FALL 2026
Pride as the Antithesis to Virtue: More, Spenser, and Milton’s Differing Definitions of Sinful Pride
Matthew Garner
DIFFERING DEFINITIONS OF SINFUL PRIDE
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw England thrown into religious and political turmoil from the tumultuous reign of King Henry VIII to the chaos of the English Civil War. Because of the deep theological roots of much of the day’s discourse and disagreement, this period of English history (later known as the English Renaissance) is the original historical context of countless transformative and thought-provoking literary works that continue to shape the way theologians think about Christianity and virtue. Many of the most influential writers of the English Renaissance were directly involved with religion through their lives and careers, and as such, they became intrinsically connected to the politicized and often controversial facets of their own belief systems. This political and social pressure created the perfect conditions for a rich and diverse exchange of faith-based literature and discussion, even if some opinions were labeled “treason” by one sitting monarch or another.
​
Of course, “diverse” in this context is really confined to the different branches of the Christian faith that were most prevalent in Europe during the time. While many of the Christian belief systems shared scriptures, doctrines, and fundamental ideas and values, the differences between them became more and more divisive, splitting believers into sub-categories and pitting them against one another. This conflict only served to further stimulate the minds of religious philosophers and critics as they continued to explore new ways of thinking about religion and virtue. Staunch Catholics such as Thomas More maintained traditional Roman Catholic ideas of vice and virtue, but even he explored new modes of religious community in his Utopia. Protestant Calvinists, who first and foremost believed in an all-powerful God and the predestination of the elect, found their beliefs mirrored in the fantasy of Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene. Even the radical, anti-monarchical Presbyterians with Arminian sympathies like John Milton were further exploring human free will in his biblical epic, Paradise Lost.
​
​One thing that seemed to be agreed upon amongst religious thinkers and writers like the three influential names mentioned before, from the most traditional to the most radical, was the importance of virtue and the danger of vice; principally, the danger of sinful or demonic pride. However, there seemed to have been disagreement as to what exactly constitutes sinful pride as opposed to virtuous pride, if such a thing indeed exists. While like most of their Renaissance era contemporaries, More, Spenser, and Milton seem to agree that an immoral sense of pride is chief among sin and antithetical to a virtuous way of life, they each espouse their own unique criteria for what constitutes sinful pride. Going chronologically, the goal of this paper is to explore and compare each of these three Renaissance era writers’ definitions of demonic pride using textual evidence from their most influential works as well as the contextual information available about their personal beliefs, lives, and careers.
THOMAS MORE AND UTOPIA
Thomas More seems to have upheld the broadest definition of sinful pride of the three. He believed all pride, from arrogant hubris to only a sense of self-identity, was blasphemous and incompatible with virtue. More was an incredibly powerful man both religiously and politically as he served as Lord Chancellor under King Henry VIII. He remained immovably loyal to the pope and the Roman Catholic church, even as the king pushed for the move to Protestantism, which eventually led to More’s capture, imprisonment, and ultimately his beheading for treason. For More, the idea that any man’s ambitions, even those of the king of England, should supersede the wishes of the pope and by extension, God, was not only preposterous but a blasphemous display of arrogant pride that he would not tolerate, even if that meant his demise. This distaste for ambitiousness and arrogance may have seemed reasonable given the context, but it was only the tip of the iceberg for More when it came to his deep-rooted hatred for pride in all forms, as can be extracted from his literary works both explicitly and implicitly.
​
Because Utopia was originally conceived ironically, and it is unlikely that More would have genuinely advocated for all aspects of Utopian life to be implemented into English society, there is some debate among scholars as to how much of Utopia Book 2 actually reflects More’s religious and political views. It is easily argued that More identified himself most within Utopia with his namesake character, also called More, who is suspicious of (but nevertheless curious about) the tales of the Utopians as told to him by the traveled Raphael Hythloday. The character More takes issue with many of the Utopians’ customs and especially with their communist economy, but he concludes by saying, “there are very many things in the Utopian commonwealth that… I would wish… to see” (117). Assuming that the character More is indeed a reflection of the author Thomas More, while also considering other literary works from his career, it becomes a little more clear that the eradication of pride was likely one of the things that the character More wished to see “in our own societies” (117).
