Audience and Reception in the Early Modern Period [1 ed.] 0367676265, 9780367676261

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Figures
1. Introduction: Audiences and Reception: Readers, Listeners, and Viewers
Notes
Works Cited
2. To Compliment a Musical Friend: Amateur Musicians and Their Audiences in France, ca. 1650-1700
2.1 The Compliment in Context
2.2 The Musical Compliment
2.3 Gallant Conversations
2.4 Arion's Song
Notes
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
3. Elizabethan Audience Gaze at History Plays: Liminal Time and Space in Shakespeare's Richard II
3.1 Of Courts
3.2 Of Private Residences
3.3 Of Tiltyards
3.4 Of Gardens
3.5 Of Power
3.6 Of Streets
3.7 Of Prisons
Notes
Works Cited
4. The Commedia dell'Arte from Marketplace to Court
4.1 Part I: Piazza Performances for Everybody: The Fascination with Servitude
4.2 Part II: The Arrival of the Actress: Staging a Female Revolution
4.3 Part III: Harlequin and Francisquina Perform Their Servitude in the Recueil Fossard
4.4 Part IV: The Commedia dell'Arte Survives the Censorship of the Counter-Reformation Church
4.5 Part V: Isabella Andreini's Mad Performance Conquers the Court
4.6 Part VI: The Commedia dell'Arte and the Courts
Notes
Works Cited
5. Spreading the Word: Theater, Religion, and Contagious Performances
5.1 Tell the Tale Anew: Contagious Stories in Theater
5.2 Live and Life-Giving: Disseminating Sermons to an Early Modern Audience
5.3 Huddled About the Campfire: Community Building Through Performance
Notes
Works Cited
6. "Sedicious" Sermons: Preaching, Politics, and Provocation in Reformation England, 1540-1570
6.1 The Evangelicals' Views of Sermons
6.2 "Sedicious" Sermons and Court Prophets
6.3 Social Justice and Political Euphemisms
6.4 In Defense of "Sedicious" Sermons
6.5 Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
7. The Rotterdam Inquisitor and the False Prophet of Antwerp: Religious Disputation and Its Audiences in the Seventeenth-Century Low Countries
7.1 Disputation and the Early Modern Public Sphere
7.2 The First Audience: Impressing 18 Witnesses
7.3 The Second Audience: Disputation Goes Public
7.4 The Third Audience: Setting the Record Straight in Print
7.5 Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
8. Relational Performances and Audiences in the Prologue of John Gower's Confessio Amantis
8.1 From Mentor to Vassal
8.2 On a Boat: Preference and Privacy
8.3 Credibility and "Trowthe"
8.4 Authority, Audience, and Community
Notes
Works Cited
9. George Turberville, Constancy and Plain Style
Notes
Works Cited
10. "Assi de doctos como de indoctos": A Poet-Translator Discovers His Audience in the Spain of Philip II
10.1 Rome on the Tagus: La Imperial Ciudad de Toledo and the Politics of Translation
10.2 Runaway Success: The Emergence of Hernández de Velasco to His Vernacular Readers
Notes
Works Cited
Early Modern Works
Secondary Literature
11. Female Audiences and Translations of the Classics in Early Modern Italy
Notes
Works cited
12. Women Are from Venus: Addressing Female Agency with Classical Allegory
12.1 Classical Readings of the Venus Trope
12.2 Gataker, Marriage Dvties
12.3 Page, "The Widdowe Indeed"
12.4 Pulter, "Emblem 13"
12.5 Hacket, "Eighth Sermon Upon the Resurrection"
12.6 Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
13. Domenico Ghirlandaio's High Altarpiece for Santa Maria Novella and the Pre-Tridentine Audience of Italian Altarpieces
13.1 Viewing the Renaissance Altarpiece
13.2 Ghirlandaio at Santa Maria Novella
13.3 Conclusions
Notes
Works Cited
14. Guides Who Know the Way
14.1 Pilgrimage and Ladder
14.2 There Are Many Paths on This Ascent
14.3 So That You May Know Yourself Well
14.4 The Play's the Thing
14.5 Disposing the Heart to the Means and the Ends
Notes
Works Cited
15. Beyond the Doctrine of Merit: Philips Galle's Prints of the Sacraments and Works of Mercy
15.1 Introduction
15.2 The Structure of Galle's Engravings
15.3 Pacification of Ghent and Its Impact on Galle's Prints
15.4 Philips Galle and the Jesuit Theatre
15.5 Galle's Prints as a Metatextual Exegesis
15.6 Right Place, Wrong Time?
Notes
Works Cited
Contributors
Index

Citation preview

Routledge Studies in Cultural History

AUDIENCE AND RECEPTION IN THE EARLY MODERN PERIOD Edited by John R. Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives

Audience and Reception in the Early Modern Period

Early modern audiences, readerships, and viewerships were not homogenous. Differences in status, education, language, wealth, and experience (to name only a few variables) could influence how a group of people, or a particular person, received and made sense of sermons, public proclamations, dramatic and musical performances, images, objects, and spaces. The ways in which each of these were framed and executed could have a serious impact on their relevance and effectiveness. The chapters in this volume explore the ways in which authors, poets, artists, preachers, theologians, playwrights, and performers took account of and encoded pluriform potential audiences, readers, and viewers in their works, and how these varied parties encountered and responded to these works. The contributors here investigate these complex interactions through a variety of critical and methodological lenses. John R. Decker is the chairperson of the Department of the History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute. Mitzi Kirkland-Ives is a professor of art history and museum studies in the Department of Art and Design at Missouri State University.

Routledge Studies in Cultural History

Contact, Conquest and Colonization How Practices of Comparing Shaped Empires and Colonialism Around the World Edited by Eleonora Rohland, Angelika Epple, Antje Flüchter, and Kirsten Kramer The German Spa in the Long Eighteenth Century A Cultural History Ute Lotz-Heumann The Formal Call in the Making of the Baltic Bourgeoisie Kekke Stadin Audience and Reception in the Early Modern Period Edited by John R. Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives The Retornados from the Portuguese Colonies in Africa Edited by Elsa Peralta Folklore and Nation in Britain and Ireland Edited by Matthew Cheeseman and Carina Hart The Politics and Polemics of Culture in Ireland, 1800–2010 Pat Cooke Emotions as Engines of History Edited by Rafał Borysławski and Alicja Bemben East Asian-German Cinema The Transnational Screen, 1919 to the Present Edited by Joanne Miyang Cho The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures Concepts, Problems, and the Aesthetics of Postcatastrophic Narration Edited by Anna Artwińska and Anja Tippner For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-Cultural-History/book-series/SE0367

Audience and Reception in the Early Modern Period

Edited by John R. Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives

First published 2022 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, John R. Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives; individual chapters, the contributors The right of John R. Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this title has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-67626-1 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-67639-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-13214-1 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141 Typeset in Sabon by MPS Limited, Dehradun

Contents

List of Figures 1 Introduction: Audiences and Reception: Readers, Listeners, and Viewers

vii

1

M ITZI KIRKL A ND -I V ES

2 To Compliment a Musical Friend: Amateur Musicians and Their Audiences in France, ca. 1650–1700

30

M ICHAE L A. B A NE

3 Elizabethan Audience Gaze at History Plays: Liminal Time and Space in Shakespeare’s Richard II

54

M URAT ÖĞÜ TCÜ

4 The Commedia dell’Arte from Marketplace to Court

81

ROS AL IND K E R R

5 Spreading the Word: Theater, Religion, and Contagious Performances

108

J. F. BE RNAR D

6 “Sedicious” Sermons: Preaching, Politics, and Provocation in Reformation England, 1540–1570 B RIA N L . HAN S O N

124

vi

Contents

7 The Rotterdam Inquisitor and the False Prophet of Antwerp: Religious Disputation and Its Audiences in the Seventeenth-Century Low Countries

145

DAV ID L . RO BI N SO N

8 Relational Performances and Audiences in the Prologue of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis

166

JON AT HAN M . N E WM A N

9 George Turberville, Constancy and Plain Style

193

M EL IH L E V I

10 “Assi de doctos como de indoctos”: A PoetTranslator Discovers His Audience in the Spain of Philip II

223

RICHARD H. AR MS T RO N G

11 Female Audiences and Translations of the Classics in Early Modern Italy

252

FRANCE S CA D ’ A LE S SA N D R O B E HR

12 Women Are from Venus: Addressing Female Agency with Classical Allegory

276

HE LE NA KAZ N O W S KA

13 Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece for Santa Maria Novella and the Pre-Tridentine Audience of Italian Altarpieces

303

S ARA H CA DA GI N

14 Guides Who Know the Way

324

JOHN R. DE C K E R

15 Beyond the Doctrine of Merit: Philips Galle’s Prints of the Sacraments and Works of Mercy

359

B ARBA RA KAM I N S K A

Contributors Index

394 397

Figures

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Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Francatripa, Harlequin Inamorato, and Licetta (Act 3, Scene 1). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Pantalon Marrying Harlequin and Francisquina (Act 3, Scene 2). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Harlequin and children visiting Pantalon (Act 3, Scene 3). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Francisquina and Pantalon Reuniting, with Harlequin Watching (Act 3, Scene 4). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. Scene from the Receuil Fossard Zany and Harlequin Watching Leandro and Francisquina (Act 3, Scene 5). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. High Altar and Choir, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy (HIP/Art Resource, NY). High Altar of Santa Maria Novella from the side before Nineteenth-Century Restoration, from Jean Corbinelli, Histoire généalogique de la Maison de Gondi (Chez Jean-Baptiste Coignard: Paris, 1705). (© Photo: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-PlanckInstitut) (Inv.no. 615378) Converted to Grayscale. Domenico Ghirlandaio (and Workshop), Madonna and Child Enthroned with Sts. Dominic, Michael, John the Baptist, and Thomas, 1490–1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Bayerische Staatsgemä ldesammlungen—Alte Pinakothek, München, URL: https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/ ZMLJroqLJv. (CC BY-SA 4.0; Converted to Grayscale). Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Resurrection of Christ, 1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Staatliche

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Museen, Berlin, Germany. Photo: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Domenico Ghirlandaio (and Workshop), St. Lawrence, c. 1490–1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen— Alte Pinakothek, München, URL: https:// www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/01G1 yj9GkE. (CC BY-SA 4.0; Converted to Grayscale). Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Stephen, c. 1493–94, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary. (© The Museum of Fine Arts Budapest/Scala/Art Resource, NY). Domenico Ghirlandaio (and Workshop), St. Catherine of Siena, c. 1490–1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen— Alte Pinakothek, München, URL: https:// www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/02 LAkM74yk (CC BY-SA 4.0; Converted to Grayscale). Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Peter Martyr, c. 1493–94, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Reggio Emilia, Italy. (Scala/Art Resource, NY). Vittore Carpaccio, Apparition of the Crucifix in the Church of Sant’Antonio di Castello, c. 1512, Oil on Canvas, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, Italy. (Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le Attività culturali/Art Resource, NY). Joos van Cleve, Annunciation, 1525. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 86 × 80 cm, Oil on Panel, Accession nr. 32.100.60. Joos van Cleve, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Hans Memling, Portrait of Martin van Niewenhoven with the Virgin, 1487. Bruges, Hospital of St. John, 44.7 × 66 cm, Oil on Panel, Object nr. O.SJ0178.I. Photo: Alexey Yakovlev, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons. Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Female Donor, 1450–60. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, 41 × 22 cm, Oil on Panel, Accession nr. 1961.9.11. Petrus Christus, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Male Donor, 1450–60. London, National Gallery, 35.5 × 26.3 cm, Oil on Panel. National Gallery, CC BY 3.0

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(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons. Anonymous. Annunciation, Late Fifteenth Century. Bruges, Cinquantanaire Museum. Oil on Wood. Daderot, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Anonymous, Way of Salvation, 1485–95. The Art Institute of Chicago, 263 × 180 mm, Ink on Paper, Reference nr. 1947.473. CC0 Public Domain. Philips Galle, Admonishing the Sinners, from the Series Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 26 × 19 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Philips Galle, Title Page, from the Series Seven Sacraments, 1576. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.5 × 19.1 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Philips Galle, Title Page, from the Series Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 26 × 19 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Philips Gale, Title Page, from the Series Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.6 × 19.2 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Antwerp, The Last Judgment with the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Works of Mercy, 1490–1500. Maagdenhuis, Stad Antwerpen (B), 115 × 125 cm, Oil on Panel. Photo: KIK / IRPA (Brussels). Philips Galle, Feeding the Hungry, from the Series Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.7 × 19.2 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Philips Galle, Eucharist, from the Series Seven Sacraments, 1576. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.6 × 19 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Philips Galle, Giving Thirsty to Drink, from the Series Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.7 × 19.2 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Philips Galle, Visiting the Sick, from the series Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.7 × 19.2 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Philips Galle, Extreme Unction, from the Series Seven Sacraments, 1576. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.6 × 19 mm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Philips Galle, Instructing the Ignorant, from the Series Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 26 × 19 cm, engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Philips Galle, Confirmation, from the Series Seven Sacraments, 1576. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.6 × 19 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Introduction: Audiences and Reception: Readers, Listeners, and Viewers Mitzi Kirkland-Ives

Across varied disciplines, the last several decades of scholarship have seen a sustained renewal of interest in audiences—readers, listeners, viewers. A wealth of studies has emerged in such diverse fields as sociology, archeology, translation studies, and studies of contemporary cultural phenomena that include mass media audience studies, museum studies, and studies of the reception of political rhetoric and advertising, to name a few examples.1 While these disciplines have their own rich bodies of literature, this volume focuses on the various arts—literary, dramatic, visual, and musical. Additionally, great portions of the discourse centering on the audiences of these arts have been dedicated to, on the one hand, the translation and reception of the arts of the ancient and late Classical world, and on the other the twentieth-century moment. While in the twentieth century Classical reception generally fell within wider study of “the Classical tradition,” in recent years the field has been better recognized in its own right, with a number of essay compilations and even a dedicated journal.2 Reception studies focusing on the twentieth century and the contemporary moment have necessarily expanded and adapted in order to investigate mass media such as television and film, and the pluriform audiences that have emerged with respect to new media technologies such as the internet, video games, and virtual reality.3 This volume, however, focuses on an earlier era of great transition, namely the late Medieval and Early Modern period in Europe: a time of great social and technological transformation that affected the nature of audiences, and how artists and artworks might address and respond to them. These centuries witnessed, among other relevant events, the reemergence of popular drama, the development of the press, increased literacy rates, and the demand for widely disseminated printed matter among increasingly diverse publics.4 This volume, then, focuses on the arts most prominent in this period: written texts including poetry and epistolary, sermons and homilies and their presentation; dramatic scripts and performance; musical performance, and the visual arts. The essays collected here, additionally, vary in their attention to different “audiences:” some focus on the reading or viewing activities of individual and DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-1

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separate readers and viewers, while others instead account for a collective event—publics as corporate or aggregated entities. As Harris describes, “The audience or public is the society as a totality of groups and forces organising, and organised by, the material structures of economic, political and ideological life, including those directly bearing upon art’s production and understanding.”5 It is impossible in a brief survey to do justice to any of these movements, and many prominent scholars and approaches will remain here unnoted, but the intention is to identify some of the key figures and trends within the theoretical developments in each of primary disciplines represented in this volume—especially models developed in the last half century—and to provide the broad contours of some of these movements as an entry point for readers arriving at these pages from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Even as a robust Formalist approach reigned in some circles over the twentieth century, a rich tradition of reception studies, loosely defined, thrived. In this sense of the term, “reception” embraces investigations that include historical chains of influence, interpretation and adaptation, translation, appropriation, and other legacies, both immediate and distant to the artwork in question. This approach is concerned with the Nachlebung of works broadly considered as well as the negotiations between artist and audience, which in this tradition is usually understood as an “ideal” or “intended” audience or beholder, and the negotiations usually understood as overt and intentional.6 These historical methods drew upon the humanistic tradition of Schliermacher and Dilthey, and the art historical tradition of Aby Warburg and Erwin Panofsky, in which an embedded meaning or authorial intention is historically excavated or recovered (or, as E. D. Hirsch argued more recently in literary studies, even if it were not recovered, the authorial intention or meaning would remain constant and privileged over its varied significance to later readers).7 While this broadly defined historical investigation of reception and the theoretical discourse has remained lively over the last forty years, in the latter half of the century a new critical lens was directed toward the question, and a number of discrete but likeminded methodological approaches were refined across a number of disciplines: responses to positivist or essentialist readings of cultural texts. This trend can be tied to more subjective or self-conscious historical projects developed in the writings of such scholars as Hayden White, Thomas Kuhn, or Michel Foucault. The hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer have also been instrumental—his concept, for example, of a “merging of horizons” of the expectations of the historical object and of the self-aware investigating subject. The more fluid understandings of meaning proposed in the wake of Structuralism, incipient already as early as Peirce’s concept of the interpretant but fully ascendant in, for example, Eco’s “Open Work” and in Barthes’ Death of the Author and S/Z, have also been

Readers, Listeners, and Viewers

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deeply influential. In grappling with the diversity and range of approaches that had emerged in the preceding quarter century, Susan Suleiman arrived at an expansive characterization of “audience-oriented criticism” in her 1980 collection of essays.9 Addressing the diversity of aims and specific approaches gathered under this umbrella, she delineated this trend within the wider academic environment: Even at first glance, however, it is obvious that the current interest in the interpretation, and more broadly in the reception, of artistic texts—including literary, filmic, pictorial, and musical ones—is part of a general trend in what the French call the human sciences (history, sociology, psychology, linguistics, anthropology) as well as in the traditional humanistic disciplines of philosophy, rhetoric, and aesthetics. The recent evolution of all these disciplines has been toward self reflexiveness—questioning and making explicit the assumptions that ground the methods of the discipline, and concurrently the investigator’s role in delimiting and even in constituting the object of study.10 In the 1960s and 1970s, for example, Anglophone literary criticism enjoyed a reinvigorated flowering of interest in reading and readerships that laid new theoretical foundations for subsequent decades, characterized (after the fact) as “Reader Response” criticism. Readerresponse as an approach emerged as a reaction to formalism and New Criticism, including that movement’s repudiation of the “Affective Fallacy” that had been famously and influentially described by Monroe Beardsley and William K. Wimsatt. The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does), a special case of epistemological skepticism, though usually advanced as if it had far stronger claims than the overall forms of skepticism. It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism. The outcome of either Fallacy, the Intentional or the Affective, is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to disappear.11 Despite the dominance of new formalism in the field, attention to the subjective experience of reading continued to capture the interest of authors. Walker Gibson, for example, probed the concept of the “mock reader” in a 1950 article—although his mock reader is understood as essential to the text itself rather than an independently and externallyexisting reading subject.12 In 1961, Wayne Booth brought some further attention to the reading subject in his Rhetoric of Fiction. Jane Tompkins edited a collection of essays in 1980 dedicated to surveying the scope of

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the most influential reader-response-directed scholarship to that date. In her introduction, Tompkins notes that: While [the essays] focus on the reader and the reading process, the essays represent a variety of theoretical orientations: New Criticism, structuralism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and deconstruction shape their definitions of the reader, of interpretation, and of the text.13 Subsequent and related scholarship over the following decades centered on further consideration of the degree to which meaning exists independently or inherently within a text or is dependent on construction by a reader, with scholars taking up early positions including George Poulet, Michael Riffaterre, and Wolfgang Iser. Robert Holub characterized this approach as, “a general shift in attention from the author of the work to the text-reader pole.”14 In her survey of the literature, Jane Tompkins observes that the “next event in the drama of the reader’s emergence into critical prominence is that instead of being seen as instrumental to the understanding of the text, the reader’s activity is declared to be identical with the text and therefore becomes itself the source of all literary value.”15 She identifies this development in Stanley Fish’s 1970 essay “Literature in the Reader,” which, she notes, “makes the crucial move in reader-oriented criticism by removing the literary text from the center of critical attention and replacing it with the reader’s cognitive activity.”16 The reader in Fish’s approach—often designated “affective stylistics”—is, however, not entirely unconstrained. Obviously, my reader is a construct, an ideal or idealized reader [...] [H]e is sufficiently experienced as a reader to have internalized the properties of literary discourses, including everything from the most local of devices (figures of speech, etc.) to whole genres. In this theory, then, the concerns of other schools of criticism—questions of genre, conventions, intellectual background, etc.— become redefined in terms of potential and probable response, the significance and value a reader can be expected to attach to the idea “epic,” or to the use of archaic language, or to anything. […] The reader, of whose responses I speak, then, is this informed reader, neither an abstraction, nor an actual living reader, but a hybrid—a real reader (me) who does everything within his power to make himself informed. That is, I can with some justification project my responses into those of “the” reader because they have been modified by the constraints placed on me by the assumptions and operations of the method […] In its operation, my method will obviously be radically historical. The critic has the responsibility of becoming not one but a number of informed readers, each of whom will be identified by a matrix of political, cultural, and literary determinants.”17

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Gerald Prince, arriving at the project with a structuralist framework, further differentiated between “real readers” as individuals in the world, “virtual readers” or those readers imagined by the author, and “ideal readers” to whom the intended meaning of a work is perfectly communicated.18 As he noted in his 1982 Narratology, In recent years, the study of literature in general and narrative in particular has been shifting from a concern with the author or with the text to a concern with the reader. Instead of establishing the meaning of a given text in terms of an author’s intentions or a set of textual patterns, for example, students of literature have focused more and more frequently on the ways in which readers, armed with expectations and interpretive conventions, structure a text and give it meaning. Ideal readers, virtual readers, implied readers, informed readers, competent readers, experienced readers, super readers, archreaders, average readers, and plain old readers now abound in literary criticism and we seem to have entered an age in which the writer, the writing and the written are less important than the read, the reading and the reader.19 Jonathan Culler continues the project further by invoking structuralist and poststructuralist developments in a rhetorical method that has been described as “Structuralist Poetics.”20 As Culler noted, even with the open play proposed by poststructuralism, “interpretation is not a matter of recovering some meaning which lies behind the work and serves as a centre governing its structure; It is rather an attempt to participate in and observe the play of possible meanings to which the text gives access.”21 Similarly, Steven Mailloux, in an approach that he characterized as “rhetorical pragmatism,” described the functioning of what he termed “interpretive conventions,” which he characterizes as, Shared ways of making sense of reality. They are communal procedures for making intelligible the world, behavior, communication, and literary texts. […] In other words, some procedure governing selection and development of relations will be adopted in interpretive free play; The center will be filled (perhaps only temporarily) by shared rules for the game (like using etymologies or deconstructing basic oppositions). These shared hermeneutic strategies function as interpretive conventions, making (and destroying) meanings. Thus, in both traditional and post-structuralist criticism, there will always be some interpretive conventions at work.22 Tony Bennett’s work, drawing on a Marxist-inflected scholarly tradition, situated interpretation—preferring the concept “productive activation”—within

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“reading formations,” which he describes as an interaction between text and reader, “structured by the material, social, ideological, and institutional relationships in which both text and readers are inescapably inscribed.”23 During the same decades, a parallel tradition broadly characterized as Reception Theory developed and emerged in German-speaking countries. Spearheaded by scholars associated with the Constance School, in particular Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, this tradition endeavored to focus on “Rezeption”—a term imported into German for the purpose by Jauss to distinguish this study from the tradition of scholarship dedicated to “Wirkung,” frequently also rendered in English as “reception” but used in the more general historical sense of reception and translation already noted.24 As Robert Holub described this difference in 1984, “Wirkungsgeschichte (in the older sense of the ‘history of the impact’ of a text or writer) has a long tradition of scholarship behind it in Germany, involving the examination of an author’s influence on later generations, especially subsequent writers.”25 Reception Theory’s fine-grained discussion of this differentiation between Rezeptionsgeschichte (history of reception) and Rezeptionsästhetik (aesthetics of reception) and the older tradition of Wirkungsgeschichte and Wirkungsästhetik mirror many of the foundational concerns of the first two decades of reader-response theory. Like that tradition, these early investigations laid the groundwork for a great deal of subsequent scholarship. In his attempt to remediate the objectivism of formalist and Marxist approaches to the history of literature—to underline that a Formalist description of a work and an examination of the material conditions of the production of a work were insufficient to understanding its historical nature—Jauss notes, Literature and art only obtain a history that has the character of a process when the succession of works is mediated not only through the producing subject but also through the consuming subject— through the interaction of author and public... The aesthetic implication lies in the fact that the first reception of a work by the reader includes a test of its aesthetic value in comparison with works already read. The obvious historical implication of this is that the understanding of that first reader will be sustained and enriched in a chain of receptions from generation to generation; in this way the historical significance of a work will be decided and its aesthetic value made evident.26 Wolfgang Iser, influenced by his training in the field of literary criticism and Roman Ingarden’s writings on “open” or “undetermined passages,”27 attempted to account for both the characteristics of the text itself and its reception by a reader.28 Holly, for example, notes that “Iser is explicitly concerned with the work’s implicit strategies for preparing its own

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afterlife.” Iser, summarizing in his “Interaction between Text and Reader,” asserts that, “if communication between text and reader is to be successful, clearly the reader’s activity must also be controlled in some way by the text. […] Although exercised by the text, it is not in the text.”30 He continues, “Communication in literature, then, is a process set in motion and regulated not by a given code, but by a mutually restrictive and magnifying interaction between the explicit and the implicit, between revelation and concealment.”31 While Iser and Jauss appear as the most prominent proponents of such approaches, as additional key influences on Reception Theory in the German-language critical tradition Holub identifies the works of Roman Ingarden, Russian Formalism (in particular Viktor Shklovsky), the Prague Structuralists (Jan Mukařovsý and Felix Vodiča), hermeneutics in the tradition of Hans-Georg Gadamer, and the development of a “sociology of literature” identified in the works of Leo Löwenthal, Julian Hirsch, and Levin Schücking.32 A host of additional scholars contributed to this trend in literary criticism in these early years, establishing a fertile ground for subsequent case studies. While much of the scholarship focused on the individual reader, other lines of inquiry pursued possible application of similar ideas to social and collective audiences. In a survey of scholarship, Steven Mailloux provides another way of understanding the variety of approaches by distinguishing the scholarship of reader-response theory between broadly “social” and structuralist models (such as that of Jonathan Culler and Stanley Fish) and “psychological” and perceptionbased models (the works of David Bleich, and Norman Holland’s “transactive criticism” and influential treatment of the “identity theme”33) that often reflect the impact of psychoanalysis on literary theory.34 With regard to the early modern period, scholarship on early print and the history of the book has been eager to consider the implications of new technology on the relationships between authors, texts, and readers.35 While the foundations of these new approaches to literature emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, a quick perusal of “new books received,” as well as reviews and contents of recently published scholarly journals, confirms that both the earlier tradition of reception studies as well as these more newly developed avenues—now themselves venerable traditions—maintain a robust and enthusiastic following to this day.36 A similar richness of scholarship is found within the discipline of art history. While the contours of art historical scholarship are in some ways parallel to that of literary criticism, they have also produced discrete theoretical approaches.37 While early art historical study was steeped in biography, connoisseurship, and modernist formalism (rekindled in the early twentieth century under such scholars as Roger Fry), a midtwentieth-century tradition of humanistic studies in reception and the iconographical and iconological methods of Erwin Panofsky and Aby Warburg’s widely-ranging Mnemosyne project set the stage for

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investigations of viewerships.38 In many ways, this mid-century approach is traceable to, and can be seen as partly following from, Riegl’s work on the relativity and historicity of vision. In his introduction to the 1999 edition of Riegl’s Group Portraiture of the Netherlands (Das holländische Gruppenporträt, 1902), Wolfgang Kemp describes Riegl’s “method of relations” and the “beholder’s involvement” as marking “the first appearance of an aesthetics of reception in Riegl’s thinking or indeed anywhere in art history.”39 One of Riegl’s successors in the next generation of Vienna School art historians, Ernst Gombrich, produced a range of influential scholarship arguing for a psychological/perceptual model of artistic response, one in which he invoked the “Beholder’s share” (updating Riegl’s “beholder’s involvement”), and at times anticipated the Constance School of reception theory through the deployment of hermeneutical concepts like the “horizon of expectation.”40 The project of recovering the historical subjecthood of viewers and audiences of the visual arts was furthered by scholars such as Arnold Hauser, whose The Social History of Art (1951) brought a sociological lens to art history, and more recently Francis Haskell’s attention to historically specific conditions of viewing and changing tastes.41 T. J. Clark has also attended to the historical reception, in a collective sense, of artworks. In his study of Courbet, he describes the multitude of critics’ voices that serve as evidence of the reception of the artist’s appearance in the Salon of 1851. In that weird, monotonous chorus, what matters is the structure of the whole, and the whole as a structure hiding and revealing the relation of the artist to his public. For our purposes, the public is different from the audience: the latter can be examined empirically, and should be. The more we know about the audience—about the social classes of Paris, the consumption habits of the bourgeoisie, how many people went to exhibitions—the more we shall understand that curious transformation in which it is given form, imagined, by the critic and by the artist himself.42 Other art historians investigating the viewing experience include—to name a few most relevant to the late Middle Ages and Early Modern era—Michael Baxandall, Svetlana Alpers, and Michael Camille. Baxandall’s concept of the “period eye” attempts a historically specific empirical approach combining Gombrich’s perceptual study with a concern for socially shared attitudes and habits of mind.43 Summarizing the project of Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-century Italy, he notes, A society develops its distinctive skills and habits, which have a visual aspect, since the visual sense is the main organ of experience,

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and these visual skills and habits become part of the medium of the painter; correspondingly, a pictorial style gives access to the visual skills and habits and, through these, to the distinctive social experience. An old picture is the record of visual activity. One has to learn to read it, just as one had to learn to read a text from a different culture, even when one knows, in a limited sense, the language: both language and pictorial representation are conventional activities.44 Svetlana Alpers’ book, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century, works toward a similarly relativistic and finegrained understanding of Dutch visual culture and perceptual habits of the seventeenth century. Michael Camille’s Image on the Edge: the Margins of Medieval Art investigates visual art in terms of meaning that is actively produced with the participation of viewers.45 Further developments parallel with, or directly responding to, literary reader-response theory and reception theory emerged in the same years.46 Wolfgang Kemp, the most prominent advocate of this approach in art history, differentiates between the scholarship of what he calls reception history and “Reception aesthetics.” As it is being used here, however, reception aesthetics enacts its interpretive power in a work-oriented fashion. It is on perpetual lookout for the implicit beholder, for the function of the beholder prescribed in the work of art the fact that the work has been created “for somebody” is not a novel insight proffered by a small branch of our history but the revelation of a constitutive moment in its creation from its very inception each work of art is addressed to someone; It works to solicit its ideal beholder. And in doing so, it divulges two pieces of information, which, considered from a very high standpoint, are, perhaps identical: In communicating with us, it speaks about its place and its potential effects in society, and it speaks about itself. Therefore, the aesthetics of reception has at least three tasks: (1) It has to discern the signs and means by which the work establishes contact with us; and it has to read them with regard to (2) their sociohistorical and (3) their actual aesthetic statements.47 Kemp goes on to describe ways in which the apprehension of an artwork often occurs in institutionalized or ritualized cultural contexts, highlighting what he terms “extrinsic conditions of access” of aesthetic objects (architectural setting, ritual, other socioeconomic contexts). For Kemp, “[a]s a historical method of investigation, reception aesthetics is obliged to reconstruct the original reception situation.”48 Michael Fried has in highly nuanced treatments attended to the moment of encounter and effect of artworks on the beholder.49 In addition to these forms of

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reader/viewer-oriented analyses, art historians also developed methods alongside related traditions in literary criticism. Scholars such as Meyer Schapiro attempted to implement structuralist and poststructuralist semiotic approaches to expand the iconographic tradition and address various “non-mimetic” elements in visual art (drawing on Ferdinand de Saussure and I. A. Richards), and the prolific semiotician Louis Marin returned frequently to Nicholas Poussin’s work as an object of study.50 After the early attentions to a psychological or psychoanalytical view of the reception of art by a viewer promoted by Ernst Gombrich and Ernst Kris, in more recent years this tradition has seen a great deal of attention; as Michael Ann Holly notes, [T]he route most frequently taken for explaining the exchanges between historical objects in historical subjects in the so called new art history is a psychoanalytic one, securing its modes of analysis either in Lacanian theory or in a Foucauldian sense of the mise-en-abime.51 Likewise, prominent among the scholars exploring the promise of a psychoanalytical semiotics in addressing reception and the viewing experience of visual art have been Mieke Bal, Norman Bryson, Lucien Dällenbach, and Claude Gandelman.52 While in studies of the reception of literature and visual art much of the scholarship has focused on the individual reader or viewer, in the fields of the criticism and history of theater and music greater attention has more frequently been cast upon the audience as a collective, which is understandable given the nature of performance. Within theater studies, a clear differentiation between “spectator” and “audience” has been helpful in disambiguating between investigations of individualized response—psychological or perceptual as well as semiotic approaches—and the collective or aggregate audience as a historical and sociological object.53 The playing field is, however, complicated with regard to the nature of theatrical and musical authors and audiences, in which authored/composed texts are further mediated by director and actors (or conductors and musicians) “en route” to the broader viewing audience. With a presence much more undeniable and overt than, say, the ultimate reader of a text, the audience viewing a play or listening to a musical performance is central in traditional historical study, although author-centered and text/script-centered studies have at times dominated. Renewed attention to the historical audience and reception of theater was brought to the foreground in the middle of the twentieth century in works like Alfred Harbage’s Shakespeare’s Audience and John Lough’s Paris Theater Audiences.54 Susan Bennett’s insightful study of theater reception begins in the nineteenth century, noting that,

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Almost all these reactions to naturalist theater, the audience has been acknowledged as a creative aspect of the dramatic process, and the spectator generally confronted, often co-opted, into a more direct role in the theatrical event. […] The intensity of interest in audience sparked by the rejection of natural practice has, in the latter half of the twentieth century, become even more acute. Both texts and performances have shown a growing absorption with the relationship of their art to those who view it actively in the theater.55 Bennett finds additional roots of the vitalized attention to the interaction between authors, performers, and audiences in the works of Berthold Brecht: The work of Brecht, as both playwright and theoretician, is clearly important for any study of audience-play relations. His ideas for theater with the power to provoke social change, along with his attempts to reactivate stage-audience exchange, have had a widespread and profound effect not only on theater practice, but also on critical responses to plays and performance.56 In addition to the historical study of performances, theater studies has, like scholarship in neighboring disciplines, of course, developed in collaboration with twentieth-century developments of reader-response theory, reception theory, structuralist and poststructuralist semiotics, sociological, and psychoanalytic approaches to viewings.57 As Henri Schoenmakers has summarized, in advocating empirical studies of performances and their audiences, “In developing theories about theatrical communication processes, we can not look at either the theatrical product, or at the spectators. We have to look at the relations between both of them.”58 The sociologist Erving Goffman introduced the concept of “dramaturgy” into theater studies, offering a new lens on the negotiation between performers and audiences.59 More recently, John Tulloch has deployed a range of empirical and quantitative data to the interplay between production and reception of theater.60 Other scholars have similarly attempted to bridge the gap between the studies of production and reception, among them Wilmar Sauter and Peter Eversmann, who have reframed that negotiation in terms of the “theatrical event,” and “eventness.”61 Drawing from developments in reception theory, Marvin Carlson’s work has investigated the effect on the meaning of production of a viewer’s experience and memory.62 Theater reception has received attention from structuralist and poststructuralist semioticians including, of course, Roland Barthes throughout his career, Umberto Eco, Kier Elam, Patrice Pavis, and Herbert Blau’s dense and voluminous The Audience.63 More recently Maaike Bleeker, for example, has investigated “visuality” and the viewing subject of theatrical performance, at times

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delving into poststructural and psychoanalytical semiotics.64 The spheres of overlap between theater and performance art more recently highlighted with the artists and theorists invoking Nicholas Bourriaud’s “Relational Aesthetics” (recently styled more frequently as “relational art”) which, among other concerns, centers on the encounter between art and the audience/“witnessing publics.”65 In relation to medieval dramatic performances and their authors, performers, and audiences, Jody Enders in Murder by Accident: Medieval Theater, Modern Media, Critical Intentions (2009) has contributed a thought-provoking critique of several aspects of twentieth- and twenty-first-century discourse.66 While largely peripheral to the essays in this volume, a similar dialog has taken place in music theory and history; it is possible to locate a distant precursor to reception studies, for example in the interests, at moments, in “subjective impression” in Eduard Hanslick, who, however, holds the artwork itself as the sole source of any potential meaning. A social history of music has been advanced by scholars including the prolific Zofia Lissa, who balanced a perceptual/psychological and historical accounts in a relativistic approach to a socially formed listening ear (analogous to Baxandall’s “period eye”).67 Hermann Danuser and Friedhelm Krummacher are chief among those who have endeavored to bring Reception theory in the tradition of Jauss to bear upon musicology, and Helmut Rösing has likewise contributed to that project; more recent scholarship in that vein has been continued by Roger Savage, Charles Rosen, and Anthony Gritten.68 While this overview has focused on late twentieth-century approaches to understandings of audience, and much could be said of the eighteenthcentury Aesthetics of Lessing, Kant, and others, it is certainly not an exclusively modern preoccupation. Aristotle’s metaphor of catharsis as it appears in his Poetics, for example, is focused on the response of viewing spectators or readers of a tragedy, while much of Plato’s negative judgement regarding poetry in the Republic centered on its effects on the audience; among the Roman poets and rhetoricians Cicero, Quintilian, and Horace made influential contributions. The Classical tradition of rhetoric in general, of course, frequently attended to the adaptation of style and presentation in response to the character of the audience, as did the Early Modern revival of the rhetorical tradition.69 In the same era, a robust discourse surrounding interpretation emerged in Jewish and Christian scholarship, especially regarding the concern for allegorical readings of texts as explored by Alexandrian school theorists including Philo, Origen, Clement, and Didymus, or the three-fold exegetical approach of Ambrose of Milan. Augustine’s De doctrina Christiana similarly considers at length the reception and interpretation of signs by readerships, and further contributions to this hermeneutic tradition, especially the four-fold Quadriga approach to texts, would be made throughout the Medieval and Early Modern eras by scholars including

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Bernard of Clairvaux, Dante Alighieri, Martin Luther, and Erasmus. In the visual arts, among early modern theoreticians we can include Leon Battista Alberti, who in De Pictura laid the groundwork for visualrhetorical appeals to the viewer of an artwork, ideas that remained at the forefront of history painting theory of the academies for the next several hundred years, and Lorenzo Ghiberti in the same years considered the specific tactile and haptic effects of sculpture on those who experienced it.71 The essays collected here are grouped by medium: Audiences, addressing the reception of musical performance, theatre, and of sermons and debate; Readerships, focusing on texts including poetry, literature, and its translation; and Viewerships, attending to the visual arts including painting and printed images. Many of these discussions investigate how, while tentatively open and polysemous—with various possible or probable meanings generated by the audience (be it collective or individual)—potential meanings are constrained or amplified by elements of the text or artworks: formal properties, modes of address, or interpretive conventions. Some of the essays in this volume work within the broad tradition of historical studies of reception, while others adhere more explicitly to the theoretical bent of the last forty years, but all share in common an attentiveness to the audience: the viewing, reading, or listening subjects of artistic and cultural objects in Early Modern Europe. Leading the first section, Audiences, is Michael Bane’s essay Amateur Musicians and Their Audiences in Seventeenth-Century France or: How to Compliment a Musical Friend. Bane seeks to identify and describe the behavior expected of well-born performers and auditors of amateur music in France at the end of the seventeenth century, when a number of authors addressed the topic in civility manuals, novels, and other records of social manners. By bringing to the fore the consequential but often overlooked concerns of nonprofessional musicians and their audiences, this chapter situates music-making and listening within the everyday lives of early-modern people. Murat Öğütcü’s essay Elizabethan Audience Gaze at History Plays: Liminal Time and Space in Shakespeare’s Richard II, examines the liminal spaces of Shakespeare’s Richard II and how they were affected by and affected Elizabethan audiences. Öğütcü investigates the stage as a Foucauldian “heterotopia” depicting the historic, histrionic and the contemporary Elizabethan period simultaneously. In The Commedia dell’Arte from Marketplace to Court, Rosalind Kerr considers how the commedia, while often subversive—presenting on the one hand subject matter that attacked mercantile overlords and the pretentious educated professional classes, and on the other addressing the plight of the starving servant classes and promoting a new class of female actors above their courtesan status—learned to tailor its public performances to suit the courts, who were so taken by the artform’s brilliant acting and transgressive subject

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matter that they coopted it over time. In his essay Spreading the word: Theatre, Religion and Contagious Performances, J. F. Bernard argues that both early modern plays and sermons were predicated on the possibility of radically transformative inward change of listeners. In thinking concomitantly about theater and religious sermons in terms of audience experience, the chapter suggests that both performances rely heavily on the rhetoric of contagion to successfully disseminate their idea. Brian Hanson also addresses the effects of preaching in “Sedicious” sermons: Preaching, politics, and provocation in Reformation England. Hanson examines the underappreciated role of seditious rhetoric in the sermons of Reformation England, arguing that it was politicized enough to galvanize subversive sentiments and even outright resistance to civil authority. The chapter argues that evangelical preachers deliberately and strategically inserted angry, political rhetoric in their sermons, including popular rebel euphemisms as well as rebukes to political entities, in order to provoke their parishioners’ emotions against magistrates. In The Rotterdam Inquisitor and the False Prophet of Antwerp, David Robinson investigates the four-year-long polemical exchange on the topic of Transubstantiation between the Jesuit preacher Joannes de Gouda and the reformer Franciscus Lansbergen. The essay approaches this exchange with an eye toward its multiple audiences: the witnesses to the initial face-to-face debate, the wider audience reached by rumors spread through correspondence and word of mouth, and, finally, the readership of the printed polemic. Robinson highlights the ways in which religious controversy was translated for, and interpreted by, diverse audiences in early modern Europe. In the next section, Readerships, we turn to the audiences and readers of written texts. In Royal Audience and the Discourse of Counsel in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Jonathan Newman uses John Gower’s frame story Confessio Amantis to approach the discourse of counsel as it was used to reproduce ethical and political scenarios at court according to familiar sociolinguistic protocols. Newman investigates strategies of verbal interaction between the poet and two simultaneous audiences—the king himself, and an audience of intended over-readers instructed both by the content of the work and by the relation between poet-counselor and king modeled by the prologue. Melih Levi, in George Turberville, Constancy and Plain Style, offers both a comprehensive critical study of Turberville’s poetry and an evaluation of plain-style poetics as conceived in the mid-Tudor period as it became institutionalized. Identifying the various historical institutions and discursive structures that helped facilitate plain style’s spread, the idea of “constancy” as a thematic locus is used to explore intersections between these various discourses. In “’Assi de doctos como de indoctos’: The Bifurcated Audience and the Poet-Translator of the Aeneid in the Spain of Philip II,” Richard Armstrong offers a discussion of the Neo-Latin paratexts and other features of the multiple sixteenth-century editions of Gregorio

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Hernández de Velasco’s Castilian translations of Virgil’s Aeneid and Sannazaro’s De partu virginis. Through their mixed messages and restarts, we discover an author surrounded by and attentive to his letrado peers, but also a translator actively trying to create and hold a vernacular audience, unafraid to rework source texts in radical ways. Francesca Behr in Translation of the Classics and the Empowerment of Women in Early Modern Italy references recent work on gender, the politics of reading, literacy, and reception. She uses these tools to consider Renaissance translations as an essential step for the appropriation of academic discourse and the empowerment of women as nontraditional readers as they began to display their understanding of those texts in their own publications—for example, romance epics, treatises, and dialogs—that were informed by and responded to Classical texts. In Women are from Venus: Addressing Women’s Agency with Classical Allegory, Helena Kaznowska tackles how the classical trope of Venus standing atop a tortoise was deployed in seventeenth-century English literature within the complex textual debate about women’s agency. This chapter investigates how writers sought to prescribe women’s behavior through their configurations of the allegory and the variety of ways in which this flexible trope was presented, contextualized, and used to address the authors’ pluriform audiences. Kaznowska observes that some writers use the allegory to place restrictions on women’s movement and agency, while others advise that women should become more visible, audible, and autonomous members of society. In the third and last section, Viewerships, we turn to art history and visual culture. Sarah Cadagin’s essay Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece for Santa Maria Novella and the Pre-Tridentine Audience of Italian Altarpieces considers the work in its original state. Cadagin notes that the altarpiece was visible to both the Dominican friars assembled at the high altar and to the work’s patrons, the Tornabuoni family. The essay argues that the two possible views engaged different but connected audiences and notions of beholding within the sacred space of the high altar: a case study in how Renaissance artists, patrons, and viewers created and utilized altarpieces to address multiple modes of vision, both physical and spiritual. John R. Decker’s essay Guides who Know the Way: Image as Primer, Prompt, and Devotional Resource, investigates how devotional images often needed to be able to address varying levels of ability and commitment in their potential users. In response to a potentially wide range of audiences, some images employed internal cues that helped draw the viewer’s attention to the various devotional activities that can be performed with their aid and others that could help the faithful assess their spiritual progress. Such images, Decker argues, acted as guides and resources that votaries could use in highly personalized ways. And, finally, Barbara Kaminska, in Beyond the Doctrine of Merit: Philips Galle’s Prints of the Sacraments and the Acts of Mercy, analyzes

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prints issued in series by Philips Galle in Antwerp. The combination of visual and verbal exempla, Biblical references, and repetition of scenes and quotes across the series situates these prints within both the tradition of florilegia and commonplace books that provided material for reflection and conversation, and that of emblem books, which more typically encouraged an active reception of texts and images. Kaminska argues that these print series were primarily intended for a learned Catholic audience and the so-called “Protestantizing Catholics” after the Pacification of Ghent. Conceptually and methodologically, the essays included here focus on the phenomenon of reception and the various strategies of engagement that authors, artists, musicians, playwrights, and performers employed to address their audiences and how those audiences responded. Early modern audiences, readerships, and viewerships were not homogenous, and differences in status, education, language, wealth, and experience (to name only a few variables) could influence how a group of people, or a particular person, received and made sense of sermons, public proclamations, dramatic and musical performances, images, objects, and spaces. The chapters in this volume investigate the ways in which authors, artists, preachers, theologians, playwrights, and performers took account of pluriform potential audiences, readers, and viewers in their works, and the contribution those audiences made to the production of meaning.

Notes 1 Various work on archeology by Holtorf, for example: Cornelius J. Holtorf, “The Life-Histories of Megaliths in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (Germany),” World Archaeology 30/1, The Past in the Past: The Reuse of Ancient Monuments (June 1998): 23–38; Chaim Perelman and Lucie OlbrechtsTyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969). 2 Rita Copeland, Patrick Cheney, Philip Hardie, David Hopkins, Charles Martindale, Norman Vance, and Jennifer Wallace, eds., The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. 5 Volumes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray, A Companion to Classical Receptions (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008); Jeffrey Hunt, R. Alden Smith, and Fabio Stok, eds., Classics From Papyrus to the Internet: An Introduction to Transmission and Reception (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017); Charles Martindale, “Introduction: Thinking Through Reception,” in Classics and the Uses of Reception, ed. Charles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas (Maldon & Oxford: Blackwell, 2006); Charles Martindale, Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 3 For a brief but cogent consideration of the relationships between diverse fields in the study of the question of reception with regard to traditional and contemporary forms of audience, see “Reception Study, Cultural Studies, and Mass Communication,” in Reception Study: From Literary Theory to

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Cultural Studies, eds. Philip Goldstein and James L. Machor (New York/ London: Routledge, 2001), 203–8. Recent items include Thomas P. Anderson and Netzley Ryan, eds. Acts of Reading: Interpretation, Reading Practices, and the Idea of the Book in John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009); Philip Goldstein and James L. Machor, eds. New Directions in American Reception Study (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008); André Lardinois, et al., eds. Texts, Transmissions, Receptions: Modern Approaches to Narratives (Boston: Brill, 2015); Jennifer A. Low and Nova Myhill, eds. Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558–1662 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Shafquat Towheed, Rosiland Crone, and Katie Halsey, eds., The History of Reading (London: Routledge, 2011); Elisabeth Salter, Popular Reading in English, c. 1400–1600 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017); Kate van Orden, Materialities: Books, Readers, and the Chanson in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Daniel Wakelin, Humanism, Reading, & English Literature 1430–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). Jonathan Harris, The New Art History. A Critical Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 195. Some influential examples include Paul Fussell, The Rhetorical World of Augustan Humanism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965); Q. D. Leavis, Fiction and the Reading Public (London: Chatto and Windus, 1932); Paul Strohm, “Chaucer’s Audience(s): Fictional, Implied, Intended, Actual,” The Chaucer Review 18/2 (1983): 137–45. E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York, NY: Seabury Press, 1975). As a response to Gadamer and a reaffirmation of objectivity in interpretation (drawing upon hermeneutical thought with different results) see Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation. Susan R. Suleiman, “Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism,” in The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, eds. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980): 3–45. Suleiman, “Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism,” 4. W. K. Wimsatt Jr. and M. C. Beardsley, “The Affective Fallacy,” The Sewanee Review 57/1 (Winter, 1949): 31–55; the same authors on the question of authorial intention, “The Intentional Fallacy,” The Sewanee Review 54/3 (1946): 468–88. Walker Gibson, “Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers,” in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980): 1–6. Tompkins, Reader-Response Criticism, ix. Robert C. Holub, Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), xii. Tompkins, Reader-Response Criticism, xvi, xvii. Stanley Fish, “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics,” in ReaderResponse Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 70-100. Stanley Fish, “Literature in the Reader,” 86–87. Fish would later take an even more relativist stance with regards to the reader’s construction of meaning, in Stanley Fish, “Interpreting the Variorium,” Critical Inquiry 2/3 (Spring, 1976): 465–85; Stanley Fish, Is there a text in this Class? The

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Mitzi Kirkland-Ives Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). Gerald Prince, “Introduction to the Study of Narratee,” in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 7–25; Gerald Prince, “Notes on the Text as Reader” in The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, eds. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 225–40. Gerald Prince, Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982), 103. Jonathan Culler, “Prolegomena to a Theory of Reading,” in The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, eds. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 46–66; Jonathan Culler, “Literary Competence,” in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 101–17. Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature (Routledge, 1975), 247. Steven Mailloux, Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1982), 149, 154. Tony Bennett, “Texts, Readers, Reading Formations,” The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association 16/1 (Spring, 1983): 12; Tony Bennet, “Texts in History,” in Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies, eds. James L. Machor and Philip Goldstein (New York/ London: Routledge, 2001), 61–76. Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Theory and History of Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). Holub, Crossing Borders, xii. Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 15–16. Elsewhere in the same work Jauss continues, clarifying what is at stake: “The conception of a history of art that is to be based on the historical functions of production, communication, and reception, and is to take part in the process of continuous mediation of past and present art, requires the critical abandonment of two contrasting positions. First, it defies historical objectivism, which remains a convenient paradigm ensuring the normal progress of philological research, but which in the realm of literature can achieve only a semblance of precision, which in the exemplary disciplines of natural and social science scarcely earns it any respect. It also challenges the philological metaphysics of tradition and thereby the classicism of a view of fiction that disregards the historicity of art in order to confer on “great fiction” its own relation to truth—‘timeless presence’ or ‘self-sufficient presence’—and a more substantial organic history—‘tradition’ or ‘the authority of the traditional’;” Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 62–3. Roman Ingarden, “Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Object,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1961): 289–313; Roman Ingarden, The literary work of art (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1973); Roman Ingarden, Ontology of the Work of Art: The Musical Work, the Picture, the Architectural Work, the Film. Series in Continental Thought, 12 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1989). Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: a Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978); Wolfgang Iser, “Interaction between Text and Reader,” in The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, eds. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980), 106–19.

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29 Michael Ann Holly, “Reading Critical Theory,” in Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996), 200. Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). 30 Iser, “Interaction between Text and Reader,” 110. 31 Iser, “Interaction between Text and Reader,” 111. 32 See Holub, “Influences and Predecessors,” Crossing Borders: 13–52. 33 David Bleich, “Pedagogical Directions in Subjective Criticism,” College English 37 (1976): 462–3; Norman Holland, “Unity Identity Text Self,” in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), 118–33; Norman Holland, “Transactive Criticism: Re-Creation Through Identity,” Criticism 18/4 (1976): 334–52. 34 Steven Maillaux, Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982), 23–24. 35 For example Roger Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe Between the 14th and 18th Centuries (Stanford University Press, 1994); Robert Darnton, “First Steps toward a History of Reading,” Australian Journal of French Studies 23/1 (1986): 5–30. 36 Janice Radway, “What’s the Matter with Reception Study? Some Thoughts on the Disciplinary Origins, Conceptual Constraints, and Persistent Viability of a Paradigm,” in New Directions in American Reception Study, eds. Goldstein Philip and James L. Machor (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 327–51. 37 Michael Ann Holly, “Reciprocity and Reception Theory,” in A Companion to Art Theory, eds. Carolyn Wilde and Paul Smith (Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies: 5. Blackwell, 2002), 448–57. 38 Erwin Panofsky, Perspective as Symbolic Form, trans. Christopher Wood (New York, 1991); Erwin Panofsky, “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline,” in Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York: Doubleday, 1955), 1–25; Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism (Latrobe, PA: Archabbey Press,1951). For discussion of more distant background of a relativistic approach in Wackenroder and in Herder’s historicism, see Keith Moxey, “Motivating History,” Art Bulletin 77/3 (Sept. 1995): 392ff. 39 Wolfgang Kemp, “The Work of Art and its Beholder. The Methodology of the Aesthetic of Reception,” in The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspective, eds. Mark A. Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith P. F. Moxey (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 11. 40 Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. (London: Phaidon, 1960); Ernst Gombrich, The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Ithaca: /Cornell/Phaidon, 1982); Richard Woodfield, Gombrich on Art and Psychology (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996). 41 Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art (New York: Knopf, 1951); Arnold Hauser, The Philosophy of Art History (New York: Knopf, 1959); Francis Haskell, Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963); Francis Haskell, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982). 42 T. J. Clark, Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution (Thames and Hudson, 1973), 11–12.

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43 Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1972); Michael Baxandall, “The Period Eye,” in The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1980), 143–63; Michael Baxandall, Patterns of Intention (New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1985). 44 Baxandall, Painting and Experience, 152. 45 For a comparison of various approaches including Schapiro, Bryson, Camille, and Alpers see Jonathan Harris, The New Art History. A Critical Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 162–191; Svetlana Alpers, The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: The Margins of Medieval Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). 46 Nicholas Davy, “Hermeneutics and Art Theory,” in A Companion to Art Theory, eds. Carolyn Wilde and Paul Smith (Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies: 5: Blackwell, 2002), 436–47. 47 These quotes from a brief and accessible English-language point of entry, Wolfgang Kemp, “The Work of Art and its Beholder. The Methodology of the Aesthetic of Reception,” in The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspectives, eds. Mark A. Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith P. F. Moxey (Cambridge, [England]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 183; Also Wolfgang Kemp, Der Anteil des Betrachters: Rezeptionsästhetische Studien zur Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: Mäander, 1983); Wolfgang Kemp, ed., Der Betrachter ist im Bild. Kunstwissenschaft und Rezeptionsästhetik (Berlin: Reimer, 1992); Klaus-Heinrich Meyer, “Das Bild ist im Betrachter. Zur Struktur- und Bedeutungskonstruktion durch den Rezipienten,” Hephaistos 9 (1988): 7–41. 48 Kemp, “The Work of Art and its Beholder,” 184–5. 49 While vital in the scholarship regarding twentieth-century Minimalism in art, most relevant to the early modern period is Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 50 Meyer Schapiro, “On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs,” Simiolus 6/1 (1971–2): 9–19; two essays of 1969 and 1976 are gathered in Meyer Schapiro, Words, Script and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language (Braziller, 1996). Among other works, Louis Marin, “Toward a Theory of Reading in the Visual Arts: Poussin’s The Arcadian Shepherds,” in Suleiman, ed., The Reader in the Text, 293–324; A collection of 22 essays first appearing between 1971 and 1992 is found in Louis Marin, On Representation (Stanford University Press, 2001). 51 Holly, “Reciprocity and Reception Theory,” 453. 52 Mieke Bal and Norman Bryson, “Semiotics and Art History,” The Art Bulletin 73/2 (June 1991): 174–208; Mieke Bal, “Seeing Signs: The Use of Semiotics for the Understanding of Visual Art,” in The Subjects of Art History, eds. Cheetham et al., 74–93; Mieke Bal, Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, trans. Christine van Boheemen (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985); Mieke Bal, Reading Rembrandt. Beyond the Word-Image Opposition (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983); Lucien Dällenbach, Le récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme. (Paris: Seuil, 1977); Claude

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53 54

55 56 57

58

59 60

61

62 63

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Gandelman, Reading Pictures, Viewing Texts (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); For a concise entry point to the relevance of Freud and Lacan on art historical methods, Steven Z. Levine, “Between Art History and Psychoanalysis: I-Eying Monet with Freud and Lacan,” in The Subjects of Art History, 197–212. The Cambridge Introduction to Theater Studies, 36–40. Alfred Harbage, Shakespeare’s Audience (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941); John Lough, Paris Theater Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957); and more recently in Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespearean London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Susan Bennett, Theater Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (London/New York: Routledge: 1997), 4; 7. Bennett, 21. On Brecht see also Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht (London: New Left Books, 1973). For a recent collection of essays relevant to the Early Modern period, Jan Bloemendal, Peter Eversmann, and Elsa Strietman, eds., Drama, Performance and Debate Theatre and Public Opinion in the Early Modern Period, Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe, Volume: 2 (Brill, 2012). Henri Schoenmakers, “The Spectator in the Leading Role. Developments in Reception and Audience Research within Theater Studies: Theory and Research,” in New Directions in Theater Research: Proceedings of the XCIth FIRT/IFTR Congress (1990), 101. Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974). John Tulloch, Shakespeare and Chekov in Production and Reception: Theatrical Events and their Audiences (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005). Performance theory as a specialized approach emerged from the 1980s onward in the wake of Richard Schechner and Mady Schuman’s 1976 collection, which introduced a broad anthropological and sociological angle (including essays by Victor Turner, Claude Levi-Strauss, E. Goffmann). Richard Schechner and Mady Schuman, eds., Ritual, Play and Performance, Readings in the Social Sciences/Theatre (New York: Seabury Press, 1976). Wilmar Sauter, The Theatrical Event: Dynamics of Performance and Perception (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000); A useful section on reception also found in Jacqueline Martin and Wilmar Sauter, Understanding Performance: Performance Analysis in Theory and Practice (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1997); Peter Eversmann, “Introduction to Part II” in Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames, eds. Vicki Ann Cremona, Peter Evermann, Hans van Maanen, Wilhelm Sauter, and John Tulloch (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004). Marvin Carlson, The Haunted Stage: The Theater as Memory Machine (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003). Herbert Blau, The Audience (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990); Umberto Eco, “Semiotics of Theatrical Performance,” The Drama Review: TDR, 21/1, Theatre and Social Action Issue (Mar., 1977): 107–17; Kier Elam, The Semiotics of Theater and Drama (London: Metheun, 1980); Patrice Pavis, Languages of the Stage (New York: Performing Arts Journal, 1982); Patrice Pavis, Theater at the Crossroads of Culture, trans. Loren Kruger (London: Routledge, 1992); Timothy Scheie, Performance Degree Zero: Roland Barthes and Theatre (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006).

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64 Maaike Bleeker, Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). 65 Nicolas Bourriaud, Relational Aesthetics, trans. Simon Pleasance & Fronza Woods with the participation of Mathieu Copeland (Dijon: Les presses du reel, 2002). 66 Jody Enders, Murder by Accident: Medieval Theater, Modern Media, Critical Intentions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2009). 67 Zofia Lissa, “The Musical Reception of Chopin’s Works,” in Studies in Chopin, ed. Dariusz Zebrowski (Warsaw: The Chopin Society, 1973), 7–29; Zofia Lissa, Eugenia Tanska, and Eugenia Tarska, “On the Evolution of Musical Perception,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 24/2 (Winter, 1965): 273–86. 68 Hermann Danuser and Friedhelm Krummacher, eds., Rezeptionsästhetik und Rezeptionsgeschichte in der Musikwissenschaft (Laaber, 1991); Friedhelm Krummacher, “Rezeptionsgeschichte als Problem der Musikwissenschaft,” Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (1979–80): 154–70; Helmut Rösing, ed., Rezeptionsforschung in der Musikwissenschaft. Wege der Forschung LXVII (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983); Roger W. H. Savage, “Crossing the Disciplinary Divide: Hermeneutics, Ethnomusicology and Musicology,” College Music Symposium 49/50 (2009): 402–08; Anthony Gritten, “The Subject of Listening,” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 45/3 (2015): 203–19; Jean-Luc Nancy, Listening, trans. Charlotte Mandell (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007); Charles Rosen, The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994). 69 Richard A. Katula, “Quintilian on the Art of Emotional Appeal,” Rhetoric Review 22.1 (2003): 5–15; George Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Friedrich Solmsen, “Aristotle and Cicero on the Orator’s Playing upon the Feelings,” Classical Philology 33 (1938): 390–404; Christopher Tindale, “Aristotle and the natures of audiences,” in The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 36–57; Chrysanthe TsitsiouChelidoni, “Horace on the Role of the Poetry’s Audience in the Literary Process,” Trends in Classics 5, no. 2 (December 2013): 341–75. 70 Kathy Eden, “The Rhetorical Tradition and Augustinian Hermeneutics in de Doctrina christiana,” Rhetorica 8.1 (1990): 45–63; For excellent surveys of diverse authors tackling interpretation in this era, see Alister E. McGrath, ed., “The Sources of Theology,” in The Christian Theology Reader (New York: Wiley, 2016), 67–148; A. Brian Scott, Alastair J. Minnis, David Wallace, eds. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism 1100-1375 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991). 71 Rocco Sinisgalli, On Painting. A New Translation and Critical Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Geraldine Johnson, “Touch, Tactility, and the Reception of Sculpture in Early Modern Italy,” in A Companion to Art Theory, 61–74.

Works Cited Anderson Thomas P. and Netzley Ryan, eds. Acts of Reading: Interpretation, Reading Practices, and the Idea of the Book in John Foxe’s Actes and Monuments. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2009.

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Bal, Mieke. “Seeing Signs: The Use of Semiotics for the Understanding of Visual Art.” In The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspectives, edited by Mark A. Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith P. F. Moxey, 74–93. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Bal, Mieke. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, trans. Christine van Boheemen. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985. Bal, Mieke. Reading Rembrandt. Beyond the Word-Image Opposition. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Bal, Mieke and Norman Bryson. “Semiotics and Art History.” The Art Bulletin 73, no. 2 (June 1991): 174–208. Balme, Christopher B. The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Studies. Cambridge Introductions to Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Baxandall, Michael. Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Baxandall, Michael. The Limewood Sculptors of Renaissance Germany. New Haven/London: Yale University Press, 1980. Baxandall, Michael. Patterns of Intention. On the Historical Explanation of Pictures. Yale University Press, 1987. Beardsley, M. C. and W. K. Wimsatt Jr. “The Affective Fallacy.” The Sewanee Review 57, no. 1 (Winter, 1949): 31–55. Beardsley, M. C. and W. K. Wimsatt Jr. “The Intentional Fallacy.” The Sewanee Review. 54, no. 3 (1946): 468–488. Benjamin, Walter. Understanding Brecht. London: New Left Books, 1973. Bennett, Susan. Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception, 2nd ed. London; New York: Routledge, 1997. Bennett, Tony. “Texts, Readers, Reading Formations.” The Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association 16, no. 1 (Spring, 1983): 3–17. Bennett, Tony. “Texts in History.” In Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies, edited by James L. Machor and Philip Goldstein, 61–76. New York; London: Routledge, 2001. Blau, Herbert. The Audience. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990. Bleeker, Maaike. Visuality in the Theatre: The Locus of Looking. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Bleich, David. “Pedagogical Directions in Subjective Criticism.” College English 37 (1976): 462–463. Bloemendal, Jan, Peter Eversmann, and Elsa Strietman, eds. Drama, Performance and Debate Theatre and Public Opinion in the Early Modern Period, Drama and Theatre in Early Modern Europe, Volumemac_mac 2. Brill, 2012. Bourriaud, Nicolas. Relational Aesthetics, translated by Simon Pleasance and Fronza Woods. Dijon: Les presses du reel, 2002. Bryson, Norman. Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1983. Carlson, Marvin. The Haunted Stage: The Theater as Memory Machine. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Chartier, Roger. The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe Between the 14th and 18th Centuries. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.

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Cheetham, Mark A., Michael Ann Holly, and Keith P. F. Moxey, eds. The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspectives. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Clark, T. J. Image of the People: Gustave Courbet and the 1848 Revolution. London: Thames and Hudson, 1973. Copeland, Rita, Patrick Cheney, Philip Hardie, David Hopkins, Charles Martindale, Norman Vance, and Jennifer Wallace, eds. The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature. 5 Volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Cremona, Vicki Ann, Peter Evermann, Hans van Maanen, Wilhelm Sauter, and John Tulloch, eds. Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004. Crosman, Inge. “Annotated Bibliography of Audience-Oriented Criticism.” In The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, 401–424. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Culler, Jonathan. “Prolegomena to a Theory of Reading.” In The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, 46–66. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Culler, Jonathan. “Literary Competence.” In Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, edited by Jane P. Tompkins, 101–117. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London/New York: Routledge, 1975. Danuser, Hermann and Friedhelm Krummacher, eds. Rezeptionsästhetik und Rezeptionsgeschichte in der Musikwissenschaft. Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 1991. Darnton, Robert. “First Steps toward a History of Reading.” Australian Journal of French Studies 23, no. 1 (1986): 5–30. Davy, Nicholas. “Hermeneutics and Art Theory.” In A Companion to Art Theory. Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies: 5, edited by Carolyn Wilde and Paul Smith, 436–447. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Dällenbach, Lucien. Le récit spéculaire. Essai sur la mise en abyme. Paris, Seuil, 1977. Eco, Umberto. “Semiotics of Theatrical Performance.” The Drama Review: TDR, 21, no. 1, Theatre and Social Action Issue (Mar., 1977): 107–117. Eden, Kathy. “The Rhetorical Tradition and Augustinian Hermeneutics in de Doctrina christiana.” Rhetorica 8, no. 1 (1990): 45–63. Elam, Kier. The Semiotics of Theater and Drama. London: Metheun, 1980. Enders, Jody. Murder by Accident: Medieval Theater, Modern Media, Critical Intentions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2009. Fish, Stanley. “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics.” In Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, edited by Jane P. Tompkins, 70–100. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Fish, Stanley. “Interpreting the Variorium.” Critical Inquiry 2, no. 3 (Spring, 1976): 465–485. Fish, Stanley. Is there a text in this Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980.

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Freese, John Henry. Aristotle, The ‘Art’ of Rhetoric. London; Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press, 1926. Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Furley, David J. and Alexander Nehamas, eds. Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Gandelman, Claude. Reading Pictures, Viewing Texts. Indiana University Press, 1991. Gibson, Walker. “Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers.” In ReaderResponse Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, edited by Jane P. Tompkins, 1–6. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Goffman, Erving. Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974. Goldstein, Philip and James L. Machor. “Reception Study, Cultural Studies, and Mass Communication.” In Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies, edited by Philip Goldstein and James L. Machor, 203–208. New York/London: Routledge, 2001. Gombrich, Ernst. Art and Illusion, A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon, 1960. Gombrich, Ernst. The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Ithaca: Cornell/Phaidon, 1982. Gritten, Anthony. “The Subject of Listening.” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 45, no. 3 (2015): 203–219. Goldstein, Philip and James L. Machor, eds. New Directions in American Reception Study. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Gurr, Andrew. Playgoing in Shakespearean London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Harbage, Alfred. Shakespeare’s Audience. New York: Columbia University Press, 1941. Hardwick, Lorna. Reception Studies. Greece & Rome. New Surveys in the Classics: No. 33. Published for the Classical Association [by] Oxford University Press, 2003. Hardwick, Lorna and Christopher Stray. A Companion to Classical Receptions. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008. Harris, Jonathan. The New Art History. A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Haskell, Francis. Patrons and Painters: A Study in the Relations Between Italian Art and Society in the Age of the Baroque. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963. Haskell, Francis. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 15001900. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982. Haskell, Francis. The Ephemeral Museum: Old Master paintings and the rise of the art exhibition. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Hauser, Arnold. The Social History of Art. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951. Hauser, Arnold. The Philosophy of Art History. New York: Knopf, 1959. Hirsch, E. D. Validity in Interpretation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967.

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Holland, Norman. “Unity Identity Text Self.” In Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, edited by Jane P. Tompkins, 118–133. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Holly, Michael Ann. “Reciprocity and Reception Theory.” In A Companion to Art Theory, edited by Carolyn Wilde and Paul Smith, 448–457. Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies: 5. Blackwell, 2002. Holly, Michael Ann. Panofsky and the Foundations of Art History. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1985. Holly, Michael Ann. Past Looking: Historical Imagination and the Rhetoric of the Image. Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1996. Holtorf, Cornelius J. “The Life-Histories of Megaliths in MecklenburgVorpommern (Germany).” World Archaeology 30, no. 1, The Past in the Past: The Reuse of Ancient Monuments (June 1998): 23–38. Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. New Accents. London; New York: Methuen, 1984. Holub, Robert C. Crossing Borders: Reception Theory, Poststructuralism, Deconstruction. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992. Hunt, Jeffrey, R. Alden Smith, and Fabio Stok, eds. Classics From Papyrus to the Internet: An Introduction to Transmission and Reception. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978. Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. Iser, Wolfgang. “The Current Situation of Literary Theory: Key Concepts and the Imaginary.” New Literary History 11, no. 1 (Autumn, 1979): 1–20. Iser, Wolfgang. “Interaction between Text and Reader.” In The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, 106–119. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Theory and History of Literature. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982. Kemp, Wolfgang. Der Anteil des Betrachters: Rezeptionsästhetische Studien zur Malerei des 19. Jahrhunderts. München: Mäander, 1983. Kemp, Wolfgang. “The Work of Art and its Beholder. The Methodology of the Aesthetic of Reception.” In The Subjects of Art History: Historical Objects in Contemporary Perspective, edited by Mark A. Cheetham, Michael Ann Holly, and Keith P. F. Moxey, 180–196. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Kemp, Wolfgang, ed. Der Betrachter ist im Bild. Kunstwissenschaft und Rezeptionsästhetik. Berlin: Reimer, 1992. Kennedy, George. A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Kane, Brian. “Jean-Luc Nancy and the Listening Subject,” Contemporary Music Review, 31, no. 5–6 (2012): 439–447. Leavis, Q. D. Fiction and the Reading Public. London: Chatto and Windus, 1932. Lissa, Zofia. “The Musical Reception of Chopin’s Works.” In Studies in Chopin, edited by Dariusz Zebrowski, 7–29. Warsaw: The Chopin Society, 1973.

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Lissa, Zofia, Eugenia Tanska, and Eugenia Tarska. “On the Evolution of Musical Perception.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 24, no. 2 (Winter, 1965): 273–286. Katula, Richard A. “Quintilian on the Art of Emotional Appeal.” Rhetoric Review 22.1 (2003): 5–15. Krummacher, Friedhelm. “Rezeptionsgeschichte als Problem der Musikwissenschaft.” Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preussischer Kulturbesitz (1979–80): 154–170. Lardinois, André, et al., eds. Texts, Transmissions, Receptions: Modern Approaches to Narratives. Boston: Brill, 2015. Leenhardt, Jacques. “Toward a Sociology of Reading.” In The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, 205–224. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Lough, John. Paris Theater Audiences in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957. Low, Jennifer A. and Nova Myhill, eds. Imagining the Audience in Early Modern Drama, 1558–1662. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Machor, James L., and Philip Goldstein. Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 2001. Mailloux, Steven. Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982. Marin, Louis. “Toward a Theory of Reading in the Visual Arts: Poussin’s The Arcadian Shepherds.” In The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, 293–324. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Marin, Louis. On Representation. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Martin, Jacqueline and Wilmar Sauter, eds. Understanding Performance: Performance Analysis in Theory and Practice. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1997. Martindale, Charles and Richard F. Thomas, Classics and the Uses of Reception. Malden, MA; Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Martindale, Charles. “Introduction: Thinking Through Reception.” In Classics and the Uses of Reception, edited by Charles Martindale and Richard F. Thomas. Maldon & Oxford: Blackwell, 2006. Martindale, Charles. Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. McGrath, Alister E., ed. “The Sources of Theology.” In The Christian Theology Reader, 67–148. Wiley, 2016. Meyer, Klaus-Heinrich. “Das Bild ist im Betrachter. Zur Struktur- und Bedeutungskonstruktion durch den Rezipienten.” Hephaistos 9 (1988): 7–41. Nancy, Jean-Luc. Listening, translated by Charlotte Mandell. New York: Fordham University Press, 2007. Perelman, Chaim and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, translated by John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. Pavis, Patrice. Languages of the Stage: Essays in the Semiology of the Theatre. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 2001.

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Pavis, Patrice. Theater at the Crossroads of Culture, translated by Loren Kruger. London: Routledge, 1992. Prince, Gerald. “Introduction to the Study of Narratee.” In Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, edited by Jane P. Tompkins, 7–25. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Prince, Gerald. “Notes on the Text as Reader.” In The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, edited by Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, 224–240. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1982. Rosen, Charles. The Frontiers of Meaning: Three Informal Lectures on Music. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994. Rösing, Helmut, ed. “Rezeptionsforschung in der Musikwissenschaft.” Wege der Forschung LXVII. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1983. Salter, Elisabeth. Popular Reading in English, c. 1400–1600. Manchester University Press, 2017. Sauter, Wilmar. The Theatrical Event: Dynamics of Performance and Perception. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2000. Savage, Roger W. H. “Crossing the Disciplinary Divide: Hermeneutics, Ethnomusicology and Musicology.” College Music Symposium 49, no. 50 (2009): 402–408. Schapiro, Meyer. “On Some Problems in the Semiotics of Visual Art: Field and Vehicle in Image-Signs.” Simiolus 6, no. 1 (1971–2): 9–19 Schapiro, Meyer. Words, Script and Pictures: Semiotics of Visual Language. New York: Braziller, 1996. Schechner, Richard and Mady Schuman, eds., Ritual, Play and Performance, Readings in the Social Sciences/Theatre. New York: Seabury Press, 1976. Scheie, Timothy. Performance Degree Zero: Roland Barthes and Theatre. University of Toronto Press, 2006. Schoenmakers, Henri. “The Spectator in the Leading Role. Developments in Reception and Audience Research within Theater Studies: Theory and Research.” In New Directions in Theater Research: Proceedings of the XCIth FIRT/IFTR Congress, Nordic theatre studies: Special international issue, edited by W. Sauter, 93–107. Munksgaard, 1990. Scott, A. Brian, Alastair J. Minnis, and David Wallace, eds. Medieval Literary Theory. Clarendon, 1991. Smith, Paul and Carolyn Wilde, eds. A Companion to Art Theory. Blackwell Companions in Cultural Studies: 5. Blackwell, 2002. Solmsen, Friedrich. “Aristotle and Cicero on the Orator’s Playing upon the Feelings.” Classical Philology 33 (1938): 390–404. Strohm, Paul. “Chaucer’s Audience(s): Fictional, Implied, Intended, Actual.” The Chaucer Review 18, no. 2 (1983): 137–145. Suleiman, Susan Rubin, and Inge Crosman Wimmers, eds. The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980. Tindale, Christopher. The Philosophy of Argument and Audience Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

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Tompkins, Jane P., ed. Reader-Response Criticism: from Formalism to PostStructuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Towheed, Shafquat, Rosiland Crone, and Katie Halsey, eds. The History of Reading. London: Routledge, 2011. Tulloch, John. Shakespeare and Chekov in Production and Reception: Theatrical Events and their Audiences. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005. Van Orden, Kate. Materialities: Books, Readers, and the Chanson in SixteenthCentury Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Wakelin, Daniel. Humanism, Reading, & English Literature 1430–1530. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Woodfield, Richard. Gombrich on Art and Psychology. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1996.

2

To Compliment a Musical Friend: Amateur Musicians and Their Audiences in France, ca. 1650–1700 Michael A. Bane

In Madeleine de Scudéry’s novel Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus (1649–53), the young and noble Lysidice critiques the recreations available to her in ancient Cumae. Each activity, the character argues, is accompanied by an irritant that spoils the fun. For example, For the ball, she said that very often the pain of attiring yourself; the throng that you find there; staying up very late; the disappointment of another dancing more and receiving more praise; all surpassed the pleasure of it. As for music, it brought melancholy with it, or at least so fastened the mind that for as long as it lasted you could do nothing but listen. Add to that also the pain of praising the musicians, which always followed the pleasure of music.1 She then sets herself the task of imagining a perfect feast free of all trouble and irritation, with choice company, beautiful surroundings, delicious food, and casual dress. As for the music, I would also like that during dinner we listened to one of those joyful compositions that are better at raising the spirits than softening the heart; and that this music be placed in a tribune in order to be delivered (as I have already said) from the embarrassment of the musicians and of the praises one is obliged to give them when one sees them closer.2 Odes to musical pleasure are common in seventeenth-century literature, but these passages suggest that music could also evoke less agreeable feelings.3 For Lysidice, music is unpleasant because it requires her to work as a listener; she is “obliged” to “always” praise musicians, whether she wants to or not. It would be better, she muses, to physically separate performers from their audience and spare the latter this awkward chore.4 Lysidice took issue with music because it forced her to reckon with irksome social obligations, and in this she was far from alone. Music DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-2

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permeated French society, perhaps nowhere more so than in the salons that flourished in Paris in the second half of the century. “These spaces of socialization,” writes Alberto Ausoni, “at once intimate and worldly, offer[ed] their habitués elite distractions that allow[ed] them to agreeably pass the time and to practice as amateurs writing, music and the arts.”5 Since many gens de qualité received some form of musical education, it would have been common to be drafted into the audience of an amateur recital, at the salon or elsewhere.6 Anne-Madeleine Goulet and Catherine Gordon have each analyzed the musical repertoires performed in these salons, but our view of the larger social context in which performance occurred is incomplete.7 The role of the audience in particular remains ambiguous. Though often portrayed as passive receivers of musical delight, they were in fact active contributors to the performative event with responsibilities and expectations of their own. For someone like Lysidice, these obligations could even be a source of anxiety. But what were they? This essay will explore what I believe to have been the chief responsibility of salon audiences: to offer elegant and felicitous praise to the performer, what Scudéry called the “pain of praising.” As I will suggest, etiquette demanded that musicians be complimented before and after musical recitals, when it was then incumbent upon auditors to offer both encouragement and assessment. This may strike the modern reader as a straightforward task, but for seventeenth-century auditors evaluating a musician was no simple matter. Most observers identified praise as the only acceptable commentary, and this led audiences to agonize over crafting elegant compliments, especially for performers of middling talent. Indeed, many considered it a mark of good breeding to compliment well, while those who gave overly long or clumsy tribute could find themselves mocked by their peers. At the same time, some authors bemoaned the automatic praise heaped upon any and all performances and instead championed a return to what they considered a more authentic culture of honest critique. By outlining music’s contested position within this broader culture of praise, I hope to illuminate one of the more obscure features of music-making in France at this time.

2.1 The Compliment in Context Linguist Janet Holmes has defined the compliment as “a speech act which explicitly or implicitly attributes credit to someone other than the speaker, usually the person addressed, for some ‘good’ (possession, characteristic, skill, etc.) which is positively valued by the speaker and the hearer.”8 The study of compliments belongs to pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics concerned with utterances and their social contexts (the newer field of historical pragmatics extends the investigation into previous centuries). By forming coherent compliments and offering them at appropriate moments, speakers prove their pragmatic competence; by

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accepting compliments in accordance with prevailing social norms, recipients do the same. The linguistic rules governing correct or efficacious compliments vary by culture and time period.9 Moreover, there is no one formula for articulating compliments (at least in English and related languages), though most conform to a small number of patterns.10 As for the function of compliments and other polite behavior, scholars have offered various explanations. Perhaps the most influential is that of Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson, who have argued that politeness is a set of strategies for saving “face,” or one’s self-image within society.11 Other scholars have addressed the broader role performed by politeness within society at large. For Robin Lakoff, politeness is “a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange.”12 In other words, compliments (and other instances of politeness) are performed in the service (whether consciously or not) of social harmony. Early moderns shared a broadly similar understanding of the compliment. In a treatise first published in 1616, the court author Eustache de Refuge defined it as “a short expression of love, declaration or demonstration of honor and obligation towards those whom we desire to induce into confidence and assurance that they are loved and take from us an admirable and reciprocal affection.”13 As this and later definitions of the word show, however, the French compliment encompassed more than the English cognate and could refer to various kinds of ceremonious, civil, or respectful speech.14 Closer equivalents to the English included louange and the verbs louanger or louer, the last of which the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française defined in 1694 as “To honor and reveal the merit of some action or something by terms that testify to the esteem one has for it.”15 Whatever the exact word, complimentary discourse marked every facet of the Old Regime. According to Bernard Bray, praise was “so widespread in etiquette that there is no moralist who does not allude to it, no civility manual that does not prescribe its judicious use, no correspondent who does not conform himself to this rite.”16 It found expression in innumerable ways: letters to friends, dedications, everyday conversation, and compliments given to musicians after their recitals. It was through these “demonstrations of honor and obligation” that people cultivated their social relationships. Such demonstrations became increasingly complex as the century progressed. Of the 1630s and 1640s, Maurice Magendie noted the “extreme complication of civility, [and] the interminable exchange of polite formulas.”17 The court of Louis XIV further refined courtesy into an instrument of power. As Norbert Elias argued, the Sun King brought to bear an elaborate system of decorum to domesticate rank-obsessed aristocrats.18 The obsession with social standing was not confined to the court, however, and it informed much of Parisian life. Of the social

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institutions operating outside the court in seventeenth-century France, perhaps the most important were the salons. According to Eric Walter, there were about 40 salons and 800 salon-goers in Paris by 1660.19 Despite their limited numbers, salons exerted an outsized influence on French society. For the aristocratic women who founded and directed them, salons offered semi-public spaces where they could debate issues of literature, philosophy, and art with a freedom and authority often denied to them in more masculine arenas such as the court or press.20 These salon-goers also cultivated distinct modes of sociability. Guided in part by the writings of Antoine Gombaud, chevalier de Méré, attendees advanced new models of nobility rooted in courtesy, l’honnêteté, and urbane conversation.21 How one expressed oneself could count for as much as one’s lineage.22 Though mocked by Molière and others for the “preciousness” of their flamboyant language, salon-goers took seriously the careful back-and-forth of (what they considered to be) elegant conversation.23 Those who failed to follow the rules of polite speech could find themselves banished from the scene.24 Whether at court or in the salons, then, social success depended on assimilating and reproducing prevailing codes of civility and style. As an integral component of seventeenth-century politesse, the compliment and related matters of praise received due consideration from a number of authors. One of the keenest was Jean-Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde, who examined the practice at length in his published dialogs. He presents the compliment as a tricky but essential skill for those engaged in social commerce. People often perceive the withholding of praise as an act of aggression, he writes, even when silence or criticism is justified. Poets are particularly solicitous of praise, and they bitterly object to defiant audiences: For me, continued Theagene, I find nothing more uncomfortable than an author infatuated with his own works, because one is forced to be too indulgent. They wish to be praised at a price whatever it may be; if they are not, it comes to a quarrel. For if one reacts negatively to what they recite, they brutally reproach you, claim that you have poor taste and that you lack wit, or that you are incapable of judging beautiful things.25 Like the earlier Lysidice, Bellegarde’s character finds the obligation to praise a poet or other author discomforting. Praise is due only to people of “rare quality,” he claims, and the common practice of heaping compliments on the undeserving is a “vice” redolent of “base flattery or a fault of judgment.”26 In a later work, Bellegarde warns against those who “affect to be more civil than others, who open their mouths only to make compliments or give praise,” because “affected or excessive compliments always come from those who mislead, or who are themselves

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misled.”27 Yet Bellegarde (through his character Euthyme) concedes that this position differs from that of most gentlemen: What angers me the most... is that I do not think anyone wants to cure themselves of this fault. We have got it into our heads that in order to be à la mode, we have to make a habit of flattering everyone, that this is the duty of an honest man [honnê te homme], that without this we cannot live among people of quality, who are nourished by vain praise.28 For many of Bellegarde’s contemporaries, society was synonymous with praise, and the gentleman was duty-bound to feed the vanity of his fellow gens de qualité .29 Despite these reservations, Bellegarde recognized that one could not do without praise altogether. He states that the gentleman must avoid two faults in equal measure: praising too much and praising too little.30 The problem was not praise per se, but rather the inopportune or clumsy declaration of it. To withhold a truly merited compliment was as great a fault as to flatter the vanity of an incompetent poet or musician. A compliment, moreover, had to be well-chosen and elegantly formed: “Nothing is more common in society than the use of compliments; all sorts of people take pride in making them. But most things that one hears are poorly imagined and often very impertinent.”31 The length of a compliment mattered as well. The longer the compliment, the greater the risk that it would devolve into meaningless flattery: “The bourgeois, the provincials, the pedants are still more scrupulous in civility when they get involved with compliments. They never find an end to them, they torture themselves a great deal and exasperate those who listen to them.”32 True gentlemen distinguished themselves through judiciously selected, inventively formed, and skillfully delivered compliments. It was a mark of distinction to compliment well, one that the uncivilized could only hope to imitate. The bourgeois, provincials, and pedants who lacked competence in this field could nevertheless educate themselves. Like other social ceremonies of importance, the compliment amassed an extensive literature aimed at those ignorant of correct protocol. As Annick Paternoster has discussed, dialogs published in Renaissance Italy (and translated elsewhere) often modeled the art of complimenting for their readers.33 Many seventeenth-century conduct manuals also offered basic guidelines for praising and complimenting. As Bray noted above, few authors neglected the topic entirely. Bellegarde, for example, provided general advice to readers and identified the broadest errors they had to avoid. Franç ois de Grenaille had given similar advice earlier in the century.34 Some authors, however, were more specific in their instruction. Claude Jaunin published Les compliments de la langue française, œuvre très utile

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et necessaire à ceux qui sont à la cour des grands in Paris in 1630, for instance, while Paul Burckhart published Duels de compliments franç ois et italiens in Lyon in 1636.35 This latter work claimed to have introduced fashionable Italian compliments to France and provided fulsome dialogs in both Italian and French suitable for several diverse occasions. Later in the century, the chevalier de Méré discussed matters of flattery, complaisance, and graceful conversation in his published works. Whatever the specific volume, readers had several guides to choose from to help them navigate complimentary discourse in a variety of situations.

2.2 The Musical Compliment As a public demonstration of talent, skill, and taste, music-making naturally engaged with the culture of praise described by Bellegarde and others. Musicians hoped to be lauded for their singing or playing, and their performances offered several opportunities for complimentary exchanges. The two most important were immediately before and after the recital. In the moments before, it was common for musicians to feign ignorance of music or to minimize their abilities until persuaded to perform by their audience. Antoine de Courtin, in his popular conduct manual first published in 1671, refers to this practice in the chapter on amateur musicians: If it happens that one has a talent for singing, playing an instrument, or even making of verses, one must never make it known by any sign. But if it is discovered and known, and one is asked to show it at some meeting by someone worthy of respect, it is necessary to first graciously [honnêtement] excuse oneself.36 In a French grammar published in 1699, Abel Boyer provided a dialog that helps illuminate Courtin’s cursory remarks: Madame: Monsieur: Madame: Monsieur: Madame: Monsieur: Madame: Monsieur: Madame: Monsieur: Madame:

Sir, will you be pleas’d to sing us a little Song? Madam, I would do it with all my Heart, if I could sing. Why do you tell me you cannot sing? I tell you nothing but the Truth. I know you sing very well. How do you know it, Madam? Your Singing-Master told me so. He says so for his own Credit. He must not be believed. You may deny it as long as you please; I am perswaded you sing very well, and that you have a fine Voice. Why are you perswaded of it? Because all good Singers love to be much entreated (or courted) to sing.

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Monsieur: Madame: Monsieur: Madame: Monsieur: Madame: Monsieur: Madame:

There’s no Rule without Exception. You refuse me then the Pleasure of hearing you sing? Madam, I have a mind to leave you in the good Opinion you have of my Voice. You will encrease it if you please to oblige me. The certainty I have of the contrary will keep me silent. You disoblige me for ever, if you don’t sing. That threatning is sufficient to oblige me to sing. But I am very hoarse. I shall grate your Ears. Pshaw! Pshaw! all those Excuses are good for nothing.37

Here Boyer supplies three stratagems for politely refusing to perform. Monsieur first claims ignorance, he will not sing because he cannot. When Madame informs him that she knows his singing master, he shifts tactics: he does indeed keep a singing master, but that in itself does not prove that he can sing. Madame sees through this lame excuse, for she knows that “all good Singers love to be much entreated (or courted) to sing.” Finally, Monsieur admits that he can sing, but not now, for he is hoarse. By this point, however, it is obvious that he will perform. The excuse serves only to temper expectations. Though the singer follows Courtin’s earlier advice by hiding his talent and modestly excusing himself, it is clear that he harbors ulterior motives.38 Each excuse, however unconvincing, provides Madame an opportunity to offer a compliment. For example, she knows he “sings very well”; she is persuaded that he “has a very fine voice”; and she suggests that his singing will bring her “pleasure.” The claim of sore throat, moreover, will allow Madame to graciously excuse any faults—and more fulsomely praise any merits—after the recital itself. The musician has yet to sing a single note, but he has already received a welter of compliments. Modesty, then, was not the sole reason a musician might decline to perform. And while we should not take a pedagogical dialog as representative of true seventeenth-century practice—for Boyer likely elongated the scene to provide students with a greater store of vocabulary and speaking practice—it does evoke in greater detail the dance of modestly hinted at by Courtin. It was in the immediate aftermath of a recital, however, that compliments were most common. As Lysidice stated in Scudéry’s novel, the pain of praising musicians “always followed the pleasure of music.” These compliments could take many forms, depending on the inventiveness of the one doing the complimenting. René Bary recorded several florid examples in his lighthearted collection of dialogs first published in 1662 with the title L’esprit de cour. Bary had cut his teeth in the Paris salons and published several works on eloquence and proper speaking.39 Many of the dialogs in L’esprit de cour are in fact instructions for praise. The reader learns to compliment another’s hair, memory, dancing, and

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even bosom. Bary dedicated three of his dialogs to musical matters: the praise of lute playing, singing, and lute playing, singing, and dancing all together. Each dialog includes two interlocutors, usually a young gallant and the lady he is wooing. The dialog devoted to the lute player is a typical example: Teagene: Beroline: Teagene: Beroline: Teagene: Beroline: Teagene: Beroline: Teagene: Beroline: Teagene: Beroline:

Has anyone ever seen a hand so light or a lute so resonant? Either you have an indelicate ear, or you have a flattering tongue. Ah! What can one not say of a girl who makes the strings speak? Art does not produce miracles, and if it did, it would not be through what I do. Then what do you call the language of your lute? Is not the effect extraordinarily virtuous? I only do what hundreds of others do. You have no equivalent. One can be above a thousand others and yet be below you. I did not expect any other response, but it diminishes injury while augmenting flattery. When I say what I have just said, I echo of the voice of the public. Surely you jest. I think what I say. If that is so, then you say what you ought not to think.40

Here we encounter the “extremely refined and ceremonious” politeness and “over-elaborate formulae” that Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni has identified as characteristic of French compliments of the era.41 To modern sensibilities, and to some in the seventeenth century as well, it is a tiresome display. Bellegarde might have even dubbed this dialog tasteless. Indeed, in the book’s preface Bary writes that some had objected to the licentiousness underpinning such extravagant praise. He replies that he has only copied what he has heard “a hundred times,” and that he hopes that by reading his conversations “provincials become more polished and ladies more informed.”42 Not all compliments were as involved as Bary’s, of course. To return to Boyer’s French grammar, the same dialog quoted above concludes with these more subdued remarks: Madame: Monsieur:

You sing very well. I am very glad I have heard you sing. Madam, you are very obliging, so kindly to excuse the Defect of my Voice, and my small skill in singing.43

Monsieur’s self-effacing reply reminds us that musicians were not passive recipients of praise, for they themselves were expected to politely

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respond to their interlocutors. As the linguist Geoffrey Leech notes, compliment response places the original recipient in a bind: to reject a compliment can be seen as rude, to accept one as immodest.44 The issue is especially fraught when two individuals are not friends or well acquainted. Boyer’s Monsieur charts a safer course by thanking Madame while modestly deprecating his own voice. Compare this response with that of the pretentious Monsieur Jourdain after he stumbles his way through a song in Molière’s comedy-ballet Le bourgeois gentilhomme (1670): Monsieur Jourdain: Singing master: Dancing master: Monsieur Jourdain:

It’s pretty, no? The prettiest in the world. And you sing it well. That’s without having studied music.45

Monsieur Jourdain immodestly fishes for compliments with his initial question, then rudely presses the matter by noting his own lack of experience. As Molière recognized, the correct or incorrect handling of compliments could be a telling marker of social competence. Molière’s scene is also a good example of complimentary exchange between two social classes. In brief, both the dancing master and singing master compliment Monsieur Jourdain because he pays their salaries. Monsieur Jourdain can afford to rudely reply to these men because neither is in a position to hinder his ultimate goal, ascension into the nobility. When alone, the two tradesmen discuss their predicament, where they must praise and be praised by a fool. The idealistic dancing master dreams of being complimented by a more enlightened audience: “There is nothing, in my opinion, that pays us better than that for all our labor; and it is an exquisite comfort, such well-informed praise.”46 The more practical musician, however, disputes his colleague’s wisdom: “There is assuredly nothing more flattering than the applause of which you speak; but that incense does not provide a living. Pure praises do not secure a comfortable life.”47 Monsieur Jourdain provides food and shelter at least, and that is enough for the singer. Though many of the examples in this essay feature agents of roughly equal standing, Molière’s works in general, and this piece in particular, remind us of the economic considerations behind much flattery in France at this time.

2.3 Gallant Conversations As the foregoing examples suggest, praise was not only an audience requirement but also a powerful inducement to musical performance itself. For some musicians, praise counted among the greatest pleasures afforded by music-making. In a two-volume collection of fashionable dialogs published in 1681 with the title Entretiens galans, three people of

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quality—Berelie, Philemon, and Celinde—discuss the barely concealed motivations animating their contemporaries. Celinde, who has just interrupted a performance of song by Berelie and Philemon, remarks: I have found that the pleasure of making oneself admired [for music] is not the greatest one for a woman with a beautiful voice. The benefit of attracting a thousand little declarations and responding to them appropriately, without it being of any consequence, is something that indeed justifies the stubbornness we have for music.48 For many, it was not enough to simply have one’s musical talent acknowledged—the performer also had to attract compliments, or “a thousand little declarations,” touching on all aspects of the performance. That these compliments were frivolous and without “consequence” added to their allure. Warming to her discourse, Celinde expands upon her theory of female musicianship. Women, she claims, adopt little airs and stratagems to win for their voices an acclaim they might not deserve. “A little cold is always of great use to them. A cough always comes to them conveniently, and they affect a hundred little difficulties to better excuse their faults and give more sparkle to what can be to their advantage.”49 Feigning sickness was beneficial thrice over: it lowered expectations; excused whatever weakness present in the performance; and implied that, when healthy, the performer was capable of even more enchanting results. Celinde claims that such ruses were peculiar to women, but Berelie asks, “Why do you cast upon them a fault that men share equally?”50 Indeed, the dialog provided in Boyer’s French grammar, discussed above, features a male singer offering the same excuse. “All good Singers love to be much courted to sing,” we learned, and it is probable that many amateurs claimed hoarseness or illness when they believed it could aid their cause. The desire for praise collided with a cultural imperative to behave modestly. Musicians who sought to dampen audience expectation seemed to act out of humility, but in fact they used the cloak of modesty to shroud their compliment grubbing. In what amounts to the dialog’s moral, Berelie ponders the ethical questions raised by a society built on compliments: We quite often attempt to hide a vice under the appearance of a virtue. We don a pretext of modesty to cover the vanity that follows the little praises that we are given. In order to attract new compliments, we skillfully offer reasons that can serve as a foundation for them. We do not realize that affectation is discovered by the care we take to hide it. Have someone sing, listen to him carefully, do not show any boredom, always ask that he sing again, praise his

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Michael A. Bane voice, say that nothing equals its beauty, and a hundred similar things. You see that he first adopts a false modesty. Watch closely and you will see that the excuses with which he counters the praise serve to prolong it rather than interrupt it. Is it possible that we keep our eyes closed and do not understand that we praise ourselves more than others do when we offer only weak and brief obstacles to the perfections that flattery gives us? To respond that we have a furious cold when someone praises our voice, is it not to admit that we can sing enchantedly when we are not sick?51

Berelie then goes on to sketch the portrait of an ideal musician, one who would receive compliments with noble nonchalance: One must not listen to what is said, if one would be embarrassed to respond to it. The young ought to remember this rule, to never forget that, unless you have much experience, one cannot respond better to praise than by not responding at all. … A little seriousness, a modest silence, a simple reverence, all say a little more when you are young, it seems to me, than all the most beautiful speech; and on the voice, as on all matters of beauty, to truly merit praise, one must not take any pride in it or too much defend one’s abilities. I would like that someone with a beautiful voice sing without affectation when urged to, and that they do not sell too dear that which costs them nothing.52 Like others before and after her, Berelie dreamt of a simplified world, one where the niceties demanded by custom were reduced to those truly deserved and honestly given. She, however, lived a more complex reality, that of seventeenth-century Paris. To judge from the preceding accounts, rare was the man or woman who lived without ceremony, or the musician who performed with modest silence.

2.4 Arion’s Song Was criticism possible? Several seventeenth-century conduct manuals dedicated chapters to raillery, a kind of gentle teasing. In 1630, Nicolas Faret defined it as “a type of conversation a little freer than ordinary, and which has something prickly mixed in, whose usage is very common among the most gallant, and is not banished even today among the most intimate friends at court.”53 Such prickly barbs, when handled skillfully, could enliven conversation among friends. When handled poorly, ironic or cutting remarks, however good-natured, ran the risk of wounding another’s pride. Since one could not know who would tolerate a ribbing when, Faret wrote that it was better to avoid raillery altogether than to chance losing a friend—or worse, gaining an enemy.54

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A final passage from Scudéry’s novel suggests the limits of criticism in polite society. Thrasimède shares with the gullible Candiope that his legendary friend Arion, famous for having charmed a dolphin with his singing, will soon be in their city. If Candiope can arrange a small audience with her friend Arpalice, he will bring Arion by for an intimate concert. Like most musicians, however, Arion would require encouragement. As Candiope relates, [Thrasimède] had told me that it was necessary to treat [Arion] with great civility, and to give him much praise. He also advised me that the true way to get him to sing was to converse with him beforehand, for this was the custom, he told me; nearly all musicians in society like more to practice what they do not do well than what they do excellently. For this reason, one must have patience, to listen to him recount some of his amorous affairs, or his adventure with the dolphin ….55 Candiope agrees, excited to hear the famous Arion sing. But it is all a ploy. Arion is actually a different, less talented friend of Thrasimède in disguise, charged with distracting Candiope with conversation while Thrasimède confesses his love to Arpalice. The plan works: while Candiope politely tolerates the false Arion’s interminable stories, Thrasimède and Arpalice discuss their feelings in relative privacy. Eventually, the false “Arion” can dither no longer and he tunes his lyre and begins to sing: But though he did so rather well for a man of quality, who did not make a profession of it, it is true that having the imagination entirely filled with the marvelous song of Arion, of whom the entire world spoke, I was strangely astonished when this friend of Thrasimède began to sing so poorly. … However, Arpalice and I did not dare show our surprise, and we pretended to find that he sang miraculously well. Yet I could not keep myself from whispering to Arpalice, while the false Arion tuned his lyre for another song, a part of what I thought: do you suppose, I said into her ear, that you must be a dolphin to find this music splendid?56 Faced with musical mediocrity, what could the young women do but swallow their laughter and submit the compulsory praise? Candiope’s final, ironic question to Arpalice is the exception that proves the rule. Critique was possible, but only whispered into the ear of a friend. Many men and women in seventeenth-century France would have fallen into the same predicament as Lysidice, Candiope, and Arpalice at some point: to be forced to praise that which discomforted them.57 These characters remind us that music only sometimes elicited pleasure,

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happiness, or joy in early-modern audiences. Depending on the performance, it could just as well provoke pain, embarrassment, tedium, and acts of polite dishonesty. And at a time when listening to music required auditors and performers to coinhabit the same enclosed space, few could escape the obligations imposed by society. As the sources discussed in this essay suggest, praise fulfilled several important functions in French musical culture: it coaxed (seemingly) reluctant performers into playing or singing; it rewarded musicians with gratifying admiration; and, when handled properly, it demonstrated the social competence of both the complimenter and complimentee.58 Some might have shaken their heads at the “people of quality” nourished by vain praise, but the alternative—honest critique—was a pill too bitter to swallow.

Notes 1 Madeleine de Scudéry, Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, 10 vols., edited and transcribed by Claude Bourqui and Alexandre Gefen (Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1656), 5027. Note that references to page numbers in Scudéry’s novel here and elsewhere in this essay correspond to the continuous pagination of the online transcription. “Pour le Bal, elle disoit que bien souvent la peine de se parer; la presse qu’on y trouvoit; le veiller extrémement tard; le dépit qu’une autre dance davantage, et reçoive plus de loüanges, surpassoit le plaisir qu’on y avoit: que pour la Musique elle portoit la mélancolie avec elle, ou du moins attachoit si fort l’esprit, que tant qu’elle duroit on ne pouvoit faire autre chose que l’escouter: joint aussi que la peine de louer les Musiciens, suivoit tousjours le plaisir de la Musique.” Translations are author’s own. 2 Scudéry, Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, 5029. “Je voudrois encore que durant le disner on entendist une de ces Musiques rejouïssantes, que sont propres à esveiller l’esprit, plustost qu’à attendrir le coeur: et que cette Musique fust dans une Tribune, afin d’estre delivrée, comme je l’ay desja dit, de l’embarras des Musiciens, et des louanges qu’on est obligé de leur donner, quand on les voit de plus prés.” 3 On the myriad ways music and pleasure intersected in seventeenth-century France, see the essays collected in Thierry Favier and Manuel Couvreur, eds., Le plaisir musical en France au XVIIesiècle (Sprimont: Mardaga, 2006). 4 As Albert P. de Mirimonde notes, Lysidice’s second passage seems to describe the small concerts given in the king’s appartements under Louis XIV, when musicians often performed from the tribunes. See Albert P. de Mirimonde, L’iconographie musicale sous les rois Bourbons: La musique dans les arts plastiques (XVIIe–XVIIIesiè cles), 2 vols. (Paris: É ditions A. et J. Picard, 1975), 1:183. 5 Alberto Ausoni, “À la cour et à la ville: Art de plaire, musique et mode,” in Regards sur la musique au temps de Louis XIV, ed. Jean Duron (Wavre: Mardaga, 2007), 12. “Ces espaces de socialisation, à la fois intimes et mondains, offrent à leurs habitués des distractions de qualité qui permettent de passer des moments agréables et de pratiquer, en amateurs, l’écriture, la musique et les arts.” 6 As stated in an article published in the Mercure galant in 1688, “Rien n’est si à la mode que la musique, et c’est aujourd’huy la passion de la pluspart des

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honnestes gens, et des personnes de qualité .” [“Nothing is so in style as music, and it is today the passion of most honnêtes gens and people of quality.”] Quoted in Michel Brenet [Marie Bobiller], Les concerts en France sous l’ancien ré gime (1900; reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1970), 110. Baldassare Castiglione’s portrait of the ideal courtier as an amateur musician strongly influenced the seventeenth century. On music in Castiglione’s book (1528), see James Haar, “The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione’s View of the Science and Art of Music,” in Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture, ed. Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 166–89; On The Book of the Courtier in France and elsewhere, see Peter Burke, The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995); On the role of music in the education of gentlemen and gentlewomen in early-modern Italy and France, see Stefano Lorenzetti, “La parte della musica nella costruzione del gentiluomo: Tendenze e programmi della pedagogia seicentesca tra Francia e Italia,” Studi Musicali 25, nos. 1–2 (1996): 17–40; Stefano Lorenzetti, Musica e identità nobiliare nell’Italia del Rinascimento: Educazione, mentalità, immaginario (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2003). For a general introduction to the French aristocracy and education, see Mark Edward Motley, Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility, 1580–1715 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990). On music-making and musical thought among honnêtes gens, see Don Fader, “The Honnête homme as Music Critic: Taste, Rhetoric, and Politesse in the 17th-Century French Reception of Italian Music,” Journal of Musicology 20, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 3–44; Michael A. Bane, “Honnêtes gens, Amateur Musicianship, and the ‘Easy Air’ in France: The Case of Francesco Corbetta’s Royal Guitars,” Journal of SeventeenthCentury Music, 20, no. 1 (2014; published 2017): https://sscm-jscm.org/jscmissues/volume-20-no-1/honnetes-gens-amateur-musicianship-and-the-easyair-in-france-the-case-of-francesco-corbettas-royal-guitars/. 7 Anne-Madeleine Goulet, Poésie, musique et sociabilité au XVIIesiècle: Les Livres d’airs de différents auteurs publiés chez Ballard de 1658 à 1694 (Paris: Champion, 2004), esp. Part 3, “À l’eschole des ruelles,” Catherine GordonSeifert, Music and the Language of Love: Seventeenth-Century French Airs (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011), esp. chapter 7, “Salon Culture and the Mid-Seventeenth-Century French Air.” See also the essays collected in Anne-Madeleine Goulet, ed., Les foyers artistiques à la fin du règne de Louis XIV, 1682–1715: Musique et spectacles (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019). 8 Janet Holmes, “Paying Compliments: A Sex-Preferential Politeness Strategy,” Journal of Pragmatics 12, no. 4 (August 1988): 446, quoted in Geoffrey Leech, The Pragmatics of Politeness (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 186. 9 Much scholarship attempts to account for the formal characteristics of compliments and their variations across languages. As Noriko Ishihara notes, compliments are among “the most researched speech acts across languages.” Noriko Ishihara, “Compliments and Responses to Compliments: Learning Communication in Context,” in Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues, ed. Alicia Martínez-Flor and Esther Usó-Juan (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010), 179. For a recent summary of research undertaken on this topic, see Susanne Strubel-Burgdorf, Compliments and Positive Assessments: Sequential

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Michael A. Bane Organization in Multi-party Conversations (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2018), 5–34. See Leech, The Pragmatics of Politeness, 186. According to Joan Manes and Nessa Wolfson, 97% of compliments in their corpus of American English conform to one of nine patterns. See Joan Manes and Nessa Wolfson, “The Compliment Formula,” in Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardized Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech, ed. Florian Coulmas (The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1981), 120. Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Robin Lakoff, Talking Power: The Politics of Language in Our Lives (New York: Basic Books, 1990), 34, quoted in Leech, The Pragmatics of Politeness, 21. Eustache de Refuge, Traicté de la cour (n.p., 1617), 9–10. “... une briefve expression d’amour, declaration ou demo[n]stration d’honneur, & d’obligation envers ceux lesquels nous desirons induire à confiance & asseurance qu’ils sont aymez & prisez de nous d’une merveille & reciproque affection.” See, for example, the definition of “compliment” in the Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, dédié au Roy, 2 vols. (Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1694): “Paroles civiles, obligeantes, respectueuses, que l’on dit à quelqu’un selon les diverses rencontres.” [“Civil, obliging, respectful words that one says to someone according to various encounters.”] Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, s.v. “louer.” “Honorer & relever le merite de quelque action, de quelque chose par des termes qui tesmoignent l’estime qu’on en fait.” Bernard Bray, “La louange, exigence de civilité et pratique é pistolaire au XVIIe siè cle,” Dix-septiè me siè cle 42, no. 2 (April–June 1990): 135. “... si ré pandue dans les usages qu’il n’est aucun moraliste qui n’y fasse allusion, aucun manuel de civilité qui n’en prescrive l’emploi judicieux, aucun é pistolier qui ne se conforme à ce rite.” Maurice Magendie, La politesse mondaine et les théories de l’honnêteté, en France au XVIIesiècle, de 1600 à 1660, 2 vols. (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1925), 1:185. “… l’extême complication de la civilité, l’interminable échange des formules polies.” See Norbert Elias, The Court Society, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006), esp. 86–126. For a critique of several of Elias’s arguments, see Jeroen Duindam, Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court, trans. Lorri S. Granger and Gerard T. Moran (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994). Giora Sternberg has recently enumerated and contextualized the most important ceremonies performed at Louis XIV’s court, see Giora Sternberg, Status Interaction during the Reign of Louis XIV (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). Eric Walter, “Les auteurs et le champ littéraire,” in Histoire de l’édition française, vol. 2, Le livre triomphant, 1660–1830, ed. Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier (Paris: Promodis, 1984), 388. On salons, women, and literature, see Faith Evelyn Beasley, Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France: Mastering Memory (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), Anne Duggan, Salonnières, Furies, and Fairies: The Politics of Gender and Cultural Change in Absolutist France (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005); Joan DeJean, Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).

