English Mythography in its European Context, 1500-1650 (Classical Presences) [1 ed.] 9780198807704, 0198807708

Table of contents :
Cover
English Mythography in its European Context, 1500–1650
Copyright
Dedicatiion
Acknowledgements
Contents
Introduction
1: Mythography in Europe, 1500–1567
1.1. Renaissance Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Mythographies
1.2. Renewal from the Wellsprings of Universal Learning
1.3. The New Mythographies
2: Stephen Batman, Edmund Spenser, and Myth as an Art of Discernment
2.1. The First English Mythography and its European Source
2.2. A ‘Strau[n]ge entermixed stratageme’: Batman’s Concept of Myth
2.3. The Imagined Gods of the Catholics and the Family of Love
2.4. The Images of the Ancient Gods
2.5. Edmund Spenser and Mythological Discernment in the Bower of Bliss
3: In memoriam Philip Sidney: Mythopoesis in Abraham Fraunce’s Amintas Dale
3.1. The Structure and Textual History of Fraunce’s Mythography
3.2. Fashionably Nebulous: Fraunce’s Concept of Myth
3.3. Making Sidney into Myth
3.4. Lasting Images: Daphne’s Story and the Ambiguity of Closure
4: Truth Lost in the River of Time: Francis Bacon, Prima Philosophia, and the Greek Fables
4.1. The Stem of the Tree of Knowledge
4.2. Parabolic Poetry: Bacon’s Concept of Myth and its Kinship with Prima Philosophia
4.3. Allegory in De sapientia veterum
4.4. Greek Myth and Prima Philosophia in the Revised Division of Learning
4.5. Early English and European Readers of De sapientia veterum
5: While the Winds Breathe, Adore Echo: Henry Reynolds between Neo-Platonic and Protestant Poetics of Myth
5.1. Reynolds and ‘the Forme and reall Essence of true Poësy’
5.2. Golden Fictions I: ‘rauisht, and inflamed with diuine fury’
5.3. Golden Fictions II: ‘in a myste, blind and benighted’
5.4. Henry Reynolds and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
5.5. Narcissus and the Divinity of Poetry
5.6. Henry Reynolds, English Mythography, and the Divinity of Poetry
6: Gods Save the King: Alexander Ross’s Civil Mythography
6.1. ‘Shall not the very Gentiles condemn them?’: Ross and the Church Robbers
6.2. ‘Apollo and a King parallel’d’: Mel Heliconium to the Rescue
6.3. Pansebeia and the Universal Function of Religion in a Commonwealth
Conclusion
Renaissance Theories of Myth?
Alexander Ross’s Mystagogus Poeticus and What Happened Next
References
Manuscripts
Primary Literature
Secondary Literature
Index of Names and Authors before 1800
General Index

Citation preview

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CLASSICAL PRESENCES General Editors LORNA HARDWICK

JAMES I . PORTER

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CLASSICAL PRESENCES Attempts to receive the texts, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome inevitably run the risk of appropriating the past in order to authenticate the present. Exploring the ways in which the classical past has been mapped over the centuries allows us to trace the avowal and disavowal of values and identities, old and new. Classical Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past.

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English Mythography in its European Context, 1500–1650 Anna-Maria Hartmann

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Anna-Maria Hartmann 2018 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2018 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2017947590 ISBN 978–0–19–880770–4 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Für meine Familie: Frieda, Hartwig, Wolfgang, Sieglinde, Benedikt, und Sheldon

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Acknowledgements It is a great pleasure and privilege to have an occasion to thank the people and institutions that have helped to bring this project to completion. I am grateful to the following institutions who have supported my research financially, intellectually, and otherwise: the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes; Trinity College, Cambridge; the Huntington Library, California; Christ Church, Oxford; Corpus Christi College, Oxford; and the English Faculty, Oxford. Chapter 4 is derived, in part, from an article entitled ‘Light from Darkness: The Relationship between Francis Bacon’s Prima Philosophia and his Concept of the Greek Fable’, published in Seventeenth Century 26.2 (2011), available online at : I am grateful to Taylor & Francis for permission to reuse it in this volume. For their invaluable support, I am deeply indebted to Mishtooni Bose, Helen Cooper, Stuart Gillespie, Stephen Harrison, Christoph Houswitschka, Christoph Jamme, Martin Korenjak, Micha Lazarus, Rhodri Lewis, Laurie Maguire, Stefan Matuschek, Richard Rutherford, Richard Serjeantson, Emma Smith, and Simon Smith. I would also like to express my gratitude to Georgie Leighton of Oxford University Press, the two anonymous readers of my manuscript, the copy editor Jeff New, and the proof reader Tim Beck for their great care and excellent suggestions. Special thanks go to my PhD supervisor Raphael Lyne. A true Doktorvater, he has been the North on my intellectual compass for so many years and has guided me with his learning, wit, and humanity. Mein größter Dank aber gilt meiner Familie. Ihnen ist dieses Buch gewidmet. Corpus Christi College, Oxford

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Contents Introduction 1. Mythography in Europe, 1500–1567 1.1. Renaissance Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Mythographies 1.2. Renewal from the Wellsprings of Universal Learning 1.3. The New Mythographies

2. Stephen Batman, Edmund Spenser, and Myth as an Art of Discernment 2.1. The First English Mythography and its European Source 2.2. A ‘Strau[n]ge entermixed stratageme’: Batman’s Concept of Myth 2.3. The Imagined Gods of the Catholics and the Family of Love 2.4. The Images of the Ancient Gods 2.5. Edmund Spenser and Mythological Discernment in the Bower of Bliss

3. In memoriam Philip Sidney: Mythopoesis in Abraham Fraunce’s Amintas Dale 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4.

The Structure and Textual History of Fraunce’s Mythography Fashionably Nebulous: Fraunce’s Concept of Myth Making Sidney into Myth Lasting Images: Daphne’s Story and the Ambiguity of Closure

4. Truth Lost in the River of Time: Francis Bacon, Prima Philosophia, and the Greek Fables 4.1. The Stem of the Tree of Knowledge 4.2. Parabolic Poetry: Bacon’s Concept of Myth and its Kinship with Prima Philosophia 4.3. Allegory in De sapientia veterum 4.4. Greek Myth and Prima Philosophia in the Revised Division of Learning 4.5. Early English and European Readers of De sapientia veterum

5. While the Winds Breathe, Adore Echo: Henry Reynolds between Neo-Platonic and Protestant Poetics of Myth

5.1. Reynolds and ‘the Forme and reall Essence of true Poësy’ 5.2. Golden Fictions I: ‘rauisht, and inflamed with diuine fury’ 5.3. Golden Fictions II: ‘in a myste, blind and benighted’

1 17 20 25 35 53 56 58 66 72 77 93 95 99 112 127 135 137 141 147 153 156 163 166 170 178

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CONTENTS

5.4. Henry Reynolds and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 5.5. Narcissus and the Divinity of Poetry 5.6. Henry Reynolds, English Mythography, and the Divinity of Poetry

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6. Gods Save the King: Alexander Ross’s Civil Mythography

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6.1. ‘Shall not the very Gentiles condemn them?’: Ross and the Church Robbers 6.2. ‘Apollo and a King parallel’d’: Mel Heliconium to the Rescue 6.3. Pansebeia and the Universal Function of Religion in a Commonwealth

Conclusion Renaissance Theories of Myth? Alexander Ross’s Mystagogus Poeticus and What Happened Next

References Index of Names and Authors before 1800 General Index

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209 215 225 239 239 243 251 273 281

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Mercurius Emptori Quod modo fabellas emptor tibi uendo profanas, Non mirum debes, siue putare nouum. Nanque quid hoc toto, sic uerum, cernis in orbe Fabula quod dici non mereatur idem? Fabula diuitiae sunt, fabula stemmata regum, Fabula quod uiuis, fabula quod facis est. Et Christus fieri coepit modo fabula multis, Quo minus est operae culpa notanda meae. Mercury to the Buyer of this Book Bookbuyer, that I now sell you profane little fables, You ought not to think astonishing or novel. For what, in truth, do you perceive in this whole world Which would not deserve to be called a fable? Wealth is a fable, the family trees of monarchs are a fable, The life you lead, the deeds you do are a fable. Even Christ of late is starting to become a fable to many. All the more reason that my work should incur no reproach. (Jacob Micyllus, 1532; my translation)

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Introduction This book tells the history of English Renaissance mythography. It argues that the six mythographies published in England between 1577 and 1647 constitute a distinct group within the wider context of Renaissance mythography in Europe. The works under investigation are Stephen Batman’s The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes (1577), Abraham Fraunce’s The Third Part of the Countess of Pembrokes Yuychurch, Entituled Amintas Dale (1592), Francis Bacon’s De sapientia veterum liber (1609), Henry Reynolds’s Mythomystes (1632), and Alexander Ross’s Mel Heliconium (1642) and Mystagogus Poeticus (1647). These titles are the only original efforts in the genre of mythography written in England during the period 1500–1650.1 Accordingly, they are especially valuable sources for the study of early modern English myth reception. During the period in which these works appeared, continental mythographies were immensely popular in England. They were bought, read, and in one case translated: a partial paraphrase of Cartari’s Italian mythography was made by Richard Linche 1 For previous overviews of the history of mythography in the Renaissance see the first chapter of book II in Jean Seznec’s The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, trans. Barbara F. Sessions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 219–56; D. C. Allen, Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), ch. 8; John Ronald Glenn, ‘Introduction’, in A Critical Edition of Alexander Ross’s 1647 Mystagogus Poeticus, or the Muses Interpreter, ed. John Ronald Glenn (New York: Garland, 1987), 1–195, esp. the section ‘The Renaissance Mythographical Tradition’, 60–109; John Mulryan and Steven Brown, ‘Introduction’, in Natale Conti, Mythologiae, trans. John Mulryan and Steven Brown, 2 vols. (Tempe, Ariz.: ACMRS, 2006), vol. I: Books 1–5, xi–xlvi. For an overview of medieval mythography, see Peter Dronke, Fabula: Explorations into the Uses of Myth in Medieval Platonism (Leiden: Brill, 1974); Jane Chance, Medieval Mythography, 3 vols. (Gainesville, Fla.: University Press of Florida, 1994–2014); and Nicolette Zeeman, ‘Mythography and Mythographical Collections’, in The Oxford Handbook of Classical Reception in English Literature, ed. Charles Martindale and David Hopkins, 5 vols. (Oxford University Press, 2016– ), vol. I: 800–1558, ed. Rita Copeland (2016), ch. 7.

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and published in 1599 as The Fountain of Ancient Fiction. But as this study demonstrates, the five original English mythographers took the genre into a new direction and have a great deal to offer both to the study of myth in early modern Europe and to the study of English literature and culture. What are mythographies? Rather than going ad fontes, sixteenth- or seventeenth-century readers interested in the ancient gods would often turn to books that collected, explained, and interpreted myth-related material for them. Such works have been produced since antiquity and show considerable formal variety. Some are written in dialogue form (Pictorius’s Apotheseos [sic]), others are organized around family relationships (Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum), astrological principles (Hyginus’s Astronomicon), or themes (Cartari’s Imagini de i dei degli antiqui). The emphasis might lie on the images of the gods (Albricus’s De imaginibus deorum), their epithets (Haurech’s De cognominibus deorum gentilium), or the stories associated with them (Conti’s Mythologies). Mythographies range from exceptionally learned works based on decades of research to compilations dashed off in a month or two. All mythographies, however, are principally concerned with the ancient gods and heroes. They offer general reflections on mythology, a collection of material (fables, epithets, etc.), as well as explanations and allegorical interpretations of the information they provide. The word ‘mythography’ is relatively rare in the period, but there was a strong sense that the texts scholars now call mythographies constituted a genre. This sense was often implicit. Jakob Moltzer (Jacobus Micyllus), for example, edited a collection of mythographies at the request of his printer, Johannes Herwagen the Elder, in 1535.2 It consisted of works by Hyginus, Palaiphatos, Fulgentius, Aratus, and Proclus, and was expanded in 1549 to include Phornutus (Cornutus) and the medieval mythographer Albricus philosophus. These authors span more than a thousand years and approach the gods from different angles. Nevertheless, Moltzer’s title page and preface make it clear that they wrote about ‘eadem res’ 2 C[aii] Iulii Hygini Augusti Liberti Fabularum liber . . . eiusdem Poeticon Astronomicon, libri quatuor. Quibus accesserunt similis argumenti. Palaephati De fabulosis narrationibus, liber I. F[abii] Fulgentii Placiadis Episcopi Carthaginensis Mythologiarum, libri III. Eiusdem De uocum antiquarum interpretatione, liber I. Arati Phainomenon fragmentum, Germanico Caesare interprete. Eiusdem Phaenomena Graece, cum interpretatione latina. Procli De sphaera libellus, Graece et Latine. Index rerum et fabularum in his omnibus scitu dignarum copiosissimus, ed. Jacobus Micyllus (Basel, 1535).

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(‘the same subject’) and that they shared this subject matter with Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century mythography Genealogia deorum, which Moltzer had edited three years earlier, also on Herwagen’s prompting.3 Eighteenth-century editors tagged this collection Mythographi Latini, but Moltzer himself did not feel that such a label was necessary.4 In other cases, the generic category was made explicit. Jakob Spanmüller (Jacobus Pontanus), for example, helpfully categorized the sources he used for his influential 1599 Virgil, which was read by poets such as Sir John Harington and Ben Jonson. On the same organizational level as the ‘oratores’, ‘geographi’, and ‘poetae’, Spanmüller identifies the ‘mithologici’ as a distinct group of authors.5 This group consists of Palaiphatus, Apollodorus of Athens, Hyginus, Phurnutus, and Fulgentius, as well as the mid-sixteenth-century mythographers Lilio Gregorio Giraldi (Lilius Gregorius Gyraldus) and Natale Conti (Natalis Comes). The fact that both of Moltzer’s ventures were initiated by the successful Basel printer Johannes Herwagen the Elder indicates the great demand for such texts in the early modern European book market: mythographies could become bestsellers. For example, Natale Conti’s Mythologiae (1567) was published in at least twenty-seven editions and was translated from Latin into French.6 Vincenzo Cartari’s vernacular mythography Imagini de i dei degli antichi (1556) saw thirty-two printings, including translations into Latin and French, as well as Linche’s partial translation into English.7 Francis Bacon’s De sapientia veterum liber was translated into English, French, Italian, and German within fifty

Micyllus, Hyginus et al., sig. α2v. Ioannes Bocatius, Peri Genealogia Deorum libri quindecim, ed. and annotated Jacobus Micyllus (Basel, 1532). 4 For bibliographical information on this collection, see Die deutschen Humanisten: Dokumente zur Überlieferung der antiken und mittelalterlichen Literatur in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann et al. (Turnhout: Brepolis, 2005– ), Abteilung I: Die Kurpfalz, III: Jacobus Micyllus, Johannes Posthius, Johannes Opsopoeus und Abraham Scultetus (2010), 23–32. 5 Jacobus Pontanus, Symbolarum libri xvii quibus P. Virgilii Maronis Bucolica, Georgica, Aeneis (Augsburg, 1599), sig. a6r. 6 Natale Conti, Mythologiae, sive explicationum fabularum (Venice, 1567). For other editions, see Mulryan’s appendix to Natale Conti, Mythologiae, trans. John Mulryan and Steven Brown, 2 vols. (Tempe, Ariz.: ACMRS, 2006), II: 937–57. I quote the Mythologiae from this modern translation, which is based on the Frankfurt 1581 edition. For Conti’s popularity, see John Mulryan and Steven Brown, ‘Introduction’, xxxvi–xlvi. 7 John Mulryan, ‘Introduction’, in Vincenzo Cartari, Images of the Gods of the Ancients: The First Italian Mythography, trans. and annotated John Mulryan (Tempe, Ariz.: ACMRS, 2012), xiii–xxxvi, here xxx–xxxv. 3

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years of its publication in 1609 and has been in print ever since.8 And, to give an example confined to the English market, Alexander Ross’s Mystagogus Poeticus, or The Muses Interpreter (1647) quickly doubled its bulk in subsequent printings and had reached its seventh edition by 1676. Demand was high because buyers for such books were found in many segments of the reading public. Mythographies were studied by the intellectual elite, including poets, visual artists, theologians, politicians, philosophers, historians, and antiquarians. But mythographical information also appealed to schoolteachers and their pupils, university students, and educated general readers. The most obvious utility of such books was to facilitate the study of other books: knowledge of the gods was essential to understand learned works, ancient literature, and the Bible. It is hard to overestimate the cultural currency of the ancient gods in this period. Contemporary poetry drank deeply from the Pierian spring. Makers of the fashionable insignia and emblems relied on fables and their allegories to pleasantly mask their moral message, or their amorous intent. Idolatry, for which the ancient gods were taken as the classic example, was a hotly debated topic amongst Catholic as well as reformed Christians. Alchemists like Michael Maier elegantly encoded the mysteries of nature in fables.9 Even royalty communicated through the meaningful presences of Castor and Pollux, Diana, Hercules, and other gods and heroes.10 In a world filled with fabulous detail, mythographies were helpful companions. Despite the great popularity of this genre, the European history of mythography has not been sufficiently explored. Scholars who touch upon the subject inevitably refer to Jean Seznec’s seminal study The Survival of the Ancient Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art (first published in French in 1940, 8

On the international circulation of Bacon’s mythography, see Anna-Maria Hartmann, ‘ “A little work of mine that hath begun to pass the world”: The Italian Translation of Francis Bacon’s De sapientia veterum’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 54.3 (2010), 203–17; see also Reginald Walter Gibson, Francis Bacon: A Bibliography of his Works and of Baconiana to the year 1750 (Oxford: Scrivener Press, 1950), and Francis Bacon, The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Graham Rees and others, 15 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996– ), vol. V: The Early Philosophical Writings to c.1611, ed. Rhodri Lewis, Sophie Weeks, and Daniel Anderson (forthcoming). 9 Michael Maier, Atalantis fugiens, hoc est, emblemata nova de secretis naturae chymica (Oppenheim, 1617). 10 For one of many examples, see Pierre de Ronsard’s use of mythological figures in the public representation of the French court as analysed by Philip Ford, Ronsard’s Hymns: A Literary and Iconographical Study (Tempe, Ariz.: ACMRS, 1996).

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translated into English in 1953), which remains the standard account of the reception of mythology during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Taking issue with earlier attitudes to the Renaissance as a ‘rebirth’ after the Dark Ages, Seznec tells a story of continuity from antiquity to the Middle Ages and from there to the end of the sixteenth century. He identifies traditions of reading myth (Euhemerism, astrology, allegory) and shows how they helped the pagan gods to stay in the imagination of Europe. With respect to sixteenth-century mythography, Seznec’s focus is firmly on the three Italian publications by Giraldi, Cartari, and Conti. His aim is to show that these Renaissance exponents of the genre were still essentially medieval: We shall attempt to show how the mythological heritage of antiquity was handed down from century to century, through what vicissitudes it passed, and the extent to which, toward the close of the Cinquecento, the great Italian treatises on the gods which were to nourish the humanism and art of all Europe were still indebted to medieval compilations and steeped in the influence of the Middle Ages.11

Seznec uses the tropes of legacy and tradition (tradere, ‘to hand down’) to think about the post-classical life of the gods. His story is one of tempesttossed survival. Once cut off from their original context, the gods were corrupted, distorted, misunderstood. The scandal at the heart of Seznec’s book is that the Renaissance broke its promise and failed to return the gods to their true, classical shapes. The scope of this book is more narrowly defined than Seznec’s magisterial account of European mythological traditions from antiquity through to the seventeenth century. However, by concentrating on the years 1500–1650 and the genre of mythography, it is able to provide a more nuanced account. Most importantly, the present study is a corrective of Seznec’s perspective on the gods as a classical heritage that needs protection from some of its heirs. His approach is akin to a critical paradigm that is often referred to as ‘the classical tradition’ and that is associated closely with other scholars of Seznec’s generation, such as Gilbert Highet (The Classical Tradition, 1949) and R. R. Bolgar (The Classical Heritage and Its Beneficiaries, 1954). Within this paradigm, the meaning of a text is to be sought at its point of origin and remains stable

11

Seznec, Survival, 6.

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as the text passes through time. In recent decades, however, the study of the classical tradition has experienced a sea-change in methodology and outlook. Consequently, it has gone through a name-change as well. ‘Classical reception studies’ takes inspiration from work done in the 1960s and 1970s in Germany, mainly by the philosopher Hans Georg Gadamer and the literary theorists Hans Robert Jauß and Wolfgang Iser.12 It privileges the moment of reception over the moment of conception and describes ‘meaning’ as something created between text and reader through a fusion of present and past horizons.13 As Charles Martindale put it in his influential book Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (1993), ‘all readings of texts are situated, contingent upon their historical moment’.14 By seeking a standpoint within history, reception theory has the potential to turn the tortured afterlives of the gods in the Renaissance into vivid presences. Methodologically, classical reception studies are predominantly practised as a combination of reception theory and intertextuality that finds expression in Martindale’s frequently cited formulation of a ‘weak’ and a ‘strong’ thesis: The weak thesis is that numerous unexplored insights into ancient literature are locked up in imitations, translations and so forth. . . . The ‘strong’ thesis is that our current interpretations of ancient texts, whether or not we are aware of it, are, in complex ways, constructed by the chain of receptions through which their continued readability has been effected. As a result, we cannot get back to any originary meaning wholly free of subsequent accretions.15

12 For discussions of the relationship between classical tradition and classical reception, as well as a wide range of examples and bibliographies, see A Companion to Classical Receptions, ed. Lorna Hardwick and Christopher Stray (Oxford: Blackwell, 2008) and A Companion to the Classical Tradition, ed. Craig Kallendorf (Oxford: Blackwell, 2010). 13 ‘In fact the horizon of the present is continually in the process of being formed because we are continually having to test all our prejudices. An important part of this testing occurs in encountering the past and in understanding the tradition from which we come. Hence the horizon of the present cannot be formed without the past. There is no more an isolated horizon of the present in itself than there are historical horizons which have to be acquired. Rather, understanding is always the fusion of these horizons supposedly existing by themselves.’ Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, revised trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), 317. 14 Charles Martindale, Redeeming the Text: Latin Poetry and the Hermeneutics of Reception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 35. 15 Martindale, Redeeming the Text, 7.

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Martindale here builds on Jauß’s Literaturgeschichte als Provokation and describes a linear and accumulating process during which instances of reception become part of the received text’s meaning.16 Although this is the ‘strong’ thesis, Martindale’s emphasis on a continuous chain of receptions has been criticized as limiting the potential of classical reception studies. In The Protean Virgil (2016), Craig Kallendorf points out that not ‘every past interpretation links on to the chain that reaches us’ and that ‘the more interesting links on the chain are often the ones that do not reach us, for they show us that the past is not simply a version of the present, but something that is sometimes strange and wonderful in its very otherness’.17 Kallendorf has the reception of Virgil in mind when he makes this observation. But the story of myth in the Renaissance, as it is presented in this study, is another example of the marvellous strangeness of the past. With the exception of Francis Bacon, the mythographers I am writing about did not forge links that became part of a great chain of meaning. It is for this reason, not in spite of it, that they are well placed to teach us how and why mythology was relevant in Renaissance England. Parts of this study employ intertextual methods, for example when the relationship between the final story in Amintas Dale and Metamorphoses XV in Chapter 3 is examined. Most of the time, however, I operate with a methodological mix. While intertextuality is capable of reversing the temporality of ‘influence’, it still has to arrange texts with respect to a before and after. The mythographers studied in this volume rarely respected the diachronic sequence of their sources. They selected versions, phrases, and approaches from a wide and diverse range available to them simultaneously in their historical moment, and put them to work. Leonard Barkan helpfully visualizes this synchronic aspect of the ‘chronological encounter between Renaissance and antiquity’ with Raphael’s School of Athens. In this fresco, the great thinkers of antiquity have been

16 ‘The obvious historical implication of this is that the understanding of the 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.’ Hans Robert Jauß, Towards an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bathi (Brighton: Harvester, 1982), 20. The original title of this publication is Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Stuttgart: Suhrkamp, 1970). This quotation is on p. 170. 17 Craig Kallendorf, The Protean Virgil: Material Form and the Reception of the Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 171–2.

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gathered together, ignoring the vast temporal and geographical distances that separate them.18 In terms of the texts studied here, this means that a woodcut seen in a sixteenth-century mythography, an early Greek fragment, and an observation of St Augustine might all be woven into a single section of the mythographer’s new fabric, which itself only had to satisfy the rhetorical needs of his moment. This diversity also points us to a feature of the subject matter of this book that distinguishes it from many other cases of classical reception. Myth, if understood as a network of stories about gods and heroes, never was bound to specific authors, genres, or even media. Mythographies are places where some of these forms and voices meet. For this reason, the genre is well suited to write an introduction to myth in the period. While the European mythographies found at least one formidable champion in Jean Seznec, the English mythographies have been laughed into oblivion. The most important inquiries into English mythography are found in Douglas Bush’s Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry (1932; repr. 1957), D. C. Allen’s Mysteriously Meant: The Rediscovery of Pagan Symbolism and Allegorical Interpretation in the Renaissance (1970), Noel Purdon’s The Words of Mercury: Shakespeare and English Mythography of the Renaissance (1974), and John Mulryan’s ‘Through A Glass Darkly’: Milton’s Reinvention of the Mythological Tradition (1996). D. C. Allen summarized what has long been the scholarly consensus on English Renaissance mythography: ‘The vast success of Giraldi, Conti, and Cartari, especially of the latter two, made the publication of further mythological handbooks hardly worth the effort.’19 Noting how much material the English mythographers gleaned from their Italian colleagues, John Mulryan judges: Milton could hardly find anything in the English mythographers that had not been first in Cartari, Conti or any of the other popular and ubiquitous Italian mythographers. And he had no reason to seek such derivative and incomplete versions of classical myth when more complete and more sophisticated versions were readily available. These English sources testify more to the durability and

18

Leonard Barkan, Transuming Passion: Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 10–19. 19 Allen, Mysteriously Meant, 233. For a similar statement, see Luc Brisson, Einführung in die Philosophie des Mythos, Band 1: Antike, Mittelalter und Renaissance, trans. Achim Russer (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), 199.

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usefulness of the Italian mythographers, than to any native tradition of mythography.20

For Mulryan, the only raison d’être of the English texts is ‘that they made the parings of their masters available to those who knew no language but English’.21 In short, scholars have been puzzled by the question how the English mythographers, authors of slender books that offer not more than a few dozen fables and their interpretations, could possibly hope to compete with the all-encompassing Italian reference works they filched for information. The answer is that they never tried to do so in the first place. The European mythographers sought to inform those in search of classical knowledge, impress other scholars, or win patronage. In contrast, the English authors transformed the genre into a highly effective rhetorical instrument designed to intervene in topical debates outside the world of classical learning. As a consequence of their interestedness, English mythographies are integrated wholes. They are designed not as loose compilations of material on the pantheon, but as coherent works that are best read from cover to cover. The relationship between the European and English mythographers is therefore not that of originals and their inferior copies. Rather, the success of the Italian mythographies liberated the genre to take on different functions in England in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the hands of the English, the reference work on fables became an argumentative kind of text, ready to be tailored to a specific purpose in a local context. Not before Alexander Ross’s second mythography, Mystagogus Poeticus, did an English author actually try to produce a comprehensive reference book on the gods. This separates Mystagogus Poeticus from its predecessors and is one of the reasons why it marks an endpoint for the period of this study. If noting the derivativeness of English mythography from Italian models has been one of the common responses in scholarship, the other has (paradoxically) been to stress its eccentricity. The works by Batman, Fraunce, Reynolds, and Ross have been described as exotic and inexplicable. While Fraunce’s text is a ‘complex yet superficial rigmarole’ for Noel Purdon, Ross and Reynolds are too odd even to be discussed by 20 John Mulryan, ‘Through a Glass Darkly’: Milton’s Reinvention of the Mythological Tradition (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1996), 227. 21 Mulryan, ‘Through a Glass Darkly’, 218.

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Douglas Bush—there is no time to ‘linger’ on such fancies.22 This impression of eccentricity, however, vanishes as soon as the texts are no longer expected to have the same tone or function as the Italian mythographies and are relocated into their historical moments. Quirkiness and creativity are two things a reader of the English mythographies can look forward to. But each text is highly adapted to its argumentative purpose, and as soon as that purpose is reconstructed, the ostensibly idiosyncratic choices of an author can be appreciated as meaningful. The English mythographies thus are partisan players in central debates of the English Renaissance, and as such they represent a new direction for the mythographical genre. Across the chapters of this study, the mythographers engage with issues such as the Reformation, English poetry, philosophy and natural philosophy, and the politics of the Civil War. The breadth of engagement with myth in Renaissance culture poses a challenge to scholarship. Most monographs that set out to contribute to our understanding of the role of myth in the Renaissance have approached the subject from one of four angles. The first is the study of Renaissance iconography. An example is Edgar Wind’s eloquent book about Italian mythological paintings, titled Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance, which was first published in 1958 but still wields great influence.23 Like that of many students of iconography, Wind’s focus is on Italy, and he specifically draws on Florentine Neo-Platonism to explicate paintings. Wind’s masterly interpretations of works such as Botticelli’s Primavera or Michelangelo’s Apollo and Marsyas capture a specific moment in the reception of myth in European art—even if, as Malcolm Bull has shown more recently, the overall importance of fables for Renaissance painting has been overstated.24 22

Noel Purdon, The Words of Mercury: Shakespeare and English Mythography of the Renaissance (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974), 86; Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry (New York: Pageant Book Company, 1932; repr. 1957), 243. 23 Edgar Wind, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance: An Exploration of Philosophical and Mystical Sources of Iconography in Renaissance Art, rev. edn. (New York: Norton, 1968). 24 Malcolm Bull, The Mirror of the Gods: How the Renaissance Artists Rediscovered the Pagan Gods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). In ch. 2, ‘Objects’, Bull shows that mythographical art was not widely available until the mid-seventeenth century, and that even then it is found ‘in locations and media that were considered to be of secondary significance’ (p. 83). Mythological art constitutes ‘only a tiny fraction of the output of virtually every major artist in the period. Donatello, Michelangelo, and Bernini were between them responsible for only a handful of mythological sculptures. The famous

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A somewhat broader approach has been taken by students of literature. Many literary studies of the reception of myth in the Renaissance work stoffgeschichtlich, such as Louise Vinge’s book on the Narcissus theme from antiquity until the nineteenth century.25 Similarly, but with a different type of focus, there are books that study the reception of individual writers, such as Ovid, Virgil, or Homer. These tend to be concerned either with the afterlife of an author, as is Wilson-Okamura’s Virgil in the Renaissance, or with the way a Renaissance author read the ancients, as is Jonathan Bate’s Shakespeare and Ovid.26 By investigating myth-related topics, these books throw spotlights on the subject of myth in the Renaissance. A broader approach can be found in Leonard Barkan’s The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism, which follows the Ovidian concept of metamorphosis from antiquity through the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance. Over the course of his book, he comes to the conclusion that metamorphosis is not ‘merely one element in myth but rather at the heart of myth itself ’.27 This conclusion is then taken further, as Barkan states that, ‘through the repeated reinterpretation and reimagination of metamorphic myths, the cluster of beliefs associated with them comes to define the heritage of antiquity’.28 Barkan’s now classic study offers a wealth of insights into the reception of Ovid and is right in emphasizing the centrality of the Metamorphoses. It is, however, also representative of a general tendency of literary scholarship to focus on Ovid’s epic. One of the aims of the present book is that it seeks to show the relevance of other, less wellknown aspects of the reception of myth. A third approach has been to look at myth reception through the lens of allegory. The history of myth in the Renaissance is sometimes told as a history of its interpretation, and in such cases myth tends to be subsumed under the category of allegory. For example, in the only complete

mythologies of Botticelli, Correggio, Titian, and Velázquez are unrepresentative of their production as a whole’ (ibid.). 25 Louise Vinge, The Narcissus Theme in Western European Literature, trans. Robert Dewsnap et al. (Lund: Gleerup, 1967). 26 David Scott Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); Jonathan Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 27 Leonard Barkan, The Gods Made Flesh: Metamorphosis and the Pursuit of Paganism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 18. 28 Barkan, Gods Made Flesh, 18.

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historical overview of myth theories, Luc Brisson does not have much time for the Renaissance and simply summarizes the achievements of the mythographers with a few words on the early modern debates over allegory, especially in the context of Bible studies.29 Alternatively, D. C. Allen’s chapter ‘Allegorical Interpretation of Renaissance Mythographers’ subjects the history and practice of allegory in the Renaissance to a grand récit of rationalization. He shows the mythographers manfully struggling with allegory, but eventually being vanquished by it: Although there are restrained exceptions like Giraldi, the force of tradition was too much for most of these compilers, and they found it impossible to avoid the euhemeristic, ethical, or moral readings of the Christian apologists and syncretists and of the symbolical and allegorical commentators on all ancient writings. Their readers found in their pages the same fascination with hidden meanings that impelled the scholiasts on Homer, Virgil, and Ovid.30

At the end of his account, the ‘irrational’ practice of non-literal reading is finally and truly overcome. This narrative makes every author working with allegory in the sixteenth or seventeenth century seem backward, and does not ask whether there were other reasons to employ this reading strategy than a naive faith in the presence of veiled wisdom. Allegory is an umbrella term that covers a great diversity of practices. As this book is concerned with texts that naturally subscribe to allegory (though not always unwarily), it will not offer a sustained study of the theoretical debate over allegory in the period. But what it can provide is a series of case studies in the practice of allegory. All English mythographers engage in non-literal readings, but each of them adapts allegory to his specific purposes. Five different forms of allegorical interpretation emerge—and the relationship between fable and interpretation is not always that of a discovery of hidden truth. Our appreciation of allegorical writing and reading in the Renaissance can benefit from asking how it could be pleasurable and profitable to write allegorically beyond narrowly defined concepts of integumentum, didacticism, or biblical hermeneutics. Even more importantly, this study shows that there is a need to distinguish between an author’s concept of myth and his use of allegory. As the case of Alexander Ross exemplifies, using a form of allegorical reading does not necessarily mean that the mythographer subscribes to a concept of myth as

29

Brisson, Einführung, 198–202.

30

Allen, Mysteriously Meant, 201.

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truth enveloped in fiction. While a mythographer’s practice of allegory and his concept of myth are linked, they are not one and the same thing. Finally, critics have approached the Renaissance with modern theories of myth in mind. This current of reception is most prominent in German scholarship, but it is also apparent elsewhere. German philologists have shown a sustained interest in myth and mythology since the publication in 1971 of the seminal collection Terror und Spiel: Probleme der Mythenrezeption.31 Some of the most important publications in the field of Renaissance studies have also been collections, such as those edited by Walter Killy, Bodo Guthmüller, and Wilhelm Kühlmann, by Udo Friedrich and Bruno Quast, and by Stephanie Wodianka and Dietmar Rieger.32 Despite major differences between these texts, they share a highly theorized approach to myth and to the Renaissance. An example is the collection prepared by Quast and Kühlmann. They begin with the assumption that myth represents the other of reason. Quast and Kühlmann then move on to define myth, with André Jolles, Ernst Cassirer, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Hans Blumenberg, as a Denkform (literally, a form of thinking, but also a form to think with), which is characterized by immediacy and presence rather than mediacy and representation. With this theory of myth, the contributors are able to discuss the ‘myth’ of courtly love, the experience of presence during transubstantiation, or specific narrative techniques in medieval poetry. They identify a rich panoply of the ‘mythic’ alive in medieval and Renaissance Europe. This approach, however, is not able to engage with the Renaissance reception of the gods on its own, historical terms. Even though this type of research discusses medieval and Renaissance texts, it is, in fact, ahistorical. These studies test the explanatory value of modern theories of myth by applying them to texts from various historical periods. What they are not interested in providing is a reconstruction of historical concepts of myth or historical negotiations of its meaning. 31 Terror und Spiel: Probleme der Mythenrezeption, ed. Manfred Führmann (Munich: Fink, 1971). 32 Mythographie der Frühen Neuzeit: Ihre Anwendung in den Künsten, ed. Walter Killy (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1984); Renaissancekultur und antike Mythologie, ed. Bodo Guthmüller and Wilhelm Kühlmann (Tübingen: Niemeier, 1999); Präsenz des Mythos: Konfigurationen einer Denkform in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. Udo Friedrich and Bruno Quast (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2004); Mythosaktualisierungen: Tradierungs- und Generierungspotentiale einer alten Erinnerungsform, ed. Stephanie Wodianka and Dietmar Rieger (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2006).

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While all four of these approaches—iconography, literary history, allegory, and myth theory—have made major contributions to early modern scholarship, I argue that the intensive study of mythographies can offer a fuller picture of the role of myth in Renaissance culture. The English mythographies that are the foundation of this study have been unduly overlooked, even though they can provide insights into how myth was received, conceptualized, and applied in early modern England. In fact, they have a great deal of explanatory value. Mythographies handle a multiplicity of fables, images, and interpretations, and they negotiate several approaches to the topic at the same time. This makes them useful for escaping narrow perspectives. On the other hand, their smaller scale and partisan nature render their complexity (just) manageable. Because English mythographers brought mythology to bear on a variety of contemporary issues, they unfold a lively and historically well-defined picture of the roles myth was made to play in early modern England. Furthermore, the texts examined in this study present an opportunity to locate England’s reception of myth in its European context, and to add a distinctive English note to the story. In order to put this first exploration of English mythography on a firm foundation and to showcase the differences from the continental mythographies, Chapter 1 provides an overview of the development of the genre in Europe in three stages and engages with recent scholarship on individual continental mythographers. Chapter 2 explores Stephen Batman’s Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes (1577). It shows that Batman’s text intervenes in pressing theological disputes in the late 1570s, particularly regarding the danger posed by the Family of Love. Insights from this mythography are applied to a reading of Book II, Canto xii of Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Chapter 3 focuses on Abraham Fraunce’s The Third Part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch (1591). This is the most Ovidian of the English mythographies, and treats myth as a living poetic tradition, using it to memorialize Sir Philip Sidney. In this text, mythology is still productive of new stories and figures. Chapter 4 demonstrates that Francis Bacon’s De sapientia veterum liber (1609) is intimately connected to his natural philosophy and results in a striking vision of the origins of poetry. This view of ancient poetry is shown to have influenced later authors interested in mythology. Chapter 5 is an analysis of Henry Reynolds’s Mythomystes (1632), which reflects tensions between Neo-Platonic and Pythagorean

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poetics on the one hand and Christian poetics on the other. This chapter argues that Reynolds seeks to resolve the problem by displacing it onto a scale of style, and points out a similar strategy in one of Reynolds’s sources, Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poetry. Chapter 6 focuses mainly on Alexander Ross’s first mythography, Mel Heliconium (1641), which harnesses mythology for Laudian and royalist causes during the Civil Wars. In order to grasp Ross’s strategy, the chapter uncovers the links between this early work and Ross’s other writings, especially the heresiology Pansebeia (1653). The differences between Ross’s first mythography and his second foray into the genre, Mystagogus Poeticus (1647), mark the beginning of a new phase in English mythography and bring this book to its conclusion. As the chapter overview suggests, this monograph is interdisciplinary. If there is a leading discipline, however, it is literary studies. As Ralph Häfner has shown in Götter im Exil, early modern encounters with the ancient deities can be illuminating for the study of poetics.33 But the reception of mythology can stimulate literary criticism in many more ways. Most chapters in this book exemplify how a specific model of myth reception might give impulses to the interpretation of English literature. The use of mythographies in literary scholarship rarely goes beyond the identification of a source for mythological detail. In contrast, this book will argue that the English mythographies can provide more exciting points of departure, in so far as they make available to critics conceptualizations and applications of myth that were circulating in English literary circles. Some authors of mythographies even went beyond writing about myth to the point of actually writing myth itself. Finally, a word on how this study relates to our own standpoint in history. If all acts of reading are situated, this includes my own. And if meaning is created through the dialogue of text and reader, I, and my moment in time, are deeply implicated in the interpretations of the mythographical works that follow. Real historical thinking must take account of its own historicity. Only then will it cease to chase the phantom of a historical object that is the object of progressive 33 Ralph Häfner, Götter im Exil: Frühneuzeitliches Dichtungsverständnis im Spannungsfeld christlicher Apologetik und philologischer Kritik ca. 1590–1736 (Tübingen: Max Niemayer, 2003).

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research, and learn to view the object as the counterpart of itself and hence understand both. The true historical object is not an object at all, but the unity of the one and the other.34

The point of interest at which the past presences of the ancient gods in Renaissance mythographies and the current moment come together to understand each other in this study is the history of modern myth philosophy. Since the late eighteenth century, Europeans have engaged in vigorous debates over the meaning and nature of myth. Myth theory and myth philosophy continue to play an important role in our modern and postmodern culture. But we know little about the shape of this discussion before the eighteenth century. Did ‘myth theories’ even exist in the Renaissance? How do early modern deliberations on myth compare to our avid and explicit discourse on the topic? The answer to these questions will become apparent across the chapters of this study. As a group, English mythographies can help us grasp if—and if, then how— the English Renaissance asked a question we moderns are fascinated with: what is myth?

34

Gadamer, Truth and Method, 310.

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1 Mythography in Europe, 1500–1567 The following extract is a piece of advertising from the year 1599. It was written by the printer Juda Bonnenvict, who had recently inherited a share in the Officina Commelina in Heidelberg: Quamvis (Nobilissime, & Amplissime Vir) hoc infelici seculo pleriq[ue] bonas literas, earumque studia nimium contemnant, nullus tamen eorum, qui Musas a limine salutarunt, adeo rerum imperitus, & a veritate ta[m] alienus reperietur, quin ingénue fateatur omnia profanorum scriptoru[m] volumina, quae praeclaras disciplinas, & historias humanae vitae magistras complectuntur, variis Poëtarum fabulis referta [esse], quarum obscuras allegorias, & arcana mysteria si quis ignoret, autorum, quos aut priuatim legit, aut aliis explicare decreuit, nec ipsa verba, nec veru[m] sensum satis intelliget, nec voluptatem, nec fructum inde percipiet, quae duo praecipue spectare solent homines sana mente praediti, quum ad aliorum libros volutandos impelluntur.1 Although, most noble and glorious Sir, in this wicked day and age many people are overly dismissive of good letters and their study, it is still true that no one who has so much as dipped his toe into the Muses’ spring can be found so ignorant and such a stranger to truth that he would not openly declare that all the volumes of the secular writers (embracing noble disciplines and histories, instructors of human life) are filled with various fables of the poets. If a man does not grasp the obscure allegories and hidden mysteries of these [fables], he will not be able to understand sufficiently either the words themselves or the true sense of the authors whom he reads privately or wants to explain to others. Nor will he be able to feel the pleasure or reap the reward [of reading]—two things that everybody in their right mind is looking for when they are driven to peruse the books of others.

Juda Bonutius, ‘Dedicatory letter’, in Mythologici Latini, ed. Hieronymus Commelinus (Heidelberg, 1599), sig. a2r. 1

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Bonnenvict wants his customers to purchase a copy of Mythologici Latini, a collection of ancient and medieval mythographies. Like every good salesman, he reminds them of a need they would readily acknowledge: a guide to the ancient gods, their fables, and allegories was indispensable for all readers of literature. Far more than simple aids to understanding hard words in an author, mythographies enhance the reading experience, he claims. They render reading intellectually and personally rewarding as they explain mysteries and give access to the meaning of a text. To Renaissance readers, allusions to ancient mythology presented themselves not as mere tests, but as delightful textual opportunities. They became the starting point for their own reflections and a springboard for their imaginations. Bonnenvict’s advertisement draws attention to the centrality of mythographies to contemporary literary culture. An up-to-date overview of this genre’s continental development is therefore desirable. It also provides the necessary framework for the following chapters. Sixteenthcentury European mythographies were read as avidly in England as on the continent throughout the period under discussion; and each English mythographer draws on one or more of his European predecessors to create his own work. Previous overviews often take a very broad view of the mythological tradition and, even if they are narrative, tend towards bibliography.2 The most influential account with a firm focus on mythography is still Jean Seznec’s chapter ‘The Science of Mythology in the Sixteenth Century’ in his seminal study The Survival of the Pagan Gods (published in French in 1940, and in English in 1953).3 Seznec measures the mythographers with the yardstick of an early twentieth-century classicist, expecting them to offer ‘a true image of classical antiquity, based upon a judicious choice of texts and illustrations’.4 He finds them slow to catch on to his teleological trajectory towards a pure classicism: ‘all of them, to a certain extent, derive from

2 A very helpful example with a generous bibliography of primary and secondary material is Jörg Jochen Berns, ‘Mythographie und Mythenkritik in der frühen Neuzeit unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des deutschsprachigen Raumes’, in Diskurse der Gelehrtenkultur in der Frühen Neuzeit: Ein Handbuch, ed. Herbert Jaumann (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 85–156. 3 Jean Seznec’s The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and Its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, trans. Barbara F. Sessions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 219–56. 4 Seznec, Survival, 220.

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the Middle Ages and continue, both in spirit and content, that medieval mythographical tradition.’5 After Boccaccio, Seznec explains, the mythographical tradition was not renewed until the middle of the sixteenth century. In the meantime, ‘the chief sources for knowledge of the gods during the first half of the sixteenth century were either the authors whom the Middle Ages had read, or the medieval authors themselves’.6 Seznec mentions the fact that commonplace books like Ravisius Textor’s Officina offered material relating to the gods, but he does not integrate these products of Renaissance humanism into his narrative. The only stepping-stone towards the three great mythographers Giraldi, Cartari, and Conti, whose works are at the centre of Seznec’s interest, is Georg Pictorius. The German’s two mythographies are summarized on a single page and then declared to fall ‘thoroughly in line with the medieval tradition’.7 Moving on to the Italian mythographers, Seznec treats them as one, despite the fact that they were published in three different decades and have different interests: ‘there is no need, we feel, for separate analyses to be made of the History of the Gods, the Mythology, and the Images.’8 Again, Seznec is frustrated to note that non-classical sources are not excised from Renaissance mythography: ‘not only are Martianus Capella and Fulgentius cited in extenso; they are even on occasion quoted in opposition to the classical authors themselves.’9 Using such sources, the mythographers allow ‘barbarian or pseudo-antique divinities’ to mingle with classical deities.10 This shows that ‘our mythographers are even more lacking in historical sense than in critical faculty’.11 His only attempt to read these three mythographers on their own terms, as artists’ manuals (although this is strictly true only for Cartari), results in a crushing judgement: they are anti-aesthetic. Mythography in sixteenthcentury Europe, Seznec concludes, ‘marks a striking regression, a return to the Middle Ages’.12 Any new assessment of the genre has to engage with Seznec’s criticism. At the same time, it has to make a fresh start by situating these texts within their historical horizons rather than placing them within a grand récit of philological progress. I shall endeavour to meet this challenge in 5 8 11

Seznec, Survival, 220. Seznec, Survival, 223. Seznec, Survival, 241.

6

Seznec, Survival, 226–7. Seznec, Survival, 236. 12 Seznec, Survival, 256. 9

7 10

Seznec, Survival, 229. Seznec, Survival, 236.

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the following discussion of mythographical developments in Europe from the turn of the century to the publication of Natale Conti’s Mythologiae (1567). A first section will look at the reception of late ancient and medieval mythographies and show that ‘new readers make new texts’— both metaphorically and literally. A second section will emphasize the role of humanist miscellanies for the reconstitution of the mythographical genre in the Renaissance. It will claim that sixteenth-century mythography was not only indebted to, but evolved out of humanist miscellanies. The final section will discuss the new mythographies. Rather than merely placing them in a chronological order, it will propose a narrative of their evolution that allows us to interrelate their efforts without eliding the differences between them.

1.1. Renaissance Perspectives on Ancient and Medieval Mythographies During the final decades of the fifteenth and the first quarter of the sixteenth century, interest in mythographies was strong amongst the book-buyers of Europe. The popularity of established texts can be seen in the number of editions individual mythographies ran through. Giovanni Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum gentilium, for example, was printed at least nine times between 1472 and 1532 in Latin and was translated into French in 1498 and 1531.13 The selling-power of mythography is also attested by the success of collections, such as the one put together by Jacob Moltzer for his printer Herwagen in Basel in 1535. Originally, it contained texts by Hyginus, Palaiphatos, Fulgentius, Aratos, and Proclus. It was soon expanded into a veritable anthology of mythography in successive editions throughout the century (1549, 1570, two in 1578, two in 1608).14 By 1578, the collection included the five mythographers already mentioned, as well as Albricus, Phornutus, Apollodorus, and excerpts from the extensive works by Macrobius, 13 See Giovanni Boccaccio, The Genealogy of the Pagan Gods, trans. Jon Solomon, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011– ), vol I: Books 1–4 (2011), xi–xii. 14 See the bibliography for Moltzer’s Mythographi Latini in Die deutschen Humanisten: Dokumente zur Überlieferung der antiken und mittelalterlichen Literatur in der frühen Neuzeit, ed. Wilhelm Kühlmann et al. (Turnhout: Brepolis, 2005– ), Abteilung i: Die Kurpfalz, iii: Jacobus Micyllus, Johannes Posthius, Johannes Opsopoeus und Abraham Scultetus (2010), 23–32.

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Marsilio Ficino, Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, and Natale Conti. Through editions, commentaries, and collections, the tried and tested ancient and medieval books on the gods remained part of the mythographical tradition throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. But Renaissance audiences brought humanist perspectives and predilections to their mythographical inheritance. Commentaries on Fulgentius and Boccaccio can exemplify this change. The first commented Renaissance edition of the Mythologiarum libri III by Fulgentius was prepared by Giovanni Baptista Pio and printed in 1498 as Enarrationes allegoricae fabularum Fulgentii Placiadis.15 Pio (1460–1540) was a student of Filippo Beroaldo the Elder at Bologna, and went on to become a respected humanist scholar in his own right. His interest in Fulgentius stems from a fascination with the Latin language and the question—hotly debated at the time—which Roman authors were suitable models of linguistic imitation.16 Like his teacher Beroaldo, who was the first Renaissance editor of Apuleius, Pio pushed the Latin language far beyond the linguistic boundaries of a Ciceronian golden age and instead delighted in the archaic, the archaizing, and the rare. A man in search of unusual words could easily be drawn to Fulgentius, who himself took such pleasure in recherché language and topics. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that Pio’s edition of the Mythologies also includes Fulgentius’s own investigation into rare Latin vocabulary, the Expositio sermonum antiquorum. In this way, Pio employed fifth-century authors like Fulgentius, Martianus Capella, or Sidonius Apollinaris in his efforts to widen the scope of Latin as it was used by the learned elite.17 His commented edition of the Mythologies thus shows how reading or editing Fulgentius in the Renaissance did not have to be a naive continuation of earlier intellectual traditions. It could be a cutting-edge enterprise, possible only on the basis of a sophisticated grasp of the diachronic development of the Latin language. 15

Fulgentius, Ennarrationes allegoricae fabularum, ed. Giovanni Battista Pio (Milan, 1498). For Pio and Fulgentius see John F. D’Amico, ‘The Progress of Renaissance Latin Prose: The Case of Apuleianism’, Renaissance Quarterly 37.3 (1984), 351–92, here 380 n. 104. 17 Pio’s approach to the language did not meet with general applause. Adriano Castellesi, who was then bishop of Bath and Wells and a strict Ciceronian, attacked Pio’s Fulgentius together with other editions of non-classical authors in his De sermone latino as a misguided promotion of barbaric Latin. For this debate see Farouk Grewing, ‘Adriano Castellesi (ca. 1460–1521)’, in Von Eleganz und Barbarei: Lateinische Grammatik und Stilisitk in Renaissance und Barock, ed. Wolfram Ax (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2001), 79–102. 16

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Pio’s interest in the linguistically obscure did not render his edition particularly accessible. The second editor of Fulgentius’s Mythologies therefore was faced with a double challenge: Baptistam pium: qui primus auctore[m] nostrum cum obscuris Commentariis emisit: secuti sumus: & tam Fulgentii q[uam] pii loca nodosa enodauimus: & fumo extincto luce[m] immisimus.18 I have followed Battista Pio, who was the first to edit our author with dark commentaries. I have disentangled the knotty places of Fulgentius as well as Pio and, having dispelled the smoke, I have let in light.

This Prometheus was the scholar, dramatist, and poeta laureatus of Emperor Maximilian, Jacob ‘Philomusus’ Locher (1471–1528).19 Locher had a close relationship to the earlier edition: he had been a student of Beroaldo and Pio in Bologna around the year 1493 and had densely annotated his (still extant) private copy of Pio’s Enarrationes allegoricae.20 But while Pio had been interested in Fulgentius as a source of linguistic abstrusities, Locher is drawn to Fulgentius for different reasons. Locher appreciated Fulgentius as a Christian author who was equally versed in divine scripture and secular poetry. Most importantly, however, he admired the bishop’s skill at revealing Christian truths hidden in the pagan fables.21 Locher drew extensively on Fulgentius’s allegories in order to defend secular literature against its detractors. A case in point is his university drama Spectaculum de iudicio Paridis, de pomo, de tribus deabus, et de triplici hominum vita (1502). It is based on Fulgentius’s interpretation of the judgement of Paris as man’s free choice between different ways of life. The debt is proudly acknowledged in the print version of the play, where Locher quotes Fulgentius’s allegory verbatim and at length.22 As Cora Dietl

18

Fulgentius, In Mythologiis . . . scholia paraphrastica a Philomuso addita sunt, ed. Jacob Locher (Augsburg/Ulm, 1521), sig. C1v. 19 For Locher, see Michael Rupp, ‘Narrenschiff ’ und ‘Stultifera Navis’: Deutsche und lateinische Moralsatire von Sebastian Brant und Jakob Locher in Basel 1494–1498 (Münster: Waxman, 2002) and Cora Dietl, Die Dramen Jacob Lochers und die frühe Humanistenbühne im süddeutschen Raum (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2005). 20 The copy is in the Universitätsbibliothek München, 2 Inc. lat. 1517/2. For Locher’s reading of Fulgentius and Boccaccio, see Dietl, Dramen Jacob Lochers, 244–52. Dietl states incorrectly that Ubertinus Clericus was Locher’s predecessor as editor of Fulgentius. 21 Locher, Fulgentius, ‘Hypothesis ad Lectorem’, sig. C1v. 22 Jacob Locher, Spectaculum a Jacobo Locher, more tragico effigiatum, in quo christianissimi reges, aduersum truculentissimos Thurcos consilium ineunt . . . Eiusdem iudiuciu[m] Paridis de pomo aureo (Augsburg, 1502), sigs. C2v–C3r.

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has shown, this ingenious piece of humanist drama did triple service: it was a defence of Locher’s reputation as professor of poetry at Ingolstadt University, an apology for secular literature as a guide to virtue, and a call to arms against the Turks, with which Locher supported his imperial patron.23 The bishop’s mythography thus had been with Philomusus Locher from the start of his long love-affair with the Muses. By the time he finally published his Fulgentius commentary In Mythologiis in 1521, Locher was able to use the edition as a platform to reflect on his long career and render visible the circle of humanist teachers and friends with whom he identified. He shows his gratitude to Sebastian Brant (whose Narrenschiff was widely read in Locher’s translation Stultifera navis), the poet Conrad Celtis, the rhetorician Johannes Calphurnius, Filippo Beroaldo, Lorenzo Rosso, Giovanni Baptista Pio, and others.24 Editing Fulgentius’s Mythologies, therefore, had given Pio and his onetime student Locher a variety of intellectual opportunities. It constituted a source of linguistic information for an elite Latin that fuelled the Ciceronian controversies. Fulgentius supplied powerful readings of myth, and on this basis gave inspiration to fresh, allegorical humanist drama. His standing as a Christian bishop appreciative of pagan learning served as a bulwark against religious enemies of classical literature. Additionally, the Mythologies served as textual coin to repay a powerful patron, functioned as a virtual meeting point for learned friends, and provided the opportunity to show off editorial skills. The philological expertise of Renaissance scholars could, however, pose a problem for the authors to whom they turned their attention. This was less of an issue with respect to the late Latinity of Fulgentius. As we have seen, Pio was attracted by Fulgentius’s obscurity, and Locher saw it as an occasion to shine as an editor. But when Jakob Moltzer (1503–58) picked up Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum, he was not so sure about the scholarly value of this great compendium on the gods. Moltzer (whose Latin name was Jacobus Micyllus) was one of the leading classical scholars of his time. He prepared an influential edition of Ovid, revised his friend Joachim Camerarius’s Homer, was the first German translator of Tacitus, and wrote his own Latin and Greek poetry. Philip Melanchthon used his influence to get his former student and friend appointed as professor of

23

Dietl, Dramen Jacob Lochers, 243–76.

24

Locher, In Mythologiis, sigs. A4r–v.

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Greek at the University of Heidelberg. One of Moltzer’s most fruitful partnerships, however, was formed with Johann Herwagen the Elder. It was this successful Basel printer who asked Moltzer to prepare an edition of Boccaccio’s Genealogia. Moltzer’s long prefatory letter, addressed to Herwagen, is of great value to the history of the mythographical genre.25 In it, the humanist articulates his ambivalence about the project. On the one hand, Moltzer raises objections, mentioning the fact that many of the learned reject Boccaccio as a source, because the Genealogia is riddled with problems. He makes evident his discomfort about editing the barbaric Latin of a scholar who had limited sources and made many mistakes. On the other hand, Moltzer stands up for Boccaccio. The man did his best in the infelicitous times through which he lived. Most importantly, Moltzer reminds any disapproving reader that the Genealogia remains the most comprehensive compendium to the gods on the current market. It is for this reason that Moltzer persevered with his emendation, revision, and extension of Boccaccio’s imperfect book. In his epistle to Herwagen, Moltzer portrays himself as struggling against overwhelming textual adversity. Like many sixteenth-century philologists, he draws on medical metaphors to describe his editorial activity.26 But where other humanists see themselves as doctors who cure the sickness of their patients or even resurrect them from the dead, Moltzer compares the task of editing Boccaccio to being the helpless physician of a dying man: Adeoq[ue] perinde mihi, atq[ue] medicis interdum solet, accidebat, qui cum annosum aliquod, nimiaq[ue] senectute labefactatum corpus curandum suscepere, quam primum uni alicui uicio mederi incipiu[n]t, a pluribus aliis mox ita obruuntur, ut plerumq[ue] de restitutione omnino desperent. Incidi enim reuera in eiusmodi corpus, quod siue aetatis suae vicio, siue aliorum negligentia, luxatum atq[ue] ruinosum ita erat, ut quacunq[ue] in parte, opem illi aliquam adhibere tentabam, ex aduerso cernerem longe plus ruinarum, quam quibus subueneram, impendere.27 25 Jacob Moltzer, ‘Epistola Nuncupatoria’, in Giovanni Boccaccio, Peri genealogias deorum libri quindecim, ed. and annotated Jacob Moltzer (Basel, 1532), sigs. Aa2r–aa3v. A Latin edition with a German summary of this letter is available in Kühlmann, Die deutschen Humanisten, 6–10. 26 See Klara Vanek, Ars corrigendi in der frühen Neuzeit: Studien zur Geschichte der Textkritik (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 110–17. 27 Moltzer, ‘Epistola Nuncupatoria’, sig. aa2r.

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And indeed just so it happened to me, as it now and then happens to doctors, when they have taken up some body, aged and shaken with too many years, in order to care for it: when they begin to cure one illness they are soon so overrun by many others that they generally despair altogether about restoring it to health. For truly I came upon such a corpus that, either by the fault of its age, or by the negligence of others, was so disordered and ruinous, that when I attempted, in any part, to offer some help to it, I would perceive, staring threateningly at me, far more devastation than in the place I was amending.

It is possible that Moltzer’s extended pun on corpora/bodies is a conscious engagement with Boccaccio’s own proems. Boccaccio had compared himself to the ancient physician Aesculapius, and the knowledge of the classical gods to his dead and dismembered patient Hippolytus.28 As Thomas Hyde has shown, Boccaccio thought of his genealogy as a single ‘corpus deorum’ that he stitched together laboriously from severed limbs he picked up as scattered references in books.29 Hyde suggests that Boccaccio’s grotesque imagery conveys ‘the sense of historical rupture that defines the early Renaissance’.30 Moltzer’s return to the medical metaphor indicates that a new rupture has opened up, one between himself and Boccaccio, whose creature lay dying under the humanist’s anatomical gaze. The time was ripe for a fresh beginning.

1.2. Renewal from the Wellsprings of Universal Learning New editions of and commentaries on established mythographies were not the only sites of development in the first three decades of the sixteenth century. In fact, they represent only the tip of the iceberg. Humanists all over Europe shared Moltzer’s conviction that ‘neither divine nor human things can be rightly and knowledgeably handled’ without the study of the pantheon, and so they expended much intellectual energy, and ink, on the gods.31 But their new material was not, at first, collected into specialized publications on fables. This raises the question where and how early sixteenth-century readers obtained their knowledge of the ancient gods before the comprehensive Italian mythographies 28 29 30

Boccaccio, Genealogy, 23. Thomas Hyde, ‘Boccaccio: The Genealogies of Myth’, PMLA 100.5 (1985), 737–45. 31 Hyde, ‘Boccaccio’, 741. Moltzer, ‘Epistola Nuncupatoria’, sig. aa3r.

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became available in the mid-century. And further, what is the relationship of these sources to the earliest new books focused exclusively on the gods, which began to appear from the 1520s onwards? A good place to start source hunting is Zürich in 1548. There, Konrad Gessner had his ear close to the ground, following the latest news on the European book market. He was putting the finishing touches on his bibliography of all books that had been written on all learned subjects since antiquity, the Pandectarum siue Partitionum uniuersalium [ . . . ] libri XXI. This publication united around 30,000 titles in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, thematically organized and thoroughly cross-referenced in twenty-one proposed books.32 The bibliography complemented Gessner’s earlier but equally ambitious directory to all learned authors, the Bibliotheca uniuersalis, which had been extremely well received by the scholars of Europe.33 The Pandectae direct their reader to a wealth of mythographical material and were prepared at the ideal moment to reflect the situation before the comprehensive Italian works were published: in Book XV, which, among other things, lists titles on the theology of the gentiles, the Swiss polymath records: ‘Lilii Gregorii Gyraldi opus de dijs, hoc anno 1548. Basileae, ut audio, excuditur’ (‘A work about the gods by Lilio Gregorio Giraldi is, so I hear, being published this year, 1548, in Basel’).34 This means that Gessner’s bibliographical snapshot was captured just an instant before Giraldi’s De deis gentium historia— the first of the three large-scale Italian mythographies—was printed. Exhaustiveness was Gessner’s stated purpose, even if that meant to include ‘bad books’.35 Therefore his list reveals, if not all individual titles, at least all the different kinds of books readers could consult before Giraldi brought about the first summarizing moment in Renaissance mythography. For the present purpose, the mythographical material recorded by Gessner falls into three groups. The first is made up of 32

Conrad Gessner, Pandectarum siue Partitionum uniuersalium (Zürich, 1548). The Pandectae of 1548 contained only nineteen of the projected twenty-one books. Book XXI, on theology, was published in 1549. Book XX, on medicine, was never finished. For Gessner’s bibliographical work, see Hans Fischer, ‘Conrad Gessner als Bibliograph’, in Hans Fischer and others, Conrad Gessner 1516–1565: Universalgelehrter, Naturforscher, Arzt (Zürich: Orell Füssli Verlag, 1967), 31–7. 33 Conrad Gessner, Bibliotheca uniuersalis, siue Catalogus omnium scriptorum locupletissimus, in tribus linguis, Latina, Graeca, & Hebraica, extantium & non extantium, ueterum & recentiorum (Zürich, 1545). 34 35 Gessner, Pandectae, fol. 246r. Gessner, Bibliotheca uniuersalis, sig. *3v.

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familiar names: Albricus, Fulgentius, Boccaccio, and Macrobius are listed alongside other established authors on mythology. The second set consists of a handful of new, relatively short books directly concerned with the gods. This is the smallest group, and includes Georg Pictorius’s Theologia mythologica (Freiburg, 1532) and Julien Haurech’s (Julianus Aurelius Haurechius) De cognominibus deorum libri tres (Antwerp, 1541). For now, however, the third group is the most interesting, because Gessner relies on it the most: it consists of humanist miscellanies. The individual books of the Pandectae are organized like an index. Rather than book titles, Gessner lists queries or topics, which are then followed by a reference to a specific authority. On the images of the gods, for example, he recommends Albricus. On the difference between gods and daemons one should consult Iamblichus, and about the power and wisdom of god, see Hermes Trismegistus’s dialogue Poimandres. Some authors are referenced again and again, providing answers to several of Gessner’s queries. For example, of the ninety-four entries in the subsection ‘De dijs, & primum de idolis seu imaginibus’ (‘About the gods and first about the idols or images’), seven refer to the humanist Pietro Crinito, whose De honesta disciplina was a success all over Europe.36 Made up of short chapters on sundry topics, the Florentine’s relatively small collection of c.600 quarto pages was so packed with desirable information that, in France alone, it would run to fifteen editions in the sixteenth century.37 Other polymaths used regularly by Gessner in this section include Alexander ab Alexandro and Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (Nicolaus Leonicus Thomaeus). But the single most frequently quoted authority on mythographical questions is Lodovico Ricchieri, better known as Lodovicus Caelius (or Coelius) Rhodiginus. The following is a representative, continuous extract from Gessner’s section ‘Deorum gentilium & daemonum enumeratio particularis ordine literarum’ (‘Particular enumeration of the gods of the gentiles and the demons;

36 Gessner, Pandectae, fols. 245r–246v. For Crinitus, see Michaelangiola Marchiaro, La biblioteca di Pietro Crinito: manoscritti e libri a stampa della raccolta libraria di un umanista fiorentino (Porto: Fédération internationale des Instituts d’études médiévales, 2013). 37 French Books III & IV: Books Published in France before 1601 in Latin and Languages Other than French, ed. by Andrew Pettegree and Malcolm Walsby (Leiden: Brill, 2012), items 63631–46.

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in alphabetical order’). It conveys an impression of Rhodiginus’s dominance in this subject area: De Amphitrite, Caelius 26.18. De Anaitide Persarum dea, Cael. 18.29. De Anterotis apud Athenienses ara, iliusq[ue] origine, Leonicen. 1.20. De Anubi pauca, Caelius 5.12. De Apheae te[m]plo in Aegina insula, Leonicenus 1.23. De Apide pauca, Caelius 5.12. Apis, Aelian. in Var. Grae. fol. 25. Apollo unde dicatur, Caelius 29.4. Quid Apollo, Idem 1.4. De Apolline, Marsilius Fic. 12.24. De Apolline plura, Caelius 10.18. Ad Musas & Apollinem, Theocrit. Epigram. 1. Cur Apollo & Diana Latonae filij: Cur dicantur Delo geniti, Pontan. de stel. libro 1. Apollo medicinae inuentor, & Musicae rex, Caelius 9.1.38

The frequency and ease with which Gessner used Rhodiginus’s miscellany as a source of mythographical information is evident in this excerpt. As we shall see later, Gessner was not the only student of fables to rely on Rhodiginus for his knowledge. Gessner’s practice warrants a closer look at this important resource. The Lectiones antiquae take as their subject the entire range of humanist interest and work through this universe of learning in a completely miscellaneous way. The main selling-point of this book is its ability to relieve growing intellectual pressures on the educated reading public. On its title page, Rhodiginus’s efforts are marketed as a lifesaver for all those drowning in a sea of paper. Gessner endorsed this promotion by copying it into his entry on Rhodiginus in the Bibliotheca uniuersalis. I quote Gessner’s slightly embellished version: qui ob omnifariam abstrusarum & reconditiorum tam rerum quam uocum in utraq[ue] lingua ex innumeris scriptoribus desumptam explicatione[m] (quas uix unius hominis aetas libris perpetuo insudans obseruaret) merito Cornucopiae seu Thesaurus utriusq[ue] linguae appellabuntur, quod in quocunq[ue] studiorum genere, non minor ipsorum quam ingentis bibliothecae, aut complurium commentariorum possit esse usus.39 On account of the explication, taken from innumerable writers, of all sorts of concealed and recondite things, as well as words, in each language (which a single man, constantly sweating over books, could hardly observe in a lifetime), these 38

Gessner, Pandectae, fol. 249r.

39

Gessner, Biblioteca uniuersalis, fol. 487v.

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[thirty books of the Lectiones antiquae] will justly be called Cornucopiae or ‘Treasuries’ of each language, because in each kind of study their usefulness is not less than that of a huge library or many commentaries.

Such a text would appeal in an intellectual climate increasingly apprehensive that there were too many books to buy and study. As Ann Blair puts it, miscellanies like the Lectiones antiquae gave ‘access to the material that one had to master to be considered well-educated—Latin language and classical culture and the wisdom accumulated in sententiae and historical example (Christian and pagan) since antiquity’.40 Rhodiginus in particular offered as much of this kind of material as can be crammed between two covers: the 1542 Basel edition, which Gessner used, has 1,182 folio pages. Amongst the material collected into the Lectiones antiquae, a reader could find everything a good mythography needs to offer. In Book XVIII, Rhodiginus defines ancient fables in general terms and distinguishes them from other ‘fables’ (such as Aesop’s) in a chapter called ‘Quid fabula & fabularum genera’ (‘What fables are and what types of fables exist’).41 Another long segment of this book is devoted to the theory and practice of three different ways of allegorical reading as well as the principle of psychomachia: ‘Triplici semita incedere, qui fabulas allegorice interpretentur. Quo pacto intelligenda deorum certamina’ (‘Those who interpret fables allegorically have proceeded on a triple path. In what way the battles of the gods are to be understood’).42 Numerous chapters are directly concerned with individual fables or gods, such as Book XX, chapter 6, which prominently discusses the moon, Selene, Diana, and Hecate. Most of the mythographical information, however, is tucked away in chapters on other topics. In these cases, the headings will not flag up any upcoming reference to a deity or story, and Rhodiginus’s comments on fables are dropped in passing while he is exploring other subjects. Thus, Saturn, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Mercury get a mention in Book I, chapter 17, on planets and elements. In Book XVIII, the nineteenth chapter is devoted to legal systems, and gods figure in a list of lawgivers. Elsewhere, cognomina of Apollo are enumerated in the context of a chapter on the Pythian oracle at Delphi (Book XVI, chapter 19). This 40 Ann Blair, Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 118. 41 Coelius Rhodiginus, Lectionum antiquarum libri XXX (Basel, 1542), 681. 42 Rhodiginus, Lectionum antiquarum (1542), 679–81 [Book XVIII chapter 6].

