purple motes

chivalry: Guillaume IX d'Aquitaine on horse

The traditional understanding of chivalry centered on a man sexually serving his wife or some other attractive woman with great generosity and dedication. However, an oppressive, men-degrading understanding of chivalrous treatment of women gained influence in twelfth-century France. That effect is clearly apparent in a thirteenth-century debate poem (tenso) between the trobairitz Guillelma de Rosers and the man trobairitz (troubadour) Lanfranc Cigala. They considered a case concerning the proper direction for chivalry. Guillelma prevailed in their debate. She asserted the traditional understanding of chivalry, but at the same time disparaged men and figured men’s sexual service to women as an assault on women.

The traditional understanding of chivalry expresses the relative importance of women’s and men’s needs. In the late-eighth-century Arabic text Bilauhar and Budasaf, a powerful warrior-hero had a beautiful wife. One day an enemy attacked their village. In their traditional gender role as persons who fight and die to defend women and children, the men of the village prepared to confront the enemy. They called on the hero to join with them. Unlike Achilles, enraged and sulking on the Trojan shore because his mistress had been taken from him, this hero had with him his beautiful wife. She wanted to have sex. The hero turned to have sex with his wife before helping the men of the village fight off an enemy force. In the traditional understanding of chivalry, men’s sexual service to their wives is more important than men helping their fellow men in battle.[1]

Guillelma de Rosers and Lanfranc Cigala’s tenso presents a similar case. Men needed help from other men:

Lady Guillelma, a band of weary knights
abroad in the dark, in most dismal weather,
wished aloud in their own tongues that they might
find shelter. Two lovers happened to over-
hear while on their way to their ladies who
lived close to there; one of them turned back to
help the knights, the other went to his lady.
Which of the two behaved most fittingly?

{ Na Guilielma, maint cavalier arratge
anan de nueg per mal temps qe fazia
si plaignian d’alberc en lur lengatge.
Auziron dui bar qe per drudaria
se’n anavan vas lur donas non len.
L’us se’n tornet per servir sella gen,
l’autre·s n’anet vas sa domna corren.
Qals d’aqels dos fes miels zo qe·il taignia? }

In the traditional understanding of chivalry, men’s love for women outweighs men’s concern for other men. At the same time, women recognized men’s love for them, appreciated men’s love for them, and were grateful for men’s love.

In response to Lanfranc’s statement of the case to be debated, Guillelma affirmed gynocentrically the traditional understanding of chivalry. She responded:

Friend Lanfranc, I think that he did best
who continued on to see his lady.
The other also did well. However, his
loved one couldn’t observe in the same way
what the other could see with her own eyes,
that her man had keep his promise to her.
I like a man better who does what he says,
than another whose heart changes his way.

{ Amics Lafranc, miels complic son viatge,
al mieu semblan, sel qi tenc vas s’amia;
e l’autre fes ben, mas son fin coratge
non poc tam be saber si donz a tria
con cil qe·l vic devant sos oils presen,
q’atendut l’a sos cavaliers coven;
q’eu pres truep mais qi zo qe diz aten,
qe qi en als son coratge cambia. }

Women are socially positioned as judges of men’s worth. Meeting him in person, a lady could judge her lover through direct observation. In Guillelma’s thinking, men helping other men has no value in itself. The lady would like to see her lover helping desperate men because that would affirm to her that her man was better than those other men. Within this gynocentric ideology, a man’s good works are worth nothing unless a woman observes him doing them.

Lanfranc himself valued men’s lives, but credited the woman for that result. He responded:

Pardon, lady, but that brave knightly man
who saved the rest from death and harm was moved
by affection: there will never appear
a chivalry that doesn’t spring from love.
Thus in my opinion, a hundredfold
she ought to thank him, as though she had beheld
the deed in person, for out of love for her
that knight saved them from what might have occurred.

{ Domna, si·us plaz, tot qan fes d’agradatge
lo cavalliers qe per sa galiardia
garda·ls autres de mort e de dampnatge,
li mouc d’amor, qar ges de cortezia
non ha nuls hom si d’amor no·il dessen;
per q’el si donz deu grazir per un cen
qar desliuret, per s’amor, de turmen
tanz cavalier qe se vista l’avia. }

Today, to hearty applause, men commonly proclaim that they owe all their worldly success to their wives. Love for the lady accordingly saved the men’s lives.

Guillelma vehemently rejected the worth of saving men’s lives. She responded:

Lanfranc, you never spoke more foolishly
than you did in what you said just now,
for as you know well, his deed was heinous.
Since loving service guided his doing,
why not go to serve his lady first?
He would have seen her gratitude and joy,
and he would have served her in many good
places with his love, not lacking as a man-toy.

{ Lafranc, ja mais non razones muzatge
tan gran co fes cel qe non tenc sa via,
qe, sapchatz be, mout i fes gran ultratge:
pueis bel-servirs tan de cor li movia,
qar non servic si donz premeiramen?
Et agra·n grat de leis e jauzimen,
pueis, per s’amor, pogra servir soven
e maintz bos luecs qe faillir no·il podia. }

Women must be served first, even if men are dying. When a ship is sinking, women must be saved first. Dominant myths to the contrary, social life has long been gynocentric. The traditional understanding of chivalry reflects that reality.

trobairitz La comtesa de Dia

The medieval intensification of chivalric gynocentrism centered on devaluing and disparaging men’s sexuality. Lanfranc connected gynocentrism to sexual abuse of men:

Lady, forgive me for uttering foolishness,
I see that my suspicions all were true.
You, jealous, cannot be content unless
all your lovers’ pilgrimages lead to you.
But when you train a horse to joust, you should
guide it with care, bearing in mind what’s good
for it. You drive your lovers so hard that they
are left debilitated, and you enraged.

{ Domna, perdon vos qier s’ieu dic folatge,
qu’oi mais vei zo qe de donas crezia:
qe no vos platz q’autre pelegrinatge
fassan li drut mas ves vos tota via.
Pero cavals c’om vol qi baürt gen
deu hom menar ab mesur’et ab sen;
mas car los drutz cochatz tan malamen
lur faill poders, don vos sobra feunia. }

Men deserve humane working conditions and adequate compensation for their erection labor. Women should love men with care for men and concern for what’s good for men. Instead, men are being raped and being falsely accused of rape with almost no public concern. The horror of rape-culture culture arose from the intensification of gynocentrism.

Lanfranc, I say that on that very day
that knight should have changed his way;
for a woman who has high forefathers,
who is beautiful and noble, should have power
to command her men’s generous service,
even when her lover is away! But each man practices
excuses because, as I know, his hardness
goes lacking when he is most required.

{ Lafranc, eu dic qe son malvatz usatge
degra laissar en aqel meteis dia
le cavalliers qe domna d’aut paratge
bella e pros deu aver en bailia,
q’en son alberc servis hom largamen
ja el no·i fos; mas chascus razon pren
qar sai qe ha tan de recrezemen
q’al maior ops poders li failliria. }

Men are human. Not all men are sexual superheroes. Men’s sexual limitations, and even their failings, should be accepted sympathetically. Women, like men, should feel entitled to sexual fulfillment as human beings in a humane society. But no woman should feel entitled to command sexual service from servant men of her household, even if her lover is away. Men should be respected as fully human beings, not treated as sexual servants that women employ at their whim.

Men must insist that women respect them. Lanfranc instead surrendered himself to Guillelma:

Lady, I have hardness and ardor,
but not against you ladies, who in bed conquer.
As I was with words foolish to have contended,
so I prefer you to encompass me if you can.

{ Domna, poder ai eu et ardimen
non contra vos, qe·us venzes en jazen,
per q’eu sui fols car ab vos pris conten;
mas vencut voil qe m’aiatz, con qe sia. }

Despite Lanfranc’s abject surrender, Guillelma in response echoed the historically entrenched disparagement of men’s sexuality as a violent attack:

Lanfranc, I give you my promise and consent,
for I feel within myself such heart and boldness
that with such cunning ladies use in defense
I will defend myself against the boldest of men.

{ Lafranc, aitan vos autrei e·us consen
qe tant mi sen de cor e d’ardimen
c’ab aital gien con domna si defen
mi defendri’al plus ardit qe sia. }

Unionality, a theory that meninists have recently developed, asserts that one plus one is more than two. Unions produce a surplus of benefit. Historically, penises have been represented very negatively, while vaginas have been represented highly positively. That structural gender disparity supports a division of union surplus that greatly disfavors men. Not surprisingly, Guillelma here figures men’s sexuality as a negative force to be repelled. At the same time, the repetitions of the syllable “con” in the last two stanzas underscore that “gien con” could be translated not only as “with such cunning,” but also as “with the prettiest cunt.”[3] Thus to the traditional understanding of chivalry the trobairitz Guillelma adds gender ideology that works to deprive men of an equal share in union surplus.

Trobairitz (including men trobairitz) singing in Provençal courts in the twelfth and thirteenth century significantly changed the meaning of chivalry and love in subsequent European and world history. The enormity of that cultural development has scarcely been recognized. For men to achieve gender equality with women, trobairitz chivalry must be decisively rejected.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Arabic literature significantly influenced trobairitz song. Examples of such Arabic literature are Nazhun’s muwashshah, udhri love poetry, and love laments such as that of ibn al-Rumi. On Arabic literature’s influence on the trobairitz more generally, Sanaullah (2010).

[2] Guillelma de Rosers and Lanfranc Cigala, “Na Guilielma, maint cavalier arratge,” stanza 1. In this and the subsequent stanzas cited seriatim from that tenso (more precisely categorized as a partimen), the Occitan text is from Harvey, Paterson & Radaelli (2010) v. 2, pp. 902-12, and the English translation is my adaption drawing on the translations of Bruckner, Shepard & White (1995) pp. 74-7, Kehew (2005) pp. 302-5, Paden & Paden (2007) pp. 192-3, and Harvey, Paterson & Radaelli (2010) v. 2, pp. 902-12. Here’s a less authoritative Occitan text.

Lanfranc Cigala served as a judge from 1235 to 1257 in Genoa. Paden & Paden (2007) p. 192. Born of a prominent Genoese family, Lanfranc was a Genoese ambassador to Provence in 1241. Thirty-two of Lanfranc’s poems have survived. Bruckner, Shepard & White (1995) pp. 171-2.

Guilhelma apparently was from Rogier in Provence in southeastern France. Rogier was probably Rougiers, which is in the department of Var. Paden & Paden (2007) p. 192. Guilhelma apparently made a long visit to Genoa. Kehew (2005) p. 300.

Emphasizing the continuing significance of trobairitz chivalry, Guillelma de Rosers’s name is typically listed before Lanfranc Cigala’s, even though in the tenso Lanfranc speaks before Guillelma. Paden & Paden (2007), however, admirable heads the poem “Lanfranc Cigala and Guilhelma de Rosers.” As is apparent, the spelling of Guilielma varies.

[3] Paden & Paden (2007) p. 193, n. 2. Modern scholars who don’t understand gender in their own contemporary societies have superficially analyzed trobairitz wordplay:

The Provençal tenso develops as a series of responses to a statement of love. The genre depicts adversarial male and female personae who dispute various aspects of love. Invariably the woman is in a position of resisting the man’s onslaught. The tenso between Guillelma de Rosers and Lanfranc Cigala exemplifies this dynamic … Guillelma and Lanfranc’s tenso dramatizes the formidable power of a prevailing symbolic language.

Solterer (1995) p. 7.

[images] (1) Chivalry: man trobairitz Guillaume IX d’Aquitaine on his horse. Illuminated initial from Recueil des poésies des troubadours, contenant leurs vies. Manuscript made in the thirteenth century. Preserved as Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). Département des manuscrits. Français 854, folio 142v. (2) (2) trobairitz La Comtesa de Dia gestures with her hand. Illuminated initial, from id. BnF Français 854, folio 141r.

References:

Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, eds. and trans. 1995. Songs of the Women Troubadours. New York: Garland.

Harvey, Ruth, Linda M. Paterson, and Anna Radaelli. 2010. The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: a critical edition. Cambridge: Brewer.

Kehew, Robert, ed. 2005. Lark in the Morning: the Verses of the Troubadours: a bilingual edition. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Paden, William D., and Frances Freeman Paden, trans. 2007. Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Sanaullah, Muhammad. 2010. “Symbolic Islamo-European Encounter in Prosody: Muwashshaḥāt, Azjāl and the Catalan Troubadours.” Islamic Studies. 49 (3): 357-400.

Solterer, Helen. 1995. The Master and Minerva: disputing women in French medieval culture. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.

Attila the Hun re-creation

When Attila the Hun’s wife Ospirin heard that his adopted son Prince Hagen had fled back to his native kingdom, she told Attila what to do. He should arrange for his other adopted son, Prince Walter of Aquitaine, to have his choice of a bride from among the Hun young women. He should also enrich this new couple with lands and goods. These actions, according to Ospirin, would prevent Walter from fleeing back to his native home as Prince Hagen had done. Attila dutifully sought to follow his wife’s advice.

While Attila the Hun was a fierce ruler who ruled much of fifth-century Europe and terrorized the Roman Empire, his wife had considerable control over him. Wives commonly have compelling sexual power over their husbands. Wives also typically have de facto control over their husbands’ financial assets and living conditions. For example, Ospirin adopted the foreign princess Hiltgunt as her daughter. Hiltgunt herself came to control Attila’s assets:

The maiden {Hiltgunt}, although captive, by the grace of the highest God, relaxed the queen’s doubting face and increased her love, for the girl abundantly displayed her outstanding character and the industry of her works. At last she was made the steward to watch over all the king’s treasure. She was but little short of herself ruling the kingdom, for whatever she wanted to do, she actually did.

{ Virgo etiam captiva deo praestante supremo
Reginae vultum placavit et auxit amorem,
Moribus eximiis operumque industria habundans.
Postremum custos thesauris provida cunctis
Efficitur, modicumque deest, quin regnet et ipsa;
Nam quicquid voluit de rebus, fecit et actis. } [1]

Ospirin evidently had been in charge of the king’s treasure and had effectively ruled over the kingdom. She then deputized the Princess Hiltgunt to have those same powers. Don’t be fooled by ideology and formalities: women in fact rule.

A man’s wife, not his king, primarily rules over him. When Attila the Hun offered Walter the proposal that Ospirin had advised, Walter explained:

If I receive a wife in accordance with my lord’s commands, I shall be bound in utmost care and love to a young woman and be generally retarded from my service to the king. I shall be driven to build homes and attend to the cultivation of my fields, and this will delay me from being in my lord’s presence and from rendering the usual devotion to the Hunnish kingdom.

{ Si nuptam accipiam domini praecepta secundum,
Vinciar inprimis curis et amore puellae
Atque a servitio regis plerumque retardor,
Aedificare domos cultumque intendere ruris
Cogor, et hoc oculis senioris adesse moratur
Et solitam regno Hunorum impendere curam. }

Husbands served their wives long before men-degrading chivalry was celebrating in twelfth-century trobairitz poetry. No man can serve two masters effectively. Walter thus urged King Attila not to compel him to marry:

Nothing is so sweet to me as to be faithfully obedient to my lord. Therefore, I beg you that you allow me now to conduct my life without a conjugal bond. If in the late or middle part of the night you give me your command, I shall go, free of other concerns and prepared for whatever mission you order. In wars, no anxieties will persuade me to yield — neither sons nor wife will draw me back and urge me to flee. I beg you, best father, by your life and by the yet unconquered race of the Huns that you stop compelling me to take up the marriage torch.

{ Nil tam dulce mihi, quam semper inesse fideli
Obsequio domini; quare, precor, absque iugali
Me vinclo permitte meam iam ducere vitam.
Si sero aut medio noctis mihi tempore mandas,
Ad quaecumque iubes, securus et ibo paratus.
In bellis nullae persuadent cedere curae,
Nec nati aut coniunx retrahentque fugamque movebunt.
Testor per propriam temet, pater optime, vitam
Atque per invictam nunc gentem Pannoniarum,
Ut non ulterius me cogas sumere taedas. }

Heloise urged Abelard not to marry her, but to keep her as his mistress. Valerius urged his friend to Rufinus to stay with him rather than marry. But men eager to marry, as Abelard and Rufinus were, are impervious to reason. Attila the Hun, a shrewd warrior, was more reasonable about marriage. Although Walter would have little chance of prevailing in fights with his wife, he was the most important warrior to Attila in fighting against foreign enemies. Daring to exercise judgment independent of his wife, Attila reasonably stopped pushing Walter to marry.

Walter was then able to act. Unknown to Attila the Hun, Hiltgunt and Walter had been betrothed in childhood. They planned to flee together. In the traditional bridal-quest narrative, the bride willingly and enthusiastically flees with the groom, who has to engage in battle to retain his bride. In other words, the man has to fight for love. The woman benefits from the man’s struggle.[2] It’s a woman’s world. In this instance, Hiltgunt filled two coffers with gold and secretly took other treasures under her control. Hiltgunt and Walter then arranged a lavish banquet for the royal household. They fled with their loot when the king and his people were incapacitated after the banquet’s copious food and drink.

As in most stories transmitted through gynocentric history, the wife turns out to be right. Attila the Hun thus had to endure his wife’s I-told-you-so:

O detestable food that we ate yesterday! O wine that has destroyed all the Huns! I, in my foreknowledge, warned our lord some time ago of the day that has come. Now we can do nothing about it. Behold! Today the pillar of your empire has clearly fallen. Behold! Your strength and famous courage have gone far from here. Walter, light of the Hunnish land, has departed from here, and my dear child Hiltgunt too. He took her with him.

{ O detestandas, quas heri sumpsimus, escas!
O vinum, quod Pannonias destruxerat omnes!
Quod domino regi iam dudum praescia dixi,
Approbat iste dies, quem nos superare nequimus.
En hodie imperii vestri cecidisse columna
Noscitur, en robur procul ivit et inclita virtus:
Waltharius, lux Pannoniae, discesserat inde,
Hiltgundem quoque mi caram deduxit alumnam. }

Attila the Hun was wild with rage. Losing Walter and Hiltgunt hurt him badly, and his wife’s disparagement of his judgment only made him feel worse. Attila tore the royal cloak off his shoulders, made faces changing rapidly with his inner torment, and refused food and drink throughout the day. That night he could not sleep. He acted like a traumatized boy-child within a cold, belittling gynocentric world.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Waltharius, ll. 110-15, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Ring (2016). Subsequent quotes are similarly from id., which is currently the best critical edition. I made minor, typically insubstantial changes in the translation to improve readability for the general reader. In making those changes, I benefited from also studying the translation of Kratz (1984). For the quotes above, the Latin text does not differ at all from this online Latin text of Waltharius. Hiltgund is commonly rendered in English as Hildegund. I preserve the literal Latin form.

The date Waltharius was written and its author aren’t certain. Some have attributed this epic poem to Ekkehard I, a monk of St. Gall, writing about 930 GC. Others place the poem in the ninth-century Carolingian empire. It most likely was written some time between 840 and 965 in a Germanic area. The story of Waltharius apparently has roots in a Germanic saga. For associated literature, Learned (1892). Like many medieval writers, the author of Waltharius was well-versed in classical literature and alludes to Virgil, Ovid, Horace, Statius, and Lucan, and the Christian poets Juvencus, Prudentius, Sedulius, and Venantius Fortunatus, among others. See Ring (2016), intro.

The subsequent quotes above are from Waltharius ll. 150-5 (If I receive a wife…), 158-67 (Nothing is so sweet…), 372-79 (O detestable food…), with citations by line numbers in the edition of Ring (2016).

[2] Waltharius apparently was built upon a bridal-quest narrative. Bornholdt (2005) Ch. 3. Mothers typically controlled their sons’ marriages in medieval Germany, as well as in Byzantium.

[image] Life-like representation of Attila the Hun in a museum in Hungary in 2005. Image thanks to A. Berger, via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Bornholdt, Claudia. 2005. Engaging Moments: the origins of medieval bridal-quest narrative. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Kratz, Dennis M., ed. and trans. 1984. Waltharius, and Ruodlieb. New York: Garland Pub.

Learned, Marion Dexter. 1892. The Saga of Walther of Aquitaine. Baltimore: Mod. Lang. Assoc. of America.

Ring, Abram, ed. and trans. 2016. Waltharius. Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 22. Leuven: Peeters. (A. M. Juster’s review)

Good lady, you may burn or hang him
or do anything you happen to desire,
for there’s nothing that he can refuse you,
as such you have him without any limits.

{ Bona domna, ardre.l podetz o pendre,
o far tot so que.us vengua a talen,
que res non es qu’el vos puesca defendre,
aysi l’avetz ses tot retenemen. } [1]

trobairitz Na Castelloza

Men have long been sexually disadvantaged. While men’s structural disadvantages are scarcely acknowledged within gynocentric society, a small number of medieval women writers courageously advocated for men. In Occitania early in the thirteenth century, the extraordinary trobairitz Lady Castelloza spoke out boldly against gender inequality in love and men having the status of serfs in sexual feudalism.

And if she tells you a high mountain is a plain,
agree with her,
and be content with both the good and ill she sends;
that way you’ll be loved.

{ e s’ela.us ditz d’aut puoig que sia landa,
vos l’an crezatz,
e plassa vos lo bes e.l mals q’il manda,
c’aissi seretz amatz. } [2]

Just as is the case for many women today, many medieval women didn’t adequately support and defend men. When Giraut de Bornelh asked his lovely friend Alamanda about his love difficulties, she advised him to be totally subservient to his lady. Alamanda was a maiden to that lady. Lord Giraut apparently had lost his lady’s love by seeking sex with a woman who was not her equal, probably none other than her maiden Alamanda. But what had that lady done to him? She had lied to him at least five times before! When women speak, men should not just listen and believe. Unwillingness to question a woman led a Harvard Law professor to personal disaster. Men should not act as doormats for women or as women’s kitchen servants.

The trobairitz Maria de Ventadorn insisted to Gui d’Ussel that a woman should retain her superior position even in a love relationship with a man. Gui felt that men and women in love should be equals. But Maria wanted men to fulfill all the pleas and commands of their lady-lovers. That’s the pernicious doctrine of yes-dearism. Just say no to female supremacists!

Lady {Maria de Ventadorn}, among us they say
that when a lady wants to love,
she should honor her love on equal terms
because they are equally in love.
…
Gui d’Ussel, at the beginning lovers
say no such thing;
instead, each one, when he wants to court,
says, with hands joined and on his knees:
“Lady, permit me to serve you honestly
as your servant man” and that’s the way she takes him.
I rightly consider him a traitor if, having given
himself as a servant, he makes himself an equal.

{ Dompna, sai dizon de mest nos
Que, pois que dompna vol amar,
Engalmen deu son drut onrar,
Pois engalmen son amoros!
…
Gui d’Uissel, ges d’aitals razos
Non son li drut al comenssar,
Anz ditz chascus, qan vol prejar,
Mans jointas e de genolos:
Dompna, voillatz qe-us serva franchamen
Cum lo vostr’om! et ella enaissi-l pren!
Eu vo-l jutge per dreich a trahitor
Si-s rend pariers e-s det per servidor. } [3]

immixtio manuum: feudal homage

Because of their great love for women, men are reluctant to demand that women treat them with equal human respect and dignity. Men tend toward gyno-idolatry. The man on his knees before a woman, with his hands clasped, is making a gesture of faithful subordination. She then puts her hands around his hands to complete this feudal gesture known as the immixtio mannum {intermingling of hands}. A man today who goes down on his knee to ask a woman for her hand in marriage is preparing to be a vassal to his woman-lord midons. That’s folly. That’s fine preparation for a sexless marriage. From studying Ovid the great teacher of love to modern empirical work on sexual selection, men should know that self-abasement is a losing love strategy.

Oh Love, what shall I do?
Shall we two live in strife?
The griefs that must ensue
would surely end my life.
Unless my Lady might
receive me in that place
she lies in, to embrace
and press against me tight,
her body, smooth and white.
…
Good Lady, thank you for
your love so true and fine;
I swear I love you more
than all past loves of mine.
I bow and join my hands
yielding myself to you;
the one thing you might do
is give me one sweet glance
if sometime you’ve the chance.

{ Amors, e que.m farai?
Si garrai ja ab te?
Ara cuit qu’e.n morrai
Del dezirer que.m ve,
Si.lh bela lai on jai
No m’aizis pres de se,
Qu’eu la manei e bai
Et estrenha vas me
So cors blanc, gras e le.
…
Bona domna, merce
Del vostre fin aman!
Qu’e.us pliu per bona fe
C’anc re non amei tan.
Mas jonchas, ab col cle,
Vos m’autrei e.m coman;
E si locs s’esdeve,
Vos me fatz bel semblan,
Que molt n’ai gran talan! } [4]

The medieval trobairitz Castelloza sympathized with men’s subordination in love. She loved a man who didn’t love her. A woman today in such a situation might open a dating app and enjoy a huge number of solicitations from men. Then, if necessary to boost her self-esteem, she might go for sexual flings with a few, or at least exploit traditional anti-men gender dating roles to get some free dinners. With a keen sense for social justice, Castelloza refused to live according to such female privilege:

I certainly know that it pleases me,
even though people say it’s not right
for a lady to plead her own cause with a knight,
and make long speeches all the time to him.
But whoever says this doesn’t know
that I want to implore before dying,
since in imploring I find sweet healing,
so I plead to him who gives me grave trouble.

{ Eu sai ben qu’a mi esta gen,
Si ben dison tuig que mout descove
Que dompna prec ja cavalier de se,
Ni que l tenga totz temps tam lonc pressic,
Mas cil c’o diz non sap gez ben chausir.
Qu’ieu vueil preiar ennanz que.m lais morir,
Qu’el preiar ai maing douz revenimen,
Can prec sellui don ai greu pessamen. } [5]

Castelloza recognized that, in pleading with a man for love, she was transgressing the norms of men-oppressing courtly love. When women treat men merely as dogs, women don’t experience the full gift of men’s tonic masculinity. The master dehumanizes herself in dehumanizing her man-slaves. Castelloza, in contrast, understood that a man’s love can ennoble a woman. She understood that a man can offer much to even the most privileged woman.

