Virginity and the Patristic Tradition; Spenser’S Faerie Queene and the Reformation
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Virginity and the Patristic Tradition; Spenser’s Faerie Queene and the Reformation —————— Beatrice Fannon Thesis Submitted in Candidature for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Cardiff University —————— July 2012 Summary It has long been recognised that chastity is a problem in Book III of The Faerie Queene. The problem arises in part because the poem does not clearly define chastity but instead ambiguously praises it both as virginity and marital love. Behind the poem, too, lies the problem of Elizabeth with her Protestant virginity sometimes represented in Britomart, sometimes in Belphoebe, but also dangerously Catholic in its iconography. Indeed, wherever we turn in The Faerie Queene there are tangles of meaning. The contention of this thesis is that these problems are not merely surface writings, but stem from the Protestant breach with the Church Fathers and the long history of virginity. That history, I suggest in the main body of the thesis, has been broadly ignored by the critics who, by failing to grasp its theological complexity and development, have failed to produce an adequate platform from which to read the Protestant reformers and The Faerie Queene. The thesis is divided into two main parts. The Introduction examines recent critical discussions of virginity in Spenser, the Middle Ages and patristics, thus working backwards historically to the patristic writings themselves where I offer, in Part I, a detailed examination of the growth of the theological significance of virginity. Part II then looks at the reformers’ attacks on virginity, Luther and Erasmus especially, before turning to a discussion of the troubled meanings of virginity and chastity in Spenser’s epic poem. Contents Preface i Introduction: The Virgins and the Critics 1 PART I I. Tertullian 43 II. Cyprian 76 III. Clement of Rome 108 IV. Methodius of Olympus 125 V. Athanasius 178 VI. Gregory of Nyssa 209 VII. Ambrose 247 VIII. John Chrysostom 278 IX. Jerome 326 X. Augustine 395 PART II XI. Renaissance Humanism and Reformation 473 XII. Spenser’s The Faerie Queene 531 Afterword 590 Bibliography 593 i Preface The present thesis explores the complex development of virginity in the patristic writings of the Church Fathers, the challenge of the Protestant reformers Luther and Erasmus to this ideal and the troubled representation of chastity in Book III of Spenser’s Protestant epic poem, The Faerie Queene. The Introduction examines recent criticism of Spenser’s poem, medieval virginity and patristic writings to suggest that the current concern with gender and the body has obscured the theological complexity and history of virginity inherited by the Middle Ages and the Reformation. Part I of the thesis then sets out to show how the concept of virginity developed from the early Church in the writings of the Church Fathers and how this history has been misunderstood. Because this part relies heavily on unfamiliar primary material, the thesis provides a full account partly via detailed footnotes. Biographical information of each Father is given in order to provide a context for the production of their works. This account, beginning with Tertullian in the early third century, and concluding with Augustine in the late fourth century, then serves as a background for a discussion of the reformers Luther and Erasmus and their engagement with and critique of patristic writings on virginity in Part II. The final chapter returns to the problem of chastity in The Faerie Queene, in particular Book III and its narrative continuations in Books IV and V. It is not, however, the contention of this thesis that the patristic writings addressed in Part I were direct source texts for Spenser. Rather, it argues that an appreciation of patristic writings which contributed to the development of the doctrine of virginity is important for understanding the flourishing of the cult of virginity and the complex theological ideas that are enshrined within it. In addition, it is necessary to understand the patristic tradition in order to appreciate the theological wrangling in the Reformation on issues concerning virginity, such as monasticism and mandatory clerical celibacy. The Reformation debates about these ii issues were not simply a rejection of corrupt practices but involved the reassessment and ultimately the rejection of an intricate and rich theological tradition. Part II seeks to offer an explanation of the issues involved in the Reformation’s interrogation and rejection of consecrated virginity. It does this by looking briefly at the writings of Martin Luther and Desiderius Erasmus, the two great continental reformers and voices of Protestant Reformation and Renaissance Humanism respectively. The Reformation debates in which these two authors partook represented a resurrection of much older, patristic debates. Luther’s fracturing of ‘virginity’ as a conceptual idea into Church practices – monasticism and mandatory sacerdotal celibacy – led, however to an undermining of its orthodox meanings, and the final chapter of the thesis seeks to demonstrate how these controversies inform Spenser’s treatment of chastity in Book III of The Faerie Queene. Spenser engages with a variety of issues connected with the doctrine of virginity and its relationship to chaste marriage. Spenser, however, not only has to negotiate the rich patristic tradition and the political aspects of Reformation theology, but his treatment of virginity also has to deal with the political figure of England’s Protestant Virgin Queen and her troubling iconography. