Decameron X.3: horrible generosity of Nathan and Mithridanes

The price of material goods relative to self-esteem and social status has fundamental economic importance.  That price structures the macroeconomics of persons’ self-interest.  In Decameron X.3, Boccaccio imagined a society in which material goods were cheap, while self-esteem and social status were dear.  Competition in generosity reached a horribly high level.  This story provides a critical perspective on the Arabic tradition of hospitality, the Christian understanding of salvation, and the role of media, particular social media, in serving self-esteem and social status.

Portrait of a Bolognese Gentleman in a Fur-lined Coat

Boccaccio ironically distanced Decameron X.3 to the realm of fantasy.  The story’s narrator presented it as being from a far-away land:

It is beyond doubt, if the reports of various men from Genoa and elsewhere who have been to those parts may be trusted, that in the region of Cathay there once lived a man of noble lineage named Nathan who was rich beyond compare. [1]

Cathay is northern China, far from Boccacio’s Florence.  Travelers’ reports commonly contain stories of wondrous sights, beasts, and events.  The clause “it is beyond doubt” is immediately qualified with reason for doubt.  It should be interpreted ironically.  The two main characters in the story are named Nathan and Mithridanes.  Nathan is a Jewish name.  Christians in medieval Europe stereotyped Jews as being ungenerous.[2]  Mithridanes is a name associated with pre-Christian Roman cultic belief.[3]  Christian nobles and merchants in fourteenth-century Florence would understand Decameron X.3 to be fantastical.

In Decameron X.3, Mithridanes sought to surpass Nathan’s fame for generosity.  Nathan lived in a huge, luxurious palace next to a main thoroughfare.  For many years, everyone who passed by Nathan hosted “in a most agreeable and festive manner.”  Nathan thus acted as the proprietor of a bizarre combination of a motel and a country estate.  Nathan’s renown spread throughout the East and the West.  Mithridanes, another rich man who lived near Nathan, grew envious:

he resolved that through an even greater display of liberality he would either obliterate the old man’s renown or overshadow it.  And so, after having had a palace built similar to Nathan’s, he began to bestow the most extravagant courtesy ever seen on everyone who passed by, going in either direction, and there is no doubt that in a short time he became very famous.

One day, a little, old, poor woman begging for alms from Mithridanes happened to remark that Nathan was more generous than he.  Her remark ignited Mithridanes to raging fury:

How can I ever match Nathan’s greatest acts of generosity, let alone surpass him as I’ve sought to do, when I can’t come close to him in the smallest things?  All my efforts will truly be in vain unless I wipe him off the face of the earth, and since old age isn’t carrying him away all by itself, I’ll have to do the job with my own hands, and that without delay.

Competition in generosity thus led to intent to murder.

Nathan subsequently offered Mithridanes horrible generosity.  Traveling to Nathan’s palace to fulfill his plan to murder him, Mithridanes encountered an old man.  Mithridanes asked the old man for directions to Nathan’s palace.  Mithridanes also requested that, “if possible, he did not want Nathan to see him or to know that he was there.”  The old man was actually Nathan.  He cheerfully and deceptively agreed to Mithridanes request.  Claiming to be one of Nathan’s menial servants, Nathan led Mithridanes to the palace.  There Nathan arranged with his servants not to reveal his identify.  Acting as a menial servant, he won the confidence of Mithridanes.  Mithridanes then told him of his plan to murder Nathan and sought his help.  Nathan agreed to help to arrange for his own murder.

With this horrible generosity, Nathan prevailed over Mithridanes.  Nathan strolled by himself in the woods.  That was the opportunity that Nathan had offered to Mithridanes to murder him.  Mithridanes jumped him, seized him by the turban, and exclaimed, “Old man, you’re as good as dead.”  In a parody upon a parody of Christian self-abnegation, Nathan responded only, “Then I must deserve it.”  Immediately events turned in a different direction:

Upon hearing his voice and looking him in the face, Mithridanes instantly recognized him as the man who had received him with such kindness, had kept him company like a friend, and had advised him so faithfully.  Consequently, his fury immediately subsided, and his anger was transformed into shame.  Hurling away the sword, which he had already drawn out in order to strike his adversary, he dismounted and flung himself down in tears at Nathan’s feet.

Nathan absolved Mithridanes of any wrong-doing in pursuing his murderous scheme:

call it evil or not as you will, there’s no need to ask for my forgiveness or for me to grant it, because you didn’t pursue it out of hatred, but in order to be held in greater esteem. … you have dedicated yourself not to the amassing of wealth, which is what misers do, but to spending what you have accumulated.

That’s a ridiculous justification, made from the perspective of nobles and courtiers looking down on merchants.  With further sarcasm, Boccaccio has Nathan expand upon this justification:

In order to increase their realms, and thus their fame, the most illustrious of emperors and the greatest of kings have practiced almost no art other than killing, not just one man as you wanted to do, but an infinite number of them, as well as putting entire countries to the torch and razing cities to the ground.  And so, if, to achieve renown, I was the only person you wanted to kill, you were not doing anything extraordinary or unusual, but something actually quite commonplace.

Citing his desire to preserve his unblemished record for generosity, Nathan then implored Mithridanes to kill him.  Mithridanes refused.  Nathan’s concern to be generous generated his grotesque devaluation of his own  life.  Only Mithridanes lack of generosity saved Nathan’s life.

Nathan further underscored the perversity of social status-seeking.  In gratitude to Nathan for not condemning his evil intent, Mithridanes offered the platitude that he would like to give years of his life to Nathan.  Nathan, greedy to add to his public record of generous acts, proposed a mechanism to effect that gift.  Nathan proposed that Mithridanes subsequently pretend to be Nathan, and Nathan pretend to be Mithridanes.  The young man Mithridanes could then deceptively add many more years of deeds of generosity to Nathan’s public record.  Mithridanes refused that absurd scheme only out of appreciation for his own inferiority in generosity:

If I knew how to comport myself as well as you do now, and as you’ve always done, I”d take your offer without giving it a second thought, but because I feel quite certain that my actions would only serve to diminish Nathan’s fame, and because I have no intention of marring in another what I cannot make perfect in myself, I won’t accept it.

