Worldlings: The term suggests not only creatures of this world, but those with allegiances to this world.
Haec . . . serenam: ‘Let Babylon read these things and learn to rear its earth-bound head as far as heaven: here is the sure path to life, which the noble example of van der Noot gives to men to read. Scorning his homeland, certain victories, and official rewards, aware that virtue has no foundation in blood, he has raised his mind to greater things and, by this work, lets the world know of his uncommon suffering and of his life’s sad labors.
‘Let Babylon read these things; let it read and fill its ears with this work. And if anyone’s mind is shrouded in dark mists and, forgetful of the right path, wanders across trackless rocks, here, the mists removed, he may find out the Supreme Good. The teachings of the “Wise” disperse the truth and jumble it with empty falsehood. O senseless minds of men! Not that Church of the Gods but the alerted mind, lashing these Learned ones with a harsh rope, will lead the corrupted soul to better things.
‘O that the idols lay overthrown! May His honor, which moves all things, be restored. Yet sometimes a kinder fortune will drop from the stars and the piteous rulers of most high Olympus will behold our struggles, behold how the tyrants of all lands rage with furious mind. But whoever is inflamed to discover the star that points out the true path, read here these learned, late-night labors which learned van der Noot has wrought for you. Like the Ploughman who watches the clouds chased away by the sun and the fields renew their smiling, so will you see a tranquil light shine out, through the dense smoke, for you.’
Doctor . . . Zoilum: ‘Doctor Gerard Goosen, Physician, Scientist, and Poet, Governor of Brabant; an Octastich on Zoilus’. An octastich is an eight-line poem. Zoilus was a literary scholar of the fourth century B.C., notorious for the harshness of his criticism of Homer.
Josias: Josiah, the king of Judah who ‘put down the idolatrous priests’ (2 Kings 23:5), is similarly instanced as a model ruler in the epistle prefatory to the 1570 edition of the Geneva Bible. The comparison of Frederick to Josiah may be especially pointed, since Josiah effected a major reformation not only in his own realm of Judah, but in the kingdom of Israel to the north as well. His fervent iconoclasm would have been an inspiration to the Antwerp reformers: at 2 Kings 23:4, Josiah burns the vessels used in the worship of Baal and carries the ashes to Bethel, the site where Jeroboam had erected his golden calves; at 23:5, he destroys the altar at Bethel.
untimely dide: Possibly influenced by van der Noot’s interpretation of the sonnet as an allegory of the depredations of time, and certainly responding to his own formulation two lines earlier, ‘in shorte time, I spied’, Spenser has introduced this characterization of the death of the hind, which is not to be found in Petrarch’s original or Marot’s translation.
The sequence of sonnets translates Du Bellay’s Songe, itself heavily indebted to Petrarch’s Canzone of Visions.
1: Du Bellay’s sequence begins with the apparition of a spirit who propounds the general lesson of the visions that will follow, that since all things beneath heaven are transitory, those who hope for permanence must vest that hope in the divine. The spirit’s admonition occupies the entire sestet of Du Bellay’s poem, whereas, in Spenser’s rendering, the apparition speaks of the world’s inconstancy and, in the final three lines, the original speaker formulates the compensatory principle of confidence in God. The summary prologue and the demonstration of the speaker’s wisdom give the sequence a somewhat greater spiritual security than is offered in the preceding sequence. That said, this second sequence is also more sepulchral than the prior one: Spenser’s speaker is addressed by a ‘ghost’ (un Demon for Du Bellay) and the ensuing poems are haunted by the pathetic or monstrous vestiges of antiquity.
1.1-5 Recalling the occasion of the appearance of Hector’s ghost in Aen 2.268-97; the ghost rouses the sleeping Aeneas, warning him to flee the burning city of Troy.
Typhæus sister: Although Hesiod distinguishes Typhœus and Typhaon, making Typhœus the latter’s father, they were frequently conflated in antiquity -- as Typhoeus, Typhos, Typhaon, or Typhon: all are monstrous and belligerent. Hesiod’s Typhœus is one of the Giants who revolted against the Olympians (Theog 820-38). Neither Typhaon nor Typhœus had a famous sister, but the poem and the woodcut seem to identify the sister as a personification of Rome as both imperial conqueror (ll. 9-10) and warlike foe of heaven (l. 6).
In a confusion possibly related to the conflation of Typhœus and Typhaon the commentary on this poem refers to the central figure as ‘Typheus daughter’. For Spenser, the figure of Typhœus will continue to invite bizarre genealogical imaginings: in FQ III.vii he will describe how Typhœus raped his own mother Earth and so sired Argante and Ollyphant, twins whose incestuous relations begin in utero: The belligerent and lecherous Argante is both Typhœus’ sister and his daughter.