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21 For the most recent discussion of l’honnêteté and the honnête homme, see Giovanni Dotoli, L’honnête homme: Une philosophie du pouvoir (Paris: Hermann, 2019). See also Emmanuel Bury, Littérature et politesse: L’invention de l’honnête homme (1580–1750) (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996); Jean-Pierre Dens, L’honnête homme et la critique du goût: Esthétique et société au XVIIesiècle (Lexington: French Forum, 1981); Magendie, La politesse mondaine. 22 On the growing importance of culture and urbanity in theories of nobility in early-modern France, see Ellery Schalk, From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 174–201. 23 Molière satirized the so-called précieuses in his play Les précieuses ridicules (1659). 24 The growth in books and other educational materials dedicated to the “art of conversation” in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries attests to its social importance. On the subject, see Benedetta Craveri, The Age of Conversation, trans. Teresa Waugh (New York: New York Review of Books, 2005); Peter Burke, The Art of Conversation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); Elizabeth Goldsmith, Exclusive Conversations: The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988). 25 Jean-Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde, Ré flexions sur ce qui peut plaire ou déplaire dans le commerce du monde (Paris: Arnoul Seneuze, 1688), 375–76. “Pour-moy, poursuivit Theagene, je ne trouve rien de plus incommode qu’un Auteur entê té de ses Ouvrages, parce qu’il faut trop se contreindre à ê tre complaisant. A quelque prix que ce soit ils veulent qu’on les encense, ou il faut se quereller; car si on fait trop le dé goû té sur ce qu’ils ré citent, ils vous reprochent brutalement que vous n’avez pas le goû t bon, & que vous manquez d’esprit, ou que vous n’é tes pas capable de juger des belles choses.” 26 Bellegarde, Réflexions, 435. “C’est une grande injustice … de prodiguer à des gens sans mé rite les loüanges qui ne sont dû ë s qu’aux personnes rares; ce vice ne peut ê tre attribué qu’à une flaterie basse, ou à un dé faut de jugement.” 27 Jean-Baptiste Morvan de Bellegarde, L’éducation parfaite, contenant les manières bienséantes aux jeunes gens de qualité, et des maximes, et des réflexions propres à avancer leur fortune (Amsterdam: Henri Schelte, 1713), 133–34. “Il ne donne pas en é tourdi dans les vû ë s de ces personnes, qui affectent d’ê tre plus civiles que les autres; qui n’ouvrent la bouche que pour faire des complimens, ou donner des loü anges, & qui excedent toû jours dans les uns, & dans les autres, parce qu’il sçait que les complimens affectez ou excessifs viennent toû jours ou de gens qui trompent, ou de gens trompez.” 28 Bellegarde, Réflexions, 435–36. “Ce qui me fâ che le plus … c’est que je ne crois pas que personne vüeille se corriger de ce dé faut; on s’est mis en tê te que pour ê tre à la mode, il faut se faire une habitude de flatter tout le monde; que c’est le devoir d’un honnê te homme, que sans cela on ne peut vivre parmi les gens de qualité qui se nourissent de vaines loüanges.” 29 Antoine Furetière’s definition captures the growing sense of obligation and annoyance with compliments toward the end of the century: “Civilité, ou honnesteté qu’on fait à autruy, soit en paroles, soit en actions. Les Courtisans ne sont pas chiches de compliments, payent volontiers en compliments, il est importun de faire des compliments à chaque porte pour sçavoir qui passera le premier, ce seroit une grande commodité de bannir les compliments, de vivre sans compliments.” [“Civility, or honnêteté, that one makes to another, either in words or in actions. Courtiers are not stingy with compliments, gladly

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Michael A. Bane paying in compliments, it is tiresome to make compliments at each doorway to know who will go first, it would be a great convenience to banish compliments, to live without compliments.”] Antoine Furetière, Dictionaire universel, contenant généralement tous les mots françois, tant vieux que modernes, et les termes de toutes les sciences et des arts, 3 vols. (Hague: Arnout et Reinier Leers, 1690), s.v. “compliment.” Bellegarde, Réflexions, 451. “Un honnê te homme … doit é viter é galement de tomber dans ces deux dé fauts, de loü er trop & de ne point loü er du tout.” Bellegarde, Réflexions, 430. “Il n’est rien de plus ordinaire dans le monde que l’usage des complimens; toutes sortes de gens se piquent d’en faire; mais la plus-part des choses qu’on entend sont mal-imaginé es, & souvent tres impertinentes.” Bellegarde, Réflexions, 325–26. “Les Bourgeois, les Provinceaux, les Pé dans sont encore fort-scrupuleux en civilitez, quand ils se sont embarquez à faire des compliments; ils n’en peuvent trouver la fin, ils se tourmentent beaucoup, & font suer ceux qui les é coutent.” Annick Paternoster, “La politesse positive dans le dialogue de la Renaissance italienne (XVe–XVIe siècle) ou l’art de doser les compliments,” in Politesse et idéologie. Rencontres de pragmatique et de rhétorique conversationnelles, ed. M. Wauthion and A. C. Simon (Louvain: Peeters, 2000), 303–11. Franç ois de Grenaille, La mode, ou charactè re de la religion, de la vie, de la conversation, de la solitude, des compliments, des habits, et du style du temps (Paris: Nicolas Gasse, 1642), 262. “Maintenant pour traicter plus particulierement des compliments à la mode: je dy qu’il y a certains esprits qui en font trop, & d’autres qui n’en font pas assez. Les uns sont importuns, & les autres incivils. Les uns flattent, les autres assomment.” [“Now to treat more specifically compliments in style: I say that there are certain minds who make too many of them and others who do not make enough. The former are inopportune, the latter uncivil. The first flatter, the others bore.”] Claude Jaunin, Les compliments de la langue française, œuvre très utile et nécessaire à ceux qui sont à la cour des grands, et qui font profession de hanter les compagnies (Paris: J. Bessin, 1630); Paul Burckhart, Duels de compliments franç ois et italiens, avec la manière usité e de parler aux discours ceremonieux des Italiens (Lyon: Scipion Iasserme, 1636). Antoine de Courtin, Nouveau traité de la civilité qui se pratique en France, parmi les honnestes gens (Paris: Helie Josset, 1671), 144–45. “S’il arrivoit que l’on eû t de la voix, ou que l’on sceû t joü er de quelque instrument, où mê me que l’on eû t le talent de faire des vers, il ne faut jamais le faire connoî tre par aucune marque: mais si cela estoit dé couvert & connu, & que dans la rencontre on fû t prié par une personne pour laquelle on eû t de la dé ference, il faut d’abord honnê tement s’excuser.” One must not demur for too long, however. According to Courtin, continued reluctance would suggest unseemly pride in one’s abilities. Abel Boyer, The Compleat French-Master, for Ladies and Gentlemen […], 2nd ed. (London: Richard Sare and John Nicholson, 1699), 89–90 (of Part 2). I have reproduced Boyer’s English, here is the French: “Monsieur, vous plait-il de nous chanter une petite chanson? / Madame, je le ferois de tout mon coeur si je savois chanter. / Pourquoi me dites vous que vous ne savez pas chanter? / Je ne vous dis que la Verité. / Se [sic] sai que vous chantez fort bien. / Comment le savez vous, Madame? / Votre Maitre à chanter me la dit. / Il dit cela pour son honneur. Il ne faut pas l’en croire. / Vous avez beau vous en defendre; Je suis persuadée que vous chantez fort bien, & que vous avez la Voix belle. / Pourquoi en étes vous persuadée? / Parce que tous les bons

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chanteurs aiment à se faire beaucoup prier pour chanter. / Il n’y a point de Regle sans Exception. / Vous me refusez donc le plaisir de vous entendre chanter? / Madame, je veux vous laisser dans la bonne Opinion que vous avez de ma Voix. / Vous l’augmenterez s’il vous plait de m’obliger. / La certitude que j’ai du contraire me fera garder le silence. / Vous me desobligez pour jamais si vous ne chantez. / Cette menace suffit pour m’obliger à chanter. Mais je suis fort enroüé. Je vous écorcherai les Oreilles. / Bon! Bon! toutes ces Excuses ne vous servent de rien.” It is possible, however, that Courtin would have faulted the length of the singer’s objections. For example, René Bary, La rhétorique françoise, où pour principale augmentation l’on trouve les secrets de nostre langue (Paris: Pierre Le Petit, 1665) and Méthode pour bien prononcer un discours, et pour le bien animer. Ouvrage très-utile à tous ceux qui parlent en public, et particulièrement aux predicateurs, et aux advocats (Paris: Denis Thierry, 1679). René Bary, L’esprit de court, ou les conversations galantes. Divisées en cent dialogues (Brussels: Balthazar Vivien, 1664), 23–24. “Teagene: A-t’on jamais veu une main si leger? A-t’on jamais entendu un Luth si resonant? / Beroline: Ou vous n’avez pas l’oreille delicate, ou vous avez la langue flatteuse. / Teagene: Hé que ne peut-on point dire d’une fille qui fait parler des cordes? / Beroline: L’art ne fait point de miracles, & quand il en feroit, il ne se serviroit pas de mon entremise. / Teagene: Comment appellez-vous doncques le langage de vostre Luth? n’est-ce pas l’effet d’une vertu extraordinaire? / Beroline: Je ne fais pas ce que cent autres font. / Teagene: Vous avez peu de semblables. / Beroline [sic]: L’on peut estre au dessus de mille autres, & estre au dessous de vous. / Beroline: Je n’attendois pas une autre réponse; Mais c’est diminuer l’injure, & augmenter la flatterie. / Teagene: Lors que je dis ce que je viens de dire, je suis l’Echo de la voix publique. / Beroline: Quoy se railler serieusement? / Teagene: Je pense ce que je dis. / Beroline: Si cela est, vous dites ce que vous ne devriez pas penser.” Catherine Kerbrat-Orecchioni, “From Good Manners to Facework: Politeness Variations and Constants in France, from the Classic Age to Today,” in Understanding Historical (Im)politeness: Relational Linguistic Practice over Time and across Cultures, ed. Marcel Bax and Dániel Z. Kádár (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2012), 137. Bary, L’esprit de court, unpaginated preface. “... les Provinciaux deviennent plus polis, & les Dames plus éclairées.” Abel Boyer, The Compleat French-Master, for Ladies and Gentlemen, 90 (of Part 2). “Vous chantez fort bien. Je suis ravie de vous avoir entendu chanter. / Madame, vous étes fort obligeante d’excuser avec tant de bonté le defaut de ma Voix, & mon peu de methode a chanter.” Leech, The Pragmatics of Politeness, 189. Molière, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, comédie-balet. Faite à Chambort, pour le divertissement du Roy (Paris: Claude Barbin, 1673), 10. “Monsieur Jourdain: N’est-il pas joly? / Maistre de Musique: Le plus joly du monde. / Maistre à dancer: Et vous le chantez bien. / Monsieur Jourdain: C’est sans avoir apris la Musique.” Molière, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, 4. “Il n’y a rien, à mon avis, qui nous paye mieux que cela de toutes nos fatigues; & ce sont des douceurs exquises, que des loüanges eclairées.” Molière, Le bourgeois gentilhomme, 4. “Il n’y a rien assurément qui chatoûille davantage que les aplaudissemens que vous dites; mais cet Encens

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Michael A. Bane ne fait pas vivre. Des loüanges toutes pures, ne mettent point un Homme à son aise.” Entretiens galans, 2 vols. (Paris: Jean Ribou, 1681), 2:29–30. “J’ay trouvé que le plaisir de se faire admirer, n’est pas le plus grand charme d’une femme qui a la voix belle. L’avantage de s’attirer mille petites declarations, & d’y ré pondre à propos sans que cela soit de nulle consequence, est quelque chose, qui justifie bien l’entê tement qu’on a pour la musique.” Entretiens galans, 2:32. “Un petit rhume leur est toû jours d’un grand usage. Une toux leur vient toû jours à propos, & on affecte cent petites difficultez pour en excuser mieux les defauts, & pour donner plus d’é clat à ce qui peut y estre à leur avantage.” Entretiens galans, 2:32. “... pourquoy vous rejettez sur elles un defaut qui leur est commun avec les hommes.” Entretiens galans, 2:33–34. “Nous tâ chons assez souvent de cacher un vice, sous les apparences d’une vertu. On se pare d’un pretexte de modestie pour se mettre à couvert de la vanité , qui suit les petites loü anges qu’on nous donne. Pour s’en attirer de nouvelles, on jette, avec adresse, des raisons qui peuvent leur servir de fondement. On ne s’avise point, que l’affectation se dé couvre, par le soin qu’on prend de la cacher. Faites chanter quelqu’un, é coutez-le avec attention, ne vous lassez pas, demandez luy toû jours qu’il recommence, loü ez sa voix, dites que rien n’en é gale la beauté , & cent choses pareilles. Vous voyez qu’on s’arme d’abord d’une fausse modestie. Regardez-y de pré s, vous verrez que les raisons qu’on oppose aux loü anges, servent à les continuer, plustost qu’à les interrompre. Se peut-il qu’on n’ouvre pas les yeux, & qu’on ne comprenne pas que c’est nous loü er nous-mesmes, plus que d’autres ne nous loü ent, lorsque nous n’opposons que des obstacles foibles & passagers aux perfections que nous donne la flaterie. Ré pondre qu’on a un furieux rhume, lorsqu’on loü e nô tre voix, n’est-ce pas avoü er, qu’on croit chanter d’une maniere enchanté e, lorsqu’on n’est pas enrhumé .” Entretiens galans, 2:35. “Il ne faut pas entendre ce que l’on dit, lorsqu’on seroit embarrassé d’y ré pondre. Les jeunes personnes doivent se souvenir de cette regle, pour ne l’oublier jamais, qu’à moins d’avoir un grand usage du monde, on ne ré pond jamais mieux à des loü anges, que lorsqu’on n’y ré pond point du tout. … Un petit serieux, un silence modeste, une simple reverence, disent dans la jeunesse un peu plus, ce me semble, que tous les plus beaux discours; & sur la voix comme sur toutes les belles qualitez, il faut pour s’en faire un veritable merite, ne point s’en piquer du tout, & ne pas aussi trop s’en dé fendre. Je voudrois qu’une personne, qui a la voix agreable, chantâ t sans faç on lorsqu’on l’en prie avec quelque instance, & qu’elle ne fî t pas acheter trop cher, ce qui ne luy coû te rien.” Nicolas Faret, L’honneste-homme ou, l’art de plaire à la court (Paris: Toussaincts du Bray, 1630), 200. “La Raillerie est une espece de discours un peu plus libre que l’ordinaire, & qui a quelque chose de picquant meslé parmy, d’ont l’usage est commun entre les plus galants, & n’est pas mesme aujourd’huy banny d’entre les plus intimes Amis de la Cour.” This popular conduct manual was reprinted well into the second half of the century. On raillerie in French salon culture, see Stephanie Bung, Spiele und Ziele: Französische Salonkulturen des 17. Jahrhunderts zwischen Elitendistinktion und belles lettres (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2013), 310–12; Françoise Poulet, “‘Douce raillerie’ et ‘raillerie opiniâtre’: Pour un usage honnête de l’énonciation piquante,” in L’honnêteté au Grand Siècle: Belles manières et belles lettres, ed. Marcella Leopizzi (Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2020),

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439–51; René Bary provided a brief example of raillery in his dialogue “De la raillerie”; see his L’esprit de cour, 203–5. Scudéry, Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, 4146. “[Thrasimède] m’avoit dit qu’il falloit luy faire beaucoup de civilité, et luy donner beaucoup de loüanges. Il m’advertit mesme que le vray moyen de le faire bien chanter, estoit de le bien entretenir devant qu’il chantast: car c’est la coustume, me disoit il, presques de tous les Musiciens qui sont au monde, d’aymer mieux à faire ce qu’ils ne font pas si bien que ce qu’ils font excellemment: c’est pourquoy il faut se donner la patience, de luy entendre raconter quelqu’une de ses avantures amoureuses, ou son advanture du Dauphin ….” Scudéry, Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus, 4157. “Mais quoy qu’il le fist assez bien, pour un homme de qualité, qui n’en fait pas profession: il est vray qu’ayant l’imagination toute remplie de ce merveilleux chant d’Arion, dont on parloit par tout le monde; je fus estrangement estonnée, lors que cét Amy de Thrasimede commença de chanter si mediocrement. … cependant Arpalice et moy, n’osions tesmoigner nostre estonnement: et nous faisions semblant de trouver qu’il chantoit miraculeusement bien. Je ne peus pourtant jamais m’empescher de dire tout bas à Arpalice, durant qu’il accordoit sa Lire pour chanter un autre Air, une partie de ce que j’en trouvois. Ne pensez vous pas, luy dis-je à l’oreille, qu’il faut estre Dauphin, pour trouver cette harmonie merveilleuse?” There is not space here to consider issues of gender, but men and women nevertheless use compliments differently. To cite only two recent articles on the topic, see Chihsia Tang, “The Interplay of Cultural Expectation, Gender Role, and Communicative Behavior: Evidence from Compliment-Responding Behavior,” Pragmatics and Society 11, no. 4 (2020): 546–71; Janie ReesMiller, “Compliments Revisited: Contemporary Compliments and Gender,” Journal of Pragmatics 43, no. 11 (September 2011): 2673–88. It is possible that differences marked the complimentary speech of men and women in seventeenth-century France as well, but it is difficult to prove with the current sources. For a brief history of gendered compliments in English, see Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker, “‘Methinks You Seem More Beautiful than Ever’: Compliments and Gender in the History of English,” in Speech Acts in the History of English, ed. Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2008), 195–228. Praise contributed to musical culture in ways unrelated to the amateur musicians discussed in this essay, of course. Raphaë lle Legrand, for example, has discussed the ritual giving of compliments between performers and audience at the Comédie-Italienne in the eighteenth century, see Raphaë lle Legrand, “‘Voici le réveil de nos âmes’: Le rituel des compliments à la Comédie Italienne,” Les cahiers du CIREM: Musique et rites, 44–46 (December 1999): 123–31.

Works Cited Primary Sources Académie française. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, dédié au Roy. 2 vols. Paris: Jean-Baptiste Coignard, 1694. Bary, René. L’esprit de court, ou les conversations galantes. Divisées en cent dialogues. Brussels: Balthazar Vivien, 1664.

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Bary, René. Méthode pour bien prononcer un discours, et pour le bien animer. Ouvrage très-utile à tous ceux qui parlent en public, et particulièrement aux predicateurs, et aux advocats. Paris: Denis Thierry, 1679. Bary, René. La rhétorique françoise, où pour principale augmentation l’on trouve les secrets de nostre langue. Paris: Pierre Le Petit, 1665. Bellegarde, Jean-Baptiste Morvan de. L’éducation parfaite, contenant les manières bienséantes aux jeunes gens de qualité, et des maximes, et des réflexions propres à avancer leur fortune. Amsterdam: Henri Schelte, 1713. Bellegarde, Jean-Baptiste Morvan de. Ré flexions sur ce qui peut plaire, ou déplaire dans le commerce du monde. Paris: Arnoul Seneuze, 1688. Boyer, Abel. The Compleat French-Master, for Ladies and Gentlemen [...]. 2nd ed. London: Richard Sare and John Nicholson, 1699. Burckhart, Paul. Duels de compliments franç ois et italiens, avec la manière usité e de parler aux discours ceremonieux des Italiens. Lyon: Scipion Iasserme, 1636. Courtin, Antoine de. Nouveau traité de la civilité qui se pratique en France, parmi les honnestes gens. Paris: Helie Josset, 1671. 1681 Entretiens galans. 2 vols. Paris: Jean Ribou, 1681. Faret, Nicolas. L’honneste-homme ou, l’art de plaire à la court. Paris: Toussaincts du Bray, 1630. Furetière, Antoine. Dictionaire universel, contenant généralement tous les mots françois, tant vieux que modernes, et les termes de toutes les sciences et des arts. 3 vols. The Hague: Arnout et Reinier Leers, 1690. Grenaille, Franç ois de. La mode, ou charactè re de la religion, de la vie, de la conversation, de la solitude, des compliments, des habits, et du style du temps. Paris: Nicolas Gasse, 1642. Jaunin, Claude. Les compliments de la langue française, œuvre très utile et nécessaire à ceux qui sont à la cour des grands, et qui font profession de hanter les compagnies. Paris: Jean Bessin, 1630. Molière. Le bourgeois gentilhomme, comédie-balet. Faite à Chambort, pour le divertissement du Roy. Paris: Claude Barbin, 1673. Refuge, Eustache de. Traicté de la cour. N.p.: n.p., 1617. Scudéry, Madeleine de. Artamène ou le Grand Cyrus. 10 vols. Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1656. Edited and transcribed by Claude Bourqui and Alexandre Gefen at https://artflsrv03.uchicago.edu/philologic4/cyrus/

Secondary Sources Ausoni, Alberto. “À la cour et à la ville: art de plaire, musique et mode.” In Regards sur la musique au temps de Louis XIV, edited by Jean Duron, 1–23. Wavre: Mardaga, 2007. Bane, Michael A. “Honnêtes gens, Amateur Musicianship, and the ‘Easy Air’ in France: The Case of Francesco Corbetta’s Royal Guitars.” Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music, 20, no. 1 (2014; published 2017): https://sscmjscm.org/jscm-issues/volume-20-no-1/honnetes-gens-amateur-musicianshipand-the-easy-air-in-france-the-case-of-francesco-corbettas-royal-guitars/ Beasley, Faith Evelyn. Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France: Mastering Memory. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006.

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Bray, Bernard. “La louange, exigence de civilité et pratique é pistolaire au XVIIe siè cle.” Dix-septiè me siè cle 42, no. 2 (April–June 1990): 135–153. Brenet, Michel [Marie Bobiller]. Les concerts en France sous l’ancien ré gime. 1900. Reprint, New York: Da Capo Press, 1970. Brown, Penelope, and Stephen C. Levinson. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Bung, Stephanie. Spiele und Ziele: Französische Salonkulturen des 17. Jahrhunderts zwischen Elitendistinktion und belles lettres. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2013. Burke, Peter. The Art of Conversation. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993. Burke, Peter. The Fortunes of the Courtier: The European Reception of Castiglione’s Cortegiano. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995. Bury, Emmanuel. Littérature et politesse: L’invention de l’honnête homme (1580–1750). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996. Craveri, Benedetta. The Age of Conversation. Translated by Teresa Waugh. New York: New York Review of Books, 2005. DeJean, Joan. Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Dens, Jean-Pierre. L’honnête homme et la critique du goût: Esthétique et société au XVIIesiècle. Lexington: French Forum, 1981. Dotoli, Giovanni. L’honnête homme: Une philosophie du pouvoir. Paris: Hermann, 2019. Duggan, Anne. Salonnières, Furies, and Fairies: The Politics of Gender and Cultural Change in Absolutist France. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2005. Duindam, Jeroen. Myths of Power: Norbert Elias and the Early Modern European Court. Translated by Lorri S. Granger and Gerard T. Moran. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 1994. Elias, Norbert. The Court Society. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2006. Fader, Don. “The Honnête homme as Music Critic: Taste, Rhetoric, and Politesse in the 17th-Century French Reception of Italian Music.” Journal of Musicology 20, no. 1 (Winter 2003): 3–44. Favier, Thierry, and Manuel Couvreur, eds. Le plaisir musical en France au XVIIesiècle. Sprimont: Mardaga, 2006. Goldsmith, Elizabeth. Exclusive Conversations: The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. Gordon-Seifert, Catherine. Music and the Language of Love: SeventeenthCentury French Airs. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. Goulet, Anne-Madeleine, ed. Les foyers artistiques à la fin du règne de Louis XIV, 1682–1715: Musique et spectacles. Turnhout: Brepols, 2019. Goulet, Anne-Madeleine. Poésie, musique et sociabilité au XVIIesiècle: Les Livres d’airs de différents auteurs publiés chez Ballard de 1658 à 1694. Paris: Champion, 2004. Haar, James. “The Courtier as Musician: Castiglione’s View of the Science and Art of Music.” In Castiglione: The Ideal and the Real in Renaissance Culture,

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edited by Robert W. Hanning and David Rosand, 166–189. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Holmes, Janet. “Paying Compliments: A Sex-Preferential Politeness Strategy.” Journal of Pragmatics 12, no. 4 (August 1988): 445–465. Ishihara, Noriko. “Compliments and Responses to Compliments: Learning Communication in Context.” In Speech Act Performance: Theoretical, Empirical and Methodological Issues, edited by Alicia Martínez-Flor and Esther Usó-Juan, 179–198. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2010. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. “From Good Manners to Facework: Politeness Variations and Constants in France, from the Classic Age to Today.” In Understanding Historical (Im)politeness: Relational Linguistic Practice over Time and across Cultures, edited by Marcel Bax and Dániel Z. Kádár, 131–153. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2012. Lakoff, Robin. Talking Power: The Politics of Language in Our Lives. New York: Basic Books, 1990. Leech, Geoffrey. The Pragmatics of Politeness. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. Legrand, Raphaë lle. “‘Voici le réveil de nos âmes’: Le rituel des compliments à la Comédie Italienne.” Les cahiers du CIREM: Musique et rites, 44–46 (December 1999): 123–131. Lorenzetti, Stefano. Musica e identità nobiliare nell’Italia del Rinascimento: Educazione, mentalità, immaginario. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2003. Lorenzetti, Stefano. “La parte della musica nella costruzione del gentiluomo: Tendenze e programmi della pedagogia seicentesca tra Francia e Italia.” Studi Musicali 25, no. 1–2 (1996): 17–40. Magendie, Maurice. La politesse mondaine et les théories de l’honnêteté, en France au XVIIesiècle, de 1600 à 1660. 2 vols. Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1925. Manes, Joan, and Nessa Wolfson. “The Compliment Formula.” In Conversational Routine: Explorations in Standardized Communication Situations and Prepatterned Speech, edited by Florian Coulmas, 115–132. The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1981. Mirimonde, Albert P. de. L’iconographie musicale sous les rois Bourbons: La musique dans les arts plastiques (XVIIe–XVIIIe siè cles). 2 vols. Paris: É ditions A. et J. Picard, 1975. Motley, Mark Edward. Becoming a French Aristocrat: The Education of the Court Nobility, 1580–1715. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Paternoster, Annick. “La politesse positive dans le dialogue de la Renaissance italienne (XVe–XVIe siècle) ou l’art de doser les compliments.” In Politesse et idéologie. Rencontres de pragmatique et de rhétorique conversationnelles, edited byM. Wauthion and A. C. Simon, 303–311. Louvain: Peeters, 2000. Poulet, Françoise. “‘Douce raillerie’ et ‘raillerie opiniâtre’: Pour un usage honnête de l’énonciation piquante.” In L’honnêteté au Grand Siècle: Belles manières et belles lettres, edited by Marcella Leopizzi, 439–451. Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 2020. Rees-Miller, Janie. “Compliments Revisited: Contemporary Compliments and Gender.” Journal of Pragmatics 43, no. 11 (September 2011): 2673–2688.

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Schalk, Ellery. From Valor to Pedigree: Ideas of Nobility in France in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Sternberg, Giora. Status Interaction during the Reign of Louis XIV. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Strubel-Burgdorf, Susanne. Compliments and Positive Assessments: Sequential Organization in Multi-party Conversations. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2018. Taavitsainen, Irma, and Andreas H. Jucker. “‘Methinks You Seem More Beautiful than Ever’: Compliments and Gender in the History of English.” In Speech Acts in the History of English, edited by Andreas H. Jucker and Irma Taavitsainen, 195–228. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2008. Tang, Chihsia. “The Interplay of Cultural Expectation, Gender Role, and Communicative Behavior: Evidence from Compliment-Responding Behavior.” Pragmatics and Society 11, no. 4 (2020): 546–571. Walter, Eric. “Les auteurs et le champ littéraire.” In Histoire de l’édition française. Vol. 2, Le livre triomphant, 1660–1830, edited by Henri-Jean Martin and Roger Chartier, 383–399. Paris: Promodis, 1984.

3

Elizabethan Audience Gaze at History Plays: Liminal Time and Space in Shakespeare’s Richard II1 Murat Öğütcü

Late Elizabethan theatre was a place that blurred several spaces within the specter of thestage. This was seen especially in the history play, which had liminal elements to it on several levels. Historical drama combined Aristotle’s binary opposites by amalgamating the particularity of history and the universality of literature, which led to the formation of a space that blurred the distinctions between fact and fiction for the Elizabethan playgoers.2 In this space, the plays and audience perception affected each other reciprocally in the following manner. The ahistorical reconstruction of fifteenth-century history through written chronicles3 and oral family histories prone to memory and loss4 led to a liminal space of formal and informal histories. The playgoers consisted of all walks of life and these in-between forms of written and oral histories were present in their identification with stage characters that had some link with their own identity either in blood or deed. This, however, resulted in the overlapping of several spaces in which identity performances were simulated within the reality of history plays. Consequently, the Elizabethan stage could be described as a “heterotopia” by “[juxtaposing] in a single real place,” that is the theatrical stage, “several spaces, several sites that [were] in themselves incompatible.”5 The transformation of the stage onto the page through publications of quartos further contributed to that liminal state by enabling a time and space surpassing opportunity for members of the reading/hearing audience to re-evaluate the play and himself/herself. All of these resulted in the formation of “heterochronies”6 which in the manner of a palimpsest depicted the past and the present on this liminal space at the same time.7 In Shakespeare’s Richard II (performed 1594–5, published 1597, 1598),8 for instance, the court, the private residence, the tournament place, the garden, the streets, and the prison were depicted as public and everyday life spaces that had on- and off-stage relevance for the Elizabethan audience.9 The critical tradition of Richard II is loaded with references that refer to political theory or merely allude to the play’s relation to the Essex coup, without a holistic analysis of the play and its effects on the playgoers apart from that relation.10 Despite the fact that DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-3

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the play’s relation with Essex cannot be denied, it is the variety of lifelike spaces that actually make the play far more effective. Although Richard II further seemed for critics “unique among Shakespeare’s earlier history plays in having no battle scene,”11 the play was actually distinctive for the variety of spaces it depicted. Contemporary audiences and readers must have felt that they were wandering from one space to another, which spaces they could associate with their own real-life experiences. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to illustrate Elizabethan audience gaze as a type of liminal space that affected signification in performances and in print forms of history plays with examples, especially, taken from Shakespeare’s Richard II.

3.1 Of Courts Although, on the surface, the court seemed to be a place exclusively associated with the higher classes of society, it was a liminal space in which the patronage system functioned as the regulating force of a topdown and bottom-up hierarchy. Government was centralized within the court that usually resided either at the relatively far Hampton Court, Richmond, and Windsor Castle, especially in times of ceremonies, or at the more approachable Whitehall Palace.12 Just like the many court structures have in common, Whitehall Palace, for instance, was divided into public areas of the courtyard, rooms, halls, chanceries and chambers that became gradually restricted areas if one further moved into the palace leading finally into the Privy chambers of the monarch.13 Although court attendance could be restricted depending on epidemic or political conditions,14 the court at Whitehall Palace was an important space at the center of London where the higher and lower societies of both London and other regions could interact. The descending hierarchy of the court, based on the support of patrons, enabled the seemingly dependent client with bottom-up agency for ascension to favor,15 especially through the aid of go-betweens who gradually helped the client approach the underofficers, members of the Privy Council and maybe the monarch either personally, through report, petitions or suits via the channels of the Court of Requests.16 Thus, the court was a liminal space where members from several social strata created an interdependence between patron and client through mediators within a top-down and bottom-up hierarchy. The liminal space of the court, however, created a friction between several ascending and descending interests which had to be governed. Especially with the appearance of failures of crops, high inflation and unrests in the 1590s,17 the control of such interests became more and more problematic. A polarized system of factionalism between the meritocratic patrons of the Cecils and the aristocratic followers of the Earl of Essex appeared. The monopolization of patronage under the

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Cecils,18 and the fact that the Earl of Essex saw himself as the natural candidate for such a role by being the heir to several Protestant aristocrats, was the basis for such conflict.19 Friction regarding office appointments and whether to follow a passive or active foreign policy led to the waste of financial resources by both meritocrats accused of domestic corruption and bribery, and the aristocrats accused of wasting money on unprofitable foreign campaigns.20 Consequently, the court in the last decade of the Elizabethan reign turned into a liminal space that contained not only several layers of social classes through top-down or bottom-up distribution of favors but also several conflicting interest groups. Similar to the attendees of the court, playgoers in Shakespeare’s England formed a heterogeneous group that consisted of members from low, middle, upper-middle, and upper estates as they viewed or read the performance of Shakespeare’s Richard II, which depicted several courts including Windsor castle (RII 1.1., 1.4., 5.3., 5.4., 5.6.).21 Reminiscent of actual courts, the material space of the histrionic court in the beginning of the play is reflective of both the ascending and descending mechanisms within a court where Richard II hears the pleas of his subjects. Yet, this seemingly ordered mechanism is paralleled by the mirror image of the court in Richard II Act 1 scene 4 in which the monarch who seemingly follows law and decorum in the public turns out to be a misbehaving king who listens to the ill-counsel of his meritocratic minions. After the departure of members of the nobility that are not as close to him as his meritocratic favorites, within the space of privacy Richard II muses on the popularity of his banished nephew whom people like almost more than him (RII 1.4.20-36). Richard thinks about how unlawfully he has contrived his arbitrary taxation of his “royal realm,” especially through taxing the landed nobility with “blank charters,” and has made his subjects pay “large sums of gold” to finance his war against Irish rebels (RII 1.4.45-52). Richard II’s misbalance of favors and preoccupation with sycophancy is criticized by his aristocrats who feel themselves excluded from the privilege of counseling him (RII 2.1.1-214) and deprived of birth-rights like fair succession to familial lands and titles (RII 2.1.163-214, 2.1.224-300), which disrupt the consensus of reciprocal give and take within the patronage system within and outside the histrionic space of the court. When the play was performed, the Elizabethan aristocrats who were socio-economically excluded from favor slowly “convinced themselves that Elizabeth fell, similar to the histrionic Richard II, into [the] category” of a tyrant as they drew parallels from Tacitus’ works on how to survive “tyrannical rule.”22 In the play, Richard II “ignore[s]” law and “offend [s]” his clients,23 and his arbitrary taxation to finance himself makes the legitimacy of his own rule questionable. Likewise, Elizabeth I toward the end of her reign offended her own clients when she started, even though

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changing her verdicts, to take back the financial resources of the Earl of Essex and his followers after 1598 which reached its peak with the removal of Essex’s monopoly on sweet wines at the end of 1600.24 However, the hoped-for change of the real monarch would probably not solve the problem of the existence of bottom-up pressures in the court. The patronage system created such a liminal space where topdown and bottom-up forces tried to exert their own power while maintaining the power of the other. As could be seen in the play, Richard II is substituted by Henry IV. Inter-factional problems like the quarrel between Aumerle and Bagot (RII 4.1.1-107) as well as clients who try to make their ideas the policies of the monarchy (RII 5.4.1-11, 5.6.30-52), however, continue to cause problems. The Elizabethan court, the chronicle material,25 and the depiction of the court on the Elizabethan stage created spaces that overlapped and formed a “heterotopia” where audience members from patron to client could equate themselves with the wronged and their foes with the favored. We are not sure whether the play used by the Essex circle in 1601 to incite the Londoners or to encourage themselves was Shakespeare’s Richard II.26 Yet, it can be assumed that the Elizabethan stage formed an in-between space that could encode and decode an intercommunication between the historical, the histrionic, and the contemporary. This reinforced the space of the court depicted on the stage as a liminal space where as a public place it attracted many private interests that conflicted with each other.

3.2 Of Private Residences Compared with the court as a public place, the private residence was a space associated with relative privacy. The private residences of the wealthy and privileged contained large numbers of rooms and provided private space. This was correlated to an “increasing desire for privacy” in the Elizabethan Period that manifested itself in rebuildings or new buildings that tried to incorporate private spaces.27 For instance, Stratton House and Stone House, which were located near the Theatre playhouse around the Swan Tavern in modern day 21 Sclater Street,28 were among the manor houses of the wealthy which the playgoers of the Theatre could see before they watched the play. The size of the multistory Tudor manors and their adjacent house-gardens may have inspired awe and curiosity about the private life inside their walls. Yet, such spaces were only relatively private because of the blurred lines between private and public life and architectural limitations. Talking or “reading aloud” could be “overheard by other members of the household”29 through which “conversation[s]” in “private chambers” “might be interrupted” by “eavesdroppers.”30 Despite such “danger[s],”31 these spaces provided a space that could be concealed from the public wherein issues that could not be voiced in

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public could be spoken out. For instance, when in Richard II’s court Gaunt hears his son’s accusations regarding Woodstock’s murder (RII 1.1.98-108), he does not affirm or contradict his son but tries to dissuade him upon Richard II’s order to repeal his challenge against Mowbray (RII 1.1.158-61). This behavior is in accordance with the Ricardian formal history regarding Woodstock’s murder in covering up its details so that Richard II is not involved in it. As Gaunt states to the Duchess of Gloucester, the widow of Woodstock, he is more eager to act “against the butchers of his life” (RII 1.2.3). Yet, the same Gaunt has to withhold himself because he “cannot correct” it since Richard II is the legitimate king and his involvement in the affair can be acted against only by “God” and “the will of heaven” (RII 1.2.48, 1.2.37-43). The sacred body of the monarch and the problematics regarding legitimate resistance toward monarchs who succeeded to the throne legitimately32 prevents Gaunt from voicing his criticism toward Richard II in public. Similarly, apart from his fatherly wishes for his well-being before the trial by combat begins (RII 1.3.78-83), Gaunt cannot voice his belief in the truth of Mowbray’s and eventually Richard II’s involvement in the murder of Woodstock. This is why Gaunt cannot act against Bolingbroke’s banishment declared by Richard II in public (RII 1.3.206248). Likewise, Gaunt cannot express his anger toward Richard II in his absence while being still in public but directs his son to accept the monarch’s order with patience (RII 1.3.253-309). The private space in Gaunt’s London residence or Ely House,33 however, enables him to voice and release such criticism.34 There, York and Gaunt are able to express their ideas freely regarding Richard II’s ill management of the country (RII 2.1.17-30, 2.1.31-68). Whether it is because they are his last words or because of his comfort to be within his own private space, Gaunt directly criticizes Richard II’s fondness of “flatterers,” unlawful measures in seizing the wealth of the nobility and leaving the country to the rule of his meritocratic civil servants which renders him the “Landlord of England” (RII 2.1.93-115). Richard II tries to cut his words short but Gaunt concludes his criticism by openly accusing him of Woodstock’s murder, after which he dies (RII 2.1.115138). Richard II’s temporal intervention is reflective of his public intervention with his train to Gaunt’s private space whose realities he cannot bear. Actually, the fact that Early Modern formal history tried to circumscribe personal family histories, in spite of their hold on popular memory,35 made the scene between Richard II and Gaunt multifaceted on at least two levels. On the one hand, the histrionic depiction of this on the Elizabethan stage enabled the presentation of privacy and informal family histories in the public, which created a liminality similar to the one experienced by Richard II who faced the voicing of such informal history. On the other hand, the reality that what was Gaunt’s informal

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and private family history developed into formal Tudor and Elizabethan history reflected in Holinshed36 and the didactic literature of Myrrovr37 and Daniel’s Ciuile Warres38 pointed out that private spaces, along with the ideas created within them, were liminal spaces that could transform into public ones. Beside the “whispers” created “among theatergoers” about the omission of sensitive material,39 the scene in Richard II reflected how private thoughts in the public could be materialized on the allowed space of the theatre. Therefore, the blurred line between the public and the private in Elizabethan private lodgings enabled a marginal specter relatively secure from the dictums of the center, which specter, however, could replace the center in signification, which was also reflected on the Elizabethan stage/page.

3.3 Of Tiltyards Beside the court and the private residence, the Elizabethan tiltyard was yet another important place in regards to the in-betweenness of audience perception of imagined and real places. The Elizabethan tiltyard, which had a permanent timber barrier dividing the narrow rectangular space, was located at Whitehall Palace parallel to the courtyard and before the Court Gate, which made it viewable and hearable also from the outside of the palace.40 It was a formal space that both continued and refashioned earlier tilts without reasserting them as spaces to conduct trials by combat. In many ways, this made the Elizabethan tiltyard a liminal space of tradition and invention. Elizabethan tournament grounds reemerged in line with the appearance of the “neo-chivalric cult of honor,”41 and emphasis on values regarding it,42 used by members of the aspiring aristocratic nobility to fashion themselves as the champions of the Queen venerating her in what was called the “Elizabeth cult.”43 The Accession Day Tilts were held each year on November 17th, but as the 1593 tilt was held at Windsor Castle because of the plague, playgoers of Richard II must have seen the 1594 and less likely the 1595 tilts, which prominently saw Essex among the champions,44 before they attended the play. Yet, different from the histrionic one, the real-life spectacular canalization of tensions of the landed nobility into non-violent shows formed an alternative to violent duels to assert one’s position and solve matters.45 Duels, on the other hand, created alternative and informal spaces substituting formal trials by combat. The concept of “[h]onor” legitimized the use of “violence” in forms of personal duels,46 yet both top-down prohibition of duels by the monarch and the bottom-up autocontrol of courtiers to avoid fines relatively limited the scale of such outbursts of violence in the Elizabethan Period.47 This limitation could not, however, prevent violent measures being used to resolve disputes among the nobility. For instance, when the quarto edition of Richard

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IIwas published, on December 21, 1597 there was a report that the Earl of Essex challenged the Earl of Nottingham about precedence in the Privy Council, and desires right to be done him, either by a commission to examine it, or by combat, either against the Earl of Nottingham himself or any of his sons or name that shall defend it; or that it will please her Majesty to see the wrongs done to him, and so will suffer himself to be commanded by her. There is such ado about it as troubles the place and all proceedings. Sir Walter Ralegh is employed to end this quarrel and make atonement between them. But the resolution of Lord Essex is not to yield but with altering the patent, which cannot be done by persuasion to bring the Earl of Nottingham to it.48 Hence, through their transformed means, trials by combat in the form of duels continued to be part of the Elizabethan consciousness, which was reinforced by chronicle material. The trial by combat between Henry of Hereford (Bolingbroke) and Mowbray had been depicted in detail in Hall and Holinshed where the trial could be visualized by the reader through descriptions ranging from the clothing to bodily gestures and verbal exclamations in the ceremonious trial.49 It is not surprising, however, that the preparation and the space of the tilt were described by chroniclers as the erection of “a ſumptuous ſcaffold or theater”50 and “ſumpteous theatre,”51 which theatricality was also depicted on the Elizabethan stage. After Richard II fails to dissuade Bolingbroke and Mowbray from “letting blood” (RII 1.1.153), he allows their request for trial by combat against accusations of “high treason” related with fraud and the murder of Woodstock (RII 1.1.87108). Both parties link trial by combat to “knightly” conduct, temporal and heavenly justice (RII 1.1.30-83, 1.1.196-205, 1.3.11-41). Yet, the intervention of Richard II (RII 1.3.118) creates several problems, which are not just related with the boundaries, use and misuse of Richard II’s “royal prerogative” or willful omission of formal “chivalric” “ceremony.”52 Trial by combat was seen as God’s judgment on earth53 and as a form of capital punishment used for the “purification”54 of society in the form of a “spectacle” that could instigate a “sacrificial catharsis” in society to purge the suspension of order.55 Hence, the tiltyard was a space for such a ritualistic cleansing of society. Richard II’s prevention of such a cleansing, however, renders the tiltyard a place for a non-violent show deprived of its functions for social purification. Yet, the very reality of the Elizabethan tiltyard as such a non-violent space created an ironic mental liminal space in the Elizabethan audience to judge and scrutinize the function of the tiltyard as a space for such purification, because they had been deprived of the theatrical catharsis regarding the histrionic trial by combat cut in the

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middle of the action. The much later parallel scene between Bagot and Aumerle, however, has a similar cut. While the scene is about to escalate into a grand-scale inter-factional quarrel through the multiple exchange of gages (RII 4.1.1-107), Bolingbroke, the now Henry IV, rejects the creation of a space for trial by combat and rather postpones the action to a non-violent ground. Henry IV orders that in a future time the problem will be dealt through “trial by jury” according to “common law.”57 Through this deferment, the transformation and the division of the traditional space of the tiltyard for the formal re-instigation of justice into the formal but non-violent tilt shows and the informal but violent duels in the Elizabethan Period was reflected. Nonetheless, as the later plot to murder Henry IV show (RII 5.2.95-9), the Elizabethan audience could observe that the transformation of a space of violence did not prevent the outcome of violence either between fictive pro- or anti-Ricardian interest groups as in Shakespeare’s play or between the Cecillian and Essexian factions whose frictions did not remain on saber-rattling but burst out in “quarrel” and “combat” in duels58 and much later to the organized but poorly executed coup de etat by Essex,59 similar to the one detected and later confessed one by Aumerle in Richard II (5.2.72, 5.3.25-145). Hence, the tiltyard found in chronicles, depicted on the stage and observed in the Elizabethan Period fashioned and re-fashioned the ideas of the space of instigating formal or informal justice through ritualized violence and the maintenance of controllable order in the Elizabethan Period.

3.4 Of Gardens Although the Elizabethan garden had no pseudo-judiciary function like the Elizabethan tiltyard, it was yet another important ever-present space regarding controllable order. The Elizabethan garden was a decorative and functional space within the limits of the Elizabethan household that also formed as a threshold between the public space of the streets and the private space of the home. Apart from the “creative” and “imitative spirit” of gardens that followed and appropriated Classical models in cultivating “plants” and designing architecture,60 the Elizabethan garden combined “profit,” “use” and “the practical” with “pleasure,” “decoration” and “the fanciful.”61 Gardeners who followed the works of Hill’s Arte of Gardening (1568, reprinted in 1572, 1586, 1593, 1608)62 or Gerard’s Herball (1597),63 which led to the production of several books on gardening like Sir Hugh Plat’s Floraes Paradise (1608),64 Markham’s books on gardens like the English Husbandman (1613)65 and Lawson’s A Nevv Orchard and Garden (1618),66 would “appropriate”67 these works and shape nature. As the contemporary William Harrison maintained they would “do in manner what they list with nature, and moderate her course in things as if they were her

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superiors.”68 Thereby, Elizabethan gardens were “[l]ike the gardens described in Sidney’s Arcadia, [which] were places ‘not fairer in natural ornaments than artificial inventions.’”69 Either following the patterns much later defined by Olivier de Serres who in his Theatre d’Agricvltvre (1600)70 divided the garden into the “the kitchen garden, the nosegay garden, the medicinal garden and the fruit garden” or “Markham” who divided it into the “household garden” and the “garden for flowers and sweet smells,”71 the Elizabethan garden was functional and gave delight to its owner. Taking into consideration that most of the houses in the Elizabethan Period, including the ones at Stone House and Stratton House, had such functional gardens and that Shoreditch had several great gardens like Spitalfields that belonged to the nearby St Mary Hospital, the Prioress’ and Ladies’ Gardens of St Leonard Church neighboring the playhouse, or that the Theatre itself was built upon a garden,72 it can be argued that the average playgoer was surrounded with real gardens which playgoers could use to make sense of the histrionic and imaginary gardens of Richard II. In the play, Gaunt in his deathbed metaphorically likens England to the ideal garden of “Eden” and imagines it in a postlapsarian condition turned into a “tenement or pelting farm” because of the mismanagement of Richard II as its overseer (RII 2.1.42, 2.1.60). Thereby, Richard II has debased England’s “symbolic” value by using the material space of England only in “practical” way “for his own convenience.”73 This discursive likening is materialized in the famous scene of the pleasure garden of the Duke of York, probably the one at Langley74 that is used by its gardener as an analogy for the decay of the country. Although Sidney in his Defence pointed out the absurdity regarding reality and theatre convention in depicting gardens with “three ladies walke to gather flowers” to make us “beleeue the ſtage to be a Garden”75 – whereby he, however, confirmed the liminal space of the theatrical stage to incorporate off-stage reality – the garden scene had been deemed as a creative invention upon the reflection of a tradition of analogical thinking. For instance, Holinshed used the imagery of the fauna at odds as a prophetic proof to reinforce the deposition of the rotten reign of Richard II and the coming of the new, green, reign of Henry IV. The Holinshed chronicle stated that “[i]n this yeare in a manner throughout all the realme of England, old baie trees withered, and afterwards, contrarie to all mens thinking, grew greene againe, a ſtrange ſight, and ſuppoſed to import ſome unknowne euent.”76 This and other hints might have been used to elaborate on the havoc created in the realm of Richard II. However, taking for granted the corruption of the Elizabethan civil service, which was in the hands of the meritocratic Cecils,77 the garden imagery could incorporate several layers of off-stage significance, as well.

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The imagery is used to depict the desire to “[c]ut off the heads of too fast-growing sprays” (RII 3.4.34), that is, socially mobile people, and “root away / The noisome weeds, which without profit suck / The soil’s fertility from wholesome flowers” (RII 3.4.37-9), like the corrupt civil servants who prevent the landed nobility from their endeavors.78 As the servant of the gardener shows, Richard II’s realm “[i]s full of weeds, her fairest flowers choked up […] and her wholesome herbs / Swarming with caterpillars” (RII 3.4.44-7), meaning, meritocratic favorites who have encouraged the monarch to tax and confiscate the wealth of the landed nobility in the play. Pastoral ease rather than active georgics have led to the indirect cultivation of unprofitable weeds, just like in the case of the meritocrats who do not deserve but receive favoritism that would be more fit for profitable subjects. As the Gardener states, Had he done so to great and growing men, They might have lived to bear and he to taste Their fruits of duty. Superfluous branches We lop away that bearing boughs may live. Had he done so, himself had borne the crown, Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down. (RII 3.4.61-6) According to Nichols, Elizabethan “gardens were always connected as closely as possible with the house, to form a prolongation of the living rooms” to enable “intercommunication” between the living quarters and the garden.79 The fauna imagery in the play was a reflection of such “intercommunication” the audience members might create, despite Sir Philip Sidney’s skepticism about reality on the Elizabethan stage. The Elizabethan garden was a symbol of profit and pleasure with its medicinal plants and flowers cultivated by a gardener who would arrange it just like a patron arranged his/her clients for profit and pleasure. Thereby, the garden was a microcosm where impulses of nature’s conflicting elements were ordered into a systematic architectural frame for the profit and pleasure of its owner. The Elizabethan playgoers who might be owners or workers of such gardens might identify themselves first with the gardener and his servant, then with Richard II and think upon how Elizabeth I managed her garden. The liminality of the Elizabethan stage which led the flow of such signifiers beyond the boundaries of time and space enabled the audience to experience formal history and personal history simultaneously.

3.5 Of Power Although not literally a space, the space of power transference was yet another important arena not only for Richard II but also in the consciousness of the Elizabethans. In the absence of mechanisms for

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removing a misbehaving monarch that were not in conflict with preserving legitimacy during a transfer of power, examples taken from history and from scripture attempted to fill the void but could not provide a definitive answer.80 This was also reflected in chronicle material from which Richard II took its source. In Holinshed, the deposition of Richard II and the ascension of Henry IV were shown as God’s plan, devised according to God's “pleaſure.”81 Yet, in the same chronicle, Richard II’s deposition was shown as an act that made him “a prince” who was “the moſt unthankfullie uſed of his ſubiects,” because Henry IV’s usurpation was not justified and “ſcourged afterwards” through rebellions in his and later reigns.82 Just like Bullough maintained “the king [had] to be shown as bringing about his own downfall; yet his forced abdication and death [was] not be justified.”83 High taxation and one-sided distribution of favors could be seen as the elements that brought Richard II’s descent, yet such misbehavior was not morally or politically sufficient for Henry IV’s ascent. In the scene in which Richard II peers toward Bolingbroke from the walls, Shakespeare attempts to visualize the problematics of descending from and ascending to spaces of power. The playgoers of Richard II could have substituted their lived experiences of the high towers of the nearby St. Leonard Church and Bishopsgate or the walls of the Tower of London84 for the relatively short distance created in the “upper rooms”85 of the playhouse. When Richard II gives way by using diplomacy through Northumberland and regrets his decision (RII 3.3.127130), he fantasizes a space of easy religiously oriented life: What must the king do now? Must he submit? The King shall do it. Must he be deposed? The King shall be contented. Must he lose The name of King? I’God’s name, let it go. I’ll give my jewels for a set of beads, My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, […] And my large kingdom for a little grave, A little, little grave, an obscure grave; Or I’ll be buried in the King’s highway, Some way of common trade, where subjects’ feet May hourly trample on their sovereign’s head; For on my heart they tread now whilst I live, And buried once, why not upon my head? (RII 3.3.143-59) The stream of consciousness method turns from self-delusion to self-pity, whereby his daydreaming about the relief from the responsibilities of being a king is the very reason of his dismay. This sense of disquiet is aggravated when Bolingbroke wants him to descend, both literally from

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the space of the castle walls and metaphorically from the space of power, which contrasts the normal top-down relationship within the patronage system. The reversal of the structure of the space of power is elaborated further in Richard II’s equation of his downfall with that of Phaeton: NORTHUMBERLAND. My lord, in the base court he doth attend To speak with you. May it please you to come down. KING RICHARD [II]. Down, down I come; like glistering Phaëthon, Wanting the manage of unruly jades. In the base court? Base court where kings grow base To come at traitors’ calls and do them grace. In the base court? Come down? Down, court! down, king! For night-owls shriek where mounting larks should sing. [Exeunt King Richard and his Followers from above.] [Northumberland returns to Bolingbroke.] BOLINGBROKE. What says his majesty? NORTHUMBERLAND. Sorrow and grief of heart Makes him speak fondly, like a frantic man [Flourish. Enter below KING RICHARD and his Followers.] Yet he is come. (RII 3.3.171-85) A similar case could be observed in the deposition scene. The scene was omitted from quartos because of the sensitive consideration of state censorship under Tilney especially about the potential of written material.86 When the former and succeeding monarch meet on the same level where Richard II hands the crown to Bolingbroke leaving both of them uncrowned (RII 4.1.108-320),87 the scene shows that the vertical society has given way to a horizontal one because of Richard II’s passivity regarding political problems. Richard II’s passive and escapist handling of socio-political crises and consideration that death might solve his problems, may not be closely identified with Elizabeth I’s policies as she definitely did not consider her own death as a manner to handle problems. Yet, she remained, almost similarly, a passive observer which could be seen in her words on the 4th August 1601 about the use of plays about Richard II to provoke the citizens of London to rise against her. Elizabeth I did or could not prevent these performances which were played “forty times in open streets and houses” and rather exclaimed “‘I am Richard the Second, know ye not that?’”88 Through this she indirectly admitted that people likened her failings to those of the historic and histrionic Richard II, further problematizing the space of power transference in the Elizabethan Period that could be seen in the performed but not published deposition scene in Richard II.

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3.6 Of Streets Although Elizabeth I negatively referred to “open streets,” in regards to the production of plays about Richard II, the streets in the Elizabethan Period were perceived in dualistic terms. They were both apparently negative and potentially positive spaces. For example, in contrast to the many regulations against it, streets were used to dispose rubbish: There were strict city ordinances against fouling the streets, but—as with many Elizabethan laws—they were not always effective. Town officials called scavagers were responsible for clearing the streets of refuse once or twice a week—probably hiring laborers to do the actual collection. Both street and cesspit waste carted to dumping areas, called laystalls, outside the town.89 The Theatre which was located at Shoreditch, whose name according to Stow was a bastardization of “Sewers Ditche,”90 had waterways which made it a boggy area.91 Playgoers who had to move from Bishopsgate Street toward Shoreditch Street in order to reach the Theatre had to face/ smell the street, as they had to in almost all streets of London, as a space for waste disposal. Apart from literal waste, metaphorical waste in form of the ““traffic” of “vagabonds,” “rouges,” “loose women,” and beggars and the presence of informal entertainment as “ballads,” “singing” and “swordplay”92 rendered the Elizabethan streets in general, and those around the infamous areas of the Theatre in Shoreditch in particular,93 loud and uncontrollable enclaves of the carnivalesque in the eyes of those in power. Disorder created by the pseudo-liberty of the streets was further seen in dissidents who used the streets to propagate their ideas. In 1591, the religious dissident Hacket and his men used the streets “to repeat” his ideas “at different parts of the City.”94 In 1592, “apprentices” gathered in the streets around “Blackfriars” to direct their criticisms against the arbitrary policies of the “Knight Marshal’s men” who imprisoned many “without any cause of offence.”95 In the infamous 1595 riots, contemporary of the production of Richard II, the young rioters used the open streets in front of “Southwark” market and “St. Paul’s” to protest against the Elizabethan government.96 Similarly, the streets around the Theatre were considered as a space where all sorts of troublemakers met like in the 1577, 1580 and 1584 “brabble[s]” that created great “tumult” and “malefactions.”97 Troublemakers included actors and theatre-entrepreneurs like the owner of the Theatre James Burbage himself, too, which could be seen in the many court procedures against him.98 However, authorities could use the streets to create awe for Elizabeth through “street shows,” “street pageants,” “civic entertainments” and

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royal progresses in the Accession Day Tilts, on the way to the Parliament, and on her way to other towns.99 Streets became very important in such occasions, and in particular in royal progresses to other towns, so that streets “were cleaned,” “not to be polluted” and “failure to observe any of these orders was punishable by a fine.”100 Hence, streets were liminal spaces of disorder and order. This dual function could be also observed in the depiction of the entry of the two kings into London in Richard II. Although Holinshed seemed to refrain from giving detail about their entries that took part on two separate days101 which Daniel in his Ciuile depicted on a single day,102 Shakespeare’s version focused on the aspect of gazing at and being a part of the show on the streets. First of all, in Shakespeare, the entry is like a “theatre” show (RII 5.2.23) where the spectators behold two different types of actors. This show combines both the pomp of formal and royal progresses and the carnivalesque making figures of authority the butt of farce. While the spectators consider Henry IV “[m]ounted upon a hot and fiery steed” in heroic terms through exclamations of well-being with “God save thee Bolingbroke!” (RII 5.2.8-11) which were reminiscent of exchanges of action and reaction drown in the loud sounds of trumpets and drums in royal progresses through streets, the same spectators throw “dust” upon the former Richard II’s still “sacred head” whom they consider as an old “actor” no longer attracting playgoers (RII 5.2.2336), just as they or amateur actors would possibly do in farcical street shows. Taking into consideration that Elizabethans frequently did “urinate in the fireplace if a chamber pot was not readily accessible,”103 then it could be concluded that the “dust” thrown into Richard II’s head might not have been simply household dust but rather household waste. What is more, through the narration of this, the two spaces of clean streets with “painted walls” and the streets used to dispose waste or “dust” is incorporated in the royal progress of Henry IV (RII 5.2.23-40). Hence, the scene where Richard II is besmirched and Henry IV is upheld was reflective of the dual function and perception of the streets as place for ordinary people to empty waste and for the ruling class as a channel to communicate with people.

3.7 Of Prisons Just like in other contemporary state apparatuses,104 Elizabethan prisons were spaces that lacked any homogeneity and prisoners were detained according to their social status and their crime. Elizabethan prisons, none of which were near to the site of the Theatre playhouse, were divided into royal prisons like the Tower of London or the Marshalsea, and ordinary jails including Newgate, the Counters and the Fleet.105 Non-royal prisons, especially the Counters and the Fleet, were more or less places for temporary “lodging” preferred by criminals because they

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“could go abroad at any time with a keeper,” “receive freely the visits of friends, confederates, and mistresses,” obtain anything for their “money,” “live on charity” and “escape ‘privy watches and searches’ without.”106 Royal prisons where predominantly political prisoners were kept, however, were notorious for the mistreatment and “torture” of the detained people manifest on the walls of cells, the warrants in the registers of the Privy Council and the State Papers Domestic, and in verbal and non-verbal accounts.107 Richard II’s historical imprisonment in Pomfret Castle and the depiction of this on the Elizabethan stage was significant in several layers. Although the imprisonment of a king had been shown before the production of Richard II in, for instance, Marlowe’s Edward II (performed 1591-3, published 1594), wherein the physical and psychological tortures like standing in waste water and being prevented from sleeping by making noises are dealt more directly,108 the very omission of such tortures in Shakespeare’s version enabled the playgoer not to be distracted by these outer forces and rather focus on the psychology of the imprisoned Richard II whose ideas themselves torture him as revealed in his long soliloquy. Within the space or void of the prison cell, Richard II compares and contrasts it with the populous outside world and muses how his mind as a space could produce thoughts in his claustrophobic environment (RII 5.5.1-5). While oscillating between “ambition” and “content” (RII 5.5.18-32) and whether or not to commit suicide (RII 5.5.38-41), Richard II tries to comfort himself by focusing on the commonness of being imprisoned which is not peculiar to him. In doing so, Richard II creates a space through which he tries to “ease” his sorrows by populating them with imaginary co-inmates (RII 5.5.23-32), which form the imagined/real audience of the king/actor in the playhouse.109 The stream of consciousness of considering himself as a king and not by mentally “play[ing] […] in one person many people” (RII 5.5.31-41) creates a liminal space where he is able to people the empty prison cell with mental pictures. Yet, after he hears “music,” which normally used to be “sweet” but his condition and his thinking upon it make it “sour sweet,” Richard II falls intro frustration about the heterochrony created by the presence of his past wasted glory in his mind and his present misery in the reality of being imprisoned in the heterotopia of the prison cell by thinking on how he has wasted his past “time” which “now […] waste[s]” him (RII 5.5.41-61). Apart from the reality that much condemned prisoners either lay at prisons for an indefinite time110 or were “executed, lest by overmuch toleration and evil example others be encouraged to like offences,” there were frequent instances of royal pardons either sending condemned male prisoners as cannon fodder to the front as in 1596 or releasing them to show the mercy of the monarch as in 1595 when eight men and eight

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women were pardoned by Elizabeth I. Although it might remain speculative, the possibility that any of such pardoned people would see or read Shakespeare’s Richard II among other literature regarding prison life, such as Luke Hutton’s The Blacke Dogge of Newgate (1596),112 would make the gaze at the imprisoned Richard II and his maddening thoughts in the claustrophobic space of the prison cell a liminal place between the theatrical adaptation of historical/fictive narrations of Richard II’s imprisonment and personal experience. Self-inflicted torture through constant thinking, the limiting space of the prison cell, talking to oneself in the absence of people, the ever presence of silence, oscillation whether or not to commit suicide, and fears regarding death might have been more apparent to these or at least the family members or friends of those once or still in prison. Consequently, the possibilities of the audience being able to decode meaning in a very personal way transforms the Elizabethan stage in Shakespeare’s Richard II into a liminal space that takes into consideration multiple levels of audiences. In conclusion, the court, the private residence, the tiltyard, the garden, the streets and the prison were depicted in Richard II as public and everyday life spaces that had on- and off-stage relevance for Elizabethan audiences. Gazing at the spaces of everyday life through Richard II was a controversial issue, especially as it was performed at a time when city authorities and the gentry petitioned against plays and argued for the formation of the more controllable “duopoly” of acting companies around 1594.113 From the relatively elevated spaces occupied by members of higher statuses to those associated with lower classes, the possibilities of the decoding meaning in very personal ways made the Elizabethan stage and its products in print or performance a liminal space that inhibited heterotopias and heterochronies. This is why the history play was in general a palimpsest of the historic, the histrionic, and the Elizabethan contemporary which simultaneously enabled multiple forms of signification in Shakespeare’s Richard II that contained multiple forms of spaces to be gazed at by its audience.

Notes 1 I want to thank Sarah Dustagheer and Clare Wright, the organizers of the Liminal Time and Space in Medieval and Early Modern Performance Conference at the University of Kent, Canterbury (5–7 September 2014), at which an earlier and shorter version of this article was presented. 2 Aristotle, “Poetics,” in Aristotle ‘Poetics’, Longinus ‘On the Sublime’, Demetrius ‘On Style’, trans. and eds. Stephen Halliwell et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard 1995), 59; Michael Hattaway, “The Shakespearean History Play,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 4.

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3 E. M. W. Tillyard, Shakespeare’s History Plays (New York: Macmillan, 1946), 32, 39; David Scott Kastan, “Shakespeare and English History,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, ed. Margreta De Grazia and Stanley Wells (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 167, 170–1; Lily B Campbell, Shakespeare’s Histories: Mirrors of Elizabethan Policy (San Marino, CA: Huntington, 1978), 60–5; R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956), 57–8; Moody E. Prior, The Drama of Power: Studies in Shakespeare’s History Plays (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973), 16; Dominique Goy-Blanquet, “Elizabethan Historiography and Shakespeare’s Sources,” in The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare’s History Plays, ed. Michael Hattaway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 62. 4 Catherine Grace Canino, Shakespeare and the Nobility: The Negotiation of Lineage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 2–3, 14–5, 220–1. 5 Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces, Heterotopias,” in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuite 5 (1984): par. 20, http://foucault.info/documents/ heterotopia/foucault.heterotopia.en.html 6 Foucault, “Spaces” par. 21. 7 Jonathan Gil Harris, Untimely Matter in the Time of Shakespeare (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 13-7; Jonathan Baldo, Memory in Shakespeare’s Histories: Stages of Forgetting in Early Modern England (London and New York: Routledge, 2012), 16. 8 Citations of Shakespeare’s Richard II are from William Shakespeare, Richard II, ed. Charles R. Forker (London: Arden, 2002). Hereafter RII and cited parenthetically by act, scene, and line number. 9 I want to express my thanks to the Map of Early Modern London database team which, through the digitized Agas Map, helped me a lot to locate the locale of this present study. See Civitas Londinvm (1562?) 2012. The Agas Map. The Map of Early Modern London. Jenstad, Janelle, ed. (MoEML, 2012), http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/agas.htm. 10 Evelyn May Albright, “Shakespeare’s Richard II and the Essex Conspiracy,” PMLA 42, no. 3 (1927): 686–720. Michael Quinn, “‘The King is not Himself’: The Personal Tragedy of Richard II,” Studies in Philology 56, no. 2 (1959): 169–186; John R. Elliott, “History and Tragedy in Richard II,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900 8, no. 2 (1968): 253–271; Phyllis Rackin, “The Role of the Audience in Shakespeare’s Richard II,” Shakespeare Quarterly 36, no. 3 (1985): 262–281; Paul E. J. Hammer, “Shakespeare’s Richard II, the Play of 7 February 1601, and the Essex Rising,” Shakespeare Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2008): 1–35; Zenón LuisMartínez, “Shakespeare’s Historical Drama as Trauerspiel: Richard II and After,” ELH 75, no. 3 (2008): 673–705; Jeffrey S. Doty, “Shakespeare’s Richard II, ‘Popularity,’ and the Early Modern Public Sphere,” Shakespeare Quarterly 61, no. 2 (2010): 183–205; Campbell, Histories, 181-2, 192, 211–2, 230; Irving Ribner, The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 154–5; Richard C. McCoy, The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989), 1-6, 1012; Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1991), 124; Louis Montrose, The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996), 68–72; Alexandra Gajda, The Earl of

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11 12

13

14

15 16

17 18

19 20

21 22

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Essex and Late Elizabethan Political Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 27, 50–1, 237–50. Alexander Legatt, Shakespeare’s Political Drama: The History Plays and the Roman Plays (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 57. Penry Williams, The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995), 124; Lawrence Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558–1641 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 385, 398; Julian Bowsher, Shakespeare’s London Theatreland: Archaeology, History and Drama (London: Museum of London Archaeology, 2012), 136–42. Bowsher, Theatreland, 136–9. John Stow, A Svrvay of London (London: Iohn Wolfe, 1599), 374–6; “Whitehall.” The Map of Early Modern London. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed June 20, 2019. http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/WHIT5.htm. For instance, in 1593 a proclamation was published which ordered to “restrain the access of so many suitors to the Court […] on pain of imprisonment.” See: G. B. Harrison, An Elizabethan Journal: Being a Record of Those Things Most Talked about during the years 1591–4 (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1974), 246. Similar restrictions on court attendance and lodging nearby the court were made in 1594 following the infamous Dr Lopez trials following his roles in an attempt on the life of Elizabeth I. See: Harrison, An Elizabethan, 278–91. D. M. Loades, The Tudor Court (Bangor: Headstart History, 1992), 86. Williams, Later, 125–7, 130; Loades, Tudor, 85; Stone, Crisis, 402; Christopher Haigh, Elizabeth I (London and New York: Longman, 1988), 88; Wallace T. MacCaffrey, “Place and Patronage in Elizabethan Politics,” in Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays Presented to Sir John Neale, eds. S. T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield and C. H. Williams (London: University of London and The Athlone Press, 1961), 101; Haigh, Elizabeth, 90–1. Stone, Crisis, 402, 446; Simon Adams, “The Patronage of the Crown in Elizabethan Politics: The 1590s in Perspective,” The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. John Guy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 37–8; Williams, Later, 398. Willaims, Later, 160–2, 203, 360; John Guy, “The Tudor Age: (1485–1603),” The Oxford History of Britain, ed. Kenneth O. Morgan (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 317. Loades, Tudor, 165; Paul E. J. Hammer, The Polarisation of Elizabethan Politics: The Political Career of Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, 1585–1597 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 114; Alasdair Hawkyard, “Councillors to Queen Elizabeth: The Cecils,” in Rivals in Power: Lives and Letters of the Great Tudor Dynasties, ed. David Starkey (London: MacMillan, 1990), 268. Hammer, Polarisation 17–9, 32–8, 54–60, 76–7, 113; Williams, Later, 342–3, 326–9; Gajda, Earl, 4, 62, 68. Adams, “Patronage of the Crown,” 34-5; Williams, Later, 364–5; Loades, Politics, 306. J. B. Black, The Reign of Elizabeth: 1558–1603 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959), 406–11; Louis Montrose, The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 155–9. Montrose, Purpose, 40; Andrew Gurr, Playgoing in Shakespeare’s London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press): 2, 54–55. John Guy, “The 1590s: The Second Reign of Elizabeth I?” in The Reign of Elizabeth I: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. John Guy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 16.

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23 Loades, Politics, 11. 24 Stone, Crisis, 483; Williams, Later, 373; G. B. Harrison, A Second Elizabethan Journal: Being a Record of Those Things Most Talked about during the years 1595–8 (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1974), 252, 287, 299, 302; G. B. Harrison, A Last Elizabethan Journal: Being a Record of Those Things Most Talked of during the years 1599–1603 (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1974), 21, 41–2, 56–7. 25 Chronicle material illustrated on several accounts that the court in financial crisis situations could turn into a place misgoverned by a monarch who would exclude some of the members of the higher classes and heavily tax them in favor of others that were or were considered as “flatterer[s].” See, Edward Hall, The Vnion of the Two Noble and Illuſtre Famelies of Lancastre & Yorke beeyng long in Continual Diſcension for the Croune of this Noble Realme (London: n. p., 1548), iir-v; Raphael Holinshed, William Harrison and John Hooker, The Firſt and ſecond Volumes of Chronicles, Compriſing 1 The Deſcription and Hiſtorie of England, 2 The Deſcription and Hiſtorie of Ireland, 3 The Deſcription and Hiſtorie of Scotland (London: n. p., 1587), 3: 493–6. However, contrary to the equation of moral depravity with failings in government, as adopted also in didactic literature and other plays, like Woodstock, Shakespeare focused on the mechanisms regarding the problems created in the space of the court. See: William Baldwin, AMyrrovr for Magiſtrates (London: Thomas Marſhe, 1563), xviv–xixr; Thomas of Woodstock or Richard the Second, Part One, eds. Peter Corbin and Douglas Sedge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 2.2.196–217, 3.1.1–14, 3.2.79–81. 26 Louis Montrose, The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996), 68–72; Richard Dutton, Mastering the Revels: The Regulation and Censorship of English Renaissance Drama (Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1991), 124. 27 Lena Cowen Orlin, Locating Privacy in Tudor London (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 106. 28 Raoul Bull, Simon Davis, Hana Lewis, Christopher Phillpotts, and Aaron Birchenough, Holywell Priory and the Development of Shoreditch to c. 1600: Archaeology from the London Overground East London Line (London: Museum of London Archaeology, 2011), 23–56. 29 Ilona Bell.,Elizabethan Women and the Poetry of Courtship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 7. 30 Emily Lu Hess Pearson, Elizabethans at Home (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957), 66. 31 Pearson, Elizabethans, 66. 32 Prior, Drama 123–4. 33 William Shakespeare, Richard II, ed. Charles R. Forker (London: Arden, 2002), 200. 34 Likewise, York’s auto-censor from publicly acting against Richard II’s misgovernment and confiscation of the lands of Bolingbroke (RII 2.1.163214) is reflective of the problematics of voicing one’s mind openly in public. What is more, the Duke of York’s narration to Duchess of York Henry IV’s progress in the streets of London (RII 5.2.1-40), a form of private family history that starts before but is interrupted and retold again, follows a similar assumption about the security of private lodgings to voice out private ideas concealed from public scrutiny. The private lodging of the Duke of York enables him to voice his mind against the injustice done to Richard II

Elizabethan Audience Gaze

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44

45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52

53 54 55

56 57 58 59

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who is humiliated in the streets by besmirching his head with waste (RII 5.2.30-6). Although York acknowledges that he would serve Henry IV from now on (RII 5.2.39-40), he could, at least in the privacy provided in his lodging, voice his mind against the wrongdoing faced by the former Richard II, which criticism Henry IV and his followers would not approve in public. Baldo, Memory 8–9; Canino, Nobility, 14–5, 220–1. Holinshed, Chronicles, 3:493. Baldwin, Myrrovr, xiir–xiiir. Samuel Daniel, The First Fowre Bookes of the Ciuile Warres Betweene the Two Houſes of Lancaſter and Yorke (London: P. Short, 1595), D3r, bk. 1, canto 60. Baldo, Memory, 16. Stow, Svrvay, 374; “Whitehall.” The Map of Early Modern London. Paul N. Siegel, “Shakespeare and the Neo-Chivalric Cult of Honor,” Centennial Review 8 (1964): 40. Curtis Brown Watson, Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960), 76–91; Hiram Haydn, The Counter-Renaissance (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950), 555–98. McCoy, Rites, 3. McCoy, Rites, 79–102; Hammer, Polarisation, 141–4, 200–7. Montrose, Subject, 129. Roy Strong, The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), 134–7; Martin Wiggins and Catherine Richardson, eds., British Drama 1533–1642: A Catalogue, Vol. 3 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 257–8, 312–3. Hammer, Polarisation, 353–4. Stone, Crisis, 245–6; Loades, Politics, 297; Loades, Tudor, 89; Mervyn Evans James, Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 308–9. Loades, Tudor, 90. Harrison, Second, 244–5. Hall, Vnion, iir–iiir; Holinshed, Chronicles 3:494. Holinshed, Chronicles 3:494. Hall, Vnion, iiv. Baldo, Memory, 12. Prior, Drama, 145. Legatt, Shakespeare’s Political, 62–8; Donna B. Hamilton, “The State of Law in Richard II,” Shakespeare Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1983): 14; Jennifer Low, “‘Those Proud Titles Thou Hast Won’: Sovereignty, Power, and Combat in Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy,” Comparative Drama 34, no. 3 (2000): 271. Low, “‘Those,” 273. Agamben, Homo, 81. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, 1995), 34, 49, 58; Rene Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), 20, 30, 33–4, 38, 287. Low, “‘Those,” 270; Warren J. MacIsaac, “The Three Cousins in Richard II,” Shakespeare Quarterly 22, no. 2 (1971): 139. Ribner, English, 160. Low, “‘Those,” 273. Harrison, Second, 166, 244–5. Harrison, Last, 146. Gajda, Earl, 32; Williams, Later, 374–6; Stone, Crisis, 482–3.

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60 Rose S. Nichols, English Pleasure Gardens (Boston, MA: D. R. Godine, 2003), 110–1; Mary E. Hazard, Elizabethan Silent Language (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2000), 38. 61 Nichols, Gardens 116; Leonard R. N. Ashley, Elizabethan Popular Culture (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1988), 17–8. 62 Thomas Hill, The Profitable Arte of Gardening (London: Allde, 1593). 63 John Gerard, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes (London: Norton, 1597). 64 Hugh Plat, Floraes Paradise (London: Leake, 1608). 65 Gervase Markham, The English Husbandman (London: Browne, 1613). 66 William Lawson, A Nevv Orchard and Garden (London: Iackson, 1618). 67 Nichols, Gardens, 112. 68 Quoted in Ashley, Elizabethan, 18. 69 Nichols, Gardens, 110. 70 Olivier de Serres, Le Theatre d’Agricvltvre et Mesnage Des Champs (Paris: n. p., 1600). 71 Nichols, Gardens, 116. 72 Bowsher, Theatreland, 55–6; Stow, Svrvay, 350; E. K. Chambers, The Elizabethan Stage, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 2:387. 73 Legatt, Shakespeare’s Political, 56. 74 Forker, Richard, 361. 75 Phillip Sidney, The Defence of Poeſie (London: VViliam Ponſonby, 1595), K1r. Yet, considering the abundance of real gardens surrounding the Theatre, Sidney’s claim of the insufficiency of the histrionic space to create an image of a garden in the minds of the playgoers seems quite absurd. 76 Holinshed, Chronicles, 3:496. 77 Adams, “Patronage of the Crown,” 34–5; Williams, Later, 364–5; Black, Reign, 406–11; Montrose, Subject, 155–9. Loades, Politics, 306. 78 Compare Gaunt’s words in Woodstock about the elimination of some of the meritocratic favorites likened to “rancorous weeds”: “Thus princely Edwards sons in tender care / Of wanton Richard and their father’s realm / Have toiled to purge fair England’s pleasant field / Of all those rancorous weeds that choked the grounds / And left her pleasant meads like barren hills” (Woodstock 5.6.1-5). 79 Nichols, Gardens, 116–7. 80 Holinshed, Chronicles 3:A3v; Prior, Drama, 123–4; Thomas Aquinas, “De regimine principum,” in Political Writings, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) 18; Johannes Salisbury, Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 191, bk. 8, ch. 17; Thomas Cranmer, Certain Sermons, or Homilies, appointed by the kynges Maieſtie (London: Grafton, 1547), N4r, O2v; Thomas Smith, The Common-vvelth of England, and Maner of Government Thereof (London: Iohn Windet, 1589), B3r-v; An Homilie Againſt Diſobedience and Wylfull Rebellion (London: Richard Iugge, 1571), B2v; Charles Merbury, A Briefe Discovrse of Royall Monarchie, as of the Best Common Weale (London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1581), 40–1. 81 Holinshed, Chronicles, 3:499. 82 Holinshed, Chronicles, 3:507. 83 Geoffrey Bullough, ed., Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare, 8 vols. (London: Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1977), 3:378. 84 Stow, Svrvay, 347–51. 85 Bowsher, Theatreland, 58.

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86 Williams, Later, 411–2; Dutton, Mastering, 2–4, 51; Albright, “Essex,” 688; Richard Helgerson, “Shakespeare and Contemporary Dramatists of History,” in A Companion to Shakespeare’s Works: Volume II: The Histories, eds. Richard Dutton and Jean E. Howard (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003), 37; Glynne Wickham, Early English Stages: 1300 to 1660: 1576 to 1660, Part I (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963), 85; Wolfgang Weiß, Das Drama der Shakespeare-Zeit: Versuch einer Beschreibung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1979), 189. Chambers, Elizabethan, 3:158. 87 Legatt, Shakespeare’s Political, 68–9. 88 Harrison, Last, 194. 89 Forgeng, Daily, 120. 90 Stow, Svrvay, 349. 91 David Mander, More Light, More Power: An Illustrated History of Shoreditch (Stroud: Sutton, 1996), 13. 92 Ashley, Elizabethan, 29, 41–2, 117, 125, 271; Frank Aydelotte, Elizabethan Rogues and Vagabonds (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), 73; Craig Turner and Tony Soper, Methods and Practice of Elizabethan Swordplay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), xv. 93 The surroundings of the Theatre were within the liberties in London and noted for the trafficking of all illicit affairs. See Bowsher, Theatreland, 214. Chambers, Elizabethan, 2:384–5. 94 Harrison, An Elizabethan, 41. 95 Harrison, An Elizabethan, 138. 96 Harrison, Second, 28–9. 97 Quoted in Bowsher, Theatreland, 57. 98 Bowsher, Theatreland, 57, 214–6; Chambers, Elizabethan, 2:387–400. 99 C. L. Barber, Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and its Relation to Social Custom (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 170; Dieter Mehl, The Elizabethan Dumb Show: The History of a Dramatic Convention (New York: Routledge, 2011), 13, 25, 47; Mary Hill Cole, The Portable Queen: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Ceremony (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1999), 84, 122, 127–33. Strong, Cult, 133. 100 Cole, Portable, 99; Zillah M. Dovey, An Elizabethan Progress: The Queen’s Journey into East Anglia, 1578 (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), 65. 101 Holinshed, Chronicles 3:501. 102 Daniel, Ciuile, I4v–L1v, bk. 2, canto 67–92. 103 Forgeng, Daily, 119. 104 Other repressive state apparatuses could be observed in the several semiindependent and conflicting constituents of the judiciary system including the City Aldermen, Lawyers, Justices of Peace, Privy Councillors and the Clergy exerted through canon law and common law their judicial power on the Elizabethan subjects. Hazard, Elizabethan Silent, 229; Edward Gieskes, Representing the Professions: Administration, Law, and the Theater in Early Modern England (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2006), 161; Ian W. Archer, The Pursuit of Stability: Social Relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 18. 105 A. V. Judges, ed., The Elizabethan Underworld: A Collection of Tudor and Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads (New York: Routledge, 2002), xlii–iii. 106 Aydelotte, Elizabethan, 83–4; Judges, Elizabethan, xliii.

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107 John Whitcomb Bayley, The History and Antiquities of the Tower of London, with Memoirs of Royal and Distinguished Persons (London: Jennings and Chaplin, 1830), 205; Kristen Deiter, The Tower of London in English Renaissance Drama: Icon of Opposition (New York and London: Routledge, 2008), 52, 89, 121; John H. Langbein, Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancient Regime (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 81–4. 108 Christopher Marlowe, The Troubleſome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the ſecond, King of England (London: Iones, 1594), K3r–L4v. 109 Unfortunately, none of today’s productions of the play use this detail to present Richard II as an Early Modern inmate who could make a graffiti of people similar to those made by detained people on the walls of prison cells. 110 Harrison, Second, 31, 341; Judges, Elizabethan, 445. 111 Harrison, Second, 73, 79, 208. 112 Luke Hutton, The Blacke Dogge of Newgate (London: Simson, 1596). 113 Chambers, Elizabethan,1:296–7; Gurr, Playgoing, 133; Bart van Es, Shakespeare in Company (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 100.

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Holinshed, Raphael, William Harrison and John Hooker. The Firſt and ſecond Volumes of Chronicles, Compriſing 1 The Deſcription and Hiſtorie of England, 2 The Deſcription and Hiſtorie of Ireland, 3 The Deſcription and Hiſtorie of Scotland. London: n. p., 1587. Hutton, Luke. The Blacke Dogge of Newgate. London: Simson, 1596. James, Mervyn Evans. Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Judges, A. V., ed. The Elizabethan Underworld: A Collection of Tudor and Early Stuart Tracts and Ballads. New York: Routledge, 2002. Kastan, David Scott. “Shakespeare and English History.” In The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare, edited byMargreta De Grazia and Stanley Wells, 167–182. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Langbein, John H. Torture and the Law of Proof: Europe and England in the Ancient Regime. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Lawson, William. A Nevv Orchard and Garden. London: Iackson, 1618. Legatt, Alexander. Shakespeare’s Political Drama: The History Plays and the Roman Plays. London and New York: Routledge, 1988. Loades, D. M. Politics and the Nation 1450-1660: Obedience, Resistance and Public Order. London: Fontana and Collins, 1974. Loades, D. M. The Tudor Court. Bangor: Headstart History, 1992. Loades, D. M. Power in Tudor England. London: MacMillan, 1997. Low, Jennifer. “‘Those Proud Titles Thou Hast Won’: Sovereignty, Power, and Combat in Shakespeare’s Second Tetralogy.” Comparative Drama, 34, no. 3 (2000): 269–290. Luis-Martínez, Zenón. “Shakespeare’s Historical Drama as Trauerspiel: Richard II and After.” ELH, 75, no. 3 (2008): 673–705. MacCaffrey, Wallace T. “Place and Patronage in Elizabethan Politics.” In Elizabethan Government and Society: Essays Presented to Sir John Neale, edited by S. T. Bindoff, J. Hurstfield, and C. H. Williams, 95–126. London: University of London and The Athlone Press, 1961. MacIsaac, Warren J. “The Three Cousins in Richard II.” Shakespeare Quarterly, 22.2 (1971): 137–146. Markham, Gervase. The English Husbandman. London: Browne, 1613. Marlowe, Christopher. The Troubleſome Raigne and Lamentable Death of Edward the ſecond, King of England. London: Iones, 1594. Mander, David. More Light, More Power: An Illustrated History of Shoreditch. Stroud: Sutton, 1996. McCoy, Richard C. The Rites of Knighthood: The Literature and Politics of Elizabethan Chivalry. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989. Mehl, Dieter. The Elizabethan Dumb Show: The History of a Dramatic Convention. New York: Routledge, 2011. Merbury, Charles. A Briefe Discovrse of Royall Monarchie, as of the Best Common Weale. London: Thomas Vautrollier, 1581. Montrose, Louis. The Purpose of Playing: Shakespeare and the Cultural Politics of the Elizabethan Theatre. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996. Montrose, Louis. The Subject of Elizabeth: Authority, Gender, and Representation. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Nichols, Rose S. English Pleasure Gardens. Boston, MA: D. R. Godine, 2003.

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Orlin, Lena Cowen. Locating Privacy in Tudor London. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pearson, Emily Lu Hess. Elizabethans at Home. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1957. Plat, Hugh. Floraes Paradise. London: Leake, 1608. Prior, Moody E. The Drama of Power: Studies in Shakespeare’s History Plays. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973. Quinn, Michael. “‘The King is not Himself’: The Personal Tragedy of Richard II.” Studies in Philology, 56, no(2) (1959): 169–186. Rackin, Phyllis. “The Role of the Audience in Shakespeare’s Richard II.” Shakespeare Quarterly, 36, no. 3 (1985): 262–281. Ribner, Irving. The English History Play in the Age of Shakespeare. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Salisbury, Johannes. Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Serres, Olivier de. Le Theatre d’Agricvltvre et Mesnage Des Champs. Paris: n. p., 1600. Shakespeare, William. “Richard II.” In The Tragedy of King Richard the Second, ed.ited by R. Forker Charles, 171–484. London: Arden, 2002. Sidney, Phillip. The Defence of Poeſie. London: VViliam Ponſonby, 1595. Siegel, Paul N. “Shakespeare and the Neo-Chivalric Cult of Honor.” Centennial Review, 8 (1964): 39–70. Smith, Thomas. The Common-vvelth of England, and Maner of Government Thereof. London: Iohn Windet, 1589. Stone, Lawrence. The Crisis of the Aristocracy: 1558–1641. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979. Stow, John. A Svrvay of London. London: Iohn Wolfe, 1599. Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth: Elizabethan Portraiture and Pageantry. London: Thames and Hudson, 1977. “Thomas of Woodstock or Richard the Second, Part One.” edited by P. Corbin and D. Sedge. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. Tillyard, E. M. W. Shakespeare’s History Plays. New York: Macmillan, 1946. Turner, Craig, and Tony Soper. Methods and Practice of Elizabethan Swordplay. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989. Watson, Curtis Brown. Shakespeare and the Renaissance Concept of Honor. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960. “Whitehall.” The Map of Early Modern London, ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed October20, 2019. http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/ WHIT5.htm. Wiggins, Martin, and Catherine Richardson, ed. British Drama 1533-1642: A Catalogue, Vol. 3 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Weiß, Wolfgang. Das Drama der Shakespeare-Zeit: Versuch einer Beschreibung. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1979. Wickham, Glynne. Early English Stages: 1300 to 1660: 1576 to 1660, Part I. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963. Williams, Penry. The Later Tudors: England 1547–1603. Oxford: Clarendon, 1995.

4

The Commedia dell’Arte from Marketplace to Court Rosalind Kerr

STRANGER: “This is what I call a show that teaches honest young women to become runaways; instructs young men how to deceive their parents and live reckless and dissolute lives, encourages servants to play tricks on their masters, and shows maidservants ways to play the bawd.”1

Italian commedia dell’arte flourished for almost two centuries, and un­ derwent many changes from its birth in the marketplace to its reputed death in the courts.2 From its origins in the piazza in the 1540s, it went on to become an immensely popular new form of theater which captured a central place in the popular imagination of its mass and elite audiences. Its formula for success arose from its stage representation of local character types recognizable by their distinctive costumes and specific dialects. Performing without scripts, the troupes developed an impromptu style of delivery which engaged audiences by implicating them in shaping the in­ trigue. Actors and spectators shared a direct exchange of information as spectators had to follow the actors closely to understand what was going to happen next. In fact, the actors might alter their actions and emotional responses on the spot in accordance with the spectators’ expressed desires. As an interactive social process, the commedia dell’arte addressed im­ portant social issues of the times and offered a trenchant commentary on the changing power relations shaping early modern northern Italy as it transited from feudalism to a market economy. Domenico Pietropaolo describes this golden age (1540–1630s) as a period in which the commedia operated as “an instrument of transgression and a vehicle for radical criticism.”3 Beyond the bawdry and the farce, the commedia dell’arte singled out certain “objects of derision” which were of deep concern to an average citizen.4 In particular, he notes the intense dislike the populace felt for the power that the new monied Venetian merchant class wielded, and also the power that higher education symbolized as a new class of aca­ demics, lawyers, and doctors exerted their status through their affiliation with distinguished universities such as Bologna. These unpopular figures DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-4

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would be captured in the famous masks of the Magnifico (Pantalone) and the man of letters (Dottore Graziano), respectively. At the other end of the spectrum, and the cause of social unrest was the huge influx of poor immigrants into the cities. These uncouth types would come to be re­ presented in the roles of the Zanni who found themselves fighting to survive by going into service with the new monied classes.5 The commedia dell’arte came into existence as popular theater aimed to appeal to average citizens but also with an eye to attracting the patronage of the wealthy upper-class and the members of the Court. As we shall see, the troupes gradually acquired a sufficiently high level of skill as perfor­ mers tried to bring themselves to the attention of Court elites who enjoyed the buffoonery they professed to disdain. In the 1560s, the phenomenal arrival of female performers brought major changes to the commedia dell’arte as they proved to be a major draw for audiences of all types. Showcasing their beauty and eloquence, these actresses brought female voices into the public discourse as well as raising the status of the com­ media as a legitimate dramatic form. The following sections will feature developments which show the commedia negotiating its existence by finding ways to appeal to diverse audiences. Knowing how interactive it was with its audiences makes it possible for us to see what kinds of social issues and character types were being targeted. The first three sections look at ways in which the actors negotiated relationships with their au­ diences: Part one deals with the actors gradually separating themselves from the buffoons and traveling street performers they resembled as they develop their art. Part two traces the impact of the arrival of the actresses and the ways they change the discourses to include female subjectivities. Part three introduces visual records of a performance from the Receuil Fossard to illustrate how the widespread pictorial representation of the commedia dell’arte appealed directly to a discerning, if cynical public. The second three headings are concerned with the relationship of the actors and the authorities of Church and State as they seek legitimation and acceptance by the Courts. Part four outlines how the actors used their cover of not having written scripts to outmaneuver the Church’s attempts to shut down their subversive theater. Part five shows how the esteem that the great actresses won from the courts won the commedia dell’arte great respect by describing the diva Isabella Andreini’s fabled mad performance at the Medici wedding gala of 1589 in Florence. Finally, part six brings together some key incidents that show how the commedia dell’arte had established itself in Court culture.

4.1 Part I: Piazza Performances for Everybody: The Fascination with Servitude While itinerant street performers had existed back in the middle-ages, their numbers were vastly increased in the early modern period by the

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mass exodus to the cities. It took some time before commedia dell’arte troupes established themselves as separate from other street performers and there was always some overlap between these groups throughout their history. The fact that the professional actors never completely es­ caped from their mountebank origins obviously affected their audience appeal since when they were closely identified with the poor and arti­ sanal classes they could speak directly to and for them. The class of buffoni who preceded the professional actors were generally on the circuit for only part of the year.6 They performed mainly during the extended Carnival three-month period, and presumably returned to other jobs to earn their livings during the rest of the year.7 However, like the professional actors who followed them, they knew how to work different spaces and appeal to diverse audiences. The names of a group of Venetian buffoni—“Tailor of Stockings” (Tagliacalze); “Cloth cutter” (Cimador); “Fodder supplier” (Berto delle Biave)—show their humble often impoverished origins and help to explain why they had a broad appeal to different levels of audiences.8 They were known for their ela­ borate clowning routines, bawdy sexual displays, dangerous acrobatic feats, and magic tricks. Some of them became so famous as to be given important roles at major Venetian festivals and carte blanche to perform the most obscene and scandalous materials that were part of their re­ pertoire. Performing at wedding festivals and carnival events, the buffoni led the way for their aristocratic betters to engage in the kind of licensed disorder which appealed to the rich and poor alike. Records of perfor­ mances by a famous early Venetian buffoni, Zuan Polo (d. 1541), show his versatility and virtuosity in a broad range extending from physical comedy to incisive social parody.9 Originally identified as “a fodder carrier,” his long and successful career encompassed surpassing his roots to become especially admired by middle- and upper-class audiences who marveled at his large repertoire of codified dialects.10 The close connection between the buffoons and the artisanal class they came from was also echoed in the creation of the role of the Zanni, who would become central members of the commedia dell’arte. Zanni, a di­ minutive form of Giovanni (John) in Venetian and Lombardy dialects was a generic no-name applied to performers who brought the new servant class of impoverished porters who had descended from the Lombardy hillsides into cities like Milan and Venice in search of work.11 Prominent in Venetian street theater, the Zanni were the servant half of the Servant-Master (Zanni-Magnifico) duos who developed perfor­ mances which represented the power struggles between the dispossessed immigrant workers and their new employers, the nouveau-riche mer­ cantile princes, the Magnificos.12 The most famous magnifico charactermask became identified with Pantalone who wore the Venetian red and black costume. The kinds of exchanges that could be developed between the master and his very hungry and wily servant in which the servant

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outwitted his rapacious boss provided enormously popular entertain­ ment for the members of the public who had to submit to serving such patrons in real life. The much-needed comic relief provided by watching the zanni barely save the Pantalone from all sorts of precarious situa­ tions, such as trying to procure a prostitute or crash a banquet, offered everyone the chance for comic relief. The bizarre comradery between them both defies and ultimately reinforces the gulf between them, especially since the zanni usually comes out on top. The public’s famil­ iarity with these figures is attested to by their appearance in con­ temporary situations that take place on street locations and not yet as part of theater performances. While mountebanks and street entertainers were continuing to perform, groups of actors were beginning to coalesce into troupes in order to pursue their profession as a full-time occupation. The first commedia dell’arte troupes formed themselves into companies who committed to travel around the country for a set time period during which they agreed to perform together, share their profits fairly and guarantee the well-being of each other. Before the women joined the troupes in the 1560s, they usually consisted of two teams of master and servants. These character masks bearing recognizable regional markers in their speech, actions, costumes, and gestures were exaggerated to the point of caricature and performed as being full of greed, lust, miserliness, cruelty in the case of Pantalone, and by vanity, stupidity, and scholarly pretension in the case of Gratiano. Opposing them were a variety of zanni, representing the conniving, somewhat bumbling, poverty-stricken servants. The buffoon-style comedy developed by the early troupes with their master and servant duos captured the popular imagination because their shows reversed the oppressive dynamic that actually prevailed where the newly rich powerful masters treated their servants with cruelty and ne­ glect. The zannis who outwitted them by speaking truth to power de­ lighted a large proportion of the population who were poor, but also appealed to the aristocratic classes who could sneer at their lack of breeding. The Courts could also take an interest in mobilizing a mass culture that encouraged a popular identification with their sovereign power.13 The troupe members themselves honed their acting skills in order to transcend their own obscure origins and prided themselves on creating highly individualized characters who surpassed the stereotypes they were imitating. In this way, the best actors were always trying to change their status and be given the ranks of honored professionals who could take their place in recognized social circles.14 The development of the role of the zanni is a case in point, since he was closest to the bottom social rung and hence had enormous appeal as an underdog. Full of endless tricks, outrageous bawdry, and bizarre behavior, the portrayal of the zanni and the serving class he represented as having insatiable desires was a mark of their dire poverty and oppressed position.15

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Just how deeply the zanni mask of the servant was embedded in the popular consciousness can be proven by the fact that his attributes were copied exactly from an actual group of wine porters. These porters (facchini) who had become a vivid presence on the streets of Milan when they descended in numbers from their original home in the Val di Blenio to look for work.16 They were famous for their distinctive clothing made of sackcloth with loose trousers and a smock tied with a belt, completed by their peaked hats and wooden swords. Their rough Bleniese dialect was often heard in the streets. They had attracted the attention of the mannerist painter/poet, Giovan Paolo Lomazzo (1538–1592) who was the most famous member of the Academy of the Val di Blenio.17 This renegade Academy, on the outskirts of Milan, was founded by the en­ graver Ambrogio Brambilla with the aim of opposing the learned literary Academies, by admitting artists and artisans from various skilled trades. Members, as part of their initiation rites, were required to imitate the appearance, speech, trade secrets, and behavior codes of the actual wine porters (facchini).18 Meeting once a month in taverns around Milan, the members of the academy had to wear the typical clothing of the porter as well as adopt a special peasant nickname as part of being initiated into the brotherhood. Finally, to demonstrate their descent into porter status, they had to speak an invented language that was a mixture of various local dialects from Milan and Blenio. Lomazzo’s insistence that the members of the academy would improve as artists by imitating the porters was borne out when it produced some famous zanni who became star members of the Gelosi troupe as early as 1560.19 The best known, Simone da Bologna, whose nickname in the troupe was Svanign Zan Panza di Pegora (Compadre John Sheep’s Belly).20 He excelled in captivating audiences not only with his actions and appearance but also with his unique gift in speaking in Bleniese dialect.21 Simone da Bologna became a star performer and royal favorite from the 1560s to at least the late 1580s throughout Italy and France.22 When he is first mentioned putting on a performance for Bleniese members in 1560, Lomazzo calls him: “the celebrated Zanni… of the Gelosi company… of unparalleled renown.”23 During his illustrious career with the Gelosi, he performed with them in Venice before the French King Henry III, where he was praised by the Florentine literato Tommaso Porcacchi as: “Utterly exceptional in imitating the mask of the Bergamask porter, but even more so in making up witty arguments and wild inventions.” (“rarissimo in rappresentar la persona d’un facchino Bergamasco, ma più raro nell’arguzie e nell invenzione spiritose.”)24 Another comment made in 1584 praises him for “observing the true decorum of the Bergamask dialect.”25 We have some idea of the lin­ guistic intricacies of the zanni’s dialog from a document, Lacrimoso Lamento (The Tearful Lament) purporting to be a lament for Simone’s death in 1585 written by several of his fellow zannis, but probably with

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his help.26 Written in a dialect that resembles the invented language of Bleniese Academy, the Lament captures the brilliance of the zannis’ unique abilities to showcase the underclass and poke fun at their masters. If Simone da Bologna and his fellow zannis moved far beyond their porter models, turning their imitations into highly sophisticated comic routines, they made these roles so popular that the zanni half of the master-servant duos, often became the chief intriguers in charge of driving the plot in such a way as to overturn the power of the masters. As long as improvisation was the dominant acting technique, these buffoon type troupe members were the subversive heart and soul of the com­ media dell’arte.

4.2 Part II: The Arrival of the Actress: Staging a Female Revolution The commedia dell’arte began as buffoon-style comedy described above and always maintained its connection with mass audiences. It also un­ derwent a phenomenal change when it admitted women into the troupes in the 1560s. At first, when mountebanks were selling entertainment and hawking products such as elixirs promising sexual potency, female performers began to appear. First as sideshow attractions, often as “tumbling whores” who put on daring acrobatic, rope-walking, con­ tortionist displays as well as providing dancing and musical accom­ paniments.27 While the lowest class of street entertainers had always included itinerant female performers,28 women had not been permitted to become professional actresses in most European countries, until the Italians allowed them. As their presence became notable on the trestle stages put up by the mountebanks and charlatans in the piazzas, they were gradually given dramatic parts to play. Enormously popular with the crowds, they often helped with the sales that followed which might involve customers throwing coins wrapped in handkerchiefs, aimed to hit some part of the women’s body. When the women returned the product, it sometimes happened that they included a note in the hand­ kerchief which offered the spectators a chance to meet them later. Once the troupes were established and the leading actresses had become fa­ mous, they would often invite the local gentry to visit them in their rented quarters to play cards and otherwise pay their respects. The actress became a draw because of the novelty of seeing beautiful women on the stage and led antitheatricalist critics to accuse the com­ media dell’arte of using the lure of female flesh to sell their entertain­ ment. At the same time, these Counter-Reformation officials mounted a serious campaign to keep women off the stage to save the spectators from damnation. The controversy underscored the power of the actress to draw attention to her sexual attractiveness and audience appeal it had. The fascination was deepened by the knowledge that the women who

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joined the troupes were closely connected to the “honest courtesan” class, the high-end sex workers who served as companions to male courtiers who could afford their services. They were known for their beauty and refinement, skilled in the fine arts, and classically-trained as orators. The addition of a prima and seconda donna to each troupe al­ lowed the commedia dell’arte to develop a repertoire that included dramatic genres from romantic comedy, pastoral, tragicomedy, tragedy, and epic. Once they had joined the troupes, the innamorate (female lovers) were joined by a class of professional gentlemen who took on the role of the innamorati (male lovers). The prima and seconda donna roles gave the actresses the chance to explore women’s social roles where young marriageable women were now supposed to have the right to choose their own partners. In a typical scenario, the shortened script form developed by the commedia, the leading ladies were usually involved with the servants in finding ways to marry the innamorati of their choice. Since the social norms still allowed fathers to dispose of their children at will, the message in the commedia offered an alternative that put women in charge of their destinies. The basic staple of the commedia dell’arte, the romantic comedy, followed the young lovers through the trials and tribulations of overcoming the opposition to their union. The ideal of romantic love which was a dominant cultural trope at this time was, of course, another object of derision for the companies to take on, since it was really a literary in­ vention created for the select few with time to such elaborate courtship rituals. Performing in the elevated language of Neoplatonic love dis­ courses, speaking in Petrarchan conceits, the female lovers played their roles to comic perfection. Since the actresses playing the romantic her­ oines and historical and mythological figures were improvising their own roles, they developed them in ways that foregrounded actual female experiences which spoke especially to the female audience members.29 As the actresses established themselves as theatrical paragons, their artistry won them admission to elite circles and raised the reputation of the commedia dell’arte to the level of an art form of note. If the fascination with the new servitude led to the commedia dell’arte’s obsession with zanni representations, so too, the “querelle des femmes” (“the woman question”) the intellectual debate on the nature of woman raging at the time was enacted on the commedia dell’arte stage.30 The actresses with their great skill as improvisors known for their eloquence offered audi­ ences living proof that women were both rational and spiritual beings. Isabella Andreini (1562–1604), the first great international diva, has left us a collection of thirty-one stage dialogs for lovers in which the male and female protagonist spar for control over the argument.31 Andreini brought lasting fame to the profession both as a performer and a writer, who also left a volume of Letters published after her death in 1607.32 These generic love letters taken from her stage speeches, cover every aspect of the nature

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of Neoplatonic love and actually became the third most popular letter collection published in the seventeenth century. Andreini’s great literary merits bought her and her troupe acceptance into academic and court circles and helped to legitimize the commedia dell’arte as high art. For example, the great demand for her letters among middle and upper middle-class citizens indicates that knowing the etiquette required for speaking of romantic love was highly prized.33 The complex attractions of the prima donnas whose idealized dis­ courses on love also provoked laughter because of their ridiculous pre­ tensions were also augmented by the presence of the third female role, the maid-servant (servetta) who could sometimes be a bawd or cour­ tesan. Saucy and sexy, her role was similar to a male zanni in exposing the unequal power structures and voicing her awareness of her sexual exploitation and hypocritical male codes insisting on female chastity. In the next section, the maid-servant’s self-awareness of her exploited role, along with that of the zanni Harlequin, are explored.

4.3 Part III: Harlequin and Francisquina Perform Their Servitude in the Recueil Fossard The commedia dell’arte inspired endless iconographic representations, and many reproductions of the troupes performing scenes became col­ lectors’ items, sought after by many who were able to purchase them. The reputation of the commedia dell’arte spread far and wide, as tourists from other European countries, especially Germany, sought out souvenir copies to put in their friendship books, the alba amicorum.34 The most famous collection of commedia woodcuts and engravings, the Recueil Fossard, which includes a vast range of images that represent the Arte’s use of the expressive body to convey a depth of meaning beyond words.35 The five images included here are particularly valuable in that they have been identified as showing in sequence scenes from the final act of a play likely performed by the Confidenti in Paris in the 1580s. The Harlequin has been identified with Tristano Martinelli, who was the first actor to make the mask famous.36 The maidservant Francisquina is likely Silvia Roncagli who was the first female to play the role.37 In the five engravings shown here, the artist makes it possible to follow the reac­ tions of Harlequin and Francisquina by supplying them with dialog which is written under each character’s image to match the actions they are shown engaged in.38 The reader is drawn in to follow what the characters are saying and to share with them in what they are experiencing. In this particular play, we are drawn to share with the hapless Harlequin as he finds himself up against the excess patriarchal power of his master Pantalon. Harlequin becomes the focus of the reader/spectator’s sympathy, making his un­ derdog status blatantly obvious (Figure 4.1). At the same time, he also

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Figure 4.1 Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Francatripa, Harlequin Inamorato, and Licetta (Act 3, Scene 1). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. 39

plays the uncouth oaf who has fallen into despair, not because of his refined love for Francisquina, but, as the other servants tell us because of his poor performance. In Figure 4.1, which depicts scene 1, of the final 3rd act, he is being taunted, first by Francatripa who frames the action by calling us all to take a look at him: “Stretched out flat, pale, glum and numb,” indicating the supine body of Harlequin as a lovelorn knight-atarms, until Francatripa undercuts the romance by explaining that he was rejected: “For failing to provide a good fuck” (act 3, scene 1). We share Licetta’s pity for his plight while he lies in her arms but we now get to laugh at the incongruity between his broken heart and his lack of sexual prowess. In the next scene (act 3, scene 2) the romance is further un­ dermined when Harlequin is being married off to his Francisquina as a kind of a bad joke, underlined by the meager dowry his master Pantalon offers them (Figure 4.2). Francisquina reveals herself as a servant who knows her place as she is presented with an enormous belly and she agrees to take Harlequin at her master’s request. She speaks to Pantalon “This will undo the mistake I made,” revealing that her remarks about

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Figure 4.2 Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Pantalon Marrying Harlequin and Francisquina (Act 3, Scene 2). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. 40

Harlequin are hypocritical: “Harlequin is a jovial fellow and a carefree man, I want him for a husband, nothing more do I wish.” In the third scene (act 3, scene 3), only a month later, an enraged Harlequin shows up at Pantalone’s door to complain about all the little bastard Harlequins that he has been stuck with (Figure 4.3). Pantalone expresses no sympathy nor responsibility, and the cruel reality of how to feed bastard children resonates with the audience who are familiar with this abuse of power. As Pantalone lords it over him: “My God, poor cuckold, …I have never had any business with your wife, You wanted both cow and calf…” The sheer exaggeration of showing him with eight little man-sized boys who resemble Pantalon increases the satire, as does Harlequin’s earnest supplication to the dismissive Pantalon.42 Such a predictable outcome elicits the expected cruel laughter as Harlequin continues to find himself on the losing side.

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Figure 4.3 Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Harlequin and Children Visiting Pantalon (Act 3, Scene 3). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. 41

The fourth scene (act 3, scene 4) continues with Harlequin’s next foray against Pantalon whom he now catches romancing his thinned-down very attractive wife (Figure 4.4). This time Harlequin knows what is going on and swears revenge with his cap in hand and wooden dagger drawn. However, the odds are now completely stacked as Pantalon and Francisquine openly plot against him, flaunting their affair. Despite the vehemence of his words, his crouched posture and their failure to ac­ knowledge his presence reduce him to impotence. For commedia del­ l’arte audiences the sheer imbalance of power, played out over and over again, created sympathy for the underdog Harlequin and disdain for the master Pantalon.

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Figure 4.4 Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Francisquina and Pantalon Reuniting, with Harlequin Watching (Act 3, Scene 4). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. 43

Francisquine whom Harlequin refers to as “a used-up slut” takes on new powers in act 3, scene 5 of the play (Figure 4.5) as she appears in a very different neatly aproned costume indicating a rise in her maid status, but perhaps more significant, being pursued not by Pantalon, but by the courtier Leandro. While Leandro is insistent that she let him bed her on the spot, she now replies that he will have to go through Harlequin and Zanni who are her first line of defense. While they crouch nearby ut­ tering brave words but with no intention of actually helping her, she comes across as powerful in her own right. If this was in fact the final scene of a scenario, it makes a very strong statement both about the centrality of Harlequin’s hold on the popular imagination from his un­ derdog position and Francisquine’s increased power as she moves from being Pantalone’s slut to the demure servetta in charge of her household space.

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Figure 4.5 Scene from the Receuil Fossard Zany and Harlequin Watching Leandro and Francisquina (Act 3, Scene 5). Photo © Nationalmuseum, Stockholm. 44

Looking at these sample engravings reveals just how well-known com­ media characters became, even more so when they were recognized as the actual individuals who had put their stamp on a particular mask.45 In the case of Harlequin and Francesquine represented in this series, we become aware of their popularity with mass audiences who could pur­ chase copies of their performances. Harlequin (Arlecchino) and Francesquine (Francesquina) continued to acquire fame as top perfor­ mers for many years. Arlecchino as the hapless, irreverent buffoon be­ came known for his subversive approach to many of his royal patrons whom he openly insulted as part of his joker status. Francesquina be­ came one of the most famous female servettas, known for her know-it-all approach to sexuality, her willingness to deceive her masters, and to advance the affairs of the young lovers in her charge.

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4.4 Part IV: The Commedia dell’Arte Survives the Censorship of the Counter-Reformation Church As it became more and more successful in the last quarter of the sixteenth century, the troupes became a direct target of the zealous reformers of the counter-reformation church. In keeping with the new rules passed at the Council of Trent (1545–1563) to bring citizens back to God, secular pleasures of all kinds came under attack. The licentious behaviors as­ sociated with the excesses of Carnival were singled out because they were symbolic expressions of the World of the Flesh, and hence in the service of the Devil. Church authorities led by the Archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo (1538–1584) mounted an especially vigorous attack on the commedia dell’arte acknowledging that its lived immediacy made it far too powerful to be allowed to exist. In a letter (1578), he complained: Indeed, I judge them [dramatic performances] to be more dangerous to daily customs and to souls than those other seedbeds of much evil, the balls, feasts, and such spectacles, because of the dishonest and wanton nature of the words, actions, and gestures that are presented in such dramas, which being more latent, make a more vivid imprint on men’s souls.46 It took some time for the Church to find a method that could shut down public performances by the commedia troupes who had become popular enough to receive invitations from both State and Court officials to play for extended periods. In order to stop acting companies from bringing their plays into a city, the Church authorities would demand that as soon as the troops arrived, they were to be ordered to appear before the priest and submit their scripts in advance so that they could be examined for blasphemy or obscenity. The authorities would then delay approving the scripts for so long that the players would be forced to leave because of lack of funds to pay their members. Apparently, this method had proven to be very successful in the Papal States in stopping many groups from performing over an extended time period.47 In July 1583, an effort was made to force the famous Gelosi troupe out of Milan where they had been invited to perform by the Spanish gov­ ernor himself after he saw them in Verona. When they arrived, Cardinal Borromeo’s proxy, Monsignor Audoeno, played the one card available to the Church: The right of censure granted by decree of the Council of Trent. In an effort to force them to leave, knowing full well that the comedians performed by improvising from minimal scripts, he requested that they submit their scripts to the Curia for approval. Adriano Valerini, an erudite doctor of laws, playwright and actor, who was at the head of the Gelosi at the time, tried to expose the Curia by complaining to the

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governor that it was the censors’ problem, since they knew that the commedia performed without scripts. The governor attempted to help the Gelosi by suggesting that a learned judge be appointed to listen to the comedians explain the main ideas but this solution was opposed by Church officials who wanted to force the Gelosi to leave the city. At this point, Valerini decided to fight back by appearing to comply with the censorship request. He offered to have the actors agree to meet with the authorities every day before a performance to explain their scenes by acting them out. Such a strategy suggests that Valerini was counting on the nonverbal dimension of the improvised scenes to hide the subversive messages of the commedia dell’arte’s live performances. Since even the smallest of gestures and facial expressions carried significant meanings, the comedians acting out their scenarios could conceal any prohibited content by simply omitting to perform it. Still the battle waged on for several months until Valerini was able to get the Senate, as the secular arm of the government in charge of censorship, to fight back against the Church, albeit with the help of a lawyer. For some time the actors had to defend their scenarios each day before performing, until everyone reached the point of exhaustion. In the end, the Governor was able to get the Church to back off and finally the comedians gained their in­ dependence. Winning this prolonged censorship battle had great sym­ bolic value because it resulted in the troupes gaining more freedom to travel and make their own bookings across Italy. Their battle with Cardinal Borromeo for legitimacy was turned into a legend that became propaganda in support of the moral efficacy of their comedies. For several generations, actors treated the copies of the scenarios approved by Cardinal Borromeo as precious possessions which they passed on to succeeding generations of actors. This contest with the church can be read as part of the struggle for the theater to gain legitimacy as a valuable secular institution which had a human message to deliver to the public. The bonds between the com­ media dell’arte and all levels of society remained strong, partly because the troupes were gifted in adjusting their performances to suit their au­ diences, often with the complicity of those in attendance. Since their subject matter dealt with the lives of regional archetypes, the troupes constantly adapted their scenarios to reflect local customs and dialects of their audiences.

4.5 Part V: Isabella Andreini’s Mad Performance Conquers the Court In 1589, Isabella Andreini and the Gelosi troupe received a last minute invitation to present performances in Florence when Grand Duke Ferdinando I married Christina di Lorena.48 The fact that the Gelosi were considered to be such high-caliber performers that they could

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substitute for the official aristocratic drama confirms that they had won recognition in the eyes of the Court.49 Isabella chose to play one of her popular roles as the prima donna innamorata (the leading lady) who is driven to madness. In keeping with the acting conventions of the time, the performance of madness required consummate acting skill. Andreini’s mad impersonation proved to be mesmerizing for her spec­ tators who were members of the neighboring courts from Italy and Europe whom the Medici wanted to impress In her first mad turn, she tore off her clothing, and, completely disheveled, ran back and forth across the stage.50 Here the Bolognese envoy described her: stopping first this person and then another, speaking now in Spanish, now in Greek, now in Italian, and many other languages, but always without making any sense. And among other things, she began to speak French and to sing certain songs (also in French), which gave inexpressible pleasure to the Most Serene Bride.51 If the envoys were delighted to hear even garbled versions of their lan­ guages as a sign that they were being acknowledged, Andreini left no doubt that the guest she cared about most was the new Grand Duchess herself whom she directly addressed with music and song. The deeper meaning below the nonsense was reinforced when Andreini returned to the stage for her second mad turn as she assumed the identity of each member of her troupe in succession: After that she started to imitate the dialects of all her fellow actors— Pantalone, Gratiano, Zanni, Pedrolino, Francatrippa, Captain Cordone, and Franceschina—so naturally and with so many absurd­ ities, that words alone cannot describe the value and virtù of this woman.52 In contrast to her first turn, Andreini descended further into the irra­ tional world of gesture and strange regional languages and irregular dialects spoken by the troupe members but somehow understandable to all. In paying this great tribute to the individual masks making up the troupe, Andreini raised their profiles for the entire court to see. This amazing descent into madness manifested the genius of the commedia dell’arte. When Andreini took the potion that restored her to her right mind, she spoke philosophically to her court audience about the perils of love and brought the comedy to an end, the same Bolognese envoy described her effect on the audience as lifechanging: Demonstrating in the performance of her Madness her sane and learned intellect, Isabella left her audiences murmuring and

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marvelling so that as long as the world last, her beautiful eloquence and worthiness will be praised.53 Pavoni’s lavish praise indicates that outstanding troupes like the Gelosi had reached a kind of zenith which made them sought after by the courts for the prestige they brought. These invited performances became a hallmark of court festivals and attest to the high regard the commedia had achieved as it moved away from the piazzas and into more perma­ nent spaces, as well as ducal and royal courts. Their enduring popularity indicates that the troupes continued to straddle both worlds as they continued to represent characters from all regions and classes. Their iconic presence was captured by many artists who reproduced their images. They were so well-known that they turned up as figures on a gameboard. In the same year as the wedding, several of the character masks whom Isabella performed appeared on a gameboard that was widely circulated.54 Of the eight fellow-actors Pavoni noted that Isabella Andreini was imitating in her performance of May 13, 1589 (as listed above),55 all but Burattino and Zanni are depicted by the engraver Ambrogio Brambilla who created it. As a further indication of how wellknown they were, several of these gameboard figures could still be re­ cognized as the actors who played them. Their fame with a broader public who could identify them on a gameboard brings to mind ties the actors’ connections to games of chance including the lotteries which were often used to fund them.

4.6 Part VI: The Commedia dell’Arte and the Courts By the mid-1580s, most of the outstanding commedia dell’arte troupes had succeeded in winning court patronage. The troupes themselves showed a par­ ticular desire to get invited to the French court for extended periods of service, or failing that, of the northern Italians duchies. For example, after the Gelosi were disbanded on Isabella Andreini’s tragic death in 1604, her son Giovan Battista Andreini found a loyal patron in Vincenzo Gonzaga I of Mantua who took care of his Fedeli troupe for many years.56 Having the protection of the courts also ensured that the troupes would be given recommendations to perform at other nearby courts connected by marriage alliances between the rulers. As the most gifted performers sought to establish themselves as artists belonging to a pres­ tigious profession, they worked very hard to avoid being lumped in with the run of the mill entertainers who also traveled the circuit. At the same time, most of the better troupes also had to earn their living by booking performance spaces in halls, private homes, and occasionally in the piazzas. For the broader public who came out to see them perform across Italy, they continued to deliver their special brand of romantic comedy combined with great wit and bawdry for the pleasure of all. Their repertoire also included a full range of dramatic genres included tragedy, tragicomedy, pastorals, and other entertainments as requested.57

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If it can be argued that the courts were guilty for sanitizing the rough and tumble buffoonery that the commedia dell’arte was famous for, it should also be noted that the courts, despite having a certain disdain for the commercial players, at the same time sought them out and prided themselves on having a company in their service. As the troupes became very successful in touring, the practice developed whereby they would commit to stay at a court for some months, often during the Autumn season. In Florence, for example, the Confidenti troupe, under company director and famous impresario Flaminio Scala, stayed from August to January in 1618.58 When they were not giving official performances, the companies used their rental spaces to bring in paying customers. A no­ table example, the Baldracca theater in the customs district, surrounded by brothels and cheap lodgings59 was rented by the comedians when they came to the city. All levels of the public could attend for a small entrance fee, but so could court members who had their own private passageway built in the Palazzo Vecchio to get there unseen. The grand-ducal family had a longstanding and enthusiastic relationship with the commedia dell’arte performers, frequently attending their plays hidden from the masses behind their private screens. The improvised “comedy of the zannis” attracted the court classes for many reasons, including the bawdy humor and physical comedy typifying the servant and nouveauriche classes. Beyond showing their apparent solidarity with the common folk, the aristocracy could enjoy their crude sexual antics while at the same time maintaining their sense of superiority, since such behavior usually characterized the lower-class characters in contrast to the in­ namorati’s refined knowledge of Neoplatonic love. The commedia del­ l’arte offered the courts and authorities the chance to appear to care about the body politic while at the same time actually permitting them to monitor public morality and social unrest.60 The Confidenti’s 1618 autumn engagement at the Theater of the Baldracca, was a case in point. Various court members got to watch and take sides for and against the volatile prima donna Celia, whose lovers insisted on storming the stage during the performances, claiming that they had paid too much to her while gambling at cards.61 Eventually she was brought into line by her Medici patron, but only after a period of chaos in which she, her mother and brother caused an uproar. Don Giovanni de’ Medici, from the illegitimate branch of the family, who was the patron of the Confidenti at the time, eventually stepped in to chastise her and demand she disown her offending family members. While this kind of fiasco allowed Don Giovanni the opportunity to exert his au­ thority, it also demonstrated how messy this kind of audience disruption could be. During his season as company director, the very experienced Scala worked very hard with his patron Don Giovanni to clean up the destructive behavior of star performers who threatened to destroy the ensemble. Together they shaped a modern commedia company that had

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learned to work together in a highly disciplined professional manner. Scala himself wanted above all to win a permanent court appointment and set out to do so by writing a fully-scripted play as proof that the scenario model used by the commedia could compete with dramatic scripts. Although the commedia dell’arte continued with its improvised acting style for some time, Scala’s full-script, along with several others from commedia playwrights, signaled that the buffoonery of the zanni with its dependence on the mixture of different dialects would be re­ placed with a standardized Italian script.62 If the courts are considered to have contributed to killing the commedia dell’arte, they were only partly responsible since many other changes took place over this two hundredyear period. It is true that by the 1630s improvised comedy was giving away to scripted texts which could be memorized. The use of written or printed materials in circulation began to alter the spontaneous compo­ sitional techniques used by the different actors. As standardized Italian became more common in written texts, the individualized masks became conventionalized. Also, the troupes became more professionalized and committed to acquiring respectability and recognition. The greatest actors among them were able to jump class. Some gained eternal fame as the fresco lunette in the main cloister of the Church of Santissima Annunciata in Florence attests. Francesco and Giovanni Battista Andreini of the famous Gelosi dynasty appear as sumptuously dressed courtiers framing a famous ceremonial event. Isabella Andreini, who had died some years earlier, was also included, watching over the proceedings from the balustrade above.63 As their repertoires came to resemble the official theater more closely, the actors were established as a new professional class. The commedia dell’arte is considered to have finally died at the hands of Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi when its message no longer resonated as an attack on the nouveau-riche merchant and professional classes; instead, it was the nobilities’ turn to be ri­ diculed.64 Over its long history, the commedia dell’arte had run its course from marketplace to court.