This isn’t just a story of two gentlemen donkeys stuck at a door, insistently saying to each other, “No, please, you first.”  The story of Nathan and Mithridanes describes perverse effects of social status being much more dear than material goods.[5]

Arabic culture has a deep tradition of hospitality as measure of social status.  Hatim Tai, a Christian Arab who lived in the sixth century, became a focal point for stories about generosity in Arabic culture.  In a book by Saadi, a major Persian poet writing in the thirteenth century, Hatim Tai is the renowned generous person in a story much like that of Decameron X.3.[4]  Another story about Hatim Tai is preserved in Arabic in the 1001 Nights.  That story places Hatim Tai’s generosity squarely within pre-Islamic Arabic culture.  Travelers at the top of a mountain came across Hatim Tai’s grave.  One traveler said mockingly, “We are your guests tonight, Hatim, and we are hungry.”  After falling asleep for the night, the traveler had a dream:

I saw Hatim approaching me with a sword.  “You have come to me,” he said, “but I have no provisions.”  He then struck my camel with his sword [6]

The traveler’s own camel thus provided the meat that the host offered.  Slaughtering a camel for a shared meal is a typical feature of a pre-Islamic ode.[7]  Hatim Tai’s slaughter of the traveler’s camel, like Decameron X.3, shows a perverse effect of intense concern for maintaining social status of generosity.[8]

In the Gospel of John, Jesus teaches extreme generosity.  Jesus declares:

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. [9]

From a Christian perspective, Jesus realized God, love, and salvation for humanity by allowing himself to be crucified.  Jesus’ words “love one another as I have loved you” mean love one another with complete self-giving, even to the point of death:

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. [10]

Like the Decameron’s story of Frate Alberto, Decameron X.3 superficially looks like a parody of Christian scripture.  But Christian extreme generosity isn’t about social status.  Jesus was the son of a carpenter from a provincial town of Judea.  Crucifixion was a degrading means of execution.  Jesus frequently disparaged prayers and pious acts intended to garner social acclaim.[11]  The distinction between outer and inner generosity is crucial in Christian understanding.  That distinction is also crucial for fully understanding Decameron X.3.

Accumulating material wealth, dissipating human sense of divine favor, and powerful new communication technologies are increasing the price of self-esteem and social status relative to material goods.  The dehumanization of materialism and consumerism is becoming less of a personal risk.  The social position of nobles and courtiers is being democratized.  Competition for social status encourages disconnection between the outer and inner person. Decameron X.3 provides a critical perspective on new personal risks in the Facebook-Twitter-smartphone social economy.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, Day 10, Story 3 (story of Nathan and Mithridanes), from Italian trans. Rebhorn (2013) p. 763.  The narrator is Filostrato.  In Boccaccio’s text, Mitridanes represents Mithridanes.  All subsequent quotes are from id., unless otherwise noted.

[2] The southwestern Eurasian tribal value of generosity is not surprisingly an aspect of Jewish tradition.  The prophet Isaiah in Hebrew scripture expressed that value:

All you who are thirsty,
come to the water!
You who have no money,
come, receive grain and eat;
Come, without paying and without cost,
drink wine and milk!

Isaiah 55:1.  The underlying idea is that the Lord is a good (generous) host.

[3] The Roman deity Mithras was the focus of a popular Roman cult.

[4] Saadi Shirazi, Bustan, ll. 306-342, from Persian trans. Clarke (1879) in Crane (1921) pp. 212-14, and Edwards (1911) Ch. II (Concerning Benevolence), “Story of Hatim and the Messenger Sent to Kill Him.”  Hatim Tai is more properly transliterated as Ḥātim al-Ṭāʾī.  It is found variously transliterated as Chatemthai, Chatemtai, and Hatam Taei.  Hatim was of the Tayy tribe of Arabia.

[5] Readers can easily interpret this story superficially.  Crane (1921) called it a “noble story.” F.W.V. Schmidt, writing in Berlin in 1818, declared:

The sentiment in this divine story so far exceeds all the bounds of the most daring fancy of our ancient and modern times, that one cannot help thinking that this work of fiction had its source in the sunny plains of the Orient, and was the offspring of a bright and peaceful mind.

Cited in id. pp. 196-7.

[6] 1001 Nights, Night 271, from Arabic trans Lyons (2008) vol, 1, p. 885.  The text is Calcutta 1839-42 (Calcutta II, also called Macnaghten).  According to Geert Jan van Gelder, earlier versions of the story are found in Ibn Qutaybah (d. 889), al-Shi`r wa-l-shu`ara’ (ed. Shakir, 249), in al-Mas`udi (d. 956), Muruj al-dhahab (ed. Charles Pellat, ii, 298-99 = para. 1213-14), and a little later, with two versions, in Abu l-Faraj al-Isfahani, al-Aghani (ed.Cairo) xvii, 374-75, 392.

[7] Examples of pre-Islamic odes (qasā’id) that describe killing a camel and sharing a meal of its meat are the Muʻallaqah of Imruʼ al-Qays and the Lāmiyyat al-‘Arab.

[8] Abū l-Ḥakam al-Maghribī, Maʿarrat al-bayt (The Domestic Scandal), written in twelfth-century Damascus, provides a light-hearted view of the hardships of a hospitable host.  In the penultimate line, the host concludes:

At other people’s places drinking
Is better, in my way of thinking.

From Arabic trans. van Gelder (forthcoming).

[9] John 15:12.

[10] John 15:13.

[11] E.g. Matthew 6:1-18, Mark 12:40.

[image] Portrait of a Bolognese Gentleman in a Fur-lined Coat, c. 1523-25, by Giuliano Bugiardini (Italian, 1475-1554).  The Walters Art Museum, 37.1101.  Special thanks to the Walters for their leadership in making art accessible worldwide on the Internet.

References:

Crane, Thomas Frederick. 1921.  “The Sources of Boccaccio’s Novella of Mitridanes and Natan (Decameron X, 3).”  The Romanic Review 12(3): 193-215.

Edwards, A. Hart, trans. 1911. The Bustān of Sadi. London: J. Murray.

