Month: May 2023

In the medieval epic Ami et Amile, Lubias was asleep with her husband Count Ami in their city of Blaye. The daughter of a rich and powerful man, she in marriage had brought him much land and gold. She expected him to fulfill his marital debt to her. However, Ami suddenly jumped out of bed and grabbed his sword. Lubias awoke. She asked her husband what troubled him. He explained that he had dreamed that his dear friend and nearly identical twin Count Amile was being mortally assaulted by her uncle Hardré. He said that he must leave immediately to help his friend.

Lubias offered no sympathy. Instead, she jealously assailed Amile:

“Sir,” she said, “well I know what you think.
Now you would like to be in the city of Paris
at the house of Count Amile, that perjuring glutton,
who kisses and embraces the daughter of Charlemagne
while my body is cast away in contempt.
I wish that I would be told evil news of her —
that her body would be delivered to evil whoredom!”

{ “Sire,” fait elle, “bien sai que voz panséz.
Or voldriéz iestre a Paris la cité,
Au conte Amile le glouton parjuré,
La fille Charle baisier et acoler,
Dont li miens cors est cheüz en vilté.
Males nouvelles m’en puisse l’on conter,
A mal putaige soit li siens cors livréz!” }[1]

Medieval women and men relished sex. Hardré alleged that Amile had sex with Princess Belissant, Charlemagne’s daughter:

I caught him naked with Belissant naked,
in the way of a wife with her husband,
and she did all the passion of love under him.

{ Qu’o Belissant nu a nu le reprins
Si faitement com fame a son mari,
Et la folie toute suz li fist il }

Lubias was jealous that she would be deprived of such pleasurable passion while Ami was with his friend Amile. But Ami’s trip was a matter of life and death for Amile. Truly loving wives should support their husbands’ friendships with men.

The man whom Lubias thought was her husband Ami soon returned home to Blaye from Paris. She greeted him and asked him for his sword. Lubias was the sort of wife who felt that she owned her husband’s sword. Declining to give it to her, he turned away. She then peevishly assailed him:

“Sir,” she said, “You have me under much contempt.
Now you have returned from the court at Paris,
you kissing and making pleasure with the daughter of Charlemagne,
while my body is held under contempt.
I pray to God, the Father who never lies,
that I be allowed yet to hear evil news of her —
that her body would be taken for evil whoredom!”

{ “Sire,” dist elle, “moult m’avéz enpor vil.
Or revenéz de la cort de Paris
La fille Charle baisier et conjoïr,
Dont li miens cors est tenus enpor vil.
Dex doinst, li Peres qui onques ne menti,
Males nouvelles m’en laist encor oïr,
A mal putaige soit li siens cors reprins.” }

The way a wicked wife slanders a husband’s friend, she will soon slander him. That’s what Lubias did to her husband. Of course, she would forgive him for her slander that if she got what she wanted from him. That night, they went to bed, naked as usual. “She expected to embrace him as her lover {elle le cuide acoler com son dru}.” She felt his hard, naked rod, but it was his steel sword! She recoiled in fear. He had placed it between them.

How could a husband be as cruel to his wife in bed as Margery Kempe was to her husband? The Middle English version of the story highlights her anger and astonishment at her husband’s lack of sexual interest in her:

The lady then looked upon him
angrily with her two eyes.
She thought her husband was insane.
“Sir,” she said, “why are you behaving so?
Thus you were never accustomed to do.
What has changed your way?”

{ The levedi loked opon him tho
Wrothlich with her eighen tuo,
Sche wend hir lord were wode.
“Sir,” sche seyd, “whi farstow so?
Thus were thou noght won to do,
Who hath changed thi mode?” }[2]

In the French epic Ami et Amile, Lubias angrily accused her husband and demanded a divorce:

“Sir,” she said, “what have you discovered about me?
You have brought your sword to kill me,
but by the faith I owe to my mother’s soul,
if I live until the dawn of the next day,
I will tell my cousins and my brothers,
and they will take me immediately in front of the bishop,
by such way to be separated from you
and from your companionship.”

{ “Sire,” dist elle, “ou m’avéz voz trouvee?
Por moi ocirre aportastez espee,
Mais par la foi que doi l’ame ma mere,
Se je vif tant que veingne l’ajornee,
Gel conterai mes couzins et mes freres,
Devant l’evesque m’averont tost menee.
Par tel engieng serai de voz sevree,
De vostre compaignie.” }

He in response lied that a doctor gave him medicine for a serious fever and forbid him to have sexual intercourse during the next thirty days. Apparently seeking to assert her sexual worth and provoke him to possessiveness, she lied that his friend Amile had sexual assaulted her.[3] He in turned lied to her that he would seek to cut off his friend’s head.

Medieval men didn’t merely listen and believe women. Medieval men knew that women, like men, sometimes lie. In fact, the man who was claiming to be Lubias’s husband Ami was actually her husband’s nearly identical friend Amile. They had swapped places so Ami could fight a judicial duel for Amile. At the level of body organs, all men function essentially the same. Lubias didn’t value her husband Ami extensively enough to be able to distinguish him from his friend Amile.

After substituting for his friend Amile in the judicial duel, Ami returned to his wife Lubias in Blaye. Amile, pretending to be Ami, urged Lubias to greet hospitably this visitor, whom she thought was Amile. To that reasonable request, she responded:

Gladly, sir, but only if you make the assurance
that tonight in your bed you would lie with me
and you wouldn’t put there your naked sword.

{ Volentiers, sire, mais que seüre fuisse
Qu’en vostre lit anquenuit me geüsse,
Que n’i fust mise la vostre espee nue. }

That’s straight-forward sexual coercion, with an ironic double-entendre using a brutalizing figure of a man’s penis. Amile readily made that promise. He knew of Ami’s love for his wife Lubias. He knew that Ami, not he, would be the one in bed with her. That night Lubias and Ami in bed together had sex. They “sufficiently enjoyed and delighted each other {gabé ont asséz et delitié}.”

Despite relishing sex with her husband, Lubias treated him wickedly. She threatened to have his friend Amile arrested and imprisoned for allegedly cheating in the judicial duel. Only Ami warning Amile to flee saved Amile from that fate. Evidently Lubias, not Ami, controlled the penal system of their realm.

Ami developed leprosy as a result of the deception he carried out to save his friend from judicial combat. Lubias responded to her husband’s terrible illness with hatred for him:

Lubias conceived for him such hate
— the evil lady, whom God can damn to evil —
that she would no longer deign to see him nor keep him
nor serve him with her body or honor him,
because she had no concern for God.

{ … Lubias le coilli en tel héz,
La male damme, cui Dex puist mal donner,
Que nel deingna veoir ne esgarder
Ne de son cors servir ne honorer,
Car de Deu nen ot cure. }

God is merciful, and those who respect God should also be merciful. Ami called out to his wife Lubias, “Come lie down, lady, don’t cease to sleep with me {Venéz jesir, damme, ne m’esveilliéz}.” She came to her husband:

Fully clothed, she sat by the count
and took to the arranging of her deceptions.
“Sir,” she said, “it has since much amazed me.
You married me seven years ago from yesterday.
Then you were healthy and solid and in good form.
Now I see you so totally enfeebled
that you can’t even walk or ride a horse.
I wish to ask you, sir, that you would let me go
in front of the bishop. You would be very good to agree.”

{ Toute vestue léz le conte s’assiet,
De ses losenges le prinst a arraisnier:
“Sire,” dist elle, “moult me puis merveillier.
Voz me preïstez set ans ot avant ier.
Dont estiiéz sains et saus et haitiéz,
Or voz voi si dou tout affoibloier,
Ne poéz mais aler ne chevauchier.
Proier voz voil, sire, que me laissiéz
Devant l’evesque, moult bien voz feriiéz.” }

In short, she asked him to agree to a divorce. For Lubias, marriage was not for better or for worse. Ami called her “totally savage and hard-hearted {tout sauvaige et grief}.” He appealed to God for help. She called him foolish.

Lubias was a strong, independent woman. She summoned two knights to take Ami before the bishop. There she denounced him and humiliated him. She probably claimed that he was unable to fulfill his marital debt to her. She declared:

Sir noble bishop,
my husband is totally ill and leprous.
Now take care sir, blessed bishop,
to decree separation between me and Ami.
I will give you my little Arabian mule
and thirty pounds of Parisian coins.

{ … Sire evesques gentiz,
Touz est malades et delgiéz mes maris.
Or en panséz, sire evesques benis,
Dou dessevrer entre moi et Ami.
Je voz donrai mon murlet arrabi
Et trente livres de deniers parisis }

The bishop was outraged. He refused to be bribed to treat a husband so cruelly. Lubias then exerted her authority as the wealthy, ruling woman of the city:

Lubias was made to behave madly
when the bishop of the city so presented himself.
She said, “Mine is this city and the honors taken here.
This land is at my command.
No bishop here can refuse to do my desire.
No man here knows authority over me.
Let go of your crosier. I forbid it to you.”

{ Lubias fu de fol contenement
Quant a l’evesque de la ville se prent:
“Moie est la ville et l’annors qu’i apent,
Ceste terre est a mon conmandement.
N’i a evesque, ne face mon talent,
Nus hom n’i a par maistrie noient.
Laissiéz la croce, que je la voz deffenz.” }

The bishop defied her. She then showed him her power:

And so Lubias sought out allies.
She gave rich men money
and had the town-dwellers equipped with robes of marten fur.
Such persons entered the church
and all together cried out to the bishop,
“Why have you humiliated our lady,
that you have made her intimate with a leper?”

{ Et Lubias si s’est tant poralee,
As riches homes a donnees soudees
Et as borjois piauls de martre affumblees,
Icelle gens s’est el monstier entree
Et tuit ensamble a l’evesque crierent:
“Por qu’avéz voz nostre damme avillee,
Qu’a un mezel l’avéz faite privee?” }

Struggling to oppose Lubias and her allies, the bishop convened in the city a panel of four bishops. Those four bishops implored God’s blessing upon Ami. They also allowed Lubias to send her husband away to a hovel outside their city of Blaye.[4]

Only Ami’s seven-year-old son Girard remained loyal to him. When he could, Girard took bread from the table and brought it to his father. But his kindness was discovered:

His mother saw him do that kindness and threatened him,
saying she would throw him on the ground and pinch him and with her palms
hit him such that the marks would appear there on his body.
“Son of a leper, of a cripple, and of a beggar!
I won’t let a day pass without beating you for him.
I will not see a month pass after Easter
that I don’t hang on your neck such a stepfather
that if he doesn’t kill you for your love of your father,
he’ll be too much of a coward.”

