horse saves foolish, slumbering Raso in De Nugis Curialium

Raso's horse Walraven

Medieval Latin literature recognized that a dog is a man’s best friend. But horses too can be worthy companions for men. Consider the story of Raso in Walter Map’s twelfth-century Latin work De Nugis Curialium.

Raso was a Christian knight. A Muslim emir ruling a neighboring city threatened Raso’s castle. Although the emir had more wealth and men than Raso, through superior fighting spirit Raso and his son successfully defended their castle. They were like the Greeks who beat back the Persians in ancient history.

Raso, an aging widower, married again for strategic advantage. He married a wealthy woman with many allies. She was also very beautiful. Raso loved her dearly and completely trusted her claims of fidelity. He gave his new wife total freedom and total rule over her step-son and his band of skillful fighting men.

One day, the emir and a large number of his knights attacked Raso’s castle. Raso and his son vigorously fought against the emir’s force and took the emir and others as prisoners. With the look of his eyes, the emir, an attractive Muslim youth, captured the love of Raso’s wife. She guilefully took charge of maintaining him in captivity:

She assigned him a separate cell, dark and strongly built, and hung the key of it at her own girdle. She tamed her prisoner by scant measure of food and drink, and the little she thought fit to allow him she cast in to him through the window as if he were a bear. She allowed no one access to him, as if she trusted no one; she knew well that all pride is tamed by hunger. [1]

The Muslim emir, betraying his beliefs, agreed to love Raso’s Christian wife. Raso believed in his wife’s fidelity, but he should have been an unbeliever. The emir and Raso’s wife together fled to the emir’s city. They rode away on Raso’s favorite horse.[2]

Raso realized he had been foolish. He exclaimed:

I am the worst befooled, that in defiance of tales and of history and of the advice of all wise men from the beginning, I trusted myself to a woman.

Raso lost the emir as a prisoner, he lost his wife, and he also lost goods those two had taken with them. But what Raso mourned endlessly without consolation was the loss of his beloved horse.

Seeking to recover his horse, Raso disguised himself as a beggar and sneaked into the emir’s city. Raso’s wife, however, recognized him and betrayed him to the emir. At his wife’s urging, the emir arranged to execute Raso. But Raso’s son learned of the planned execution. From ambush, Raso’s son and his men attacked the execution party, slaughtering many. Raso’s son killed the emir, but his step-mother escaped on his father’s beloved horse. Raso, although saved from death, was disconsolate. He longed to recover his horse.

Again Raso disguised himself as a beggar and entered the city. He overheard a rich knight propositioning Raso’s wife and proposing that they flee. She agreed to meet the rich knight an hour before dawn at the southern gate of the city. Raso went back to his castle, put on his knight’s armor, and took up watch at the southern gate of the city. His wife, sleepless from desire for the rich knight, arrived in the pre-dawn darkness with Raso’s horse. She mistook Raso for her rich knight. Raso mounted his horse and gave her the horse he had brought. He then merrily set off with his horse and his wife.

Unfortunately, Raso was so tired from his long night that he fell asleep on his horse. Leaning on his spear and sleeping, he started to snore. His wife recognized his snore. She also saw the rich knight and his force of men off in the distance. She urgently gestured them to come to her and the snoring Raso. When the rich knight and his force closed in, Raso’s horse, not willing to be taken without a fight, raised his head, neighed, and dug his hooves against the ground. Raso then awoke. He bravely confronted the attack and called to his son, who was patrolling nearby. Raso and his son devastated the rich knight’s force. His son beheaded his step-mother and rode off in triumph. Raso happily returned home on his horse.

A husband must do more than just love his wife. He cannot know for certain what his wife will do. He should always take care to preserve his relationship with his dog or his horse.[2]

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Notes:

[1] De Rasone et eius uxore (Of Raso and his Wife), in Walter Map, De nugis curialium, Dist. 3, c. 4, from Latin trans. James (1983) p. 265. The text notes, “The emir she thought could give her all that an old husband could not.” The subsequent quote is from id. p. 267. The Latin and English translation of this story span id. pp. 262-71. The story of Zetus in Petronius Redivivus (piece VII, Analecta Dublinensia), written in England late in the twelfth or early in the thirteenth century, has considerable similarities with the story of Raso in De nugis curialium. Colker (2007) p. 3.