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arrangement (or lack of it) means that, while there is easily enough matter on the gods in this learned book to furnish a comprehensive mythography, it is mixed in with other heterogeneous information. How could such a book serve as a reference work on the gods? In fact, the melange of subjects discussed in the Lectiones antiquae did not stand in the way of quick information retrieval. The material was managed effectively by multiple finding devices. Already the first edition of the Lectiones antiquae (Venice, 1516) provided readers with three different organizational tools. A contents list displayed the long chapter titles in the order in which they occurred in the book, with each of the titles long enough to be called a small abstract. Attention is drawn to Rhodiginus’s humanist learning by a directory to clever observations and emendations, organized as an alphabetical list of the authors amended. And finally, there is an alphabetical subject index. In the 1542 Basel folio, this alone took up 173 pages. This masterpiece of knowledge organization made it possible to survey with one glance everything Rhodiginus said about (for instance) Mercury across the entire Lectiones antiquae, and allowed readers to adapt their reading experience to their level of knowledge. In the index of the 1542 edition, somebody interested in Mercury would find no less than fifty-six entries on the messenger god (forty-eight on Mercury, eight on Hermes). A beginner could brush up on ‘Mercurius pastoralis deus, et montanus’ on p. 432, and find out why Mercury is thought of as ‘tricephalus’ on p. 680. He could ascertain that Mercury was an inventor of arts and refer to pp. 278 and 722 for details. Indexed as ‘Mercurius, Cadmus and Cadmillus’, Rhodiginus’s opinion on a particularly tricky name of the god might catch a philologist’s eye and point him to p. 922. The plentiful list attracts attention to Mercury’s colours, allegories, the story of his fathering of Hermaphroditus, his physical meaning, explanations as to why he carries a coin purse and why he quarrelled with Minerva. The index effectively transforms the heterogeneous mass of classical commentary into a handy reference work on fables. Thus, texts like the Lectiones antiquae and their methods of information management comfortably filled the gap between Boccaccio and the Italian mythographers. But I would argue that the relationship between the miscellanies and the Renaissance mythographies is even closer than that. One just has to imagine one of Rhodiginus’s readers to be a writer in search of material. It is easy to see how a future Renaissance

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mythographer could have been tempted to pick pieces of information on the gods from the index, like ripe apples from a tree, and gather them into one basket. This is precisely what Georg Pictorius did when he put together Theologia mythologica, a text often referred to as the first Renaissance mythography. Pictorius was headmaster of the Freiburg Latin gymnasium when he composed this book for the young tyros under his care. He readily acknowledges his reliance on polymaths in his list of authorities, where he collects them under the heading ‘autorum mixtis’, that is, miscellaneous authors. Amongst them is Aulius Gellius, whose Noctes Atticae is the classic example of the miscellaneous genre in antiquity, as well as Angelo Poliziano, whose Miscellanea (1489) set a trend for later writers of this kind. The headmaster’s most trusty allies, however, are Rhodiginus, whose text Pictorius knew in the earlier, sixteen-book version, and Erasmus, whose Adagia are the most famous and readable example of a well-indexed stockpile of humanist learning. An additional incentive for using the Adagia might have been that Erasmus was living in Freiburg at the time of Pictorius’s stint as headmaster. An analysis of a representative excerpt from his chapter on Mercury may be the best way to convey a sense of the pervasive influence of the miscellanies on Theologia mythologica. Already the first point of his exposition of Mercury—why this god has three heads—is taken straight from the Adagia (‘Triceps Mercurius’), and Pictorius duly cites his source: ‘testis Erasmus’.43 The longest passage from the Mercury chapter, which I will analyse here, is devoted to the caduceus. Pictorius starts off with the sleep-inducing qualities of Mercury’s magic wand and takes the opportunity to educate his pupils about poetic imitation by comparing Homer’s treatment of the wand to Virgil’s. Then Pictorius discusses the caduceus as a symbol of peace and describes what it looks like: [1] Huic uirgam tribuerunt sopiferam [sic], hoc est caduceum, cuius sic Home [rus]: ultimo Iliados meminit: Mox ubi iam pedibus talaria subdidit aurea,

Georg Pictorius, Theologia mythologica (Freiburg, 1532), fol. 20r [sig. C4r]. ‘Triceps Mercurius’ in Erasmus, Adagiorum Opus (Basel, 1526), 739. For a modern translation, see Collected Works of Erasmus, 89 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974– ), vol. XXXV: Adages III iv to IV ii 100, ed. John N. Grant, trans. and annotated Denis L. Drysdall (2005), 278 (Adage III vii 95). 43

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Tum uirgam capit, hac demulcet lumina somno, Quorumcunq[ue] uelit, somnum quoq[ue] pellit eadem. Hunc imitatus Maro, sic eiusdem caduceum describe[n]s quarto Aeneidos: Tum uirgam capit, hac animos ille euocat orco Pallentes, alias sub tristia tartara mittit, Dat somnos, adimitq[ue] & lumina morte resignat. [2] Fuit autem haec uirga belli finiti symbolum: nam quia Mercurius orationis deus, et deorum nuntius merito a dijs mittebatur, ut dissidentiu[m] animos foederaret. Hinc legati pacis Caduceatores dicti. sicut enim per foeciales [sic, i.e. fetiales] bella indicebantur, ita per caduceatores finieba[n]tur. Caduceum Aegyptij in speciem draconum maris et foeminae coniunctoru[m] figurauerunt, & Mercurio consecraru[n]t. Hij dracones parte media uoluminis sui, nodo (quem uocant Herculis) inuicem obligantur, primaeq[ue] partes eorum reflexae in circulum praessis osculis ambitum circuli iungunt, et post nodum caudae reuocantur ad capulum caducei, sic Macrob[ius] li[bro] I. Sat[urnalia] ca[pite] 19. Causam autem cur exterae gentes caduceum in pace tractanda circundata anguium effigie fecerint, quidam hanc esse tradunt, cum Mercurius lyram in Cyllene mo[n]te Archadiae septichordam ad Atlantidu[m] numerum instituisset, quod Maia mater eius ex illarum numero esset. Ac no[n] multo post deprehensus ab Apolline fuisset boues suas abigere, quo facilius ueniam ab eo impetraret, Apollini traditur concessisse, ut lyram a se primo inuentam praedicaret; propter quod Apollinem ferunt uirgam quanda[m] Mercurio dono dedisse, quam cu[m] manu tenens in Archadiam proficisceretur[,] inuentos ab eo fuisse dracones duos simul ligatos, & inter se mutuo pugnantes: quo uiso uirgam interposuisse, & dicto citius praelium diremisse. Eo facto huiusmodi uirgam pacis gratia dixit esse constitutam: & huius rei exemplo uirgam postea duorum draconum similitudine finxerunt, eaq[ue] & in palaestra & in reliquis certaminibus usi sunt ad praelium dirimendum. Plin[ius] alia recenset li[bro] 29. ca[pite] 3. [3] Aliter tamen de Corycio, hoc est, caduceo[,] scribit Coelius quu[m] dicit: Coryciu[m] erat lignum rectu[m], utrinq[ue] duos continens serpentes implexos inuicem, ita ut se mutuo & ex aduersum intuerentur. Lignum autem rectum symbolice & operte orationis rectitudinem significat: serpe[n]tes uero impliciti, castra castris iuncta nobis innuunt occultius. Quibus se dissidentes conciliatura uoluntates, orationis inserit uirtus, haec Coelius lib[ro] II. cap[ite] 50. Et ibi quoq [ue] hastam et caduceum mittere, pro hoc quod est aut bellum aut pacem amplexari positum, reperies: cuius etiam meminit A. Gellius lib[ro] II. cap[ite] 27.44 (1) To him they attributed the sleep-bearing wand, which is the caduceus, about which Homer says in the last book of the Iliad [cf. Il. XXIV.340–4]: At once when he bound the golden sandals to his feet,

44

Pictorius, Theologia mythologica, fols. 20r–21r [sigs. C4r–C5r]. Rhodiginus, Lectionum antiquarum libri XVI (Basel, 1517), 588–9, here 589.

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Then he takes up the wand, with which he lulls to sleep the eyes Of those whom he will, and with the same wand he drives sleep away. Virgil imitated him, thus describing the caduceus of Mercury in the fourth book of the Aeneid [cf. Aen. IV.242–4]: Then he takes his wand; with this he calls pale ghosts from Orcus And sends others down to gloomy Tartarus, Gives or takes away sleep and unseals the eyes in death. (2) The wand was also a symbol for a war that has been ended; because Mercury was the god of oratory and was justly sent by the gods as their messenger, in order to unite the minds of those at odds with each other. Hence ambassadors of peace were called caduceators. And just as by the fetials wars were declared, so by the caduceators they used to be ended. The Egyptians formed the caduceus in the shape of intertwined serpents, male and female, and they consecrated it to Mercury; these serpents are bound together with each other in the middle part of their coil in a knot, which they call ‘the knot of Hercules’; their upper parts are bent into a circle, and they complete the shape of the circle as they meet in a kiss; below the knot, their tails are brought back together at the handle of the caduceus. Thus writes Macrobius in the first book of the Saturnalia, chapter 19. Also, certain people say that the reason why foreign nations, when peace is to be observed, make the caduceus in the shape of snakes, is as follows. When Mercury had made the lyre on the Mountain Cyllene in Arcadia, he made it with seven strings on account of the number of the Atlantids, because his mother Maia was one of them. But not much later he was caught driving away Apollo’s cattle. So that Mercury might more easily procure forgiveness, he is said to have granted to Apollo that he would proclaim that the lyre was first invented by the sun god. Because of this, they say that Apollo gave a certain wand as a gift to Mercury. Holding this wand in his hand, Mercury set forth into Arcadia, and two snakes were found by him bound together and fighting in turns amongst themselves. At this sight, he interposed the distaff between them and separated the battle swifter than one can utter a word. This deed having been performed, he proclaimed that the wand was appointed for the service of peace. And from the example of this incident, they afterwards fashioned that distaff in the likeness of two snakes. And this wand they used in wrestling and other contests in order to separate fights. Pliny narrates other things at Book XXIX, chapter 3. (3) Caelius writes in another manner, however, about the corycium, which is the caduceus, when he says: the corycium was a straight staff, holding two serpents intertwined on both sides, in such a way that they looked at each other across the staff. Moreover, the straight staff signifies, symbolically and in a covert manner, the directness of oratory. But the intertwined serpents intimate to us in a hidden manner armies locked in battle with other armies. The virtue of oratory intervenes to bring together their wills, which are at disagreement. These things Caelius Rhodiginus writes in Book XI chapter 50. And there you will also find it alleged that they sent a spear or a caduceus, by which, that is, they embraced either war or peace. This fact Aulus Gellius also records in Book II, chapter 27.

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Pictorius’s first insight in this excerpt, concerning Virgil’s imitation of Homer, is taken from Erasmus’s adage ‘virgula divina’, to which Pictorius later refers his students directly.45 The second section cites the ancient authorities Macrobius and Pliny, but quotes them only indirectly, because this entire section is really lifted verbatim from a Renaissance dictionary. Ultimately, it can be traced to one of the pioneering publications of humanist miscellanies, Niccola Perotti’s Cornucopiae.46 For his physical description of the caduceus in the third section, Pictorius turns to Rhodiginus. This time, he cites his source precisely, as if to encourage his pupils to follow up his reference and have a look at the Lectiones antiquae in the school library. The discussion of the caduceus also closes with a further reading suggestion: ‘De Caduceo lege Eras[mi] proverb [ias] Cassioticus nodus, et uirgula divina’ (‘About the caduceus, check Erasmus’s proverbs “Cassioticus nodus” and “Virgula divina” ’).47 The section on the caduceus is thus entirely copied and pasted from miscellanies, the best of which are cited explicitly by Pictorius and recommended to his students for further, independent study. Konrad Gessner’s bibliography and Georg Pictorius’s mythography teach us a lot about the history of Renaissance mythography before 1548. On the lookout for material on the ancient gods and heroes, both authors used established mythographies, but contemporary polymaths were even more important sources. Pictorius and Gessner ran their fingers down

45 ‘Virgula divina’ in Erasmus, Adagia 1526, 56–7. For a modern translation, see Collected Works of Erasmus 89 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974– ), vol. XXXI: Adages I i 1 to I v 100, trans. Margaret Mann Phillips, annotated R. A. B. Mynors (1982), 139–41 (Adage I i 97). 46 First published in 1489, the Cornucopiae began life as a commentary on Martial with extensive explanations of Latin words. For this reason, it became the basis for various Renaissance dictionaries—most importantly Calepine’s Dictionarium (1502), which in turn was plundered for further reference works. This means that, although Perotti’s Cornucopiae is the origin of this passage and could be Pictorius’s source, the schoolmaster could very well have taken it from a later publication that was based on Perotti. The entire passage is verbatim in Nicolaus Perottus, Cornucopiae (Venice, 1494), fol. 43r, as well as in the edition printed by Johann Prüß in Strasburg in 1506, fol. 32v, ll. 21–45. The single difference between the passages is that Perotti does not identify his sources. Pictorius thus either inserted the references to Macrobius and Pliny himself, or his intermediate source had already done so. 47 Pictorius, Theologia mythologica, fol. 21v [sig. C5v]. ‘Cassioticus nodus’ in Erasmus, Adagia 1526, 465. For a modern translation, see Collected Works of Erasmus, 89 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974– ), vol. XXXIII: Adages II i 1 to II vi 100, trans. and annotated R. A. B. Mynors (1991), 257–8 (Adage II v 34).

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the indices of miscellaneous reference works, and suggested their readers do exactly the same. Their practice shows that miscellanies were used as substitute mythographies before the new comprehensive and specialist works on the gods became available from 1548 onwards. But there is more. In so far as Theologia mythologica and the Pandectae are guides to further reading, it is important to observe that they actively direct their users back to their own sources for even more information. This is only to be expected in a bibliography, but it is noteworthy that this is also true of Pictorius’s schoolboy’s introduction. Theologia mythologica represents itself as a first port of call for those curious about mythographical matters, eventually closing the circle by sending the inquiring mind on to the all-encompassing polymaths. Intriguingly, what is often called the ‘first’ Renaissance mythography is subtitled as ‘ex doctiss[imorum] virorum promptuario labore Pictorii Vill[ingensis] in compendium congesta’ (‘material gathered together into one compendium from the storehouses of the most learned men by the work of Pictorius from Villingen’). Instead of presenting his effort as an independent work, the author pitches his product as a helpful, specialized extract from the larger works to which it constantly refers back. Miscellanies like the Lectiones antiquae or the Adagia were not just a site of mythographical scholarship during the sixteenth century. The case of Theologia mythologica suggests that polymathic miscellanies constitute an integral part of the Renaissance development of mythography as the universal genre from which more specific reference works on the gods were derived.

1.3. The New Mythographies So far, I have cautiously assigned the title ‘first Renaissance mythography’ to Pictorius’s 1532 venture. However, there is some wriggle-room. An overview of new inquiries devoted exclusively to the gods and heroes between 1500 and 1567 might look like this: Petrus Jacobus Montefalcus, De cognominibus deorum opusculum (Perugia, 1525); Georg Pictorius, Theologia mythologica (Freiburg, 1532); Julianus Aurelius Haurech, De cognominibus deorum gentilium libri tres (Antwerp, 1541); Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, Deorum gentilium uaria & multiplex historia (Basel, 1548); Johannes Herold, Heydenweldt (Basel, 1554); Vincenzo Cartari, Le imagini con la spositione de i dei degli antiqui (Venice, 1556); Georg

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Pictorius, Apotheseos [sic] (Basel, 1558); and Natale Conti, Mythologiae (Venice, 1567). It is immediately striking that the mythographies are initially preoccupied with the gods’ names. These are the focus of Montefalco, Haurech, Giraldi, and Herold. Based on this shared interest, it is possible to provide a provisional orientation in the field and describe the mythographical spectrum on a linear scale. At one end, we would find works exclusively focused on names. The opposite extreme would be formed by works that cover a wide range of topics, such as names, genealogies, images, allegories, rituals, and stories. The earliest text, Montefalco’s De cognominibus deorum opusculum, is located on the far end of exclusivity. It is simply a list of names with their etymologies and explanations, and was planned as a companion piece to another work, on the sacred rituals of the ancients, which, if it ever existed, does not seem to have survived.48 For Mercury, Montefalco cites fifteen names, such as Mercurius, Hermes, Camillus, Argiphontes, Caducifer, and Cyllenius. To take Mercurius Caducifer as an example, one finds that, in contrast to Pictorius’s exhaustive treatment of the shape, history, powers, and allegory of the caduceus, the Italian is exceedingly brief. Much like a lexicographer, he limits himself to the cognomen and evidence for its ancient usage: ‘CADUCIFER quasi caduceum ferens. Ouidi. Hinc se sustulerat paribus caducifer alis’ (‘He is called Caducifer, as if to say, he who carries the caduceus. From Ovid: “The bearer of the caduceus had lifted off on level wings” ’).49 But it is not always possible for Montefalco to keep his notes this trim. In order to elucidate the common cognomen ‘Argiphontes’, for example, he needs to summarize the story of Mercury and Argus. Still, he resists going too far afield: ARGIPHONTES nominatur quoniam argum centoculum q[ui] Iunonis iussu Io Inachi filiam co[n]uersam in uaccam custodiebat morti odit [sic, i.e. dedit] ἀπὸ του ἀργου & φονέω interficio. Nec ignoro Mercurium a Macrobio disceptante solem esse aliam dari huic nomini etymologiam.50 He is called Argiphontes, because he killed the hundred-eyed Argus, who had been commanded by Juno to guard Io, daughter of Inachus, after she had been changed into a cow, ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀγροῦ and φονέω, ‘I kill’. Nor am I ignorant of the

48 49 50

Petrus Jacobus Montefalcus, De cognominibus deorum opusculum (Perugia, 1525), fol. 2v. Montefalcus, De cognominibus, fol. 19r, quoting from Ovid, Met. II.708. Montefalcus, De cognominibus, fols. 18v–19r.

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fact that another etymology for this name is given by Macrobius, who judges that Mercury is the sun.

Macrobius’s reading of the many-eyed Argus as the stars and Mercury as the sun that eclipses them with his light is a famous and elegant allegory of the god.51 Montefalco imagines his reader to be not only already aware of this interpretation, but also keen to hear it again. He acknowledges the allegory so as to look well informed, but denies his audience the satisfaction of a retelling. This mythography thus caters to men like Montefalco himself, who like facts, not allegories: ‘Quisqu[i]s amas ueterum cognomina nosse deorum | Et ferias, ludos, sacra, cerimonias. | Numinibus ue [sic] quibus quae uictima detur, adesto’ (‘Whoever you are who love to know the names, and the holidays, the games, the sacred rites and the ceremonies, or to what deities which sacrifices should be given, come here!’)52 In other words, De cognominibus deorum is dedicated to antiquarian detail, not to the unfolding of its potential meaning. Julien Haurech informs us in the preface to De cognominibus deorum gentilium libri tres that he concentrated only on the major gods of antiquity and brought together their cognomina in order to ease access to learned texts: ‘uiamq[ue] ad intelligendos poëtas, oratores, & historiographos muniuerim’ (‘I have opened a way to understand the poets, orators, and historiographers’).53 Like Montefalco, Haurech grapples with his audience’s eagerness for allegorical interpretation. He admits upfront that he must disappoint those who hope for moral interpretations, but ‘non sane q[uod] laborem subterfugerem, sed quod hoc praestare prorsus ἀδύνατον putarem’ (‘not indeed because I fled the labour, but because I thought I was utterly unable to provide this’).54 This can be read as a polite recusatio, but it is far from a categorical dismissal of this type of fable interpretation. Allegory is used continually in Haurech’s expositions of names: Mercurium autem Graeci ab eloquendi facultate λόγιον appellaru[n]t, et διάκτορα, quod per orationem animi nostri sensus alijs declaremus, quo fit vt sacrae

51 Macrobius, Saturnalia, trans. Percival Vaughan Davies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 134–5. 52 Montefalcus, De cognominibus, sig. A1v. 53 Julianus Aurelius Haurechius, De cognominibus deorum libri tres (Antwerp, 1541), sigs. A3v–A4r. 54 Haurech, De cognominibus, fol. 7v.

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ei essent linguae. figuraba[n]t eum allatum [sic], quod oratione nihil sit velocius. Vnde et Homerus ἔπεα πτερόεντα vocauit. item iuuenili facie, quod nunquam senescat oratio.55 However, the Greeks named Mercury ‘skilled with words’ and ‘messenger’ because by speech we declare the perceptions of our minds to others. Hence languages were sacred to him. They used to figure him as winged because nothing is faster than oratory. Hence Homer, too, spoke of ‘winged words’. Also, he has the face of a young man because speech does not age.

In comparison to Montefalco’s lists, Haurech’s book on epithets is a more inclusive work. With its extensive preface (on the gods’ origins, categories, and gender), its continuous prose and diverse material, De cognominibus deorum gentilium presents itself as a general and readable introduction to the key Olympians. The unrivalled magnum opus amongst the name-based mythographies, however, is Lilio Gregorio Giraldi’s De deis gentium uaria & multiplex historia. In contrast to Montefalco’s and Haurech’s selective lists, this is a comprehensive work on the gods’ names and boasts scholarship of a far higher standard. Giraldi’s academic ambitions are evident in his treatment of his contemporaries. Where other mythographers copy Caelius Rhodiginus, Giraldi corrects the fellow humanist’s Greek, and delightedly points out his victory, not once, but twice in the same chapter.56 While De deis gentium is chiefly organized around epithets, it has a broader approach to fables than Montefalco and Haurech. The images of the gods are given separate consideration, and where Giraldi has something to say that is not connected to any name, he makes sure to include it. For instance, Mercury’s daughter Palaestra is discussed prominently, even though none of Mercury’s cognomina is directly derived from her. Furthermore, in order to explicate names, Giraldi draws on a great variety of material, such as iconography, genealogy, cults, statues, local traditions, and so on. He makes the occasional quip on contemporary fashion or slips in quotations from his own letters where he has hit upon a felicitous phrase. Allegory also plays a role. Following the epithet κλέπτης, for example, one might expect to find the usual account of Mercury

55 56

Haurech, De cognominibus, fol. 31v. Giraldi, De deis gentium uaria & multiplex historia (Basel, 1548), 425.

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stealing Apollo’s cattle. But Giraldi skips the well-known story in favour of some moral allegorizing about the dangerous power of oratory: Κλέπτης, id est fur, est etiam cognominatus, quod oratio quasi furari uideatur: adeo tacite in animos hominum surrepit, & influit, ut eos quocunq[ue] uelit trahat, & ab eis quod uelit extorqueat. Mitto fabulam de gregibus sublatis Apollini, & sagittis.57 Κλέπτης, i.e. thief, is also his name, because oratory may seem like stealing: so quietly it creeps into the minds of men and insinuates itself into them, so that it draws them wherever it wants and extorts from them what it wants. I pass over the fable of the flocks and arrows stolen from Apollo.

Riding on the coattails of a small army of cognomina, all kinds of mythographical material find their way into De deis gentium historia. This mythography is further towards the middle of our scale than one might first expect. Karl Enenkel suggested that Giraldi did not originally plan to be so inclusive. In his scenario, the Basel edition of Haurech’s De cognominibus deorum gentilium (published by Oporinus in 1543) came to Giraldi’s attention due to his close links to the printers there. Having envisaged his mythography as a work about cognomina, Giraldi was ‘shocked’ by the rival publication.58 As a consequence, the Italian changed his working title from De variis deorum cognominibus to the more general De deis gentium uaria & multiplex historia. With the modification of the title, so Enenkel speculates, the scope of the mythography was enlarged. It is of course conceivable, although unlikely, that Giraldi, who had worked for decades on this comprehensive and deeply learned work, worried about being scooped by Haurech’s slender introduction to the main gods. Yet it seems to me that Enenkel’s scenario speaks more to the unease of modern critics, who would like to explain away those aspects of Giraldi’s work they consider passé in a Renaissance scholar. Enenkel is correct to describe De deis gentium as ‘the fruit of a lifelong scholarly pursuit and of an excerpting activity of decennia’.59 Like he does, I would emphasize Giraldi’s scholarly achievement in the 57

Giraldi, De deis gentium, 423. Karl Enenkel, ‘The Making of Sixteenth-Century Mythography: Giraldi’s Syntagma de musis (1507, 1511 and 1539), De deis gentium historia (ca. 1500–1548), and Julien de Havrech’s De cognominibus deorum gentilium (1541)’, Humanistica Lovaniensia 51 (2002), 9–53, here 31. 59 Enenkel, ‘The Making of Sixteenth-Century Mythography’, 18. 58

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face of Seznec’s misrepresentation of Renaissance mythographies as the same ‘both in spirit and content’ as medieval compilations. However, he portrays the Italian mythographer as ‘a fanatic and pedantically precise philologist’, and praises Giraldi’s methods and interests where they map on to those of modern classicists.60 It seems that Enenkel uses the same modern philological yardstick as Seznec did. The only difference is that the French critic saw the mythographers fall short, while Enenkel thinks that at least Giraldi made the grade. His highest recommendation for the Renaissance scholar is that he was ‘predominantly a “Altertumswissenschaftler” ’.61 In the history of scholarship, as Anthony Grafton has shown, historical philology and allegory are often seen as intellectually contradictory ways of approaching ancient literature.62 The former is equated with the rigorous, modern academic discipline and a scientific appreciation of history, the latter with the ahistorical, unscholarly application of the past to the present. But such a dichotomy limits our understanding of Renaissance mythography. Sixteenth-century humanists held assumptions, had predilections, employed methods and engaged in fields of research that fall outside the modern academic discipline ‘classical studies’. As much as Giraldi laboured to pin down the correct form and ancient usage of a divine epithet in his historical scholarship, he also allowed his mythography to shift into other interpretative frameworks he found worthwhile, such as allegory, social commentary, or table-talk on life and manners. By doing so, he prepared an aspect of antiquity to be used by his contemporaries in a wide range of intellectual and creative pursuits. This reflects his interests, and those of his readers. Giraldi’s audience was more diverse than that of today’s academic monographs. It consisted of scholars, courtiers, poets, natural philosophers, and well-educated general readers. They looked to their mythographers for historical clarifications of hard words, but they also wanted to be provided with ways to apply the world of ancient gods to various aspects of their experience. We have seen this type of expectation at work in the cases of the more restrained mythographies by Montefalco and

Enenkel, ‘The Making of Sixteenth-Century Mythography’, 18. Enenkel, ‘The Making of Sixteenth-Century Mythography’, 29. Anthony Grafton, Defenders of the Text: Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1991), esp. ch. 1. 60 61 62

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Haurech. Both authors reacted to the pressure to provide their readers with allegorical applications of myths. The strength of this demand is revealed in the mythographers’ respective successes on the European book market. As it happens, the more allegory and room for application a mythography offered, the more reprints and translations it went through. The widest readership was gained by Natale Conti, who made moral allegory into the main focus of his book. Seen from his contemporaries’ perspective, Giraldi should not be criticized for including allegories, but for not including more of them. The German mythographer Johannes Herold is a direct imitator of Giraldi. He followed so closely in the Italian’s footsteps that his 1554 mythography is essentially an abridged translation of De deis gentium. This text is of special interest as a vernacular venture into the genre. Herold’s anxieties about his transposition of pagan material into German present us with an opportunity to observe one of the challenges associated with mythography in a world fractured by religious controversy. Apart from the mythography, Heydenweldt und irer Götter anfängcklicher Vrsprung includes Herold’s translation of the first six books of Diodorus Siculus, Dictys of Crete’s chronicle of the Trojan War, Horapollo’s Hieroglyphica, astrological tables, and woodcut illustrations of the pagan deities by an anonymous artist. The translations in Heydenweldt are governed by humanist ideals. Like Lawrence Humphrey, author of the most comprehensive Renaissance treatise on translation (and from 1555 to 1560 a fellow citizen of Basel), Herold believed in the personal and national utilitas of making available works that promote the ancient love of virtue.63 Herold thought that these texts would benefit the common man ‘[der] dan[n] auch ein hirn hatt’ (‘who does have a brain, too’). As the common man improves, so will his country.64 What a wonderful world it would be, or so Herold muses in his introduction, were the certain knowledge of the true god coupled with the ancients’ love 63 For the most detailed Renaissance discussion of the utility of translation, see Lawrence Humphrey, Interpretatio linguarum: seu de ratione conuertendi & explicandi autores tam sacros quam prophanos, libri tres (Basel, 1559); this concept is discussed in Sheldon Brammall, The English Aeneid: Translations of Virgil 1555–1646 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 8–15. 64 Herold, Heydenweldt vnd irer Götter anfängcklicher Vrsprung (Basel, 1554) sig. [*]3v. For Herold’s imperial politics, see Andreas Burckhardt, Johannes Basilius Herold: Kaiser und Reich im protestantischen Schrifttum des Basler Buchdrucks um die Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Basel: Helbing and Lichtenhahn, 1967).

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of honour.65 In the case of Germany, united as it was only in its language (its ‘einigen vnzerkryppelte[n] spraach’) and the idea of the Holy Roman Empire, the nation-building potential of translation was especially strong.66 The mythographical material in Heydenweldt is thus meant as an encouragement for the Germans to claim the wisdom of the ancients as their inheritance so that Germany may take its place as last in a series of great nations that had consisted of Egypt, Greece, Rome, and Italy. There is, however, an obstacle to overcome, and that has to do with scholarly detachment. Herold is convinced that, had he written his work in Latin, he would have garnered only praise for his efforts. Or: zu[m] wenigsten wurdend die selbigen [i.e. die ‘in[n] vilen spraachen erüebten glerten me[n]tschen’] dises alles on anstoß lesen, auch jnen nit vngwhon sein lassen, als die, so in[n] Griechischer, Latinischer vnd andern spraachen, zu[o]vor bei Lilio Gyraldo in[n] gantz holdfälig gstellter ordnung (dero ich dann souil mir möglich nachgefaren) dergleichen meer gelesen.67 at the very least, these same people [i.e. multilingual, learned people] would read all of this without taking offence, nor would they be unfamiliar with the material, as they have read it before, and more, in Greek, Latin, and other languages in Lilio Giraldi in beautiful order (which I have followed as much as possible).

But scholarly level-headedness is not what he expects from vernacular readers confronted with pagan thought. Herold anticipates he will be accused of promoting idolatry. He therefore records a detailed confession of his Christian faith to prevent such accusations. His book is not meant to promote polytheism, he stresses; it is not a contribution to religious controversy at all.68 He wants his audience to read past the ancients’ false beliefs and instead focus on the positive value of their moral teaching, which will improve individual as well as national prospects. In this way, the success of a translatio sapientiae (et imperii) from the Egyptians, Greek, Romans, and Italians onto the Germans depends on the willingness and ability of Herold’s vernacular audience to read their mother tongue as if it were Latin. Herold’s attempt at re-educating his readers is a creative response to a challenge some mythographers perceived. Those who anticipated attacks from religious quarters did their best to forestall what they saw as misappropriations of their work. This includes, against Herold’s 65 67

Herold, Heydenweldt, sig. [*]2r. Herold, Heydenweldt, sig. [*]3r.

66 68

Herold, Heydenweldt, sig. [*]3v. Herold, Heydenweldt, sig. [*]3v.

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assumptions, Neo-Latin mythographers. Julianus Aurelius Haurech, whose De cognominibus deorum (1541) I have already discussed, forestalled Christian polemic by placing himself into a long and illustrious tradition of ‘safe’ scholars. He named St Augustine, Fulgentius, Boccaccio, Vives, and Erasmus as examples of worthy Christians who studied the pagan gods with benefit for their readers. With such powerful reinforcement, Haurech felt strong enough to push back at his potential critics: An ideo uocabitur in discrimen nostra persuasio, si puer intelligat quare Iupiter Romanis Stator appelletur, aut unde Pistoris cognomen sortitus sit? Nonne grande crimen est chartis mandare, quare Iunonem Romani Monetam uocarint, & unde Veneri cognomen Caluae impositum sit. O secula, o mores.69 Will our belief be called into question, if a boy understands why Jupiter is called Stator by the Romans, or whence he received the additional name of Pistor? Surely it is not a great crime to commit to writing why the Romans called Iuno Moneta and whence the name Calva was given to Venus? O secula, o mores.

Evoking an educational context, Haurech distinguished clearly between a scholarly discussion of the pantheon and actual pagan worship. Knowing, he suggested, is not believing. Haurech was also a Catholic, and worried that some readers would equate pagan idolatry with Catholic saint worship. He sought to pre-empt this accusation by rehearsing the standard technical distinction between worshipping an image and worshipping someone represented by an image.70 The line of thought linking pagan idolatry, Catholic saints, and Christian heresy directly informs the first English mythography and will therefore be discussed in more detail in Chapter 2. For the purposes of this survey, Herold and Haurech furnish examples of mythographers’ attempts to steer clear of the religious controversies of their day. This is a good point at which to pause and look back at the first group of new mythographies. The works by Montefalco, Haurech, Giraldi, and Herold map well onto the linear scale I have proposed at the beginning of this section. They describe a development that sees the new Renaissance mythographies remain focused on names while they grow in size and become more inclusive of other approaches. From the mid-1550s, however, this line diverges: Cartari (1556) deliberately

69

Haurech, De cognominibus, sigs. A3r–v.

70

Haurech, De cognominibus, fol. 4r.

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breaks free from the competition by writing about the gods’ images, and Conti (1567) branches out into moral allegory. Vincenzo Cartari’s Le imagini con la spositione de i dei degli antichi contains information on names, allegories, and other approaches to fables, but this mythography chiefly organizes its material around questions of representation. Cartari’s predilection for the images of the gods may have been inspired, as his modern translator John Mulryan suggests, by his membership in a secret learned society which was also frequented by Titian, Tintoretto, and Giorgio Vasari. But even if the Academia de Pellegrini played a role in his choice of approach, a more mundane reason for Cartari’s specialization is suggested in Francesco Marcolini’s address to the reader in the first edition of Le imagini. This short document, composed by the printer of the mythography, is not included in Mulryan’s English translation of the expanded third edition from the year 1571. In his address, Marcolini testifies to the fact that, by 1556, the market for mythographical reference works had become rather contested: Hanno scritto molti de i Dei de gliantichi, & in diuersi modi, imperoche alcuni della progenie, alcuni della natura, & alcuni altri de i diuersi nomi di quelli scriuendo hanno ragionato, ma chi delle Statoe, e delle imagini loro habbia detto non è stato alcun’altro, che M. Vincenzo Cartari.71 Many have discussed the gods of the ancients in writing, and in different ways, as some have written thoughtfully about their progeny, some about their nature, and some others about their various names, but nobody except Vincenzo Cartari has spoken about their statues and their images.

Marcolini probably thinks of Boccaccio, Cicero, and Giraldi when he speaks about authors on the genealogy, nature, and names of the gods. There are other possible candidates. Perhaps his reader was reminded of Cornutus with his De natura deorum (a treatise from the first century BC, frequently republished in contemporary mythographical collections), or of Montefalco and Haurech with their respective texts on the gods’ names. In such a well-established field, and with the comprehensive work by Giraldi as a major competitor, Cartari needed a new sellingpoint. He found it in iconography. This decision paid off: only Conti

Francesco Marcolini, ‘A quelli che leggono’, in Vincezo Cartari, Le imagini con la spositione de i dei degli antichi (Venice, 1556), sigs. A3r–v, here A3r. 71

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would be able to challenge Cartari’s status as the most-read Renaissance mythographer. Despite coming relatively late to the game, Natale Conti (Natales Comes) represents himself as a pioneer. This has caused irritation among scholars, because it is hardly possible for Conti to be ignorant of his predecessors. However, within the process of diversification that I have outlined, Conti is marking a new branch of mythography as his own, one specializing in allegory. A reader of the Mythologiae is confronted with a very substantial volume, consisting of ten books. Its wealth of material is made manageable by a clear structure, marginal notes, and an excellent index. The mythography thus bears all the markers of the genre’s regeneration via the well-organized miscellaneous reference works written by the turn-of-the-century humanists. In the first book, Conti introduces his subject, talking about the nature of fables, their usefulness and variety, the pagan gods and the rituals surrounding them. He explains that fables veil philosophical truth. Instead of teaching openly, the ancient philosophers had wrapped up their knowledge in fictional stories to make it inaccessible to ordinary men: philosophical secrets must be kept from the simple-minded, lest they misunderstand them. Conti’s characteristic emphasis on morality comes through when he talks about the consequences of such misunderstandings of philosophy: ‘it would be easy for them [i.e. the simpleminded people] to lose their religion and all of their virtue.’72 However, after Plato and Aristotle began to teach philosophy plainly, the art of reading these fables was slowly forgotten. Over the course of the next eight books, he therefore retells and interprets a multitude of ancient fables. His organizational principle reveals his Christian perspective on the topic, with individual books titled ‘On the One God, the Originator and Creator of All Things’ or ‘How Clearly the Ancients Expressed their Ideas about the Underworld’. The latter book describes and allegorizes Acheron, Styx and Cocytus, Cerberus and Charon, as well as the main gods associated with the underworld, the Fates, the Eumenides, Night, Sleep, and Death. In the tenth book, Conti summarizes the key allegories. There, the information on the most important gods is divided into subheadings for the reader’s convenience. Saturn’s meaning, for example, is

72

Conti, Mythologiae, 2.

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unfolded across three paragraphs, each representing one of Conti’s main areas of allegorical interest: historical, physical, and ethical allegory. Rather than fence off the scholarly exploration of antiquity from religious matters, Conti embraces the idea that fables can support the teachings of Christianity. Among the many benefits of studying fables, he names their function as a spiritual and ethical guide: We intend to gloss only those stories that raise men to the heights of celestial knowledge, that counsel proper behavior and discourage unlawful pleasures, that reveal Nature’s secrets, that ultimately teach us all we absolutely need to know to lead a decent human life, that enhance our understanding of the great writers.73

Like Cartari, Conti relies on Neo-Platonic ideas to build a bridge between ancient fables and Christian life. By granting the ancients some insights into divine truths and by offering a wealth of allegories, this work offers ample opportunities to apply the fables of the past to the sixteenthcentury present. No other mythography so fully offers up antiquity to the creative uses and argumentative needs of the readers of that period. On this basis, it is easy to see why Conti’s influence was ubiquitous amongst those who did not only want to know about the history of the gods, but put them to some contemporary use. With Conti’s Mythologiae, the development described in this survey of European mythography comes to its conclusion. For the next one hundred years, the three Italian mythographies would dominate the market of reference works on the ancient gods. The fact that the publication of Conti ended this phase of the genre’s development, as if the keystone had been inserted into the apex of a mythographical arch, suggests that the genre’s subdivision into the three areas of names, images, and allegories was not a random result of market differentiation. I would like to propose that this triad reflects how ‘mythography’ was conceived as a coherent discipline in the sixteenth century. Support for this proposal comes from the author I have yet to integrate into my model: Georg Pictorius. His second venture into the field, Apotheseos, was published nearly thirty years after Theologia mythologica (1532), in the year 1558.74 It thus succeeds Montefalco, Haurech, Giraldi, 73

Conti, Mythologiae, 3. Rachel Darmon suggests the title comes from ἀπόθεσις, a noun formed from ἀποτίθημι ‘to stow away’. It is indeed another ‘storehouse’ of mythological information and recycles large sections from Theologia mythologica. Rachel Darmon, ‘Georg Pictorius à 74

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Herold, and Cartari, but precedes Conti. Given the increased attention to epithets in Apotheseos, Karl Enenkel has suggested that Pictorius wrote his second mythography because he had come to realize that Theologia mythologica was ‘outdated and obsolete’ in the light of recent and more scholarly work.75 Pictorius rewrote this book to include ‘the results of the newest mythographical research by humanists like Giraldi and [Haurech]’.76 This is a problematic assumption, not least because this line of Latin authors is disrupted by the presence of the vernacular mythographer Johannes Herold, Giraldi’s German translator. While Pictorius never mentions Haurech or Giraldi, he prominently cites Herold in his list of authorities and reprints the German’s illustrations. This suggests that Pictorius did derive his material on epithets from Giraldi, but indirectly via Herold’s German. Furthermore, Apotheseos could not be less interested in cutting-edge philology. Camillus, for example, is an important epithet of Mercury to which Haurech and Herold each devote a full paragraph. Giraldi’s discussion extends over half a folio page, including the following observation on variants: Camillus Mercurius ab Hetruscis uocatus, id est minister, ut Seruius apud Vergilium docet, et Plut[archus] in Numa. Pindari tamen & Lycophronis commentarij καδμίλον Mercurium uocatum aiunt, a Boeotijs. Sed in co[m]mentarijs sane eruditis in Apollonij Argonautica, Casmilus appellari uidetur. [I]dem Varro de Lingua latina. Hinc Casmilus nominatur in Samothracum mysterijs, deus quidam administer deis magnis. Verbum graecum arbitror, quod apud Callimachum in poematis eius inueni.77

la recherche d’un language mythographique’, in Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Upsaliensis: Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, ed. Astrid Steiner-Weder et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 341–51, here 345; for a discussion of the two works and their relationship see Wolfgang Augustyn, ‘Georg Pictorius und sein Handbuch zur Mythologie: Theologia mythologica (Freiburg 1532) and Apotheseos (!) tam exterarum gentium . . . libri tres (Basel 1558)’, in Kunst und Humanismus: Festschrift für Gosbert Schüßler, ed. Wolfgang Augustyn und Eckard Leuschner (Passau: Dietmar Klinger, 2007), 209–46. 75 Karl Enenkel, ‘The Development of Sixteenth-Century Mythography: Georg Pictorius’s Theologia mythologica, Apotheosis deorum and Julien de Havrech’s De cognominibus deorum gentilium’, in Classical Mythology in the Netherlands in the Age of Renaissance and Baroque: Proceedings of the International Conference Antwerp 19–21 May 2005, ed. Carl van de Velde (Leuven: Peters, 2009), 211–53, here 241. 76 Enenkel, ‘The Development of Sixteenth-Century Mythography’, 214. 77 Giraldi, De deis gentium, 422.

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By the Etruscans, Mercury was called Camillus, i.e. servant, as Servius teaches in his Virgil commentary, and Plutarch in Numa. However, the commentaries of Pindar and Lycophron say that Mercury was called καδμίλος by the Boeotians. And in the learned commentaries on the Argonautica of Apollonius he seems to be called Casmilus. The same in Varro’s De lingua Latina. Hence in the mysteries of Samothrace he is called Casmilus, a certain god who is an assistant to the great gods. I put my faith in the Greek, because I have found it in Callimachus amongst his little poems.

This is the kind of humanist research Enenkel has in mind. But Pictorius’s full entry on this cognomen, which in length and scholarly depth resembles his other entries on names, reads: ‘Canillum [sic] dixere, quasi omnium deorum praeministrante[m]’ (‘He is called Camillus, as if to say, the one who ministers to all the gods’).78 The author of Apotheseos cannot be described as a man chasing recent philological developments. With scholarly ambition crossed off the list of possible motivations, it is not apparent why Pictorius should have written a second mythography. By 1558, he had long left behind the Latin school for a career as a physician, which he supported by producing a plethora of medical books. In Pictorius’s long publication record, Apotheseos stands out as the only text on literary or ancient matters composed after he left his position as headmaster in 1535.79 He might have used the book as a calling-card. The text is dedicated to Werner von Zimmern, who owned a library and Wunderkammer of very high repute. In 1558, Pictorius did not yet know von Zimmern, but his aristocratic patient Georg von Helfenstein was a mutual acquaintance. In his dedication, Pictorius explains how von Helfenstein had pointed out von Zimmern as a fitting patron for this book, and asks to be inscribed into his list of clients.80 There is little evidence to evaluate Pictorius’s success in this venture. His biographer Tilman Wertz records that, by 1563, Pictorius had been to Herrenzimmern at least once and had seen its treasures.81 If Pictorius frequented the castle more often than that, he might have met Johannes Herold there, who spent

78 Georg Pictorius, Apotheseos tam exterarum gentium quam Romanorum deorum libri tres, nomina, imagines & earundem imaginum complecte[n]tes allegorias (Basel, 1558), 37 [recte p. 36, or sig. C7v]. 79 In this paragraph, I am indebted to the bibliography and biography in Tilman Wertz, Georgius Pictorius (1500–1569/73): Leben und Werk eines oberrheinischen Arztes und Humanisten (Heidelberg: Palatina Verlag, 2006). 80 81 Pictorius, Apotheseos, sig. A3r. Wertz, Pictorius, 62.

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his last working years in von Zimmern’s library to research a universal history.82 In contrast to the other works discussed in this survey, Pictorius wrote his mythographies for a clearly defined, personally identifiable, audience. The first was meant as a primer for his students, the second was, at least partly, intended to expand his local social network. In both cases, Pictorius aimed at a general introduction to the gods. The title page of Theologia mythologica identifies three areas of mythographical interest that imply the book’s well-rounded completeness: ‘De nominum deorum gentilium ratione. De imaginibus, aut formis, insignibusq[ue] eorundem. Et omnium imaginum explanationes allegoricae’ (‘An account of the names of the pagan gods. About their images or shapes and the insignia of the same. And the allegorical explanations of all images’). The same plenitude is promised on the title page of Apotheseos: ‘Libri tres. Nomina. imagines, & earundem imaginum complecte[n]tes allegorias’ (‘Three books comprising the names, images, and the allegories of these images’). Significantly, the three topics that circumscribe the self-contained works by Pictorius are the same as the three foci of the dominant Italian works. At the beginning of this chapter, I criticized Jean Seznec for lumping together the Italian mythographies as if they were one work. But it would also be wrong to overlook a sense of coherence amongst them in sixteenth-century sources. They are, for example, invoked in unison by John Marston, when he satirically poses as a reader in despair: O darknes palpable! Egipts black night! My wit is stricken blind, hath lost his sight. My shins are broke, with groping for some sence To know to what his words have reference. Certes (sunt) but (non videtur) that I know. Reach me some Poets Index that will show. Imagines Deorum. Booke of Epithites, Natales Comes, thou I know recites, And mak’st Anatomie of Poesie.83

82

Herold worked from 1563 to 1567 in the library of Herrenzimmern; see Burckhardt, Herold, 249–63. 83 This is from the second satire, ‘Quedam sunt, et non videntur’, in John Marston, The Metamorphosis of Pigmalions Image and Certaine Satyres (London, 1598), 38–49, here 39–40. I first encountered this quotation in Mulryan and Brown, ‘Introduction’, xxxvii.

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Bruised, blinded, and utterly lost in the dim thicket of his poet’s invention, Marston’s speaker tries to get some clarity by consulting three books at all once: one each on images, names, and allegory, or, metonymically speaking, Cartari (‘Imagines Deorum’), Giraldi (‘Booke of Epithites’), and ‘Natales Comes’. If Pictorius and Marston are anything to go by, the triad of names, images, and allegories is a distinctive feature of Renaissance mythography and represents the essential constituents of the subject, as a whole, as it was conceived in the early modern period. To borrow Marston’s phrase, they make up the anatomy of mythography. It is now possible to summarize some of the main characteristics of early sixteenth-century European mythographies. Several of the following points might seem obvious, because they meet our general expectations about reference manuals. It is worth making these assumptions explicit, however, in order to be able to identify the many ways in which English mythographies differ from their continental predecessors. The European mythographies were intended by their authors to serve as educational tools, and they were used as such. By providing information, these texts were able to enhance the pleasures of reading. The readers are fashioned as students of the ancients—be they pupils in school, general readers of Latin, or fully fledged scholars. They will be spared the Herculean labours undertaken by the mythographer, but reap all the benefits of a deeper understanding of the ancient texts and a clearer as well as fuller application of ancient wisdom. The success of this project does not depend on the mythography being read from cover to cover. These texts could be dipped into when and where needed. As a consequence of their function, these reference manuals grew in bulk and comprehensiveness—a tendency made possible by new technologies of knowledge organization—until a saturation point was reached with the triumvirate of Giraldi, Cartari, and Conti. As one might expect from reference works, European mythographies were not involved in the fast-paced political and religious skirmishes of their day. Non-topicality was a positive value for these texts, as it eased their dissemination in Europe across national and confessional boundaries. It was also a condition for their astounding longevity (many European mythographies were republished again and again until the end of the seventeenth century) and their success across countries. Accordingly, mythographers who thought their publications in danger of being dragged into current debates did what they could to avoid what

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they saw as a misappropriation of their work. This is not to say that a man like Giraldi would shy away from making a topical observation here or there, or that the allegories in the mythographies were always disinterested. But the success of such a mythography or its ability to serve its intended purpose did not depend on a reader noticing such scattered comments or biases. This eclecticism and openness fits their generic kinship with miscellanies and their educational and encyclopedic aims. Although English mythographers build directly on one or more of their continental predecessors, they take the genre into a completely new direction. They were short and not very helpful with regard to mythological allusions in books. Not only did they comment on the current affairs of their day, they were written to intervene in them. In order to do so, they had to adopt a particular interpretative stance. Thus, the following discussions of the English mythographies written between 1577 and 1647 give us access to a range of conceptualizations of myth and an introduction to its living presence in English Renaissance culture.

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2 Stephen Batman, Edmund Spenser, and Myth as an Art of Discernment When scholars think about Stephen Batman—if they ever think about Stephen Batman—it is usually in one of three contexts: Archbishop Matthew Parker’s library, the reception of Bartholomew the Englishman’s encyclopaedia, or Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. In the first context, the London-based clergyman is famous for having collected a staggering amount of material from monastic libraries for the Archbishop in the 1570s. When Batman later recalled his success, he stated that he recovered ‘six thousand seaven hundred Bookes, by my onelye travaile, whereof choyce being taken, [Parker] most gratiouslye bestowed many on Corpus Christi Colledge in Cambridge’.1 Substantial work has been done on Batman’s own collection of medieval manuscripts, including gems such as Piers Plowman and Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.2 Linked to his engagement with the Catholic past, and another area of scholarly 1 Stephen Batman, The Doome, Warning All Men to the Judgement Wherein are Contayned for the Most Parte All the Straunge Prodigies Hapned in the Worlde, with Diuers Secrete Figures of Reuelations Tending to Mannes Stayed Conuersion towardes God: in Maner of a Generall Chronicle (London, 1582), 400. 2 For this line of research, see Kate McLoughlin, ‘Magdalen College Ms Pepys 2498 and Stephen Batman’s Reading Practices’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 10 (1994), 525–34; M. B. Parkes, ‘Stephen Batman’s Manuscripts’, in Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami, ed. Masahiko Kanno et al. (Tokyo: Yushodo Press, 1997), 125–56; A. S. G. Edwards, ‘Editing and Ideology: Stephen Batman and the Book of Privy Counselling’, in Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake, ed. Geoffrey Lester (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 268–79; A. S. G. Edwards and Simon Horobin, ‘Further Books Annotated by Stephen Batman’, The Library 11 (2010), 227–31; Simon Horobin, ‘Stephen Batman and his Manuscripts of Piers Ploughman’, Review of English Studies 62 (2011), 358–72.

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interest, is his big editorial project Batman uppon Bartholome His Book De proprietatibus rerum (1582)—a revised and expanded edition of John Trevisa’s fourteenth-century translation of the thirteenth-century compilatio.3 In comparison to his textual work, Batman’s skill as a visual artist and extensive use of woodcuts has gained little attention.4 Literary critics have studied Batman mainly because they have sensed a connection between Batman’s work and Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Jennifer Summit has read the library of Eumnestes and the destruction of the Bower of Bliss in Book II as reflections of ‘a distinctly post-Reformation concern with the institution of the library’, and placed these episodes into the context of Parker and his book collectors.5 John N. King has relied on Batman’s early work A Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation (1569) to contextualize Spenser’s anti-Catholic imagery in Book I.6 Even more closely associated with the Faerie Queene is Batman’s Travayled Pylgrime, also from 1569. This readable and beautifully illustrated quest allegory follows a knight called Author, who travels over the Field of Time under the guidance of his companion Reason. Andrew Hadfield thinks it is ‘obvious’ that Spenser knew Batman’s Pylgrime.7 Other critics are more cautious. Katherine Koller has pointed out the similarities to Book II of the Faerie Queene; Anne Lake Prescott thinks Book I works even better as a parallel. Koller, Prescott, and Sutch believe Spenser had read The Travayled Pylgrime, but, because Batman’s book is based on a Spanish version of a popular French text—Le Chevalier delibéré by Olivier de la Marche (1483)—they avoid terms such as ‘influence’ or ‘source’ to describe the connection between Batman’s pilgrim and Spenser’s knights.8 They opt for ‘analogy’ and ‘precedent’ 3 See e.g. Elizabeth Keen, The Journey of a Book: Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things (Canberra: Australian National University E-Press, 2007), 133–54. 4 An exception is David Davis, ‘The Vayle of Eternall Memorie: Contesting Representations of Queen Elizabeth in English Woodcuts’, Words & Image: A Journal of Verbal/ Visual Enquiry 27.1 (2011), 65–76. 5 Jennifer Summit, ‘Monuments and Ruins: Spenser and the Problem of the English Library’, English Literary History 70 (2003), 1–34, here 1. An expanded version of this article appeared as chapter 3 of Summit’s monograph Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 101–35. 6 John N. King, Spenser’s Poetry and the Reformation Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 49 et passim. 7 Andrew Hadfield, Edmund Spenser: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 114. 8 Katherine Koller, ‘The Travayled Pylgryme by Stephen Batman and Book Two of The Faerie Queene’, Modern Language Quarterly 3 (1942), 535–41; Anne Lake Prescott and Susie

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instead. Spenserians are, however, confident that Spenser knew Batman uppon Bartholome, and this is the text by Batman most frequently referenced in the Spenser Encyclopedia. Maybe in an effort to push Batman into the spotlight, Andrew Hadfield has recently made a biographical connection between Spenser and Batman. He stresses that both were closely connected to Dutch immigrant communities in London and further relates them through their respective employers. From 1578 to 1579, Spenser was the secretary of John Young, the Bishop of Rochester. This was a productive time for Spenser, who was working on the Shepheardes Calender as well as drafts for Book II of The Faerie Queene. Because Young and Batman’s employer Parker ‘were closely allied within the church hierarchy’, Hadfield thinks it likely that Spenser and Batman knew each other.9 Hadfield’s scenario is complicated by the fact that Parker was already dead when Spenser worked for Young. But his instinct is right: we should begin to take notice of the overlaps between the lives of the two men, their social and professional environment, and their interests—not least, mythology and mythography. The main reason for the lack of engagement with The Golden Booke lies in the fact that the handful of critics who have glanced at this mythography have dismissed it as mad and hardly worth a second look. Noel Purdon, whose discussion of The Golden Booke is the most detailed investigation into this mythography to date, has a difficult time with Batman’s treatment of the pagan gods. When Batman turns to the Catholics and sectarians, the scholar loses his patience: ‘Now comes the really schizophrenic part of the book, both in form—it wavers between catechism, diatribe, and essay—and in material, which is usually inappropriate, badly organized, and stupidly connected.’10 With respect to its place in the history of mythography, Noel Purdon declares the first English mythography to be a degeneration. The following chapter offers a radically different evaluation of The Golden Booke. It argues that the oddities of this text are the result of

Speakman Sutch, ‘Translation as Transformation: Oliver de La Marche’s “Le Chevalier Délibéré” and its Hapsburg and Elizabethan Permutations’, Comparative Literature Studies 25.4 (1988), 281–317; Anne Lake Prescott, ‘Spenser’s Chivalric Restoration: From Bateman’s “Travayled Pylgrime” to the Redcrosse Knight’, Studies in Philology 86.2 (1989), 166–97. 9

Hadfield, Spenser, 114.

10

Purdon, Words of Mercury, 49.

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a new take on the function of its genre. Batman picked up Georg Pictorius’s second, pleasantly learned mythography and shaped it into a rhetorical tool against a particularly pernicious threat to Protestant souls. Where previous mythographers avoided getting embroiled in religious debates, Batman dove right into a rising wave of opposition against the Family of Love. The success of his attack rests on a clever combination of two perspectives on the ancient gods and their images that are usually seen as contradictory: the gods’ negative religious function as damnable idols, and their positive moral and social function as poetic allegory. Batman does not allow these two attitudes just to sit uncomfortably next to each other; he seeks to unite them in a single concept of myth, which he calls a ‘strau[n]ge entermixed stratageme’. The tensions—so symptomatic for Renaissance culture—between Protestant and humanist approaches to myth are also reflected in the iconographical choices Batman made in this mythography. The first half of this chapter is a contextualized analysis of The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes, and reconstructs one of the more creative roles myth played in the religious controversies of Elizabethan England. The second half reaps the literary rewards of reading Batman. I argue that Batman’s pedagogy of perception, which is embedded in his careful structural design, can enrich our understanding of myth in contemporary poetry. I will demonstrate this potential by taking a fresh look at Edmund Spenser’s mythological programme in Book II, Canto xii of The Faerie Queene.

2.1. The First English Mythography and its European Source If one leafs superficially through The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes, one could think that D. C. Allen and John Mulryan are right, and that the first English mythography is a wholly derivative text. Stephen Batman starts off with descriptions of thirty-nine pagan deities for which he relies heavily on a European mythography, the Neo-Latin Apotheseos published in 1558 by the German medical doctor Georg Pictorius.11 The debt is acknowledged by Batman, who lists Pictorius with his other authorities 11

For Pictorius’s Apotheseos, see my discussion in Ch. 1.

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at the back of his book.12 Pictorius covered thirty-nine deities over the course of a conversation between the learned Theophrastus and his pupil Evander. Stephen Batman follows Pictorius’s selection of gods and their sequential arrangement precisely, with three exceptions: Priapus is moved from number 23 to 34; Pictorius’s consecutive entries on Harpokrates and Angeronia are combined under one heading; and the Englishman concludes his descriptions of the pagan gods with an entry on Castor and Pollux that has no precedent in Pictorius. Batman abandons the dialogue form and instead pours the mythographical information into blocks of prose. He loosely translates large sections from Pictorius’s Latin, favouring material on images over material on the gods’ names and epithets. Overall, however, Batman rejects far more than he incorporates and liberally adds his own interpretations of attributes as well as anecdotes and fables. The Englishman thus uses the structure and some of the image-related content from Apotheseos as the scaffolding for what is very much his own edifice. Moreover, The Golden Booke does not end with Castor and Pollux. The material taken from Pictorius forms only the first part of a mythography that extends its scope over a series of gods that include Vorax, the Capital God of Superstition, St Francis, and John of Leyden. This transforms the list of pagan deities Batman took from Pictorius into only the first in a series of three groups of deities. Structure is an important element in this text. Having reached the end of the pagans, the reader finds a woodcut, the only actual illustration in the book. The design is non-representational and made up entirely of Hebrew, Roman, and Arabic numbers. This abstract design divides The Golden Booke into a pagan ‘before’ and a Christian ‘after’. Following the miscellaneous middle section is a very short discussion of the Catholic gods, of which only three are named: St Francis, St Dunstan, and St Giles. Finally, we reach the last set of leaden gods, the sectarians. Headed by the great god ‘Papa’, this last list uncoils to include Christian heretics and sectarians from the Pharisees to the Anabaptists, and thus brings the chronology up to Batman’s own day. The pagan section, with the material taken from Pictorius, establishes The Golden Booke as a mythography, but Batman’s polemic expansion of his list of deities signals that this is not the usual kind. This mythography

12

For a detailed discussion of this debt, see Purdon, Words of Mercury, 41–51.

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presents itself structurally as a whole and clearly wants to convince its readers of something important. But of what exactly? How does Batman meaningfully relate Jupiter, St Francis, and John of Leyden?

2.2. A ‘Strau[n]ge entermixed stratageme’: Batman’s Concept of Myth The short answer is that all of the leaden gods in The Golden Booke are defined throughout as ‘imagined gods’. They are, as the subtitle announces, ‘the vayne imaginations of Heathe[n] Pagans, and counterfaict Christians’, and Batman refers to his project as ‘this smal Treatise of the putatiue & imagined Gods of the Gentiles’.13 ‘Vain imaginations’, ‘putative and imagined’, and ‘counterfeit’ all play variations on these gods’ non-existence, sinfulness, and deceptiveness. The etymology of the term highlights that they are not just abstract notions: our minds body them forth in sensual terms. The word ‘imagined’ in this mythography also explains the gods’ place of conception and birth: like Minerva from Jupiter, or Milton’s Sin from Satan, all of the deities in The Golden Booke have sprung from ‘phantastical braynes’.14 These illusions of divinity conflict with a truth that is identified soon after. Batman explains to his dedicatee Henry Carey that his mythography is a text: [w]herein we Christians, now lyuinge in the cleare light of the Gospel, may euidently see, with what erroneous tru[m]peries, Antiquitie hath bene nozzeled: in what foggy mystes, they haue long wandered: in what filthye puddles they haue bene myered: under what masking vysors of clouted religio[n]s, they haue bene bewytched: what traditions they haue of theyr owne phantastical braynes to themselues forged: & finallye into what Apostacye, Atheisme, Blasphemy, Idolatrye, and Heresie, they haue plunged their Soules, & affiaunced their beleeues.15

In this mini-allegory, personified Antiquity first seems an abused victim, set stumbling on a cruel and confusing path by an unknown deceiver, until it is revealed how implicated she was in her own fall. In so far as this Antiquity is Everyman, however, her blindness and self-deception can

13 14 15

Batman, Golden Booke, sig. [fleuron] 2v. Batman, Golden Booke, sig. [fleuron] 2v. Batman, Golden Booke, sig. [fleuron] 2v.

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also be read as the ongoing struggle between the simple clarity of Christian truth and a thousand darkling fabrications. But there is a difference between the pagans in the past and the ‘Christians now’, whom Batman is addressing, and that is the availability of a reliable test for religious truth. Batman gives thanks to God ‘for the reuealing of him selfe unto us, in his moste sacred and blessed worde, the most perfect Touchstone, which unfeynedlye tryeth Truth and Simplicity, fro[m] Falshode & Hypocrisie’.16 The Bible not only divides truth from falsehood, but also removes the complex and obscuring layers of spiritual lies, revealing the naked simplicity of the true faith. Batman’s dedication outlines one of the central problems of Christianity: how can we know God and his truth? Batman retraces John Calvin’s approach to the problem in The Institutes of the Christian Religion. This text was widely available in English in Thomas Norton’s influential translation, from which I quote. Calvin explained that man instinctively understands that there is a deity, and it is natural that we seek to know him. Ideally, ‘the godly minde doth not as by a dreame ymagine to her selfe any god at aduenture, but stedfastly beholdeth the only one and trew God: and doth not falsely forge of him whatsoeuer her selfe lyketh, but is content to beleue him to be such a one as he discloseth him self ’.17 In other words, God is always like himself and ‘no imagined Ghost or fantasy’.18 But the vast and miserable majority do not inquire soberly into God’s truth. Instead, they ‘curiously fly to vaine speculations’ and ‘imagine hym suche a one as of their owne rashe presumption they haue forged hym’.19 This, Calvin writes, results in a multitude of imagined gods: Truly euen as out of a wide and large spring do issue waters, so the infinite numbre of gods hath flowed out of the wit of man, while euery man ouer licentiousely strayeng, erroniously deuiseth this or that concernyng God hym selfe. And yet I nede not here to make a register of the superstitions, wherewith the world hath ben entangled: bycause . . . in soo dooynge I should neuer have ende.20

16 Batman, Golden Booke, sig. [fleuron] 2v and 4r. Due to a mistake at the printinghouse, the final page of the dedication was separated from the previous one by the two commendatory poems. 17 John Calvin, The Institution of Christian Religion, trans. Thomas Norton (London, 1561), fol. 2v. 18 19 Calvin, Institution, fol. 5r. Calvin, Institution, fol. 4v. 20 Calvin, Institution, fol. 10r.

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Man needs more help than the light of nature can afford if he is not to drown in a deluge of proliferating phantom gods. This is why God, who had already left plenty of traces in his creation, added the light of his Word to guide the faithful. Calvin explains that ‘we ought to learne by the Scripture, that god which is the creator of the world, is by certaine markes seuerallye discerned from the counterfait multitude of false gods’.21 Even to apprehend God, the creator (let alone God, the redeemer), Christians need to study scripture. So far, Calvin’s imagined gods are the same as Batman’s. In contrast to Calvin, however, the English pastor did not find it unnecessary ‘to make a register of the superstitions, wherewith the world hath ben entangled’—this is exactly what The Golden Booke is. The reason why such a catalogue of false gods was called for is implied in the dedication, and spelled out in the commendatory poems. E.L., who contributes the first set of verses, plays on Batman’s name and the title of the mythography to capture the revelatory nature of this book: This Booke beholde, that Leaden Gods contayne: And how a Bat, like glittering Gold most bright, Those glosinge Gods depaintes in colours playne: That euery man, which doth his Booke beholde, For guerdon will geeue it, the name of Golde.22

Similarly, Thomas Newton, the author of the second praise poem, considers Batman a discoverer of fraudulent gods: Curas, ne Stygius lupus insidietur ouili, Romanusue pias rabula vexet oues. Praestigias aperis, veterum et figmenta deorum, Et pandis verae relligionis [sic] iter. Detegis horrendi fraudes Cacodaemonis atras, Informas Iuuenes, erudis atq[ue] rudes.23 You take care lest the hellish wolf lies in ambush for the sheepfold; or the Roman pettifogger harasses the flocks. You uncover the deceptions and the figments of the old gods, and you show the way of true religion. You expose the black frauds of the evil spirit; you fashion young men and you educate the rude.

21 23

22 Calvin, Institution, fol. 12r. Batman, Golden Booke, sig. [fleuron] 3v. Batman, Golden Booke, sig. [fleuron] 3r.

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The commendatory poems show two things. First, this mythography is not meant for readers of Ovid, but for Christian believers in need of guidance. Second, it is meant to be an aid in the difficult work of discerning religious truth from falsehood. While the Bible represents truth and identifies whatever diverges from it as irreligion, The Golden Booke offers a series of positive identifications of imagined gods so that the readers know how to spot them when they come their way. Accordingly, Batman writes in the middle section: as before is described the Gods of the Gentiles: so foloweth after the Gods of the Romish Churche, to the ende that euery true Christian, may the better dyscerne the light from Darkenesse, and Truth from Falshood: and co[n]ferring the vayne imaginacions of tyme past, with the true Touchstone in tyme present, shal easelye espie, the broade way to destruction, through the which too manye haue passed.24

This is the counter-allegory to Antiquity’s blind groping towards the abyss. For the true Christian, the fogs are lifted and his sight is restored. Batman’s mythography hopes to aid this process by teaching the art of discernment that enables the faithful to recognize the dangers in their path. The passionate rhetoric of exposure may be a little over the top with regard to the false gods mentioned in the prefatory material and in the middle section. It is not likely that Jupiter and Isis were insinuating themselves into the hearts of Batman’s parishioners in St Mary Newington. The Catholics, of course, were a realistic threat, but one that Batman’s Golden Booke locates in the past as ‘a seruile bondage, as our forefathers haue long continued in’.25 How are we to interpret the role of the ancient and the Catholic gods in this text? The answer lies in the structure of the mythography, which invites the reader to compare and contrast all three groups of ‘imagined gods’. We progress from antiquity to an immediate past to the present. We also pass from gods that no one believes in anymore, to those who have been successfully identified as wolves among the flock, in order finally to arrive at current, lesser known evils. As we move along this series, it becomes clear that the ancient gods are not exactly the same as the Catholics, who are not exactly the same as the sectarians. Batman practices repetition with a difference. He has a didactic intention, and the dissimilarities between the ‘imagined gods’ are the most instructive aspect of this mythography. 24

Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 22v.

25

Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 29v.

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Rather surprisingly, when Batman starts into his actual mythography with the thirty-nine entries on the pagan deities, he adopts a positive framework for his ‘imagined gods’, completely different from the one he outlines in the preface. Batman concludes nearly every entry of his mythography with a short paragraph introduced by a variation of the phrase ‘the poets feign’. These paragraphs are without exception Batman’s addition and not to be found in his Neo-Latin source. The expression ‘the poets feign’ occurs like a chorus thirty-five times and locates the origins of myth in the mind of a poet. Proteus, for example, ‘hath no shape or likenesse, because the Poetes faygne that he was a God of the Sea, which could turne himselfe into any shape’.26 The poetic activity is based on an endeavour to instruct the audience morally: The Poets faygne Cerberus . . . hauing three heades, the one of a Goate, the seconde of a Beare, the thirde of a Tyger, whereby is also signified, Lechery, Gourmandise, and Murder: dyvers haue framed diuers shapes, onely to paint forth the filthines of vice, the more to terrify the folowinge Age.27

Significantly, this Cerberus comes with exchangeable heads: Batman portrays mythology as a living tradition of allegorical fiction that remains endlessly adaptable to teach the lessons a specific audience needs. Throughout the thirty-nine entries, Batman’s label ‘imagined gods’ signifies the same thing Philip Sidney meant when he was discussing mythological figures as the quintessential products of the imagination. In A Defence of Poetry, which was composed around the same time as The Golden Booke, the poet’s imagination brings forth fictions like ‘the Heroes, Demigods, Cyclops, Chimeras, Furies, and such like’ for the benefit of the reader.28 As long as nobody believes them to be true, these figments do an important job: If then a man can arrive to that child’s age to know that the poets’ persons and doings are but pictures what should be, and not stories what have been, they will never give the lie to things not affirmatively but allegorically and figuratively written. And therefore, as in history, looking for truth, they may go away full

26

27 Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 20r [= 18r]. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 10v. Philip Sidney, ‘A Defence of Poetry’ in Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten, Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 73–121, here 78. Although composed in the late 1570s/early 1580s, the Defence was not published until 1595. For a précis of composition and publication dates, see Jan van Dorsten’s introduction to Sidney, ‘Defence’, 60–70. 28

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fraught with falsehood, so in poesy, looking but for fiction, they shall use the narration but as an imaginative ground-plot of a profitable invention.29

Calvin’s imagined gods are bad, because people believe in them. Sidney’s poetic gods, born from the very same mental faculty, are a seedbed for positive moral growth, as long as people treat them as merely fictitious. Batman’s entries on the pagan gods highlight the positive aspect of their imaginary nature. This respectable side of the gods is linked to the wisdom, piety, and love of virtue with which sixteenth-century humanists like Batman invested the ancients, especially the Romans. The ancient Romans had such great regard for virtue, Batman explains, that they dedicated three goddesses to it, Strenua, Agenoria, and Stimula. He writes: Seing therfore that the Gentiles and heathnish people in auncient times past, haue so preferred vertue that not onely they haue executed their lawes by punishinge the Ungodlye: but also haue lefte in Tables, written, paynted, and grauen, the substaunce of that which they professed for a perpetuall recorde of theyre liues and conuersations, howe much more oughte wee that are Christians esteme of the most deuine tables geue[n] by God to Moses. wherein was drawen by the finger of the almighty, the happie gouernment of mannes felicitye?30

Batman’s analogy between myth and the Mosaic law might seem rather bold, but Homer and Moses were often seen as analogous. It was a common assumption in the Renaissance that poets like Homer functioned as the primary lawgivers and theologians of the ancient world— George Puttenham, for example, mentions this tradition.31 Of course, for Batman, the pagan records are inferior to the Ten Commandments, but that only underlines how shocking it is that Christians, who have better laws, live so immorally. This stress on the positive dimension of the pagan deities does not mean that Batman abandoned the definition of ‘imagined gods’ which he had outlined in his prefatory material. When he discusses the history of religion in the middle section, he shows that the ancient gods were the common offspring of Satan and the human mind. After the Holy Spirit 30 Sidney, ‘Defence’, 103. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 24r. Puttenham has two chapters titled: ‘How the first poets were the first priests, the first prophets, the first legislators and politicians in the world’ and ‘How the poets were the first philosophers, the first astronomers, and historiographers, and orators, and musicians of the world’. Homer was, of course, all of these things. George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy, ed. Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 96 and 98. 29 31

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had withdrawn from postlapsarian humanity, ‘Satha[n] presently steps in, and so fillinge the mynde wyth vayn cogitations, wh[i]ch presently began inuocations to diuyls, honours to spirites, & worshipinge of creatures’.32 Once engaged, the human imagination proved prolific. The Golden Booke features gods born from civic pride (like Minerva in Athens), from the wish to express values (like Strenua, Agenoria, and Stimula), and the desire to honour innovators, heroes, or benefactors. The conflicting meanings of the term ‘imagined gods’ are united in what amounts to Batman’s definition of ancient mythology. Although humanity’s descent into polytheism involved a rapid proliferation of false gods engendered by Satan and the human mind, Batman writes, ‘neuerthelesse in the middest of the which sin, there amo[n]g some remayned the sparkes of treue seruice, by the which although outwarde Idolatrous, yet inwarde by lawes, & constitutions verteous’.33 Piety, lawfulness, and morality are possible even in a world practising a false religion. Batman calls this a ‘Strau[n]ge entermixed stratageme’, and means to integrate the contradictory views of the pagans that govern his mythography: the irreligious heathens and the virtuous model citizens.34 His regard for the ancients goes so far that he renders idolatry an external feature, and virtue their inward quality. It is likely that Batman builds on St Augustine’s concept of civic theology in De civitate Dei VI (chapters 2–7), which presents pagan myth as a false religion that, on a political level, improves people and cultivates civic virtues. If so, this establishes a conceptual link to the only other mythographer in the English Renaissance who is also a minister of the Church of England: Alexander Ross, whose work is discussed in Chapter 6, makes extensive use of Augustine. Batman’s view of myth as a mixture between irreligion and moral virtue has implications for his allegory. The topic of watchfulness can serve as an example. Minerva, who signifies wisdom, is given an owl that ‘representeth warynesse, because when all other sleepe, she waketh’.35 Osiris’s canine features signifie ‘the watchful barkinge of spirituality’.36 When Batman discusses Mercury, he takes his time to unfold the story of the death of Argus at great length. Despite his one hundred eyes, Argus is 32 34 36

Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 24v. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 24v. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 15v.

33 35

Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 24v. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 5v.