{ Voit le sa mere, si le chose et menace,
Qu’encontre terre et a poins et a paumes
Le batra tant que i parront les traces.
“Fiz a mezel, a delgiet et a ladre!
Ja n’iert uns jors que por lui ne voz bate.
Ja ne verréz un mois apréz la Pasque
Que sor le col te metrai tel parrastre,
S’il ne te tue, il fera trop que lasches,
Por l’ammor de ton pere.” }

Girard fought back against the men supporting his evil mother. He bashed four of them on the head with a club. Then he rushed into the kitchen and demanded a peacock for his father. The cook refused, explaining that Lubias would kill him for providing it. Girard then smashed the cook’s head with a club and killed him. Two other cooks saw this and were terrified. They agreed to bring provisions to Ami. Whether Lubias subsequently killed them isn’t mentioned. Ordinary men’s deaths attract relatively little interest in medieval literature.

Girard brought his father food. He kissed his father on the mouth and nose despite his father’s leprosy. His father told him to move away to avoid risk of leprosy. The son refused to obey his father:

You speak madness.
Your flesh would never be vile to me.
Much to the contrary, to me it’s sweet, very good, and pleasant,
and by the apostle whom God gave a fine blessing,
if you would see to flee and go,
I will go with you, if I’m not then turned back.
A more loyal man than me cannot be found here.
Food and some bread I will seek by God —
willingly I will do it.

{ De folie parléz.
La vostre chars ne m’iert ja en vilté,
Ansoiz m’est douce et moult bonne et soéz,
Et par l’apostre cui Dex donna bon gré,
Se voz en voi ne fuïr ne aler,
G’irai o voz, se je m’en puis torner;
Plus loial home de moi n’i trouveréz.
De la vitaille, dou pain querrai por Dé,
Volentiers le feroie. }

Ami decided to go, but he insisted that his son remain. Ami wanted his son to become a knight and receive his inheritance.

Like vicious anti-meninists, Lubias had no pity for her son or her husband. Her young, noble, innocent son she abused and imprisoned:

The wicked mother threatened Girard and knocked him
to the ground with her fists and her feet.
She summoned two lord knights,
who by right of force took him and bound him
and put him in a cellar under a tower.

{ La male mere le menace et sel fiert
Encontre terre et as poinz et as piés.
Elle en apelle douz barons chevaliers,
Par droite force le fait panre et liier,
Desoz la tor l’ont mis en un celier. }

When her starving husband met Lubias returning from church service outside of Blaye, he begged her for some crumbs from her table. She scorned him:

Sir invalid, you are tiring me too much.
How quickly you now have taken to begging!
When I had you thrown outside of Blaye,
my steward and knights assured me
that you would die quickly, that you would scarcely live.
Now I see you so healthy and solid and in good form.
May God who judges all not be pleased
that you might live yet an entire month!
I am too tired of you.

{ Sire malades, trop poéz anuier.
Tost avéz ores aprins a porchacier.
Quant je voz fiz fors de Blaivies gietier,
Disoient moi serjant et chevalier
Que morriéz tost, gaires ne viveriéz ;
Or voz voi si sain et sauf et haitié.
Ja Deu ne place qui tout a a jugier
Que vouz soiéz passéz un mois entier!
Trop en sui annuiie. }

She decreed that no one could give anything to Ami or to have anything to do with him. She wanted him to die of hunger and thirst. But two loyal serfs asked Lubias that they be allowed take Ami to beg with them in foreign lands. They promised that she would never see him again. With that promise, she permitted them to care for her starving, sick husband. She refused Ami’s request to see his son for one last time before he left.[5]

Literary evaluations of Lubias underscore the direction of medieval literary studies. Commenting on bitter words from Amile, William Calin in a scholarly study published in 1966 declared:

Lubias’ actions no doubt merit the diatribe. The list of her major crimes — seeking to bribe the bishop to annul her marriage, turning Ami out of house and home, wishing he were dead and to that end ordering that he be starved, beating and imprisoning their son Girard, threatening Girard with the prospect of a harsh stepfather, preventing father and son from seeing each other, from saying goodbye — is of a wickedness seldom matched in the chanson de geste.[6]

In an introductory essay published in 1981, the authors warned of “a certain anti-feminism” in this medieval story. They meant that it depicted a woman as thoroughly evil:

Lubias is unmitigatedly evil, a sensual, cruel, and mendacious woman, as incapable of love for her son Girard as for her husband Ami, and as intent upon destroying the bond between father and son as that between the two friends.[7]

To avoid anti-feminism under current scholarly standards, Satan, devils, and other completely evil beings must be depicted as male. A scholarly article published in 1990 explicitly drew upon Georges Duby’s dubious medieval history to declare Lubias a victim and a chattel passed among men. Naturally, “Lubias’s indignation is better founded than she knows.” Moreover, “Lubias speaks more truly than she knows” when she falsely accuses Amile of sexually assaulting her.[8]

With closely focused analysis, three other scholarly articles also found an “antifeminist, misogynistic element” in the depiction of Lubias. The good man William Calin, then recognized as a leading scholar of the chanson de geste, in response published in 1991 a scholarly article with a section headed “In defense of Lubias.” Calin first defined Lubias to be “evil incarnate” through no fault of her own. She was evil because she was the niece of the evil man Hardré, or because of misogyny. Literary scholars are rationalizing animals:

Lubias dislikes {her husband’s friend} Amile for defendable reasons: he declined the offer of her hand in marriage and passed her on to Ami {whom she didn’t have to agree to marry}; later, of course, she believes it is he who slew her uncle {who was trying to kill him}. She comes to dislike her husband Ami because he will not listen to her {or he listens to her and realizes that she’s lying}, because he prefers Amile to her {or perhaps not}, placing a higher price on friendship than on marriage {which should include friendship}.[9]

In Calin’s new interpretation, Lubias, who claimed to have hit Amile in the face and knocked him to the ground, can only use words as a weapon:

In opposition to the man’s coldness, to his physical mastery and refusal of her sexuality, the woman responds verbally. Lubias the woman resorts to speech, the only weapon that she can wield against her husband à armes égales, the only weapon with which she can wound him in turn.[10]

Words were not enough to have Ami expelled from his home into a hut outside of Blaye. Words were not enough to have their son Girard shackled and imprisoned underneath a tower. Lubias needed men to listen to her words and follow her directions. Men are remarkably willing to follow the directing words of even evil women. Calin concluded:

we are meant to comprehend and to empathize with Belissant and even, should one so wish, with Lubias.

In literary criticism over the past few decades, scholars have very much wished to empathize with despicably wicked women like Lubias.

Both women and men can act as if they are Satan-possessed. Both women and men can be cruel spouses. That’s reality painful to recognize, particularly for men in relation to women. Nonetheless, truly loving another human being requires appreciating the full extent of our humanity.

* * * * *

Read more:

• Belissant & Lubias direct violence against men in epic Ami et Amile
• Danes besieging Paris needed Erik the Eloquent’s flyting skill
• medieval women taught men about true love

Notes:

[1] Ami and Amile {Ami et Amile}, Continental version in decasyllabic verses {Version continentale en décasyllabes}, vv. 882-8 (50), Old French edition of Dembowski (1969), my English translation, benefiting from that of Rosenberg & Danon (1996). The verse numbers are followed by laisse in parentheses. Ami et Amile is also known as Amis and Amiles {Amis et Amiles}.

The daughter of Charlemagne is Belissant. Although she raped Amile, he forgave her and they married. Belissant compassionately supported Amile’s friendship with Ami. She also cared for Ami when he became a leper.

The Anglo-Norman version, Amis and Amilun {Amis et Amilun}, is more explicit about the wealth of the (unnamed) woman corresponding to Lubias. She was a count’s daughter. Amis (corresponding to Amile) benefited materially and in status by marrying her:

By inheritance she received
half the revenue of the count.
…
Amis, as very quickly as he could,
took leave respectfully and traveled
to his country, toward his beloved,
whom he loved like his life.
Now he had risen to a high state,
because he accrued through marriage
great power and great honor.
Great estates were under his rule,
three counties and a half,
as soon as the count had died.

{ Par heritage la meite
Li fu acheu del counte.
…
Amis, al plus tost qu’il poeit,
Conge ad pris si s’en aloyt
En sun pais vers sa amie,
Ke tant ama come sa vie.
Or est mounte en haut estage,
Kar cru li est par mariage
Grant seignurie e grant honur;
De grant terres ert il seingnur,
De treis contez e demi,
Si tost com li quens ert fini. }

Amis and Amilun {Amis et Amilun}, Anglo-Norman verse version, vv. 173-4, 771-80, Old French (Anglo-Norman) text from Kölbing (1884) pp. 129-30, my English translation, benefiting from that of Weiss (2009).

Subsequent quotes above, unless otherwise noted are similarly from the chanson de geste Ami et Amile. Those quotes are vv. 1420-2 (73) (I caught him naked…), 1125-31 (62) (“Sir,” she said, “You have me under much contempt…”), 1163 (64) (She expected to embrace…), 1169-76 (65) (“Sir,” she said, “what have you discovered about me?…”), 1986-8 (99) (Gladly, sire, but only if…), 2005 (100) (sufficiently enjoyed…), 2062-66 (103) (Lubias conceived for him such hate…), 2070 (104) (Come lie down…), 2072-80 (104) (Fully clothed, she sat by the count…), 2092 (104) (totally savage and hard-hearted), 2119-24 (107) (Sir noble bishop…), 2132-8 (108) (Lubias was made to behave madly…), 2153-9 (109) (And so Lubias sought out allies…), 2235-43 (113) (His mother saw him do that kindness…), 2299-2307 (115) (You speak madness…), 2312-6 (116) (The wicked mother threatened Girard…), 2347-55 (117) (Sir invalid, you are tiring me…).

[2] Amis and Amiloun, Middle English verse version, vv. 1165-70, Middle English text from Foster (2007), my English modernization. For a complete English modernization of Amis and Amiloun, Eckert (2015).