[2] Cooper (2011), pp. 103-4, comments:

These adventures {of Raso} … are recounted without humour or a sense of irony, but do allow a modern reader — although this is certainly not Map’s intention — to gain a great sympathy for the wife’s decision to run away while perhaps feeling frustrated at so useless a story.

Most modern readers lack sympathy for violence against men or men being incarcerated for nothing more than having consensual sex and being poor. Walther Map had a better sense of humor and irony than have many modern readers.

[image] Elisabeth’s horse Walraven. Horses can be worthy companions for women, too. Thanks to Elisabeth for sharing the image of her horse under a Creative Commons By-2.0 license.

References:

Colker, Marvin L. ed. 2007. Petronius Rediuiuus et Helias Tripolanensis: id est Petronius Rediuiuus quod Heliae Tripolanensis videtur necnon fragmenta (alia) Heliae Tripolanensis. Leiden: Brill.

Cooper, Alan. 2011. “Walter Map on Henry I: The Creation of Eminently Useful History.” Pp. 103-14 in Juliana Dresvina, Nicholas Sparks, and Erik Kooper, eds. 2011. The medieval chronicle VII. International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle. Amsterdam: New York.

James, M. R. trans., C. N. L. Brooke, and R. A. B. Mynors, eds. 1983. Walter Map. De nugis curialium {Courtiers’ trifles}. Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press.

Resus saves medieval Rollo, ignorant of feminine imperative

knight greeting others

The medieval Rollo, an eminent, prosperous knight but ignorant of the feminine imperative, had a beautiful wife. His neighbor, a youth named Resus, fell madly in love with her. She strongly rebuffed his amorous entreaties.

Realizing that he had a much lower sexual market value than Rollo, Resus resolved to improve himself. Ignorant men in the Middle Ages believed in courtly love and ideals of chivalry. Men foolishly thought that valiant acts of violence against other men intrigued women more than jerk-boy attitude towards them. Resus thus proceeded ignorantly:

Now with breathless speed he sought out warfare, took part in all encounters everywhere, learned well the tricks, changes and chances of battle and received the knighthood from Rollo himself … where he {Resus} found a quarrel slackened or slumbering he stirred it up and brought it to a head, or where he did not, he was still the foremost and strongest of all. Superior to all, he soon went beyond the praises of his own neighborhood, and, unsurpassed, burned to attain wider fame. [1]

Despite his impressive feats, his inner man was weak. He wept and mourned and pined for the woman who rejected him. Nothing he did could outweigh his self-degrading, self-pitying attitude toward women. In response, Rollo’s wife repelled and spurned him. She thrust him further down in despair.

Significant developments ignited Rollo’s wife’s love for Resus. One day Resus happened to meet Rollo, his wife, and other eminent persons journeying. Resus briefly joined the traveling party. He conversed courteously with the men. He gave no indication of caring about Rollo’s wife. When he rode away from them, he didn’t look back. Rollo for a long time gazed after him in silent contemplation. Rollo’s wife asked why he was so preoccupied with the departing figure of Resus. Rollo said to her:

I looked with delight on what I wish I could always see, the noble wonder of our time, a man distinguished for birth, beauty, character, wealth, renown, and every earthly gift, and what the book could not find  — at all points blessed.

Love for Resus welled up in Rollo’s wife. When she returned home, she rushed into an inner room. There she wept for having rejected Resus.

Rollo’s wife resolved to seek a tryst with Resus. She sent a messenger to him with her proposition. Inflamed with desire, he came to her. They stole into a secret chamber prepared for their love-making. She said to him:

You are wondering, perhaps, dearest one, what it is that has made me yours all at once after so many harsh repulses. Rollo was the cause: I had not believed common report, but his words — for I know him to be most truthful — persuaded me that you, as far as time, place, and means allow, are wiser than Apollo, kinder than Jove, more lion-like than Mars; nor is there any blessing enjoyed by the gods save immortality which he omitted in your praises. I believed, I confess it, and surrendered, and here with joy I offer you the pleasure you covet. [2]

In other words, she believed that Resus was even more of an alpha male than her husband. She lay down on the bed and beckoned Resus. He, however, suddenly restrained himself. He admired the goodness of Rollo. He recognized that Rollo had in effect given him his wife. Now enlightened, he refused Rollo’s unknowing gift. He refused to cuckold the good man Rollo.

