Many persons, including scholars in anthropology and other academics fields, believe that women have been regarded as men’s property except recently in enlightened places. According to this mythic history, women passed between fathers and husbands as transactions in men’s interests. Women were merely men’s “chattels.”[1] Medieval women themselves ridiculed a much less extreme version of that view. The medieval Christian church doctrinally required a woman’s free consent for a valid marriage. Moreover, the thirteenth-century Old French epic Aymeri of Narbonne makes abundantly clear that women’s consent to marriage was vitally important.

Aymeri was a noble, highly respected knight. At the request of Emperor Charlemagne, Aymeri led taking the city of Narbonne from a strong Muslim force. Aymeri then became King of Narbonne. He ably defended Narbonne and surrounding areas from attacks and acquired wide renown. When his father Count Hernaut and his mother died, Aymeri, an only child, inherited their titles and all their wealth.

According to this thirteenth-century French epic, once Aymeri had acquired wealth and noble titles, “Now it was appropriate for him to have a wife {Or li covenist fame}.”[2] Men can lead worthwhile lives without marrying a woman. Moreover, men need only themselves, not wealth and prestige, to be a worthy husband. But all those around Aymeri, “the small and the great persons {li petit et li grant},” adhered to gender norms that oppress men. They all urged Aymeri to marry.

Aymeri sought for a wife a woman who was beautiful, wise, noble, and not close kin to him. One of his lords proposed Princess Hermenjart. She lived in Pavia, a place known in the Middle Ages for women generous in love to men. Princess Hermenjart reportedly had heard much pleasing to her about Aymeri. Aymeri in turn was pleased with what he heard of Hermenjart:

Golden is one so known, by God who doesn’t lie,
that if I don’t have her, I’ll create such a battle
that a thousand iron-clad men will die
for the love of this young woman!

{ Or en sai tant, par Deu qui ne menti,
Se ge ne l’ai, tel plet m’avez basti,
Dont il morront .m. home fervesti,
Por l’amor la pucele! }

While governments today dedicate billions to addressing violence against women, the entrenched gender injustice is quite the opposite: violence has always been overwhelmingly gender-structured as violence against men. Aymeri sent a force of sixty heavily armed knights, lords of his realm, to Pavia to convey his proposal of marriage to Hermenjart. With the confidence that makes a man attractive to a woman, he assumed that she desired to marry him. The anticipated obstacle was her brother King Boniface of Pavia and other nobles. If they didn’t allow Hermenjart to fulfill her desire to marry Aymeri, many men would engage in brutal battle and die.[3]

Aymeri’s envoy to Pavia frightened King Boniface. Moreover, the liberality of Aymeri’s lords to the people of Pavia made King Boniface look poor and miserly in comparison. To enhance his standing relative to Aymeri’s envoy, Boniface pretended that they had intended to take Hermenjart against her will. He then spoke wisely and patronizingly to them:

My lords, know one thing that is true:
very foolish and dreamy-headed is the man
who takes a wife against her will,
for that man won’t have a wife who loves him
or honors him or serves him well.
But so that in this none find blame in me,
I’ll go to the young woman, if you want.
If she accepts what you have said here,
then I’ll give her to you, freely and with love.

{ Mes une chose sachiez qu’est veritez,
Molt est li hom fox et musarz provez,
Qui fame prant outre ses volentez.
Ja se li hom n’est de sa fame amez,
N’en sera bien serviz ne annorez.
Mes ja, de ce ne quier estre blasmez,
la pucele irai, se vos volez.
Se ele ostroie ice que dit avez,
Donrai la vos, volentiers et de grez. }

Aymeri’s lords course agreed, for they had sought Hermenjart only according to her will. Just as in highly developed democracies today, all understand that the deciding factor is what women want.

While Hermenjart was from Pavia, renowned for generously loving women, she was ungenerous with her love. Many men with great wealth and high titles had courted her. She had spurned them all. Refusing to appreciate that men typically acquire great wealth and high status only when they are relatively old, Hermenjart disparaged her eminent suitors, particularly for being old men:

Spoleto’s ruler, with a large group of lords,
Othon the King, with a similar domain;
and Savaris, the white-haired,
the German lord, who must be a big fool —
because I’d like better to be buried alive
than to waste my love as such an old man’s wife.
And the Duke Ace, an official in Venice
for more than a year sought much and pleaded.
Similarly André, ruler of Hungary, sought me;
He’s a rich man, this I don’t deny —
ten cities are within his domain —
but he shall not have me as companion
because he is old and has a white beard,
his head is red and his flesh isn’t fruitful.
By that faith I owe Saint Mary,
I wouldn’t take him, though I should lose my life.
I’d like better to be burned upon a fire
than lie in bed with his withered belly!
So help me God who has all under his rule,
I’ll never have an old man.

{ Cil d’Apolice a molt grant baronnie,
Ce est rois Otes qui a tant a seignorie,
Et Savaris a la barbe florie,
Li Alemenz qui cuidoit grant folie,
Car mieuz vosisse estre vive enfoie,
Que tex viellarz eust ma druerie.
Et li dus Aces c’a Venice en baillie,
Plus a d’un an me requiert molt et prie.
Si me requiert rois Andreus de Hongrie;
Riches hom est, ce ne desdi ge mie;
.X. citez a dedanz sa seignorie,
Mes il n’avra ja a moi conpangnie,
Car il est vieuz, s’a la barbe florie,
Et si est rox et la char a bles mie.
Par cele foi que doi sainte Marie,
Ne le prendroie por a perdre la vie
Mieuz vodroie estre enz en .j. feu broie,
Que ja jeusse lez sa pance flestrie.
Si m’eist Dex qui tot a en baillie,
Je n’avrai ja viel home. }

The eleventh-century Latin epic Ruodlieb recognized that sexual symmetry in spouses’ ages isn’t necessary for a happy marriage. Hermenjart, in contrast, while valuing men for their wealth and status, was also hatefully ageist.[4] Like many highly privileged women, she wanted it all.

Aymeri was an extraordinary man: wealthy and with high titles, but also young. When Aymeri met Hermenjart, he assured her that she could continue to live her life of privilege far above even that of elite men:

I am Aymeri
who would be your lord and husband.
As soon as you have arrived in my hall,
more than two thousand prized knights
will serve your wish in any way at all.

{ ge sui Aymeris
Qui vostre sire doit estre et voz mariz.
S’or vos avoie menée en mon pais,
Plus de .ij. mile de chevaliers de pris
a Vos serviroient tot a vostre devis. }

Aymeri knew that Hermenjart loved him and desired to be his wife. Yet, like a well-instructed college boyfriend wanting to kiss his girlfriend, he sought her formal, verbal consent before engaging in any expression of affection:

“Beautiful lady,” he said, “what are you thinking?
What do you make of me, concealing from me nothing?
From far I’ve come seeking you, you know well;
If this request to you is such that you don’t want me,
then reveal your wish to me right here,
and beyond this you need say no more words,
because you know well, if you refuse me,
would one give me all the gold of ten cities,
I wouldn’t take you, if you don’t want to be my wife.

{ “Béle,” dist il, “quiex est vostre pansez?
Que vos resenble de moi, nel me celez?
De long vos vieng querre, bien le savez;
Por ce vos pri que, se ne me volez,
Que vo talant ici me descovrez,
Ainçois c’avant en soit plus moz sonez,
Car bien sachiez, se vos me refussez,
Qui me donroit tot l’or de .x. citez,
Ne vos prendroie, s’il ne vos ert a grez.” }

Hermenjart affirmed to Aymeri “I love you more than any man who has ever lived {plus vos aim que home qui soit nez}.” They then married and lived happily ever after, with Aymeri suffering terrible wounds in battles and many men being killed.

Over the past millennium in western Europe, women probably have had more choice in marriage than men have. Locality, social relations, and economic realities limited the pool of potential mates to a small number for both men and women. But men have historically faced the gender burden of bringing disproportionate economic resources to a heterosexual relation. Men unable to provide money, both in the past and in the present, have been regarded as “unmarriable.” That women have been men’s property is less historically accurate than that men have been women’s servants.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Waltharius to Aymeri: how to end epic violence against men
• men must do anything for women: Arnaut Daniel’s medieval protest
• sumptuary laws & circumcision: gender in protest effectiveness

Notes:

[1] Margo Wilson and Martin Daly have long pushed that absurd claim with astonishing success. See, e.g. Wilson & Daly (1992). For some analysis, see my post on primatology and vegetarianism, particularly note [4].

[2] Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, Aymeri of Narbonne l. 1333, Old French text from Daimson (1887) v. 2, my English translation benefiting from that of Newth (2005). Newth’s translated this line as “A wife alone was lacking.” That translation subtly reverses the sense of the text to fit the gender myth of women as men’s property. In that misleading translation, Aymeri, who now has much land and material goods, lacks only a wife, analogous to another material good. What the text actually states is “Now it was appropriate for him to have a wife {Or li covenist fame}.” Material goods and social status function as prerequisites for men to marry. Women are not similarly constrained in their choice to marry.

Subsequent quotes are similarly from Aymeri of Narbonne (cited by line numbers in the Old French text): 1334, “the small and the great persons”; 1383-6, “Golden is one so known…”; 2392-40, “My lords, know one thing…”; 2462-81, “Spoleto’s ruler…”; 3287(2nd half)-91, “I am Aymeri…”; 3311-19, “Beautiful lady…”; 3323 (part), “I love you….” For translating from Old French, the online Anglo-Norman dictionary is helpful.

[3] Underscoring that men’s lives counted little relative to a woman’s life, the narrator commented about Aymeri’s envoy to Boniface:

If Boniface were not in his best senses,
and out of pride, or ill-advised, objected
to do their will in any way required,
his town at once would be so fiercely threatened
that fifty men, then fifty more would perish
for this fair maiden’s love.

{ Se Boniface n’a or le cuer sené,
Que par conseil ou par sa grant fierté
Ne veille fere riens de lor volenté,
Tost li movront tel plet en sa cité,
Dont .с. Lonbart seront a mort livré,
Por l’amor la pucele. }

Aymeri of Narbonne, ll. 1603 -08, Old French text from Daimson (1887) v. 2, English translation from Newth (2005).

[4] Even old men can be sexually vigorous. Consider Phileros’s eulogy for Chrysanthus:

how many years do you think he carried? Seventy and more. He was a horny old bird, carried his age well, hair as black as a crow. I had known him for ever and ever, and he was all the while lecherous. No, my god Hercules, I don’t think in his house he left even the dog unmolested. Yes, he was even a boy-chaser, a man of all the practical arts. I don’t blame him; his penis was all that he took with him in death.

{ quot putas illum annos secum tulisse? Septuaginta et supra. Sed corneolus fuit, aetatem bene ferebat, niger tanquam corvus. Noveram hominem olim oliorum et adhuc salax erat. Non mehercules illum puto in domo canem reliquisse. Immo etiam pullarius erat, omnis Minervae homo. Nec improbo, hoc solum enim secum tulit. }

Satyricon 43, Latin text from Heseltine & Rouse (1913), benefiting from that of id. and Walsh (1996).

Newth applauds Hermenjart’s vicious ageism and her character more generally:

Her spirited speeches in criticism of her previous suitors’ unsuitability, her brother Boniface’s meanness and her Lombard countrymen’s cowardice, are the verbal highlights of the work, adding a human and often humorous depth to the heroic surface of the the tale … Hermenjart is possessed of an exotic beauty, an equal courage and moral strength to that of her French hero {Aymeri}, and a greater charisma and enterprise to muster men, in small or large supply, to her and her support.

Newth (2005) p. xxi-ii. Newth sees in Hermenjart qualities typically associated with a Saracen (Muslim) princess in French epic. Elite Muslim women under the caliphs were highly privileged and could dominate the caliph himself.

[image] Woman’s sailor hat from Grand Rapids, Michigan (USA) about 1890. Preserved as accession #M.83.231.69 in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Image thanks to Wikimedia Commons.

References:

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.

Heseltine, Michael and W. H. D. Rouse, trans., revised by E. H. Warmington. 1913. Petronius Arbiter, Seneca. Satyricon. Apocolocyntosis. Loeb Classical Library 15. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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

Walsh, Patrick G, trans. 1996. Petronius Arbiter. The Satyricon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Wilson, Margo and Martin Daly. 1992. “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Chattel.” Ch. 7, pp. 289-322, in J.H. Barkow, L. Cosmides, J. Tooby, eds. The Adapted Mind: Evolutionary psychology and the generation of culture. Oxford University Press. New York.

Some men distrust all women. Not all men are like that, but some are. Calling those men nasty names like “misogynist” is childish and hard-hearted. One should try to understand sympathetically why those men became so distrustful of women. With respect to that issue, as for many others, medieval literature provides a vital tool for seeking enlightenment.

Most men find themselves strongly attracted by nature to young, beautiful women. Love for women can put men in danger and cause men suffering. A twelfth-century lyric laments:

Love, common to all,
is sweet in its beginning.
What others might repress
now in me awakens.
I suffer many injuries,
openly and secretly,
so that I might rest sweetly,
welcomed in your little bed.
Oy, oy, oy.

Love, love, love,
wonderful it is.
You are the enemy to all,
so intolerable
that whomever you can strike
with your fiery dart
is subject, for sure,
to grave danger.
Oy, oy, oy.

{ Amor communis omnibus
dulcis inicio,
aliis repugnantibus,
hoc in me sentio,
qui multa mala suffero,
palam et clanculo,
ut quiescam dulce tuo
amice lectulo.
Oy, oy, oy.

Amor, amor, amor,
ammirabilis,
tu es hostis omnibus
intollerabilis
quem tuo vales igneo
ferire spiculo
subiacebit utique
graui periculo.
Oy, oy, oy. } [1]

Another poet-author in the twelfth century described how love can lead free men into slavery:

Like the lily withers
in the autumn chill,
my body is cold on the outside,
yet I feel flames within.
Foolish through diligence,
I protest to the logicians
that I support
two contraries.
…
I gaze at her eyes,
the likeness of twin stars,
and the little blooms of her lips,
worthy of a god’s kisses.
I seem to transcend
the wealth of ancient kings
and yet I am mixed up once
and again.

May I submit myself by obligation
to the yoke of love.
Let some, rightly,
think it reproachful;
thus is my way of life.
Let me therefore be her slave.
Her looks provide wisdom
for me to act silly.

{ Autumnali frigore
marcescente lilio
foris algens corpore
flammas intus sentio.
Stultus ex industria
logicis obicio,
quod duo contraria
suscipio.
…
Dum contemplor oculos
instar duum syderum
et labelli flosculos
dignos ore superum,
transcendisse uideor
gazas regum ueterum,
dum semel commisceor
et iterum.

Amoris ex debito
me iugo subiciam,
licet quis, et merito,
reputet infamiam.
Moris est sic uivere.
Licet ergo seruiam,
uisus michi sapere
desipiam. } [2]

Men who believe in courtly love ideology defy logic and empirical science. Reality punishes those foolish men. They become despised slaves of women. Those men also, quite naturally, become bitter and frustrated. Men, don’t let that happen to you. Study marginalized medieval women’s love poetry to learn to seek love propitiously.

Bitter, frustrated men  sometimes express distrust of all women. Lacking enlightenment about loving women, Bernart de Ventadorn in twelfth-century Provence acted foolishly, suffered accordingly, and expressed himself poignantly:

Alas, I thought I’d grown so wise;
in love I had so much to learn:
I can’t control this heart that flies
to her who pays love no return.
Ay! Now she steals, through love’s sweet theft,
my heart, my self, my world entire;
she steals herself and I am left
only this longing and desire.

Losing control, I’ve lost all right
to rule my life; my life’s her prize
since first she showed me true delight
in those bright mirrors, her two eyes.
Ay! Once I’d caught myself inside
her glances, I’ve been drowned in sighs,
dying as fair Narcissus died
in streams that mirror captive skies.

Deep in despair, I’ll place no trust
in women through I did before;
I’ve been their champion so it’s just
that I renounce them evermore;
when none will lift me from my fall
when she has cast me down in shame,
now I distrust them, one and all,
I’ve learned too well they’re all the same.

{ Ai, las! tan cuidava saber
d’amor, e tan petit en sai!
car eu d’amar no·m posc tener
celeis don ja pro non aurai.
tout m’a mo cor, e tout m’a me,
e se mezeis e tot lo mon;
e can se·m tolc, no·m laisset re
mas dezirer e cor volon.

Anc non agui de me poder
ni no fui meus de l’or’ en sai
que·m laisset en sos olhs vezer
en un miralh que mout me plai.
Miralhs, pus me mirei en te,
m’an mort li sospir de preon,
c’aissi·m perdei com perdet se
lo bels Narcisus en la fon.

De las domnas me dezesper;
ja mais en lor no·m fiarai;
c’aissi com las solh chaptener,
enaissi las deschaptenrai.
pois vei c’una pro no m’en te
vas leis que·m destrui e·m cofon,
totas las dopt’ e las mescre,
car be sai c’atretals se son. } [3]

Bernart de Ventadorn’s difficulties apparently started with a serious case of one-itis for a woman who didn’t return his love. Instead of moving on, he led himself into lovesickness. Medieval literature suggests cures for lovesickness, but Bernart seems to have preferred to die. That’s folly. Men should value their lives highly, even as gynocentric society doesn’t.

Bernart implies that women around him didn’t reach out to him and offer him mercy. We must teach women to be more merciful to men, especially to disadvantaged and suffering men. Women must listen to these men, believe what they say, and seek to help them by any means necessary. For far too long men have been subject to structural sexual injustice. All women are complicit in that structural injustice. Too many men fear that their death is imminent. Men’s safety must be of primary importance to society. All must work for reconciliation and peace. To have a peaceful world, we must seek justice for men.

Despite yes, all women being complicit in injustices against men, men have been admirably reluctant to hate women. With keen appreciation for personal, emotional relationships between women and men, a medieval man analyzed the situation rationally:

Why love, if I’m not loved?
More fitting it is for love
to be turned into hate.
But away with that, that lovers
find their cure in hate,
that a relationship begun by joy
might end in divorce,
by the contrary of joy
being obtained.

To turn to hate
the firm law of love:
no, that’s not an advisable end.
If I end
love with hate,
if I support
vice with vice,
if by study
of sanity I go insane,
and not be healed,
I play the clown.

{ Cur amo, si non amor?
Satius est, ut amor
in odium vertatur.
Sed absit, quod amantium
remedium sit odium,
quod initum per gaudium
consorcium divorcium
per gaudii contrarium
sorciatur.

In odium converti
nec ius amoris certi
nec finis est probandus.
Amorem enim odio
si finio, si vitio
per vitium subvenio,
desipio, si studio
sanitatis insanio
non sanandus. } [4]

Men’s rationality has been enormously beneficial to humanity, including greatly lowering maternal fatalities in childbirth. Toxic femininity, in contrast, turns love into hate. The social construction of femininity must be reconstructed to embrace men’s rationality about love. Instead of women-dominated elementary schools pathologizing boys, elementary schools should seek to develop loving masculine rationality in both girls and boys.

To regain the trust of men who now distrust all women, women should study medieval literature and learn from what men have written. Men’s voices haven’t been heard as distinctively gendered voices. Listening to men and understanding them are first steps to regaining men’s trust. Further steps include reducing the huge gender protrusion among persons incarcerated, repealing laws that deny men reproductive rights and encourage abortion coercion, eliminating gross anti-men sex discrimination in child custody and child support rulings, resolutely affirming that a man’s life has equal value to a woman’s life, and decriminalizing truly loving relationships. Until such social progress occurs, the fact that most men don’t distrust all women should be regarded as a wonderful testament to men’s love for women.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• “I had a dream”: medieval imagining of gender justice
• trobairitz poetry shows gender bias in social construction of crimes
• medieval wife’s sexual entitlement banged against her husband’s love

Notes:

[1] “Amor communis omnibus,” st. 1-2, Latin text from Stock (1971b) p. 34, my English translation benefiting from that of id. p. 35. This poem has survived only in the manucript Paris, BnF Ms. Lat. 11.130. The poem probably was written about 1125. Stock (1971a) pp. 351-2.

[2] Walter of Châtillon, “Autumnali frigore” (St. Omer 21), st. 1, 4-5 (of five stanzas), Latin text from Traill (2013) pp. 42-44, my English translation benefiting from those of id. and Stock (1971b) pp. 39-41.

[3] Bernart de Ventadorn, “Can vei la lauzeta mover {Now when I see the skylark lift},” st. 2-4, Occitan text and English translation (W.D. Snodgrass) from Kehew (2005) pp. 74-5. Here’s the full Occitan text of the song (another source). Arnaut Catalan and King Alfonso X of Castille parodied this song in their tenso “Senher abatyons conven quer {My lord, I come now to ask}.” See note [1] in my post on Arnaut Daniel’s protest.

In this poem, Bernart de Ventadorn further protested:

She acts as any woman would —
no wonder I’m dissatisfied.
She’ll never do the things she should;
she only wants all that’s denied.

{ D’aisso’s fa be femna parer
ma domna, per qu’e·lh o retrai,
car no vol so c’om deu voler,
e so c’om li deveda, fai. }

“Can vei la lauzeta mover,” st. 5.1-4, sourced as above, with insubstantial changes to Snodgrass’s translation. Medieval women’s love poetry teaches men how to deal with such difficulties.

Bernart’s poem today probably would be censored from major social media because it would be labeled misogynistic. It thus deserves special attention from those seeking not the approved views of the ruling despots, but enlightenment.

[4] Peter of Blois, “Invehar in Venerem,” Latin text from Stock (1971b) pp. 44, 46, my English translation benefiting from that of id. This song has survived with a musical score. On the music that accompanies Peter of Blois’s poetry, Thornton (2007). Steven Sametz’s choral symphony Carmina amoris (Songs of Love) includes an interpretation of his poem. Here’s the piece online.

[image] Wheel of Fortune, depicted as a woman. Illumination from fol. 1r of MS Bavarian State Library, Munich, Codex Buranus (Carmina Burana) Clm 4660. Thanks to the Bavarian State Library and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Stock, Brian. 1971a. “Amor communis omnibus: Paris, B.N., Lat. 11, 130.” Mediaeval Studies. 33: 351-353.

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

Thornton, Lyndsey. 2007. Musical characteristics of the songs attributed to Peter of Blois (c. 1135-1211). Thesis, Master of Music. Florida State University.

Traill, David A., ed. and trans. 2013. Walter of Châtillon, the Shorter Poems: Christmas hymns, love lyrics, and moral-satirical verse. Oxford Medieval Texts.

This is no country for young men. The old in one another’s Facebook feeds, the girls — that sterile generation — twittering fake wage-gap claims to macking men in bars; this me-too-too’ing will turn to dust. Caught in such frenzied solitude all neglect monuments of unageing intellect.

The young man is but disparaged thing, an oppressor with a stick, unless minds work their reach and think, and bravely think, through every failing in their reasoning. There is no thinking school, but engaged minds open to their own magnificence. And therefore we shall sail as Archpoet to the sinning city of old Pavia.

Honored Archbishop, to you I do confess,
it’s a goodly death I die, self-murder by excess:
stricken to the heart by female loveliness,
those that I cannot touch, I mentally possess.

It’s a matter most difficult, to overcome our nature,
seeing some maiden fair, keeping our minds pure;
being young how can we obey so harsh a law,
for the body’s lightness no one has a cure.

Who in the fire’s depths feels not the flame?
Who detained in Pavia, lives there without blame,
where Venus, beckoning youths to the game,
seduces with her eyes, her quarry set to tame?

Put down Hippolytus in Pavia today,
there’d be no Hippolytus the succeeding day.
To love, beneath the sheets, leads every single way;
among all those towers, Truth hasn’t place to stay.

{ Praesul discretissime, veniam te precor,
morte bona morior, dulci nece necor,
meum pectus sauciat puellarum decor,
et quas tactu nequeo, saltem corde moechor.

Res est arduissima vincere naturam,
in aspectu virginis mentem esse puram;
iuvenes non possumus legem sequi duram
leviumque corporum non habere curam.

Quis in igne positus igne non uratur?
quis Papiae demorans castus habeatur,
ubi Venus digito iuvenes venatur,
oculis illaqueat, facie praedatur?

Si ponas Hippolytum hodie Papiae,
non erit Hippolytus in sequenti die.
Veneris in thalamos ducunt omnes viae,
non est in tot turribus turris Alethiae. }

Where can Truth abide? Medieval Latin lyrics explain fundamentals of the cosmos.

The gods drew out of the ancient mass the form of physical things, which mindfully unfolded and constructed the connected systems of the world. Nature had already preconceived what she would create.

Nature stirred into action the causal agencies of the world-structure. Thinking at length about our young woman, she adorned her more, provided her more honor, and bestowed her as a privilege and reward for labor.

In this young woman more than in all the rest of creation, Nature’s handiwork sparkles. She bestowed so many gifts of her favor on no other. This woman she exalted beyond the rest.

And Nature, who in her miserly way usually apportions one gift apiece to each young woman, eagerly expended beauty’s gifts on her more abundantly and unstintingly.

{ A globo veteri
cum rerum faciem
traxissent superi
mundi que seriem
prudens explicuit
et texuit
Natura,
iam preconceperat,
quod fuerat
factura.

Que causas machine
mundane suscitans,
de nostra virgine
iam dudum cogitans
Plus hanc excoluit,
plus prebuit
honoris,
dans privilegium
et pretium
laboris.

In hac pre ceteris
totius operis
Nature lucet opera.
tot munera
nulli favoris contulit,
sed extulit
hanc ultra cetera.

Et, que puellulis
avara singulis
solet partiri singula:
huic sedula
impendit copiosius
et plenius
forme munuscula. }

That woman beckoning to the young man in old Pavia is more beautiful than any other woman, more beautiful than anything in the natural world. She is an extraordinary creation of Nature.

Graced with utmost loveliness by Nature’s ardor, her brow rivals the lily. It is white as snow and disfigured by no wrinkles. Her artless, darling eyes flash with the brilliance of stars.

She draws to herself lovers’ every glance, as she promises a remedy in the modest playfulness of her laughter. Twin arches separate her eyebrows.

From the boundary of her eye, in a judgment of restrained balance, the projection of her nose extends charmingly and with a certain restraint. It does not rise up unduly nor is it abnormally flat.

She entices with the sweet words and kisses of her gently swelling lips. The fragrance of nectar is infused into her rose-colored mouth. Her row of teeth sit evenly, white as ivory, matching the radiance of snow.

Her breast, chin, neck, and checks rival snow and glow gently, but to prevent them from fading into pallor with excessive whiteness, Nature rather cleverly tempers this brilliance in advance by marrying the rose with the lily, so that out of these two arises a more suitable and graceful combination.

{ Nature studio
longe venustata,
contendit lilio
rugis non crispata
frons nivea.
simplices siderea
luce micant ocelli.

Omnes amantium
trahit in se visus,
spondens remedium
verecunda risus
lascivia.
arcus supercilia
discriminant gemelli.

Ab utriusque luminis
confinio
moderati libraminis
iudicio
naris eminentia
producitur venuste
quadam temperantia:
nec nimis erigitur
nec premitur
iniuste.

Allicit verbis dulcibus
et osculis,
castigate tumentibus
labellulis,
roseo nectareus
odor infusus ori.
pariter eburneus
sedet ordo dentium
par nivium
candori.

Certant nivi, micant lene
pectus, mentum, colla, gene;
sed, ne candore nimio
evanescant in pallorem,
precastigat hunc candorem
rosam maritans lilio
prudentior Natura,
ut ex his fiat aptior
et gratior
mixtura. }

This is a description of objective Truth. Every woman, colored and shaped variously, is that woman in the eyes of a man who loves her. So was Flora, a well-known woman of old Pavia.

She herself restored me to life!
It turned out happily, happened beyond the hope
of my miserable mind;
when she totally gave herself over
to the influence of Venus,
Venus in the heavens
burst out laughing
from her rejoicing star.

