Search results
This is the first book-length study devoted to Una, the beleaguered but ultimately triumphant heroine of Book One of The Faerie Queene. Challenging the standard identification of Spenser’s Una with the post-Reformation Church in England, it argues that she stands, rather, for the community of the redeemed, the invisible Church, whose membership is known by God alone. Una’s story (its Tudor resonances notwithstanding) thus embraces that of the Synagogue before the Incarnation as well as that of the Church in the time of Christ and thereafter. Una’s trajectory also allegorizes the redemptive process that populates the City. Initially fallible, she undergoes a transformation that is explained by the appearance of the kingly lion as Christ in canto iii. Indeed, she becomes Christ-like herself. The tragically alienated figure of Abessa in canto iii represents, it is argued, Synagoga. The disarmingly feckless satyrs in canto vi are the Gentiles of the Apostolic era, and the unreliable yet indispensable dwarf is the embodiment of the adiaphora that define national (i. e., visible), Churches. The import of Spenser’s problematic marriage metaphor is clarified in the light of the Bible and medieval allegories. These individual interpretations contribute to a coherent account of what is shown to be, on Spenser’s part, a consistent treatment of his heroine.
subtly (but significantly) recalled by the lion as Christ. Spenser’s treatment of Abessa as the Synagogue is further enriched by references to the medieval iconographical tradition according to which the Christian Church (Ecclesia) and the Synagogue (Synagoga) were personified as two women, one triumphant, the other broken; one a queen and the other a deposed queen.20 The stone archway framing the doorway into the Chapter House of Rochester Cathedral (through which Spenser, as secretary to the bishop in 1578, must have passed many a time) is framed by these very
the primary qualities associated with Judaism in Christian polemic, artwork and secular literature. Appearing on cathedral architecture and wall paintings across Europe, two female figures enacted this juxtaposition of blindness and sight. 73 Ecclesia, bearer of Christian law, was frequently placed, like the N-Town Mary and Joseph, across an architectural space and on a corresponding but opposite plinth from Synagoga of the Old Law, who was blindfolded and carried a broken staff. The use of a blindfold on Synagoga, who, from the fifteenth century, was shown facing
History of British Theatre , vol. 1: Origins to 1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 87–115, 111. 18 See Barran, L’Homme iustifié par Foy , III.v.1042–3. 19 On this opposition in its original context, see Wolfgang S. Seiferth, Synagogue and Church in the Middle Ages: Two Symbols in Art and Literature , trans. Lee Chadeayne and Paul Gottwald (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1970), esp. chapter 9, ‘Synagoga’s Blindfold’ (pp. 95–109), which documents motifs echoed in Barran’s theatricalisation: the structure of disputatio ; the veiling of Synagoga
, <4.2.7.4.2>: ‘Cum spiritus carni in homine connexus sit, quare noluerit Dominus in primitiua Ecclesia temporalia spiritualibus esse connexa?’; <4.2.7.4.2.6>: ‘[O]culus Ecclesie contemplationi legis diuine debuit intendere et a terrenis istis separare. … Sed hodie magis occupata est Ecclesia in temporalibus quoad magnam partem sui quam fuerit Synagoga
Archimago knew what the lion stood for he would have reason to fear its intentions. While the lion ignores Archimago here, God will (as it were) swallow up hypocrites on the last day. MUP_Walls_Final.indd 55 30/07/2013 16:14 God’s only daughter 56 response of Synagoga to Ecclesia. But we shall consider this subject more fully in Chapter 4. Imperfections in the redeemed In his relationship with Una, the lion allegorizes both the Incarnation and its consequence for those elected to salvation, that consequence being redemption. It is this relationship that accounts for
none of the society’s secrets even till death, to kill all the children of up to three years of age that they could and to bring the bodies to their meetings, to hasten to TMM6 8/30/03 126 5:37 PM Page 126 THE MALLEUS MALEFICARUM the assembly whenever called, to impede all marriages through magic and maleficium, and, finally, to avenge any injuries done to the sect or its members. At their meetings, or synagoga, the sectaries gave the devil the obscene kiss on the buttocks or anus (depending upon his chosen form) in token of homage, after which they enjoyed a
translation, available in The Pilgrimage of the Soul: A Critical Edition of the Middle English Dream Vision, ed. Rosemary Potts McGerr (New York and London: Garland, 1990), I, 25–54. The soul’s comment quoted above is on p. 29, ll. 25–6. For the worm and her scroll, see McGerr’s Pls 3b, 4a, 4b and her analysis of illustrations in the extant MSS in her Introduction, xlvii ff. 81 The demise of the Law was intimated in canto iii by the fate of Abessa’s pot of water (iconographically equivalent to the tablets of the Law as an attribute of Synagoga). See Chapter 4, under ‘Una
Press, 2007), pp. 181–3. 109 Both the Mary Magdalene and the Hannah texts quoted above appear in the Libellus prayer excerpts. 110 Hannah is seen as a symbol of Ecclesia (versus Penninah’s Synagoga ), or as a personification of Christian sacrifice (and an exemplar for the practice of monastic oblation) in literature before the eleventh century. John is the first medieval writer to use Hannah as a devotional exemplar (he is followed by Peter Damien and Abelard, though neither uses Hannah as robustly as John does
sculptures en pieres e peyntures chescun jour pur ce que il ne ly vueillent oblier, quar peynture c’est lyvre a ceux qe ne ount conoissaunce de lettre ’ [729–732]. 106 ‘ Mes ore de synagoge, que fust temple as gyus, ore est ordyné eglise a chretienz pur fere sacrifice chretiene ’ [732–733]. 107 Rowe, Synagoga and Ecclesia. 108 Westrem, ‘Against Gog’, 55. 109 As Despres writes: ‘The Jewish protagonist in disputation literature, in sermon exempla, and in Marian miracles is always male’ (‘Protean Jew’, 161). 110 Or at least its attempt; see Kruger, Spectral Jew