id: annotations type: Drafted by Joe Loewenstein August 2010; marked up by Alexandra Bursak & Perry Trolard September 2010; marked up by Jonathan Butler, September/October 2011. id: 1316026447667552 type: commentaryReaders will note that we will print an abridgement of the Theatre, with the full text of the book available on line. The following notes provide glosses and commentary for the abridged version and also a sketchy, incomplete commentary on some passages that will be published only in the online Archive. id: 1316026447667662 type: commentaryTHEATRE: not an uncommon title for a sixteenth-century book meant to provide a critical conspectus on a subject. Such books share with theatrical auditoria the function of offering an object of scrutiny rendered circumscribed and made available for serious reflection to a spectator whose situation allows him or her an objectifying, but not dispassionate vantage. id: 1316026447667699 type: glossvoluptuous: sensuous, sensual id: 1316026447667735 type: commentaryWorldlings: The term suggests not only creatures of this world, but those with allegiances to this world. id: 1316026447667773 type: commentaryHONI SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE: ‘Shame on he who think ill of this’. This is the motto of the Order of the Garter. id: 1316026447667810 type: sigIn commendationem . . . Brabant: ‘Poem in commendation of the work set forth by the most noble and virtuous Lord, John van der Noot, patrician of Antwerp, by “M. Rabilae”, poet of Brabant.’ ‘M. Rabilae’ is probably an anagram of the name of Melchior van Baerle (Barlaeus), Antwerp author of a number of Latin poems on mythological subjects. id: 1316026447670167 type: commentary 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.’ id: 1316026447670258 type: commentaryDOCTOR . . . Octastichon: ‘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.E., notorious for the harshness of his criticism of Homer. id: 1316026447670295 type: commentaryGERARDUS GOOSSENIUS: Like van der Noot, van Goossens was a member of the Dutch refugee community in England, having left the Netherlands in 1566. Shortly after the publication of A Theatre he fell foul of the authorities of the Dutch Church owing to a dispute with one of the elders, John Engelram, after which he moved to Canterbury. id: 1316026447670333 type: commentaryZoile . . . Goosseni :‘Zoilus, why so pale? Why the perpetual long face, your brow furrowed and forehead always wrinkled? I see that you’re bothered by the publication of this book. But why, I wonder, should you find that troubling? Is it because it attacks the rites of the Papists and the worship of idols, and doesn’t lament despoiled Babylon? It doesn't mind some backbiting, Zoilus; it is content to have delighted the good and discomfited the wicked’. ‘Goossens, steadfast.’ id: 1316026447670404 type: commentaryFraunce: From the reign of Edward III through to that of George III, all English monarchs asserted formal claim to the throne of France. id: 1316026447670439 type: commentarymy departure oute of Brabante: Van der Noot fled Antwerp (in the duchy of Brabant) in the spring of 1567 after a failed Calvinist attempt to take control of the city government. Margaret of Parma had put down the revolt, yet she exercised what would seem, in hindsight, a comparatively moderate approach to this and prior Calvinist insurgencies in Antwerp and its environs; when the Duke of Alva replaced her later in the spring, a number of Antwerp’s Protestants sought refuge in England and Germany. More of the Dutch exiles ended up in London than in any other individual European locale. id: 1316026447670475 type: glossnaturall: native id: 1316026447670514 type: commentaryas well . . . Antechrist: Van der Noot’s special emphasis on visual hygiene does more than prepare for the carefully disciplined visionary poems to come. The Antwerp Calvinists had a resolute interest in the purification of visual culture, having engaged in an aggressive program of iconoclasm in the years before the crackdown that forced him to flee to England. The identification of the Roman church or the pope with the Antichrist has a number of pre-Reformation antecedents, and figures in the first of the twenty-five articles of the Lollards (1388). id: 1316026447670551 type: glossRomyshe: Roman id: 1316026447670586 type: glossmeane space: meantime id: 1316026447670622 type: glossnourice: nurse id: 1316026447670658 type: glossother my: my other id: 1316026447670695 type: glosswithdrawe: distract id: 1316026447670767 type: glossthe rather: instead id: 1316026447670837 type: glossgyve: devote id: 1316026447670878 type: glossfor as much: insofar id: 1316026447670914 type: glossconveniencie: aptness id: 1316026447670949 type: glossresembled: likened id: 1316026447670984 type: commentaryblessed and happie: A pleonasm: happie here means ‘fortunate’ or ‘blessed’. id: 1316026447671023 type: commentaryprince: Although van der Noot refers to Elizabeth as a ‘Princesse’ in the dedicatory half-title, the sex-neutral use of the term ‘prince’ was in wide use. id: 1316026447671071 type: commentarylineally descended: The assertion is polemical: after all, in 1536, her father had declared Elizabeth illegitimate; he reversed himself by the Act of Succession of 1543, which Act Edward VI had attempted to overrule in the Device for the Succession of 1553. There were several claimants at the time of the publication of Theatre. Henry Hastings still had a few supporters, and more important, the pretensions of Elizabeth’s second cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, had been explicit since the death of her half-sister, Mary Tudor, when Henry II of France declared his son, Francis II, and Mary, his wife, king and queen of England. Even though Mary Queen of Scots had fled to England from Scotland in 1568 and was very much under Elizabeth’s thumb when Theatre was published, her claims to the English throne had the abiding support of England’s Catholics: the publication precedes the Northern Rebellion by only a few months. Van der Noot’s affirmations of Elizabeth’s sovereignty here have a nervous truculence; they contribute to the general defense against Catholic claims to authority in Theatre. id: 1316026447671115 type: glosspuissant: powerful id: 1316026447671151 type: glossstile: full legal title id: 1316026447671186 type: commentaryNeither for that: Continuing a series initiated by ‘not so much for that’ above. id: 1316026447671255 type: commentaryPhoenix . . . singular: Cf. Epigram 5. In his account of the mythical phoenix ( Natural History 10.2) , Pliny mentions that only one of its kind exists at any time. id: 1316026447671300 type: glossTullie: Marcus Tullius Cicero id: 1316026447671343 type: commentarygiven in your own person: I.e., rather than through an interpreter. id: 1316026447671379 type: glossexquisite: highly accomplished id: 1316026447671415 type: commentarymeasures: This term for dance ‘steps’ reminds us that just as ancient and Early Modern musical theory emphasized the relation between mathematical proportion and ideal musical intervals, so did theoretical writing on dancing describe its gestures and steps as governed by regularities and proportions; see Elyot (1531: 77v-78r) and Nevile (2004). id: 1316026447671456 type: glosshis nine sisters: the Muses id: 1316026447671524 type: commentaryimagerie: Although the term can denote sculpture, van der Noot almost certainly means ‘embroidery’ here. Elizabeth was said to have been fond of embroidery and skilled at it from an early age. Two handsome embroidered bookbindings survive, customarily attributed to her. id: 1316026447671559 type: glosscunnyng: artfulness id: 1316026447671594 type: glossdevise: design id: 1316026447671630 type: glossalonly: alone id: 1316026447671669 type: glossof hir: out of her; as an exercise of her id: 1316026447671704 type: glossenduing: endowing id: 1316026447671740 type: glossargument: theme id: 1316026447671776 type: commentaryfained Emblemes: Invented images representing moral fables, pictorial allegories. For more on emblems see the Introduction. id: 1316026447671813 type: glossglosing: specious praise id: 1316026447671856 type: commentaryflatterie or glosing: The phrase is pleonastic. Glosing, cognate with glossing, has a special association with writing. id: 1316026447671900 type: glossinconveniencie: unsuitableness id: 1316026447671939 type: commentaryAsse tuning of a harp: The ancient proverb ‘The ass with the lyre’ could be used to evoke the incomprehension of the crude and ignorant, and the folly of offering higher things to the debased, as well as a range of simple incongruities. Because Erasmus discusses the provenance and the meanings of the proverb at some length in his Adages, it had special currency among humanists. id: 1316026447672013 type: glossaccompt: account id: 1316026447672113 type: glossfor these alonely: only for these id: 1316026447672156 type: commentaryLamuell . . . Proverbes: Van der Noot here quotes Proverbs 31:30. Proverbs was frequently understood to consist of three books, since it collects sayings attributed, first, to Solomon, then, to Agur son of Jakeh, and, in the final chapter, to Lemuel. id: 1316026447672195 type: glossdeceivable : deceitful id: 1316026447672232 type: glosshappie: fortunate id: 1316026447672268 type: glosspeculiarly: particularly, preferentially id: 1316026447672307 type: glossal . . . his: all of his other forenamed id: 1316026447672346 type: glosslightened: enlightened id: 1316026447672489 type: glosslovablenesse: praiseworthiness id: 1316026447672563 type: commentaryPrince: Van der Noot here insists on the fact that the term could be used indifferently of a male or female ruler. id: 1316026447672598 type: commentaryjewels: Not gemstones per se , but articles of adornment made of precious materials. id: 1316026447672641 type: commentarylaw and equitie: Van der Noot follows Aristotle (Nic Eth 5) in the conventional distinction between legal justice, administered in England on the authority of custom, maxim, and statute and equity, an extralegal power to bring legal justice, in specific cases, into line with the general principles from which it springs. Van der Noot’s readers would have associated equitable justice with particular (conciliar) courts, and above all the Chancery and the Court of Requests. id: 1316026447672682 type: commentaryin six or seven languages: Important as was vernacular translation of the Bible to those committed to church reform, concerned as they were with lay access to scripture, van der Noot’s emphasis here falls on a different matter of linguistic access. He praises ways in which the religious needs of its various ethnic communities were accommodated in cosmopolitan London. id: 1316026447672716 type: commentaryThe Sacraments . . . Supper: Baptism and the Eucharist are the only two rites recognized as sacraments by the leading theologians of the Reformation. id: 1316026447672788 type: commentaryChristian discipline: The Protestant reformers were concerned not only with the correction of doctrine and the reform of church polity, but with a reform of discipline, that is, of the methods of doctrinal and moral correction in pastoral practice, especially at the parish level. id: 1316026447672823 type: commentarycountrey and nation: While country denotes a group of people originating in a particular place, nation can refer both to an ethnic group and to a confessional sect. id: 1316026447672872 type: glossentertainement: welcome id: 1316026447672942 type: commentarybanishyng . . . Divell: At 1 John 2:22 the distinguishing feature of the Antichrist is his denial of the divinity of Jesus. The identification of the Antichrist as a son or descendant of Satan derives from the convergence of two other interpretive traditions: that the Antichrist is to be identified with the ‘sonne of perdition’ of 2 Thess 2:3 and that this sonship, an infernal mirror-image of Christ’s divine sonship, is disclosed at Gen 3:15 , where God refers to the abiding hostility of the descendants of the serpent to the descendants of Eve. id: 1316026447672985 type: glossoverthwartly . . . hair: perversely and completely contrariwise id: 1316026447673022 type: commentaryPharao . . . Jezabell: Jeroboam, first king of the breakaway Northern kingdom of Israel, is remembered in 1 Kings for his revival of idolatry (12:28); his successors, of whom Ahab (here ‘Achab’) is said to be the worst (1 Kings 16:30) , are regularly condemned for committing the idolatry: ‘and it came to pass, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, that he [i.e., Ahab] took to wife Jezebel the daughter of Ethbaal king of the Zidonians, and went and served Baal, and worshipped him.’ In their iconoclasm, then, the Reformers tax Catholics with committing the sins of Jeroboam; see Luther (Table-Talk: 175). The gloss to ‘Jezebel’ at this juncture in the Geneva Bible – ‘By whose influence he fell into wicked and strange idolatry and cruel persecution’ − is relevant as are John Knox’s references to Mary Tudor as ‘that cursed Jesabell’ (Against the Monstruous Regiment of Women 1558: D6) and his yoking together of Pharoah and Jezebel in his Faythfull Admonition of 1554 : ‘Remembre brethren, that Goddes vengeaunce plaged not Pharao the fyrst yeare of his tyranny. Neyther dyd the dogges devoure and consume bothe the fleshe and bones of wicked Jezabel when she first erected and set up her Idolatrie’ (F1v-F2r). id: 1316026447673084 type: commentaryJosua . . . David : A slightly heterogeneous list, although Joshua, Gideon, and David all figure in the Old Testament as great military leaders. An outlier not only in this respect, ‘Judah’ also disrupts the chronology of the list. This suggests a possible transmissional lapse in the French Theatre, which the English translation faithfully reproduces at this juncture. id: 1316026447673126 type: commentarykingdome . . . worlde: In Works and Days 109-120, Hesiod identifies the reign of Cronos with the Golden Age. In Roman culture, Cronos was conflated with Saturn, and the pleasures of the Cronian Golden Age with the indulgence and social leveling of Saturnalia; Ovid offers classic rendering of the Saturnian Golden Age in Met 1.89-112 . In his fourth eclogue, Virgil hails the return of Saturn and Astraea, and with them the return of the Golden Age (Ecl 4.6). id: 1316026447673177 type: commentaryAstrea: According to Ovid (Met 1.149-50), this virgin goddess forsook the earth during the last of the Four Ages, when injustice and impiety asserted themselves. Camden reports that Virgil’s celebration of the return of Astraea in the fourth eclogue, ‘Iam redit virgo’, was applied to Elizabeth ‘in the beginning of her . . . reign’ (Remains 1605: Z2r-Z2v). For more on this mythologization of Elizabeth, see Yates (1947). id: 1316026447673258 type: glossGod of: God in exercise of id: 1316026447673300 type: commentarythese our most miserable days: The clash between the description, a few lines earlier, of the English present as a Golden Age and, here, of the European present as ‘miserable’ suggests the peculiar psychological situation of the asylum-seeker; it also evokes a paradox in the self-understanding of the Protestant, who sees himself as a member of both a persecuted minority and a triumphant imperial Church. id: 1316026447673338 type: glosscommodities: sources of sustenance and comfort id: 1316026447673409 type: commentaryIf they . . . other : Matt 10:23. id: 1316026447673446 type: glossdignities: positions of elevated status id: 1316026447673486 type: glosspreferments: positions conferring social and financial advantage id: 1316026447673522 type: commentaryFrederike: Under the Elector, Frederick III, most of the Palatinate, which had been hospitable to a range of Protestant groups, became a strictly Calvinist enclave within the Holy Roman Empire, though his efforts to suppress Lutheran practices in the Upper Palatinate were only partly successful. id: 1316026447673557 type: commentaryJosias: 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 23:15, he destroys the altar at Bethel. id: 1316026447673598 type: glossharborough: harbor id: 1316026447673635 type: commentaryFrench . . . Dutche: Edward VI granted charters for the founding in London of both Dutch and French churches in 1550. id: 1316026447673711 type: glossdyvers: diverse id: 1316026447673747 type: commentaryHow . . . Jahel: Alluding both to the account of Deborah’s advice to Barak on how to defeat the army of Sisera (Judg 4:6-16) and to the story of Jael’s subsequent murder of Sisera (Judg 4:17-21). id: 1316026447673788 type: commentaryhe also . . . daughter: See 1 Sam 19:11-16. id: 1316026447673826 type: commentaryhe delivered . . . Judith: As narrated in the apocryphal book of Judith, ch. 8-16. id: 1316026447673869 type: commentarythe children . . . Haman : See Esther. id: 1316026447673915 type: glossrenoumed: renowned id: 1316026447673954 type: glosstofore: earlier id: 1316026447674023 type: glossaffection: disposition, affect id: 1316026447674059 type: commentaryand that maugre . . . being: ‘And all this despite the provocations of your enemies, who, being, etc.’ The phrase ‘maugre the beard of’ was proverbial, but van der Noot may be playing with ‘beard’ here, suggesting that Elizabeth is undeterred by the virility of the Catholic princes - the Pope and Philip II of Spain - who opposed her. id: 1316026447674102 type: glossendite: compose id: 1316026447674138 type: glossheartie: heartfelt id: 1316026447674174 type: commentaryyour Majesties counsel: Van der Noot is probably referring quite specifically to Elizabeth’s Privy Council. id: 1316026447674246 type: glossweal: well-being id: 1316026447674286 type: glossestate: state id: 1316026447674322 type: glosswold not be: desire not to be id: 1316026447674358 type: glossby your grace: by means of your liberality id: 1316026447674426 type: glossin store: laid up id: 1316026447674465 type: glossin signification: as a sign id: 1316026447674508 type: glossvouchsafe: be willing, deign id: 1316026447674544 type: glossthe matter: the substance of the argument id: 1316026447674579 type: glossthe same: i.e., the matter of the book id: 1316026447674615 type: glosscontentation: contentment id: 1316026447674654 type: commentaryconscience: The term can have its modern, specifically moral sense, as well as the less specific senses of ‘consciousness’ and ‘inward thought’. id: 1316026447674690 type: commentary1.1 Spenser is translating Marot’s translation of Petrarch’s canzone 323, the so-called ‘Canzone of Visions’. The source canzone is constructed in twelve-line stanzas with a regular, if complex rhyme scheme, with a three-line tornata at the conclusion; Marot’s translation preserves the organization of the poem in twelve-line units, but changes the rhyme scheme. As to format, all of van der Noot’s editions follow the layout of illustrated manuscript editions of Marot’s translation from the 1560s, which display only one twelve-line unit per opening. id: 1316026447674876 type: commentary1.1 One of two of the epigrams that Spenser has translated in sonnet form, expanding Marot's twelve lines to fourteen. id: 1316026447674913 type: commentary1.1-3 Spenser’s syntax in these opening lines supports the general theme of the vain and transitory character of the world. No visionary ‘I’ organizes the lines; the first person leaves only traces − on ‘my window’ and in the two indirect objects (‘me’) of ‘hapned’ and ‘grieveth’. Instead, Spenser gives us an absolute construction in the first line, the participle in which (‘being’) can be attached only to an ‘I’ that appears nowhere in the sentence, and is followed by two impersonal constructions, [‘it’] ‘hapned’ and ‘it grieveth’. Indeed, these opening lines are remarkable for a dreamlike ellipsis of specific subjects: if the visionary ‘I’ does not securely manifest its presence, the things seen are not much more syntactically assertive, at least within this three-line introduction to the sequence. (‘Things’ appears at first to be the subject of ‘hapned’, but is, in fact, the object of to ‘see’.) id: 1316026447674980 type: glossHinde: a female deer id: 1316026447675017 type: commentary1.4-8 Van der Noot glosses this vision as an allegory for the death of Petrarch’s Laura, pursued by the dogs of destiny or appointed time (‘by the houndes white and black he understode the daye and nyght’; 000-00). id: 1316026447675058 type: glossmought: might, could id: 1316026447675093 type: commentarythe greatest God: The adjective can function as a superlative (‘the greatest of the Gods’) or as an absolute superlative; the phrase in the French source, souverain des Dieux (B1v) , cannot be understood as absolute. id: 1316026447675134 type: commentaryWith deadly force so: ‘So’ can modify either ‘deadly force’ (i.e. ‘with such deadly force’) or ‘pinchte’ in 9. Spenser’s sources - mordean sì forte (Petrarch) and mordoint si fort (Marot) - would authorize either construction. id: 1316026447675193 type: commentaryuntimely: 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. id: 1316026447675233 type: commentary1.13-14 Spenser here introduces a temporal idea not present in his sources. Marot follows Petrarch closely, using a past tense to describe how the cruelty of death vanquished (vanquit, B1v) beauty and how destiny makes the speaker sigh (souspirer me feit); Spenser’s absolute construction (‘death vanquishing’) and his ‘Oft makes me waile’ suggests that the experience of the vision takes place in a grievous, perpetually renewed present. id: 1316026447675354 type: commentary2.1-6 Again van der Noot will construe the vulnerable thing at the center of the vision as a figure for Laura: the ebony of the ship as her black brows, its ivory, her skin; the ship's gold sails and silk tackle are said to stand both for her clothing and for her precious virtues; see [cross-ref]. id: 1316026447675319 type: glossHeben : ebony id: 1316026447675396 type: commentaryturmoyle: The verb is often used to describe the effect of storms on the sea. The slightly unusual transfer to the air evokes an abnormal turbulence. id: 1316026447675432 type: commentaryriches: Probably to be construed as ‘wealth, richesse’ rather than as ‘valuable things’: with metrical stress falling on the second syllable, it is closely allied to the abstract term, richesse, in Marot’s version. id: 1316026447675508 type: commentaryep. 