I’m setting a bad pattern
for other loving women,
since it’s usually men who send
messages of well-chosen words.
Yet I consider myself cured,
friend, when I implore you.
for keeping faith is how I woo.
A noble women would grow richer
if you graced her with the gift
of your embrace or your kiss.

{ Mout aurei mes mal usatge
A las autras amairitz,
C’hom sol trametre mesatge,
E motz triaz e chauzitz.
Es ieu tenc me per gerida,
Amics, a la mia fe,
Can vos prec — c’aissi.m conve;
Que plus pros n’es enriquida
S’a de vos calqu’aondansa
De baisar o de coindansa. } [6]

Men’s lack of imagination and unwillingness to protest helps to keep them in their gender prison of gynocentrism. Men rightly appreciate, admire, and love courageous, transgressive women like the trobairitz Castelloza. But men must take responsibility for winning their own liberation. A man showing loving concern about his close friend getting married isn’t enough. Men should be more daring and, like Matheolus, raise stirring voices of men’s sexed protest. Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOWs) struggled against misandry and castration culture even in the Middle Ages, and they continue to do so today. MGTOW is merely prudent personal action. To dismantle gynocentric oppression, men must recover, create, and disseminate protest poetry as potent as the medieval troubadours’ feudal songs of men’s love serfdom.

Peire, if spanning two or three years
the world were run as would please me,
I’ll tell you how with women it would be:
they would never be courted with tears,
rather, they would suffer such love-fears
that they would honor us,
and court us, rather than we, them.

{ Peire, si fos dos ans o tres
Lo segles faihz al meu plazer,
De domnas vos dic eu lo ver:
Non foran mais preyadas ges,
Ans sostengran tan greu pena
Qu’elas nos feiran tan d’onor
C’ans nos prejaran que nos lor. } [7]

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Domna and Donzela, “Bona domna, tan vos ay fin coratge” ll. 17-20, Occitan text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Bruckner, Shepard & White (1995) pp. 92-3. Here’s some meta-data about this trobairitz song. It’s a debate poem (tenso). The currently best critical edition of trobairitz / troubadour tensos is Harvey, Paterson & Radaelli (2010), but it’s expensive and not widely available. For analysis of the genre of tenso, McQueen (2015).

[2] Alamanda and Giraut de Bornelh, “S’ie.us qier conseill, bella amia Alamanda” ll. 13-16, Occitan text and English translation from Bruckner, Shepard & White (1995) pp. 42-3.

[3] Maria de Ventadorn and Gui d’Ussel, “Gui d’Ussel be.m pesa” ll. 25-8, 33-40, Occitan text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Bruckner, Shepard & White (1995) pp. 38-41. This poem is also available in translation in Paden & Paden (2007). The immixtio manuum isn’t attested prior to 1100. West (2013) p. 211.

[4] Bernart de Ventadorn, “Pois preyatz me, senhor” ll. stanzas 4 & 6, Occitan text and English translation by W.D. Snodgrass from Kehew (2005) pp. 84-5. The Poemist offers online the full text and English translation.

[5] Na {Lady} Castelloza, “Amics, s’ie.us trobes avinen” ll. 17-24 (stanza 3), Occitan text from Paden (1981), English trans. (modified) from Paden & Paden (2007). Bruckner, Shepard & White (1995) provides a slightly different Occitan text and English translation of all of Castelloza’s songs. Butterfly Crossings provides an online Occitan text and English translation of the full song, with commentary. Her commentary puts forward orthodox myth in service of gynocentrism:

by virtue of being a woman she is below him socially, thus rendering her statement simultaneously true and drawing attention to the place of women in society as opposed to the artificial pedestal they sit upon in traditional Troubadour poems. Regardless of her title, class, or wealth, in love, much like in life, the woman is beneath the man and must beg his favor like Castelloza here does.

Yup, so Anne of France was beneath day-laboring men gathering stones in fields.

Much influential recent scholarship on trobairitz has been based on dominant gender delusions. A relevant critique:

Gravdal’s argument here is based on her assumption that, for the men, powerlessness is a pose, a rhetorical strategy; the male speaker adopts an abased position only to use it as a springboard to higher status and sociopolitical clout. That Castelloza’s speaker does this as well is frequently overlooked, because it is assumed that for the women, powerlessness is a reality. This assumption is not supported by the evidence for noblewomen’s sociopolitical situation in Occitania during the time of the trobairitz.

Langdon (2001) p. 40.

[6] Castelloza, “Mout avetz faich lonc estatge” ll. 21-30 (stanza 3), Occitan text from Paden (1981), English trans. (modified) from Paden & Paden (2007). Butterfly Crossings again offers the full song, along with commentary. The commentary shows orthodox academic failure of self-consciousness:

Almost smirkingly Castelloza acknowledges that her behavior sets a terrible example for all other female lovers while synchronously encouraging them to do the same. She is not apologizing as much as drawing attention to the solidarity between women who will now partake in this perhaps liberating behavior and act upon their desires as opposed to remaining within the confined roles of passive love interests.

Women unite in liberating behavior: ask men out and buy men dinner!

In Castelloza’s songs, the man she loves has neither voice nor activity. Siskin & Storme (1989) pp. 119-20. Self-centeredness is a common characteristic of women’s writing, particularly in the last few decades of literary scholarship.

[7] Peire d’Alvrnha (possibly) and Bernart de Ventadorn, “Amics Bernartz de Ventadorn,” stanza 4, Occitan text from Trobar, my English translation benefiting from that of Rosenberg, Switten & Le Vot (1998). James H. Donalson provides an online Occitan text and English translation for the full song.

Bernart de Ventadorn was one of the greatest troubadour love poets. His desire for women to experience men’s subordinate position in love is coupled with appreciation for gender equality and reciprocity in love:

The love of two good lovers lies
in pleasing and in yearning’s thrill
from which no good thing will arise
unless they match each other’s will.
The man was born an imbecile
who scolds her for her preference
or bids her do what she resents.

{ En agradar et en voler
es l’amors de dos fiṉs amants;
nulha res no·i pòt proṉ tener
se·l volontatz non es egals.
E cell es beṉ fols naturals
qui de çò que vòl la reprend
e·ilh lauza çò qu no·ilh es gent }

“Chantars no pot gaire valer,” Occitan text and English trans. (modified insubstantially) from A.Z. Foreman. For an alternate English translation, Paden & Paden (2007) pp. 74-5. While Bernart here unequally criticizes men, in an earlier stanza her criticized women whoring in loving men.

[images] (1) Na Castelloza. Illuminated initial in manuscript Chansonnier provençal (Chansonnier K). Created in the second half of the thirteenth century. Folio 110v in Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) MS. 12473. (2) Immixtio manuum: Feudal tenant show faithful subordination to a procurator of King James II of Majorca in Tautaval. Illumination made in 1293. Preserved as Archives Départementales de Pyrénées-Orientales 1B31.

References:

Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, eds. and trans. 1995. Songs of the Women Troubadours. New York: Garland.

Harvey, Ruth, Linda M. Paterson, and Anna Radaelli. 2010. The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: a critical edition. Cambridge: Brewer.

Kehew, Robert, ed. 2005. Lark in the Morning: the Verses of the Troubadours: a bilingual edition. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Langdon, Alison. 2001. “‘Pois dompna s’ave/d’amar’: Na Castellosa’s Cansos and Medieval Feminist Scholarship.” Medieval Feminist Forum 32: 32-42.

McQueen, Kelli. 2015. That’s Debatable!: Genre Issues in Troubadour Tensos and Partimens. Thesis for Degree of Master of Music. Theses and Dissertations. Paper 819. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Paden, William D. 1981. “The Poems of the Trobairitz Na Castelloza.” Romance Philology. 35 (1): 158-182.

Paden, William D., and Frances Freeman Paden, trans. 2007. Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Rosenberg, Samuel N., Margaret Louise Switten, and Gérard Le Vot. 1998. Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: an anthology of poems and melodies. New York: Garland Pub.

Siskin, H. Jay and Julie A. Storme. 1989. “Suffering Love: The Reversed Order in the Poetry of Na Castelloza.” Ch. 6 (pp. 113-127) in Paden, William D., ed. The Voice of the Trobairitz: perspectives on the women troubadours. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

West, Charles. 2013. Reframing the Feudal Revolution: political and social transformation between Marne and Moselle, c. 800 – c. 1100. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.

mean red cat

Modern public discussion of rape has overwhelmingly ignored rape of men and propagated ignorance and anti-men gender bigotry. The underlying problem is as grotesque as the mass imprisonment of men under carceral anti-meninism and as subtle as medieval trobairitz poetry setting men up to be criminals. Since persons today are thoroughly trained to ignore the obvious, let’s begin reconstructing criminal justice and romance between women and men through analysis of trobairitz poetry.

The thirteenth-century trobairitz Domna H. presented a sexual scenario to the man trobairitz Rofin. She asked:

Rofin, you’re an expert in these matters,
so tell me right away, which one did better:
suppose a lady who is noble and well born
and has two lovers
wants them both to swear an oath
before she is willing to sleep with them:
they must promise to do no more
than hug and kiss. And one makes haste
to make that oath and breaks his word.
But the other simply doesn’t dare.

{ Rofin, digatz m’ades de quors,
cals fetz meills, car etz conoissens:
c’una domna coinda e valens
que ieu sai ha dos amadors,
e vol q’uesqecs iur e pliva
enans que·ls voilla ab si colgar,
que plus mas tener e baisar
no·ill faran, e l’uns s’abriva
e·l fag, qe sagramen no·ill te,
l’autres no·l ausa far per re. } [1]

A woman who makes her lover promise to sleep with her, but do no more than hug and kiss her, is heartless and cruel at best. Most men are romantically simple and quite excitable. Christian men pray to God to lead them not into temptation.[2] Women who care for men should respect that manly prayer. Women who care for men shouldn’t taunt prudent men that they lack daring. Prudent men know what they have and how they can be exploited.

Most men have contempt for a man who would force a woman to have sex. Males raping females is quite rare across all primate species, and all but one of those species have no formal police forces and no institutions of penal incarceration. Like most men would, Rofin denounced the man-lover who in the hypothetical scenario raped his beloved lady. To hold that position, he had to resist the lady seeking to seduce men into becoming felons:

Lady, folly overcame the one
who was disobedient
toward his lady, for is it not evident
that a lover, when love drives him on,
should never defy his lady’s words
and willfully compel her.
So I say the one who broke his faith
should lose the high joy of his lady
without reprieve,
and the other man find mercy.

A true lover will not feel such fear,
Rofin, that he won’t take his pleasure,
for his desire and overwhelming urge
drive him so hard that he can’t stop
or control himself
despite the clamor of his famous lady.
For if love is earnest, lounging about
and gazing heats him up
so much that he cannot hear or see
or know if he does bad or good.

Lady, I think it is a great mistake
in a lover who loves from the heart,
if any pleasure brings him joy
that does not honor his lady.
For he should not even avoid
pain if it lets him honor her,
nor should anything please him
unless it pleases her.
A lover who does not behave this way
should lose his lady and his life!

{ Domna, d’aitan sobret follors
cel que fon deshobediens
ves sidons, que non es parvens
q’amans, puois lo destreing amors,
deia ab voluntat forciva
los ditz de sa domna passar.
Per q’eu dic qe senes cobrar
deu perdre la ioia autiva
de sidons cel qui frais sa fe
e l’autres deu trobar merce.

A fin amic non tol paors,
Rofin, de penre iauzimens,
qe·l desirs e·l sobretalens
lo destreing tant qe per clamors
de sidons nominativa
noi·s pot soffrir ni capdellar;
c’ab iazer et ab remirar
l’amors corals reccaliva tant
fort que non au ni non ve
ni conois qan fai mal o be.

Domna, ben mi par grans errors
d’amic, puois ama coralmens,
que nuills gaugz li sia plazens
q’a sa domna non sia honors,
car no·ill deu esser esqiva
pena per sa domna onrar,
ni·l deu res per dreg agradar
s’a leis non es agradiva,
e drutz q’enaissi no·s capte
deu perdre sa domna e se. }

Throughout history the death penalty has been grossly gender-biased against men. That alone is moral reason enough to reject completely the death penalty. The man broke his promise that he would sleep with his beloved lady, but only hug and kiss her. For that, like any other convicted felon, he should’t be killed under gender-biased penal law. Erase the gender-biased death penalty from penal law!

Men shouldn’t put themselves in a position where they might commit a horrible crime. A woman who knowingly goads a man into putting himself into such a position is no better than an accomplice to rape. She is deliberately inciting men to do evil. She does that in part through the vicious female practice of sexual disparaging and shaming men:

Rofin, the cowardly invader
is shameful, soft, and shrinking.
Know that he was a shameful swine
when he lost himself mid-course.
But the ardent one, in whom merit lives,
knew how to advance his cause
when he seized what he held most dear
while his beloved was near.
A lady who distrusts a lover like him
trusts wrongly one who shrinks from her.

{ Rofin, dels crois envazidors
aunitz e flacs e recrezens,
sapchatz qe fon l’aunitz dolens
qe se perdet en mieg dels cors,
mas l’arditz on pretz s’aviva
saup gen sa valor enansar
qant pres tot so qe·ill fon plus car
mentre·il fon l’amors aiziva
e domna q’aital drut mescre
mal creira cel qui s’en recre. }

Because Rofin spoke out strongly against forcing a woman to have sex, Domna H. turned on him and disparaged his masculinity:

Now I know how it really goes,
Rofin, since I hear you blame
the true man and defend the loser.
You yourself would do feeble work
at it.

{ Oimais conosc ben cossi va,
Rofin, puois que·us aug encolpar
lo fin e·l caitiu razonar:
q’eissamens obra caitiva
faria }

In Chrétien de Troyes’s Lancelot, a wicked woman arranged a fake rape scene to test Lancelot’s courage and spur his passion. Men are eager to help women in distress. Men should be more aware of how women like Domna H. manipulate them and set them up to be charged with felony crimes.[3]

Trivializing women’s sexual assaults against men contributes to the gender protrusion among prisoners. Consider the case of an eager lover of women in early twelfth-century southern France, the man trobairitz Guilhem IX of Aquitaine, also known as Guillem de Peiteus. One day while walking in the sunshine and coyly looking for women to love, he encountered the wives of Sir Guarin and Sir Bernard. Those women greeted him courteously, but they warily observed that many fools wander about the world.

Learned lovers know the effective seduction tactic “agree and amplify.” Guilhem responded to the wives in a language that might have been Arabic, a prestigious, classical language of great lovers.[4] But whatever he said was gibberish to them. That intrigued the women:

So Agnes said to Ermaline,
“Let’s take him home, quick; don’t waste time.
He’s just the thing we hoped to find:
mute as a stone.
No matter what we’ve got in mind,
it won’t get known.”

Under her cloak, one let me hide;
we slipped up to her room’s fireside.
By now, I thought one could abide
to play this role —
right willingly I warmed myself
at their live coals.

They served fat capons for our fare —
I didn’t stop at just one pair;
we had no cook or cook’s boy there,
but just us three.
The bread was white, the pepper hot,
the wine flowed freely.

{ So diz n’Agnes a n’Ermessen:
“Trobat avem que anam queren.
Sor, per amor Deu, l’alberguem,
qe ben es mutz,
e ja per lui nostre conselh
non er saubutz.”

La una·m pres sotz son mantel,
menet m’en cambra, al fornel.
Sapchatz qu’a mi fo bon e bel,
e·l focs fo bos,
et eu calfei me volentiers
als gros carbos.

A manjar mi deron capos,
e sapchatz agui mais de dos,
e no·i ac cog ni cogastros,
mas sol nos tres,
e·l pans fo blancs e·l vins fo bos
e·l pebr’ espes. } [5]

A capon is a rooster castrated to make for better eating. It’s an element of castration culture. It’s an ominous sign for any man. But Guilhem didn’t understand.

Taught to be suspicious of men, the women resolved to test him. They wanted to be sure that he wouldn’t be able to reveal the evil that they would do:

“Wait, sister, this guy’s full of fakes,
his babble — an act for our sake?
See if our big red cat’s awake
and fetch him, quick.
Right here’s one silence we should break
if it’s a trick.”

So Agnes brought that wicked beast,
mustachioed, huge, and full of yeast;
to see him sitting at our feast —
seemed less than good;
I very nearly lost my nerve
and hardihood.

We’d had our fill of drink and food,
so I undressed, as they thought good.
They brought that vile cat where I stood —
my back was turned —
and then they raked him down my side
from stem to stern.

And all at once, they yanked his tail
to make him dig in, tooth and nail.
I got a hundred scars, wholesale,
right then and there.
They could have flayed me, though, before
I’d budge one hair.

{ “Sor, aquest hom es enginhos,
e laissa lo parler per nos:
nos aportem nostre gat ros
de mantement,
qe·l fara parlar az estros,
si de re·nz ment.”

N’Agnes anet per l’enujos,
e fo granz et ac loncz guinhos:
e eu, can lo vi entre nos,
aig n’espavent,
qu’a pauc non perdei la valor
e l’ardiment.

Quant aguem begut a manjat,
eu mi despoillei a lor grat.
Detras m’aporteron lo gat
mal e felon;
la una·l tira del costat
tro al tallon.

Per la coa de mantenen
tira·l gat et el escoissen:
plajas mi feron mais de cen
aqella ves;
mas eu no·m mogra ges enguers,
qui m’ausizes. }

The red cat is male, signifying men’s mistreatment of men and men’s complicity in women’s mistreatment of men. But men naturalize their own oppression. They simply accept whatever abuse they suffer. Guilhem said not a word in response to the brutal physical abuse that he endured.

Men’s willingness to suffer allows women to exploit them. So it was for Guilhem:

So Agnes said to Ermaline,
“He’s mute for sure, sister; that’s fine.
Let’s take a nice warm bath, unwind,
then take things slow.”
I stayed inside their oven there
eight days or so.

I fucked them, fairly to relate,
a full one hundred eighty eight.
My breech-strap near broke at that rate,
also my reins.
I can’t recount all my distress
or half my pains.

No; I can’t tell all my distress
or half my pains.

{ “Sor, diz n’Agnes a n’Ermessen,
mutz es, qe ben es conoissen;
Sor, del banh nos apareillem
e del sojorn.”
Ueit jorns ez encar mais estei
en aquel forn.

Tant las fotei com auzirets:
cen e quatre vint et ueit vetz,
q’a pauc no·i rompei mos coretz
e mos arnes;
e no·us pues dir lo malaveg,
tan gran m’en pres.

Ges no·us sai dir lo malaveg,
tan gran m’en pres. }

All his erection labor left Guilhem broken and in pain. Men should be adequately compensated for their erection labor. Instead, Guilhem was first scourged and bloodied with a red cat’s claws and fangs. An alternate version of the song concludes with Guilhem sending a message to Agnes and Ermaline to kill that red cat for love of him. They owe him much more than that.[6] In a society whose penal institutions weren’t deeply biased toward punishing men, both wives would be arraigned for aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Domna H. and Rofin, “Rofin, digatz m’ades de quors,” st. 1, Occitan text from Bruckner, Shepard & White (1995) p. 78, English translation (modified slightly) from Paden & Paden (2007) p. 180. All subsequent quotes from this song are similarly sourced. This poem is classed as a partimen, a type of tenso (debate poem). A partimen sets forth in its first stanza a topic for the two parties to debate. Domna H. and Rofin were probably an Italian lady and a joglar (itinerant entertainer), respectively. Id.

Bernart Marti thought that a woman having two lovers in addition to her husband was unfaithful and disgraceful:

A lady toward her lover is perfidious
when she gives her love to three:
beyond lawful
is three,
but apart from her husband
I’ll allow her one pleading lover,
and if she seeks out more,
she’s a disgrace
and a proven whore.

{ Dona es vas drut trefana
De s’amor, pos tres n’apana:
Estra lei
N’i son trei,
Mas ab son marit l’autrei
Un amic cortes prezant.
E si plus n’i vai sercant
Es desleialada
E puta provada. }

Bernart Marti, “Bel m’es lai latz la fontana” st. 2, Occitan text and English translation (modified slightly) from Léglu (1999) p. 53. Here’s the full Occitan text of this song. Medieval European literature warned men against having more than one wife.

[2] Matthew 6:13, Luke 11:4, i.e. a petition in the prayer commonly know as “Our Father {Pater noster}.”

[3] In recent decades, carceral anti-meninism has flourished in elite literary scholarship. For example, Puckett expands and celebrates Domna H.’s anti-meninism:

Domna H attacks the entire spectrum of male heterosexual sexuality, presenting all male desire and sexuality as out of control; those who are not “shameful, soft and cowardly” turn out to be rapists, unable to control their excessive sexual desires, while those who do not force their beloved are motivated more by concerns for their own potential sexual lack, by their inability to control their own bodies, than by abstract questions of mutuality or morality.

Puckett (2012) p. 13.

[4] On Guilhem’s possible contact with Arabic speakers, Beech (1992). Fourteenth-century lyric song in the Spanish masterpiece Libro de buen amor clearly shows the influence of Arabic.

[5] Guilhem IX of Aquitaine, “Farai un vers, pos mi somelh,” st. 6, Occitan text and English trans. (by Snodgrass, modified slightly) from Kehew (2005) pp. 30-1. For simplicity I refer to the poetic narrator as Guilhem. However, the song-author Guilhem IX of Aquitaine surely was poetically sophisticated enough to create a narrator’s voice different from his own real-life self. Subsequent quotes are similarly from id. Paten & Paten (2007) pp. 26-7 provides another translation. Freely available online are alternate translations by James H. Donalson, Leonard Cottrell, and trobar.

Guilhem IX of Aquitaine, who lived from 1071 to 1126, is the first man trobairitz whose name is known. He is also apparently identified in manuscripts as “Count of Poitou {Coms de Peitieus}.” He was one of the wealthiest and most politically powerful men in Europe of that time. The medieval chronicler Geoffroy de Vigeois characterize him as “a vigorous lover of women {vehemens amator foeminarum}.” His Old Occitan vida calls him “one of the greatest deceivers of women {dels majors trichadors de dompnas}.” Kehew (2005) p 20.

[6] In writing a late-thirteenth-century songbook (chansonnier), the scribe apparently recognized the significance of Guilhem’s red-cat song to the trobairitz songs of Na Castelloza. In that chansonnier, a song sequence begins and ends with five of Guilhem’s songs that frame six trobairitz songs. Four of those six trobairitz songs are those of Na Castelloza. She sung against men being distinctively positioned as a gender subject to sexual feudalism. In depicting personally sexual abuse of a man, Guilhem’s red-cat song provocatively frames Castelloza’s critique of gynocentric oppression. See Chansonnier provençal, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M.819, folios 228-236 (written in Venice or Padua, c. 1285-1300). Cf. Nichols (1999) pp. 79-81.

[image] Mean red cat. Image from Grumpy Alice via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Beech, George T. 1992. “Troubadour Contacts with Muslim Spain and Knowledge of Arabic : New Evidence Concerning William IX of Aquitaine.” Romania. 113 (449): 14-42.

Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, eds. and trans. 1995. Songs of the Women Troubadours. New York: Garland.

Kehew, Robert, ed. 2005. Lark in the Morning: the Verses of the Troubadours: a bilingual edition. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Léglu, Catherine. 1999. “Moral and satirical poetry.” Ch. 3 (pp. 47-65) in Gaunt, Simon, and Sarah Kay, eds. The Troubadours: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Nichols, Stephen G. 1999. “The early troubadours: Guilhem IX to Bernart de Ventadorn.” Ch. 4 (pp. 66-82) in Gaunt, Simon, and Sarah Kay, eds. The Troubadours: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Paden, William D., and Frances Freeman Paden, trans. 2007. Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Puckett, Jennifer. 2012. “When a Woman Says ‘Yes,’ She Really Means ‘No’: The Subversive Rape Rhetoric of Domna H.” Tenso. 27 (1-2): 1-24.

Roland blows horn during massacre of men

The tenth-century Latin epic Waltharius sings of brutal violence against men — of arms and legs separated from men’s bodies, cruel blows to men’s heads, and eyes and teeth lost. Tell me, how can horrific violence against men continue to our day with so little public concern? Does Fate destine men to be the gender brutalized without compassion under gynocentrism?

Hildegrund and her betrothed, the courageous warrior Walter of Aquitaine, were returning home. They carried much treasure. Gunther, King of the Franks, heard news of them passing through his territory. Gathering with him twelve strong, self-sacrificing men, King Gunther set out to seize Hildegrund and her treasure. Walter’s friend from childhood, Prince Hagen of the Franks, reluctantly accompanied his king. Hagen strove to dissuade King Gunther from attacking Walter.[1]

Seeing Gunther and his band of men approaching, Walter and Hildegrund retreated to a cave that only one person at a time could access through a narrow ravine. King Gunther sent a messenger to them. Walter, attempting to negotiate safe passage through Gunther’s territory, offered generous payment. But Gunther wanted Hildegrund, the horse that she led, and the whole treasure chest. To save men’s lives, Hildegrund could have chosen to become Gunther’s queen, and she could have ordered Walter to give her horse and treasure chest to Gunther. Hildegrund, a strong, independent woman, said and did nothing. Thus ensued brutal violence against men and the loss of many men’s lives, which should be accounted as valuable as treasure.

While Hildegrund sat by watching, one by one Gunther’s men dutifully engaged in lethal combat with Walter. The first, Camalo, threw a spear at Walter. Walter dodged and countered with a spear throw that pierced Camalo’s arm and leg and pinned both to his horse. Then Walter ran up to him and thrust his sword into him to the hilt. One man was now dead.