​
According to Book 2 of Utopia, the Utopians are free “from internal strife” because “they have rooted up the seeds of ambition” (116). They have eradicated from their lives the “single monster, the begetter of all others… Pride” (More 116). In Utopia, which was originally written in Greek, More doesn’t actually use the word “pride” but instead uses the Greek superbia. Superbia’s closest English translation by definition is actually nearer to envy, but has been historically translated to pride in More’s Utopia to better align with how he applies the word. Superbia is the feeling of superiority, of pride to the detriment of someone else, and while More was well aware that not all pride is gained at the expense of others, he seems to have believed that the difference did not make it any less sinful.
​
More even manages to purge an otherwise stoic society of its stoic pride. Like the stoics, the Utopians are a people who “define virtue as living according to nature” (More 87), and much of their philosophy regarding happiness and pleasure mirrors that of the ancient Stoics aside from the absence of the fundamental stoic pride. Stoic pride, according to Anna Deter’s “‘Glorious Perverseness’: Stoic Pride and Domestic Heroism in Richardson’s Novels”, is the Stoic’s belief in his own self-sufficiency and virtue “derived from within, rather than from God” (71). The Utopians, on the other hand, believe their own philosophic rationalism is “weak and defective” when removed from their religion and that their happiness is “by God’s goodness,” not their own sufficiency (More 87).
​
As for More’s implicit demonizing of pride, the underlying reality of Utopia is that the price of the Utopians' stability and contentment is the rejection of all aspects of individual or group identity and complete submission to the absolute power of the religious hierarchy. As John Lewis aptly puts it in his comparative piece “‘Sacrilege Toward the Individual’: The Anti-Pride of Thomas More’s Utopia and Anthem’s Radical Alternative”, it is More’s belief “that each individual must accept a prescribed place in a greater whole” and “must not aspire beyond the limits set by the rulers” (3-4). More illustrates this by stripping away the concept of private property from the Utopians; not just land or wealth either, but personal items like clothes and finery too. All of the Utopians wear the same undyed garb, so when foreign representatives visit Utopia bedecked in their “pomp and splendor,” children who have since outgrown the precious minerals that are seen only as toys point and laugh at the “big lummox… wearing pearls and jewels as if he were a little boy” (More 84-5). By twisting any kind of colorful or expressive clothing into something to be ridiculed or laughed at, More quickly instills conformity into Utopian society as a virtue and any expression of individuality as vain or even shameful. It is at this point that the reader may start to notice More’s definition of sinful pride expanding in order to include all appreciation for the individual. More would later go on to write The Treatise Upon the Passion as a prisoner in the tower of London where he says, “...what horrible peril there is in this pestilent sin of pride, what abominable sin it is in the sight of god, when any creature falls into the delight and liking of itself,” further solidifying the vast boundaries of his definition of sinful pride (7).
​
Divesting the Utopians of fancy clothes and jewels may not seem like a huge deal on its own, but it is only one example of how More’s version of the ideal commonwealth demonizes the individual, first with expression, then with thought. The Utopians, according to More, “in intellectual pursuits… are tireless,” however, he makes no indication that the Utopians produce any literature of their own (93). It is as if they can only ever memorize other’s ideas (the ones approved for them by their religious overseers) and can form no new theories of their own. It is worth noting that the scholars of Utopia, those who are exempt from manual labor and allowed to dedicate themselves to study, must be approved for the position by their superiors, and can lose their position to the whims of those same superiors. Consequently, learning in Utopia isn’t as much about expanding one’s knowledge as it is replicating previously approved ideas. For the Utopians “to learn is to give up all intellectual ambitions, to repeat and to obey” (Lewis 5). In his fight against ambition, arrogance, and a sense of self, More both conceptualizes and endorses a closed cyclical system of blind obedience meant to eradicate pride, and diminished pride meant to “make room for obedience,” (Lewis 7).
