Hildebert of Lavardin on woman’s role in the pursuit of death

newborn macaque imitates man's tongue protrusion

Men commonly seek wealth and fame. Men, with good evolutionary pedigree, also commonly seek women. In Boethius’s sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy, Lady Philosophy warned Boethius against too highly valuing wealth and fame. Lady Philosophy said nothing to Boethius about men seeking women.[1] At the height of enlightenment in twelfth-century Europe, long before our age of oppressive ideology, Hildebert of Lavardin understood that Lady Philosophy sought to take Boethius home to experience consolation in marital union. Yet Hildebert also understood that women and men’s personal relationships are as treacherous as high politics of public life.

Although many things impede holy habits,
woman, wealth, and honor impede these most highly.
Woman, wealth, and honor are tinder and torches of evil,
they draw hearts to sin and hands to the sword.
Happy is the one who knows by studied example what woman is,
who with learned skill eludes her wiles.

{ Plurima cum soleant mores evertere sacros,
Altius evertit femina, census, honos.
Femina, census, honos fomenta fomesque malorum,
In scelus, in gladios corda manusque trahunt.
Felix expertus exemplo femina quid sit,
Quique suos aliqua suffugit arte dolos. }[2]

Hildebert of Lavardin wrote a daring revision of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. Hildebert’s work, Of the Complaint and Conflict of Spirit and Flesh {De querimonia et conflictu spiritus et carnis}, alternates poetry and prose, as does Boethius’s work. Hildebert wrote five pairs of prose and poetry sections. Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy consists of five books. Boethius’s work begins aberrationally in elegiac poetry, with theatrical whores dictating sad songs to the tearful, mournful first-person narrating man. Hildebert’s work begins with a first-person narrating man undertaking the practical tasks of rebuilding a house that has burned to the ground. The fire that burned down the house was misapplied passion.[3]

It’s better to marry a serpent or lion
than to have a contentious wife.

{ Junge serpentem potius tibe sive leonem
Quam contendentem sponsam. }[4]

Hildebert’s woman-spirit is a foil to Lady Philosophy. Boethius’s Lady Philosophy appears suddenly to him as a majestic authority. Sullied only by others’ lack of appreciation for her, she seeks to console Boethius. Hildebert’s woman-spirit similarly appears suddenly to Hildebert. But she is an unstable, querulous woman. She complains of endless attacks from enemies. She claims that her servant-girl has bewitched her and led her into ignominious affairs with disreputable paramours. The entire situation displeases her. And it’s all Hildebert’s fault. He didn’t recognize who she is, and he has failed to protect her.

Woman conceives in her mind, praises with her tongue, and fulfills with her deeds,
what ruins law, the people, and her own self.

{ Femina mente gerit, lingua probat, actibus implet
Quo lex, quo populus, quo simul ipsa ruit. }[5]

Hildebert, like many other men, fails to recognize the woman-spirit ruling over him. His woman-spirit disparages him:

Show me, if you can, what you would accomplish without me, what you would arrange without my knowing it. I know the thoughts of your heart and the secrets of your bedchamber. If you write, I move your fingers; if you speak, I open your mouth. The decisions of your household and its expenses, and equally the rules about slacking servants are in my control, planned and promulgated by me. … Do you recognize her who completely fills you, completely moves you, completely rules and possesses you? [6]

Hildebert understood that Eve and Adam originally lived in a concord of spirit and flesh. But the fall of man-flesh and woman-spirit broke that concord:

because of the flesh inciting and the spirit incited as though by her husband and spouse, that first transgression came to be … Do you see, therefore, the concupiscence that moves the flesh as if it were male, the depravity with which such a husband extorted for himself the consent of the spirit, and the sort of offspring these two could generate? Do you see, I ask, how a foreign stench wafts in on me {Hildebert’s woman-spirit}, and the smoke I endure from the fanned flames? [7]

The woman-spirit reigns over the man-flesh in stench and misery, anxiety and tiresomeness. Their concord is in “shameful and ridiculous appetites for death.”

Although the flesh is pleased to be given life, and it loves
this duty of living breath, still it happens that
broken by long evils, it grows weary of life, it renounces years,
it prefers to die once rather than many times, and to be seized
by the ultimate death, rather than survive when so many have gone before.
But although it may be intent upon these, there is no homicidal will,
until the uxorious spirit grows weak and favors the flesh;
when the spirit has been overcome by goads and alluring arguments,
error comes into being: while the flesh cries out,
the spirit hears her; crime is created by consent,
and through this creation a monstrosity: the flesh becomes husband,
the spirit, wife. [8]

With woman-spirits, philosophy’s modern-day descendants lead man and woman to the land of the dead. Philosophy, unlike Lady Philosophy, is a death figure:

This is seen in many ways. The theta on her {Philosophy’s} robe marks the top of the ladder that reaches from praxis to theoria; but a theta on the robe of a prisoner is a sign of one marked for death. The smoke that covers her robes at {Consolation of Philosophy, section} 1.1.3 reminds … of the smoke on death masks in the halls of aristocratic families. … Philosophy is the practice of death; a good death will prove the philosopher, and Philosophy is eager for the prisoner to die well and thus to vindicate her. … As Philosophy is both death and half of the author’s person, we may conclude that the author does not desire that these halves of himself be reconciled and united. [9]

Hildebert sets before himself Xanthippe and Socrates, Dhuoda and Bernard. Xanthippe is the woman-spirit of Hildebert’s De querimonia et conflictu spiritus et carnis. Dhuoda is Boethius’s Lady Philosophy. Women and men can make for themselves much different earthly homes.

A fountain of piety spares the sins of woman:
Let the severe fathers learn to pity the wretched ones.

{ Parcit peccatis mulieris fons pietatis:
Discant austeri Patres miseris misereri. }[10]

Stand firm against the criminalization of men. Lift up your spirit to worthy hopes. Pray that truth conquers lies, and virtue prevails. Your mundane actions necessarily play amid the harmony of the star-filled universe.