Notes 1 The STRANGER is the erudite theater critic complaining about the sub­ versive effects of the commedia dell’arte on the populace. First prologue, Flaminio Scala, The Fake Husband, A Comedy, ed. and trans. Rosalind Kerr (Toronto: Iter Press, 2020), 48. 2 The term “commedia dell’arte” came to have many meanings to explain what kind of professional theater it was. See Elena Tamburini who uses the term “commedia di excellenza” as a more accurate translation, hence, “theater of excellence.” Elena Tamburini, Culture ermetiche e Commedia dell’Arte: Tra Giulio Camillo e Flaminio Scala (Ariccia: Aracne Editrice, 2016), 10. 3 Domenico Pietropaolo, Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 29. This excellent recent study explores several

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facets of the commedia dell’arte from its rise to ultimate demise. He notes that it had lost this broad appeal towards the end of the eighteenth century when it came under the reforms of Carlo Goldoni and Carlo Gozzi. Pietropaolo, Semiotics, discusses five main “objects of derision” of which three are mentioned in this paragraph, 27–28. Completing Pietropaolo’s “objects of derision” are idealized romantic love and the foreign military occupation, represented by the two pairs of lovers and the Spanish captain, respectively, 28. M.A. Katritsky, The Art of Commedia: A Study in the Commedia dell’Arte 1560-1630 with Special Reference to the Visual Records (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 34. The professional troupes were formed to operate for several consecutive months or years on shared earnings and with a contract that they must perform together. Robert Henke, Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell’Arte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 55. Henke describes Zuan Polo’s impressive career, Performance, 56–63. Henke comments that hearing him switch back and forth in so many different dialects allowed the more educated audience members to enjoy “the laughter of superiority” as they heard these rustic imitations, Performance, 59. Henke, Performance, 58. Zanni was a generic version of Giovanni (John) and intended to convey their inferiorized non-individualized status. José Antonio Maravall, Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, trans. Terry Cochran (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986), 204. Elena Tamburini, Culture ermetiche e Commedia dell’Arte: Tra Giulio Camillo e Flaminio Scala (Ariccia: Aracne Editrice, 2016), 36–42. Henke, Performance, 82. The Val di Blenio (also spelled Bregno, or Brenno) is a valley between Switzerland and Como which was part of Italy in the sixteenth century. By this time the porters had lost the dignity of their trade and were seen struggling to earn a living by transporting wood, charcoal, marble and merchandise, sweeping chimneys, tending inns or selling chestnuts. See “Introduction,” Jean Julia Chai, ed. and trans. Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Idea of the Temple of Painting (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013), 8. Lomazzo chose the name for the Academy on purpose since its mascot was the Bleniese porter whom its members were obliged to imitate in every way, on the pretense of developing humility through losing their high social status. Lomazzo wanted to attack the kind of pedantry that dominated Academic circles thus opposing their blind devotion to classical models with his likeable rough porter. At their initiations they had to be informed on many precise trade secrets of the porters: know how the straw used for packaging must be tied; what type and how long the rope used for this should be; the characteristics of good wine, both red and white; how different implements and instruments used by the porters should be kept (including tools such as the stick (fusella) and the slippers (sciavatt)); how to flay a kid; and how to arrange the bags to transport a load. See Chai, “Introduction,” in Idea of the Temple of Painting, 11.

The Commedia dell’Arte 101 19 For the connections between the Academy and the commedia dell’arte, see Elena Tamburini, “I Comici Gelosi e l’Accademia della Val di Blenio,” Biblioteca teatrale 97–98 (January-June 2011): 175-195. The Gelosi troupe is generally thought to have come into existence in 1568 and to have estab­ lished itself as one of the best under the joint directorship of Francesco and Isabella Andreini who were associated with it from about 1576. It was dis­ banded when Isabella died in childbirth while traveling back to Italy from France in 1604. 20 Simone da Bologna may be the Zanni featured prominently in the Carnavalet portrait that may represent the Gelosi on tour in France in the late 1570s or early 1580s. 21 This invented mixture of Bergamask, Milanese, Venetian and Bolognese dialects mangled them together for maximum effect. It twisted classical lin­ guistic precepts, deforming language into a macaronic highly inventive if grotesque tongue full of wordplay and double meanings using sound and sense. 22 He was also joined by two brothers who were also important zannis. The Zanni names were cited as the two brothers of Simone in Pavoni’s diary of the Florentine wedding festival of 1589. See Delia Gambelli, who notes that Pavoni’s diary mentions them. The more famous of the two was the zanni Gabriele Panzanini (Francatrippa), also a member of the Bleniese Academy. Delia Gambelli, Arlecchino a Parigi. Dall’Inferno alla corte del re Sole (Rome: Bulzoni, 1993), 152. Images of Francatrippa in his typical zanni costume are included in this article in section 3 on the Recueil Fossard. 23 Lomazzo, Rime (1587), I.II, 113. Sonnet reproduced in Tamburini, Culture ermetiche, 146. 24 Tommaso Porcacchi, Le attioni d’Arrigo III, Re di Francia e di Polonia (Venice, 1574), 74. Quoted in Henke, Performance, 106n3. Cited in Feruccio Marotti and Giovanna Romei, ed. La commedia dell’arte e la società bar­ occa, vol. 2 (Rome: Bulzoni, 1991), 43, n.1. 25 Bartolomeo Rossi in his introductory address to the reader to his scripted play Fiammella, lauds Simone and two other zanni. See Henke, Performance, 106n5. 26 Il lacrismoso lamento che fè Zan Salcizza e Zan Capella, invitando tutti I Filosofi, Poeti, e tutti I Fachi delle Valade, a pianzer la morte di Zan Panza de Pegora, alias Simon Comico Gelosi, 1585, Excerpts in Marotti and Romei, 107–111. 27 The term “tumbling whore” was applied by the English playwright Ben Jonson to a commediadell’arte performer in Volpone (2.2). See Ben Jonson, “Volpone,” in Ben Jonson, Four Comedies, ed. Helen Ostovich (New York: Routledge, 2013), 59–227. 28 See M.A. Katritzky, Women, Medicine and Theater, 1500-1750: Literary Mountebanks and Performing Quacks (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 29 See Rosalind Kerr, The Rise of the Diva on the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell’Arte Stage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). I argue that having real women creating their own speeches and actions as they played the female roles allowed them to reference their personal experiences to their audiences. Their audiences knew them both as actual persons and as the characters they impersonated. Since they signaled to spectators when they were improvising virtuoso turns; such as, composing poetry, singing, playing musical instruments, competing with other prima donnas, their performances made their self-reflexive artifice visible to their audiences.

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30 This debate questioning the nature of women echoed across Europe from the fourteenth century and was hotly contested on both sides as to whether women were the inferior sex as argued from biblical time to the present. The actresses often debated on the superior worth of women in their dialogs with their male counterparts. 31 Isabella Andreini, Fragmenti di alcune scritture della signora Isabella Andreini Comica Gelosa, e Academica Intenta. Raccolti da Francesco Andreini Comico Geloso, detto il Capitano Spavento, a dati in luce da Flamminio Scala Comico, a da lui dedicate all’ illustrissimo Sig. Filippo Capponi (Venice: Gio. Battista Combi, 1617). 32 Isabella Andreini, Lettere della signora Isabella Andrini padovana, comica gelosa e academica Intenta, nominata l’Accesa (Venice: Marc’Antonio Zaltieri, 1607). 33 The Lettere were extremely popular and went through nineteen editions between 1607 and 1663. Translated into French, they are considered to have been the third most influential model for their form, coming after Ovid’s Heroides and the letters of Abelard and Heloise. Bernard A. Bray, L’art de la lettre amoureuse: Des manuels aux romans, 1550-1700 (Hague: Mouton, 1967), 14. See Valeria Finucci, Mirtilla, A Pastoral, ed. Valeria Finucci, trans. Julia Kisacky (Toronto: Iter Press, 2018), especially “Editor’s Introduction,” 12 for a more thorough discussion. 34 Alba Amicorum were pocket-sized volumes that travelers carried around with them to record their experiences which often included attending per­ formances and acquiring pictures of the players. See M.A. Katritzky, 'Was commedia dell’arte performed by mountebanks? Album amicorum illustra­ tions and Thomas Platter’s description of 1598’, Theater Research International 23 (1998), 104–125. 35 The Recueil Fossard is a collection of engravings put together by Sieur Fossard to present to Louis IV from performances of the Commedia dell’Arte in France from the 1580s on that was found in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm in the 1920s. There is a selection in Pierre Louis Duchartre, “The Pictorial Supplement,” in The Italian Comedy, trans. Randolph Weaver (New York: Dover, 1966), 315–339. 36 The great actor Tristano Martinelli has been identified as Harlequin from his distinctive costume and gestures. Harlequin is his French name for the Italian Arlecchino. See Henke, Performance, 153–174. 37 Silvia Roncagli (1547-1603) took over Francesquina from the male actor Battista Amorevoli da Treviso and he is thought to have been with the Confidenti in the 1580s. Scholars think she is more likely to have taken the role because of the emphasis on her female body. In the Receuil Fossard her name is spelled slightly differently as Francisquina. 38 English translations of the Recueil Fossard verses are by Christine McWebb. See Pierre Louis Duchartre, “The Pictorial Supplement.” 39 Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Francatripa, Harlequin Inamorato, and Licetta (act 3, scene 1):

Col. 1 Francatripa: Sir Lovers, come closer, Look at Harlequin who is dying for his mistress, He is stretched out flat, pale, glum and numb, For failing to provide a good fuck. Col. 2 Harlequin Enamored:

The Commedia dell’Arte 103 Helas! I am finished, say I and lie dead, The captain Charon (?) has taken me in his barque, Because my Francisquine where my comfort lies, Rejects my advances and is so cruel to me. Col. 3 Licetta: The poor man is only skin and bones, Burnt and ravaged by this wretched love, Harlequin, my friend, moisten your lips with this broth, It will restore you and help you regain your wits. 40 Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Pantalon marrying Harlequin and Francisquina (act 3, scene 2):

Col. 1 Harlequin: Well, Segnor Pantalon, I ask for the beautiful Francisquine’s hand In loyal marriage, I promise you not to abandon her, As long as this love rage holds me by the balls. Col. 2 Sir Pantalon: Join your hands together, and swear that you will forever be loyal to one another: For your advancement, you will receive from me six toothpicks as allowance, a pot and two ladles. Col. 3 Francisquina: Sir, I agree since it pleases you, This will undo the mistake I made, Harlequin is a jovial fellow and a carefree man, I want him for a husband, nothing more I wish. 41 Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Harlequin and children visiting Pantalon (act 3, scene 3):

Col. 1 Harlequin: Disloyal Pantalon, I must be very angry with you, You made me wed an infamous whore, She just gave birth to a girl, And I only wed her one month ago. Col. 2 I am dying of rage: here are eight (wretched) children, all yours, who I bring to you, so that you can feed them in these hard times: The father must help his children in dire straits. Col. 3 Sir Pantalon: My God, poor cuckold, you are racking your brain, I have never had any business with your wife: You wanted both cow and calf,

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42 Representations of Harlequin surrounded by swarms of little Harlequins con­ tinue as a strong motif for many more years. Henke discusses his appearance with many offspring as one of his devices to remind his patrons that he needed money for his growing brood of children. See Henke, Performance, 166. 43 Scene from the Receuil Fossard with Francisquina and Pantalon reuniting, with Harlequin watching (act 3, scene 4):

Col. 1 Francisquina: My dear friend, Pantalon, I came to see you, in order to continue our initial friendship, because I am all yours, as you know: Command then, friend, without begging. Col. 2 Pantalon: Francisquine, my love and only hope, We can enjoy our love without constraint: Whether Harlequin gets angry or jealous, You will always visit me nonetheless. Col. 3 Harlequin: I will catch you in flagrant delicti, you used up slut, And you, old driveller, old bald ruffian, I discovered your subtle shrewdness: I swear on the death of shit, you will be whipped. 44 Scene from the Receuil Fossard Zany and Harlequin watching Leandro and Francisquina (act 3, scene 5):

Col. 1 Harlequin: The spear raised, Zany, let us attack this gallant, Who wants to make love to our Fransisquina. But keep the bottle in your hand when you walk in front of me. Then, you will see how brave I am. Col. 2 Leandro: Francsiquina, my dear, I waited too long, To discover my love for you, Which will kill me in a strange way, If, on this day, I did you a service. Col. 3 Francisquina: Noble Sir Leandro, control yourself, Poor Francisquina will never be yours. But beware of Zany, Harlequin or any other Who you see come here or talk amicably with me. 45 See notes 36 and 37 above. 46 Borromeo to Cardinal Gabriello Paleotti, Archbishop of Bologna, July 1578,

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original Italian in Ferdinando Taviani, ed. La commedia dell’arte e la società barocca. Vol. 1, La fascinazione del teatro (Rome: Bulzoni, 1969), 23. All translations, unless otherwise stated, are author’s. In Ferdinando Taviani and Mirella Schino, il segreto della commedia dell’arte (Florence: La Casa Usher, 1982), 381. English translation in Kenneth Richards and Laura Richards, The Commedia dell’Arte: A Documentary History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), 249. For full coverage of the events, see James Saslow, The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996). The official dramatic entry, La Pellegrina was performed by the Intronati, the famous company of young aristocratic players from Siena. The account of her performance is recorded by the Bolognese envoy, Guiseppe Pavoni, in his Diario descritto da Giuseppe Pavoni delle feste celebrate nelle solennissimenozze delli Serenissimi Sposi il Sig. Don Ferdinando Medici e la Sig. Donna Christiana di Loreno Gran Duchi di Toscana (Bologna: Giovanni Rossi, 1589). Excerpt in Flaminio Scala, Il teatro delle favole rappresentative. Modern Edition by Ferruccio Marotti. 2 vols. (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1976), appendix 2, 1: lxxiix. Pavoni, Diario, in Flaminio Scala, lxxv. Diario, in Scala, lxxv. Diario, in Scala, lxx. For reproduction of the gameboard and the individual figures, see M.A. Katritzky, “Eight Portraits of Gelosi Actors in 1589?,” Theater Research International 21, no. 2 (1996), 108–120. Rpt. of gameboard: plate 17, 112. See note 46. After Virginia Ramponi, Giovan Battista’s wife stepped in to sing the role of Arianna at the Mantuan court in 1608, the Fedeli became the official troupe. See Richards and Richards, The Commedia dell’Arte, 67–68. Francesco Andreini in Le Bravure claimed that his Gelosi troupe can show “future actors the true way of composing and performing comedies, tragi­ comedies, tragedies, pastorals, intermedi, and other theatrical inventions, such as one can daily see on the lists of the stage.” In Marotti and Romei, La commedia dell’arte, 218. Trans. Henke, Performance, 176. There is an extensive record of Scala’s Florentine visit covered in his corre­ spondence to his patron Don Giovanni de’ Medici. Domenica Landolfi, “Flaminio Scala,” 1: 439–587 in Giovanni Battista Andreini, et al., Comici dell’arte, Corrispondenze, ed. Siro Ferrone, Claudia Burattelli, Domenica Landolfi, and Anna Zinanni, 2 vols. (Florence: Le Lettere, 1993). Baldracca itself means “whore.” See Maravell for analysis of the important role that theater played in Spain and Italy in shaping baroque values under the guise of allowing certain ex­ cesses. Maravell, Culture of the Baroque, 132–143. See Rosalind Kerr, “Scala’s Relationship with Don Giovanni de’ Medici and the Confidenti,” in Flaminio Scala, The Fake Husband, A Comedy, ed. and trans. Rosalind Kerr (Toronto: Iter Press, 2020), 12–17. Siro Ferrone, Attori mercante corsari: La Commedia dell’Arte in Europa tra Cinque e Seicento (Turin: Einaudi, 1993), 180–183. This fresco lunette by Bernardino Poccetti (c. 1607) is now in a private collection. Pietropaolo, Semiotics, 29–34.

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Works Cited Andreini, Giovanni Battista et al. Comici dell’arte, Corrispondenze, edited by Siro Ferrone, Claudia Burattelli, Domenica Landolfi, and Anna Zinanni. 2 vols. Florence: Le Lettere, 1993. Andreini, Isabella. Fragmenti di alcune scritture della signora Isabella Andreini Comica Gelosa, e Academica Intenta. Raccolti da Francesco Andreini Comico Geloso, detto il Capitano Spavento, a dati in luce da Flamminio Scala Comico, a da lui dedicate all’ illustrissimo Sig. Filippo Capponi. Venice: Gio. Battista Combi, 1617. Andreini, Isabella. Lettere della signora Isabella Andrini padovana, comica ge­ losa e academica Intenta, nominata l’Accesa. Venice: Marc’Antonio Zaltieri, 1607. Beijer, Agne and Pierre Louis Duchartre, Recueil de plusieurs fragments des premières comedies italiennes qui ont été représentées en France sous le regne de Henri III. Recueil dit de Fossard, conserve au Musée National de Stockholm. Paris: Duchartre and Buggenhoudt, 1928. Beijer, Agne and Pierre Louis Duchartre. Pierre Louis Duchartre. “The Pictorial Supplement.” In The Italian Comedy, translated by Randolph Weaver, 315339. New York: Dover, 1966. Chai, Jean Julia. “Introduction.” In Giovan Paolo Lomazzo, Idea of the Temple of Painting, 1-41. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. Finucci, Valeria. “Editor’s Introduction.” In Mirtilla, A Pastoral, edited by Valeria Finucci, translated by Julia Kisacky, 1-46. Toronto: Iter Press, 2018. Ferrone, Siro. Attori mercante corsari: La Commedia dell’Arte in Europa tra Cinque e Seicento. Torino: Einaudi, 1993. Gambelli, Delia. Arlecchino a Parigi. Dall’Inferno alla corte del re Sole. Vol. 1. Rome: Bulzoni, 1993. Henke, Robert. Performance and Literature in the Commedia dell’Arte. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Jonson, Ben. “Volpone.” In Ben Jonson, Four Comedies, edited by Helen Ostovich, 59-227. New York: Routledge, 2013. Katritzky, M.A. The Art of Commedia: A Study in the Commedia dell’Arte 1560-1620 with Special Reference to the Visual Records. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. Katritzky, M.A. “Eight Portraits of Gelosi Actors in 1589?” Theatre Research International, 21, no. 2 (1996): 108-120. Katritzky, M.A. “Was commedia dell’arte performed by mountebanks? Album amicorum Illustrations and Thomas Platter’s Description of 1598.” Theatre Research International, 23 (1998): 104-125. Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo. Rabisch. Critical text, translation and notes by D. Isella. Torino: Einaudi, 1993. Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo. The Idea of the Temple of Painting, edited and translated by Jean Julia Chai. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013. Maravall, José Antonio. Culture of the Baroque: Analysis of a Historical Structure, translated by Terry Cochran. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986.

The Commedia dell’Arte 107 Pavoni, Guiseppe. Diario descritto da Giuseppe Pavoni delle feste celebrate nelle solennissime nozze delli Serenissimi Sposi il Sig. Don Ferdinando Medici e la Sig. Donna Christiana di Loreno Gran Duchi di Toscana. Bologna: Giovanni Rossi, 1589. Pietropaolo, Domenico. Semiotics and Pragmatics of Stage Improvisation. London: Bloomsbury, 2016. Porcacchi, Tommaso. Le attioni d’Arrigo III, Re di Francia e di Polonia. Venice: Aldine Press, 1574. Richards, Kenneth and Laura Richards. The Commedia dell’Arte: A Documentary History. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990. Rossi, Bartolomeo. La fiammella, pastorale. Paris: Abel L'Angelier, 1584. Saslow, James. The Medici Wedding of 1589: Florentine Festival as Theatrum Mundi. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. Scala, Flaminio. The Fake Husband, A Comedy, edited and translated by Rosalind Kerr. Toronto: Iter Press, 2020. Tamburini, Elena. Culture ermetiche e Commedia dell’Arte: Tra Giulio Camillo e Flaminio Scala. Ariccia: Aracne Editrice, 2016. Tamburini, Elena. “I Comici Gelosi e l’Accademia della Val di Blenio.” Biblioteca teatrale 97–98 (January-June 2011): 175-195. Taviani, Ferdinando, ed. La commedia dell’arte e la società barocca. Vol. 1, La fascinazione del teatro. Rome: Bulzoni, 1969. Taviani, Ferdinando and Mirella Schino. Il segreto della commedia dell’arte. Florence: La Casa Usher, 1982.

5

Spreading the Word: Theater, Religion, and Contagious Performances J.F. Bernard

P.T. Barnum famously said, “there is no such thing as bad publicity.” Apocryphal or not, Barnum’s quip—or if you’d rather, Oscar Wilde’s remark in The Picture of Dorian Gray that “the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about”1—reminds me of early modern theater, whose popularity was paradoxically commensurate with its castigation as a site of immorality and disease. On the one hand, as Paul Yachnin and others have written, early modern theater stood at the forefront of the creation and cultivation of public spheres in early modernity, being emblematic of the more general movement toward “voluntary groupings … built on the shared interests, tastes, commitments, and desires of individuals.”2 As a popular form of entertainment, the business of early modern theater dovetailed surprisingly well with the model of contagion, one that requires repeated dissemination in a public setting to insure subsistence. Much in the way a disease exists as long as it can reach carriers, theater must constantly draw audiences in and in order to do so, much infect the public dimensions of life. Conversely, this affinity with contagion was undoubtedly conducive to the idea of early modern theater, in its physical, social, and architectural embodiments, as both a hotbed for the proliferation of actual diseases such as syphilis or the bubonic plague, but more importantly perhaps, as a corrupting force endangering morals and character. It is not surprising then, that the antitheatrical rhetoric of the time, was caked in similar vernacular. As Jennie Votava writes, the “typical antitheatrical view of theater [was] as a disease itself.”3 Conversely, Stephen Gosson, possibly the most famous theatrical detractor of the early modern period, writes in Playes Confuted (1582) that the theatrical power of seduction over the imagination is such that to watch a play is to let yourself becontaminated by it. “Vice,” he states, is learned with be holding, sense is tickled, desire pricked, and those impressions of mind are secretly conveyed over to the gazers, which that plaiers do counterfiet on the stage. As long as we know ourselves to be flesh, behold in those examples in theatres that are DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-5

Spreading the Word 109 incident to flesh, wee are taught by other men’s examples how to fall. And that they come honest to a play, may depart infected.4 Better to be talked about in the same breath as syphilis than not being talked about… Beyond his well-rehearsed attack on its inherent immorality, Gosson’s language here hints at a core belief about the powers of theater that will inform my essay’s central claim. In writing about its capacity to infect “honest” playgoers, Gosson imbues theater with contagious agency, with the ability to foster change within the audience not only while they sit in the playhouse, but once they “depart” from it. The passage alludes to the sympathetic impression of theater onto its gazing audiences, while underscoring the (perhaps) more serious threat of dissemination once they re-enter their community. We find echoes of such a concern throughout the antitheatrical tradition, as when William Prynne cautions against the threat of the contagion of theatergoers contaminating the populace at large as they “swarme thicke of late on the streets of our metropolis.”5 His curmudgeonly rhetoric aside, Gosson believes that seeing a play can change the way we see the world (and ourselves within it). Hamlet suggests as much when he remembers the story of “guilty creatures, sitting at a play, [who] Have by the very cunning of the scene/ Been struck so to the soul (2, 2. 1664–1665).6 “Struck to the soul” has clear moral implications for Hamlet here, but I draw attention to the idea that theater can induce seismic inward change in the way we understand and perceive our world, unseen to the naked eye, but nevertheless radically transformative. While this is the kind of notion that invites an obvious contagion metaphor, I would like to argue that the idea of an early modern audience being changed through a performance also broadly describes the discourses concerning religious sermon in the period. Traditionally, early modern religion is often pigeonholed alongside Gosson and other writers such as Prynne and John Northbrooke, as an ideological counterpart to early modern theater. Both spheres take shots at each other throughout the period, and they remain fundamentally opposed. Recent scholarship gave some credence to antitheatrical works, notably in their resistance to what they perceived as remaining Catholic elements within early modern culture and their recognition of theater as a powerful art form.7 Yet, the notion of yoking of theater and sermons under the auspices of early modern performance that this essay outlines, a live experience designed to usher important transformation in the individual and encourage repeated attendance, allows us to reconsider two cornerstones of the early modern public experience under previously unacknowledged common ground. In thinking concomitantly about theater and religious sermons in terms of audience experience, my chapter suggests that both performances operate under a similar model,

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in that they rely heavily on the rhetoric of contagion to successfully disseminate their ideas. Both seek to not only reach diverse audiences, but to leave a mark on them, to impress them so as to insure a continuity of sorts through communal disseminative practices.8 I argue that early modern theater and religion follow prevalent ideas concerning the speed and efficiency of contagion in trying to successfully reach their audiences at the moment of the performance and beyond. Both must draw intended crowds to designated public spaces and expose them to their respective narratives. Yet, plays and sermons also carry the inherent expectation that audience members will leave as carriers of ideas, information, or doctrines and disseminate them in their respective communities. The success of such a process relies on widespread (yet mostly scientifically inaccurate) ideas about contagion that circulated in the period; people knew contagion was fast and powerful, and both theater and religion rely on this fact to impress their ideas on audiences. Such an understanding of early modern audiences is found in not only in sermons themselves, but in theological writings about the aims of preaching, as well as within plays themselves (Shakespeare’s particularly). Both theatrical and religious conceptions of contagion as a metaphor for publicity stem from Girolamo Fracastoro’s seminal sixteenth-century theory of contagion. De Contagione (Of Contagion) essentially synthesizes various discourses on invisible seeds (from Galen and Anaxagoras to Roger Bacon) in an attempt to explain the problem of contagion as a natural phenomenon. For Fracastoro, infection incurs when invisible airborne seeds (semina or seminaria) are transmitted from one body to another. This process could manifest itself through direct contact, or at a distance, an idea that gave way to medieval ideas of contagious emotions and other intangible elements.9 Fracastoro’s theory, heavily indebted to Bacon’s thirteenth-century discourse on species, framed sympathy as a cornerstone of contagion; the idea that there needed to be a harmonious relationship of similitude between agent and subject in order for one to impress onto the other and for contagion to successfully transpire. Moreover, following medieval ideas of multiplication, Fracastoro suggested that “contagion did not merely consists of the transmission of a putrefaction, it [also] involved the generation of the seeds of the disease in other bodies.”10 Contagion was not understood as inevitable, but rather, as the result of a combination of factors under optimal circumstances that did not end with or in the infected body but rather moved through it. In other words, like most natural phenomena, contagion was a fluid process of transmission that required a sympathetic relationship amongst its parts, which brings us back to performance. Any model operating through repeated disseminations in a public setting proves inherently contagious, since survival is effectively based on not only communicating specific messages to audiences but generating in them the urge to disseminate them back into the community and eventually return

Spreading the Word 111 to the site of infection. In that sense, early modern theater and religion both appeal to the contagiousness of their stories.

5.1 Tell the Tale Anew: Contagious Stories in Theater Theater draws on our communal need for storytelling, fusing memories of familiar sources narratives with new dramatic representations. The idea that theater holds powers of transformation is nothing new. Its association with contagion, however, proves more interesting and recuperative in terms of the cyclical willingness, in movement and receptivity, toward infection that theatergoers display in that period; people flocked to the playhouses in spite (or perhaps because) of their ill repute since they desired what was being offered to them on stage. This conscious seeking out of theatrical contagion stresses its dependence on a sympathetic relationship between agent and subject. The transformation of stories from source material to playtext, from performance to an act of retelling or remembering later on, outlines the public dimension of early modern theater—what we could anachronistically conceive of a marketing practices—by replicating the transformation it engenders in its audience members (from story listener, to story carrier and ultimately, storytellers themselves). This tripartite model of communication underlines its prime disposition to not only circulate but produce stories through what Steven Mullaney has termed its “inhabited affective technology.” Audience members transform from story listeners, to story carriers, and eventually, storytellers themselves, re-initiating the transmission process outside of the original site of contagion. This process occurs in the immediacy of the performance, what Brian Richardson, in the context of a narrative theory of drams calls “stage time,” but it more importantly connects to Ricoeur’s idea of narrative time, as the time of the public, in which, he writes, “through its recitation, a story is incorporated into a community which it gathers together.”11 Indeed, “the communal act of repetition” found at the core of the historicizing process Ricoeur delineates strikes an arresting parallel with the idea that Shakespearean drama manages to disseminate stories through repeated performances beyond the spatiotemporal confines of the theatrical place, once audience members reintegrate the community. In this sense, playgoing brings about a fundamental change within the individual through the anamnestic force of contagious storytelling that creates a network between its participants. Shakespeare’s plays are astutely conscious of the ideas expressed above both in their dramatic treatment of stories on stage, but also in their persistent effort to lead audiences to think of and in terms of stories. The idea finds itself at the nexus of Othello’s dramatic structure since the play betrays an anxious concern with the contagious power of stories. Recalling how he narrated his life story to Desdemona, Othello describes how

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J.F. Bernard My story being done, She gave me for my pains a world of kisses. She swore in faith ‘twas strange,’ twas passing strange; ‘Twas pitiful,’ twas wondrous pitiful. She wished she had not heard it; yet she wished That heaven had made her such a man. She thanked me, And bade me, if I had a friend that loved her, I should but teach him how to tell my story, And that would woo her. Upon this hint I spake. She loved me for the dangers I had passed, And I loved her that she did pity them. This only is the witchcraft I have used (i, iii. 157-168).

The only witchcraft Othello used is perhaps the most powerful one of all, the one that blends imagination and memory and impresses a permanent mark unto its audience. Storytelling in Othello (and in Shakespeare) is witchcraft precisely because of the cognitive experience it provides. Desdemona fell in love with him because of the stories he told, Othello reasons, and he loved her because of her reaction to them. Iago’s endeavors rest similarly on his ability to control and disseminate the various stories he spins throughout the play to other characters and audiences alike. His capacity to make anyone “tell the tale anew” provides an arresting parallel to the cognitive force of Shakespeare’s theater. Stories being spread on stage never remain solely there. In plays such as Measure for Measure, stories and the information they contain serve as a go-between for various social spheres, being uttered on stage in front of a theatrical audience always privy to a character’s inner thoughts. The bulk of the play is spent spreading misinformation to gage a character’s true mettle and revealing actual knowledge to guide everyone toward resolution. All of this is known ahead of time by the audience, which suggests that the focus remains on the generative and contagious power associated with the spread of stories that tap into cultural memories (collective and individual) as they disseminate a new shared narrative. In Pericles, “ancient Gower” is himself a figure of the past (as the fourteenth century author of the play’s source text Apollonius of Tyre) that also narrates the (new) dramatic story of Pericles, helping the audience move through to the play’s various locales.12 In Twelfth Night, a late revelation that Viola’s clothes are with the imprisoned sea captain (5, 1. 275–276) conjures up a memory of a character we have not seen or heard from since act one. The first scene in As You Like It informs us that the third De Boys brother is named Jacques, but that detail is soon overtaken by the lengthy introduction of the melancholy Jacques that the Duke’s lords provide (2, 1). The two characters only appear on stage together in the final scene. Under these terms, theater appears inherently

Spreading the Word 113 conversional in its public nature, in the pressures it applies on the threshold between the individual and the community, in the change it brings about, and in its cognitive, affective, and narrative linking of past, present, and future selfhoods. Likewise, the ghost’s command to his son in Hamlet to “mark” him (I, V. 2) might as well be the tagline for a play obsessed with remembering stories. Old Hamlet’s request that the prince mark him is a loaded one that encompasses the ubiquitous power of memory in the play; the Ghost wants Hamlet to remember him (as King), his murder, his guilty uncle, his innocent mother, his request for revenge, but also him as a father (don’t forget me when I am gone). Hamlet’s answer, which catalyzes the revenge plot, reiterates the power bestowed to memory throughout the play: Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all my trivial fonds records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain, Unmixed with baser matter. (1, 5. 98-105). Hamlet’s pledge suggests that committing something to memory requires forgetting other things. Remembering and forgetting are fused together in a cognitive effort implying a dynamic range of actions (wiping, writing, copying). Going forward, Hamlet’s single-minded revenge quest gets problematized throughout the play by competing sets of memory that threaten to sidetrack him: His relationship with Ophelia, his friendship with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, university life, pirates, Yorick’s skull, etc. These intrusion on the memory of his father are shared by the audience as well since, as Hamlet’s confidants, we must also dismiss their concerns if we wish to see him successfully avenge the King. Such a disregard cannot be done successfully; each of those competing memories becomes part of Hamlet’s story until his demise. Hamlet’s dying request to Horatio similarly embodies the dyad of memory and forgetting that runs through the play. His first, stoic plea to his friend, “report me and my cause aright/To the unsatisfied” (5, 2. 341–342) changes somewhat as he draws nearer to death: O God, Horatio, what a wounded name, Things standing thus unknown, shall I leave Behind me! If thou didst ever hold me in thy heart,

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J.F. Bernard Absent thee from felicity awhile, And in this harsh world draw thy breathe in pain To tell my story. (5, 2. 346–352).

More so than having his cause reported, Hamlet now seems preoccupied with the way in which he will be remembered (don’t forget me when I’m gone). His final demand, once he hears of Fortinbras’ arrival changes once again: “So tell him, with th’ occurrents more or less/which I have solicited” (5, 2. 359–360). Hamlet now asks Horatio to shape his story for Fortinbras (with the editing note “more or less”). This leads to Horatio’s notorious summation of the play, which sounds much different from the story we have witnessed for the last few hours (Blood! Carnage! Unnatural acts!). The audience, having been privy to Hamlet’s entire quest for remembrance, can overlook Horatio’s tale and leave the theater with what they feel is a more an accurate memory of the play. Rather than wiping away all records and saws of books, they have instead collated all of it in the story of Hamlet. The tragedy of the Danish Prince offers a great example of theater’s powers over and awareness of its audience.

5.2 Live and Life-Giving: Disseminating Sermons to an Early Modern Audience As previously noted, the association of sermons and plays is not as antithetical as it would initially seem, given that both activities not only existed alongside each other in early modern England, but actually overlapped. In her brilliant study of conversions on the early modern stage, Lieke Stelling astutely notes that the religious’ antitheatrical stance was never strictly a philosophical one, but that it carried very practical objections as well. As she explains, religious hostility toward theater was “fueled by their conviction that playwrights drew audiences away from church service—and, eventually, the possibility of spiritual conversion, a concern that was exacerbated by the unprecedented success of commercial theater in the Elizabethan era.”13 Preachers, Stelling writes, saw theater as a rival alternative for Londoners in terms of where to spend their time: When preachers condemned theatrical practice, they did so because they regarded it as a spiritual danger as well as a threat to their business, feeling they had been drawn into a rivalry with playwrights in attracting and captivating audiences. In this competition for popularity, playwrights appeared to have a clear lead over preachers, or so it was experienced by various clerics.14

Spreading the Word 115 The idea that religion and theater were not simply ideologically opposed but rather found themselves in direct competition with one another for the attention (and patronage) of early modern audiences places them in a much closer relationship, one hinging on the similar performative tools they relied on. In criticizing theater, preachers such as Owen Felltham would also recognize that sermons could not compete with plays when it came to garnering interest: the waighty lines men finde upon the Stage, I am persuaded have beene the lures, to draw away Pulpits followers. Wee complaine of drowsiness at a Sermon; when a Play of a doubled length leades us still with alacrity. But the fault is not all in ourselves. If wee saw Divinitie acted, the gesture and varietie would as much invigilate. But it is too high to bee personated by Humanitie. The Stage feeds both the eare and the eye: And through this latter sence, the Soule drinkes deeper draughts. Things acted, possesse us more.15 Preachers often thought of their sermons in explicitly performative terms. As James Thomas Ford writes, famed theologian John Calvin “believed that the preacher spoke in two voices: One that exhorts the godly and sets them on the right path, and the other that wards off the wolves from the flock … The minister of the Word, according to Calvin, should not only give a clear understanding of Scripture, but must also add véhémence so that the message will penetrate the heart.”16 This vehemence often translated in rhetorical and performative tricks designed to make the sermon impressive. “Preachers who advocated and practiced the ‘plain style,’” Ford notes, “recognized the need to color their sermons with some rhetorical tropes. They saw the use of oratory as a means to an end.”17 Such theatrics were not only seen as a way to attract and preserve attention, but, as Eric Josef Carlson writes, came to represent the central aims of the very art of preaching given that “many preachers were prepared to argue … that it was precisely the accidents or externals—the preacher’s voice and movements, for example—that gave sermons their power to save. The delivered sermon not only was live, it was life-giving.”18 The line between theater and sermons was thus certainly a blurry one since they effectively occupied a shared performative space, a fact their respective (if not common) audiences were undoubtedly aware of. In published sermons of the time, we find numerous references to popular early modern plays used to emphasized evangelical arguments. In The Magistrate’s Scripture, famed early modern preacher Henry Smith relies on an all-too familiar metaphor when describing the duties of man throughout his life: “Every man hath part, some longer, and some shorter: And while the Actors are at it, suddenly Death steps upon the Stage, like a Hawk which separates one of the Doves from his flight.” As critics such as J.W. Blench have pointed out, Smith’s “astute

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gauge of an audience familiar with similar contentions” in Jacques’ “Seven Ages of Man” speech from Shakespeare’s As You Like It betrays the closeness with which theater and religion conceived of their audiences.19 Smith’s example is a particular useful one given both the immense popularity of his sermons, and the noted importance he gave to their performative aspects. As Lori Humphrey notes, Smith was effectively “Elizabethan England’s best-selling preacher,” one “totally enamored of the beauties of linguistic holiness [while being] fascinating specimen of late Elizabethan churchmanship.”20 Smith’s incommensurate popularity, she surmises, “was largely the consequence, then, of his performative popularity; all his best-selling sermons can be considered postscripts to performance.”21 Smith’s notoriety was such, Thomas Fuller recounts, “that on Sundays the Church of St Clement Danes had standing room only, with people jostling in the aisles for the chance to hear the silver-tongued Smith expound on his text.”22 Thus, religious sermons betray a preoccupation with contagion, publicity, and audiences that dovetails with the one I have just outlined. Recent scholarship on the topic has demonstrated that sermons were not only performative in nature, but in design as well. As Emma Rhatigan points out, the ways in which preachers crafted sermons were inherently theatrical in their attempt “to both shape their oratory to a particular congregation and to exploit the architectural and spatial dynamic of their performance space in order to enhance the rhetorical potential of their sermons.”23 Rhetorical training for sermons emphasized their performative dimension as much as their composition and in their assessment or critique of particular preachers, people were often quick to bring up element such as monotonous tone, apathetic delivery or lack of emotion. Moreover, sermons enjoyed tremendous popularity in England as performative events. The “huge appetite and enthusiasm for preaching” seen across England, Rhatigan goes on to explain, created “extra-parochial lectureships to provide additional preaching,” which she identifies as a sign of the gradual shift in sermons toward becoming “free-standing events in their own rights [in which] the pulpits were stages, providing an opportunity for sometimes histrionic and emotive performances.”24 This fundamentally public dimension of preaching was most evident in outdoor sermons such as the pulpit at Paul’s Cross in London. “The fact that it attracted large crowds,” Rhatigan writes, “meant that it was also used for the publication of proclamations.”25 In Paul Cross at London, we find the impingement of sermons on the public dimensions of life, the association between the memory of a repeated performative action and an intrinsically public space. Sermons were a complex matrix of religion, politics, and culture in the period, much too complex in fact for this paper to do it justice. Yet as public events in constant need of repeated attendance, they come close to the ways in which theater and its stories insured its subsistence in the

Spreading the Word 117 period. As John Craig explains, the reception of sermons was often tied “to the popularity of particular preachers,” and to the various performative aspects of their oratorical skills (physical appearance, delivery, emotions, etc.) that would prove most memorable.26 Craig gives the example of sermons by William Glibery, as a “reminder that early modern sermons were potent occasions, irritating or confirming the different members of their auditories, bits and pieces being remembered and becoming the stuff of conversations. They were a dynamic element in the shared world of social communication.”27 Glibery’s oratories were known to be exaggeratedly performative, often making references to audience member’s home lives and favoring the lasting impression of a pun, joke or emotional moments on audiences over the substance or the doctrines preached in the sermons). Such a bend was undoubtedly criticized but its very existence shows a conscious attention to the contagious performance of sermons as a way to ensure their continuity. Given the seventeenth-century expectation that “the sermon preached would become the sermon repeated,”28 preachers were astutely conscious of the public life of their works and of the need to make an impression on the sermon's audience.

5.3 Huddled About the Campfire: Community Building Through Performance The strongest tie binding theater and sermons is perhaps found in their very audiences, and in the universal drive toward community and shared experience. In her wonderfully hybrid piece “It was a dark and stormy night, or why are we huddling about the campfire?” Ursula Le Guin ponders our quintessential attachment to stories and storytelling by asking “Why are we huddling about the campfire? Why do we tell tales, or tales about tales? Why do we bear witness, true or false? … Is it because we are so organized as to take actions that prevent our dissolution into the surroundings?” In stressing the inherent survivalist instinct found in this practice (and its fundamentally ritualistic nature), Le Guin connects storytelling to ideas of evolutionary progress, by way of zoologist and neurophysiologist J.Z. Young, who explains in The Life of Vertebrates that “living things act as they do because they are so organized as to take actions that prevent their dissolution into their surroundings.” Taking actions to prevent dissolutions is what Shakespeare’s theater does in by asking its audiences to remember its stories. Le Guin’s paints storytelling as a pulsating matrix of interactivity between teller and listener, something that constantly tows the line between transforming itself and transforming its participants, describing it at some point as “writing a story while reading it with close attention … not sure what to expect, but collaborating hard, as it if that was anything new.” When it comes to memory and theater, we are indeed

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collaborating hard in remembering a play, even if we fundamentally transform it in the process. The association of fire with communitybuilding dates as far back as the classical philosophies of Aristotle, Plato, or Protagoras, and is perhaps best exemplified by “the story of origins” that Vitruvius relates in his writing on architecture (de architectura), where primitive men gathered for the first time around an accidental forest fire. Vitruvius explains that In this gathering of people, as they poured forth their breath in varying voices, they established words by happening upon them in their daily routines. Later, by signifying things with more frequent practice, they began by chance occurrence to speak sentences and thus produced conversations among themselves.29 More than its dangers, the fire’s warmth caused people to socialize, develop language, and ultimately, as Le Guin seemingly suggests, storytelling. Taking actions to prevent dissolutions is what theater does in asking its audiences to remember its stories. It is also what early modern preachers do in tailoring their sermons to fit the public and venue they were to perform in. The campfire image connects both early modern worlds on the level of repeated exposure to ideas and narratives that audiences subsequently bring home with them. It exists as much in Hamlet’s dying request to Horatio (“tell my story [and] report me and my cause aright”) as it does in the drive to utilize and perpetuate the “psychological and converting power of the spoken word” that James Rigney ascribes to sermons. Both are understood as actions to prevent dissolution in the surroundings. Yet, each of these processes contain their share of risks and shortcomings. On the one hand, any consideration of the retentive quality of their performances harkens us to precarious world of firsthand accounts and reviews. Remembering and retelling are in themselves messy and fluid actions. Our theatrical memory is, as Tribble and Sutton put it, deeply anachronistic and polytemporal. It bridges the gap between “the embodied sensory-affective realm of individual experience” during the performance and “the social and material constituents of our activities in remembering.”30 Simply put, memory is both past and present. In this sense, early modern theater functions as the site of narrative infection, what historian Pierre Nora could call the “site of memory” (lieu de mémoire),31 even though the actual act of memory that Tribble and Sutton are referring to takes place away from such a site, in the aftermath of the performance, when one recalls the story. In his discussion of vernacular criticism, Michael Bristol remarks that a narrative “always has scope and extent beyond what is explicitly reported in a contingent text or performance” because it's inevitably complemented by “one’s

Spreading the Word 119 own background knowledge about how the world works.”32 Bristol’s focus looks to questions of moral agency more than narratives, but the ideas nevertheless touches on the contagious and cognitive effects of stories told on stage. “The basic competence for understanding a story as a process of filling in or completing gaps in the contingent storytelling,” Bristol writes, “is acquired at a very early stage of social learning [and is] a basic condition for the possibility of ‘getting the story.’”33 Remembering a play inevitably entails muddling past and present since, as James Wertsch and Henry Roediger explains, in acts of collective remembering, “the past is tied interpretatively to the present and if necessary, part of an account of the past may be deleted or distorted in the service of present needs.”34 The same holds true for sermons since, as Ford explains, “the few parishioners who managed to remember the sermon content demonstrated a rather simplistic if not wrong understanding of the message.” There existed, he continues, “a certain communicative impasse … between the preacher’s intent and the popular reception,” given that the “few parishioners who managed to remember the sermon content demonstrated a rather simplistic if not wrong understanding of the message.”35 On the other hand, any model built on hopes of retention and later dissemination carries the inevitable risk that the message can get lost or corrupted (misremembered). As Ford explains of the critical history of sermons, While the literature on preachers and homiletics is vast, scholars have had a more difficult time in assessing the reception of sermons. This lacuna in the study of preaching is surprising in that preaching was intended to move auditors and provoke some kind of response. Nonetheless, information on popular responses to preaching is few and far between. Rare is the external source that allows us to see how a lay audience understood the message of a sermon … Understanding the sermon as a “social event” involves knowing something about the style and personality of the preacher, the context of the sermon, the social makeup of the audience, and the events or issues of the day.36 Thinking of religious sermons and theatrical performance concurrently opens new critical avenues from which to reimagine the early modern public existence through contagiousness and the “market strategies” that both spheres employ in order to make a cognitive and emotional impact on its audience. In doing so however, much like Glibery’s sermons, we are confronted with the idea that flavor often trumps substance; we are more easily convinced or prone to remember snapshots of heightened stimulation than precise content, what Craig calls a “nutshell of an arresting image, phrase, activity, or strong reaction, whether in admiration

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or disgust.”37 Yet, the desired result is achieved nonetheless and the dissolution into the surrounding is averted. When preaching or telling a story on stage, there is no such thing as bad publicity, but it is also uncertain that the impression made will not impede the knowledge imparted.

Notes 1 Wilde’s novel opens with Lord Henry trying to convince the artist Basil Hallward, to send his most recent painting to the Grosvenor. With Hallward reticent, Lord Henry remarks that “it is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about,” Oscar Wilde. The Picture of Dorian Gray. Penguin, 2011, 14. 2 Paul Yachnin and Bronwen Wilson, “Introduction,” Making Publics in Early Modern Europe, eds. Yachnin and Wilson (New York, NY: Routledge, 2010), 1-24, 1. 3 Jennie Votava, “Comedy, the Senses, and Social Contagion in Plays Confuted in Five Actions and The Comedy of Errors,” in Contagion and the Shakespearean Stage, eds. Mary Floyd-Wilson and Darryl Chalk (New York: Palgrave, 2019), 25; For further consideration of the antitheatrical understanding of theater as contagion, see Darryl Chalk, “Contagious Emulation: Antitheatricality and Theater as Plague in Troilus and Cressida,” in This Earthly Stage: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, eds. Brett D. Hirsh and Christopher Wortham (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), 75-101. 4 Stephen Gosson, Playes Confuted in Five Actions (London, 1582). 5 William Prynne, Histrio-Matrix, the Payers Scourge, or Actors Tragoedie (London, 1633), 500. 6 All Shakespeare quotes taken from David Bevington, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 1997). 7 See Leah S. Marcus, “Antitheatricality: The Theater as Scourge,” in A New Companion to Renaissance Drama, eds. Arthur F. Kinney and Thomas Warren-Hopper (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2017), 182-192. See also Votava, “Comedy, the Senses, and Social Contagion in Plays.” 8 As an obvious sign of the times we live in, I am compelled to say that this chapter was initially developed in 2019, where using a contagion metaphor as part of a theoretical framework was still a quaint and quirky critical maneuver. 9 See Donald Beecher, “Windows on Contagion,” in Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe, ed. Claire Carlin (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 32-46. 10 Isabelle Pantin, “Fracastoro’s De Contagione and Medieval Reflection on ‘Action at a Distance,’” in Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe, 3-15. 11 Paul Ricoeur, “Narrative Time,” Critical Inquiry 7:1 (Autumn 1980), 169190, 176. 12 The implication here is that the chorus functions as a dyad of memory and forgetting in itself, transitioning from Antiochus to Tarsus, for example, with an implied urge to forget about the latter’s horrifying incest plot place until it is brought back in the last scene. 13 Lieke J. Stelling, Religious Conversion in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 2019), 42. 14 Stelling, Religious Conversion, 51.

Spreading the Word 121 15 Owen Felltham, Resolves or Excogitations: A Second Centurie (London, 1628), 64-65. Original emphasis. 16 James Thomas Ford, “Preaching in the Reformed Tradition,” in Preachers and People in the Reformation and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Taylor. A New History of Sermons 2 (Boston: Brill, 2001), 65-90, 67. 17 Ford, “Preaching in the Reformed Tradition,” 74. 18 Eric Josef Carlson, “The Boring of the Ear: Shaping the Pastoral Vision of Preaching in England, 1540-1640,” in Preachers and People in the Reformation and Early Modern Period, 65-90, 67; 249-296, 281, emphasis mine. 19 J.W. Blench, Preaching in England in Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Basil Blackwell, 1964), 186-187. Curiously, despite the overt reference to As You Like It, W. Fraser Mitchell notes of the same passage that Smith “was accustomed to appeal to citizens of the type depicted in the plays of Jonson and Dekker,” Fraser Mitchell, English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson; a study of its literary aspects (London: Macmillan, 1932), 198; Lori Humphrey, “Sermons,” in The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England, eds. Andy Kesson and Emma Smith. Series Title, Material Readings in Early Modern Culture (Surrey: Ashgate, 2013), 193-201, 195.

20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

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Humphrey, “Sermons,” 193-194. Humphrey, “Sermons,” 199. Humphrey, “Sermons,” 197-198. Emma Rhatigan, “Preaching Venues: Architecture and Auditories,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, eds. Peter McCollough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan (Oxford University Press, 2001), 87119, 87-88. Rhatigan, “Preaching Venues,” 91-92. Rhatigan, “Preaching Venues,” 104. John Craig, “Sermon Reception,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, eds. Peter McCollough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 178-193, 182. Craig, “Sermon Reception,” 180. Craig, “Sermon Reception,” 189. See Olga Medvedkova, “In the Beginning, There was Fire: Vitruvius and the Origin of the City,” trans. Philippe Malgouyres, in Wounded Cities: The Representation of Urban Disasters in European Art (14th-20th Centuries), eds. Marco Folin and Monica Preti (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 75-99. Tribble and Sutton, “Minds in and Out of Time: Memory, Embodied Skill, Anachronism and Performance,” Textual Practice, 26, no. 4 (2012): 587607, 589. Pierre Nora, “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” Representations 26 (1989), 7-25. Michael D. Bristol, “Vernacular Criticism and the Scenes Shakespeare Never Wrote,” Shakespeare Survey 53 (2000): 89-90. Bristol, “Vernacular Criticism,” 89. James Wertsch and Henry Roediger, “Collective Memory: Conceptual foundations and Theoretical approaches,” Memory 16, 3 (2008): 318-326, 320. James Thomas Ford, “Preaching in the Reformed Tradition,” in Preachers and People in the Reformation and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Taylor. A New History of Sermons 2 (Boston: Brill, 200), 65-90, 83. Ford, “Preaching in the Reformed Tradition,” 81. Craig, “Sermon Reception,” 184.

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Works Cited Beecher, Donald. “Windows on Contagion.” In Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe, edited by Claire Carlin, 32–46. New York: Palgrave: 2005. Bevington, David. The Complete Works of Shakespeare, 4th ed. New York: Longman, 1997. Blench, J.W. Preaching in England in Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. New York: Basil Blackwell 1964. Bristol, Michael D. “Vernacular Criticism and the Scenes Shakespeare Never Wrote.” Shakespeare Survey, 53 (2000): 89–90. Carlson, Eric Josef. “The Boring of the Ear: Shaping the Pastoral Vision of Preaching in England, 1540–1640.” In Preachers and People in the Reformation and Early Modern Period, edited by Larissa Taylor, 249–296. A New History of Sermons 2. Boston: Brill, 2001. Chalk, Darryl. “Contagious Emulation: Antitheatricality and Theater as Plague in Troilus and Cressida.” In This Earthly Stage: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England, edited by Brett D. Hirsh and Christopher Wortham, 75–101. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Craig, John. “Sermon Reception.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, edited by Peter McCollough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan, 178–193. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Felltham, Owen. Resolves or Excogitations: A Second Centurie. London: Henry Seile, 1628. Ford, James Thomas. “Preaching in the Reformed Tradition.” In Preachers and People in the Reformation and Early Modern Period, edited by Larissa Taylor, 65–90. A New History of Sermons 2. Boston: Brill, 2001. Pantin, Isabelle. “Fracastoro’s De Contagione and Medieval Reflection on ‘Action at a Distance.’” In Imagining Contagion in Early Modern Europe, edited by Claire Carlin, 3–15. London: Palgrave, 2005. Gosson, Stephen. Playes Confuted in Five Actions. London: Thomas Gosson Dwelling, 1582. Humphrey, Lori. “Sermons.” In The Elizabethan Top Ten: Defining Print Popularity in Early Modern England, edited by Andy Kesson and Emma Smith, 193–201. Material Readings in Early Modern Culture. Surrey: Ashgate, 2013. LeGuin, Ursula. “It Was a Dark and Stormy Night; Or, Why Are We Huddling about the Campfire?” Critical Inquiry 7, no. 1 On Narrative (Autumn 1980): 191–199. Marcus, Leah S. “Antitheatricality: The Theater as Scourge.” In A New Companion to Renaissance Drama, edited by Arthur F. Kinney and Thomas Warren-Hopper, 182–192. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2017. Medvedkova, Olga. “In the Beginning, There was Fire: Vitruvius and the Origin of the City.” In Wounded Cities: The Representation of Urban Disasters in European Art (14th-20th Centuries), translated by Philippe Malgouyres; edited by Marco Folin and Monica Preti, 75–99. Leiden: Brill, 2015. Mitchell, W. Fraser. English Pulpit Oratory from Andrewes to Tillotson; A Study of Its Literary Aspects. London: Macmillan, 1932. Mullaney, Steven. “Affective Technologies: Toward an Emotional Logic of the Elizabethan Stage.” In Environment and Embodiment in Early Modern

Spreading the Word 123 England, edited by Mary Floyd-Wilson and Garrett A. Sullivan Jr., 71–89. Early Modern Literature in History. London: Palgrave, 2007. Nora, Pierre. “Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire.” Representations 26: 7–25. Prynne, William. Histrio-Mastix, the Players Scourge, or Actors Tragoedie. London: Michael Sparke, 1633. Rhatigan, Emma. “Preaching Venues: Architecture and Auditories.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, edited by Peter McCollough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan, 87–119. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Ricoeur, Paul. “Narrative Time.” Critical Inquiry 7, no. 1 (Autumn 1980): 169–190. Richardson, Brian. “‘Time is Out of Joint’: Narrative Models and the Temporality of the Drama.” Poetics Today 8, no. 2 (1987): 299–309. Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” In The Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington, 1006–1116. Updated 4th ed. New York: Longman, 1997. Shakespeare, William. “Othello.” In The Complete Works of Shakespeare, edited by David Bevington, 1117–1166. Updated 4th ed. New York: Longman, 1997. Stelling, Lieke J. Religious Conversion in Early Modern Drama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Tribble, Evelyn B. and John Sutton. “Minds in and Out of Time: Memory, Embodied Skill, Anachronism and Performance.” Textual Practice 26, no. 4 (2012): 587–607. Votava, Jennie. “Comedy, the Senses, and Social Contagion in Plays Confuted in Five Actions and The Comedy of Errors.” In Contagion and the Shakespearean Stage, edited by Mary Floyd-Wilson and Darryl Chalk, 25–46. New York: Palgrave, 2019. Wertsch, James and Henry Roediger. “Collective Memory: Conceptual Foundations and Theoretical Approaches.” Memory 16, no. 3 (2008): 318–326. Wilde, Oscar. The Picture of Dorian Gray. New York: Penguin, 2011. Yachnin, Paul and Bronwen Wilson. “Introduction.” In Making Publics in Early Modern Europe, edited by Paul Yachnin and Bronwen Wilson, 1–24. New York: Routledge, 2010.

6

“Sedicious” Sermons: Preaching, Politics, and Provocation in Reformation England, 1540–1570 Brian L. Hanson

In the latter years of King Henry VIII’s reign when evangelical sermons had a mixed reception among the commons, the evangelical cleric and bishop of Worcester, Hugh Latimer, was accused in the presence of Henry VIII of “sedicion” and “sedicious doctrine” in his sermons.1 The king addressed Latimer, “What say you to that sir?” Kneeling down, Latimer turned to his accuser and challenged him with three poignant questions: “Sir what forme of preaching would you appoynt me to preache before a kynge? Would you have me for to preache nothing as concerning a king, in the kings sermon? Have you any commission to ap [p]oint me what I shal preach?”2 When the accuser “wold make no answer,” Latimer then appealed to Henry, defending his commission as a preacher: “But if youre grace allow me for a preacher, I would desyre your grace to geve me leave to discharge my conscience. Geve me leave to frame my doctrine according to mine audience.”3 Latimer, being dismissed from the king’s presence, was in his conscience “burdened with the worde of sedition.”4 Though he was never formally charged or committed to the Tower prison, he consoled himself that “so farre as I know mine owne hart, there is no man further from sedicion then I, whiche I have declared in all my doinges, and yet it hathe ben ever layd to me.”5 Several years later during the height of the evangelical reformation in England, Latimer stood before another king, Edward VI, and preached a sermon in which he acknowledged that many blamed the “newe prechynge” for causing “al[l] sedition and rebellion” in England.6 The evangelical preacher in England, Latimer observed in his sermon, was castigated as “a naughty fellowe, a sedicious fellowe, hee maketh trouble and rebellyon in the Realme.”7 He dismissed that charge by incorporating the biblical narrative of the prophet Elijah’s confrontation with King Ahab: “But Gods preacher goddes prophet was not the cause of the trouble. Then is it not we Preachers that trouble England.”8 These two examples from the sermons of Latimer illustrate that English parishioners in the 1550s viewed a linkage between preaching and rebellion, which in turn demonstrates that sermons must have been politicized DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-6

“Sedicious” Sermons 125 enough to galvanize such subversive sentiments and even outright resistance to civil authority. While recent scholarship has addressed political rebellion and resistance in early modern England, there is a peculiar deficiency regarding the subject of political resistance among the evangelicals, particularly in their sermons.9 Further, while there is no shortage of scholarship addressing the early modern sermon, much more attention has been devoted to Elizabethan and Jacobean sermons, to the neglect of sermons preached during the early reformation in England.10 This chapter examines the underappreciated role of “sedicious” rhetoric in the sermons of Reformation England, particularly in the years of 1540–1570. Evangelical preachers deliberately inserted angry, political rhetoric in their sermons, including direct rebukes to political entities and popular rebel euphemisms, in order to identify with their audiences and to provoke parishioners’ emotions against magistrates. Thus, these sermons validated political protest and disobedience in the “common weale.” Focusing on these sermons of England’s early reformation is essential to unpacking how the early evangelicals wedded the genre of sermon with political dissent in shaping a godly “common weale.” Further, this chapter evaluates the use and interpretation of rebel rhetoric in sermons, asserting that political and visceral connections existed in audiences’ reception of “sedicious” sermons. How did these evangelical preachers deliberately incorporate rhetoric that provoked and shaped their audiences in opposition to political governance? How did seemingly innocuous biblical expositions of sermon texts slip into “sedicious” rhetoric? What biblical models did the evangelical clergy utilize to justify their message of disobedience and “sedicion”? A closer scrutiny of this rhetoric and sermonic techniques of these clergy is warranted in order to understand how evangelical clergy bridged the gap between exposition and application into rebel rhetoric. By demonstrating how these sermons played a crucial role in both shaping the political ethos of the English “common weale” and influencing the political opinions of audiences, the findings of this chapter contribute a much-needed dimension to the rhetoric of rebellion in Reformation England.

6.1 The Evangelicals’ Views of Sermons While not all audiences of sermons in England were in agreement to the content or purpose of sermons, the evangelical preachers of the early reformation in England shared common ground on the primacy of preaching and its significance to the nourishment of their audiences. In his Short Catechisme, John Ponet submitted four “marckes” of a “true” church, the first of which was the “pure, preachyng of the gospel.”11 Latimer observed that preaching was essential to salvation. With echoes of the Apostle Paul, he asserted that to “take away preaching, [was to]

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take away salvation.”12 John Calvin, though in Geneva, counseled Protector Somerset in a letter of 1549 that “the reformation [in England] will not succeed unless unfolded by preaching.”13 The evangelicals were also universally united regarding the content of sermons. In theory, the evangelicals held that clergy were to exclusively preach “Gods most holy word,” specifically the “Gospell.”14 Thomas Becon exhorted his fellow ministers that they were to only “preach the worde of God to the flocke” and “fede them with the pure Evangelion & true Gospell of Christ.”15 Both Becon and Latimer specifically forbade the preaching of “tales of Robyn hood,” which would have had undertones of “sedicion.”16 From the evangelicals’ perspective, failing to preach the Bible was tantamount to spiritual famine. Becon warned that “whan the preachyng of Gods word fayleth, the people peryshe and runne cleane oute of order.”17 The early English evangelicals insisted that sermons had a “edifying,” spiritual purpose for their respective audiences. The preaching of the “Gospell” was to elicit repentance, faith, and love for God from parishioners.18 Thomas Cranmer averred that “by the preaching of gods most holy word” the “great benefites” of “comforte, ioy, or peace” would be “felt.”19 John Jewel stressed the importance of “the holsom preaching of the Gospell” through the Holy Spirit who would “mollifie and soften the hardnes of mans heart.”20 The “office and charge of preaching repentaunce and remission of sinnes,” Ponet reasoned, was the duty of all “divers and sondrye Ministers.”21 Cranmer went further in teasing out what sermons were to do beyond internal “edifiying, instruction, and comfort.”22 Preaching was to ultimately produce “godly” actions, to “move the people to honor and worshippe almighty God, and diligently to serve hym, every one accordynge to their degre, state, and vocacion.”23 Not surprisingly, the quintessential biblical model of all preachers was Christ who was “the preacher of all preachers, the patrone and the exemplar, that al preachers ought to folow.”24 The other biblical models commended by evangelicals were Isaiah and Jonah.25 Given that these evangelicals held that the content of sermons was restricted to the Bible and the objective was only spiritual, it is intriguing how much many of their sermons sharply veered from what they argued a sermon should be. While the evangelicals established their own standards and expectations, the government had its own stipulations, laying the parameters for acceptable preachers and preaching. The records of the Privy Council meetings during Edward’s reign suggests that there were strict regulations and careful scrutiny of sermons. All preachers were required to subscribe to “certain articles” and “to make report of theyr opinions.”26 Further, preaching was strictly prohibited on “workedaies” due to “the disposicion of the people to idelnes.”27 Any preacher not strictly adhering to the established protocol was required to attend a Council meeting for questioning. Thomas Putto, a lay preacher, was summoned

“Sedicious” Sermons 127 to the Council for his “lewd preaching,” but even after he was corrected, he continued “of his owne hedde [to] preache as lewdely as he had doone before.”28 A “yonge, learned” preacher had apparently “preached sediciousely,” and after “divers admonytions, [he] persevered from evill to worse.”29 He was eventually examined by Archbishop Cranmer. Even bishops did not escape the watchful control of the Council. George Day, Bishop of Chichester, was under surveillance for his questionable preaching. Day appeared before the Council on November 8, 1550 due to accusations against his preaching, and he was given two days to submit his sermons for the Council to review.30 Other records from the Henrician, Edwardian, and Elizabethan reformations demonstrate a serious approach taken against “sedicious woords in a sermon.”31 As demonstrated from the 1549 Rebellions, the Council was acutely aware that “sedicion” uttered from the pulpit and transmitted to the ears of audiences had the potential of catastrophic damage to society. Within this context of suspicion and surveillance the evangelical preachers ventured to deliver their “sedicious” sermons.

6.2 “Sedicious” Sermons and Court Prophets The relationship of evangelical sermons with “sedicion” in the early reformation in England must be understood within the framework of Old Testament prophecy and court prophets. The evangelicals regarded all “true” preachers as, in Cranmer’s view, “hys [God’s] messengers” to the “common weale” of England.32 This linkage between the sermon, which was essentially God’s message, and the preacher-messenger from God led many evangelical preachers to conclude that they themselves were court prophets, preacher-prophets, in the mold of their Old Testament counterparts. These English evangelical preachers viewed preaching as prophecy in two senses: The declaration of the words of God through sermons and the foretelling of divine predictions and prophecies regarding the future. Evangelical preaching, therefore, strictly conformed to Old Testament functions and models of prophecy. In his prayer book entitled, A flour of godly praiers, Becon interpreted England’s religious history as an unbroken succession of English evangelical “prophets” whom God had “raysed up” to “cal us [the common weale of England] unto repentaunce.”33 Becon’s interpretation of prophetic continuity was strikingly parallel to Stephen’s sermon, essentially a narrative of Israel’s Old Testament history, delivered immediately prior to his martyrdom. As Stephen drew a connection between Israel’s disobedience to the Old Testament prophets’ call to repentance and the spiritual rebellion of the Pharisees of Stephen’s day, so Becon forged a direct connection between England’s history of “condemning” and “burning” her preacher-prophets and the refusal of religious conservatives to submit to Edward VI’s reforms.34 In his historical narrative,

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Becon viewed the evangelical preachers in England’s past and present as “prophets.” Beginning with Gildas, the sixth-century British monk, Becon traced the English “prophets” through the “godlye” John Wycliffe. Then arriving in his own century, Becon explicitly acknowledged the evangelical prophets of the early Henrician Reformation of the 1530s: William Tyndale, Thomas Bilney, John Frith, Robert Barnes, William Jerome, Thomas Garrett, and Anthony Parson.35 Becon’s view of prophetic continuity represented the mainstream, evangelical view, one that ultimately held that England was God’s covenanted people. This deep-seated conviction that God had raised up the early English evangelicals as preacher-prophets in the mold of the Old Testament court prophets of Israel shaped the way in which these clergy preached their sermons. Additionally, this view guided their perception of political governance in England, sanctioning them as court prophets to both interact with and challenge Tudor politics. The prophet-preachers had two target audiences in mind: The monarch and his subjects of the “common weale.” John Bale, William Samuel, and John Hooper were among those evangelical preachers who explicitly designated themselves as evangelical court prophets to Edward VI, though those three evangelicals were never officially appointed as the king’s chaplains.36 Their argument was that all evangelical preacher-prophets possessed the divine right to confront, rebuke, challenge, and counsel political governance, both face-to-face and indirectly through the medium of sermons. It was, of course, a convenient cover when the evangelical preacher dissented against public policy. Hooper, one of those evangelicals who consistently challenged political governance, affirmed that “if there [magistrates’] offence be hurtfull and slaunderous to the word of god and pernicious to the commune wealthe the preacher of Godes word must not dissemble to correct it by the word of God playnly without coloure or circumloquncion as Nathan dyd David. Elias Achab. Iohn Herod.”37 Delivering sermons as prophecy in the guise of Old Testament court prophets, therefore, became an especially successful strategy for the evangelical preachers to employ whenever they were accused of “sedicion.” Because divine prophecy in the Old Testament both superseded and directly influenced governance in the commonwealth of Israel, the evangelical prophets of England found in the Old Testament a blueprint and vision for a “godly common weale,” one that included “godly” governance under a “godly prince.” Thus the sermon became a prophetic message and mandate delivered both to the king and commonwealth, for all to obey. The obvious advantage of Old Testament prophetic rhetoric was the appeal to the commons of England. In this context of spiritual idolatry, it was necessary for these early modern evangelical preacherprophets to portray Catholic priests as the “prestes of Baal.”38 Portraying “false” religion within a framework of Old Testament political theology, biblical rhetoric was an effective method of playing up to

“Sedicious” Sermons 129 the increasing biblical literacy of English audiences due to the access to the Bible after Miles Coverdale’s translation in 1535. However, the disadvantage of this use of Old Testament rhetoric from the perspective of the evangelical prophets was that anything that contradicted the monarch or magistrate, even ideas rooted in the Bible, could be perceived as “sedicion.” The English evangelical prophets regularly defended themselves against the charge of “sedicion” by appealing to the Old Testament prophets. The objective was to validate the evangelical cause as the “true” church and to deflect the charges from English Catholics that it was a “newe” religion. One way to accomplish this objective was to use the technique of reimagination and contextualization of Old Testament prophecies, a highly entertaining way to submit biblical models that evangelical prophets could adhere to. Both Becon and his fellow evangelical, Robert Crowley, creatively placed themselves in Old Testament texts as court prophets who confronted and protested against their king. These biblical reimaginations were essentially pieces of propaganda intended to bolster divine authority as true prophets in the public image. They were also intended to reinforce the Old Testament precedent that a court prophet had the prerogative to publicly rebuke kings and magistrates. For example, Becon reimagined himself as Elijah the prophet, adapting I Kings 18 to the context of the year 1550.39 Becon boldly challenged his King Ahab, ironically the evangelical Edward VI, and defending himself against the king’s charge of “sedicion” and of being the “troubler” of England, shamelessly reciprocating the charge of “sedicion” to Edward. Crowley also employed a biblical reimagination of the situation by assuming the figure of the prophet Ezekiel, who in the thirty-fourth chapter, engaged in a dialog with God regarding the corrupt leadership of Israel.40 But in Crowley’s contextualization of Ezekiel, the leadership of England came under God’s condemnation: Thou sonne of manne sayth the Lord: prophecye agaynst the shepherdes of England, prophecy and say unto those shepheardis: thus sayeth the Lord God. Wo be to the shepherdes of England, that have fed them selves. What ought not those shepherdes to have fed those flockes of England.41 In both examples, Becon and Crowley were deliberately demonstrating a linkage between evangelical prophets with Old Testament court prophets. These reimagined, contextualized biblical scenes reinforced the idea that the evangelicals were the “true” preacher-prophets, and hence, of the “true” church of God. Not only did the English preacher-prophets utilize the proclamatory function of their office through sermons, but the prediction of future events was another facet of sermon delivery on which they capitalized.

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The audacious, risky business of predicting the future from the pulpit was one from which the evangelicals did not recoil, because it bolstered their divine authority as preachers in the eyes and ears of their audiences. While early modern English evangelicals in theory affirmed the cessation of the Old Testament office of prophet, this belief did not prevent them from pronouncing plagues on England. If the evangelical preachers disapproved of political decisions, they responded with specific plague warnings and prophecies within their sermons. The use of “plague” rhetoric became a potent, “sedicious” instrument of propaganda as a means of validating the evangelical cause in its prophetic war against English Catholics and anyone who resisted the evangelical reformation in England. Plague rhetoric and anything prophetic, particularly in the 1550s, was synonymous with political protest. Anything that predicted misfortune or judgment on the “common weale” of England was treated as “sedicious” and “traysonous.”42 Indeed, Edward’s reign was one of clamping down on seditious speech.43 The penalties for “sedicion” in Edward’s reign included monetary fines, imprisonment, and cropping of ears.44 “Sedicious” speech was taken very seriously, especially “lewde” and “vayne” prophecies. The mixture of politics and religion was treated as an explosive concoction, because audiences were affected by it. A number of men were committed to the Tower prison in 1552 and 1553 during Edward’s reign for their “lewde prophecies,” including a David Clover of Bath, John Davies, and William Cossey.45 It was not only an offense against the crown for originating these “sedicious” prophecies, but it was also a criminal act to disseminate the “sedicious” prophecies of others. In June 1553, a warrant was issued for the “apprehension” of one named Neweton for being a “spreder abrode of vayne prophesyes.”46 Another named Clerke was accused in April 1552 of being a “reporter abrode of certaine lewde prophecies and other slaunderous matters touching the Kinges Majesties and dyvers noble men of his Councell.” He was committed to the Tower for further “examination” until a “worthy punishement” was decided.47 Northumberland, in a letter to William Cecil on October 30, 1552, expressed his desire to move against one named Lister, a merchant tailor, who used a “lewd book of prophecy and expounds it to many people.”48 Numerous other examples abounded in the reign of Edward VI. While the content of these prophecies is not explicitly stated in these civil suits, clearly these prophecies were rampant during the Edwardian regime. They were viewed by the crown as dangerous and “sedicious,” for/as it undermined the authority of the state. Evangelical sermons between 1540 and 1570 were charged with plague rhetoric, specifically predictions and threats of future plagues on England as consequences for a failure to repent. The objective of this type of plague rhetoric was to instill terror within and to persuade audiences to repent from sin and to “amend” their lives. The predictive,

“Sedicious” Sermons 131 subjective element of plague prophecies yielded a rhetoric that was sometimes colorful, if not, almost unbelievable. Instigating fright with threats of the imminent occurrence of supernatural, catastrophic, sometimes wildly fantastical events could be an effective propaganda weapon to elicit the desired repentance.49 The “providential” signs and wonders witnessed and confirmed by people in sixteenth-century England were frequently politicized.50 Furthermore, the evangelical prophets’ contemporary application of Old Testament plague rhetoric to English society was intended in part to validate the evangelical faith in direct contrast with Catholicism. This integration of biblical prophecy within their own rhetoric was intended to affirm their own alleged divine authority as representatives of God. These predictive, plague prophecies can be divided into two classifications. First, the evangelicals incorporated countless plague prophecies without specifying the exact nature of the plague. This was a “safe,” low-risk use of plague prophecies without committing to precise, specific prophetic fulfillments in England, thus avoiding being exposed as a “false prophet.” The plague predictions were also broad and nebulous enough to evade public scrutiny of and skepticism to the prophecies, thus safeguarding the credibility of the preacher. The pervasive prophetic formula for this division of plague prophecies was a statement connecting the “vengeaunce of God” with a plague. Thomas Lever, for example, warned England in a 1550 sermon of the impending “vengeance of god, as a dewe plage and punishment,” evading any specificity as to what the “plage” might look like in England.51 While some evangelical prophets relied upon vague plague predictions, other prophets boldly prognosticated the explicit nature of God’s looming “vengeaunce” on England. This type of specific plague prediction relied upon Old Testament models, which were often alluded to or cited in the prediction. One prominent example of this is found in another sermon preached by Lever in which he contextualized the biblical narrative of the prophet Gad, who pronounced a plague of pestilence on Israel in 1 Chronicles 21. Recasting himself as the English Gad, he utilized Gad’s rhetoric in pronouncing a plague on England: “the aungell of the Lorde [is] with a sworde of vengeaunce redye to destroye you.”52 His contextualization of Gad’s prophecy insinuated that some type of deadly pestilence would ravage England as the angel of the Lord judged King David’s Israel. In addition to predictions of pestilence, some evangelical prophets explicitly predicted that England would be invaded by its foreign enemies, a prediction that was strikingly reminiscent of the warnings of foreign invasion found in the Old Testament books of Deuteronomy and Isaiah.53 Lever prophesied in his sermon that “Englande shall be destroyed sodainly, miserably, and shamefullye.”54 He predicted that England’s destruction would be by means of “hundred thousandes of Scottes, Frenche menne, Papists, and Turkes, entryng in

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on every syde, to murther, spoyle, and to destroye.” His prophecy was politically far-fetched, given that England was not in any danger of invasion from any of the specific groups cited by Lever in 1550.55 Likewise, John Bradford prophesied in his sermon in 1553 that “forren enemies [are] to devoure us, and destroy us.”56 Predicting that England’s archenemies, especially the Scots and the French, would invade its lands would have been perceived as traitorous speech.57 I have already argued that the primary aim for the evangelical preachers in uttering their plague predictions was to generate “repentaunce” in England. But what specific physical, visceral responses accompanying “repentaunce” did the preachers desire to stimulate among their listeners? These prophets instructed their audiences to perform accompanying fruits of repentance in order to demonstrate their genuine “repentaunce.” One anonymous evangelical was explicit in the physical gesticulations he desired to see, appealing for his readers to perform them. In his prayer to God, he entreated that “wolde they not altogether knele upon their knees with the teares running downe by their chekes rufullye loking towardes you of the parliament house and holding up their handes.”58 Lever demanded of his parishioners in one of his sermons that they “spedely repent, and myserably lamente, and be ashamed of your vainglory, covetousnes, and ambicion.”59 Bradford expressed in his sermon that his hope was that his predictions of England’s destruction by civil wars and enemy invasions “wyll thruste oute some teares of repentaunce.”60 After threatening his readers in 1541 with impending “cursynge, wrath, vengeaunce, destruction, perdicion, damnacion,” Becon gave a vision of what he hoped to witness: “Me thynk I se[e] you nowe agayn very sory, much lamentyng, wryngyng your handes, tearyng youre heere, cursynge the tyme of youre byrth, havyng pleasure in nothing walkyng as persons in distresse.”61 This “weeping” and “hand wringing” rhetoric is reminiscent of the Old Testament prophet Joel, who called for external actions of repentance including lamentation, weeping, wailing, mourning, and fasting.62 While these external actions appear to be requisite from the perspective of these preacher-prophets, they affirmed that the internal fruit of repentance was ultimately what they were attempting to achieve by the plague predictions. Becon defended his harsh, threatening rhetoric by comparing himself to a physician who diagnoses and treats one’s disease in order to ultimately bring “ioy” and health.63

6.3 Social Justice and Political Euphemisms Another facet of the “sedicious” sermons was the presence of social justice rhetoric, which was incorporated to identify with the marginalized and neglected of England. This, again, corresponded with Old Testament prophetic messages of social justice in defending the poor,

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orphans, and widows. Social justice rhetoric had an obvious intersection with the political, thus politicizing these sermons. Rather than deeply analyzing and expounding the biblical texts, the biblical text was an extended metaphor of England, an integration of the biblical text with the contemporary context of England. For example, John 6, the account of Christ feeding the crowd of five thousand, became a contemporary narrative of England’s condition in Lever’s sermon, one that was preached before Edward VI in 1550. As Christ “lifted his eyes” with compassion on the hungry multitude, so Lever exhorted Edward VI to “lyfte up your gracious eyes of charytable pitie, and behold muche people througheoute all Englande, comminge to seke reliefe, ease and comforte, sente frome God unto them, by your excellente Maiestye.”65 Christ posed a question to Philip, one of his disciples, “From whence shall we bye breade, that these maye eate?” in order to instruct him. Lever continued his metaphor by applying it to England, offering specific counsel to Edward VI. Edward VI as the “Christen Kyng, ought to say to his Counsell: From whence shall we that be governors kepers and feders, bye and provyde with our own costes, labor, and diligence, bread, foode and necessaryes, that these may eate and be relieved.”66 Interspersed all throughout this extended metaphor and contextualization of John 6 were biting jabs and accusations, addressing the corrupt gentry in their abuse of the poor commons. Addressing the leadership of England with fiery, “sedicious” language as “ye Prynces of Sodome,” he criticized them for not curtailing the abuses of the “covetous landlordes” who took advantage of the poor.67 He then targeted those “covetous landlordes,” whom he accused of being responsible for the plight of the “Old Fathers, poore Wydowes, and yong children, [who] lie begging in the mirie stretes. O mercifull Lorde, what a number of poore, feable, haulte, Blynde, Lame, sycklye, yea, wyth idle vacaboundes, and dissembelinge kaityffes mixt among them, lie and crepe, begging in the myry streates of London and Westminster.”68 All throughout his sermon, Lever inserted graphic words and images to elicit sympathy for the poor: “myre,” “beg,” “decay,” and “crepe.”69 One common metaphor for the poor in evangelical sermons was “shepe,” a metaphor used repeatedly by the prophet Ezekiel to refer to the neglected people within Israel.70 On the other hand, many evangelical preachers jettisoned the exposition altogether, often early in their sermons, in order to address political matters. In one of his New postil sermons preached in 1566, Becon abandoning his biblical text almost immediately, addressed the political and social issues of England by condemning the “thefte, deceipt, crafte subtiltie, extorcion” that were practiced by “almost all craftes men marchants, brokers, usurers and suche like dayly.”71 He denounced the “excessive prices” of crops and livestock, accusing the wealthy of price gouging.72 Numerous other evangelical sermons likewise addressed the issue of poverty and its alleged root cause of

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covetousness of the wealthy without any attempt to connect those concepts to their primary biblical text.73 Another strategy that evangelical clergy implemented in their sermons to identify with their audiences, particularly the poor commons, was the use of popular euphemisms associated with political rebellion in early modern England. Because of the relationship of the crown with the church in Edwardian England, to incorporate rebel rhetoric in sermons was considered highly problematic from the government’s perspective. Andy Wood has contended that rebel political euphemisms thrived in the context of the 1540s and early 1550s, particularly due to the 1549 rebellions.74 These political euphemisms were deliberately charged with “sedicion,” intending to trigger emotional, visceral responses. What Wood does not note, however, is that the juxtaposition of the Bible with popular rebel rhetoric in the pulpit had both an appealing and explosive effect on audiences, with the possibility of unleashing Bible-sanctioned rebellion. Given that much of these popular rebel euphemisms were used in sermons, the English commons were regularly exposed to these euphemisms in religious contexts. Sermons from these evangelicals were infused with these popular rebel expressions, illustrating the linkage between preaching and rebellion and suggesting that the evangelical preachers’ strategy was calculated to provoke dissent. Among the most commonly used euphemisms and rebel expressions were “poll and pill,” “cormorauntes,” and “catarpillars.” J.W. Blench and Lucy Wooding have asserted that the evangelicals during the early Reformation in England favored images, metaphors, and a simple, plain style in order to identify with their hearers.75 This is especially noticeable in the use of rebel rhetoric in sermons preached during the 1550s and 1560s. Evangelical preaching was intended to adapt to and persuade the commons of England, sometimes in “treasonous” ways. The language of “poll and pill” was a frequently used term by the rebels and was synonymous with extortion and unjust taxation.76 Both evangelicals and non-evangelicals alike used this phrase to convey displeasure with political governance. Becon’s repeated use of “poll and pill” in his New postil sermons of 1566 contributed to the sharp, “sedicious” tone of those sermons.77 “Cormorauntes” and “catarpillars” were also popular rebel euphemisms in reference to the corrupt gentry who mistreated the poor.78 For some evangelical prophets, their rhetoric resembled that of violent resistance advocated in A Myrroure for magistrates.79 For instance, Lever extensively incorporated the rhetoric of “hanging,” advocating the hanging of certain magistrates. Incidentally, one of those sermons was preached before Edward VI.80 In another instance, when Lever preached at Paul’s Cross in 1550, he incorporated Old Testament metaphors to advocate hanging of magistrates: “God shall commaunde hys faythfull servaunte Moyses [Edward VI] the kynges mayesty to take and hange all the rulers of the people that have witynglye sufferd these

“Sedicious” Sermons 135 whoryshe Madyanytes these Popysh abuses.”81 It is important to note that the popular euphemisms expressed in Myrroure were all present in these evangelicals’ rhetoric. Rebel rhetoric and political euphemisms were juxtaposed with preaching in evangelical sermons in Reformation England in order to validate political protest in the “common weale.”

6.4 In Defense of “Sedicious” Sermons While most evangelicals advocated for the freedom to speak one’s conscience in the pulpit, even if deemed “sedicious,” Archbishop Cranmer called for his fellow clergy to exercise restraint in their sermon deliveries. He cautioned in a sermon of 1547 that any “resistance” to the king, “either in thought, woorde, or dede,” would be punishable by God.82 His conclusion was “we may not resyst, nor in any wayes hurt, an anoynted kyng, which is Gods liuetenaunt, vecegerent, and highest minister in that country.”83 His fellow evangelicals, however, spoke defensively of their “sedicious” sermons with consistent appeals to their “conscience” and “rights” as preachers. Cranmer’s close friend, Becon, justified his “rayling,” “sedicious” sermons with biblical proof. He refused to term this “rayling,” preferring to use “reprove.” He acknowledged that it was dubbed “rayling” by those who criticized preaching that “offended” them. He stipulated in one of his sermons that “Cesar ought not to trouble the kyngdom of God, nor violentlye to compelle menne.”84 If Caesar or any magistrate, warned Becon in his sermon, became “an impedimente to theyr subiectes in thys service of GOD, […] the subiectes oughte not to obeye hym, yea, they ought rather to suffer all extremities thenne to doo any thynge agaynste God, and theyr conscience.”85 In Becon’s case, it was the “conscience” that dictated one’s disobedience to civil authorities. For Becon this was highly personal. Becon’s statement regarding the “conscience” was published in 1566, the year of the “Vestiarian Controversy,” in which thirty-seven clergy in London were suspended in March for refusing to comply with Archbishop Matthew Parker’s injunction to wear the surplice.86 Becon was among them. Also embroiled in his own controversy over Queen Elizabeth’s requirement to don the surplice was William Fulke, preacher of St Johns College, Cambridge. In 1565, Fulke was accused by the crown for “disorderly acting and preaching” and for “making Robin Hoodes penny-worthes of their copes, and other vestments.”87 Indeed, the queen pronounced that all preachers were prohibited from preaching against the wearing of vestments or anything regarding adiaphora. The evangelical preacher and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, John Whitgift, complained to William Cecil about the queen’s prohibition: “it greavyth me that any man shoulde cease from preaching” regarding things “indifferent.”88 Inextricably linked to Becon’s appeal to “conscience” was his belief in the protection of his “right” to express his views and protest from the

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pulpit. He argued that the “pastour” should “follow his right” to publicly protest through the medium of sermons, and “the godly maiestrates in this behalfe ought to maintaine the right of the Pastours.”89 The right to protest was a basic human right for the commons, contended Becon, but he cautioned moderation and expedience when one’s right to protest was undermined: He that can preserve, kepe, and defende his right, life, and goods by lawfull meanes, doth wel. But he that can not this do, let him not outragiously complaine, but quieting himselfe, let him with a contented minde saye: That should be my righte, and they that thus wronge me, do very uniustly.90 The irony of Becon’s arguments was that these were all delivered to audiences as sermons in his London pulpit during the 1560s. The sermon that was to be rooted only in “Gods worde” and free of politicization became the very instrument of political dissent, inciting English audiences in rebellion against political governance. Becon had no qualms about publicly rebuking civil and religious authorities in his sermons when he disagreed with them, and he encouraged other ministers to do the same. In another of his New postil sermons, he defended “preachers” who “frely speake” and “without feare rebuke those thinges, that are worthy to be reproved, be the[y] persones of hye or low degree.”91 He also denied the charge of “sedicion,” arguing that parishioners tended to label what they disliked as “sedicious.” Maintaining the language of “rebuking” and “reproving,” he appealed to the Bible as a model of reproof: “For the gospell spareth no man, but reprouveth the sinnes of all men generally and without exception.”92 Becon reasoned if the “gospell” rebuked “without exception,” then as a minister of the “gospell” he was obligated to reprove his congregation, magistrates, or queen in similar fashion. Immediately after refuting the accusation of “sedicion,” he escalated the tension in defending his and others’ rights as preachers to “reprove,” challenging the magistrates themselves: Why then shold we preachers for thy cause (O thou maiestrate) cast our selves into daunger, and serve thy lustes contrarie to our office? It is not our worde. Neither are we in this office to serve thy tourne, as men hyred of thee to teach such things, as maye please thy fansye, the preachers may not do so, neither wyl they do so, nor yet ought they so to do.93

6.5 Conclusion Early evangelical sermons were calculated and deliberate in the attempt of the preachers to provoke certain responses from their respective

“Sedicious” Sermons 137 audiences. Delivering sermons in the authority of Old Testament prophets was intended to generate favorable reception among audiences. That authority was purported as divine and incontrovertible. Therefore, any accusation of “sedicion” in a sermon was deemed “false.” Evangelicals coalesced prophetic rhetoric with popular rebel rhetoric to effect change and to bring reforms to a “godly common weale.” The evangelicals ultimately incorporated prophetic language as a means of validating their office as preacher-prophets and solidifying their divine authority in challenging both the government and the Catholic Church. The evangelical preachers understood their biblically literate audiences and pressed Old Testament political theology within their sermons, pushing the boundaries of exegesis and application into sometimes questionable interpretations. They also accurately gauged the times by sensing the ethos of rebellion in their hearers, particularly after 1549. The bite of the evangelicals’ rhetoric after the rebellions of 1549 is strikingly evident in their sermons and suggests that they felt that they had greater liberty to challenge political governance under a “godly” king in Edward VI compared to Henry VIII. The ironic twist in all of this is that the evangelical preachers, who had publicly hailed Edward as a godly “Josiah” were seditiously referring to him, supposedly one of their own, as “Ahab” in their sermons. Preaching sermons as prophecy also displayed the conviction that civil authority was not the sole arbiter. The slippage into “sedicion” inherent with the prophetic model of preaching was an inevitable reality for the evangelical preachers. In this context of spiritual idolatry, it was necessary for these evangelical prophets to portray conservative religion as a false religion of Baal. These sermons in their Old Testament prophetic mold were undergirded with the conviction that England was God’s chosen people, a “godly common weale.” However, there was a glaring contradiction in the underlying message of these evangelical prophets’ prophecies. If England was the people of God, akin to Old Testament Israel, why then in the same prophecies was England also portrayed as the “enemy” of God?94 Because of the overlapping spheres of Tudor politics, religion, and society, in which the early evangelicals as court prophets ministered in, their prophetic and rebel rhetoric, intended to be salutary, had the undesired effect of being viewed as “sedicious” and “treasonous,” because it implied opposition to England’s political direction. And in Reformation England, to be a “sedicious” court prophet was tantamount to rebellion. The evangelical prophets’ vision of an Old Testament England under the spiritual guidance of evangelical court prophets was threatened by their very own sermons. The very sermons that were powerful weapons of both evangelical conversion and political protest in the hand of the evangelicals would eventually be used against them.

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Notes 1 Hugh Latimer, 27 sermons preached by the ryght Reverende father in God (London: John Day, 1562), STC 15276, sig. F7r. 2 Latimer, 27 sermons, sig. F7r. 3 Latimer, 27 sermons, sig. F7r. 4 Latimer, 27 sermons, sig. F7v. 5 Latimer, 27 sermons, sig. F7v. 6 Hugh Latimer, A moste faithfull sermo[n] preached before the Kynges most excelle[n]te Maiestye (London: John Day, 1553), STC 15290, sigs. B7v–B8r. 7 Latimer, Moste faithfull sermo[n], sig. A4r. 8 Latimer, Moste faithfull sermo[n], sig. C1r. Latimer was referencing 1 Kings 18:18. 9 David Cressy. Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010; Scott Lucas. “‘Let none such office take, save he that can for right his prince forsake’: A Mirror for Magistrates, Resistance Theory and the Elizabethan Monarchical Republic” in John F. McDiarmid, ed. The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 91–107; Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Andy Wood, The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 10 J.W. Blench, Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1964); Eric Josef Carlson, “The Boring of the Ear: Shaping the Pastoral Vision of Preaching in England, 1540–1640” in Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, ed. Larissa Taylor (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 249–296; Arnold Hunt, The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); John N. King, “Paul’s Cross and the Implementation of Protestant Reforms Under Edward VI” in Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520–1640, ed. Torrance Kirby (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 141–159; Kevin Killeen, The Political Bible in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Millar MacLure, The Paul’s Cross sermons, 1534–1642 (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1958); Peter McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Mary Morrissey, Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); Susan Wabuda, Preaching during the English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 11 John Ponet, A short catechism (London: John Day, 1553), STC 4812, sig. G2v. 12 Latimer, 27 sermons, sig. G8v. Latimer’s statement mirrored Romans 10:14. 13 The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom), State Papers 10/5f.23. 14 John Bradford, Godlie meditations upon the Lordes prayer (London: Rouland Hall, 1562), STC 3484, sigs. B7r–v; Thomas Cranmer, Catechismus (London: Nicolas Hill, 1548), STC 5993, sig. R5v; John Jewel, An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande (London: Reginald Wolf, 1564), STC 14591, sig. C1r. 15 Thomas Becon, A pleasaunte newe nosegay (London: J. Mayler for J. Gough, 1542), STC 1742, sig. L7r. 16 Becon, Pleasaunte newe nosegay, sig. A7v; Hugh Latimer, The seconde [seventh] sermon of Maister Hughe Latimer (London: John Day and William Seres, 1549), STC 15274.7, sig. X6r.

“Sedicious” Sermons 139 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Becon, Pleasaunte newe nosegay, sig. A3v. Cranmer, Catechismus, sigs. X6r–v. Cranmer, Catechismus, sigs. R5r–v. Jewel, Apologie, sig. C1r. John Ponet, The humble and unfained confessio[n] (Wittenburg: Nicholas Dorcastor, 1554), STC 5630, sig. C5r. Thomas Cranmer, Certayne sermons, or homelies appoynted by the kynges Maiestie (London: Richard Grafton, 1547), STC 13640, sig. A2v. Cranmer, Certayne sermons, sig. A2v. Latimer, 27 sermons, sig. G8v. Latimer, 27 sermons, sigs. D3r, F8r. The National Archives (Kew, United Kingdom), Privy Council 2/4f.624. TNA, PC 2/4f.58. TNA, PC 2/4f.21; Mark Byford, “The Birth of a Protestant Town: the Process of Reformation in Tudor Colchester, 1530–1580” in The Reformation in English Towns, 1500–1640, ed. Patrick Collinson and John Craig (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 28. TNA, PC 2/4f.226. TNA, PC 2/4f.159. TNA, PC 2/1f.185; TNA, PC 2/4f.246; TNA, PC 2/4f.717; TNA, SP 63/ 28f.20. Cranmer, Certayne sermons, sig. N3v. Thomas Becon, A flour of godly praiers (London: John Day, 1550), STC 1719.5, sigs. A4r–v. Becon, Flour of godly praiers, sig. A4v. The biblical reference is Acts 7. Becon, Flour of godly praiers, sig. A4v. John Bale, The first two partes of the actes or unchast examples of the Englysh votaryes (London, 1551), STC 1273.5, sig. B1r; William Samuel, A warnyng for the cittie of London (London: Humfrey Powell, 1550), STC 21690.8, sig. A2r; John Hooper, A declaration of the ten holy co[m]maundementes of allmyghtye God (Zurich: Augustin Fries, 1549), STC 13746, sigs. K7r–v. Hooper, Declaration, sigs. K7r–v. Anne Askew, The first examinacio[n] of Anne Askewe latelye martired in Smythfelde (Wesel: D. van der Straten, 1546), STC 848, sig. E4v; John Bale, The apology of Iohan Bale agaynste a ranke papyst (London: S. Mierdman, 1550), STC 1275, sig. A4v; Thomas Becon, A humble supplicacion unto God (Strasburgh: J. Lambrecht, 1554), STC 1730, sig. A4v; John Hooper, A godly confession and protestacion of the christian faith (London: John Day, 1550), STC 13757, sig. E2r. Thomas Becon, The fortresse of the faythfull (London: John Day, 1550), STC 1721, sigs. D3v–E4r. Robert Crowley, The way to wealth wherein is plainly taught a most present remedy for sedicion (London: S. Mierdman, 1550), STC 6096. Crowley, Way to wealth, sig. A8r. Crowley quoted from Ezekiel 34:1–2. Brian L. Hanson, Reformation of the Commonwealth: Thomas Becon and the Politics of Evangelical Change in Tudor England (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019), 158–159. Wood, 1549 Rebellions, 99–100; Cressy, Dangerous Talk, 55. TNA, PC 2/3f.81; TNA, PC 2/4f.667; TNA, PC 2/2f.573. TNA, PC 2/4f.639; TNA, PC 2/4f.643; TNA, PC 2/4f.729. TNA, PC 2/4f.729. TNA, PC 2/4f.528.

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48 TNA, SP 10/15f.81. 49 Hanson, Reformation of the Commonwealth, 152. 50 Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 168–170. 51 Thomas Lever, A sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye in Lente before the kynges Maiestie (London: John Day, 1550), STC 15548, sigs. A3r–v. 52 Thomas Lever, A sermon preached at Pauls Crosse the xiiii day of December by Thomas Lever (London: John Day, 1550), STC 15546.3, sigs. D5v–D6r. 53 See Deuteronomy 28:49–53; Isaiah 1:7, 5:24–25. 54 Thomas Lever, A fruitfull sermon (London: John Day, 1550), STC 15543, sigs. A6r–v. 55 Hanson, Reformation of the Commonwealth, 154. 56 John Bradford, A sermon of repentaunce (London: S. Mierdman, 1553), STC 3496, sig. A3r. 57 SP 1/191f.52. For instance, Queen Katherine Parr wrote in 1544 of a “vayn rumour” that predicted the French would invade England. The Queen derided the person who spread this rumor as “sedicious.” 58 Anonymous, Pyers plowmans exhortation (London: Anthony Scoloker, 1550), STC 19905, sig. B4r. 59 Lever, Fruitfull sermon, sig. A7r. 60 Bradford, Sermon of repentaunce, sigs. E3r–v. 61 Thomas Becon, Newes out of heaven (London: J. Mayler for J. Gough, 1541), STC 1739, sig. E6v. 62 Joel 1:5; 2:12. 63 Becon, Newes out of heaven, sig. E7r. 64 For example, see Isaiah 1:17, 3:14–15, 10:2, 11:4, 25:4, 41:17; Jeremiah 5:28, 20:13, 22:16; Ezekiel 16:49, 18:2, 22:29; Amos 2:6, 4:1, 5:12, 8:4. 65 Lever, Sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye, sig. B4v. 66 Lever, Sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye, sig. C4r. 67 Lever, Sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye, sig. B8v. 68 Lever, Sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye, sigs. D5r–v. 69 Lever, Sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye, sigs. C4v, D5r. 70 Thomas Becon, New postil (London: Thomas Marsh, 1566), STC 1736, sig. ZZZ5r; Hugh Latimer, The sermon that the reverende father in Christ, Hugh Latimer, Byshop of Worcester, made to the clergie (London: Thomas Berthelet, 1537), STC 15286, sig. B1v; Lever, Sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye, sig. B5r. See Ezekiel 34:2–31. 71 Becon, New postil, sig. KK1v. 72 Becon, New postil, sig. KK2r; Hanson, Reformation of the Commonwealth, 215. 73 Edward Dering, A sermo[n] preached before the Quenes Maiestie (London: John Awdely, 1569), STC 6699, sig. E7v; John Foxe, A sermon of Christ crucified, preached at Paules Crosse the Friday before Easter (London: John Day, 1570), STC 11242.6, sig. S2v; Hugh Latimer, A sermon of Master Latimer, preached at Stamford (London: John Day, 1550), STC 15293, sig. E4r; Hugh Latimer, The fyrste sermon of Mayster Hughe Latimer, whiche he preached before the Kinges Maiestie (London: John Day, 1549), STC 15272.5, sig. A2r; Thomas Lever, A sermon preached ye fourth Su[n]daye in Lente (London: John Day, 1550), STC 15548.5, sig. E3r; Richard Porder, A sermon of gods fearefull threatnings for idolatrye mixing of religion (London: Henry Denham, 1570), STC 20117, sigs. I1r–I8r; Thomas Wimbledon, A sermon no lesse frutefull then famous (London: Richard Kele, 1550), STC 25824, sigs. C1r, C3v.

“Sedicious” Sermons 141 74 Wood, 1549 Rebellions, 101. 75 Blench, Preaching in England in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 142; Lucy Wooding, “From Tudor Humanism to Reformation Preaching,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, ed. Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 339. 76 Wood, 1549 Rebellions, 101. 77 Becon, New postil, sigs. HH8v, MM2r, MM3r, MM5v, YY6v, ZZ5r. 78 Anonymous, The pitifull estate of the time present A Christian consideration of the miseries of this time (London: Henry Denham, 1564), STC 21504, sig. A8v; John Bale, The image of bothe churches after revlacion of saynt Iohan (Antwerp: S. Mierdman, 1545), STC 1296.5, sig. A3v; John Barthlet, The pedegrewe of heretiques (London: Henry Denham, 1566), STC 1534, sig. S8r; Becon, New postil, sigs. O4r, AA1r–v, HH3v, YY7v; Richard Brasier, A godly wil and confession of the Christian Faythe (London: John Day, 1551), STC 3552.7, sig. B7r; Matthew Parker, A defence of priestes mariages (London: Richard Jugge, 1567), STC 17519, sig. U1r; James Pilkington, Aggeus and Abdias prophetes the one corrected (London: William Seres, 1562), STC 19927, sigs. DD7r, FF8r; James Pilkington, The burnynge of Paules church in London (London: William Seres, 1563), STC 19931, sig. G7r. 79 William Baldwin, A myrroure for magistrates (London: Thomas Marsh, 1559), STC 1247, sigs. A8v, C3v. 80 Lever, Sermon preached at Pauls Crosse, sig. E6v; Lever, Sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye, sigs. C8v, E7v. 81 Lever, Sermon preached at Pauls Crosse, sig. E6v. 82 Cranmer, Certayne sermons, sig. S2r. 83 Cranmer, Certayne sermons, sig. R8v. 84 Becon, New postil, sig. ZZ1v. 85 Becon, New postil, sig. ZZ1v. 86 Peter Marshall, Reformation England, 1480–1642 (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 131. Becon’s New postil sermons were most likely already composed before 1566, since the sermons were to “be redde in the Church thorowout the yeare.” Becon, New postil, Title Page. 87 TNA, SP 12/38f.11; Richard Bauckham, “William Fulke,” ODNB (accessed 6 January 2020); Richard Rex, “William Fulke and the Vestments Controversy” in St John’s College, Cambridge: A History, ed. Peter Linehan (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011), 71–72. 88 TNA, SP 12/43f.25; William Joseph Sheils, “John Whitgift,” ODNB (accessed 6 January 2020). 89 Becon, New postil, sigs. YY7r–v. 90 Becon, New postil, sig. YY7v. 91 Becon, New postil, sigs. Y7v–Y8r. 92 Becon, New postil, sig. Y7v. 93 Becon, New postil, sig. Y8r. 94 Walsham, Providence, 303.

Works Cited Askew, Anne. The first examinacio[n] of Anne Askewe latelye martired in Smythfelde. Wesel: D. van der Straten, 1546, STC 848, sig. E4v. Anonymous. Pyers plowmans exhortation. London: Anthony Scoloker, 1550, STC 19905, sig. B4r.

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Anonymous. The pitifull estate of the time present A Christian consideration of the miseries of this time. London: Henry Denham, 1564, STC 21504, sig. A8v. Bale, John. The first two partes of the actes or unchast examples of the Englysh votaryes. London: John Bale, 1551, STC 1273.5, sig. B1r. Bale, John. The apology of Iohan Bale agaynste a ranke papyst. London: S. Mierdman, 1550, STC 1275, sig. A4v. Bale, John. The image of bothe churches after revlacion of saynt Iohan. Antwerp: S. Mierdman, 1545, STC 1296.5, sig. A3v. Baldwin, William. A myrroure for magistrates. London: Thomas Marsh, 1559, STC 1247, sigs. A8v, C3v. Barthlet, John. The pedegrewe of heretiques. London: Henry Denham, 1566, STC 1534, sig. S8r. Becon, Thomas. Newes out of heaven. London: J. Mayler for J. Gough, 1541, STC 1739, sig. E6v. Becon, Thomas. A pleasaunte newe nosegay. London: J. Mayler for J. Gough, 1542, STC 1742, sig. L7r. Becon, Thomas. A flour of godly praiers. London: John Day, 1550, STC 1719.5, sigs. A4r–v. Becon, Thomas. The fortresse of the faythfull. London: John Day, 1550, STC 1721, sigs. D3v–E4r. Becon, Thomas. A humble supplicacion unto God. Strasburgh: J. Lambrecht, 1554, STC 1730, sig. A4v. Becon, Thomas. New postil. London: Thomas Marsh, 1566, STC 1736, sig. ZZZ5r. Blench, J.W. Preaching in England in the Late Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1964. Bradford, John. Godlie meditations upon the Lordes prayer. London: Rouland Hall, 1562, STC 3484, sigs. B7r–v. Bradford, John. A sermon of repentaunce. London: S. Mierdman, 1553, STC 3496, sig. A3r. Brasier, Richard. A godly wil and confession of the Christian Faythe. London: John Day, 1551, STC 3552.7, sig. B7r. Byford, Mark. “The Birth of a Protestant Town: the Process of Reformation in Tudor Colchester, 1530–1580.” In The Reformation in English Towns, 1500–1640, edited by Patrick Collinson and John Craig, 23–47. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998. Carlson, Eric Josef. “The Boring of the Ear: Shaping the Pastoral Vision of Preaching in England, 1540–1640.” In Preachers and People in the Reformations and Early Modern Period, edited by Larissa Taylor, 249–296. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Cranmer, Thomas. Catechismus. London: Nicolas Hill, 1548, STC 5993, sigs. R5v. Cranmer, Thomas. Certayne sermons, or homelies appoynted by the kynges Maiestie. London: Richard Grafton, 1547, STC 13640, sig. A2v. Cressy, David. Dangerous Talk: Scandalous, Seditious, and Treasonable Speech in Pre-modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Crowley, Robert. The way to wealth wherein is plainly taught a most present remedy for sedicion. London: S. Mierdman, 1550, STC 6096.

“Sedicious” Sermons 143 Dering, Edward. A sermo[n] preached before the Quenes Maiestie. London: John Awdely, 1569, STC 6699, sig. E7v. Foxe, John. A sermon of Christ crucified, preached at Paules Crosse the Friday before Easter. London: John Day, 1570, STC 11242.6, sig. S2v. Hanson, Brian L. Reformation of the Commonwealth: Thomas Becon and the Politics of Evangelical Change in Tudor England, 158–159. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019. Hooper, John. A declaration of the ten holy co[m]maundementes of allmyghtye God. Zurich: Augustin Fries, 1549, STC 13746, sigs. K7r–v. Hooper, John. A godly confession and protestacion of the christian faith. London: John Day, 1550, STC 13757, sig. E2r. Hunt, Arnold. The Art of Hearing: English Preachers and Their Audiences, 1590–1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Jewel, John. An apologie or answere in defence of the Churche of Englande. London: Reginald Wolf, 1564, STC 14591, sig. C1r. Killeen, Kevin. The Political Bible in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. King, John N. “Paul’s Cross and the Implementation of Protestant Reforms Under Edward VI.” In Paul’s Cross and the Culture of Persuasion in England, 1520–1640, edited by Torrance Kirby, 141–159. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Latimer, Hugh. 27 sermons preached by the ryght Reverende father in God. London: John Day, 1562, STC 15276, sig. F7r. Latimer, Hugh. A moste faithfull sermo[n] preached before the Kynges most excelle[n]te Maiestye. London: John Day, 1553, STC 15290, sigs. B7v–B8r. Latimer, Hugh. A sermon of Master Latimer, preached at Stamford. London: John Day, 1550, STC 15293, sig. E4r. Latimer, Hugh. The seconde [seventh] sermon of Maister Hughe Latimer. London: John Day and William Seres, 1549, STC 15274.7, sig. X6r. Latimer, Hugh. The fyrste sermon of Mayster Hughe Latimer, whiche he preached before the Kinges Maiestie. London: John Day, 1549, STC 15272.5, sig. A2r. Latimer, Hugh. The sermon that the reverende father in Christ, Hugh Latimer, Byshop of Worcester, made to the clergie. London: Thomas Berthelet, 1537, STC 15286, sig. B1v. Lever, Thomas. A sermon preached at Pauls Crosse the xiiii day of December by Thomas Lever. London: John Day, 1550, STC 15546.3, sigs. D5v–D6r. Lever, Thomas. A fruitfull sermon. London: John Day, 1550, STC 15543, sigs. A6r–v. Lever, Thomas. A sermon preached the thyrd Sondaye in Lente before the kynges Maiestie. London: John Day, 1550, STC 15548, sigs. A3r–v. Lever, Thomas. A sermon preached ye fourth Su[n]daye in Lente. London: John Day, 1550, STC15548.5, sig. E3r. Lucas, Scott. “‘Let none such office take, save he that can for right his prince forsake’: A Mirror for Magistrates, Resistance Theory and the Elizabethan Monarchical Republic.” In The Monarchical Republic of Early Modern England, edited by John F. McDiarmid, 91–107. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007. MacLure, Millar. The Paul’s Cross sermons, 1534–1642. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1958.

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McCullough, Peter. Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Marshall, Peter. Reformation England, 1480–1642. London: Bloomsbury, 2012. Morrissey, Mary. Politics and the Paul’s Cross Sermons, 1558–1642. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Parker, Matthew. A defence of priestes mariages. London: Richard Jugge, 1567, STC 17519, sig. U1r. Pilkington, James. Aggeus and Abdias prophetes the one corrected. London: William Seres, 1562, STC 19927, sigs. DD7r, FF8r. Pilkington, James. The burnynge of Paules church in London. London: William Seres, 1563, STC 19931, sig. G7r. Ponet, John. A short catechism. London: John Day, 1553, STC 4812, sig. G2v. Ponet, John. The humble and unfained confessio[n]. Wittenburg: Nicholas Dorcastor, 1554, STC 5630, sig. C5r. Porder, Richard. A sermon of gods fearefull threatnings for idolatrye mixing of religion. London: Henry Denham, 1570, STC 20117, sigs. I1r–I8r. Rex, Richard. “William Fulke and the Vestments Controversy.” In St John’s College, Cambridge: A History, edited by Peter Linehan, 71–72. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2011. Samuel, William. A warnyng for the cittie of London. London: Humfrey Powell, 1550, STC 21690.8, sig. A2r. Wabuda, Susan. Preaching during the English Reformation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Walsham, Alexandra. Providence in Early Modern England, 168–170. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Wimbledon, Thomas. A sermon no lesse frutefull then famous. London: Richard Kele, 1550, STC 25824, sigs. C1r, C3v. Withington, Phil. Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Wood, Andy. The 1549 Rebellions and the Making of Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Wooding, Lucy. “From Tudor Humanism to Reformation Preaching.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, edited by Peter McCullough, Hugh Adlington, and Emma Rhatigan, 329–347. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

7

The Rotterdam Inquisitor and the False Prophet of Antwerp: Religious Disputation and Its Audiences in the SeventeenthCentury Low Countries David L. Robinson

On April 9, 1609 the Dutch Republic and the Habsburg rulers of Spain and the Southern Netherlands signed a truce offering a reprieve from decades of conflict in the Low Countries. It also allowed for freer mobility in the confessionally diverse region divided by the war. Not long after this truce, several Protestant Rotterdammers visited Antwerp. They approached the celebrated Jesuit preacher there, Joannes de Gouda, and told him of the Reformed minister of Rotterdam, Franciscus Lansbergen, who claimed that the doctrine of transubstantiation was baseless and that “no Jesuit or Pope” could satisfactorily defend it. They requested that Gouda debate Lansbergen, who was currently visiting Antwerp, on this point. Gouda initially refused, saying there was “little profit” in such conferences, but ultimately relented to their persistence.1 Their disputation on June 17, 1609 set off a controversy that would continue for the next three years. While this disputation created a great deal of controversy in the years immediately following the Twelve-Years Truce, it was not entirely unique. Gouda’s frequent polemical sermons also prompted a response from the Reformed pastor of Breda, Hendrik Boxhoorn, resulting in a printed exchange between him and Gouda which laid the groundwork for another disputation in Breda between Boxhoorn and Pieter van Dornik, a Catholic priest from The Hague.2 Similar disputations between Reformed ministers and Mennonites were even more frequent in the Dutch Republic.3 This is to say nothing of the many disputations or “private conferences” hosted by aristocrats in neighboring France and England.4 An analysis of the Gouda-Lansbergen debate is therefore illustrative of a broader practice common in multiconfessional societies throughout early modern northwestern Europe. This paper approaches this controversy with an eye toward its multiple audiences: The witnesses to the initial face-to-face debate, the wider audience reached by rumors spread through correspondence and word of mouth, and, finally, the readership of the printed polemic. I argue that it was precisely disputation’s ability to offer a performance of religious DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-7

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controversy that could be translated into different media to reach diverse audiences that made it so appealing for both its practitioners and its audiences. The main sources for this study are the printed accounts of the disputation: Ghespreck over de Leere vande Transubstantiatie (in two editions, printed in 1609 and 1610) by Francicus Lansbergen’s son and assistant in the disputation, Samuel, and Gouda’s Andwoorde Ioannis de Govda, published in 1609. These sources are admittedly only one of the media in which this controversy was undertaken, and they come not from the perspective of the audience, but the two disputants. Nevertheless, they are useful for our approach focusing on audiences because the two authors, in giving their respective accounts of the disputation, provide insight into how the controversy spread after the debate. As we shall see, the printed accounts were very much a response to the ongoing oral and manuscript controversy.

7.1 Disputation and the Early Modern Public Sphere Before turning to a more detailed analysis of the events that created this controversy, it is useful to define what is meant by the term “disputation” and to situate it in current scholarship about the nature of the early modern public sphere. Disputation refers to the formal academic debate practiced in medieval and early modern universities. By the early modern period, the form had been standardized for some time. The basic practice of the ordinary disputation involved a magister (master) providing a student a thesis to defend. This student took the role of respondens, presenting the thesis and briefly outlining some supporting arguments before another student, taking the role of opponens, presented his opposing arguments to the proposition. After these opening statements, the students debated each other for a set amount of time, after which the master either called on another student to assume the role of opponens or ended the debate. As a conclusion of the debate, the master would provide his determinatio, summarizing the arguments and pointing out fallacies before resolving the disputation by giving his own answer to the proposition.5 Disputation was not without criticism. Humanists like Juan Luis Vives condemned disputations as overly performative. In his De causis corruptarum artium of 1534 he wrote of the disputants in the quodlibet disputations of the University of Paris, “To appeal to the popular audience and even sometimes, forsooth, to the arbiter of the disputation, they make up ludicrous things as if in a play, and with the same lofty and empty style, so that the common crowd would admire what they could not understand, and they themselves would gain a reputation among the people.”6 For Vives, disputations were performative contests of reputation that obscured, rather than revealed religious truth.

