The Development of the Cult of Elizabeth I .docVIP

The Development of the Cult of Elizabeth I The topic of my paper was prompted by a request to give the source of one of my references about the development of Queen Elizabeth’s cult along a historical line. I realized I could not do that, since there is no work dealing explicitly with the ordering of the various aspects on a timeline, although most of the books on the topic refer to it. Thus the following paper will contain a chronological overview of the symbolical attributes of Queen Elizabeth with illustrations from the field of literature and art. The line of the various aspects starts with an element usually easily skipped over. Its dating preceeds17 November, 1558 when Elizabeth Tudor ascended the thrown of England. By that time the 25 years old princess fashioned a well articulated image of herself. She was known and admired for her intellect, of which she made proof in many ways: she completed translations from Latin as a New Year’s gift to her father, and set a French poem into English for her stepmother; she composed poems; wrote prayers; spoke fluently Latin, French, and Italian and read Greek and Spanish. The importance of the educated prince was emphasized already by Erasmus in his Education of a Christian Prince (1516) and it seems reasonable that Elizabeth consciously developed this feature amid the turmoil of her young years and uncertainties facing her future. She refers to this strategy in a later speech delivered to her troublesome parliament in 1566: “I am your anointed queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am indeed endued with such qualities that if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat, I were able to live in any place of Christendom”. On a portrait sent to her brother Edward VI in 1549, she had herself painted with two books, a bigger one in the background on a lectern, and a smaller one in her hand, calling attention to the fact that her learning was her chief attribute. In the accompanyi