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Molinos: “The Subject of the Day” in the Ring and the Book
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
For the background of The Ring and the Book Browning relied heavily on static features of Roman and Aretine life in the late seventeenth century. Many references to streets, buildings, landscapes, customs, politics, and religion could fit a narrative laid in 1650 or in 1750; moreover, the classical and Biblical allusions, which outnumber but resemble those in The Old Yellow Book, carry little connotation of a precise time. Manifestly topical, however, are the references to the heretical teachings of Miguel de Molinos, which Browning termed Molinism. In The Old Yellow Book this heresy is mentioned only once, when the writer of the first anonymous pamphlet suggests that those who do not support a wronged husband against an errant wife may seek to introduce “the power of sinning against the laws of God with impunity, along with the doctrine of Molinos and philosophic sin, which has been checked by the authority of the Holy Office.”
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1952
References
1 The Old Yellow Book, trans. Charles W. Hodell (Washington, 1916), p. 120 (cxlvi).
2 A. K. Cook, A Commentary upon Browning's “The Ring and the Book” (London, 1920), Appendix viii, pp. 306-311. Cook states that Browning made “more than thirty” references to Molinism and analogous heresies; but he cites only twenty-five, one of. which (viii.712) is highly doubtful and is not included in the thirty-five here considered. Cook's suggestion that references to Molinos constitute an anachronism is based on the fact that the heretic was imprisoned in 1687, about ten years before the action of the poem takes place.
3 All references are to the Modern Student's Library text, ed. Frederick Morgan Padelford (New York, 1917).
4 The highly simplified descriptions of Molinism, Jansenism, Quietism, and Semiquietism and the identifications of Molina, Jansen, Molinos, Madame Guyon, and Fénelon are based on The Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1911) and Ludwig Von Pastor, The History of the Popes (St. Louis, 1940).