Dragon: Of the dragon of Rev. 12 and 13, the Geneva glossator comments (at 13.2) “that is, the devil.”
one cride: At Rev 13.4, a multitude of worshippers offers up this reverent question.
Apoc. 9. [marg. gl.]: I.e., Rev 9:3 and 9:17. The gloss in the Geneva Bible to the locusts (van der Noot’s ‘Grashoppers’) that vex the earth in Rev 9 is pertinent: ‘Locustes are false teachers, heretikes, and worldlie suttil Prelates, with Monkes, Freres Cardinals Patriarkes, Archebishops, Bishops, Doctors Bachelors & masters which forsake Christ to mainteine false doctrine.’
Math. 23 [marginal gloss]: Matt 23:34.
[glosses]: The relevant passages are Esth 3:4 and 1 Macc 1:41-51.
Of these . . . seduced by them.: C.f Bale (1550: L2r).
[glosses]: As elsewhere TVW reproduces the glosses in the French Theatre, with some errors. As printed, TVW misrepresents the reference to 1 Maccabees as a reference to 2 Maccabees (a book that Luther regarded with contempt and which many Protestants kept at arms’ length), but even the gloss in the French source seems only approximate, for although 1 Macc. 2 is relevant to the discussion at hand, the oppressions of Antiochus are most vividly narrated in the first chapter of 1 Macc. Other glosses are also problematic. Habak. 1 marvels over the conquests of the Chaldeans, but the curse on them is withheld until 2.8 and 2.15-17. The gloss ‘Esay. 22’ may be a reference to the captivity of Shebna at Isa 22.17, but context strongly suggests that this, like the rest of Isa 22, concerns an Assyrian conquest, not one of Persians or Medes. (The Geneva glosses construe Isa 22 as a prophecy of Babylonian conquest – again, not Persian or Medean.) The other references may be specified to Isa 13.17-22 and 2 Chron 36.17-23.
[glosses: Psalm 9 . . . Rom. 1.]: There are no corresponding glosses in the French Theatre, although their textual locations correspond to places in the French Theatre where, in several copies, the margins are distinguished by a great deal of bleed-through. It may be that Roest, construing this bleed-through as poorly printed glosses, felt obliged to “repair” the illegible glosses. If so, he did his job poorly: since neither Ps 9 nor Rom 3 are pertinent to the passages they ostensibly underpin, they seem little better than place-holders. It may be that the list of the various forms of wickedness that fill those who do not honor God (Rom 1.29) is a gloss relevant to the Popedom’s ‘headlong’ rush ‘to every kinde of mischiefe’.
[gloss: 2. Thess. 2.]: This is the first of three consecutive glosses all of which refer the reader to 2 Thess 2: this passage draws on verses 10-11, but as van der Noot’s glosses imply, Bale’s commentary here, and for the next page, dwells on the identification of the Lawless One of 2 Thess 2.9-12 and the Antichrist-Beast of Rev 13 (1550: g3v-g4r). Bale and van der Noot interest themselves especially on the dynamics of apocalyptic justice: to those who, refusing truth, secure authority by means of illusion, God responds by inflicting delusion, leaving the deceivers sunk in deception. Both Bale and Calvin regard the Antichrist as being made fully manifest in the papacy by the progressive workings of the mystery of iniquity of 2 Thess 2.7; see Firth, Apocalyptic Tradition, 53.
men of the countrey: Rustics, translating ‘Le Paisan ou laboreur’ (Le Theatre, D7).
For all . . . of the eyes: Both the immediate French source and the verse from 1 John that it renders strongly support the emendation here. The compositor has plainly compressed his copy, reducing the first two of the three vices to a single one – ‘the luste of the eyes’ − in a straightforward instance of eye-skip. It may be that the compositor fumbled the line further, misreading ‘as the luste’ (which would translate ‘asçavoir la concupiscence’) and setting ‘is the luste’, yet because ‘is’ corresponds to the syntax of the phrase as the passage is rendered in the Vulgate we have let the word stand.