​
John Lewis says that for staunch catholic Thomas More “humility is his goal” (7), however, based upon the situation of the Utopians, who are denied both individual expression and individual thought, it would be more accurate to say that More’s goal is conformity. When contrasted with conformity as its opposite, it becomes more clear exactly how broad Thomas More’s criteria was for sinful pride. For More, there is nothing but sinful pride, and there is no place for pride in the virtuous lifestyle.
EDMUND SPENSER AND THE FAERIE QUEENE
Like More, Edmund Spenser believed that self-imposed pride of any kind is sinful, and that the only way to properly accept the benefits of God’s grace is through humility, the direct opposite of pride. However, given his belief in the Calvinist tradition of predestination, it is likely that he believed that battling one’s sinful pride was just another step towards righteousness for those elected by God. In his Arthurian fantasy epic The Faerie Queene Book I, Spenser explores (through many layers of allegory) the path to holiness through temptation, despair, and sin; the deadliest and most persistent of the sins being, of course, pride. Throughout this journey, Spenser’s protagonist, Red Cross Knight, stumbles into trouble and makes poor choices over and over again, but, as he was chosen for this quest by the titular Faerie Queene, he ultimately overcomes with the help of his maiden companion, Una.
​
Since the publication of The Faerie Queene, there has been much debate between scholars over whether the ideas at the foundation of The Faerie Queene’s allegory are actually Calvinist-leaning or not. Assuming that they are, Red Cross Knight falls neatly into the Calvinist idea of one of the elect. There are three main components of Calvinism, all of which are exemplified through Red Cross Knight: the idea that there are a limited number of people who are predestined for heaven, that the grace bestowed upon them by God is absolutely irresistible, and that humans are innately depraved and cannot reach holiness without the grace of God.
​
At the beginning of Book 1 of The Faerie Queene, Red Cross Knight (then just a country peasant of no renown), is chosen by the Faerie Queene to embark on a journey with Una and is given a set of armor and a sword. The Faerie Queene herself is thought to be representative of Queen Elizabeth I, and by association, God, marking this event as Red Cross Knight’s election as one of God’s chosen. The contrast between Red Cross Knight after he is chosen with the boy he was just moments before serves to highlight the total depravity of humanity without the blessings of God: a boy with nothing versus a knight with armor and sword. Despite representing a direct blessing from God, Red Cross Knight does not accept his new gifts with humility, and a prideful sense of self-excellence is quick to take hold of the knight, leading him into trouble.
​
Red Cross Knight’s companion, Una, is often believed to be the personification of God’s grace, and it is through her companionship that Red Cross Knight manages to rise above the messes he creates for himself. Stripped of the metaphor, the man’s pride gets him into trouble, and the grace of God gets him out. One such example of this dynamic appears right away in Canto 1 when the travelers come across the Cave of Error. Confident in his own abilities and his new armor, Red Cross Knight jumps right in to fight the beast and is quickly overwhelmed. Blinded by his own arrogance and dependent only upon his own strength, the knight stands no chance and quickly falls into despair. As summarized by Harry Rusche in his paper “Pride, Humility, and Grace in Book 1 of The Faerie Queene”, “Red Cross must first be convinced of his own excellence before he can despair at the evidence of his lack of excellence when all his sins and weaknesses are recalled to him; the Knight’s pride is thus perverted to despair” (36). It is not until Una shouts for him to “Add faith unto your force, and be not faint,” when Red Cross Knight leans on the grace of God, that he is able to emerge victorious (i, 19).
​
Unlike Thomas More’s focus on conformity being the end goal of ridding oneself of pride, Spenser’s goal may have genuinely been humility. After losing his way time and time again when he separates from Una, Red Cross Knight must learn that he “has no cause for pride and every reason for humility. Without grace, he is nothing” (Rusche 36). The message that humility is the key to holiness is solidified through the introduction of Arthur, a pinnacle of virtuous and holy figures. Despite Arthur’s own physical and spiritual prowess, what actually ends up saving him and Red Cross Knight from Orgoglio is the shine of his shield, another symbol of God’s grace. As explained by Rusche, “Humility is the denial of one’s own powers, the knowledge of one’s own insufficiency without grace,” which naturally leads to an “absence of spiritual or intellectual pride” (34). Humility can also be said to be the acknowledgement and acceptance of the innate depravity of humanity and the subsequent reliance on God in order to achieve holiness. The narrator of The Faerie Queene spells this message out in the beginning of Canto 10 as Red Cross Knight has just been freed from his imprisonment in the House of Pride’s dungeons:
​
What man is he, that boasts of fleshly might,
And vaine assuraunce of mortality,
Which, all so soone as it doth come to fight
Against spirituall foes, yields by and by,
Or else from the fielde most cowardly doth ly?
