purple motes

How are you commanding me, little boy,
for what are you telling me, little son,
to sing a sweet song,
while I am far away in exile,
within this sea?
O why are you commanding me to sing?

{ Ut quid iubes, pusiole,
quare mandas, filiole,
carmen dulce me cantare,
cum sim longe exul valde
intra mare?
o cur iubes canere? } [1]

The eminent, amazing medieval Latin scholar Peter Dronke died on April 19, 2020. He was born in Nazi Germany in 1934. In 1960, as a junior research fellow at Oxford, Dronke married Ursula Brown. She was then an outstanding scholar of medieval Icelandic and Old Norse sagas and a tutor at Oxford. She was fourteen years older than he.

About a year later, Peter Dronke received a lectureship in medieval Latin at the University Cambridge. Ursula then led Peter to their new home in Cambridge. She managed domestic affairs there for a decade, including supervising their only child, a daughter born in 1962. In 1970, Ursula moved on to another management position as Head of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Munich. She worked there for three years. In 1976, she become a fellow of Linacre College, Oxford, and Vigfússon Reader in Old Icelandic Literature and Antiquities, an Oxford University professorship. She held those Oxford positions until 1988.

Achieving success that would not have been possible without his wife, Peter rose through the Cambridge academic hierarchy. He become a fellow of Clare Hall in 1964, received a Readership in Medieval Latin Literature in 1979, and was awarded a chair as Professor of Medieval Latin Literature in 1989. He held that Cambridge University professorship until 2001. For many years Ursula and Peter thus had to communicate their nuptial love in part through words transmitted between the academic heights of Oxford and Cambridge.[2]

Peter Dronke championed medieval courtly love lyrics, poetic individuality, and women writers. The men-abasing ideology of courtly love has been enormously damaging to heterosexual relations and gender equality. Concern for poetic individuality drove the early nineteenth-century Romantic movement, particularly in Germany. That’s plausibly associated with communicative changes that produced massively disproportionate incarceration of men. A revered scholar of medieval Latin literature sympathetically acknowledged Dronke’s “unique responsiveness to ‘goddess’ figures in medieval texts.”[3] A laudatory obituary for Dronke asserted, “his streak of feminist partisanship was inextricably intertwined with a profound commitment to a language of tolerance and equality.”[4] Perhaps Dronke welcomed Dronke’s Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Supplement; or, Medieval Women Writers’ Loving Concern for Men. Perhaps Dronke would have tolerated or even encouraged medieval meninist literary criticism. In light of Dronke’s life and scholarly work, I doubt it. His support for tolerance, gender equality, and enlightenment probably didn’t go that far.[5]

Study of medieval Latin literature is largely corrupt and decaying. The sneering, smearing, anachronistic label “anti-feminist” has been sufficient to foreclose serious attention to magnificent, meaningful medieval Latin works such as the thirteenth-century Lamentations of Little, Little Matheus {Lamentationes Matheoluli}. With respect to Letters of Two Lovers {Epistolae duorum amantium}, a leading medieval scholar declared:

When the Man in the flush of reciprocated love wrote that “you are I and I am you,” he surely had no sinister project in mind. Yet the lovers lived in a patriarchal society where no heterosexual relationship, even outside marriage, could remain a genuine friendship of equals. [6]

Did Ursula or Peter Dronke speak out against that categorical, nonsensical scholarly dogma?

Medieval Latin scholarship that embraces contempt for men as a gender has a dismal future. In 2001, when Peter Dronke retired as Professor of Medieval Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge, Cambridge didn’t appoint another scholar to that chair. Reviewing the festschrift for Dronke, a medieval scholar commented:

There is a particular poignancy to this volume. In a revealing and nuanced introduction to the volume, on Dronke’s formative role in promoting the study of Medieval Latin at Cambridge, Marenbon laments the University’s apparent decision not to continue with teaching the subject, on the grounds of the small number of students who choose to take it up — a policy decision which many medievalists may recognize as all too familiar in university administrations. [7]

In the U.S. today, about twice as many women as men are earning advanced degrees in literary and humanistic fields.[8] Literary scholarship as it’s now conducted is much less interesting to men than to women. That should be a serious concern. Particularly with respect to medieval Latin literature, scholars deserve nearly all the blame for repelling today’s men students.[9]

