In the Bavarian abbey at Tegernsee no later than the twelfth century, a woman student was in love with her man teacher. She wrote to him a passionate love letter. That letter began thus:

To H., flower of flowers, crowned with the garland of courtliness,
model of manliness, the ultimate standard of manliness,
N., who is like honey and without gall like the turtledove,
sends whatever is joyous, whatever can be worthwhile
in present life and whatever is sweet in eternal life,
what love Thisbe had for Pyramus and finally, after all, sends herself,
and then again herself, and whatever she has better than herself.

{ H. flori florum, redimito stemmate morum,
virtutum forme, virtutum denique norme,
<…> similis mellis et turtur nescia fellis,
quicquid iocundum, quicquid valet esse secundum
vite presentis, vel quicquid dulce perennis,
quod Piramo Tispe, tandem post omnia sese,
hinc iterum sese vel quicquid habet melius se. } [1]

Pyramus killed himself out of love for his beloved woman Thisbe. More needs to done to prevent men’s deaths. This woman student wrote to her man teacher that he was to her “more beloved than all the most beloved {dilectissimorum dilectior}.” In fact, she felt at first sight of him the intercourse of love:

From the day I first saw you I began to love you.
You penetrated forcefully my heart’s inner being.

{ Nam a die qua te primum vidi cepi diligere te.
Tu cordis mei intima fortiter penetrasti }

She felt “your being, your being with me {tuus esse, mecum esse}.” That’s a passionate expression of intimate union.

Women in love tend to have a sense of entitlement to love possession. The woman student instructed her man teacher to be faithful to her. She declared that he was one “whom I keep locked in the marrow of my heart {quem teneo medullis cordis inclusum}.” In concluding her letter to him, she drew upon what was probably a refrain in a medieval German folk song:

You are mine, I am yours,
of this you shall be sure.
You are locked
within my heart.
The little key is lost —
there within you must forever be.

{ Du bist min, ih bin din,
des solt du gewis sin.
Du bist beslossen
in minem herzen,
verlorn ist daz sluzzelin —
du muost och immer dar inne sin. }

That’s a sweet sentiment. But it’s also an aggressive assertion of love possession. It starts with the declaration “you are mine {du bist min}” and leaves no room for the other to question, for “of this you shall be sure {des solt du gewis sin}.” Men sometimes sense in love with women an ominous shadow of captivity.

Men, even men professors, tend toward romantic simplicity. Early in the twelfth century at a convent in Regensburg, Bavaria, a woman student was in love with her man teacher. He wrote to her:

It’s I, you know whom, but don’t betray your lover!
I beg you to come at dawn to the old chapel.
Knock at the door lightly, because the sacristan lives there.
What my heart now conceals, then will be revealed to you in bed.

{ En ego quem nosti, sed amantem prodere noli!
Deprecor ad vetulam te mane venire capellam.
Pulsato leviter, quoniam manct inde minister.
Quod celat pectus modo, tunc retegit tibi lectus. } [2]

To many men, love isn’t just a matter of words. The teacher at Regensburg explained to a woman student:

Love consists not in words, but in good deeds.
Because I feel that you love me in words and deeds,
if I live unharmed, with an equally good deed I’ll repay you.

{ Non constat verbis dilectio, sed benefactis.
Quod mihi te verbis et amicam sentio factis,
Si sospes vivam benefactum par tibi reddam. } [3]

Put more simply, one good night in bed merits another. Men’s feelings such as these shouldn’t be dismissed as merely crude lechery. One learned, twelfth-century teacher in Paris wrote to his highly educated woman student:

Those parts that your clothes conceal are like what? Scarcely can I rest my mind.
I want to caress them when they enter my soul.

{ Qualia sunt que veste tegis? Vix mente quiesco.
Que palpasse volo cum subeunt animo. } [4]

While engaging in work of the mind, medieval men teachers profoundly appreciated women’s bodies and the joys of sensuality.

When a woman declares that she gives herself in love to a man, that man commonly feels entitled to have sex with her. Men as fully human beings deserve to flourish fully in all their natural capabilities. Most men sadly have no general sense of sexual entitlement. Of course, men can scarcely develop a sense of sexual entitlement when they endure a harshly unequal gender burden in seeking amorous relationships. Married men and women, however, had a legal sexual entitlement in the relatively enlightened medieval period. Medieval marital law required spouses to have sex with each other even when one didn’t feel like it. Some medieval men apparently felt similarly entitled to sex even if the woman who loved him wasn’t married to him. In particular, the man teacher at Tegernsee complained that the woman student who loved him refused to consent to having sex with him:

Since toward me you spread your branches, fittingly adorned with leaves of words, you enticed my heart. But so that I should not pluck any of your tree’s fruit to taste, you repulsed me. This is the gospel’s fig-tree, fruitless and poetically subtle, yet without cultivation. For what does it occupy earth? If faith without works is truly dead, and if the fullness of love is shown in works, you have shown yourself exceedingly contrary to your very self. … What you expressed magnificently in words, you should fulfill with loving acts.

{ Siquidem ramos tuos, verborum foliis decener adornators, ad me protendens, cor meum allexisti, sed, ne fructem aliquem arboris tue ad gustandum decerperem, repulisti, Hec est enim evangelica illa ficus sine fructu, et poetica sollertia sine cultu: quid etiam terram occupat? Si enim fides sine operibus mortua est, et plenitudo dilectionis exhibitio est operis, valde te contrariam tibi ipsi ostendisti … que verbis magnifice exsecuta est amicabilibus factis adinplere. } [5]

She then again rebuffed him:

you think that after some tender words that we have spoken, you should proceed to acts. It is not so, nor will it be!

{ putatis quod mollia queque nostra dicta transire debeatis ad acta: sic non est nec erit! }

Medieval women students were strong and independent enough to say no to importuning men teachers, even those arguably entitled to sex with them. This young woman even included a bitingly ironic final line in medieval German:

May you be steadfast and joyous always.

{ Statich und salich du iemer wis. }

Not all medieval women were this cruel. Some compassionately helped dying men. Other medieval women nicely refused to have sex with their boyfriends. No good reason exists for being mean to men. Good will to men is good practice, and it promotes peace on earth.

While men need to cultivate a sense of sexual entitlement, women in love should relinquish their sense of love possession. A woman should not treat a man she loves as if he were her personal property or feudal serf. This gender trouble has deep historical roots. Consider a Greek woman’s claims sometime before the early second-century BGC. About her lover she said:

The choice was made by both:
we were united; Aphrodite
is surety for our love. Pain holds me
when I remember
how he kissed me while treacherously intending
to leave me,
that inventor of inconstancy
and creator of love.

{ ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων γέγον᾿ αἵρεσις·
ἐζευγνίσμεθα· τῆς φιλίης Κύπρις
ἔστ᾿ ἀνάδοχος. ὀδύνη μ᾿ ἔχει,
ὅταν ἀναμνησθῶ
ὥς με κατεφίλει ’πιβούλως μέλλων
με καταλιμπάνειν
ἀκαταστασίης εὑρετὴς
καὶ ὁ τὴν φιλίην ἐκτικώς. } [6]

This woman acknowledges her agency and her choice in love. Yet she disparages the man she loved exercising his choice. He loved her, and then he rejected her. That happens in the earthly world. He almost surely didn’t declare himself her love possession forever.[7] Even if he did, men, like women, sometimes change their minds. Her calling him the “inventor of inconstancy” reflects her pain of being rejected. Feminist scholars would note that Helen of Troy deserves credit for being inconstant much earlier than this man was. In any case, this woman wasn’t abandoned, as if she had the right to have the man with her. Merely the man who once loved her subsequently left her.[8]

This woman refused to accept being rejected in love. She still burned with desire for the man:

Desire has seized me,
I do not deny it, having him in my thoughts.
Loving stars and you, Queen Night, who loved with me,
escort me even now to him, to whom Aphrodite
delivers me and drives me, and to the
great desire that has taken hold of me.
As guide I have the great fire
that burns in my heart.

{ ἔλαβέ μ᾿ ἔρως,
οὐκ ἀπαναίναμαι, αὐτὸν ἔχουσ᾿ ἐν τῆι διανοίαι.
ἄστρα φίλα καὶ συνερῶσα πότνια νύξ μοι
παράπεμψον ἔτι με νῦν πρὸς ὃν ἡ Κύπρις
ἔκδοτον ἄγει με καὶ ὁ
πολὺς ἔρως παραλαβών.
συνοδηγὸν ἔχω τὸ πολὺ πῦρ
τὸ ἐν τῆι ψυχῆι μου καιόμενον. }

The underlying figure here is a torchlight bridal procession.[9] The woman doesn’t respect the man’s choice of whom to marry. She insists that she will marry him. She asserts that her sexual jealousy must be the factor controlling his marriage:

I am about to go mad; for jealousy holds me,
and I am burning at being deserted.
For this very reason throw the garlands to me,
with which I shall be bedded in my loneliness.
My lord, do not exclude me and put me away;
receive me; I accept being a slave to jealousy.

{ μέλλω μαίνεσθαι· ζῆλος γάρ μ᾿ ἔχει,
καὶ κατακαίομαι καταλελειμένη.
αὐτὸ δὲ τοῦτό μοι τοὺς στεφάνους βάλε,
οἷς μεμονωμένη χρωτισθήσομαι.
κύριε, μή μ᾿ ἀφῆις ἀποκεκλειμένην·
δέξαι μ᾿· εὐδοκῶ ζήλωι δουλεύειν. }

This woman interprets her jealousy as creating a sexual entitlement for her. Certainly she, like any man, is entitled to sex by her very humanity. But she’s not entitled to sex with any man she chooses. Moreover, she has no right to compel him to marry her, even if she claims that he “seduced” her as a virgin. Women must check their privileged assertions of love possession.

Sexual entitlement expresses a basic human right that’s not gender-specific. Gynocentric society has wrongly sought to deny men’s sexual entitlement while asserting women’s sexual freedom and celebrating women’s strong, independent sexuality. That’s a major gender injustice.

Love possession, in contrast, isn’t a human right. Love possession rightly comes about only through the gift of oneself to another. Rather than demanding that, women should lovingly seek men’s masculine gifts.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• how to argue nicely about sex with your boyfriend: a medieval lesson
• medieval wife’s sexual entitlement banged against her husband’s love
• “I had a dream”: medieval imagining of gender justice

Notes:

[1] Tegernsee Love-Letters 8, ll. 1-7, Latin text from Dronke (2015) p. 230, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. p. 231 and Newman (2016) p. 242. For a freely available Latin text close to Dronke’s, see Lachmann & Haupt (1888) p. 221. The woman-writer’s initial is missing. I’ve supplied “N.” above in the English translation.

The subsequent five quotes above are similarly from Tegernsee Love-Letters 8. These quotes are, cited by line number in the Latin text of Dronke (2015): 8, “more beloved…”; 56-7, “From the day I first saw you…”; 73-4, “your being…”; 53, “whom I keep locked…”; 131-6, “You are mine….” I’ve simplified the presentation of Dronke’s Latin text to represent simply his emended version.

Newman points out that the German poem “You are mine…” could not have originally ended Tegernsee Love-Letters 8. Newman (2016) p. 246. In Tegernsee Love-Letters 9.40, the man teacher complains to the woman student about the “harsh epilogue {asper epilogus}” to her letter. The German poem certainly isn’t a harsh epilogue. Newman further declared: “The German lines replace an earlier epilogue deleted by the Tegernsee scribe.” Id p. 248. Some scribe apparently deleted the original epilogue. But the German song may have existed in the letter before the deleted epilogue. That deleted epilogue could have been a jarring, harshly anti-meninist declaration such as, “But remember, men who think a heart’s love implies carnal love are dogs!”

[2] Love-Verses from Regensburg 14, Latin text from Dronke (1965) v. 2, p. 426, my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Newman (2016) p. 263 (where it’s numbered 16).

[3] Love-Verses from Regensburg 50, Latin text from Dronke (1965) v. 2, p. 443, my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Newman (2016) p. 278 (where it’s numbered 65).

[4] Letters of Two Lovers {Epistolae duorum amantium} 113.11-2, Latin text from Mews (1999) p. 312, my English translation benefiting from that of id., p. 313, and Newman (2016) p. 82. The Latin text of the letters was originally published in Könsgen (1974).

[5] Tegernsee Love-Letters 9, ll. 21-33, 43-4., Latin text from Dronke (2015) p. 242f, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. and Newman (2016) p. 249. The teacher here alludes to Genesis 3:6 (plucking fruit), Matthew 11:19, Mark 11:13-4, Luke 13:7 (fig tree), James 2:20, 26 (faith without works), and Ephesians 3:19 (fullness of love). Dronke lineates this passage that’s apparently in prose. I’ve not imposed any lineation above.

In interpreting this letter, Newman figures the man teacher as a beast. He “pounces” on the woman; he’s a “rhetorical devil.” Newman (2016) p. 250. Such vicious rhetoric supports the criminalization of men’s sexuality and mass incarceration of men.

The subsequent two quotes are similarly sourced, but from Tegernsee Love-Letters 10.43-46 (“You think that…) and 10.64 (May you be steadfast…).

Medieval men expressed gratitude toward women teachers who taught them sex. For example, the thirteenth-century Galician troubadour Afonso Anes do Cotom praised an abbess-teacher:

Dear abbess, I have heard
that you are very learned
about what´s good; for love
of God, please have mercy
on me, as I know nothing
more than an ass about fucking
and just this year got married.

I´ve heard that when it comes
to fucking and other good fun
you´re a most learned nun,
so teach me how to fuck,
Madam, as I´m untrained:
my parents never explained,
and I remained quite dumb.

And if by you I´m told
about the art of screwing,
and if I learn to do it
from you in your Godly role
as abbess, each time I fuck
I´ll say a solemn Our Father,
and I´ll say it for your soul.

I´m certain, Madam, that you
can thus attain God´s kingdom:
by teaching all poor sinners
more than abstaining from food,
and by teaching all the women
who come to seek your wisdom
about how they should screw.

{ Abadessa, oí dizer
que érades mui sabedor
de tod’o bem; e, por amor
de Deus, querede-vos doer
de mim, que ogano casei,
que bem vos juro que nom sei
mais que um asno de foder.

Ca me fazem en sabedor
de vós que havedes bom sem
de foder e de tod’o bem;
ensinade-me mais, senhor,
como foda, ca o nom sei,
nem padre nem madre nom hei
que m’ensin’e fic’i pastor.

E se eu ensinado vou
de vós, senhor, deste mester
de foder e foder souber
per vós, que me Deus aparou,
cada que per foder direi
Pater Noster e enmentarei
a alma de quem m’ensinou.

E per i podedes gaar,
mia senhor, o reino de Deus,
per ensinar os pobres seus
mais ca por outro jajũar;
e per ensinar a molher
coitada, que a vós veer,
senhor, que nom souber ambrar. }

Galician text and English translation (by Richard Zenith) from the excellent Cantigas Medievais Galego-Portuguesas site. This poem should not be interpreted to justify women teachers raping male students. That those students are then liable to pay their rapists “child support” exacerbates the criminal harm.

[6] From a fragment known as the Alexandrian Erotic Fragment or Fragmentum Grenfellianum, ll. 1-8, Greek text and English translation (modified slightly) from Rusten & Cunningham (2003) pp. 362-3, where it’s labeled Popular Mime, Fragments 1. The subsequent two quotes are similarly sourced from this poem. It was written on the back of a contract dated to 174/3 BGC. Hagedorn (2005) p. 213.

[7] Their being “united” isn’t the language of marriage. Hagedorn (2005) p. 218.

[8] Showing the power of poor-dearism, this poem is called “a dramatic monologue by a young girl, in love but deserted by her lover.” Rusten & Cunningham (2003) p. 356. It’s a “lyrical love-lament song by a woman to the man who has abandoned her.” Alexiou & Dronke (1971) p. 366. She is an “abandoned woman.” Hagedorn (2005) pp. 224.

[9] Alexiou & Dronke (1971) p. 367. Id. provides many other examples of bridal laments.

[images] (1) Women harvesting penises from a penis-tree. Illumination in a 14th-century manuscript of Le Roman de la Rose by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun. On folio 160r of manuscript preserved as BnF Ms. Français 25526. Penis trees were a common representation in late-medieval Europe. Mattelaer (2010). The growth of penis-trees suggest more intensive commodification and devaluation of men’s sexuality. (2) Man handing penis to woman. Similarly from folio 160r of BnF Ms. Français 25526.

References:

Alexiou, Margaret and Dronke, Peter. 1971. “Lament of Jephtha’s Daughter: Themes, Traditions, Originality.” Studi Medievali 12 (2): 819-63. Reprinted, with minor revisions, as Ch. 12 (pp. 345-88) in Dronke, Peter. 1992. Intellectuals and poets in Medieval Europe. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura.

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.

Hagedorn, Anselm C. 2005. “Jealousy and Desire at Night: Fragmentum Grenfellianum and Song of Songs.” Pp. 206-27 in Hagedorn, Anselm C., ed. Perspectives on the Song of Songs. Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft / Beihefte, Bd. 346. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Könsgen, Ewald. 1974. Epistolae duorum amantium: Briefe Abaelards und Heloises? Leiden, Köln: Brill.

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

Mattelaer, Johan J. 2010. “The Phallus Tree: A Medieval and Renaissance Phenomenon.” The Journal of Sexual Medicine. 7 (2): 846-851.

Mews, Constant. 1999. The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France. St Martin’s Press, New York.

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

Rusten, Jeffrey and I. C. Cunningham, ed. and trans. 2003. Theophrastus, Herodas, Sophron. Characters. Herodas: Mimes. Sophron and Other Mime Fragments. Loeb Classical Library 225. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

In the relatively liberal and tolerant culture of medieval Europe, learned persons produced tremendous diversity in written texts. Just as classical Arabic culture produced raucous satire, medieval European culture produced bizarre animal stories providing vitally important teaching, vigorous works of men’s sexed protest, heartwarming stories of husbands’ loving concern for their wives, and many other texts scarcely conceivable today. Benefiting from medieval freedom of speech, medieval authors further wrote outrageous parodies of sacred liturgy and even of women.

Medieval liturgical parodies centered on drinking and gambling. Celebrants in parodic liturgy honored Bacchus, the traditional Greco-Roman god of wine, and Decius and Dolium, invented gods of dice and the cask of wine, respectively. The celebrants are compulsively driven to drink and gamble to excess. As a result, they get miserably drunk, groan, and commonly lose their clothes from losing bets.

In the parodies, liturgy is transformed to be consistent with excessive drinking and gambling. In the parodic penitential act (confession), the phrase “through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault {mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa}” becomes “through my drunkenness, through my drunkenness, though my most extreme drunkenness {mea crapula, mea crapula, mea maxima crapula}.” Many other liturgical expressions are similarly transformed:

the most common exchange of the Mass Dominus vobiscum / Et cum spiritu tuo (The Lord by with you / And with your spirit) becomes Dolus vobiscum / Et cum gemitur tuo (Fraud be with you / And with your groan). The prompt to prayer Oremus (Let us pray) becomes Potemus (Let us drink) or Ploremus (Let us cry). Laus tibi Christe (Praise to you, Christ), a response pronounced after the Gospel, becomes the anti-peasant quip Fraus tibi, rustice (Fraud to you, peasant). The words of the preface Dignum et iustum est (It is fitting and right) become either Vinum et mustum est (There is wine and must) or Merum et mustum est (There is unmixed wine and must). Amen becomes stramen (straw); Alleluia becomes allecia (herring); and certain transitional words are subtly altered — ideo (thus) becomes rideo (I laugh). The titles of liturgical books are also changed, turning the Letter of Paul to the Hebraeos (Hebrews) into the letter to the Ebrios (drunkards). … The introduction to the Pater noster, Audemus dicere (We dare to say) becomes Audemus bibere (We dare to drink), and the first line is changed from Pater noster, qui es in caelis (Our Father, who is in Heaven) to Potus noster, qui est in cyphy (Our drink, which is in the cup). [3]

The biblical phrase “through all the ages of the ages {per omnia saecula saeculorum}” becomes “though all the cups of the cups {per omnia pocula poculorum}.” Ingenious authors also coined neologism: the invented Latin word allernebria combined alleluia {an expression of praise} and inebria {you are drunk}.

One of the most prevalent parodies turned a sequence praising the Virgin Mary into a sequence praising wine. This parody probably dates to the thirteenth century. By the fifteenth century, it was incorporated into an extensive Drinker’s Mass {Missa potatorum}. Medieval hymns and sequences praising the Virgin Mary frequently include earthy, fleshy representations. Mary wonderfully becoming pregnant is thus linked to figures of harbor, bush, and rod. The parody in turn praises the physical qualities of the wine and its bodily passage across lips and tongue, down into the stomach. Both the original and the parody express medieval culture’s profound appreciation for human bodily experience.

The most audacious of all medieval poetry challenged gyno-idolatry and gynocentrism. Writing in Latin in twelfth-century northern France, Guibert of Nogent added further piquancy to Lucretius’s vigorous dispelling of gyno-idolatrous delusions. Matheus of Boulogne in the thirteenth century drew upon liturgical and theological themes to protest men’s suffering in marriage. The medieval men who wrote satires against gyno-idolatry and gynocentrism didn’t hate women any more than those who wrote liturgical parodies hated the dominant religion of Christianity. Their marginalized writings are the sigh of oppressed men, the heart of a heartless world toward men, and the soul of the soulless conditions of gynocentrism.

Although their writing has largely been trivialized, men trobairitz (troubadours) writing in thirteenth-century southern France produced extraordinary works of men’s sexed protest. Dominant voices celebrated men’s suffering under sexual feudalism. Some men trobairitz in response advocated for MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way). Others, understandably angry and bitter at the injustices of gynocentrism, disparaged all women. Idealistic medieval men dreamed of a more humane and compassionate world for men. Others looked for renewal through parodies focusing on the lower stratum of flesh-and-blood bodies. The grotesque stupidity of men’s self-abasing servitude toward women they refigured as women farting at men.

With sound and smell, farting has long served as an insistent sign of human presence. Meninism, in the face of gross devaluation of men’s lives, is the radical notion that men are human beings. Men fart. Women also fart. I scream, you should scream, we all should scream for gender equality for men. Such was possible in the Middle Ages. That must remain possible if we are to have a humane and sane world.

* * * * *

Read more:

• melodious nightingale & heavenly Jerusalem: medieval re-imaginings
• Salve, mater Salvatoris: honoring the great woman in medieval Europe
• Dante’s Folquet de Marseille praised Rahab in paradise

Notes:

[1] Medieval Confession {Confiteor}, Latin text and English translation from the Tridentine Mass (via Sancta Missa). The Confiteor is first quoted as a part of the Mass in the Micrologus of Bernold of Constance, who died about 1100. The Third Council of Ravenna in 1314 adopted the Confiteor in the exact form of that of the Tridentine Mass. Since its general liturgical use from about a millennium ago, forms of the Confiteor have varied. For additional history, see New Advent; on variants, see Psallite Sapienter.

[2] Confiteor from Drunkard’s Mass {Missa potatorum}, Latin text and English translation from Bayless (1996) pp. 338-45. Another drinker’s Mass, We Confess to the Cask {Confitemini dolio}, has the priest make a similar confession. That parody Mass dates from no later than 1535. Ed. and trans. in id. pp. 346-53. For manuscript citations to twenty-one liturgical parodies, Romano (2009), App. 1. Here’s online Latin texts of drinkers’ Masses.

The Drunkard’s Mass beginning “I will go in to the altar of Bacchus {Introibo ad altare Bacchi}” dates from no later than the thirteenth century. A gambler’s Mass, “Lugeamus omnes in Decio {Let us all weep over Decius},” appears as Carmina Burana 215. It was probably copied about 1230. Liturgical parodies, which weren’t authoritative, vary considerably across copies. Many were probably highly informal, never disseminated, and lost over time. Bayless (1999) pp. 79, 87, 139, 170. Liturgical parodies surely were not merely late-medieval phenomena.

In classical Arabic literature, poems in praise of wine (khamriyyāt) are a major group. Some Islamic authorities regard wine as forbidden for Muslims. In ninth-century Baghdad, the great classical Arabic writer al-Jahiz profoundly and humorously addressed the issue of drinking wine.

In medieval Europe, sacred Latin verse, parodic Latin verse, and Occitan lyric were interacting no later than the thirteenth century. In a liturgical parody, Peire Cardenal with an Occitan estribot ironically attacked clerics:

And in place of the matins they have composed an order:
that they should lie with whores until the sun has risen,
and sing baladas and travestied prosae instead.

{ E en loc de matinas an us ordes trobatz
Que jazon ab putanas tro.l solelhs es levatz,
Enans canton baladas e prozels trasgitatz. }

Peire Cardenal, “I shall compose an estribot, which will be very learned {Un estribot farai, que er mot maïstratz}” vv. 19-21, Occitan text and English translation from Léglu (2000) p. 7. A balada is a specific poetic form associated with dancing. A prosa is a short prose work inserted into the liturgy of the Mass.

The clerical affirmation of men’s strong, independent sexuality parallels an Occitan lyric. In the Carmina Burana, written about 1230, immediately following a gambler’s Mass ( “Let us all weep over Decius {Lugeamus omnes in Decio}”) is a parodic prayer:

Almighty, everlasting God, who has sowed great discord between the unschooled and the clerics, grant, we pray, that we may live off their labors, take advantage of their wives, and in the deaths of the aforesaid forever rejoice.

{ Omnipotens sempiterne deus, qui inter rusticos et clericos magnam discordiam seminasti, presta, quesumus, de laboribus eorum vivere, de mulieribus ipsorum uti et de morte dictorum semper gaudere. }

Carmina Burana 215a, Latin text and English translation from Traill (2018) v. 2, pp. 352-3. The closing prayer to the parodic Mass We Confess to the Cask {Confitemini dolio} is similar. For Latin text and English translation, Bayless (1996) p. 116. An Occitan lyric more vigorously affirms men’s sexuality:

Now sing praises! Praised, praised
be the commandment of the abbot.
Lovely girl, if you were
a nun of our house,
to the benefit of all the monks
you would receive tribute.
But you wouldn’t be there, lovely girl,
unless every day you were on your back,
so says the abbot.

{ Ara lausatz, lausat, lausat,
Li comandament l’abat.
Bela, si vos eravatz
Monja de nostra maison,
A profiech de totz los monges
Vos prendiatz liurason.
Mas vos non estaretc, Bela,
Si totzjorns enversa non
ço ditz l’abat. }

Old Occitan text and English translation (with my modifications) from Léglu (2000) p. 9. On the interaction between sacred Latin verse and Old Occitan lyric more generally, id. Ch. 1.

[3] Romano (2009) p. 288. Similarly, Bayless (1996) p. 102. On allernebria, Romano (2009) p. 300.

[4] “At now the sun’s dawning ray {Iam lucis orto sidere}” st. 1, Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 112, my English translation, benefiting from those of id., Alan G. McDougall, and Bella Millett. This sixth-century hymn became set for the Prime hour in the liturgical Daily Office. It consists of four Ambrosian quatrains.

[5] “At now the sun’s dawning ray {Iam lucis orto sidere}” (drinking parody) st. 1, Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 225, my English translation, benefiting from those of id. and Bergquist (2002) p. xviii-xix. Here’s the complete Latin text with reading notes. Brittain (1962), pp. xxxi-ii, lists this parody as from the twelfth century.

[6] “Good and sweet word {Verbum bonum et suave},” Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 225, my English translation, benefiting from those of id. and Edward Tambling & John Kelly. This sequence dates to no later than the twelfth century. Here’s an online Latin text and associated musical notation. Here’s a recording of this sequence.

[7] “Good wine with savor {Vinum bonum cum sapore},” Latin text (modified slightly) from Bayless (1996) p. 339, my English translation, benefiting from that of id., pp. 342-3, and Brittain (1962) p. 224. Here a Latin text from an English songsheet c. 1480 (via Thomas Wright (1847)) and a Latin text from an unattributed 15th-century manuscript (probably via Lehmann (1923)).

For verses 5.3-4, Bayless’s Latin text is (with my English translation) “With voices being not exultant / let us proclaim joys {Sit cum voce non iucunda / Personemus gaudia}.” That’s inconsistent with other manuscripts and not plausible in context. I’ve emended “non iucunda” to “nos iucunda,” consistent with the text from Brittain (1962). That gives in my translation “We with voices being exultant / let us proclaim joys.”

Versus 6.2-3 are difficult and exist in significant variants. Bayless’s text seems to me sensible and quite interesting. It implies clerics “rarely” (but at times) did not participate in the drunken play. It further suggests status tension between participants and non-participants (all have “equal standing”).

Bayless didn’t translate Madafala. That’s apparently the name of a blessed woman. I’ve interpreted it in context as the constructed saint Sloshed based on the Latin word madefacio. That’s consistent with the personifications Cask {Dolium} and Dice {Decius}.

“Vinum bonum cum sapore” and other parodies of “Verbum bonum et suave” were “the single most popular parody composed in the Middle Ages.” Bayless (1996) p. 109. “Vinum bonum cum sapore” dates to the twelfth century. Brittain (1962) p. xxxi. Or perhaps the thirteenth century. Brittain (1937) p. 139.

[8] Bernart de Ventadorn, “When the cold breeze blows {Can la frej’aura venta},” st. 1, Old Occitan text from Serra-Baldó (1934) via Corpus des Troubadours, English translation (with my modifications) from Paden & Paden (2007) p. 76. Bernart de Ventadorn lived in twelfth-century southern France. His name (ventus in Latin means “wind”; similar terms exist in Old French and Old Occitan) made him a particular humorous focus for songs concerning wind and farting.

[9] “When the fart blows from the ass {Quan lo petz del cul venta},” Old Occitan text from Bec (1984) pp. 174-5, my English translation, benefiting from the French translation of id. and the English translation of Poe (2000) p. 86. This song survives in two manuscripts. Verse 5 in manuscript G has “From a horrible bleeder {D’una orrida sangnenta},” while manuscript J has “From a shit-covered old woman {D’una velha merdolenta}.” Above I’ve used Bec’s suggested source for the two versions. Id. p. 175, note to v. 5.

[10] Cobla, Old Occitan text from Bec (1984) pp. 105-6, my English translation, benefiting from the French translation of id. This cobla is preserved in four manuscripts.

[11] Cobla, Old Occitan text from Bec (1984) p. 106, my English translation, benefiting from the French translation of id. Both this parody and its source occur together in Manuscript G.

[image] Portrait of the Ferrara Court Jester Pietro Gonella (excerpt). Painting by Jean Fouquet about the year 1445. Preserved as accession # GG_1840 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum (Vienna, Austria). Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Bayless, Martha. 1996. Parody in the Middle Ages: the Latin tradition. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

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

Bergquist, Peter, ed. 2002. The Complete Motets. 3, Motets for four to eight voices from Thesaurus musicus (Nuremberg, 1564). Middleton, Wisconsin: A-R Editions.

Brittain, Frederick. 1937. The Mediaeval Latin and Romance Lyric to A.D. 1300. University Press: Cambridge.

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

Léglu, Catherine. 2000. Between Sequence and Sirventes: aspects of parody in the troubadour lyric. Oxford: University of Oxford.

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

Poe, Elizabeth W. 2000. “‘Cobleiarai, car mi platz’: The Role of the Cobla in the Occitan Lyric Tradition.” Ch. 2 (pp. 68-94) in Paden, William D., ed. Medieval Lyric: genres in historical context. Urbana, IL: Univ. of Illinois Press.

Romano, John F. 2009. “Ite potus est: Liturgical parody and views of late-medieval worship.” Sacris Erudiri. 48: 275-309.

Competition between humans historically has been mainly within each sex. As the truly learned know, women compete viciously with other women. Men typically don’t seek to compete with women. However, some women, such as Jephthah’s daughter seeking to best Isaac, measure themselves against men. Poems from women students in love with their men teachers in twelfth-century Europe exhibit women’s competitive tendencies and men’s reactions.

Women students sometimes fall in love with their men teachers. That’s what happened at the convent at Regensburg early in the twelfth century. Making matters complicated, several women students fell in love with the same man teacher. One woman student complained to her beloved teacher that he hadn’t slept with her. She then turned to curse her rivals:

Me with words, other girlfriends you embrace with love-works.
Why should I complain? May what I pray be done for me upon those rivals:
let all the snakes that horrid Medusa has for hair
leap upon nymphs who now tempt your constancy!

{ Me verbis, alias opera complexus amicas.
Quid queror? adversis mihi fiat quod precor illis:
Fert quoscumque coma serpentes dira Medusa
Nimphis insiliant que nunc tua federa temptant! } [1]

The woman student turned upside-down the Virgin Mary’s “let it be done to me according to your word {fiat mihi secundum verbum tuum}.” Whether this woman student’s teacher did her according to her desire isn’t known. From a Christian perspective, her prayer invoking mythic figures from traditional Greco-Roman religion surely had no real effect.

In moments of self-consciousness, women who drive themselves to compete with men sometimes feel insecure. In the abbey at Tegernsee early in the twelfth century, a woman student in love with her teacher wrote to him:

If Vergil’s genius abounded in me, or Cicero’s eloquence overflowed towards me, or that of any distinguished orator, or even, so to speak, any illustrious versifier, I would still confess myself to be unequal to replying to the page of your most polished words. So if I express something less elegantly than I’d wish, I don’t want you to laugh at me.

{ si exuberaret mihi ingenium Maronis, si afflueret eloquentia Ciceronis aut cuiuslibet eximii oratoris aut etiam, ut ita dixerim, egregii versificatoris, imparem tamen me faterer esse ad respondendum pagine elimatissimi tui sermonis. Quapropter si minus lepide quam volo aliquid profero, nolo irrideas } [2]

This woman took as her role models two of the greatest men authors of classical Latin literature. That’s impressive and admirable. But she shouldn’t expect to be able to write as polished words as her teacher, who surely was older, more experienced, and more learned than she. She even feared that he would laugh at her. What man teacher would laugh at the intellectual work of a lovely, feminine, warmly receptively woman student in love with him?

Men are generally reluctant to compete aggressively with women. That reluctance has considerable social support. Women who compete in men’s sports and other formerly all-male activities are lauded as gender pioneers. However, men and even transsexual women who enter women’s sports and other formerly all-female spaces are castigated as villains rather than celebrated as heroes of progress toward gender neutrality and gender equality. Men feel at least unconsciously women’s largely unacknowledged gynocentric privilege. Facing socially lauded competition from women, men tend toward self-abasement, cultivation of weakness, and withdrawal. Most men don’t want to beat women. Most men simply try to love women.

