You who exist unchangingly as the origin of things, favor our pious undertakings, and the lyre of our soul rule, we pray, ruler of rulers.
God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we praise you with mouth and heart set in the frailty of our life.
O all-powerful ruler of the world, end of all creation, make every end of ours be ended in you alone.
{ Qui principium constas rerum, fave nostris piis ceptis atque mentis plectrum rege, precamur, rex regum.
Pater, nate, spiritus sancte, te laudamus ore, corde in huius vite siti fragilitate.
O cunctipotens mundum regens, finis rerum creatarum, omnem finem nostrum fac finiri in te solum. }[1]
Late in the thirteenth century, nuns living in the Anglo-Saxon royal Wilton Abbey directed the learned monk Goscelin of Saint-Bertin to write the life and deeds of Edith. She was a Wilton Abby nun who died in 986 at a young age, yet already with a reputation for saintliness. Goscelin recounted how Edith worked miracles concerning bowel movements. These miracle didn’t associate Saint Edith with a foul smell. Medieval Christian holiness embraced all of bodily life.
According to Goscelin, Saint Edith exposed a thief through an irrepressible bowel movement. This miracle was associated with the sacred fabric of Edith’s tomb:
On Saint Edith’s candle-lit tomb was a radiantly white votive linen cloth made into a scarf the width of the palm of a hand. A little woman, left there alone and in her solitude becoming inclined to theft, took it and removed the spoil wrapped around her shin.
{ Tumbam eius luciferam uotiuum candidabat linteum, pallio ad mensuram palme circumsutum. Hoc muliercula, sola ibi relicta et ex solitudine furto contigua, excerpit, tibieque inuolutum spolium abducit. }[2]
Saint Edith from Heaven acted to prevent this theft:
Suddenly a divine fetter bound the young woman as she attempted to flee. It utterly fastened her little thieving foot to the spot. The sacred threshold didn’t allow the thief to escape with her sacrilegious booty. Long she struggled at the doorstep. Then defecation overcame her, and it compelled her to exit. But the guilty woman remained standing there, unable to extricate herself. With pallor, trembling, and groaning, she revealed her crime.
{ Mox diuina compes fugientem constrinxit et furtigerulum pedem radicitus fixit, nec sacrum limen cum sacrilegio excedere licuit. Diu luctanti in tali cippo, editua superuenit, exire compellit; sed rea inextricabilis resistit; pallore, tremore, gemitu crimen prodit. }
Perhaps the thief soiled herself. In any case, she unwrapped the stolen cloth from her shin and returned it. Then she was able to leave and go to the bathroom to clean herself or relieve herself.
Saint Edith’s tomb had a righteous relation to bowel functioning. Goscelin recorded another of her miracles:
A sister, who is still alive under the nursing of the younger nuns, was in danger of death because of continuous and untreatable dysentery. As she lay at Saint Edith’s wonder-working tomb, the unrestrained filthy discharge soon stopped and her health was restored.
{ Soror quoque, superstes adhuc inter iuniorum nutrimenta, iugi et inmedicabili ad mortem periclitabatur dissenteria. Cui, acumbenti ad eiusdem opifere tumulum, mox effrenis illuuies refrenata et salus est redintegrata. }[3]
Saint Edith’s tomb wasn’t unique in its bowel miracles. At another monastery in England, a religious brother became demon-possessed. The community brought him to the tomb of Saint Æthelthryth and prayed for him. He subsequently made a prodigious, extremely foul-smelling bowel movement that exorcised him. Medieval piety wasn’t squeamish about the bodily realities of life.
Jesus, known as a good physician, healed the sick in earthly, corporal ways. Despite the risk of a horrible stench, Jesus called forth Lazarus after he had lain dead for four days. Medieval Christians celebrated Easter with laughter. Those of us who aren’t medieval Christians might prefer to suppress distressing and humbling realities of bodily life. But the frailties of life are of its essence.
[1] Cambridge Songs {Carmina cantabrigiensia} 7, “You the origin {Qui principium},” stanzas 1a, 6.1-7, Latin text (consonantal u written as v for ease in recognizing sounds) and English translation (modified slightly) from Ziolkowski (1994). Verse 1.11 includes the conjectural text “in huius” of Jaffé (1869) p. 457, as reported in Ziolkowski (1994) p. 183. Id. provides other conjectures.
“Qui principium,” which survives only in Carmina cantabrigiensia, commemorates the life of Heribert, Archbishop of Cologne from 999 to 1021. Heribert also served from 994 as Chancellor for the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III. Heribert died in 1021. This poem apparently was composed shortly thereafter, most likely in Cologne or Deutz. Id. pp. 183-4. Above are only the first stanza and the last stanza, excluding the concluding identical pendant versicle “Pater, nate …”. Ziolkowski notes the “nicely chiastic balance” in the beginning and ending of this long poem. Id. p. 186.
[2] Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Life of Edith {Vita Edithe} / About Saint Edith, virgin and abbess {De sancta Editha virgine et abbatissa} 27, Latin text from Wilmart (1938) pp. 100-1, English translation (modified slightly) from Wright & Loncar (2004) p. 62. The subsequent quote above is sourced similarly.
Goscelin completed about 1080 his account of the life and translation of Saint Edith. The two most important surviving manuscripts are Cardiff, Public Library, MS I. 381, folios 81-120 (written early in the twelfth century) and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C 938, folios 1-29 (written in the thirteenth century). On differences between these manuscripts, Wright & Loncar (2004) pp. 17-8.
[3] Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, Translation of Edith {Translatio Edithe} 10, Latin text from Wilmart (1938) p. 277, English translation (modified slightly) from Wright & Loncar (2004) pp. 76-7.
[images] (1) Portrait of Saint Edith. Painted c. 1300-1340. From folio 3r of British Library, Royal MS 14 B VI, via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Portrait of Saint Edith. Painted fourth quarter of the thirteenth century. From folio 3r of British Library, Royal MS 14 B V, via Wikimedia Commons.
Wright, Michael, and Kathleen Loncar, trans. 2004. “Goscelin’s Legend of Edith.” Part I (pp. 17-93) in Hollis, Stephanie, ed. Writing the Wilton Women: Goscelin’s Legend of Edith and Liber confortatorius. Turnhout: Brepols.
Ziolkowski, Jan M. 1994. The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia). New York: Garland. Introduction.