The Rotterdam Inquisitor 147 Nevertheless, the confessional competition brought about by the Reformation ensured continued interest in the procedure. Both Catholic and Protestant clergy were trained in disputation and educated laypeople would also likely have been familiar with the practice. Disputation was central to the curriculum of the Protestant Leiden University’s theological Staten College. Apart from the Disputationes publicae pro gradu that were needed for master’s or a doctoral degree in theology, medicine or law, there were “public practice disputations,” disputations publicae exercitii gratia, held roughly every two weeks on a recurring cycle of theological topics considered important for students in the theological faculty. As if this were not enough, other disputations on random topics (quaelibet material) were held roughly twice a month, in addition to private disputations organized by professors.7 Catholics were equally interested in the practice of disputation. When the first English Catholic seminary on the continent was founded at Douai in 1568, its curriculum focused on training priests in controversy and disputation in particular. Students studied controversial scriptural passages and sharpened their arguments in weekly disputations.8 It was from this interest in religious debate and controversy that sprang numerous non-academic disputations, often organized or requested by laypeople. These disputations, or conferences as they were called, were chiefly the performances of religious controversy for lay audiences. They generally followed well-worn arguments in the vernacular rather than in Latin, but pitted representatives of each confession against each other. Just as Corpus Christi processions served as performances of a community’s religious unity, and therefore became flashpoints of violence in religiously divided communities, disputation acted out the community’s religious division, ideally offering a resolution by showing one side held the truth.9 But, disputation was a dialogue. It offered both sides an opportunity to air their case and gave the audience some latitude in how to interpret what they saw and heard. It was therefore critical to shape the perception of the debate after the event itself. Its drama was fodder for rumors so the performance of disputation continued onto the streets and into the press, reaching whole new audiences. Approaching disputations as performances intended for public debate engages this study with ongoing scholarship on the nature of the early modern public sphere. Of Jürgen Habermas’s complex work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, early modern scholars have focused on two main points. First, that eighteenth-century capitalism led to the creation of a “bourgeois public sphere” in which a new class of merchants and bureaucrats engaged in “public use of their reason” (i.e. “public opinion”) through the media of news journals and the institutions of salons and coffee houses. Secondly, that before this context, there existed only a “representative publicness” in which local

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power brokers displayed their public authority before a largely passive public.10 Some scholars, such as David Zaret, have responded by contesting Habermas’s timeline, pointing to the growing influence of print on seventeenth-century political communication.11 However, Netherlandic scholars have mounted an even more substantial critique of Habermas and have developed an alternative approach to the early modern public sphere. Jan Bloemendal and Arjan van Dixhoorn admit that the formation of public opinion in early modern Europe was different than the process defined by Habermas. Here they identify another pitfall with Habermas’s theory: Its focus on print material, particularly news journals of the eighteenth century. Bloemendal and Dixhoorn take their cue from the performative turn and argue that the early modern Low Countries did in fact have “a permanent supra-local public sphere as a result of the interaction of handwritten and printed works with the oral, performative and visual media of face-to-face society.” Their sources are instead “literary works” such as plays, songs and poems published “for a general public” with the aim of “informing, persuading or convincing that public.” Thus, while only a few well-connected members of society continually collected news, the media of “the oral world” reached a broad audience and could influence public opinion.12 The interpretation of Bloemendal and Dixhoorn is borne out in the evidence presented by the Gouda-Lansbergen disputation. A confessionally-divided public was eager for religious controversy and disputations could reach these audiences through several stages of communication: The disputation itself, the oral and manuscript discussion in the immediate aftermath, and the printed controversy.

7.2 The First Audience: Impressing 18 Witnesses The first audience was comprised of those present at the event of the disputation itself. After having consented to the Rotterdammer’s request for disputation, Gouda apparently met with Lansbergen to offer him a challenge. However, now it was Lansbergen who was reluctant to take part, fearing that such a public debate would violate the “peace and commandments” of the governors of the Southern Netherlands, Archduke Albrecht VII and Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia.13 Indeed, in the month following the disputation they would promulgate an edict banning all religious disputations, perhaps in response to the controversy that this disputation added to the already religiously tense atmosphere of post-truce Antwerp.14 Nevertheless, at the time, Gouda allayed Lansbergen’s concerns by promising him “all freedom” to speak about “whatever displeased him in the Catholic Church.” Lansbergen and Gouda then shook hands, but Lansbergen further insisted that since this disputation was not being held “except for the consolation of some

The Rotterdam Inquisitor 149 weak consciences,” the proceedings should “remain among us” lest they be “spread among the community.”15 Thus, at the outset, both parties made it clear that this disputation was intended to be private, held only for a few laypeople who had questions about the nature of the Eucharist and possibly about their confessional allegiance. Samuel Lansbergen recorded that at this meeting his father and Gouda agreed on the time and place for the disputation. The time is specified as the next morning (17 June), but neither account gives the location.16 Gouda’s assurances to Lansbergen suggest that he may have had a hand in hosting it. Their agreement that the conference be private also suggest that it was held somewhere behind closed doors. Similar disputations in England and France were often hosted in the homes of wealthy laypeople, so this may have also been the case here.17 At any rate, the audience was restricted to eighteen witnesses, twelve of them from Rotterdam. Most of these witnesses are never identified, but Gouda did name five of them that accompanied Lansbergen: Guiliam Schaelkens, judge; Claes Rooclaes, former schoolmaster; Jan Dircesen Versijden, Secretary of Schielandt; Egbert Jacobsen, his clerk; and Daniel Verleck, apparently a pilgrim from Mechelen.18 Apart from the final person whose occupation and social status remains somewhat mysterious, the audience appears to have been drawn from the middling sort of respected community members. This kind of audience was likely educated enough to follow the theological debate and respected enough that their account of events would hold some sway in their community. Hence, it was critical for disputants to make a favorable impression on this audience, not just for the salvation of their souls, but also to shape the inevitable public discussion of the disputation after the event. The disputation began on the morning of June 17 with Franciscus Lansbergen, assisted by his son Samuel sitting on one end of a table, Gouda and his assistant Cornelius Cornelii on the opposite end, and the 18 witnesses likely sitting between them.19 Gouda opened the proceedings by presenting the thesis that the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ as articulated in the Council of Trent is based on Holy Scripture and “orthodox Fathers.” The first couple of hours saw familiar arguments about the interpretation of Christ’s words in the Gospels “This is my body” and passages about the Eucharist from a number of theologians and popes from early church history into the fifteenth century, including Augustine, and Ambrose, and Duns Scotus. The party had a recess around noon in order for Gouda and Cornelius to perform Mass before resuming the debate at 2 o’clock.20 However, disputation was not just a medium to convey theological ideas; it was a performance in which clerics contested each other’s reputation as scholars and godly ministers. Lansbergen raised an argument

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that if a consecrated host really becomes Christ’s substance, then even unworthy persons like Judas would have eaten Christ’s substance. Gouda agreed with this statement at which point Lansbergen threw a book on the table, Decisiones aureas by the fifteenth-century German humanist and printer Johann Heynlin (Jean à Lapide). Out of the book, he proceeded to read several hypothetical scenarios related to the Eucharist, such as what is to be done if a mouse eats it—burn it and preserve the ashes—or if someone vomits it—collect the vomit and burn it. The Lansbergen account records that Gouda responded to the vomit scenario by saying that this doctrine is so well-known that it is taught to Catholic school children, to which Lansbergen replied sardonically “It is truly a fine doctrine which you implant in your students: A poor God must it be who you eat, who you spit up, and eject from behind through your bowels.” The author records Gouda’s response as “Yes, we eat him (said Father Gouda in formal words) we throw him up, we crap and shit him out” (wy kacken, ende schijten hem uyt).21 Gouda’s account instead puts these words in Lansbergen’s reply, “O poor God, O poor Sacrament that men eat, spit out, shit and crap!” Gouda then asks Lansbergen if he has any actual argument to put forward as such blasphemous statements are for “foolish folk” and have no place among “scholars, who understand reason.” It is impossible for us to know who actually said what, but both accounts agree that Lansbergen pulled out Heynlin’s book to form a scatological reductio ad absurdum argument to make Gouda and the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation appear ridiculous. Gouda responded by suggesting instead that Lansbergen debased himself by even bringing up this argument. The audience members then rose up and insisted that Gouda respond to the issue of the Eucharist-eating mouse to move the debate along.22 This part of the debate was certainly not profound theological dialogue, but it made for great drama that would, not surprisingly, figure prominently in the subsequent public discussion of the event.

7.3 The Second Audience: Disputation Goes Public Despite this apparently rude exchange, Samuel Lansbergen writes that the party “departed from each other with courtesy and in friendship,” but before leaving his father insisted that Gouda and Cornelii “speak nothing other than truthfully about this conference.”23 Already Lansbergen was thinking about the next stage of the controversy. Rumors and manuscripts about the conference began circulating almost immediately. Like the wartime sixteenth-century Amsterdam described by Henk van Nierop, truce-time Antwerp was an “oral world” where even well-connected literate elites were heavily reliant on “hearsay” as the primary source of news.24 The clerics themselves used their privileged position to actively take part in the spread of oral rumors about the

The Rotterdam Inquisitor 151 disputation. Samuel Lansbergen, in his preface addressed to Gouda and Cornelii, dated August 15, 1609, wrote “there is hardly a dinner” in Antwerp attended by a priest or a monk where one did not hear how Gouda “made my honourable Father mute.”25 However, it was the access to the pulpit that really allowed clerics to convey their version of events to a broad audience. Indeed, Gouda had made a name for himself in Antwerp by preaching polemical sermons that ridiculed Protestant doctrines.26 This disputation certainly gave him and his colleagues plenty of material for such sermons. Lansbergen further wrote that from his departure from Antwerp with his father, he began receiving “multitudes of letters” and reports from “honourable persons” that in cities throughout the southern Netherlands hardly anything is preached except “the great victory” of Gouda over Lansbergen.27 Gouda’s account responds to this accusation, stating that it was actually the Lansbergens who broke their word and, even before they left Antwerp, began spreading rumors that “Father Gouda was forced silent fourteen times and left the arguments of Lansbergen unanswered.” The sermons of Gouda and other priests were thus necessary to dispel these rumors.28 Contemporaries understandably viewed such oral rumors with suspicion and sought some means of verifying the claims that were being made. One form of verification was to get information from reliable witnesses.29 The word-of-mouth accounts circulating in Antwerp and Rotterdam thus generated a further discussion via written correspondence. Recall that it was from letters from “honorable persons” that Samuel Lansbergen heard about the rumors spoke about his father in Antwerp. Others wrote the Lansbergens seeking their verification as participants in the disputation. Gouda’s account includes an July 11 letter from Franciscus Lansbergen in which he responded to a request from some “brothers” (apparently Jesuits) to recount the recent disputation in Antwerp.30 In it, he wrote that the twelve Rotterdammers that were at the disputation, “together abhor the Papacy (to which they were attached one time before the conference), except for one of them who is partial, and knows that Father Gouda got the worst of it, but he does not want to let it all come down to Gouda.”31 In this letter, Lansbergen cites the assessment of the disputation the lay audience as evidence of his victory and confirms the rumors that Gouda had performed so poorly that even the sole Catholic Rotterdammer had to admit this. Judging from these accounts, it appears that there was some disagreement about what information about the conference could be appropriately shared, and what should be kept private. Yet, both parties and the witnesses were quick to spread word of it so that, as Gouda put it, the conference was “in the mouths of all the world.”32 However, this oral version of the disputation appears to have been stripped of most of

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its theological content. The focus of these rumors was not that a particular doctrinal point was successfully defended, but rather that the opponent was forced silent. These rumors therefore served to turn a private disputation into a public controversy in which the reputations of the participating clerics were on the line. These rumors encouraged some well-connected persons to seek verification of the conflicting oral accounts. While written correspondence and witness accounts could provide more detail, they did little to assuage the partisan nature of the controversy. Instead, they appear to have expanded the audience of the controversy even further, ensuring that this private disputation became emblematic of a wider conflict between Catholic and Protestant truth claims.

7.4 The Third Audience: Setting the Record Straight in Print With news of the conference, or at least a version of the conference spread far and wide, both parties turned to print as a means to set the record straight. In his preface, Samuel Lansbergen writes that the reason for the publication of his book was to “defend the honour of my Father…with the publication of the Conference before the whole world.”33 Similarly, in his preface addressed to the “noble and powerful gentlemen” of the Estates of the United Provinces, Gouda writes that he published his Andwoorde because of his “affection for the truth” after reading the “falsehood and lies” with which the Lansbergens use to “alienate” said gentlemen from the Catholic faith.34 The utility of print as a means to correct false rumors appears to have been a common sentiment. In 1612, the Remonstrant preacher Johannes Uytenbogaert justified the publication of his response to Contra-Remonstrant rumors by citing a Dutch proverb: “Al is de Leugen snel, de waerheyt achter haeltse wel (Though the Lie is fast, the truth soon catches up).”35 This proverb speaks to an apparently common assumption—shared by the disputants in this paper—that falsehoods could be spread rapidly, but were ephemeral; the truth would outlast falsehood. Print was seen as a tool to convey the “true” version of events. It could rely on the author’s social capital as a participant in events, it appeared more reliable because it took time and could respond to a multitude of rumors that had been circulating, and finally, it offered a permanent record of events. Print was thus the final stage of the controversy in which both parties sought to shape the lasting perception of the conference and vindicate themselves before the widest possible audience. They certainly did not anticipate their accounts being digitized on Google Books 400 years after the fact, but they did attribute a certain degree of permanence to print that would outlast the various versions of the conferences that were circulating by word of mouth or in manuscript.

The Rotterdam Inquisitor 153 The printed accounts ushered in another stage of the performance of disputation as both parties sought to frame the debate for a wider audience. Once again the judgment of the witnesses was a critical component in this framing. The Lansbergen account appears to have been the first to be printed in Rotterdam around August 1609. It is a relatively short 44-page account of the proceedings in which Samuel, as mentioned above, sought to defend the honor of his father against the slanderous rumors that he performed poorly in the disputation. As evidence, he concludes his account with an attestation from the bailiff, mayors, and judges of Rotterdam that vouches for the accuracy of the testimony of the citizens of their city who attended the conference. The attestation states that while the witnesses did not “comprehend” everything in the conference, the Lansbergen account captures its “substance,” particularly regarding Gouda’s words in the discussion of the “meal of the body of Christ and the mouse etc.” which were said by him “in effect.”36 Lansbergen thus buttressed his defense of his father’s reputation by drawing not just upon the witnesses, but also the social capital of the political leadership of Rotterdam. Both eye-witness’ testimony and social status are used to lend credibility to his account. Gouda’s Andwoorde Ioannis de Govda responded to Lansbergen’s Ghespreck in December. It is a much longer text, numbering some 157 pages but its rhetorical counter-thrust is made apparent on the cover page when it cites John 7:24 “[judge not according to appearances, but] judge righteous judgment.”37 Gouda then proceeded to write to the gentlemen of the United Provinces that he “wished nothing other” than that they “judge between me and Franciscus according to reason, conscience and God.”38 To that end, Gouda published within his account “nearly the whole book” of the Lansbergens in order that the “impartial reader” might be better able to “judge between us both.”39 In Gouda’s view, reading his account with an impartial eye will show that Lansbergen and the other Rotterdammers are unreliable witnesses. Therefore, he concludes his address to the reader by listing 25 of Franciscus Lansbergen’s “blasphemies” against the Catholic Church in the disputation. Moreover, Gouda’s account properly begins by first explaining Lansbergen’s promise not to spread word of the conference before including his letter to the Jesuit brothers mentioned above to demonstrate that he broke his word almost immediately. Gouda not only attacked Lansbergen’s reliability, but also his use of the assessment of the Rotterdam witnesses as evidence to support his case. Gouda highlighted the importance of his response to them by writing in large letters in the middle of a chapter “If it is true that Gouda said in formal words: Wy spouwen, wy kacken, wy schijten hem uyt.” We have noted his denial earlier in this paper, but he also criticized the witnesses as men who “understood little of the Holy fathers, or Scripture, or transubstantiation” but “well understood the mouse and

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bowel movements.” He does not blame these witnesses for their ignorance, instead pointing the finger at Lansbergen who brought them along knowing full well that he could sway them with his foolish arguments, and then use them to mislead men of higher social standing on their return to Rotterdam.40 The conference thus turned out to be just what Gouda had feared from the beginning; a dialogue about high matters of theology before an audience that was unqualified to understand its subtleties. Whereas the word-of-mouth and manuscript versions of the disputation appear to have simplified the proceedings to a matter of winners and losers, these printed accounts recounted the disputation in much more detail and allowed the authors to engage more deeply with the theological questions it raised. In fact, Gouda’s Andwoorde was published with a 124-page response to the Lansbergens’ “concerns about Transubstantiation.”41 In response, Samuel Lansbergen published a greatly expanded second edition of Ghespreck in 1610 which reprinted the original account with “further explanations” inserted throughout responding to the claims made in Gouda’s Andwoorde. At the same time as the second edition of Ghespreck, Franciscus Lansbergen published his own Weder-antwoorde, a tome of some 400 pages in which he responded in great detail to the latter part of Gouda’s work on his concerns with transubstantiation. This printed exchange continued into 1612 with another three lengthy polemical works.42 According to the second edition of Ghespreck, Franciscus Lansbergen had insisted that they continue the disputation after the recess for Mass because he could “spend his time better than with many unnecessary writings and responses,” which often result in “name-calling and slandering.” Moreover, he believed that differences in religion are better judged “in a verbal conference, in the presence of parties” of different religious perspectives than in writing.43 It appears then both Gouda and Lansbergen became embroiled in a printed conflict that neither of them wanted. If that was the case, then why did they allow it to go on for so long? An analogy to the conversionary sermons preached to Jews in late sixteenth-century Rome analyzed by Emily Michelson can help explain the endurance of this controversy. By the 1580s, Rome’s Jews were compelled to attend weekly sermons preached ostensibly to convert them. However, Michelson observes that the sermons had broad appeal to Christian auditors. She argues that both the context and content of these sermons reveal that the “conversionary function” of the preaching was “subordinate to the various purposes it could serve for Christians.” The sermons addressed a “multilayered, diverse audience” and used Jews and Judaism as a platform to affirm Catholic identity. Even if the sermons did not result in conversions, they offered an occasion for the public display of neophytes and new catechumens, the proclamation of

The Rotterdam Inquisitor 155 the vigor of Catholicism, and a demonstration that the work of conversion was being done. Ultimately, these sermons were a display of Catholic triumphalism.44 Just like those sermons, the audience of disputations like the one between Gouda and Lansbergen included both the religious other and those already in the fold. Even if they did not convince others to renounce their errors, they could be a platform by which to affirm religious identities. The disputation itself was one performance in which there was a real possibility to convince an audience to change, or at least make up their mind, about their confessional allegiance. The printed exchange was another performance entirely, one directed more so to those already committed to one or another confession. It was a stage on which to perform notions of true and false religion, to display the rationality and virtuousness of one’s own party, and the ignorance and duplicity of one’s opponents. Gouda, in his Andwoorde, was quick to associate the Lansbergens with a general Protestant tendency toward blasphemy and slander. In his preface to the reader, he first excuses his delay in publishing this account due to his painstaking effort to accurately respond to Lansbergen’s text by copying it into his own for the “impartial reader” and his meticulous citation of Church Fathers in both Latin and Dutch for the benefit of the learned and those unable to read Latin. This meticulous scholarship and consideration of the reader is then contrasted with that of Lansbergen when Gouda writes that there may be “a word or two” against the Reformed ministers that the reader, particularly the “so-called Reformed reader,” might find “too sharp or too harsh.” He excuses himself on the grounds that it was those ministers “who first assailed the Catholics with blasphemies.” Just as Luther and Calvin did this, so too did the Lansbergens.45 The contrast between reason and true religion on the one hand and blasphemy and dishonesty on the other is even more evident in Gouda’s subsequent publications. He opens his 1611 De victorievse transsubstantiatie by declaring that “Lansbergen and his likewise named Reformed preachers are nothing but liars, slanderers, poor citers of authors, falsifiers of the Old Fathers and opponents of the holy Scriptures.”46 The next 269 pages are dedicated to providing examples of the Lansbergens’ failings in their publications against Gouda. The following year he published The godlessness of the Rotterdam inquisition in which Franciscus and Samuel Lansbergen work as inquisitors with slander, lies, [and] poor citations, in which he not only offered a final polemic against the Lansbergens, but situated them in a “list of liars” that included Franciscus Gomarus and Johannes Uytenbogaert, the two prominent figures at the head of the unfolding Arminian controversy in the Dutch Republic. He then beseeched the Lansbergens to see the error of their ways and return to the “right way of salvation” in the “old

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general Catholic Roman Belief.”47 In defending his decision not to respond to every citation of Lansbergen, Gouda further situates their controversy in a wider international polemical conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism. He observes that in the disputation held at Fontainebleau in 1600 between Philippe Duplessis-Mornay, “a heretic like thee,” and the Bishop of Evreux, Evreux did not “respond to all of the lying-protocols” but was still able to the demonstrate that Mornay had poorly cited and falsified the Church Fathers.48 Thus, Gouda’s rhetoric focused heavily on the immoral character of the Lansbergens, particularly their false and inaccurate citations. However, he does not fault them in particular but rather paints a picture of Protestantism as a faith intrinsically based upon deceit and poor scholarship. Gouda often addressed these claims toward an ostensibly Protestant audience, sometimes directly to the Lansbergens, but often to the magistrates of the Dutch Republic and the city of Rotterdam in particular. A final notable point then about Gouda’s rhetoric is his use of one of the Rotterdam’s most celebrated sons, Desiderius Erasmus. Despite being placed on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1559, Erasmus was not necessarily a persona non grata amongst Catholic writers. In 1558, Stanislaus Hosius, Bishop of Warmia claimed that Erasmus correctly concluded that Protestantism “had opened the window to every form of wickedness.” Even after Erasmus was included on the index, Gouda’s fellow Dutch Jesuit Peter Canisius considered Erasmus worthy of both praise and blame: A forerunner of Luther, but also a defender of Mary.49 Gouda, by contrast, placed Erasmus wholeheartedly in the Catholic camp as a defender of Catholic orthodoxy and opponent of the heretics now supported by his hometown. In the final chapter of the Andwoorde, Gouda asks how it is that the “Consistorians [i.e. the Reformed] revere both Lansbergen in the pulpit and Erasmus on the bridge when one of the two is a false teacher and false prophet?” Here Gouda seems to be referring to the bridge of the humanist’s namesake in the city. He included a letter in Latin from Erasmus to Conrado Pelicano to show Erasmus’s commitment to Catholicism. Gouda summarizes three salient points from the letter in Dutch: That it is “onmenschelick”—that is, barbaric or inhumane—to “make public the secrets of friends”; that it shows “the manner by which heretics fool the people” into thinking they are learned; and finally, that Erasmus believed that the Holy Sacrament could not be anything other than “the true body and blood of Christ.”50 If Rotterdammers truly revere Erasmus, they would return to the faith that he professed and turn away from the heresy he condemned. He further concluded his book by addressing the “Lords and citizens of Rotterdam.” He claims that he wrote this book to bring them to a better understanding of “Holy Catholic Apostolic and Roman belief, which Erasmus taught in Rotterdam” and how falsely Lansbergen acted and how much his teachings go “against Erasmus, against old

The Rotterdam Inquisitor 157 Rotterdam, against the old and God-fearing Netherlands, against the Christian world, against the Apostolic and Evangelical Doctrine.”51 While Gouda’s rhetoric may not have convinced the regents of Rotterdam to return to Catholicism, it did provide the Catholic reader with a vision of their Reformed opponents as untrustworthy, falsely portraying their doctrine as aligning with Scripture and the Church Fathers, and in fact a threat to Dutch learning and culture. It may have further allowed the more moderate among them to reconcile Erasmus and Catholicism. The Lansbergens took a similar tack in their work. Franciscus Lansbergen’s Weder-antwoorde (a tome of over 400 pages) displays a woodcut of a man chopping down a tree surrounded by the words of Matthew 7:19, “Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.” He clarifies in his preface that those badfruit trees are the Jesuits who are “false prophets” and “servants of the great Prince of darkness.” Rather than the “old Catholic Church” representing the faith of the “old fathers,” Lansbergen calls the Roman Catholic Church a “public Synagogue of the Antichrist, whose pretended antiquity is condensed novelty.” He specifically pinpoints the “absurdity” of transubstantiation (a doctrine created by Thomas Aquinas according to Lansbergen) which denies the atonement of Christ’s crucifixion.52 As Samuel Lansbergen further outlined in his preface to Ghespreeck, it follows that the “champions of the Roman Synagogue” would defend this anti-Christian doctrine with “lying, deception, with slandering, with swearing, and malicious talk.”53 Thus, the Lansbergens likewise accuse their opponents of preaching novel and heretical doctrines. Their pretended antiquity is refuted with an association with Judaism, at once admitting its antiquity, but also drawing upon AntiSemitic perceptions of Jews as obstinate rejecters of Christianity in favor of falsehood. Ultimately then, both parties claimed to seek to convince adherents of the opposing party, but their rhetoric also bolstered confessional identities and vilified opponents. Their opponents’ doctrines are portrayed as innovative and therefore contradictory to those of the church fathers. They are thus false teachers as exemplified by their immoral behavior.

7.5 Conclusion The disputation held at Antwerp on June 17, 1609 and its aftermath clearly did little to assuage the religious tensions that engulfed the Low Countries, and indeed all of Europe and its empires. In fact, far from resolving a disputed point of theology—the goal of academic disputation—the Gouda-Lansbergen disputation and similar “conferences” seem to have simply created more controversy. However, the controversy was, in fact, a source of the appeal of these non-academic

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disputations. Despite their misgivings, both Catholics and Protestants engaged in disputation to perform religious controversy and reach a much broader variety of audiences than they could with printed polemic alone. The disputation itself was a private affair, ideally only open to witnesses capable of following the theological discussion. However, this was never a purely rational dialogue, but one in which disputants sought to impress the audience with their erudition and superior debating abilities. After the disputation, these witnesses and the disputants themselves could provide a condensed version of events, suitable for public consumption that highlighted the triumph of the true minister over the false one. Once this simplified partisan version of events had garnered enough public attention, the disputants followed it up with printed accounts of events to vindicate themselves before a learned audience and posterity. Such printed accounts offered more theological content than the oral rumors that reached a wider audience, but also reinforced ideas about true and false religion, painting a fuller picture of the doctrinal falsehood and moral depravity displayed by the clergy of the opposing confession. In the end, the disputation did not serve to present a single truth as the disputants, however faintly, hoped it would. Instead, it worked within an early modern public sphere defined by its multiple media and audiences to perform religious controversy before several different audiences. It could not reconcile the religious differences in society, but it could offer a performance of religious triumph and thereby strengthen religious identities. Such disputations were not really a tool to resolve disputed doctrinal points, but instead were weapons in the confessional conflict of the further Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

Notes 1 Joannes de Gouda, Andwoorde Ioannis de Govda priester der societeyt Iesv op de medesprake aengaende de transsubstantiatie met Francisco ende Samvele Lansbergen ministers tot Rotterdam (Antwerp: Joachim Trognesius, 1609), 1-2. 2 Boxhorn, Hendrik and Joannes de Gouda, Predicatie van pr. Ioannes de Govda Iesvvvyt, t’Antwerpen op alderheylighen dach ghedaen, ende overghezonden aen Henricvm Boxhornivm (Rotterdam: Felix van Sambix, 1610), Fol. 1b-2b. Boxhorn followed Predicatie up with an expanded refutation of Gouda’s sermon, Anti-pater Govda, dat is Patris Joannis de Gauda, priesters van jesu-wijt nederslach, over syn predicatie opden Paeps-alder-heylighen dach ghedaen (Rotterdam: F. van Sambix, 1611). This prompted two replies by Gouda: Ander-half-hondert levghens Henrici Boxhornii woordendienaers tot Breda, in sijn venijnich Teghen-ghift ghemenght, ontdeckt ende wederleyt (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1611) and Den Katholiicken heyligen-dienst Ioannis de Govda, priester der Societeyt Iesv, teghens Henricvm Boxhornivm: Ioannem Bogaert, Wilhelmvm Perkinsvm, Vincentivm Mevsevoet sijnen vertaelder, ketters, leughenaers, in Brabant, Enghelant Hollant (Antwerp: Hieronyms Verdussen, 1612). On the 1613

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disputation in Breda between Boxhorn and van Dornik, see Boxhorn, Vaerachtich verhael vande disputatie ende het ghespreck gehouden den vierden Januarij anno M. D. C. XIII. tusschen…Henricvm Boxhornivm licentiaet ende bediender des h. euangelij tot Breda, ende…Peeter van Dornick licentiaet ende paeps-pastoor in de Haghe by Breda (Delft: Adraen Cornelisz, 1613). Samme Zijlstra, Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden: Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531-1675 (Hilversum & Leeuwarden: Uitgeverij Verloren & Fryske Akademy, 2000), 351-353, 367-371. See, e.g., Émile Kappler, Les Conférences théologiques entre catholiques et protestants en France au xviie siècle (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2011); Joshua Rodda, Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558-1626 (Burlington: Ashgate, 2014); Natacha Salliot, Philippe Duplessis-Mornay: La rhétorique dan la théologie (Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2009). Leinsle, Scholastic Theology, 120-123; Alex J. Novikoff, The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 141, 225-227. Quoted in Jody Enders, “The Theater of Scholastic Erudition,” Comparative Drama 27:3 (Fall 1993), 351. Keith D. Stanglin, The Missing Public Disputations of Jacobus Arminius: Introduction, Text, and Commentary (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010), 12-19. Thomas McCoog, S.J., “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission,” in The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in celebration of the first centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford (1896-1996), ed. Thomas McCoog (Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 1996), 121-122. Benjamin Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 97. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991), 15-28. This description also draws on the summaries of Habermas’s thought in Jan Bloemendal and Arjan van Dixhoorn, “Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Early Modern Low Countries” in Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450-1650, ed. Jan Bloemendal, Arjan van Dixhoorn, and Elsa Streitman (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011), 11-12. David Zaret, Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 3-6. Others have made similar arguments in different contexts. Cf. Andrew Pettegree, “A Provincial News Community in Sixteenth-Century Europe,” in Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke, ed. Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 33-34; Sara Beam, “Apparitions and the Public Sphere in Seventeenth-Century France,” Canadian Journal of History XXXIX (April 1994), 1-22; Jeffrey K. Sawyer, Pamphlet Propaganda, Faction Politics, and the Public Sphere (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). Torrance Kirby locates the public sphere’s origins even earlier, as a consequence of the Reformation’s “culture of persuasion.” Torrance Kirby, Persuasion and Conversion: Essays on Religion, Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2013). Bloemendal and Dixhoorn, “Literary Cultures and Public Opinion,” 1-20, 26-27. Other scholars of the early modern world have also drawn on oral

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and performance culture to offer an alternative to the Habermasian model of the public sphere; cf. Babak Rahimi, Theater State and the Formation of Early Modern Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 1590-1641 CE (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012); Massimo Rospocher and Rosa Salzberg, “An Evanescent Public Sphere: Voices, Spaces, and Publics in Venice during the Italian Wars,” in Beyond the Public Sphere: Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe, ed. Massimo Rospocher (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 2012), 95-113. Gouda, Andwoorde, 2. Werner Thomas, “The Treaty of London, the Twelve Years Truce and Religious Toleration in Spain and the Netherlands,” in The Twelve Years’ Truce (1609): Peace, Truce, War and Law in the Low Countries at the Turn of the 17 th Century, ed. Randall Lesaffer (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 290-292. Gouda, Andwoorde, 2. Samuel Lansbergen, Ghespreck over de Leere vande Transubstantiatie, onlancks ghehouden binnen Antwerpen, tusschen Franciscum Lansbergium, Dienaer der Gemyente Christi binnen Rotterdam, ende Patrem Gauda Priester der ghenaemder Societeyt Jesu (Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz, 1609), 1. See, e.g., [Daniel Featley], The Fisher catched in his owne net (London: 1623); Archibald Adair, Narré de la conférence verbale et par escrit, tenue entre M. Pierre du Moulin et M. Cayer (Genève: Pierre Aubert, 1625). Gouda, Andwoorde, 93. The original text is “Magelaens Pelgrim,” which may a phonetic transcription of the city of Mechelen. Lansbergen, Ghespreck, 1. Lansbergen, Ghespreck, 1-18. Samuel Lansbergen, Ghespreck Over de Leere vande Transubstantiatie…Wtgegeven ende verrijckt met Nadere verclaringen…(Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz., 1610), 87-91. Gouda: “Jae, wy eten hem (seyde Pater Gouda in formele woorden) wy spouwen hem uyt, wy kacken, ende schijten hem uyt.” Lansbergen: O armen Godt/o arm Sacrament/dat men eet/uytspout/schijt ende kackt!” Gouda, Andwoorde, 88-94. Lansbergen, Ghespreck…met Nadere verclaringen, 141-142. Henk van Nierop, “‘And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars.’ Rumour and the Revolt of the Netherlands,” in Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke, ed. Judith Pollman and Andrew Spicer (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), 70-73. Samuel Lansbergen, “Aen de E.E. Heeren, ende R. Patres, D. Goudam, ende D. Cornelium Cornelii, Priesters der ghenaemder Societeyt Jesu,” in Ghespreck. Joep van Gennip, Controverse in Context: Een comparatief onderzoek naar de Nederlandstalige controversepublicaties van de jezuïeten in de zeventiende-eeuwse Republiek (Hilversum: Verloren, 2014), 98, 104-109. Lansbergen, “Aen de E.E. Heeren,” in Ghespreck, Aiir. Gouda, Andwoorde, 3. van Nierop, “‘And Ye Shall Hear of Wars and Rumours of Wars,’” 74-76. Gouda uses the letter to refute the claim of Samuel Lansbergen that his father only publicized the disputation after being forced to do so by “Jesuitsche Collegianten.” He takes the letter as evidence that it was Lansbergen, not Gouda, he first broke his word to keep this disputation private. These

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“broeders” immediately forward this letter to Gouda. Gouda, Andwoorde, 4-5. Gouda, Andwoorde, 4-5. “‘T is waer dat ick de conferentie in orden hebbe geschreven/soo-setusschen ons gehschiedt is: maer ick en soude door als-noch niet gheerne allen man de copije mede deylen/tot dat ick naeder verstae hoe dat hem P. Gouda over de conferentie laet hooren. Hier zijn by ons wel 12 Rotterdams die in de disputatie gheweest zijn/ ende t’samen het Pausdom (‘t welck sy voor de conferentie t’eenemael toegedaen waren) verfoeyen: uytghenomen eenen die t’eenemael partiael is/ende wel bekent dat Pater Gouda t’ondergheleghen heeft/ maer dat hy ‘t op Gouda niet alleen en wilt laten aencomen…” Gouda, Andwoorde, 3. Samuel Lansbergen, “Aen de E.E. Heeren, ende R. Patres, D. Goudam, ende D. Cornelium Cornelii, Priesters der ghenaemder Societeyt Jesu,” in Ghespreck…met Nadere verclaringen. Gouda, “Edele ende Moghende Heeren Staten der vereenigher Nederlanden,” Andwoorde, *2. Johannes Uytenbogaert, “Tot den Leser” and “Den vrede Christi,” in Cort berecht. Nopende seeckere copije van een remonstrantie, die (soo men voorgheeft) in den druck van de conferentie in den Haghe ghehouden, naghelaten oft vergheten is (Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz., 1612). Lansbergen, Ghespreck…met Nadere verclaringen, 151-152. KJV. The cover page gives only the latter part of the verse, first in Latin then in Dutch. A woodcut of a cloud blowing a fire with the word “Augetur” (increase) suggests he knew that this response would further enflame the controversy. Gouda, Andwoorde, *2. Gouda, “Tot den Leser,” Andwoorde, [viii]. Gouda, Andwoorde, 91-94. Gouda, “Andwoorde Ioannis de Gouda Priester der Societeyt Jesu op de Bedenckinghen Francisci Lansbergii aengaende de Transsubstantiatie.” Andwoorde, 145-269. Joannes de Gouda, De victorievse transsubstantiatie Ioannis de Govda priester der Societeyt Iesv over Franciscvm ende Samvelem Lansberghens, woordendienaers tot Rotterdam (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1611); Franciscus Lansbergen, Wtvaert van de roomsche transubstantiatie…nu ten tweeden male beweert ende verdedicht (Rotterdam: J. Ianszoon, 1612); Joannes de Gouda, De godtloosheyt der Rotterdamscher inquisitie in de welcke Franciscus ende Samuel Lansbergen inquisiteurs arbeyden met lasteren, leugenen, quade citatien, ende alderley onverstandicheydt levendich te delven ende begraven de vvelvarende, triumphante, eewichdurende, Roomsche, katholijcke transvbstantiatie (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1612). Samuel Lansbergen, Ghespreck, 76-77. Emily Michelson, “Conversionary Preaching and the Jews of Early Modern Rome,” Past and Present 235 (May 2017), 70-72, 101-102. Gouda, Andwoorde, *4r-*4v. Joannes de Gouda, “Edele ende Moghende Heeren Staten der Vereenighder Nederlanden,” in De victorievse transsubstantiatie Ioannis de Govda priester der Societeyt Iesv over Franciscvm ende Samvelem Lansberghens, woordendienaers tot Rotterdam (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1611), *3. Joannes de Gouda, De godtloosheyt der Rotterdamscher inquisitie in de welcke Franciscus ende Samuel Lansbergen inquisiteurs arbeyden met

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lasteren, leugenen, quade citatien, ende alderley onverstandicheydt levendich te delven ende begraven de vvelvarende, triumphante, eewichdurende, Roomsche, katholijcke transvbstantiatie (Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1612), 3-4 Gouda, Rotterdamscher inquisitive, 5-7. For a more detailed look at the Fontainebleau conference, see David Robinson, “Religious Disputations as Theatre: Staging Religious Difference in France after the Wars of Religion,” in Reframing Reformation: Understanding Religious Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. Nicholas Terpstra (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2020), 31-50. Hilmar M. Pabel, “Praise and Blame: Peter Canisius’s Ambivalent Assessment of Erasmus,” in The Reception of Eramus in the Early Modern Period, ed. Karl Enenkel (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2013), 130, 157. Gouda, Andwoorde, 131-141. The full letter is included in Latin, 133-139. Gouda, Andwoorde, 142-143. One can also read the title of Gouda’s final work in this vein. The Rotterdam Inquisitie may have been inspired by another famous controversy in the Dutch Republic between the Reformed Church and the Spiritualist Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert. Coornhert’s public criticism of the Reformed Church led to a public disputation between him and two Reformed ministers in Leiden in 1578. His account of the proceedings circulated in manuscript before being printed in 1607. In the account, he portrays the proceedings as a “Genevan inquisition” against him. Dirck Volckertsz. Coornhert Vande Leydtsche Disputatie. Warachtich Verhael (1607), 41. For a recent critical assessment of this disputation and Coornhert’s account of it, see Marianne Roobol, Disputation by Decree: The Public Disputations between Reformed Ministers and Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert as Instruments of Religious Policy during the Dutch Revolt (1557-1583) (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010). Franciscus Lansbergen, “Aen de Edele, erent-feste, moghende, wyse, ende seer Voor-sienighe Heeren, de Staten van Hollandt ende West-Vrieslandt,” in Weder-antwoorde Francisci Lansbergii…teghens de antwoorde Joann. de Gouda…op sekere bedenckinghen Lansbergii voorseyt, aengaende de transsubstantiatie (Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz, 1610), *2r-*3r. Samuel Lansbergen, “Aen de Hooch-weerdighe, Voorsiendighe, wijse Heeren, mijn Heeren, Bailju, Burgher-Meesteren, ende Pensionaris der Stadt Rotterdam,” in Ghespreck…met Nadere verclaringen, [vi-vii].

Works Cited Adair, Archibald. Narré de la conférence verbale et par escrit, tenue entre M. Pierre du Moulin et M. Cayer. Genève: Pierre Aubert, 1625. Beam, Sara. “Apparitions and the Public Sphere in Seventeenth-Century France.” Canadian Journal of History, XXXIX (April 1994): 1–22. Bloemendal, Jan van and Arjan Dixhoorn, eds. Literary Cultures and Public Opinion in the Low Countries, 1450-1650. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2011. Boxhorn, Hendrik and Joannes de Gouda. Predicatie van pr. Ioannes de Govda Iesvvvyt, t’Antwerpen op alderheylighen dach ghedaen, ende over-ghezonden aen Henricvm Boxhornivm. Rotterdam: Felix van Sambix, 1610. Boxhorn, Hendrik. Anti-pater Govda, dat is Patris Joannis de Gauda, priesters van jesu-wijt nederslach, over syn predicatie opden Paeps-alder-heylighen dach ghedaen. Rotterdam: F. van Sambix, 1611.

The Rotterdam Inquisitor 163 Boxhorn, Hendrik. Vaerachtich verhael vande disputatie ende het ghespreck gehouden den vierden Januarij anno M. D. C. XIII. tusschen…Henricvm Boxhornivm licentiaet ende bediender des h. euangelij tot Breda, ende…Peeter van Dornick licentiaet ende paeps-pastoor in de Haghe by Breda. Delft: Adraen Cornelisz., 1613. Coornhert, Dirck Volckertsz. Vande Leydtsche Disputatie. Warachtich Verhael. Leiden: Coornhert, 1607. Enders, Jody. “The Theater of Scholastic Erudition.” Comparative Drama, 27, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 341–363. Featley, Daniel. The Fisher catched in his owne net. London: s. n., 1623. Van Gennip, Joep. Controverse in Context: Een comparatief onderzoek naar de Nederlandstalige controversepublicaties van de jezuïeten in de zeventiendeeeuwse Republiek. Hilversum: Verloren, 2014. de Gouda, Joannes. Andwoorde Ioannis de Govda priester der societeyt Iesv op de medesprake aengaende de transsubstantiatie met Francisco ende Samvele Lansbergen ministers tot Rotterdam. Antwerp: Joachim Trognesius, 1609. de Gouda, Joannes. Ander-half-hondert levghens Henrici Boxhornii woordendienaers tot Breda, in sijn venijnich Teghen-ghift ghemenght, ontdeckt ende wederleyt. Antwerp: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1611. de Gouda, Joannes. De victorievse transsubstantiatie Ioannis de Govda priester der Societeyt Iesv over Franciscvm ende Samvelem Lansberghens, woordendienaers tot Rotterdam. T’Antwerpen: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1611. de Gouda, Joannes. De godtloosheyt der Rotterdamscher inquisitie in de welcke Franciscus ende Samuel Lansbergen inquisiteurs arbeyden met lasteren, leugenen, quade citatien, ende alderley onverstandicheydt levendich te delven ende begraven de vvelvarende, triumphante, eewichdurende, Roomsche, katholijcke transvbstantiatie. T’Hantwerpen: Hieronymus Verdussen, 1612. de Gouda, Joannes. Den Katholiicken heyligen-dienst Ioannis de Govda, priester der Societeyt Iesv, teghens Henricvm Boxhornivm: Ioannem Bogaert, Wilhelmvm Perkinsvm, Vincentivm Mevsevoet sijnen vertaelder, ketters, leughenaers, in Brabant, Enghelant Hollant. Antwerp: Hieronyms Verdussen, 1612. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991. Kaplan, Benjamin. Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. Kappler, Émile. Les Conférences théologiques entre catholiques et protestants en France au xviie siècle. Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2011. Kirby, Torrance. Persuasion and Conversion: Essays on Religion, Politics, and the Public Sphere in Early Modern England. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2013. Lansbergen, Franciscus. Weder-antwoorde Francisci Lansbergii…teghens de antwoorde Joann. de Gouda…op sekere bedenckinghen Lansbergii voorseyt, aengaende de transsubstantiatie. Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz., 1610. Lansbergen, Franciscus. Wtvaert van de roomsche transubstantiatie…nu ten tweeden male beweert ende verdedicht. Rotterdam: J. Ianszoon, 1612.

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Lansbergen, Samuel. Ghespreck over de Leere vande Transubstantiatie, onlancks ghehouden binnen Antwerpen, tusschen Franciscum Lansbergium, Dienaer der Gemyente Christi binnen Rotterdam, ende Patrem Gauda Priester der ghenaemder Societeyt Jesu. Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz, 1609. Lansbergen, Samuel. Ghespreck Over de Leere vande Transubstantiatie…Wtgegeven ende verrijckt met Nadere verclaringen…. Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz, 1610. Leinsle, Ulrich G. Introduction to Scholastic Theology, translated by Michael J. Miller. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2010. McCoog, S.J. Thomas, “‘Playing the Champion’: The Role of Disputation in the Jesuit Mission.” In The Reckoned Expense: Edmund Campion and the Early English Jesuits: Essays in celebration of the first centenary of Campion Hall, Oxford (1896-1996), edited by Thomas McCoog, 121–138. Rochester, NY: The Boydell Press, 1996. Novikoff, Alex J. The Medieval Culture of Disputation: Pedagogy, Practice, and Performance. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013. Pollman, Judith and Andrew Spicer, eds. Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Rahimi, Babak. Theater State and the Formation of Early Modern Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 1590-1641CE. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2012. Robinson, David. “Religious Disputations as Theatre: Staging Religious Difference in France after the Wars of Religion.” In Reframing Reformation: Understanding Religious Difference in Early Modern Europe, edited by Nicholas Terpstra, 31–50. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2020. Rodda, Joshua. Public Religious Disputation in England, 1558-1626. Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. Roobol, Marianne. Disputation by Decree: The Public Disputations between Reformed Ministers and Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert as Instruments of Religious Policy during the Dutch Revolt (1557-1583). Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010. Rospocher, Massimo and Rosa Salzberg. “An Evanescent Public Sphere: Voices, Spaces, and Publics in Venice during the Italian Wars.” In Beyond the Public Sphere: Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe, edited by Massimo Rospocher. Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino, 2012. Salliot, Natacha. Philippe Duplessis-Mornay: La rhétorique dans la théologie. Paris: Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2009. Stanglin, Keith D. The Missing Public Disputations of Jacobus Arminius: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2010. Sawyer, Jeffrey K. Pamphlet Propaganda, Faction Politics, and the Public Sphere. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Thomas, Werner. “The Treaty of London, the Twelve Years Truce and Religious Toleration in Spain and the Netherlands.” In The Twelve Years’ Truce (1609): Peace, Truce, War and Law in the Low Countries at the Turn of the 17th Century, edited by Randall Lesaffer, 277–297. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

The Rotterdam Inquisitor 165 Uytenbogaert, Johannes. Cort berecht. Nopende seeckere copije van een remonstrantie, die (soo men voor-gheeft) in den druck van de conferentie in den Haghe ghehouden, naghelaten oft vergheten is. Rotterdam: Matthijs Bastiaensz, 1612. Zaret, David. Origins of Democratic Culture: Printing, Petitions, and the Public Sphere in Early-Modern England. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Zijlstra, Samme. Om de ware gemeente en de oude gronden: Geschiedenis van de dopersen in de Nederlanden 1531-1675. Hilversum & Leeuwarden: Uitgeverij Verloren & Fryske Akademy, 2000.

8

Relational Performances and Audiences in the Prologue of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis Jonathan M. Newman

John Gower (1330–1408) was the author of three long moral-didactic poems, the Anglo-Norman Mirrour d’Omme, the Latin Vox Clamantis, and the Middle English Confessio Amantis. His works suggest acquaintance with many of the most influential and powerful figures of his day. A friend of Geoffrey Chaucer’s and a courtier of three successive monarchs, John Gower’s poetic and political career converge in his selfrepresentation as royal counselor, first in the Vox Clamantis, written around the time of the 1381 uprising and revised in its wake, and later in the Confessio Amantis, completed by 1390 and revised until no later than 1392.1 In the Vox Clamantis, Gower addresses moral counsel in the form of a Latin verse epistle to Richard II in the tone of a master teaching a wayward student.2 In the first recension of the Confessio Amantis, however, he addresses King Richard with the tone of a courtier who enjoys the preferment of his monarch.3 The tension between these two relational models, teacher-student and king-courtier, pervades the Confessio Amantis and offers an object of moral inquiry in its own right. An instructional dialog between Gower’s persona (the student) and the allegorical figure of Genius (the master) is the frame for the story collection, but in the first recension, this dialogic is framed through dedications by the imagined dialog between the poet John Gower and his King Richard II embodied in the book. The book is embodied because it continues a relationship enacted in a prior interaction it describes in the Prologue’s dedication: The poet and king meet on the Thames and the king invites the poet aboard his barge and commissions a book in English. The Confessio Amantis, therefore, is the sign and issue of the relation between king and poet.4 It therefore seems worthwhile to analyze how the discourse of the interaction described in the commission scene performs that relation. As a performance of the poet–king relation, the interaction between king and poet has a broader significance to our understanding of the Confessio Amantis than as a status ritual or obeisance due a royal patron. The scene forms the centerpiece of what Gérard Genette calls the “paratext”: DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-8

Relational Performances and Audiences 167 a zone between text and off-text, a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public, an influence that ... is at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it.5 As a poem containing prudential wisdom and advice specifically for kings, the Confessio Amantis enacts Gower’s status as courtier; his narration of the work’s commission advertises the king’s preferment. This preferment warrants his authority as a moral counselor and mitigates the risk of overstepping boundaries and insulting that inevitably accompanies advice.6 This advice is, after all, explicitly solicited. In the relations of preferment that prevail in the social life of courts, hierarchy goes with social proximity in an asymmetrical intimacy. Gower uses this familiar relational model to construct an idealized relationship which, in the wider context of prologue and poem, elicits the reader’s interpretive and ethical cooperation. The way this idealization manages the audience can be inferred from the details of the commissions, particularly, as I shall demonstrate, in the way they combine literary rituals affirming the reader’s status with the preferential discourse of private familiarity between poet and king. Scholarship on Gower’s portrayal of the commission has searched it for clues about Gower and King Richard’s relationship to one another and their respective views on kingship. Scholars have also debated whether the commission could have taken place as described.7 Genuine or not, the scene asserted its factuality to contemporary audience as it has to modern critics.8 Anne Middleton suggests the commission scene was a deviation from Gower’s artistic design and moral purpose; as Gower’s sense of his audience developed from a royal circle to a wider public, his excision of the scene corrected this deviation (which was compelled by self-preservation) so that he addressed at last the “public” for whom he claimed to speak.9 Tracing back this trajectory, Gower’s sense of his audience shifts from the clerical elite addressed in the Vox Clamantis to the king as the embodiment of the realm as whole, to the realm itself, even if, as Fisher hinted, for Gower “Engelonde” is identifiable with the interests of the London citizenry.10 Middleton, like Gower himself, perhaps, conceals the situated interest of the London citizenry under the umbrella of the “commons” as a whole. The poetic voice of “public poetry” is, for Anne Middleton, that of the townsman, “vernacular, practical, worldly, plain, public-spirited, and peaceloving—in a word, ‘common,’ rather than courtly or clerical, in its professed values and social allegiances.”11 At the same time, she argues that this public voice speaks “as if” to the entire community—as a whole, and all at once rather than severally—rather than “as if” to a coterie or patron. By its mode of address and diction it implies that the community is heterogeneous, diverse, made up of many having separate

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“singular interests.”12 This is, perhaps, a whiggish fantasy, eliding as it does the fact that, even speaking as a London citizen to others of his station, the community to and for whom Gower speaks is narrowly circumscribed and privileged. The city of London, for example, was a contestant and power broker in the political struggles among Richard, the upper nobility, and the church. I would moderate this view to suggest that the textualized relation between King and poet depicts a social ideal of good faith and integrity equally available to several audiences—elitepublic, private coterie, and the king himself, notwithstanding Gower’s shifting sense of affiliation among those several audiences.13 A re-examination of Gower’s earlier self-representation as royal counselor in the Vox clamantis, a dream vision about English society during the Peasants’ Rebellion of 1381, will help to clarify Gower’s changing conception of this role and its relation to his several audiences.

8.1 From Mentor to Vassal Gower and King Richard’s relation is depicted differently in the Confessio’s Prologue than in Book VI of the Vox Clamantis. In the Latin work, Gower assumes a magisterial role, whereas in the English work he plays a courtly counselor, a more delicate task requiring a complicated balance of deference and authority. Most of Book VI is a verse epistle in which he advises King Richard, still adolescent at the time of composition, about the governance of himself and his kingdom. The epistle’s preface, referring to the king in third rather than second person, addresses a different audience, and sets the epistle’s advice in the context of a specific problem: Flatterers surround the king and keep him from truthtellers like Gower: A mob of flatterers proceeds to the middle of the royal court, and whatever it commands to be done the court grants them. But the court banishes those who dare to speak the truth, and does not allow such people to be at the king’s side.14 Gower spares King Richard responsibility for this state of affairs, but this excuse comes at the expense of the king’s autonomy and dignity. A later revision of the preface attributes a greater share of responsibility to the king’s greater age. The king, an untaught boy, neglects moral courses of conduct in which a man can grow out of a boy. In fact, his juvenile entourage so commands the boy that he understand nothing purposeful, unless it be his whim.15

Relational Performances and Audiences 169 No longer fully excusable, the King nevertheless is swayed by boyish affections to choose youthful and rash counselors when he should know better.16 In both versions, the preface’s disparagement of Richard’s authority frames Gower’s self-authorization in the epistle. The first version shows a king too young and inexperienced to choose trustworthy advisors. In the revised version, the king chooses youthful comrades who share his vanity and impulsiveness, and “older men of greed who in pursuing their gains tolerate many scandals for the boy’s pleasure.”17 Self-appointed spokesman for “voice of the people of today,” Gower dares to speak the unflattering truth: Everywhere today, the voice of the people, put in doubt by the severity of the evil, cries out about such things. I grieve such things the more by those disgusting things I glimpse, because of which I bring the boy king the writings to follow.18 Although the poet speaks on behalf of the people, his grief surpasses theirs insofar as his social position grants him a better view of the court’s corruption. Thus, his courtier’s status paradoxically qualifies him as popular spokesman.19 Authorized doubly by popular mandate and his own privileged perspective, Gower addresses the puer rex indoctus in purely magisterial terms, using simple imperatives and other bald directives. He plainly indicates in the preface that the liberties he will take in this letter, which he describes as scripta sequenda, writings to be followed—as in observed and obeyed. Some characteristic examples of these directives: “If you wish to be king, rule yourself, and king you will be”; “O good young king, act so that your youth be given rightly to ways compliant with goodness”; “Beware false friends mixed up in filthy deeds.”20 Such liberties are unthinkable in the Confessio Amantis; the Latin Vox Clamantis was addressed to an audience of learned clergy who would prove unsympathetic to Richard.21 The young king was the epistle’s implied, but not actual audience, a symbolic focus for Gower’s views on kingship and the role of royal counselors. Gower’s repeated mention of the king’s youth enables his own self-representation as a wise, stern counselor. The Vox Clamantis calls a clerical audience to identify with and emulate this role. Not coincidentally, this same clerical community is the satiric target of much of the Vox Clamantis. Despite the epistle’s direct address to King Richard, he is not really the audience of the Vox Clamantis, but a “mock reader.”22 The Confessio Amantis (in its first recension), on the other hand, represents a much richer and more nuanced relationship between poet and king—this, along with the switch from Latin from English, strongly suggests the king was an actual intended audience. Gower’s epistle to the king in the Vox Clamantis is didactic and sermonizing, while his English poem is deferential and courtly, avoiding even direct address in its

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dedication. This later textualization of the poet–king relation is an anecdote rather than a diatribe, set one day on the familiar Thames. Combined with the ritual and discursive qualities of the transaction it depicts, the anecdote argues its own authenticity by appeal to the social reality that defined their respective positions and configured the discourse of their interaction, a “reality” more significant to Gower and his audience than the factual circumstances of their meeting. Gower must pay due obeisance in addressing his king and be strategic in giving advice. For this reason, while preferment shapes the represented relation of poet and king (and by proxy, author and reader), direct moral instruction of the kind found in Vox clamantis is couched in the fictional dialog between Genius and Gower. In this dialogic frame, Gower takes the subordinate role of student and penitent. Genius plays the confessor, with the social, spiritual, and intellectual authority of father, teacher, and priest: This worthi prest, this holy man To me spekende thus began, And seide: “Benedicité,” Mi sone; of the felicité Of love and ek of all the wo Thou shalt thee schrive of both tuo.23 Addressing Gower as “mi sone” immediately subordinates the poet, as does his doubling (“thou shalt thee schrive”) of the status-marking tpronoun.24 This subordination is reinforced by the penitential discourse in which the penitent submits himself to the questioning and correction of the priest.25 “Thi schrifte to oppose and hiere, My sone, I am assigned hiere Be Venus the godesse above, . . . For that belongeth to thoffice Of Prest, whos ordre that I bere,26 Genius’s authority is based not on his character or moral worth but on his sacred office. Gower’s self-positioning as subordinate to Genius is a gesture of misdirection that conceals the author’s status as moral advisor to his extratextual audience. Another such gesture is found in Book Seven of Confessio Amantis, a collection of narratives with its own inner frame of an instructive dialog between Aristotle and Alexander the Great. The tradition of mirrors for princes from which Gower draws these representative figures “defines Aristotle, history’s most authoritative philosopher, as instructor of Alexander, its most powerful monarch.”27 Familiar but remote, these

Relational Performances and Audiences 171 culturally prestigious stand-ins for learned author and royal reader valorize king and counselor. At the same time, the situational context of “long ago and far away” impersonalizes Gower’s counsel, investing it with a relevance that is universal rather than merely addressed to Richard’s problems, mitigating the potential insult contained in advice. Gower takes measures to distance his relation to King Richard from the Genius-Amans and Aristotle-Alexander relational pairs. The identification is available, potentially attractive, but not enjoined. This impersonalization is a mark of a subordinate’s caution in counseling his superior.28 Such caution is continually evident in Gower’s affirmation of King Richard’s superior status and avoidance of direct advice. It is also evident in how he casts even his fictionally mediated scene of counsel as the fulfillment of a superior’s request rather than as an elder’s rebuke. Finally, it is evident in his self-presentation as the transmitter rather than originator of counsel. These precautions are notably absent in royal counsel in Book VI of Vox Clamantis. Gower’s changing self-representation as royal counselor between the Vox Clamantis and the Confessio Amantis finds a possible explanation in Richard’s changing political fortunes. Reaching majority in 1387, King Richard substantially rearranged his circle of advisors to exclude a number of prominent noblemen, a move that provoked a forceful counter-reaction stripping the King of many of his powers, including his freedom to choose his own counsel.29 By 1390 Richard II had resumed his full royal powers.30 During this period, Gower completed the Confessio Amantis; whatever the king’s actual attitude, the poet may have found it prudent to be more careful than he was in the Vox Clamantis. The change in tone speaks to a crucial change in the political situations with King’s Richard’s “growing appreciation of the role of the king’s entourage as a forum for the display of his majesty,” a development influenced by continental courts that were “larger, . . . more civilized and sophisticated,” and marked by a “greater preoccupation with ceremony and ritual.”31 This is why Gower frames the Confessio Amantis as an act of service by a courtier licensed by the king’s preferment to give counsel in the less ceremonious context of casual (in its original sense) and private interaction. Richard’s understanding of royal authority did not admit his being lectured publicly by a squire who dabbled in law and real estate.32 Gower writes himself as the recipient of (Genius’s) counsel, assuming the fictional persona of Amans, while appearing in the Prologue as his “concrete extraliterary self.”33 Gower makes the most salient feature of this outer “real” persona his reverence and loyalty. All of this amounts to more than a courtier’s prudence before a temperamental monarch; this relation represented in the anecdote exemplifies just hierarchy and mutual fidelity in specific contrast to the attacks of

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widespread faithlessness and strife that make up most of the Prologue. At the same time, Gower draws attention to how his discourse declaring his own fidelity and honesty resembles that of traitors, hypocrites, and false counselors in order to invite the critical moral participation of his audience.

8.2 On a Boat: Preference and Privacy In Gower’s anecdote about the book’s commission, he fashions himself as the kind of courtier who does not strive after the prince’s favor; his humility, disinterestedness, and directness of speech are emblems of his trustworthiness. His language mixes familiarity with deference, but stops short of flattery. Central to this strategic positioning of himself in relation to his audience is his use of medieval satiric discourse. Medieval satire is blunt and direct, but criticizes concrete practices and institutions rather than abstract vices. To speak this way is to represent oneself as blunt and honest; even if its aggression is not directed toward the king, the very fact that it discusses problems in the kingdom that excuses Gower from the charge of flattery. At the same time, his attacks in the Prologue of the Confessio against the wickedness and immorality of others show him by contrast in an idealized light.34 Gower distinguishes himself especially from flatterers, hypocrites, and dissemblers, the recurring villains of medieval satires and sermons. The trustworthy counselor differentiates himself from them by his plain-dealing willingness to speak unflattering truths. Conversely, the prince shows himself to be confidently moral by his receptivity to such truth-telling. The wicked liars cataloged in the Prologue estates contrast with the fidelity and honesty embodied by a fearless counselor addressing a wise prince, and these ideals are enacted in the commission scene and fulfilled in the production of the Confessio Amantis itself. In the Prologue, the scene of commission and estates satire thus reinforce each other. The commission scene begins and ends with dedications, literary rituals that affirm poet and king in their respective status. These public rituals contrast the private familiarities they contain. The indicators of familiarity, even intimacy, between poet and king, actually reinforce their relative status which is explicitly expressed in the dedication. Here is the text of the commission scene, which contains several features distinguishing it from public, ceremonial exchange, making it atypical of dedications to mirrors for princes; “while complimentary, [it] comes nowhere near the flowery hyperbole that usually characterizes royal dedications.”35 Its informality is also surprisingly discordant with Richard’s cultivation of the ceremonial and sacred character of the royal office at that time.36

Relational Performances and Audiences 173 I thenke and have it understonde, As it bifel upon a tyde, As thing which scholde tho bityde— Under the toun of newe Troye, Which took of Brut his ferste joye, In Temse whan it was flowende As I by bote cam rowende, So as Fortune hir tyme sette, My liege lord par chaunce I mette; And so bifel, as I cam neigh, Out of my bot, whan he me seigh, He bad me come into his barge. An whan I was with him at large, Amonges othre thinges seyde He hath this charge upon my leyde, And bad me doo my busynesse That to his hihe worthinesse Som newe thing I scholde booke, That he himself it mighte looke After the forme of my writyinge. And thus upon his comaundyng Myn hert is wel the more glad To write so as he me bad;37 The scene’s discourse shifts public to a private interaction, where a greater degree of informality is permissible. Informality is a feature of preferment between unequal actors; here, it elevates Gower’s status and evokes a situational context in which counsel is appropriate and expected. Other discursive features of this passage reinforce this preferment. First, Gower evokes a familiar link between London and Troy, between Britain and “Brut,” and this identification references a foundational narrative of the Plantagenet dynasty.38 The identification of King Richard with the Trojan legend binds the interaction to foundational events in a way that avows the essential rightness of its participants’ roles. It affirms Gower’s faithful assent to Richard’s exalted selfunderstanding. The legendary association suppresses the historical contingency of Richard’s rule by transposing the encounter into a narrative temporality outside the flow of everyday events.39 Some hear in the reference to Troy a note of ambiguity, even warning.40 Besides the ambiguous figure of Aeneas, the central fact destabilizing the legendary ideal of Troy is that it fell. In the rest of the Prologue, Gower repeatedly alludes to the working of chance and fortune in his insistence on the accidental, casual nature of the encounter: “As it bifel upon a tyde,” “So as Fortune hir tyme sette,” “par chaunce,” “and so bifel.”41 Inseparable from the legend of Troy’s glory is its fall from fortune, and this

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discordant subtext complicates the mythical allusion’s function as a status-affirming ritual, especially given the universal history synopsized later in the Prologue in Gower’s account of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream with its litany of fallen empires.42 Notwithstanding these ambiguities, these references to fortune in the immediate context of the encounter on the river serve to emphasize the accidental nature of Gower and King Richard’s meeting, and in this way excuse the poet from any accusation that he was calculatedly lurking on the river, waiting to be spotted by the king, jostling for royal attention like the ambitious courtiers whom Skelton later depicts as crowding the docks around the ship of Fortune.43 In fact, the king first notices Gower and “bids him come into the royal barge” of his own accord.44 The king’s initiation of the exchange illustrates his preference for Gower, his prerogative in granting preference, and his final authority over the Confessio Amantis as its initial cause. After Gower sets the scene, poet and king slip into conversation with an unceremonious ease suggesting prior acquaintance. Their encounter is casual not only in the etymological sense just described, but in its modern usage of relaxed and informal: And whan I was with him at large, Amonges othre thinges seyde He hath this charge upon me leyde45 Russell Peck glosses “at large” as “comfortably, without restraint.”46 The word relates to largesse, the aristocratic virtue of liberality. An aristocratic virtue is practiced by superiors on behalf of subordinates; lords are treated with deference, and vassals with largesse. As the prerogative of the lord, the act of preferment that promotes a subordinate to familiarity is an act of generosity. Preferment, however, is by definition exclusive. Like Gower’s contemporary audience, we are excluded from knowing what “othre thinges” passed between him and Richard. The “charge,” the literary commission, thus emerges for a wider audience from concealed interaction. The existence of this relation and its private, preferential attributes are disclosed to the reader in several ways. Frank Grady points out that even though the Thames was a busy commercial thoroughfare, “Gower gives no sense that it is crowded or noisy or smelly; indeed, the river seems quite oddly empty but for the royal barge and Gower’s nowabandoned boat.”47 The royal barge is itself empty of a royal entourage—only the king is figure. Perhaps this reinforces Scanlon’s sense of the setting being “striking” since it “does not occur at court, the nerve center of a monarch’s sovereignty.”48 As court was the location of public ceremony, the choice to represent the encounter away from court also evokes familiarity between poet and king. The paucity of

Relational Performances and Audiences 175 circumstantial detail, the omission of any other participants or attendants to the king, and Gower’s reticence about the “other things” said, all construct a private and familiar exchange. Gower’s use of indirect discourse to represent this encounter reinforces its preferential qualities, for it implies a greater selectivity than direct reported speech. Gower mentions that “other things” are said, but not what they are. The “privacy” of the encounter illustrates King Richard’s authority to bestow preference as he chooses and his discernment in choosing wisely, and at the same time, illustrates the tact and discretion that distinguish Gower as worthy of preferment. The passage idealizes both participants by affirming the suitability of each to the role they play and the authenticity of their regard for one another. Gower’s discretion preserves King Richard’s privacy and maintains his public front; his tact, like the book itself, is an act of service, as much an affirmation of loyalty as the dedications that bookend the anecdote. In the dedication immediately preceding the anecdote it, Gower declares he will make . . . A book for King Richardes sake To whom bilongeth my ligeance With al myn hertes obeissance In al that ever a liege man Unto his king may doon or can.49 The language of vassalage combines affective (al myn hertes obeissance) with juridical discourse (ligeance, liege man).50 Each justifies and naturalizes the other. The “liege man” is bound by oath and compelled by his desire to do all he can for his lord. Gower affirms his loyalty with a prayer: So ferforth I me recomaunde To him which al me may comaunde, Prayend unto the hihe regne Which causeth every king to regne, That his corone longe stonde.51 The end-rhymed pair of “I me recomaunde” with “me may comaunde” aligns the reciprocal rights and obligations of Gower and Richard; Gower commits himself to the king’s keeping and offers obedience in return. His self-recommendation affirms that his preferment is at the king’s discretion, just as every king’s fortune is at God’s discretion. This comparison makes their relation reflect the “hihe regne” of God Himself. After the commission scene’s nineteen lines, Gower reaffirms his obligation of loyalty and obedience, and locates his obedience as much in affection as obligation:

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Jonathan M. Newman And thus upon his comaundyng Myn hert is wel the more glad To write so as he me bad;52

More than just a status ritual or a flattering gesture identifying the patron as the poem’s original cause, the anecdote attributes Gower’s access to the king to royal preferment, by ascribing his familiarity with Richard to the king’s will, the poet avoids the appearance of ambition. For Grady, the impression that Gower and Richard are alone on the river suggests that the commission scene “is a literary device, a scene that is not so much recollected as staged.”53 Yet real-life interactions often possess a staged quality, especially in high-stakes domains like court. I propose that the scene textualizes the way preferential relations were staged in real-life. Grady argues that the scene offers a flattering portrait of “a monarch in control of both his kingdom and himself.”54 Yet it also flatters the poet by representing a relation of private access, affection, familiarity, and trust. By a discourse that evokes these qualities, it performs a private interaction for a public audience. Erving Goffman, describing the way members of in-groups represent their affiliation to one another and their respective roles, refers to interactants who cooperate in the performance of their mutual roles as “teammates,” and their cooperative relation he calls a “performance team.” Among teammates, the privilege of familiarity—which may constitute a kind of intimacy without warmth—need not be something of an organic kind, slowly developing with the passage of time spent together, but rather a formal relationship that is automatically extended and received as soon as an individual takes a place on the team.55 Representing Richard and himself as a two-man performance team, Gower claims for himself the privilege of access to the king even as he maintains the king’s exclusive authority to grant this privilege. This performance is directed to the secondary audience over-reading this work of counsel. The care evident in Gower’s staging of their interaction reflects the conscious attention which Richard himself paid to the appearance and effect of his interaction with others. Simon Walker writes: The changes in court ceremonial in the final years of Richard’s reign embodied, at a practical level . . . an increasing distinction between the king’s public and private persons which simultaneously conferred upon him a greater degree of discretion in his courses of action. While his public person became increasingly sacralized, to the extent that courtiers were required to drop to their knees whenever the royal glance lighted upon them, the privilege of

Relational Performances and Audiences 177 familiar access to the king was increasingly personalized, with the king’s own will regarded as sufficient . . . to dissolve the barriers of social and ceremonial hierarchy.56 In the commission scene, we see precisely this dissolution. The scene, however, speaks to more than Gower’s immediate political context. Rather than simply accommodating the monumental self-regard of a preening monarch, Gower puts the situation at court to the service of his moral-didactic poem and textually stages the “performance team” of poet and king as the embodiment of social ideals such as fidelity, discretion, honesty, loyalty, and love. Underscoring the importance of these ideals are the condemnations of deception, dissimulation, and disloyalty which crowd the satire that follows in the Prologue.

8.3 Credibility and “Trowthe” In the Prologue, the king solicits a book from the courtier-poet who obliges with a work of counsel. For Gower, the giving and receiving of counsel binds the body politic to its head: For alle resoun wolde this, That unto him which the heved is The membres buxom scholden bowe, And he scholde ek her trowthe allowe, With al his herte and make hem chiere, For good consail is good to hiere.57 The good king cheerfully accepts “good consail” as the subject’s expression of his “trowthe.” The word “trowthe” encapsulates an ethical ideal of courtly social relations shared by Gower and his contemporaries. In the Middle Ages, the primary meaning of “trowthe” was relational fidelity and mutual trust, although R.F. Green has argued that in Gower’s period this relational definition was “challenged by the intellectual notion of truth as correspondence to reality.”58 If Gower was aware of this challenge, he reconciled the intellectual and relational notions of truth in the person of the truth-telling counselor. True words correspond to the things they name just as the words of true people reflect their intentions. Gower founds his authority on a consequent tautology; his loyalty to King Richard and the reliability of his counsel confirm one another. “Good conseil” is identical with “trowthe.” The affection that pervades preferential discourse (“With al his herte and make hem chiere”) are both cause and result of “trowthe.” Since counsel gives discursive form to “trowthe,” it is girded by the affective language of preference; good counsel and genuine affection legitimize preferment as the ordering principle of courtly society.59

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However, the same relational context also allows for distrust, feigned affection, and deceit. If “trowthe” is manifested in discourse, it can be falsified. In the Confessio Amantis, satire represents dissimulation to explore but ultimately suppress it. For this reason, Gower shares the preoccupation of much court literature and mirrors for princes with flattery and hypocrisy. His self-representation as a true counselor requires the definition and identification of false counselors. As David Gary Shaw describes late medieval English society, “fidelity worked to define the good person, the well-tended relationship, but most often showed up in the negative discriminations of morality.”60 “Negative discriminations” show up in Gower’s estates satire not only on account of the “perceived success [of vice, corruption, etc.] . . . in daily affairs” but because the speaker who makes such discriminations exempts himself and the sympathetic reader.61 As the fulfillment of a liege man’s obligation, counsel confirms author and reader in their social standing; in parallel, satire confirms them in their moral standing by excluding the targets of its rebuke from interaction. The following lines challenges the secondary audience to read his words in good faith and join the community of the “goode”: Bot what as eny man accuse, This mai reson of trowthe excuse; The vice of hem that ben ungoode, Is no reproef unto the goode.62 Gower’s claim to moral authority, as Scanlon points out, “depends on the wicked, or negative example,” which the Prologue’s estates satire provides in abundance.63 It also contributes to the poem’s moral-didactic purpose by instructing the reader about the political and moral threat of dissimulation. These two goals are closely related. The possibility of dissimulated authority is a consequence of the fact that “authority . . . is discursively constructed.”64 In his use of satire to distinguish himself as a true counselor from false ones, Gower reveals a consciousness of this discursive construction of authority. Rival claimants to the same authority challenge the performability of “trowthe,” as the Western Schism beginning in 1378 made evident to Gower and his contemporaries: In holy cherche of such a slitte Is for to rewe unto ous alle; God grante it mote wel befalle Towardes him whiche hath the trowthe.65 This prayer is at the same time a declaration of skepticism, acknowledging the undecidability of the question based on external signifiers, but suggests Gower’s persistent faith that, although two rival popes perform one unique office, one must necessarily be dissembling and one must be

Relational Performances and Audiences 179 true. Gower’s condemnations of predatory knights, prideful clerics, false counselors, and other villains below papal status treat the political and moral dangers of dissimulation in each estate. Those acting in these roles have compromised the authority inherent to them; Gower grounds his authority as counselor in his relation with the king, at once the actual intended audience and a model of ethical selfsovereignty with whom other readers are called to identify. The text’s authority, its “trowthe,” rests in the active cooperation of its audience to whom it offers the enticing subject position of sovereign. In accepting this subject position, readers both ratify and share in the author’s moral authority. The fidelity, affection, and reciprocal obligation of the author–reader relation constructed by the commission scene stands in contrast to the debat which scars society at large.66 In court, rivals seek to discredit one another. This immediate context motivates Gower’s anxiety about his words being distorted by deceitful and envious rivals: And eek my fere is wel the lasse That non envye schal compasse Without a reasonable wite To feyne and blame that I write.67 This fear of distortion appears already in the Latin verses that open Confessio Amantis: Ossibus ergo carens que conterit ossa loquelis Absit, et interpres stet procul oro malus.68 Gower preemptively discredits dissembling rivals who, “lacking bones,” are dangerous because they offer no stable self-performance, no reliable correspondence between their words and thoughts, but can still discredit Gower, “break his bones” with their speech and falsely claim the authority he deserves. The reader’s cooperation is required because of the interpretive crisis generated by the symmetry between Gower and his imagined rival, the malus interpres, each discrediting the other and seeking the same authoritative position. Hence, the commission scene’s enactment of a private domain of interaction that excludes third parties is motivated not only by Gower’s desire to appear discreet, as I argued in the last section, but is justified by the lurking threat of the malus interpres, the wicked interpreter. It is specifically this figure, in all his forms, that the text excludes, for he cannot twist words he does not hear. Of course, given the very public nature of the Confessio Amantis, this gesture of privacy is no more than a literary effect. Gower conceived his poem in explicitly monumental terms with a readership continuing into posterity:

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Jonathan M. Newman Of hem that writen ous tofore The bokes duelle, and we therfore Ben tawht of that was write tho: Forthi good is that we also In oure tyme among ous hiere Do wryte of newe some matiere, Essampled of these olde wyse, So that it myhte in such a wyse, Whan we ben dede and elleswhere, Beleve to the worldes eere In tyme comende after this.69

In combining public and private discourse, Gower necessarily risks his words’ exposure to the distortions of the malus interpres. In the prayer concluding the scene of commission, Gower recapitulates the hope expressed in the Latin verse at the Prologue’s opening that his words will not be distorted, and once more distinguishes a good, cooperative audience from a malicious one: A gentil herte his tunge stilleth That is malice noon distilleth, But preyseth that is to be preised; But he that hath his word unpeysed And handeleth onwrong every thing, I pray unto the heven king Fro suche tunges He me schilde.70 The malicious rivals whose words are unleashed from the restraints of truth, conscience, or reason threaten the relational context on which Gower rests his authority.71 And natheles the world is wilde Of such jangling, and what bifalle, My kinges heste schal nought falle, That I, in hope to deserve His thonk, ne schal his wil observe.72 These imagined rivals declare that Gower will never fulfill his obligation and merit the king’s gratitude.73 In other words, rivals accuse Gower of their own dissembling. We learn more about such rivals and wicked interpreters in the Prologue’s estate satire. Each estate—clergy, nobility, and commons—has its own versions of the malus interpres who twists language and sows discord for personal gain. According to the Latin verse at the beginning of the section satirizing the nobility, the tempus presens is a time when “hidden hatred

Relational Performances and Audiences 181 presents a painted face of love, and clothes under false peace an age at arms.”74 Deceit corrupts the pristine condition of the lay nobility, when word and deed were one: Of mannes herte the corage Was schewed thanne in the visage; The word was lich to the conceite Withoute semblant of deceite.75 Visage and corage, face and feeling, no longer accord. Venality and fraud compromise the lay government’s sacred purpose of administering justice and protecting the weak, as does the duplicity of lawyers: And lawe hath take hire double face, So that justice out of the weie With ryhtwisnesse is gon aweie.76 Gower dwells at greater length on the corruption of the clergy, whose falseness and venality threaten not only the material but the spiritual welfare of those in their charge: Lo, how thei feignen chalk for chese, For though thei speke and teche wel, Thei don hemself therof no del.77 Gower blames their failing on avarice and price, and like the nobility, their face and their feelings (visage and corage) are split: Ther ben also somme, as men seie, That folwen Simon at hieles, Whos carte goth upon the whieles Of coveitise and worldes Pride, And holy cherche goth beside, Which scheweth outward a visage Of that is noght in the corage. For if men loke in holy cherche, Betwen the word and that their werche Ther is a full gret difference.78 Because of the “gret difference” between appearance and intention, the clergy, like the nobility, measure up poorly against their forebears: To thenke upon the daies olde, The lif of clerkes to beholde, Men sein how that thei were tho

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Jonathan M. Newman Ensample and reule of alle tho Which of wisdom the vertu soughten.79

Fallen from their pristine virtue, they no longer fulfill their role as “ensample and reule of alle.”80 Rampant pride and hypocrisy have driven the church to schism; Gower takes no side on this controversy but prays that “God grante it mote wel befalle/Towardes him whiche hath the trowthe.”81 Attacking clerical hypocrisy is medieval satire’s most frequent topic, but in the Prologue of the Confessio Amantis it serves the special purpose of insulating the author from the charge of hypocrisy. The disorder of the clergy is emblematic of a more general social strife: “The world stand evere upon debat,/So may be seker non astat.”82 Against this division stands the idealized preferential dyad grounded in “trowthe” embodied by poet and King. This pair, at least, proves that deceit, though widespread, is not universal, a fact which allows for the possibility of the poet’s own credibility. Gower notes that The vice of hem that ben ungoode, Is no reproef unto the goode. For every man hise oghne werkes Schal bere, and thus as of the clerkes The goode men ben to comende, And alle these othre God amende.83 This passage excuses the reader from blame; in the context of the estates satire, it also excuses the author. The juxtaposition of the commission scene with the estates satire depicts an emblematic community of the good encroached on all sides by the wicked.84 Gower must distinguish himself from the false counselors and hypocrites for two reasons. First, claims to honesty, humility, and loyalty may as easily be made by dissimulating rivals. Second, he is, like them, a provider of moral counsel. How does one tell the true pope from the false? The true counselor from the false? Gower presents both dilemmas in the belief that one of the two must be true, but the symmetry between Gower and his dissembling rival nevertheless provokes an interpretive crisis for the audience because of the distorted judgment of the “world” that weighs with a deceitful balance: The world as of his propre kynde Was evere untrewe, and as the blynde Improprelich he demeth fame, He blameth that is noght to blame And preiseth that is noght to preise. Thus when he schall the thinges peise,

Relational Performances and Audiences 183 Ther is deceipte in his balance And al is that the variance Of ouse, that schold ous betre avise.85 Gower responds to this crisis by aligning himself and the audience in a community of shared judgment and mutual regard. Addressing his lay audience with the use of the first person plural “ous,” Gower groups himself with the victims of corrupt clerics. Echoing the first line of the poem (“Of hem that writen ous tofore . . . ”), Gower represents himself as a fellow reader in need of discernment and counsel.86 This is a gesture of humility, and if clerical corruption is caused by pride, Gower’s profession of humility is a claim to moral authority, both here and in the Prologue’s opening Latin verses: “Laziness, dullness of sense, little schooling and a lack of labor causes me, the least of all, to sing of lesser things.”87 He claims that his humility distinguishes him from his prideful enemies. In the first recension of the Prologue, it is by appealing to his relational context with the king that he seeks to validate this claim. For Gower, the world’s ability to peise (weigh) words and deeds rightly is distorted by the malicious tongue of a clergy corrupted by pride. Therefore, Gower’s humility betokens honesty, clarity, reliable judgment, and trustworthy counsel. In the commission scene, Gower’s humble subordination of his poetic authority to the king’s sovereign authority is a gesture of humility that pays appropriate deference and creates a relational context of “trowthe” in distinction to the venality and deception of Gower’s rivals. But the symmetry between Gower and the false counselors and preachers remains; in declaring his purpose of providing moral counsel, he makes the symmetry explicit and invites comparison. Of false preachers he writes: Who that here wordes understode, It thenkth thei wolden do the same; Bot yet betwen ernest and game Ful ofte it torneth otherwise. With holy tales thei devise How meritoire is thilke dede. . .88 “Betwen ernest and game” recalls Gower’s “middel weie . . . Somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore.”89 The false preachers telling “holy tales” superficially resemble the counselor figure of Genius: And natheless good is to hiere Such thing wherof a man may lere That vertu is acordant, ...

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Jonathan M. Newman I rede ensample amonges alle, Wherof to kepe wel an ere It oghte pute a man in fere.90

As a teller of moral exempla (even if through the mouthpiece of Genius), Gower risks resembling hypocritical clerics who tell “holy tales.”

8.4 Authority, Audience, and Community Gower’s resemblance as an author of moral tales to false clerics who tell holy tales provokes a crisis of trust. As William Robins puts it, “the narrating voice of the Prologue takes upon itself the office of instruction vacated by the contemporary clergy.”91 In taking their office for himself, Gower invites the same scrutiny he exercises on the clergy. He distinguishes himself from them, I argue above, by performing his humility and good faith, especially in his self-representation in the commission scene. Even in the revised Prologue, Gower’s self-description as a “burel clerk” inflects his authority as counselor with a gesture of supplication; “burel,” which Peck glosses as “lay,” literally means coarse and plain, yet by calling himself a clerk he lays claim to the cleric’s authority. In revealing what distinguishes him from false rivals, Gower also calls attention to similarities. Involved throughout his life in court where the stakes of self-performance were so high, Gower was made crucially aware of the split between visage and corage in both others and in himself. This self-consciousness manifests itself at the beginning of Book One in a striking incongruity between text and gloss. Declaring his intention to give counsel as one who has suffered on account of love, Gower offers himself and his experiences as an example for others: For in good feith this wolde I rede, That every man ensample take Of wisdom which him is betake, And that he wot of good apprise To teche it forth, for such emprise Is for to preise;92 Nearby on the page, Gower glosses, “Here the author, fashioning himself to be the Lover as if in the role of those others whom love binds, proposes to write about their various passions one by one in the various sections of this book.”93 “Se fingens,” which Peck translates as “fashions himself,” equally means “pretends to be”; the latter possibility is reinforced by quasi in persona aliorum, “as if in the persona of others.” The gloss assures us that this fakery is moral, for Gower it is only pretending to be one whom amor binds in order to describe the effects of passions. If we believe the gloss, we accept that Gower’s textual self-

Relational Performances and Audiences 185 performance and his actual persona are divided, a possibility that contaminates the clerical authority he constructs in the Prologue. Discussing the contradictions between the Confessio’s narrative exempla and their interpretations in the frame’s dialog, Robins observes that Aware that the reader’s internal disposition will determine the interpretation of his poem, Gower’s rhetorical strategy (and his ethical gambit) is to prompt his readers to consider the logic and built-in limits of the patterns by which they conceive experience. . ..94 These patterns include modes of self-performance and relational models available to a literary representation that brings about the “contradictory enactment of various kinds of discursive authority.”95 This performance depends on its audience’s cooperation as Gower’s ethical gambit extends to his authorial self-representation; rather than concealing the contradictory enactments of his authority, he invites his audience to compare them to those of society’s numerous dissemblers. The “problematic obstacle . . . of his poem” is, in the Prologue, Gower’s resemblance to those from whom he would distinguish himself, and Gower develops his authorial persona’s contradictory resemblance to dissimulators in order to engage “the will and reflection of a listener, even while asserting that listener’s self-responsibility.”96 In the Prologue, this authorial persona is marked by a number of complexities and incongruities, including Gower’s dual roles as author and courtier, individual poet and popular voice, satirist and counselor. The commission scene negotiates these incongruities by framing his text as a royal audience taking place both in public and private, fixed in time and tied to a mythic history, but not on display for a present courtly audience. In court, the pretense and display of self-fashioning (se fingens) is an elementary condition of interaction. The court is only a good moral, social, and political authority when trowthe makes the performed self correspond to the inner self, when visage reflects corage. Authority may be constructed by discourse, but discourse, finally, is grounded in lived relations. True authority is based in relational trowthe. Gower situates his own “trowthe” in the context of his relation with King Richard, but renders this context relative before the transcendent audience of God. Gower thus concludes the Prologue with a prayer in which he looks to God’s court, where there is no privacy, dissimulation, hidden counsel, or debate. But thilke Lord which al may kepe, To whom no consail may ben hid, Upon the world which is betid, Amende that whereof men pleigne

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Jonathan M. Newman With trewe hertes and with pleine, And reconcile love ageyn, As he which is king sovereign Of al the worldes governaunce.97

This prayer looks toward judgment day as the reconciliation of appearance to reality. The royal court finally belongs to the world, and as Claudius recognizes while attempting prayer in Elsinore, God is an audience that no performance can fool.

Notes 1 On the dating of the Vox Clamantis, see George B. Stow, “Richard II in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Some Historical Perspectives,” Mediaevalia 16 (1993): 5. On the dating of the Confessio Amantis, see Russell A. Peck, “Introduction,” in John Gower: Confessio Amantis, vol. 1, ed. Russell A. Peck, Latin Translation by Andrew Galloway, teams Series, 1-63. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000, 59-62. 2 In short, I discussed how in giving counsel poets adapt the relational role of father or teacher in order to gain unfettered authority to advise and rebuke. 3 Here as throughout, unless otherwise specified, the Confessio Amantis is referred to in the form of its first recension. Below, I explain my reason for taking this recension into account in considering the commission scene’s place in the design of the Prologue. Citations of the Confessio Amantis follow the edition of G.C. Macaulay, The Complete Works of John Gower, 4 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899, vol. 2. 4 Lynn Staley, “Gower, Richard II, Henry of Derby, and the Business of Making Culture,” Speculum 75, no. 1 (2000): 70-71 5 Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 2. 6 Erving Goffman, “On Face-Work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction,” in Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982, 5-45. 7 Patricia J. Eberle, “Richard II and the Literary Arts,” in The Art of Kingship, 236; Frank Grady, “Gower’s Boat, Richard’s Barge, and the True Story of the Confessio Amantis: Text and Gloss,” Texas Studies in Language and Literature 44, no. 1 (2002), 1-15. 8 One problem with arguing for the scene’s importance is that it is excised in later manuscripts. To this, Matthew Irwin adduces Joyce Coleman’s “apt comment, that despite possible later changes, ‘all but a few hundred of the Confessio’s over thirty thousand lines were written ‘for king Richardes sak.’’” Matthew W. Irwin, “a Bok for King Richardes Sake’: Royal Patronage, the Confessio, and the Legend of Good Women,” in On John Gower, ed. Yeager, 104-123, 105. Cited in Matthew W. Irvin, The Poetic Voices of John Gower: Politics and Personae in the Confessio Amantis, 2014. 9 Anne Middleton, “The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II.” Speculum, 53 (1978): 98. 10 See John H. Fisher, John Gower, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer. New York: New York University Press, 1964, 116-127.

Relational Performances and Audiences 187 11 Anne Middleton, “The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II,” Speculum, 53 (1978): 95. 12 Middleton, “The Idea of Public Poetry,” 96. 13 Other scholars have also sought the reasons—political, moral, or personal—for Gower’s removal of the commission scene in the 1392 recension and his rededication of the Confessio to Henry of Bolingbroke. John H. Fisher, John Gower, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer. New York: New York University Press, 1964, 123; George B. Stow, “Richard II in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Some Historical Perspectives,” Mediaevalia 16 (1993): 15; Staley, “Gower, Richard II, Henry Derby,” 82. 14 Agmen adulantum media procedit in aula,/Quodque iubet fieri, curia cedit eis:/Set qui vera loqui presumunt, curia tales,/Pellit, et ad regis non sinit esse latus.VC 6.551-555: Translations are my own, but I have consulted Eric Stockton, trans., The Major Latin Works of John Gower. University of Washington Press: Seattle, 1962. Citations of Vox Clamantis follow Macaulay, Complete Works, vol. 4. 15 Rex, puer indoctus, morales neglegit actus,/In quibus a puero crescere possit homo:/Sic etenim puerum iuuenilis concio ducit,/Quod nichil expediens, sit nisi velle, sapit. Vox Clamantis 6.557-560. 16 Medieval writers treating the topic of youthful counselors misleading a king find a common source in I Kings 12:5-19, in which young men’s counsel leads to the division of Israel and Judah. 17 Sunt eciam veteres cupidi, qui lucra sequentes/Ad pueri placitum plura nephanda sinunt Vox Clamantis 6.565-566. 18 Talia vox populi conclamat vbique moderni/In dubio positi pre gravitate mali:/Sic ego condoleo super hiis que tedia cerno,/Quo Regi puero scripta sequenda fero. Vox Clamantis 6.577-580. 19 According to George Coffman, Gower defined himself in this role throughout his literary career. George R. Coffman, “John Gower, Mentor for Royalty: Richard II,” PMLA 69, no. 4 (1954): 953-964. 20 Si rex esse velis, te rege, rex et eris. Vox Clamantis 6.606; O bone rex iuvenis, fac quod bonitate iuuentusSit tua morigeris dedita rite modis. 627-628; “Sordibus implicitos falsosque cauebis amicos . . .,” 643. 21 Fisher, John Gower, 105. 22 Walker Gibson, “Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers,” in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tomkins. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980, 1-6. 23 Gower, Confessio Amantis, I.203-208. 24 The sociolinguistic study of terms of address commonly distinguishes two second-person pronouns in many European languages, the t-pronoun and the v-pronoun. The t-pronoun includes modern French tu or early Modern English thou; it indicates either social proximity or superior rank of the speaker. The v-pronoun, French vous or early Modern English you, indicates either social distance or the superior rank of the addressee. Roger Brown and Albert Gilman, “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity,” in Style in Language, ed. Thomas Sebeok. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960, 253-276. 25 Fisher, John Gower, 137-138. 26 Gower, Confessio Amantis, I.233-243. 27 Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, 283.

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28 Penelope Brown and Stephen C. Levinson, Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 279. 29 Anthony Goodman, “Richard II’s Councils,” in Art of Kingship, 70-73. 30 In May 1389, Richard II announced his majority and his removal of wicked counselors “by whom the kingdom is oppressed.” Stow, “Richard II in Gower’s Confessio Amantis,” 14. 31 Saul, “Kingship of Richard II,” 39. 32 On Gower’s extraliterary career, see John H. Fisher, John Gower, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer. New York: New York University Press, 1964. 33 This phrase is from Robert J. Meyer-Lee, Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 4. 34 “. . . it must be emphasized that medieval satirical theory formed the basis of a species of medieval poetry which is distinguished by the fact that its social doctrine is morally constructive, conservative, and earnest.” Paul Miller, “John Gower, Satiric Poet,” in Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments, ed. A.J. Minnis. Cambridge: Brewer, 1983, 90. 35 Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, 253. 36 See remarks by Nigel Saul, note 36. According to Staley, “That account of a king recognizing a poet and bidding him enter his barge one summer evening does not sound like the Richard of the 1390s, who sat stiffly in hall, looking straight ahead until he summoned a bow with an icy glance.” Lynn Staley, “Gower, Richard II, Henry Derby,” 74-75. 37 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *34-*54. The asterisk (*) indicates lines from the first recension. 38 Bennett discusses the attention King Richard, eager to establish the sacral quality of his kingship, paid to such foundational narratives. Michael Bennett, “Richard II and the Wider Real,” in Arts of Kingship, 201-202. 39 Scanlon makes this point at greater length; Narrative, Authority, and Power, 253. 40 John Ganim summarizes an argument by Sylvia Federico: “the claim to a translatio imperii from ancient Troy . . . was fraught with contradictions. Troy itself stood in for a Rome which was an impossible imperial ideal. . . These unstable associations often undercut the attempt to renew London as a ‘New Troy.’” John M. Ganim, “Gower, Liminality, and the Politics of Space,” Exemplaria, 19 (2007): 7; Sylvia Federico, New Troy: Fantasies of Empire in the Late Middle Ages, 36, Medieval Cultures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. 41 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *35, *41, *42, *43. 42 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 585-1087. 43 John Skelton, “The Bowge of Court,” “The Skelton Project Poems – Homepage,” accessed January 15, 2020, http://www.skeltonproject.org/ poems/. 44 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *44-*45. 45 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *45-7. 46 Peck, Confessio Amantis, 67. 47 Grady, “Gower’s Boat,” 5. 48 Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, 253. 49 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *24-*28. 50 For a discussion of the centrality of “obeissance” and “ligeance” to King Richard’s elaboration of his monarchy, see Nigel Saul, “Richard II and the

Relational Performances and Audiences 189

51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73

74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83

Vocabulary of Kingship,” English Historical Review, 110, no. 438 (1995): 854-877. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *29-*33. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *54-*56. Grady, “Gower’s Boat,” 5. Grady, “Gower’s Boat,” 9. Erving Goffman, Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, 83. Simon Walker, “Richard II’s Views on Kingship,” in Political Culture in Later Medieval England, ed. Michael J. Braddick. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006, 145. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 151-156. R.F. Green, A Crisis of Truth. Literature and Law in Ricardian England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999, 2-4. The phrase summing up Green’s central tenet is from David Gary Shaw, Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in Medieval England. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 24. It is perhaps Gower’s deftness in representing himself as party to preferential relations, as a perpetual insider, that rendered him suspicious to a later age that had come to see the operation of preference and personal affective ties in government as a source of corruption. On Gower’s reputation as a political operator from the eighteenth well into the twentieth century, see chapter one of Fisher, John Gower, 1-37. Shaw, Necessary Conjunctions, 25. Shaw, Necessary Conjunctions, 200. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 487-490. Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, 247-248. Scanlon, Narrative, Authority, and Power, 247-248. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 338-341. The word “debat” and its variants occur eight times in the Prologue. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *57-*60. “Therefore make absent the one who, lacking bones, breaks bones with speech, and let the wicked interpreter stand far off.” [trans. mine] Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 1-11. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *61-*67. “unpeysed” suggests also an imbalance in the scales, a frequent symbol of corruption and fraud in medieval satire. See Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 541 (“There is deceit in his balance”). Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. *68-*72. The word jangling, with its association with the coarser verse of lower-class poets, sets up once again a symmetry between Gower and his rival that puts the latter to advantage. cf. Piers. Plowman. B.x.31 “Iaperes and iogeloures and iangelers of gestes.” OED. “Nuncque latens odium vultum depingit amoris, Paceque sub ficta tempus ad arma tegit,” trans. Andrew Galloway, in Peck, Confessio Amantis, vol. 1. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 111-114. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 130-132. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 416-418. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 442-451. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 193-197. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 196. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 340-341. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 567-568. Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 489-494.

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84 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 488. 85 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 535-543. 86 This parallels his subordinate position in the dialog with Genius, who in Book One attacks dissemblers with magisterial directness and certitude (Gower, Confessio Amantis, I.594-599):

Mi sone, an ypocrite is this: A man which feigneth conscience, As thogh it were all innocence Withoute, and is noght so withinne; And doth so for he wolde winne Of his desire the vein astat. 87 “Torpor, ebes sensus, scola parva labor minimusque/Causant quo minimus ipse minora canam,” in CA Prol.i.1-2, trans. Irwin, The Poetic Voices of John Gower, 50. 88 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 460-465. 89 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 17-19. 90 Gower, Confessio Amantis, I.453-462. 91 William Robins, “Romance, Exemplum, and the Subject of the Confessio Amantis,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer, 19 (1997): 175-176. 92 Gower, Confessio Amantis, I.78-83. 93 Hic quasi in persona aliorum, quos amor alligat, fingens se auctor esse Amantem, varias eorum passiones variis huius libri distinccionibus per singula scribere proponit. Latin marginalia, ll. 59, trans. Andrew Galloway, in Peck, Confessio Amantis, vol. 1. 94 Robins, “Subject of the Confessio Amantis,” 177. 95 Robins, “Subject of the Confessio Amantis,” 179. 96 Robins, “Subject of the Confessio Amantis,” 165. 97 Gower, Confessio Amantis, Prol. 180-187.

Works Cited Bennett, Michael J. “Richard II and the Wider Realm.” In Richard II: The Art of Kingship, edited by Anthony Goodman and James Gillespie, 187–204. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999. Brown, Penelope and Stephen C. Levinson. Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics. 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Brown, Roger and Albert Gilman. “The Pronouns of Power and Solidarity.” In Style in Language, edited by Thomas Seobok, 253–276. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960. Coffman, George R. “John Gower, Mentor for Royalty: Richard II.” PMLA, 69, no. 4 (1954): 953–964. Eberle, Patricia J. “Richard II and the Literary Arts.” In Richard II: The Art of Kingship, edited by Anthony Goodman and James Gillespie, 231–253. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999.

Relational Performances and Audiences 191 Federico, Sylvia. New Troy: Fantasies of Empire in the Late Middle Ages. Medieval Cultures. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003. Fisher, John H. John Gower, Moral Philosopher and Friend of Chaucer. New York: New York University Press, 1964. Ganim, John M. “Gower, Liminality, and the Politics of Space.” Exemplaria, 19 (2007): 1–30. Genette, Gerard. Paratexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Gibson, Walker. “Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers.” In ReaderResponse Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, edited by Jane P. Tomkins, 1–6. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. Goffman, Erving. “On Face-Work: An Analysis of Ritual Elements in Social Interaction.” In Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior, 5–45. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1959. Goodman, Anthony. “Richard II’s Councils.” In Richard II: The Art of Kingship, edited by Anthony Goodman and James L. Gillespie, 59–82. Oxford: Clarendon Press, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Gower, John and G.C. Macaulay. The Complete Works of John Gower. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899. Gower, John and Russell A. Peck. “Introduction.” In Confessio Amantis. Kalamazoo, MI: Published for TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages) in association with the University of Rochester by Medieval Institute Publications, 1–63. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 2000. Gower, John and Eric W. Stockton. The Major Latin Works of John Gower an Annotated Translation into English with an Introductory Essay on the Author’s Non-English Works. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1962. Grady, Frank. “Gower’s Boat, Richard’s Barge, and the True Story of the Confessio Amantis: Text and Gloss.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 44, no. 1 (2002): 1–15. Green, Richard. A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. Irvin, Matthew W. The Poetic Voices of John Gower: Politics and Personae in the Confessio Amantis. Publications of the John Gower Society. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014. Meyer-Lee, Robert J. Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt, edited by A.J. Minnis. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Middleton, Anne. “The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II.” Speculum, 53 (1978): 94–114. Miller, Paul. “John Gower, Satiric Poet.” In Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments, edited by A.J. Minnis. Cambridge: Brewer, 1983. Robins, William. “Romance, Exemplum, and the Subject of the Confessio Amantis.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (1997): 157–181. Saul, Nigel. “Richard II and the Vocabulary of Kingship.” English Historical Review, 110, no. 438 (1995): 854–877.

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Saul, Nigel. “The Kingship of Richard II.” In Richard II: The Art of Kingship, edited by Anthony and Goodman Gillespie, 37–58. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. Scanlon, Larry. Narrative, Authority, and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Shaw, David Gary. Necessary Conjunctions: The Social Self in Medieval England, edited by Bonnie Wheeler. The New Middle Ages. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Staley, Lynn. “Gower, Richard II, Henry of Derby, and the Business of Making Culture.” Speculum, 75, no. 1 (2000): 68–96. Stow, George B. “Richard II in John Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Some Historical Perspectives.” Mediaevalia, 16 (1993): 3–20. “The Skelton Project Poems – Homepage.” Accessed January 15, 2020. http:// www.skeltonproject.org/poems/. Walker, Simon. “Richard II’s Views on Kingship.” In Political Culture in Later Medieval England, edited by J. Braddick, 139–153. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006.

9

George Turberville, Constancy and Plain Style Melih Levi

The Mid-Tudor period had a decisive impact on the development of modern English poetry. A poet born into this period would have lived a life informed by inconstancy, uncertainty and change. From a political and cultural perspective, it was a tumultuous period with numerous rebellions, executions, changes in the legal system, and perhaps most important, an uncertainty about the kingdom’s religious affiliation. During Mary’s reign, in 1557 one of the most important documents of Renaissance poetry, Tottel’s Miscellany, was published. This anthology became a crucial model for the poets of this period and had an unmistakable impact on the structure and style of poetic thinking up until the middle of the next century. Only a year after the publication of Tottel, Elizabeth I succeeded Mary, returned the kingdom to Protestantism and brought about the most substantial changes associated today with the Reformation. This mid-Tudor period also witnessed the institutional development of the plain-style, centered mostly around poets like George Gascoigne, Barnabe Googe, and George Turberville. Though plain style was practiced and used variously by poets of previous generations, mid-Tudor poets brought to it a rhetorical and stylistic discipline, thus encoding its structural and systematic characteristics. Earlier poets such Thomas Wyatt used plain and Petrarchan styles, often separately, in their poems. While it is possible to find in Wyatt’s poetry a conversation between these two styles, ultimately, the Petrarchan style looms much larger and defines Wyatt’s rhetorical and amatory sensibility. Tottel reflects the stylistic diversity of the English verse leading up to the mid-Tudor period. However, there too, the Petrarchan style emerges as the most constant sensibility. “More than one out of every six poems in the book is a sonnet.”1 The sonnets surely demonstrate variations in style. Still, they constitute a structural stability around Petrarchan concerns. It is perhaps uncanny that even though poets like Turberville and Googe announce “sonets” in the titles for their collections, their sonnets seldom resemble traditional ones. DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-9

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Turberville’s sonnets are often simply one-quatrain answer poems on amatory issues. Their conscious gesturing toward the sonnet but ultimate avoidance of the most recognizable conventions of the form gives the readiest account of their complicated relationship to the Petrarchan style. While Turberville used many conventional amatory tropes from the Petrarchan tradition, his poetry demonstrates a clear unease with the structures that held these tropes at a psychological balance. This paper recognizes the religious, specifically Catholic, plot of Petrarch as providing the constitutive fiction of the Petrarchan style, even if the structure was explicitly adapted to a secular diction in its development in the English context. Plain style, I argue, results from an emptying out of some of the structural tensions that define Petrarchism. This line of argumentation will show theories of Petrarchan poetry, such as Roland Greene’s influential dialectic between fictive and ritualistic elements, to have a deeper Catholic vein and inverse applicability to the Petrarchan poetic line in English. In this chapter, I develop a similar structural framework that explains the constitutive gestures of a plain-style poetics. Ultimately, in positioning itself against the structural concerns of Petrarchan verse, plain-style recodes it with the other dominant religious and ideological discourse, Protestantism. Turberville’s most important work Epitahes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets was published almost 10 years into Elizabeth’s reign, in 1567. It is considered to be the first poetry sequence in English to be addressed to a specific patron (“To the Right Noble and his singular good Lady, Lady Anne, Countesse Warwick”) and offers Tymetes’s account of his love for Pyndara. The plot of this love story is rather conventional: He falls in love with Pyndara, gathers up the courage to tell her. There are brief instances of mutual affection but Tymetes, himself insecure, complains repeatedly about the fickleness of his lady. The lovers separate as Pyndara goes away for some time but ultimately Tymetes’s suspicions prove to be true and she ends up marrying another man. I was only able to put this narrative together after consulting various critical sources which grapple with the plot.2 The fictive, or as I will show, anti-fictive, elements of the book were organized so poorly and offhandedly that it is almost impossible to extract a coherent plot from the sequence. The poems do not follow a chronological order and those which refer explicitly to Tymetes and Pyndara are interrupted with numerous didactic accounts, epitaphs, answer poems, general complaints and reflections on the nature of love. If there is one anchor in Turberville’s sequence, it is his sustained interest in the idea of constancy. Constancy and steadfastness appear in many of the poems as praiseworthy values, while change and fickleness are described as threatening or morally corrupt (“To his Friende to be constant after choise made,” “Of certaine Flowers sent by his Love vpon suspicion of chaunge,” “The assured promise of a constant Louer,” “To a fickle and vnconstant Dame, a friendly warning”). It would be naïve to

George Turberville, Constancy 195 understand Turberville’s obsession with constancy as resulting simply from the political and religious inconstancy of the period. After all, the desire for constancy is hardly a new invention of the poets of his generation. It makes numerous appearances in the poetry of the Troubadours, Chaucer and, of course, Petrarch. But constancy acquires different political and religious valences in this particular period. A quick survey of the kinds of documents in which constancy appears as a moral virtue yields three primary domains: Religious, amatory, and hermeneutic/rhetorical. In the religious texts of the era, especially in the English translations of the Psalms, constancy regularly appears as a virtue. In William Whittingham’s 1562 translation of Miserere mei deus, “Thy constant spirite in me let rest,/which may these raging enemies kill” (39-40).3 In John Hall’s 1565 The prayse of faithe: “Fayth is a perfect confidence,/Of thynges that hoped are,/And a most constant certeintie,/Of thynges whiche are not sene” (9-12).4 A Protestant ethics informs the proliferation of such religious references to constancy. The designation of the Bible as the sole authority meant that people had to practice more caution in order to avoid establishing mutable objects as the locus for religious contemplation. In Hall’s account, faith is associated with other abstract values such as confidence and “constant certeintie” but these states are purposefully not tied to a sensory experience of the world. In fact, by relating faith to those things “which are not sene,” it is dissociated further from the senses. Reason also becomes suspect in religious discourse and is often designated as inferior to belief. Miles Huggarde, in his preface to the 1554 treatise Declaring Howe Christe was Banished, starts by praising reason: “If reason did rule men/As reason should of ryght.”5 But in the next few lines, belief appears to be the superior faculty: “Belief should truely then/Shyne as a virtue bright.” Huggarde establishes a hierarchy between virtues, which is a practice that we can encounter in many Protestant sermons, homilies and also plain-style poems. After all, Protestantism is not the only ideological framework to emerge during this time. The rise of a Humanist worldview, which brings along a radically uneasy and polytheist field of reference for new scholarship, challenges some of the basic tenets of a Protestant outlook. While the use of Reason increases readerly capacities and helps establish the textuality of the Bible as central to the Protestant experience, it is also threatening because Reason can bend, engender doubt, and impede the work of faith. As Huggarde says in the same preface, “And now gentle reader/What soeuer thou be/Stretche reason no farther/Than to faith will agre.” When writers try to establish such hierarchies between different but ultimately interdependent ways of evaluating the world, their rhetoric inevitably commits to the surface. They cannot comfortably dwell in the space opened up by metaphor as the experience of conceit risks nullifying

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distinctions between such carefully cherished categories. Similarly, plainstyle poets like Turberville use metaphors only to establish poetry as a testing ground. Metaphors rarely activate immersion in a conflicting thought, rather, they activate metaphor as conflict. Images are seldom retrieved from the imagination to embrace their unknown potential or disobedience, their progress is often monitored by a highly self-aware “craftsman” (i.e. Gascoigne’s “Woodmanship”). Hunting is one of Turberville’s prized metaphors, as evidenced by his later authorship of an influential hunting manual. But even with this metaphor, which was successfully psychologized earlier by Wyatt, Turberville keeps to the surface and impedes its natural progress by maintaining a side narrative of his pen’s inability to capture the right metaphor. As Catherine Bates shows, we often read Turberville with a radical doubt that his “ragged pen” “will have the power to win or capture anything at all.”6 In his doctoral dissertation on Turberville, William Sheidley also recognized this almost-postmodern “self-consciousness” as the sole strength of Turberville’s poetry: Turbervile, going through the motions of the courtly dance or the scholarly imitation, unavoidably looks at himself—as a dancer who catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror—with a measure of detachment, and, also perhaps unavoidably, communicates his judgement of the dance and the act of dancing to the reader.7 Turberville’s use of Petrarchan images and strategies without a willingness to inhabit its psychologized structure is similar to his transformation of the sonnet into a mere answer poem on intellectual concerns. With titles that are often clearly copied form Tottel, Turberville’s poems do not hesitate to gesture toward a Petrarchan realm but nevertheless consciously avoid embracing its structural design. This self-awarenessand commitment to the surface, which we encounter in the religious manuals of the era, is a direct extension of Protestant concerns over intentionality. How much of one’s valuation of an image stems from an inherent sanctity and how much of it results from the language’s active fashioning of an aura of divinity?8 Turberville explains this concern most clearly in “Spare to speake, Spare to speede,” annexed to his Tragical histories in 1569 along with a large body of epistolary poems:9 No doubt, a Lady doth imbrace him more, that dares To tell his tale, than such a one that of his language spares. Deceit is dreaded more, and craft doth rifer raigne,

George Turberville, Constancy 197 In one that like an image fits, than him that speaketh plaine.

To my knowledge, this instance offers the most blunt and condensed defense of the plain-style. Turberville encourages the lover not to hold back his thoughts and to speak plainly, without trying to fit all of his thoughts into intentional images. Notice how he associates deceit and craft with both styles. Inferior is the one that attempts to capture and restrain the mind’s activity in an image, and superior is the one that speaks plainly and tests his ability to hit the mark, or as Turberville says earlier in the poem: “So he that spares to speake,/when time and place are fit,/Is sure to misse the marke, which else/he were in hope to hit.” These lines offer an impressive theory of poetry’s performative dimension. In the Petrarchan style, there is often an awareness of the premeditation of speech: While Wyatt’s famous Petrarchan poems such as “Whoso list to hunt” capture an unparalleled dramatic energy, the discourse of their fiction is often very apparent and stronger than their story. In other words, our grasp of the story is actively mediated by a deeply subjectivized set of references and images. Hence, a sense of premeditation weighs over and negotiates the dramatic energy of thought as it unfolds in the reading. By contrast, in Turberville, language rather than subjectivity does the work of meditation by forcing all speech patterns (proverbial and colloquial) into a strictly regularized meter. The most important aspect of Turberville’s skepticism toward a rhetoric that is controlled by images is this: Intuitively, one might associate commitment to an image or metaphor as the very condition for creating rhetorical constancy. However, their reasoning against this intuitive position establishes the most significant structural difference between Petrarchan and plain-style poetry. For plain-style poets like Turberville, constancy is not to be sought in images out of a clear Protestant anxiety about their mutability. Centering a poem’s main activity around a single conceit or image risks displacing agency from the speaker and the reader. In his epilogue to the poems annexed to Tragical Tales, Turberville apologizes for the “barren” and “vaine” qualities of his verse, the “lacke of learned stile/And stately stuffe.” Readers, he yields, couldn’t possibly have found a “new deuice but lately wrought,/ that breatheth yet and bleedes.”10 Even though the whole epilogue has a self-degrading tone, it also presents a stark defense of plain style: My slender ship hath kept the shore, for feare of boystrous winde. I bore my simple sayles but lowe I dreaded sodaine showers.