Medieval Latin literature has great potential to speak to men students. An eminent medieval Latin scholar, one who studied under Peter Dronke, observed:

The best way to conceive of Latin in the Middle Ages may be as a father tongue. This description conveys Latin’s special quality as a language spoken by no one as a mother tongue. Furthermore, it hints at the status of Latin as a mainly male language, since most of the people who had the opportunity to learn Latin were boys and men (more likely to be figurative Fathers in the Church than flesh-and-blood patresfamilias) who occupied posts within a strongly patriarchal system. [10]

The reference to “a strongly patriarchal system” is best ignored as merely bowing to current, unquestionable academic dogma. The important point is that most of the persons who studied and wrote medieval Latin literature were boys and men. Medieval Latin literature includes poignant, relevant voices of men’s sexed protest, sophisticated poetry depicting women’s sexual exploitation of men, and heart-wrenching poems on violence against men. Grazida Lizier, or even Marguerite Porete, didn’t produce more interesting medieval literature than the Archpoet’s “As Fame sounds the trumpet {Fama tuba dante sonum}.”

Modern anthologies aren’t appealing entrées for men students into medieval Latin literature. When Dronke went to Cambridge, Frederick Brittain was teaching medieval Latin literature there. Brittain’s The Penguin Book of Latin Verse, first published in 1962, ends with a poem by Allen Beville Ramsay, who was Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, from 1925 to 1947. Ramsay’s poem ends:

Give me a pious heart, I beg, and to be worthy
of my mother’s love.

{ De pium pectus, precor, et mereri
Matris amorem. } [11]

Given that’s how The Penguin Book of Latin Verse ends, most men students will flee as far back to the beginning of Latin verse as they can go. Ramsay’s poem is entitled “The Eve of Saint Nicholas.” Men students surely would be much more interested in the medieval Latin poetic roots of “The Eve of St. Agnes.”

Medieval Latin literature is mutilated and abused in James Wilhelm’s Lyrics of the Middle Ages. This book was published in 1990. Its first section is “Latin Hymns and Lyrics from 850 to 1300.” Why not from 500 to 1500? Wilhelm’s prefatory text explains:

The anthology begins with Gottschalk, whose moving poem to a young novice prefigures the love poetry that had been silent since the end of the Roman Empire, but which would break forth with renewed energy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. … Latin went on after the year 1300, but by this time most of the works had become secular and were more Renaissance in spirit than medieval. [12]

Gottschalk’s moving poem probably wasn’t written to be literally a love poem to a young novice.[13] With a similar vision, but much greater medieval influence, Boethius’s early sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy {Consolatio Philosophiae} includes a poignant strand of profound personal love. Maximianus’s sixth-century love elegies treat men’s fundamental emotional concerns as humanely and sympathetically as any poetry ever written. Maximianus’s love elegies were rightly part of the thirteenth-century Latin school curriculum known as the Six Authors {Sex Auctores}. Boethius and Maximianus sixth-century medieval Latin poems are essential literature not just for men students, but for all students.

Wilhelm’s claim that medieval Latin works after the year 1300 “were more Renaissance in spirit than medieval” is vacuous at best. The great Poggio Bracciolini, a medieval church official who died in 1459, assiduously searched for classical texts, recovered Lucretius’s incomparable On the Nature of Things {De rerum natura}, and helped to transmit medieval stories of men’s sexed protest to the present. The fifteenth-century Alphabetical Song Concerning the Evil Woman {Canticum alphabeticum de mala muliere} is part of a long medieval tradition of important, challenging teaching for men students. Guillaume Du Fay’s medieval motet, O Saint Sebastian — O martyr Sebastian — O how wonderful {O sancte Sebastiane – O martyr Sebastiane – O quam mira} is a medieval work that speaks poignantly to present-day anxieties about the corona-virus plague. In our benighted ignorance and bigotry, we are more medieval than the Middle Ages ever were.