Whom do you seek in the sepulcher, O literature-followers? {Quem quaeritis in sepulchro, litterarum-colae?}
The father of wisdom, who was crucified, O schools-dwellers. {Pater sapientiae crucifixum, o scholarum-colae.}
He is not here. He has risen as he himself said. Go, announce that he is risen. {Non est hic. Surrexit sicut ipse dixit. Ite, nuntiate quia surrexit.}
Alleluia, the author has risen! Today the mighty lion, the spirit, the son of mind, has risen. Praise be to God. Say it indeed! {Alleluia, resurrexit auctor! Hodie resurrexit leo fortis, anima, filius mentis. Deo gratias. Dicite eia!}
These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons, they will speak new languages, they will pick up serpents, and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them. They will lay their hands on the sick, and the sick will recover. {σημεῖα δὲ τοῖς πιστεύσασιν ταῦτα παρακολουθήσει ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου δαιμόνια ἐκβαλοῦσιν γλώσσαις λαλήσουσιν καιναῖς καὶ ἐν ταῖς χερσὶν ὄφεις ἀροῦσιν κἂν θανάσιμόν τι πίωσιν οὐ μὴ αὐτοὺς βλάψῃ ἐπὶ ἀρρώστους χεῖρας ἐπιθήσουσιν καὶ καλῶς ἕξουσιν}
Strongly misreading Thomas Malory’s medieval romance The Death of Arthur {Le Morte d’Arthur}, Roland Barthes made himself a celebrity author with his 1967 essay, “The Death of the Author {La mort de l’auteur}.” Malory’s romance built upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-century account of horrific violence against men, The History of the Kings of Britain {Historia regum Britanniae}. Barthes’s essay begins with discussing a castrato dressed as a woman and has nothing to say about castration culture.
The above play adapts an early tenth-century Easter trope from the monastery of St. Martial at Limoges in present-day France. For that text and related ones, with English translation, Bevington (1975). For biblical roots of the “quem quaeritis” trope, John 18:4,7; 20:15. Scholars have struggled to recognize that Christianity from its origins has been dramatic, but not objectively so. For an example of Biblical drama, Acts 3:1-4:31. On the history of medieval Christian drama, Forse (2002) and Norton (2017). The final text, translated from the Greek, is Mark 16:17-8.
[images] (1) Whom do you seek {Quem quaeritis}?: angel questions women at Jesus’s tomb. Illumination in tenth-century Missel de Limoges. From folio 76v of Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Latin 9438. (2) Sunrise over the ocean at Dong Hae, South Korea, on 28 September 2010. Source image thanks to Belinda and Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Barthes, Roland. 1967. “The Death of the Author {La mort de l’auteur}.” Aspen. no. 5 + 6. New York, N.Y.: Roaring Fork Press.
Bevington, David M. 1975. Medieval Drama. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Charlemagne has been revered as the “Father of Europe {Pater Europae}.” With battles among elite eunuchs crippling the eastern part of the Roman Empire, Pope Leo III in the year 800 crowned Charlemagne as the first Holy Roman Emperor. With his reverence for his mother Bertrada, Charlemagne showed mothers’ preeminence in relation to their children. The wealthy Roman father Proterius in contrast could only weep as his daughter openly defied him to marry one of his servants.
By her diplomatic initiative about the year 770, Charlemagne’s mother Bertrada arranged for him to marry Desiderata, the daughter of King Desiderius of Lombardy. Bertrada even brought Desiderata from Lombardy to Charlemagne at his imperial capital Aachen.[1] Such forceful motherly action isn’t unusual. Mothers historically have regulated children’s moral development, where children receive formal schooling, whom children marry, and sons’ behavior in violence against men. By the thirteenth century, Bertrada’s ability to walk all over her children and others was recognized in an epithet joined to her name: “Bertrada with big feet {Berte aus grands piés},” “Queen with the foot of a goose {Regina pede aucae}.”[2]
Charlemagne’s decision to divorce Desiderata after a year of marriage created tension in relation to his mother Bertrada. His divorce underscored her influence in bringing about the marriage and his normal reverence for her:
Charlemagne’s mother Bertrada lived with him to an old age in great honor. He treated her with the highest reverence. No discord of any kind ever arose between them, except concerning his divorce of King Desiderius’s daughter, whom he had married at her urging.
{ Mater quoque eius Berhtrada in magno apud eum honore consenuit. Colebat enim eam cum summa reverentia, ita ut nulla umquam invicem sit exorta discordia, praeter in divortio filiae Desiderii regis, quam illa suadente acceperat. }[3]
A parent inducing a child to marry a specific person is more controlling than merely dissuading the child from marrying a particular person. Even more controlling would be to have a child stay in a marriage to a spouse whom the child didn’t want to marry and whom didn’t turn out to be a satisfactory spouse. Bertrada failed at that high level of control. She nonetheless quarreled with her son Charlemagne about his divorce. She didn’t apologize to him for coercing him into an unsatisfactory marriage.
The father Proterius of Caesarea had a much different relationship with his daughter than Bertrada did with her son Charlemagne. After Proterius’s servant made a pact with the devil for Proterius’s daughter’s love, the devil inflamed her with lust for the servant. The daughter cried out to her father that she must unite sexually with his servant:
Take pity, father, upon your wretched daughter! I will die now, my father, if I’m not united with this young man. Don’t, father dear, don’t delay while you can still save me. If you delay, you won’t have your child, but on the day of judgment as if for killing me, pains and torments of punishment you will endure.
{ Miserere, misere, pater, filie! Moriar, mi pater, modo, si non iungar tali puero. Noli pater kare, noli tardare, dum potes me salvare. Si moraris, natam tuam non habebis, sed in die iudicii quasi pro peremta poenas et tormenta tu subibis supplicii. }[4]
Proterius wept in response to his daughter’s outrageous demand and threat. He pleaded with her:
Child, alas, who has blinded you? Child, who has bewitched you? I dedicated you to Christ. I didn’t betroth you to a fornicator. Allow me, my daughter, permit me now to accomplish what I wish. If you consent to my direction, the time will come when you will rejoice greatly that you did not fulfill the wicked desire that you now insanely exhibit.
{ Nata, heu quis te cecavit? Nata, quis te fascinavit? Ego Christo dedicavi, non te mecho destinavi. Patere, mi filia, sine me modo perficere quod volo. Si consentis mihi, tempus adveniet, quando multum letaberis, pravam quod non voluntatem perfeceris, male sana quam nunc geris. }
The daughter adamantly refused to heed her father’s plea. She issued him an ultimatum:
My father, either you fulfill my desire, or soon you will see me dying.
{ Pater mi, aut fac desiderium meum, aut post modicum morientem videbis me. }[5]
That’s terribly coercive. Most fathers love their daughters beyond their own lives. Few fathers have enough strength to tell their adult daughters, “Take responsibility for your own life!”
Proterius wasn’t able to resist his daughter’s demand. Daughters dominate fathers:
The father therefore with much reluctance fulfilled her desire. He was overwhelmed with immeasurable sadness, having believed his friends’ counsels urging him to carry out her will or she would kill herself. Advised to realize the desire of the young woman, the believing father wouldn’t hand her over to destructive death. So he conducted a marriage between his own daughter and her desired young man, and he gave all his property to them.
{ Pater ergo in magna defectione factus, ac inmensurabilitate tristitiae absortus et amicorum consiliis credulus, hortantium ei deferre voluntatem eius aut se ipsam exponere. Credens pater, praecepit fieri desiderium puellae ne exitiali se traderet morti. Et adduxit quaesitum puerum ac propriam filiam, dansque eis omnem substantiam suam }
Even more so than men for women, fathers typically will do anything to please their daughters.[6] But this father couldn’t refrain from poetically telling his daughter the truth:
Go, now a truly wretched one. You will suffer much some day because at this time you didn’t listen to your father.