The medieval “good man” was a euphemism for a man who got cuckolded. Some would say today’s Rollo, who seeks to educate men about the feminine imperative, isn’t a good man. Judge for yourself.

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Notes:

[1] De Rollone et eius uxore (Of Rollo and his Wife), in Walter Map, De nugis curialium, Dist. 3, c. 5, from Latin trans. James (1983) p. 273, with my non-substantial adaptations.The subsequent two quotes are similarly from id. pp. 273, 275. The Latin and English translation span id. pp. 270-7.

Walter Map wrote De nugis curialium in the court of Henry II, probably in the early 1180s. The text apparently didn’t circulate. It survives in only one manuscript, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 851 (3041). Id. pp. xxvi, xlv.

Giraldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales) in his Gemma ecclesiastica (Jewel of the church). 2.12, tells a similar story about the French knight Reginald de Pumpuna. Hinton (1917) p. 208. Gerald of Wales presented a copy of Gemma ecclesiastica to Pope Innocent III. Id. Gerald of Wales told a second version of the story of Rasso and Resus. Opera 2.226-8, as noted in James (1983) p. 270, n. 3.

[2] Walter Map, with his keen appreciation for interpersonal relations and feminine psychology, has the lady read the knight’s mind (“You are wondering, perhaps, …”). In Gerald of Wales’s version, the knight explicitly asks the lady why her attitude toward him has reversed. That explicit question also occurs in the similar version in Ser Givoanni Fiorentino’s Il Pecorone (The Blockhead), 1.1. Il Pecorone is a collection of fifty short stories written in Italian between 1378 and 1385. So too for the version in Il Novellino 3.1 (21st novel). Il Novellino, by Masuccio Salernitano (1410–1475), was first published in Naples in 1476. For the text of all these versions, Hinton (1917).

A common feature across all these versions is men’s ignorance of women, women’s privilege in love relations, and the importance of men’s solidarity with each other for constraining women’s dominance. Cf. Mann (2001) pp. 106-7.

[image] Re-enactor in armour at the Tewkesbury Medieval Festival, 13 July 2008. Image by Andy Dolman, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Hinton, James. 1917. “Walter Map and Ser Giovanni.” Modern Philology. 15(4): 203-9.

James, M. R. trans., C. N. L. Brooke, and R. A. B. Mynors, eds. 1983. Walter Map. De nugis curialium {Courtiers’ trifles}. Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press.

Mann, Jill. 2001. “Wife-Swapping in Medieval Literature.” Viator. 32: 93-112.

Gyges & Candaules: controlling men's sexuality and seduction

Candaules covertly shows wife to Gyges

“When a woman takes off her clothes, she takes off her modesty.” That was an old saying in Greece about 2,500 years ago.[1] Ancient authors discussed it with respect to wives’ behavior in the marital bedroom. Yet in its context in the ancient Greek story of Gyges and Candaules, that aphorism concerned controlling men’s strong, visually stimulated sexual desire and seductive power.

A man seeing naked a woman other than his wife was primarily a violation of the social order. In the story of Gyges and Candaules, King Candaules arranged for his favorite bodyguard Gyges to see his queen naked in their bedroom at night. When that occurred, the queen sensed Gyges covertly looking at her. According to an ancient Greek tragedy, the next morning the queen woke the king early and sent him out to provide law for the people. She simultaneously rationalized presenting Gyges with a murderous ultimatum:

when arose the brilliant star, forerunner of the dawn of the first gleam of day, I roused {King} Candaules from bed and sent him forth to deliver law to his people. Ready on my lips was persuasion’s tale, the one that forbids a king, the guardian of his people, to sleep the whole night through. And summoners {have gone to call} Gyges to my presence [2]

She told Gyges to either kill Candaules, seize the throne, and marry her, or be himself killed. Since she proposed that Gyges marry her, the queen wasn’t horrified by the act itself of Gyges seeing her naked. Her concern, like concern about men having sex without being subject to forced financial fatherhood, was that Gyges saw her naked without being married to her. Her concern was to uphold the law controlling men’s sexuality.