Men deserve blame for their weakness in competition with women. Consider a man teacher and a woman student enamored of each other in twelfth-century central France. They were more probably Peter Abelard and Heloise of the Paraclete than not. The woman student was intensely concerned about her intellectual performance in writing love letters to her man teacher:

Great in temerity is my sending to you my literary words. Even one most learned all the way to the fingertips, one for whom all artful arrangements of words had become habitual through long stages of emotional cultivation, wouldn’t be able to paint the face of elegant language so as to merit rightly the scrutiny of such a teacher as you are. By no means I — I who seem scarcely skilled enough to produce trifles or writing that neither tastes of bitten fingernails nor bangs the desk. Before such a teacher, a teacher by his virtues, a teacher by his character, a teacher to whom French stiff-neckedness rightly yields, to whom the whole arrogant world rises to honor, anyone who thinks oneself to look learned would be made straight-away speechless and mute.

{ Magne temeritatis est litteratorie tibi verba dirigere, quia cuique litteratissimo et ad unguem usque perducto, cui omnis disposicio artium per inveterata incrementa affectionum transivit in habitum, non sufficit tam floridum eloquencie vultum depingere, ut iure tanti magistri mereatur conspectui apparere, nedum michi que vix videor disposita ad queque levia, que demorsos ungues non sapiunt, nec pluteum cadunt: magistro inquam tanto, magistro virtutibus, magistro moribus, cui jure cedit francigena cervicositas, et simul assurgit tocius mundi superciliositas, quilibet compositus qui sibi videtur sciolus, suo prorsus judicio fiet elinguis et mutus. } [3]

In writing love letters to her man teacher, the woman student strove to look learned:

the Woman {student} uses rhymed prose self-consciously and consistently, while the Man {teacher} avoids it. Her style is ambitious, mannered, and often recherché, with a particular taste for rare words and neologisms. She even uses words found seldom or nowhere else in the corpus of medieval Latin …. Her letters also “present a rarer and richer vocabulary of terms for feelings and a tendency toward the sublime,” as Stella observes, while the Man appears “more inclined to the abstract, but more banal and less affective.” … It must be said that, while she often rises to sublime heights, her prose sometimes ties itself into grammatical knots.  … she contrives the tortuous conceit that “if one little drop of knowability were to trickle down to me from the honeycomb of wisdom, I would strive with a supreme effort of my mind to depict a few things in fragrant nectar for you … in the markings of a letter.” While both lovers take refuge in the ineffability topos, the Man does so faute de mieux, scarcely bothering to strive with the exigencies of language, “I love you so much I cannot say how much,” he writes, using a familiar proverb, or again, “I love you so much that I cannot rightly express it.” [4]

Men typically don’t seek to impress beloved women intellectually. This man teacher abased himself to support his woman student’s fragile self-esteem:

I marvel at your genius, for you argue so subtly about the laws of friendship that you seem not to have read Cicero, but to have given Cicero himself those precepts. So to my response I will thus come — if it rightly can be called a response, where nothing equal is offered — so let me in my own way respond. … To you I am in many ways unequal, or to speak more truly, in all ways I am unequal, for you surpass me even in that where I seemed to excel. Your genius, your eloquence, far beyond your age and sex, now begin to extend into manly strength. What humility, what kindness you extend to all alike! With such great worth, how astonishing is your self-control! Do not your qualities glorify you above all persons? Do they not put you in a high place? And from there like a chandelier you could shine, and you would be made visible to all.

{ Tuum admiror ingenium, que tam subtiliter de amicicie legibus argumentaris ut non Tullium legisse, sed ipsi Tullio precepta dedissse videaris. Ut ergo ad respondendum veniam si responsio jure vocari potest, ubi nichil par redditur, ut meo modo respondeam … Tibi multis modis impar sum, et ut verius dicam omnibus modis impar sum, quia in hoc eciam me excedis, ubi ego videbar excedere. Ingenium tuum, facundia tua, ultra etatem et sexum tuum iam virile in robur se incipit extendere. Quid humilitas, quid omnibus conformis affabilitas tua! Quid in tanta dignitate admirabilis temperancia tua! Nonne te super omnes magnificant, nonne te in excelso collocant? ut inde quasi de candelabro luceas et omnibus spectabilis fias. } [5]

A man’s self-abasement typically doesn’t inspire a woman’s passion for him. This man teacher, however, wisely insinuated enough shadow of folly to intrigue a perceptive woman. Declaring that the woman student gave Cicero his precepts borders on mocking her intellectual pretensions. Describing a woman as having achieved “manly strength” draws upon the social construction of manliness as an achievement. Under gynocentrism, women are ideologically understood to have intrinsic value, while men lack such value. A woman struggling to achieve the virtue of manliness fails to appreciate the reality of womanliness. At least this woman student remained humble in her greatness as she shined from a place high above everyone else. Or so her teacher wrote, perhaps with a hint of a smile. The man teacher wasn’t interested in engaging in literary competition with the woman student he loved. With respect to his love for her, he wrote to her, “I would rather exhibit in doing, than show in words {potius opere volo exhibere, quam verbis demonstrare}.”[6]

With similar motives, other medieval men teachers similarly abased themselves to beloved women students. The man teacher at Regensburg wrote to one of his amorous women students:

Indeed I know that learned Minerva herself taught you.
She gave you a fiery face and a skillful heart,
she nurtured you and even commanded you to know yourself,
not letting you hide the flames you carry in your chest —
disgraceful flames, with which even me, burned, you further burn!

{ Quin ipsam doctam scio te docuisse Minervam,
Que dedit ignitum vultum tibi, corque peritum,
Teque saginavit vel se cognoscere iussit,
Ne lateant quantas gestent tua pectora flammas —
Flammas et turpes, quibus et me, torrida, torres! } [7]

In thus praising this woman student, the man teacher forced her to recognize her passion for him. Recognizing his disproportionate gender exposure to love blame, he shrewdly blamed her preemptively for his passion for her. The man teacher then went on to abase himself and all men in order to boost his woman student’s self esteem:

By far you surpass me, by far you vanquish me in song.
I confess myself vanquished, at last forced to give my hand.
The poet Orpheus himself encountered his just destruction,
having presumed to challenge your sex in writing.
Marsyas laughed at the puffing cheeks of the Tritonian goddess;
hence with skin flayed he flowed away like a stream through fields.
All men have always withdrawn in competition with women.
Such is enough examples recounted to have reminded me
that I should avoid this competition, for I’m not equal to you.

{ Longe precellis, longe me carmine vincis.
Victum me fateor tandemque manus dare cogor.
Treicius vates iustas reperit sibi clades,
Presumens vestrum scribendo lacessere sexum;
Risit ventosas Tritone Marsia buccas,
Hinc cute detracta defluxit ut amnis in arva.
Femineisque mares cesserunt litibus omnes.
Sic satis exemplis me commonitum memoratis
Hanc ut devitem, quia non sum par tibi, litem. }

If the woman student wasn’t intellectually sophisticated (and many aren’t), she probably would have lost love interest in her man teacher because she now would have believed that he was below her. If she had keen appreciation for men (and many women don’t), she would have recognized that he was merely pandering to her intellectual insecurity. The man teacher almost surely didn’t really believe that his woman student was a better poet than he.

Students today are taught that “the future is female.” Many women students, and many men students too, believe this hateful female-supremacist doctrine. Facing their socially celebrated, impending loss in competition against women, many men withdraw from women and cultivate the weakness that they have been taught that they have. Not all men are like that. Some men retain firmly protruding belief in their distinctive masculine gifts. Yet, in strife with women, most men today, without the intellectual sophistication of learned medieval men, withdraw, surrender, and declare their inferiority to women. That’s a love catastrophe.

In relationships between women and men, the stakes for men are socially constructed to be higher than for women. Throughout history, punishment for adultery has been gender-biased against men. Within deeply entrenched castration culture, Peter Abelard in twelfth-century France was castrated for Heloise of the Paraclete becoming pregnant through sex with him. Heloise herself wasn’t subject to any violent punishment. Even in twelfth-century Europe, men faced crushing financial burdens for an unintended pregnancy. Today, men have absolutely no reproductive rights. If a man contributes to a pregnancy that he didn’t intend and he doesn’t manage to coerce his girlfriend into having an abortion, he could be jailed for debt if he’s unable to make state-mandated monthly payment obligation across eighteen or more years. To make matters worse, leading news sources have been publishing mendacious claims about men raping women. Men throughout history have been rightly concerned about false accusations of rape. The highly disproportionate incarceration of men relative to women today highlights that men’s penal risks are now much higher than those risks were in the Middle Ages. Today, a prudent man teacher would file an evidentiary report and request a cease-and-desist order if any woman student indicated amorous interest in him.

Women competing with men creates acute difficulties for men. In the relatively liberal and tolerant circumstances of twelfth-century Europe, men teachers were willing to engage in amorous relationships with their women students. When conducted through the exchange of written texts, those love relationships tended to become intellectually competitive. Intellectually ambitious women tend to understand themselves to be in competition with men. Men in turn are prone to gyno-idolotry and self-abasement relative to women. Medieval men teachers were learned enough to have some critical perspective on these dangers. Their sophisticated love letters to women students probably fostered love and probably didn’t further disadvantage men’s social position. Today, women’s competition with men is much more intense. In addition, men are much more ignorant about how to deal with competitive women. Men today desperately need a good medieval Latin education.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• gendered misunderstandings of love possession & sexual entitlement
• hateful castration culture: castrated Abelard disparaged & demeaned
• Guibert of Nogent in Heloise’s light: dark nights of internalized misandry

Notes:

[1] Love-Verses from Regensburg 37, Latin text from Dronke (1965) v. 2, p. 438, my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Newman (2016) pp. 274-5 (where it’s numbered 49). The woman student’s letter alludes to Luke 1:38.

Subsequent quotes from this collection are similarly sourced. Love-Verses from Regensburg are also known as the Regensburg Songs and Carmina ratisponensia.

The women students at Regensburg competed for their man teacher’s affection. One woman student, who regarded her teacher’s words like the Biblical Word of God, wrote:

Correct the little verses I present to you, teacher,
for your words to me I ponder like the light of the Word.
But I am very sad that you prefer Bertha to me.

{ Corrige versiculos tibi quos presento, magister,
Nam tua verba mihi reputo pro lumine Verbi.
Sed nimium doleo, quia preponas mihi Bertham. }

Love-Verses from Regensburg 6. Another woman student expressed her delight in having sex with her man teacher:

My mind is full of joy, my body is raised up from grief,
on account that you, teacher, honor me with your love.

{ Mens mea letatur, corpusque dolore levatur,
Idcirco quia me, doctor, dignaris amare. }

Love-Verses from Regensburg 8. A woman student implicitly acknowledged her man teacher’s difficult teaching circumstances:

I am sick to endure so often departing from you
when all our young women are running to you.

{ Non valeo crebrum de te sufferre regressum
Ad te cum nostre concurrant queque puelle. }

Love-Verses from Regensburg 21. A woman student apparently taunted another woman student who was having sex with their man teacher:

You aren’t the first for him who previously led to bed six:
you have come as the seventh, and scarcely pleased him most.

{ Prima tamen non es, quia duxerat antea bis tres:
Septima venisti, supremaque vix placuisti. }

Love-Verses from Regensburg 15 vv. 3-4 (of 4). Medieval scholars have rightly never questioned the authenticity of these letters from women students to their man teacher.

[2] Tegernsee Love-Letters 8, ll. 8-18, Latin text from Dronke (2015) p. 230, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. p. 231 and Newman (2016) p. 242. Dronke lineated the prose. I’ve ignored that lineation. For a freely available Latin text close to Dronke’s, see Lachmann & Haupt (1888) p. 221.

[3] Letters of Two Lovers {Epistolae duorum amantium} 49 (woman to man) excerpt, Latin text from Mews (1999) p. 252, my English translation benefiting from that of id. and Newman (2016) p. 82. Subsequent quotes from Epistolae duorum amantium are similarly sourced.

In one letter, the woman student constructs a debate between “affect {affectus}” (her love for her man teacher) and “defect {defectus}” (her limited literary talent). Epistolae duorum amantium 23. She refers to “defects of my arid talent {aridi defectus ingenii}” and the “aridness of my talent {ingenii ariditas}.” With references to desire, thirst, flow, drinking, and love, she wrote:

Between persuasion and dissuasion thus suspended in oscillation, I have put off action on my debt of gratitude, obedient to the advice of my talent that blushes at its feebleness. I beg that the excellence of divine gentleness abounding in you charge no fault, and while being the son of true sweetness, you allow the manliness of your known mildness to abound more above me. I know and confess that from the riches of your philosophy copious joy has flowed and continues to flow to me. But, if without offense I may speak, what has flowed from you to me is still less than what in this affair would make me perfectly blessed. I come often with parched throat, desiring to be refreshed with your mouth’s sweet nectar and to drink thirstily the riches spreading from your heart. What need for more work with words? With God as my witness I declare that no one who lives and breathes air in this world would I desire to love more than I love you.

{ Hac hortaminis et dehortaminis alternacione suspensam, hucusque debitam graciarum actionem distuli, parens consiliis, imbecillitatem suam erubescens ingenii. Quod queso abundans in te divine suavitatis excellencia michi non imputet, sed cum sis vere dulcedinis filius, cognita tibi mansuetudinis virtus super me magis abundet. Scio quidem et fateor ex philosophie tue diviciis maximam michi fluxisse et fluere copiam gaudiorum, sed ut inoffense loquar, minorem tamen quam que me faciat in ea re perfecte beatam. Venio enim sepe aridis faucibus desiderans suavi oris tui refici nectare, diffusasque in corde tuo divitias sicienter haurire. Quid pluribus opus est verbis? Deo teste profiteor, quia nemo in seculo vitali spirat aura quem te magis amare desiderem. }

Epistolae duorum amantium 23. In this context, the woman student’s reference to her dryness suggests her yearning for her man teacher to stimulate her sexual moistening. The association with literary talent is misleading. Men’s sexual generosity in reality depends little on women’s skills in writing letters.

Medieval scholars have vigorously debated whether Epistolae duorum amantium are letters that the great medieval scholar Heloise of the Paraclete and her husband Peter Abelard wrote to each other. Mews (1999) asserts that the two lovers are Heloise and Abelard. Reviewing Mews (1999), Newman in 2000 credited Mews’s book with “demonstrating beyond a reasonable doubt that the authors of these letters were indeed Heloise and Abelard.” Newman subsequently revised that claim:

the case for Abelard and Heloise remains unprovable {sic}. But in light of all that we know thus far, it is highly probable.

Newman (2016) p. 78. Appropriate evidence can effectively prove attributions of medieval texts. The case for Abelard and Heloise is provable, but it hasn’t been proven. Jaeger, in a learned study, found “a strong argument in favor of the ascription.” Jaeger (2005) p. 149. In my judgment, that Heloise and Abelard wrote the Epistolae duorum amantium is more likely than not. Hence, in my judgment, informed persons can reasonably doubt that Heloise and Abelard wrote those letters. See, e.g. Ziolkowski (2004).

[4] Newman (2016) pp. 61-2. Both internal quotes of scholarly analysis are from Stella (2008). The two quotations from the man lover are from Epistolae duorum amantium 38c and 56. I’ve omitted the internal citations to those letters as well as footnotes in the quoted passage.  Examples of the woman’s rare Latin diction (with citation to the relevant letter):

the nouns superciliositas (arrogance, no. 49), dehortamen (dissuasion, no. 23), and vinculamen (chain, no. 49), the adjective dulcifer (dulcet, no. 98); and three terms of negation: innexibilis (inextricable, no. 94), immarcidus (unwithered, no. 18), and inepotabilis (inexhaustible, no. 86).

Newman (2016) p. 61.

[5] Epistolae duorum amantium 50 (man to woman), excerpt. The quoted Latin above ends with a question mark. That punction almost surely wasn’t original to the twelfth-century text. I’ve changed it to a period because I think that a period makes better sense. Newman observed:

For all her professed obedience, the Woman readily assumes a dominant role in the art of love, retaining the domina’s rights to correct abberant behavior, withdraw her favor, or lapse into sulky silence when her lover had displeased her. In fact, he often calls her domina {lady lord}, much like a courtly beloved (nos. 6, 8, 36, 61, 87, 108). She never calls him dominus {lord}. … The Woman reserves the rights to pass judgment, to reproach, to maintain silence, and to withdraw her favor if her covenant partner falls short of her demands, as he often does. He in turn repents, apologizes, and promises to amend. Rarely is this pattern reversed.

Newman (2016) pp. 30, 178. Is it any wonder that Valerius earnestly warned Rufinus against marriage?

In displaying literary prowess in their exchange of love letters, the woman competed more intensely with the man than the man did with the woman. That’s particularly clear if the woman was Heloise and the man was Abelard. Newman stated:

Given the nature of literary love, a competition in loving inevitably becomes a competition in writing. That is one reason the Woman worries so much about the inadequacies of her style and polishes it to such a pitch of intensity.

Id. p. 24. The Woman’s writing isn’t “a triumph of self-conscious, competitive love.” Id. Her writing is a testament to delusions about love and delusions about men’s feelings and desires.

[6] Epistolae duorum amantium 46 (man to woman), excerpt. Late in their letter exchange (no. 72), the man proposes that they try to surpass each other in “competition worthy of love {amabilis concertatio}.” That’s best interpreted as the man’s attempt to redirect the woman competing with him in writing love-letters. Later, he again tries to mute the woman’s tendency to compete with him in literary merit:

Let among us which loves the other more always be in doubt, so that the competition between us will always be most beautiful, for thus both of us will win.

{ semper in dubio servetur, uter nostrum magis alterum diligat, quia ita semper pulcerrima inter nos erit concertacio ut uterque vincat. }

Epistolae duorum amantium 85 (man to woman), excerpt. Cf. Newman (2016) pp. 24, 179.

The woman student and the man teacher both apparently desired sexual intercourse with each other. Newman asserted, “The Man, not surprisingly, expresses greater sexual urgency.” Newman (2016) p. 40. Ancient and medieval authorities generally believed that women are more sexual ardent than men (see, e.g. Empress Theodora).

Newman’s intepretation of Epistolae duorum amantium reflects anti-meninism pervasive in academia today. Newman described the “‘normal’ scenario for seduction” to be a modern anti-meninist caricature:

Men are opportunistic cads, so a seducer can be expected to walk away unscathed, leaving his victim alone and suicidal. Abandoned by her lover, beaten by her parents, ostracized by all, she suffers torments in pregnancy and expects nothing better than to die in childbirth. No longer virgin, she cannot hope for marriage; she will be lucky if some nunnery takes her in as a penitent.

Id. p. 39. Newman draws a more scholarly distinction between Ovidian love (the man’s love; bad) and “ennobling love” (the woman’s love; good). Id. pp. 39-40. Her interpretation of such love distinctions is similarly colored with anti-meninist misunderstanding of gender.

[7] Love-Verses from Regensburg 38. The subsequent quote is from the conclusion of Regensburg 38 and all of Regensburg 39 in Dronke’s text. These two poems seem to me to be actually one. That’s how they are presented in Newman (2016) p. 270.

[image] Portrait of a Lady (excerpt). Oil painting by Rogier van der Weyden, made about 1460. Preserved as accession # 1937.1.44 in the National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC). Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

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.

Jaeger, C. Stephen. 2005. “Epistolae duorum amantium and the Ascription to Abelard and Heloise.” Pp. 125-66 in Olson, Linda, and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, eds. Voices in Dialogue: reading women in the Middle Ages. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press.

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

Mews, Constant J. 1999. The Lost Love letters of Heloise and Abelard: perceptions of dialogue in twelfth-century France. Houndmills: Macmillan.

Newman, Barbara. 2000. “Review of The Lost Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard: Perceptions of Dialogue in Twelfth-Century France by Constant Mews.” The Medieval Review. Online.

Newman, Barbara. 2016. Making Love in the Twelfth Century: Letters of two lovers in context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (Carol M. Cusack’s review, Alex J. Novikoff’s review, Constant Mews’s review)

Stella, Francesco. 2008. “Analisi informatiche dei lessico e individuazione degli autori nelle Epistolae duorum amantium (XII secolo).” Pp. 560-569 in Wright, Roger, ed. Latin vulgaire – latin tardif. actes du VIIIe Colloque International sur le Latin Vulgaire et Tardif, Oxford, 6-9 septembre 2006 VIII VIII. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. 2004. “Lost and Not Yet Found: Heloise, Abelard, and the Epistolae duorum amantium.” The Journal of Medieval Latin. 14 (1): 171-202.

A medieval monk was full of pride and gluttony. He also had strong, independent sexuality. One day a nobleman’s wife caught his eye:

he sees a woman adorned with jewels and enveloped in various robes, ornamented on all sides like a temple. Although her face was fading with old age, she helps herself with cosmetics, and she doesn’t judge it to be grasping to regard herself as equal to a virgin upon which no man has ridden. Her hair is the hair of Apollo, although she has taken care to curl hers with a curling-iron, and she has turned to saffron for her blonde hair-color. Her forehead is constructed lily-white, although I trust very little in lily that doesn’t reign beyond where the cosmetic ointment ends. Her eyebrows are arched, although God has frequently arisen to help with tweezing them. Her eyes are doves’ eyes, although the blink of her little eye accomplishes proof of a shameless heart. Her face has a yellow-brown appearance, although now the intentional brightness of its brightness is the guilty blush of blush. Her rosy lips swell slightly, although they glow life-like colored with lipstick, and her teeth rattle in her old cheeks.

{ vidit mulierem ornatam monilibus circumamictam varietatibis compositam et circumornatam, ut similitudo templi. Que tamen senio antiquata arte iuvat faciem nec rapinam arbitrata est se esse equalem virgini, super quam nullus hominum sedit. Crines eius crines Apollinis, sed tamen calamistro crispari studuit, de colore crocum consuluit; frons candore lilia figurat, sed tamen fido parum de tali lilio quo non regnat, cum cessat unctio; arcuata sunt supercilia, sed tamen frequenter es depilatorium surgit Deus in adiutorium; oculi sui oculi columbarum, sed tamen est patrantis ocelli fractio impudici cordis argumentatio. Et erat facies electri species, et tamen candor hic candoris conscius et rubori rubor obnoxius et tument modice labella rosea, sed tamen suffuso minio in vita rutilant et dentes veterum genarum ratilant. } [1]

This woman’s wasn’t as fair as the moon. She didn’t shine like the dawn. There were flaws in her. Yet living in their disadvantaged circumstances, men are charitable about women’s flaws. This monk was:

The monk sees her and covets her. He comes to her and says: “Lady, after I saw you, my heart flowed into my belly like liquid wax, because your face ignites my soul. And so, lady, help me. I am being tortured in this flame.

{ Monachus vidit et invidit, accessit et dixit: “Domina postquam vidi te, factum est cor meum tanquam cera liquescens in medio ventris mei, quia facies tua incendit animam meam, set tu domina succurre mihi, quia crucior in hac flamma.” }

If today a man were to say to a woman that her hair is like a flock of goats moving down the slopes of a mountain, she might immediately run off and report him to the relevant authority for dehumanizing her. Medieval women were more understanding and appreciative. This medieval woman also knew what she wanted and knew her worth:

She remains standing there and says to him: “How sweet is your lips’ eloquence, sweeter than honey to my mouth. If you would balance your words with your deeds, I would comply with your instructions and not reject your presents.” She is intensely pitying, bearing openly her loving, lascivious flesh.

{ Que stetit et ait: “Quam dulcia faucibus meis eloquia tua super mel ori meo. Si dictis facta compenses, tuis obtemperabo mandatis nec renuntiabo muneribus.” Erat enim valde compatiens et super lascivos pia gestans viscera. }

The monk enthusiastically consented to the woman’s charitable and commercial proposition. He told her:

I swear to you once with the pledge of my faith. I will not make void that which proceeds from my lips. Your right hand will be filled with presents, because I am rich in farmland, rich in money placed in usury, and my substance in land below and my possessions are beyond numbering. My storerooms are full, from them so bursting forth that the sheep in my pastures are pregnant, and my cattle are fat. I will gave you money inestimable, if at night you will fulfill my heart, because I long for love.

{ Semel iurabo tibi in fidei pignore, quia que procedunt de labiis meis non faciam irrita. Dextera tua repleta erit muneribus, quia ego dives sum agris, dives positus in fenore nummis et substancia mea in inferioribus terre et possessionis mee non est numerus, promptuaria mea plena, eructancia ex hoc in illud, oves mee fetose in egressibus suis, boves mee crasse. Numerabo tibi pecuniam inestimabilem, si nocte adimpleveris vota cordis mei, quia amore langueo. } [2]

The monk was eager to enlarge the woman. Yet she was perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting he might offer:

She truly keeps all these words within her heart. “What you ask,” she says, “I will do.”

{ Illa vero conservabat omnia verba hoc conferens in corde suo. “Quod petis” inquit, “faciam.” }

She then declared that she would get her husband drunk at dinner. She told the monk that, when darkness covers the day, he should come to her with watchful eye and careful step. She also instructed him to bring her presents. The monk was happy that his joy would be hers. He explained that he was going away. She would no longer see him, and then she would see him again. Their desires at that time would be fulfilled. They parted with a kiss.

The woman, an experienced and knowledgeable lover, knew that equivocation can increase the delight of love under a legal regime in which men don’t have to fear absurd rape charges. She didn’t let her yes mean yes, and her no mean no. When the monk came to her burning with passion, she took him by the hand, hugged him, and led him to her bed. Then she trembled, stepped back, and whispered to him:

Your religion is an abomination to me, and my soul hates your habit, because if I undergo you in bed, Hell is my home. Therefore I don’t want to be one with you.

{ Religio tua abominatio est mihi et habitum hunc odivit anima mea, quia si sustinuero te, infernus domus mea est et ideo nolo tibi commisceri. } [3]

Today’s heirs to Ovid’s art call such a response a “shit test.” The monk responded satisfactorily:

Lady, if you loath this work, take this little sack of ten marks as the price for your work. If you oppose religion, be underneath me, and I will place myself between you and God.

{ Domina, si laborem fastidis, accipe forulum hunc decem marcarum laboris precium. Si religionem causaris, subiecta esto michi et ego ponam me inter te et Deum. }

With respect to the troubled woman, the monk interceded with his sack and his body. Their tryst was thus saved:

Having perceived the amount that he gives, she is truly satisfied and says: “Lord, do not reject this work, your will be done, enter into the joy of your lady.” He thus tests her once, twice, a third time, and a fourth, and no grumbling is heard, nor complaint, but in his possession of her body, she throws herself to the direction of the work of darkness, and so puts on the armor of love-play. And thus the two are grinding into one flesh in one bed in this night, one being taken and the other being left behind.

{ Illa vero satisdatione percepta dedit copiam sui et dixit: “Domine, non recuso laborem, fiat voluntas tua, intra in gaudium domine tue.” Eaque semel temptata secundo, tercio et quarto, non murmur resonat nec querimonia, sed in corporalem possessionem missus adicit opera tenebrarum, ut induat arma ioci; et erant duo molentes in carne una in lecto uno in nocte illa, unus assumetur et alter relinquetur. }

Oh most unhappy night, oh most unholy and irreverent night! Cursed is the fault that brought such a great loss!

At midnight there was a shout. Behold, the husband wandering around drunk had come back home. All the servants went out to greet him. The monk, as if possessed by a demon, burst into a frenzy, frothing at the mouth and madly seeking a place to hide. He hid under a basket, with only his shaven head-top showing like a light shining in the darkness. Then all realized that a man had broken into the house at night and made bread with the master’s wife. The servants armed themselves with swords and clubs and sought out the man. One wise servant recognized that the wife was also at fault:

O wicked and detestable woman! Who is the enemy who comes and sows weeds, and greatly besoils my bed with perfidy? You will perish by the sword!

{ O nephanda et detestabilis mulier! Quis est inimicus homo qui venit et superseminauit zizaniam, et cubile meu tant maculavit perfidia? Et tu gladio peribis! } [4]

The wife, however, denied knowing such a man:

My man, I know not what you say. I am clean of the blood of this righteous one, you will see.

{ Homo, nescio quid dicis. Munda ego sum a sanguine iusti huius, tu videris. }

The husband soon saw the monk’s robe lying in the bedroom. What more testimony did he need? His wife’s own work testified against her. Declaring that God would punish her, the husband did nothing to her. He didn’t even tell her to go and sin no more.

Men’s sexuality, in contrast, has long been subject to worldly penal regulation. Searching his bedroom for the monk, the husband saw the monk’s shaven head-top shining from under the basket. This was an epiphany:

He say: “Hurrah, hurrah, and so do my eyes see!” And the servants cry out, saying, “Where in the world is he? Show us, lord, and we will devour him.” “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay him,” says the lord. “A bad work is being worked out in me. Thus I desire that he remain until I come.” The lord goes up to him and boldly seizes him by the very hairs of his head and manfully drags him, but not by the extent to which one could cast out a demon from a herd of pigs, and this one was mute. Now having relinquished a handful of hair, the monk has a broken, naked brow, that of Golgotha itself, called the place of a skull to this day.

{ dixit: “Euge, euge, quia viderunt oculi mei!” Et clamaverunt famuli dicentes, “Ubinam est? Ostende nobis, domine, et devorabimus eum.” “Michi vindictam et ego tribuam,” dicit dominus. “Malum opus operatus est in me. Sic eum volo manere donec veniam.” Accessit ad eum dominus et ipsum per capilos capitis fortiter arripuit et viriliter atraxit, nec per magnitudinem molis sue poterat eiecere demonium, et illus erat mutus. Ruptoque iam capilorum manipulo nudam reliquit frontem faciens ipsum Golgota, quod est Calvarie locus, usque ad hodiernum diem. }

Men are crucified for any and all perceived sexual offenses, while women are given to God’s mercy. The widow, the girl orphan, and the woman receive care, while men and boys are cast off. How long, oh Lord, will you let these injustices continue? Gynocentric society exalts castration culture as the solution to all men’s faults and difficulties:

And he grabs the monk again by the remaining hairs of his head and so pulls him up, saying: “Friend, for what have you come?” And the monk responds: “Lord, I delight in the righteousness of your house.” “Yes indeed, it is the place of my dwelling,” says the lord. “You moreover have no excuse for your sin, and therefore where I find you, there I shall judge you. So choose one of the two: either I will destroy your body, or I will shorten it.” The servants were responding to the contrary, “Lord, not only his feet, but his hands and head too.” “Not the head,” says the lord, “because cutting off the head would allow making the sign of the cross to be futile. Not the feet, because they are an ornament for cloistered monks. It’s better to cut off the excess that offends god and man.” And turning to the monk, the lord says: “My brother, a small part of the whole mass of your body is corrupt. And your testicles are worthless, because I am good. Therefore I will pluck them out and throw them away from you. When you have done this one thing, your whole body will be full of light.” He speaks, and his testicles are done.

{ Et iterum resumpsit eum per residuos capilos capitis et ipsum elevavit dicens: “Amce, ad quid venisti?” At ille respondit: “Domine, dilexi decorum domus tue.” “Imo locum habitacionis mee,” dicit dominus, “Nunc autem excusacionem non habes de peccato tuo, et ideo ubi te invenero, ibi te iudicabo. Tamen unum ex duobus elige: aut auferizabo corpus tuum aut sincopabo illud.” Responderent autem famuli dicentes: “Domine, non tantum pedes, sed manus et caput.” “Caput nolo,” dicit dominus, “propter religionis signum licet sterilis sit. Pedes nolo qua claustri ornamenta sunt. Melius est enim resecare superflua que deum offendunt et hominus.” Et conversus ad eum dixit: “Frater mi, modicum est quod totum massam corporis corrumpit. An testiculos tuus nequam est, quia ego bonus sum. Eruam ergo eum et prohiciam abs te et, cum simplex fueris, totum corpus lucidum erit.” Dixit et facta sunt. } [5]

All that is left is for men to weep:

Since then indeed with each step he barely moves forward with his back always bowed down and his stomach bitter, because where there’s pain, there’s the penis wrapped up. There he touches. He looked for it to yield grapes, but it yielded wild grapes. Then laying prostrate on the earth, to the height of his throat he groans. And awakening, he mourns his testicles. He is made like Rachel weeping over his stones, and he would not be consoled, for they are no more.

{ Deinde quippe passu vix eo progrediente dorsum suum semper incurvat et venter eius amaricatus est, quia ubi dolor, ibi digitus septus. Hec tangit et exspectavit, ut faceret uvas, et fecit labruscas. Tunc humio prostratus summo crepans gutture et evigilans geminos gemit. Et factus est Rachel plorans calculos suos et noluit consolari, quia non sunt. } [6]

All persons of good will should have compassion for men, just as they have compassion for Rachel.

If God can condescend to become a fully human man, then the word of God can withstand the necessity of vibrantly illustrating castration culture. Contrary to the claims of authoritative myth-makers today, men have always been punished more harshly for adultery than women have. Harsh penal regulation of men’s sexuality goes all the way back to ancient Greece. The same medieval Latin culture that comically described the brutal castration of this monk also cruelly satirized monks, all men, more generally:

As long as they live, they love no one and they are loved by no one:
let them be as the grass upon the housetops, which withers before it is plucked.

Therefore what is more apt, what is more fitting than the curse I call forth here:
Let their dwellings be desolate, and in their tents no one dwell.

{ Dum viuunt, nec amant quemquam nec amantur ab ullo:
Fiant sicut fenum tectorum quod priusquam euellatur exaruit.

Ergo quid pocius, quid dignius imprecer illis?
Fiat habitacio eorum deserta et in tabernacula non sit, qui inhabitet. } [7]

Meninism is the radical notion that men, all men, are human beings. Just like women, men deserve mercy and lovingkindness all the days of their lives.

* *  *  *  *

Read more:

• still-relevant medieval advice for men: si non caste, tamen caute
• hateful castration culture: castrated Abelard disparaged & demeaned
• the pregnant abbess, the nun of Watton & cuckolded husbands

Notes:

[1] “Of a certain cloistered monk’s downfall and eventual castration {De cuiusdam claustralis dissolucione et castracionis eventu},” ll. 19-29, Latin text from Lehmann (1963) pp. 225-6, my English translation. For a brief discussion of this work, Bayless (1996) pp. 167-9. “De cuiusdam claustralis dissolucione” is stylistically and thematically similar to Walter Map’s De nugis curialium.

Lehmann’s version collates four manuscripts of “De cuiusdam claustralis dissolucione.” The earliest, Cambridge Trinity College MS. 1149, was written in the thirteenth century. At least five manuscripts of this work have survived. Bayless (2018), text 12, is a manuscript version (Milan, Bioblioteca Ambrosiana O.63 sup., fols 106v-109r; 15th century) not included in Lehmann’s collation.