Gelder, Geert Jan van. “Abū l-Ḥakam al-Maghribī, Maʿarrat al-bayt (‘The Domestic Scandal’).”  Forthcoming in A Literary History of Medicine: “The Best Accounts of the Classes of Physicians” by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (d. 1270).  University of Oxford & University of Warwick.

Lyons, Malcolm C. 2008. The Arabian nights: tales of 1001 nights. vols. 1-3. London: Penguin.

Rebhorn, Wayne A., trans. 2013. Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

COB-97: training essential for bureaucracy

University of Bologna, interior

The machinery of bureaucracy depends on a trained workforce.  Modern societies have thus established special educational institutions.  In these institutions, uneducated young persons are grouped together so that they can better learn from each other.  The young persons are separated from the workforce so as to avoid real-world distractions.  They are then passed through courses and requirements.  That makes them certified as educated throughout their subsequent working lives.  While traditional educational institutions have considerable bureaucratic merit, they no longer suffice for the needs of today’s bureaucracies.

Today’s bureaucracy must be a learning organization.  Learning must be added to the job description of every person in the bureaucracy.  Every document created within the bureaucracy, including substantive emails copied to more than five persons, must have a separate learning section describing the learning associated with the document.  Highlighting the importance of learning, many organizations are establishing Chief Learning Officers to supervise and coordinate learning.

In today’s online, digital world, learning is necessary to maintain business advantage.  Consider DAFTA’s implementation of online timekeeping for its employees.  DAFTA (Document Assembly/Fastenings Trade Association) is the leading Washington-based trade association for the manufacturers of document clasps, paper clips, staples, and related office document technologies.  Until last year, DAFTA employees had punched-hole timecards.  They also wrote out on paper requests for sick time and vacation time.  After being informed of the advent of the new online, digital world, DAFTA’s leadership decided to implement an online, digital timekeeping system.

DAFTA’s implementation of online timekeeping nearly failed from lack of attention to learning.  Employees struggled to figure out how to use the online timekeeping system.  That raised the question of the proper time code to use to record time spent trying to figure out how to use the online timekeeping system.  No one knew.  Several meetings about the issue raised the question of how to record time spent trying to figure out how to record time spent trying to figure out how to use the online timekeeping system.

With the situation threatening to spiral out of control, the Chief Learning Officer stepped in and pointed out the need for training.  She established a new, online training course on how to use the new timekeeping system.  The training course had a special training module addressing how to record time spent discussing how to record time spent trying to figure out to use the new timekeeping system.  Employees, however, couldn’t figure out how to register for the new online training course.

Emphasizing the importance of training, the Chief Learning Officer set up a new training course on how to register for training courses.  Colleges champion “learning how to learn,” she declared, “we will train how to train.”  The Chief Learning Officer coordinated with the Chief Data Officer to establish a schema for collecting data on registrations for the training course on how to register for training courses.  The DAFTA Head, recognizing the importance of big data and being a data-driven organization, agreed to allow one year for data to accumulate on registrations for the training course on how to register for training courses.  She also allowed employees to use the old punchcard and paper timekeeping system in the interim.  The Chief Learning Officer thus transformed DAFTA into a learning organization.  You can do the same for your organization!

That’s all for this month’s Carnival of Bureaucrats.  Enjoy previous bureaucratic carnivals here.  Nominations of posts to be considered for inclusion in next month’s carnival should be submitted using Form 376: Application for Bureaucratic Recognition.

Theophrastus’s Golden Book on Marriage: Jerome’s creativity

The late-fourth-century Christian ascetic and scholar Jerome had such extraordinary literary creativity that scholars to this day have barely recognized his genius.  Jerome wove Christian scripture, non-Christian Greco-Roman literature, and the work of early Christian thought leaders into innovative, outrageous, transgressive forms.  One of Jerome’s greatest and most influential works, Theophrastus’ Golden Book on Marriage {Aureolus liber de nuptiis}, has been so badly misunderstood that many scholars believe that Theophrastus, Aristotle’s successor at the Athenian lyceum, wrote it.  Theophrastus’ Golden Book on Marriage is a sophisticated literary artifice.  Written by Jerome from his personal perspective as a man, Theophrastus’ Golden Book on Marriage inconceivably tells women what men want.[1]

Golden Book, after that of Theophrastus

With remarkable daring, Jerome addressed Theophrastus’ Golden Book to women.  Theophrastus’ book occurs as a small section in Jerome’s voluminous treatise, Against Jovinian {Adversus Jovinianum}.  Jerome sought in Adversus Jovinianum to confute a theologian’s claim that “virgin maidens, widows, and married women {virgines, viduas, et maritatas}” have statuses of equal merit as Christians.  Immediately before citing Theophrastus’ Golden Book, Jerome declares:

What am I to do when the women of our time press me with apostolic authority, and before the first husband is buried, repeat continually the precepts that allow a second marriage? Since they despise the fidelity which Christian purity dictates, let them at least learn chastity from the heathen.

{ quid faciam, cum mihi mulieres nostri temporis, Apostoli ingerant auctoritatem; et necdum elato funere prioris viri, memoriter digamiae praecepta decantent? Ut quae Christianae pudicitiae despiciunt fidem, discant saltem ab Ethnicis castitatem. }[2]

Jerome thus constructed Theophrastus’ Golden Book as instruction for women.  As Aristotle’s successor in leading the Athenian lyceum, Theophrastus was an eminent classical philosophical authority.  Through Theophrastus, Jerome provided authoritative heathen teaching for women.

Jerome introduced Theophrastus’ Golden Book with a parody of wisdom attributed to Solomon.  Solomon is traditionally identified as the author of the biblical book Proverbs.  Like the biblical book Sirach, Proverbs concludes with a Hebrew acrostic.  Proverbs’ concluding acrostic has a genre that was probably as popular in the ancient world as it is today: an encomium to the strong, independent woman.  The first and last two lines of Proverbs’ encomium carry its main points:

A woman of strength, who can find?
Her price is greater than rubies.

Comeliness is deceit and beauty a vapor,
but a woman who fears the Lord — she will be praised.
Give her the fruit of her hands,
and let her deeds praise her in the gates.