3 Of the Epigrams, only the first and this third poem are sonnets. Making this formal shift, Spenser may simply be succumbing to the difficulty of rendering Marot’s douzaine in twelve English lines; he may also have adopted the sonnet form as an homage to Petrarch, widely felt to be the master of the form, for this particular poem takes up one of the central images of Petrarch’s Rime sparse, the laurel tree. In this poem and elsewhere in Petrarch’s collection, the image of the flourishing laurel effects a congruence between the apparently divergent objects of Petrarch’s longing, the beloved Laura and the fame that might accrue to poetic achievement, an achievement that might be recognized by the award of a laurel crown. id: 1316026447675549 type: commentaryfresh and lusty: Since the phrasing here is closer to Petrarch’s giovenetto e schietto than to Marot’s simple jeune (E2v), one might conclude that Spenser had consulted Petrarch’s original. But the lines immediately following follow Marot in a firm departure from his Petrarchan source. id: 1316026447675598 type: commentary3.3-6 The full stop after ‘melodie’ clarifies the syntax of a sentence left uncertain in Le Theatre. Marot’s translation had departed from the logic of the Petrarchan original in which the speaker’s sense of the paradisiacal nature of the tree derives from its freshness and lustiness; in Spenser’s poem, this sense of the tree’s paradisiacal nature is traced to the plenitude of birds in its branches. (When Spenser revised the translation for VP, he worked to recover the fundamental logic of Petrarch’s lines.) id: 1316026447675640 type: commentarynoble: Spenser departs from his sources here, as he will at line 12 below, where he describes the tree as ‘royall’. He may have been inspired to this diction by Roest’s translation of van der Noot’s commentary on the previous poem, where Laura’s virtues are described as ‘noble and excellent’ (000-00). id: 1316026447675681 type: commentarymelodie: Van der Noot comments that the birds’ song represents Laura’s conversation and song (F4v). id: 1316026447675718 type: glosssprites: spirits id: 1316026447675754 type: glosswelkin: sky id: 1316026447675796 type: glossoutbrast: burst forth id: 1316026447675834 type: commentaryshadow: The word manages to refer at once to the tree, its shadow, and the visionary experience at the moment of their combined passing-away. id: 1316026447675968 type: glosscloune: peasant id: 1316026447675921 type: commentaryhomely . . . ruder : The adjectives insist on a rusticity not emphasized in Petrarch or Marot. For a similar non-comparative use of ‘ruder’, see the ‘ruder clowne’ of FQ VI.x.7.4 , and cf. the ‘viler clowne’ of Oct 97 . id: 1316026447676006 type: commentaryThat sweetely . . . fall : Spenser’s subsequent poetry recurs frequently to this accord of song and the sound of falling water, which he came to treat as the sign of a poetry that, while rural, could also claim, perhaps by virtue of its harmony with the natural order, the right to speak of higher things. In April, Colin is said to have made his song in praise of Elisa, Queene of shepheardes while lying beside a spring and to have ‘tuned it unto the Waters fall’ ( 35-6); and see also the lament in June 155-6) . The laments of The Teares of the Muses are similarly ‘powred forth . . . Beside the silver Springs of Helicone’ (4-5) and there the Muses teach ‘the trembling streames. . . to beare . . . A Bases part’ (25-8). Again, in FQ, the Nymphes and Faeries at the base of Mt. Acidale are found sitting by the banks of ‘a gentle flud . . . And to the waters fall tuning their accents fit’ (VI.x.7.1 and 9). Noting the shift in this line, possibly inadvertent, from the pentameter norm of the rest of the Epigrams to an alexandrine, John Hollander remarks (1988: 173-6) on the important congruence of this ‘scene’ of acoustic concord with Spenser’s first use of that metrical attenuation which would be one of the distinguishing features of the Faerie Queene stanza. For more on this attunement, see Cheney (1997: 72-3). id: 1316026447676079 type: commentarychiefe: As in Marot, no lesser delights are explicitly named, although Spenser’s line suggests that the pleasure of ‘the sight’ may exceed the pleasure of the ‘accorde’ of voice and waters. In Petrarch there is no competition between sight and sound, instead, they collaborate to produce a sweetness that by its very increase seems to trigger the onset of loss – quando / più dolcezza prendea . . . / . . . aprir vidi uno speco (‘when / I took more sweetness . . . / . . . I saw a chasm open’). id: 1316026447676168 type: commentaryPhoenix: In Epigrams 5.7 , Martial compares the longevity and resilience of Rome to that of the phoenix. Petrarch emphasizes the self-destruction of the phoenix, suppressing its capacity for self-renewal. On the singularity of the Phoenix, see above [cross-ref] and n. id: 1316026447676210 type: glossanone: immediately id: 1316026447676248 type: glosswight: creature id: 1316026447676283 type: commentaryUntill: The speaker relinquishes the thought that the bird is ‘some heavenly wight’ upon witnessing its arrival at the scenes of prior desolation described in the previous two Epigrams. This changing-of-mind is somewhat more explicit in Marot (don pensay . . . jusque à tant / Qu'il vint à; ‘wherefore I thought . . . until / it arrivated at’) and Petrarch (prima pensai, fin ch' . . . giunse'; ‘at first I thought, until . . . it reached’). id: 1316026447676333 type: commentarywe see: The characterization of the transitory things as transitory visibilia is Spenser’s own invention, and it throws emphasis on the importance of viewing to the sensation of loss. The detail is especially fitting since, in this poem, the Phoenix is at once the object of the speaker’s gaze and, itself, a gazer, looking on the same ‘broken tree’ and ‘spring late devoured’ that the speaker earlier viewed. Whereas the speaker of the prior poems responds to the vision of loss with grief, the Phoenix responds with ‘disdaine’. id: 1316026447676379 type: commentarydide: In Spenser’s sources, the Phoenix disappears. id: 1316026447676420 type: commentarypitie and love : The Phoenix’s death excites emotions not evinced by the prior visions. id: 1316026447676491 type: commentaryAt last: Perhaps suggesting that the appearance of a Lady in this sixth and final vision has been elicited by the new depth and generosity of the speaker’s response to the death of the Phoenix in the fifth vision, his ‘pitie and love’. In both poems, the speaker is said to respond with burning. id: 1316026447676529 type: commentarythinking: Whereas Marot’s songeant suggests some continuity between the vision of the Lady and the ruminative experience that makes the speaker ‘burne and quake,’ Spenser's ‘thinking’ recurs to Petrarch’s phrasing − che mai nol penso ch'i'non arda et treme − which marks a sharper rift between the vision and the emotional reflection on that vision. The phrasing here and the choice of ‘proudely’ at line 4, which recovers the force of Petrarch’s superba (which Marot has nearly lost in his contre amour rebelle), suggest that Spenser has here consulted Marot’s Petrarchan source. id: 1316026447676589 type: commentaryWhite seemed hir robes: Whereas in Petrarch, the weaving creates the effect of snow and gold combined, in Spenser’s version snow and gold seem to be the very constituents of the fabric. Spenser’s slight invention here is perhaps inspired by the dense verbal texture in the French version, for Marot describes the fabric as made with such art that gold and snow ensemble / sembloient meslez (‘seem commingled together’; B6v). id: 1316026447676631 type: glosswaste: waist id: 1316026447676670 type: commentary6.8 Recalling the death of Eurydice, stung by a snake on the occasion of her marriage ( Virgil, Georg 4.457-9 ; Ovid, Met 3.10 ). id: 1316026447676716 type: commentaryin earth: Although the Lady of this douzaine mounts up to joy, ‘in’ sustains the idea of Eurydicean entombment, an idea reinforced by the phrasing of Marot’s envoy, which concludes with a longing for a conspicuously subterranean death (soubz la terre gesir). id: 1316026447676759 type: glossanoy: vex id: 1316026447676795 type: commentaryyelde . . . a sweete request: Spenser seems to be straining to secure a rhyme for ‘rest’; the phrase very imperfectly renders Marot’s donne ung doulx plaisir (‘gives a sweet pleasure’) and Petrarch’s àn fatto un dolce . . . desio (‘has produced a sweet desire’). The substantial revision of the envoy for Bellay may well stem from Spenser’s dissatisfaction with this particular line. id: 1316026447676844 type: commentarywithin the earth: See note to 6.11. id: 1316026447676920 type: commentaryThe sequence of sonnets translates Du Bellay’s Songe, itself heavily indebted to Petrarch’s Canzone of Visions. id: 1316026447676958 type: commentaryDu 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. id: 1316026447676998 type: commentary1.1-5 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. id: 1316026447677040 type: commentarythat great rivers: The Tiber’s. id: 1316026447677078 type: commentaryTemple: The idea that God dwells in a heavenly temple is a frequent biblical topos (see, e.g., Isa 6:1, Heb 8:1-6, and Rev 11:19). The heavens themselves are not directly compared to a temple in the canonical bible and no detailed speculation as to the architecture (and angelic personnel) of the heavenly temple was made until the Songs of the Sabbath Sacrifice (among the Dead Sea Scrolls) and the hekhalot literature of early Judaism. id: 1316026447677121 type: commentarynought . . . vanitie: Eccles 1:2 and 12:8. id: 1316026447677157 type: glossSith: since id: 1316026447677193 type: glossstay: to hold fixed id: 1316026447677268 type: commentaryThe second, third, and fourth sonnets focus on the destruction of monumental Roman culture. Van der Noot speaks of Rome as stuffed . . . wyth . . . all maner of riches, wherupon didde ensue all kinde of superfluitie and worldely pompousnesse ( F5v-F6r). His description suggests an abiding fascination with Roman sumptuousness: ‘They adorned their Citie with all maner of sumptuous and costely buyldings, wyth all kindes of curious and cunning workes, as Theaters, Triumphall Arkes, Pyramedes, Columnes, Spires, and a greate number of graven Images, Statues, Medalles and Figures, made of divers and sundry kindes of stuffe, as Marble, Alablaster, Golde, Sylver, Copper, Pourphere, Emplaster, Brasse and other like mettall, some graven, and other some cast’ ( F6r) . id: 1316026447677413 type: glossframe: structure, building id: 1316026447677450 type: commentarycubites : A cubit is a measure of the distance from the elbow to the tip of the fingers. With the exception of the revised translation for Bellay, Spenser employs the term on only one other occasion, to measure the depth of the fountain in the Bower of Bliss (FQ II.xii.62); see comments on line 11. id: 1316026447677492 type: commentaryDorike wise: Doric manner. Vitruvius associates the Doric order in architecture with masculine valour (De Architectura 1.2.5). The inscription, SPQR, in the tympanum of the temple in the facing illustration specifies this as a Roman building: this abbreviation for Senatus Populusque Romanus (‘The Roman Senate and the Roman People’) was inscribed on Roman public from the time of the Republic forward. id: 1316026447677538 type: glossOf bricke, ne yet: neither of brick nor id: 1316026447677574 type: glossChristall: crystal id: 1316026447677611 type: commentarydeepe vaute: A crypt. Whereas Spenser is translating ventre, a term inapplicable to lofty spaces, ‘vault’ ( Fr voûte) can be used for any enclosed space surmounted with an arched ceiling, so Spenser is somewhat lightening his source. id: 1316026447677652 type: glossparget: ornamental work (usually in plaster) on walls; id: 1316026447677727 type: glosssielyng: ceiling id: 1316026447677763 type: commentarygolden plates: Cf. golden lamminae that cover the interior of the ‘house’ within the Holy of Holies (1 Kings 6:21), an ornamental feature not fully captured in the Geneva rendering. id: 1316026447677835 type: commentaryJaspis: Jasper. With the exception of the revised translation of this poem in Bellay, Spenser’s only other references to jasper and emerald are found in his descriptions of the Bower of Bliss: some of the grapes that hang over the second gate in the Bower appear like emeralds (FQ II.xii.54) and the fountain in the Bower is paved with jasper (FQ II.xii.62). Crystal (line 6), jasper, and emerald are all part of the array of precious materials mentioned in the descriptions of heaven in Revelation 4 and 21. id: 1316026447677889 type: glosssodein: sudden id: 1316026447677929 type: commentaryearthquake: Cf. the destruction of the Temple alluded to in Matt 24:2 and the less specifically located earthquakes of 24:7. id: 1316026447678009 type: commentarysharped: Pointed. Spenser will use this again in an analogous architectural description in Rome 2.2, but the term is also used of Cupid’s arrow in Tottel’s Miscellany (1557) . id: 1316026447678053 type: commentary3.3-4 Spenser has some difficulties rendering Du Bellay here. The obelisk in Du Bellay’s poem is precisely as high as (justement mesuré, / Tant que) an archer - keen-eyed, as a professional necessity - can aim (prendre visee), whereas Spenser’s translation suggests both that the height of obelisk is somehow proportioned to its square base and that it is as tall as an archer can see. id: 1316026447678097 type: commentarycouched: In Du Bellay’s original, the ashes repose (reposoit) in the urn. Spenser has displaced the verb used of the lions, couchez, in line 9, and thereby has relinquished phrasing that suggests the heraldic character of the resting lions. id: 1316026447678143 type: commentarygrief: Cf. Du Bellay’s