A shorter version of this monk’s castration is known by the title “The passion of a certain black monk according to excess {Passio cuiusdam nigri monachi secundum luxuriam}.” At least seven manuscripts of “Passio cuiusdam nigri monachi” have survived. Bayless (2018) pp. 81-2, where text 11 is a previously unedited manuscript of the work. Bayless’s manuscript source was written in the first half the fifteenth century.

“De cuiusdam claustralis dissolucione” in all the manuscript versions, long and short, is a biblical cento, loosely speaking. It is comprised of many, sometime lightly adapted, biblical phrases.

Subsequent quotes above are from Lehmann’s Latin text, unless otherwise noted, while the English translations are mine.

[2] Both Lehmann and Bayless note que procedent de labiis meis non faciiam irita to Psalm 89:34 in modern Psalm numbering. Isaiah 55:11, in the context of making the earth fertile, seems to me a more significant reference.

[3] Lehmann (1963) p. 227, prints ideo volo tibi comisceri for l. 60, and indicates no variants across manuscripts. That text doesn’t make sense in context. I think it’s a result of a printing error. Above I follow Bayless (2018) p. 88, ideo nolo tibi comisceri.

[4] This and the subsequent three quotes take the Latin text from Bayless (2018) p. 89. Bayless’s manuscript here provides a more moving and more terse text.

[5] The sentence “where I find you, there I will judge you {Ubi te invenero, ibi te iudicabo}” circulated widely. Bayless (2018) p. 91, note to l. 91.

[6] The phrase “where there’s pain, there’s the finger {ubi dolor, ibi digitus}” was medieval proverbial expression. Id. p. 92, note to l. 112. In that expression, the word digitus has the sense of a finger pointing in blame. Here’s more on that proverb.

The word digitus figuratively encompasses the English translation “penis.” That’s clearly its meaning above.

[7] “Verses about fleshly monks {Metra de monachis carnalibus},” st. 11-2 (of 12), Latin text from Rigg (1980) p. 137 (critical edition of all manuscripts of the English version), my English translation, benefiting from that of id. p. 141. The earliest manuscript of “Metra de monachis carnalibus” was written in the thirteenth century.

Stanzas of “Metra de monachis carnalibus” consist of one line disparaging monks’ worldliness, mainly their gluttony, and a line adapted from Psalms. The Psalm verses for the two stanzas above are Psalms 129:6 and 69:25.

Early fifteenth-century manuscripts attests to disparaging etymologies of monks:

The monk by etymology: oppressor of morals, lover of wantonness, cultivator of heresy, despoiler of virtues.

{ Monachus ethymologyce: Morum Oppressor, Nequicie Amator, Cultor Heresis, Uirtutum Spoliator. }

Latin text from Prague, Metrop. Bibl. MS 1614 (written 1387-1443), fol. 189v, via Bayless (1996) p. 403, my English translation, benefiting from the translation of id.

That Prague manuscript also contains a jingle disparaging monks as adulterous:

If a monk consults you, don’t esteem him too highly,
Give him a drink outside, so he doesn’t observe your wife.

{ Sit tibi consultum, monachum non dilige multum,
Foris eum pota, ne uxor sit sibi nota. }

Latin from folio 83rv, my English translation benefiting from that of Bayless (1996) p. 40. “Prayers of the priest’s housekeeper {Preces famulae sacerdotis},” found in three manuscripts with the oldest written in the fifteenth century, similarly disparages canons for lustfulness:

For the canons:
These with women are completely defiled; virgins they are not.

{ Pro canonicis,
Hii cum mulieribus sunt coinquinati; virgines enim non sunt. }

“Preces famulae sacerdotis” st. 10, Latin text from Bayless (1996) p. 173, my English translation, benefiting from that of id.

[image] Jesus forgiving the woman caught in adultery. See John 8:1-11. Illumination (detail) from the Hitda Codex, commissioned by Hitda, abbess of Meschede in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, about the year 1020. On folio 171 in manuscript Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, cod. 1640. Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Bayless, Martha. 1996. Parody in the Middle Ages: the Latin tradition. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Bayless, Martha, ed. 2018. Fifteen Medieval Latin Parodies. Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, 35. Toronto, Canada: Published for the Centre for Medieval Studies by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

Lehmann, Paul. 1963. Die Parodie im Mittelalter. 2nd edition. Stuttgart: Hiersemann. First edition: v. 1 (1922), Die Parodie im Mittelalter; v. 2 (1923), Parodistische Texte: Beispiele zur lateinischen Parodie im Mittelaltersource texts.

Rigg, A. George. 1980. “ ‘Metra de monachis carnalibus’: The Three Versions.” Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch. 15: 134-42.

Ah, pain, true companion of love,
whose ills I can ill assuage,
do you have a cure?
Pain besets me, and no wonder,
for here and now, grim exile
calls me from my beloved,
whose praiseworthiness is unique.
Paris would not have chosen Helen
as his partner over her.

So why complain that I will be
far from her who haughtily rejects
me, her devoted servant,
her whose name is so revered
that I must not presume
to name her?
Thanks to this misdeed of mine,
she often looks at me with a face
such as she directs at no one else.

{ O comes amoris, dolor,
cuius mala male solor,
an habes remedium?
Dolor urget me, nec mirum,
quem a praedilecta dirum,
en, vocat exilium:
cuius laus est singularis,
pro qua non curasset Paris
Helenae consortium.

Sed quid queror me remotum
illi fore, quae devotum
me fastidit hominem,
cuius nomen tam verendum
quod nec michi praesumendum
est, ut eam nominem?
Ob quam causam mei mali
me frequenter vultu tali
respicit, quo neminem. }

Difficulties and disappointments fill men’s lives. Even while being beaten down under gynocentrism, some men refuse to relinquish their capacity to dream.  Even as they suffer under senseless one-itis, nothing is more prevalent in men’s dreams than the delights of creation. So it was for this medieval man:

I love her, her alone,
who has caught me on her hook,
but she does not love me back.
A kind of valley nourishes her,
like, I would think, a paradise,
in which the blessed Creator has
placed this about-to-create —
she bright of face, pure of soul —
my heart calls creation forth.

Rejoice, exalted valley,
valley with roses garlanded,
valley, the flower of valleys,
among valleys a valley unique!
Sun and moon and sweet song of birds
unite in praising you.
The nightingale too sings your praises,
sweet and delightful valley,
bearing solace to those who are sad.

{ Ergo solus sola amo,
cuius captus sum ab hamo,
nec vicem reciprocat.
Quam enutrit vallis quaedam,
quam ut paradisum credam,
in qua pius collocat
hanc creator creaturam,
vultu claram, mente puram,
quam cor meum invocat.

Gaude, vallis insignita,
vallis rosis redimita,
vallis, flos convallium,
inter valles vallis una,
quam collaudat sol et luna,
dulcis cantus avium!
Te collaudat philomena,
vallis dulcis et amena,
maestis dans solacium. }

The third verse of the third stanza ends with the man’s disappointment in not being loved as he loves. Moses sensed God in a burning bush. This man’s imagination miraculously continued to burn for the woman’s procreative place. She was bright of face and pure of soul, and most likely a debt-free virgin without tattoos. Her place of creation is surely like a paradise that nourishes humans.

Sometimes benefiting from the aid of the male gaze, men with their vibrant and dynamic imaginations even in disappointment call forth to their hearts women’s procreative place. That lush and fecund valley, that channel of life, has been praised in literature throughout history while men’s penises have been disparaged. Gender bias against men is pervasive and must be thoroughly penetrated and criticized.

The last three verses of the last stanza modulate from joyously praising the woman’s valley to the sadness of solace not received. Not all women are like that. The singing nightingale has been socially constructed as female — Philomela waging symbolic war on men. Let her sing and praise her own vagina in vagina monologues. In the real, natural world, even amid pain and sadness, male nightingales sing to females.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• remembrance of love fills men with anguish and desperate hope
• Dante’s Folquet de Marseille praised Rahab in paradise
• gendered misunderstandings of love possession & sexual entitlement

Notes:

The above poem is from the Carmina Burana, a mainly Latin songbook copied about the year 1230. The complete poem of four stanzas is Carmina Burana 8 (supplement), while Carmina Burana 111 as copied into the manuscript includes only stanzas 1 and 4. The Latin text above is from Traill (2018) v. 2, pp. 36-8, which presents the medieval text with classical Latin spelling for greater accessibility. I have made a few insubstantial modifications to Traill’s editorial presentation of the Latin text.

The English translation above is Traill’s, with my modifications according to my sense of the Latin poetry and of the most poetic, but faithful, English translation. My most significant changes from Traill’s translation are in stanza 3. Traill noted with respect to verse 3.9:

The quam must refer to the woman. However, at 4.1 it is the valley that is invoked, thus blending woman and valley.

Id. p. 629. He further observed:

The idealized valley, which is the focus of stanzas 3 and 4, suggests, allegorically, the beloved’s virginity.

Id. The valley figure seems to me to be more specifically corporal. My translation of stanza 3 reflects my understanding of the valley as a vitally important part of the woman’s body. My translation benefited from the help of a world-renowned philologist, who of course deserves no blame for my peculiar perspectives.

Traill’s translation of comes as “true companion” in 1.1 is insightful. That translation doesn’t just function to give the translated line four beats. Comes is associated in medieval Latin with comitatus, a group of warriors who were closely associated with a leader and pledged to give their lives in service to him.

The medieval Latin word philomena came to mean nightingale from the classical Latin Philomela, which referred to the daughter of the King of Athens and the sister of Procne. Procne’s husband King Tereus inflicted horrific and highly unusual violence on Philomela.  She subsequently turned into a nightingale. In referring to a nightingale, medieval Latin commonly uses philomena rather than the classical Latin word for nightingale, luscinia. As philomena exemplifies, men’s gender subordination is enacted in part through the social construction of language itself.

[image] Lush valley. Source photo by Collin Xu on Unsplash under the permissive Unsplash license.

Reference:

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

In some cathedrals in medieval France from no later than the twelfth century, clergy on Easter Sunday danced and sang through a labyrinth pattern built into the floor of the cathedral’s nave. As they danced and sang they tossed balls among themselves. One ball perhaps represented the ball of tar that Theseus had stuffed into the mouth of the Minotaur. Another may have represented Ariadne’s ball of thread by which Theseus guided himself out of the labyrinth. Christians needed neither of those two balls. They had Christ, the fully human man who conquered the maze of life and death to save all persons. After this singing, dancing, and ball-tossing, all came together for a feast.[1] Thus they celebrating the joy of Easter.

Christians must be foolish to be one with Christ. Paul of Tarsus, who turned his life upside down, declared in his letter to the Corinthians:

For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. … Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the foolishness of what we preach to save those who believe.

{ Verbum enim crucis pereuntibus quidem stultitia est his autem qui salvi fiunt id est nobis virtus Dei est. … Ubi sapiens ubi scriba ubi conquisitor huius saeculi nonne stultam fecit Deus sapientiam huius mundi. Nam quia in Dei sapientia non cognovit mundus per sapientiam Deum placuit Deo per stultitiam praedicationis salvos facere credentes.

λόγος γὰρ ὁ τοῦ σταυροῦ τοῖς μὲν ἀπολλυμένοις μωρία ἐστίν τοῖς δὲ σῳζομένοις ἡμῖν δύναμις θεοῦ ἐστιν. … ποῦ σοφός ποῦ γραμματεύς ποῦ συζητητὴς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου οὐχὶ ἐμώρανεν ὁ θεὸς τὴν σοφίαν τοῦ κόσμου. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ οὐκ ἔγνω ὁ κόσμος διὰ τῆς σοφίας τὸν θεόν εὐδόκησεν ὁ θεὸς διὰ τῆς μωρίας τοῦ κηρύγματος σῶσαι τοὺς πιστεύοντας. } [2]

Paul described Christians as “fools for the sake of Christ {stulti propter Christum | ἡμεῖς μωροὶ διὰ Χριστόν}.” By today’s standards, medieval Christians were fools in diverse ways.

Though having relatively low official status, subdeacons in some medieval French churches had a feast celebrating their manly goodness. Subdeacons presided at the Feast of the Rod {festum baculi}. That feast typically was celebrated on the first of the year in conjunction with the Feast of the Circumcision. It included an outdoor procession led by a subdeacon “master of the rod {magister baculi}.” There was also a joyous choral dance. A leader of the Feast of the Rod, a subdeacon at the cathedral of Châlon, wrote a poem celebrating it about the year 1170:

The day has come,
friends, the cherished day.
Whatever others
do or want,
we the ring dance
lead with joy.

Before the rod,
the clergy with the people
exult today.

{ Adest dies
optata, socii.
Quidquid agant
et velint alii,
nos choream
ducamus gaudii.

Pro baculo
exsultet hodie
clerus cum populo. } [3]

Not all church officials cherished the subdeacons’ Feast of the Rod. A theologian in Paris, writing about 1162, referred to it informally as a feast of fools {festum stultorum}.[4] Ordinary men celebrating their intrinsic masculine goodness tend to be regarded as fools within gynocentric ideology.

In the twelfth century at the Beauvais cathedral, a feast celebrating the donkey, now known in English as the Feast of the Ass, was part of the evening liturgy the day before the Feast of the Rod. The celebration began with the choir singing at the cathedral’s entrance:

Light today, light of joy, banish from me every sorrow —
wherever it be, be it expelled from our solemnities tomorrow.
Today be envy far, far away from every breast —
all wish to be happy, honoring the donkey’s feast.

{ Lux hodie, lux laetitiae, me iudice tristis
quisquis erit removendus erit sollempnibus istis.
Sint hodie procul invidie, procul omnia mesta,
laeta volunt quicumque colunt asinaria festa. } [5]

The donkey represents the subdeacons and all the unheralded men who get their jobs done:

Out from the Orient
was the donkey sent,
beautiful and very strong was he,
bearing burdens skillfully.
Hey, hey, sir donkey, hey!

Here in the hills by Shechem bred,
then under Reuben nourishèd,
the River Jordan traversèd,
into Bethlehem he sped.
Hey, hey, sir donkey, hey!

Leaping higher than goats be bound,
discrediting even male roe deer,
he goes like swift Midian dromedaries,
but even speedier.
Hey, hey, sir donkey, hey!

While he drags long carriages
loaded down with much baggage,
that jawbone of his
vigorously grinds fodder.
Hey, hey, sir donkey, hey!

He eats ears of barley corn,
and wild thistle as well,
and wheat from the chaff
he separates on threshing floor.
Hey, hey, sir donkey, hey!

Amen you would say, ass,
now sated with hay-grass,
amen, amen, you say again,
you cast off ancient sin.
Hey ho, hey ho, hey ho hey,
fair you are, sir donkey, for you go all day,
fair your mouth, for your singing bray!

{ Orientis partibus
adventavit asinus,
pulcher et fortissimus,
sarcinis aptissimus.
Hez hez sire asnes hez.

Hic in collibus Sichen
iam nutritus sub Ruben
transiit per Iordanem
saliit in Bethlehem
Hez hez sire asnes hez.

Saltu vincit hynnulos,
damnas et capreolos,
super dromedarios
velox madianeos.
Hez hez sire asnes hez.

Dum trahit vehicula
multa cum sarcinula
illius mandibula
dura terit pabula.
Hez hez sire asnes hez.

Cum aristis ordeum
comedit et carduum,
triticum ex palea
segregat in area.
Hez hez sire asnes hez.

Amen dicas, asine,
iam satur ex gramine,
amen amen itera,
aspernare vetera.
Hez va hez va hez va hez
biax sire asnes car allez
bele bouche car chantez. } [6]

The male donkey has long been recognized to have impressive masculinity. When the donkey entered the Beauvais cathedral as part of sacred medieval liturgy, no one would have thought of Nigel of Canterbury’s Mirror of Fools {Speculum stultorum}. The Feast of the Ass would have been a time of joyfully raised self-esteem for the men in the cathedral and the women who love them.

The Feast of the Rod and the Feast of the Ass were official liturgical events that turned the gynocentric world upside-down in celebrating the goodness of men who lack distinguished achievement. Yet church officials didn’t always live up to the gospel’s overturning of worldly values and worldly hierarchies. Medieval money gospels parodied such failures. From no later than the early thirteenth century, the Holy Gospel according to marks of silver {Sanctus evangelium secundum marcas argenti} begins:

At that time the pope said to the Romans: “When the Son of man comes to the seat of our majesty, first say to him: ‘Friend, why have you come?’ If he persists in knocking at the gate without offering you anything, throw him out into the outer darkness.” Now it came to pass that a certain poor cleric came to the Curia of the Lord Pope. The poor cleric cried aloud, saying: “Take pity on me, you who are the pope’s gatekeepers, because the hand of poverty has touched me. I am poor and in need; for this reason I ask you to come to my assistance in my calamity and misfortune.” The gatekeepers, however, when they heard this, were very indignant and said: “Friend, to Hell with you and your poverty. Get you behind me Satan, because you do not smell like money. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will not enter the joy of your master until you have given your last penny.”

{ In illo tempore: dixit papa Romanis: “Cum venerit filius hominis ad sedem maiestatis nostrae, primum dicite: ‘Amice, ad quid venisti?’ At ille si perseveraverit pulsans, nil dans vobis, eicite eum in tenebras exteriores.’ Factum est autem, ut quidam pauper clericus veniret ad Curiam Domini Pape, et exclamavit dicens: “Miseremini mei saltem vos, ostiarii papae, quia manus paupertatis tetigit me. Ego vero egenus et pauper sum; ideo peto ut subveniatis calamitati et miseriae meae.” Illi autem audientes indignati sunt valde et dixerunt: “Amice, paupertas tua tecum sit in perditionae. Vade retro, satanas, quia non sapis ea, quae sapiunt nummi. Amen, amen, dico tibi: non intrabis in gaudium domini tui, donec dederis novissimum quadrantem.” } [7]

In Luke’s Gospel, the parable of the widow and the unjust judge is followed by Jesus’s question, “When the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?” This money gospel suggests that he wouldn’t find faith in the Roman Curia. Jesus taught that for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. That’s not possible without money in the money gospel. “Get behind me Satan” is what Jesus said to Peter when Peter sought to act in a worldly way. The money gospel directs that phrase at a poor man lacking the worldly value of money. In a gospel parable, servants are invited to enter the joy of their master because they have been faithful in small things. Their master promises to put them in charge of great things. In the money gospel, the Roman Curia, in charge of great things, hasn’t been faithful even in small things.[8] Like requiring men to achieve in order to be regarded as virtuous, love of money fundamentally contradicts Jesus’s teachings.

Medieval nonsense centos show learned knowledge of scripture and joy in outrageous acts of creativity. They have none of the serious concerns of the money gospels and Ausonius’s Wedding Cento {Cento nuptialis}. For example, in a medieval nonsense cento two woman prostitutes accused Salomon and a prelate of wronging them. The prelate called out to those in the house for help:

And a person from within responds, saying, “Do not trouble me; the door is now shut and my children aren’t present. Go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.” And so when they were going to buy, the queen of the south of that end came out to draw water. But a young woman also came out. She was beautiful of face and splendid in appearance. No man had ever ridden her, except a hundred and forty-four thousand out of every nation under heaven. And she kissed him and said, “What further need do we have of witnesses?”

{ Et ille de intus respondit dicens: “Iam hostium meum clausum est et pueri mei non comparent. Ite pocius ad uendentes et emite uobis.” Unde cum irent emere uenit regina austri a finibus illis egresa haurire aquam. Erat autem puella pulchra facie et decora aspectu super quam nullus hominum sedebat nis centum quadraginta milia hominum ex omni natione que sub celo est. Et osculatus est eam et dixit: “Quid adhuc egemus testibus?” } [9]

This short passage is constructed from twelve snippets from the Latin Bible translation known as the Vulgate. It makes nonsense of the Christian teaching that Christians should be known by their love for one another.

Medieval men used biblical texts in unauthorized ways to express their great love for women. A verse of a psalm expresses gratitude for the steadfast love of the Lord:

When the anxieties within me are many, your consolations delight my soul.

{ In multitudine cogitationum mearum quae sunt in me intrinsecus consolationes tuae delectabunt animam meam.

בְּרֹ֣ב שַׂרְעַפַּ֣י בְּקִרְבִּ֑י תַּ֝נְחוּמֶ֗יךָ יְֽשַׁעַשְׁע֥וּ נַפְשִֽׁי }

A medieval men’s prayer “for the feminine sex {pro femineo sexu}” with similar language expressed gratitude to women:

Their delights have given joy to our souls.

{ Delectationes eorum laetificaverunt animos nostros. } [10]

Another verse of a psalm tells of the value of sons within historically entrenched exploitation of men in violence against men:

Blessed is the man who has filled his quiver with them. He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies at the city gate.

{ Beatus vir qui implevit faretram suam ex ipsis non confundentur cum loquentur inimicis in porta.

אַשְׁרֵ֤י הַגֶּ֗בֶר אֲשֶׁ֤ר מִלֵּ֥א אֶת־אַשְׁפָּתֹ֗ו מֵ֫הֶ֥ם
לֹֽא־יֵבֹ֑שׁוּ כִּֽי־יְדַבְּר֖וּ אֶת־אֹויְבִ֣ים בַּשָּֽׁעַר }

Another medieval men’s prayer “for the feminine sex {pro femineo sexu}” draws upon that psalm verse to declare:

Blessed is the man who has filled his desire with them. He shall not be frustrated eternally.

{ Beatus vir qui implevit desiderium suum ex ipsis non confundentur in eternum. } [11]

Using a similar technique of misapplication, Peter Abelard brazenly wrote to Heloise:

Because we do not follow the Lord’s commandment unless we love one another, we should obey divine Scripture.

{ Quia mandatum domini non observamus, nisi dilectionem ad invicem habeamus, oportet nos divine scripture obedire. } [12]

Abelard misapplied Jesus’s new commandment to imply that Heloise and he should have sex. Actually, what “love one another” means in specific circumstances often isn’t clear.

Some mischievous medieval thinkers interpreted “love one another” very literally. They took that commandment to concern the Christian disciple Invicem (One-Another):

Note that blessed Paul had a certain disciple, very distinguished, whom he wished to give over to religious life. There he might serve God and be saved from the shipwreck of this world. He was called One-Another. Contemplating the fact that he wanted to enter the monastery, the monastic brothers argued to blessed Paul against the ways and deeds of One-Another. They cited Matthew 14: They hated One-Another so they betrayed One-Another. Since in such a monastery iniquity abounded and the charity of many had grown cold, the blessed Paul, hoping nevertheless that they would show him favor out of love for himself, wanted One-Another to be accepted. Blessed Paul wrote the words set forth: Receive One-Another. And that is what is written. And he asked them to be friendly and gentle with him, Ephesians 4: Be friendly and merciful to One-Another. Second, he asked them to give comfort to him, 1 Thessalonians 5: Comfort and build up One-Another. Third, he asked them to show reverence to him, Ephesians 5: Be subject to One-Another in the fear of Christ, and Philippians 2: judging One-Another superior. Fourth, blessed Paul asked them to provide agreeable recreation for him, Philippians 2: Showing hospitality toward One-Another without murmuring. Fifth, he asked them to be courteous with gifts and goods for him, Revelations 4: Send gifts to One-Another. Shortly thereafter blessed Paul left them, but he did not forget One-Another, but rather, whenever he preached he thoughtfully had prayers said for him by the church, James 5: Pray for One-Another that you may be saved. Likewise whenever he sent a message he gave greetings to One-Another, 1 Corinthians 12: Greet One-Another. Likewise he always commended him to his brethren and friends in letters, John 15: I give a commandment unto you, that you love One-Another.

{ Notandum quod beatus Paulus habuit quendam discipulum valde discretum quem tradere voluit religioni, ut ibi deo ministraret et a mundi naufragio servaretur, quique Invicem vocabatur. Considerantes autem fratres monasterii quod monasterium intrare volebat, modum et gestum predicti Invicem desuaserunt beato Paulo, dicentes illud Mathei xiiii: Odio habuerunt Invicem ut Invicem traderent. Et quia in tali monasterio habundavit iniquitas et refriguit caritas multorum, nichilominus sperans beatus Paulus quod amore ipsius gratum eum haberent, volens quod retineretur, scripsit verba proposita: Suscipite Invicem. Quod et scriptum est. Et rogavit eos ut familiares et mansueti sibi essent, ad Ephesios iiii: Estote Invicem mansueti et misericordes. Secundo rogavit eos ut consolacionem ei facerent, 1 ad Tessalonicenses v: Consolamini et edificate Invicem. Tertio rogavit eos ut ei reverentiam exhiberent, ad Ephesios v: Subditi estote Invicem in timore Christi, ad Philippenses ii: Superiorem Invicem arbitrantes. Quarto rogavit eos beatus Paulus ut sibi bonas recreaciones facerent, ad Philippenses ii: Hospitales estote Invicem sine murmuratione. Quinto rogavit eos ut de muneribus et de peculiis sibi curiales essent, Apocalipsis iiii: Munera mittent Invicem. Postmodum decescit ab eis beatus Paulus nec prefatum discipulum suum oblivioni dedit, ymo quandocumque predicabat pro eo orationes fieri ab ecclesia [ad] sollicite procuravit, Iacob v: Orate pro Invicem ut salvemini. Item quandocumque nuntium habebat semper eum salutabat, 1 ad Corinthios xii: Salutate Invicem. Item sepe ipsum fratribus et amicis per litteras commendavit, Iohannis xv: Hec mando vobis, ut diligatis Invicem. } [13]

Even more famous than Paul’s disciple Invicem was the great medieval saint Nemo (Nobody):

This blessed Nobody is contemporaneous with God the Father, and in essence particularly like the Son, as he was neither created nor begotten but proceeds forth in Holy Scripture. That is set forth fully by the psalmist, who says: Days shall be formed, and Nobody shall be in them. Afterward, to him such authority justly accrued, with such great merit, that as if spurning earthly things, he ascended to the heights of heaven in miraculous flight. Thus it is read: Nobody has ascended into heaven. The Lord himself testifies to this, saying: Nobody can come to me. When this most holy Nobody ascended into heaven, as it is said, he saw the pure, complete, and simultaneously threefold Godhead himself, as it is read: Nobody has seen God. That this Nobody has seen God the Gospel gives witness, as it is read: Nobody knows the Son, and elsewhere: Nobody is speaking to the Holy Spirit.

{ Beatus igitur Nemo iste contemporaneus dei patris et in essentia precipue consimilis filio, velut nec creatus nec genitus sed procedens in sacra pagina reperitur, in qua plene dictum est per psalmistam dicentem: Dies formabuntur et Nemo in eis. Cui postea merito tanta crevit auctoritas ut, ac si terrena respuens, ad celorum culmina volatu mirabili pervolavit, sicut legitur: Nemo ascendit in celum. Et hoc idem testatur dominus, dicens: Nemo potest venire ad me. Qui, dum celum ascenderet, ut dictum est, deitatem puram et integram et insimul trinitatem vidit ibidem sanctissimus Nemo, sicut legitur: Nemo deum vidit. Quod deum vidisset iste Nemo, evangelium protestatur, sicut legitur: Nemo novit filium, et alibi: Nemo loquens in spiritu sancto. } [14]

Such has been Nobody’s influence that people around the world still seek to find him and enjoy him. Not surprisingly, when released in 2003, the blockbuster movie Finding Nemo became the high-grossing animated film of all time.

Medieval thinkers had more important concerns than mere theatrical entertainment. They valued logic, reasoning, and men’s welfare as well as women’s welfare. One wrote on the bottom margin of a sermon on Nobody:

This Nobody was, moreover, of such great strength that he bit No-One in the balls, about which the logicians have a saying, namely, No-One and Nobody bite themselves in the balls.

{ Fuit autem tante fortitudinis ille Nemo quod mordebat Nullum in sacco, de quo loyci ponunt exemplum, scilicet Nullus et Nemo mordent se in sacco. } [15]

Violence against men’s genitals, appallingly celebrated in Super Bowl commercials, should condemned. Meninism is the radical notion that men are human beings. No human being should be subject to sexual violence. Therefore, no man should be subject to sexual violence. It’s logically that simple.

Aspiring to the fullness of life, the human heart restlessly seeks the joy of unlimited creativity. Literary use of nobody is attested as far back as Odysseus calling himself Nobody {Οὖτις} in seeking to escape from the Cyclops Polyphemus in the Odyssey.[16] Nobody would engage in cultural appropriation to challenge gynocentrism today for fear of social mobbing and a chorus of flesh-bots name-calling. To the center of the medieval labyrinth may this broken road lead.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• medieval parodies encompassed sacred liturgy and even women
• no Juvenal kidding: Milesian tales, Asinarius & Brothers Grimm
• Samuel Johnson defined gender bias & gender subordination

Notes:

[1] The first undisputable reference to such a “ball game {ludus pilae}” is by the French liturgist and theologian John Beleth in his Compendium of Church Liturgy {Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis}, written between 1160 and 1164. Honorius of Autun, who lived from about 1080 to 1154, may have referred to such a ball game in his early-twelfth-century work, Gem of the Soul {Gemma animae}. Mews (2009), Harris (2011) Ch. 5. Writing about 1200, Bishop Secard of Cremona in his Orders for Liturgy {Mitralis de officio} referred to bishops and clerics engaging in the “game of circular dance or ball {ludus choreae vel pilae}” as part of “December freedom {decembrica libertate}.” Mews (2009) p. 513. On December freedom, cf. Horace, Carmina 2.7. Clerical dance apparently was performed in the Cathedral of Sens in the thirteenth century. Rievallensis (2019). On the meaning and use of labyrinths on medieval church floors, Mews (2009) pp. 516-22, Harris (2011) p. 59 (which provides the interpretation of the balls above).

Surviving floor labyrinths in French cathedrals date from the twelfth or thirteenth centuries. Theseus and the Minotaur were depicted at the labyrinth center, perhaps representing Christ and the Devil, respectively. Mews (2009) p. 517. The Minotaur-Devil was born of Pasiphae having sex with a bull. Of course, having the public propaganda apparatus widely disseminate “teach women not to have sex with bulls” would be hateful and ridiculous.

[2] 1 Corinthians 1:18, 20-21. The subsequent quote is from 1 Corinthians 4:10. The original languages of the Christian Bible are Hebrew, Greek, and a few words of Aramaic. Almost all clerics in medieval Europe knew the Bible only in Latin, almost wholly through Jerome’s translation (the Vulgate). I have thus included the Vulgate translation above and in subsequent biblical quotes.

[3] Stanza 1 and refrain of poem by Guy of Bazoches, from The Book of the Letter of Guy of Bazoches {Liber epistularum Geuidonis de Basochis} (Adolfsson, 1969) 22 (also printed in Raby, Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse, pp. 259-61), Latin text via Harris (2011) p. 70, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The poem has a total of six stanzas, with the “Pro baculo” refrain following each.

The “master of the rod {magister baculi}” took over some of the cantor’s authority during the Feast of the Rod. His cermonial rod was made of wood, painted, and topped with an ivory apple. In Châlons in 1410, this beautiful rod was explicitly described as the rod of the Feast of Fools. Harris (2011) p. 69. The liturgy for the Feast of the Rod probably included Luke 2:23: “Every male who opens the womb will be called sacred to the Lord {omne masculinum adaperiens vulvam sanctum Domino vocabitur}.” On widely differing interpretations of that passage, Huot (1997) p. 67. The Feast of the Rod was an important counterpoint to the medieval Romance of the Rose.

[4] John Beleth, Summa de ecclesiasticis officiis, quoted in Harris (2011) p. 66. The feast of the subdeacons {festum subdiaconorum}, the feast of the Rod {festum baculi} and the feast of fools {festum stultorum} seem to have all referred to the same feast.

[5] Latin text from Harris (2011) p. 76, my English translation, benefiting from that in id. This hymn was performed in a festival of medieval lessons and carols at Saint Christopher’s Episcopal Church (Roseville, Minnesota) on Dec. 8, 2013. But Saint Christiopher’s Church replaced “donkey {asinaria}” in the original hymn with “sanctified {consecratus}.” In Latin, the Feast of the Ass is known as Festum asinorum or Asinaria festa. That might be better translated as the Feast of the Donkey.

[6] Latin text from Harris (2011) pp. 76-7, my English translation, benefiting from that in id. “Orientis partibus” is a twelfth-century conductus attributed to Pierre de Corbeil, Bishop of Sens. It became widely known, particularly in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Germany. Here’s an adapted modern English version. This conductus survives with a melody. Here’s an excellent performance with the original Latin words. A performance of an adapted English version is also freely accessible. The Feast of the Ass was performed at the thirteenth-century Cathedral at Sens, with “Orientis partibus” used as the conductus. Balbulus (2019).

In addition to relatively liberal freedom of speech, medieval Europe was also relatively liberal with respect to liturgy:

medieval notions of what was proper to corporate cathedral worship differed greatly from our own: until very recently, we were far more restrained.

Harris (2011) p. 62. Id. documents that the Feast of Fools was an authorized, organized, and institutionalized aspect of medieval liturgy. A modern jest: “Question: What’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? Answer: You can negotiate with a terrorist.”

[7] Carmina Burana 44, “Gospel {Ewangelium}” ll. 1-13, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly to enhance readability for the general reader) from Traill (2018) v. 1, pp. The Carmina Burana was put together about the year 1230. Id. p. ix. For other medieval Latin money gospels, with Engish translation, Bayless (1996) Appendices 8 & 9. Id. also provides another medieval Latin money gospel (text 2) and a money grammar (text 14), both without English translation.

Lehmann (1963) provides 22 parodic medieval Latin texts. However, “Lehmann’s references are frequently both inadequate and unreliable.” Bayless (1996) p. 16. The references in both Bayless (1996) and Bayless (2018) are learned, thorough, and highly specific, including distinguishing variants in particular manuscripts.

[8] Cf. Luke 18:8 (son of man coming), Matthew 7:7 and Luke 11:9 (knock and the door will be opened), and Matthew 25:23 (enter the joy of the master).

[9] “Nothing is made from nothing… {Ex nichilo nichil fit…}” (medieval nonsense cento) ll. 43-50, Latin text from Bayless (2018) p. 45, my English translation. The manuscript source is Munich, Universitätsbibliothek 8° Cod. ms. 352, fol. 146rv. That manuscript is from the last third of the fifteenth century. Id. p. 42. Jesus commands Christians to testify to being his disciples by showing their love for one another. John 13:35.

[10] “Prayers of the priest’s housekeeper {Preces famulae sacerdotis}” 34, Latin text from Walther (1931) pp. 349-55, via Bayless (1996) p. 174; my English translation benefiting from that of id.

The source verse quoted previously is Psalm 94:19. All my biblical references are with respect to standard, modern bibles. References to Psalms in the Vulgate (Bayless’s references) are usually one less.

[11] “Preces famulae sacerdotis” 60, sourced as previously. The biblical source is Psalm 127:5.