The story of Amelius and Amicus, as represented in a Latin verse summary that Raoul Le Tortier {Radulphus Tortarius} wrote about 1090, depicts the Lubias-character’s ardent, vigorous desire to have sex with her husband:

When at night he was lying with her in one bed,
very frequently she pushed at the young man’s side.
He averted his face, afraid even to give her a kiss.
Because of her persistence during the night, he placed a bared sword
between them. So she was made exceedingly sad.

{ Cum qua dum strato de noctibus incubat uno,
Crebrius et pulsat illa latus iuvenis,
Avertit faciem, metuit dare basia saltem;
Sed sibi dum semper illa molesta foret,
Noctibus assiduis nudus deponitur ensis
Inter eos, tristis unde fit ipsa nimis. }

Radulphus Tortarius, Letters {Epistulae} 2, “To Bernarnd {Ad Bernardum},” vv. 173-8, Latin text from Ogle & Schullian (1933) p. 261, my English translation, benefiting from that of Leach (1937) Appendix A, “The Amis and Amilous Story of Radulfus Tortarius.”

[3] Lubias claimed that she slapped Amile in the face and knocked him to the ground when he attempted to sexually assault her. Medieval women weren’t afraid to defend themselves against men acting wrongly.

[4] The early Latin version underscores the Lubias-character’s cruelty to her husband in response to him becoming leprous:

For that reason, your most cruel wife expelled you
like sweepings or waste from the house.

{ Peppulit idcirco tua te sevissima coniux
Purgamenta velut quisquiliasve domus. }

Radulphus Tortarius, “Ad Bernardum,” vv. 293-4, my English translation, benefiting from that of Leach (1937) Appendix A,

[5] In Ami et Amile, Ami is miraculously cured of his leprosy and returns to Blaye. He publicly denounces Lubias for her treachery. He orders her exiled to the hovel in which she exiled him, but he provides her with a meager daily ration of bread. After a week passes, overcome with pity for Lubias, he restores her to her domain. Forgiveness is a fundamental Christian value.

[6] Calin (1966) pp. 73-4. Exasperated at Lubias’s lie that he sexually assaulted her, Amile bitterly declared:

So entirely crazy is one who trusts many women
and who tells a woman about any of his secrets.
Now I know well that Solomon told the truth:
among seven thousand women, there isn’t three or four
very perfect ones, whom I would wish to trust.

{ Tant par est fox qui mainte fame croit
Et qui li dist noient de son consoil.
Or sai je bien, Salemons se dist voir:
En set milliers n’en a quatre, non trois,
De bien parfaitez, qui croire les voldroit. }

Ami et Amile, vv. 1218-22 (67). No human woman or man is perfect. The alleged Solomonic wisdom that Amile cited is obviously ridiculous.

[7] Rosenberg & Danon (1996) p. 13 (Introduction, first published in 1981). Preceding the above quote is the phrase: “indeed, one may even speak of a certain anti-feminism in the poem.”

[8] Kay (1990) pp. 138, 140. Ford commented on the Lubias-character and added a sarcastic observation for the learned:

Her vindictiveness, even malignity, provides an interesting contrast, implied rather than specified, to Belisaunt’s original amorality and her later generosity. So much for “token” wives.

Ford (2007), from introduction to the Middle English Amis and Amiloun. Cf. Kay (1990) p. 132.

[9] Calin (1991) p. 83, with my interpolated glosses within braces. For the heading “In defense of Lubias,” the characterization “evil incarnate,” and the general exculpation, id. p. 82. Calin was responding explicitly to Vesce (1973), Zink (1987), Rosenberg (1987), and Kay (1990). Id. p. 78.

Preceding the above quote is the prefatory phrase, “In general terms, I said in The Epic Quest that….” Here “general terms” seems to mean blaming Hardré for Lubias’s wickedness. Calin (1966) p. 77. Earlier Calin at least observed that Lubias “remains oblivious to her husband’s inner soul, her ignorance symbolized by a parallel substitution of husbands.” Id. p. 97.

To distance himself from extremists, Calin warned, “the absolute pervasiveness of both clerical and feudal misogyny ought not to be exaggerated.” Calin (1991) p. 88. If misogyny really were absolutely pervasive, one could scarcely exaggerate it.

In the 1996 preface to Ami and Amile, first published in 1981, the authors declared:

The primacy of the companions’ friendship, however defined, not only displaces two strong female characters but raises the whole question of women’s roles in Old French narrative.

Rosenberg & Danon (1996) p. vii. Men’s friendship has scarcely been permitted to have significance beyond its relevance to strong female characters and the “whole question of women’s roles.”

[10] Calin (1991) p. 85. The subsequent quote above is from id. p. 88. It’s from the last sentence in the penultimate paragraph of that scholarly article.

[images] Decorated initials from a manuscript of the chanson de geste Ami et Amile made in 1465 in Artois, northern France. From folios 169v, 99v, 171r, 186r, and 103v of Arras, Bibliothèque municipale MS. 0704 (CGM 696).

References:

Calin, William. 1966. The Epic Quest: Studies in Four Old French Chansons de Geste. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press.

Calin, William. 1991. “Women and Their Sexuality in Ami et Amile: An Occasion to Deconstruct?” Olifant. 16(1/2): 77–89.

Dembowski, Peter F., ed. 1969. Ami et Amile. Paris: Champion. Online in Base de français médiéval.

Eckert, Kenneth. 2015. Middle English Romances in Translation: Amis and Amiloun | Athelston | Floris and Blancheflor | Havelok the Dane | King Horn | Sir Degare. Havertown: Sidestone Press.

Foster, Edward E., ed. 2007. Amis and Amiloun; Robert of Cisyle; and Sir Amadace. Second edition. Middle English Texts Series. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications.

Kay, Sarah. 1990. “Seduction and Suppression in ‘Ami et Amile.’” French Studies. 44(2): 129–142.

Kölbing, Eugen, ed. 1884. Amis and Amiloun, Zugleich Mit Der Altfranzösischen Quelle. Nebst Einer Beilage: Amícus ok Amilíus Rímur. Heilbronn: Gebr. Henninger.

Leach, MacEdward, ed. 1937. Amis and Amiloun. Early English Text Society 203. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937.

Ogle, Marbury B. and Dorothy M. Schullian, eds. 1933. Rodulfi Tortarii Carmina. Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome, 8. Rome: American Academy in Rome.

Rosenberg, Samuel N. 1987. “Lire Ami et Amile: le regard sur les personnages féminins.” Pp. 67-78 in Jean Dufoumet, ed. Ami et Amile: Une chanson de geste de l’amitié. Paris: Champion.

Rosenberg, Samuel N, and Samuel Danon, trans. With a new afterword by David Konstan. 1996. Ami and Amile: A Medieval Tale of Friendship. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Originally published by French Literature Publications Co., 1981.

Vesce, Thomas E. 1973. “Reflections on the Epic Quality of Ami et Amile: Chanson de Geste.” Mediaeval Studies. 39: 129–45. Reviewed by Samuel N. Rosenberg in Olifant 3(3) (March 1976): 221-5, with Vesce’s response.

Weiss, Judith. 2009. The Birth of Romance in England: The Romance of Horn, The Folie Tristan, The Lai of Haveloc, and Amis and Amilun; Four Twelfth-Century Romances in the French of England. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS).

Zink, Michel. 1987. “Lubias et Belissant dans la Chanson d’Ami et Amile.” Littératures. 17: 11-24.

Violence against men, normalized as merely violence, structures epic literature. Although scholars scarcely acknowledge women’s epic importance, men engage in violence against men according to values that women establish, maintain, and represent. Women thus direct epic violence against men. In the twelfth-century “song of deeds {chanson de geste}” Ami and Amile {Ami et Amile}, directing women take center stage in the major characters Princess Belissant and the noble young woman Lubias. Belissant and Lubias lead the devoted men friends Ami and Amile in an epic that moves beyond typical epic violence to encompass heterosexual rape and perverse judicial combat. Ultimately Belissant, but not Lubias, points to ending epic violence against men.

Ami et Amile starts with the promise that it will tell “about such martial qualities {de tel barnaige}” as should never be forgotten. The titular heroes Ami and Amile, born on the same day, are like identical twins. As fifteen-year-old knights, they set out in search of each other. For seven years they traveled widely — Germany, southern France, Italy, Jerusalem — in search of each other. In their quests for each other, Ami paused at Pavia, a city renowned for beautiful, warmly receptive women. Near Rome, Amile spent a night “at a brothel-keeper’s house {chiés un oste felon}.”[1] Ami and Amile apparently were young men who knew sexual desire for women. They also loved each other as men friends.

Ami and Amile came together in an enactment of love as war. Ami finally saw Amile in a meadow of summer flowers in Apulia, Italy. Each knight was riding his steed. It was as if they met each other in a joust:

With his golden spurs he jabbed his horse.
Quickly this side went,
and that one from afar recognized the sight of him.
Towards him he turned when from afar he saw him.
By such force they come together,
so strongly they kissed and so pleasantly they embraced,
they nearly fainted and died.
Their stirrups snapped and together they fell to the meadow.
Only then would they speak to each other.

{ Le cheval broche des esperons doréz,
Isnellement est celle part aléz,
Et cil le vit qui l’ot ja avisé.
Vers lui se torne quant il l’ot ravisé,
Par tel vertu se sont entr’acolé,
Tant fort se baisent et estraingnent soef,
A poi ne sont estaint et definé;
Lor estrier rompent si sont cheü el pré.
Or parleront ensamble. }[2]

They rejoiced in being with each other. Then they followed men’s epic destiny. Amile said to Ami:

Now let’s go to the court in Paris.
The king is at war. If he wishes to retain us,
I will be your liege and your vassal,
for I see you are a fine man.

{ Or en irons a la cort a Paris.
Li rois a guerre; s’il noz weult detenir,
Vostre hom serai et li vostres conquis,
Car molt voz voi bel home. }

War subordinates man to man in organizing violence against men. King Charlemagne was ready for war. Seeing that Amile and Ami were fine men, he took them into his service. Fine men can do much more than engage in war.

On the very day that Ami and Amile arrived at Charlemagne’s court in Paris, Charlemagne went to war. The two young men participated in the terrible violence against men:

There you could have seen such a wicked battle —
so many helmets fractured and so many bucklers pierced,
one dead man upon the other thrown to the sand.
The two companions struck blows well there.
They captured two princes, Berart and Nevelon,
and sent them to prison in Paris.

