Month: October 2013

The noble Spanish knight Suero de Quinones fell deeply in love with a lady.  He vainly sought her affections.  Declaring himself imprisoned with love for her, every Thursday he wore an iron collar around his neck.  To impress her, he fought with his right arm bared against the Moors in Grenada.[1]  The lady nonetheless did not requite his love.

Ignorant of classical Ovidian learning, Suero de Quinones in 1434 occupied a bridge with the help of nine of his fellow knights.  They demanded a fight from any man who sought to cross the bridge:

Knights were to be clad in the armor of war, and were to joust without shields.  Armor, lances, and horses would be provided for all, although if a knight chose to wear his own armor he might do so.  Suero and his companions were to have no advantage in the matter of arms.  Two knights would joust until three lances were broken between them.  A lance which struck down a knight or drew blood was to be counted as broken.  Any noble woman who passed within a half-league of the Passo {bridge} would be obliged to give up the glove of her right hand unless she was attended by a knight who would joust on her behalf. [2]

One woman’s glove was thus made equivalent to grave risk to a man’s life.  Suero and companions pledged to occupy the bridge until they had broken three hundred lances, or for thirty days.  Knights from across Spain and beyond Spain came to take up Suero’s challenge.  After thirty days, sixty-eight knights had jousted with Suero and his companions.  Many knights were wounded.  One knight was killed.  Suero and eight of his companions were so badly injured at the end of the thirty days that they were physically incapable of jousting.  The absurd event concluded with a solemn ceremony indicating the point of the carnage: the iron collar symbolizing his love bondage was removed from the neck of the physically wounded Suero de Quinones.  Many years later, Suero de Quinones was killed in a joust.[3]

The extent to which men’s lives are devalued is greatly under-appreciated.  True understanding of chivalry was historically suppressed more than a millennium ago, resulting in continuing harm to men.  Medieval French fabliaux relished violence against men and demeaned men’s persons to penises.  Early in the seventeenth century, Don Quixote of La Mancha cited with admiration Suero de Quinones.  Quixote declared himself to be a direct male descendant of the man who killed Suero.[4]  Subsequent history of chivalry makes clear that Quixote’s literary-symbolic genealogy was completely fanciful.

The best modern scholarship among the rare work showing concern about men has identified the disease of one-itis.  Professor Flame insightfully explains:

When it comes to a relationship, it is possible to have a healthy, passionate and loving relationship WITHOUT getting one-itis for the chick.  One-itis basically means the guy is placing the girl way above himself, places her on a pedestal (and thus above her true worth in his life). You don’t have to do this to have a loving relationship with your gf {girlfriend}.  In fact, I think it’s even more rewarding when you understand and accept that your gf is as human as you are.  This allows you to appreciate her in her real form, as a person who is as flawed as you are, but who ignites something within you.

Perfection is not a requirement for love. Part of romance and love and building real relationships is discovering the flaws in your partner and embracing those flaws as part of this whole, real person that you are sharing something very intimate and beautiful with.  There’s something very sacred about seeing a person truly as he/she is and still realizing how important she is in your life.

Professor Heartiste recommends having sex with ten other women hotter than the woman whom you feel is holding you in the love bondage of one-itis.  With admirable ethics, Prof. Heartiste describes a possible side-effect of such treatment for one-itis: “ten-itis, which is a perpetual ringing in the ear caused by all the sex screams of your exes.”  The value to men of such expert opinion is obvious.  Yet many men do not seek the best available scholarship on men because they are afraid that women might punish them for learning such thinking.

In 1438, only four years after Suero de Quinones and his companions quixotically occupied the bridge, the Archpriest of Talavera recognized the social problem of chivalry and the difficulty of addressing gender equality.  The Archpriest of Talavera sought to reduce men’s relational subordination to women and promote gender equality.  He wrote a book that challenged women’s rule.  In an epilogue to that book, he explained that he considered throwing the book into flames hot as lust.  He later fell asleep and dreamed of more than a thousand ladies — elegant, famous, well-bred, and very pretty.  He was then an old man.  The ladies gang-raped him.  One said to him:

Crazy fool!  How could you dare write or speak of women who deserve to rule the world?  Remember, remember, how much fun you had with us in the past.  Well, don’t say now: “I’ll never partake of that cup,” since in old age the crafty devil is accustomed to enter into the old head of the lowly and clumsy ass.