On came Scaramund, Camalo’s nephew. “Now I shall either die or avenge my dear friend {Nunc aut commoriar vel carum ulciscar amicum}!” Scaramund quickly threw two spears at Walter and, charging at him, attempted a sword blow to Walter’s head. He hit weakly. Walter thrust his spear under Scaramund’s chin, lifted him up, and cut off his head with a sword-blow. Two men were now dead.

King Gunther raged, “Let’s attack him and given him no chance to rest {Aggrediamur eum nec respirare sinamus}.” Gunther’s liege Evarhard immediately went to do battle with Walter. From a distance Evarhard rained down on Walter arrows like a spring torrent. Wielding his shield like an umbrella, Walter deflected the arrows and then hurled his spear. It pierced the breast of Evarhard’s horse. The horse violently rose up and then collapsed on top of Evarhard. Walter then ran up and decapitated him. The total of dead men, which should be counted, rose to three.

King Gunther then ordered the Saxon Ekerich to attack Walter. Walter’s stout shield shattered the iron-tipped, cornel-wood spear that Ekerich threw with a throwing strap. Walter’s spear in contrast split Ekerich’s shield and ripped into his lungs: “unlucky Ekerich rolled over and coughed up a stream of blood {volvitur infelix Ekivrid rivumque cruoris / evomit}.” Four men were now dead.

With sword alone Hadawart attacked Walter. Climbing over the pile of dead men’s bodies to get to Walter, Hadawart swung his sword at Walter. Walter parried with his spear and knocked Hadawart’s sword into the bushes. Walter then knocked Hadawart down, stepped on his neck, and stabbed him to death. Men’s lives should matter for more than a count.

When watching a mass-market action movie, who counts how many men are killed? Why do politicians, among whom a majority are men, spend billions of dollars to address violence against women and say nothing about violence against men? Why do academics trivialize and laugh at violence against men?[2]

Eleven eminent men, one after another, went to their death in attacking Walter. Then King Gunther and Walter’s childhood friend Prince Hagen attacked him. Their fight ended only after Gunther lost a leg, Hagen lost an eye and three teeth, and Walter his right palm. Depriving men of their members is an aspect of historically entrenched castration culture. As shown in top-ranked recent U.S. television commercials, violence against men’s genitals is trivialized to sell mass-market consumer goods. So it is with violence against men more generally. At the end of the epic Waltharius, the maimed Walter and Hagen joke with each other about their bodily wounds.

An alternative exists for ending epic violence against men. The early thirteenth-century Old French epic Aymeri of Narbonne narrates a path not taken. In that epic’s first geste, the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne is returning from Spain. He is distraught about the death of Roland and others of his Peers in battle at Roncevaux. From a hilltop, Charlemagne saw the great port city of Narbonne. Three Muslim kings, along with twenty thousand well-armed men, held that strongly fortified city. Charlemagne, with his war-wary men yearning to return home, nonetheless resolved to take Narbonne.

Charlemagne’s Peers just said no to their emperor’s plan for further violence against men. Duke Naimon said to Charlemagne:

In faith, our men are so worn out with war
that three of them have not one woman’s force.
No count or king, no prince or knight of yours
desires to fight or attack this fort.

{ Et tuit nostre home sont si las par moi foi,
Que une fame ne valent pas li troi.
N’avez baron prince conte ne roi
Qui ait talant d’asaut ne de tornoi. } [3]

Charlemagne declared that he would give the city, once captured, to Naimon. Naimon responded that he would refuse to accept it.

Charlemagne then offered Narbonne to Count Dreues. That noble man spoke the reality of many men’s lives in relation to what they are urged to do:

“My lord,” he said, “I have not asked you for it.
The living fiend can take it and destroy it!
Within a month, in all faith I assure you,
I want to be in my own land and fortress,
where I may bathe and heal the wounds I’ve borne here.
I am worn out; I can do little more, sire.
I need to rest; in truth I am exhausted.
…
I do not want Narbonne.”

{ “Sire,” fet il, “mie ne vos en quier.”
“Li vis deables la puise trebuchier!
Foi que doi vos, ainçois .j. mois entier,
Vodrai ge estre en mon pais arrier;
La me ferai cousteir et bangnier,
Car toz sui las, ne me puis preu aidier,
S’avroie molt de repos grant mestier.
…
Car ge n’en ai que faire.” }

A new house? A new car? An expensive vacation? Many men don’t ask for these things, and they don’t want these things. They implore their lord for rest from all that they do.

Charlemagne then turned to Richard of Normandy, praised his bravery, and offered him Narbonne. Richard groaned and grieved. Then he told his emperor:

Within this land so long I’ve been
that all my flesh is bruised with injuries.
…
If I were back in Normandy, my seat,
there’s naught in Spain that I would want to keep,
nor would I care to rule Narbonne as liege.
Choose someone else, for I want it the least!
May hell-fire burn the city!

{ Tant ai esté en la terre haie
Que tote en ai la char tainte et blemie
…
Se g’estoie ore arriers en Normendie,
Ja en Espangne n’avroie menentie,
Ne de Nerbone n’avroie seignorie.
Donez la autre, car ge ne la quier mie.
De mau feu soit ele arse! }

The emperor stood there with downcast eyes. Too bad, one might say. Far better to endure disappointing looks and scorn than to waste one’s life.

One by one the Emperor Charlemagne asked twelve of his Peers to take Narbonne. They all refused. They all said in various ways that they were tired and had enough. Many men at various points in their lives feel the same way. Men must learn to say no and refuse to do what authorities want them to do. With this particular, rare courage, men can end epic violence against men.

In the tenth-century Latin epic Waltharius, eleven noble men willingly went to die in brutal battle one after another. In the thirteenth-century Old French epic Aymeri of Narbonne, twelve noble men refused Charlemagne’s offer to acquire Narbonne by fighting for it. That’s progress.

Because Count Aymeri didn’t say no to Emperor Charlemagne, epic violence against men didn’t end. Aymeri led the taking of Narbonne. He also led the defeat of a Saracen siege to retake Narbonne. Both involved mass slaughter of men. When the badly wounded Aymeri came to his bride Hermenjart, he kissed her three times and said:

This mighty realm is yours as much as mine!

{ Or seroiz dame de ceste grant contrée! }

Then he gave Narbonne to Hermenjart as a wedding gift. Unlike the twelve Peers of Charlemagne, she didn’t refuse to accept Narbonne. She didn’t have to consider fighting and dying in battle for Narbonne.

Epic violence against men continued for the sons of Hermenjart and Aymeri. Under gynocentrism, men must fight for their fortune, which is as much theirs as it their wives’:

With his foes in hand, Aymeri planned
to send his sons, each one, upon a quest
to other lands, to kings and marquises,
to fight for their own fortunes.

{ Or se pansa li frans cuens posteis
Q’an autres terres, a rois et a marchis,
Envoiera les damoisiax gentis;
S’iront ennor conquerre. }

Grotesque myths of gender inequality continue in our day with epic violence against men. With compassion for men, all women and men today should courageously say, “No. It must end.”

The beginning of the end is noticing. The back cover of the 2005 English translation of Aymeri of Narbonne breathlessly declares:

Aymeri of Narbonne tells the story of Aymeri, son of one of Charlemagne’s paladins, who alone accepts the great emperor’s challenge to reconquer the Languedoc city of Narbonne from the occupying Saracens. … But the real focus of the tale soon turns to the lovely — and courageous — Hermenjart. No passive object of desire or chivalric quest, the princess of Pavia becomes a character every bit as dynamic as her male suitor and his companions.

Hermenjart, “the real focus of the tale,” courageously takes Narbonne without having to do anything. The translator of the epic explains:

Hermenjart is possessed of an exotic beauty, an equal courage and moral strength to that of her French hero, and a greater charisma and enterprise to muster men, in small or large supply, to her and his support. [4]

Men have long been eager to lay down their lives in service to women. It was a women’s world. It still is a woman’s world. Whether the future is female, in accordance with female supremacist dogma, remains to be seen.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] The details in this and the subsequent six paragraphs are from Waltharius, ed. and trans. Ring (2016). A slightly inferior Latin text (part 1, part 2) is freely available online. The quotes above are ll. 691 (Now I shall either die…), 722 (Let’s attack him…), 778-9 (unlucky Ekerich…).

Kratz interprets Waltharius as mocking the epic tradition from a Christian perspective. He focuses particularly on Walter’s pride and greed. Kratz (1980) Ch. 2. Christianity regards men as no less children of God than women are. Yet like many persons, Christians often fail to see socially institutionalized massacres of men as contrary to men’s God-given human dignity.

[2] One academic declared:

By the time Walther takes on his sixth opponent — “sextus erat Patavrid” — this reader, at least, is rolling in the aisles.

Townsend (1996) p. 70. Why Townsend perceives men being brutally killed as hilariously funny isn’t clear. Townsend strains tendentiously and unconvincingly to support the dominant gynocentric pattern in academic interpretations of literary texts. The underlying sickness may be related to castration culture, as Townsend suggests:

the last state of Walther, Gunther, and Hagen suggests that the price of phallic potency is amputation — that those who live by the phallus are figuratively castrated by the phallus, and that within the signifying economy of patriarchy’s dominant fiction, as Kaja Silverman has contended, all {emphasis in original) subjectivity is castrated; or put different, that the price of the phallus is the rest of the body or at least significant portions of it.

Id. p. 83.

Waltharius is directly related to modern low-budget horror films and big-budget action movies through massive wounding and slaughter of men. On Waltharius and big-budget action films, Ziolkowski (2001) pp. 41-2. With respect to low-budget horror films, Townsend declares:

The investment of the young men who regularly watch these films {low-budget horror films} and who are thoroughly versed in their rigid conventions seems to lie, in significant measure, in seeing themselves as embodied in the Final Girl.

Townsend (1996) p. 71. Men who don’t want to be killed under gynocentric contempt for men’s lives naturally identify with women.

In the more liberal and less intellectually oppressive Middle Ages, persons perceived identity less ideologically. For example, Guibert of Nogent, a learned and highly perceptive twelfth-century abbot, greatly admired his mother. Guibert distanced himself from other women and men in his family. He described them as “either animals ignorant of God or savage warriors accused of bloodshed {aut animales et Dei ignari, aut efferos arma et caedium rei},” perhaps meaning by gender, respectively. Guibert of Nogent, Monodiae {Songs of Self} 1.2, Latin text from Bourgin (1907), my English translation benefiting from that of McAlhany & Rubenstein (2011) p. 8.

[3] Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, Aymeri of Narbonne ll. 219-22, Old French text from Daimson (1887) v. 2, English translation (modified slightly) from Newth (2005). Subsequent quotes are similarly from ll. 339-45, 356 (“My lord,” he said, …), 367-8, 372-6 (Within this land…), 4409 (This mighty realm is yours…), 4705-8 (With his foes in hand…).

Scholars have placed Aymeri of Narbonne in a genre called chanson de geste. Written forms of this genre were popular in France from about 1100 to 1300 GC. The most widely known chanson de geste is the Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland), probably written at the end of the eleventh century.

Aymeri of Narbonne has survived in five manuscript copies, the earliest of which dates to the middle of the thirteenth century. It probably was composed early in the thirteenth century. In the surviving manuscripts, it’s grouped with Girart de Vienne and Les Narbonnais, two other chansons de geste. Newth (2005) p. xiv.

[4] Newth (2005) p. xxii.

[image] Roland blows his horn at the massacre of men in a ravine at Roncevaux. Imagined scene from the Song of Roland. Oil on canvas painting made by Gustave Doré in the nineteenth century. Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Bourgin, George, ed. 1907. Guibert of Nogent. Histoire de sa vie: 1053-1124. Paris: Picard.

Demaison, Louis, ed. 1887. Aymeri de Narbonne: chanson de geste; texte, glossaire, et tables. Vol. 1, Vol. 2. Publications de la Société des Anciens Textes Français. Paris: F. Didot et cie.

Kratz, Dennis M. 1980. Mocking Epic: Waltharius, Alexandreis, and the problem of Christian heroism. Madrid, España: J.P. Turanzas.

McAlhany, Joseph, and Jay Rubenstein, trans. 2011. Guibert of Nogent. Monodies and the Relics of Saints: the autobiography and a manifesto of a French monk from the time of the crusades. New York, NY: Penguin Books.

Newth, Michael A, trans. 2005. Aymeri of Narbonne: a French epic romance. New York: Italica Press.

Ring, Abram, ed. and trans. 2016. Waltharius. Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 22. Leuven: Peeters. (A. M. Juster’s review)

Townsend, David. 1996. “Ironic Intertextuality and the Reader’s Resistance to Heroic Maculinity in the Waltharius.” Pp. 67-86 in Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome, and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages. New York: Garland Pub.

Ziolkowski, Jan. 2001. “Fighting Words: Wordplay and Swordplay in the Waltharius.” Pp. 29-51 in Olsen, Karin E., Antonina Harbus, and Tette Hofstra, eds. 2001. Germanic Texts and Latin Models Medieval Reconstructions: papers presented at an international conference held July 1-3, 1998, at the University of Groningen. Leuven: Peeters.

men dying in crusades battle

Men have long been socially regarded as disposable persons. Despite a recent court decision condemning sexist U.S. Selective Service registration, that injustice continues with little public notice. In late-medieval Europe, men’s life expectancy was about nine years less than that of women. In the ancient Mediterranean world, celebrated sayings of Spartan mothers urged men to die in battle. Cross-species and cross-cultural evidence indicates that disproportionate violence against men is constructed through social effects of sex. In poetry he wrote in the twelfth century in southern France, the man trobairitz Marcabru dared to suggest that part of the problem is women’s lack of concern for men’s lives.

In a song sardonically beginning “Peace in the name of the Lord! {Pax in nomine Domini!},” Marcabru called men to “a cleansing place {un lavador}.” The “cleansing place” was the men-killing fields of brutal Christian-Muslim battles in the medieval crusades. The Christian Book of Revelation describes many persons wearing white robes while standing before God’s throne:

One of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, clothed in white robes, and from where have they come?” I said to him, “Sir, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

{ καὶ ἀπεκρίθη εἷς ἐκ τῶν πρεσβυτέρων λέγων μοι οὗτοι οἱ περιβεβλημένοι τὰς στολὰς τὰς λευκὰς τίνες εἰσὶν καὶ πόθεν ἦλθον. καὶ εἴρηκα αὐτῷ κύριέ μου σὺ οἶδας καὶ εἶπέν μοι οὗτοί εἰσιν οἱ ἐρχόμενοι ἐκ τῆς θλίψεως τῆς μεγάλης καὶ ἔπλυναν τὰς στολὰς αὐτῶν καὶ ἐλεύκαναν αὐτὰς ἐν τῷ αἵματι τοῦ ἀρνίου. } [1]

Jesus, the Lamb of God in Christian understanding, suffered bloody crucifixion. On the pattern of standing under Jesus when a soldier pierced his side and blood and water poured down, this song figures medieval Christian men getting covered in blood in battles with Muslims as a redemptive position — “the cleansing place.” Those men who didn’t want to wash their robes in the blood of brutal violence were shamed:

Degenerate are the Frenchmen all
if they reject the holy cause
to which they’re called.

{ Desnaturat son li Frances,
Si de l’afar Dieu dizon no,
Q’ie·us ai comes. } [2]

As Marcabru recognized, men are socially pressured to risk their lives in lethal battle.

In another twelfth-century song, Marcabru again represented the conscription of men into battle. The poem’s amorous narrator met a noble girl with a lovely figure in a locus amoenus — an idyllic place of natural beauty, serenity, and fruitfulness. She ignored him:

There by the welling spring she cried,
and from her breast escaped a sigh:
“Jesus, king of earth and sky,
you have magnified my pains —
I sorrow for the shame you suffer,
but grieve that the best men at offer
leave to serve your higher aim.”

“In your company goes my loved one,
handsome, strong, of valor proven,
gone. And in his place I’m given
desire and weeping unrestrained.
Ah, a curse upon King Louis,
he who calls men into service!
Meanwhile my grieving heart lies slain.”

{ Dels huelhs ploret josta la fon
E del cor sospiret preon.
“Jhesus,” dis elha, “reys del mon,
Per vos mi creys ma grans dolors,
Quar vostra anta mi cofon,
Quar li mellor de tot est mon
Vos van servir, mas a vos platz.”

“Ab vos s’en vai lo meus amicx,
Lo belhs e·l gens e·l pros e·l ricx;
Sai m’en reman lo grans destricx,
Lo deziriers soven e·l plors.
Ay mala fos reys Lozoicx
Que fai los mans e los prezicx,
Per que·l dols m’es el cor intratz!” } [3]

This noble woman laments that the worldly power King Louis orders the best men to serve Jesus by fighting to bring the Holy Land under Christian control. That’s the “cleansing place.” That’s the worldly hell of war. While this noble woman curses King Louis, her concern isn’t men’s suffering, but her own:

In these two stanzas the woman is talking about herself: She is more hurt and more wounded by her lover’s absence from her than she is concerned for his safety on the Crusade. It never occurs to her that his pain and suffering, emotional and physical, might be equal to hers or greater. Her grief excludes everything outside herself, including her lover, because grief is a stronger emotion in her than love. [4]

Men being maimed and killed in war is of relatively little public concern. What matters is that women suffer in war, because they are deprived of men who love and serve them. So felt this noble woman of Marcabru’s poem, and so proclaim leading authorities today.[5]

The amorous narrator sought to make this noble woman happy, as men commonly do for women. In their basic sexual functioning, all men are equal. In that animal sense, one man’s wood rises and shoots as good as another’s:

When I heard her grieving,
I walked toward her by the clear water.
“Pretty one,” I said, “too much weeping
will stain your face and lovely color.
Try not to fall into despair,
for he who makes the woods leaf out
can give you plenty of joy.”

{ Quant ieu l’auzi desconortar,
Ves lieys vengui josta·l riu clar.
“Belha,” fi·m ieu, “per trop plorar
Afolha cara e colors;
E no vos cal dezesperar,
Que selh qui fai lo bosc fulhar,
Vos pot donar de joy assatz.” } [6]

Men are plentiful, but each man is unique and special, and each man is a fully human being. Women who regard men as interchangeable sex toys dehumanize them. The narrator internalized that dehumanization of men. The woman, in contrast, valued her specific man:

“Sir,” said she, “I well believe
that God will have mercy on me
as he has had on sinners before,
in heaven, many and evermore.
But here on earth he sends afar
the man who loved me and does not care
now that he has gone away!”

{ “Senher,” dis elha, “ben o crey
Que Dieus aya de mi mercey
En l’autre segle per jassey,
Quon assatz d’autres peccadors:
Mas say mi tolh aquelha rey
Don joys mi crec! mas pauc mi tey
Que trop s’es de mi alonhatz.” }

Men become absent from ordinary life when authorities send them into the worldly hell of war. Men also become absent from ordinary life when they are ejected from their children’s lives through divorce and anti-men family-court bias. The woman feels that God doesn’t care about men’s absence in ordinary life. She has projected onto God gynocentric society’s lack of concern for losing men.

Unlike the United Nations’ propaganda campaign HeForShe, “she for him” is both grammatical correct and true social justice. Women, appreciate men! Appreciate men for their tonic masculinity. Appreciate men not just for what they do for you, but also because men are fully human beings. Men simply in their being are fully worthy of human dignity and respect.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Revelation 7:13-14, Greek text is the Morphological GNT via Blue Letter Bible. On blood and water flowing from Jesus’s lanced side, John 19:34.

[2] Marcabru, “Peace in the name of the Lord! {Pax in nomine Domini!},” 8.1-3, Occitan text and English trans. (by Kehew) from Kehew (2005) pp. 58-9. Paden & Paden (2007) pp. 43-5 provides an alternate translation, with notes. Here’s an online text and English translation of the whole song. Here’s a version sung to a non-original melody.

The historical context of disparaging the French men was their sluggish response to the Muslim victory at Antioch in 1136. Raymond, the defeated prince of Antioch, was the younger son of the man trobairitz Guilhem IX of Aquitaine. Paden & Paden (2007) p. 45, n. 8 & 9.

[3] Marcabru, “A la fontana del vergier” stanzas 3 & 4, Occitan text and English trans. (by Kehew, modified slightly) from Kehew (2005) pp. 44-5. Here’s an online text and English translation of the whole song. Paden & Paden (2005), pp. 46-7, provides an alternate translation. The woman apparently curses King Louis VII of France, who summoned men to crusade in 1146. King Louis VII’s wife was the extraordinarily privileged Eleanor of Aquitaine. Id. p. 46. With her vast wealth, Eleanor of Aquitaine financially supported trobairitz, including impecunious men trobairitz.

[4] Olson (1976) p. 195. Older scholarship ignored the missing men who had been disposed into brutal battle. Thus the poem displays “monumentality and tranquility, which is perfectly accomplished and classical {monumentalität und Ruhe, die durchaus vollendet und klassisch ist}.” Vossler (1913) p. 55, cited in Olson (1976) p. 194. More recent scholarship deploys poor-dearism and men-hating in a way that defies belief for any thinking person:

the woman is always subservient to the male order, always a construct. Like a puppet, she is manipulated, in gesture and in voice. The work divides rather neatly into three parts, each offering evidence of the ways in which the invented woman may satisfy male needs.

Cholakian (1987) p. 8. Citing Kathryn Gravdal as authority, Cholakian apparently believes that the entire medieval corpus of pastoral poetry shows “the implicit as well as the explicit intention of rape.” Id. p. 11, n. 20.

Women are deeply involved in the social disposal of men in battle. Jackson declared:

to my knowledge there exists no medieval poem in any language in which a female persona is portrayed as speaking out in support of crusading.

Jackson (2003) p. 2, and again on p. 79. Medieval Arabic poetry has a recognized genre of poems in which women incite men to violence like crusading. Sefer Shaashuim, a Hebrew work from about 1200, tells of how a woman deliberately incited a war. Albertanus of Brescia’s thirteenth-century Liber consolationis et consilii artfully has Melibee provide unusual, irenic advice to her husband.

[5] In 1998 at a conference on domestic violence, Hillary Clinton declared:

Women have always been the primary victims of war. Women lose their husbands, their fathers, their sons in combat.

The United Nations subsequently endorsed similar false news on multiple occasions, adding in rape for additional sensationalism. For example, in 2003, authorities informed the United Nations Security Council that “women suffer disproportionately during and after war.” Here’s the press release proclaiming that propaganda. On International Women’s Day in 2017, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull reminded everyone that “women are disproportionately the victims of war.” Apparently to elite regret, some persons have retained their ability to perceive reality. Those persons are thus understandably and rightfully angry.

[6] Marcabru, “A la fontana del vergier” stanza 5, Occitan text from Kehew (2005) p. 46, English trans. from Paden & Paden (2007) p. 46. I’ve used the later source for the English translation because it keeps closer to the Occitan original. The subsequent quote is from id., stanza 6 (the concluding stanza).

[image] Men being killed in a brutal battle of the crusades. Upper register of folio 23v in the Crusader Bible / Morgan Picture Bible of Louis IX. Generally thought to have been made in Paris about 1245. Preserved as MS M.638 in the Morgan Library & Museum (New York). Here’s detailed analysis of the Crusader Bible / Morgan Picture Bible.

References:

Cholakian, Rouben C. 1987. “Marcabru’s ‘A la fontana del vergier’: A Hybrid Form.” Tenso. 3 (1): 1-14.

Jackson, William E. 2003. Ardent Complaints and Equivocal Piety: the portrayal of the crusader in medieval German poetry. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.

Kehew, Robert, ed. 2005. Lark in the Morning: the Verses of the Troubadours: a bilingual edition. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Olson, Susan. 1976. “Immutable love: Two good women in Marcabru.” Neophilologus: An International Journal of Modern and Mediaeval Language and Literature. 60 (2): 190-199.

Paden, William D., and Frances Freeman Paden, trans. 2007. Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Vossler, Karl. 1913. Der Trobador Marcabru und die Anfänge des gekünstelten Stiles. Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Philologischen Und Historischen Classe der K.B. Akademie der Wissenschaft Zu München 11. München: Königlich Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Marcabru the troubadour

The brilliant twelfth-century troubadour Marcabru distinguished between true love and false love. He disparaged women for loving brutish men. He assailed men who allowed themselves to be cuckolded. Marcabru’s medieval Occitan vida states that he “spoke ill of women and of love {dis ma de las femnas e d’amor}.”[1] Why in writing about men-abasing courtly love would Marcabru have spoken ill of women and love?

In Marcabru’s time, a working man from Provence loved a highly privileged Genoese woman. Genoa was then an independent city-state and one of the wealthiest ports on the Mediterranean. Using his native language, the struggling Provençal man pleaded with the elite Genoese woman for her love:

Beautiful one, I have begged you so much,
if it please you, to love me,
I whom am your vassal,
for you are noble and well-educated
and you uphold all good worth.
For these reasons your friendship pleases me.
Since you are courteous in all you do,
my heart is fixed on you,
rather than on any other Genoese lady.
Your mercy will show if you love me,
and then I will be better repaid
than if Genoa were mine,
with all the wealth hoarded there
by the Genoese.

{ Bella, tant vos ai preiada
Si.us plaz, q’amar me voillaz
Q’eu sui vostr’endomenjaz,
Car es pros et enseignada
E toz bos prez autreiaz,
Per qe.m plai vostr’amistaz;
Car es en toz faiz cortesa
S’es mos cors en vos fermaz
Plus q’en nulla Genoesa,
Per q’er merces si m’amaz;
E pois serai meilz pagaz
Qe s’era mia.ill ciutaz
ab l’aver q’es aiostaz
Dels Genoes. } [2]

The highly privileged Genoese woman responded in her Genoese language:

Minstrel, you are not courteous
in requesting this of me
since I will do nothing.
Go hang yourself
— I will not be your friend!
Indeed, I’ll slit your throat,
you cursed Provençal.
I’ll heap insults on you:
dirty, stupid, hairless!
I’ll never love you
because I have a husband more handsome
than you, and I know it well.
Go away, brother, for I have
better things to do with my time.