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lulled to sleep by Mercury, who then kills the failed guard. This is taken to mean that nobody is so circumspect that they cannot be deceived by flattery.37 As moral advice, such readings are unremarkable. But Batman’s contemporary Christian reader is supposed to grasp the irony when counterfeit gods preach spiritual vigilance. One of Batman’s allegorical comments on watchfulness seems almost programmatic. It is that on Jupiter’s bird and cupbearer, in the very first chapter of The Golden Booke: by the Eagle is understode the Soule . . . , by the Page, the simplicity therof: intimating thereby, that if the Soule of Man, be free from the querkes [i.e. the tricks] of dissembling phantasie, and as the Eagle soareth aloft, so if the Soule of Man, shalbe occupied with heauenlye cogitations, that then shalbee enioyed the Cup of golde, whereby is signified the rewarde of Vertue, in the presence of Iupiter.38

In this instance, Batman’s allegory requires the reader to know and supply the ancient Neo-Platonic reading of the fable of Ganymede as the ascent of the soul to heaven. This is the necessary stepping-stone on the way to the intended Calvinist reading: only those souls will reach heaven that are able to recognize and resist the dissembling fantasies of false religion. The relationship between these two allegorical readings can be understood, with John Hollander, in terms of metalepsis (the rhetorical trope of transumption).39 That is, we can arrange the readings on a timeline and observe how the temporal distance between them creates space for interpretative comment. The Neo-Platonic allegory is revealed as spiritually hollow in comparison to the Protestant one, and, what is more, the ancient account of the soul’s ascent into heaven is identified as just the kind of dissembling fantasy that must be avoided by faithful Christians. Hollander’s comment that ‘the whole Renaissance is in a sense a transumption of antique culture’ is particularly apt for Batman’s treatment of this fable: ‘This process of taking hold of something poetically in order to revise it upwards, as it were, cancelling and transforming . . . is metaleptic in the broadest sense.’40 Just as the eagle lifts the boy, Batman carries the pagan allegory of the soul upwards onto a higher, truer 37

38 Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 4v. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 1v. John Hollander, The Figure of Echo: A Mode of Allusion in Milton and After (Berkley: University of California Press, 1981), esp. ch. 5 and the appendix ‘The Trope of Transumption’. 40 Hollander, The Figure of Echo, 147. 39

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spiritual plane. Thus, in a moment of transumptive mythography, Batman’s allegoresis actually performs the rape of Ganymede.41 In The Golden Booke, Batman has developed a concept of ancient myth that incorporates three different aspects: its role as irreligion in a past reality; its role as a poetic record of moral laws for an ancient, admirable society; and its continuing significance as allegory in Batman’s own day. I believe he chose the phrase ‘imagined gods’ as the umbrella term for his mythography over other possible vocabulary, such as ‘idols’, precisely because it allowed him to accommodate positive associations with ancient mythology. In doing so, the mythographer presents a solution for a dilemma that many faithful Protestant humanists struggled with when they were torn between their admiration for the ancients and pity for their lost souls.

2.3. The Imagined Gods of the Catholics and the Family of Love The gap between the imagined gods of the pagans and those of the Catholics is easily bridged. Tapping into an established tradition of reformed attacks against Catholic saint worship as idolatry, Batman uses the word ‘saint’ synonymously with ‘god’ as he talks about ‘the supersticious Gods and Saincts of Romayne factions’.42 But the Catholic gods are much worse than the pagans. This becomes evident in one of the transitional texts in the middle section, a translation of the altercation between the emperor Augustus and the philosopher Epictetus. Batman, who otherwise translates this dialogue faithfully, cannot help but intrude on the question ‘What is Rome?’ In the Altercatio, Hadrian’s inquiry ‘quid est Roma?’ is followed by a commendation of the city consistent with Batman’s admiration for its earthly glory: Rome is a fountain of empire and a consecration of eternal peace.43 Batman reproduces this 41 For a study of Ganymede as a locus of self-reflexive metalepsis in the Renaissance, see Leonard Barkan, Transuming Passion: Ganymede and the Erotics of Humanism (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991). 42 Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 29v. 43 Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti philosophi, ed. Lloyd William Daly and Walther Suchier (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1939), 107; Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 27v. Batman asserts that he has taken this dialogue ‘out of Vegetius de re militari’ (Golden Booke, fol. 24v). Batman owned a copy of Vegetius, De re militari (1535), which is now in the Parker

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exchange and then interpolates the question ‘What is Rome, sithens it [is] ruled by religion?’ He replies himself: The Fou[n]tayne of Ciuil dissenio[n], poured into su[n]dry Kingdomes: A Brothell house for Whores mayntenaunce: A Sa[n]ctuary for Murtherers, & Theeues: A Pardon for homicide, the Temple of Idolatry: a depriuation of Vertue: the execrable face of al the furies.44

Both ancient Rome and Catholic Rome might have adored false gods, but Catholic Rome lacks all the redeeming features of the ancient heathens. Instead, it fuels immorality, lawlessness, and irreligion. The Golden Booke charts a downward trajectory with respect to virtue and social stability, and an upward trajectory with regard to spiritual danger and political unrest. The Catholic gods’ darker shade of evil is emphasized by a change in Batman’s language of the imagination. While the pagan part of the mythography foregrounded the literary imagination of poets, there are now only two makers of gods: the Pope and Satan. While the thirty-nine pagan figures were arranged in an orderly list, the Catholic gods run to an overwhelming total. ‘Such a number of preposterous Godds are to bee found: so Saincted & made by the mayster Demon, that to write them al, woulde contayne an huge volume.’45 Accordingly, Batman changes his mythographical method from a list to a pars pro toto. He selects three saints as examples: ‘These have I sette onlye to sharpen the myndes of wel disposed [readers], the better to consider the rest.’46 In the context of Batman’s fierce Protestantism, the hagiographic language of his chapter on St Francis may at first seem disconcerting. Francis is described as sitting in the highest place in heaven. He is distinguished by bearing the wounds of Christ and ‘hathe obserued the lawe of the highest’.47 This kind of talk culminates in the statement that ‘Frauncis was like the sonne of God’.48 Batman allows the familiar and comfortable language of saint worship to run unchecked, as if to try and fool his reader into nodding assent. At the point of highest praise, Library in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge (class mark SP 311). However, this copy does not contain the Altercatio, nor am I aware of any edition that combined these texts. 44 46 48

Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 27v. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 29v. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 29r.

45 47

Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 29v. Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 29r.

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however, he abruptly stops the flow of Catholic sentiment: ‘whether this be horrible blasphemy, let al that be of God, Iudge.’ I am tempted to say that Batman’s reader is to be surprised by sin here, much like Stanley Fish thinks Milton is tripping up his readers in Paradise Lost.49 At any rate, Batman’s entries on the Catholic gods propose that Catholic hypocrisy is worse than open irreligion, and that it is harder to distinguish from true holiness than were the outlandish trappings of paganism. It is, however, in the third section that Batman unmasks the most treacherous of the false gods. He begins with a spirited paragraph on ‘Papa the great God, which weares the triple crowne’, followed by twenty short notes headed ‘Basilides’, ‘Cataphriges’, ‘Apelles’, ‘Pharisees’, ‘Saduces’, ‘Essees’, ‘Cerdo[n]’, ‘Valentinianus’, ‘Martion’, ‘Sabellicus’, ‘Manes’, ‘Arrius’, ‘Donatus’, ‘Macedonius’, ‘Eunomius’, ‘Pelagius’, ‘Eutices’, ‘John A leyd’, ‘David George’, and ‘Henry N’. The first seventeen of these are old heresies. Batman is brief about them. Five are given less than four lines; the other twelve are up to twelve lines long. Eight of the twelve longer ones are copied and pasted from a dictionary.50 The others probably came from a similar source. But the final three heretics stand out. They are the most contemporary irreligionists in the entire mythography, and their entries were composed by Batman himself. They include much more detail, such as typical Anabaptist errors, and the titles of Niclaes’s books, which ‘to the great hurt of many lightbrayne Christia[n]s’ had become available in England.51 This might seem like a random list of heretics, but a similar set of names appears a year later in Batman’s next appearance in print, that is, in a preface that he contributed to John Rogers’s A Displaying of an Horrible Sect of Grosse and Wicked Heretiques, Naming Themselues the Family of Loue (1578). From this preface we learn more about the relationship Batman proposes between the ancient and early modern heretics. ‘The sonnes of the diuell gate names, as Phariseis, Seduceis,

49 Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost, 2nd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998). 50 The entries ‘Basilides’, ‘Cataphriges’, ‘Apelles’, ‘Cerdon’, ‘Arrius’, ‘Donatus’, ‘Eunomius’, and ‘Eutices’ appear verbatim in Thomas Cooper’s edition of the Bibliotheca Eliotae. I have checked Batman’s text against the following edition: Thomas Elyot, Bibliotheca Eliotae Eliotis Librarie: The Second Tyme Enriched, and Corrected by T[homas] Cooper (London, 1552), sigs. K3r, N3v, F6r, O2r, H1r, Bb6v, Ee3r, and Ee4r. 51 Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 33v.

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Esseis, Basilides, Cerdonistes, Valentianistes, Marcionistes, Appelles, Montanus, Sabellius, Manes, Arius, Donatus, Macedonius, Eunomius, Pelagius, Eutiches.’52 Although belonging to a much older generation of the devil’s offspring, they have prepared the ground for his latest, most horrid children: ‘of the dounge of these filthie sectes haue proceeded a newe Mergus, a cormorant fowle, the Familie of Loue, an hereticall sect, that hath, to bring foorth a newe puritie in religion, supped up the most part of former errours.’53 For Batman, the Family is a rapacious monster, fat and bloated with the heresies of all times. Their founder, Henry Niclaes, who was the only one of Batman’s heretics still alive when The Golden Booke went into print, is thus not simply a fitting chronological endpoint. He is the summa and culmination of Batman’s genealogy of false gods. Jan van Leiden, David Joris, and Henry Niclaes were closely connected in Batman’s mind and the minds of those who opposed the Family of Love. Jan van Leiden, also called Jan Beukels, rose to fame as the prophet and leader of the Anabaptist kingdom of Münster 1534/5.54 In an effort to erect a community of saints, Melchiorite Anabaptists gained power in the town and restructured its entire social, religious, and political order. Compulsory adult baptism, a communality of goods, draconic punishments for those who opposed the revolution, and enforced polygamy were some characteristics of the new order. When Catholic forces of the Habsburg Empire and the local Bishop Franz von Waldeck took the town in 1535 and ended the radical dream of a New Jerusalem, the Münster Rebellion became an example for the consequences of religious radicalism. After this rebellion and Jan van Leiden’s death, the most 52 Stephen Batman, ‘To the Gentle Reader’, in John Rogers, The Displaying of an Horrible Sect of Grosse and Wicked Heretiques, Naming Themselves the Family of Loue (London, 1578), sigs. A7v–B1r, here A8r–v. 53 Batman, ‘To the Gentle Reader’, sig. 8v. Cormorants were famous for their rapacious appetite and associated with greed and the devil. See Kevin De Ornellas, ‘ “Fowle Foules”?: The Sacred Pelican and the Profane Cormorant’, in A Cultural History of Animals, ed. Linda Kalof and Brigitte Resl, 6 vols. (Berg: Oxford, 2007), vol. III: A Cultural History of Animals in the Renaissance, ed. Bruce Boehrer, 27–52. Batman’s ornithological insult hit home. As is recorded in John Rogers, An Answere unto a Wicked . . . Libel Made by Christopher Vitel (London, 1579), the Familist Elder Christopher Vitell reacted strongly to the comparison: ‘This blasphemous Bateman, with his slau[n]dering, and lying, blasphemeth the holy ghost. For he nameth the Familye of Love, a cormorant fowle, and an hereticall sect’ (sig. D5r). 54 In this paragraph, I am indebted to Ralf Klötzer, Die Täuferherrschaft von Münster: Stadtreformation und Welterneuerung (Münster: Aschedorff Verlag, 1992).

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influential leader of the Anabaptist movement was the more moderate David Joris, who was called David George in England. Batman and his ally Rogers were convinced that David George was the direct predecessor of Henry Niclaes, the founder of the Family of Love.55 In 1577, Niclaes was 75 years old and living in Cologne. His writings had been arriving in England from 1573 onwards, in translations by Christopher Vitells.56 Apart from their contemporaneity and their absorption of other heresies, the Family of Love is a fit climax to The Golden Booke for other reasons as well. Familists, if successful on their journey towards perfection, would reach a stage in which they were vergottet, a state of unity with the Almighty, translated into English as ‘godded with God’. In many ways, if there was a heresy that resulted in so many false deities, it was this one. What is more, the members of the Family were greatly feared for their ability to mimic orthodox piety. They were sworn to secrecy and called upon to fake conformity. One of their critics, William Wilkinson, for example, is alarmed by Niclaes’s teaching that ‘it is lawfull for one of his Familie to dissemble and conceale his Religion’.57 The idea that these heretics were able to live undetected amongst the English Protestants also haunted the author of The Displaying of an Horrible Sect, John Rogers, who addresses them directly: ‘For you are obedient to such doctrine as is taught, you communicate with us in Christs sacramentes, you heare our teachers expound the scriptures: and yet you credit and beleeue only H.N.’58 And yet, hypocrisy was not the worst of their deceitfulness. Batman’s Anti-Familist co-author makes it clear that the Family’s pretences to a pious, upright life and sweet manners are not just a protective disguise, but a harmful weapon: ‘they insinuate a good life, which they pretende to followe: which is as the visard and cloake to hide al the rest of their grosse and absurde doctrine, and the hooke and baite whereby the simple are altogether deceiued.’59 As respected members of

55

See e.g. Rogers, The Displaying of an Horrible Sect, sigs. A1r–A3v. For the Family of Love and its influence in England, see Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1981); Christopher W. Marsh, The Family of Love in English Society 1550–1630 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 57 William Wilkinson, A Confutation of Certaine Articles Deliuered unto the Familye of Loue (London, 1579), sig. S1r. 58 Rogers, The Displaying of an Horrible Sect, sig. G8v. 59 Rogers, The Displaying of an Horrible Sect, sig. E6r. 56

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their communities, Familists could attract unsuspecting Protestants with their semblance of holiness. Once someone was drawn into their circles, they could secretly turn them into a dissembling heretic like themselves.60 Batman’s lineage of the devil thus culminated in ‘imagined gods’ that had mastered the mimicry of true Christianity, only to entrap others. The Family of Love completes yet another arch in Batman’s argument. His first set of gods were fictitious in Calvin’s negative, but also in Sidney’s positive sense. Damned but virtuous, the ancients were better than the Catholics, who were also damned, and on top of that brought licentiousness and discord. The worst-case scenario is represented by the three final figures. As the horrific events in Germany had shown, the Family of Love would bring a breakdown of society as English men and women knew it. The murders and abominations of Münster, so John Rogers warns, are the logical consequence if Familists would come to power.61 Batman himself spells out the connection between the Family’s teaching and civil disorder even more clearly: It behooueth therefore all reuerend Elders, Bishops, and Preachers, to seeke at the handes of our souereigne, authoritie to redresse the same [heresy], or else will assuredly followe the like plague on us, as was at Munster in Germanie, by Dauid George, Iohn A Leede, Knipper Dolling, and others, the seede whereof is H.N. Henrie Nicholas, nowe of Colone.62

The Family of Love was a threat to the souls of Englishmen, and to the state of England. In 1578 and 1579, several major Anti-Familist treatises appeared in England, all fearing ‘that dayly those swarmes increase, which in the end . . . will wonderfully disquiet . . . and molest the Church of God’.63 They were authored by John Knewstubs, John Rogers, and William Wilkinson. All three urged the authorities (particularly the Privy Council, the bishops, and, cautiously, the Queen) to weed out this pernicious heresy. Members of the Family of Love retaliated in print, and were in turn refuted by their English enemies. When Christopher W. Marsh described this crisis of the Family of Love, he briefly mentioned The Golden Booke as an example of the occasional references to the Family 60 61 62 63

See e.g. Rogers, The Displaying of an Horrible Sect, sigs. E3v–E4r. Rogers, The Displaying of an Horrible Sect, sig. A6r. Batman, ‘To the Gentle Reader’, sigs. A8v–B1r. Wilkinson, A Confutation, sig. *4r.

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before the heated debates of 1578 and 1579.64 But Batman’s inclusion of the Family into his mythography is not just a throwaway reference at the end of his book. The mythography as a whole builds up to its final chapters, establishing an increasingly threatening pattern that finds its fulfilment in the Family of Love. This makes The Golden Booke an integral part of the Anti-Familist efforts in the late 1570s. Such an interpretation is borne out by the fact that Batman developed some of the Anti-Familist themes from the Golden Booke in the preface he contributed to John Roger’s The Displaying of an Horrible Secte. More importantly, there is evidence that Batman and his mythography were, by at least one contemporary member of Niclaes’s sect, presumed to be at the forefront of the Anti-Familist movement. A Dutch Familist Elder, calling himself Abia Nazarenus, cast Batman’s Golden Booke as an AntiFamilist tract in his Reproofe Spoken and Geeuen-forth . . . Against All False Christians, Seducing Ypocrites, and Enemies of the Trueth and Loue, which was published in English in 1579. Abia Nazarenus shames the ‘Offallers, Aduersaries, Resisters’ of the Family: som of them haue made manifest themselues, and their Names, by their slaunderous Bookes: namelie these are knowne unto us in England, Stephan Bateman (in his Booke tituled The golden Booke of the leaden Gods: and in Iohn Rogers Booke, To the Reader), Iohn Rogers . . . and Iohn Knewstub and his Companions.65

Batman’s mythography was recognized, just two years after its publication, as a contribution to a religious controversy being fought passionately at the time.

2.4. The Images of the Ancient Gods The role of The Golden Booke as an anti-Familist tract helps us understand the iconographical decisions Batman made in this publication. Batman’s source Apotheseos was illustrated with a series of woodcuts Pictorius had adopted from Johannes Herold’s Heydenweldt. Given Batman’s interest in the visual arts, one might have expected him to reproduce these images. Batman drew, painted, illuminated, and 64

Marsh, Family of Love, 104. Abia Nazarenus, A Reproofe, Spoken and Geeuen-fourth by Abia Nazarenus Against All False Christians, Seducing Ypocrites, and Enemies of the Trueth and Loue (London, 1579), sig. A3r–v. 65

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designed woodcuts. He also wrote about the art of limning, a form of painting using water-based colours. In his edition of Bartholomew, Batman added a long section on limning to Book XIX (‘On Colours’), in which he described it as ‘so faire an exercise’ and worthy of kings.66 His previous works A Christiall Glasse of Christian Reformation and The Travayled Pylgrime were extensively illustrated, and so were most subsequent publications.67 Finally, in a case very similar to Batman’s use of Apotheseos—his translation of Konrad Lykosthenes’ Prodigiorum ac ostentorum chronicon (Basel, 1557) into The Doome Warning All Men to the Iugment—Batman did reproduce the German woodcuts he found in his source. And yet, The Golden Booke only offers verbal descriptions of the ancient gods. They do not deviate in content from Pictorius’s descriptions and illustrations, but they represent a marked departure in form and medium. He might have felt it inappropriate to reproduce images of pagan idols in a text that emphasizes this aspect of the pantheon. But if read as a substitution, rather than a simple omission, Batman’s verbal representations gain extra significance. As he translates the lurid physicality of the pagan figures into a textual medium, he simultaneously transforms (for example) Cerberus’s three heads from the sensual features of a religious idol into poetic imagery that serves a moral end. This manoeuvre reflects Batman’s dual concept of myth as both irreligion and moral allegory. It also enacts his own rejection of idolatry, while salvaging the positive value of myth. Turning to the Catholic gods, it seems at first as if Batman refused to provide any visual information. It is suggestive, however, that the three figures he chose from the ranks of Catholic saints are all friars (Batman is playing fast and loose with Catholic terminology here, as he conflates monks and friars into one group): Francis is the founder 66

Bartholomew the Englishman, Batman uppon Bartholome his Booke De Proprietatibus Rerum, ed. Stephen Batman (London, 1582), fols. 395r–396v. Rivkah Zim suggests that Batman’s section on limning in the edition of Bartholomew ‘may be part of a lost work on limning, listed as belonging to Parker’s son John: “4° Bateman of the Art of Lymning” ’. Rivkah Zim, ‘Batman, Stephan (c.1542–1584)’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), online edn. , accessed on 29 March 2017. 67 Cf. Ruth Samson Luborsky and Elizabeth Morley Ingram, A Guide to English Illustrated Books 1536–1603, 2 vols. (Tempe, Ariz.: ACMRS, 1998).

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of the ‘barefoote Friers’, St Gyles is ‘Fryer Gyles’, and St Dunstan seems to appear in ‘the Alcharo[n] of the Barefoote Fryers’.68 Based on this description it would have been easy for Batman’s reader to conjure up a generic image of these men. Within the Protestant culture of Batman’s time, Catholic friars had special iconographical significance. As John N. King has shown, the figure of a monk, friar, or hermit was a convention of clerical satire and indicated hypocrisy and superstition.69 For instance, Spenser’s evil magician Archimago, who is glossed as Hypocrisie from the start of Canto i, first enters the scene dressed in a hermit’s outfit. King also mentions examples from the post-Reformation stage. Referencing John Bales’s The Three Laws (in which Hypocrisy wears a Franciscan habit) and Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus (in which Mephistophilis is dressed as a monk) among others, King explains that ‘the stage convention of costuming personifications of Hypocrisy in monastic attire lodges the point that onlookers must learn to “see through” their spiritual disguises’.70 Batman himself used this convention in A Chrystal Glasse of Christian Reformation. Several of its woodcuts contain the figure of a friar as a representation of deadly sin. Batman explains, ‘the Fryers weede and Beades signifieth hypocrisie and lothsomnes of the truth.’71 It would therefore make sense for the mythographer to choose three friars for his pars pro toto of Catholic gods, and rely on his readers’ associations with them to reinforce his point about Catholic hypocrisy. We cannot assume that Batman’s readers had any idea what the sectarians looked like, and our mythographer suppresses any visual information. Still, Batman’s term ‘imagined gods’ carries with it the assumption that the sectarians are not just abstract notions. They have sensual features. So, how should his readers imagine them? It is, of course, difficult to interpret something that is not there, but I think the absence of visual information on the sectarians is meaningful. Batman and the Anti-Familist writers of the late 1570s stressed the fact that these dangerous heretics walked about disguised by their good life and manners. There were no sure signs to tell them apart from the true

68 69 70 71

Batman, Golden Booke, fol. 29v. In this paragraph, I am indebted to King, Spenser’s Poetry, 47–58. King, Spenser’s Poetry, 51. Stephen Batman, A Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation (London, 1569), sig. G2r.

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Christians. It follows that Batman’s reader should expect a sectarian to look just like a pious member of the Church of England. It is certainly one of the desired effects of The Golden Booke to send the reader out into the world a vigilant watchman, ready to detect spiritual frauds under the subtlest disguises. Batman might therefore have left his sectarians visually undetermined because Christian heretics are extremely hard to identify and might lurk beneath the friendly face of your neighbour. This interpretation is corroborated by the single woodcut at the heart of The Golden Booke. It shows a lozenge formed by two letters ‘v’, one the right way up and the other upside down. The lozenge contains the Hebrew letters shin and yod, as well as the Roman numbers C, X, I, and Arabic 5, 10, and 300. It represents ‘the Eternitie vnder which is comprehended the Hypocrysie of the Church, the losing of Sathan, and the appearinge of the Gospell’.72 This is fairly obscure, but it becomes a little clearer if one follows Batman through the numerological operations in the passage explicating the woodcut. Eventually, he arrives at the sum of 5491. The annus mundi 5491, he explains, marks the beginning of the persecution of the true church before the second coming of Christ. There is no further clue in the mythography that would help us date this event any more precisely. But in his chronicle The Doome Warning All Men to the Iugment, Batman mentions that the year 1581 corresponds to ‘5543, but after some Authors according to the scriptures, 5555’.73 If AD 1581 is AM 5555 (going with the number that has the authority of scripture behind it), then AM 5491 is AD 1517. This is the year Martin Luther published the Ninety-Five Theses. The beginning of the Reformation could indeed be seen to have revealed the ‘Hypocrysie of the Church’, seen the ‘appearinge of the Gospell’, and caused the ‘losing of Sathan’ upon the faithful. It appears therefore that Batman thought the time of tribulations had already begun. The exact year Batman meant to spell out is, however, less important than the fact that the apocalyptic figure evokes the atmosphere that saturates this text. Batman’s readers would have been familiar with Christ’s speech on Mount Olivet (Matt. 24), where he informs his disciples about the signs that presage the end of history. The beginning of the speech indicates the first sign and gives a stark warning: ‘Take heed that no man 72 73

Batman, The Golden Booke, fol. 22v. Stephen Batman, The Doome Warning All Men to the Iudgemente, sig. ¶7v.

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deceive you. For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many’ (Matt. 24:4–5). This thought resonates with the central problem Batman’s book addresses. Placed into the apocalyptic context that the woodcut suggests, The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes can be understood as a tool to help faithful Christians see through the deceptions of the false Christs—the imagined gods—that had arisen in the latter days of the world. Batman’s Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes is thus neither derivative nor nonsensical. The London clergyman took a politely learned mythography from Southern Germany, and developed it into an attack against the spiritual enemies of English Protestants. It thus represents an innovation in mythography which sees the genre transformed from a loosely interconnected reference manual to a tightly integrated, argumentative text. Because of its partisan nature, this English mythography is able to expose one of the uses to which mythology could be put in the religious culture of the English Renaissance. Its response to apparently contradictory attitudes to mythology (irreligion and didactic poetry) makes it especially valuable for an account of myth in the period. Other critics of religious images had to condemn the poets’ speaking pictures together with visual representation.74 But Batman was able to separate the two, condemning idols while preserving poetry. Furthermore, Batman’s effort to put ancient mythology in dialogue with the religious anxieties of Protestant England adds to our understanding of the history of myth theory. The Golden Booke is the inaugural example for the deliberate selection and manipulation of mythological traditions that will emerge as typical for early modern English mythographers. In this case, Batman spun together a concept of myth from a variety of attitudes as disparate as classic stock-and-stone idolatry, Calvin’s imaginary gods, the gods as poetic allegory, mythology as a legal code, and, maybe, Augustine’s civic theology. Although his conceptualization of myth is the result of an ad

74 See e.g. Batman’s contemporary John Jewel: ‘But the comparison that M. Harding useth between imagery and poetry seemeth nearest to express the truth. For painters and poets, for liberty of lying, have of a long time been coupled both together. . . . And therefore, like as Plato commanded all poets for their lying to be banished out of his commonwealth; so likewise Almighty God, for like liberty, banished all painters out of Israel.’ The Works of John Jewel, ed. John Ayre, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Parker Society, 1845–50), vol. II (1847), 660. I first came across this quotation in James Nohrnberg, The Analogy of the Faerie Queene (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 107.

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hoc response to pressures in another cultural area, it represents a commitment to a unique concept of mythology. His ‘straunge entermixed stratageme’ could be called a proto-theory.

2.5. Edmund Spenser and Mythological Discernment in the Bower of Bliss Edmund Spenser’s acquaintance with Italian mythographies and their influence on The Faerie Queene have long been acknowledged by Spenserians. Henry Lotspeich’s seminal study Classical Mythology in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser (1932) exemplifies how mythography has typically been brought into play when literary scholars explore this poem. When Lotspeich is unable to locate a mythological detail in classical sources, he reaches for Boccaccio and Conti and is often rewarded by finding Spenser’s variation of a fable or image there. The two mythographers are also used as guides to Spenser’s allegory: For the poet’s allegorical use of the voyage between rocks and whirlpools, Comes’ chapter on Scylla and Charybdis was an important precedent. From it, Spenser has taken several descriptive details and in it he found a full statement of his own moral allegory, expressed in his own figurative idiom. By the navigator who sails between Scylla and Charybdis and finally emerges in safety, ‘what else is meant but that which is written by Aristotle in his Ethics, that virtue is the mean between two extremes, both of which must be avoided?’75

The Italian mythographies help Lotspeich tie Spenser’s poetry into a culture of classical reception and they enable scholars to pinpoint where the poet uses a traditional image or allegory. English mythographies could of course be put to the same use, although they are not as fit for this task as the much more comprehensive Italian mythographies are. What the English mythographies can do, however, is provide specific models for a way of thinking and arguing with myth. This can open our eyes to similar mythological strategies in other texts. Batman brings myth into a discussion of the nature of error, the dangers of a wayward imagination, and the seductive disguises of moral and spiritual enemies. Both his structural use of myth and 75 Henry Gibbons Lotspeich, Classical Mythology in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1932), 21. He is quoting from Natale Conti (cf. Conti, Mythologies, 750).

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the topics he illuminates with the help of mythology can inform a reading of Spenser’s mythological programme in Book II, Canto xii of The Faerie Queene.76 Scholars have noted that Spenser is doing something with biform women in Books I and II.77 Maik Goth, in his recent study Monsters and the Poetic Imagination in The Faerie Queene, discusses Errour and Duessa as corresponding figures. Errour is the first monster of The Faerie Queene, a terrifying, biform creature that attacks Redcrosse and Una in the Wandering Wood. Duessa is an evil witch, who is the duplicitous opponent of Una’s single truth and the main villain of Book I. Duessa seems to be a dazzling beauty, but when she is disrobed at the behest of Una, her magic fails and she turns out to be a hideous old hag whose lower body is made up of disparate animal parts (I.viii.46–8). Goth analyses the two biform females that bookend this portion of the epic and establishes a taxonomy that puts the fully monstrous Errour on one side, the seemingly human Duessa on the other, and the mermaids from Book II in between: ‘Between these two, the mermaids take a firm middle position as metamorphosed beings whose two body segments are sutured so convincingly that they do not seem to interact physically.’78 Such classification brings some order into the multifarious monsters in The Faerie Queene and discovers correspondences. But it runs into difficulties with an especially artful fiend. Goth’s taxonomy captures Duessa once she is undressed, but Acrasia—arguably the most dangerous murderess in The Faerie Queene—slips through his net, because her moral corruption never seems to mar her alabaster skin. We can see Goth grapple with this when he labels Acrasia a ‘monster fell’, appropriating the Palmer’s phrase ‘Griefe is a flood, and loue a monster fell’ (II.iv.35) in order to pull her

76 I quote from Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, rev. 2nd edn. (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2007). References will be made in parentheses in the text, citing the book, canto, and stanza number. 77 For an early exploration of this topic, see Joan Larsen Klein, ‘From Errour to Acrasia’, Huntington Library Quarterly 41.3 (1978), 173–99. In light of modern scholarship, many details of her reading are problematic, but her intuition—that Errour, Duessa, Phaedria, and Acrasia form a narrative sequence designed to instruct the reader in progressively more deceptive practices of evil—holds true and describes a use of iconography not dissimilar to my following argument. 78 Maik Goth, Monsters and the Poetic Imagination in The Faerie Queene: ‘Most Ugly Shapes and Horrible Aspects’ (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 97.

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into the confines of his teratology.79 This attempt at fitting Acrasia into the categories of the monstrous despite her lack of manifestly monstrous characteristics highlights the problem posed by the evil witch. It is my contention that Acrasia’s appearance is too discordant with her moral depravity to be her true shape, and that The Golden Booke can help us get to grips with her irksome beauty. Batman applied mythology to the very similar problem of discovering the face of irreligion underneath the attractive orthodoxy of the Family of Love. With his text in mind, it is easier to spot a structurally analogous mythological programme in Canto xii, where Spenser establishes a series of biform women beginning with Scylla and the mermaids and continuing in the garden itself with the damsels in the fountain before it culminates in Acrasia. Like Batman’s series, Spenser’s string of biform females negotiates the links between the monstrous births of the human imagination, appealing deceptions, and falsehood. Book II of The Faerie Queene tells the story of Sir Guyon, the Knight of Temperance, who learns about the evil witch Acrasia from the dying Amavia. Amavia informs Guyon that Acrasia lures brave knights (such as Amavia’s husband Mordant) away from their quests into the web of illusions that is her garden. Surrendering to pleasure, the young men become forgetful of the immortal fame to be won by noble deeds. As they abandon themselves to sensuality, Acrasia extracts their spirits and transforms them into beasts. At the end of her story, Amavia dies and leaves behind her baby Ruddymane, his hands for ever stained with the blood of his mother. Guyon grimly swears ‘dew vengeance’ (II.i.61) and sets out with his companion the Palmer to put an end to Acrasia’s atrocities. The challenge of defeating the witch is formidable, because she resides deep within her garden. Although this garden looks like ‘the most daintie Paradise on ground’ (II.xii.58), its beauty is unnatural and serves as a trap by which to catch intemperate men.80 In Canto v, Spenser gives a preview of the Bower that shows its preoccupation with deceit. We hear about the knight Cymochles, one of Acrasia’s victims, as he experiences the Bower:

79

Goth, Monsters, 146. For a classic account of the relationship between art and nature in the Bower, see C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936). 80

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He, like an Adder, lurking in the weedes, His wandring thought in deepe desire does steepe, And his frayle eye with spoyle of beauty feedes; Sometimes he falsely faines himselfe to sleepe, Whiles through their lids his wanton eies do peepe, To steale a snatch of amorous conceipt, Whereby close fire into his heart does creepe: So, he them deceiues, deceiud in his deceipt, Made dronk with drugs of deare voluptuous receipt.

(II.v.34)

This is a place where even the serpent is beguiled. While Cymochles pointlessly plays the peeping Tom amidst a posy of ladies that display themselves all too willingly, the reader becomes aware of how badly the young man has misinterpreted the power-relationships in this Anti-Eden.81 Canto xii is the culmination of Sir Guyon’s quest and brings him face to face with Acrasia. The canto is split into two parts. The first narrates the last leg of Sir Guyon’s journey over sea and land to the wandering island of Acrasia. The second part details his progress through her garden to its centre, the capture of Acrasia, the destruction of the Bower, and the release of Acrasia’s victims. The most explicit classical model is the Odyssey. The first part of the canto retraces Odysseus’s journey away from Circe’s island, passing Scylla and Charybdis, the sirens, and the wandering islands; the second part is based on Odyssey’s dealings with Circe, from his receipt of the moly to the release of his men. The division of this canto into two separate parts is also reflected in Spenser’s more or less explicit use of mythology. The first half is a tour de force of what classicists would call ‘window allusions’: Spenser sends Guyon on an ocean passage previously travelled by the heroes of Tasso, Virgil, Apollonius Rhodius, and Homer.82 Such perspicuous references to ancient myth disappear soon after our heroes have stepped through the gate of Acrasia’s garden. As we shall see, the mythological figures of the first half do return in the second, but in increasingly covert forms. To begin with, Guyon and the Palmer face a challenge that is emblematic for the knight of Temperance: they have to navigate Scylla and Charybdis. Scylla’s importance is stressed over that of Charybdis as the 81 For an influential discussion of the Bower as an Anti-Eden, see Nohrnberg, The Analogy of the Faerie Queene, 490–519. 82 For this term and an example of a window allusion, see Damien Nelis, Vergil’s Aeneid and the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (Leeds: Francis Cairns, 2001), 1–21.

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Palmer singles her out for a lengthy exposition of her moral significance (II.xii.9). In the Renaissance, the best-known iconographies of the seamonster Scylla derive from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Virgil’s Aeneid. In Ovid, the sea-god Glaucus falls in love with the girl, who scorns him. So Glaucus asks Circe to mix a love potion to change her mind. But Circe falls for Glaucus herself and prepares a poison instead. She pours it into the pond where Scylla likes to bathe: Scylla venit mediaque tenus descenderat alvo, cum sua foedari latrantibus inguina monstris adspicit.83 Then Scylla comes and wades waist-deep into the water; when all at once she sees her loins disfigured with barking monster-shapes.

Although Homer gives her twelve legs, six necks, and three rows of teeth in each head (Od. XII.73–100), Ovid and Virgil confine her deformation to her lower half. Virgil writes: prima hominis facies et pulchro pectore virgo pube tenus, postrema immani corpore pistrix delphinum caudas utero commissa luporum.84 Above she is of human form, down to the waist a fair-bosomed maiden; below, she is a sea dragon of monstrous frame, with dolphin’s tails joined to a belly of wolves.

Spenser does not follow this iconography. He goes out of his way to remove all traces of humanity from the two women and presents us with natural phenomena called ‘The Rock of Reproach’ (Scylla) and ‘The Gulfe of Greediness’ (Charybdis). Spenser’s iconography follows Ovid, who claims that Scylla was transformed into a monster just before Odysseus passed through, but by the time Aeneas journeyed to Italy Scylla had been fully transformed into a rock (Met. XVI.72–4). This is linked to a rationalizing mythographical tradition, which explained the myth of Scylla and Charybdis as an aitios for treacherous rocks and a whirlpool in the Sicilian Sea.85 But the poetic significance of Spenser’s choice of representation is not immediately apparent. 83

Ovid, Metamorphoses, ed. and trans. Frank Justus Miller, rev. G. P. Goold, 2 vols., 3rd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), I: 304–5 (XIV.60–1). 84 Virgil, Aeneid, ed. and trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G. P. Goold, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), I: 400–1 (III.426–8). 85 For his possible debt to Natale Conti in this passage, see Lotspeich, Classical Mythology, 106–7; Conti, Mythologies, 745–51.

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Spenser dwells for six long stanzas on the horrific aspects of this landscape. The ‘hideous Rock’ is a magnet, whose ‘craggie clift | Depending from on high, dreadful to sight | Over the waves his rugged arms doth lift’ (II.xii.4). The Gulfe is described as an enormous ‘grisely mouth’, ‘sucking the seas into his entralles deepe | That seemed more horrible then hell to bee’ (II.xii.6). As the boatman rows them past Scylla, the Palmer gestures to the disgusting mess of corpses littering the foot of the Rock and explains their meaning to his pupil and to the readers of the poem: Behold th’ensamples in our sightes, Of lustfull luxurie and thriftlesse wast: What now is left of miserable wightes, Which spent their looser daies in leud delightes, But shame and sad reproach, here to be red, By these rent reliques, speaking their ill plightes? Let all that liue, hereby be counselled, To shunne Rock of Reproch and it as death to dread.

(II.xii.9)

As has often been noted, the parallels between Guyon and his epic forerunners highlight the complete lack of danger in this scene. Odysseus loses six men as he hugs Scylla to avoid Charybdis (Od. XII.245–59). Warned by Helenus, Aeneas took the long way round (Aen. III.420–32). Guyon sails straight through. But this does not mean he is the greater man. The Palmer explains the reason for Guyon’s safety, when he asserts that Scylla and Charybdis are ‘ensamples in our sightes’, that is, didactic tools ready for decoding. This makes it possible for Guyon and the Palmer—to use Theresa M. Krier’s terminology—not just to perceive Scylla and Charybdis, but recognize them for what they are.86 Spenser turned them from fast-moving monsters into a landscape, because they need to stand still for our hero, who is to look and learn.

86 ‘Recognition makes possible denotation—Sylvanus can deduce that Una’s radiant form is not Diana because she lacks the iconographic, public, recognizable accoutrements of bow and buskins—while recognition merges into the viewer’s and reader’s work of understanding connotation: the Neoplatonic implications of the narrator’s calling Una “that mirror rare,” for instance, or Sylvanus’s own subsequent action of reviving his “ancient love” for Cyparissus (1.6.17).’ Theresa M. Krier, Gazing on Secret Sights: Spenser, Classical Imitation, and the Decorums of Vision (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), 9. She is adopting terms from Norman Bryson, Vision and Painting: The Logic of the Gaze (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).

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That the three men in the boat are able to keep such a straight course says something important about the nature of Scylla’s and Charybdis’ attraction. Although Scylla exerts her magnetism on the vessel, and Charybdis sucks powerfully at the water, the pair does not attract the men. Rendered as true and therefore terrific representations of intemperance, the gulf and the rock are repellent. It is as if their mechanical pull and their visual and moral repulsion hold each other in balance, or rather, cancel each other out. As a consequence, the boatman can steer an even course and Guyon can keep the necessary distance to ‘read’. Scylla’s and Charybdis’ function as signifiers of vice therefore proposes another explanation for Spenser’s complete transformation of the monsters into this ‘dangerous and detestable place’ (II.xii.8). Their hideousness straightforwardly denotes their moral nature. Had Spenser retained Scylla as a ‘pulchro pectore virgo’, she could not have served as a straightforward lesson. As it is, she stands transfixed, a trusty signifier of the ugly truth of vice. This makes Spenser’s use of Scylla and Charybdis analogous to Batman’s use of the pagan gods in The Golden Booke. Both form clear examples of vices while teaching important moral lessons. Also like the pagan gods in Batman’s mythography, Scylla and Charybdis set in motion a chain of compare and contrast—that ‘sustained interaction between reader and text’ which Gordon Teskey calls Spenser’s allegory.87 When the ideal allegorical reader journeys between Rock and Gulfe, he is not only called upon to recognize Scylla and Charybdis in them. He is expected to conjure up everything he knows about these figures (maybe even check a mythography) and have it at hand in case some aspect of it is later confirmed as meaningful. As Raphael Lyne writes: ‘In The Faerie Queene there is often the potential for apparent allusions, or near allusions, to lead somewhere specific: the reader is involved in this potential, even if it is not always fulfilled.’88 One example for the way in which Scylla extends her potential for meaning over the entire canto is her relationship to Circe. At the beginning of the canto, Circe is merely one implicit aspect of Scylla’s fable. In other words, she is part of Scylla’s allusive potential. But as we encounter Circe’s

87 Gordon Teskey, ‘Allegory’, in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. A. C. Hamilton (London: Routledge, 1990), 43–60, here 43. 88 Raphael Lyne, Ovid’s Changing Worlds: English Metamorphoses 1567–1632 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 105.

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relative Medea (depicted on the ivory frieze of Acrasia’s garden gate at II. xii.44–5), this potential is realized and becomes meaningful. The allusion continues all the way through to the Acrasia, who is ‘essentially’ Circe.89 Scylla’s bathing and biformity likewise form part of her allusive potential. The reader does not have to wait long until this combination is activated. In the Odyssey, the sirens precede Scylla and Charybdis and their looks remain vague: they are two lethal maidens who sit in a meadow (Od. XII.39–54, 158–200). Traditionally, the sirens were depicted as half women, half birds. Spenser gives us mermaids instead. By the sixteenth century, it was common to conflate sirens and mermaids.90 But Spenser’s changes are not merely conventional. He makes his five mermaids half women, half fish, removes them from the meadow, and places them into the water of a calm bay: ‘There those fiue sisters had continuall trade, | And usd to bathe themselues in that deceitfull shade’ (II.xii.30). Spenser also invents an Ovidian-style fable of their metamorphosis which allows him to dwell upon the hybridity of the mermaids for an entire stanza: They were faire Ladies, till they fondly striu’d With th’Heliconian maides for maystery; Of whom they ouer-comen, were depriu’d Of their proud beautie, and th’one moyity Tranformed to fish, for their bold surquedry, But th’vpper halfe their hew retayned still, And their sweet skill in wonted melody; Which euer after they abused to ill, T’allure weake traueillers, whom gotten they did kill. (II.xii.31)

Just like Scylla, this new set of Odyssean monsters is entirely evil; but, unlike Scylla, the mermaids’ shape is only half ugly. Taken as monstrous signifiers, the mermaids’ lower halves display their true nature correctly, while the beauty of their top halves is false and actively misleading. This is also implied by Spenser’s sentence structure: ‘which euer after they abused to ill’ is governed by their ‘sweet skill in wonted melody’, but also by their ‘vpper halfe’. Thus, music and female beauty are the hook and bait by which these creatures catch their prey. But Guyon seems unable Tania Demetriou, ‘ “Essentially Circe”: Spenser, Homer, and the Homeric Tradition’, Translation and Literature 15 (2006), 151–76. 90 Batman himself is a witness to this confluence of traditions. His entry ‘De Sirena’ in Batman uppon Bartholome, begins: ‘The mermaide[n] is called Sirena, he[n]ce Siren’ (Batman uppon Batholome, fol. 380v). See also Goth, Monsters, 92–3. 89

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to detect this falsehood. He feels his ‘senses softly tickeled’ (II.xii.33), and would have stopped the boat had the Palmer not told him to keep moving. To be fair on Guyon, we have to remember that he cannot hear the narrator. All he sees is a group of five pretty women harmonizing as they sit in the waters of a shady bay. The fishtails underneath the waves are carefully kept out of his sight. Before we reach the next instance of biform bathers, we enter into Acrasia’s garden. Everything appears so lovely there that even the narrator is in danger of losing perspective. The Bower is: More sweet and holesome, then the pleasaunt hill Of Rhodope, on which the Nimphe, that bore A gyaunt babe, her selfe for grief did kill: Or the Thessalian Tempe, where of yore Fayre Daphne Phœbus hart with loue did gore; Or Ida, where the Gods lou’d to repayre, When euer they their heauenly bowres forlore; Or sweet Parnasse, the haunt of Muses fayre; Or Eden selfe; if ought with Eden mote compayre. (II.xii.52)

In the last line of this stanza, the narrator is betrayed into a blasphemous comparison of the immoral garden to the Christian paradise. He stops in his tracks for the duration of a shocked caesura as he realizes what he has done—and the rest of the line is damage control. This stanza demonstrates how easy it is to be duped by the Bower. Obviously, women with fishtails have no place in this mimicry of paradise. So, when Guyon and the Palmer pass a fountain, in which two blond girls are sporting with each other, no hint of biformity spoils their bodies. We think we know that, because the water is so clear: ‘That through the waues one might the bottom see, | All pau’d beneath with Iaspar shining bright’ (II.xii.62). But Spenser places a clue for the vigilant: Then th’one her selfe low ducked in the flood, Abasht, that her a straunger did auise: But thother rather higher did arise, And her two lily paps aloft displayd, And all, that might his melting hart entyse To her delights, she vnto him bewrayd: The rest hidd vnderneath, him more desirous made. (II.xii.66)

If we visualize this moment, as the second girl stands in the crystal-clear liquid, we have to imagine that the lower part of her body is bent, much

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like Plato’s submerged stick that demonstrates the relationship between illusion, pleasure, and irrationality (Republic 602c). Incidentally, the optical illusion makes her look a lot more like the mermaids than her wholly gorgeous body would have initially suggested. Faint as it is, this visual echo and the waterline that cuts across her body betrays the nameless bathers’ descent from Scylla, Charybdis, and the mermaids. At this point in the series, the deceptive layer of beauty has overspread the entirety of the intemperate monster, and the water now reaches up to their chests. Guyon does not worry about any of these things when he catches sight of them: ‘The secrete signes of kindled lust’ appear on his face; he slackens his pace and stares (II.xii.68). In this case, the attraction is so strong, the old Palmer has to drag Guyon away: ‘He much rebukt those wandring eyes of his, | And counseld well, him forward thence did draw’ (II.xii.69). Before we leave the fountain behind, it is worth lingering over the question of what we really see when we look at these girls. The clear water suggests that everything is revealed, if a little distorted, but Spenser uses a confusing simile. ‘The whiles their snowy limbes, as through a vele, | So through the christall waues appeared plaine’ (II.xii.64). We thus see through water, through a veil, through a crystal glass. This is the language of allegory itself. But—and this is what is confusing—we do not see through that glass darkly. If this was proper allegory, the glass should obscure, the veil should conceal, and the reader should have to perform some intellectual labour to discover the precious truth that is hidden from sight. Spenser’s own allegory, as we know from the letter to Raleigh, is a ‘darke conceit’.91 In contrast, the allegorical art of the fountain makes everything appear plainly. This is too easy; the truths offered by the Bower must be suspected. It is also significant that the girls’ limbs are ‘snowy’. In a pool of water, ivory or alabaster would have been equally Petrarchan but more lasting conceits. Spenser’s choice of metaphor hints at a solidity created from the material of the fountain itself, unnaturally maintained, and always in danger of reuniting with it. For the allegorical art of the fountain, the awkward relationship between the snowy limbs and the water means that the distinction between the liquid veil and the substantial truth it covers Edmund Spenser, ‘Letter to Raleigh’, in Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A. C. Hamilton, revised 2nd edn. (Harlow: Peason Longman, 2007), 714–18, here 714. 91

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ultimately must collapse. So, rather than offering worthless truths, the fountain has no truth to offer at all, only aggregates of fiction. An illuminating parallel exists in the Snowy Florimell, an automaton put together by a witch in Book III. This disturbing creature derives her epithet from the fact that she is mainly made from snow. Her shape is held together by magic, and once she is confronted with the real Florimell, the imposter melts. The girls in the fountain have even less corporeality than the false Florimell who was made from ‘real’ snow. In the context of the fountain’s pretended allegory, the water is the veil of fiction, and the snowiness of the girls betrays the fact that they are nothing but a condensed form of fiction. Harry Berger Jr. has argued very influentially that Acrasia’s art represents an evil version of allegorical poetry: Acrasia creates a world of false images which pretend to be real, yet which are completely dictated by a single intention, dedicated to a single purpose. . . . Her intention—to bring men from weal to woe, discipline to disorder, virtue to vice— conflicts directly with the aim of the allegorical poet.92

In Berger’s masterful reading, Acrasia is revealed as a ‘demonic allegorist’ whose immoral art is opposed to that of Spenser’s moral allegory. But he never explained how Acrasia’s allegory actually works. The answer lies in the fountain’s mimicry of the allegorical process. We must keep in mind that Acrasia’s garden functions as a trap, and that the fountain is part of the set-up. By posing as allegorical art, the fountain arrests inquiry on the surface of the girls’ bodies. Guyon believes that he has grasped the full intellectual movement: the water is the veil and the bodies are the naked truth ‘hid underneath’: there is no need to probe further. But the reader who has followed Spenser’s mythological series knows better. The fountain might hold up its hardly-hidden delights as the rewards of the allegorical thought process, that is, as its final truth. But what it discovers is just another fictional shell. If the fountain hides a kernel of truth at all, it is a rotten one and looks remarkably like the monstrous Scylla. Why is Guyon so easily fooled? He seems to have forgotten the didactic ‘ensample’ of intemperate vice that was pointed out to him at the beginning, or, at least, he does not apply the example to his experiences in the

92

Harry Berger Jr., The Allegorical Temper: Vision and Reality in Book II of Spenser’s Faerie Queene (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957), 224.

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Bower. Instead of using, as the ideal reader does, Spenser’s series to discern the subtler forms of falsehood, Guyon falls, every time, for the deceptive semblances offered to his eye. This might have to do with his allegorical nature. Recently, Spenserians have come to stress the radical limitations of the characters in The Faerie Queene. Building on the scholarship of Gordon Teskey and Susan Wofford, Jeff Dolven posits that Spenser’s heroes are unable to learn from the figurative world around them:93 The Faerie Queene may unsettle us with the possibility, not only that characters cannot read the allegory, but that we must read it at their expense: not only do they never know what we know, but they suffer for our enlightenment. That is what it is to make an example of someone.94

Dolven is thinking about the Redcross Knight’s ignominious expulsion from the House of Pride, but his observation holds true for what is happening to Guyon in Canto xii. His lust for the monsters he should shun is a didactic strategy of The Faerie Queene. If this is his function, we should be very worried about Guyon’s ability to withstand the impossibly attractive Acrasia. After the girls in the fountain, Guyon and the Palmer reach the heart of the Bower of Bliss. They approach quietly, creeping on their bellies through the coverts and bushes—good serpents in an evil paradise. Finally, they set eyes on the witch herself: Vpon a bed of Roses she was layd, As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin, And was arayd, or rather disarayd, All in a vele of silke and siluer thin, That hid no whit her alablaster skin, But rather shewd more white, if more might bee: More subtile web Arachne cannot spin, Nor the fine nets, which oft we wouen see Of scorched deaw, do not in th’ayre more lightly flee. Her snowy brest was bare to ready spoyle Of hungry eies, which n’ote therewith be fild, And yet through languour of her late sweet toyle,

93

Susan Wofford, The Choice of Achilles: The Ideology of Figure in the Epic (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); Gordon Teskey, Allegory and Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). 94 Jeff Dolven, Scenes of Instruction in Renaissance Romance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 147.

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Few drops, more cleare then Nectar, forth distild, That like pure Orient perles adowne it trild, And her fair eyes sweet smyling in delight, Moystened their fierie beames, with which she thrild Fraile harts, yet quenched not; like starry light Which sparckling on the silent waves, does seeme more bright. (II.xii.77–8)

In Acrasia’s case, biformity and bathing are displaced onto the plane of poetic metaphor. This blazon of her beauty runs over two stanzas, with the description travelling from her lower body upwards to her eyes. In a counter-movement, the poetic imagery literally flows downwards. The final alexandrine in the first stanza introduces the idea of morning dew, and from there, the water imagery builds through the second stanza: the dewdrops turn into sweat on snowy breasts, then into drops of nectar, which, swollen to the size of pearls, roll down her body into the final image, the silent ocean waves. In so far as these two stanzas represent Acrasia in words on the page, the line of her body is cut in half by the alexandrine in the first stanza, which contains the first hint of water. Below that, she is submerged in liquid—just like Scylla, the mermaids, and the girls in the fountain. Acrasia is the culmination of several developments in Spenser’s series of bathers: like Batman’s imagined gods, they grow less obviously monstrous and more attractive and dangerous. Hints towards biformity and bathing grow ever subtler. The position of the water-line also keeps moving upwards. Scylla was fully displayed above the ocean waves. The mermaids were neatly cut in half by the water as they sat in their shallow bay that hid their fishtails. The water of the fountain reached just below the girls’ breasts. Acrasia is thinly, but completely covered in moisture. She is ‘arayd, or rather disarayd, | All in a vele’, and this garment turns out to be ultimately made from dew, metaphorically speaking at least. This liquid veil—reminiscent of the water in the fountain—is open to discover her naked breasts and thus frames her to look like an erotic, perverted pietà.95 But even her breasts are not simply bare: they are For Acrasia as a parody of the pietà, see e.g. Stephen Greenblatt’s chapter ‘To Fashion a Gentleman: Spenser and the Destruction of the Bower of Bliss’, in Renaissance SelfFashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), esp. 188–9. For a standard account of veils in the Bower, see Antoinette Dauber, ‘The Art of Veiling in the Bower of Bliss’, Spenser Studies 1 (1980), 163–75. 95

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bathed in post-coital perspiration. The oxymoron of Acrasia’s hot and sweaty ‘snowy brest’ repeats the suspicious relationship between the fountain girls’ snowy limbs and the liquid veil that bodied them forth. If there is anything we have learnt about water in this canto, it is that it keeps deformity out of sight, and that it is capable of creating beautiful but illusory bodies. In Acrasia’s case, it does both at the same time. Her liquid veil hides her true shape and produces the effect of alabaster skin. That Acrasia’s white skin is unnatural, or rather supernatural, is clear from the fact that her veil ‘hid no whit her alabaster skin, | But rather shewd more white, if more might bee’ (II.xii.77). This demonstrates that Acrasia is not, as Joan Larsen Klein had intuited, ‘clothed in seductive flesh’.96 She is actually wrapped in a film of moisture that creates the fiction of her beauty. Spenser never shows us what is underneath her liquid veil, but, by now, we can guess. The analogy to Batman’s contemporary sectarians is clear: the imagined gods of the Family of Love were so effective in their pretended piety they seemed to be the real thing. Up to this point in the narrative, Guyon has been a reliable, though unwitting indicator of moral danger. Unmoved by Scylla and Charybdis, enticed by the mermaids, and kindled into lust by the girls in the fountain, our hero should be violently attracted by Acrasia’s enhanced beauty. If we follow a reading of stanza 81 by Syrithe Pugh, he is. This stanza narrates Acrasia’s capture by Guyon and the Palmer: The noble Elfe, and carefull Palmer drew So nigh them, minding nought, but lustfull game, That suddein forth they on them rusht, and threw A subtile net, which only for the same The skilfull Palmer formally did frame. So held them vnder fast, the whiles the rest Fled all away for feare of fowler shame. The faire Enchauntresse, so vnwares opprest, Tryde all her arts, and all her sleights, thence out to wrest.

(II.xii.81)

Pugh suggests that the phrase ‘minding naught but lustfull game’ is ambiguous. It obviously applies to Acrasia and her lover. But it could equally well describe the state of mind of Guyon and his Palmer in the

96

Klein, ‘From Errour to Acrasia’, 192.

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moment of attack. This would mean that the capture of Acrasia, ‘so unwares opprest’, is hardly distinguishable from a rape. Guyon’s fulfilment of his heroic quest could be due to intemperate lust.97 Guyon’s momentary intemperance also shows itself in his subsequent wrathful destruction of the Bower ‘with rigour pittilesse’: he defaces and spoils, until he ‘of the fayrest late, now made the fowlest place’ (II.xii.83). This returns us to the beginning of this canto, which started off with Scylla as a ‘daungerous and detestable place’ (II.xii.8). As Guyon strips the Bower, he reveals its continuity with the landscape at the beginning of the canto. Just as Spenser’s biform bathers were gradually hidden under false beauty, so was the wasteland surrounding Acrasia crusted over by the art of the Bower. Seen from this perspective, the entire canto was a mermaid: one half ugly, the other covered by false beauty. By now, it should be apparent that the use of mythology in Canto xii is directly analogous to the use of mythology in Batman’s Golden Booke. For the mythographer, the Greek and Roman pantheon had served as historical example. Not only do the pagan deities demonstrate what ‘imagined gods’ are in contrast to the one true God, they also represent the classic test case, which can be applied to other, less obvious cases of irreligion which the Christian reader might encounter. Batman first likens the pagans to the Catholics, showing how instructive such an application of the ancient example can be. Armed with two didactic instances and an object lesson in their application, Batman’s reader is then prepared to bring what he has learnt to bear on the last set of gods in this series of three. This strategic use of the pagan gods in The Golden Booke provides us with a historical model for a way of using myth argumentatively that we can apply to mythological poetry. In my example from The Faerie Queene, Batman’s perspective not only helps us discover interconnections across a canto that might otherwise go unnoticed; it also removes such interconnections from the realm of scholarly intuition and anchors them in a historical precedent. Furthermore, Batman’s mythography alerts scholars of classical reception to two often-overlooked factors. First, the series of biform women is a good reminder that allusions

97

Syrithe Pugh, Spenser and Ovid (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 77–118, esp. 108.

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might be not only textual, but can also be visual. Spenser, after all, writes in ‘speaking pictures’ which sometimes require the reader to ‘body them forth’ in order to grasp their full impact. And second, we have seen that a mythological allusion might go, as it were, underground and exert its influence on parts of the poem where we have no signposting, and where we might not even expect to think in terms of mythology.

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3 In memoriam Philip Sidney Mythopoesis in Abraham Fraunce’s Amintas Dale

Abraham Fraunce’s The Third Part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch, Entituled, Amintas Dale, Wherin Are the Most Conceited Tales of the Pagan Gods in English Hexameters Together with their Auncient Descriptions and Philosophical Explications is the last in a series of texts Fraunce published following the death of his patron Philip Sidney. The first of these, The Lamentations of Amyntas for the Death of Phillis, appeared in 1587 and was reprinted in 1588 and 1589. This free translation of Thomas Watson’s Neo-Latin poem Amyntas (1585) was then refashioned into The Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch Conteining the Affectionate Life, and Vnfortunate Death of Phillis and Amyntas, That in a Pastorall, This in a Funerall in the year of the fifth anniversary of Sidney’s death, 1591. All of the editions of the Lamentations ended with Amintas’s metamorphosis into an Amaranthus flower and the villagers’ unsuccessful search for him. In the 1591 publication, which comprises parts one and two of The Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch, Fraunce changes the ending: the Amaranthus flower is found and identified as the metamorphosed Amintas, and annual festivities in his honour are inaugurated. Amintas Dale, published in 1592, then presents itself as the first of these occasions. It is the sequel to the ‘Life’ and ‘Death’ story of the 1591 Yuychurch volume and thus The Third Part. In so far as it reads Amintas Dale as a reaction to Philip Sidney’s death, this chapter contributes to the story Gavin Alexander told in Writing After Sidney. He reads Sidney’s works as well as his life through the figure of aposiopesis, or breaking off of speech, and from this develops a dialogic model of Sidney’s literary influence: ‘Responses to Sidney use

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incompletion as a figure for the gap between them and Sidney, and for the imperfect condition of a hermeneutic relation to him. It becomes a sign of dialogue that Sidney has initiated and left open.’1 The authors he studies ‘all write Sidney, resurrect him, shape or transmit his voice’.2 Amintas Dale was not discussed by Alexander, but it, too, qualifies as a work written ‘after Sidney’. Its characters and tales group around the painful absence of Sidney/Amyntas and it responds to Sidney through its hexametrical verses, shepherds’ songs, dialogic structure, and its Arcadian setting. Like other works in Alexander’s book, Amintas Dale engages in the prosopographia of Mary Sidney and the members of her circle. Most importantly, it ends on a double aposiopesis: a tale within the final tale as well as the final tale itself are suddenly interrupted. Yet, the incongruous tonal quality of Fraunce’s parodic finale precludes any straightforward interpretation of this ending. As we shall see, Amintas Dale is an especially complex site of memorializing, as it tries to answer Sidney’s figure of incompletion with an imitation of what is perhaps the most resounding statement of poetic accomplishment ever made: the conclusion of Ovid’s carmen perpetuum. Not only the ending of Amintas Dale is curious. Combining ungainly verse, quotation-ridden prose, and a provocative satire in a pastoral play, it is peopled both by the highly literary shepherds of the eclogue tradition and Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, alias Pembrokiana. The text seems to challenge all definitions with respect to form, genre, and even content. While it had been clear from the start that Stephen Batman’s Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes belongs to the genre of mythography, the relationship of Amintas Dale to mythographical writing is less apparent and will have to be argued in the present chapter. At first glance, Fraunce’s exuberant engagement with the gods and their many meanings seems most representative of the Renaissance approach to myth as we know it from modern studies of the subject: he is the only one of the English mythographers to relate to fables via Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Thus, before Amintas Dale can be shown to represent a self-reflexive attempt to immortalize Philip Sidney in the world of mythology, its various generic and intellectual contexts will have to be established. 1 Gavin Alexander, Writing After Sidney: The Literary Response to Sir Philip Sidney 1586–1640 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 55. 2 Alexander, Writing After Sidney, p. xxxvi.

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3.1. The Structure and Textual History of Fraunce’s Mythography Jonathan Bate, in Shakespeare and Ovid, called Fraunce’s mythography ‘the fullest English commentary of the sixteenth century’.3 Similarly, Noel Purdon called it ‘an Ovid with a fat commentary appended’.4 But the mythographical explanations in Amintas Dale do not actually form a commentary on the verse translations. A sixteenth-century commentary on Ovid progresses line by line; it discusses, under the appropriate lemma, hard words or points of grammar, rhetorical figures, allusions to other authors such as Virgil or Homer, proper names, plants or animals (here, mythographical data come into play), and whatever the editor finds puzzling. Elpinus’s explications in Amintas Dale are very different. The mythographical information following the fable of Echo and Narcissus is a good example. First, we learn about the etymology of Juno’s names. Juno is then explained physically: she is the ‘vertue and efficacy of the ayre, and al its inferior compositon’.5 Her relationship to Jupiter veils the relationship between the inferior and the superior regions of the air. Juno’s upbringing by Oceanus and Thetis (the air is rarified water) and her giving birth to Vulcan (fire is made from incensed air) are interpreted in the same vein. Homer’s golden chain of being denotes Juno, the air, hanging chained between all things.6 She commands the winds, because they are nothing but air. The explanatory value of this is proven by Virgil’s Aeneid: now we understand the deeper significance of Aeolus’s (who is the king of winds) obedience to Juno.7 Aeolus is then explained historically, and a description of the winds is added. We also learn about Juno’s handmaids, her messenger Iris, and 3

Joanthan Bate, Shakespeare and Ovid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 27. Noel Purdon, The Words of Mercury: Shakespeare and English Mythography of the Renaissance (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974), 89. 5 Abraham Fraunce, The Third Part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch, Entituled Amintas Dale (London, 1592), sig. E1r. 6 Here, two episodes from Homer’s work are conflated. The first is Juno’s suspension in air, Homer, Iliad, trans. A. T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt, 2 vols., rev. edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), II: 106–9 (XV.18–24). The second is the golden chain on which all gods and goddesses could hang but not pull Jupiter from heaven (Il. VIII.18–22). Both are mentioned in Conti’s treatment of the incident, where Conti states that they are the same chain (Mythologiae, 116). 7 Cf. Virgil, Aeneid, ed. and trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G. P. Goold, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), I: 266–7 (I.65–80). 4

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her bird, the peacock. A description of the goddess is provided. Only after two pages does Elpinus turn, for twelve lines, to the story of Echo and Narcissus. Ixion follows, whom Fraunce alludes to in the story of Echo (this allusion is not in Ovid). He gets just as much attention as Echo and Narcissus did. In Fraunce’s rendering of the verse, the tertium comparationis between Ixion and Echo is Juno’s spiteful laughter at their punishment, which serves to colour the goddess’s character. In the mythographical explication the connection is that Ixion is a wouldbe lover of Juno. He was granted a free wish by Jupiter and wanted to sleep with the queen of gods. This being out of the question, Jupiter fabricated a fake-Juno out of clouds, on which Ixion begat the Centaurs (also called nubigenae). To round things off, Elpinus adds a three-pagelong Italian Echo poem after he finishes his explanations. This is a typical mythographical entry on the goddess, not a commentary on Ovid’s version of Echo and Narcissus. The actual principle of mythographical order is commented upon in the text itself, albeit in passages of little prominence. Amintas Dale begins with Pembrokiana’s request that each shepherd should tell one transformation story about one particular god. The connection between the story and the mythographical explanation is slight, as the introduction to the story of Echo and Narcissus shows: Elpinus having concluded this discourse [on Jupiter], it was commaunded by the Lady regent, that because Iuno was by nature and mariage conioyned with Iupiter, they should ioyntly be remembred, before any other of Saturns broode were medled withall. Fuluia therefore being apoynted for this narration, for that shee could not readily call to minde any memorable tale of Iuno herselfe, sang as foloweth of the Nymph Eccho, who was alwaies taken to be Iunoes daughter.8

This paragraph does not only convey a sense of how feeble the connection between fable and interpretation is. It is also the most prominent hint at the ordering principle of the work: Saturn’s progeny. Accordingly, at the end of the second explication, the reader learns that, after Pan, ‘it was thought good, that Saturne his children should be remembred in order’.9 A list of the gods starring in the explications (after the more general first one, which discusses Demagorgon and the children of Chaos, as well as Uranus and his son Saturn) reads as follows: Pan, Jupiter,

8

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D4r.

9

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D1v.

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Juno, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, Mercury, Mars, Minerva, Diana, Venus, Bacchus, Vertumnus, and Nemesis. Pan is of course the genius loci of Amintas Dale and as the god of shepherds has precedence. But he is also older than Saturn and all the others, being the second child of Chaos, born together with his sisters, the Fates.10 Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, and Pluto are Saturn’s children, as is Venus in a sense (born when Saturn’s genitals fell into the sea). The rest are his grandchildren through Jupiter, except Mars, who was born from Juno without male help. Vertumnus and Nemesis are the odd ones out—the reason for their inclusion will become apparent later in this chapter. While the verses take us through most books of the Metamorphoses, from Chaos to the Roman fables of Pomona and Vertumnus, the mythography deals with the most important gods in a mini-Genealogia. The dispositio of Amintas Dale is therefore a double structure with two lines of development, which are only weakly interconnected. The explanations do not comment much on the verse, nor do those that refer to the verse actually illuminate the allusions as they work in the poem. A narrative comment during the transition from storytelling to mythography suggests even more: ‘Damaetas had now done: and Elpinus thus recontinued his intermitted labor.’11 Continuous mythographical prose from god to god is interrupted by intruding tales. Furthermore, the explanations that actually refer to the story are never integrated into the rest of the prose, but set apart with a phrase such as ‘Now to Alphesiboeus his tale’12 or ‘Now for the explication of this [Vulcan’s] wooing of Minerva’.13 Amintas Dale can therefore be described as a generic hybrid: it is half mythography and half mythological poetry. The mythographical half of Amintas Dale probably has its roots in one of Fraunce’s much earlier projects. In the 1588 Insignium, armorum, emblematum, hieroglyphicorum, et symbolorum, quae ab Italis imprese nominantur, explicatio, there is evidence for an earlier, entirely mythographical work from Fraunce’s pen. The Insignium treats the image–meaning relationships mentioned in the title: insignia, arms, emblems, hieroglyphs, and imprese.14 10

11 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B2v. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D3r. 13 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. L4v. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. L2v. 14 While ‘symbolum’ is generally used to designate all of these particular cases, Fraunce—following Claude Mignault—also names imprese synecdochically ‘symbola’. He thus confers the general term in a totum pro parte figure on this special case, because Latin lacks a word for this recent Italian invention. Abraham Fraunce, Insignium armorum, 12

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However, on the very first page of the Insignium, Fraunce explains that he should also speak about mythology in this book. The reason why he does not do so is that he has already written about mythology elsewhere: Mythologiam, deorum imagines, & aenigmatum quorundam explicationem iam-pridem descripsimus: quod opus quia varium est & multiplex, iustumq[ue] volumen desiderat, supprimendum est, donec perfectius elaboretur.15 The mythology, the images of the gods, and the explanation of certain riddles, I have already described; because this work is various and complicated, and requires a fitting volume, it is to be held back, until it should be elaborated more fully.

Fraunce refers to a draft mythography begun at some point before 1588, but as yet unfinished. His Latin alludes to the titles of the Italian mythographies, boasting his familiarity with Giraldi’s De deis gentium uaria & multiplex historia, Cartari’s Imagines Deorum (the title of the Latin translation of Imagini de i dei), and Conti’s Mythologiae. Fraunce’s plan for a Latin mythography would explain the subtitle of the Insignium: ‘quae symbolicae philosophiae postrema pars est’ (‘which is the last part of the philosophy of symbols’), which implies that there were one or two preceding parts planned. Amintas Dale is certainly not the ‘volumen iustum’ promised in the Insignium. First of all, its language is English and not the elegant Latin of the tract on symbols. Second, it is not a scholarly prose text, but fiction. Most importantly, Amintas Dale belongs to the context of Fraunce’s works celebrating Philip Sidney and his memory. The idea for it is unlikely to have been conceived before 1591, the fifth anniversary of

emblematum, hieroglyphicorum, et symbolorum, quae ab Italis imprese nominantur, explicatio quae symbolicae philosophiae postrema pars est (London, 1588), sig. M2r. 15 Fraunce, Insignium, sig. A3r–v. Two manuscripts are closely related to the Insignium. First, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.345 contains forty imprese by Paolo Giovio. It is in Fraunce’s own handwriting and is dedicated to Philip Sidney. The other is titled ‘Symbolicae philosophiae liber quartus et ultimus’ and is held in the Kent County Archive (MS U1475.16). This MS was presented to Robert Sidney and contains the impresematerial of the third book of the Insignium. Fifty-six lines of Latin verse on the imprese of Philip Sidney were newly added for this occasion. This MS has been edited and translated: Abraham Fraunce, Symbolicae philosophiae liber quartus et ultimus, ed. John Manning, trans. Estelle Haan (New York: AMS Press, 1991). However, I am quoting from the Insignium throughout, because Fraunce’s remarks on myth are scattered across all three books of the Insignium and because the material I rely on in Book III remained unchanged in the MS version.

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Sidney’s death, when Fraunce for the first time introduces the annual festivities honouring his former patron in the first instalment of the Countess of Pembroke’s Yuychurch. This means that the verses for Amintas Dale are unlikely to have been written before 1591. If the mythographical material in Amintas Dale had its origins in Fraunce’s projected Latin mythography, the elements of this text come from two separate production contexts. Fraunce’s main mythographical model could have been Cartari. Fraunce mentions in his book on symbol theory that the gods had insignia. He quotes the Carmina Priapea, which enumerate some of them, but adds: Et ea quae sequuntur in eodem loco, quae malo in tacitis legentium cogitationibus relinquere, quàm in oratione mea ponere. Singulis ergo dijs sua insignia tribuit antiquitas: quae, qualia sint, tum demum explicabimus, cùm deorum imagines, earumq[ue] rationes latius exponemus.16 And those things which follow there, these I prefer rather to leave to the silent thoughts of the readers, than to put into my discourse. Antiquity attributed insignia to the individual gods, which, and of what quality they are, I will only then explain, when I shall speak more extensively about the images of the gods and their reasons.

The images of the gods and their attributes would therefore have a space in his mythography, which suggests a text discussing one god and his or her images at a time. This is the structure of Cartari’s mythography, a text Fraunce knew. If Fraunce wrote this manuscript mythography as part of his symbol theory and, years later, salvaged it for his Amintas Dale, this would explain the progression from god to god, the inclusion of the verbal ‘pictures’ of each god—as well as the disruptiveness of the fables and the lack of mutual illumination between fables and explication.

3.2. Fashionably Nebulous: Fraunce’s Concept of Myth Even though Fraunce’s Latin mythography is not available, Amintas Dale and the more general Insignium are sufficient to reconstruct his thoughts on the conception and function of fables. In Amintas Dale, Fraunce does 16

Fraunce, Insignium, sig. D1r.

