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Critical Introduction to Thomas Adams’s Eirenopolis

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Critical Introduction to Thomas Adams’s Eirenopolis

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Critical Introduction to Thomas Adams’s Eirenopolis

Thomas Adams’s Eirenopolis describes an ideal London. As the City of Peace , London becomes New Jerusalem, in which urbs, communitas, and res publica combine in a unified vision of religious and civil peace. Adams communicates this interpretation of God’s will with London’s familiar terrain, making his doctrine more understandable to his audience. Simultaneously, Adams invests London’s space, inhabitants, and government with divine meaning. However, beneath Adams’s attempts to glorify the city, the reader can detect undercurrents of disgust and fear. Ultimately, Adams’s London is two-faced: it is both glorious and disgusting, holy and evil, unified and divided.
Adams was a prolific and popular seventeenth-century preacher and author; he produced nineteen collections of sermons and three treatises between 1612 and 1652. At the height of his popularity, Adams preached on several occasions at Paul’s Cross. In 1625, he read sermons for the lord mayor’s election and the bishop of London’s visit. He also spoke at Whitehall two days after the death of King James. Reportedly called the prose Shakespeare of Puritan theologians by Robert Southey, Adams developed a highly satirical prose style that drew on contemporary dramatic conventions.
In an era characterized by religious contention, Eirenopolis advocates that peace be the paramount aim of religion. It is a thoughtful work for and about the citizens of early modern London. By using familiar London landmarks, it illuminates how citizens might become better city-dwellers. The frequent use of Latin, along with Biblical and classical allusions, implies an ecclesiastical audience, but the inclusion of translations and verse glosses suggests that Adams intended his text to be more far-reaching.
Eirenopolis’s central conceit is the association of London’s urbs with various peaceful themes. The city walls become Unity and Concord, Bishopsgate becomes Innocence, Ludgate becomes Patience, Aldgate becomes Beneficence, Cripplegate becomes Recompense, and the Thames becomes Prosperity. These associations suggest that the City of Peace, or New Jerusalem (6), is realized within London. The new names of these urbs invest the architecture of London with divine meaning. The walls no longer merely delineate the boundary of London proper; they unify the inhabitants as a holy body (31). The association of Bishopgate with the clergy serves as a physical reminder of the blamelessness of God’s servants (43). Ludgate’s prison is no longer a mere jail for freemen and clergymen; it becomes a place where Londoners learn to patiently suffer the world’s ills (20). Aldgate, with its statues of Peace and Charity and its proximity to two almshouses, becomes a model of divine charity. Cripplegate, which was apparently named after its crippled beggars, is invested with the virtues of compensation and renewal following sin thanks to reports of spontaneous healing occasioned by passing beneath its arch. Finally, the Thames, as the provider of commerce and material goods, becomes the Ocean of God’s Bountie (168).
While London as an urbs is generally eulogized, Adams includes two representations of evil and civic strife: Newgate and Moorgate, symbols of Contention. Newgate, as London’s oldest prison, represents the birth of strife (92) in London, while Moorgate, as a location for the banishment of all those fitter for the societie of Moores and Pagans (91), represents all that is alien to London.
These contentious gates operate solely as portals out of the city. All of the symbolic elements of the city structure function as agents of movement: the virtuous gates as inward thresholds, the walls as prohibitors of movement and upholders of the status quo, and the contentious gates as means of expulsion. The Thames occupies a dual position, with its capacity to [come] flowing in with…commodities, [and go]…loaden backe with…injuries (166). Effectively, virtue is presented as something that exists outside of London and therefore must be imported; conversely, the city itself produces nothing but vice. This treatment of the urbs of London, as both a worldly expression of God’s will and a producer of strife and filth, signals the ambivalence regarding London that emerges throughout Adams’s text.