{ La veïssiéz un estor si felon,
Tant elme fraint et percié tant blazon,
L’un mort sor l’autre trebuchier el sablon.
Bien i ferirent andui li compaingnon:
Douz contes prinrent, Berart et Nevelon,
Si les envoient a Paris en prison. }

Epic literature is filled with one dead man thrown upon another, with the dead men as numerous as sand on the seashore and stars in the sky.[3] Epic violence against men does not realize men’s distinctive seminal blessing.

Because of his envy and wickedness, Charlemagne’s faithless seneschal Hardré plotted to have Ami and Amile killed. Charlemagne had been fighting with Gombaut of Lorraine for twelve or fifteen years. Hardré secretly met with Gombaut and promised him a large sum of money to kill Ami and Amile. Gombaut and Hardré arranged an ambush. But Ami and Amile fought strongly along with other of Charlemagne’s knights. They routed Gombaut’s men. Hardré pretended to have been a hero in the horrific violence:

In front of him under the protection of an olive tree
he saw laying two noble knights,
dead and killed with swords of steel.
That one went to their side, so as to cut off their heads,
so as to hang their heads behind his saddle.
When he would retire back to court,
then he could boast to the acclaimed barons
and make himself appear much more proud and fierce.
May it please God that he not live another full month!
He came to the Seine and crossed by boat,
the scoundrel, so taken with himself, vaunting
in himself and his lineage.

{ Devant lui garde desoz un olivier
Et voit jesir douz barons chevaliers
Mors et ocis as espees d’aciers.
Celle part vint, si lor copa les chiés,
Si les pandi a son arson derrier.
Quant il sera arriere repairiéz,
Si se vantra au barnaige proisié,
Moult plus s’en fra et orgoilloz et fiers.
Ja Deu ne place que vive un mois entier!
Il vint a Sainne, si est outre naigiéz.
Li glouz par lui se prinst moult a prisier
Et lui et son lyngnaige }

Men vaunt in themselves according to women’s appraisals of men. The acclaimed barons had high status in the eyes of women at court. Hardré wanted to be like them in prowess in killing men.

Hardré falsely claimed that Ami and Amile had been killed in the battle. Charlemagne’s beautiful young daughter Belissant fainted at that news. She especially mourned Amile, whom she loved. When Amile and Ami returned leading two prisoners, she was overjoyed. She praised them for being “brave and bold {preu et hardi}” in violence against men. She also warned them against the treacherous Hardré.

Ami’s prowess gained for him the opportunity to marry the beautiful Lubias. After Amile magnanimously praised Hardré’s prowess to Charlemagne, Hardré promised him much gold and marriage to Lubias. A beautiful blond, Lubias was the daughter of Hardré’s brother, a rich and powerful man. Medieval marriage required the consent of both spouses. Amile, apparently not wanting to marry Lubias, tactfully suggested that she marry his friend Ami:

Lord, rightful emperor,
let my companion have her. He is a better fighter,
and does better in striking with the sword.

{ … Sire, drois empereres,
Mes compains l’ait qui plus est conquereres,
Et si fiert mieus dou tranchant de l’espee. }

Oblivious to this allusion to brutally disparaging men’s sexuality, Ami eagerly sought to marry Lubias. She apparently regarded Amile and Ami as interchangeable as men. If she weren’t willing to marry Amile, Hardré hardly would have offered her to him. She agreed to marry Ami instead of Amile. Men in truth are not exchangeable tokens, but they are too often treated so.

Lubias and Ami’s marriage develops the theme of women’s influence on friendship between men. One night, after the couple enjoyed sex, Lubias said to Ami:

“Sir,” said Lubias, “Since our marriage, much I have been surprised
about the Count Amile, your dear companion.
Much has he regretted that he didn’t have me as wife.
He has sent four messengers to me conveying
that with good favor he would still love me willingly.

{ Sire, dist elle, moult m’en puis merveillier
Dou conte Amile, vostre compaingnon chier.
Moult se repant quant ne m’ot a moillier;
Il m’en a ci quatre més envoié
Qu’il m’ameroit de gréz et volentiers. }

Lubias was lying to try to turn Ami against his friend Amile. Women who desire to dominate men strive to undermine friendships among men.

Ami, however, refused to believe that his good friend Amile would cuckold him. Ami resolved that the very next morning he would he go to Amile with four hundred of his loyal knights. They wouldn’t attack his friend Amile, but serve him in violence against men. After the friends met and embraced, Ami said that he had a son with Lubias. Ami promised that his son would serve Amile in violence against men if the need arose. These closely juxtaposed events resolve a threat of cuckolding with “normal” epic violence against men.

Perhaps drawing upon his experience with his wife Lubias, Ami warned Amile about women seeking to undermine men’s friendship. Ami apparently was aware that Charlemagne’s daughter Princess Belissant loved Amile. Ami may have also sensed that Amile loved her, even though such a love was inappropriate for a landless, relatively poor knight. Ami thus warned Amile:

Don’t be hot to love Charlemagne’s daughter.
Don’t embrace her flanks or her sides,
because once a woman has a man serving her,
he will be made to forget his father and mother,
cousins and brothers and his intimate men friends.

{ La fille Charle ne voz chaut a amer
Ne embracier ses flans ne ses costéz,
Car puis que fame fait home acuverter,
Et pere et mere li fait entr’oublier,
Couzins et freres et ses amis charnéz }

With their social superiority, women readily dominate men. Friendship among men is vital for resisting gynocentric gender domination and overturning men’s status as disposable instruments for fighting wars. Women who truly love men support friendship among men.

Wary after his friend’s warning, Amile repeatedly declined Princess Belissant’s requests to have sex with him. Strong, independent medieval women took the initiative in making direct amorous requests to men. Belissant bluntly complained to Amile:

“Good sir Amile,” said the noble young woman,
“I offered you the other day my love service,
dressed purely in my shift within my bedchamber.
You know well how to refuse my love.”

{ “Biaus sire Amile,” dist la franche meschinne,
“Je voz offri l’autre jor mon service
Dedens ma chambre en pure ma chemise.
Bien voz seüstez de m’amor escondire.” }

On a subsequent day, Belissant saw Amile and said to him:

“Sir,” she said, “I love no other than you.
Into your bed one night I’ll invite myself.
My whole body I will put at your service.”

{ “Sire,” dist elle, “je n’aimme se voz non.
En vostre lit une nuit me semoing,
Trestout mon cors voz metrai a bandon.” }

Prior to recent decades, many persons had a more sophisticated understanding of communication than “no means no.” Nonetheless, women should not sexually harass men, nor should women rape men. Although Amile recognized that Princess Belissant was his superior and that he owed her obedience, he again told her no. He refused to have sex with her.

Belissant refused to take no for an answer. She said to herself:

“Alas! God, dear heavenly Father,” she said.
“who has ever seen any man of such fierce knighthood,
of such prowess and of such martial valor,
who hasn’t deigned to love me or even look at me?
But by Jesus, the heavenly Father,
now I will not be stopped from doing what I want to do.
No other woman was ever as determined as I am.
I will go to his bed tonight,
and lay myself down under his pelts of marten.
It doesn’t matter to me if the whole world sees me,
nor if for that my father beats me daily,
for Amile is an exceedingly beautiful man.”

{ “Hé! Dex,” dist ele, “biaus Pere esperitables!
Qui vit ainz home de si fier vasselaige,
De tel proesce ne de tel baronnaige,
Qui ne me deingne amer ne ne m’esgarde.
Mais par Jhesu, le Pere esperitable,
Or ne lairai ce que je voil ne face,
Ainz nulle fame ne fu onques si aspre,
Que anquenuit an son lit ne m’en aille,
Coucherai moi desoz les piauls de martre.
Il ne m’en chaut, se li siecles m’esgarde
Ne se mes pere m’en fait chascun jor batre,
Car trop i a bel home.” }

With her sense of female privilege and sexual entitlement, Belissant did what she wanted to do:

At midnight all alone she arose.
She summoned neither a servant nor a chambermaid.
An expensive mantle of purple silk she threw over herself,
then she arose and extinguished the light.
Now the bedchamber was made completely dark and opaque.
She quickly approached the count’s bed
and raised up the expensive pelts of marten,
and she bedded herself at the count’s side,
very sweetly she slid herself next to him.

{ A mienuit toute seule se lieve,
Onques n’i quist garce ne chamberiere.
Un chier mantel osterin sor li giete,
Puis se leva, si estaint la lumiere.
Or fu la chambre toute noire et teniecle,
Au lit le conte s’i est tost approchie
Et sozleva les piauls de martre chieres
Et elle s’est léz le conte couchie,
Moult souavet s’est deléz lui glacie. }

Belissant thus worked a classic bed trick:

The count awakened, completely moving his face in bafflement.
And the count said, “Who are you here, joyfully alive?
Who at such an hour is beside me in bed?
If you are a woman, someone’s spouse,
or the daughter of Charlemagne, who rules France,
I beg by God, the son of Mary,
my sweet friend, return yourself back to your place.
And if you are a servant-girl or a chambermaid
of low birth, you have much advanced yourself well.
Remain here with me and have a happy face.
Tomorrow you’ll have a hundred coins in your purse.”

{ Li cuens s’esveille, toute mue la chiere
Et dist li cuens: “Qui iéz tu, envoisie,
Qui a tele hore iéz deléz moi couchie?
Se tu iéz fame, espeuse nosoïe,
Ou fille Charle, qui France a en baillie,
Je te conjur de Deu le fil Marie,
Ma douce amie, retorne t’an arriere.
Et se tu iéz beasse ou chamberiere
De bas paraige, moult t’iéz bien avancie:
Remain huimais o moi a bele chiere,
Demain avras cent sols en t’aumosniere.” }

While not wanting to cause serious offense to the innocent, Amile was willing to pay for a part-time woman sex worker’s aggressively promoted service. This was exactly what Belissant had hoped. She didn’t acknowledge that she was Charlemagne’s daughter. Instead, she silently closed in to get what she wanted:

Towards the count she drew more closely
and didn’t say a word, but was perfectly quiet.
The count felt her to be slim and delicate,
suddenly he could not but be moved with much desire to love.
Her little breasts sat next to his chest.
Only by a little they weren’t hard as stones,
so the baron fell for a first time.