[12] Letters of Two Lovers {Epistolae duorum amantium} 52 (man to woman) excerpt, Latin text of Ewald Könsgen from Mews (1999) p. 258, my English translation benefiting from that of Newman (2016) p. 153. For the commandment to love one another, John 13:34, Romans 13:8. The great twelfth-century rhetor Boncompagno da Signa taught similar use of biblical texts for amorous purposes.

Whether the two lovers of Epistolae duorum amantium were Heloise and Peter Abelard has been the subject of vigorous debate among scholars. See note [3] in my post concerning literary competition between Heloise and Abelard. I think it’s more probable than not that they were the two lovers writing those letters.

[13] “Receive One-Another {Suscipte Invicem}…” (Short Invicem: The Hamburg Recension) ll. 1-24, Latin text from Bayless (1996) p. 316, English translation from id. p. 318, with my changes for ease of reading. The manuscript source is Hamburg, Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek MS Petri 22, fol. 260rv. That manuscript was written in 1435. Id. p. 316.

Other versions of the life of Paul’s disciple Invicem exist. One is the “Long Invicem,” attested in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek MS clm. 10751. That manuscripts was written in 1575. Bayless (1996) pp. 311-5 gives the Latin text and an English translation. Bayless (2018), text 10, is an additional life of Invicem from Besançon, Bibliothèque Municipale 592, written about 1450.

[14] “Here begins the life of the most holy and most glorious Nobody {Incipit vita sanctissimi et gloriosissimi Neminis}…” (Long Nemo, second recension) ll. 14-24, Latin text from Bayless (1996) p. 260, English translation from id. p. 281, with my modifications. Id. provides edited texts and translations of another three Nemo’s. Bayless (2018), texts 8 & 9, includes two additional Nemo’s.

The Long Nemo dates from no later than the thirteenth century. In 1290, a certain Stephen wrote a long work concerning it: The refutation of the abominable sermon put forth by Radulph, about a certain Nobody, heretic and damned, according to Stephen of Saint George, defender of the Christian faith {Reprobatio nefandi sermonis editi per Radulphum de quodam Nemine heretico et dampnato, secundum Stephanum de Sancto Georgio christianefidei defensorem}. Bayless commented:

Stephen’s very peculiar document, much longer than the original Nemo text, first explains that Nemo is not a real person, but goes on to prove that the saint is actually a sinner and heretic, supported by its own army of quotations. The Reprobatio {Refutation} against Nemo is thus either a clumsy piece of satire or the work of an idiot; critics have reached no consensus.

Bayless (2018) p. 61.

[15] Marginal note on bottom of “Short Nemo” Salzburg, Bibliothek der Erzabtei St. Peter MS b.V.15 (Bayless MS S), fol. 231r, Latin text from Bayless (1996) p. 294, English translation from id. p. 302, with my modifications. In particular, I interpret the first nullum as “No-One.”

[16] Odyssey 9.366-460. The Odyssey, attributed to Homer, was written about 2700 years ago.

[images] (1) Persons walking the labyrinth on the floor in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Chartres (Chartres Cathedral), which was build between 1194 and 1220. Source image via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Labyrinth in Grace Cathedral, San Francisco. That cathedral was built in stages between 1928 and 1964. Its labyrinth is based on that one at Chartres. Source image by David Clay via Wikimedia Commons. Here’s an image of the labyrinth’s pattern, and one showing its center today.

References:

Balbulus, Notkerus. 2019. “New Years with the Canons of Sens (1).” Canticum Salomonis, online Dec. 31.

Bayless, Martha. 1996. Parody in the Middle Ages: the Latin tradition. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Bayless, Martha, ed. 2018. Fifteen Medieval Latin Parodies. Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, 35. Toronto, Canada: Published for the Centre for Medieval Studies by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

Harris, Max. 2011. Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Huot, Sylvia. 1997. Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet: The Sacred and the Profane in Thirteenth-Century Polyphony. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Lehmann, Paul. 1963. Die Parodie im Mittelalter. 2nd edition. Stuttgart: Hiersemann. First edition: v. 1 (1922), Die Parodie im Mittelalter; v. 2 (1923), Parodistische Texte: Beispiele zur lateinischen Parodie im Mittelaltersource texts.

Mews, Constant J. 1999. The Lost Love letters of Heloise and Abelard: perceptions of dialogue in twelfth-century France. Houndmills: Macmillan.

Mews, Constant J. 2009. “Liturgists and Dance in the Twelfth Century: The Witness of John Beleth and Sicard of Cremona.” Church History. 78 (3): 512-548.

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

Rievallensis, Aelredus. 2019. “Ecclesia Saltans (1): A New Document Bearing on Ecclesiastical Dance, by Jacques Chailley.” Online at Canticum Salomonis, Nov. 27.

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

Walther, Hans. 1931. “Parodistische Gebete der Pfarrköchin in einer Züricher Handschrift.” Studi Medievali. n.s. 4: 344-57.

Concubines rank lower than wives in most societies’ social structure. But what about men’s status?[1] The learned and eloquent ancient Roman orator Cicero described the desperation of husbands suffering from their wives’ abuse. In early-eleventh-century Baghdad, the rich merchant ibn Jumhūr had to endure torrents of abuse from his concubine Zād Mihr. In actuality, husbands are not only subordinate to their wives, but also subordinate to their concubines.

A coherent medieval collection of prayers spanning all stations of society documents the struggle against men’s subordination to their concubines. The collection begins by acknowledging the failures of all:

Let us pray for every status in the Church!
All have gone astray. Together they are made hurtful. There is none who would do good, no, not one.

{ Oremus pro omni statu ecclesie!
Omnes declinaverunt, simul inutiles facti sunt. Non est qui faciat bonum, non est usque ad unum. } [2]

The next three prayers harshly denounce the behavior of the nominally leading men of medieval society:

For the pope and the cardinals.
From elders is coming forth the wickedness of my people, who the bad example they see, they follow.

For our king.
Destruction and misery are in his way, and the way of peace he has not yet discovered.

For the leaders of the land.
O Israel, your princes are rebellious, companions of thieves, and act very similar to tyrants.

{ Pro papa et cardinalibus.
A senioribus egressa est iniquitas populi mei, qui malum quod videt in exemplum trahit.

Pro rege nostro.
Contricio et infelicitas et inquietudo in viis eius, ut viam pacis nondum invenit.

Pro principibus terre.
O Israhel, infideles principes tui socii furum sunt et tyrannis similimi. } [3]

About thirty prayers later, the collection reaches the nominally lowliest ranks of medieval society:

For our household servants.
The elderly servants are always slow. While they eat, they get warm; when working, they get cold.

Let us pray also for our concubines.
They themselves will truly be our judges and rule us with an iron rod, by which for our faithlessness our property is squandered.

For our extra-marital children.
They themselves are witnesses of their parents’ wickedness, which will itself walk by its own paths.

{ Pro familia nostra.
Prespiterum servi sunt omni tempore tardi. Dum comedunt sudant, frigescunt quando laborant.

Oremus etiam pro concubinis nostris.
Ipse enim erunt judices nostri et regent nos in virga ferrea, quarum perfidia nostra consumitur substantia.

Pro spuriis nostris.
Ipsi enim testes sunt iniquitatis parentum suorum, in quorum semitis et ipsi ambulabunt. } [4]

The prayer for concubines, placed between prayers for servants and extra-marital children, implicitly recognizes concubines’ low social status. That prayer also implicitly acknowledges men’s weakness in relation to beautiful women. Men’s weakness in relation to beautiful women is both economically disastrous for men and leads to women ruling over them.

In the difficult circumstances of their lives, men often accept passively injustices done to them. The biblical story of the massacre of the men of Shechem tells of treacherous, vicious violence against men because of Shechem’s illicit love for Dinah. Violence against men still remains the undistinguished, untroubling understanding of violence. When the Hebrews wandering in the desert lacked water, Moses and Aaron had to do something. Men are valued as men in their doings, not merely in their being. Whatever the man Jonah did was wrong. A whale ate him at sea and on land the sun beat down on his head. Who has compassion for Jonah’s suffering and for the suffering of men generally? About 855, a highly learned German theologian poignantly portrayed men’s despair:

But already Shechem was asking for the dishonored Dinah,
Aaron was spilling water, competing then with Dinah,
bald Jonah was destitute, shipwrecked in the sea;
together they mourned, stroking their trimmed foreskins.

{ Sed quia iam prostitutam quaerebat Sichem Dinam,
Aquas Aaron effundebat, contendebat tunc Dina,
Ionas calvus nudus erat naufragus in maria;
Plangebant cuncti recisa palpantes preputia. } [5]

Mutilation of baby boys’ genitals continues today across atheists, Christians, and Jews without any truly believed religious justification. Circumcision of baby boys’ genitals attracts less social concern than restrictions on women’s fancy clothes. Men’s subordination to their concubines reflects the impotence of men resigned merely to stroking their trimmed foreskins.

Learned and wise authorities have long sought to dissuade men from gyno-idolatrous subservience to their concubines and to women in general. At some time between the middle of the ninth century and early in the sixteenth century, a scribe copying the prayer for concubines added wisdom from Cicero:

And can I regard as being free a man over whom a woman rules? On whom she imposes laws, and to whom she orders, commands, and prohibits? Moreover, is not he himself a miserable little man who none of her rulings is able to negate, who dares to refuse her nothing? If she calls him, he is coming. If she asks, he is giving. If she throws him out, he is leaving. If she threatens, he is trembling.

{ An ille michi liber videtur, cui mulier imperat? Cui leges imponit, prescribit iubet, vetat? Ipse autem miser homuntio nichil imperanti negare potest, nichil recusare audet? Si vocat eum, veniendum est. Si poscit, dandum est. Si eicit, abeundum est. Si minatur, extimescendum est. } [6]

These are the men that men-abasing courtly love ideology celebrates. These little men are prevalent in gynocentric society. They are not free men. Teach your sons not to be those men!

Women who love men must do more to help men. Not satisfied with merely the authority of Cicero, perhaps another scribe added wisdom from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes:

I find, says the prophet, more bitter than death the woman whose heart is a hunter’s snares and nets, whose hands are fetters. One who pleases God will flee from her. The other, a sinner, is taken by her, more bitter than death.

{ Inveni, inquit propheta, amariorem morte mulierem, que laqueus est venatorum, sagena cor eius, vincula sunt manus eius. Qui placet Deo fugiet illam; qui autem peccator est capietur ab ea, amarior est morte. } [7]

Today such wisdom tends to be trivialized through name-calling. Medieval authorities were more enlightened. Matheolus warned men against oppressive practices of women and the church. The satirical medieval Fifteen Joys of Marriage described men becoming prisoners in their marriages. Some medieval women viciously cuckolded their husbands. Teach your daughters not to be those women!

The combined authority of Cicero and Ecclesiastes sadly has been insufficient to save men from subservience to women. As the medieval manuscript indicates, inadequate philological education in schools hinders vigorous social criticism. Thus to the quotes from Cicero and Ecclesiastes under the prayer for concubines, a medieval reader added explanatory glosses: “she imposes laws {leges imponit}” glossed as “command {mandatum}”; “she orders {prescribit}” glossed as “what must be made to be {quid faciendum sit}”; and “she vetoes {vetat}” glossed as “she prohibits {prohibet}.” One must first understand in order to resist.

Most men today lack the opportunity to study medieval Latin language and literature. Yet even deprived of that important opportunity, men can understand gynocentric oppression simply by asking questions. Why does the gender composition of highly privileged persons such as corporate executives, political leaders, and math professors generate more public concern than the massively disproportionate incarceration of men? Why are men deprived of any reproductive rights whatsoever and have only the choice to engage in abortion coercion? Why does grotesque anti-men gender discrimination continue to pervade family courts while governments move to enact paid parental leave? The fundamental answer to those questions is simple: the actual status of ordinary men is lower than that of their concubines.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Cicero unpacked: piss on learned hypocrites to cultivate public fields
• did Lot support daughters who raped him? Cena Cypriani rewritten
• Sabine women win Pyrrhic peace for Roman men

Notes:

[1] On the formal and actual status of medieval concubines, see Brundage (1993) and Karras (2014). Medieval historians typically share common delusions about men’s status in the present. Their historical work on gender is thus scarcely credible.

[2] Prayers for every status in the church {Orationes pro omni statu ecclesiae} 1, Latin text from Bayless (2018) p. 53 (text 7), my English translation. For ease of reading, I’ve made some insubstantial changes to Bayless’s Latin text, e.g. differentiated v from u, and j from i. Subsquent quotes from this text are sourced similarly.

Bayless has edited this text from MS. Rome, Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana Pal. lat. 1050, fols 293r-294. This manuscript was written in parts in 1475 and 1530. Id. The line of commentary following the call for prayer adapts Psalm 14:3 (in modern numbering).

Two other manuscripts of similar collections of prayers have survived in manuscripts written in the fifteenth century. Those texts are printed in Walther (1931). For discussion of these similar collections, called Prayers of the priest’s housekeeper {Preces famulae sacerdotis}, Bayless (1996) pp. 172-5. These or similar collections might well have been composed in the twelfth century or earlier.

[3] Orationes pro omni statu ecclesia 2-4. As Bayless notes, the lines of commentary for these three prayers adapt Daniel 13:5, Romans 3:16-7, and Isaiah 1:23, respectively.

[4] Orationes pro omni statu ecclesia 27-29 (out of 33 prayers in total). Prespiterum apparently is a medieval Latin spelling of presbyterum. Bayless notes the commentary to the prayer for household servants is “common in medieval satire.” Prayers 28 and 29 adapt Matthew 12:27 and Psalm 2:9; and Wisdom 4:6, respectively. Bayless (2018) p. 59, notes.

[5] Hrabanus Maurus, The Wedding Banquet {Cena nuptialis} ll. 233-8, Latin text from Modesto (1992) p. 192, my English translation. Hrabanus’s Cena nuptialis adapted into verse Cyprian’s Banquet {Cena Cypriani}. The relevant text from Cena Cypriani:

But since someone was contending with Dinah, Aaron was spilling water, and Jonas was destitute.

{ Sed quoniam contendebat Dina, aquam effundebat Aaron,
et nudus erat Ionas. }

Latin text from Modesto (1992) p. 30, my English translation. Dinah seems to be related to Aaron spilling water through the implicit sense that she was crying over her brothers killing her beloved Shechem. Hrabanus Maurus wrote his Cena nuptialis about 855 and dedicated it to Lothar II, King of Lotharingia. On Cena nuptialis, Bayless (1996) pp. 38-40.

[6] Orationes pro omni statu ecclesia 28.4-8 (additional commentary). The text notes: “These are Cicero in Paradoxes {Hec Cicero in Paradoxa}.” The reference is to Cicero, Stoic Paradoxes {Paradoxa stoicorum} 5.36, which is quoted closely, but not exactly. For Paradoxa stoicorum in Latin and English translation, Rackham (1942). The glosses to this text, discussed subsequently above, are given in Bayless (2018) p. 59, notes.

Cicero in Paradoxa stoicorum presented women’s dominance as a problem in men’s intimate relations with women. In fifteenth-century Europe, women’s dominance was regarded as a matter of high politics:

Let us inquire, and we find that nearly all the world’s kingdom have been overthrown because of women. The first of them, the happy kingdom Troy, was destroyed because of the abduction of a single woman, Helen. Many thousands of Greeks were slain. The kingdom of the Jews had many evils and deaths because of the very bad queen Jezebel and her daughter Athaliah, queen in the kingdom of Judah. Athaliah had the sons of her son slain so that with his death she herself could reign, but both Jezebel and Athaliah were slain. The kingdom of the Romans endured many evils because of Cleopatra, the Queen of Egypt, a very bad woman. And so on for others. Hence no wonder if the world now suffers from women’s evil.

{ Invenimus fere omnia mundi regna propter mulieres fuisse versa. Primum enim quod fuit regnum felix, scilicet Troye, proper raptum unius femine, scilicet Helene, destructum est, multi milibus Graecorum occisis. Regnum Judeorum multa mala et exterminia habuit propter pessimam reginam Jezebel et filiam eius Athaliam reginam in regno Jude, que occidi fecerat filios filij ut eo mortuo ipsa regnaret, sed utraque occisa. Regnum Romanorum multa mala sostinuit propter Cleopatram reginam Egipti, pessimam mulierem. Et sic de alijs. Unde non mirum si mundus iam patitur ob malitiam mulierum. }

The Hammer of Witches {Malleus maleficarum} Part 1, Question 6, part 2, Latin text from MacKay (2006) v. 1, pp. 289-90, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. On the relative propensity of queens and kings to engage in war from the fifteenth century to the twentieth century, Dube & Harish (2019). Modern readings of the Malleus maleficarum have obscured that men vastly predominated among witches who were killed, just as today men vastly  predominate among victims of lethal violence.

[7] Orationes pro omni statu ecclesia 28.10-13 (additional commentary). The text begins “Ecclesiastes 7 {Eccl 7}.” It quotes closely but not exactly the Vulgate text of Ecclesiastes 7:26 (in modern numbering). In medieval versions of the Vulgate, this verse ended with “more bitter than death, that is, than the devil {amarior est morte, id est, diablo}.” Bayless (2018) p. 59, notes.

[image] Young Man at Prayer (excerpt). Painting by Hans Memling, made about 1475. Preserved as accession number NG2594 in the National Gallery (London, UK). Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Bayless, Martha. 1996. Parody in the Middle Ages: the Latin tradition. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Bayless, Martha, ed. 2018. Fifteen Medieval Latin Parodies. Toronto Medieval Latin Texts, 35. Toronto, Canada: Published for the Centre for Medieval Studies by the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies.

Brundage, James A. 1993. Sex, Law and Marriage in the Middle Ages. Aldershot: Variorum.

Dube, Oeindrila and S.P. Harish. 2019. “Queens.” University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2019-120. Available at SSRN.

Karras, Ruth Mazo. 2014. Unmarriages: women, men, and sexual unions in the Middle Ages. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. (review by Walter Prevenier)

Mackay, Christopher S., ed. and trans. 2006. Malleus maleficarum: the hammer of witches. 2 vols. Cambridge University Press.

Modesto, Christine. 1992. Studien zur Cena Cypriani und zu deren Rezeption. Classica Monacensia, 3. Tubingen: G. Narr.

Rackham, Harris, ed and trans. 1942. Cicero. On the Orator {De oratore}, Book III; On Fate {De fato}; Stoic Paradoxes {Paradoxa stoicorum}; Divisions of Oratory {De partitione oratoria}. Loeb Classical Library 349. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Walther, Hans. 1931. “Parodistische Gebete der Pfarrköchin in einer Züricher Handschrift.” Studi Medievali. n.s. 4: 344-57.

A certain church leader named Hilary conducted a hearing in the city Golgotha of Numskulls. The matter was legion. Lot came to family court to contest an order of child support requiring him to pay 60% of his income to his two daughters who had raped him. Interested parties entered the courtroom.

Solomon’s seven hundred wives and concubines sat together. Royally dressed, Solomon’s mother Bathsheba came in and then left to take a bath outside. The pregnant virgin Mary brought her husband Joseph from the house of David. Lot’s wife sat in the front row and worried that Judge Hilary would deprive Lot of almost all his salt. Elizabeth wanted to know if the payments she would receive would be less because her husband Zachariah had become disabled. The Samaritan woman was there, wondering how many different men could be required to pay her at the same time. Rebecca wanted to know how one man’s income would be divided among multiple mothers. Sarah entered, seeking to learn if angels are under the court’s jurisdiction. Hearing that Lot’s daughter would be getting hefty monthly payments for having Moab, Ruth came to see if she could have a child support order imposed on Naomi. Salome, daughter of Herodias, sought to have a child support order imposed on John the Baptist’s head. Hannah, lacking income, prayed in the court for children. Rachel entered, weeping for her sons being destroyed in the family court system.

Judge Hilary called the court to order. Jezebel was counsel for Lot’s daughters. Jezebel moved that the court recognize, as a preliminary matter, that Lot had always desired to have sex with his daughters, and that Lot should be regarded as their common-law husband. Jesus of Nazareth, counsel for Lot, objected that Lot’s adherence to the commandment “love one another” doesn’t imply incest. Judge Hilary sustained Jesus’s objection: “We note that marital status is irrelevant to the imposition of child support obligations.”

Jesus called Noah to testify on Lot’s behalf. Jesus asked Noah’s questions to qualify him as an expert:

What is the difference between an angry circus owner and a Roman hairdresser?

One is a raving showman and the other is a shaving Roman.

Why didn’t the Israelites starve in the desert?

Because of the sand which is there.

And where did the sandwiches come from?

Ham and his descendants bred and mustered there.

Satisfied with Noah’s answer, Jesus entered scripture into the court record that showed that Noah was the inventor of wine and had experience passing out naked and drunk. The court accepted Noah as a qualified witness. The crowd that now filled the courtroom began talking aloud.

Cain said Noah isn’t able. Isaac laughed. Eve felt tempted to get to know Noah. The Witch of Endor saw Noah under the waters. Gomer, wife of Hosiah, said Noah had gotten her drunk and raped her. Potiphar’s wife said, “Me too!” Tamar claimed that Noah neglected to pay prostitutes their full fees. A dove cooed that Noah had harassed her and made her feel unwelcomed. Shepherds blamed Noah for allying with Cain and fencing off part of their grazing land. The woman at the well said Noah never offered her a drink. Ham said Noah cursed his son Canaan for no good reason. A flood of others in the courtroom and on social media joined in denouncing Noah. A chant began: “Say no to Noah, say no to Noah, say no to Noah….”

Judge Hilary angrily arose and screamed, “You shitty deplorables! Where do you think you are? This is no Neanderthal football stadium. This is my court. Shut the fuck up!” The courtroom settled into abashed silence.

Jezebel began questioning Noah. How often do you drink wine? Do you prefer to drink by yourself? Were you grateful that your sons Shem and Japheth came to when you were drunk and naked? Do you recognize that those who refuse to exalt the best interests of the child should die by the sword? She then turned to Judge Hilary and said that there was no need for further questions.

Jesus arose and said to the court, “Just as it was in the days of Noah, so too it will be when justice flows down like flood waters and righteousness like a mighty torrent.” Jesus then turned to question Lot.

Jesus asked Lot a lot of questions. When you lived in Sodom, did the licentiousness of the lawless distress you? Have you forgiven your daughters for raping you? Do you forgive them for acting according to the men-oppressing ideology of gynocentric society? Do you forgive your daughters for not showing lovingkindness toward you their father? Do you love your daughters with self-giving love, wishing only their good? Is freely giving of yourself in love consistent with being compelled to pay child support to your daughters? Was your parenthood of Moab and Ammon planned parenthood? Would fathering children through your daughters raping you be your reproductive choice?

Judge Hilary interrupted Jesus, “Enough. What is truth? And what’s best for women and girls? Isn’t it in the best interests of Lot’s daughters to get monthly payments from him?” Jesus stood before her and remained silent for a long time. Then he said, “Remember Lot’s wife.”

Adam leaned away from Eve. Job cried out to the Lord. Paul declared God’s grace to be sufficient. Abraham promised to rescue Lot even while not knowing how. Jacob sought a ladder to escape from family court. John the Baptist lost his head from such tyranny. David wept for his son Absalom. Rahab left to hang a red cord outside her window. Moses could only stutter. Peter fumed and look ready to assault the judge. The Ethiopian eunuch praised God. Isaac went to gather wood to build a fire for himself. Isaiah foresaw fatherless children. Jeremiah denounced the judge as foolish and senseless, and predicted calamity upon the nation. Joseph of Arimathea promised to do all he could for Lot.

Mary was stunned, Sarah laughed at what was done.
When all had been settled, they returned to their homes.

{ stupebat Maria, ridebat de facto Sara.
Tunc explicitis omnibus domos suas repetierunt. }

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• through labyrinths: medieval fullness of life and joy in creativity
• Martianus Capella, updated: the marriage of Gynecology and Hercules
• medieval monk castrated for adultery; husband doesn’t punish wife

Notes:

The account of Lot’s daughters raping him is Genesis 19:30-38. The above work should not be interpreted to trivialize women raping men or pervasive anti-men sex discrimination in family courts. For a thorough, factual analysis of alimony, child custody, and child support laws, see Real World Divorce.

The above work is a reworking of a Latin work called Cena Cypriani {Cyprian’s Banquet}, also spelled Coena Cypriani. In medieval Europe, Cena Cypriani was attributed to Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage. He lived from about 200 to 258 GC.  Most scholars now think that Cena Cypriani was written between the middle of the fourth century and the middle of the fifth century. Some scholars speculate that Zeno of Verona (died 371 GC) wrote it.

Cena Cypriani is a short Latin prose work that in the modern period has been regarded as bizarre. It consists of about 1500 words. Bayless (1996) p. 19. Doležalová summarized:

It describes a wedding feast organized by king Joel in Cana, Galilee. The king invites many guests – characters from different parts of the Bible and also from the apocryphal Acta Pauli et Theclae (APT). They sit down, accept special dress, cook for themselves, eat, drink, some of them fall asleep, others are entertained, and then they all go home in a festive procession. The next day they return with presents for the king, but as it is discovered that something has been stolen the day before, they are investigated and tortured, until the king decides that only one of them, Achan, should be punished, and so they (including Jesus) kill him and bury him before they return home. After each of the activities is shortly introduced, an enumeration of what the guests did, ate or wore — a list of the Biblical characters and their attributions — follows

Doležalová (2002) p. 187. Bayless observed:

the focus of the story is the inventories of characters and their actions … The text is, in effect, an animated catalog of symbols and correspondences

Bayless (1996) pp. 19-20. The beginning of Cena Cyrpriani provides a good sense of it:

A certain king, Joel by name, organized a wedding in the eastern region, in Cana of Galilee. To this wedding, many were invited. Thus those, who had earlier bathed in the Jordan, came to the feast. At that time Naaman cleansed, Amos sprinkled water, James and Andrew brought hay. Matthew and Peter lay down, Solomon prepared the table, and the whole crowd reclined at various places. But when the place was already full of the reclining ones, those who arrived later, all, as they could, looked for a place for themselves. So Adam, the first of all, sat in the middle, Eve on leaves, Cain on top of a plough, Abel on a milk churn, Noah on an ark, Japheth on bricks, Abraham under a tree, Isaac on an altar, Jacob on a rock …

{ Quidam rex nomine Iohel nuptias faciebat in regione orientis, in Chana Galileae. His nuptiis invitati sunt plures. Igitur qui temperius loti in Iordane adfuerunt in convivio. Tunc commundavit Naaman, aquam sparsit Amos, Iacobus et Andreas attulerunt faenum, Matheus et Petrus straverunt, mensam posuit Salomon. Atque omnes discubuerunt turbae. Sed cum iam locus discumbentium plenus esset, qui superveniebant, quisque ut poterat, locum sibi inveniebat. Primus atque omnium sedit Adam in medio, Eva super folia, Cain super aratrum, Abel super mulgarium, Noe super archam, Iaphet super lateres, Abraham sub arbore, Isaac super aram, Iacob super petram … }

Latin text of Modesto and English translation from Doležalová (2017) p. 46.

During the Middle Ages, Cena Cypriani was rewritten at least four times and prompted at least one extensive written commentary. Hrabanus Mauris, abbot of Fulda and then Archbishop of Mainz, rewrote the Cena Cyrpriani about 855 to create a work known as the Cena nuptialis {Marriage banquet}. Cena nuptialis, which survives in 18 manuscripts, “made the allegory clearer and the narrative more rapid and coherent.” Bayless (1996) p. 39. In Rome in 876 or 877, John Hymmonides (also known as John the Deacon) recast Cena Cypriani into verse. John followed the original closely. Probably about 1050, the monk Azelinus of Reims wrote another version in verse for the Emperor Henry III of Germany. That version is known as Cena Azelini. Another rewriting of the Cena Cypriani occurred perhaps at Arras about 1200. The French Benedictine monk Herveus Dolensis (also called Herveus of Bourg-Dieu or Hervaeus Burgidolensis) wrote a lengthy commentary on Cena Cypriani about 1150. That commentary survives in four manuscripts.

Cena Cypriani was regarded in medieval Europe as both amusing and useful. Well-known throughout the Middle Ages, Cena Cypriani survives in whole or in part in at least 104 manuscripts. These manuscripts apparently was read or copied mainly in monasteries. Cena Cypriani seems to have functioned as a tool, or perhaps a game, for improving biblical knowledge. Not confined to monasteries, Cena Cypriani was known as the highest levels of learning and political power. Peter Abelard and Hugh of St. Victor both refer to it, and Hrabanus Maurus, who rewrote it, was an eminent theologian. Copies of Cena Cypriani were dedicated to kings, emperors, and popes.

As the Waltharius indicates, medieval authors didn’t regard Christian humor to be inconsistent with deep Christian faith. John Hymmonides referred to his rewriting of Cena Cypriani as a “royal jest {imperialis iocus}.” In his poem dedicating his version to Pope John VIII, John wrote:

Whoever desires to discern me, John, dancing,
now listen to my song, attend to the merrymaking:
I will play in running through a medley, formed under God,
that would make Codrus’s belly burst. You, friends, applaud.

{ Quique cupitis saltantem me lohannem cernere,
Nunc cantantem auditote, iocantem attendite:
Satiram ludam percurrens: divino sub plasmate,
Quo Codri findatur venter. Vos, amici, plaudite. }

Latin text from Bayless (1996) p. 41, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. In his letter dedicating Cena nuptialis to Pope John, John Hymmonides wrote: “take this amusement, Pope John; may you be laughing, if it itself is able to please {ludentem papa Iohannes accipe; ridere, si placet, ipse potes}.” Similarly from id. p. 42. With the starkness that characterizes Proverbs and other biblical wisdom, Burchardus, Abbot of Believaux, in the twelfth century wrote:

some laugh with delight at the excellence and honor and glory of wisdom; others laugh with silliness at the growth and hawking of foolishness. The wise are made merry by laughter and do not jeer; the foolish are made silly by laughter and indulge in ridicule.

{ alii rident cum iocunditate ad laudem et honorem et gloriam sapientiae, alii rident cum iocositate ad incrementum et propalationem stulticiae: iocundantur sapientes in risu et non irrident, stulti iocantur in risu et derident. }

“In defense of beards {Apologia de barbis}” 3.179-81, Latin text and English translation from Bayless (1996) pp. 204-5.

Recent studies suggest that Cena Cypriani was within the mainstream of literature from about 1500 to 2000 years ago. Cena Cypriani has parallels with Petronius’s Satyricon 35. Manca (2008) pp. 89-90. Similarities also exist with respect to Apuleis’s Metamorphoses 6.24-5. Casaretto (2006) pp. 239-46. Testamentum Porcelli {The Testament of a Piglet}, written perhaps in the fourth century, provides another parallel. Livini (2011) p. 287.

For texts and studies of Cena Cypriani, Modesto (1992), Bayless (1996), and Doležalová (2007) are the most important works. Modesto (1992) includes German translations of the various versions of Cena Cypriani. Doležalová (2007) includes an English translation of the original version based on Modesto’s critical Latin text. Bayless (1996) includes an English translation of the Arras Cena Cypriani. Doležalová (2007), which is freely accessible online, includes a Latin text close to the base Cena Cypriani, with notes indicating the textual variants. Radej (1989), also freely accessible online, includes a Latin text and a Bosnian translation. Here are additional instances: an online, machine-readable Latin text and an online Latin manuscript. Conybeare (2013) uses the laughter of Sarah in Cena Cypriani as a starting point toward exploring cultish academic writings. Cena Cypriani, recreated in the context of Lot’s daughters raping him, seems to me to be capable of promoting both delightful laughter and social justice.

The reference above to the church leader Hilary is open to several interpretations. Hilary of Poitiers served as as Bishop of Poitiers from 351 to 356 GC. Hilary of Arles served as Bishop of Arles in southern France from 429 to 444 GC. Whether either Hilary adjudicated any child support cases isn’t known.

The questions above concerning the angry circus owner and the Roman hairdresser are from Susan Stewart via Parker (1985) p. 84, n. 5. The questions concerning the Israelites’ food in the desert are from Robert Graves via id. p. 79. I was alerted to the relevance of Five Constipated Men in the Bible via Manca (2008) pp. 94-5. The final quote is the last two lines of Cena Cypriani, in Latin and in my English translation. Some versions read “Mary is stunned {stupet Maria},” but “Mary was stunned {stupebat Maria}” is Modesto’s superior reading.

[image] Lot and his daughters. Seventeenth-century painting by Marcantonio Franceschini. Preserved in the Museo di Stato di San Marino. Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Bayless, Martha. 1996. Parody in the Middle Ages: the Latin tradition. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Casaretto, Francesco Mosetti. 2006. “Modelli e antimodelli per la «Cena Cypriani»: il «teatro interiore», Zenone e… Apuleio!” Wiener Studien. 119: 215-246.

Conybeare, Catherine. 2013. The Laughter of Sarah: Biblical Exegesis, Feminist Theory, and the Laughter of Delight. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Doležalová, Lucie. 2002. “Receptions of Obscurity and Obscurities of Reception: The Case of the Cena Cypriani.” Listy Filologické / Folia Philologica. 125 (3-4): 187-197.

Doležalová, Lucie. 2004. “Quoddam notabile vel ridiculum: an unnoticed version of Cena Cypriani (Ms. Uppsala, UL C 178).” Archivum Latinitatis Medii Aevi (Bulletin Du Cange). 62: 137-160.

Doležalová, Lucie. 2007. Reception and its Varieties: reading, re-writing, and understanding Cena Cypriani in the Middle Ages. Trier: Wiss. Verl. Trier.

Doležalová, Lucie. 2017. “Measuring the Measuring Rod: The Bible and Parabiblical Texts within the History of Medieval Literature.” Interfaces 4: 39-58.

Livini, Andrea. 2011. “Il caso della Cena Cypriani: riflessioni sulla circolazione alto-medievale di un libellus tardo-antico.” Wiener Studien. 124: 279-295.

Manca, Massimo. 2008. “La Coena Cypriani fra pantagruelismi letterari e oralità popolare.” Incontri Triestini di Filologia Classica. 8: 85-97 (Edizioni Università Trieste).

Modesto, Christine. 1992. Studien zur Cena Cypriani und zu deren Rezeption. Classica Monacensia, 3. Tubingen: G. Narr.

Parker, Douglass. 1985. “The Curious Case of Pharaoh’s Polyp, and Related Matters.” SubStance. 14 (2): 74-86.

Radej, Irena. 1989. “Parodijske osobine teksta ‘Cena Cypriani.’” Latina et Graeca. 1 (34): 19-41.