Another ancient Greek account of Gyges and Candaules similarly concerns control of men’s sexuality. In Plato’s Republic, an ancestor of Gyges acquired a golden ring of invisibility.[3] He then subverted the sexual-political order:

he immediately contrived to be one of the messengers to the king. When he arrived, he committed adultery with the king’s wife and, along with her, set upon the king and killed him. And so he took over the rule. [4]

Plato undoubtedly knew the story of Gyges seeing the queen naked. The implicit story in Plato’s account is that the ancestor of Gyges saw the queen naked, desired her, and seduced her. Control of what men can see is presented as necessary to control men’s sexuality.[5]

Fear of men’s sexuality informs the aphorism about women’s clothing in Herodotus’s story of Gyges and Candaules. According to Herodotus, an ancient Greek reporter-historian, Candaules continually praised the beauty of his wife’s body. He wanted Gyges to know without doubt the truth of that beauty. Candaules thus urged Gyges to contrive to see her naked. Gyges protested:

Master, what a sick word you have spoken, in bidding me to look upon my lady-lord naked! When a woman takes off her clothes, she takes off her modesty. Men of old discovered many fine things, and among them this one, that each should look upon his own, only. Indeed I believe that your wife is the most beautiful of all women, and I beg of you not to demand of me what is unlawful. [6]

Other authors interpreted the saying about a woman taking off her clothes to be about women’s behavior. Writing in the third century of the Roman Empire, Plutarch, a biographer of Greek philosophers, declared:

Herodotus was not right in saying that a woman lays aside her modesty along with her undergarment. On the contrary, a virtuous woman puts on modesty in its stead, and husband and wife bring into their mutual relations the greatest modesty as a token of the greatest love. [7]

Yet Diogenes Laertius, an influential Greek historian writing in the early years of the Roman Empire, presented a much different judgment. To the wife of Pythagoras, a leading Greek thinker who preceded Herodotus by about a century, Diogenes Laertius attributed contrasting advice:

she recommended a woman, who was going to her husband, to put off her modesty with her clothes, and when she left him, to resume it again with her clothes [8]

Within the story of Gyges and Candaules, the issue isn’t the behavior of a woman. Gyges and Candaules expected that Candaules’s wife wouldn’t perceive that Gyges viewed her naked. In that context, the aphorism about a woman taking off her clothes must relate to a man illicitly and covertly seeing a woman naked. Plato’s account points to a plausible concern. If a man illicitly and covertly sees a naked woman, he will desire her, seduce her, and overturn the sexual-political order. Gyges was self-conscious of his own potential weakness.

In Herodotus’s story, the queen validated legal control of men’s sexuality. Perceiving that Gyges had seen her naked, she responded with emotionless concern for punishment:

though she was so shamed, she raised no outcry nor let on to have understood, having in mind to take punishment on Candaules. [9]

Delivering her murderous ultimatum to Gyges, she declared:

either he that contrived this must die, or you, who have viewed me naked and done what is not lawful {must die}.

The queen could have sought to have both Gyges and Candaules killed. Such vengeance would have detracted from the structure of Greek law controlling men’s sexuality. In ancient Greek understanding, Candaules being killed is the natural result of Gyges seeing Candaules’s wife naked. If law is to prevent that killing, Gyges must be killed.

Although scarcely recognized, social and legal control of men’s sexuality has been harshly oppressive. Men throughout history have been highly vulnerable to charges of rape. Punishment of men for illicit sex has historically been brutal and even included castration. Criminalizing men seducing women has encompassed behaviors far beyond any reasonable understanding of violent threats and acts. Current “child support” laws force enormously oppressive financial fatherhood on men who explicitly consent to nothing more than consensual sex. Broad trends point to even more oppressive social and legal control of men’s sexuality. That will affect significantly the course of human history.

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Notes:

[1] The saying about a woman taking off her clothes occurs within Herodotus’s story of Gyges and Candaules, Histories 1.8.3-4. For detailed philological analysis of that saying, Cairns (1996). My translation of the saying is consistent with a variety of highly knowledgeable translations.

Herodotus describes the saying as one of the fine things that men of old discovered. Id. 1.8.5. Herodotus wrote his Histories in the mid-fifth century BGC. The saying, and the story of Gyges and Candaules, subsequently becoming a common text in Roman rhetorical schools. Smith (1920). For the relation of the story of Gyges and Candaules to folktale motifs, Cohen (2004).

