In medieval Europe, courtly romances valorized violence against men and male disposability. Even the mighty knight Don Quixote could not extirpate these pernicious ideas of chivalry from European consciousness, which went on to colonize the world. The extraordinarily expensive raising of the Costa Concordia does nothing to challenge the intellectual leaders seeking to keep men on sinking ships. Humankind’s best hope for lessening violence against men and lengthening men’s lives is to study the blunt, lusty, irreverently truthtelling Archpriest of Talavera. He fearlessly teaches that women are key.
Some thought leaders have expressed concern that the Archpriest of Talavera was an anti-meninist. Today’s well-educated readers will not read any work authoritatively labeled anti-meninist. That’s reasonable. A reader doesn’t want to come under public suspicion of anti-meninism. A high intellectual official declaring a person to be anti-meninist is tantamount today to a public death sentence.
But was the Archpriest of Talavera an anti-meninist? This question has been of central concern to medieval scholars. While in such matters scholars generally prefer to error on the side of caution, the sparse evidence from the Archpriest of Talavera’s life in early-fifteen-century Spain suggests that he may not have been anti-meninist.[1] The one work securely attributed to him devotes more attention to women than to men. But throughout history, women have received more attention than men have. Men in the Archpriest of Talavera’s work have less lively and distinctive voices than women do, and the men tend to be subordinate to women as actors.[2] That’s an under-appreciated, general historical pattern. It isn’t evidence that the Archpriest of Talavera was an anti-meninist.
The Archpriest of Talavera described men’s subordination to women, but he didn’t necessary support it. For example, he described how a woman directs her choleric lover to violence. The woman bursts into tears. Then she declares to her lover:
Do you think it’s right for What’s-her-name or So-and-so to insult me in public, calling me a whore and concubine? She called me a married whore and said such nasty things about me that I wish I had died before I became your mistress! Alas, poor wretch that I am! Now I am dishonored and undone! And by whom? By a vile whore, dirt under my feet! Or by a low scoundrel, scum of the earth! Do you think I’ll put up with that? Rather, I’ll forswear myself, by God and my soul! I’ll run off with a Moor from over the sea, or with the basest footman in Castile! That’s all I’ve got to say!
{ ¿Parécevos esto bien, que Fulana o Fulano me ha deshonrado en plaza? ¿Y cómo? Bien a su voluntad llamándome puta amigada. Díjome puta casada, y díjome tales y tales injurias, que más querría ser muerta que ser en vuestro poder venida. ¡Ay de mí, cuitada! ¡Ahora soy difamada y deshonrada! Y ¿de quién? ¡De una puta bellaca, suela de mi zapata! o ¡De un bellaco vil, suela de mi chapín! Pues si esto vos parece que yo debo sufrir, en antes renegaría yo de mí en Dios y mi ánima; antes me fuese con un moro de allén la mar o con el más vil hombre de pie que en Castilla hubiese, y no digo más }[3]
Hearing such words, the man immediately picks up his sword and rushes out to do violence to the woman who insulted his lover. The other woman’s lover will rise in her defense. The two men will seek to kill each other or grievously wound each other. Men’s violence and violence against men is rooted in men’s sexual-relational subordination to women. That isn’t anti-meninist ideology. It’s reality.
While violence against men attracts little public concern today, medieval women were concerned about violence against men. The man who sought to avenge the insult to his lover was seriously injured in the fight with the other woman’s lover. The Archpriest of Talavera observes of the woman and her lover:
When her lover is brought back to her house wounded or having wounded, the blessed promoter of it all scratches her arse (speaking with due reverence) and says: “Unhappy creature that I am, shamed and undone! O Lord, what will become of me now? Who cut your face? Who killed you? Who struck you such a blow? Holy Virgin! Dear Jesus, to Thee I commend him! Don’t break my heart! Woe is me! Bring me eggs! Bring me lint! Bring me wine to make a compress! … Are you hurt? Unlucky wretch that I am, born in an evil hour!” Etc.