{ אֵשֶׁת־חַיִל מִי יִמְצָא וְרָחֹק מִפְּנִינִים מִכְרָהּ׃

שֶׁקֶר הַחֵן וְהֶבֶל הַיֹּפִי אִשָּׁה יִרְאַת־יְהוָה הִיא
תִתְהַלָּל׃
תְּנוּ־לָהּ מִפְּרִי יָדֶיהָ וִיהַלְלוּהָ בַשְּׁעָרִים מַעֲשֶׂיהָ׃
}[3]

Proverbs’ strong woman works outside the home, independently of her husband, in the breadwinner role that traditionally has been imposed on men as their exclusive, natural burden.

Jerome reconfigured the values of the Proverbs encomium to the strong, independent woman.  Jerome artfully declares:

Theophrastus’s book about marriage is said to be gold. In it he asks whether a wise man should marry. And after specifying that, yes, occasionally a wise man might venture on marriage — if the woman is beautiful, of good character, and honorable parentage, and he himself healthy and rich. But he immediately concludes, “All these things rarely coexist in a marriage. Therefore, a wise man should not marry.”

{ Fertur aureolus Theophrasti liber de nuptiis, in quo quaerit, an vir sapiens ducat uxorem. Et cum definisset, si pulchra esset, si bene morata, si honestis parentibus, si ipse sanus ac dives, sic sapientem aliquando inire matrimonium, statim intulit: “Haec autem in nuptiis raro universa concordant. Non est ergo uxor ducenda sapienti.” }[4]

Because the woman that Proverbs praises is actually rare, Theophrastus’ book is worth its weight in gold.  It prevents a mistaken evaluation of the worth of a wife.  Proverbs disparages the value of a wife’s beauty and emphasizes her earning potential.  But if a man is already rich, a woman’s earning potential has little marginal value to him in marriage.  Theophrastus’ book highlights a woman’s beauty and her social status.  In addition, the husband being healthy alludes to him being able to exercise fully the sexual opportunities that marriage potentially provides.  In short, Jerome through Theophrastus instructs Christian women that the Proverbs encomium to the strong, independent woman is bunk.[5]

Jerome also reconfigured in non-Christian terms the Christian gospel’s wisdom about serving two masters.  The gospel of Matthew declares:

No one can serve two masters: for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

{ οὐδεὶς δύναται δυσὶ κυρίοις δουλεύειν ἢ γὰρ τὸν ἕνα μισήσει καὶ τὸν ἕτερον ἀγαπήσει ἢ ἑνὸς ἀνθέξεται καὶ τοῦ ἑτέρου καταφρονήσει οὐ δύνασθε θεῷ δουλεύειν καὶ μαμωνᾷ }[6]

Jerome explains:

For in the first place marriage impedes his study of philosophy, nor can anyone serve both books and his wife.

{ Primum enim impediri studia Philosophiae; nec posse quemquam libris et uxori pariter inservire. }

Books here substitute for seeking God, and a wife, for seeking wealth.  Jerome immediately expands satirically the latter point:

Many things are necessary for married women’s practices: expensive clothes, gold, gems, shopping sprees, maids, all kinds of furniture, litters, and a gilt two-wheeled chariot.

{ Multa esse quae matronarum usibus necessaria sint, pretiosae vestes, aurum, gemmae, sumptus, ancillae, supellex varia, lecticae et esseda deaurata. }

Jerome also represents the reversal of love and hate.  He describes the wife’s jealousy of others and the husband’s attempts to establish friendships with others.  Jerome observes:

A wife suspects that her husband’s love goes the same way as her hate.

{ Alterius amorem, suum odium suspicatur. }

In Jerome’s creative allegory, just as marriage impedes a non-Christian from pursuing learning, marriage also impedes a Christian from serving God.

Biblical wisdom presents contrasting views of women.  Chapter 26 of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) alternates twice between describing the wicked wife and the good wife.  The obvious question is how to get a good wife rather than a wicked one.  Jerome through Theophrastus reasons:

There is no choosing a wife, but one has whatever comes along. If she has a temper, if she is foolish, malformed, proud, smelly, whatever vice it is, we learn it only after the wedding. A horse, a donkey, a bull, a dog, and the most worthless slaves, even clothes and kettles, a wooden stool, a goblet, and an earthen pitcher all are tested first and then bought or not. Only a wife is not shown, so that she should not displease before she is wed.

{ nulla est uxoris electio, sed qualiscumque obvenerit, habenda. Si iracunda, si fatua, si deformis, si superba, si fetida, quodcumque vitii est, post nuptias discimus. Equus, asinus, bos, canis, et vilissima mancipia, vestes quoque, et lebetes, sedile ligneum, calix, et urceolus fictilis probantur prius, et sic emuntur: sola uxor non ostenditur, ne ante displiceat, quam ducatur. }

Jerome through Theophrastus thus instructs women about men’s reluctance to marry.  Men cannot distinguish between good and bad women before marriage.[7]  Out of respect for men’s lack of knowledge, even a woman who believes herself to be good should not urge a man to marry her.

With Theophrastus’ Golden Book, Jerome displayed his mastery of Juvenal’s towering classical work of men sexed protests.  Like Juvenal, Jerome through Theophrastus protests wives’ rule of the household.[8]  Juvenal’s mimesis of a wife’s words is stilted and tendentious, with a style little different from his rhetorical questions.[9]  Jerome’s mimesis of a wife’s words is more realistic and more comic:

Talkative complaints occur throughout the night. “That woman looks so much prettier when she goes out. This one is honored by everyone. When women get together, they despise me as a miserable little woman.  Why were you staring at the woman next door?  What were you talking about with the maid?  What did you bring home from the forum? I am not allowed to have a male friend or companion.”

{ per noctes totas garrulae conquestiones: “Illa ornatior procedit in publicum: haec honoratur ab omnibus, ego in conventu feminarum misella despicior. Cur aspiciebas vicinam? quid cum ancillula loquebaris? de foro veniens quid attulisti? Non amicum habere possumus, non sodalem.” }[10]

Jerome makes similar points of protest to Juvenal, but in a more refined, more charitable way.  In protesting wives’ sexual relations with household eunuchs, Juvenal graphically describes a young man getting his testicles torn off so as to serve better sexually the mistress of the house.  Jerome more decorously mentions, “her eunuch, gelded to prolong her pleasure and to make it safe {in longam securamque libidinem exsectus spado}.”  Juvenal describes wives brutally flogging household servants.[11]  Jerome merely hints discretely about workplace sexual harassment:

Upon whomever she sets her heart, they must have her love though they want her not.