[2] P.Oxy. XXIII 2382, from Greek trans. Page (1951) p. 3. I’ve made insubstantial changes to lessen the awkwardness of dangling phrases. The text is on a re-used papyrus dating to 200 BGC. An alternative translation:

When the radiant dawn arrived
the courier of the day’s first glimmer,
I woke him and from the bedchamber sent him,
to judge the people’s affairs — I had a plan
worthy of consideration, which would not allow
the king to sleep the entire [night …
[to] Gyges’ herald …

Kotlinska-Toma (2015) p. 127, which also provides the Greek text. The translation “I had a plan / worthy of consideration, which would not allow / the king to sleep the entire {night}” seems to me less plausible than “Persuasion’s tale was ready on my lips, the one that forbids a king, the guardian of his people, to sleep the whole night through.” The latter is the verbatim relevant translated text from Page (1951) p. 3. Page’s translation makes sense in the context of the queen waking the king and sending him out to judge the people’s affairs. It also provides a rationalization for the queen having the king killed. In Kotlinska-Toma’s translation, the queen describes to herself obliquely her plan to have the king killed. That seems inconsistent with the queen’s emotional turmoil and her strong actions.

[3] Plato, The Republic Bk. II, 360a-b. The ancestor of Gyges took the golden ring from the finger of a naked corpse lying inside a hollow bronze horse revealed through a thunderstorm and earthquake. Corpse-stripping in the context of these ominous portents suggests a bad man and ill fortune. Plato’s story seems to paint with ill fortune Gyges’s similar, but externally motivated acts.

[4] Plato, The Republic Bk. II, 360a-b, from Greek trans. Bloom (1968) pp. 37-8.

[5] Nicolas of Damascus, perhaps conveying a report from the fifth-century historian Xanthus of Lydia, provides another version of the story of Gyges and Candaules. In Nicolas’s version, Gyges goes to fetch the bride of King Adyattes (King Candaules). The bride is Toudo, daughter of Arnossus, king of the Mysians:

Gyges fell in love with Toudo, lost his head, and tried to force his attentions on her. She declined his advances, threatened him, and told all when she reached the king’s presence.

Nicolas of Damascus, FGRHist 90 F 47, from Greek epitomized in Pedley (1972) p. 16 (no. 35). Candaules then resolved to kill Gyges. But with the help of a female slave in love with him, Gyges killed Candaules in his bedchamber before Candaules could kill Gyges. Gyges then became king, married Toudo, and thus made her his queen.

While Nicolas of Damascus’s version of the story of Gyges and Candaules doesn’t involve a man seeing a woman naked, it does involve a man sexually desiring a young woman after seeing her. Seeing her prompts him to attempt to seduce her. Ultimately, his actions overturn the sexual-political order.

In Xenophon’s Cyropaedia 5.1, Cyrus avoids gazing upon a beautiful woman so as not to be induced to neglect his duties. In Greek myth, men illicitly seeing females naked suffered harsh punishments, e.g. Teiresias blinded for seeing Athena naked, Actaeon tore apart by his hounds for seeing Artemis bathing, Erymanthos blinded for seeing Aphrodite having sex with Adonis. Cohen (2004) Appendix.

[6] Herodotus, Histories 1.8, from Greek trans. adapted from Grene (1987) p. 36. Other translations of the story of Gyges and Candaules (including the above quote) are available here and here.

[7] Plutarch, Moralia, Conjugalia Praecepta 10.1 (Loeb Classical Library, 1928), trans. from Latin, probably originally written in Greek.

[8] Diogenes Laertius, Lives and Opinion of Eminent Philosophers, Life of Pythagoras 22, from Greek trans. C.D. Yonge. Diogenes attributes the advice to Theano, wife of Pythagoras.

[9] Herodotus, Histories 1.10, trans. Grene (1987) p. 37. The subsequent quote is from id. 1.11, p. 37. Herodotus offers a rationalization of the queen’s action apart from specific law:

For among the Lydians and indeed among the generality of the barbarians, for even a man to be seen naked is an occasion of great shame.

1.10.3, trans. id. In Greece, men were commonly naked in public baths and gymnasiums. The queen responds to being seen naked not with passion, but with a rational plan consistent with the law controlling men’s sexuality.

Flory (1987), Ch. 2, interprets the story of Gyges and Candaules as representing accident and unpredictable passion in contrast to Persian reason for war. However, contrast between passion and reason is a fundamental element within the story of Gyges and Candaules itself.

In Herodotus’s Histories, the Persians are generally associated with externalized values — countable objects. Internal values of honor, shame, and culture drive the Greeks. Konstan (1987). Yet men illicitly seeing naked women seems for the Greeks to be primarily a rational matter of maintaining the visual-political order.