Both men and women commonly feel regret about past love mistakes. Love regrets commonly concern jerks. Those who don’t study the past are doomed to repeat it. Medieval poetry can help women and men learn from the past and love more learnedly.

In northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, women poets known as trouvères mourned their love mistakes. One woman poet sang:

Never did I love while I was loved.
Now I regret it, if only that mattered,
for love had dealt me the finest
and the most handsome man in all the land
to have all honor and joy.
But now he has given his love to another,
who has gladly kept him for herself.
Alas! Why was I ever born?
By my pride I have lost my beloved.

Now Love has dealt me a cruel blow
when it grants to another the one I love,
but does not let me stop thinking of him
so that I can have neither comfort nor joy.
Alas! The love I ardently refused to share with him
will henceforth be conferred and bestowed on her.
But I’ve spoken too late, for I’ve already lost him;
Now I must love without being loved,
for I’ve vanquished my treacherous heart too late.

{ Onqes n’amai tant que jou fui amee;
Or m’en repent, se ce peüst valoir,
Q’amours m’avoit au meillour assenee,
Pour toute hounour et toute joie avoir,
Et au plus bel de toute la contree;
Mais ore a il autrui s’amour dounee,
Qi volentiers a soi l’a retenu.
Lasse, pour koi fui je de mere nee!
Par mon orguel ai mon ami perdu.

Or m’a amours malement assenee
Qant çou que j’aim fait a une autre avoir,
Ne ne m’an laist retraire ma pensee,
Ne si n’en puis soulas ne joie avoir.
Lasse, l’amour que tant li ai veee
Li seroit ja otroiie et dounee;
Mais tart l’ai dit, car je l’ai ja perdu;
Or me convient amer sans estre amee,
Car trop ai tart mon felon cuer vaincu. } [1]

Another trouvère similarly lamented:

Alas, why did I refuse
the one who loved me so?
So long he dreamed of me
and found no mercy there.
Alas, what a hard heart I have!
What can I say?
Insane
I was, more than mad,
when I rebuffed him.
I will do
justice to his wishes
if he should deign to hear me.

Truly, I should proclaim myself
both wretched and unlucky
when he who has not a bit of bitterness,
only great sweetness and modesty,
courted me so gently,
yet in me
found
no mercy. Insane
I was not to love him.
I will do
justice to his wishes
if he should deign to hear me.

He should have found
mercy when he asked for it.
Truly, I acted wrongly
when I refused it to him.
This has put me into such great dismay
that I will die of it
if I will not be reconciled
to him
without delay.
I will do
justice to his wishes
if he should deign to hear me.

{ Lasse, por quoi refusai
Celui qui tant m’a amee?
Lonc tens a a muoi musé
Et n’i a merci trouvee.
Lasse, si tres dur cuer ai!
Qu’en dirai?
Forssenee
Fui, plus que desvee,
Quant le refusai.
G’en ferai
Droit a son plesir,
S’il m’en daigne oïr.

Certes, bien me doi clamer
Et lasse et maleree
Quant cil ou n’a point d’amer,
Fors grant douçor et rosee,
Tant doucement me pria
Et n’i a
Recouvree
Merci; forssenee
Fui quant ne l’amai.
G’en ferai
Droit a son plesir,
S’il m’en daigne oïr.

Bien deüst avoir trouvé
Merci quant l’a demandée;
Certes, mal en ai ouvré
Quant je la li ai vëee;
Mult m’a mis en grand esmai.
G’en morrai,
S’acordee
Sanz grant demoree
A lui ne serai.
G’en ferai
Droit a son plesir,
S’il m’en daigne oïr. } [2]

Women who lack compassion for men will suffer for their own wickedness. As is most right and just for the particular circumstances, women should show mercy or lovingkindness or both to men.

Men deserve some blame for failures in love between women and men. Men have been taught nonsense — false knowledge about women and men. Yet men haven’t been shrewd enough to perceive the lies coming from authorities. A man trobairitz in southern France about the year 1200 lamented:

Already I have seen many things
that I would never have thought I saw,
and have played and laughed with such
as have barely given any pleasure.
I have served many men of merit
while never receiving a reward,
and have seen many know-nothings, with stupid words,
have very good results in their affairs.

And I have seen because of a wicked lover
a lady stop loving her husband,
and many a know-nothing obtain
more than a noble, learned man.
I have seen on behalf of ladies
many men in folly spend all their goods
and be badly received despite their giving,
and others get love without gifts.

I have seen ladies courted
with kindness and with honor;
then came an eager, ignorant man,
going quickly with know-nothing words
that for him obtain the better part.
Judge if they are a bad sort of work!
Many of those ladies in all their knowing
welcome better to their pleasure the most horrible.

{ Ieu ai ja vista manhta rei
Dont anc non fis semblant que vis,
Ez ai ab tal jogat e ris
Dont anc gaire no’m n’azautèi,
Ez ai servit a manht òm pro
Ont anc non cobrèi gazardó;
Ez a manh nèsci ab fòl parlar.
Ai vist tròp ben far son afar.

Et ai ja vist per àvol drut
A dòmna marit desamar
Ez a manht nèsci acabar
Pus qu’az un franc aperceubut;
E per dòmnas ai ja vist ieu
A manht òm metr’ en folh lo sieu,
Ez ai ne vist amat ses dar
E mal volgut ab molt donar.

Ieu ai vist dòmnas demandar
Ab plazers ez ab onramens,
Pueis veni’ us desconoissens
Abrivatz de nèsci parlar
Que n’avia la miélher part.
Esgardatz si son de mal art!
Manhtas n’i a que’ls plus savais
Acuelhon mielhs en totz lurs plais. } [3]

Women spend many billions of dollars on clothes, jewelry, and cosmetics. Yet many men are stupid enough to believe that the most effective way to appeal to women is to just “be themselves.” Even worse, many men are stupid enough to believe that playing the role of the chivalric knight to some lady-idol will excite her passion. Men should push aside the teachings of “refinement” and “good learning” and embrace the medieval spirit of empiricism and doing what works:

I have seen suffer for ladies
men of refinement and good learning,
and the know-nothing gets far more from the ladies
than the more knowing with his noble petitions,
and I have seen one of extreme discretion
lose status from being subject to treachery.
So there’s more value, in my understanding,
at times to be crazy than to have too much studied sense.

{ Ieu ai vist en dòmnas ponhar
D’ensenhatz e de ben aprés
E’l nèsci avenir nemés
Que’l plus savi ab gen prejar;
Ez ai vist nozer chausimen
A tròp-valer ab trichamen;
Per que val mais, a mos entens,
En luec foudatz que sobriers sens. } [4]

When refinement and good learning are a quilt of absurdities, men are better off acting as crazy know-nothings who behave according to the results they see. Or at least they should study Ovid and other, well-experienced jerk lovers.

Men should not take literally women’s advice on how men can be more attractive to women. Delusions are pervasive in politics and love. In northern France late in the thirteenth century, a woman trouvère sang to a man who loved her:

Love, what generates
in your heart such a conviction
as to think you have been rejected:
because I have shown you
a demeanor other than you desire?
But if only you knew
how a woman should retain
a lover she dreads to lose,
you would understand
that I did it in the hope
that by being harsh with you,
I might make you love me.
True heart, do not cease to love me,
for other than to cherish you
I can have no thought.

{ Amis, dont est engenree
en vo cuer tel volentés,
qu’estre cuidiés refusés:
pour ce que vous ai monstree
chiere autre que ne volés?
Mais se bien saviés
comment on doit retenir
amant c’on crient departir,
entendre porriés
que le fis par tel desir
qu’en aigrir
vous feïsse en moi amer.
Fins cuers, ne veulliés cesser,
car aillours que vous chierir
ne puis penser. } [5]

In short, this woman acted like a jerk to her boyfriend in the hope that he would then love her more. That doesn’t work with men. This woman was projecting her own feminine psychology onto her boyfriend. Women love jerks. Like Digenis Akritis, most men aren’t jerks and don’t enjoy acting like jerks. But men will do anything for women. Acting occasionally like a jerk to stir a woman’s passion is just another burden that men must bear.

In our benighted age of ignorance and bigotry, intelligent persons today should turn to medieval literature for true learning. Medieval literature can teach women about men’s vibrant imaginations and the importance of charity and mercy toward men. Men can learn from medieval literature expressive bravery, courageous resistance, and a sense that what they feel, other men too have felt. Medieval literature can help to cure the epidemic of love failure and regret.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• medieval women’s love poetry for men’s learning
• an impious medieval man’s response to gender injustice
• wife calling husband home in the shadow of Corpus Juris Civilis

Notes:

[1] Anonymous chanson d’amour, “Never did I love while I was loved {Onqes n’amai tant que jou fui amee},” st. 1 & 3 (of 3), Picard dialect of Langue d’oïl, text and translation (with some insubstantial changes) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 120, with medieval musical score, id. p. 119. Here are the manuscripts for this song. Some attribute this song to Richard de Fournival, who lived from about 1200 to 1260 in Amiens in northern France. Lepage (1981) p. 34.

Langue d’oïl, a medieval language spoken in northern France, is the main predecessor to modern French. Langue d’oïl was the language of the trouvères. Langue d’oc (Old Occitan), a medieval language spoken in southern France, was the language of the trobairitz.

In their introduction, Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) argues “The Case for the Women Trouvères.” I assume above that women trouvères wrote the songs cited. Excellent men poets are capable of faithfully representing women’s voices. So the long and bitter scholarly debates about whether the authors of these songs were actually women doesn’t concern me. These songs should be interpreted as representing authentic women’s voices, irrespective of who wrote them.

[2] Anonymous chanson d’ami, “Alas, why did I refuse {Lasse, por quoi refusai},”st. 1-3 (of 5), text and translation (with my minor modifications to track the original more closely) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 131, with medieval musical score, id. p. 132. Here are manuscripts for this song, and a recording by Perceval (1994).

Another woman trouvère lamented:

Oh, my love! Why did I not to your wishes
bed down while I could still see you?
Vile persons whom I greatly feared,
have so tormented and restrained me
that I could never reward your service.
If were possible, I would repent more
than Adam did for taking the apple.

{ Ahi, amins! tout a vostre devise
Que ne fis jeu tant con je vos veoie?
Jant vilainne cui je tant redotoie
M’ont si greveit et si areire mise
C’ains ne vos pou merir vostre servise.
S’estre poioit, plus m’an repantiroie
C’Adans ne fist de la pome c’ot prise. }

Duchesse de Lorraine, plainte, “Many a time I have been asked {Par maintes fois avrai esteit requise}” st. 2 (of 4), text (Lorraine dialect) and translation (with my minor modifications) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 124. After taking the apple in acordance with his wife’s advice, Adam had much less joy in his relation with Eve.

[3] Guilhem Ademar, “Already I have seen many things {Ieu ai ja vista manhta rei}” st. 1-3, Old Occitan text from Bec (1984) p. 58-9, my English translation, benefiting from the French translation of id. The subsequent quote is similarly sourced. Here are this song’s manuscripts and printings. For Guilhem Ademar’s corpus of songs, Almqvist (1951) and Andolfato (2014).

A women trouvère who chose as her lover the worse of two men realized after the fact the perversity of her desire:

Who of two leaves the better one,
against her judgment,
and takes for herself the worse —
I do believe that she demonstrates
the very highest folly.

{ Qui de .ii. biens le millour
Laist, encontre sa pensee,
Et prent pour li le piour,
Bien croi que c’est esprovee
Tres haute folour. }

Chanson d’ami, “I have cause to judge {Cause ai d’avoir mon penser},” refrain (of three stanzas), text (Picard dialect, from the Montpellier manuscript) and translation (with my modifications) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 138.

[4] Guilhem Ademar, “Ieu ai ja vista manhta rei” st. 4. Guilhem observed that even a man with non-normative formal learning is no match for women’s guile:

I have seen a man who knew well
and who studied necromancy and divination,
yet he was betrayed unjustly and wrongly by a woman.

{ Eu ai ia vist home qi conois fort
et a legit nigromansi’e sort
trazit per femn’a pechat et a tort }

Guilhem Ademar, “In summer when the flowers appear in the woods {El temps d’estui, qan par la flors el bruoill},”5.1-3, Old Occitan text from Andolfato (2014) p. 121, my English translation, benefiting from the Italian translation of id. Bec (1984) p. 58 also provides these lines.

[5] Anonymous motet, “Lady whom I dare not name {Dame que je n’os noumer},” Motetus, Picard dialect of Langue d’oïl, text and translation (with some insubstantial changes) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 237, with medieval musical score, id. p. 238-9. This motet survives only in the Monpellier Codex and was probably composed between 1270 and 1300. Méegens (2011), which accepts uncritically gynocentric ideology, discusses the women’s voice in thirteenth-century motets.

[videos] (1) Azam Ali singing “Lasse, pour quoi refusai,” from her album Portals of Grace (2002). (2) Anonymous 4 performing “Lonc tans a / Dame que je n’os noumer / Amis, donc est engenree,” from their album Love’s Illusion (1994).

References:

Almqvist, Kurt, ed. and trans. 1951. Poésies du Troubadour Guilhem Adémar. Uppsala: Almqvist et Wiksells.

Andolfato, Francesca. 2014. Le canzoni di Guilhem Ademar. Edizione critica, commento e traduzione. Ph.D. Thesis. Università Ca’Forscari Venezia.

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

Doss-Quinby, Eglal, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer, and Elizabeth Aubery. 2001. Songs of the Women Trouvères. New Haven: Yale University Press. (review by Carol Symes)

Lepage, Yvan G. 1981. Richard de Fournival, Œuvre lyrique. Publié en ligne par l’ENS de Lyon dans la Base de français médiéval, dernière révision le 12-10-2012.

Méegens, Rachel . 2011. “La Voix Féminine dans les Motets Français à Deux et Trois Voix du XIIIe Siècle.” Transposition. (1): online.

The Old French lay Ignaure, composed about the year 1200, tells a common story of penal bias in punishment for adultery. Men’s sexuality has long been socially constructed to have lower social value than women’s sexuality. However, with astonishing daring, Ignaure didn’t merely represent gynocentric reality. This marginalized lay also sought to change it. Ignaure presented a lesson from its man author to the woman patron who loved him. The lesson of Ignaure remains to be learned: women who reject the masculine model of Jesus’s love and seek to control and constrain men’s sexuality produce castration and death.

Violence against men in medieval literature and society, as in most societies today, is prevalent and unmarked. Gender bias in medieval violence gave elite medieval men a life expectancy about nine years less than that of elite medieval women. Violence against men has often targeted men’s genitals. When Heloise of the Paraclete’s relatives discovered her sexual affair with Peter Abelard, he was castrated. She wasn’t subject to any violence. Like some men academics today, the medieval courtier Sincopus castrated himself for career advancement. To enhance further his social standing, Sincopus subsequently hosted dinner parties for eminent guests. One night, guests inadvertently ate the ashes of Sincopus’s genitals. A culturally elaborate form of cannibalism, castration culture cuts deeply into European culture.

Ignaure introduces itself as an instructive tale of love. It subtly associates sense and wisdom with men’s seminal work:

Anybody who loves should not conceal,
rather should with none but fine words expose
that from which others can learn
and none but a fine lesson take.
…
Seeds are wasted if they’re kept covered.
That which is shown and revealed
can sow a seed in any place.
For this reason I wish to start a romance

{ Cors ki aimme ne doit reponre,
Ains doit auchun biel mot despondre,
U li autre puissent aprendre
Et auchun biel example prendre.
…
Sens est perdus ki est couvers;
Cis k’est moustrés et descouvers
Puet en auchun liu semenchier.
Pour chou voel roumans coumenchier } [1]

The central character of this romance is a very sexually potent knight named Ignaure. He enjoyed the music of flutes and pipes and the pleasure of gathering blossoms to celebrate the coming of May. Courtly love for women aroused and inflamed him. Yet he wasn’t a self-abasing knight groveling in service before one lady-idol. He was sexually loving the twelve high-born, beautiful wives of the twelve leading knights of the castle in which he was born. Women called him Nightingale. Women gave him money and goods in appreciation for his love. Who has ever welcomed the seeds of such romance?

The adulterous wives who loved Ignaure refused to accept that one man could fully love all twelve of them. At first they didn’t know that their extra-marital affairs were all with the same man. Some medieval men for amusement recited liturgical poems recast as drinking songs; other men confessed their weakness for beautiful, warmly receptive women like those in Pavia. In that spirit, these twelve wives got together in a garden and arranged a mock confession of their love affairs to one of them pretending to be a priest. That ordinary childish fun turned terrible when the fake woman priest found that all the women confessed to be having affairs with Ignaure. He was the same man with which the pretend woman priest herself was having a love affair!

No less prone to stumbling than Jesus’s own original twelve bumbling apostles, these twelve adulterous wives responded furiously and violently to not having sole possession of their lover. Jesus knew that the Samaritan woman at the well had five husbands and was currently sleeping with a man who wasn’t her husband. Yet Jesus treated the Samaritan woman with such dignity and respect that she called her fellow Samaritans to meet Jesus. When Jesus encountered a woman caught in the act of adultery, he saved her from punishment.[2] While the Gospel authors didn’t record such love toward relationally wayward men, Jesus almost surely would have treated men with equal compassion. Most importantly, Jesus, a fully masculine man, offered his love and his body wholly and completely to all who followed him. The twelve adulterous wives, however, plotted to kill Ignaure for loving all twelve of them.

One of the twelve adulterous wives lured Ignaure into an enclosed garden. There the other adulterous wives were hiding, waiting for him. They had sharp knives concealed under their cloaks. When the gate to the garden was locked and Ignaure had sat down, these woman rushed out. They were inflamed with anger and rage. They encircled Ignaure. Bereft of self-consciousness, they called Ignaure faithless, treacherous, and disloyal.

Despite being violently ambushed, Ignaure remained calm and retained his love for these adulterous wives. He declared that every one of them he loved truly with a pure and sincere heart. One adulterous wife cross-examined him, expecting with a leading question to lead him into an abject confession of wrong-doing:

“What?” said another, “what did you say?
You do not love me faithfully?”

{ “Coi?” dist une autre, “c’avés dit?
Enne m’amés vous par fianche?” }

Ignaure in response confidently asserted his capacity to love women:

Yes, with all my power,
you indeed and all the others,
I love truly, all of them, without doubt,
in both their solace and their delight.

{ Oïl, de toute ma poissanche,
Et vous et les autres testoutes
Ain ge bien, testoutes sans doutes,
Et lor solas et lor delis. }

Yelling and threatening, the women drew out their knives and said that they would kill him. Ignaure calmly responded:

Ladies, you would never be so cruel
that you would commit so great a sin.
If now I had my helmet laced on my head
and was riding my warhorse Equilanche
with shield around my neck and lance in hand,
so I would descend here,
and place myself at your mercy.
If I were to die at such beautiful hands,
I would be a martyr with the saints.
Well I know I was born at an auspicious hour.

{ Dames, ja ne serés si crueux
Que vous fachiés si grant pechiet.
S’or avoie l’iaume lachiet
Et fuisse el destrier d’Equilanche,
L’escu au col, el puing la lanche,
Si descendroie jou ichi
Et me metroie en vo merchi.
Se je muir a si bieles mains,
G’iere martyrs avoec les sains;
Bien sai qui fui nés en bonne eure. }

Most men don’t want to compete with women, even women who are trying to kill them. Ignaure’s bold and fearless speech brought love to the women’s hearts.

One of the adulterous wives proposed that Ignaure be allowed to love only one woman, and that he choose which one to love. The other adulterous wives agreed to impose this sexual constraint on Ignaure rather than to kill him. Ignaure chose the woman who had intervened to save his life. Yet he also truthfully and courageously said that he was “much grieved {molt dolans}” over losing the other women as concurrent lovers.

Having sex with only one woman creates risks for men. One risk is being stranded in a relationship that turns sexless. Another is that the man slips into gyno-idolatry and becomes oblivious to the reality that his beloved woman is a human like any other woman. Yet another risk is that the woman becomes excessively domineering over her lover and essentially makes him her prisoner. Moreover, when a man loves just one woman who is another man’s wife, he faces an increased risk of being caught in his frequent visits to her. Ignaure summarizes the risk to a man of having only one woman lover with a homely Old French proverb:

A mouse with just one hole can’t last long.

{ Soris ki n’a c’un trau poi dure. } [3]

Men deserve freedom to choose the sexual risks they will take. The angry, adulterous wives deprived Ignaure of choice.

The sexual constraint the women imposed on Ignaure proved disastrous for him and them. The knight caught his wife and Ignaure in bed together. Ignaure was imprisoned under the threat of being killed. The wife wasn’t punished. But she and the other adulterous wives were upset about the imprisonment of Ignaure. They swore to fast until they found out whether he would be killed or released. They thus engaged in ridiculous news-seeking and showed callus indifference to Ignaure’s actual fate. Fasting in Christian understanding is a practice of purification. Women must purify themselves to love men more substantively.

In the Christian Last Supper, Christ recast the Incarnation as Christians continually feeding upon his body. Christian cannibalism is loving incorporation. One of the betrayed husbands proposed a parody of the Eucharistic meal:

After four days, let’s remove from the serving man
all of his member dangling down below,
the delights of which have pleased our wives.
Then let’s make it appear to be something to eat;
the heart we’ll put in as well.
Twelve bowls from this we’ll make
and trick them into eating it,
because we couldn’t take any better revenge.

{ Au quart jor prendons le vassal
Tout le daerrain membre aval,
Dont li delis lor soloit plaire,
Si en fache on .I. mangier faire;
Le cuer avoec nous meterons.
.XII. escuieles en ferons;
Par engien lor faisons mangier,
Car nous n’en poons mieus vengier. }

The betrayed husbands made such a meal and gave it a sweet aroma. They praised this “good and fine {bonne et biele}” meal to their fasting wives. The adulterous wives broke their fast to eat the meal. They thus ate Ignaure’s penis and his heart. [4]

Most women don’t desire literally to eat their merely human lover’s penis and heart. To the principal adulterous wife, who was the pretend woman priest who became Ignaure’s exclusive lover, her husband declared:

Lady priestess,
you have already been his mistress.
You have eaten that of your great desire,
which provided you with much pleasure,
for you had no wish for any other.
In the end it has been served to you.
I have killed and destroyed your lover.
All can share a piece of the pleasure
from that which women crave most.
In having it, was there enough for you twelve?
We are now well-avenged for the shame.

{ Dame prestresse,
Ja fustes vous sa mistresse.
Mangié avés le grant desir
Ki si vous estoit em plaisir,
Car d’autre n’aviés vous envie;
En la fin en estes servie.
Vostre drut ai mort et destruit;
Toutes partirés au deduit
De chou que femme qui plus goulouse.
End avés assés en vous douse?
Bien nous sommes vengié del blasme. }

Ignaure had been killed. His heart and penis had been torn off from his body and made into a meal. The adulterous wives recognized their culpability in that horror. They vowed to God that they would never eat again. This vow they kept, and they too died.

The adulterous wives contributed to castration culture by hypocritically seeking to control and constrain Ignaure’s sexuality. Eunuchs were widely despised in ancient and medieval times. One man trobairitz, presenting himself as a eunuch, sang of his misery:

Of this I fully assure you:
that which gives a man the most happiness
I have lost and have instead been given shame,
and I dare not say who took it from me.
I have truly a good heart,
since I speak of such great embarrassment.

But for that reason I so hasten
to speak of this that I now lament:
because I wish easily, without delay, to relieve
all husbands from the nightmare,
and the anger and the worry,
for which they look at me with darkened face.

Although I act gracious and generous,
I am in fact flaccid and despicable,
a coward both armed and without breastplate.
I am leprous and foul-smelling,
a miser, a low-grade host,
of all by far the most inept warrior.

{ D’aisso vos fatz ben totz certz:
qu’aicels don hom es plus gais
ai perdutz, don ai vergoigna;
e non aus dir qui·ls me trais;
et ai ben cor vertadier
quar dic tant grand encombrier.

Mas per so sui tant espertz
de dir aisso que er plais:
quar voill leu gitar ses poigna
totz los maritz de pantais
e d’ira e de conssirier,
don mout m’en fan semblant nier.

Si·m fatz coindes e degertz
si·m sui eu flacs e savais
volpilz garnitz e ses broigna,
e sui mizels e putnais:
escars, vilan conduchier,
de tot lo plus croi guerrier. } [5]

Peter Abelard was viciously abused as a castrated man. Modern authorities, however, have obliterated castration as personal experience of men and cultural constraint on men. Instead, the psychoanalytic abstraction “castration complex” is used to disparage men’s wounds, fears, and anxieties. The adulterous wives duped into eating their lover’s penis finally digested the reality of castration culture. Castration culture must be understood before it leads to more deaths of men and women.

Ignaure includes a telling epilogue. In that epilogue, the author (self-identified as Renaut) blesses and praises his patron:

And a blessing be on her who had it made,
this lay which must be pleasing to lovers.
She has bound me so strongly
that I am unable to be untied.

{ Et benie soit ki le fist faire,
Cest lai ki as amans doit plaire.
Cele m’a si fort atachié
Que n’en puis estre deslachié. }

Renaut then describes the woman to whom he is bound. She is beautiful, charming, and very polite. Moreover, her breasts, which are “very firm {bien duretes},” push out her tunic, and she has a “lovely waist {gente par la chainture}.” In summary, she seems to be a woman of many men’s dreams. But Renaut hints at a difficulty he has:

She is the chain, all entirely.
Be aware that through this chain
the lady leads me wherever she wishes.
Much am I in a very sweet prison;
I have no desire to be ransomed.
That is the subject of this lay.
Here for you I will end it.
The French, the Poitevins, and the Bretons
call it the lay of the Prisoner.
Here ends the lay of the Prisoner.
I know about it absolutely nothing more.

{ C’est la caïne toute entiere.
Sachié que par cester caïne
La u la dame velt me mainne.
Molt sui en tres douche prison;
Issir n’en quier par raenchon.
C’est la matere de cel lay;
Ichi le vous definerai.
Franchois, Poitevin et Breton
L’apielent le lay del Prison.
Ichi faut li lays del Prison;
Je n’en sai plus ne o ne non. }

The last line above is best read ironically. The lay of the prisoner seems to describe the personal situation of the author Renaut. His woman patron apparently demanded to love him wholly and exclusively. That should be his choice. But he wasn’t given the freedom to choose. She, a person under whom he worked, enchained him.[6] The lesson of the lay is that women controlling and constraining men’s sexuality isn’t fruitful. Such possessive dominance in love leads to castration and death.

The lesson of the lay of the prisoner has largely been lost. The text itself survives in only one manuscript. One modern man medievalist with no appreciation for men’s interests interpreted Ignaure genderlessly as a “social drama of class conflict.”[7] Modern women medievalists have a keener sense of their gender identity and gender interests. Gynocentric medieval scholarship has established Christine de Pizan, Marguerite Porete, and the beguines as leading figures of the European Middle Ages. Not surprisingly, an eminent woman medievalist reads Ignaure as a satire against beguines and their Eucharistic piety.[8] Another woman medievalist reads the penal killing of Ignaure and the adulterous wives eating his penis and heart as an appealing metaphor for heterosexual love:

As a metaphor for love, the act of cannibalism gives voice to the wordless acts of physical love and intimate exchange that are difficult if not impossible to describe, and thus articulates the possibility of unity between two desiring subjects. … Placing satisfied female desire at the center of the tale also reclaims female literary influence, putting women in charge of heart and penis, in charge of desire and its related lyric outpouring. [9]

What about satisfying male desire? Is Ignaure’s sexual desire humanely satisfied in this romance? Why is castration culture unremarkable within dominant discourse?

Good-faith “and/both” interpretation can contribute to appreciating the cultural richness of medieval literature and activating its critical potential. Considering the Wife of Bath’s Prologue from the perspectives of “misogynists and feminists” merely exercises narrow minds across the linear moral hierarchy of today’s dominant, totalizing gender paradigm.[10] A good-faith effort at “and/both” thinking would also read the Wife of Bath’s Prologue from the perspectives of misandrists and meninists. Such readings can provide critical insight into the highly disproportionate imprisonment of men, pervasive anti-men bias in the administration of domestic violence laws, and the incarceration of men too poor to make onerous monthly payments obligations resulting from a man choosing nothing more than to have consensual sex. Even without a general commitment to “and/both” interpretation, medieval literary studies should strive to be welcoming and inclusive of meninist literary criticism.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• medieval monk castrated for adultery; husband doesn’t punish wife
• ostentatio genitalium saves world from pathological gynocentrism
• transcending legal constraints to meet men’s sexual needs

Notes:

[1] Ignaure vv. 1-4, 11-14, Old French text (Picard dialect) from Burgess & Brook (2010) p. 70, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The introductory verses of this lay aren’t transparent. They apparently relate to the amorous context of the epilogue. Id. pp. 60-1. My translation, while following the Old French closely, attempts to bring out the relation of sens {good sense; significance; seed; semen} and semencher {to plant seed; to have sex of reproductive type} to sexuality. Other scholars have recognized this relation. Id. and Bloch (1992) p. 127. An alternate translation of Ignaure, vv. 11-14:

Talent is wasted if it is kept hidden;
That which is displayed and revealed
Can begin to grow in some place.
For this reason I wish to begin a tale.

Burgess & Brook (2010) p. 71.

Ignaure is known through only one manuscript, Paris BnF fr. 1553, f. 485r – 488v. That manuscript appears to have been written between 1285 and 1290. Burgess & Brook (2010) p. 7. Ignaure, v. 621, identifies its author as Renaut. This Renaut has long been regarded as Renaut de Beaujeu, but recent scholarship suggests Renaud of Saint-Trivier. Scholars have dated the composition of Ignaure to the late twelfth century or early thirteenth century. Id. pp. 8-10. Here’s an incomplete bibliography of studies concerning Ignaure. On the structure of Ignaure in relation to other Old French lays, Sasková (2009).

Subsequent quotes from Ignaure are similarly sourced. They are vv. 310-11 (What?…), 312-5 (Yes, with all my power…), 324-33 (Ladies, you would never be so cruel…), 373 (A mouse…), 541-8 (After four days…), 565-76 (Lady priestess…), 627-30 (And a blessing be on her…), 652-62 (She is the chain…).

[2] John 4:1-42 (Samaritan woman at the well), John 8:1-11 (woman caught in adultery).

[3] Emphasizing the importance of this medieval folk wisdom, Ignaure repeats it subsequently with slightly different wording:

The mouse who has but one hole
is very soon caught in a trap.

{ La soris ki n’a c’un pertruis
Est molt tost prise en enganee. }

Vv. 4801-1. This proverbial wisdom exists in a variety of closely related medieval sayings, e.g. “God help the mouse who knows but one hole {Dahez ait la soriz qui ne set c’un pertuis},” and “The mouse is unhappy if it knows but one hole {La soriz est mauvese qui ne set c’um pertuis}.” Burgess & Brook (2010) p. 107, note to v. 373, and more generally, Singer (1999) pp. 154-5. The metaphorical implications for men’s loving sexual work with their penises is straight-forward.

[4] Ignaure has been classified with a group of tales known as the “eaten heart story.” In Stith Thompson’s Motif-Index of Folk Literature, the eaten heart story is Q478.1: “adultress is caused unwittingly to eat her lover’s heart (sometimes other parts of the body).” Cited in Burgess & Brook (2010) p. 25. Ten medieval European eaten heart tales have been identified. For a review, id., pp. 25-35. The adulterous wives eating Ignaure’s penis is central to the distinctiveness and meaning of Ignaure. Scholars haven’t considered seriously the eating of the penis or castration culture more generally. See, e.g. id. pp. 35-6.

[5] Raimbaut d’Aurenga (Raimbaut of Orange), “For a long time I have been hiding {Lonc temps ai estat cubertz}” st. 2-4, Old Occitan text (based on that of Milone (1998)) from Lirica Medievale Romanza, my English translation benefiting from the Italian translation of id. (Samantha Molinaro), the English translation from trobar, and that of Gaunt (1989) pp. 140-1. Lirica Medievale Romanza provides many other songs by Raimbaut d’Aurenga, as does trobar. 

At some point in his life, Raimbaut d’Aurenga apparently was highly capable of loving women well. He sang:

Thus about loving I say:
I love so guilelessly
her whom I should love,
that the best lovers
(if they were sure how truly I love her)
would come to me here
to beg from this day forth
that I teach them as apprentices
about good loving;
and even thus to beg
me about it would come five hundred ladies.

{ Don d’amar dic:
Qu’am si ses tric
Lieys qu’amar deg,
Que·l miels adreg
(s’eron sert cum l’am finamens)
M’irion sai
Preguar hueymai
Que·ls essenhes cum aprendens
De ben amar;
E neus preguar
M’en venrion dompnas cinc cens. }

Raimbaut d’Aurenga, “I am very pleased {Assaz m’es belh},” st. 4, Old Occitan text (Pattison edition) via Lirica Medievale Romanza, my English translation, benefiting from that of trobar and Gaunt (1989) p. 124. Raimbaut expresses in some of his songs vigorous sexuality:

Indeed it shall be, lady, a great honor
if I from you am granted
the privilege under the covers
of holding you in naked embrace;
you are worth as much as the best hundred ladies!
And I’m not overly boastful —
the sole thought of this has rejoiced my heart
more than if I were the emperor.

{ Ben aurai, dompna, grand honor
si ja de vos m’es jutgada
honranssa que sotz cobertor
vos tenga nud’ embrassada;
car vos valetz las meillors cen!
Q’ieu non sui sobregabaire —
sol del pes ai mon cor gauzen
plus que s’era emperaire! }

Raimbaut d’Aurenga, “I do not sing for bird nor flower {Non chant per auzel ni per flor},” st. 3, Old Occitan text (Pattison edition) via Lirica Medievale Romanza, my English translation benefiting from that of trobar. See similarly Raimbaut d’Aurenga, “Amid the frost and wind and mud {Entre gel e vent e fanc},” st. 8, available with Old Occitan text and English translation at trobar and Gaunt (1989) p. 142.

As a model for his lady and him, Raimbaut references Iseult and Tristan cuckolding her husband King Mark:

See, lady, how God helps
the lady agreeable to loving.
Iseult was in great fear,
then soon she was counseled.
She made her husband believe
that no man born of woman
had touched her – now
the very same thing you can do!

{ Vejatz, dompna, cum Dieus acor
Dompna que d’amar s’agrada.
Q’Iseutz estet en gran paor,
Puois fon breumens conseillada;
Qu’il fetz a son marit crezen
C’anc hom que nasques de maire
Non toques en lieis. – Mantenen
Atrestal podetz vos faire! }

“Non chant per auzel ni per flor,” st. 6, sourced as previously. In the Iseult & Tristan tales of Thomas of Britain and Béroul, Iseult passes a chastity test throught a guileful, covering interaction with Tristan (an ambiguous oath). Whether Raimbaut was castrated at some point in his life, or he only claimed to be castrated to dupe husbands, isn’t known. Cf. Gaunt (1989) pp. 139-43. But castration unquestionably was a real risk that medieval men endured.