{ Vade, vere iam misera olim multum dolitura, patrem quia non es modo auditura. }[7]
That of course is exactly what happened. She in horror discovered that she had married a man who had made a pact with the devil.
What can a woman do when she has married a man in league with the devil? Proterius’s daughter prayed for help to the man now known as Saint Basil the Great:
Have mercy on me, have mercy, holy one of God, have mercy, disciple of my Lord. I have gone to the side of demons. Have mercy on me, a wretched one, who didn’t obey her own father.
{ Miserere mihi, miserere sancte Dei, miserere mei discipule Domini, que cuae cum daemonibus causam egi. Miserere mihi miserae, proprium patrem non obaudiente. }[8]
Saint Basil of course helped her. He wrestled with the devil, recovered her husband, and thus enabled them to have a marriage with a propitious, shared foundation in reverence for God.
Throughout history, high-born women have been far more advantaged than the vast majority of men. Even apart from social class, mothers have commonly been more privileged in relation to children than fathers. Mothers benefit from fundamental gender inequality in parental knowledge. Moreover, mothers commonly have the opportunity to spend more time with their children, thus strengthening the mother-child bond. Official child custody decisions throughout history have been strongly biased towards mothers. Despite the rise of various forms of market-based day-care, men in court decisions today still face egregious sex discrimination in allocating in-person child custody and monetary child support. Fathers today need to hear Proterius’s daughter belatedly appreciating her father.
[1] When the king of the Franks Pepin the Short died in 768, the kingship was split between Bertrada’s and his two sons, Charlemagne and his younger brother Carloman I. Bertrada favored Charlemagne as king. To strengthen his position relative to that of Carloman, Betrada independently traveled to Italy and arranged the marriage to Desiderata. Here’s more on this maternal marital diplomacy. The name Desiderata might be a misreading. Her name might actually be Gerperga.
[2] These epithets for Bertrada come from Adenet Le Roi’s romance Bertrada with Big Feet {Berte aus grands piés}. Adenet Le Roi wrote this romance about 1273.
Some mothers were less successful than Bertrada in arranging their children’s marriages. For example, a mother in a thirteenth-century Germanic land urged her daughter to marry a son of the head tenant farmer rather than a knight. The daughter refused:
Now you’re setting that peasant on me! But I think I can handle a proud knight. What good would it be for me to have a peasant as my husband who cannot love me the way I wish. I think he’ll have to do without me.
{ Nu giuzzet mir den mayer an di versen! ia trow ich einem stolczen ritter w2ol gehersen. zwiu sol ein gebower mir ze man, der enchan mich nah minem willen niht getrouten. ich wæn, er min ein muz gestan. }
Neidhart von Reuental, Riedegg Manuscript 53 (R530), “Listen, how the birds all sing {Losa, wie di vogel alle donent},” stanza 7, Middle High German text and English translation (modified slightly) from Starkey & Wenzel (2016) p. 209. Here’s a variant version of this poem (Neidhart, Sommerlied 7), and another. Conflict between mothers and daughters sometimes progresses to domestic violence.
[3] Einhard, Life of Charles the Great {Vita Karoli Magni} 2.18, Latin text from MGH SS rer. Germ. 25, my English translation, benefiting from those of Grant (1907) and Noble (2009). Bertrada died in 786. Id. p. 38. Subsequent quotes from Einhard’s Vita Karoli Magni are similarly sourced. Here’s a brief review of Einhard’s biography.
Einhard noted of Charlemagne:
At his mother’s urging, he married the daughter of Desiderius, King of the Lombards. For an unknown reason, after a year of marriage he divorced her.
{ cum matris hortatu filiam Desiderii regis Langobardorum duxisset uxorem, incertum qua de causa, post annum eam repudiavit }
Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, 2.18. According to Notker, Charlemagne divorced Desiderata because she was “bedridden and incapable of having children {clinica et ad propagandam prolem inhabilis}.” The Monk of Saint Gall {Monachus Sangallensis}, identified as Notker the Stammerer, {Notcerus Balbulus}, Deeds of Charles the Great {Gesta Karoli Magni} 2.17, Latin text from Jaffé (1967), p. 691, English translation from Noble (2009) p. 111. Id. notes: “No other source reports these details, and they are probably not to be trusted.”
[4] Cambridge Songs {Carmina cantabrigiensia} 30A, “Whoever has been besieged of old {Quisquis dolosis antiqui},” vv. 3a.2-14, Latin text (editorial marks elided, and consonantal u written as v for ease of reading) and English translation (modified) from Ziolkowski (1994). The subsequent quote above is similarly from “Quisquis dolosis antiqui,” vv. 3b.2-14.
[5] BHL 1023 (earliest known Latin translation of the pseudo-Amphilochian life of Basil), chapter 11, “About the denial of Christ in writing {De negante christum scripto},” Latin text from Corona (2006), my English translation. The subsequent quote above is similarly from “De negante christum scripto.”
[6] Charlemagne promoted his daughters’ personal development:
He determined that his children should be formally educated first in liberal studies, his sons and daughters both, just as he himself made his own effort.
{ Liberos suos ita censuit instituendos, ut tam filii quam filiae primo liberalibus studiis, quibus et ipse operam dabat, erudirentur. }
Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, 2.19. Charlemagne kept his daughters close to him, but didn’t constrain their behavior:
Although his daughters were very beautiful and by him much beloved, strange to say, he never wished to give any of them in marriage, neither to one of his own Franks nor to a foreigner. But he kept them all with him in the palace up to the time of his death. He said that he could not forgo their companionship. And because of this he experienced blows of bad fortune, although he was otherwise happy. He simply pretended as if no suspicion of immorality had ever arisen and that no rumors had ever circulated.
{ Quae cum pulcherrimae essent et ab eo plurimum diligerentur, mirum dictu, quod nullam earum cuiquam aut suorum aut exterorum nuptum dare voluit, sed omnes secum usque ad obitum suum in domo sua retinuit, dicens se earum contubernio carere non posse. Ac propter hoc, licet alias felix, adversae fortunae malignitatem expertus est. Quod tamen ita dissimulavit, acsi de eis nulla umquam alicuius probri suspicio exorta vel fama dispersa fuisset }
Id. Charlemagne’s daughter Rotrude and Count Rorgo of Maine had a non-marital son named Louis. Without marrying, Charlemagne’s daughter Bertha lived openly at court with the poet Angilbert. Noble (2009) p. 39, n. 74. The ninth-century Visio Wettini depicted bestial violence against Charlemagne’s genitals as punishment for his “filthy lust {libidinis turpis}.” See note 14 in my post on Charlemagne’s paladin Oliver.
Charlemagne’s daughters formed a politically powerful group in Charlemagne’s palace. De Jong (2018), Nelson (1993). Upon succeeding Charlemagne as emperor, Louis the Pious dispersed the sisters:
The emperor ordered the whole female crowd — which was very large — to be excluded from the palace, except for a very few whom he indicated were suitable for royal service. Each of the other sisters withdrew to the properties that they had received from their father.
