Clik here to view.
Eufemie led Cador in love as radical proto-meninist
Scholars have been silent about whether the thirteenth-century Old French Romance of Silence {Roman de Silence} is ultimately misandristic, transmitting an ultra-conservative message, or actually...
View Articlegod of love advised medieval victim of war on men
A medieval man suffering grief in love fell asleep. Most persons in the relatively enlightened medieval period didn’t believe that a god of love exists. But the entity that this grieving lover...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII’s marital problems
In 1137, King Louis VI of France arranged for his seventeen-year-old son Louis VII to marry the fifteen-year-old Eleanor of Aquitaine. She was the Duchess of Aquitaine and one of the wealthiest and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Socrates wanted to suppress discussion of castration culture
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates instigated a quarrel between lowly philosophy and revered poetry. Such a quarrel served him seeking status as a philosopher. This rhetorical gambit led to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Pompeia and Fulvia in Roman de Merlin & Roman de Silence
Pompeia and Fulvia, treacherous elite women in the Roman Republic, were foremothers of evil women in medieval romance. Pompeia became the deceitful empress in the Grisandole episode of the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Socrates’s city of sows lacks roses & lilies contending beautifully
In Plato’s Republic, Socrates constructs with words a first city in which men cooperate without competing. Glaucon disparages this first city as a “city of sows {ὑῶν πόλις}.” The first city’s sows are...
View Articlecaptive bird teaching: Disciplina clericalis on dialectic of wisdom
According to the early twelfth-century Training Manual for Clergy {Disciplina clericalis}, a rustic had a garden in which water flowed and fresh grass grew. Birds would sing in this garden. One day...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Queen Eufeme falsely accused Malduit-Silence of attempted rape
A man raping a woman has been recognized as a grave offense across three thousand years of literary history. False accusations of rape have been a related major concern, except perhaps in the past few...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Heinrich von Morungen foolishly died from gyno-idolatry
Many medieval men ardently, inordinately loved women. Such love creates grave risk of blinding, deafening gyno-idolatry. The minnesinger Heinrich von Morungen, who lived in the Germanic land of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
demons purged in crapping & farting in Life of Saint Martin
If you think demons have grabbed hold of you, do something about it. Purge the demons from your soul. The widely lauded and influential fourth-century saint Martin of Tours, also known as Martin the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Guillaume de Palerne’s medieval dream of gender equality in love
In the late-twelfth-century Old French adventure romance William of Palermo {Guillaume de Palerne}, Queen Felise and King Embron are relaxing in a garden in Palermo with their four-year-old son...
View ArticleClik here to view.
sharing food indicates love in Fortunatus’s poetry
The sixth-century poet and public figure Venantius Fortunatus delighted in sharing food and eating. To his dear friends Radegund of Thuringia and Agnes of the Holy Cross, Fortunatus sent a gift: As...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sidonius’s myth and philosophy in marriage of Araneola & Polemius
In mid-fifth-century Gaul, Araneola and Polemius planned to marry. Araneola was a strong, independent woman descended from leading Roman officials. Polemius, a descendant of the eminent Roman...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fortunatus imagined helping Radegund in the kitchen
In the sixth century, Radegund of Thuringia, a princess and queen, left her life of royal privilege to serve humbly her religious sisters in the Abbey of the Holy Cross at Poitiers. Her friend...
View ArticleClik here to view.
captive among Burgundians, Sidonius too sad to sing marriage
Living in the Gaulish city of Lyon in the early 460s, the Roman public official and poet Sidonius Apollinaris quartered Germanic Burgundians in his house. The Burgundians could serve as allies in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
desert monk John the Dwarf learned to be good as man, not angel
Not living with mobile phones embedded in their faces, medieval men were sensitive to sensuous impressions around them. Many medieval men, not surprisingly, ardently loved women.[1] Yet the reality of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
silence in medieval romance about women inheriting property
In the horrific Trojan War, thousands of men were slaughtered for the sake of one woman, Helen of Troy. That massive gender inequality in social value has long been treated with silence. Women’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sidonius shows elite men’s gender-disdain for men in 5th-century Gaul
Elite men, big men — men who have prevailed in grappling for status in gynocentric society — serve their personal interests in promoting sexism against men. Men as a gender are almost all non-elite...
View ArticleClik here to view.
women in love with men shouldn’t presume exclusivity & commitment
In medieval Europe, women experienced strong, enduring delight with men. Medieval men in turn ardently loved women, sometimes even to the extent of scandalous gyno-idolatry. Love’s passion, however,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
invective against men risks supporting castration culture
Invective against men differs categorically from seeking to castrate men. Yet disdaining and disparaging men historically has been associated with castration culture. Invective against men, and even...
View Article