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Notice how the description of Turberville’s verse resists the purely metaphorical by employing proverbial statements about his own “lowly” style. “To keep the shore,” which means to play it safe in this context, uses the language of “familiar stuffe.” Why? Because not to do so might risk encountering a “boystrous winde.” Here, the poet carefully transitions from a proverbial to a metaphorical stance. The second line presents an image rather than responding with a colloquial affirmation. The Petrarchan style, for Turberville, is defined by its susceptibility to such momentary storms and psychological unrest. A similar movement happens in the rest of this stanza with an explicitly proverbial language (“to bore one’s sayles lowe”) followed by the overpowering metaphor of the “sodaine showers.” In short, perhaps somewhat counterintuitively, images cannot establish a sense of constancy for plain-style poets. Constancy is to be sought in staying afloat and keeping the surface while testing various alternatives, metaphors, and strategies. The listing and categorizing impulse is thus very much an organic part of this style, as can be observed in Gasocigne’s “Woodmanship,” Ralegh’s “The Lie,” and in most poems by Googe and Turberville. Ultimately, Turberville does not avoid images or metaphors in his poems. To the contrary, his poems are rife with them. What he does avoid is using image as conceit, to create an entire temporality or intentionality through an image. The kind of uncertainty about images we find in plain-style poets also features in the homilies and sermons delivered around England during this period. In his 1540 sermon “Of Idols and Images,” Roger Edgeworth reacts to an increasing conflation of images and idols. He blames the translators of the Bible for translating Imago as image, and making people believe that “to have Images is idolatry.” He explains: “An image is a similitude of a natural thing, that hath been, is, or may be. An idol is a similitude representing a thing that never was nor may be.”11 Edgeworth’s sermon captures an essential uncertainty lurking around, especially during the mid-Tudor period of the Reformation. Images are still very much a part of everyday as well as artistic discourse. The problem is about how one controls the image so that it does not generate its new, autonomous field of reference. “… You must understand and know that an Image is a thing carved, or painted, or cast in a mold, that representeth and signifieth a thing that is in deed, or that hath be or that be in deed.” To confer a false image or metaphor with its own reality is a problematic endeavor on religious grounds. It is possible to understand plain-style poets’ hesitation to use extended imagery as part of this cautious sensibility. As Matthew Milner shows in The Senses and the English Reformation, “the fear of idolatry and false religion were of one mind: The senses ought to be used to discern good from evil and to avoid vice and foster virtue.”12 Plain-style’s uneasy

George Turberville, Constancy 199 relationship with images, then, is very much a part of this Reformation discourse. The proverbial or social framing in which Turberville presents his images is also a way of resisting the inward orientation of Petrarchan imagery.13 Turberville’s poetry was informed by his affiliation with the most active social institutions of the mid-Tudor period: The Inns of Court, which Jessica Winston designates as a “protopublic sphere.”14 The social and collegial aspect of their poetry digested the didacticism of humanist discourse in the period. The sense of outward orientation or the socialization of imagery in Turberville’s poetry reflects a desire to replace the language of affect and inwardness with a more public attitude. “The problem of passion” William Sheidley identifies in Turberville is rather misleading because those instances of exaggerated emotion are often selfaware replications of cultural tropes.15 Ironically, “the problem” is not entirely his per se, but of his moment or of the esthetic ambitions of his predecessors. Had Sheidley paired this problem of affect with his apt evaluation of the inherent self-awareness and “irony” in Turberville’s attitude, he could have also identified its radical anti-Petrarchan stance. Turberville’s “sonet” exchanges with Barnabe Googe on this subject are highly illuminating. Here is Googe’s “Sonet of the paines of Loue”: “Twoo lynes shall the griefe/that I by Loue sustaine:/I burne, I flame, I faint, I freeze,/of Hell I feele the paine.”16 The language is exaggerated, artificial, and rich in affective sentiment. Turberville responds with his own sonnet which advises Googe to keep the structure but replace amatory discourse with that of Reason: “Twoo lynes shall teach you how/to purchase ease anewe:/Let Reason rule where Loue did raigne,/ and ydle thoughts eschewe.”17 Turberville immediately recognizes the forced element in Googe’s verse: It sustains an amatory fiction and repeats its conventions, while failing to “purchase” or obtain new energy from this available fiction. His suggestion is, once again, to keep the structure of a Petrarchan poetics while renewing its discourse of Love with the discourse of Reason. This way, the idle thoughts and passions of an exaggerated, emotional register can be controlled. Indeed, Turberville’s entire project can be seen as taking these idle thoughts and images of the amatory tradition and framing them within a heavily didactic, controlled, and reasoning style. As stated earlier, the act of creating hierarchies between different discursive structures is central to the plain-style and it habitually occasions self-aware meditations on the poet’s specific choices. This structural awareness is what makes Turberville’s poems interesting but also “unsatisfactory” as Sheidley argues, for it calls attention to “his divorce of poetry from the rest of experience.”18 The next exchange between the two poets concerns the actual reasons behind love’s pain. Googe asks readers not to “accuse” God if one is so

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moved “to wayle for loue, for thou thy selfe/art cause of all the paine.”19 Here is Turberville’s answer: Not God (friend Googe) the Louer blames as worker of his woes: But Cupid that his fierie flames so frantickly bestowes.20

On one hand, Turberville affirms one of the most conventional references of the amatory tradition and establishes Cupid as the sole authority when it comes to issues of love. On the other hand, the form of the answer poem allows Turberville to distance himself from either discourse and to offer a more “scholarly” meditation on the figure of “the Louer.” Notice also how Turberville calls attention to a possible kinship between two seemingly unrelated discourses: Love and (especially intellectual) friendship. Winston recognizes “the ambiguous presentation of friendship and romance” in “mid-Tudor inns-of-court poetry” and shows how “men at the Inns reinforced their sense of communal identity and belonging in sometimes romantic terms, at the same time warning against women and, more specifically, against the threat that women might distract from friendship and even a public career.”21 The homosocial aspect of so much mid-Tudor poetry provides yet another structure to compete with the central alterity which informs Petrarchan poetry and rewrites the Catholic tension that defines its structural problematic. Now three parties are involved in the construction of love poetry. Whereas the addressed “you” in Googe’s sonnet was the lover, here it becomes Googe himself, and “the Louer,” the abstract and structural position of amatory poetry.22 The homosocial element in this exchange allows the poet to demonstrate the extent to which amatory lyric strives to create its own conditions. The alliterative exaggeration of the last two lines marks a change in tone and calls attention to the artificial element in the amatory tradition. More important, it performs the sensuous image-making practices that the tradition employs. Ultimately, the constancy of each subject position in the first line (God, friend, the Lover) is replaced and unsettled by the frantic activity of this God-figure. What is curiously missing from this stanza is any mention of the beloved. Her absence is a testament to the extent to which the assimilation of Petrarch into the English context has made the beloved into nothing more than a structural necessity. As observed, the second domain where the idea of constancy prominently features is the amatory. Themes of constancy, fickleness, and mutability are not new concerns to the Renaissance. They appear frequently in the poetry of the Troubadours and Chaucer. However, there are important changes in gender dynamics in poems about constancy

George Turberville, Constancy 201 that appear in Tottel, especially in poems by Wyatt. In mid-Tudor poetry, changes are even more perceptible given the overtly scholarly set of references, the rise of print culture and the homosocial dynamics that subvert the structure of address. Amanda Holton’s “Chaucer’s Presence in Songs and Sonettes” provides the best account of Chaucer’s influence on the poetry in Tottel. One of the central differences, Holton shows, is that Chaucer’s interest in “women and their suffering in love is effaced from the Miscellany.”23 It is clear that Wyatt heard echoes of Chaucer as he was composing his own poetry, as some of his diction owes directly to Chaucer’s poetry. “Newfanglenesse,” which means inconstancy or always being attracted to new things, appears in Wyatt’s “They flee from me…,” which is about a man’s nostalgia for the times when he could court women with ease. But his current world is defined by “continual change,” and he searches in his mind for a bit of sensual memory to reignite his imagination. That world is now gone, and the reason has partly to do with him, for he had to leave and go elsewhere. But more important, it has to do with the remembered woman for she had “to use newfangleness.” Holton argues that this idea of changeability and “newfanglenesse” is almost always associated with men in Chaucer’s poetry. Though this is true on a larger scale, it is still possible to find many instances of women described with this adjective, as in Chaucer’s “Against Women Unconstant.” Still, the erasure of women’s perspective altogether and the full concentration of the blame of inconstancy on women in sixteenth-century poetry is vital for an appreciation of the Petrarchan style. Wyatt and other early sixteenth-century poets’ purposeful inversion of these dynamics, especially while using a Chaucerian diction, is crucial but also unsurprising. Though some of their tropes and diction might come from a Chaucerian line, they are often absorbed into a clearly Petrarchan structure of imagination, which needs an object outside of the 24 speaker to be inconstant. As John Freccero shows, “language and desire are indistinguishable in a literary text… [B]y accusing his persona of an idolatrous passion Petrarch was affirming his own autonomy as a poetic creator.”25 The radical intertwinement between language and desire necessitates an object that is continuously lost and retrieved. The prosodic developments in English poetry also offered an appropriate medium for the systole and diastole of an agitated Petrarchan sensibility. Wyatt, in particular, made some of the most noteworthy attempts at regularizing the English meter. Nevertheless, what makes his meter so compelling is its flexibility: It still allows (not in Tottel) for so many uneasy and restless variations. Even though he has strong control over the meter, his iambic structure is often imperfectly executed in order to reflect the speech patterns of a deeply troubled psyche. This prosody provided the best possible formal structure for Petrarch in English because often, his extra syllables which later caused Tottel take up his

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whip, kept rejuvenating a sense of the Lacanian surplus in language, and calling attention to the inconstancy of desire. Part of the reason Wyatt has become the quintessential subject for the study of amatory lyric as a commentary on courtly culture, male desire and misogyny is that the capricious structure of his poems lends itself perfectly to metonymic interpretation. Ultimately, in Wyatt’s hands, woman’s inconstancy becomes a convenient way to maintain the speaker’s autonomy. Depending on perspective, one might see this as an unconscious continuation of a Catholic sensibility that transfers theological concerns to the linguistic (as Freccero argues), or alternatively, as a rehearsal for a Protestant poetics that is in the process of learning how to let go of an idolizing impulse. Critics have taken either side of this debate especially in relation to Tottel’s long-lasting influence.26 Since I argue that the mid-Tudor period marks the very beginnings of a Protestant poetry in English, I am interested in framing Wyatt and Tottel as uneasy rehearsals for a Protestant poetics. But in arguing this, I am inevitably making the claim that both lines in English poetry, plain-style and Petrarchan, continue naturally from this moment. What, then, distinguishes them? Gary Waller offers the most convincing account of the relationship between Petrarchan verse in English and Protestantism: “The Protestant ‘I,’ like the Petrarchan ‘I,’ then is an anxious, self-obsessed, confessional, and above all time-bound ‘I.’ Its poetry is ‘self’-obsessed and that obsession often emerges in a concern with time, mutability, and flux.”27 The key term in Waller’s analysis is time. The subject is time-bound, especially after Wyatt, since the metronomic undercurrent of his prosody really establishes a constant tic-toc behind the descriptive and argumentative struggles of the speaker. Herein lies the tension: Although the subject is bound to a specific temporality (of a conceit, image, speech act), it is also always in the process of searching for some convincing truth. This desire is partly inherited from Petrarch’s sequence which uses physical desire as a conduit for a religious pursuit. In Petrarchan verse after Wyatt, especially with Sidney and Spenser, this tension will translate into a need to develop various fictive strategies. In the absence of an overtly Catholic framework, the supreme fiction will have to be replaced by other structures. The sonnet sequences (except for a few borderline cases like Greville’s Caelica) inhabit a largely Petrarchan structure because this new technology gives poets an opportunity to establish competing temporalities. The individual sonnet is always uncertain of its participation into the larger structure and demands a unitary temporality. Individual poems, however, are also continually pulled into and engender a different kind of temporality that is possible to conceptualize only after experiencing the sequence in their entirety. Plain-style poems produce entirely different conditions for poetic temporality. Rather than outsourcing the poem’s argument to a conceit

George Turberville, Constancy 203 and using that radical separation to sustain the illusion of a hermeneutically discoverable self, plain style poems start from “some fixed truth about the self,” to use Waller’s terms. They then test whether the speaker can manage to stay afloat and move through possible conceits and images without getting caught in their vortex. Ralegh’s “The Lie” is a great example of this phenomenon, since the poem rests upon a moral truism that truth must always be one’s guide and the soul will outlast any attempt to destroy it. For this poem to work, the middle parts need to have direct impact and continually reanimate a sense of authority. They are to be read as extensions of a truism or moral stance rather than their pursuit. The speaking voice, the “I” knows that it has to die and to step out of time, and therefore needs to construct a “soul” that cannot die and will be able to resist the time-bounded aspect of self-construction. As opposed to the immersive structural temporality of a Petrarchan conceit, Ralegh’s poem locates temporality outside, as belonging to the addressee. Like Turberville, Ralegh also relies on proverbial statement (“to give the lie”) to stick to the surface and to avoid depth. Unlike the introspective event of a Petrarchan metaphor or conceit, in plain-style poets, the proverbial stance aims for multiple immediacies of impact. Turberville occasionally practices Wyatt’s misogynistic usage of the constancy theme while also retrieving some of the Chaucerian gender dynamics associated with the concept. Poems complaining about women’s mutability are accompanied by poems that advise the friend to be constant and faithful (both as a spouse and in rhetoric). On the level of address, Turberville’s language shows influences of a scholarly and at times legal argument. This is not surprising given his heavy involvement with the Inns of Court, where scholarly matters were often discussed and its members recruited for legal professions because of increased legal reforms during the Elizabethan era. Rather than the style of a lover’s-complaint which we find in early Tudor verse, mid-Tudor poets like Turberville opt for a triangular address. His speaker addresses a friend, who is in turn trying to fashion a convincing rhetoric to court a lover, and since these poems exist within the loose fiction of a love story between Tymetes and Pyndara, the speaker is simultaneously refining his own rhetoric before addressing Pyndara. In “To his Friende to be constant after choise made,” Turberville gives advice to a friend on issues of love.28 In the first part of the poem, he goes through a list of famous women who are still remembered and celebrated for the constancy of their love even in the most difficult conditions: Ulysses’ wife, Fame, Cleopatra. In the next section, he advances two contrasting images by praising the durability of marble stone and diamond for they are “the longest of all,/and always one appeare,” and downplaying the “slender price” of a “waxen forme” for “with force of fire it melts/and wasteth with a trice.” The apparent contradiction in this and other poems by Turberville is that even though they praise constancy and singular appearance, they

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reason by moving through a multiplicity of examples and by avoiding depth in each case. As in Ralegh, rhetorical constancy comes to refer to the poet’s ability to move through the surface of a poem (and culture) without assigning substantial intentionality to its images and objects of attention. Thus plain-style poets manage to avoid a religious problematic that disturbs the poems which continue to inhabit a Petrarchan structure. Milner argues that during the Elizabethan period, “with the ambiguities surrounding affective experience of the Word, outside theological discourse it was not clear as to whether affect was pre- or postintellective.”29 This problem is inevitable within the structure of Petrarchan conceit which stretches thought in the guise of a concept or image and, when executed successfully, makes it impossible to discern the thought from the image. Late sixteenth- and early seventeenthcentury practices of Petrarchan conceit will often perform a playful and ironic self-awareness of this problem (Donne’s “The Flea”). In plainstyle, the problematic is largely avoided by foregrounding the argumentative structure of the poem. Rather than thought going in search of truth by embodying its objects, the opposite happens: The truth goes in search of thoughts that will validate its view of the world. In “To his Friende to be constant…,” Turberville imitates a sonnet by an unknown author found in Tottel: “That constancy of all vertues is most worthy.” The sonnet uses the exact same images in the second part of Turberville’s poem: Marble, diamonds and wax. The Tottel sonnet, however, has a radically different feel because it uses the form as a resource to embody the thought. “Though in the waxe a perfect picture made,/Dothe shew as fayre as in the marble stone,/Yet do we see it is estemed of none,/Because that fire or force the forme dothe fade.” Each sentence begins with a thought that is trying to sort itself out. Each thought demonstrates an understanding that it comes with a caveat: “Though…,” “Whereas…,” “Then if we do esteeme…,” “Like to that hart…” In Turberville’s version, this active imitation of thought is replaced by exemplification and obvious didacticism. It begins with a set of rhetorical questions: “What made Vlysses Wife/to be renowned so?/ What forced Fame hir endless brute/in blasting trumpe to blow?” If the Tottel sonnet demands complete immersion in the unfolding of its thought, Turberville’s works by deduction: It guides readers to extract from each line that piece of information which will affirm the truism when it is delivered “plain and simple” at the very end. If in the Tottel version knowledge is obtained through the sensuous experience of a thought, in Turberville an already established and cherished knowledge is verified. The Tottel sonnets ends: What iewell then with tonge can be exprest. Like to that hart where loue hath framed such sethe, That can not fade but by the force of dethe.

George Turberville, Constancy 205 And Turberville’s sonnet: Then if thou long for prayse/or blasted Fame to finde, (My Friend) thou must not chaunge thy choyce/or turne lyke Cock with winde. Be constant in thy worde/and stable in thy deede: This is the readiest way to win/and purchase prayse with speede. The former ends on a note of uncertainty: How can language achieve the kind of constancy that love always finds in its object? The poem itself might be the perfect answer because it forces the reader to embody and perform its thought each time. It is not a mere description of diamonds, candles or marble. It is an impatient thought caught in a state of perpetual unfolding. It creates a kind temporality independent of any answer that might be provided to its central question. It is through enacting the impossibility of finding a capable language to express love’s constancy that the poem gathers a sense of timelessness (the title of the poem ought not mislead readers, as most titles were assigned posthumously by Tottel and reduce the lively tension in poems to mere didactic statements). Turberville’s ending is entirely different. It resolves the slightest uncertainty and instead embraces a didactic agenda. It also acquires a clear teleological character: Do this if you want to earn women’s attention. But there is something entirely new in Turberville as well: As argued earlier, the poem has a triangular address. It is giving advice to a friend but the parenthetical phrase “my friend” is curious. Since the poem exists within a sequence in which many (at least narratively inclined) poems are addressed directly to the lover, Turberville feels the need to clarify the “thou” of his poem. Even though he had already clearly established the addressee in the title (“To his Friende”), there is an anxious attempt to contain the scope of the address. Turberville is careful not to open the “thou” position to the lover in this case because he would be suggesting not only that she be constant (as he does in other poems) but that she might “long for prayse.” This problem of address captures an important tension which emerges with the rise of print circulation and poetry’s entry into the public sphere (here, Inns of Court).30 Plain-style is always susceptible to such uncertainties around audience and address. Since the meaning is not framed within the private language of a conceit, its truism and lesson are available for anyone who reads or hears the poem. But in this poem, the truism is gendered and its availability for larger consumption threatens the amatory pursuits of the poet himself. The askew gender dynamics also come up in the proverbial element in Turberville’s poem: “To turn lyke Cock with winde.” Instead of fashioning a sophisticated metaphor, Turberville opts for a public language. And herein lies the rub: This line clearly comes from Chaucer’s “Against

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Women Unconstant”: “But, as a wederock, that turneth his face/With every wind, ye fare, and that is sene.”31 Turberville uses the exact same description which Chaucer had used to describe a woman’s inconstancy, to warn a friend against such behavior. The intertextuality of this poem, which would have been available to most readers in Turberville’s circles, clearly blurs the distinction between a friend and a lover. The social and didactic element in mid-Tudor poetry poses its greatest opportunity and challenge here: As a poetics that has divorced itself from the idolizing impulses of (a Catholic) Petrarchism, it fails to produce a strong sense of embodiment. The addressee is often indirectly implicated or involved in the development of a wisdom that is supposed to have universal purchase. It is worth turning to John Stuart Mill’s well-known description of poetry32: [E]loquence is heard; poetry is overheard. Eloquence supposes an audience. The peculiarity of poetry appears to us to lie in the poet’s unconsciousness of a listener. Poetry is feeling confessing to itself in moments of solitude, and embodying itself in symbols which are the nearest possible representations of the feeling in which it exists in the poet’s mind. Plain-style is rife with eloquence. In fact, one might say, eloquence is its most cherished objective. It maximizes the demand for an audience but lacks the latter part of Mill’s description. It does not “embody itself in” images or symbols. What does this mean? What kind of potential lies in a poem that overestimates its audience without providing sufficient opportunity for embodiment? Or to use Roland Greene’s terms: What are the opportunities in a poem that announces its ritualistic ambitions without providing the necessary performative structures?33 It is worth turning to Greene’s theory on lyric poetry sequences as privileging the fictive and the ritualistic after the Renaissance because it seems that most plain-style poems, and Turberville’s in particular, work by creating the structures for these categories without fulfilling them. Since Greene originally targets a Petrarchist line in English poetry, this dialectic need not necessarily apply to the plain-style tradition. In fact, if I am right in arguing that the plainstyle consciously works against the religious structure of the Petrarchan style, it is worth asking whether the plain-style works also by subverting or eviscerating the fictive and ritualistic elements in poetry. Through the problem of address, I have already established a significant obstacle against the ritualistic element in Turberville. Greene explains the ritualistic character in an early article on Sidney as being “at the very foundations of both the genre’s transitivity—its emotive adaptability to various speaking voices (…)—and of its involvement in ideological suasion.”34 In Turberville, as we have seen, the voice is so conscious of

George Turberville, Constancy 207 being heard but also so disembodied that it refuses to be adaptable to other voices. This problematic reveals itself most remarkably in his heavily-regularized prosody. Most mid-Tudor poets took Tottel as the central model for their sequences. This is obvious from the way in which poets like Turberville and Googe published collections that offer, like Tottel, “a museum of genres and conventions.”35 Tottel however featured heavily edited and regularized versions of poetry by Wyatt, Surrey, Grimald, and others. The metrical deviations which are crucial for the psychology of Wyatt’s verse were mostly eliminated. Singlehandedly, then, Tottel managed to consolidate a desire for regularity in English poetry. In his prosody manual, George Saintsbury describes the achievement of these mid-Tudor poets as doing “the inestimable work of drilling, regimenting, and preparing the raw and demoralized state of English prosody so that it may be ready to the hands of a real master and commander.”36 The verbs “drilling” and “regimenting” are absolutely accurate since it is hard to encounter a single deviation in the works of these poets, and in particular, in Turberville. Richard Panofsky observes a similar development/problem in Turberville’s prosody: “Turbervile’s metronomic, unmodulated iambs also sought, strong, regularized effects.”37 Although this is clearly a threshold moment in English poetry, it also presents a rhetorical challenge. Patrick Cheney argues that as a result of the regularizing tendencies of the “Gascoigne school,” “we feel a consistent poetic artificiality; in real life, no one speaks like this. Clearly, the verse aims to imitate verse, not actual speech.”38 Like an address without embodiment, Turberville’s highly regularized prosody which never departs from the iambic succession, announces a similar desire for the ritualistic without ever quite fulfilling its conditions. Intuitively, one might expect the fictive element in Turberville to be central to the poetic operation. It is, after all, the first poetry sequence to be devoted to a specific woman and one that straightforwardly announces the fictional story between Tymetes and Pyndara. Like the ritualistic, however, the fictive element in Turberville’s poetry works by acknowledging structural expectations and subsequently eviscerating them. The whole sequence begins with a note “To the Reader,” establishing the work’s overarching narrative: “Whatsoeuer I haue penned, I write not to this purpose, that any youthlie head shoulde follow or pursue such farile affections, or taste of amorous bait: But by meere fiction of these Fantasies, I woulde warne (if I might) all tender age to flee that fonde and filthie affection of poysoned & vnlawfull loue.”39 Surely, it is possible to read this introductory remark as enhancing the fiction behind the whole sequence and performing the classic distancing trope of eighteenth-century novelists: This story is just a piece of fiction. However, the basic frame narrative which is about Tymetes’s love for Pyndara is nearly impossible to put together. The poems are not placed in a chronological order; they are interrupted by pages and pages of

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moralizing poetry, answer poems, epitaphs and letter-poems to friends, which continually remind of the poet’s introductory warning on the heinous nature of love. Partly, this problem is structural. Mid-Tudor poets consciously imitated the sheer variety of forms and attitudes they observed in Tottel, which did not have its own frame narrative except for those overarching fictions (like the Petrarchan) one could discern from individual poems. Hence, writing an entire book of poems, in various forms and styles, that is sustained by a single fiction was an entirely new experiment for these poets. Perhaps part of the looseness of Turberville’s narrative results from his not having sufficient models for this enterprise. Mary Thomas Crane writes about the “dangers of narrative” in sixteenth-century poetry and how in the earlier part, it was “antithetical to the humanist practice of gathering and framing.”40 But mid-Tudor poets like Gascoigne and Turberville start to imagine how they might “make these exclusive systems compatible.” “Unlike the humanists,” Crane suggests, “Turberville argues that their fictionality, and not their didacticism, makes them moral.”41 This is a compelling idea but it is also misleading. Fictionality does not supersede didacticism in Turberville as the overwhelming majority of the poems in the sequence have an overtly moralizing attitude. Even of the poems that fit explicitly into the narrative sequence, most follow a didactic and hortative mode. It goes without saying that Turberville dynamizes humanist discourse by making fiction essential to its diffusion and proliferation. This uneasy dynamic is precisely what is crucial about the sequence. If we turn to Greene’s emphasis on deictic identifiers (here, there, now, then) as foregrounding the fictive operation in poems, in Turberville they often undermine a fiction that is already loose, and makes the present tense of the poem a playground not for the development, not of a complex subjectivity, but of humanist discourse. If Petrarchist verse allows an entire sequence as well as individual poems to harbor fictive energies, neither really exists in Turberville’s case since individual poems are never encapsulations or microcosms of a fictive temporality. Instead, any emerging temporality is immediately subsumed under a knowledge that is not an organic extension of the poem’s own activity but a part of humanist, intertextual, and transferable formulae. It is no coincidence that the deictic “now” often activates the listing and cataloging impulse of plain-style poems. Whereas Wyatt’s distressed mind often finds rest in turning to the present (“now”) for more interiority, thinking and recollecting, Turberville finds rest in turning to proverbs and wisdom that depersonalize the present into general knowability. The titles themselves play an important role in this process, since they readily announce the formulaic wisdom which the poems eventually try to dramatize. Rather than allowing readers to obtain knowledge from the poetic event of thinking, the titles turn poems into dramatizations of received knowledge. A substantial part of this knowledge was inherited from Tottel.

George Turberville, Constancy 209 Many titles and values affirmed in Turberville’s collection were directly taken from Tottel, who took the liberty of giving poems with no original titles to his own formulaic and often moralizing ones. I hope to have shown that turning to Greene’s critical terms on lyric poetry, which at its outset privileges a Petrarchan lineage, is useful because their subversion in plain-style poetry shows how sixteenth-century plain-style defined itself against Petrarchan conventions. Furthermore, such a comparison restores the religious subtexts which were influential to the development of both styles. On some minor level, Greene’s theory shows how a structurally Catholic undercurrent survives in lyric poetry today and how those moments of plain-style in later English poetry (Shakespeare, Greville, Jonson, Donne, Milton) might owe something to a Protestant poetics. In the last part of this essay, I shall summarize my ideas by offering a traceable account of the sixteenth-century development of the plainstyle. As John Hankins mentions, “more than two-third of [Turberville’s] poems were influenced by Tottel.”42 A comparative reading of a Wyatt poem (“The restful place, renewer of my smart”), its edited and anthologized version in Tottel (“The louer to his bed, with describing of his unquiet state”), and Turberville’s imitation of it (“The louer to his carefull bed declaring his restlesse state”) will help me point out specific differences.43 What we shall observe in comparing these three versions are the following. First, a continual regularization of prosody that helps establish a standard for English verse and a ritualistic framework, which is in turn undermined by its own constancy. Second, a steady affirmation of Reason to subdue the psychological urgency of Wyatt’s restless and referentially unstable language. Third, a growing “scholarly” tendency to externalize objects and the use of apostrophe to maintain that distance. Fourth, the subsequent rise of a scholarly melancholy or grief that will come to inform the poetry of Donne. Chris Stamatakis suggests Petrarch’s sonnet 234 (“O cameretta…”) as a possible source for Wyatt’s poem. Petrarch first addresses the “little room” and then “the little bed.” Stamatakis argues that Petrarch, differently from Wyatt, is able to flee both “myself and my thoughts.”44 This is not altogether accurate. Petrarch starts his sonnet by lamenting how the room is not the tranquil port that welcomes him after a day of fighting with emotional storms, and how the bed is not a place of “rest and comfort” anymore but a place of sorrow and anxiety.45 With the volta, he abandons the apostrophic mode, and along with it an addressable object, to present the labyrinthine syntax his thoughts trail in the absence of an anchor. “Nor do I flee only my hiding place and my rest, but even more myself and my thoughts that used to raise me in flight as I followed them.” The language performs the opposite of the statement here. He cannot flee from his thoughts but becomes radically intertwined in the syntactical

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operations which were developed in the presence of an object. The disappearance of apostrophe and object-oriented thinking forces his thoughts to unwanted and harmful places and the poem finally exhales: “So afraid am I of being alone.” The religious plot here is obvious. This is a rehearsal for Petrarch’s speaker who is trying to figure out whether he can discipline thought in the absence of an object. And this is exactly why a Petrarchan line opens perfectly to both a Catholic and Protestant poetics. For a Catholic reading this poem, the objects of adoration might suggest productive ways of disciplining one’s desires and directing them toward religious ends. For a Protestant reading this poem, it might suggest the dangers of educating the mind through such inconstant objects that risk driving imagination into corrupted avenues. In Wyatt’s poem, the first stanza lists in each line a possible description of “the restful place”: “Reviver of my smart/The labor’s salve…/The body’s ease,…” The bed is now filled with paradoxical associations because though it was once a “place of sleep,” now he can’t do anything on it but “wake” (I invite readers to pick up on these indirect references to death here, which Turberville will turn into a central trope in his imitation). In the second stanza, Wyatt complains about how the world has changed and nothing (frost, snow, previous cures) helps him get over the pain. The third stanza embraces the impossibility of his situation and the futility of any “labor,” and addresses the bed for one last time with a slightly changed version of the refrain: “Wherefore with tears, my bed, I thee forsake.” Petrarch is able to sustain his paradox (claiming that he flees his thoughts but can’t) through the volta of the sonnet whose ability to capture an actual turn remains questionable. Wyatt’s is not a sonnet: It is written in seven-line stanzas, with mostly end-stopped lines and a fairly constant refrain. Thus, it immediately recalls the etymological meaning of stanza: Each one feels like a room, designed and shaped by the poet to host his thoughts. Stamatakis formulates this nicely: “On a first reading, it seems to address not just an imagined physical object (the speaker’s bed, later announced in line 7), but also the lyric form itself.” Even though the poem announces Wyatt’s decision to part with his bed, the constancy of his form paradoxically maintains it as a resting place for his thoughts. Even the minor changes in the refrain gives a story and temporality to the poem. In the first stanza, the refrain stretches the poem’s initial apostrophe (“the restful place”), finally gives it a name, and announces the decision: “Besprent with tears, my bed, I thee forsake.” The second stanza, which does not have any apostrophe, relaxes the caesuras of the first: “Besprent with tears, my bed for to forsake.” The disappearance of an apostrophizing impulse may suggest that Wyatt is not speaking to his bed but now he is in his bed, thinking and trying to find some consolation. The next stanza confirms this: “Yet helpeth it not.” No, it’s not happening. “I find no better ease/In bed our out.” Maybe, then, in the first stanza Wyatt was out of his bed, addressing it

George Turberville, Constancy 211 directly, and in the second, in it, trying to see if either position would bring solace. But ultimately, if neither state offers any help, and “no place” can take away his “grief,” there is no way to go but further into language: “Wherefore with tears, my bed, I thee forsake.” The “wherefore” captures the whole argument of the poem: It can either introduce a logical continuation of the poet’s thought, or it can be a question: “To what purpose, to what end?” What’s the use of leaving my bed if I can’t find comfort anywhere? Tottel’s version of this poem regularizes it into a perfectly iambic rhythm, does away with its monosyllabic intensity, and most importantly, turns its uncertainties into resolute and reasoning gestures. Most immediately, Tottel’s title changes the spatial uncertainty, establishes the bed as the apostrophic object and converts the poem’s referential uncertainty into the energies of a dramatic monologue: “The louer to his bed, with describing of his unquiet state.” The refrains are kept the same for the most part, except in the second instance, where Tottel regularizes “my bed for to forsake” by choosing the obsolete spelling, “bedde.” Monosyllables always pose a challenge for metrical constancy because they unsettle the distribution of stresses. Gascoigne famously advised poets to use monosyllables for they are more native to the language. Paradoxically, however, their frequent use challenges the unswerving regularity of a metrical scheme.46 Tottel was clearly disquieted by the rush of monosyllables (“my bed for to…”) in Wyatt’s original but his regularization also takes away from the dubious nature of Wyatt’s rushed and uncertain commitments. While in Wyatt’s original, the apostrophic first stanza blurs the distinctions between the actual bed and Wyatt’s imagined version of it, in Tottel, the object is entirely externalized. “Quieter of mind and my unquiet foe,/Forgetter of pain, remembering my woe” becomes, “Quieter of minde, and myne unquiet fo:/ Forgetter of payne, remembrer of my woe.” The deletion of “and” restores the iambic flow but also erases a crucial uncertainty about reference. In Wyatt version, it is not clear whether the bed is calmer than both his mind and his destructive condition, or whether these are separate descriptors for his bed, indicating that it is both calm and restless at the same time. The uncertainty here is Wyatt’s consistent way of producing the Petrarchan intertwinement of language and desire. A similar loss is at stake with the change of “remembering” to “remembrer.” Here, Tottel opts for less syllables to preserve the meter but erases possible uncertainties and the askew temporality of the original. Most importantly, the pivotal ambiguities of Wyatt’s ending are completely lost in Tottel: “Yet it helpeth not” becomes “But all for nought,” losing the opportunity to turn language into the main actor of the poem. The referential ambiguity of “it” is lost. The most dramatic change is in the fifth line of the final stanza: “Yet that I gave I cannot call again,” is a typical Wyatt line that embodies the entanglement of his thoughts and

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affirms the inseparability of the object from the speaker. But now it conveys opposite: “My heart once set, I cannot it refraine.” Similarly, the monosyllabic penultimate line (“No place from me my grief can take”) is tamed with the polysyllabic “away” (“No place from me my grief away can take”). Whereas the original might suggest both “grief cannot take any place away from me” and “nowhere can take away my grief,” Tottel’s version suppresses this delightful uncertainty with the constancy of the pentameter. Finally, let us turn to Turberville’s imitation (“The Louer to his carefull bed declaring his restlesse state”) which continues the work of regularizing Wyatt and replacing any remaining ambiguities with the constant references of a scholarly mind. The (very) latent metaphor of the bed as a grave and any mournful content of the original receive explicit acknowledgment in Turberville’s version. Grief also takes a very different form in Turberville: It is now fueled by a radical disconnect between the precision of learned metaphors and Reason’s ultimate inability to dramatize the speaker’s psychology. This impasse is important also because it predicts some seventeenth-century discourses on scholarly melancholy, especially the kind that Douglas Trevor associates with Donne, as “the consequence of scholarly inclinations he can neither control nor resist.”47 This impasse is fundamentally Protestant in nature and is predicted by many manuals of rhetoric published during the Reformation. For instance, the 1530 English translation Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa’s (an important forerunner to the Reformation) Of the Vanitie and Uncertaintie of Artes and Sciences criticizes poetry and philosophy for “shee is certaine of nothinge” and men’s “reason cannot perswade no constant and certaine thinge, but doth alwayes wauer in mutable opinions… [it is] plaine and holy meaning, in which alone the truth doth consiste.”48 In Turberville’s poem, any uncertainty about poetic address is resolved from the onset. The title readily announces the apostrophic aspect of the poem (“The louer to his carefull bed”) and establishes the object as “carefull.” Our modern ears ought not confuse this phrase with careful, as in Turberville’s poem, it unmistakably means filled with grief. The object is instantly turned into a metonymic signifier for grief. What’s more, it is neither “my bed” (like in Wyatt), nor a possible fiction of his mind. The unchanging refrain in Turberville is: “(O bed) I thee forsake.” This metonymic object of grief is now doubly distanced from the poet. In fact, the poem opens with yet another indication of distancing: “Thou that wert earst a restfull place/dost now renue my smart.” This sounds immediately different from Wyatt’s swift entry into a room (“The restfull place…”). In Turberville, the “thou” is instantly objectivized. The deictic “now” is not engrained into the psychologized syntax of the poem like in Wyatt. Rather, it ascribes a temporality to the object. It is inconstant: You were once that, but now you are this. Following Tottel, he cleanses

George Turberville, Constancy 213 the seventh line (“Once quieter of minde perdie,/now an unquiet fo”) from any remaining uncertainty. Now each side of the caesura is introduced by deictic markers, “once” and “now.” The deictic activity is achieving the exact opposite of its effect in Wyatt, which Greene describes as “corroborat[ing] the speaker’s awareness that his ‘here’ is not everywhere, that this poem is spoken from within a kind of retreat away from a larger, more complex world.” In Turberville’s poem, some slight adjustments in wording loses the phenomenological scope of Wyatt’s. What’s lost is also an awareness of language as an object that can enact momentary gains and losses of meaning. Instead, the entire activity of loss is metonymically charged onto the “carefull bed.” In the rest of the poem, Turberville describes the inability to calm his restless mind. The second stanza starts by downplaying the power of select mythological references: “No Ise of Apenynus top/my flaming fire may quent/No heate of brightest Phoebus beames/may bate my chillie colde.” The first refers to a snow-covered mountain range in Italy which features frequently in Homer and Virgil, and Phoebus is just another name for Apollo. Neither of these mythological images are able to quench his pain. What sends Turberville in search of these classical allusions are the following lines in Wyatt: “The frosty snowes may not redresse my heat:/Nor heat of sunne abate my fervent cold.” By adding these references, Turberville exaggerates the original imagery in Wyatt, but more important, he turns the poetic self into a passive creation of these tropes or, more generally, of knowledge. “I” never appears in this stanza, even though Wyatt’s descriptions are immediately followed by an acceptance of the self’s inability to find solace: “I know nothing to ease my paynes so great.” Where Wyatt concludes his search by simply accepting a lack of knowledge, Turberville supplements Wyatt’s emotional states with a performance of Classical knowledge. The agency is displaced from the speaker and transferred instead to the objects of his knowledge and their inability to bring about change. Unlike his more conventional plain-style poems which end with a truism or formula, here the soul cannot find an animating maxim to live by and experiences a death anxiety throughout. It surfaces most clearly in the third stanza where Turberville explains the way dreams offer momentary joys to his brain. Eventually upon waking, however, fear and unrest return. Turberville describes his dreaming state with the image of a “carcass”: “Whilst yet I lie in slumbring sleepe/My carkasse feeles no wo.” Carcass primarily refers to a dead or unfeeling body and elsewhere in Turberville the word is used with this meaning (i.e. Tragicall Tales: “Where dead the carkasse lay,” “There lay his loathsome carkasse slaine/For every man to vewe”).49 Sleep as a symbol of the lingering state between life and death is an old trope. But for this poem, it is doing more than just bringing up a commonplace. It establishes the state of a Protestant poetic self that is

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produced by “poring over handbooks of self-knowledge, of searching for signs of election.”50 In the last stanza, Turberville writes, … I die, yet am alive, From pangues of plaint to fits of fume/my restlesse minde doth runne, With rage and fansie Reason fights,/they altogether striue, Resistaunce vayleth naught at all,/for I am quickly wunne: Thus seeking rest no ruth I finde/that gladsome ioy may make, Wherefore consumed with flowering tears/(O bed) I thee forsake.

“Reason” is Turberville’s most striking addition to his imitation of the Wyatt poem. Ending the poem on this note reveals the faculty with which Turberville has been trying to avoid being pulled into the vortex of grief. But supplementing Wyatt’s poem with knowledge or reason does not help him revitalize its content. In this case, to “let[ting] Reason rule” does not “purchase ease anewe.” Even the unyielding meter cannot hold the speaker in the poem’s temporality. If so much of Wyatt’s poetry was in the act of figuring out how “to build a moral or emotional stay against change,” Turberville’s poetry, with its regular prosody and tonal constancy, approaches change from a place of elegiac certitude.51 When he looks at the world and its objects, he sees a meaning that’s long lost and irrecoverable. He describes his bed as “carefull” because the object stands as a metonymy for a world that embodies loss. My argument in this paper has been to associate this sense of loss with the gradual erasure of a Petrarchan structure from the lineage of plain-style poetry. My aim is not to fetishize Petrarchan line of poetry as sustaining a Catholic sensuality. What’s gradually lost is the intentional uncertainty surrounding an image: An image’s simultaneous ability to serve both as an impediment and an opportunity for higher knowledge. Turberville’s poem is experiencing a sort of crisis because on one hand, it actively inhabits a Petrarchan diction, while on the other it is unable to inscribe a sense of intentionality to its own images. Seen this way, the poem gives Turberville a room in which to mourn a sensibility that was already partly lost when he saw it through the mediated version of Tottel. Turberville’s stanza-by-stanza dilation of Wyatt’s original content is an attempt to resist change and obtain constancy by adding “(such is hap) renewed cares… to the olde.” He must have gotten the verb “renew” from the first line of Wyatt’s poem in Tottel: “The restfull place, renewer of my smart.” What he didn’t know was the original word Wyatt had used: “Reviver.” Though the two words are very close in meaning, they capture precisely what was gained and lost in every stage of Petrarch’s journey from Wyatt to Turberville. If Wyatt was reviving Petrarch in English, Turberville was merely renewing Tottel’s version of Wyatt.

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Notes 1 William R. Parker, “The Sonnets in Tottel’s Miscellany,” PMLA, 54, no. 3 (1939): 669-677, 669. 2 John Erskine Hankins, The Life and Works of George Turbervile (Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1940). Hankins was the first to construct the narrative of this sequence. William Sheidley, The Poetry of Barnaba Googe and George Turberville: A study (PhD diss., Stanford University, 1968). Sheidley puts together a lengthy reconstruction of the narrative from a largely unchronological original. He finds Hankins’s emphasis on the narrative integrity of the work to be “misleading”: “… the reader who attempts to trace this story through the approximately ninety amatory poems that follow the ‘Argument’—mingled as they are with lyrics of other sorts—find himself repeatedly uncertain whether a given poem belongs in the sequence or out of it. A number of poems purporting to be epistles sent between Tymetes and Pyndara from the core of the sequence” (170). Jessica Winston, Lawyers at Play: Literature, Law, and Politics at the Early Modern Inns of Court, 15581581 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). Winston recognizes the “loose narrative” of this sequence and relates it to the cautionary framing Turberville’s want to bring to the love story: “In a sense, Turberville repeats what Googe did in his pastorals, presenting an erotic narrative in such a way as to warn against it” (90). 3 William Whittingham, “Miserere mei deus.” In Songbooks (1500-1700): The whole booke of Psalmes, ed. T. Starnhold and I. Hopkins (London: John Day, 1562), 118-119. 4 John Hall, The Courte of Vertu: Contayning many holy or Spretuall Songes, Sonnettes, psalmes & Shorte Sentences, as well of holy Scripture as others (London: Thomas Marshe, 1565). 5 Miles Huggarde, “The preface to the reader.” In A treatise declaring howe Christ by perverse preachyng was banished out of this realm. And howe it hath pleased God to bring Christ home againe by Mary our moost gracious Quene (London: Robert Caly, 1554). Literature Online, accessed 12 November, 2018. 6 Catherine Bates, “George Turberville and the Painful Art of Falconry.” In Masculinity and the Hunt: Wyatt to Spenser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 145-169. Bates’s reading is crucial because it counterpoises the question of women’s “unreliability” with the structural metaphor of hunting in Turberville: “The unreliability of women is one thing—and generates the standard misogynistic complaint—but the unreliability of a man’s shooting tool is something quite else. The man whose weapon refuses to go where he wants it to or to bring off the right kill is, by implication, far worse off than the man whose bird has simply flown away to someone else” (161). Bates is interested in a psychoanalytical reading of the hunting metaphor. Turberville’s open anxiety about his inability to capture the right metaphor explains the investment he makes in poetry about women’s inconstancy. But this kind of transference is very different from how, say a Wyatt poem, lends itself to a structural reading of courtly culture and misogyny. In Turberville, the general avoidance of a right metaphor is often more conscious than it seems. Not hitting the right metaphor is a self-aware attempt to keep the poem’s images from turning into conceits. To compensate, Turberville habitually turns to truisms or maxims. This way, his constant streaming through images becomes a strategic choice to fashion the plain articulation of a truth into the poem’s central gesture. Earlier, Sheidley argued that “Turbervile apparently understood the art of poetry as a self-justifying and

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self-completing exercise rather than a mode of thought and expression in which wisdom may be formulated and communicated.” It is true that Turberville did not see the poetic space as a medium in which to formulate and develop thoughts. But he did certainly see the poem as a didactic instance that allows for the communication of deeply held truths and maxims. Sheidley, The Poetry of Barnaba Googe, 277. For Sheidley the self-awareness of Turberville’s poetry points to a “rift between poetry and reality.” The poet uses certain rhetorical tropes so self-consciously that he affirms the space of creation as producing its self-contained, separate reality. This metaawareness is important for how I eventually engage Roland Greene’s discussions of the ritualistic element in Petrarchan poetry. In Turberville, there is certainly an awareness about the poetic space as a performative domain. However, this awareness is foregrounded to such an extent that the poems ultimately resist the participatory energies of ritual. Matthew Milner, The Senses and the English Reformation (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011). George Turberville, Tragicall Tales (London: Abell Jeffs, 1587), 153-155. Turberville, Tragicall Tales, 196-199. Roger Edgeworth, “Of Idols and Images.” In The English Sermon: Volume I: 1550-1650, ed. Martin Semour-Smith (Cheshire: Carcanet Press, 1976). Milner, The Senses and the English Reformation, 164. Hankins, The Life and Works of George Turberville. The author was the first to call attention to the prominence of proverbs in Turberville: “Perhaps the most noticeable characteristic of Turbervile’s style is his frequent use of proverbs or phrases that have proverbial force … The use of proverbs as an ornament of style was advocated by Thomas Wilson in 1560, and he particularly recommended the collection of John Heywood” (76-77). Douglas L. Peterson, The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne: A History of the Plain and Eloquent Styles (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967). Peterson offers an unsystematic but exhaustive account of plain and Petrarchan styles. He also calls attention to proverbs in Turberville: “But for amorous verse he appears generally to have preferred a polite, conversational style, embellished with native proverbs and numerous classical allusions. Structurally, he adds little that is new to the tradition” (145). What Peterson overlooks is how these new layers offer a commentary on the old. By presenting a comparative lineage (Petrarch-Wyatt-Tottel-Turberville), I shall analyze these rhetorical layers as the natural continuation of a moralizing and regularizing tendency in plain style. Ingrid Nelson, Lyric Tactics: Poetry, Genre, and Practice in Later Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Nelson offers a strong reading of why Chaucer turns to a proverbial mode in Antigone’s discourse on love in the second book of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. She sets this in contrast to the obvious Petrarchism that undergirds Troilus’s lyric episodes. She finds in Antigone’s song a political valence insofar as “the song’s adaptations of its sources and multivocal transmission suggest a model of inclusive negotiation of public and private desires” (102). I take Nelson to be identifying one of the first and most important instances of the tension between Petrarchan and plain styles developed within a single work, which is how plain style will continue to appear later in the tradition: alongside and often in contradistinction to the Petrarchan (i.e. Wyatt, Greville, Shakespeare). Jessica Winston, Lawyers at Play. William E. Sheidley, “George Turbervile and the Problem of Passion,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 69 (1970): 631-648. Sheidley

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mentions this problem in his dissertation as well (published 1968) but it becomes the central concern for this stand-alone article on Turberville. George Turberville, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (London: Henry Denham, 1567), 8. Turberville, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, 8. Sheidley, The Poetry of Barnaba Googe, 307. Turberville, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, 11. Turberville, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, 11. Jessica Winston, Lawyers at Play, 93. Sheidley, The Poetry of Barnaba Googe, 289. Sheidley emphasizes the sense of discursive distance Turberville manages to maintain in such discussions on amatory conventions: “…because he conceives of poetry as a special world quite separable from reality, whose laws are not those of religion and moral philosophy but of literary tradition and convention.” Amanda Holton, “Chaucer’s Presence in Songes and Sonettes.” In Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes in Context, ed. Stephen Hamrick (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 87-109, 99. Elizabeth Heale, Wyatt, Surrey and Early Tudor Poetry (New York: Longman, 1998). Heale offers a comparable account of the influence of Chaucer on Wyatt (“They flee from me”), focusing specifically on the repeated use of “newfangelnesse” in “The Squire’s Tale”: “Chaucer’s female falcon complains of men, Wyatt’s male lover complains of the faithlessness of women” (51). “In such poems, traditional topoi of the cruel of faithless mistress and the rebellious lover who turns, or dreams of turning, the tables on his mistress may displace wider frustrations and resentments arising from the contradictions, for male courtiers, inherent in courting itself, an activity perceived in the Henrician period as glamorous and shameful, its rewards both desirable and unstable” (53). Hankins, The Life and Works of George Turbervile. Hankins recognizes the mutual influence of both Tottel and Chaucer on Turberville’s poetry, however also mentions that “Turbervile’s method of work, which makes it seem probable that many of his passages based upon Tottel and the works of Chaucer are the result of an extremely retentive memory rather than a deliberate plagiarizing from those volumes” (78). This is partly accurate since instances of Chaucerian language and description appear in Turberville but a basic comparison of Tottel and Turberville would suffice to prove that Turberville must have consulted the anthology directly and meticulously. Sheidley (1968) describes certain poems of Turberville as “derivative to the point of plagiarism from Wyatt’s” (195). It is obvious that Tottel had the most direct and decisive influence on Turberville. John Freccero, “The Fig Tree and the Laurel: Petrarch’s Poetics,” Diacritics, 5, no. 1 (1975): 34-40. There are various positions on the degree to which religion informed Tottel’s editorial practices. Stephen Hamrick, “Tottel’s Miscellany and the English Reformation,” Criticism, 44, no. 4 (2002): 329-336. Hamrick argues that a “Catholic poetics” survives in Petrarchan poetry: “…the Protestant poetry in Tottel’s Miscellany incorporated complex images of Catholic practice to fashion a new form of iconoclasm, which creates rather than destroys” (331). His account is not altogether convincing because it is interested in locating specific tendencies (idolatry) as tenets of a Catholic sensibility and does not provide any structural account of Petrarchism as containing inherently religious dynamics. Since Petrarchan poetry matured into a secular medium, an image or referencebased argument fall short of explaining the “Catholic discourse circulating within Tottel’s Miscellany and the wider literary culture” (352). Peter C.

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Herman, “Songs and Sonettes, 1557.” In Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes in Context, ed. Stephen Hamrick (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013), 111-130. Herman proposes “that Richard Tottel meant to participate in the creation of a distinctly English, distinctly Catholic culture intended to answer the Protestant nationalism arising in response to Mary I’s attempt to bring England back into the Catholic fold” (111). Herman’s evidence is exclusively contextual: Tottel’s inclusion of Surrey, who was “a victim of Henry VIII’s tyranny,” shows how he intended to “construct Surrey as a Catholic martyr” (124). He is aware of the evidence being mostly “extrinsic to the verse” but finds Tottel’s editorial sensibility to be indicative of a conscious religious agenda (125). Paul Marquis, “Politics and Print: The Curious Revisions to Tottel’s ‘Songes and Sonettes,’” Studies in Philology, 97, no. 2 (2000): 145-164. The author presents a comparable historical analysis of Tottel’s revisions. These historical arguments are often convincing and one might also extricate the religious element in these studies to reflect on how the second edition of Tottel clearly constructs a more moralizing and didactic framing around the amatory content. Christopher Warner, The Making and Marketing of Tottel’s Miscellany, 1557: Songs and Sonnets in the Summer of the Martyrs’ Fires (Dorchester: Ashgate, 2013). Warner offers the most exhaustive account of the numerous changes Tottel made to the Miscellany from its first publication under Mary in June 1557 to the second in July 1557. Warner offers the most reasonable position on ascribing religious significance to Petrarchan instances and moments of idolizing in poetry: “Catholics could read them topically in this way, to be sure, but Protestants could just as easily read them oppositely, and either camp could simply take them as timeless expression of lament for a corrupted world… In sum, whatever the original intent of these poems’ authors, their messages were safely all purpose, proving as fit to print in Elizabeth’s reign as they were in Mary’s” (168). It is clear that a convincing evaluation of the religious undercurrent in specific poems needs to take up dialectical gestures to entertain various ways of reading these texts and the simultaneous presence of Catholic and Protestant sensibilities. Gary Waller, English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century (New York: Longman, 1986), 102. Turberville, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, 20. Milner, The Senses and the English Reformation, 285. Hankins, The Life and Works of George Turbervile. The author notices how “in the later Epitaphs and Sonnettes, such phrases are often printed in italics or Roman type, while the context is in black letter, with the evident purpose of calling attention to the moral which they convey.” As Hankins suggests, through such typographical alterations, Turberville seems to be foregrounding the didactic component of his poetry. These proverbial instances further fortify the sense of supervision and control he wants to establish around the more slippery events like metaphor which threaten to crack the surface of his language. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Mark Allen and John H. Fisher (Boston: Wadsworth, 2012), 716. The authorship of this poem is contested but recent scholarship has almost unanimously confirmed Chaucer as the author. John Stuart Mill, “Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties,” Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, Vol. 1 (Boston: William V. Spencer, 1864), 89-120, 97. Roland Greene, Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991). Greene’s theory is ultimately limited neither to Petrarchan nor sixteenth-century

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34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46

47 48 49 50 51

poetry: “All poems, I think, hold the ritual and fictional modes in some relation to each other” (22). My general inclination is not to deny the applicability of this theory to plain-style, but to demonstrate how plain style poems invert and decode such modalities. Greene develops his account in Post-Petrarchism with more substantial commentary on the lyric temporalities that the fictive and the ritualistic elements sustain. Greene’s lyric temporality depends on a dynamic collaboration between the two elements and their psychologized phenomenology. Roland Greene, “Sir Philip Sidney’s Psalms, the Sixteenth-Century Psalter, and the Nature of Lyric,” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 30, no. 1 (1990): 19-40, 21. Sheidley, The Poetry of Barnaba Googe, 164. George Saintsbury, Historical Manual of English Prosody (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919), 169. Richard J. Panofsky, Introduction to George Turberville. Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567) and Epitaphes and Sonnettes (1576) (New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1977), v-xv, xiii. Patrick Cheney, Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry (Malden, Mass: WileyBlackwell, 2011), 147. Turberville, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, A6. Mary Thomas Crane, “Bend or Frame: Lyric Collections and the Dangers of Narrative, 1550-1590,” in Framing Authority: Saying, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 162-196, 162. Crane, “Bend or Frame,” 174. Hankins, The Life and Works of George Turberville, 72. The original Wyatt is from Wyatt, The Complete Poems, 117-118; Tottel’s Wyatt is from Tottel, Tottel’s Miscellany; the Turberville poem is from Turberville, Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, 36. Chris Stamatakis, “Wyatt and Surrey: Songs and Sonnets,” in A Companion to Renaissance Poetry, ed. Catherine Bates (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2018), 262-275, 267. Francesco Petrarcha, Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics, trans. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976), 392-393. George Gascoigne, “Certayne notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or rhyme in English, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati,” in English Sixteenth-Century Verse: An Anthology, ed. Richard S. Sylvester (Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974), 317-328, 322: “the most auncient English wordes are of one sillable, so that the more monasyllables that you use the truer Englishman you shall seeme, and the lesse you shall smell of the Inkehorne: Also wordes of many syllables do cloye a verse and make it unpleasant…” Douglas Trevor, The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 93. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim, Of the Vanitie and vncertaintie of Arts (London: s.n., 1530). Literature Online, accessed 12 November, 2018, 64. Turberville, Tragicall Tales. Both quotations are from “The Argument to the Ninth Historie,” 117, 127. Waller, English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century, 101. Roland Greene, “Thomas Wyatt,” in The Cambridge Companion to English Poets, ed. Claude Rawson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 37-52, 45.

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Works Cited Agrippa von Nettesheim, Heinrich Cornelius. Of the Vanitie and vncertaintie of Arts. London: s.n., 1530. Literature Online, accessed 12 November, 2018. Bates, Catherine. “George Turberville and the Painful Art of Falconry.” In Masculinity and the Hunt: Wyatt to Spenser, 145-169. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Bell, Ilona. Elizabethan Women and The Poetry of Courtship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Brown, Calvin S. “Monosyllables in English Verse.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 3, no. 4 (1963): 473-491. Cranmer, Thomas. Certain Sermons or Homilies (1547) and A Homily against Disobedience and Wilful Rebellion (1570), edited by Ronald B. Bond. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by Mark Allen and John H. Fisher. Boston: Wadsworth, 2012. Cheney, Patrick. Reading Sixteenth-Century Poetry. Malden, Mass: WileyBlackwell, 2011. Crane, Mary Thomas. “Bend or Frame: Lyric Collections and the Dangers of Narrative, 1550-1590.” In Framing Authority: Saying, Self, and Society in Sixteenth-Century England, 162-196. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Edgeworth, Roger. “Of Idols and Images.” In The English Sermon: Volume I: 1550-1650, edited by Martin Seymour-Smith. Cheshire: Carcanet Press, 1976. Freccero, John. “The Fig Tree and the Laurel: Petrarch’s Poetics.” Diacritics, 5, no. 1 (1975): 34-40. Gascoigne, George. “Certayne notes of Instruction concerning the making of verse or rhyme in English, written at the request of Master Edouardo Donati.” In English Sixteenth-Century Verse: An Anthology, edited by Richard S. Sylvester, 317-328. Garden City: Anchor Press, 1974. Greene, Roland. “Sir Philip Sidney’s Psalms, the Sixteenth-Century Psalter, and the Nature of Lyric.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, 30, no. 1 (1990): 19-40. Greene, Roland. Post-Petrarchism: Origins and Innovations of the Western Lyric Sequence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Greene, Roland. “Thomas Wyatt.” In The Cambridge Companion to English Poets, edited by Claude Rawson, 37-52. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Greville, Fulke. Selected Poems of Fulke Greville, edited by Thom Gunn. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1968. Hall, John. The Courte of Vertu: Contayning many holy or Spretuall Songes, Sonnettes, psalmes & Shorte Sentences, as well of holy Scripture as others. London: Thomas Marshe, 1565. Hamrick, Stephen. “Tottel’s Miscellany and the English Reformation.” Criticism, 44, no. 4 (2002): 329-361. Hankins, John Erskine. The Life and Works of George Turbervile. Lawrence: University of Kansas, 1940. Heale, Elizabeth. Wyatt, Surrey and Early Tudor Poetry. New York: Longman, 1998.

George Turberville, Constancy 221 Herman, Peter C. “Songs and Sonettes, 1557.” In Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes in Context, edited by Stephen Hamrick, 111-130. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. Holton, Amanda and Tom MacFaul, eds. Tottel’s Miscellany: Songs and Sonnets of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Others. London: Penguin, 2011. Holton, Amanda and Tom MacFaul. “Chaucer’s Presence in Songes and Sonettes.” In Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes in Context, edited by Stephen Hamrick, 87-109. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. Huggarde, Miles. “The preface to the reader.” In A treatise declaring howe Christ by perverse preachyng was banished out of this realm. And howe it hath pleased God to bring Christ home againe by Mary our moost gracious Quene. London: s.n., 1554. Literature Online, accessed 12 November, 2018. Kingsley-Smith, Jane. “Cupid, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Sidney’s Arcadia.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 48, no. 1 (2008): 65-91. Kuchar, Gary. “Petrarchism and Repentance in John Donne’s Holy Sonnets.” Modern Philology, 105, no. 3 (2008): 535-569. Lerer, Seth. “Cultivation and Inhumation: Some Thoughts on the Cultural Impact of Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes.” In Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes in Context, edited by Stephen Hamrick. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. Marquis, Paul A. “Politics and Print: The Curious Revisions to Tottel’s ‘Songes and Sonettes.’” Studies in Philology, 97, no. 2 (2000): 145-164. Marquis, Paul A. “Printing History and Editorial Design in the Elizabethan Version of Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes.” In Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes in Context, edited by Stephen Hamrick, 14-36. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013. Mill, John Stuart. “Thoughts on Poetry and its Varieties.” In Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, Vol. 1, 89-120. Boston: William V. Spencer, 1864. Milner, Matthew. The Senses and the English Reformation. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. Nelson, Ingrid. Lyric Tactics: Poetry, Genre, and Practice in Later Medieval England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. Panofsky, Richard J. “Introduction.” In George Turberville. Epitaphs, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets (1567), v-xv. New York: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints, 1977. Parker, William R. “The Sonnets in Tottel’s Miscellany.” PMLA, 54, no. 3 (1939): 669-677. Peterson, Douglas L. The English Lyric from Wyatt to Donne: A History of the Plain and Eloquent Styles. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967. Petrarcha, Francesco. Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The Rime Sparse and Other Lyrics, translated by Robert M. Durling. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1976. Saintsbury, George. Historical Manual of English Prosody. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919. Shannon, Laurie. “Minerva’s Men: Horizontal Nationhood and the Literary Production of Googe, Turbervile, and Gascoigne.” In The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Literature: 1485-1603, edited by Mike Pincombe and Cathy Shrank, 437-454. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

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Sheidley, William Edwards. “George Turbervile and the Problem of Passion.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 69 (1970): 631-648. Sheidley, William Edwards. The Poetry of Barnaba Googe and George Turberville: A study. PhD diss., Stanford University, 1968. Shrank, Cathy. “‘Matters of Love as of Discourse’: The English Sonnet, 15601580.” Studies in Philology, 105 (2008): 30-49. Stamatakis, Chris. “Wyatt and Surrey: Songs and Sonnets.” In A Companion to Renaissance Poetry, edited by Catherine Bates, 262-275. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2018. Stapleton, M.L. “Edmund Spenser, George Turberville, and Isabella Whitney Read Ovid’s Heroides.” Studies in Philology, 105 (2008): 487-519. Tottel, Richard, ed. Tottel’s Miscellany, edited by H.E. Rollins. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966. Trevor, Douglas. “John Donne and Scholarly Melancholy.” In The Poetics of Melancholy in Early Modern England, 87-115. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Turberville, George. Epitaphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets. London: Henry Denham, 1567. Turberville, George. Tragicall Tales. London: Abell Jeffs, 1587. Waller, Gary. English Poetry of the Sixteenth Century. New York: Longman, 1986. Warner, J. Christopher. The Making and Marketing of Tottel’s Miscellany, 1557: Songs and Sonnets in the Summer of the Martyrs’ Fires. Dorchester: Ashgate, 2013. Whittingham, William. “Miserere mei deus.” In Songbooks (1500-1700): The whole booke of Psalmes, edited by T. Starnhold and I. Hopkins, 118-119. London: John Day, 1562. Willis, Jonathan. Church Music and Protestantism in Post-Reformation England. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. Winston, Jessica. “Lyric Poetry at the Early Elizabethan Inns of Court: Forming a Professional Community.” In The Intellectual and Cultural World of the Early Modern Inns of Court, edited by Jayne Elisabeth Archer, Elizabeth Goldring, and Sarah Knight, 223-244. New York: Manchester University Press, 2011. Winston, Jessica. Lawyers at Play: Literature, Law, and Politics at the Early Modern Inns of Court, 1558-1581. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Winters, Yvor. “The 16th Century Lyric in England: A Critical and Historical Reinterpretation.” In Elizabethan Poetry: Modern Essays in Criticism, edited by Paul Alpers, 93-125. New York: Oxford, 1967. Wyatt, Sir Thomas. The Complete Poems, edited by R.A. Rebholz. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978.

10 “Assi de doctos como de indoctos”: A Poet-Translator Discovers His Audience in the Spain of Philip II Richard H. Armstrong In 1555, a young poet-translator published a complete Castilian translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, Los Doze Libros de la Eneida de Vergilio, to which he did not dare openly to attach his name.1 This anonymity is odd in itself, as the work was a major achievement by any standard and certainly a coup for Spanish letters at the time, given the status of Virgil among humanists throughout Europe.2 The previous Spanish translations of Virgil had had little impact, so the field was wide open. The 1428 prose translation and commentary by Enrique de Villena, remarkable in being one of the first complete translations of the Aeneid into any European vernacular, languished in obscurity by this time, as it had never been printed and existed in very few copies.3 Juan de Ayala, the Toledan printer of this 1555 translation, clearly did not know of its existence. The 1528 translation of Aeneid 2 by the playwright Francisco de las Natas was a small, perhaps probative publication by a member of the Italian Giunta publishing dynasty, who had acquired through marriage the important press of Fadrique de Basilea in Burgos.4 But Juan de Ayala does not mention it either, and that slim volume is exceedingly rare today. It would appear that already by 1555 Natas’ translation was hardly known, and as it was written in the coplas de arte mayor that were the meter of Spanish epic from the previous century, it would not be a likely inspiration for poets taking on the new Italian poetic form of the hendecasyllabic verse in its various configurations of terza rima, ottava rima, versi sciolti (blank verse), and the sonnet. The watershed year for this change in Spanish poetics is conventionally set at 1543 with the publication of the works of Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega, though such importations had been going on intermittently for a while.5 The use of Italian meters for translation picked up quickly with the translation into Castilian ottava rima of Orlando Furioso by Gerónimo de Urrea, which saw various reprintings (Antwerp, 1549; Lyon, 1550; Antwerp, 1554; Lyon, 1556; Antwerp, 1558; Barcelona, 1564), and another done by Hernando Alcocer (appearing once in Toledo, 1550). Francisco Garrido de Villena produced an ottava rima translation of Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato in Valencia DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-10

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in 1555. While the vogue of Italian chivalric epic helped to establish ottava rima, the Italian invention of blank verse also carried over quickly. Gonzalo Pérez, who would become Philip II’s secretary of state, held a privilege to publish his blank verse translation of the Odyssey dated as early at 1547, though the first part (books 1-13) appeared only in 1550 (in Salamanca and Antwerp; then Venice, 1553); his full, reworked version appeared in Antwerp in 1556 and again in Venice, 1562.6 Juan Martín Cordero produced a blank verse translation of Girolamo Vida’s Christiad in 1554 for presentation at the nuptials of Philip and Mary Tudor.7 So a translation of Virgil appearing in 1555 and done in Italianate meters fits an obvious pattern of cultural transfer for the time, with Virgil following very shortly after Homer’s debut in Spanish, who in turn was preceded by Ariosto.8 The printer’s introduction makes it clear that the monumental task of translating Virgil’s epic was only just now accomplished in Spain with this publication, though it had already been achieved in France and Italy. In Italy and France they have well understood the value of this poet for many years now and the profit that comes from reading him, since, not content with having him in the first language in which he was written [sic], they have translated and printed him many times in their vernacular languages, it seeming unfair to them that such a pleasant and beneficial author should be enjoyed only by those who understand the Latin language. Only Spain still had this task to complete up till now; I don’t know the reason why.9 This sense of cultural belatedness was not accurate, given the prehistory of Spanish translation as we have seen; but it does typify the Spanish attitude of the day. Like Rome in the face of Greek culture, Spain, though politically dominant in Italy, was falling captive to the conquered culture of the Italian states.10 This is especially evident in the physical and poetic form of this translation, which takes on Italian meters and book forms, but puts them to new ends. For while it is written in the newly adapted hendecasyllabic verse arranged in the forms of versi sciolti and ottava rima, those forms were never combined into a single epic poem or translation in Italy. The poet-translator chose quite strikingly to render Virgil’s epic narration in blank verse (like his colleagues Gonzalo Pérez and Juan Martín Cordero), while deploying the rich poetic possibilities of ottava rima for all the speeches. The book design itself utilizes a quarto-sized format made popular by Italian publishers like the Giolito press for their fine editions of Ariosto, with two columns of text per page.11 It lacks the rich illustrative headpieces typical of the Giolito press as well as its paratexts of allegories, arguments, and indices of notable passages. But its roman typography gives it a pleasant if somewhat austere look, and each octave is marked by an appealing fleuron in solid

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black ink, either to mark the change to stanzaic meter or to signal the shift to direct speech. Though lacking illustrations, the book does have some textual embellishments: An introductory sonnet (again, a Italian form) in Spanish, 2 prefatory Latin epigrams, and a final text appended as a coda to the Aeneid, the pseudonymous Exclamatio Caesaris Augusti, a short post-classical poem describing the Roman emperor’s refusal to burn the work as Virgil had instructed in his will, one of many texts published in Latin editions of Virgil at the time.12 This poem is translated into terza rima, a meter commonly deployed for elegy and didactic verse in Italy after ottava rima eclipsed it for epic.13 Thus taken as a whole, this volume looks like a declaration of allegiance to Italian humanism in addition to being a tribute to Rome’s greatest poet. It thus displays a “double reception” of both Italian and Roman culture, a point to which we shall return below. Yet despite the evident care in this publication and the boldness of its new synthesis of Italian forms, the poet-translator chose to withhold his name, leaving Juan de Ayala to speak for him in the preface. The printer speculates over reasons why no one has tried to translate Virgil into Castilian until now, declaring that it is not the case that men of talent were lacking; more likely, they were simply too busy with other matters, or lacked the leisure to dedicate to so serious a task, knowing how difficult it would be to translate such so great and artistic a work. But then he gets closer to the case at hand: […] or what is more probable, I am convinced that there hasn’t lacked a person to undertake such a noble task, except that he will have contented himself with doing it only for his own exercise and enjoyment, without wanting to communicate his efforts to the kind of person who, instead of thanking him for them, would carp at them. Which has been the larger part of the reason why the author of this translation did not allow it to be published some years before, and why, now that at the insistence of some of his friends he has permitted it to see the light of day, he holds back his name in silence, believing it better to listen like Apelles behind the canvas to the criticisms the readers of his work are giving than, by publishing his name, to be obliged to respond to such diverse objections that so many different tastes, of both the learned and the unlearned (assi de doctos como de indoctos), with and without reason, are wont to raise.14 All topoi of humility aside, it would seem, then, that our poet, the licenciado Gregorio Hernández de Velasco (1525?–1577 or 1586), was aware of the risk he was running by mixing meters and importing so enthusiastically the new Italian forms for a text as monumental as the Aeneid. Ayala for his part anticipates the reader’s objections by saying

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that if he should find anything objectionable to his taste, he should compare it to the original before dismissing it—proof, we can infer, that a Latin-literate readership was at least partly presupposed here. But he then makes a further point about appreciating the difficulties of poetic translation. Because he [i.e., the reader] will encounter many things that, not being translated, would be errors without excuse, and being translated, excuses them. Especially when the translation is in rhyme, a thing so difficult and in which the rough spots of the ancient poets are smoothed over so laboriously.15 By saying “when the translation is in rhyme,” Ayala points to the fact that this translation rhymes only part of the time; but he also upholds the great value of rhyme as a carefully-wrought construction, something only a vernacular poetics would support, as rhyme is not a formal principle of classical verse. Ayala also enjoins the reader to not stop at the literal story, but to seek out the moral meaning and philosophical sense; for, he concludes, the intention of the translator “was principally the moral benefit of whoever reads his translation, and secondarily to make a beginning and clear the way for those who wish to make trial of their talent upon Virgil in this kind of exercise.”16 It seems quite extraordinary that a man who worked so hard on a project of this kind with such clear intentions to benefit his public would forego the security of a royal privilege to protect his intellectual property. As we saw, his fellow translator Gonzalo Pérez was very keen to obtain one already in 1547 for his translation of the Odyssey, and it is unlikely that Hernández would have had difficulty doing so in the 1550s, given the significance of the work and its appeal to the Imperial Spain of Charles V and the young Philip, already King of Naples as well as of England iure uxoris, and soon to become Philip II of the Hispanic Realms, Sicily and the Indies in 1556. Unlike fractured and servile Italy, Spain had every reason to see itself in terms of imperial epic as its domains and influence grew across the globe on a scale unknown in world history. Access to Virgil’s epic was even being facilitated by the posthumous publication of Antonio de Nebrija’s Ecphrases familiares in 1546, a complete and handy Latin paraphrase of every line of the Aeneid printed along with a newly corrected edition of the text, all specifically designed for students in Spain.17 Hernández de Velasco poses an interesting case for the subject of this volume, in that the milieu in which he was educated and lived, the “Imperial City” of Toledo, had clearly honed his critical acumen to a level where he was exquisitely sensitive to the opinions of his peers. These were men of great cultural ambition, and he was no less ambitious in his desire to make Virgilian epic a part of Spain’s cultural patrimony. As I shall further explore below, translation itself resonated with a key

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theme at the time, the notion of the cultural “transfer” of classical poetics from Greece and Rome to Spain. However, by playing coy with his translation text, Hernández came to a rude awakening of how the larger world of publishing works. For his translation would become a runaway success, particularly in editions printed far away in Antwerp, a major center of large-scale Spanish-language publishing at the time. The translator thus had to reconsider his delicate authorial stance, as he was losing money—in addition to the obvious fact that he had cheated himself of literary fame. Thus nineteen years after its first publication, he emerged from behind the mask in a new edition of the work, thoroughly revised and expanded for the reader, and most importantly, armed with a royal privilege. Though this new edition will continue to show the support of his learned friends—who penned new Latin epigrams under their own names this time to bless the work—Hernández showed in the expansion of his edition that he had discovered the larger vernacular audience and sought to address its needs. I wish here to explore the two audiences of this translation in its two main editions (Toledo, 1555 and 1574), and will treat first in Part 1 the inner circle of Christian humanists in Toledo, and in part 2 the wider vernacular public, especially as addressed in the later edition and the manner in which Hernández de Velasco chose to reclaim his best seller.

10.1 Rome on the Tagus: La Imperial Ciudad de Toledo and the Politics of Translation Right under the preface by Juan de Ayala that explains the translator’s serious intentions, a Latin epigram appears in mysterious isolation on the page. Virgilij nomen constet, vis forte secundi Litera dematur rigida Virgilio. Perhaps you wish the name of the second Virgil to be known; Let the harsh letter be removed from Virgilius. This is obviously a complex riddle concerning the poet-translator’s identity, the “second Virgil.” The “harsh letter” appears to be the trilled r, itself flagged by the adjective rigida, whose r would be rolled all the harder for being in initial position and repeated from the previous word dematur. The fact the letter r stands on both sides of the caesura in the pentameter verse also strongly emphasizes which letter is meant. So if you remove the r from Virgilius, you get vigilius, “the watchful, wakeful one”; but this is a kind of hybrid, as the standard Latin form of this adjective is vigil, vigilis. However, the –ius ending attached oddly to the standard form vigil might be itself a formal allusion to the translator’s first name in Latin, Gregorius, from the Greek Γρηγόριος, “wakeful,

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watchful.” We might even hazard the notion that the artful construction of the epigram so as to begin and end with Virgil’s name in two different cases (the figure known as polyptoton) was meant to indicate the translator’s name in Castilian, since the Latin ablative Virgilio nearly rhymes with Gregorio in the vernacular. This play on names is full of subtle implications, as the “second Virgil” has had to be “watchful” in his careful translation of the text, and “wakeful” in his long lucubrations. But it is also a shift from the pagan name of Virgilius to the Christian name Gregorius, which is formed from the koine verb γρηγορέω, “keep awake” (derived from the classical ἐγείρω). Gregorius was an extremely popular name among the Latin popes, and had pastoral overtones from its pseudo-etymology from grex, gregis (“flock”). Thus Gregorio Hernández—the second, vernacular Virgil—has kept vigil in producing this translation for the flock of his readership. These are all viable notions for a milieu of Christian humanism such as the Toledo of his day, as we shall now explore. Such a subtle game seems indicative of a highly tuned in-group sensibility, the shared but secretive discourse of a coterie of learned men who are in on the trilingual joke at the expense of the greater mass of readers. But the playful non-revelations of authorship continue in a Latin epigram on the next page, which shift from the reader’s natural curiosity to a grandiose declaration of cultural “translation”; namely, that this “transfer” of Virgil into Castilian represents a wholesale transfer of classical poetics to the site of Toledo. As the anonymous epigram mirrors much of the poetic interests of this humanist milieu, it is worth looking at in detail. Autoris nomen lector studiose requiris Et liber iste nouus, prodijt vnde, rogas. Nullus homo poterat tanto par esse labori, Vltra hominum vires se tulit iste labor. Phoebus, Erictȩis postquam secessit Athenis, Deseruitque arces, Roma superba, tuas, Toletum inuisit, totamque, a sedibus imis Transtulit huc Pimplam, Pegasidesque deas. Quȩ postquam nemoris subiere cacumina densi, Et loca quȩ aurifluo perluit amne Tagus Vergilij sacram (quo nil Permesidos vnda Maius habet) tetigit docta Thalia lyram. Vtque leues Satyrii melius Nymphȩque locorum Percipere Andini grandia sensa queant, Hispane Latium cecinit deus ipse Poema: Hoc dono Hispanos demeruisse volens.

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Keen reader, you wish to know the name of the author and ask whence this new book has come. No human was equal to so great a labor, this task went beyond the powers of men. Phoebus came, once he left Erechthean Athens and, proud Rome, quit your citadel, to see Toledo, and from its deepest roots transferred here Pimpla entire and the goddesses of Pegasus’ spring. After they took possession of the towering, dense grove, and the places the Tagus bathed with its river flowing with gold, Learned Thalia strummed the sacred lyre of Virgil (the water of Permessus [i.e., Helicon] has nothing greater). And so that the silly satyrs and nymphs of these places might better be able to perceive the immense thoughts of the man of Andes (i.e., Virgil), the god himself sang the Latian poem in Spanish, wishing to oblige the Spanish with this gift. We have strong reason to suspect that this epigram was penned by Álvar Gómez de Castro (1515–1580), a prominent humanist and professor of Greek at the University of Santa Catalina in Toledo (and previously at the University of Alcalá de Henares). An epigram is attributed to him by name in the revised edition of 1574, which makes my assumption all the more plausible; but the overall poetic claim here is familiar in Gómez de Castro’s other Latin poems. The year before the publication of this translation, in fact, he had penned a Latin poem in dactylic hexameter in honor of Bernardino de Alcaraz for his creation of new professorships at the university of Santa Catalina, part of an effort to make the institution more of a place for advanced study. Gómez titled the epyllion Naiades after the nymphs of the Tagus and its many springs that populate the poem.18 The poem extolls Bernardino for raising up Toledo to become a new cultural center, with a mixture of idyllic geography, history, and poetic rivalry with the great classical sites of the past. After running through a cursory history of the site of Toledo from the Visigoths to the Islamic conquest, the poem relates its restoration to glory by Charles V and his successor Philip, who have subdued hitherto unknown peoples around the world and, through the marriage of Philip to Mary Tudor, returned the rebellious English to the fold of the Church. The poem later focuses on the prophetic utterances of Tephria, the personification of a spring inside the city of Toledo, who prophesies the site will soon host the relocated muses, thus surpassing all the famous poetic locales of the past in its learning and literary production. This section is notable for its refrain, tolle caput super astra potens, urbs regia, tolle (“raise up your mighty head above the stars, royal city, raise it up”).

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From such works we can see the optimism in Toledo, particularly during the years 1554–1558, when the young Philip seemed to be bringing the world together by reconciling the English with the Catholic faith and acceding to the crowns of Spain, making the “Imperial City of Toledo” a uniquely important location. In 1551 (reprinted 1554), there appeared a first lengthy history of the city, Hystoria, o Descripcion de la Imperial cibdad de Toledo, attributed to Pedro Alcocer (though some scholars suspect it was largely written by Juan de Vergara), which relates its long history from ancient times through the Moorish middle ages and Reconquest and up to the reign of the Ferdinand and Isabella, ending on a highly positive description of the great cathedral and the city’s many monastic foundations. As Primate of Spain, the Archbishop of Toledo was especially powerful in this new empire of Spain, and the elaborate rebuilding of the Cathedral and palaces at this time shows further material evidence for an optimism raising Toledo to world-historical importance.19 Closer to their own interests, the founding of new chairs in Greek and rhetoric made Toledo more congenial to the humanists’ new literary culture (though the winds would change when Philip II decided to move the capital to Madrid in 1561). A colophon at the end of Los Doze Libros de la Eneida proudly states that it was printed by Juan de Ayala “en la imperial ciudad de Toledo.”20 Given the moment of this translation’s appearance in 1555, I thus read this epigram as more than a one-off bit of flummery for a fellow author, and rather see it as a key text that locates the poet-translator in the orbit of an important cenacle of ecclesiastical letrados who are helping to refashion Spanish culture in line with an ascendant Catholic imperial order. A sonnet in Castilian that has been attributed to Gómez de Castro appears on the verso of the title page, and recounts how sixteen centuries have passed since the Mantuan Tityrus made the name of his beloved Amaryllis re-echo on Italian soil (cf. Virgil, Eclogues 1.4-5), stopping the astounded Mincio river in its flow and drawing the beasts and trees to himself (i.e., like Orpheus).21 Once the shepherd’s soul was released from its mortal prison, a note was found left on his pan pipe, addressed to “the sacred shepherd of Amphrysus” (i.e., Apollo) and proclaiming, “Spain awaits/one to whom I shall be justly given./Go to the Tagus and you shall find him on its banks.”22 The conflation of pastoral and epic themes continues in the second Latin epigram, which says that during the days of Roman domination, Virgil was renowned throughout the world, but after the imperium left Roman shores and the Latin language “forgot its own sound” (Dedidicitque sonum Lingua Latina suum), lest the learned and beautiful poem of Virgil perish, the Mincio learned to speak in Spanish (Hispano didicit Mincius ore loqui).23 So here again a pastoral poetics of place combines with a cultural politics of translatio imperii, which rather aggressively proclaims the eclipse of Italy and the ascendancy of Spain. These are strong statements by any measure, and they

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contrast remarkably with the previous generation of Spanish humanists like Antonio de Nebrija, who decried the general ignorance and barbarity of Spanish university culture compared to Italy.24 Just as poets like Sannazaro and Vida had adopted Virgilian themes to celebrate the cultural rebirth of Rome under popes Julius II and Leo X, these humanists in Toledo were reinventing the city on the Tagus by the intervention of pastoral and epic themes.25 Two chief influences in this endeavor were Sannazaro himself and Garcilaso de a Vega, a native of Toledo whose third eclogue had begun the pastoralization of the Tagus in Renaissance Spanish letters.26 Besides the echoes of this pastoral trend in the epigrams prefacing the translation, Hernández de Velasco was directly engaged with Sannazaro through translating the latter’s short epic De partu virginis (1526), a work that appeared in Toledo in 1554, just the year before his Aeneid translation and with the same printer, Juan de Ayala.27 This combination of Christian and Classical epic interests is hardly surprising, as the two poems were read together at Spanish universities.28 But this other translation is worth discussing for three reasons: (1) It shows a remarkable difference from Los Doze Libros de la Eneida in the clear, named presence of its author; (2) it displays an open celebration of community inscribed in paratexts accompanying the translation, which name his friends and patrons and give us a real sense of this interior readership; (3) it also displays a degree of formal innovation and playfulness that recalls the polymetric form of the Aeneid translation. For example, the translation is prefaced by two 17-line poems, labeled as being from Hernández de Velasco to Don Rodrigo Dávalos and vice versa, which describe the presentation of this translation to Dávalos by the poet. The poems are written in rimalmezzo, so their form is not apparent at first. But then a Latin epigram tells the reader that in order to discover the art in these poems, he should “gather the letters,” thus exposing that they are both acrostic poems which reveal Dávalos’ name in the poet’s poem, while the poet’s name lies in Dávalos’.29 The Latin poem also reveals that if the reader counts the verses, he will find they have the exact same number. So once again we see the literary playfulness of this group, only now without the coy anonymity. In fact, Hernández de Velasco goes to great lengths in a parergon to his translation to name and celebrate a large number of patrons and friends for several octaves, including the “Christian Orpheus” Juan de Vergara, his teacher Alonso Cedillo the “bright light of Spain,” Álvar Gómez “who makes both poles resound with the Castilian name and sends the Greek and Roman to Lethe” (66r), and Francisco Lupo, “the Ovid of Toledo” (67r). While the parergon becomes a bit tedious in this society listing, it seems a joyful and exuberant piece aimed at gratifying a small audience; at times it even lapses into Italian, which suggests in such company the poet was not averse to showing off. Lastly, we should note that this

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translation of Sannazaro’s Latin hexameter verse is into ottava rima, the verse form of chivalric epic. Hernández de Velasco’s preface makes it clear that he has done this deliberately to encourage people to use these Italian forms for better purposes, i.e., to celebrate the salvific love of the Mother of God and not the vain eros of the Earthly Venus.30 The poettranslator thus inaugurates the use of ottava rima for Spanish religious poetry, disassociating it rather swiftly from the playful world of Ariosto and Boiardo. (It is worth recalling that Juan Martín Cordero’s translation of Vida’s Christiad was into blank verse, which appeared in the same year as El parto de la Virgen.) Thus, Hernández de Velasco’s two translations shed a remarkable light on each other: El parto de la Virgen reveals and details by name a vibrant and privileged social context from which this work emerged as well as a genuinely fervent Marian devotion; but Los Doze Libros de la Eneida shrouds this context in a winking anonymity whose motivation is hard to fathom, a point to which I shall return. Some other translation work by Hernández de Velasco also reveals further the connections between the poet and Gómez de Castro. When Gómez de Castro published his Latin Edyllia aliquot, sive poematia in 1558 (Lyon), we see in the list of its contents a reference to a Spanish translation of the poet’s poem on the Holy Cross per Licentiatum Gregorium Fernandi à Velasco, which oddly is not actually in the volume.31 We do possess two letters (sadly undated) that show Gómez had asked Hernández to translate Luigi Tansillo’s Lagrime di San Pietro, in which the translator describes the tremendous regard in which he holds the professor’s literary judgment: Quod si quid in eis concinnum fortassis, absolutumue numeris offenderis, id quidem ipsum tibi vni acceptum feres: cuius exactissimum ac singulare iudicium transferentis animo penitus insidebat, mentique incessanter obuersabatur. But if you should perhaps hit upon something well done or perfected in these verses, you will take that very thing as offered to you alone, whose exacting and singular judgment was deeply rooted in the translator’s thinking and floated before his mind endlessly.32 We might take this as further proof of Hernandez’ basic sensitivity in the face of criticism and dependency on Gómez de Castro for approval. There also exists a sonnet by Gómez de Castro deftly recusing the writer from editing the El parto de la Virgen, as the poet feels his friend has long surpassed him in poetic excellence.33 Certainly such topoi of humility are to be taken lightly, but it does show a high degree of sensitivity concerning poetic translation that again reflects on the scruples exhibited in the Aeneid translation.

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This brings us back to the mysterious anonymity not only of the translation of Virgil, but also of the accompanying epigrams. The 1550s were an odd time to neglect a sovereign’s attention, to judge from other epic translations at least. Gonzalo Pérez made a point of writing Prince Philip into his introduction, which presents the Odyssey as a kind of mirror for princes.34 Juan Martín Cordero, for his part, courted the attention of Mary I of England, as his translation was produced at the advent of her marriage to Philip. Lodovico Dolce dedicated his best-seller le Trasformationi, a vibrant rifacimento of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, “all’invittissimo e gloriosissimo imperatore” Charles V in 1553.35 So given the advent of a fully executed translation of the Aeneid, a key text of Latin humanism and imperial ideology, it is decidedly odd that none of the members of this Toledan circle saw fit to mention either the emperor or his ascendant son at all in their contributions to the volume. This remains hard to explain in my view, again given the direct resonance of Virgil for an imperial monarchy like Spain and the clear drive the humanists shared for veering their Virgilianism toward glorifying the Imperial City of Toledo as a blossoming literary idyll. Though some members of this circle were of Jewish converso background, their piety seems not to have been in question (save for Juan de Vergara, whose Erasmian proclivities ran him afoul of the Inquisition), and both the translations of Hernández and the religious poetry of Gómez de Castro show they had no difficulty signaling their fervent loyalty to Roman Catholicism. At any rate, the Aeneid translation had to be licensed for publication in Spain, though pursuing an author’s or publisher’s privilege was another matter, and it was clearly a personal choice to forego one.36 In the absence of other arguments, then, it would appear that this bold experiment in poetic form may simply have been cause enough for Hernández de Velasco to “hide behind the canvas,” as the prologue says, to hear what people say, even if he clearly tips off the learned reader that it was done by someone named Gregorio. Whatever the public they imagined for the work, the author and his friends were definitely not openly asking for a royal audience. By 1574 as I have mentioned, the poet-translator was quite ready to step out from behind this anonymity, and his colleagues joined him in his revised edition by including new Latin epigrams under their own names, showing the continuity of this group remained intact (in fact, the Spanish sonnet is reprinted, but as the last of the laudatory poems this time, not the first). Assuming my hypothesis is correct concerning the authorship of the first epigram in the 1555 edition, Gómez de Castro changes the argument of his new contribution and no longer repeats the notion of Toledo’s usurpation as seat of Apollo and the Muses, perhaps because Madrid was now capital of Spain. Instead, inspired perhaps by Hernández’ inclusion of the Exclamatio Caesaris Augusti, Gómez’ epigram depicts Virgil himself in the Elysian Fields reading “the polished

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poems of Velasco” (carmina culta Velasci), and then declaring to the gods and Augustus, “I revoke my will; now I like my writings.” The reason is that he finds they have at last been perfected, and that “it was fated that the restorative (alma) Spanish Muse would put the final touch on Virgil’s Aeneid.”37 A longer epigram by Francisco Lupo addresses Virgil directly, inviting him to leave ruined Rome and come instead to the shores of the Tagus, for which he has the best guide in Hernández, who knows the region like the back of his hand. Here Lupo does another play on words with “Gregorio” reminiscent of the first edition, saying the fates had duly named him “from his night watches” (fecerunt nomen ab excubijs). He assures Virgil that if he gives himself over to Hernández like a good craftsman (presumably a tailor), he will not only find himself attired as if he were a native Spaniard, but that the rivers of Italy will hear him speak so well in a foreign tongue that they will weep and flee down to their own depths upon seeing the Tagus take precedence.38 It is notable that while these topoi of location continue, here signaled metonymically by the names of rivers, the new epigrams bring on the Roman poet himself in relation to Hernández de Velasco and not the Muses. It seems a new recognition of human agency has at last arrived: As the poet-translator emerges as an identifiable person, Virgil also now appears in support of his translator’s work.

10.2 Runaway Success: The Emergence of Hernández de Velasco to His Vernacular Readers When Don Quixote enters Barcelona on one of his last adventures, he discovers a printer’s shop. Inside, he meets a man of fine figure and grave appearance who has translated a work from Italian into Castilian and is supervising the printer’s composition of his book. After an interesting discussion of translation, Don Quixote asks the man if he is printing the book at his own cost, or if he sold the copyright to a publisher. The author responds that he is printing it at his own cost, expecting to realize a profit of at least a thousand ducats on the first printing of two thousand copies, which should sell in a jiffy at six reales apiece. When Don Quixote casts doubt on the wisdom of burdening himself with two thousand copies, given the tricks of the printing trade, the author then objects. “¿Quiere vuesa merced que se lo dé a un librero, que me dé por el privilegio tres maravedís, y aún piensa que me hace merced en dármelos? Yo no imprimo mis libros para alcanzar fama en el mundo, que ya en él soy conocido por mis obras; provecho quiero; que sin él no vale un cuatrín la buena fama.”39 “Your Lordship wishes me to give it to a bookseller, who will pay three maravedís for the privilege, and even thinks he’s doing me a

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favor in giving them to me? I don’t print my books to obtain fame in the world, as I am already known to it through my works; I want profit, because without that good fame isn’t worth a penny.” This moment in Cervantes’ work certainly strikes a chord when we look at the situation of Hernández de Velasco’s Los Doze Libros de la Eneida de Vergilio some nineteen years on. For the work had become a runaway success, spreading the experimental translation across the domains of Europe wherever Spanish was spoken or read (which at the time included many parts of Italy, the Spanish Netherlands, and Spain’s overseas dominions). Nothing can quite capture the sense of alienation and commodification of a literary work as vividly as the simple material passage of this book from Juan de Ayala’s print shop in the Imperial City to the presses of the great international port of Antwerp, at this time reaching its height in terms of both population and production.40 In 1557, just two years after the first edition appeared in Toledo, we find the talented printer and punchcutter Ameet Tavernier producing an elegant edition for the publisher Jean Bellère in the novel sextodecimo format, a remarkable and handy reduction of a classic text from the original quarto, and printed in a fashionable italic font.41 It seems the bookmen of Antwerp recognized a good prospect in Los Doze Libros de la Eneida, since they had been producing classical epic in vernacular translation for the Spanish and Dutch/Flemish markets with some success. Jorge de Bustamante’s earlier translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses appeared in 1551 with Jan Steelsius, who also brought out books 1–13 of Gonzalo Pérez’ Ulyxea in 1550, and then later the whole of it in 1556. Johannes Florianus’ Dutch Metamorphoses appeared 1552 with Hans de Laet, and a Dutch Aeneid by Cornelis van Ghistele came out in two volumes in 1556 with the widow of Jacob van Liesveldt. Moreover, the 1550s were a heady imperial moment in the Low Countries as well as Toledo, from the time of Prince Philip’s royal progress to them in 1549 to his marriage to Mary I of England in 1554, and the abdication of Charles V and accession of Philip as King of Spain in 1556, all events that brought a sizable Spanish entourage into the region. In 1555, Jean Bellère printed the Latin octavo edition of the histories of the great imperial victories of Charles V in Tunisia, literally in the same italic type as the sextodecimo Eneida, which drew analogies between the glorious emperor and the ancient Romans.42 So in this moment of imperial transition with hopes now on Philip II, a Castilian Aeneid might well have seemed an auspicious product to bring to the world market, and not just Spain. Miguel Martínez has made a very interesting argument that by bringing out works of translated classical epic in the handy and less expensive octavo, duodecimo and sextodecimo formats, which were innovated by Aldo Manuzio in Venice for Greek and Latin classics, these

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bookmen effectively codified a new readership and material form for vernacular epic. The publishing strategies developed by a group of Antwerpian bookmen for the commercialization of classical epic provided an affordable model for the material codification of a certain kind of epic poetry. This model established a dignifying material connection with the modern diffusion of the classical past as it also facilitated a wider social and geographical distribution—which in turn allowed for new popular appropriations of the printed matter.43 Martínez’ interest lies with the emerging “gunpowder epics” of the Renaissance, beginning with Alonso de Ercilla’s La Araucana in 1569. But the transformation of Juan de Ayala’s Toledan quarto Eneida into a compact sextodecimo in an italic font certainly epitomizes this market transformation rather dramatically. In fact, the next edition of Los Doze Libros de la Eneida produced in Spain—printed in Alcalá de Henares in 1563—is in duodecimo, following the trend set by the Antwerp printers. While the 1574 re-edition returns to the original quarto format and the original printing house, by then run by Juan de Ayala Cano, son of the original publisher, a reprint three years later with the same press (then run by the youngest son, Diego de Ayala) was in duodecimo format. The subsequent editions are either in octavo (1585, Alcalá de Henares; 1614, Lisbon) or duodecimo (1586, Zaragoza). Of course, we should not look merely to book formats for evidence that Hernández de Velasco’s text evolved to address a wider audience than his original circle in Toledo. I wish to discuss further the substantive changes in terms of his heightened authorial presence in the 1574 edition because, on the one hand, they reveal a man now ready to enter explicitly into the legal privileges and responsibilities of authorship, while on the other hand, the new content he added reveals his awareness of a general vernacular readership beyond the Latin-literate letrados of his own kind. First, in terms of legal authorship, the edition of 1574 sports two separate royal privileges, one for Castile and a slightly longer one for Aragon, facing each other (¶ ii v and ¶ iij r-v) and giving in similar terms the copyright to el Licenciado Gregorio Hernandez de Velasco or his agents for ten years from the date of the document. This is pretty standard legal language, but document couches the author as petitioning the crown as an aggrieved party: “… a report was made to us saying that nearly twenty years ago you had translated the Aeneid of Virgil into ottava rima and Castilian verse, and that as you had no royal privilege from us, it was printed many times in various places with many errors” (con muchos vicios—the Aragonese privilege adds that the work was muy estragada, “very much spoiled”).44 It was fairly normal to allege that one’s work was being mutilated by predatory publishers in the

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context of securing a privilege, but Hernández had more than this reason to desire further protection.45 He also planned to publish along with the epic and the Exclamatio Caesaris Augusti the first and fourth Eclogues as well as a full translation of Maffeo Vegio’s supplemental thirteenth book. Moreover, he submitted the original translation itself to the labor limae, a process of revision which is not uncommon in Renaissance translation; the best documented example of this is Gonzalo Pérez’ Ulyxea, for which we have clear evidence of a remarkable process of refinement as it went through various editions.46 The overall plan on Hernández de Velasco’s part was clearly to create effectively a new work that would render all previous editions obsolete or incomplete, as we can see right from the title page, which reads like a marquee advertisement. The Aeneid of Virgil, prince among Latin Poets, translated into ottava rima and Castilian verse, now in this latest printing reworked and polished (limada) with much study and care, such that one could call it a new translation. Dedicated to His Most Catholic Royal Majesty King Philip the Second of this name, our Lord. There has been added to this eighth printing the following: Two Eclogues of Virgil, The First and Fourth. The Thirteenth book by Maffeo Vegio, Poet of Lodi, entitled Supplement to the Aeneid of Virgil. A table, which contains the explanation of difficult proper nouns, words, and places spread through the whole work. This makes quite a contrast to the original title, “The Twelve Books of the Aeneid of Virgil, Prince of the Latin Poets. Translated into ottava rima and Castilian verse,” by which it had been known in various editions. The title page of this new edition is clearly pulling out all the stops in advertising the work as new, improved, more user friendly, and, politically speaking, issued with the expressed support of the king himself. This brings us to another dimension of Hernández de Velasco’s emergence as an author. He is not just a royal petitioner requesting redress from the unfairness of the marketplace, but now a courtier as well, who draws the inevitable parallels between Philip II and Roman virtue in his dedication. With just title is this Castilian translation of the Aeneid of Virgil, the best of the Latin poets, dedicated to Your Majesty, the best of Christian kings. As much for the fact that it was so favored and esteemed at its beginning by the Emperor Caesar Augustus, unique exemplar of princes, by whose pious providence it can still be read today and will forever be read in the world, as well as for the fact that all that it teaches, both in terms of what pertains to the political life in the first six books and in terms of the military art in the last six books, one sees precisely in Your Majesty, whose most important

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It seems quite a change from the anonymous author of the first edition to this new combination of courtier and book-monger, who this time around cannot help but use the content of Virgil’s work as an excuse to flatter his sovereign, just as Gonzalo Pérez had done two decades before in his preface to the then-Prince Philip. Now that he has been granted full authorial privilege, Hernández seems ready to offer the requisite authorial obedience as well. If we turn now to the new content of the edition, we are at first a bit struck by the selectivity of his additions. Given the great vogue of pastoral poetry, the addition of only two eclogues seems a bit miserly. We might conclude the translator has delivered only the two most essential: The first eclogue for its autobiographical pathos, as it celebrates the generosity of Octavian in returning Tityrus to his confiscated land; and the fourth of course for its prophetic invocation of a return to the Golden Age, long seen as a prophecy about the birth of Christ in Christian times and a cornerstone of Christian Virgilianism. But no other eclogues are admitted into this edition, nor do the Georgics get a hearing; and yet the Exclamatio Caesaris Augusti remains, which might seem a curious choice. To me, it seems that Hernández wanted to keep the focus very much on the Aeneid and the drama of its near destruction, such that only an eclogue with some autobiographical element and the other with its prophetic voice were felt to be useful contributions. Maffeo Vegio’s supplemental Book Thirteen then complemented the epic narrative, with the Exclamatio retaining its original function of dramatizing how the work was nearly lost but for Augustus’ intervention to save it, something even mentioned in the translator’s dedication to Philip II, as we saw. It seems, then, there was never a grand plan to expand this project into the collected works of Virgil. Even in the final edition to which the poet may have still contributed in his lifetime, that of Zaragoza in 1586, we find only the addition of (1) the 4-verse “pre-proem” Ille ego qui quondam to Aeneid 1, (2) a Spanish Vida of Virgil translated from Donatus, and (3) the translation into terza rima of a short poem on “the Y of Pythagoras, moralized by Virgil,” another post-classical work that commonly finds its way into editions of Virgil.48 So Hernández de Velasco fundamentally wanted to give his audience an Aeneid, not a complete Virgil, which at the time would have included a great many other poems that were typically printed in the Latin Opera

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Omnia editions. His addition of two Eclogues certainly reflects the connections between pastoral and epic that seem particular to the Sannazaro-influenced Virgilianism of the Toledo letrados, though in formal terms we might again see the guiding influence of Garcilaso de la Vega. Garcilaso’s polymetric play in the pastoral genre was formidable, and Hernández shows greater internal coherence in his eclogue translations in that he does not mix meters within a single poem, though he uses different meters for them individually. The first eclogue he renders into terza rima, while for the fourth he uses the more demanding form of hendecasyllabic rimalmezzo, which nonetheless keeps from assimilating that eclogue to epic, despite its grander political theme of the return of the Golden Age. At the end of the previous century, Juan del Encina had translated the Fourth Eclogue into coplas de arte mayor, then the established meter of Spanish epic, while translating the political message of the poem into the time of his contemporary monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella. He thus used both the epic genre and the prophetic nature of the poem to praise his sovereigns by making it about the birth of their son Juan.50 Hernández avoids all this in his own translation of the fourth eclogue, perhaps preferring to keep it more authentically “Virgilian” in order to veer it toward the birth of Jesus. He thus ducks the opportunity to retrofit this poem for a royal audience, unlike his predecessor. While it is undeniable that emerging as an author required our poet to take a more public stance as both hawker of his own wares and subject of his sovereign, the most interesting feature to me is his explicit stance as a translator trying to reach a vernacular audience much wider than his own little world of learned men. For this, the tabla or glossary of difficult terms is the most interesting addition in the 1574 reprinting, which at 26 pages is the longest single text added to the edition. On the one hand, by having such a vocabulary list the poet could avoid feeling obliged to revise the work for greater vernacular simplicity. In fact, a study of his word choice reveals not just that a significant number of learned words or cultismos that pass into Spanish can be dated from his translation, but also that between the first edition of 1555 and that of 1574, Hernández actually reduced the number of Latinisms, an apparent concession to a more popular style of diction.51 What is slightly odd is that the tabla appears to be based on the 1555 edition, even though it is printed with the 1574 version. For example, he duly defines the learned word alígero as “cosa que trae alas” (“something that has wings”) whereas in the poem he changed his original alígero to the common Romance form alado. So in book one, “[Venus] Habla con el aligero Cupido” (1555, 9r, “Venus speaks with aligerous Cupid”) becomes “Habla con el alado Dios Cupido” (1574, 9r, “Venus speaks with the winged god, Cupid”). Some of the cultismos discussed in the tabla are specific to Roman religion, such as augur (“agorero de aues,” “diviner of birds”), and if we look at a particular moment that required some technical knowledge of

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Roman religion, we can see how Hernández de Velasco sought to retain the alterity of Roman ritual without speaking over the heads of the vernacular readers. At Aeneid 7.187-191, there is a description of a cedar wood image of Picus in the palace of Latinus at Laurentum that has a very specific iconography, one a Roman could readily recognize though it puzzles the modern reader. ipse Quirinali lituo paruaque sedebat succinctus trabea laeuaque ancile gerebat Picus, equum domitor, quem capta cupidine coniunx aurea percussum uirga uersumque uenenis fecit auem Circe sparsitque coloribus alas. To render this inelegantly, [Picus] himself sat equipped with a Quirinal lituus [the augur’s ritual staff] and girded in a short trabea [the distinctive ceremonial garment of the augur] and bore in his left hand an ancile [“buckler,” usually referring to a shield supposedly fallen from heaven, this is a specific kind of ritual object kept by the Salian priests of Mars, not a normal shield]; Picus, tamer of horses, whom his bride Circe, caught up in her passion, struck with her golden wand and covered in potions, turning him into a bird and spattering his wings with colors. There is a good deal of complex anachronism here in Virgil’s description, which backdates certain technical features of Roman religion to the mythical time of Aeneas and Latinus. As we see from time to time in his work, the translator takes explanatory elements from Servius’ commentary on the Aeneid to assist in his translation. Servius explains the lemma QUIRINALI LITVO by saying, “lituus est incuruum augurum baculum, quo utebantur ad designanda caeli spatia, nam manu non licebat” (“the lituus is the curved wand of the augurs, which they used to demarcate regions in the sky, for one was not allowed to do so with the hand”). And so the Spanish translation reads, Estaua entre los vultos de los reyes Sentado el vulto del antiguo Pico, El domador famoso de cauallos: Con sus insignias de Augur, trabea y baculo. Y vn escudo pequeño en la sinestra, Al qual la bella Circe, de amor presa, Muriendo por le ser muger, y viendose Dexada del por otra, con su vara Hirio, y con magica arte transformandole,

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En aue le boluio de su apellido: Y de colores le esparzio las alas. There was seated among the images of the kings The image of ancient Picus, The famous tamer of horses, With his insignia as augur, the trabea and wand, And a small shield in his left hand, Whom the beautiful Circe, stricken with love, Dying to be his wife and seeing herself Abandoned by him for another, struck with her wand And, transforming him with magical art, Changed into the bird of his name (i.e., the woodpecker [Lat. picus]) And sprinkled his wings with colors. Of course, any translator of a passage like this will have to make choices, and few are able to bring across the ritual specificity of ancile, the sacred shield fallen from heaven, which now just becomes a generic “small shield.” But following Servius, our translator bypasses the greater complexity of rendering Quirinalis lituus with its striking anachronism (Quirinalis being an august word for “Roman,” linked to the deified Romulus or Quirinus, who is three centuries from being born at this point in the narrative!) by deploying the simple word báculo (cf. Servius’ baculum above). He does retain the technical term trabea for the distinctive garment of the augur, and he defines both augur and trabea in his tabla. But note, the word augur never appears in Virgil’s verses here; it rather is implied by the description. The translator is engaging in more of a cultural than a semantic translation. He has accurately introduced the Latin religious office of augur and defined it for the reader in order to respect the alterity of Roman religion in this moment of the text, thus negotiating the boundaries of the untranslatable and avoiding any creation of facile equivalencies—for there is no Castilian equivalent for a Roman augur. We can see similar strategies at work among our more recent English translators, like Robert Fitzgerald (“The seated figure of Picus, tamer of horses,/In a striped mantle, held a Quirinal staff/And on his left forearm a Shield of Heaven”) and Robert Fagles (“There with the augur’s staff sat Picus to the life,/girt up in the short robe of state, his left hand/holding the sacred buckler”), who do their best to convey something of the religious iconography of the image, though it means little to the modern reader.52 A similar strategy occurs in book 1.6, as Aeneas is said to be endeavoring to “bring his gods to Latium” (inferretque deos Latio), and Hernández chose to make this more specific than Virgil’s Latin with the line “y dar a sus Penates aposento” (“and to give lodging to his penates”), using the Latinism penates for the household idols

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Aeneas is carrying with him.53 This term he then defines in the tabla as “Los Dioses a quien honorauan los gentiles dentro de sus casas” (“the gods which the pagans worshiped in their houses”). Here again the translator has introduced a Latinism that Virgil himself does not use in the line in order to describe an alien religious practice for the vernacular reader. As I mentioned, Servius’ commentary quite often guides some of the specific interpretations and even words that Hernández introduces into his translation, such as penates mentioned above.54 In the passage cited from book 7, however, we see a more extended use of Servius in the interpretation of the myth of Circe and Picus, since Virgil’s version seems to have Circe as the bride or wife of Picus, whereas Ovid has it that Circe was jealous of Picus’ bride Canens (though this might be original to Ovid, Metamorphoses 14.308-434). In Hernández’ translation, it is clear that he takes capta cupidine coniunx in the sense of “caught up with the passion to be his bride,” and his further inclusion of the detail that she felt herself spurned for the sake of another most likely comes again from Servius, as there is nothing like it in Virgil’s lines. In Servius’ explanation, the rivalry was between Pomona and Circe, and when Pomona succeeds in gaining Picus as a husband, “Circe, as she loved him and was spurned, grew angry and changed him into a bird, the woodpecker.”55 Perhaps Hernández sought to avoid choosing between Canens or Pomona as rivals by not mentioning either one’s name, but he certainly gives the Virgilian passage a Servian interpretation. The greater significance of this is, however, that Hernández’ translation text delivers to the vernacular reader the same interpretive aids the typical reader of the Latin text would have had, only they are encoded into the translation as opposed to a commentary. This process of explicitation, while common enough today, was still experimental in these formative days of early modern translation, and conforms to James Holmes’ characterization of translation as “interpretation by enactment.”56 The end result of Hernández’ effort was a poetic translation that would convey with the elegance of Italian meters but in the dignified language of Castile an Aeneid for their times. As much as this project seems hatched in the small circle of letrados in and around Toledo, the translation became a conduit of Latin epic to a wide market of vernacular readers, a consequence it seems Hernández may not have originally envisioned, afraid as he apparently was of the judgment of learned and unlearned alike. But though he may have feared that wider, invisible public, the bookmen of Antwerp had shown that his translation found far more buyers than critics, and he had nearly twenty years to reflect on what that meant before regaining control of his work. Hernandez’ reemerged in 1574 in the various guises the early modern poet-translator could be required to adopt: Proprietor of a literary commodity, petitioner of legal protection, loyal subject to an exemplary sovereign, and

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careful curator and arbiter of taste for an emerging vernacular readership. This episode of early modern authorship, I contend, is in nuce a parable of how the new technology of print, backed by a system of capital, skilled labor, and increasingly worldwide distribution, transformed not just the readership of classical texts, but also the agency of those who, to this day, continue to attend to the voracious and lucrative market for translations from the classics.

Notes 1 Los Doze Libros de la Eneida de Vergilio, Principe de los Poetas Latinos. Traduzida en octeaua rima y verso Castellano. Impresso en Toledo en casa de Iuan de Ayala. Año. 1555. The biographical details for Gregorio Hernández de Velasco are sketchy, but he may have been born around 1525, making him perhaps 30 at the first publication of Los Doze Libros and 49 at the time of the revised edition. The 1555 preface suggests he delayed publication for a time, which would mean it was a work of his mid-twenties. The 1558 Eidylia of Gómez de Castro mention him as licenciatus, presumably in theology, and the 1574 privileges refer to him as a licenciado and clérigo and nuestro vezino en Toledo. His 1574 dedication to Philip II, however, as well as the tax assessment in the same edition list him as Doctor Gregorio Hernández de Velasco. A Latin letter to Alvar Gómez is written from Toledo’s Hospedal de Tavera, but it is not clear in what capacity he is there. The death dates of 1577 or 1586 appear to be based on the assumption of his being alive at the later republication of the translation, especially since final changes to the 1586 edition seem likely to have been supervised by him. 2 For Virgil in the Spain of this time, see Alberto Blecua, “Virgilio en España en los siglos XVI y XVII,” in Studia virgiliana. Actes del VIè simposi de la Secció Catalana de la SEEC (Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1983), 61-77. 3 Enrique de Villena, Obras Completas, ed. Pedro M. Cátedra, vols 2-3 (Madrid: Turner, 1994). See also Richard H. Armstrong, “Dante’s Influence on Virgil: Italian volgarizzamenti and Enrique de Villena’s Eneida of 1428,” in Virgil and His Translators, ed. Susanna Braund and Zara Martirosova Torlone (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), 36-50. 4 Francisco de las Natas, Siguese el segundo libro de las Eneydas. Trobado en metro mayor de nuestro romance castellano: por Francisco de las natas clerigo presbitero beneficiado en la yglesia parochial de sancto thome de la villa de cuebas rubias. Y en la yglesia de sancta cruz del lugar de rebilla cabriada. De la diocesis de Burgos. Burgos, Juan de Junta, 1528. Only one exemplar is currently reported for this book. Given the rarity of certain printed editions for some of the texts discussed in this chapter, I will give the identification numbers for the online reference databases of Iberian Books (henceforth IB) and the Universal Short Title Catalogue (henceforth USTC). For this particular translation, those reference numbers are IB 61617 = USTC 342453. For Virgilian works, I will also cross-reference to Craig Kallendorf, A Bibliography of the Early Printed Editions of Virgil, 14691850 (New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2012). 5 For the “literary manifestos” of Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega, see “Three Literary Manifestos of Early Modern Spain,” ed. and trans. Anne J. Cruz and Elias L. Rivers, PMLA 126.1 (Jan. 2011): 233-242.

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6 For a modern critical edition of this translation, see La Ulixea de Homero, traducida de griego en lengua castellana por el secretario Gonzalo Pérez, ed. Juan Ramón Muñoz Sánchez (Malaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2015). 7 Juan Martín Cordero, Los Christiados de Hyeronimo Vida, Obispo de Alba, traduzidos en verso castellano por Iuan Martin Cordero Valenciano. Dirigidos ala serenißima Reyna de Inglaterra, Francia, y Ybernia, y muy alta, y muy ponderosa Princesa de las Españas (Antwerp: Martin Nutius, 1554). See Josep Lluís Martos, “Juan Martín Cordero en Flandes: Humanismo, mecenazgo, e imprenta,” Revista de filología española 95.1 (2015): 75-96, especially p. 78. 8 In contrast, Jorge de Bustamante’s earlier and widely republished translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses was in prose, as was Martín Lasso de Oropesa’s translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia. 9 Los Doze Libros, 1555, Prologo, p. 3, “Bien han entendido en Italia y Francia muchos años ha el valor deste Poeta y el prouecho que de su lectura resulta, pues no contentandose con tenerle en la primera lengua en que el quedo escrito, le han traduzido y impresso muchas vezes en sus lenguajes vulgares, pareciendoles injusto que de tan dulce y prouechoso autor, solo gozen los que entienden la lengua Latina. Esta diligencia tenia sola Hespaña por hazer hasta ahora: no se la causa.” 10 See Paolo Procaccioli, “L’Italia Spagnola,” in Atlante della letteratura italiana, ed. Sergio Luzzatto and Gabriele Pedullà (Turin: Einaudi, 2011), vol. 2, 532-539. 11 On the significance of formats for the genre of vernacular epic, see Miguel Martínez, “The Heroes in the World’s Marketplace: Translating and Printing Epic in Renaissance Antwerp,” in Translation and the Book Trade in Early Modern Europe, ed. José María Pérez Fernández and Edward Wilson-Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 81-106. 12 This poem is often titled in full Exclamatio Caesari Augusti in iussum Virgilii pro Aeneide comburenda and is found in the Anthologia Latina (Riese 672). It appears as early as the ninth century. It was often printed in early modern editions of Virgil’s works and is also found in many humanistic manuscripts. For the full text in Latin, Anthologia latina sive Poesis latinae supplementum, ed. Franciscus Buechler and Alexander Riese, pars prior, fascicle 2 (Leipzig: Teunber, 1906; reprint Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1964), 145-148. Hernández’ translation appears at the end of the 1555 edition in a single unnumbered page following the end of the Aeneid and the printer’s colophon on p. 119v. 13 On later terza rima, Mario Fubini, “La terzina dopo Dante,” Metrica e poesia: Lezioni sulle forme metriche italiane (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1975), vol. 1 (Dal Duecento al Petrarca), chapter 5. 14 Los Doze Libros, 1555, Prologo, p. 3, “o lo que es mas possible, creo yo por cierto que no ha faltado quien aya tomado tan honesto trabajo, sino que se aura contentado con hazerlo solo para su exercicio y contentamiento, sin querer communicar sus trabajos a quien en lugar de se los agradecer se los murmure. Lo qual ha sido buena parte de causa para que el autor de esta traduction no la aya permitido publicar algunos años antes, y para que ya que a instancia de algunos amigos suyos permitio que saliesse a luz, dexe en silencio su nombre, teniendo por mejor escuchar con Apeles de tras de la tabla las censuras que dieren los lectores de su obra, que publicando su nombre estar obligado a responder a tan diuersas objeciones que tan diuersos gustos, assi de doctos como de indoctos, con razon y sin razon, suelen opponer.” 15 Los Doze Libros, 1555, Prologo, p. 4, “Porque se encontrara con muchas cosas que no siendo traduzidas fueran errores sin disculpa, y el ser traduzidas

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las disculpa. Especialmente quando la traduction es en consonancia: cosa tan difficil, y en que tan penosamente se allanan las asperezas de los poetas antiguos.” Los Doze Libros, 1555, Prologo, p. 4, “La otra es que no se contente con entender la letra y gustar solamente de la hystoria, sino que passe adelante y escudriñe y inuestigue el entendimiento moral y sentido Philosophico, que es el que produze la mayor vtilidad. Y leyendo de esta manera a Vergilio, no defraudara al que le traduxo de su intento, el qual principalmente fue el prouecho moral de quien leyesse su traduction, y accessoriamente hazer principio y abrir camino alos que eneste genero de exercicio quisieren en Vergilio hazer prueua de sus ingenios.” Antonio de Nebrija, Pub. Vergilii Maronis Partheniae Mantuani Aeneis diuinum opus ab Aelio Antonio Nebrissensi ex Grammatico & Rhetore, Regis historiographo familiari commentario, Y nunc recens excusso elucidata in lucem prodit (Granada: s.n., 1545; IB 61614 = USTC 342451). Also, Ecphrases in Virgilii opera admodum familiares & rudibus tirunculis ad intelligendum facillimas (Granada: s.n., 1546; IB 76869). The poem was included in Alvari Gomecii Evlaliensis Edyllia Aliqvot, sive Poematia (Lyon: Gaspar Trechsel, 1558), and can be found edited with a Spanish translation in María del Carmen Vaquero Serrano, “Los Idilios (1558) de Álvar Gómez (Un libro en honor de Juan de Vergara y Bernardino de Alcaraz),” Lemir 23 (2019)—Textos, 1-140, with this poem on pp. 83-94. For more on Gómez de Castro, see her En el entorno del Maestro Álvar Gómez: Pedro del Campo, María de Mendoz y los Guevara (Toledo: Oretania, 1996). On this rebuilding effort and the renaissance currents in Toledo, see Jonathan Paul O’Connor, “Diego López de Ayala and the Intellectual Contours of Sixteenth-Century Toledo” (PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011). Los Doze Libros, 1555, 119v. On the attribution of the sonnet to Gómez de Castro (which he numbers XCIII among his poems), see Antonio Alvar Ezquerra, “Acercamiento a la poesía de Alvar Gómez de Castro: ensayo de una biografía y edición de su poesía latina,” (PhD diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid [1979] 2015), p. 702 bis. Los Doze Libros, 1555, 1v. Los Doze Libros, 1555, 3r. On the barbarie hispánica, see Luis Gil Fernández, Panorama social del humanismo español (1500-1800) (Madrid: Tecnos, 1997), chapter 2. On the Virgilian themes of Sannazaro and Vida, see Jeffrey Glodzik, “Vergilianism in the Early Cinquecento Rome: Egidio Gallo and the Vision of Roman Destiny,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 45.1 (Spring 2014): 73-98. For Garcilaso de la Vega and the Tagus in particular, see Paul Carranza, “Garcilaso’s Third Eclogue, Verses 65-68: The Tagus River, Exile, and Caesar’s Campaign in Gaul,” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 41.3 (Spring 2017): 499-524. On his Eclogues generally, see Christopher Fitzpatrick, “Garcilaso de la Vega and the Pastoral Tradition,” Classics Ireland 8 (2001): 17-29; Peter M. Komanecky, “Epic and Pastoral in Garcilaso’s Eclogues,” MLN 86.2 (March 1971): 154-166; Dario Fernández Morera, “Garcilaso’s Second Eclogue and the Literary Tradition,” Hispanic Review 47.1 (Winter 1979): 37-54.

