Rhetoric of old heartless queen in the Spanish church (9)
I believe the answer is:
eloquence
'rhetoric' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'of old heartless queen in the spanish church' is the wordplay.
'of old' becomes 'o' (I can't explain this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'heartless' means to remove the middle letters.
'in' is an insertion indicator.
'the spanish' becomes 'el'.
'church' becomes 'ce' (abbreviation for Church of England).
'queen' with its centre removed is 'quen'.
'o'+'quen'='oquen'
'el'+'ce'='elce'
'oquen' placed into 'elce' is 'ELOQUENCE'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for eloquence that I've seen before include "Fluency in language" , "Persuasiveness in speech" , "way with words" , "Persuasive speech" , "Fluent speaking" .)