{ Loco atrevido, ¿dó te vino osar de escribir ni hablar de aquellas que merecen del mundo la victoria? Have, have memoria cuanto de nos hubiste algún tiempo pasado gasajado. Pues no digas aún de esta agua no beberé, que a la vejez acostumbra entrar el diablo artero en la cabeza vieja del torpe vil asno. }[5]

The ladies thus suggested that he actually wanted it.  A scholar who has examined the gang-rape in detail concluded that it’s “truly comical.”[6]  But the Archpriest of Talavera made clear his pain:

It seemed to me that I was more dead than alive and that I’d rather be dead than experience such pain.  Anguishing in pain, sweating, I awoke and thought I had been in the power of cruel ladies.

{ a mi semblar quedé más muerto que no vivo, que morir más amaba que tal dolor pasar. Congojado de tormento, sudando, desperté y pensé que en poder de crueles señoras me había hallado. }[7]

The cruel ladies left the Archpriest of Talavera with a stark choice:

Either I must have peace and ultimate pardon, good will and affection from those ladies under whose mantle I have lived and must burn the book which I have completed . Or else, with repentance asking pardon from them, may the book continue to exist and so long as I live may I be despised by so many lovely ladies or whatever other cruel punishment there might result.

{ o paz haya y perdón final, bien querencia de aquellas so cual manto bebí en esta vida, o que queme el libro que yo he acabado y no perezca. Mas, con arrepentimiento demando perdón de ellas, y me lo otorguen o que quede el libro y yo sea mal quisto para mientra viva de tanta linda dama, o que pena cruel sea. }[8]

The epilogue demands to be read ironically.  The Archpriest of Talavera did not burn his book.  He would not be intimidated by being “despised by so many lovely ladies.”  He would not create or impose upon himself “other cruel punishment.”  While as a young man he had fun “under the mantle” of ladies, as he grew in wisdom he recognized true love of God to be far more important than carnal love.  He probably saw for himself the trials of Suero de Quinones and his companions at the bridge.  Suero de Quinones foolishly slept alone with an aching head, lamenting that his lady would not enter his house. Suero de Quinones’ affliction was the worst misfortune.[9]  Despite the Archpriest of Talavera’s book, men continue to suffer that misfortune.  Chivalry deludes men and keeps them in ignorance in the continuing Dark Ages.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• addressing sexual inequality and meeting men’s sexual needs
• Charlie Chaplin, victim of sexual chivalry
• sexist Selective Service exemplifies contempt for men’s bodies

Notes:

[1] Evans (1932) p. 144.  Today’s famous Betas-of-the-Month are Suero de Quinones’ cultural-historical descendants.

[2] Id. p. 145.  Suero de Quinones’ feat was of a recognized type called a pas d’armes.

[3] Id. pp. 146, 143, ft. 8.  Four knights came to participate from beyond the borders of Spain.  At the request of Suero de Quinones, a town notary Don Luis Alonso Luengo kept a detailed account of the events, which were known as the Passo Honroso.  That account was subsequently published by Pero Rodriquez de Lena as El Passo Honroso de Suero de Quinones.  Selected passages are available both in medieval Spanish and in modern English translation in Fallows (2010). The knight Gutierre Quijada killed Suero de Quinones in a joust on July 11, 1456, near Barcial de la Loma. Gutierre Quijada had participated in the Passo Honroso.

[4] Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, vol. 1, ch. 49.

[5] Alonso Martínez de Toledo, Archpriest of Talavera, Demanda (Epilogue), Spanish text from the online presentation by Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes of the edition of Gerli (1979), English translation from Naylor & Rank (2013) p. 223.

