SOURCE: Richey, Esther Gilman. “Subverting Paul: The True Church and the Querelle des Femmes in Aemilia Lanyer.” In The Politics of Revelation in the English Renaissance, pp. 60-83. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1998.

In the following excerpt, Richey argues that Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum is a revision of St. Paul's interpretation of Genesis.

And then the world by womans hands shall rul'd be and obey But when the widow over all the world shall beare the sway And cast into the sea the gold and silver with disdayne And cast the brass of brittle man and yron into the main Then shall the worldly elements all desolate remain. 

—Thomas Brightman, A Revelation of the Apocalypse

In A Revelation of the Apocalypse, written in 1611, Thomas Brightman appropriates a passage from the “Sybyll's Books” to reveal the triumph of the bride of Christ at the end of time, a...