Bryan Goldberg
Cesare Ripa and Henry Peacham offer differing, but not conflicting, religious interpretations of the allegory Wisdom. Ripa personifies wisdom and explains that mankind should use it as a first step towards life eternal. Peacham's emblem also encourages man to pursue wisdom as part of a religious, God fearing lifestyle, but it is less bold in making references towards salvation.
Henry Peacham's illustration of Wisdom in Minerva Britanna encourages strict respect for the word of God. Peacham presents the reader with a venomous snake, tongue sticking out, wrapped around a sword on top of a sealed book:
A poisonous Serpent wreathed up around
In scalie boughtes, a sharpe two edged Sword,
Supported by a booke upon the ground,
Is worldly wisdome grounded on God's word,
To which unlesse our projects doth sustaine,
Our plot is nought, and best devises vaine. (Peacham)
Peacham describes the sword as "two edged," meaning that there are both benefits and harms associated with wisdom. Scholars of this era understood that after man ate from the "tree to be desired to make one wise" (Gen 3: 6), he gained invaluable knowledge at the expense of bliss and paradise. During Peacham's time, the serpent was seen as a "two-edged" creature, but its presence in this emblem is particularly important since it was the snake who convinced mankind to seek wisdom. The sword and snake are "supported by a booke upon the ground," presumably the Bible, and significant in showing the reader that wisdom is "grounded on God's word." The final two lines of the stanza present a warning to the reader that "unlesse our projects doth sustaine" God's word, "Our plot is nought and best devises vaine." Thus, Peacham is suggesting that since man posses the wisdom that he stole from Eden, he should use this knowledge in concordance with God's word; any other application of wisdom would be in vain.
In Iconologia, Ripa depicts the image of Wisdom as a young woman with a lamp in one hand and a large, open book in the other:
Young, because Wisdom so rules and overpowers the constellations that can neither make her old nor deprive her of that fear of God which is the beginning of wisdom, which is maintain'd in the soul, without being ever diminish'd by the darkness of vise, which cannot promote wisdom, but involves the mind in Error and evil Thoughts. The lamp signals the light of the understanding. The book is the Bible where perfect wisdom is to be learnt, and all things necessary to salvation. (Ripa)
Since Wisdom has the power to "overpower" that which "makes her old," then Wisdom is the path to immortality. It is not immortality in the corporeal sense, but rather, in the spiritual sense, suggesting that wisdom is the key to eternal life in heaven. Ripa reminds the reader that wisdom "is maintain'd in the soul," so it transcends the physical life and travels with a believer into heaven. Furthermore, the "beginning of wisdom" is fear in God, which is a correct first step towards life eternal. If the most important step towards eternity is the evasion of sin, then the wise man is certainly bound for immortality, since wisdom is not "diminish'd by the darkness of vise." Rather, wisdom keeps man away from "error and evil thoughts." Thus, when people make the fatal mistake of sinning, they are only doing so because they are not wise enough to avoid such "errors." Ripa believes that true understanding of religion and wisdom are one in the same, and thus, the lady Wisdom carries a Bible, "where perfect wisdom is to be learnt." At the end of the emblematic passage, he reaffirms what has been suspected all along: wisdom is what gets a person into heaven, for it contains "all things necessary to salvation."
Peacham, Henry, Minerva Brittana,1612
Ripa, Iconologia, 1603.