[6] Costa Fontes (2000), p. 48, describes the ladies’ attack as amounting to “nothing less than rape.”  Id., p. 49, describes that attack as “truly comical,” and the whole epilogue, “unquestionably hilarious.”  Costa Fontes also misandristically labels the Archpriest of Talavera “a misogynistic work.” Id. p. 36.  More important than name-calling is the current social reality of hate rape and imprisonment.

[7] Trans. Naylor & Rank (2013) p. 223.

[8] Id. pp. 223-4.  Demands for a retraction (palinode) have continued to the present:

The modern reader of the Archpriest of Talavera might well react as did a former student of one of the translators of this work by walking out of the classroom declaring that she was going to burn the book on the lawn of the university and by condemning the professor for promoting a work of such appallingly politically incorrect views of women.  She had some reason to react in this way given the hypersensitivity not only of women, but of men and society in general to the tenets of the feminist movement — the twentieth century’s extended version of a medieval palinode, which ultimately condemns centuries of “anti-feminist” behavior toward women.

Id., translators’ introduction, p. 19.  The brutalized lives of the subordinated men at the Passo Honroso attracts concern only from true humanitarians like the Archpriest of Talavera. A scholar who insightfully reviewed literature addressing the literature of men’s sexed protests observed:

The term “antifeminist” has been applied widely and indiscriminately to any story in which, even superficially, it appears that a woman is being criticized.

Goldberg (1983) p. 67.  Goldberg made that observation prior to the burgeoning of deeply misandristic literary studies and concerted efforts to popularize misandry.  Through the development of more powerful institutions of moral discipline and punishment since the Middle Ages, anti-feminist behavior has become more suppressed.

[9] Naylor & Rank (2013) p. 222, ft. 163, unconvincingly declares that the demanda (epilogue) is “clearly spurious.”  Costa Fontes (2000) argues that the demanda is Alonso Martínez de Toledo’s work.  Costa Fontes recognized the Archpriest of Talavera’s irony, but not his philanthropy.

[image] Detail from title page of Alonso Martínez de Toledo’s Arcipreste de Talavera (Seville: Andres de Burgos, 1547).

References:

Costa Fontes, Manuel da. 2000  “Martínez de Toledo’s ‘Nightmare’ and the Courtly and Oral Tradition.”  Ch. 3 (pp. 35-53) in Manuel da Costa Fontes. 2000. Folklore and literature studies in the Portuguese, Brazilian, Sephardic, and Hispanic oral traditions. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press.

Evans, P. G. 1932. “A Spanish Knight in Flesh and Blood-A Study of the Chivalric Spirit of Suero de Quiñones.” Hispania. 15 (2): 141-152.

Fallows, Noel. 2010. Jousting in Medieval and Renaissance Iberia. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press.

Gerli, Michael, ed. 1979. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo. Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho. Madrid: Cátedra.

Goldberg, Harriet. 1983. “Sexual humor in misogynist medieval exempla.” Pp. 67-83 in Miller, Beth Kurti. 1983. Women in Hispanic literature: icons and fallen idols. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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.

Suppression of paternity knowledge, Orwellian scholarly treatment of the gender gap in lifespan, legally forced financial fatherhood, continuing sexist Selective Service registration — none of these strange socio-political phenomena makes sense within contemporary learning.  For true insight, one must turn to Alonso Martínez de Toledo’s outrageously transgressive early-fifteenth-century Spanish work, the Archpriest of Talavera, also known as Corbacho. Like the thirteenth-century French fabliau La Dame Escoilliee, the Archpriest of Talavera considers the problem of wives doing the opposite of whatever their husbands request.  The Archpriest of Talavera, however, addresses that problem more realistically.  It provides exempla to help men overcome their natural inferiority in guile.