{ Y cuando entra herido por casa o ha herido, ráscase la bendita de la promovedora de ello las nalgas -con reverencia hablando- diciendo: “¡Cuitada, mezquina, turbada, corrida! ¡Yuy, y qué será de mí! Señor, ¿quién vos hirió por la cara? o ¿Quién me vos mató? o ¿Quién vos dio tal golpe? ¡Virgen María! ¡A ti lo acomiendo, Jesús mío! ¡Bueno, y no me lastimes! ¡Ay, triste de mí! ¡Daca huevos; daca estopa; daca vino para estopadas! … ¡Triste de mí, que en hora mala nací!”, etc. }[4]
The wounded man is lucky enough to be bleeding next to his woman as she enjoys wine. If the man inflicted wounds, then the many other men who serve as the punishing end of the law will be after him:
He will lose his possessions and live in hiding and run away, abandoning his country and his house, and will wander about in foreign parts, making a living for magistrates, constables, and notaries, and all because of those accursed, damned, unlucky, poisonous, cruel, and monstrous tears!
{ después han de perder lo que tienen y andar escondidos y huidos; dejar sus tierras y casas y andar por las ajenas, y dar de comer a los alcaldes, alguaciles y notarios. Y esto se les viene de cada día por estas lágrimas negras, malditas, mal aventuradas, rabiosas y emponzoñadas, venenosas, crueles y desmesuradas. }
As a rare man who feels men’s pain, the Archpriest of Talaveda exclaims:
Lord, would that I could weigh the tears of a woman, had I but the knowledge! Truly a single tear of hers outweighs a hundredweight of lead or copper! A curse upon him, amen, who does not ponder this and who, when sees a woman in tears, does not consider that they are merely an instrument of vengeance.
{ ¡Ay Dios, quién pudiese pesar una lágrima de mujer! ¡Si el hombre tan discreto y sabio fuese! Por cierto, más pesa una lágrima de ellas que un quintal de plomo o de cobre: ¡maldito sea el que en esto no pensare, amén! Cuando lágrimas de ellas viere, que primero tome acuerdo que venganza }
Men lack the strength to stand up to women’s tears. Violence against men will decrease when fewer woman cry for violence against men, and more weep for violence against men.
Weeping women are essential for any mass-media news report of serious public concern. Women’s tears far outweigh men’s lives. Men will never achieve equality with women until their interests are supported with women’s tears.
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Read more:
- violence against men in medieval French fabliaux
- women silence men with violence
- women’s rule at the United Nations
Notes:
[1] Whitbourn (1970), pp. 48-52, reviews the scholarly moral judgments on the personal merit of the long-dead Archpriest of Talavera. Solomon (1997) completely misses the spirit of the Archpriest of Talavera and creates, in an uncanny contrast, a work of mind-numbing dullness.
[2] The Archpriest of Talavera’s work is of course the book Archpriest of Talavera by Alonso Martínez de Toledo.
[3] Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Archpriest of Talavera, Part 3, Ch. 8, Spanish text from the online presentation by Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes of the edition of Gerli (1979), English translation from Simpson (1959) p. 182. Subsequent quotes above are similarly from id. pp. 183-5. Naylor & Rank (2013), which provides a scholarly translation of the full work, has similar but somewhat less lively text.
[4] Eggs yolk and wine were used in ancient treatments for wounds. See, e.g. McCallum (2008) p. 272 (ancient Romans treating wounds with egg yolk) and Luke 10:34 (pouring oil and wine on a wound). Jacopo Berengario da Carpi, On Fracture of the Skull Or Cranium (1518), states that wounds are frequently treated with rose oil and egg yolk.
[image] My photograph of a painting of the Battle of Adwa, by an anonymous Ethiopian artist, dated c. 1968, in the collection of the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC.
References:
Gerli, Michael, ed. 1979. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo. Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho. Madrid: Cátedra.
McCallum, Jack Edward. 2008. Military medicine from ancient times to the 21st century. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO.
Naylor, Eric W., and Jerry Rank. 2013. The Archpriest of Talavera by Alonso Martínez de Toledo: dealing with the vices of wicked women and the complexions of men. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Simpson, Lesley Byrd Simpson. 1959. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo. Little sermons on sin: the Archpriest of Talavera. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Solomon, Michael. 1997. The literature of misogyny in medieval Spain: the “Arcipreste de Talavera” and the “Spill”. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Whitbourn, Christine J. 1970. The Arcipreste de Talavera and the Literature of Love. Hull: University of Hull Publications.
