Molinos: “The Subject of the Day” in the Ring and the Book

Abstract

For the background of The Ring and the Book Browning relied heavily on static features of Roman and Aretine life in the late seventeenth century. Many references to streets, buildings, landscapes, customs, politics, and religion could fit a narrative laid in 1650 or in 1750; moreover, the classical and Biblical allusions, which outnumber but resemble those in The Old Yellow Book, carry little connotation of a precise time. Manifestly topical, however, are the references to the heretical teachings of Miguel de Molinos, which Browning termed Molinism. In The Old Yellow Book this heresy is mentioned only once, when the writer of the first anonymous pamphlet suggests that those who do not support a wronged husband against an errant wife may seek to introduce “the power of sinning against the laws of God with impunity, along with the doctrine of Molinos and philosophic sin, which has been checked by the authority of the Holy Office.”