Apart from promoting the childish delusion of the Middle Ages, Wilhelm amputated a vital organ of medieval Latin literature. The second section of his anthology is “The Carmina Burana.” Put together early in the thirteenth century, the Carmina Burana is “the largest surviving collection of secular medieval Latin verse.”[14] Its poem are as much medieval Latin hymns and lyrics as the poems in Wilhelm’s prior section, “Latin Hymns and Lyrics from 850 to 1300.” Implicitly justifying his division of Latin lyrics, Wilhelm declared:

As an entity, the Burana celebrate nature, love, and fortune in a way that runs directly counter to the supernatural doctrines of the Church. … Some of the poems … are almost grotesque parodies. … If these {other Carmina Burana} poems are comic, they are also diabolical, no matter how much like schoolbook exercises they may seem. [15]

Medieval intellectuals were less prone to searching out and quarantining the supernatural and/or diabolical. Medieval Latin authors wrote poetry celebrating asses for the liturgy, biblical centos on a monk unfairly castrated for adultery, and parodies of sacred liturgy and even of women. The ninth-century Latin author Sedulius Scottus wrote a brilliant bellwether poem concerning nature, love, and fortune. That medieval Latin poem points in the opposite direction from Wilhelm’s death-promoting division of medieval Latin literature.[16]

No book on medieval Latin literature has been more welcoming to men students since Helen Waddell’s Mediaeval Latin Lyrics was published in 1929. With wide-ranging personal experience, a first-class honors B.A. plus M.A. in literature from Queen’s University, Belfast, scholarships from Oxford, and admirable dedication to caring for her step-mother, Helen Waddell was an unconventional medievalist.[17] A man academic, with characteristic lack of gender self-consciousness, complained about Helen Waddell’s medieval scholarship:

She is so insistent that we shall see medieval scholars as men, she forgets that they are both scholars and medieval. [18]

For far too long, scholars have written about man — abstract, genderless, generic man. Helen Waddell understood that men are distinctively male and that being male is significant and not a birth defect. She understood, as today’s female supremacists don’t, that a humane future cannot be just female.

Waddell’s Mediaeval Latin Lyrics begins with “Dancing Girl of Syria {Copa Surisca}.” Perhaps that poem would have been more accurately titled “Darling Syrian Woman Tavern-Keeper {Copa Syrisca}.” Far more important is Waddell beginning her anthology of medieval Latin lyrics with that poem. Waddell’s anthology ends with “She herself restored me to life {Ipsa vivere mihi reddidit}.” Waddell appreciated men and medieval Latin literature in a humane and enlightened way, far beyond the oppressive ideology of men-abasing courtly love.[19]

Helen Waddell and Peter Dronke are dead. In her own understanding, Waddell has gone to be with the God of most of medieval Latin literature. In his own understanding, Dronke is probably just dust. Dust might count as more material remains than what’s left of Dronke’s chair of medieval Latin literature at Cambridge. To honor best Peter Dronke’s learned, careful, thoroughly researched and documented medieval Latin scholarship, scholars should welcome and include in such scholarship Helen Waddell’s religious openness, meninist insight, and literary creativity. Then medieval Latin literature will attract more men students, and probably more women students, too. That’s the way toward a renaissance of medieval Latin literature and a more fruitful future for humanity.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• Dronke’s Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Supplement
• the penis’s image problem in comparative gender perspective
• generation of vipers will be overcome when cocks crow

Notes:

[1]  Gottschalk of Orbais, “How are you commanding me, little boy, {Ut quid iubes, pusiole},” Latin text from The Gottschalk Homepage, my English translation, benefiting from that of Godman (1985), p. 229, and Carr (2018). Here’s a fine recorded performance of “Ut quid iubes, pusiole,” as performed by Cantilena Antiqua in Jaroslaw, Poland in 2009.

Gottschalk probably wrote “Ut quid iubes” after becoming immersed in bitter conflict with Hrabanus Maurus. Hrabanus, a highly influential church leader, celebrated men’s seminal blessing and fiercely sought to suppress what he regarded a heresy. To Hrabanus, Gottschalk’s views on predestination were heresy. Hrabanus and other church leaders thus had Gottschalk incarcerated in the Hautvillers monastery in 849. Gottschalk was labeled a “dangerously insane figure.” Gillis (2017) p. 148. Secular rulers in 851 confirmed Gottschalk’s condemnation. Gottschalk probably wrote “Ut quid iubes” in response to his exile-incarceration for life, without hope for further appeal. An alternate view is that Gottschalk wrote this poem early in his life, perhaps about 825. Godman (1985) p. 40.

