Daughter of Baptista Bassano, court musician of Elizabeth I (and later Charles I) of England, Aemilia frequented the fringes of the court of Elizabeth I and became the mistress of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, forty-five years her senior. Pregnant at the age of twenty-three, she married her cousin by marriage, Alphonso Lanyer, also a Queen's musician in October 1592. Lanyer was granted a monopoly for the weighing of hay and straw in London, a monopoly that would provide Aemilia with a precarious income after his death in 1613.

      Published in the same year as the King James Bible (1611), Lanyer's Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews, 1611) is a poem about the Passion of Christ. Dedicated to women and addressed to women, Lanyer makes no apology for publishing a serious work of poetry under her own name. Arguing for women's religious and social equality in the introductory dedicatory poems, Lanyer continues her feminist theme when she reinterprets the biblical creation story as well as the stories of Christ's life and death from a feminist point of view. Indeed, her entire Passion story is viewed from a feminist perspective.

      Here is her introduction

. To the Virtuous Reader.

      Often have I heard, that it is the property of some women, not only to emulate the virtues and perfections of the rest, but also by all their powers of ill speaking, to eclipse the brightness of their deserved fame: now contrary to this custom, which men I hope unjustly lay to their charge, I have written this small volume, or little book, for the general use of all virtuous Ladies and Gentlewomen of this kingdom; and in commendation of some particular persons of our own sex, such as for the most part, are so well known to myself, and others, that I dare undertake Fame dares not to call any better. And this have I done, to make known to the world, that all women deserve not to be blamed though some forgetting they are women themselves, and in danger to be condemned by the words of their own mouths, fall into so great an error, as to speak unadvisedly against the rest of their sex; which if it be true, I am persuaded they can show their own imperfection in nothing more: and therefore could wish (for their own ease, modesties, and credit) they would refer such points of folly, to be practiced by evil disposed men, who forgetting they were borne of women, nourished of women, and that if it were not by the means of women, they would be quite extinguished out of the world, and a final end of them all, do like Vipers deface the wombs wherein they were bred, only to give way and utterance to their want of discretion and goodness. Such as these, were they that dishonored Christ his Apostles and Prophets, putting them to shameful deaths. Therefore we are not to regard any imputations, that they undeservedly lay upon us, no otherwise than to make use of them to our own benefits, as spurs to virtue, making us fly all occasions that may color their unjust speeches to pass currant. Especially considering that they have tempted even the patience of God himself, who gave power to wise and virtuous women, to bring down their pride and arrogance. As was cruel Cesarus by the discreet counsel of noble Deborah, Judge and Prophetess of Israel: and resolution of Jael wife of Heber the Kenite: wicked Haman, by the divine prayers and prudent proceedings of beautiful Hester: blasphemous Holofernes, by the invincible courage, rare wisdom, and confident carriage of Judeth: & the unjust Judges, by the innocency of chaste Susanna: with infinite others, which for brevity sake I will omit. As also in respect it pleased our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, without the assistance of man, being free from original and all other sins, from the time of his conception, till the hour of his death, to be begotten of a woman, borne of a woman, nourished of a woman, obedient to a woman; and that he healed woman, pardoned women, comforted women: yea, even when he was in his greatest agony and bloody sweat, going to be crucified, and also in the last hour of his death, took care to dispose of a woman: after his resurrection, appeared first to a woman, sent a woman to declare his most glorious resurrection to the rest of his Disciples. Many other examples I could allege of divers faithful and virtuous women, who have in all ages, not only been Confessors, but also endured most cruel martyrdom for their faith in Jesus Christ. All which is sufficient to enforce all good Christians and honorable minded men to speak reverently of our sex, and especially of all virtuous and good women. To the modest sensors of both which, I refer these my imperfect endeavors, knowing that according to their own excellent dispositions, they will rather, cherish, nourish, and increase the least spark of virtue where they find it, by their favorable and best interpretations, than quench it by wrong constructions. To whom I wish all increase of virtue, and desire their best opinions.

      Eve's Apology occurs in the portion of the passion narrative when Christ is before Pilate and Pilate's wife is to plead with Pilate to spare Christ's life. And an excerpt from her poem:

Now Pontius Pilate is to judge the Cause
Of faultlesse Jesus, who before him stands;
Who neither hath offended Prince, nor Lawes,
Although he now be brought in woefull bands:
O noble Governour, make thou yet a pause,
Doe not in innocent blood imbrue thy hands; 
But heare the words of thy most worthy wife,
Who sends to thee, to beg her Saviours life.

Let barb'rous crueltie farre depart from thee,
And in true Justice take afflictions part;
Open thine eies, that thou the truth mai'st see,
Doe not the thing that goes against thy heart,
Condemne not him that must thy Saviour be;
But view his holy Life, his good desert. 
Let not us Women glory in Mens fall,
Who had power given to over-rule us all.

'Till now your indiscretion sets us free,
And makes our former fault much lesse appeare;
Our Mother Eve, who tasted of the Tree,
Giving to Adam what shee held most deare,
Was simply good, and had no powre to see,
The after-comming harme did not appeare: 
The subtile Serpent that our Sex betraide,
Before our fall so sure a plot had laide.

That undiscerning Ignorance perceav'd
No guile, or craft that was by him intended;
For had she knowne, of what we were bereav'd,
To his request she had not condiscended.
But she (poore soule) by cunning was deceav'd,
No hurt therein her harmelesse Heart intended: 
For she alleadg'd Gods word, which he denies,
That they should die, but even as Gods, be wise.

But surely Adam can not be excusde,
Her fault though great, yet hee was most too blame;
What Weaknesse offerd, Strength might have refusde,
Being Lord of all, the greater was his shame:
Although the Serpents craft had her abusde,
Gods holy word ought all his actions frame, 
For he was Lord and King of all the earth,
Before poore Eve had either life or breath.

For more information: Aemilia Lanyer Website

References:

* Used in preparation of this work

      Marshall Grossman (Editor), Aemilia Lanyer: Gender, Genre, and the Canon (Studies in the English Renaissance), 1998

      * Aemilia Lanyer, Susanne Woods (ed.), 1611, The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer: Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Women Writers in English 1350-1850), [Oxford: Oxord University Press, 1993]

      Susanne Woods, Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet, 1999 (Not Yet Published) Hardcover

      Diane Purkiss (Editor), Renaissance Women: The Plays of Elizabeth Cary and The Poems of Aemilia Lanyer (Pickering Women's Classics), 1994

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