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27 El parto de la Virgen que compuso el celebre Jacobo Sannazaro, traducido en octava rima castellana (Toledo: Juan de Ayala, 1554; IB 77337 = USTC 348794). This original printing has been flagged as a potential ghost, but it seems there still remains a physical copy in Toledo as referenced by M. Vaquero Serrano, “El maestro Alonso Cedillo (1484-1565): Escritos, testamento e inventario: su biblioteca,” Lemir 21 (2017): 33-106, p. 104. This poem too was reprinted in the poet’s lifetime: Salamanca, 1569; Madrid, 1569; Seville, 1580; Zaragoza, 1583. 28 Alejandro Coroleu, Printing and Reading Italian Latin Humanism in Renaissance Europe (ca. 1470-ca. 1540) (Cambridge: Scholars Publishing, 2014), 116. 29 Instead of the rare 1554 edition, I am forced to cite from El parto de la Virgen que compuso el celebre Iacobo Sannazaro, Poeta Napolitano, en verso Heroyco Latino. Traduzido en octaua rima Castellana, por el Licenciado Gregorio Hernandez de Velasco (Zaragoza: Lorenço y Diego de Robles Hermanos, 1583), A4v. It is worth noting that Jorge de Bustamante, the translator of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, had penned some verses in coplas de arte mayor at the head of his translation which, in the form of a reverse acrostic, disclosed his name and place of origin. 30 El parto de la Virgen (Zaragoza 1583), preface “Al pio lector,” pp. 4-5. 31 Edyllia (1558), see above note 18, verso of title page. 32 José López de Toro, “Gregorio Hernández de Velasco, traductor de Tansillo,” in Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal, Tomo VII (2 vols), (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1957), 331-349, citation from pp. 340-341. 33 López de Toro, 1957 (see note 32), 332. 34 In fact, Pérez would write Philip in twice, once as prince in the 1550 introduction, then as King of Spain and England (etc.) in the finished translation of 1556. 35 Lodovico Dolce, Le Trasformationi di M. Lodovico Dolce all’invittissimo e gloriosissimo imperatore Carlo Quinto (Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1553). 36 On this point, see Alexander Wilkinson, “The Printed Book on the Iberian Peninsula, 1500-1540,” in The Book Triumphant: Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, ed. Malcolm Walsby and Graeme Kemp (Leiden: Brill, 2011) especially pp. 94-95. 37 La Eneida de Vergilio, principe de los poetas Latinos, traduzida en octaua rima y verso Castellano […] (Toledo: Juan de Ayala, 1574), ¶vi recto. 38 La Eneida de Vergilio 1574, ¶vi recto. 39 Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quijote de la Mancha II, 62, ed. John Jay Allen (Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1977), 504. 40 See Werner Waterschoot, “Antwerp: Book, Publishing and Cultural Production Before 1585,” in The Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, ed. Patrick O’Brien et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), chapter 11. See also chapter 2 in the same volume, Michael Limberger, “‘No Town in the World Provides More Advantages’: Economies of Agglomeration and the Golden Age of Antwerp.” Also, Hubert Meeus, “Printing Vernacular Translations in Sixteenth-Century Antwerp,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 64 (2014): 108-137. 41 IB 64196 = USTC 440221 (Kallendorf SA1557.1). On Tavernier, see M. Parker et al., “Ameet Tavernier, Punchcutter (ca. 1522-1570),” De Gulden Passer 39 (1961): 17-76. This translation is in fact the first recorded publication of Tavernier in Antwerp, where he had just joined the Guild of St.

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Luke (which included printers) in 1556, and the text is printed in his characteristic Augustine or English italic (see Parker et al., pp. 25-29). Overall, there is confusion over the exact number of Antwerp editions that remains to this day. A second printing in duodecimo by Gerard Smits for Bellère has been reported in the same year of 1557 (Kallendorf SA1557.2), though this might be confused with the one Smits produced in 1576 for Bellère, which had no printed date. According to J. Peeters-Fontainas (Bibliographie des impressions espagnoles des Pays-Bas méridiondaux [Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1965], 700-702), the editions attributed to Smits for 1572 and 1575 were also confusions with the 1576 version. What complicates matters is that Hernández de Velasco himself claims in his 1574 re-edition that this is the eighth printing, which presupposes more than the extant 1557, 1566, and 1576 Antwerp editions. One copy of a 1570 edition attributed to Bellère is reported at the Vienna Universitätsbibliothek, but has not been examined by anyone that I know of. The lack of editions after 1576 probably has more to do with the sack of Antwerp in the Spanish Fury than the inhibitory effects of Hernández’ privilege of 1574, which was only good for Castile and Aragon. Cornelius Duplicius Scepper et al., Rerum à Carolo V. Caesare Augusto in Africa bello gestarum commentarii, elegantißimis iconibus ad historiam accomodis illustrati (Antwerp: Jean Bellère, 1555). Miguel Martínez, “The Heroes in the World’s Marketplace” (see above note 11), 100. La Eneida de Vergilio, 1574, ¶vi verso. On the language of complaint in privileges, see Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 42-43. On Pérez’ revisions as found in an autograph manuscript, see Luis Arturo Guichard, “Un autógrafo de la traducción de Homero de Gonzalo Pérez (Ulyxea XIV-XXIV) anotado por Juan Páez de Castro y el Cardenal Mendoza y Bovadilla,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 15.4 (December 2008): 525-557. La Eneida de Vergilio, 1574, ¶iiij. On Y of Pythagoras poem in the Renaissance, see Paul White, Iodocus Badius Ascensius: Commentary, Commerce and Print in the Renaissance (London: British Academy, 2013), 187-193. As it is a short moralistic commentary on human life, one can see what it might have appealed to a letrado like Hernández de Velasco. On the various configurations of the Virgilian corpus in the Renaissance and their significance for reception studies, see Craig Kallendorf, Printing Virgil: The Transformation of the Classics in the Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2020); Craig Kallendorf, “Canon, Print, and the Virgilian Corpus,” Classical Receptions Journal 10.2 (2018): 149-169; and Craig Kallendorf, The Protean Virgil: Material Form and the Reception of the Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); also David Scott Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). On Encina’s “application” of the eclogues to contemporary historical themes, see Daniela Capra, “Juan del Encina traduce a Virgilio,” Metalinguaggi e metatesti. Lingua, letteratura e traduzione, XXIV Congresso AISPI (Padua 2007), ed. A. Cassol et al. (Roma: AISPI edizioni, 2012), 223-233. McGrady, Donald, “Cultismos en la Eneida de Hernández de Velasco,” Thesaurus 28.2 (1973): 358-363.

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52 Robert Fitzgerald, trans., The Aeneid (New York: Vintage Classics, 1990), 202; Robert Fagles, trans., The Aeneid (New York: Penguin, 2006), 219. 53 La Eneida de Vergilio, 1574, 1r. The only difference here from the 1555 edition is the capitalization of Penates. 54 Servius’ suggestion is that the word deos refers either to the penates (as at Aen. 3.172) or to himself, Ascanius, and their descendants (as at Aen. 9.642). Servianorum in Vergilii carmina commentariorum editionis Havardianae, ed. E.K. Rand et al. (Lancaster, Penn.: Lancaster, 1946) ad Aen. 1.6, vol. 2, p. 15. 55 Servius, Commentarii ad Aen. 7.190, “fabula autem talis est. Picum amavit Pomona, pomorum dea, et eius volentis est sortita coniugium. postea Circe, cum eum amaret et sperneretur, irata eum in avem, picum Martium, convertit.” Servio, Commento al libro VII dell’Eneide di Virgilio, ed. G. Ramires (Bologna: Pàtron, 2003), 31. 56 James S. Holmes, Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies (Amsterdam: Rhodopi, 1988), 11.

Works Cited Early Modern Works Cordero, Juan Martín. Los Christiados de Hyeronimo Vida, Obispo de Alba, traduzidos en verso castellano por Iuan Martin Cordero Valenciano. Dirigidos ala serenißima Reyna de Inglaterra, Francia, y Ybernia, y muy alta, y muy ponderosa Princesa de las Españas. Antwerp: Martin Nutius, 1554. Dolce, Lodovico. Le Trasformationi di M. Lodovico Dolce all’invittissimo e gloriosissimo imperatore Carlo Quinto. Venice: Gabriele Giolito, 1553. Gómez de Castro, Álvar. Alvari Gomecii Evlaliensis Edyllia Aliqvot, sive Poematia. Lyon: Gaspar Trechsel, 1558. Hernández de Velasco, Gregorio. LOS DOZE LIBROS de la Eneida de VERGILIO, Principe de los Poetas Latinos. Traduzida en octaua rima y verso Castellano. Toledo: Juan de Ayala, 1555. Hernández de Velasco, Gregorio. LA ENEIDA DE VIRGILIO, principe de los poetas Latinos, traduzida en octaua rima y verso Castellano, ahora enesta vltima impression reformada y limada con mucho estudio y cuydado, de tal manera, que se puede dezir nueua traduccion. Toledo: Juan de Ayala Cano, 1574. Hernández de Velasco, Gregorio. EL PARTO DE LA VIRGEN que compuso el celebre Iacobo Sannazaro, Poeta Napolitano, en verso Heroyco Latino. Traduzido en octaua rima Castellano, por el Licenciado Gregorio Hernandez de Velasco. Zaragoza: Lorenzo and Diego Robles, 1583. Natas, Francisco de las. Siguese el segundo libro de las Eneydas. Trobado en metro mayor de nuestro romance castellano: por Francisco de las natas clerigo presbitero beneficiado en la yglesia parochial de sancto thome de la villa de cuebas rubias. Y en la yglesia de sancta cruz del lugar de rebilla cabriada. De la diocesis de Burgos. Burgos: Juan de Junta, 1528. Nebrija, Antonio de. Pub. Vergilii Maronis Partheniae Mantuani Aeneis diuinum opus ab Aelio Antonio Nebrissensi ex Grammatico & Rhetore, Regis historiographo familiari commentario, Y nunc recens excusso elucidata in lucem prodit. Granada: s.n., 1545.

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Nebrija, Antonio de. Ecphrases in Virgilii opera admodum familiares & rudibus tirunculis ad intelligendum facillimas. Granada: s.n., 1546. Scepper, Cornelius Duplicius et al. Rerum à Carolo V. Caesare Augusto in Africa bello gestarum commentarii, elegantißimis iconibus ad historiam accomodis illustrati. Antwerp: Jean Bellère, 1555.

Secondary Literature Alvar Ezquerra, Antonio. “Acercamiento a la poesía de Alvar Gómez de Castro: ensayo de una biografía y edición de su poesía latina.” PhD diss., Universidad Complutense de Madrid [1979], 2015. Armstrong, Richard H. “Dante’s Influence on Virgil: Italian volgarizzamenti and Enrique de Villena’s Eneida of 1428.” In Virgil and His Translators, edited by Susanna Braund and Zara Martirosova Torlone, 36-50. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Blecua, Alberto. “Virgilio en España en los siglos XVI y XVII.” In Studia virgiliana. Actes del VIè simposi de la Secció Catalana de la SEEC, 61-77. Bellaterra: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1983. Buechler, Franciscus and Alexander Riese, eds. Anthologia latina sive Poesis latinae supplementum, pars prior, fascicle 2. Leipzig: Teunber, 1906. Reprint, Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1964. Capra, Daniela. “Juan del Encina traduce a Virgilio.” In Metalinguaggi e metatesti. Lingua, letteratura e traduzione, XXIV Congresso AISPI (Padua 2007), edited by A. Cassol et al., 223-233. Roma: AISPI edizioni, 2012. Carranza, Paul. “Garcilaso’s Third Eclogue, Verses 65-68: The Tagus River, Exile, and Caesar’s Campaign in Gaul.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos 41.3 (Spring 2017): 499-524. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha, edited by John Jay Allen. Madrid: Ediciones Cátedra, 1977. Coroleu, Alejandro. Printing and Reading Italian Latin Humanism in Renaissance Europe (ca. 1470-ca. 1540). Cambridge: Scholars Publishing, 2014. Cruz, Anne J. and Elias L. Rivers, eds. and trans. “Three Literary Manifestos of Early Modern Spain.” PMLA 126.1 (January 2011): 233-242. Fagles, Robert, trans. The Aeneid. New York: Penguin, 2006. Fernández Morera, Dario. “Garcilaso’s Second Eclogue and the Literary Tradition.” Hispanic Review 47.1 (Winter 1979): 37-54. Fitzgerald, Robert, trans. The Aeneid. New York: Vintage Classics, 1990. Fubini, Mario. Metrica e poesia: Lezioni sulle forme metriche italiane, vol. 1. Dal Duecento al Petrarca. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1975. Fitzpatrick, Christopher. “Garcilaso de la Vega and the Pastoral Tradition.” Classics Ireland 8 (2001): 17-29. Gil Fernández, Luis. Panorama social del humanismo español (1500-1800). Madrid: Tecnos, 1997. Glodzik, Jeffrey. “Vergilianism in the Early Cinquecento Rome: Egidio Gallo and the Vision of Roman Destiny.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 45.1 (Spring 2014): 73-98.

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Guichard, Luis Arturo. “Un autógrafo de la traducción de Homero de Gonzalo Pérez (Ulyxea XIV-XXIV) anotado por Juan Páez de Castro y el Cardenal Mendoza y Bovadilla.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 15.4 (December 2008): 525-557. Holmes, James S. Translated! Papers on Literary Translation and Translation Studies. Amsterdam: Rhodopi, 1988. Kallendorf, Craig. Printing Virgil: The Transformation of the Classics in the Renaissance. Leiden: Brill, 2020. Kallendorf, Craig. “Canon, Print, and the Virgilian Corpus.” Classical Receptions Journal 10.2 (2018): 149-169. Kallendorf, Craig. The Protean Virgil: Material Form and the Reception of the Classics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Kallendorf, Craig. A Bibliography of the Early Printed Editions of Virgil, 14691850. New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 2012. Komanecky, Peter M. “Epic and Pastoral in Garcilaso’s Eclogues.” MLN 86.2 (March 1971): 154-166. Limberger, Michael. “‘No Town in the World Provides More Advantages’: Economies of Agglomeration and the Golden Age of Antwerp.” In The Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, edited by Patrick O’Brien et al., chapter 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. López de Toro, José. “Gregorio Hernández de Velasco, traductor de Tansillo.” In Estudios dedicados a Menéndez Pidal, Tomo VII, 331-349. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1957. McGrady, Donald. “Cultismos en la Eneida de Hernández de Velasco.” Thesaurus 28.2 (1973): 358-363. Martinez, Miguel. “The Heroes in the World’s Marketplace: Translating and Printing Epic in Renaissance Antwerp.” In Translation and The Book Trade in Early Modern Europe, edited by José María Pérez Fernández and Edward Wilson-Lee, 81-106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Martos, Josep Lluís. “Juan Martín Cordero en Flandes: Humanismo, mecenazgo, e imprenta.” Revista de filología española 95.1 (2015): 75-96. Meeus, Hubert. “Printing vernacular translations in sixteenth-century Antwerp.” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek 64 (2014): 108-137. O’Connor, Jonathan Paul. “Diego López de Ayala and the Intellectual Contours of Sixteenth-Century Toledo.” PhD diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2011. Parker, M. et al., “Ameet Tavernier, Punchcutter (ca. 1522-1570).” De Gulden Passer 39 (1961): 17-76. Peeters-Fontainas, Jean-Félix. Bibliographie des impressions espagnoles des Pays-Bas méridiondaux. Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1965. Pérez, Gonzalo. La Ulixea de Homero, traducida de griego en lengua castellana por el secretario Gonzalo Pérez, edited by Juan Ramón Muñoz Sánchez. Malaga: Universidad de Málaga, 2015. Procaccioli, Paolo. “L’Italia Spagnola.” In Atlante della letteratura italiana, edited by Sergio Luzzatto and Gabriele Pedullà, vol. 2, 532-539. Turin: Einaudi, 2011.

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Richardson, Brian. Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Servius. Servio, Commento al libro VII dell’Eneide di Virgilio, edited by G. Ramires. Bologna: Pàtron, 2003. Servius. Servio. Servianorum in Vergilii carmina commentariorum editionis Havardianae, edited by E.K. Rand et al. Lancaster, Penn.: Lancaster, 1946. Vaquero Serrano, María del Carmen. “Los Idilios (1558) de Álvar Gómez (Un libro en honor de Juan de Vergara y Bernardino de Alcaraz).” Lemir 23 (2019)—Textos: 1-140. Vaquero Serrano, María del Carmen. “El maestro Alonso Cedillo (1484-1565): Escritos, testamento e inventario: su biblioteca.” Lemir 21 (2017): 33-106. Vaquero Serrano, María del Carmen. En el entorno del Maestro Álvar Gómez: Pedro del Campo, María de Mendoz y los Guevara. Toledo: Oretania, 1996. Villena, Enrique de. Obras Completas, edited by Pedro M. Cátedra, vols 2-3. Madrid: Turner, 1994. White, Paul. Iodocus Badius Ascensius: Commentary, Commerce and Print in the Renaissance. London: British Academy, 2013. Waterschoot, Werner. “Antwerp: book, publishing and cultural production before 1585.” In The Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe: Golden Ages in Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, edited by Patrick O’Brien et al., chapter 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Wilkinson, Alexander. “The Printed Book on the Iberian Peninsula, 1500-1540.” In The Book Triumphant: Print in Transition in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, edited by Malcolm Walsby and Graeme Kemp, 78-96. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Wilson-Okamura, David Scott. Virgil in the Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.

11 Female Audiences and Translations of the Classics in Early Modern Italy Francesca D’Alessandro Behr

Early modern reading audiences were not at all homogenous in education and tastes, and those who began to edit and print books during this time freely employed vernacular translations to reach diverse audiences. In this contribution it will be my task to emphasize how the presence of the vernacular in Italian printed books from the sixteenth century reveals a shift in Renaissance readership in which women are present and at times addressed specifically in dedications.1 I will treat books as social products whose meaning was not determined solely by the intentions of their authors but modified in the process of translation, production, dissemination, and reception. I will also highlight that divulgation of the classics in translation was facilitated by the accademie, newly established associations for the promotion of literature, philosophy, and sciences. Finally, by framing vernacularization as a phenomenon able to make high culture accessible to and serviceable for women on a much larger scale, I will reflect on what those translated texts represented for their new female readers and for that society in general. During the sixteenth century the advent of the printing press facilitated the spreading of written culture to wider segments of the population with the circulation of new books in the vernacular (Italian) and volgarizzamenti, translations in Italian from Classical texts written for the vulgus, the people who could not comfortably read Latin. The publication of so many books was in part responsible for the standardization of national idioms, the different languages of Europe (i.e. Italian, French, Spanish, etc.) which became the norm in locally printed materials. The cost of books steadily dropped and book fairs became yearly occurrences in major cities. Printed texts could spread information more quickly and cheaply than before. Thanks to them, in Italy and in Europe, literacy levels crept upward.2 In a revealing page of his Pleasant Dialogues (Dialoghi Piacevoli) published in 1539, Niccolò Franco describes Renaissance market trends and the emergence of a new public of “indotti,” people who did not know Latin and whose reading of translated texts was often aimed at apprehending specific contents useful to their occupations. He writes: DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-11

Women and Translations of the Classics 253 We know that the unlearned are more numerous than the learned. Therefore it will be important to keep in the bookshop those “small works” (operine) which have been and are being translated in this language. For mechanics which have no letters ... will request Pliny. Soldiers without Latin will want Appian’s Wars and Caesar’s Commentaries. Kings ... will purchase Plutarch’s and Suetonius’ Lives. Unschooled friars will want the Letters of St. Paul, the Gospels and bible translated into the vernacular. Do not consider that the learned criticize translations for they are envious of the translators who write ... for those without education.3 Although in this extract women are not highlighted as potential consumers of vernacular literature, in the above mentioned Dialogues the concerns of Cautano who wants to become a book seller, and the advice given to him by his friend Sannio, reveals the historical situation: they are well aware of the extraordinary number of new readers who cannot read Latin.4 Sarah Gwyneth Ross’s study of book inventories from sixteenthcentury Venice confirms the picture that in this period “education was within reach for men and women of the artisanal and mercantile classes.”5 The collecting practices of the Venetians underscore that a desire to invest in education and books was triggered not only by the availability of schools and affordable books but also by the harder to define “but nonetheless perceptible, entrenchment of humanistic ideals.”6 The individuals surveyed and studied by Ross are physicians, apothecaries, lawyers, and metal workers gathering texts related to their professions but also connected to much broader literary interests. Among people who collect books we find women. For example the small library of Catharina, wife of a goldsmith, included a translation of Lucan’s epic poem and the Jewish historian Josephus.7 Alvisa Bonadio the widow of a pharmacist acquired by herself or received from her husband a good number of devotional books but also chivalric poems such as Boiardo’s Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso.8 Similar practices and middle-class book “collectors” can be found in Florence and Rome.9 The presence of chivalric poems in their houses corroborates the notion that artisans and professionals read not only texts related to their work but also for entertainment.10 Such books appear in the Venetian vernacular Schools where teachers besides employing religious texts (e.g., the Office of the Virgin Mary, Psalms, the Fior di Virtù, or the Imitation of Christ) taught boys to read using chivalric romances (libri de batagia, books of battles) since, as Paul Grendler records, “that was what their fathers desired.”11 Grendler attests to the fact that chivalric poetry was eagerly read by a great variety of people and “no sharp division between school culture and popular culture can be made because

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these vernacular texts also appeared in the private libraries of merchants and craftsmen.”12 The content of chivalric poetry mixing the stories of knights, battles, and the exciting vicissitudes of love-enchanted characters was immensely popular. Boccaccio’s Teseida (1339–41) in octave featuring the love story between the two Theban warriors Arcita and Palemone can be considered the prototype for the romance epic (often also referred to as epic romance, romance, chivalric epic, or heroic poem), a hybrid genre written in the vernacular, blending traditional mythological and love themes. This newly created type of literature became very fashionable during the Renaissance, especially when authors started to amalgamate medieval chivalric romances (the matière de France originating from the Chanson de Roland and the matière de Bretagne (e.g., the Arthurian cycle) with epic themes and plots derived from the ancient classics (Virgil, Ovid, Statius, and Lucan).13 The popularity of chivalric literature among men and women is clearly discernible in Tullia d’Aragona’s 1560 book, Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino (The Wretch Otherwise Called the Little Warrior), the first romance epic written by a woman in Italian. In its introduction the author recounts the origins of her composition and her aspiration to give to a male and female audience a book they would enjoy without the risk of corruption: ... Being aware of how much women and men are eager to read or to listen to pleasurable things, for some time I looked for almost all the books of histories or poems in our language. Since, as I said, I had become convinced that without doubt poetry, for many respects but principally for the presence of verses, is more pleasing to every person, than any other kind of genre, I finally realized that Morganti, Ancroie, Innamoramenti d’Orlando, Buovi ... and even [the work of] Ariosto himself were not free of this vice i.e. of containing lascivious, dishonest and unworthy things ... in the end I found this most beautiful book in Spanish ... all most chaste, all pure, all Christian.14 Tullia uses the pretense of having looked far and wide for a chaste chivalric poem in Italian and unable to find one, claims to translate from Spanish the one in question. The passage cited highlights how much men and women loved this genre, and the mise-en-scène of a translation reveals the fashionable appeal of adaptations from foreign languages.15 The content and introduction of the book mentioned above—and also many more such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, Petrarch’s Canzoniere, Boccaccio’s Decameron all written in the vernacular and repeatedly published during the Renaissance—are evidence of an emerging attention toward women. Women, “did not attend the schools and could not read Latin but had a primary importance in the linguistic formation of children,” as they were the first to communicate with them in the

Women and Translations of the Classics 255 vernacular, which in Medieval and Renaissance documents is sometimes designated as lingua materna.16 Dante, perhaps more acutely than anyone else during his age, seems aware of women in his Vita nuova where he explains that Italian poetry began with a man “wanting to make his words understood to a woman unable to understand Latin verses.”17 Even if Dante exaggerates, without any doubt the rise of literature in the vernacular manifests “the interest of intellectuals and higher echelons of the new lay and urban society towards women, their endorsement of a system of values marked by a ‘culture of eros’ and inspired to the problematics of intersexual relationship.”18 The presence of women as readers can also be noticed analyzing dedications, a paratext which was a norm in the Renaissance books. Dedications offer valuable information on the range of people who wrote them and received them. Despite the frequency of dedicatory letters in Renaissance books, only in the last twenty years have scholars begun to pay specific attention to the phenomenon.19 Marco Paoli’s 2006 volume on the topic marks the first monograph completely devoted to the theme, however it does not focus at all on women as dedicatees.20 Paoli is mostly preoccupied with the dedication he terms “venale” that is written to prompt financial contributions. The word venale is linked to Latin “vendere,” “to sell” and underlines the commercial environment in which the book was located. In fact, despite the introduction of the moveable type printing press, the actual production of every single volume remained a relatively expensive and labor-intensive event for which economic aid was welcomed.21 A “venal” dedication accompanies Erasmo from Valvasone’s translation of Statius’ Thebaide (1570) in ottava rima printed in Venice by Francesco de Franceschi and dedicated to Lucrezia d’Este della Rovere, princess of Urbino and to her sister Leonora. In the dedicatory letter which accompanies the book, the prestigious dedicatees are asked to accept the object of his labor under their “regal, splendid roof” (I.6).22 The female dedicatees are also made present in other passages of the edition, for instance when in Canto 2, Amphiaraus shows to Tideus and Polynices that hundreds of years before the Theban war, the God Janus had celebrated the two princesses on the walls of the temple of Argos. Moreover, Valvasone mentions other “women, knights, ... and wise people” (“donne, cavalieri, ... e saggi,” Canto 2.106, p.18r) famous during his time.23 With tact and indirection which are typical of the language of dedications, Valvasone is soliciting a compensation from the princesses who at the court of Ferrara first and Urbino later, sponsored artists and literary enterprises. At the same time, he wants to involve a larger segment of men and women. As B. Guthmüller observes “the new recipients of the Italian translation are not only the individuals to whom the work is dedicated; next to them, the translators insert ... numerous other personalities of the time—Italian princes and princesses, poets,

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literati—usually in long lists as in Valvasone; it is the public envisioned and desired by the author who in this way anchors his work to his present.”24 Translators are greatly preoccupied with the taste and expectations of contemporary readers who are apostrophized at the beginning of some cantos or when a poem is near to conclusion. This custom was not practiced in antiquity and reveals the identities and characteristics of the Renaissance public. For instance, in the just mentioned Thebaide, Valvasone imitating Statius, apostrophizes his own work, but differently from the ancient, he suggests that his opus is already appreciated by some men and women and hopes that it will be remembered even after his death: Dear Thebaid of mine, after many years of great sweat I lead you into harbor. Will you travel around in these new clothes after your maker is dead? [...] The Italian youth who reads and hears you, already favors you and approves of you [...] Already women and knights, servant of love, in singing, sometimes honor you.25 Not only young people are already reading and approving of this new Thebaid, men and women in love are highlighted as preferring this text. Women are also specifically mentioned by Ludovico Dolce in his Trasformationi, a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in whose exordium to Canto 14, they are described as “benevolently listening to” his verses (“che benignamente / i versi miei ... udite”).26 The presence of women is palpable in Gynevra de le clare donne, dedicated to Ginevra Sforza by Sabadino degli Arienti. Besides glorifying Gynevra wife of the Lord of Bologna, in the volume which comprises thirty-three biographies of early Renaissance women, the author includes his own wife Francesca “daughter of Carolo di Bruni” who “found pleasure in listening to verses of Vergil being read; she gladly read Pliny’s Natural History translated in the maternal language and spiritual and holy books” (“figliuola di Carolo di Bruni” che “havea piacere assai in audire legere li versi de Virgilio; legea lei voluntiera Plinio de naturali historia, posto in materna lingua, et de libri spirituali et sancti.”)27 The books and the dedications described so far reveal some writers invested in the writing of new books in the vernacular, and others translating classical literature for men and women who were interested in it but could not read it in Latin or Greek. The importance of translations for the education of women is highlighted by Dionigi Atanagi, secretary of the short-lived Accademia della Fama. Openness to less educated members of society characterize this as well as the other Italian accademie, which were associations born in the peninsula independently from the courts and the Church to foster the sciences and the humanities.28 Even if the accademie had relatively diversified profiles, most of them were committed to the vernacular. In addition, academy members

Women and Translations of the Classics 257 often had ties to printing presses, wrote in support of the vernacular and produced translations of the classics. In 1561 at the request of the powerful Giorgio di Andrea di Taddeo Gradenigo, the above mentioned Atanagi published the memorial volume Rime di diversi nobilissimi, et eccellentissimi autori, in morte della Signora Irene delle Signore di Spilimbergo to celebrate the recently passed poetess, singer, and painter Irene di Spilimbergo. Atanagi also composed her biography Vita della signora Irene di Spilimbergo dedicated to Claudia Rangone and inserted in the Rhymes. In the Vita, Atanagi remembers Irene for her “study of many books in the vernacular” and that “she read many books translated from Latin and Greek in the vernacular, and others in our language dealing with morals, education, and the rules of the mentioned Italian language.”29 While educating herself through vernacular translations, her objective was not simply to pass time but as A. Schutte observes, Irene read with analytical spirit “with ... attention to the subject matter, concepts, and turns of phrase,” taking notes “with the fixed intention of making use of them, both in her development and behavior and in conversation and writing.”30 If for music and painting Irene had tutors, her literary education occurred at home exclusively through the reading of books. In surveying dedications accompanying books we realize that their purpose widens. Besides soliciting specific individuals with the hope of a compensation, authors and printers acknowledge the presence of a larger group of readers and use the dedication as a space eminently dialogic in which they discuss their agenda, connect their writings to others, and highlight certain individuals hoping that they will read the work. In some dedications of the translated classics, women are acknowledged as ideal readers and the printed book as a new medium of education. Before attending universities and learning Latin, women’s access to printed books became paramount for their education. Among Italian publishers, Gabriele Giolito was the personality who perhaps most fully appreciated the potential of the volgare and the female reading market. An analysis of Giolito’s introduction to About the Nobility and Excellence of Women a text originally written by Agrippa von Nettesheim in Latin (1529) but promptly translated into many languages, highlights the presence of women among the dedicatees and also how Giolito fashions himself vis-à-vis them. He erases the name of the translator and includes a dedication to Buona Suarda a noblewoman from Monferrato—Giolito’s own homeland—whose virtue, he states, is the greatest defense for women. The work is a gift to her but also “a harbor” for all women. In this way, like Valvasone, Giolito shifts the focal point from a unique dedicatee to all women and highlights the book’s formative influence on the public opinion. Suarda may have helped financially in the publication of that edition but all the women who read the book made it successful and benefitted from it.31

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Equally aware of women’s desire to learn is Alessandro Piccolomini’s On the sphere of the world for Laudomia Forteguerri.32 In this compendium of astronomy which summarized Greek and Latin sources, the author insists on the importance of opening up scientific and philosophical knowledge to those who are not professional scholars. He names Laudomia as his ideal reader because she is eager to learn but unable to advance further in her education for her lack of Latin. For this reason he writes his book in the vernacular.33 Piccolomini was one of the first to understand that “progress and renovation depended on a greater dissemination of classical culture beyond the tight circle of professional humanists” and that all intelligent individuals endowed with a will to learn, regardless of gender should have a right to access knowledge.34 Alessandro found himself in agreement with Marcantonio Piccolomini who with Antonio Vignali founded Siena’s Accademia degli Intronati. In a letter from 1528 directed to the archbishop of Siena, Marcantonio highlights some essential traits of the newly created institution, namely attention given to the theme of love and the female public as well as a special focus placed on translated ancient texts.35 Eventually Alessandro became the maker of the fame of Laudomia whose poetry he introduced to another Accademia, the Infiammati in Padua. Alessandro Piccolomini was also the first Italian translator of Xenophon’s dialogue Oeconomicus (1540) which he dedicated to Sienese Frasia de Venturi.36 Through the descriptions of the literary soirées taking place in Siena, Girolamo Bargagli’s Dialogue of Games Usually Played in Siena during Evening Gatherings (1563–4) confirms the presence of women and sheds light on the educational underpinnings of the conversations described in Piccolomini’s books.37 Piccolomini’s translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus can also be considered one of them. Well before current discussions about the dialogue, Piccolomini shows awareness of its philogynist potentials by translating it into Italian and dedicating it to a woman.38 The Greek text was available to him thanks to the Juntine (1516) and Aldine editions (1525); eleven Latin translations preceded the Italian rendition. In the dedication, he praises Frasia and Greek civilization and establishes a parallelism between the proper government of a house and that of a city. The Oeconomicus relates a conversation between Critobolus and Socrates. In the middle of it, Socrates learns about Ischomachos’ training of his wife who thanks to this instruction develops into an effective manager of the house. Production and security of the household become concerns of both spouses depicted as reciprocally accountable toward each other in “a sort of dyarchic rule over their joint estate.”39 It is clear that the true themes of the dialogue are education and how to train somebody to became a good master and person. Not only does Piccolomini, via Xenophon, describe women and men as identically endowed with self-restraint, memory and diligence, he also puts great

Women and Translations of the Classics 259 emphasis on conversation. “Memory, discourse, and care,” he writes, “are qualities necessary to the duties of both men and woman, God himself distributed them separately in such a way that was not possible to know with certainty who obtained the greatest share.”40 The passage translates a specific sentence of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus (7.26) but the word “discourse” is an addition by Piccolomini who, however, had found it in the ancient text some pages earlier at 7.10 where dialegesthai, “to carry a conversation,” is the first thing Ischomachus teaches to his wife who in her paternal home “had seen, heard, and said little.”41 The prominence given to conversation is extremely significant in the original as well as in the translation. The Greek term dialegesthai is not normally employed to describe the interaction between spouses, but of conversation between male peers. Its use implies that Ischomachos wants to view his wife as his peer and exchange opinions with her. Moreover the verb “to converse” in Xenophon’s Memorabilia (4.5.12) is employed for “associates deliberating in common.” In the Oeconomicus, it is the first verb linked with Socrates speaking with Critobulus (1.1), and it seems to be what Ischomachos is doing with his wife because their conversation proceeds like a Socratic dialogue. Ischomachos asks a question, his wife responds, and Ischomachos answers the question by asking another.42 Piccolomini finds in Xenophon a confirmation of the fact that dialogue as oral activity or recorded in books is an essential tool of education. The Intronati, in a truly Socratic vein, adopt it with the intention to educate men and women. Cinquecento translations such as the ones mentioned above offered translators a chance to experiment with the Italian language but also to transform a poetic text into an explicit didactic experience in which they could transmit content coming from the past, reiterate cultural hierarchies and traditional expectations or challenge socio-cultural patterns and assumptions.43 Still, as male translators attempt to orient women’s readings and interpretations, we must wonder if they were successful and if female readers endorsed their constructions. Without any doubt, books in the vernacular provided women with a cultural patrimony that once imparted could be redeployed in any direction they chose, not necessarily as men intended. The assimilation and redeployment of the translated classics is noticeable in several texts written by women especially after 1550 and it must be counted among the factors which stimulated their literary output. Carlo Dionisotti placed the emergence of women writers in Italy between 1538 and 1560 but Virginia Cox has proved that women’s writings also peaked between the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century when they capitalize on the work of their immediate female predecessors and, as I would add, on the massive presence of translations in vernacular.44 At that point not only do they write more, they also venture into genres which they had not previously dared

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to touch such as epic romance. In Venice, for instance, we find two native female authors, Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella, who write extensively and produce epic romances. It is not essential to establish in what specific form these (or other) women accessed the texts from antiquity, if they read them in the original or in translation, in anthologies, compilations, or compendia. What is crucial is that they read them and reflected on them. Women’s independent evaluation and ability to re-elaborate the classics are particularly remarkable if we consider the fact that through free adaptations translators often imparted specific moral lessons to their readers. Familiarity with and re-elaboration of the classics are demonstrated by Fonte in her epic romance Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro (1581).45 While her relationship to classical sources appears to be mediated through translations since she never quotes in Latin, in this epic romance she displays an independent evaluation of classical sources. A comparison between the Floridoro and the translated Aeneid reveals that she was familiar with Virgil’s masterpiece and criticizes the final actions of Aeneas when the Trojan kills his enemy Turnus. Fonte disapproves of the epic as a genre ideologically connected to war by creating in the amazon Risamante a female protagonist who, in marked contrast with Aeneas, decides to spare her adversary. She seems to be indirectly taking issue with Ludovico Dolce’s evaluation of Aeneas in his translation of the Aeneid. Dolce’s paraphrase was published in 1572 by Giolito de’ Ferrari, it includes fifty-four cantos and provides the most extensive framework (allegories with commentary, brief introductions summarizing each canto, and table of contents) accompanying the Italian versions of the Virgilian text.46 Throughout Dolce’s version of the Aeneid, the protagonist is singled out for his piety and virtue: even when Aeneas kills Turnus, in one of the allegories preceding Canto 54, Dolce suggests that the Trojan hero is rightly avenging Pallas, for “it is not possible to moderate just anger without vengeance.”47 If Dolce interprets Aeneas’s slaughter of Turnus as a sign of the hero’s rightful indignation, in the last lines of her poem Fonte makes clear that anger must be curbed by compassion with Risamante who after having demonstrated her military skills extends compassion toward her adversary to affirm her superiority. When she injures him, she does not let her anger prevail, instead, without hesitation, she spares him: The stunned king falls and wets the green plain with a streaming vermilion rivulet; the lady knight, who has a soft and humane heart, realizing that she has the upper hand in that matter, runs over to him and with a compassionate hand removes the bloody helmet from his head and demonstrates to everyone her victory by showing his unconscious appearance, from which she has triumph and glory.48

Women and Translations of the Classics 261 Familiarity with the classics can also be noticed in Lucrezia Marinella’s treatise The Nobility and Excellence of Women (La nobiltà et eccellenze delle donne et i diffetti, e mancamenti degli uomini, 1601) and her romance epic Henry or Byzantium Gained (L’Enrico ovvero Bisanzio Acquistato, 1635). Marinella was acquainted with a great variety of classical sources and she mounts her arguments using the authority of some and rejecting others. For instance, if some translators used Virgilian Dido as a reproachable example of somebody who had indulged in sexual relations with a foreigner and as a warning for women to preserve their chastity, Marinella adopts her as an icon of a just and courageous female leader. Ludovico Dolce, among others, in his already mentioned translation of the Aeneid underlined the importance of female chastity in the allegory preceding Canto 36 where he discussed Dido’s behavior: Through Dido, who in desperation plans to kill herself and in fact kills herself, we can understand how much, in a noble soul, remorse for a bad action can accomplish and how cautious women must be, and most of all those who have the reputation to be honorable and honest, and in giving themselves prey to a lascivious appetite, because they often are mistaken, and nothing is left of them if not infamy, repentance and continuous regret of their tormented conscience.49 According to Dolce, once chastity is abandoned, nothing else matters. For him, this is the lesson to draw from Dido’s encounter with Aeneas. Marinella however, is not happy with his version of the story and assessment of Dido. In Nobility, she declares that Virgil had not recounted the truth when narrating the reasons for Dido’s suicide, attributed to the queen’s shame for having been abandoned by Aeneas. At Nobiltà (46–47), she includes Dido among virtuous women and rectifies Virgil’s story. Following Justinus and the pre-Virgilian tradition endorsed by Petrarch, Marinella records that, after having founded Carthage, the queen received warning of King Iarbas’s threats to destroy the city unless she married him. Remaining chaste and in order to preserve peace and the well-being of her newly created state, she committed suicide: Then Iarbas, King of Mauritania, seeing how the Tyrians were prospering, having already heard of Dido’s great beauty, sent for ten of the principal Carthaginians to come to Mauritania and ordered them to do their best to make their queen his wife, threatening otherwise to wage a cruel war against them ... When she heard this she felt greatly troubled and began to cry and call on her dear Sychaeus ... She then slew herself in the presence of the whole population. For as long as Carthage endured Dido was worshiped

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The statement proves that she was a keen critic of Virgil’s evaluation and the retelling of Dido’s story in the Aeneid. Her different evaluation of Dido is confirmed in chapter 5 of the Nobiltà when the topic discussed is “Just and faithful women.” After having endorsed the authority of Aristotle’s Ethics (quoted in Latin) who qualified justice as a virtue more important than temperance or physical strength and encompassing all of them, Marinella offers Dido as an example of a respected and just ruler because she gave laws to her city. To strengthen her point, she quotes Aeneid 1.507–8 in Latin and in Annibal Caro’s Italian translation: Isabella of Aragona was just and as Vergil says Dido was just as we read in the first book of the Aeneid: “Iura dabat, legesque uiris, operumque laborem / partibus ęquabat iustis” and these verses translated in the vernacular by Annibal Caro sound like this: “And while with sweetness she gives to her peoples edicts and laws, she distributes works and labors in matching proportions.”51 We can see that Marinella in her treatise does not highlight Dido, the unfortunate lover, but gives to her story and death a noble political connotation. She recovers the specifically political aspects of Dido’s career in the Aeneid and other sources instead of focusing on her romantic entanglement. In reading Nobiltà we notice that she had at hand several translations of the classics such as Annibal Caro’s cited translation of the Aeneid (1581), that of Alessandro Guarnelli (1554) but also Andrea dell’Anguillara’s Metamorphoses (Le Metamorfosi d’Ovidio, 1561) and Remigio Fiorentino’s Heroides (1555). Although Marinella could read Latin, she inserts Latin sources accompanied by a published vernacular translation to facilitate the comprehension of the argument by her own female readers. In her Henry or Byzantium Gained which features Venice’s involvement in the fourth crusade, by re-employing ideas, motifs, and techniques taken from classical authors, once again Marinella extolls the worth of women and demonstrates an independent evaluation of her models. In the poem she uses the epic stereotype of the encounter between the enchantress/prophetess and the warrior in a markedly new fashion. In fact, she rewrites this character normally constructed by male authors as ambiguous or negative (e.g., Ariosto’s Alcina, Tasso’s Armida, Andrea da Barberino’s Sibyl, etc.) and turns her into a completely positive figure. Marinella’s enchantress Erina shares similarities with Homer’s Calypso the beautiful nymph who in the Odyssey lives in a lush dwelling place

Women and Translations of the Classics 263 (Od. 5.55–75) and would like to keep Odysseus with her forever, as well as with Circe whose home is erected “through dense brush and trees” (Od. 10.197) in a “splendid palace built of polished stones” (Od. 10.211; 253). Besides emphasizing Circe’s enchanting voice and hospitality toward Odysseus and his men (Od. 10.350–71, 449–53), Homer featured in her a commanding woman who transforms Odysseus’s companions into pigs (Od. 10.235–48) before being persuaded to free them from the spell and release them from her island. In stark contrast, Marinella’s enchantress never uses her powers and knowledge against men. During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Circe represented the quintessential embodiment of temptation and entrapment. In fact the Homeric allegorists and several Christian writers crafted an image “of a voluptuous Circe, beckoning the rational, temperate Odysseus to drink from her poisoned cup” and possessing “obvious similarities to the figure of Eve holding out the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge to a still-innocent Adam in Genesis 3.”52 This is the notion assigned to her by Boccaccio’s text On Famous Women in which he writes that “there are many Circes everywhere and many other men are changed into beasts by their lustfulness and their vices. And Ulysses ... signifies the wise man who cannot be bound by the trickery of deceitful people and who by his example often loosens the bonds of those who are held.”53 The typical source for Circe’s visual and literary depiction in the Renaissance was not so much Homer’s Odyssey, but the writings of Boccaccio, Virgil (Aeneid 7), Ovid (Metamorphoses 14), Augustine (City of God, 17.17–18), and Boethius (De Consolatione Philosophiae, 38.1), in whose works she became an emblem of sin and spiritual enslavement. In chivalric poems the negativity of Circe continues to be alive in figures like the beautiful enchantress Alcina (Orlando Furioso) and Armida (Gerusalemme Liberata) who lure knights away from their military duties to pursue pleasure and idleness.54 We see quite well how “Alcina’s island is Ariosto’s ‘Island of the Blest’ (Pindar II.72), his milk-and-honey land of eternal youth and beauty where Ruggiero will follow in the footsteps of Ulysses, Aeneas, and Hercules.”55 The beautiful gardens in which these women live become the symbol of their erotic allure, of their attempt to confuse with a shining but false surface which drags them away from their true selves and duties. Distancing herself from many male predecessors, through the prophetess Erina, Marinella restructures the epic topos of the encounter between a powerful female enchantress and a brave soldier in a beautiful and remote place. Already Fonte in her Floridoro (Canto 8 and 12) had created a good enchantress in Circetta and reflected on the story of Circe in Homer’s Odyssey, showing sympathy for Circe. Marinella continues to push the metamorphosis of the enchantress in a positive direction. As a matter of fact, in Enrico, despite being a beautiful and unbaptized

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enchantress, Erina is not a symbol of temptation. On the contrary, she searches for God through the contemplation and study of nature. She does not propose enticement of the senses, but philosophical inquiry of causes, solitude, and study as channels to reach God and happiness. To the warrior Venier, one of the protagonists of the Enrico who has been shipwrecked on her verdant island and is primarily preoccupied about his militaristic future and the war in Byzantium, the young maiden points out a different way of life possible on her island. She reminds him that he has arrived to a special location where happiness is reachable and he has a chance to become divine: Be peaceful, end the trouble and pain that shake your heart. Do not be in pain if your very evil destiny pushed you to the wild and far-off places, it is possible to live happy, joyful, and blessed here among wild animals and trees. Man becomes divine by pondering the main principles of hidden causes and wonderful deeds. This is how his glorious desires are quelled: he opens to view what is hidden and unknown and discovers it. Come to my home: great knowledge has created the highest beauty there, it veiled and covered it with god. I am merely a mortal woman, I live in a beautiful but flimsy home, where I polish my soul and clean my arrows. There I praise him who rules eternally among the stars and the sun in his eternal beauty. He made me worthy that I would stay away from tricks and illusions when I look around in the fog. Even a mortal mind does not scorn being part of the heaven that God rules so well.56 It is a special moment in the history of the depiction of this female type. Erina pronounces words which had never been uttered before by an enchantress praising God and inviting the soldier into her beautiful home where he will have a chance to inquire into the causes of the universe and, in that process, to get closer to God. Erina is proposing to Venier to explore a path which he has never considered and that will bring him away from his world but closer to God. Knowledge of nature and causes make men “divine” and this seems to her the most important goal a man should pursue. During the encounter between Erina and Venier the woman challenges earthly glory and military kleos in the name of humanistic ideals. In Canto 22, after having foreseen his death, she reminds Venier about the futility and dangers of war and earthly glory: She saw his fierce soul ablaze in his martial countenance, and she smiled broadly, then with a kind voice she uttered the following words with her beautiful mouth: “That fire of honor burns you and

Women and Translations of the Classics 265 tears you apart and eats at you to such a degree that you don’t care for what’s dear and beautiful (and there’s plenty of that in my royal home). Therefore, you will go among spears, swords, and well-reinforced shields where fierce Mars teaches the art of killing to hearts deprived of love and pity. Will you change your tender feelings into harsh and cruel ones? Will you deprive yourself of your humanity and make your heart happy in other people’s pain?”57 Seeking the glory of war, considered by Erina as a negative force that burns and bites one’s breast, Venier foolishly wishes to abandon the island, reject what is beautiful and precious and choose “fierce Mars” as his teacher, shedding his humanity and imitating those whose hearts are empty of love and pity. Venier remains deaf to the woman’s argument and persuasion but the readers can see the validity of her reasons and the originality of her character. We realize that Marinella has read with great profit the poems of her contemporaries and the translated classics and used them in the praise of peace and the education of women.58 Lodovico Domenichi in his dialogue the Nobility of Women, via the speaker Violante Bentivoglia, suggests indeed with Dante and the other authors discussed here, that “wise and knowledgeable men wrote books to please women.”59 But we see in this work that the person Violante does not function simply as a receiver of established wisdom, nor even merely as a “moderator” who keeps order in the conversation and asks appropriate questions to stimulate further discussion: she is a true discussant who speaks to present her own opinions. As such, “she becomes emblematic of a new role for women in Renaissance dialogues, a role that sees them as “contributors” to the search for knowledge and not just as catalysts for men to voice their own (male) views.”60 Violante then is a realistic character who resembles actual authors, such as Fonte and Marinella, whose works confirm that the appropriation of the classics through vernacularization made culture accessible to and imitable by women on a larger scale.61 Through vernacularization and the increasing marketability and dissemination of books women participated in the elaboration and reelaboration of Western cultural traditions. Women readers became women authors and expressed the awareness of their worth establishing themselves as players in Renaissance discourse about morality and society: “from objects of discourse women [became] real interlocutors.”62

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Notes 1 Carlo Dionisotti, Geografia e storia della letteratura Italiana (Torino: Einaudi, 1967), 103–44; G. Folena, Volgarizzare e Tradurre (Torino: Einaudi, 1991). 2 B. Richardson, Printing, Writers, and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 108–11 about literacy and 112–4 about costs. For the creation of a European book market, Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 65–90; Angela Nuovo, The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 47–96. 3 Niccolò Franco, Dialoghi Piacevoli (1539), 109v. Cited by Angela Nuovo, I Giolito e la stampa: nell’Italia del XVI secolo (Genève: Librairie Droz, 2005), 99. 4 Carlo Simiani, Nicolò Franco, la vita e le opera (Torino-Roma: Editori L. Roux e C., 1894), 88. 5 Sarah Gwyneth Ross, Everyday Renaissance: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice (Florence: I Tatti, 2016), 44. 6 Ibid., 45. 7 Ibid., 38 and 45. 8 Ibid., 39. 9 Christiane Bec, Les Livres des Florentines (1413–1608) (Florence: Olschki, 1984); Renata Ago, Il gusto delle cose. Una storia degli oggetti nella Roma del Seicento (Rome: Donzelli editore, 2006). 10 Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso became one of the most widely printed books in the sixteenth century. In the Folger Shakespeare’s library alone, there are twenty-six copies of various editions of the poem, see: https:// collation.folger.edu/2015/05/a-renaissance-best-seller-of-love-and-action/; Daniel Javitch, Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991). 11 Paul Grendler, “What Giovanni Read in School: Vernacular Texts in Sixteenth Century Venetian schools,” Sixteenth Century Journal 13.1 (1982): 51. 12 Ibid., 53. 13 Dominique Battles, The Medieval Tradition of Thebes: History and Narrative in the Roman de Thèbes, Boccaccio, Chaucer and Lydgate (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 61–76. On the blending of different traditions and the emergence of the genre, Francesca D. Behr, Arms and the Woman Classical Tradition and Women Writers in the Venetian Renaissance (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2018), 29–30; Jane Everson, The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism: The Matter of Italy and the World of Rome (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 14 Tullia d’Aragona, “Ai lettori” in Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino (Venezia: Sessa, 1560), XXVII … conoscendo quanto le donne e gli uomini sien vaghi di leggere o d’ascoltare cose piacevoli, andai per qualche tempo ricercando, quasi tutti i libri d’istorie o di poesie, che avesse la lingua nostra. Ove risolutami, come ho detto, che per certo la poesia per molti rispetti, ma principalmente per quella del verso, è molto più grata ad ogni persona, che tutte l’altre, trovai finalmente che Morganti, Ancroie, Innamoramenti d’Orlando, Buovi ... e finalmente l’Ariosto stesso non mancavano di questo gran vizio di contenere

Women and Translations of the Classics 267 in essi cose lascive e disoneste e indegne..trovai finalmente questo bellissimo libro in lingua Spagnuola ... tutto castissimo, tutto puro, tutto cristiano. 15 The work in reality re-writes Andrea da Barberino’s Il Guerrin Meschino (1473) written in Italian and already available. Cf. Giulia Corsalini, “Guerrino nel regno della Sibilla. Tullia d’Aragona e il romanzo di Andrea da Barberino,” Sinestesie Online 13 (2015): 1–2; G. Allaire, “Tullia d’Aragona’s “Il Meschino” as Key to a Reappraisal of Her Work,” Quaderni d’italianistica 16.1 (1995): 42. 16 Tiziana Plebani, “Il genere” dei libri: storie e rappresentazioni della letteratura al femminile e al maschile tra Medioevo ed età moderna (Milano: Franco Angeli, 2001), 24. 17 Dante Alighieri, Vita nuova 25.6, “che volle fare intendere le sue parole a donna, a la quale era malagevole d’intendere li versi latini,” cited in T. Barolini, Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture (New York: Fordham University, 2006), 346–5 and 462; A. Cornish, “A Lady Asks: The Gender of Vulgarisation in Late Medieval Italy,” PMLA 115 (2000): 174; M. Zancan, “Letteratura, critica, storiografia. Questioni di genere,” Bollettino d’Italianistica 2.2 (2005): 5–31. 18 Asor Rosa, “La fondazione del laico,” in Letteratura Italiana: Le Questioni, ed. Asor Rosa, vol. 5 (Torino: Einaudi, 1986), 24–34. English translation is mine. 19 Dedications become so typical during this century that between 1601 and 1607 Comino Ventura published an extensive collection of letters of dedication providing readers with good examples of all sorts of texts of this kind. See: G. Savoldelli and R. Frigeni, Comino Ventura. Tra Lettere e libri di lettere (Florence: Olschki, 2017). On the “margins” or “threshold” of the book, Gérard Genette, Paratext: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 20 Marco Paoli, La dedica: storia di una strategia editoriale (Italia, secoli XVI–XIX) (Lucca: L. Pacini Fazzi, 2009). 21 C. Di Filippo Bareggi, Il mestiere di scrivere. Lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento (Roma: Bulzoni, 1988). 22 P. Serassi, La vita di Torquato Tasso, ed. C. Guasti (Firenze: Barbera, Bianchi e Comp., 1854), 484. 23 B. Guthmüller, “Letteratura nazionale e traduzione dei classici nel cinquecento,” Lettere Italiane 45.4 (1993): 508. 24 Ibid. 25 Erasmo from Valvasone, trans. Thebaide (Venice: Francesco de Franceschi, 1570), 12.238-9, p. 158r. and v.

Cara Thebaide mia, dopo molti anni Ch’ assai sudando verso il fin ti porto, Girerai molto in questi novi panni Il mondo poi che il tuo padron fia morto? [...] L’ Itala gioventù ti legge e ode; Già ti raccoglie, e favorisce, e approva [...] Già donne e cavalier, servi d’amore, Ti fan cantando alcune volte honore [...]

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26 Ludovico Dolce, Trasformationi (Venezia: Giolito de’ Ferrari, 1553). 27 My translation of Giovanni Sabadino degli Arienti, Gynevra de le clare donne, eds. C. Ricci and A. Bacchi Della Lega (Bologna: RomagnoliDell’Acqua, 1888), 365, originally printed in 1502. 28 Jane Everson and L. Sampson, introduction to The Italian Academies 1525–1700; Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent, eds. Jane Everson, D. Reidy, and L. Sampson (New York and London: Routledge, 2016), 1–22; J. Campbell and A. Larsen, introduction to Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters, eds. Julie Campbell and Anne R. Larsen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 1–25. 29 Quoted by A. Chemello, “La Vita come prefazione ‘allografa.’ Alcuni asempi,” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 113.1 (2001): 137. 30 A. Schutte, “Irene di Spilimbergo: The Image of a Creative Woman in Late Renaissance Italy,” Renaissance Quarterly 44.1 (1991): 51 quoting Atanagi’s Vita 1561, A6v–A7. 31 Androniki Dialeti, “The Publisher Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, Female Readers and the Debate About Women in Sixteenth Century Italy,” Renaissance and Reformation 28.4 (2004): 6. 32 Alessandro Piccolomini, De la sfera del mondo (Siena: Volpini, 1540). 33 Eugenio Refini, “‘Non solo delle opinioni, ma delle parole ancora’: Alessandro Piccolomini volgarizzatore rinascimentale di Aristotele e la sua teoria della traduzione,” Tradurre 8 (2015), https://rivistatradurre.it/ non‐solo‐delle‐opinioni‐ma‐delle‐parole‐ancora/. 34 Florindo Cerreta, Alessandro Piccolomini: letterato e filosofo sanese del Cinquecento (Siena: Accademia degli Intronati, 1960), 38–9. 35 F. Tomasi, “L’epistolario di Marcantonio Piccolomini,” in Per uno studio delle corrispondenze letterarie di età moderna, Atti del seminario internazionale di Bergamo 11–12 Dicembre 2014, eds. C. Carminati, P. Procaccioli, E. Russo, and C. Viola (Verona: Edizioni QuiEdit, 2016), 214. 36 Tomasi, “L’epistolario di Marcantonio Piccolomini,” 210; F. Tomasi, “Strategie paratestuali nel commento alla lirica del XVI secolo (1540–1560),” in Le soglie testuali: apparenze e funzioni del paratesto nel secondo Cinquecento e oltre, eds. P. Boissier and R. Scheffer (Manziana: Vecchiarelli Editore), 33. About the presence of women in the cultural life of Siena, see: Konrad Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics and Poetry in Sixteenth Century Siena (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2012). 37 A. Coller, “The Sienese Accademia degli Intronati and Its Female Interlocutors,” Italianist 26.2 (2006): 223–46; R. Belladonna, “Gli Intronati, le donne, Aonio Paleario e Agostino Museo in un dialogo inedito di Marcantonio Piccolomini, il Sodo Intronato (1538),” Bullettino senese di storia patria 99 (1992): 48–90; Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 46; E. Brizio, “Women and Community in Early Modern Europe: Approaches and Perspectives,“ SF Online 15.1 (2018). 38 D. Robin, “A Renaissance Feminist Translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus,” in Roman Literature, Gender, and Reception: domina illustris, eds. D. Lateiner, B. K. Gold, and J. Perkins (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), 207–21. 39 G. Nelsestuen, “Oikonomia as a Theory of Empire in the Political Thought of Xenophon and Aristotle,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017): 85. 40 Alessandro Piccolomini, La Economica di Xenofonte, tradotta di lingua Greca in lingua Toscana (Venezia: Del Pozzo, 1540), 17r.

Women and Translations of the Classics 269 La memoria poi, e il discorso e la diligentia, per esser cose necessarie a l’offitio così de lhuomo come de la donna, esso Dio partitamente lo diuise loro; tal che non si puo chiaramente conoscer che di loro nhabbia piu parte. 41 Ibid., 15v. In the Greek text at 7.5–6. “che pochissime cose uedeva, o intendeua, o parlaua.” 42 A. Glazebrook, “Cosmetics and Sôphrosunê: Ischomacos’ Wife in Xenophon’s Oikonomikos,” The Classical World 102.3 (2009): 239; cf. Robin, “A Renaissance Feminist Translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus,” 209 and 214. 43 L. Borsetto, Riscrivere gli antichi, riscrivere i moderni e altri studi di letteratura Italiana e comparata tra Quattro e Ottocento (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’ Orso, 2002), VI. 44 Virginia Cox, Women’s Writings in Italy: 1400–1650 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008); Dionisotti, Geografia e Storia della letteratura Italiana, 227–54; Eisenbichler, The Sword and the Pen, 2–3; Virginia Cox, The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writings in Counter-Reformation Italy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), xi–xxiv. 45 Moderata Fonte, Tredici Canti del Floridoro (Venezia: Rampazzetti, 1581). Italian text is M. Fonte, Tredici canti del Floridoro, ed. Valeria Finucci (Modena: Mucchi Editore, 1995), English translation is Floridoro. A Chivalric Poem, ed. V. Finucci and trans. J. Kisacky (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 46 Ludovico Dolce. L’Achille et l’Enea (Venezia: Gabriel Giolito de Ferraris, 1572). 47 Ibid., 536. “non potendosi temperar un giusto sdegno senza vendetta.” 48 Fonte, Tredici canti del Floridoro. Cf. Behr, Arms and the Woman, 55–62.

Il re stordito cade e’l verde piano D’un corrente ruscel vermiglio irriga; La guerriera, c’ha’l cor molle e umano, Vistosi il meglio aver di quella briga Gli corre sopra, e con pietosa mano Dell’elmo sanguinoso il capo sbriga, E dimostra a ciascun la sua vittoria Nel volto smorto, ond’ha trionfo e gloria. (Fl. 13.63) 49 Dolce, L’Achille et l’Enea, 347. Per Didone, che disperata disegna d’ammazzarsi, e s’ammazza, si conosce, quanto possa in un’animo generoso il pentimento d’una cosa mal fatta, e quanto debbono esser caute le donne, e massime quelle, che sono in concetto

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Francesca D’Alessandro Behr d’honorate, e d’honeste, e in darsi in preda a uno lasciuo appetito, peroche spesso elle sono ingannate, e non resta appresso di loro senon infamia, pentimento, e rimordimento continuo della tormentata coscienza.

50 Lucrezia Marinella, The Nobility an Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men, ed. and trans. Ann Dunhill (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 97. About Dido in the Renaissance, K. Kallendorf, “Boccaccio’s Dido and the Rhetorical Criticism of Virgil’s Aeneid,” Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 403–4. The two most important sources for the Dido myth before Virgil are Justin’s Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus and Timaeus’s Histories. About the Dido’s reception, M. Desmond, Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and Medieval Aeneid (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994): 23–73; M. Franklin, “Mantegna’s Dido: Faithful Widow or Abandoned Lover?” Artibus et Historiae 21.41 (2000): 117–8; D. Quint, Epic and Empire. Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993): 21–50. 51 Marinella, The Nobility an Excellence of Women, 68. Italian citations of La Nobiltà are from the 1601’s edition (Venezia: Ciotti). Giusta era Isabella di Aragona e giusta come dice Virgilio fu Didone, come si legge nel primo libro dell’Eneida:

Iura dabat, legesque uiris, operumque laborem Partibus ęquabat iustis et questi uersi latini traslati in uolgar da Annibal caro, cosi suonano: E mentre con dolcezza editti, & leggi Porge à le genti; e con egual compenso L’opre distribuisce, e le fatiche; 52 Judith Yarnall, Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 91. 53 Cited in S. Kolsky, The Genealogy of Women: Studies in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus Claris (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2003), 75–6. 54 L. Benedetti, “La Sconfitta di Diana. Note per una rilettura della Gerusalemme Liberata,” MLN 108.1 (1993): 31–58; JoAnn Cavallo, Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, from Public Duty to Private Pleasure (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004). 55 I. MacCarthy, “Alcina’s Island from Imitation to Innovation in the Orlando Furioso” Italica 81.3 (2004): 325. 56 Marinella, Henry or Byzantium Gained

Non ti doler se’l tuo malvagio tanto Destin ti ha spinto in parti erme e remote, Ché qui tra fiere e tronchi ancora lice Viver beato e’n sé lieto e felice. (Enrico 5.80.5–8) Col contemplar delle cagioni ascose Gli alti principi e le mirabil opre, Vien l’uomo divin, sue voglie gloriose,

Women and Translations of the Classics 271 Per cui l’ascoso e occulto apre e discopre. Vieni al mio tetto, in cui gran sapere pose Somma bellezza, e l’oro il vela e copre. Io, mortal donna, in bel ma frale albergo Vivo e l’alma e i miei strali polisco e tergo. (Enrico 5.81) E lodo lui che tra le stelle e’l sole Di sua diva bellezza eterno regna, Che lungi dal sentier di scherzi e fole Sé tra nebbia mirar mi fece degna Ed a mente mortal che Dio ben cole Far parte del cielo seco non isdegna.” (Enrico 5.82.1–6) 57 Marinella, Henry or Byzantium Gained

Essa [Erina] vede l’animo feroce Tutto avvampare al marziale aspetto: Sorrise alquanto, e con benigna voce Apre la bella bocca a simil detto: Quell’incendio d’onor, che t’arde e coce, Ti lacera così, ti rode il petto, Che’l caro e’l bel non curi, onde si mostra Ricca e abbondante la mia regia chiostra. (Enr. 22.63) Dunque n’andrai là dove il fero Marte Tra lancie e spade, e ben ferrati scudi: D’uccider e ferire insegna l’arte A i cor d’amor e di pietade ignudi; Tu coloro imitando in quella parte Li tuoi teneri affetti acerbi e crudi Farai d’umanità spogliato, e’l core Potrai far lieto ne l’altrui dolore?” (Enr. 22.64) 58 See also: Behr, Arms and the Woman, Ch. 6. 59 Lodovico Domenichi, Nobiltà delle donne (Venezia: Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari, 1551), 95r. 60 Laura Prelipcean, “Dialogic Construction and Interaction in Lodovico Domenichi’s ‘La nobiltà delle donne,’” Renaissance and Reformation 39.2 (2016): 80. 61 A. Cornish, “A Lady Asks: The Gender of Vulgarisation in Late Medieval Italy,” 177. 62 Beatricde Collina, “Moderata Fonte e ‘Il merito delle donne,’” Annali d’Italianistica 7 (1989): 145.

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Works cited Ago, Renata. Il gusto delle cose. Una storia degli oggetti nella Roma del Seicento. Rome: Donzelli editore, 2006. Allaire, G. “Tullia d’Aragona’s “Il Meschino” as Key to a Reappraisal of Her Work.” Quaderni d’italianistica 16.1 (1995): 33–50. Asor Rosa, A. “La fondazione del laico.” In Letteratura Italiana: Le Questioni, edited by A. Asor Rosa, vol. 5, 24–34. Turin: Einaudi, 1986. Arienti, Giovanni Sabadino. Gynevra de le clare donne Gynevra de le clare donne, edited by C. Ricci and A. Bacchi Della Lega. Bologna: RomagnoliDell’Acqua, 1888. Barolini, T. Dante and the Origins of Italian Literary Culture. New York: Fordham University, 2006. Battles, Dominique. The Medieval Tradition of Thebes: History and Narrative in the Roman de Thèbes, Boccaccio, Chaucer and Lydgate. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. Bec, Christiane. Les Livres des Florentines (1413–1608). Florence: Olschki, 1984. Behr, Francesca D. Arms and the Woman: Classical Tradition and Women Writers in the Venetian Renaissance. Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2018. Belladonna, R. “Gli Intronati, le donne, Aonio Paleario e Agostino Museo in un dialogo inedito di Marcantonio Piccolomini, il Sodo Intronato (1538).” Bullettino senese di storia patria 99 (1992): 48–90. Benedetti, L. “La Sconfitta di Diana. Note per una rilettura della Gerusalemme Liberata.” MLN 108.1 (1993): 31–58. Borsetto, L. Riscrivere gli antichi, riscrivere i moderni e altri studi di letteratura Italiana e comparata tra Quattro e Ottocento. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’ Orso, 2002. Brizio, E. “Women and Community in Early Modern Europe: Approaches and Perspectives.” SF Online 15.1 (2018). http://sfonline.barnard.edu/women-andcommunity-in-early-modern-europe-approaches-and-perspectives/il-dialogode-giuochi-by-girolamo-bargagli-and-the-women-of-siena-culture-independence-and-politics/#footnote_1_3951. Campbell, Julie, and Anne R. Larsen, eds. Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters. Farnham: Ashgate, 2009. Cavallo, Jo Ann. Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, from Public Duty to Private Pleasure. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. Cerreta, Florindo. Alessandro Piccolomini: letterato e filosofo sanese del Cinquecento. Siena: Accademia degli Intronati, 1960. Chemello, A. “La Vita come prefazione ‘allografa.’ Alcuni asempi.” Mélanges de l’école française de Rome 113.1 (2001): 123–47. Coller, A. “The Sienese Accademia degli Intronati and Its Female Interlocutors.” Italianist 26.2 (2006): 223–46. Collina, Beatrice. “Moderata Fonte e ‘Il merito delle donne.’” Annali d’Italianistica 7 (1989): 142–64. Cornish, A. “A Lady Asks: The Gender of Vulgarisation in Late Medieval Italy." PMLA 115 (2000): 166–80.

Women and Translations of the Classics 273 Corsalini, Giulia. “Guerrino nel regno della Sibilla. Tullia d’Aragona e il romanzo di Andrea da Barberino.” Sinestesie Online 13 (2015): 1–12. Cox, V. Women’s Writings in Italy: 1400–1650. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. Cox, V. The Prodigious Muse: Women’s Writings in Counter-Reformation Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. D’Aragona, T. Il Meschino altramente detto il Guerrino. Venezia: Sessa, 1560. Desmond, M. Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and Medieval Aeneid. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994. Dialeti, Androniki. “The Publisher Gabriel Giolito de’ Ferrari, Female Readers and the Debate about Women in Sixteenth-Century Italy.” Renaissance and Reformation 28.4 (2004): 5–32. Di Filippo Bareggi, C. Il mestiere di scrivere. Lavoro intellettuale e mercato librario a Venezia nel Cinquecento. Roma: Bulzoni, 1988. Dionisotti, Carlo. Geografia e storia della letteratura Italiana. Torino: Einaudi, 1999 (orig. 1967). Dolce, Ludovico. L’Achille et l’Enea di Messer Lodovico Dolce ... in Ottava Rima. Venezia: Gabriel Giolito de Ferraris, 1572. Domenichi, L. Nobiltà delle donne. Venezia: Gabriele Giolito de Ferrari, 1551. Eisenbichler, Konrad. The Sword and the Pen: Women, Politics and Poetry in Sixteenth Century Siena. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2012. Everson, Jane. The Italian Romance Epic in the Age of Humanism: The Matter of Italy and the World of Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Everson, J., D. Reidy, and L. Sampson, eds. The Italian Academies 1525–1700; Networks of Culture, Innovation and Dissent. New York and London: Routledge, 2016. Folena, G. Volgarizzare e Tradurre. Torino: Einaudi, 1991. Fonte, Moderata. Il Merito delle donne, edited by Adriana Chemello. Milano: Eidos, 1988. Fonte, Moderata. Tredici canti del Floridoro, edited by Valeria Finucci. Modena: Mucchi Editore, 1995. Fonte, Moderata. The Worth of Women. Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men, edited and translated by V. Cox. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Fonte, Moderata. Floridoro. A Chivalric Poem, edited by V. Finucci and translated by J. Kisacky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Fonte, Moderata. Floridoro. A Chivalric Poem, edited by V. Finucci and translated by Julia Kisacky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Franklin, M. “Mantegna’s Dido: Faithful Widow or Abandoned Lover?” Artibus et Historiae 21.41 (2000): 111–22. Genette, G. Paratext: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Glazebrook, A. “Cosmetics and Sôphrosunê: Ischomacos’ Wife in Xenophon’s Oikonomikos.” The Classical World 102.3 (2009): 233–48. Grendler, P. “What Giovanni Read in School: Vernacular Texts in Sixteenth Century Venetian Schools." Sixteenth Century Journal 13.1 (1982): 41–54. Guthmüller, B. “Letteratura nazionale e traduzione dei classici nel cinquecento.” Lettere Italiane 45.4 (1993): 501–18.

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Javitch, Daniel. Proclaiming a Classic: The Canonization of Orlando Furioso. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991. Kallendorf, C. “Boccaccio’s Dido and the Rhetorical Criticism of Virgil’s Aeneid.” Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 401–15. Kolsky, S. The Genealogy of Women: Studies in Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2003. MacCarthy, I. “Alcina’s Island from Imitation to Innovation in the Orlando Furioso.” Italica 81.3 (2004): 325–50. Marinella, Lucrezia. La nobiltà et eccellenze delle donne et i diffetti, e mancamenti degli uomini. Venezia: Ciotti, 1601. Marinella, Lucrezia. The Nobility an Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men, edited and translated by Ann Dunhill. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Nelsestuen, G. “Oikonomia as a Theory of Empire in the Political Thought of Xenophon and Aristotle.” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 57 (2017): 74–104. Nuovo, Angela. I Giolito e la stampa: nell’Italia del XVI secolo. Genève: Librairie Droz, 2005. Nuovo, Angela. The Book Trade in the Italian Renaissance. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Paoli, M. La dedica: storia di una strategia editoriale (Italia, secoli XVI–XIX). Lucca: L. Pacini Fazzi, 2009. Pettegree, Andrew. The Book in the Renaissance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Piccolomini, Alessandro. La Economica di Xenofonte tradotta di lingua Greca in lingua Toscana. Venice: Del Pozzo, 1540. Plebani, Tiziana. Il “genere” dei libri: storie e rappresentazioni della letteratura al femminile e al maschile tra Medioevo ed età moderna. Milan: Franco Angeli, 2001. Prelipcean, Laura. “Dialogic Construction and Interaction in Lodovico Domenichi’s ‘La nobiltà delle donne.’” Renaissance and Reformation 39.2 (2016): 61–83. Quint, D. Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993. Refini, Eugenio. “‘Non solo delle opinioni, ma delle parole ancora’: Alessandro Piccolomini volgarizzatore rinascimentale di Aristotele e la sua teoria della traduzione.” Tradurre: pratiche teorie strumenti 8 (2015). http:// rivistatradurre.it/ Richardson, B. Printing, Writers, and Readers in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Robin, D. “A Renaissance Feminist Translation of Xenophon’s Oeconomicus.” In Roman Literature, Gender, and Reception: domina illustris, edited by Donald Lateiner, Barbara K. Gold, and Judith Perkins, 207–21. New York and London: Routledge, 2013. Ross, Sarah Gwyneth. Everyday Renaissance: The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy in Venice. Florence: I Tatti, 2016. Savoldelli, G., and R. Frigeni. Comino Ventura. Tra Lettere e libri di lettere. Florence: Olschki, 2017.

Women and Translations of the Classics 275 Schutte, A. 1991. “Irene di Spilimbergo: The Image of a Creative Woman in Late Renaissance Italy.” Renaissance Quarterly 44.1 (1991): 42–61. Serassi, P. La vita di Torquato Tasso, edited by C. Guasti. Firenze: Barbera, Bianchi e Comp., 1854. Simiani, Carlo. Nicolò Franco, la vita e le opere. Turin, Rome: Editori L. Roux e C., 1894. Tomasi, Franco. “Strategie paratestuali nel commento alla lirica del XVI secolo (1540–1560).” In Le soglie testuali: apparenze e funzioni del paratesto nel secondo Cinquecento e oltre // Textual Thresholds: Appearances and Functions of Paratext in the Sixteenth Century. Atti della giornata internazionale, Groningen 13 Dicembre 2007, edited by P. Boissier and R. Scheffer, 21–60. Manziana: Vecchiarelli Editore, 2011. Tomasi, Franco. “L’epistolario di Marcantonio Piccolomini.” In Per uno studio delle corrispondenze letterarie di età moderna, Atti del seminario internazionale di Bergamo 11–12 Dicembre 2014, edited by C. Carminati, P. Procaccioli, E. Russo, and C. Viola, 209–43. Verona: Edizioni QuiEdit, 2016. Valvasone di, Erasmo. La Thebaide di Stazio ridotta in ottava rima. Venice: Francesco de Franceschi Senese, 1571. Xenophon. Xenophon in Seven Volumes (LOEB Classical Library). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968–1979. Yarnall, Judith. Transformations of Circe: The History of an Enchantress. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994. Zancan, M. “Letteratura, critica, storiografia. Questioni di genere.” Bollettino d’Italianistica 2.2 (2005): 5–31.

12 Women Are from Venus: Addressing Female Agency with Classical Allegory Helena Kaznowska

Nowadays, travelers looking to experience the splendor of the European renaissance might undertake a cultural pilgrimage to Florence, following the well-worn route around the Uffizi Gallery to view one of the period’s most iconic treasures: The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli. Dating from the mid-1480s, the painting shows the Roman goddess modestly covering her naked body with carefully placed hands and flowing golden locks. The resplendent figure serenely emerges from the water and drifts toward the shore with her feet resting on an oversized scallop shell. Botticelli inherited the artistic tradition from antiquity of placing Venus on a scallop, symbolizing her birth from the sea and thus proclaiming the birth of love.1 Although the trope was adopted before and has often been since, Venus and her shell attracted an unprecedented number of artistic renditions around the turn of the sixteenth century.2 Francesco del Cossa’s fresco at the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara, The Triumph of Venus (1476–84), portrays the majestic figure as she disembarks from a thronelike shell that has been dutifully pulled to shore by two swans, while Titian’s 1520s painting Venus Anadyomene (from the Greek meaning “to rise from the sea”), depicts the goddess wringing her hair as the shell floats nearby. The image of the goddess standing on a scallop shell has become one of the most iconic images associated with the European renaissance, Venus’s birth incarnating the period’s classical rebirth. Ancient Greek interpretations of the goddess’s creation were much more diverse, and although they have been somewhat overshadowed by the scallop as history has progressed, these alternative Venus’s “anadyomene” scenes continued to be copied and revised across Europe in the centuries that followed.3 One such version features a tortoise or turtle, an alternative shell that later featured in Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken geslachts (“On the Excellence of the Female Sex”) by the prominent Dutch physician, politician, and author Johan van Beverwijck.4 The work, which was first published in 1639, blends historical and medical evidence to create a compendium of reasons for recognizing women’s achievements, its success leading to the printing of a second edition four years later.5 The two seemingly disparate tropes depicted by Botticelli and van DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-12

Women Are from Venus 277 Beverwijck are united in their placement of the goddess upon animal shells set against pastoral backdrops, with van Beverwijck’s house in the background echoing the sense of belonging associated with the scallop’s shell in Botticelli’s painting. But by employing different shells, the author and the artist put forward contrasting explanations as to why Venus is making her journey. For Botticelli, the goddess is moving away from her domestic shell onto the island of Cyprus to live and rule; her foot is poised, her raft is moments away from grounding, and she is ready to disembark. It is therefore particularly significant that van Beverwijck’s depiction of the female exemplar Venus is corporally touching an animal that is, by its very nature, inseparable from its home. Fused by both the vertebrae and ribcage, and enclosed by the top and underbelly, a tortoise is firmly welded to its domestic enclosure, and so too is the woman stood upon it in van Beverwijck’s illustration.6 The image prompts us to investigate the complex textual debate surrounding women’s agency and consider how writers sought to prescribe or liberate women’s behavior through their configurations of the overtly domestic allegory. The theme of women and home as inseparable is further developed in van Beverwijck’s illustration thanks to details deployed in the background. Rather than the goddess of spring, Horae, welcoming Venus ashore from her journey as it is portrayed by Botticelli, the printed book depicts a man toiling the land in her place. Instead of Zephyr, god of wind, and Aura, goddess of the breeze, blowing Venus toward her new land and life, a second woman is visible through a doorway who sits inside spinning. While Venus’s knee is bent, ready to complete the expedition that will transport her to foreign lands, the tortoise’s foot in the Dutch illustration is poised to crawl in the direction of the house and return its female rider to a life of domesticity. The image’s caption is in verse: “You, husband, work outside the house / But inside tasks befall your spouse.”7 Although a similar subject is depicted in these two artworks, the overall message in van Beverwijck’s appears starkly different to Botticelli’s Venus: women are housebound and men are to venture out. “The praise of a woman mainly exists in the care she gives to her household,” the Dutch author declares, “[f]or the turtle is always at home, and carries the house along under all circumstances.”8 Nevertheless, there is a certain degree of tension in van Beverwijck’s book as a whole. The mention of a tortoise appears to be at odds with a text that attempts, as the title suggests, to debunk traditional gendered roles, locations, and activities. Split into three parts, the author first discusses the nature of women, followed by a section on their learning and wisdom and, finally, their virtues, showing that women are “not inferior, not equal, but superior” to men, as Lia van Gemert argues.9 Initially, the work is preoccupied with refuting gendered stereotypes by reasoning that since women give birth to humans they are humans themselves, and the author uses his medical expertise to argue that

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women contribute essentially to human reproduction. He contests the Galenic principles that women are necessarily cooler in temperature than men, which he dismisses as being irrelevant. After this, van Beverwijck offers practical activities to keep women’s minds occupied, designed to recognize and enhance their abilities. In the final section, the author illustrates his claims by drawing on the virtues of 700 women from biblical, historical, and classical sources, as well as citing poetry by Dutch women writers. At one point, van Beverwijck writes: “to those who argue that women are fit only to manage the house and no more, I reply that many women go from the home and practice trade and the arts and learning. Only let women come to the exercise of other matters and they will show that they are capable of all things.”10 Van Beverwijck requires his audiences, early modern and modern, to be more than merely passive as they attempt to determine his attitude to female agency. Should women “go from the home” as van Beverwijck’s text states, since “they are capable of all things,” or should they be restricted to the household’s “inside tasks” as the image and caption demand? This interpretive dichotomy will form the heart of my chapter, as I explore the contexts in which these starkly different conducts were advocated through configurations of Venus and the tortoise. The texts I choose confirm the trope’s flexibility. First is a printed conduct book by Thomas Gataker aimed at newlyweds, followed by an extract from a manuscript conduct book written by William Page to his widowed mother; both texts draw upon the tortoise’s negative connotations to place restrictions on women’s agency and make them merely passive by confining them to their domestic environments. Following this is an emblem poem by Lady Hester Pulter that was to be circulated within her family11 and, finally, a printed Easter sermon by John Hacket; both authors suggest that women should become more visible, audible, and autonomous members of society. Early modern manifestations are by no means restricted to these four texts, and a more expansive study of the emblem is still wanting.12 My selection was made thanks to the authors’ pluriform audiences—extending from Pulter’s literate nobility, to Page’s non-gentry mother, to the listeners of Gataker and Hacket’s parishes—considering how poets, preachers and conduct manual writers account for their intended audiences and questioning how contextual signification shifts measurably in these invocations. These choices of genre nuance reception, as women’s agency was stifled, interrogated, or promoted by writers who used the same classical trope to influence audiences across early modern culture.

12.1 Classical Readings of the Venus Trope The illustration in van Beverwijck’s text of Venus standing on a tortoise is a variation upon an ancient theme. This pairing is the result of a tradition most famously developed by Phidias, the Greek painter and sculptor

Women Are from Venus 279 renowned for his statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world.13 Little is known about Phidias; he is believed to have lived in Athens from around 490 until 430 BC but no originals of his artwork exist.14 The artist’s sculpture of Aphrodite—Venus’s Grecian antecedent—is thought to have been created in the c. 430 BC after his commission of Zeus, and stood in the ancient district of Elis with her foot resting upon a tortoise. While some successful excavations have been carried out at the agora, Aphrodite’s temple and Phidias’s statue have not been uncovered.15 Instead, Phidias’s work is immortalized by artists’ copies produced at a later date—although the accuracy of these replicas is up for debate—and known thanks to the praise of ancient writers.16 Phidias’s reasons for sculpting the figure of Aphrodite are clear, considering the temple at Elis in which his finished artwork stood was dedicated to the goddess; but his decision to associate the goddess of love with a tortoise is only elucidated by surviving commentary provided hundreds of years later by Pausanias and Plutarch.17 Pausanias, born c. 125 AD, produced a guide to ancient landmarks, Periegesis Hellados (“Description of Greece”), in which he remarks that Phidias’s reason for matching the goddess with the tortoise might have been an attempt to personify one side of Aphrodite’s dual contrasting personalities, related to the two versions of her birth. Two different statues stood at Elis to embody her conflicting personalities. One, Pandemus, meaning “common,” was embodied as a goat to symbolize the low sensory pleasures of touch and its lustful desires. The other, Urania, meaning “heavenly,” was born out of the foaming sea, and it was this statue, Pausanias asserts, that was “the work of Pheidias, and she stands with one foot upon a tortoise.”18 While the goddess and goat were made of bronze, the “goddess in the temple they call Heavenly”—that of Aphrodite and the tortoise—was made of chryselephantine, an overlay of “ivory and gold,” materials as valuable as they were perishable. Pausanias suggests that the figure was connected to the shelled creature since it represented her birthplace, and that the tortoise reminded the goddess of her personal history as she moved to new lands, rather than providing an enclosure to which she should return. Yet Pausanias concedes that his is just a theory: as to “[t]he meaning of the tortoise and of the he-goat,” he remarks, “I leave to those who care to guess.”19 The biographer and author Plutarch lived between c. 46 AD and c. 120 AD, providing commentary on the same statue in “Coniugalia Praecepta” (“Advice to the Bride and Groom”), extracted from his book, Moralia (“Morals”). The first English translation was published in 1603 and according to his interpretation, it was the theme of matrimony that connected the goddess to the tortoise in Phidias’s sculpture. Phidias, when he made the image of Venus for the Elaeans, devised that she should tread with her feete upon a tortoise shell, signifying

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Helena Kaznowska thereby that a woman ought to keepe home and not goe foorth of doores, but stay within house with silence; for surely a wife is to speake either unto her husband onely, or else by the meanes of her husband; neither must she thinke much and be offended, if like the minstrell that soundeth the hautboies, she utter a lowder and bigger voice than her owne, by the tongue of another.20

Since homes are created by keeping women physically and emotionally attached to their domestic spaces, argues Plutarch, women must “not goe foorth of doors” and, like tortoises, should be permanently confined within their homes. “[N]either must she thinke much,” he warns, and so women become their husbands’ agents and are muted altogether.21 Readers of English would have learned about the Venus trope through the first vernacular translation of Plutarch’s Morals by Philemon Holland in 1603,22 and although Pausanias’s text was available from 1500 in Latin, it was not translated into English until 1780.23 These assorted narratives enforce existing ideas about the instability of inherited classical tropes and their signifying potential. Early modern writers did not necessarily have a “rigorously conceptualized understanding of what was involved in borrowing from or alluding to a classical author,” as Colin Burrow argues of William Shakespeare, who “could make use of his classical reading so richly because he did not have a dogmatic or a programmatic attitude to it.”24 Plutarch’s suggestion that women ought to “keepe home” by having their touch and sounds restricted proved influential to seventeenth-century English writers. While some agreed that women’s movements and voices should be suppressed, such as Gataker and Page, it was also highly contested by others, such as Pulter and Hacket.

12.2 Gataker, Marriage Dvties The Puritan minister Thomas Gataker was something of a nuptials expert, outliving four wives before his death in 1654 at the age of seventynine, although his short book on conduct published in 1620, Marriage dvties briefely covched together, does not dwell on his own domestic experiences.25 Instead, it pragmatically advises married couples on their relationships and suggests how to distribute domestic duties. Conduct books were typically written by men and aimed at women, contributing to what Suzanne Hull has called a “mini-explosion of female literature” comprising “largely practical guides,” which occurred from the end of the sixteenth century and proliferated throughout the seventeenth.26 These books and their authors sought to provide information on model behavior for women, but appear instead to have been a way of “policing” conduct “to keep women submissive and focused on domestic affairs,” as Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer observe.27 While some publications focus on elite women’s experiences, Protestant conduct

Women Are from Venus 281 manuals “frequently imagine a household in which women have a different set of responsibilities than those of the leisured classes,” as Martine van Elk asserts, often catering to non-elite readers.28 The intended readership of the Puritan minister’s publication appears to be no exception. Gataker’s text comprises “raw notes of a Sermon long since made” as a wedding day preacher for the congregation of Rotherhithe in Surrey, where he preached for over forty years.29 Although the intervening editorial and commercial processes that made some oral sermons into printed documents is something that demands further study, the original airing of the minister’s ideas might have provided aural guidance to a non-elite listening public.30 His printed text appears to be aimed at a similarly non-aristocratic reader. Rather than discussing the management of large-scale households owned by the leisured classes, Gataker advises wives to obtain “profitable worke” to enlarge their household’s income, and during these labors they must “thinketh not scorne to soile [their] hands.”31 It is to Rotherhithe’s community of non-elite dwellers living amid the district’s shipyards, as well as the wider readership of his printed text, that Gataker referenced the classical trope to condemn women who socialized freely and promote women who were dedicated to making their homely shells. Marriage dvties is dedicated to Robert and Dorothie Cooke, the newly married son and daughter-in-law of the Member of Parliament Sir William Cooke, and was given as a new year’s gift. Although Gataker did not conduct their nuptials (the “knitting […] together”) himself, the preacher’s dedication was appropriate as an old friend of the family, having tutored the Cooke children while he studied at Lincoln’s Inn.32 In the publication’s preface, the author hints at his forthcoming assessment of domestic cohabitation, wishing the “hopefvll yovng covple […] many comfortable daies in Gods feare and fauour to their mutuall and eternall good.”33 It should not be assumed that the presence of both husband and wife within Gataker’s preface is indicative of a text “concerned with distinctly ‘female needs’,” as Helen Smith warns, nor should women’s patronage be seen to operate “as an indirect alternative to authorship” where “dedications are a reliable guide to its operation.”34 While the wife’s appearance in the preface establishes her as a public figure to readers of the text, as Marriage dvties continues, it becomes apparent that Dorothie Cooke’s outwards-facing demeanor is not advised of other wives. Despite this textual union alongside her husband as joint patrons, with their “mutuall and eternall” marital union, this does not mean that the domestic responsibilities Gataker discusses throughout his text should be the same for both men and women.35 Women’s relationships with their homes are represented by the tortoise’s fusion with its shell, in which the classical emblem is celebrated and Christian approval is cast over its “heathen” ancient Greek origins:

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Helena Kaznowska Apostle Paul willeth that women be house-keepers, or keepers at home, as we call them hous-wiues: and the heathen for that one respect among others made […] the Toteis * an embleme of womanhood.36

“Housekeeper” was a term often used to specifically mean the maintenance of the physical domestic space, and was commonly deployed by sixteenthand seventeenth-century writers to describe women and men.37 Nevertheless, Gataker glosses over the term’s nuances as he corrects it to “housewife,” which specifically signifies a woman’s care of her family and home.38 He therefore asserts that only women must be welded to their home physically and emotionally by referring to the tortoise as an “embleme of womanhood.”39 Anthony Fletcher’s suggestion that conduct books were “a product of the Reformation” certainly resonates here; Martin Luther, he argues, considered marriage and motherhood to be woman’s “inescapable vocation” and therefore Protestant rhetoric stressed the patriarchal family “more forcefully than ever before as the nucleus of the church and of society.”40 The content of these publications was “stereotyped and repetitious,” Fletcher argues, “yet, in their force and coherence rather than their total originality, they portray a distinctive English version of the Protestant idea of marriage.”41 By alluding to the trope of Venus standing on a tortoise, Gataker reassures his readers of a familiar Puritan social order that, if his guidance is followed, will remain intact. Rather than championing women’s domestic achievements to further his argument, however, he focuses on the negative consequences of when women are neglectful of their domestic duties. The preacher compares tortoises to wives who are negligent or absent while “worke about the house goeth but vntowardly forward,” causing there to be “none to ouersee, or looke after” the family and home.42 Wives that abscond from their domestic duties will be denounced as “gadders abroad,” despite women being like the Torteis, carr[ying] their whole house on their backe, which though they feele not the weight of, yet maketh the husbands backe ake, yea and cracke too, breaketh the backe of their estate: […] so farre are they from helping to further or aduance their estate. Such should remember the saying of Salomon, that as the wise woman helpeth to build vp the house: so shee is a foole that thus pulleth the house downe with her owne hands.43 All wives are automatically attached to their homes, yet the bad wife “feele[s] not the weight of” her domestic responsibilities, meaning her husband bears the burden—so much so that it makes him “ake.” The tortoise trope has been morphed here, as Gataker suggests that a man might have to resort to carrying the domestic load on his back if a

Women Are from Venus 283 woman is inattentive of her expected role. The foolish wife’s lackluster approach results in an unsuccessful marital union and the destruction of their estate. Therefore, what makes a bad wife and an unstable home is, according to Gataker, when she is “wandering abroad” from her rightful domestic duties: it must “bee condemned the practise of such wiues [who] are gadders abroad,” or those who are “least acquainted with, or delighting in ought at their own home.”44 To avoid a wayward wife and a division of labor that burdens the husband with unnecessary domestic responsibility, Gataker writes that couples should collaboratively “build up” their marital home. Later in the text the author compares a harmonious household to the intricate mechanisms of a clock: if the spring be faultie, the wheels can not goe, or if they mooue not either other, the hammer can not strike: so here, where dutie faileth between man and wife it causeth a neglect of all other good duties.45 The moral of Gataker’s publication is that newlyweds must work together to have a marital home that runs like clockwork, despite the difference in their rightful domestic duties. As Heidi Brayman Hackel argues, conduct books—along with legal statutes and educational guides—are one overt way in which “the pressures of the patriarchal state on female readers can be felt”; and they “reveal the assumptions of patriarchy in its ‘domestic form’.”46 This is true in terms of Gataker’s authorial, masculine prescriptivism that directs women’s behavior, inextricably tying a wife’s physical body to her home despite advocating a collaborative domestic environment. “Marriage in this period was expected to be an unequal partnership in which the husband’s superior position was justified by his greater strength and wisdom,” Ralph Houlbrooke argues: “[h]armony was supposed to prevail as a result of wifely obedience, the judicious exercise of husbandly authority, and mutual affection and forbearance.”47 Certainly, the preacher does propose that a mutually-maintained domestic network can and should be achieved, and this in turn offers a contrast to Plutarch’s more extreme commentary that stipulates how a wife’s actions, thoughts, and opinions should be dictated by her husband. And yet with Gataker’s emphasis on the hands-on approach needed to maintain an estate, combined with his condemnation of wives venturing “vntowardly forward,” Gataker aligns himself to the Plutarchan premise that “a woman ought to keepe home and not goe foorth of doors.”48

12.3 Page, “The Widdowe Indeed” While Gataker supplies his conduct theories about husbands and wives through print and aural forms, the classical trope was not singularly used

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by writers of the time to suggest the appropriate habitat for married women. Other contemporary literature sought to prescribe unmarried women’s conduct by refiguring the same ancient emblem, as in the work of the Church of England clergyman, William Page (1590–1664). Page published a series of treatises and translations in the 1630s and 1640s, but he also left a collection of manuscripts to the University of Oxford, his alma mater. These include “The Widdowe Indeed,” dating from the 1620s, which draws its title from the biblical text of Timothy (5.3) when Saint Paul urges the church at Corinth to honor “widows indeed.”49 It is the only surviving English language treatise from the period devoted exclusively to advising widows—a text that the unmarried Page had intended to be read by his mother.50 The octavo book, containing 240 pages of immaculate handwriting, measures 16 cm × 20 cm; it is bound in vellum and was given to the Bodleian between 1634 and 1635, where it remains.51 “The Widdowe Indeed” explores diverse, multicultural attitudes toward widowhood. Page draws upon the “strange” practice of Indian women “amongst whom it is a custome that so soone as their husbands dy, they will kill themselues shortly after if not presently at his funeral.”52 The author refers to ancient Greek mythology, in which a “fayre and fine younge damsell […] defloured by Neptune” was, due to her “gay and gorgeous apparel,” transformed into a crow; Page uses this as a warning against widows’ wearing of “light and wanton apparell [as] they are in danger to make shipwracke of their honesty.”53 Foremost, however, the author examines the practices of Biblical widows. He celebrates the “deuoute and religious widdowe Anna [… who] serued God with fastings and prayers”; he applauds the widow Sarepta, who “had but a handfull of meate and a little oyle […] yet when the phrophet Eliah prayed her to giue him thereof she refused not, but willingly and readily prouided it”; and he praises the daring widow Judith who “deliuered her people from death and destruction.”54 Demonstrating the ultimate Protestant experience of salvation, these women were Page’s widows indeed; widows in early modern England must aspire to be like these Biblical role models by deploying similar levels of exemplary self-control in their actions. As Barbara J. Todd and Jeremy Boulton persuasively document, English widows in the seventeenth century were less likely to remarry than ever before.55 This was due to legal factors and popular cultural conceptions: women risked losing control of the property from their first marriage for their own use or for their children’s inheritance; remarriage was sometimes seen as disloyal to the deceased husband and family; it was, perhaps, a rejection of the typically male-headed household; or because remarriage was interpreted as sexual promiscuity—a theme which dominates Page’s text. The author develops his argument supporting a widow’s chastity by referencing the classical emblem, adapting

Women Are from Venus 285 the trope to feature a snail which can, unlike most tortoises, retract its body fully into its shell and totally internalize itself from the wider world.56 [F]or if euery good woman should be like a snayle hid within her house (from whence I thinke they are very fitly called housewifes) then much more my widdowe wille keep within doores who hath more occasions to be priuate and remote from company and lesse cause to go abroad.57 While Page’s denunciation of exploration is not explicitly sexual in this instance, two pages later he specifies the types of “go[ing] abroad” that widows should refrain from: I speake not this to condeme the comerce and meetings of women upon speciall occasions, [… for the] company and conference of modest and discreete matrons is a great comfort and recreation the one to the other […]. but this is that which I dislike and this I would have my widdowe take heade of that—shee come as little as shee can into the company of younge men. what doth a widdowe sayth St Jerome amongst a multitude of servants amongst a heape of servingmen. fly (sayth he) the company of younge men let not these trimned tricked and dainty trim youths come within the roofe of thyne house, drive away from thyne house the singer, the fiddler, the piper, and all this rowte of the diuell as the deadly Songs of Syrens[.]58 Having only moments before compared the widow to a snail, Page’s mention of the young men’s entrance into the “roofe of thyne house” appears to be a less than subtle sexual reference to their penetration of both home and widow. A prominent trope in ballads was “presenting the fiddler or piper as a promoter of lewdness and debauchery,” argues Christopher Marsh, a tradition that Page aligns with by referencing the two instrumentalists.59 So too does the singer, as he warns against the musicians’ enchanting melodies which, much like those of sirens, would lead the widow down the “rowte” to the devil. These unfavorable musicians recall the Plutarchian suggestion that a wife’s voice should only be amplified like a hautboy instrument through her husband, not by embarking on new relationships with “younge men.” The implicit monogamy of the ideal wife’s acoustic presence is developed by Page, who suggests that the widow who keeps the company of siren-like male musicians will be sexually promiscuous, too. For Page, the fear of widows venturing out of doors stems from a concern about who they might meet; it is as much an invasion of the boundaries of the female self as it is the boundaries of the spaces in which she resides. According to the

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author, widows should keep their domestic spaces, and so too their corporeal “domestic spaces,” free from male company. Page explains in greater detail his anxieties at the consequences of when widows entertain “younge men.” But let these women and widdowes remember how Solomon describeth the harlot, whose feete (sayth he) cannot abide in her house now shee is without, now in the streets, and lyeth in wayte at euery corner. These gadding gossipps the Apostle noteth when he sayth they will go from house to house as though they had rather be any where then at their owne house. neither will they be content to be at one house onely but they must go up and downe from house to house. […F]or if it be the custome and property of yonge and wanton widdowes to goe from house to house […] then on the contrary it must be the condition and practise of my widdow indeed to live privately and retiredly at home and not thus runn from house to house.60 Page’s paranoid warning against moving “from house to house” is repeated four times. The promiscuous journey of the harlot widow, who “lyeth in wayte at euery corner” and journeys “up and downe,” is a far cry from the loyal snail who is physically conjoined to and contained within her own home. A stark contrast between the physical and ideological domestic loyalties of the snail and the harlot is drawn upon directly. Writing in the margins next to the interpretation of Solomon’s religious verse, and on the page opposite the aforementioned snail reference, Page mentions the classical trope once again: thertfore it was of a gods deuise of Phidias to make the image of venus wth her feete treading upon a tortoise shell, signifying thereby that a woman ought to keepe at home and not often go forth of doors/ Plutarch[.]61 The author’s decision to annotate here forms a paratextual connection between his variation of the trope featuring a snail, and the direct reference to Phidias and Plutarch’s tortoise on the opposite page. In doing so, he offers a jarring contrast between Venus, the archetypal woman, and the harlot.62 “If writing is preservative,” as Lisa Gitelman suggests, these blank parts of books “preserved preservation.” “Their design, manufacture, and adoption worked to conserve patterns of inscription and expression.”63 With this informed textual and spatial planning, nestled next to his condemnation of the harlot who ran, repeatedly, from house to house, Page cultivates instead a stark juxtaposition between the two types of women—the remarrying widow and the chaste domestic “widow indeed”; the harlot and her snail’s shell, or Venus and her

Women Are from Venus 287 tortoise. Page also appears to be drawing from Pausanias’s interpretation of the Venus trope by recognizing the dual personality of Aphrodite. By referencing the harlot, he brings to mind the common touch of Aphrodite Pandemus, and by alluding to Venus and the tortoise, he references the celestial, heavenly Aphrodite Urania who was born from the sea. With his paratextual linking of the goddess’s dual nature, Page appears to recognize the interpretive ambiguity of the classical trope and work to both its extremes. As Jennifer Panek asks in her study of widows and suitors in early modern drama, “[w]hen a woman emerged, at her husband’s death, from the patriarchal control of coverture, why did men find it in their interest to deploy the fiction of her inordinate sexual appetite?”64 To further Panek’s study on suitors, why would Page counsel his own mother in sexual matters? Perhaps it was a financially-incentivized endeavor; a matter of securing his inheritance, which a remarriage might divert from his grasp. Or was he trying to protect her from gossip that might erupt if she were to remarry? As Dorothea Kehler suggests, the Catholic shackles condemning remarriage were hard to shake off in post-reformation England, despite the fact that “[m]ost Protestant thinkers and polemicists […] knew in principle that they should feel differently].”65 Although many Protestant authors encouraged this practice of remarriage, as Alan Macfarlane and Miriam Slater argue, others “could not escape its age-old coding as a betrayal of the deceased.”66 In reality, remarriage was a common occurrence, but claims of bigamy, cuckoldry, and disrespect to the deceased were equally common.67 If Page also made a habit of preaching to his congregation on the validity of a widow’s celibacy, it is no wonder that this Church of England clergyman wanted to warn his own mother against it so that she could become a model citizen and avoid disapproval from the community he had helped to educate.

12.4 Pulter, “Emblem 13” The conduct literature that I have drawn upon so far has focused only on male interpretations of the feminine classical trope, but by the middle of the seventeenth century, the emblem had been interpreted by Lady Hester Pulter (1595/6–1678). Well-educated and highly literate, Pulter composed her manuscript at the manor of Broadfield, the rural home in Hertfordshire that she shared with her husband Arthur and their fifteen children.68 It is perhaps unsurprising that she wrote most of her poetry during the long periods of customary postpartum lying-in.69 Pulter never published during her lifetime. Her manuscript, containing 120 poems and the first part of a prose romance, is in the Brotherton Collection at the University of Leeds, having been discovered only in 1996.70 Composed between the early 1640s and 1667, Pulter’s literature is generally considered to be a part of her and her husband’s supposed

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“royalist retirement” from public life during this period of political turmoil.71 One common way of avoiding “problems of past, present and future” during the English Civil War, as Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday argue, was to “turn away from the world of messy political confrontation and create an idealized world of art or devotion.”72 Many Royalist writers produced religious verse, poetry, masques, and other escapist texts, and as Earl Miner declared: “the most distinctive feature of the Cavalier response to the times was retreat.”73 Although this trend has typically been considered in relation to male writers, in choosing to compose emblems—which were an increasingly unpopular art form by the middle of the century—Rachel Dunn argues that Pulter “present[s] the double death of the emblem poem and the king.”74 But the extent to which her withdrawal was “passively endured rather than actively resisted” should be contested, James Loxley warns—and I argue that this theme is explored by Pulter in her use of the tortoise trope.75 Pulter’s is the only known English emblem book authored by a woman that still exists from the early modern period.76 Emblem books were, as Rosemary Freeman defines, “a collection of moral symbols” containing or implying images, captioned with an interpretive motto.77 They were either wholly spiritual meditations on Christianity or moralizing in their content, such as Pulter’s, with the aim of propelling its reader towards virtue.78 Although her volume does not contain literal pictures, Pulter’s text invokes imagery by interpreting the classical trope as one both strange and familiar to her readers, beginning her composition “Emblem 13” with a male porcupine’s attack upon a female tortoise. The porcupine went ruffling in his pride, Scorning the humble tortoise by his side, Spurning her oft, and spurting many a quill; The tortoise pulled her head in and lay still. He called her “patient fool” and “suff’ring ass”; Thus o’er her back, insulting, he did pass.79 These opening lines reveal that the male porcupine insults the tortoise because of her passive response to his forthright provocation: she is a “patient fool” and a “sufff’ring ass” since she submits to his quillspurting. As Pulter’s porcupine climbs upon the tortoise’s shell, she inverts the figure of Venus who stands in other versions of the myth. He can easily perform this repressive action because the tortoise is concealed within her home in a motionless pose, the shelled creature’s passive domesticity and refusal to journey means that she deserves the attack, reasons the porcupine. After the male oppressor has finished physically and metaphorically walking over the tortoise, the abusive companion’s behavior is immediately met with retribution as “a loaded cart and men came by” who

Women Are from Venus 289 “threw stones and lashed their whip, / Which made the furious porcupine to skip.”80 Pulter’s female character does not emerge unscathed from this encounter either, as the men “[t]hen drove their cart over the tortoise shell.”81 The ambiguous impact of the poet’s imagery and the confusion of her emblem’s symbolism are shown by two contrasting scholarly interpretations. The cart’s running over of the female character is used by Sarah Ross to suggest that the tortoise was “humbled” by the porcupine to “moralise on the scene’s significance.”82 Ross’s interpretation is contested by a more recent reading of the poem by Margaret J. M. Ezell, who argues that women in Pulter’s corpus “manifest their personalities differently” as “pragmatic heroines” who “find themselves in extraordinary situations not of their making, and who react in sometimes surprising ways.”83 The heroine’s surprising reaction that Ezell could be referring to comes immediately after the creature’s road accident in “Emblem 13”: The tortoise hardly could hold in her laughter But did refrain, hearing the doleful moan The porcupine made to himself alone, Saying, “let revengeful spirits learn by me Not to retaliate an injury But of this tortoise learn humility.” The tortoise blushed to hear herself commended Then crawled away and so the emblem ended.84 Demonstrating remarkable self-control, as well as a deep consideration for her partner, the tortoise maintains the Plutarchan premise that she should be “with silence.” This noble exercise of humility is acknowledged by the porcupine, who becomes motivated to change his own attitude—a marital dynamic that is quite different to Plutarch’s assertion that a wife must speak either to or through her husband. Similarly, Pulter goes on to invert Plutarch’s interpretation of the classical tortoise trope that suggests how women “ought […] not goe foorth of doors” by having her female heroine crawl away, her shell damaged from the men’s attack but her spirits firmly intact.85 Although claiming the emblem to have already ended, Pulter continues her poem: Then, like the tortoise, though I feel or see The least affront or seeming injury, Yet let my mind above the greatest be. What if they hurt my flesh;’tis but my shell That suffers, my enfranchised soul is well. Then at my oppressors’ feet myself I’ll lay; Vengeance is thine, my God, thou wilt repay.86

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The poet appears to speak directly to her reader in the composition’s final lines, comparing her own situation with that of her tortoise heroine, both of which are affronted and physically injured. Despite drawing no direct reference to Venus, the figure standing upon the tortoise is incarnated in the “flesh” of her “oppressors,” representing the author’s imprisonment within her rural Hertfordshire house during the period of profound political turmoil, by inverting the classical trope. While Ross suggests that Pulter’s poems are first and foremost a commentary on contemporary politics and popular literature, this view does not exclude them from being seen as comments on women’s experiences.87 Like her emblem, Pulter’s retreat appears not to have been “passively endured,” an assumption often made about Royalist writers during the Civil War, as Loxley warns.88 Pulter “let[s her] mind above the greatest be”—a far cry from Plutarch’s use of the same allegory to assert that “neither must [women] thinke much”—using her intellectual freedom to convey her struggles with the physical restrictions that were being enforced upon her off the page. The poet and her tortoise heroine might be physically damaged but are mentally strong, seeking divine vengeance for those who constrained women by binding them to domestic existences.

12.5 Hacket, “Eighth Sermon Upon the Resurrection” The emblem of Venus atop a tortoise was appropriated by different writers for audiences across many genres; the trope’s rich ambiguity allowed it to be used in complex and varied ways in debates on women’s autonomy and discussions about their domestic duty. Pulter’s poem shows how women writers could contest the patriarchal principles of the tortoise trope. This also suggests, more broadly, that if patriarchy often works through prescription, then one feature of prescription is that it can be revised and reworked, its condition of articulation also enabling its critique. Similarly, it can be assumed that the practices of some women did not perfectly enact the idealistic female experiences described in male-authored conduct literature written by those such as Gataker and Page. As such, correctional literature and its references to the trope should not be interpreted as a sign of historical physical conduct, because these texts would not have been produced if women were already obediently enacting the patriarchal rules outlined.89 It was not only women such as Pulter who challenged the expectation that their sex should be silently and resolutely bound to their homes, and for the remainder of this chapter I considering a sermon by John Hacket, bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, and his interpretation of the classical allegory.90 Hacket’s “Eighth Sermon Upon the Resurrection” was published posthumously by Thomas Plume in his 1675 publication A century of sermons upon several remarkable subjects.91 The folio, of more than 1,000 pages, includes works that were preached in Lichfield and

Women Are from Venus 291 Coventry, as well as Whitehall, Cambridge, and Holborn. The volume comprises fifteen sermons about Christ’s incarnation, six on his baptism, twenty-one about his temptations, seven about his transfigurations, five on his passions, five on the descent of the Holy Ghost, and nine that discuss the resurrection.92 Although accessibility for a general readership was limited because of the volume’s cost, 30s, its original listening audience would have been more diverse, as well as less reliant on their own levels of literacy to engage with the narratives. In his eighth sermon on Christ’s resurrection, the bishop focuses on the actions of Mary Magdalen and “the other women” who, in the days preceding Christ’s resurrection, “went to and fro sundry times” to visit his disciples. Their journeying was so frequent that it caused onlookers to wonder “what make[s] these [women go] abroad, that they cross the streets so often.” But despite those who questioned the women, their journeys were entirely justified, according to Hackett in his reference to the classical trope: The married woman is described in Plutarch, […] treading upon a Tortoise, as an emblem that it was good for her to stay at home, and to carry her house upon her back. But these holy Matrons had a clear conscience in them, that it could be no blemish to their honour to lackey up and down in so good an occasion, and upon the Errand of an Angel.93 He goes further still, dismissing those who took a dislike to these women by calling them “uncharitable persons”; despite those who “censured them,” he proudly declares that the women “still […] went on.” Rather than moving slowly or ashamedly as they deviated from their domestic duties, “[t]he Messanger of good tidings should make haste […] as they ran to tell his Disciples,” the bishop asserts. While Plutarch compares a wife’s voice to a minstrel who should speak through her husband, like playing a hautboy that makes her “utter a lowder and bigger voice than her owne, by the tongue of another,” Hacket emphasizes the women’s roles as messengers who “tell” divine news.94 The bishop imagines these biblical women’s roles in Christ’s resurrection to be founded in their ability to act freely and autonomously, as well as being effective communicators when relaying these journeys of “clear conscience.” While early modern women’s funeral sermons often “adopt a roll call of biblical examples of conventional domesticity,” Jeanne Shami argues, the biblical women in Hacket’s Easter sermon necessarily moved beyond the domestic realm: “what these women saw at the Sepulchre” was because “they adventured boldly abroad,” as opposed to those “who were shut up for fear at home.”95 As the sermon progresses, Hacket alludes again to the classical trope, this time inverting the figure of Venus. He references Matthew (28.9), in which the biblical women “held [Christ] by the feet,” clasping his body in an act of worship.96 They “touch his flesh,” and “explored that he is no

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Phantome, or Delusion,” emphasizing the reality of this true Christian god compared to beliefs of “Heathen[s]” who worship the Roman gods and goddess like Venus.97 Hacket plays with references to the trope in his use of an oceanic simile in his address to these “devout Matrons”: you were before like waves of the Sea, tossed about with suspicions and uncertainties, you were carried hither and thither with doubtful fears whether Christ would come again from the dead, as he promised, on the third day, but now you have your hand upon the Anchor, upon his feet, hold them fast, and your faith shall no more be shaken. You touch his flesh, you feel the pulse of his veins, his joynts and bones are under your fingers. While Pausanias suggests that Aphrodite was linked to the tortoise because of her birth from the foaming sea, Hacket believes that the biblical women had overcome previously felt waves of doubt regarding Christ’s resurrection.98 By replacing the figure of Venus with Christ, it is God who will help women venture into the wider world and so, in turn, the women’s feet become blessed as they “walk upon this errand to bring glad tidings of salvation.” The bishop writes that for women to be static is not the correct way for them to engage with society or the Lord, recalling a “Samaritan Woman” who “did well not to stay” still but knew it was “better to go into the City, and to tell her kindred that she had found the Messiah.” While “[t]he Apostles lurkt at home for fear” these women who were not domestically bound were “Daughters of Jerusalem.”99 Hacket’s insistence that these biblical women were agents of their own autonomous and mobile bodies would likely have prompted the women in his audience to reconsider their own domestic duties and reassess their agency.100 The bishop was convinced that his sermons had a direct effect on his audiences: after delivering his 1665 visitation service in Wem, Shropshire, for example, he reported that his reading was so persuasive that “by my sermon preacht then, there were an 100 prisbyterians less then before”—successfully converting members of the protestant subsect to Calvinism.101 His “Eighth Sermon Upon the Resurrection” might have been similarly efficacious in changing how women’s agency was imagined by his congregation of listeners and readers. As Peter Lake writes about the depiction of early modern women in funeral sermons, it was essential for the clergymen to portray an idealized portrait of the deceased as well as one that was recognizable to the congregation; similarly, the biblical women of Hacket’s sermon were dually represented as being idealized yet relatable figures for their early modern audience.102 Emulation of the holy women’s lifestyles, as described by the bishop, could allow early modern women to transgress the strict boundaries that demarcated them from the world beyond their doorstep—contrary to those described by Plutarch, Gataker, or Page in their evaluations of the

Women Are from Venus 293 classical trope. By discussing and promoting these traveling women in a sermon that was first preached and then subsequently published, thus facilitating the public exposure of women aurally and textually, the preacher doubly emphasizes that women can embrace their autonomy through their literary engagement.