{ Envers le conte est plus préz approchie
Et ne dist mot, ainz est bien acoisie.
Li cuens la sent graislete et deloïe,
Ainz ne se mut que s’amor moult desirre.
Les mamelettes deléz le piz li sieent,
Par un petit ne sont dures com pierres,
Si enchaït li ber une foïe. }

Only after she had sex with Amile did Belissant reveal her identity:

“Sir,” she said, “listen to me a little.
You have refused my heart.
By lovely guile I have taken you and overcome you.
From now on, if you please, love me
and so be my beloved and my intimate.”

{ “Sire,” dist elle, “un petit m’entendéz.
Voz aviiéz le mien cors refusé,
Par bel engieng voz ai prins et maté.
D’or en avant, s’il voz plaist, si m’améz
Et si soiéz mes drus et mes privéz.” }

Amile was furious at Belissant’s sexual deception. It created mortal danger for him:

The count listened to her, and he became very angry.
“Lady-lord,” he said, “indeed you have bewitched me
and undercut my royal service and my privileges.
If the king learns of it, I will have my head cut off.”

{ Li cuens l’oï, si en fu moult iréz.
“Damme,” dist il, “bien m’avéz enchanté
Et mon service et mes dons recopéz.
Sel seit li rois, j’avrai le chief copé.” }

According to current standards, Belissant raped Amile by deception. He wanted to have sex with a woman, but he didn’t want to have sex with her, and he didn’t consent to having sex with her.[4] Rape has always been regarded as a serious crime, except for women raping men.

Other versions of this story more clearly present the woman sexually coercing the man. An Anglo-Norman version from late in the twelfth century makes explicit her coercing him by threatening him with capital punishment. Denied sex with him, she furiously declared:

What?
Are you distressed by this —
that I have given you my love?
After this day, never in my life
will there be pleasure in my heart
if I am not avenged on you!
Certainly now I am well shamed
that you don’t deign to have me as lover.
Very noble men have begged me for love,
and I have refused them all.
Certainly you aren’t a knight.
You are vanquished and sluggish.
I will beat you hard and well in battle
and tell my father
that towards him and me you have done wrong
and you will be torn apart by horses.
Then on you I will be well avenged!

{ … Coment?
Este vus de ceo en marrement
Ke jeo vus ai done m’amur?
Ja en ma vie apres ceo jor
Ne serrai en mon quer haite,
Si jeo ne seie de vus venge!
Certes, or sui jeo bien honie,
Kant nem deignez aver amie:
Tant gentils hommes m’unt preie,
E jeo les ai tuz refuse.
Certes, n’estes pas chevaler,
Recreant estes e lanier.
Un plai bien dur vus bastirai
E a mon piere le conterai,
Ke vers li estes de moi forfet,
E serrez a chivals detrait.
Dunc serrai de vus bien vengie! }[5]

The Middle English Amis and Amiloun, composed no later than about 1330, made explicit the Anglo-Norman version’s implicit threat of false accusation of rape. After he warned at length that for them to have sex would be disastrous, she ridiculed his “preaching” and threatened him:

“But,” she said, “by Him that made us,
all this preaching helps not at all.
No matter how long you resist,
unless you will grant me my desire,
my love shall very dearly cost you,
with pains hard and strong.
My hair-covering and my clothes soon
I will each tear down
and say with a large wrong,
with strength, you have violated me.
You shall be arrested according to the land’s law
and condemned to hang high!”

{ “Ac,” sche seyd, “bi Him that ous wrought,
Al thi precheing helpeth nought,
No stond thou never so long.
Bot yif thou wilt graunt me mi thought,
Mi love schal be ful dere abought
With pines hard and strong;
Mi kerchef and mi clothes anon
Y schal torende doun ichon
And say with michel wrong,
With strengthe thou hast me todrawe;
Ytake thou schalt be londes lawe
And dempt heighe to hong!” }[6]

Penal systems vastly gender-disproportionately punish persons with penises. False accusations of rape are a very serious threat to men. Given a choice between facing a false accusation of rape and having sex with a woman, most men would prudently choose to have sex with her. That’s another way in which women rape men.

Whether Amile was raped by Belissant through deception or through criminal coercion, he didn’t under any reasonable standard wrong her or anyone else. But justice systems have long been gender-biased against men. In this story, the evil seneschal Hardré heard Belissant finally speaking to Amile. Hardré immediately defined the crime and punishment in the gender-dominant way:

By God, Amile, you’ve moved forward too quickly.
Now I know well of what you can boast.
You will carry away from the court a rich reward
when you are proved to be caught with my lady.
But if I live so long for it to be tomorrow,
then I will go to the emperor to recount the events
and so your head will be cut off!

{ Par Deu! Amiles, trop voz iestez hastéz.
Or sai je bien que voz poéz vanter.
Riches soudees de la cort emportéz,
Quant o ma damme iestez reprins prouvéz.
Mais se vif tant que il soit ajorné,
Lors l’irai je l’empereor conter,
Si voz fera celle teste coper. }

Threatening to have Amile’s head cut off for having sex alludes to castration culture, the killing of men as specifically masculine beings. Underscoring the epic theme of women’s influence on violence against men, Belissant urged Amile to fight with Hardré:

If he wants to accuse you of anything,
take up battle against him. You will vanquish him,
he who is evil and treacherous.

{ Se il voz weult de noient encuser,
Prennéz bataille vers lui, voz le vaintréz,
Qu’il est fel et traïtres. }

Belissant’s sexual violence against Amile led to more violence against men. Women are complicit in epic violence against men.

In a masterful touch, Ami et Amile first presents Hardré’s accusation with a gender twist. Men’s sexuality has long been regulated more harshly than women’s. Hardré declared to King Charlemagne:

Lord, rightful emperor,
I have horrible news for you.
Count Amile has dishonored your daughter.
I have caught and proved him to be in a bed with her.
King, make her burn, make her ashes be in the wind.
By God, for this she must be put to death.

{ … Sire drois empereres,
Je voz apors nouveles effraees.
Li cuens Amiles ta fille a vergondee,
Enz en un lit l’ai reprinse prouvee.
Rois, fait l’ardoir, la poudre en soit ventee.
Par Deu, morte an doit iestre. }[7]

That Charlemagne’s daughter was in bed with Amile wasn’t Amile’s fault. Death was a common medieval penalty for rape. Despite misinterpreting the affair, Hardré directed punishment not at the man, as is typical, but at the guilty woman. The king, however, mimicked Hardré’s original threat. The king would have Amile’s head cut off if Amile didn’t disprove the allegation that he sleep with Belissant. The proof would be the outcome of deadly judicial combat between Amile and Hardré.

Neither Amile nor any else at court, with three exceptions, believed in his righteousness. According to this epic, judicial combat required hostages for each party. A hostage insured a party’s performance and shared the party’s fate. When Amile asked among his fellow knights for a bondsman / hostage, none was willing to serve. The king then intended to cut off Amile’s head immediately. Suddenly, however, the queen pledged herself as Amile’s hostage. Needlessly increasing the stakes, she declared that Belissant and her brother Beuvon also pledged themselves to be his hostages. Having gone to meet his friend Ami, Amile explained to him:

But I could not find any hostages
then the queen suddenly pledged herself to me,
Beuvon her son who is brave and courtly,
and Belissant, who has a body so lovely.
I will not go to see them again except these months.
A man who has done wrong should not put himself to combat.
By my sin I have killed them.
…
Never again except these months will I be seen by them.
A man who has done wrong should not know combat.
Now I wish I were dead.

{ Mais des ostaiges ne poi je nul avoir,
Quant la roïne me pleja endroit soi,
Bueves sez fiz qui est preuz et cortois
Et Belissans qui le cors a adroit.
Je nes irai resgarder mais des mois.
Hom qui tort a combatre ne se doit.
Par pechié les ai mortes.
…
Ja n’i serai mais des mois esgardéz.
Hom qui tort a combatre ne se seit.
Or voldroie mors iestre. }

Epic violence against men is bad enough. This chanson de geste starts with epic violence against men and advances to a man wishing he were dead because a woman raped him.

Like the earlier Waltharius, Ami et Amile subverts epic with absurdity. Ami, pretending to be Amile, fought the judicial battle against Hardré. It was a brutal, two-day fight between the two men.

Count Ami held the sharp sword,
and so strongly struck Hardré on his gleaming helmet
that florets and gems fell from their settings.
The blow sliced through the head-covering of his Moorish hauberk,
and that rough blow descended upon his face.
His right eye was thrown down toward the field.
Upon the chest of his white hauberk it hung.

{ Li cuens Amis tint l’espee tranchant,
Si fiert Hardré sor son elme luisant,
Que flors et pierres contreval en descent,
Fausse la coiffe de l’auberc jazerant,
Sor le visaige li ruistes cops descent
Que le destre oil li abatit an champ;
Sor la poitrine dou blanc hauberc li pant. }

This bizarre scene of a knight’s dismembered right eye parallels another knight’s right eye gouged out in violent battle: “the quivering eye of Hagen {tremulus Haganonis ocellus}” resting on the battlefield in Waltharius.[8] Both Waltharius and Ami et Amile make epic violence against men appear not just irrational, but grotesque.

Men’s gouged out eyes symbolize an outer, critical perspective on epic violence against men. Fully appreciating women in relation to men provides that critical perspective. In Ami et Amile, Belissant and Lubias set the most significant plot directions. Lubias never progressed even to consciousness of her own wickedness. Belissant, however, came to regret profoundly that her rape of Amile caused terrible violence against men:

“Alas!” she said, “Evil it was that I was ever born,
when for me such a battle is fought.
Better it would be, by God, that I had been destroyed,
burned in a fire or killed with knives.
Ah, Count Amile, may God give you aid today!”

{ “Lasse!” dist elle, “mar fui onques veüe,
Quant por moi est tex bataille randue.
Miex fust, par Deu, que je fuisse fondue,
Arse en un feu ou a coutiaus fandue.
Hé! cuens Amiles, Dex voz face hui aiue!” }

With remarkable gender understanding, Belissant took the violence upon herself and prayed for divine aid for her endangered man. Her words are centered in three laisses (a type of stanza) that end with verses that together ironically critique epic violence against men:

the beautiful daughter of Charlemagne
all for the daughter of Charlemagne
all for the daughter of Charlemagne

{ La bele fille Charle
Tout por la fille Charle
Tout por la fille Charle }

Epic violence against men in the European literary tradition has at its origin Helen of Troy. All the horror of the Trojan War was for Helen, the beautiful wife of Menelaus. Ending that epic tradition has been the most important literary task since the Iliad.

