Moving from a critical reassessment of English Legal Tradition, the essay presents an original perspective about Elizabethan queenship. In particular Queen Elizabeth I is presented as the English katechon. The Author discusses the various meanings attributed to this Greek word, and rediscovers its inner potentialities as powerful device for building a bridge between Theology and Law. According to this view, Elizabeth’s natural and physical body was transfigured not only into a sovereign political body, but also into a theological means of theo-secular salvation: she was the godly force providentially destined to fight the Antichrist, earthly embody by the Roman Pope. the soteriological discourse thus provided a specific pattern for English nationhood. The chapter analyses all the arguments and which strategically concur to support this understanding of English sovereignty: juridical assertions and statement, literary constructions, visual and iconographic representations. Their learned composition forged a new order within whose boundaries the theatricalization of the monarchy was combined with a history of salvation.
Katechontic Elizabeth: The Physical Repository of Sovereignty through Law, Literature and Iconography
Costantini, Cristina
2016
Abstract
Moving from a critical reassessment of English Legal Tradition, the essay presents an original perspective about Elizabethan queenship. In particular Queen Elizabeth I is presented as the English katechon. The Author discusses the various meanings attributed to this Greek word, and rediscovers its inner potentialities as powerful device for building a bridge between Theology and Law. According to this view, Elizabeth’s natural and physical body was transfigured not only into a sovereign political body, but also into a theological means of theo-secular salvation: she was the godly force providentially destined to fight the Antichrist, earthly embody by the Roman Pope. the soteriological discourse thus provided a specific pattern for English nationhood. The chapter analyses all the arguments and which strategically concur to support this understanding of English sovereignty: juridical assertions and statement, literary constructions, visual and iconographic representations. Their learned composition forged a new order within whose boundaries the theatricalization of the monarchy was combined with a history of salvation.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
