I. HOLINESS
The fundamental doctrine of Platonism as it was understood throughout the period of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the reality of a heavenly beauty known in and by the soul, as contrasted with an earthly beauty known only to the sense. In this the Christian philosophic mind found the basis for its conception of holiness. Christian discipline and Platonic idealism blended in the “Faerie Queene” in the legend of the Red Cross Knight.
The underlying idea taught by Spenser in the first book is that holiness is a state of the soul in which wisdom or truth can be seen and loved in and for its beauty. In the allegorical scheme of his work Una stands for the Platonic wisdom, σοφία, or ἀρετή, and a sight of her in her native beauty constitutes the happy ending of the many struggles and perplexities that the Red Cross Knight experiences in his pursuit of holiness. The identification of Una with the Platonic idea of truth or wisdom is not merely a matter of inference left for the reader to draw; for Spenser himself is careful to inform us of the true nature of the part she plays in his allegory. Una is presented as teaching the satyrs truth and “trew sacred lore.” (I. vi. 19; I. vi. 30.) When the lion, amazed at her sight, forgets his fierceness, Spenser comments:
“O how can beautie maister the most strong,
And simple truth subdue avenging wrong?”
(I. iii. 6.)
When Una summons Arthur to the rescue of the Red Cross Knight from the Giant and the Dragon, Spenser opens his canto with a reflection on the guiding power of grace and truth amid the many perils of human life:
“Ay me, how many perils doe enfold
The righteous man, to make him daily fall?
Were not, that heavenly grace doth him uphold,
And stedfast truth acquite him out of all.
Her love is firme, her care continuall,
So oft as he through his owne foolish pride,
Or weaknesse is to sinfull bands made thrall.”
(I. viii. 1.)
Here Arthur is meant by grace and Una by truth. In accordance with the same conception of Una’s nature Satyrane is made to wonder
“at her wisedome heavenly rare,
Whose like in womens wit he never knew;
· · · · ·
Thenceforth he kept her goodly company,
And learnd her discipline of faith and veritie.”
(I. vi. 31.)
Furthermore, she is represented as guiding the Red Cross Knight to Fidelia’s school, where he is to taste her “heavenly learning,” to hear the wisdom of her divine words, and to learn “celestiall discipline.” (I. x. 18.) In making these comments and in thus directing the course of the action of his poem Spenser presents in Una the personification of truth or wisdom.
But he does more than this; he presents her not only as wisdom, but as true beauty. Spenser is so thoroughly convinced of the truth of that fundamental idea of Platonic ethics, that truth and beauty are identical, that he shows their union in the character of Una, in whom, as her name signifies, they are one. Plato had taught that the highest beauty which the soul can know is wisdom, which, though invisible to sight, would inflame the hearts of men in an unwonted degree could there be a visible image of her. In his “Phædrus” he had stated that “sight is the most piercing of our bodily senses; though not by that is wisdom seen; her loveliness would have been transporting if there had been a visible image of her.” (250.) Convinced, as Spenser was, of the spiritual nature of the beauty of wisdom, he carefully avoids dwelling upon any detail of Una’s physical beauty. The poetic form of allegory, through which his ideas were to be conveyed, required the personification of truth, and the romantic character of chivalry demanded that his Knight should have a lady to protect. The progress of the action of the poem, moreover, made necessary some reference to the details of Una’s form and feature. (Cf. I. iii. 4–6; vi. 9.) But in no instance where the physical form of Una is brought to notice is there any trace of the poet’s desire to concentrate attention upon her physical charms. In this respect Una stands distinctly apart from all his other heroines, and especially Belphœbe. And yet Spenser has taken the greatest care to show that the source of Una’s influence over those that come into her presence lies in the power exerted by her beauty; but this is the beauty of her whole nature, a penetrating radiance of light revealing the soul that is truly wise. Indeed, when Spenser has the best of opportunities to describe Una, after she has laid aside the black stole that hides her features, he contents himself with a few lines, testifying only to their radiant brilliancy:
“Her angels face
As the great eye of heaven shyned bright,
And made a sunshine in the shadie place.”
(I. iii. 4.)
In other instances he directs our attention to the power which the mere sight of her has upon the beholder. Her beauty can tame the raging lion and turn a ravenous beast into a strong body-guard who finds his duty in the light of her fair eyes:
“It fortuned out of the thickest wood
A ramping Lyon rushed suddainly,
Hunting full greedie after salvage blood;
Soone as the toy all virgin he did spy,
With gaping mouth at her ran greedily,
To have attonce devour’d her tender corse:
But to the pray when as he drew more ny,
His bloudie rage asswaged with remorse,
And with the sight amazd, forgat his furious forse.”
(I. iii. 5.)
“The Lyon would not leave her desolate,
· · · · ·
From her faire eyes he tooke commaundement,
And ever by her lookes conceived her intent.”
(I. iii. 9.)
The wild-wood gods stand astonished at her beauty, and in their wonder pity her desolate condition. (I. vi. 9–12.) Old Sylvanus is smitten by a sight of her. In her presence he doubts the purity of his own Dryope’s fairness; sometimes he thinks her Venus, but then on further reflection he recalls that Venus never had so sober mood; her image calls to mind—
“His ancient love, and dearest Cyparisse,
· · · · ·
How fair he was, and yet not faire to this.”
(I. vi. 17.)