.xxi. yeares: The 211th poem in Petrarch’s Rime sparse establishes the year of Petrarch’s enamourment as 1327; the 336th poem establishes the year of Laura’s death as 1348. Petrarch gives both dates again in an obituary he inscribes in his manuscript of Virgil.
ten yeares: In the 364th of the 366 poems of the Rime sparse, Petrarch recalls the twenty-one years during which he loved Laura prior to her death and marks the occasion of the poem as the tenth anniversary of her death.
understode: The word is used similarly below at [give l. ref to Understandyng hereby]. The sense of the term as used here -- not an unfamiliar one in Spenser’s period -- suggest a semantic peculiarity central to visionary poetry. Insofar as Petrarch is to be taken as having been a passive witness to these visions, this understanding may be taken as his interpretation of that visionary experience (OED ‘understand’ 5a); insofar as Petrarch is to be taken as the inventor of these visions, this understanding may be taken as the meaning he intends for us to derive from his description of those visions (OED ‘understand’ 5b). The dual sense of understand thus anticipates the very similar dual sense of read in Spenser’s mature poetry.
christian libertie: The phrase has distinctive, technical force in the writings of Calvin’s Institutes III.xix (and less technical force in Luther), but van der Noot’s use of this important Reformation slogan to designate a freedom from worldly desires is incongruous with Calvin’s usage, which denotes that freedom from the Old Law expounded in Galatians.
Holly: Neither Petrarch’s poem nor van der Noot’s French commentary warrants the suggestion that a holly has bloomed from a laurel. Holly seems to be an error based on the compositor’s misreading of his copy, but the original wording of the copy is difficult to determine. Roest may have consulted Marot’s translation of Petrarch and construed divins rameaux (l. 1) as ‘holy bowes’ or, perhaps, he has translated the phrase in the French commentary, belles branchettes, as ‘jolly bowes’.
are . . . one: share a single approach.
hir departure (as it is sayde): I.e., her so-called ‘departure’.
Dodonian tree: An oak; see above n. to 5.1.
Vimiall . . . Vimiel: There is considerable transmissional muddle here. The French source reads Viminel and Viniel for the third and sixth hills in its list (Le Theatre: E8). Viniel seems simply to be a distorted repetition of Viminel - the learned reader would expect to see the Aventine hill listed here - and Viminel is a misspelling of Viminall. The misspelling may have been marked for correction in Roest’s copy, but ‘Vimiall’ in the English Theatre fails to make an accurate correcton; and ‘Vimiel’ is no improvement on Viniel.
the shee wolfe . . . Romains: This symbol (‘Armes’) was widely circulated on Roman coins from as early as the third century B.C.E. Cicero mentions that a statue of the she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus was damaged by a lightning strike in 65 B.C.E. (In Catilinem, 3.19).
Typheus daughter: The poem refers, in fact, to ‘Typhæus sister’, for which see the note at 11.4 above. Different authors attribute various daughters to Typhaon/Typhoeus: the Chimera, the Sphinx, the Harpies, and the Lernaean Hydra, none of whom have attributes that correspond securely to those of the central figure in Du Bellay’s poem.
Oute . . . beastlynesse: In The Boke Named the Governour (1537: B7v) Sir Thomas Elyot remarks on the antiquity of the idea that character could be transmitted by breast-milk; in The Boke of Children (1546), Jean Goeurot adduces a number of classical authors from Plato to Pliny on this point, particularly citing Aeneid IV.365-7, where Virgil’s Dido attributes Aeneas’ cruelty ‘unto the gyver of the mylke’ (S1v-S2v).
cast . . . teeth: The famous anti-Roman remark of Mithridates VI is recorded in Justin’s Epitome of the Philippic History of Pompeius Trogus XXXVIII.6.8.
Nero . . . Maxence: The inclusion of Trajan in this list may seem anomalous, since both Aquinas and Dante include him among the virtuous pagans, but van der Noot seems to be drawing on Augustine’s list of the ten persecutions of the early Church that stand as preliminary to the eleventh and final persecution under the aegis of the Antichrist (City of God, 18.52): Augustine lists Trajan’s persectuion as the third of these ten. He gives Nero’s and Domitian’s as the first two, Aurelian’s as the ninth and Diocletian’s (and Maximian’s) as the tenth. Van der Noot may have meant to include Maximian in this list and not his son, Maxentius – Maxence. Maxentius had, in fact, practiced a policy of toleration towards Christians, although because of his rivalry with the Christian Constantine, he earned an undeserved post-antique reputation for hostility to Christians.
have been . . . are . . . rysen: The shift to the present tense captures the typological historical sense at the core of the Theatre: the punishment of ancient anti-Christian Rome is imagined as meted out in the present, so that the early persecutors merge with the pope and his bishops and the early Christian martyrs dissolve into modern Protestants.
