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10 - Spenser's religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2006

Andrew Hadfield
Affiliation:
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
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Summary

Edmund Spenser lived during an era of chronic religious anxiety. He was born at about the time of the accession to the throne of Mary I (1553-8), the Catholic queen who attempted to reverse Henry VIII's schism from the Church of Rome and the Protestant religious settlement of her late brother, Edward VI (1547-53). Too young to remember Wyatt's Rebellion (1554), which triggered persecutions that earned the queen her reputation as 'Bloody Mary', Spenser would compose lines that allude at some level to burnings of Protestant heretics: 'holy Martyrs often doen to dye, / With cruell malice and strong tyranny' (FQ, I, viii, 36). Surely he read sensational accounts of religious persecution in John Foxe's Acts and Monuments of These Latter and Perilous Days (1563), known popularly as the Book of Martyrs. The most influential book of its age, other than the English Bible, that monumental collection exerted a profound influence upon the formation of English Protestant identity and nationhood.

Coming of age under Elizabeth I (1558-1603), the poet served the Virgin Queen who attempted to resolve religious discord with an ecclesiastical settlement that fused Catholic ritualism with codification of Protestant theology in the 'Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion' (1563). For hundreds of years, patriotic citizens celebrated the 17 November, the anniversary of her sister's death and her own Accession Day, as a national triumph over Catholicism.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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  • Spenser's religion
  • Edited by Andrew Hadfield, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Spenser
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521641999.011
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  • Spenser's religion
  • Edited by Andrew Hadfield, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Spenser
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521641999.011
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Spenser's religion
  • Edited by Andrew Hadfield, University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to Spenser
  • Online publication: 28 May 2006
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521641999.011
Available formats
×