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not explicitly theorize the relationship between the invention of the story and its meanings. His idea of how fables come to be must therefore be gleaned from his frequent remarks on poets’ activities. Three typical examples are: Claudian in his Poeme de raptu Proserpinae, maketh them [the Parcae] all attend on Pluto, soe doth Fulgentius, because their dominion is most ouer these terrestriall and inferior bodies figured by Pluto and his infernall kingdome.17 Allegorically they [the Sirens] signifie the cosning trics of counterfeit strumpets, the vndoubted shipwrack of all affectionat yonkers: and therefore it is said by Virgil, that the Mermaydes rocks are all-ouerspread with bones of dead men, whose destruction their deceauable allurements had procured.18 Cicnus was king of Liguria; he loued Musick, and is therefore of Ouid turnd into a Swanne.19

Claudian, Virgil, and Ovid are shown to be in possession of the ethical, historical, or natural-philosophical knowledge that a mythographer is able to find in their poems. Such an assumption is not a given. As we shall see, Francis Bacon assumed that the Greek and Roman poets had no idea what kind of knowledge they transmitted. Furthermore, Fraunce represents the individual authors as actively searching for an appropriate image for the particular cosmic, moral, or historical truth they want to express. The linking word between the choice of image and the knowledge is always either ‘because’, ‘for’, or ‘therefore’, showing the close creative connection between the two. The first conclusion must be that, for Fraunce as it had been for Batman, the invention of fables is an image-making process. Fraunce stresses the poets’ freedom with their material. They could either invent new elements or stories,20 or take over old ones and add to them: ‘That which foloweth of the generall deluge or inundation, is borrowed, by likelihood, out of Moyses, by adding thereunto the conceit of Deucalions and Pyrrhaes casting of stones behind their backes for the renuing of our stony generation.’21 The idea of the pagan poets’ debt to Moses was a commonplace of the time. It was often employed either by

17

18 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B3r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. F4v. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. L4r. 20 ‘As Homer (the first author of this inuention [i.e. the binding of Proteus]) in the fourth of his Odyssea discourseth at large.’ Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. G1r. 21 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sigs. C3r–v. 19

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apologists who wanted to show that philosophers like Plato had read the works of Moses and that their works therefore contain elements of the true religion, or by those who wanted to attack the pagans by showing that all of their wisdom was plagiarized from the sacred books of the Jews. But in Fraunce, the emphasis lies elsewhere. Deucalion is not a stolen Noah; he is a poetic addition by the pagan author that enriches Moses’s story. The relationship between the ancients and Moses is that of artists, borrowing from and adding to each other’s work. Accordingly, contradictions between versions are no problem: while Ovid’s Cupid is blind, ‘Moschus in his wandring and fugitive Cupid, maketh him not blinde, but hauing bright and cleare eyes. Tasso hath the like in Italian, to that of Moschus in greeke.’22 There can be no single right version of Cupid, because the image and description of the god will change according to the poet’s purpose in the poem at hand. Similar to the poetic half of Batman’s ‘entermixed stratageme’ of myth, Fraunce’s account of the fables’ conception revolves around learned poets deliberately choosing an image (taken from nature or newly created) to fit a particular message. Bleached bones stranded on the rocks of the Sirens signify a young man’s fate at the hands of loose women. The re-creation of men from rocks stresses the cruelty and hardness of humanity. The metamorphosis of a man into a swan expresses Cygnus’s love of music. Superficially, this looks like Natale Conti’s approach: The poets used this type of fictive indirection to explain the orderly course of natural events, and they concealed various subjects beneath the secret coverings of fables: sometimes knowledge or learning, or the powers and originating principles of natural phenomena, or perhaps the way to build a civilized course of life.23

However, there are two important differences between the two mythographers: the first is Fraunce’s strong emphasis on imagery, and the second is the function of this imagery. Conti speaks of concealment and continues the above quotation by saying that ‘these forms of knowledge hidden in fables were comprehensible only to the ancient wise men, or to those that the wise men themselves had instructed in these

22

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. M4r. Natale Conti, Mythologiae, trans. John Mulryan and Steven Brown, 2 vols. (Tempe, Ariz.: ACMRS, 2006), I: 116. 23

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matters’.24 The fables protected knowledge from the eyes of the uninitiated. This fictional lock could not be opened without the secret key handed down from one wise man to another. Such concealing images can be chosen like a code, without connection to what is signified. Fraunce’s examples, however, all depend on a tertium comparationis between the chosen image and the signified, that is, they depend on a quality which the two compared things have in common: the hardness of humans/stones, the hierarchical order between the elements/kings and client kings, or the musicality of Cygnus/swans. Second, the truth-veiling images in Fraunce are anything but impenetrable. Fraunce believed that everyone who is not completely dim-witted can understand the moral sense and every betterborn Englishman can fathom even the deepest mysteries of the fables: They, whose capacitie is such, as that they can reach somewhat further than the external discourse and history, shall finde a morall sence included therein, extolling virtue, condemning vice, euery way profitable for the institution of a practicall and common wealch man [sic]. The rest, that are better borne and of a more noble spirit, shall meete with hidden mysteries of naturall, astrologicall, or diuine and metaphysicall philosophy, to entertaine their heauenly speculation.25

The function of the mythological images cannot, therefore, lie only in concealment. One of the most interesting passages in Amintas Dale illustrates this point. In this passage, Fraunce claims that Ovid gave a small hint, somewhere in his Tristia, that points to the moral interpretation of the story of Phaethon in the Metamorphoses: ‘The ethicall moralization, (which Ouid himselfe tutcheth in his bookes de Tristibus) may be this: Phaeton, a youth, and therefore vnable to gouerne, will needes be a magistrate: but alas, it is too great a burden for his weake shoulders.’26 Fraunce refers to Tristia III.4.29, where Icarus, Dolon, and Phaethon are used as examples to warn a friend not to seek power and renown—they only lead to one’s downfall.27 Fraunce takes Ovid’s hint in the Tristia and 24

25 Conti, Mythologiae, I: 116. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B2r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. K1v. 27 Ovid, Tristia, Ex Ponto, trans. Arthur Leslie Wheeler, rev. G. P. Goold, rev. 2nd edn. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988, repr. 1996), 116 (III.4.21–32). Fraunce, too, connects Icarus and Phaethon: Amintas Dale, sig. K3r: ‘The like folly and fall was that of Icarus, who soared so high with his waxed wings, that he gaue name to the Icarian sea, wherein he was drowned. Ouid 8. Metam. sweetely telleth this tale, and in 3. de tristibus, as sweetely doth expound it.’ 26

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applies it to the passage from the Metamorphoses. He takes his reader quotation-by-quotation through the relevant lines of the Phaethon episode, making his case for a political allegory contained in the fable as Ovid told it. In Metamorphoses II.63–7, for example, Phoebus is speaking to Phaethon about the route the sun chariot is taking: Ardua prima via est et qua vix mane recentes Enituntur equi; medio est altissima caelo, Unde mare et terras ipsi mihi saepe videre Fit timor et pavida trepidat formidine pectus; Ultima prona via est et eget moderamine certo.28 The first part of the road is steep, up which my steeds in all their morning freshness can scarce make their way. In mid-heaven it is exceeding high, whence to look down on sea and land oft-times causes even me to tremble, and my heart to quake with throbbing fear. The last part of the journey is precipitous, and needs an assured control.

Fraunce takes these words of Phoebus and transfers their meaning into the political context. The basis for this operation is a simile: a career in politics is like a dangerous ascent into heaven. The government and administration of a commonwealth is: as heauy as heauenly. The beginning and climing vp, is hard and difficult: the top thereof subiect to a thousand perills and dangers, which make euen the most experienced, much to feare: and the discent or comming downe is headlong.29

Each image of the tale, the chariot, the wild horses, the constellations in the sky, and so on, is interpreted—or rather translated into the chosen context. Fraunce devotes more than three quarto pages to making his point. The imagery that has concealed this meaning becomes, as soon as the correct interpretive context is known, an aid to understanding and to fleshing out the details of the philosophical knowledge contained. The images chosen by the makers of fables constitute a very thin veil indeed: they reveal as much as they conceal. Fraunce’s concept of mythopoesis is close to his patron Philip Sidney’s concept of poetics. Fraunce’s core principle is an idea preconceived in the poet’s mind. Sidney writes in the Defence: ‘the skill of each artificer standeth in that idea or fore-conceit of the work, and not in the work itself. And that the poet hath that idea is manifest, by delivering them forth 28

Met. II.63–7.

29

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. K1v.

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in such excellency as he had imagined them.’30 Like Sidney, Fraunce is clear about the sequence of events: the poet first has his idea and then looks for a suitable, fictional image. Sidney writes that a poet ‘doth not learn a conceit out of a matter, but maketh matter for a conceit’.31 As we shall see, the transparency of the fictional veil that is characteristic of Fraunce’s concept of fable is linked to the pedagogical and psychological function of the imagery that constitutes the fables. This function is akin to Sidney’s thoughts on the psychological power of poetry. In the Insignium, Fraunce asks how ideas conceived in the mind (‘animi sensa’ or ‘animi notiones’) are expressed through images to those absent in time or space, and what different sorts of image-meaning relationships exist.32 He calls these relationships ‘symbola’. That Fraunce saw fables as one special case of symbol is clear from the beginning of the Insignium. It is while the ‘volumen iustum’ on fables is in preparation that he, in the interim, writes about the other symbols: quod opus . . . supprimendum est, donec perfectius elaboretur. Interim de Insignibus, Armis, Emblematibus, Symbolis, Hieroglyphicis, quod inuenerimus, afferemus; obiterq[ue] etia[m] coronaru[m], tunicaru[m], colorumq[ue] varietate[m] explicabimus.33 this work (on mythology) is to be suppressed, until it should be elaborated more fully. Meanwhile, I will treat of insignia, arms, emblems, imprese, hieroglyphs, which I have met with, and in passing I will explain the diversity of garlands, tunics, and colours.

All image–meaning relationships discussed have two things in common with the fable as Fraunce treats it in Amintas Dale. They express notions preconceived in the author’s mind. And they are engaged in the concealing–revealing game the fables are playing, that is, all symbols conceal their meaning, but none of them is allowed to be too obscure. The latter is evident from Fraunce’s definition of his general term. A symbol, he defines in line with Claude Mignault, is ‘id quo aliquid 31 Sidney, ‘Defence’, 79. Sidney, ‘Defence’, 99. Fraunce, Insignium, sig. A3r and A3v. ‘Animi notiones’ is in most cases Fraunce’s translation of Girolamo Ruscelli’s ‘intention dell’Autore’ in his Discorso, which Fraunce in many places summarizes. This could be Fraunce’s translation of fore-conceit and point to yet another connection to Sidney’s Defence. For a discussion of Fraunce’s use of Ruscelli see Michael Bath, Speaking Pictures: English Emblem Books and Renaissance Culture (London: Longman, 1994), 140–1. 33 Fraunce, Insignium, sig. A3v. 30 32

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coniectamus & cognoscimus’ (‘that by which we conjecture or understand something’),34 but it is also ‘argumentum quo aliquid ocultatur’ (‘an argument by which something is concealed’).35 With respect to the imprese, for example, Fraunce explains the importance: vt neque tanta tenebrarum caligine inuoluatur, vt Sybilla quaepiam interpres videatur adhibenda, neque ita apertum sit ac peruulgatum, vt vel media plebe petitus homunculus & legat, & intelligat.36 that it is neither wrapped up in so great a cloud of darkness that a Sibylline intermediary seems to be needed for it, and neither should it be so open and vulgarized, that even a little man sought from the middle of the plebs could read and understand it.

These parallels between Fraunce’s concept of fables in Amintas Dale, his definition of the symbol, and his thoughts on imprese are not surprising, seeing that Fraunce stated his conviction that all things within the scope of the Insignium—‘omnia quae proposuimus’ (‘all things I have proposed’)—share basic features.37 But what about the image-making process itself? What is its basis and how does the fable differ from the other symbols? The answer lies embedded in Fraunce’s discussion of imprese, where he critically engages with the opinions of the established authors on the subject. For Fraunce, an impresa begins, like all symbols, with an idea conceived in the mind of the inventor.38 For this, the inventor needs to find a fitting image, which Fraunce advises is best taken from nature. The inventor has to ask himself: ‘quae planta, quodnam animal istiusmodi proprietate sit instructum, quae accomodata videri possit ad id quod volumus exprimendum’ (‘which plant, which animal by the special quality of its manner is fit, which can seem suitable to that which we want to

34

Fraunce, Insignium, sig. M2r. Fraunce takes these definitions from Claude Mignault’s ‘Syntagma de Symbolis, stemmatum et schematum ratione, quae insignia seu arma gentilia vulgo nominantur: Deque Emblematis’, published as prefatory material to Alciati’s Emblemata. This material was first published in 1571. The edition I have seen is Claude Mignault, ‘Syntagma de Symbolis’, in Andrea Alciati, Emblemata (Padua, 1621), xlv–lxiv. 35 36 Fraunce, Insignium, sig. M2r. Fraunce, Insignium, sig. M2v. 37 Fraunce, Insignium, sig. A3v. 38 Fraunce states that ‘primo in loco diligenter id erit considerandum, quod velimus exprimi’ (‘in the first place, one must diligently consider what we want to express’). Fraunce, Insignium, sig. Q4v.

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express’).39 Fraunce recommends leafing through Konrad Gessner’s Historiae animalium, Pietro Andrea Mattioli’s work on herbs (Fraunce probably refers to Commentarii denuo aucti in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei de medica materia), and Julius Caesar Scaliger’s De plantis to make sure the chosen image corresponds to the truth of nature.40 This, however, does not yet explain what he means by ‘proprietas’, the special character or quality of the animal or plant which makes it fit for the image. Fraunce’s discussion of the use of the human form in imprese, a hotly debated topic amongst the writers on the subject, holds the key to his idea of ‘proprietas’. Fraunce says that living men are not to be depicted, because they are unstable signifiers: Porro, homo cum sui iuris sit, rationis & iudicij particeps, inconstans saepissime repertitur, nulla vt certa regula sumi posit ab illius actionibus ad rem aliquam explicandam.41 Moreover, since man is of his own law, a sharer of reason and judgement, he is very often found inconstant, so that no certain rule can be derived from his actions by which some thing could be explained.

Images in imprese need to afford stable signification. What commends animals and plants therefore is the fact that they are ‘constantissime’, that is, most consistent in their behaviour.42 Their meanings are fixed and therefore they are able to serve as the basis of a comparison. On the same grounds, Fraunce allows the use of dead and famous people whose character traits have become proverbial, such as the cruelty of Nero or the dishonourableness of Thersites.43 In order to qualify for an impresa, therefore, anything chosen to express the inventor’s idea needs to correspond to it in one of its wellknown features. This is true for mythological figures as well, the use of which Fraunce allows against the opinion of Scipione Bargali. Fraunce stresses that gods and their stories are known to schoolboys and used in everyday conversation.44 Thus, they offer the same kind of stability in meaning as famous people of the past or things governed by nature.

39

40 Fraunce, Insignium, sig. Q4v. Fraunce, Insignium, sig. Q4v. Fraunce, Insignium, sig. O4r. 42 ‘Quae vero non pro arbitratu suo feruntur, sed mouentur natura duce, co[n]stantissime progrediuntur’ (‘These indeed are carried not by their own judgement, but are moved by nature, their leader; they go about their ways very consistently’). Fraunce, Insignium, sig. O4r. 43 44 Fraunce, Insignium, sig. O4v. Fraunce, Insignium, sig. P1r. 41

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It was the job of the motto to narrow down the potentially multiple meanings of the image to the specific meaning referred to in a particular impresa. Summing up so far, an image chosen for an impresa needs to correspond to the inventor’s mental concept in a well-established way. It can be taken from nature, history, poetry, or mythology. The author of an impresa does not make up new, fictional matter for his mental conceit. The reason for this might have been communicative economy in the busy streets Fraunce imagines as the setting for his imprese.45 Fraunce’s discussion of the human form is also interesting for its comments on the degree of obscurity to be found in fables. It becomes clear that the function of the concealing images in fables are illustrative and explanatory: All the ‘deorum imagines, dearumque, omnia portenta poetica’ (‘the images of the gods and goddesses, and all the fantastic poetical stories’) and the ‘Faunos, Satyros, & rustica montium, arborum, fontiumque nomina’ (‘the fauns, satyrs, and the rustic spirits of the mountains, trees, and springs’) should be allowed in an impresa, because it is only fitting that truths should be illustrated and explained by fictions (‘vt res vera fictis illustretur et explicetur, id mihi videtur maxime accomodatum’).46 Fraunce tells us that others hold the opinion that mythological figures should be forbidden in imprese on the ground that they are very difficult to understand. But he opposes this opinion. Yes, imprese must gracefully conceal their meaning and hide it successfully from the uneducated and vulgar. But all it needs to achieve that is a little cloud of obscurity (‘obscuritatis nubecula’).47 The fables are accessible to common sense (‘neque . . . a communi sensu abhorrentia’), and they can be understood by schoolboys. In polite conversation they offer just the right degree of elegant concealment required in a successful impresa. Therefore mythological figures are recommended for use.48 However, there is a difference between image-making in those symbols described in the Insignium and the image-making in the fables of the 45 ‘Plures enim, si in pileis tunicisue proponantur, tam cito nec legi possunt, nec intellegi, vel ab amicis e fenestris aspicientibus, vel ab alijs huc illuc co[n]fluentibus’ (‘If more [than two images] should be displayed on hats or clothing, they can neither be read quickly nor understood by either friends looking on out of windows or others flocking together here and there’). Fraunce, Insignium, sig. M4v. 46 Fraunce, Insignium, sigs. O4v–P1r. 47 Fraunce, Insignium, sig. P1r. Fraunce is here joining forces with Girolamo Ruscelli against Paolo Giovio, paraphrasing Ruscelli’s Discorso approvingly and at length at this point. 48 Fraunce, Insignium, sig. P1r.

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poets. At the beginning of his discussion of the use of human forms in imprese, Fraunce quotes Virgil’s description of Venus in the Aeneid looking like Harplice from Thracia.49 This was seen by some as a proto-impresa and had been put forward by Ruscelli to defend the use of the human form. Fraunce’s reaction to it is straightforward. Virgil cannot be used as an argument in this discussion, because ‘[l]iberiores enim sunt poetae quam oratores’ (‘poets are freer than orators’).50 Fraunce opens up a distinction we have encountered before. While the similes of an inventor of imprese—of an orator—need to be backed up by the authority of nature’s laws, historical fact, or poetical convention, the poet is free to fashion new images to express his meaning. Indeed, all other image-making processes in the Insignium are bound back to authoritative sources such as those used in the imprese. Only the images in fables range freely in the zodiac of the poet’s wit. After all, the poet is the one to fashion the images others are subsequently using. With Fraunce, the author of fables is liberated into the realm of poetic metaphor. This might well be the reason why Fraunce set the fable apart from the other symbols and wanted to devote a separate book to the discussion of such a varied and complex topic. In order to understand how Fraunce thought poetic metaphors work, we need to turn to a text published in the same year as the Insignium: the Arcadian Rhetorike. The concept of ‘revealing concealment’ that was so prominent in both Amintas Dale and the Insignium is at the heart of the concept of metaphor as Fraunce’s contemporaries saw it. It was understood as hiding a literal sense under another, that is, under the chosen image. In his Rhetorike, Fraunce defines metaphor as a trope: ‘when a word is turned from his naturall signification, to some other.’51 The concealing–revealing function comes through even more clearly in the work of a contemporary who, like Fraunce, built his rhetorical handbook around Sidney’s Arcadia and saw fables in the context of similitudes and emblems. John Hoskins explains in his Directions for Speech and Style that a ‘METAPHOR or TRANSLATION, is the friendly and neighborly borrowing of one word to express a thing with more light and better note, though not so directly and properly as the natural name of the

49 51

50 Aen. I.314–17. Fraunce, Insignium, sig. O4v. Abraham Fraunce, Arcadian Rhetorike (London, 1588), sig. A2v.

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thing meant would signify’.52 A metaphor extended from one word to a sentence or paragraph is termed ‘allegory’. Fraunce writes: The excellencie of tropes is then most apparant, when either manie be fitlie included in one word, or one so continued in manie, as that with what thing it begin, with the same it also end: and then it is called an Allegorie or Inuersion.53

When Fraunce explains the story of Phaethon, this is the type of allegory he is pursuing. For him, the story of Phaethon’s ride in the sun’s chariot is a metaphor continued in many words. His reading of it as an allegory for a public career reverses Ovid’s sustained imagery into the plain meaning of political advice. Hoskins spells out the essential closeness of metaphors, emblems, allegories, similitudes, and mythological tales. Building on Sidney’s comparison of Philoclea’s tested virtue with a besieged castle, he elaborates: plant a castle compassed with rivers and let the word be, Nec obsidione nec cuniculis (neither by siege nor undermining): that is an emblem . . . Lay it as it is in Sir Philip S[idney]: Philoclea’s virtue, the proper terms of the one part; environed, rivers, battered, undermined, the terms of the other part; all these terms in one sentence and it is an allegory. Let it be this: There was a lamb in a castle, and an elephant and a fox besieged it . . . . Then it is a fable. Let Spenser tell you such a tale of a Faery Queen, and Ovid of Diana, and then it is a poet’s tale.54

Thus, a metaphor or similar strategies of speaking through images (verbal and actual) first of all cover up what is actually meant. Once the tertium comparationis is found, however, they add significance to the literal meaning. In a mythological context, some things can only be understood when certain fictional images are explained, such as the physical meaning of the gods. As soon as a mythographer has provided this knowledge, however, the metaphor of Juno commanding Aeolus (the god of wind) becomes transparent and meaningful beyond the simple equation of Juno with the air. For Fraunce, the Greek fables

52 John Hoskins, Directions for Speech and Style, ed. Hoyt H. Hudson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1935), 8. For a study of vernacular rhetoric manuals and their importance for early modern English literature, see Jenny C. Mann, Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012). Sean Keilen combines these interests with mythology, especially the fables of Orpheus, Philomela, and Circe in Vulgar Eloquence: On the Renaissance Invention of Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). 53 54 Fraunce, Arcadian Rhetorike, sig. A2v. Hoskins, Directions, 9–10.

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were essentially free-ranging poetic metaphors. And the desired effect of metaphoric speech, as the examples from the Arcadian Rhetorike and Hoskins’s Directions, as well as the Insignium, have indicated, is to incite the reader to find the underlying connection, perhaps even add his creativity to enhance the meaning. If a poetic metaphor is successful, it becomes an image that can be used by others. The rhetoric of metaphorical speech is also emphasized in Fraunce’s short general introduction to the mythographical explications in Amintas Dale. Here, he duly rehearses mythographical commonplaces: fables are like Pythagoras’s ‘symbolicall kinde of teaching’, like Plato’s ‘conceited parables and allegoricall discourses’, like the doctrines which the Ethiopians and Egyptians kept ‘religiously secret’, and like the ‘mysticall and allegoricall’ songs of Solomon.55 The Greeks similarly have ‘wrapped up in tales such sweet inuentions, as of the learned vnfolder may well be deemed vonderfull, though to a vulgar conceit, they seeme but friuolus imaginations’.56 But Fraunce, as we might now expect, does not follow these commonplaces to the point where allegories serve secret communication. Rather, he suggests that allegories were created to make available the conceits they cover: He that cannot conceaue any sufficient cause which might induce antiquity to deale thus warily in matters of such importance, let him know that . . . the picturing forth, figuring, or, as it were, personall representing of things in verse after this manner, is most effectual and auaylable.57

This is reminiscent of Fraunce’s phrase in the Insignium, where he explained that in fables true things are illustrated and explained by fictions. This way of metaphorical speaking is pedagogically most effective and beneficial for the reader.58 All teaching by philosophers, Sidney concurs, remains barren without the images of poets: so no doubt the philosopher with his learned definitions . . . replenisheth the memory with many infallible grounds of wisdom, which, notwithstanding, lie dark before the imaginative and judging power, if they be not illuminated or figured forth by the speaking picture of poesy.59 55

All quotations in this sentence are from Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B1v. 57 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B1v. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sigs. B1v–B2r. 58 According to the OED, ‘available’ here means either ‘capable of producing a desired result; of avail, effectual, efficacious’ or ‘of advantage; serviceable, beneficial, profitable (to, unto)’. 59 Sidney, ‘Defence’, 86. 56

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Approached from this angle, Fraunce’s unusual introductory remarks fall into place. He had opened with a comparison between painters and poets, supported by two quotations from Cicero. This leads him to a definition of ‘poetry, a speaking picture’.60 The idea of the sister arts is here used in the same way as Sidney employs it in the Defence. Sidney defines poetry as ‘a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth—to speak metaphorically, a speaking picture—with this end, to teach and delight’.61 Sidney’s take on the imagery in poetry is a clearly rhetorical one in the sense that it is concerned with the power of these images over emotions, memory, and judgement. The concreteness of images will be better remembered than abstract teaching, and, together with a passionate involvement in the story, they could lead to the desired effect of epideictic rhetoric.62 Fraunce, after revealing that the ancients put their knowledge into images on grounds of their efficacy, is making the same point. The ancients wrote speaking pictures, because imagery serves to ‘moue mens minds, to stirre vp delight, to confirme memorie, and to allure and entice our cogitations by such familiar and sensible discourses, to matters of more diuine and higher contemplation’.63 The effects of delight might be the only ones the simple reader will experience, but everyone above a ‘mean conceit’ will be able to benefit from the moral lessons. Sidney does not talk about the third effect Fraunce mentions: the images can introduce the high-minded readers to ‘hidden mysteries of naturall, astrologicall, or diuine and metaphysical philosophy’ and ‘entertaine their heauenly speculation’.64 We have already seen how this works: as soon as Ovid has given us a hint as to the meaning of Phaethon’s journey, the reader can try to match all images to the political context and think about their applicability; as soon as we know about Pan standing for the universe we can interpret his figure, clothing, and attributes accordingly and discover more and more significance.

60

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B1v. Sidney, ‘Defence’, 79–80. This phrase seems to be echoed by Fraunce’s ‘picturing forth, figuring, or, as it were, personall representing’, Amintas Dale, sig. B2r. 62 The poet ‘doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it’. And, Sidney writes, ‘glad will they be to hear the tales of Hercules, Achilles, Cyrus, Aeneas; and, hearing them, must needs hear the right description of wisdom, valour and justice.’ Sidney, ‘Defence’, 92. 63 64 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B2r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B2r. 61

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Fraunce’s concern with myth is thus characterized by a focus on mythopoesis. Myth is a storehouse of images which are both the product of and the raw material for a poetic process of image-making. It is as ancient as European civilization, it transcends the efforts of an individual poet, and it is still very much alive. Fables and their images are communicative of the artists’ thoughts and wisdom, rather than mysterious and impenetrable. The imagery has a significant relationship to the meaning it veils. Rather than hiding it, the chosen image helps to create meaning. Its all-important function is to entice the reader, to stir him in order to teach him, to tease his mind and direct his thoughts to find out more. This concept of myth is more indebted to Sidney’s poetics than to any mythographer, Italian or otherwise, that Fraunce might have plundered for individual interpretations. In this context, it only makes sense that Amintas Dale contains actual poetry rather than the simple prose summaries that are the usual fare in mythographies. If myth is a form of poetry, it needs to be told poetically to have its desired effect. In this point, Fraunce agrees with the other English mythographer who includes a versified fable into his text: Henry Reynolds. As we shall see, Reynolds also develops a poetic concept of myth (although very different from Fraunce’s). And he, too, attempts to activate its power by retelling a fable in a compelling poetic form. Fraunce, however, is the only English mythographer who fashions a new fable, one concerned with Philip Sidney’s death. In the verses of Amintas Dale, the reader can observe how Fraunce laboriously re-creates fables in verse and establishes specific connections between them in order to weave his own fable into the established web.

3.3. Making Sidney into Myth For the few scholars writing on the subject, the adjective ‘Ovidian’ has seemed sufficient to label—and pass over—Fraunce’s verses in Amintas Dale.65 But in order to understand Fraunce’s Ovidianism, it is important to be aware that Fraunce draws on authors other than Ovid for his verses. David Sharp was the first to point out that Fraunce, in his sixth tale, does

65

Bush, Mythology, 308.

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not translate from Ovid, but from Claudian’s De raptu Proserpinae.66 A. B. Taylor noted a debt to Arthur Golding’s The XV books of P. Ouidius Naso, Entytuled Metamorphosis (London, 1567).67 And as I have shown elsewhere, there was yet another, much more pervasive influence: Giovanni dell’Anguillara’s Metamorfosi (1561).68 Additionally, Fraunce frequently alludes to continental mythological poetry, for example Boscán’s Leandro y Hero, Remy Belleau’s La Bergerie, and various works by Tasso. This practice does not only underline Fraunce’s vernacular humanism. It expands the metamorphic world of Ovid. Building upon the internal coherence of the tales in the Metamorphoses, he is able to weave those of others into it, add one of his own, and exhort his readers to write one, too: I remember an odde conceited dialogue between her [Echo] & the affectionate louer, which as I heard of late from a forren Pastor, so here for nouelties sake, I repeat it: that some of our company may another time either worke on the same ground, or lay himself a new foundation.69

The identity of this foreign poet was as unknown to Fraunce as it is to modern readers. Fraunce took it from one of the Italian editions of Imagini de i dei degli antichi by Cartari—who did not acknowledge his source.70 But the point about Fraunce’s Ovidianism is that it enlarges Ovid: it includes ancient variations as well as sixteenth-century versions

David Sharp, ‘Abraham Fraunce’s Debt to Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae in Amintas Dale’, Notes and Queries 245 (2000), 436–8. 67 A. B. Taylor, ‘Abraham Fraunce’s Debt to Arthur Golding in Amintas Dale’, Notes and Queries 33 (1986), 333–6. 68 For a more detailed discussion, see my article ‘Abraham Fraunce’s Use of Giovanni Andrea dell’Anguillara’s Metamorfosi’, Translation and Literature 22.1 (2013), 103–10. 69 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. E3v (my emphasis). 70 Cartari’s Latin editions contain only one classical example (Ausonius). The Italian editions, however, include vernacular renderings of the Echo fable, and some also offer this Echo poem. The poem is not included in the modern edition Vincenzo Cartari, Le immagini degli dèi, ed. Caterina Volpi (Rome: Da Luca, 1996). Snare, who was the first to identify the source of this poem, saw it only in the 1647 Venice edition; cf. Abraham Fraunce, The Third Part of the Countess of Pembroke’s Ivychurch: Entitled Amintas Dale, ed. Gerald Snare (Northridge, Calif.: California State University Press, 1975), n. 51. I have seen this poem in Vincenzo Cartari, Le imagini de i dei degli antichi (Padua, 1603), 126–9. It is not yet included in the 1581 Lyon edition. On editions of Cartari’s mythography in general see Caterina Volpi, ‘Introduzione, Vincenzo Cartari, Le immagini degli dèi’, in Vincenzo Cartari, Le immagini degli dèi, ed. Caterina Volpi (Rome: Da Luca, 1996), 1–30, here 28–30, and John Mulryan, ‘Translations and Adaptations of Vincenzo Cartari’s Imagini and Natale Conti’s Mythologiae: The Mythographic Tradition in the Renaissance’, Canadian Review of Comparative Literature 8 (1981), 272–83. 66

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and new alternatives that have not yet been written. The world of the Latin Metamorphoses is stretched to include all mythic stories. Such a view of the Metamorphoses and of their strong but flexible principle of coherence allows Fraunce to weave his own tale into the complex web of myth. Fraunce begins by linking Amintas Dale to his earlier Amintas-texts, especially The Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch Conteining the Affectionate Life and Vnfortunate Death of Phillis and Amyntas of the previous year. As mentioned at the outset of this chapter, The Lamentations of Amintas had been published in 1587, 1588, and 1589 without alterations. It ended, like Watson’s Latin original, with the transformation of the shepherd into the Amaranthus flower, his neighbours searching for him in vain.71 When Fraunce republished the Lamentations in 1591 as the second part of the Yuychurch, he introduced a new ending: Amaryllis at last finds the Amaranthus flower and presents it to Pembrokiana. This character of Mary Sidney then commands that, annually, all have to come together to praise and mourn the shepherd in that same part of Yuychurch Park, which she christens ‘Amintas Dale’.72 One year later, in the 1592 publication, they do just that. After the link is established, Fraunce has Pembrokiana open ‘that solempne feast of murdered Amyntas’ in the following way: Pastymes ouerpast, and death’s celebration ended, Matchles Lady regent, for a further grace to Amyntas Late transformed to a flowre; wills euery man to remember Some one God transformd, or that transformed another: And enioynes each nymph to recount some tale of a Goddesse That was changd herself, or wrought some change in an other.73

Mary Sidney acts as Muse telling her poets what to sing. The theme is the same as in Ovid, bodies changed into new forms. Narratologically, however, there is a great difference. Ovid, without asserting a strong narrative voice (there is no first-person verb form like Virgil’s cano), emphasizes continuous narration.74 In Fraunce, this is 71 The Complete Works of Thomas Watson, ed. Dana F. Sutton, 2 vols. (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1996), I: 345. 72 Abraham Fraunce, The Countess of Pembrokes Yuychurch Conteining the Affectionate Life and Vnfortunate Death of Phillis and Amyntas (London, 1591), sigs. L1v–L2r. 73 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. A4r. 74 Lothar Spahlinger, Ars latet arte sua: Die Poetologie der Metamorphosen Ovids (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1996), 30.

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substituted by a dramatic situation. The stress is on oral relation by individual voices. This narrative framework is akin to the singing competitions in the Arcadia and is a common narrative situation within Ovid’s epic: more often than not, we encounter stories-within-stories related by a human or god to others.75 The literary space, the dale, is also a typical space for storytelling in the Metamorphoses, such as the hilly area where Orpheus performs his songs amidst the gathered trees. Furthermore, it is like so many of the pastoral settings in which Ovid’s transformations actually happen. The fictional space ‘Amintas Dale’ is thus one in which fables are narrated, and where they take place. We seem to be situated within a world like Ovid’s. Indeed, the gathering of a group of shepherds and nymphs in a dale for the festival of a metamorphosed friend could easily be the frame narrative for a book of the Metamorphoses. But this change from continuous narration to a series of songs means that Amintas Dale cannot be a ‘carmen perpetuum’ (‘song in unbroken strains’).76 Does this mean that Fraunce needs to give up on the interwovenness and integrity of the tales? Three aspects of Amintas Dale might suggest that we are dealing with discrete stories rather than an integrated whole. First, there is the narrative change. Second, Fraunce is selective. He chooses fables from Books I–IV, X, XIII, and XIV, beginning with Book I and ending with two tales from Book XIV, but deviating from Ovid’s order between them. And third, he omits frame narratives that link the stories in Ovid. Fraunce’s tale of Io is a good example. The most important source for Io’s story is Ovid (I.588–750).77 Ovid transitions from Daphne’s story by telling how all the rivers are rushing to console Daphne’s father—all except Inachus, who mourns the loss of his own daughter Io. In contrast, Fraunce simply begins with ‘IOue, as he looked downe fro[m] the skies, sawe beautiful Io’.78 This seems to reflect the practice of most sixteenth-century editors of the Metamorphoses, who divided the poem up into individual fabulae.79 A case in point is the edition

75 The last three tales in Amintas Dale, for example, are narrated by a group of three nymphs, mirroring the daughters of Minyas in Book IV of the Metamorphoses. 76 77 78 Met. I.4. Met. I.588–747. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D1v. 79 For an account of sixteenth-century editions of Ovid’s various works see Ann Moss, Ovid in Renaissance France: A Survey of the Latin Editions of Ovid and Commentaries Printed in France before 1600 (London: Warburg Institute, University of London, 1982).

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and commentary by the Italian Raphael Regius, first printed in 1496. From 1510 onwards, Ovid’s text in this edition was interrupted by the argumenta of Lactantius Placidus—short plot summaries of the fables they preceded.80 The Regius edition inserts the argumentum ‘Io, Inachi amnis filia’ before Ovid’s lines I.568–723, and thus partitions Io, Syrinx, and Argos into one block.81 This is also true for uncommented editions, such as Andrea Naugerio’s.82 A case closer to home looks very similar: in George Sabinus’s Fabularum Ouidii Interpretatio, first published in Wittenberg in 1555 and redacted by the Cambridge printer Thomas Thomas in 1584, the same lines (I.568–723) are grouped together and presented under the title ‘Fabula X, XI, XII et XIII. De Io in vaccam, Syringe in fistulam, & Argo in caudam pauonis mutato’ (‘About the transformation of Io into a cow, Syrinx into the reed-pipe, and Argo into the tail of the peacock’).83 The 155 lines by Ovid are followed by Sabinus’s interpretation of the three mentioned transformations, before the next instalment of the Metamorphoses follows, ‘Fabula XIIII. De Io in pristinam figuram reuersa’ (‘Fable XIIII. About how Io was returned to her previous form’).84 This practice seems to suggest an understanding of the Metamorphoses as a compilation of individual fables rather than a unified work. Fraunce starts twenty lines later than Sabinus and Regius, beginning with I.588, and suppresses those elements in line 588 which allude to the frame. These first impressions, however, are deceptive. Fraunce’s approach to Ovid is akin to the rhetorical figure pars pro toto. Fraunce calls this the synecdoche of the part, ‘when by a part we mean the whole, and it is either of the member, or of the speciall. Of the member, when by one integrall member the whole is signified.’85 Puttenham writes that, because this figure asks for ‘a good, quick, and pregnant capacity, and

80

Cf. Moss, Ovid in Renaissance France, 28. Raphael Regius, P. Ouidij Nasonis Metamorphoseon libri XV Raphaelis Regii Volaterani lvcvlentissima explanatio (Venice, 1586), 23. 82 Naugerio splits Io’s story into four sections, cf. Andrea Naugerio, P. Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseon libri XV, ab Andrea Naugerio castigari, et Vict[or] Giselini scholijs illustrati (Antwerp, 1588), 40–8. 83 Thomas Thomas, Fabularum Ouidii interpretatio, ethica, physica, et historica, tradita in Academia Regiomontana à Gerogio Sabino, & in vnum collecta & edita studio & industria T.T. (Cambridge, 1584), 42. 84 85 Thomas, Fabularum, 49. Fraunce, Arcadian Rhetorike, sig. B5r–v. 81

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is not for an ordinary or dull wit so to do, I chose to call him the figure not only of conceit . . . but also of quick conceit.’86 Fraunce applies this principle to mythology. Just as he makes Ovid’s Metamorphoses stand for a larger, international, and ongoing mythological tradition, so he opens up the individual fables to include other, related stories. This can be demonstrated by a close reading of the fable of Io, which is also one of the stories to partake in Fraunce’s creation of a new mythic image. Fraunce’s translation of the Latin becomes interesting when Juno looks down from heaven and spies the suspicious clouds obscuring the earth. In Ovid, her reaction is to try and find out Jove’s whereabouts: ‘atque suus coniunx ubi sit circumspicit, ut quae | deprensi totiens iam nosset furta mariti’ (‘and forthwith she glanced around to see where her lord might be, as one who knew well his oft-discovered wiles’).87 In a linear reading of the Metamorphoses, this hint at Jupiter’s extra-marital amours may come as a surprise—Io is his first affair in the (chronologically ordered) poem. Up to this point he has figured only as a ruler who installs peace and order.88 However, Ovid’s epic is not a poem to be read only lineally. Fables are set up to be compared and contrasted; they point forwards and backwards. Themes are repeated and transformed in this carmen perpetuum—passages are translucent enough to let similar stories shine through them, especially as the readers in both antiquity and the Renaissance would already know them from other versions and mythographers. Fraunce shows his appreciation of what Sarah Annes Brown called, jarringly, ‘the inherent hypertextuality of Ovid’s original work’89 by being

86 George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy: A Critical Edition, ed. Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), 270. 87 Met. I.605–6. 88 Galinsky suggests that ‘by references beyond his own narrative Ovid enhances the character of the Metamorphoses as a comprehensive exposition of Graeco-Roman myth’, in G. Karl Galinsky, Ovid’s Metamorphoses: An Introduction to the Basic Aspects (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), 34. Hyginus, in his 145th fable, takes Ovid’s claim to linear chronology seriously, however, and refers to Io as ‘hanc Iupiter mortalem primam compressit’, which Jean-Yves Boriaud translates as ‘la première mortelle qu’étreignit Jupiter’, Hygin, Fables, ed. and trans. Jean-Yves Boriaud (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1997), 109. 89 Sarah Annes Brown, ‘Arachne’s Web: Intertextual Mythography and the Renaissance Actaeon’, in The Renaissance Computer: Knowledge Technology in the First Age of Print, ed. Neil Rhodes and Jonathan Sawday (Routledge: London and New York, 2000), 120–34, here 121.

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more outspoken than Ovid with respect to the furtiveness of Juno’s husband: [Juno] Meruailes much, and asks, if her husband were in Olympus, Who transformd sometimes to a Bull, sometimes to a golden Showre, was woont each where such slippery prancks to be playing.90

Instead of leaving it to the reader to fill this Leerstelle, Fraunce points to Europa and Semele as parallel cases of Jupiter’s adultery. He shows how stories can be transformed into each other, highlighting how metamorphosis is not simply a topic in Ovid’s epic, but a formal principle of thought. Another instance of this follows quickly. Jupiter cannot be found in heaven, so Juno, in a fury, storms down to earth and dispels the clouds. However, ‘Ioue foresawe this geare: and faire white bewtiful Io, | Straight with a tryce transformde to a fayre white bewtiful heyfar’.91 In Ovid, Juno looks at the pretty cow in grudging admiration and finally asks, ‘nec non, et cuius et unde quove sit armento, veri quasi nescia quaerit’ (‘whose she was and whence she came or from what herd, as if she did not know full well’).92 Fraunce’s Juno goes further: Iuno geu’s good woords (although, God knows, with an ill will,) And commends this Cow, and sais; o happy the Bullock Whoe might once enioy this fayre white bewtiful Heyfar.93

The goddess, who in Fraunce’s version already expressed her familiarity with the Europa story, here either warns her husband not to play the bull again, or, quite aware the deed is done, comments on the situation in a deeply ironic manner. Either way, the insertion opens the story up to be paralleled and contrasted to Europa’s.94

90

91 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D1v. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D2r. 93 Met. I.613–14. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D2r. 94 In Moschus’s poem ‘Europa’—a version preceding Ovid’s—the connection is already established. The girl Europa carries a flower-basket with three pictures on it: Io crossing the sea to Egypt as a heifer, Zeus lovingly touching her to transform her back into a woman, and the beautiful wings of the peacock framing the first two pictures, rising from the third, showing Argus’s transformation to Juno’s bird (ll. 39–62). For a modern edition, translation, and commentary see Winfried Bühler, Die Europa des Moschus: Text, Übersetzung und Kommentar (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1960). The description of the basket is on p. 35 in Bühler. In Moschus, the immediate tertium comparationis is the cow/bull crossing the sea, but the love affair is of course an implied parallel. Fraunce refers to Moschus’s poem ‘The Runaway Love’ in his mythographical explications (Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. M4r), and might have known his Europa, too. For a reading of the structural relationship between 92

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Juno’s commendation of Io is, however, not in Ovid. It is a borrowing from Anguillara’s Metamorfosi, and is Fraunce’s translation of ‘O ben felice Toro, | Che goderà così leggiadra fera’.95 Anguillara is playing a sophisticated game of translation in this line, playing with ‘toro’ in Latin and Italian: the dative of the Latin ‘torus’ (‘toro’) is used by Ovid’s Jupiter in his speech to Io, meaning the ‘spouse’ or ‘husband’ she is destined to make happy.96 Now that Io is a cow, Anguillara’s Juno uses the Italian word ‘toro’ (bull) to mock the transformed girl, who is indeed in for a bull-husband. Fraunce, who cannot replicate this game in English, nevertheless lives up to the occasion by substantiating his inserted parallels to Europa’s story: Io has become the mistress of a (sometime) bull. This again stresses the easy transition between stories. Twice more will Fraunce insert such references into his translation where they do not come up in the original: after Juno manoeuvred Jupiter into giving her the cow for a gift, the goddess ‘feared a Bull stil’ and set the hundredeyed Argus to watch over Io. Her father Inachus cries out in his grief over her metamorphosis: ‘Io must haue calues for sons, and bull for a husband.’97 By rewriting Io as Europa, Fraunce moves away from translation towards a creative effort of imitation. Quite to the contrary of what was suggested by the partitioning of Ovid’s poem into a few chosen fables, and by the lack of references to the frame stories, Fraunce’s synecdochical treatment of the Io story underlines his awareness of the Metamorphoses as a whole, as a web of narratives that allude to each other and create points of comparison and contrast. On the same basic principle, Fraunce had been able to expand Ovid’s epic into a more general world of myth, including other authors’ versions or inviting new ones. Fraunce’s own addition to this world is made possible by this nexus of parallels and contrasts as well. Fraunce forces his reader to acknowledge this structure throughout his translation. Whenever a character in Ovid tells one story, in Fraunce that character will often tell three. In Io, for example, Mercury not only sings about Pan and Syrinx, but also about Niobe and Arachne. Furthermore, Io and Europa in Ovid, see Brooks Otis, Ovid as an Epic Poet, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 91–127. 95

Anguillara, Metamorfosi, fol. 8r. Ovid has, ‘o virgo Iove digna tuoque beatum | nescio quem facture toro’ (‘O maiden worthy of the love of Jove, and destined to make some husband happy’), Met. I.590. 97 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sigs. D2r and D2v. 96

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Neptune and Minerva’s fight over Athens enters the story of Polyphemus; in the same tale, Scylla and Galathea are offered for comparison. Daphne is likened to Clymene, as she, too, was loved by Apollo, and Clymene’s son Phaethon is compared to Icarus. Diana’s cruelty in killing Actaeon is stressed by reminding the reader that she is less austere towards other boys: ‘Beautiful Endymion she could finde time to be kissing.’98 It is this method of establishing clusters that Fraunce uses to build his own mythic image into the world of metamorphoses. The most significant of these clusters in Amintas Dale brings together moments of grief and anguish. The first, and most subtle, of his allusions to dead young men is part of the tale of Io and rests upon Fraunce’s translation of a particularly puzzling line. When the girl, still a cow, finds her father Inachus, she tries to make herself known to him. Ovid explains what she does in two lines: ‘litteras pro verbis, quam pes in pulvere duxit | corporis indicium mutati triste peregit’ (‘But instead of words, she did tell the sad story of her changed form with letters which she traced in the dust with her hoof ’).99 The verb ‘duco’ denotes ‘to lead, conduct, draw’, but it can also mean ‘to produce, form, shape’.100 Ovid uses ‘duco’ in the latter sense when he speaks of nature slowly shaping Diana’s grotto.101 Despite the fact that Ovid’s choice of words points to a laboured and slow effort on the part of the cow to shape the two letters in the sand, Fraunce’s expanding translation reads: ‘At last, two letters with her hoofe shee prynts by the ryuer, | I, and, O, for a signe of late transfigured Io.’102 Fraunce spells out that it is the form of her hoof that prints her name and calls the result ‘a signe’. In the mythographical prose accompanying this story, Elpinus explains that the ‘impression of a Cowes hoofe, resembleth a greeke ω with an ι in the middle: whereupon it is said, that Io with her foote wrote her name on the banke of her fathers brooke.’103 This works especially well visually, if the vowel carries an accent: ώ. 98

99 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. L4v. Met. I.649–50. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. duco. 101 ‘[S]imulaverat artem | ingenio natura suo; nam pumice vivo | et levibus tofis nativum duxerat arcum’ (‘But Nature had by her own cunning imitated art; for she had shaped a native arch of the living rock and soft tufa’), Met. III.159–60. 102 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D2v. 103 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. D3r. Note that E.K., whose glosses Fraunce knew, also comments on this instance under the lemma Argus. Here, Io derives her name from the form of the hoofprint: ‘to hym [Argus] was committed the keeping of the transformed Cow 100

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The context for this curious translation is a debate among Ovid commentators. The person who seems to be the reference point for the discussion of line 649 in the sixteenth century is Raphael Regius. He explains in his commentary: loco verboru[m] inq[ui]t littera, q[uam] pedibus i[n] puluere vacca effecit, indicauit patri filia[m]. bouis.n[am].pes i&o litteras exprimere v[idetu]r.quas cu[m] vidisset Inachus, ea[m] esse filia[m] cognouit. Sunt t[ame]n qui r[ati]onem in mutata Io rema[n]sisse malint, & ex ea nome[n] illa[m] suu[m] scripsisse, qualis & et in socijs Vlyssis ma[n]sisse, cu[m] ab alijs poetis, tu[m] ipse Hom[erus] fingit.104 in the place of ‘words’ he says ‘letter’, which the cow made with her feet in the sand; it indicated the daughter to the father. The foot of the cow seems to express the letters i and o. When Inachus had seen this, he knew her to be his daughter. However, there are those who prefer that reason remained in the transformed Io and that out of that she wrote her name, and in the same way in the companions of Ulysses [reason] remained, as both other poets and Homer himself fashion.

Regius seems inclined to the first explanation, that is, that a cow’s footprint anyway looks like ω, or perhaps an ι superimposed upon an ο. Henricus Glareanus throws his weight on the other side of the argument: he holds that Io retained her reason (like the companions of Ulysses who were transformed into pigs by Circe) and is thus able to write both letters in the sand.105 Seeing that Ovid stresses Io’s thoughts and anguish about being in the body of the cow throughout her story, it is surprising that this debate arose in the first place. But even Pontanus felt it necessary to comment on the question: he argues that she wrote the letters, because, had there been nothing but Io’s footprints, Inachus could never have told her apart from any other cow, as all cows have the same hoof. For good measure Pontanus throws in a reference to Pliny, who knew of an elephant able to write Greek.106 But Fraunce is with those who believe that Io used her hoof print to communicate.

Io: So called because that in the print of a Cowes foote, there is figured an I in the middest of an O.’ Edmund Spenser, The Yale Edition of the Shorter Poems, ed. William A. Oram et al. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 133. 104

Regius, Metamorphoseon, 25. Henricus Glareanus quoted in Regius, Metamorphoseon, 31. 106 Jacobus Pontanus, Ex P. Ovidii Nasonis Metamorphoseon libri XV (Antwerp, 1618), 66. For Pliny’s elephant see Brian Cummings, ‘Pliny’s Literate Elephant and the Idea of Animal Language in Renaissance Thought’, in Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other Wonderful Creatures, ed. Erica Fudge (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 164–85. 105

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Moreover, Fraunce expressly mentions the letters ‘i’ and ‘o’, which are missing in Ovid’s text. He not only inserts them, but declares them to be ‘a signe’. Again we encounter his fascination with the relationship between word, meaning, and image (the hoofprint), which here alerted him to the possibilities of the ω-theory. This is especially significant since Renaissance Latin dictionaries paraphrased the word ‘Io’ as ‘dolentis particula’107—a cry of grief. Now we can see what model Fraunce had in mind: in the tenth book of the Metamorphoses, Hyacinthus is transformed into a flower by Apollo. The plant is beautiful, but: non satis hoc Phoebo est (is enim fuit auctor honoris): ipse suos gemitus foliis inscribit et AI AI flos habet inscriptum, funesta que littera ducta est.108 Phoebus, not satisfied with this—for ’twas he who wrought the honouring miracle—himself inscribed his grieving words upon the leaves, and the flower bore the marks, AI AI, letters of lamentation, drawn thereon.

The ‘littera ducta’ link the story of Hyacinthus to Io, who ‘litteras . . . duxit’. Ovid uses the words for Phoebus inscribing his pain (‘AI’) onto the flower, and Fraunce created a parallel case with the letters IO for the girl printing her name (and pain) into the sand—a ‘signe’, or impresa, of her woe. Again, two stories become transparent to each other. This connection between Io and Apollo not only exemplifies how Fraunce drew on commentaries of Ovid for his translation and how he established parallels to other stories even in small details. This element of the story of Io also introduces the first of many references to grief over dead boys that have been transformed into flowers. The other references are much more straightforward. Ovid’s Venus, when finding Adonis mortally wounded, thinks that if Persephone can turn a girl (Menthe) ‘to fragrant mint’, then she can metamorphose Adonis with equal right into a flower.109 Fraunce’s Venus, however, argues: If that Apollo could transforme his boy Hyacinthus Into a flower for a fame, to the mourning flower Hyacinthus,

‘Io, dolentis particula est. Tibull. Vror io. Tibul. Oh, I burne’, Thomas Cooper, Thesaurus linguae Romanae et Britannicae (London 1578), sig. xxx6v; ‘IO, (ἰώ) dolendi particula est’, Ambrosius Calepinus, Latinae atqve adeo etiam grecae linguae dictionarivm (Basel, 1546), sig. PP5v. 108 109 Met. X.214–16. Met. X.729. 107

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Which stilbeares, ay, ay, in leaues, in signe of a wailing: If that Apollo could his dolefull boy Cyparissus Turne into a dolefull tree, to the ioyles deadly Cypressus, Shall not Lady Venus doe the like for loued Adonis?110

All three stories, Cyparissus, Hyacinthus, and Adonis, come from Book X of the Metamorphoses, from the string of songs about lovely boys and cruel or perverse women performed by Orpheus. All three are turned into plants. What connects them emotionally is the overpowering grief and eternal love professed by those who stay behind. Cyparissus, seeing his stag dead, resolves to die himself. All he craves is ‘ut tempore lugeat omni’ (‘that he might mourn forever’).111 Apollo, who loves the youth, grants his wish but, full of sadness himself, says ‘lugebere nobis | lugebisque alios aderisque dolentibus’ (‘you shall be mourned by me, shall mourn for others, and your place shall always be where others grieve’).112 Thus, the cypress now is a sign of grief, mourned itself. The young Spartan Hyacinthus is killed accidentally by Apollo’s arrow. The god tries to cure him, but to no avail. Slowly, the boy fades away: ut, siquis violas rigidumve papaver in horto liliaque infringat fulvis horrentia linguis, marcida demittant subito caput illa vietum nec se sustineant spectentque cacumine terram.113 just as when in a watered garden, if someone breaks off violets or poppies or lilies, bristling with their yellow stamens, fainting they suddenly droop their withered heads and can no longer stand erect, but gaze, with tops bowed low, upon the earth.

Apollo, full of self-reproach and sorrow, wishes he were mortal to be able to die with Hyacinthus. But as the fates forbid this, he tells the dead boy, ‘semper eris mecum memorique haerebis in ore’ (‘thou shalt be always with me, and shalt stay on my mindful lips’).114 Then he turns him into a flower bearing the god’s anguished cry ‘AI’. His city, Sparta, remembers his honour and celebrates his festival, the Hyacinthia, every year. Adonis, of course, is Venus’s love, who—in Fraunce—is killed by a boar. In other versions of the story, among them Anguillara’s, it is the jealous Mars who transforms into the animal and takes revenge on his rival.

110 112

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. M3r. 113 Met. X.141–2. Met. X.190–4.

111

Met. X.135. 114 Met. X.204.

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Venus, like Apollo, shapes her love into a flower. The petals of the Anemone denote the frailty of things, as, in Fraunce’s words, ‘euery winde-puffe | Blowes them away’.115 But the memory of Adonis shall endure: ‘yet world, to the worlds end, | In despite of you [the Hellish Fates] shall yearely remember Adonis.’116 All these sad remembrances render more meaningful Fraunce’s treatment of Narcissus, the most famous of the boys who end up as flowers. Fraunce’s, not Ovid’s, Narcissus compares himself to Adonis when speaking to Echo: ‘Let greedie deuouring | Boares and beares be my graue, if I euer yeeld to thy pleasure.’117 This links him to Adonis, but as a contrast: Adonis is no way as scornful as Narcissus.118 While Myrrha’s son was happy to exchange French kisses with Venus in Fraunce’s rendering (kisses that are not in Ovid), Narcissus is an ‘ouer-weening princox’ and commits the crime of not loving back those who love him.119 The punishment, in Fraunce, follows swiftly: this self-love ‘made him loose himself, for a fading shade of his owne-self ’.120 The word ‘fade’ binds him to the frailty of the anemone, but Fraunce denies him the metamorphosis. He is the only character in Amintas Dale whose transformation is suppressed in the verse; we are left to assume he simply fades into death. Fraunce contrasts the figure of proud Narcissus with the group of youths set up as signs of perpetual grief and yearly remembrance. If there is a reader left who has not made the connection to Sidney/ Amintas, Fraunce has Elpinus make it for him. The fact that here we deal with a new allegory, that these old images are made to bear new meaning, is expressly indicated: ‘Cassiopaea, said Elpinus, hath so passionately discoursed of Venus and Adonis, that I feare me, vnder these names she 115

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. M3r. The simile is taken from Ovid, Met. X.737–9. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. M3r. 117 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. E1r. 118 Robert Greene had fashioned a reluctant Adonis in ‘Infidas Song’ in Never Too Late (1590), where Venus complains of Adonis’s coldness: ‘To let faire Venus die for woe, | N’oseres vous, mon bel amy, | That doth loue sweete Adon so, | Te vous en prie, pitie me: | N’oseres vous, mon bel, mon bel, | N’oseres vous, mon bel amy.’ The Life and Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene M.A., ed. Alexander Grosart, facs. repr., 15 vols. (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), VIII: 77. 119 ‘And then Adonis lipps with her owne lipps kindely she kisseth | Rolling tongue, moyst mouth with her owne mouth all to be sucking | Mouth and tong and lipps, with Ioues drinck Nectar abounding.’ Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. M2r. For Narcissus’s prideful rejection of Echo see Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. E1r. 120 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. E1r. 116

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mourneth her owne loue, and vterreth her own affection.’121 The parallel to Amintas and the Amaranthus is clear. Fraunce transfers the emotional power of the images from ancient fable onto his new mythic image of an all-too-soon faded youth. Sidney’s name and fate are concealed under a beautiful image, as are the mourners and their pain. But the effect of Cassiopaea’s passionate discourse is to engage the reader’s mind to unlock its significance. Fraunce likely took the hint for building this cluster from other poets, who had, between 1587 and 1591, picked up his initial link between Sidney and Amintas and then established the latent connection between Amintas and these boys from fable. For example, in Thomas Lodge’s 1589 poem Scillaes Metamorphosis, the nymphs Clore and Nais try to cure Glaucus’s love wounds with the power of plants befitting his plight: ‘Clore she gathered Amaranthus flower, | And Nais Aiax blossom in that stowre.’122 Later, we learn that ‘the poore Amyntas is a starre’123 in Venus’s crown. Spenser also refers to Amaranthus and Amintas in the Garden of Adonis in The Faerie Queene: And all about grew euery sort of flower, To which sad louers were transformde of yore; Fresh Hyacinthus, Phoebus paramoure, And dearest loue, Foolish Narcisse, that likes the watry shore, Sad Amaranthus, made a flower but late, Sad Amaranthus, in whose purple gore Me seems I see Amintas wretched fate, To whom sweet Poets verse hath giuen endlesse date.124

Most scholars agree that the lines on the Amaranthus refer to the untimely death of Sidney and the poets’ lamentations occasioned by it.125 121

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. M3r. Thomas Lodge, Scillaes Metamorphosis, Enterlaced with the Vnfortunate Loue of Glaucus (London, 1589), sig. A4v. Ajax’s flower is the Hyacinthus. 123 Lodge, Scillaes Metamorphosis, sig. C1r. 124 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene, ed. A.C. Hamilton, rev. 2nd edn. (Harlowe: Longman, 2007), 349 (III.vi.45). Frank Ardolino has discussed this stanza as part of a literary exchange of compliments between Spenser and Thomas Watson in ‘Thomas Watson, Shadow Poet of Edmund Spenser’, Notes & Queries 61.2 (2014), 225–9. 125 See e.g. A.C. Hamilton’s commentary to stanza III.6.45 in Spenser, Faerie Queene, 349; Jon A. Quitslund, ‘The Work of Mourning in Spenser’s Garden of Adonis’, Renaissance Papers (1997), 23–31; Lyne, Ovid’s Changing Worlds, 110. For identifications of Amintas in this and other poems: Charles Crawford, ‘ “Greenes Funeralls”, 1594, and Nicholas Breton’, 122

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Even though it was only added in 1609, Spenser’s powerful Virgilian halfline is a formal point in favour of this theory: it represents a form of the figure aposiopesis which Gavin Alexander has shown to be characteristic for writing after Sidney. Fraunce knew The Faerie Queene intimately and quoted from it in his Arcadian Rhetorike (as this was published in 1588 and the first three books of The Faerie Queene appeared in 1590, he must have had access to the manuscript). Thus, by 1590, when Fraunce was putting the first two parts of the Yuychurch together, the relationship between Amintas, Adonis, Hyacinthus, and Narcissus had been established for him by other poets. If he imitated Spenser specifically, The Faerie Queene is closely connected to both mythographies published during its long period of composition.126 Be that as it may, in Amintas Dale, Fraunce re-created a cluster of allusions very similar to Spenser’s (albeit excluding the proud Narcissus), and he could depend upon his readers to make the connection to Sidney’s death. A similar cluster would be built one year after the publication of Amintas Dale by William Shakespeare in Venus and Adonis (1594). Spenser, Fraunce, and Shakespeare allude to the dead boys in the context of the Venus and Adonis fable and use the metamorphic relationship between Ovid’s tales to evoke the whole in its parts. Shakespeare’s epyllion is discussed in this context by Daniel D. Moss as ‘a radical reduction of all mythology to a single myth, all metamorphoses into one’. Just like Fraunce’s string of seemingly discrete Ovidian tales, Shakespeare’s Adonis ‘is no mere transplant from an isolated moment in Ovid’s poem, but a site of confluence for numerous metamorphic figures, beginning with the equally beautiful, equally doomed boys Cyparissus, Hyacinthus, and Narcissus.’127

Studies in Philology 26, Extra Series 1 (1929), 1–39; William Ringler, ‘Spenser and Thomas Watson’, Modern Language Notes 69.7 (1954), 484–7; Harry Morris, ‘Richard Barnfield, “Amyntas”, and the Sidney Circle’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 74.4 (1959), 318–24, and the rejoinder to Morris: Walter Staton, ‘Thomas Watson and Abraham Fraunce’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 76.1 (1961), 150–3; also Steven May, ‘Spenser’s “Amyntas”: Three Poems by Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange, Fifth Earl of Derby’, Modern Philology 70.1 (1972), 49–52. 126 See Chapter 1 for a discussion of The Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto xii in relation to Stephen Batman, The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes (London, 1577). 127 Daniel D. Moss, The Ovidian Vogue: Literary Fashion and Imitative Practice in Late Elizabethan England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 39 and 42.

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In his verses taken from Books I–XIV of the Metamorphoses, Fraunce brought into play a range of source material (vernacular translations, commentaries, alternative versions, mythography). The chief effect towards which he employed these sources was to convey a sense for the whole, interconnected world of metamorphic myth from just a few fragments. Interlaced into this fabric is the figure of Amintas. Fraunce was alert to what other poets were doing in their Ovidian imitations, and he honoured his former patron and, through him, his new patroness. Most important for Amintas Dale as a mythography is the fact that Fraunce employed the generic form as the basis for his creation of a new mythological image. Here, mythography is poetically productive. The Amaranthus flower conceals and reveals Sidney’s untimely death and the pain he left behind. Fraunce took the poem ad sua tempora, just like Ovid had done. In its time-frame and interconnectedness, Amintas Dale imitates the Roman epic as a whole. This explains Fraunce’s inclusion of Vertumnus and Nemesis in his otherwise genealogically ordered mythography: he needed gods that corresponded to the stories of Pomona, Iphis, and Anaxarete from the later, Roman books of the Metamorphoses. The collection of Amintas Dale reads like the attempt to re-create Ovid’s world in a nutshell. If this is the case, however, what happened to Book XV and Ovid’s famous closing lines?

3.4. Lasting Images: Daphne’s Story and the Ambiguity of Closure Book XV of the Metamorphoses has been puzzling readers for two millennia. It seems to hold two keys to the epic: a philosophy of transformation in the speech of Pythagoras (XV.75–478) and Ovid’s last poetological word on his work in the sphragis (XV.871–79). But the meaning and relationship of the two, as well as their importance for the whole are matters of debate: ‘Can one take the Speech as a serious essay in philosophical didactic, or is it all a mighty spoof?’128 Pythagoras’s speech is one of the longest episodes in the poem (404 lines) and is carefully framed.

Philip Hardie, ‘The Speech of Pythagoras in Ovid’s Metamorphoses 15: Empedoclean Epos’, Classical Quarterly 45 (1995), 204–14, here 204. 128

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Numa, the second king of Rome, seeks the knowledge of rerum natura and thus leaves his Sabinian home, travelling to Crotona for education.129 There, Pythagoras speaks to the people. He is a man who approaches the gods in heaven with his thoughts (‘caeli regione remotos | mente deos abiit’130). The philosopher’s speech concentrates on two points: vegetarianism and the principle of ‘omnia mutantur, nihil interit’ (‘all things are changing; nothing dies’).131 Without clearly stating that Numa was amongst the spellbound crowd of listeners (an anachronism), Ovid has the king leave the town after Pythagoras ends his speech ‘talibus atque aliis instructo pectore dictis’ (‘with mind filled with these and other teachings’) to return and teach Rome peace.132 Nothing stays the same—this does not bode well for the Roman Empire, but it also sits awkwardly with the famous ending, which boasts that ‘iamque opus exegi, quod nec Iovis ira nec ignis | Nec poterit ferrum nec edax abdolere vetustas’ (‘and now my work is done, which neither the wrath of Jove, nor fire, nor sword, nor the gnawing tooth of time shall ever be able to undo’).133 Seeing that the wrath of Jove is perfectly able to destroy both earth and sky in Book I, this is quite a claim. Ovid boasts that, although his body might die, his fame as poet will survive with his poem and live through all ages: vivam. But read in conjunction with Pythagoras’s speech, Ovid creates a paradox—a problematic inheritance. One of Ovid’s most sensitive readers in the Renaissance, Edmund Spenser, had an ambiguous relationship to the idea of Ovidian change. Raphael Lyne has shown possible parallels between the function of Spenser’s ‘Mutability Cantos’ and Ovid’s speech of Pythagoras for their respective epics.134 More importantly, he also pointed out that The Faerie Queene contains struggles ‘between competing notions of change’, especially when one compares the positive power of metamorphosis in the Garden of Adonis (which is ‘eterne in mutability’, III.vi.47) with the rejection of change at the end of the ‘Mutability Cantos’ in favour of a Christian worldview:135 129

130 131 Met. XV.6. Met. XV.62–3. Met. XV.165. Met. XV.479. On the importance of the pairing of Numa with Pythagoras and the anachronism involved: Vinzenz Buchheit, ‘Numa-Pythagoras in der Deutung Ovids’, Hermes 121.1 (1993), 77–99. 133 134 Met. XV.871–2. Lyne, Ovid’s Changing Worlds, 97. 135 Lyne, Ovid’s Changing Worlds, 138. Lyne’s chapter ‘Ovidian Subtexts in The Faerie Queene’ is an exploration of exactly that (pp. 80–141). 132

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Then gin I think on that which Nature sayd, Of that same time when no more Change shall be, But stedfast rest of all things firmely stayd Upon the pillours of Eternity, That is contrayr to Mutabilitie: For, all that moveth, doth in Change delight: But thence-forth all shall rest eternally With Him that is the God of Sabbaoth hight: O thou great Sabbaoth God, graunt me that Sabaoths sight. (VIII.viii.2)

Spenser’s final reaction to the idea of change is to envisage its end in the all-comprehending figure of the Creator. Fraunce’s last tale in Amintas Dale is also a dialogue with Metamorphoses XV. It is, however, a conversation difficult to eavesdrop on: if ever there was a crazy story, this is it. An uncertain sense of closure is invoked, when we learn that the last story of the day comes from a nymph called Daphne. This closes a circle, because the nymph Daphne in Ovid is the first girl that is transformed. Daphne, beloved of Apollo, is also the laurel tree and thus crowns poetic achievement, but Fraunce’s Daphne lacks ingenium and creative language: ‘I can neither sing or say very well: but sith I must needes tell somewhat, it is good to begin betimes, that I may the sooner make an ende.’136 She will not make an end, though, but be interrupted and asked to finish some other time. Daphne identifies her oftentimes drunken mother as the source of her prose story, which was told ‘many times in good sobrietie’.137 Thus, instead of being inspired by the Muses and the waters of Egeria, Daphne’s story came from a woman hanging on to a bottle of liquor—a bacchant, one of the killers of the ur-poet Orpheus. Daphne, the anti-poet, launches into ‘a long discourse of certayne schollers of Cambridge, who would needs finde out some way to mount vp to heauen’.138 Like Numa, the scholars decide that educational travel is the best route to knowledge and they ‘seeke and search, passe and repasse, from East to Weast, some by land, some by sea’.139 Those on the ship meet ‘an Academique’, who, like Pythagoras, has already travelled to heaven.140 His speech is the actual heart of Daphne’s tale. The Cambridge scholars 136 138 140

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P1r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P1r. Met. XV.147–9.

137 139

Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P1r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P1r.

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learn that the academic is from a university called ‘The Garden’. The scholars of ‘The Garden’ delight in the situation Pythagoras describes in the beginning of his speech: ‘sunt fruges, sunt deducentia ramos | Pondere poma suo tumidaeque in vitibus uvae, | Sunt herbae dulces’ (‘you have the fruits of the earth, you have apples, bending down the branches with their weight, and grapes swelling to ripeness on the vines’).141 They sing ‘of the vertue of hearbs, the pleasaunt liquor of the vine, the sweetnes of fruits’.142 These scholars have the names of plants: ‘one was called a Violet, an other, a Thistle, this Lettuce, that Succorie; the rest, either Borage, Hmlock [sic], Pasnip, Cowslip, Rosemary, or some like.’143 One day, an astrologer forecasts a deluge that will destroy ‘The Garden’. Therefore the Gardeners devise a way up to heaven in order to ask the gods whether the earth will really be flooded and to petition some favours. Their approach to finding a way up is rather literary. First, one suggests the lightest of them should be borne up by an eagle, which is rejected on moral grounds because Ganymede was transported in this way. Some others, remembring Lucians ship, thought it best to go by water: Others, rather by land, through some great forrest, as Dante did: at last, they all agreed, that the surest way was, to make ladders of the poles that bare vp their hopes [i.e. the poles on which the sky rests], and by the meanes thereof, to builde and rayse vp a tower that should ouer-looke the whole worlde.144

Despite the forebodings of any reader familiar with the tower of Babel, this edifice is a success. As soon as it is finished, three scholars are chosen to travel to heaven: Hemlock, ‘one Damoetas of the Dearles parck, Fac-totum indeclinabile to the Lady of the Lake’, Thistle, ‘wholly addicted to contemplation’, and Parsnip, ‘fayre, streight, and vpright’.145 They climb up via the poles (traditionally held by Atlas), delight in the ‘sweete sightes’ high above the earth, and eventually ride on a cloud.146 In this way, their journey is a mirror of Pythagoras’s: ‘iuvat ire per alta | astra, iuvat terris et inerti sede relicta | nube vehi validique umeris insistere Atlantis’ (‘it is a delight to

141

142 Met. XV.76–8. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P1r. 144 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P2r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P1v. 145 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P2r. Virginia Stern has suggested that these are the three Harvey brothers, see Gabriel Harvey: A Study of his Life, Marginalia, and Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 89–91. 146 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sigs. P2r and P4r. 143

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take one’s way along the starry firmament and, leaving the earth and its dull regions behind, to ride on the clouds, to take stand on stout Atlas’s shoulders’).147 At this point, we learn that the bad weather has arrived on earth, but, some hours and a joke on astronomers later, the sun shines once more. Up in the sky, the story goes on. Intellectus and his sister ‘Fantasie, or Opinion’148 guide our Gardeners into heaven, and the three men give all their fruit offerings away to Venus and Ganymede. Jupiter, angry at finding empty baskets, hurls Hemlock and Parsnip down to earth, where they metamorphose into their respective plants. Thistle’s shock about this is the aitios of the down of a thistle: The Thistle, being all this while in heauen, and perceauing how rygorously his fellowes were handled; scratched off all his tender heaire from his head . . . so that it neuer after grew vp so firmly agayne, but that euery yeare once (for a memorial of this admyrable accident) euery little blast of winde blewe it all about the fieldes and Gardens.149

Intellectus saves him from Jupiter’s wrath and so Thistle is allowed to read out the petitions of the Gardeners, in which Fraunce mocks the idea of both vegetarianism and metempsychosis: Inprimis, that Hemlock neuer grow in Gardens; but onely in ditches and such like obscure and vnpleasant places, fitte for so vnsauorie and loathsome a weede. Item, That none vnder the degree of Esquire, haue his bed stuft with the downe of a thistle. Item, That whosoeuer eateth buttered Pasnips without pepper, may dye without Auricular confession.150

Fraunce hits on the incongruity that in Ovid bodies were transformed into animals, plants, and things, whereas Pythagoras has souls only migrate between humans and animals. As we are in danger of eating a relative or another ex-human being, we should refrain from meat. But, Fraunce asks, what if souls migrate into plants? In Ovid, after all, many people transform into trees and flowers. What if a scholar transforms into a parsnip? Well, then he at least should be well buttered and seasoned. This is meant as a hilarious story, but the proximity of Parsnip’s transformation to Sidney’s seems uncomfortably close. After this incident, Intellectus and Thistle progress to the palace of time. So does Ovid’s Pythagoras move on to talk about time as the instigator of 147 149

148 Met. XV.147–9. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P3v. 150 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P4r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. P4v.