{ Quoscumque illa dilexerit, ingratis amandi. }[12]

Juvenal graphically describes wives sneaking out at night to work in brothels and having sex with gladiators.  Juvenal also describes men having consensual sex with other men’s wives as if those men were brutish attackers:

Meanwhile her adulterer lurks, kept separate and hidden.
impatiently he maintains silence in the delay and draws back his foreskin.

{ abditus interea latet et secretus adulter,
inpatiensque morae silet et praeputia ducit. }[13]

Jerome, in contrast, more charitably recognizes men’s attractive qualities:

If a wife is beautiful, she quickly takes lovers. If she’s ugly, she readily desires them. It’s difficult to guard what many love, yet it’s annoying to possess what no one thinks worth having. The misery of having an unshapely wife, however, is less than that of protecting a shapely one. Nothing is safe for which the whole population sighs and prays. One man entices with his shape, another with his ingenuity, another with his wit, another with gift-giving. Somehow or sometime, that would be captured which is continually attacked on all sides.

{ Pulchra cito adamatur, foeda facile concupiscit. Difficile custoditur, quod plures amant. Molestum est possidere, quod nemo habere dignetur. Minore tamen miseria deformis habetur, quam formosa servatur. Nihil tutum est, in quod totius populi vota suspirant. Alius forma, alius ingenio, alius facetiis, alius liberalitate sollicitat. Aliquo modo, vel aliquando expugnatur, quod undique incessitur. }

Juvenal suggests as an alternative to a wife a boy sex-object.[14]  Jerome more humanely suggests a faithful servant, friends, and relatives.  Juvenal elaborates at length about wives’ propensities toward superstition and willingness to poison their husbands.[15]  Jerome addresses these problems briefly and pragmatically.  In a key symbolic gesture, Jerome refers to a good and kind wife as “a rare bird {rara avis}.”  He thus cites Juvenal’s description of a suitable wife as “a rare bird on this earth, exactly like a black swan {rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cycno}.”[16]  Jerome, with brevity and graciousness, trumped Juvenal in addressing marriage in this earthly life.

Within Theophrastus’ Golden Book on Marriage, Jerome also poignantly points to a greater life.  Describing a husband’s solicitude for a good and kind wife, Jerome declares:

When she gives birth, we groan with her. When she’s in danger, we’re tormented with her.

{ cum parturiente gemimus, cum periclitante torquemur. }

The husband experiences continually being with his wife.  Jerome implicitly recognizes the good of that experience with an abrupt shift to describing an alternate experience:

A wise man can never be alone.  He has with him all men who are and who have ever been good, and he turns his free mind wherever he likes.  What his body cannot do, he embraces in this thought.  And if he lacks men with whom to speak, he speaks with God.  He will never be less alone than when he is alone.

{ Sapiens autem numquam solus esse potest. Habet secum omnes qui sunt, qui umquam fuerunt boni, et animum liberum quocumque vult, transfert. Quod corpore non potest, cogitatione complectitur. Et si hominum inopia fuerit, loquitur cum Deo. Numquam minus solus erit, quam cum solus erit. } [17]

Jerome thus described his experience of Christian ascetic life.  Jerome’s Christian ascetic life encompassed strenuous scholarly study and writing.  Wealthy women who admired and patronized Jerome provided vital support for his scholarly study and writing.  Jerome concluded Theophrastus’ Golden Book with fitting words for patrons:

To spend your money well while you are still alive would be a more certain inheritance than to leave what you acquired by your own hard work to be used for who knows what.

{ Licet certior haereditas sit; dum advivis, bene abuti substantia tua, quam tuo labore quaesita in incertos usus relinquere. }

Juvenal’s satire is all bite.  Jerome made with Juvenal’s satire a much greater work.  Theophrastus’ Golden Book on Marriage explains to women the value of men’s Christian ascetic life.  It also suggests to wealthy women that they should financially support men in Christian ascetic life.[18]

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Theophrastus’s Golden Book on Marriage {Aureolus liber de nuptiis} was widely disseminated throughout medieval Europe. For a survey of influence, Schmitt (1972) pp. 259-68. De nuptiis was “by far the most important Theophrastan text known to the Middle Ages.” Id. p. 259. De nuptiis was incorporated in John of Salisbury’s influential Policraticus, Bk. 8, Ch. 11. For an English translation, Pike (1938) pp. 356-8. John wrote Policraticus about 1159.

In 1195, Lotario Dei Segni, the future Pope Innocent III, wrote On the Misery of the Human Condition {De Miseria Condicionis Humane}. He included in section I.16 text from Theophrastus’s Aureolus liber de nuptiis. See Lewis (1978) pp. 118-22, 290. De Miseria Condicionis Humane also included a witty reformulation of biblical injunction:

Who could ever tolerate a rival calmly? Mere suspicion strongly distresses the jealous man, for even though it is written, “They shall be two in one flesh,” still the jealousy of man does not endure two men in one flesh.

{ Quis unquam equanimiter potuit sustinere rivalem? Sola suspicio zelotipum vehementer affligit, nam licet scriptum sit, “Erunt duo in carne una,” zelus tamen viri duos in una carne non patitur. }

Id. pp. 122-3. Cf. Genesis 2:24. Throughout the Middle Ages, De Miseria Condicionis Humane was a highly popular and influential text.  However, men’s aversion to being cuckolded now tends to be disparaged.

