Author: Douglas Galbi

husband’s sexual obligation to wife is matter of life & death

medieval husband and wife

A wife having sex with her husband when she doesn’t feel like doing it is now regarded as her husband raping her. In the more enlightened Middle Ages, the situation was much different. Christian spouses had an obligation to grant each other’s requests for sex, even if one didn’t feel like doing it.[1] The Christian marital sexual obligation was know as the marital debt. But this marital sexual obligation wasn’t merely understand in contractual-commercial terms. A medieval husband’s sexual obligation to his wife included action saving her life and preserving her mental health.

In medieval Italy, a young, newly married woman was gravely ill. She lay on her back, her eyes closed, scarcely breathing, and looking like a corpse. Everyone thought that she would soon die. The young, newly married husband despaired greatly of her mortal illness. Showing manly initiative, he rose into action:

The husband was lamenting that his wife, with whom he had been sexually intimate so few times and whom he loved greatly, was being so soon snatched away from him. He therefore decided to have sex with her before she expired. After having sent away all bystanders by mentioning vaguely the performance of some secret act, he engaged in sexual intimacy with his wife.

{ Dolebat vir tam cito eripi uxorem sibi, quam raro cognoverat, et eam, ut aequum erat, summe amabat. Decrevit ergo cum uxore, antequam ea expiraret, coire. Semotis omnibus (cum nescio quid se acturum secreto dixisset), uxorem cognovit. } [2]

The effects of marital sex were miraculous:

Immediately, as if her husband had injected new life into her body, she began to draw in breath, she opened her eyes, and after a little while she began to speak. With a gentle voice, she called for her husband.

{ Illa e vestigio, tanquam vir novam vitam in corpus ejus indidisset, coepit spiritum ducere, atque oculis subapertis, post paululum loqui, et submissa voce virum appellare. }

As most husbands do, he responded promptly and obediently to his wife’s call. She asked for some food and drink. He got them for her. She was thus fully restored to good health. The course of the wife’s illness leaves no room for doubt: without the husband’s sexual service, the wife would have died. That’s a stressful burden for husbands to hold in the marital bed.

A husband’s obligation to have sex with his wife was also regarded as vitally important to his wife’s mental health. In medieval Tuscany, a wife was suffering from frenzy and delirium. To get her to a folk-healer for a prognosis and treatment, the husband and his helpers had to transport her across the Arno River:

In order to cross the Arno River, they put the woman on the back of the strongest man. Immediately she began wriggling her buttocks, simulating sexual intercourse, and crying out in a loud voice, “I,” she said, frequently repeating her words, “want to be fucked!” Thus she voiced the cause of her illness.

{ Cum per Arnum fluvium transituri mulierem supra dorsum hominis validioris imposuissent, coepit illa vestigio nates movere, similis coeunti, ac magna vocce clamitans: “Ego,” inquit, saepius verba iterans, “vellem futui!” quibus vocibus causam expressit morbi. } [3]

Everyone laughed at the husband and attributed his wife’s illness to him:

The one who was carrying the woman poured out such a fit of laughter that he fell into the water with her. All the rest burst out laughing with knowing the cure for this insanity. They asserted that, not the work of a folk-healer, but sexual intercourse would restore her to sanity. And they turned to her husband, “You,” they said, “will be the best doctor for your wife.”

{ Qui ferebat foeminam, adeo est in resum effusus, ut una cum ea in aquam caderet. Tum ridentes omnes, cum insaniae medelam cognovissent, non esse opus incantationibus asserunt, sed coitu, ad sanitatem restituendam. Et in virium versi: “Tu,” inquiunt, “optimus uxoris curator eris.” }

All then returned home. As soon as the husband had been sexually intimate with his wife, she perfectly recovered her mind.[4] Husbands were thus held responsible for wives’ mental health. That’s a heavy burden of sexual responsibility for husbands.

