Nohrnberg asked me to forward his response to the list. It follows my brief
 note.

 Actually, I have something in mind much simpler (as those who know me would
 have guessed) than I have led the respondents to think. I am examining the
 physiology of the collapses Una suffers during her search for Redcrosse.
 Each is the result of an emotional shock to the capacity of her heart to
 generate the vital spirits necessary to life. The collapses thus reinforce
 the purely emotional movements of her heart such as that found in her
 response to meeting Archimago disguised as Redcrosse. A comparison I have
in
 mind is with Britomart. Her  love for Artegall is also full-hearted; but it
 is basically an expression of her organs of generation and thus admits all
 kinds of emotions, even distrust and jealousy.  Una's love wells up wholly
 from the pure fountain of her heart. And so, my interest is not, as I led
 Berger to think, in the idea that God's love can be understood as eros, but
 that Una's love is so pure it bears comparison to,  not is equated with,
 God's agape.

 My thanks for the responses. They have been most helpful.

 Jim Broaddus

 Norhnberg's response:

> > The idea that Una is God the Redeemer Deity might be heard in the
> > text's allusions to the Song of Songs, where the usual allegory of the
> >
> > (human) Spouse-soul yearning after its divine redeemer has its
> > counterpart -- mutatis mutandis -- in the (divine) Lover-spouse
> > yearning after the lapsed (human) soul.  Insofar as the Wisdom
> > represented by Una is an aspect of the deity, and insofar as Una
> > redeems Redcrosse from error, or divinely forgives it him, the point
> > is perhaps anticipated in the following, likewise insofar as Una as
> > Wisdom is also a part of the divine concern and attributes, and
> > insofar as she is also Redcrosse's good angel or faithful guardian:
> >
> > The Protestant reading of the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew
> > maintains that the chosen will be brought into error.  In the wood of
> > Error, Redcrosse is tested and blooded.  A.C. Hamilton gives an apt
> > parallel from Ecclesiasticus (3:17-19), describing Wisdom trying her
> > devotee in "crooked ways," and then, having proven him, returning him
> > to the straight way with comforting knowledge.  Una herself seems to
> > cite Ecclesiasticus 21:22-23:  "The foot of a fool is quick to enter a
> >
> > house, But an experienced man waits respectfully before it":  "Yet
> > wisedome warnes, whilst foot is in the gate, / To stay the steppe, ere
> >
> > forced to retrate." (I.i13).  Of man's search for wisdom through
> > history, Hooker translates Lactantius to the following effect:
> > "...God did not suffer him being desirous of the light of wisdom to
> > stray any longer up and down, and with bootless expense of travel to
> > wander in the darkness that had no passage to get out by.  His eyes at
> >
> > length God did open, and bestow upon him the knowledge of the truth by
> >
> > way of Donative, to the end that man might both be clearly convicted
> > of folly, and being through error out of the way, have the path that
> > leadeth unto immortalilty laid plain before him."  We ma conclude that
> >
> > in his descent into the dark Redcrosse is accompannied by Wisdom, like
> >
> > the the dreamer Joseph in Wisdom 10:12-14; the text anticiaptes future
> >
> > developments [in Book I]: "When the righteous was solde she forsoke
> > him not, but delieued him from sinne; she went down with him into the
> > dongeon, / And failed him not in the bandes, til she had broght him
> > the sceptre of the realme, and power against those who had oppressed
> > him, and them that had accused him, she delcared to be liers, and gaue
> >
> > him perpetual glorie. (Geneva Bible)  Una accomplishes no less.  [AnFQ
> >
> > 142-43]
> >
> > Despair tries to bring Redcrosse around to Job's conclusion that
> > oblivion and the grave are his only hope, and thus he resembles Job's
> > counselors, who "mainteine with manie goodlie arguments, that God
> > punisheth continually according to the trespas, grounding vppone Gods
> > prouidence, his iustice, and mans sinnes"; "yet," the Geneva Bible
> > continues, "their intention is euil: for they labour to bring Iob into
> >
> > dispaire, and so they mainteine an euil cause."  As the imagery makes
> > clear, the "cursed place occupied by Despair is almost that grave or
> > pit or Sheol unto which the soul is brought in its extremity in the
> > Old Testament.  //  More complicated biblical overtones anticipate the
> >
> > reversal at the end of the canto.  "Christ cannot save thy soul,"
> > Lucifer will tell the distraught Doctor Faustus, "for Christ is just"
> > ("Is not he iust," Despair asks [I.ix.47]).  The argument of the
> > Adversary inverts that of I John 2:1ff., where his righteousness is
> > precisely the reason that Christ can save.  Despair asks"  "Shall he
> > thy sins vp in his knowledge fold, / And guiltie be of thine
> > impietie?"  (I.ix.47)  The answer on both counts is yes, for God will