torment. id: 1316026447678182 type: commentaryflashe: The reading ‘flushe’ in our copy text may be either an instance of foul case or of a misreading of manuscript copy, since ‘a’ and ‘u’ are easily confused in secretary hand, especially in Spenser’s. id: 1316026447678286 type: glosschapters: capitals, the top portion of a column id: 1316026447678325 type: glossfrises: friezes id: 1316026447678393 type: glossarke: arch id: 1316026447678429 type: commentaryvictorie: Triumphal arches are customarily ornamented with images of Victory personified, carved in relief in the roughly triangular spaces above the curved portion of the archway, as in the woodcut illustration facing the poem. id: 1316026447678464 type: glosshabite: clothing id: 1316026447678503 type: glosschaire: chariot id: 1316026447678543 type: glossauncient: ancient id: 1316026447678582 type: commentaryhis sire: Vulcan’s father. Son of Jove and Juno, Vulcan is blacksmith and armorer to the gods. id: 1316026447678618 type: glossSith: Since id: 1316026447678689 type: commentaryUnrhymed like the other Sonets, the fifth of the Sonets offers especially good examples of Spenser’s effort to capture the character of rhyme in French, which is relatively unemphatic when compared to that of rhyme in English. The final syllables of lines 1, 3, and 4 are bound together by assonance, thus helping to mark the first quatrain as an independent unit. Spenser achieves an effect of mild closure by means of the internal rhyme of ‘disdain’ and ‘again’ in lines 13 and 14; he would later strengthen this effect in the revision for Complaints, where the two words are in terminal position, giving the Complaints version its final couplet. id: 1316026447678732 type: commentaryDodonian tree: An oak (and not the palms of van der Noot’s woodcut). Dodona was a city in northwest Greece, famous for its sacred oak and its oracle of Zeus. The reference initiates a pattern in the poem that represents the eminence of Rome as deriving from transplants of Eastern − Greek and Trojan − culture. id: 1316026447678815 type: glossgladsome: pleasant id: type: seven hilles: ‘Namely upon the hill of Palatine, the hill Capitoli[n]e, the mounte Vimiall, the mount Cely, Esquilin, Vimiel, and Quirinel’ ( Noot: F4v-F5r ). id: 1316026447678856 type: commentarybedecked with his leaves: A garland of oak leaves was the traditional symbolic reward of those who had saved a Roman citizen in battle. id: 1316026447678898 type: commentaryItalian streame: The Tiber. Spenser does not here translate Du Bellay’s Ausonien, though he will restore the term in Complaints. (‘Ausonia’ was an archaic name for central and southern Italy.) id: 1316026447678938 type: commentarymany goodly signes: For Du Bellay’s maint beau tesmoignage. ‘Signes’ fails to capture the retrospective character of tesmoignage, which might be rendered ‘trace’, but which carries a strong juridical cast, as in ‘witness’ or ‘evidence’. id: 1316026447678980 type: commentaryrace: From L radix, root; often used to describe plant and animal species as well as human lineages. The vegetative sense is activated here by the fact that the Dodonian tree is a metaphor for the Trojan people, transplanted and flourishing as Romans. id: 1316026447679019 type: glosserst: originally id: 1316026447679054 type: commentaryTrojan As with Italian (line 4), Spenser adopts a more familiar designator of place than that in his source. Du Bellay’s Dardanien identifies Troy with Dardanus, mythical founder of Troy and son of Zeus and Elektra. id: 1316026447679097 type: commentaryvillaines: The term, originally meaning a person of low birth, had already begun to take on its modern moral connotations. Du Bellay’s paisans had no such connotations. id: 1316026447679140 type: commentaryheape: For Du Bellay’s somewhat more orderly troppe (‘troupe’). id: 1316026447679180 type: commentarywedge: A possible translation of Du Bellay’s congnee (cognee in Noot’s Le theatre), but an odd one, since the plain sense of congnee is ‘axe’. Spenser seems to be trying to capture the slow, persistent force of the wedge, possibly influenced by the connotations of gemir, accurately rendered as ‘grone’; indeed, the entire sonnet might be said to recall Virgil’s comparison of the final collapse of Troy to the groan and tumble of a mountain ash felled by rivalrous woodsmen (Aen 2.626-31). id: 1316026447679271 type: glosssince: thereafter id: 1316026447679312 type: commentarytwinne . . . trees: Alluding either to the split between the Eastern and Western Churches or the split within the western residue of the Roman Empire between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire. id: 1316026447679384 type: commentarybirde . . . Sunne: The eagle, as at FQ I.x.47.6 ; and see Isidore, Etymologies 12.7:10-11 . The Eagle imperial, as van der Noot describes the bird of this sonnet [cross-ref], seems to symbolize Rome in its ancient glory. Psalms 103 attributes a capacity for self-renewal to the eagle, thus eliciting a potential link to the phoenix. (In the Natural History 10.2-3, Pliny the Elder turns to a discussion of the varieties of eagle immediately after his discussion of the phoenix, which he dismisses as a merely legendary creature.) The link to the phoenix is rendered more complex at the conclusion of the sonnet, when an owl rises from the ashes of the dead eagle. id: 1316026447679443 type: commentaryth’example . . . damme: Whereas the ancient naturalists from Aristotle forward emphasize how ruthlessly eagles test their young, Spenser and Du Bellay shift attention to the fledgling and to the rigorous imitation by which she rises to heroic, if fatal, achievement. id: 1316026447679480 type: commentarytombling : Aside from its associations with tomb, Spenser’s rendering of Du Bellay’s rouant (‘coiling’) establishes a link between the eagle and the ship of Epigram 2 , which crashes on hidden rocks when the sea is ‘tombled up’. id: 1316026447679533 type: commentarylompe: The strange translation of Du Bellay’s tourbillon is possibly traceable to both Spenser's interest in an echoic relation to ‘tombling’ and to the traditional English rendering of Romans 9:21 , where God’s providential creativity likened to that of a potter who can ‘make of the same lompe one vessel to honour, and another unto dishonour’. In his effort to find a term for the whirlwind of fire, Spenser may have been influenced by the term for the whirling mass of clay on the potter’s wheel. id: 1316026447679572 type: commentaryfoule . . . light: The owl emerging from the eagle’s ashes probably stands either for the Holy Roman Empire or the modern papacy. id: 1316026447679609 type: commentaryas a worme: This literal translation (of Comme un vermet) would seem to have the force preserved in the modern French idiom, nu comme un ver, naked as a worm; for the same idiom in Chaucer, see Rom, 454 . id: 1316026447679684 type: glossastonned: stunned, amazed id: 1316026447679824 type: commentarythis nightly ghost: All versions of van der Noot’s Theatre omit the eighth sonnet of Songe, in which a monstrous seven-headed beast emerges from the foundations of an ancient ruin; after changing its shape a hundred times, the monster evaporates in the blast of a Scythian wind. In the ninth sonnet, Du Bellay again refers to the apparition as a monstre; that Spenser translates the term as ghost, and so captures the ghostly evanescence attributed to the monster in the omitted sonnet, suggests that he may have had recourse to a complete edition of Songe. For the omission of the eighth sonnet, see the Introduction. id: 1316026447679876 type: commentary7.2-8 This description of the spirit of the Tiber differs strikingly from Virgil’s far more benign description of the river god at Aeneid 8.26-30 . Van der Noot refers to the central figure as the great Statue, though the image as described and as depicted in the woodcut matches neither the celebrated Roman statue of the Tiber unearthed near Santa Maria sopra Minerva in 1512-3 nor the statue of the Tigris from the Quirinal that Michelangelo had refashioned as an image of the Tiber in the 1560s (after the composition of Du Bellay’s Songe). id: 1316026447679919 type: commentaryside: The word can mean both ‘at length’ and ‘low-hanging’; Spenser is rendering flottans, ‘flowing’. id: 1316026447679956 type: commentarySaturnelike: Aged, because Saturn, as the father of Jove, was traditionally associated with an ancient divine regime. Saturn is also associated with melancholy temperament. id: 1316026447679995 type: commentarya water: Following his French original, une eau, quite closely. id: 1316026447680038 type: commentarycreekie: Replete with creeks. Spenser’s use of this word to translate Du Bellay’s, sinueux, ‘sinuous’ is the first recorded in OED. This may be the first manifestation of Spenser’s distinctive interest in tributary flows. id: 1316026447680081 type: commentaryshoare: The battle between Aeneas (the Troyan Duke) and Turnus, narrated in Aeneid 12 , takes place in fields along the Tiber west of Rome, near Laurentum. id: 1316026447680126 type: commentary7.9-10 In Livy’s version of the late 4th-c legend, Romulus and Remus, having been cast into the Tiber on orders of the tyrant Amulius, are left floating in a trough; when the overflowing river ebbs they are rescued and nursed by a thirsty she-wolf ( Ab Urbe Condita, 1.4 ). Van der Noot argues that from the breasts of the wolf the twin founders of Rome sucked all manner of crueltie and beastlynesse[cross ref.] A statue of the Roman wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, famous in Spenser’s day and long thought to have been cast in the fifth century, was housed on the Capitoline Hill overlooking the Tiber. id: 1316026447680217 type: commentary7.11-12 Wreaths of olive, palm, and laurel were awarded to Greek athletes and military commanders as tokens of victory, but the olive had special associations with peace, the palm, with victory, and the laurel, with poetic achievement. The fates of the three trees may together signify the transitory nature of achievement, yet insofar as the poem seems slightly to differentiate the fate of olive and palm from that of the laurel, the poem perhaps implies that a collapse of a regime of post-bellum peace leads to a withering of the arts. id: 1316026447680168 type: commentarybow: Bough; hence wreath, garland. ‘Bow’ is an acceptable 16th-c spelling for bough; although bough usually indicates a more substantial limb than that which would be used for a garland, Spenser’s usage is comparable to Henryson’s ‘The bewis braid blomit abone my heid’ (‘The Lion and the Mouse’, The moral fabilis of Esope 1570: 1330). id: 1316026447680284 type: commentarytune : Translating Du Bellay’s accordoit. Cf. the rendering of Marot’s accordoient in Epigrams 4 as ‘in accorde did tune’. id: 1316026447680331 type: glossRenting: rending id: 1316026447680445 type: glosswhilome: erstwhile, once upon a time id: 1316026447680401 type: commentarythis . . . face : By thus rendering Du Bellay’s ceste face (‘this aspect’ or ‘this face’), Spenser suggests that the lost visage is the nymph’s own, as if the removal of ‘this whilome honored face’ were not an especially lamentable product of some larger historical decay but were, instead the effect of the nymph’s own grief. This quickened disfigurement is refracted and further heightened in lines 10-12, where the nymph imagines modern Rome as a hydra each of whose seven heads should be cut off. id: 1316026447680479 type: commentarypraise : In the 16th-c, praise can mean ‘the activity of praising’, ‘the products of that activity’, and ‘praiseworthiness’; Spenser frequently uses the word in circumstances in which the latter sense is primary (cf. Am 5.9 and FQ II.v.26.2 ). But all three senses are relevant here: the Roman culture of praising, the store of Roman self-congratulation, and the achievements and virtues that were the objects of that praise have all disappeared. A similar, if not identical set of meanings attaches to the word the Spenser is translating here, los, which can mean both ‘the activity of