{ imperator omnem coetum – qui permaximus erat – femineum palatio excludi iudicavit praeter paucissimas, quas famulatio regali congruas iudicavit. Sororum autem queque in sua, que a patre acceperat, concessit }
The Astronomer, Life of Emperor Louis {Vita Hludowici imperatoris} c. 23, Latin text from Pertz (1929) p. 619, English translation (modified slightly) from Noble (2009) p. 248.
A law about discipline at the Aachen palace {Capitulare de disciplina palatti Aquisgranesis} (probably issued about 820) sought to punish persons among whom “would be found lurking an unknown man or a whore {igrotum hominem vel meretricem latitantem invenire possit}.” Latin text from MGH Capit. 1, Capitularia regum Francorum, no. 146, English translation (modified) from Nelson (2001) p. 238. On atonement during the reign of Louis the Pious, De Jong (2011).
[7] “Quisquis dolosis antiqui,” vv. 4a.11-14, Latin text (editorial marks elided) and English translation (modified) from Ziolkowski (1994). The father’s words in BHL 1023 (pseudo-Amphilochian life of Basil) are slightly less pointed:
Farewell, my daughter, truly wretched one, for you will cry much, repenting very soon when you have nothing to help you.
{ vale filia, vere misera, multum enim planges poenitens in novissimo quando nihil habes proficere }
Sourced as previously.
[8] BHL 1023 (pseudo-Amphilochian life of Basil), chapter 11, “About the denial of Christ in writing {De negante christum scripto},” Latin text from Corona (2006), my English translation.
[image] Bertrada holding up a small figure of her son King Charlemagne. Nineteenth-century sculpture by Eugène André Oudiné. Currently in the Jardin du Luxembourg, Paris, France. Source image thanks to Jastrow and Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Corona, Gabriella. 2006. Aelfric’s Life of Saint Basil the Great: Background and Context. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer.
De Jong, Mayke. 2018. “Einhard, the Astronomer, and Charlemagne’s Daughters.” Pp. 551-565 in Grosse, Rolf, and Michel Sot, eds. Charlemagne: les temps, les espaces, les hommes: construction et déconstruction d’un règne. Turnhout: Brepols.
Nelson, Janet L. 1993. “Women at the court of Charlemagne: a case of monstrous regiment?” Ch. 4 (pp. 43-62) in Parsons, John Carmi, ed. Medieval Queenship. New York: St. Martins Press.
Nelson, Janet L. 2001. “Aachen as a place of power.” Pp. 217-239 in Mayke de Jong, Frans Theuws, and Carine van Rhijn, eds. Topographies of power in the early Middle Ages. Leiden: Brill.
Pertz, Georg Heinrich, ed. 1829. Monumenta Germaniae Historica: inde ab anno Christi quingentesimo usque ad annum millesimum et quingentesimum. Scriptores rerum Sangallensium. Annalium et chronicorum aevi Caroli continuatio. Historiae aevi Carolini. 2. Stuttgart: Hiersemann.
Starkey, Kathryn and Edith Wenzel. 2016. Neidhart: selected songs from the Riedegg Manuscript (Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, mgf 1062). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University.
Ziolkowski, Jan M. 1994. The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia). New York: Garland. Introduction.
Women tend to regard men instrumentally, e.g. what will he give me or what will he do for me. Men’s intrinsic virtue and beauty tends to be socially devalued. But consider “O admirabile Veneris idolum,” a poem from tenth-century Verona. It addresses a young man:
O marvelous idol of love, in whose substance there is no defect, may the prime-mover, who created stars and sky, founded seas and land, protect you. May you not sense deception through the guile of a thief. May Clotho, who bears the distaff, delight in you.
{ O admirabile Veneris idolum, cuius materie nihil est frivolum, archos te protegat, qui stellas et polum fecit et maria condidit et solum. Furis ingenio non sentias dolum, Cloto te diligat, que baiolat colum. }[1]
In medieval Christian understanding, idolatry is a sin. Moreover, the prime-mover to medieval Christians wasn’t an impersonal abstraction, but the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Composing a contrafactum to a Christian chant honoring the Roman tombs of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the poet of “O admirabile Veneris idolum” posed on the poem’s surface as a tenth-century adherent to traditional Greco-Roman religion.
This poet apparently appreciated women. Clotho was a female figure who spun the fabric of human lives in traditional Greco-Roman religion. The guile of a thief might be interpreted as the action of a woman-rival competing for the beautiful young man’s love. Women understand their own gender’s strength in guile. Ostentatiously displaying classical learning was perhaps a clever love distinction:
“Keep this young man safe!” not by supposition, but with resolute heart I implore Lachesis, sister of Atropos, that she not seize the thread. May you have Neptune and Thetis as companions when you are carried over the river Adige.
{ “Salvato puerum” non per ipotesim, sed firmo pectore deprecor Lachesim, sororem Atropos, ne curet heresim. Neptunum comitem habeas et Tetim, cum vectus fueris per fluvium Tesim. }[2]
Not a cleric engaged in learned suppositions, this poet spoke from the heart. Most classically learned persons in medieval Europe were men. The classical learning displayed in this poem would impress a medieval young man much more if it came from a woman than from a man.
While women in general are amorously privileged relative to men, women compete intensely for men that they love. This poet suffered amorous loss:
Please tell: why do you flee, even though I love you? What shall I do, wretched one, since I cannot see you? Hard material from the bones of mother-earth created humans when stones were cast. Of these, this dear young man is one, one who shows no compassion for my tearful moans. While I am sad, my rival will rejoice. I roar like a female deer when her fawn takes flight.
{ Quo fugis, amabo, cum te dilexerim? Miser, quid faciam, cum te non viderim? Dura materies ex matris ossibus creavit homines iactis lapidibus, ex quibus unus est iste puerulus, qui lacrimabiles non curat gemitus. Cum tristis fuero, gaudebit emulus. Ut cerva rugio, cum fugit hinnulus. }
The wretched one could be the poet, or her epithet for the beautiful, hard-hearted young man who left her. The final verse, with its figure of a female deer roaring for its lost fawn, encapsulates the poem’s heart. Nothing is more profoundly Christian than the wounded praying for the good of the harm-perpetrating other.[3] This poem’s Christian macro-structure encompasses its traditional Greco-Roman ornament. Its unfamiliar surface makes more poignant its Christian moral orientation. As a woman’s poem, this poem is as ordinary as a female deer loving her fawn, and as extraordinary as a female deer roaring.
Medieval Galician-Portuguese “songs about a beloved man {cantigas d’amigo}” provide examples of a woman addressing a beloved man about a woman-rival. Like in “O admirabile Veneris idolum,” but in a much narrower poetic field, a woman in a cantiga d’amigo expressed her love for her boyfriend who left her for a rival:
It’s been a long time, my boyfriend, since you went away from me in Valongo and didn’t see me again. Nor did I ever again have pleasure in anything, for never was a boyfriend so desired by a girlfriend.
Nor will any woman who speaks truly ever tell you, nor can you ever find out from somebody else, if it please God, or if I have any truth in me, that you ever saw a boyfriend so desired by a woman.
Although you had a girlfriend whom you really loved, still, come back to me if you find anyone who says anything other than I say: that they never saw a boyfriend so desired by a girlfriend.