Medieval wives never forgave husbands who failed to fulfill their marital sexual responsibilities. Consider a medieval husband asking his dying wife for forgiveness for any injury he might have done her. He reminded her that he had been a good husband. He explained that he had never failed to pay his marital sexual debt to her, with one exception:

excepting that time when she was not in good health, because he didn’t want to fatigue her with sexual intercourse.

{ eo excepto tempore, quo illa non recte valeret, ne coitu fatigaretur.} [5]

His wife, lying gravely ill in bed, responded:

“This,” she said, “by my faith, I can never forgive you. I was never so sick or infirm that I wasn’t able to be flat on my back.”

{ “Hoc,” inquit, “per fidem nunquam parcam neque remittam tibi: nullo enim tempore adeo invalida atque infirma extiti, quin commode possem resupina jacere.” }

Husbands must learn to infer what their wives are actually saying. To any but the dullest husband, this wife’s message to her husband is clear: get to your marital sexual work, now!

Throughout history, young, beautiful women have sexually harassed men. But within medieval marriage, sexual harassment wasn’t a concern. Spouses were expected to have sex whenever one of them desired. Husbands had the longest and hardest part of this marital responsibility. For those drooping in their duty, beatings and other forms of punishment stimulated only a small share of men with peculiar predilections. A medieval proverb offered women more generally useful wisdom:

She who wants her tail soothed must stroke her husband’s head.

{ Pités de cul trait lent de cief. }[6]

Today, men are incarcerated for not being able to make monthly payments to woman with whom they had sex. Being incarcerated greatly harms a father’s ability to provide emotional and material support to his children. Loving men, or least treating them humanely, is a much better way.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] If both spouses never requested sex, Christians could live in a sexless marriage.

[2] Poggio, Facetiae 112, “Of a husband who was sexually intimate with his sick wife, and thus restored her to health {De viro qui uxorem aegrotam cognovit, et postea convaluit},” Latin text from Poggoi (1879) vol. 1, p. 180. Here and subsequent quotes include my English translation, drawing upon that of id., but tracking the Latin more closely. The subsequent quote is from id.

[3] Poggio, Facetiae 24, “A frenetic wife {De muliere phrenetica},” Poggoi (1879) vol. 1, pp. 50-2. The subsequent quote is from id. Cf. John the Baptist, e.g. John 1:23, “I am the voice of one crying out {ego vox clamantis}.

[4] Classical Arabic literature preserves a similar understanding of the importance of men sexually serving women:

It is said that the virgin, if she be kept too long from copulation, will suffer from a condition that the physicians call “constriction of the womb,” which leads to delirium and melancholia in the brain, to the extent that she may be thought mad, though she is not; suffice that she be fucked for the ill to vanish immediately.

Nu’aymī (2009) p. 128.

[5] Poggio, Facetiae 42, “A husband who asked his wife for forgiveness while she was sick {Vir qui mulieri dum aegrota esset veniam postulavit},” Poggoi (1879) vol. 1, pp. 74-5. The subsequent quote is from id.

[6] Gautier le Leu, “The Widow {La Veuve},” v. 562, Old French text from Livingston (1951), my English translation benefiting from that of Hellman & O’Gorman (1965) p. 155. On this medieval proverb, Livingston (1939).

[image] A holy family in medieval Spain. Illumination from a Book of Hours. Made in Spain in the 1460s. On folio 48v in Ms. Add. 18193, British Library, London. Thanks to the Web Gallery of Art.

References:

Hellman, Robert, and Richard O’Gorman. 1965. Fabliaux; ribald tales from the old French. New York: Crowell.

Livingston, Charles H. 1939. “Tobler-Lommatzsch Chief (Chaver).” Modern Language Notes. 54 (4): 290-291.

Livingston, Charles H. 1951. Le Jongleur Gautier Le Leu: étude sur les fabliaux. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Nu’aymī, Salwá (Salwa al Neimi), from Arabic trans. Carol Perkins. 2009. The proof of the honey. New York: Europa Editions.

