Abstract
Abstract The use of biblical analogies hailing Elizabeth by comparing her to biblical figures has long been recognized as important for the establishment of her rule. Elizabeth was compared to the apocryphal heroine Judith throughout her reign in a positive way. Yet in the wake and aftermath of the Northern Rising, the Papal Bull and the Ridolfi plot the comparison was challenged, as were Elizabethan politics, by another Judith appearing on stage, Mary Stuart. By reading the famous motet, Spem in alium, composed by the Elizabethan court musician Thomas Tallis as a work that makes use of both Protestant and Catholic appropriations of the biblical heroine, the Essay shows the possibilities of musical communication covering a middle ground in this pivotal period of the reign. By commissioning the piece, one of the most eminent Catholic nobles, Henry Fitzalan, twelfth earl of Arundel, used a musically couched reading of the biblical story of Judith to negotiate his personal relationship with the queen after having been implicated in the Ridolfi plot. As such the motet allows new insights in the communicative interactions of Catholics and Protestants and shows the heuristic value of musical sources for understanding Elizabethan politics.
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