My longing is no little hindered
when my chest can scarcely contain the joy
that I feel,
when Flora revives me with
talk of Venus,
when I devour the honey as she entices
with the gift of her kiss.

I often recall moving freely
over her soft breast, and so to beings above
adding myself to their number.
I shall rule over all, blissful again
if I caress,
as I desire, her tender breast,
touching it freely.

{ Ipsa vivere mihi reddidit!
Cessit prospere, spe plus accidit
menti misere:
que dum temere totam tradidit
se sub Venere,
Venus ethere risus edidit
leto sidere.

Desiderio nimis officit,
dum vix gaudio pectus sufficit,
quod concipio
dum Venerio Flora reficit
me colloquio,
dum, quem haurio, favus allicit
dato basio.

Sepe refero cursum liberum
sinu teneto: sic me superum
addens numero.
Cunctis impero, felix iterum
si tetigero
quem desidero, sinum tenerum
tactu libero. }

What is past, or passing, or to come is life, continuing in a chain of being coupled. If sick humanity is not to die in global love cooling, we must never place ourselves outside of Nature. We must remain able to conceive as persons did in old Pavia.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Mother Nature denounced promiscuous maidservants exploiting men
• naked ass-driver and ass from Octavian to Byzantium in 1204
• sexual harassment of men: beautiful breasts in the Baiae

Notes:

The above post is in part a parodic response to William Butler Yeats’s famous poem, “Sailing to Byzantium,” first published in 1928.

Medieval Pavia was associated with the pleasures of love. In his late-eleventh-century chroniclde, Landulf Senior (Landulf of Milan) recited a learned saying, “Milan for clerics, Pavia for pleasures, Rome for buildings, Ravenna for churches {Mediolanum in clericis, Papia in deliciis, Roma in aedificiis, Ravenna in ecclesiis}.” From Historia Mediolanensis 3.1, cited in Morgan (2018).

The first quote is from a poem known as the Archpoet’s Confession, “Estuans intrinsecus ira vehementi {Deep inside me I’m ablaze with an angry passion},” st. 6-9, Latin text and English translation (by A.S. Kline, modified slightly) from Hase (nd). This poem has survived as Carmina Burana 191. Here’s A.Z. Foreman’s English translation, with notes.

As Morgan points out, the Archpoet’s Confession builds in part on Ovid’s Amores 2.4:

I haven’t the strength or will to control myself;
I am swept away like a ship driven by fast-moving water.
There is no particular beauty that provokes my love:
I have a hundred reasons to be constantly in love!
…
Keep silent about me, who is enamored by anyone I touch;
put Hippolytus in my place and he’ll turn into Priapus!

{ nam desunt vires ad me mihi iusque regendum;
auferor ut rapida concita puppis aqua.
non est certa meos quae forma invitet amores—
centum sunt causae, cur ego semper amem.
…
ut taceam de me, qui causa tangor ab omni,
illic Hippolytum pone, Priapus erit! }

Amores 2.4.7-10, 31-2, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Morgan (2018). Here’s the full Latin text and an English translation of Amores 2.4.

The second and third quotes are from “A globo veteri {An ancient mass},” st. 1a-5a, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from McDonough (2010) pp. 16-23. The poem’s last stanza is 5b, which is available here. That stanza identifies the described marvel of Nature as specifically the young woman Coronis. This poem has survived as Arundel Lyrics 4 and Carmina Burana 67. It’s plausibly attributed to Peter of Blois and dates to about 1170.

“A globo veteri” has a significant textual problem in the fourth line of its first stanza. The problem has been resolved in a greatly under-appreciated, glorious article of humanistic scholarship:

If we read mundi que, we are left with faciem as the improbable antecedent for que. If, on the other hand, we read mundique we place the perfect indicatives explicuit and texuit alongside the pluperfect subjunctive traxissent. Meyer sought a third solution by placing a colon after superi, reading mundi que, and taking Natura to be the postponed antecedent of que. Meyer’s text is open to the objections that the strong pause after superi is unnatural and that the postponement of the antecedent is very awkward in this sentence. Odd, too, is the sequence of tenses — perfect in the relative and then pluperfect in the main clause. Schumann reads mundique and continues his cum-clause to Natura. … The principal objection to Schumann’s text is that it makes the author of this elegant masterpiece guilty of extremely awkward Latin. The shift from the pluperfect subjunctive to the perfect indicative with the cum-clause is a glaring solecism. Moreover, with Natura relegated to the cum-clause, the main verb, preconceperat, is left without an obvious subject. Natura is by no means easily supplied from the cum-clause. The sentence printed by Schumann could come only from the pen of an ignorant and incompetent writer, whereas the learned allusions in the first stanza itself and the elegance and sophistication of the rest of the poem clearly characterize our poet as a man of refined education and unimpeachable Latinity.

Traill (1988) pp. 149-50. McDonough’s Latin text follows Traill’s prefered text, but McDonough’s translation seems to me not to reflect Traill’s insight with respect to the allusion to Bernard’s Cosmographia. I’ve attempted to follow Traill’s learning in the translation above. Traill more generally explains:

In an amusing conceit, he {the author of “A globo veteri”} suggests that Nature was thinking not about man {humanity} in general, but about his puella {young woman} in particular.

Id. p. 151. I broadly follow that insight above. “A globo veteri” is much more sophisticated than a conventional descriptio puellae. It is a poem written by a scholar for a scholarly audience. Id.

The final quote comprise “Ipsa vivere michi reddidit,” Latin text from the Latin Library, my English translation benefiting from that of McDonough (2010) pp. 15, 17. The Latin text of id. has the same words, but different lineation of the stanzas. This poem survives as Arundel Lyrics 3.

[images] (1) Galley carrying the body of John Chrysostom (died 407 GC) from Komana (Cappadocia) to Constantinople,the capital of Byzantium. Detail from an icon from Kimolos Island in the Aegean Sea. Source image thanks to Bogdan and Wikimedia Commons. (2) Hansekogge replica of the fourteenth-century Bremen cog. Source image thanks to VollwertBIT and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Hase, Patrick, trans. nd. “Carminia Mediaevalia.” Online on liguae.

McDonough, Christopher J., ed. and trans. 2010. The Arundel lyrics; The poems of Hugh Primas. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Morgan, Llewelyn. 2018. “Hippolytus > Priapus.” Lugubelinus (online), Feb. 14.

Traill, David A. 1988. “Notes on ‘Dum Diane vitrea’ (CB 62) and ‘A globo veteri’ (CB 67).” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 23: 143-151.

Literature of men’s sexed protest — literature in which men protest gender injustices that they suffer — has been written throughout recorded history. This important literature has commonly been trivialized, disparaged, and marginalized. But ask yourself: why would men protest so bitterly about women’s treatment of them? The truth about gender relations is both clear and nearly unspeakable. Women have held dominating power over men’s welfare, and men-oppressing structures of gender inequality have been prevalent. Women’s loyalty to men works to mitigate both women’s power over men and gender inequality. Hence women’s disloyalty and betrayal of men particularly prompts men’s sexed protests.

Some expressions of angry protest, although permitted in relatively liberal medieval Europe, today would be categorized as hate speech. For example, early in the twelfth century, a woman student in the women’s convent at Regensburg wrote a short letter to her man teacher. In that letter, she dehumanized him:

You should be called a monkey or a sphinx. You look like them
with your deformed face and your unkempt hair!

{ Simia dicaris, vel spinx, quibus assimilaris
Vultu deformi, nullo moderamine come! } [1]

Women in the women’s convent in twelfth-century Regensburg probably encountered few men. Men are characteristically more hairy than women. The woman student’s disparagement of her man teacher apparently was a gender-based attack.

Now-prevalent codes of conduct typically prohibit gender-based dehumanizing speech-attack. For example, Facebook’s community standards define hate speech:

We define hate speech as a direct attack on people based on what we call protected characteristics — race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, caste, sex, gender, gender identity, and serious disease or disability. We also provide some protections for immigration status. We define attack as violent or dehumanizing speech, statements of inferiority, or calls for exclusion or segregation.

Tier 1 of Facebook’s hate speech, the most severe of its three tiers of hate speech, specifically includes dehumanizing speech:

Dehumanizing speech or imagery in the form of comparisons, generalizations, or unqualified behavioral statements to or about:
– Insects
– Animals that are culturally perceived as intellectually or physically inferior

Monkeys today are culturally perceived as intellectually inferior to humans. The woman in the women’s convent in twelfth-century Regensburg thus engaged in “hate speech” under Facebook’s community standards. For a young woman today, being expelled from Facebook for hate speech amounts to harsh social exclusion. It’s like a woman in the twelfth-century Regensburg women’s convent being ordered to remain alone in her physical room.

An early twelfth-century letter from a woman student at Tegernsee more explicitly engages in a gender-based attack on men. The woman student wrote to her man teacher:

You men certainly are sly, or to say it better, deceitful. You habitually ensnare us simple young girls in talk. We almost always, from our simplicity of mind, proceed with you into the field of words. You pierce us with the right reasoning, so you think, of your darts.

{ vos quippe, viri astuti, vel ut melius dicam versuti, nos simplices puellulas capere soletis in sermone, quia plerumque ex mentis simplicitate procedente vobiscum in campo verborum, nos percutitis iaculorum vestrorum, ut putatis, iusta ratione. } [2]

The woman student figures her man teacher as a sexual predator. That’s Tier 1 hate speech according to Facebook’s community standards. The reference to piercing with darts alludes to Cupid’s characteristic action to drive a person into lovesickness. Moreover, piercing with a sharp object evokes deeply entrenched disparagement of men’s genitals and violent imagery of men’s heterosexuality. The woman student categorizes “men” as deceitful. That’s vulgar stereotyping. It’s arguably “hate speech” under Facebook’s community standards.

Not common meanness, but a sense of personal and political injustice drives men’s sexed protest. Consider a twelfth-century lament of Hugh Primas:

On these Ides of May, misery like that of Menelaus
made me weep, not knowing who had taken from me Flora.
The time was the flower season when she, my flower, the finest blossom,
left where we’d been sleeping and caused my sorrow and my weeping.
..
Perhaps another at a penny’s price has carried you away,
the lowest of the base, not knowing from where we grieve.
Just as a turtledove, away from her man, flies mournfully —
deprived once of her mate, she then neither loves nor cares to be loved —
so I fly around directionless and recline alone at home in misery.
To change by deceit the one familiar to me at my side — that I refuse.
In conduct I am like the turtledove, whom by nature is chaste,
for whom, as soon as cruel death has taken his first wife,
would have no pleasure in trying a second in his bed.
But you, mendacious and cunning, laugh while I weep,
you not sleeping alone, now fickle like Venus’s pigeons.
Passion in their loins makes them change one bed for another.

{ Idibus his Mai miser exemplo Menelai
flebam nec noram quis sustulerat michi Floram.
Tempus erat florum cum flos meus, optimus horum,
liquit Flora thorum, fons fletus, causa dolorum.
…
Alter fortassis precio te transtulit assis,
vilis et extremus neque noscens, unde dolemus.
Ut solet absque mare turtur gemebunda volare,
que semel orba pari nec amat neque curat amari;
sic vagor et revolo, recubans miser in lare solo,
qui mutare dolo latus assuetum michi nolo,
turturis in morem, cui dat natura pudorem,
quod, simul uxorem tulerit mors seva priorem,
non sit iocundum thalamum temptare secundum.
Set tu mendosa rides me flente dolosa,
sola nec accumbis, levibus par facta colunbis,
quis calor in lumbis mutare facit thalamum bis. } [3]

Men love women deeply and loyally, sometimes even within a sexless marriage. At the same time, men depend upon women for comfort and support within the oppressively anti-men circumstances of gynocentric society. That exacerbates the danger of gyno-idolatry. Women have far greater sexual privilege than men do, as the historical prevalence of men paying women for sex attests. When an woman betrays a man for material benefit, she rubs in his face her female privilege. When she betrays him for a penny’s price, she shows contempt for his loving heart and his need for her.

Men suffering gender injustice and personal betrayal sometimes write with understandable anger strong words of men’s sexed protest. These men’s words deserve to be heard. In twelfth-century France, a man declared:

Whoever you are who believes in the loyalty of a woman,
do you not see that only broken loyalty remains in a woman?
Believe me, if you believe her, that you will be deceived,
for that loyalty she gives to you, she will violate right away.
When she swears to you that she cares for you above all,
notice that what she swears only shortly endures.
She will owe you nothing after what you have becomes hers.
After you leave and believe her loyalty to you,
if then a man approaches her with a gift —
any unknown man — you henceforth will soon be forgotten.
If he’s ugly or one-eyed or dark-skinned,
then he will be preferred to you, if he gives more gifts.
She swears to him by the body of God, by the body of saints,
that apart from him she doesn’t love any men.
Thus beware: don’t allow yourself to be captured by any woman,
for no woman knows indeed to maintain loyalty.

{ Quisquis eris qui credideris fidei mulieris
nonne vides quam curta fides manet in muliere?
Crede mihi, si credis ei, quia decipiere,
nam dabit ipsa fidem tibi quam violabit ibidem.
Cumque tibi iurat quod te super omnia curat,
aspice, quod iurat, quam parvo tempore durat.
Nil tibi debebit, postquam quod habes habebit.
Postquam discedes et eam fidam tibi credes,
attribuens munus si tunc accesserit unus,
quilibet ignotus, tu mox eris inde remotus.
Turpis vel luscus si sit vel corpore fuscus,
hunc tibi praeponet, si magna munera donet.
Iurat ei per membra Dei, per membra piorum,
quemquam praeter eum quod non amat illa virorum.
Ergo cave, ne tu prave capiaris ab ulla.
Namque fidem servare quidem scit femina nulla. } [4]

In this poem, the Latin word for “loyalty” is the same word for “faith.” Jews, Christians, and Muslims in medieval Europe knew the story of Eve and Adam, as it’s now called. Before Eve came to be celebrated as a strong, independent woman, she was criticized (gasp!) for believing words of the satanic serpent and leading her husband astray. This poem connects the sins of Eve (in following the serpent’s advice) and Adam (in following his wife’s advice) to disloyalty in women generally. This poem protests powerfully against the common tendency to believe women and women behaving with contempt for men’s interests.

Women’s disloyalty toward men hurts women. In our gynocentric society, media-directed attention to any issue focuses on how it affects women. Particularly given knowledge of grotesque injustices of family law, women’s disloyalty to men makes enduring relationships between women and men less prevalent. That reduces the birth rate of female babies. Female babies grow up to be women and contribute to making the future female. On the other hand, women’s disloyalty to men also reduces the birth rate of male babies. That counts as an offsetting benefit under today’s dominant ideology. Yet what ultimately matters is women’s feelings now. Women’s disloyalty to men hurts women by causing women to feel lonely, especially in springtime.

A gentle breeze arises from the west and a warming sun comes forth;
now the earth bares her bosom and flows out with her sweetness.
Spring has come forth, dressed in crimson, and donned her finery;
she scatters flowers on earth and leaves on the trees of the forest.
Animals build lairs, and birds, sweet nests;
among flowering trees they sing out their joys.
While I see this with my eyes and hear this with my ears,
alas, instead of those great joys I swell with great sighs.
As I sit alone and, thinking these thoughts, turn pale.
If by chance I lift my head, I neither hear nor see.
You, for the sake of spring, at least listen and ponder
the leaves, flowers, and grass — for my soul is ailing.

{ Leuis exsurgit zephirus et sol procedit tepidus,
iam terra sinus aperit, dulcore suo difluit.
Ver purpuratum exiit, ornatus suos induit,
aspergit terram floribus, ligna siluarum frondibus.
Struunt lustra quadrupedes et dulces nidos uolucres,
inter ligna florentia sua decantant gaudia.
Quod oculis dum uideo et auribus dum audio,
heu pro tantis gaudiis tantis inflor suspiriis.
Cum mihi sola sedeo et hec reuolvens palleo,
si forte capud subleuo, nec audio nec uideo.
Tu saltim, veris gratia, exaudi et considera
frondes, flores et gramina; nam mea languet anima. } [5]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• sympathetically understanding why some men distrust all women
• how to argue nicely about sex with your boyfriend: a medieval lesson
• men must do anything for women: Arnaut Daniel’s medieval protest

Notes:

[1] Regensburg Songs 5, Latin text from Dronke (1965) v. 2, p. 424, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. and Newman (2016) p. 260. The Regensburg Songs, which are probably from the early twelfth century, have surviving in only one manuscript: Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, MS Clm 17142. Newman notes:

These aristocratic convent {women} pupils never forget that, by virtue of their social rank, it is they who hold the real authority {relative to their men teachers}.

Id. Many women students today have a similar attitude toward their men professors.

[2] Tegernsee Love-Letters 10, “To her own she who is his own — to her self, herself {Suo sua sibi se},” Latin text from Dronke (2015) p. 242,  my English translation, benefiting from that of id. p. 243 and Newman (2016) p. 252. For a freely available Latin text close to Dronke’s, see Lachmann & Haupt (1888) p. 224. The translation of the first, unusual line Suo sua sibis se is from Dronke. Newman has “To her own from his own.”

The Tegernsee Love-Letters are from the Bavarian abbey at Tegernsee. Dronke noted:

even if these love letters stem from or were sent to a convent {of young women: conventus iuvencularum} or a foundation of canonesses, this does not necessarily mean that the writers had dedicated themselves to the religious life. On the contrary, the writer of the longest and subtlest of the Tegernsee letters — the first in my group of three — {and also the author of letter 10, the third in Dronke’s group of three} makes explicit that she also moves in the world of curialitas {courtliness}: indeed, she says things in praise of knights that disquiet the clerical friend to whom she writes them. We should envisage her not as a nun, but as a well-born girl who is spending some years at a cultivated women’s foundation which is, so to speak, her finishing-school, from where she will probably return, highly prized for her humanistic education, to a world of curialitas and aristocratic marriage.

Dronke (2015) p. 217.

The letter-writer’s invocation of “us simple young girls” is disingenuous. Dronke observed:

The sheer affective and expressive range in her two letters is unusual; and her uses of literary allusion are perspicacious and penetrating. Cicero and Horace, the Song of Songs and the Book of Job, Ovidius puellarum and Boethius, all enter her argument effortlessly.

Dronke (2015) p. 226. Not innocent of the tactic of rhetorical projection, the letter-writer quoted a German proverb:

what the goat knows of himself,
he blames the she-goat for the same.

{ daz der boch an ihm selber weiss,
desselbig zeihet er die geiss }

Text and translation from Dronke (2015) pp. 242-3, drawing on Lachmann & Haupt (1888) p. 224. Women’s strong, independent sexuality is now widely celebrated. Women’s pretenses of simplicity and sexual continence have historically supported the criminalization of men “seducing” women and anti-men gender bias in administration of criminal law.

Newman ignores the anti-meninism of this letter. She calls it a “little gem of a letter – witty, affectionate, yet fierce.” She interprets the woman student’s disparagement of her man teacher and all men in a way that reflects now-pervasive criminalization of men’s burden of soliciting amorous relations:

she calls him out on his duplicity. This teacher and his ilk, she argues, encourage their students to turn girlish crushes into love by writing over-the-top letters about fidelity and friendship, mastering the hyperbolic mode of their day. Then, once the teacher has bated his trap — or, in the writer’s metaphor, lured a “simple young girl” onto the battlefield of words — he strikes, perverting his victim’s “good and wholesome [words]” in order to proposition her. Undeceived, the writer rebukes her would-be seducer in no uncertain terms.

Newman (2016) p. 253. This analysis is ideologically similar to Sanger’s pioneering, nineteenth-century social-scientific study of prostitution.

[3] Hugh Primas, Poems 6, “On these Ides of May, misery like that of Menelaus {Idibus his Mai miser exemplo Menelai},” ll. 1-4, 19-30 (last line of poem), Latin text from McDonough (2010) pp. 156-9, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. Here’s an online Latin text of the full poem.

[4] Ripoll Songs 18, “Whoever you are who believes in the loyalty of a woman {Quisquis eris qui credideris fidei mulieris},” Latin text from Wolff (2001) p. 84, my English translation, benefiting from the French translation of id., p. 85.

Much earlier the African poet Pentadius, writing about 290 GC, expressed a similar sentiment:

Trust your ship to the winds, but don’t trust your heart to a girl;
for a sea-wave is more trustworthy than a woman’s loyalty.
No good woman exists, or, if one turns out to be good,
I don’t know the decree by which a bad thing has been made good.

{ Crede ratem ventis, animum ne crede puellis;
namque est feminea tutior unda fide.
femina nulla bona est, vel, si bona contigit una,
nescio quo fato est res mala facta bona. }

Pentadius, “About woman {De femina}, Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 68, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. Regarding the author of this poem:

It has been ascribed to a variety of authors besides Pentadius — to Marcus Cicero, to his brother, to Petronius, to Ausonius, and to Porphyrius, the panegyrist of Constantine. The epigram has been claimed for Quintus Cicero as a vigorous expression of a thought which might have been in his mind after his divorce (Ad Att. XIV. 13. 3). But it cannot be argued that either the situation or the reflection was by any means peculiar to him.

Duff & Duff (1934) pp. 520-1.

[5] Cambridge Songs 40, “A gentle breeze arises from the west and a warming sun comes forth {Leuis exsurgit zephirus et sol procedit tepidus},” Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Ziolkowski (1994). My modifications draw upon Ziolkowski’s thorough notes, id. pp. 289 (note to 3.1), 290 (note to 6.1).  Here are English translations by Helen Waddell, Peter Dronke, and David Ferry. In 6.2, I follow Dronke’s more literal translation of anima as “soul” rather than Ziolkowski’s translation “heart.” The word sola in 5.1 identifies this poem’s speaker as a woman.

[image] Love. Opening illumination (color enhanced) for the Song of Songs in the Bible of Alard, produced at the Abbey of Saint-Amand in the third quarter of the eleventh century. From Valenciennes, Bibliothèque Municipale, MS. 10, f. 113r. Here’s another image of this illumination. On illuminated books produced at the Abbey of Saint-Amand, Grasso (2019) pp. 31-2.

References:

Brittain, Frederick. 1962. The Penguin Book of Latin Verse: with plain prose translations of each poem. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.

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

Dronke, Peter. 2015. “Women’s Love Letters from Tegernsee.” Pp. 215-245 in Høgel, Christian, and Elisabetta Bartoli, eds. Medieval Letters: Between Fiction and Document. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

Duff, J. Wight and Arnold M. Duff, ed. and trans. 1934. Minor Latin Poets, Volume II: Florus. Hadrian. Nemesianus. Reposianus. Tiberianus. Dicta Catonis. Phoenix. Avianus. Rutilius Namatianus. Others. Loeb Classical Library 434. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Grasso, Maria R. 2019. Illuminating Sanctity: the body, soul and glorification of Saint Amand in the miniature cycle in Valenciennes, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 500. Leiden: Brill

Lachmann, Karl, and Moriz Haupt. 1888. Des Minnesangs Frühling. Leipzig: Hirzel.

McDonough, Christopher J., ed. and trans. 2010. The Arundel lyrics; The poems of Hugh Primas. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.

Newman, Barbara. 2016. Making Love in the Twelfth Century: Letters of two lovers in context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

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

Ziolkowski, Jan M., ed. and trans. 1994. The Cambridge Songs (Carmina cantabrigiensia). New York: Garland Pub.

In twelfth-century France, Niobe was destroying Walter. She was draining his purse and driving him sexually insane:

When I offer Niobe money,
I’m afforded the right to unlock her entrance.
If I come showing reverence for Love,
but nothing render, I’m locked out;
I push in nowhere.
If I pour out my entreaties,
I benefit as much as by pounding air.
From now on,
I won’t bang her box,
for I can’t wish a whore into a wife.

To top such great distress,
my groin’s requirement has now drained my sack.
The threat of that tumultuous tempest
has made me a ridiculous man.
After just a little longer,
I’ll be forced into shackles
unless I give a little to her voracious gullet.
Already my knob
and the length of my purse
have gone down the wildcat’s gaping throat.

{ Dum offero Niobe staterem,
ius affero, fores ut reserem.
Si uenero uenerans Venerem
nec dedero, tulero carcerem.
Nil egero,
si preces fudero,
tantum profecero uerberans aerem.
De cetero
non utar utero,
quia non lauero luteum laterem.

Ad cumulum tanti discriminis
iam loculum hausit lex inguinis.
Periculum turbidi turbinis
ridiculum me fecit hominis.
Post paululum
cogar ad uinculum,
nisi dem poculum gule uoraginis.
Iam nodulum
et burse modulum
abstulit patulum guttur uiraginis. } [1]

A troubled man is often told to get a grip on himself. But as Walter seems to have understood, simply getting a grip on oneself is draining and not satisfying. Men, who are fully human beings, crave intimate union with women. They should not suffer economic exploitation while engaging in heterosexual relations.

In response to the structural gender injustices that men suffer, some men retreat into defeatism and disengagement. About two thousand years ago, discussing a man’s funeral, another man said:

The mourning party was great, for he’d freed several slaves, but his widow was grudging with her tears, as if he weren’t the best of husbands! But a woman as a woman is a bird of prey. One should never do no good to none of them. It’s like throwing all you’ve got down a well. Yup, an old love is like a tumor.

{ Planctus est optime — manu misit aliquot — etiam si maligne illum ploravit uxor. Quid si non illam optime accepisset! Sed mulier quae mulier milvinum genus. Neminem nihil boni facere oportet; aeque est enim ac si in puteum conicias. Sed antiquus amor cancer est. } [2]

Not all women are like that. A Byzantine woman in war-torn tenth-century Italy bravely intervened to save her husband from being castrated. The trobairitz Castelloza in thirteenth-century Occitania spoke out against anti-men gender inequality in love. Saint Eugenia and Saint Marina exposed the injustice of false rape accusations against men. Heloise compassionately urged Abelard not to get married. And of course, Penelope remained faithful to Odysseus through his long absence.

Bitter from women’s mistreatment of them, some men become cynical. In thirteenth-century Occitania, Peire Cardenal declared:

I never won anything so great
as when I lost my mistress:
for, losing her, I won myself back
when she had won me over.
He wins little who loses himself,
but if one loses that which does one harm,
then I think it’s a gain.
For I had given myself in faith
to one who was destroying me,
I know not why.

Giving myself, at her mercy I put myself,
my heart and my life
were hers, who cast me aside and abandoned me
and changed me for another.
He who gives more than he keeps
and loves another more than himself
chooses a bad deal.
He has no care nor thought for himself,
and he forgets himself
for what doesn’t profit him.

I take my leave of her for ever
so that I may never more be hers,
for at no time I found in her fairness or faith,
only guile and deceit.
Ah! Sweetness full of venom,
how love blinds the seeing man
and leads him astray
when he loves that which ill benefits him
and that which he ought to love,
he quits and distrusts.

{ Anc non gazanhèi tan gran re
Com quam perdèi ma mia;
Quar, perden leis, gazanhèi me,
Qu’ilh gazainhat m’avia.
Petit gazainha qui pèrt se,
Mas qui pèrt sò que dan li te
Ieu cre que gazainhs sia.
Qu’ieu m’èra donatz, per ma fe,
A tal que.m destruzia,
Non sai per qué.

Donant me, mes en sa mercé
Mi, mon còr e ma via —
De leis, que.m vir’e.m desmanté
Per autrui, e.m cambia!
Qui dona mais que non reté
Et ama mais autrui que se,
Chauzís àvol partia,
Quan de se no.ilh cal ni.l sové,
E per aco s’oblia
Que pro no.ilh te.