*  *  *  *  *

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Notes:

[1] James J. O’Donnell has helpfully made available online a concordance for the Latin text of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. The ordinary Latin word for wealth (opēs) occurs in Consolation of Philosophy 22 times in various forms.  The Latin word for honor (honor) occurs 17 times in various forms. Latin words for woman, femina, mulier, and domina, occur 0 times, 2 times, and 3 times, respectively. In Boethius’s Consolation of {Lady} Philosophy, woman is not conceptually positioned as an object of men’s appetites, as are wealth and honor.

[2] Hilbert of Lavardin, Of three vices: love of woman, avarice, ambition {De tribus vitiis: Muliebri amore, avaritia, ambitione} ll. 1-6, Latin text and English trans. Walsh (2005) p. 231, with my adaptations. The Latin text in Patrologia Latina (PL 171 1428C) is headed How woman, avarice, and ambition are damaging to the holiness of man {Quam nociva sint sacris hominibus femina, avaritia, ambitio}.

Hildebert of Lavardin, who lived from about 1056 to 1133, rose from humble birth to become Bishop of Le Mans in 1096 and then Archbishop of Tours. He is alternately known as Hildebert of Tours. He reportedly fathered many children as archdeacon at Le Mans. Balint (2009) p. 40, n. 80, citing Ivo of Chartres, letter 277 (PL 172.279). Hildebert probably wrote De tribus vitiis: Muliebri amore, avaritia, ambitione prior to 1096, when he was archdeacon at the cathedral school of Le Mans. Hildebert became known as “the finest scholar and the most competent versifier of his age.” Walsh (2005) p. 231. For references to key scholarly work on Hildebert, see Angelini (2015) p. 168, n. 3.

Hildebert apparently recognized discrimination against men in criminal justice. He wrote ironically in elegant Latin poetry:

Woman is a fragile thing, constant in nothing but crime,
Never ceasing to wreak willing harm.

{ Femina res fragilis, nunquam nisi crimine constans,
Nunquam sponte sua desinit esse nocens. }

De tribus vitiis: Muliebri amore, avaritia, ambitione ll. 7-8. As is apparent above, Hildebert’s De querimonia et conflictu spiritus et carnis is also a significant contribution to the literature of men’s sexed protest.

Patrologia Latina credits Hildebert with another work of men’s sexed protest, How intimacy with women is dangerous {Quam periculosa mulierum familiaritas}. See PL 171.1427D, Latin text online here. However, Hauréau (1882), pp. 102-4, argues that this poem was written at the end of the twelfth century or early in the thirteenth century. Like passages in Bernard of Morlaix’s De Contemptu Mundi, Quam periculosa mulierum familiaritas tends to trivialize by exaggeration men’s precarious social position.

Hildebert had close, friendly relations with powerful women. He wrote personal letters to Matilda, the Empress of England, and to Adele, Countess of Blois and daughter of William the Conqueror, as well as to other powerful women. On Hildebert’s letters to powerful women, Angelini (2015). Hildebert also dedicated poems to women. Id. p. 170.

[3] Balint (2009) Appendix II, pp. 174-190, provides an English translation of De querimonia et conflictu spiritus et carnis. For English translations of Boethius’s Consolation of philosophy, see the references in my post on Lady Philosophy and man blindness.

[4] Lamentationes Matheoluli, ll. 692-3, from Latin trans. Correale & Hamel (2005) p. 388, with my adaptations. The Latin text is available in Van Hamel (1892). See also ll. 3738-9: “A man is safer living with a lion than married to a wife who habitually argues {tutior est homini comitiva leonis / Quam fedus sponse rixose conditionis}.” My translation, benefiting from that of Correale & Hamel (2005) p. 389, n. 2.

[5] Hilbert of Lavardin, De tribus vitiis: Muliebri amore, avaritia, ambitione ll. 25-6, from Latin trans. Walsh (2005) p. 231-2, with my adaptations.

[6] Hilbert of Lavardin, De querimonia et conflictu spiritus et carnis Prose 2, from Latin trans. Balint (2009 pp. 178-9. Here’s a Latin text from PL 171.989-1004. Dronke (1994), p. 47, observes that “the text in the Patrologia Latina is badly garbled and there is no modern edition.” Dronke draws upon manuscripts that title the work Philosophy of the Inner and Outer Man {Philosophia de interiore et exteriore homine}. Orth (2000) now provides a modern edition.

[7] De querimonia et conflictu spiritus et carnis Prose 4, trans. Balint (2009) pp. 184, 186. The subsequent quote is from Prose 5, id. p. 189. Modern medieval scholarship tends to stereotype the flesh as woman, and the spirit as man. In the twelfth century, Hildebert had a more fluid understanding of the gendering of flesh and spirit.

[8] Verse 5, trans. id. pp. 189-90. Id. translates animae obsequium as “duty of the soul.” Above I’ve used “duty of living breath” to avoid metaphysical connotations in an apparently mundane context.

[9] Relihan (2007) pp. 68-9.

[10] Where the woman caught in adultery is spared {Ubi parcit mulieri deprehensae in adulterio} PL 171 1427C. I’m grateful to David Konstan for help with translating the Latin text. While PL attributes this poem to Hildebert, Hauréau (1882), pp. 101-2, suggests that Baudry de Bourgueil (Baldric of Dol) wrote it. The sense of “the wretched ones” seems to me to be men.

[image] Newborn macaque imitates a man’s tongue protrusion. Thanks to Evolution of Neonatal Imitation. Gross L, PLoS Biology Vol. 4/9/2006 and Wikimedia Commons. Here’s some discussion of the biology of making sense of another like oneself.

References:

Angelini, Roberto. 2015. “Powerful Women in the Epistles of Hildebert of Lavardin.” Pp. 167-178 in Høgel, Christian, and Elisabetta Bartoli, eds. 2015. Medieval Letters: between fiction and document. Turnhout: Brepols.

Balint, Bridget K. 2009. Ordering Chaos: the self and the cosmos in twelfth-century Latin prosimetrum. Leiden: Brill.

Correale, Robert M., and Mary Hamel. 2005. Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales. Volume II. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer.

Dronke, Peter. 1994. Verse with Prose from Petronius to Dante: the art and scope of the mixed form. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Hauréau, Jean Barthélémy. 1882. Les mélanges poétiques d’Hildebert de Lavardin. Paris, Le Mans.