{ Iuiar, voi no sei corteso
Qe me chaideiai de zo,
Qe niente no farò.
Ance fossi voi apeso
— vostr’amia non serò.
Certo, ia ve scanerò,
Provenzal malaurao!
Tal enoio ve dirò:
Sozo, mozo, escalvao!
Ni ia voi non amerò,
Q’eu chu bello marì o
Qe voi no sei, ben lo so.
Andai via, frar’, eu temp’ò
Meillaura! }

The woman went on to disparage the man as having less sense than a cat. She also made further ethnic slurs against Provençals. When the man offered to serve her well sexually, she suggested that he go mount a pack-horse.

privileged lady

Courtly love was a form of structural gender oppression of men. Without concern for men’s disadvantaged position, some women treated men badly:

Lady, because of you I am in great torment.
— Sir, you act foolishly, and I am not grateful to you for that.
Lady, for God’s sake, be considerate.
— Sir, your pleas are wasted on me.
Good lady, I love you with a pure heart.
— Sir, and I desire you less than I desire anyone.
Lady, for that reason, I have a sorrowful heart.
— Sir, and I am happy and joyful.

Lady, I am dying for lack of encouragement from you.
— Sir, you are taking a long time to do it.
Lady, my life is worse than death.
— Sir, I’m pleased, provided I don’t cause your death.
Lady, I get nothing but discouragement from you.
— Sir, do you think you can force me to love you?
Lady, you can save me with a look.
— Sir, you have no hope or encouragement.

Lady, I then go elsewhere to beg for pity.
— Sir, then leave — who is keeping you?
Lady, I cannot because your love holds me back.
— It does that, Sir, without my help.
Lady, you always reply to me too harshly.
— Sir, that’s because I hate you more than anyone.
So, Lady, you will never be kind to me?
— Sir, it will be as you say, I believe.

{ Domna, per vos estauc en greu turmen.
— Senher, que fols faitz, qu’ieu grat no.us en sen.
Domna, per dieu, ajatz en chauzimen.
— Senher, vostres precs hi anatz perden.
Bona domna, ie.us am ieu finamen.
— Senher, et ie.us vuelh peitz qu’a l’autra gen.
Domna, per so n’ai ieu lo cor dolen.
— Senher, et ieu alegre e iauzen.

Domna, ia muer per vos sens nulh cofort.
— Senher, ben trop n’auretz faich lonc acort.
Domna, ia es ma vida peigz de mort.
— Senher, so.m platz, sol que no.us no’aya tort.
Domna, de vos non ai mas desconort.
— Senher, e doncs cujatz qu’ie.us am per fort?
Domna, ab un semblan m’agratz estort.
— Senher, respieit no.n ajatz ni conort.

Domna, vauc doncs alhors clamar merce.
— Senher, anatz de sai — qui vos rete?
Domna, no puesc, que vostr’amors me te.
— Senes cosselh, senher, o fa de me.
Domna, trop mal mi respondetz ancse.
— Senher, quar peigz vos vuelh qu’az autra re.
E doncs, dona, no.m faretz ia nulh be?
— Senher, aissi er cum disez, so cre. } [3]

Cruel, uncaring women didn’t just treat unwanted men-lovers badly. They also treated their husbands badly:

I’m pretty, yet I have heavy despair
by my husband, for him I neither want nor desire.

With that I’ll tell you why I so seek love:
I’m pretty, yet I have grave despair
by my husband, for him I neither want nor desire.

Because I’m petite, young, and ready,
I’m pretty, yet I have grave despair
by my husband, for him I neither want nor desire.

And a husband who makes me joyful is what I deserve,
with whom I could always laugh and play.
I’m pretty, yet I have grave despair
by my husband, for him I neither want nor desire.

May God save me if I have ever loved him.
I’m pretty, yet I have grave despair
by my husband, for him I neither want nor desire.

To sleep with him is bitter for me.
I’m pretty, yet I have grave despair
by my husband, for him I neither want nor desire.

And when I see him I feel so ashamed
that I pray death will come to take him soon.
I’m pretty, yet I have grave despair
by my husband, for him I neither want nor desire.

{ Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire
per mon marit, qar ne.l voil ne.l desire.

Q’en be.us dirai per qe son aisi drusa,
Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire
per mon marit, qar ne.l voil ne.l desire.

Qar pauca son, ioveneta e tosa,
Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire
per mon marit, qar ne.l voil ne.l desire.

E degr’aver marit dunt fos ioiosa,
Ab cui toz temps pogues iogar e rire.
Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire
per mon marit, qar ne.l voil ne.l desire.

Ia Deus mi.n.sal se ia sui amorosa;
Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire
per mon marit, qar ne.l voil ne.l desire.

De lui amar, mia sui cubitosa,
Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire
per mon marit, qar ne.l voil ne.l desire.

Anz quant lo vie, ne son tant vergoignosa
q’er prec la mort qe.l venga tost aucire.
Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire
per mon marit, qar ne.l voil ne.l desire. } [4]

After the introductory refrain, this song has end rhymes across the first lines of the stanzas, with every third stanza having four verses rather than three. That formal sophistication matters little relative to the utter self-absorption of the woman’s words. The song is all about her. Because she is pretty, she feels entitled to whatever she desires. That’s a common aspect of female privilege under gynocentrism.

Some medieval literature spoke ill of men. Why would it be remarkable if Marcabru spoke ill of women? Today writers who would write anything even mildly critical of women had best append to every instance of the word “women” a pious tag: PBUT & NAWALT, meaning “praise be upon them and not all women are like that.” The danger of not writing piously about women is made clear in a thirteenth-century trobairitz song:

I cannot keep silent, I must say what I think
about that for which I have great hurt in my heart.
It gives me pain and grief to tell
about those ancient troubadours,
now dead, for I say they gravely sinned.
They led the world into confusion
when they spoke ill of women openly.
All who hear their speech believe it,
and grant that such things seem true.
Thus they have led the world into error.

{ No puesc mudar no digua mon vejaire
D’aisso don ay al cor molt gran error
Et er me molt mal e greu a retraire
Quar aquist antic trobador
Que.n son passat, dic que son fort peccaire
Qu’ilh an mes lo segl’en error
Que an dig mal de domnas a prezen
E trastug silh q’o auzon crezo.ls en
Et autreyon tug que ben es semblansa
Et aissi an mes lo segl’en erransa. } [5]

The danger is in speaking “openly” about women. If all who hear openly spoken words about women believe and judge them to be true, maybe those words actually are true. Maybe women in fact are equally human beings with men, not goddesses. Perhaps women even fart.

All these men were good troubadours,
and they pretended to be loyal lovers.
But I know that no lover can be true
who speaks ill of love;
rather, I say he’s deceitful in love
and behaves like a traitor.
The more strongly he strives for love,
the more candidly he speaks ill of it,
for even if a man owned all of France,
but had no lady, he would have no happiness.

{ E tug aquist que eron bon trobaire
Tug se fenhon per lial amador,
Mas ieu sai be que non es fis amaire
Nuls hom que digua mal d’amor;
Enans vos die qu’es ves amor bauzaire
E fai l’uzatge al traitor;
Aicel que se so on plus fort s’aten
Plus en ditz mal aissi tot a prezen
Quar neguns hom, s’avia tota Fransa,
No pot ses don’aver gran benestansa. }

A man without a woman is like a fish without a bicycle. Why hasn’t that sentiment become famous? Those who can’t distinguish between men-abasing courtly love and mutually generous, self-sacrificing love are incapable of distinguishing between false and true.

Never will a man of noble nature
allow another man to speak so foolishly,
as do those who are deceitful, fickle
lovers, and who all act the same.
Lord Marcabru spoke like a preacher,
who in a church or a place of prayer,
speaks great ill of those who don’t believe —
just so he spoke ill of women.
I tell you that there’s no great honor
in speaking ill of those who birth infants.

{ E ja nulhs hom que sia de bon aire
No sufrira qu’om en digua folhor,
Mas silh que son ves amor tric e vaire
Ho tuzonon e s’en tenon ab lor;
Qu’en Marcabrus a ley de predicaire
Quant es en gleiza ho orador
Que di gran mal de la gen mescrezen,
Et el ditz mal de donas eyssamen/
E dic vos be que non l’es gran honransa
Selh que ditz mal d’aisso don nays enfansa. }

Women instruct men to police other men for threats against gynocentrism. Men, if they want to be “noble” in women’s eyes, must punish men who are deceitful, fickle lovers. In addition, anyone who calls a woman a deceitful, fickle lover is a misogynist. Women are a privileged class because they give birth to infants. In contrast, men’s erection labor merits only laughter.

The great troubadour Marcabru spoke truth to power. Like Matheolus, Valerius, Hugh Primas and other courageous medieval men, Marcabru with compassion toward men sought to warn them:

Marcabru, son of Marcabruna,
was engendered under such a moon
that he knows how love dies.
Listen!
He’s never loved a woman
nor been loved by any.

If you follow women’s wisdom
it’s right that you’ll meet your doom,
as Scripture teaches us.
Listen!
Misfortune will come to you,
if you are not careful!

{ Marcabrus, fills Marcabruna,
Fo engenratz en tal luna
Qu’el sap d’Amor cum degruna,
–Escoutatz!–
Quez anc non amet neguna,
Ni d’autra non fo amatz.

Qui per sen de femna reigna
Dreitz es que mals li·n aveigna
Si cum la letra·ns enseigna;
–Escoutatz!–
Malaventura·us en veigna
Si tuich no vos en gardatz! } [6]

Love dies when love is identified only with courtly love. Marcabru apparently didn’t love any women that way, nor did any so love him. Listen and learn from him! Today, terribly, yes all men are portrayed as evil, as being animated with toxic masculinity. Don’t listen to that. Euripides was slandered, too. So what if Marcabru spoke ill of women and courtly love? If you want nice, work for justice.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Here’s Marcabru’s vida in Occitan and English from BnF MS. 12473. Marcabru was from Gascony and probably sung fron 1130 to 1149. Guilhem X of Aquitaine, son of the troubadour Guilhem IX, patronized Marcabru, as did King Alfonso VII of Castile and León. About forty songs of Marcabru have survived. Paden & Paden (2007) p. 38. “Marcabru’s poetry is arguably the most powerful and distinctive of any of the troubadours.” Kehew (2005) p. 43. For the best Occitan text and English translations of all Marcabru’s surviving songs, Gaunt, Harvey & Paterson (2000). Nelson (1970) includes translations and is freely available.

Like sexual harassment authorities today, Marcabru condemned relationships between a superior and a subordinate worker:

A lady knows nothing of courtly love
if she loves a household servant;
her desire makes a bitch of her,
like a pure hound with a mongrel cur.

{ Dompna non sap d’amor fina
C’ama girbaut de maiso,
Sa voluntatz la mastina
Cum fai lebrieir’ ab gosso! }

Marcabru, “L’iverns vai e·l temps s’aizina {Winter departs and the weather follows}” st. 6.1-4, Occitan text and English translation (modified) from trobar. As has often been the case, Marcabru blamed husbands for their wives cuckolding them:

Married men with goatish minds,
you prepare your pillow so
that the cunt turns into thief.
Such a one says, “My son laughed at me,”
when he didn’t engender him.
You indeed keep a foolish appearance.

{ Moillerat, ab sen cabri
Atal paratz lo coissi
Don lo cons esdeven laire!
Que tals ditz: “Mos fills me ri”
Que anc ren no·i ac a faire:
Gardatz sen ben bedoi. }

Marcabru, “Dirai vos en mon lati {I shall tell you, in my language}” st. 6, Occitan text and translation (modified) from trobar.

[2] Raimbaut de Vaqueiras and an anonymous trobairitz, “Bella, tant vos ai preiada {Beautiful one, I have begged you so much},” st. 1, Occitan text from Nappholz (1994) p. 54, English translated (modified) from id. p. 55. The subsequent quote (st. 2) is similarly sourced from that song. Here’s a freely available, online text and translation, where the first line is “Domna, tant vos ai preiada {Lady, so much I have endeared you}.”

Raimbaut de Vaqueiras apparently wrote from about 1180 to 1205 in the courts of Provence and northern Italy. He was a master of multi-lingual songs. His “Eras quan vei verdeyar {Now when I see the meadows turning green}” consists of “a series of stanzas, first in Occitan and then in Genoese, Old French, Gascon, and Galician-Portuguese.” Pagen & Paden (2007) p. 136, from the introduction to an English translation of that song. Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’s most famous song is “The first of May {Kalenda maya},” a stamping dance song {estampida}. The melody of that song has survived. Here’s a online recording. For text and English translation of all of Raimbaut de Vaqueiras’s songs, Linskill (1964).

[3] Aimeric de Peguilhan and an anonymous trobairitz, “Domna, per vos estauc en greu turmen {Lady, because of you I am in great torment},” st. 1-3, Occitan text from Nappholz (1994) p. 80, English translated (modified) from id. p. 81. The Occitan text is also available in Chaytor (1902) pp. 71-2.

Aimeric de Peguilhan was born in Toulouse and sung his songs from about 1190 to 1220 on the Iberian peninsula and Italy. Fifty of his songs have survived, five with music. Gaunt & Kay (1999) p. 279. For texts and English translations of all of the songs of Aimeric de Peguilhan, Shepard & Chambers (1950).

[4] Anonymous trobairitz, “Coindeta sui, si cum n’ai greu cossire {I’m pretty, yet I have heavy despair},” st. 1-3, Occitan text from Nappholz (1994) p. 74, my English translation benefiting from those of id. p. 75 and Butterfly Crossing. Butterfly Crossing doesn’t represent in her text of the poem that the first stanza is a refrain. Exemplifying the “women are wonderful” effect, she wrote:

the content, at least for me, is justified and simultaneously hollow. Of course I understand the plight of the young girl, forced to marry a much older man, against her will. She wishes his demise (and here I believe it has less to do with his actual age as it does with her choice in the matter). Yet, her very real plight is lessened through her superficial excuse. Even aside from my own translation, the typical understanding of “coindeta” relies on a meaning of beauty and youth, with previous adjectives being “lovely,” “fair,” and “graceful.” While she may be all of those things, I think this refrain (“coindeta sui” is repeated three to four times in each of the five stanzas), detracts from her more serious condition of being married off against her will, regardless of either of their physical traits. His age or virility almost seems a pretext to her want for another, which, for whatever reasons, she cannot have (and I am willing to bet there are socio-economic reasons for her being denied a marriage of her choice). In short, regardless of his age or appearance, he was thrust upon her against her will, and thus she sings her unhappy lament at the situation.

Nothing in this ballad (balada) indicates that the speaking voice was “forced to marry a much older man, against her will.” The song indicates only that the wife despises her husband and wishes that he were dead. The husband has no voice in the poem. However, medieval Latin poetry includes laments of old men with respect to young women sexually harassing them.

Another ballad also develops the theme of cuckolding. It has the refrain:

When my jealous husband is away,
handsome friend,
come to me.

{ Qant la gilos er fora,
Bel ami,
vene-vos a mi. }

Occitan text and English translation from Nappholz (1994) pp. 112-3; also available from Klinck (2004) pp. 74-5.

Nappholz emphasizes the importance of trobairitz. They were:

contemporaries of troubadours, … but they were no mere imitators. Instead, they took the rhetoric of fin’amors and shaped it to suit their own needs. With wit sublety, and poetic skill, they created a subject position for themselves out of a rhetoric which, by its very nature objectified them.

Nappholz (1994) p. 1. Occitan song no more “objectified” trobairitz than it did so to men trobairitz. Women under gynocentrism have more freedom of speech than men do. That’s why studying marginalized men authors is so important.

[5] Raimon Jordon, “No puesc mudar no digua mon vejaire {I cannot keep silent, I must say what I think},” st. 1, Occitan text from Bruckner, Shepard & White (1995) p. 98, my English translation, benefitting from those of id., Nappholz (1994) p. 103, Paden & Paden (2007) p. 112. The subsequent two quotes and the subsequent two stanzas are similarly sourced.

The single manuscript in which “No puesc mudar no digua mon vejaire” survives ascribes it to the man trobairitz Raimon Jordon. Some scholars believe, however, that a trobairitz herself wrote it. They see support for that belief in the song’s last stanza:

Let no one marvel
if I speak this way and even then wish to prove
that every man should argue for his brother
and every lady for her sister,
because Adam was our first father
and all have the Lord God as creator;
and if, through this, I wish to make an argument
for ladies, I regret nothing at all,
because one lady should honor another,
and that’s why I have said how it seems to me.

{ Ia no sia negus meravellaire
s’ieu aisso dic ni vuelh mostrar alhor
que quascus hom deu razonar son fraire
e queia domna sa seror,
quar Adams fo lo nostre premier paire
et avem Damnidieu ad auctor,
e s’ieu per so vuelh far razonamen
a las domnas, no m’o reptes nien,
quar dona deu az autra far onransa
e per aisso ai.n ieu dig ma semblansa. }

Occitan text and English trans. sourced as above. Men have seldom argued for their brothers on matters of gender. That reality supports an ironic interpretation of the whole song.

[6] Marcabru, “Dire vos vuelh ses duptansa {I wish to speak firmly},” st. 11-12 (final two stanza), Occitan text from Rosenberg, Switten & Le Vot (1998) pp. 48-9, my English translation, benefiting from those of id., Paden & Paden (2007) pp. 38-9, and trobar. Carol Anne Perry Lagemann at St Cecilia Press offers a loosely translated, more easily singable version. Here’s a recording of this song based on its surviving melody. In some manuscripts, the order of the last two stanzas is reversed.

[images] (1) Marcabru. Illumination in chansonnier provençal (Chansonnier K). Made in the second half of the 13th century. Folio 102r in manuscript preserved as Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) MS. Français 12473. (2) Highly privileged lady. Illumination in chansonnier provençal (Chansonnier La Vallière). Made in the fourteenth century. Folio 103v in manuscript preserved as Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) MS. Français 22543.

References:

Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn, Laurie Shepard, and Sarah White, eds. and trans. 1995. Songs of the Women Troubadours. New York: Garland.

Chaytor, Henry. J., ed. 1902. The Troubadours of Dante: being selections from the works of the Provençal poets quoted by Dante ; with introd., notes, concise grammar and glossary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Gaunt, Simon and Sarah Kay. 1999. “Major Troubadours.” Appendix 1 (Pp. 279-291) (listing 56) in Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay. The Troubadours: an introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gaunt, Simon, Ruth Harvey, and Linda M. Paterson, ed. and trans. 2000. Marcabru: a critical edition. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer.

Kehew, Robert, ed. 2005. Lark in the Morning: the Verses of the Troubadours: a bilingual edition. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Klinck, Anne L. 2004. Anthology of Ancient Medival Woman’s Song. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Linskill, Joseph, ed. and trans. 1964. The Poems of the Troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. The Hague: Mouton.

Nappholz, Carol Jane, trans. 1994. Unsung Women: the anonymous female voice in troubadour poetry. New York: Lang.

Nelson, Deborah H. 1970. Marcabru, Prophet of Fin’Amors. Ph. D. Thesis. Ohio State University.

Paden, William D., and Frances Freeman Paden, trans. 2007. Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Rosenberg, Samuel N., Margaret Louise Switten, and Gérard Le Vot. 1998. Songs of the Troubadours and Trouvères: an anthology of poems and melodies. New York: Garland Pub.

Shepard, William P., and Frank M. Chambers, ed. and trans. 1950. The Poems of Aimeric de Peguilhan. Evanston: Nothwestern University Press.

medieval love as chess game

Returning triumphantly from leading the Huns in savage battle, Walter of Aquitaine entered the chamber of King Attila the Hun. There he met Hildegund of Burgundy. She was the beautiful young woman to whom he had been betrothed from childhood. Attila the Hun had taken both Hildegund and Walter from their parents as hostages. Alone in the king’s chamber, they embraced and enjoyed sweet kisses.

Hildegund administered the kingdom on behalf of Attila’s wife Ospirin. But Walter was no boot-licking General Belisarius. With manly self-assertion he said to Hildegund after his exhausting martial work:

Swiftly bring me here drink! I am tired and out of breath.

{ Ocius huc potum ferto, quia fessus anhelo. } [1]

She, striving to please her man, brought him a precious goblet filled with undiluted wine. He held her hand, and she looked at him intently. He then offered her a drink from the goblet. He said:

We have both endured exile so long —
not being unaware of what by luck our parents
arranged between us for our future life.
How long will we remain silent about this?

{ Exilium pariter patimur iam tempore tanto,
Non ignorantes, quid nostri forte parentes
Inter se nostra de re fecere futura.
Quamne diu tacito premimus haec ipsa palato? }

He wants to talk about marriage? He wants to talk about marriage when they’re alone in the king’s bedroom and have embraced and kissed and started drinking? Most men are romantically simple. What sort of man was Walter?

Hildegund thought that Walter was satirizing her and the idea of getting married. She remained silent for awhile. Then she burst out in epic eloquence:

Why fake in speech what you reject deep in your breast,
and with your mouth urge what you spurn with all your heart,
as if it were a great shame to marry such a bride?

{ Quid lingua simulas, quod ab imo pectore damnas,
Oreque persuades, toto quod corde refutas,
Sit veluti talem pudor ingens ducere nuptam? } [2]

In a more colloquial translation, “So you’re gay, so you’re just not into me, is that it?” Walter, a wise young man with extraordinary masculine self-control, had important plans. He also was learned in the game of love. He confidently dismissed Hildegund’s words:

Away with what you say! Set straight your sense!
Since no one is here but us alone,
know that I spoke nothing from a deceiving mind,
don’t think anything nebulous or false was mixed in.
If I knew you would focus for me a ready mind,
and faithfully, carefully keep your vows through everything,
then I would offer you all the mysteries of my heart.

{ Absit quod memoras, dextrorsum porrige sensum!
Noris me nihilum simulata mente locutum,
Nec quicquam nebulae vel falsi interfore crede!
Nullus adest nobis exceptis namque duobus.
Si nossem temet mihi promptam impendere mentem
Atque fidem votis servare per omnia cautis,
Pandere cuncta tibi cordis mysteria vellem. }

Scarcely anyone today can even imagine a man speaking such words to a woman. That’s why there’s now an epidemic of sexless marriages. To overcome that imaginative and performative disability, recognize reality and natural laws of cause and effect:

At last the maiden, bowing at the man’s knees, proclaimed:
“To wherever you call me, my lord, I will eagerly follow,
nor would I prefer anything above your pleasing commands.”

{ Tandem virgo viri genibus curvata profatur:
“Ad quaecumque vocas, mi domne, sequar studiose
Nec quicquam placitis malim praeponere iussis.” } [3]

Walter himself couldn’t overturn gynocentrism. But he acted so as to secure Hildegund’s respect for him.

With a careful plan and faithful execution, Hildegund and Walter escaped from the court of Attila the Hun. Walter carried heavy armor and weapons so that, if necessary, he could fight to protect Hildegund and himself. After forty days of flight, he spotted a well-protected cave nestled in the lush Vosges valley of northeastern France. Declaring that he needed rest, he led Hildegund to that cave.

Needing rest is natural, even for men, yet in seeking rest men run the risk of appearing weak. Men have the burden of continually maintaining a strong masculine frame to retain women’s passion for them. Walter masterfully handled that burden:

Putting aside his heavy burdens of war, he then said,
collapsing into the maiden’s lap: “Keep a careful watch,
Hildegund, and if you see a dark dust-cloud rising,
awaken me with your charming touch of gentle reminding,
and even if you should see a huge troop advancing,
take care, my dear girl, not to disturb my sleep immediately,
for from here one can see clearly to a far distance.
Attentively scan all points around the region.

{ Bellica tum demum deponens pondera dixit
Virginis in gremium fusus: “circumspice caute,
Hiltgunt, et nebulam si tolli videris atram,
Attactu blando me surgere commonitato,
Et licet ingentem conspexeris ire catervam,
Ne excutias somno subito, mi cara, caveto,
Nam procul hinc acies potis es transmittere puras.
Instanter cunctam circa explora regionem.” } [4]

Walter putting his head into Hildegund’s lap shows fine masculine initiative. Even better was his wry assertion of masculine self-confidence: if a huge troop is advancing to attack us, don’t wake me too soon. I want to enjoy a little more sleep before I deal with that problem. Readers should understand that Hildegund scanned the region with a smile on her face and a tingle in her loins.

Soon Hildegund spotted a group of heavily armed men advancing on horseback. Because she hadn’t learned the lesson that Erec taught Enide, she woke Walter when the group of armed men was still far away. Walter casually wiped his eyes to enliven them from his deep sleep. Then with sleep-stiff limbs he put on his clothes and armed himself. He began to prepare for battle by whipping his sword through the air.

The armed men approached closely, their spears flashing. Stupefied with fear, Hildegund cried out:

“We have the Huns here,” she said,
and falling to the ground in great sorrow spoke out:
“I beg, my lord, that my neck be cut by your sword,
so that I, not obtaining union with you in the marriage bed,
shall not suffer carnal intercourse with any other.”

{ “Hunos hic,” inquit, “habemus,”
In terramque cadens effatur talia tristis:
“Obsecro, mi senior, gladio mea colla secentur,
Ut, quae non merui pacto thalamo sociari,
Nullius ulterius patiar consortia carnis.” }

A virgin woman yearning to experience her beloved man’s sword is completely understandable. While Jephthah allowed his daughter to bully him into killing her, Walter was a strong, independent man. He thus refused to do what a woman begged him to do:

In response the young man said: “Shall your innocent blood stain me?”
And, “How can my strong sword strike down my enemies,
if it does not now spare so faithful a friend?
Away with your request! Toss fear from your mind!
The one who has often led me out of various dangers
can here, I believe, rout this enemy of ours.

