Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser on Transnational Governance and the Future of Christendom

This article considers the writings of Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser within the context of European religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, amid the perceived Ottoman threat to Christendom. In their fictional works, these authors imagine an overarching authority that might replace...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRenaissance quarterly Vol. 74; no. 2; pp. 369 - 411
Main Author Lockey, Brian C.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.01.2021
Subjects
16th century
Christianity
Christians
Cristianismo
Elizabethan period
English literature
Escritores
Ficción
Fiction
Good & evil
Literatura inglesa
Plot (Narrative)
Popes
Reconciliation
Religion
Religion and politics
Religión y politica
Renaissance period
Secularism
Sidney, Philip (1554-1586)
Siglo XVI
Spenser, Edmund (1552?-1599)
Theology
Transnationalism
Writers
England
Italy
United Kingdom > UK
Europe
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Summary:This article considers the writings of Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser within the context of European religious conflicts between Protestants and Catholics, amid the perceived Ottoman threat to Christendom. In their fictional works, these authors imagine an overarching authority that might replace the traditional papal power of oversight and deposing in order to regulate temporal sovereigns and foster a unity of Christian princes within Europe. Even as they can be read as reimagining Christendom, their fictional works reflect what Charles Taylor has called the “disenchantment” of sacred spaces within his philosophical history of the emergence of secularity within European cultures.
ISSN:0034-4338
1935-0236
DOI:10.1017/rqx.2021.1