Orth, Peter, ed. 2000. Hildebert de Lavardin. Hildeberts Prosimetrum De Querimonia und die Gedichte eines Anonymus: Untersuchungen und kritische Editionen. Wiener Studien. Beiheft ; 26 / Arbeiten zur mittel- und neulateinischen Philologie 6. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Relihan, Joel C. 2007. The Prisoner’s Philosophy: life and death in Boethius’s Consolation. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press.

Van Hamel, Anton Gerard, ed. 1892. Mathéolus, Jean Le Fèvre. Les lamentations de Mathéolus et le livre de leesce de Jehan Le Fèvre, de Ressons: poèmes français du XIVe siècle. Paris: Bouillon.

Walsh, P. G. 2005. “Antifeminism in the High Middle Ages.” Ch. 11 (pp. 222-42) in Smith, Warren S, ed. 2005. Satiric advice on women and marriage from Plautus to Chaucer. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse & husbandly subordination

The narrator of The Householder of Paris {Le Ménagier de Paris} seems to be an avuncular, kindly man. In this work written in French about 1393, the narrator worries that he might be boring or over-taxing his intended reader, his young wife. He worries that she might “despair of ever being able to bear the heavy burden of all my advice.”[1] To illustrate that her wifely burden is relatively light, he inserts in his text the lengthy allegorical-didactic work The Way of Poverty and Riches {Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse}. That text describes a husband’s crushing burden of work. The husband’s heavy responsibilities gives him no position of privilege. Drawing upon practical reason and folk wisdom, Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse urges husbandly subordination even to apparently lunatic wives.

husband sees horrifying vision

Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse begins with a newly married man anxiously awake while his wife soundly sleeps in bed next to him. The husband had a lengthy visionary experience of his life’s challenges. The following day the husband recounted to his wife that experience. She in response castigated him:

What are you talking about? Are you out of your mind? You are not making any sense rambling on to me about your night — it is a fantasy invented out of some kind of lunacy! [2]

That’s a common reaction to men explaining the difficulties of their lives. Women and men have much less empathy for men than for women.

The husband responded practically to his wife’s outburst. He explained:

I remained silent during these taunts, uttering not a word, for becoming vexed with her would gain me nothing. Plus, I recently learned from a wise man that no one should value anything that a woman says, whether good or bad, quarrel or slander. A woman always wants to be praised and acknowledged for her words. She does not want to be reproved; rather, she wants to be commended and esteemed as highly for the bad as for the good. This habit I know well, and so I ignored the derision. Yes, one must hold one’s tongue before a woman and do what she wants.

Those comments are problematic. Doing what a woman wants requires listening to her to some extent. The husband’s point seems to be that men should accept derision from their wives and not challenge what their wives say. He advised other men to be similarly subordinate to their wives:

I thus advise all those who have wives: however lunatic it may seem to let them have their way, it is even greater madness, in my opinion, to displease them. For a woman will never be satisfied if her husband defies her until, sooner or later, she had gotten the better of him twice over. Otherwise she betrays her woman’s nature. Thus if he must choose the lesser of two evils, he does right to draw himself near one danger in order to withdraw from a greater danger. [3]

Women naturally gifted with high sexual allure have extraordinary power over men. Family courts that are egregiously irrational and anti-men give reason for men to cower in marriage. But the problem of men’s subordination to women is much more general. For most men, doing what women want is much easier that standing up for their own needs and desires.

Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse shows that the way to riches is treacherous. That text was written in fourteenth century Europe, probably in 1342. Husbandly subordination to wives in practice didn’t prevent Europe from becoming materially rich. Yet that history isn’t solid ground for complacency. Even easier than husbands being subordinate to wives is men not caring and not doing. That is a sure way to poverty.

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Notes:

[1] The translation of Power (1928), which is entitled The Goodman of Paris, presents the narrator as “avuncular, benevolent, even doting.” Brereton & Ferrier (1981) “characterize the narrator as ‘kindly’ and encouraging of his wife.” Greco & Rose (2009), in contrast, dourly titles its introduction “Maid to Order: The Good Wife of Paris.” Id. pp 7, 1. Greco & Rose explain:

The sections lessoning the wife on estate management, for example, reflect the surveillance and tight control the householder wants to have over his spouse and his minions, his vegetables, his horses, his dogs and his birds.

Id. p. 7. This new way of reading Le Ménagier de Paris indicates the ideology underlying the rise of mass incarceration in the U.S.

[2] Le Ménagier de Paris 2.1 (inserted text of Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse), from Old French trans. Greco & Rose (2009) p. 208. In their introduction to this article of the text, the editors explain that the husband’s “down-to-earth wife disbelieves his outlandish story of these travels.” Id. p. 178. The husband might come to regard his wife as down-to-earth in the way that Matheolus regarded Petra in their rocky relationship. The subsequent quotes are from Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse, id.

[3] Medieval scholars have described this section of the text as an “antifeminist diatribe.” Ferrier (1979) p. 79; Greco & Rose (2009) pp. 41, 179. Much more important than name-calling is recognizing how such attitudes contribute to the subordination of men.

[image] Despair visits newlywed husband. From Le Livre du Chastel de Labour, illuminated volume of La voie de Povreté ou de Richesse (The Way of Poverty or of Wealth). Paris, 1425-1450. f. 5v, Widener 1 (item no. mcaw010612), Free Library of Philadelphia.

References:

Brereton, Georgine, and Janet M. Ferrier, eds. 1981. Le menagier de Paris. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Ferrier, Janet. 1979. “Seulement pour vous endoctriner: The Author’s Use of Exempla in Le Ménagier de Paris.” Medium Aevum 48: 77-89.

Greco, Gina L., and Christine M. Rose, ed. and trans. 2009. The good wife’s guide; Le ménagier de Paris: a medieval household book. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Power, Eileen, ed. and trans. 1928. The Goodman of Paris (Le ménagier de Paris): a treatise on moral and domestic economy by a citizen of Paris (c. 1393). London: G. Routledge & Sons.

Lady Philosophy and man blindness in Boethius’s Consolation

“Do you remember that you are a man?”
“How could I forget that?” I answered.
“Well, then, what is a man? Can you give me a definition?”
“Do you mean that I am a rational animal, and mortal? I know that, and I admit that I am such a creature.”
“Do you know nothing else about what you are?”
“No, nothing.”