{ Gran sazon á, meu amigo, que vos vós de mi partistes en Valong’ e non m’ ar vistes nen ar ouv’ eu depois migo de nulha ren gasalhado, mais nunca tan desejado d’ amiga fostes amigo
Nen vos dirá nunca molher que verdade queira dizer nen vós non podedes saber nunca per outren, se Deus quer, ou se eu verdad’ ei migo, que nunca vistes amigo tan desejado de molher
Pero ouvestes amiga a que quisestes mui gran ben, a min vos tornade por en, se achardes quen vos diga se non assi com’ eu digo: que nunca vissen amigo tan desejado d’ amiga }[4]
This woman insists that she loves her man more than any other woman ever has. The first-verse phrase “my boyfriend {meu amigo}” contrasts with subsequent, less personally assertive relations between a boyfriend and a girlfriend, or a boyfriend and a woman. Just as God for medieval Christians is a prime-mover within a unique personal covenant, this woman insisted that she was personally unique to her boyfriend.
Another cantiga d’amigo shows a woman struggling to take revenge on the boyfriend who left her. The song is self-consciously ironic:
Listen, boyfriend, to what I heard today said about you, so help me God: that you love another and not me. And if it’s true, I’ll get revenge this way: I’ll try not to love you, beginning now, and it’ll hurt me more than anything.
I heard it said that, just to cause me pain, you love another, my treacherous one, and if it’s true, by Our Lord, I’ll tell you how I think to take revenge: I’ll try not to love you, beginning now, and it’ll hurt me more than anything.
And if I find out that this is true what they’re telling me, my boyfriend, by God, I’ll cry out these eyes of mine, and I’ll tell you how I’ll take my revenge: I’ll try not to love you, beginning now, and it’ll hurt me more than anything.
{ Vedes, amigo, o que oj’ oí dizer de vós, assi Deus mi perdon, que amades ja outra e mi non, mais, se verdad’ é, vingar m’ ei assi: punharei ja de vos non querer ben; e pesar mh á én mais que outra ren
Oí dizer por me fazer pesar amades vós outra, meu traedor, e, se verdad’ é, par Nostro Senhor, direi vos como me cuid’ a vingar: punharei ja de vos non querer ben; e pesar mh á én mais que outra ren
E, se eu esto por verdade sei que mi dizen, meu amigo, par Deus, chorarei muito destes olhos meus, e direi vos como me vingarei: punharei ja de vos non querer ben; e pesar mh á én mais que outra ren }[5]
God is invoked in each stanza, but only in a formulaic way. This woman will try not to love her enemy ex-boyfriend. She knows that not loving that enemy will hurt her more than anything. That’s a mistake that the poet of “O admirabile Veneris idolum” didn’t make.
Life is complicated, and so too is not loving. A woman in another cantiga d’amigo vehemently rejected her ex-boyfriend:
What eyes are those that have no shame? Tell me, boyfriend of another girl, not mine! And tell me now, so help you God, since they say that now you are another’s, how do you dare to come before my eyes, boyfriend, for the love of God?
Because you really should have remembered how sad I saw you for my sake, liar, and how I went to you then. But since now you’ve taken up with another, how do you dare to come before my eyes, boyfriend, for the love of God?
By God, liar, what little thanks I got when you were about to die if I hadn’t visited, and I went to see you. But since now another has won you from me, how do you dare to come before my eyes, boyfriend, for the love of God?
I don’t want your pledges any more. Just go away right now, by Our Lord! And wherever I am, never come there again! Since you’ve taken up with another woman, how do you dare to come before my eyes, boyfriend, for the love of God?
{ Que olhos son que vergonha non an, dized’, amigo d’ outra, ca meu non, e dized’ ora, se Deus vos pardon, pois que vos ja con outra preço dan, com ousastes viir ant’ os meus olhos, amigo, por amor de Deus?
Ca vós ben vos deviades nembrar en qual coita vos eu ja por mi vi, fals’, e nembrar vos qual vos fui eu i; mais, pois con outra fostes começar, como ousastes viir ant’ os meus olhos, amigo, por amor de Deus?
Par Deus, falso, mal se mi gradeceu, quando vós ouverades de morrer se eu non fosse, que vos fui veer; mais, pois vos outra ja de min venceu, como ousastes viir ant’ os meus olhos, amigo, por amor de Deus?
Non mi á mais vosso preito mester, e ide vos ja, por Nostro Senhor, e non venhades nunca u eu for; pois começastes con outra molher, como ousastes viir ant’ os meus olhos, amigo, por amor de Deus? }[6]
This woman apparently rescued her boyfriend from dying of lovesickness. He subsequently sought healthcare with another woman. In ancient Greece and in many cultures throughout history, honor and shame are moral fundamentals, and hurting those who help you is morally wrong. “What eyes are those that have no shame?” Those eyes might be understood as the emphatically repeated “my eyes” — the woman’s eyes that see her ex-boyfriend. She could be an ancient Greek woman speaking to herself in exasperation about still loving her lying ex-boyfriend.
Privileged, middle-aged women occasionally love much less privileged, young, beautiful men. That power imbalance allows the woman to make the man successful, but it can also threaten him:
They told me a thing about you now, my boyfriend, which upsets me very much, but I’m thinking to better that thing, if I can do it, and I can very well, because I have the power I always had, and I made you, and now I will unmake you.
They tell me you went and chose a lady for whom you thought that you would leave me, and that’s just fine, if it turns out well, but I will turn that ‘well’ of yours into ill, because I have the power I always had, and I made you, and now I will unmake you.
You chose a lady, I heard it said, to my distress, and you’ll lose out there, if I can do it, and do it I can, as I always could, and I have the power, because I have the power I always had, and I made you, and now I will unmake you.
And once I turn you back into what you were, that’ll upset me, but I’ll get back at you.
{ Disseron mh ora de vós ũa ren, meu amigo, de que ei gran pesar, mais eu mho cuido mui ben melhorar, se eu poder, e poderei mui ben, ca o poder, que eu sempre ouvi, m’ ei, e eu vos fiz e eu vos desfarei
Dizen mi que filhastes senhor tal per que vos cuidastes de min partir, e ben vos é, se vos a ben sair, mais deste ben farei vos end’ eu mal, ca o poder, que eu sempre ouvi, m’ ei, e eu vos fiz e eu vos desfarei
Senhor filhastes, com’ oí dizer a meu pesar, e perderedes i, se eu poder, e poderei assi como fiz sempr’ e posso me poder, ca o poder, que eu sempre ouvi, m’ ei, e eu vos fiz e eu vos desfarei
E, pois vos eu tornar qual vos achei, pesar mh á en, mais pero vingar m’ ei }[7]
This woman, very upset at her ex-boyfriend moving on to a rival woman, wants to hurt him. That’s probably common for status-disparate love relationships that go bad. Jealousy, after all, is a powerful motivation, and the capability to harm is heightened with a large power differential. Nonetheless, that’s not the only possible outcome in such a situation. Despite being older and undoubtedly more learned that the lost beloved young man, the speaker of “O admirabile Veneris idolum” wants to protect him from harm.
