ABSTRACT
At the beginning of Paradise Regained, Satan, having witnessed Jesus’ baptism, calls—like a pope or a prelate—a “council” or “consistory” (I, 40, 42). Church councils, consistories, conclaves—Milton was wont to take a dim view of them, figuratively and literally. They were not a source of clear bright truth; he consigned them to hell. We remember the “secret conclave” of Paradise Lost I, 795, an ironic glance at cardinals locked up to elect a pope. As Tillyard remarked, Milton “assumes, in the first book especially, some knowledge of the earlier poem.” 1 In neither poem does God ever hold what is called a council. Council is a bad word, used only of the bad, in all its nine occurrences. 2