{ Tum iuvenis: “cruor innocuus me tinxerit?” inquit
Et: “quo forte modo gladius potis est inimicos
Sternere, tam fidae si nunc non parcit amicae?
Absit quod rogitas; mentis depone pavorem.
Qui me de variis eduxit saepe periclis,
Hic valet hic hostes, credo, confundere nostros.” }

While he rejected yes-dearism, Walter like far too many men didn’t sufficiently value his own life. Facing brutal fighting against a numerous foe, including the highly skilled warrior Hagen, Walter said to Hildegund:

If only, God willing, I can disrupt his strength,
then,” he said, “from this battle my life shall be saved for you, Hildegund, my spouse.”

{ “Quam si forte volente deo intercepero solam,
Tunc,” ait “ex pugna tibi, Hiltgunt sponsa, reservor.” }

Every man’s life deserves to be saved for its intrinsic value and dignity, irrespective of whether he has a loving spouse. Epic violence against men continues because not every man has the courage to reject it.

Walter at least rejected Hildegund’s entreaty to kill her with his sword. Men are made for loving, not killing. At the same time, men should not expect romance to be simple. A man must be strong and skilled enough to build and sustain sexual tension to enjoy a long and loving conjugal partnership.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Waltharius, l. 223, Latin text and English trans. (modified slightly) from Ring (2016). A monk apparently wrote the Waltharius some time between 840 and 965 in a Germanic area.

Subsequent quotes are from Waltharius ll. 231-4 (We have both endured…), 237-9 (Why fake in speech…), 241-7 (Away with what you say…), 248-50 (At last the maiden…), 503-10 (Putting aside his heavy burdens…), 543(2nd half)-547 (We have the Huns…), 548-53 (In response the young man said…), 570-1 (If only, God willing…). The Latin text is from Ring (2016). That’s the leading critical edition. It’s slightly superior textually to a freely available online Latin text (part 1, part 2, part 3), but also includes documentation of textual variants. The English translation is my responsibility. I have benefited greatly from the translations of Ring (2016) and Kratz (1984).

[2] Hildegund regarded Walter’s prior words as spoken “in irony {per hyroniam}.” On the medieval meaning of that term:

One fragmentary manuscript of the Waltharius glosses the Latin hyoniam with the Germanic word spot (whence the modern German Spott), meaning “mockery” or even “sarcasm”

Ring (2016) pp. 170-1, n. 62, citing the published fragment images of Green (2004). The manuscript is known as Manuscript I and dates to the mid-eleventh-century. The Germanic gloss is from the twelfth century. Ring (2016) p. 22.

[3] Hildegrund poignantly alludes to the words that Ruth the Moabite spoke to her Jewish mother-in-law Naomi. Ruth 1:16.

[4] Nickel associates Walter putting his head in Hildegund’s lap with a folkloric tradition in which a warrior puts his head into a princess’s lap under a tree and asks her to examine his head for lice. In a still surviving oral version, when the man falls asleep and the princess looks up in the tree, she sees eleven hanged women in the branches. Nickel (1973) p. 141. This folktale motif is completely different in tone from the corresponding events in the Waltharius. Ring rightly calls the relationship between the stories “highly speculative.” Ring (2016) p. 176, n. 121.

[image] Woman and man engaged in chess game of love. The depicted minnesinger is Margrave Otto von Brandenburg (Otto IV, 1266–1308). Illustration from Codex Manesse, Zurich, made between 1305 and 1315. Manuscript preserved as UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, fol. 13r. Thanks to University of Hiedelberg and Wikimedia Commons. On love as a game of chess, see e.g. Bernart d’Auriac, “S’ieu agues len de saber e de sen,” and more generally, Blakeslee (1985).

References:

Blakeslee, Merritt R. 1985. “Lo dous jocx sotils: la partie d’échecs amoureuse dans la poésie des troubadours.” Cahiers De Civilisation Médiévale. 28 (110): 213-222.

Green, Jonathan. 2004. “Waltharius fragments from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.” Zeitschrift Für Deutsches Altertum Und Deutsche Literatur. 133 (1): 61-74.

Nickel, Helmut. 1973. “About the Sword of the Huns and the ‘Urepos’ of the Steppes.” Metropolitan Museum Journal. 7: 131-142.

Kratz, Dennis M., ed. and trans. 1984. Waltharius and Ruodlieb. New York: Garland Pub.

Ring, Abram, ed. and trans. 2016. Waltharius. Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 22. Leuven: Peeters. (A. M. Juster’s review)

medieval lovers

Sex in the age of mechanical reproduction commonly consists of robotic, minutely regulated affairs among persons earnestly trying to convince themselves that they’re alive. How many lovelorn persons desperately stroking their smartphones today even know what it means to have a roll in the hay? Why do they read a massively reproduced instruction book on the joy of sex? Fully alive, flesh-and-blood human beings acted differently in medieval times. Rather than faithfully believing in rape culture, medieval persons regarded sex as natural and pleasing.

Let the young man and virgin woman, both beautiful,
press against each other on the couch in the dark
and hug each other in turn repeatedly,
giving themselves many sweet embraces.

While holding her let the young man
kiss her with cheek close,
caressing her chest and nipples
and her fittingly satisfying little thing.

Thighs to thighs joined,
entering upon the fruit of Love,
let all clamor cease,
and so love be fulfilled.

{ Iuvenis et virgo pulcra
in obscuro premant fulcra,
et vicissim perconexus
dulces sibi dent amplexus.

Hosculetur hos, maxillam,
iuvenis dum tenet illam;
tangat pectus et papillam
satis aptam et puxillam.

Femur femori iungatur,
fructus Veneris summatur:
tunc omnino cesset clamor:
adimplebitur sic amor. } [1]

Late in the twelfth century, a monk at the Catalonian monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll apparently copied the above poem about two young lovers. These two young lovers didn’t sign a series of formal affirmative consent forms at each step in their amorous relationship. They behaved the way most young women and men yearn to do:

Tenderly I held her legs, without her resisting,
and with her consent caressed her above her thighs.
She didn’t then forbid me to caress her snowy-white breasts,
which to caress was for me extremely sweet.
We went to bed, both our bodies were entwined;
the rest, which she permitted me to take, wasn’t done reluctantly.

{ Cuius crus tenerum tenui, quod non negat ipsa,
Insuper ex coxas, sponte sua tetigi;
Nec vetuit niveas post me tractare papillas,
Quas tractare mihi dulce nimis fuerat.
Venimus ad lectum, connectimur insimul ambo;
Cetera, que licuit sumere, non piguit. } [2]

Like most men throughout history, this young man didn’t want to rape the young woman that he loved. The young man’s concern for the young woman’s consent contrasts with how she burst into his bedroom without asking permission:

Although I intended to open the closed, latched doors by hand,
a Venus herself burst through while I was separating them.
A beautiful young woman approached via that means
to give me loving kisses in a thousand ways.
Flora was her name, and florid were her deeds.
She bore honey in her throat and spoke honeyed words.

{ Cunque manu clausas valvas aperire volebam,
fregit poste seram protinus ipsa Venus.
Venerat illius conductu pulcra puella,
hoscula mille modis que mihi cara daret.
Flora sibi nomen, quia florida sunt sua facta,
gutture mella gerens, mellea verba dedit. } [3]

That young man didn’t file a sexual assault charge against the young woman. With generosity of spirit, he delighted in her enthusiastic consent to sex with him.

Medieval young women enthusiastically consented to sex with young men. That was especially so in the spring:

All young persons then
are burning in love;
he seeks her who desires him,
and thus he loves and is loved.

And the young woman aptly
seeks such who is young,
so that in an equal way she wants
only to love and to be loved.

{ Omnis ergo adolescens
in amore sit fervescens.
Querat cum quo delectetur
et, ut amet, sic ametur.

Et amicum virgo decens
talem querat qui sit recens
atque velit modo pari
tam amare quam amari. } [4]

The joy of sex is dissipating amid the opening chasm of sexual totalitarianism. In 2017, a journalist, a Beijing Bureau Chief, had a drunken hook-up with a journalist friend studying Chinese. Months later, piling on to an accusation about a sexual encounter five years earlier, she publicly denounced him. He became a target of online mobbing, his friends turned against him, and he was forced to resign as the president of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China. Then his employer, the Los Angeles Times, fired him. All this took place without any thorough, reasoned, multi-sided inquiry into the facts. A subsequent analysis that apparently attempted to be fair nonetheless declared:

Given the millennia during which women have had to take male abuse and suffer under institutionalized denial of and indifference to it, it is perhaps understandable that there is a willingness to shrug off the prospect that some unfairly accused men will become roadkill on the way to a more equitable future. [5]

That’s the childish sentiment that two wrongs will make a right. That’s the amoral consequentialism put forward by Walter Duranty, Ezra Klein, and other news-media thought leaders. That’s profoundly ignorant and narrow-minded history distorted with grotesque anti-men gender bigotry.

Earnestly believed, cartoonish stories of oppressors and victims provide foundations for unfathomable cruelty. Why did Stalin’s bureaucratic interrogators regularly stick heated metal rods into men’s anuses? Why did they crush men’s testicles with the toes of their jackboots?[6] Because those Russian men were bourgeoisie, whatever that means, and those Russian men were thus enemies of the working class, an ideological abstraction. A Spanish school teacher recently taught her students that boys should be castrated at birth. Sexual totalitarianism today teaches that men have been oppressors, and women have been victims throughout history.

How in such circumstances can women and men today experience the joy of sex as medieval men and women did? The great ancient poet-philosopher Lucretius provides the answer: women and men must make a true and authentic swerve from dominant delusions. They must live in the day-to-day reality of ordinary life, not in abstract ideology. Women and men today must conceive the vitality of medieval life, especially the imaginative vitality of medieval Latin literature.

medieval couple in bed

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Carmina Rivipullensia, “Redit estas cunctis grata {Summer returns promising pleasure to all},” ll. 21-32, Latin text from Stock (1971) p. 52, my English translation benefiting from those of id. p. 53 and Lazar (1989) p. 255. Here’s an online Latin text. Latin texts of the Ripoll love poems are also available in Raby (1959) pp. 332-40. All the poems of Carmina Rivipullensia are available in the first published edition, d’Olwer (1923), which is freely available online. The leading critical edition is Moralejo (1986), which unfortunately is difficult to acquire.

Carmina Rivipullensia survives in a single manuscript, MS Ripoll 74, now preserved in the Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó (Barcelona). The twenty-two Latin poems of Carmina Rivipullensia exist in a distinctive scribal hand written on three pages of a tenth-century Liber glossarum held at the monastery of Santa Maria de Ripoll in Catalonia. Based on the script, the songs were apparently written in that book late in the twelfth century. Dronke (1979) argues that Carmina Rivipullensia in MS Ripoll 74 represents an author’s work-in-progress. Traill (2006) convincingly argues that the poems are a copy. Traill suggests that a cleric wrote the love poems in Metz in the Lorraine region of northeastern France, perhaps in 1150 or 1151. A monk at Ripoll then copied those poems into the Ripoll glossary late in the twelfth century when the source book was to be returned to the monastery of St. Victor of Marseille.

[2] Carmina Rivipullensia, “Sol ramium fervens medium dum scandit Olimpi {At noon the hot sun, climbing Mt. Olympus, blazed down through the leaves},” ll. 17-22, Latin text from Stock (1971) p. 56, my English translation benefiting from those of id. p. 57 and Lazar (1989) p. 254.

The poem’s reference to “the rest {cetera}” associates the poem with Ovid, Amores 1.5.23-4. A twelfth-century Latin love poem commented in conclusion:

But who ignores the “et cetera”?
It surpasses every expectation.

{ Sed quis nescit cetera?
Predicatus vincitur. }

Walter of Châtillon, “Declinante frigore {The winter cold was waning},” ll. 48-9, Latin text and English trans. from Lazar (1989) p. 253. An eminent medieval Latin scholar aptly declared:

the erotic was a normal aspect of the love experience in the Middle Ages. The suppression of the erotic in medieval poetry is a distinctively modern prejudice

Stock (1971) p. 13.

[3] “Sol ramium fervens medium dum scandit Olimpi {At noon the hot sun, climbing Mt. Olympus, blazed down through the leaves},” ll. 11-6, Latin text from Stock (1971) p. 54, my English translation benefiting from that of id. p. 55. This song provides a gender-critical perspective on a common figure of ancient Greek and Roman love elegy: “lament outside the door {παρακλαυσίθυρον}” and the “shut-out lover {exclusus amator}.” This gender-critical depiction of a love affair has the added poignancy of being a dream. Although the loving narrator was “deeply wounded by betrayal {alto vulnere lesus}” and had “weary members {pernimium membra},” he still felt the flame of love, especially at noon with a hot sun (ll. 1-7). He generously concludes his song:

I so desire this happy young woman to live across all time,
adding only this: that she live especially for me.

{ Hanc igitur cupio felicem vivere semper,
hoc tamen addendo: vivat ut ipsa mihi. }

“Sol ramium fervens,” ll. 23-4, sourced as for previous quote.

[4] Carmina Rivipullensia, “Redit estas cunctis grata {Summer returns promising pleasure to all},” ll. 13-20, Latin text from Stock (1971) p. 52, my English translation benefiting from those of id. p. 53 and Lazar (1989) p. 255. The concern here for gender equality in love is similar to that of the Arundel Lyrics. Medieval church doctrine asserted that marriage should be a conjugal partnership of equals, in contrast to the men-abasing ideology of courtly love. This understanding of love expresses the commandment to love like the love between God and humans. See John 13:34, 15:12.

[5] Yoffe (2019).

[6] Described by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in The Gulag Archipelago, quoted in Morson (2019). Sexual assault against men has been prevalent historically, yet its magnitude today is almost wholly ignored.

[images] (1) Medieval lovers. Illuminated initial (C) in manuscript copy of Aldobrandino of Siena’s Le Régime du corps. Made in third quarter of the thirteenth century (perhaps c. 1285) in northern France. On folio 9v of British Library MS. Sloane 2435. (2) Medieval couple in bed. Illumination in manuscript of Laurent de Premierfait’s 1414 French translation of Boccaccio’s Decameron; illumination made about 1419 by the Cité des Dames Master for John the Fearless of Burgandy. Folio 91r in Vatican Library MS. Pal.lat.1989.

References:

d’Olwer, Lluís Nicolau. 1923. “L’escola poetica de Ripoll en els segles X-XIII.” Anuari del Institut d’Estudies Catalans. 6: 3-84.

Dronke, Peter. 1979. “The Interpretation of the Ripoll Love-Songs.” Romance Philology. 33 (1): 14-42.

Lazar, Moshe. 1989. “Carmina Erotica, Carmina Iocosa: The Body and the Bawdy in Medieval Love Songs.” Pp. 249-276 in Lazar, Moshe, and Norris J. Lacy, eds. Poetics of Love in the Middle Ages: texts and contexts. Fairfax, Va: George Mason University Press.

Moralejo, José-Luis. 1986. Carmina Rivipullensia: (Ms. 74, Rivipullensis) = Cancionero de Ripoll. Barcelona: Bosch.

Morson, Gary Saul. 2019. “How the great truth dawned: On the Soviet virtue of cruelty.” New Criterion. Sept. 2019 edition.

Raby, F. J. E. 1959. The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Stock, Brian, trans. 1971. Medieval Latin Lyrics: Translated and introduced by Brian Stock, original woodcuts by Fritz Kredel. Boston: David Godine, Publisher.

Traill, David A. 2006. “The Origin of the Ripoll Poems.” In Actas do IV Congresso Internacional de Latim Medieval Hispânico (Lisboa, 12-15 de Outubro de 2005). Centro de Estudos Clássicos das Universidades de Lisboa.

Yoffe, Emily. 2019. “METOO: I’m Radioactive.” Reason. Oct. 2019 issue.

man desiring woman

In our age of demonizing men’s sexuality, men perceiving an attractive woman to be attractive is nearly unthinkable. The male gaze has been disparaged and punished to the point of death. Men inducing women to love (“seducing them”) has also been thoroughly criminalized. Men’s perceptions and feelings, however, have not always been so harshly repressed. In the relatively liberal and tolerant circumstances of medieval Europe, men even discussed what they want most physically from a woman.

The man trobairitz Sifre shared a woman’s love with another man, probably her husband. He asked his professional colleague Mir Bernart which half of the woman he should seek. Mir Bernart compassionately responded:

Sifre, I think you’re fortunate
to have asked me for advice,
and I’ll give you the best of that,
because I’ve thought deeply of desired service.
I’ll tell you the truth without shading:
if in sharing you take my word, to be blunt,
you assuredly should prefer the part with the cunt.

{ Sifre, be·us tenc per arribat
car cosselh m’aves demandat,
et ieu donar lo·us ay onrat
car fort en cossir de prion:
so sapchatz ben en veritat,
que, si·m creziatz d’est mercat,
per ver penriatz daus la con.} [1]

Sifre chided Mir Bernart for speaking so knowingly and plainly. Sifre declared that he prefers the upper part, where a woman cuts her hair, but doesn’t remove all of it. Mir Bernart responded with a commitment to truth and the dignity of humanism:

Sifre, you’re refusing the best, the ultimate
and thus what every man loves most.
According to nature and custom
of good lovers through the world,
the lower part is worth more than the face.
And let no troubadour make excuses for me,
for none answers more nobly than I do.

{ Sifren, lo mielhs laissatz e·l pus
e so que mays ama cascus
segon la natura e·l us
que fan’autre bon drut pel mon
val may so d’aval no fa·l mus.
E ja trobaires no·m n’escus,
c’om genser de mi no’y respon. }

Even in the relatively liberal and tolerant circumstances of medieval Europe, men attacked other men for speaking frankly about women. So Sifre tore into Mir Bernart:

Mir Bernart, I am all but enraged
that you give an uncouth answer
and set a much higher value on that bringing
ruination to lovers and husbands alike:
a gentle advance is worth more,
embracing and caressing and kissing
mouth and eyes and face and forehead.

{ Mir Bernat, per pauc no·m n’irays
car mi respondes motz savays
e sela part prezatz trop mays
que los drutz e·ls maritz cofon,
que may ne val us gens assays
c’om embratz e manei e bays
boca et huelh e car’e froll. } [2]

While an unplanned pregnancy can bring ruination to men, that’s only because men are deprived of any reproductive rights whatsoever. Some men facing a disastrous unplanned pregnancy resort to abortion coercion. But that sad reality doesn’t usually change men’s preferences. Mir Bernart stood his ground and boldly insisted on truth-telling:

Sifre, do not imagine I shall shift my ground,
abandoning the best for the worst,
for every day I embrace and kiss
brother, cousin or second-cousin.
But I maintain that I am right in thinking
that all love-making arises
from the end where love is most hidden.

{ Sifren, no’us cuges qu’ie·m biais
ni·l mielhs per lo sordeior lais,
que tot dia abras e bays
fraire e cozi e segall.
Mas d’ayso die que soy verays,
que tota drudaria nays
d’aquel cap don pus se rescon. }

The discussion between Sifre and Mir Bernart then degenerated into trading insults. Having a serious, truthful discussion about men’s interests and concerns has never been easy.

troubadour sending song

In the thirteenth century, sophisticated trobairitz songs expressing men’s subordinate position in sexual feudalism and vigorously critiquing that structure of gender oppression were coming to an end. Crude wailing and sensational spectacles more easily attract attention. They also tend to support lies. Truth-telling is an art and a craft that must be cultivated. Late in the thirteenth century, a man trobairitz lamented:

For now no art is less admired
than the worthy craft of song.
These days the nobles’ tastes run
to entertainments less inspired.
Wailing mingles with disgrace:
all that once engendered praise
from the memory has died.
Now the world is mostly lies.

{ Qu’er non es grazitz lunhs mestiers
menhs en cort, que de belh saber
de trobar; qu’auzir e vezer
hi vol hom mais captenhs leugiers
e critz mesclatz ab dezonor;
Quar tot quan sol donar lauzor,
es al pus del tot oblidat,
que·l mons es quays totz en barat. } [3]

These words resonate among the prevalent lies of today.

Dare to think about what is true. Young, attractive, warmly receptive women have enormous power over men. That’s not just a matter of a pretty face. Men admire women’s breasts and women’s buttocks. But the ultimate foundation of men’s gyno-idolatry is almost surely women’s vaginas. With good evolutionary reason, that’s the part of a woman that most men want most.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Sifre and Mir Bernart “Mir Bernat, mas vos ay trobat {Mir Bernart, since I have found you} st. 2, Occitan text and English translation (modified) from Harvey, Paterson & Radaelli (2010) pp. 1168-9. Subsequent quotes from the same song are similarly sourced. This song probably was composed in Carcassonne (in Occitania, in southern France) in the later decades of the twelfth century. Id. p. 1170. Here’s an online Occitan text of the whole song.

[2] In a cobla (one-stanza song), the man trobairitz Raimon Rigaut supported Sifre’s position:

Never for love of her cunt
did I request my lady’s love,
but rather for her clear face
and smiling mouth;
I could easily enter the cunts
of many, if only I asked for them,
but I prefer frequent kissing
to the cunt that kills desire.

{ Anc per amor del con
A midons non quis s’amor,
Mas per sa fresca color
E per sa boca rien,
Qu’ieu pron cons trobaria
Ab mantas, s’ieu lo lur queria,
Per qu’ieu am mais baisar soven
Que’l con, qu’amorta lo talen. }

Occitan text and English translation (modified) from Lazar (1989) p. 263. Here’s a nearly identical Occitan text online. While a man generally experiences detumescence after ejaculating in a woman’s vagina, most men are quite eager to have that experience. Raimon Rigaut composed in the middle of the thirteenth century. For other trobairitz / troubadour songs frankly discussing sexuality, Bec (1984).

[3] Guiraut Riquier, “Be·m degra de chantar tener {It would be best if I refrained},” st. 3, Occitan text and English translation (Kehew) from Kehew (2005) pp. 308-9. Born in Narbonne about 1230, Guiraut Riquier composed his songs from 1254 to 1292 in the courts of the Viscount of Narbonne, Alfonso X of Castile and León, and Henri II of Rodez. He is the last troubadour known, and this, his last song, was composed in 1292. Id. pp. 306-07. Here’s an online Occitan text of the whole song.

[images] (1) Man and woman in illuminated initials. From folio 2v and 2r in a chansonnier (Chansonnier Gil) made in the 14th century. Preserved as MS Barcelona Biblioteca de Catalunya 146. (2) Man trobairitz sending forth a letter. Illumination on folio 4r of the chansonnier of Matfré Ermengau, Breviari d’amor et Lettre à sa soeur {Breviary of love and Letter to his beloved woman}, made in the 14th century. Preserved as MS Bibliothèque nationale de France. Français 857.

References:

Bec, Pierre. 1984. Burlesque et Obscénité chez les Troubadours: pour une approche du contre-texte médiéval. Paris: Stock.

Harvey, Ruth, Linda M. Paterson, and Anna Radaelli. 2010. The Troubadour Tensos and Partimens: a critical edition. Cambridge: Brewer.

Kehew, Robert, ed. 2005. Lark in the Morning: the Verses of the Troubadours: a bilingual edition. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

raising Lazarus

With the heavily armed Frankish men rapidly approaching, Walter of Aquitaine went to the entrance of the cave where his beloved-betrothed Hildegund had retreated. There he said:

Now before the entryway I speak a haughty boast:
none of the Franks returning from here will be able to say
to his wife that he has with impunity taken any of our great treasure.

{ Hac coram porta verbum modo iacto superbum:
Hinc nullus rediens uxori dicere Francus
Praesumet se impune gazae quid tollere tantae. } [1]

Epic heroes generically boast to their fellow warriors. Walter boasted to his betrothed, and his boast addressed the household matter of what other men would say to their wives. Is epic struggle ultimately about husbands seeking to win their wives’ admiration?

Not yet having finished his speech, suddenly to the earth
he fell and begged forgiveness for such he had said.

{ Necdum sermonem complevit, humotenus ecce
Corruit et veniam petiit, quia talia dixit. }

Walter didn’t beg forgiveness for travestying epic conventions. He apparently begged forgiveness for his pride, the most serious sin in Christian thought of the time.[2] He went on to acknowledge that he would escape alive the forthcoming battle only “god willing {volens deo}.”

The epic’s ending isn’t obviously pious. Walter fought against his close friend Hagen and the Frankish king Gunther. Walter escaped that battle alive, but not unwounded:

After it was finished, each of them was marked:
there lay King Gunther’s foot, there Walter’s palm,
and here the still-quivering eye of Hagen.
In just such a way they divided the Avarish bracelets.
Two of them sat together (the third was still lying on the ground)
and they wiped the torrential river of blood off the flowers.
In the meantime, Alpharides called back the fearful girl
with a shout. She came and bandaged each wound.

