“Send your angel”: Augustinian Nests and Guyon’s Faint

Abstract

When the Palmer covers the pulse of Guyon in Faerie Queene Il.viii, the action evokes the covering wings of the mother hen of Matthew 18:10 and God’s protective wings in the Psalms. These images come together in the writings of Augustine, in particular his Confessions and his commentary on Psalm 91. In the Confessions Augustine conveys carnal understanding and rejection of the redemptive simplicity of the Scriptures by the metaphor of a fall out of the nest of faith. An angel’s prayer for the rescue of an unfledged chicken in Book XII of the Confessions is strongly echoed in the passage of Guyon’s faint. This metaphorical fall appears in the Palmer and Guyon’s combination of presumptuous overconfidence in ethical precepts and despair over mortality in the opening of Faerie Queene II, which betrays a regressive carnality opposed to Pauline spiritual renewal. In Augustinian terms, the Word of God and sufficient ecclesiastical support for the “little one” in the faith provide the proper path to self-control through hope in the promise of eternity. In both Augustine’s early theology, and Book II of The Faerie Queene, conversion and temperance are equated in a neo-Platonic return to God.