Poggio. 1879. Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini. The facetiae or jocose tales of Poggio, now first translated into English with the Latin text. Paris: Isidore Liseux (vol. 1, vol. 2).

medieval education: teaching demonology of men’s sexuality

medieval demonology: Lucifer being judged

Today in higher education, students are taught about the demonic male, the pathology of masculinity, and the oppressive power of the male gaze. Medieval education tended to be of higher intellectual quality. Nonetheless, Egbert of Liège’s early-eleventh-century schoolbook for young boys indicates that, even in the more enlightened medieval period, students were taught demonology of men’s sexuality.

Like Hesiod’s Theogony, demonology of men’s sexuality draws upon the cultural resources of castration culture. Medieval Latin literature addressed castration culture with acute perceptiveness in such masterpieces as Radulfus Tortarius’s Sincopus and John of Hauville’s Architrenius. Medieval authors dared to tell of Ovid being castrated for defying the great mother goddess Cybele. Medieval authors narrated the effects on Percival of his father being castrated. From this well-laden ship of castration culture, Egbert of Liège drew simple, disparaging lessons for young boys.

Silence and castrate yourself. This brutal teaching, so familiar to men today, Egbert drilled into young boys with heroic Latin hexameter poetry:

Cut off the member that impedes you the most, I say.
What is the source of evil? I argue it is these two: the tongue and the genitals.
If you want to be a strong man, use your strength, O conqueror.
If you are willing to cut, then do away with both of them like a man.

{ Hoc menbrum capula tibi, quod magis inpedit, inquam.
Unde mali caput? Haec duo linguam causor et inguen:
fortis et ut vir sis, tum viribus utere, victor,
si capulare velis, extingue viriliter ambo. }[1]

Act like a man! Be a strong man! The social imperatives of gynocentric society presume that men aren’t naturally virtuous. The demonology of men’s sexuality starts with denying men’s birthright. It depends on forcing men to work to be men. Silencing men is necessary to prevent men from speaking out about injustices against men.

Throughout history, some brave men have refused to silence themselves. Juvenal wrote boldly and frankly to dissuade his friend Postumus from marrying. Loqui prohibeor et tacere non possum. They forbid me to speak, and I cannot be silent. Thus Rufinus urged his friend Valerius not marry. Matheolus courageously shared his lessons from the school of hard knocks that was his marriage to Petra. With just a little exposure to masterpieces in literature of men’s sexed protest, even the most dim-witted boy can understand a fundamental lesson: get married under gynocentrism only at grave risk to your well-being.

Men often need to be pressured into marriage. Shaming men — “you’re afraid to get married” — has been a common tactic throughout history to pressure men into marriage. In the Middle Ages, Egbert taught young boys that even a man reluctant to have sex with an ugly woman is a coward. Egbert taught that lesson with a fable about a man and a bear:

A coward was ordered to lie down with an ugly beast.
But after he had kissed the bear, he shunned it.
He was then urged to poke his rod into its bowels.
“Men, I could scarcely bring myself to touch it with my lips. Where are you pushing me?” he said.
“Let no friend ask that I venture greater things after this.
Such terror infused me from what I have already ventured,
I was sure I was going to crap myself with a filthy pile.”

{ Ignavus deforme pecus concidere iussus;
oscula sed postquam libavit, abhorruit ursum.
Cogitur inde, feri ut venabula figat in alvum:
“Labra, viri, vixdum ammovi! quo truditis?” inquit,
“Me maiora audere dehinc ne poscat amicus:
tantus enim invasit terror pro talibus ausis,
certus eram me congerie foedare inhonesta.” }[2]

This fable concludes with the moral it teaches:

One terrified by the smallest things, balks at more serious ones in his fear.