{ Postquam finis adest, insignia quemque notabant:
Illic Guntharii regis pes, palma iacebat
Waltharii nec non tremulus Haganonis ocellus.
Sic sic armillas partiti sunt Avarenses!
Consedere duo, nam tertius ille iacebat,
Sanguinis undantem tergentes floribus amnem.
Haec inter timidam revocat clamore puellam
Alpharides, veniens quae saucia quaeque ligavit. }

The “Avarish bracelets” are treasure that Walter and Hildegund stole from the poem’s Pannonian Avar king Attila the Hun. The word “Avarish {Avarenses}” probably was meant to pun with “avarice {avaritia}.”[3] The wounds to the three men invoke self-punishment to prevent further sinning, as described in Mark 9:42-8. Mark there connects the ancient understanding of righting interpersonal wrongs to Christian self-consciousness in seeking forgiveness. The name Alpharides is an epic patronymic for Walter, son of King Alphere of Aquitaine. Despite his cut-off eye twitching on the ground, Hagen managed to help Walter wipe their blood from flowers. Resonating with that incongruity is the fearful girl. She is Hildegund, the strong, independent woman who administered the finances of Attila the Hun’s kingdom. She acted with Christian compassion for all, like Jesus the Good Physician. In addition to bandaging the men’s wounds, she offered them wine.[4] Then Walter and Hagen “playfully jest with each other while drinking {inter pocula scurrili certamine ludunt}.” That’s the epically bizarre ending to the fighting in the Waltharius.

The Waltharius closes off epic narration in a distinctly Christian way. Walter returned to his home kingdom. There Hildegund and he were married. After his father died, Walter reigned as king for thirty years:

What kind of battles and what great triumphs he often
received… behold, my blunted pen refuses to write any more.
…
This is the poetry of Walter. May Jesus save you!

{ Qualia bella dehinc vel quantos saepe triumphos
Ceperit, ecce stilus renuit signare retunsus.
…
Haec est Waltharii poesis. vos salvet Iesus. }

In Christian understanding, God became the fully human Jesus, born in a small provincial town to a carpenter and an undistinguished young woman. Jesus engaged in ordinary life, ate with everyone, and playfully mocked his disciples. Jesus healed the sick in earthy ways and raised the dead Lazarus to life through drama that non-Christian Greco-Roman elites would regard as ridiculous. God, like the pen of the Waltharius’s author, refused with Jesus to write the proper matter of epic.

The prologue to the Waltharius subtly sets out its Christian program. The difficulty in interpreting it comes from not fully appreciating Christianity historically. One medieval scholar explained:

The ludus poeticus (poetic play) requires leisure, it represents a jest or witty game by contrast with serious literature; it can be used almost synonymously with nugae ‘trifles’ and be equated with iocus ‘jest’; and on rare occasions it can designate poetry at large as opposed to serious, political work.[5]

Are the Christian gospels poetry, or serious, political work? An eminent medievalist, ignoring the problem and idealizing a distinction between jest and earnest, categorized the Waltharius unequivocally in medieval thought:

The epic of Waltharius, then, was considered lusus, like all poetry without a Christian-ethical trend.[6]

Such high-level interpretation has driven philological reading of the prologue:

One gets the sense that the poet is not entirely serious when using the commonplaces of epic narratives dealing with war; whether this sort of parodying is intended as critique, however, and what value we are to give such a critique, is far from clear. … the preface states unequivocally that the poem is not intended for edification, but for amusement [7]

Here’s what the last seven verses of the prologue say in a reasonable translation:

Servant of the highest God, do not look down on the words of this little book.
It does not sing of God’s nourishing, but resounds with amazing deeds of
the young man Walter, maimed through much fighting.
It requires one to jest with the Lord rather than to petition the Lord.
When read through, it shortens the undistinguished hours of the long-aged day.
May you, holy priest, be happy through further years,
may Gerald your dear brother be in your mind.

{ Serve dei summi, ne despice verba libelli,
Non canit alma dei, resonat sed mira tyronis,
Nomine Waltharius, per proelia multa resectus.
Ludendum magis est dominum quam sit rogitandum,
Perlectus longaevi stringit inampla diei.
Sis felix sanctus per tempora plura sacerdos,
Sit tibi mente tua Geraldus carus adelphus. } [8]

The final two lines invoke brotherly affection and simple happiness. That provides meaningful context for the key, central verse: ludendum magis est dominum quam sit rogitandum. That verse has been uniformly translated with the sense, “It requires one to play rather than pray to the Lord.” However, the words ludendum {play / jest} and rogitandum {pray / petition} bracket the line with dominum {Lord} in the middle. Grammatically, dominum could go with either participle, or both. Inter-personal jesting better reflects the Waltharius’s Christian sense than does the more ordinary Christian practice of petitioning God for help or nourishment. Not merely mocking classical epic, the Waltharius brings to classical epic an extraordinary Christian sense of human comedy.[9]

Jesus talking with Samaritan woman at well

The Christian gospels aren’t an epic story of a hero-savior. They are more like the Life of Aesop. They overturn the dominant order and offer salvation in ordinary life. That salvation comes through God who becomes the friend and companion of humans, humans who repeatedly act wrongly.[10] The Waltharius engages in the literary way of the Christian gospels.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Waltharius, ll. 561-3, Latin text and English trans. (modified slightly) from Ring (2016). My modifications to Ring’s translation benefited from also studying the translation of Kratz (1984). The subsequent three quotes are similarly from Waltharius ll. 564-5 (Not yet having finished…); 1401-8 (After it was finished…); 570 (God willing); 1424 (playful jest); 1451-2, 1456 (What kind of battles…). Line 1456 is the last verse of the poem.

[2] Stone (2013) p. 59. Walter indicates his Christian piety when, in receiving wine from Hildegund, he makes the sign of the Cross. Waltharius l. 225. Superbia is the Latin word corresponding to “pride.” Walter isn’t generally characterized with superbia, while King Gunther is. Id. p. 61. But Walter displays much pride in l. 805-17. Ghosh (2015) p. 165, Ring (2016) p. 180, n. 178-9.

[3] Waltharius, ll. 4-5, 11, associate the Pannonians with the Huns and state that King Attila ruled over them. The historical Pannonians, Huns, and Avars were three different populations. Ring (2016) p. 166, n. 22. The interpretation of Avarish {Avarenses} and the subsequent textual points in the above paragraph come mainly from the excellent textual notes in id.

[4] Women couldn’t be Christian priests in medieval Europe. Yet Hildegund quasi-sacramentally offers wine twice. On the first occasion, Walter made the sign of the Cross when receiving wine from her. Waltharius l. 225.

[5] Green (2002) p. 32. Green observed:

Hrotswitha meant her poetic legends to be regarded as ﬁctional, she nonetheless dedicates them with a wish that they be read to pass away the time when the reader is worn out by labour.

Id. p. 33. In the tenth century in Lower Saxony (Germany), Hrotswitha wrote in her Dedicatio 7:

and, when worn out by various labour,
deign to read these verses for entertainment.

{ et, cum sis certe vario lassata labore,
ludens dignare hos modulos legere. }

Latin text and English trans. from id. p. 211, n. 103.

In addition to valuing entertainment, medieval thinkers recognized fundamental significance for laughter. About the end of the tenth century and writing at the Abbey of St. Gall, where some regard the author of Waltharius to have resided, Notker III (Notker Labeo) asserted: “the human is a animal that is rational, mortal, and capable of laughter {homo est animal rationale, mortale, risus capax}.” De Definitione, Latin text as cited in Adolf (1947) p. 251. That definition adopts a definition of “man” that Boethius cited to Lady Philosophy. Adolf insightfully observed:

laughter might have been considered the natural consequence of combining two qualities as contradictory as mortality and reason. Indeed modern theories on laughter have reached exactly this conclusion. … it all boils down to the opposition between ‘mortale’ and ‘rationale’ — strange bedfellows indeed, only to be reconciled by laughter.

Id. p. 253. Jesus embraced and transformed human’s mortality and ridiculousness. Thus, not surprisingly, Notker’s definition of the human was widely taught in medieval Christian Europe:

The standard school-example of a definition was homo est animal rationale, mortale, risus capax: “Man is an animal, rational, mortal and capable of laughing.” A ninth century grammar written in France offers the alternative porcus est animal mortale, irrationale, cibum capiens, quadrupedale, grunnibile: “A pig is an animal, mortal, irrational, food-taking, four-footed and capable of grunting.”

McKeown (2010), Ch. 8 supplement (modified insubstantially for readability).

[6] Curtius (1953) p. 430. This statement comes in the section “Comic Elements in the Epic” within a lengthy, rambling excursus entitled “Jest and Earnest in Medieval Literature.” Medieval Europe differed from classical antiquity:

From what has so far been set forth, it follows that the polarity “jest and earnest” is, from the late antique period onward, a conceptual and formal schema which appears not only in rhetorical theory, in poetry, and in poetics, but also in the circle of the ideal of life established by the panegyric style (in this respect it is comparable to the topos puer senex). … We may, then, view the phenomenon as a fresh substantiation of the view that the Middle Ages loved all kinds of crossings and mixtures of stylistic genres. And in fact we find in the Middle Ages ludicra within domains and genres which, to our modern taste, schooled by classicistic aesthetics, absolutely exclude any such mixtures.

Id. p. 424. It’s not just that “the Middle Ages loved all kinds of crossings and mixtures of stylistic genres” like a person might love strawberry ice cream. The Christianity of the gospels authorized “all kinds of crossings and mixtures of stylistic genres.” The European Middle Ages were deeply Christian.

[7] Ghosh (2015) p. 181. In his Ph.D. Thesis, Ghosh stated that “in Waltharius Christian morality appears to have little of a role to play”; the Waltharius’s narrator “did not attempt to reflect deeply on any moral problems that might have been posed by his narrative.” Ghosh (2009) pp. iii (abstract), 167. For the latter quote, also Ghosh (2015) p. 182.

Ziolkowski presented a more nuanced view:

His reference {that of the author of the Waltharius, perhaps Gerald} to play points at once to the reader, who by perusing the Waltharius is opting not to perform the sacred task of praying, and to the contents of the poem, which despite the gore spilt in the battles have a playful side that precludes categorizing the Waltharius as either undiluted heroism or undiluted tragedy. The poem, like most of life, is far more artful and complicated than that.

Ziolkowski (2001) p. 51. Ordinary life usually isn’t undiluted heroism or undiluted tragedy, but it’s also not typically thought of as poetic. Through the incarnation of God as the man Jesus, ordinary life became poetic in a Christian perspective.

Responding to Ziolkowski, Ghosh shifted slightly toward a now-fashionable academic position of ambiguity and ambivalence. Ghosh stated:

But a refusal to portray just heroism or tragedy is coupled equally with a refusal to portray just a secular or religious moral, and perhaps the playful element of the poem can be read as a sophisticated rejection of such binaries in favour of (a rather modern-seeming) lack of commitment to any particular position.

Ghosh (2015) p. 183, n. 146. The author of the Waltharius more likely was committed to particular Christian perspective well-appreciated in the European Middle Ages, but little recognized today.

[8] Waltharius, prologue ll. 16-22. My translation above differs significantly in the Waltharius’s statement of how it should be read (prologue l. 19). Other translations emphasize mere entertainment. “It requires one to play rather than pray to the Lord” in Ring (2016). “It is for playing more than praying to the Lord” in Kratz (1984). “The aim is to delight, rather than to instruct in religious terms” in Murdoch (1996) p. 93. “If and when it is important to play rather than to pray to the lord” in Ziolkowski (2001) p. 51. “It is more for entertainment than for beseeching God” in Ghosh (2015) p. 181, n. 142. These translations aren’t incorrect. But “It requires one to jest with the Lord rather than to petition the Lord” seems to me a better translation in context. I’m grateful for an expert Latin philologist pointing out to me that ludere with the accusative generally means “mock,” but that lighter meanings are possible.

[9] On the Waltharius mocking classical epic and Germanic folk legend, Kratz (1980). The Waltharius is a Christian epic that builds upon early Jewish Christians speaking in tongues with the coming of the Holy Spirit:

And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others mockingly said, “They are filled with new wine.”

{ ἐξίσταντο δὲ πάντες καὶ διηπόρουν ἄλλος πρὸς ἄλλον λέγοντες τί θέλει τοῦτο εἶναι ἕτεροι δὲ διαχλευάζοντες ἔλεγον ὅτι γλεύκους μεμεστωμένοι εἰσίν }

Acts 2:12-13. According to Stone, the Waltharius “glorifies lay noblemen as Christian warriors.” Stone (2013) p. 70. Cf. Ghosh (2015) pp. 165-70. The Christian warrior Walter isn’t an ideal; he is a human, comic figure.

[10] The gospels repeatedly depict the disciples falling asleep when they should be awake, seeking high positions as Jesus’s disciples instead of being humble, seeking to fight violently when they should accept God’s plan, and being weak of heart and willing to betray their friend and master Jesus. See, e.g. Luke 22:39-46, 54-62, John 18:10-11, Mark 14:45-50, John 6:66-7.

[images] (1) The Raising of Lazarus. Made by Duccio di Buoninsegna about 1310-11 to be part of the altarpiece for the high altar of Siena Cathedral in Italy. Preserved as accession number APx 1975.01 in the Kimbell Art Museum (Forth Worth, Texas). (2) Jesus conversing with the Samaritan woman at the well. Made by Jacob van Oost the Younger in 1668 in Bruges. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Adolf, Helen. 1947. “On Mediaeval Laughter.” Speculum. 22 (2): 251-253.

Curtius, Ernst Robert. 1953. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. Translated from the Germany by Willard R. Trask. New York: Pantheon Books.

Ghosh, Shami. 2009. The Barbarian Past in Early Medieval Historical Narrative. Ph. D. Thesis. University of Toronto.

Ghosh, Shami. 2015. Writing the Barbarian Past: studies in early Medieval historical narrative. Brill’s series on the Early Middle Ages, v. 24. Leiden: Brill (based on Ghosh (2009)).

Green, Dennis Howard. 2002. The Beginnings of Medieval Romance: fact and fiction, 1150-1220. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kratz, Dennis M. 1980. Mocking Epic: Waltharius, Alexandreis, and the problem of Christian heroism. Madrid, España: J.P. Turanzas.

Kratz, Dennis M., ed. and trans. 1984. Waltharius and Ruodlieb. New York: Garland Pub.

McKeown, J. C. 2010. Classical Latin: an introductory course. Indianapolis, Ind: Hackett.

Murdoch, Brian. 1996. The German Hero: politics and pragmatism in early medieval poetry. London: The Hambledon Press.

Ring, Abram, ed. and trans. 2016. Waltharius. Dallas Medieval Texts and Translations 22. Leuven: Peeters. (A. M. Juster’s review)

Stone, Rachel. 2013. “Waltharius and Carolingian Morality: Satire and Lay Values.” Early Medieval Europe. 21 (1): 50-70.

Ziolkowski, Jan. 2001. “Fighting Words: Wordplay and Swordplay in the Waltharius.” Pp. 29-51 in Olsen, Karin E., Antonina Harbus, and Tette Hofstra, eds. 2001. Germanic Texts and Latin Models: Medieval Reconstructions; papers presented at an international conference held July 1-3, 1998, at the University of Groningen. Leuven: Peeters.

Guilhelm (William) IX of Aquitaine

In our age of ignorance, bigotry, and superstition, many believe that trobairitz and troubadours were medieval folk singers who sang only ennobling love songs. That’s fake history, the medievalism of fantasy, an ideological fabrication in support of today’s men-oppressing cult of courtly love. Trobairitz and troubadours were elite women and men. Their songs included earthy appreciation for sexuality and lower bodily functions as well as sophisticated, critical considerations of dominant structures of gynocentric gender oppression. A unjustly marginalized song of trobairitz and troubadour, wife and husband, deserves more attention than numerous conventional songs of men-abasing courtly love.

In this greatly under-appreciated song, a troubadour singing to a trobairitz described in the third person a difficult marital situation. He recounted:

I have heard a lady who complained
about her husband, and I can tell you her grievance:
he never put it in more than half-way when she gave herself to him,
and for this she wanted her right to be upheld,
so that the lacking and the harm to her
he would come to rectify at once,
no more doing her wrong
with what he holds out.

{ Una dona ai auzit que s’es clamada
de son marit. e sai·us dir de que·s rancura:
qu’anc non lo·y mes mas de mieg, pus li fon dada;
e d’aquo volia que·l fezes drechura,
que la falhida e·l dan
li esmende d’er enan
e que no·l fes tort en re
d’aquo que li·n arete. }

The medieval Christian ideal of marriage was an equal conjugal partnership, not courtly love. Medieval Christian spouses had an obligation to fulfill each other’s requests for sex. That was called the marital debt. Yet women’s sexuality has long been valued more highly than men’s. Women are thus prone to acquire a sense of sexual entitlement. The wife described herself as “giving herself” to her husband, and she didn’t appreciate her husband giving himself to her. She wanted more than he gave. Like a woman claiming child support from a man that she has raped, the wife asserted her sexual right.

Not sexually ungenerous, the husband didn’t go in more than half-way out of love for his wife. The troubadour recounted:

And her husband responded to her as it pleased him,
and told her the reason he gave it to her in moderation:
he had a bigger one than any man of that place,
and he feared that she surely would die
if he didn’t hold back,
for he had one so large,
that he could kill her with it
if he had no compassion for her.

{ E son marit li respos si com l’agrada,
et dis razo per que lo·j mes de mezura:
major l’a que negus hom de l’encontrada;
e temeria que fos de mort segura
si non l’anava palpan,
c’a desmezura l’a gran:
ausir la poiria be
si no·l avia merce. }

Dying in love passion is a gender-neutral poetic figure. Lucius, transformed into a donkey in Apuleius’s second-century Metamorphoses, wrongly worried about hurting a woman with his penis. Many men similarly internalize representations of their love-making organ as a weapon of violence. Such poetic simple-mindedness harms both men and women.

In response to the troubadour’s account, the trobairitz identified the husband as her husband. She asserted her evaluation of the matter:

All that you have heard him say is the boasting
of my husband, who doesn’t, I believe, have one so large.
I believe not even half of what he says he has,
such have I felt a lack and an inadequacy.
And he says that he might kill me with it,
yet of that I have no fear;
indeed, the one he has for me is too small,
and about this he has lied to me.

{ Tot aiso que l’auzes dir es guabaria
a mo marit, qu’ieu non cug n’aja sobreira;
ni la mitat d’aco que di cre que sia,
que·l frachur’ay ieu sentid’ e la nessieira.
E ditz que aussiria m’en,
et ieu no·n ai espaven;
ans l’a a mos obs petit,
e d’aco eys a mentit. }

Men’s bodies and men’s performance are subject to the female gaze and female evaluation. Is it any wonder that men feel pressure to put meat on table?

In response to the trobairitz belittling her husband, the troubadour identified himself as her husband. He strongly criticized his wife for not appreciating his compassion for her:

Wife, what you seek is grand madness!
And I should warn you well from the start,
that I could destroy one who has no other illness,
and you would want to die in such a way?
If I hadn’t had such sense,
as to have consideration,
it would be choosing sorrow
for you, and there’s no gratitude for me.

{ Molher, vos aves dezir de gran folia!
E deuria vos ben castiar la premieira,
qu’ieu l’ausis, c’anc non ac autra malautia:
e vos volriatz morir d’aital maneira?
S’ieu non agues tan de sen
com ai avut chauzimen,
pessaza for’ essernit
de vos: e no m’es grazit. }

Most husbands love their wives and seek to do what is best for their wives. Wives should show more gratitude for their husbands, as Boncompagno taught wives in twelfth-century Bologna.

The trobairitz, a strong, independent woman, instructed her husband on what he should do in bed with her. She declared:

Husband, you should cease the harm you do
and reduce the evil done to me, discerning a better way.
If you can do it so that you hear me cry out and yell,
by ruling over me in my loins and killing it,
I will give you a fighting partner
who triumphs, but doesn’t strike,
who is pleased when he is struck
and doesn’t become less daring.

{ Marit, de trastot lo dan vos fas fi faire
e del mal que·m podetz far, al mieu albire:
si me·n podetz far sentir qu’en crit ni·n braire
per iustiziar mi en ren e per ausire.
E darai vos batallier
que·us vensera, mas no fier;
e platz li cant es feritz,
e ies non es mens arditz. }

Throughout history, some women have enjoyed rough sex. Men naturally fear hurting a beloved woman. Men also rightly fear being wrongly prosecuted for sexual assault. But ultimately women rule over men. The husband declared:

Wife, since as a liar
you regard me, I’ll put it all in:
because you’re not grateful for restraint,
you will then give up your spirit!

{ Molher, pos per messongier
m’avetz, metrai lo·us entier:
pus lo fleis no m’es grazitz,
e issir n’a l’esperitz! }

Jesus’s passion ended with him giving up his spirit. For faithful Christians, that salvific act of love offers hope for abundant life and complete joy. The wife recognized that passion ultimately lives not in words but in action. She knowingly chided her husband:

Husband, I ask for us to abstain
from what is worth only a penny;
much boasting we have heard,
nothing more than empty words!

{ Maritz, ja part nous enquier
del valeissen d’un denier;
que mans gabs avem auzitz
que non eran mas los critz! }

In other words, the wife proposed that they engage in marital sex, rather than just talk about it. Men’s sexuality is enormously important to women. This song poignantly moved from a third-personal story to a first-personal negotiation of intimacy between spouses within a Christian understanding of passion.

troubadour-knight with big weapon

Vitally important medieval literature has been marginalized through men’s lack of meninist self-consciousness and the overwhelming force of gynocentric interests. Troubadours have been socially constructed as idealized instructors in courtly love. They in our day thus serve to instruct men in oppressive, fruitless self-abasement in loving women. Trobairitz have been falsely interpreted as proto-anti-meninists who further demonstrate the truth of dominant myths. Love separated from truth cannot stand the test of enlightenment. Study medieval literature and truly swerve now!

* * * * *

Notes:

The above quotes are from the medieval trobairitz / troubadour song (tenso) “Una dona ai auzit que s’es clamada {I have heard a lady who complained}.” The quotes cover the whole song. This song also exists in a somewhat different version “D’una domn’ai auzit dir que s’es clamada {I have heard of a lady who complained}.” In Chansonnier C (MS BnF 856), this song is wrongly attributed to Guillem de Sant Didier (Guillem de Sant-Leidier). Scholars now regard it to have been composed at least in part by the early fourteenth-century troubadour Peire Duran. Sakari (1992), Sansone (2000), Sansone (2001).

An anonymous trobairitz apparently co-composed this song. Some scholars wrongly deny a trobairitz authority to co-write such a song. However, medieval women, like medieval men, composed a wide range of works. Some scholars also regard this tenso as “fictive.” See, e.g. Taylor (2015) p. 483. This tenso likely draws upon a classical literary tradition represented by Lucius as a donkey having a sexual affair with an elite woman in Apuleius’s Metamorphoses. However, the tenso may be real in the sense that a trobairitz and troubadour, who were wife and husband, together composed and sung this song about a matter of personal concern to them in early fourteenth-century Occitania.

Troubadours lacked the privileged position of trobairitz. Like many wives pursuing careers today, trobairitz were more likely to compose and sing for their own aspirations and personal fulfillment, not because they were forced to earn money as sexually devalued persons.

The Occitan text above is that of Sansone (2000), which provides a scholarly critical edition of the song. The English translation is mine, benefiting from the Italian translation of id. and the English translation of a slightly different version in Nappholz (1994) pp. 92-95.

On giving up one’s spirit as Christian death, see Jesus’s death as described in Matthew 27:50, Mark 15:39, Luke 23:46, and John 19:30. In the Vulgate, Luke 23:46 states:

Father, into your hands a commend my spirit. Having said this, he breathed his last.

{ Pater in manus tuas commendo spiritum meum et haec dicens exspiravit. }

[images] (1) Troubadour-knight Guilhem IX of Aquitaine with thin spear. Illuminated initial on folio 142v of Recueil des poésies des troubadours, contenant leurs vies (Chansonnier I), made in second half of the 13th century. MS preserved as Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). Département des manuscrits. Français 854. (2) Troubadour-knight carrying large weapon. Illuminated initial on folio 89v in BnF Français 854.

References:

Nappholz, Carol Jane, trans. 1994. Unsung Women: the anonymous female voice in troubadour poetry. New York: Lang.

Sakari, Aimo. 1992. “L’attribution de D’una domn’ai auzit dir que s’es clamada (234,8).” Actes de Montpellier 1990, l’Association Internationale d’Études Occitanes (AIÉO). III: 1145-1152.

Sansone, Giuseppe. 2000. “Per il testo della tenzone fittizia attribuita a Peire Duran.” Romania. 118 (469): 219-235.

Sansone, Giuseppe. 2001. “Una difficile paternità: la tenzone di Peire Duran.” Pp. S. 478-486 in Kremnitz, Georg, ed. Le Rayonnement de la Civilisation Occitane à l’Aube d’un Nouveau Millénaire: 12-19 Septembre 1999. Wien: Ed. Praesens Wissenschaftsverl.

Taylor, Robert A. 2015. A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Troubadours and Old Occitan Literature. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University.

Raimon Berenguier IV

In early thirteenth-century France, Raimon Berenguier IV, the Count of Provence, described a hundred women in a desperate situation:

Friend Sir Arnaut, a hundred ladies of rank
go overseas and halfway to the Holy Land,
they are unable to complete their voyage
nor return home directly by any means
but through you, by this condition:
you let out a fart generating such wind
that the ladies will come to be saved.
Will you do it, or not? I would like to know.

{ Amics N’Arnauz, cent domnas de parage
van outramar e son a meça via,
e non podon acomplir lor viage
n’endrez tornar per nuilla ren qe sia
se per vos non, qe es per tal coven
c’un pez fassaz de qe·s movan tal ven
que las domnas vadan a salvamen.
Farez l’o non? Q’eu saber lo volria. } [1]

The Count’s friend Arnaut Catalan was dedicated to serving women. He responded:

Lord Count, it is my habit always
to defend ladies concerning love.
Although farting is not to my liking,
I will do so, for if I did not,
I would be badly lacking toward ladies.
And I assure you that, if by other means
they could not be saved,
after the fart I would try fully shitting myself.