Belissant’s marriage to Amile explicitly supported solidarity among men. An unnamed knight told her an appropriate marriage vow:

A knight said, “Lady-lord, voluntarily
you will swear now to this court
that you will take Amile as your husband,
with the consent of his companion Ami,
and between those two will never sow discord.”

{ “Volentiers, damme,” uns chevaliers respont,
“Voz jurreréz orendroit a bandon
Que voz panréz Amile le baron
Au loëment d’Ami son compaingnon,
Ne antr’euls douz ne meteréz tanson.” }

Belissant responded with enthusiastic consent:

“Sir,” she said, “voluntarily I swear it:
so help me God and the saints whose relics are here,
that I will take Amile as my husband,
with the consent of his companion Ami,
and between those two will never sow discord.”

{ “Sire,” dist elle, “volentiers le jurronz:
Si m’aït Dex et li saint qui ci sont,
Que je panrai Amile le baron
Au loëment d’Ami son compaingnon,
Ne entr’euls douz ne mouvrai ja tanson.” }

Such a marriage vow seems as improbable as overturning gynocentrism. Nonetheless, such a marriage vow exists. It exists in a twelfth-century chanson de geste that in recent decades few persons have read. By supporting solidarity among men, Princess Belissant showed an important way in which women can help to end epic violence against men.

Ami et Amile ends without violence against men. “The powerful count Ami took the cross {La crois a prinse li cuens Amis puissans}.” His friend Amile also took the cross. Their crusade was not the usual medieval crusade:

They went over the sea to seek true forgiveness.
…
To the Holy Sepulcher they went without stopping.
The Holy Cross, on which was suffered the passion
of Jesus the Lord — this they kissed in that jurisdiction.

{ Outre mer vont por querre voir pardon
…
Jusqu’au Sepulcre n’i font arrestison,
La sainte Crois, ou souffri passion
Jhesus li Sires, baisierent a bandon }

The epic Ami et Amile says nothing about violence against men on Ami and Amile’s crusade. This epic says nothing about changing the ruler of the Holy Land. Ami and Amile returned together to Italy “without battle {sans tanson}.” They died together, without any reference to violence, in Mortara, Lombardy. There they were buried in the same tomb. Ami et Amile ends with forgiveness, peace, and solidarity among men.[9]

Progressive criticism of epic literature begins with taking seriously epic violence against men. Men are human beings. Men’s lives matter. Men’s lives have been intimately intertwined with women lives throughout history. Epic violence against men depends on women, even if relatively few women explicitly appear in epic.[10] Like Belissant, women can and should act to end epic violence against men.

* * * * *

Read more:

• Queen Eufeme falsely accused Malduit-Silence of attempted rape
• Chrétien de Troyes excused Philomena for killing her innocent son
• Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale: ass-reaming theme of man’s inhumanity to man

Notes:

[1] Ami and Amile {Ami et Amile}, Continental version in decasyllabic verses {Version continentale en décasyllabes}, v. 63 (5), Old French edition of Dembowski (1969), my English translation. The previous short quote, “about such martial qualities,” is similarly from Ami et Amile, v. 3 (1). Subsequent quotes from Ami et Amile are similarly sourced, with my English translation benefiting from that of Rosenberg & Danon (1996). The verse numbers are followed by the laisse numbers in parentheses. Ami et Amile is also known as Amis and Amiles {Amis et Amiles}.

The story of these devoted men friends exists in many medieval versons and languages. It probably originated in ancient folk traditions or in a lost chanson de geste from the eleventh century. On the former claim, now generally regarded more skeptically, Krappe (1923). On the latter, Bar (1937). The earliest surviving version is a verse summary of the story of Amelius and Amicus written in Latin about 1090 by Raoul Le Tortier {Radulphus Tortarius}, a monk at Fleury-sur-Loire. Radulphus declared that the story was well-known among the Saxons and in Gaul. On the various versions, Leach (1937) pp. ix-xxxi, Rosenberg & Danon (1996) pp. 1-9, and Foster (2007) introduction. On some other related stories, see note [1] in my post of the friendship of Tito and Gisippo (Boccaccio’s Decameron X.8).

Ami et Amile is closely assocaited with the epic tradition. Its decasyllabic verse is the verse of Old French epic. Its introduction has epic character. Ami et Amile survives in only one manuscript: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français, 860, f. 93ra-111ra. That manuscript, written in the second half of the thirteenth century, consists of four other chansons de geste. Ami et Amile, situated among these other epics, evidently was understood to be part of the chanson de geste tradition. Ami et Amile is thought to have been composed about 1200.

In its various versions, the story of the close friends Ami and Amile contains many folkloric elements. These include (with Stith-Thompsom index) sworn friends (P 311), judicial combat (H 218), the sword of chastity (T 351; also included in the related medieval Arabic Tale of Attaf), a leper hero (L 112.7.1), identification by a cup (H 121), washing in the blood of child as cure for leprosy (D 1502.4.2.1), as well as many other less distinctive folk motifs. For a list of relevant folk motifs and related analysis, Calin (1966) pp. 58-72.

Versions of the story of the close friends Ami and Amile also include hagiographic themes. An explicitly hagiographic version is the twelfth-century Latin prose version, The Life of Amicus and Amelius {Vita Amici et Amelii}. For an edition, Kölbing (1884) pp. xcvi-cxxi. Of thirty-four versions Leach identified, he classified seven as romantic and twenty-seven as hagiographic. Leach (1937) pp. ix-xiv. The chanson de geste Ami et Amile, which Leach classified as romantic, includes hagiographic elements:

it shows analogues to the themes of pilgrimage and quest and salvation which are typical of the hagiographic genre, and certainly incorporates the basic hagiographic element of the miracle. Finally, we may see as a parallel to the function of hagiography the edifying portrayal, from birth to death, of a type of morally ideal heroes and the celebration of a type of exemplary behavior.

Rosenberg & Danon (1996) p. 9. Calin interpreted the chanson de geste as fundamentally a Christian “quest for the absolute.” Calin (1966) Chapter 2. That interpretation doesn’t do justice to Ami et Amile’s engagement with mundane gender concerns. Of course, Christ’s universal redemption of equally valued human persons across genders is a central Christian belief.

Subsequent quotes above, unless otherwise noted, are from Ami et Amile and are similarly sourced. They are vv. 175-83 (11) (With his golden spurs…), 195-8 (12) (Now let’s go to the court in Paris…), 220-5 (14) (There you could have seen such a wicked battle…), 388-99 (22) (In front of him under the protection of an olive tree…), 444 (26) (brave and bold), 476-8 (28) (Lord, rightful emperor…), 501-5 (30) (“Sir,” said Lubias…), 566-70 (34) (Don’t be hot to love Charlemagne’s daughter…), 612-5 (37) (“Good sir Amile,” said the noble young woman…), 628-30 (38) (“Sir,” she said…), 650-61 (39) (“Alas! God, dear heavenly Father,” she said…), 664-72 (40) (At midnight all alone she arose…), 673-83 (40) (The count awakened…), 685-91 (40) (Towards the count she drew more closely…), 696-700 (41) (“Sir,” she said, “listen to me a little…”), 701-4 (41) (The count listened to her…), 707-13 (41) (By God, Amile…), 720-2 (41) (If he wants to accuse you…), 728-33 (43) (Lord, rightful emperor…), 989-95 (56), 1015-7 (57) (But I could not find any hostages…), 1563-9 (80) (Count Ami held the sharp sword…), 1522-5 (78) (“Alas!” she said…), 1505 (77), 1534 (78), 1562 (79) (the beautiful daughter of Charlemagne…), 1830-4 (91) (A knight said…), 1835-9 (91) (“Sir,” she said…), 3463 (175) (The powerful count Ami took the cross), 3473, 3483-5 (176) (They went over the sea to seek true forgiveness…), 3486 (176) (without battle).

[2] Konstan perceived with respect to Ami and Amile, “no hint … of any erotic or sexual dimension to their relationship.” Konstan (1996) p. 154. While the joust seems to me to draw upon erotic imagery of love as war, Konstan aptly noted:

The story of Ami and Amile reflects a culture in which friendship may involve a high degree of commitment and intimacy, and the development of social mores since the seventeenth century has made it seem as though only sex can account for so close a tie.

Id. In any case, Ami et Amile decisively rejects the conceit of love as war.

[3] Genesis 15:5, 22:17, 26:4; Exodus 32:13; 1 Chronicles 27:23. Scholars have generally preferred to ignore the massive killing of men in epic and to lament that more women don’t explicitly appear in epic. These positions together imply that scholars favor gender equality in violent victimization, but logic seems to be suppressed with such views.

Scholars have misrepresented women’s fundamental importance in epic. A book designed for general readers and students declares:

in the earliest ‘songs of deeds’ women figure very much as minor characters whose honour, like their status in society, is dependent on and reflected from males.

Newth (2014) p. 1. That’s backwards. Men’s honor, including being animalized as merely males, is very much shaped through women’s eyes.

Women characters don’t have to appear in a particular epic to shape men’s deeds. One reads that epic generally, and Ami et Amile specifically, features “the distinctly marginal and second-class role of women.” Rosenberg & Danon (1996) p. 14, from 1981 introduction. The vast majority of men in epic are nameless men conventionally killed. That’s apparently a “first-class role.”

Kay interpreted Ami et Amile as confirming the academic-hero Irigaray’s tendentious, totalitarian claims:

Why this absence of women? Are they omitted or excluded? … Irigaray’s contention that in Western society all representation, including and especially self-representation, is based on the specular reiteration of the masculine model, links her commentary on Freud with the central section of Speculum whose theme is the dispossession from subjecthood of women … The pattern of seduction and suppression disenfranchises the women from participation in textual truth. They are not allowed to be right, even if they are. Their words will not be believed, for one of two very good reasons. Either they are transparent objects, and thus inaudible (so Amile is deaf to Belissant’s declarations of love); or else they are malign subjects, and therefore not to be heeded (so neither does he pay any attention to Lubias’s denunciation of the way she is used as a commodity in homosocial trade). Women are excluded from the chanson de geste not, as a conventional account would suggest, because they cannot participate in heroic action, but because they stand in a negative relation to language and hence to the text.