{ sed hoc quoque respondeas uelim: hominemne te esse meministi? — quidni, inquam, meminerim? — quid igitur homo sit poterisne proferre? — hocine interrogas, an esse me sciam rationale animal atque mortale? scio, et id me esse confiteor. — et illa: nihilne aliud te esse nouisti? — nihil. }[1]

Lady Philosophy with Boetius in bed

Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy is a poetry-filled dialogue between a man and a woman. The text begins with Boethius weeping in bed. He has lost his youthful glory and good looks. He laments deceitful Fortune and the sorrow of his continuing life. Then Lady Philosophy appears.[2] With a majestic face, flashing eyes, and towering height, she has a manly, commanding presence that Boethius lacks.

Standing about Boethius’s bed were women associated with poetry, play, and sex. Lady Philosophy drives those women away:

“Who let those whores from the theater come to the bedside of this sick man?” she said. “They cannot offer medicine for his sorrows; they will nourish him only with their sweet poison. They kill the fruitful harvest of reason with the sterile thorns of the passions; they do not liberate the minds of men from disease, but merely accustom them to it.”

{ quis, inquit, has scenicas meretriculas ad hunc aegrum permisit accedere, quae dolores eius non modo nullis remediis fouerent, uerum dulcibus insuper alerent uenenis? hae sunt enim quae infructuosis affectuum spinis uberem fructibus rationis segetem necant hominumque mentes assuefaciunt morbo, non liberant. }

The figure “sterile thorns {infructuosae spinae}” resonates with sexual dysfunction against the fruitful harvest. Lady Philosophy sits at the foot of Boethius’s bed and sings poems to him. She gently strokes his breast and dries his tear-filled eyes with a fold of her robe. She tries to recall him to the “strength of a virile soul {virilis animus robur}.” Has Boethius forgotten the natural sense of being a virile man?

While Boethius was highly learned in Latin literature, his Consolation of Philosophy ignores significant prior Latin literature. Boethius wrote Consolation of Philosophy about 525. Many centuries earlier Juvenal had unforgettably protested against women’s abuses of men and urged his friend not to marry. Jerome through the persona of Theophrastus humorously had urged widows to act with Christian charity toward men and not remarry. In response to Roman men’s reluctance to subject themselves to the burdens of marriage, Roman law penalized Roman men who remained unmarried. None of this complex, vibrant human reality appears overtly in the Consolation of Philosophy.[3]

Lady Philosophy describes marriage in lifeless conventions. She declares that everyone considers Boethius fortunate to have “such a chaste, unblemished wife, and such fine sons {coniunx pudore tum masculae quoque proles oportunitate}.”[4] Those who might perceive in that statement a subtle claim about other (unchaste) wives and other (vicious) sons would be mistaken about the wives. Explaining happiness, Lady Philosophy declares:

Someone else may enjoy both wealth and social position, but be miserable because he is not married. Still another may be happily married but have no children to inherit his fortune. Others have children, only to be saddened by their vices. Therefore, no one is entirely satisfied with his lot; each finds something lacking, or something that gives pain.

{ ille utroque circumfluus uitam caelibem deflet; ille nuptiis felix orbus liberis alieno censum nutrit heredi; alius prole laetatus filii filiaeue delictis maestus illacrimat. idcirco nemo facile cum fortunae suae condicione concordat; inest enim singulis quod inexpertus ignoret, expertus exhorreat. }

Lady Philosophy later elaborates on the difficulties with children:

The pleasure one finds in his wife and children ought to be a most wholesome thing, but the man who protested that he found his sons to be his torturers spoke what may too often be true. How terrible such a condition can be you must learn from me, since you have never experienced it at first hand, nor do you now suffer from it. In this matter I commend the opinion of Euripides who said that the childless man is happy by his misfortune.

{ honestissima quidem coniugis foret liberorumque iucunditas; sed nimis e natura dictum est nescio quem filios inuenisse tortores. quorum quam sit mordax quaecumque condicio neque alias expertum te neque nunc anxium necesse est admonere. in quo Euripidis mei sententiam probo, qui carentem liberis infortunio dixit esse felicem. }[5]

Roman men and women who appreciated reading Ovid, Juvenal and Jerome would see through Lady Philosophy’s dress and recognize features of women they knew.

Lady Philosophy obscures heterosexual passion. She tells the story of a free man who, experiencing a tyrant’s torture to betray a secret, bit off his tongue and spat it in the tyrant’s face. Jerome had recast that story to tell of an enchained man biting off his tongue to resist sexual assault by a woman in a locus amoenus.[6] In contrasting surface beauty with inner reality, Lady Philosophy described the outwardly beautiful body of Alcibiades containing ugly entrails within. Given early Christian concern with women’s adornment, that story probably more commonly figured an enticing woman. In referring to men’s bodily pleasures, Lady Philosophy refers to a man’s “wife and children {coniunx que liberi}.”[7] Bodily pleasures that husbands experience with their wives, if the marital bed hasn’t frozen over, differ significantly from bodily pleasures they experience with their children. Lady Philosophy doesn’t acknowledge that obvious sexual distinction.

Lady Philosophy ironically emphasizes wealth, honor, and power relative to sex. Males competing with other males to have sex with females and to preserve their offspring’s lives drives biological evolution. Lady Philosophy’s mythic history of men’s violence against men emphasizes men’s interest in luxuries and ignores men’s interest in sex and in providing for their children:

How happy were men long ago,
when they were content with nature
and not yet corrupted by wealth:
their hungers were easily sated
by acorns they found on the ground.
They had not yet learned to mix
sweet honey into their wine.
They did not dress up in silks
dyed bright with Tyrian purple.
…
No bugle calls then had sounded
to summon men to bloodshed
in hatred or naked greed
that stained the fields with blood,
for what could men gain from killing?
Look at us now and compare
our lives to those of the ancients.
As fierce as the fires of Etna
is the lust of men for plunder.
Shame, shame on the man
who first dug gold from the earth
and brought the bright baubles of jewelers
into the light of the sun.