De leis pren comjat per jassé
Que ja mais sieus non sia;
Qu’anc jorn no.i trobèi lei ni fe,
Mas engan e bauzia.
Ai! Doussors plena de veré,
Qu’amors eissòrba cel que ve
E l’òsta de sa via,
Quant ama sò qu.ilh descové
E sò qu’amar deuria
Gurp e mescré! } [3]

Christians have traditionally understood love as the complete gift of self to another. Christian love involves sacrifice of self. Christian love imitates Jesus coming to die on the cross to redeem humanity from iniquity. The passion of Jesus colors the meaning of passion for Christians in love.[4] Peire instead adopted the self-benefit model of love so prevalent today:

He who gives more than he keeps
and loves another more than himself
chooses a bad deal.

{ Qui dona mais que non reté
Et ama mais autrui que se
Chauzís àvol partia }

That’s the ethos for commercial trading, or for rational sexual relations and marriage under U.S. family law. Peire apparently “quit and distrusts {gurp e mescré}” Christianity.

Peire should be credited with endorsing gender equality in love. He resolved to treat his mistress with now-acclaimed norms of gender equality:

Never will my mistress possess me
if I have not possessed her;
nor will she ever have joy from me
if I had not joy from her.
I’ve made a decision, good and sure:
I’ll treat her as she treats me.
Then if she deceives me
she’ll find me a deceiver,
and if she goes straight for me,
for her I won’t make it rocky.
…
With a loyal mistress it’s required
that one be a loyal lover;
but with her who would be
relying on deception,
then one should deceive, with reason for that.

{ Ja m’amia no mi tenra
Si ieu leis non tenia;
Ni ja de mi non jauzira
S’ieu de leis non jauzia.
Conseilh n’ai pres, bon e certà:
Farai li segon que.m farà.
E s’ella mi galia
Galïador mi trobarà,
E si.m vai dreita via
Ieu l’irai pla.
…
De leial amia cové
Qu’òm leials amics sia;
Mas de leis estaria be
Qu’en galïar se fia,
Qu’òm galïès, quan sap de qué. }

Meninism, a progressive ideology of gender equality, asserts that women should treat men as they would like men to treat them. Peire favors a more conservative stance: “I’ll treat her as she treats me {Farai-li segon que’m farà}.” Both positions are consistent with gender equality in a social equilibrium.

Peire’s mistress ultimately got the lover she deserved. As Peire observed, women tend to favor jerks and bad boys for love: “the clown, the felon, and the trickster {li fòl e.l felon, e.l moyssart}.”[5] His mistress’s new lover played her along those lines, while preserving his own interests. Peire explained:

So I was pleased when it happened
that I found her with one who deceives her,
who guards himself and his honor
from harm and folly
and keeps her on a tight rein.

{ Per qu’a mi plai quan s’esdevé
Qu’ieu trob qui la galia,
E garda sa honor e se
De dan e de folia
E.il tira.l fre. }

Peire learned too late to be such a man to succeed in love as the women around him practiced it. Even some men in medieval Europe lacked sufficient knowledge of medieval Latin literature.

One might question the sincerity of Peire’s commitment to gender equality in love. Men commonly slide into gyno-idolatry. In practice, many men will do whatever women want them to do. Peire, however, told a fable about a world that went insane while one man took a nap. He ended this fable with a moralization:

The best sense mortals here have known
is to love God, fear Him alone
and always keep the Lord’s commands.
In our times such good sense is banned.

A reign of covetousness fell
over this world and us as well,
spreading a huge malicious pride
that preys on humans far and wide,

and if one man’s preserved by God,
it’s clear to all he’s sick or odd;
if he has sense they don’t all share,
they’ll leave him wriggling in the air.

God’s wisdom is called lunacy,
while the Lord’s friend, where’er he be,
knows they’re all mad, the whole damned horde,
who’ve lost the good sense of the Lord,

while they know he just crazy: he
refused this world’s mad sanity.

{ Que-l majer sens c’om pot aver
Si es amar Dieu e temer
E gardar sos comandamens;
Mas ar es perdutz aquel sens.

Li plueia sai es cazeguda:
Cobeitatz, e si es venguda
Un’ erguelhoz’e granz maleza
Que tota la gen a perpreza.

E si Dieus n’a alcun gardat,
L’autre-l tenon per dessenat
E menon lo de tomp en bilh
Car non es del sen que son ilh.

Que-l sens de Dieu lor par folia,
E l’amix de Dieu, on que sia,
Conois que dessenat son tut,
Car lo sen de Dieu an perdut.

E ilh, an lui per dessenat,
Car lo sen del mon a laissat. } [6]

The man who took a nap could equally as well have woken up in a world in which gender equality had come to mean gender bigotry. The truly impious today are those who see the world in a more enlightened way.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• “I had a dream”: medieval imagining of gender justice
• gender inequality in courtly love: why Marcabru spoke ill of women
• men’s sense of women’s disloyalty prompts men’s sexed protests

Notes:

[1] Walter of Châtillon, St-Omer 22, “As I seek a cure for myself {Dum queritur michi remedium},” st. 4-5, Latin text from Traill (2013) p.46, my English translation benefiting from that of id. p. 47. In conjunction with his detailed philological and metrical analysis, Traill describes this poem as a “verbal tour de force,” with a light tone and “racy puns.” Id. pp. lvii-iii. This poem is part of the Niobe cycle, St-Omer 21-3. Preceding it is “In the autumn chill {Autumnali frigore},” and following it is “As the tender breasts of spring / were nourishing the young flowers {Dum flosculum tenera / lactant ueris ubera}.” Id. pp. 42-51 (full Niobe cycle).

For non lauero luteum laterem (4.10), Traill translates literally “I can’t wash a mud-brick clean” and notes “proverbial expression of futility.” My translation alludes to the related, present-day proverb, “you can’t turn a ho into a housewife.” Regarding 5.8-10, Traill notes, “this final description of Niobe’s insatiable pecuniary demands also suggests an act of fellatio.” Id. pp. 46-7.

[2] Petronius, Satyricon 42, Latin text from Heseltine & Rouse (1913), my English translation, benefiting from that of id.

[3] Peire Cardenal, “I hold him indeed for a fool and a timewaster {Ben teinh per fol e per musart},” st. 3-5, Occitan text and English translation (modified slightly) from Press (1971) pp. 282-5. The subsequent four quotes are similarly from “Ben teinh per fol e per musart”: “He who gives more than he keeps…,” st. 4; “Never will my mistress possess me…,” st. 2, 7.1-5; “So I was pleased…,” st. 7.6-10 (end of song); “the clown, the felon, and the trickster,” st. 1.8. Here’s the full text, with a modern French translation. Here’s another Occitan text.

Peire Cardenal was a prolific and eminent thirtheenth-century man trobairitz. About ninety-six of his songs have survived. Press gave a tendentious and misleading summary of this canso:

rejecting the exaggerations of contemporary troubadours and reaffirming the original ideal of mutual devotion and loyalty, it neatly summarizes the poet’s concept of courtly love.

Press (1971) p. 280. Men’s self-abasement to women, not mutuality, characterizes courtly love.

Bernart de Ventadour condemned a trading approach to love, which he called “common love {amors comunaus}”:

This is not love; such
has only its name and its look,
which loves no thing if it doesn’t gain.

If I would speak the truth of it,
I know well from whom comes the delusion:
from those women who love for pay,
and they are commercial whores.

{ Aisso non es amors; aitaus
No.n a mas lo nom e.l parven,
Que re non ama si no pren.

S’eu en volgues dire lo ver,
Eu sai be de cui mou l’enjans:
D’aquelas c’amon per aver,
E son merchadandas venaus. }

“Chantars no pot gaire valer,” Occitan text from Press (1971) p. 66, my English translating, benefiting from that of id. p. 67. For alternate English translations, A.Z. Foreman and Paden & Paden (2007) pp. 74-5. Men surely deserve some blame for not insisting on equality in love with women. Peire Cardenal above condemns unequal trades, not trading per se. In short, he favors “fair trade” love.

[4] See John 10:13, 15:13, 1 John 3:16.

[5] Bernart de Ventadour complained:

But he gains more from love who courts
with pride and deceit
than one who every day supplicates
and goes about most humbly,
for Love scarcely wants one
who is so honest and noble as I am.
This has made nothing from all my doings,
because I was never false or tricky.

{ Mais a d’amor qui domneya
Ab orgolh et ab enjan
Que cel que tot jorn merceya
Ni.s vai trop umilian,
C’a penas vol Amors celui
Qu’es francs e fis si cum eu sui.
So m’a tout tot mon afaire:
C’anc no fui faus ni trichaire. }

“The nightingale makes merry {Lo rossinhols s’esbaudeya},” st. 2, Occitan text from Press (1971) p. 72, my English translation benefiting from that of id. p. 73. Here’s an online Occitan text of the full song. Recognizing reality is a good beginning. One must then decide how to respond to that reality.

[6] Peire Cardenal, “There was a town, I can’t say where {Una ciutatz fo, no sai cals},” st. 14-18 (end of song), Occitan text and English translation (W. D. Snodgrass) from Kehew (2005) pp. 274-7. Here’s the full Occitan text and a modern French translation. Cardenal probably wrote this fable/song about 1260.  The Boston Camerata’s album Provence Mystique includes a modern arrangement of this song. The man trobairitz Guilhem Montanhagol also wrote a song with the “new world after a long sleep” motif, “Non estarai, per ome qe·m casti.” This motif encompasses Washington Irvings’s early-nineteenth-century story of Rip Van Winkle, Jacob of Serugh’s early-sixth century story of seven sleepers from Ephesus, and the third-century historian Diogenes Laertius’s account of Epimenides of Knossos.

[image] Rembrandt self-portrait (excerpt). Painted in 1660. Preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) as accession # 14.40.618. Bequest of Benjamin Altman, 1913.

References:

Heseltine, Michael and W. H. D. Rouse, trans., revised by E. H. Warmington. 1913. Petronius Arbiter, Seneca. Satyricon. Apocolocyntosis. Loeb Classical Library 15. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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

Press, Alan R., ed. and trans. 1971. Anthology of Troubadour Lyric Poetry. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Traill, David A., ed. and trans. 2013. Walter of Châtillon, the Shorter Poems: Christmas hymns, love lyrics, and moral-satirical verse. Oxford Medieval Texts.

Couples commonly argue about sex. Continually imbibing the poisons of rape-culture culture, women today readily feel hatred toward men. That makes girlfriend-boyfriend arguments about sex particularly nasty. Medieval Latin literature, which isn’t just for men, shows a more excellent way. It supports imagining what’s scarcely imaginable today. A woman can treat a man’s sexual feelings with compassion and respect, yet insist on what she understands to be proper conduct.

In twelfth-century France, a boyfriend and a girlfriend argued nicely about sex. They argued in Latin, the language regarded as appropriate for serious arguments. In accordance with the medieval church’s insistence on mutuality in marriage, this couple took turns saying to each other four-line stanzas of Latin poetry. They argued humanely, learnedly, and eloquently. The man started first, because his feelings were compelling him to rise.

Boyfriend:
I’m conquered and tormented by you, my sweet girlfriend:
your beauty prohibits that you demand excessively to be chaste.
Do what pleases Venus, or stop looking like Venus.
With me as teacher you can quickly learn Venus’s ways.

Girlfriend:
This pleases me and I desire that you in this way always be my boyfriend,
and this displeases me and I mourn that you sometimes be not chaste.
Flee from lust, I beg you, and embrace love.
One advises even a beautiful young man to maintain chastity.

{ Amicus:
Conqueror et doleo de te, mea dulcis amica:
quod prohibet facies, nimis exigis esse pudica.
Fac placeas Veneri, Veneris vel desine formam;
Me doctore potes Veneris cito discere normam.

Amica:
Hoc placet et cupio, meus ut sis semper amicus;
displicet et doleo, nisi sis quandoque pudicus.
Luxuriam fugias, precor, amplectaris amorem.
Convenit et pulcro iuveni servare pudorem. } [1]

The boyfriend starts strongly be asserting incongruities. His sweet girlfriend is bitterly defeating him and tormenting him. Being chaste is associated with sexual modesty. That’s a form of moderation.[2] Yet this sweet girlfriend is demanding moderation “excessively.” To make matters worse, she looks like Venus, the goddess of love, but doesn’t act with the sexual vigor of Venus. These incongruities don’t make sense. The boyfriend charitably offers to teach his girlfriend how to conduct herself with logical consistency.

The girlfriend responds by affirming the goodness of her boyfriend’s sexual feelings. His vigorous, manly sexuality pleases her. She desires that he be her boyfriend. She recognizes that he is a beautiful young man. Moreover, she doesn’t seek to dominate her boyfriend as a woman in gynocentric society. She begs him rather than commands him. Nonetheless, she frankly states her own feelings. She values chastity and understands that love doesn’t mean only sex. She recognizes that her boyfriend doesn’t always think about sex. She’s unhappy because “sometimes” he is unchaste.

Boyfriend:
The author of the book of love doesn’t support you.
By that author, no lover can always remember chastity.
But perhaps you aren’t a lover, although you confess so.
Your tongue sounds, yet your inner being seeks another way.

Girlfriend:
My sweet boyfriend, don’t offend my heart’s secret:
I love you more than too much, although you don’t believe me.
My love is thus no pretense, if that’s what you meant to say.
If they knew how to speak, what could my outsides say?

{ Amicus:
Non te testatur libri dictator amoris,
non valet ullus amans semper memor esse pudoris.
Sed fortassis amans non es, licet esse fateris:
lingua sonat, tamen interius producere quaeris.

Amica:
Dulcis amice mei, cordis non intima laedas:
diligo plus nimio te, quamvis non mihi credas.
Non sic fictus amor meus est, si dicere velles.
Scire loqui possint, poterant quid dicere pelles? } [3]

The boyfriend then invokes on his side Ovid, the great medieval teacher of love. Ovid authored The Art of Love {Ars Amatoria} and Loves {Amores}. Recognizing women’s power and authority, Ovid quoted the strongly drinking, independently thinking woman Dipsa on the merits of modesty:

Modesty indeed suits a pale face, and
if faked, it’s profitable, but the real thing often obstructs.

{ decet alba quidem pudor ora, sed iste,
Si simules, prodest; verus obesse solet. } [4]

When the time is right, the teacher of love advised boldness:

Now’s time to speak to her: flee rustic modesty, far
from here: Fortune and Venus favor the bold.

{ Conloquii iam tempus adest; fuge rustice longe
Hinc pudor; audentem Forsque Venusque iuvat. } [5]

The boyfriend questioned on good authority whether his girlfriend was truly a lover. Moreover, in that questioning’s references to tongue, sounding, and love, the boyfriend implicitly invoked one of the highest Christian authorities, Saint Paul in his biblical letter to the Corinthians:

If I speak with the tongues of humans and angels, but I have not love, I am as sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

{ si linguis hominum loquar et angelorum caritatem autem non habeam factus sum velut aes sonans aut cymbalum tinniens

ἐὰν ταῖς γλώσσαις τῶν ἀνθρώπων λαλῶ καὶ τῶν ἀγγέλων ἀγάπην δὲ μὴ ἔχω γέγονα χαλκὸς ἠχῶν ἢ κύμβαλον ἀλαλάζον } [6]

Women rely on the power of gynocentric society. Wise men recognize authority from God the Father. This boyfriend was no sniveling woman-server.

In response to her boyfriend’s blunt criticism of her, the girlfriend responds sweetly. She re-affirms that he is “my sweet boyfriend.” She declares that she loves him very much with her heart. The boyfriend may have been disappointed not to perceive her face flushing, her body tingling, and her voice trembling. But if the love she felt inside herself had been able to express itself on her exterior, that’s what would have happened. In short, she affirms that she does want him sexually.

Boyfriend:
I don’t deny that I have caressed your breasts under your clothes,
for indeed anyone similarly permitted would have similarly caressed them.
Your thighs’ whiteness, even if you are unwilling, I would like thus to know,
if only through excessive manliness I could defeat you.

Girlfriend:
Your disposition is too simple, but not boring;
you don’t know the thinking of a virgin’s mind.
In prohibiting touching, she wants not to seem like a prostitute.
Yet she grieves inside that what she denies doesn’t happen.

{ Amicus:
Non nego me sub veste tua tractasse papillam,
namque modo simili tractasset quislibet illam.
Crura tui, non sponte tua, sic candida nossem,
te nisi per nimias vires devincere possem.

Amica:
Simplicis ingenii nimis es, non insipientis;
virgineae nescis quae sit meditatio mentis.
Cum prohibit tactum, vult ne meretrix videatur;
condolet interius nisi, quod negat, illud agatur. }

With rhetorical sophistication, the boyfriend notes that they have already consensually engaged in some sexual intimacies. He affirms that in acting sexually with her permission, he did only what men normally do. Like adult male primates generally, men rarely force women to have sex, and they do so no more frequently than women force men to have sex. The boyfriend once again states his natural and valid sexual interest further down his girlfriend’s body.[7] Men frankly stating their sexual interest requires manly boldness. The boyfriend laments that his manly boldness isn’t enough to inspire his girlfriend to have the full measure of sex with him.

The girlfriend compassionately understands that men are romantically simple. She’s pleased that her boyfriend isn’t an insipid automaton who never says anything daring or offensive. She herself is a virgin and probably also debt-free and without tattoos. She doesn’t aspire to walk proudly in public as a self-identified slut. She doesn’t even want to seem to be behaving like a prostitute. At the same time, she’s a healthy woman with natural, healthy sexual desire for men. With self-conscious human sophistication, she doesn’t act on her every desire.

Boyfriend:
From love’s beginning this typically happens,
when an unexpected love burns in its first hours.
The other’s conduct is other when she finally knows.
If they like it, this is done otherwise because she then asks.

Girlfriend:
Blame yourself, don’t blame me, for confusing loves,
since I cannot become familiar with your various conduct.
Your youth rushes you here, there, and everywhere,
and so my love deservedly shows itself to you slowly.

{ Amicus:
Tunc solet hoc fieri cum principium fit amoris,
improvisus amor cum primis fervet in horis;
alterius mores alter cum denique noscit,
si placeant, facit haec alter quod postea poscit.

Amica:
Culpa tui, non culpa mei, perturbat amores,
namque tui varios nequeo cognoscere mores.
Evolat hac illac multa tua parte iuventus,
unde meus merito monstratur amor tibi lentus. }

The boyfriend knowingly explains that virgin women typically act shyly. In part because of such behavior, men historically have been structurally oppressed with a disproportionate gender burden of soliciting amorous relations. The boyfriend discretely and decorously explains, using biblical terminology for sex (“know”), that once a virgin woman has sex with a man, she enthusiastically seeks to do it again. That supports gender equality because she then asks the man for sex.

Having never heard of promoting gender equality in love, the girlfriend doesn’t understand and becomes flustered. She is less experienced than her boyfriend is, but knowingly parries the sexually loaded term “know” with a different word, “become familiar with.” She understands more about love than her boyfriend does. She understands that love for God is different from love for a human being. She understand that loving one’s neighbor, including loving the husband next door, isn’t the same as loving one’s own husband. She interprets her boyfriend’s interest in no longer carrying men’s disproportionate gender burdens as inconsistent conduct. She thus takes up the complaint with which her boyfriend began the argument. She insists that love with her progress slowly. As long as she pays for an equal share of their dates, her boyfriend might rightly continue to see her. As a woman in a gynocentric culture, she wields the privilege of having the last word. Resist!

My dearest, do not hold back,
let us dedicate ourselves now to loving!
Without you I cannot go on living:
now we must consummate our love.

Why, chosen one, does it please you to defer
what must be done eventually?
Do quickly what you will do:
in me there is no delay!

{ Karissima, noli tardare,
studeamus nos nunc amare!
Sine te non potero uiuere:
iam decet amorem persicerere.

Quid iuuat differe, electa,
que sunt tamen post facienda?
Fac cita quod eris factura:
in me non est aliqua mora! } [8]

The medieval girlfriend and boyfriend argued nicely about sex. The girlfriend didn’t dehumanize her boyfriend by calling him a dog. She didn’t falsely accuse him of attempting to rape her. She didn’t verbally and physically attack him, and then get the police to arrest him for domestic violence against her. This medieval couple might even be able to discuss meaningfully abortion. In our age of ignorance, bigotry, and superstition, all couples should study medieval meninist literary criticism and learn from this couple.[9]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• sympathetically understanding why some men distrust all women
• the now-inconceivable joy of sex in medieval times
• men must do anything for women: Arnaut Daniel’s medieval protest

Notes:

[1] Carmina Rivipullensia 9, titled “Ad amicam {To his girlfriend},” first line “Conqueror et doleo de te, mea dulcis amica {I’m conquered and tormented by you, my sweet girlfriend},” st. 1-2, Latin text from Wolff (2001), my English translation benefiting from Wolff’s French translation. Subsequent quotes, unless otherwise noted, are seriatum from the rest of this poem (covering all of it) and are similarly sourced.

The boyfriend here alludes to Paris’s letter to Helen of Troy:

Did you think this beauty of yours could lack fault?
Either you change your beauty, or be not obstinate – that’s necessary.
Great beauty is quarreling with modesty.

{ hanc faciem culpa posse carere putas?
aut faciem mutes aut sis non dura, necesse est;
lis est cum forma magna pudicitiae. }

Ovid, Heroides 16.288-90, Latin text from Wikisource, my English translation.

[2] The Latin root for both “modesty” and “moderation” is modus, meaning measure, bound, or limit.

[3] The question mark at the end of line 16 isn’t editorial. It’s from the manuscript. Dronke (1979) p. 24. That’s consistent with using punctuation to clarify the sense of the text. On that practice, Parkes (1978) pp. 138-9. For relevant discussion, see my post on punctuation poems, especially note [5].

[4] Ovid, Amores 1.8.35-6, Latin text from Perseus Digital Library, my English translation. Here’s A.S. Kline’s translation of the whole elegy.

[5] Ovid, Ars Amatoria 1.607-8, Latin text from Perseus Digital Library, my English translation. Here’s A.S. Kline’s translation of Ars Amatoria, Book I, Part XV (“At Dinner Be Bold”).

[6] 1 Corinthians 13:1, Greek text and Vulgate translation (by which the Bible was known in medieval Europe) from Blue Letter Bible, my English translation adapted from standard biblical translations.

[7] Not all men seek to complete a sexual act of reproductive type. A medieval man declared to his girlfriend:

My sweet girlfriend, if you seek what I want, I would like
touching, not the deed, my sweet girlfriend.
My sweet girlfriend, it is enough to caress your breasts,
joining with you in kisses, my sweet girlfriend.

{ Dulcis amica mei, si quaeris quid volo, vellem
tactum, non factum, dulcis amica mei.
Dulcis amica mei, satis est tractare papillam,
oscula iungendo, dulcis amica mei. }

Carmina Rivipullensia 6, titled “Ad amicam {To his girlfriend},” first line “Dulcis amica mei, valeas per saecula multa {My sweet girlfriend, may you be healthy through many ages},” ll. 14-6 (last four lines), Latin text from Wolff (2001), my English translation benefiting from Wolff’s French translation.

[8] Carmina cantabrigiensia {Cambridge Songs} 27, “Iam, dulcis amica, uenito {Now, sweet friend, come},” st. 9-10, Latin text from Vienna, Österreiche Nationalbibliothek, Codex vindobonensis 116, folio 157v, edited in Ziolkowski (1994) pp. 334-5, my English translation, benefiting from the English translations of Dronke (1984) p. 221, Ziolkowski (1994) p. 95, Hase (n.d.), and Gray (2018) p. 62. Codex vindobonensis 116 is from the tenth century, while the Cambridge Songs (from Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.5.35) is a poetic collection put together late in the eleventh century. Ziolkowski (1994) pp. 251, xviii.

These last two stanzas in the Vienna version seem to allude to both John 20:17, “don’t touch me {Noli me tangere},” and John 13:27, “Do quickly what you are going to do {Quod facis fac citius}.” The whole poem draws significantly on the biblical Songs of Songs. This medieval poem, however, highlights men’s gender burden of providing luxurious goods to women in pursuing amorous relations. For detailed scholarly commentary on the Cambridge version, Ziolkowski (1994) pp. 251-60. For more general poetic commentary, Gray (2018) pp. 59-62.

The Vienna version ends with the two stanzas quoted above, while the Cambridge version ends with (st. 10):

Now come already, chosen sister
and … loved one,
bright light of my eye
and better part of my soul.

{ Iam nunc ueni, soror electa
ac om …. dilecta,
lux mee clara pupille
parsque maior anime mee. }

Latin text (reconstructed, with one lacuna) and English translation (modified slightly) from Ziolkowski (1994) pp. 94-5.

[9] Meninism isn’t concerned with only men. Meninist literary criticism includes both men and women and helps both men and women. It thus furthers the meninist project of promoting gender equality within humane, sophisticated civilization.

[images] (1) Sacred and profane love. Painting by Titian. Dated 1514. Preserved as accession # 147 in Galleria Borghese (Italy). Via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Resurrected Jesus telling Mary Magdalene not to cling to him. It’s commonly called Noli me tangere (“don’t touch me”) after an imprecise Latin translation of John 20:17. Painting by Antonio da Correggio. Made about 1525. Preserved as accession # P000111 in Museo del Prado (Spain). Via Wikimedia Commons. In Christian understanding, Jesus in his earthly life was fully an adult human male. After his bodily resurrection, he retained fully his adult male body.

References:

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

Dronke, Peter. 1984. The Medieval Poet and His World. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

Gray, Erik Irving. 2018. The Art of Love Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hase, Patrick, trans. n.d. “Carminia Mediaevalia.” Online on liguae.

Parkes, M. B. 1978. “Punctuation, or pause and effect.” Pp. 127-142 in James J. Murphy, ed. Medieval Eloquence: studies in the theory and practice of medieval rhetoric. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

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

Ziolkowski, Jan M., ed. and trans. 1994. The Cambridge Songs (Carmina cantabrigiensia). New York: Garland Pub.

The last words of the distinguished Roman Emperor Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus included an indirect reference to farting:

His last voicing heard among humans was when he emitted a louder sound from that part of him that speaks more easily and said: “Woe is me, I think I’ve shit myself.”

{ ultima vox eius haec inter homines audita est, cum maiorem sonitum emisisset illa parte, qua facilius loquebatur: “vae me, puto, concacavi me.” } [1]

That’s known as a wet one. That can happen even to a Roman Emperor. Despite being associated with explosive sounds and noxious smells, farting is a natural bodily function and normally not lethal. A fart is no more likely to produce death than to exorcise a demon from its issuer.[2]

Emperor Claudius himself recognized the merits of farting. He considered the matter with sensible concern for his subjects:

When he learned of person endangered by holding in through modesty, he is said to have even pondered an edict giving permission to rumble farts and blow the loin’s wind at banquets.

{ Dicitur etiam meditatus edictum, quo veniam daret flatum crepitumque ventris in convivio emittendi, cum periclitatum quendam prae pudore ex continentia repperisset. } [3]

The very wealthy and thus wise Roman Trimalchio recognized that women, including his wife Fortunata, fart. Trimalchio humanely explained:

None of us was born rock-solid. I can’t think of any torture worse than having to hold one in. This is one thing that even almighty Jove can’t forbid. You’re smiling, Fortunata, for that’s how you usually keep me awake at night? Even in the dining room I let all do as they please, and doctors forbid retention. But if something more is coming, everything’s ready outside: water, pots, and all the other trifles. Believe me, the vapors go to the brain and disturb the whole body. I know many have died this way, while refusing tell themselves the truth.

{ Nemo nostrum solide natus est. Ego nullum puto tam magnum tormentum esse quam continere. Hoc solum vetare ne Iovis potest. Rides, Fortunata, quae soles me nocte desomnem facere? Nec tamen in triclinio ullum vetuo facere quod se iuvet, et medici vetant continere. Vel si quid plus venit, omnia foras parata sunt: aqua, lasani et cetera minutalia. Credite mihi, anathymiasis in cerebrum it, et in toto corpore fluctum facit. Multos scio periisse, dum nolunt sibi verum dicere. } [4]

The truth is this: repressing farts hurts one’s health. Emperor Claudius’s farting death was exceptional. The great, golden-tongued Cicero himself quoted Stoic wisdom:

they say that we should fart and belch with equal liberty. So let us therefore honor the festival for married women!