praising’ and ‘fame, renown’; in Du Bellay’s poem, the latter sense seems to be primary. id: 1316026447680528 type: glosshap: chance id: 1316026447680564 type: glossbate: discord id: 1316026447680603 type: commentary8.10-12 The new Hydra recalls the seven-headed Beast from the Sea of Rev 13, yet whereas the Beast in Revelation is identifiable as the seven-hilled Rome (and is so identified in the glosses to the Geneva Bible of 1560), the new Hydra, presumably associated with the papacy or the Roman church, seems paradoxically a threat to the imperial Roman nymph herself. The paradox, that one figure of Rome should threaten another, is central to Du Bellay’s Roman poems. id: 1316026447680645 type: glossmete: deserving id: 1316026447680680 type: commentaryHercules: To slaughter the hydra, said to grow multiple new heads with each decapitation, was the second of Hercules’ twelve labours. id: 1316026447680719 type: commentaryNeroes and Caligulaes: The two first-century Roman emperors serving here as types of criminally violent monarchy. The glosses to Rev 13:3 of the 1560 Geneva Bible refer to Nero as the emperor ‘who moved the first persecution againste the churche’. id: 1316026447680759 type: commentarybring forth: In Spenser’s source, the new Hydra is said to sire the ‘Neroes and Caligulaes’ on the nymph; Spenser has muted the insinuation of rape. id: 1316026447680798 type: commentarycroked shore?: Recalling the creekie shoare (10) of the previous sonnet. The emended punctuation consolidates the unambiguously interrogative force of Du Bellay’s construction − N'estoit-ce pas (‘was it not?’) − which is slightly effaced by the mispunctuation in the French version of Theatre, which is reproduced in the English edition. id: 1316026447680914 type: commentaryflame. . . with triple point : Perhaps alluding to the triple structure of the papal tiara − an allusion that would be enhanced by the reference to ‘incense’ in 9.3 − and meant to imply the grandiose aspirations of the Roman church. id: 1316026447680953 type: commentary9.3-4 Confusingly, the lines preserve Du Bellay’s word-order. id: 1316026447680997 type: glossleames: flashes id: 1316026447681065 type: commentarygolden shoure: The story of Jove’s impregnation, in the form of a shower of gold, of the imprisoned Danae was allegorized as an account of the corrupting power of gold at least as early as the first century C.E.; see Horace, Odes 3.16. id: 1316026447681137 type: glossglystering: glittering id: 1316026447681207 type: commentaryThe tone and tactics of the opening of the poem and woodcut are conspicuously at odds. The illustration, which captures the ‘rout’ of the poem’s final lines, is populous and busy, whereas the sonnet unfolds quietly, at a steady pace. The first quatrain simply describes the welling spring, the second the harmony that supplements the shining pleasantness of the spring. The mention of mermaids in 8 is the first hint of animation, and they obtrude only figuratively on the scene; line 9 introduces ‘seates and benches’, the first mark that the spring is meant to accommodate human or humanoid presence. Only at line 10 does the setting accommodate something of the woodcut’s crowd, and even then the ‘hundred Nymphes’ are presented in orderly array – ‘side by side about’. id: 1316026447681289 type: commentary10.3-4 The river Pactolus was famously rich in electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver. Ovid transmits an etiological myth: when Midas, on Bacchus’ instructions, washed himself in the Pactolus to rid himself of the curse of the golden touch, the riverbed turned hard and yellow (Met 11.137-45). id: 1316026447681328 type: commentary10.5-6 The evaluative comparison of Art (i.e., the exercise or products of human education, design, or craft) and Nature (i.e. the wild, the given, the non-human, the unwilled) is traditional; the two principles are usually understood to be in competition. Spenser makes characteristically distinctive − albeit not unique − contributions to the tradition, both instanced here: he especially interests himself in (often competitive) collaborations between Nature and Art and he often imagines their encounter as especially productive of pleasure. id: 1316026447681367 type: commentaryaccordes : Harmony. Like ‘harmony’ or ‘concord’, accord can have both musical and socio-political senses. id: 1316026447681405 type: commentaryMermaids: Spenser is translating d’une Serene [ sic , a misprint for Sirene]. The conflation of mermaid and siren is ancient and, because the terms could be used interchangeably, the use of mermaid here probably should not be taken as a suppression of the threat associated with the allure of the siren’s song; cf. FQ II.xii.17.9. id: 1316026447681453 type: commentaryassembled: A direct translation of the French s’assembla, the usual connotations of which, like those of its English cognate, entail no hint of disorder. id: 1316026447681526 type: commentary11.1-2 Omitting two poems from Du Bellay’s sequence, van der Noot proceeds to the last of Du Bellay’s visions, set at dawn. The belief invoked here, that dreams at dawn are true, was sufficiently commonplace in antiquity that Artemidorus goes out of his way to debunk it in chapter 7 of Book 1 of his Oneirocritica, the first systematic treatise on dream interpretation. id: 1316026447681571 type: commentaryMorpheus: The god of sleep. id: 1316026447681607 type: commentaryTyphaeus 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 (lines 9-10) and warlike foe of heaven (line 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. id: 1316026447681654 type: glossbravely: splendidly id: 1316026447681722 type: commentarymorian: Morion; type of visorless brimmed helmet. id: 1316026447681760 type: glossharde by: very close at hand id: 1316026447681795 type: glossgronde: groaned id: 1316026447681874 type: glosswith . . . afrayde: frightened by id: 1316026447681910 type: glosstho: then, thereupon id: 1316026447681948 type: commentarystriken . . . thunder: Fall, struck by a clap of thunder. id: 1316026447681983 type: commentarystart: In Spenser’s source, the shift in tense is less jarring: unlike the other poems in the sequence, Du Bellay’s final sonnet is cast in the present tense, whereas Spenser postpones the shift to the present until the moment of waking. id: 1316026447682054 type: commentary12.1-8 The octave of the twelfth sonnet is based on the first two-and-a-half verses of Revelation 13 . id: 1316026447682196 type: commentary12.2-5 The beast combines attributes of the four creatures from the sea that appear to Daniel in Dan 7.2-7. In his discussion of the sonnet, van der Noot will follow the 1560 Geneva glosses to Rev 2, which associates the leopard, bear, and lion with the Macedonians, the Persians, and the Chaldeans; see below [van der Noot G5-6v]. Van der Noot variously describes as ‘signifying the congregation of the wicked and proude hypocrites’ and as ‘meaning the odible, fals, & damnable errors & pestiferous inspirations of the divel’ [cross-ref to G2v]. (In his ensuing discussion, he takes pains to distinguish the beast of Rev 13, which he associates with the priestly hierarchy of the Roman Church, from the dragon of Rev 12, which he associates with Satan himself.) id: 1316026447682249 type: commentarythe vile blaspheming name: ‘What is it I pray you else, than a great abhomination & blasphemy that the Pope claimeth to him selfe to be the most holy father, to be the Vicare of Christ, God on earth, supreame head of the Church, the only steward of the gifts, graces, and misteries of God? What meaneth it that Priests and Bishops do arrogantly ascribe to them selves to be Bridegromes, to stand in Gods stead, to have power to pardon sinne, and to be our Ladies clean and undefiled knights? What be these else than names of blasphemie?’ ( van der Noot: G4r-G4v ). id: 1316026447682320 type: commentaryDragon: Of the dragon of Rev 12 and 13, the Geneva glossator comments (at 13:2) ‘that is, the devil.’ id: 1316026447682359 type: commentary12.8 ‘The infallible word of God (which be the Scriptures) hath given him this wound’ ( van der Noot: H3r). In Rev 13:3 although one of the heads of the beast is said to have sustained an apparently mortal wound, the wound is then said to have healed, a detail captured in the Dutch − maer is weet om genesen (‘but it has been healed’) − but dropped in the French and English versions. id: type: One cride: At Rev 13:4, a multitude of worshippers offers up this reverent question. id: 1316026447682441 type: commentary12.11-14 The last four lines of the sonnet are based loosely on Rev 13:11-14, which narrates the appearance of a second beast which sets up an idolatrous cult of the first. ‘All those that worshyp the Dragon, worship the beast also: for as those whiche honour Christ, honor hys father also, in lyke maner all those whiche adore Antechrist, that is to say, consent and holde of his traditions, masses, and ordinaunces, all those (I saye) worship the divel, of whom they have receyved all his wickednesses’ ( van der Noot, H3r ). id: 1316026447682487 type: commentaryfrom the sea: At Rev 13:11, a second beast arises, this time from the land. Although the woodcut plainly distinguishes the origins of the two beasts, Spenser departs from the biblical source here by faithfully translating his French original (de Mer ‘from the sea’), which mistranslates its Dutch original (wt de eerde; ‘out of the earth’). id: 1316026447682527 type: commentarysetting . . . up: 1) erecting, 2) exalting. The phrase operates with similar ambiguity in van der Noot’s commentary where he comments on the cultishness of the prelates and bishops of the Roman Church: ‘they proceed further to the forbidding of mariage, meate, egges, butter: in lyke manner images, and crucifixes were sette up, woorkyng thereby false miracles’ [ ref to G1v]. id: 1316026447682568 type: commentaryhir: I.e., her, the first beast’s. id: 1316026447682639 type: commentary13.1-10 The first ten lines of the sonnet are based on Rev 17:3-6. ‘The beast signifieth the ancient Rome: the Woman that sitteth thereon, the newe Rome whiche is the Papistrie, whose crueltie & blood sheding is declared by skarlat’ ( 1560 Geneva gloss to Rev 17:3 ). id: 1316026447682680 type: commentaryOrenge: Spenser has mistranslated migrainne, the term for a cloth dyed to a not-very-intense scarlet. id: 1316026447682719 type: glossfell: cruel id: 1316026447682793 type: commentary13.12-14 Based on Rev 18:1-2 . id: 1316026447682872 type: commentaryThe third of the apocalyptic sonnets is based on Rev 19:11-20. Van der Noot offers a sustained gloss on the poem at M5v-O3v. id: 1316026447682943 type: glossembrued: soaked, stained id: 1316026447682982 type: glosspuissant : powerful id: 1316026447683018 type: commentary14.8-9 The apparent padding − as me thought and descending downe − actually reproduces similar features in the French source. id: 1316026447683095 type: glossslea: slay id: 1316026447683174 type: commentaryAlthough Spenser would revise the translations from Du Bellay and Petrarch for Complaints, he never reworked the apocalyptic sonnets; yet he would adapt this rendering of John’s final vision in Revelation for Redcrosse’s vision at the Mount of Holy Contemplation, FQ I.x.55-7. As the New Jerusalem of these sonnets is meant to displace vainglorious Babylon and Rome in the esteem of men, so Redcrosse will recognize the milder error of his over-estimation of Cleopolis, the dwelling place of the Faerie Queene herself ( FQ I.x.58). id: 1316026447683218 type: commentary15.1-7 Based on Rev 21:1-4. id: 1316026447683255 type: commentarynew: At [O4v] Van der Noot draws attention to the figurative force of the term even as he insists that the new Jerusalem is the Church. id: 1316026447683293 type: glossgarnisht: adorned id: 1316026447683333 type: commentaryspouse: In a marginal gloss at O4v, as part of his discussion of the newness of the New Jerusalem, van der Noot draws attention in a marginal gloss to his source in Ephesians 5 for the analogy of the Church as a bride; he indicates that the newness of the Jerusalem-Church is like the figurative renewal of a betrothed woman as she is ‘trimmed for hir husbande, for she is purified and made newe againe.’ id: 1316026447683376 type: commentary15.8-14 The last half of the sonnet derives its matter from several verses from Rev 21 and 22 : the divine radiance from 21:11; the square city plan of the New Jerusalem, 21:16; its gates of pearl, 21:21; and the crystalline river of life, 22:1-2. id: 1316026447683413 type: commentarySquare : ‘Whatsoever is foure square, abideth firme and unmoveable, and is not subject to rolling or unstablenesse’, Theatre O7r . id: 1316026447683451 type: commentarytwelve gates: For the twelve gates as the twelve apostles, see van der Noot’s commentary at P1. id: 1316026447683488 type: commentaryunto the Churches good: Whereas in the biblical original, the leaves of the tree of life are said to heal the nations, Noot’s sonnets suggest that the fruit of the tree is instead meant to improve the state of the church. id: 1316026447683599 type: glossDeclaration: explanation id: 1316026447683635 type: glossunquiet: restless id: 1316026447683670 type: glossmislike of: begrudge, disapprove of id: 1316026447683707 type: glossestate: status, situation id: 1316026447683746 type: glosscalling: vocation id: 1316026447683785 type: glossgo about: undertake id: 1316026447683821 type: glossenter into: take up id: 1316026447683860 type: glosslyvings: vocations, positions in life id: 1316026447683899 type: glossthe fewest numbre of: very few id: 1316026447683971 type: glossfor all that: despite the fact that id: 1316026447684007 type: glossinconveniences: misfortunes id: 1316026447684042 type: commentarymen of the countrey: Rustics, translating ‘Le Paisan ou laboreur’ (Le Theatre, D7). id: 1316026447684084 type: glosstravaile: strive id: 1316026447684122 type: glossyet: still id: 1316026447684160 type: glossstudieth: exerts himself in planning id: 1316026447684196 type: glosscarnall: worldly id: 1316026447684232 type: glosscareful: anxious id: 1316026447684304 type: glossmoyle: drudge id: 1316026447684340 type: glossgapeth for: longs for id: 1316026447684379 type: glossgraunted of: granted by id: 1316026447684419 type: commentarythan that of brute: We take ‘is’ in our copy text as a compositor’s misreading of ‘yt’ in MS copy. id: 1316026447684556 type: glossproceede of: derive from id: 1316026447684597 type: glossfor this . . . us: that is given to us for this purpose id: 1316026447684633 type: glossunquietness: discontent id: 1316026447684699 type: commentarychristian 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. id: 1316026447684739 type: glossput case: propose by way of example id: 1316026447684781 type: commentaryAlthough 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. id: 1316026447684864 type: glossthe rather: the more easily id: 1316026447684900 type: glosscovete after: long for id: 1316026447684936 type: glossmore a greate deale: a great deal more id: 1316026447685007 type: glossthorough: through, by means of id: 1316026447685043 type: glossin it is no suche default: in the right use of worldly goods there is no moral defect id: 1316026447685086 type: glossonely I meane: I only mean id: 1316026447685121 type: glosspropre: legitimate id: 1316026447685192 type: glosspossessed of: possessed by id: 1316026447685227 type: commentaryGallio . . . unto them: Van der Noot here paraphrases the concluding line of chapter 22 of De Vita Beata, which the younger Seneca dedicated to his older brother Gallio: ad postremum divitiae meae sunt, tu divitiarum es (‘in fine, I own my riches; yours own you’). id: 1316026447685268 type: glossconfidence: impudence id: 1316026447685310 type: glosschasyng: chasing away, expulsion id: 1316026447685349 type: glossthraldome: captivity id: 1316026447685417 type: glossset by: esteem id: 1316026447685453 type: commentaryWhen riches . . . them: Ps 62:10. id: 1316026447685493 type: commentaryConsideryng . . . ydle: The sentence would be a bit less difficult if it were less compressed. Van der Noot not only asserts the worthlessness of worldly things, but also sets up an opposition between the intrinsic worthlessness of things – ‘of them selves most miserable’ − and the vanity and idleness that we confer on things, insisting, as he does so, that things receive nothing else from us other than this vain and idle aspect. id: 1316026447685536 type: commentaryas Plato sayth: The Laws 5.727E-728A. For the idea that the essence of poverty is not lack and that the only true poverty is covetousness, see Laws 5.736E. id: 1316026447685574 type: glossunsaciable: insatiable id: 1316026447685612 type: glosscontentation: contentment id: 1316026447685686 type: commentaryHe is . . . at all: Moral Epistles, 20.10, 20.8. id: 1316026447685724 type: commentaryChrysostom: Hom. 21 super Matt. (6.24) id: 1316026447685762 type: glossinconveniences: improprieties id: 1316026447685798 type: glosscome to great estate: come into great wealth (or achieve eminent status) id: 1316026447685833 type: glossendued: endowed id: 1316026447685960 type: glosswil not be: wish not to be id: 1316026447685923 type: commentarythem: Referring to the ‘divers and sundry kindes of wantonnesse and other inconveniences.’ id: 1316026447685996 type: glossof other: for others id: 1316026447686068 type: commentarythose three: Greed, lust, ambition. id: 1316026447686103 type: commentaryas witnesseth . . . Epistles: 1 John 2:15-17. id: 1316026447686143 type: commentaryFor 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. id: 1316026447686184 type: glossrehearse: recount id: 1316026447686256 type: commentaryincorporated: For the incorporation of believers into the body of Christ, see Eph 5:30 and Rom 12:5; for the identity of the Church with that body, see Col 1:24. id: 1316026447686301 type: glosscrosses: misfortunes, impediments id: 1316026447686336 type: glosscommodities: useful things, goods id: 1316026447686371 type: commentaryturned . . . mire: Both proverbs are marshalled at 2 Pet 2:22 . id: 1316026447686407 type: glossthe livelier: more vividly id: 1316026447686481 type: glossto the ende: so that id: 1316026447686517 type: commentaryOmne . . . dulci : Ars Poetica 343. id: 1316026447686555 type: glosshonestly: honourably, chastely id: 1316026447686680 type: commentaryBrabants speache: In effect, Dutch: in the middle of the sixteenth century the central region of the Netherlands, the region straddling the Rhine, was more influential politically than the Frisian region to the north, and the dialect spoken in Brabant seemed on the verge of becoming a more widely accepted trans-regional standard. As is observed in the introduction above, Roest here misrepresents the genesis of the translations of the poems: the poems were translated from Marot’s French version as printed the previous year, probably with occasional reference to the Italian original. id: 1316026447686864 type: glossunderstode: meant id: 1316026447687037 type: commentaryare . . . one: share a single approach. id: 1316026447687072 type: glossstay hym selfe: rely id: 1316026447687111 type: glossfansie: fantasy id: 1316026447687149 type: glosspassed over: spent id: 1316026447687217 type: glosswhat with . . . what in: in consequence of . . . and in consequence of id: 1316026447687253 type: commentaryhir departure (as it is sayde): I.e., her so-called ‘departure’. id: 1316026447687287 type: commentaryso long a time: The French source is less vague, stipulating that, having loved Laura for forty years, Petrarch mourned her for seven. id: 1316026447687326 type: glossconsidering with him self: reconsidering, reflecting id: 1316026447687362 type: glossto Godwarde: toward God id: 1316026447687402 type: glossdescribed of: described by id: 1316026447687437 type: glossArke triumphant: triumphal arch id: 1316026447687473 type: commentaryDodonian tree: An oak; see above n. to 5.1. id: 1316026447687549 type: commentaryVimiall . . . 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. id: 1316026447687654 type: glosswhereout . . . flushing: out from which a bird abruptly flying upwards id: 1316026447687693 type: glosshundreth: hundred id: 1316026447687732 type: glossdrave: drove id: 1316026447687806 type: commentaryWith all . . . Lupa: The sentence summarizes the two themes of the sequence: the transitory character of earthly achievements and satisfactions, and the specific humiliation of Rome, the rise of which was motivated by covetousness and a desire for authority consistent with the wolvishness of its founders’ upbringing. id: 1316026447687841 type: commentaryand that: I.e. and that destruction. id: 1316026447687917 type: glosshad to: had for. id: 1316026447687955 type: glossfollowing: deriving from id: 1316026447687990 type: commentaryLupa: The name is simply the Latin word for ‘she-wolf’. id: 1316026447688025 type: commentaryOute . . . 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). id: 1316026447688079 type: commentarycast . . . 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. id: 1316026447688118 type: commentarybloud : An outlier in the series, the term has no equivalent in the French commentary that Roest is translating. id: 1316026447688186 type: glossFigures: images id: 1316026447688230 type: glossPourphere: porphyry id: 1316026447688269 type: glossEmplaster: plaster of Paris id: 1316026447688305 type: glossgraven: carved id: 1316026447688340 type: glossother some: some others id: 1316026447688376 type: glossprivie: secret id: 1316026447688411 type: glossparticular: narrowly self-interested id: 1316026447688450 type: glossfrom time to time: from age to age id: 1316026447688521 type: glosspresident: appointed governor, viceroy id: 1316026447688600 type: commentarytheirs: The gods of the Romans. id: 1316026447688640 type: glossenorme: enormous id: 1316026447688675 type: commentaryhave 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. id: 1316026447688744 type: glossEastgothes . . . Westgothes: Ostrogoths and Visigoths id: 1316026447688783 type: glossrased: razed id: 1316026447688861 type: commentaryFor the fervent . . . purpose: Bale 1570, p. 74-75 on the events following upon the opening of the third seal. id: 1316026447688897 type: commentaryAfter this sort . . . abolished: Bale 1570, p. 78. id: 1316026447688933 type: commentarySunne. . . Moone: Language of the sixth seal, possibly borrowed from Bale 1550: L6v. id: 1316026447688971 type: commentaryFor they dayly . . . have sayde: Bale 1550: L1r-L2r. id: 1316026447689048 type: commentaryJohn . . . Patriarkes: Even before the accession of John IV to the office of Archbishop of Constantinople in 582, the Council of Constantinople (381) had declared that the Bishop of Constantinople should have primacy of honour after the Bishop of Rome and the Council of Chalcedon (451) had established Constantinople as a patriarchate. But it was only when John IV, also known as John the Faster, began styling himself Ecumenical Patriarch and, it was alleged, claimed that it was a title to be restricted to his own see, that he provoked protests from Pope Pelagius II and his successor, Gregory the Great. Calvin treats Gregory as the hero of this struggle, ascribing to him a general resistance to episcopal primacy (Institutes 4.7.21) id: 1316026447689218 type: commentaryBoniface the third: The future Boniface III was appointed by Gregory the Great to serve as papal legate to Constantinople in 603, and he served in that capacity until the end of Gregory’s papacy and on through the papacy of Gregory’s successor, Sabinian, after which time he was himself elected to the papacy. During his brief service as pope, he reasserted papal primacy, claiming the title of Universal Bishop. id: 1316026447689253 type: glosslieuetenant: The term is used here in its technical sense, i.e. place-holder, or vice-regent. id: 1316026447689295 type: commentaryMahomet . . . afterward: Chronology is crucial to the logic of this discussion of John, Boniface, and Mohammed: John the Faster served as Archbishop of Constantinople from 582 to 595, Boniface’s brief papacy took place in 