{ felix nimium prior aetas
contenta fidelibus aruis
nec inerti perdita luxu,
facili quae sera solebat
ieiunia soluere glande.
non Bacchica munera norant
liquido confundere melle
nec lucida uellera Serum
Tyrio miscere ueneno.
…
tunc classica saeua tacebant
odiis neque fusus acerbis
cruor horrida tinxerat arua.
quid enim furor hosticus ulla
uellet prior arma mouere,
cum uulnera saeua uiderent
nec praemia sanguinis ulla?
utinam modo nostra redirent
in mores tempora priscos!
sed saeuior ignibus Aetnae
feruens amor ardet habendi.
heu, primus quis fuit ille
auri qui pondera tecti
gemmasque latere uolentes
pretiosa pericula fodit. }[8]

Lady Philosophy incongruously describes men as elite women in the context of battlefields drenched with men’s blood. Boethius, who was from a very wealthy family, had little need for gold. He expresses no lust for wealth or luxuries, nor passion for violence against men.[9]

Lady Philosophy’s most elaborate figure of heterosexuality is resentful. Instead of Cupid’s arrows, she describes a bee’s sting. The temporal perspective is that of a bitter, forsaken lover:

Every pleasure knows this one thing:
Goading on those who enjoy it,
Like the honeybees that hover.
Once it pours its pleasing nectar,
It is gone, and pangs the bruised heart
With a sting that can’t be drawn out.

{ habet hoc uoluptas omnis,
stimulis agit fruentes
apiumque par uolantum,
ubi grata mella fudit,
fugit et nimis tenaci
ferit icta corda morsu. }[10]

Pleasure has been transitory. Hurt has endured. Philosophy has failed as consolation for Lady Philosophy.

The doctor Lady Philosophy, full of poetry and rhetorical sophistication, engages in an intricate game of Christian seduction. For earthly Christian men, virtuous loving differs from consorting with dressy whores, and from merely cherishing a wife as mother of your children. Lady Philosophy proposes to lead Boethius to understand fully his manhood “under my direction, along my path, and by my means {meo ductu, mea semita, meis etiam vehiculis}.” Lady Philosophy, much more human than philosophy alone, offers unitive understanding:

The warmth of springtime calls forth blooming
flowers that perfume the air:
hot summer dries the grain in the fields;
autumn brings the happy harvest;
and in wintertime the rains come down
to nourish and refresh the earth.
These delicate balances order all
that live and breathe on the bountiful earth,
and that same order takes them away
at the end, when their span of time has run.
But always above there sits the Lord
who rules all things and holds in his hands
the reins that guide his whole creation,
the ruler, the fons et origo.
The lawgiver, the wise judge,
he stirs the stars and planets to motion
and yet controls their paths and orbits,
lest they run wild to break from their circles,
tearing the sky into pieces reducing
the universe to its building blocks,
but the bonds of love hold those pieces in place.
Love is that common fount of all;
All seek adhesion to that end, the good.
Things cannot otherwise survive
Unless, in Love’s renewed embrace, they flow
Back to that source, their fount of life.

{ his de causis uere tepenti
spirat florifer annus odores,
aestas cererem feruida siccat,
remeat pomis grauis autumnus,
hiemem defluus inrigat imber.
haec temperies alit ac profert
quicquid uitam spirat in orbe;
eadem rapiens condit et aufert
obitu mergens orta supremo.
sedet interea conditor altus
rerumque regens flectit habenas,
rex et dominus, fons et origo,
lex et sapiens arbiter aequi,
et quae motu concitat ire
sistit retrahens ac uaga firmat;
nam nisi rectos reuocans itus
flexos iterum cogat in orbes,
quae nunc stabilis continet ordo
dissaepta suo fonte fatiscant.
hic est cunctis communis amor
repetuntque boni fine teneri,
quia non aliter durare queant
nisi conuerso rursus amore
refluant causae quae dedit esse. }[11]

Boethius reaps despair from his philosophically idealistic political activity as a leading Roman public figure. Lethargic, he suffers lovesickness from forgetting himself personally as a man. A twelfth-century courtier, less poetic than Lady Philosophy but with similar breadth of learning and interest in dialogue, understood the ultimate earthly consolation to be heterosexual union.[12]

Lady Philosophy, although a doctor, is a Roman woman who gains Boethius’s attention by remaining silent for awhile with modest reserve.[13] She doesn’t explicitly propose the harsh remedy necessary for Boethius to ascend to a higher, more personal, more unitive love. Eloping carnally with Lady Philosophy would be wickedness impossible to hide from the all-seeing judge on high. Trying to hide from God would be unnecessary if Lady Philosophy were Boethius’s wife. The literary implication follows logically. Lady Philosophy, Boethius’s wife, is calling Boethius home to be a virile soul in an invigorated marital bed.[14]

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Notes:

[1] Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, 1.P6, Latin text from O’Donnell (1990), English trans. Langston (2010) p. 15. Richard H. Green finished this translation in 1962. His translation emphasizes accuracy. It translates the poems as prose. For my interpretation, the poetic form is significant. Hence I draw on other translations for the sections in meter. Subsequent prose quotes are from id. (source book.section, translation page) 1.P1, p. 4 (whores from the theater); 1.P2, p. 5 (virile soul);  2.P3, p. 21 (chase wife and fine sons); 2.P4, p. 23 (miserable because not married); 3.P7, p. 42 (childless man happy / bodily pleasures); 4.P1, p. 59 (along my path).

As a philosopher, Boethius wrote Latin translations and learned commentaries on Aristotle’s works on logic. Boethius also wrote treatises on theology. For an overview of Boethius’s writings, Marenbon (2010).

[2] For simplicity, I refer to the first-person voice of the man within Consolation of Philosophy as Boethius. That character is not necessarily identical with the author Boethius. Within the text, Lady Philosophy is identified only as Philosophy, referenced with female gender. Because Philosophy’s sex is crucial to my interpretation, I refer to Philosophy as Lady Philosophy.