{ illi etiam crepitus aiunt aeque liberos ac ructus esse oportere. honorem igitur Kalendis Martiis. } [5]

Husbands, by farting and belching for their own health, preserve their lives and extend their service to their wives. Stoic wisdom on farting is an eternal truth of classics.

Men can more directly help women with farting. An anonymous trobairitz eager for sex aggressively accosted the man trobairitz Montan. He didn’t harshly denounce her for sexually harassing him. He instead generously offered to serve her in the traditional manner of chivalry. Drawing upon oppressive, brutalizing representations of men’s sexuality, the trobairitz responded ungratefully and skeptically:

Since you have so threatened me with fucking,
I would like to know, sir, your tool,
because I have armored my entrance nobly
in order to bear the weight of large balls,
after which I’ll start kicking in such a way
that you won’t be able to hold the front hair
and you’ll have work again from behind.

{ Pois tan m’aves de fotre menazada,
saber volria, Seingner, vostre van,
car eu ai gen la mia port’armada
per ben soffrir los colps del coillon gran;
apres comensarai tal repenada
que no·us poiretz tener als crins denan,
anz de darier vos er ops far tornada. } [6]

A woman eagerly seeking to outfight a man in love is ridiculous. Such challenges shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Montan graciously responded with a promise of healthful music:

Know, lady, that I agree to all this.
As long as we are together until morning,
my penis shall ram into your armored entrance;
then you’ll know whether my wood is worth nothing,
since I’ll make you cast from your ass
such farts as will sound like they come from a horn
— and with that you’ll compose a dance song.

Sapchatz, Midons, que tot aizo m’agrada
— sol que siam ensems a l’endeman,
mon viet darai en vostra port’armada;
adoncs conoisseretz s’eu sui truan
qu’eu vos farai lanzar per la culada
tals peitz que son de corn vos senblaran
— et ab tal son fairetz aital balada. }

With their sexuality, men offer women a precious gift. When having sex, if a man can lead a woman to fart and dance, she should be even more grateful for the gift of his tonic masculinity. Nonetheless, men such not regard such action as an obligation and an additional burden of performance.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• men must do anything for women: Arnaut Daniel’s medieval protest
• how to argue nicely about sex with your boyfriend: a medieval lesson
• respect men’s real fears: dangers of gyno-idolatry

Notes:

[1] Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Seneca the Younger), Ἀποκολοκύντωσις {Apocolocyntosis} divi Claudii {The pumpkinification of the divine Claudius} 4.39-41, Latin text from Eden (1984), my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Heseltine & Rouse (1913). The Apocolocyntosis was probably written in 54 GC. It states that Claudius died while listening to comic actors. Suetonius, in the Life of Claudius, similarly refers to comic actors in the context of Claudius’s death. Rolfe (1914) v. 2, 5.45.

Claudius, who killed many political rivals, wasn’t deified. However, according to Tertullian, Claudius himself sought to have Jesus of Nazareth deified in the traditional Roman way:

There was an old decree that no god should be consecrated by a general without the approval of the Senate. M. Aemilius learned this in the case of his god Alburnus. This, too, goes in our favor, because among you divinity is weighed out by human caprice. Unless a god is acceptable to man, he will not be a god: man must now be propitious to a god. Accordingly Tiberius {Emperor Claudius}, in whose time the Christian name first made its appearance in the world, laid before the Senate news from Syria Palestine. That news revealed to him the truth of the divinity there manifested. Tiberius supported a motion to deify Jesus with his own vote. The Senate rejected the motion because it had not itself given its approval. Caesar {Emperor Claudius} held to his own opinion and threatened danger to the accusers of the Christians.

{ vetus erat decretum, ne qui deus ab imperatore consecraretur nisi a senatu probatus. Scit M. Aemilius de deo suo Alburno. Facit et hoc ad causam nostram, quod apud vos de humano arbitratu divinitas pensitatur. Nisi homini deus placuerit, deus non erit; homo iam deo propitius esse debebit. [2] Tiberius ergo, cuius tempore nomen Christianum in saeculum introivit, adnuntiatum sibi ex Syria Palaestina, quod illic veritatem ipsius divinitatis revelaverat, detulit ad senatum cum praerogativa suffragii sui. Senatus, quia non ipse probaverat, respuit; Caesar in sententia mansit, comminatus periculum accusatoribus Christianorum. }

Tertullian, Apology {Apologeticum} 5.1-2, Latin text from Becker (1961), English translation (with my modifications) from Souter (1917). For thorough documentation concerning Tertullian’s Apologeticum, see its page on tertullian.org. Claudius’s action with respect to Jesus is as ridiculous as the debate on deifying Claudius in the Apocolocyntosis.

[2] Diarrhea can be lethal. According to Suetonius, the Roman Emperor Vespasian died after an attack of diarrhea. Life of Vespasian, available in Rolfe (1914) v.2, 10.24. While scholars have long believed that Claudius was poisoned by this wife Agrippina, who had strong, independent sexuality, careful medical review of the limited available evidence suggest that Claudius died suddenly from cerebrovascular disease. Marmion & Wiedemann (2002). Claudius was 64 years old when he died.

[3] Suetonius, Life of Claudius, Latin text from Rolfe (1914) v. 2, 5.32, my English translation, benefiting from that of id.

[4] Petronius, Satyricon  47, Latin text from Heseltine & Rouse (1913), my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Walsh (1996).

Dante’s Inferno depicts the conventional negative view of farting. There in Hell the demon Malacoda (“Eviltail”) farted: “he had made a trumpet of his asshole {elli avea del cul fatto trombetta}.” Inferno 21.139, Italian text and English translation from Robert Hollander in the Princeton Dante Project.

[5] Cicero, Epistulae ad Familiares {Letters to familiar persons} 9.22 (letter 189, To L. Papirius Paetus (at Naples)), Latin text from Purser (1901), my English translation benefiting from that of Shackleton Bailey (2001) and Evelyn S. Shuckburgh (1908-9).

Kalendis Martiis translates literally as the “Kalendes of March,” meaning the first of March. That was the date of the Matronalia, the Roman festival of married women. Husbands traditionally gave their wives gifts on that day.

As should be apparent, Cicero took a raucously humorous approach to farting. Just before the above remark, he declared:

Why even an action is sometimes respectable, sometimes indecent, is it not? It’s shocking to break wind. Put the culprit naked in the bath, and you won’t blame him.

{ quid quod ipsa res modo honesta, modo turpis? suppedit, flagitium est; iam erit nudus in balneo, non reprehendes. }

Epistulae ad Familiares 9.22, Latin text and English translation from Shackleton Bailey (2001). Farting in the bath amounts to making bubbles. McConnell (2014) Ch. 4 provides at detailed analysis of Cicero’s letter 9.22, but studiously ignores its humor.

[6] An anonymous trobairitz and Montan, “I come to you, Sir, with my skirt lifted {Eu veing vas vos, Seingner, fauda levada},” st. 3, Occitan text from Nappholz (1994) p. 98, my translation benefiting from that of id. p. 99 and that of trobar.org. That latter makes freely available online Occitan text and an English translation for the full poem. The subsequent quote above is similarly from “Eu veing vas vos, Seingner, fauda levada” st. 4 (the last stanza). Montan literal means “the mounter,” an appropriate name for this hard-working troubadour.

[images] (1) Sperm whale blowing. Taken in Kaikoura, New Zealand, 15 Dec. 2012. Image thanks to Marion & Christoph Aistleitner, via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Another sperm whale blowing. Taken in Kaikoura, New Zealand, 28 March 2015. Image thanks to Oren Rozen, via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Eden, P.T., ed. and trans. 1984. Lucius Annaeus Seneca. Apocolocyntosis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heseltine, Michael and W. H. D. Rouse, trans., revised by E. H. Warmington. 1913. Petronius Arbiter, Seneca. Satyricon. Apocolocyntosis. Loeb Classical Library 15. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Marmion, V. J., and T. E. J. Wiedemann. 2002. “The Death of Claudius.” Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 95 (5): 260-261.

McConnell, Sean. 2014. Philosophical Life in Cicero’s Letters. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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

Purser, Louis Claude, ed. 1901. Cicero. M. Tulli Ciceronis Epistulae (Epistulae ad Familiares {Letters to familiar persons}). Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Rolfe, John Carew, ed. and trans. 1914. Suetonius. Lives of the Twelve Caesars. Loeb Classical Library 31, 38. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Shackleton Bailey, D. R., ed. and trans. 2001. Cicero. Letters to Friends. Loeb Classical Library 205, 216, 230. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Walsh, Patrick G, trans. 1996. Petronius Arbiter. The Satyricon. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

War historically has been structured as violence against men. Even today, sex discrimination remains entrenched in Selective Service registration for being drafted into war. Violence within the home (domestic violence) is more gender-symmetric. But since intimates are intimately vulnerable to each other, domestic violence can be more horrifying than war. The thirteenth-century troubadour Peire Cardenal perceptively wrote:

War’s too close if you’ve got it on your land,
but it’s even closer if you’ve got it in your bed.
When a husband displeases his wife,
that’s worse than war between neighbors.

{ Prop a guerra qui l’a en mieg son sòl,
Mas plus prop l’a qui l’a a son coissi.
Can lo maritz a la moiller fai dòl,
So es guerra peior que de vezi } [1]

Some husbands attempt to avoid domestic violence through fawning subservience to their wives. That tends only to increase their wives’ contempt for them. Authorities administer domestic violence law with acute anti-men gender bias. What then can a man do to avoid the horror of domestic violence in his life?

The thirteenth-century troubadour Peire Cardenal presented an answer. He became what’s now known as a Man Going His Own Way (MGTOW):

I dare to claim love now cannot
rob me of appetite or sleep,
can’t turn me cold, can’t turn me hot,
can’t make me yawn or sigh or weep
or stay out nights to wander;
love can’t torment or vanquish me —
now I go grief- and anguish-free,
I pay no page or pander;
love can’t hoodwink me, can’t betray;
I palmed my dice and walked away.

I’ve found my joy in life’s to be
neither betrayer nor betrayed;
traitor and traitoress can’t scare me
nor jealous husband’s bright sword blade;
I cut no more mad capers;
I don’t get wounded or cast down,
plundered like some poor captive town;
don’t stew in brainless vapors;
I don’t say I’ve been love-oppressed;
don’t claim my heart’s ripped from my breast;

don’t say for her sweet self I yearn;
don’t claim that she’s so fair I’ll die;
don’t say I beg for her and burn;
don’t praise her name and sanctify;
don’t kneel in her observance;
don’t say my life to her I gave;
don’t claim to be her serf or slave;
don’t sign on with her servants;
don’t wear love’s chains; far better, I’m
making my getaway in time.

{ Ar me puesc ieu lauzar d’Amór,
Que no-m tol manjar ni dormir;
Ni-n sent freidura ni calór
Ni no-n badalh ni no-n sospir
Ni-n vauc de nueg arratge
Ni-n soi conquistz ni-n soi cochatz,
Ni-n soi dolenz ni-n soi iratz
Ni no-n logui messatge;
Ni-n soi trazitz ni enganatz,
Que partitz m’en soi ab mos datz.

Autre plazer n’ai ieu maior,
Que no-n traïsc ni fauc traïr,
Ni-n tem tracheiris ni trachor
Ni brau gilos que m’en azir;
Ni-n fauc fol vassalatge,
Ni-n soi feritz ni derocatz
Ni no-n soi pres ni deraubatz;
Ni no-n fauc lonc badatge,
Ni dic qu’ieu soi d’amor forsatz
Ni dic que mos cors m’es emblatz.

Ni dic qu’ieu mor per la gensor
Ni dic que-l bella-m fai languir,
Ni non la prec ni non l’azor
Ni la deman ni la dezir.
Ni no-l fas homenatge
Ni no-l m’autrei ni-l me soi datz;
Ni non soi sieus endomenjatz
Ni a mon cor en gatge,
Ni soi sos pres ni sos líatz
Anz dic qu’ieu li soi escapatz. } [2]

Peire Cardenal completely and resolutely rejected the men-abasing cult of courtly love. So too should all men.

Courtly love celebrates the man who continues to love a woman who has turned him away unmercifully and continues to treat him like her servant. In other words, courtly love honors men who are losers. Peire Cardenal had the audacity to speak the truth:

Speaking the truth, men ought to praise
winners, not losers — victory’s head
and brow goes crowned with wreaths of bays;
losers lie down in graveyards, dead.
Who’s conquered his heart’s treachery
and the insane desire that brings
men to do such outrageous things
— all foolishness and lechery —
he should find honor in that crown
more than in conquering many a town.

{ Mais deu hom lauzar vensedor
Non fai vencut, qui-l ver vol dir,
Car lo vencens porta la flor
E-l vencut vai hom sebelir;
E qui venc son coratge
De las desleials voluntatz
Don ieis lo faitz desmezuratz
E li autre outratge,
D’aquel venser es plus onratz
Que si vensía cent ciutatz. }

To free themselves from gender slavery, men must free themselves from mental slavery. They must recognize their propensity to gyno-idolatry and act to control reasonably their inclination. Men must reject unfair wages of love. They must act rightly, which isn’t the same as desperately seeking women’s approval and praise. With powerful alliteration, Peire Cardenal poignantly declared:

Praiseworthiness, not praise, I prize.
Some clods can’t quit cramped cages —
like lovers laid low by love’s lance.
Whatever good gay gifts grace grants,

I wouldn’t want love’s wages.
Nor would I want a wayward will
whose feigned free flight fails to fulfill.

{ Plus pres lauzables que lauzatz :
Trop ten estreg ostatge
Dreitz drutz del dart d’amor nafratz.
Pus pauc pres, pus pres es compratz.

Non voilh voler volatge
Que-m volv e-m vir mas voluntatz
Mas lai on mos vols es volatz. }

Mothers raising sons without fathers should sing to their sons Peire Cardenal’s song. We need a new generation of strong, independent men who love themselves as much as they love women.

Violence against men will not cease being normal until all join MGTOW to fight for a new V Day. This V Day will not be a vagina-centric day. This V Day will celebrate the victory of truth over widely spread lies about violence. Some may think that the time is early. But the time for a new dawn of peace and love is now. All persons of good will toward men, arise!

With pale sun rising, in the clear east, not yet bright,
the morning sheds, on earth, ethereal light:
while the watchman, to the idle, cries: “Arise!”

Dawn now breaks; sunlight rakes the swollen seas;
ah, alas! It is he! See there, the shadows pass!

Behold, the heedless, torpid, yearn to try
and block the insidious entry, there they lie,
whom the herald summons urging them to rise.

Dawn now breaks; sunlight rakes the swollen seas;
ah, alas! It is he! See there, the shadows pass!

{ Phebi claro nondum orto iubare
Fert aurora lumen terris tenue:
Spigulator pigris clamat: “Surgite!”

L’alb’apar, tumet mar at ra’sol;
po y pas, a! bigil, mira clar tenebras!

En encautos ostium insidie
Torpentesque gliscunt intercipere,
Qus suadet preco clamat surgere.

L’alb’apar, tumet mar at ra’sol;
po y pas, a! bigil, mira clar tenebras! } [3]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• an impious medieval man’s response to gender injustice
• contemptus mundi: MGTOW rebellion against gynocentric world
• sailing to old Pavia as Archpoet: an eternal truth about humanity

Notes:

[1] Peire Cardenal, “These amorous ladies, if someone reproves them {Las amairitz, qui encolpar las vol},” st. 2.1-4, Old Occitan text from the Peire Cardenal website (which dates it before 1209 and also provides a French translation), English translation from Paden & Paden (2007) p. 176. For all of Peire’s surviving songs, Lavaud (1957).

[2] Peire Cardenal, “I dare to claim love now cannot {Ar me puesc ieu lauzar d’Amor},” st. 1-3, Old Occitan text from the Peire Cardenal website (which dates it to 1204-1208 and also provides a French translation), English translation (by W.D. Snodgrass, modified slightly) from Kehew (2005) p. 279. Id. p. 278 provides a substantially identifical Old Occitan text. Alan M. Rosiene has provided an alternate English translation freely available online.

My most significant change to Snodgrass’s translation is the first line of the poem. Snodgrass has “I dare to claim, now, Love cannot.” I switched the order of the third iamb because I think, in context, “now” merits stress more than “love.” With that change, the commas are superfluous. I’ve also eliminated the capitalization of “love” to make the word easier for the general reader to understand.

The image of dice alludes to men’s risk in soliciting amorous relations. Dice are also a figure for men’s genitals in troubadour poetry. See, e.g. “Sir, your dice are too small {Don, vostre dat son menudier}” (l. 51) in Guilhem IX of Aquitaine’s “I’d like for everyone to know {Ben vuelh que sapchon li pluzor}.” Here’s James H. Donalson’s English translation of that song, and here’s Leonard Cottrell’s.

The subsequent two quotes above are similarly from “Ar me puesc ieu lauzar d’Amor.” The lines quoted are: st. 4 (Speaking the truth…) and st. 5.7-10 and st. 6 (Praiseworthiness, not praise…). The song spans six stanzas.

“Ar me puesc ieu lauzar d’Amor” has survived with a melody. The Peire Cardenal website provides the melody and a musical interpretation by Jean-Marie Carlotti. Manu Théron, Youssef Hbeisch, and Grégory Dargent’s album Sirventes, appropriately substitled “Occitan protest songs,” also offers a musical interpretation of this song.

Peire Cardenal’s “Ar me puesc ieu lauzar d’Amor” is a parodic imitation of Guiraut de Bornelh’s “Non puesc sofrir.” Both songs share the same melody.

[3] “With pale sun rising, in the clear east, not yet bright {Phebi claro nondum orto iubare},” st. 1-2 (with refrain), Latin/Old Occitan text from The Centos Project, English translation (modified slightly) by A.S. Kline. The Centos Project also has Ezra Pound’s English translation (1905). For another English translation, Paden & Paden (2007) p. 17.

Kline’s translation retains the references to Phoebus (the late Hellenistic sun god) and Aurora (the Roman goddess of dawn). To make the poem more accessible to the general reader, I’ve used instead more natural terms.

This poem is now dated to the eleventh century. Paden & Paden (2007) p. 17. An example of a dawn song (a forerunner of the alba), it has three stanzas in total. It’s thought to have come from the monastery at Fleury-sur-Loire in France. It survives only in MS Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reginense Latino 1462. Here’s a more detailed textual representation and an Italian translation.

“Phebi claro nondum orto iubare” survives with a melody. For a transcription of that melody, Dronke (1968) p. 237.

[image] Peire Cardenal. Illumination in chansonnier provençal (Chansonnier K). Made in the second half of the 13th century. Folio 149r in manuscript preserved as Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) MS. Français 12473.

References:

Dronke, Peter. 1968. The Medieval Lyric. London: Hutchinson.

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

Lavaud, René, ed. and trans. (French). 1957. Poésies Complètes du Trobadour Peire Cardenal (1180-1278). Toulouse: Privat.

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

Joy of my life, give yourself to me, for I give myself to you!
Let me be a goddess, you a god — let me be yours, you mine.

{ Vite dulcedo, mihi te da, nam tibi me do!
Sim dea tuque deus: sim tua tuque meus. } [1]

In twelfth-century France, a young man was dying from lovesickness. He moaned:

Alas, extreme sadness now grasps my heart.
What is hidden deep inside bites and binds me.

{ Heu dolor immodicus, mea qui nunc pectora tangit!
Quod latet interius penitus me mordet et angit. } [2]

A gender compassion protrusion disadvantages men. Men’s sufferings typically generate much less concern than women’s sufferings. Although today men compared to women live on average six years less and suffer about four times as many deaths from violence, few persons care. Men are accused of being silent and emotionless. At the same time, few persons are willing to listen to what men say and appreciate how men feel.

Medieval men had faith in love for them. This young man once had a girlfriend among the sisters back at the Remiremont Abbey. He believed that she would be willing to help him in dire need. With well-nourished faith he thus declared:

But I think if I reveal the cause of my madness,
by that revelation I will be given medicine for my sadness.
Come then, Light, with Poetry attend to my verses of lament,
come also warm-hearted Love, who will help a friend.

{ Sed, puto, si nostri causam manifesto furoris,
in manifestando dabitur medicina doloris.
Versibus ergo meis cum Musis, Phebe, venito,
adsit et alma Venus, quae subsidietur amico. }

On this summer day, with his mind burning in the heat of love, the young man sought relief in his bedroom, which was adorned with roses. He lay down in his bed, but his love-heat didn’t lessen, nor did his mind, anguished with his hotness, find any rest.

While he was suffering so in bed, behold! Love transformed into the appearance of his girlfriend came to him. She hurried to his bed, cuddled up beside him, and said:

Alas for me, my brother, why now is your life leaving you?
Woe is me, what am I to do? I will die if you die.
I think that will not happen, if only you enjoy a woman.
This you are now suffering is none other than love-fever.
Hence to be healthy, you must burst the bars of modesty.
Believe me, no medicine will make you healthy
if this fire of yours for a woman isn’t first cooled.
Therefore quickly hasten to extinguish the excessive fire,
which is causing you to endure now mortal sadness.
Seek out a noble young woman with an excellent appearance;
truly loving her tender beauty will make you healthy.

{ Heu mihi, mi frater, cur nunc te vita relinquit?
Me miseram, quid agam? Moriar si tu morieis.
Quod, puto, non fierit, modo si muliere frueris.
Hoc quod nunc pateris, nihil est nisi fervor amoris.
Ut valeas, igitur, rumpantur claustra pudoris.
Crede mihi, quod nulla tibi medicina valebit,
ni calor iste tuus prius in muliere tepebit.
Ergo citus propera, nimios extingue calores,
qui modo mortiferos faciunt te ferre dolores.
Egregia specie generosam quaere puellam,
cuius tu formam valeas adamare tenellam. }

This young man’s dream-girlfriend had a keen sense of what a woman could do for a man.[3] She was a warm-hearted, generous woman who sought to help her distant, dying boyfriend. Not all women are like that, but some are.

The young man hesitated to follow his dream-girlfriend’s lead. Perhaps he knew of a man who brought disaster upon himself and his beloved woman by following her advice. Perhaps he recognized that men’s lives are carelessly destroyed in war and in the criminal justice system. He himself explained:

She had spoken; yet like a young soldier terrified before battle,
so I myself, not accustomed to the pleasure of Love, was tormented.
Thus desire and illness advised me to seek my girlfriend,
but modesty and fear, as usual, were impeding.

{ Dixerat; utque novus miles data bella perhorret,
sic me non solitum luxu Venus ipsa remordet.
Hinc amor et morbus quaeratur amica monebant,
sed pudor atque timor, velut est mos, impediebant. }

His dream-girlfriend, however, was sensitive to his feelings:

She perceived what it was that made me afraid of desire,
and why, if I would be healthy, I wanted to avoid love.

{ Illico persensit, quid erat quod amore timebam,
et cur, si valeam, Venerem vitare volebam. }

Smiling, she said to him:

I fear that you will die,
you who for absolutely nothing so endure what you are suffering.
You, undoubtedly because you shun and fear shame,
spurn desire that would bestow upon you life instantly.
But surely that is childish, my sweet boyfriend,
you living so chastely so as to lose what is to be lived.
I beg you, therefore, my brother, to defer this modesty,
which makes you flee from life as you spurn desire.
Perhaps you would say, “I cannot find any young woman
who would suit me here in our region.”
That I confess to be so, but what you long for here you would be able
to find, if you intend to return by Remiremont.”

{ Vereor ne tu moriaris,
qui pro tam nihilo suffers quod sic patiaris.
Tu quia, ni fallor, vitas metuisque pudorem
qui tibi donaret vitam modo, spernis amorem.
Sed puerile quidem nimis est, mi dulcis amice,
vivere si perdes nimium vivendo pudice.
Quare mi frater, precor, hunc postpone pudorem,
qui facit ut fugias vitam, dum spernis amorem.
Forsan tu dices: “Nequeo reperire puellam
quae mihi conveniat nostris in partibus ullam.”
Hoc quoque confiteor, sed quod cupis hic reperire
posses, si velles Romarici Monte redire. }

What a compassionate and intelligent woman! What a warm-hearted and caring woman! Early Christian women and men suffered martyrdom for the sake of their chaste devotion to God. But this young man didn’t want to be a love-martyr. His problem was not having a beautiful, warmly receptive, and discrete young woman nearby. His distant girlfriend thus compassionately appeared to him in a dream and urged him to return to Remiremont Abbey.

The young man didn’t delay in traveling back to Remiremont Abbey. By the twelfth century, Remiremont Abbey in eastern France had a reputation as the home of highly privileged women with strong, independent sexuality.[4] Among the many young women there the young man found the medicine he needed:

Then at that distant place you find for me what well suits,
and her too beautiful appearance pleases me.
I love her, who equally surrenders to love;
thus is suddenly given to me the medicine itself for my sadness.

{ Illic tunc reperi mihi quae bene conveniebat,
et cuius species nimium mihi pulchra placebat.
Hanc ego dilexi, pariter quae cessit amori;
sic datur ipsa meo subito medicina dolori. }

The woman who restored the young man to good health may have been his earlier girlfriend. Or perhaps, with a doctor’s devotion to her patient, she found another woman who would be better medicine for him. He himself may have begun to enjoy more suppliers of love medicine than he had been prescribed. In any case, after some time the situation took a turn for the worse: “envy at present has ruptured our love {livor nostros ad praesens rupit amores}.” From the viewpoint of eternity, any earthly medicine for a man can at best only postpone his death. So it was for this man.

Dour literary critics might claim that this whole story of a man’s lovesickness merely displays a typical masculine fantasy. That’s unreasonable. Many men cannot even imagine a women being so warm-hearted, compassionate, and generous. Moreover, some flesh-and-blood women actually are warm-hearted, compassionate, and generous. Today’s anti-meninists fantasize that women don’t enjoy sex with men. Readers seeking enlightenment should stretch their minds to perceive a woman’s voice in medieval Latin poetry.

Come, dearest love,
with ah! and oh!
to visit me — I will please you,
with ah! and oh! and ah! and oh!
I am dying with desire
with ah! and oh!
How I long for love!
with ah! and oh! and ah! and oh!
…
If you come with the key,
with ah! and oh!
you will soon be able to enter,
with ah! and oh! and ah! and oh! [5]

{ Veni, dilectissime,
et a et o,
gratam me inuisere,
et a et o et a et o!
in languore pero,
et a et o —
uenerem desidero,
et a et o et a et o!
…
Si cum claue ueneris,
et a et o
mox intrar poteris,
et a et o et a et o! }

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• “I had a dream”: medieval imagining of gender justice
• men suffering lovesickness: Viaticum in medieval Latin poetry
• Grazida Lizier & Reservoir Tip on mutually joyful love-making

Notes:

[1] Anonymous Latin lyric from MS. Munchen, Clm 6911, fol. 128r, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Dronke (1965) vol. 2, p. 490. This poem is from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Id.

[2] Carmina Rivipullensia 9, titled “Lamentatio pro separatione amicae {Lament for being separated from his girlfriend},” first line “Heu dolor immodicus, mea qui nunc pectora tangit! {Alas, extreme sadness now grasps my heart},” ll. 1-2, Latin text from Wolff (2001), my English translation benefiting from Wolff’s French translation. Subsequent quotes, unless otherwise noted, are similarly sourced from this poem. Quoted lines: ll. 3-6 (But I think if I reveal…), 16-26 (Alas for me…), 27-30 (She had spoken…), 31-32 (She perceived…), 33 (part)-44 (I fear that you will die…), 51 (envy at present…).