“O admirabile Veneris idolum” is “among the pearls of medieval poetry” within the rich treasure of medieval literature generally. Yet it has been under-interpreted:
It has been understood most often as a love poem composed by a male teacher for a boy — a medieval version of the genre of homoerotic poems known in antiquity as paidikon.[8]
Rather than looking back to antiquity and traditional Greco-Roman values, readers can more fully appreciate “O admirabile Veneris idolum” by appreciating its Christian context and looking forward to the Galician-Portuguese cantigas d’amigo of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In medieval Europe, Christian holy love and incarnate love in ordinary life could readily be regarded as essentially the same form. Learned medieval women teachers — Hildegard of Bingen, Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, Heloise of the Paraclete, and undoubtedly others — in various ways loved men. As medieval Christians understood, the Christian imperative to love one’s enemies applies even within the specific circumstances of personal betrayal in love. “O admirabile Veneris idolum” should prompt readers today to ponder how they can love men well.
[1] Cambridge Songs {Carmina cantabrigiensia} 48, “O marvelous idol of love {O admirabile Veneris idolum / O admirabile Veneris ydolum},” stanza 1, Latin text (editorial marks elided; v used for ease in recognizing sounds) and English translation (modified) from Ziolkowski (1994). Subsequent quotes from this poem are similarly sourced and comprise sequentially the whole poem. Here’s an alternate translation of the poem.
This poem has survived in the mid-eleventh-century C = Carmina cantabrigiensia (University of Cambridge, MS Gg.5.35, folio 441v) and in the late-eleventh-century V = Biblioteca apostolica vaticana, MS Vaticanus latinus 3227, folio 80v. The composition of the poem dates to the ninth or tenth century. Giovini (1999) (tenth); Curius (1953) p. 114 (ninth).
Music for a Christian pilgrimage song fits this poem. In C, stanzas 1-2 are neumed. In V, “O admirabile Veneris ydolum” is followed by the metrically and rhythmically identical poem, “O noble Rome, lady-lord of the world {O Roma nobilis orbis et domina}.” The latter poem survives in another manuscript with musically interpretable notation. Ziolkowski (1994) p. 307; Nardini (2021) p. 147.
[2] The words “archos {prime-mover},” “ipothesis {supposition},” and “haeresis {a taking}” are learned words with Greek origin. Ziolkowski (1994) p. 307. “Amabo,” meaning “please” is an unusual word that occurs in the early Latin playwrights Plautus and Terence. Id. p. 308. The poem also includes allusions to Juvenal, Virgil, and Ovid. Giovini (1999).
[3] From a Christian perspective, Christ’s incarnation and crucifixion to redeem sinful humanity is a preeminent expression of divine love. As specific Christian teachings, Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27-38 (love your enemies); Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31 (do to others as you would have them do to you).
[4] Martin Padrozelos 2, song about a beloved man {cantiga de amigo}, “It’s been a long time, my boyfriend {Gran sazon á, meu amigo}” (B 1239, V 844), Galician-Portuguese text (editorial marks eliminated) from Cohen (2003), English translation (modified slightly) from Cohen (2010). Here’s this song at Galician-Portuguese Medieval Songs. Martin / Martim Padrozelos apparently flourished in the middle and late thirteenth century.
For an analysis and complete enumeration of cantigas d’amigo concerning a rival woman, Cohen (2011) 67-83 (“The Other Girl: Outra”) and pp. 85-6 (Appendix: Other Lovers in the Cantigas d’Amigo). Rip Cohen should be honored for his enormous sacrifice in working on cantigas de amigo and making much of his work freely available worldwide on the Internet.
[5] Fernan Velho 1, song about a beloved man {cantiga de amigo}, “Listen, boyfriend, to what I heard today {Vedes, amigo, o que oj’ oí}” (B 819, V 403, C 819), Galician-Portuguese text (editorial marks eliminated) from Cohen (2003), English translation (modified slightly) from Cohen (2010). Here’s this song at Universo Cantigas and at Galician-Portuguese Medieval Songs. The electro-medieval band Qntal recorded an adaptation of this song on its 2004 album Illuminate (Noir Records).
[6] Juião Bolseiro 6, song about a beloved man {cantiga de amigo}, “What eyes are those that have no shame? {Que olhos son que vergonha non an}” (B 1170, V 776), Galician-Portuguese text (editorial marks eliminated) from Cohen (2003), English translation (modified slightly) from Cohen (2010). Here’s this song at Galician-Portuguese Medieval Songs.
[7] Johan Perez d’Avoin 7, song about a beloved man {cantiga de amigo}, “They told me a thing about you now {Disseron mh ora de vós ũa ren}” (B 670, V 273), Galician-Portuguese text (editorial marks eliminated) from Cohen (2003), English translation (modified slightly) from Cohen (2010). Here’s this song at Universo Cantigas and at Galician-Portuguese Medieval Songs.
[8] Ziolkoski (1994). The previous short quote (“among the pearls of medieval poetry”) is from Curtius 1953) p. 114. For an argument that the poetic voice is a woman’s, Vollmann (1988). Jaeger perceived in this poem “the lack of any Christian coloring.” Jaeger (1999) p. 56. The music of the poem surely provided Christian coloring in its time. More importantly, its emotional macro-structure is also Christian. Nardini, who examines its music in detail, calls it a “secular parody.” Nardini (2021) p. 147. The poem seems to me a secular parody in the sense of parodying a paidikon.
A reviewer of Stephen Gaselee’s An Anthology of Medieval Latin (1925) stated:
A classical student, for example, might welcome the suggestion that the accentual dactylic tetrameter of O admirabile Veneris ydolum was ultimately derived from the classical Lesser Asclepiadic.
Merrill (1926) p. 308. Classical students would be better directed to think comparatively about the Christian understanding of love and ponder classical philology’s gender problem.
Medieval love poetry encompasses an astonishing range of possibilities. Baudri (Badric), who became Abbot of Bourgueil (c. 1080) and archbishop of Dol (1107) in Brittany, lightly observed:
They reproach me even with this: speaking in the way of young men, I wrote to young women and no less to adolescent boys. Some of what I wrote indeed concerned love, and my songs have pleased both sexes.
{ Obiciunt etiam, iuvenum cur more loquutus Virginibus scripsi nec minus et pueris. Nam scripsi quedam, que complectuntur amorem, Carminibusque meis sexus uterque placet. }
Baudri to Godfrey of Reims, written between 1081 and 1089, poem 161, vv. 183-6, Latin text and English translation (modified) from Bond (1986) p. 183. Baudri’s male addressee had to be at least old enough to read learned Latin poetry. Here are some related verses from Curtius (1953) pp. 115-6. What Baudri actually did sexually and with whom in late eleventh-century France isn’t clear. That matters less than what you are doing and thinking now about how to love men well.
Cohen, Rip. 2011. Erotic angles on the cantigas d’amigo. Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar, 68. London: Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies, Queen Mary, University of London.
Giovini, Marco. 1999. “O admirabile Veneris ydolum: un carme d’amore paidico del X secolo e il mito di Deucalione.” Studi Medievali. 40 (1): 261-278.