[3] Boethius had “close and enthusiastic knowledge” of Juvenal as well as of Ovid. Walsh (1999) p. xxxix. Consolation of Philosophy 2.P5.34 refers to Juvenal X.19 (poor have no need to worry about robbers), and Consolation of Philosophy 4.M3.15 refers to Juvenal XV.163 (Tigris Indica). As an elite Roman Christian living in Rome, Boethius read Jerome’s Vulgate Bible and also undoubtedly knew of Jerome’s influential letters to elite Romans. As a leading Roman public official, Boethius would have also known Roman legal history.

[4] Consolation of Philosophy 2.P3, trans. Langston (2010) p. 15. In the next prose section, Lady Philosophy presents a more extensive, but highly conventional, laudatory description of Boethius’s wife:

Your wife, so gracious, so chaste, so like her father in excellence of character, still lives, though now she is weary of life and goes on only for your sake. Even I must concede that in her case your happiness is greatly marred since her sorrow for your misfortune is killing her.

{ uiuit uxor ingenio modesta, pudicitia pudore praecellens et, ut omnes eius dotes breuiter includam, patri similis; uiuit, inquam, tibique tantum uitae huius exosa spiritum seruat, quoque uno felicitatem minui tuam uel ipsa concesserim, tui desiderio lacrimis ac dolore tabescit. }

2.P4, id. p. 22. In the last sentence quoted above, Lady Philosophy construes intricate interpersonal connections between Boethius and his wife.

[5] Boethius at a young age married his foster-father’s daughter Rusticiana. They had two sons, Symmachus and Boethius. While Boethius’s sons were politically successful, the quality of their personal relationship with him isn’t otherwise attested. In the Consolation of Philosophy, Boethius has a tortuous relation with philosophy. Lady Philosophy may be referring to Boethius as her son, in the sense of being a wayward disciple. The context, however, is that of real, human relationships.

Boethius refers to Euripides’ Andromache ll. 418-20. Those lines actually express Andromache’s love for her child:

All mankind, it seems, find that children are their very souls. Whoever finds fault with this through inexperience, although he has less pain, has a poor happiness.

{ πᾶσι δ᾽ ἀνθρώποις ἄρ᾽ ἦν
ψυχὴ τέκν᾽: ὅστις δ᾽ αὔτ᾽ ἄπειρος ὢν ψέγει,
ἧσσον μὲν ἀλγεῖ, δυστυχῶν δ᾽ εὐδαιμονεῖ. }

Given Boethius’s sophisticated treatment of these lines from Andromache, the relation of Boethius and Lady Philosophy to their sons should be allowed possibilities for irony.

[6] Consolation of Philosophy 2.P5. According to Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 9.10.59, Life of Anaxarchus:

when Nicocreon commanded his {Anaxarchus’s} tongue to be cut out, they say he bit it off and spat it at him.

{ κελεύσαντος δὲ τοῦ Νικοκρέοντος καὶ τὴν γλῶτταν αὐτοῦ ἐκτμηθῆναι, λόγος ἀποτραγόντα προσπτύσαι αὐτῷ. }

Cf. Jerome, The Life of Paul the First Hermit, s. 3, described in my post on castration in the story of the Nun of Watton.

[7] Lady Philosophy declares in 3.P2:

they want a wife and children because they regard them as sources of pleasure

{ uxor ac liberi quae iucunditatis gratia petuntur. }

Trans. Langston (2010) p. 35. In 2.P7, Lady Philosophy muses:

What now shall I say about bodily pleasures? Longing for that is full of anxiety. Its satisfaction is full of regret. … The pleasure one finds in his wife and children ought to be a most wholesome thing….

{ Quid autem de corporis voluptatibus loquar quarum appetentia quidem plena est anxietatis, satietas vero poenitentiae? … Honestissima quidem coniugis foret liberorumque iucunditas… }

Trans. id. p. 42. Most husbands experience with their wives a type of pleasure that they have no interest in attempting to seek with their children. Lady Philosophy’s claims about bodily pleasures are best interpreted with respect to Boethius’s specific life history.

[8] Consolation of Philosophy 2.m5.1-9, 16-30, trans. Slavitt (2008) pp. 47-8. Relihan (2001), p. xxix, notes that he constructed his translation “so as to avoid sexist language.” Relihan’s translation of 2.m5 thus obscures that the violence is violence against men. Recognizing the highly sex-disparate imprisonment of men is also relevant to a poem about a prisoner. As indicated above, sex is central to a personally sophisticated, textually detailed interpretation of the Consolation of Philosophy. For related mythic history, see my post on Pamphilus and men’s abasement, labor, and violence.

[9] Donato (2013), Ch. 1, convincingly argues that Boethius, with his commitment to aristocratic ideals of late antiquity, didn’t privilege external goods over intellectual and moral excellence.

[10] Consolation of Philosophy 3.M7, trans. Relihan (2001) p. 64. Slavitt’s translation effaces the singularity of the bee that stings.

[11] Consolation of Philosophy 4.M6.25-48, trans. Slavitt (2008) pp. 140-1, Walsh (1999) p. 94. The last four lines are from Walsh’s translation. Slavitt’s translation narrows the focus of the last three lines to the firmament and includes a superfluous, confusing negative. The previous short quote, “under my direction, along my path, and by my means,” is from Consolation of Philosophy 4.P1

This poem echoes themes of 2.m8, later memorably personalized in Dante, Paradiso IIII.143-5. Donato (2013) and Blackwood (2015) insightfully emphasize the importance of personal experience and poetic music for understanding fully Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy.

[12] Writing in France about 1200, Andreas Capellanus described love “with the final consolation avoided {extremo paetermisso solatio}.” Andreas Capellanus, De amore 1.6.473, from Walsh (1982) p. 181 (from the eighth dialogue between a man of higher nobility and a woman of higher nobility). The term solatium occurs throughout De amore in reference to incarnated love. The context — incarnated love for another person — identifies solatium with consolatio.

[13] Consolation of Philosophy 2.1:

Philosophy was silent for a while; then, regaining my attention by her modest reserve, she began thus …

{ Post haec paulisper obticuit atque ubi attentionem meam modesta taciturnitate collegit, sic exorsa est }

Trans. Langston (2010) p. 17 (modified slightly).