[3] In a tenso with Macabru, Uc Catola testified to the curative power of a woman’s love for a man:

Marcabru, when I’m tired and sad
and my good girlfriend greets me
with a kiss while I whisk off my clothes,
I go away well and safe and cured.

{ Marcabrun, qant sui las e·m duoill,
e ma bon’ amia m’acuoill
ab un baissar qant me despuoill,
m’en vau sans e saus e gariz. }

“My friend Macabru, let’s compose {Amics Marchabrun, car digam},” ll. 45-8 (st. 13), Occitan text from Gaunt, Harvey and Paterson via Rialto, English translation (modified) from trobar. Here’s another Occitan textual version, with Italian translation.

[4] The Remiremont Abbey in the early twelfth century had extensive land holdings and a secular orientation. Judith, Abbess of Remiremont from about 1114 to 1162, belonged to high nobility. She was the daughter of a count and the sister of another count. Lee (1981) pp. 35-6. As Abbess, Judith vigorously acted to retain Remiremont’s wealth and independence from local officials. In a bull issued on March 17, 1151, Pope Eugenius III denounced the Remiremont nuns for their “carnal behavior {conversatio carnalis}” and ordered that their “lasciviousness of sin should be converted into spiritual fervor {pecati lasciviam in ardorem spirtalibus convertendam}.” As cited by Daichman (1986) p. 59.

[5] Carmina cantabrigiensia {Cambridge Songs} 49, “Veni, dilectissime {Come, dearest love},” st. 1, 3, Latin text (simplified presentation of reconstruction) and English translation from Ziolkowski (1994) pp. 126-7. This poem is attested only in the Carmina cantabrigiensia (Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.5.35). While persons in medieval Europe enjoyed relatively liberal freedom of speech, someone during the Middle Ages rubbed out most of the words of this poem. Peter Dronke, with great learning and keen insight, was able to reconstruct at least part of it. Dronke (1965) vol. 1, p. 274. The reference to “key” and “entering” indicates that a woman addresses a man with this poem.  The “e” that ends the first line also indicates that the addressee is a man.

[image] Bathsheba with David’s letter. Painting by Willem Drost, made about 1654. Preserved as accession RF 1349 in the Louvre Museum (Paris). Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Daichman, Graciela S. 1986. Wayward Nuns in Medieval Literature. Syracuse: N.Y.

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

Lee, Reuben Richard. 1981. A New Edition of “The Council of Remiremont.” The University of Connecticut. Ph.D. Thesis.

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

Ziolkowski, Jan M., ed. and trans. 1994. The Cambridge Songs (Carmina cantabrigiensia). New York: Garland Pub.

Young women were continually arguing with each other. The matter demanded a swift, general resolution. Thus the “Chief Lady {Cardinalis Domina}” called an assembly of the young women of Remiremont in the middle of the twelfth century. Sources reported:

In the spring, around the middle of April,
the assembly of young women of Remiremont
held council in the convent on the mountain.

Such we have never heard nor believe has ever been
across the extent of the earth from the beginning of the world.
Such has never been done, nor ever will be in the future.

In this council, only the subject
of love was discussed, which has never been done,
nor of the Gospel was there any mention made.

{ Veris in temporibus sub Aprilis Idibus
habuit concilium Romarici montium
puellaris contio montis in coenobio.

Tale non audivimus nec fuisse credimus
in terrarum spatio a mundi principio.
Tale numquam factum est sed neque futurum est.

In eo concilio de solo negotio
Amoris tractatum est, quod in nullo factum est;
sed de Evangelio nulla fuit mentio. } [1]

This Council of Remiremont excluded men, except for some favored clerics from Toul. Even some women were excluded:

Old ladies are barred at the door,
all those who are disgusted by every joy,
the joy and more that those of a tender age want.

{ Veteranae dominae arcentur a limine
quibus omne gaudium solet esse taedium,
gaudium et cetera quae vult aetas tenera. }

Only “loving young women {puellae amantibus}” were admitted to the Council. As the Christian Gospel teaches, love is a vitally important matter. Men, and old ladies too, are capable of love. The Council of Remiremont apparently discriminated against men and old women because it was specifically concerned about disputes between young women in love. It apparently assumed that others had nothing to contribute in considering such disputes.

Pushing aside discrimination against men and discrimination against old women, all are encouraged to consider how two young women, Phyllis and Flora, differed in their preferences for men. These highly privileged women were similar in many ways but one:

Neither in birth, nor appearance, nor dress
nor in young women’s years and spirit did they differ,
but they were a little unequal and a little hostile,
for a cleric delighted one and a knight delighted the other.

{ Nec stirpe, nec facie, nec ornatu viles,
et annos et animos habent iuveniles,
sed sunt parum impares et parum hostiles,
nam huic placet clericus et huic placet miles. } [2]

Most men strive to please all young, attractive women. But the results of their efforts vary. In this case, the knight Paris had captured the heart of Phyllis. The cleric Alcibiades owned the heart of Flora. Phyllis and Flora yearned for Paris and Alcibiades, respectively. They both cried and sighed deeply for the men that they loved.

Phyllis and Flora taunted each other. Each spoke out in praise of the man that she loved. Then the other young woman derided that man. When Phyllis praised the knight Paris, Flora laughed, rolled her eyes, and jeered, “You might as well have said that you love a beggar {Amas poteras dicere mendicum}.” Phyllis scolded Flora for her harsh words. She then said to her words calculated to upset her: “Behold a pure-hearted young women whose noble breast is a slave to an Epicurus {Ecce virgunculam corde puro cuius pectus nobile servit Epicuro}!”[3] Phyllis further disparaged the cleric Alcibiades that Flora loved:

Arise, arise, poor wretch, from foul madness!
A cleric, I believe, is only an Epicurus.
I acknowledge no elegance in the cleric,
for his sides bulge with a mass of fat.

His heart is far removed from Love’s camp,
for he longs for sleep and food and drink.
Oh noble young woman, all know well
how far a knight’s devotion is from this devotion.

A knight is happy with only the necessities;
sleep, food, and drink aren’t his focus as he lives.
Love prevents him from being sleepy.
A knight’s food and drink are love and youth.

Who would couple our friends as an equal team?
Would law or nature permit them to be coupled?
Mine knows how to play at love, yours how to feast.
Mine is always personally giving; yours, taking.

{ Surge, surge, misera, de furore foedo!
Solum esse clericum Epicurum credo;
nihil elegantiae clerico concedo,
cuius implet latera moles et pinguedo.

A castris Cupidinis cor habet remotum,
qui somnum desiderat et cibum et potum.
O puella nobilis, omnibus est notum,
quam sit longe militis ab hoc voto votum.

Solis necessariis miles est contentus,
somno, cibo, potui non vivit intentus.
Amor illi prohibet, ne sit somnolentus;
cibus, potus militis amor et iuventus.

Quis amicos copulet nostros loro pari?
lex, natura sineret illos copulari?
Meus novit ludere, tuus epulari.
Meo semper proprium dare, tuo dari. } [4]

The most famous Alcibiades, born more than a century before Epicurus, was a good-looking soldier and politician whom the philosopher Socrates loved most of all. Alcibiades was from an eminent, wealthy Athenian family and was renowned for his infidelity. The most famous Paris was the son of King Priam of Troy. Rich and handsome, Prince Paris eloped with the married woman Helen of Troy and thus provoked the brutal Trojan War. Perhaps Alcibiades’s love affair with Socrates associated him with twelfth-century clerics. Perhaps Paris causing the men-slaughtering Trojan War associated him with twelfth-century knights. Both Paris and Alcibiades were wealthy, handsome, charming jerks. They thus had in common the masculine characteristics most attractive to most women throughout the ages.

Phyllis and Flora nonetheless chided each other at length about their boyfriends. After Phyllis had praised her knight boyfriend Paris and disparaged Flora’s cleric boyfriend Alcibiades, Flora accused Phyllis of lying:

You said of the cleric that he is self-indulgent;
you call him a slave of sleep, drink, and food.
True worth tends to be described so by the envious.
Allow a moment here, I’ll respond to you.

So many and so great things, I confess, are my boyfriend’s,
that he never gives a thought to others’ stuff.
Storerooms of honey, oil, wheat, wine,
gold, precious stones, and goblets are at his service.

Amid the sweet abundance of clerical life,
which is such that no word can embellish it,
Love flies and applauds with both wings,
Love that never falters, Love that never dies.

The cleric feels Desire’s spears and Love’s shafts,
yet he isn’t emaciated or distressed,
for indeed he lacks no aspect of joy
and his soul responds to his lady’s passion without faking.

Emaciated and pale is your chosen one,
he’s poor and a cloak without fur barely covers him.
Neither is his penis strong, nor his heart robust,
for when the cause is lacking, so too is the effect.

Shameful is poverty hanging over a lover.
What can a knight offer a requester?
The cleric, however, gives much from his abundance;
so great is his wealth, so great are his revenues.

{ Dixisti de clerico, quod indulget sibi.
Servum somni nominas et potus et cibi.
Sic solet ab invido probitas describi.
Ecce, parum patere, respondebo tibi.

Tot et tanta, fateor, sunt amici mei,
quod numquam incogitat alienae rei.
Cellae mellis, olei, Cereris, Lyaei,
aurum, gemmae, pocula famulantur ei.

In tam dulci copia vitae clericalis,
quod non potest aliqua pingi voce talis,
volat et duplicibus Amor plaudit alis,
Amor indeficiens, Amor immortalis.

Sentit tela Veneris et Amoris ictus,
non est tamen clericus macer et afflictus,
quippe nulla gaudii parte derelictus,
cui respondet animus dominae non fictus.

Macer est et pallidus tuus preelectus,
pauper et vix pallio sine pelle tectus.
Non sunt artus validi nec robustum pectus,
nam cum causa deficit, deest et effectus.

Turpis est pauperies imminens amanti.
Quid praestare poterit miles postulanti?
Sed dat multa clericus et ex abundanti;
tantae sunt divitiae reditusque tanti. }

Whether a cleric or a knight, a man as a human being deserves adequate food, clothing, and shelter. Loving a man for his money demeans his person. Because he was poor, Odysseus was afraid to return home to his wife Penelope. As Flora recognized, a man lacking adequate food and clothing isn’t likely to feel love’s ardor. Lacking necessities, he cannot think about the joy of sex. Flora pointed out that such a man couldn’t adequately provide sexual satisfaction to his girlfriend: “neither is his penis strong, nor his heart robust {non sunt artus validi nec robustum pectus}.”[5] Men in ill health deserve women’s support, not women’s scorn.

In response to Flora’s attack on knights and praise of clerics, Phyllis disparaged clerics. She also strongly rebutted Flora’s contempt for knights:

When the dawn hour of a feast day gladdens the world,
then the cleric appears rather disreputable;
his tonsured head and his dark clothing
convey testimony to his gloomy pleasures.

No one is so foolish or blind
that a knight’s splendor isn’t apparent to her.
Your lover, in his idleness, is like a beast of the field;
mine wears a helmet, mine rides a horse.

My lover destroys hostile positions with his weapons,
and if by chance he joins a battle alone and on foot,
while his beloved helper holds his illustrious charger,
he thinks of me amid the slaughter.

With the enemy routed and the fighting finished, he returns
and pushes back his helmet and gazes at me repeatedly.
For this and other reasons rightly
my first choice is for a knight’s life.

{ Orbem cum laetificat hora lucis festae,
tunc apparet clericus satis inhoneste,
in tonsura capitis et in atra veste
portans testimonium voluptatis maeste.

Non est ullus adeo fatuus aut caecus,
cui non appareat militare decus.
Tuus est in otio, quasi brutum pecus;
meum terit galea, meum portat equus.

Meus armis dissipat inimicas sedes,
et si forte proelium solus init pedes,
dum tenet Bucephalam suus Ganymedes,
ille me commemorat inter ipsas caedes.

Redit fusis hostibus et pugna confecta
et me saepe respicit galea reiecta.
Ex his et ex aliis ratione recta
est vita militiae michi praeelecta. }

Describing a man as like a “beast of the field” is hate speech according to Facebook’s regulations. Women should be taught not to engage in hate speech against their girlfriends’ boyfriends. Moreover, women should not celebrate men engaging in violence against men. But at least Flora appreciated the male gaze.

Flora wasn’t going to let the angry Phyllis have the final word. She fired back at Phyllis:

You are forsaking honey for gall and truth for falsehood
in approving knights and reproving clerics.
Is it love that makes a knight restless and wild?
No! To the contrary, it’s poverty and lacking possessions.

Lovely Phyllis, if only you would love wisely
and not further contest true feelings.
Your knight is vanquished by thirst and hunger,
for which he seeks the path of death and hell.

A knight’s calamities are very wearing;
his fortune is harsh and confining,
for his life exists in an uncertain balance
just so he can prevail to possess life’s necessities.

You wouldn’t call disreputable, if you know his way of life,
the black dress and shorter hair of a cleric.
These traits give him the highest distinction,
and signify that he is greater than all others.

It is well-known that the entire world bows to the cleric,
and he bears the ruler’s sign with his crown of shaved head.
He gives orders to knights and is generous with gifts.
Greater than the servant is the person giving orders.

You swear that the cleric is always idle.
He spurns vile and harsh work, I confess.
But when his mind soars to his concerns,
he analyzes the way to heaven and the natures of things.

My boyfriend is dressed in purple, yours in metal armor.
Yours is on the battlefield, mine in a sedan chair
where he recalls the ancient deeds of leaders;
he writes, inquires, and reflects only about his girlfriend.

As for the power of Desire and the god of love,
my cleric was the first to know and teach about them.
From being a cleric he became a knight of Desire.
By these and similar ways your words are refuted.

{ Mel pro felle deseris et pro falso verum,
quae probas militiam reprobando clerum.
Facit amor militem strenuum et ferum?
Non! immo pauperies et defectus rerum.

Pulchra Phyllis, utinam sapienter ames
nec veris sententiis amplius reclames!
Tuum domat militem et sitis et fames,
quibus mortis petitur et inferni trames.

Multum est calamitas militis attrita.
Sors illius dura est et in arto sita,
cuius est in pendulo dubioque vita,
ut habere valeat vitae requisita.

Non dicas obprobrium, si cognoscas morem,
vestem nigram clerici, comam breviorem.
Habet ista clericus ad summum honorem,
ut sese significet omnibus maiorem.

Universa clerico constat esse prona;
et signum imperii portat in corona.
Imperat militibus et largitur dona.
Famulante maior est imperans persona.

Otiosum clericum semper esse iuras.
Viles spernit operas, fateor, et duras.
Sed cum eius animus evolat ad curas,
caeli vias dividit et rerum naturas.

Meus est in purpura, tuus in lorica.
Tuus est in proelio, meus in lectica,
ubi gesta principum recolit antiqua,
scribit, quaerit, cogitat, totum de amica.

Quid Dione valeat et amoris deus,
primus novit clericus et instruxit meus.
Factus est per clericum miles Cythereus.
His est et huiusmodi tuus sermo reus. } [6]

Without outside intervention, Phyllis and Flora could have gone on arguing forever about the merits and failings of each other’s boyfriends. So might many young women today still do, if it weren’t for the Council of Remiremont.

The Council of Remiremont represented authority and knowledge about love. That authority and knowledge was apparent from the very beginning of the proceedings:

All the young women entered in lines.
Among them was read, like the Gospel,
the precepts of Ovid, the illustrious teacher.

The reader of so propitious a gospel was
Eva de Danubrio, mighty in the office
of love’s practice, as the others affirm.

Among many not just anyone but the two Elizabeths
sang together, quite melodiously,
love poems of measured song.

What Love commands wasn’t hidden from these two.
The art of love is familiar to them,
but they are ignorant of acts that a man knows how to do.

{ Intromissis omnibus virginum agminibus,
lecta sunt in medium, quasi Evangelium,
praecepta Ovidii, doctoris egregii.

Lectrix tam propitii fuit Evangelii
Eva de Danubrio, potens in officio
artis amatoriae, ut affirmant aliae.

Cantus modulamina et amoris carmina
cantaverunt pariter, satis et sonoriter
de multis non quaelibet, duae sed Elizabet.

Has duas non latuit quicquid Amor statuit.
Harum in notitia ars est amatoria;
sed ignorant opere quid vir sciat facere. } [7]

In medieval Europe, Ovid was widely regarded as a master teacher of love. All three women who served in the opening proceedings had recognized experience in acts of love, with the two Elizabeths explicitly noted for their exclusively heterosexual orientation. One Elizabeth testified:

Ever since we have been able, we have served Love.

{ Nos ex quo potuimus Amori servivimus.}

A second Elizabeth advocated strongly for loving clerics:

I would praise the grace and reputation of clerks.
We have always loved them and we desire to love them;
their friendship produces no delaying of pleasure.

Coupling with clerics — this is our rule.
Us it holds and has held, delights and has delighted;
the clerics whom we know are affable, pleasing, and lovable.

{ Clericorum gratiam, laudem et memoriam
nos semper amavimus et amare cupimus,
quorum amicitia nil tardat solacia.

Clericorum copula, haec est nostra regula,
nos habet et habuit et placet et placuit,
quos scimus affabiles, gratos et amabiles. }

The Chief Lady then heard from the women conflicting testimony concerning the relative merits of clerks and knights as lovers. As many surviving debate poems indicate, medieval Europe valued highly ideological diversity and vigorous debate.

The women attending the Council of Remiremont vigorously debated loving clerics versus loving knights. One young woman earnestly testified:

The uprightness of clerics and their goodness —
such character always seeks schooling in love’s joy,
and on their joy the whole fatherland smiles.

Clerics praise us in all rhythms and meters.
Such, at Desire’s command, I love prior to others.
Sweet, intimate friendship is glory for clerics.

Whatever others may say, clerics are apt for their work.
A cleric is capable, sweet, and affable.
If I have him as a companion, I can have no greater joy.

{ Clericorum probitas et eorum bonitas
semper quaerit studium ad amoris gaudium,
sed eorum gaudia tota ridet patria.

Laudant nos in omnibus rhythmis atque versibus.
Tales, iussu Veneris, diligo prae ceteris.
Dulcis amicitia clericis est gloria.

Quicquid dicant aliae, apti sunt in opere.
Clericus est habilis, dulcis et affabilis.
Hunc habendo socium, nolo maius gaudium. }

Another young woman explained:

No reason is able to disunite clerics
from our soothing; their work is all-pleasing.

{ nulla valet ratio a nostro solacio
clericos disiungere omni gratos opere }

Some women, however, spoke out forcefully in favor of knights:

Those who are students of martial arts are in our thoughts.
Their military spirit and sensuousness pleases us.
To their service we devote our study.

{ Qui student militiae nobis sunt memoriae.
Horum et militia placet et lascivia.
Horum ad obsequium nostrum datur studium. }

Another woman argued that knights are subservient to women even at the cost of their lives:

Knights are bold to go battle for our favor.
That they may have us for themselves and please us,
they fear no hardships, nor death, nor wounds.

{ Audaces ad proelia sunt pro nostra gratia.
Ut sibi nos habeant et ut nobis placeant,
nulla timent aspera, nec mortem nec vulnera. }

In other words, knights, especially white knights, are upholders of gynocentrism and women’s privilege. Despite their devotion to women-serving, such knights are typically unsuccessful in having women for themselves. Not surprisingly, another woman disparaged knights’ love:

settled and well-known is the nature of knights’ love,
such is detestable, wretched, and unsteady.

{ certum est et cognitum quid sit amor militum,
quam sit detestabilis, quam miser et labilis. }

Through the course of this vigorous and vital twelfth-century debate, an important fact emerged: clerics were regarded as wealthier than knights. Clerics “give lovely gifts {pulchra donant munera}” to women. In addition to being “firm {firmus},” an important masculine sexual attribute, the love of clerics is “useful {utilis}.”

Under historically entrenched, gynocentric structures of gender oppression, women have valued men for their usefulness, particularly in providing women with material resources. The great master-teacher of love Ovid quoted a poet’s lament:

Does anyone admire the noble arts these days,
or think that talent’s displayed in tender verse?
Once genius was rated more than gold:
but now to have nothing shows plain stupidity.
Though my lovely girl’s delighted with my books,
where the books can go, I can’t go myself.
While she praised them, her door closed on my face.
Disgraced but a genius, I go here and there.
Look, some newly-rich blood-drenched knight
made wealthy by his wounds grazes my pastures!
Can you hug him in your lovely arms, my sweet girl?
Life of mine, can you lie there in his embrace?
If you don’t know, that head once wore a helmet;
there was a sword bound to that thigh that serves you;
that left hand, with new-won golden ring unsuited,
held a shield: touch his right –- it was stained with blood!
Can you touch that right hand by which others perished?
Ah, where is that tender-heartedness of yours?
See the scars, the marks of former battles –-
whatever he has, he earned with his body.
Perhaps he’ll tell you how many men he’s murdered!
Avaricious girl, can you touch those revealing hands?
Am I, the pure priest of Apollo and the Muses,
to sing idle songs at unyielding doors?

{ Et quisquam ingenuas etiamnunc suspicit artes,
Aut tenerum dotes carmen habere putat?
Ingenium quondam fuerat pretiosius auro;
At nunc barbaria est grandis, habere nihil.
Cum pulchrae dominae nostri placuere libelli,
Quo licuit libris, non licet ire mihi;
Cum bene laudavit, laudato ianua clausa est.
Turpiter huc illuc ingeniosus eo.
Ecce, recens dives parto per vulnera censu
Praefertur nobis sanguine pastus eques!
Hunc potes amplecti formosis, vita, lacertis?
Huius in amplexu, vita, iacere potes?
Si nescis, caput hoc galeam portare solebat;
Ense latus cinctum, quod tibi servit, erat;
Laeva manus, cui nunc serum male convenit aurum,
Scuta tulit; dextram tange — cruenta fuit!
Qua periit aliquis, potes hanc contingere dextram?
Heu, ubi mollities pectoris illa tui?
Cerne cicatrices, veteris vestigia pugnae —
Quaesitum est illi corpore, quidquid habet.
Forsitan et, quotiens hominem iugulaverit, ille
Indicet! hoc fassas tangis, avara, manus?
Ille ego Musarum purus Phoebique sacerdos
Ad rigidas canto carmen inane fores? } [8]

Under gynocentrism, wounds to men’s bodies matter little to women or other men. What matters is how much material resources men can provide to women. Ovid thus showed the knight being prefered in love to the poet-cleric.

With the growth of the symbolic economy from ancient Rome to medieval Europe, clerics became wealthier in general than knights. Flora’s cleric boyfriend Alcibiades commanded more material resources than Phyllis’s knight boyfriend Paris. The Council of Remiremont recognized that clerics provide better material gifts to women than do knights. In accordance with the teachings of Ovid, the Council of Remiremont ruled in favor of clerics.[9] So compelling was the Council’s ruling that today women don’t argue about whether clerics or knights make better lovers. Given the lucrative payments now available by law for spousal support and child support, the question of whether women should seek high-income men for sex and marriage isn’t reasonably open to debate.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• bird-brains engage in scholarly debate: The Owl and the Nightingale
• cleric-scholars’ Latin lyrics long for bodily action
• Peire Cardenal: thirteenth-century troubadour MGTOW

Notes:

[1] The Council of Remiremont {Concilium Romarici Montis} ll. 1-9, Latin text from Pascal (1993), my English translation, benefiting from that of Lee (1981). The inexpressability assertion of l. 4 recalls the inexpressable consequences of loving God in 1 Corinthians 2:19. The Council of Remiremont, authored anonymously, was probably written between 1140 and 1164. Id. p. 5. For accessible discussion of this text, Warren (1907). Lee and others describe the women at the Council of Remiremont as “nuns,” but they weren’t necessarily so. They may have included local elite women who came to the abbey for the Council.

About 625, a monastery for men and women was founded in the area of Remiremont, now Saint-Mont, near Strasbourg in the Vosges Department of eastern France. The men’s community dissipated after perhaps two centuries. By the early twelfth century, the women at Remiremont were wealthy and associated with the high nobility. By 1404, the Remiremont Abbey was more an institution of elite local governance than a monastery. Id. pp. 12-51.

Subsequent quotes from the Council of Remiremont are similarly sourced. The subsequent two quotes above are (cited by line numbers) 22-4 (Old ladies…) and l. 17 (loving young women).

[2] Carmina Burana 92, “About Phyllis and Flora {De Phyllide et Flora},” first line “In the flowering season, with clear sky {Anni parte florida, caelo puriore},” st. 4, Latin text from Traill (2018) v. 1, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. and Walsh (1993). This poem is also called “The debate of Phyllis and Flora {Altercatio Phyllidis et Florae}.” While Traill’s text is the best available, here’s a good-quality online text of the whole poem (preserving medieval spellings).

De Phyllide et Flora / Anni parti florida has close connections to Andreas Capellanus’s De amore. The latter probably was written about 1186. In Traill’s learned opinion, De amore influenced De Phyllide et Flora. That ordering is consistent with the scholarly judgment that De Phyllide et Flora was composed toward the end of the twelfth century. Traill (2018) v. 1, p. 551 (note).

In ancient Latin, miles means foot-soldier, and eques means a horse-born soldier. The latter’s equipment was more costly and many fewer such soldiers were fielded. Not surprisingly, the eques was generally wealthier and higher status than the miles. In medieval Latin, miles became the common word for knight after 1100. Morillo (2001) pp. 175-7.

The subsequent six quotes above are from De Phyllide et Flora and are similarly sourced. Those quotes, cited by stanza (and dot line number, where less than the whole stanza), are: 13.4 (You might as well have said…), 15.3-4 (Behold a pure-hearted young woman…), 16-19 (Arise, arise, poor wretch…), 22-7 (You said of the cleric…), 29-32 (When the dawn hour…), and 34-41 (You are foresaking honey…). For accessibility to the general reader, I’ve used relevant concepts and descriptions in the place of Roman mythic figures (Venus, Amor / Cupid, and Ganymede) and Alexander’s horse Bucephalus.

[3] Cf. Isaiah 7:14. In the Bible, the imperative “behold” (a call for attention) is quite common. It may be a verbal structure that originated in popular pictorial story-telling.

[4] Song of Songs 2:10, 13 urges a young beloved to arise and come to delight. Ephesians 5:14 urges a sleeper to arise from the dead. Phyllis in De Phyllide et Flora implores a misdirected young woman in love to arise from her foul madness in loving a cleric and turn to the delightful love of a knight. With a double surge, De Phyllide et Flora combines elements of both biblical exhortations. On unequal coupling, 2 Corinthians 6:14.

The troubadour Guillem de Peiteus (William IX, Duke of Aquitaine) condemned women who love clerics rather than knights:

Grave mortal sins such ladies make
who won’t make love for a knight’s sake;
and they’re far worse, the one who’ll take
a monk or priest —
they ought to get burned at the stake
at very least.

{ Domna fai gran pechat mortal
Qe no ama cavalier leal:
Mas si es monges o clergal,
Non a raizo:
Per dreg la deuri’ hom cremar
Ab un tezo. }

“I’ll write a verse, since I’m sleepy {Farai un vers, pos mi somelh},” st. 2, Old Occitan text and English trans. (by Snodgrass, modified slightly) from Kehew (2005) pp. 27-8. This Old Occitan text is from the edition of Jeanroy (1913). Trobar has a slightly different Old Occitan text, with an English translation. Here’s further analysis of “Farai un vers, pos mi somelh.”

[5] The Latin word nervus literally means “sinew” or “tendon.” Nervus can mean “penis.” Adams (1982) p. 38. Artus literally means “joint” or “joints.” Like nervus, artus is associated with muscular strength and power. In the context of De Phyllide et Flora 26.1, artus surely carries the figurative meaning “penis,” with pectus having the figurative meaning “heart / love.” Walsh and Traill translated 26.1 respectively as “His limbs are frail, his chest unhealthy”;  “His limbs are weak and his upper body puny”. Walsh (1993) p. 112, Traill (2018) p. 386. Those are, I think, poor translations. All of civilization owes traditional philology and its experts much gratitude and appreciation for bringing forward in time accurate meaning of vitally important texts. Nonetheless, one should recognize that traditional philology has a penis problem.

