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Spenser's Use of the Bible and His Alleged Puritanism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Grace Warren Landrum
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Extract

Although Spenser, speaking in the character of Irenæus in the View of the State of Ireland, declares himself as not “professed” in religion, he shows in general such profound interest in religion that his ecclesiastical and theological views have provoked abundant discussion. In examining the question of his religious predilections one might expect to gain further evidence from a careful study of his use of the Scriptures.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , September 1926 , pp. 517 - 544
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1926

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References

1 This estimate excludes, of course, references in Spenser's translations, in the argument and the Gloss of the Shepheardes Calender. In the prose matter accompaning the latter Spenser may have had a hand. See Draper's study of the Gloss, Journ. Eng. and Germ. Phil., XVIII, 556-74.

2 Queen Elizabeth reinstated Cranmer's Bible as the authorized version (The English Hexapla, p. 88). It is not impossible, though not highly probable, that Spenser might have reverted to the Coverdale version (1535 A.D.). But a comparison of Spenser and the passages below in parallel columns shows no evidence of his use of this version. In the single case (No. 11) in which he is closer to Coverdale the change in phrasing from the latter to that of the Bishops' Bible is inconsequential:

Spenser : Her berth was of the wombe of morning dew

Coverdale: The dew of thy byrth is of the wombe of the morning

Bishops': The deawe of thy birth is to thee from the womb as from the morning

In every other instance in which Spenser is closer to C or B than to G the Cover-dale phrasing is the same as that of C and B. Again, the sole case of greater likeness of Coverdale to the Genevan proves nothing as to Spenser's dependence upon Coverdale.

There is a singular agreement of Spenser with the Vulgate in No. 1 (see below), as Professor Carleton Brown has shown me. The Vulgate (Gen. 2:11) has Phison and Gihon, Spenser's forms, with which no one of the four Protestant versions agrees exactly. But there is no further consistency in Spenser's spelling of biblical names. For example, the Vulgate has Debbora, Sisara; Coverdale, Deborra, Sissera; Cranmer, Sisara, Delora; the Genevan, Debora and Sisera (Judges 4:14). Again, the Vulgate, the Bishops' Bible and Spenser agree in Elias as the prophet's name. It seems to me, therefore, unsafe to assume more than accidental agreement between Spenser and the Vulgate. However, in his correspondence with Harvey Spenser quotes verbatim part of a long verse (2 Mach. IX:8) from the Latin. This verse suggested to him FQ I iv 47 8 (q.v.).

3 Between 1560 and 1644 at least 140 editions of the Genevan Bible or Testament appeared. See The English Hexapla, p. 93.

4 “Even Parker and Grindall, opposed as they were to the sentiments of the translators on ecclesiastical grounds, acknowledged it [The Genevan Version] as a valuable performance—” The English Hexapla, p. 35. See also Westcott, A General View of the English Bible. p. 107.

5 The English Hexapla, p. 93.

6 The similarity of the Bishops' version to Cranmer's will appear in quotations in this article. See also The English Bible in the John Rylands Collection, p. 215.

7 In the biblical citations which follow, C is used to designate Cranmer's version, G, the Genevan, and B the Bishops'. I have not always cited the same edition of G, but the variations between the editions are too slight, I believe, to affect the results of this investigation.

8 References in Spenser are to the Oxford edition, 1912.

9 Coverdale's translation in the four passages which follow agrees perfectly with C, G, and B. The spelling given is that of B.

10 Oxford edition p. 408.

11 For this treatise references are to Todd's edition of Spenser, 1805.

12 The evidence from the prose, The View of Ireland,in which, relieved of metrical adjustment, Spenser could quote exactly, is divided. See cases 2, 4 (Cramner's); 12, 17 (Genevan).

13 It may be said in passing that Tyndale's New Testament version appears to have no influence upon Spenser's phrasing.

14 Preface to the Complaints, Oxford edition, p. 470.

15 Complete Works of Spenser, I, 99.

16 The metrical renderings of Sternhold and Hopkins to be sung in church appear in some Genevan versions. See The Bay Psalm Book, as reprinted by the New England Society in the City of New York, p.v.

17 Fowre Letters, edited by Grosart, I, 218.

18 Spenser has nearly sixty references or allusions to Psalms, Ecclesiastes and Canticles.

19 The Foure Hymnes.

20 See Greenlaw, “Spenser's Influence on Paradise Lost,” Studies in Phil. XVII, 320-359; Fletcher, “Spenser's Foure Hymnes,” P.M.L.A. XXVI, 452-75; Harrison, Platonism in English Poetry, pp. 185ff; Padelford, “Spenser and the Theology of Calvin,” Mod. Phil. XII, 1-18; “Spenser's Foure Hymnes,” Journ. Eng. and Ger. Philol. XIII, 418-83.

21 See The Foure Hymnes, p. lxi.

22 See the comment on this, The Foure Hymnes p. 57. Compare the phras in Colin Clout's Come Home Again, vv. 839-842:

For long before the world he was y-'bore
And bred above in Venus bosom deare:
For by his powre the world was made
And all that therein of you wondrous doth appear.