[14] Donato (2013) identifies Lady Philosophy’s wide-ranging, personal therapy as helping Boethius to overcome his preoccupation with elite Roman public life. Relihan (2007) Ch. 9, which perceives a Christian intention in Consolation of Philosophy, highlights that its last three lines refer to Esther 16:4. The text in Esther is from the decree of Ahasuerus. Given the personal characters of both figures in the text, Tobit 7:4 seems to me to point to a fuller interpretation of Consolation of Philosophy’s end.

[image] Lady Philosophy and Boethius, who is lethargically lying in bed. Illumination from anonymous French translation of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. France, 1477. Harley 4339, f. 2. Thanks to the British Library.

References:

Blackwood, Stephen. 2015. The Consolation of Boethius as poetic liturgy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Donato, Antonio. 2013. Boethius’ Consolation of philosophy as a product of late antiquity. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Langston, Douglas C. ed. 2010. Boethius. The consolation of philosophy: authoritative text, contexts, criticism. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.

Marenbon, John. 2010. “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius.” Entry in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

O’Donnell, James Joseph, ed. 1990. Boethius. Consolatio philosophiae. Bryn Mawr Latin Commentaries. Bryn Mawr, PA: Thomas Library, Bryn Mawr College. Online presentations via O’Donnell at Georgetown and via Perseus.

Relihan, Joel C., trans. 2001. Boethius. Consolation of philosophy. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Pub. Co.

Relihan, Joel C. 2007. The prisoner’s philosophy: life and death in Boethius’s Consolation. Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame Press.

Slavitt, David R., trans. 2008. Boethius. The consolation of philosophy. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University.

Walsh, P. G., trans. 1982. Andreas Capellanus on love {De amore}. London: Duckworth.

Walsh, P. G., trans. 1999. Boethius. The consolation of philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

medieval husband fantasy: hardships, comfort & forgiveness

While men wrote most medieval European texts, most of those texts don’t reflect men’s self-consciousness as men. In the gynocentric society that characterizes humans and many other primates, men’s thinking about man and society fundamentally concerns what women want. The Householder of Paris {Le Ménagier de Paris}, a book written in French about 1393, was intended to serve a wife. Yet it contains a poignant medieval husband’s fantasy of hardships of work, comforts from a wife, and forgiveness for adultery.

Le Ménagier de Paris is structured as an older husband instructing his young wife on how to care for a husband. The narrator distances the husband from himself by frequently describing the husband as his wife’s subsequent second husband. The narrator describes his instruction as intended to increase his wife’s honor and social status. The husband apparently is reluctant to speak directly of what he wants.

What the narrator wants appears poignantly in a particular evocation of a medieval husband’s fantasy. Providing instruction to his wife in case “you have another husband after me,” the narrator declares:

love your husband’s person carefully. I entreat you to see that he has clean linen, for that is your domain, while the concerns and troubles of men are those outside affairs they must handle, amidst coming and going, running here and there, in rain, wind, snow, and hail, sometimes drenched, sometimes dry, now sweating, now shivering, ill fed, ill lodged, ill shod, and poorly rested. Yet nothing represents a hardship for him, because the thought of his wife’s good care for him upon his return comforts him immensely. The ease, joys, and pleasures he knows she will provide for him herself, or have done for him in her presence, cheer him: removing his shoes in front of a good fire, washing his feet, offering clean shoes and socks, serving plenteous food and drink, respectfully honoring him. After this, she puts him to sleep in white sheets and his nightcap, covered with good furs, and satisfies him with other joys and amusements, intimacies, loves, and secrets about which I remain silent. The next day, she has set out fresh shirts and garments for him. [1]

Here instruction becomes fantasy as a man recalls hardships of his life. It is a medieval husband’s fantasy about the comforts of home.

medieval Castle of Labor from Le Chemin voie de Povreté et de richesse

Hardships in medieval men’s lives were no fantasy. The fourteenth-century French allegory Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse (The Way of Poverty and Riches) begins with a newly married couple in bed. The wife was sleeping soundly. The husband was wide awake. A vision appeared to him of persons called Want, Necessity, Penury, and Scarcity. These personifications grabbed him and pummeled him. Then Disquiet, Worry, Distress, and Despair assailed him. Finally a saving lady came to him:

a most noble lady, gracious, upright, pleasant, and fair. She did not seem obstinate but rather gentle and humble toward all. Her body, comely and elegant, bore such noble adornments that surely marked her as a daughter of a king. [2]

She was Reason. Explaining love for her Father and His glorious Mother, the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Works of Mercy, Reason instructed the husband about his salvation. Reason then kissed him and went deep inside him.

Explaining more concretely the value of hardships was a happy family. This family consisted of Good-Heart (the father), Good-Desire (the mother), and Intent-to Do-Well (their son). Good-Heart advised the husband, “you must work hard, sleep little, and stay awake.”[3] Good-Desire in turn advised him to use his time wisely and persevere in good deeds. The husband promised that he would strive to succeed.

The happy family led the husband to the Castle of Labor. There the husband found a mass workforce:

more than a hundred thousand workers toiled throughout the city, each one exerting himself at his designated task. No one was idle. This castle was so noisy with pounding and hammering that one would be hard-pressed to hear God’s thunder. [4]

Within the Castle of Labor the husband met Attention-to-Duty, Mindfulness, and the lady of the castle, Pain. Lady Pain instructed the husband:

perform your assignment gladly and skillfully, and concentrate on what is at hand without daydreaming. And no cheating! Rather, toil so that you sweat profusely by virtue of your exertion. No one should dare relax himself or take it easy here, or he would immediately be tossed out.

The husband diligently went to work:

I dove into my work, applying all my effort — mind and body. I labored like that without respite until bright daylight shone through the window, and then I blew out my candle. I continued to apply myself to my task, without seeking either quitting time or a break, until the breakfast hour — breakfast and dinner being one and the same according to the habit of laborers. … I abandoned myself to my tasks, from top to bottom. All in all, I never acted ineptly, and I worked so strenuously that when I heard the curfew, I rejoiced, because of weariness and weakness from the exertion

After the long workday, the husband was allowed to visit Repose. Known to be a deceitful man, Repose lived within the husband and wife’s home. The husband, who was prudently subservient to his wife, prayed that he get to “the demense of the grand lady Riches,” or at least to Sufficiency.

