Content area
Full Text
Abstract
This paper examines a centerpiece of anti-Catholic rhetoric, the Whore of Babylon, in Britain from 1660 to 1789. It argues that during this era the Whore came to stand less for the Roman Catholic Church and more for Protestants' own tendencies to drift towards beliefs and practices that resembled Catholicism, especially through an emphasis on external display over spiritual substance. In such writings 'whorishness' suggests a relationship with God that is mediated by elements marked as false including set prayer, priestly vestments, or a belief in salvation through works. There was a double valence to the usage of the Whore, however, for it is also the case that, within moderate circles, to make use of this figure of Babylon also suggested an extremism that in its fanaticism resembled Catholicism. Treatments of the Whore in this place and time thus were governed by a duality that positioned her beyond the pale of legitimate religious debate. Held up as a lens onto a monstrous Catholicism, she also blurred the line between Catholic and Protestant, revealing antiProtestant qualities in those most eager to defeat her.
1 Because this study encompasses the formation of Great Britain through Acts of Union in 1706 and 1707, there will be some slippage in my use of 'British' versus 'English' or 'Scottish'.
The Whore of Babylon, from Revelation 17, plays an almost ubiquitous role in the British rhetoric of anti-Catholicism, linked so closely to the Roman Catholic Church that her name provided a ready shorthand for the perceived evils of Rome. The centrality of this scriptural interpretation, in which the Whore of Babylon stands for the Pope or for Rome, is apparent in the casual matter-of-factness informing one of the earliest publications to link the Whore to the Pope, William Tyndale's The Practise of Prelates. Without elaboration, Tyndale follows a reference to 'The greate baude the hore of babylon' with a parenthentical comment '[sc. the Pope]', indicating an unquestioned allegorical alignment of these figures (Tyndale 1530, no page).
Much has been written about the Whore's significance to the antiCatholic rhetoric of early modern England, particularly her function as monstrous female and her association with the gender inversions Protestants attributed to Catholicism. Frances Dolan's work has been central to this illumination...