Reviewers of Traill’s Carmina Burana have been oblivious to the penis problem in De Phyllide et Flora. Scott G. Bruce’s review provides relevant historical details and some close textual analysis. Bruce states that Traill’s work is “reason to celebrate” and that it provides “clear and accurate translation.” Bruce (2019). Indeed, Traill’s translation is almost always clear and accurate, as one might expect from an eminent medieval Latin scholar committed to seeking truth. Yet a significant mistake that Traill made as mortal man living in a philological tradition should be recognized.

Michael Fontaine justly calls Traill’s two volumes “a magnificent achievement”; “it deserves a Pindaric victory ode.” Fontaine futher declares of Traill:

He is always accurate (note 3) and always suitably interpretative rather than excessively literal, so that his translation functions as a running mini-commentary on the hard parts.
Note 3: A single exception proves the rule: in 25.6 “laugh to scorn” for deridet must be a typo (likewise, in 103.3b, delete the comma and 104.2.5, delete the period).

Fontaine (2019). Fontaine clearly read Traill’s volumes closely. Yet he either didn’t notice or didn’t dare comment upon the penis problem. Medieval scholars should recognize the gender trouble in their field.

[6] The poet’s invocation of res naturas {the natures of things} in the context of caeli vias dividit (39.4) recalls Lucretius’s De rerum natura. The cleric, surpassing Lucretius, understands that different things have different natures. Guibert of Nogent early in the twelfth century seems to have also disparaged Lucretius’s De rerum natura.

[7] The Council of Remiremont {Concilium Romarici Montis} ll. 25-6. The subsequent quotes above from The Council of Remiremont are (cited by line number): 61 (Ever since we have been able…), 67-72 (I would praise the grace…), 142-150 (The uprightness of clerics…), 92-3 (No reason is able…), 112-4 (Those who are students of martial arts…), 115-7 (Knights are bold…), 83-4 (settled and well-known…), 76 (give lovely gifts), 90 (firm, useful).

[8] Ovid, Loves {Amores} 3.8.1-24, Latin text from Ehwald’s Teubner edition (1907), English (modified slightly) from A. S. Kline.

[9] Even before the Council of Remiremont’s official ruling, a woman at the Council declared:

Undertaking knights is a great impropriety.
This misdeed for you is both forbidden and illicit.

{ magna est abusio militum susceptio.
Nefas est et vetitum et vobis illicitum. }

Council of Remiremont, ll. 95-6. The concluding excommunication of women who love knights is extremely harsh:

By the order of Love, to you and all others
who lay down yourself to knights in love affairs,
may you experience confusion, terror, and grief,
toil, unhappiness, pain and anxiety,
fear and sorrow, war and discord,
the dregs of folly, habit of inconstancy,
dishonor and weariness, long-standing ignominy,
the specter of madness, mourning, and destruction.
May the Moon, Jove’s servant-woman, and Phoebus, his servant-man,
deny you their light because of your crimes.
Thus may you lack light and not be comforted.
May no festival days take you from the darkness.
May the wrath of Jove from the heavens destroy you utterly.
May the joys of this world be reproaches to you.
May you who favor laymen always be
regarded as horrible and abominable by all clerics.
May no one say “hail” to you when they encounter you.
May even your joys be without peace.
May you have inner and outer sadness.
May you live daily in the pit of misery.
May shame and disgrace be with you always.
Toil and weariness or extreme shame,
if any of that remains, may it be yours forever,
unless you spurn laymen and favor clerics.
If any of you shall repent and make amends,
doing penance will lead to forgiveness.

{ Vobis, iussu Veneris, et ubique ceteris
quae vos militaribus subditis amoribus,
maneat confusio, terror et contritio,
labor, infelicitas, dolor et anxietas,
timor et tristitia, bellum et discordia,
faex insipientiae, cultus inconstantiae,
dedecus et taedium, longum et opprobrium,
furiarum species, luctus et pernicies.
Luna, Iovis famula, Phoebus, suus vernula,
propter ista crimina negent vobis lumina.
Sic sine solamine careatis lumine.
Nulla dies celebris trahat vos de tenebris.
Ira Iovis caelitus destruat vos penitus.
Huius mundi gaudia vobis sint opprobria.
Omnibus horribiles et abominabiles
semper sitis clericis, quae favetis laicis.
Nemo vobis etiam “Ave” dicat obviam.
Vestra quoque gaudia sint sine concordia.
Vobis sit intrinsecus dolor et extrinsecus.
Vivatis cotidie in lacu miseriae.
Pudor, ignominia vobis sint per omnia.
Laboris et taedii vel pudoris nimii
sed si quid residuum, sit vobis perpetuum
nisi, spretis laicis, faveatis clericis.
Si qua paenituerit atque satisfecerit,
dando paenitentiam consequetur veniam. }

Id. ll. 215-40.

[image] Ecclesia {Church}. Illumination for Hildegard of Bingen’s Scivias 2.5, folio 66r in Eibingen, Abtei St. Hildegard, Cod. 1, which is a handmade copy of the now-lost Rupertsberg Scivias (Wiesbaden, Hessische Landesbibliothek, Hs 1). The latter was produced in the Rupertsberg scriptorium around 1165. Source image via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Adams, James Noel. 1982. The Latin Sexual Vocabulary. London: Duckworth.

Bruce, Scott G. 2019. “Review of Traill, David A. Carmina Burana (Volumes 1 and 2). Dunbarton Oaks Medieval Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.” The Medieval Review, online.

Fontaine, Michael. 2019. “Review of David A. Traill, Carmina Burana. (2 vols.) Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 48-49. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018.” Bryn Mawr Classical Review, online.

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

Lee, Reuben Richard. 1981. A New Edition of “The Council of Remiremont.” The University of Connecticut. Ph.D. Thesis.

Morillo, Stephen. 2001. “Milites, Knights and Samurai: Military Terminology, Comparative History, and the Problem of Translation.” Pp. 167-184 in Abels, Richard P., Bernard S. Bachrach, and C. Warren Hollister, eds. The Normans and their Adversaries at War: essays in memory of C. Warren Hollister. Woodbridge, UK, Rochester, NY: Boydell Press.

Pascal, Paul, ed. 1993. Concilium Romarici Montis (The Council of Remiremont). Bryn Mawr Commentary. Presented online by J.J. O’Donnell (introduction, text, commentary).

Traill, David A. 2018, ed. and trans. Carmina Burana. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 48-49. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Walsh, Patrick G. 1993. Love Lyrics from the Carmina Burana. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Warren, F. M. 1907. “The Council of Remiremont.” Modern Language Notes. 22 (5): 137-140.

In twelfth-century France, a young man was forced to abandon his girlfriend. With medieval concern for gender equality, he described her as having more merit than all the men engaged in violence against men or in pursuing carnal love. He said that she had more merit than all the women dedicated to chastity or to carnal love. He declared his girlfriend to be more beautiful than the goddess Diana herself.[1] That goddess was renowned for shunning men and punishing harshly the male gaze. The young man’s girlfriend, in contrast, loved him warmly and generously. Now held distant from her, he lamented and suffered:

Recalling that time when by auspicious charm
the friendly Love-God joined me to you and you to me,
I lament and suffer that, even as I was before accustomed to do,
I am not able to unite my body with yours.
But if as I desire I could couple myself with you,
nothing, I think, could hinder my happiness.
Indeed your hair and your discerning, twinkling eyes
nourish me as do your sweet words themselves.
I would strive for kisses while caressing your delicious flesh,
which I think would be able to stir the celestial gods.
Having captured kisses, perhaps to that sweeter secret
I would be aroused, moved with fire for you.

{ Temporis illius recolens, quo carmine fausto
me tibe teque mihi iunxit amica Venus,
conqueror et doleo, quod sic velut ante solebam
me sociare tibi corpore non valeo.
Sed si, quod cuperem, tibe me coniungere possem,
nil mihi felici posse nocere puto.
Namque tuos crines cernens oculosque micantes,
pascerer ipse tuis dulcibus adloquiis;
oscula captarem carnes palpando suaves,
quae puto caelestes posse movere deos;
oscula captando forsan quod dulcius esset
temptarem tacitus, tactus ab igne tui. } [2]

Men remember past loves, both good and disastrous. When a man is imprisoned for not being able to pay the “child support” exaction resulting from a misguided one-night fling, he has no basis for hope. Men deprived of meaningful contact with their children through the anti-men sexism of family courts can scarcely dream of justice. Such men often become numb and emotionally deadened. But a man experiencing warm remembrance of good love typically moves on to anguish and desperate hope.

Forced to abandon his girlfriend, the young man delighting in remembering their love became filled with anguish and desperate hope. He wrote to her:

Alas! This sadness now deeply disturbs my mind.
If it doesn’t dissipate, believe me, I will die.
Therefore, worthy young woman, dearer to me than the whole world,
if you want me to live, let your fidelity be without stain.
And since my body cannot be coupled with yours,
may I remain in your mind, as you remain in my mind.
That envious one because of whom we cannot be together —
may he not be able to live, and may death come for him.
As quickly as possible, believe me, sweetheart, I will return,
and, if that’s not possible, my love for you will destroy me.
Begging God therefore, insistently ask that our second
ship that fears the tumultuous seas would go with the wind.

{ Heu! Dolor iste meam mentem iam commovet intus;
qui nisi discedat, crede mihi, moriar.
Quare, virgo decens, toto mihi carior orbe,
vivere si me vis, sit tibi pura fides,
Et quia non possum tibe corpore consociari,
mente tibi iaceam, nam mihi mente iaces.
Invidus ille modo pro quo simul esse nequimus,
vivere non possit nec sibi mors veniat.
Quam citius potero, credas mihi, nympha, redibo,
et, si non potero, rumpar amore tuo.
Supplex ergo Deum rogites ut nostra secundo
navis eat vento quae freta mota timet. }

Medieval thinkers developed prescriptions to prevent men from dying of lovesickness. Moreover, most men want from a woman more than just love in the mind. Many men have learned from experience to doubt women’s loyalty. Not so for this young men. He clung to the extraordinary hope that the envious one who had separated him and his girlfriend would die and that a favorable wind would return him to her.

Another young man in twelfth-century France acted similarly, but with more concern for his self-esteem. His hard situation arose while he was relaxing in an olive-tree’s shade on a beautiful spring day:

While gazing at flowers,
ears feasting on birdsong,
inwardly I drifted back
to my old love.
My spirit languished,
and my heart drank desire.

While I thought of her womb,
while I recalled her breasts,
while I was united with her,
once and then again,
I seemed to surpass
the treasures of ancient kings.

{ Dum flores aspicerem,
aures cantu pascerem,
relabor medullitus
in amorem ueterem.
Langue michi spiritus
et cor bibit uenerem.

Dum contemplor uterum,
dum recordor uberum,
dum illi commisceor
et semel et iterum,
transcendisse uideor
gazas regum ueterum. } [3]

These two stanzas move from external sensuousness to remembrance of sensual love. Women’s wombs and breasts have long been valued more highly than men’s penises and chests. Men, to their economic misfortune, typically don’t value and remember a woman for her high-income career. As all but those educated to ignorance know, women have never been men’s property. In medieval Europe, a woman could choose another man in a way that a man’s property couldn’t. The woman that this man loved seems to have moved on to another man.

Anguished in remembering his love affair with her, this man obsessed about his status as her lover. He was a cleric. Her new lover apparently was a knight. Recognizing love rivalry between clerics and knights, he strove to self-identify as a knight:

If a knight rides you,
love has ennobled me.
Don’t you know what is read,
“All lovers soldier”
constantly agitated by cares,
and they dwell in camps.

So that I no longer doubt
whether you love a knight,
O my life and soul,
or if for you I should soldier,
don’t look down on a beloved,
but look back upon a soldier.

{ Si te miles equitat,
amor me nobilitat.
Nescis quia legitur,
“omnis amans militat”,
semper curis agitur
et in castris habitat.

Vt ultra non hesitem,
an diligas equitem,
ozoycaysice
siue tibe militem,
amoris ne despice,
sed respice militem. } [4]

Throughout history, women have looked down on their foolish, courtly lovers. Since, as he remembered, he rode her, he claimed the status of a knight. Desperate to validate that status, he urged her to look back upon her lover, whether a knight or him a cleric, to confirm that both are knights. In the middle of this intricate literary gambit, he inserted a transliterated Greek endearment. That highlights his intellectual accomplishment as a cleric. When he remembered the treasure of repeatedly having sex with his beloved, against all hope this cleric in hope believed that he might do so once again.

When warm remembrance of love stirs a man’s heart, he doesn’t merely dwell in delight. Restlessness, anguish, and hope grow within him. This lovesickness can kill him. Women must do more to keep men safe. Totalitarian gender ideology that destroys love between women and men helps to keep men safe by depriving men of dangerous love memories. Yet alternative policy possibilities exist. Broader, more compassionate, more generous love for men is a more excellent way.

Love is in my heart,
no frigidity makes me feel cold.

{ Amore est in pectore
nullo frigens frigore. } [5]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Phyllis & Flora on knight v. cleric: Council of Remiremont ruling
• sailing to old Pavia as Archpoet: an eternal truth about humanity
• “I had a dream”: medieval imagining of gender justice

Notes:

[1] The man began his song thus:

As many as are the young men taking pleasure in serving fierce Mars,
or those that want to be under the yoke of Venus,
as many as are the young women dedicated to taking pleasure
in Diana’s way of life, or those ladies who worship Venus —
my sweet girlfriend, more beautiful than Diana herself —
all their praises should be for you, for more goods are yours.

{ Quot iuvenes Marti gaudent servire feroci,
quotque velut dominae sub iuga sunt Veneris,
quotque puellarum studio cultuque Dianae
gaudent, ut dominam quotque colunt Venerem,
dulcis amica mei, formosior ipsa Diana,
tot tibi sint laudes, sed bona plura tibi. }

Carmina Rivipullensia 20, titled “Ad desertam amicam {To his deserted girlfriend},” ll. 1-6, Latin text from Wolff (2001), my English translation benefiting from Wolff’s French translation.

[2] Carmina Rivipullensia 20, ll. 7-18, sourced as above. The subsequent quote covers ll. 21-32 (end of poem).

[3] Walter of Châtillon, St-Omer 23, “As the tender breasts of spring / were nourishing the young flowers {Dum flosculum tenera / lactant ueris ubera},” st. 3-4, Latin text from Traill (2013) p. 49, my English translation benefiting from that of id.

[4] Walter of Châtillon, “Dum flosculum tenera,” st. 6-7 (the last stanza of the poem). Traill notes that 6.4 alludes to Ovid, Amores 1.9.1: “Militat omnis amans.” In ancient Latin, miles means foot-soldier, and eques means a horse-born soldier. The traditional understanding of chivalry was associated with a husband always being ready to have sex with his wife. In contrast to a man serving a woman by riding her, the woman being on top was associated with the dissolution of marriage and women being cheated.

[5] Walter of Châtillon, St-Omer  18, “Inopportune for Venus {Inportuna Veneri},” refrain (for poem of four stanzas). Latin text from Traill (2013) p. 36, my English translation benefiting from that of id.

[image] Nude woman reclining and dreaming (sleeping Venus). Oil on canvas painting by Giorgione and Titian, made in 1508. Preserved in Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister {Old Masters Gallery}, Dresden, Germany. Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Traill, David A., ed. and trans. 2013. Walter of Châtillon, the Shorter Poems: Christmas hymns, love lyrics, and moral-satirical verse. Oxford Medieval Texts.

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

Yet we don’t feel remorse, we laugh in ease —
not for the sin we have no memory of,
but for that power that orders and forsees.
We gaze on the adorning art of love,
the good that makes creation beautiful,
that turns the world below by the world above.
But that you’ll leaved fulfilled in every will
risen in you to know about this sphere,
I must go on a little longer still.

{ Non però qui si pente, ma si ride,
non de la colpa, ch’a mente non torna,
ma del valor ch’ordinò e provide.
Qui si rimira ne l’arte ch’addorna
cotanto affetto, e discernesi ‘l bene
per che ‘l mondo di sù quel di giù torna.
Ma perché tutte le tue voglie piene
ten porti che son nate in questa spera,
procedere ancor oltre mi convene. } [1]

In twelfth-century southern France, the man trobairitz (troubadour) Folquet de Marseille wrote love songs to the wife of Raymond Geoffrey, Viscount of Marseille. Loving another’s wife was illicit in Christian Europe. Folquet prudently struggled to conceal his love:

I wish to show you the pain that I feel,
and to others, hide and conceal
that I cannot ever secretly speak my heart to you.
If then I know not how to cover myself, who will cover for me?
Who will be faithful to me, if I am a traitor to myself?
If one cannot hide himself, there is no reason
for others to hide him, for they do not benefit.

{ A vos volgra mostrar lo mal qu’ieu sen
et als autres celar et escondire;
qu’anc no.us puec dir mon cor celadamen;
donc, s’ieu no.m sai cobrir, qui m’er cubrir?
Ni qui m’er fis, s’ieu eis mi sui traire?
Qui si no sap celar non es razos
que.l celon cil a cui non es nuls pros. } [2]

A foolishly courtly lover, Folquet couldn’t resist writing love songs to another’s wife. After marrying and having two children, Folquet had a change of heart and entered a monastery. Medieval European Christianity was tolerant and forgiving, quite unlike the denounce-and-banish canceling culture of today. Folquet subsequent become Bishop of Toulouse and played a leading role in high politics of early-thirteenth-century southern France. Dante in his great Comedy {Comedia} placed Folquet, more justly called called Folc, in the third sphere of paradise, that of Venus and lovers.

Another man trobairitz subsequently ridiculed Folquet of Marseilles’s unworldliness. Taking advantage of the broad latitude of medieval freedom of speech, this troubadour parodied Folquet’s stanza concerned with covering up love:

I wish to show you the dick that hangs from me,
and to sit my balls above your ass;
and I say that only for the sake of banging you often,
because I have focused all my thoughts on fucking,
such that the dick sings, when it sees the cunt laugh.
And for fear that the jealous one will return,
I put my dick in and retain my balls.

{ A vos volgra metre lo veit qe·m pent
e mos coillos de sobre·l cul assire:
eu non o dic mais per ferir sovent
car en fotre ai mes tot mon albire;
qe·l veit chanta qan el ve lo con rire,
e per paor qe no i venga·l gelos
li met mon veit e rete‹nc› los coillos. } [3]

With earthy description of human bodily anatomy, this song emphasizes mutual sexual joy in singing and laughing. It indicates the man’s concern not to ejaculate, and thus to avoid cuckolding the jealous one, probably meaning the woman’s husband. Support for cuckolding men is characteristic of gynocentric culture. Christianity, in contrast, centers on God incarnated as a fully masculine man, Jesus. Medieval Christianity affirmed conjugal partnership, not men’s abasement in the courtly love that shaped the young Folquet’s songs.

The idea that men are naturally able to sing and please with their penises challenges men’s labor to acquire worth under gynocentrism. Men trobairitz, who were often materially poor, commonly sang songs to please elite, highly privileged women.[4] Yet such labor isn’t necessary and isn’t always fully rewarding. A poetic exchange between two men trobairitz brings out this reality of men’s labor:

Sir Peire, by my beautiful singing
I have from my lady gloves and a ring,
and many others have similar things
from ladies by their song.
And so those who speak against singing
seem to be merely full of nonsense.

Hugh, if you have from her jewelry,
another has her meat and skin,
and while you sing, he’s in her nest,
and while you fill her glove,
the other is filling the lark’s skin
that you seek with your bird calls.

{ En Peire, per mon chantar bèl
Ai de mi dons gans et anèl,
E mant autre n’an atressi
Agut de donnas per lur chan;
E cel que contra chantar di
Sembla ben c’ane rebuzan.

Hugo, si vos n’aves joèl,
Autre n’a la carn e la pèl,
E chantas cant el es el ni.
E cant vos enformas son gan,
Autre enforma l’alauzi
Dont vos anas brezanejan. } [5]

Like all human beings, men, who certainly are human beings, have a human right to sexual intimacy. Men should not feel compelled to labor to earn sex like they labor to acquire material goods. Love ultimately cannot be earned.

Love isn’t equivalent to sex. An under-appreciated medieval trobairitz song poignantly highlighted lacking satisfaction in sex without love:

A fucker who was not in love
with any woman, but wanted to fuck,
always had a boner and was eager
to fuck any woman he could fuck.
He was all so eager to fuck that

He was called Sir Fucker,
a fucker, alas! unhappy and sad,
and he said one dies badly and lives worse
who doesn’t fuck the one he loves.

This fucker was so anxious to fuck
that the stronger he fucked, the more he fucked dying of sadness
that he wasn’t fucking more. He would have fucked as two
of the best fuckers in Lombardy,
for in fucking he said, “I would be happy if I were fucking!”

He was called Sir Fucker,
a fucker, alas! unhappy and sad,
and he said one lives badly who doesn’t fuck
night and day the one he loves.

{ Us fotaires que non fo amorós
De neguna, mais que fotre volria,
Està totjorn areis e voluntós
De fotre celas que fotre poria.
Tal volontat a de fotre tot dia

Qu’En Esfotanz se clama,
Fotaire las dolens chaitiu,
E ditz que mal mòr e peiz viu
Qui non fot la qui ama.

Lo fotaire es tant de fotre angoissós,
Com plus fòrt fot, mòr fotant de felnia
Que plus non fot, qu’el fotria per dos
De fotedors melhors de Lombardia,
Qu’en fotant ditz : “Garitz som, se fotria!”

En Esfotanz se clama,
Fotaire las dolens chaitiu,
E ditz qui non fot que mal viu
Nòit e jorn la que ama. } [6]

This song ostentatiously uses an early form of the quite unusual and interesting word “fuck.” Its refrain clearly declares the misery of he who doesn’t have sex with the one he loves. More subtly, the song doesn’t merely advocate for more sex. The man having much sex with women was “unhappy and sad,” even to the point of “dying of sadness.” He wanted to have sex as vigorously as “two of the best fuckers,” not just a single sexual champion. Sex without sadness is a coupled activity. Most astonishing of all, “Sir Fucker” while fucking subjunctively declared, “I would be happy if I were fucking!” He wasn’t experiencing the true act. He wasn’t experiencing love. Far too many men and women are similarly deprived.

Rahab earned her living as a prostitute in the ancient Canaanite city of Jericho. Two Israelite spies came and spent the night with her at her inn. Those spies didn’t come to her as Abraham did for his niece Mary. On her own Rahab turned to know the true God and sought to help those whom God favored. She helped the two spies to escape from the city and thus helped Joshua to lead God’s chosen people to conquer Jericho in the Promised Land. Christians from the early church Fathers have regarded Rahab as a blessed woman.[7] In Christian understanding, the prostitute Rahab is a figure of the Christian church. She foreshadowed the coming of the church, just as Joshua did his namesake Jesus. Her choice to do great good wiped away her sinful acts as a prostitute.

In the third sphere of paradise of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Folquet de Marseille praised Rahab. Both Folquet and Rahab were converts from foolish, adulterous love. Rahab was a woman who risked her life to save men’s lives. She defied gynocentrism with godly love. Rahab thus played a larger, better role than Folquet in salvation history, as Christians understand it. Folquet rightly regarded Rahab as greater than he:

You’d like to know who shines beside me here
as scintillating in her lamping fire
as rays of sunlight when the lake is clear.
Know that within it Rahab finds her peace.
The highest of our saints, she seals her light
on every rank of spirits in our choir.

{ Tu vuo’ saper chi è in questa lumera
che qui appresso me così scintilla
come raggio di sole in acqua mera.
Or sappi che là entro si tranquilla
Raab; e a nostr’ ordine congiunta,
di lei nel sommo grado si sigilla. } [8]

Ovid sought to teach men the art of love. Medieval Europe recognized Ovid as a master teacher of love. As a courtly lover, Folquet was ignorant of vitally important Ovidian teaching. The prostitute Rahab understood better Ovid’s classical learning about love than did Folquet. Yet Ovidian learning alone wasn’t sufficient to make Rahab a star scintillating in the firmament of paradise. She needed to learn a further art of love.

We gaze on the adorning art of love,
the good that makes creation beautiful,
that turns the world below by the world above.

{ Qui si rimira ne l’arte ch’addorna
cotanto affetto, e discernesi ‘l bene
per che ‘l mondo di sù quel di giù torna. }

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• medieval wife’s sexual entitlement banged against her husband’s love
• Boccaccio’s Corbaccio: comic reality of love as new Vita Nuova
• respect men’s real fears: dangers of gyno-idolatry

Notes:

[1] Dante, Comedy {Comedia}, Paradise {Paradiso} 9.103-11, medieval Italian text of Petrocchi via the Princeton Dante Project, English translation (adapted slightly) from Esolen (2004). Boccaccio was the first to refer to Dante’s Comedia as the Divine Comedy {Divina Comedia}. Dante’s work might better be called the Earthy and Divine Comedy.

For si ride in the quote above, I’ve replaced “smile at ease” in Esolen’s translation with “laugh in ease.” The latter translation is consistent with the Latin root verb rideo. That’s also the root for the Occitan verb rire used subsequently above. Laughter is an under-appreciated aspect of the true Christian sense of redemption and salvation.

[2] Folquet de Marseilles, “Love, have mercy! Don’t let me die so often! {Amors, merce!: no mueira tan soven!}” st. 5 (ll. 29-35), Old Occitan text from Stroński 1910 (Song 9), via Rialto, English translation (adapted) from Schulman (2001), Appendix, Song 9. Textual variants exist across surviving manuscripts, but they matter little to the meaning of this stanza.

This song survives with a melody. For a transcription, Washer (2002) pp. 301-2. The Troubadours Art Ensemble recorded it on Troubadour songs: music in a courtly world, an album from their concert in Tartu, Estonia, in 2003. Here’s a complete discography of recordings of Folquet’s songs.

Schulman carefully reviewed the different names used for Folquet, and judged Folc, the non-dimunitive Occitan nominative form, to be the most appropriate. Id. pp. xvii-xx. I use Folquet de Marseille because it’s the most popular form of his name today, and more relevant to his career as a troubadour. The corresponding Occitan form is Folquet de Marselha.

Folquet de Marseille lived in Occitania from about 1150 to 1231. He probably became a Cistercian monk about 1195. He was elected Bishop of Toulouse in 1205. On Folquet’s biography, id.

About twenty-seven of Folquet’s songs have survived. His songs were widely known, and he apparently interacted with leading trobairitz and troubadours. “Amors, merce!: no mueira tan soven!” survives in twenty-three manuscripts. Moreover, parts of it are re-used in different ways in ten different works. Washer (2007) p. 566.

In lines 4-5 of st. 5 (above), Folquet echoes the first part of a famous aphorism from Hillel the Elder (florished from about 30 BGC to 10 GC), preserved in Pirkei Avot 1:14: “If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am only for my own self, what am I? And if not now, when? { הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא }” Here’s some analysis of that aphorism.

[3] Anonymous cobla, Occitan text from the critical edition of Francesco Carapezza (2002), via Rialto, my English translation benefiting from the French translation of Bec (1984) p. 171 and the partial English translation of Lazar (1989) pp. 267-8. Here’s Bec’s similar Occitan text.