> > remember man's sin no more (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:12, 10:17; Ps. 103:3;
> > Isa. 3:17); he has made Christ sin for us, even as he has made us
> > righteous in Christ (II Cor. 5:21).  A somewhat similar solution is
> > reached in Job, in the speech in which Elihu speaks of a "messenger"
> > who will be a reconciliation between God and man (Job 33:23-24).
> > "That is, the minster shal by the preaching of the word pronounce vnto
> >
> > him ye forgiueness of his sinnes," the Geneva gloss explains.  More
> > specifically, Christ was made curse for us, according to the chapter
> > in which Paul addresses the "bewitched" Galatians (cf. I.ix.53, "Ne
> > let vaine words bewitch thy manly hart").  Paul is explaining the
> > doctrine of justification by faith, and the adoption of Christians
> > into the promises made to Abraham, and to his "one" seed, which Paul
> > identifies as Christ (Gal. 3:16). In the Old Testament this promise is
> >
> > brought to the edge of annulment in its very inception, when Abraham
> > is summoned to sacrifice his only son:  "Herein stode ye cheifest
> > point of his temptation, seing he was commanded to offre vp him in
> > whome God had promised to blesse all the nations of the worlde"
> > (Geneva gloss on Gen. 22:2).  Despair proffers a "cursed knife" to
> > Redcrosse:  "He to him raught a dagger sharpe and keene, / And gaue it
> >
> > him in hand....He lifted vp his hand" (I.ix.51).  With this we may
> > compare Genesis 22:10:  "And Abraham stretching forthe his hand, toke
> > the knife to kil his sonne."  It is an angel or messenger that
> > interrupts the sacrifice, and reasserts the promise.  Spenser seems to
> >
> > have this interrruption too, for Redcrosse's blood is seen "To come,
> > and goe with tydings from the hart,/As it a running messnger had
> > beene" (I.ix.51), and the knight's hesitation is followed by Una's
> > snatching of the knife and asserting Redcrossse's election.  ...  Thus
> >
> > the two cantos (Despair's and Contemplation's] form a biblical
> > diptych, hinging on Romans 5:2;  Moreouer the Law entered thereupon
> > that the offence shulde abunde:  neuertheles, where sinne abunded,
> > there grace abunded muche more" (cf. I.ix.53).  The diptych reproduces
> >
> > the Christian concdption of the argument of the Bible as a whole.  [As
> >
> > does the parable of the prodigal son.]  [AnFQ 154-55, 158]
> >
> > The seemingly abstruse allegory whereby the tree, to be regenerated,
> > must be bathed in a living well, belongs to the idea that an unfallen
> > man is like a watered treee, expecially the one found in Psalm 1:3.
> > The Geneva Bible comments that "God's children are so maystned eue
> > with his grace."  The Epistle known as Barnabas (11:1`-11) compares
> > the same tree to the watered trees of Ezekiel's New Jerusalme, which
> > give eternal life:  "That is to say we go down into the water full of
> > sin and defilement, but we come up out of it bearing fruit."
> > Similarly, Gregory of Nyassa, on the subject of the baptism of Christ,
> >
> > says the Jordan is "glorified by regenerating men and planting them in
> >
> > the Paradise of God."  ...  A large number of texts can be cited that
> > understand the trees planted in paradise to be redeemed men, or
> > Christian neophytes, installed in the Church.  Conversely, the trees
> > may be the virtues implanted int the redeemed man.  It is axiomatic in
> >
> > the catechistical literature (as in a book like Herbert's Temple),
> > that the ecclesiastical and soteriological themes be mutually
> > entailed:  Church and Christian are born and edified together.  //
> > There is a hint of the tree's presence in the "holy water" of the well
> >
> > of life too.  When Redcrosse rises from the well, he is
> > thrice-renewed, ...:  So new the new-borne knight to battle new did
> > rise' (I.xi.34).  Cary, in his translation of Dante, copares this line
> >
> > to Purgatorio XXXIII.142ff., where the image of the baptised
> > catechumen as a watered tree is somewhat more noticeable:  "From the
> > most holy waters," the pilgrim [Dante] says, "I came forth again
> > remade, even as new palnts renewed with new fronds."  [His sins,
> > especially his offenses to Beatrice, are not only purged, but also, as
> >
> > a result of Lethe, forgotten.]  [AnFQ 164-66]
> >
> > The matter of the monogamous Una's commitment and dedication to her
> > knight, and her part in cheering him and making him whole or perfect,
> > esp. at the House of Holiness, is treated briefly at the end of the
> > chapter [from which the above], pp. 280-81.  She is a vehicle of
> > grace, and an embodiment of it, and the Analogy eventually implies an
> > ironical comparison between the forgiveness of RC's waywardness in Bk.
> >
> > I and the blase attitude towards Calidore's seduction and abandonment
> > of Pastorella around the figure of the Graces in Bk. VI (this last
> > being a somewhat forward novel-ization of the action and being based
> > on what are only hints in the text).   --jcn
>
>
>