{ In minimis veritus refugit graviora timendo. }

Heterosexual men tend to prefer beautiful, feminine women for mates. Egbert inverted such a female mate with the figure of an ugly, male bear. That simple literary move drills into young boys the lesson that men must be willing to marry any women, or they will be socially disparaged as not real men.[3]

In conjunction with urging young boys to be silent, to castrate themselves, and to go obediently into marriage with violent, ugly, mannish women, Egbert taught them not to struggle against men’s subservience to women. Young boys under Egbert’s tutelage learned that men’s physical strength and intellectual capabilities are no match for women’s actual superiority:

A woman laid low the first man Adam, Samson, and Solomon.
A woman conquered the newly formed man, the strong man, the wise man.
The weak sex struck down the strong one through temptations.

{ Primum hominem, Samson, Salemonem femina stravit,
plasma novum, fortem, sapientem femina vicit,
debilis allisit fortem per scandala sexum. }[4]

Misrepresenting women as the “weak sex” is obfuscation in the service of gynocentrism. If women actually were the weak sex, then men wouldn’t be dying from violence four times as frequently as women do, and men wouldn’t be subject to social injustices that are socially deprived of that name. Unlike many professors today, Egbert deserves credit for instructing students in the reality of men’s subservience to women.

While instructing young boys in silence, castration, forced marriage, and subservience to women, Egbert recognized that the quality of knowledge teachers offered students was declining. Egbert observed:

Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before.
Indeed, cleverness is shunned at home and abroad.
What does reading offer to pupils except tears?
It is rare, worthless when offered for sale, and devoid of wit.

{ Ut numquam studium sic friget ubique scolare,
quippe domi sollertia militiaeque negatur;
lectio quid preter plorare ministrat alumnis?
Rara quidem, nauci, cum venerit, et salis expers. }[5]

Compared to Egbert’s time early in the eleventh century, the situation is even worse today. Critical gender theory is produced with little scholarly effort. Truly clever work is shunned and ignored. What pupil wouldn’t be reduced to tears while reading ignorant scholarship proclaiming misogyny? After many expensive years of higher education, a student is firmly indoctrinated in the demonology of men’s sexuality and knows nothing about real sexism.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Egbert of Liège, The Well-Laden Ship {Fecunda Ratis} 1.1190-3, Latin text and English translation from Babcock (2013) pp. 126-7. These verses are titled “Concerning the more unjust members {De menbris magis iniustis}”. Cf. id. p. x, “that such poison is being fed to children is still disturbing.”

Egbert reflected ideas about castration and violence against men that all humane persons should find deeply disturbing. In his schoolbook, Egbert included the proverb:

My hand is not clean: the dog isn’t cleansed of a testicle.

{ Nec mihi munda manus, canis et non teste solutus. }

Fecunda ratis 1.131, sourced as previously. Egbert or one of his students glossed this proverb with the words:

If anyone has begun to castrate a dog, when one testicle is torn out and the other remains, that person has neither a clean hand nor completed work. In the same way, having wounded an enemy and letting him remain alive, afterward one will experience an avenger of his death, whom he had earlier willingly left behind as a survivor.

{ Si quis canem ceperit castrare uno testiculo eruto, altero dimisso, nec mundam habit manum nec opus impletum. Sic aliquis, (si) inimicum vulnerans vivum dimiserit, postea experietur mortis suae ultorem, quem antea volens reliquit superstitem. }

Babcock (2013) p. 269, note to Fecunda ratis 1.131, with the Latin translation modified slightly, including to eliminate a sexist assumption about the castrator’s gender. This gloss personifies a man’s testicle as both an avenger and a being that can die.

Babcock’s Latin text is essentially that of Voigt (1889). In this and subsequent quotes, I’ve lineated Babcock’s translation to match the Latin text to help non-Latinists to examine the Latin.

Egbert, a cleric in Liège (in present-day Belgium), completed Fecunda Ratis between 1010 and 1026. Babcock (2013) p. xiii, xv. It consists of “2,373 unrhymed hexameter verse in two books.” Ziolkowski (2007) pp. 100. The work has survived in a single, eleventh-century manuscript: Cologne, Erzbischöfliche Diözesanbibliothek, Dombibliothek codex 196, fols. 1r-63r. Liège was within the archbishopric of Cologne. Ziolkowski (2007) p. 101; Babcock (2013) p. xxv, n 1.