Another, possibly related poem, attests to medieval awareness of the horror of castration. This Old Occitan poem tells of Linaura (an Old Occitan form for Ignaure) being castrated and killed for having sex with another man’s wife:

From Linaura, know
how he was greatly loved
and how all the ladies
loved him and sought him,
until the wicked husband,
by great treachery,
caught him and had him killed.
But this was most deplorable,
that his penis was butchered.
He was, I believe, cut up
and divided into four parts
by those four husbands.
He was the master
of his office
until he was betrayed
and killed by the jealous.

{ De Linaura sapchatz
com el fon cobeitatz
e com l’ameron totas
donas e·n foron glotas,
entro·l maritz felon,
per granda trassion,
lo fey ausir al plag.
Mas aco fon mot lag
que Massot so auzis;
e·n fo, so cre, devis
e faitz catre mitatz
pels catre molheratz.
Sest ac la maÿstria
dedintre sa bailia,
entro que fon fenitz
e pels gilos traïtz. }

Arnaut Guilhem de Marsan, ensenhamen “Who is able to understand well {Qui comte vol apendre},” vv. 217-32, Old Occitan text of Gouiran (2014) via Rialto, my English translation, benefiting from the French translation of id. and the English translation of Burgess & Brook (2010) pp. 14-5. This poem dates to 1170-80. Philologists have debated the meaning of moheratz and massot. Following Mouzat and Pirot, I’ve interpreted these words as “husbands” and “club / penis” (mace / massue). For the philological issues, with relevant scholarly references, id.

Ignaure’s castration seems to have been widely known in late twelfth-century France. Chrétien de Troyes refered to Ignaure:

That is the greatly loved Ignaure,
a pleasing man who loves women.

{ C’est Iagnaures li covoitiez,
Li amoreus et li pleisanz. }

The Knight of the Cart {Chevalier de la charette}, vv. 5788-9, Old French text and English translation from Burgess & Brook (2010) p. 13. Moreover, Linaura (Old Occitan form of Ignaure) was a code name (senhal) used for Raimbaut d’Aurenga in the songs of the men trobairitiz Giraut de Bornelh and Gaucelm Faidit. Id. p. 15. See also Samantha Molinaro’s commentary on Raimbaut d’Aurenga.

[6] Women using their positions of authority to coerce men sexually is morally wrong. That’s also formally illegal in most places. In thirteenth-century Navarre, Thibault de Champagne sang of a similar imprisonment:

Lady, when I stood before you
and I saw you for the first time,
my heart leaped forth so far
that it remained with you when I left.
Then I was led without offer of ransom
to be captive in the sweet prison

{ Dame, quant je devant vos fui
Et je vos vi premierement,
Mes cuers aloit si tresaillant
Qu’il vos remest quant je m’en mui.
Lors fu menés sanz raençon
En la douce chartre en prison }

“Just like the unicorn am I {Ausi conme unicorne sui}” vv. 10-15, Old French text from Samuel N. Rosenberg, my English translation benefiting from that of id. and O’Sullivan (2005) pp. 190-1. Here’s the song with a modern French translation. Culpability for this man’s imprisonment at least in part goes to men’s human nature. This song concludes with recognizing that this man, like the many men vastly disproportionately imprisoned, “bears so heavy a burden {soustenir si grevain fes}.” At least this man only metaphorically lost his heart, rather than being killed and having his penis and heart eaten, as happened to Ignaure. Anne Azéma performed this song with appropriate poignancy.

[7] Bloch (1991) p. 124. In Bloch’s line of thinking, the men-abasing sexual feudalism of courtly love expresses misogyny.

[8] Newman (2013) pp. 178-81. In this interpretation, acts of the wives that have pious analogues, e.g. confession and fasting, represent piety. Acts of the wives that don’t have pious analogues, e.g. adultery and planning to kill Ignaure, are parodies of piety. That’s a tendentious pattern of interpretation.

[9] Heneveld (2018) p. 412.

[10] Newman (2013) pp. 172-3. On “a hermeneutics of  both/and” more generally, id. pp. 7-13. Looking at the Wife of Bath’s Prologue from the perspectives of feminism and misogyny surely isn’t what “sic et non {yes and no}” meant to Peter Abelard.

[image] Venus worshipped by six men, all legendary lovers: Achilles, Tristan, Lancelot, Samson, Paris and Troilus. Decorated birth tray (desco da parto), made c. 1400. Ascribed to variously to Master of Charles of Durazzo, Master Taking of Tarento, and Francesco de Michele. Preserved as item R.F.2089 in the Musée du Louvre (Paris). Via Wikimedia Commons.

On “and/both” interpretation of this depiction, Newman (2013) pp. 8-10. This birth tray suggests to me gyno-idolatry. A particular woman enjoying six men lovers, or a particular man relishing twelve women lovers, seems to me understandable in both sacred and secular ways. Such understanding seems to me less socially significant than understanding the structural oppressions of gynocentrism.

References:

Bloch, R. Howard. 1991. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Burgess, Glyn S., and Leslie C. Brook, ed. and trans. 2010. The Old French Lays of Ignaure, Oiselet and Armours. Gallica 18. Cambridge: Brewer.

Gaunt, Simon. 1989. Troubadours and Irony. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Heneveld, Amy. 2018. “Eating your lover’s otherness: The narrative theme of the Eaten Heart in the Lai d’Ignaure.” Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes / Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies. 36 (2): 393-412.

Newman, Barbara. 2013. Medieval Crossover: reading the secular against the sacred. The Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. (Blake Gutt’s review, Ryan McDermott’s review, Karl F. Morrison’s review, Galina Zelenina’s review)

O’Sullivan, Daniel E. 2005. Marian Devotion in Thirteenth-Century French Lyric. University of Toronto Press.

Sasková, Silvie. 2009. The Structural Arrangement of the Old French Narrative Lays. Ph.D. Thesis. University of Canterbury. School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics.

Singer, Samuel. 1999. Thesaurus Proverbiorum Medii Aevi, Bd. 8, Linke – Niere Lexikon der Sprichwörter des Romanisch-Germanischen Mittelalters. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Both in classical Socratic learning and in Christian tradition, men are figuratively constructed as women participating in the awesome privilege of incarnating both thoughts and human beings. Yet men have their own natural gender blessing. Consistent with the promise from God recorded in Hebrew scripture, men with their testicles bear seminal creativity to make descendants as numerous as stars of heaven.

Women throughout history have been naturally privileged to give birth. In the classical Socratic method of learning, to nurture their own thinking men must develop the procreative capabilities of women. Socrates himself explained how as a teacher he was like women midwives:

All that is true of their art of midwifery is true also of mine, but mine differs from theirs in being practiced upon men, not women, and in tending their souls in labor, not their bodies. … Now those who associate with me are in this matter also like women in childbirth. They are in pain and are full of trouble night and day, much more than are women. My art can arouse this pain and cause it to cease.

{ Τῇ δέ γ᾿ ἐμῇ τέχνῃ τῆς μαιεύσεως τὰ μὲν ἄλλα ὑπάρχει ὅσα ἐκείναις, διαφέρει δὲ τῷ τε ἄνδρας ἀλλὰ μὴ γυναῖκας μαιεύεσθαι καὶ τῷ τὰς ψυχὰς αὐτῶν τικτούσας ἐπισκοπεῖν ἀλλὰ μὴ τὰ σώματα. … πάσχουσι δὲ δὴ οἱ ἐμοὶ συγγιγνόμενοι καὶ τοῦτο ταὐτὸν ταῖς τικτούσαις· ὠδίνουσι γὰρ καὶ ἀπορίας ἐμπίμπλανται νύκτας τε καὶ ἡμέρας πολὺ μᾶλλον ἢ ἐκεῖναι ταύτην δὲ τὴν ὠδῖνα ἐγείρειν τε καὶ ἀποπαύειν ἡ ἐμὴ τέχνη δύναται. } [1]

Christians have traditionally understood Mary, the mother of Jesus, as the first tabernacle of Christ’s body. Christians seek to follow Mary in incarnating God. The great Christian scholar Origen of Alexandria, writing early in the third century, explained:

The soul conceives from this seed of the Word and the Word forms a fetus in itself until it gives birth to a spirit respecting the majesty of God.

{ Concipit ergo anima ex hoc verbi semine et conceptum format in se verbum, donec pariat spiritum timoris Dei. } [2]

For Christians, Mary the mother of Jesus has long been a figure of hyper-veneration {hyperdulia}. From the earliest Christian understanding, the Christian church has been a figure of the heavenly Jerusalem, the bride of Christ, and the eternal mother of all Christians. To be Christian, men must learn from Mary and embrace feminine receptivity in relation to God.

The eminent ninth-century poet and theologian Hrabanus Maurus recognized men’s natural gender blessing. Hrabanus about 810 created a magnificent book, In Honor of the Holy Cross {In honorem sanctae crucis}. That book contains 28 intricately shaped poems (carmina figurata).[3] One of its carmina figurata shows Jesus with his arms extended widely, reaching beyond the frame of the image to embrace all of the world. While Jesus is not depicted on the cross, his bodily gesture prefigures his crucifixion. The figure of Jesus is composed within a square field of letters. Read as horizontal lines of text, those letters make a poem in praise of the word of God incarnated as Jesus Christ. Hrabanus literally constructed Jesus with letters. As the image makes clear, Jesus isn’t a neuter word. Christ is a fully masculine man.

Hrabanus’s prose explanation for this poem instructs the reader to trace with a finger the outline of Jesus’s body. From the middle finger of Jesus’s right hand, stroking Jesus’s arm, and then caressing to the top of Jesus’s head traces the text “Dextra Dei summi cuncta creavit Jesus {Jesus has created all things by the right hand of the most high}.” Similarly stroking from the top of Christ’s head to the middle finger of Christ’s left hand generates the text “Christus laxabit e sanguine debita mundo {Christ will pay with his blood for the sins of the world}.” Tracing from the ring finger of Jesus’s right hand, along the bottom of his arm, and then down the right side of Jesus’s body to his right ankle gives “In cruce sic positus desolvens vincla tyranni {On the cross thus placed, he delivers us from the chains of the tyrant}.” Turning to understand, a reader traces the outline of Christ’s right foot and then caresses up between Christ’s legs to his loincloth. One’s finger then drops to earthy understanding in tracing the outline of Jesus’s left foot. The whole movement generates the text “Aeternus dominus deduxit ad astra beatos {The eternal Lord has guided the blessed to the stars}.”[4] The overall shape of this tracing is masculine genitals, with the penis pointing up through Jesus’s loincloth to heaven. For those who appreciate it, masculine sexuality points from earthly gynocentric tyranny to blessed, external life with Christ in heaven.

The words woven through Christ’s loincloth emphasize the blessing of men’s sexuality. Classical literature and sculpture representing men’s penises were predominately concerned with the size of men’s penises. Jesus, who joined heaven and earth, made all one from the small to the large:

A small cloth covers that which contains the stars
and with only the palm of his hand he encloses the entire world.

{ Veste quidem parva hic tegitur qui continet astra,
atque solum palmo claudit ubique suo. } [5]

As its folds make clear, the small cloth (the loincloth) covers Jesus’s masculine genitals. Jesus’s testicles contain the stars in the sense that they encompass the central blessing of Hebrew scripture: the divine promise of descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven.[6] The background poem for the loincloth underscores God’s creative power:

Here is truth clothed in a garment which Christ with his teaching
reveals in explication: this small garment the law
signifies, for with a few letters it covers
the all-powerful Creator, the Ruler who contains all things.
To him the world relates, the stars and the sea and the air.
Our nature closely is linked with our Creator,
for it covers that Creator. He holds the dry land in his palm,
protects it, and makes it visible to humanity by his power.
He is revealed everywhere in this world through his work.

{ induta en veritas veste quid dogmate christus
indicat exponam legem parva hic quoque vestis
significat namque hic tegitur in grammate raro
summipotens auctor qui continet omnia rector
ad quem mundus pertinet astra ac pontus et aether
nostraque natura arta atque sociate creanti ets
nam auctorem haec illum palmo qui claudit et arua
obtegit humano aut claudit uisu ecce potentem
ipse tamen ostensus ubique suo est oere orbi huic }

Human nature is closely linked with the creation of the world and the incarnation of human beings. All men have a natural, distinctive gender blessing. Men bear the blessing of seminal creativity to make descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven.[7]

A leading sex theorist has recently emphasized that men don’t have intrinsically less biological value than women do. Folk wisdom tends to regard men as relatively expendable because (male) sperm is plentiful while (female) eggs have a small, fixed supply. Gynocentric society treats fathers as persons readily reduced to visitors in their children’s lives, and treats men as readily expendable on sinking ships or in wars. Yet from an evolutionary perspective, reproduction has no value without survival to reproduce again. Men have been and continue to be crucial for children and civilizations to grow and flourish.[8]

Men don’t have value merely in all their doings for others. From a Christian perspective, men are as much beloved children of God as women are. Men in their human being are capable of incarnating divine being in the same way as any woman today could. Moreover, as Hrabanus recognized in his magnificent carmen figuratum of Jesus, men with their testicles, penises, and plentiful sperm represent the divine blessing of potentially making descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• sacredness of sex highlighted in Guibert’s medieval metamorphoses
• sacralizing men’s sexuality: Jacob & his wives to Jesus & his church
• the penis’s image problem in comparative gender perspective

Notes:

[1] Plato, Theaetetus 150, 151, Greek text and English translation (modified slightly for ease of reading) from Fowler (1921).

[2] Origen of Alexandria, Homily 12.7 (from his homilies on Leviticus), quoted in Coon (2004) p. 295 (with my changes to the translation for clarity). Cf. John 1:1-4, 14. This understanding of masculine pregnancy is similar to that in Philo of Alexandria and rabbinic midrashim. Id. Here’s Origen’s full homily in Latin, with an English translation. For all of Origen’s homilies on Leviticus in English translation, Barkley (1990).

Throughout history, masculinity or being “virtuous” has often been oppressively constructed as an attribute that men must work to achieve. That was the ideological structure in the Carolingian Empire. Stone (2012). Not surprisingly, men have often preferred to be characterized as pigs.

[3] Hrabanus Maurus (lived about 783 to 856 in present-day Germany) was a scholar, poet, monk, and theologian. As a young man Hrabanus studied under the eminent scholar Alcuin of York, Abbot of Tours. Hrabanus himself became Abbot of the Benedictine Abbey of Fulda in 822.

Particularly learned in the Torah of Hebrew scripture, Hrabanus became the foremost biblical scholar in the Carolingian Empire. He associated with the leading religious and political authorities of his time. The Holy Roman Emperor Lothar I, in a letter he wrote in 854, ranked Hrabanus with the eminent church fathers Jerome, Ambrose, Augustine, and Pope Gregory the Great. Coon (2011) p. 13. Hrabanus appears in Dante’s Paradiso, Canto 12, in the fourth sphere of heaven. Hrabanus appears there with Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, Hugh of St. Victor, Orosius, Boethius, Gratian, and other eminent, learned Christian men.

Hrabanus wrote In honorem sanctae crucis, his first book, for his teacher Alquin. Alcuin composed some carmina figurata in the tradition of the early-fourth-century poet Publius Optatianus Porfyrius. One of Alcuin’s carmina figurata is an acrostic in praise of the cross, De sancta cruce. Hrabanus took carmina figurata to a much higher level of sophistication. His In honorem sanctae crucis, completed about 810, was recognized as a masterpiece. Hrabanus sent copies to eminent patrons, friends, and monasteries: Emperor Louis the Pious, Pope Gregory IV, bishops Haistulf of Mainz and Otgarius of Mainz, and the monasteries of Saint-Martin and of Saint-Denis.

While not well-know today, In honorem sanctae crucis (also known as On praise of the holy cross {De laudibus sanctae crucis}) was long regarded as an important work. About 81 medieval manuscripts of In honorem sanctae crucis are known, ten surviving from the ninth century. The last manuscript copy was made in 1600 for the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf. A printed version was published in 1503.

The best current critical edition of In honorem sanctae crucis is Perrin (1997), building upon Perrin (1990). For a detailed technical analysis of a tenth-century manuscript (Cambridge University, Trinity College, MS B.16.3), Panayotova & Ricciardi (2017). On the manuscript and print production history of In honorem sanctae crucis from the ninth century to the seventeenth century, Michael (2019).

Ancient and early medieval texts presented letters without spacing for words (scriptio continua). Ancient and early medieval text also had little or no punctuation and little or no distinctive capitalization. These practices of textual presentation made carmina figurata more accessible to ancient and medieval readers than to readers today.

Hrabanus made some adjustments to letters in creating the 28 carmina figurata of In honorem sanctae crucis:

To make his letters fit the established grid, Hrabanus freely bent the rules of orthography and grammar. In 26 instances he elided words as when caeleste animal was rendered caelestanimal. He dropped letter ‘u’ following ‘q’ 295 times. Readers would know that qater = quater and atqe = atque. In 104 cases Hrabanus dropped letters that are not pronounced. These and other strategies enabled him to free up space for 811 letters according to Perrin’s analysis. By the same token, Hrabanus added letters to fill out blank spaces (‘caedris’ for ‘cedris’) 36 times. Clearly his major problem was fitting his words into the available spaces on the grid. Hrabanus’s linguistic ingenuity offers an interesting contrast to the linguistic hypercorrectivity of many of his contemporaries.

Contreni (1998).

[4] The Latin texts and English translations for these tracing are from Schipper (2014) p. 194, with my minor modifications. The subsequent two quotes are similarly from id. pp. 194, 196. The interpretation of the fourth tracing is mine.

Hrabanus regarded the written word as having eternal value. In a poetic preface to tituli that he wrote about 820 for churches that Abbot Eigil of Fulda founded, Hrabanus wrote:

No work arises that age, full of years,
does not destroy, or wicked time overturn:
only written things escape this fate, repel death,
only written things in books renew what has been.
God’s finger carved written things aptly
on rock, when he gave his Law to his people.
The world that is, has been, or may come in future’s chance —
these written things teach all their connected speakings.

{ Nullum opus exsurgit quod non annosa vetustas
Expugnet, quod non vertat iniqua dies:
Grammata sola carent fato, mortemque repellunt,
Praeterita renovant grammata sola biblis.
Grammata nempe dei digitus sulcabat in apta
Rupe, suo legem cum dederat populo,
Sunt, fuerant, mundo venient quae forte futura,
Grammata haec monstrant famine cuncta suo. }

Hrabanus, “Since the benign Law of God in mastery rules the wide world {Lex pia cumque dei latum dominans regit orbem}” vv. 7-14 (of 14), Latin text from Goodman (1985) pp. 248-9, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The rare Latin word famen, plural famina, evokes the Hisperica Famina. A similar poem, which the first line Nullum opus exsurgit quod non annosa vetustas, appears in the Anthologia Latina (Riese 418). It’s labeled an epigram of Seneca.

[5] Cf. Isaiah 40:12, 48:13; Psalm 102:25. Christians seek to model themselves on Christ. Hrabanus quoted Origen:

Understand that you are another world in small, and inside of you is the sun, the moon, and stars.

{ intellige te alium mundum esse in parvo, et esse intra te solem, esse lunam esse etiam stellas }

Origen, Homilies on Leviticus 5.2, quoted in Hrabanus, Commentary on Leviticus {Expositiones in Leviticum} 2.3. For Origen’s Homilies on Leviticus, Barkley (1990). Coon associates this text with “remaking of the ascetic male into a dazzling vessel of the divine.” Coon (2004) p. 297. That text, however, doesn’t just concern “the ascetic male.” It relates to all men. Hrabanus’s representation of Christ presents a profound interpretation of being Christian.

[6] Genesis 15:5, 22:17, 26:4; Exodus 32:13; 1 Chronicles 27:23. Hrabanus wrote:

What is the Word if not semen? When the Word is emitted in an orderly fashion, the hearing mind — like a conceiving uterus — is impregnated for the offspring of good works.

{ Quid est sermo, nisi semen, qui dum ordinate mittitur, audientis mens, quasi concipientis uterus, ad boni operis prolem fecundatur. }

From Hrabanus’s commentary on Leviticus, written about 820. Via Coon (2004) pp. 278-9. For this understanding, Hrabanus apparently drew upon the exegetical thinking of Gregory the Great. Id.

Rabbinic authorities had similar understanding of the seminal blessing. In the Avot and the Mishnah, written about 200 GC, the model rabbinic sage never loses a drop of Torah. Id. p. 296, with related discussion p. 294. Present-day U.S. child support laws provide strong incentives for men to account for every drop of their semen. See Phillips v. Irons, 354 Ill. App. 3d 1164, 2005 Ill. App. LEXIS 1807 (Ill. App. Ct. 1st Dist. 2005), 883 N.E.2d 1151, summarized here.

[7] My interpretation of Hrabanus’s carmen figuratum of Jesus builds upon those of Coon and Schipper. Coon declares:

In his image of Christ, the Carolingian artist both screens the divine phallus from human gaze and simultaneously reveals its glorious nature and function through the agency of the letters scattered across the loincloth. It is a fitting combination for the Son of God, who fuses divine and human attributes and who is himself the Word. … For Hrabanus those stars {of Genesis 15:5} were future Christian souls born through the potency of Christ’s preaching.

Coon (2011) pp. 219-20. Schipper states:

But what exactly does Hrabanus mean to say with these clearly sensual if not erotic references to caressing movements, broken movements, and references to stars at the centre of the loin cloth of Christ? The temptation, of course, is to conclude immediately that something intentionally erotic is meant; indeed, that astra is intended as an indication of what lies beneath the loin cloth, namely Christ’s manhood. The very position of the inscription invites such an interpretation, and it is one I’m sure Hrabanus must have been aware of, even if he never says so in so many words. But there is a broad explanation as well. … The general direction of meaning of these lines {the background poem for the loincloth} suggests God or the Law covering Truth, God as the all-powerful Creator who has fashioned and revealed all the created world. But Hrabanus never lets go of the literal meaning of a small cloth (parua … uestis) covering that which creates or procreates, Christ’s penis, which is not just a penis, but also the creator (or the creative power) who makes the created world visible for mankind.

Id. pp. 195-7. In my understanding, Hrabanus used astra in specific reference to the central blessing of Hebrew scripture, and the shape of the fourth tracing he meant to represent masculine genitals.

[8] Ryan (2020). Most medievalists haven’t read Ryan and similar thinkers. Like many medievalists discussing gender and “the body,” Coon refers to men’s bodies abstractly and makes broad claims supporting current academic dogma such as gender theory:

the body of a monk served as a bridge between classical Rome and an encroaching Dark Age. … the monastic body expressed the imperial ambitions of the religious leadership of the Carolingian Empire. …. clerical elites forged a model of gender that sought to feminize lay male bodies through textual, ritual, and spatial means, reflecting the rivalry between lay and priestly groups. … For gender theorists, monastic masculinity also discloses the queerness of the Carolingian cloister. … The monastic refectory is a sparring ground, where corporal pleasures, such as eating or moving the eyes over the bodies of other diners, are crushed by power of the Word performed by a lector trained in the art of classical oratory. The dining hall of a monastery is a perilous space, where monks are “invited into the body only to resist.”{reference note omitted} … Hrabanus’s In Honor of the Holy Cross visualizes the fundamental spiritual dilemma of the Dark Age body: the body is central to the meaning of the faith but its centrality occasions anxiety among the faithful.

Coon (2011) pp. 2, 10, 249, 252. In contrast to Coon’s dark and stormy account, Stone states, “the Carolingian religious elite do not seem to have found celibacy difficult.” Stone (2012) p. 326. Medieval scholarship would be more interesting and serve social justice better if it addressed the specific biological reality of men’s bodies in relation to structures of oppression, e.g. violence against men’s genitals, normative mutilation of men’s genitals, culture support for castrating men, and laws that suppress men’s plentiful seminal capabilities.

[image] Carmen figuratum of Jesus Christ in Hrabanus Maurus’s In honorem sanctae crucis. Folio 8v (excerpt) from instance made in mid-eleventh-century Paris. That instance follows the content of the ninth-century instance made in Fulda for the Holy Roman Emperor Louis the Pious. Manuscript preserved as Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits (BnF) Latin 11685. The subsequent two images are excerpts from that image, with my blue-guideline overlay added to the first of those two.

Other instances of this carmen figuratum from Hrabanus’s In honorem sanctae crucis are freely available online. See:

1. Folio 3v in a ninth-century instance made in Fulda and probably offered to the Abbey of Saint-Denis between 845 and 847. Preserved as BnF Latin 2422.
2. Folio 8v in an instance made between 825-850 in Fulda. Preserved as Biblioteca Apostolia Vaticana. Reginensis lat. 124.
3. Folio 4v in a tenth-century instance. Preserved as BnF Latin 2421. Kelin Michael suggests that this manuscript “may be an Anglo-Saxon copy made in the 10th century during a period of Benedictine monastic reform.” Jesse Hurlbut shows details of this manuscript.
4. Folio 3v in a tenth-century instance. Preserved as Cambridge University, Trinity College, MS B.16.3. On this instance, Panayotova & Ricciardi (2017).
5. Folio 6v in an instance produced in 1490 in Lorch, Germany. Preserved as Württembergische Landesbibliothek (Stuttgart, Germany), Cod.theol.et phil.fol.122.
6. Folio 9v in an instance made for Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II in 1600. Preserved as BnF Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Ms-472 réserve.

References:

Barkley, Gary Wayne, tr. 1990. Origen. Homilies on Leviticus: 1-16. Fathers of the Church, Vol. 83. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.

Contreni, John J. 1998. “Review of Perrin (1997), Rabani Mauri In honorem sanctae crucis.” The Medieval Review. Online.

Coon, Lynda L. 2004. “‘What is the Word if not semen?’ Priestly bodies in Carolingian exegesis.” Ch. 15 (pp. 278-300) in Brubaker, Leslie, and Julia M. H. Smith. Gender in the Early Medieval World: East and West, 300-900. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Coon, Lynda L. 2011. Dark Age Bodies: gender and monastic practice in the early medieval West. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press. (review by Rebecca Hardie)

Fowler, Harold N., ed. and trans. 1921. Plato. Vol. 7. Theaetetus. Loeb Classical Library, Vol. 128. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.

Godman, Peter. 1985. Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. London: Duckworth.

Michael, Kelin. 2019. “The Transition of Material: Hrabanus Maurus’s In honorem sanctae crucis as Manuscript and Printed Book.” Paper presented at The Materiality of Devotion Exhibition Symposium, Emory University, Mar. 1, 2019. (video of presentation)

Panayotova, Stella and Paola Ricciardi. 2017. “Painting the Trinity Hrabanus: Materials, Techniques and Methods of Production.” Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society. 16: 227-249. (web-viewable version)

Perrin, Michel. 1990. “Le De laudibus Sanctae Crucis de Raban Maur et sa Tradition Manuscrite au IXe siècle.” Revue d’Histoire des Textes. 19 (1989): 191-251.

Perrin, Michel, ed. 1997. Rabani Mauri In honorem Sanctae Crucis. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis, Vols. 100, 100 A. Turnholti: Brepols.

Ryan, Peter. 2020. “Gynocentrism, Sex Differences and the Manipulation of Men.” Available online at both Gynocentrism and Its Cultural Origins and A Voice for Men.

Schipper, William. 2014. “Secretive Bodies and Passionate Souls: Transgressive Sexuality Among the Carolingians.” Pp. 173-199 in Kambaskovic, Danijela, ed. Conjunctions of Mind, Soul and Body from Plato to the Enlightenment. Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.

Stone, Rachel. 2012. Morality and Masculinity in the Carolingian Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (review by Valerie L. Garver, review by Clara Harder)

Slut walks, vagina monologues, and similar public celebrations of women’s strong, independent sexuality aren’t new cultural phenomena. The story of the sexually eager widow of Ephesus has been known for at least two millennia. The sixth-century Byzantine Empress Theodora was famous for her vibrant, dynamic sexuality. College students in English-speaking countries today, deprived of adequate education in medieval literature, probably know only of Chaucer’s now revered Wife of Bath. But many women in medieval fabliaux also exemplify women’s sexual strength. Moreover, as scholars in recent decades have affirmed, in northern France in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, women trouvères themselves sang of their own strong, independent sexuality.

Medieval husbands who failed to satisfy their wives felt the force of their wives’ sexual vigor and independence. Ten medieval wives got together in a tavern and ridiculed their husbands’ inadequate penises. About 1500, two married women and a widow in Scotland viciously abused their husbands for sexual failures. One woman trouvère sang to her lover with spiteful glee:

You will have the pleasure,
my lover, from me,
as my husband never has.
You have deserved it well,
with good faith.
You will have the pleasure,
my lover, from me,
Slanderers are on watch,
day and night,
to do us evil.
You will have the pleasure,
my lover, from me,
as my husband never has.

{ Vous arez la druerie,
Amis, de moi,
Ce que mes mariz n’a mie.
Vos l’avez bien deservie
En bone foi.
Vos arez la druerie,
Amis, de moi.
Mesdissant sont en agait
Et main et soir
Por nos faire vilonie.
Vous arez la druerie,
Amis, de moi,
Ce que mes mariz n’a mie. } [1]

Women trouvères didn’t disparage their husbands sexually only to their lovers and women friends. One wife-trouvère treated her husband with open, flagrant contempt:

Endure, husband, and don’t be annoyed,
tomorrow you’ll have me, but my lover’s tonight.
I forbid you to speak of it a single word
— endure, husband, and do not move —
the night is short, soon you’ll have me again,
when my lover has had his sensual pleasure.
Endure, husband, and don’t be annoyed,
tomorrow you’ll have me, but my lover’s tonight.

{ Soufrés, maris, et si ne vous anuit,
Demain m’arés et mes amis anuit.
Je vous deffenc k’un seul mot n’en parlés.
— Soufrés, maris, et si ne vous mouvés —
La nuis est courte, aparmains me rarés,
Quant mes amis ara fait sen deduit.
Soufrés, maris, et si ne vous anuit,
Demain m’arés et mes amis anuit. } [2]

Suppose the husband resigned himself to trying to endure quietly his wife’s affair. That wasn’t possible with some medieval wives. Another wife-trouvère made clear to her husband that she would talk about her affairs:

I won’t on behalf of my husband not be saying
that my lover last night slept with me.
I said it well before he was betrothed to me:
— I won’t on behalf of my husband not be saying —
if he would beat me or treat me badly,
he’d be a cuckold and so he would pay.
I won’t on behalf of my husband not be saying
that my lover last night slept with me.

{ Jai ne lairai por mon mari ne die
Li miens amins jeut aneut aveucke moi.
Je li dis bien ainz qu’il m’eut plevie:
— Jai ne lairai por mon marit ne die —
S’il me batoit ne faixoit vilonie,
Il seroit cous, et si lou comparroit.
Jai ne lairai por mon mari ne die
Li miens amins jeut aneut avecque moi. } [3]

Under modern “child support” laws, husbands are financially liable for children that their wives have extra-maritally. Evidently being cuckolded was similarly costly in medieval Europe. At the same time, men face a burden of performance in love. A medieval wife-trouvère taunted her husband for his loving:

Blech, husband, on your love
because I have a lover!
Handsome is he, and of noble bearing:
blech, husband, on your love!
He serves me night and day:
for that I love him so.
Blech, husband, on your love
because I have a lover!

{ Fi maris de vostre amour,
car j’ai ami!
Biaus est et de noble’ atour:
fi, maris de vostre amour!
il me sert et nuit et jour:
pour che l’aim si.
Fi maris de vostre amour,
car j’ai ami! } [4]

This song is appealing enough to gynocentric sensibility today for Leonard Bernstein to have composed a score for it, and for it to be performed in churches. For anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear, women’s strong, independent sexuality cannot be doubted.

Men leaders tend to respond to women’s strong, independent sexuality with compassion and indulgence. Consider the behavior of Daniél úa Líathaiti, Abbot of Lismore and Cork in ninth-century Ireland. A woman attempted to seduce Daniél while he has hearing her confession. He counseled her:

O woman, a blessing on you — say it not!
Let us meditate on the assembly of eternal judgment.
Decay is the fate of every creature.
I fear going into the cold earth.

Your mind is set on folly that lacks lasting value.
Clearly, you are not pursuing wisdom.
What you are saying will be empty talk.
Our death will be nearer before it comes to be.
…
I will not sell Heaven for sin.
The payment will be paid back to me if I do.
Put not forward for wrongdoing that
which you shall never recover here, O woman.

Abandon that which will injure you;
sell not your share in Heaven.
Under God’s protection, go to your home,
and take from me a blessing, O woman.

{ A ben, bennacht fort — ná ráid!
Imráidem dáil mbrátha búain.
A-tá irchra for cach n-dúil:
ad-águr dul i n-úir n-úair.

Im-ráidi baís cen bríg mbaí:
is súaichnid ní gaís fris-ngní.
A n-as-bir-siu bid rád fás:
bid nessa ar m-bás ‘síu ‘ma-rrí.
…
Ríched ní renaim ar chol;
dam ad-fíther cía do-gnem.
Ní nád faigbe síu íar sin
ní thaibre ar bin, a ben.

Léic úait a n-í condat-sil;
do chuit i n-nim náchas-ren;
for fóesam n-Dé eirg dot treib
bendacht úaim-se beir, a ben. } [5]

Daniél úa Líathaiti witnessed to the spirit of forgiveness and loving correction that Jesus taught to his disciples. Yet many women chafe at even the thought of a man telling her what to do. Moreover, authorities today preach unquestioning belief in whatever charges a woman brings against a man. What if, in response to being sexually rebuffed, the woman had falsely accused Daniél of sexually harassing her or raping her? Perhaps Daniél would have called on Saint Marina or Saint Eugenia for help. Without divine aid, a man today could easily have his life ruined by a woman’s false accusation.

Struggling to make a living, ordinary men understandably get angry with women’s disloyalty to their men. Speaking the voice of such men, one man trobairitz sang:

I thought that among a thousand
would be found one loyal woman —
so much have I searched,
but all behave as a betrayer
and act like a thief
who when blindfolded,
demands that her partner
endure her shame with her,
so as not to be alone
to bear all the worries she has.

Such a fine and subtle heart
women have for deceiving
that not a single one can be found
who doesn’t dupe her partner.
Then she doesn’t care and laughs
when she sees him made a fool.
And she who knows how to take care of
the affairs of others,
so well it would seem,
knows how to advance her own interests.