One exemplum is the story of a wise man in the Levant with a beautiful wife.  She cuckolds him.  Adultery was then a capital crime.  The man, however, wisely realizes that if he kills his wife or if he seeks to have her legally executed, he will be either ruined or dishonored.  He instead cunningly figures out how to have her kill herself:

he took a concoction of poisons and mixed them with the best and most fragrant wine he could get, since she didn’t think that good wine made her life unpleasant.  And he put it in a glass flask and said to himself: “If I put this flask where she’ll see it, although I tell her: ‘Be careful that you don’t taste this,’ she, because she’s a woman, will most surely do what I forbid her and won’t fail to drink some, on her life, and in that way she’ll die.”

No sooner said than done.  The clever good man took the flask and put it in a window where she would see it.  And she instantly asked: “What are you putting over there, husband?”  He answered: “Wife, this flask, but I bid and beg you not to taste what’s inside; since if you taste of it you’ll die instantly,” just like God told Eve.  He told her this in the presence of everybody in his house so that they would be witnesses; and then he pretended that he was going out, and he was hardly at the door when she immediately took the flask and said: “By God, may I be burned at the stake if I don’t find out what this is.”  And she smelled the flask and saw it was very fine wine and said: “Come on, what a wonderful husband I’ve got, and what a party this is!  He told me not to drink of this?  May God give me a hard time of it if I’ll stand this sort of slight!  I know that it’s not God’s will that only he drink it, since all goodies aren’t reserved for the king’s mouth!”

{ tomó ponzoñas confeccionadas y mezclolas con del mejor y más odorífero vino que pudo haber, por cuanto a ella no le amargaba buen vino, y púsolo en una ampolla de vidrio, y dijo: “«Si yo esta ampolla pongo donde ella la vea, aunque yo le mande “Cata que no gustes de esto”, ella, como es mujer, lo que le yo vedare aquello más hará y no dejará de beber de ello por la vida, y así morirá».

Dicho y hecho: el buen hombre sabio tomó la ampolla y púsola en una ventana donde ella la viese. Y luego dijo ella: «¿Qué ponéis ahí, marido?». Respondió él: «Mujer, aquesta ampolla, pero mándote y ruego que no gustes de lo que dentro tiene; que si lo gustares luego morirás, así como nuestro Señor dijo a Eva». Y esto le dijo en presencia de todos los de su casa porque fuesen testigos. Y luego hizo que se iba. Y aún no fue a la puerta, que ella luego tomó la ampolla, y dijo: «¡A osadas! ¡Quemada me vean si no veo qué es esto!». Y olió el ampolla y vio que era vino muy fino, y dijo: «¡Tómate allá, qué marido y qué solaz! ¿De esto dijo que no gustase yo? ¡Pascua mala me dé Dios si con esta mancilla quedo! ¡No plega a Dios que él solo lo beba; que las buenas cosas no son todas para boca de Rey!». }[1]

The strong, independent wife drank some wine and instantly fell over dead.  The husband pretended to be deeply grieving while telling himself, “I wish I hadn’t waited so long to do this.”  Medieval men would have gained much instruction from this exemplum.  Obviously it’s not literally relevant to modern circumstances.  But it can instruct men today in the importance of fiction.

Another exemplum draws upon the male imagination that helped to make the Swiss Family Robinson a blockbuster movie.  A woman had wronged her husband (probably cuckolded him).  The husband responded with exemplary male guile:

He had a trunk made with three locks and inside put a cocked steel crossbow, and whenever it was opened the bolt would hit the chest of the person who opened it.  And he put it in their living quarters and said: “Wife, I beg you not to open this chest!  If you do, as soon as you open it, you’ll die instantly.  Heed these instructions I’m giving you and telling you in front of the people who are here, and may God be my witness that, if you do the opposite, you’ll regret it.  And I have nothing else to say.” And, once he had said that, he left that very second, and went to see about his trading.  And the instant he was gone, his wife started to think about it; the first day, then the next, the first night and the following ten nights, so much so that she was just about to burst from thinking about it, and it bothered her so much that she couldn’t stand it.  And she said one day: “I’ll be damned if it isn’t some secret thing which my husband put in that trunk which he wouldn’t want me to see or know about, since he put on so many locks and so emphatically forbid me to open it.  Well he won’t get away with that, since even if I am to die an awful death, I’ll open it up and see what he’s got inside there.”  She went that very moment to force the lock on the chest, and on raising the lid the crossbow went off and struck her in the breast, and she died instantly.