{ Seingner En Coms, en ai un tal usage
c’ades manteing domnas en drudaria.
Si tot lo peiz no m’en ven d’agradage,
eu lo farei, qe s’eu no lo faria
falliria vas domnas malamen.
E dic vos ben qe, si per altramen
no podion anar a salvamen,
apres lo peiz toz mi concagaria. }

Men must do whatever is necessary to help women, no matter how degrading to men such action is. Some may raise practical objections:

Friend Sir Arnaut, you speak very badly
and will receive great blame from the men
that must transport so many pleasant, comely hearts
by ass-wind to the holy ground of Syria.

{ Amics N’Arnauz, trop parlaz malamen
per lo gran blasme qe n’aurez de la gen
qe vol passar tan gen cors avinen
a vent de cul en terra de Suria. }

Imagine a man farting and shitting so prodigiously as to drive a sailboat from the middle of the Mediterranean all the way to the Holy Land. That’s a crappy way to sail. But all that matters is that women get what they want. Arnaut Catalan explained:

Lord Count, it is much better by a hundred times
that I should fart than so many lively, pleasing hearts
should come to grief through foolish principle,
for I can wash myself, however much I shit myself.

{ Seingner En Coms, molt es miellz per un cen
q’eu fasa·l peiz qe tan gai cors plazen
se perdison per fol enseingnamen,
qe·m puosc lavar qan cunqigaz me sia. }

Men face an enormous burden of performance in serving women. Men are expected to go down in sinking ships to save women. At the same time, men are socially unappreciated and face acute hardships and injustices. What is to be done?

Men must support other men who show the strength and knowledge to say no to women. Consider the case of Lady Ena and Bernart de Cornilh in southern France late in the twelfth century. Bernart sought Lady Ena’s love. In response, she showed him her back, and then:

she put her hand behind her thigh
and showed him the hole underneath
and said “If you blow me gently here
I’ll make you my lover dear.”

{ Elha mes tras la cueissa’l man
E’l mostrèt lo trauc sotiran
E dis: “S’aicí’m cornatz de plan,
Ieu vos farai mon drut certan.” } [2]

In other words, she virtually slapped him in the face, shit all over him, and then told him to thank her for that. Bernart de Cornilh wisely said no to being so degraded in love.

Raimon de Durfort

The troubadours Truc Malec and Raimon de Durfort in response defended Lady Ena and attacked Bernart. Truc Malec declared that Bernart had wronged her body:

He dishonored it out of folly,
while I would have liked to have blown there
cheerfully, without a sad heart.

{ Celh lo soanet per foldat,
E ieu lai vòlgr’ aver cornat
Alegrament, ses còr irat. } [3]

Raimon de Durfort added that Bernart should be sexually assaulted:

Evil it will be if he isn’t forced
to blow a pregnant mare.

{ Mal estarà qui no’l destrenh
Tant que cornès un’ egua prenh. }

Underscoring the twisted world of self-abasing men, Raimon condemned Bernart for not acting like a true courtly lover:

False lady-lover, learn
from me what you don’t know.
Wrongly you have courted
a lady, and then debased yourself.

{ Fals domnejador, aprendètz
De mi aiçò que non sabètz:
Per fals vos tenc car enquerètz
Dòmna, pueis vos i sordegetz. } [4]

Under gynocentrism, men are kept dazed and confused through the use of words in a way opposite of what they actually mean. Thus a man who refuses a lady’s request to put his mouth to her anus and blow has “degraded” himself. That’s like declaring that a husband has raped his wife when she has sex with him out of love for him.[5]

Arnaut Daniel

Exquisitely skilled in the use of words, the eminent troubadour Arnaut Daniel defended Bernart de Cornilh. Arnaut gave good reasons for not putting one’s mouth to a woman’s anus:

because the anus is rough, dirty, and hairy,
and not for one day does it remain dry,
and there the swamp is mighty deep,
because the rot inside ferments it,
such that its heart flows out, then shrinks;
and I don’t want him ever to be a lover,
he who puts his mouth to the anus.

{ Que’l còrns es fèrs, laitz e pelutz
E nul jorn non estai essutz
Et es prion dins la palutz
Per que relent’ ensús lo glutz
Qu’adès per si cor ne redutz;
E non vòlh que mais sia drutz
Cel que sa boch’ al còrn condutz. } [6]

Like most men, Arnaut Daniel was first concerned for women:

There will truly be other tests,
more attractive, with greater value,
and if Bernart pulled himself away,
by Christ, he did but a knowing act,
because fear and terror seized him,
because if the stream had come from above,
it’d have scalded his neck and cheeks.
And it’s not right for a lady to kiss
a man who blows a stinking anus.

Bernart, I don’t at all agree
with the words of Raimon de Durfort
that you were ever at fault:
for if you had blown for amusement,
well you would have found a strong counterpoint,
and the smell would soon have killed you,
for manure in a garden doesn’t smell worse.
And you, despite whoever disparages you,
praise God who has delivered you.

{ Pro i agra d’autres assais,
De plus bèls que valgron mais,
E si En Bernatz s’en estrai,
Per Crist, anc-no’i fetz que savais,
Car l’en pres paors et esglais.
Car si’l vengués d’amont lo rais
Tot l’escaldèra’l còl e’l cais ;
E no’is coven que dòmna bais
Aquel qui cornès còr putnais.

Bernatz, ges eu non m’acòrt
Al dich Raimon de Durfòrt
Que vos anc mais n’aguessetz tòrt;
Que si cornavatz per depòrt,
Ben trobavatz fòrt contrafòrt,
E la pudors agra’us tòst mort,
Que peitz òlh non fa fems en órt;
E vos, qui que’us en desconòrt,
Lauzatz en Deu que’us n’a estòrt. }

These words of Arnaut Daniel should be taken seriously. Petrarch called Arnaut “the grand master of love, who in his land / is still honored for his strange and beautiful language {gran maestro d’amor, ch’a la sua terra / ancor fa onor, col suo dir strano e bello}.”[7] In Dante’s Purgatorio, Guido Guinizelli, whom Dante regarded as his father in lyric poetry, deferred to Arnaut:

{he} was a greater craftsman of his mother tongue.
In songs of love and in the prose romance
he surpassed all. Let fools talk all they want
of the Limogian poet’s excellence —
they turn their faces more toward fame than truth,
settling their judgment by what others say
before they hear how reason rules, or art.

{ fu miglior fabbro del parlar materno.
Versi d’amore e prose di romanzi
soverchiò tutti; e lascia dir li stolti
che quel di Lemosì credon ch’avanzi
A voce più ch’al ver drizzan li volti,
e così ferman sua oppinïone
prima ch’arte o ragion per lor s’ascolti. } [8]

Boccaccio in his brilliant Corbaccio may well have drawn inspiration from Arnaut’s song. Thus the “three crowns {tre corone}” of Italian literature agree about Arnaut’s importance. Even within gynocentric society, any man should feel free to say no when a woman he hardly know asks him to put his mouth to her anus and blow.

Nonetheless, Raimon de Durfort refused to defer to Arnaut’s poetic insight. Raimon insisted that a man must serve a woman as she requests. Raimon declared:

If any noble lady in the world,
had shown me her anus and cunt,
in this way, just as they are,
and then addressed me: “Sir Raimon,
blow me here, in my rear.
I would lower my face forward,
as if seeking to drink from a spring.
A lover who thus answers his lady,
well deserves to receive her heart’s joy.

{ Non es bona dòmn’ el mon,
Si’m mostrava’l còrn e l’con
Tot atretal com ilh se son
E pueis m’apelava : ‘N Raimon,
Cornatz m’aicí sobre’l reon,
Qu’ieu no’i baissès la car’ el front
Com si volgués beure en fon:
Drutz qu’a sa dòmna aissí respon,
Ben tanh que de son còr l’aon. } [9]

Raimon declared that he would blow in the anuses of hundreds of thousands of women, even if quite a few of their anuses were foul. He also disparaged Bernart de Cornilh and his humane defender Arnaut Daniel. He sung to Bernart:

You surpass in wretchedness
even Arnaut the student,
ruined by dice and board games,
who goes around like a penitent,
poor of clothing and of cash.

{ Pus ètz malastrucs sobriers
Non es Arnautz l’escoliers,
Cui confondon dat e tauliers
E vai coma penedensiers
Paupres de draps e de deniers }

Literary writers have often been impoverished. To make matters worse, meninist literary critics today are marginalized and excluded from the schools. Speaking truthfully about men in relation to women isn’t rewarding.

Most men feel that they must do anything that women want. Yet the great medieval troubadour Arnaut Daniel recognized his responsibility to speak out against appalling debasement of men. More writers today should do likewise. Men must acquire the learning necessary to know to say no to women.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Raimon Berenguier IV, Count of Provence {Coms de Proensa} and Arnaut Catalan, “Amics N’Arnauz, cent domnas de parage {Friend Sir Arnaut, a hundred ladies of rank}” (tenso), st. 1, Occitan text and English translation of Ruth Harvey (modified) via Rialto. Gatti (2017) provides a slightly different text and an Italian translation. The subsequent three quotes are seriatim from this song and cover all of it.

A related tenso between Arnaut and King Alfonso X of Castile (Alfonso X the Wise) concerns sailing with farts. Arnaut petitioned the king to be named what might rightly be called a Rear Admiral:

My lord, I come now to ask
you for a boon, if you please:
I’d like to be your admiral
over the bounding seas.
If you grant me this, in all good faith
I promise to drive your entire fleet
with the force of a windy fart,
and they’ll sail with astonishing speed!

{ Senher abatyons conven quer
un don que·m donez, si vos play
que vulh vostr’almiral seer
en cela vostra mar da lay.
E sy o faz, en bona fe,
c’a totas las naus que la son a
eu les faray tal vent de me
c’or anon totas a bandon. }

“Senher abatyons conven quer, {alternately} Sénher, adars ie ‘us venh querer {My lord, I come now to ask},” st. 1, Occitan text from Gatti (2017), English translation from Paden & Paden (2007) p. 187; Gatti provides an Italian translation. Here’s an alternate Occitan text.

King Alfonse granted Arnaut’s petition and declared him (Rear) “Admiral Gas {Almiral Sisom}.” In gratitude, Arnaut promised a wind that would bring his lady and a hundred other women to King Alfonse. But King Alfonse objected to sending ladies with farting:

He is no true lover who intends
to manufacture such a wind!

{ que non é bon doneador
quen esto fezer a cyente. }

St. 4, ll. 7-8, sourced as previously. This song seems to allude to “Amics N’Arnauz, cent domnas de parage.” In addition, both troubadours “play upon the specific metrical form and rhymes from the song of the lark by Bernart Ventadorn, ‘Qan vei la lauzeta mover {When I see the lark beat his winds},’ reducing it to a scurrilous mockery involving a bird (sison {francolin}) that was famous for flatulence.” Paden & Paden (2007) p. 187, reference omitted and bird name added. The analysis of Gatti (2007) supports attributing this poem in part to Arnaut Catalan.

[2] Raimon de Durfort, “Truc Malèc, a vos me tenh {Truc Malec, I hold on to you},” 2.6-9, Occitan text from Martínez Malo (2005), English translation (modified) from trobar. This song is the second in a temporal series of four songs concerning what has come to be known as the Cornilh Affair. The second, third, and fourth poems in the series are Truc Malec, “En Raimon, be’us tenc a grat {Sir Raimon, I am in your debt}“; Arnaut Daniel, “Pòis Raimons e’N Truc Malècs {Though Raimon and Truc Malec}“; and Raimon de Durfort, “Ben es malastrucs dolens {He is rather unhappy and afflicted}.” Martínez Malo (2005) pp. 84-93 provides Occitan text and Spanish translation for all four. Trobar provides Occitan text and English translation for all four, to which the titles are linked. All quotes above from songs in this series are sourced as above, except where otherwise noted. The songs refer to Bernart de Cornilh. He was from Cercina, a rural borough of Florence.

According to Taylor summarizing Lazzerini (1981), “there is no doubt that corn has the clear meaning of cul.” Taylor (2015) p. 345. Lazzerini (1989) further analyzes another reference to the ass.

Truc (Turc) Malec sung in the late twelfth century. Taylor (2015) p. 524. Raimon de Durfort must be from the same time. Neither is known apart from this sequence of songs and their joint vida:

Raimon de Durfort and Lord Turc Malec were two knights from Quercy who composed the sirventes about the lady called Milady Aia, the one who said to the knight of Cornil that she would not love him if he did not blow in her arse. And here are written the sirventes.

{ Raimons de Dufort e·N Turc Malec si foron du cavallier de Caersi que feiren los sirventes de la domna que ac nom ma donna n’Aia, aquella que dis al cavalier de Cornil qu’ella no l’amaria si el no la cornava el cul. Et aqui son escritz los sirventes. }

Egan (1984) pp. 31-2.

[3] Truc Malec, “En Raimon, be’us tenc a grat {Sir Raimon, I am in your debt}” ll. 7-9.

[4] Raimon de Durfort, “Truc Malèc, a vos me tenh {Truc Malec, I hold on to you},” st. 6 (final stanza).

[5] Jewers similarly asserts:

In essence, troubadour lyric betrays a configuration of power and gender that privileges the male, while it reifies and objectifies the female. … The lesson of the affaire Cornilh has something to teach us about the nature and status of the counter-text: it lays bare the rank misogyny underlying and underpinning the lyric system and exploits it to a comically absurd degree, demystifying the male subject as well as it cruelly lays bare the female object.

Jewers (2002) pp. 37, 43. For a frank confession of this game, Dummitt (2019).

[6] Arnaut Daniel, “Pòis Raimons e’N Truc Malècs {Though Raimon and Truc Malec},” 2.3-9, with English translation of this song benefitting from that of Wilhelm (1981) pp. 75-7 and trobar. Here’s a modern French translation. The subsequent quote is similarly st. 2-3.

According to his vida, Arnaut Daniel was born of a noble family living at the castle of Ribérac in the department of Dordogne. He studied Latin, but gave up that study to compose Occitan songs as a joglar {minstrel}. He apparently was active from about 1180 to 1195. Paden & Paden (2007) p. 114. Arnaut’s songs “represent the pinnacle of trobar clus, the art of ‘closed compositions’ in which the sense of the song is disguised with elaborate patterns of rhyme and versification.” Id. Arnaut is credited with having invented a complex poetic form, the sestina. About nineteen of his songs, two with melodies, have survived.

Arnaut was a courageous poet willing to challenge men’s unlimited subservience to women. In his song “En cest sonet coind’e leri {In this little song, pretty and joyful},” Arnaut declared:

I am Arnaut, who hoards the wind
and chases the rabbit with the ox
and swims against the swelling tide.

{ Ieu sui Arnautz q’amàs l’aura,
E chatz la lebre ab lo bou
E nadi contra suberna. }

Occitan text and English translation from Wilhelm (1981) pp. 42-3. Paden & Paden (2007) pp. 117-8 offers an alternate translation, as does James H. Donalson (2003). Here’s a modern French translation of Pèire Bec (2012).

Lacking Arnaut’s concern for social justice, the famous sophist Jacques Lacan quoted Arnaut’s “Pòis Raimons e’N Truc Malècs” in full and used it in his attempt to kiss the ass of dominant ideology. He thus gained a pungent insight:

Having been the focus of attacks by feminists during the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Lacan sought a way to ensure that his theory would reinforce, rather than contradict, the feminist agenda. His own efforts in this realm led him to the conclusion that there is no possible sexual relationship.

Labbie (2006) p. 97. Lacan could have supported his claim “there is no sexual relationship” by surveying married men or discussing Margery Kempe’s husband. Instead Lacan discussed at length the gap, explored what slipped out from there, and signified it throughout his work.

[7] Petrarch, Triumphus Cupidinis 4.41-2, cited and translated in Kay (2016) p. 155, n. 3.

[8] Dante, Commedia, Purgatorio 26.117-23, Italian text from the Princeton Dante Project, English translation (modified slightly) from Esolen (2004). The Limogian poet is the troubadour Guirant de Bornelh, who sung in late-twelfth and early-thirteenth century Provence.

Regarding Arnaut’s “Pòis Raimons e’N Truc Malècs,” the eminent Dante scholar Paget Toynbee comically couldn’t even bring himself to name it explicitly:

The tenor of one of these {of Arnaut’s songs}, which forms part of a poetical controversy with two other troubadours concerning the conduct of a certain lady, sufficiently accounts for the place in Purgatory assigned to him by D. {Dante}.

Toynbee (1898) p. 50, entry for “Arnaldo Daniello {Arnaut Daniel}.”

[9] Raimon de Durfort, “Ben es malastrucs dolens {He is rather unhappy and afflicted},” st. 2. The subsequent is st. 4.1-5.

[images] (1) Raimon Berenguier IV, Count of Barcelona, detail from portrait of Queen Petronila of Aragon and Count Ramon Berenguier IV of Barcelona. The latter isn’t the same person as Raimon Berenguier IV, Count of Provence. Painting made in 1634, original of Filippo Ariosto (1586). Preserved as acccession # P005881 in the Museo del Prado (Spain). (2) Illuminated initial with Raimon de Durfort. Vida of Turc Malec and Raimon de Durfort in text on top. Folio 186v in Recueil des poésies des troubadours, contenant leurs vies. Made in the thirteenth century. Preserved as Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) Ms. 854. (3) Illuminated initial with Arnaut Daniel. From folio 65r in BnF Ms. 854.

References:

Dummitt, Christopher. 2019. “‘I Basically Just Made It Up’: Confessions of a Social Constructionist.” Quillette. Sept. 17.

Egan, Margarita. 1984. The Vidas of the Troubadours. Garland Library of Medieval Literature: series B: translations, 6. New York: Garland Pub.

Esolen, Anthony M., trans. 2004. Dante Alighieri. Purgatory {second section of the Divine Comedy}. New York: Modern Library.

Gatti, Luca. 2017. “Tra Arnaldi e protettori: edizioni e prospettive critiche di due tenzoni scatologiche (BdT 184,1 e T 21,1).” Pp. 85-94 in Isabel De Riquer, Dominique Billy, Giovanni Palumbo, eds. Actes du XXVIIe Congrès international de linguistique et de philologie romanes (Nancy, 15-20 juillet 2013), Section 14: Littératures médiévales.

Jewers, Caroline. 2002. “The Cornilh Affair: Obscenity and the Counter-text in the Occitan Troubadours, or, the Gift of the Gap.” Mediterranean Studies. 11: 29-43.

Kay, Tristan. 2016. Dante’s Lyric Redemption: eros, salvation, vernacular tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Labbie, Erin Felicia. 2006. Lacan’s Medievalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Lazzerini, Lucia. 1981-83. “Cornar lo corn: sulla tenzone tra Raimon de Durfort, Truc Malec e Arnaut Danielm.” Medioevo Romanzo 8: 339–70.

Lazzerini, Lucia. 1989. “Postilla al corn: raboi.” Medioevo Romanzo 14: 39–50.

Martínez Malo, Jesús. 2005. “Cornatz lo còrn.” Litoral: école lacanienne de psychanalyse, L’amour Lacan II. 36: 49-98.

Paden, William D., and Frances Freeman Paden, trans. 2007. Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Taylor, Robert A. 2015. A Bibliographical Guide to the Study of the Troubadours and Old Occitan Literature. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University.

Toynbee, Paget Jackson. 1898. A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wilhelm, James J., ed. and trans. 1981. The Poetry of Arnaut Daniel. New York: Garland Publ.

medieval dream lovers

Men today seared in the flames of vicious gender injustice can scarcely imagine a comforting night of compassion and love. As if human rights weren’t men’s rights, men are persecuted for the gaze of their eyes and the spread of their legs. Men are convicted of serious crimes without even the possibility of speaking and being believed. Men carry the crushing gender burden of soliciting amorous relations and then paying for the check, as if the bank of justice is bankrupt and men’s lives don’t matter.

Burning inwardly with violent wrath,
in bitterness let me speak to my soul.

{ Estuans intrinsecus ira vehementi
in amaritudine loquar mee menti. } [1]

A young man in twelfth-century France had a dream one night. He sees in front of his eyes a beautiful woman. That day he had called out to a beautiful woman, but she ignored him. The young woman in the Song of Songs had a similar experience when she called to a young man whom she loved.[2] So who is this young woman who appears to the young man in his dream?

Her shapeliness at first fills me with doubt:
is this the young woman to whom I called by day?

{ Cuius forma mihi primum satis est dubitata,
an foret haec virgo fuerat quae luce vocata. } [3]

Women and men deserve better than being ignored by those they love. That amorous injustice predominately hurts men, as the dominant structure of prostitution historically attests. Men deserve medieval Latin poetic justice:

But after recognizing this woman to be lovelier than the other,
I forget the other and caress this one’s breasts.
She moves into my embrace, chest close to chest,
and that beautiful girl gives me kisses in a million ways.
I feel joy that almost no other woman would give me.

{ Postquam cognovi quod erat speciosior illa,
illa neglecta, fuit illico tacta papilla.
Venit in amplexus, pectus iacuit prope pectus;
oscula mille modis dum dat mihi pulchra puella,
gaudia persensi quae vix mihi nunc daret ulla. }

As the learned know, most men are romantically simple. So was this young man:

Her kisses join with mine, yet my hope vainly pushed up,
for when I seek to hug her tender neck,
she flees to I know not where, not even uttering a single word.

{ Oscula iungebat, sed me spes vana ferebat.
Namque sui tenerum volo dum circumdare collum,
nescio quo fugit, nec verbum protulit unum. }

Aeneas had a similar experience when he sought to hold on to his wife and his father.[4] Yet despite crushing gynocentric oppression, this man held onto the dream of gender justice. He retained hope in Aeneas’s mother Venus:

So I grieve much, but I judge I would grieve even more
if, what I held in my dream, I wouldn’t watchfully retain.

{ Unde nimis doleo, puto sed magis inde dolebo,
ni, quod per somnium tenui, vigilans retinebo. }

He held onto the dream that men one day would have poetic justice in love.

Another young man in twelfth-century France had a dream. He recounted:

In April time, I was sleeping alone
in a green meadow already quite flowery,
when a most beautiful girl, with a shining face,
a descendant coming from royal blood,
appeared in front of me. With her ornate robe
she fashioned for me with great effort a breeze.
While enlivening me that way, she sometimes with sweet
kisses joined her honey-dripping mouth to mine,
and she would have joined flank-to-flank with me,
but at first she feared that I would respond harshly.

{ Aprilis tempore, dum solus dormio
In prato viridi, iam satis florido,
Virgo pulcherrima, vultu sidereo,
Et proles sanguine progressa regio,
Ante me visa est, que suo pallio
Auram mihi facit cum magno studio.
Auram dum ventilat, interdum dulcia
Ore mellifluo iungebat basia,
Et latus lateri iunxisset pariter,
Sed primum timuit ne ferrem graviter. } [5]

In the relatively tolerant Middle Ages, kisses were not considered to be equivalent to full-on, flank-to-flank sexual assault. Not a vicious rapist, this young woman sought to please the man she loved. She explained that she had come to him with a life-and-death problem:

At the call of Venus
I come to you, beloved young man;
Cupid’s torch has inflamed my heart.
I love you with my soul and whole body.
If you don’t love me as I love you,
trust me that I will die from excessive grief.
And so I beg you, the glory of young men,
that you not disregard me, but give me solace.

{ Monitu Veneris
ad te devenio, dilecte iuvenis;
face Cupidinis succensa pectore,
Mente te diligo cum toto corpore.
Ni me dilxeris sicut te diligo,
credas quod moriar dolore nimio.
Quare te deprecor, o decus iuvenum,
ut non me negligas, sed des solacium. }

In traditional Greco-Roman religion, no one could resist the love-spurring strike of Cupid, acting under gynocentrism according to the will of his mother Venus. In what’s known as the Great Commandment, the sacred law of the Jews declares: “love your neighbor as yourself { בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ }.” Jesus of Nazareth urged his Christian disciples to follow the Jewish Great Commandment. He added, “love one another as I have loved you {diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos}.”[6] Neither of these commandments are quite equivalent to the Cupid-stricken young woman’s request: “love me as I love you {me dilxeris sicut te diligo}.” She shrewdly further supported her request with the threat of her death. Men have long striven to save women from death. Few men in the ancient world would be so harsh and unmerciful as to reject this woman’s Greco-Roman Jewish-Christian supplication.

Nonetheless, the beautiful young woman gave additional strong reasons for the young man to love her. She declared:

Nor can you rightly now disregard me,
since I am coming from royal blood.
Gold and ornate robes, purple vestments,
grey Celtic garments, and various animal-skins —
more I will give to you, if you will be welcoming
and, as I love you, so you will love me.
If you seek a beautiful and illustrious figure,
here I am; take me, since I love you.
Because no more beautiful woman exists for you in our age,
I desire that you have the most beautiful lover.

{ Nec iuste poteris nunc me negligere,
quippe sum regio progressa sanguine.
Aurum et pallia, vestes purpureas,
rhenones griseos et pelles varias,
plures tibi dabo, si gratus fueris
et, ut te diligo, sic me dilexeris.
Si pulchram faciem quaeris et splendidam,
hic sum; me teneas, quia te deligam.
Cum nullus pulchrior te sit in saeculo,
ut pulchram habeas amicam cupio. }

Men tend to strive for high social status in order to be attractive to women. This woman offered to raise the man’s social status through her own high status. Moreover, husbands historically have disproportionately carried the gender burden of working outside the home to provide goods to their wives. This woman offered to provide luxurious material goods to the man she loved.[7] Most importantly, men tend to value highly a woman with an attractive physical figure and beautiful appearance. This young woman was the most beautiful woman of her time. Oppressed with men’s burden of soliciting amorous relationships, what man wouldn’t be delighted with this woman’s urgent request for love?