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change. ‘Sed ut unda inpellitur unda | urgeturque prior veniente urgetque priorem, | tempora sic fugiunt pariterque sequuntur | et nova sunt semper’ (‘But, as wave is pushed on by wave, and as each wave is both impelled by that behind and itself impels the wave in front, so time both flees and follows and is ever new’).151 Fraunce’s personification of Time sits in the midst of its servants, Day and Night, the Hours and Minutes, Peace, War, Plenty, Dearth, and so on. The messengers to Day and Night bring Fraunce to the sphragis of the Metamorphoses and the end of his own work. The messengers were saying, such an one hath builded such a fortresse against the Maiestie and dominion of Tyme: another hath erected an image: a third hath composed a booke, all intending to be masters & triumphers ouer Tyme.152

But Ovidian claims of vivam are futile: ‘Tyme, perceauing this, looketh in his glasses, held by Verity, and doth but smile at their attempts.’153 Time hands those cases over to Fortune, who toys with them, then gives them over to fire and war. In the end, nothing lasts: the artistic attempts at eternity ‘vanish away presently, and neuer apeare againe’.154 Fraunce’s treatment of Ovid’s bold sphragis shows little confidence in poetic immortality. At this moment, another aposiopesis takes place. The academic’s tale is interrupted: a violent storm threatens to destroy the ship on which the Cambridge scholars wanted to find the way to heaven.155 This jerks the reader out of heavenly speculations and we are back on board Lucian’s satirical ship, expecting it to be swallowed by a giant whale at any moment. Simultaneously, the next narrative frame collapses and Pembrokiana interrupts Daphne. The anti-poet is not allowed to finish her shipwrecked tale until ‘some other time, when they might there meete againe, for the like celebration of Amyntas death’.156 Fraunce makes no attempt at closure. The day and Amintas Dale end with a Latin poem, supposedly written by Amintas, on the death of his Philis, asserting the ‘status instabilis’ of human life.157 Pythagoras’s omnia mutantur, nihil interit and Ovid’s vivam are both rejected. Omnia 151

152 Met. XV.181–4. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. Q1r. 154 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. Q1r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. Q1r. 155 Note that Pythagoras compares himself to a ship, ‘et quoniam magno feror aequore planeque ventis | vela dedi’ (‘And since I am embarked on the boundless sea and have spread my full sails to winds’), Met. XV.176–7. 156 157 Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. Q1r. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sigs. Q1v–Q2r. 153

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mutantur, omnia interiunt seems to be Fraunce’s answer. But with even more justification than the speech of Pythagoras gives a reader, we can ask: is it all a mighty spoof? The figure of Daphne alone could discredit anything said in the story. The way Fraunce carefully heaped significant transformations around Sidney/Amintas and the idea of yearly commemoration seems to speak a more positive language than Daphne’s story. Does Pembrokiana’s intervention mean that something does remain—if only the grief and yearly remembrance of Amintas’s death? More importantly, Fraunce has—and Spenser and Lodge attest to this— written Sidney as Amintas into Ovid’s poem, which, so far, had proven to be a song sung perpetually. Perhaps the best interpretation of Fraunce’s version of Metamorphoses XV is that he has successfully re-created Ovid’s paradox.

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4 Truth Lost in the River of Time Francis Bacon, Prima Philosophia, and the Greek Fables

Francis Bacon’s Great Instauration was projected as a restoration of learning.1 At the end of it, mankind would have re-established the knowledge Adam had before the Fall, ‘the pure knowledg of nature and vniversality, a knowledge by the light whereof man did giue names vnto other creatures in Paradise, as they were brought before him, according vnto their proprieties’.2 This knowledge was not lost because of man’s first disobedience;3 it declined through the workings of time after man had lapsed into mortality. ‘[T]he truth is, that time seemeth to be of the nature of a Riuer, or streame, which carryeth downe to vs that which is light and blowne vp; and sinketh and drowneth that which is weightie and solide.’4 Thus, all the knowledge Bacon wanted to unearth on his quest for complete dominion over nature was, most probably, known to

This chapter is derived, in part, from an article ‘Light from Darkness: The Relationship between Francis Bacon’s Prima Philosophia and his Concept of the Greek Fable’, published in The Seventeenth Century 26.2 (2011), 203–20, available online: . 2 Francis Bacon, The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Graham Rees and others, 15 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996– ), vol. IV: The Advancement of Learning, ed. Michael Kiernan (2000), 6. I am quoting where possible from The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Graham Rees and others, 15 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996– ). Otherwise, I am using The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis, and Douglas Denon Heath, 14 vols. (London, Longman, 1857–74). In the following, this edition will be abbreviated as SEH. If not otherwise stated, translations into English from Bacon’s Latin are taken from the respective edition. 3 4 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 6. Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 29. 1

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the earliest ages. But this probability was of no practical importance for his project, for two reasons. First, because we have no records of these times and therefore no knowledge of them.5 And second, because Bacon wanted truth to ‘be discovered by the light of nature, not recovered from the darkness of the past’.6 There is, however, one apparent exception to this rule: the interpretation of Greek fables. In the first part of the Great Instauration, the division of sciences as represented in De augmentis scientiarum (1623), Bacon makes research into the stories of the pagan gods a desideratum of the new philosophy and gives three examples demonstrating how they are properly interpreted. In order to understand Bacon’s concept of myth, it is necessary to read his work on fables in close conjunction with his Great Instauration. In the first part of the following chapter, I will argue that one of the reasons that Bacon was interested in what he calls parabolic poetry was that he hoped to find axioms of prima philosophia in the fables. Thus, while Bacon writes in the tradition that sees fables as fictional covers for hidden philosophical truth, he is unusual in his redefinition of this underlying truth and, as a consequence, of the type of allegory he employs to uncover it. Even though Bacon has been called the ‘best’, and thus the most representative, allegorical interpreter of mythology, his approach is very different from that of his contemporaries and from what one would expect after reading the Italian mythographers, on whom he relies heavily for source material.7 Twentieth-century scholars of Bacon’s mythographical work have often pointed out that Bacon made some dismissive remarks about fables before 1609. When Bacon then expressed admiration for antiquity in De sapientia veterum, they ascribed this apparent change of heart to his Cf. Francis Bacon, ‘Valerius Terminus’, in SEH III. 201–52, here 225. Francis Bacon, ‘The Refutation of Philosophy’, in Benjamin Farrington, The Philosophy of Francis Bacon: An Essay on its Development from 1603 to 1609 with New Translations of Fundamental Texts (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1964), 103–33, here 121. This point was made repeatedly throughout Bacon’s career. For one of the most famous examples see The Oxford Francis Bacon, vol. XI: The Instauratio Magna II: The Novum Organum and Associated Texts, ed. Graham Rees (2004), 183. 7 Luc Brisson, Einführung in die Philosophie des Mythos, Band 1: Antike, Mittelalter und Renaissance, trans. Achim Russer (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996), 201. For Bacon’s sources, see Charles Lemmi, The Classic Deities in Bacon: A Study in Mythological Symbolism (Baltimore: The John Hopkins Press, 1933), and Barbara Carman Garner, ‘Francis Bacon, Natalis Comes and the Mythological Tradition’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 33 (1970), 264–91. 5 6

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pragmatism (Paolo Rossi), opportunism (Lisa Jardine), or outright insincerity (Perez Zagorin).8 In their account, Bacon only pretended to revere ancient wisdom to sugar the pill of his political and philosophical innovations for his more conservative contemporaries. However, this narrative can only be sustained if we overlook Bacon’s differentiation between periods of antiquity and his careful consideration of the relative merits of received knowledge and innovations. Moreover, Rhodri Lewis has rightly pointed out that, while pragmatism might account for De sapientia veterum itself, it cannot explain why Bacon made research into fables a desideratum of the Great Instauration, in the De augmentis.9 Therefore, Lewis argues, ‘we impoverish our understanding of Bacon’s mythography if we fail to take seriously his claims to have believed in mythology as a repository of ancient wisdom’.10 The following chapter takes Lewis’s revision even further. It demonstrates that the concept of prima philosophia represents a significant link between Bacon’s mythographical and philosophical work, and thus explains why Bacon recommended the study of myth to posterity.

4.1. The Stem of the Tree of Knowledge Bacon’s plan for the Instauratio magna, the great renewal of learning, consisted of six steps. The first part was meant as an overview of all knowledge, which would be divided into its parts and reviewed as to its deficiencies. This was partly realized in the Advancement of Learning and its expanded, Latin version, De augmentis scientiarum. The second part, some of which is extant in the New Organon, was to explain Bacon’s new approach to knowledge and the correct interpretation of nature. In the third part, all existing data that could be the basis of further investigation would be collected in a gigantic natural history. The next, fourth step was supposed to demonstrate how the New Organon works in practice, by applying its principles to data such as natural historians had collected. 8 Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, trans. Sacha Rabinovich (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968), 128; Lisa Jardine, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 193; Perez Zagorin, Francis Bacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 70. 9 Rhodri Lewis, ‘Francis Bacon, Allegory, and the Uses of Myth’, Review of English Studies, NS 61.250 (2010), 360–89, here 375. 10 Lewis, ‘Francis Bacon, Allegory, and the Uses of Myth’, 375.

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While some temporarily accepted theories not based on the New Organon would be written down in part five, only the valid outcome of Bacon’s interpretation of nature would finally be collected into a receptacle of results in the sixth and final part of the Instauration.11 It is the first step of this project that concerns us here, the division of learning into its constituent parts. Bacon warns that the partitions of knowledge: are not like seuerall lines that meete in one Angle, and so touch but in a point, but are like branches of a tree, that meete in a stemme; which hath a dimension and quantitie of entyrenes and continuance, before it come to discontinue & break it self into Armes and boughes, therfore it is good, before wee enter into the former distribution, to erect & constitute one vniuersal Science by the name of PHILOSOPHIA PRIMA, PRIMITIVE or SVMMARIE PHILOSOPHIE, as the Maine and common way, before we come where the waies part, and deuide themselues.12

Primary philosophy, as Bacon set it down in both the Advancement and De augmentis, thus unites the knowledge of God, nature, and man. It is important to note that primary philosophy represents the lowest level of abstraction from nature and finds its experimental equivalent in the ‘Instances of Correspondence’, that is, experiments which discover parallels and substantial resemblances between different areas of investigation.13 While, as Lisa Jardine has pointed out, the term prima philosophia existed in scholastic classifications of knowledge as a synonym for metaphysics, Bacon is at pains to show that what he wants to establish

11 For a summary of Bacon’s project, see Graham Rees, ‘Introduction’, in Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, XI. i–cxxiii. 12 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 76. 13 Cf. Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, XI: 288–97. ‘Instances of Correspondence’ point to certain ‘consents’ in nature and are ‘like the first and lowest steps towards the union of nature’ (Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, XI: 291). At the end of his explanation of this Instance of Special Power in the Novum Organum (Book II, aphorism 27), Bacon turns to examples familiar from his discussions of philosophia prima: ‘Lastly then, the Correspondence of Instances in the axioms of the sciences is well worthy of note; as, for instance, the rhetorical trope called Deceiving Expectation corresponds to the musical trope called False Cadence. Likewise, the mathematical postulate that when two things are equal to a third, they are equal to each other corresponds to the structure of the syllogism in logic which unites things which agree in a middle term. In short, a certain acuteness in searching out and tracking down physical correspondences and resemblances is very useful in very many matters.’ Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, XI: 295–7.

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is something quite different.14 Prima philosophia, in Bacon’s unique definition, is a universal science consisting of axioms which are so fundamental that they can be transferred from one science (or branch of knowledge) to many others. The fact that man has long abandoned the search for the underlying links between the sciences has greatly harmed human knowledge, in Bacon’s opinion. In the early draft, Valerius Terminus, he explains his thoughts about this universal learning for the first time in a chapter fragment titled: ‘of the impediments of knowledge in handling it by parts, and in slipping off particular sciences from the root and stock of universal knowledge.’15 Bacon picks up Cicero’s complaint that, since Socrates, the study of rhetoric has only been a study of words, no longer also a study of things: ‘whereas before his time the same professors of wisdom in Greece did pretend to teach an universal Sapience and knowledge both of matter and words, Socrates divorced them and withdrew philosophy and left rhetoric to itself, which by that destitution became but a barren and unnoble science.’16 Bacon concurs, and widens the argument by saying this is true for all sciences. By specializing, and by dividing knowledge into different areas of inquiry, their interconnectedness has become invisible.17 The neglect of prima philosophia is lamentable because, besides being desirable for representing the deepest truths about nature, each of its axioms functions like a shortcut, leading to the discovery of truth in multiple areas. One of the aims of the Great Instauration was to rediscover this knowledge, both through investigation into nature and by collecting all the axioms that can be found in ‘the profounder sort of wittes’, who from time to time have drawn ‘a Bucket of Water out of this well’.18 After all, universal sapience once was current, in the era before the Greek philosophers. Sapience, sapientia, is also what Bacon would later call his primary philosophy in De augmentis. He thus calls both the fables and prima

14 ‘It appears by that which has been already said, that I intend Primitive or Summary Philosophy and Metaphysic, which heretofore have been confounded as one, to be distinct things. For the one I have made a parent or common ancestor to all knowledge; the other, a branch or portion of Natural Philosophy.’ Francis Bacon, ‘De augmentis scientiarum’, in SEH I. 414–844, here 549–50. Spedding’s translation of De augmentis is in SEH IV, here 345–6; cf. Jardine, Francis Bacon, 104 n. 1. 15 16 17 SEH III. 228. SEH III. 228. SEH III. 228. 18 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 78; cf. SEH I. 543 (trans. SEH IV. 339).

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philosophia ‘wisdom’. In the De augmentis passage, ‘wisdom’, that is, primary philosophy, is defined in Ciceronian terms as the knowledge of man, God, and nature.19 But, as we have seen, it is also characterized as only the very first rung on the intellectual ladder. It can thus be opposed to knowledge, that is, scientia, which represents the higher rungs of the ladder. Such a concept of ‘sapientia’—as Rhodri Lewis has shown— results in a redefinition of the wisdom of the ancients, the prisca sapientia, as a lower form of knowledge, akin to prudentia.20 This foregrounds the usefulness of both Bacon’s thirty-one instances of prisca sophia in De sapientia veterum and prima philosophia as guides to further study, just as the ‘Instances of Correspondence’ very practically discover congruencies in different areas of investigation. The authors Bacon quotes in order to illustrate universal axioms make an interesting list. Taking together the Valerius Terminus, the Advancement, and De augmentis, we encounter Plutarch, Virgil, Machiavelli, Ovid, scripture, and the ancient Persian magicians.21 The axiom of the constancy of matter is a good example of prima philosophia: Is not the obseruation, Omnia mutantur, nil interit [‘everything changes, nothing lasts’, Ovid, Met. XV.165], a contemplation in Philosophie thus, that the Quantum of Nature is eternall, In Naturall Theologie thus, That it requireth the same Omnipotencie to make somewhat Nothing, which at the first made nothing somewhat? According to the Scripture, Didici quod omnia opera quae fecit Deus, perseuerent in perpetuum, non possumus eis quicquam addere, nec auferre [‘I know that, whatsoever God doeth, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it’, Eccles. 3:14].22

‘Sapientia autem est, ut a veteribus philosophis definitum est, rerum divinarum et humanarum causarumque, quibus eae res continentur, scientia’ (‘Wisdom, moreover, as the word has been defined by the philosophers of old, is the “knowledge of things human and divine and of the causes by which those things are controlled” ’); Cicero, De officiis, trans. Walter Miller (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), 172–3 (II.2). See also Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, trans. J. E. King (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966), 392 (IV.26). Cf. Lewis, ‘Bacon, Allegory and the Uses of Myth’, 387. 20 Lewis, ‘Bacon, Allegory and the Uses of Myth’, 384–5. 21 Magic was by no means despised by Bacon, as is often assumed. He distinguished between ‘that natural magic which flutters about so many books, embracing certain credulous and superstitious traditions and observations concerning sympathies and antipathies’, SEH I. 573 (trans. SEH IV. 367). But ‘among the Persians magic was taken for a sublime wisdom, and the knowledge of the universal consents of things; and so the three kings who came from the east to worship Christ were called by the name of Magi’, SEH I, 573 (trans. SEH IV, 366). 22 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 77. 19

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Here, mythology and scripture supplement each other, expressing the same underlying axiom of prima philosophia, which is true in natural theology as well as natural philosophy. Like matter itself, this kind of knowledge is so basic it can change shape and yet remain the same. An axiom of prima philosophia can thus occur in two different forms. First, one might come across it as a simple, historical, political, or naturalphilosophical truth within one branch of knowledge. I am going to call this its isolated form. Second, as in the case of the above quotation, it can appear in a cluster that displays its adaptability to various areas of study. I am going to call this its full or metamorphic form. The challenge Bacon perceives is to identify isolated truths as versions of an axiom of prima philosophia, establish its links to others, and thus reveal the basic interconnectedness of things. This search movement is not dissimilar to reading De sapientia veterum. The mythography is not just a sequence of discrete mythographical entries, it is interconnected. For example, Bacon uses the omnia mutantur axiom in his interpretation of Cupid, Coelum, and, of course, in ‘Proteus, sive materia’: matter, when put under pressure in experiments, is forced to change shape, but cannot be reduced to nothing, except by God’s omnipotence.23 It seems, thus, that Bacon turned mostly to very old texts to identify axioms of prima philosophia, especially scripture and Greek mythology. Moreover, Bacon’s mythography and prima philosophia share some patterns of thought.

4.2. Parabolic Poetry: Bacon’s Concept of Myth and its Kinship with Prima Philosophia The first thoughts Bacon published in print on the subject of fables can be found in the two books of the Advancement of Learning, which was dedicated to King James I in a bid for patronage for the reformation of learning.24 The first book remorselessly sums up what in Bacon’s view 23 For a reading of De sapientia veterum and De principiis atque originibus in the context of Bacon’s matter theory, see Sophie Weeks, ‘Francis Bacon and the Art–Nature Distinction’, Ambix 54.2 (2007), 117–45 and Silvia Alejandra Manzo, ‘Holy Writ, Mythology, and the Foundation of Francis Bacon’s Principle of the Constancy of Matter’, Early Science and Medicine 4.2 (1999), 114–26. 24 The manuscript fragments ‘Cogitationes de scientia humana’ (1605 or earlier) contain five fables and their interpretations, four of which would make their way into De sapientia veterum nearly unchanged, see British Library MS Add.4258, fols. 218r and 220r–222r.

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was the sadly dilapidated state of human learning and makes the case for its actual dignity and importance. In the second book Bacon surveys human learning and points out areas that need to be improved or established—this book would later be revised and expanded into eight volumes on the division of learning in De augmentis, part one of the Great Instauration. The first division is into history, poetry, and philosophy. Poetry, as one ‘of the principall Portions of learning . . . is nothing else but FAINED HISTORY, which may be stiled as well in Prose as in Verse’.25 The subcategories of poetry are poetry narrative, representative (stage drama), and allusive, or parabolical. For Bacon, as for Philip Sidney, the general characteristic of poesy is the fact that it is ‘not tyed to the Lawes of Matter; may at pleasure ioyne that which Nature hath seuered: & seuer that which Nature hath ioyned, and so make vnlawfull Matches & diuorses of things’.26 Subsequently Bacon rehearses poetry’s liberty, epideictic potential, and kinship to painting and music, thus revealing a typical Renaissance poetics. He ends the general section on poetry, that is, the part that applies to all three subcategories, by remarking that it ‘hath had accesse and estimation in rude times, and barbarous Regions, where other learning stoode excluded’.27 Thus he refers to poetry as an old form of knowledge, indeed the oldest form of knowledge, having been around even before civilization. The antiquity of poetry, too, is a typical assumption of the time. A classic statement could be found in the Ars poetica, where Horace represents poetry as the first and undifferentiated means of man to understand the world in all its aspects.28 In sixteenth-century England, George Puttenham explains that poesy ‘was the original cause and occasion of their [men’s] first assemblies, when, before, the people remained in the woods

25 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 73. A definition of poetry according to content rather than form (metrical verse) is typical for the time. Cf. Fraunce, Amintas Dale, sig. B1v: ‘and poets (seeking as well to please, as to profit) haue well made choyce of verse, yet the making of a verse is no part of Poetrie: otherwise, the sweete and inimitable poeme of Heliodorus should be no Poeme, and euery vnreasonable rimer should weare a Lawrell garland.’ For the same argument see Sidney, ‘Defence’, 81. 26 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 73. Cf. Sidney, ‘Defence’, 78: ‘Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up with the vigour of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature, in making things . . . better than Nature bringeth forth.’ 27 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 74. 28 Horace, Epistles Book II and Epistle to the Pisones (‘Ars poetica’), ed. Niall Rudd (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 72 (ll. 396–401).

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and mountains, vagrant and dispersed like the wild beasts, lawless and naked, or very ill clad’.29 He assumed that, in poetry, the knowledge of God, of man, and of nature once had been united.30 Even though they cast poetic primitiveness differently, Puttenham and Bacon agree that it is very old and, as the ur-type of human knowledge, possesses universal scope. However, even though Bacon alludes to this common concept in his general description, he reserves the universal quality of poetry as an early form of knowledge for parabolic poetry—more precisely, for only one of the two subcategories of parabolic poetry. This means that Bacon, like other English mythographers, sees myth as a form of poetry. But in contrast to Batman and Fraunce, who continued a living tradition of allegorizing or myth-making, Bacon locates fables firmly in the past. In the Advancement, Bacon defines parabolical poetry as ‘a NARRATION applied onely to expresse some speciall purpose or conceit’ and again points to its antiquity: ‘Parabolical wisedome was much more in vse in the ancient times.’31 It is divided into two categories. There are parables which were used pedagogically or rhetorically to ‘expresse any point of reason, which was more sharpe or subtile then the vulgar in that maner, because men in those times wanted both varietie of examples, and subtiltie of conceit’.32 Examples for this use are the fables of Aesop, the sentences of the Seven Wise Men, and the use of hieroglyphs. ‘But there remaineth yet another vse of POESEY PARABOLICAL, opposite to that which we last mentioned: for that tendeth to demonstrate, and illustrate that which is taught or deliuered, and this other to retire and obscure it.’33 The second category thus veils knowledge from the eyes of the uninitiated. It is in this second, obscuring subcategory of parabolic poetry where Bacon locates the Greek fables. He gives only one further example for the obscuring parables, ‘diuine poesy’.34 This means that Bacon must have understood some of the Old Testament authors as poets. Indeed, Moses, David, Solomon, and the author of the book of Job are mentioned regularly in Renaissance poetics since editors of the Bible had become aware that some of the Hebrew texts had been composed in verse. A prominent example is the Biblia sacra, edited by Immanuel Tremellius and Franciscus Junius, which is also mentioned by Philip 29 31 33

30 Puttenham, Art of Poesy, 96. Puttenham, Art of Poesy, 96 and 98. 32 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 74. Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 74. 34 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 74. Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 74.

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Sidney in his apology for poetry.35 The Pentateuch, other Old Testament texts, and the Greek fables were intimately connected, being some of the oldest poetical texts mankind possesses, and closest in time to a lost golden age of learning. While Fraunce modifies the idea of the obscurity of fables to an inviting semi-transparency, Bacon adheres to the more traditional view that fables were supposed to shield truth successfully from vulgar eyes. But with respect to the nature of the hidden knowledge, Bacon, too, innovates. So, what did the scribes and ancient pagan poets hide in their parables? Bacon’s answer to this question takes us back to the idea of poetry as the nurse of mankind, the first and universal knowledge in which different parts of learning had not yet been cut off from each other, and which was not yet greatly abstracted from nature.36 We are dealing with the obscuring parables, ‘when the Secrets and Misteries of Religion, Pollicy, or Philosophy, are inuolued in Fables or Parables’. Taking into account the two interpreted fables Bacon sketches by way of example in the Advancement of Learning, parables partake of poetry, theology, politics, and philosophy. In this fashion, the parables contain knowledge of God, man, and nature. Furthermore, its classification unites all three principal parts of learning, history, poetry, and philosophy. Parabolic poetry of the obscuring kind is poetry, that is, feigned history, with a philosophical content. While some individual fables might be naturalphilosophical and others political, some can join together various areas. Parabolic poetry as such is a form of comprehending the world that is integral rather than divisive. In the same way, axioms of prima philosophia can occur as isolated truths or in their fuller forms, dovetailing different areas of investigation, while the study of prima philosophia as such is concerned with the interconnectedness of all parts of knowledge.

35 The second edition was published in 1580 under the title Testamenti veteris Biblia sacra sive libri canonici, priscae Iudaeorum Ecclesiae a Deo traditi Latini recens ex Hebraeo facti brevibúsque scholiis illustrati ab Immanuele Tremellio & Francisco Iunio (London, 1580). Cf. James L. Kugel, The Idea of Biblical Poetry: Parallelism and its History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), esp. 223. Sidney refers to their authority and connects pagan and Old Testament poetry (Sidney, ‘Defence’, 80). 36 Cf. Sidney’s description of the nature of this first, poetical knowledge (‘Defence’, 74): ‘And first, to all them that, professing learning, inveigh against poetry may justly be objected that they go very near to ungratefulness, to seek to deface that which, in the noblest nations and languages that are known, hath been the first light-giver to ignorance, and first nurse, whose milk by little and little enabled them to feed afterwards of tougher knowledges.’

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The universal quality of parabolic poetry is not only expressed in Bacon’s definition, however. It is also emphasized by its placement within Bacon’s tripartite structure of the division of knowledge. Bacon encouraged his readers to think of the division of learning as a large treediagram, and indeed added such a visualization to his text in 1623. Parabolic poetry, partaking of all aspects of learning, would sit squarely in the middle of such a mental picture, at the point, as it were, where the branches of the tree of knowledge are parting. As Sachiko Kusukawa, in her essay on Bacon’s classification of knowledge, has pointed out with respect to Bacon’s placement of rhetoric, the systematic position of a certain passage can be highly significant.37 Such an awareness of the organization of Bacon’s text highlights the fact that the universality of parabolic poetry does not occupy its systematic space alone: it is immediately followed—only one paragraph intercedes—by the discussion of prima philosophia, the stem of the tree of knowledge. Again, their shared status as sapientia rather than scientia, as lower-level axioms rather than higher-level axioms, is being enforced. With respect to the age of parabolic poetry, the most precise chronology we get from Bacon is at the beginning of his preface to De sapientia veterum. ‘The most ancient times (except what is preserved of them in the scriptures) are buried in oblivion and silence: to that silence succeeded the fables and the poets: to those fables the written records which have come down to us.’38 This order is reminiscent of Varro’s, who divided world history into the unknown, the mythical, and the historical ages. Bacon matches each of these ages with the records that remain of them: the earliest history of humankind with scripture, the second with the fables, and the third with proper written records, beginning, probably, with Greek historiography. He believed, therefore, that the surviving Greek versions of the myths, recorded by Homer and Hesiod, were much later than the origins of these stories.39 Already in the Redargutio

37 Sachiko Kusukawa, ‘Bacon’s Classification of Knowledge’, in The Cambridge Companion to Francis Bacon, ed. Markku Peltonen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 47–74, here 64–5. 38 Francis Bacon, ‘De sapientia veterum’, in SEH VI. 618–86, here 625 (trans. SEH VI. 688–764, here 695). 39 For Bacon and Homer see Gerard Passannante, ‘Homer Atomized: Francis Bacon and the Matter of Tradition’, English Literary History 76.4 (2009), 1015–47. For Bacon’s use of Varro, see Lewis, ‘Bacon, Allegory and the Uses of Myth’, 379.

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philosophiarum he had insisted that the fables, originally, were much older than Greek civilization and might therefore contain relics from earlier and better times.40 Fables, he repeats in the preface to De sapientia, ‘must be regarded as neither being the inventions nor belonging to the age of the poets themselves, but as sacred relics and light airs breathing out of better times, that were caught from the traditions of more ancient nations and so received into the flutes and trumpets of the Greeks’.41 This renders the two types of obscuring parabolic text, divine poesy and the Greek fables, the only records of humanity close in time to Adam’s universal knowledge. The ‘more ancient nations’, whose wisdom fell into the trumpets of the Greeks, further connect scripture, fable, and prima philosophia. Egypt, the Persians, and the Babylonians (Chaldeans), together with what we know of the utmost antiquity through scripture and the fables, form a league against Greek philosophers, with whom the decline of knowledge began. In his description of prima philosophia Bacon had praised the ancient Persians for their magic, the chief business of which was ‘to note the correspondences between the architectures and fabrics of things natural and things civil’.42 Furthermore, Bacon identified a principle of prima philosophia in Moses’s Egyptian knowledge. Moses, he writes: is adorned by the Scriptures with this addition, and commendation: That he was seene in all the Learning of the Ægyptians; which Nation we know was one of the most ancient Schooles of the world: for, so Plato brings in the Egyptian priest, saying vnto Solon: You Grecians are euer Children, you haue no knowledge of antiquitie, nor antiquitie of knowledge. Take a view of the ceremoniall law of Moyses; you shall find . . . that some of the most learned Rabynes haue trauailed profitably, and profoundly to obserue, some of them a naturall, some of them a morall sence, or reduction of many of the ceremonies and ordinances: As in the lawe of the Leprousie, where it is sayd: If the whiteness haue ouerspread the flesh, the Patient may passe abroad for clean; But if there be any whole flesh remayning, he is to be shut vp for uncleane: One of them noteth a principle of nature, that putrefaction is more contagious before maturitie than after: And another noteth a

40 ‘[T]hough the fables of the poets are of a nature to lend themselves to many interpretations, I should be loth to draw recondite meanings out of them, if they were invented by those who have handed them on to us. But this, I think, is not so. They are not offered to us as new inventions now for the first time brought forward, but as things formerly believed and known. This circumstance increases their value in my eyes, since it suggests that they are the sacred survivals of better times.’ Bacon, ‘Refutation’, 121. 41 42 SEH VI. 627 (trans. SEH VI. 697–8). SEH I. 542 (trans. SEH IV. 339).

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position of morall Philosophie, that men abandoned to vice, doe not so much corrupt manners, as those that are halfe good, and halfe euill; so, in this and verie many other places in that lawe, there is to bee found besides the Theologicall sence, much aspersion of Philosophie.43

In Bacon’s discussion of prima philosophia in De augmentis eighteen years later, the law of putrefaction is listed as one of the examples of primary philosophy, without, however, an acknowledgement of Bacon’s source.44 Egypt especially seems to serve as the channel of communication between the better times of human knowledge and whatever records we have of those times. It is worthy of note that Bacon, in his account of Moses’s Egyptian learning quoted above and in his New Atlantis, capitalizes on the fact that the story of the old Atlantis made it into Greece via an Egyptian priest, who thought the Greeks barely children in knowledge.45 To sum up, the Greek fables as parabolic poetry share with prima philosophia age, universal scope, a place lower down on the intellectual hierarchy, a systematic middle position on Bacon’s tree of knowledge, and privileged sources. Such a concept of myth as distorted tales that, in their original form, veiled insights into the basic interconnectedness of nature is unique to Bacon. In the kindred Old Testament, Bacon was able to find one of the valuable axioms of primary philosophy. Finding such a law in scripture, however, is one thing. Finding it in Greek fables is another. One reason for this is that ‘the Scriptures being giuen by inspiration, and not by humane reason, doe differ from all other books in the Author: which by consequence doth drawe on some difference to be vsed by the Expositor’.46 Another reason is that the fables had been tampered with by the unwitting Greeks. Bacon therefore has to develop his very own take on allegory in De sapientia veterum.

4.3. Allegory in De sapientia veterum De sapientia veterum was dedicated to Robert Cecil, first Earl of Salisbury, Chancellor of Cambridge University, and to Cambridge University

43

Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 34–5. SEH I. 541 (trans. SEH IV. 338). 45 For Bacon’s engagement with Plato’s Egyptian priest, see my article ‘The Strange Antiquity of Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis’, Renaissance Studies 29.3 (2015), 375–93. 46 Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 187. 44

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itself, Bacon’s alma mater. In his dedication, Bacon capitalized on the image of the nursing mother, and allowed this idea of beginnings and increase to spill over into other images: Bacon’s texts—having their earliest roots in his education at Cambridge—serve as starting points for philosophical inventions in the wider world and, in the form of De sapientia veterum, return to the alma mater. Bacon carries the studies from the contemplative university life into the active life, where they can acquire ‘new grace and vigor’ and, ‘having more matter to feed them, strike their roots perhaps deeper, or at least grow taller and fuller leaved’.47 By these references to the roots of learning and to promising beginnings, the tone for the text is set and the link to the concerns of universal learning established. After showing his concern with learning in general, Bacon focuses on a discussion of fables in his preface. Towards the end of his prefatory defence of the interpretation of fables, Bacon elucidates his hermeneutics. The fables were invented ‘by men who both lived in different ages and had different ends, some being more modern [recentiores], some more ancient, some having in their thoughts natural philosophy, others civil affairs’.48 If we want to get at their original meanings, we must find the original versions of the stories. Bacon therefore decides upon an approach that seems akin to philology. ‘And since they are told in different ways by writers nearly contemporaneous, it is easy to see that what all the versions have in common came from ancient tradition, while the parts in which they vary are the additions introduced by the several writers for embellishment.’49 Bacon was confident that he was able to identify the basic meaning of a fable (Cupid as the Atom, the Sphinx as the sciences).50 In this way, he matches each fable with a single field of knowledge. Here lies the most obvious difference between Bacon’s mythography and other Renaissance interpretations of myth. Mythographers like Vincenzo Cartari or Bacon’s source Natale Conti endeavoured to find in each fable as many meanings as their humanistic erudition allowed them to find, and reported as many

47

48 SEH VI. 621 (trans. SEH VI. 691). SEH VI. 626 (trans. SEH VI. 697). SEH VI. 627 (trans. SEH VI. 697). 50 This does not inhibit their function as probative or initiative rhetoric suggested by Lewis, ‘Bacon, Allegory and the Uses of Myth’, 386. While the main frame of reference of a fable remains stable, an interpretation of particular elements can be added, changed, or used to point out new ways of looking at the topic. 49

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different versions as possible. Bacon cut back this luxurious growth and located each story within one field of learning. In this manner, the twenty-nine short fables (in total, there are thirtyone) in De sapientia veterum are explicated.51 Bacon discovers in each of them either a moral, or a political, or a natural-philosophical truth. The story of Narcissus, for example, veils a moral truth about people who fall in love with themselves because of their beauty or some other unearned gift of nature. The fable of Coelum is natural philosophical, stands for origins, and is compared to Democritus’s later philosophy on the origins of things. Typhon (or, the Rebel) is interpreted along Machiavellian lines and is read as political allegory: a king who becomes a tyrant will be rebelled against by his nobles, but he can regain power through good laws and the goodwill of his people.52 This approach stresses the universality of parabolic poetry as such, but adds authority and sobriety to Bacon’s individual interpretations. Exactly the same range of philosophy (moral, political, natural) would be covered by the three exemplary fables in De augmentis. Thus, the twenty-nine short expositions are being identified with one area of investigation each. Within it, each describes a very specific problem: counselling, treaties, the atom, dishonour, religious zeal, satiety. As we have seen with Cupid, Coelum, and Proteus, Bacon employs axioms of prima philosophia in these fables, but only in the isolated forms they take in the particular area each fable discusses. Nevertheless, across the range of fables in which an axiom is used, its fuller form emerges. The two fables which are significantly longer, ‘Pan, sive Natura’ and ‘Prometheus, sive Status Hominis’, differ greatly not only in length, but also in subject matter and manner of interpretation. The subject matter of these two fables comprises, as Bacon elucidates in his fable ‘Sphynx, 51 The thirty-one fables and interpretations are of varying length: sixteen of the fables are less than three pages long (in the original duodecimo format) and the rest of them vary from three to six pages, with two notable exceptions: ‘Pan, or Nature’ (over fourteen duodecimo pages) and ‘Prometheus, or the State of Man’ (nineteen pages). 52 The nobles and the people are the two political forces a prince has to reckon with; see Machiavelli, The Prince, ed. Quentin Skinner and Russell Price (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 34–7. Machiavelli interpreted fables in only one passage in The Prince (ch. 18, ‘How rulers should keep promises’, pp. 61–3). This brief exposition became one of Bacon’s two examples for fables as parables in the Advancement: Chiron’s tutelage of Achilles, a fable ‘Expounded Ingeniously, but corruptly by Machiavell’ (Bacon, Oxford Francis Bacon, IV. 75).

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sive Scientia’, the whole universe of learning: ‘Of the Sphinx’s riddles there are in all two kinds; one concerning the nature of things, another concerning the nature of man.’53 In this manner Pan and Prometheus divide up the whole realm of learning between them rather than being specific, as the twenty-nine other fables are. And accordingly, rather than straightforwardly pointing out the meaning of each, Bacon uses Pan and Prometheus to explore a range of truths throughout all parts of learning touching nature and man. Bacon’s interpretation of Pan begins by establishing the fable as one related to natural philosophy; a ‘noble fable this, if there be any such; and big almost to bursting with the secrets and mysteries of Nature’.54 The paragraph immediately following this sentence, however, links the fable to divine knowledge. If Pan is the Son of Mercury, then Nature is born from the divine word, ‘an opinion which the Scriptures establish beyond question’.55 If he is the son of Penelope and all her suitors, nature has a material beginning, being sprung ‘of the seeds of things mixed and confused together’.56 Bacon repeats his own explanation of this second theory of origin in Virgil’s words, quoting from the Eclogues 6.31–4.57 Just as easily as prose turns into verse, the study of nature turns into divine metaphysics. For, like Pan’s horns, the ‘summits, or universal forms, of nature do in a manner reach up to God [ad diuina]’.58 Just as he had done in the axiom of prima philosophia about the constancy of matter, Bacon orchestrates the meanings of scripture and fable: ‘As for Pan’s being, next to Mercury, the messenger of the gods, that is an allegory plainly divine; seeing that next to the word of God, the image itself of the world is the great proclaimer of the divine wisdom and goodness. So sings the Psalmist [Ps. 19:1]: The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth the workes of his hands.’59 Here, one text can be translated into another, because the truth beneath both is the same. The terrors Pan can cause are interpreted first in a natural-philosophical way 53

54 SEH VI. 679 (trans. SEH VI. 757). SEH VI. 636 (trans. SEH VI. 709). 56 SEH VI. 636 (trans. SEH VI. 709). SEH VI. 636 (trans. SEH VI. 709). 57 For Bacon and his use of poetry in his philosophical works see Robert M. Schuler, ‘Francis Bacon and Scientific Poetry’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, NS 82.2 (1992), 1–65, here 44–5. 58 SEH VI. 637 (trans. SEH VI. 710). 59 SEH VI. 639 (trans. SEH VI. 712). Note that Bacon translated and published several psalms, dedicated to George Herbert, without, however, theorizing the psalm as a genre; see Francis Bacon, The Translation of Certaine Psalmes into English Verse (London, 1625). 55

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(fear preserves life) and then in a moral strain (in seasons of adversity, men tend to superstitions, which are nothing else but ‘Panic’ terrors). Bacon interpreted Pan’s challenge of Cupid as the struggle between harmony and disorder in nature and translated this into the world of political philosophy, referring back to the fable of Typhon, the Rebel. Bacon ends his discussion with Pan’s lack of issue—the world, as a whole, is perfect in itself (another hint towards the constancy of matter). In other words, the realm of nature is all-encompassing and indifferent, but carrying all differences within itself. As has become clear through Bacon’s way of interpreting the fable, knowledge of nature in its most general sense is able to metamorphose: philosophy morphs into divinity, and different forms of philosophy translate into each other. Nevertheless, its axioms are clearly identifiable. One axiom of prima philosophia emerges from the interpretation of Pan in the full form Bacon uses in his formal discussions of primary philosophy. In De sapientia veterum, this axiom is applied to divine providence and human government. In Bacon’s revision of this fable for De augmentis, it is enlarged to contain knowledge of God, man, and nature, by adding an application to natural philosophy. I am quoting the later version: That sheephook also representing empire contains a noble metaphor, alluding to the mixture of straight and crooked in the ways of nature. And this rod or staff is crooked principally in the upper part; because all the works of Divine Providence in the world are mostly brought about in a mysterious and circuitous manner, so that while one thing appears to be doing another is doing really; as the selling of Joseph into Egypt, and the like. Moreover in all wise human governments, those who sit at the helm can produce and insinuate what they desire for the good of the people more successfully by pretexts and indirect ways than directly. Nay (which perchance may seem strange), in mere natural things you may deceive nature sooner than force her; so ineffectual and self-impeding are all things which are done directly; whereas on the other hand the indirect and insinuating way proceeds smoothly and gains its end.60

This fable of universal nature contains truths of God, nature, and man, most of which can be translated—just as Bacon expects of axioms of prima philosophia—into other realms of knowledge and remain true.

60

SEH I. 526–7 (trans. SEH IV. 323–4).

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The second fable of this length in De sapientia veterum, the allegory of the state of man, shows the same range of truths. Bacon first speaks of arts and sciences with relation to man, but then, ‘[h]aving thus described the state of man in respect of arts and matters intellectual, the parable passes to Religion’; and ‘[a]fter touching the state of Religion, the parable turns to morals and the conditions of human life’.61 All these different parts of learning would be neatly partitioned in Bacon’s division of learning and laid out for posterity to investigate. This fable, however, demonstrates their interconnectedness. Axioms of prima philosophia are thus represented in De sapientia veterum in two different ways. Like the omnia mutantur axiom, axioms of prima philosophia can emerge across a range of fables discussing a specific problem. Noticing them across the entries of the mythography mimics the process of discovery of such axioms in Bacon’s interpretation of nature. The two longer fables, however, contain axioms of prima philosophia in their full, metamorphic form. This is the case, because the subject matter of Prometheus and Pan (man and nature) is so general that it must be located in the stem of the tree of knowledge. In these two fables, Bacon can stage the protean nature of this deepest form of knowledge. Interestingly, the most basic concept of nature (matter) and the deepest truths (prima philosophia) both endlessly transform and nevertheless remain constant (and indeed, the two meet in the fable ‘Proteus, sive Materia’). Bacon’s allegoresis is thus very different to that of his main source, the Mythologiae. When Conti offers multiple interpretations for an individual element of a fable, it is due to his awareness of the different ways in which this element had been interpreted by other authors whom he copies for copia. Bacon refrains from such polysemy when he interprets fables as belonging to a specific field of knowledge. And when he does unfold a range of meanings out of a single element of a fable, this indicates the nature of the underlying, basic truth, which in turn demonstrates the interconnectedness of nature. Bacon’s concept of myth therefore gains coherence through the special form of learning which shows itself directly in the more general fables (like Prometheus) and which establishes ‘deeper’ connections between those fables that are located on different branches of learning (e.g. Cupid, Coelum, and Proteus).

61

SEH VI. 673–4 (trans. SEH VI. 750–1).

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4.4. Greek Myth and Prima Philosophia in the Revised Division of Learning Orpheus, singer of numerous fables in Book X of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, was often seen as the father of all poetry in the Renaissance. In De sapientia veterum, Bacon underlined the universality of the ancient parabolic poetry he was dealing with by identifying Orpheus, the urpoet, with ‘[p]hilosophiae universae’, universal philosophy.62 That Bacon came to associate this early form of poetry more and more with philosophy is further stressed by the changes that he introduced into the discussion of poetry as a principal part of learning in De augmentis scientiarum. Bacon did not finish the first part of the Great Instauration, Descriptio globi intellectualis. When he published the Novum Organum in 1620, he still had to refer to the Advancement of Learning as a substitute for this first part. Finally, in 1623, he published De augmentis scientiarum, a much-enlarged Latin revision of the Advancement. In De augmentis scientiarum, the section on poetry is completely restructured. While the Advancement had a general paragraph applicable to all subcategories of poetry, De augmentis relegates what was said there to the discussion of narrative and dramatic poetry. The traditional functions of poetry appertain to the first subcategory, narrative poetry: ‘So that this Poesy [Poesis ista] conduces not only to delight but also to magnanimity and morality.’63 In contrast to the other two poetical forms, parabolic poetry is wholly set aside as something of majesty, even sanctity. ‘But Parabolical Poesy is of a higher character than the others, and appears to be something sacred and venerable [Res sacra videtur et Augusta]; especially as religion itself commonly uses its aid as a means of communication between divinity and humanity.’64 While Bacon sees no need to investigate further into either narrative, dramatic, or the first kind of parabolic poetry (used to illustrate complex thought to simple minds), the study of the obscuring parables were, for the first time in Bacon’s work, marked as a desideratum. The gap between ‘normal’ poetry and parables becomes even greater seeing that Bacon on the one hand affirmed ‘poesy . . . being to be accounted

62 64

SEH VI. 646 (trans. SEH VI. 720). SEH I. 520 (trans. SEH IV. 316).

63

SEH I. 518–19 (trans. SEH IV. 316).

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rather as a pleasure or play of wit than a science [pro lusu potius ingenii quam pro scientia]’,65 but on the other hand repeated with respect to the parables that ‘the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy, and philosophy are involved’ in them.66 Finally, pushing the obscuring parables even further away from its fictional kindred, Bacon named the study of obscuring parables ‘Philosophiam secundúm Parabolas antiquas’—‘philosophy according to the ancient parables’.67 In earlier texts, Bacon had expressed doubts about the validity of fable interpretation, but had nevertheless recommended and pursued it. In De augmentis, he positively declared: ‘I am inclined to think that a mystery is involved in no small number of them.’68 After having thus erected a new line of investigation necessary for the Great Instauration—philosophy according to ancient parables—Bacon proceeds to give examples. They are taken from moral, natural, and political philosophy, and one of them is the enlarged interpretation of the fable of Pan. The changes Bacon introduced into his interpretation emphasize what I elucidated in my reading of Pan in De sapientia veterum. One of the additions is to be found in the paragraph on the Fates, Pan’s sisters. It was only a couple of lines long in the duodecimo format of De sapientia, but in the folio De augmentis the interpretation of Pan’s sisters runs over more than a page. What was added is a further emphasis on the unity of the world and the interconnectedness of everything at its roots. The chain of nature is the same thing as the thread of the Fates. The Fates signify: every event of any kind, and not the more noble only, yet in this sense too [the fable] excellently answers to the universal frame of things; seeing that there is nothing in the order of nature so small as to be without a cause, nor again anything so great but it depends on something else; so that the fabric of nature contains in her own lap and bosom every event whatever, both small and great, and develops them in due season by a fixed law.69

65 SEH I. 616 (trans. SEH IV. 406). For poetry as recreation see also the opening chapter of Francis Bacon, ‘Descriptio Globi Intellectualis’, in The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Graham Rees and others, 15 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996– ), vol. VI: Philosophical Studies c.1611–c.1619, ed. Graham Rees (1996), 95–169, here 97. 66 67 SEH I. 520 (trans. SEH IV. 317). SEH I. 521. 68 69 SEH I. 520 (trans. SEH IV. 317). SEH I. 524 (trans. SEH IV. 321).

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Refuting the possibility of chance, Bacon underlines the essential unity of all things. No thing is an island: ‘as if anything in the universe could be like an island, separated from connexion with the rest.’70 The axiom of indirection (Pan’s sheephook), which I quoted above, is greatly enlarged in comparison to its 1609 version, making the metaphor even deeper, that is, more universally true. As in the Advancement, prima philosophia comes on the heels of the fables, both holding their position in the systematic middle. As mentioned above, Moses’s law of putrefaction ranks amongst the examples of prima philosophia, which is named as another desideratum of the new philosophy. Only the ‘dull and leaden’ kind of people think fables are nonsense.71 Only those with a very narrow mind (‘fortasse parum’) believe that correspondences such as the Persians investigated into, and such as he gave examples for in this passage on prima philosophia, are nothing but similitudes (‘similitudines merae sunt’).72 Instead, the establishment of this field would be ‘a thing of excellent use for displaying the unity of nature’.73 Thus, Bacon’s concept of myth was initially embedded in a definition of poetry, but then moved towards myth as a form of philosophical communication. In the broadest sense, Bacon shared this approach to myth with his principal source, Natale Conti. But Bacon redefined the ‘philosophy’ in the fables as a very specific, historical type of learning that he called sapientia and which was related to his unique concept of prima philosophia. It is this underlying learning that gives coherence to Bacon’s concept of myth. Bacon locates fables in the second period of history and is not interested in reviving their ancient function, that is, the communication of learning between the initiated. Instead, he is keen to recover the learning from the first period of history that survived wrapped up in the fables. The right allegorical method of doing so is akin to philology: it identifies the oldest version of a fable and its intended allegory. The general thrust of the Great Instauration was forward; as this chapter has shown, however, Bacon was flexible enough to bend his own rules, if doing so promised valuable insights into nature.

70 72

71 SEH I. 524 (trans. SEH IV. 321). SEH VI. 627 (trans. SEH VI. 698). 73 SEH I. 543. SEH I. 543 (trans. SEH IV. 339).

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4.5. Early English and European Readers of De sapientia veterum Although Stephen Batman’s Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes was read in the Netherlands shortly after it was published, most of the English mythographers did not have an international reception history. Francis Bacon’s mythographical work, however, was read all over Europe. According to Reginald Walter Gibson’s bibliography, there were fourteen Latin, twenty-one English, eleven Italian, eleven French, two Dutch, and one German editions of this mythography by the end of the seventeenth century.74 Because Bacon wrote in Latin, his work was immediately accessible to educated readers, who could acquire his books through personal networks or the Frankfurt Book Fair. Moreover, De sapientia veterum was variously translated into European vernaculars. A brief survey of these translations presents an opportunity to reverse the direction of influence for a moment and observe how an English Renaissance mythography was received on the continent. The Italian version of De sapientia veterum was printed in London in 1617 and 1618—even before its English translation by Arthur Gorges appeared in 1619. It was published together with the Italian Essays in a volume titled Saggi morali con un altro trattato della sapienza degli antichi, with imprints from London, Florence, and Venice. Bacon himself was involved in this international publication project. The Italian translation realized his long-standing ambition to win fame in the heartland of the Renaissance. Apart from that, Bacon welcomed the chance to cause the Pope some trouble.75 Shortly afterwards, in Paris, Jean Baudoin translated De sapientia veterum into French as La sagesse mystérieuse des anciens (1619). This translation belonged to the world of literary salons in Paris. The book is dedicated, ‘comme au soleil des Muses Françoises’, to Catherine de Vivonne who was just at that time establishing the literary conversations held in the chambre bleu of her

74

Reginald Walter Gibson, Francis Bacon: A Bibliography of his Works and of Baconiana to the Year 1750 (Oxford: Scrivener Press, 1950). 75 For a detailed history of the Italian translation, see my article ‘ “A little work of mine that hath begun to pass the world”: The Italian Translation of Francis Bacon’s De sapientia veterum’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 54.3 (2010), 203–17.

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townhouse, the Hôtel de Rambouillet.76 In accordance with the polite goals of these gatherings, Baudoin recommends Bacon as a moral allegorist to his patroness. There is also a mythographical context for this translation: Baudoin would go on to translate Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia and prepare an edition of Jean de Montlyard’s French translation of Conti’s Mythologiae. Baudoin added four short treatises of his own to this edition, which were titled Recherches touchant la mythologie and summarized earlier mythographical work.77 The first Dutch translation appeared in 1646 in Leiden, in a single volume with the essays and meditations: De Proef-Stuken, midtgaders, Sijn Heylige Medidatien, en de Wijsheit de Ouden. The translator was Peter Boener, who had travelled to England and had once been in Bacon’s service. Alberto Elena has briefly discussed this translation in the context of the history of science in the Netherlands, citing it as evidence for a much wider dissemination of Baconian thought in academic and non-academic circles than has hitherto been assumed.78 An especially intensive instance of the reception of Bacon’s thought on myth took place in Nuremberg, Germany, in the 1650s. The poet Georg Philipp Harsdörffer and his friends in the literary circle Pegnesischer Blumenorden (‘Pegnitz Flower Society’) read all of Bacon’s mythographical output. They developed the central ideology for their influential group from Bacon’s allegory of Pan. Several of their works engage with and translate from De sapientia veterum and De augmentis, and there is also a full German version to which Harsdörffer contributed paratextual material: Von der Alten Weißheit was part of a collection of Baconiana put together by Johann Wilhelm von Stubenberg.79 As this translation 76 Francis Bacon, La sagesse mystérieuse des anciens, trans. Jean Baudoin (Paris, 1619), sig. a2v. 77 On Jean Baudoin and Bacon, see Anne-Élizabeth Spica, ‘Jean Baudoin et la Fable’, XVIIe siècle 216 (2002), 417–31; Sara Petrella, ‘Jean Baudoin et la réception des mythographies au XVIIe siècle’, in S’exprimer autrement: poétique et enjeux de l’allegorie à l’Âge classique, ed. Marie-Christine Pioffet and Anne-Élizabeth Spica (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2016), 105–22. 78 Alberto Elena, ‘Baconianism in the Seventeenth-Century Netherlands: A Preliminary Survey’, Nuncius 6.1 (1991), 33–47. 79 Francisci Baconi, Grafens von Verulamio, Fürtrefflicher Staats- Vernunfft- und SittenLehr-Schrifften 1. Von der Alten Weißheit. Ii. Etliche Einrahtungen aus den Sprüchen Salomonis. Iii. Die Farben (oder Kennzeichen) des Guten und Bösen, trans. Johann Willhelm von Stubenberg (Nürnberg, 1654). For a detailed discussion of the importance of Bacon’s mythographical work for this circle, see Jörg Jochen Berns, ‘Gott und Götter: Harsdörffers

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and the other European responses show, Bacon’s reception in Europe was driven by a wide range of interests: personal ambition, confessional politics, mythography, literary society, and poetics. A comprehensive study of the vernacular reception of De sapientia veterum could paint a lively picture of the role of myth in seventeenth-century Europe. Returning to England, there are two readers of De sapientia veterum who deserve closer attention in the context of my argument about Bacon: Henry Reynolds, whose Mythomystes is the subject of the next chapter, and George Sandys. Sandys is frequently quoted in studies on Bacon, because, in the 1632 edition of Ouids Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz’d, and Represented in Figures, Sandys listed the authors he was indebted to and singled out Bacon as the most praiseworthy: ‘Of moderne writers, I have receiued the greatest light from Geraldus, Pontanus, Ficinus, Viues, Comes, Scaliger, Sabinus, Pierius, and the Crowne of the latter, the Vicount of St Albons.’80 But his earlier work, A Relation of a Journey, already contains much material for an illuminating comparison, both with Bacon and Reynolds. In 1610, George Sandys went on a journey around the Mediterranean, visiting Turkey, Egypt, the Holy Land, and Italy. After his return, he wrote an account of this trip in four books, relating his experiences of these various cultures. In Book IV, on Italy, he reflects on the classical literature through which he has learnt to imagine these lands, and questions the truth value of his ancient guides.81 Sandys does not expect much from mythological poets. The word ‘fable’ means nothing more to Sandys than a fictional story. Reaching Mount Etna, for example, he cites Vergil’s description of the volcano and his explanation for its violent eruptions: the giant Enceladus lies trapped underneath it, and ‘as often as he turns his weary sides | All Sicil quakes; and smoke dayes beauty

Mythenkritik und der Pantheismus der Pegnitzschäfer unter dem Einfluß Francis Bacons’, in Georg Philipp Harsdörffer: Ein deutscher Dichter und Europäischer Gelehrter, ed. Italo Michele Battafarano (Bern: Lang, 1991), 23–81; Jürgen Klein, ‘The Reception of Francis Bacon in Seventeenth-Century German Philosophy’, Intellectual News 14 (2001), 75–93. 80 George Sandys, Ouids Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz’d, and Represented in Figures, An Essay to The Translation of Virgil’s Aeneis (Oxford, 1632), 18. 81 For a discussion of Sandys’s relationship to classical antiquity, see Raphael Lyne, Ovid’s Changing Worlds: English Metamorphoses, 1567–1632 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 4: ‘Sandys’s Virgilian Ovid’; Sheldon Brammall, The English Aeneid: Translations of Virgil 1555–1646 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), 135–9.

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hides’.82 Following the long quotation, Sandys writes: ‘But leaue we fables with their allegories, and come to the true reason.’83 Sandys thus rationalizes fables, often using Euhemerism to explain their origins. Even when he looks to epic for historical, geographical, or medical information, he makes sure to substantiate the poetic account with a more trustworthy source: ‘The ancient Geographers do ioyntly affirme with Virgil, that the Cretans “Did in an hundred ample Cities dwell”.’84 Sandys not only distrusts the poets, he frequently feels superior to antiquity. Scylla and Charybdis owe their terror to the lack of skill of ancient sailors, and Homer egregiously exaggerated. Sandys is even more dismissive when he touches upon matters of heaven and hell: ‘[Avernus] was supposed the entrance into hell by ignorant Antiquity: where they offered infernall sacrifice to Pluto, and the Manes, here said to giue answeres. For which purpose Homer brought hither his Vlysses, and Virgil his Aeneas.’85 But even if Homer’s and Virgil’s testimonies are given little credit, Sandys has the greatest respect for one of their sources: the Cumean Sibyl. Sandys believes that there was more than one sibyl, and that most of the prophecies were inspired by demons. But not all of them: ‘surely a peaceable, and better spirit did inspire them with those heauenly diuinations of our Sauiour.’86 In his view, the Sibylline prophecies are much older than the Aeneid or the works of Homer, and might have been established in Cumae ‘ere the warre of Troy’.87 Sandys speaks of this tradition as no less confused than the Sibyl’s leaves. When he tells us how to separate the authentic ancient prophecies from later poetic additions, he sounds very much like Bacon: Whereby it doth giue cause of strong coniecture, that these bookes [the Sibylline prophecies] haue had much inserted into them after the euent, . . . the history besides being orderly related, though written by diuerse, and in diuerse ages. So that the whole being to be misdoubted, in that falsified part, or the true from the vntrue not distinguishable; we are rather to beleeue those that haue the testimony

82 George Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney Begun An: Dom: 1610. Foure bookes. Containing a Description of the Turkish Empire, of Ægypt, of the Holy Land, of the Remote Parts of Italy, and Ilands Adioyning (London, 1615), 243, cf. Aen. III.581–2. 83 Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney, 243. 84 Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney, 223, cf. Aen. III.106. 85 86 Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney, 279. Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney, 284. 87 Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney, 282.

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of time for their approbation. As that prophesie of our Sauiour by this of Cuma; borrowed from her by Virgil (as he confesseth) though perhaps not applied by him where it was meant, but left at random to be construed by euent, and mixt with his fictions.88

As with Bacon, venerable truths originated in the depths of antiquity long before Homer and were only later picked up by ignorant poets who mixed them with their fictions without knowing what they were doing. These truths can be excavated if the readers of ancient mythological poetry are happy to compare versions until they have determined the oldest ones. The thought movement is thus very similar in Bacon and Sandys. However, this close parallel also serves to highlight an important difference in their views. For Sandys, the epics by Homer and Virgil contain true fragments of the Sibylline prophecies about Christ, Troy, and Rome. Bacon also does not shy away from finding divine wisdom in some fables. When ancient mythology makes Mercury the father of Pan, for example, it communicates that nature was born from the divine word. But for Bacon, the authors of these fables did not receive such insights through divine inspiration. Any sacred knowledge in fables is there because their authors lived in the primary age of history, when some of Adam’s knowledge was still current. The question whether there is any Christian knowledge in ancient poetry and whether divine inspiration of pagan authors is possible is at the heart of the next English mythography, Mythomystes by Henry Reynolds. It would be satisfying to report that Reynolds developed his thoughts through a dialogue with Bacon and maybe even Sandys. Unfortunately, Reynolds was not a very attentive reader of the greatest English mythographer. In fact, while he did read Bacon, his reaction to his predecessor is not dissimilar to that of the twentieth-century critics I mentioned at the outset of this chapter: Suppose that a man (nor vnlearned one neither) shall haue taken paines in foure or fiue fables of the Auncients to vnfould and deliuer vs much doctrine and high meanings in them, which he calls their wisdome; and yet the same man in another Treatise of his, shall say of those auncient Fables.—I think they were first made, and their expositions deuised afterward . . . what shall we make of such

88

Sandys, A Relation of a Iourney, 284. He goes on to cite Virgil’s fourth eclogue.

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willing contradictio[n]s, when a man to vent a few fancies of his owne, shall tell vs first, they are the wisdome of the Auncients; and next, that those Auncient fables were but meere fables, and without wisdom or meaning.89

Reynolds had read only The Advancement of Learning and De sapientia veterum. Ignoring chronology, he construed Bacon’s change of perspectives on fables as wilful contradictions. This leaves Bacon a hypocrite who reads fables to serve his own purpose. Not surprisingly, Reynolds grows more and more incensed over the course of this passage. He tries to cool his ire by telling himself that Bacon’s ‘Barbarisme’ cannot efface the arcana of the ancients, nor can ‘all the dampes and thick fogs by dull & durty Ignorance breathed on them, darken [them] at all, or hide [them] from the quicke eye of select and happier vnderstandings’.90 In Mythomystes, Bacon figures as a bad breath, exhaling mildew on the flowers of poetry. Ironically, Reynolds, too, was misunderstood by his readers, and they found similarly colourful ways of venting their frustration.

89 Henry Reynolds, Mythomystes wherein a Short Suruay Is Taken of the Nature and Value of True Poesy and Depth of the Ancients above Our Moderne Poets. To Which Is Annexed The Tale of Narcissus Briefly Mythologized (London, 1632), 78–9. 90 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 80.

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5 While the Winds Breathe, Adore Echo Henry Reynolds between Neo-Platonic and Protestant Poetics of Myth It is by now a well-established tradition to begin a piece on Mythomystes1 by quoting Joel E. Spingarn. In Mythomystes, ‘this perverse work’, Reynolds travels on the road of Neo-Platonism ‘into a tropical rainforest of strange fancies: the Cabalists and Neoplatonists, Philo and Reuchlin, but especially Pico della Mirandola and Alessandro Farra, here find an English voice’.2 Spingarn mourns that the wide reading and culture Mythomystes displays in its opening pages are wasted by its ‘author gone off on a tangent’: Reynolds should have continued his table-talk on the best modern poets of Europe rather than argue for the wisdom of the ancients. It is then another tradition in Reynolds scholarship to move on to other, less outlandish authors immediately after the quotation from Spingarn has been provided. With a good amount of critical disdain, for example, Douglas Bush refuses to discuss Mythomystes, because ‘we cannot plunge into the tropical forest’.3 Judging from the diction of Spingarn and Bush, fresh readers of the 1632 piece might become convinced they would be better off reading something else. This impression is aided by a number of problems that a reader of Mythomystes encounters. The small tract of, all in all, 111 pages seems to 1 Henry Reynolds, Mythomystes (London, 1632). I quote from the facsimile edition: Henry Reynolds, Mythomystes [1632], ed. Arthur F. Kinney (Menston: Scolar Press, 1972). 2 Joel E. Spingarn, ‘Introduction’, in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Joel E. Spingarn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), ix–cvi, here xxi. 3 Douglas Bush, Mythology and the Renaissance Tradition in English Poetry (New York: Pageant Book Co., 1932; repr. 1957), 243.

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come out of nowhere, or so the critics say, who find it alien to its time.4 Contextualization is made difficult as there is only one further publication by Reynolds, containing a translation of Tasso’s pastoral Aminta and a poem on the fate of Ariadne.5 Furthermore, Henry Reynolds himself is obscure to us.6 His star shines brightest in Michael Drayton’s elegy ‘To my Most Dearely-Loved Friend Henery Reynolds Esquire, of Poets and Poesie’. Mythomystes itself does not make things easier. The text has some urgency about it. It begins with sharp criticism of the modern age and a pessimistic passage on the best modern writers in Europe: hardly any of them really deserves the name of poet. What follows is a three-point comparison between the ancients and the moderns. At the end of it, Reynolds hopes that he has shown the deficiency of the moderns in contrast to the perfectly wise and philosophic poets of early antiquity, and has spurred on his contemporaries to reach once more for true greatness. Added to this pamphlet are two afterthoughts. First, an explanation of the banishment of Homer from Plato’s Republic, and second, the fable of Narcissus told in English verse and interpreted in several different ways. Throughout his text, Reynolds draws heavily on the work of Neo-Platonic thinkers. But, despite the fact that it is possible to extract some structural order from Mythomystes, it is truly entangled. The confusion is due partly to Reynolds’s habit of allowing his sentences to tumble over more than a page. He tosses out an idea, loses sight of it, catches himself, and then nearly trips over his own full stop. The syntax unfolds like a babushka doll, while verbs go missing and parentheses close that never opened. Finally, the argument of the text is riddled with what seem to be strong, internal contradictions. This chapter will show, however, that Mythomystes is not an idiosyncrasy. Rather, it participates in two poetological debates of its age. Initially, it will prove helpful to think of Reynolds’s treatise as emerging from the poetic circle of his friend Michael Drayton and its concerns with the deterioration of English poetry in the 1620s and early 1630s. But Arthur F. Kinney, ‘Note’, in Reynolds, Mythomystes, pp. [i–ix], here p. [vi]. Henry Reynolds, Torquato Tassos Aminta Englisht, to This Is Added Ariadne’s Complaint in Imitation of Anguillara (London, 1628). Reynolds’s interest in Aminta and Anguillara link him to Abraham Fraunce. 6 See Mary Hobbs, ‘Drayton’s “Most Dearely-Loved Friend Henery Reynolds Esq.” ’, Review of English Studies, NS 24:96 (1973), 414–28, and Douglas Bush, ‘Two Poems by Henry Reynolds’, Modern Language Notes 41.8 (1926), 510–13. 4 5

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my subsequent analysis of the text will put us into a position to suggest a much larger, European context for Reynolds’s complex attitude to the gods. Mythomystes, I will argue, is a dynamic response to the tensions between Neo-Platonic claims for the divinity of ancient poetry and a Protestant poetics that rejected syncretism and sought to set the truth of Christianity apart. In his study Götter im Exil, Ralph Häfner discussed this tension as a productive challenge faced by Christian humanism in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.7 The philologists in Häfner’s book were, on the one hand, the heirs of an Orphic-Platonic tradition that embraced syncretistic tendencies and were able to conceive of both David’s psalms and Pindar’s hymns as divinely inspired poetry. On the other hand, they experienced the divisive powers of confessionalization and textual scholarship, which prised pagan and Christian traditions apart. In the first part of his study, Häfner identifies the 1620s and early 1630s as a period during which Christian scholars re-evaluated their position towards an earlier Renaissance Neo-Platonism.8 One of the first major figures discussed in Götter im Exil is the polymath Gerhard Johann Vossius, whose thoughts on pagan and Christian poetics took shape at the same time as Reynolds was writing Mythomystes. In De artis poeticae natura, ac constitutione liber, Vossius offers his solution in the form of what Häfner calls an ‘eclectic Platonism’: he subscribes to the idea of divine fury as one of two origins of poetry.9 But as much as this might sound like an endorsement of Plato’s Ion and Phaidros, Vossius is careful to explain the origins of this furor poeticus in medical terms as a consequence of melancholic humours. Vossius therefore renounces the possibility that poetry might contain knowledge received immediately from the gods through the gift of divine madness.10 7

Ralph Häfner, Götter im Exil: Frühneuzeitliches Dichtungsverständnis im Spannungsfeld christlicher Apologetik und philologischer Kritik (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2003) especially Part I: ‘Das Fortleben der orphisch-platonischen Hymnologie im christlichen Humanismus’. A summary of this Habilitationsschrift can be found in the review by Martin Mulsow, ‘Christian Humanism in the Age of Critical Philology: Ralph Häfner’s “Gods in Exile” ’, Journal of the History of Ideas 70.4 (2009), 659–79. 8 Häfner, Götter im Exil, xxvi. 9 The other source of poetry is an innate inventiveness (vis excogitandi). Häfner discusses Vossius, De artis poeticae natura, ac constitutione liber (Amsterdam, 1647) on pp. 37–48 and suggests that Vossius was working on this text as well as his De theologia gentili et physiologa christiana (Amsterdam, 1642) while working as a professor in Leiden during the 1620s and early 1630s (Häfner, Götter im Exil, 7). 10 Häfner, Götter im Exil, 42.

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Meanwhile in England, Henry Reynolds grapples with the same question in a more intuitive manner, and finds his own, rather elegant solution. In order to gain insights into the implications of approaching myth within a dual framework of Neo-Platonism and Protestant poetics from Mythomystes, critics must resist the temptation to try and abstract from it a single coherent position towards the ancient gods. For this reason, my analysis will follow his arguments strictly in the order he develops them. This method brings out the elasticism of Reynolds’s thinking and leads to explanations for his advances or retreats. Having traced Reynolds’s line of reasoning, this chapter will illuminate his relationship to Neo-Platonism further by studying his use of the sources he relies on. With regard to these, I will concentrate particularly on Pico della Mirandola, the most frequently quoted author in Mythomystes. This is necessary, because Pico’s oeuvre itself has an ambivalent relationship to divine inspiration, and the extent of Reynolds’s debt to Pico determines how much of Reynolds’s poetological headache is due to his favourite author. The final part of the chapter will be devoted to Reynolds’s interpretation of the tale of Narcissus. This part of Mythomystes seems to be entirely independent from the prose tract that precedes it. I will show, however, that Reynolds’s rendering of the tale as well as his dizzyingly complex interpretation are designed to support the prose, restate its concerns in poetic terms, and bring it to a dramatic, appealing conclusion. The discussion will focus on Reynolds’s central interpretation of the tale, which is the ‘divine sense’ of the fable, and demonstrate how Reynolds infuses the story of Narcissus with its ancient poetic power. His reading is constructed around one of the symbols of Pythagoras, which fascinated many Renaissance readers but are now hardly known even among early modern scholars.

5.1. Reynolds and ‘the Forme and reall Essence of true Poësy’ Reynolds begins Mythomystes with censorious gusto: ‘I Have thought vpon the times wee liue in; and I am forced to affirme the world is decrepit.’11 The world soul lies languishing because ‘the knowledge of the Truth of things’ is lost.12 Wisdom and intellectual unity have been

11

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 1.

12

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 2.

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exchanged for ‘all the diseases of all errors, heresies, and different sects and schismes of opinions and vnderstandings in all matter of Arts, Sciences and Learnings whatsoeuer’.13 Every ‘illiterate’ as well as every ‘puny graduate in some Vniuersity’ is allowed to handle secret knowledge and interpret it ‘out of the treasonous mint of their owne imaginations’.14 One of these ailments is the bad state poetry had fallen into. Reynolds employs religious diction to describe the problem: like heretics, these writers and readers profane poetry by interpreting the most ancient texts without guidance from tradition. The linguistically brilliant poetry of his own day, empty of philosophical knowledge, is ‘a superficiall meere outside of Sence, or gaye barke only (without the body) of Reason’.15 In short, true poetry is lofty, elitist, and secret, a form of communication between the learned—but it has been sadly abandoned by vain and vacant modern minds. And, in spite of Reynolds’s modern critics, who find him such an exotic plant, there were many learned men in the late 1620s and early 1630s who would have agreed with him. Hence, when Reynolds brilliantly describes the modern verses as ‘meere imbroideries vpo[n] copwebbs’, his phrase matches those of Dudley North and William Drummond, who spoke of ‘fine colored ayery bubbles or Quelque-choses’ and ‘scholastical Quiddities’.16 Both writers belong to the circle of Henry Reynolds’s friend Michael Drayton, a leading voice in the chorus that sang the poetic decline of the age. Drayton’s poem The Moon-Calfe is a good example. It was published in 1627, five years before Mythomystes, in the same collection that contained the elegy to Henry Reynolds. The monstrous moon-calf, born from the world’s intercourse with the devil, loathes ‘nothing more then truth and knowledge’:17 But all this poysonous froth Hell hath let flie, In these last dayes, at noble Poesie, That which hath had both in all times and places, For her much worth, so sundry souveraigne graces; 13

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 2. 15 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 3. Reynolds, Mythomystes, sig. A3r. 16 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 25. North and Drummond are quoted in Richard F. Hardin, Michael Drayton and the Passing of Elizabethan England (Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 1973), 108. William Drummond, ‘To His Much Honoured Friend Dr Arthur Johnston, Physitian to the King’, in The Works of William Drummond of Hawthornden (Edinburgh: Watson, 1711), 143. Dudley North, A Forest of Varieties (London, 1645), 2. 17 I quote from Michael Drayton, Works, ed. J. William Hebel, 5 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961); here III: 175 (l. 357). 14

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The language, which the Spheares and Angels speake, In which their minde they to poore Mortalls breake By Gods great power, into rich soules infus’d, By every Moon-Calfe lately thus abus’d.18 ... O that the Ancients should so carefull be, Of what they did impresse, and onely we Loosely at randome, should let all things flie, Though against the Muses it be blasphemie.19

In this satire on his own time, Drayton raises some of the same points that Reynolds deplores: truth and poetry are sacred things handled with secrecy by the ancients, but are now fingered by too many, too openly. Drayton here employs the language of Neo-Platonism to praise the explicitly divine gift of poetry, whereas Reynolds has, so far, only indirectly hinted at its sanctity by calling its enemies heretics and profaners. Despite his heightened diction, Drayton envisages the office of a poet mostly in social terms in the Moon-Calfe. A poet’s work is supposed to provide ‘Wise pollicie, Morallity, or Story, | Well purtraying the Ancients and their glory’.20 Here, however, Reynolds parts ways with his friend. Those that are greatly gifted with ‘fancy and imagination’—and they exist even in the degenerate seventeenth century—should only use those ‘liberall graces of Nature, to the end shee gaue them’.21 This end is the untiring search for the philosophical truth hidden in the ancient poets’ works as well as the subsequent invention of new ‘pleasing and profitable fictions’, which are able to teach these truths to a select group of learned readers.22 Drayton’s ‘Morallity’ does not belong to these truths. It is not dignified enough. Moral philosophy is: vtterly vnfit to bee the Subiect of Poems: since it containes in it but the obuious restraints or impulsions of the Humane Sence and will, to or from what it ynly before-hand (without extrinsicke force or law) feeles and knowes it ought to shunne, or imbrace.23

18 19 20 22

Drayton, Works, III: 175–6 (ll. 373–80). Drayton, Works, III: 177 (ll. 419–22). 21 Drayton, Works, III: 176 (ll. 407–8). Reynolds, Mythomystes, 9. 23 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 10. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 48–9.