606, and Mohammed experienced his first revelation in 610 and took up the public work of prophecy in 613. id: 1316026447689332 type: commentaryTalmuith: 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. id: 1316026447689367 type: commentarySarazens their Alcorane: This distorts the Qur’anic principle of taḥrīf, the idea that the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament corrupt the revelation that the Qur’an embodies. This particular distortion was given its most influential articulation in the work of Ricoldo da Monte di Croce, whose major thirteenth-century treatise on the Qur’an Luther translated and who claimed that Moslems believed that the Gospel, in its uncorrupted original form, contained a prophecy of the coming of Muhammed. id: 1316026447689406 type: commentaryDecretals: 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. id: 1316026447689446 type: commentarytraditions: Because the term can be used to designate authoritative convention passed down orally, it can connote dubitable legends and rules, as it does here. id: 1316026447689520 type: glossWherunto: to which end id: 1316026447689558 type: glossthe rather: the sooner id: 1316026447689628 type: commentarytraditions of men: What follows is a condensed summary of the aspects of Catholic doctrine and worship to which the Reformers were most vehemently opposed, characterized as traditions of men (with the same disapproving connotations of the word traditions as are intended two sentences earlier) to distinguish them from those aspects of doctrine of worship that, the Reformers contended, could be securely founded on Scripture. As mentioned in the Introduction, van der Noot continues to follow Bale’s Image of Two Churches, but slightly abridging his list of the sensuous and spectacular of worship (the use of bells, incense, candles, instrumental music), the doctrine of purgatorie and the practices intended to intercede on behalf of those abiding there (masses for al soules, diriges, obsequies, indulgences), an array of related practices aimed to secure the intercession of saints (Pilgrimages, the veneration of relikes), and several practices of self-deprivation thought to substitute for faith itself and a dependence of divine grace (Lenten abstentions and, for the clergy, celibacy). id: 1316026447689698 type: glossas: such as id: 1316026447689737 type: commentarybells: The use of bells in Catholic worship was a frequent object of Reformation attack. Various uses of bells − to announce imminent death, to call the faithful to worship, and to accompany the elevation of the host at Mass − were subjected to criticism, but the practice of dedicating new bells by prayers, washing, and unction was considered especially egregious. id: 1316026447689772 type: glossdiriges, obsequies: funeral or commemorative rites id: 1316026447689807 type: commentarydiriges: The word can be used specifically to denote Matins for the Dead or, more generally, any chanting or reading of the Office of the Dead, whether for a funeral or for a memorial service. The word, which develops into the modern dirge, is the first in the antiphon for the first nocturn of Matins. id: 1316026447689844 type: commentaryobsequies: Sometimes used as a synonym for dirige, sometimes to refer more generally to the Offices of the Dead (comprising both the Placebo and the Dirige, i.e. Vespers and Matins for the Dead), and sometimes, most generally, to denote all burial rites and ritual commemoratives for the dead. id: 1316026447689968 type: commentaryRogation dayes: Though the Catholic Church formally recognized a Major Rogation on 25 April and three Minor Rogations, on the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Ascension Day, the Sunday before Ascension Day also came to be known as Rogation Sunday. All Rogation days were associated with penance and fasting, but the Minor Rogations − and, by association, Rogation Sunday − were especially distinguished by outdoor processions and prayers for agricultural prosperity. id: 1316026447690008 type: commentarycoales . . . broyled: These relics were among the treasures of Rome’s church of San Lorenzo in Panisperna. id: 1316026447690042 type: commentaryJosephs hosen: Since the ninth century relics said to be Jesus’ swaddling clothes were housed at Aachen; the legend that St. Joseph had fashioned these swaddling clothes from his stockings is of a later date. id: 1316026447690081 type: commentaryS. Cornelis: Relics of St. Cornelius, patron saint of cattle, were widely distributed across northern Europe, and especially in the Low countries: an important collection of relics were housed at an abbey in Ninove, 40 miles SW of Antwerp. But van der Noot may have been thinking of another collection of relics near Aachen: St. Cornelius’ head was preserved at Kornelimünster a few miles SE of Aachen. id: 1316026447690117 type: commentaryimages: 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. id: 1316026447690289 type: commentaryseventh seale: An error. The French source is correct: van der Noot is describing the vision of the opening of the fourth seal ( Rev 6:7-8). id: 1316026447690368 type: commentaryRom. 2. . . . Math. 6. [marg. glosses]: The reference to Romans is miscopied from the French: the relevant passage from Romans, on the extension of Christ’s offer of a spiritual life even to those dead in the body, is 8:10. The chapters from Luke and Matthew contain the two versions of the Sermon on the Mount, both concerned with life conferred by Christ. But each of the Gospel chapters takes up different themes of concern to van der Noot: Luke 12:4-5 focuses on the eternal death to which van der Noot imagines his papist adversaries as condemned; several verses in Matt 6 concentrate on the empty devotional shows of hypocrisy. id: 1316026447690413 type: commentaryEsay. 5. [marg. gl.]: Isa 5:14. id: 1316026447690488 type: commentaryseduced 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. id: 1316026447690534 type: commentaryDaniel and Paule: It was customary among the Reformers to associate the fourth beast in Dan 7 with Rome (7:7, explicated at 7:19-23) and to understand the little horn of the beast (7:8, explicated at 7:24-6) not only as the Antichrist, the man of sin of 2 Thess 2:3-8, but also as the pope. Tertullian is the first to have argued that the lawlessness of the Antichrist (2 Thess 2:3) would be unleashed only when the Roman Empire fell (De Resurrectione Carnis 24). id: 1316026447690575 type: commentaryholy 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’. id: 1316026447690620 type: commentaryI saw . . . and corporally: This long passage on Rev 13:1-2 is all but lifted from Bale (1550: f8r-g5r). id: 1316026447690666 type: commentarycongregation . . . hypocrites: Job 15:34; versions of this formulation make up a steady refrain in Bale’s Image. id: 1316026447690705 type: commentaryCeder . . . 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. id: 1316026447690750 type: commentaryElmas: Acts 13.6-12. id: 1316026447690787 type: commentaryApoc. 6. [marg. gl.]: I.e., Rev 6:7-8. id: 1316026447690830 type: commentaryApoc. 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.’ id: 1316026447690883 type: glossodible: odious id: 1316026447690955 type: commentarybut . . . 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. id: 1316026447691016 type: commentarytheir ten heads: In fact, the beast of Rev 13:1 , to which the dragon of 12:3 defers, has only seven heads, although it wears a crown on each of its ten horns. id: 1316026447691056 type: commentarythat which . . . have they: Whereas the draconic Satan has only instigated the thyng, the bestial congregation has achieved it. Roest takes care in this passage not to specify the work of the Beast, referring to it as the thyng or, merely, it. id: 1316026447691134 type: glossblowe . . . eares: whisper to them concerning, secretly propose id: 1316026447691170 type: commentaryhe is but able . . . inspiration: He can only incite the bestial congregation to imagine performing it. id: 1316026447691242 type: glossfound out: invented id: 1316026447691282 type: commentarypurgatorie . . . service: Although van der Noot offers this as a list of erroneous doctrines that the bestial congregation enforces as dogma, he follows Bale in augmenting the list of erroneous beliefs (purgatorie, transubstantiation) with several corrupt practices. id: 1316026447691322 type: commentaryauricular confession: Compulsory confession ‘into the ear of’ a priestly-confessor. Calvin offers a sustained critique of the practice in Institutes III.4. id: 1316026447691361 type: commentarytransubstantiation: Mentioned neither in Bale nor in the French Theatre at this juncture. id: 1316026447691399 type: commentaryfather of all lies: See John 8.44. id: 1316026447691440 type: commentarywritten: 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. id: 1316026447691487 type: glossHereout . . . like: From these and similar instances id: 1316026447691523 type: glossghostly: spiritual id: 1316026447691659 type: commentarymore wickednesse: It is worth observing the culminative force here. Van der Noot has steadily distinguished Satan and his ministers, making Satan the figure of lesser wickedness: whereas Satan instigates, they achieve and violently maintain; whereas he plays, they seriously compel; what he invents, they institute as dogma. This will culminate in the assertion that follows, that Satan is impotent without his popish ministers. id: 1316026447691695 type: commentaryJudas . . . entred: Luke 22.3, John 13.27. id: 1316026447691866 type: commentaryMath. 23 [marginal gloss]: Matt 23:34. id: 1316026447691905 type: commentaryAnd upon . . . Christ : Rev 13:1. id: 1316026447691942 type: glosswher with: by means of which id: 1316026447691980 type: glosssuborne: adorn id: 1316026447692014 type: commentarysuborne: For a similar usage, see Vewe [cross-ref to ‘Evill thinges being decked and suborned with the gay attyre of goodly woordes’]. id: 1316026447692053 type: glossestimation: reputation id: 1316026447692087 type: glosspatriarks: the highest-ranking of Catholic bishops id: 1316026447692122 type: commentarychief heads: Roest is translating ‘Principaux, chefz’. id: 1316026447692169 type: glosspronotaries: high-ranking Monsignors of the Catholic church id: 1316026447692205 type: glossofficialls: bishops’ representatives to diocesan ecclesiastical courts id: 1316026447692240 type: glosscommissaries: papal appointees with special commissions id: 1316026447692306 type: glossprebendaries: cathedral administrators id: 1316026447692376 type: glossVicare: representative id: 1316026447692414 type: commentaryBridegromes: 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. id: 1316026447692453 type: commentaryas Zacharie termeth them: Zech 10:17. id: 1316026447692526 type: glossil favored of fashion: ugly in shape id: 1316026447692561 type: glossstoutnesse: stubbornness id: 1316026447692597 type: commentarya 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. id: 1316026447692637 type: commentarykingdome of the Grecians: Referring to the Greek empire established by the eastern conquests of Alexander the Great. id: 1316026447692743 type: glossParalipomenon: I.e., Chronicles. id: 1316026447692815 type: commentaryBut this beast . . . to the Lion: Not in Bale. id: 1316026447692887 type: commentaryas 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. id: 1316026447692931 type: commentaryAs 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). id: 1316026447692981 type: glossSodometrie: sodomy id: 1316026447693018 type: commentarySodometrie: While sodomy (or, here, ‘Sodometrie’) is often used to comprise the full field of proscribed sexual practices (and thus substantially overlaps uncleannesse), it sometimes seems especially to evoke sexual activities between men, hence the frequent use of the term in denunciations of monks. id: 1316026447693059 type: commentaryGods holy Temple: The Church; as the gloss indicates, Paul describes the Church in these terms at 1 Cor 3:16. id: 1316026447693132 type: commentaryvessels