[2] Peter Dronke was the son of Maria Kronfeld, a Catholic with close Jewish family relations, and Adolf Dronke, a secularist. Dronke went with his sister and parents to live in New Zealand in 1939. There Dronke obtained a B.A. from Victoria University of Wellington in 1953 and an M.A. in 1954. He then received a scholarship to study English at Magdalen College, Oxford. He received an Oxford degree in 1957 and subsequently received an Italian government scholarship to study in Rome during the academic year 1957-8. Dronke then became a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. On the biography of Peter Dronke, Marenbon (2001), Boltani (2020), Gentili (2020), Sequentia tribute (2020), and Warner (2020).

While Ursula Brown changed her name to Ursula Dronke, that shouldn’t be interpreted as her subordination to her husband. When Ursula Brown and Peter Dronke married, Peter probably asked Ursula for permission to change his last name to Brown. She, being older and wiser, and also a generous-hearted person, probably decided that she would change her name to Dronke so as to help Peter as a young scholar to establish his career. Peter then conformed to his wife’s decision.

Ursula’s choice to take the name Dronke was more reasonable than both spouses adopting a hyphenated last name formed from their prior last names, with the order of the last names in the hyphenated new name chosen by the wife in accordance with the reality of gynocentrism. That hyphenating naming practice has double the administrative and reputational cost of a single marital name change. It also isn’t sustainable intergenerationally. On the biography of Ursula Dronke, O’Donoghue (2012) and Warner (2012). Ursula and Peter Dronke are lamentably excluded from Chance (2005).

Ursula and Peter Dronke’s only child, their daughter Cressida, went on to have two children herself, Gabriel and Lara. Peter Dronke had many students. He also had these two grandchildren.

[3] Wetherbee (2004) p. 243. Like many societies, medieval Europe was highly gynocentric.

[4] Warner (2020).

[5] According to Warner, Ursula Brown and Peter Dronke shared “a commitment to socialist principles.” Warner (2012). Peter Dronke however, donated most of his scholarly work to publishers. Those publishers have disseminated Dronke’s work as private property accessible only to those with sufficient resources to purchase it. Dronke could have done much more to make his scholarly work freely available, as a common good, to everyone worldwide. He seems to have done nothing to promote anything other than the privatization of his work.

[6] Newman (2016) p. 31.

[7] Mews (2008). Dronke taught John Marenbon medieval Latin literature in 1975-6 when Marenbon was an undergraduate at Cambridge. Marenbon observed:

Medieval Latin will cease to be a proper subject in the University, represented by someone teaching, supervising research and championing the interests of the discipline. Just as in the bad old days, students will no longer be able to receive ‘a formation in medieval Latin literature’.

Marenbon (2001) p. 5.

[8] Among degrees awarded in the U.S. in the the academic year 2017-18, women received more than twice as many masters degrees as did men (10,538 masters degrees to women, 5,169 masters degrees to men). Women received more than 50% more doctorate degrees (1,766 doctorate degrees to women, 1,170 doctorate degrees to men). Here are the data as a Google Sheets web page and an LibreOffice spreadsheet. For a related compilation for the academic year 2010-11, see note [4] in my post, “women and men on medieval women writers.”

These data are from the U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. The National Center for Education Statistics obscures this gender comparison by distributing the relevant data across four separate, “web only,” highly detailed tables.

[9] Both women and men scholars have been largely silent about the real gender trouble in the humanities. Reviewing broadly medieval literature, Mortensen declared:

if we as medieval textual scholars do not wish to abandon the entire field to complete fragmentation and private initiative – or to one-sided ideological exploitation – we need to find ways to supplement our existing master-narratives for this extremely large and multifaceted record of verbal art and premodern human insight.

