Robert Browning
"Bishop Orders His Tomb" ("Tomb at St. Praxed's
(Rome, 15---]") [1842]
OVERVIEW:
Browning once more goes back to the Italian Renaissance, to sixteenth-century
Rome, for the setting of this dramatic monologue. The fictional
speaker is a dying Roman Catholic bishop whose directions about
his burial and the construction of his tomb reveal his worldliness,
his love of luxury, and his jealousy of rivals in the church hierarchy.
He is speaking to a group of attendants and his "nephews"
as he reflects on his past life, the present moment of his death,
and visions of the magnificent tomb he will enjoy, he thinks,
in the future.
The nephews are actually his illegitimate sons. The priestly
requirement of celibacy did not prevent some from having mistresses,
and the bishop remembers that he defeated his rival Gandolf in
obtaining the favors of the particularly beautiful mistress who
was the mother of these sons. Now they gather about his deathbed
to hear his final words.
STYLE. The poem is in blank verse, a form more suited
than rhymed verse to the rambling discourse of the dying bishop.
The bishop speaks first as a holy man, quoting the Bible in the
opening line. His thoughts then focus on his dead mistress, the
mother of these sons. Her death reminds him of his own. At line
15 the tone shifts; the bishop gets down to the business of ordering
the elaborate and costly tomb that will hold his remains. Although
his tomb will not occupy the best location in the church, he decides
that his niche will be good enough. The tomb is to be made of
the richest stone--peach marble columns around a dark basalt slab.
He reveals to his sons the location of a piece of the semiprecious
stone lapis lazuli, which the bishop had stolen years before when
his earlier church had burned. He hid it then,, saving it to
adorn his own tomb. He describes the size of the stone in grotesque
terms: "Big as a Jew's head cut off at the nape," emphasizing
his greed and inhumanity as well as his love of luxury.
But the bishop is afraid, not for the salvation of his soul, but
that his own sons will, like himself, be greedy and keep the lapis
lazuli for themselves. Perhaps they will not want to spend money
on a magnificent tomb, even though he is leaving them his wealth
and his country villas. This fear is mingled with the bishop's
gloating pleasure to think that his tomb will be much more impressive
than that of his old rival, Gandolf.
The bishop elaborates on his orders. Instead of basalt, the slab
should be black marble. He describes a bas-relief frieze that
he wants placed around the base. It will show a gaudy and bizarre
combination of pagan figures--nymphs and Pan--and Christian figures--Christ
and Moses. Even as he suspects that his sons will substitute
a common marble, travertine, he changes his mind and orders green
jasper, an even more costly stone, instead of black marble. He
bribes his sons with the promise that he will get Sait Praxed
to provide them with luxuries such as horses, fine manuscripts,
and beautiful mistresses. In return, they must make his inscription
in the best classical Latin.
The bishop supposes that after his death he will see church services,
hear the mass, smell incense, and be conscious of the splendor
of church rites. The bishop practices for death by assuming the
position he will have in the tomb. At about line 94 his thoughts
become more confused, drifting from the church to Christ to his
mistress to rich marble and pure Latin. The fear of his sons'
ingratitude returns in line 114, and he finally dismisses them.
His last thought is the satisfaction of having beaten old Gandolf,
both in the rivalry for his mistress and in the richness of his
tomb. The bishop's worldliness, love of luxury, and shallow faith
reflect Browning's assessment of the condition of the church in
the sixteenth century.
Browning said of his own burial: "I have no kind of concern
as to where the clothes of myself shall be thrown."
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