Egbert’s Fecunda Ratis provides early Latin versions of influential stories. The earliest known version of “Little Red Riding Hood” occurs in Fecunda Ratis 2.472-85, “Concerning the girl saved from wolf cubs {De puella a lupellis servata}”. For thorough analysis of the history of “Little Red Riding Hood,” Ziolkowski (2007) Ch. 3.

The earliest known version of the story of the peasant and his domineering wife is also found in Fecunda Ratis. It’s 1.1378-84, “Concerning a wife hostile to her husband {De uxore infensa marito}”. The great medieval women writer Marie de France reworked this story to provide the earliest known representation of the inverted v-sign, a sexually insulting gesture that remains common in the United Kingdom today.

[2] Egbert, Fecunda Ratis 1.1419-26, Latin text and English trans. Babcock (2013) pp. 146-9 (including subsequent quote above), with my changes to the translation. These verses are titled “About the man who kissed a bear {De eo, qui osculatus est ursum},” Babcock called this fable “extremely puzzling.” Id. p. 328, n. to 1419-26. It immediately follows verses describing five stages of “flaming love {flagrantis …. amoris}”: sight, speech, touch, kisses, and sexual intercourse. Babcock notes that the fable “would be (and probably should be) interpreted sexually by the reader.” Id.

My changes to Babcock’s translation help to make clear the fable’s relevance to the gender oppression of men. Babcock translated concidere as “slaughter” and venabula figat in alvum as “stick his lance in the belly of the beast.” I follow Babcock’s suggestions for sexual meanings of these terms. The idiomatic phrase “belly of the beast” seems to me to have misleading connotations here; moreover, the Latin doesn’t repeat the noun “beast {pecus}” from the first verse. For audere / ausis, I use the verb “venture” rather than Babcock’s “dare” to be more consistent with the sense of the man’s reluctance. For “defile myself with a filthy mass,” I use more concrete, colloquial diction consistent with the Latin.

[3] Not understanding the fable’s meaning and corresponding literary device, Babcock misconstrued it with an excessively literal reading: “the bear, like the coward, is male, so it would be anal sex that is implied.” Babcock (2013) p. 328, n. to 1419-26. On a husband’s reluctance to consummate a marriage, see, e.g. the Vita of Galaktion and Episteme and John VIII Palaiologos’s behavior toward his wife Sophia of Montferrat.

[4] Egbert, Fecunda Ratis 2.515-7, Latin text and English trans. Babcock (2013) pp. 230-1. In discussing Solomon, who in Solomon and Marcolf showed malice toward men, Egbert’s work carries forth the understandable frustration and anger of men suffering under long-standing gynocentric oppression:

How many cups, always bitter, does this sex serve up?
The first man fell by this disease, and Samson and Solomon.
What wonder could this poisonous snake not topple?

{ Hic sexus quota pocula semper amara propinat!
Primus homo hoc morbo, Samson ceciditque Salemon —
quid non precipitet haec ydra venefica mirum? }

Fecunda Ratis 2.539-41, trans. id. pp. 232-3. Men deserve compassion for their personal suffering. But at the level of social structure, men share equal blame for the injustices of gynocentrism.

[5] Egbert, Fecunda Ratis 1.1093-6, Latin text and English trans. Babcock (2013) pp. 116-7. These verses are titled “Concerning Poor Scholarly Effort {De malo studio}”.

[image] Excerpt from Lucifer being judged by Christ in majesty. Illumination on f. 067v of Livre de la Vigne nostre Seigneur (Bodley Library, Oxford, MS. Douce 134). Created in France, c. 1450-1470. Image thanks to the Bodley Library’s Luna system. Here’s a brief review of medieval demonology.

References:

Babcock, Robert Gary, ed. and trans. 2013. Egbert of Liège. The well-laden ship. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library 25. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.