{ Hizo hacer un arca con tres cerraduras y puso dentro una ballesta de acero armada, y cada que la abrían dábale el viratón por los pechos a aquel que la abría; y púsola en su palacio, y dijo: «Mujer, yo te ruego que tú no abras esta arca, si no, al punto que la abrieres luego morirás. Cata que así te lo mando y digo delante estos que presentes están, y séame Dios testigo, que si el contrario hicieres, que tú te arrepentirás; y no digo más». Y dicho esto en ese punto partió y se fue a su mercadería. Y luego, él partido, la mujer comenzó de pensar un día, otro día, una noche y diez noches, tanto que ya reventaba de pensamiento y basqueaba de corazón que no lo podía soportar. Y un día dijo: «¡Mal gozo vean de mí si alguna cosa secreta que no querría mi marido que yo viese o supiese no puso en esta arca; que cuantas cerraduras le puso y tanto me vedó que no la abriese! Pues no se me irá con esta: que aunque morir supiese de mala muerte, yo la abriré y veré qué cosa tiene dentro». Fue luego a decerrajar el arca, y al alzar del tapadero de ella, disparó la ballesta y diole por los pechos, y luego cayó muerta. }[2]

Medieval chivalric literature instructed men to risk their lives foolishly.  Directly confronting the wife or her lover would be physically dangerous for the husband.  Attempting to bring his wife’s betrayal before the law would be socially risky for the husband, because men are socially vulnerable.  In this exemplum, as in the previous one, the husband sets up witnesses (“I’m … telling you in front of the people who are here”) and acts with unusual guile.  The capability to act with guile offers considerable advantages in responding to hostile forces both foreign and domestic.

Medieval literature celebrates women’s acts of guile.  Women show ingenious guile in cuckolding husbands and deceiving them.[3]  Even the renowned sage Hippocrates, who restored dead persons to life, was killed through his wife’s ploy.  Medieval didactic stories taught men that the wiles of women are impossible to compile.  While men apparently are naturally inferior to women in guile, Alonso Martínez de Toledo did not believe that biology is destiny.  With his under-appreciated work the Archpriest of Talavera, Martínez de Toledo sought to instruct men in guile.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Marie de France appreciated men’s secrets in Bisclavret
• promise of the French Revolution fell to men’s inferiority in guile
• husband with guile verifies his personal status

Notes:

[1] Alonso Martínez de Toledo, Archpriest of Talavera 2.7, Spanish text from the online presentation by Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes of the edition of Gerli (1979), English translation (modified slightly) from Naylor & Rank (2013) p. 124. Subsequent quotes from Archpriest of Talavera are similarly sourced. For an alternate, quite similar translation, Simpson (1959) p. 134-5.

Archpriest of Talavera is also called Corbacho o Reprobación del amor mundano. This exemplum draws upon Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo declares that this exemplum is of a worldly man and only for worldly men:

He was canny and used cunning according to the ways of the world, although by God’s law he chose the worst way. For her end he thought of another way so that he would be blameless in the eyes of the world — although not in the eyes of God, as I said, since the person who causes harm and does it on purpose, is responsible for the harm.

{ Fue sabio y usó de arte según el mundo, aunque según Dios escogió lo peor. Por ende pensó de acabar de ella por otra vía que él sin culpa fuese al mundo -aunque a Dios no, según dije, por cuanto el que da causa al daño y por su razón se hace, tenido es al daño- mas quisiera él que pareciera ella ser de su propia muerte causa. }

Archpriest of Talavera 2.7, id. p. 123.