12.6 Conclusion Although classical mythology was firmly embedded in early modern English culture, it was also contested, subjected to diverse readings and interpretations, and became a source of anxiety for contemporary readers and writers. Knowledge of classical tropes came, as Angus Vine argues, in part, “through learned institutions such as the grammar schools and ‘high’ forms of production such as mythological handbooks, but [was] just as influential and pervasive in more popular forms of entertainment such as pageants, progresses and the public theatre.”103 The trope of Venus and a tortoise, turtle, or snail is no exception and was shared across learned and popular genres, between rich and poor alike. It appeared in high-brow manuscript literature with a select readership, such as the poetry of Pulter or the conduct book by Page, as well as cheaper printed texts and more widely read (and heard) works, such as the sermons by Gataker and Hacket. Early modern scholars’ “opportunistic use” of classical myths to communicate personal philosophical theories has received a great deal of critical attention. But my chapter has shown that we need to consider the consumption of classical myths in relation to women’s agency, how gendered control is configured within early modern literature, and how reading or hearing about classical tropes might prompt women to reassess their own domestic duties. Similarly, the various ways in which Venus atop a tortoise was used by seventeenth-century writers shows that its meanings, while often drawing upon previous interpretations, were nonetheless subjective. The trope’s reappearance suggests its serious social, cultural, and political currency in early modern England. Emphasizing the malleable nature of the classical trope shifts the focus away from the impossible task of pinpointing its true meaning, and instead encourages conversations about the intentions and effects of its multiple interpretations.

Notes 1 The etymology of the name Aphrodite—Venus’s Grecian antecedent—is thought to derive from the Greek word “aphros,” meaning “foam,” which symbolises her birth from the foam. The foam was created, as one version of the myth goes, when the severed genitals of the god Uranus were thrown into the ocean. Similarly, “kteis,” the Greek work for scallop shell, also meant the female genitals. See: Sebastian Goth, “Venus Anadyomene: The Birth of Art,” in Venus as Muse: From Lucretius to Michel Serres, ed. Hanjo

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6 7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14

Helena Kaznowska Berressem, Günter Blamberger, and Sebastian Goth (Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2015), 19; Patty O’Brien, The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Colonial Pacific (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2006), 49. Caroline Arscott and Katie Scott, eds., Manifestations of Venus: Art and Sexuality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). Venus “anadyomene,” “capitoline,” “crouching,” “genitrix,” “sadalbinder,” “victrix” and others. See: Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981). Tortoises and turtles were often used interchangeably in early modern texts. In 1682, for example, Thomas Amy writes that “[t]hey are a sort of creatures which live both on Land and Water.” See: Carolina, or, A description of the present state of that country and the natural excellencies thereof (London: W. C., 1682); Ioh[an] van Beverwiick. Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken geslachts [“On the Excellence of the Female Sex”] (Dordrecht: Printed by Hedrick van Esch, 1643), 206. Johan van Beverwijck, Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken geslachts [“On the Excellence of the Female Sex”] (Dordrecht: For Jasper Gorissz, 1639). The Venus on a turtle image appears on page 298 in the first edition. For more on van Beverwijck, see: Cornelia Niekus Moore, “‘Not by Nature but by Custom’: Johan van Beverwijck’s Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken Geslachts,” The Sixteenth Century Journal 25, no. 3 (1994): 633–51. For more on the anatomy of tortoises, see Craig B. Stanford, The Last Tortoise: A Tale of Extinction in Our Lifetime (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010), 14–15. Translation in Wayne E. Franits, Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 69. Ibid., 69. Lia van Gemert, “The Power of the Weaker Vessels: Simon Schama and Johan van Beverwijck on Women,” in Women of the Golden Age: An International Debate on Women in Seventeenth-Century Holland, England and Italy, ed. Els Kloek, Nicole Teeuwen, and Marijke Huisman, 40 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1994). Translation in Simon Schama. “Wives and Wantons: Versions of Womanhood in 17th Century Dutch Art,” Oxford Art Journal 3, no.1 (1980): 9. Such is the conclusion of Kate Chedgzoy, Women’s Writing in the British Atlantic World: Memory, Place and History, 1640–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 135. Other references in English include Richard Braithwaite, The English Gentleman: Containing Sundry Excellent Rules How to Accommodate Himselfe in the Manage of Publike or Private Affaires (London: J. Haviland, 1630), 263; Francis Dillingham, A Golden Keye Opening the Locke to Eternall Happiness (London: John Tapp, 1609), 11; William Painter, The Second Tome of the Palace of Pleasure Conteyning Store of Goodly Histories, Tragicall Matters, and Other Morall Argument (London: Henry Bynneman, 1567), 269–70; and Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicolas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair, 3 vols, vol. 3, 197 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). Claire Cullen Davison, “Aphrodite Ourania,” Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies 56, no. S105P1 (2013): 29. An extant sculpture of Aphrodite has been attributed to Phidias, found in an Athenian agora, although it has been contested. See: Evelyn B. Harrison, “A

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17 18 19 20 21 22

23 24 25

26 27

28 29

30

31 32

Pheidian Head of Aphrodite Ourania,” Hesperia 53, no. 4 (1984): 379–88; Robin Osborne, The History Written on the Classical Greek Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 208–9. Cullen Davison, “Aphrodite Ourania,” 29–30. Berlin’s Aphrodite Brazza is often associated with Phidias’s Aphrodite at Elis, although its production in c. 430 BC means it is hard to know if it is a faithful copy of Phidias’s earlier work. See: Evelyn B. Harrison, “Pheidias,” in Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture, ed. Olga Palagia and Jerome Jordan, 16–65 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Osborne, History Written, 208. Sarah B. Pomeroy, Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 32. Pausanias, “Book VI—Elis II,” in Description of Greece, ed. and trans. W. H. S. Jones, 5 vols, vol. 3, 152–3 (London: William Heinemann, 1933). Plutarch, The Philosophie, Commonlie Called, the Morals, trans. Philemon Holland (London: Arnold Hatfield, 1603), 321. Ibid., 321. For more on the early modern reception of Plutarch, see: Fred Schurink, “Print, Patronage, and Occasion: Translations of Plutarch’s Moralia in Tudor England,” Yearbook of English Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 86–191; Colin Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), esp. Chapter 6. Maria Pretzler discusses Pausanias’s European print history in Maria Pretzler, Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece (London: Duckworth, 2007), 118. Burrow, Shakespeare and Classical, 242. Conall Boyle, “Preface to the 2008 Edition of The Nature and Uses of Lotteries,” in Thomas Gataker, The Nature and Uses of Lotteries: A Historical and Theological Treatise, ed. Conall Boyle (Charlottesville, VA: Imprint Academic, 2008), viii. Suzanne W. Hull, Chaste, Silent & Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1982), 35. Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer, “Introduction: Rereading Women’s Literary History,” in Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550–1700, ed. Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer, 6 (London: Routledge, 2004). Martine van Elk, Early Modern Women’s Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic (Cham, CH: Springer International Publishing/Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 34. Thomas Gataker, Marriage Dvties Briefely Covched Together (London: William Iones, 1620), A3v; Francis J. Bremer, “Gataker, Thomas (1574–1654),” in Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America: A Comprehensive Encyclopaedia, ed. Francis J. Bremer and Tom Webster, 103 (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC–CLIO, 2006). James Rigney studies the debated benefits of reading sermons but the move from preacher to printer is still uncharted. See: James Rigney, “Sermons into Print,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, ed. Hugh Adlington, Peter McCullough, and Emma Rhatigan, 198–209 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Gataker, Marriage Dvties, 20–1. See: A. D. Thrush, The House of Commons, 1604–1629, 6 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), vol. 3, 653–4; Brett Usher, “Gataker, Thomas (1574–1654),” ODNB, Oxford University Press, 23

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41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49

50

51 52 53 54 55 56

Helena Kaznowska Sept. 2004, accessed 12 Jan. 2015, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/10445. Quote from Gataker, Marriage Dvties, 1. Gataker, Marriage Dvties, 1. Helen Smith, “Grossly Material Things”: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 55. Gataker, Marriage Dvties, 1. Ibid., 20. “Housekeeper, n.,” OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2015, accessed 21 Mar. 2015, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/88915. “Housewife, n.,” OED Online, Oxford University Press, March 2015, accessed 21 Mar. 2015, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/88947. See, for example: John Foxe, Actes and Monuments of Matters Most Speciall and Memorable, Happenyng in the Church (London: printed by Iohn Day, 1573), 880, 1503. Anthony Fletcher, “The Protestant Idea of Marriage in Early Modern England,” in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson, ed. Anthony Fletcher and Peter Roberts, 162 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Ibid., 181. Gataker, Marriage Dvties, 22, incorrectly printed as “20.” Correct numbering resumes from page 24. Ibid., 22–23, “20–21.” Ibid., 22, “20.” Ibid., 5. Heidi Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 197. Ralph Houlbrooke, ed., English Family Life, 1576–1716: An Anthology from Diaries (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), 52. Gataker, Marriage Dvties, 22 incorrectly printed as “20,” and Plutarch, The Philosophie, 321. 1 Timothy 5.3, King James Bible “Authorized Version,” Cambridge Edition, 1611, http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611_1-Timothy-5-3/; Barbara J. Todd, “The Virtuous Widow in Protestant England,” in Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Varner, 71 (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1999). Bibliographical details from Manfred Brod, “Page, William (1590–1664),” ODNB, Oxford University Press, 23 Sept. 2004, accessed 22 Jan. 2015, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21098, and Todd, “The Virtuous Widow,” 71. Falconer Madan and H. H. E. Craster, Summary Catalogue of Western MSS. in the Bodleian Library, Which Have Not Hitherto Been Catalogued in the Quarto Series (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922), 143–4. William Page. “The Widdowe Indeed,” Bod. Bodley MS. 115, 153. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 30, 82, 31. Todd, “Virtuous Widow,” 71. See also: Jeremy Boulton, “London Widowhood Revisited: The Decline of Female Remarriage in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries,” Continuity and Change 5, no. 3 (1990): 323–55. The comparison of women to snails has been linked first, to women’s household chores by Retha M. Warnicke; second, to the stereotype of women as gossips by Todd; and third, to depictions of Adam and Eve prior to the Fall to assure people that they were happily married, according to Diane Kelsey McColley. See: Retha M. Warnicke, “Eulogies for Women:

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57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66

67

68

69 70

71 72

Public Testimony of Their Godly Example and Leadership,” in Attending to Early Modern Women in England, ed. Betty S. Travitsky and Adele F. Seeff, 168–86 (Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1994); Todd, “Virtuous Widow,” 66–83; Diane Kelsey McColley, Poetry and Ecology in the Age of Milton and Marvell (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), 145–6. Page, “The Widdowe Indeed,” 44. Ibid., 46. Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 82. Page, “The Widdowe Indeed,” 45. Ibid., 45. Ibid., 45. Lisa Gitelman, Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014), 22. Jennifer Panek, Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 4. Dorothea Kehler, “The First Quarto of Hamlet: Reforming Widow Gertred,” Shakespeare Quarterly 46, no. 4 (1995): 398–413. Alan Macfarlane, Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300–1840 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 234–6; Miriam Slater, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House (London: Routledge, 1984), 104–7; Kehler, “The First Quarto,” 398–413. For more on remarriage and its opposition see Antonia Fraser’s old but still relevant study, Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England (London: George Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984), 82–5; Barbara J. Todd, “Demographic Determinism and Female Agency: The Remarrying Widow Reconsidered… Again,” Continuity and Change 9, no. 3 (1994): 421–50. Sarah C. E. Ross, “Women and Religious Verse in English Manuscript Culture, c.1600–1668: Lady Anne Southwell, Lady Hester Pulter and Katherine Austen” (Doctoral thesis, St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, 2000), 101–6. Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson, introduction to Early Modern Women Poets (1520–1700): An Anthology, ed. Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), xxxii–xxxiii. Hester Pulter, Poems, Emblems, and the Unfortunate Florinda, ed. Alice Eardley (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Brotherton Library, 2014). The history of the manuscript’s rediscovery has been charted by Alice Eardley, “‘Shut up in a Countrey Grange’: The Provenance of Lady Hester Pulter’s Poetry and Prose and Women’s Literary History,” Huntington Library Quarterly 80, no. 2 (2017): 345–59. For more on Pulter’s place within the genre of emblem books, see: Rachel Dunn, “Breaking a Tradition: Hester Pulter and the English Emblem Book,” The Seventeenth Century 30, no. 1 (2015): 55–73. For other recent scholarship on Pulter, see: Sarah Hutton, “Hester Pulter (c.1596–1678). A Woman Poet and the New Astronomy,” Études Épistémè 14 (2008), 1 Oct. 2008, accessed 21 Feb. 2018, http://journals.openedition.org/ episteme/729, and Ruth Connolly, “Hester Pulter’s Childbirth Poetics,” Women’s Writing 26, no. 3 (2019): 282–303. Ross, “Women and Religious Verse,” 99. Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday, introduction to Literature and the English Civil War, ed. Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday, 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

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73 Earl Miner, The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 179. 74 Dunn, “Breaking a Tradition,” 62. 75 James Loxley, Royalism and Poetry in the English Civil Wars: The Drawn Sword (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1997): 192–241, qtd. 202. 76 Dunn, “Breaking a Tradition,” 56. 77 Rosemary Freeman, English Emblem Books (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970), 238–9. 78 Michael Bath, Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture (London: Longman, 1994), 2. 79 Hester Pulter, “Emblem 13,” Poems, Emblems, 202, lines 1–6. 80 Ibid., lines 7–13. 81 Ibid., line 14. 82 See: Ross, “Women and Religious Verse,” 123–4. 83 Margaret J. M. Ezell, “The Laughing Tortoise: Speculations on Manuscript Sources and Women’s Book History,” English Literary Renaissance 38, no. 2 (2008): 331–55, qtd. 351. 84 Pulter, “Emblem 13,” lines 15–24. 85 Plutarch, The Philosophie, 321. 86 Pulter, “Emblem 13,” lines 27–33. 87 Ross, “Women and Religious Verse,” 99–173. 88 Loxley, Royalism and Poetry, 202. 89 For more on gap between conduct and conduct literature, see: Jessica Murphy, Virtuous Necessity: Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2015). 90 See: Brian Quintrell, “Hacket, John (1592–1670),” ODNB, Oxford University Press, 3 Jan. 2008, accessed 9 April 2018, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/11837. 91 John Hacket, “Eighth Sermon Upon the Resurrection,” in A Century of Sermons Upon Several Remarkable Subjects (London: Published by Thomas Plume, 1675), 615–23. 92 Hacket has received little scholarly attention, but for more on his transfiguration sermons, see: Kenneth Stevenson, “‘In All Supernatural Works, We Rather Draw Back Than Help On’: The Seven Transfiguration Sermons of John Hacket (1592–1670),” in Exchanges of Grace: Essays in Honour of Ann Loades, ed. Natalie K. Watson and Stephen Burns, 66–77 (London: SCM Press, 2008). 93 Hacket, “Eighth Sermon,” 615–6. 94 Plutarch, The Philosophie, 321. 95 Hacket, “Eighth Sermon,” 615–6; Jeanne Shami, “Women and Sermons,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, ed. Hugh Adlington, Peter McCullough, and Emma Rhatigan, 156 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 96 Matthew 28.9, King James Bible “Authorized Version,” Cambridge Edition, 1611, https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/1611_Matthew-28-9/. 97 Hacket, “Eighth Sermon,” 618. 98 Pausanias, “Book VI—Elis II,” 152–3. 99 Hacket, “Eighth Sermon,” 622. 100 On women’s relationships with clergy, as one of the “few legitimate malefemale friendships,” see Diane Willen, “Godly Women in Early Modern England: Puritanism and Gender,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43, no. 4 (1992): 570–1.

Women Are from Venus 299 101 John Hacket, “Letter to Dr Browne, 19 January 1665,” Bodl. MS Tanner 45, fol. 13. 102 Peter Lake, “Feminine Piety and Personal Potency: The ‘Emancipation’ of Mrs Jane Ratcliffe,” The Seventeenth Century 2, no. 2 (1987): 160. 103 Angus Vine, “Myth and Legend,” in The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Andrew Hadfield, Matthew Dimmock, and Abigail Shinn, 104 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014).

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Dunn, Rachel. “Breaking a Tradition: Hester Pulter and the English Emblem Book.” The Seventeenth Century 30, no. 1 (2015): 55–73. Ezell, Margaret J. M. “The Laughing Tortoise: Speculations on Manuscript Sources and Women’s Book History.” English Literary Renaissance 38, no. 2 (2008): 331–55. Fletcher, Anthony. “The Protestant Idea of Marriage in Early Modern England.” In Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Honour of Patrick Collinson, edited by Anthony Fletcher and Peter Roberts, 161–81. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Foxe, John. Actes and Monuments of Matters Most Speciall and Memorable, Happenyng in the Church. London: Printed by Iohn Day, 1573. Franits, Wayne E. Paragons of Virtue: Women and Domesticity in SeventeenthCentury Dutch Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Fraser, Antonia. The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England. London: George Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984. Freeman, Rosemary. English Emblem Books. London: Chatto and Windus, 1970. Gataker, Thomas. Marriage Dvties Briefely Covched Together. London: William Iones, 1620. Gitelman, Lisa. Paper Knowledge: Toward a Media History of Documents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014. Goth, Sebastian. “Venus Anadyomene: The Birth of Art.” In Venus as Muse: From Lucretius to Michel Serres, edited by Hanjo Berressem, Günter Blamberger, and Sebastian Goth, 15–40. Leiden: Brill Rodopi, 2015. Hackel, Heidi Brayman. Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender, and Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Hacket, John. A Century of Sermons Upon Several Remarkable Subjects. London: Published by Thomas Plume, 1675. Harrison, Evelyn B. “A Pheidian Head of Aphrodite Ourania.” Hesperia 53, no. 4 (1984): 379–88. Harrison, Evelyn B. “Pheidias.” In Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture, edited by Olga Palagia and Jerome Jordan, 16–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Haskell, Francis and Nicholas Penny. Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500–1900. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1981. Healy, Thomas, and Jonathan Sawday. “Introduction.” In Literature and the English Civil War, edited by Thomas Healy and Jonathan Sawday, 1–20. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Houlbrooke, Ralph, ed. English Family Life, 1576–1716: An Anthology from Diaries. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Hull, Suzanne W. Chaste, Silent & Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640. San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1982. Hutton, Sarah. “Hester Pulter (c.1596–1678). A Woman Poet and the New Astronomy.” Études Épistémè 14 (2008), 1 Oct. 2008, accessed 21 Feb. 2018, http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/729 Kehler, Dorothea. “The First Quarto of Hamlet: Reforming Widow Gertred.” Shakespeare Quarterly 46, no. 4 (1995): 398–413. Lake, Peter. “Feminine Piety and Personal Potency: The ‘Emancipation’ of Mrs Jane Ratcliffe.” The Seventeenth Century 2, no. 2 (1987): 143–65.

Women Are from Venus 301 Loxley, James. Royalism and Poetry in the English Civil Wars: The Drawn Sword. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1997. Macfarlane, Alan. Marriage and Love in England: Modes of Reproduction, 1300–1840, 234–236. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Madan, Falconer, and H. H. E. Craster. Summary Catalogue of Western MSS. In the Bodleian Library, Which Have Not Hitherto Been Catalogued in the Quarto Series. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922. Marsh, Christopher. Music and Society in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. McColley, Diane Kelsey. Poetry and Ecology in the Age of Milton and Marvell, 145–6. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007. Miner, Earl. The Cavalier Mode from Jonson to Cotton. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971. Moore, Cornelia Niekus. “‘Not by Nature but by Custom’: Johan van Beverwijck’s Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken Geslachts.” The Sixteenth Century Journal 25, no. 3 (1994): 633–51. Murphy, Jessica. Virtuous Necessity: Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2015. O’Brien, Patty. The Pacific Muse: Exotic Femininity and the Colonial Pacific. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2006. Osborne, Robin. The History Written on the Classical Greek Body. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Ostovich, Helen, and Elizabeth Sauer. “Introduction: Rereading Women’s Literary History.” In Reading Early Modern Women: An Anthology of Texts in Manuscript and Print, 1550–1700, edited by Helen Ostovich and Elizabeth Sauer, 1–14. London: Routledge, 2004. Painter, William. The Second Tome of the Palace of Pleasure Conteyning Store of Goodly Histories, Tragicall Matters, and Other Morall Argument. London: Henry Bynneman, 1567. Panek, Jennifer. Widows and Suitors in Early Modern English Comedy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Pausanias. “Book VI—Elis II.” In Description of Greece, edited and translated by W. H. S. Jones, 5 vols, vol. 3. London: William Heinemann, 1933. Plutarch. The Philosophie, Commonlie Called, the Morals, translated by Philemon Holland. London: Arnold Hatfield, 1603. Pomeroy, Sarah B. Women in Hellenistic Egypt: From Alexander to Cleopatra. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1984. Pretzler, Maria. Pausanias: Travel Writing in Ancient Greece. London: Duckworth, 2007. Pulter, Hester. Poems, Emblems, and the Unfortunate Florinda, edited by Alice Eardley. Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, Brotherton Library, 2014. Quintrell, Brian. “Hacket, John (1592–1670).” ODNB, Oxford University Press, 3 Jan. 2008, accessed 9 Apr. 2018, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11837 Rigney, James. “Sermons into Print.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, edited by Hugh Adlington, Peter McCullough, and Emma Rhatigan, 198–209. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

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Ross, Sarah C. E. “Women and Religious Verse in English Manuscript Culture, c.1600–1668: Lady Anne Southwell, Lady Hester Pulter and Katherine Austen.” Doctoral thesis, St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford, 2000. Schama, Simon. “Wives and Wantons: Versions of Womanhood in 17th Century Dutch Art.” Oxford Art Journal 3, no. 1 (1980): 5–13. Schurink, Fred. “Print, Patronage, and Occasion: Translations of Plutarch’s Moralia in Tudor England.” Yearbook of English Studies 38, no. 1 (2008): 86–191. Shami, Jeanne. “Women and Sermons.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Early Modern Sermon, edited by Hugh Adlington, Peter McCullough, and Emma Rhatigan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. doi: 10.1093/oxfordhb/ 9780199237531.013.0009. Slater, Miriam. Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House. London: Routledge, 1984. Smith, Helen. “Grossly Material Things”: Women and Book Production in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Stanford, Craig B. The Last Tortoise: A Tale of Extinction in Our Lifetime. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2010. Stevenson, Kenneth. “‘In All Supernatural Works, We Rather Draw Back Than Help On’: The Seven Transfiguration Sermons of John Hacket (1592–1670).” In Exchanges of Grace: Essays in Honour of Ann Loades, edited by Natalie K. Watson and Stephen Burns, 66–77. London: SCM Press, 2008. Thrush, A. D. The House of Commons, 1604–1629, 6 vols, vol. 3, 653–4. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Todd, Barbara J. “Demographic Determinism and Female Agency: The Remarrying Widow Reconsidered … Again.” Continuity and Change 9, no. 3 (1994): 421–50. Todd, Barbara J. “The Virtuous Widow in Protestant England.” In Widowhood in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, edited by Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Varner, 66–83. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 1999. Usher, Brett. “Gataker, Thomas (1574–1654).” ODNB, Oxford University Press, 23 Sep. 2004, accessed 12 Jan. 2015, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/10445 van Beverwijck, Johan. Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken geslachts [“On the Excellence of the Female Sex”]. Dordrecht: For Jasper Gorissz, 1639. van Elk, Martine. Early Modern Women’s Writing: Domesticity, Privacy, and the Public Sphere in England and the Dutch Republic. Cham, CH: Springer International Publishing/Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. van Gemert, Lia. “The Power of the Weaker Vessels: Simon Schama and Johan van Beverwijck on Women.” In Women of the Golden Age: An International Debate on Women in Seventeenth-Century Holland, England and Italy, edited by Els Kloek, Nicole Teeuwen, and Marijke Huisman, 39–50. Hilversum: Verloren, 1994. Vine, Angus. “Myth and Legend.” In The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Culture in Early Modern England, edited by Andrew Hadfield, Matthew Dimmock, and Abigail Shinn, 103–18. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2014. Warnicke, Retha M. “Eulogies for Women: Public Testimony of Their Godly Example and Leadership.” In Attending to Early Modern Women in England, edited by Betty S. Travitsky and Adele F. Seeff, 168–86. Newark, NJ: University of Delaware Press, 1994. Willen, Diane. “Godly Women in Early Modern England: Puritanism and Gender.” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 43, no. 4 (1992): 570–1.

13 Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece for Santa Maria Novella and the Pre-Tridentine Audience of Italian Altarpieces Sarah Cadagin The Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence is famed today for its marble façade by Leon Battista Alberti and its interior nave fresco of The Trinity by Masaccio. In the late fifteenth century, however, Santa Maria Novella was equally celebrated for its lavish high altarpiece (Figure 13.1) created by Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494), and his workshop, and patronized by wealthy Florentine banker and Medici as­ sociate, Giovanni Tornabuoni (1428–1497). Giorgio Vasari, for example, praised the figures of Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece as “entirely alive” and “lack [ing] nothing save speech,”1 while the anonymous author of the latefifteenth- to early-sixteenth-century Libro di Antonio Billi described the altarpiece as having “many good figures, very beautiful.”2 Today, we can unfortunately only imagine how Vasari and others saw Santa Maria Novella’s high altar in the fifteenth century; the altar today is largely from the nineteenth century, and the panels of Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece have long been dispersed among various European collections.3

Figure 13.1 High Altar and Choir, Santa Maria Novella, Florence, Italy (HIP/Art Resource, NY).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-13

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Utilizing archival, archaeological, and textual evidence, scholars have been able, however, to reconstruct the initial, completed appearance of Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece.4 In its original installation (Figure 13.2), the altarpiece was a four-sided, box-like structure surrounded by an all’an­ tica marble frame. It consisted of two square panels for the front and back; six slim side panels; and a predella that ran around the entire structure.

Figure 13.2 High Altar of Santa Maria Novella from the Side Before NineteenthCentury Restoration, from Jean Corbinelli, Histoire généalogique de la Maison de Gondi (Chez Jean-Baptiste Coignard: Paris, 1705). (© Photo: Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz—Max-Planck-Institut) (Inv.no. 615378) Converted to Grayscale.

The main panel that faced the nave (Figure 13.3) featured the Madonna lactans, floating in the sky in a blazing orange aureole of light. Below the mother and child, within a landscape of green hills, are four saints: Dominic, Michael the Archangel, John the Baptist, and Thomas.5

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 305

Figure 13.3 Domenico Ghirlandaio (and Workshop), Madonna and Child Enthroned with Sts. Dominic, Michael, John the Baptist, and Thomas, 1490–1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen—Alte Pinakothek, München, URL: https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/ZMLJroqLJv. (CC BY-SA 4.0; Converted to Grayscale).

The back panel of the altarpiece (Figure 13.4), visible only to those who would have been seated or gathered around it in the rear of the choir, showed the Resurrection of Christ. Largely completed after Ghirlandaio’s death by his younger brothers, the back panel depicts Christ floating on a tiny, seraphim-supported cloud over a classicallyinspired tomb. Below, among a similarly green landscape to the main panel of the altarpiece and turning away in surprise and fear, are the Roman soldiers hired to guard Jesus’s burial place.

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Figure 13.4 Domenico Ghirlandaio, The Resurrection of Christ, 1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, Germany. Photo: Domenico Ghirlandaio, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The vertical side panels of the altarpiece depicted standing saints in front of scallop-shell niches. On the left and right of the main panel were originally Saint Lawrence (Figure 13.5) and his traditional companion, Saint Stephen (Figure 13.6).

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Figure 13.5 Domenico Ghirlandaio (and Workshop), St. Lawrence, c. 1490–1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen—Alte Pinakothek, München, URL: https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/01G1 yj9GkE. (CC BY-SA 4.0; Converted to Grayscale).

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Figure 13.6 Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Stephen, c. 1493–1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest, Hungary. (© The Museum of Fine Arts Budapest/Scala/Art Resource, NY).

On the left and right side of the altarpiece’s box-like structure were Saint Antoninus, unfortunately destroyed during the bombing of Berlin in 1945, and Saint Catherine of Siena (Figure 13.7).

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 309

Figure 13.7 Domenico Ghirlandaio (and Workshop), St. Catherine of Siena, c. 1490–1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen—Alte Pinakothek, München, URL: https://www.sammlung.pinakothek.de/en/artwork/02LAkM74 yk. (CC BY-SA 4.0; Converted to Grayscale).

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Flanking the square back panel of The Resurrection were Saint Peter Martyr (Figure 13.8) and Saint Vincent Ferrer, also destroyed in 1945.6

Figure 13.8 Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Peter Martyr, c. 1493–1494, Tempera and Possibly Oil on Panel, Fondazione Magnani Rocca, Reggio Emilia, Italy. (Scala/Art Resource, NY).

Although the original construction of Ghirlandaio’s Santa Maria Novella altarpiece has long been known, there has been no attention paid to the ramifications of such a construction on the altarpiece’s ico­ nography and meaning. The altarpiece was at once double sided, pre­ suming different beholders in front of and behind it, but also quadruple sided, with the side panels on the left and right expanding the potential number of distinct beholders at any one time to four. While double-sided

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 311 altarpieces were not entirely unusual in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance—Duccio’s Maestà for Siena Cathedral is a sovereign wellknown example—a four-sided altarpiece was much more remarkable and certainly merits careful consideration of the viewing conditions of such an iconographically rich and structurally complex work. That Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece was also located in the high altar chapel, which additionally served as the Tornabuoni family chapel, further complicates matters, as the church’s choir was a decidedly restricted space in terms of both audience and optics. By examining the varied beholders and viewing conditions of Ghirlandaio’s Santa Maria Novella altarpiece, this chapter offers a new assessment of not only the iconography of Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece, but also the broader implications of the viewing of Renaissance altarpieces in the decades before the Council of Trent. Often highly privileged images only for the eyes of the clergy, and intimately related to the liturgies of the altar, altarpieces were images whose very beholding and function conditioned and shaped their special form, subjects, and sacred meanings. Considering the specific audiences and viewing con­ ditions of Renaissance altarpieces allows us much greater insight into the meanings of these objects, as well as the richness of their sacred iconography.

13.1 Viewing the Renaissance Altarpiece Beholding an altarpiece was both an ordinary, or, conversely, a largely privileged experience in the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Vittore Carpaccio’s 1512 Apparition of the Crucifix in the Church of Sant’Antonio di Castello7 gives a detailed sense of such differing ex­ periences in its lateral view of the nave of a Venetian church (Figure 13.9). Behind the foreground procession of friars carrying tall crosses into the church are three different altarpieces, set over altars on the right side aisle of the nave; on the left is a contemporary, lunetteshaped altarpiece of a landscape view, with an all’antica marble frame, while on the right are two seemingly older medieval polyptychs showing the Madonna and Child and various saints. To the left of these altar­ pieces is a large rood screen, or tramezzo, that divides the public area of the nave from the area of the choir reserved for the church’s friars.8 Sant’Antonio’s tramezzo is about as tall as half the height of the church, and appears to be made of both wood and stone. Beneath and in front of the tramezzo on the left are two other altars; the altar closest to the front of the picture plane appears to have a sculpted altarpiece of the Madonna and Child on it, while the other altar, closest to the wall, might contain a tabernacle, as it shows a small, pentagonal niche on the wall next to the altar.

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Figure 13.9 Vittore Carpaccio, Apparition Sant’Antonio di Castello, c. dell’Accademia, Venice, Italy. Attività culturali/Art Resource,

of the Crucifix in the Church of 1512, Oil on Canvas, Gallerie (Scala/Ministero per i Beni e le NY).

Carpaccio’s painting alerts us to the several different locations and viewing conditions of altarpieces in Renaissance churches. Some altar­ pieces, like those on the aisle wall of the nave and those underneath the tramezzo, were readily visible to an assembled congregation or to a ca­ sual visitor. Altarpieces like these were commonly patronized by in­ dividuals, families, or smaller religious groups such as confraternities. These individuals and groups endowed Masses at these altars for the salvation of their souls and/or for the commemoration of deceased members. In keeping with their more “public” viewership, altarpieces like these, as well as those in somewhat more private chapels, reflected family or group identity, as much as they also honored the piety and taste of the patrons.9 The high altar and altarpiece of Sant’Antonio are not, however, visible to the general congregation, the casual visitor, or even the viewer of Carpaccio’s painting. Masked by the height and expanse of the tramezzo, the high altar and its altarpiece would only have been seen by the friars of the church community. Originally intended to maintain the clausura of a monastic community within its public church,10 tramezzi effectively

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 313 created two or even three different areas of worship within the Renaissance church: that of the sanctuary or choir, where the clergy performed the sacred rituals of the Mass at the high altar, and that of the nave, where the laity heard the celebration from the area in front of the tramezzo. Communion was distributed to the faithful in the nave (rather than the contemporary practice of a worshipper coming to the altar), and sermons were preached from the top of the tramezzo or at a pulpit in the nave.11 In some churches, laymen were permitted to attend Mass within the area in front of the choir, behind the tramezzo; laymen thus sometimes had visual access to the high altarpiece.12 Laywomen, on the other hand, almost always attended Mass in the nave (or in a nave balcony), making their viewing of the choir, high altar, and high altarpiece extremely difficult, if not impossible.13 A tripartite arrangement of clergy, laymen, and laywomen was the case, for instance, in Florence’s San Marco, where there were two tramezzi: one at the middle of the nave, dividing it into an “upper” and “lower” church (in the words of William Hood), and another between the upper church and the choir.14 Laywomen and laymen were permitted within the lower church, while only laymen had access to the upper church; only the Dominican friars of the church were allowed in the choir.15 The laity was sometimes allowed access to the high altar and its al­ tarpiece. Saint Antoninus (1389–1459), archbishop of Florence in the mid-fifteenth century, made allowances for laymen to enter the choir of a church when the friars or monks were not present.16 Women whose families had chapels in the transept or apse were also able to enter the space behind the tramezzo at certain times.17 Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444) additionally encouraged the faithful to “go to the high altar when you enter a church, and adore it,” suggesting that the laity could enter the choir area on some occasions.18 At San Marco, the doors be­ tween the two tramezzi were opened before the Eucharistic host was consecrated and lifted above the officiant’s head. Congregants could thus see a view down toward the high altar, the lifted host, and Fra Angelico’s famed high altarpiece.19 But in the majority of cases, high altarpieces were privileged images largely only for the eyes of the clergy. Their visual consumption was primarily by the priests who officiated around them, and by the assembled clergy who worshipped alongside them. These kinds of viewing conditions were the case at Santa Maria Novella, and particularly for the high altar chapel where Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece was originally located. As first outlined by Marcia Hall, fifteenth-century Santa Maria Novella was divided at the fourth bay of the nave by a large stone ponte, or tramezzo.20 This largely prohibited the laity from entering and, more importantly, even seeing, the choir and transept area of the church. As discussed, the choir area may have been open to the laity at certain times, but for the most part it was restricted to

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the Dominicans and to individuals with chapels in the choir and transept, like Ghirlandaio’s patrons, the Tornabuoni. In addition to the restrictions of the nave ponte at Santa Maria Novella, there were also further walls around the high altar chapel. The only view into the chapel was thus through an opening on the high altar side,21 and this view was only possible for individuals with access to the choir and/or transept in the first place. Covered in front by the two solid walls of the high altar chapel, and then behind the massive stone ponte of the nave, Ghirlandaio’s altarpiece, and also most of his frescoes in the choir, were thus not visible to anyone outside the choir chapel. Hall notes in particular that the altarpiece would only have been visible to “someone standing on the church’s axis at a time when the central door of the ponte was open.”22 The Tornabuoni Chapel was thus very much a restricted, hybrid space: through the Tornabuoni’s extensive patronage, it served as a burial and memorial site for their family, but the chapel was also the choir of the entire church, the site of the daily Masses of the church’s Conventual Dominicans. The imagery of the chapel was thus primarily seen not by ordinary lay citizens, or even usually by the Tornabuoni themselves but, rather, by the Dominican friars who saw and heard the liturgies around its altar.

13.2 Ghirlandaio at Santa Maria Novella Ghirlandaio first began work at Santa Maria Novella in 1485, after being commissioned by Giovanni Tornabuoni to fresco the three walls of the high altar chapel.23 The contract for the chapel explicitly states that the frescoes were to be “an act of piety and love of God, to the exaltation of his [the Tornabuoni] house and family and the enhancement of said church and chapel.”24 Tornabuoni initially did not have full patronage, nor burial rights to the space in 1485; he merely had patronage of the chapel’s walls. As Rab Hatfield posits, Tornabuoni likely hoped to im­ press the friars with the sumptuousness of the frescoes as a means to secure broader patronage rights for himself and his family in the high altar chapel.25 Regardless of his exact intentions, in October 1486, Tornabuoni successfully gained patronage rights to the entire chapel, its altar, and walls in his name and that of the entire Tornabuoni family.26 He specifically set aside money—a lavish 500 gold florins—for the chapel’s altarpiece in his 1490 will.27 Frescoed between the fall of 1485 and December 1490, the Tornabuoni Chapel features twenty-five murals of the lives of St. John the Baptist and the Virgin, with images of Tornabuoni and his wife, as well as Saint Dominic and Saint Peter Martyr. Ghirlandaio also designed the chapel’s three large stained-glass windows with further images of the Virgin and various saints,28 and Tornabuoni provided for choir stalls, embroideries, candlesticks, tombs, and memorial Masses for the space.29

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 315 Ghirlandaio likely began work on the altarpiece sometime in 1491, after Tornabuoni had set aside funds for it in his will and after Ghirlandaio had completed the frescoes of the chapel. The altarpiece was installed by April 1494, some three months after Ghirlandaio’s death, when a “Lorenzo clerico” was paid to cover the painting with a curtain.30 The overall iconographical program of the Tornabuoni Chapel unites both personal and pious concerns, particularly in the space’s numerous, celebrated family portraits.31 As a family chapel—a specific, small ar­ chitectural space endowed by individuals and/or families within larger churches—the Tornabuoni chapel served several purposes. First and foremost, family chapels were semi-private spaces where special Masses could be said in the honor of and for the soul(s) of the patron(s). In this sense, as Robert Gaston has argued, they were primarily liturgical spaces,32 but it is also essential to consider them as fundamentally es­ chatological spaces, as the endowed Masses offered within them were on behalf of the patron’s soul.33 Patrons, and even other members of the laity, may additionally have prayed or performed other devotions within family chapels or in front of family altars.34 Many family chapels and altars were also burial spaces. The burial tomb, either a sarcophagus or more commonly a slab, was often located in front of the endowed altar or within the space of the family chapel. Burial within the precincts of the church, according to Saint Antoninus, brought the deceased into closer communication with the saints honored at the church, increased the chances of the faithful offering prayers for the deceased upon beholding the tomb, and ensured that the bodies of the deceased would not be disturbed by demons.35 The Tornabuoni Chapel certainly functioned in these ways. It was the burial site of several members of the Tornabuoni family, and it also was the site of Masses in the family’s honor and memory. But unlike other family chapels in the Renaissance, which were often spaces solely for memorial Masses for the family, the Tornabuoni Chapel was also the choir chapel for Santa Maria Novella’s Dominican friars. Its main liturgical use was thus not for special Masses for the Tornabuoni, but, rather, for the daily cele­ bration of the Mass for the Conventual Dominicans. And, as already discussed, the late fifteenth-century viewing—or more appropriately, re­ striction of viewing—of the Tornabuoni Chapel readily identified it as a space only for the church’s Dominicans. The altarpiece’s multi-sided design and selection of imagery particular to both the Dominicans and the Tornabuoni demonstrates Ghirlandaio’s keen awareness of the dual audiences of his work. First and foremost, the altarpiece’s multi-paneled structure presented imagery from every angle to the Dominicans who would have gathered around the altar in the twotiered choir stalls of the chapel.36 For the Dominicans behind the altar, their view was of The Resurrection of Christ—the most triumphant

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subject of Christianity, and as appropriate for the Tornabuoni’s burial and memorial chapel as it was for the Dominicans in its promise of salvation. Friars seated behind the altar, as well as those seated in the sides of the chapel, also saw important Dominican saints in Peter Martyr, Vincent Ferrer, Antoninus, and Catherine of Siena. It is no co­ incidence that these panels were placed in direct view of the Dominicans, for each saint was a significant exemplar, teacher, and model. The panels of St. Lawrence and St. Stephen—venerated saints from the earliest days of Christianity, and in the case of Lawrence, the name saint of Giovanni Tornabuoni’s son, Lorenzo—are suitably placed in the more “public” view of the altarpiece on either side of the main, front panel. The saints depicted in the main panel—Dominic, Michael, John the Baptist, and Thomas—also appeal to the chapel’s different beholders. Saint Dominic is eminently suitable for the main panel of the altarpiece as he was the founder and patron saint of the Dominican Order. He kneels on the left, holding and pointing to an open book which reads, “Blessed Dominic taught us learning and wisdom,” a section from the liturgy of Pentecost.37 Ghirlandaio thus emphasizes Dominic as an ex­ emplar and teacher for the friars by having the saint emphatically point to a text—a text which, explicitly identifies Dominic as an instiller of “learning and wisdom.” As outlined by Tobias Leuker, this Pentecost text boldly replaces the original “Christ” with “Dominic.”38 The text thus suggests that Dominic was a kind of alter Christus as Dominic, like Christ, was an effective facilitator of sacred knowledge.39 Saint Michael the Archangel, long symbolic of the Church Militant,40 supports the particularly Dominican mission of the combat against heresy. As a warrior-angel of the Christian End Times, Michael also strengthens the salvific message of the altarpiece’s back panel of The Resurrection. Saint Thomas is a reference to the chapel’s dedication to the Assumption of the Virgin, in that he legendarily received the Virgin’s sacred girdle at her assumption into heaven. Saint John the Baptist is the subject of the chapel’s frescoes, the patron saint of Florence, and the name-saint of Giovanni Tornabuoni, who was properly Giovan Battista Tornabuoni. The Baptist’s gesture in the altarpiece of pointing upward toward the Virgin and Child indicates his particular role as an intercessor while also stressing his status as a means or way toward the divine as a prophet and forerunner of Christ.

13.3 Conclusions Domenico Ghirlandaio’s high altarpiece for Santa Maria Novella thus proves the importance of considering not only the precise audiences of Renaissance works of art, but also the particular viewing conditions that allowed such audiences to behold and engage with works of art. In the case of a high altarpiece like Ghirlandaio’s, the audience was both

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 317 limited and specific. It largely encompassed only the Dominican clergy of Santa Maria Novella, and perhaps occasionally the wealthy Florentine patricians who had sponsored chapels in the transept like Ghirlandaio’s patron, Giovanni Tornabuoni. This audience was limited and specific because of the viewing conditions of Santa Maria Novella—a large stone ponte at the crossing of the nave and transept physically and optically blocked access to the high altar from the main body of the church. There were additionally further walls around the high altar chapel to restrict both an actual and a visual encounter. Ghirlandaio seems to have been especially cognizant of the specific audience and viewing conditions of his altarpiece. The altarpiece itself contained multiple panels on each of its original four sides, making sacred imagery visually available to any Dominican friar seated or gathered around the high altar in the choir. The iconography of the al­ tarpiece was carefully crafted to inspire and encourage the Dominicans who participated in sacred services each day around the altar. This iconography was additionally particular to Giovanni Tornabuoni and his family, and shows that Ghirlandaio was sensitive to both his patron as well as the regular beholders of his work. While Ghirlandaio is in many ways an exceptional artist in his ability to deeply and thoughtfully consider the environment and circumstances surrounding the beholding of his paintings, he is hardly the only Renaissance artist to be conscious of the audience of his work. In thus considering Ghirlandaio and his high altarpiece for Santa Maria Novella, we see a paradigm for the viewing of Renaissance altarpieces more broadly. These were works of art that simultaneously could broadcast the wealth, taste, identity, and piety of a lay patron, but they were nonetheless often only seen by the clergy. This clerical audience, and their engagement with and daily beholding of the high altarpiece, then, largely determined the altarpiece’s iconography. This largely ecclesiastical audience is vital to understanding Renaissance high altarpieces in the decades before the Council of Trent and the subsequent dismantling of tramezzi that was one of its numerous reforms. Without such an understanding, interpretations of fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and early-sixteenth-century high altarpieces may incorrectly posit a principally lay audience and thus a principally lay comprehension of the altarpiece’s iconography and meaning. Failure to consider the clergy’s primary beholding of early Renaissance high altarpieces may also inadequately address the theological complexities, order-specific messages, and liturgical resonances of altarpiece imagery for the original, clerical viewers. To understand early high Renaissance altarpieces, one of the most common forms of Renaissance sacred imagery, we must thus pay careful and close attention to audience and viewing conditions. Doing so not only brings new nuances to Renaissance altarpieces themselves and their traditional, scholarly interpretations, but it also

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reveals the primacy of the early Renaissance altarpiece in directing, in­ spiring, and visually articulating the specific values of its beholders.

Notes 1 Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: G.C. Sansoni, 1906), 3: 268. “...sono interamente vive ... non manca se non la parola.” The research for this chapter derives from my doctoral dissertation, and from the paper I presented at the panel, “More Than Merely Passive: Addressing the Early Modern Audience,” organized by John Decker and Mitzi Kirkland-Ives at the annual conference of the Renaissance Society of America in 2019. My dissertation research was gen­ erously supported by the Graduate School and the College of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, and by the Cosmos Club Foundation in Washington, DC. As always, I am deeply grateful to my doc­ toral adviser, Meredith J. Gill, as well as to John and Mitzi for being such thoughtful and kind collaborators and editors. John in particular has long been a supportive colleague ever since he first reached out to me when I was a lowly adjunct professor of art history at Georgia State University, and I thank him for his continued encouragement and friendship. A version of this chapter was also presented in small part as the Winter 2019 Liberal Arts Lecture at my home institution, the Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta, Georgia. I thank my wonderful colleagues and students there for their thoughtprovoking and probing questions and comments after the lecture. 2 Il Libro di Antonio Billi, ed. Fabio Benedettucci (Rome: De Rubeis, 1991), 98. “Domenico del Grillandaio dipinse la cappella maggiore in Santa Maria Novella e la tavola, e guastossi la dipintura vechia fatta per mano dello Orcagna, donde cavò parechi buoni tratti in fiure molto belle.” 3 The panels include, all by Ghirlandaio unless noted: Virgin and Child with Sts. Dominic, Michael, John the Baptist, and Thomas (1490-94), tempera and possibly oil on panel, Alte Pinakothek, Munich; Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Lawrence (c. 1493–4), tempera and possibly oil on panel, Alte Pinakothek, Munich; St. Stephen (c. 1493–4), tempera and possibly oil on panel, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest; St. Catherine of Siena (c. 1493–4), tempera and possibly oil on panel, Alte Pinakothek, Munich; Davide and Benedetto (?) Ghirlandaio, Resurrection of Christ (c. 1494), tempera and possibly oil on panel, Staatliche Museen, Berlin; and Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Peter Martyr (c. 1493–4), tempera and possibly oil on panel, Magnani Collection, Reggio Emilia. 4 Christian von Holst, “Domenico Ghirlandaio: L’altare maggiore di Santa Maria Novella a Firenze ricostruito,” Antichità viva 8, no. 3 (1969): 36–41; Takuma Ito, “Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Santa Maria Novella Altarpiece: A Reconstruction,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 56, no. 2 (2014): 170–91. Maria DePrano’s Art Patronage, Family, and Gender in Renaissance Florence: The Tornabuoni (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2018) also has some excellent new digital re­ construction images of the chapel; see 126–30. The Alte Pinakothek’s new catalog of its Florentine paintings also has the most up-to-date assessment of the altarpiece paintings and their original installation in Santa Maria Novella; see Andreas Schumacher, ed., Florentiner Malerei Alte Pinakothek:

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 319

5

6 7 8

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10 11

12 13 14 15

Die Gemälde des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2017), 386–417. While the saint has long been identified as St. John the Evangelist, Ito has recently published a late eighteenth-century description of the altarpiece that describes the figure as St. Thomas. This identification is corroborated by the description’s account of the altarpiece’s long-lost predella as including a scene not of St. John the Evangelist, but of St. Thomas verifying the wounds of Christ. Ghirlandaio’s depiction of St. John the Evangelist in the chapel’s vault as elderly and white-bearded, and not with brown hair and youthful as in the altarpiece, would seem to confirm this new identification, as does the chapel’s dedication to the Coronation and Assumption of the Virgin, a feast specially associated with Thomas. Holst was the first to reconstruct the altarpiece’s original appearance. Ito amends Holst’s reconstruction slightly, based upon new archival discoveries. Vittore Carpaccio, Apparition of the Crucifix in the Church of Sant’Antonio di Castello (c. 1512), oil on canvas, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. See: Peter Humfrey, Carpaccio (London: Chaucer, 2005), 136–7. Marcia Hall was one of the first scholars to probe the implications of rood screens in medieval and Renaissance churches. Marcia Hall, “The Ponte in Santa Maria Novella: The Problem of the Rood Screen in Italy,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974): 157–73; Marcia Hall, “The Italian Rood Screen: Some Implications for Liturgy and Function,” in Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, eds. Sergio Bertelli and Gloria Ramakus, 2 vols, vol. 2, 213–8 (Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1978); and Marcia Hall, “The Tramezzo in the Italian Renaissance, Revisited,” in Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, ed. Sharon Gerstel, 215–32 (Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 2006). For a larger discussion of Renaissance altarpieces for private patrons, see: Sarah Mellott Cadagin, “The Altarpieces of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494): Between Heaven and Earth, Faith and Art” (PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 2017). As Hall posits, the rood screen allowed friars and monks to “gain access from the cloister to the choir in the upper nave without leaving the seclusion of the clausura”; Hall, “The Italian Rood Screen,” 215. Joseph Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, trans. Francis Brumer, 2 vols, vol. 1, 129, 362 (Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1986); John Harper, The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy: From the Tenth to the Eighteenth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 40; Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 70. Donal Cooper, “Franciscan Choir Enclosures and the Function of DoubleSided Altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine Umbria,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 64 (2001): 1–54, 47. Cooper, “Franciscan Choir Enclosures,” 1–54, 47; Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 117. William Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 2–3. William Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, 2–3. See also Theresa Flanigan, “Ocular Chastity: Optical Theory, Architectural Barriers, and the Gaze in the Renaissance Church of San Marco in Florence,” in Beyond the Text: Franciscan Art and the Construction of Religion, eds. Xavier Seubert and Oleg Bychkov, 40–60 (St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications,

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2013). Flanigan 41 and 45 includes some particularly useful digital re­ constructions of the plan and optics of San Marco in the fifteenth century. Hall, “The Tramezzo in the Italian Renaissance, Revisited,” 219. Ibid., 219. Bernardino of Siena, Le Prediche Volgari, ed. C. Cannarozzi, 2 vols, vol. 1, 212 (Pistoia: 1934); cf. Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence, 55. Fra Angelico, San Marco Altarpiece (c. 1438–41), tempera on panel, Museo di San Marco, Florence. Hood, Fra Angelico at San Marco, 2; Flanigan, “Ocular Chastity,” 43–6. Hall, “The Ponte in Santa Maria Novella,” 159. Ibid., 162. Ibid., 163–4. Ghirlandaio’s frescoes in the Tornabuoni Chapel have been extensively stu­ died, most notably by Jean Cadogan, Patricia Simons, and Maria DePrano: Jean Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 67–90 and 236–43; Patricia Simons, “Portraiture and Patronage in Quattrocento Florence with a Special Reference to the Tornaquinci and Their Chapel in S. Maria Novella” (PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne, 1985); Patricia Simons, “Giovanna and Ginevra: Portraits for the Tornabuoni Family by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli,” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 14/15 (2011–2012): 103–35; and Maria DePrano, Art Patronage, Family, and Gender in Renaissance Florence: The Tornabuoni (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2018). First published by Gaetano Milanesi in 1887, the contract is still preserved in Florence’s Archivio di Stato as Notarile antecosimiano 13186, Ser Jacopo di Martino da Firenze, 1481–87, cc. 159 r.–60 r. It is published in Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 350–1 as document 25, and an abridged English translation of it is in David Chambers, Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971), 172–5 (document 107). The original Latin reads, “…dictam cappellam suis propriis sumptibus ac intuitu pietatis et amore Die decorare ac nobilibus et egregiis et exquisitis et ornatis pitturis ornare proposuerit in exaltationem sue domus ac familie et ornatum ac decorem dicte ecclesie et capplle prefate.” The trans­ lation above is from Chambers, Patrons and Artists, 173. Rab Hatfield, “Giovanni Tornabuoni, i fratelli Ghirlandaio e l a cappella maggiore di Santa Maria Novella,” in Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449–1494: Atti del convegno internazionale, 16–18 ottobre 1994, eds. Wolfram Prinz and Max Seidel, 112–7, 113 (Florence: Centro Di, 1996). Florence, Archivio di Stato, Notarile antecosimiano 13186, Ser Iacopo Iacopi, 1481–7, cc. 192 v.–3 v. Published as document 28 in Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio: 357–8. Technically, as first delineated by Patricia Simons, the chapel’s rights were to the Tornaquinici, the larger extended family of the Tornabuoni; see Simons, “Portraiture and Patronage in Quattrocento Florence,” 107–233. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 266. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 282–4. See also Frank Martin, “Domenico del Ghirlandaio delineavit? Osservazioni sulle vetrate della cappella Tornabuoni,” in Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449–1494 (Florence: Centro Di, 1996), 118–40. Cadogan, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 239. The tombs, traces of which were found after the 1966 flood, included those of Giovanni, his parents, and his daughter-in-law, Giovanna degli Albizzi.

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 321 30 Ibid., 267. 31 Cadogan Domenico Ghirlandaio, 87–90 and 241–3; Simons, “Patronage in Quattrocento Florence,” 234–327; Alessandro Salucci, Il Ghirlandaio a Santa Maria Novella la Cappella Tornabuoni: Un percorso tra storia e teologia (Florence: Edifir, 2012), 8, 19; Hatfield, “Giovanni Tornabuoni,” 115–7. 32 Robert Gaston, “Liturgy and Patronage in San Lorenzo, Florence, 1350–1650,” in Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, eds. F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons, 111–33, 113, 119 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). Samuel Cohn, Jr. has written persuasively on the importance of en­ dowed Masses in family chapels or at family altars as overt forms of lay control over liturgical practices in the decades after the Black Death; Samuel Cohn Jr., The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), especially 213–32. 33 The contemporary theological idea was that the soul of the patron was, if alive, in need of prayers for salvation, or if dead, presumably in Purgatory and in need of prayers to shorten the duration of that purgatorial stay. See: Cohn Jr., The Cult of Remembrance, 110–1; Sharon Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 204–9. 34 There is scant evidence for the participation of patrons at the endowed Masses or for other activities at the altars/chapels, but the donation of benches does suggest their use by individuals other than the officiating priest (s); see Jill Burke, Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 120–1 and Alison Luchs, Cestello: A Cistercian Church of the Florentine Renaissance (New York: Garland, 1977), 42. Funeral and burial masses performed in the chapels or at the endowed altars were, however, usually attended by, at the very least, the male members of the family; see Strocchia, Death and Ritual, 24. 35 St. Antoninus, Summa theologica pars tertia (Venice: N. Jenson, 1477), Tit. X, cap. III [available in full digital version from the manuscript preserved in Yale University’s Beinecke Library at galegroup.comis]; cf. Gaston 131, n. 87. 36 Hall, “The Ponte in Santa Maria Novella,” 163. 37 Tobias Leuker, “Heiligenlob in Text und Bild: Der Hl. Dominikus und Ghirlandaios Pala für Santa Maria Novella,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 54, no. 3 (2010–2012): 425–44, 426. The original Latin reads, “DISCIPLINAM ET SAPIENTIA[M] DOCVIT EOS BEATVS DOMINICVS.” 38 Ibid., 426–429 and 436. 39 Ibid., 426–429 and 436. 40 This derives from the Book of Daniel 12, when Daniel has a vision of Michael as a warrior-prince fighting the Antichrist, and from the Book of Revelation 12, when St. John has a vision of Michael and the other angels fighting against the great dragon of the Apocalypse.

Works Cited Bernardino of Siena. Le Prediche Volgari, edited by C. Cannarozzi, 2 vols. Pistoia: Pacinotti, 1934. Burke, Jill. Changing Patrons: Social Identity and the Visual Arts in Renaissance Florence. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.

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Cadagin, Sarah Mellott. “The Altarpieces of Domenico Ghirlandaio (1449–1494): Between Heaven and Earth, Faith and Art.” PhD dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park, 2017. Cadogan, Jean. Domenico Ghirlandaio: Artist and Artisan. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. Chambers, David. Patrons and Artists in the Italian Renaissance. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1971. Cohn, Samuel Jr. The Cult of Remembrance and the Black Death: Six Renaissance Cities in Central Italy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Cooper, Donal. “Franciscan Choir Enclosures and the Function of Double-Sided Altarpieces in Pre-Tridentine Umbria.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 64 (2001): 1–54. Corbinelli, Jean. Histoire généalogique de la Maison de Gondi. Paris: Chez Jean‐Baptiste Coignard, 1705. DePrano, Maria. Art Patronage, Family, and Gender in Renaissance Florence: The Tornabuoni. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Flanigan, Theresa. “Ocular Chastity: Optical Theory, Architectural Barriers, and the Gaze in the Renaissance Church of San Marco in Florence.” In Beyond the Text: Franciscan Art and the Construction of Religion, edited by Xavier Seubert and Oleg Bychkov, 40–60. St. Bonaventure: Franciscan Institute Publications, 2013. Gaston, Robert. “Liturgy and Patronage in San Lorenzo, Florence, 1350–1650.” In Patronage, Art, and Society in Renaissance Italy, edited by F. W. Kent and Patricia Simons, 111–33. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Hall, Marcia. “The Ponte in Santa Maria Novella: The Problem of the Rood Screen in Italy.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 37 (1974): 157–73. Hall, Marcia. “The Italian Rood Screen: Some Implications for Liturgy and Function.” In Essays Presented to Myron P. Gilmore, edited by Sergio Bertelli and Gloria Ramakus, 2 vols, vol. II, 213–8. Florence: La Nuova Italia Editrice, 1978. Hall, Marcia. “The Tramezzo in the Italian Renaissance, Revisited.” In Thresholds of the Sacred: Architectural, Art Historical, Liturgical, and Theological Perspectives on Religious Screens, East and West, edited by Sharon Gerstel, 215–32. Washington: Dumbarton Oaks, 2006. Harper, John. The Forms and Orders of Western Liturgy: From the Tenth to the Eighteenth Centuries. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Hatfield, Rab. “Giovanni Tornabuoni, i fratelli Ghirlandaio e l a cappella maggiore di Santa Maria Novella.” In Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449–1494: Atti del convegno internazionale, 16–18 ottobre 1994, edited by Wolfram Prinz and Max Seidel, 112–7. Florence: Centro Di, 1996. Holst, Christian von. “Domenico Ghirlandaio: L’altare maggiore di Santa Maria Novella a Firenze ricostruito.” Antichità viva 8, no. 3 (1969): 36–41. Hood, William. Fra Angelico at San Marco. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Humfrey, Peter. Carpaccio. London: Chaucer, 2005. Il Libro di Antonio Billi, edited by Fabio Benedettucci. Rome: De Rubeis, 1991.

Domenico Ghirlandaio’s High Altarpiece 323 Ito, Takuma. “Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Santa Maria Novella Altarpiece: A Reconstruction,” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 56, no. 2 (2014): 170–91. Jungmann, Joseph. The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development, trans. Francis Brumer, 2 vols. Westminster, Maryland: Christian Classics, 1986. Leuker, Tobias. “Heiligenlob in Text und Bild: Der Hl. Dominikus und Ghirlandaios Pala für Santa Maria Novella.” Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz 54, no. 3 (2010–2012): 425–44. Luchs, Alison. Cestello: A Cistercian Church of the Florentine Renaissance. New York: Garland, 1977. Martin, Frank. “Domenico del Ghirlandaio delineavit? Osservazioni sulle vetrate della cappella Tornabuoni.” In Domenico Ghirlandaio 1449–1494: Atti di convegno internazionale Firenze, 16–18 ottobre 1994, edited by Wolfram Prinz and Max Seidel, 118–40. Florence: Centro Di, 1996. Rubin, Miri. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Salucci, Alessandro. Il Ghirlandaio a Santa Maria Novella la Cappella Tornabuoni: Un percorso tra storia e teologia. Florence: Edifir, 2012. Schumacher, Andreas, ed. Florentiner Malerei Alte Pinakothek: Die Gemälde des 14. bis 16. Jahrhunderts. Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2017. Simons, Patricia. “Portraiture and Patronage in Quattrocento Florence with a Special Reference to the Tornaquinci and their Chapel in S. Maria Novella.” PhD dissertation, University of Melbourne, 1985. St. Antoninus. Summa theologica pars tertia. Venice: N. Jenson, 1477. Strocchia, Sharon. Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Strocchia, Sharon. “Giovanna and Ginevra: Portraits for the Tornabuoni Family by Ghirlandaio and Botticelli.” I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 14/15 (2011–2012): 103–35. Trexler, Richard. Public Life in Renaissance Florence. New York: Academic Press, 1980. Vasari, Giorgio. Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori scultori ed architettori, edited by Gaetano Milanesi. Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1906.

14 Guides Who Know the Way John R. Decker

… meditation is a zealous attention of the mind, earnestly pursuing an investigation … Richard of St. Victor, The Mystical Ark† The whole of creation is like a book or picture to us; an indicator, for the believer, of our life, our lot, our condition, our death, as in a mirror. Alain of Lille, The Mirror of Human Salvation††

Joos van Cleve’s Annunciation, 1525 (Figure 14.1), is an intriguing work.1 The Virgin and Archangel appear in a well-appointed interior in which Mary, busy at her own devotions, is interrupted to receive the news that she will conceive God incarnate. The presence of the Virgin and Gabriel in an haute bourgeois interior is a rather common motif for Annunciation scenes in northern art in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The presence of a number of overtly religious and/or devotional items in it, however, makes this image particularly interesting. In addition to the Virgin’s priedieu, and the book of hours atop it, the back wall of the tidy room dis­ plays: a triptych with outer doors painted in grisailles opening to a fullcolor interior, a pair of lead glass windows with biblical figures, and a colored woodcut of Moses. In other words, the Virgin’s sanctuary con­ tains a variety of religious items useful for directing her meditations and focusing her thoughts on divine matters. The depicted use of the book and prie-dieu signals that the other items in the room are not mere decorations but are components of a sustained habit of personal spirituality. Further, the interior space and the devotional images and objects in it demonstrate a proper, well-ordered upper middleclass religiosity.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-14

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Figure 14.1 Joos van Cleve, Annunciation, 1525. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 86 × 80 cm, Oil on Panel, Accession nr. 32.100.60. Joos van Cleve, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Van Cleve’s painting is not unique in its use of devotional images and objects within an image designed for use during meditation. Similar signs of individual piety are present in multiple examples from the fifteenth century. Hans Memling’s portrait of Martin van Nieuwenhoven, 1487 (Figure 14.2), depicts the donor with an opened book of hours and lead glass windows depicting St. Martin of Tours.2

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Figure 14.2 Hans Memling, Portrait of Martin van Niewenhoven with the Virgin, 1487. Bruges, Hospital of St. John, 44.7 × 66 cm, Oil on Panel, Object nr. O.SJ0178.I. Photo: Alexey Yakovlev, CC BY-SA 4.0 < https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dieric Bouts’s Portrait of a Female Donor, 1455 (Figure 14.3), shows a young woman with prie-dieu, book of hours, and colored woodcut of St. Margaret. Petrus Christus’s Portrait of a Young Man, 1450–60 (Figure 14.4) depicts a pious man holding a book of hours; there is also an illuminated version of the salva sancta facies on the wall behind him.3

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Figure 14.3 Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Female Donor, 1450–60. Washington, DC, National Gallery of Art, 41 × 22 cm, Oil on Panel, Accession nr. 1961.9.11. Petrus Christus, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Figure 14.4 Petrus Christus, Portrait of a Male Donor, 1450–60. London, National Gallery, 35.5 × 26.3 cm, Oil on Panel. National Gallery, CC BY 3.0 ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons.

In each of these cases, the scenes depict acts of meditation that take place in private households rather than in the confines of a church. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the merger of domestic and devotional space was not unusual. An Annunciation originally painted on a hearth in a private house in Bruges (Figure 14.5), for instance, shows how integral religious subject matter could be to the home. This is significant as the intersection of the sacred with the domestic points toward lay pious practices that could be performed without the direct supervision or intervention of a priest or confessor. These activities, however, still needed structure and direction to remain orthodox and be spiritually efficacious. The devotional items deployed during meditation needed not only to sustain the act but also to help the votary actively create a soul worth redeeming.

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Figure 14.5 Anonymous. Annunciation, Late Fifteenth Century. Bruges, Cinquantanaire Museum. Oil on Wood. Daderot, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Those who could afford it made use of the various types of devotionalia depicted in Van Cleve’s painting and more. Pious men and women in the early modern period had available to them an array of images and ob­ jects useful in the pursuit of perfecting their souls—from inexpensive items such as small statues made out of pipe clay, simple prints, and prayer beads, to expensive objects such as books, paintings, and more.4 Van Cleve’s Annunciation, however, is not merely a recitation of the

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contents of a devout home. The devotional and meditational devices represented in the painting appear as components of an image that was itself devotional and meditational. For the pious viewer, Van Cleve’s Annunciation was a starting point for spiritual exercises in which a de­ votee’s actions in front of the painting, to a certain extent, paralleled those of the Virgin.5 Like the Madonna, the votary had an image available to focus the mind, heart, and soul on the divine. Positioned outside the fictive world of the painting as a participant in potentia, the viewer mentally had access to the narrative contained in the image as well as the various objects available in the Virgin’s space. Such items might or might not reflect similar things in the viewer’s personal col­ lection of devotionalia, though it is not hard to imagine a prosperous early modern Christian with an equally impressive array of objects at her or his disposal. As a result, the viewer could augment what she or he saw in the image with tactile experiences based on the devotionalia in her or his possession. Each of the images I have discussed so far, to larger or smaller degree, has within it internal cues that refer to the devotional processes available to the votaries using it.6 These referential items were mnemonic triggers that helped the viewer assemble her or his devotional chains (catenae) and kept meditation moving.7 As I will argue in this chapter, however, such prompts were more than just mnemonic triggers, they were also visual guides, which the votary could employ as she or he negotiated the act of meditation. In part, these guides drew attention to the various devotional activities that can be performed with their aid, as well as the image in which they are represented, and more generally to the role of devotional objects as avenues of spiritual self-fashioning.8 As tools that made available and exploited modes of meditation, such images fa­ cilitated a votary’s knowledge and awareness of various devotional processes, demonstrated how devotion worked, reinforced the im­ portance of particular stages in it, and drew attention to the devotee’s own position in those stages. In other words, images like Van Cleve’s addressed the viewer and helped make the votary aware of her or his spiritual progress. They also encouraged the votary to become an active participant in devotion rather than a passive viewer of an image.

14.1 Pilgrimage and Ladder The need for self-awareness, self-reflection, and active participation when engaged in acts of personal piety was integral to late-medieval and early modern spirituality. As a mode of spiritual self-fashioning, medi­ tation required time, patience, and effort to perform properly. Rather than being a one-time event, the devotional act required both ongoing

Guides Who Know the Way 331 and repeated mental, spiritual, and physical engagement to be effective. This accorded well with the Christian understanding of spiritual life as a pilgrimage through the world in which the soul journeyed on the path toward redemption or perdition. According to this model, those who successfully complete the journey of life and arrive safely on the other side enjoy the paradise God has prepared for them. Those who succumb to temptation and fail in the quest for reconciliation, suffer in the damnation they have earned for themselves. This layer of responsibility was especially important as it was based on the consequences of the efforts and actions of the faithful. According to Christian belief, how­ ever, human free will (liberum arbitrium) was deformed through original sin and the human judgments that drove each choice would always be flawed. As a result, how one participated in the journey mattered because no one could attain salvation passively.9 By the fourteenth century, the metaphor of the pilgrimage of the soul was deeply intertwined with a Christian world view. Images of pilgrims, either as representatives of individuals on a holy journey or as re­ presentations of the more abstract ideal of striving for salvation, were fairly common in early modern European art. Written works like Dante’s Divine Comedy (Divina Commedia), Guillaume de Deguileville’s Pilgrimage of Human Life (Le pelerinage de la vie humaine), and their various derivatives across Europe, helped disseminate the concept to a wide readership in the vernacular.10 The propagation of these written sources may have been broadened further by their transmission to audiences through oral recita­ tions of their contents in various settings. Over the course of time, various authors adopted the metaphor of life as a pilgrimage and linked it to the concept of devotion as a goal-driven movement along a structured path. The anonymous fifteenth-century work titled The Mirror of Salvation of Every Man (Den spyeghel der salicheyt van Elckerlijc), for example, sets the protagonist on a pilgrimage during which he must follow a path of incremental self-improvement to achieve salvation.11 This subject was made even more widely available through a well-known play titled Elkerlijc (as well as its English counterpart Everyman), in which actors performed the story of Every Man’s salvation for an assembled audience (a point to which I will return later in this chapter). The link between a fixed itinerary of devotion—which was structured, directed toward a known goal, and depended on the awareness of one’s place in it—and the impact it could have on the soul was not limited to literature, plays, and images. The well-defined pilgrimage routes through Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern period offered Christians the opportunity to experience first-hand the benefits that a fixed itinerary of devotion could have on the soul. The possibility of rehabilitating even the most obdurate of sinners by requiring them to tread an authorized path of

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pilgrimage and requiring devotional effort from them, in fact, was the impetus behind the practice of judicial pilgrimages in the Low Countries.12 The benefits of pilgrimage were not limited to the physical act of travel. Indeed, many Christians worked to (re)form their souls by engaging in mental pilgrimages in which they visited holy sites in their imaginations in highly structured ways.13 Not only did such mental pilgrimages require careful attention to the order of the itinerary, they also often demanded that participants keep careful track of how many steps they had taken toward or away from a particular location on that route. While a prominent metaphor, the pilgrimage of the soul was not the only framework for understanding the soul’s journey as an active, di­ rected process. Many devotional authors also used the conceptual fra­ mework of a ladder—drawn from Jacob’s dream vision in Genesis 28:10-17—or even merged the two.14 The tropes of path and ladder provided the various authors engaged in the process of leading devotees toward salvation with mental models that allowed a range of movement—forward or backward, up or down, toward or away from God. In the late Middle Ages, one of the best-known proponents of the metaphors of the path and ladder for the soul was Saint Bonaventure. In his work, The Soul’s Journey Into God (Itinerarium mentis in Deum), the author describes the ongoing task of perfecting the innermost self.15 For Bonaventure, the created cosmos is a Jacob’s Ladder that provides a path to the divine.16 To climb the ladder, however, requires that each Christian must enter into her or his own inner self and contemplate the image of God, which the soul bears. By diligently progressing through each stage, the faithful make their way toward God. For the ascents to be fruitful, the votary must be conscientious in, and actively engaged with, her or his exercises. It was not enough to perform an act mechanically by rote. To be effective, each iteration of devotion demanded care and ef­ fort.17 By directly addressing readers and admonishing them to exercise caution along the path as well as spend the time needed to understand each stage, Bonaventure structures the votary’s devotional experiences. Forearmed with the author’s instructions, the devotee is in a better po­ sition to benefit from the exercises and to reach her or his desired goal.

14.2 There Are Many Paths on This Ascent Conscientious effort directed toward staying on the path of redemption was a common component of late-medieval and early modern devotion. This approach is evident, for example, in tracts written in the mid-to-late fourteenth century in the Low Countries. Jan van Ruusbroec’s Seven Steps (Zeven Trappen) and Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen’s Spiritual Ascents (Geestelijk Opklimmingen) are two prime examples. Both

Guides Who Know the Way 333 Ruusbroec and Zerbolt van Zutphen were associated with the Modern Devotion, which was a far-reaching lay spiritual movement in the Low Countries.18 Ruusbroec’s teachings inspired the founder of the move­ ment, Geert Groote, and in many ways set the tone for the spiritual writings that the Modern Devotion produced. Zerbolt van Zutphen was a follower of Groote and his works express many of the ideas espoused by the founder and by Ruusbroec. This is not to say, however, that the Modern Devotion—or any particular approach to lay piety for that matter—is responsible for the devotional practices I discuss in this study. In fact, it is the willingness of the authors associated with the Modern Devotion to adopt well-established approaches to religiosity that makes them such effective examples of wider trends in religious behavior in the late medieval and early modern periods. In the Seven Steps, Ruusbroec lays out seven stages for creating what he calls a “perfected active life” (een volmaakt werkende leven), that “leads us higher and higher in that eternal life until we, through grace, are worthy to stand before the face of our Lord.”19 The steps for achieving this ascent are: the desire to unite with God, voluntary poverty, cleanliness of the soul and purity of the body, true humility, nobility of the virtues and good works, giving oneself over completely to God, and contemplation of the godhead.20 Between the fifth and sixth steps, the author offers a series of exercises de­ signed to rectify the soul and draw it nearer to God. The climb upward, however, is not without its dangers. Shortly after the section containing the exercises, Ruusbroec informs his readers of the various “departures from the path” (dolen) that can afflict the faithful as they struggle toward God. The greatest majority of these pitfalls derive from an individual’s inability to properly discipline the self and abandon worldly desires. In order to guide the votary and help find the correct course, the author provides diagnostic examples of the spiritual disorders caused by departure from the path. The afflicted, “are easily vexed, troubled, irascible, rushed, depraved, aggressive, and debased in being, in works, and in conduct …”21 The presence of any of these in the votary is a sure sign of incorrect practice. These faults serve as antipodes to the ideal virtues after which the votary should strive during, and after, ascent. As correctives, or negative exemplars, they guide the faithful away from these mistakes by providing identifiable symptoms against which to guard. Once the soul has been disciplined, it can move onward to the sixth step, which Ruusbroec calls “clear insight, pure of spirit and of thought.”22 Without the preparation of the preceding steps and exercises, the votary cannot hope to ascend to this stage or beyond to the seventh in which the soul contemplates God. Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen, in the Spiritual Ascents, also leads the votary through the steps necessary to bring the soul to greater

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perfection.23 At the beginning of the tract, Zerbolt asks the votary to recognize how fallen her or his soul is and understand the descents that occurred to reach such a low state. From the depths of iniquity, the soul must climb upward—first to a neutral position in which it has left behind sin and has been reconciled though conversion, and then from there to seeking mindfully after God through spiritual exercises. At the beginning of the ascent stage, Zerbolt counsels the faithful to, “Dispose your ascents in your heart.” Before you ascend, that is, begin to advance spiritually, your heart must be well disposed to reach its end, which is purity of heart and love. Carefully examine and consider what suits you, what is most useful, and if you do not know, ask others … Set a certain end in your heart toward which by grace you may come to complete all your works and exercises. Then order the steps, exercises, and means by which to reach that end, and fix both the end and the means firmly in your heart.24 The stress placed on active participation through preparation and execu­ tion of the exercises helps to focus the mind and spirit as well as increase the likelihood of a positive outcome. In each stage, Zerbolt reminds the votary of the need to be aware of her or his progress, or lack thereof. He addresses devotees by directing them to assess the state of their souls and then take conscious, directed action based on what they find.25 First and before all else carefully examine yourself … Inquire which vices lie hidden and which are open in you, which strongest and which most festering; next which remedies are the most effective against each vice. Then take up battle against the vice that seems to fester most. Try with all your strength to purge it; focus all your effort and concentration on driving it out. Constantly plead with God, and let it come before your eyes in prayer. Pour out tears without ceasing for its extermination. … Do not fight the one in such a way as to lose all thought of the others, but fight principally against the one in such a way as to conceive general horror of all the others. Indeed the more strenuously and wisely you do battle with the one, the greater horror you will conceive for all.26 To be successful in one’s journey, a votary’s meditational exercises must begin by understanding the gulf dividing the soul and God and then must work diligently to reform the innermost self so that it inclines toward the divine. Zerbolt assures the votary that, “[i]f you proved a diligent workman in these … inner examinations and as a just judge judged

Guides Who Know the Way 335 yourself, tearing away the veil of self-love or self-indulgence and in no way flattered or stroked yourself, you will doubtless advance greatly in self-knowledge.”27 The process of self-inspection and the work of tra­ veling the path and/or ladder toward God was not passive but required vigorous, and often uncomfortable, action on the votary’s part. Such deep engagement was critical because the path, and the various steps required to traverse it, was difficult to discern. Moreover, according to Zerbolt, various sins, vices, and agents of the Devil also constantly threatened to derail one’s progress. In theory, the more active the votary was in her or his efforts to participate in salvation, the more active the Devil’s counter-response. As remedy to the challenges in the process, the author counsels his audience that they need help. He states, “[b]ecause there are many paths on this ascent … do not even set out without a guide who knows both the way and the treachery of the adversaries.”28 Images like those under study so far provided visual guides designed to help the votary steer clear of the many obstacles they might meet on the path to (re)forming their souls. In the case of Van Cleve’s Annunciation, the Virgin’s performance of piety—as well as the presence of the various instruments at her disposal—models a form of successful devotion that underscores the need for active participation. The call to be active was not limited to expensive paintings meant for the wealthy. Even those of humbler means were introduced to the concept via more financially accessible images. An anonymous woodcut from Augsburg titled The Way of Salvation, 1490 (Figure 14.6), depicts the journey awaiting the pious soul seeking to know God.29 While the woodcut makes use of the types of imagery found in various devotional tracts, to my knowledge, it does not il­ lustrate a particular textual source but is a free interpretation of the tradition.30 At the base of the round-topped mountain that dominates the composition, a woman dressed as a nun kneels, with hands clasped in prayer, ostensibly engaged in meditation. Floating above the mountain is the object of the nun’s desire—Christ and quartet of musicmaking angels gazing down from heaven. The Way of Salvation is a woodcut and it is improbable that the depicted nun represents a par­ ticular donor. She, instead, is a stand-in for any votary looking to begin an ascent toward the godhead. The form of devotion manifested in the image was available to a broad cross section of the faithful (both male and female) and was not limited to the high-flown acts of contempla­ tion solely practiced by religious professionals.

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Figure 14.6 Anonymous, Way of Salvation, 1485–95. The Art Institute of Chicago, 263 × 180 mm, Ink on Paper, Reference nr. 1947.473. CC0 Public Domain.

The nun’s position at the foot of the mountain makes clear that to reach Christ, the faithful soul must ascend following a defined path, which in this instance also resembles a ladder. The pathway available to the nun (and viewer) is steep and narrow and is bordered by large thistles growing out of the mountain. The difficulty of the path—its vertical ascent and thorny flora—is amplified further by the scourges on the ground in front of the nun. Twelve banderoles constitute the rungs of the ladder that will lead the votary along the path between the thistles to a rendezvous with Christ at the top of the mountain. Each rung contains a single concept necessary to make the ascent: faith, charity, modesty,

Guides Who Know the Way 337 steadfastness, justice, strength, determination, temperance, patience, obedience, humility, and love of God. In addition, three banderoles announce to the viewer that, “by overcoming vice and sin and by treading over thorn and thistle, one can arrive at the top of the moun­ tain, to stand at peace with God.”31 Like the works of Bonaventure and Zerbolt van Zutphen, The Way of Salvation breaks down the path for seeking the divine into a gradual series of steps. Similar to the texts, the image makes clear that although the steps are incremental, it does not mean that they are necessarily easy to accomplish or that they occur automatically. As the nun contemplates her desired union with God, she must ascend rung by rung, being sure not to miss any of the twelve handholds offered. These waypoints require the application of the vir­ tues written on each rung. To ascend the mountain depicted, and to maintain the act of meditation, the nun (and by extension any viewer) needed to find her inner strength and work her way through the exercise by marshaling, among other things, her steadfastness, determination, and patience. These three behaviors in particular underpinned the pro­ cess of meditation, which was always in danger of collapsing should the votary’s concentration lapse and become passive rather than active. Their presence in the list of internal qualities needed to ascend helps make the viewer aware that failure to reach God is fundamentally a failure of self-mastery. The scourges in front of the nun make clear that to persist on the path before them, all devotees must exercise a self-aware discipline (physical, mental, and spiritual). In addition to the difficulty of executing such virtues, the path upward is complicated by being narrow and bordered by rocks and thistles. These obstructions thematize the dangers involved in attempting ascent. The narrowness of the ladder/path evokes the observation of Matthew 7:14 that, “straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.” The image amplifies this by drawing the devotee’s attention to the act of devotion through the motif of the praying nun with her scourges. Further, it alerts the viewer to the difficulty of the ascent, to the narrowness of the route that must be traversed, and to the consequences for straying from the path (i.e. failure to meet with Christ). The banderoles offer a textual confirmation of the threats the terrain poses by informing the votary that the thistles and thorns of the vices must be overcome to achieve success. Though not explicitly stated in the image, the juxtaposition of the narrow path of virtues and the wide borderlands of thistles-cum-vices asserts that if the votary cannot ascend the mountain and see God, it is because she or he has performed the devotional act improperly. The fault for such a failure rests solely with the devotee and not the image. After all, the woodcut not only shows the path, and the dangers to be faced, it also offers a glimpse of the glory awaiting the votary if she or he can be disciplined and focused enough to tame sin and seek the divine. The various

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elements in the image—the ladder of virtues, the narrow passage up the middle of the mountain, the ideal, prayerful posture of the nun—function as guides who point the votary toward her or his desired goal, which is the elevation of the soul. In short, the nun, scourges, thistles, ladder, and mountain address the viewer and invite active participation. The nun who stands in for the viewer turns her attention to the mountain of contemplation, the path required to ascend it, the tools useful for staying on it, and the desired goal of that climb. The depicted nun, however, is rooted in her position and does not ascend the mountain. Only the votary, who is positioned outside the image, is free to begin, and potentially complete, the journey. In theory, the nun’s goal matches the viewer’s and vice versa—a desire to experience the divine. Reaching that goal becomes possible through the devotional actions encapsulated in, and made possible by, the image. In this way, we may see the print as a visual expression of Zerbolt’s advice to, “order the steps, exercises, and means by which to reach that end, and fix both the end and the means firmly in your heart.”32 The print is a devotional object that contains within it other devotional objects, images, and ideas. Such intra-pictorial indices not only clarify the actions required of the devotee but also point to themselves, and the image in which they are contained, as a means for accomplishing those actions. The success or failure of a votary’s ascent was dependent on more than following a simple pointer, however. Before any journey upward was possible, Christians needed to take stock of the state of their souls and understand the points from which they were starting. To do this, a great deal of self-knowledge and self-reflection on the individual’s part was necessary.

14.3 So That You May Know Yourself Well By the fourteenth century, Christians could turn to the Spiegel (mirror) genre—in both Latin and vernacular versions—for help with achieving the greater self-awareness required for redemption.33 While there are differences in how various authors used the metaphor of the mirror, texts in this genre share in common that they direct readers toward greater knowledge of nature, future events, of God, or of the self.34 The focus of such literature was to provide information and understanding necessary for personal development.35 The ubiquity of the mirror metaphor in Christian religious practice generated a particular form of meditational behavior referred to as speculation, which was the act of mentally gazing into one of the many metaphorical mirrors available to the faithful in order to gain the knowledge they promised.36 For pious Christians, the most useful form of speculation was that which offered insight into the state of one’s soul and turned the innermost self toward God.37

Guides Who Know the Way 339 A good example of the focus on self-knowledge as a critical compo­ nent of the process of salvation occurs in Ruusbroec’s The Mirror of Eternal Salvation (Die spieghel der ewigher salicheit). Ruusbroec was neither the only proponent of this approach, nor the only author to discuss it in the vernacular.38 The influence his writings had on devo­ tional life in the Low Countries, however, make this tract an interesting touchstone for this chapter. In his tract, the author informs the reader that there are three levels of spiritual life: striving against sin, the achievement of the virtues, and the negation of the self in God.39 He offers his work as an education in these spiritual levels and informs the reader that, “I shall demonstrate and make [these three states] clear to you, so that you may know yourself well and not think yourself better or more holy than you are.”40 Mirror texts often advocated this type of selfawareness by leading the reader through a slow, mindful examination of the self in which an ideal (or series of ideals) is offered and becomes the benchmark against which the reader assess her or his soul. The greatest ideal after which the soul could strive was that set by Christ. In order to achieve this ideal, the votary needed to work toward greater likeness with the exemplar. In his Mirror of Perfection, for example, Hendrik Herp—a Franciscan who was also associated with the Modern Devotion—leads readers through a series of exercises designed to purify the soul and direct it toward God. The Mirror of Perfection was widely distributed and available in the original vernacular as well as in Latin translations.41 In chapter 46, titled “The Third Exercise is to Resemble” (Die derde oefeninghe is te gheliken), the author describes Christ as the exemplar and offers advice as to how the audience can be more like him. When that fire of love has been stoked, so that he [the votary] shall first burn up all unlikeness, that is all sin and shortcomings, all natural passion and clinging to earthly things, all inclination to sensible things and impatience. … he [the votary] shall bind together all his imperfections and throw them into that immeasurable fire of Godly love … Then he shall rise up with a burning desire to become the likeness of God … And if he [the votary] zealously observes his spiritual exemplar, that is Christ in all his perfection in both his deity and his humanity … he [the votary] shall desire to make himself in conformity with the humanity of Christ in all the virtues … And above all, [the votary] shall desire to resemble Christ in seeking after the deepest destitution, humbleness, and meekness.42 In order to (re)form the soul, votaries must fix their attention on the example of Christ and use it as a benchmark against which they judge their own behavior. As they strive to be more Christ-like, Christians must rid themselves of persistent imperfections by burning them away in the “immeasurable fire of Godly love.” By the fifteenth century, the

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concept of Christ as an exemplar for the faithful to imitate was com­ monplace and was widely disseminated in works like Thomas a Kempis’s Imitatio Christi (Imitation of Christ). The Imitatio led votaries through devotional exercises that centered on Christ’s life and actions. The point of these meditations was to help bring the reader’s soul into greater conformity with Christ. The exercises advocated in the Mirror of Eternal Salvation, The Mirror of Perfection, the Imitatio Christi, and similar works, required votaries to enact a form of reverse mirroring in which they, outside the mirror of the text, were required to change in order to more carefully match the image of Christ contained in it. In other words, to be efficacious the text had to be able penetrate and alter the real world, not vice versa. The drive toward conformity and greater perfection, however, in­ troduced complications. Votaries, for example, needed to be aware of whether they had truly attained and assimilated the various virtues after which they were striving or were, instead, enacting false semblances of those traits. Herp makes this enjoinder clear. And if [the votary] exercises himself to receive any virtues, such as in humbling himself to receive meekness … he will want to know whether he has received that virtue in the ground [of his soul] and has come therein to resemble Christ, thus shall he note whether he is so passionate in his petition for this virtue that he without any reservation of his heart … mildly surrenders himself in the desire to make himself ready in the virtue in which he is tested—even in that period when the certainty of grace is denied him: then he shall know that he has received that virtue in the highest perfection by the gift of God.43 The soul’s willingness to persist in the practice of the virtue, even in the absence of the overt confirmation of it through the experience of the gift of grace, becomes a mirror that reflects the possession of that virtue. This is significant as such behavior did not rely on the solace of an immediate reward but was the result of changes in one’s internal habitus that de­ monstrated foundational transformations of the soul. A similar problem of certainty appears in Hendrik Mande’s tract titled “A Devout Little Book on the Highest Perfection of Love and how one Shall Strive to Reach it” (Een devoet boexken vander volmaecster hoecheit der minnen ende hoemen dair toe sel pinen te comen).44 Mande was associated with the Modern Devotion and authored numerous works that survive in multiple editions. In the “Devout Little Book,” Mande notes that dis­ cerning whether or not the experiences that occur during devotion (e.g. a feeling of sweetness that seems to imply perfection) are genuine or de­ ceptive is a complicated matter for the votary—especially a beginner. The solution to the problem, according to Mande, is to “plant” the virtues in the soul and “root” them with “long exercises and with close

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care.” Christians were aware that sure ascertainment of the achieve­ ment of virtue in the soul could be difficult thanks in part to the Pauline observation that in this life we see through such mirrors only darkly (I Corinthians 13:12). Despite the step-wise examinations of the self that these texts advocate, it was difficult for the faithful (and still is for modern scholars) to determine whether the soul’s progress, which is posited as being the result of careful assessment—and is often described in terms of ascent—is purely sequential, loosely corelated, or a combi­ nation of the two that allows for growth by disciplined development as well as by intuitive or spiritual leaps.46 In any event, the late-medieval and early modern devotional authors noted in this chapter agree that progress is not possible without care and attention. The need to pay close attention to one’s own internal states before, during, and after devotion was not limited to Dutch authors associated with the Modern Devotion. Early modern Christians across Europe were already well versed in this type of mental activation of narratives. In the Mediations on the Life of Christ, for example, the Psuedo-Bonaventure (John of Calabria?) provides the votary with a model for doing this. The Meditations was the product of Franciscan spirituality and was designed to help awaken the faithful to a deep contemplation of holy subjects. Its pastoral focus made it popular among the laity and, as a result, the text was quickly disseminated across Europe and appeared in numerous vernacular editions.47 In a section titled “Meditations on the Passion of the Lord, in General,” the author demonstrates how devotees should approach the narratives regarding Christ’s death that follow. The di­ rections provided help to frame the reader’s interpretive process and, as such, are worth quoting at length. He who wishes to glory in the Cross and the Passion must dwell with continued meditation on the mysteries and events that occurred. … I … believe that in attaining this state it is therefore necessary to be directed by the whole light of the mind, by the eye of the watchful heart, having left all the other extraneous cares … by desire, wisdom, and perseverance … Therefore I exhort you that, if you have studiously considered the things said above on His life, you much more diligently concentrate the whole spirit and all the virtues … Therefore all the things, that is, what can be as piously meditated as I think I am telling you, with the accustomed meditation. … You will hear (and see). One of them [Christ’s tormentors] seizes Him (this sweet, mild, and pious Jesus,) another binds Him, another attacks Him, another scolds Him, another pushes Him, another blasphemes Him, another spits on Him … He is led back and forth,

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The Passion narrative is expressed in terms of short episodes each with a strong affective charge. Further, the votary is directed to imagine the various points of Christ’s torture as happening both linearly and cir­ cuitously (e.g. from place to place but also “back and forth” but with no specified endpoint). It is not enough to consider the events of the Passion in a detached manner, however. The author informs the faithful that they should “[h]eed all these things as though you were present, and watch Him attentively … Tarry here a little and examine the marvelous things of your Lord with pious mind.”49 In other words, the devotee should explore each moment with the intensity of actual, physical and emo­ tional presence and use the specific event as an anchor point for medi­ tation. In this form of devotional exercise, the individual moments of the Passion act as mnemonic triggers that help the votary assemble a catenae of associations. Carefully following these chains, in turn, required its own form of attention and awareness in order to parse out the deeper Christian ideas they referenced.50

14.4 The Play’s the Thing In addition to written sources like the Mirror of Eternal Salvation and the Mirror of Perfection, as well as visual examples like the Way of Salvation, the faithful also encountered the enjoinder to self-awareness and self-assessment through popular drama. This venue offered early modern Christians access to these ideas for both literate and illiterate (or semi-literate) audiences. Three works in particular stand out as ex­ emplary. The first is The Mirror of Salvation of Every Man (also com­ monly known as Elckerlijc), which was printed as early as 1496 (though the text likely predates this publication period) and is presented in the form of a Rhetorician’s play.51 The dramatic narrative follows the pil­ grimage of redemption the protagonist takes as he works to rectify his soul in preparation for answering God’s summons to account for his life. It is difficult to know for certain whether or not this work was performed publicly in the Low Countries but its English variant, Everyman, was staged fairly frequently in the sixteenth century.52 Given the moralizing content of the work and its address to all people, it seems likely that Elckerlijc was performed for an audience rather than being a play read in solitude by an individual.53 The second is The Play of the Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins (Het spel van de V vroede en V dwaeze Maegden), which dates to the late fifteenth century and also bears the hallmarks of Rhetorician’s drama.54 The play enacts Christ’s parable, recorded in

Guides Who Know the Way 343 Matthew 25:1–13, in which two groups of Virgins respond to the coming of the “bridegroom.” The third play, titled Marijken van Nijmegen, chronicles the spiritual fall, awakening, and eventual re­ demption of a young woman who makes a pact with the Devil. Elkerlijc, The Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins, and Marijken van Nijmegen were moralizing plays that encouraged the audience toward adopting virtue and that attempted to place, and keep, the faithful on the path to salvation. Each work does this by directly addressing the audience and by asking listeners to reflect on the consequences of both good and bad choices. The certainty of consequences is the dramatic force driving Elkerlijc. God, unhappy with the sinful state of humankind, sends Death to fetch Everyman (Elkerlijc) who will account for his deeds. The Grim Reaper departs heaven and confronts the protagonist with the news of his pending judgment. … be certain that thou must make an accounting before God Almighty, Of how you have spent your time, and of your works, good and bad. … I am Death, By God’s order, Everyman shall make an accounting.55 Everyman (Elkerlijc) is caught off guard by Death’s sudden appearance and tries to make a deal to keep his life so that he may begin to undo his sinful actions. The protagonist is faced with prospect of suffering the consequences of a lifetime of bad decisions but Death gives him only the day to put his spiritual affairs in order. The fate of the soul is also at stake in The Five wise and Five Foolish Virgins; the parable on which it is based compares those who make themselves ready for judgment with those who do not. The play offers five virtues (Fear, Hope, Charity, Belief, and Obedience) and opposes them to an equal number of vices (Wasted Time, Frivolity, Pride, Vainglory, and Idle Speech). Through their examples—positive and negative—they demonstrate the difference between the elect and the damned. As the play progresses, each of the characters makes clear that what they have done, or have left undone, will influence their fates. When the moment of judgment comes, the virtuous maidens are taken up to heaven while their counterparts remain outside the gates of paradise unaware that they have been excluded from eternal grace. Soon after, the Devil claims his prizes and informs each foolish virgin how she lost her chance. At the end of the play, the text drives home the potentially disastrous consequences of leading an insufficiently introspective life.

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John R. Decker Thus we pray that you take this example, And be wary of sins from henceforth, That you will hold your conscience pure and unspotted, Because thou know not the day nor the hour When the Lord shall come56

Following the mirror tradition, both Elkerlijc and The Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins encourage spectators to be self-aware in order to rectify their souls and attain heaven. In Elkerlijc, such self-awareness comes when the protagonist seeks out Virtue, who sends him to Knowledge. Under the tutelage of Knowledge, Elkerlijc pursues Confession who counsels him to find Penitence as he prepares himself to stand in judgment before God.57 As he takes this advice and begins to perform penance, the character of Elkerlijc ad­ dresses the audience and encourages it to do likewise by saying, “Oh Brothers, do each penance difficult and fruitful, before thou must go on your pilgrimage [i.e. to give account before God].”58 The result of his confession and penance is the restoration of his Virtue, which leads in an upward spiral to his rectification. The course of his conversion, and the efficacy of the steps he takes along the way, demonstrates to audience members that if they follow a similar route, and are as focused on selfimprovement as Elkerlijc becomes, they too will increase their chances of a good result. The mirroring function of the play—its call for selfawareness and the acknowledgment of the effects of devout actions—comes in the work’s epilogue, which again directly addresses the audience. … Most esteemed Audience, Note this mirror, have it before your eyes And you will be held far from pride and likewise from all sins. Now, let us pray daily, That each person should print this in his heart, That we may at last come purely before God …59 The need for self-aware preparation is even more pointed in The Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins. The Wise Virgins address the audience and provide a pathway for properly preparing for the coming of the bridegroom, Christ. Each virgin is clear that focusing on Christ’s Passion and holding it firmly in one’s memory is the surest foundation for those seeking salvation. The persona of Faith, for example, informs the audience that “with his Passion and bitter death, he has brought us out of our distress. If we keep this firmly in our memories, it will lead us to eternal glory where life and joy are eternal.”60 The memory of Christ’s sacrifice and what it promises for

Guides Who Know the Way 345 Christian souls is only part of the program. To be worthy, each soul must prepare itself in ways that are pleasing to God. In the context of the play, this is equated with preparing a lamp with which to keep watch. Each virgin emphasizes her eponymous virtue as being efficacious in the soul’s preparation. After Fear has warned her sisters that the bridegroom is coming and admonishes them ensure their lamps are ready, each states what she has done to prepare. The speech given by Obedience is parti­ cularly interesting in that it emphasizes the need for self-knowledge. Thus have I filled my lamp, With obedient knowledge of all my guilt; That [knowledge] is an oil, which mollifies God greatly … Because it is the foundation of all virtues.61 Once each of the wise virgins has said her piece, the foolish virgins de­ monstrate how poorly prepared they are. Wasted Time begins the litany of failure by stating, “I’m looking in my lamp and find that the oil is all gone.”62 The accounting of each virgin as to the manner in which she has prepared her lamp creates a reflexive pivot in the play. It does so by posing an unstated question to the audience, which asks each person to assess her or his own “lamps” (souls) and determine whether or not s/he conforms to the example of the wise virgins or the foolish virgins. Such an awareness requires audience members to take stock of their own inner spiritual states at that moment, compare them to the positive and negative ex­ amples offered, and determine whether or not they would be ready should the bridegroom come. A similar effect is achieved in Elckerlijc as the protagonist works to root out the iniquities he finds in his soul while he prepares for his meeting with God. As an embodiment of everyone, his sins represent (admittedly to a deeper, more extreme level) those into which members of the audience are also likely to have fallen. Similar devices help drive the narrative of Marijken van Nijmegen. Written around 1500 in or near Antwerp, the play is a tale of sin, conversion, and salvation set in the audience’s own world of lived ex­ perience.63 The story begins with a young woman, Marijken, living under the care of her uncle who is a priest. The uncle sends Marijken to nearby Nijmegen to get various supplies (e.g. oil for the lamp, salt, vi­ negar). The trip takes longer than she expects and, as a result, she is forced to stay in Nijmegen despite the fact that her uncle had warned her to be home before dark. Marijken decides to seek shelter with her aunt who lives in town but finds no welcome. The aunt reveals herself to be a drunkard and a gambler and chases away Marijken with harsh language once it is clear that the young woman does not approve of her lifestyle. Marijken flees but finds herself alone and vulnerable outside the city. In desperation, she calls out to both God and the Devil in the hopes that one of them will help her. The Devil responds to her plea by appearing to

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her in the guise of a man named Moenen and offering to teach her great secrets as well as the trivium and quadrivium. Marijken agrees to Moenen’s offer but in exchange must alter her name, which is a deri­ vative of Maria, to something else. She complies, changes her name to Emmeken (little “m”), and spends the next few years in Antwerp living in sin with Moenen. After six years, Emmeken feels regret for what she has done and wishes to see her uncle and aunt once more before finally abandoning herself to utter damnation. The two travel to Nijmegen and arrive on a feast day. Emmeken is disappointed to learn that her aunt has been dead for three years already but is delighted to hear that a play called the Masscheroene will be performed. The Masscheroene is a playwithin-the-play and consists of the so-called Court of Heaven in which the Devil’s representative, Masscheroene, makes claim to all human souls on account of their sinfulness. Over the course of the trial, the Virgin Mary intercedes and invokes God’s mercy, which opens the path for salvation. Even before the play-within-the-play occurs, Monen objects to attending the performance and informs the audience of the basis of his trepidation. I fear, by Lucifer’s backside, that she might hear in this play something by which she will receive sorrow and afterthoughts.64 In other words, Moenen signals for the audience that the inset that follows is the turning point in the narrative because it encapsulates the larger message of play in which it is embedded. Despite Moenen’s misgivings, Emmeken watches the Masscheroene anyway. After hearing the Virgin’s promise in the play that she will aid all who ask for her help Marijken understands the depth of her sin and experiences a spiritual awakening. Lord God, how my blood is warmed In the hearing of this wagon play! I hear many reasons and so many arguments, That I have received true afterthought and sorrow.65 As Moenen predicts, the play-within-the-play brings about the very re­ sults he fears. To prevent the loss of his prey, he reveals his true demonic form and attempts to murder Marijken and claim her soul. Following the advice of the Masscheroene, however, Marijken calls for the Virgin’s aid and is saved so that she can perform the penance needed to rectify her soul and avoid damnation. The play ends by recounting Marijken’s pe­ nance and eventual salvation. The embedded portion of the Masschereone, though diegetically compressed and inserted into the larger story, operates at a conceptually higher level than the rest of Marijken van Nijmegen. The play-within-

Guides Who Know the Way 347 the-play represents a visionary space—i.e. the Court of Heaven normally unseen by human eyes—in which is revealed deep theological truths. The percepts conveyed in the dialogue echo outward into the narrative of the main play and teach the protagonist what she should do to save her soul. Marijken’s actions, in turn, echo outward to the audience and demon­ strate that if the faithful invoke the Virgin’s help and trust in God’s mercy they too can hope for salvation, no matter how sinful they have become. In effect, plays like Marijken van Nijmegen, Elkerlijk, the Wise and Foolish Virgins, as well as devotional texts like The Life of Christ, The Seven Steps, and the Mirror of Eternal Salvation, guide the votary along the path of redemption by inculcating greater self-awareness. For the faithful, in theory at least, the proper execution of devotion was fundamentally (self)reflexive, disciplined, and directed toward a goal. To that end, it was incumbent on any votary to prepare for her or his de­ votion carefully.

14.5 Disposing the Heart to the Means and the Ends At this point, I would like to return to Van Cleeve’s Annunciation. In the image, the Virgin busies herself with her devotions as the Archangel enters the room. She is not shown with a simple devotional aid, but has at her fingertips a veritable spiritual arsenal. The fiction of the scene asks viewers to understand that Mary can find inspiration for her devotions at any moment. Her book of hours, the house altar opened so that both its interior and exterior are available for viewing, the colored woodcut of Moses, and the leaded glass windows each offer sub narratives that the Virgin can contemplate. In turn, the viewer is also able to explore those sub narratives in relation to the primary story of the Annunciation as she or he actively engages in the process of assembling her or his own de­ votions. The combination of the items in use and the arrival of the holy messenger during an act of devotion indicate that there is a link between the proper activation and employment of such objects and images and the potential for experiencing divine mysteries. To increase the like­ lihood of such an experience, however, the devotee would do well to heed Zerbolt’s advice to, “order the steps.” Van Cleeve’s painting appears to show just such preparation, which is not to say that he was illustrating the ideas espoused by the Modern Devotion or any other sect. The Virgin’s room has in it a variety of items that have the ability to aid and direct her devotional activities. As an exemplar of ideal meditation and perfect piety, the Virgin makes use of the means available to her to focus her heart and mind on God. These items are disposed throughout the room so as to fill her experiential field with edifying and efficacious prompts. The careful representations of each of these items increases the mimetic claims of the image and also

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creates surrogate objects that the viewer can activate and use mentally as she or he imitates the Virgin during the act of devotion. Ultimately, it is the viewer who may freely gaze around the room and take in each of the devotional items placed there. The Virgin’s gaze is turned midway toward the angel so that she no longer directly faces any of her aids. Following the logic of the scene, Mary no longer needs the items in her room because she has already received the desire of her heart and is approaching a uniquely intimate encounter with the Divine. The viewer, however, is excluded from the same experience as the Virgin though she or he can seek God in the various ways that each devotional item, as well as the entire panel itself, makes possible. The image acts as an index for the votary by pre-assembling a useful variety of devotionalia that can be activated in imitation of Mary. It also makes clear that the Virgin’s efforts are successful in part because of her careful preparation and active participation. Mary’s actions demonstrate that simply having such imagery available was insufficient. It was, instead, the proper use of each item that offered benefits for the soul. For devotion to be effective (i.e. to transform the soul and bring it closer to God), the votary needed to be aware of how and why she or he was performing each act and needed to use each image and object strategically in the process of (re) creating her or his innermost self.

Notes 1

2 3

4 5

†

Richard of St. Victor, “The Mystical Ark,” in Richard of St. Victor, The Twelve Patriarchs, The Mystical Ark, Book Three of the Trinity, ed. Grover A. Zinn. Series Title, Classics of Western Spirituality (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1979), 157. †† Avril Henry, The Mirror of Man’s Saluacioun. A Middle English Translation of Speculum Humanae Salvationis (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 14. For the bibliography on this image, see: John Oliver Hand, Joos Van Cleve, the Complete Paintings (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2004), 148; Maryan Ainsworth and Keith Christiansen, eds., From Van Eyck to Breugel. Early Netherlandish Painting in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 364. It is notable here that like the Virgin in Van Cleve’s image, the act of devotion is paired with an encounter with the divine. These examples are not exhaustive but, instead, offer evidence that the phenomenon of devotional and meditational images containing devotional and meditational images and objects in them was not isolated. Indeed, these types of images were not only present in the Low Countries but in other regions of Europe as well. Vittore Crivelli’s Madonna and Child with Two Angels (1481–2), the Liesborn Master’s Annunciation (1470–80), Pedro Berruguete’s Annunciation in the Miraflores monastery (albeit under the strong influence of Flemish painters), and Nicolas Froment’s Virgin and the Burning Bush triptych (1476) provide examples from across the continent. W. H. Th. Knippenberg, Devotionalia. Religeuze voorwerpen uit het ka­ tholieke leven, 2 Vols (Eindhoven: Bura Books, 1985). Christopher Wood, 'The Votive Scenario,' RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, 59/60 (Spring/Autumn 2011): 205-227. In his examination of

Guides Who Know the Way 349 images used in votive or ex vote contexts, Wood observes that two images in particular—a woodcut of St. Anthony receiving ex votes and a painting of an enchantress by Dosso Dossi—share in common that (210): Both pictures are recursive: the beholder of each picture is offered a target of attention, and at the same time sees attention modeled. Each picture theorizes itself through embedded analogous of itself.

6

7

8

9

10

Wood’s astute observation tugs at the edges of the phenomenon I study in this chapter. In what follows, I work to unravel the means by which such recursion and self-referentiality worked in particular images. The form of self-awareness I discuss in this chapter belongs to the votary and is initiated and sustained by the image. This differs from the concept of the “self-aware image,” in which the image is seen as a reflexive commentary on strategies of representation. See: Victor Stoichita, The Self-Aware Image. An Insight into Early Modern Meta-Painting (New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997). Discussion of mnemonic cues and techniques has become common in dis­ cussions of devotional images and practices. These concepts are generally based on works by Yates and Carruthers. Francis Yates, The Art of Memory (New York: Routledge, 1966); Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996). Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen, “The Spiritual Ascents,” in Devotio Moderna. Basic Writings, trans. John van Engen. Series Title, Classics of Western Spirituality (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1988); Pseudo-Bonaventure, Meditations on the Life of Christ. An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century , trans. Isa Ragusa and Rosalie Green (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961). Zerbolt refers to a confessor as a spiritual guide for the votary. I have adapted his advice to include certain types of imagery that was useful for guiding a devotee’s meditation processes. The PseudoBonavenure (John of Calabria?) makes a similar point in the Meditations on the Life of Christ when he says, “I declare that one should be instructed on how to avoid enemies and vices leading to fall and deception…” (3). Saint Augustine, Concerning the City of God; Against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson (New York: Penguin Books, 1984). The locus classicus for this model was St. Augustine’s City of God in which he treated earthly ex­ istence as a preparation for the eternity that awaits the faithful and a test that determines one’s final outcome at the Last Judgment. Guillaume de Deguileville, The Pilgrimage of Human Life (Le Pelerinage de la vie humaine), trans. Eugene Clasy. Series Title, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 76 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992); Ingrid Biesheuvel, Die pelgrimage vander menscheliker creaturen. Een studie naar overlevering en vertaal- en bewerkinstechniek vand de Middelnederlandse vertalingen van de Pelerinage de vie humaine (1330–1331) van Guillaume de Digulleville met een kritische editie van handschrift Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent BMH 93 (Hilversum: Verloren, 2005); William Calin, The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2014). Like Dante’s Divine Comedy, Deguileville’s Pilgrimage of Human Life (written be­ tween 1331 and 1355) traces the dream vision of the soul through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise, and was directed toward laypeople who were all pil­ grims in this world. The text was circulated in multiple translations.

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11 Anonymous, Den spyghel der salicheyt van Elckerlijc, ed. A. van Elslander (Antwerp: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1985). 12 J. G. Endhoven, Bedevaart als Straf. Door het Leidse Gerecht Opgelegde Bedevaarten van 1370-1500 (PhD Dissertation, University of Leiden, Leiden, 1976). 13 See for example: Kathryn M. Rudy, Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent. Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages, Series Title Disciplina Monastica. Studies on Medieval Monastic Life, 8 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). 14 Lina Bolzoni, The Web of Images. Vernacular Preaching from its Origins to St. Bernardino da Siena (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004). On pages 102–3, Bolzoni gives a brief synopsis of the ladder motif. Specifically, she traces its origins to Johannes Climacus (sixth century) whose work Scala paradisi uses the dream vision from Genesis to discuss the steps for heavenly ascent. For an excellent overview of the interlinkages between the metaphors of ladder and mirror in the Middle Ages, see: Jeffrey Hamburger, Nuns as Artists. The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1997), 108–14. 15 Ewert Cousins, trans., Bonaventure. The Soul’s Journey Into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of Saint Francis. Series title, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1978), 51–116. 16 Ibid., 63. 17 Ibid., 57. Bonaventure signals this at the very beginning of the work by telling the faithful that they, “should not run rapidly over … these considerations, but should mull them over slowly with great care.” 18 The scholarship on the Modern Devotion is vast and ever growing. For a good overview, see (among others): R. R. Post, The Modern Devotion. Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism (Leiden: Brill, 1968); John van Engen, trans. Devotio Moderna. Basic Writings. 19 Jan van Ruusbroec, Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec. Volume 4: Dat rike der ghelieven, vanden vier becoringhen, vanden seven sloten, van seven trappen, ed. Jean Baptiste Davide (Ghent: Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen, 1861), Volume 4, 34. Siet, dit is een volmaakt werkende leven met drie ordening, die ons leyden in dat ewich leven, hogere en’ hogere na dat wi in gracien verdienen, ende werdich sijn vore dat aenschijn ons Heren. 20 Jan van Ruusbroec, Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec. Volume 4; Jan van Ruusbroec, Jan van Ruusbroec Opera Omnia, Volume 9, ed. G. de Baere (Turhnout: Brepols, 2001). 21 Jan van Ruusbroec, Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec. Volume 4, 35; Jan van Ruusbroec, Opera Omnia, Volume 9, 90–1. Si werden lichte gherenen, ghestooert, toornegh, haestegh, scalc, slach­ ghelec, en’ onweerdegh in waerden, in werken, en’ in ghelate … 22 Jan van Ruusbroec, Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec. Volume 4, 50. Hier na volcht die seste trappe, dat is een claer insien, pier van gheeste en’ van ghedacthen.

Guides Who Know the Way 351 23 Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen, “The Spiritual Ascents.” 24 Ibid., 255. 25 Ibid., 297. “First and before all else carefully examine yourself … Inquire which vices lie hidden and which are open in you, which strongest and which most festering; next which remedies are the most effective against each vice. Then take up battle against the vice that seems to fester most. Try with all your strength to purge it; focus all your effort and concentration on driving it out.” 26 Ibid., 297. 27 Ibid., 254. 28 Ibid., 295. 29 Richard S. Fields, Fifteenth Century Woodcuts & Metalcuts from the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1965). The woodcut appears as catalog number 270. The print is also reproduced in Elizabeth Mongan and Carl Schniewind, The First Century of Printmaking, 1400–1500. An Exhibition at the Art Institute Chicago (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1941) as catalog number 31. 30 The number of steps, for example, conjures associations with Benedict’s twelve steps of humility but differs in specific content. 31 Elizabeth Mongan and Carl Schniewind, The First Century of Printmaking, 42. 32 Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen, “The Spiritual Ascents,” 255. 33 Ritamary Bradley, “Backgrounds of the Title Speculum in Mediaeval Literature,” Speculum 29, no. 1 (1954): 100–15; Herbert Grabes, The Mutable Glass. Mirror-imagery in titles and texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982); Marcia Colish, The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge (Lincoln, NE: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1983); Petronella Bange, Spiegels der Christenen: Zelfreflectie en ideaalbeeld in laat-middeleeuwse moralistisch-didactische traktaten, Series Title, Middeleeuwse Studies, 2 (Nijmegen: Katholieke Univ., 1986); Miranda Anderson, ed., The Book of the Mirror: An Interdisciplinary Collection Exploring the Cultural Story of the Mirror (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007). The Christian use of the mirror metaphor traces its roots to Augustine’s Speculum de scriptura sacra, which treats the text of the bible as a mirror in which the faithful can see and understand themselves. The Spiegel tradition as a means of self-knowledge has deep roots in Western thought, reaching back to the ancient Greek admonishment that each man must know himself. Both Plato and Aristotle, for example, encouraged various forms of mental and philo­ sophical reflection as a means of understanding one’s mind and soul. 34 Petronella Bange, Spiegels der Christenen, 24. In her analysis, Bange states specifically that, “alle Spiegels bieden de lezer op de een of andere wijze kennis aan, of dit nu kennis is van de lezer zelf, van God, van de natuur of van de toekomst”; Alexa Sand, “The Fairest of Them All: Reflections on Some Fourteenth-Century Mirrors,” in Push Me, Pull You. Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, 2 Vols., ed. Sarah Blick and Laura Gelfand, Vol. 2, 529–60 (Leiden: Brill, 2011). Sand’s note 1 (529), provides a good synopsis of the historiography of the metaphor of the mirror. Mirror texts took up various subjects, including world history, religious dogma, political doctrine, etc., for the benefit of the reader. The focus of such literature was to provide knowledge necessary for personal development.

