Praising Elizabeth I in Latin at Norwich (1578)

Abstract

When Elizabeth I visited the city of Norwich, she was publicly praised as a virgin queen for the first time in her reign. Although this image of Elizabeth becomes important to later historiography, this essay argues that there is a more sustained strand of royal myth-making in this visit that gives her even greater independent and specific political authority: that of an educated queen. At Norwich, Elizabeth was addressed more frequently in Latin than during any other visit during her reign, except for her visits to the universities. This essay analyzes the Latin texts to show how Norwich’s civic officials used this image to praise Elizabeth as a queen so individually powerful that she should commit more firmly to remaining a distinctly unmarried goddess of wisdom, a champion of Norwich, and the Nurse of God’s True (Protestant) Church. What goes unspoken is that she has no need for a foreign Catholic husband in the French Duke of Anjou—the context that underwrites the praise of her as a virgin queen. These Latin texts convey Elizabeth as a queen who has already the specific authority and nurturing care that give her distinctly peaceful nation all it needs to remain strong, prosperous, and religiously unified.