Sunne. . . Moone: Language of the sixth seal, possibly borrowed from Bale 1550: L6v.
For they dayly . . . have sayde: Bale 1550: L1r-L2r.
Talmuith: Talmud. The status of the Talmud within Judaism had been a central object of dispute in the pamphlet war that passed between Reuchlin on the one hand and Johnannes Pfefferkorn and his Dominican supporters on the other during the years 1507 and 1521, but the claim that Jews regarded the Talmud as having greater authority than the Bible may be traced to the letters that Gregory IX issued in 1239 condemning the Talmud.
Decretals: The term denotes the papal letters that formulate decisions in canon law. The pseudo-Isidorean Decretals, part of a large Frankish collection of spurious documents, were woven into a larger collection of authentic canons, the so-called Hispana, sometime in the middle of the ninth century. Nicholas of Cusa subjected these documents to critical scrutiny in the middle of the fifteenth century, and Erasmus and du Moulin elaborated Cusanus’ criticism in the century that followed.
brought in: introduced
Although van der Noot doesn’t offer the reader a formal partition or outline of the next few pages, he does suggest, at F2r, that he has offered an account of the three principal temptations from which all and every kinde of evyll proceedeth (F2r): the love of riches (E1v-E7v), ambition (E7v-F1r), and lust (F1r-F2r). We here offer the beginning of the discussion of the temptation of riches, the longest of these three informal sections.
church holy days: Like most of the criticism in this passage, the attack on the multitude of Catholic holidays might have come from any of the Reformers, but Calvinists like van der Noot were especially fervent in their sabbatarianism and in their strict abridgement in the number of holidays celebrated: many mid-century Calvinist churches celebrated only the Sabbath, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsunday, and there was a brief period in Geneva when even the celebration of Christmas was proscribed.
The item marks a departure from Bale, who here speaks of ‘hallowing of churches’ instead of the proliferation of holidays (1550: L1v). Bale’s Image continues to inspire the next few sentences, but van der Noot improvises by providing more piquantly specific enormities than Bale offers.
images: While the veneration of images is a central object of Protestant criticism, van der Noot’s iconoclastic engagements are hardly abstract. Van der Noot had fled to England because of the punitive repression that followed the sacking of Antwerp churches and defacing of their images in the summer of 1566.
foreseing . . . Maosin: The text, which has no equivalent in Bale’s Image, may be corrupt here. Roest is translating Ils bastirent & edifierent en tous endroictz leurs Maosins (‘In every place they build and set up their Maosins’; F4), but even if foresee is being used to mean ‘provide for’, it seems an imperfect way to render van der Noot’s two verbs for building. Because of the oddly spelled word, Maosins, in his source, Roest may not have recognized van der Noot’s reference to the notoriously difficult verse, Daniel 11.38, ‘But in hys place’ – that is, instead of ‘the God of his fathers’ (11.37) – ‘shal he honour the God Mauzzim’, where ‘he’ is ‘the King’ of 11.36, usually understood as the Antichrist. Modern translations render ‘Mauzzim’ as ‘forces’ or ‘fortresses’, while Luther identifies ‘Mauzzim’ with the mass, but the gloss to the Geneva version is closer to the spirit of van der Noot’s allusion, for it characterizes the Mauzzim as ‘the god of riches and power.’ On Maosin, see also N7v.
copper faces: An unusual locution, possibly comparable to brazen-faced. But because Roest is translating ‘la face enflée’ (enflamed face) he may mean the phrase to name acne rosacea, sometimes referred to as ‘copper-nose’.
seduced by them: Although the seductress of Prov 5:3-6 is less potent than the Whore of Rev, ‘her steppes take holde on hel.’ Still, the reference may be a misprint: the gloss in the French Theatre gives ‘Pro. 2’, possibly a reference to a comparable seductress at 2:16-19, whereas the source in Bale (1550: L2v) offers ‘Prove. 1’, presumably 1:12, which, like Isa 5:14, features a ravenous Sheol.
holy ghost by S. John: Cf. Bale (1550: A3v-A4r). But the language here may also reflect the influence of the headnote to Rev in the Geneva Bible, which, like Bale’s Image, describes the book as the Holy Ghost’s own compendium of apocalyptic prophecies, emphasizes the theme of punishment of hypocrisy, and focuses on enargeia: ‘Herein therefore is lively set forth the Divinitie of Christ’ and ‘the livelie description of Antichrist is set forth’.
I saw . . . and corporally: This long passage on Rev 13:1-2 is all but lifted from Bale (1550: f8r-g5r).