Ne let the man ascribe it to his skill,
That thorough grace hath gained victory.
If any strength we have, it is to ill,
But all the good is Gods, both power and eke will. (x, 1)
​
Because Red Cross Knight represents someone who is predestined for heaven, and someone who, through the humble acceptance of the grace of God, does make his way down the path to righteousness, it is likely that Edmund Spenser believed there was some forgiveness to be had for individuals who are otherwise elect but have struggled with pride. It is even possible that Spenser saw the battle against and the ultimate overcoming of pride as an important part of the sanctification process (or path to righteousness) for God’s elect. For Spenser, becoming more godly may have necessitated an intimate experience with sin and learning to overcome by the grace of God through that experience. Spenser’s criteria for sinful pride mirrors More’s in that it encompasses any confidence that originates from the individual, however Spenser’s does not equate pridefulness with a lack of salvation due to his belief in the irresistible nature of God’s grace.
JOHN MILTON AND PARADISE LOST
The famously anti-monarchical, Arminian-leaning Protestant, John Milton, was likely to have had the most tolerance for prideful behavior of the three authors, as he believed not only that one could be forgiven of their sinful pride through the grace of God, but that there was also a virtuous pride to be had also through God. Milton seems to have believed that on the one end of the spectrum, the arrogance to believe that one is equal to or could replace God is sinful, but that the confidence and dignity instilled in one through the grace of God is virtuous.
​
As opposed to the Calvinist belief in a God who dictates every minute detail to have ever happened or will ever happen, meaning that humans are never actually free to make choices that weren't already predetermined by God, Arminian Protestants like Milton believed that God bestowed upon humans free will and the ability to reason on their own, and he wrote his epic poem Paradise Lost in order to explore and defend this concept. Even beyond the human characters of Adam and Eve, Milton uses the angels (both the fallen and the heavenly) to embody the different choices that were made due to the angels’ having free will: submission and obedience to God or prideful ambition and the fall into sin. Namely, Milton’s characters Satan and Messiah (God’s son) “portrayed contrasting patterns of heroic virtue” as John Steadman points out in Milton’s Epic Characters: Image and Idol (24). Furthermore, not only does juxtaposing these two characters highlight the differences in their virtue (or lack thereof), it specifically emphasizes how each falls neatly into the two categories of good versus bad pride according to Milton’s criteria.
​
While Milton crafts a disconcertingly sympathetic character in Satan, Satan himself, in all of his startling self-awareness, makes it very clear that the pride he embodies is undoubtedly of the sinful variety. He briefly laments for his life lost in heaven, of “how glorious once above thy sphere; / Till pride and worse ambition threw me down,” admitting that it was indeed his pride that ultimately caused his fall, solidifying pride’s position as Milton’s principal concern amongst sin and vice (iv, 39-40). What is more, with great pride comes great shame, something Satan becomes intimately familiar with the first time he experiences pain during the battle with Michael and Gabriel’s army, as reported by Raphael:
​
Gnashing for anguish and despite and shame
To find himself not matchless, and his pride
Humbled by such rebuke, so far beneath
His confidence to equal God in power. (vi, 340-3)
​
Satan’s pride convinces him of his equality to God, which provides him with the false confidence he summons to challenge God’s armies, and when his confidence in his own power fails him, just as Spenser’s Red Cross Knight is failed by his, the resulting shame and despair are astounding.