Mortensen (2017) p. 60. With respect to gender, literary scholarship has already become a field of one-sided ideological exploitation. A medievalist might consider “feminist criticism of the role of gender in the author’s writing and in our reading.” Ziolkowsk (1996) p. 530. Meninist literary criticism, in contrast, continues to be viciously marginalized and suppressed.

[10] Ziolkowski (1996) p. 506.

[11] Allen Beville Ramsay, “Nicholas, merciful father and guardian {Nicola, clemens pater atque custos},” Latin text from Brittain (1962) p. 363, my English translation benefiting from that of id.

[12] Wilhelm (1990) p. 3. On the periodization with respect to medieval Latin literature, Ziolkowski (1996) pp. 508-11.

[13] Godman stated:

Ut quid iubes? is imprecisely allusive … Whatever the personal circumstances of this poem’s composition, nothing in the text licenses us to interpret it biographically, nor do we need to do so. … Gottschalk’s theme is less the difficulties he experienced on Reichenau while exiled from Fulda than a condition of mind … it is poetry symbolic of a state of sensibility in which consciousness of personal suffering vies with the duty of divine praise.

Godman (1985) p. 42.

[14] The Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library recently published David Traill’s magnificent edition of the Carmina Burana. Traill (2018). The quoted phrase is on the flyleaves of both volumes.

[15] Wilhelm (1990) pp. 27-8. The third section in Wilhelm’s book is entitled “Provençal Lyrics.” Its introduction begins:

The Provençal lyric bursts upon the late medieval world like a welcomed ray of spring sunlight.

Id. p. 45. In fact, Raimon Berenguier IV, Arnaut Catalan, Bernart de Cornilh, and Raimon de Durfort discussing in Provencal lyrics the extent of men’s obligations to serve women is squarely within the great tradition of earlier medieval Latin literature such as Waltherius and Ruodlieb, and stories in the chronicles of Guibert of Nogent and Liudprand of Cremona.

[16] In addition to contempt from medievalists, medieval Latin literature has also suffered from contempt from classicists:

Until recently classicists, with few exceptions, have taken almost no interest in Medieval Latin, and indeed have often been hostile to or contemptuous of it. This attitude goes back to — in fact is almost a definition of — the Renaissance Humanist culture that prided itself on having rediscovered classical antiquity — not only Greek but ‘pure’ Latin. From the sixteenth century on, the efforts of Latinists have been directed to preserving the Latin language and literature of the late years of the Republic and the early years of the Empire. Style, spelling and metre were taught according to classical models; the reform of spelling took immediate effect and was confirmed by the invention of printing. As a result over a thousand years of Latin literature was dismissed as ignorant and barbaric. I recall a New Zealand professor of Latin who read the entire Oxford Book of Medieval Latin and found only one piece that he liked (Peter Riga’s poem on the hermaphrodite). Religious attitudes (not, of course, just among classicists) have also played their part. A great deal of Medieval Latin literature concerns the Virgin, the saints, and other (from a Protestant point of view) dubious topics. Anticlericalism was not confined to Protestant countries: the epithet ‘monkish’ has often been enough to condemn an author to permanent obscurity. In modern times even being religious at all — let alone moral — puts a medieval writer at a serious disadvantage with his {modern} reader.

Rigg (1992) p. 3. In contrast to much of medieval Latin literature, Rigg’s presentation of medieval Latin literature is wholly lacking in rhetorical sophistication and verbal allurement. His book thus functions as a learned reference work for all but the most dedicated students of medieval Latin literature.

[17] For an anti-meninist biography of Waddell, see FitzGerald (2005). FitzGerald’s biography is one chapter in Chance (2005), a monumental work of gynocentrism.

[18] Jones (1928) pp. 497-8. Jones declared of Waddell:

One can read her discussion of the Carolingian scholars and scarcely suspect that the interminable tomes of the Poetae Karolii Aevi are, unless sifted, a weariness of the flesh, a stupendous compound of bad verse, of dull homily, of empty panegyric, of monotonous elegy, of abecedaria and acrostic and anagram and palindrome, of edifying discourse and endless sermon and monkish chronicle and versified stale small-beer.