Ceder . . . Libanus: Cf. Bale (1550: f8r). For the cedars of Lebanon as a figure for a punishable pride, see Isa 2:12-13 and Ps 37:35.
Elmas: Acts 13.6-12.
their heads . . . and their hornes: Rev 13.1.
but . . . congregation: Our copy text reads ‘but in this point differ the dragon and the beast, from the divell and his membres, Sathan and his carnal and beastly congregation’, which misrepresents the French source, which unfolds as a series of slightly irregular contrastive pairs: en ce seul point different le Dragon et la beste: le diable et ses membres: Satan de sa congregation charnelle (‘in this particular way differ the Dragon and the Beast, the Devil and his members, Satan from his carnal congregation’ [emphases mine]; F4r). We conjecture that, in preparing his translation, Roest first levelled the irregularity of et-et-de by rendering it ‘and . . . and . . . and’, but later changed his mind, crossing out the last ‘and’ and writing ‘from’ above it. Confused by his copy, the compositor set ‘from’ in the wrong place in the sentence and failed to cancel the third ‘and’.
It is worth noting that van der Noot equates the congregation of Satan (Rev 2:9 and 3:9) with the congregation of the hypocrites (Job 15:34) mentioned a few lines earlier.
auricular confession: Compulsory confession ‘into the ear of’ a priestly-confessor. Calvin offers a sustained critique of the practice in Institutes III.4.
father of all lies: See John 8.44.
written: In both the French commentary and here, van der Noot departs from Bale, whose use of the phrase ‘unwritten veryte’ (1550: g1v) stipulates the unauthorized character of these dogmatic impositions.
Judas . . . entred: Luke 22.3, John 13.27.
bishops and Scribes: Van der Noot’s formulation has polemical force: it adapts the gospel pairing, ‘chief Priests and Scribes’ from Matt 2.4 (and see also Luke 23.10 and the more frequent pairing of scribes and Pharisees, which is employed throughout the gospels and serves as the anaphoric matrix of Jesus’ address to the multitude in Matt 23). By referring to Jerusalem’s chief priests as bishops, van der Noot sharpens the typological relationship between the modern Roman clerics and the priestly enemies of Jesus himself and so prepares for the double assertion in the next sentence: first, that the Apostles, tru ministers and other witnesses of Christ were persecuted and are again persecuted at this present and, second, that, by persecuting the present witnesses of Christ, these popish prelates . . . fulfil the mesure of their fathers. Bale’s typology is even more emphatic; in the comparable passage, he speaks of “Bysshoppes and lawers” (sic, 1550: g1v).
Bridegromes: I.e., bridegrooms of the Church. In Mark 2:19-20, Jesus is understood to have referred to himself as a bridegroom; in Eph 5:25, Paul likens Christ’s love for the Church to a man’s love for his spouse. Insofar as ordination was understood as conforming the priest to Christ, priests could also be understood as bridegrooms of the Church.
as Zacharie termeth them: Zech 10:17.
a Lion . . . Chaldees: Dan 7:4. The apparatus of the Geneva Bible illustrates a long-standing interpretive confusion over the first of the four kingdoms to which the prophetic chapters 2 and 8 of Daniel refer: the Geneva headnote sensibly refers to the first kingdom as Daniel’s Babylon, but the gloss to 7:4 associates the Lion with the Assyrians and Chaldeans, despite the fact that the Assyrian empire predates Daniel and his prophecy.
as much, and more: The Geneva gloss emphasizes that the beast symbolically combines the peoples ‘whom the Romaines overcame’; Bale (1550: g3v) and van der Noot emphasize the ways in which the Beast exceeds the corruption of its predecessors. See the note to ‘vii. times double’ below.
As at this day: This abridges the version in the French Theatre, which adduces Paul’s ‘prediction’ of this realm of surpassing corruption. The gloss in the French version incorrectly refers the reader to Rom 7, whereas the language of the source of the passage in Bale’s Image makes a clear reference to Paul’s description of an ancient ‘mystery of iniquity’ that would eventually lose its mysteriousness (2 Thess 2:7-8). As Bale’s commentary in Part II of Image makes clear, the workings of the mystery of iniquity are responsible for the embodiment of the Antichrist in the worldly papacy (1550: g1v).
vii. times double: Roest here translates ‘sept fois le double’, probably a derivation from septemgeminus (L.) and, hence, meaning ‘sevenfold’, as opposed to ‘fourteenfold’.
covetousnesse: Translating convoitise; van der Noot's source in Bale reads ‘affeccyons’ (1550: g3v).