[image] Gyges sees Candaules’s wife naked. Painting by William Etty, 1830. Thanks to Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Cairns, Douglas L. 1996. “‘Off with her ΑΙΔΩΣ’: Herodotus 1.8.3–4.” The Classical Quarterly. 46 (1): 78-83.

Cohen, Ivan M. 2004. “Herodotus and the Story of Gyges: Traditional Motifs in Historical Narrative.” Fabula. 45 (1-2): 55-68.

Flory, Stewart. 1987. The archaic smile of Herodotus. Detroit: Wayne State university press.

Grene, David trans. 1987. Herodotus. The history. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Konstan, David. 1987. “Persians, Greeks and Empire.” Arethusa. 20(1): 59-73.

Kotlinska-Toma, Agnieszka. 2015. Hellenistic tragedy: texts, translations and a critical survey. London: Bloomsbury Academic,

Page, D. L. 1951. A new chapter in the history of Greek tragedy. London: Cambridge University Press.

Pedley, John Griffiths. 1972. Ancient literary sources on Sardis. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Smith, Kirby Flower. 1920. “The Literary Tradition of Gyges and Candaules.” The American Journal of Philology. 41 (1): 1-37.

don't believe your wife if she tells you you're dead

peasant with questioning look

Many husbands believe whatever their wives tell them. That’s a mistake. Husbands should learn from a peasant living in Bailleul in thirteenth-century France. His wife told him he was dead. He believed her. As a result, he was cuckolded before his very own, living, seeing eyes.

While the husband was out working in the fields, his stay-at-home wife planned an amorous engagement with a local pastor. She cooked a chicken, baked a cake, and readied some wine for romancing. Unfortunately, her peasant husband returned home early, tired and hungry. His wife’s joyful meal seemed to be spoiled.

Women, however, are far superior to men in guile. Acting out her wish that her husband were dead, to him she said:

Milord, God bless my soul,
How weak and pale you seem to me!
I swear you’re only skin and bone.

Her husband, without understanding, said that he was starving. She responded:

I know for sure you’ll soon be dead;
a truer word you’ll never hear.
Now go to bed; you’re dying, dear.
Oh, woe is me! When you are gone,
I’ll lack the will to carry on,
because you’ll be away so far.
Oh sire, how very pale you are!

She prepared for him a bed of straw and hay in a corner of their one-room home. Then she undressed him, had him lay down with his mouth and eyes closed, and covered him with a sheet. She then lay on top of him and lamented that he was dead:

May God have mercy on your soul!
Oh, how can a wretched wife console
herself, and keep from dying too?

The peasant believed his wife. He believed that he was dead.

His wife then fetched her lover-priest. He came and read some psalms. She beat her palms against her breast, but didn’t manage to weep. The priest then undressed her and laid her down on some straw:

the two of them were soon enmeshed,
with him above and her below.
The peasant saw the whole tableau
while lying underneath the covers;
open eyed he watched the lovers,
clearly saw the straw-sack jumping,
saw as well the chaplain humping,
knew it was the chaplain too,
and raised an awful hullaballoo.

The peasant shouted that if he weren’t dead, he would pummel the priest to hell. The priest sternly instructed the peasant that since he was dead, he should keep his eyes closed. Understanding, but not, the peasant then tried to act dead. Meanwhile, his wife and the priest continued with the activity that creates new life.

Like the peasant from Bailleul, men in general are too willing to accept being consigned to death. In the Middle Ages, stories helped to enlighten men about real life. Those stories are too important to be suppressed today.

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Notes:

The story above recounts Jean Bodel’s thirteenth-century French fabliau, The Peasant from Bailleul (Le vilain de Bailleul). The quotes above are from the Old French translation of Harrison (1974), pp. 391-9. For an alternate translation, Dubin (2013) pp. 497-502. The Old French text is available online. Here’s a bibliography about The Peasant from Bailleul.

[image] Peasant with questioning look. Detail from the painting The Baker’s Cart. Jean Michelin, 1656. Held in Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), accession no. 27.59. Thanks to the Met and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Dubin, Nathaniel. 2013. The fabliaux. New York: Liveright.

Harrison, Robert L. 1974. Gallic salt: eighteen fabliaux translated from the Old French. Berkeley: University of California Press.