Bishop Orders His Tomb at St.Praxed’s Church

The poem ‘Bishop Orders His Tomb at St.Praxed’s Church’ was first published in Hood’s Magazine in 1845 with the name ‘The Tomb at St. Praxed’s’. Later Bowning changed the name and called it ‘Bishop Orders His Tomb at St.Praxed’s Church’. Browning does not tell us the Bishop’s name. He might have in mind the life of Cardinal Ippolito d’ Este, the Younger who was a materialistic vain and extremely mean person. Gandolf, mentioned as the arch rival in the poem is also fictitious. The Praxed’s Church might have been the Santa Prassede which Browning visited in 1844. Browning in writing the poem might have been influenced also by Thomas Macaulay’s review of a book of Leopold Ranke.

Browning attacks virulently the Bishop in the poem and reveals relentlessly his meanness of mind, selfishness, materialistic outlook, above all his hypocrisy. The Bishop is the narrator of the poem and his words bring his ill traits of character to light.

The Bishop begins with a Biblical quotation

“Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher
Vanity of Vanities! all is vanity”

Then he addresses his sons as nephews. He particularly name one son, Auselm who is perhaps his favourite. Next he refers to his dead wife whom he won against another clergyman named Gandolf. Gandolf on the otherhand won the southern corner for his residence by defeating the Bishop. So they were arch rival to each other. His wife begot him many sons. His lustfulness finds expression not only in his affair with this woman but also in his prayer to St. Praxed for granting his sons ‘mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs’ besides horses and Greek manuscripts. The Bishop is lascivious to the core and does not feel ashamed to see the address of huddling (privacy)

“One pan
Ready to twitch the Nymph’s last garment off”

The Bishop allures his sons with these temptations and many other lucrative things because he has a clandestine desire. It is that his sons will erect his tomb after his death in the St. Praxed Church. He tells them that he wanted the South corner of the church for his tomb. But his rival Gondolf snatched it away from him. He was dead and now he lay there. He orders his sons to build his tomb at such a place and in such a manner as will enable him to look at his life-long enemy Gandolf’s . The Bishop wants his tomb to be built with basalt stone, with nine columns round him, two and two. He wants the vase to be full of luscious grapes. He wants visors or masks of the helmet and a bust on a pedestal. He divulges that he had stolen a precious ‘Lapis Lazuli’from a church and burnt it to hide his crime. He buried the blue stone in the vineyard. He gives detailed description of the place of hiding and methods of recovery. He wants this blue stone to be placed between his knees so that Gandolf may burst of envy and disappointment. He promises to give his sons the fashionable villas and he will pray to God for them. But if they disobey his order he will not give them the villas. He says.

‘Else I give the Pope,
My villas’

He wants his sons to write his epitaph in the language of Cicero i.e. in Latin. Bishop discloses that he had deliberately written grandolf’s epitaph in the Utopian language. However the Bishop has some good sides too. He is a lover of the classics and Latin. This is best expressed in the telling exemplum of the lynx tied to a tripod. The Bishop has a clear idea of what he wants for his grave. As the poem draws to a close the candles of his sons dwindle and the memory of their tall pale mother with her talking eyes rekindles in the Bishop’s mind. It strikes a discordant tone in the flow of the Bishop’s great ideas about his tomb. He discovers that his sons will not pay heed to his request much less for his commands. He despairs. Now he does not hope that his tomb would be build of anything other than mere sand stone. He is reconciled to his fate. He tells his sons.

“Well go I bless you”

He remains in the church, the church for peace. He still expresses his desire to watch Gandolf if he leers at him from his onion-stone. He thinks Gandolf still envies him, because his wife was so fair.