Sam McLucas

Grace in the Face of Calamity

What better time is there than during captivity, when one loses all autonomy and hope, for virtuous grace to flourish, and steel itself against despair and hopelessness? It is in these moments, cut off from the material and left only to reflect on that which can not be seen or understood, that the lifelong battle of morals is won or lost, and what should be a moment of anguish can transform into one of transcendent sanctity.  Because both Misodorius and Pamela’s characters, during their respective reflections on their own captivity, exhibit seemingly otherworldly virtue, they both relate to the writings of the medieval writers Abba Philemon and St. Athanasius, whose musings about isolation, faith, and spiritual occupation could have been addressed to the characters themselves. Pamela, in her humble prayer, transcends her prison, welcomes distress as a simple exercise of her overpowering virtue, and converses in solitude with heaven in the same manner in which Abba Philemon and St. Anthasius taught a millennia ago. While Musidorius and Pyrocles await their grim fate at the hands of Eaurchus, they, instead of wallowing in fear and confusion, are each basked in heavenly joy, and experience the same unquenchable light that Abba Philemon described as the natural successor to spiritual occupation. Moments of isolation and captivity are eternal to the human condition, and it concerns the modern individual, just as much as an ancient Greek or a Jacobean Englishman, that isolation is not a natural precursor to melancholy and despondency, but instead, by way of introspection and prayer, isolation or captivity can instead provide a conduit towards spiritual joy. 

Pamela, being watched by Cecropia but believing herself to be alone, paced her cell with measured steps, and knelt down in prayer. Pamela, in this instance, mirrors the Hesychast tradition of early monastic Christians, where practitioners reached a form of divine connection through isolation and prayer. As Pamela walks to and fro in her cell, she reassures herself that although she is imprisoned, that no jail cell can bar out God, and she asks herself  “to whom else should I fly to for Succour?” (Arcadia 463) There is also repeated emphasis placed on her calm, measured demeanor, walking with a “pace soft” and being still of “one measure” (Arcadia 463). Abba Philmon emphasized in his teachings that it is impossible to fully reach God and embrace divination without isolating oneself from the material world. The process in which Abba Philemon describes as being necessary to reach this state is reflected in how Pamela enters her prayer. “Silence gives birth to endeavor” and according to Abba Philemon, that silence shifts into fear, and eventually humility, and at the very end of that introspection, one realizes that they are not far from god. (Abba Philemon, 403) Pamela, while she paces in her cell, feels the same fear and humility that Abba Philemon chronicles, and when she “flies” to meet him, she does so because she is close to him.

As Pamela kneels down in prayer, she pleads to God, not to free her of her confinement, but that the calamity she faces might exercise her virtue. She asks this of God because she knows, as did St. Anthony, that the sufferings in the material world pale in not only scope but meaning to the glory of heaven, and through spiritual connection and virtue she could become “worthy”. Pamela, during her prayer, asks God to let “calamity be the exercise, but not the overthrow of my virtue”, and to let her captors prevail over her. (Arcadia 464) St. Anthony, in the narrative of St. Athanasius, came forth to a gathering of monks, and instructed them on the nature of corporeal suffering being of no importance in comparison to the unseeable glory of the divine.  He tells them “Let us not faint… nor deem that the time is long…” because “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy” of the glory of god. (Athanasius 17) Pamela being indifferent to the injustices wrought upon her was not a happenstance plot device. Sidney himself contemplated how to interject lessons in worthiness into writing. He viewed himself as somewhat of a spiritual instructor, and through his writings the “image of each action stirreth and instructeth the mind…  and informs with counsel how to be worthy.” (Defense of Poesie, 55)

The image of Pamela knelt in Prayer is one of ethereal goodness, with the power of her prayer having transformed her visage into an icon of purity. Pamela’s otherworldly aspect is evocative of Abba Philmemon’s narrative because of its similarity to early Christian ideas surrounding the transformational power of prayer. With Cecropia, her captor, peering at her, Pamela is described as being a “heavenly a creature”, with devotion having borrowed her body to make her its earthly representation, and her eyes lifted so skyward that they seemed to “fly thitherward to take their place among the fellow stars”. (Arcadia 464) Pamela is characterized as being so virtuous and graceful that she has essentially lost her human form and has taken up one of the divine. Abba Philemon spoke about this divine transfiguration with the power of prayer. When he was approached by a young man who was concerned with his lack of focus, Abba Philemon advised him; “For if prayer and learning from the Scriptures are constantly in you…, your soul will be opened, and it will be filled with great joy and a certain ineffable burning sensation… and the whole man becomes spiritual”. (Abba Philemon 407) This theme of detachment through prayer and virtue from the material world and entering the spiritual world appears again later in Abba Philemon’s writings. Speaking of when someone has been acted upon by grace, he says that their body “becomes permeated with light… “Such a man is attached to nothing in this world; for he has passed from death into life.” (Abba Philemon 414)