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If morals are taught, it should be done plainly and in prose, so that they are accessible to everybody.24 This stance makes Reynolds’s poetics stand out in a culture whose defence of the art was mostly based on its epideictic function. It also explains his criticism of Tasso, which otherwise might puzzle the reader of Mythomystes: Gerusalemme liberata can only be recommended as far as ‘an excellent pile of meerely Morall Philosophy may deserue’.25 Writers thus should not make morality the subject of poetry. And neither should readers seek to learn morality from the best—that is, the ancient Greek and Roman—poets. Reynolds is astounded that learned men of his own time reduce the meaning of the old masters to ‘meerely Morall doctrine’.26 Epideictic readings of some stories are legitimate, Reynolds allows, and gives some examples of well-known moral interpretations of myths: ‘As in their Hercules, Theseus, Vlysses, Æneas, and other their Heroës they haue giuen example of all vertues; and punisht all vices; as pride and ambition, in their Giants and Titanes, &c.’27 But even in these cases, there is more. If involved at all, moral philosophy is ever ‘the least part of the Doctrine . . . that they [poets like Homer, Hesiod, and Musaeus] meant to lay downe in those their wise, though impossible fables’.28 Epideictic readings only scratch the surface of ancient poetry. Drayton’s ‘Wise pollicie’ or ‘Story’ (i.e. history) does not fare better in Reynolds’s evaluation, which is why Samuel Daniel’s Civil Wars fails to impress: Reynolds wishes the poem were ‘somwhat more than a true Chronicle history in rime’.29 Morality, history, and lessons of successful policy are things that can be gleaned from the plotline of a story. As Reynolds makes clear, these kinds of knowledge are matter for prose. It is not worth hiding them in elaborate poetic mazes. For Reynolds, poetry must involve deep secrets below its ‘gay bark’; it must be allegorical to merit the name. He thus defines ‘the Forme and reall Essence of true Poësy’30 exceptionally narrowly as allegorized philosophy in verse. Poets and philosophers ‘are, or should be both professors of but one, and the same learning, though by the one receiued and deliuered in the apparell of verse, the other of prose’.31 In a society that affords excellent

24 26 28 30

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 45. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 50. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 51. Reynolds, Mythomystes, sig. A4r.

25 27 29

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 7. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 60. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 9. 31 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 23.

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philosophy written in prose (like seventeenth-century England), ‘our Philosophers are all our Poets, or what our Poets should bee.’32 In order to understand the exact nature of this philosophical knowledge, Reynolds’s reader has to wait until nearly the very end of Mythomystes. For the moment, Reynolds is more concerned with the faults of the moderns. Considering his narrow definition of the art, it does not come as a surprise that hardly any author finds his approval. Of Spain, he writes, ‘I cannot say it affords many, if any [good poets] at all’.33 The French, ‘likewise, . . . I can say little of ’.34 There are three Italian poets Reynolds does tolerate: Lodovico Ariosto, Torquato Tasso, and Giovanni Battista Marino. I have already noted how Reynolds qualifies his praise of Tasso. Similarly, Ariosto is only half-heartedly recommended for ‘the artfull woofe of his ingenious, though vnmeaning fables; the best, perhaps haue in that kind beene sung since Ouid’.35 Unlike Drayton, Reynolds does not indulge in Elizabethan nostalgia. All but one of the commendable English poets are Elizabethans (Chaucer, Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, and Drayton), but none of them goes without blame. For Reynolds, the halcyon days of poetry were over long before. While Virgil and Lucretius still understood the secret meaning of fables, already in Roman days, knowledge was in decline. From the beads of inherited stories ‘the ingenious Ouid has made a curious and excellent chaine; though perhaps hee vnderstood not their depth’.36 Having painted his own times as black as possible, Reynolds now turns to the distant past for illumination. In this way, he has set the stage for the three-point comparison between the ancients and the moderns, which dominates his prose tract.

5.2. Golden Fictions I: ‘rauisht, and inflamed with diuine fury’ In his first two points, Reynolds is concerned not with what poets like Homer, Orpheus, Pindar, or Virgil knew (this will be the focus of his

32

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 44. Later, Reynolds qualifies this complete identification. While the content of poetry and philosophy is the same, poets have the added advantage of being able to please their readers. 33 34 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 6. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 6. 35 36 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 7. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 37.

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third point); rather, he is keen to discuss what kind of men they were and how they treated their knowledge. Firstly, they neglected the world in order to pursue truth; and secondly, they took the greatest care to hide that truth from vulgar eyes. Both points are commonplaces of the time. Reynolds, however, chooses the strongest and most emphatic available versions of these conventional ideas by placing them into the context of the Neo-Platonic theory of the divinity of poetry. The small body of scholarship on Mythomystes offers two divergent representations of Reynolds’s Neo-Platonism, both of which miss the mark.37 Most scholars suggest that he is a mere follower of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whose works Reynolds quotes at length in Mythomystes. Spingarn had labelled Reynolds ‘the chief example in English of the systematic application of Neo-Platonism to the interpretation of poetry’.38 In the same way, Arthur F. Kinney was glad to find an angle that shows Reynolds ‘not altogether alien to his time’ by rendering him a devout follower of Pico.39 Since then, the equation of Reynolds’s opinions with those of the NeoPlatonists has been uncritically accepted.40 In contrast to these voices, Cinquemani’s article on Mythomystes entirely ignores the fact that Reynolds allows Neo-Platonic authors to mediate between him and antiquity. Cinquemani sets out on an irrelevant hunt for the ancient origins of the ideas Reynolds picked up from his early modern sources. Accordingly, he comes to the conclusion that Reynolds’s allegoresis is ‘strongly rooted in the mythological exegeses of ancient Greece’, but ‘reflects also the attitudes to myth in Hellenistic Alexandria and patristic North Africa’.41 In order to understand Reynolds’s relationship to myth and Neo-Platonism, a much more flexible approach to the actual texture of Mythomystes is needed. Reynolds begins his commendation of the ancients with a discussion of Platonic love. Skipping over the mediary role of earthly beauty, he explains that the object of this love is the exquisite beauty of intellectual 37 See A. M. Cinquemani, ‘Henry Reynolds’ “Mythomystes” and the Continuity of Ancient Modes of Allegoresis in Seventeenth-Century England’, PMLA 85.5 (1970), 1041–9, and Michael Stausberg, Faszination Zarathushtra: Zoroaster und die europäische Religionsgeschichte der frühen Neuzeit, 2 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998), I: 308–11. 38 39 Spingarn, ‘Introduction’, xxi. Kinney, ‘Note’, p. [vi]. 40 For the most recent example, see Volkhard Wels, ‘Francis Bacon über die Fiktionalität der Dichtung, antike Mythologie und die Macht der Phantasie’, Scientia Poetica: Jahrbuch für Geschichte der Literatur und der Wissenschaften 14 (2010), 1–28, here 14. 41 Cinquemani, ‘Continuity’, 1049.

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things. One can take Reynolds’s description of this love either as an attempt to imitate ecstatic speech, or as a good example for his confused style of writing: To the contemplation whereof [i.e. of intellectual things], rationall and wise Spirits are forcibly raised and lifted aloft; yea lifted oftentimes so far (sayes Plato) aboue mortality, as euen—in Deum transeunt, and so full fraught with the delight and abondance of the pleasure they feele in those their eleuations, raptures, and mentall alienations (wherein the soule remaines for a time quite seperated as it were from the body) do not only sing with the ingenious Ouid— Est Deus in nobis, agitante calescimus illo, But in an Extaticke manner, and to vse Plato’s phrase) [sic—no opening parenthesis] diuino afflatu co[n]citati, cry out with the intraunced Zoroaster—Ope thine eyes, ope them wide; raise and lift them aloft.42

Thus inspired, the poet-prophet becomes blind to the world’s inferior pleasures. This explains the blindness of Homer and the fable of Tiresias, who lost his eyesight after seeing Pallas (Wisdom) naked. These men’s fury is a divine gift. Reynolds quotes Plato’s Ion saying that ‘it is—a thing so sacred, as—non sine maximo fauore Dei comparari queat, cannot bee attained to without the wonderfull fauour of God’.43 Reynolds adds the Neo-Platonic interpretation of the fable of Ganymede as an expression of this experience: the rational part of man is lifted for love into the heavens and fed with the nectar of wisdom.44 Reynolds is quoting from two accounts of Platonic love to make this point: Marsilio Ficino’s rendering of Ion and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Commentary on a Poem of Platonic Love. Ficino’s text describes the poetic frenzy instilled by the Muses through musical harmonies as the first step towards a mystical union with God—the other steps being the priestly frenzy, prophecy, and love. All of these furies are divine. The Commentary has a different emphasis and is concerned with Platonic love as the ascent of the soul through the love felt for physical beauty to the love of intellectual beauty. The passage Reynolds concentrates on reminds the reader that a vision of intellectual beauty can only be attained by averting one’s eyes from worldly things. Reynolds’s account blurs what is quite clear in Ficino and Pico, and

42

43 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 16–17. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 19. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 19–20. For a subtly different use of this myth and its NeoPlatonic allegory, compare Stephen Batman’s interpretation as described in Chapter 2. 44

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results in a version in which poetic frenzy and Platonic love have become more or less the same thing. While Reynolds claims that he is quoting Plato’s Ion, his words actually come from Ficino’s introduction to Ion, the ‘Argumentum Marsilii Ficini in Platonis Ionem’, and in only one case from Ficino’s translation of Ion.45 Both Ficino’s own introduction and his translation are indistinguishably quoted as Plato’s words. For example, Ficino’s observation, ‘divino furore supra hominis naturam erigitur et in deum transit’, in the ‘Argumentum’ is given by Reynolds in the passage quoted above as ‘lifted oftentimes so far (sayes Plato*) [marginal gloss: *In Iöne] aboue mortality, as euen in Deum transeunt’.46 These passages from the Ion are the only instances of Reynolds quoting from Marsilio Ficino. In fact, the name of the godfather of Neo-Platonism is not even mentioned in Mythomystes. Here, Reynolds reaches for Ficino because his main source for this passage, Pico’s Commentary on a Poem of Platonic Love, neither describes poetic fury at length nor quotes from Ion. These two circumstances taken together suggest that Reynolds went out of his way to build the resounding claims of the Ion into his prose tract. After all, there is no higher praise for ancient poetry than its origin in a mystical union with God. Reynolds closes his first point by establishing the intellectual genealogy of the prisci. The ancients who had experienced divine fury became the teachers of all other ancient wise men. The group of ‘priscae Sapientiae patres & authores’47 includes ‘all the Magi, the wise East did euer breed’,48 ‘Orpheus, Virgil, Hesiod, Pindarus, and Homer’,49 the ‘diuine Plato’,50 ‘the intraunced Zoroaster’51, as well as Mercurius (Hermes) Trismegistus, Aglaophemus, Eudoxus, and Socrates.52 Into this illustrious group Marsilio Ficino, ‘Argumentum Marsilii Ficini in Platonis Ionem’, in Marsilio Ficino, Commentaries on Plato, ed. and trans. Michael J. B. Allen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008– ), vol. I: Phaedrus and Ion (2008), 194–207. 46 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 16; Ficino, ‘Argumentum’, 194. 47 48 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 21. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 11. 49 50 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 13. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 15. 51 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 17. 52 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 57. Eudoxus of Cnidus was an astronomer and contemporary of Plato. The obscure Aglaophemus is supposed to have been a teacher of Pythagoras. Cf. Charles B. Schmitt, ‘Perennial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz’, Journal of the History of Ideas 27.4 (1966), 505–32, here 510 n. 36. Both authors’ claim to fame in the Renaissance is their being mentioned in some of Ficino’s lists of the prisci; this is also the reason why their names occur in Mythomystes. 45

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‘the most autenticke Iamblicus, the Caldean’ belongs just as well as Pythagoras, who had ‘the Theology of Orpheus as his coppy and patterne’.53 These are the poets ‘most famous of that truly golden age’.54 Reynolds’s aetas aurea thus lasted roughly from Zoroaster to Plato, with a late representative in Virgil.55 In other words, it stretched from the biblical flood—Zoroaster was commonly dated to the time of Noah or even identified with Noah’s son Cham—to the Augustan age. What Reynolds sketches is an image of antiquity and fable that was first developed by Marsilio Ficino. In the preface to his translation of texts from the Corpus Hermeticum, Ficino gives an outline of what he calls the prisca theologia, or theologia philosophica.56 When he translated the Corpus Hermeticum, Ficino still believed Hermes Trismegistus was the first sage and philosopher in history (later, Zoroaster would hold this position).57 He writes that Hermes was the first amongst the philosophers who: a Physicis ac mathematicis ad diuinoru[m] contemplatione[m] se contulit. Primus de maiestate dei, daemonum ordine, animaru[m] mutationibus sapientissime disputauit. Primus igit[ur] theologi[ae] appellatus est auctor. Eum secutus Orpheus, secu[n]das antiquae theologiae partes obtinuit. Orphei sacris initiatus est Aglaophemus. Aglaophemo successit in theologia Pythagoras: que[m] Philolaus sectatus est, diui Platonis nostri praeceptor. Itaq[ue] una prisc[ae] theologiae undiq[ue] sibi consona secta, ex theologis sex miro quoda[m] ordine co[n]flata est, exordia sumens à Mercurio, a diuo Platone penitus absoluta.58

53

54 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 21. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 23. Virgil would have acquired this knowledge through the Cumean Sibyl. See David Scott Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71–2. 56 For this concept see Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Virginia Conant (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943); Schmitt, ‘Perennial Philosophy’, 505–32; Daniel P. Walker, The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century (London: Duckworth, 1972); Michael J. B. Allen, Synoptic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation (Florence: Olschki, 1998); Martin Mulsow, ‘Ambiguities of the Prisca Sapientia in Late Renaissance Humanism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 65.1 (2004), 1–13. 57 Cf. Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and others, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001–6), vol. VI: Books XVII–XVIII, ed. Michael J. B. Allen (2006), 7. On the early modern reception of Zoroaster see the exhaustive Stausberg, Zarathushtra. Stausberg discusses Ficino on pp. 93–228. For the reception of Hermes Trismegistus and his works in the early modern era, see Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus, trans. David Lorton (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). 58 Marsilio Ficino, ‘Praefatio’, in Mercurii Trismegisti Pymander, de potestate et sapientia dei eiusdem Asclepivs, de uoluntate dei (Basel, 1532), sigs. A2r–A4v, here sigs. A2v–A3r. 55

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from physics and also mathematics, directed his attention to the contemplation of the divine things. He was the first to discuss most wisely the majesty of God, the order of the demons, the changes of the souls. Accordingly, he is called the first author of theology. He was followed by Orpheus, who obtained the second position in ancient theology. Aglaophemus was initiated into the sacred knowledge of Orpheus. Aglaophemus was succeeded in theology by Pythagoras, who was followed by Philolaus, the instructor of our divine Plato. And thus, one single school of primary theology in all respects consonant with itself was made up out of the marvellous order of these six theologians, taking its beginnings from Mercury and having been concluded most deeply by the divine Plato.

For Ficino, this unbroken tradition from Hermes or Zoroaster to the ‘divine’ Plato carried sacred knowledge compatible with Christianity, which is why he calls it theologia philosophica and its proponents prisci theologi. In this way, Hermes was not simply a philosopher, but a prophet, who was able to foresee the coming of Christ, the judgement to come, the resurrection of the dead, the glory of the blessed, and the punishment of the sinners.59 The tradition culminated in Plato, whom Augustine had pronounced the philosopher closest to Christian truth (‘christiane veritati omnium proximum’).60 The point about the prisci theologi is, therefore, that the writings of this particular group of pagans represent a theology prefiguring and confirming Christianity. Plato, who was supposed to have read the Pentateuch, even could be called a Greekspeaking Moses.61 The conviction that Plato’s philosophy was congruent with and confirmed Christian teachings allowed Ficino to write his magnum opus, the Platonic Theology. Reynolds’s most important source, Pico della Mirandola, emphasizes the divine knowledge of the ancients as well. Reynolds quotes Pico on Zoroaster’s magic, which ‘non esse aliud, quàm diuinorum scientiam’ (‘is nothing else than the knowledge of divine things’).62 The similarities Ficino, ‘Praefatio’, sig. A3r. Ficino, Platonic Theology, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and others, 6 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001–6), vol. I: Books I–IV, ed. James Hankins, trans. Michael J. B. Allen (2001), 8. 61 Ficino opens his letter ‘Concordia Mosis et Platonis’ with this equation. The letter itself does not exclusively focus on Plato and Moses, but demonstrates the concordances of numerous ancients with Christianity. An English translation of this letter can be found in The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Language Department of the School of Economic Science London, 8 vols. (London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975–2010), vol. VII: Liber VIII (2004), 9–12. 62 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, ‘Apologia’, in Opera omnia Ioannis Pici (Basel, 1557), 114–240, here 121. 59 60

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with Marsilio Ficino are apparent, but while Ficino envisaged parallels between the Platonic tradition and Christianity, Pico believed in a much broader stream of wisdom. In his seminal article on the prisca philosophia, Charles B. Schmitt summarized that Pico: went beyond Ficino’s notion of twin unbroken traditions of philosophical and theological truth. Truth, instead of residing in two traditions only, resides in many. Ficino’s prisci theologi have no special access to truth, but aspects of it are to be found in Averroes, the Koran, the Cabala, the writings of the medieval schoolmen, and in many other places as well.63

That is, whereas the prisci in Ficino’s thought possess an exclusive wisdom, Pico counts them amongst a large number of writers or schools that have some knowledge of the same truth. As Schmitt concludes, Pico’s concept is closer than Ficino’s to the idea of an ever-persistent truth manifesting itself in many guises, as it was later developed by Agostino Steuco in De perenni philosophia. Reynolds draws heavily on these Neo-Platonic authors and quotes their works liberally. But does this mean that he, too, believed that the ancient poets in some way possessed knowledge of Christian truths? The example of Stephen Batman’s severe dismissal of the pagan deities as idols underlines how extreme such a position could seem. Up to this point, Reynolds has nowhere connected his ancients with Christianity, but what else could he indicate when he speaks of divine inspiration? Reynolds’s ancient poets are ravished by divine fury and are identified as the same group of men who populate the Neo-Platonic texts on the theologia philosophica. The way Reynolds ends his first section does not seem to leave any doubt of his confident Neo-Platonism. Quoting Alessandro Farra’s Settenario on the meaning of the ancient myths, Reynolds leaves his reader on a high note: ‘Their fables are all full of most high Mysteries; and haue in them that splendor that is shed into the fancy and intellect, rauisht, and inflamed with diuine fury.’64 The second section of Mythomystes strengthens the impression of Reynolds as a dyed-in-the-wool Neo-Platonist. Just like Pico, the Englishman displays a fascination with the secret communication of knowledge. Reynolds quickly dismisses those contemporaries (amongst

63 64

Schmitt, ‘Perennial Philosophy’, 512. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 23; Alessandro Farra, Settenario (Venice, 1544), 320.

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them Francis Bacon) who entertained the theory of accommodation. This theory entails that at least some of the imagery invented by the ancients was not there to conceal knowledge, but was meant to make it more accessible to the simple-minded people they tried to teach.65 Reynolds strongly disapproves. Hieroglyphs were secret marks among the Egyptian priests and the sphinx was their symbol of admonition that ‘high and Mysticall matters should by riddles and enigmaticall knotts be kept inuiolate from the prophane Multitude’.66 For the rest of this section, Reynolds furnishes his reader with examples. Orpheus constructed his poetry with the help of the theory of numbers. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey conceal intellectual things beneath a veil of fictions. Plato even wrote his letters enigmatically. Aristotle speaks of his works as texts editi et non editi. Other instances are the symbols of Pythagoras, and the Cabala, which had so absorbed Pico’s interest. Furthermore, for the first time in Mythomystes, Reynolds draws liberally on the Bible for supporting evidence and thereby connects his tradition of philosophia with the realm of theologia. Moses is introduced as a model for the ancient poets in the art of veiling. Or rather—Reynolds corrects himself—the ancient poets really were ‘iointrunners with him in the same example of closenesse, and care to conceale’.67 The restatement is important: biblical practice does not have the primacy of a model. It is part of the common ancient habit of not casting one’s intellectual pearls among swine. This moment, at nearly the exact mid-point of Henry Reynolds’s prose tract, when the divinely inspired ancient poets prove to be ‘iointrunners’ with Moses, marks the high-point of their career in Mythomystes.

65

Francis Bacon, The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Graham Rees and others, 15 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996– ), vol. IV: The Advancement of Learning, ed. Michael Kiernan (2000), 74. Reynolds quotes from Bacon’s Advancement in Mythomystes, 78–80. 66 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 29–30. Both Bacon and Reynolds here focus on the vulgar and the idea that the wiser sort would make allowance for the less learned by explaining complicated philosophical or theological issues in a more accessible way. In the seventeenth century, accommodation also came to be greatly important in the context of the reconciliation of the literal meaning of the Bible with new natural philosophical insights, see Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 121–60. 67 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 39. The word ‘iointrunners’ seems to be Reynolds’s invention. Even though the word is in use today—it refers to a rope of asbestos that holds molten lead when making lead joints in plumbing—it is not recorded in the OED.

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5.3. Golden Fictions II: ‘in a myste, blind and benighted’ Suddenly, on reaching his third point of comparison, Reynolds’s tone changes. As if speaking of the biblical truths had melted his wings, Reynolds lowers his claims for humanity. Abandoning a rhetoric reminiscent of Pico’s The Dignity of Man, Reynolds now sounds the rich, weighty notes of the King James Bible: Wee liue in a myste, blind and benighted; and since our first fathers disobedience poysoned himselfe and his posterity, Man is become the imperfectest and most deficient Animall of all the field: . . . with him the beast, and with it the whole vegitable and generall Terrene nature also suffered, and still groanes vnder the losse of their first purity, occasioned by his fall.68

Point three, which makes up about half of Reynolds’s prose, is devoted to a discussion of what the ancient pagans actually knew. It is in this point, Reynolds adds, brutally, that ‘the grossest defect and maime appeares, in our Modernes’.69 But the real amputation in the third section of Mythomystes happens to Reynolds’s claim for the ancients. Above the lowest form of wisdom that is sometimes contained in fables (that is, moral philosophy), there are ‘two more remooued and harder lessons’ of much greater importance.70 The first of these lessons teaches the mysteries of nature, which are all contained in the works of the poets and philosophers ‘who liued neerest to the time of the gods; meaning the old wise Ethnicks’.71 With Pico, Reynolds identifies natural magic, as practised first by Zoroaster, the Chaldean, but also by Homer and Orpheus, with ‘the exact and absolute knowledge of all naturall things (which the Auncients were Masters of)’.72 The ancient poems— and this passage shows what Reynolds understands by the term natural philosophy—‘haue neuer been by any wise expounder made to meane other then meerely the Generation of the Elements, with their Vertues, and Changes; the Courses of the Starres, with their Powers, and Influences; and all the most important Secrets of Nature, hanging necessarily vpon the knowledge of These’.73 The complexities of astrology and the theory of the elements are thus imagined at the top of the ladder of 68 70 72

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 46. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 49. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 52.

69 71 73

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 44. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 49. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 55–6.

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natural learning, but fables also contain many ‘inferiour speculations’ about nature.74 Two of these obvious truths are hidden in the stories of the rape of Proserpine and the birth of Bacchus. The abduction of Proserpine into the underworld signifies the placing of plant seeds into the earth. The death of Semele stands for ‘the violent pressure and dilaceration of his [Bacchus’s] mother the Grape’.75 An example for a higher truth hidden in Homer is the following observation about the elements: I would aske who can make those fights and contentions that the wise Homer faignes betweene his Gods and Goddesses to meane other then the naturall Contrariety of the Elements: and especially of the Fire and Water; which as they are tempered and reconciled by the aire, so Iuno (which signifies the äery region) reconciles, & accords the warring Gods.76

Other such studies ‘of a higher nature and vaster extente’ are the clashes between Jupiter and Juno veiling the explanation of meteors, which occur when the upper and lower regions of the air have differing temperatures.77 The examples Reynolds uses are badly worn. Juno as the air, Bacchus as wine—these are the most commonplace interpretations. As was pointed out in Chapter 3, Fraunce used them to prompt his reader towards a more sustained effort of interpretation. They are found in every Renaissance mythography and have a well-known ancestor in the physical allegory of the stoics as outlined by Balbus in Cicero’s De natura deorum.78 Even so, Reynolds develops an astonishingly confident claim out of them. He believes that a man who took ‘the paines of running through all the Fables of the Auncients’ and interpreted them for his readers could actually uncover ‘from this beginning [the creation] to the end’ the ‘compleate knowledge of all Nature’.79 The completeness of the ancients’ knowledge in this field allows Reynolds to parallel their accounts with those of the Bible. In this way, the story of Jupiter’s fathering of Diana and Apollo is an account of the creation of sun and moon and possesses the same natural philosophical value as does Genesis 1:3.80

74

75 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 63. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 62. 77 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 64–5. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 65. 78 Cicero, De natura deorum, Academica, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 182–91 (II.24–7). 79 80 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 66–7. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 67–8. 76

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But while Reynolds gives with one hand, he takes away with the other. His admission that the pagan poets had perfect natural knowledge is part of a move that denies them true divine inspiration. Reynolds’s thought is quite complex: Howbeit I must (to returne to my former discourse) in honour & iust praise of the before mentioned wise Auncients (and with the premised befitting caution) not doubt to say, that as his Instructions in the holy Scripture, and especially in the old Law, must of necessity reach as far farther then the bare historicall trueth (though not in the same manner) as extends the difference in our selues between Nature alone, and Nature and Grace vnited; so likewise, that one, and a great portion of the doctrine of that part of holy Writ, the wise Ethnicks vndoubtedly possest in all perfection; to wit, the knowledge of all Natures most high and hidden wayes and workings: and though far short in the safer part of wisdome, of their more inlightned successors, yet was the bare light (or rather fire) of nature in them, enough to draw the[m] as high as Reason could help flesh and bloud to reach heauen with.81

Here, Reynolds tries to capture, through a series of differences, the ineffable something the ancient texts lack if compared to the Old Testament. Put simply, the ancient pagans only had (fallen) reason to work with and, while they have achieved as much as is humanly possible by finding out everything about nature, their texts do not possess the divine dimension of the books of Moses. Moses was inspired by the true God and therefore his texts contain all natural and all divine knowledge. In contrast to him, the pagans’ area of expertise is limited to nature; one could say it does not extend beyond Jupiter, that is, the higher regions of the air. A clear line is drawn and the ancient pagan texts are strictly separated from biblical ones. As the ancients were Moses’s ‘iointrunners’ in secrecy, so they are his ‘condisciples’ in natural philosophy. Once more, Reynolds makes sure no one can take this parallel any further than he intends it to go: Now though we reuerence Moses more (as we ought to doe) then these his condisciples, because inspired so far aboue them with the immediate spirit of Almighty God; yet ought we neuertheless reuerence them, and the wisdome of their fables, . . . his condisciples I call them, because they read bothe vnder their Aegyptian teachers one lesson; & were (as Moses of himselfe sayes) expert in the learning of the Aegyptians: yea many of them (and Poets all) were (to speak fitlyer) the teachers of that Learning themselues, and Masters therein no lesse then Moses.82 81

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 72–3.

82

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 76–7.

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United in wisdom, but divided in spirit, Reynolds carefully separates the most ancient poets according to the origins of their knowledge. For him, Plato could never have been, as he was for Ficino, a Greek-speaking Moses. But this ‘no’ to pagan visions of the divine is not as decisive as it sounds. Reynolds reintroduces aspects of it under different terms. There are really only two ways of approaching ‘this supreme altitude, and immensity’ of the divine.83 One is belief in Christ. The other is the study of God’s second book, nature. This means that unlocking the secrets of creation could lead a man step by step towards a vision of God, the Creator. If we understood the mysteries of nature, ‘how much would it cleare, and how infinitely ennoble our blind and groueling conditions, by exalting our vnderstandings to the sight . . . of God’.84 This type of divine vision must have been granted to the ancient poets whose texts include the entire knowledge of nature. Therefore, in the second half of Mythomystes, ‘in Deum transeunt’ comes to mean that, through their perfect knowledge of nature, the pagans climbed the ladder of knowledge towards a vision of God as he reveals himself in creation. It also suggests that the same vision could be reached by correctly interpreting ancient poetry that contains this knowledge. Reynolds’s scattered remarks about the second ‘more remooued and harder’ lesson intensify his ambiguity. Reynolds acknowledges that the highest form of knowledge that could be contained in fables is divinity. But he only mentions this possibility briefly, by reference to other people who endorse such a view, and always in parentheses. ‘I will not deny but the Auncients mingled much doctrine of Morality (yea, high Diuinity also) with their Naturall Philosophy.’85 Zoroaster, Reynolds reports, ‘hath diuinely sung of the Essence and attributes of God’.86 But the responsibility for Zoroaster as an author of the theologia philosophica is passed to Alessandro Farra, who is quoted rehearsing the tradition established by Ficino that Zoroaster was the first author of the theologia philosophica. Pausanias is called upon to confirm that Orpheus first taught universal theology.87 Henry Reynolds always keeps a safe distance between himself and this concept. Outside of parentheses and quotations,

83 85 87

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 47. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 56. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 57.

84 86

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 70–1. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 56.

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he sticks to his separation of the pagan and Christian tradition in everything but natural knowledge. Not least, this is a question of prudence. Lessons of divinity should be taken ‘from the hands of their fittest teachers’.88 With respect to divinity: we need goe no farther (though learned & wise Writers haue made mention, and to high purpose, of a Theologia Philosophica, as they call some of the doctrines of the auncient Poets), then to the Doctors, and Doctrines of that Church that God dyed to plant, and which shall liue till the worlds death.89

Again, the possibility of a foreshadowing of Christian truth in pagan poetry is entertained in parentheses, but caution demands ‘(if we be wise enough to loue our selues so well)’ that it is discounted.90 Not taking instruction in divinity from the pagans thus becomes a matter of the ethics of reading them. A prudent man knows where to stop. Even with respect to paralleling historical events in pagan myth and in the Bible, as with Deucalion and the biblical flood, Reynolds proves wary. He proclaims that it is ‘wide of my purpose (though it contradicts it not) to conster them [the ancient poets] other then meere children of Nature’.91 And yet, the insistent presence of the figure of parenthesis draws attention to itself. In Puttenham’s Art of Poesy, parenthesis is mentioned as a case of hyperbaton, that is, a figure that creates disorder. Puttenham calls hyperbaton the ‘Tresspasser’ and parenthesis the ‘Insertour’.92 Reynolds’s insertions certainly trespass beyond the limits of his self-prescribed Protestant poetics. What is more, they present this poetics as somehow lacking. In her discussion of the figure, Jenny C. Mann writes that the definitions of parenthesis in English rhetoric manuals ‘articulate what Derrida describes as the conundrum of the supplement: the figure adds an inessential extra bit of text to something already complete, and yet the very presence of the figure exposes a lack in what was supposed to be complete in itself.’93 Reynolds’s parentheses operate like this, too. He formulates a consistent poetics in complete sentences. But he keeps supplementing both with brackets that intrude the notion of divine fury. It is as if he was trying to give back to the ancients what he has just taken away. 88

89 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 49. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 49. 91 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 49. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 73. 92 Puttenham, Art of English Poesy, 252 (III.13). 93 Jenny C. Mann, Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 101. 90

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This leaves the reader with the sense that an explanation of ancient poetry based on natural reason alone is somehow diminished. To sum up, after a complete reading of Henry Reynolds’s prose tract, which begins so strongly and seems to falter at the end, the reader is left not knowing quite what to think. The first half trumpets the NeoPlatonic traditions of the pagan poets’ and philosophers’ divine inspiration and celebrates the theologia philosophica. The second half excludes this possibility: the ancients were not inspired by God. The only area in which the truth of the Old Testament is matched by pagan myths is natural knowledge. But Reynolds leaves the door just a little bit ajar: through their philosophy, the pagans attained a vision of the divine as it is revealed in nature. Just maybe, divine meanings are involved in the pagan texts, but it is better not to talk about it or go looking for them. Keeping these two worlds separate is a matter of readerly discipline and self-restraint. At this point, my argument about Mythomystes has to open a rather large parenthesis itself in order to meet a possible objection. As it happens, Pico della Mirandola, who is by far the most quoted and also the most highly esteemed author in Mythomystes, also changed his mind about the ancients midway through his Works as the seventeenth century had them. Pico began his career admiring the ancients as forerunners of Christianity and ended it downgrading them to learned men unaware of any truths beyond those of morality and nature. This raises an important question: is Reynolds’s fluctuating evaluation of Neo-Platonic philosophy due to his own reservations, or is it merely the result of his imitation of the intellectual development of the man he most admired? The following section will answer this question by establishing exactly how Reynolds uses Pico and how much of his writing he actually knew.

5.4. Henry Reynolds and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Passages from five of Pico’s works can be found in Mythomystes: the Commentary on a Poem of Platonic Love; the Oratio, also called De dignitate hominis; the 900 Theses or Conclusiones; the Apologia; and Heptaplus.94 For an introduction to Pico, see S. A. Farmer, ‘Introductory Monograph’, in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486), ed. S. A. Farmer (Tempe, 94

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The first four form a close-knit group of texts that were written around the year 1486, in which Pico planned to hold a great disputation in Rome of 900 philosophical and theological statements drawn from the works of numerous authors and schools. De dignitate was meant as a preface for the 900 conclusions to be discussed. When the church prevented the public debate, Pico wrote the Apologia, in which he tried to show the orthodoxy of the allegedly heretic conclusions. In these texts, Pico unfolded aspects of his syncretistic philosophy: Hac ego ratione motus no[n] unius modo (ut quibusdam placebat) sed omnigenae doctrinae placita in mediu[m] affere uolui, ut hac complurimum sectarum collatione, ac multifari[ae] discussione philosophiae, ille ueritatis fulgor cuius Plato meminit in epistolis, animis nostris quasi Sol oriens ex alto clarius illusceret.95 I have wished to bring into view the things taught not merely according to one doctrine (as some would desire), but things taught according to every sort of doctrine, that by this comparison of very many sects and by the discussion of manifold philosophy, that radiance of truth which Plato mentions in his Letters might shine more clearly upon our minds, like the sun rising from the deep.

In De dignitate, Conclusiones, and Apologia, Pico treats the most ancient writers—such as Orpheus, Homer, the Chaldean magicians, or Pythagoras—with the greatest respect, allowing them knowledge of theology, divine inspiration, and even a prophetic role. But despite the shortness of Pico’s life, a group of ‘later’ works needs to be distinguished, to which Heptaplus, a commentary on Genesis, belongs. The later texts, especially the Disputationes in astrologiam, are evidence of a change in Pico’s views, which S. A. Farmer describes as ‘startling’.96 As Farmer points out in his chapter ‘Pico and Anti-Pico’, the Disputationes not only ridicule the ancient philosophy and fables together with their claim to divine inspiration, but also trace ancient magic back to the

Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998), 1–179; and Pico della Mirandola: New Essays, ed. M. V. Dougherty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 95 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, ‘De dignitate hominis’, in Opera omnia Ioannis Pici (Basel, 1557), 313–31, here 325. The translation is taken from Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, ‘On the Dignity of Man’, in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, On the Dignity of Man, On Being and the One, Heptaplus, trans. Charles Glenn Wallis (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1965), 3–34, here 23. 96 Farmer, ‘Introductory Monograph’, 143.

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workings of the devil: there is no wisdom in the ancients at all, only superstition.97 Farmer suggests that these changes are due to the heavyhanded editing of Gianfrancesco Pico, who had the care of his uncle’s manuscripts after his death. The reason for the radical shift in Pico’s opinion about the ancients, however, does not need to concern us here. It is important, though, to understand that Heptaplus, while not as radical as the Disputationes, does paint a bleaker picture of antiquity than the earlier works. In Heptaplus, like in the second half of Mythomystes, man is a fallen being, and the ancients are not more than very learned pagans.98 So, how deeply do the works of Pico della Mirandola influence the structure and content of Mythomystes? A first perusal of Mythomystes certainly gives the impression of close engagement with Pico as a man and writer. The longest marginal note of the text is devoted to the celebration of the Italian’s wisdom. Reynolds’s phrase ‘the excellent Io: Picus (or rather Phoenix as wisemen have named him)’ is glossed: ‘Ang: Politianus, (who likewise calls him—Doctiorum omnium doctissimus,) Pau: Jouius Baroaldus, and our Sir Tho: Moore, who (among infinite many others) hath voluminously write his praises.’99 The sheer quantity of quotations is overwhelming: into the sixty-five pages devoted to the three points of comparison between the ancients and the moderns, Reynolds squeezes twenty-one direct quotations from Pico, some of them longer than a full page. Nevertheless, if the practice of other early modern authors is anything to go by, a modern critic is wise to be wary. If we want to establish the extent of Reynolds’s dependence on Pico for his ambiguity towards divine furor, the first question that needs answering is whether Reynolds actually had direct access to Pico’s works or whether he simply plundered a mediary source, attempting to cover his trails by adding references and profuse praise of an author he had never read. There is no need to doubt Reynolds’s proficiency in Italian or his access to works of Italian literature and philosophy. His only other Farmer, ‘Introductory Monograph’, 142–6, here 143. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, ‘Heptaplus’, in Opera omnia Ioannis Pici (Basel, 1557), 1–62, especially the expositions on day seven, e.g. on p. 50. 99 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 21. Reynolds seems to be copying a group of references second-hand, because the names clearly do not all make sense to him: ‘Pau: Jouius Baroaldus’ is the result of yoking together and misspelling Paulus Jouius (Paulo Giovio) and Filippo Beroaldus (the Elder or the Younger). 97 98

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known work is a translation of Tasso’s Aminta. Through Michael Drayton, himself an Italophile, Reynolds is linked to students of the Italian language and culture like William Drummond and Samuel Daniel (whose translations from Tasso’s Aminta Reynolds consulted for his own version).100 Pico’s works were widely available to seventeenthcentury readers in folio editions of Gianfrancesco Pico’s Opera omnia Ioanis Pici. Textual evidence also renders it likely that Reynolds had direct access to a copy of the Opera. First of all, he is correctly quoting a wide range of texts, all of which were contained in this volume. The references Reynolds supplies suggest that the text he was working from was a folio: Reynolds’s references to pp. 80 and 81 in his copy of Pico correspond to the folio pages 121 and 122 in the Basel 1557 edition which I am using for comparison, and his references to the pp. 112, 115, and 116 correspond to pp. 170, 174, and 175 in the Basel folio.101 Furthermore, Reynolds’s quotations move effortlessly between the pages. For example, Reynolds begins a quotation about ancient Hebrew doctors from the Apologia, but breaks off in order to interject a list of names for specification, which he took from a later passage in the Apologia: ‘Rabi Eliazar, Rabi Moysis de Ægypto, Rabi Simeon Ben Lagis, Rabi Ismahel, Rabi Iodam, & Rabi Nachinan.’102 He marks skipping the intervening pages by saying, ‘whom afterwards he names’.103 He then resumes the quotation with which he had set out. Later, he again refers correctly to the physical book, when he points out that Pico ‘hath these words immediately following’.104 The most convincing evidence for a direct knowledge of Pico is Reynolds’s own disingenuousness. Mythomystes boasts quotations from Plato, Aristotle, and Iamblichus, but most of them are lifted from passages in Pico’s works. A good example is the following:

See Jason Lawrence, ‘Who the Devil Taught Thee so much Italian?’: Italian Language Learning and Literary Imitation in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 97. For the interest in Italian culture in late sixteenth-century and early seventeenth-century England, see also Michael Wyatt, The Italian Encounter with Tudor England: A Cultural Politics of Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 101 Reynolds uses the abbreviation ‘fo:’ to make his references. In this case, it refers to pages rather than leaves. Similarly, the errata note at the end of Mythomystes uses ‘fo:’, but means pages. 102 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 40. Pico, ‘Apologia’, 122 and 175. 103 104 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 40. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 30. 100

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Well might Plato* [marginal gloss: *in Epimenide.] consequently affirme that— among all liberall Arts, and contemplatiue Sciences, the chiefest and most diuine was the—Scientia numerandi. and who likewise questioning why Man was the wisest of Animalls, answers himselfe againe (as Aristotle in his Problemes obserues)—quia numerare nouit—because hee could number. no lesse than Auenzoar the Babylonian, whose frequent word by Albumazars report (as Picus Mirandula* [marginal gloss: in Apolog:] notes) was—eum omnia nosse qui nouerat numerare—that hee knowes all things that knowes number.105

Pico’s Apologia reads: Scribit Plato in Epimenide, inter omnes liberales artes & scientias contemplatrices, praecipuam maximeq[ue] diuinam esse scientiam numerandi: qu[ae]rens item, Cur homo animal sapientissimum? respondet, Quia numerare nouit. cuius sententiae & Aristoteles meminit in problematis. Scribit Abunazar, uerbum fuisse Auenzoar Babylonij, Eum omnia nosse, qui nouerat numerare.106 Plato writes in Epimenides that, amongst all liberal arts and contemplative sciences, the art of numbering is the foremost, greatest and most divine. Asking therefore, why is man the wisest animal? he answers, because he knows how to number. Which sentences Aristotle remembers in his Problems. Abunazar writes that Avenzoar of Babylon always said that he who knows how to number knows everything.

Reynolds’s copious authorities were first collected by Pico, who is Reynolds’s actual source. I would propose, therefore, that Reynolds had first-hand knowledge of Pico through an edition of the Opera. The next step in this investigation of Reynolds’s debt to Pico is to find out how the Englishman used the Opera. A close examination of his quotations reveals a clear pattern. The Commentary is quoted at least four times. All of these references are on pp. 15–19 in Mythomystes, where Reynolds discusses Platonic love, and they are taken from a single page of the Commentary.107 The Conclusiones furnished Reynolds with four references as well, three of which are on pp. 52–4 in Mythomystes and enrich a discussion of natural magic.108 Heptaplus is quoted once in a passage on Moses, to confirm that all knowledge, divine and human, is contained in the Pentateuch, and that Moses wrote the Law darkly, 106 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 35. Pico, ‘Apologia’, 120. In the Basel edition I am using, this is p. 910. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, ‘In Platonis Conuiuium Lib. III’, in Opera omnia Ioannis Pici (Basel, 1557), 897–923. 108 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, ‘Conclusiones nongentae’, in Opera omnia Ioannis Pici (Basel, 1557), 63–113. Reynolds takes his quotations from what are pp. 103 and 106 in the Basel edition. 105 107

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hiding divine and human truths even in the letters of his alphabet.109 This means that the bulk of the quotations come from either De dignitate or the Apologia. It is not so easy to determine which, because Pico recycled large parts of the earlier De dignitate for his Apologia. Together, the two texts are quoted twelve times. Seven of these instances appear verbatim in both De dignitate and Apologia. One passage is exclusive to De dignitate, four are exclusive to the Apologia. Seeing that Reynolds consistently claims to have the ambiguous quotations from the Apologia, I assume that this text is quoted eleven times, and De dignitate only once.110 In the instance of the single De dignitate quotation, Reynolds complains about the mercenary nature of scholarship and poetry in his day. Unusually, Reynolds does not name Pico in this instance, but adds his words anonymously as an afterthought by ‘a wise Author’, who writes ‘from the like resentment’.111 Furthermore, Mythomystes does not show any awareness of the fact that the last few pages of De dignitate contain the very same sentences Reynolds quotes as coming from the Apologia. This makes it doubtful that Reynolds read De dignitate in its entirety. The passages taken from the Apologia are thus by far the most numerous. But they are taken from two small sections of Pico’s text only. Seven times, Reynolds quotes from what in the Basel edition of Pico’s Opera are pp. 120–4. These are the passages the Apologia has in common with De dignitate.112 Four times he takes his material from what are pp. 170–5 in the Basel edition. Those are the quotations exclusive to the Apologia. On the first set of pages, Pico commends the achievements of the ancient philosophers and poets in divine and human matters—a rich quarry for Reynolds’s own encomium of their achievements. On the second set of pages, Pico defends natural magic against the suspicions of the church officials who had taken offence at his statements on magic and the Cabala. As I pointed out above, the quotations from the Conclusiones serve the same purpose. This evidence reduces Reynolds’s Pico, ‘Heptaplus’, 59. Pico, ‘De dignitate’, 322; The quotations from the Apologia are: p. 124 (Mythomystes, 30–1); p. 122 (Mythomystes, 32); p. 174 (Mythomystes, 34); p. 120 (Mythomystes, 35); p. 173 (Mythomystes, 36); p. 122 (Mythomystes, 40); p. 175 (Mythomystes, 40); p. 122 (Mythomystes, 40); p. 122 (Mythomystes, 40–2); p. 170 (Mythomystes, 53); p. 121 (Mythomystes, 53–4). 111 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 26. 112 The parallel passages can be found in Pico, ‘De dignitate’, 326–30. 109 110

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use of Pico’s Opera to a few extracts on three topics: Platonic love (from the Commentary), praise of the ancients (from the Apologia), and ancient magic (from the Apologia and Conclusiones). It is also useful to mark where in Mythomystes Reynolds employs Pico. There is a plethora of quotations in Reynolds’s points I and II, that is, the first half of Mythomystes where Reynolds embraces the idea of divine fury in ancient poets, but shortly after the beginning of point III all references to Pico cease.113 In fact, the only topic for which Pico is used in point III is natural magic as the embodiment of the complete knowledge of nature—Pico on Platonic love and the divinity of poetry is entirely confined to the first two points. Whereas Pico is cited twenty times between pp. 15 and 54, he is heard only once between pp. 55 and 84. It is therefore unlikely that Reynolds developed his Janus-faced relationship to the ancients out of an intensive study of Pico’s equally divided oeuvre. Reynolds perhaps knew only a few pages of the Italian’s works. Furthermore, Reynolds quotes from the later works, which represent the ‘Anti-Pico’, only a single time when he uses Heptaplus. The excellent index usually supplied with the Opera might elucidate the single instance of Reynolds’s use of this text. Reynolds needed the quotation to prove that all knowledge lies hidden in the books of Moses. Suggestively, looking up ‘Moses’ in the index of the Basel edition directs the reader to the page Reynolds quoted by signposting exactly what the extract is supposed to deliver in Mythomystes. The index informs us: ‘mosis libris omnem sapientiam latere’ (‘that in the books of Moses all wisdom lies hidden’). The ‘volta’ in the middle of Mythomystes does therefore not mirror the development of thought in the Opera. This evidence makes it possible to pinpoint what Reynolds wanted from his most important source. First of all, he was only interested in ‘Pico’, not in ‘Anti-Pico’, if he actually knew about the latter. He saw in the Italian a proponent of the divinity of poetry and the theologia philosophica, which is why he used him as a go-to in those parts of Mythomystes in which he expresses like sentiments. As soon as he begins to sing a different tune, he stops referring to Pico. Most importantly, however, Reynolds used the Opera as his commonplace book. He knew it to be an excellent quarry for authoritative quotations on several points he 113

Point three begins on p. 44. After that, Pico only occurs on pp. 52–4 and p. 81, in all cases on natural magic as an example of the ancients’ complete knowledge of nature.

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wanted to make, and the index of the Opera might have recommended them especially. At one point in Mythomystes, Reynolds allows his schoolmasterly practicality to shine through. His own description of his practice of quotation in this instance supports my suggestion that Reynolds does not develop any of his points out of his reading of Pico, but only uses him as a shortcut to supportive material: ‘For proofe of which Truth . . . and to omit the multiplicity of lesse autentike testimonies, that all Authors are full of, [I will] alledge only the beforecited Mirandula.’114 If something can be proven out of the ‘learned’, ‘excellent’, ‘authentike’ Pico, there is no need to search painstakingly anywhere else.115 Any reservations against the Neo-Platonic concept of ancient philosophy and poetry in Mythomystes must, then, be Reynolds’s own.

5.5. Narcissus and the Divinity of Poetry At this point we can return to our sequential reading of Mythomystes, where we are arrived at the verse appendix. Before this was added to Mythomystes, the text circulated in manuscript for a while. During this time, Reynolds writes, his treatise had fallen ‘into the view of some not iniudicious eyes’.116 These earliest readers of Mythomystes had raised the issue of ‘how it could be, that Plato, so great a louer and honorer of the Auncient Poets in generall, and of Homer (one of the best of them) in particular; should exclude and banish him neuerthelesse out of his Common-wealth’.117 In response to this challenge, Reynolds decided to add three pages to his manuscript. In this first appendix to Mythomystes, he explains that Plato imagined an ideal commonwealth in his Republic, not a real one. Citizens who are ‘diuine, heroique, and perfectly Philosophick and wise spirits, and such as are already arriued to the summe of all intellectuall height, and perfection of vertue and Sapience . . . can haue no need of a Homer or his instructions, to shew them the way to bee, or make them what they are already made’.118 This is why Plato had no use for poets in his ideal republic. In an imperfect state, however, poets are greatly needed in order to ‘allure with the sweetnesse and pleasure of their fictions, the mindes of men to the loue and knowledge of vertue and 114 116 118

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 52. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 82. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 83.

115 117

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 19, 17, 30. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 82.

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wisdom’.119 This is the first moment in the entire text in which poetry is allowed to have a power that sets it apart from philosophy. It was perhaps when writing these lines that Reynolds decided to add yet another appendix to Mythomystes, this time in verse, which exploits this special power to exhort his reader to philosophy. In ‘The Tale of Narcissus Briefly Mythologised’, Reynolds does two unexpected things. First, despite his own words of caution and denial in the foregoing second half of the prose tract, he offers the ‘diuine sense’ of a fable as its highest and noblest meaning. Second, Reynolds provides an English version of the tale of Narcissus and Echo that is doubly discredited by his own words. Reynolds’s starting point is Ovid’s version of the story. I have quoted Reynolds’s opinion of the Roman poet above: Ovid most probably was ignorant of the philosophy behind the fables. Furthermore, Reynolds does not translate from the Latin Metamorphoses, but from a hugely popular Italian version by Giovanni Andrea dell’ Anguillara.120 The Italian’s version, the Metamorfosi (1561), imitated Ariosto, and Reynolds sees Ariosto’s ‘ingenious woofe’ as closely connected to Ovid’s—and as equally meaningless.121 Taking into account his own liberties as a translator, Reynolds offers his reader a text far removed from the great ancient wisdom. Why would Reynolds match a twice-translated modern version of a story ignorantly devised with a ‘divine’ interpretation, which reaches after the highest truths? One answer to this question could lie in Reynolds’s first appendix: if poetry wants to be effective in attracting readers to the study of philosophy, it needs to be alluring, sweet, and pleasurable. Therefore, if he wants his reader to listen and the philosophy in the tale of Narcissus to strike home, he needs to tell it as captivatingly as possible. Ovid and Ariosto, as we have seen, are unsurpassed as weavers of tales. A version of Narcissus that combines their skills would be very powerful. With respect to philosophy, these two poets were clearly out of their depths; but the wisdom involved in the fable will be supplied by a more ancient source. Beyond the charm of Ovid’s and Ariosto’s poetry, there is a further

119

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 84. Cf. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 87–105 and Anguillara, Metamorfosi, fols. 31r–33r. 121 For Anguillara’s imitations of Ariosto, see Maria Moog-Grünewald, Metamorphosen der ‘Metamorphosen’: Rezeptionsarten der Ovidischen Verwandlungsgeschichten in Italien und Frankreich im sechzehnten und siebzehnten Jahrhundert (Heidelberg: Winter, 1979), 73–7. 120

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reason to offer the tale of Narcissus in such a highly intertextual poetic form. Reynolds’s version of the fable and its interpretation can be seen as illustrative of a temporal continuity. The provided text self-consciously reaches back from seventeenth-century England via sixteenth-century Italy to Ovid’s Rome. But Reynolds’s journey through time does not end there. In his ‘Obseruation vpon the fable of Narcissus’, he returns the story to one of its ultimate, Greek sources. He establishes a connection from his present to the prisci sapientes. The actual words Reynolds will interpret, and which he also quotes, are not Ovid’s but Pythagoras’s. By creating this continuum, Reynolds momentarily thinks like Bacon and demonstrates that each version of the fable has retained the kernel of its truth even to his day despite going through the hands of ignorant wordsmiths. Reynolds’s fable makes it clear to the modern poets, whom he wants to push towards greatness, that they could still achieve the communication of philosophy, if they imitated the ancients. But Reynolds also establishes a vital link back into the golden age. His multi-layered version of Narcissus contains the history of the fable’s transmission and, like Ariadne’s thread, leads the reader back to its beginnings in ancient wisdom. In this case, the beginning is rather impressive. ‘While the winds breathe, adore Echo’ is the strangely beautiful sentence at the heart of Reynolds’s Narcissus interpretation.122 It is a translation of one of the Pythagorean symbols, also called akousmata.123 The symbols are a group—the exact number varies with each editor—of short, enigmatic sentences, which had been attributed to Pythagoras since antiquity. The most authoritative list of these precepts was given by Iamblichus. This Greek Neo-Platonist thinker from the third century AD was intensely interested in Pythagoreanism and wrote ten books

122 For an overview of the reception of the fable of Narcissus in the Renaissance see the anthology of Ursula Orlowsky and Rebekka Orlowsky, Narziß und Narzißmus im Spiegel von Literatur, bildender Kunst und Psychoanalyse (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1992), and Louise Vinge, The Narcissus Theme in Western European Literature, trans. Robert Dewsnap et al. (Lund: Gleerup, 1967). 123 The akousmata must not be confused with the Carmen aureum. Pythagoras’s reputation as a poet rested on the Carmen aureum, or Golden Verses. This text was available in the Renaissance with a commentary by Hierocles of Alexandria. In 1656, an English translation was published: Hierocles of Alexandria, Hierocles Vpon the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, trans. John Hall (London, 1657 [= 1656]). Hierocles explains that the moralistic poem—which for example advises the reader to honour the gods and to carry his burden patiently—is an introduction to the complete philosophy of the Pythagoreans.

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De secta Pythagorica, of which only five are now extant. The second book comprises a general exhortation to philosophy. Moving from the general to the specifically Pythagorean, this book culminates in a list of and commentary on thirty-nine Pythagorean symbols, which Iamblichus believed to be of great exhortative use.124 The symbols 6–12, for example, are: 6. Abstain from Melanurus, for it belongs to the terrestrial Gods. 7. Above all things, govern your tongue when you follow the Gods. 8. When the winds blow, worship the sound. 9. Cut not fire with a sword. 10. Turn away from yourself every sharp edge. 11. Help a man to take up a burden, but not to lay it down. 12. Put the shoe on the right foot first, but put the left foot first into the bath tub.125

Walter Burkert explains that the akousmata are the oldest traces of Pythagorean philosophy, some of which come from an archaic period and are thus even older than Pythagoras.126 The original context of the symbols was ritualistic. They were a form of precept only known to the insiders of a group surrounding a vatic figure.127 The earliest traceable efforts to explain these symbols date from the pre-Platonic era. Iamblichus’s list and his subsequent commentary on the akousmata proved greatly influential in the Renaissance through their reception in Florentine Neo-Platonist circles. Christopher S. Celenza has given an overview of the Italian and broader European reception of the Pythagorean symbols in the introduction to his edition of Giovanni Nesi’s Symbolum Nesianum.128 One of the most influential readers of the symbols in the Italian Renaissance was Marsilio Ficino, even though he did not write 124

On Iamblichean Pythagoreanism see Dominic J. O’Meara, Pythagoras Revived: Mathematics and Philosophy in Late Antiquity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). 125 Iamblichus, The Exhortation to Philosophy Including the Letters of Iamblichus and Procul’s Commentary on the Chaldean Oracles, trans. Thomas Moore Johnson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Phanes Press, 1988), 95. 126 Walter Burkert, Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaos und Platon (Nürnberg: Hans Carl, 1962), 150. A revised text is available in English, titled Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, trans. Edwin L. Minar, Jr. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972). On Pythagoreanism in the Renaissance, see S. K. Heninger, Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1974). 127 Burkert, Weisheit und Wissenschaft, 161. 128 Christopher S. Celenza, Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence: The Symbolum Nesianum (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Celenza’s introduction builds upon an earlier article ‘Pythagoras in the Renaissance: The Case of Marsilio Ficino’, Renaissance Quarterly 52.3 (1999), 667–711.

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extensively on them. Ficino approached Pythagoras early on in his career due to his interest in Iamblichus. Celenza suggests that Iamblichus’s soteriological portrayal of Pythagoras attracted Ficino, who, in the 1460s, liked to see himself as a hierophant. He understood the symbols as vatic utterances and ‘took them seriously as monumenta of the prisca theologia tradition, suggesting in his De christiana religione that the symbols bore similarities to some of the precepts of Moses’.129 One tradition of reading the symbols was thus established. In his discussion of the European context of the symbols in the sixteenth century, Celenza sees Johannes Reuchlin as an exponent of this Neo-Platonic tradition, but also identifies two further approaches to the symbols. First, there were moral readings, as in the works of Filippo Beroaldus the Elder and Erasmus. Second, Celenza points to an antiquarian interest in the symbols, as displayed by the mythographer Lilio Gregorio Giraldi. Additionally, there was the possibility to exploit their comic potential. Angelo Poliziano, for example, delighted in ‘Lucianesque’ mockery of the symbols in a praelectio from the year 1492 and disapproved of them in the Lamia.130 The controversy surrounding the particular symbol Reynolds brought to his reading of Narcissus has not been noted by scholars so far. In the Renaissance, it was considered a very hard nut to crack. ‘Difficillimum vero est’, judged that most learned of expositors, Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, in his Libelli duo on ancient enigmata.131 The first problem was its translation. In the modern Teubner edition, the symbol reads: ‘Ἀνέμων πνεόντων τὴν ἠχὼ προσκύνει.’132 The early modern edition of the Protrepticus by Johann Arcerius has the same Greek text.133 A literal rendering into English would be: ‘When the winds blow, worship the echo.’134 The noun ‘ἡ ἠχώ’ can mean either ‘a reverberated sound’ or refer to the nymph Echo. 129

Celenza, Piety and Pythagoras, 22. Celenza, Piety and Pythagoras, 33. Celenza’s section on the European context comprises pp. 52–81. 131 Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, Libelli duo, in quorum altero aenigmata pleraque antiquorum, in altero Pythagorae symbola . . . explicata (Basel, 1551), 169. 132 Iamblichus, Protrepticvs, ed. Ermengildo Pistelli (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1967), 107 and 112. 133 Iamblichus, De vita Pythagorae et protrepticus orationes ad philosophiam, ed. and trans. Johann Arcerius (Frankera, 1598), 132 and 140. 134 Modern translations vary greatly. ‘When the winds blow, worship the sound’ in Iamblichus, Exhortation, 95 and 99; ‘Wenn die Winde wehen, verehre das Echo’ in Iamblichos, Aufruf zur Philosophie, trans. Otto Schönberger (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1984), 71 and 75; ‘Quand les vents sufflent, adore leur murmure’, in Jamblique, Protreptique, trans. Édouard Des Places (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1989), 133 and 138. 130

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This gave Renaissance translators several options. Marsilio Ficino, the first Renaissance translator, had opened the door for a reference to the nymph Echo by translating: ‘Flantibus ventis echon adora.’135 Giraldi was not pleased. The Italian antiquary was on a mission to keep Echo out of the Pythagorean symbols. Giraldi wrote both an interpretation of the symbols and, as we have seen in Chapter 1, a highly influential mythography; both contain protestations that the echo in the akousmata has nothing to do with the mythological girl. In the Libelli duo, his discussion of the symbol culminates in the sentence: ‘Ex quib[us] uidemus illum hoc symbolo ἦχον, sonitum, non Echo nympham, ut Marsilius, interpretatum esse’ (‘From all of which we see that in this symbol the word ἦχον must be translated as a sound, not as Echo the nymph, as Marsilio did’).136 In his mythography De deis gentium, he ends the entry on Echo: ‘De Echo & in Symbolis non nihil dictum est’ (‘In the Symbols, nothing whatsoever is said about Echo’).137 He must have felt like a man desperately trying to stop a leak. Probably out of a similar predicament, some learned interpreters of the symbol chose to translate simply ‘sonum’, ‘sound’.138 But there was a reason to stick with ‘echo’ other than the literal meaning of the word ἡ ἠχώ in Greek: Iamblichus’s interpretation of the symbol, which was of central importance to its reception in the Renaissance. According to Iamblichus, the echo symbol says that we should worship the similitude (or reflection) of the divine. Giraldi himself translated: ‘Adoranda est Echo, cum flant venti.’139 His echo is emphatically not a girl; it is the reverberated sound, as his interpretation of the symbol clarifies.

135 Marsilio Ficino, ‘Symbola Pythagorae phylosophi’, in De mysteriis (Venice: 1516), fol. 86r. Ficino’s translation ‘echon’ suggests that his Greek source had a slightly different text, where ‘echo’ was in the accusative ‘ἦχον’. 136 Giraldi, Libelli duo, p. 170. 137 Lilio Gregorio Giraldi, De deis gentium libri sive syntagma XVIII (Paris, 1565), 383. The double negation in this sentence might be the reason why Vinge, Narcissus, 146–8 misunderstands Giraldi’s project. 138 Arcerius translates ‘Ventis spirantibus sonum adora’ in Iamblichus, De vita Pythagorae, 132 and 140; Agostino Steuco has ‘uenti flantis sonitum uenerari’ in De perenni philosophia libri X (Basel 1542), 537. Giraldi mentions Steuco’s version in his Libelli duo, 170. In both cases, it is unlikely that a confusion of ἠχώ with ἠχώς, ‘sound’, is behind the translations with ‘sonum’, as ἠχώς is masculine and ἠχώ is always preceded by the feminine accusative article τὴν. Steuco’s and Arcerius’s translations must be based on a deliberate, interpretative decision, perhaps even the wish to avoid an association with the nymph Echo. 139 Giraldi, Libelli duo, 169.

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Giraldi’s decision to translate ‘echo’ in spite of the possible misinterpretation might be connected to Iamblichus’s reading of the symbol (which Giraldi quotes) as appertaining to a divine reflection.140 Based on the authority of this interpretation, it would make sense to underline the notion of reflection and similitude inherent in the noun by translating ‘echo’, rather than merely ‘sound’. At any rate, the most learned early modern commentator on this question, Gerardus Ioannes Vossius, did use Iamblichus’s interpretation to decide in favour of ‘echo’ rather than ‘sound’. For the nymph version, Vossius had only an ironic smile: ‘Mirum vero Pythagoram etiam cultum Echus adprobasse. Id enim comprobari videtur symbolo ejus’ (‘It is truly astounding that even Pythagoras approved of the cult of Echo; for it seems to have been sanctioned by one of his symbols’).141 But neither can he approve of Arcerius’s flat ‘Ventis spirantibus sonum adora’. Vossius agrees with Giraldi that the translation should be ‘echo’. Otherwise the Iamblichean idea of a reflection is not sufficiently transparent: ‘Atqui non quivis sonus, similitudinem habet: nec consonum illud est in quodlibet sono; sed in resultanto illo, quem echo dicimus’ (‘Not every sound has a likeness: and there is not a harmony in every sound; but only in that sound which springs back, which we call an “echo” ’).142 Thus, in a translation and interpretation of the echo symbol many choices were involved. In all of them, Henry Reynolds chose to follow Alessandro Farra.143 Farra’s Settenario offers readings of the akousmata in its last book, which is about imprese. As Farra says of himself on the title page of his Tre discorsi (1564), he was a lawyer and member of the Academia degli Affidati. His Settenario (1544) was well known for its extensive treatment of imprese as symbolic philosophy, which was quoted, for example, by Abraham Fraunce in the Insignium armorum.144 Despite the fact that Celenza does not mention Farra in his book on the

140

It is part of his quotation from Steuco, Giraldi, Libelli duo, 170. Gerardus Ioannes Vossius, De theologia gentili et physiologia christiana tomus II comprehendens librum quartum, et quinque posteriores qui ex auctoris autographo nunc primum prodeunt (Amsterdam, 1668), Book VIII, p. 190. 142 Vossius, De theologia gentili, 190. 143 Critics have noted Reynolds’s debt to Farra in this instance—Reynolds’s use of the Settenario throughout Mythomystes signposts the fact. No one, however, has gone beyond a simple identification of the source. 144 For a discussion of Fraunce’s use of Farra see Bath, Speaking Pictures, 141–2. 141

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symbols, it is not difficult to place Farra in the interpretive traditions Celenza had established. About Pythagoras, Farra writes: Pitagora hauendo imparato da i secreti di Mercurio Trismegisto la scienza delle cose diuine se ne passò in Grecia, doue insegnò solamente con uiua uoce, occoltando sotto simboli, & numerationi i misteri della vera sapienza.145 Pythagoras, having learnt from the secrets of Hermes Trismegistus the science of divine things, brought it to Greece, where he would teach them only by word of mouth, hiding underneath symbols and numbers the mysteries of the true wisdom.

In Farra’s account, Pythagoras is established as one of the prisci theologi and as a teacher of the highest and most divine secrets to a select few. Indulging his passion for syncretism, Farra adds numerological and Cabalistic significance to the akousmata by discussing only the twentytwo most important ones—twenty-two being the number of letters in the Sacred Language.146 Reynolds’s source thus enthusiastically adheres to Neo-Platonism with respect to the significance of the symbols. Accordingly, Farra chose the translation rejected by the antiquaries. Fascinated as he was by the idea of conflating various strands of ancient wisdom into one seamless truth, he did not let this possibility pass by unheeded and made ‘ἠχώ’ the nymph. Henry Reynolds agreed, taking over both the translation and the interpretation, in which Farra built upon Iamblichus. This is Reynolds’s version of Farra’s passage on the echo symbol: While the winds breathe, adore Echo. This Winde is (as the before-mencioned Iamblicus, by consent of his other fellow-Cabalists sayes) the Symbole of the Breath of God; and Ecco, the Reflection of this diuine breath, or Spirit vpon us; or (as they interpret it)—the daughter of the diuine voice; which through the beatifying splendor it shedds & diffuses through the Soule, is justly worthy to be reuerenced and adored by vs. This Ecco descending vpon a Narcissus, or such a Soule as (impurely and vitiously affected) slights, and stops his eares to the Diuine voice, or shutts his harte fro[m] diuine Inspirations, through his being enamour’d of not himselfe, but his owne shaddow meerely, and (buried in the ordures of the Sence) followes corporall shadowes, and flyes the light and purity of Intellectuall Beauty, he becoms thence (being dispoyled,

145

Farra, Settenario, 352–3.

146

Farra, Settenario, 372.

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(as the great Iamblicus speakes) of his propper, natiue, and celestiall vertue, and ability,) an earthy, weake, worthlesse thing, and fit sacrifize for only eternall obliuion, and the dij inferi.147

In order to make this complex paragraph transparent, one more piece of the puzzle is needed. Reynolds and Farra combine the Iamblichean interpretation of the echo symbol with a reading of the tale of Narcissus that was developed by Marsilio Ficino. Ficino had interpreted Narcissus as a soul falling in love with material beauty, that is, with an inferior copy, rather than with the superior, intellectual beauty of its own soul. As a consequence, the soul suffers spiritual death: A certain young man, Narcissus, that is, the soul of bold and inexperienced man, does not see his own countenance, he never notices his own substance and virtue, but pursues his reflection on the water, and tries to embrace it; that is, the soul admires the beauty in the weak body, an image in the flowing water, which is never satisfied by enjoyment of the body. For it does not really seek the body itself, but only its beauty, and is seduced by bodily beauty, which is the image of its own beauty. In this way, Narcissus desires, and since he pays no heed to that true beauty while he desires and pursues something else, he cannot satisfy his desire. Therefore he is destroyed, melted into tears; that is, the soul, so placed outside itself, and having fallen into the body, is racked by terrible disturbances, or infected by the diseases of the body, and dies, so to speak, since it already seems to be more body than soul.148

In this reading, Echo is not even of marginal importance. Ficino is concerned with Narcissus’s misdirected search. His instinctive need for higher beauty can never be satisfied by the inferior copy he pursues. But how does Farra shape this diverse material? First, he reads the Pythagorean symbol as referring to Echo the nymph, which, as we have seen, was not self-evident. Second, he takes Iamblichus’s interpretation of the echo as a reflection of the divine and applies it to the girl who famously faded into a mere reverberation. It is this Pythagorean Echo that Farra, in a third step, builds into Ficino’s psychological reading of Narcissus. Farra introduces Echo as a possible escape from the vicious circle in which 147

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 110–11. Farra, Settenario, 385–7. A modern translation of Farra’s interpretation as well as a reading of this passage can be found in Vinge, Narcissus, 149–50. 148 Marsilio Ficino, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium, ed. and trans. Sears Reynolds Jayne (Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1944), 212 (book VI, chapter 17).

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Ficino’s Narcissus is solipsistically trapped. Echo is now the divine voice, the ‘diuine Inspirations’ and the ‘light and purity of Intellectuall Beauty’ which could lead Narcissus onto the right path. Instead, he tragically flees her. The connection to the concerns of Mythomystes slowly becomes clear. Reynolds made sure that his English translation of Anguillara’s Narcissus dovetails with Farra’s interpretation. Narcissus is set up as a representative of the immortal soul. While Tiresias promises him a ‘viuer lungo’ in Anguillara’s version, he will be ‘immortall as his Sire’ in the English translation.149 But he falls for the lying semblances of the physical world. While Anguillara’s Narcissus is entranced by ‘quell’imagine diuina’ in the water, Reynolds’s boy is ‘Transported with the silly vaine desire | that the deceiptfull shadow breedes in him’.150 The idea of Narcissus falling in love with a bad copy of truth is stressed twice by introducing mirror imagery: the well, ‘l’onda di Lete’ (‘the wave of Lethe’), turns into a ‘trech’erous mirhor’.151 The desire for his shadow becomes ‘the vain loue infected | Of what the liquid-cristall glasse reflected’.152 Besotted with earthly beauty, he rejects the truly divine. Anguillara’s formulation that Narcissus despises even ‘forma celeste’153 is moved by Reynolds from the middle of the stanza to the more emphatic position at the very end and integrated into the curse of Astraea. His crime is that he disdains ‘Not nymphes alone, but heau’nly deities’.154 Where Echo is a girl of sweet eloquence in Anguillara, she sways her audience with ‘imperious eloquution’ in the English translation: ‘it a heauen was her wordes to hear.’155 But when she speaks, Narcissus does not listen. Blinded by desire (an idea Reynolds adds to his version), Narcissus turns himself into an idol. While Anguillara’s Narcissus thinks himself to be ‘bel, nobile, e degno’ (‘beautiful, noble, and worthy’), Reynolds’s boy ‘lou’de, ador’de and deifi’de Himselfe’.156 Had he adored Echo, there would have been a happy ending. Just such a happy ending had been supplied by Henry Reynolds’s friend Michael Drayton. Behind the love story of Drayton’s ‘Endimion 149 150 151 152 154 155 156

Anguillara, Metamorfosi, fol. 31r; Reynolds, Mythomystes, 87. Anguillara, Metamorfosi, fol. 32r; Reynolds, Mythomystes, 97. Anguillara, Metamorfosi, fol. 32r; Reynolds, Mythomystes, 95. 153 Reynolds, Mythomystes, 95. Anguillara, Metamorfosi, fol. 32r. Reynolds, Mythomystes, 93. Anguillara, Metamorfosi, fol. 31v; Reynolds, Mythomystes, 89. Anguillara, Metamorfosi, fol. 31r; Reynolds, Mythomystes, 88.