The city walls, even as they form the urbs, simultaneously denote the border of a totalizing communitas of London citizens. In his description of the walls as Unity and Concord, Adams proposes that it is in a Citie, as in a Bodie (31). As a unified physical body, citizens must all…exercise their functions for the good of the whole (34). Individual differences are permitted, for some are stronger, as the armes and legges (32), but all must combine to provide for the supportation of the weaker (32). It is not merely through entering the urbs of the city, but by sacrificing private desires for the general good that the faithfull citizens of Peace (33) are determined. However, the city as a connected body of disparate members is not merely the ideal condition of the Holy City; it is an unavoidable condition of city life. Whether in practice the London body pursues the good of all its component members, or chooses to starue the whole Body, to fatt a toe (34), is uncertain. Once again, despite Adams’s predominantly laudatory tone, his trepidation regarding London’s actual merit emerges as he concedes that Many euill men may haue one will in wickednesse (39). Furthermore, it becomes apparent that the fundamental reason for civil unity is to protect the city from an enemie’s entrance (38). Far from being united, Adams’s Londoners constantly threaten to pecke out one another’s eyes (40). London is no longer a New Jerusalem, but a composite Judah and Israel that, in warring against itself, is overcome by enemies (43). The undercurrent of strife once again corrupts the holy and perfect city of peace.
Adams’s representation of London as res publica also corresponds with the general tendency of Eirenopolis to depict London as the City of God in miniature, while concurrently revealing an embedded trepidation regarding its virtue. If the ruler of New Jerusalem is God, then the ruler of London must be a little God (126); the section on the Prince of Peace (126) is essentially an extended tribute to King James and an argument for his divine right to rule. In the City of Peace, all must obey (126) both the God-on-Earth of the King, and the Gospel-on-Earth of the law (138). London becomes an amalgamated expression of the royal court and the court of law, attended by Plenty…her Treasurer, Liberalitie her Almoner, Conscience her Chancelor, Wisdome her Counseller (188). Adams explicitly upholds Magistracie, or [the] lawfulnes of authoritie (110); at the same time, he expresses distrust regarding the legal process. In a lengthy diatribe against lawyers and legal abuses, Adams depicts London’s res publica as infested with a smooth-fac’d company (91) of civil antagonists. Language saturated with references to feeding, diseased bowels, and foul air (108–10) denotes a res publica that is not a reflection of the Gospel, but instead a disorder in the body of London.
The London of Eirenopolis is a complicated tangle of urbs, communitas, and res publica. London, an amalgamation of New Jerusalem and Babel, is both divine and dangerous. Adams employs London as an analogy in order to clarify his opinions regarding holiness and peace, and his treatise demonstrates considerable theological knowledge and an unquestionable desire to contribute to social well-being. However, more than a model for peace, Eirenopolis provides a revealing indication of early modern confusion regarding this changing city. Adams’s concluding image of London is as Solomon’s Jerusalem verified, but his most apt image of London might be his allusion to anamorphic pictures: London is like certain Pictures, that represent to diuers beholders, at diuers stations, diuers formes…Looking one way, you see a beautifull Virgine: another way, some deformed monster (166).

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MLA citation

Critical Introduction to Thomas Adams’s Eirenopolis. The Map of Early Modern London, edited by Janelle Jenstad, U of Victoria, 20 Jun. 2018, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/EIRE1_critical.htm.

Chicago citation

Critical Introduction to Thomas Adams’s Eirenopolis. The Map of Early Modern London. Ed. Janelle Jenstad. Victoria: University of Victoria. Accessed June 20, 2018. http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/EIRE1_critical.htm.

APA citation

2018. Critical Introduction to Thomas Adams’s Eirenopolis. In J. Jenstad (Ed), The Map of Early Modern London. Victoria: University of Victoria. Retrieved from http://mapoflondon.uvic.ca/EIRE1_critical.htm.

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Provider: University of Victoria
Database: The Map of Early Modern London
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RefWorks

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TEI citation

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