Kay (1990) pp. 130, 139, 140. That shouldn’t be believed, for the very good reason that it’s nonsense. One could equally well argue that all the men killed in epic “stand in a negative relation to language and hence to the text.” Those words aren’t believed because either the writer isn’t an eminent professor, and hence is socially positioned as inaudible, or the writer is constructed as a malign subject not to be heeded. Who cares if Irigaray didn’t say so?

Women certainly aren’t excluded from epic or even just chansons de geste. Helen of Troy drives the action of the Iliad. Juno and Dido are important figures in the Aeneid. Prudentius’s epic Psychomachia is peopled with female personifications. Countess Ermengard and Queen Guiborc are important figures in the chanson de geste Aliscans. Six chansons de geste have been grouped together, translated, and marketed under the title Heroines of the French Epic. Newth (2014). Many chansons de geste are quite similar to romances. Kay (1995). Most obviously, Belissant and Lubias are important figures in the epic Ami et Amile.

The academic posturing for women is ridiculous to a non-participant. For example, an eminent scholar began a scholarly article on the chanson de geste Ami et Amile thus:

The songs of deeds are stories of men. That of Ami et Amile is even the story of two men, who do not treat women with much regard, if we are to believe this advice from Ami: “S’elle voz dist orgoil ne faussetéz, / Hauciéz le paume et el chief l’en ferez {If she speaks proudly or falsely, raise your palm and slap her on the head}” …

{ Les chansons de geste sont des histoires d’hommes. Celle d’Ami et Amile est même l’histoire de deux hommes, qui ne traitent pas les femmes avec beaucoup d’égards, si l’on en croit ce conseil d’Ami : « S’elle voz dist orgoil ne faussetéz, / Hauciéz le paume et el chief l’en ferez » … }

Zink (1987) p. 11, my English translation of the original French and the Old French quote from Ami et Amile, vv. 1068-9 (60). Calin similarly cited this verse and glossed it as “he should not hesitate to bash her.” Calin (1991) p. 82. Kay, with indignant astonishment, astonishingly universalized the verse: “It is astonishing that the best way to impersonate the loyal husband is, apparently, to strike his wife in the face (l.1069).” Kay (1990) p. 137. It’s difficult to imagine such a reader appreciating literature.

When Lubias accused Amile, disguised as her husband Ami, of having an affair with Belissant and called Belissant a whore, Amile / Ami raised his palm and slapped her in the nose. Ami et Amile, v. 1133 (62). Calin declared, “One of the most brutal actions, at least by modern standards, occurs when Amile strikes Lubias in the face….” Calin (1966) p. 73. Readers are taught to overlook or trivialize massive violence against men in epic. But in this epic, a man slapped a woman in the face! A woman would never slap a man in the face. Of course, exactly that action is a staple of comedy and romance through to the present.

In advising a slap to the face, Ami was giving Amile advice about how to live with Ami’s wife Lubias. Lubias herself claimed that she punched Amile in the face:

I gave him such a punch in the face
that he fell to the ground on his knees.

{ Tel li donnai de mon poing enz el front
Que a la terre chaï a jenoillons. }

Ami et Amile, vv. 1212-3 (66), Old French edition of Dembowski (1969), my English translation. Kay tendentiously justified Lubias punching Amile in the face. She concluded, “Lubias’s indignation is better founded that {sic} she knows.” Kay (1990) p. 138. Modern scholarly representations of violence are a gynocentric farce.

[4] Women raping men tends to be trivialized in both life and literature. In Calin’s interpretation:

The joining of Amile and Belissant is recounted in all its sensuous detail, with all the positive overtones of passion, beauty, and desire … the scene concretizes a masculine wish-fulfillment fantasy … the all-but-institutionalized wish-fulfillment fantasy of the twelfth-century juvenis lacking land and a wife … Their ménage is presumably what Belissant desired from the beginning and what Amile would have desired had he not been impeded by masculine scruples.

Calin (1991) pp. pp. 80, 81. Kay desribed Belissant raping Amile as a seduction that, like everything in anti-meninist ideology, confirms the “phallic order”:

Belissant’s seduction {of Amile} confirms the centrality of phallic order with respect to the hierarchical structures of society

Kay (1990) p. 136 (my explanatory gloss added in brackets). According to Kay, “Belissant has been set up,” apparently by that scholarly bogeyman “patriarchy”:

Her attempted seduction of Amile is an assault on her father’s dominance for which she can only be punished.

Kay (1990) p. 136. Bringing together the views of Calin and Kay, one learns that masculine wish-fulfillment fantasy is an assault on the father’s dominance. Who knew?

[5] Amis and Amilun {Amis et Amilun}, Anglo-Norman verse version, vv. 269-85, Old French (Anglo-Norman) text from Kölbing (1884) pp. 129-30, English translation (modified) from Weiss (2009) p. 175.

Kölbing’s edition is based on manuscript C (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 50 ff. 94vb-102ra; written in the second half of the thirteenth century). For an edition of the Anglo-Norman version in manuscript L (London British Library Royal 12. C. XII, ff. 69ra-76rb; written at the end of the thirteenth or early in the fourteenth century), Fukui (1990).

In the Anglo-Norman version, Charlemagne’s daughter is named Mirabele, and also called Florie. These names, like the name Bellisant, indicate this woman’s admirable status by the end of the story. Amilun and Amis in the Anglo-Norman version correspond to Ami and Amile in the chanson de geste . Hence Florie rapes Amis, not Amilun.

Much medieval scholarship about rape seems to me viciously misleading. Because men throughout history have faced serious punishment for raping women, men have been seriously concerned about false accusations of rape. Medieval scholars have nonetheless trivialized men’s concerns (mere “masculine anxiety”) about false accusations of rape. For example, Vines declared: “the many stories of Potiphar’s wife expose masculine anxiety about two aspects of medieval rape law, namely, prosecution and punishment.” Vines (2022) p. 110. Vines concluded with the declaration that medieval romance “ultimately reaffirm the traditional structure where men are the acceptable aggressors.” Id. p. 111. That’s preposterous. Today, women raping men is scarcely recognized publicly. Women’s tears garner them lenient sentences for raping boys. Women are far more acceptable rapists than men are. Given the vastly gender-disproportionate incarceration of men, men have obvious reasons for concern about anti-men gender bias in prosecution and punishment. The popular translation of Mason (1910) omits Belissant raping Amile and simply makes him guilty of having sex with her.

Medieval scholars have scarcely acknowledged that Belissant raped Amile. One reads, “Belissant seduces Amile,” Gilbert (2019) p. 81; “Belissant’s seduction {of Amile} is all but pure masculine wish-fulfillment fantasy,” Calin (1991) p. 85; “Belissant is better at picking her partner than Charlemagne at selecting one for her,” Kay (1990) p. 140; “Belissant’s seduction of Amile,” Calin (1966) p. 82. It’s as if, in the Middle English version, Amis is guilty of sleeping with Belisaunt / Belissant: “The knight Amis, who has slept with his lord’s daughter, dares not face a trial by combat because he is guilty.” Newman (2013) p. 24. While not wanting to accuse a woman of committing a crime, Calin at least acknowledged, “Amile is for all intents and purposes innocent” of having sex with Belissant (“dishonoring the king”). Calin (1966) p. 86.

[6] Amis and Amiloun, Middle English verse version, vv. 625-36, Middle English text from Foster (2007), my English modernization. For a complete English modernization of Amis and Amiloun, Eckert (2015).

Amis and Amiloun survives in four manuscripts. Foster’s edition takes as its base text manuscript A (Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck manuscript), at the Advocates Library, Edinburgh. Fols. 49r–61v). The Auchinleck manuscript was written in London in the 1330s.

In the Middle English version, Belisaunt, Amiloun, and Amis correspond to Belissant, Ami, and Amile in the chanson de geste. As in the Anglo-Norman version, Belisaunt rapes Amis, not Amiloun.

Amis warned Belisaunt at length that nothing but woe would come from them having sex and urged her to reconsider her desire. She in response ridiculed him:

That lovely maiden of great renown
answered, “Sir knight, you have no tonsure.
For God that redeemed you dearly,
are you a priest or a parson,
or are you a monk or a canon,
that you preach to me thus here?
You shouldn’t have been a knight
to go among shining maidens.
You should have been a friar!
He who taught you thus to preach,
I wish the devil of Hell would take him,
though he were my brother!

{ That mirie maiden of gret renoun
Answerd, “Sir knight, thou nast no croun;
For God that bought the dere,
Whether artow prest other persoun,
Other thou art monk other canoun,
That prechest me thus here?
Thou no schust have ben no knight,
To gon among maidens bright,
Thou schust have ben a frere!
He that lerd the thus to preche,
The devel of helle ichim biteche,
Mi brother thei he were! }

Amis and Amiloun, vv. 613-24, sourced as previously.

Foster noted that Belisaunt “threatens to cry rape if Amis does not acquiesce.” Yet he also minimizes the moral wrong of this activity: “Belisaunt’s successful stalking of Amis occurs while the duke is hunting, and he is finally seduced while the duke is hunting again.” In addition, Foster faulted Amis: “Amis is trapped by Belisaunt’s persistence and compromised by his own failure of nerve: he does the wrong thing.” Foster (2007) Introduction. Avoiding a false accusation of rape by having sex with a woman might well be a prudent choice for a man. He should not be blamed for having sex to avoid a potentially deadly false accusation of rape.

[7] In the version of Radulphus Tortarius, the friends are named Amicus and Amelius. Amelius is charged with having sex with Beliardus, the daughter of King Gaiferus of Poitiers. This charge is made through the courtier Ardradus telling Bertha, the Queen of Poiters:

The string of love sounds loudly. The ear of one hears it.
Ardradus, which he was called, is jealous.
He soon tells the queen. In the manner of a lioness
when deprived of her whelps, she roars and rages.
Furious, with disheveled hair she complains to the King.
She judges Amelius to hang from a cross.

{ Insonuit nervus, deprendit id aulicus unus,
Invidet Ardradus, iste vocatus erat,
Qui mox reginae manifestat; more leenae
Haec fremit, ablatis quando furit catulis;
Conqueritur regi passis furiosa capillis,
In cruce pendendum iudicat Amelium. }147-52

Radulphus Tortarius, Letters {Epistulae} 2, “To Bernarnd {Ad Bernardum},” vv. 147-52, Latin text from Ogle & Schullian (1933) p. 261, my English translation, benefiting from that of Leach (1937) Appendix A, “The Amis and Amilous Story of Radulfus Tortarius.” Radulphus Tortarius’s version underscores women’s complicity in unjust penal punishment of men.