Id. p. 498. The interminable tomes of modern academic literary criticism are far less diverse, less useful, and less interesting than medieval Latin literature.

[19] Waddell’s anthology lacks beautiful medieval Latin hymns. In her postscript to her 1948 edition, Waddell made clear that she appreciated all of medieval Latin literature:

The intervening years have made more apparent to me the justice of a complaint brought by a discriminating critic against the principle of selection in this anthology: that is has preferred “the hilarity and mockery of the last masks of paganism” — a harsh phrase for verse as innocent as Herrick’s — to the sanctum saeculare of the mediaeval hymns. Yet it is a preference in seeming only. The greatest things in mediaeval Latin, its “living and victorious splendours,” are not here, because I cannot translate them. Even in secular Latin there are things before which translation is abashed: for these others, nondum propalatam esse viam sanctorum: “the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest.”

Waddell (1929 / 1948) p. viii.

[images] (1) Pope Gregory IV receives a book from Hrabanus Maurus. Illumination made in Fulda between 831 and 840. From instance of Hrabanus, On praise of the holy cross {De laudibus sanctae crucis}, folio 2 of MS. Austrian National Library, Codex 652. Via Wikimedia Commons. (2) Holy men in carmen figuratus, from another instance of Hrabanus, On praise of the holy cross {De laudibus sanctae crucis}, folio 19v of MS. Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) Latin 11685.

References:

Boltani, Plero. 2020. “Dronke, medievista e latinista dell’amore.” Il Sole (Italy). April 24.

Brittain, Frederick. 1962. The Penguin Book of Latin Verse: with plain prose translations of each poem. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.

Carr, Simonetta. 2018. “Gottschalk of Orbais – Bold Witness and Sweet Poet.” Place for Truth. Sept. 12. Online.

Chance, Jane. 2005. Women Medievalists and the Academy. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press.

FitzGerald, Jennifer. 2005. “Helen Waddell (1889-1965): The Scholar-Poet.” Ch. 24 (pp. 323-338) in Chance (2005).

Gentili, Sonia. 2020. “L’immaginazione poetica del suo Medioevo liberato.” quotidiano comunista / il manifesto (Italy). May 3.

Gillis, Matthew Bryan. 2017. Heresy and Dissent in the Carolingian Empire: the case of Gottschalk of Orbais. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (review by Scott Ashley)

Godman, Peter. 1985. Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance. London: Duckworth.

Jones, Howard Mumford. 1928. “Book review: The Wandering Scholars by Helen Waddell.” Modern Philology. 25 (4): 497-499.

Marenbon, John, 2001. “Peter Dronke and Medieval Latin at Cambridge.” Pp. 1-6 in Marenbon, John, ed. Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: a festschrift for Peter Dronke. Leiden: Brill.

Mews, Constant. 2008. “Book Review: Marenbon, ed., Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages.” The Medieval Review. Online, January 12.

Mortensen, Lars Boje. 2017. “The Canons of Medieval Literature from the Middle Ages to the Twenty-First Century.” Analecta Romana Instituti Danici. 42: 47-63.

Newman, Barbara. 2016. Making Love in the Twelfth Century: Letters of two lovers in context. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

O’Donoghue. Heather. 2012. “Ursula Dronke obituary: Inspirational teacher of Old Norse literature specialising in the sagas and poetry of medieval Iceland.” The Guardian (UK). March 25.

Rigg, A. G. 1992. A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, 1066-1422. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Traill, David A. 2018, ed. and trans. Carmina Burana. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, 48-49. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Waddell, Helen. 1929 / rev. 1948. Mediaeval Latin Lyrics. New York: Henry Holt.

Warner, Marina. 2012. “Obituary. Ursula Dronke: Enlightening scholar of medieval literature.” Independent (UK). April 6.

Warner, Marina. 2020. “Peter Dronke obituary: Scholar of medieval Latin who shone light on Hildegard of Bingen and other female writers of the Middle Ages.” The Guardian (UK). Online, May 14.

Wetherbee, Winthrop. 2004. “Book Review: Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke.” Speculum. 79 (1): 242-244.

Wilhelm, James J., ed. 1990. Lyrics of the Middle Ages: an anthology. New York: Garland Publishing.