23 Compare Amoretti, LXVIII 12, 14:

With love may one another entertayne ....
Love is the lesson which the Lord us taught.

24 Spenser is nearer Luke than Plato in a phrase which Miss Winstanley derives from the latter (The Foure Hymnes p. lvii) :

At length him nayled on a gallows tree
And slew the just by most unjust decree (Heavenly Love 153, 154).
In referring to Christ's death why should Spenser have in mind ' the fate of the just man as given in the Republic“ when a biblical author twice calls Jesus ”the Just?“ (See Acts 3:14 and 7:52). The three versions (C, G, B,) agree in rendering ”The Holy and the Just One.“

25 The Foure Hymnes, p. 75.

26 Ibid., p. 74.

27 E. Hickey, “Catholicity in Spenser,” America Catholic Quarterly Review, XXXII, 491.

28 The Seven Deadly Sins passage, (F. Q. I iv) illustrates the point.

29 “Spenser's Sapience,” Studies in Philology, XIV, 169.

30 To Osgood's list I should add Heavenly Beautie, 239-241 (Wisdom 9:16); ibid., 246, 247 (Wisdom 10:10); ib. 53; 61, 62 (Wisdom 13:3). Osgood remarks in a note that Spenser's borrowing's from the Apocrypha are slightly nearer the Genevan version than the Bishops'. A careful examination of Cranmer's, the Genevan, and the Bishops' leads me to decide against the Genevan. The clearest cases of difference—very slight, to be sure—are as follows:

31 “Benievieni's Ode of Love and Spenser's Foure Hymnes,” Mod. Philol. VIII, 546.

32 Spenser's “Foure Hymnes,” Jour. Eng. and Germ. Philol. XIII, 425.

33 “Spenser's Foure Hymnes,” Journ. Eng. Germ. Philol., XIII, 427ff; “Spenser and the Spirit of Puritanism,” Mod. Philol. XIV, 36; “Spenser and the Puritan Propaganda,” Mod. Philol., XI, 91ff; “Spenser and the Theory of Calvin,” Mod. Philol., XII, 9.

34 “Spenser's Blatant Beast,” Mod. Lang. Rev., XIII, 273.

35 See P.M.L.A., XXXI, p. 729.

36 “The Shepheardes Calender,” P.M.L.A., XXVI., 448.

37 Ibid., p. 436.

38 “Spenser's Puritanism,” Mod. Lang. Quarterly, III. 6-10, 103-110.

39 James J. Higginson, Spenser's Shepherd's Calender in Relation to Contemporary Affairs, N. Y. 1912, p. 39; see also pp. 157 and 160.

40 “Spenser and the Puritan Propaganda,” Mod. Philol. XI, 105.

41 “The Relation of Spenser and Harvey to Puritanism,” Mod. Philol. XV, 549-64.

42 De Selincourt considers Harvey “a strong Puritan (Oxford edition of Spenser, p. ix). The editor of his marginalia, G. C. Moore Smith, objects to his being called a Puritan and believes him ”too much a man of the Italian Renaissance to be a very fervent Christian.“ But we cannot overlook Harvey's genuine interest in religious matters, as expressed in his glowing praise of the Prayer Book: Ecce elegans atque praegnans tractatus in authentico Libro Precum publicarum in Ecclesia nostra Anglicana ....cuius ignarus plane asinus ad lyram Ecclesiasticum. Certum mea, tuaque refert ilium ediscere disertum praegnantem tractatum De Anno et partibus eius. (Marginalia, p. 163). Furthermore, he like Spenser, is enamoured of the Apocalypse as ”the verie notablest and most wonderful Propheticall or Poetical Vision“ that he had ever read.” (See A New Yeres Gift, Osford edition of Spenser, p. 628), His marginal comments in general show decided biblical impress. Is it, in fact, quite possible that his eagerness “to avoid all semblance of being a Puritan,” to quote Long (“Spenser and the Bishop of Rochester,” P.M.L.A. XXXI, 730), arose because he was really marked, by more than one “od point of puritanism or praecisionism,” though he disclaimed it?

43 F Q I x 19

44 Padelford, “Spenser and the Theology of Calvin,” Mod. Philol. VII, 5.

45 F Q I xi 47 8, 9

46 The Faerie Queene, Book I, p. 237.

47 See in general the discussion by Padelford, “Spenser and the Theology of Calvin,” Mod. Phil. XII, 8; “Spenser's Foure Hymnes,” J.E.G. Ph. XIII, 429

48 F Q I viii I.

49 “Spenser and the Theology of Calvin,” Mod. Philol. XII, 7.

50 Klein, Intolerance in the Reign of Elizabeth, p. 136.

51 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, p. 54.

52 Klein, op. cit., p. 138.

53 Ibid., p. 143.

54 Ibid., p. 161.

55 Ibid., p. 150.

56 See the work of Higginson and Greenlaw in particular. Help may be expected from the forthcoming study by F. F. Covington, Jr., of Spenser's years in Ireland.

57 View of Ireland, Todd's edition, p. 501 ff.

58 F Q, I viii 36. See Miss Winstanley's edition of Book I, p. 267