Richard Verstegan and the Symbol of Babylon in the Early Modern Period

Abstract

By the early modern period, the city of Babylon was in ruins, but it continued to loom large in the imagination. This chapter takes the English recusant printer, polemicist, and spy Richard Verstegan as the lens through which to examine the diverse iconography of Babylon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Verstegan’s treatment of the Tower of Babel reflects contemporary interest in questions about the origins of language and nation, but he also employed it to explore issues of tyranny in early modern England. He reclaimed the image of the harlot from the stock Protestant identification of the Whore of Babylon with the Roman Church, and used the biblical exile of the Jews in Babylon to frame his own religious exile. The chapter places Verstegan alongside his contemporaries, from Spenser to Milton, illuminating their use of the image of Babylon through consideration of his treatment of this very flexible symbol.