This week, I was tasked with reading the first seven Cantos of Book 1 of Faerie Queene and Chapter 25 (John Scottus Eriugena) of Medieval Philosophy. Spenser wrote his classic epic poem for the purpose of creating an allegory that represents the concept of spiritual virtue. Each character represents a different type of virtue that the main character, Redcorsse, must fend off. The title character, the Faerie Queene herself, is meant to represent Queen Elizabeth – the ruler of Spenser’s England and the supposed protector and keeper of the faith. Redcrosse represents the individual Christian, on the search for Holiness, who is armed with faith in Christ, the shield with the bloody cross. Una, his lady traveler means “truth.” For a Christian to be holy, he must have true faith, and so the plot of Book I mostly concerns the attempts of evildoers to separate Redcrosse from Una. Most of these villains are meant by Spenser to represent one thing in common: the Roman Catholic Church. Spenser felt that in the English Reformation, the people had defeated “false religion” such as Catholicism and embraced “true religion”, such as Protestantism and Anglicanism. Thus, Redcrosse must defeat villains who mimic the falsehood and impurity of the Roman Church.
The section where he took on Errour most enthralled me. When Redcrosse chokes the beast, Spenser writes,
“His grasping hold, and from her turne him backe:
Her vomit full of bookes and papers was
With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke,
And creeping caught way in the weedy gras:
Her filthy parbreake all the place defiled has.” (Spenser 46, lines 20, 3-6)
The Christian (Redcrosse) may be able to defeat these obvious and disgusting errors, but before he is united to the truth he is still lost and can be easily deceived. One can connect this level of deception to this passage in Medieval Philosophy: “The name God is applied not only to the Divine Essence, but also, as frequently in sacred Scripture, to that way in which He show’s Himself, in some manner to intellectual and rational creatures, to each according to his capacity. This way is usually termed by the Greeks theophany, i.e., “an appearance of God.”” (Foltz 162). These two passages relate because they show the true nature of how Christianity viewed both the perception of reality and what is false. Holiness (Redcrosse) is susceptible to the opposite of truth. Redcrosse may be able to defeat the strength of Errour or the other villainous creatures that come after him through his own native virtue, but he falls prey to the wiles of Falsehood such as Duressa, who represents the Roman Church, both because she is “false faith,” and because of her rich, purple and gold clothing, which, for Spenser, displays the greedy wealth and arrogant pomp of Rome. According to Eriugena, God hates deception and expects his people to live, speak, love, and think the truth. One can truly see the disconnect and dissolve in Christianity through Spenser’s Faerie Queene through the differences between Catholicism and it’s evolving sects when it comes to truth and reality versus deception and falsehood.
Leave a Reply