Voigt, Ernst, ed. 1889. Egberts von Lüttich Fecunda Ratis, zum ersten Mal herausgegeben, auf ihre Quellen zurückgeführt und erklärt von Ernst Voigt. Halle A.S.: M. Niemeyer.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. 2007. Fairy tales from before fairy tales: the medieval Latin past of wonderful lies. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

women’s superiority: the silliness of talk about gender equality

Saint Gregory of Nazianzus

In 384 GC, the Patriarch of Constantinople Gregory of Nazianzus wrote to the young bride Olympiada. She was a wealthy descendant of the Roman imperial family. Gregory knew her personally and acted as her spiritual father. As a wedding gift, he gave her a 111-verse poem of fatherly advice. That poem shows that an extraordinarily wise man recognized, about 1600 years ago, that talk about gender equality is silliness relative to women’s actual gender superiority.

Gregory’s poem for Olympiada indicated the extraordinary privilege of elite women relative to ordinary men. While ordinary men commonly worked on the verge of starvation, elite women led lives of luxury and feminine vanity. Gregory warned Olympiada against adorning herself with gold, precious stones, fancy dresses, and cosmetics. He urged her to distinguish herself from other elite women:

The expensive and fancy dresses must remain for those women that have no desire for the life beyond and do not know what the meaning of spiritual struggle and attainment of virtues is all about; this type of woman cannot possibly comprehend the spiritual radiance and brilliance of a life in Christ. You have aimed towards greater goals and for a higher purpose for your life. … Stay away from conceited and ostentatious women whose mind is preoccupied with external appearances and social circles, all for the purpose of vainglory and public display.

Such women today write about patriarchy and men’s oppression of women. They do so to gain public attention and fashionable intellectual status. Women who truly care about social justice speak out on behalf on men.

Gregory explicitly described women’s superiority to men. He bluntly told Olympiada:

Set aside the silliness of equality among the sexes that some of your contemporaries preach, and attempt to comprehend the obligations of marriage. … You must surely be aware of how easily anger overtakes men. They cannot maintain their temper, and they often appear as wild lions. It is at this exact moment that a woman must remain stronger and display her superiority. You must play the role of the lion-tamer. What does a lion-tamer do when the beast starts roaring? He becomes even calmer than usual and through kindness and persistence he overcomes the lion’s wrath. He speaks to the lion kindly, in a soft but firm voice, he caresses it, he attends to it, he pets it, and little by little calmness is restored.

Historically, men have been disparaged as dogs, pigs, wolves, and animals sexually inferior to donkeys. Not all men are like that. Gregory, who was a highly learned theologian, stated merely that men “often appear as wild lions.” More importantly, Gregory recognized that, in general, women are stronger than men and superior to men in social position and social power.

While Gregory never produced a treatise on gender theory, his kindly, fatherly words to Olympiada suggest that he had a sophisticated understanding of intersexual dynamics. He urged Olympiada to love her husband according to the Christian model of love:

In your marriage, fondness, affection and love must be strong and persistent for him whom God has selected to be your life partner. This man is now the eye of your life and the delight of your heart. And if you ever perceive that your husband possibly loves you more than you love him, do not take advantage of his feeling by attempting to gain the upper had in your marriage. That is plainly wrong as it is totally against the writings of the Holy Gospel!

The leading medieval theologian Peter Lombard recognized that courtly love puts men in a subservient position relative to women. Men’s inferiority to women in identifying biological offspring has enormous implications for social inequality. Yet gender inequality ultimately has even deeper roots. The fundamental gender equality is this: men typically love women more than women love men. That inequality in love allows women to gain the upper hand over men. The Christian model of love, as well as women of great culture and learning, challenge prevalent inequality in love between men and women.