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35 Ritamary Bradley, “Backgrounds of the Title Speculum in Mediaeval Literature,” 110; Petronella Bange, Spiegels der Christenen, 20; Avril Henry, The Mirror of Man’s Saluacioun. Henry (14) notes Alain of Lille’s verse: The whole of creation is like a book or picture to us; an indicator, for the believer, of our life, our lot, our condition, our death, as in a mirror. Following Augustine’s example, spiritual writers (including such luminaries as Hugh of St. Victor, Alain of Lille, and Thomas Aquinas) used the meta­ phor of the mirror as a two-fold construct that led Christians to understand who and what they were as well as who and what they ought to become. 36 Jeffrey Hamburger, “Speculations on Speculation. Vision and Perception in the Theory and Practice of Mystical Devotion,” in Deutsche Mystic im abendländischen Zusammenhang. Neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte, eds. Walter Haug and Wolfram Schneider-Lastin, 353–408 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000). 37 Ibid. On page 359, Hamburger notes: As a mediating process, speculation insists on the connectedness of things, the way in which all Creation can be read as a mirror reflecting its Creator and in which man, in turn, can find in nature and sensory experience a spur to his salvation. 38 Petronella Bange, Spiegels der Christenen, 26, 39–40; Avril Henry, The Mirror of Man’s Saluacioun, 10. Bange provides a list divided into century and parsed by region of origin. Perhaps the best-known example of the mirror genre was the anonymous fourteenth-century Mirror of Human Salvation (Speculum humane salvationis), c. 1310–24, which was widely spread by the fifteenth century and was available in Latin as well as German, Dutch, English, and Spanish. The survival of nearly 400 late-medieval and early modern editions from various parts of Europe offers ample testimony to its popularity. 39 Jan van Ruusbroec, “Die spieghel der ewigher salicheit,” in Jan van Ruusbroec, Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec. Deel 3: Vanden XII dogheden, een spieghel der ewigher salicheit, Vanden kerstenen ghelove, ed. Jean Baptiste David, 117–236 (Gent: Vlaemsch Bibliophilen, 1860). 40 Ibid., 124. Ic salse u tonen en’ verclaren, op dat ghi u zelven wel bekennen moecht, en’ niet beter noch heilige en want sijn, dan ghi sijt. Note: David explains in note 6 that “en waent sijn” should be translated as “en acht te sijn.” 41 Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550), Series Title, The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism (New York: Herder & Herder, 2012), 130. 42 Hendrik Herp, Spieghel der volcomenheit, ed. L. Verschueren (The Hague: Standaard Uitgeverij, 1998), 174–5. Als dat vier der minnen in dat hert onsteken is, so sal hi daer ierst op verbernen alle onghelijcheit, dat is alle sonde ende ghebreckelicheit, alle

Guides Who Know the Way 353 natuerlike passie ende onghestoruenheit, alle sinlike toeneyghen ende onlijdsaemheit. … hi sal nemen in eenen bant al sijn onuolcomenheit ende werpense in dat onghemeten vier der godliker minnen … Dan sal hij oprisen mitter [fol. 91v] bernender begherten godformich te werden … Ende als al hi naerstich aen merken sijn gheestelic exemplaer, dat is Cristum in allen sinen volcomenheiden nader godheit ende nader menscheit … sal hi hem pinen medeformich te maken der menscheit Cristi in alten doechden … Ende bouen al sal hi Cristo begheren ghelijc te werden in die begherten der alre diepste snootheit, verworpenheit ende oetmodeicheit. 43 Ibid., 175–6. Ende als hi hem oefent in eneghe doechden te vercrighen, als in verworpenheid sijns selfs om te crighen oetmoedicheit … wil hi dan weten oft hi die doechde te gronde vercreghen heeft ende Cristo daer in ghelijc geworden is, so sal hi merken oft hi tot dierre doechde also driftich is inder begherten, dat hi sonder alle wedertreck sijns hertens … hem seluen in die wille der reden [fol. 92r] mildelic ouergheuet—oec in dier tijd als hem die beuoelike gracie ontoghen is—in die doecht dair hi in gheproeuet wert: dan sal hi weten, dat hi die doecht inder hoechster volcomenheit bi der gaven Gods ontvangen heuet. 44 Hendrik Mande, “(Extract From) A devout Little Book on the Highest Perfection of Love,” in Late Medieval Mysticism of the Low Countries, Series Title: The Classics of Western Spirituality, eds. Rik van Nieuwenhove, Robert Faesen, S. J., and Helen Rolfson, 84–86 (New York: Paulist Press, 2008). 45 Ibid., 84. 46 Bernard McGinn, The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 133. McGinn, discussing Hendrik Herp’s Mirror of Perfection, states, “[a]s with many such quasi-scholastic distinctions, it is not always easy to see how these ascensions are related and whether they are to be considered as progressive or con­ comitant.” In addition to this critical insight, I assert that these poles demarcate a continuum along which are possible a wide variety of combinations. Such combinations allow for the types of unexpected leaps upward, or sudden flashes of the divine, that many tract authors describe—albeit as the result of a gift of divine grace. 47 Pseudo-Bonaventure, Meditations on the Life of Christ, xxii. 48 Ibid., 317–9. 49 Ibid., 320. 50 For a more in-depth discussion of this concept, see: John R. Decker, “‘By Stages Toward What We Mean to Say': Diegetic Rupture as a Tool of Devotion,” Word & Image 26, no. 3 (2020): 284–98 (https://doi.org/10.1 080/02666286.1709349). 51 Anonymous, Den spyghel der salicheyt van Elkerlijc, 2; Bart Ramakers, Mariken van Nieumeghen & Elckerlijc: Zonde, hoop en verlossing in de late Middeleeuwen, trans. Willem Wilmink (Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1998). 52 A. C. Cawley, Everyman, and Medieval Miracle Plays (London: Everyman’s Library, 1977).

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53 The Dutch version is a bit complicated as the opening of the printed tale informs readers that, “[h]ier beghint een schoon boecxken ghemaeckt in den maniere van eenen speel of esbatement …” This sentence seems to indicate that this was indeed a “read” play rather than a performed production. The origins of the play appear to be earlier than the 1496 publication date of the boecxken and it may well be that the opening sentence is less a reflection of the original form of the work and more a means of recontextualizing it as a play despite its current codex format (i.e. although it is presented in a book it should be understood as a play). 54 Anonymous, Het spel van de V vroede en V dwaeze Maegden, ed. Jules M. Ketele (Gent: Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen, 1846); Jozef van Mierlo, Geschiedenis van de letterkunde der Nederlanden, 2 Vols., Vol. 2, 231–4 (’s-Hertogenbosch: Teulings, 1940). Both Ketele and van Mierlo as­ sociate the play with Rhetorician dramas; Van Mierlo dates the play to the fifteenth century. Although the play does not bear mirror in its title, like the other parables in the New Testament it was thought to reflect deeper truths that Christians were to grasp. Ruusbroec, for example, used the story of the Virgins as the basis for his well-known Spiritual Espousals. 55 Anonymous, Den spyghel der salicheyt van Elkerlijc, 31. … ghi moet voer God almachtig Rekenninghe doen, des seker sijt, Ende hoe gi bestaet hebt uwen tijt, Van uwen wercken, goet ende quaet … Ick ben die Doot. Elckerlijc sal bi Gods beveele doen rekeninghe mi. 56 Anonymous, Het spel van de V vroede en V dwaeze Maegden, 54. Dus bidden wy hu, neempt exempel hier an, Ende wilt hu wachten van zonden voert dan, Hu consciencie wilt houden puer en onbevlect, Want ghy en weet noch dach noch huere Wanneer den heere commen sal 57 In many ways, the persona of Knowledge acts like the persona named God’s Grace in the Pilgrimage of Human Life. Both are tutelary characters who lead the protagonist through the pilgrimage that awaits. It seems likely that the role of Knowledge in Elkerlijc draws from the earlier text but any deeper analysis is far outside the scope of this chapter. 58 Anonymous, Den spyghel der salicheyt van Elkerlijc, 35. Ay, broeders, doet alle penitencie strange end vruchtbarich. Tseghen dat hi u pilgrimagie moet gaen. Verdam notes that Tseghen is another form of jegen, which is translatable as tegenover. Van Dale notes that tegenover can be translated as before, which is the sense I have used here. 59 Ibid., 52.

Guides Who Know the Way 355 … Seer uut ghelesen, Merct desen spieghel, hebten voer oghen Ende wilt u van hovardien poghen Ende oec van allen sonden met. Nu laet ons bidden onghelet, Dat dit elk mensen moet vesten, Dat wi voer Gode suver comen ten lesten… 60 Anonymous, Het spel van de V vroede en V dwaeze Maegden, 14. Met zynder passe ende bitter doot, Heeft hi ons bracht ut alder noot. Houden wy dat vaste in ons memorie, Et zal ons leiden ter eewegher glorie Daer leven ende vrueght es eewelicke. 61 Ibid., 30. Met ootmoedige kenende al mynder scult, Daer heb ic myn lampte ooc gevult; Dats een olie, die Godt zeere Versacht: … Want se es van alle deughden’t fondament. 62 Ibid., 31. Ik kicke in myn lampte ende vinde de olie al uute. 63 Dirk Coigneau, Mariken van Nieumeghen (Hilversum: Verloren, 1996); Bart Ramakers, Mariken van Nieumeghen & Elckerlijc. 64 Dirk Coigneau, Mariken van Nieumeghen, 109. Ic heb al vreese, bi Lucifers achterqueerne, Oft si int spel iet hoorde van deghe Daer si berou oft achterdenken bi ghecreghe. 65 Ibid., 114. Here God, hoe wert mijn blote verwermende Int hooren van desen wagenspele! Ick hoor dier redenen ende argumente soe vele, Dat ick puer achterdincken crighe ende berou.

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Works Cited Ainsworth, Maryan, and Keith Christiansen, eds. From Van Eyck to Breugel. Early Netherlandish Painting in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998. Anderson, Miranda, ed. The Book of the Mirror: An Interdisciplinary Collection Exploring the Cultural Story of the Mirror. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. Anonymous. Den spyghel der salicheyt van Elckerlijc, edited by A. van Elslander. Antwerp: De Nederlandsche Boekhandel, 1985. Anonymous. Het spel van de V vroede en V dwaeze Maegden, edited by Jules M. Ketele. Gent: Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen, 1846. Bange, Petronella. Spiegels der Christenen: Zelfreflectie en ideaalbeeld in laatmiddeleeuwse moralistisch-didactische traktaten, Series Title, Middeleeuwse Studies, 2. Nijmegen: Katholieke Univ., 1986. Biesheuvel, Ingrid. Die pelgrimage vander menscheliker creaturen. Een studie naar overlevering en vertaal- en bewerkinstechniek vand de Middelnederlandse vertalingen van de Pelerinage de vie humaine (1330-1331) van Guillaume de Digulleville met een kritische editie van handschrift Utrecht, Museum Catharijneconvent BMH 93. Hilversum: Verloren, 2005. Bolzoni, Lina. The Web of Images. Vernacular Preaching from Its Origins to St. Bernardino da Siena. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004. Bradley, Ritamary. “Backgrounds of the Title Speculum in Mediaeval Literature.” Speculum 29, no. 1 (1954): 100–15. Calin, William. The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval England. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2014. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory. A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996. Cawley, A. C. Everyman, and Medieval Miracle Plays. London: Everyman’s Library, 1977. Coigneau, Dirk. Mariken van Nieumeghen. Hilversum: Verloren, 1996. Colish, Marcia. The Mirror of Language: A Study in the Medieval Theory of Knowledge. Lincoln, NE: Univ of Nebraska Press, 1983. Cousins, Ewert, trans. Bonaventure. The Soul’s Journey Into God, The Tree of Life, The Life of Saint Francis, The Classics of Western Spirituality, 51–116. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1978. Decker, John R. “‘By Stages Toward What We Mean to Say:’ Diegetic Rupture as a Tool of Devotion.” Word & Image 26, no. 3 (2020): 284–98 ( 10.1080/02 666286.1709349). de Deguileville, Guillaume. The Pilgrimage of Human Life (Le Pelerinage de la vie humaine), translated by Eugene Clasy. Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 76. New York: Garland Publishing, 1992. Endhoven, J. G. Bedevaart als Straf. Door het Leidse Gerecht Opgelegde Bedevaarten van 1370–1500. PhD dissertation, University of Leiden, Leiden, 1976. Fields, Richard S. Fifteenth Century Woodcuts & Metalcuts from the National Gallery of Art. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1965. Gerard Zerbolt van Zutphen. “The Spiritual Ascents.” In Devotio Moderna.

Guides Who Know the Way 357 Basic Writings. Classics of Western Spirituality, translated by John van Engen. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1988. Grabes, Herbert. The Mutable Glass. Mirror-Imagery in Titles and Texts of the Middle Ages and English Renaissance. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982. Hamburger, Jeffrey. Nuns as Artists. The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of Calif. Press, 1997: 108–14. Hamburger, Jeffrey. “Speculations on Speculation. Vision and Perception in the Theory and Practice of Mystical Devotion.” In Deutsche Mystic im abendländischen Zusammenhang. Neu erschlossene Texte, neue methodische Ansätze, neue theoretische Konzepte, edited by Walter Haug and Wolfram Schneider-Lastin, 353–408. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2000. Hand, John Oliver. Joos Van Cleve, the Complete Paintings. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 2004. Henry, Avril. The Mirror of Man’s Saluacioun. A Middle English Translation of Speculum Humanae Salvationis. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1987. Herp, Hendrik. Spieghel der volcomenheit, edited by L. Verschueren. The Hague: Standaard Uitgeverij, 1998. Knippenberg, W. H. Th. Devotionalia. Religeuze voorwerpen uit het katholieke leven, 2 Vols. Eindhoven: Bura Books, 1985. Mande, Hendrik. “(Extract From) A devout Little Book on the Highest Perfection of Love.” In Late Medieval Mysticism of the Low Countries. The Classics of Western Spirituality, edited by Rik van Nieuwenhove, Robert Faesen, S. J., and Helen Rolfson, 76–87. New York: Paulist Press, 2008. McGinn, Bernard. The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism (1350–1550). The Presence of God: A History of Western Christian Mysticism. New York: Herder & Herder, 2012. Mongan, Elizabeth, and Carl Schniewind. The First Century of Printmaking, 1400–1500. An Exhibition at the Art Institute Chicago. Chicago, IL: Lakeside Press, 1941. Post, R. R. The Modern Devotion. Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism. Leiden: Brill, 1968. Pseudo-Bonaventure. Meditations on the Life of Christ. An Illustrated Manuscript of the Fourteenth Century, translated by Isa Ragusa and Rosalie Green. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1961. Ramakers, Bart. Mariken van Nieumeghen & Elckerlijc: Zonde, hoop en verlossing in de late Middeleeuwen, translated by Willem Wilmink. Amsterdam: Prometheus, 1998. Richard of St. Victor. “The Mystical Ark,” In Richard of St. Victor, The Twelve Patriarchs, The Mystical Ark, Book Three of the Trinity. Classics of Western Spirituality, edited by Grover A. Zinn. New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1979. Rudy, Kathryn M. Virtual Pilgrimages in the Convent. Imagining Jerusalem in the Late Middle Ages, Disciplina Monastica. Studies on Medieval Monastic Life, 8. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Saint Augustine. Concerning the City of God; Against the Pagans, translated by Henry Bettenson. New York: Penguin Books, 1984. Sand, Alexa. “The Fairest of Them All: Reflections on Some Fourteenth-Century

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Mirrors.” In Push Me, Pull You. Imaginative and Emotional Interaction in Late Medieval and Renaissance Art, edited by Sarah Blick and Laura Gelfand, 527–59. Leiden: Brill, 2011. Stoichita, Victor. The Self-Aware Image. An Insight into Early Modern MetaPainting. New York, NY: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997. van Mierlo, Jozef. Geschiedenis van de letterkunde der Nederlanden, 2 Vols. ’sHertogenbosch: Teulings, 1940: Vol. 2, 231–4. van Ruusbroec, Jan. Werken van Jan van Ruusbroec. Volume 4: Dat rike der ghelieven, vanden vier becoringhen, vanden seven sloten, van seven trappen, edited by Jean Baptiste Davide. Volume 4, 34. Ghent: Maetschappy der Vlaemsche Bibliophilen, 1861. van Ruusbroec, Jan. Jan van Ruusbroec Opera Omnia, Volume 9, edited by G. de Baere. Turnhout: Brepols, 2001. Wood, Christopher. “The Votive Scenario.” RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 59/60 (Spring/Autumn 2011): 205–27. Yates, Francis. The Art of Memory. New York: Routledge, 1966.

15 Beyond the Doctrine of Merit: Philips Galle’s Prints of the Sacraments and Works of Mercy Barbara Kaminska

15.1 Introduction Chapter 13 of Genesis tells the story of a quarrel between the shepherds of Abraham and Lot over a land which was too small for both of them “for their substance was great.” Seeking peace, Abraham urges Lot to depart and gives him first choice of the place where he wishes to live. Abraham will move to whichever land Lot rejects. Philips Galle de­ picted this episode as one of the many exempla of admonishing sinners in his series of the Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy (1577), which accom­ panied his Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy from the same year, and Seven Sacraments published a year earlier (Figure 15.1). The scene in the lower left corner is complete with a quote from the Vulgate: “There arose a strife between the herdsmen. Abram therefore said to Lot; Let there be no quarrel, I beseech thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen: for we are brethren” (Genesis 7–8). James Clifton has suggested that the verses offer a conciliatory spirit amidst sectarian strife in the Low Countries, serving as an encourage­ ment of tolerance instead of conflict between the Netherlandish Catholics and Calvinists.1 The sophisticated approach to the Works of Mercy and sacraments engraved and published by Galle, and at least partially designed by Hans Bol, aligns with the humanistic spirit of in­ terconfessional dialogue advocated by Antwerp scholars, merchants, and printers such as Abraham Ortelius, Gillis Hooftman, and Christophe Plantin, as well as Galle’s teacher in Haarlem, Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert.2 But the story in Genesis 13 also offers a metaphor for the three series’ goals, iconography, and historical circumstances, whose “substance was too great” to be reconciled, ultimately leading to these prints’ market failure.3

DOI: 10.4324/9781003132141-15

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Figure 15.1 Philips Galle, Admonishing the Sinners, from the Series Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 26 × 19 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Galle’s elaborate prints offered a compelling exegetical exercise, and this complexity sets them apart from other late medieval and Renaissance renditions of the theme of the Works of Mercy. Their visual and conceptual sophistication, in turn, compelled viewers to examine arguments in favor of good works, which Protestants often brushed off as simplistic. Galle relies on the accumulation of Old and New Testament exempla, alongside quotes from the Jesuit play Catharinias and occasional fragments of the edicts of church councils, to illustrate each work of mercy and sacrament. The format of the prints can be traced to the practice of compiling florilegia and commonplace books.4 The three series invited their audience to find correspondences among

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 361 scenes and quotes across all twenty-four images (eight in each series, including the title engravings), and to construct their own arguments on the practice and soteriological implications of charity. Galle’s sources are discursive par excellence and even polemical—for instance, the majority of the quotes from Catharinias come specifically from Catherine’s debate with pagan philosophers, while the model of commonplace books re­ quires a constant dynamic interpretative effort.5 In this essay, I attempt to outline how the original viewers of Galle’s cycles would have approached his prints, and what kind of arguments they could have woven from the visual and textual material with which the prints presented. On the most fundamental level, Galle’s engravings should be seen in the context of the Reformation-era debates about the doctrine of merit versus predestination, with the addition of a more niche doctrine of perfectibilism developed by Galle’s teacher, Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert. However, Galle’s overall choice of topic and of specific quotes in each print was also strongly dependent on the parti­ cular political situation in the Netherlands in 1576–77, right before and in the immediate aftermath of the Pacification of Ghent. As I will pro­ pose, the changes brought about by the Pacification in the confessional and demographic circumstances of the Low Countries appear to have inspired Galle to produce prints which at first glance seem less sectarian. But while Galle abandons references to the canon law of the Roman Catholic Church in the later prints, he develops other, more subtle means of emphasizing the Catholic doctrine. For instance, the quotes from Catharinias become more complete, and the seven corporeal works are directly connected to the Last Judgment. Nevertheless, this essay does not suggest that we approach Galle’s designs as an example of antiProtestant propaganda. It shows, rather, that Galle’s work targeted a large segment of sixteenth-century Netherlandish society who, while participating in Catholic rituals, were primarily interested in scriptural exegesis rather than doctrinal battle with the Reformers.

15.2 The Structure of Galle’s Engravings Before we can consider how Galle’s prints would have been viewed, we need to analyze their compositional structure. All three series open with a title engraving, which for the Seven Sacraments features seven scontemporary scenes of sacramental rituals, framed with their symbolic paraphernalia and biblical quotes (Figure 15.2), whereas the Spiritual Works of Mercy shows relevant allegorical and narrative exempla in seven roundels (Figure 15.3), and the Corporeal Works introduce a narrative scene of the Last Judgment (Figure 15.4).

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Figure 15.2 Philips Galle, Title Page, from the Series Seven Sacraments, 1576. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.5 × 19.1 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 363

Figure 15.3 Philips Galle, Title Page, from the Series Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 26 × 19 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 15.4 Philips Gale, Title Page, from the Series Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.6 × 19.2 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 365 Each of the seven prints that follow in each series uses an arch to structure the composition. The four vignettes in the corners typically feature an Old Testament narrative. The exceptions to this pattern are limited to three engravings in the Seven Sacraments and four in the Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy. In the Baptism, the lower-right corner shows the healing of the paralytic at Bethesda (John 5). In the Reconciliation, the lower-left corner features the raising of Lazarus (John 11), and the lower-right—the healing of the leper (Matthew 8), which corresponds to a scene based on Leviticus 13 in the upper corner. Finally, in the Anointing of the Sick, all four vignettes are dedicated to the church councils (Trent in the upper left, Meaux-Paris in the lower left, Florence in the upper right, and Worms in the lower right). In Instructing the Ignorant, all four scenes are related to the sending of the Holy Ghost, with the scenes at the top focused on the calling of the bishops and doctors of the Church, and the Apostles. The upper-left corner of Admonishing the Sinners depicts a proverb from Matthew 7:3: “And why seest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye; and seest not the beam that is in thy own eye?” Both scenes on the left side in Bearing Patiently Those Who Wrong Us show the persecution of Christ’s fol­ lowers, a theme which is continued in Forgiving Offenses Willingly, in which, in the lower-right corner, we see an illustration of Matthew 5:25 (“Be at agreement with thy adversary…”), and in the upper-right corner we find the stoning of Saint Stephen. The central part of each engraving features several episodes from the New Testament, but in most cases what we see at the bottom and closest to us is a contemporary example of a sacrament or a work of mercy. The engravings are large, measuring approximately 156 × 190 mm. The impression of the horror vacui which the viewer experiences upon a first inspection of the prints may suggest that the scrutiny of individual episodes and quotes, which tightly fill any empty spaces, is nearly im­ possible. However, thanks to the engravings’ size and their consistent structure across the twenty-one main images, viewers are able to quickly develop the ability to look at those engravings and move from one scene to another. The compositional similarities further facilitate finding cor­ respondences among the prints, while the proportions of figures and scales of individual episodes help a viewer to enter the complex world of the designs. The contemporary scenes in the foreground are the largest, stimulating the viewer’s identification with depicted figures. From here, a viewer could proceed to scrutinize the New Testament exempla, which gradually become smaller toward the top of the central scene, suggesting the recession of space. The composition of this main section of each engraving is subordinated to two conflicting tendencies. On the one

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hand, Galle appears to be constructing a perspectival view, but on the other, he relies on a variety of architectural elements such as door frames, balustrades, and steps which accentuate individual examples. These elements, as James Clifton has observed, link the scenes “visually though not narratively.”6 One could argue, however, that the visual structure suggests a specific movement to viewers, which when followed creates a religious narrative for them. The sequence of stairs, gentle hills, an open door, etc. allow viewers to “walk” from one site to the next, progressively exploring different exempla. This pattern is well illustrated in Admonishing the Sinners. It begins with the contemporary scene of a man being admonished by a priest, from which the viewer can “walk” upstairs to join a gathering illustrating Ecclesiasticus 11:7: “Before thou inquire, blame no man: and when thou hast inquired, reprove justly,” and another, to the right, based on Ecclesiastes 1:15: “The perverse are hard to be corrected,” and 2 Thessalonians 3:14: “… if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and do not keep company with him, that he may be ashamed.” Up the next flight of stairs, is a gathering overseen by the Pope, based again on Ecclesiastes 7:14: “Consider the works of God, that no man can correct whom he hath despised,” and 1 Timothy 5:20: “Them that sin reprove before all: that the rest also may have fear.” To the right and three steps up, a gathering of three figures depicts the verse of Titus 2:15 “These things speak, and exhort and rebuke with all authority.” The final stop on this journey is the Golgotha, where the Penitent Thief rebukes the other crucified Thief. The central section of each print is flanked by figures of the Old Testament prophets, kings, and priests, and, in some instances, the New Testament authors. They are leaning against tablets with one long quote from the Vulgate or a sequence of three to four quotes, which sometimes present a longer version of a citation included in the main scene. Although visually separated from the central section and positioned against the arch’s pilasters, those figures point toward the scenes in the middle, referring the viewer back to those exempla. Finally, the scenes in the four corners provide Old Testament types for the New Testament stories. The proportions of figures in all the engravings establish a cen­ trifugal composition, with the contemporary scene as a starting point, leading next to the New Testament, and the Old at the end, in order to “demonstrate a continuity of meaning that validates contemporary ritual and practice.”7

15.3 Pacification of Ghent and Its Impact on Galle’s Prints Philips Galle published his three series of prints at a very particular moment in the early history of the Dutch Revolt. On November 8, 1576,

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 367 four days after the mutinying Spanish troops sacked Antwerp, the pro­ vinces of Holland and Zeeland and the provinces in the southern Netherlands signed the Pacification of Ghent. Spanish soldiers were to withdraw from the Low Countries, the anti-heresy placards to be re­ voked, and local Netherlandish authorities to be put back in charge of political decision. On February 22, 1577, Philip II’s brother and the new governor of the Netherlands, Don Juan of Austria, signed the Pacification on behalf of the Spanish Crown. Despite the distrust of many Netherlanders, a large number of exiles who fled the country in 1567 decided to come back. However, Antwerp did not immediately become a Calvinist Republic, and Catholics continued to dominate the civic bodies. This would begin to change only in the year 1579, which, as Guido Marnef has shown, marked the moment of the Calvinist ascen­ dancy to power.8 The demographics of the group who chose to return to the Netherlands after a decade requires us to consider why they left in the first place. The period of twelve months between April 1566 and April 1567 is known as annus mirabilis, the year of miracles, or simply the wonder year, and is typically recognized as the beginning of the Dutch Revolt. Annus mirabilis started with the Compromise of the Nobles, when on April 5, 1566, the local nobility successfully submitted to the governess Margaret of Parma a petition in which they demanded the suspension of the anti-heresy placards and moderation in matters of religion. Clearly misjudging Philip II’s character, the governess promised to forward the petition to the king, lending it her support. In the fol­ lowing months, Lutheran and Calvinist congregations whose meetings had up until then been clandestine began to organize open-air sermons outside the city walls. These gatherings were known as hedge-preaching (haagpreken), referencing the poles that demarcated the city limits be­ yond which the crowds met. The hedge-sermons would attract as many as 20,000 people, few of which were actually committed Protestants. The majority of attendees were Catholics who had no intention of leaving the Roman Church, and would even attend a Catholic mass or procession on the same day as they attended a Calvinist sermon—they were simply curious about the new doctrines. Contemporary reports acknowledge that hedge-sermons became so popular because they fo­ cused on the Bible. Even an undeniably Catholic author Marcus van Vaernewijck did not hesitate to repeat what some other “good Catholics” told him about the sermons: The Holy Scripture, they said, that they heard there so thoroughly explained, made their hearts leap up with joy, and they were

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Barbara Kaminska thoroughly moved, and in tears, caused by great devotions and piety toward God, [tears] running from their eyes, but really from their hearts.9

This desire of common Catholics to hear biblical exegesis did not go unnoticed among their own clergy. Another chronicler of the wonder year, Godevaert van Haecht, wrote on July 24, 1566 that priests placed announcements on doors across the city that in the Burchtkerk (Saint Walburga church) the Word of God would be preached. But instead of bringing in large crowds, the announcement amused the passersby, who would comment: “Shall they only begin now to preach the Word of God? What have they been teaching all these years?”10 The hedge-preaching ended in April 1567, and five months later, violent persecution of religious dissidents began. In September, Fernando Álvares de Toledo, 3rd Duke of Alba, established the Council of Troubles, soon to be nicknamed the Council of Blood, which carried out the death sentences of approximately 1000 “heretics,” but convicted as many as 9000, the rest of whom lived abroad. The Council targeted all social groups and usually announced its sentences without a proper trial until it was abolished in 1574. The wide-ranging arrests and bleak prospects faced by anyone charged by the Council forced many to re­ main in exile. Some emigrants would return in the winter of 1576–77, while others chose to live in the Northern Provinces, the Rhineland, or England. With many merchants, scholars, and artists fleeing the country, annus mirabilis ultimately left the southern Netherlands weakened po­ litically, economically, and culturally. But it also revealed that there was a large group of open-minded Catholics who wished to remain in the Roman Church and did not consider Protestant sermons to be contra­ dictory to their professed faith. Scholars of the sixteenth-century Netherlands have long agreed that we are looking primarily at a het­ erogenous group who were not interested in formal definitions and strict sectarian divides, but rather wished to cultivate a Bible-oriented Christianity.11 When the hedge-preaching was ultimately abolished and the religious persecution intensified, this significant segment of the population remained without any legal outlets for their scriptural curi­ osity, while any signs of religious dissent—including in the visual arts—became dangerous. It is against such a religious and artistic backdrop that we should consider Galle’s prints. The aftermath of the wonder year appears to have created a void in the market, which could be filled with works of art offering an exercise in biblical exegesis—as long as they adhered to Catholic doctrine. Galle’s Seven Sacraments, Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy, and Seven

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 369 Corporeal Works of Mercy seem to respond to precisely such a market need. The Seven Sacraments, as a series created before the Pacification of Ghent and its ratification by Don Juan of Austria, is unequivocally Catholic both in its subject matter and specific iconography, while the two series of the Works of Mercy, although still essentially Catholic, include fewer re­ ferences to the laws and rituals of the Roman Church. This is true as much for the corporeal as it is for the spiritual works, even though the latter do not have a scriptural basis. They were formulated in the Middle Ages, most comprehensively by Thomas Aquinas. Thomas believed that the spiritual works are in fact more valuable than the corporeal ones, as the spirit is more important than the body, and caring for another person’s soul is of a greater urgency.12 Nonetheless, as Galle’s prints show, there is no scarcity of bib­ lical episodes that are relevant to these works. Not a single reference to the Roman Catholic edicts appears in the seven prints, although the title print features an image of a kneeling priest in a ceremonial cape, spreading in­ cense by the altar, to illustrate praying for the living and the dead. The strictly biblical iconography is preserved in the Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy. The series opens with an engraving of the Last Judgment which appears to give precedence to their Catholic interpretation. However, the connection between good works and eternal life is more complex and ambivalent than what is usually assumed, and requires a commentary. Protestant theologians of course rejected the doctrine of merit, which in the eyes of the Catholic Church was explicitly supported by Matthew 25. Following Martin Luther’s triad of Sola Gratia, Sola Fide, and Solus Christus, it would be sacrilegious to think that men could gain salvation through their own good deeds, and the Calvinist doctrine of predestination renders such an idea even more absurd. But Matthew’s gospel, which explicitly links humankind’s fate at the Last Judgment to its actions, still posed a problem to the sixteenth-century reformers. In his extremely influential Loci Communes, Philip Melanchthon wrote about those passages that “Scripture is not speaking about the outward aspect or appearance of the work only, but … especially the will of the affection, which is the origin of the work.”13 And Calvin, in his commentaries on Matthew, wrote: “it is foolish for monks and pinhead disputants of that sort to invent six Works of Mercy (as Christ mentions no more): as if even children could fail to understand that in synecdoche, all the duties of love are being praised.”14 But regardless of what the leading theologians of the Reformation wrote about good deeds, not much changed in the everyday homiletics and patterns of charitable behavior. As Marco van Leeuwen and Daniëlle Teeuwen have shown, Protestant sermons, municipal decrees, and the charters of charitable organizations continued to argue that generosity in almsgiving would help the givers to obtain eternal life, while greed could

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put their afterlives in serious jeopardy.15 And while images of the Seven (corporeal) Works of Mercy created in the Northern Netherlands gradually lost references to the Last Judgment, the genre itself continued to enjoy great popularity.16 Caution should therefore be used when determining whether the iconography of the Seven Works of Mercy would have been inherently unpalatable for Protestant or “Protestantizing” viewers. In Galle’s series, the opening print shows symbols of the six scriptural Works of Mercy in the frame surrounding the central scene of the Last Judgment, each accompanied by short quotes from the Old and New Testament. The importance of one’s deeds for Christ’s verdict is underscored by a seven-headed beast representing the seven deadly sins. Such a connection between the Works of Mercy and the cardinal sins was not unusual in the iconography of the Last Judgment—it appears, for instance, in the panel created around 1490–1500 for the Antwerp Chamber of Almoners, now in the city’s Maagdenhuis Museum (Figure 15.5). In Galle’s print, Christ, judging the living and the dead, is accompanied by what at first glance seems to be Deësis, with Mary to Christ’s right, and John to his left. However, the clean-shaven, youthful face of this figure does not resemble John the Baptist. There are a few other figures ac­ companying Christ, possibly illustrating the idea of the intercession, but they seem to have little effect on the separation of the blessed and the damned by Michael, who, it should be noted, has been stripped of all his traditional attributes. Without his sword and scale, Michael repeats the gesture of Christ, which may suggest that the Judgment has already happened, determined by the good works—or lack thereof—of humanity. The inscription at the bottom of the print describes the scene: At the end of times the Shepherd will separate the sheep and the goat And then he will greatly discern between the sheep and the goat The beneficence of the pious will bring the rewards And the godless sinners will serve their punishments. While the inscription paraphrases Matthew’s gospel, it does not come from the Bible. Rather, it is a nearly verbatim quote from scene 1 of act 5, lines 1513–1516, of the Jesuit play Catharinias. The majority of the remaining twenty-three engravings from the three series also use the same text as a source of the inscriptions at the bottom. Considering its importance for Galle’s designs, we need to take a closer look at the play.

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 371

Figure 15.5 Antwerp, The Last Judgment with the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Works of Mercy, 1490–1500. Maagdenhuis, Stad Antwerpen (B), 115 × 125 cm, Oil on Panel. Photo: KIK/IRPA (Brussels).

15.4 Philips Galle and the Jesuit Theatre Catharinias is one of the three plays dedicated to Saint Catherine of Alexandria from the Innsbruck Jesuit College and was first performed in 1577—the other two plays date from 1576 and 1606. It belongs to the genre of martyrdom plays, especially popular among Jesuit schools. Plays dedicated to Catherine had further significance for the Innsbruck College, which adopted her as their patron saint.17 In the play, whose performance lasted eight hours, particular attention was given to Catherine’s dispute with pagan philosophers. Scholars have suggested that this staged debate served two functions. First, it provided a model for polemical exchanges between Catholics and Protestants, and second, it emphasized the importance of learning. High intellectual standards and the knowledge of rhetoric were the hallmark of the Jesuit Order,

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which was at the time in conflict with the Innsbruck Franciscans. The performance of the play during the visit of Duke Ferdinand II’s royal relatives presented the Jesuits with a unique opportunity to lobby in favor of their order.18 The play was written by Johannes Sonhovius (Zonhoven), a Flemish Jesuit who, despite his collaboration with the famous Hieronymus Nadal, is a little-known figure.19 In 1575, he became the first prefect of the Collegium of Jesuits in Antwerp, but in the summer of 1576 he was summoned by the Order to help Nadal with the Adnotationes et medi­ tationes in Evangelia. Before leaving for Italy in August 1577, the two Jesuits settled in the convent at Hall in Tirol, in close vicinity to Innsbruck. Immediately before leaving Antwerp, in early July 1576, Sonhovius—who was greatly respected among the Antwerp Jesuits for his poetic skills—wrote and directed a highly successful play dedicated to two early Christian martyrs titled Josaphat et Barleem. The decision of the Jesuit General that Sonhovius should join Nadal indicates that his aptitude for such work had been recognized outside Antwerp as well. Indeed, Nadal’s letters written in the Fall and Winter of 1576 to the General underline Sonhovius’s talent for providing inscriptions for images, and suggest that he planned to write five plays on the life of Christ.20 The quotes from Catharinias in Galle’s prints raise a question about the nature of the collaboration between the publisher, the Jesuits, and Hans Bol, to whom Stefaan Hautekeete attributed three drawings that must have served as preparatory sketches for Galle’s prints. Joachim Jacoby—who first studied two of these drawings, albeit without attri­ buting them to Bol—has suggested that the images were intended as an illustration for Petrus Canisius’s Catechism, a project completed only in 1589, and ultimately illustrated with much simpler images by Peeter van der Borcht.21 Based on the differences between the drawings and prints, Hautekeete and Jacoby agree that once the drawings were finished, Galle must have consulted with a theological advisor about them. Jacoby proposes Father Harlemius (Johan Willemszoon), a professor of theology at the Jesuit College in Leuven, who contributed the biblical index to Plantin’s Biblia Polyglotta.22 According to Jacoby, Harlemius would have acted on behalf of Canisius, who was traveling in Bavaria and Tirol in the late 1570s, in explaining his Catechism so that the images by Galle match its content. Quotes from Catharinias suggest that it was Sonhovius who served as the theological advisor, although the timeline that accounts for his involvement is complicated.23 Catharinias was first performed in 1577 at the Innsbruck court, and, as it relies on the 1576 Tragoedia de fortissimo S. Cathariniae certamine,

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 373 it is unlikely that Sonhovius would have worked on it prior to leaving Antwerp.24 In the earliest series, the Seven Sacraments, which must have been designed while Sonhovius was still living in Antwerp, the verses at the bottom of Anointing of the Sick, The Holy Orders, and Marriage do not come from the play. In the remaining four prints, the paraphrase is loose, with the first line in the Reconciliation a citation from book 46, verse 481 of the Aeneid.25 However, the quotes in all the engravings in the Spiritual Works of Mercy can be found in the play, albeit some in a different order or combining passages that appear in different scenes. Finally, in the Corporeal Works of Mercy the play is quoted almost completely verbatim. This opens a few different possibilities. It is cer­ tainly conceivable that while still in Antwerp, Sonhovius was writing another play that he to some extent later incorporated in Catharinias and shared with Galle.26 It is also possible that he continued to advise Galle, and corresponded with him after he left Antwerp—such a practice of negotiating iconographic programs via letters was certainly not un­ known among early modern artists, theologians, and patrons.27 The pattern of collaboration between Galle and Sonhovius is intertwined with another question: to what extent do the passages from Catharinias serve as an authoritative Catholic interpretation of the scriptural scenes included by Galle? In order to satisfactorily answer this question, we need to turn now to the modes of viewing of Galle’s engravings.

15.5 Galle’s Prints as a Metatextual Exegesis Galle’s prints, as we have seen, would have been intended for viewers who, after the initial success of the annus mirabilis, had to curb their interest in the scriptural exegesis. Some of them would have left the country in 1567, and returned in late 1576 and 1577. They were used to approaching images as semi-activated objects, which stimulated an en­ gaged, active response, and in which the required intellectual effort in­ creased their viewing pleasure.28 Series of images, whether published in emblem books or as sets of prints, allowed for an even greater multi­ plicity of interpretations, and Galle’s 1576–1577 prints were no dif­ ferent. Their structure required a concentrated effort and established them as quintessentially discursive. As scholars have shown, Galle’s engravings grew out of the tradition of florilegia and commonplace books, although no specific title can be identified as the direct source of his designs.29 The loci communes system was used in education across confessional borders, facilitated theological debates, and was inherently connected to the early modern mnemotechnics.30 According to Clifton, in Galle, each of the Seven Corporeal and Seven Spiritual Works of

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Mercy, and the Seven Sacraments constitutes a locus communis, which allows for the organization of all the different biblical stories and quotes.31 Or, to put it differently, the Bible becomes an ethical and so­ teriological source, in which particular stories gain their meaning through illustrating specific virtues or sacraments. The proliferation of quotes and images in Galle’s engravings exposed their viewers to a very comprehensive experience of the Bible. And while it might seem that a Catholic’s desire to read the Scripture would have been deemed praiseworthy, it would remain controversial throughout the sixteenth century. For instance, Erasmus of Rotterdam argued in his Convivium Religiosum that reading and discussing the Bible should be “permissible even for sailors… provided there is no rash attempt at formal definition.”32 A zealously Catholic Antwerp poet Anna Bijns, on the other hand, associated readings of the Scripture unsupervised by the clergy with the clandestine meetings of the Protestant congregations. Based on the inventories of Antwerp households that frequently list a copy of the Bible among household possessions, more people seem to have followed Erasmus’s encouragement than supported Bijns’s funda­ mentalist position.33 Galle’s prints can be seen as a response to this controversy. They stimulate the study of the Scripture among laymen and women, but their structure—which imposes a specific way of reading the prints—and non-biblical quotes serve as a commentary. A lay viewer’s reading of this biblical material would still be unsupervised, but with a proper structure, and quotes from church councils and a Jesuit play, a Catholic viewer is guided toward the correct understanding of the Bible. In other words, the composition and the non-scriptural quotes act as a subtle disembodied proxy for the Roman Church’s authorities. Based on the example of Admonishing of the Sinners, I have suggested how the sequence of architectural and landscape elements in the central scene would have guided a viewer through an account composed by textual and visual narratives. I would now like to apply such a reading to Feeding the Hungry but this time also including the images in the four corners, quotes held by the figures framing the middle of the print, and the verses from Catharinias at the bottom (Figure 15.6). This will illu­ minate two aspects of the prints’ reception: first, how their different elements interact, and second, how the Jesuit play established a Catholic reading of the series. Since the quotes from Catharinias are the most exact in the Corporeal Works, it is reasonable to focus on this particular series. In addition, the majority of the quotes in this particular series come from the debate between Catherine and pagan philosophers, a discursive scene of the play par excellence.

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Figure 15.6 Philips Galle, Feeding the Hungry, from the Series Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.7 × 19.2 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The contemporary scene in the foreground shows a banquet attended by peasants, but provided by an upper-class man in the lower right corner. He follows the words in Luke 14:13–14, which, in an abbre­ viated quote, are written below the table: “But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind; and thou shalt be blessed, because they have not wherewith to make thee recompense: for recompense shall be made thee at the resurrection of the just.” The gospel admonition has its prefiguration in Tobias 4:17, which Galle placed on the side of the table: “Eat thy bread with the hungry and the

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needy, and with thy garments cover the naked.” The banquet is set against a hill side, on top of which Christ is dining at the house of Simon the Levi. The interior of the house is framed with quotes from Mark 2:15 (“and it came to pass, that as he sat at meat in his house, many publicans and sinners sat down together with Jesus and his disciples”) and Matthew 9:13 (“Go then and learn what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice”). On the wide frieze above the dining chamber, Galle placed verse 21 from Matthew 19: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me.” The hill is spatially unified with the house of Levi, as if it were possible to step inside from the banquet. The transition from the bottom of the print to the words from Matthew 19:21 introduces charity as a commandment of Christ that may be challenging to fulfill, but which guarantees moral perfection and eternal life. Galle thus gives his audience prints that not only ground the Works of Mercy in biblical exegesis, but can also be used as a tool for spiritual and moral growth and perfection in unity with God. Selling one’s possessions as re­ commended by Christ in Matthew 19:21 is more difficult than dining with “the hungry and the needy,” but it is not the first step that Christ asks of his followers. From the contemporary banquet in the foreground, a viewer can also “walk” down the hill and toward the right, to participate in the miracle of loaves and fishes described in Matthew 14:16–20 (the fragment in­ cluded by Galle) and John 6:1–14, which relates to Christ’s words in Matthew 15:32, included above the gathering: “And Jesus called to­ gether his disciples, and said: I have compassion on the multitudes, be­ cause they continue with me now three days, and have not what to eat, and I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way.” By feeding the hungry a viewer not only follows Christ’s commandment to support the poor, but also imitates Christ’s own actions. Furthermore, Christ showing mercy toward his followers by providing food for them also suggests to the viewer that God will not leave them in their own time of need. Even for those who gather their treasure in heaven, charity is still reciprocal, according to the scene of Paul leaving Malta from Acts 28:9–10, illustrated behind the feeding of the multitudes: “All that had diseases in the island, came and were healed. And when we were set to sail, they laded us with such things as were necessary.” This more im­ mediate reward is emphasized in the quote from Isaiah 58:7–8 in the arch framing the central scene: “Deal thy bread to the hungry and then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thy shall speedily arise.”

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 377 The quote from Isaiah helps the viewer move to the scenes included outside the central part of the print. The prophet stands against the pi­ laster to the right, holding a more complete quote from Chapter 58:10–12, which underlines the spiritual benefits of charity for the benefactor: When thou shalt pour out thy soul to the hungry, and shalt satisfy the afflicted soul then shall thy light rise up in darkness, and thy darkness shall be as the noonday. And the Lord will give thee rest continually, and will fill thy soul with brightness, and deliver thy bones, and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a fountain of water whose waters shall not fail. And the places that have been desolate for ages shall be built in thee: thou shalt raise up the foundations of generation and generation: and thou shalt be called the repairer of the fences, turning the paths into rest. Across the print stands Christ, resting against a tablet with abbreviated quotes from Luke 3:9–11 and Luke 16:20 and 22: For now the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be cut down and cast into the fire. And the people asked him, saying: What then shall we do? And he answering, said to them: He that hath two coats, let him give to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do in like manner. And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores. Desiring to be filled with the crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and no one did give him; moreover the dogs came, and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell. Above Christ, Galle placed an episode from 3 Kings 17 when Elias is fed by a raven, and then by a widow of Sarephta, whose son he raises from the dead—an act which once again underlines a more immediate reward of one’s charity. The same narrative continues in the image underneath Christ, in the lower left corner. Both the images in the upper and lower right corners also tell stories from the Kings: 4 Kings 4: 42–43 when Eliseus feeds the multitudes in a story that can serve as a prefiguration of the miracle of loaves and fishes, and 1 Kings 21:1–4, when David

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receives holy bread from Ahimelech, whose symbolism can be related to the Eucharist and Christ’s sacrifice. Whereas the exempla in the four corners and in the central part of the print show the importance of charity, the quotes from Luke underneath Christ demonstrate that its performance is in fact necessary for the eternal life. This message is repeated at the bottom of the print in the quotes from Matthew 25, Ecclesiasticus 4:2, Acts 6:3, and, with a minor alteration in the first line, Act 2, Scene 5, verses 604–607 of Catharinias: The resources of the rich are to help the poor, [whom] the bitter poverty, The evil hunger and whims of misfortune oppress. Then the King of Heaven will take mercy And his power he will lend to you and direct you to the good. Other prints in the Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy likewise use the text of Catharinias to link the performance of charitable deeds to a heavenly reward. For instance, the print of Visiting the Sick, which continues the earlier quote with verses 608–611, reads: Go to the weary with disease, who, weak, has sunken into the state Of lifeless limbs, go to the broken with pain, Bring the gifts and assistance as consolation in their unfortunate state! Such merits will bring you acclaim in eternal times. The quote from the play continues through verse 615 in Giving Drink to the Thirsty: When out of love to God one cooling water to the thirsty Gives, then one also extinguishes the burning flames of Heaven [Heaven’s anger], And beyond the golden stars from the never-exhausted Streams and rivers of all goodness without end will drink. Scene 5 of act 2 of the play, from which all these quotes come, shows the disputation between Catherine and pagan philosophers. It therefore seems to embody a discursive approach to religion. The dispute’s re­ solution, however, had been decided even before it began. The same approach characterizes Galle’s prints. The accumulation of scriptural

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 379 exempla provides viewers with many arguments to draw from, but the quotes from Catharinias direct them toward one definite interpretation. Each of Galle’s engravings offers a broad and demanding illustration of sacraments and Works of Mercy, but the prints also correspond to and complement each other. Connections among them are facilitated by compositional, structural, and thematic similarities. For example, three engravings feature a nearly identical scene of a meal, placed to the left of the central part of each engraving. In the Eucharist, we find the scene of the Last Supper, with Christ’s words “This is my body, this is my blood” written on the cornice, and further biblical quotations indicated on the floor (Figure 15.7). The Last Supper explains the mystery of transubstantiation celebrated in each Mass. A curtain has been drawn away to reveal Christ dining for the last time with his disciples, while a priest celebrates the consecration directly underneath it, and Christian men and woman are receiving the holy communion to the right. The biblical narrative not only serves to confirm the soteriological significance of this ritual, but is also presented as the only source which can illuminate the doctrine of the transubstantiation. Feeding the Hungry is an almost identical scene, which could be easily taken for the Last Supper if it were not framed with verses from Mark 2:15 and Matthew 9:13 that identify it as the feast at the house of Levi. The visual affinity between the feast at the house of Levi and the Last Supper, and Christ’s words about sacrifice in Matthew 9:13—which viewers could understand in the context of Christ himself becoming the ultimate sacrifice—enhance the meaning of both scenes. Following the explanation common in sixteenth-century exegesis, a viewer comes to understand the Last Supper not only as a crucial soteriological and sa­ cramental event, but also as the last of many meals Christ celebrated with his followers, and “publicans and sinners,” during which he taught them about the kingdom of God, charity, and brotherly love.34 Moving between the prints of the Eucharist and the print of Feeding the Hungry, it is clear that partaking in the sacrament requires viewers to partake in communion with “the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind” pic­ tured underneath the feast at the house of Levi.

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Figure 15.7 Philips Galle, Eucharist, from the Series Seven Sacraments, 1576. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.6 × 19 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Finally, two jugs of wine standing in front of the table in Feeding the Hungry are featured again in Giving Drink to the Thirsty, where the same part of the engraving is occupied by the Wedding at Cana (Figure 15.8).

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Figure 15.8 Philips Galle, Giving Thirsty to Drink, from the Series Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.7 × 19.2 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Here, the most important place at the table is taken by the bride, with Christ and his mother sitting to the side, and the words from John 2:3 and 7–8 written at Christ’s feet. The Wedding at Cana is another biblical episode which shows Christ’s charity in the context of a meal, but it is also his first miracle and public manifestation of his messianic nature, which would later be fully re­ vealed at the Last Supper with the words “For this is my blood of the new testament, which shall be shed for many unto remission of sins.” The transformation of water into wine can be further associated with the transformation of the Eucharistic wine into Christ’s blood, and Christ’s blood into the water of life, about which Christ speaks to a Samaritan

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woman in the meeting at a well, which is also featured in the print of Giving Drink to the Thirsty. Another possibility of such an intertextual reading is offered by the prints of Visiting the Sick (Figure 15.9) and the Extreme Unction (Figure 15.10). The Extreme Unction developed from the Anointment of the Sick that was recommended in James 5:14–15, two verses which are included at the bottom of the sacramental print:

Figure 15.9 Philips Galle, Visiting the Sick, from the Series Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.7 × 19.2 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

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Figure 15.10 Philips Galle, Extreme Unction, from the Series Seven Sacraments, 1576. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.6 × 19 mm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Is any man sick among you? Let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man: and the Lord shall raise him up: and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him.

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Although the anointment recommended by James for the sake of healing became a ritual performed to those on their deathbed, similarities be­ tween these two prints by Galle invite a reflection about the merciful assistance clergy and laypeople can—and should—offer at a sick’s per­ son’s bedside, and what would be the proper help and consolation at different stages of disease. The contemporary scenes in the foreground of both prints include a crucifix on the table at the feet of the bed, but in Visiting the Sick a knife, a piece of fruit, and a jug of water are placed next to the crucifix, while in the Extreme Unction their place is taken by a taper and a jar with the holy ointment. In the former image, the sick man prays the rosary while visitors offering food, money, and con­ versation enter the room. In Extreme Unction, the priests and family members recite prayers on behalf of the dying man. Galle’s message seems to be that in sickness, a Christian should rely on his community, but in the hour of death, they must be assisted by the clergy. It was possibly the vague soteriological status of the anointment of the sick that prompted Galle and his theological advisor to add the images and quotes from church councils, which establish the ars moriendi as the domain of the Catholic Church. In the sixteenth century, especially among the Protestant theologians, the rituals traditionally performed for the dying person were questioned. Here, Galle underscores the connection between the biblical foundation of the Anointment of the Sick and the sacrament administered by the Church. However, the rosary in the hand of the sick man also directs us to another print in the Seven Corporeal Works of Mercy—in the foreground of Giving Drink to the Thirsty an orthope­ dically impaired elderly man is holding one as well. Both men seek God’s favor (and the intercession of the Virgin, given their specific prayers), but their Christian community has the obligation to extend its hospitality not only onto well-to-do neighbors (like the one pictured in Visiting the Sick) but also destitute beggars.

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 385

Figure 15.11 Philips Galle, Instructing the Ignorant, from the Series Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy, 1577. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 26 x 19 cm, engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

An inquisitive viewer could continue searching for these types of affinities and correspondences virtually endlessly. For instance, Instructing the Ignorant (Figure 15.11) includes four scenes of the Holy Ghost being sent to the Apostles, prophets, doctors, and bishops, and the Confirmation (Figure 15.12) features the Pentecost as the source of the sacrament.

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Figure 15.12 Philips Galle, Confirmation, from the Series Seven Sacraments, 1576. Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 25.6 × 19 cm, Engraving. Courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Similarly, Burying the Dead uses excerpts of Matthew 14:12–13: “And his [John the Baptist’s] disciples came and took the body, and buried it, and came and told Jesus. Which when Jesus had heard, he retired from thence by boat, into a desert place apart, and the multitudes having heard of it.” Feeding the Hungry, however, features the miracle of feeding the multitude that immediately follows in the biblical narrative. In this visual exercise in biblical exegesis, the mysteries of Christian faith and the doctrine of the Catholic Church are explained first and foremost through biblical stories—as Walter Melion has argued referring to the example of allegorical prints by Hendrick Goltzius, “both in word and image, Scripture is activated as the privileged instrument of scriptural

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 387 35

reading.” However, a question arises as to whether these prints have anything to offer to a viewer looking for a less dogmatically Catholic theology. There has been a tendency among scholars to associate Galle’s prints with the influence of his teacher, the famously heterodox thinker Dirck Volkertszoon Coornhert, who after a period of exile returned to Haarlem in November 1576 to resume his post as the city’s secretary.36 While still living in Xanten, in 1575, Coornhert provided the text for an emblem book illustrated by Galle and published by Plantin. Thus, while there is no direct evidence of Coornhert’s involvement in the series of sacraments and Works of Mercy, his impact on those prints—as well as other engravings created by Galle in collaboration with another pupil of Coornhert, Hendrick Goltzius—appears very likely.37 The prints’ focus on the Bible, formal and conceptual correspondences with the com­ monplace system, and emphasis on the importance of the ethical beha­ vior of humankind certainly aligned with Coornhert’s interests. But Coornhert also spent much of his multifaceted career fighting institu­ tional churches. Indignant about the abuses of the Roman Catholic Church, Coornhert nonetheless argued that this was the only true Church, and vehemently opposed the “monstrous opinion” of pre­ destination.38 His outrage at the fundamental doctrine of the Calvinists eventually resulted in a 774-page volume, On Predestination, finished in 1590. Through the combination of contemporary scenes and biblical exempla, Galle’s prints underline the importance of human actions for the life of the community, while the imagery of the Last Judgment em­ phasizes the consequences of these actions for an individual’s fate in the afterlife. Galle and Coornhert then fully agree in their rejection of pre­ destination. However, Coornhert’s writings are unique in their firm be­ lief that anyone can attain perfection, “become [a] living image of God through virtues [and] be united with God through this reflection of his image.”39 His understanding of merit, while not contradictory to the theological position of the Roman Catholic Church, is also subtler than the church’s teachings. For Coornhert, the potential perfectibilism comes from God, and the role of humankind is limited to either accepting or rejecting his gifts. The exchange is akin to that between a beggar and an almsgiver, in which all that a beggar needs to do is outstretch his hand.40 Human cooperation is necessary for salvation, but the “pure grace” of God is decisive for justification and redemption.41 If we wanted to compare Coornhert’s position to any of the better known sixteenthcentury theologies—remembering that Coornhert himself would not approve of being classified that way—his argument essentially attempts to reconcile Catholic and Lutheran theologies. It is, however, impossible to reconcile with the content of the Catharinias play cited by Galle.

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15.6 Right Place, Wrong Time? Philips Galle’s three series published in 1576–1577 did not achieve commercial success. None of the prints has ever been reprinted (save for the much simplified Hortinus’s edition), and after a few experiments by Hendrick Goltzius using a similar compositional structure, the format was abandoned.42 This appears to have been the result of the political and confessional situation in the Netherlands. Although the Pacification of Ghent appears to have prompted Galle’s attempt to address a broader, more heterodox audience with his exclusively scriptural engravings of the Corporeal Works of Mercy, he nonetheless used an unequivocal Catholic commentary by Sonhovius to explain the doctrine of merit. His sophisticated, erudite designs required a significant exegetical effort from a viewer, which he could have expected to be successful among his targeted audience. For decades Antwerp had been known for its pictorial innovations both in paintings and prints, largely thanks to an affluent group of collectors interested more in visual and intellectual challenges offered by images and less in their religious orthodoxy. The prints had a good chance of becoming successful because they suggest that learned exegesis can be a foundation of charity, and, to put it even more radi­ cally, that biblical literacy and focus on the word of God can foster a more hospitable and just society. This is indeed a proposition with which Coornhert would have agreed, as he firmly believed in intelligence as teaching people right from wrong, and reason as guiding their moral behavior. In less than two years after the publication of the Sacraments and Works of Mercy cycles, however, Antwerp experienced a Calvinist as­ cendancy to power, which changed the conditions of artistic production in the city. In the words of Manfred Sellink, Galle “must have deemed it wiser to concentrate on subjects that could not bring about any possible irritations of the Antwerp authorities.”43 Perhaps if Galle’s prints had not included quotes from Catharinias, their fate would have been dif­ ferent. As it was, they became unacceptable for anyone in favor of predestination. Although the Calvinist Republic in Antwerp did not last long, in the later 1580s and 1590s other types of religious images, more straightforward in their Counter-Reformation message, took over.44 Potential customers for religious prints would have turned to more ex­ plicit Catholic imagery, and the few open-minded and heterodox col­ lectors still living in the city were unlikely to sustain a market for an exegetical series that conceptualized biblical stories the way the Seven Sacraments and Works of Mercy did. In other words, between 1578 and 1585, Galle’s prints were too Catholic, and after 1585, they were not Catholic enough—an in-between stance was no longer possible. The prints were a product of their time. They were an attempt to reach a scripturally curious and scripturally literate audience who was left with

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 389 very little after the annus mirabilis. A sequence of confessional and po­ litical upheavals, however, drastically altered the character of that group. To return to the metaphor from earlier, the substance of the engravings envisioned by Galle was too great to succeed in the market, for there may be many mansions in the Father’s house, but soon after the prints’ production, they did not belong in any of them.

Notes 1 James Clifton and Walter S. Melion, Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century (London: Giles, 2009), 175. 2 Philips Galle does not mention Hans Bol as the inventor, and his role in the design of the prints is not well known. His authorship is based on three extant drawings: Comforting the Afflicted at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rennes, Instructing the Ignorant at the Graphische Sammlung in Stuttgart, and Matrimony at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Stefan Hautekeete, in­ troduction to The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700. Hans Bol. Part I, comp. Ursula Mielke and ed. Ger Luijten (Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: Sound & Vision Publishers, 2015), lxxxi. The Rennes and Stuttgart drawings were “discovered” and associated with Galle’s series by Joachim Jacoby, who nonetheless hesitated to attribute them to a specific Antwerp artist. Joachim Jacoby, “Amendments: Two Drawings for Prints by Philips Galle,” Delineavit et Sculpsit 33 (2010): 2–24. See also: Stefaan Hautekeete, “New Amendments: Drawings for Prints by Hans Bol,” Delineavit et Sculpsit 35 (2012): 1–9. 3 The extremely complex composition of Galle’s engravings must have been unsuccessful with their audience, as Galle would never replicate them in his long and prolific career. The most similar to his series of the Works of Mercy and Sacraments is the cycle made in collaboration with Hendrick Goltzius, Allegories on the Life of Christ and, signed only by Goltzius, Allegories of Faith (1578). See also: James Clifton, “Appositis Exemplis, Ac Sententiis Illustrata. Philips Galle’s Series of the Sacraments and the Works of Mercy,” in Infant Milk or Hardy Nourishment? The Bible for Lay People and Theologians in the Early Modern Period, eds. W. François and A. A. den Hollander, 302 (Leuven–Paris–Walpole, MA: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2009). 4 Catharinias as the source of the quotation in the print of the Baptism has been briefly acknowledged by Ryszard Knapiński, who does not, however, discuss its authorship or the relationship between the author and Galle. Ryszard Knapiński, “Wykład potrydenckiej nauki o sakramencie chrztu św. zawarty w rycinie „Sacramentum baptismi” z serii Septem novae legis sa­ cramenta autorstwa Philipa Galle’a,” in Miejsca chrztów, urządzenia bap­ tyzmalne i ceremoniał chrzcielny, ed. Andrzej M. Wyrwa, 363 (Poznań– Dziekanowice: Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 2016). 5 See the recent edition of the play: Stefan Tilg, Die Hl. Katharina von Alexandria auf der Jesuitenbühne. Drei Innsbrucker Dramen aus den jahren 1576, 1577 und 1606 (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2005), 198–201. Analyzing the spatial organization of pages in commonplace books, Mark Meadow argues that “The juxtapositions created by the presence of the quotations together on the page will suggest certain affinities and disparities

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10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19

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to the reader, which may either support or confute the implications of any single citation, and which will shape and modify, and ultimately complicate, the reader’s understanding of the heading that describes the group as a whole.” Mark A. Meadow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs” and the Practice of Rhetoric (Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2002), 85. Clifton and Melion, Scripture for the Eyes, 152. In the extant drawings of Hans Bol, the impression of the spatial unity of the main scene is much stronger. Ibid., 153. Guido Marnef, “The Process of Political Change under the Calvinist Republic in Antwerp (1577–1585),” in Des villes en révolte: Les républiques urbaines aux Pays-Bas et en France pendant la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle, ed. Monique Weiss, 28 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010). Marcus van Vaernewijck, Van die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick in Ghendt, 1566–1568, ed. Ferdinand van der Haeghen, vol. 1, 81 (Ghent: Annoot-Braeckman, 1872–1881). Except for the biblical quota­ tions, which come from the Douay–Rheims Bible, all translations are mine. Godevaert van Haecht, Kroniek over de troebelen van 1565 tot 1574 te Antwerpen en elders, ed. Rob van Roosbroeck, 73–4 (Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1929–1930). For example, see books and essays by Guido Marnef, Walter S. Melion, and Barbara A. Kaminska. Ralf van Bühren, Die Werke der Barmherzigkeit in der Kunst des 12.-18. Jahrhunderts: Zum Wandel eines Bildmotivs vor dem Hintergrund neu­ zeitlicher Rhetorikrezeption (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1998), 21. Philip Melanchthon, Commonplaces. Loci Communes 1521 (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2014), 136. Maureen Flynn, Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 143. Marco H. D. van Leeuwen, “Amsterdam en de Armenzorg tijdens de Republiek,” NEHA-Jaarboek 95 (1996): 139–43; Daniëlle Teeuwen, Financing Poor Relief Through Charitable Collections in Dutch Towns, c. 1600–1800 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), esp. 101. See: Sheila D. Muller, Charity in the Dutch Republic: Pictures of Rich and Poor for Charitable Institutions (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985). Korenjak et al., Tyrolis Latina. Geschichte der Lateinischen Literatur in Tirol (Vienna–Cologne–Weimar: Böhlau, 2012), 276. Ibid., 277. The biographic information which I present here is based on Tilg, Die Hl. Katharina von Alexandria and Korenjak et al., Tyrolis Latina. See also a brief mention in Bernhard Duhr, Geschichte der Jesuiten in der Ländern Deustche Zunge (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1907), 336. Tilg, Die Hl. Katharina von Alexandria, 36. Joachim Jacoby, “Amendments,” 17–19. While Jacoby’s argument asso­ ciating Galle’s prints with Canisius’s Catechism is convincing, such a con­ nection is irrelevant for the objectives of this essay. Galle’s prints were never used as an illustration of the Catechism, and instead were published in­ dependently. Thus, a sixteenth-century viewer—whose reception of these three series concerns us here—would not have experienced them as a part of a Jesuit publication. See also footnote 23 on a later appropriation of Galle for a strictly Jesuit tract.

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 391 22 Jacoby, “Amendments,” 17–19. 23 The involvement of Sonhovius (or perhaps another Jesuit) in the creation of these prints possibly also explains why—and how—the Jesuit Julius Roscius Hortinus published a simplified edition of Galle’s Works of Mercy in Rome in 1586. His Icones operum misericordiae uses engravings redesigned by Mario Cartaro in such a way that the majority of the text has been moved to a separate page. Clifton, “Appositis Exemplis,” 300. The structure of the Icones is much closer to Nadal’s combination of text and image, which— assuming Galle intended his series to have a more heterodox appeal—would have completely stripped them of such a pretense. 24 Sonhovius’s Catharinias is more elaborate and sophisticated, but it still relies on the 1576 play as its model. Korenjak et al., Tyrolis Latina, 275. 25 There are a few other passages in Catharinias itself in which Sonhovius paraphrases Virgil, not least because the play is written in hexameter. On the structure and versification of the play see: Korenjak et al., Tyrolis Latina, 279. 26 I have not been able to establish whether any copies of Sonhovius’s Josaphat et Barleem have survived, but it is certainly not impossible that some of the quotes in Galle’s prints would have come from that play. 27 See: Barbara A. Kaminska, “‘That There Be No Schisms Among You’: Saint Paul as a Figure of Confessional Reconciliation in a Series of Paintings by Martin de Vos,” Journal of Early Modern Christianity 3, no. 1 (April 2016): 99–129. 28 See: Meadow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs,” passim. 29 Clifton, “Appositis Exemplis,” 306. 30 The literature on commonplace books is vast. A good place to start is Earle Havens, Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). On the relevance of the loci communes system for visual arts see: Meadow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs.” Galle’s three print series were extensively discussed in the context of this tradition by James Clifton. “Appositis Exemplis.” 31 Clifton, “Appositis Exemplis,” 302 ff. 32 Desiderius Erasmus, “The Godly Feast,” in Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 39 (1), ed. Craig R. Thompson, 184 (Toronto–Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1997). 33 On laymen’s access to the Scripture see: Barbara Kaminska, Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Religious Art for the Urban Community (Leiden: Brill, 2019), esp. chapters 1–3. 34 Kaminska, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, passim. 35 Walter S. Melion, “Hendrick Goltzius’s Method of Exegetical Allegory in His Scriptural Prints of the 1570s,” in The Primacy of the Image in Northern European Art, 1400–1700. Essays in Honor of Larry Silver, ed. Debra Cashion, Henry Luttikhuizen, and Ashley West, 431 (Leiden: Brill, 2017). 36 See: Manfred Sellink, “Philips Galle (1537–1612). Engraver and Print Publisher in Haarlem and Antwerp” (PhD dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1997); Clifton, “Appositis Exemplis.” 37 Sellink, “Philips Galle,” 97–101. 38 On the conflict between Coornhert and the nascent Calvinist Church, see: Gerrit Voogt, Constraint on Trial. Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert and Religious Freedom (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000); Marianne Roobol, Disputation by Decree. The Public Disputations Between Reformed Ministers and Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert as Instruments of Religious

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Policy During the Dutch Revolt (1577–1583) (Leiden: Brill, 2010); and Barbara A. Kaminska, “Looking Beyond Confessional Boundaries: Discourse of Religious Tolerance in Prints by Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert and Adriaan de Weert,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 36.3 (Summer 2013): 83–126. Voogt, Constraint on Trial, 67. The gradual development of one’s ethical behavior suggested by prints such as Feeding the Hungry could possibly be understood in the context of perfectibilism as well. Voogt, Constraint on Trial, 71. Roobol, Disputation by Decree, 183. See also: Clifton, “Apositis Exemplis,” 317. Sellink, “Philips Galle,” 102. On the transformation of Galle’s own religious prints see Sellink, “Philips Galle,” 100ff.

Works Cited Bühren, Ralf van. Die Werke der Barmherzigkeit in der Kunst des 12.-18. Jahrhunderts: Zum Wandel eines Bildmotivs vor dem Hintergrund neu­ zeitlicher Rhetorikrezeption. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1998. Clifton, James, and Walter S. Melion. Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century. London: Giles, 2009. Clifton, James, and Walter S. Melion. “Appositis Exemplis, Ac Sententiis Illustrata. Philips Galle’s Series of the Sacraments and the Works of Mercy.” In Infant Milk or Hardy Nourishment? The Bible for Lay People and Theologians in the Early Modern Period, edited by Wim François and August den Hollander, 297–335. Leuven–Paris–Walpole, MA: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2009. Duhr, Bernhard. Geschichte der Jesuiten in der Ländern Deustche Zunge. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1907. Erasmus, Desiderius. The Godly Feast (Convivium Religiosum). In Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 39 (1): Colloquies, edited by Craig R. Thompson, 171–243. Toronto–Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1997. Flynn, Maureen. Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Hautekeete, Stefaan. “New Amendments: Drawings for Prints by Hans Bol.” Delineavit et Sculpsit 35 (2012): 1–9. Hautekeete, Stefaan. “Introduction.” In The New Hollstein Dutch & Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts 1450–1700. Hans Bol. Part I, compiled by Ursula Mielke, edited by Ger Luijten, xxvi–ci. Ouderkerk aan den Ijssel: Sound & Vision Publishers, 2015. Havens, Earle. Commonplace Books: A History of Manuscripts and Printed Books from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001. Jacoby, Joachim. “Amendments: Two Drawings for Prints by Philips Galle." Delineavit et Sculpsit 33 (2010): 2–24. Kaminska, Barbara A. “Looking beyond Confessional Boundaries: Discourse of Religious Tolerance in Prints by Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert and Adriaan de Weert.” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 36.3 (Summer 2013): 83–126.

Beyond the Doctrine of Merit 393 Kaminska, Barbara A. “‘That There Be No Schisms Among You’: Saint Paul as a Figure of Confessional Reconciliation in a Series of Paintings by Martin de Vos.” Journal of Early Modern Christianity 3.1 (April 2016): 99–129. Kaminska, Barbara A. Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Religious Art for the Urban Community. Leiden: Brill, 2019. Knapiński, Ryszard. “Wykład potrydenckiej nauki o sakramencie chrztu św. zawarty w rycinie „Sacramentum baptismi” z serii Septem novae legis sacra­ menta autorstwa Philipa Galle’a.” In Miejsca chrztów, urządzenia baptyz­ malne i ceremoniał chrzcielny, edited by Andrzej M. Wyrwa, 339–70. Poznań–Dziekanowice: Wydawnictwo Poznańskiego Towarzystwa Przyjaciół Nauk, 2016. Korenjak, Martin, Florian Schaffenrath, Lav Subaric, and Karlheinz Tochterle. Tyrolis Latina. Geschichte der Lateinischen Literatur in Tirol, 2 vols. Vienna–Cologne–Weimar: Böhlau, 2012. Marnef, Guido. “The Process of Political Change Under the Calvinist Republic in Antwerp (1577–1585).” In Des villes en révolte: Les républiques urbaines aux Pays-Bas et en France pendant la deuxième moitié du XVIe siècle, edited by Monique Weiss, 25–33. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010. Meadow, Mark A. Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s “Netherlandish Proverbs” and the Practice of Rhetoric. Zwolle: Waanders Publishers, 2002. Melanchthon, Philip. Commonplaces. Loci Communes 1521. Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2014. Melion, Walter S. “Hendrick Goltzius’s Method of Exegetical Allegory in His Scriptural Prints of the 1570s.” In The Primacy of the Image in Northern European Art, 1400–1700. Essays in Honor of Larry Silver, edited by Debra Cashion, Henry Luttikhuizen, and Ashley West, 419–32. Leiden: Brill, 2017. Muller, Sheila D. Charity in the Dutch Republic: Pictures of Rich and Poor for Charitable Institutions. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1985. Roobol, Marianne. Disputation by Decree. The Public Disputations Between Reformed Ministers and Dirck Volckertszoon Coornhert as Instruments of Religious Policy During the Dutch Revolt (1577–1583). Leiden: Brill, 2010. Sellink, Manfred. “Philips Galle (1537–1612). Engraver and Print Publisher in Haarlem and Antwerp.” PhD dissertation, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, 1997. Teeuwen, Daniëlle. Financing Poor Relief Through Charitable Collections in Dutch Towns, c. 1600–1800. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015. Tilg, Stefan. Die Hl. Katharina von Alexandria auf der Jesuitenbühne. Drei Innsbrucker Dramen aus den Jahren 1576, 1577 und 1606. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2005. van Haecht, Godevaert. Kroniek over de troebelen van 1565 tot 1574 te Antwerpen en elders, edited by Rob van Roosbroeck. Antwerp: De Sikkel, 1929–1930. van Leeuwen, Marco H. D. “Amsterdam en de Armenzorg tijdens de Republiek,” NEHA-Jaarboek 95 (1996): 132–61. van Vaernewijck, Marcus. Van die beroerlicke tijden in die Nederlanden en voornamelick in Ghendt, 1566–1568, edited by Ferdinand vander Haeghen. Ghent: Annoot-Braeckman, 1872–1881. Voogt, Gerrit. Constraint on Trial. Dirck Volkertsz. Coornhert and Religious Freedom. Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2000.

Contributors

Richard H. Armstrong is an associate professor of Classical Studies at the University of Houston. He is the author of A Compulsion for Antiquity: Freud and the Ancient World (Cornell University Press, 2005) and co-editor of Remusings: Essays on the Translation of Classical Poetry, special edition of Classical and Modern Literature 27.1, (Spring) 2007. Michael A. Bane is a visiting assistant professor of Musicology at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University. His publications include “Marin Marais and His Public” in Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America (2018) and “Honnêtes gens, Amateur Musicianship, and the ‘Easy Air’ in France: The Case of Francesco Corbetta’s Royal Guitars” in the Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music (2017). Francesca D’Alessandro Behr is a professor of Classics and Italian Studies at the University of Houston. She is the author of Arms and the Woman: Classical Tradition and Women Writers in the Venetian Renaissance (Ohio State University Press, 2018) and Feeling History: Lucan, Stoicism and the Aesthetics of Passion (Ohio State University Press, 2007). She also received a Knighthood (2014) in the Order of the Star, Republic of Italy. J.F. Bernard is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Champlain College. He is the author of Shakespearean Melancholy: Philosophy, Form, and the Transformation of Comedy. Critical Studies in Shakespeare and Philosophy (Edinburgh University Press, 2018). Sarah M. Cadigan is a professor of Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design. Her most recent publications include “The Interrelation of Curtains, Altarpieces, Relics: Domenico Ghirlandaio’s Response to the Cult of the Volto Santo in Lucca Cathedral” in The Interaction of Art and Relics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (forthcoming) and “Domenico Ghirlandaio and his Workshop in Pisa: Panel Paintings for the Gesuati” in Predella: Journal of Visual Arts (2017).

Contributors 395 John R. Decker is the chairperson of the Department of the History of Art and Design at Pratt Institute. He is the author of The Technology of Salvation and the Art of Geertgen tot Sint Jans (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009) and co-editor of Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015). Brian L. Hanson is an assistant professor of History at the Bethlehem College and Seminary. He is the author of Reformation of the Commonwealth: Thomas Becon and the Politics of Evangelical Change inTudor England (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2019) and co-author of Waiting on the Spirit of Promise: The Life and Theology of Suffering of Abraham Cheare (Wipf & Stock, 2014). Barbara Kaminska is an assistant professor at Sam Houston State University. She is author of Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Religious Art for the Urban Community (Leiden: Brill, 2019) and the essay “A Religious Minority between Triumph and Persecution: Frans Hogenberg’s Hedgepreaching outside Antwerp and the Flemish Community in Cologne” in Protestant Majorities and Minorities in Early Modern Europe. Confessional Boundaries and Contested Identities (2019). Helena Kaznowska is a senior lecturer at Bath Spa University. She is coauthor of The Incunabula of Middle Temple Library (Middle Temple Library, 2014), and author of “Stories between Storeys: The Uses of Stairs to Gain Domestic Control” in Early Modern Literary Studies (2019). Rosalind Kerr is a fellow at the Center for Reformation and Renaissance Studies at the University of Victoria, Toronto and Professor Emerita of Drama at the University of Alberta. She is author of The Rise of the Diva on the Sixteenth-Century Commedia dell’Arte Stage (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015). Mitzi Kirkland-Ives is a professor of Art History at Missouri State University. She is the author of In the Footsteps of Christ: Hans Memling’s Passion Narratives and the Devotional Imagination in the Early Modern Netherlands. Proteus: Studies in Early Modern Identity Formation, 5 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013) and co-editor of Death, Torture and the Broken Body in European Art, 1300-1650 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2015). Melih Levi is assistant professor of English at Bogazici University. Recent publications include “John Ashbery: Thinking of Images to Images of Thinking.” in Thresholds (2020) and “Self-Fashioning, Tanzimat and Translation” in Modernity in Ottoman Culture: Reform and the Tanzimat Novel. (2019).

396

Contributors

Jonathan M. Newman is an assistant professor of Pre-1800 British Literature at Missouri State University. He is author of Speculum futurorum temporum siue Pentachronon sancte Hildegardis (Mirror of Future Times or the Five Times of Saint Hildegard), edition and translation with Magda Hayton (under contract with Peeters Press, 2021). Murat Öğütcü is an assistant professor in the Department of Western Languages and Literatures at Manzur University. His recent essays include “Masculine Dreams: Henry V and the Jacobean Politics of Court Performance,” in Performances at Court in the Age of Shakespeare (2019) and “Of Fathers and Sons: Inter-Generational and Intrafamilial Loyalties and Conflict in Shakespeare’s Elizabethan History Plays,” in ‘Experienc’d Age knows what for Youth is fit’?: Generational and Familial Conflict in British and Irish Drama and Theatre (2019). David L. Robinson holds a PhD from the University of Toronto, and is the author of “’Un Rémede plus doux:’ The 1600 Fontainebleau Conference in Context” in Reframing Reformation: Understanding Religious Differences in Early Modern Europe (forthcoming) and “The 1799 Anglo-Russian Invasion of Holland: A Comparative View from the Press” in Napoleonic Scholarship: The Journal of the International Napoleonic Society (2015).

Index

Abraham, biblical figure 359, 377 academies see accademie accademie 252, 257; della Fama (Venice) 256; degli Intronati (Siena) 258; della Infiammati (Padua) 258; della Val di Blenio (Milan) 85–86, 100n16, 100n17, 100n19, 101n22 Accession Day Tilts, England 59, 67 Aeneid 223–225, 230–242, 243n1, 244n12, 260–263, 373 Agrippa, Heinrich Cornelius, Of the Vanitie and Uncertaintie of Artes and Sciences 212 Agrippa von Nettesheim, About the Nobility and Excellence of Women 257 album amicorum 88, 102n34 Alba, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, duque de 368 Alberti, Leon Battista 13, 303 Albrecht VII, archduke of Austria 148 Alcaraz, Bernardino de 229 Alcocer, Hernando 223 Alcocer, Pedro Hystoria, o Descripcion de la Imperial cibdad de Toledo 230 Alexandrian school of theology 12 Alighieri, Dante see Dante Alighieri altarpieces 15, 303–322, 394, 397 Álvares de Toledo, Fernando see Alba, Fernando Álvarez de Toledo, duque de, 1507-1582 amatory 193–195, 199–201, 205, 215n2, 217n22, 218n26 Ambrose, bishop of Milan 12, 149 Amsterdam 150 anachronism 240–241

Andreini, Isabella 82, 87–88, 95–99, 100n19 Anguillara, Andere dell’ 262 annus mirabilis 265–366, 371, 385 Anointing of the sick, sacrament of 365, 373, 378, 382–384 anti-Semitism 157 Antoninus, saint 308, 313, 315, 316, 321n35, 323 Antwerp 145, 148, 151, 157–158, 345–346, 359, 367; Almoners, Chamber of 370–373; Collegium of Jesuits 370–373; Calvinist Republic in 388–380; Saint Walburga Church 367; Printing in 223–227, 235–236, 242, 388 apostrophe, apostrophic mode 209–212 Aquinas, Thomas 74n80, 76, 157, 352n35, 369 d’Aragona, Tullia 254 architecture, residential, Tudor era 57–59 Arienti, Sabadino degli 256 Ariosto, Ludovico 224, 232, 253–254, 262–263, 266n10 aristocracy 32–33, 43, 55–56, 59, 83–84, 95, 98, 105n49, 145, 174 Aristotle 12, 54, 118, 170–171, 262,351n33; Poetics 12 ars moriendi 381 art history 7–10 Arthurian cycle 254 Atanagi, Dionigi 256–257, 268n30 Audoeno, Ludovico (Bishop Lewis Owen) 94 Augustine of Hippo 263

398

Index

authority 33, 67, 98, 125, 137, 148, 167–168, 170–180, 183–185, 186n2, 195, 200, 203, 261–262, 283, 366; Divine authority 129–131, 137 Ayala Cano, Juan de 236 Ayala, Juan de 223, 225–227, 230–231, 235–236 Bacon, Roger 110 Baldracca Theatre (Florence) 97–98, 105n59 Baldwin, William: A Myrroure for Magistrates 134–135 Bale, John 128 Barberino, Andrea da 262, 267n15 Bargagli, Girolamo 258 Barnes, Robert 128 Bary, René 37, 47n39; L’esprit de cour 36 Basilea, Fadrique de aka Freidrich Biel aka Friedericus de Basilea 223 Becon, Thomas 126–129, 132–136; A flour of godly praiers 127; New postil 133–134, 136 beholder’s involvement, beholder’s share 8 Bellère, Jean 235, 246–247n41 Bellegarde, Jean-Baptiste Morvan de 33–35, 37 Bernard, of Clairvaux 12 Bernardino, of Siena 313, 320n18, 321, 350n14, 356 Beverwijck, Johan van: Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken geslachts 276–278, 294n5 Bijns, Anna 374 Bilney, Thomas 128 Boccaccio, Giovanni 263; Decameron 254; On Famous Women 263; Teseida 254 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus 263 Boiardo, Matteo Maria 232; Orlando Innamorato 223, 253 Bol, Hans 359, 372, 389n2, 390n6 Bologna, Simone da 85–86, 100n20 Bonaventure 332, 337; see also Pseudo-Bonaventure books 16, 61, 88, 113, 114, 131, 156, 214, 235, 252, 254–259, 265, 280, 282–283, 286, 288, 293, 329, 360–361, 373; dedications 257;

inventories of 252; see also album amicorum; commonplace books; conduct books; emblem books; gardens, books on; Index of Prohibited Books; printing Borcht, Peeter van der 372 Borromeo, Carlo (cardinal) 94–95 Boscán, Juan 223 Botticelli, Sandro, The Birth of Venus 276–277 Bouts, Dieric, Portrait of a Female Donor 326 Boxhoorn, Hendrik 145 Boyer, Abel 35–39 Brambilla, Ambrogio 85, 97 Breda, Netherlands 145, 158–159n2 Broadfield Manor, Hertfordshire 287 buffoon, buffoonery, buffoni 82–86, 93, 98–99 Burbage, James 66 Burckhart, Paul, Duels de compliments franç ois et italiens 35 Burgos, Spain 223 Bustamante, Jorge de 235, 244n8, 246n29 Calvin, John 115, 126, 155, 367 Calvinism, Calvinists 292, 359, 366, 368, 384–386, 389n38 Cambridge, St Johns College 135 Canisius, Peter (Petrus) 156, 372, 390n21 carnival 83, 94; carnivalesque 66–67 Caro, Annibal 262 Carpaccio, Vittore 311, 312, 319, 322 Castro, Álvar Gómez de 229, 231; Naiades 229; El parto de la Virgen 232; Edyllia aliquot, sive poemati 232, 245n18 Catharinias, Jesuit play 360–361, 370–374, 378–379, 387–388, 389n4, 391n24 catharsis 12, 60 Catherine, of Siena 308, 309, 316, 318n3, 361, 371, 374, 378, 379 Catholic Church, Catholic doctrine 109, 131, 137, 147–148, 150–158, 194, 200, 202, 230, 233, 287, 359–361, 367–369, 371, 373–374, 384, 386–388; English Catholicism 128–131; and Petrarchan poetry 202, 206, 209–210, 214, 217n26, 218n26

Index 399 Cecil, William, Baron Burghley 130, 135 Cecils 55–56, 61–62 Cedillo, Alonso 231 Chanson de Roland 254 chapels 312, 313, 314–317, 321n32, 321n34; as burial spaces 305, 314–316, 321n34; family endowment of 311–312, 316–317, 321n34 Charles V, emperor 226, 229, 233, 235 Chaucer, Geoffrey 166, 195, 200–201, 203, 205–206, 216n13, 217n23, 217n24; Against Women Unconstant 201, 205–206 Christus, Petrus 326–28; Portrait of a Female Donor 327; Portrait of a Young Man 328 Cicero 12 Circe, mythological figure 240–242, 263 civility 32–34, 41, 45n29; manuals 32–34 Clement I, Pope 12 Cleve, Joos van, Annunciation 324, 325, 329–330, 335, 348n1, 357 collecting practices 253 Commedia dell’Arte 81–107 commonplace books 360–361, 373, 389n5, 391n30 commonwealth (English) 128 compliments 31–40, 43n9, 44n10, 45–46n29, 49n57 Compromise of the Nobles 367 conduct books 34–35, 40, 48, 278, 280–284, 287, 290, 293, 298n89 confessionalization 145, 147–149, 155, 158, 359, 361, 373, 388–389 Confidenti (theater troup) 88, 97–98, 102n37 confirmation (sacrament) 385, 386 connoisseurship 7–8 Consistorians see Reformed Church Constance School of reception theory 6–7 constancy 193–194, 197–198, 200, 203–205, 209–212, 214 contagion 108–111, 116 Contra-Remonstrants 152 conversions, religious 114, 154–155 Cooke, Dorothie 281 Cooke, Robert 281

Cooke, Sir William 281 Coornhert, Dirck Volkertszoon 162n51, 359, 361, 387–388, 390n38 coplas de arte mayor (verse form) 223, 239, 246n29 Cornelii, Cornelius 149–151 Corpus Christi, liturgical feast 141 Cossa, Francesco del, The Triumph of Venus 276 Cossey, William 130 Council of Blood see Council of Troubles Council of Meaux-Paris 365 Council of Trent 94, 149, 311, 317, 365; see also Counter-Reformation Council of Troubles 368 Counter-Reformation 86–87, 158, 388; see also Council of Trent Courbet, Gustave 8 courts, courtiers 43n6, 45n29, 99, 166–169, 171–179, 184–186, 237–238; courtyards 54–59; English court 54–59, 65, 67, 71n14, 72n25; French court 32–33, 40, 44n18; Innsbruck court 370; Italian courts 82, 84, 88, 94, 96–99, 105n56, 255–256; Court of Heaven 346; see also Inns of Court court prophets 127–129, 137 courtesans 87 Courtin, Antoine de 35–36, 47n38 Coventry 290–291 Cranmer, Thomas 126–127, 135 credibility 131, 153, 177–184 Crowley, Robert 129 Cupid (mythological figure) 200, 239–240, 242 Dávalos, Don Rodrigo 231 Daniel, Samuel, Ciuile Warres 59, 67 Dante Alighieri 13, 243–244, 249, 254–255, 265, 267, 271–272, 331, 349n10; Divine Comedy 254, 331, 349n10; Vita Nuova 255 Day, George Bishop of Chichester 127 debate 145–150, 185, 359–361, 371, 373–374; see also disputations de Gouda, Joannes 145–146, 148–157, 158n2, 160n30, 162n51 de Serres, Olivier 62 dead, burying of the, as sacrament 386 dedications, in books 257

400

Index

Deësis 370 Deguileville, Guillaume de, Pilgrimage of Human Salvation 331, 349n10 deixis, deictic 208, 212 Devereux, Robert see Essex, Earl of Devotio Moderna see Modern Devotion devotion, religious 15, 232, 253, 288, 315, 324–348, 348n3, 349n7, 350n18, 352n36, 353n50, 356–357, 368; see also Modern Devotion devotionalia, devotional aids 253, 324, 329–330, 348, 357 Dictionnaire de l’Acadé mie franç aise 32, 44n14 Dido (character in Aeneid) 261–262, 270n50 Didymus, of Alexandria 12 disease 108, 110, 132, 374–375, 380; see also contagion; theater as 110 disputations 145–158, 158–159n2, 160n30, 162n51, 376; see also debate Dolce, Lodovico 233, 256, 260–261 Domenichi, Lodovico 265 Dominic 304, 305, 316, 318n3, 321n37 Dominican order, Dominican friars, Dominican churches 303, 313–318; Conventual Dominicans 314 Don Juan of Austria see John of Austria Donne, John 209, 212 van Dornik, Pieter 145, 159n2 Dottore Graziano (Commedia dell’Arte character) 82 Douai, English Catholic seminary 147 dramaturgy 11 Duccio di Buonisegna 311 duels 59–61 Duns Scotus, John 149 Duns, John see Duns Scotus, John Duplessis-Morney, Phillippe 156 Dutch Republic 145, 155–157, 162n51 Dutch Revolt 366–367 Eden, Garden of 62 Edgeworth, Roger 198 Edward VI, king of England 124, 127–130, 133–134, 137, 138n10 Elizabeth I, queen of England 56–57,

59, 63, 65–66, 71n14, 135, 193–194, 218n27 Elkerlijc 331, 343–344, 353n51 emblem books 287–291, 297n70, 373, 387 enchantresses 262–264, 349n5 English Civil War (1642–51) 288, 290 engravings, printed matter 88, 93, 102n35,223, 234–239, 246n27, 247n41, 252, 255, 257, 365–366, 370, 373–374, 379, 387–389, 391n23 Entretiens galans 38–39 epistemology 3 epistolary poetry 196–197 Erasmus, Desiderius aka Erasmus of Rotterdam 12, 156–157, 374 Ercilla, Alonso de, La Araucana 236 Essex, Earl of 56–57, 59–61; Essex coup 54, 61 d’Este della Rovere, Leonora, princess of Urbino 255 d’Este della Rovere, Lucrezia, princess of Urbino 255 etiquette 31–32, 88 Eucharist 149–150, 156, 378–379, 380, 381; Eucharistic host 313; Eucharistic wine 381 evangelical, evangelical preachers and sermons 115, 124–137 Everyman see Elkerlijc Evreux, Bishop of 156 Exclamatio Caesaris Augusti 225, 233, 237–238, 244n12 exegesis, exegetical 12, 137, 359–361, 368, 373, 376, 379, 386, 388 extreme unction, sacrament 382, 383, 384 Faret, Nicolas 40 Felltham, Owen 115 Ferdinand II, archduke of Austria and Holy Roman emperor 230, 239, 372 Ferdinando I, grand duke of Tuscany 95 Ferrara, Palazzo Schifanoia 276 Fiorentino, Remigio 262 Fish, Stanley 4, 7, 17n17 flattery, flatterer 34–38, 40, 46n34, 58, 72n25, 168, 172, 176, 178, 238, 335 Florence, Italy 82, 95, 97, 253, 276, 303, 313, 316, 322, 365; Baldracca

Index 401 Theatre 97–98, 105n59; Palazzo Vecchio 98; San Marco 313, 320n15, 322; Santa Maria Novella 15, 303–319, 320n20, 321n31, 323; Santissima Annunciata 99 florilegia see commonplace books Fonte, Moderata 260 formalism, in literary and art criticism 3, 7; Russian formalism 7 Forteguerri, Laudomia 258 Foucault, Michel 2, 10; see also heterochronies and hetertopias Fracastoro, Girolamo 110 Francatripa (commedia dell’arte character) 89, 89, 102n39 Francisquina (commedia dell’arte character) 88–89, 92–93, 90, 92, 93, 102n37, 103n40, 104n43, 104n44 Franco, Niccolò 252 Frith, John 128 Fulke, William 135 Gómez de Castro, Álvar see Castro, Álvar Gómez de Gadamer, Hans-Georg 2, 7 Galen 100, 278 Galle, Phillips 359–363, 360, 362, 363, 366–389, 375, 380, 381, 382, 383, 385, 386, 389n2, 389n3, 389n4, 390n21, 391n23, 391n26, 393n44 Garcilaso de la Vega 223, 231, 239, 243n5 gardens, gardening 54, 57, 61–63, 69, 74n75, 263 Garrett, Thomas 128 Gascoigne, George 193, 196, 207–208, 211 Gataker, Thomas, Marriage dvties briefely covched together 278–283, 290, 292–293 Gelosi (Commedia dell’Arte troupe) 85, 94–97, 99, 100n20, 105n57 gender, gender dynamics 49n57, 200–207, 257–258, 276–278, 293, 298n100 Genesis (Biblical text) 263, 332, 350n14, 359 gens de qualité 31, 34 Gerard, John 61 Ghirlandaio, Domenico 15, 303–317,

318n3, 319n5, 320n23–29, 321n31, 321n37, 322, 323 Gibson, Walker 3 Giolito, Gabriele 257; Giolito Press 224 Glibery, William 117, 119 Goldoni, Carlo 99, 99n3 Goltzius, Hendrick 386–388, 389n3 Gomarus, Franciscus 155 Gombaud, Antoine, chevalier de Méré 33 Gómez de Castro, Álvar 229–233; Edyllia aliquot, siue poemati 232, 243n1, 245n18, 245n21 Googe, Barnabe 193, 198–200, 207, 215n2 Gosson, Stephen 108–109 Gouda, Johanes de 145–146, 148–157, 158n2, 161n30 Gower, John 112, 166–186, 187n13, 189n59, 189n73; Mirrour d’Omme 166; Vox Clamantis 166–171, 186n1, 187n14; Confessio Amantis 166–172, 186n1, 186n3, 187n13, 190n86 Gozzi, Carlo 99, 99n3 Gradenigo, Giorgio di Andrea di Taddeo 257 Gratiano (Commedia dell’Arte character) 84, 96 Grenaille, François de 34, 46n34 Greville, Fulke 202, 209 Grimald, Nicolas 207 Guarnelli, Alessandro 262 Hacket, John Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry 280, 290, 293, 298n92; Eighth Sermon Upon the Resurrection 290–292 Hacket, William 66 Haecht, Godevaert van 366 Habsburgs 145; Habsburg Netherlands 145, 148; see also Philip II; Ferdinand II Harlemius, Father see Willemszoon, Johan Harlequin (Commedia dell’Arte character) 88–93, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 102n36, 102n39, 103n40, 103n41, 103n42, 104n43, 104n44 Harrison, William 61 hedge-preachers, hedge-sermons 365–366

402

Index

hendecasyllabic verse 223–224, 239 Henrician Reformation 127–128 Henry III, king of France 85 Henry IV, king of England 34; in Holinshed’s Chronicles 62, 64; in Shakespeare’s Richard II 57, 61, 67 Henry VIII, king of England 124, 137, 218n26 herbalists, herbals 61–62 Hereford, Henry of aka Bolingbrooke see Henry IV Hernández de Velasco, Gregorio 225–228, 231–242, 243n1, 247n41, 247n48 Herp, Hendrik 339–340; Mirror of Perfection 339–340, 342, 352n46; The Mirror of Eternal Salvation 339, 342 heterochronies, heterotopias 54 Heynlin, Johann 150 Hill, Thomas 61 Holinshed, Raphael 59–60, 62, 64, 67 Holland, Philemon 280 Holy Ghost 291, 365, 385 Holy Orders, sacrament of 373 Holy Sacrament see Eucharist homosociality 200–201 Hooftman, Gillis 359 Hooper, John 128 Horace 12 Horatio (character in Hamlet) 113–114, 118 horizons 2 Hortinus aka Julius Roscius 384, 387n23 Hosius, Stanislaus 156 Host see Eucharistic host housewives 282, 285 Howard, Henry, earl of Surrey see Surrey Huggarde, Miles 195 Latimer, Hugh 124–126 humanism, humanists 2–3, 7, 146, 150, 156, 195, 199, 208, 223, 225, 227–231, 233, 245n12, 253, 258, 264, 359 iambic rhythym or structure 201, 207, 211 idolatry 128, 137, 198, 217n26 immorality 108–109, 157, 172 imprisonment 66–69, 71n14, 76n109, 112, 124, 130, 290

improvisation 86 Index of Prohibited Books 156 Ingarden, Roman 6–7 innamorate and innamorati 87 Instructing the ignorant (act of mercy) 365, 385, 385 Iser, Wolfgang 4, 6–7 Jaunin, Claude, Les compliments de la langue française 34–35 Jauss, Hans Robert 6–7, 12 Jean à Lapide see Lapide, Johan de Jerome, William 128 Jesuits, Jesuit Order 145, 151, 153, 156–157, 160n30, 360, 370–372, 374; Jesuit College in Innsbruck 371–372 Jewel, John 126 Johannes de Gouda see Gouda, Johnanes de Johannes Florianus 235 John of Austria, Governor of Hapsburg Netherlands aka Don Juan of Austria 367–369 John the Baptist 304, 305, 314, 316, 370, 386 Jonson, Ben 101n27, 121n19, 209 jousts see tilts Judaism 154–155; conversos 233; see also antisemitism Kemp, Wolfgang 8–9 Kempis, Thomas à see Thomas à Kempis Lacan, Jacques 10, 201 laity, lay audiences 119, 147, 149, 151, 183–184, 255, 312–317, 320n32, 325, 332, 341, 374, 391n33; lay women 313 Lansbergen, Franciscus 145, 149, 153–155, 157 Lansbergen, Samuel 149–157 Lapide, Jean à see Heynlin, Johan Last Judgment 344, 349n9, 361, 369–371, 371, 387 Last Supper 379–381 Latimer, Hugh Bishop of Worcester 124–126 Latin, language and translations of works 147, 155–156, 161n37, 166, 179–181, 183, 224–233, 235–238, 241–242, 252–262, 280, 338–339

Index 403 Lawrence, saint 306, 307, 316, 318n3 Lawson, William 61 Leiden, University of 147 Lever, Thomas 131–134 Libro di Antonio Billi 303, 318n2, 322 liminality, liminal spaces 54–60, 62–63, 67–69 literacy 1, 129, 252, 266n2, 291, 388; see also books literature 5–9, 30, 33–34, 44n20, 54, 252, 284, 290, 293, 331, 338; court literature 178; sociology of literature 7; see also books; see also conduct books; see also poetry; see also vernacular literature liturgy 316, 319n8, 321n32, 322; liturgical space 315, 317; division of 315 loci communes see commonplace books Lomazzo, Giovan Paolo 85 London 57–58, 65, 66–67, 114, 133, 135–136, 167–168, 173, 178n40; Prisons; Inns of Court 199, 203, 205; Paul’s Cross 116; Lincoln’s Inn 281; towers 64; Whitehall 55 Los Doze Libros de la Eneida de Vergilio 223, 230–232, 235; see also Ayala, Juan de; see also Hernandez de Velasco, Gregorio Lot (Biblical figure) 359 louange, louanger 32 Louis XIV, king of France 32, 42n4, 44n18 Luther, Martin; Lutheranism 12, 155–156, 282, 367–367, 369, 387 Madonna lactans 304 malus interpres 179–180 Mande, Hendrik 340 Manuzio, Aldo (Aldus Manutius) 235; Aldine Press 258 Margaret of Parma, Governess of Hapsburg Netherlands 367 Marijken van Nijmegen 343–347 Marinella, Lucrezia 260–265 Markham, Gervase 61–62 Marlowe, Christopher 68 marriage 87, 97, 280–284; as sacrament 373; royal marriages 229, 233, 235; remarriages 287 Martín Cordero, Juan 224, 232–233 Martinelli, Tristano 88, 102n36

martyrs, martyrdom 127, 218n26, 371–372; see also Peter Martyr Marxist scholarship 5–6 Mary I, queen of England 218n27, 229, 233, 235 Mary Magdalen 291 Mary Tudor see Mary I Masaccio, Trinity 303 mass media 1; see also printing Masses 149, 154, 312–315, 321n32, 321n34, 365, 376; see also Eucharist Meaux-Paris, Council of see Council of Meaux-Paris meditations 199, 288, 324, 340–341, 349n8, 353n47, 357 Medici family 82, 96, 98, 105n48, 105n50, 107, 303 Melanchthon, Philip 369 Memling, Hans, Portrait of Martin van Nieuwenhoven 325, 326 Mennonites 145 meter, in poetry 197, 201, 211–214, 225, 227, 229, 232, 239, 242, 391n25 Michael, archangel 304, 316, 347 Mill, John Stuart 206 Milton, John 209 mnemonics 330, 342, 349n7 Mnemosyne Project 7 Modern Devotion 332, 339–341, 347, 350n18 modesty 36, 39–40, 336 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin) 33, 38, 45n23; Le bourgeois gentilhomme 38 morals, morality 98, 108, 178, 257, 279, 260; see also immorality mountebanks 84–86 music and musicians 30–32, 34–42, 43n6, 49n58, 68, 86, 96, 101n33, 257, 285, 335; history and theory of 12–13 Nadal, Hieronymus 372, 391n23 Natas, Francisco de las 231; Aeneid 2 223 Nebrija, Antonio de, Ecphrases familiares 226 Neoplatonism 87–88, 98 Nettesheim, Agrippa von, About the Nobility and Excellence of Women 25

404

Index

New Criticism 4 Northbrooke, John 109 Odyssey 262–263; see also Pérez, Gonzalo Origen 12 Ortelius, Abraham 359 Ovid, Metamorphoses 233, 235, 242, 244n8, 246n29, 256, 262–263 Pacification of Ghent 361, 366–367, 369, 388 Padua, Accademia dei Infiammati 258 Page, William 278, 284; The Widdowe Indeed 283–286 Panofsky, Erwin 2, 7 Pantalone (Commedia dall’Arte character) 82–84, 90, 92, 96 Pardons (legal) 68 Paris 8, 10, 31–36, 40, 88; University of 146 Parker, Matthew 135 Parson, Anthony 128 passion 43n6, 184, 199, 201, 240–242, 339–341; Passion of Christ 291, 339–342, 344 Pausanias 279–280, 287, 292, 295n23; Periegesis Hellados 279–280 Peirce, Charles Sanders 2 Pelicano, Conrado 156 Pentecost 316, 385 Pérez, Gonzalo 224, 226, 233, 235, 237–238; Odyssey 224, 226, 233; Ulyxea 226, 233, 235, 237 Perfectibilism (theological doctrine) 361, 387, 392n39 period eye 8, 12 Peter Martyr 310, 314, 316, 318n3 Petrarch 195, 202, 209–210, 214, 254, 261; Petrarchan style, in poetry 87, 193–204, 206, 208–211, 214, 216n7, 217n26, 218n26 Petrarcha, Francesco see Petrarch phenomenology 4, 219n33 Phidias 278–279, 286, 294n14, 295n16 Philip (Biblical figure) 133 Philip II, king of Spain, Holy Roman emperor 224, 226, 229–230, 233, 235, 237–238, 243n1, 246n34, 367 Philo, of Alexandria (Philo Judaeus) 12

Piccolomini, Alessandro 258–259 Piccolomini, Marcantonio 258 plain style, in poetry 115, 134, 193–194, 197, 202, 217n13, 219n33 Plantin, Christophe 359, 372, 387 Plat, Hugh, Sir 61 Plato 12, 118, 351n33 plays 11, 54–55, 65–66, 69, 72n25, 94, 98, 110–115, 121n19, 148, 331, 342, 347, 371–372; see also theater Pliny the Elder 253, 256 Plume, Thomas 290 Plutarch 253, 279–280, 283, 285–286, 289–292, 295n22 poems, poets, poetry 12, 33–34, 101n29, 166–177, 182–185, 186n2, 188n34, 189n73, 193–214, 215n6, 216n7, 217n22, 217n24n, 217n26, 218n30, 219n33, 223–234, 236–239, 242, 246n27, 253–255, 257–259, 278, 287–290, 293, 372; chivalric poetry 224, 253–254, 263; lyric poetry 206, 209; see also meter; Petrarchan style; plain style; prosody; Structuralist Poetics politeness, politesse 32–33, 37 Polo, Zuan 83, 100n9 Ponet, John, Short Catechisme 125–126 ponte (liturgical furniture) see tramezzo Porcacchi, Tommaso 85 porcupines 288–290 poststructuralism 5, 10–11 power, empowerment 32, 57, 63–66, 81, 83–86, 88, 90–92, 148, 168, 171, 367, 378, 388 Prague Structuralists 7 praise 30–42, 49n58, 85, 96, 156 preaching, preachers 14, 16, 110, 114–120, 124–137, 145, 151–152, 154–155, 157, 183, 278, 281–283, 287, 290–293, 295n30, 313, 350n14, 356, 367–368; see also hedge preachers; sermons predestination 361, 369, 387, 388 preferment, royal 166–167, 170–171, 173–177 print, print media, printing 55, 69, 99, 145–146, 148, 152–155, 158, 162n51, 200, 205, 218n26, 223–227, 234–237, 243, 244n12,

Index 405 247n41, 252, 255, 257, 276–278, 281, 293, 329, 338, 342, 351n29, 354n53, 357, 359–361, 365–366, 368–389, 389n2, 389n4, 390n21, 391n23, 392n44; see also books prisons 66–69, 76n109, 124, 130; see also imprisonment privacy 56–58, 73n34, 172, 175, 179, 185 Privy Council, England 55, 60, 68, 126 prophesies, prophets 14, 62, 124, 127–134, 137, 141n78, 144, 145, 156–157, 229, 238–239, 262, 316, 366, 377, 385; false prophets 131, 156–157 prosody 201–202, 206–209, 214 Protagoras 118 Protestants, Protestantism 145, 147, 151–152, 155–158, 193–197, 212, 218n26, 284, 287, 359, 365–369, 371, 381; Protestant conduct manuals 280, 282; Protestant poetics 202, 209–210, 213, 217n26; Protestantizing Catholics 370, 388; see also Calvinism; Lutheranism; Reformation proverbs 208, 216n13 Prynne, William 109 Pseudo-Bonaventure Meditations on the Life of Christ 341 psychoanalysis 4, 7 Pulter, Hester 278, 280, 287–290, 293, 297n70 Putto, Thomas 126 Quadriga see exegesis Quintilian 12 Ralegh, Walter 60, 198, 203 reader-response criticism 4, 6–7, 11 readers, readerships 1–7, 12, 34–35, 55, 132, 145, 179, 185, 197, 199, 204–210, 225–226, 228, 231, 234–236, 240, 242–243, 251–256, 259–262, 265, 267n19, 280–283, 288, 291–293, 331–333, 338–339, 354n53 reason 147, 150, 153, 155, 180, 195, 197, 199, 209, 212, 214, 225, 388 rebellions 64, 124–125, 127, 134, 136–137, 168, 193 reception 1–3, 6–13; reception theory

6–9, 11–12; classical reception 1; see also reader-response criticism Receuil Fossard 82, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 102n37, 103n40, 103n41, 104n43, 104n44 Reconciliation (sacrament) 359, 365, 373, 387 Reformation, Protestant 124–128, 130, 134–135, 137, 147, 158, 159n11, 193, 198, 212, 282, 287, 361, 369; see also Protestantism Refuge, Eustache de 32 relational aesthetics/ relational art 12; relational contexts and models 166–167, 181, 183, 185, 187n2 Remonstrants 152 representation 9, 81–82, 87–88, 111, 185, 347, 349n6; self-representation 166, 168–169, 171, 178, 184–185 resistance 14, 109, 125, 134–135 resurrection 375; Resurrection of Christ 290–292, 298n91, 305–306, 310, 316, 318, 375 rhetoric 3, 5, 13, 108–110, 115–116, 125, 128–135, 137, 156–157, 185, 193, 195, 197, 203–204, 207, 212, 216n7, 216n13, 230, 282, 371; classical rhetoric 12; rhetorical pragmatism 5; rhetoricians 12, 342, 354n54 Richard II, king of England 57, 64, 66, 68, 69, 72n34, 76n109, 168, 171–172, 188n30; see also Shakespeare, William, Richard II Ricoeur, Paul 111 rimalmezzo (verse form) 231, 239 riots 66 romances, literary genre 253–254, 260 rood screens see tramezzi Roncagli, Silvia 88, 102n37 Roscius, Julius see Hortinus Rotterdam 145, 148–149, 151, 153–157, 162n51 Ruusbroec, Jan van 332–333, 339–350, 354n54; Mirror of Eternal Salvation 339; Seven Steps 332–333 Saintsbury, George 207 salons 8, 31, 33, 36, 44n20, 48n54, 147 salvation 125–126, 149, 155, 284, 292, 312, 316, 321, 324, 331–332,

406

Index

335, 336, 337, 339–340, 342–347, 348n1, 352n37, 369, 387 Samuel, William 128 Sannazaro, Jacopo 231–232, 239; De partu virginis 231, 246n27 Saussure, Ferdinand de 10 Scala, Flaminio 97 Scudéry, Madeleine de 30–31; Artamène, ou le Grand Cyrus 30, 36, 41, 42n1 sedition, seditious 124, 130, 137 semiosis see semiotics semiotics 10–11 senses 195, 198, 264 sermons 1, 13, 14, 16, 74n80, 77, 109–110, 114–119, 124–128, 130, 132–137, 138n, 145, 151, 154–155, 172, 195, 198, 281, 290–293, 295n30, 298n92, 300–302, 313, 367–69; see also hedge-sermons; preaching Sforza, Ginevra 256 Shakespeare, William 55–56, 67, 72n25, 110–112, 117, 209, 280; As You Like It 116; Hamlet 112; Measure for Measure 112; Othello 111–112; Pericles 112; Richard II 54–69; Twelfth Night 112 Sidney, Phillip 62–63, 74n75, 202, 206 Siena 36; Accademia degli Intronati 105n49, 258; Cathedral 311; see also Catherine similitudes 110, 198 Smith, Henry 115–116 Song of Roland see Chanson de Roland Sonhovius, Johannes 369–371, 384, 387n23–26 sonnets 193–194, 196, 199–200, 202, 204, 209–210, 218n30, 223, 225, 230, 232–233, 245n21 soteriology 361, 379, 384 species (Bacon) 110 spectators, spectatorship 10–12, 67, 81, 86, 88, 101n29, 344 Spenser, Edmund 202 Spilimbergo, Irene di 257 stanzas, structure of 210–214, 225 State Papers Domestic 68 Statius, Publius Papinius 254–256 Steelsius, Jan 235

Stephen (saint) 127, 306, 308, 316, 318n3, 365 Structuralism 2, 4–5, 10–11; structuralist poetics 5; see also Prague Structuralists Suarda, Buona 257 subversion 82, 86, 92, 94, 125 Surrey, Henry Howard Earl of 207, 217n23, 218n26 Tacitus, Cornelius 56 Tansillo, Luigi, Lagrime di San Pietro 232 Tasso, Torquato 262 taste 8, 19n41, 25, 33, 35, 43n6, 51, 63, 108, 207, 225–226, 243, 252, 256, 294n3, 300, 312, 317; history of 8 Tavernier, Ameet 235, 241n41 taxes, taxation 56, 63–64, 72n25, 134, 243n1 temporality 173, 198, 202–203, 205, 208, 210–212, 214 terms of address (linguistics) 187n24 Thames River 166, 170, 174 The Mirror of Salvation of Every Man see Elkerlijc The Play of the Five Wise and Five Foolish Virgins 342–345, 347 theater 10–14, 59–60, 81–84, 95, 97–99, 108–118, 120n3; see also plays Thomas á Kempis 340 Thomas, saint, apostle 304–305, 316, 318n3, 391n5, 391n6 Tilney, Edmund 65 tilts and tiltyards 59–61, 67, 69; see also Accession Day Tilts Titian (Titziano Vecelli), Venus Anadyomene 276 Toledo 223, 226–233, 235–236, 239, 242 Tornabuoni family 15, 303, 311, 314–317, 320n23–26, 320n28, 322–323; Giovanni 303, 314–317, 321n32; Lorenzo 314–315; Tornabuoni Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence 314–317, 318n4, 320n23 tortoises 276–280, 282, 285–293, 294n4, 294n6 Tottel’s Miscellany 193, 196,

Index 407 200–201, 202, 204–209, 211–212, 214, 217–218n26 tramezzi 311–313, 317, 319, 320n16, 322 translation, translators 2, 6, 195, 198, 223–243, 252–262, 284, 339, 349n10, 354 transubstantiation 145, 149, 150, 153–154, 157, 379; see also Eucharist Trent, Council of see Council of Trent trial by combat 58, 60–61 Troubadours 195, 200 truth 152, 158, 168–169, 177, 180, 202–204, 212, 215—216n6, 245, 354n54 Tudors 59, 128, 137, 193; see also Mary I; Elizabeth I; Henry VII Turberville, George 193–214, 215n2, 215n6, 216n7, 216n13, 216n14, 217n22, 217n24 Twelve-Years Truce 145 Tyndale, William 128 tyrants 56 Urrea, Gerónimo Jiménez de 223 Uytenbogaert, Johannes 152, 155 Vaernewijck, Marcus van 365 Valencia 223 Valerini, Adriano 94–95 Valvasone, Erasmo di 255–257 Vasari, Giorgio 303, 318n1, 323 Vega, Garcilaso de la 223, 231, 239, 243n5, 245n26 Vegio, Maffeo 237–238 Velasco, Gregorio Hernández de 225–227, 231–240, 243n1 Venice 83, 85, 253, 260, 262 Venturi, Frasia de 258 Venus (mythological figure) 170, 232, 239, 276–282, 286–288, 290, 292–293, 294n3, 294n5 Vergara, Juan de 230–231, 233 vernacular languages 15, 224, 227, 234–236, 239–243, 244n11, 252–259, 262, 26, 340, 5; Dutch 235, 331, 338–339, 341; English 280; Italian 252–259, 262; Spanish 223–224, 228, 235; vernacular criticism 118; vernacularization process 252, 265

Vida, Girolamo 224, 231–232, 245n25; Christiad 224, 232 Vignali, Antonio 258 Villena, Enrique de 223 Villena, Francisco Garrido de 223 Vincent Ferrer 310, 316 Vincenzo Gonzaga I, Duke of Milan 97 Virgil, Aeneid 213, 223–231, 233–234, 236–242, 243n2, 243n4, 244n12, 244n25, 247n49, 254, 256, 260–263, 270n50, 373, 391n25 Vergil see Virgil Visiting the sick (act of mercy) 378, 382, 382–384 visuality 11 Vitruvius Pollio, de Architetura 118 Vives, Juan Luis 146 Warburg, Aby 2, 7 waste disposal 66–68, 73n34 Wedding at Cana 380–381 Whitgift, John 135 Whittingham, William 195 witnessing publics 12 women 15, 33, 39, 41, 49n57, 101n30, 200–201, 203, 205, 215n6, 217n23, 262–263, 276–286, 289–293, 296n56, 298n100, 313, 329, 374; as actors 84, 86–87, 101n29; as authors 252, 265, 278, 290; as readers/audiences/ viewerships 44n20, 86, 252–262, 265, 268n26, 280, 313, 329, 374; womanhood 282 Works of Mercy, Corporeal 359, 361, 364, 369–370, 373–375, 375, 378, 381, 382, 384, 388 Works of Mercy, Seven Spritual 359, 360, 363, 365, 368, 373, 385 Wyatt, Thomas 193, 196–197, 200–203, 207–214, 215n6, 216n13, 217n23, 217n24 Wycliffe, John 128 Xenophon 258–259 Zanni (Commedia dell’Arte characters) 82–88, 91, 96–98, 100n12, 101n22 Zonhoven see Sonhovius Zerbolt van Zutphen, Gerard 332–338, 347; Spiritual Ascents 333–334