My Sunday School teacher used to encourage us to read "atonement" as 
"at-one-ment." I suspect the pun was readily available to Spenser.

Derek

Moreover, that's the actual etymology--atonement derives from "at one 
{-ness}" or "at one-ment."  Thus Sunday School is not really so different 
from the House of Holiness, where Una takes her knight to make him whole, or 
heal him, or restore his bodily integrity (his spiritual body, that is). 
 See, e.g., FQ II.i.29, "So beene they both attone," for Redcrosse and 
Guyon's reconciliation.

And note also the way in which Spenser first identifies Una as
"As one that inly mourned," after first identifying Redcrosse "As one for
knightly jousts and fierce encounters fit" (I.i.4, I.i.1) and Una's use of
the singular in expressing her faith in her truant champion, "He is one the
truest knight alive" (I.iii.37).

For health and wholeness, there's this taken from a paper ("Corpus 
Christi...") prepared for Lauren Silberman's MLA session longish ago: 
 Spenser's first legend assumes that our identity and our person are erected 
on an individually generated body, and that only a resurrection of this body 
is capable of fulfilling the measure of who we are.  Spenser would hardly 
have put it this way, but this is the implication of making his 
standard-bearer a victorious Christian martyr.  No doubt Redcrosse is a 
noble soul with a great potential for human sensibility, but he is presented 
as a character who repeatedly and mainly comes into his own through 
corporeality and sensations and the orientation of his person on his 
physical life and death.  The fiction makes his identity inseparable from 
his life in the body, both when he is sown a physical body with Fradubio and 
his own georgic original, and when he is raised a spiritual body with his 
savior on Easter morning.
     Redcrosse stands for faith and holiness, but his holiness is symbolized 
by his wholeness, and his faith is correlated with his physical condition 
and his health.  The vicissitudes of his faith and the strength of his 
virtue are somaticized.  A moribund faith is represented by a cadverous 
body, a lively faith by a robust body, and a wavering or troubled faith by a 
weakened or debilitated body.  Redcrosse's history includes a medical one: 
 trouble sleeping in Archimago's cell, a physical attack with Sansfoy, 
nervous shock at the condition of Fradubio, trauma with Sansjoy and 
convalescence at the House of Pride, fatigue and prostration in the company 
of Duessa, near total degeneration and incapacitation in the prison of 
Orgoglio, a strong recovery with the intervention of Arthur, a disappointing 
relapse with Despair, physic at the holy hospital, extensive therapy and 
rehabilitation under the house doctor, and finally exhaustive exertions 
followed by total recuperations in the three round fight with the dragon, 
when we're talking Rocky Balboa.
         Redcrosse's rocky medical history suggests that the condition of 
his body is a virtual criterion for that of his faith.  Of course a healthy 
body need not reflect a healthy faith, for we are not talking about a 
religion of a perfect body, as in the Stallone movies, but a perfected 
spirit.  To a nutritionist, the anorectic atop the mount of Contemplation 
wouldn't look much better than the starveling in the bottom of Orgoglio's 
castle:  "Each bone might through his body well be red, / And euery sinew 
seene through his long fast:  / For naught he car'd his carcas long vnfed; / 
His mind was full of spiritual repast, / And pyn'd his flesh, to keepe his 
body low and chast" (x.48).  Redcrosse is similarly inured, under a 
comparable ascetic regimen, at the House of Holiness, a health club for 
getting in shape for heaven.  By means of his namesake's last scenes on 
earth, the house doctor brings the charity case to perfect health by a kind 
of spiritual surgery.  (Cf. "salve" at I.v.17, and the tree of life dropping 
Balme or gratious ointment that could heal deadly wounds at I.xi.48.)
               In favor of spiritual acts of mercy to others, such as 
advising a fellow sinner like Redcrosse, Contemplation neglects any corporal 
act of mercy towards his own body.  But the effect is the opposite of 
Idleness's exemption from labor and exercise, which was suppossedly "For 
contemplation sake" (I.iv.20).  Idleness lacks the energy to stay awake or 
hold his head erect, and his draggy limbs shake with fever.  Sin and illness 
both being vicious and mortal, the sins are disfigured by disease:  fever, 
narcolepsy, pathological obesity, gastro-enteritic reflux disorder, dropsy, 
siphyllis, gout, foaming at the mouth, spleen, frenzy, palsey, and apoplexy. 
  Lucifera presents no symptoms, but her dwelling proves both a lazar house 
and a charnel house.


> 
> Were there associations of holiness with wholeness before Berger's 1966-67 
>essay on Book I?
> 
> Berger says
> 
> The image [of the New Jerusalem] identifies holiness with wholeness, that 
>is, with the oneness of shared life, of communion and community. Having 
>traveled so long by himself, Redcross now begins to  join and to be joined 
>by real others;  the sacramental atmosphere of the dragon fight will further 
>prepare him for union and Una, while the whole the image of Eden will 
>suggest the character of wholeness.
> 
> Since then, has anyone other than Nohrnberg connected the two words?
> 
> Nohrnberg says
> 
> Thus Spenser's knight of holiness is often presented to us in terms of his 
>health, or his wholeness: etymologically, holiness in Hebrew is set 
>apartness, but in English it is wholeness. Analogy, 279.
> 
> 
> Jim Broaddus
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Retired, Ind. State.Univ.
> 2487 KY 3245
> Brodhead, KY 40409
> 
> 

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James Nohrnberg
Dept. of English, Bryan Hall 219
Univ. of Virginia
P.O Box 400121
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4121