Gregory told Olympiada the truth about gender equality rather than the conventional lies so prevalent throughout history. A woman can free herself from criminal justice by baring her breasts to a jury. When a woman claims rape, men foolishly limit themselves to listening and believing and acting to punish and even kill other men. A woman’s tears overwhelm any public reason. Rome was explicitly founded on the principle of the Sabine women’s social superiority. Almost all other societies have been based on belief in women’s superiority to men. Gregory of Nazarianus deserves extraordinary praise and honor for speaking truth about gender power.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

Notes:

The quotes above are from Gregory of Nazianzus’s letter to Olympiada in 384 GC. The translation is from the Orthodox Christian Information Center’s website. The name of the translator isn’t given. I’ve made some non-substantial changes to the translation. The Greek text and Latin translations (prose and verse) are available in Patrologia Graeca (PG), vol. 37, p. 1542.

Gregory of Nazianzus was an eminent theologian and church leader who lived from about 329 to 390 GC. Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nyssa are known as the Cappadocian Fathers. With Basil the Great and John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus is regarded as a Holy Hierarch. He is also regarded as a saint. He is one of only three persons generally known by the epithet “the Theologian.” For more information on Gregory and a translation of some of his poems, Dunkle (2009). Here’s a large collection of Gregory’s writings. Although widely revered, Gregory’s insightful contribution to gender theory has been almost totally ignored.

[image] Excerpt from icon of Gregory of Nazianzus, the Theologian. Made in 1408 and attributed to Andrei Rublev. Originally in the Dormition Cathedral, Valdimir, Russia. Now in the State Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow), inventory # 19725. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons.

Reference:

Dunkle, Brian P. 2009. Gregory Nazianzen’s Poems on Scripture: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary. S.T.L. Degree Thesis. Boston College School of Theology and Ministry.

reconstructing ancient songs for schoolboys: Juvenal vs. sugar & spice

Surviving manuscripts in Europe from the tenth through the twelfth century include musical notation for Latin texts by Virgil, Lucan, Horace, Juvenal, Statius, and Boethius, and other classical authors. The musical notation seems to have been intended to help medieval schoolboys learn how to recite classical Latin verse.[1] Today those classical works are read as literary poems. Schoolboys singing Juvenal’s satire 6? That’s inconceivable today. Any schoolboys doing that would be immediately expelled from the gynocentric-totalitarian educational complex and probably incarcerated for committing gender-transgressive singing crimes.

Modern scholars have imagined medieval men singing Latin classics in a highly orthodox way. An eminent scholar at Cambridge University and a world-class performer of medieval music have reconstructed medieval songs based on poems from Boethius’s sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy. Those poems were written with musical notation in the eleventh-century manuscript Carmina Cantabrigiensia.[2] A portion of their musical reconstruction is available on YouTube (see below). It’s music for these Boethian verses:

Verses I made once glowing with content;
Tearful, alas, sad songs must I begin.

{ Carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi,
Flebilis heu maestos cogor inire modos. } [3]

This surely isn’t the sort of music schoolboys would enjoy.

For a sense of what schoolboys sang within medieval Latin’s relatively broad freedom of expression, modern trends provide considerable insight. About 1820, the English poet Robert Southey wrote the verses:

What are little boys made of
Snips & snails & puppy dogs tails
And such are little boys made of.

What are young women made of
Sugar & spice & all things nice [4]

By the mid-twentieth century, nearly identical lines formed a well-known nursery rhyme. By 2017, the U.S. mega-corporation Nike drew upon that nursery rhyme in an attempt to influence Russian popular culture and Russian consumer behavior. Contempt for boys and men and celebration of girls and women are winning themes in gynocentric society.[5]

At the margins of gynocentric society are boys’ and men’s voices of sexed protest. Medieval schoolboys were forced to endure oppressive lessons such as those in Egbert of Liège’s eleventh-century Fecunda Ratis. But perceptive and compassionate medieval writers understood the suffering of fathers’ deprived of custody of their children, poignantly lamented a non-functioning penis, and vigorously protested structural injustices against men. They would have sought to boost boys’ rebellious spirits. They would have taught boys to sing verses from Juvenal’s Satire 6:

this is the moment of pure Woman —
the shout’s repeated in unison from the entire grotto:
“Now’s the time! Send in the men!” If the wife’s paramour is asleep,
she’ll tell his son to put on his hood and hurry along.
If that’s no good, there’s an assault on the slaves. If no prospect of available
slaves, they’ll pay the water delivery man to come in. If they
can’t find him and there’s a deficit of humans, not a moment passes before
she voluntarily offers her ass to be mounted by a donkey.