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the depiction of chastity in The Faerie Queene proves as ambiguous as the poem’s dark allegory. To be aware of the struggles of the Church Fathers to define and defend virginity in all its theological complexity is to begin to understand why Renaissance writers like Spenser found both a rich topic in virginity but also a political, moral and religious aporia. 1 Introduction: The Virgins and the Critics i. Renaissance Literary Studies Where any consideration of virginity in the Renaissance exists, it is Queen Elizabeth I’s personal cult of virginity that dominates discussions.1 Not surprisingly, perhaps, critical studies of The Faerie Queene which focus on the virginal chastity of the queen tend to assert its political dimension rather than its theological importance or spiritual complexity. In an essay surveying gendered readings of Spenser, Elizabeth Bellamy notes that ‘gender-based studies of Spenser, dating from the early 1980s, often focussed on the sexual politics of Elizabeth’s cult of chastity’.2 This trend has continued ever since. Louis Montrose, for example, interrogates the queen’s cult in the light of John Knox’s The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1588) and episodes in Books II and V of The Faerie Queene.3 He argues that Spenser’s works are saturated by ‘the vexed relationship of gender and power’, which are indicative of ‘a pervasively masculinist early modern culture’ and a ‘late Elizabethan articulation of the interplay between dominant gender paradigms and emergent political paradigms’.4 Maureen Quilligan, in a discussion on the importance of gendered readership, says that the third book of The Faerie Queene, entitled The Legend of Chastity, ‘directly addressed the problem of the queen’s politically powerful virginity and the dynamics of its erotic 1 Discussions on Elizabeth’s cult of virginity owe much to Francis Yates’ work on Tudor portraiture. Cf. Francis A. Yates, Selected Works: Astraea, Vol. V (London and New York: Routledge, 1975). 2 Elizabeth Jane Bellamy, ‘Gender’, in A Critical Companion to Spenser Studies, ed. Bart van Es (Hampshire and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 76-97, (p. 93). 3 He argues that Knox’s tract ‘encapsulates certain persistent thematic, imagistic, and rhetorical elements that are writ large across Spenser’s Faerie Queene.’ Louis Montrose, ‘Spenser and the Elizabethan Political Imaginary’, EHL, Vol. 69, No. 4 (Winter, 2002), 907-946, (p. 909). 4 Montrose, ‘Spenser and the Elizabethan Political Imaginary’, p. 907. 2 allure’.5 Other studies suggest that Book III represents male anxiety about female rulers. Thus, Mary Villeponteaux argues that ‘[t]he virgin knight Britomart is the figure in the poem who best exemplifies Spenser’s ambivalent depiction of women’s authority’.6 The understanding of The Faerie Queene as a comment on female authority is shared also by Judith H. Anderson in her essay ‘“In liuing colours bright hew”: The Queen of Spenser’s Central Books’.7 More comprehensively, Philippa Berry’s Of Chastity and Power: Elizabethan Literature and the Unmarried Queen examines Elizabeth’s cult of virginity from the perspective of its appropriation of Petrarchan love imagery and argues that The idea of feminine chastity which was emphasised by Petrarch and the Renaissance Neoplatonists acquired a new and unexpected significance when associated with a woman who was possessed of both political and spiritual authority.8 While this may be so, Berry’s argument overlooks the obvious tension between the spiritual and political aspects of virginity. The ‘political’ had, after all, emerged from denying the ‘spiritual’ aspects of virginity in the Reformation. Whereas Berry discusses the literary influences adopted by Elizabeth in her cult, the complexities of the Elizabethan cult of the virgin seem to have been overlooked, or oversimplified, by other critics. In her book, Transforming Desire: Erotic Knowledge in 5 Maureen Quilligan, ‘The Gender of the Reader and the Problem of Sexuality [in Books III and IV]’, in Critical Essays on Edmund Spenser, ed. Mihoko Suzuki (New York: G. K. Hall & Co., 1996), pp. 133-151, (p. 133). 6 Mary Villeponteaux, ‘Displacing Feminine Authority in The Faerie Queene’, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 35, No. 1, The English Renaissance (Winter, 1995), 53-67, (p. 53). 7 Cf. Anderson: ‘Even in the 1590 Faerie Queene, Spenser’s reverence for Queen Elizabeth is accompanied by a cautionary awareness of the temptations and dangers of queenly power and by a complementary awareness of the cost – the denial or exclusion of human possibilities – an ennobling idea exacts of its bearer.’ Judith H.