Later in Arcadia, Pyrocles and Misodorius, awaiting the trial that would see them both executed by their kin Euarchus, debate with each other the nature of love, death, friendship and heavenly ordinance. During their debate, Pyrocles and Misodorius pay particular attention to the divine’s role in their journey, and because of this, their ruminations mirror early Christian thinking about death, acceptance, and virtue. Musidorius reassures Pyrocles that their time on earth has been beneficial to those they have touched, and that all they are losing to death is time on earth. Musidorius shifts Pyrocles’s attention away from the material and onto the immaterial and the divine. He reassures him; “O Blame not the heavens… as their course never alters”. (Arcadia 803) St. Anthony had similar thoughts on the relationships between death, the material, and the immaterial. Regarding death, and what matters when someone dies, St. Anthony says to “get those things which we can take away with us”…wit, prudence, justice, … faith in Christ” and if one possesses those, they will find themselves preparing for us a welcome in the next life. (Athanasius 17) Misodorius and Pyrocles both come to the same conclusion, that in the face of death, virtues are the salvage of the soul. It might also be pertinent to mention that Sidney’s Uncle, grandfather and great-grandfather were all executed for treason by the British Crown, making captivity and execution a phenomenon not unknown to him. (Hamilton 2)

Pyrocles, after listening to Misodorius’s ponderings on death, offers Misodorius his own reflection on the power of spiritual knowledge, and how such knowledge offers both of them exemption from the misery of suffering, which so excites Misodorius that he beams with a heavenly joy. The conclusion that Misodorius and Pyrocles relates to the teachings of Abba Philmeon because they both speak to the essentiality of spiritual knowledge, and the replacement of misery and desire with that same divine light. Pyrocles tells Misodorius, at the end of a long declaration in which he reflects all the knowledge he has acquired over his life, that they have both united themselves in that “high and heavenly love of the unquenchable light”. (Arcadia 805) After hearing this, Misodoriuos is beset by a heavenly joy, betraying the imminent danger he faces. Abba Philemon relays this message in one of his speeches. He tells a prospective solitary an account of how knowledge can divinely imbue one with grace. He tells the student; “The mind becomes perfect when it enters into the sphere of essential knowledge”, and because of this, the mind achieves kingly rank, and “no longer feels poor”. (Abba Philemon 403) Sidney was known to himself intensely fear “the secret sins of his own heart” as it related to his own salvation. (Hamilton 6) It is easy to see how Sidney’s own personal capacity for introspection could reflect in how Misodorius and Pyrocles debate their own virtue.

Misodorious, having been inspired with divine joy after hearing Pyrocles’s speech, broke into song, one which cast away his doubts about death, and he sings of the vanity of fear and the supremacy of reason in the face of evil. This passage in particular relates to the writings of Philip Sidney himself, because, in his writings, Sidney spoke of the ways in which song and poetry can be used to comfort sorrow and display grace. While addressed more specifically to the Biblical Psalms, Sidney wrote that the poetical parts of the scriptures can be used as “the fruit of comfort by some, when, in sorrowful pangs of their death-bringing sins, they find the consolation of the never-leaving goodness.” (Defence of Poesy, page 25) Sidney, while he was referencing the Psalms in particular, emphasizes that song and poetry are a medium in which otherworldly grace can be relayed, especially in moments of calamity. 

Philip Sidney’s Arcadia makes a point of showing characters stripped of their freedom, dignity, and autonomy. In those moments of isolation, where introspection is the only means of mental escape, is where virtue can conquer fear and sorrow. In the cases of Pamela, Pyrocles, and Misodorius, virtue can even overtake one’s soul, and by means of prayer and acceptance, imbue one with an otherworldly grace and divine joy. In a broader point, the stories contained in Arcadia, along with the writings of medieval Christian thinkers, emphasize the importance of personal introspection, and acceptance of what that introspection may lead to. If one looks into themselves and sees that they led a good and faithful life, where their virtue outweighs all else, then in moments where introspection is the only option, such as captivity, or imminent demise, they can feel, instead of fear or sorrow, a sense of inner fulfillment that would otherwise be impossible. This reasoning on faith reaches beyond the world of early Christian literature and Arcadia, and is pertinent now and has always been.