And those women who can’t spin a yarn
to their own benefit
make the loss go to another.
You’ll know worse in the morning
when you have bad women neighbors,
for what you hold most dear
they will make hate you,
and make you love that which
in a thousand years
can bring you no joy.

If you regard vile women
and want to condemn them,
always they will swear to you,
by the teeth of a noble lady,
that what a man has said to have seen
shouldn’t be taken into consideration.
And they know how to pay you back
for such nobleness with their deceit.
From their treacheries
no man can safeguard himself.

One who believes that in women
he can find loyalty
is well made to be chastised.
I tell myself he’ll in the dog kennel
search in vain for lard.
And he who wants to send
to a hawk, with no fooling,
his chickens to feed —
one of the big ones of these
I don’t want promised to me for roasting.

{ Qu’ieu cugiei entre mil
Una lïal trobar,
Tan cujava cercar;
Totas an un trahí
E fan o atressí
Co’l laire al bendar,
Que demanda son par
Per sas antas sofrir,
Per que’l mazans
Totz sobre lui no’s vir.

Tant an prim e subtil
Lur còr per enganar,
Qu’una non pòt estar
Que sa par non galí;
Pueis s’en gab’e s’en ri,
Quan la ve folejar;
Et qui d’autrui afar
Si sap tan gent formir,
Ben es semblans
Que’l sieu sapch’ enantir.

E celha que del fil
A sos òps no pòt far,
Ad autra en fai filar;
E ja pejor matí
No’ us cal de mal vezí;
Que çò qu’avètz plus car
Vos faràn azirar,
E tal ren abelhir
Que de mil ans
No vos poiretz jauzir.

Si las tenètz tan vil
Que las vulhatz blasmar,
Sempre’ us iràn jurar,
Sobre las dens N’ Arpí,
Que çò qu’òm ditz que vi
No’s fai a consirar;
E saubràn vos pagar
Tan gent ab lur mentir,
De lurs enjans
Nulhs òm no’s pòt gandir.

Qui en lòc feminil
Cuja feutat trobar
Ben fai a castiar ;
Qu’ieu dic qu’en loc caní
Vai ben cercar saï ;
E qui vòl comandar
Al milan ni bailar
Sos poletz per noirir,
La us dels grans
No’m don pòis per raustir. } [6]

This is a song of field and market and real folk concerns: thieves, punishment for avarice, spinning yarn, neighborhood affairs, dogs, hawks, chickens, and trades. Among persons living close to economic subsistence, men and women depend on each other as partners. A woman’s sexual disloyalty indicates that she’s an undependable partner to a man.

Among the gynocentric elite, criticizing women has scarcely been tolerated. The man trobairitz not surprisingly began his song about women’s disloyalty with a poetic feint and an acknowledgement of fear:

When the mild weather of April
covers the dry trees with leaves,
and mute birds now begin to sing,
each in his own language,
I would well like to have in me
the ability to compose a poem
with power to chastise
women for their failings,
without harm or damage
being able to come to me.

{ Quan lo dous temps d’abril
Fa’ls arbres secs fulhar,
E’ls auzelhs mutz cantar
Quascun en son latí,
Ben vòlgr’ aver en mi
Poder de tal trobar,
Cum pogués castiar
Las dòmnas de falhir,
Que mals ni dans
No m’en pogués venir. }

One would have to be as clever as Renart the fox to chastise women for their failings without incurring the wrath of the gynocentric elite.[7] The man trobairitz chose the tactic of speaking blunt truth through figures of folk experience. Men’s poetry of sexed protest can be suppressed, but ordinary reality inexorably resists.

Women’s strong, independent sexuality doesn’t necessarily imply that all women will be disloyal to their men. A woman recently abandoned her husband and two children to become a sex worker in Nevada. That’s probably not common. However, particularly with men today being held financially responsible under child-support laws for women’s extra-marital (or extra-relational) children, men should evaluate women’s loyalty carefully.[8] Men, here’s a simple test: if your wife or girlfriend enjoys a performance in church of “Blech, husband, on your love {Fi, maris, de vostre amour},” you probably face serious risk of being cuckolded.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• men’s sense of women’s disloyalty prompts men’s sexed protests
• about jerks: women’s regrets for the men who truly loved them
• medieval husband fantasy: hardships, comfort & forgiveness

Notes:

[1] Rondeau, “You will have your pleasure {Vous arez la druerie},” text (Picard dialect of Langue d’oïl) and translation (with some insubstantial changes) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 187. This rondeau, which was composed in the thirteenth century, survives only in the manuscript Paris, BnF, Ms. fr. 12786. Here’s a performance of this song from Anne Azéma & Aziman Ensemble’s album Le Tournoi de Chauvency (2017). Here’s another performance by Ensemble Sanacore and Ensemble Perceval from Tournoi des dames (1997).

[2] Rondeau, “Endure, husband, and don’t be annoyed {Soufrés maris, et si ne vous anuit},” text (Picard dialect of Langue d’oïl) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) pp. 184, 186, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. This rondeau, composed about 1250, survives only in the manuscript Rome, Bibliothèque Vaticane, Ms. Regina 1490. Medieval music for it has also survived. Id. p. 185. Here’s a performance of this song by Ensemble Perceval from the album La chanson d’ami (1994).

[3] Rondeau, “I won’t on behalf of my husband not be saying {Jai ne lairai por mon mari ne die},” text (Lorraine dialect of Langue d’oïl) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 183, my English translation, benefiting from that of id. The text survives in the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Ms. Douce 308. Here’s a performance of this song by Ensemble Sanacore and Ensemble Perceval from Tournoi des dames (1997). With respect to the woman trouvère betraying her husband, Dell signals this woman’s strength: “Under no set of circumstances will this juggernaut of a woman be deflected.” Dell (2008) p. 127.

Men have long protested women talking about previously hidden matters to the harm of their men. One man trobairitz sang:

One has difficulty finding healthy reason
in a woman, in truth,
for she would change her disposition
from what you find now
if you make her slightly angry.
And once annoyed, she has changed,
and all, which she knew in secret,
when she’s angry, she reveals.
I regard as a senseless person
one who wants to reveal to a woman
a secret to be kept hidden.
I have seen great things come
to nothing in decay and death
because the well-hidden was revealed.

{ Grèu tròb’ òm natural sen
En una femn’ en vertat;
Que son voler cambïat
Li trobaretz mantenen,
Si la faitz un pauc irada,
E pòis tantòst s’es cambiada
E tot, aitan quan sabria,
Quant es irada, diria,
Ieu tenc cel dessenat
Que secret en celat
Vòlh’a femna descobrir.
Qu’ieu n’ai vist grans res venir
En decazement e a mòrt
Qu’ab ben celar foran estòrt. }

Anonymous cobla, Old Occitan text from Bec (1984) p. 66, my English translation, benefiting from the French translation of id. The great medieval woman writer Marie de France in her romance Bisclavret showed compassionate concern for keeping men’s secrets.

[4] Adam de la Halle, Rondeau, “Blech, husband, on your love {Fi, maris, de vostre amour},” text (Picard dialect of Langue d’oïl) from Ibos-Augé (2019) p. 262, my English translation. A motet version of this rondeau has also survived. Id. Here’s a score for the rondeau.

Adam de la Halle was active in Arras, France, in the second half of the thirteenth century. While Adam de la Halle is nominally the author, a woman, such as Adam’s wife, may have actually composed “Fi, maris, de vostre amour.” As we are now repeatedly instructed, women throughout history often been deprived of credit for their inventions and their work.

Leonard Bernstein wrote music for “Fi, maris, de vostre amour” as a chorus for the 1955 Broadway adaption of Jean Anouilh’s play The Lark (1952). On Bernstein’s version of this song, Dittamo (2019) pp. 38-42. Here’s a performance of Bernstein’s version.

In recent decades, many arrangements and performances of “Fi, maris, de vostre amour” have occurred. The two videos embedded above and cited below document two performances in churches. Here are additional performances available on YouTube: recording by Ensemble Sanacore & Ensemble Perceval in 1997; performance by Insieme Vocale Tourdion in Italy in 2011; performance by Kate Smith and others in Beijing, China on Aug. 10, 2013 (in Songs From the Labyrinth in Yuanfen~Flow 798 Art Zone); a performance by The King’s Counterpoint at Old St. Andrew’s Parish Church, Charleston, SC, in September, 2015; and a recording by a Capella de Ministrers in 2016. Two other available performances (here and here) lack attributions. See also a young man doing an amateur trumpet peformance of this song.

Moving beyond disparing her husband’s love and taunting her husband with her lover, another wife-trouvère sought a divorce:

Take it off —
this ring on my finger!
A boor should not have me,
for I know well he would end up a cuckold
if he were with me
for long;
I want to leave him right now.
This marriage is not right.

{ Osteis lou moi,
L’anelet dou doi!
Avoir pas vilains ne me doit,
Car, bien sai, cous en seroit
S’avocke moi
Longement estoit;
Departir m’an vuel orandroit,
Je ne suix pas marïee a droit. }

Motet, text (Lorraine dialect of Langue d’oïl) and translation (with insubstantial changes) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 249. For a resolutely gynocentric perspective on betrayal in medieval French songs, Harkey (2016).

[5] Daniél úa Líathaiti, “Oh woman, a blessing on you – say it not! {A ben bennacht fort – ná ráid},” also known as “Sell Not Heaven for Sin {Ríched ní renaim ar chol},” st. 1-2, 4-5 (of 7), Gaelic text from Murphy (1956) pp. 6-9, translation adapted from those of id., Meyer (1904), and Swift (2014). The Corpus of Electronic Texts has made freely available a Gaelic text quite close to Murphy’s.

This poem survives in the Book of Leinster. See Best & O’Brien (1967) vol. 5, p. 1221. The Book of Leinster was compiled about 1160. Daniél úa Líathaiti is a historical Irish abbot who died in 863. On Jesus’s loving forgiveness and correction for a woman caught in adultery, John 8:1-11.

[6] Pèire de Bossinhac, “When the mild weather of April {Quan lo dous temps d’abril},” st. 2-6, Old Occitan text from Bec (1984) pp. 62-4, my Englist translation benefiting from the French translation of id. Pèire de Bossinhac florished about 1160 and was a contemporary of the man trobairitz Bertran de Born. The subsequent quote is similarly from st. 1 of this song. Medieval authorities regarded this song well enough for it to have been included in Matfre Ermengaud’s Le Breviari d’amor. Matfre Ermengaud begin that work in 1288 and finished it sometime before 1322.

[7] In the penultimate stanza of “Quan lo dous temps d’abril,” Pèire de Bossinhac daringly sings:

Never did Renart on Ysengrimus
know such pleasant revenge
as when he had him flayed
and for mockery gave to him
a fur hat and fur gloves.
Likewise I do when I’m angry.

{ Anc Rainartz d’Isengri
No’s saup tan gent venjar,
Quan lo fetz escorjar,
E’ il det per escarnir
Capèl e gans,
Com ieu fas quan m’azir. }

Sourced as for previous quotes from this song. Modern scholars have viciously condemned Pèire de Bossinhac’s song of men’s sexed protest. Bec categorizes it as “fundamental, gratuitous and ferocious misogyny {misogynie fondamentale, gratuite et féroce}.” Bec (1984) p. 62. If Pèire de Bossinhac lived today, he probably would be forced to write a poem of repentence for criticizing women.

[8] Amid today’s failing relationships between women and men, Dell ponders cultish abstractions:

If there is no sexual relation and no ‘Woman’, what position could  feminity take up? … what if any relation fails? This seems to be what my research has shown, an ultimate inability to ‘place’ femininity securely in any relation.

Dell (2008) p. 205, tendentiously following Lacan’s manipulation of Arnaut’s “Pòis Raimons e’N Truc Malècs.” On the latter, see note [6] in my post on Arnaut Daniel’s medieval protest. Neither men nor women deserve to be symbolically defined or constrained. Fruitful relations are built on truth. Dell presumes that medieval discourse was “a system which relies for its effects of meaning on binary oppositions favouring masculinity.” Id. p. 204. That’s false. Many medieval scholars are woefully ignorant of the gender reality of their own times, to say nothing of that of the Middle Ages.

[videos] (1) Performance of “Fi, maris, de vostre amour” at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (Cleveland, Ohio) in March, 2015. Performance by Contrapunctus Early Music (David E. A. Acres, Director). (2) Performance of “Fi, maris, de vostre amour” at the Church of the Epiphany (Crafters, South Australia) in 2004. Performance by Lumina Vocal Ensemble (Anne Pope, Director).

References:

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

Best, R. I., and M. A. O’Brien, eds. 1967. The Book of Leinster. Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

Dell, Helen. 2008. Desire by Gender and Genre in Trouvère Song. Gallica, vol. 10. Woodbridge: Brewer. (review by Lisa Padden)

Dittamo, Patrick Connor. 2019. The prehistory and reception of Leonard Bernstein’s Missa Brevis (1988). Thesis, Master of Music. College of Arts and Sciences, Kansas State University (Manhattan, Kansas, USA).

Doss-Quinby, Eglal, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer, and Elizabeth Aubery. 2001. Songs of the Women Trouvères. New Haven: Yale University Press. (review by Carol Symes)

Harkey, Hannah. 2016. Quant se depart li jolis tan: betrayal in the songs of medieval French women. Master Thesis, University of Mississippi. Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 696.

Ibos-Augé, Anne. 2019. “Refrain Quotations in Adam’s Rondeaux, Motets, and Plays.” Ch. 9 (pp. 249-281) in Saltzstein, Jennifer, ed. Musical culture in the World of Adam de la Halle. Brill: Leiden.

Meyer, Kuno. 1904. “Daniel Húa Liathaide’s Advice to a Woman.” Ériu. 1: 67-71.

Murphy, Gerard. 1956. Early Irish Lyrics, eighth to twelfth century. Edited with translation, notes, and glossary. Clarendon Press: Oxford.

Swift, Catherine. 2014. “Penitence, confession and the Irish anmchara.” Paper given to CAMP group, NUI Galway, November 2014.

Today men are taught to “listen and believe” women making accusations of serious crimes. Such dogma would never have been accepted in relatively enlightened medieval Europe. Clerics, church officials, and monks such as Erasmus of Rotterdam, Poggio Bracciolini, and François Rabelais taught men and women to think and to question. That’s the path to a more just, more enlightened world.

No later than early in the sixteenth century, a Dominican friar in his homily on Good Friday presented to a crowded congregation the story of a pregnant nun who claimed to have been raped. Erasmus reported in his Colloquies that a butcher relayed the story to a fishmonger. The butcher explained:

A young man had laid with a nun. Her swollen belly provided subsequent proof of the act. The nuns were called together, with the abbess presiding. The nun was accused. There was no grounds for status inficialis {controverting the facts}. She needed to argue a justification. She took refuge in status qualitatis {the meaning of the facts}, or, if you prefer, status translationis {the justification for the action}. “I was laid by force of someone stronger,” the nun said. “At least you could have screamed,” responded the abbess. “I would have done so,” the nun said, “but in the dormitory, to break the silence is forbidden.”

{ Virginem sacram oppresserat adolescens. Vteri tumor arguit factum. Conuocatus est virginum chorus, praesedit abbatissa. Accusata est. Infidali statui non erat locus, argumentum erat necessarium. Confugit ad statum qualitatis, nisi mauis translationis. – Oppressa sum a valentiore. — At saltem exclamasses. — Fecissem, inquit, sed in dormitorio nefas est soluere silentium. } [1]

Given the penal orientation of criminal law, men have a strong incentive to develop a sophisticated understanding of criminal procedure. The butcher analyzed the case through technical terms of forensic rhetoric.[2] Since he was directly addressing a fishmonger, he apparently expected the fishmonger to have a similar level of legal sophistication. The Dominan friar’s story of the pregnant nun claiming rape was probably one that his congregation, like the butcher and the fishmonger, could handle in a sophisticated way.

The nun’s claim would not have been understood as presenting a serious risk of criminal injustice. Today, men are regarded as culpable of rape for having wives who truly love them. Men today must adhere to detailed scripts for amorous encounters in order not to be subject to sex charges. In the more enlightened medieval period, criminal justice was more reasonable. The Dominican friar told the story of the pregnant nun claiming rape during his Good Friday sermon. The crucifixion of Jesus was a mob-driven travesty of justice.  Consistent with that context, the Dominican friar told the pregnant nun story “to dissipate the bitterness of his sermon with a more pleasant story {sermonis amaritudinem … iucundiore narratione dilueret}.” The butcher commented:

So that’s the story. Only we must confess, many sillier claims have been carried forward.

{ Sit haec fabula; modo fateamur, hoc stultiora geri permulta. }

The butcher statement shouldn’t be misinterpreted literally. Medieval criminal courts weren’t filled with silly sex claims. Such claims, if carried forward during the medieval period, surely would have been quickly dismissed. The congregation that heard the Dominican preacher’s story of the pregnant nun claiming rape probably laughed at that story.[3]

Rabelais emphasized the ridiculousness of the nun’s claim of rape. Rabelais told nearly the same story as Erasmus had:

You know how that nun, Sister Bottom in Croquignoles, got pregnant by a begging brother called Stiffly-Redeem-It. When the bulge became evident, she was summoned by the abbess to the chapter-house and charged with incest. She made excuses, maintaining that it had not happened with her consent but by violence, through being raped by Frère Stiffly-Redeem-It. The abbess said, “You wicked little thing! It took place in the dormitory. Why did you not cry ‘Rape’? We would all have rushed in to help you.” The nun replied that she dared not cry out in the dormitory, because in the dormitory, one kept perpetual silence.

{ Vous sçavez comment à Croquignoles quand la nonnain seur Fessue, feut par le ieune Briffault dam Royddimet engroissée, & la groisse congnue, appellée par l’abbesse en chapitre & arguée de inceste, elle s’excusoit, alleguante que ce n’avoit esté de son consentement, ce avoit esté par violence & par la force du frère Royddimet. L’abbesse replicante & disante, meschante, c’estoit on dortouoir, pourquoy ne crioys tu à la force? Nous toutes eussions couru à ton ayde? Respondit qu’elle ne ausoit crier on dortouoi : pource qu’on dortouoir, y a silence sempiternelle. } [4]

Rabelais named the nun Sister Bottom {seur Fessue} and her lover Stiffly-Redeem-It {Royddimet}. Both those names bear sexual innuendo. He also had the abbess refer to the nun as a “wicked little thing.” Women characteristically speak more frankly about women than men do.

Rabelais expanded upon the nun’s false claim of rape to engage with the context of interpreting signs. Rabelais’s story continued:

“But, you wicked little thing,” said the abbess, “why didn’t you make signs to the other nuns in the room?” “I,” said La Bottom, “did make signs as much as I could with my bottom; but nobody came to help me.” “But, you wicked little thing,” demanded the abbess, “why didn’t you come straight to me, to tell me and formally accuse him? If it had happened to me, that’s what I would have done to prove my innocence.” “Because,” said La Bottom, “fearing to remain in sin — in a state of damnation — if overcome by sudden death, I made my confession to him before he left the room. The penance he gave me was not to reveal the encounter and to tell it to nobody. To reveal his absolution would have been a most enormous sin, most odious before God and the angels. It might perhaps have been the cause of fire from Heaven burning down the whole of our abbey, and we might all have been cast down into the pit with Datham and Abiram.

{ Mais (dist l’abbesse) meschante que tu es, pourquoy ne faisois tu signes à tes voisines de chambre? Ie (respondit la Fessue) leurs faisois signes du cul tant que povois, mais persone ne me secourut. Mais (demanda l’abbesse) meschante, pourquoy incontinent ne me le veins tu dire, & l’accuser reguliairement? Ainsi eusse ie faict, si le cas me feust advenu, pour demonstrer mon innocence, (respondit la fessue) que craignante demourer en peché & estat de damnation, de paour que ne feusse de mort soubdaine prævenue, ie me confessay à luy avant qu’il departist de la chambre: & il me bailla en penitence non le dire ne deceler à persone. Trop enorme eust esté le peché, reveler sa confession, & trop detestable davant Dieu & les anges. Par adventure eust ce esté cause: que le feu du Ciel eust ars toute l’abbaye: & toutes feussions tombées en abisme avecques Dathan & Abiron. }

The reference to Sister Bottom making signs with her bottom is a visually pun on characteristic activity of sexual intercourse. The fake confession is another addition in the same pattern as the nun not wanting to violate the rule of silence. The Old French lay Ignaure features a fake confession. In this story the confession isn’t fake, but it’s done with bad faith. The sister’s claim about fear of revealing her absolution similarly appears to be in bad faith. Rabelais’s expansion of the story of the pregnant nun claiming rape highlights human wiles in obscuring and excusing disapproved actions.

In the relatively enlightened medieval period, human impurity, reason’s capacity to invent justifications, and women and men’s equal sinfulness were widely understood. Today, men are socially constructed as an intrinsically toxic gender,  mass incarceration of men is rationalized through a social code of silence, and gender inequality is promoted under the guise of gender equality. The preaching delivered through the churches of our time — universities, businesses, and the media-entertainment industrial complex — is a ridiculous mass of absurdities. If elephants can be trained to dance, lions tamed for sport, and leopards taught to hunt, surely our secular elite can learn to be reasonable.[5]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• cuckolds don’t question; they just listen, believe and are duped
• medieval counterparts to women’s strong, independent sexuality
• men’s blessing of seminal creativity as numerous as stars of heaven

Notes:

[1] Erasmus of Rotterdam, Patterns of Fitting Conversations {Familiarium colloquiorum formulae}, Fish-Eating {Ίχθνοφαγία}, ll. 1063-8, Latin from ASD I-3, p. 524, English translation (modified slightly) from Thompson (1997) p. 706 (v. 40). The subsequent quote is similarly sourced from ll. 1068-9.

Thompson translated Virginem sacram oppresserat adolescens as “A young man had taken advantage of a nun.” That English translation conveys at least moral disparagement of the young man. The Latin verb opprimo seems to me better translated in relation to its primary meaning “to press down upon.” Erasmus’s subsequent retelling of the story doesn’t support assuming that the young man committed a non-consensual sex crime. See note [3] below.

Erasmus’s Colloquies “grew from a small collection of phrases, sentences, and snatches of dialogue written in Paris about 1497 to help his private pupils improve their command of Latin.” The first edition was published in Basel in 1518. From Thompson (1997), online overview. The colloquy Fish-Eating first appeared in edition of Erasmus’s Colloquies published in February, 1526.

The story of the pregnant nun claiming rape probably was a well-known medieval tale. Erasmus stated that he heard it as a boy. See quotes from Ecclesiastes in note [3]. That implies Erasmus heard the story before about 1480. A similar tale exists in Heinrich Bebel’s Facetiae, first published in 1506. Thompson (1997) p. 744, n. 219. An Old French farce The Abbess and Sister Bottom {L’Abbesse et Soeur Fessue} dates from about 1510. Hayes (2010) pp. 51-3. Hayes interprets that farce from the perspective of conventional poor-dearism: “Sister Fessue is the gullible pawn who is controlled by those in authority, first by the monk and now by her abbess.” Id. p. 53. Medieval nuns were guileful enough to fake death with a body double to escape the convent.

[2] Regarding technical terms of forensic rhetoric, Quintilian’s analysis is “long and complex.” In addition to status inficialis, status qualitatis, and status translationis, forensic rhetoric also includes status conjecturalis and status definitivus. Thompson (1997) p. 745, n. 220. Above I’ve provided simple glosses.

[3] Erasmus included a version of the story of the pregnant nun claiming rape in his Ecclesiastes, or the Evangelical Preacher {Ecclesiastes, sive Concionator Evangelicus}, also titled Ecclesiastes, or the Art of Preaching {Ecclesiastes, sive de ratione concionandi}:

As a boy I heard a certain Dominican who was endowed with an outstanding native grace of tongue. In order to rouse sleepers, he told this story, which is not without a hint of depravity. “A certain nun,” he said, “was shown by the swelling of her belly to have had relations with a man. In an assembly of nuns she was severely rebuked by the superior, whom they call an abbess, for having disgraced the holy community in this way. She pleads the excuse of force, saying “A young man entered my room. He was stronger than I. It would have been useless for me to resist him. Besides, force is not reckoned a crime.” Then the superior said, “You could be excused if you had shouted, as Scripture advises.” Here the maiden said, “I would have done that, but it happened in the dormitory, where breaking silence was forbidden.”

{ Puer audiui quendam Dominieanum, eximia ae natiua linguae gratia praeditum. Is vt excitaret dormitantes hane retulit fabulam, non absque specie nequitiae. “Nonna, inquit, quaedam vteri tumore prodita est habuisse rem cum viro. Conuocato virginum coetu seueriter obiurgata est a praeposita quam Abbatissam vocant, quod ad eum modum dehonestasset sanctum collegium. IlIa exeusat vim: “Iuuenis, inquiens, venit in eubiculum meum, me robustior, cui frustra fuissem reluctata. Porro vis non imputatur pro crimine.” Tum praeposita: “Excusari poteras si clamasses, quemadmodum admonet Scriptura.” Hie virgo: “Id quidem fecissem, sed res acta est in dormitorio, vbi soluere silentium erat religio.” }

Ecclesiastes 2.672-81, Latin text from ASD V-4, p. 278, English translation (modified slightly) from McGinness et al. (2015) p. 508. Erasmus then comments:

But I desist, lest in rebuking foolishness, I become foolish myself.

{ Sed desino, ne reprehendendo ineptias, ipse fiam ineptus. }

Ecclesiastes 2.681-2, sourced as above. The first edition of Ecclesiastes was published in 1535. It’s a massive work drawing upon many of Erasmus’s prior works.

Standards of seriousness for scribes copying sacred works were higher. In a titulus intended for a scriptorum, probably the scriptorum at St. Martin at Tours, Alcuin in the eighth century wrote:

May those who copy the pronouncements of the holy law
and the hallowed sayings of the saintly fathers sit here.
Here let them take care not to insert silly remarks;
may their hands not make mistakes through silliness.

{ Hic sedeant sacrae scribentes famina legis,
Nec non sanctorum dicta sacrata patrum,
Hic interserere caveant sua frivola verbis,
Frivola nec propter erret et ipsa manus }

vv. 1-4, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Godman (1985) p. 138.

[4] Rabelais, Gargantua and Patagruel, Book 3, Ch. 19, French text from Rabelais, Oeuvres complètes (1552), edited by Alphonse Lemerre (1870), via Wikisource, English translation (modified slightly) from Screech (2006) pp. 483-4.

The third book of Gargantua and Patagruel was first published in 1546. While Rabelais followed Eramus’s work closely, whether Rabelais picked up the story of the pregnant nun claiming rape from Erasmus isn’t clear.

About 1730, Thomas, the sixth Earl of Harrington, apparently wrote an English version of this tale.

[5] Regarding priests, Erasmus wrote:

Do we know how to tame wild and frightful beasts, either for entertainment or for ordinary use, and not know how to pacify men so that they serve Christ? Do monarchs pay people to teach elephants to dance, to tame lions for sport, to tame lynxes and leopards for hunting: and the monarch of the church cannot find how to entice men to the lovable service of Christ?

{ Nouimus cicurare bestias feras et horribiles, vel ad voluptatem vel ad vsum vulgarem, et non nouimus mansuefacere homines vt seruiant Christo? Monarchae alunt, qui doceant elephantos ad saltandum, qui doment leones ad lusum, qui doment lynces ac leopardos ad venatum, et monarcha Ecclesiae non inuenit quo homines alliciat ad amabile Christi seruitium? }

Ecclesiastes 1.336-41, ASD V-4, p. 148, sourced as above.

[image] Young woman holding ermine. Painting (slightly excerpted) by Leonardo da Vinci, about 1490. Held as accession # XII-209 in the Czartoryski Museum (Krakow, Poland). Via Wikimedia Commons.

References:

ASD. Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami Opera omnia (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1969-2018).

Godman, Peter. 1985. Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. London: Duckworth.

Hayes, E. Bruce. 2010. Rabelais’s Radical Farce: Late Medieval Comic Theater and Its Function in Rabelais. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.

McGinness, Frederick J., Michael Heath, James L. P. Butrica, and Alexander Dalzell, eds. 2015. Spiritualia and Pastoralia: Exomologesis and Ecclesiastes. Collected Works of Erasmus, vols. 67-68. Toronto: University of Toronto.

Screech, M.A., trans. 2006. François Rabelais. Gargantua and Pantagruel. Penguin Classics. London: Penguin Books. (review by Barbara Bowen)

Thompson, Craig R., trans. 1997. Erasmus of Rotterdam. Colloquies {Colloquia}. Collected Works of Erasmus, vols. 39-40. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

In 203, Saint Perpetua resolutely rejected her father’s abject pleas and triumphantly proceeded to Christian martyrdom. In the sixth-century kontakia of Romanos the Melodist, the blessed Mary overshadows Jesus. Moreover, men’s voices on the way to Jesus’s crucifixion are scarcely heard. Mary the Mother of God and Saint Perpetua aren’t exceptional Christian women in dominating men. Notker of Saint Gall’s ninth-century sequence, “For the festival of holy women,” shows the pattern of Christian gynocentrism. The central position of women in Christianity was ultimately expressed parodically about 1450 in “The Dispute Between God and His Mother.”

Christianity requires its followers to strive for holiness. The seventh-century desert monk John Climacus explored in his Ladder of Divine Ascent the difficulties of obtaining union with the heavenly divine. Notker of Saint Gall’s ninth-century sequence “For the festival of holy women {In natale sanctorum feminarum}” proclaimed that Christ’s love had made heavenly ascent possible for women:

A ladder stretching to heaven,
surrounded by torments —

at its base an attentive dragon
keeps watch, constantly awake,
so that no one even to the first step
can climb unhurt.

Its ascent is barred
by an Ethiop with drawn sword
threatening death.
Its highest step supports
a radiant young man
holding a golden bough.

This is the ladder that Christ’s love
made possible for women to climb.
So trampling down the dragon,
passing by the Ethiop’s sword,
and going through all kinds of torments,
they may reach heaven’s summit,
and from the hand of the consoling
king take the golden laurel.

{ Scalam ad caelos subrectam
tormentis cinctam —

Cuius ima draco servare
cautus invigilat iugiter,
Ne quis eius vel primum gradum
possit insaucius scandere,

Cuius ascensus extracto
Aethiops gladio
vetat exitium minitans,
Cuius supremis innixus
iuvenis splendidus
ramum aureolum retinet

Hanc ergo scalam ita Christi
amor feminis fecit perviam
ut dracone conculcato
et Aethopis gladio transito
Per omne genus tormentōrum
caeli apicem queant capere
et de manu confortantis
regis auream lauream sumere. } [1]

The ladder surrounded by torments, the dragon at its base, the hostile gladiator, and the magnificent man holding a prize come from visions of Saint Perpetua. Perpetua envisioned herself stepping on the head of the serpent in climbing the ladder to heaven.

Notker generalized the heroic Saint Perpetua to the gynocentric Christian path to holiness. In Christian understanding, Mary, the new Eve, gave birth to Jesus, who stepped on the head of the serpent.[2] Mary thus nullified the serpent’s deception of Eve and gave every woman the capacity to be like Saint Perpetua:

What help was it for you,
unholy serpent,
once to have
deceived one woman,
when the virgin birthed
in the flesh
of God the Father
the one Lord Jesus?

He took spoils from you and
pierced your jaw with a hook
to make a way out for Eve’s offspring,
whom you desire to possess.

Thus you now discern yourself
defeated by virgins, hated one,
and by married women bearing
children who please God,

and by widows now
wholly faithful to their husbands.
They cause you to groan,
you who persuaded a virgin
to be unfaithful
to her Creator.

Women you now see in war
against you becoming leaders,
urging their children
bravely to defeat your torments.

Even vessels of your grace,
prostitutes, are by the Lord cleansed,
and these for himself as a temple
he deems worthy to purify.

{ Quid tibi profecit,
profane serpens,
quondam unam
decepisse mulierem,
Cum virgo pepererit
incarnatum
dei patris
unicum dominum Jesum?

Qui praedam tibi tulit et
armilla maxillam forat,
Ut egressus Evae natis
fiat, quos tenere cupis.

Nunc ergo temet virgines
vincere cernis invide,
Et maritatas parere
filios deo placitos,

Et viduarum
maritis fidem
nunc ingemis integram,
Qui creatori
fidem negare
persuaseras virgini.

Feminas nunc vides in bello
contra te acto duces existere,
Quae filios suos instigant
fortiter tua tormenta vincere.

Quin et tua vasa
meretrices dominus emundat
Et haec sibi templum
dignatur efficere purgatum. } [3]

Notker insistently privileges women in the Christian way of holiness. The one woman Mary precedes the one Lord Jesus. Mary, made in the flesh according to God the Father, gave birth in the flesh to Jesus. Like a father deprived of custody of his children in gender-biased family courts, Adam is absent; all humans are Eve’s children. The Christian way is that of a blessed woman — from virgin woman, to married woman, to widow (woman outliving her husband). Even women prostitutes are recognized to be, like Mary Magdalene, vessels of the Lord. In Notker’s depiction of the Christian church as the people of God, men exists only at the periphery in their relations to women.[4]

Notker’s closing two stanzas of praise and thanksgiving resonate with the figure of the fallen and redeemed woman. Genesis describes a radical unity of female and male. A central figure of Christianity is conjugal partnership. Yet human societies preferentially provide compassion to women. Notker’s gender-inclusive terms such as “us” are merely surface forms for women’s underlying gender dominance:

For these favors now
let us together,
both the sinners and the righteous,
glorify the Lord,
who strengthens the upright
and to the fallen extends
his right hand, so that at least
after our evil deeds we may rise.

{ Pro his nunc beneficiis
in commune dominum
nos glorificemus
et peccatores et iusti,
Qui et stantes corroborat
et prolapsis dexteram
porrigit, ut saltem
post facinora surgamus. } [5]

No less human and no less beloved of God, men like women are also fallen and redeemed in Christ. Men, however, tend to be submerged within gender-generic references such as “man.” In the Christian gendering of man’s path to holiness, women are the dominant gender.[6]

About 1450, “The Dispute between God and his Mother {La Desputoison de Dieu et de sa Mère}” comically represented the extreme of Christian gynocentrism. Jesus, living among the poor, brought his rich mother Mary to court with a claim for child support. After describing many lavish cathedrals dedicated to Mary across France, Jesus noted:

In her mansions, enclosed in walls,
with high, crenellated towers,
she keeps relics, chalices, gems,
brocades of fine gold and of silk;
no one could count all the riches
with which her mansions are decked out
…
I dare to say in front of you all
that even the beeswax candles
my mother burns in her houses
cost more than all the goods we have

{ En sez maisonz closez de murz,
A haultez tourz et à créneaux,
Fiertrez, calicez et joyaulz
Et drapz de fin or et de soie,
Si qu’à nombrer ne les saroie,
Dont sez maisonz sont reparéez
…
J’ose bien par devant tous dire,
Que mielz vault seullement le chire
Que ma mère art en sez maisons,
Que tous lez bienz que nous avons } [7]

Mary in response declared that she had earned all her wealth. She disparaged Jesus for his poverty:

I’ve many times caught sight of him
in churches, his arms outstretched,
poor and barefoot and badly dressed.
I well know he will live like this
for as long as this world endures.

