A woman with Saint Peter's Keys?: Aemilia Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum and the priestly gifts of women

Criticism, Summer, 2003 by Micheline White

That Lanyer is fully cognizant of the special healing powers associated with Peter's keys is made evident by her use of technical, theological terms in describing the Countess's spiritual labor. For instance, she asserts that the Countess heals by "applying" Christ's "pure merits" to sinners, a claim that echoes Lancelot Andrewes's discussion of the way priests "apply" the remission of sins to Christians, as well as John Jewel's claim that a priest used the keys by offering "the merits of Christ" to sinners. (10) Lanyer also claims that the Countess has the power to cast out "evil spirits," an activity performed by Christ and the disciples, and practiced by some Elizabethan and Jacobean priests. What is so distinctive about Lanyer's representation of female piety, here, is her nonchalant fusion of feminine and clerical vocabulary. The Countess performs pious activities expected of women, yet in inspiring imitation she also provides spiritual healing: her virtues "heale" the souls of sinners by inspiring them to redress themselves (1371); her "faire examples" have been given the power to apply Christ's merits and cast out evil spirits (1378); and her faith is "appli'd" to sinners and "healeth" their grieving souls (1382-83).

In the stanzas that follow, Lanyer continues to fuse feminine and clerical language as she depicts the Countess "feed[ing]" Christ's "flocke" (1438), covering sins, and recovering "lost sheepe" in a widow's "vaile" (1397, 1389). (11) The tradition of representing priests as "shepherds" tending to focks can be traced back to the Old Testament, and in the New Testament Christ both describes himself as shepherd (John 10:1-18; Luke 15:4-7), and instructs Peter to continue his ministry by feeding his sheep (John 21:15-17). Likewise, Peter instructs the church "elders" to "feede the flocke of God" (1 Pet. 5:2). Lanyer first depicts Christ as a shepherd going to feed his flock (1345-47), but only a few stanzas later she describes the Countess as a priestly, pastoral mediator:

   Thou mai'st convert, but never will incline

   To fowle disorder, or licentiousnesse
   But in thy modest vaile do'st sweetly cover
   The staines of other sinnes, to make themselves,
   That by this meanes thou mai'st in time recover
   Those weake lost sheepe that did so long transgresse,
   Presenting them unto thy deerest Lover;
   That when he brings them backe unto his fold,
   In their conversion then he may behold

   Thy beauty shining brighter than the Sunne,

(1392-1401)

In these lines, Lanyer echoes other writers who praised wealthy women for fighting sin and helping to reclaim sinners, (12) but she also incorporates the pastoral vocabulary usually reserved to describe the special healing and feeding provided by male ecclesiastics. (13)

Lanyer also asserts that women have been chosen to serve as healing shepherds in the poem to the Countess of Cumberland's daughter, "To the Ladle Anne, Countess of Dorcet." As other scholars have noted, this poem broaches the sensitive issue of inheritance, and Lanyer consoles Dorset by claiming that she has inherited virtue from her mother in addition to titles and wealth. (14) Dorset is exhorted to imitate her mother, and while Lanyer draws on orthodox language in calling her "Gods Steward" (57), (15) she also draws on clerical vocabulary, calling her a "Shepheardesse" called to "bind up the broken" and feed Christ's "flocke" (133, 76, 134). For example, after chastising the nobility who fail to provide charity, Lanyer enjoins Dorset to inherit her mother's "Crowne" of "goodnesse, bountie, grace, love, [and] pietie" (65-66):