Write a 5 page essay on Poem: The Bishop Orders his tomb at Saint Praxed Church by Robert Browning.This paper analyzes what the literature is saying about materialism in The Bishop Orders His Tomb At

Write a 5 page essay on Poem: The Bishop Orders his tomb at Saint Praxed Church by Robert Browning.

This paper analyzes what the literature is saying about materialism in The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxeds Church. Several authors agree that this poem is an effective dramatic monologue that exposes the materialism of the Catholic Church through irony and parody.

The Church admonishes greed and corruption and yet the Bishop in The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxeds Church has lived and wants to die with his material needs and goals in mind. Cervo mentions “hedonistic skepticism” present in Brownings poem, which parodies the essence of “understanding faith” (205). The more that the Catholic Bishop in this poem explains the details of his tomb, the more he underscores the death of the essence of faith. Indeed, The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxeds Church says more about faith than the Bishop wishes to reveal. There is irony in how in his dying moments, he is exposing himself as a spiritual fraud. He is a fraud for not living the teachings of Saint Praxed. Saint Praxed gave everything to the poor. the Bishop, on the contrary, saves the best for himself. This article shows the hypocrisy of priests, because they do not practice piety. Instead, the Bishop in this poem, even at the point of his death, shows obsession for material possessions. He wants a “slab of basalt” for his tomb (Browning 25), so that he would outshine his rival Gandolfs final resting place. The poem is then filled with descriptions of the tomb that underscores a priests absence of spiritual richness. The Bishop is only concerned of his tombs opulence, so that he can continue looking down on his predecessor, Gandolf. While Gandolf lives in eternity with his cheap “paltry onion-stone” (Browning 31), the Bishop will rest on basalt, surrounded with “Peach-blossom marble all, the rare...” (Browning 29). This is how the Bishop wants to die- with a bang of splendor around him, so that he can continue outshining Gandolf.