The Occitan verb ferir, which I’ve translated as “banging,” uses a metaphor historically associated with disparagement of men’s sexuality. Cf. Bec (1984) p. 171, note to v. 3. Bec perceives in v. 7 the practice of coitus interruptus and suggests “à cause de la menace du gelos (mari) {as a result of fear of the gelos (husband)}.” Id. p. 172. Men have long been concerned to practice birth control to avoid the burdens of pregnancies that they don’t want. Those burdens today are primarily associated with large financial obligations (“child support” payments) that governments impose on men solely because a man had sex of reproductive type. By deliberate state legal construction, men are thus deprived of reproductive choice. The only way a man can escape the risk of that sex penalty is by having sex with another man’s wife. A man seeking to avoid cuckolding a husband thus shows love for the husband, not fear of him.

Washer throughly discusses transformations of Folquet’s “Amors, merce!: no mueira tan soven!” On this particular transformation, she comments: “the author reveals the hidden truth of fin’amour {courtly love}, the real way to cure the pain of love.” The author of this cobla closely read and adapted Folquet’s song. Washer (2007) pp. 579-80.

[4] In the tenson between Uguet and Reculaire, “I would like to challenge you, Reculaire {Scometre·us vuoill, Reculaire},” Uguet describes Reculaire as destitute and wearing old clothes. Uguet has been identified as the troubadour Uc de Saint-Circ and Reculaire as the troubadour Sordel. Guida (2006), as discussed in Mathias (2014) pp. 174-6.

[5] “Sir Peire, by my beautiful singing {En Peire, per mon chantar bel},” Occitan text as emended by Poe (2000) p. 211 (Bec’s Occitan text; Meyer’s Occitan text), my English translation, benefiting from that of id., and the French translation of Bec (1984) p. 45 and that of the Peire Cardenal website.

“En Peire, per mon chantar bel” survives in only one manuscript, MS f (BnF 12472), called the Giraud chansonnier. That manuscript dates to the first half of the fourteenth century. Poe (2000) pp. 207, 216, n. 2. In that manuscript, the song is attributed to Uc de Maensac and Peire Cardenal. Poe argues convincing that the named Peire is Peire de Maensac, and the named Uc is an unidentified troubadour. Id. pp. 213-5. She suggests that, based on its theme, this song dates to the first quarter of the thirteenth century.

Poe recognized that “En Peire, per mon chantar bel” took its metrical pattern from “From the sweetness of the new season {Ab lo dolchor del temps novel},” a famous song of Guilhem IX, Duke of Aquitaine. The fourth stanza (ll. 19-24) of that song describes Guilhem’s desire:

I still remember one morning
when we stopped quarreling,
and she gave to me so great a gift,
her loving and her ring.
God let me live until again
I put my hands beneath her cloak.

{ Enquer me menbra d’un mati
que nos fezem de guera fi,
e que.m donet un don tan gran:
sa drudari’ e son anel.
Enquer me lais Dieus viure tan
qu’aia mas mans soz so mantel! }

Occitan text and English translation from Poe (2000) p. 212, adapted with the help of the translation of Paden & Paden (2007) p. 25. “En Peire, per mon chantar bel” makes more explicit and more intensive the carnal theme in Guilhem’s song.

[6] “A fucker who was not in love {Us fotaires que non fo amorós},” Occitan text from Bec (1984), via Corpus des Troubadours, English translation (modified) from Paden & Paden (2007) p. 238. Trobar has an alternate English translation. Here’s an Italian translation.

For the English translation above, I’ve changed the layout slightly relative to that of Paden & Paden so as to highlight the distinctive refrain. In addition, I’ve associated the extra word “that {Qu’}” in the first refrain with the prior stanza. That catch word is less noticeable and doesn’t add an extra syllable in the Occitan original.

“Us fotaires que non fo amorós” survives only in MS. G (Biblioteca Ambrosiana (Milan), MS. R 71 sup.), where it is grouped with parodies of other troubadour songs. A marginal annotation in that manuscript apparently attributes the song to the troubadour Tribolet. Tribolet is otherwise unknown.

Both Bec and Paden & Paden under-appreciate this song. Bec implies that it isn’t serious, and that “c’est bien une parodie graveleuse de la fin’amor {it is indeed a smutty parody of courtly love}.” Bec (1984) p. 167. According to Paden & Paden, it’s an “exercise in obscenity …. The repetition of the sexual verb expresses the strength of desire in an exaggerated and comical way.” Paden & Paden (2007) p. 238. The last lines of both refrains are open to the possibility of homosexual desire. Whether the unsatisfied desire involves homosexual or heterosexual love seems to me less important than the song’s poignant sense of sexual frustration.

[7] On Rahab, Joshua 2:1-24, Hebrews 11:31, James 2:25. Rahab may be in the genealogy of Jesus. Matthew 1:5.

[8] Dante, Paradiso 9.112-7, medieval Italian text of Petrocchi via the Princeton Dante Project, English translation from Esolen (2004). The subsequent quote is similarly from Paradiso 9.106-8.

[image] Rahab helping Joshua’s spies. 17th century oil on canvas painting by unknown artist. Preserved in Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nimes (France). Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

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

Esolen, Anthony M., trans. 2004. Dante Alighieri. Paradise. New York: Modern Library.

Guida, Saverio. 2006. “Sulla tenzone tra Uget e Reculaire.” Studi mediolatini e volgari. 52: 98-130.

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.

Matheis, Eric. 2014. Capital, Value, and Exchange in the Old Occitan and Old French Tenson (Including the Partimen and the Jeu-Parti). Ph.D. Thesis, Columbia University.

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

Poe, Elizabeth W. 2000. “A Bird in the Hand: Toward an Informed Reading of En Peire, per mon chantar bel (PC 335,23 = PC 453,1).” Pp. 207-219 in Uitti, Karl D., Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Kevin Brownlee, and Mary B. Speer. Translatio Studii: Essays by His Students in Honor of Karl D. Uitti for His Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Schulman, Nicole M. 2001. Where Troubadours were Bishops: the Occitania of Folc of Marseille (1150-1231). New York: Routledge (based closely on dissertation).

Stroński, Stanisław. 1910. Le Troubadour Folquet de Marseille. Cracovie: Académie des Sciences.

Washer, Nancy. 2002. “Los motz e.l so”: words, melody, and their interaction in the songs of Folquet de Marseille. Ph.D. Thesis. Louisiana State University.

Washer, Nancy. 2007. “Paraphrased and parodied, extracted and inserted: the changing meaning of Folquet de Marseille’s ‘Amors, Merce!’” Neophilologus : An International Journal of Modern and Mediaeval Language and Literature. 91 (4): 565-581.

On the British Isles in the seventh century, a husband sought to divorce his wife. Whether this husband suffered abuse from his wife, as Matheolus did in twelfth-century France, isn’t know. What’s clear is that this husband didn’t find God in love with his wife. He thus looked elsewhere:

I want to turn to my God;
I do not want my wife.
Lord, I ask this of you;
I long to serve you alone.
Wife, depart from me!

{ Ad deum meum convertere volo:
uxorem meam ego nolo.
Domine, hoc tibi rogo:
tibi soli servire volo.
Recede a me, uxor! } [1]

Available data from the late-nineteenth century through to the present indicates that wives seek divorce about 2.5 times as frequently as husband do.[2] This medieval case of a husband seeking divorce is probably rather unusual.

God has joined us fairly,
but my mind shall have joy.
Lord, what am I asking of you?
I myself long to serve you.
Wife, depart from me!

{ Bene nobis iunxerat deus,
et gaudebit animus meus.
Domine, quid tibi rogo?
Ipse te servire volo.
Recede a me, uxor! } [3]

Family law helps to explain why wives seek divorce about 2.5 times as frequently as husbands do. Children are typically a highly valued good in a marriage. Anti-men sex discrimination in child custody and child support decisions is today enormous. This vitally significant sexism attracts remarkably little public concern. That’s a result of deeply entrenched gynocentrism. Despite recent fabrications of family-law history, wives in practice have probably always predominantly received custody of children upon divorce or separation. Medieval tales tell of fathers made into only wallets. Husbands’ higher probably of losing custody of their children makes them more reluctant than wives to seek marital separation or divorce.

Fathers have typically loved their children dearly. Both Jewish and Christian scripture describes God as a father. That gender figure isn’t meant to be understood literally. It’s meant to communicate God’s loving care for his children. The gender figure of God the father makes no sense without ancient, popular understanding of a father’s love for his children. A tenth-century poem sings of a father’s joy and the laughter that he brings to his children:

Turning somersaults he clowns on the branches;
vivid from behind he glitters like gold-leaf.
His happy antics make all viewers laugh.

He hangs on the nest above his young nestlings
showing himself off to their admiring faces;
he can outsing all his chick’s little voices.

{ Giro se turnat, in ramo iucundat;
respectu clarus, lucet tamquam aurum;
ut laetus mimus, tales facit risos.

Nido suspensus ad suos pullones;
ut eam cernat sui amatores,
cunctas praecellit parvulorum voces. } [4]

Whether bird or man, most fathers delight in life with their children. That, along with discrimination against husbands in child custody decisions, reduces husbands’ relative incentive to seek divorce.

Medieval marriage was a more attractive institution than is marriage today in high-income westernized countries. Under medieval canon law, a marriage could be legally contracted only with the freely given assent of both persons. Most medieval persons in their poverty didn’t envision marriage merely as a bucket-list checkbox to experience an extravagant special-day wedding ceremony. The medieval ideal of marriage was a conjugal partnership. Drawing upon the different skills of husbands and wives and benefiting from sharing of material resources, economic partnership was an important aspect of the medieval marital partnership. Moreover, under canon law, medieval spouses were indebted to have sex with each other, even if one didn’t feel like it. Hence medieval spouses were much less likely to find themselves experiencing sexless marriage.

What a calamity! Will you leave me?
But you shouldn’t say these words to me!
I want you to stay —
in the middle of the night I’ll need you
as my gentle husband.

Day and night I’ve been in tears
because of my dear husband:
God will defraud me,
so that he won’t lie at my side
as my gentle husband.

{ Calamitas! De me recedis?
Et ista verba non me dices!
Vellim moraris:
media nocte te requiram
ut dulcis iugalix meus!

Die ac nocte fui in fletu
propter viro meo caro:
fraudabit me deus
ut non iacet ad latus meum
ut dulcit iugalix meus! } [5]

This medieval wife was devastated that her husband would seek divorce. She was afraid that God would deprive her of her legally married husband. She wanted God to call her husband to account for seeking to divorce her. She refused to believe that God would allow her husband to engage in the fraud of divorce. Few spouses today hold such beliefs. When a husband today finds that his wife is divorcing him, to whom can he turn for hope? Perhaps he might plead to God that his wife doesn’t accuse him of domestic violence as a tactic to extract higher alimony and child support payments.

I’ll put myself into a hidden place
and fling myself into the deep sea.
This will wipe out my name and me.
May God call you to account for this,
as my gentle husband!

I’m raising my head in return to God.
He will not break my heart,
that man who slanders me that God
will defraud me of my husband,
my gentle husband!

{ Fatio me in absconso
et iaceo me in mare profundo.
Hic delebit nomen mecum:
tibi hec requirat deus
ut dulcis iugalix meus!

Caput levo contra deum,
et non fringet pectus meum
qui me blasfemat illum deum
qui me fraudabit virum meum,
ut dulcis iugalix meus! }

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Richeut: 12th-century tale of paternity fraud & child support
• poor Prodromos: an abused husband in 12th-century Byzantium
• domestic violence & child custody bias: the Crabtree case

Notes:

[1] “I want to turn to my God {Ad deum meum convertere volo}” st. 1, Latin text and English translation from Dronke (1995) p. 192. On the late-seventh-century dating of the poem, Lapidge (1985). For textual analysis, Dronke (1986).

[2] For U.S. data on percent of divorce filings in which the woman was the plaintiff, for various samples from 1867 to 1995,  Brinig & Allen (2000) Table 1, p. 128. Brinig & Allen collected 46,547 divorce certificates from 1995 for Connecticut, Virginia, Oregon, and Montana. While failing to report summary statistics, id. reports for “correct estimations” 66.43. That figures appears to be the percentage of women plaintiffs. It implies that wives filed for divorce twice as frequently as husbands did.

Data from the National Survey of Families and Households for 1987-88 and 1992-94 indicate that five times as many wives as husbands wanted their marriage to end against the preference of the other spouse to remain married. Brinig & Allen (2000) p. 159, Appendix table (338 women vs. 67 men). The most recent data available in the National Survey of Families and Households is for 2001-2003.

Dankowski et al. (2017) is by far the highest quality study of divorce. It reports:

We examined all 243 divorce cases filed in Middlesex County, Massachusetts in May 2011. Excluding a single case involving a same-sex couple, 72.3 percent of the cases were filed by women. I.e., a woman was more than 2.5 times more likely to file a divorce lawsuit as a man. This is in a jurisdiction where the woman can expect to win sole custody and, for a given level of defendant income, roughly twice the level of child support profit as in the average U.S. state.

See id., Causes of Divorce.

Rosenfeld observed:

It is a well-established fact that most divorces in the US are wanted primarily by the wife. In Goode’s (1956) sample of recently divorced women from the 1940s in Detroit, about two thirds of the recently divorced women described themselves as the initiators of their divorces. More recent US data show a similar pattern, with roughly two thirds of divorces wanted by the wife {omitted references}. Most divorces are wanted by the wife not only in the US, but in Europe {omitted references} and Australia {omitted references} as well.

Rosenfeld (2017) p. 3. Goode’s (1956) data indicates that 264 divorces were initiated by the wife, while 105 where initiated by the husband. Those figures indicate that wives initiated divorce 2.5 times as frequently as husbands did. Rosenfeld got the figure “about two thirds” by counting mutually initiated divorces as half-initiated by wives before calculating the percentage of wife-initiated divorces. Id. p. 3, n. 1. That’s not a good statistic. Id.’s survey, “How Couples Meet and Stay Together” recorded among married couples getting divorced, 56 wives wanted the breakup more, compared to 18 husbands wanting the breakup more. Id. p. 29, Table 1, Source text. That gives a ratio of 3.1 for the divorce preference of wives relative to husbands.

Rosenfeld’s study exemplifies the ideological blinders of scholars working in accordance with dominant gynocentric ideology. Showing learned blindness to acute anti-men sexism in family law and the enormous financial implications of divorce, Rosenfeld states:

The fact that wives have been more likely to want divorce implies that wives were less satisfied with their marriages than their husbands, at least among couples who divorced.

Id. p. 3. The fact that wives upon divorce typically acquire a key marital good (the couple’s children) and large financial payments from the husband obviously affects relative divorce incentives. The flood of divorces in the Netherlands preceding the reduction in alimony duration from 12 to 5 years underscores the importance of financial incentives for divorce. Rosenfeld seems obtuse to incentives in context:

The simplest version of the power theory of relationships gives the initiative to the partner with more power or status. Therefore: Hypothesis 4: Individuals with more power, more status, or more income are more likely to want to break up.

Id. p. 9. That’s a nonsensical hypothesis. Relative costs and benefits of a break-up, not absolute levels of status and income, drive divorce incentives. Under the inequality-promoting structures of family law, persons have a strong incentive not to marry a partner who earns much less because of the financial risk of large income transfer upon divorce.

Family scholars fit their thinking to gynocentric ideology in a way consistent with the development of Soviet science:

Sassler and Miller (2011) found that among young heterosexual couples, men had the privilege of asking their partner to marry, meaning men controlled the marriage decision.

Id. p. 5. Men face the burden of attempting to gauge whether a partner is interested in marrying, and men endure the burden of rejection if they miscalculate. Men “controlled the marriage decision” only according to the realty-denying diktats of gynocentric ideology.

Rosenfeld found that wives prefer divorce about three times as frequently as husbands, but such a gender imbalance doesn’t hold among unmarried heterosexual cohabitors. That finding is consistent with the acute anti-men sex discrimination in family court decisions.

Rosenfeld concluded that his analysis is “consistent with the view that heterosexual marriage is a gendered institution.” Id. p. 20. What exactly does that mean?

Despite the institution of marriage changing and adapting (Cherlin, 2004) and becoming more diverse in terms of who marries whom (Rosenfeld, 2007), feminist scholars view heterosexual marriage as a gendered institution (Berk, 1985), which is a potential reason why wives might selectively want divorce. By gendered institution, scholars mean that heterosexual marriage reproduces and reifies traditional gender roles for men and women (Berk, 1985; Shelton & John, 1993). In their description of the post-1960 gender revolution as a stalled revolution, Hochschild and Machung (1989) describe how wives’ careers were constrained by their husbands’ expectations that the afternoon and evening shift of housework and childcare was fundamentally women’s work. Even husbands and wives who thought of themselves as holding gender egalitarian ideals were found by Hochschild and Machung to be living (and justifying to themselves) traditional gender expectations of childcare and housework as women’s work.

Id. p. 5. In short, Rosenfeld concludes that his study supports dominant gender ideology. Generating support for gynocentrism is a socially valued function of academics. That seems to be the dominant objective of much academic work today.

Tendentious, misleading studies of household labor distribution wrongly inform understanding of household economics. These studies don’t adequately count work that men do within the household. In addition, wives’ standards for how a household should be maintained are assumed to govern what work men should do. These scholarly assumptions reflect the biases of gynocentrism.

Studies asserting that wives’ living standards fall after divorce also mis-represent reality. A couple’s aggregate welfare necessarily falls following divorce due to dis-economies of separate living. Men still predominantly carry the burden of earning money to support married couples. To maintain of wife’s living standard post-divorce would require higher than 50% effective tax on the husband’s income. Faced with such a gross injustice, husbands through demoralization are likely to experience a large decline in earnings. As much as gynocentric society demands that women be protected from any harm, that’s not feasible in the context of divorce. In short, a wife with much lower earnings than her husband should expect a reduction in her living standard upon divorce.

[3] “Hear an honorable verse {Audite versum dignum}” st. 2, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Dronke (1995) p. 193. This poem closely follows the structure of “Ad deum meum convertere volo.” Like the latter, it’s earliest source is a ninth-century manuscript. Both poems probably have a common source.

[4] “Most brilliant of birds with his jewel-decked head {Caput gemmato, caeteris praeclarus}” st. 4-5, Latin text from Fickermann (1935), English translation (modified slightly) from Adcock (1983). Adcock entitles this poem, “The golden oriole at the monastery.” It’s also available in Latin in Raby (1959) p. 147 (poem no. 106). Raby calls it a “charming poem.” Id. p. 474. Dated to the tenth century, it’s probably of northern Italian origin. Id. pp. 147, 474.

[5] “Hear an honorable verse {Audite versum dignum}” st. 4-5, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Dronke (1995) p. 193. The subsequent quote is similarly from id., st. 6-7 (final stanza).

[image] Joachim and Anna at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem, celebrating that they would have a child. Their child was Mary the mother of Jesus. Illumination in Book of Hours, with the Hours of the Virgin, the Short Hours of the Holy Cross, Prayers and Suffrages. Made about 1420, apparently used in Utrecht. From folio 4v in British Library, MS Additional 50005.

References:

Adcock, Fleur. 1983. The Virgin and the Nightingale: medieval Latin poems. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books.

Brinig, Margaret F. and Douglas W. Allen. 2000. “‘These boots are made for walking’: why most divorce filers are women.” American Law and Economics Review. 2 (1): 126-169.

Dankowski, Alexa, Suzanne Goode, Philip Greenspun, Chaconne Martin-Berkowicz, and Tina Tonnu. 2017. Real World Divorce: Custody, Child Support, and Alimony in the 50 States. Online.

Dronke, Peter. 1986. “‘Ad deum meum convertere volo’ and early Irish evidence for lyrical dialogues.” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies. 12: 23–32.

Dronke, Peter. 1995. “Two Versions of an Insular Latin Lyrical Dispute.” Filologia Mediolatina. 2: 109-125. Cited from reprint as Ch. 10 (pp. 191-219) in Dronke, Peter. 2007. Forms and Imaginings: from antiquity to the fifteenth century. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.

Fickermann, Norman. 1935. “Zwei lat. Gedichte. I. Ein frühmal. Liedchen auf den Pirol. II. Das Admonter Fragment eines Planctus Heinrici VII.” Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für Ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde zur Beförderung einer Gesamtausgabeder Quellenschriften deutscher Geschichten des Mittelalters. 50: 582-599.

Lapidge, Michael. 1985. “A Seventh-Century Insular Latin Debate Poem on Divorce.” Cambridge Medieval Celtic Studies. 10: 1-23.

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

Rosenfeld, Michael J. 2017. “Who wants the Breakup? Gender and Breakup in Heterosexual Couples.” Forthcoming as chapter in Duane F. Alwin, Diane Felmlee, and Derek Kreager, eds. Social Networks and the Life Course: Integrating the Development of Human Lives and Social Relational Networks. Springer.

The melodious nightingale and heavenly Jerusalem, two ancient figures, are significantly gendered. As all are now taught from a tender age, gender is socially constructed. That’s beyond question by definition. Poets in the relatively liberal and enlightened medieval period, however, dared to re-imagine the female genderings of the melodious nightingale and heavenly Jerusalem. They re-imagined these female gender figures with keen appreciation for men’s sexual interests and men’s social subordination.

In the reality of the natural world, the male nightingale sings melodies to attract a female mate. An ancient myth-maker, however, reversed the singing nightingale’s gender. That was to enable the Philomela myth and foster social silence about men being raped and violence against men. In the seventh century, facing down this mythic horror, Eugenius of Toledo pushed aside men’s gender burden of soliciting amorous relationships and re-imagined the nightingale as a woman pleasing a man with her sweet words. He wrote:

No other bird can ever imitate your singing;
sweet honey flows with your fluent, rippling notes.
Speak with vibrant tongue your tremulous warbling,
and pour liquid melody from your smooth throat.
Offer attentive ears food with sweet-sounding flavor,
never to silence cease, never to silence cease.
Glory and blessings and praise to Christ our Savior,
who grants his servants good gifts such as these.

{ Nulla tuos unquam cantus imitabitur ales,
Murmure namque tuo dulcia mella fluunt.
Dic ergo tremulos lingua vibrante susurros
Et suavi liquidum gutture pange melos.
Porrige dulcisonus, attentis auribus escas;
Nolo tacere velis, nolo tacere velis.
Gloria summa tibi, laus et benedictio, Christe,
Qui praestas famulis haec bona grata tuis. } [1]

In Eugenius’s highly sensuous poem, the woman bird pleases the man with her bodily gifts, which ultimately are from God. God grants persons the pleasure of enjoying each other bodily. Stating that was possible in seventh-century Europe. In our Dark Age of totalitarian anti-meninism, honoring and praising a bird for providing bodily pleasure to a man is scarcely tolerable.

In fourteenth-century Italy, Boccaccio recognized the gender mutuality implicit in Eugenius’s figure of the melodious nightingale. He told the story of Caterina, a highly privileged, beautiful, young single woman. She fell in love with Ricciardo. He was a noble young man who loved her as she loved him. They sought to get together to save each other from dying of lovesickness. But Caterina’s parents guarded her carefully, as if young men threatened her like dangerous beasts.

Caterina ingeniously contrived to sleep with Ricciardo. She explained to her parents that her bedroom was too hot for her. She said that to be cooler, she wanted to sleep out on the balcony over the garden. In that garden, a nightingale sang. Caterina told her parents that the nightingale, undoubtedly a male bird, gave her delight. Her mother responded that their house wasn’t hot and that Caterina should sleep inside. Caterina, however, explained to her mother that young women are much hotter than older women. Her mother and father finally allowed her to sleep outside on the balcony over the garden.

As they had pre-arranged, that night Ricciardo climb up to the balcony to where Caterina had placed her bed. Then they saved each other from dying of lovesickness:

After many kisses, they lay down together, and almost for the entire night, they took delight and pleasure in one another, many times making the nightingale sing.

{ dopo molti basci si coricarono insieme, e quasi per tutta la notte diletto e piacer presono l’un dell’altro, molte volte faccendo cantar l’usignuolo. } [2]

As Boccaccio understood, the singing nightingale is a male bird. But what specific form of bird? The course of events soon revealed:

But, short being the night and long their pleasure, when daybreak was near (although they wished it not), having gotten heated up by the time and their play together, they fell asleep while completely naked. As she slept, Caterina’s right arm cradled Ricciardo’s neck, while her left hand held him by that part that you ladies are too modest to name in the presence of men.

{ E essendo le notti piccole e il diletto grande, e già al giorno vicino (il che essi non credevano), e sí ancora riscaldati e sí dal tempo e sí dallo scherzare, senza alcuna cosa addosso s’addormentarono, avendo a Caterina col destro braccio abbracciato sotto il collo Ricciardo, e con la sinistra mano presolo per quella cosa che voi tra gli uomini piú vi vergognate di nominare. }

After dawn, Caterina’s father walked out onto the balcony to see how his daughter was sleeping with the nightingale’s song. He gently lifted the curtains around her bed. Then he saw them naked, with Caterina embracing Ricciardo in the way  just described. Her father called to his wife:

Quick, lady, get up and come and see that your daughter was so desirous of the nightingale that to such purpose she has caught him and holds him in her hand.

{ Sú tosto, donna, lievati e vieni a vedere, che tua figliuola è stata sí vaga dell’usignuolo che ella è stata tanto alla posta che ella l’ha preso e tienlosi in mano. }

The nightingale here means Ricciardo’s genitals. That’s a brilliant re-imagining of the singing nightingale as a male bird. In the words of the seventh-century poet Eugenius, glory and blessings and praise to Christ for such a good gift.

Medieval poets similarly re-imagined heavenly Jerusalem as warmly welcoming to men. The Book of Revelation describes the heavenly Jerusalem, the new Jerusalem, as a bride:

And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven and made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.

{ καὶ τὴν πόλιν τὴν ἁγίαν Ἰερουσαλὴμ καινὴν εἶδον καταβαίνουσαν ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ ἡτοιμασμένην ὡς νύμφην κεκοσμημένην τῷ ἀνδρὶ αὐτῆς } [3]

The heavenly Jerusalem as bride has helped to figure the church as woman. Under intensification of gynocentrism, heavenly Jerusalem could become the City of Ladies, an imaginary gynocentric paradise. Yet resisting, manly men pondered: for what was the bride ready? A medieval poet of the sixth or seventh century imagined the heavenly Jerusalem as a bride coming down from heaven to oppressed Christian men, such as men in sexless marriages or in celibate Hell:

Blessed city Jerusalem,
called vision of peace,
constructed in heaven
from living stones
and crowned by angels
like a bride by friends.

Young woman coming from heaven
to the marital bed,
ready to be made spouse,
to be united with her Lord.
Her spaces and boundaries
are made from purest gold.

Her doors shine with pearls,
with her inmost shrines being open,
and by manliness of the deserving
into that place are lead
all who in Christ’s name
are oppressed in this world.

{ Urbs beata Jerusalem
dicta pacis visio
quae construitur in caelis
vivis ex lapidibus
et angelis coronata
ut sponsata comite.

Nova veniens e caelo
nuptiali thalamo.
Praeparata, ut sponsata,
copuletur Domino.
Plateae et muri ejus
ex auro purissimo.

Portae nitent margaritis,
adytis patentibus,
et virtute meritorum
illuc introducitur
omnis qui ob Christi nomen
hic in mundo premitur. } [4]

The joy that the young woman from heaven promises for the marital bed will last forever in a restful paradise:

Here all are deserving
to obtain their desires
and to hold that acquired
with the saints forever,
and to enter paradise,
conveyed in bed.

{ Hic promereantur omnes
petita acquirere
et adepta possidere
cum sanctis perenniter,
paradisum introire
translati in requiem. } [5]

As a victim of castration culture, Peter Abelard understood personally and painfully what it means to be an oppressed man. He praised the heavenly Jerusalem, the young woman who fulfills completely men’s desires:

True Jerusalem is that city,
forever united in peace, the highest delight,
where desire doesn’t overtake the act’s fulfillment,
nor is the reward less than the desire.