Jerome has not been credited with writing Theophrastus’s Aureolus liber de nuptiis.  The most extensive recent scholarly analysis of Jerome’s satire takes literally Jerome’s claim that Theophrastus wrote that book.  It also provides this fine piece of learned, ingenuous analysis:

Bickel explained the resemblances between Juvenal and the extract from Theophrastus as follows: when Jerome was copying Theophrastus from Porphyry, memories of Juvenal’s sixth satire entered his mind and he added these reminiscences to the extract … These views were seriously challenged by J. van Wageningen, who explained the apparent reminiscences of Juvenal by the theory that Jerome derived the ecloga Theophrasti from Seneca’s De matrimonio, which was also used by Juvenal in composing his sixth satire.  Van Wageningen’s argument takes too little account of Bickel’s cogent demonstration that the ecloga Theophrasti shows numerous traces of Jerome’s own Latin style. … In praise of Jerome, however, it may be said that if he had not admitted that Theophrastus’ attack on women was not his own original work, the reader would hardly have guessed it, so markedly is his adaptation of the passage stamped with his own satiric style.

Weisen (1964) pp. 153-5.  A scholarly work published in 1997 and focusing on Chaucer wisely observed:

the evidence suggests strongly that no such book {Aureolus liber de nuptiis} ever existed in Greek and that it was Jerome who composed it and simply invented the ascription.

Hanna & Lawler (1997) p. 8.  In a magisterial commentary on Jerome’s Booklet on maintaining virginity {Libellus de Virginitate Servanda} (Letter 22, to Eustochium), a leading scholar of Jerome greatly disparaged Jerome’s creativity:

Jerome’s brilliance often turns out to be no more than the glitter of pilfered tinsel.  … Any meretricious formulation that caught Jerome’s eye was memorized for redeployment later … Jerome recognized the limitations of his own intellectual ability: he knew that he was not really capable of independent and creative thought. … it is precisely originality of form which is often lacking in Jerome. … Jerome’s own contribution to the debate {about virginity} is often tasteless and bizarre.

Adkin (2003) pp. 2-5.  Properly attributing to Jerome Theophrastus’s Aureolus liber de nuptiis should help to correct that mistaken evaluation.

[2] Jerome, Against Jovinian {Adversus Jovinianum}, I.47, Latin text from Migne (1845), English translation (modified slightly) from Freemantle (1892) p. 846.  Jerome was confuting Jovinian.  Jerome’s quotation of Jovinian’s claim is in I.3. Subsequent quotes from Adversus Jovinianum have the same Latin source.

[3] Proverbs 31:10, 31:30-1, Hebrew text from Blue Letter Bible, English trans. from Fox (2009) pp. 888-9.  The above English translation presents the Hebrew lines as paired English lines.

[4] Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum, I.47, trans. (modified) from Hanna & Lawler (1997) p. 150.  This translation is similar to that in Freemantle (1892) p. 846.  All subsequent quotations of Jerome, unless otherwise noted, are from Adversus Jovinianum, I.47 (Theophrastus’s Aureolus liber de nuptiis), sourced similarly.

[5] Solomon and Marcolf, a work widespread in fifteenth-century Europe, similarly challenges and parodies the wisdom of Solomon.

[6] Matthew 6:24, Luke 16:13.

[7] Many men today attempt to learn about a women through cohabitation before marriage.  Such an approach has serious problems with incentives and ecological relevance.  It also ignores the significance of marital law.  In any case, non-marital cohabitation was less feasible in the fourth century because fewer men and women had the resources to maintain households separate from their families.  Cohabitation choices had then broader social significance.

[8] Cf. Juvenal, Satires 6, ll. 149-52, 210-24.

[9] Consider, for example this dialog between husband and wife:

{wife} “Crucify that slave.”
{husband} “What crime has he committed to deserve punishment? Who says they witnessed it? Who accused him? Give him a hearing!  No hesitation is ever long enough when a person’s life is at stake.”
{wife} “You idiot! Is a slave a person?  All right, let’s accept that he hasn’t done anything.  But it’s my wish and my command.  Let my will be reason enough.”

{ “pone crucem servo.” “meruit quo crimine servus
supplicium? quis testis adest? quis detulit? audi;
nulla umquam de morte hominis cunctatio longa est.”
“o demens, ita servus homo est? nil fecerit, esto:
hoc volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas.” }219-23

Juvenal, Satires 6, ll. 219-23, Latin text and English translations (modified slightly) from Braund (2004) p. 253. Subsequent quotes from Juvenal are similarly sourced.

[10] Jerome is thus an unappreciated father of the scintillating dialogue in the medieval (c. 1400) French work 15 Joys of Marriage.

[11] Juvenal, Satires 6, ll. 366-78 (man having testicles torn off).  Here’s discussion of the sexual merits of eunuchs in Juvenal.  Id. ll. 474-93 (wife flogging household servants).

[12] Jerome, Adversus Jovinianum, I.47, trans. (modified) from Fremantle (1892) p. 847.  Hanna & Lawler (1997), p. 152, has for this line:

Those whom she loves must be loved in return, whether they want to or not.

That translation has similar meaning, but is more obscure.

[13] Juvenal, Satires 6, ll. 237-8.

[14] Juvenal, Satires 6, ll. 33-7.

[15] Juvenal, Satires 6, ll. 542-91 (superstition), ll. 659-61 (poisoning husband).

[16] Juvenal, Satires 6, ll 165.

[17] In describing ascetic life in Aureolus liber de nuptiis, Jerome refers to loneliness and “what with his body he cannot do {quod corpore non potest}.” That may allude to consolations of companionship and sex that some husbands experience in marriage.

[18] Not all men favor Christian ascetic life.  A leading scholar of Jerome observed:

Despite all his austerities J.’s {Jerome’s} mind still seethed with lust.

Adkin (2003) p. 59.  In other words, Jerome had sexuality like that of an ordinary, healthy man.  Nonetheless, Jerome chose a Christian ascetic life.  Women can show love for men who do not choose such a life by taking care of them sexually in addition to financially supporting them.  That would be enough for most men.  Most men don’t demand to have it all.

[image] Modified version of Binding from Five Poems (increased color saturation, intensified highlights). Original 16th century Persia, The Walters Art Museum, W.610.binding.  Thanks to the Walters for preserving this binding and sharing liberally an image of it.

References:

Adkin, Neil. 2003. Jerome on Virginity: a commentary on the Libellus de virginitate servanda (Letter 22). Cambridge: Francis Cairns.

