Reading Catholic Art in Edmund Spenser’s Temple of Isis

This article investigates Spenser’s Egyptian lexicon for the Catholic veneration of sacred images in the Temple of Isis in book 5 of the Faerie Queene. Though not Catholic, Spenser salvages the spiritual power of material objects for his own literary project. By deploying Egyptian mythology as the setting for Britomart’s dream vision of English Empire, Spenser sketches a translatio imperii from Egypt to Rome and from Rome to England, a transfer not only of political but also of religious power; for England to vie for the inheritance of the Roman Empire, it had to show a lineage to Rome, just as Britomart’s dream vision shows Queen Elizabeth’s ancestry. I argue that in her dream vision, Britomart can be seen not only as Isis but also as the Virgin Mary. Spenser’s emphasis on the spiritual power of the Isis statue to transform Britomart leads me to a contemporary title-page image in John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica. The textual and visual correlations between the Isis statue and Dee’s monad testify to a shared reverence for the power of material objects in early modern England’s Protestant culture. The Faerie Queene educates readers, like Britomart, to recognize the difference between sacred art and empty idolatry—to resist seduction by Busirane’s statue of Cupid and to acknowledge the power of Isis.