While medieval husbands understood the importance of hard work and acquiring material goods, their fantasies weren’t narrowly materialistic. Le Ménagier de Paris describes an orphan boy’s attachment to a woman stranger:

If he finds outside the family {step-family} a safe refuge and the help of a woman who welcomes him, taking care to warm him sitting with her by a little fire, to clean and mend his hose, breeches, shirts, and other clothing, subsequently he will follow her and desire her company, wanting to sleep and warm himself between her breasts. Thus will the child cast off his stepmother and stepfather, who beforehand paid no attention to him and now want to take him back and have him again. But that will not happen, for such a child now values more the company of this stranger who considers and cares for him than that of his relatives, who paid no heed to him [5]

Le Ménagier de Paris declares that loving care for an orphan boy and other animals is more powerful than women’s witchcraft:

They wail that the woman has bewitched their child and that because of this spell he cannot leave her, or be happy unless he stays with her. But whatever they say, it is not witchcraft; rather it is due to the love, the courtesies, the intimacies, joys, and pleasures that the woman has shared with him. On my soul, there is no other magic! Assuredly, if you show kindheartedness to a bear, a wolf, or a lion, that same bear, wolf, or lion will follow you.

Just as for an orphan boy, so too for a husband:

my dear, I urge you to bewitch and bewitch again your future husband, and protect him from holes in the roof and smokey fires, and do not quarrel with him, but be sweet, pleasant, and peaceful with him. Make certain that in winter he has a good fire without smoke, and let him slumber, warmly wrapped, cozy between your breasts, and in this way bewitch him. [6]

There’s no question about the narrator’s grasp of reality. Immediately after this description of bewitching, he describes in detail techniques for ridding a bedroom of fleas.

Le Ménagier de Paris imagines ideals of love in ordinary life. A wife cuckolded her husband. On her deathbed, she confessed that one of her three children wasn’t her husband’s child. Her confessor urged her to confess to her husband and beg his forgiveness. That she did. Before she got to the specifics, her husband interrupted her:

“Ho! ho! ho! say no more!” He then kissed her and pardoned her, chiding, “Never speak of this again, nor tell anyone else which of your children it may be, for I want to love them all equally, so that you will not be blamed either during your life or after your death. … Be silent; I do not wish to know any more. [7]

Echoing the story of the monk Abraham’s rescue of his beloved Mary from a brothel, Le Ménagier de Paris also tells of a wife who left her husband for another man. She eventually became a prostitute. Arranging circumstances so as to appear as if she were returning from a pilgrimage to the famous shrine of Santiago de Compostela, the husband invited and welcomed his wife back home.

Men tend to prefer realistic genres of biography, adventurous action, and quests. But men don’t lack personal, emotional fantasies. Men’s fantasies of personal love are merely less commonly expressed and much less socially valued.

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Notes:

[1] The Householder of Paris {Le Ménagier de Paris} 1.7.1, from Old French trans. Greco & Rose (2009) p. 138.

[2] Le Ménagier de Paris 2.1.5 (inserted text from The Way of Poverty and Riches {Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse}), from Old French trans. id. p. 185. Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse is also known as The Book of Poverty and Riches {Le livre de Povreté et de Richesse} and The Voice and Address about Poverty and Riches {La voie et adresse de pauvreté et de richesse}. Jacques Bruyant is thought to have written it in 1342. Bruyant appears to have been a minor official without much literary learning. He probably “lived a difficult life of work and modest achievement.” Epurescu-Pascovici (2013) p. 21.

In France in 1499, Pierre Gringore adapted and abridged Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse under the title The Castle of Labor {Chasteau du Labour}. Alexander Barclay translated Gringore’s version into English and Wynkyn de Worde printed it in England in 1506 as The Castell of Laboure. Id., Introductory Note, p. 177. On Wynkyn de Worde, see note [3] in my post on the prison of marriage.

[3] Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse, Greco & Rose (2009) p. 202.

[4] Id. p. 204. The subsequent three quotes are from id. pp. 205-6, 208. The first cited quote above indicates medieval appreciation for large-scale division of labor. The idea of division of labor is central to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776). Epurescu-Pascovici (2013) discusses ways in which Le Chemin de Povreté et de Richesse represents “modern” ideas of individual agency, practical rationality, and mass labor.

[5] Le Ménagier de Paris 1.7.2, trans. Greco & Rose (2009) pp. 138-9. The subsequent quote is from id.

[6] Le Ménagier de Paris 1.7.3, trans. id. p. 139. Greco & Rose highlight “the dark contours of this picture of a wife in charge of the pleasure of others.” They declared, “neither of us has … taken to heart any of the advice on how to be ‘good’ wives.” Id. Introduction, p. 13; Preface, p. xi.

On proverbial motivations for a man to leave his home, see Proverbs 19:13, 21:9, 27:15; Isaiah 9:18. In his twelfth-century treatise De miseria humane conditionis (On the misery of the the human condition), Lothario Dei Segni wrote:

There are three things which keep a man from staying home: smoke, a leaky roof, and a shrewish wife.

Bk I, Ch. XVII, from Latin trans. Dietz (1969) p. 20. Lothario Dei Segni wrote De miseria humane conditionis about 1195.

[7] Le Ménagier de Paris 1.8.10, trans. id. p. 145. The subsequent story of forgiving adultery is from 1.8.12.

[image] Detail of the Castle of Labor. From Le Livre du Chastel de Labour, illuminated volume of La voie de Povreté ou de Richesse (The Way of Poverty or of Wealth). Paris, 1425-1450. f. 61v, Widener 1 (item no. mcaw010612), Free Library of Philadelphia.

References:

Dietz, Margaret, trans. and Donald Roy Howard, ed. 1969. Lothario Dei Segni. On the misery of the human condition. De miseria humane conditionis. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.

Epurescu-Pascovici, Ionuț. 2013. “Le chemin de povreté et de richesse and the late medieval social imaginary.” French Historical Studies. 36 (1): 19-50.

Greco, Gina L., and Christine M. Rose, ed. and trans. 2009. The good wife’s guide; Le ménagier de Paris: a medieval household book. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.