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

Fox, Michael V. 2009.  Proverbs 10-31: a new translation with introduction and commentary.  The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries. Vol. 18B. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Freemantle, William Henry, trans. 1892.  The Principal Works of St. Jerome.  Philip Schaff, ed. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd Series, vol. 6. Oxford: Parker.

Hanna, Ralph and Traugott Lawler, eds. 1997. Jankyn’s book of wikked wyves. Vol. 1: The Primary Texts (with translations). Walter Map’s Dissuasio; Theophrastus’ De Nuptiis; selections from Jerome’s Adversus Jovinianum. University of Georgia Press: Athens.

Lewis, Robert E., ed. and trans. 1978. Lotario Dei Segni {later named Pope Innocent III}. De miseria condicionis humane. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press.

Pike, Joseph B., trans. 1938. John of Salisbury. Frivolities of courtiers and footprints of philosopher: Being a transaltion of the first, second, and third books and selections from the seventh and eighth books of the Policraticus of John of Salisbury. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.

Schmitt, Charles B. 1972. “Theophrastus in the Middle Ages.” Viator. 2: 251-270.

Wiesen, David S. 1964. St. Jerome as a satirist: a study in Christian Latin thought and letters. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press.

William, Nastagio, Federigo: ignorant men in love

Before the scientific advances of sexual selection field reports, men in love lived in ignorant self-abasement.  Many men still do.[1]  Empirical science alone cannot produce loving enlightenment.  To move beyond the dark ages of chivalric self-abasement, men must understand the stories of William, Nastagio, and Federigo.

William, said to be a bright, young man, desired his master’s wife.  She was beautiful:

She was exceeding beautiful.
the wild flowers blooming on the hill,
the lily flower, the rose of May —
she was more beautiful than they.

The narrator, undoubtedly like William, let her bodily beauty lead him to where a beautiful women’s beauty naturally leads men:

For when her hair was left untied,
it shone so bright that anyone
who saw would swear that it was spun
from purest gold.  Her forehead shone
like finely cut and polished stone,
her eyebrows brown and widely spread,
her eyes were laughing in her head,

{continuing down through nose, mouth, chin, throat}
her breast were round as little apples,
firm and small with little nipples,
there’s nothing more for me to say:
to lead men’s hearts and minds astray [2]

Men who aspire to be more than beasts understand and respect their own sexuality.  Appreciating a young, beautiful woman’s physical attractiveness doesn’t require a man to be subjugated by it.

William was both stupid and timid.  He stayed in his beloved’s household for seven years, pining away in love for her, never saying a word to her.  Finally he accosted her:

William looked long and longingly
upon her, then he said, “Hello.”

No, no, no.  “Lady, go make me a sandwich” would have been better.  Even worse, William then deployed a stock tactic of a love-struck adolescent:

“Lady, I beg of you, pay heed
to what I ask of you.  I need
your counsel.  Tell me what you’d say ….”
— “Of course I’ll give it.  Ask away.”
— “If clerk, or knight of high degree,
or someone from the bourgeoisie
should fall in love — or even a squire —

What would your opinion be
if he has loved her seven years
and kept it hidden and he fears
still to tell her anything —
what martyrdom he’s suffering —
and yet he still could tell his love
if only he were brave enough
and the occasion would appear
to open up his heart to her,
and what I really wish I knew
is what you think he ought to do
and whether he does right or wrong
to keep his love from her so long.”

She declared that the hypothetical lover should bravely tell his love.  She also said of the beloved:

She’d have to pity the poor man.
It would be very foolish of her
not to accept the love he’s offered
and one day wish to God she had. [3]

William moaned and sighed and then said, “Lady, behold the man.”[4] The lady asked if he were joking and then told him to shut up and get out.  The lady was false to her counsel.  She was true to human nature.  Women naturally don’t desire sexually pathetic men.

William nearly killing himself stirred the lady’s desire.  William announced a starvation strike for love:

Kill me and get it over with.
Listen, I asked for your love.
I beg a gift, and I will prove
my need for it.  I will not eat
until the day that you see fit. [5]

Since pathetically abasing himself didn’t work to stir the lady’s love, William resolved to abase himself even further.  He refused to eat until the lady acknowledged his love.  That’s not a rational response to the lesson of experience.  Only within the conventions of chivalric fiction is such a tactic ever successful.  So it was here.  The lady and his master implored William to eat.  Without acknowledgement of his love, William resolutely refused to eat, sweating and trembling, with every limb filled with pain, potentially facing death at the hand of his master for desiring his wife should she acknowledge his love.  His suffering and bravery stirred the lady’s sexual desire.

falcon with kill

The lady arranged to cuckold her husband with doublespeak.  She said that William was sick to death with desire for his master’s faucon.  The master readily granted his faucon to William to save his life.  Faucon is Old French for falcon.  Faucon can also be interpreted as “false cunt.”  The lady understood faucon to mean both falcon and false cunt.  Her husband gave his falcon to William, and she gave herself to William.  William instantly became well.  In representing herself as a false cunt, she made effective for William the counsel that she had betrayed.

Boccaccio, who was keenly concerned about men in love, seems to have responded to William of the Falcon with two adjacent stories in the Decameron.  In Decameron 5.8, Nastagio degli Onesti nearly squandered his fortune unsuccessfully seeking the love of a beautiful, young woman.  At times Nastagio was so filled with despair about his unrequited love that he wanted to commit suicide.  Lost in a pine forest, Nastagio had a Dantesque vision of a beautiful, young women, completely naked, running from two ferocious dogs and a knight.  Nastagio intervened to defend the woman.  The knight explained that both he and the woman were spirits undergoing God-ordained punishments:

I, who once loved her so dearly, was to pursue her as my mortal enemy rather than the woman I once loved.  And every time I catch up to her, I kill her with this same sword with which I slew myself {in love suicide}. Then I rip open her back, and as you are about to see for yourself, I tear from her body that cold, hard heart of hers, which neither love nor pity could ever penetrate, and together with the rest of her inner organs, I give it to these dogs to eat.  In a short space of time, as the justice and power of God ordain, she rises up as if she never died and begins her woeful flight all over again, with the dogs and me in pursuit. [6]

Nastagio, although full of pity and fear from the vision, realized that it could be useful to him.  He arranged to have the woman he loved see the vision.  Realizing the lady’s words to William in William of the Falcon, the lady in Boccaccio’s story understood:

She’d have to pity the poor man.
It would be very foolish of her
not to accept the love he’s offered
and one day wish to God she had. [7]

She thus agreed to marry Nastagio.  They lived happily ever after.  In William of the Falcon, the bravery of a man enduring extreme, self-imposed suffering stirred the lady to sexual desire.  In Boccaccio’s more humane story, the lady’s vision of her own future suffering from rejecting a man’s love stirred her to accept his love.