Unlike Red Cross Knight, however, Satan’s shame only serves to fuel his ire against God, trapping him in a vicious cycle of arrogance, shame, and need for revenge– a cycle which Satan himself outlines as he makes his way to Eden, prepared to incite the fall of mankind:
​
For never can true reconcilement grow
Where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep:
Which would but lead me to a worse relapse,
And heavier fall… (iv, 98-101)
…
Farewell remorse: all good to me is lost;
Evil be thou my good; by thee at least
Divided empire with heaven’s king I hold (iv, 109-11)
​
Contrary to Satan is God’s son, also known as Messiah. Messiah embodies only the pride which is impressed upon him by God, and which he humbly accepts. This is the only acceptable source of virtuous pride, according to Milton, as it is up to the free will of humans to accept the grace of God with humility in order to achieve the moral perfection necessary for a truly virtuous life. God, being omniscient as he is, already knows that his son will one day descend unto Earth in order to sacrifice himself for the salvation of mankind, and as the idea occurs to Messiah, God warns him that “by descending to assume / Man’s nature,” not to let it “lessen or degrade thine own,” (iii, 303-4). The kind of pride being impressed upon Messiah can be assumed to be more akin to dignity and can be attributed only to God himself. Messiah even admits, “thou always seek’st / To glorify thy son,” deflecting any commendation away from himself and unto God, and it is this kind of behavior that justifies Messiah’s embodiment of pride as virtuous (vi, 724-5).
​
A similar contrast between sinful and virtuous pride can be found in the microcosm that is Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Just as it was with Messiah, the virtuous pride of mankind is that which was imparted onto them by God. Adam’s virtuous pride comes from his station as the superior being to Eve, as impressed onto him by Raphael when he warns Adam against “attributing overmuch to things / Less excellent, as thou thy self perceiv’st” (viii, 565-6). Eve herself is described as possessing a “modest pride” when Adam first beholds her (iv, 310), and by virtue of having such a pride before sin is introduced to the garden, it is therefore virtuous. As for the couple’s sinful pride, it is best exemplified by how they both prioritize their own collateral love for each other over their love for God and obedience to his commands. When
Eve has just eaten of the forbidden fruit and has to choose whether or not to share this discovery (and its consequences) with Adam, her choice is ultimately made out of her love for him:
​
So dear I love him, that with him all deaths
I could endure, without him live no life. (ix, 832-3)
​
And when faced with the choice between eating of the fruit and not, even despite knowing that to eat is to fall, Adam’s choice is also made out of his collateral love:
​
And me with thee hath ruined, for with thee
Certain my resolution is to die; (ix, 906-7)
…
Bone of my bone thou art, and from thy state
Mine never shall be parted, bliss or woe. (ix, 915-6)
​
This distinction between good and bad pride is also heavily reflective of Aristotle’s definition of pride or magnanimity (occasionally translated to highmindedness) as outlined in his Nicomachean Ethics (114). Aristotle believed that pride was the excess of all of the other virtues and could only be achieved when one had mastered all of virtue’s other components (iv, vi). It is made clear throughout Paradise Lost that Milton was greatly influenced by Aristotle and Greek tradition through his use of classical heroic stereotypes as well as numerous references to Greek mythology. Milton describes the fall of Adam and Eve as “Not less but more heroic than the wrath / Of stern Achilles,” a comparison of not only the characters, but perhaps of the virtues they either represent or lack (ix, 14-5). For the Greeks, the four main virtues to be observed were prudence, justice, courage, and temperance– the story of Achilles being synonymous with courage. For Milton, the most important of the four (and the lack of being what eventually leads to the fall of both Satan and mankind), was temperance, or self-control.
​
If Thomas More’s solution for sinful pride was conformity, and Spenser’s humility, then it could be argued that Milton’s was temperance. An excess of sinful pride and lack of temperance is what leads Satan to challenge God’s power, and preying on Eve’s “Vain hopes, vain aims” with “conceits engendering pride” is how Satan ultimately gets her to forego any semblance of self-control and eat of the forbidden fruit (iv, 808-9). Paradise Lost seems to be Milton’s warning against the misuse of man’s God-given free will towards arrogant ends and his urgence towards “self-esteem” that is “grounded on just and right” with God as its source (viii, 572).