Jaeger, C. Stephen. 1999. Ennobling Love: in search of a lost sensibility. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Merrill, Elmer Truesdell. 1926. “Book Review: An Anthology of Medieval Latin.” The Classical Journal. 21 (4): 307-309.
Nardini, Luisa. 2021. Chants, hypertext, and prosulas: re-texting the proper of the mass in Beneventan manuscripts. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Vollmann, Benedikt K. 1988. “O admirabile Veneris idolum (Carmina Cantabrigiensia 48) – ein Mädchenlied?” Pp. 532-543 in Udo Kindermann, Wolfgang Maaz, and Fritz Wagner, eds. Festschrift für Paul Klopsch. Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 492. Göppingen: Kümmerle.
Ziolkowski, Jan M. 1994. The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia). New York: Garland. Introduction.
Bringing joy to a tearful damsel imprisoned in a tower by a bad man is an archetypal masculine hero-fantasy. Such a story occurs in many variations in medieval literature. The mid-sixteenth-century story-collector Straparola, who popularized fairy-tales, created in contrast a witty story that transgressed gender and the conventional tower romance.
In Straparola’s story, King Galafro of Spain appears to be the typical bad man. He was a fierce warrior. As an old man, he married a beautiful young woman named Feliciana. Age difference doesn’t necessarily prevent a happy marriage. But King Galafro wasn’t a strong, independent husband:
Because of her gentleness and gracious manner, the king loved his queen exceedingly, taking thought of nothing else than how he might please her.
{ e per la sua gentilezza e maniere accorte, era sommamente amata dal Re, nè ad altro pensava che compiacerle. }
After examining the king’s hand, a chiromancer told him that his wife would cuckold him. The king thus resolved to keep his wife in a strong, carefully guarded tower.
Gender inequality in parental knowledge creates the gender-distinctive issue of men being cuckolded. Modern DNA-based paternity testing could eliminate this gender inequality. However, social forces under gynocentrism suppress routine DNA paternity testing. A historical alternative has been for husbands to attempt to guard their wives to prevent them from secretly having sex with another man. Medieval literature documents that such mate-guarding frequently fails. In Straparola’s story-collection, the knowing lady Lionora declared to her woman-friends:
Again and again, loving and gracious ladies, I’ve heard it said that the cleverest stratagems of art and science are helpless when pitted against the shrewdness of women. The reason for this is that at her creation, woman sprang not from the dry, barren earth, but from the ribs of Adam our first father. Thus, from the beginning women were made of flesh and not of dust, even though in the end their bodies, like men’s, inevitably are reduced to ashes.
{ Più e più volte, amorevoli e graziose donne, ho udito dire, non valer scienza nè arte alcuna contrar astuzia delle donne, e questo prociede perchè elle non dalla trita e secca terra sono prodotte, ma dalla costa del padre nostro Adamo; e così sono di carne e non di terra, ancor che i loro corpi al fine in cenere si riducano. }
Lionora naturalized women’s superiority in guile. Rationalizations for gender inequality in parental knowledge are now much different. The specifics of oppressive rationalizations have little significance to possibilities for social change. As Straparola’s story shows, invention and ingenuity can overcome natural gender differences.
Galeotto, the son of the king of Castille, heard that King Galafro was strictly guarding his queen Feliciana. With men’s usual compassion for women, Galeotto resolved to bring joy to Feliciana. He first gathered many luxury items. Then, dressed as a merchant, he hawked his precious wares throughout the city where Feliciana was imprisoned in royal ease.
The oppressed queen’s servant-women told her that a merchant was selling luxury goods, including cloth embroidered with silver and gold. Acquiring additional luxuries might lift the spirit of an oppressed woman of privilege. The queen thus pleaded with the working men guarding her tower to allow the merchant to enter. A married king is merely nominal ruler of the realm. Despite the king’s order to the guards, the queen persuaded them to allow the merchant to visit her.
Galeotto disguised as the merchant acted with consummate guile. He made simultaneous offers:
Having first made the due and customary obeisance to the queen, the merchant spread out his rich wares. The queen, who was sprightly and rather bold, noticed that the merchant was handsome and had a kindly nature. She began to shoot darts from the crossbows of her eyes so as to arouse his amorous feelings. This trader, who kept his eyes wide open, showed that he wanted the same and would give love for love.
{ Il qual, prima fatta la debita e convenevole riverenza, la salutò; indi mostròle le nobili sue merci. La Reina, che era festevole e baldanzosa, vedendolo bello, piacevole e di natura benigno, incominciò ballestrarlo con la coda dell’occhio e accenderlo del lei amore. Il mercatante, che non dormiva, dimostrava nel volto corresponderle in amore. }
The queen became most interested in a particular item:
After the queen had looked at a great number of his things, she said, “Master, your wares are truly very fine. That no one can deny. But among them all, this one pleases me most. I’d be happy to know the price you want for it.”
{ Vedute che ebbe la Reina molte cose, disse: Maestro, le cose vostre sono bellissime, nè hanno opposizione alcuna; ma tra tutte questa molto mi aggrada. Io volontieri saprei quello l’apprecciate. }
The merchant responded, “Lady-lord, no sum of money is sufficient to purchase these things. But seeing that you nourish such great desire to possess them, rather than sell them to you, I’m willing to give them to you if by such means I could be certain of winning your grace, which I value far above all other things.”
{ Rispose il mercatante: Signora, non è danaro che sofficiente sia a sodisfamento di lei. Ma quando vi fosse in piacere, io più presto ve la donerei che venderla: pur ch’io fosse sicuro di ottener la grazia sua, la qual io reputo maggiore che ogni altra robba. }
The merchant offered himself, with all his masculine marvels, to the queen for free. The queen was delighted with this extraordinarily generous merchant. She exclaimed:
Master, what you have said shows that you aren’t a low-born man, or one who is dedicated to the search for profit, but with your presentation you demonstrate the magnanimity that reigns over your kindly heart. So, however unworthy I may appear to be, I offer myself to you so that you may use me according to your pleasure.
{ Maestro, quello che voi dite, non è atto di uomo vile, che è più delle volte dedito all’ingordo guadagno; ma con effetti dimostrate la magnanimità che nel cor vostro ben disposto regna. Io, quantunque indegna, mi offero a’ piaceri e comandi vostri. }
That’s a counter-offer similar to the merchant’s offer of all of himself in exchange for her love. He in response gave a speech of pure courtly love:
Lady-lord, most truly you are the one firm and enduring support of my life. Your angelic beauty, joined to the sweet and kindly welcome that you have extended to me, has bound me with so strong a chain that I find it vain to hope that I shall ever again be able to free myself. I’m all afire with love for you. All the water in the world could never extinguish the ardent flames that consume my heart. I am a wanderer come from a distant land with no other purpose than to look upon that rare and radiant beauty that raises you far above every other living lady. As kindly and courteous as you are, if you would take me into your favor, you would thereby gain a devoted servant whom you may employ as though a part of yourself.