In the subsequent story in the Decameron, the man in love gives up his falcon but gets the false cunt.  Filomena, who narrates this story, declares that it “partly resembles the preceding one.”  Like Nastagio, Federigo was a rich young man profligately and futilely courting a beautiful woman.  Federigo was in love with Monna Giovanna, who was married to a rich man.  Federigo’s courtship left him with nothing but a falcon:

As Federigo continued to spend money well beyond his means, while acquiring nothing from his lady in return, he went through his entire fortune, as can easily happen, and wound up a poor man, left with nothing except a tiny little farm, the income from which was just enough for him to live very frugally, and a single falcon, which was among the finest in the world. … There he would go hunting with his falcon, whenever he could, and without asking assistance from anyone, he bore his poverty with patience. [8]

Monna Giovanna’s husband died.  While spending the summer at their country estate, her son became acquainted with Federigo and his falcon.  The boy happened to fall ill.  He told his mother that he would get better if she would get for him Federigo’s falcon.  Monna Giovanna had never paid any attention to Federigo’s love for her.  But now that she needed a falcon, she decided to visit him personally, invite herself to have dinner with him, and ask him for his falcon.

Federigo responded to Monna Giovanna’s visit with self-abasement and extravagance.  Surprised and delighted by her visit and her self-invitation to dinner, Federigo wanted to “honor the noble lady” with a worthy meal.  But he had nothing suitable, except for his falcon.  He cooked his falcon and served it as dinner for the lady.  That extravagant charity is as false to reason and nature as the rich lady’s surprise visit and self-invitation to dinner at her spurned lover’s poor home.  It’s as false to reason and nature as the son’s claim that getting Federigo’s falcon would cure his illness.

The story ends with intimations of falsity.  Having failed to acquire Federigo’s falcon other than as a piece of dead, cooked meat, Monna Giovanna returned “utterly despondent” to her son.  Her son then died.  That actually was in Monna Giovanna’s material interests, for when her rich husband died:

he left his entire estate to his son, who was still a growing boy, and since he also loved his wife very dearly, he made her his heir in the case that he son would die without lawful issue. [9]

Monna Giovanna wanted to remain a rich widow.  But her brothers pressured her to remarry.  Mona Giovanna recalled “Federigo’s great worth and his last act of generosity, that is his having killed such a splendid falcon in her honor.”  She might more realistically have recalled Federigo as a foolish, self-abasing man who had caused her utter despair.  Monna Giovanna and Federigo married.  Federigo reportedly lived happily ever after:

Federigo, finding himself not just married to the great lady he had loved so dearly, but a very rich man to boot {through his share in Monna Giovanna’s inherited wealth}, managed his fortune more prudently than he had before and lived with her happily to the end of his days. [10]

A profligate man doesn’t plausibly become prudent by marrying a rich widow.  Monna Giovanna treated Federigo selfishly and instrumentally.  Read against William of the Falcon, Monna Giovanna seems like the false cunt, and Federigo, the foolish, self-abasing man.  That doesn’t suggest a happy end for Federigo.

Everyone in the brigata “praised God for having given Federigo the reward he deserved.”[11]  In truth, Federigo undoubtedly received the reward he deserved.  To move beyond self-abasement, men must understand.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

Notes:

[1] Societies have always required men to sacrifice their lives in group-structured men-on-men violence (war).  That discourse colonizes men’s personal lives.  Men come to believe that they must desperately fight for love, rather than be loved for who they are.

[2] William of the Falcon {Guilluame au Faucon}, fabliau, 1st half of the 13th century, from Old French trans. Duval (1982) p. 92 (inc. previous quote).  For alternate English translations, see the Fabliaux English Translation Index.

[3] Id. pp. 94-5 (previous three quotes).

[4] Cf. John 19:5. That parallel suggests that William feels he isn’t guilty of any offense.  He is guilty of fearing to give offense.

[5] Id. p. 97.

[6] Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron, Day 5, Story 8 (story of Nastagio degli Onesti), from Italian trans. Rebhorn (2013) p. 448.  The story of Nastagio degli Onesti is the subject of four paintings that Sandro Botticelli produced in the 1480s.  Botticelli’s paintings focus on the woman.

[7] Guilluame au Faucon, trans Duval (1982) p. 95.

[8] Boccaccio, Decameron, Day 5, Story 9 (story of Federigo degli Alberighi), from Italian trans. Rebhorn (2013) p. 453.

[9] Id.

[10] Id. p. 458. The Bustan of Saadi (written in Persian in 1257) includes a story with some similar features.  The Sultan of Turkey decides to ask Hatim Tai, an Arab renowned for generosity, for his fabulous horse.  But before the messenger conveyed the Sultan of Turkey’s request, Hatim slaughtered his horse because it was all he had to provide a meal for the messenger.  Trans. Edwards (1911) Ch. II (Concerning Benevolence), “Story of Hatim Taei.”  The additional context of courtly love in the Decameron‘s story of Federigo degli Alberighi highlights the sexed structure of self-abasement in generosity.

[11] Introductory sentences to Decameron, Day 5, Story 10, trans. Rebhorn (2013) p. 459.

References:

DuVal, John, trans. and Raymond Eichmann, text, notes, intro. 1982. Cuckolds, clerics, & countrymen: medieval French fabliaux. Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press.

Edwards, A. Hart, trans. 1911. The Bustān of Sadi. London: J. Murray.

Rebhorn, Wayne A., trans. 2013. Giovanni Boccaccio. The Decameron. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.