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and Phoebe’, the fate of Narcissus lurks as a dark alternative. When Phoebe entreats Endimion to love her, she upbraids him for his unresponsiveness: My sighs move trees, rocks melting with my tears, But thou art blind, and cruell stop’st thine eares: Looke in this Well, (if beautie men alow) Though thou be faire, yet I as fayre as thou; I am a Vestall, and a spotles Mayd, Although by love to thee I am betrayd: But sith (unkinde) thou doost my love disdayne, To rocks and hills my selfe I will complaine.157

This accusation contains a lot of mythological role-play. Phoebe is Orpheus enchanting all nature but him: her reluctant lover must be harder than a rock. Stopping his ears like one of Odysseus’s oarsmen, Endimion misjudges the chaste girl as a siren and thus proves unwise and unfair. Worst of all, he behaves like Narcissus. Phoebe imagines herself disdained like Echo, deserted places resounding with her pain. But Phoebe is not only like Echo because she poses as a rejected nymph. In Ficinian terms, the moon reflects the intellectual light of divine wisdom and power, which the sun symbolizes within the material world.158 In the Supplementum Ficinianum, Kristeller offers an additional phrase elucidating the role of the moon, which symbolizes ‘the mind of the prophets which prophesies what it does all the more exactly and certainly, the more it is filled by the light of the sun itself ’.159 In this passage, Drayton has Phoebe represent Orphic poetry, which is a reflection of divine beauty. Drayton’s Phoebe is thus analogous to Reynolds’s Echo as a special type of poetry that takes its light from the divine, or, to stay in the phonic metaphor, resounds with it. Fortunately, however, Endimion is not Narcissus:

157

Drayton, Works, I: 136. Ficino expressed the symbolic relationship between the sun and divinity in his Del Sole, Marsilio Ficino, ‘Del Sole’, in Opera (Basel 1576), 965–75. 159 ‘Luna vero mens vatum estque tanto exactius certiusque vaticinatur, quanto solis ipsius lumine plenior est.’ Marsilio Ficino, Supplementum Ficinianum: Marsilii Ficini Florentini philosophi Platonici opuscula inedita et dispersa primum collegit et ex fontibus plerumque manuscriptis, ed. Oskar Paul Kristeller, 2 vols. (Florence: Olschki, 1937), II: 102. I quote the translation offered in Celenza, ‘Pythagoras in the Renaissance’, 697. 158

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But whilst the wanton thus pursu’d his sport, Deceitfull Love had undermin’d the Fort, And by a breach (in spight of all deniance) Entred the Fort which lately made defiance.160

He turns away from the inferior reflection of himself in the well and instead adores Phoebe. Thus, Endimion begins the intellectual journey that is Platonic love. He will be rewarded by wisdom and climb up into the heavens. A happy ending, however, would not have served the purposes of Mythomystes. In Reynolds’s and Farra’s reading, the fable of Narcissus is not merely a version of the Neo-Platonic complaint about the soul’s infatuation with the flesh. Rather, it captures a moment of decision. It is the same decision Endimion faces, but, in the light of the Narcissus story, it is a warning. It points out the fact that Narcissus did not have to descend into the flesh and die; he could have ascended to heaven. Echo, who represents true, ancient poetry as the prisci wrote it, called him away from the sensual shadows to the pursuit of the divine vision she reflects. But he did not listen. Mythomystes has held up a mirror to the moderns and has pointed out to them a splendid alternative in the form of a revival of ancient poetry. Having arrived at the end of the book, the tale of Narcissus now asks the reader to make a decision. It restates the central problem of Mythomystes in poetical terms—the tragedy of a society that is focused on superficial materiality and blind to intellectual beauty. And most importantly, the tale of Narcissus is performative speech. It does what it says. Fulfilling the most central task of poetry, this pleasurable fiction is meant to allure the reader away from earthly things to begin the journey towards truth. In Mythomystes, the tale of Narcissus represents the call of Echo.

5.6. Henry Reynolds, English Mythography, and the Divinity of Poetry Still, there remains the question, why Henry Reynolds returns to the idea of a ‘divine sense’ in poetry after spending so much ink on separating Moses’s true inspiration from the ancients’ efforts of mere reason. Why

160

Drayton, Works, I: 137.

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warn your audience against finding divine meanings in poems and then go and do so yourself? One could answer this question by way of Reynolds’s reinterpretation of the ancients’ rapture as a vision of God gained through the understanding of nature. But the return to NeoPlatonic diction is too complete. Echo becomes the divine ‘Spirit vpon us’, which descends on the human soul and offers ‘diuine Inspirations’.161 Looking at the other mythographers in England, Reynolds’s return to Neo-Platonism is much more surprising than his earlier rejection of it. None of the English mythographers subscribes to the divine fury or a tradition of theologia philosophica. Stephen Batman wrote about the ‘Strau[n]ge entermixed stratageme’ of ancient myth and allowed it an important role as a teacher of virtue. But he firmly separated it from the ‘touchstone’ of true religion. Alexander Ross, as we shall see in the next chapter, also approaches myth as an expression of ancient religion. Ross uses Augustine’s conceptualization of myth as a starting point, which means that the divinity of the ancients is unredeemably wrong. In such a framework, ancient wisdom can be judged valuable in the realm of politics, but is firmly placed outside the Christian tradition. Abraham Fraunce and Francis Bacon, whose concepts of myth are ultimately based in poetry, both use aspects of the Neo-Platonic tradition. Nevertheless, neither mythographer leaves the realm of human reason and what it can achieve unaided. Francis Bacon’s vision of the most distant past vaguely resembles the idea of a prisca philosophia. There was a golden age of wisdom at the beginning of the world and this wisdom was handed down by a select few in secret forms of communication for many thousands of years. But for Bacon, the ancient wisdom is simply the remnant of Adamic knowledge of man and nature, those bits of understanding that the river of time had not yet drowned when the fables were first devised in some pre-Homeric century. This is a far cry from a pre-Christian tradition of inspired prophet-philosophers. Abraham Fraunce takes his Neo-Platonism from Philip Sidney and is mostly concerned with the nature of poetic imagery. Following Sidney, Fraunce would submit to the idea that fiction can create an image of a higher reality than the material world and thus reach closer to truth than history or philosophy. Nevertheless, these images are formed in the minds of men; they are not divinely inspired. Just like his colleagues,

161

Reynolds, Mythomystes, 110.

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Henry Reynolds makes the authors of fables into mere men who work with their fallen reason—but only in the second part of Mythomystes. It would be possible to interpret Reynolds’s fluctuations as inconsistencies. For a modern reader, used to methodical argumentation, Mythomystes is a difficult text that suggests loose thinking and a lack of editing on Reynolds’s part. But Reynolds’s elasticism is not indicative of disorder. Reading the text in sequence has helped to understand how the argument of Mythomystes unfolds organically. It also makes the reader sensitive to changing contexts, that is, different questions Reynolds wants to answer at different times, and especially to varying rhetorical temperatures. Reynolds sets out on a rhetorical high, describing what type of man an ancient poet was: dignified, austere, mysterious. But then he needs to speak about what exactly the ancients knew. This entails defining their wisdom by comparing and contrasting them with Moses. In this passage, Reynolds is not only analytical, but also very careful. He worries about the ethics of reading, about what we can think and what we should think. In this passage, Reynolds also adopts a more sober tone. The ancients are denied inspiration and the divinity of poetry is banished into parentheses: it is there, but not there. In the verse appendix, Reynolds throws this caution to the wind. It has no place in the tale of Narcissus and its interpretation, which are, once more, ripe with divine promise. Reynolds’s ambiguities therefore reflect two things. First, they are indicative of contexts in which it would be appropriate or inappropriate to entertain certain ideas. Second, they show the scale of the rhetoric of divine inspiration, which Reynolds ascends and descends according to his tone in a certain section. The more enthused his own writing is, the higher he extols the divinity of poetry. There is, of course, also a difference between verse and prose. Whatever Reynolds said about the superior inspiration of Moses does not apply in the realm of verse he enters immediately afterwards. This particular difference is mirrored in the curious relationship between the early modern mythographies and the contemporary Neo-Platonic poetry. As has emerged from this book, the English mythographers in the late Renaissance reject the idea of the divinus furor. But simultaneously, poets like Michael Drayton describe poetry as, for example, ‘By Gods great power, into rich soules infus’d’. Mythomystes represents this larger cultural divide in a nutshell. I would suggest that, apart from necessary religious caution, the most important determining factor for his relationship to divine fury is rhetorical pitch. This can be captured in the difference between verse and

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prose, or by shifting rhetorical modes in prose. The different engagements with divine fury in Mythomystes, which a modern reader perceives as contradictions, are held together by being arranged on a scale. They can belong to one spectrum of thought, but it depends on the heat of the argument whether it makes sense to speak of divine fury or not. This is foreign to a modern consciousness, but in this respect Reynolds is representative of many in his culture. The same rhetorical scale can be observed in the way divine fury is handled by one of the most brilliant and influential minds of the English Renaissance: Philip Sidney. Early on in his Defence, Sidney clearly states with reference to Ion that Plato ‘attributeth unto poesy more than myself do, namely, to be a very inspiring of a divine force’.162 The Defence famously argues for poetry springing from man’s mind—‘freely ranging only within the zodiac of his own wit’.163 The ability to perceive, and forge in fiction, perfection in a brazen world is the divinity of poetry, not more and not less. Sidney, like Reynolds, sees learning as a ‘purifying of wit’ and accords to poetry the unique ability to make philosophy attractive.164 The final goal of learning, says Sidney, is to ‘draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clayey lodgings, can be capable of ’.165 Here, as in Reynolds’s second half of Mythomystes, human potential is limited to what a fallen being can achieve unaided. But despite these clear words and his consistent reasoning throughout the text, Sidney seems to contradict himself in a rhetorical extravaganza at the very end of his text. Finishing with a flourish, he lavishes the highest possible honour on poetry, including its divine origins: I conjure you all that have had the evil luck to read this ink-wasting toy of mine . . . to believe, with Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasures of the Grecians’ divinity; to believe, with Bembus, that they were first bringers-in of all civility; to believe, with Scaliger, that no philosopher’s precepts can sooner make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil; to believe, with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutus, that it pleased the heavenly Deity, by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to give us all knowledge, Logic, Rhetoric, Philosophy natural and moral, and quid non?; to believe, with me, that there are many mysteries contained in Poetry, which of purpose were written darkly, lest by prophane wits it should be abused; to

162 Sidney, ‘Defence’, 109. For Sidney’s stance on divine fury, see Geoffrey Shepherd, ‘Introduction’, in Philip Sidney, Apology for Poetry (London: Nelson, 1965), 1–91, here 63–4. 163 164 Sidney, ‘Defence’, 78. Sidney, ‘Defence’, 82. 165 Sidney, ‘Defence’, 82.

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believe, with Landino, that they are so beloved of the gods that whatsoever they write proceeds of a divine fury; lastly, to believe themselves, when they tell you they will make you immortal by their verses.166

The very last paragraph of the Defence is electrifying. This is the rhetorical register in which the idea of divine fury belongs and thrives. I would like to argue that thinking in terms of logical contradictions is not always the right response when exploring an author’s relationship to the divine inspiration of poets. In Sidney’s Defence, as in Reynolds’s Mythomystes, the fate of the ancients’ divine inspiration rises and falls with the heat of the argument. Mythomystes also underlines the necessity for critics of the Renaissance reception of ancient myth to engage with a broader range of textual traditions. A Renaissance reader can, like Henry Reynolds, think of fables not only in terms of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Virgil’s Aeneid, or Homer’s Iliad. Reynolds saw them as intimately connected with numerology, hieroglyphs, the works of Plato, the Cabala, the books of Moses, and the Pythagorean symbols among others. Moreover, Reynolds offers important further evidence that the Renaissance approach to myth does not stop at an interpretation of individual fables. Reynolds believed that fables, in their entirety, involve the complete knowledge of nature. They are not discrete stories that contain individual units of truth, but instead need to be seen as a nexus of wisdom. Reynolds’s work demonstrates—as the other English mythographies do in their way— that concepts were available during the Renaissance which made sense of fables as a unified phenomenon that is greater than its parts and that could and should be interpreted as a whole. In other words, there is evidence for ‘myth theories’ rather than ‘fable interpretation’. And third, Reynolds confirms a fascinating trend in English mythography. Like Abraham Fraunce, he does not only think about fables. He also revives their ancient purpose. Henry Reynolds wrote Mythomystes as an urgent wake-up call to his degenerate society. His use of the fable of Narcissus not only underlines the problem he stated in the prose; it also performs the role myth was given by the prisci. Reynolds’s Narcissus is meant to attract the reader to the study of philosophy through its sheer beauty. As we shall see in the following chapter, Alexander Ross also tried to exploit an ancient function of the gods. 166

Sidney, ‘Defence’, 121.

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6 Gods Save the King Alexander Ross’s Civil Mythography ‘I must salute that most learned and worthy gentleman, and most indeared minion of the Muses, Master Alexander Ross, who hath written manyer excellent books in Latine and English, what in prose, what in verse, then he hath lived yeers.’1 In the eyes of Thomas Urquhart, most fervent fan of the prolific Scottish gentleman, the thought of the sheer mass of Ross’s publications stirs feelings of joy, gratefulness, and hope for the future of Western civilization. ‘One would think’, he muses, ‘that the souls of Socrates, Chrysostome, Aristotle, Ciceron, and Virgil have been transformed into the substantial faculties of that entelechy.’2 Not all of Urquart’s contemporaries would have praised Ross quite that highly, but he was a well-known figure in public debates and his works were very successful—some of them ran to more than eight editions. Today, Ross’s contribution to the literary and political culture of Civil War England has been well-nigh forgotten. Only one extended study of Ross’s works exists, John Ronald Glenn’s book-length introduction to his critical edition of Mystagogus Poeticus (1987).3 The silence might be explained by Ross’s lack of poetic talent, but it is not justified. In the following chapter, I will show how Ross can contribute to current critical discussions of the appropriation of ancient Rome by writers before and during the Civil Wars. 4 As David Norbrook has noted, ‘the years of the 1 Thomas Urquhart, Ekskubalauron, or the Discovery of a Most Exquisite Jewel (London, 1652), 171. 2 Urquhart, Ekskubalauron, 174. 3 John Ronald Glenn, ‘Introduction’, in A Critical Edition of Alexander Ross’s 1647 Mystagogus Poeticus, or the Muses Interpreter, ed. John Ronald Glenn (New York: Garland, 1987), 1–195. 4 For readings of this royalist tradition, see Graham Parry, The Golden Age Restor’d: The Culture of the Stuart Court, 1603–42 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1981);

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personal rule saw a strong emphasis on an Augustan poetics. Not only was Roman imperial poetry given great scope, but newer forms of poetic praise were developed as the Stuart masque reached its apogee.’5 Aurelian Townshend, for example, brought Charles on stage in the costume of a Roman emperor in Albions Triumph (1632), and George Sandys dedicated his translation of the first book of the Aeneid to Charles as a British Augustus.6 In the same year in which Thomas Carew’s Twelfth Night masque Coelum Britannicum showed the Olympian gods reform heaven according to the virtuous principles of the Caroline court, Ross made an offering to Charles in the form of the Virgilian cento Virgilius evangelisans (1634), which tells the story of Christ in Virgil’s words. The cento was dedicated ‘ad Augustissimum Carolum Magnae Britanniae, &c. Monarcham’.7 Ross thus joined the ranks of poets who celebrated the personal rule of Charles I as the return of an Augustan golden age of political harmony and religious peace. In the 1640s, Ross continued drawing parallels between the Roman Empire and Stuart England. But this time, his contribution to the cause is more complex. During the Civil Wars, as Nigel Smith has pointed out, ‘all monarchical defence was a theology as much as it was a politics’.8 This holds true for the mythographical project this chapter charts, in which Ross intertwines the threads of Roman religious piety and imperial glory into an innovative defence of Laudian royalism. This chapter

Howard Erskine-Hill, The Augustan Idea in English Literature (London: Edward Arnold, 1983); and Robin Sowerby, The Augustan Art of Poetry: Augustan Translation of the Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). For authors exploring oppositional, republican aspects of the period’s use of Rome, see Nigel Smith, Literature and Revolution in England 1640–1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994); David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); and Sheldon Brammall, The English Aeneid: Translations of Virgil, 1555–1646 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), ch. 5. 5

David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic, 66. George Sandys, ‘The First Booke of Virgils Aeneis’, in Ovids Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz’d, and Represented in Figures (London, 1632); Aurelian Townshend, Albions Triumph (London, 1632). For a discussion of Sandys, see Brammall, English Aeneid, ch. 4, for Townshend, see Parry, The Golden Age Restor’d, ch. 9. 7 Alexander Ross, Virgilius evangelisans, sive historia domini et salvatoris nostru Iesu Christi, Virgilianis verbis & versibus descripta (1634), sig. A2r. 8 Smith, Literature and Revolution, 114. For an exploration of Protestant writing during the Stuart reign that pays special attention to heroic and mythological conceptions of the Church of England, see Reid Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture in SeventeenthCentury England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), chs. 1 and 2. 6

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will look at four of Ross’s works from this period: his first mythography, Mel Heliconium, or Poetical Honey Gathered out of the Weeds of Parnassus (1642), two sermons that were published in 1642 (Gods House, or the House of Prayer and Gods House Made a Den of Theeves), and his magnum opus, Pansebeia, or a View of All Religions in the World (1653). In these texts, I argue, Ross casts the ancient gods and the stories surrounding them as the product of the greatly successful civil theology of the Roman Empire and demonstrates the political value of religious fear. Readers of this chapter will find it illuminating to compare Ross’s mythographical work and its aims with Stephen Batman’s (Chapter 2). The first and the last English Renaissance mythographers were both Church of England clergymen and encountered the same fundamental problem when engaging with the ancient deities. Like Batman, Ross had a very high opinion of the Romans as a virtuous people, wishing the Christians of his time would live up to their model of a well-ordered, powerful empire. At the same time, the gods served so piously by the pagans were wicked idols. Batman found a solution in his ‘stra[u]nge entermixed strategem’ and, within it, distinguished between a religious and a poetic perspective on the gods. This chapter explores how Ross exploited the same ambiguity in the cultural legacy of the ancients.

6.1. ‘Shall not the very Gentiles condemn them?’: Ross and the Church Robbers In the early 1640s, tensions between the conflicting religious and political groups in Southampton were growing more and more palpable. While the town’s authorities seemed to lean towards Charles I, the allegiance of most inhabitants lay elsewhere.9 This had become clear in November 1640, when the puritans Henry Barton and William Prynne had landed in Southampton port on their way from their prisons in Guernsey and Jersey back to London. The two puritan martyrs, cheeks branded and ears cropped, were ‘entertain’d with extraordinary demonstrations of 9 The best account of Southampton in the Civil War is still John Silvester Davies, A History of Southampton Partly from the MS of Dr Speed in the Southampton Archives (Southampton: Gilbert, 1883), 484–5; see also Adrian Rance, Southampton: An Illustrated History (Horndean: Milestone Publications, 1989), 70–2; for a history of the Civil War in Hampshire with some reference to Southampton see Tony Maclachlan, Civil War in Hampshire (Salisbury: Rowanvale, 2000).

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Affections and Esteem; attended by a marvellous conflux of Company; and their Charges not only born with great magnificence, but liberal Presents given to them’.10 It is impossible to say how the 4,500 inhabitants in Southampton managed to look like a multitude, especially as some of them stayed at home. Alexander Ross, rector of All Saints in Southampton and staunch royalist, was certainly not swelling the numbers of the cheering crowd. In fact, Ross did all he could to convince the more radical amongst his parishioners to change their minds about some of the theological issues that were so inextricably interwoven with politics in the 1640s.11 Ross was a moderate Calvinist. His views on predestination are recorded in A Centurie of Divine Meditations upon Predestination and its Adjuncts (1646). But in points of ceremony and church politics, he was of one mind with Archbishop William Laud, who seems to have taken some interest in Ross’s career.12 Ross displayed his allegiance to Charles I’s church government on the title pages of his 1642 publications, all of which proclaim that he is His Majesty’s Chaplain in Ordinary. Ross annoyed the godly in his congregation by according a higher importance to prayer than to preaching in one of his sermons.13 And when he addressed his flock on 24 February 1641 [= 1642] on the topic ‘It is written, my house shall be called the house of prayer, but you have made it a den of theeves’ (Matt. 21:13), he knew he was asking for trouble again. Gods House, or the House of Prayer, as this sermon was titled in print, focused on the proper use of churches. ‘See what titles he [David] gives to the Temple, faire, beauty, holinesse, and sometimes the beauty of holinesse’,14 Ross implored, fighting against ‘some new upstart Sectaries in this Towne’, whose ‘unreverent gesture in the Church, disesteeme of 10

Edward Clarendon, The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (Oxford, 1707), 199. 11 For Ross’s life, see Glenn, ‘Introduction’, 1–59 (for a record of events leading up to Ross’s departure from Southampton, see esp. pp. 11–14); see also the two articles on Ross’s life by David Allan, who seems to be unaware of Glenn’s earlier account: David Allan, ‘ “An Ancient Sage Philosopher”: Alexander Ross and the Defence of Philosophy’, Seventeenth Century 17 (2001), 68–93; as well as ‘Ross, Alexander (1591–1654)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Lawrence Goldman, online edn. (accessed 27 Nov. 2016). 12 Glenn, ‘Introduction’, 5. There is, however, no proof for a connection between Laud and Ross. 13 Cf. Alexander Ross, Gods House, or the House of Prayer (London, 1641 [= 1642]), 14. 14 Ross, Gods House, 10.

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Church prayers, and disgracefull speeches against the outward splendour of Gods house’ had excited his anger.15 Ross was firmly committed to the ‘beauty of holiness’ and the importance of rituals.16 With most Laudians, he believed that church buildings were suffused by the divine presence much more than any other space on earth.17 Therefore, English churches should imitate the magnificence of Solomon’s temple and believers should conduct themselves reverently in God’s own house. True adoration, Ross explains in his sermon, is ‘expressed by a submissive gesture of the body, either in uncovering of the head, or pulling off the shooe, or bending of knee, bowing of the body, kissing of the hand, &c’.18 With dismay he witnessed the destructive progress of iconoclasts throughout the country, who regarded such outward signs of reverence as superstition and popery. Ross was as much against image-worship as any of them, but, he asks, is ‘there no avoyding of superstition, but by falling into sacriledge? No shunning of Charibdis, but by falling upon Scylla?’19 In order to convince his audience of the orthodoxy of beauty and decorum in divine worship, Ross employs quotations from scripture and examples from the practices of ‘the purest times of the primitive Church’.20 He positions English orthodoxy between radical puritanism that aims at further reformation and popish superstition that had deformed the ancient purity of the early Christian church. He displays his adherence to Church of England teaching as developed by Richard

Ross, Gods House, sig. A2r (from Ross’s preface ‘To the Orthodoxe Reader’). On the ‘beauty of holiness’ ideal, its influence on church architecture, and the new liturgy of the English church since the 1630s, see Graham Parry, The Art of the English Counter-Reformation: Glory, Laud and Honour (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006). 17 For the idea of church buildings as God’s houses see e.g. Robert Skinner, A Sermon Preached Before the King at Whitehall (London, 1634), John Browning, Concerning Public Prayer and the Fasts of the Church (London, 1636), Thomas Laurence, Two Sermons (Oxford, 1635), and Walter Balcanquall, The Honour of Christian Churches (London, 1633). Their sermons and others are discussed in Peter Lake, ‘The Laudian Style: Order, Uniformity and the Pursuit of the Beauty of Holiness’, in The Early Stuart Church 1603–1642, ed. Kenneth Fincham (London: Macmillan, 1993), 161–85, esp. 164–71. 18 Ross, Gods House, 14–15. 19 Ross, Gods House, 12. When representing the Laudian Church as an Odyssean ship sailing through the Scylla and Charybdis of religious extremes, Ross is using an established trope for the via media represented by the Church of England. William Chillingworth, for example, is employing it in The Religion of Protestants (Oxford, 1638), 167–8. This and other allusions to ancient heroes in The Religion of Protestants are discussed by Barbour, Literature and Religious Culture, 74–8. 20 Ross, Gods House, 9. 15 16

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Hooker, Lancelot Andrewes, and William Laud.21 But Ross also demonstrates an altogether different kind of argumentation: Shall not the blind Papists that built them [i.e. the churches in England built before the Reformation], rise up in judgement against those that spoyled them? Nay, shall not the very Gentiles condemne them, who spared no labour and cost to erect proud and magnificent Temples to their Idoll Gods? witness Jupiters temple in the Capitoll; Apollo’s temple at Delphos, Diana’s temple (the seventh wonder of the world) at Ephesus, and many thousands more. One city of Rome could reckon 300. faire Temples in Augustus Caesars time. Maxima tercentum totam delubra per urbem [‘three hundred very great temples all over the city of Rome’, Aen. VIII.716]. I could tell you that the Egyptians spared no cost in building Temples even to Snakes and Crocodiles. You’l say they were mad, and I say so too, But if it was madnesse to erect Temples to false gods, it’s far greater madness to destroy the Temples of the true God. I can tell you sad stories of those who have either robbed or destroyed even idolatrous Temples. Of Cambyses that spoyled the Temples of Egypt, of Xerxes and Brennus, who robbed Jupiters and Apollo’s temples, of the stolne gold of Tholousa; Of Pompey, Craßus, and others.22

Commonplacing examples from religions in various ages and countries, he demonstrates that Catholics, ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans might have been wrong in their divinity, but got it right with respect to the external forms of worship. For Ross, religious piety expresses itself as respect for the divinity and the observance of decorum in God’s house, no matter what set of gods a society believes in. Offences against this principle have always met with divine punishment. Reading pagan stories, Ross implies, can teach his contemporaries how to conduct their lives as believers in a society of Christians. They serve as his strongest argument against the indifference, or even aggression, which the godly expressed against sacred spaces. This is especially true of one story: Virgil’s Aeneid, which is the only text quoted in Gods House, or the House of Prayer other than the Bible. Virgil’s unique authority is supposed to underline the historical truth of the existence of 300 temples in Rome under the government of Augustus. Furthermore, the original context of the quoted line in the ekphrasis of Aeneas’s shield pits the well-ordered church of the Augustan renovatio against the 21

For the relationship between the English church in the early seventeenth century and antiquity (especially its relationship to the Church Fathers), see Jean-Louis Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 22 Ross, Gods House, 11.

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preceding description of a chaos of filthy gods in the train of Antony and his immoral queen, Cleopatra.23 The image of historical Rome gleaming with Augustus’s maxima delubra corresponds to his own ideal of a decorous, hierarchically ordered English church with the king as its furtherer and crown jewel. Such an arrangement is not only historically justified, but corresponds with the order of the cosmos: ‘I need not tell you, that parents expect from their children, masters from their servants, Kings from their Subjects a reverent and decent behaviour; and is not the Lord of this house a Father, a master, a King, and we his children, servants, subjects?’24 Thus, Ross constructs the familiar historical parallel between the religious politics of the Augustan Empire and the Stuart rule, and impresses upon his listeners the cosmological parallel between the celestial and earthly kingdoms. But Ross knew that he was wasting his breath on large parts of his audience on that Sunday in February 1642. He was quite aware that the meaning of a story depends on its audience, and that his listeners were not well disposed: I desire not onely your patience, but also your charitable constructions, for let the flowers be never so wholsome, yet Spiders will sucke thence nothing but poyson, and some are so uncharitably and superciliously censorious, that what relisheth not in the palat is accounted erroneous.25

While Ross is busy drawing wholesome precepts out of pagan stories in this sermon, he cannot help but fear that his puritan listeners might twist his words into expressing idolatrous heresy—which is exactly what they did: ‘One calls it a pernicious Sermon, another sayes it was fit to be preached at Rome, a third, that it is false doctrine.’26 Neither Catholicism nor erroneous teaching was a small accusation. Preaching to this flock was taxing. Some of ‘our new up-start faction’ came to Ross’s church ‘for no other end but to carpe and mocke at our Sermons’.27 But, as Ross defiantly informed his critics three weeks later, in another sermon on Matthew 21:13, they ‘must not thinke that I will muzle my mouth, and

23

For a discussion of this passage, see David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 21–31. 24 25 Ross, Gods House, 8. Ross, Gods House, 4–5. 26 Ross, Gods House, sig. A2r. 27 Ross, Gods House Made a Den of Theeves (London, 1642), 3.

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keepe silence’.28 With respect to his parish, this was an empty promise. Soon after he had spoken these words, the shepherd left Southampton, which had been his home for twenty-six years. His parting gift to the ‘Iudicious and conscionable’ of the parish, however, was the printed version of the March sermon, Gods House Made a Den of Theeves.29 In the medium of the printed word, Ross remained true to his promise of a sustained counter-attack against the radicals. And he moved swiftly. He had preached Gods House Made a Den of Theeves in mid-March 1642. On 26 April, the mythography Mel Heliconium, in which Ross once more plays the honey-bee, was granted its imprimatur. Like the sermons, Mel Heliconium teems with church robbers. Sacred spaces are defaced, heretics multiply, and the glorious English crown and church are in dire need of defence against the forces of darkness and chaos: Sacrilegious Church robbers are these Harpies, who fell upon Christs patrimony like Ocypete or Aello, a sudden blast or storme; and like Celaeno, have brought obscurity on the Church, and have exclipsed her light; and indeed the names doe agree, for Aello is hee that takes away another mans goods, Ocypete, suddenly, Celaeno blacknesse or darknesse, so they on a sudden snatcht away those goods that were none of theirs, and with the obscure cloud of poverty have turned the Churches beauty into blacknesse.30

Once more, Ross rushes to the defence of the beauty of holiness. The close relationship between the sermons and the mythography could suggest that Ross wrote the latter after preaching the sermons. But the roughly six weeks between mid-March and late April 1642 do not comprise the full period of composition. The basic idea for a sermon on Matthew 21:13 and a draft of Mel Heliconium had been conceived years before. An abstract of a sermon on the same passage was around since probably the mid-1620s.31 Ross also says, in the dedication of Mel Heliconium to William Seymour, the manuscript of the mythography had ‘lyen long neglected’ before publication.32 The most likely scenario is therefore that Ross found himself in urgent need of a text expressing his 28

29 Ross, Den of Theeves, 2. Ross, Den of Theeves, sig. A1v. Alexander Ross, Mel Heliconium, or Poeticall Honey Gathered out of the Weeds of Parnassus (London, 1642), 61–2. 31 A manuscript abstract of a sermon on this passage can be found in CUL MS Dd. 12.30, fols. 14r–19v. This duodecimo notebook belonged to Ross and contains a large number of sermon abstracts, many of which are dated. All of the dates refer to the mid-1620s. 32 Ross, Mel Heliconium, sig. A2r. 30

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anxieties and hopes regarding the state of English (church) politics in the spring of 1642, and found that he already had one in his drawer.

6.2. ‘Apollo and a King parallel’d’: Mel Heliconium to the Rescue The first hint that the ancient fables are conceptualized ambiguously in this mythography is the subtitle, Poetical Honey Gathered out of the Weeds of Parnassus. Rather than offering delightful rhetorical flowers, Ross confronts his reader with rank undergrowth. Still, he promises to suck, bee-like, something sweet and wholesome from it. The bee was a widely used metaphor for reading and writing, going back at least to Simonides.33 The equally common comparison between honey and eloquence can already be found in Homer.34 The gathering and honeymaking insect was a staple in commonplace books and the literature surrounding them. Usually, the source would be the busy bees in Seneca (Epistulae morales XI.84) and in the Saturnalia by Macrobius (I, preface).35 But Ross’s bees are special: they draw honey from useless weeds. John M. Wallace therefore suggested that Ross derived his title from the second essay in Plutarch’s Moralia.36 In ‘On How a Young Man Should Study Poetry’, Plutarch observes: Now the bee, in accordance with nature’s laws, discovers amid the most pungent flowers and the roughest thorns the smoothest and most palatable honey; so children, if they be rightly nurtured amid poetry, will in some way or other learn

33 For the bee as an image of authorship in early Greek poetry, see René Nünlist, Poetologische Bildersprache in der frühgriechischen Dichtung (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1998), 60–3, for the relevant Simonides fragment 593, see p. 60. 34 Nestor’s words flow sweeter than honey in Homer, Iliad, ed. and trans. A. T. Murray, rev. William F. Wyatt, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999), I: 30 (I. 249). For honey as an image for poetry or oratory in early Greek poetry, see Nünlist, Poetologische Bildersprache, 300–6. 35 For a discussion of these passages and their importance for commonplacing see Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structuring of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 12–14, et passim. For a discussion of the use of the bee-simile to describe a range of imitative practices from simple gathering to complete transformation of earlier material, see G. W. Pigman III., ‘Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly 33.1 (1980), 1–32, esp. 4–7. 36 John M. Wallace, ‘ “Examples are best precepts”: Readers and Meanings in SeventeenthCentury Poetry’, Critical Inquiry 1.2 (1974), 273–90, here 277 n. 12.

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to draw some wholesome and profitable doctrine even from passages that are suspect of what is base and improper.37

This corresponds to Ross’s idea and introduces the mythography as a text that confronts the ancient myths as something immoral and potentially dangerous. There is, however, no similarity between Plutarch’s and Ross’s actual approaches to reading. Ross renders Plutarch’s image expressive of an altogether different reception history of the stories of the ancient gods: that of the Church Fathers, who sought ways to use the dangerous tales of false gods to some good Christian end. In his dedication to William Seymour, Ross claims that in Mel Heliconium ‘may be seen what use can be made of poeticall fictions: The spoiles of AEgyptians, and a Babylonish garment, may be serviceable for the Tabernacle.’38 This language signposts Ross’s allegiance to Augustine, whose works are amongst the most frequently quoted in Ross’s oeuvre. In De doctrina Christiana, Augustine had famously appropriated the ‘Egyptian spoils’ from Exodus.39 Considering all human arts with respect to their usefulness or harmfulness for a Christian, the Bishop of Hippo explained that pagan learning is: [l]ike the treasures of the ancient Egyptians, who possessed not only idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and shunned but also vessels and ornaments of silver and gold, and clothes, which on leaving Egypt the people of Israel, in order to make better use of them, surreptitiously claimed for themselves.40

The intellectual wealth of the pagans must be brought to its just, Christian use. Leaving the mindset of the pagans as Israel left the land of the Egyptians, Christians must remove the treasures of pagan learning valuable for Christianity and apply them ‘to their true function [usum iustum], that of preaching the gospel’.41 Thus, Ross takes nothing away

37 Plutarch, Moralia, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969), 171 (II.32). 38 Ross, Mel Heliconium, sig. A2v. 39 ‘But euery woman shal borrow of her neighbour, and of her that soiourneth in her house, iewels of siluer, and iewels of gold, and rayment: and ye shall put them vpon your sonnes and vpon your daughters, and yee shall spoile the Egyptians.’ Exod. 3:22. 40 Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, ed. and trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 125. 41 Augustine, De doctrina, 125.

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from the wickedness of the gentile’s stories, while emphasizing their potential value for Christians. The Babylonian garment from Joshua 6 serves a similar purpose, although it was not used by Augustine. When Israel conquered Jericho, the Lord forbade them to take any spoils for themselves: ‘But all the siluer, and gold, and vessels of brasse and yron, are consecrated vnto the Lord: they shall come into the treasurie of the Lord’ (Josh. 6:19). Achan, however, did not obey. He took and hid a beautifully spun robe from Babylon. Only when this robe was returned to the Lord (and Achan stoned) did God return to his people. As one would expect, this Babylonish garment was used against the Laudians during the 1640s in England.42 But Ross interprets the story in favour of Laudian ceremonialism. By adding this robe to his sentence on the proper use of pagan heritage, he signals that some ornaments, ceremonies, and ideas retained from pagans or from Catholics are riches that rightly belong to the Lord. That means, rather than discarding them, they should be reclaimed from the pagans and Catholics for the English church. A reading of Mel Heliconium will reveal what the intellectual treasure is that Ross wants to salvage from the pagan fables. Mel Heliconium is a fragment. The A–Z of Roman fables is only an A–G, which, however, contains no less than forty-eight entries. Each of these consists of four parts: a title (the name of the god or hero discussed), a short description of his or her genealogy and special qualities, the ‘mysteries’ (Ross’s numbered list of interpretations), and a meditation in verse. The thought-process followed throughout can best be described as a form of distillation of Christian sense from pagan story, which is reflected in his movement from prose to poetry within each entry. Under the heading Bacchus, for example, Ross tells the story of Bacchus’s birth from Jupiter’s thigh. Then he mentions that the god was brought up in Egypt, and that ‘he subdued the Indians and other nations; 42 See e.g. Dwalphintramis, The Anatomie of the Service Book, Dedicated to the High Court of Parliament (London, 1641), 68; Samuel Rutherfurd, The Divine Right of ChurchGovernment and Excommunication, or a Peacable Dispute for the Perfection of the Holy Scripture in Point of Ceremonies and Church Government (London, 1646), 72–3. The impeached Archbishop Laud is compared to Achan in Henry Burton, The Grand Impostor Vnmasked, or a Detection of the Notorious Hypocrisie and Desperate Impiety of the Late Archbishop, So Styled, of Canterbury (London, 1644), 9. Alexandra Walsham mentions the use of Achan’s story in the Civil Wars in Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 47.

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was the first who wore a Diadem, and triumphed, and found out the use of wine’.43 The first interpretation concentrates on a loosely natural philosophical explanation of Bacchus as the vine or wine. For example, his birth from ashes and childhood in Egypt relate to the fact that a vine needs ‘hot aire, and mellow soile’.44 This theme extends into moral advice. Bacchus, as the wine, wears the diadem and triumphs because all nations are easily subdued by alcohol. The orgies and Bacchus’s accompanying tigers, panthers, and lynxes are images for what happens in drunken revelry. Ross then seizes the opportunity to warn his reader about the bad effects of excessive drinking, though ‘I discommend not the moderat use of wine, which is Jupiters sonne, or the gift of God’.45 Finally, Ross defends wine as a friend to health, wisdom, and eloquence. The second interpretation identifies Bacchus with the sun. Equating gods with the light of heaven is one of Ross’s favourite explanations. The sun is ‘both Liber and Dionysus, free from all sublunary imperfections, and freeth the world from darknesse and inconveniences of the night, and pricks forward the mindes of men to their daily actions’.46 Thirdly, Bacchus is like original sin. Much of what Ross said about the negative qualities of wine is applied to this darker subject. ‘[T]his unruly evil hath travell’d farther than Bacchus did, and hath an attendance of worse beasts then Tygers, Panthers &c. To wit, of terrours, and of evil conscience, and actual sins, it hath subdued all mankinde.’47 With the fourth interpretation, Ross leads his reader back into the light of day: inevitably in this mythography, ‘Christ is the true Dionysius’.48 He is ‘Liber, who makes us onely free, the great King, who hath subdued all Nations, whose Diadem is glory’.49 Now, Ross is ready for the poem. The poetic meditations pull together the meanings Ross has accumulated during the interpretations and concentrate them into Christian verse. The process can be demonstrated with Bacchus’s role as furtherer of eloquence. During the first interpretation of Bacchus as wine, Ross tells his reader that ‘Mercury carried him, being a child, to Macris the daughter of Aristaeus [the beekeeper from Georgics 4, discussed earlier in Mel Heliconium], who anointed his lips with honey; to shew that in wine

43 45 47 49

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 50. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 51. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 54. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 54.

44 46 48

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 51. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 53. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 54.

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is eloquence’.50 This image is taken over into the Christian allegory: Christ’s ‘lips were truly anointed with honey, grace was diffused in them, and never man spake as he did’.51 In vino eloquentia turns into the gospel. Finally, in the meditation, all but the Christian mystery has disappeared and nothing is left of Macris’s gesture towards Bacchus but the essence of the imagery, sweet eloquence: This is he whose eloquence Doth surpasse all human sense: From whose lips, as from a still [= distiller], Drops of Nectar down did drill [= trickle].52

Distillation is also a useful master-trope for Ross’s careful process of eliciting Christian meaning out of the pagan stories. His mythography suggests a study of the fables not for hermeneutic but for devotional ends, encouraging his audience to explore the Christian resonances of an image, to linger over it and play with ever more possibilities of reading, say, the honey-anointed lips of Bacchus. In Ross’s case, allegory is akin to meditation. Correspondingly, Mel Heliconium does not claim that Christian meanings are truly contained in the pagan stories, despite the inevitable equation of a god or hero with Christ, God, or the devil at the end of every chapter. A comparison of Ross’s attitude to Reynolds’s treatment of divine truths in ancient mythological poetry is revealing. While Reynolds was engaged in a painful and eventually incomplete process of removing the idea of divine inspiration from his Protestant poetics, Ross’s interpretations are in no way alleviated by Neo-Platonic sentiments that might explain the ancient myths as cryptic vessels of Christian truths. The pagans, he explains, had no idea about Christ. ‘Before Christ came, the Gentiles were but Ants, men of earthly conversation, being fed with roots of superstition.’53 Only a few of the most learned pagans were able to penetrate a little further: ‘the blinde Gentiles made [Fortune] a blinde goddesse, ruling things by her will, rather then by counsell; . . . but I think, that the wiser sort, by fortune understood Gods will or providence; which the Poet calls omnipotent, and the Historian,

50 52

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 52. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 55.

51 53

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 54–5. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 8.

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the ruler of all things.’54 Ross imagines a scenario, in which the ‘ruder’ people took the various gods and their stories and responsibilities at face value, while more learned individuals did not believe in them and were in possession of some reasonable truths about the universe.55 Whatever divine, Christian sense Ross’s readers gain from ancient fables, is the result of their own spiritual refinement of the material. All forty-eight entries end with some lines of verse, but some stand out, because they are followed by either two sets of verses or a titled poem. It is to these special cases that Ross directs his reader’s heightened attention. The mythological figures rendered conspicuous in such a way are Apollo (a meditation followed by ‘Apollo and a King parallel’d’), Cadmus and Harmonia (a meditation followed by ‘The picture of a King’), Cupido (a meditation followed by ‘That Christ is the true God of Love’), and Deucalion (‘The happinesse of Britain’). In Cupido, Ross is on a mission to purge the word ‘love’ from all unseemly connotations. The rest of the marked fables, however, follow a pattern. In the first interpretation of his mysteries, Apollo is identified as the sun, ‘both the destroyer and preserver of things’.56 In the second, Ross informs us that ‘Our Saviour Christ is the true Apollo, both a destroyer of Satan’s kingdom, and a saver of his people’.57 Finally, Apollo is a king. ‘As the Sunne amongst the Planets; so is a King amongst his subjects; . . . the destroyer of the wicked, and a preserver of good men.’58 Finally, ‘Apollo and a King parallel’d’ connects Apollo, the sun, kingship, and Christ: Like as Apollo’s sparkling flame, Doth cherish with his beams the frame Of this round Globe we see: So Kings extend on us the light Of their just laws, and with their might Keep us from injury.59

Ross makes sure that the parallel to Charles I is clear. ‘Now if this Sun shines any where | He shines in our Northern sphaere, | And moves in British skies.’60 Ross’s mysteries thus prepare—and his meditation then

54 55 56 58 60

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 143. The locus classicus for this assumption is Cicero, De natura deorum II.28. 57 Ross, Mel Heliconium, 26. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 29. 59 Ross, Mel Heliconium, 29. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 32–3. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 33.

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makes explicit—a close connection between Christ and kings, especially Charles I. The same is true for Cadmus. Cadmus is introduced as the King of Thebes, to whom Jupiter himself gave Harmonia as a wife. Ross finds three key ‘mysteries’ hidden in his story. First, ‘Cadmus may be meant of a wise Governour; who marrieth with Harmonia, when he doth all things with order and Harmonie’.61 Second, the hero stands for a ‘good Minister’ who, ‘like Cadmus, must do all things with order and decencie’.62 ‘He must also kill the Dragon that infecteth the Well, that is, the Heretick.’63 Third, Cadmus is Christ, who is ‘the husband of order and harmony, the builder of a greater city than Thebes’.64 Thus, Christ, the king and his clergymen are paralleled as agents of order each within their spheres. The difference is one of function and degree, but really they are types of each other. The mysteries are followed by the expected meditation on Christ, the triumphant Prince of Heaven, who treads down the Dragon/Devil. On the facing page, the ‘Picture of a King’ translates the elements of the Cadmus story into an allegorization of an ideal king’s life. A monarch is Christ’s viceregent on earth and the only protector of political and religious harmony in a commonwealth. The topic of God’s (or the king’s) ministers is taken up again in Deucalion, who is ‘the tipe of a minister’.65 The office of ministers is to ‘water the barre[n] ground of mens hearts, & to call them to repentance & grace; they must be just as Deucalion was, and build up the living temple of God’.66 The king’s magistrates are a similar case: ‘Magistrates and such as would bring rude and barbarous people to civilitie, and of stones to make them men, must have the perfections of Deucalion; prudence, religion, justice &c.’67 The poem following the entry on Deucalion is ‘The happinesse of Britain’, which celebrates the British peacefulness within a war-torn Europe. The good work of British priests and the king are mostly responsible for this peace, the glory of which is very much the glory of the beauty of holiness. At the end of the poem, the relationship between the king and God is reiterated:

61 63 65 67

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 65. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 67. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 114. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 116.

62 64

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 66. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 67. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 115.

66

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Great God, prime author of our peace, Let not this happinesse decrease, But let us flourish still: Take not thy mercie from this land, Nor from the man of thy right hand, So shall we fear no ill.68

Behind the power of the king and his untiring ministers and magistrates looms the power of the Lord. Thus, while Ross deals with morals, the praise of Christ, and other devotional topics, his greatest and most strongly emphasized concern is with politics. His interpretations and meditations together forge a strong alliance between God, Christ, the king, and his secular as well as ecclesiastical ministers for the good of the people. This alliance guarantees harmony, peace, the enforcement of law, and the battle against heresy. Mel Heliconium teaches a pious life, but even more so it preaches that kings are God’s vice-regents on earth and without them there can be no peace and piety. This emphasizes the hierarchical order from God downwards to the lowliest member of the earthly commonwealth that was already prominent in Gods House, or the House of Prayer. And just like the sermon, Mel Heliconium draws the parallel between Britain and Augustan Rome. Again and again the meditations bring Charles I into the text, and he emerges as an ideal ruler. A ‘Prince so perfect to be found, | He’s either in King Arthurs chair, | Or else he doth reside no where’.69 Ross’s readers would have been aware of this perfect prince’s literary prototype: Virgil’s Aeneas. Aeneas emerges from Ross’s description as everything that is laudable—the perfect ruler, husband (!), son, and father. The emphasis, however, is clearly on the piety of the Trojan’s actions: Aeneas is the Idea of a perfect Prince and Governour, in whom wee see piety towards his gods in carrying them with him, having rescued them from the fire of Troy; in worshipping the gods of the places still where he came; in going to Apollos Temple, as soon as he lands in Italy, in his devout prayers he makes to Jupiter, Apollo, Venus, and other gods.70

Such high commendation of Aeneas, though alien to most modern readers of his adventures, was in no way a radical thought in Ross’s 68 70

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 118. Ross, Mel Heliconium, 13.

69

Ross, Mel Heliconium, 69.

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England. According to Wilson-Okamura, the ‘ideal-man theory’ was the most common approach to Virgil’s epic in the Renaissance.71 It is based on an epideictic reading of the poem. ‘At the heart of this reading is an ideal, a vision of things as they should be, in which we find a morally perfect hero through whom virtue is praised and vice is condemned.’72 This reading can be applied to politics in such a way that through Aeneas honour is heaped on his descendant Augustus. The power of gods, especially Aeneas’s mother Venus, elevates the authority of Aeneas as well as that of Augustus, adopted son of the divus Julius Caesar. Accordingly, Ross takes particular care that the model of Charles’s rule is not simply Augustus, but pius Augustus and pius Aeneas. If Charles is Augustus, then Ross must be Virgil, or Horace. Indeed, the paratexts of Mel Heliconium place the English clergyman into the venerable tradition of the Augustan poets. Ross calls his old benefactor Edward Seymour (grandfather to the dedicatee William Seymour) the ‘Maecenas of my young Muses’.73 The motto of the mythography is taken from Horace’s Odes: ego apis Matinae more modoque grata carpentis thyma per laborem plurimum circa nemus uvidique Tiburis ripas operosa parvus carmina fingo.74 I, in manner and method like a Matine bee that with incessant toil sips the lovely thyme around the woods and riverbanks of well-watered Tibur, fashion in a small way my painstaking songs.

This is first of all an example of the modesty topos; but there is more. The motto is taken from Odes 4.2, Pindarum quisquis studet aemulari. In this ode, Horace refuses to compose an epinikion on Augustus in the grand Pindaric style, claiming to be unable to write in this vast, vatic vein. At the same time, however, his recusatio is a beautiful praise poem on the 71 David Scott Wilson-Okamura, Virgil in the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 208–12. 72 Craig Kallendorf, In Praise of Aeneas: Virgil and Epideictic Rhetoric in the Early Italian Renaissance (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1989), 9. 73 Ross, Mel Heliconium, sig. A2r. 74 Horace, Odes and Epodes, ed. and trans. Niall Rudd (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 222–3 (IV.2.27–32).

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princeps.75 Horace imagines himself amongst the crowd cheering for Augustus in his imminent triumph (16 BC) and lovingly describes the calf he will sacrifice for Augustus: a little brown animal with a white half-moon on its forehead. By choosing this motto, Ross presents Mel Heliconium as an offering to his king. In imitation of the Augustan poets, who frequently imagined themselves into such a triumphant context, Ross employs this motto-poem as he did Aeneid VIII.716 in Gods House, or the House of Prayer: he is inscribing himself into a scene amidst the maxima delubra of Rome, sacrificing for Augustus at one of his triumphs, celebrating the union of political and religious order under a pious prince.76 But as things were in 1642, Mel Heliconium ends on a prayer well in keeping with its anxieties and its aim to demonstrate the power of God behind the government: The man of thy right hand preserve Lord as the apple of thine eye; And from this sinfull land Let not true love with her two sisters flye. But as its name is Albion, So in it still let all be one.77

From Ross’s 1642 sermons and Mel Heliconium, a twofold pattern emerges. There is a clear hierarchy linking each and every subject to his superiors and eventually to the king, who is God’s representative on earth. This hierarchy must be reflected in a well-ordered commonwealth, in which all is peace, beauty, and piety. Charles I would make Britain into such a commonwealth and the Church of England into such a church. He thus merits comparison with pius Augustus, who brought peace and splendour to the Roman state and religion. These insights can be carried

75 On this ode see Eduard Fraenkel, Horace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), 433–40; Hans Peter Syndikus, Die Lyrik des Horaz: Eine Interpretation der Oden, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972–3), Bd. II: Drittes und Viertes Buch (1973), 296–310. On Horace and the recusatio poem more generally see R. O. A. M. Lyne, Horace: Behind the Public Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 31–9. 76 The similarity between the two scenes of pious triumph in Odes IV.2 and Aen. VIII.716 was also suggested by Paul Shorey in his commentary on this poem. He glosses the word ‘dabimus’ from the lines ‘Io Triumphe | civitas omnis dabimusque divis | tura benignis’ (IV.2.50–2) with ‘at the totam delubra per urbem’. See Horace, Odes and Epodes, ed. with commentary Paul Shorey, rev. Paul Shorey and Gordon J. Laing (Boston: Benjamin H. Sanborn, 1911), 422. 77 Ross, Mel Heliconium, 176.

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away from pondering the stories of the ancient gods under Ross’s guidance. All of this would fit together very well and suit the context of royalist literature in the 1640s perfectly, if Ross was not at the same time emphasizing the paganism of the fables. Seeing that the Laudians had to fend off accusations of idolatry and unflattering comparisons to modern as well as ancient Roman worshippers, one should ask: from the perspective of a Laudian royalist, where lies the point of advantageous comparison between a pagan state’s religion riddled with superstitions and Charles I’s church government? And with what legitimation does Ross discover a defence of monarchy and of the ‘beauty of holiness’ in the Roman fables? In order to answer these questions, it helps to contextualize the 1642 texts with Ross’s magnum opus, Pansebeia.

6.3. Pansebeia and the Universal Function of Religion in a Commonwealth In the fifty years after its first printing in 1653, Pansebeia, or a View of All Religions in the World ran to ten ever-longer editions, as well as a German, a French, and a Dutch translation. Despite its evident significance for seventeenth-century readers, this text has not been discussed at any length by scholars. Pansebeia sets out with a similar image to Mel Heliconium: that of weeding. Omnia autem probate quod bonum est, tenete (‘Prove all things; hold fast that which is good’, 1 Thess. 5:21) is the motto of the volume, the physical bulk of which correctly suggest the large amount of material sifted for valuable tenets. In Pansebeia, as in Mel Heliconium: are set before you, light & darkness, truth and falshood, gold and dross, flowrs and weeds, corn and chaff, which I know you are able to discriminate, & to gather hony with the Bee, out of every weed, with Sampson to take meat out of the eater, with Virgil to pick gold out of dung, and with the Physitian to extract antidotes out of poyson.78

Even though Pansebeia was published a decade after the other texts I am discussing, the relationship between it and the 1642 mythography and sermons is close—not only with respect to ideas, but also with respect to 78

Alexander Ross, Pansebeia, or a View of All Religions in the World (London, 1653), sig. A4r–v.

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the imagery and examples collected to present those ideas. A good example for the latter similarities is Ross’s treatment of the church robbers. In Gods House, or the House of Prayer, Ross had reminded his listeners of the cruel fates of famous church robbers, of ‘Cambyses that spoyled the Temples of Egypt, of Xerxes and Brennus, who robbed Jupiters and Apollo’s temples, of the stolne gold of Tholousa; Of Pompey, Craßus, and others’.79 The exact same list in the same order, though greatly embellished, occurs in Pansebeia.80 It seems as if Ross had a commonplace book which included a heading ‘church robbers, ancient’, and which he plundered as he phrased his favourite arguments. Because Pansebeia is conceived on much broader terms and thus allows a more detailed appreciation of Ross’s religious and political concepts, it provides an important context to understand Ross’s approach to mythography in 1642. In Pansebeia, or a View of All Religions in the World, Ross gathered together much of what an early modern reader could know about the festivals, gods, rites, temples, and orders of priesthoods in Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. The first five (out of fifteen) sections are devoted to a description of the polytheistic religions in these places, including ancient Greece and Rome in section 4. Section 6 discusses Islam, being one of ‘the two prevalent Religions now in Europe’.81 The other one is Christianity, but section 7 is less a description of Christian beliefs than of the heresies endangering the true faith. Section 8 narrates the theological opinions held within Christianity from the seventh century until Ross’s own day. Religious orders are described in great detail in sections 9, 10, and 11. Section 12 is devoted to what he calls contemporary ‘sects’, such as the Brownists, Familists, or Arminians. Ross then moves on to the tenets of Roman Catholicism (section 13) and Eastern Christianity (section 14). In the last part of the book, he steps back from his evidence and draws his conclusions. Large parts of the book are thus a heresiology, as the full subtitle suggests: A View of All Religions in the World with the Several Church-Governments, from the Creation, to these Times Together with a Discovery of All Known Heresies in All Ages and Places throughout Asia, Africa, America, and Europe. However, hardly any material from this compendium of errors contributes to Ross’s political argument, 79 81

Ross, Gods House, 11. Ross, Pansebeia, sig. ¶2v.

80

Ross, Pansebeia, 533–4.

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which is found in section 15. Here, he relies on examples from ancient Rome, as well as a few elements from his discussions of ancient Greek paganism and Islam. The first thing to note about Ross’s representation of Roman religion in Pansebeia is that he suppresses an account of the origins of the pagan gods, an account that his reader would have expected from a book on Church-Governments, from the Creation, to these Times. Only once, in the preface to the reader, does he allude to the problem: ‘It stood with the justice of God, to suffer men who in the beginning were of one language and religion to fall into a Babel and confusion, both of tongues and false religions, for not retaining the truth.’82 In order to understand this omission, it is important to know how the seventeenth century imagined the beginnings of paganism. Stephen Batman has already furnished us with one version of the story, when he explained that Satan filled man’s brain with deviant imaginations as soon as God permitted it. Ross would have been aware of at least three further, prominent explanations of how humanity’s lapse into irreligion occurred: textual misreadings, Noah’s curse, and Euhemerism. The first explanation could be found—amongst others—in the most authoritative text available on the topic, John Selden’s De diis Syris syntagma II (1617). Selden treats of ‘Deorum multitudinis ORIGINE & PROCESSV’ in the third chapter of the prolegomena.83 While Selden offers a number of different origins for paganism, they are all embedded in a story of decline. As G. J. Toomer notes in his discussion of De diis Syris, Selden took one of the main assumptions of his book from Joseph Scaliger’s Opus de emendatione temporum, ‘namely, that pagan deities can often be explained as perversions or misunderstandings of the biblical truth’.84 In this way, Selden asks ‘vndenam Jupiter Sabazius?’ (‘from where then came Jupiter Sabazius?’), and immediately answers himself ‘a Iehouah Sabaoth’ (‘from Jehova Sabaoth’).85 This pagan god is the fruit of a fallen word, a philological lapse. Such a level of sophistication did evidently not appeal to Alexander Ross, who does not quote De diis Syris in Pansebeia.

82

Ross, Pansebeia, sig. A9r–v. John Selden, De diis Syris (London, 1617), xxiv–lxix. 84 G. J. Toomer, John Selden: A Life in Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), I: 212. 85 Selden, De diis Syris, xxxii. 83

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But Ross does use a text dependent on Selden’s work: Elias Schedius’s De diis Germanis (1648), which offers a more popular explanation for paganism and is treated as an authority in Pansebeia. While relying on Selden in other ways, the ‘dedicatio’ of De diis Germanis rehearses the theories of an author Selden had been at pains to refute: the highly popular Annius of Viterbo (Gianni Nanni). Toomer finds it remarkable that Selden ‘still feels it is necessary to denounce the forgeries of Annius’ in 1617.86 But evidently the Commentaria Fratri Joannis Annii Viterbiensis super opera diversorum auctorum de antiquitatibus loquentium (1498) were still taken seriously by some in 1648. Annius had included in his commentaries a book by Berosus, the Chaldean. Some genuine fragments of Berosus exist, but Annius’s text is his own invention. David M. Whitford has discussed Annius’s version of Genesis 9 in detail in his book The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era (2009).87 I will confine myself to Schedius’s slightly altered version. After the Flood, Noah invented wine and became so drunk that he lay in his tent ‘genitalia denudatus’.88 His son Cham (Ham), who believes he is his father’s least favourite child, finds Noah in this compromising situation. In order to stop Noah from producing more favourites, Cham ‘virilia manu venefica tetigit, taciteq[ue] magico carmine submurmurans, eum sterilem, & ad foemellam aliquam foecundandam inhabilem fecit’89 (‘touched with his sorcerous hand the virility [of Noah], and, silently murmuring a magical incantation, he made him sterile and unable to get any girl pregnant’). When Noah realizes this, he curses Cham, who dies. ‘Anima autem ejus ab illius discipulis inter sidera credebatur relata, dicebaturque ab iisdem Zoroaster, ac si dicas, vivens astrum’90 (‘But his soul was believed by his disciples to have been returned amongst the stars, and he was called Zoroaster, as if to say, living star). This, essentially, is the beginning of paganism. The Germans, however, do not stem from Cham. They are descendants of Tuysco, ‘Noae Filius, Germanorum

86

Selden, De diis Syris, sig. A5r; Toomer, Selden, I: 213. David M. Whitford, The Curse of Ham in the Early Modern Era (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 45–76. Whitford seems to be unaware of the role Ham plays in seventeenth-century accounts of the origins of irreligion. 88 Elias Schedius, De diis Germanis sive veteri Germanorum, Gallorum, Britannorum, Vandalorum religione syngrammata quatuor (Amsterdam, 1648), sig. *4v. 89 90 Schedius, De diis Germanis, sig. *4v. Schedius, De diis Germanis, sig. *4v. 87

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Sarmatarumque Pater’91 (‘Noah’s son and father of the Germans and the Sarmatians’), who had persevered in the true faith of his father. Ultimately, the armies of Cham’s pagan and idolatrous posterity attack central Europe. For Schedius, the fable of the war of the Titans is the surviving memory of the fight between the ‘Teutones’ or ‘Tuiscones’ and Cham (Jupiter Hammon).92 With Jupiter’s victory, paganism in Germany began: ‘Cum itaque aliquam multa secula veri DEI cultores extitissent, tandem in sensum perversum distracti a creatore ad creaturas, proh nefas! delapsi’93 (‘Although thus for many ages worshippers of the true God existed, at last distracted from the creature towards the created, Oh unspeakable crime! they slipped into a twisted understanding’). The third explanation of paganism can be found in another important source for Pansebeia, Purchas His Pilgrimage. Samuel Purchas’s description of his project in his subtitle sounds very similar to Ross’s: Relations of the World and the Religions Observed in All Ages and Places Discouered, from the Creation unto this Present (1613). But while Ross tacitly skips the first few thousand years of his history, Purchas duly begins with the creation. He discusses the beginning of pagan worship in chapter 10, ‘Of Babylonia, the originall of Idolatrie: and the Chaldaeans Antiquities before the Floud, as BEROSVS hath reported them’ (meaning the genuine Berosus, not Annius’s).94 Once more, Cham plays a central role: In this Countrey was built the first Citie which wee reade of after the Floud, by the vngratefull world, moued thereunto (as some thinke) by Nimrod, the son of Cush, nephew of Cham. For as Cains posteritie, before the Floud, were called the Sonnes of Men, as more sauouring the things of men then of God; more industrious in humane inuentions, then religious deuotions: so by Noahs Curse it may appeare, and by the Nations that descended of him, that Cham was the first Author, after the Floud, of irreligion.95

Babylon, therefore, is the place from where irreligion spread, because the city belonged to the family of Noah’s cursed son. Purchas thus cannot entirely disentangle himself from ‘fabling Annius’, even though he knows

91 92 93 94 95

Schedius, De diis Germanis, sig. *8r. Schedius, De diis Germanis, sig. **1v–**2r. Schedius, De diis Germanis, sig. **2r. Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimage (London, 1613), 45. Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 45.

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that Annius’s Berosus was a forgery.96 Uneasy, he moves on to ‘truer and more certaine reports’.97 These reports are taken from mostly Christian authorities like Eusebius, Lactantius, and Tertullian. While the witnesses all contradict each other in detail, their explanations, as Purchas relates them, are in essence Euhemerist. Eusebius, for example, teaches that the father of Abraham, Thara, invented images in order to commemorate Babylonian ‘Warriors, Rulers, and such as had atchieued noblest Enterprises & worthiest Exploits in their life time’.98 But their posterity, ‘ignorant of that their scope (which was, to obserue their memorials which had been authors of good things, and because they were their fore-fathers) worshipped them as heauenly Deities, and sacrificed to them’.99 This does not only account for paganism, but also for idolatry. The Book of Wisdom confirms Euhemerist roots for pagan gods: bereaved parents deify children, tyrants force their people to worship them, great craftsmen, because of their wondrous skill, are taken for gods.100 Purchas also copies the relevant passage from Lactantius’s remarks on Noah, Cham, and the origin of false religion.101 After Cham had been cursed, Purchas writes, he ‘receiued not of his father the worship of GOD’, which rendered his posterity ignorant of their maker.102 But even the other descendants of Noah, with time and geographical expansion, forgot the truth and thought up new religions. Amongst those were the Egyptians, who were the first to ‘behold & adore the heauenly bodies’ (mostly, because their houses lacked roofs):103 Other men scattered through the World, admiring the Elements, the Heauen, Sunne, Land, Sea, without any Images & Temples worshipped them, and sacrificed to them sub dio, till in processe of time they erected Temples & Images to

96

97 Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 45, cf. 33. Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 46. 99 Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 46. Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 46. 100 Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 47. 101 ‘When their father recognised what they had done, he disinherited his son Ham and banished him. Ham fled, and settled in the part of the earth now called Arabia; it is called Canaan, and its people Canaanites, from his name. These were the first people not to know God, because their leader and founder, after the curse upon him, did not follow his father in the worship of God, thus bequeathing to his descendants ignorance of the godhead.’ Lactantius, Divine Institutes, trans. Anthony Bowen and Peter Garnsey (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003), 158–9 (II.13, in other editions this is sometimes ch. 14). 102 103 Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 47. Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 47. 98

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their most puissant Kings, & ordained vnto them Sacrifices and Incence: so wandering from the knowledge of the true GOD, they became Gentiles.104

Thus, while Noah’s curse remains a good point of departure, Purchas’s sources are brought together to tell a story of decline explained by human forgetfulness and Euhemerism. Ross probably was familiar with each of these three approaches to the origins of pagan gods. Not only were they the most common explanations in his time; Ross also refers his reader to Joseph Scaliger’s, Schedius’s, and Purchas’s works.105 It is therefore conspicuous that, despite his subtitle, Ross’s acknowledgement of the failure of post-diluvian humanity to retain the truth is at best fleeting. He even gives some agency in this matter to God (the confusion of tongues). Ross’s subsequent treatment of Roman religion suggests that his omission of this story of human failure was deliberate. Paganism, for all Ross knew, originated in an unforgivable lapse—a nefas, as Schedius has it. But in Pansebeia, the ancient Romans are meant to function as religious examples to be imitated by Ross’s Christian contemporaries. Attaching their religion to this story of spreading evil would have made a favourable comparison rhetorically ineffective, while suppressing the beginnings of paganism helps portray the Romans in the best possible light. Furthermore, Ross suggests that the Roman pantheon was no pantheon, but an elaborate worship of only one god, the sun: Their chiefe deities were twenty, namely: Jupiter, the God of thunder, Juno of riches, Venus of beauty, Minerva of wisdome, Vesta of the Earth, Ceres of Corn, Diana of hunting, Mars of wars, Mercury of Eloquence, Vulcan, of fire, Apollo of Physick, Neptune of the Sea, Janus of Husbandry, Saturn of time, Genius of Nativities, Orcus of Hell, Bacchus of Wine, Tellus of Seeds, Sol the Sun, and Luna the Moon. But indeed under all these names they understood the Sun, to whom for his divers effects, and operations, they gave divers names, as Macrobius sheweth.106

104

Purchas, His Pilgrimage, 47. For Schedius, see n. 100. Ross draws on Purchas in the sections on ancient and contemporary Eastern religions, e.g. Pansebeia, 54, 55, 57, 70, 71, 77, etc. Like authors such as Richard Hakluyt or Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Purchas provides Ross with details about ancient and contemporary religions in faraway regions (Babylon, Malabar, Bengal, Angola, the Congo, etc.). Ross shows awareness that Purchas had read the same authors he uses, e.g. on Virginia, ‘See Hackluit, and Purchas out of him’ (p. 81). With respect to Scaliger, Ross refers mostly to De emendatione for information on ancient religions (e.g. p. 39 on Babylon). In section 15, Scaliger is referred to in order to prove ancient sun worship (e.g. pp. 543, 544). 106 Ross, Pansebeia, 100–1; see also 115. 105

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Ross adopts Macrobius’s syncretism unequivocally in Pansebeia. As we have already seen in Mel Heliconium, Macrobius features prominently in all mythographical works by Ross, mostly with reference to his Saturnalia. This is a fictional dialogue written in order to hand down Macrobius’s knowledge to his son Eustachius. Book I is dedicated to a syncretistic exposition of Roman religion. According to the learned Praetextus, the ‘diverse powers of the sun have given names to as many gods’.107 In the various deities of the pantheon different aspects of the celestial light are being worshipped. Praetextus explains this by showing how Apollo, Jupiter, Adonis, and so on are all really embodiments of the sun (Book I, chapters 17–23). Ross supports this theory in Pansebeia with the two most authoritative sources available to him, the Bible and Virgil: By what we have said, appears that the wise Gentiles did acknowledge but one Deity, giving him divers names, from his divers effects and operations. This Deity was nothing else but the Sun, as we have shewed; whose power is diffused every where, and nothing, as David saith, is hid from the heat thereof: Jovis omnia plena, saith Virgil Ecl. 3. all things are filled with Jupiter.108

Sun worship is presented as a rational practice. Ross clearly states that the ancients gained glimpses into the nature of God through the use of their natural reason.109 Confronted with something ultimately incomprehensible, and seeing that ‘no sensible entitie was comparable to the Sun in glory, light, motion, power, beauty, operation, &c. but that all things in a manner had dependence from him in respect to life, motion, comfort and being’, the Romans made the sun their sole deity.110 Ross’s pagans, then, were monotheists. There is no reason for Ross to clutter his margin with proofs for such a statement. Pagan belief in a single deity was a topos so well rehearsed in Renaissance literature that a hint to other authors sufficed. Ross refers his reader, for example, to Philip de Mornay’s De la vérité de la religion Chrétienne (Paris, 1585), which had been translated into English by Philip Sidney and Arthur Golding (published 1617). Mornay ran through all the usual evidence culled from ancient philosophers and poets in support of pagan monotheism in his chapter, ‘Que la sagesse de ce monde a recognèu ún seul 107 Macrobius, Saturnalia, trans. Percival Vaughan Davies (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969), 114 (I.17.4). 108 109 Ross, Pansebeia, 554–5. Ross, Pansebeia, 539. 110 Ross, Pansebeia, 539.

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Dieux’ (‘That the wisdom of this world recognized a single god’). Ross’s statement that the gentiles even had ‘some glimmering of the Trinity’111 could equally be backed up with de Mornay, who had devoted chapter 6 of De la vérité to showing how ancient philosophy agreed with the doctrine of the Trinity. Thus, rather than consigning the Romans to the darkness of irreligion, Ross portrays them straining towards the light with all their God-given abilities. According to Ross, Roman paganism, originally, was not even idolatrous. ‘Numa taught the Romans to worship their Gods by offering Corn, and Cakes besprinkled with salt, and to erect Temples, but no Images, thinking it both absurd and impossible to represent that incomprehensible power, by outward shapes and formes.’112 It was only much later that they were taught to set up images, ‘according to the Grecian manner’.113 According to their higher moral standard, the Romans treated their gods differently from the way the Greeks treated theirs. Homer, for example, shows Jupiter breaking his promise, being ridiculed, falling in love, and being subject to sleep. ‘So that, albeit both the Greeks and the Romans worshipped the same Jupiter; yet the Romans being a wiser people, spake always reverently of him, as may be seen in the Prince of Poets, Virgil triumphant.’114 (This explains why Mel Heliconium abounds with quotations from Virgil, while Ovid, who treats his gods as irreverently as Homer did, is never mentioned.) However, if the more knowledgeable pagans grasped that there is only one God, why are there so many of them in the Roman pantheon? I answer, this multiplication of Deities was for the satisfaction and content of the rude people, which could not comprehend, how one and the same Deitie could be diffused through all parts of the Universe; therefore the wiser sort were forced to devise as many gods as there were species of things in the world. And because the ignorant people would worship no Deity, but what they saw, therefore their Priests were faine to represent those invisible powers by pictures and images, without which the people thought they could not be safe or secure if these gods were not still present with them.115

Both the assumption of a divide between the wise and the rude, and the idea that the rude simply could not conceive of a single deity were

111 114

Ross, Pansebeia, 517. Ross, Pansebeia, 108.

112 115

Ross, Pansebeia, 96. Ross, Pansebeia, 555–6.

113

Ross, Pansebeia, 96.

