Religious propaganda was an influential force behind literary production in late-16th Century England, the time when Edmund Spenser began his epic poem The Faerie Queene. Its characters are allegorical representations of Virtues, Sins and the Catholic and Protestant juntas; Spenser’s interest is to caricature a sinful, unholy Catholic Church which in his time conspired against the reigning Queen Elizabeth I. In Book 1, he achieves this through the viscerally striking characters Duessa and Errour, and by the abjectly evil ones Archimago and Orgoglio. In contrast, the virtuous heroes of Book 1 – Redcrosse, Una, Arthur and the Faerie Queene – represent Anglicanism. Spenser alludes through symbolic imagery to the Bible, and its opposing factions of Good and Evil, to suggest an alternative interpretation of it within the context of an anti-Catholic Reformation.
The Redcrosse Knight, the protagonist of Book 1, is presented with the striking image of a red cross on his garb:
“(…) on his brest a bloudie Cross he bore, / The deare resemblance of his dying Lord, / For whose sweet sake that glorious badge he wore, / And dead as living ever him ador’d (…)”
Here it is strongly suggested that the red cross he wears symbolizes the Crucifixion of Jesus; this connection emphasises Redcrosse’s function as an allegory for the virtue of Holiness. Connecting him to the Crucifixion and Resurrection foreshadows his symbolic rebirth at the House of Caelia after being led astray and made to suffer at the hands of Duessa and Orgoglio, who will imprison him in an underground cell, referencing Jesus’s entombment. The red cross is also the symbol of St. George, patron saint of England. Spenser’s propagandistic angle comes in here; upon breaking away from Roman Catholicism to establish Anglicanism as the national English religion, the veneration of St. George was magnified to support a sense of Anglican political-religious identity. Spenser’s use of St. George in an anti-Catholic context represents the foundation of an independent Church with its own branch of saintly worship; it also gives Redcrosse the heroic attribute of a true Christian fighting against heretics.
Redcrosse’s companion, Una, is also presented with extensive Biblical symbols:
“Una rode (Redcrosse) faire beside, / Upon a lowly Asse more white then snow, / Yet she much whiter, but the same did hide under a vele, / (…) a milk white lamb she lad.”
Her riding upon a donkey alludes to Jesus’s entrance into Jerusalem in the Gospels; the use of the colour white, her veil, conveying modesty, and another Christ symbol, the lamb, also emphasise her holy aspects. Her name’s literal meaning is one or oneness, reflecting the singular nature of Truth, which she represents, and that of the Protestant Church. These two ideals’ embodiment in a single character reinforces their inseparability in the poem’s context. Female figures in the Booke of Holinesse are symbolic to opposing religious factions – the most prominent being Una and, later on, Duessa. The agressive male characters they are attached to – Redcrosse and Orgoglio respectively – embody the battles undertaken between these. In Redcrosse’s case, the tasks he must complete represent the progressive struggle of the Anglican Church to fight foreign Catholics and establish Anglicanism as the dominant English Church.
Redcrosse’s first task in the poem is to destroy the dragon Errour. The monster is described with startling imagery:
“Her vomit full of bokes and papers was, / With loathly frogs and toades, which eyes did lacke, / And creeping sought way in the weedy gras,” and her young “flocked all about her bleeding wound, / And sucked up their dying mothers blood, / Making her death their life, and eke her hurt their good.”
The image of Errour vomiting books and papers alludes to the negative propaganda the Catholic See veered against Elizabeth I. They are also a reference to Papal writings, such as bulls. It expresses the idea that erroneous information is the enemy to be vanquished; Papal literature is, by implication, deliberate misinformation. The frogs and toads allude to the following monsters in the Bible’s Book of Revelation:
“16:13-14: And I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon and out of the mouth of the beast and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits like frogs; For they are spirits of demons, (…)”
These creatures are associated with deceit and heresy; their use in the poem’s context suggests that Spenser is using the Revelations, interpreted in his time as an apocalyptic prophecy, as a denunciation against the Catholic Church. When Errour’s brood drink her blood, Spenser illustrates how lies and misinformation feed on each other: though the battle against Errour has finished, the evil forces which sustain her kind are still there. This elevates the tension in the narrative, indicating that Redcrosse will face future fights. It is also an allegory for the ever-present Catholics who still conspire against Anglicanism, despite the strength of Spenser’s attack.
After slaying Errour, Redcrosse and Una fall into the power of Archimago, a primary antagonistic character in the poem. Archimago appears disguised as an old hermit-friar:
“For that old man of pleasing wordes had store, / And well would file his tongue smooth as glas; / He told of Saintes and Popes, and evermore / He strowd an Ave-Mary after and before.”
The reference to Saints and Popes, cornerstones of Catholic practice, is the key: Spenser has caricatured the Pope through Archimago. Archimago’s wizardly powers, and his use of words to seduce and confound plays on the disparaging view Anglican theologians had of the Pope. These traits are possibly a reaction against Pope Pius V’s papal bull of 1570, Regnans in Excelsis, which excommunicated Elizabeth I and her followers, accused her of being a “heretic and favourer of heretics”, and attempted to depose her. As a riposte, Spenser introduces a Pope-like figure who lures Holiness away from Truth.