{ Signora, vera e salda colonna della vita mia, l’angelica bellezza vostra, congiunta con quelle dolci e benigne accoglienze, mi ha sì fortemente legato, che io non spero potermi mai più da lei dissogliere. Io per voi ardo, nè trovo acqua che estinguer possa sì ardente fuoco in cui mi trovo. Io da lontani paesi sono partito, e non per altro se non per veder la rara e singolar bellezza, la quale ad ogni altra donna vi fa superiore. Se voi, come benigna e cortese, nella grazia vostra mi accetterete, arrete un servo di cui potrete disporre come di voi stessa. La Reina, udite tai parole, stette sopra di sè, e prese ammirazione non picciola che ’l mercatante avesse tanto ardire; ma pur vedendolo bello e leggiadro, e considerando l’ingiuria che le faceva il marito tenendola chiusa nella torre, dispose al tutto seguire il piacer suo. }
Women, like men, should realize that courtly love is utterly unrealistic and profoundly false to the mud-made nature of women and men. But the queen, knowing that in courtly love men are effectively sexual serfs to lordly women, sought to exploit her gender privilege. She imposed as an additional condition for her love that he give her all the luxury wares that he had brought with him. What he had previously given her was all of himself. That wasn’t enough for this acquisitive queen.
The merchant gave the queen all his material goods. Then she led him into a bedroom. There he “took the ultimate fruit of love {prese gli ultimi frutti d’amore}.” So too did she.
After they finished enjoying sex, Galeotto demanded that the queen give him back his merchandise. He thus ironically insisted on the value of his masculine sexual gift. The queen chided him for allegedly acting juvenile:
Surely it does not become a noble-minded and liberal gentleman to demand the return of anything that he has faithfully bestowed upon another. This is the way of children, who in their tender ages lack sense and understanding. But to tell you frankly, since you are a man wise and understanding and have no need of a guardian, I do not intend to return your wares.
{ Non conviensi ad uomo magnifico e liberale addimandare in dietro la cosa lealmente donata. Questo fanno i fanciulli, che per la tenella età sono di senno e d’intelletto privi. Ma a voi, uomo savio e accorto, a cui non fa bisogno curatore, io la robba restituir non intendo. }
Galeotto declared that if she didn’t return his wares, he would remain there until the king returned. Then he would ask the king to administer justice. Recognizing Galeotto’s clever move, the queen returned his wares. This is the lover’s gift regained, a gender-transgressive motif in folklore.
Galeotto happily left the queen’s tower. He passed through the streets proclaiming loudly:
I know it, and I don’t want to tell it. I know it, and I don’t want to tell it!
{ Io il so, e non lo voglio dire: io il so e non lo voglio dire! }
King Galafro, returning from hunting, heard Galeotto’s cries and was amused. When he entered his wife’s tower, he said to her in jest, “Madame, I know it, and I don’t want to tell it {Madonna, io il so, e non lo voglio dire}.” Mistakenly thinking that her husband spoke in earnest, she fell at his feet, confessed her sexual infidelity, and begged him for forgiveness.
King Galafro, the typical bad man of medieval romance, revealed himself to be a good man. He told his wife:
Madame, be of good cheer. Don’t torment yourself. Whatever Heaven wills, so that will come to be.
{ Madama, sta di buona voglia, nè ti smarrire; perciò che quello che vuole il cielo, convien che sia. }
The king ordered that the tower imprisoning his wife be demolished. He gave his wife complete freedom to do whatever she desired. She and her husband then lived together joyfully. Some might think that with her freedom she engaged in polyamory. In the context of Straparola’s story, almost surely she was faithful to her husband.
Let us count the ways that Straparola’s story transgresses gender and romance stereotypes. The lovely young woman Feliciana fails to gain material goods in exchange for having sex with a man. She is also revealed to be inferior in guile to Galeotto. Moreover, Galeotto, who pretended to be a merchant, enacted the lesson that men’s sexuality is a highly beneficial gift beyond any material price. In addition, the stereotypical bad man King Galafro becomes a good man who graciously forgives his wife. He essentially communicates to her that he doesn’t care if she has sex with other men. This is a story that women and men today should tell and retell to liberate themselves from gender and romance stereotypes.
The quotes above are from Giovanni (Zoan) Francesco Straparola, The Pleasant Nights {Le Piacevoli Notti}, Italian text from Rua (1899), English translation (modified) from Beecher (2012). All the quotes above except one are from Night 9, Story 1 (“King Galafro’s Vain Precautions”). The lady Diana tells this story. Lionora’s naturalization of women’s superiority in guile comes from the introduction to Night 12, Story 1 (“How Florio’s Wife Cures His Jealousy”).
While this story includes well-recognized motifs in folklore, its over-all structure is unique. Beecher observed:
The creative agency responsible for putting them together may have been Straparola himself, or more probably the collective oral tradition from which the tale was surely derived.
Beecher (2012) vol. 2, p. 269. The deliberate transgression of gender and romance conventions seems to me to point to Straparola himself as the creative agency. Beecher further observed:
Either this story is thematically savvy and self-aware, deconstructing its own romantic facade through mutual exploitation and trickery brought to situational blackmail amid hollow and bankrupted sentiments, or the tale, in its impromptu combination of motifs, simply lost track of itself.
Id. p. 270. The story seems to me surely thematically savvy and self-aware. It’s like the thirteenth-century Old Occitan Romance of Flamenca, which has long been under-appreciated.
A central motif of this story is a husband’s mate-guarding. An influential instance of this motif is the “confined woman {inclusa}” story in The Romance of the Seven Sages of Rome {Le roman des Sept Sages de Rome}. In Inclusa, a knight out of jealousy keeps his wife imprisoned in a tower. Another knight feels compassion for the wife’s plight. He builds a tower next to hers and then a tunnel connecting the two towers. The wife and knight secretly cuckold the husband using this tunnel of love. They ultimately flee from the “bad man” husband. The thirteenth-century Old French romance Joufroi de Poitiers tells a structurally similar story.
Nearly all the conventional means are represented in Straparola’s own stories: digging underground from castle to castle (‘Erminione and Filenia,’ IV.2), the lover transformed into a bird who then flies in through the window (‘Fortunio, the King’s Daughter, and the Mermaid,’ III.4), an intruder disguised as a merchant in the manner of Doralice’s father — a potential model for the lover in the present story — or entry to the lady’s chamber inside a coffer or large work of art (‘Doralice,’ I.4); or carried out (as in ‘The Physician’s Wife,’ IV.4).
[images] (1) Saint George kills a dragon and saves a damsel in distress. Painted by Paolo Uccello from 1456 to 1460. Preserved in the Musée Jacquemart-André (Paris, France). Via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Man kills another man to become hero to damsel in distress. Painted by Frank Bernard Dicksee in 1885. Image via Wikimedia Commons. (3) Damsel in distress chained to a railroad track. Photo still from the 1917 silent film Teddy at the Throttle (directed by Clarence G. Badger). Via Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Beecher, Donald. 2012. Giovanni Francesco Straparola. The Pleasant Nights. 2 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Waters, W.G., trans. 1894. Giovanni Francesco Straparola. The Nights. Vol. 1. Vol. 2. London: Lawrence and Bullen. Alternate presentation: vol. 1, vol. 2.