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commonplace.116 Ross’s particular combination of these two assumptions, however, is surprising. Schedius, for example, had written: ‘Hi [vulgi & imperiti] enim, rationi lora nimium permittentes, tantam machinam, totque & tam diversas & diversae naturae in ea res non posse subsistere, nisi certum cuique Numen destinarent, persuaderi non potuerunt’117 (‘For they [the vulgar and ignorant], giving too much rein to their reason, could not but be persuaded that so great a machine with so many and such diverse things of diverse nature in it could not exist, unless they fixed a certain divine power to each’). Ross, however, claims that the prudent philosophers and priests invented the gods for the benefit of the simple people. Edward Herbert, Baron of Cherbury, assumes, like Ross, that the priests made up the gods. But Cherbury sees this as a vicious act that led the simple people astray from proper worship.118 For Ross, in contrast, the origin of the Roman pantheon was an admirable act of benevolent accommodation. Ross’s portrayal of Roman religion dissociates it from the disreputable beginnings of paganism and emphasizes its monotheism, rationality, moral superiority, and charity. ‘There never was a wiser State then the Romans, and more zealous in the worship of their gods.’119 The Roman fables had been invented by the priests and philosophers for the good of the people. They are the site where Roman religion was created and the basis for the worship of the invented gods. And with the manner of worship, we have reached the heart of Ross’s argument: They reverenced and obeyed their Priests, wee dishonour, disobey and slight ours; they observed many Festivall dayes to their Idols, we grudge to give one day to the service of the true God . . . such reverence and devotion they carried to their Idols, that they durst not enter their Temples, nor draw neere their Altars, till first they were purified; they did not onely kneel, but fall flat on the ground before their fained Gods; they knock their breasts, beat their heads to the ground, teare

116

For this notion see also Ross, Mel Heliconium, 143. Schedius, De diis Germanis, sig. *2v. 118 Edward Herbert, Pagan Religion: A Translation of De Religione Gentilium, trans. John Anthony Butler (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1996), 52 et passim. One of the undercurrents of this argument, both in Cherbury and in Ross, is the debate about the role of priests in a society. The two authors have very different opinions about ‘priestcraft’. An introduction to the problem, albeit with a focus on the restoration church, is J. A. I. Champion, The Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: The Church of England and Its Enemies 1660–1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 119 Ross, Pansebeia, 530. 117

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their skinnes, wound and cut their flesh, thinking thereby to pacify their false gods: Whereas we will not debarre our selves of the least pleasure or profit to gaine Heaven; and so irreverent is our behaviour in the presence and house of Almighty God, Before whom the Cherubims and Seraphims dare not stand, but with covered faces: as if he were our equal, and not our Lord or Father, for (to speak in the Prophets words) Malach. I.6. If hee bee our Father, where is his honour? And if he bee our Lord, where is his fear?120

This is Alexander Ross, the Laudian preacher. All these topics can be found in Gods House, or the House of Prayer. In this quotation, Ross speaks of pagans more generally, but each of these acts, we can safely assume, was carried out best by the Romans, the most zealous in the worship of their gods. They did what, according to Ross, the English Christians should do: value the priesthood, honour and beautify churches, pray, kneel, and most importantly, respect and obey their father, king, and Lord. Still, the question remains: what exactly is the tertium comparationis between the pious pagan Romans and the good English Christians? The underlying point of comparison is political. All this exemplary zeal served the interest of the Roman state: No spur [is] so sharp to stir and extimulate peoples affections towards the defence, obedience, reverence, and maintenance of their Governours, as Religion; therefore the wise Roman Emperors took more pride and delight in the titles of Pius and Sanctus; of Pious, Holy, Religious, then to be stiled, Wise, Fortunate, Stout, or Valorous; and to let the people know what care they had of Religion, they alone would be called Pontifices Maximi, or chief Bishops. There is no epithet that the wise Poet gives to Aeneas so often, as that of Piety; Pius Aeneas, pietate insignis & armis, insignem pietate uirum, &c. Quo iustior alter, nec pietate fuit, &c. Virgil.121

In their undisputed political wisdom, ideal princes of the Roman Empire championed religion, because they knew that this would stabilize their reign. Such a religion has one preeminent aim: to keep people in order through the fear of God. ‘[T]here can be no obedience or submission of Inferiours to their Superiours without Religion, which teacheth that Princes and Magistrates are Gods Vice-Gerents here on Earth.’122 At some point in Ross’s treatment, the falseness of Roman religion was

120 122

Ross, Pansebeia, sig. A8r–v. Ross, Pansebeia, 520.

121

Ross, Pansebeia, 523.

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rendered irrelevant, and it became an expediency of successful rule—a tool of government. Ross, an avid reader of Augustine, would have known the concept of civil theology from the City of God (Book VI, chapters 2–7). In chapter 5, Augustine discusses the categories of mythical, natural, and civil theology (‘uno fabuloso, altero naturali tertioque civili’123), which Varro had introduced in his lost Antiquities. Mythical theology refers to the fables of poetry and stage plays. Natural theology means the philosophers’ inquiries into the nature of the gods. Civil theology is the practice of religion by the people in a commonwealth, detailing the forms, places, and times of worship. The Bishop of Hippo collapses the difference between the mythical and the civil theology because ‘the gods who are laughed at in the theatres are the same as those adored in the temples, and the deities to whom you offer sacrifices are identical with those for whom you put on games’.124 Augustine finds nothing good to say about mythical or civil religion: ‘Both “theologies” are disgusting, both deserve condemnation.’125 Ross strongly disagrees with this. For him, civil theology has great value. Returning to the Scylla-and-Charybdis image, Ross explains that religion is ‘the Sacred Anchor, by which the Great Ship of the State is held fast, that she may not bee split upon the Quick-Sands of popular tumults, or on the Rocks of Sedition’.126 Ross agrees with Thomas Hobbes, when he declares that only the fear of eternal punishment can rein in people’s passions: It was this fear that begot religion in the world, Primus in orbe Deos fecit timor, and it is Religion that cherisheth, increaseth & quickeneth this fear; the end then of Common-wealths and of all societies is, that men may live more comfortably and securely, then they can do alone; but without Religion, there can be no security nor comfort, no more then there can be for lambs among wolves; for homo homini lupus.127

123 Augustinus, De civitate Dei libri XXII, ed. Bernard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1981), vol. I: Libri I–XIII, 252. Translations from this text are taken from Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 2003). 124 Augustine, City of God, 237; ‘nec alii dii rideantur in theatris, quam qui adorantur in templis, nec aliis ludos exhibeatis, quam quibus victimas immolatis’, De civitate Dei, 255. 125 Augustine, City of God, 237; ‘Ambae turpes ambaeque damnabiles’, De civitate Dei, 256. 126 127 Ross, Pansebeia, sig. A3r. Ross, Pansebeia, 520.

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The link between God and the people is the king, ‘whom if we do not fear and obey, we can not fear and obey God’.128 The best Roman rulers, especially Augustus in his programme of renovatio, had understood the use of religious practice for the welfare of the state. For the same reason, Ross would have the English Christians cultivate the rituals and beauty of worship—despite the fact that Christianity does not need all these trappings. In reaction to this tricky point, Ross re-creates the divide between the learned and the rude people that he had found in Rome. There are some Christians strong enough to believe and lead good lives without any outward props. It is the weak and the simple who need ceremonies and splendour, who: must sometimes be fed with such milk. Religious Ceremonies are like the Priests ornaments, which are not parts of his essence, & yet procure him reverence; which Jaddus knew, when, in his robes, he presented himself to Alexander; who, doubtless, had he appeared without them, had gone without either reverence or benevolence; so that Jerusalem did own her safety and deliverance to the high Priests Vestments. Religion without Ceremonies, is like solid meat without sauce.129

The learned few need to implement forms of worship that help the ignorant mass to lead good lives, for their own and the state’s sake. This shows where exactly the parallel lies between the religion of the Roman pagans and the English Christians: the Roman fables and the rituals, temples, and priesthoods that developed out of them fulfilled the same function as the Laudian pomp and circumstance would, if the godly only allowed the priests to do their job. Divesting the English church of these ceremonies endangers the morale of the people and the stability of the state—to say nothing about the wrath of God against a community that does not properly honour his representative or Himself. Ross was not the first Renaissance mythographer who pointed to the use of fables as support for political leaders and popular obedience. Already Boccaccio mentions, in the Tratatello, that poets served the powerful by making the people believe in, and fear, their god-like status.130 Natale Conti writes in Book I, chapter 3 of the Mythologiae 128

129 Ross, Pansebeia, 520. Ross, Pansebeia, 535. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Life of Dante [Trattatello in Laude di Dante], trans. Vincenzo Zin Bollettino (New York: Garland, 1990), 36–7. For Boccaccio’s thoughts on 130

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that women and the unlettered crowd would not have been able to lead respectable and obedient lives without great fear of the gods, which is why the ancient sages invented the thunderbolts and tridents for their gods.131 But Ross uses this idea very specifically and locally. He dissects Christian religion into its spiritually relevant aspects on the one hand, and its politically relevant aspects on the other. He separates them and then boldly equates Laudianism with the political aspects—and thus with the pagan worship of the powerful Roman Empire. In doing so, Ross turns the most potent argument of his enemies (that the Laudian forms of worship are like pagan idolatry or Popish superstition) against them by justifying the Laudian insistence on beauty and decorum politically, rather than theologically. Pansebeia throws a fascinating light on Ross’s first mythography, Mel Heliconium. Other than what one would expect from a mythography, Ross is not trying to find arcane wisdom, or indeed Christian prophecy, in the ancient stories. Instead, he is using the fables in analogy to their ancient function. This was, first, to remind the Roman people of the position of their king as vice-regent of a divine power, and second, to utilize the people’s fear of this supernatural power in order to render them obedient towards its representatives. Ross employs his ‘interpretations’ of the fables in the same way, by insistently discovering in them the close relationship between the earthly and the heavenly king, Charles I and God. Thus, Mel Heliconium is devotional literature intended to fulfil the very function the fables had in their original, Roman context. In analogy to Augustine’s concept of the ancients’ civil theology, one could call Mel Heliconium a civil mythography.

the origins and use of pagan poetry see Brigitte Hege, Boccaccios Apologie der heidnischen Dichtung in den Genealogie deorum gentilium Buch XIV: Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar und Abhandlung (Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 1997). 131

Natale Conti, Mythologiae, trans. John Mulryan and Steven Brown, 2 vols. (Tempe, Ariz.: ACMRS, 2006), I: 3–4.

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Conclusion Renaissance Theories of Myth? At the beginning of this book, I posed the question whether there was such a thing as a ‘myth theory’ or even ‘myth philosophy’ in the English Renaissance. According to Burton Feldman and Robert D. Richardson, ‘the rise of modern mythology’ only began in the early eighteenth century. Feldman and Richardson claim that, ‘from around 1700 to around 1860, theorists, scholars, and artists formulated and elaborated ideas that constitute a watershed in which radically new views of myth emerged’.1 The pioneers of ‘mythology’ in this sense—a field of study devoted to the question ‘what is myth?’—were men born just around the time my study ends: Bernard Fontenelle was born in the year 1657 and Giambattista Vico in 1668. But does this mean that the question was not asked before? Previous scholars have suggested that it was not. John Ronald Glenn, whose substantial introduction to Mystagogus Poeticus is one of the bestinformed treatises on the history of English mythography, thinks of Fulgentius as representative for ‘all mythographers until the eighteenth century’, and states that: Fulgentius possessed no theoretical interest in the nature of myth as a phenomenon sui generis. It never occurred to him or his followers to define myth, to look for unity within it. . . . What ontological status the myths possessed—that is, in what sense they might be said to exist—is an issue which for Fulgentius never arises.2

With respect to medieval mythographies, this view has been confirmed very recently. In an overview of ‘Mythography and Mythographical 1

Burton Feldman and Robert D. Richardson, Jr., The Rise of Modern Mythology 1680–1860 (Bloomington, Ind.: University of Indiana Press, 1972), xix. 2 John R. Glenn, ‘Introduction’ in A Critical Edition of Alexander Ross’s 1647 Mystagogus Poeticus, Or The Muses Interpreter, ed. John R. Glenn (New York: Garland, 1987), 1–195, here 62–3.

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Collections’ in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, Nicolette Zeeman comes to the conclusion that ‘most of these collections are encyclopedic and eclectic rather than shaped by a particular interpretative stance’.3 My study has shown, however, that this is not true for Renaissance mythographies in England. Rather than simply enumerating fables and their interpretations, each author discussed in this book operates with an underlying concept of myth that gives coherence to the entirety of the mythography and that can be extracted in the form of a definition. Nevertheless, the mythographers did not see themselves as partaking in a sustained dialogue about the nature of mythology in their culture and did not set out primarily to theorize myth. Their concepts remained implicit and were developed ad hoc. Batman, Fraunce, Bacon, Reynolds, and Ross used mythographies and mythology to talk about heresy, poetry, knowledge, poetics, or politics. In order to do so, they created combinatory concepts of myth, that is, they selected specific elements from the mythological tradition and joined them in such a way as to give rhetorical force to their position. This explains why these authors took relatively little notice of each other: Batman, Fraunce, and Ross saw their books as participating in theological, poetic, and political dialogues. This is different for Reynolds and Bacon. Probing the nature and value of fables and positioning themselves within the foregoing discourse on the topic was essential for them, even though the main drift of their work on myth was natural philosophical and poetological. One could call the ad hoc, combinatory concepts created by these men ‘proto-theories’ of myth. They occupy a place between medieval and modern thinking about the subject, and could be described as a distinctive phase in the earliest modern history of myth theory. As a history of a genre, this study has considered a series of English contributions to mythography. It established that the English texts—far from being inferior copies of European masterpieces—constitute a distinct phase in the genre’s history. In the sixteenth century, European

3

This quotation is taken from Zeeman’s abstract of the chapter in the online edition: Nicolette Zeeman, ‘Mythography and Mythographical Collections’, in The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012–), vol. I: 800–1558 (2012) (accessed 23 Mar. 2017).

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writers and printing-presses provided large-scale, comprehensive mythographies that satisfied the need for myth manuals all across Europe, including England. English mythographers never tried to rival these great works. Instead, the English texts belong to a separate period of mythographical writing, which took the genre and adapted it to local argumentative purposes. Rightly understood, these books represent a valuable source for the study of myth reception in the English Renaissance, and illuminate various aspects of early modern culture. What is more, their intimate connection to continental myth manuals allows us to isolate a distinctively English perspective on the genre within a wider European context. Each mythography discussed in this study is modelled in some way on a continental work. Batman started with Pictorius, Fraunce had Cartari at the back of his mind, Bacon raided Conti, Reynolds read Pico, and Ross reached back all the way to Augustine and Macrobius. In each case, however, the relationship is not exclusive. The English authors took some of the content and structure from the continental mythographers, but at the same time borrowed from a temporally and spatially diverse range of texts and traditions. These included Ovid’s Metamorphoses, emblems and imprese, dictionaries, commentaries, Church Fathers, ancient and medieval philosophy, and mysterious ancient enigmata. Mythographies are focal points of a complicated network of texts and reveal the rich array of sources a reader might use to understand the role of mythology in the Renaissance. The mythographers also elucidate the practical applicability not only of individual fables but of the idea of mythology to a variety of important issues in the English Renaissance. Stephan Batman yoked together Pictorius, Calvin, and moral allegory, because it made for an effective attack against the Family of Love. Fraunce intertwined Ovid, contemporary image theory, and a recent poetic tradition that had sprung up around the figure of Amintas, because he wanted to fashion an immortal poetic avatar of Philip Sidney. Francis Bacon refashioned the idea of fables as veils of truth and applied it to material he found in Conti to probe for especially old axioms that could help towards his projected renovation of natural knowledge. Protestant poetics, Neo-Platonic poetics, and Pythagorean symbols gave Henry Reynolds the parameters for his sensitive exploration of the limits of what can be said about the divinity of poetry in the England of his time. And Ross crafted Varro, Augustine,

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Macrobius, and Laudianism into a piece of political rhetoric that was to awe its readers into submission to the Stuart monarchy. The mythographers thus show the interdisciplinary relevance of myth for scholars of the early modern period. The study of any Renaissance mythography requires careful source criticism and contextualization in intellectual history, art history, politics, and theology. But the short and highly motivated English ones also reward sustained linguistic and literary analysis. They might look like reference works or commentaries, but they were composed as integrated wholes and have to be interpreted as such. This is obvious with regard to the highly literary Amintas Dale, but it is also true for the others. Formal features carry meaning in Batman’s tripartite mythography; considerations of tone and style form part of Reynolds’s thought process; themes are built up, expanded in prose, and condensed in verse across entries in Ross’s first mythography. In Bacon’s case, literary analysis proved essential to establish the connection between his interest in mythology and his concept of prima philosophia. Three of the mythographers allow their discourse on the subject of ancient fables to blend into a form of speaking through myth—in their case, Rede vom Mythos crosses over into mythologische Rede. Reynolds seeks to awaken a desire for divine wisdom and virtue in the souls of his readers by retelling the Narcissus fable, and Ross tries to instil fear and respect for the higher powers in English citizens. Abraham Fraunce even practices mythopoesis. Such a use of fables would not surprise in poetry or drama, but Renaissance mythographies themselves have not been considered as sites of myth-making, nor as texts that try to work a ‘mythological effect’ on the reader. Literary creativity and a rhetorical use of language are therefore notable qualities of English mythographical writing, and a reminder that literary and nonliterary genres have fluent boundaries. Another important aspect of mythographical creativity is allegory. For authors like Luc Brisson, the history of allegory is the history of myth theory during the Renaissance.4 It is true that all English mythographies in this period read fables allegorically. But two qualifications must be noted. First, one must distinguish between an author’s concept of myth and his individual methods of interpreting the fables. To name but one 4

Luc Brisson, Einführung in die Philosophie des Mythos, Band 1: Antike, Mittelalter und Renaissance, trans. Achim Russer (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996).

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example, Ross rejects the idea that there is Christian truth in pagan fables, but still invites his reader to refine the pagan images he provides into Christian ones. This is not about finding truth behind a fictional cover. It is a way of meditating on Christ. Second, the English mythographies display great variety in their allegorical approaches. Contrasting examples can be furnished by Batman, Fraunce, and Bacon. Batman’s allegory, for instance, depends on perspective. Taken as poetic tales, fables remain profitable and can be read allegorically. In their other manifestation, as the remnants of an evil religion, they contain no wisdom: they serve as a negative example. In Fraunce’s book, allegory is a flirtatious, semi-transparent veil that is lightly draped over and easily lifted from courtly messages. Bacon’s allegoresis, in contrast, poses as the result of patient and expert philological labour. Unusually, he commits to a single meaning for each aspect of a fable, except where the truth hidden underneath is itself polysemous. The English mythographers thus exemplify how creative, variegated, and subtle allegorical reading can be. Not only do the literary characteristics of these texts impact on the way we should read them; they also have consequences for the ways in which we can use them to interpret mythological poetry. Hitherto, the well-known Italian mythographies were consulted by literary scholars as quarries for versions of fables or allegories that found their way into mythological poems. English mythographies should be consulted more often during such routine checks, and their inclusion in H. David Brumble’s Classical Myths and Legends in the Middle Ages and Renaissance: A Dictionary of Allegorical Meanings (1998) raises hopes that they will. But, as I have shown across the chapters of this book, the English mythographies offer much more exciting points of departure. They contain structures, concepts, interpretative methods, and stylistic qualities that can help us identify and understand similar features in the works of Spenser, Sidney, Drayton, and others. English mythographers are therefore not only worthy of study in their own right; they add to our analytical tool-set.

Alexander Ross’s Mystagogus Poeticus and What Happened Next This book has delineated the history of English Renaissance mythography. Over the course of five chapters, I have argued that the mythographies

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published in England between 1577 and 1647 constitute a distinct group within the wider context of Renaissance mythography in Europe. It was comparatively straightforward to date the beginning of the period under consideration, because Stephen Batman’s The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes was the first of its kind in sixteenth-century England. The endpoint is harder to establish, but I would suggest that Alexander Ross’s second venture into the genre, Mystagogus Poeticus (1647), represents the moment of transition. On the one hand, this text grows out of Mel Heliconium; on the other hand, it has more in common with the mythographies that follow than with those that preceded it. Mel Heliconium had been presented on its title page as ‘The first Book’ of a multi-volume work, and in many ways, Mystagogus Poeticus, or the Muses Interpreter: Explaining the Historicall Mysteries, and Mysticall Histories, of the Ancient Greek and Latin Poets is the fulfilment of this promise in the form of a complete A–Z of the gods. Throughout the letters A–G, Ross simply copied Mel Heliconium. To make this less obvious, he consistently added one new observation to the beginning of each of the interpretations. Ross also altered the title of the interpretations from ‘Mysteries’ to ‘Interpreter’. But the most consequential change is the omission of all of the poems. The verse meditations, which had been the climax of each and every entry in Mel Heliconium, are suppressed in Mystagogus Poeticus, and there are no new verses to replace them. In his first mythography, Ross’s rhetoric of honey-making was reflected in the three steps of fable–interpretation–poetry (weed– extraction of sweetness–honey). In Mystagogus Poeticus, the honey is lost, while the interpretations themselves move centre stage. This alteration goes hand in hand with Ross’s re-evaluation of the fables on the title page of the new mythography. The Parnassus of Mel Heliconium was pestered with weeds that needed painstaking transformation into something valuable. On the title page of Mystagogus Poeticus, however, gardens grow, filled with ‘flowers of usefull, delightfull, and rare Observations’. Ross thus relocates his mythography from a religious context into the world of literature. ‘Here Apollo’s Temple is opened, the Muses Treasures discovered, and the Gardens of Parnassus disclosed.’5 And, despite the 5 Alexander Ross, Mystagogus Poeticus, or the Muses Interpreter: Explaining the Historicall Mysteries, and Mysticall Histories, of the Ancient Greek and Latin Poets (London, 1647), title page.

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Christian moralistic tinge that is to be expected from a work by Ross, the naughtiness of the Greeks—reason enough to disparage them in his magnum opus Pansebeia and ignore them in Mel Heliconium—poses no threat in this fictional realm. They can now appear even on the title page, side by side with the virtuous Romans. John R. Glenn noted that Ross’s two mythographies create ‘very different’ effects.6 He argues that, ‘in discarding the poems, Ross transformed the book from a pleasant little collection of trifles into a work of undoubted scholarly pretensions’.7 I agree with Glenn that the major change is the omission of the verses. But, as I have shown, the verse meditations were not mere adornment; they were the all-important site of Ross’s application of Roman religion to Civil War politics. The different impact of the two mythographies is due, I would contend, to the fact that the omission of the poems creates a more diffuse, much less politically pointed text. Whereas the first mythography distilled the disparate meanings of the pagan gods into a specific royalist message, the second text simply offers a heterogeneous range of allegories and comments. All of these changes can be explained by the function and audience Ross had in mind for his second mythography. Mystagogus Poeticus was to serve as a handbook of mythology in schools and for a general public that had no access to ancient languages. Glenn suggests that, until 1649, Ross lived mostly on the fees his pupils paid for their tuition at his house.8 The schoolmaster, who found himself in a financially and politically precarious position during his early years in London, perceived a market for an English reference work on the ancient gods.9 Ross’s quick and efficient manner of composition would support this theory. Starnes and Talbert have emphasized the apparent haste with which Mystagogus Poeticus was thrown together.10 From the letter H onwards, it plagiarizes Charles Stephanus’s Dictionarium for its descriptions of the gods and heroes.11 If Ross hoped for financial success at the booksellers by

7 Glenn, ‘Introduction’, 182. Glenn, ‘Introduction’, 135–6. Glenn, ‘Introduction’, 16. 9 For Ross’s situation in his early years in London, see Glenn, ‘Introduction’, 14–17. 10 DeWitt T. Starnes and Ernest William Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries: A Study of Renaissance Dictionaries in Their Relation to Classical Learning of Contemporary English Writers (Chapel Hill, NC: University of Carolina Press, 1955), 415. 11 Starnes and Talbert, Renaissance Dictionaries, 401; see also 407. 6 8

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producing a beginner-friendly introduction to the gods, he was not disappointed. Mystagogus Poeticus went through six ever-larger editions until the end of the century. The importance of the school context for mythographical reading and writing in the second half of the seventeenth century is illustrated by Nicholas Billingsley’s Kosmobrephia, or The Infancy of the World. His miniature mythography in verse suggests that such texts were an inspiring aspect of the curriculum at Eton College at the end of the 1640s. The small volume was printed, with a dedication to the Provost of Eton, in 1658. At that point, the author was 25 years of age, but the title page claims that it was ‘Written Some years since by N.B. then of Eaton School’. Billingsley states he was only 15 when he wrote The Infancy of the World. It contains, among other things, twenty mythographical poems, which range from Jupiter to the Fates, in no particular order. This book, with its thirteen prefatory poems, presents itself as the product of a studious but frequently ill teenager, who was dearly beloved by his teachers, family, and friends. It demonstrates the recreational pleasures involved in reading and writing mythography in English. As Billingsley wrote in his preface: ‘I found no better remedy to rouse my selfe out of my dumpish malencholy [sic] (to which I was naturaly enclined) than a fit of Poetry.’12 Another new aspect of late seventeenth-century mythographies is a dependence on French models. Pierre Gatruche’s Histoire Poetique can serve as an example. It was originally published in 1659 for use in Jesuit schools, and appeared in English in 1671. The translator, Marius D’Assigny, augmented the original with copious notes of his own. The Poetical Histories are advertised as a ‘Complete Collection of all the Stories necessary for a Perfect understanding of the Greek and Latin Poets and other Ancient Authors’, and aimed at ‘judicious men’ and ‘young students’.13 D’Assigny disparages previous English works, most likely with an eye to Ross: ‘Some of these things have been already collected in English, I confess, but how, and in what manner, I leave to the Readers

12

Nicholas Billingsley, Kosmobrephia, or The Infancy of the World (London, 1658), sig. A4v. 13 Pierre Gautruche, The Poetical Histories Being a Compleat Collection of All the Stories Necessary for a Perfect Understanding of the Greek and Latin Poets and other Ancient Authors, trans. Marius D’Assigny (London, 1671), sig. b6v.

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judgment.’14 We can gain a more precise sense of the competition from a later preface. When ‘J.A.B.’ translated François Pomey’s Latin Pantheum mythicum (1659) into English in 1694, he took stock of the small number of similar publications on the English market: Tis confess’d that there are already many Books publisht on the present Subject, two or three of which are in our own Tongue, and those, we doubt not, will by some men be thought enow. But since this can be the Opinion but of a few and those unexperien’d people, we chose rather to regard the Advice of many grave persons of known skill in the Art of Teaching, who tell us that Godwin in his Antiquities has done very well indeed in the whole, but that in this point he is too short; that Ross also deserves commendation for his Mythology, but is tedious and as much too large; and that Galtruchius, as D’Assigny has translated and dish’d him out to us, is so confused and artless in its Method, as well as unfortunate in another Instance, that ’tis not so useful as may be desir’d.15

J.A.B.’s confidence in the superiority of his offering was justified. The Pantheon, known as Tooke’s Pantheon from the sixth edition onwards, would continue to be printed well into the nineteenth century. Both translations from the French adopt the rationalizing, historical approach of their originals. Although previous English mythographies included Euhemerist interpretations of fables, they did not play the leading role they assumed in the French texts. This does not mean that Gautruche and Pomey banish allegory altogether. Bacchus’s animals, the ass and goat, for example, are still said to signify that ‘those that are given to Wine, become sots, as Asses, or as lascivious as Goats’ in the Poetical Histories.16 But this is not the point: ‘The truth is Liber, otherwise called Dionysius, or Osiris, by the Egyptians, was a King of Nysa a City in Arabia Felix, who taught his people, and the inhabitants of the adjoyning Countries many useful Arts, as the ordering of the Vine, and the

14

Gautruche, Poetical Histories, sig. b6v. François Pomey, The Pantheon, Representing the Fabulous Histories of the Heathen Gods and Most Illustrious Heroes, in A Short, Plain and Familiar Method by Way of Dialogue. For the Use of Schools, trans. J.A.B. (London, 1694), sig. A3r. ‘Godwin’ probably refers to the frequently reprinted Thomas Godwin, An English Exposition of the Romane Antiquities (Oxford, 1614). The ‘other Instance’ is identified in another version of this preface as the ‘Correction’ of D’Assigny’s text, which might point to unfortunate editing. This preface exists in a number of variant versions that differ even within editions. I quote from the copy Vet. A3 e.803 in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 16 Gautruche, Poetical Histories, 44. 15

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preserving of Bees.’17 For both of the French Jesuit mythographers, the kernel of truth in fables are fragments of history. Although Ross, D’Assigny, and J.A.B. address themselves to a wider readership, including those who cannot speak Latin, the best example for the new mythographers’ commitment to widening access is Robert Whitcombe’s Janua Divorum, or The Lives and Histories of the Heathen Gods, Goddesses, & Demi-Gods. This attractive volume includes twentyfive copper cuts and is written in verse ‘whose Chiming Periods seem at once to strike both the Fancies and Memories of the illiterate’.18 By illiterate, Whitcombe means ‘many excellent Wits of both Sexes, whom cruel Custom or incroaching Business has debar’d the benefit of the Greek and Latin Tongues’.19 Any male or female Londoner, Whitcombe claims, needs to know a modicum about the deities of antiquity to navigate London society successfully: That a Competent knowledge of the Laws and Grounds of Poesie in general is as absolutely requisite amongst the English-Gentry now . . . is so easie a Problem, that he who has ventur’d but as far as Charing-Cross; or attempted to come within the perfume of a Courtier, can decide it on the Affirmative. ’Tis thought as necessary to the Complement of a Courtier, as the knowledge of the Compass to the Composition of a Seaman; neither Man nor Woman can safely Sail in the Courts dangerous Ocean without it, unless they are resolved to expose themselves to those Impetuous Storms of Scorn and Neglect, which Augmented by Envy and Interest, will immediately hurry them into one of those Dangerous Gulphs, Ruine or Disgrace.20

Like so many Ulysses, men and women riding the waves of polite London society need to acquire mythological information, or suffer ignominious shipwreck. Janua Divorum is a fairly superficial introduction to the pantheon, but it is a good read. Whitcombe has energy, a competent poetic voice, and a great tonal range. He revels in the salacious facts of Jupiter’s affair with Latona and delights in the marital comedy of Juno finding Jupiter with his lover. But he is equally capable of setting the mood for the history of Ceres with a moving contemplation of mankind’s cruelty, blindness, and folly. Robert Whitcombe had first 17

Gautruche, Poetical Histories, 46. Robert Whitcombe, Janua Divorum, or The Lives and Histories of the Heathen Gods, Goddesses, & Demi-Gods (London, 1677), sig. A8v. 19 Whitcombe, Janua Divorum, sig. A8v. 20 Whitcombe, Janua Divorum, sig. A6v. 18

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dedicated this mythography to Robert Cheney, Esq. But in 1678, it became the first of its kind in English to be dedicated to a woman— one who exemplified court culture like none other—the actress and royal mistress Nell Gwynn.21 Even such a brief sampling of the texts to come reveals the main differences between the Renaissance mythographies studied in this book and the ones published in the second half of the seventeenth century. While Batman and his successors mostly retained the form of reference works, they did not aim at providing general introductions to the pantheon. Instead, they applied the authority of ancient mythology to current issues in religion, literary life, natural philosophy, poetics, and politics. This explains why they were not used in schools and why they were (apart from Bacon’s De sapientia veterum) never reprinted. With Mystagogus Poeticus, Ross produced the first English mythography that not only looked like a handbook of myth, but was intended to serve as such. The new audience were schoolboys, gentlemen that had no Latin, and women who tried to hold their own in society. No wonder these texts ran through so many editions. Furthermore, whereas the earlier English mythographers had worked with German and Italian models, European influence now came from France, where mythographers put different accents and favoured historical approaches. It would take another volume to explain all of these shifts and evaluate the role of these texts in the second half of the seventeenth century. For the present study, it suffices to note that, with Ross’s Mystagogus Poeticus, the distinctive phase of English Renaissance mythography came to an end.

21 The Bodleian copy Vet. A3 f.182 conflates the 1677 and 1678 editions. It has two title pages and two dedications, one to Robert Cheney, Esq., the other ‘To the Illustrious Ellen Guin’. The less rare 1678 edition retains only the dedication to Nell Gwynn.

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References Manuscripts Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Dd.12.30. Alexander Ross’s notebook, containing sermon abstracts. London, British Library, MS Add.27.278. Francis Bacon’s memorandum-book ‘Commentarius solutus’. London, British Library, MS Add.4258. Papers relating to Francis Bacon, fols. 218r and 220r–222r containing early mythographical drafts. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D.345. Abraham Fraunce’s illustrated copy of forty imprese by Paolo Giovio. Kent, Kent County Archive, MS U1475.16. Abraham Fraunce’s ‘Symbolicae philosophiae liber quartus et ultimus’.

Primary Literature Altercatio Hadriani Augusti et Epicteti philosophi, ed. Lloyd William Daly and Walther Suchier (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1939). Anguillara, Giovanni Andrea, Le Metamorfosi di Ovidio ridotte da Giouanni Andrea dall’Anguillara in ottaua rima, con l’annotatione di M. Gioseppe Horologgi et con gli argomenti di M. Francesco Turchi (Venice, 1587). Annius of Viterbo, Commentaria fratri Joannis Annii Viterbiensis super opera diversorum auctorum de antiquitatibus loquentium (Rome, 1498). Augustine, De civitate Dei libri XXII, ed. Bernard Dombart and Alfons Kalb, 2 vols. (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1981). Augustine, De doctrina Christiana, ed. and trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 2003). Bacon, Francis, La sagesse mystérieuse des anciens, trans. by Jean Baudoin (Paris, 1619). Bacon, Francis, The Translation of Certaine Psalmes into English Verse (London, 1625).

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Petrella, Sara, ‘Jean Baudoin et la réception des mythographies au XVIIe siècle’, in S’exprimer autrement: poétique et enjeux de l’allegorie à l’Âge classique, ed. Marie-Christine Pioffet and Anne-Élizabeth Spica (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2016), 105–22. Pettegree, Andrew, and Malcolm Walsby (eds.), French Bookes III & IV: Books Published in France before 1601 in Latin and Languages Other than French (Leiden: Brill, 2012). Pigman, G. W. ‘Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance’, Renaissance Quarterly 33.1 (1980), 1–32. Prescott, Anne Lake, ‘Spenser’s Chivalric Restoration: From Bateman’s “Travayled Pylgrime” to the Redcrosse Knight’, Studies in Philology 86.2 (1989), 166–97. Prescott, Anne Lake, and Susie Speakman Sutch, ‘Translation as Transformation: Oliver de La Marche’s “Le Chevalier Délibéré” and its Hapsburg and Elizabethan Permutations’, Comparative Literature Studies 25.4 (1988), 281–317. Pugh, Syrithe, Spenser and Ovid (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005). Purdon, Noel, The Words of Mercury: Shakespeare and English Mythography of the Renaissance (Salzburg: Institut für Englische Sprache und Literatur, 1974). Quantin, Jean-Louis, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity: The Construction of a Confessional Identity in the Seventeenth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Quint, David, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). Rance, Adrian, Southampton: An Illustrated History (Horndean: Milestone Publications, 1989). Rees, Graham, ‘Introduction’, in Francis Bacon, The Oxford Francis Bacon, ed. Graham Rees and others, 15 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996– ), vol. XI: The Instauratio Magna II: The Novum Organum and Associated Texts, ed. Graham Rees (2004), i–cxxiii. Ringler, William, ‘Spenser and Thomas Watson’, Modern Language Notes, 69.7 (1954), 484–7. Rossi, Paolo, Francis Bacon: From Magic to Science, trans. Sacha Rabinovich (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968). Rupp, Michael, ‘Narrenschiff ’ und ‘Stultifera Navis’: Deutsche und lateinische Moralsatire von Sebastian Brant und Jakob Locher in Basel 1494–1498 (Münster: Waxman, 2002). Salzman, Paul, ‘Narrative Contexts for Bacon’s New Atlantis’, in Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis: New Interdisciplinary Essays, ed. Bronwen Price (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 28–47. Schmitt, Charles B., ‘Perennial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz’, Journal of the History of Ideas 27.4 (1966), 505–32.

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Schuler, Robert M., ‘Francis Bacon and Scientific Poetry’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, NS 82.2 (1992), 1–65. Seznec, Jean, The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, trans. Barbara F. Sessions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972). Sharp, David, ‘Abraham Fraunce’s Debt to Claudian’s De Raptu Proserpinae in Amintas Dale’, Notes and Queries 245 (2000), 436–8. Shepherd, Geoffrey, ‘Introduction’, in Philip Sidney, Apology for Poetry (London: Nelson, 1965), 1–91. Smith, Nigel, Literature and Revolution in England 1640–1660 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994). Sowerby, Robin, The Augustan Art of Poetry: Augustan Translation of the Classics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). Spahlinger, Lothar, Ars latet arte sua: Die Poetologie der Metamorphosen Ovids (Stuttgart and Leipzig: Teubner, 1996). Spica, Anne-Élizabeth, ‘Jean Baudoin et la Fable’, XVII e siècle 216 (2002), 417–31. Spingarn, Joel E., ‘Introduction’, in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. Joel E. Spingarn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908), ix–cvi. Starnes, DeWitt T., and Ernest William Talbert, Classical Myth and Legend in Renaissance Dictionaries: A Study of Renaissance Dictionaries in Their Relation to Classical Learning of Contemporary English Writers (Chapel Hill, NC: University of Carolina Press, 1955). Staton, Walter, ‘Thomas Watson and Abraham Fraunce’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 76.1 (1961), 150–3. Stausberg, Michael, Faszination Zarathushtra: Zoroaster und die europäische Religionsgeschichte der frühen Neuzeit, 2 vols. (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1998). Stern, Virginia, Gabriel Harvey: A Study of his Life, Marginalia, and Library (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979). Summit, Jennifer, ‘Monuments and Ruins: Spenser and the Problem of the English Library’, English Literary History 70 (2003), 1–34. Summit, Jennifer, Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008). Syndikus, Peter, Die Lyrik des Horaz: Eine Interpretation der Oden, 2 vols. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972–3). Taylor, A. B., ‘Abraham Fraunce’s Debt to Arthur Golding in Amintas Dale’, Notes and Queries 33 (1986), 333–6. Teskey, Gordon, ‘Allegory’, in The Spenser Encyclopedia, ed. A. C. Hamilton (London: Routledge, 1990), 43–60. Teskey, Gordon, Allegory and Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996). Toomer, G. J., John Selden: A Life in Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

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Zeeman, Nicolette, ‘Mythography and Mythographical Collections’, in The Oxford Handbook of Classical Reception in English Literature, ed. Charles Martindale and David Hopkins, 5 vols. (Oxford University Press, 2016– ), vol. I: 800–1558, ed. Rita Copeland (2016), 121–50. Zim, Rivkah, ‘Batman, Stephan (c.1542–1584)’, in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: OUP, 2004), online edition (accessed 29 Mar. 2017). Zittel, Claus, et al. (eds.), Philosophies of Technologies: Francis Bacon and His Contemporaries (Leiden: Brill, 2008). Zunino Garrido, Marìa de la Conta, ‘Boscán and Garcilaso as Rhetorical Models in the English Renaissance: The Case of Abraham Fraunce’s The Arcadian Rhetorike’, Atlantis 27.2 (2005), 119–34.

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Index of Names and Authors before 1800 Abraham (biblical figure) 230 Academia de Pellegrini 44 Achan (biblical figure) 217 Actaeon (mythological figure) 120 Adam (biblical figure) 135 Adonis (mythological figure) 122–6, see also Garden of Adonis Aeneas (mythological figure) 81–2, 169, 212, 222–3, 235 Aeolus (mythological figure) 95, 109 Aesculapius (mythological figure) 25 Aesop (mythological figure) 143 Agenoria (mythological figure) 63–4 Aglaophemus 173 and n.52, 175 Albricus philosophus 20, 27 De imaginibus deorum 2 Alexander ab Alexandro 27 Amintas (poetic alias of Philip Sidney) 93, 125–6, 132–3, 241 Andrews, Lancelot 212 dell’Anguillara, Giovanni 123, 191, 199 Metamorfosi 113, 119, 123, 164, 191 Annius of Viterbo (Gianni Nanni) 228 Apollo 29, 39, 97, 120, 122–4, 129, 179, 215, 220, 231, see also Phoebus, Sol Apollodorus of Athens 3, 20 Apollonius Rhodius 80 Apuleius, Lucius 21 Arachne (mythological figure) 119 Aratus 2, 20 Arcerius, Johann 194, 195n.138 Argus (mythological figure) 36–7 Ariadne (mythological figure) 164, 192 Ariosto, Lodovico 170, 191 Aristaeus (mythological figure) 218 Aristotle 45, 186–7, 204, 207 Astraea (mythological figure) 199 Augustus (Emperor) 66, 212–13, 222–4, 237, see also Augustanism Averroes 176

Bacchus (mythological figure) 97, 179, 217–19, 231, 247, see also Dionysus Bacon, Francis 7, 100, Chapter 4 (135–61) passim, 177 and n.66, 192, 202, 241–2, 243, 249 Advancement of Learning 137, 140–1, 143–4, 153, 155, 161 De augmentis scientarium 136, 139 and n.14, 140, 142, 147, 149, 151, 153, 157 De sapientia veterum liber 1, 3, 14, 136–7, 140–1, 145–9, 151–4, 156–8, 161, 249 Instauratio Magna (Great Instauration) 135–9, 142, 153–5 New Atlantis 147 Novum Organum 137–8, 153 Redargutio philosophiarum 145–6 Valerius Terminus 139–40 Bales, John 74 Bargali, Scipione 106 Bartholomew the Englishman 53 Barton, Henry 209 Batman, Stephen 14, Chapter 2 (53–92) passim, 94, 100–1, 156, 172n.44, 176, 202, 209, 227, 241–2, 243, 249 A Christall Glasse of Christian Reformation 54, 73–4 Batman Uppon Bartholome His Booke De proprietatibus rerum 53–4, 73 The Doome Warning All Men to the Iugment 73, 75 The Golden Booke of the Leaden Goddes 1, 14, 55–8, 60–2, 64–7, 69–73, 75–6, 79, 91, 94, 156, 244 The Travayled Pylgrime 54 Belleau, Remy 113 Bernini, Gian Lorenzo 10n.24 Beroaldo the Elder, Filippo 21–3, 194 Berosus, the Chaldean 228–30 Beukels, Jan, see Leiden, Jan van

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INDEX OF NAMES AND AUTHORS BEFORE

Billingsley, Nicholas 246 Kosmobrephia, or The Infancy of the World 246 Boccaccio, Giovanni 19, 21, 25, 27, 30, 43–4, 77, 237 and n.130 Genealogia deorum gentilium 2–3, 20, 23–5 Tratatello 237 Boener, Peter 157 Bonnenvict, Juda 17–18 Boscán, Juan 113 Botticelli, Sandro 10, 11n.24 Brant, Sebastian 23 Cadmus (mythological figure) 220–1 Calepine 34n.46 Calvin, John 59–60, 63, 76, 241 Camerarius, Joachim 23 Carew, Thomas 208 Cartari, Vincenzo 1, 5, 8, 19, 43–7, 50, 148, 241 Carmina Priapea 99 Imagini de i dei degli antichi 2–3, 35, 44, 98, 113 and n.70 Cassiopaea (mythological figure) 124–5 Castellesi, Adriano 21n.17 Castor and Pollux (mythological figures) 57 Cecil, Robert, First Earl of Shaftesbury 147 Celtis, Conrad 23 Cerberus (mythological figure) 45, 62, 73 Ceres (mythological figure) 231, 248 Cham (biblical figure) 228–31 Chaos (mythological figure) 96–7 Charles I (king) 208–10, 220–5, 238 Charon (mythological figure) 45 Chaucer, Geoffrey 53, 170 Cheney, Robert 249 Chillingworth, William 211n.19 Christ (biblical figure) 76, 181, 208, 218–19, 221, 243 Cicero 21 and n.17, 23, 44, 111, 139–40, 207 De natura deorum 179 Cicnus (king) see Cygnus (mythological figure) Circe 80, 83–4, 121 Claudian 100, 113 Clymene (mythological figure) 120

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Coelum (mythological figure) 141, 149, 152 Comes, Natalis, see Conti, Natale Conti, Natale 3, 5, 8, 19, 21, 41, 44–7, 50, 77 and n.75, 101, 148, 152, 155, 158, 237, 241 Mythologiae 2–3, 20, 36, 45–6, 98, 152, 157, 237 Cooper, Thomas 68n.50, 122n.107 Cornutus, Lucius Annaeus (Phornutus, also Phurnutus) 2, 3, 20, 204 De natura deorum 44 Corregio, Antonio da 11n.24 Crinito, Pietro 27 De honesta disciplina 27 Cumean Sibyl, the 159–60, 174n.55 Cupid (mythological figure) 101, 141, 148–9, 151–2, 220 Cygnus (mythological figure) 100–2 Cyparissus (mythological figure) 123, 126 Daniel, Samuel 169, 170, 186 Daphne (mythological figure) 115, 120, 129 D’Assigny, Marius 246, 247 and n.15, 248 David (biblical figure) 143, 165 Davies, John Silvester 209n.9 Delphic Oracle, the 29 Demagorgon (mythological figure) 96 Democritus 149 Deucalion (mythological figure) 100–1, 182, 220–1 Diana (mythological figure) 29, 97, 120, 179, 231, see also Luna and Phoebe Dictys of Crete 41 Diodorus Siculus 41 Dionysus 218, see also Bacchus Dolon 102 Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi) 10n.24 Drayton, Michael 164, 167–70, 186, 203, 243 ‘Endimion and Phoebe’ 199–201 The Moon-Calfe 167–8 Drummond, William 167, 186 Echo (mythological figure) 95–6, 113 and n.70, 190–205 Echo poem 96, 113 Endymion (mythological figure) 120, 200–1

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INDEX OF NAMES AND AUTHORS BEFORE

Epictetus 66 Erasmus 31, 34, 43, 194 Adagia 31–5 Eudoxus of Cnidus 173 and n.52 Europa (mythological figure) 118–19 Eusebius of Chaesarea 230 Farra, Alessandro 181, 196 and n.143, 197–9, 201 Settenario 176, 196 and n.143 Tre discorsi 196 Fates, the (mythological figures) 45, 97, 154, 246 Ficino, Marsilio 21, 158, 173–6, 181, 193–5, 198–9, 200 and n.158 Fontenelle, Bernard 239 Fraunce, Abraham 1, 14, Chapter 3 (93–133) passim, 144, 179, 202, 241–2, 243 Arcadian Rhetorike 108, 110, 126 Countess of Pembrokes Yuychurch 99, 114, 126 Insignium, armorum, emblematum, hieroglyphicorum, et symbolorum 97, 98 and n.15, 99, 104–5, 107–8, 196 The Lamentations of Amyntas for the Death of Phillis 93, 114 The Third Part of the Countess of Pembrokes Yuychurch, Entituled Amintas Dale 1, 7, 14, 93–133, 242 Fulgentius 2–3, 19–23, 27, 43, 100, 239 Expositio sermonum antiquorum 21 Mythologiarum libri III 21–3, see also Pio, Giovanni Baptista, Enarrationes allegoricae fabularum Fulgentii Placiadis Galathea (mythological figure) 120 Ganymede (mythological figure) 65–6 and n.41, 130–1, 172 Gautruche, Pierre 246–7, 248 Histoire Poetique 246–7 Gellius, Aulius 31–2 George, David, see David Joris Gessner, Konrad 26–9, 34, 106 Bibliotheca uniuersalis 26, 28, 34 Historiae animalium 106 Pandectarum siue Partitionum uniuersalium [. . .] libri XXI 26 and n.32, 27, 35 Giovio, Paolo 98n.15

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Giraldi, Lilio Gregorio 3, 5, 8, 12, 19, 21, 36, 38–41, 43–4, 46–7, 50–1, 158, 194, 195 and n.138, 196 Deorum gentilium uaria & multiplex historia 26, 35, 38–41, 98 Libelli duo 195 and n.138 Golding, Arthur 113, 232 Gorges, Arthur 156 Greene, Robert 124n.118 Gwynn, Nell 249 Gyraldus, Lilius Gregorius, see Giraldi, Lilio Gregorio Hadrian (emperor) 66 Hakluyt, Richard 231n.105 Hall, John 192n.123 Harington, John 3 Harmonia (mythological figure) 220 Harplice from Thracia 108 Harpokrates 57 Harsdörffer, Georg Philipp 157 Haurech, Julianus Aurelius 36–9, 41, 43–4, 46–7 De cognominibus deorum gentilium 2, 27, 35, 37–9, 43 Hecate (mythological figure) 29 Henricus Glareanus 121 Herbert, Edward, Baron of Cherbury 234 and n.118 Herbert, George 150n.59 Hercules (mythological figure) 34, 111, 169 Hermaphroditus (mythological figure) 30 Hermes Trismegistus 27, 173–5 Herold, Johannes 36, 41–3, 47–8, 49n.82 Heydenweldt und irer Götter anfängcklicher Vrsprung 35, 41–2, 72 Herwagen the Elder, Johannes 2–3, 20, 24 Hesiod 145, 169, 173 Hierocles of Alexandria 192n.123 Hippolytus (mythological figure) 25 Hobbes, Thomas 236 Homer 11–12, 31–2, 34, 38, 63, 80–1, 95 and n.6, 145, 159–60, 164, 169–70, 172–3, 178, 184, 190, 202, 215, 233 Iliad, the 32, 177, 205 Odyssey, the 80, 84, 159, 177 Hooker, Richard 211–12 Horace 142, 223–4 Horapollo 41

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INDEX OF NAMES AND AUTHORS BEFORE

Hoskins, John 108–10 Humphrey, Lawrence 41 Hyacinthus (mythological figure) 122–3, 126 Hyginus 2, 3, 20, 117n.88 Astronomicon 2, 3 Fabula 117n.88 Iamblichus 27, 174, 186, 192–3, 195–6, 198 Icarus (mythological figure) 102, 120 Inachus (mythological figure) 115–16, 119 Io (mythological figure) 115–17, 119–22 Isis (mythological figure) 61 Ixion (mythological figure) 96 ‘J.A.B.’ 247–8 Tooke’s Pantheon 247 James I (king) 141 Janus (mythological figure) 231 Jewel, John 76n.74 John of Leyden 57–8 Jonson, Ben 3 Joris, David 69–70 Jove (mythological figure), see Jupiter Julius Caesar 223 Juno (mythological figure) 95 and n.6, 96–7, 109, 117–19, 231 Jupiter (mythological figure) 29, 58, 61, 65, 96, 117–18, 128, 131, 179–80, 217–18, 227, 229, 231, 233, 246, 248 Knewstubs, John 71 Lactantius Placidus 116, 230 Landino, Cristofero 204 Latona 248 Laud, Archbishop William 210, 212 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 173n.52 Leiden, Jan van 69–71 Linche, Richard 1 The Fountain of Ancient Fiction 2–3 Linschoten, Jan Huygen van 231n.105 Locher, Jacob ‘Philomusus’ 22–3 Lodge, Thomas 125, 133 Lucretius 170 Luna 231, see also Diana and Phoebe Luther, Martin 75 Lykosthenes, Konrad 73

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Machiavelli, Niccolò 140, 149 Macris (mythological figure) 219 Macrobius 20, 27, 32–3, 34 and n.46, 37, 215, 231–2, 241–2 Saturnalia 215, 232 Marche, Olivier de la 54 Marcolini, Francesco 44 Marino, Giovanni Battista 170 Marlowe, Christopher 74 Mars (mythological figure) 29, 97, 123, 231 Marston, John 49–50 Martial 34n.46 Martianus Capella 19, 21 Mattioli, Pietro Andrea 106 Maximilian I (Holy Roman emperor) 22 Medea (mythological figure) 84 Melanchthon, Philip 23 Menthe (mythological figure) 122 Mercury 29–33, 36, 38, 47–8, 65, 97, 119, 150, 160, 218, 231 Michelangelo 10 Micyllus, Jacobus, see Moltzer, Jacob Mignault, Claude 97n.14, 104, 105n.34 Milton, John 8, 68 Minerva 57, 64, 97, 120, 231 Mirandola, Pico della 163, 166, 171–2, 175–6, 183–90, 241 Moltzer, Jacob 2–3, 20, 23–5 Mythographi Latini 2–3 Peri genealogias deorum libri quindecim 23–5 Montefalcus, Petrus Jacobus 35–7, 38, 40, 43–4, 46 De cognominibus deorum opusculum 35–7, 38 Montlyard, Jean de 157 Mornay, Philip de 232–3 Moschus 118n.94 Moses (biblical figure) 63, 101, 143, 146–7, 155, 175n.61, 177, 180, 187, 189, 201, 203, 205 Muses, the (mythological figures) 23, 114, 129, 207, 223 Narcissus (mythological figure) 11, 124, 126, 149, 164, 166, 190–1, 192 and n.122, 194, 198–201, 203, 205, 242 Naugerio, Andrea 116 Nazarenus, Abia 72 Nemesis (mythological figure) 97, 127

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INDEX OF NAMES AND AUTHORS BEFORE

Neptune (mythological figure) 97, 120, 231 Nero (Emperor) 106 Nesi, Giovanni 193 Newton, Thomas 60 Niclaes, Henry 68–70, 72 Niobe (biblical figure) 119 Noah (biblical figure) 101, 174, 227–31 North, Dudley 167 Norton, Thomas 59 Numa (king) 128–9 Oceanus and Thetis 95 Odysseus 82, 84, 121, 169, 200, 211n.19, 248 Orpheus 115, 123, 129, 153, 170, 173–5, 178, 184, 200 Ovid 11–12, 14, 36, 61, 84, 95–6, 100–3, 109, 111–16, 117 and n.88, 118 and n.94, 119–22, 124, 126–9, 131–3, 140, 170, 191–2, 233, 241, see also metamorphosis commentaries on 95–6, 121 editions of 23, 115–16 imitation of 81, 84, 94, 112–33 interpretation of 102–3, 109, 111 translations of 113, 117–19, 123, 158, 190–201, 208 Metamorphoses 7, 11, 81, 94, 97, 102–3, 113–14, 115 and n.75, 116, 117 and n.88, 119, 122–3, 127, 129, 132–3, 153, 158, 191, 205, 241 Tristia 102–4 Palaestra 38 Palaiphatos 2, 3, 20 On Incredible Tales 2, 3, 20 Pallas (mythological figure) 172, see also Minerva Pan (mythological figure) 96–7, 111, 119, 150–2, 154–5, 157, 160 Paris (mythological figure) 22 Parker, Matthew 53–5, 73 Perotti, Niccola 34n.46 Cornucopiae 34 and n.46 Persephone (mythological figure) 122 Petrarca, Francesco 86 Phaethon (mythological figure) 102–3, 109, 111, 120 Phoebe (mythological figure) 200–1 Phoebus (mythological figure) 103, 122

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Philo of Alexandria 163 Phornutus, see Cornutus, Lucius Annaeus Pictorius, Georg 19, 31, 34 and n.46, 35–6, 46–9, 56–7, 73, 241 Apotheseos 2, 36, 46–8, 56–7, 72–3 Theologia mythologica 27, 31, 35, 46–7, 49 Pierius (Giovanni Pierio Valeriano) 158 Pindar 48, 165, 170, 173 Pio, Giovanni Baptista 21 and n.17, 22–3 Enarrationes allegoricae fabularum Fulgentii Placiadis 21–2, see also Fulgentius, Mythologiarum libri III Plato 45, 101, 110, 146, 147n.45, 173–6, 186–7, 190, 193, 205, see also Neo-Platonism Ion 165, 172–3, 204 Phaidros 165 Republic 86, 164 Pliny the Elder 32–3, 34 and n.46, 121 Plutarch 48, 140, 215–16 Pluto (mythological figure) 97, 100, 159 Poliziano, Angelo 31, 194 Lamia 194 Miscellanea 31 Polyphemus (mythological figure) 120 Pomey, François 247 Pantheum mythicum 247 Pomona 97 Pontanus, Jacobus, see Spanmüller, Jakob Priapus (mythological figure) 57 Proclus of Lycia 2, 20 Prometheus (mythological figure) 150, 152 Proserpina (mythological figure) 179 Proteus (mythological figure) 62, 100, 141, 149, 152 Prüß, Johann 34n.46 Prynne, William 209 Purchas, Samuel 230, 231 and n.105 Relations of the World and the Religions Observed 229 Puttenham, George 63 and n.31, 116, 142–3, 182 Pyrrha (mythological figure) 100 Pythagoras 127–33, 166, 173n.52, 174, 177, 192 and n.123, 194, 196–7 Pythagorean Symbols 192–201 Raleigh, Sir Walter 86 Raphael (artist) 7

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INDEX OF NAMES AND AUTHORS BEFORE

Regius, Raphael 116, 121 Reuchlin, Johannes 163, 194 Reynolds, Henry 1, 9, 14–15, 112, 158, 160–1, Chapter 5 (163–205) passim, 219, 241–2 Mythomystes 1, 14, 158, 161, 163, 165–7, 169–70, 173 and n.52, 176–8, 181, 183, 185–91, 196n.143, 199, 201, 203–5 Ricchieri, Lodovico see Rhodiginus, Lodovicus Caelius Ripa, Cesare Iconologia 157 Rhodiginus, Lodovicus Caelius (or Coelius) 27–34, 38 Rogers, John 68–72 Ross, Alexander 12, 64, 202, 205, Chapter 6 (207–38) passim, 241, 243–6, 248–9 A Centurie of Divine Meditations upon Predestination 210 Gods House Made a Den of Theeves 209, 214 Gods House, or the House of Prayer 209–10, 212, 222, 224, 226, 235 Mel Heliconium 1, 15, 209, 214–19, 222–5, 232–3, 238, 244–5 Mystagogus Poeticus 1, 9, 15, 207, 239, 243–6, 249 Pansebeia, or a View of All Religions in the World 15, 209, 225–9, 231–2, 238, 245 Rosso, Lorenzo 23 Ruscelli, Girolamo 104n.32, 107 Sabinus, George 158 Fabularum Ouidi Interpretatio 116 St Augustine 8, 43, 64, 202, 209, 216–17, 236, 238, 241 St Dunstan 57 St Francis 57–8, 67, 73 St Giles 57, 74 Sandys, George 158–60, 208 Ouids Metamorphosis Englished, Mythologiz’d, and Represented in Figures 158, 208 A Relation of a Journey 158 Satan (biblical figure) 67, 69, 71, 75, 227 Saturn (mythological figure) 29, 45, 96–7, 231

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Scalinger, Joseph 106, 158, 204, 231 and n.105 Schedius, Elias 231 De diis Germanis 228–9 Scylla and Charybdis (mythological figures) 77, 79–84, 86–7, 89–91, 120, 159, 211 and n.19, 236 Selden, John 227–8 De diis Syris syntagma II 227 Selene (mythological figure) 29, see also Diana and Phoebe Semele (mythological figure) 118, 179 Seneca the Younger 215 Seymour, William 209, 214, 216, 223 Shakespeare, William 126 Sibyl, see Cumean Sibyl, the Sidney, Mary 94, 96, 114 Sidney, Philip 14, 62–3, 71, 93–4, 98 and n.15, 99, 103–4, 108–10, 111 and n.62, 112, 124–7, 133, 142–4, 170, 202, 204–5, 232, 241, 243 Arcadia 108, 115 Defense of Poetry 1, 5, 62, 103, 104n.32, 111, 144n.36, 204–5 Sidonius Apollinaris 21 Socrates 139, 173, 207 Sol (mythological figure) 231 Solomon (biblical figure) 143 Spanmüller, Jakob (Jacobus Pontanus) 3, 121, 158 Spenser, Edmund 53–5, 74, 77–92, 125–6, 128–9, 133, 170, 243 The Faerie Queen 14, 53–6, 77–9, 83, 88, 91, 125–6, 128 The Shepheardes Calender 55 Sphinx (mythological figure) 148–50 Stephanus, Charles Dictionarium 245 Steuco, Agostino 195n.138 De perenni philosophia 176 Stimula (mythological figure) 63–4 Strenua (mythological figure) 63–4 Stubenberg, Johann Wilhelm von 157 Syrinx (mythological figure) 116, 119 Tasso, Torquato 80, 113, 164, 169, 186 Tellus (mythological figure) 231 Tertullian 230 Textor, Ravisius Officina 19 Theseus (mythological figure) 169

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INDEX OF NAMES AND AUTHORS BEFORE

Thomas, Thomas 116 Tintoretto 44 Titian 11n.24, 44 Tomeo, Niccolò Leonico 27 Townshend, Aurelian 208 Tremellius, Immanuel and Franciscus Junius Biblia sacra 143 Trevisa, John 54 Typhon (mythological figure) 149, 151 Ulysses (mythological figure), see Odysseus Uranus (mythological figure) 96 Urquart, Thomas 207 Varro 145, 236, 241 Antiquities 236 De lingua Latina 48 Vasari, Giorgio 44 Velázquez, Diego 11n.24 Venus (mythological figure) 29, 97, 108, 122–3, 131, 223, 231 Vertumnus (mythological figure) 97, 127 Vesta (mythological figure) 231 Vico, Giambattista 239 Virgil 12, 31, 33–4, 48, 80, 100, 108, 114, 140, 150, 158–60, 170, 173,

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

174 and n.55, 204, 207–8, 222–3, 232–3 Aeneid, the 33, 81, 95, 108, 159, 205, 212, 224 reception of 7, 11 Vitells, Christopher 70 Vives, Juan Luis 43, 158 Vivonne, Catherine de 156 Vossius, Gerhard Johann 165, 196 De artis poeticae natura 165n.9 De theologia gentili et physiologa christiana 165n.9 Vulcan (mythological figure) 95, 231 Waldeck, Franz von (Bishop of Münster) 69 Watson, Thomas 93, 114 Whitcombe, Robert 248 Janua Divorum, or the Lives and Histories of the Heathen Gods 248 Wilkinson, William 70–1 Young, John (Bishop of Rochester) 55 Zeus 118n94, see also Jupiter Zimmern, Werner von 48–9 Zoroaster 173, 174 and n.57, 175, 178, 181, 228

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 16/1/2018, SPi

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 16/1/2018, SPi

General Index akousmata, see Pythagorean symbols allegory 5, 11–14, 22, 29–30, 36–41, 44, 45–6, 49–51, 58, 62, 64–6, 77, 83, 86–7, 100, 109–10, 136, 143, 147, 152, 155, 157, 172n.44, 179, 219–20, 241–2, 243, 247, see also metaphor debates about 12 Arminians 226 astrology 2, 5, 130, 178 Augustanism 174, 208 and n.4, 212–13, 222–4 axioms 139–40, 147, 151–2, 155, 241 Babel, tower of 130 Babylon/Babylonians 146, 187, 209, 216–17, 229–30, 231n.105 Basel 20, 24, 29, 39, 186, 188 beauty 172, 205, 232, 237, see also beauty of holiness beauty of holiness 210, 211 and n.16, 221, 225 Bible, the 12, 59–61, 141, 143–5, 147, 150 and n.59, 165, 177–80, 182, 184, 187, 189, 212–14, 219, 228, 232 book market, the 3, 20, 28, 41, 156, 241, 247–8 Cabala 176–7, 188, 205 caduceus, the 31–4, 36 Cambridge 53, 116, 129–30, 132, 147–8 Catholicism 43, 53, 61, 66–9, 73–4, 211, 213, 226 anti-Catholicism 54, 56, 74 Catholics 91, 212, 217 Chaldea/Chaldeans 178, 184, 228–9, see also Babylon Christianity 12, 29, 45, 59–60, 71–2, 75–6, 160, 165, 175 and n.61, 176, 182, 194, 202, 209, 211, 219–20, 226, 230–1, 233, 237–8, 243, 245, see also Catholicism and Christians and Church of England, the Eastern 226 ideas of 85, 128, 226

and paganism 23, 43, 46, 57–9, 61, 63, 65–6, 71, 91, 101, 180–2, 209, 212–13, 216–20, 225, 235, 237–8, 243 Christians 23, 60–1, 65, 75, 91, 212, 216–17, 235, see also Christianity Church of England, the 64, 75, 208n.8, 209, 211 and n.19, 212 and n.21, 213–15, 217, 224, 237 Church Fathers, the 209, 216, 241 Civil Wars, the 10, 15, 207–8, 209n.9, 245 ‘Classical reception studies’ 6–8, see also reception theory classics/classicism 18–19, 23, 37, 40 closure 127, 129 cognomina 2, 35–41, 47–8, 57 coherence 49, 113–14, 152, 155 discernment 53, 60–1, 77, 88 divinity 58, 168, 171–3, 175, 180–2, 185, 188–90, 199, 200 and n.158, 201–5, 219, 234, 238, see also God and poetic/divine fury editing 21–4, 115–17, 185 education 28–9, 31, 42–3, 50, 56, 60, 102, 104, 110–11, 148, 245–6 Egypt 42, 146, 147 and n.45, 158, 177, 180, 209, 212, 216–18, 226, 230, 247 emblems 4 and n.9, 97, 104, 105n.34, 108–9, 241 epideictic rhetoric 111, 142, 169, 222–3 epithets, see cognomina error, religious 68–72, 77–8, 167, 226 Euhemerism 5, 12, 159, 227, 230–1, 247 fables, see myth false gods 56–77, 91, 212, 216, 227, 230, 234–5 Family of Love, the 14, 56, 66, 68–72, 74, 79, 90, 226, 241 France 156–7, 246–9 Frankfurt Book Fair 156 Freiburg 31

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

GENERAL INDEX

Garden of Adonis 125 and n.125, 128 genealogy 36, 44, 69, 97, 127 Germany 6, 13, 42, 71, 73, 76, 228–9, 249 God 45, 59–60, 91, 150–1, 153, 160, 172–3, 175, 181, 183, 211–12, 218–19, 221–2, 224, 227, 231, 233–4, 237–8 knowledge of 138, 143, 151, 202 Greece 42, 100, 109–10, 145, 169, 171, 193, 212, 226–7, 233, 245 heresy 43, 68–9, 71–2, 74, 168, 184, 213, 221–2, 226, 240, see also idolatry hermeneutics 6–7, 12, 94, 148–9 hieroglyphs 41, 97, 104, 143, 177, 205 history 15–16, 19, 40, 46, 91, 100, 107, 142, 144–5, 155, 213, 242, 249 human beings 106–7, 135, 146, 152–3, 188, 204 imagination of, see imagination knowledge of 151–2, 202 humanism 19–21, 23–5, 27, 30–1, 38, 40–1, 45, 47–8, 56, 63, 66, 113, 148, 165, see also miscellanies, humanist iconography 10, 14, 38, 44, 72–6, 81 idolatry 42–3, 58–64, 66, 67, 73, 76, 176, 212–13, 225, 229, 233, 238 images 19, 25, 43, 44–5, 72–7, 81, 89, 92, 97–8, 101–7, 109–12, 122, 125, 202, 211, 215 and n.33, 219, 225, 233, 241, 248 imagination 5, 11, 18, 58–64, 67, 74, 77–9, 110, 167–8, 227 imprese 97, 98n.15, 104–8, 196, 241 indices 30–1, 45, 189 interconnectedness 127, 141, 144, 147, 152, 154–5 interpretation 5–7, 12, 13, 37, 49, 65–6, 100, 103–10, 112, 114, 116, 124–5, 148–52, 155, 161, 169, 170, 190–201, 202, 218–19, 243, see also nature, interpretation of intertextuality 6–7, 192 irreligion 61, 64, 66–8, 73, 76, 79, 91, 227, 228n.87, 229, 233, see also heresy Islam 227 Italy 9, 26, 42, 81, 158, 170, 185–6, 249 Judaism 101 knowledge 30, 102, 111, 135, 137–47, 151–2, 155, 160, 166–7, 169–71,

176, 178–82, 189–90, 202, 204–5, 240–1, see also prisca sapientia division of 138, 142, 145, 147, 153 of God, see God, knowledge of hidden 144, 168–9, 177–8, 189 organization of 30, 144–5 philosophical 103, 137, 151, 167, 170, 178–80, see also prima philosophia religious 160, 178, 181–2, 204 ‘Tree of ’ 137, 147 language 21–4, 41–3, 67, 120–2, 164, 167, 172, 197, see also editing and languages and lexicography and translation languages Dutch 157, 225 English 3–4, 44, 70, 98, 119, 158, 164, 191, 199, 249 French 3, 20, 157, 225, 246–8 German 23, 41–3, 47, 225, 249 Greek 38, 194, 195n.135 Hebrew 186 Italian 113n.70, 156–7, 185, 249 Latin 3, 20, 21 and n.17, 23–4, 29, 31, 42, 48, 50, 57, 62, 98–9, 113n.70, 114, 117, 156, 191, 247–9 vernacular 42, 109n.52, 113 Laudianism 15, 208, 211n.19, 217, 225, 235, 237–8, 242 learning 25, 31, 142, 144–5, 148, 150, 152–3, 155, 182, 185, 204, 237 pagan 23, 185, 209, 216 Leiden 157, 165n.9 lexicography 34, 36, 68 London 55, 76, 156, 245, 248 love 171–3, 189, 199, 200–1, see also Family of Love magic 74, 140 and n.21, 146, 178, 184, 187, 189 and n.113 meditation 217–22, 244–5 metalepsis 65–6 metamorphosis 11, 84, 93, 101, 113, 114, 117, 118n.94, 120, 124, 126, 128–9, 131–2, 151, 244 metaphor 24–5, 86–7, 88–90, 108–10, 151, 155 metaphysics 138, 139n.14 miscellanies 25–35, 51 ancient 31 humanist 20, 27, 31, 34–5

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GENERAL INDEX

monarchy, the 208–10, 213–15, 220–4, 238, 242, see also royalism and Stuarts, the monsters/monstrosity 78–9, 81–91 morality 39, 45–6, 63–7, 73, 79, 83, 85, 100, 102, 111, 149, 151, 154, 168–9, 181, 204, 209, 216, 233–4, 241, 245, see also allegory Münster 69 Rebellion in 69, 71 myth proto-theories of 59–60, 62–3, 109–12, 141–7, 176, 180, 227–31, 234–6, 238 rhetorical applications of 22–3, 50–1, 68–72, 124–7, 137, 155, 201, 220–5, 241–2 myth philosophy 16, 239 myth theory 8, 11–16, 91–2, 96, 99, 104, 107–8, 205, 239–40 mythopoesis 93, 103, 112, 242 natural philosophy 135–61, 178–82, 189, 202, 204, 240–1 nature 4, 44, 79n.80, 90, 105–8, 140, 144, 151–2, 154–5, 168, 178–82, 202, 205 interpretation of 138, 144, 152, 178–82, 189, 202 Neo-Platonism 46, 65, 82n.86, 163, 165–6, 170–7, 183–90, 192–4, 197, 202–3, 219, 241 Netherlands, the 156–7 Nuremberg 157 Orphic tradition, the 165, 200 paganism and Christianity 41–3, 57, 58–72, 178–83, 209–20, 225–38, 243 origins of 59–60, 225–38 parenthesis 172, 182–3 Paris (city) 156–7 pars pro toto 67, 74, 116 Pegnesischer Blumenorden 157 piety 64, 70, 208, 212, 235, see also beauty of holiness poetic/divine fury 165, 170, 172–3, 176, 182, 189, 202–5 poetics 14–15, 62–6, 99–112, 141–6, 165, 166–70, 190–204, 208 politics 10, 50, 67, 103, 109, 137, 144, 149 and n.52, 154, 207–9, 215, 221–6, 235–6, 238, 240, 242, 245, 249, see also state, the



and religion, see state, the, and the church/religion Pope, the 67, 156, 211, 238 prima philosophia 135, 138–41, 144–7, 149–53, 155, 176, 202, 242 prisca sapientia 139–40, 155, 192 prisca theologia 174–6, 194, 197, 202 prisci 173 and n.52, 205 prosopographia 94 psychomachia 29 Pythagoreanism 14, 193–6, 198, 241 Pythagorean symbols 192 and n.123, 193, 195–7 readers 6–7, 18, 28, 40, 41, 50, 51, 58–65, 68, 84, 91–2, 102, 125, 156–61, 182, 201, 212–13, 220, 237, 241, 248, see also reception theory reception theory 5–7, 11 religion, see Catholicism and Christianity and Church of England and Family of Love and irreligion and paganism and Christianity rhetoric 56, 65, 108, 109–11, 116, 139, 145, 148n.50, 182, 203–5, 215, 240, 242 Rome 42, 63, 67, 100, 128, 169, 207–9, 212–13, 222, 224, 226–7, 231–5, 237–8, 245 royalism 208–9, 225 Sibylline prophecies 159–60, 165 Southampton 209–15 Spain 170 state, the 71, 103, 224–6, 234–8, 242 and the church/religion 209, 213–15, 221–6, 234–8 Strasburg 34n.46 Stuarts, the 208–15, 242 Styx (mythological river) 45 syncretism 12, 165, 184, 197, 232 translation/translations 3–4, 20, 41–2, 47, 57, 66, 70, 73, 93, 108, 112–13, 117–27, 150n.59, 156–8, 164, 173, 174, 191–201, 225, 246–7 Turkey 23, 158 Venice 156 Virginia 231n.105 Wittenberg 116