The name “Archimago” means arch-image: it is an allusion to the rich tradition of Catholic iconography, which Protestants curbed in their own churches, believing them idolatrous. This is represented by Archimago’s use of illusions – by disguising himself, as in his first appearance, or later on when he induces dreams on a sleeping Redcrosse:
“He that the Stubborne Sprites can wisely tame, / He bids thee to him send for his intent / A fit false dreame, that can delude the sleepers sent. / (…) That troublous dreame gan freshly tosse (Redcrosse’s) braine, / With bowres, and beds, and Ladies deare delight: / But when he saw his labour was all vaine, / With that misformed spright he backe returne againe.”
In Elizabethan times such dreams were seen as portentous, and the reference to sprites (nature spirits) gives the passage a hellish tone. It is through Archimago’s use of dark magic that Spenser demonizes the Pope. Another key point in the poem in which Spenser’s propaganda manifests itself is in Cantos VII and VIII – specifically, through the characters Orgoglio and Duessa. Their relationship represents the Catholic Church’s combination of Satanic power – as represented by Orgoglio – and deceitfulness (Duessa).
Orgoglio’s name, meaning Pride in Italian, links him to the Bible’s Satan: Pride is the greatest of the Seven Deadly Sins, since it is the one which drove Satan out of Heaven and into a war with God. They are both antagonistic figures constructed on the theme of opposition and defiance: satan is a Hebrew noun deriving from the verb to oppose; they are both hubris-driven characters who fall when they are blinded by their self-regard. To reinforce these points of Orgoglio’s character, Spenser also references Classical mythology by characterising him as the son of the Earth-goddess Gaia and the Wind-god Aeolus:
“The greatest Earth his uncouth mother was, / And blastring Aeolus his boasted sire.”
Orgoglio is a brutal giant born from the Earth, like the mythical Greek Gigantes, beings who hubristically defied the Olympians in a war known as the Gigantomachy. These references are tied together in a figure which represents passion-driven antagonism. His Italian name is an attack on Rome, centre of Catholicism; Spenser provides a clear associative link between Satanic hubris and Papal dominion.
In another literary reference, Spenser alludes to the Book of Revelations when Orgoglio gifts Duessa with lavish clothes and a seven-headed monster:
“He gave her gold and purple pall to weare, / And triple crowne set on her head full hye, / And her endowd with royal maiestsye: / Then for to make her dreaded more of men, (…) Upon this dreadfull Beast with sevenfold head / He set the false Duessa”
alludes directly to Revelations 17: 3 – 4,
“(…) and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. / And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and and precious stones and pearls, (…)”.
The Biblical figure is the Whore of Babylon; Spenser associates her to Duessa to reinforce anti-Catholic interpretations of the Revelations. The title Whore is metaphorically translated from the Greek to mean Idolatress, drawing a parallel to Duessa’s role as an idol of, and provoker of, false worship.
Physical description appears again at Canto VIII’s close, with the disrobing of Duessa, describing the witch’s terrifying physical appearance:
“A loathly, wrinckled hag, ill favoured, old, / Whose secret filth good manners biddeth not be told. (…) Such is the face of falshood, such the sight of fowle Duessa, when her borrowed light / Is laid away, and counterfesaunce knowne.”
The intensity of the imagery parallels the previous passage; however, here the vivid description is meant to disgust and repel, contrasting with the mystical beauty of Una and the Faerie Queene. In Spenser’s time, physical appearance was seen as a reflection of a person’s true character: in the poem, beauty represents good while ugliness shows evil. Much like the Devil, Duessa cloaks her true appearance with a charming illusion, a contrast which embodies the ugly nature of duplicity. This is conveyed by the juxtaposed words borrowed light, where light, a symbol of goodness, is demeaned in value by the bathetic adjective; it also mirrors the invocation of the Faerie Queene in the prologue to Book 1, “Great Lady of the greatest Isle, whose light / Like Phoebus lampe throughout the world doth shine,” which uses light symbolism to convey her glory. The Faerie Queene represents Queen Elizabeth I, re-establisher of Protestantism in England, and the light imagery alludes to the quasi-saintly veneration Anglican Reformists held her in.
Another prominent use of it is during the battle in Canto VII, when Arthur’s shield falls and reveals a stunning light:
“the light thereof, that heavens light did pas, / Such blazing brightnesse through the aier threw, / That eye mote not the same endure to vew.”
Light is a prominent image in the Bible to represent a holy presence: God appears in the Old Testament as a burning bush which radiates light; Christ’s Transfiguration is accompanied by a flash of blinding light. In The Faerie Queene‘s Book 1, light has been associated to the titular character, and now to Arthur. This character is the King Arthur from the earliest Medieval British mythology, mixing Pagan and Christian elements alike. The light symbolism connects him to the Biblical King of the New Testament, Jesus; in this way the interconnected light imagery becomes representative of the mystical span of English Royalty. By using mythical history of Britain’s origins, Spenser implies that this legacy is more powerful than that of the Pope; it resonates with the fact that Anglicanism bases the head of its religion around a local monarch instead of a distant bishop.
Arthur’s prevalence in English literature ties in with the literary history Spenser draws upon to create a propagandistic side to his poem. By targeting the Italian language through Orgoglio’s name, he reaches the foundation of a culture he seeks to antagonise. And by connecting Archimago and Errour through the idea that they use language to deceive and spread evil, Spenser portrays the side of a religious war fought with letters. Implicitly, The Faerie Queene itself is partly Spenser’s literary contribution to this wider conflict, as the voice of Anglican Protestantism.
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