Archpriest of Talavera’s exemplum on guileful use of poison to kill a disobedient wife seems to drawn upon a written tradition that Andreas Capellanus’s De amore recorded in Latin, probably in the 1180s:

We read too of a man of great wisdom who had a loathsome wife. He was unwilling to kill her with his own hand, because he did not want to commit a crime. But he knew that she took joy in seeking forbidden things, and so he got a most expensive vessel and put in it a fine, fragrant wine mixed with poison. Then he said to his wife: “My dearest wife, be sure not to touch this goblet, nor venture to sip a single drop of this liquid, for it is poisonous and lethal for humans to drink.” The woman spurned her husband’s prohibition; before he had gone any distance she took liberties with the forbidden drink, and the poison finished her off altogether. … So if you want a woman to do anything, you will get your way by bidding her do the opposite.

{ Sed et legitur quod vir quidam sapientissimus fuit exosam habens uxorem. Qui causa criminis evitandi eam nolens propria interimere manu, sciens mulierem libenter in vetita niti, vas pretiosissimum praeparavit et in eo vinum optimum et odoriferum cum veneno mixtum apposuit et ait uxori: “Uxor dulcissima, cave ne vasculum praesens attingas, nec de hoc liquore quomodolibet praelibare praesumas, quia res est venenosa et humanae contraria vitae.” Mulier vero vetita mariti contemnens, quum nondum procul abisset, de inhibito liquore praesumpsit et sic est penitus interempta veneno. … Si vis ergo mulierem facere quidquam, ei praecipiendo contraria obtinebis. }

De amore 3.90-91, Latin text and English translation from Walsh (1982) pp. 314-5. Fabliaux of Marie de France also address a husband struggling with a disobedient wife.

[2] Archpriest of Talavera 2.7, id. p. 124.

[3] The Archpriest of Talavera tells four stories of women’s guile in cuckolding men.  In one story, a wife was consorting with a friar in her bedroom.  When her husband arrived, she told her husband that he had hair on his coat and got him to turn around so she could clean it off.  The friar then escaped unseen.  In another story, a wife with her lover at night pretended to extinguish the light accidentally when her husband arrived.  Her lover thus escaped in the dark.  Another wife in similar circumstances stuck a pot in front of her husband’s face and asked him to look for a hole in it.  There was none, but that ruse allowed her lover to escape unseen.  A particularly outrageous story has a wife enabling her lover to escape by means of a impious variant of a pious story about Saint Bernard of Clairvaux:

This is what she did.  She said:  “Husband, you don’t realize how my breast has swelled, and I’m dying because there’s so much milk.” He said: “Let’s see: show me.” And she took out her breast and gave him a squirt of milk in the eye and completely blinded him, and in the meanwhile the other man {her lover} started out. And the husband said: “O son of a bitch, how the milk smarts.” The other man who was going out answered: “I bet horns {of a cuckold} hurt more!” And the husband, since he heard noise as the other man passed by and since he couldn’t see, said: “Who just passed by?  I thought I heard a man.” She said: “It’s the cat, woe is me, and he’s carrying my meat off.”

{ Y así lo hizo. Dijo: «Marido, no sabes cómo se ha hinchado mi teta, y rabio con la mucha leche». Dijo: «Muestra, veamos». Sacó la teta y diole un rayo de leche por los ojos que lo cegó del todo, y en tanto el otro salió. Y dijo: «¡Oh hija de puta, cómo me escuece la leche!». Respondió el otro que se iba: «¿Qué debe hacer el cuerno?». Y el marido, como que sintió ruido al pasar y como no veía, dijo: «¿Quién pasó ahora por aquí? Pareciome que hombre sentí». Dijo ella: «El gato, cuitada, es que me lleva la carne». }

The wife then pretended to run after the cat.  The husband was fooled. Archpriest of Talavera 2.10, id. pp. 133-4 (quote and all the stories described above).  The breast-milk blinding is sequentially the first story of cuckolding and sets the tone for the others.  Cf. the lactation of St. Bernard.  Chivalric ideals supported the superiority of women by associating women with the chastity of the Virgin Mary.

References:

Gerli, Michael, ed. 1979. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo. Arcipreste de Talavera o Corbacho. Madrid: Cátedra.

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.

Walsh, P.G., trans. 1982. Andreas Capellanus on love. London: Duckworth.