{ tum femina simplex,
ac pariter toto repetitus clamor ab antro
“iam fas est, admitte viros.” dormitat adulter,
illa iubet sumpto iuvenem properare cucullo;
si nihil est, servis incurritur; abstuleris spem
servorum, veniet conductus aquarius; hic si
quaeritur et desunt homines, mora nulla per ipsam
quo minus inposito clunem summittat asello. } [6]

Schoolboys throughout the ages would relish singing such verses. More importantly, such verses would teach schoolboys that they are no more intrinsically stupid and evil than girls are. That’s a lesson that boys need to learn, especially today.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Ziolkowski (2007) provides a seminal scholarly review of musical notation in classical manuscripts.

[2] The Cambridge scholar is Sam Barrett. The leading medieval musician is Benjamin Bagby, co-founder of Sequentia and director of Sequentia’s Lost Songs Project. Sequentia has produced an album of reconstructed medieval music, Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper.

Carmina Cantabrigiensia includes Modus Florum and Modus Liebinc. Both of these songs might encourage boys to challenge gynocentrism. See my post on Modus Florum, especially note [11].

[3] Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy 1.1-2, Latin text and English trans. from Stewart, Rand & Tester (1974) pp. 130-1.

[4] Opie & Opie (1997) p. 117. When writing about women, Southey took care to indicate that not all women are like that (NAWALT):

What are some women made of?
Bell metal mouths and leathern lungs
Goose’s brains and parrot’s tongues.

Id. In 1846, Edward Francis Rimbault, an English musicologist, included no such qualification in disparaging young men:

What are young men made of?
Sighs and leers and crocodile tears.
What are young women made of?
Ribbons and laces, and sweet pretty faces.

Id.

[5] In a highly popular related video, the Powerpuff Girls take on the Rowdyruff Boys. The boys are depicted as sinister. Moreover, the boys are associated with crime and incarceration. The girls prevail in the end with the tactics that medieval literature of men’s sex protest recognized: the tactics that brought about the downfall of Adam, Samson, and Solomon.

[6] Juvenal, Satire 6.327-34, Latin text and trans. (adapted non-substantially) from Braund (2004) pp. 262-3. Munk Olsen reported that Juvenal’s Satire 88.79-84 and 8.88-89 are neumed (notated with musical notation) in Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, MS B.P.L 82, fol. 59r. That claim hasn’t been verified. Ziolkowski (2007) p. 257. In his De doctrina spirituali, Otloh of St. Emmeran in Regensburg (c. 1010-1070) described Horace, Terence, and Juvenal as three authors “to whom the worldly school is devoted {quos sectatur schola mundi}.” id. p. 35. Moreover, the eleventh-century Lexicon prosodiacum included examples from Juvenal. Id. Juvenal is among the classical poets represented most frequently in surviving medieval manuscripts. Id. p. 36. Medieval schoolboys plausibly sung Juvenal’s Satire 6.327-34.

References:

Braund, Susanna Morton, ed. and trans. 2004. Juvenal, Persius. Juvenal and Persius. Loeb Classical Library 91. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Opie, Iona Archibald, and Peter Opie. 1997. The Oxford dictionary of nursery rhymes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Stewart, H. F., E. K. Rand, S. J. Tester, ed. and trans. 1973. Boethius. Theological Tractates. The Consolation of Philosophy. Loeb Classical Library 74. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. 2007. Nota bene: reading classics and writing melodies in the early Middle Ages. Turnhout: Brepols. (introduction)