of his glory: Rom 9:23, part of Paul’s discussion of election. id: 1316026447693169 type: commentaryPharao . . . Caiphas: To the formulaic list of the notorious oppressors of the righteous, Pharaoh, Antiochus, and Caiaphas, a fourth, Herod, is sometimes added. id: 1316026447693236 type: glossin the comparison of: i.e., compared to id: 1316026447693277 type: commentarysecuritie: In the sixteenth century, the term could be used to denote a culpable confidence or lack of compunction. id: 1316026447693312 type: commentary[glosses]: The relevant passages are Esth 3:4 and 1 Macc 1:41-51. id: 1316026447693352 type: glossto the ordinaunces: in comparison to the ordinaunces id: 1316026447693391 type: glossAfter this sort: accordingly id: 1316026447693426 type: commentaryPopedom: This play on ‘kingdom’ is not original with Roest; the Reformers used both this and ‘papisty’ to refer to the papacy. id: 1316026447693464 type: commentary vii. times double: Roest here translates ‘sept fois le double’, probably a derivation from septemgeminus (Lat.) and, hence, meaning ‘sevenfold’, as opposed to ‘fourteenfold’. id: 1316026447693593 type: commentarycovetousnesse: Translating convoitise; van der Noot's source in Bale reads ‘affeccyons’ (1550: g3v). id: 1316026447693635 type: glosssheade: shed id: 1316026447693705 type: glossobservings: observances id: 1316026447693858 type: commentaryTherfore God . . . . pleasure in unrighteousnesse: Not in Bale. id: 1316026447693995 type: commentary[The portion of Theatre extracted for print ends here. (The editors earlier approved an extract that ended a two-and-a-half sentences earlier. I’ve decided to extend it to reach to the end of the commentary on the first two sentences of Rev 13. Neater that way.) What follows henceforth is simply an account of the debts to Bale.] id: 1316026447694064 type: commentarythe Pope . . . I mean: Not in Bale. id: 1316026447694359 type: commentaryupon the Mount . . . Jesus): Not in Bale. id: 1316026447694426 type: commentaryBrabant . . . countrey: Bale’s focus is on England. id: 1316026447694464 type: commentaryfriendshyp . . . children: Not in Bale. id: 1316026447694534 type: commentaryAnd it was permitted . . . ordinaunces: Bale, Image, I4v-I5v. Van der Noot skips a long section in Bale devoted to the suppression of scriptural reading and the censorship of reformed commentary in England. He also skips Bale's gloss on Rev 13:13-14 (Image, I1r-I4v) and instead turns directly to Bale’s gloss on Rev 13:15, the first few sentences of which he abridges here. id: 1316026447694141 type: commentaryFor it is evident . . . made whole?: Bale, Image, 1545, G3r-I1r. The appropriation of Bale is freer in this next, long section. Van der Noot abridges the Image at a few junctures at which Bale is especially prolix, sketchily updates Bale’s survey of the European anti-Catholic movement, and he gives a slightly more penetrating account of those temporizers who reject the authority of the contemporary Roman church, but cling to earlier traditions of doctrine and practice that he judges to be without scriptural warrant. Here, as elsewhere, van der Noot mutes anti-semitic notes in Bale and − because the first version of this commentary was prepared for a French audience − removes many specific references to the struggles of English protestants. id: 1316026447694218 type: commentaryOther some . . . serve hym arighte: Not in Bale. id: 1316026447694285 type: commentaryto consume their adversaries: Bale asserts, at this juncture, ‘Neverthelesse to the christiane is persecucion necessarye’ (H4v), and elaborates the principle of necessary martyrdom before turning to Rev 13:11. id: 1316026447694605 type: commentaryThis number . . . agaynst him: Bale, Image, K1v. id: 1316026447694677 type: commentarySome expositors . . . father the pope: Bale, Image, K2r. id: 1316026447694722 type: commentaryI saw (sayth . . . or whatsoever: Bale, Image Q5v. Van der Noot breaks in on Bale to reflect on his own service as an alderman in Antwerp. id: 1316026447694792 type: commentaryThis beaste is whole . . . doings are: Image, Q5v-Q7v. As part of his general program of updating Bale and muting the local English concerns of the Image, van der Noot excises Bale’s obscene account of the Tunstall’s panting service to the Whore of Babylon. id: 1316026447694872 type: commentaryAnd in hir forhead . . . horrible impietie: Image, Q7v-Q8v. id: 1316026447694944 type: commentaryIt is no mervaile . . . confidence in it: Image, Q3v-Q4v. id: 1316026447695017 type: commentaryThe .x. horns . . . abhomination of that Antechrist: Image, S3r-S4v. id: 1316026447695089 type: commentaryJohn Wicliffe, . . . Regius,]: The list of Reformation champions adapts Bale’s, adding Wycliff, Hus, Beza, Viret, Peter Martyr, Alasco, and Regius and dropping Reuchlin, Erasmus, Pomeran, Grineus, and a variety of English reformers. id: 1316026447695155 type: commentaryFor the Foules, . . . hir flesh: Not in Bale. id: 1316026447695348 type: commentaryAfter all these manifold . . . bonde of peace: Bale, Image, 1570, U8v [sig. no?]-Aaa3r. id: 1316026447695191 type: commentaryAfter all these manifold . . . with the cloud: Bale, Image, L2r. id: 1316026447695277 type: commentaryand in the .xiii. Chapter . . . downeward: Bale, Image, L4r. id: 1316026447695421 type: commentaryriggish and lecherous prelates: The French Theatre inserts an adapted version of sonnet decrying contemporary Roman debauchery. The sonnet appears later in an adapted form in George Thomson’s La chasse de la beste romaine (1611), addressed to Du Bellay. id: 1316026447695493 type: commentaryand shed very . . . any more: Image Aaa3r-Bbb3v. Van der Noot imitates Bale freely here, sometimes expanding and sometimes condensing. id: 1316026447695569 type: commentaryBut they have their rewarde . . . gnashing of teeth: Not in Bale. id: 1316026447695636 type: commentaryBertrandus Herebaldus: An almost comical instance of unfaithful transmission: ‘Bertrandus, Herebaldus’ in Le Theatre, a corruption of ‘Bertramus, Herebaldus’ in Bale’s Image. A treatise on the Eucharist arguing against the doctrine of transubstantiation was printed in 1531 and attributed to Bertramus, although the treatise is actually the work of a ninth-century theologian by the name of Ratramnus. Similar errors of transmission appear elsewhere in this list. id: 1316026447695711 type: commentaryagainst God and hys saincts . . . on this maner: Although van der Noot continues to follow Bale here, he condenses and rearranges freely in this section when adapting it for Le Theatre; Theatre is even more fully reworked. id: 1316026447695791 type: commentaryAnd every Shippe . . . she is fallen: Image, Ccc2v-Ccc4r. id: 1316026447695876 type: commentaryThe apples . . . dangerous wayes: Image, Bbb8r-Ccc1r. id: type: These grosse . . . one houre: Picking up detail of the merchants’ corpulence from Image Ccc1v, van der Noot proceeds to conclude this section by appropriating the conclusion of the lament of the shipmen at Image, Ccc4r. id: 1316026447695990 type: commentaryI Saw the heavens open . . . everlasting fire: Image, Eee2r-Eee6r. id: 1316026447696058 type: glossholds: strongholds id: 1316026447696095 type: commentarysavior: i.e. savour id: 1316026447696267 type: commentaryFor he it is . . . things are set: Image, Eee6v. id: 1316026447696340 type: commentaryAnd I saw an Angell . . . leude Prelats: Image, Eee8r-Fff3v. id: 1316026447696412 type: commentaryThey seeke . . . against Christ: Not in Bale. id: 1316026447696452 type: commentaryThe conspectus of contemporary persecutions departs from Bale’s Image. id: 1316026447696519 type: commentarythe Lambe is strong . . . of those virgins: These lines draw variously from Bale, Image, K5r-K5v, K7r, and K8r. id: 1316026447696597 type: commentaryfor they judge . . . unchast chastitie: Van der Noot departs from his dependence on Bale here. Bale concentrates on the spiritual virginity of ideal marriage, whereas van der Noot’s address to marriage is somewhat less mystical. Even as he sustains a vigorous attack on the corrupt sexuality of the Roman clergy’s, he propounds a defense of right marriage as a moral and devotional practice. id: 1316026447696633 type: commentaryFor what I pray you . . . S. Paule testifieth: Image, K8r-K8v. id: 1316026447696670 type: commentaryThe Lambe whyche . . . strong mounte Syon : Image, K5r. id: 1316026447696742 type: commentarythe Dragon and . . . of the divel: Image, F3v. id: 1316026447696783 type: commentaryFor it followeth . . . and false Prophetes: Image, Fff4r-Fff4v, deleting the discussion of Caiaphas. id: 1316026447696857 type: commentaryAnd the remnant . . . bloud of the wicked: Image, Fff5v-Fff6v. id: 1316026447696932 type: commentaryI sawe (sayth S. John . . . perfection: Image, Kkk1v-Kkk2v. id: 1316026447697005 type: commentaryAnd there was no more sea . . . farre from them: Image, Kkk3r-Kkk7r, lightly abridged. id: 1316026447697073 type: commentaryThe building of the frame . . . accepted of God: Image, Lll8r. id: 1316026447697150 type: commentaryThis holy Jerusalem . . . moste finest golde: Image, Mmm2r-Mmm2v. id: 1316026447697219 type: commentaryThis Citie hath . . . shall be saved: Image, Mmm3v. id: 1316026447697261 type: commentaryAnd on every gate . . . kingdom of Christ: Image, Ooo2v. id: 1316026447697336 type: commentaryAnd at these gates . . . of the promise: Image, Mmm3v-Mmm4r. id: 1316026447697404 type: commentaryThe walles of the Citie . . . principallest: Image, Mmm5r-Mmm6v. id: 1316026447697476 type: commentaryThe buildings of the wall . . . pretious stones: Image, Nnn5r-Nnn6r. id: 1316026447697549 type: commentaryThe first foundation . . . chyldren of God: Image, Nnn6v-Ooo2r. id: 1316026447697617 type: commentaryAnd the Angell . . . never shall perishe: Image, Ppp2r-Ppp3v and Ppp4v-Ppp6v. Van der Noot abridges and simplifies Bale slightly in this section. id: 1316026447697657 type: commentaryThis worde then . . . heavenly Jerusalem : based loosely on Bale, Image, PPP6v-Ppp7r. id: type: It must be of necessitie . . . are unperfect : Image, 1545, H4v-H5r. id: 1316026447697770 type: commentary[1] Sir Thomas Elyot, The Boke Named the Governour (1531), 77v-78r. id: 1316026447697807 type: commentary[2] Jennifer Nevile, The Eloquent Body: Dance and Humanist Culture in Fifteenth-Century Italy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004) and id: 1347468549961 type: glosswoulde be: wish to be id: 1347469454970 type: commentary.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. id: 1347469629168 type: commentaryten 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. id: 1347469911496 type: commentary 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. id: 1347470131922 type: commentary 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’. id: 1347470684142 type: commentary 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). id: 1347470900765 type: commentary 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 Lerna Hydra, none of whom have attributes that correspond securely to those of the central figure in Du Bellay’s poem. id: 1347471230657 type: glosscast . . . teeth: reproached them id: 1347471704469 type: commentary 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. id: 1347472869587 type: commentarybrought in: introduced id: 1347473133263 type: commentary 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. id: 1347473369349 type: commentary 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. id: 1347473689402 type: commentaryOf these . . . seduced by them.: C.f Bale (1550: L2r). id: 1347473943026 type: commentary 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’. id: 1347474777033 type: commentarytheir heads . . . and their hornes: Rev 13.1. id: 1347475287572 type: commentary 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). id: 1347475900016 type: commentary [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. id: 1347476542385 type: commentary [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’. id: 1347476734927 type: commentary [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.