{ Je l’ay maintez foiz regardé
En chez moustierz, lez braz tenduz,
Povrez, nuz piéz, et mal vestus.
Bien scay qui ainsy se maintenra
Tant qui che siècle chy durra. }

The pope, judging the dispute between Jesus and Mary, ruled in favor of Mary. He ordered Jesus to pay all of Mary’s court costs and support all her servants throughout all their lives. Mary was awarded the souls of all who died after having served her well. Gynocentric society privileges women above men, even to the extent of favoring a wealthy Mary over God, her poor son Jesus.

Gynocentric society is more nefarious than gender. Many women and men don’t perceive that the gender binary oppresses them. Gynocentric society, in contrast, deprives men of reproductive rights, encourages abortion coercion, produces grotesque anti-men sex discrimination in child custody and child support rulings, promotes hateful rape-culture culture, and generates highly disproportionate incarceration of men, among many other social injustices. Abolishing gynocentric society should be a much higher social-justice priority than abolishing gender.

Gynocentric society rests in part on inadequate literary history. Those who don’t learn that women were the dominant gender in Christian literary history cannot create a better future. Marginalized medieval men with lively literary imaginations recast gendered literary figures supporting the subordination of men. Men and women today must study medieval literature and do better.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Cicero & Ecclesiastes against concubines dominating men
• Salve, mater Salvatoris: honoring the great woman in medieval Europe
• contemptus mundi: MGTOW rebellion against gynocentric world

Notes:

[1] Notker of Saint Gall, also know as Notker the Stammerer {Notcerus Balbulus}, “For the festival of holy women {In natale sanctorum feminarum}” preface to st. 6, Latin text from Godman (1985) pp. 318-21, my English translation, benefiting from those of id., Dronke (1968) pp. 41-2, and A.Z. Foreman. Subsequent quotes from this sequence are similarly sourced.

Notker wrote this sequence about 885 GC. It’s one of the 49 sequences in Notker’s Liber ymnorum {Book of hymns}. Bower (2016), a magnificent edition of that work, is sadly expensive and not readily available.

[2] Genesis 3:15, Revelation 12.

[3] Notker’s figures associate Perpetua with Christ and universalize her triumph. The ladder parallels Jacob’s ladder to heaven. Genesis 28:10-2. The gladiator (in Perpetua’s account, an Egyptian with whom she fights) is linked to Christian imagery of spiritual struggle. 1 Timothy 1:18, 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7; 1 Corinthians 9:25-6. The radiant young man holding a golden bough suggests Aeneas visiting the underworld, and the consoling king with the golden laurel, the laurel of Apollo and immortality. Dronke (1968) p. 43. The Christian God, the father and the son Christ in heaven, encompass both. After his defeat of death through his resurrection, Christ harrowed Hell. That’s analogous to Christ overcame God’s impossibility challenge to Job: to snare the face of the behemoth. Job 40.24. For the explication, id. Christ then climbed the ladder to heaven, showing the way for all of “Eve’s children.”

[4] Notker holds a “binary hierarchical version of gender difference.” Cotter-Lynch (2016) p. 101. Notker represents Perpetua in terms of a “strict gender hierarchy.” Gold (2018) p. 160. Neither Cotter-Lynch nor Gold, however, recognizes men’s marginality in Notker’s poem, and neither contextualizes that poem within medieval gynocentrism. The Ruodlieb and Waltharius are much better evidence of medieval gender than are the sermons of Augustine. Women’s Christian gender dominance was obvious in the pilgrimage sites, church dedications, and popular devotion of medieval Europe.

[5] In Latin, the masculine plural substantives peccatores {sinners} and iusti {the righteous} aren’t reserved only for men. Women may be included in those terms. In contrast to Godman (1985), p. 321, but like Dronke (1968), p. 42, I’ve translated those terms gender-inclusively. I have done similarly for filii {children} previously in this sequence.

[6] Men are an addendum in Notker’s poetic scheme:

Notker seems to say, not only the martyr heroines but women in all their womanly capacities can triumph in that encounter and ordeal by which the divine is attained: through the harrowing of hell, in which they were achieved archetypally, they lost their impossible fearfulness. Every woman’s life can become a vindication of Eve, a bruising of the serpent’s head; even the lives of courtesans {meretrices} — for Christ did not reject them.

Dronke (1968) p. 43. In Dronke’s view, the last two stanzas of Notker’s sequence go on to associate Perpetua with “Everyman” {sic, id.}, meaning every person.

Godman provides an opposing reading, but similarly backgrounds men as a gender:

Notker’s poem celebrates the very familial virtues which Perpetua repudiated. … His poem is not written in indiscriminate praise of ‘the Perpetuas of this world or Everyman’ {citing Dronke (1968) p. 43}, for the theme of Notker’s sequence is much more daring. Instead of Perpetua he praises Everyman {sic}, and celebrates the extraordinary qualities in the ostensibly commonplace virtues of holy women.

Godman (1985) p. 67. Both Dronke’s and Godman’s interpretations agree that women are the dominant gender in Notker’s poetic representation of the ladder to heaven. So too are women in Christian literary history generally.

[7] “The Dispute between God and his Mother {La Desputoison de Dieu et de sa Mère}” vv. 62-7, 85-8, Old French (Picard dialect) text and English translation (modified slightly) from Newman (2013) App. 2. Subsequent quotes from “La Desputoison de Dieu et de sa Mère” are similarly sourced. The subsequent quote above is vv. 168-72.

This comedic poem survives only in Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Ottoboniani latini, 2523, f. 46vb-47vb. Jehan le Leu, a Walloon glovemaker, wrote this manuscript in 1453. Newman dates the composition of “La Desputoison de Dieu et de sa Mère” to probably 1450, or possibly 1417. Newman (2013) p. 203. Langlois (1885), pp. 54-61, provides a freely accessible Old French text.

“La Desputoison de Dieu et de sa Mère” shows concern for parental uncertainty. That’s a fundamental gender disadvantage of men. Jesus asserted regarding his mother:

All the while she withholds my share from me,
and I’m certainly no bastard!

{ Quant elle me détient ma part,
Et sy ne suiz mie bastart! }

Vv. 27-8. The judge ironically questions Mary’s parental knowledge:

And it seems to me he is right
to claim his father’s legacy,
if you were indeed his mother!

{ Et il me sanble qu’il a droit
S’il demande la part son père,
Ou caz que vous fustez sa mère. }

Vv. 100-3. Paternity laws today use biological paternity to assign sex-payment (“child support”) obligations when no other man is assigned them.

[image] Women (Mary) / Church with moon under her feet confronts dragon. The small naked man (Jesus) has clearly drawn masculine genitals. That reflects medieval appreciation for Christ as a fully masculine man. Illumination on folio 29v of Bamberger Apokalypse. Made at Reichenau Abbey (Germany), c. 1010. Preserved as Staatsbibliothek Bamberg Msc.Bibl.140.

References:

Bower, Calvin M., ed. and trans. 2016. The Liber ymnorum of Notker Balbulus. London: Published for Henry Bradshaw Society by the Boydell Press. (review by Susan Forscher Weiss)

Cotter-Lynch, Margaret. 2016. Saint Perpetua across the Middle Ages: Mother, Gladiator, Saint. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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

Godman, Peter. 1985. Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. London: Duckworth.

Gold, Barbara K. 2018. Perpetua: Athlete of God. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. (review by Stavroula Constantinou)

Langlois, Ernest. 1885. “Notice du manuscrit Ottobonien 2528.” Mélanges d’Archéologie et d’Histoire. 5 (1): 25-80.

Newman, Barbara. 2013. Medieval Crossover: reading the secular against the sacred. The Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.

After a battle in Ireland in 649, Créide, the daughter of the king of Aidne, lamented the killing of a man who had helped her father in the fight. She had fallen in love with this fallen warrior:

And they the arrows that murder sleep,
at every hour of the cold night,
are love-lamenting, for time spent with
him from beside the land of Roigne.
…
Tormented is my kindly heart,
holy Christ, by his grievous death —
and they the arrows that murder sleep,
at every hour of the cold night.

{ It é saigte gona súain,
cech trátha i n-aidchi adúair
serccoí, lia gnása, iar ndé
fir a tóeb thíre Roigne.
…
Cráidid mo chride cainech,
a Chríst cáid, a foraided;
It é saigte gona súain,
cech trátha i n-aidchi adúair. } [1]

This poem implicitly contrasts the warm joy of a woman sleeping with her beloved man to the horror of her sleeping with the cold nightmare of his grievous death. That nightmare envelops her imagination of loving him. Yet that nightmare had an underlying reality. His death was no violence-induced fantasy.

War historically has been almost exclusively structured as men killing other men. For most of history, most women have sincerely loved men and cared greatly about men’s deaths. Yet today, many men feel as if their lives don’t matter. Governments treat fathers as wallets and draft men as cannon fodder for senseless wars. Changing that oppressive, unequal gender structure begins with truthfully acknowledging a fundamental problem: the devaluation of men’s lives.

Men’s courage in battle shouldn’t be understood to devalue men’s lives. When the Christian Roman Emperor Louis the Pious died in 840, his sons contended with each other for succession to their father’s throne.[2] Efforts to settle their dispute peacefully failed. The brothers and their supporters then fought a brutal battle at Fontenoy on June 25, 841. That was a Saturday, “Saturn’s Day {Saturni dies}” in the Roman calendar. The poet Angelbert wrote:

I grieve, for it was not the Sabbath day, but Saturn’s day;
the wicked demon rejoices in the breaking of peace among brothers.

{ Sabbati non illud fuit, sed Saturni doleo,
de fraterna rupta pace gaudet demon impius. } [3]

Saturn was a traditional Greco-Roman god associated with castration culture and child sacrifices. Neither castration culture nor child sacrifices are consistent with the new creation of Christ.

Angelbert condemned the horrific violence against men in the battle at Fontenoy. He wasn’t a poet-moralist condemning from afar the ways of the world. He was a supporter of William the Pious’s eldest son Lothar. Angelbert fought on the front line at Fontenoy:

Fontenoy is what peasants call the water-spring and village
where Frankish blood was shed in slaughter and ruin.
Horror-stricken themselves are fields and woods and marshes.

May neither dew nor showers nor rain fall on that meadow
in which strong men, learned in battles, fell.
Father, brother, mother, sister, and friends wept for them.

And this finished crime, which I have described in verse,
I Angelbert myself witnessed, fighting with the others.
I alone remain of the many on the battle’s front line.

{ Fontaneto fontem dicunt, villam quoque rustice,
ubi strages et ruina Francorum de sanguine.
orrent campi, orrent silve, orrent ipsi paludes.

Gramen illud ros et ymber nec humectet pluvia,
in quo fortes ceciderunt, proelia doctissima,
pater, frater, mater, soror, quos amici fleverant.

Hoc autem scelus peractum, quod descripsi ritmice,
Angelbertus ego vidi pugnansque cum aliis
solus de multis remansi prima frontis acie. } [4]

In contrast to the civilized vitality of water-spring and village, even the basic elements of nature are horrified. Life-giving water should now refuse to infuse the earth.[5] Angelbert saw the field become white with the inner linen garments of men lying dead, their bodies sliced into pieces. Against the ancient epic tradition of battle poetry, Angelbert lamented the suffering and deaths of so many men:

The battle is not worthy of praise, nor of melodious song.
The rising, midday, setting, and darkening sun
should lament for those who died in that disaster.

Cursed be that day, may it not in the year’s circle
be counted, but eradicated from all memory,
not lit by the sun’s splendor, nor by dawn or dusk.

That night and subsequent day, a most terrible night,
that night mixed equally with lament and pain —
here they died, there they groaned in grave distress.

O grief and lamentation! Naked are the dead.
Vultures, crows, and wolves voraciously devour their flesh.
Horror-stricken, lacking burial, helplessly lies the corpse.

The weeping and the wailing I will not describe further.
Let each, as much as one can, restrain tears.
For their souls, let us pray to the Lord.

{ Laude pugna non est digna, nec cantu melodię,
oriens, meridianus, occidens et aquilo
plangant illos qui fuerunt illocasu mortui.

Maledicta dies illa, nec in annis circulo
numeretur, sed radatur ab omni memoria,
iubar solis nec illustret aurore crepusculum.

Nox et sequens diem illam, noxque dira nimium,
nox illa que planctu mixta et dolore pariter,
hic obit et ille gemit cum gravi penuria.

O luctum atque lamentum! Nudati sunt mortui.
Illorum carnes vultur, corvus, lupus vorant acriter;
orrent, carent sepulturis, vane iacet cadaver.

Ploratum et ululatum nec describo amplius,
unusquisque quantum potest restringatque lacrimas;
pro illorum animabus deprecemur Dominum. } [6]

For his lament, Angelbert adapted to rhythmic verse the marching meter that Venantius Fortunatus used in 570 for his triumphant hymn “Sing, tongue, the battle of glorious combat {Pange lingua gloriosi proelium certaminis}.” Moreover, in emphasizing that “most terrible night {noxque dira nimium},” Angelbert calls to mind in contrast the Exsultet of the Christian Easter Vigil:

This is the night
when our forefathers,
sons of Israel, you led out of Egypt,
with dry steeps you made them cross the Red Sea.
…
This is the night
when, having broken the chains of death,
Christ rose victorious from Hell.
…
O truly blessed night,
when earth and heaven,
human and divine, are joined.

{ Haec nox est,
in qua primum patres nostros,
filios Israel eductos de Aegypto,
Mare Rubrum sicco vestigio transire fecisti.
…
Haec nox est,
in qua, destructis vínculis mortis,
Christus ab ínferis victor ascendit.
…
O vere beata nox,
in qua terrenis caelestia,
humanis divina iunguntur. } [7]

From Angelbert’s perspective, the battle of Fontenoy was a disastrous failure of Christian society. He recognized the intrinsic value of men’s lives. Yet Angelbert didn’t directly challenge structures of gender oppression that devalue men’s lives. He concluded with a call for prayer to the Lord.

While some medieval women encouraged men to prove their prowess in deadly violence against men, other medieval women grieved that their beloved men went into battle, especially in far-away wars such as the crusades. Early in the thirteenth century, a woman trouvère probably sang:

I will sing for my heart
that I wish to comfort.
For despite my great distress
I do not wish to die or go mad
when from the savage land
I see no one return,
from where he is who calms
my heart, whenever I hear talk of him.

God, when they shout “Charge!”,
Lord, help the pilgrim
for whom I tremble,
because ruthless are the Saracens.

I will suffer in this state
until I see him come back.
He is on pilgrimage —
God grant that he may return!
And in spite of all my family
I do not seek reason to find
another to make a marriage.
Fools they are whom I hear talk of him.

God, when they shout “Charge!”,
Lord, help the pilgrim
for whom I tremble,
because ruthless are the Saracens.

For in my heart I grieve
that he is not in this land,
the one for whom I am so often tormented:
I have neither pleasure nor laughter.
He is handsome and I am nobly born.
Lord God, why have you done this?
When we desire one another,
why have you parted us?

God, when they shout “Charge!”,
Lord, help the pilgrim
for whom I tremble,
because ruthless are the Saracens.

{ Chanterai por mon corage
Que je vueill reconforter,
Car avec mon grant damage
Ne vueill morir n’afoler,
Quant de la terre sauvage
Ne voi nului retorner,
Ou cil est qui m’assoage
Le cuer, quant j’en oi parler.

Deus, quant crïeront “Outree,”
Sire, aidiez au pelerin
Por qui sui espöentee,
Car felon sunt Sarrazin.

Soufferai mon lonc estaige
Tant que.l voie rapasser.
Il est en pelerinage,
Dont Deus le lait retorner!
Et maugré tot mon lignage
Ne quier ochoison trover
D’autre face mariage;
Folz est qui j’en oi parler!

Deus, quant crïeront “Outree,”
Sire, aidiez au pelerin
Por qui sui espöentee,
Car felon sunt Sarrazin.

De ce sui au cuer dolente
Que cil n’est en cest païs
Qui si sovent me tormente:
Je n’en ai ne gieu ne ris.
Il est biaus et je sui gente.
Sire Deus, por que.l feïs?
Quant l’une a l’autre atalente,
Por coi nos as departis?

Deus, quant crïeront “Outree,”
Sire, aidiez au pelerin
Por qui sui espöentee,
Car felon sunt Sarrazin. } [8]

The woman trouvère’s song focuses on her own grief. It thus reflects the gynocentrism of medieval culture as a whole. Medieval mothers typically influenced strongly their children’s marriage decisions.[9] Despite such pressure to marry another, this woman remained loyal to her beloved man. She felt sensually connected to his body even while he was in battle far from her:

For this I faithfully wait,
that I have accepted his homage;
and when the sweet breeze blows
that comes from that sweet land
where he is whom I desire,
eagerly I turn my face to it.
Then it seems to me that I feel him
underneath my gray mantle.

God, when they shout “Charge!”,
Lord, help the pilgrim
for whom I tremble,
because ruthless are the Saracens.

For this I greatly regret,
that I was not in his departure parade.
The tunic he had worn
he sent to me to embrace.
At night, when his love spurs me,
I lay it down beside me,
all night against my naked skin,
to soothe my pain.

God, when they shout “Charge!”,
Lord, help the pilgrim
for whom I tremble,
because ruthless are the Saracens.

{ De ce sui en bone atente
Que je son homage pris;
Et quant la douce ore vente
Qui vient de cel douz païs
Ou cil est qui m’atalente,
Volentiers i tor mon vis;
Adont m’est vis que je.l sente
Par desoz mon mantel gris.

Deus, quant crïeront “Outree,”
Sire, aidiez au pelerin
por qui sui espöentee,
car felon sunt Sarrazin.

De ce sui mout decüe
Que ne fui au convoier;
Sa chemise qu’ot vestue
M’envoia por embracier:
La nuit, quant s’amor m’argue,
La met delez moi couchier
Mout estroit a ma char nue
Por mes malz assoagier.

Deus, quant crïeront “Outree,”
Sire, aidiez au pelerin
por qui sui espöentee,
car felon sunt Sarrazin. }

Men in their masculine bodily presence are wonderful gifts to women. What this woman felt from afar is a mere shadow of the pleasure she and her man would have felt together in person. Women must not merely lament the absence of beloved men. Women must act to make their men less exposed to violence.

Women haven’t done enough to protect men. With her beloved man suffering in the brutal crusade for Jerusalem, one woman trouvère early in the thirteenth century warned that she was close to getting angry with God:

Jerusalem, you do me great harm,
robbing me of the one I loved most of all!
Know in truth that I will no longer love you,
because he is what brings me the saddest joy.
And very often I sigh in anguish
so that I am very close to getting angry at God,
who has taken from me the great joy in which I lived.

{ Jherusalem, grant damage me fais
qui m’as tolu ce que je pluz amoie!
Sachiez de voir: ne vos amerai maiz
quar c’est la rienz dont j’ai pluz male joie!
Et bien sovent en souspir et pantais,
si qu’a bien pou que vers Deu ne m’irais,
qui m’a osté de grant joie ou j’estoie. } [10]

Threatened by men pursuing them, a woman in an early twelfth-century Irish poem urged her man to sleep. She promised to watch over him:

Sleep a little, just a little,
for there is little for you to fear,
O lad to whom I have given love,
son of Úa Duibne, Díarmait.

Sleep here soundly, soundly,
descendent of Duibne, noble Díarmait;
I shall watch over you the while
lovely son of Úa Duibne.

{ Cotail becán becán bec,
úair ní hecail duit a bec,
a gille día tardus seirc,
a meic uí Duibne, a Díarmait.

Cotailsi sunn go sáim sáim,
a uí Duibne, a Díarmait áin;
do-génsa t’foraire de,
a meic uí delbda Duibne. } [11]

As Walter made clear to Hildegund in the Waltherius, quality sleep is important to men. Yet women can’t be expected to be always with men, ready to keep watch so that their men can sleep peacefully. Moreover, if some mortal danger arises, the woman always keeping watch at night is likely to be too tired to fight effectively alongside of her man. Woman must take more radical action to save men’s lives.

Women today should unite in a mass uprising against sexist military draft registration. Despite having women generals, women fighter pilots, women Marines, and women fully integrated into the armed services, the U.S. still requires only men to register for being drafted under U.S. Selective Service. A U.S. District Court has declared that policy unconstitutional. The U.S. Selective Service System has ignored this court ruling. The U.S. Congress is too keen to pander to anti-men gender bigots and too busy with political theater simply to pass a law abolishing sexist Selective Service registration. Mass media directs its propaganda cannon at changing the gender composition of small, elite groups and ignores the gender composition of those at the bottom of society. Too many men have internalized the ideological gynocentric construction of their lives as being less valuable than women’s lives. Women must act to protect men’s interests and women’s own interests in men.

A country is more likely to engage in foolish wars if undervalued men vastly predominate among the soldiers dying in those wars. If women and men truly served equally in the military and died in roughly equal numbers in military service, a country would be much more reluctant to engage in wars. Women can best promote peace by insisting on gender equality in military service. Women must do more than merely lament their beloved men’s absences and deaths in war.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Waltharius to Aymeri: how to end epic violence against men
• medieval monk castrated for adultery; husband doesn’t punish wife
• Peire Cardenal: thirteenth-century troubadour MGTOW

Notes:

[1] “And they the arrows that murder sleep {It é saigte gona súain}” st. 1, 8 (of 8), Old Irish text and English translation (modified slightly) from Murphy (1956) p. 87. I’ve aligned the English translation lines with the Irish text. To follow the Irish, I’ve also made identical the first and last two lines in the English translation (using the translation of it é from Murphy’s glossary). Murphy dates this poem as c. 800. This lament is preserved in a single sixteenth-century manuscript, British Museum Harleian MS. 5280, f. 15b. Id. p. 212.

The preface to the poem explains that Créide, daughter of Gúaire of Aidne, fell in love with Dínertach, son of Gúaire of the Ui Fidgente only when she saw him mortally wounded in battle:

She had seen him in the battle of Aidne, in which he had been wounded with seventeen woundings on the breast of his tunic. She loved him after that.

{ Di-connuircsi isin treus Aidne ro geghin secht ngoine deac for seglach a léniod. Ro-carostoirsie ierum. }

Old Irish text and Engish translation (modified insubstantially) from id. p. 87.

[2] Louis the Pious was the son of Charlemagne. At Louis’s death, his three surviving sons were Lothar I of Italy (the eldest son), Charles the Bald, and Louis the German. At the battle of Fontenoy, Lothar was allied with Pepin II of Aquitaine. According to Angelbert, Lothar fought strongly, but some of his princes betrayed him in battle. Lothar’s side lost, and he fled. The warring brothers established peace among themselves through an agreement on the division the Charlemagne’s empire only in 843 through the Treaty of Verdun.

[3] Angelbert, “Aurora cum primo mane tetra noctis dividet {At the first light, dawn will separate the horrors of night},” 1.2-3, Latin text from Jasiński (2016) p. 78 (unified Latin text), my Latin translation benefiting mainly from the English translations of Godman (1985) pp. 262-5, Waddell (1948) pp. 102-5, translation via Eric Boulanger, and translation via Gérard Le Vot. Subsequent quotes from “Aurora cum primo mane tetra noctis dividet” are similarly sourced. The Paris manuscript alone has the reading “Saturni dolium {Saturn’s cauldron}.”

The first letter in each stanza of Angelbert’s poem form the alphabetical sequence A through P. Other examples of that poetic form (abecedarius) are chapters 1, 2, and 4 of the Book of Lamentations, Psalm 119, Augustine’s “Psalm against the Donatists {Psalmus contra partem Donati}” written in 393 (for scholarly discussion Hudnick (2011)), and Chaucer’s “Prayer of Our Lady,” “Almighty and All-Merciful Queen {Almighty and al merciable queene}.”

Authors have commonly claimed that the abecedarius was “employed as a mnemonic technique for public recitation.” See, e.g. Godman (1985) p. 49, which provides the quote. Medieval literary persons developed extraordinary memories. They could readily appreciate complex Homeric and Virgilian centos. The first letter of each stanza of a poem has trivial significance relative to medieval demands and capabilities for literary memory. The abecedarius is better interpreted as a constructed poetic sign for “natural” literary order.

Three medieval manuscripts of Angelbert’s poem have survived. The most important is in the Kórnik Library of the Polish Academy of Sciences. That manuscript dates to the second half of the ninth century. Jasiński (2016) pp. 29, 35. A codex of the tenth century, now held in Paris (BnF lat. 1154), includes musical notation (neumes). Id. p. 33. Another manuscript originates from a Benedictine monastery in St. Gallen. Angelbert’s poem apparently was copied into that manuscript in the tenth century. Id. Following Jasiński, these manuscripts are called the Kórnik, Paris, and St. Gallen manuscripts, respectively.

Latin texts printed for this poem have varied significantly. Both Godman’s and Waddell’s Latin texts differ from Jasiński’s. Motivating his thorough study of the surviving manuscripts, Jasiński stated:

Unfortunately, the Carolingian poetical masterpiece has survived to our own times in a form which is questionable in many respects. Since the 18th century until today, the most eminent Latinists have made the poem a subject of their studies. The text has been published many times, and scholars undertook numerous attempts at a reconstruction of the original text in their separate studies. Although these works deserve the highest respect, the same cannot be said about the subsequent editions of the poem. The later the edition, the more errors it contains. In our opinion, the sheer number of errors in these editions prevents any critical analysis of the text of this unique poem.

Jasiński (2016) p. 84 (abstract). Jasiński’s study allows one to analyze whether a given Latin text contains a medieval variant or simply a modern printing error. Jasiński unified Latin text is the best reconstruction of the original Latin text. I’ve thus favored that text, while noting interesting medieval variants.

Here’s a Latin text and loose English translation printed in 1857 in Dublin University Magazine (vol. 49).

[4] For the first hemistich of verse 7.1, the St. Gallen manuscript has “pater, frater, mater, soror”; the Paris manuscript, “pater, mater, soror, frater”; and the Kórnik manuscript, “pater matri, soror fratri.” Jasiński (2016) pp. 36-40. For reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, Jasiński judged the St. Gallen manuscript to best represent the original text. Id. pp. 62-3. In the poetic context of brutal violence against men, placing first the compassion of male relatives emphasizes the gender structure of the violence.

[5] Cf. Isaiah 55:10-11.

[6] The Latin text of Waddell (1948) follows the Paris manuscript. In that manuscript, stanza 13 {Nox…} repeats the third line of stanza 7 {Gramen…}. That brings in the dead men’s community and lessens the stark desolation conveyed by what was probably the original stanza 13.

About the year 820, Theodulf of Orléans wrote allegorically of an epic battle of birds:

They tore at one another everywhere with blows and bites,
and both sides waged war with spiritful determination.
Here you might think you were seeing Rutilians, there Trojans
roused to action, and a fierce battle raging on both sides.
As acorns tumble in autumn from the oak trees
and full-grown leaves fall when the frost comes,
so the army of birds was cut down and died on that spot,
the enormous mass of their corpses covering the earth.
Just as the smooth threshing-floor is filled with grain in summer,
so that field was filled with birds who had been slaughtered.
A small number coming from the north were turned back northwards;
an entire cohort lay destroyed on either side.

{ Inque vicem laniant se hinc morsibus, ictibus illinc,
Ingenti bellum surgit utrimque animo.
Hinc Rutilos, illinc videas consurgere Teucros,
Saevire et Martem parte ab utraque ferum.
Glans cadit autumno veluti de stipite querna,
Maturum et folium iam veniente gelu,
Non aliter avium moriens exercitus illic
Decidit et magna strage replevit humum.
Nam teres aestivis impletur ut area granis,
Campus ita extincta sic ave plenus erat.
A borea in boream veniens pars parva reversa est,
Tota in utraque cohors parte perempta iacet. }

Theodulf of Orléans, “We can understand certain things from exemplary events {Rebus et exemplis quaedam bene nosse valemus}” vv. 173-84, Latin text and English translation (modified slightly) from Godman (1985) pp. 174-5. This poem is “an understated allegory of the political dissension threatening the {Carolingian} empire and threatening his own fate.” Id. p. 15. The description of the field filled with the dead bodies of birds may have influenced Angelbert’s description of the dead after the battle of Fontenoy.

Theodulf ‘s poem, which is also known by the title “The Battle of the Birds {De pugna avium},” is part 3 of Theodulf’s “Letter to Moduin {Epistola ad Modoinum}.” Moduin is Moduin of Autun. He was a court poet, the Bishop of Autun, and Theodulf’s close friend. Moduin used the pen name Naso. Apprently he apparently admired the poetry of Ovid.

[7] Excerpt from the Exsultet {Rejoice} of the Christian Easter Vigil. The Exsultet is attested in the seventh-century Bobbio Missal, a Gallican sacramentary.

Angelbert’s “cursed be that day” moves the self-curses of Jeremiah 20:14-18 and Job 3:3-7 to the social level of a day of horrible violence against men. The Vulgate translation of Leviticus 25:30 refers to one year’s time as “the year’s circle {anni circulus}.” On persons nakedly departing from the world, Job 1:21, Ecclesiastes 5:15, 1 Timothy 6:7.

[8] Guiot de Dijon, Chanson de croisade, Retrouenge, “I will sing for my heart {Chanterai por mon corage}” st 1-3 (with the refrain broken out separately), Old French text and English translation (with my modifications) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) pp. 141-2. A significant scholarly view doubts the attribution to Guiot de Dijon and asserts that a woman trouvère probably wrote this song. The subsequent quote is stanzas 4-5 (of 5) from this song.

Significant textual variations exist for “Chanterai por mon corage.” For a slightly different Old French text, with English translation and thorough scholarly notes, see song RS 21 in Warwick’s Troubadours, Trouvères and the Crusades site. The “about the text” tab suggests that this song “may date from the first third or half of the 13th c.” For an interpretation of the textual differences in versions of this song, Atkinson (1979).

Several modern performances of this song are available on YouTube. In addition to the recording embedded above, The Early Music Consort of London (directed by David Munrow) recorded a version on its album Music of the Crusades (1991). Studio Der Frühen Musik recorded a version on its album Chanterai Por Mon Coraige (1994).

Despite some women’s laments for men, women play a central role in inciting men to violence against men. In an article published in an elite scholarly journal, Perfetti reported:

Reading medieval poems with a focus on the crusader figure and not just on references to specific efforts to recover the Holy Land, we can see at work an eroticized poetics of crusading in which love for a lady is not in conflict with crusading but rather an enhancement of it. … the eroticized portrait of the crusader they created undoubtedly helped to promote crusading.

Perfetti (2013) pp.  956-7. Perfetti discerns “a process of gendering the crusades as a masculine enterprise.” Id. p. 944. The gynocentric process of devaluing men’s lives and gendering men to be subject to brutal violence has been prevalent throughout history. That oppressive gender structure continues to our day. Perfetti offers no insight into how to change it.

[9] In the motet “I rightly should grieve {Je me doi bien doloseir},” Motetus, a woman trouvère sings:

Why have you given me,
mother, a husband?
For never willingly
would I have wished to be given
to anyone other than
the one I have taken as my own.

{ Por coi m’aveis vos doneit,
Mere, mari?
Cant ja par mun greit
Ne fuist ensi
K’a autrui fuisse doneie
K’a celi cui j’ai de moi saisit }

Old French text (Walloon / Lorraine) and English translation (modified slightly) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 217. Id., pp. 218-9, provides music for this song. In Byzantium, mothers arranged bride shows for their sons.

[10] Chanson de croisade, “Jerusalem, you do me great harm {Jherusalem, grant damage me fais}” st. 1, Old French text and English translation (modified slightly) from Doss-Quinby et al. (2001) p. 146. For a good online text and translation of the whole song, see song RS 191 in Warwick’s Troubadours, Trouvères and the Crusades site. That site suggests that this song dates from the second quarter of the thirteenth century. A performance of this song by The Ensemble Perceval is readily available.

[11] “Sleep a little, just a little {Cotail becán becán bec},” also known as “Díarmait’s sleep” st. 1-2, Old Irish text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Murphy (1956) pp. 161-2. Murphy dates this anonymous poem to c. 1150. Finn (Fionn) and his fianna (warrior band) were pursuing the two lovers Gráinne and Díarmait úa Duibne.

[images] (1) Video with recorded performance of Angelbert’s “Aurora cum primo mane tetra noctis dividet” by Gérard Le Vot on Ultima Lacrima, Sacred Chants of the Middle Ages 9th-13th centuries (Studio S.M., 1997). (2) Video with recorded performance of “Chanterai por mon corage” by Estampie / Schola Cantorum Gedanensis on the album Crusaders – In Nomine Domini (1996). (3) Selective Service video poster on display at Reagan National Airport, Washington, DC, on December 23, 2019. Photo by Douglas Galbi.

References:

Atkinson, J. Keith. 1979. “Deux interprétations de la chanson ‘Chanterai por mon corage.’” Pp. 33-45 in Mélanges de Langue et Littérature Françaises du Moyen-Âge Offerts à Pierre Jonin. Sénéfiance, 7. Aix-en-Provenc: Publications du Cuerma, Université de Provence.

Doss-Quinby, Eglal, Joan Tasker Grimbert, Wendy Pfeffer, and Elizabeth Aubery. 2001. Songs of the Women Trouvères. New Haven: Yale University Press. (review by Carol Symes)

Godman, Peter. 1985. Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. London: Duckworth.

Hunink, Vincent. 2011. “Singing Together in Church: Augustine’s Psalm against the Donatists.” Pp. 389-403 in A.P.M.H. Lardinois, J.H. Blok, M.G.M. van der Poel, eds.. Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion. Orality and Literacy in the Ancient World, vol. 8. Leiden: Brill.

Jasiński, Tomasz. 2016. “Próba rekonstrukcji pierwotnego tekstu wiersza Angilberta o bitwie pod Fontenoy (841 rok).” Pamiętnik Biblioteki Kórnickiej. 33: 29-84. Online.

Murphy, Gerard. 1956. Early Irish Lyrics, Eighth to Twelfth century. Edited with translation, notes, and glossary. Clarendon Press: Oxford.

Perfetti, Lisa. 2013. “Crusader as Lover: The Eroticized Poetics of Crusading in Medieval France.” Speculum. 88 (4): 932-957.

Waddell, Helen. 1948. Mediaeval Latin Lyrics. New York: Henry Holt.