Men are generally generous and eager to please women. Not surprisingly, the sleeping young man promptly responded to the young woman’s plea:

Immediately aroused by these words of the young woman,
I seize her with a firm embrace.
I kiss her cheeks, caress her breasts,
after which I fill fully her sweet secret.
Thus I can deduce I would be exceptionally
happy, indeed so and more than exceptionally,
if I could hold that girl when I were awake,
whom I held in the field until I was awake.

{ His verbis virginis commotus illico,
ipsam amplexibus duris circumligo.
Genas deosculans papillas palpito,
post illud dulcius secretum compleo.
Inferre igitur possum quod nimium
felix ipse forem et plus quam nimium,
illam si virginem tenerem vigilans
quam prato tenui, dum fui vigilans. } [8]

He had a dream one day. He had a dream that men would no longer be shackled with repeated rejections in love. He had a dream that men would no longer be regarded as generic humans — “man” — but welcomed and treated with dignity as distinctively gendered persons. He had a dream that academia and all societies throughout the world would rise up and live out the true meaning of gender equality. While many men wallow in the valley of despair, committing suicide much more frequently than women, he had a dream in a green flowering field in April. He had a dream of gender justice and togetherness.

dream love

We must not be unmindful of the suffering that the men-abasing ideology of courtly love has generated throughout history. While a man had a dream of gender justice and togetherness in twelfth-century France, another man about that time and place sang of his despair, exile, and impending death:

All mercy’s gone, all pity lost —
though at the best I still knew none —
since she who should yield mercy most
shows me the least of anyone.
Wrongful it seems, now, in my view,
to see a creature’s love betrayed
who’d seek no other good but you,
then let him die without your aid.

Since she, my Lady, shows no care
to earn my thanks, nor pay Love’s rights
since she’ll not hear my constant prayer
and my love yields her no delights,
I say no more; I silent go;
she gives me death; let death reply.
My Lady won’t embrace me so
I leave, exiled to pain close by.

{ Merces es perduda, per ver,
Et eu non o saubi anc mai,
Car cilh qui plus en degr’ aver,
No.n a ges; et on la querrai?
A! can mal sembla, qui la ve,
Qued aquest chaitiu deziron
Que ja ses leis non aura be,
Laisse morrir, que no l.aon

Pus ab midons no.m pot valer
Precs ni merces ni.l dreihz qu’eu ai,
Ni a leis no ven a plazer
Qu’eu l’am, ja mais no.lh o dirai.
Aissi.m part de leis e.m recre;
Mort m’a, e per mort li respon ,
E vau m’en, pus ilh no.m rete,
Chaitius, en issilh, no sai on. } [9]

Women must do more to aid men. Men’s deaths should not be a matter of indifference. Men care for women and labor to protect them from death, even in dreams. Beginning from within their imagination, women should do the same for men.

Now is the time to make real the promises of gender equality. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of men-hating me-too-ism to the sunlit path of gender justice. Now is the time to lift our world from the quicksands of gender bigotry to the solid rock of sexual intimacy. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.[10]

A medieval man had a dream. His dream is still a dream today, a horribly unknown dream, a dream that deserves to be fulfilled one day.

On that day, blue-collar men operating garbage trucks in Florida will know their children, and their children their fathers, and men will be disproportionately incarcerated no more.

On that day, career women in New York City will live to ripe old ages with their satisfied lovers, not their cats and dogs.

On that day, a man speaking out for justice at the University of Cambridge won’t be smeared with a milkshake, and activists in Portland will fight for men thrown in debtor’s prison because they lack reproductive rights.

On that day, women and men academics at the University of Texas won’t discount men’s labor within the home, and a woman academic at Southwestern Illinois College will be embarrassed to have helped develop a sexism scale that is deeply sexist.

On that day, a woman executive leading a mega-corp in California will marry a handsome, young, penniless and uneducated immigrant from Mexico, and she will respect him for the work he does for their family within their home.

Love between women and men will not flourish until justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream. The vision still has its time, it presses on to fulfillment, and it will not disappoint.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Twelfth-century poem (c. 1165) known as the Archpoet’s Confession, ll. 1-2, Latin text from Latin wikisource, my English translation. A.S. Kline has a full translation, reproduced on linguae. This poem is included in the Carmina Burana as no. 191. Writing the poem with classical Latin spelling changes Estuans to Aestuans and mee to meae.

[2] Song of Songs 5:6, which is part of the dream sequence 5:2-7.

[3] Carmina Rivipullensia 8, titled “Aliud somnium {Another dream},” first line “Illud si verum fieret quod somnia monstrant {If it turns out to be true what dreams show},” ll. 5-6, Latin text from Wolff (2001), my English translation benefiting from the French translation of id. This poem is probably from the twelfth century and survives only in MS Ripoll 74. On that manuscript, see note [1] in my post on the medieval joy of sex.

The subsequent three quotes above are similarly from this poem, ll. 7-11 (But after recognizing…), 12-4 (Her kisses join with mine…), 15-6 (So I grieve much…). The poem has 16 lines.

[4] Aeneid 2.793-4 and 6.701-2. A woman had a similar experience in a dream:

I held out my arms and pressed my body to his.
Utterly drained of blood I froze,
for he had vanished! I was holding nothing!
Freed from sleep, I cried out loudly:
“Where are you fleeing, please. Why so swiftly?
Halt your step, or if you will, I too shall enter,
for I want to live with you for ever!”

{ Extensis brachiis corpus applicui,
exsanguis penitus tota derigui
Evanuit enim! nichil retinui!
Sopore libera exclamo fortiter:
“Quo fugis, amabo? Cur tam celeriter?
Siste gradum, si vis inibo partier,
nam tecum viver volo perhenniter!” }

“Foebus abierat subtractis cursibus {Phoebus had fled, his voyage done},” Latin text and English translation (modified to follow the Latin more closely) from Dronke (1965) v. 2, pp. 334-6. This poem apparently was written in northern Italy about 1000 GC. Here’s a less literal, poetic translation of the whole poem. Poetic imagination is wonderfully unbounded. Yet in relation to dominant social structures, a woman coming in love to a man in his dream is far more transgressive.

[5] Carmina Rivipullensia 7, titled “De somnio {About a dream},” first line “Si vera somnia forent, quae somnio {If the dreams I dream would be true},” ll. 3-12, Latin text from Wolff (2001), my English translation benefiting from the French translation of id. Here’s a partial Spanish translation. The subsequent three quotes are similarly from this poem: ll. 13(2nd half)-20 (At the call of Venus…), 21-30 (Nor can you rightly now…), 31-8 (Immediately aroused…). Line 38 is the last line of the poem.

[6] For the Great Commandment of Jewish law, Leviticus 19:18. The Hebrew text differs subtly from subsequent Greek and English translations. For Jesus teaching the Great Commandment to his disciples, Matthew 19:19, 22:39; James 2:8. For Jesus extending that commandment to imitating his love, John 15:12. The Gospels and Christian epistles were originally written in Greek. I have quoted John in Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, the Biblical text most widely read in medieval Europe.

[7] Dronke, a leading expositor of men-abasing courtly love, read the young women’s righteous offer to the young men as alluding to Satan tempting Jesus (Matthew 4:9, Luke 4:6-7). Dronke (1965) v. 2, p. 339. That seems to me a hellish misreading of a Christian gesture of turning the world upside-down for justice.

Dronke interprets “De somnio” as “a humorous piece of wishful thinking” with “delightful elements of burlesque.” Id. pp. 339, 341. That description, which might equally serve as a classical interpretation of the Gospels, expresses an aspect of “De somnio.” Yet Christian literary work and Christian beliefs incorporate such characteristics into a more profound understanding of the world. The tenth-century Latin epic Walthurius brilliantly displays that understanding.

[8] An earlier reading corrects the last line to “quam prato tenui dum fui somnians.” See. e.g. Raby (1959) p. 339 (no. 227). But the original text makes good poetic sense and should be preserved. Dronke (1979) pp. 23-4.

[9] Bernart de Ventadorn, “Can vei la lauzeta mover {Now when I see the skylark lift},” st. 6-7, Occitan text and English translation (W.D. Snodgrass) from Kehew (2005) p. 77. An alternate manuscript spelling is “Qan vei la lauzeta mover.” Here’s the full Occitan text of the song (another source). The song survives with a melody; here’s a performance of it. Bernart is regarded as “one of the greatest love poets among the troubadours.” Paden & Paden (2007) p. 74. He was active in the middle of the twelfth century.

Above I’ve made some insubstantial changes to Snodgrass’s translation. In addition, I changed line 7.8 from “I leave, exiled to pain for aye” to “I leave, exiled to pain close by.” That change preserves the meter and rhyme. It seems to me more understandable (the woman he loves curtly dismisses him from her presence) and more poignant. In Snodgrass’s text and translation, the subsequent stanza then gives the lover’s further action: “I leave to wander, none knows where.” A more literal translation of the Occitan text for 7.7-8 is “If she abandons me, I will go away / a wretch in exile, I know not where.” Paden & Paden (2007) p. 79 (from stanza 5 in that text).

[10] The text above draws upon Martin Luther King’s famous speech for social justice, “I have a dream.” He delivered that speech, which drew upon a wide range of sources, on August 28, 1963. The parallels between dominant institutions’ views of racial justice in 1963 and dominant institutions’ views of gender justice today provides a critical perspective on urgently needed change.

[images] (1) Medieval woman and man hugging each other in bed. The depicted man (minnesinger) is Herr Hug von Werbenwag. He lived in thirteenth-century Germanic lands. Illustration from Codex Manesse, Zurich, made between 1305 and 1315. Manuscript preserved as UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, fol. 252r. Thanks to University of Hiedelberg and Wikimedia Commons. (2) Medieval man dreaming while woman hugs him. The depicted man (minnesinger) here apparently is Herr Konrad von Altstetteng. He is known to have sung between 1320 and 1327 about the Upper Rhine Valley. Similarly from UB Heidelberg, Cod. Pal. germ. 848, fol. 249v.

References:

Dronke, Peter. 1965. Medieval Latin and the Rise of European Love-Lyric. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Dronke, Peter. 1979. “The Interpretation of the Ripoll Love-Songs.” Romance Philology. 33 (1): 14-42.

Kehew, Robert, ed. 2005. Lark in the Morning: the Verses of the Troubadours: a bilingual edition. Chicago, Ill: University of Chicago Press.

Paden, William D., and Frances Freeman Paden, trans. 2007. Troubadour Poems from the South of France. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Raby, F. J. E. 1959. The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wolff, Etienne. 2001. Le Chansonnier amoureux: Carmina Rivipullensia. Monaco: Rocher.

Byzantine Greek fire, a naval weapon

In twelfth-century France, a young man was hunting with his dogs in April. While men are commonly regarded as dogs, men themselves typically distinguish between persons and dogs. Most men have no interest in becoming romantically involved with a female dog, a bitch. Yet a young man hunting with his dogs in April might be stirred with love:

In April time, when the wood is decked green
and the field with rosy flowers is dressed,
tender youth is inflamed with love.

Inflamed with love is tender youth,
all the little birds sing out together
and the wild blackbird calls sweetly.

{ Aprilis tempore, quo nemus frondibus
et pratum roseis ornatur floribus,
iuuentus tenera feruet amoribus.

Feruet amoribus iuuentus tenera,
pie cum concinit omnis auicula,
et cantat dulciter siluestris merula. } [1]

Sunsets and feeling lonely tend to prompt men to yearn for love. This young man had never before loved a woman. His heart felt pain:

Coming back from the hunt at that time of year,
with the sun going down to set in the west,
I started to call for my wandering dogs.

Looking around I could not find them,
which gave me no small sadness
so I did not stop seeking them.

{ Venatu rediens eodem tempore,
sol cum descenderat uergente cardine,
errantes catulos cepi requirere.

Quos circumspeciens nusquam reperio,
unde non modicum sed satis doleo;
non cessans igitur perditos querito. }

A young, beautiful, warmly receptive woman is far more attractive to most men than is a dog, or even a group of dogs that he might have together.

The mischievous man-child Cupid and his award-winning mother Venus assailed the young man. Cupid, leaning on his bow and looking as sexy as Apollo, said:

To stop worrying is my advice to you now.
It is not right to hunt at times like this;
rather we must play at love.

Perhaps you do not know of Cupid’s games?
It would be a great shame if such a fine youth
didn’t frequently play in the court of Venus.

If you should once play in her game of love,
for nothing else would you ever give it up,
but forever faithfully serve her in your soul.

{ Dimittas moneo laborem itaque;
non est conueniens hoc tali tempore
venari; potius debemus ludere.

Ignoras forsitan ludos Cupidinis,
sed ualde dedecet, si talis iuuenis
non ludit sepius in aula Veneris.

Si semel luseris in eius curia,
non eam deseres ulla penuria,
illi sed seruies mente continua. } [2]

The young man thought of love. He was shaken, scared, and taken:

Hearing his words, I was shaken to the core;
as if in great fear I fell to the ground,
and so a new flame burst out inside me.

{ Ad cuius monitus totus contremui,
uelut exterritus ad terram cecidi;
sic nouis ignibus statim incalui. }

The young man hunting with his dogs in April was hunted and snared in thought. In springtime, nature is beautiful, fecund, undeniably real, and influential.[3]

De ramis cadunt folia: manuscript

Men have good reason to fear the fire of their love. Men understand that spring is only a season, and that winter will come:

The leaves fall from the branches,
for all that is green has died,
warmth now has left all
and departed,
for the last of the Zodiac signs
the sun has reached.

{ De ramis cadunt folia,
nam viror totus periit;
iam calor liquit omnia
et abiit
nam signa caeli ultima
sol petiit. } [4]

Margery Kempe’s husband understood what that stanza means. Yet for generation after generation, despite gynocentric oppression, men have been on fire in love for women:

Now all that is, freezes,
but I alone am hot;
or rather it’s my heart
that burns.
This fire is a girl
for whom I languish.

My fire is nourished by the kiss
and soft touch of the girl.
In her eyes shines
the light of lights.
None across the whole age
is more divine.

Greek fire is extinguished
with wine turned bitter,
but this fire is never extinguished
for the saddest lover.
Rather, it’s sustained by fuel
most fruitful.

{ Modo frigescit quicquid est,
sed solus ego caleo;
immo sic mihi cordi est
quod ardeo;
hic ignis tamen virgo est,
qua langueo.

Nutritur ignis osculo
et leni tactu virginis
in suo lucet oculo
lux luminis,
nec est in toto saeculo
plus numinis.

Ignis graecus extinguitur
cum vino iam acerrimo,
sed iste non extinguitur
miserrimo;
immo fomento alitur
uberrimo. }

Men’s fundamental sin is gyno-idolatry. Lucretius, the great dispeller of delusions, described the problem clearly in ancient Rome. Christians in medieval Europe understood Lucretius. Consider the man-narrator’s claim: “In her eyes shines / the light of lights. None across the whole age / is more divine.” In Christian understanding, Jesus is the King of Kings and the light of the world.[5] Regarding a human woman, one not even the mother of Jesus, as more divine than Jesus is blasphemy.

The final stanza makes an obscure comparison to Greek fire. Greek fire literally means an incendiary weapon that the Byzantine navy used. In this poetic context, Greek fire alludes to sexual passion, particularly sexual passion associated with eating and drinking at Greco-Roman symposia. At his last supper with his disciplines, Jesus poured wine and told his disciples to take that, his blood, and drink of it. Thirsting in the passion of his crucifixion for humanity’s sins, Jesus was given only sour wine to drink.[6] With understanding of the passion of Christ, Christian disciples were expected to leave behind the sexual passions of Greco-Roman symposia. But not all Christians substantially did so. The saddest lover is the Christian so enthralled in gyno-idolatry that his delusions continually fuel the fire of his love.

The medieval Christian poet was willing to describe gyno-idolatry explicitly. Gyno-idolatry was understood as a fundamental danger for men:

As in kindling
fire burns ardently
when it is introduced,
so my mind
for you, goddess,
is inflamed and burns up.

Say, who is so hard,
who is so pure,
devoid of all sin,
and capable of such being,
that none of your gifts
could seduce him?

Long live Cato,
to whom God gave
such rigidity,
but by your flower
he would be held, burning
in love.

{ Ut in lignis
ardet ignis,
siccis cum subducitur,
sic mens mea
pro te, dea,
fervet et comburitur.

Dic, quis durus,
quis tam purus,
carens omni crimine,
esse potest,
quem non dotes
tuae possint flectere?

Vivat Cato,
Dei dato,
qui sic fuit rigidus:
in amore
tuo flore
captus erit fervidus. } [7]

In the relatively liberal and tolerant circumstances of medieval Europe, a beautiful, young woman’s gifts could be described without fear of censorship, virtual stone-throwing, or attack by an angry, ignorant mob. Thus the poet-narrator declared:

Venus would have wished
your locks
to be her own,
if she had seen them,
and she would have mourned
because they excelled her own.

Your face and throat
are without wrinkles,
and your angelic visage
indicates to humans
that you are heavenly,
not earthly.

Your teeth
shine, seated
within your beautiful lips,
which if ever
I might touch,
give honeyed kisses.

And your
breasts,
beautifully small,
not swelling,
gleam white,
whiter than snow.

What about the hands,
a belly so flat,
and a graceful figure —
you are so formed,
so adorned —
could one be better fashioned?

Your legs radiate sleekly —
but why say more?
The goddesses
of heaven
and earth
you surpass
in beauty and lineage.

{ Fore suum
crinem tuum
Venus ipsa cuperet,
si videret;
et doloret
suum quod exuperet.

Frons et gula
sine ruga
et visus angelicus
te caelestem,
non terrestrem,
denotant hominibus.

Tibi dentes
sunt candentes,
pulcre sedent labia,
que si quando
ore tango
mellea dant suavia.

Et tuarum
pupillarum
forma satis parvula
non tumescit,
sed albescit,
nive magis candida.

Quid quod manus,
venter planus
et statura gracilis
te sic formant
et cohornant
quod nimis es habilis?

Nitent crura.
Sed quid plura?
deas pulchritudine
et caelestes
et terrestres
superas et genere. }

So the man makes his beloved woman into a goddess, or rather, he imagines her to be better than a goddess. With respect to a beautiful woman, gyno-idolatry among men is completely understandable:

And therefore,
blessed girl,
no one should be surprised
if my mind
for you, goddess,
has been wounded by Venus.

{ Et idcirco,
pia virgo,
nulli sit mirabile,
si mens mea
pro te, dea,
lesa sit a Venere. }

If men are to lose their chains and become liberated, they must recognize their primary weakness. Men must reject gyno-idolatry and embrace women as equal human beings.

Meninism is the simple idea that men are equal to women as human beings. If you’re not a meninist, you’re a bigot. Unfortunately, most men aren’t meninists. Much work remains to be done to achieve social justice for men.

* * * * *

Notes:

[1] Carmina Rivipullensia 1, titled “Quomodo primum amavit {How he has loved for the first time},” first line “Aprilis tempore, quo nemus frondibus {In April time, when the wood is decked green},” st. 1-2, Latin text and English translation from Preater (2015). This poem is probably from the twelfth century and survives only in MS Ripoll 74. On that manuscript, see note [1] in my post on the medieval joy of sex.

The subsequent three quotes above are similarly sourced (with a few minor changes in translation) from “Aprilis tempore, quo nemus frondibus”: st. 4-5 (Coming back from the hunt…), 8-10 (To stop worrying…), 11 (Hearing his words…). For the translation of line 8.3, Dronke (1979) p. 21. The poem has 11 stanzas in total. For a Latin text and French translation, Wolff (2001) pp. 20-3.

[2] Thiébaux perceives Cupid’s “insinuating, gently bullying mockery” of the young man; the poem displays “light malice in treating this relation between the lover and the god.” That is the style of Ovid’s Ars Amatoria. Thiébaux (1974) p. 101. Id., pp. 101-2, provides a slightly inaccurate translation of the poem.

In st. 8, the original reading in the third line was Veneri {of Venus} rather than venari:

The manuscript originally read “Veneri”, but it is corrected to “venari” in the same hand as the original.

Raby (1957) v. 2, p. 238. See also Dronke (1979) pp. 20-1.

[3] Another medieval Latin poem tells of a man unsuccessfully hunting with his dogs. When he blew his horn to recall his dogs, a king’s daughter was stirred with love:

At this sound a noble maiden
trembled all over, about to enter her father’s land.
That young man, discerning, hastened towards her.
He saw and spoke with her, felt his lips kissing hers.
Then he and the king’s daughter, considering the matter,
traversed the utmost boundary of love.

{ Ad cuius sonitum erilis filia
Tota contremuit itura patria,
Quam cernens iuvenis adiit properans:
Vidit et loquitur, sensit os osculans:
Et sibi consulens et regis filie
Extremum Veneris concessit linee. }

“Surgens Manerius summo diluculo {Arising in the early dawn, Manerius},” ll. 13-8 (the last three couplets of the poem), Latin text from Raby (1933), my English translation, benefiting from that of Thiébaux (1974). The poem, commonly called Manerius, dates from before 1168. It survives in cod. Vat. Christ. No. 344, fol. 38, where it’s entitled “De quodam iuvene {About a certain young man}.” Raby (1933) p. 205. A man raising his horn and blowing vigorously displays his potency. If a man cannot be chaste, he should at least be careful.

[4] “De ramis cadunt folia” st. 1, Latin text from Dronke (1965) v. 1, p. 288, my English translation, benefiting from those of id. and Hase (nd). The subsequent quote above is similarly sourced. It covers st. 4-6, the last three stanzas of the poem.

This twelfth-century poem is relatively well-known for a Latin lyric. Raby (1959) n. 234, p. 353, and Brittain (1962) provide Latin texts, with the latter including an English translation. A Latin reading blog provides a Latin text with learning notes and Helen Waddell’s English translation. This poem survives, with musical notation, only in the conductus-manuscripts of Saint-Martial, BnF (Paris) lat. 3719 fol. 42r-v. Dronke (1965) v. 1, p. 288. Here’s a modern sung adaptation from the album Les Chants Funestes by O Quam Tristis.

[5] Calling Jesus the King of Kings {βασιλεὺς τῶν βασιλευόντων}: 1 Timothy 6:15, Revelation 17:14, 91:16; Jesus as light of the world {φώς τοῦ κόσμου}: John 8:12, 9:5.

[6] Jesus giving wine to his disciples: Matthew 26:27-9, Mark 14:23-5, Luke 22:17-8; soldiers giving sour wine to Jesus on the cross: Matthew 27:34, Mark 15:36, Luke 23:36, John 19:29. The Latin reading blog notes:

Greek fire was a weapon used by the Byzantines against ships. It is of unknown composition. The statement by the poet that this fire can be extinguished by vinegar (vinum acrum) is of course nonsense.

That note seems to me to miss the poetic point.

[7] Carmina Rivipullensia 3, titled “In praise of his girlfriend {Laudes amicae},” first line “Sidus clarum {Bright star},” st. 4-6, Latin text from Wolff (2001) (but retaining medieval Latin spellings), my English translation benefiting from Wolff’s French translation and the English translation of Hase (nd). The subsequent two quotes are similarly sourced from st. 7-12 (Venus would have wished…) and 13 (And therefore…). This song has a total of 14 stanzas. On the question form of verse 11, Dronke (1979) p. 22. Dronke interprets that stanza as implying the woman’s inexpressible beauty.

[images] (1) Byzantine Greek fire being used against the enemy ship of Thomas the Slav. From the Codex Skylitzes Matritensis, Bibliteca Nacional de Madrid, Vitr. 26-2, Bild-Nr. 77, folio 34v. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons. (2) Manuscript text, including musical notation, from the beginning of “De ramis cadunt folia.” Folio 42r in Miscellanea of manuscripts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Preserved as Bibliothèque nationale de France. Département des manuscrits. Latin 3719.

References:

Brittain, Frederick. 1962. The Penguin Book of Latin Verse; with plain prose translations of each poem. Baltimore: Penguin Books.

Dronke, Peter. 1965. Medieval Latin and the Rise of European Love-Lyric. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Dronke, Peter. 1979. “The Interpretation of the Ripoll Love-Songs.” Romance Philology. 33 (1): 14-42.

Hase, Patrick, trans. nd. “Carminia Mediaevalia.” Online on liguae.

Preater, Jason. 2015. “Cancionero de Ripoll- In April Time.” Online (June 27, 2015) at Writing Finger.

Raby, Frederic J. E. 1933. “Surgens Manerius Summo Diluculo… .” Speculum. 8 (2): 204-208.

Raby, Frederic J. E. 1957. A History of Secular Latin poetry in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Raby, Frederic J. E. 1959. The Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse. Oxford: Clarendon.

Thiébaux, Marcelle. 1974. The Stag of Love; the chase in medieval literature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Wolff, Etienne. 2001. Le Chansonnier amoureux: Carmina Rivipullensia. Monaco: Rocher.

Wednesday’s flowers

misdirected chivalry in Guillelma de Rosers & Lanfranc Cigala’s tenso

Ospirin, Hiltgunt & Walter of Aquitaine: medieval wives & husbands

trobairitz Castelloza against sexual feudalism & gender inequality

Wednesday’s flowers

trobairitz poetry shows gender bias in social construction of crimes

Waltharius to Aymeri: how to end epic violence against men

Marcabru on medieval conscription of men and women’s response

Wednesday’s flowers

gender inequality in courtly love: why Marcabru spoke ill of women

sexual tension between Walter & Hildegund in tenth-century Europe

the now-inconceivable joy of sex in medieval times

Wednesday’s flowers

what men want most: honest, frank discussion in medieval France

Christian comedy: epic jesting with the Lord in the Waltharius

medieval wife’s sexual entitlement banged against her husband’s love

Wednesday’s flower

men must do anything for women: Arnaut Daniel’s medieval protest

“I had a dream”: medieval imagining of gender justice

respect men’s real fears: dangers of gyno-idolatry