CONCLUSION
As it turns out, modern religious philosophers are as far from reaching a consensus as to the definition of sinful pride as the philosophers of the English Renaissance, who were, in turn, just as far from reaching a consensus as the Greeks before them. For More, Spenser, Milton, and
many others, it all boils down to the specific way in which one interprets scripture and how one chooses to apply those interpretations to their personal life.
​
For Thomas More, pride of any design was unacceptable, and simply knowing oneself or (heaven forbid) liking oneself was treated just the same as aspiring to godhood. For Spenser, it still mattered not what form the prideful behavior took, it was all still sinful, but it mattered more who the prideful behavior was being exhibited by. God would always forgive those who were predestined for heaven, after all. Finally, for Milton, ever the radical, some amount of dignified pride gained through one’s relationship with God was not only not a sin, but a virtue. To think
oneself better than God, however, was still blasphemous and a one-way ticket to damnation. Nevertheless, despite how different their criterias for sinful pride may have been, More, Spenser, and Milton all seem to have agreed that it was the absolute deadliest sin any person seeking salvation could fall into.
WORKS CITED
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by J. E. C. Welldon. Macmillan And Co., 1923, pp. 114.
Deters, Anna. “‘Glorious Perverseness’: Stoic Pride and Domestic Heroism in Richardson’s Novels”. Eighteenth Century Fiction, vol. 26, no. 1, University of Toronto Press, 2013, pp. 67-92.
Lewis, John. “‘Sacrilege Toward the Individual’: The Anti-Pride of Thomas More’s Utopia and Anthem’s Radical Alternative”. Essays on Ayn Rand’s “Anthem”, Lexington Books, 2005, pp. 1-14.
Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Oxford University Press, 2008.
More, Thomas. Treatise Upon the Passion. The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, vol. 13, Yale University Press, 1976, pp. 7.
More, Thomas. Utopia. Translated by Robert M. Adams. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by James Noggle, 10th ed., vol. C, W. W. Norton, 2018, pp. 44-118.
Rusche, Harry. “Pride, Humility, and Grace in Book 1 of The Faerie Queene”. Studies in English Literature, vol. 7, no. 1, Rice University Press, 1999, pp. 29-39.
Spenser, Edmund. The Faerie Queene Book 1. The Norton Anthology of English Literature, edited by James Noggle, 10th ed., vol. C, W. W. Norton, 2018, pp. 247-406.
Steadman, John. Milton’s Epic Characters: Image and Idol. University of North Carolina Press, 1968, pp. 23-36.
CONTINUE READING
.jpeg)
Oluchi Ogbonna
State University Affiliation
To understand the role of culture in peer-initiated sexual abuse (PISA) perpetrated by adolescents aged 13-18, this study analyzes PISA risk factors identified in research from 8 countries over the past 15 years. Juveniles accounted for approximately 17% of sexual crimes in the U.S. in 2015 - a trend mirrored by rising rates in other nations - making PISA a significant global public health issue. Yet most research is Western-centric and focuses on victimization rather than perpetration. This study employs a socio-ecological framework to analyze research on PISA from 8 countries: the United States, South Korea, Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Sierra Leone...
.jpeg)
Abigail Palin
State University Affiliation
Could individual incentives positively alter the relationship between overall pay dispersion and organizational performance, similar to horizontal pay dispersion? Related to this question, this research explores the interaction between overall pay dispersion and individual incentives on organizational performance. Using manager-reported data from the 2011 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS), 2,231 United Kingdom workplaces were analyzed...
.jpeg)
Emily Salinas
State University Affiliation
This study explores the influence of Zoroastrianism on the design and function of ceremonial spaces in the Achaemenid Persian Empire between 550 BCE and 330 BCE. While several scholars have analyzed the symbolic significance of fire in Zoroastrianism, few studies examine how its religious ideals are directly integrated into the design of Achaemenid ceremonial sites. An evaluation of sacred Avesta texts dated to the reign of Cyrus the Great reveals how Zoroastrianism was built upon a foundation of fire worship as a symbol of Ahura Mazda and his sacred light, serving as a bridge between the physical and spiritual worlds...