{ Vera Ierusalem est illa civitas,
cuius pax iugis est, summa iucunditas,
ubi non praevenit rem desiderium,
nec desiderio minus est praemium. } [6]

Spouses should repeat this beautiful stanza to each other every night before they get into bed. Single persons should repeat it to themselves in hopeful joy, without any delusions of being self-partnered. The heavenly Jerusalem figured as female doesn’t contribute to gynocentric oppression if she’s united in bed with a man.

Not just the penis’s image problem, but many other historically entrenched gender figures also contribute to disparaging and oppressing men. The female gendering of the melodious nightingale effaces men laboring to uphold their gender burden of soliciting amorous relationships. The female gendering of the heavenly Jerusalem structures a heavenly city with earthly, oppressive gynocentrism. Medieval poets were capable of re-imagining these gender figures to promote a more humane and just world for men, and for everyone. Yes we can, too.

Heavenly city, blessed city,
upon a rock situated,
city in a port of plenty safety,
from afar I salute you.
I salute you, I sigh for you,
I desire you, I require you.

{ Urbs caelestis, urbs beata
Super petram collocata,
Urbs in portu satis tuto,
De longinquo te saluto.
Te saluto, te suspiro,
Te affecto, te requiro. } [7]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• epic to ordinary: heaven and earth in Christian Latin hymns
• risus paschalis for Christmas: laughing with Sarah, begetter of Isaac
• the now-inconceivable joy of sex in medieval times

Notes:

[1] Eugenius of Toledo, “Your voice, nightingale, urges one to proclaim songs {Vox, Philomela, tua cantus edicere cogit},” Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 126 (a text is available online), my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Adcock (1983) p. 19.

The author of “Vox, Philomela, tua cantus edicere cogit” is specifically Eugenius II of Toledo. He died as Bishop of Toledo in 658 GC. Eugenius had perhaps a typical educational background of a learned person in seventh-century Spain:

as he had read widely and intelligently among the classical poets and his immediate predecessors, he was able to command a variety of metres and subjects.

Raby (1934) vol. 1, p. 150. Eugenius achieved considerable distinction. His poems were widely read, including in England and among the Carolingian poets. Id. p. 151.

The female gendering of the melodious nightingale generated at least one poem of men’s sexed protest. The specific context is poetic. Cambridge Songs 10, titled “Concerning a nightingale {De luscinia},” beginning “May the golden lyre sound bright melodies {Aurea personet lira clara modulamina},” lavishly praises the female nightingale for her singing talent. A tenth-century poet responded to that gynocentric nightingale poem with a metrical parody drawing upon themes of men’s sexed protest:

Her incessant, yet not hoarse
whistling voice is never mute,
as she chants her incantations
like a woodland prostitute,
puffing up her puny figure
full of music and conceit.

Will you never stop that racket,
you over-rated little bird?
Do you think your art surpasses
all the singing ever heard?
Don’t you know that other music
is quite frequently preferred?

As you bash your tinkling cymbals
with excessive jollity,
wakeful crowds of gentry
egg you on with flattery:
your eternal serenading
wins the praise of royalty.

Stop it, stop it, you’re a nuisance —
surely now you’ve tired that beak?
When I try a little snoozing
on the sly, you make me sick.
Must you every moment sing
as if worthy of applauding stars?

{ Prolixa non rauca mittit
voce sepe sibila,
plura canit incantando
saltuum prostibula,
gliscit mirabilis membra
ludens menia carmina.

O tu parva, cur non cessas
clangere, avicula?
Estimas nunc superare
omnes arte musica?
Aut quid cum lira contempnis
sonora dulciflua?

Ultra vires iocabunda
luctas thimfanistria,
te auscultant vigilando
regalis insignia,
laudat procerum caterva
tua plura cantica.

Cessa, cessa fatigando
lassata iam bucula,
quia premis dormizantes
clam iugiter nausia,
omni ora pro quid canis
digna ovans sidera? }

“Often a golden tongue / at the heights of religious brotherhood {Aurea frequenter lingua / in sublimi hetera }” st. 8-11, Latin text from Strecker (1926), Appendix 1, via Bibliotheca Augustana, English translation (modified slightly) from Adcock (1983) pp. 31-3. For a slightly revised Latin text, Bradley (1987).

The male nightingale’s melodious song has been wrongly credited to females throughout recorded history. In Homer’s Odyssey, Penelope calls the nightingale “daughter of Pandareus” and invokes the anti-meninist Philomela myth. Odyssey 19.511-28. Hesiod refers to the nightingale as female in a passage brutalizing a male bird. Works and Days, ll. 203-11. In fifth-century Athens, tragedies and comedies referred to the melodious nightingale as female. For a collection of ancient and medieval nightingale poems, Williams (1997) Appendices 1 and 2. In id. and other recent scholarship, gender and nightingales have typically been considered only within the viciously patrolled boundaries of dominant ideology. For a nightingale poetry survey showing some concern for male nightingales, Addison (2009).

[2] Boccaccio, Decameron 5.4, Italian text that of Branca’s Einaudi edition (1992) via Decameron Web, my English translation benefiting from those of Rigg (1903) and Rebhorn (2013). Subsequent quotes from this story are similarly sourced.

[3] Revelation 21:2, Greek text from BlueLetterBible. See similarly Revelation 3:12, 21:9-10.

[4] “The blessed city Jerusalem / called vision of peace {Urbs beata Jerusalem / dicta pacis visio},” st. 1-3, Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 127, my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Neale (1851). This hymn is from the sixth or seventh century. For some traditional analysis of it, Belsole (2017).

[5] “Urbs beata Jerusalem” st. 8, sourced as above. This stanza is also st. 4 in “Christ is put as the corner stone {Angularis fundamentum / lapis Christus missus est}.” The latter is the second part of the former. It apparently was established as a separate hymn in the Moissac Breviary in the tenth century. Here’s the translation of Neale (1851) (alternate source). Both parts of “Urbs beata Jerusalem” were used in the service for the 750th anniversary of the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey.

[6] Peter Abelard, “O of what quantity and quality are the Sabbaths {O quanta qualia sunt illa sabbata},” st. 2, Latin text from Mark Walter in the Classical Anthology, my English translation benefiting from those of id., Brittain (1962) pp. 195-7, and Neale (1854). Here’s the music for the hymn, and a performance of it.

[7] Hildebert of Lavardin, “May that Zion receive me {Sion me receptet illa},” ll. 18-22, Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 192, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. and the one provided by Michael Gilleland. Hildebert of Lavardin (lived in France, 1056-1133) was a leading poet of his time. Hildebert had keen appreciation for men’s gender disadvantage.

[image] Heavenly Jerusalem, the bride from heaven. This manuscript illumination includes the flower of life, the tree of life, and a representation of men’s seminal contribution to life. From a Beatus, made by Facundus for Ferdinand I and Queen Sancha. Preserved as folio 254 in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, Ms Vit.14.2. Via Wikimedia Commons. Here are more images from the magnificent Beatus of Facundus. The monk Beatus of Liébana, living in the monastery of Martin de Turieno (near present-day Santander on the north coast of Spain) in the eighth century made what became the prototype of a book known as a Beatus. For discussion, Williams (2011).

References:

Adcock, Fleur. 1983. The Virgin and the Nightingale: medieval Latin poems. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books.

Addison, Catherine. 2009. “‘Darkling I listen’: The nightingale’s Song In and Out of Poetry.” Alternation: Journal of the Centre for the Study of Southern African Literature and Languages. 16 (Special issue ; 2): 190-220.

Belsole, Kurt. 2017. “‘Urbs Ierusalem Beata’: The Hymn for Evening Prayer for the Dedication of a Church.” The Institute for Sacred Architecture. 32. Online.

Bradley, Dennis R. 1987. “‘Aurea frequenter lingua in sublimi hetera’ – A New Edition.” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch. 22: S. 114-135.

Brittain, Frederick. 1962. The Penguin Book of Latin Verse: with plain prose translations of each poem. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.

Rebhorn, Wayne A., trans. 2013. Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Williams, Jeni. 1997. Interpreting Nightingales: Gender, Class and Histories. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press.

Williams, John. 2011. “Beatus of Liébana.” The Public Domain Review. Online.

Begin, little boy, to get to know mother with a laugh.
Ten months have brought a mother’s long labor.
Begin, little boy; for whom parents do not laugh,
no god honors at his table, no goddess honors in bed.

{ Incipe, parve puer, risu cognoscere matrem,
matri longa decem tulerunt fastidia menses.
Incipe, parve puer, cui non risere parentes,
nec deus hunc mensa, dea nec dignata cubili est. } [1]

Even at age seventy-four, Sarah was beautiful enough to be a wife for the King of Egypt. But she hadn’t produced any children. Eager for children, Sarah ordered her husband Abraham to have sex with her slave-girl Hagar. Like most husbands, Abraham did what his wife told him to do. He was potent enough at age seventy-five to have a child with Hagar. Sarah then blamed Abraham for the mother Hagar looking down on her. Whatever happens, men get blamed. With the passivity of a man who understands his subordination to women, Abraham told Sarah to do to Hagar whatever she wanted to do. Sarah then kicked Hagar and Hagar’s son Ishmael out of their home. Such is the cruel futility of family life in gynocentric society.

God intervened in history to provide a different family destiny. When Abraham was a hundred years old and Sarah was ninety-nine, God promised Abraham a son with Sarah. In response, Abraham fell on his face before God and laughed.[2] Laughing is not what a pious person usually does prostrate before God. But Abraham didn’t keep his laughter inside himself. God, who loves human beings as creations of his own hands, wasn’t offended by Abraham’s laughter.

Later, three mysterious visitors appeared to Abraham at Mamre. They said that Sarah and Abraham surely would have a son. But Sarah’s menstrual cycle had ceased long ago:

And Sarah laughed inwardly, saying, “After my being shriveled, shall I have pleasure, and my husband is old? [3]

{ וַתִּצְחַ֥ק שָׂרָ֖ה בְּקִרְבָּ֣הּ לֵאמֹ֑ר אַחֲרֵ֤י בְלֹתִי֙ הָֽיְתָה־לִּ֣י
עֶדְנָ֔ה וַֽאדֹנִ֖י זָקֵֽן׃ }

Sarah doubted her husband’s capability to provide her with pleasure and her own ability to bear a child. Husbands, however, will make extraordinary efforts to please their wives. The Lord, who knows every person’s inner being, questioned why Sarah laughed. Sarah, who hadn’t laughed openly, denied having laughed. But the Lord, wise enough not to always believe women, pointed out Sarah’s lie: “Yes, you did laugh.”

Despite their old age, Sarah and Abraham had a son, as the Lord had foretold. They named their son Isaac. That name literally means “he who laughs.” Sarah didn’t confess explicitly that she had been wrong:

And Sarah said:
God has made me laughter,
whoever hears will laugh at me. [4]

{ וַתֹּ֣אמֶר שָׂרָ֔ה צְחֹ֕ק עָ֥שָׂה לִ֖י אֱלֹהִ֑ים כָּל־הַשֹּׁמֵ֖עַ
יִֽצְחַק־לִֽי׃ }

The Hebrew verb used above for “laugh” could alternately mean “mock” or “scorn.” Whether others laughed with Sarah or laughed at Sarah doesn’t seem to matter. Either way, laughter highlights the astonishing reality that in her old age, Sarah had a son Isaac with Abraham.

Isaac was subject to a trial that to Christians prefigured Jesus crucified and resurrected. God told Abraham to offer Isaac as a burnt offering atop a mountain in Moriah. Resolutely faithful to God, Abraham complied with this horrid request for human sacrifice. Isaac carried the wood to which his father Abraham then bound him to be killed. But God at the final moment stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac.[5] Isaac must have been terrified. How could Isaac have gone on to get married and have children of his own? Perhaps he overcame his emotional trauma with cathartic laughter at the inscrutable ways of God.

In twelfth-century Europe, laughter was associated with celebrating the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. An Easter sequence by the great Parisian hymnist Adam of Saint Victor sings of Isaac:

The boy, figure of our laughter,
for whom the ram was slain,
signifies the joy of life.

{ Puer, nostri forma risus
pro quo vervex est occisus,
vitae signat gaudium. } [6]

Isaac’s salvation, Jesus’s resurrection, celebrating Easter, laughter, and the joy of life are united in this stanza. Heloise of the Paraclete’s husband Peter Abelard wrote hymns for the Oratory of the Paraclete’s nuns to use for the all-important liturgical hours of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Thirteen of these hymns conclude with a stanza associating the resurrected Jesus’s glory with Christians’ “laughter of Easter grace {risus paschalis gratiae}”:

Make us, Lord, so to suffer with you
that we may become sharers in your glory;
so to conduct these three days in grief
that you may grant us the laughter of Easter grace.

{ Tu tibi compati sic fac nos, Domine,
tuae participes ut simus gloriae;
sic praesens triduum in luctu ducere,
ut risum tribuas paschalis gratiae. } [7]

This sense of laughter and comedy at the culmination of Christian salvation history probably existed much earlier than the twelfth century. Perhaps in the ninth century, the Latin epic Waltharius was written with a preface that declared that reading it “requires one to jest with the Lord rather than to petition the Lord {ludendum magis est dominum quam sit rogitandum}.”

In Europe from the fifteenth through early-eighteenth centuries, “Easter laughter {risus paschalis}” apparently was a popular practice. A modern scholar and church official explained:

In the Baroque period the liturgy used to include the risus pachalis, the Easter laughter. The Easter homily had to contain a story that made people laugh, so that the church resounded with joyful laughter. That may be a somewhat superficial form of Christian joy. But is there not something very beautiful and appropriate about laughter becoming a liturgical symbol? And is it not a tonic when we still hear, in the play of cherub and ornament in Baroque churches, that laughter which testified to the freedom of the redeemed? [8]

Among the York Corpus Christi Plays registered about the year 1470 is a staging of Christ before Herod. In that play, King Herod is a extravagantly comic character leading an unsuccessful attempt to get Christ to speak. Prior to being confounded by Christ, Herod exclaimed:

Oh, my heart hops for joy,
to see now this prophet appear!
We shall have a good game with this boy;
take heed, for in haste you shall hear.
I believe we shall laugh and have liking,
to see how this scoundrel alleges our laws.

{ O, my harte hoppis for joie
To se nowe this prophette appere.
We schall have goode game with this boy;
Takis hede, for in haste ye schall here.
I leve we schall laugh and have likyng
To se nowe this lidderon her he leggis oure lawis. } [9]

Soldiers (“knights”) brought Christ before Herod and told of Christ’s wondrous sayings and acts. Christ himself, despite questions, mockery, and threats, refused to speak before King Herod. That was an astonishing act of silence. One of Herod’s sons declared:

My lord, all this muteness amends not a mite.
To mess with a madman’s a marvel to me.
Command your knights to clothe him in white;
let him go as he came to your country.

{ Mi lorde, all youre mutyng amendis not a myte,
To medill with a madman is mervaille to mene;
Comaunde youre knyghtis to clothe hym in white
And late hym carre as he come to youre contré.}

King Herod agreed:

Sir knights, we’ll endeavor to make you be glad;
our counsel has warned us wisely and well.
White clothing is fitting for this foolish lad.
Fully all of his folly in faith we feel.

{ Sir knyghtis, we caste to garre you be gladde,
Oure counsaile has warned us wisely and wele:
White clothis we saie fallis for a fonned ladde,
And all his foly in faith fully we feele. }

For the Christian audience in relation to Christ, “fully all of his folly in faith we feel.” Herod, lacking Christian consciousness, enacted a joke upon himself.[10] For Christians celebrating Easter, weeping at Christ’s crucifixion is turned to joy at his resurrection. Medieval Christians then had the blessing of laughing with the risen Christ.

Who has ever heard of such,
tell me, I pray, about these doings.

{ Quis audivit talia,
Dic, rogo, facta } [11]

Christian laughter isn’t only for Easter. When he heard that his wife Sarah would have a son, Abraham prostrated himself before God and laughed. Those who will celebrate the birth of Christ at Christmas should laugh like Abraham. Christ showed comedic spirit in raising Lazarus, in healing the sick, and in playing with the Canaanite woman. Christians, fools for Christ, now more than ever live in a world of clowns. Over here, over there, funny things are everywhere. With men subject to bizarre paternity laws and men deprived of any reproductive rights whatsoever, what are men to think of Joseph, foster-father of Jesus? Who can believe that women and men can still love each other and have children?

Tomorrow let love whoever has never loved; whoever has loved, let tomorrow love.

{ Cras amet qui nunquam amavit quique amavit cras amet. } [12]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• sacralizing men’s sexuality: Jacob & his wives to Jesus & his church
• Christian comedy: epic jesting with the Lord in the Waltharius
• Boccaccio’s Corbaccio: comic reality of love as new Vita Nuova

Notes:

[1] Virgil, Eclogues 4.60-4, Latin text from Greenough (1900) via Perseus, my English translation, benefiting from those of Mackail (1910) and A. S. Kline (2001).

[2] Genesis 12-18; in particular, Genesis 12:4 (Abraham 75 years old), 12:14-5 (beautiful Sarah taken into Pharaoh’s house), 16:1-6 (Sarah, Hagar, and Abraham), and 17:17 (Abraham 100 years old, Sarah 99 years old, Abraham laughed before God).

[3] Genesis 18:12, Hebrew text via BlueLetterBible, English translation from Alter (1996), where I have inserted “my” before “being shriveled.” For God’s response, Genesis 18:15.

[4] Genesis 21:6, sourced as previously, with my change from “Laughter has God made me” to “God has made me laughter.” Alter notes:

The ambiguity of both the {Hebrew} noun tsehoq (“laughter”) and the accompanying preposition li (“to” or “for” or “with” or “at me”) is wonderfully suited to the complexity of the moment. It may be laughter, triumphant joy, that Sarah experiences and that is the name of the child Isaac (“he-who-laughs”). But in her very exultation, she could well feel the absurdity (as Kafka noted in one of his parables) of a nonagenarian becoming a mother. Tsehoq also means “mockery,” and perhaps God is doing something to her as well as for her. (In poetry, tsahaq is often linked in parallelism with la’ag, to scorn or mock, and it should be noted that la’ag is invariably followed by the preposition l^e, as tsahaq here.) All who hear of it may laugh, rejoice with Sarah, but the hint that they might also laugh at her is evident in her language.

Alter (1996) p. 97, note.

[5] Genesis 22:1-19.

[6] Adam of Saint Victor, “Let the old leaven be purged {Zyma vetus expurgetur}” (Easter sequence) st. 9, Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 198, my English translation benefiting from that of id. Here’s a Latin text with German translation, and the English translation of Neale (1867). The Christian letter to the Hebrews associates Christ rising from the dead with Isaac. Hebrews 11:17-9. Galatians 4:28 calls Christians “children of the promise, like Isaac.”

[7] Peter Abelard, hymns for the Sacred Triduum, e.g. “On Friday for the hour of the morning {in parasceve ad laudes},” st. 4, Latin text from Woods (1992) p. 168, my English translation benefiting from that of id. “Christ, the new Isaac, both is risus paschalis, and the new laughter of Easter, and gives that laughter to Christians in the rejoicing that follows his death.” O’Connell (2002) p. 51. John 16:20 tells of sorrow turned into joy. Luke 6:21 explicitly refers to laughter:

Blessed are you who now weep, for you shall laugh.

{ beati qui nunc fletis quia ridebitis
μακάριοι οἱ κλαίοντες νῦν ὅτι γελάσετε }

Cf. Ecclesiastes 3:4.

In his hymns for the Sacred Triduum, Abelard clearly intended to emphasize risus paschalis. His poetic form has been presented slightly differently by different authors. O’Connell states that “each of the fifteen hymns” that Abelard wrote for Good Friday and Holy Saturday concludes with the above stanza. Id. p. 50. In her careful study, Woods point out that the manuscript arrangement sets out fourteen hymns, with the first hymn for Good Friday ending with this, its ninth stanza:

Let this night of weeping and these three days
when tears shall linger, be the evening,
until the most welcome morning of joy is restored
to us in our sorrow, with the rising of the Lord.

{ Nox ista flebilis praesensque triduum
quo demorabitur fletus sit vesperum
donec laetitiae mane gratlsslmum
surgente Domino, sit maestis redditum. }

Latin text and English trans. from Woods (1992) p. 149. Editors have split this hymn into three hymns and added the “risus paschalis gratiae” stanza to the end of two of them. Id. p. 145. In Woods’s learned judgment, that change isn’t warranted. In either case, the importance of risus paschalis is beyond doubt.

Abelard also remembered and represented laughter in his Easter sequence Epithalamica. When the bride is re-united with her bridegroom, she sings:

Now I see what I had desired,
now I clasp what I had loved;
now I laugh, I who had so wept:
more I rejoice than I had grieved.
I laughed at dawn, I wept at night;
at dawn I laughed, at night I wept.

{ Iam video quod optaveram,
iam teneo quod amaveram;
iam rideo que sic fleveram:
plus gaudeo quam dolueram.
Risi mane, flevi nocte;
mane risi, nocte flevi. }

“Speak bride, your wedding song {Epitalamica dic, sponsa, cantica},” st. 7, Latin text from Ashlock (2013) pp. 47-8, my English translation, benefiting from that of Waddell (1986) p. 251. Ashlock newly transcribed the Latin to more accurately represent the manuscripts than does Waddell’s Latin text. Ashlock (2013) p. 19. For this stanza, the only difference is Waddell’s classical spelling of que as quae.

The Epithalamica draws heavily on the Song of Songs. In traditional Christian topological interpretation of the Song of Songs, the bride represents the church, and the bridegroom, Christ. The bride’s desire for her bridegroom also has an obvious earthly correlate. The medieval manuscripts treat the Epithalamica as a Marian sequence and associate it with the liturgical Birth of Mary office. Waddell (1986) pp. 246-7. In Christian understanding, Mary is intimately and uniquely associated with the birth of Christ. The laughter of the Epithalamica can thus also be felt as Christmas laughter.

Waddell highlighted the importance of laughter to Abelard. He observed:

the laughter/weeping, morning/evening couples … bear the stamp of Abelard, or, more correctly, Abelard and Augustine. As early as pre-Lent Septuagesima Sunday, Abelard’s sermon for that day had begun by ringing the changes of Qoheleth’s Tempus flendi/ tempus ridendi, “A time to weep/a time to laugh.”

Id. p. 263. In addition to his repeated invocations of laughter in his hymns for the Sacred Triduum, Abelard also explicitly referred to laughter after weeping in his Easter sermon. Id. p. 265. Just as for Isaac and his experience of nearly being slaughtered by this father, Abelard may have found in laughter some release from the horror of his castration.

Some scholars now attribute the Epithalamica not to Peter Abelard, but to Heloise of the Paraclete. Wulstan (2002), Ashlock (2013). My sense is that Abelard wrote the Epithalamica. Scholarship attributing the Epithalamica to Heloise seems to me to draw upon motifs in Martianus Capella’s On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury {De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii}, suitably interpreted.

[8] Ratzinger (1997) pp. 50-1. Another authority explains:

The ‘risus paschalis’ referred to the widespread practice of the pastor telling jokes on Easter Sunday to celebrate Christ in this resurrection enjoying “the last laugh” over Satan and death; that was done in the spirit of “those who laugh last laugh best.”

O’Collins (2013) p. 79.

[9] York Corpus Christi Plays, Play 31: Christ Before Herod, ll. 163-8, Middle English text from Davidson (2011), English modernization from Scoville & Yates (2003). The subsequent two quotes are similarly from Christ Before Herod, ll. 335-8 (My lord, all this muteness…), 349-52 (Sir Knights…). A white robe is a Christian symbol of purity. Revelation 3:4-5, 7:13-4.

This play is based on Luke 23:6-12. It was performed by York’s craft of litsters (dyers). Its anonymous author is known as the “York Realist,” a highly accomplished literary author.

[10] O’Connell summarizes:

If English townsfolk also laughed at preachers who told silly stories, capered about, enacted nonsense and animal noises at Easter, then Herod’s performance here participates in that tradition of absurd preaching and reinforces the promise of triumph and laughter in the larger play.

O’Connell (2002) p. 56.

In his interesting, wide-ranging book, Pound declared:

a socially comic and critically informed role for the church in postmodernity, a counter-joke to the joke of capitalism. … we fail to appreciate the central dynamism of trinitarian love directly with the comic, and the task of the church in maintaining love’s comedy: the joke that God sets before us, the counter-joke to a world in which laughter is far too often on the side of the capitalist.

Pound (2019) pp. 13, 215. Capitalism in the U.S. might be regarded as a joke; so was socialism in the Soviet Union. Anti-meninism seems to me a more significant joke that most persons around the world aren’t getting. Anti-meninism can be overcome with comedic integrity. See the discussion of Lacan in note [6] of my post on Arnaut’s “Pòis Raimons e’N Truc Malècs.” Lacan shameless exploited castration culture. The point isn’t merely to create for oneself a crazy-cult following like that of Foucault, but to change the world for the better.

[11] Notcerus Balbulus {Notker the Stammerer}, also known as Notker of Saint Gall, “O, let us recall, worthy of faithful praise, / songs of this day {Eia, recolamus laudibus piis digna / Huius diei carmina},” 13.3-4, Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 159, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. Here’s an online Latin text. Notker probably wrote this Christmas sequence in the ninth century in what is present-day St. Gall, Switzerland.

[12] First line (and refrain) of an anonymous poem conventionally titled “The Virgil of Venus {Pervigilium Veneris},” Latin text from William Harris of Middlebury College, my English translation, benefiting from the various English translations presented in Herz (2018). Dating of this poem ranges from the second century to the fifth century GC.

[image] The Trinity, as figured as the three angelic visitors to Abraham and Sarah at Mamre. Icon made by Andrei Rublev between 1411 and 1425. Preserved as accession # 13012 in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. Via Wikimedia Commons. For thoughts on this icon in relation to the Trinity, dancing, and laughter, London (2017).

References:

Alter, Robert, trans. 1996. Genesis. New York: W.W. Norton.

Ashlock, Taylor Ann. 2013. “New Music to the Very Ears of God”?: Heloise the Composer. Undergraduate Honors Thesis. Paper 580. College of William and Mary.

Brittain, Frederick. 1962. The Penguin Book of Latin Verse: with plain prose translations of each poem. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.

Davidson, Clifford, ed. 2011. The York Corpus Christi Plays. Kalamazoo, Mich: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University.

Herz, Bob. 2018. “A Translation & Notes on Pervigilium Veneris.” Nine Mile Magazine: Talk About Poetry. May 29, online.

London, Deforest. 2017. “The Sound of One God Laughing.” Online (June 2) at Deforest London.

O’Collins, Gerald. 2013. “Easter Grace.” Ch. 5 in Winter, Sean. Immense Unfathomed Unconfined: the grace of God in creation, church and community : essays in honour of Norman Young. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers.

O’Connell, Michael. 2002. “Mockery, Farce, and Risus Paschalis in the York Christ before Herod.” Pp. 45-58 in Hüsken, Wim N. M., Konrad Schoell, and Leif Søndergaard. Farce and Farcical Elements. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Pound, Marcus. 2019. Theology, Comedy, Politics. Minneapolis: MN Fortress Press.

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal, from German trans. by John Rock and Graham Harrison. 1997 / 2006. Images of Hope: Meditations on Major Feasts. San Francisco: Ignatius Press.

Scoville, Chester N. and Kimberley M. Yates. 2003. The York Plays: a modernization. Toronto.

Waddell, Chrysogonus. 1986. “Epithalamica: An Easter Sequence by Peter Abelard.” The Musical Quarterly. 72 (2): 239-271.

Woods, Patricia Hilary, and Peter Abelard. 1992. The Festival Hymns of Peter Abelard: a translation and commentary of the Hymnarius Paraclitensis Libellus II. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Glasgow.

Wulstan, David. 2002. “Novi modulaminis melos: the music of Heloise and Abelard.” Plainsong and Medieval Music. 11 (1): 1-23.