To behold her lovely face the wood nymphs flock about and when they have seen it, they flee away in envious fear, lest the contrast of its beauty may disgrace their own. (I. vi. 18.)
By these dramatic touches Spenser very skilfully suggests to his reader the high nature of Una’s beauty. It has a power to win its way upon the brute creation, and it has a severity and radiance that set it off from the beauty of physical form possessed by the wood nymphs and even by the great goddess of love, Venus.
The most important consideration that bears upon the question of Una’s beauty is found in the method which Spenser has used to indicate how the Red Cross Knight attains to a knowledge of it. One reason why the people of the wood, the nymphs, the fauns, and the satyrs, were permitted to see the celestial beauty of Una unveiled lay in the fact that through their experiences a means was provided by the poet to quicken the imagination into a sense of its pure nature. But the Knight, though he had journeyed with her throughout a great portion of her “wearie journey,” had never been able to see her face in its native splendor, hidden, as it had always been, from his sight by the black veil which Una wore. The deep conceit which Spenser here uses points in the direction of Platonism; for there it was taught that wisdom could be seen only by the soul. This is a fundamental truth, present everywhere in Plato, in the vision of beauty that rises before the mind at the end of the dialectic of the “Symposium,” in the species of divine fury that accompanies the recollection of the ideal world in the presence of a beautiful object, as analyzed in the “Phædrus,” and in the “Hymn of the Dialectic” in the “Republic” by which the soul rises to a sight of the good. (VII. 532.) In the “Phædo” the function of philosophy is explained to lie in the exercise by the soul of this power of spiritual contemplation of true existence. (82, 83.) In Spenser this conception is further illustrated by the part which the schooling, received by the Red Cross Knight on the Mount of Contemplation, played in the perfection of his mental vision. Up to the time when the Knight comes to the Mount he is, as the aged sire says, a “man of earth,” and his spirit needs to be purified of all the grossness of sense. (I. x. 52.) When this has been accomplished, the Knight is prepared to
“see the way,
That never yet was seene of Faeries sonne.”
(I. x. 52.)
While on this Mount he is initiated into a knowledge of the glories of the Heavenly Jerusalem, and through this experience he is made aware of the relative insignificance of that beauty which he had thought the greatest to be known on earth. He thus says to the aged man, Heavenly Contemplation, who has revealed this vision to him:
“Till now, said then the knight, I weened well,
That great Cleopolis, where I have beene,
In which that fairest Faerie Queene doth dwell,
The fairest Citie was, that might be seene;
And that bright towre all built of christall cleene,
Panthea, seemd the brightest thing, that was:
But now by proofe all otherwise I weene;
For this great Citie that does far surpas,
And this bright Angels towre quite dims that towre of glas.”
(I. x. 58.)
With his soul filled with the radiance of this vision of beauty, his eyes dazed—
“Through passing brightnesse, which did quite confound
His feeble sence, and too exceeding shyne.
So darke are earthly things compard to things divine—”
(I. x. 67.)
the Red Cross Knight descends from the Mount; and when after the completion of his labors he sees Una on the day of her betrothal, he wonders at a beauty in her which he has never before seen. Una has now laid aside her black veil, and shines upon him in the native undimmed splendor of truth.
“The blazing brightnesse of her beauties beame,
And glorious light of her sunshyny face
To tell, were as to strive against the streame.
My ragged rimes are all too rude and bace,
Her heavenly lineaments for to enchace.
Ne wonder; for her owne deare loved knight,
All were she dayly with himselfe in place,
Did wonder much at her celestiall sight:
Oft had he seene her faire, but never so faire dight.”
(I. xii. 23.)
The contribution of Platonism to the formation of the ideal of holiness can now be easily recognized. The discipline of the Red Cross Knight in the House of Holiness is twofold. In the practice of the Christian graces—faith, hope, and charity—the Knight is perfected in the way of the righteous life. He is a penitent seeking to cleanse his soul of the infection of sin. On the Mount of Heavenly Contemplation he exercises his soul in the contemplative vision of the eternal world. But the emphasis laid by Platonism upon the loveliness of that wisdom which is the object of contemplation results in quickening the imagination and in stirring the soul to realize the principle in love. This is the exact nature of the experience of the Red Cross Knight at the end of his journey. On the Mount of Heavenly Contemplation he has a desire to remain in the peaceful contemplation of heaven:
“O let me not (quoth he) then turne againe
Backe to the world, whose joyes so fruitlesse are;
But let me here for aye in peace remaine,
Or streight way on that last long voyage fare,
That nothing may my present hope empare.”
(I. x. 63.)
But the aged sire, Heavenly Contemplation, reminds him of his duty to free Una’s parents from the dragon. (I. x. 63.) Obedient but still purposing to return to the contemplative life (I. x. 64.), the Knight descends; and in the performance of his duty he gains the reward that the contemplative life brings. “But he,” says Plato, “whose initiation is recent, and who has been the spectator of many glories in the other world, is amazed when he sees any one having a godlike face or any bodily form which is the expression of divine beauty.” (“Phædrus,” 251.) Thus it is that the Red Cross Knight
“Did wonder much at her celestiall sight.”
(I. xii. 23.)
With that sight comes the one joy of his life after the many struggles experienced in the perfection of his soul in holiness.
“And ever, when his eye did her behold,
His heart did seeme to melt in pleasures manifold.”
(I. xii. 40.)