[8] Waltharius, v. 1403, Latin text and English trans. from Ring (2016). The Waltharius apparently influenced the chanson de geste The Monastic Life of William {Le Moniage Guillaume}.

[9] In Ami et Amile, Emperor Charlemagne is a thematic foil to Ami and Amile. Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman Emperor, was commonly regarded as a model Christian king in twelfth-century France. Nonetheless, Charlemagne in Ami et Amile is depicted as a viciously brutal fool. The seneschal Hardré has a historical prototype in Hardradus, who tried to kill Charlemagne in 785. Calin (1966) p. 77. In contrast, in Ami et Amile Hardré manipulates Charlemagne, and Charlemagne repeatedly echoes Hardré’s words. See, e.g. Hardré proposes to Charlemagne sharply contrasting punishment and reward for Ami and Amile’s martial exploits (laisses 16 and 17); Charlemagne chastises Belissant for disparaging Hardré, whom Charlemagne describes as a good knight (laisse 25); Hardré dupes Charlemagne about his battle conduct and advises Charlemagne to have Lubias marry Amile (laisse 28). Charlemagne is ready to kill Amile merely because Hardré claims that Amile had sex with her. Charlemagne moreover shows no concern about killing his wife and daughter (laisses 46 and 68-70). Ami et Amile praises Charlemagne abstractly: “Our Emperor was very noble and trustworthy … Our Emperor was very brave and noble {Nostre empereres fu moult gentiz et fiers … Nostre empereres fu moult preuz et nobile}.” Ami et Amile, vv. 257 (17) and 283 (18). This chanson de geste, however, shows Charlemagne in action to be contemptible, especially in contrast to Ami and Amile.

Friendship among men and institutionalized violence against men are issues of great public importance. Even with its shocking treatment of Charlemagne, the public importance of Ami et Amile hasn’t been adequately recognized:

The chanson de geste named for them is not concerned with any public issue, any political or historical or religious cause which would subsume their story. The poem is focused, rather, on their lives and their relationship

Rosenberg & Danon (1996) p. 16. Ami et Amile presents friendship between men creatively in relation to epic violence:

When seen against the rich literary tradition concerning friendship in classical antiquity, the tale of Ami and Amile appears as something radically new.

Konstan (1996). The innovative medieval epic Ami et Amile should be more widely read and much better interpreted in order to promote social justice.

By seeking God’s forgiveness, the loyal and intimate friends Ami and Amile recognize their wrongs and the wrongs of others living within the complexities of human life. Utterly misinterpreting them, Zink preferred to employ inappropriately the medieval topos of contempt for the world to garner scholarly value through supporting poor-dearism:

Ami and Amile render contempt for the world desirable by associating it with a love of self disguised as love of the other. Women, the good and the bad, are the value-promoters and the victims of this sufficiency of men.

{ Ami et Amile rendent désirable le mépris du monde en l’associant à un amour de soi déguisé en amour de l’autre. Les femmes, la bonne et la mauvaise, sont les faire-valoir et les victimes de cette suffisance des hommes. }

Zink (1987) p. 23, my English translation of the original French. Alas, for the existence of strong, independent men! Just think how they affect women, those poor dears!

[10] Scholarly discussion of Ami et Amile shows acute gender trouble. Consider, for example, Kay (1990) — a highly regarded scholarly article. Beginning this article with three sentences from three eminent men medieval scholars, Kay chided them for slighting women. She then drew upon scholarly claims of the devotedly gynocentric man “Duby,” the all-powerful pyschoanalytic woman hero-scholar “Irigaray,” and the pillar of queer studies “Sedgwick.” With the benefit of these authorities, Kay perceived that Ami et Amile concerns “phallic dominance.” She discovered “forcible elimination of women from the epic world.” That “forcible elimination of women” from epic differs from forcible elimination of men in epic through massive slaughter of men.

Kay’s claims about the forcible elimination of women from epic weren’t regarded as inconsistent with the plain evidence of women in epics. Appearing before the final part of her paper, Kay didn’t present those claims as requiring a peculiar type of spectacles. Kay, however, added a final part, prefaced with a warning: “The final part of this paper is highly speculative.” That final part leads to these concluding sentences:

Women are introduced in order that they can be expelled and a primal masculine order restored. Thus, while women may be excluded from the matière of the chansons de geste, they are, paradoxically, a valuable prop to the ideal of masculine collectivity.

Kay (1990) p. 141. In this paradoxical view, women, excluded from epic, are included in epic in order to be excluded to serve men’s interests. That’s a view well worthy of a scholarly worship and holy water! The earlier short quotes are from id. p. 135 (phallic dominance) and p. 136 (forcible elimination of women from epic). Kay explicitly cited work of “Duby” (Georges Duby) and “Sedgwick” (Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick), but not “Irigaray” (Luce Irigaray).

The amazing scholarly contortions to demonize men as oppressors and promote sympathy for women aren’t paradoxical. Observe that the claims of Kay (1990) have compelled respect from scholars of widely differing scholarly orientations. Engaging with what had become to scholars the “woman question” in Ami et Amile, Calin declared:

Sarah Kay’s essay is especially challenging. Grounding a rigorous close reading of the text in the most sophisticated feminist theory, Kay argues that both women characters are punished and, in the end, excluded from the “epic world,” a world and world vision that depend on their exclusion.

Calin (1991) p. 79. How could one believe that the punishment and exclusion of women characters is essential to epic? That wasn’t actually the challenge for Calin. He emphasized that he in no way meant to contradict Kay:

In this article, I propose a reading of the chanson parallel to Kay’s. I insist that my considerations are meant to be taken in conjunction with hers, not in opposition.

Id. Calin earned a Ph.D. in medieval French literature from Yale in 1960. By 1991, he was widely regarded as a leading scholar of the chansons de geste. On Calin’s biography, Jones (2018). Calin prudently refused to challenge Kay’s ridiculous claims. That’s the way to keep friends and ascend in academia.

Samuelson’s recent study of Ami et Amile unself-consciously explored concern for counter-narratives in Kay (1995). Samuelson received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 2016 for a study of medieval French literature. His advisor was Kay. His study appears in a scholarly volume honoring Kay’s achievements as a leading scholar of medieval French literature. Samuelson’s study provides a learned display of formalities of counter-narrative discourse:

I begin by building on Kay’s work on female ‘counternarratives’ in Ami et Amile, observing how curious echoes – almost what Leo Bersani (Bersani and Phillips 2008: 86) calls ‘liquefying speech’ – entangle the ‘dominant narrative’ with female ‘counternarratives’. Yet, while Kay focuses on gender politics, I then look to two unlikely bedfellows – canon law and Bersani’s work in queer theory – to tease out a ‘counternarrative’ about illicit sexual behaviours, which is not entirely embodied by (or does not perfectly ‘belong’ to) women. Sexuality, argues Bersani, ‘is that which is intolerable to the structured self’ (1986: 38); similarly, Ami et Amile stresses how desire is ‘intolerable’ to the ‘dominant narrative’. And yet – in a manner also in keeping with Bersani’s thought – the ‘dominant narrative’ engages in risky, perverse, but all too alluring ways with this ‘counternarrative’, which asserts that desire disfigures order.

Samuelson (2021) p. 73. Engaging in Bersani’s argument in “Is the Rectum a Grave?”, Samuelson considered how Amile killing his two boys and bathing Ami in their blood to cure Ami of leprosy relates to barebacking:

This scene may be productively considered alongside Bersani’s work on the deliberately risky sexual practice of barebacking. As the friends fully expect to be executed for killing Amile’s sons (§164), ‘there is’, as in barebacking, ‘no speculation about the possibility of something other than death’ arising from the experience (Bersani and Phillips 2008: 41). And as barebacking debunks the association of sex with life, ‘advertis[ing] the risk of the sexual […] as the risk of self-dismissal, of losing sight of the self’ and ‘dangerously represent[ing] jouissance as a model of ascesis’ (Bersani 2010: 30), so too do self-dismissal and sacrifice here rub shoulders with an awesome and awful spiritual, emotional, and physical experience.

Id. p. 80. Samuelson recognized a significant risk in making this argument:

shifting the focus from women to desire comports a significant risk: that of erasing women. By way of conclusion, I would, though, insist that not only did Kay’s feminist work provide the departure point for my queer reading, but this reading can and should return us to women.

Id. pp. 83-4. Literary scholars may ponderously ponder “counter-narrative.” But in the final analysis, apart from marginalize and excluded meninist literary criticism, scholars are socially compelled to support work like Kay (1990) and to uphold dominant gynocentrism.

[images] (1) Ami and Amile depicted as nearly identical youths. In the top right of the image, apparently the pope baptises Ami and Amile. Illumination from manuscript of Jean Mansel’s Flower of Stories {Fleur des histoires}. Manuscript made in Bruges in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. From folio 250r of Paris Bibliothèque Mazarine, 1560. (2) Belissant “marrying” (raping) Amile. From manuscript of chanson de geste Ami et Amile. Made in 1465 in Artois, northern France. From folio 68r of Arras, Bibliothèque municipale MS. 0704 (CGM 696). (3) Ami / Amile kills Hardré in judicial combat. From folio 77v of Arras, Bibliothèque municipale MS. 0704 (CGM 696), described previously.

References:

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Calin, William. 1991. “Women and Their Sexuality in Ami et Amile: An Occasion to Deconstruct?” Olifant. 16(1/2): 77–89.

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Samuelson, Charlie. 2016. ‘Baisies Ceste Feuille’: Queer(ing) Rhetoric in Verse Romances and the Dits, from Chretien de Troyes to Christine de Pizan. Ph.D. Thesis, French and Italian Department, Princeton University. Advisor: Sarah Kay.

Samuelson, Charlie. 2021. “‘He wishes that everyone were leprous like him’: Infectious Counternarratives in Ami et Amile.” Pp.71-84 in Jane Gilbert and Miranda Griffin, eds. 2021. The Futures of Medieval French: Essays in Honour of Sarah Kay. Suffolk, UK: D.S. Brewer.

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