Ziolkowski, Jan. M. 1996. “Towards a History of Medieval Latin Literature.” Section GA (pp. 505-536) in Mantello, Frank, Anthony Carl, and Arthur George Rigg, eds. Medieval Latin: an introduction and bibliographical guide. Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press.

In 1164, the Archpoet begged his patron Rainald of Dassel for help. Rainald was Archbishop of Cologne and Archchancellor of Italy for the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. When Rainald came to be honored at Vienne in Burgundy, nobles, actors, musicians, and entertainers all hoped to receive gifts. The much more learned and cultured Archpoet, however, bowed his head in shame, “as if a brother to thieves {tamquam frater sim latronum}.”[1] The Archpoet had done moral wrong and been deprived of many goods. He was truly a brother to thieves in the most wicked sense of being willing to castrate himself for wine.

The Archpoet depicted himself as the biblical prophet Jonah. In his poem “As Fame sounds the trumpet {Fama tuba dante sonum},” the Archpoet explained to his patron Rainald:

Having seized Jonah by chance
as the one guilty of the sudden storm,
condemned by his ship-mates,
the gates of the whale soon swallowed him.
And thus I, deserving of death,
having lived wickedly and perversely,
I whose flesh was engulfed
(but whose heart perhaps still remains)
is guilty before you and fears you.
You perhaps will have pity on me.

Behold, your Jonah weeps,
not ignorant of his fault,
for which the whale ate him;
he wants and begs for mercy,
that from the disease he suffers,
you may release him, you whom he honors,
fears, worships, and adores.

{ Ionam deprehensum sorte
reum tempestatis orte,
condempnatum a cohorte
mox absorbent ceti porte.
sic et ego dignus morte
prave vivens et distorte
cuius carnes sunt absorte
(sed cor manet adhuc forte)
reus tibi vereor te
miserturum mihi forte.

Ecce Ionas tuus plorat,
culpam suam non ignorat,
pro qua cetus eum vorat:
veniam vult et implorat,
ut a peste qua laborat
solvas eum quem honorat
tremit colit et adorat. } [2]

Lacking the insights of meninist literary criticism, scholars haven’t understood well the whale that swallowed the Archpoet. The Archpoet’s poetic forefather Hugh Primas brilliantly depicted whores exploiting him and other love-deprived men.[3] Moreover, the Archpoet’s illustrious contemporary Walter of Châtillon described being legally, financially, and sexually swallowed by a whore:

I’ll be forced into shackles
unless I give a little to her voracious gullet.
Already my knob
and the length of my purse
have gone down the wildcat’s gaping throat.

{ cogar ad vinculum,
nisi dem poculum gule voraginis.
Iam nodulum
et burse modulum
abstulit patulum guttur viraginis. } [4]

In medieval Europe, women with strong, independent, and highly active sexuality were thought to have unusually large vaginas. The whale that swallowed the Archpoet is best understood as a rapacious whore’s vagina.[5]

In describing his being swallowed by a rapacious whore’s whale-vagina, the Archpoet rejected men-abasing courtly love for an idolized woman. Within the structural gender injustices of heterosexual love-seeking, the Archpoet apparently was love-impoverished. Poor in this fundamental sense, he turned to a whore for sexual consolation. She engulfed his flesh, but didn’t hold his heart: “but the heart remains {sed cor manet}.” Supporting his appeal for patronage, the Archpoet extravagantly expressed his love for his patron Rainald of Dassel, the one “whom he honors, / fears, worships, and adores {quem honorat / tremit colit et adorat}.” The Archpoet represented his love for Rainald to be as a courtly lover loves his idealized beloved. The Archpoet implied that, despite his whoring, his heart always remained with his patron.[6]

The Archpoet conditionally promised to turn from sex with whores to poetry. He implored Rainald:

If you pardon this guilty man,
and if you give order to the whale,
the whale whose mouth is wide,
it may, offering its customary gap,
vomit the made-bald poet
to his very intended port,
him made thin by hunger.
Thus the poet of poets might again
write for you a pleasing work.
…
With my life I’ll surpass the lives of the fathers,
shunning those things that you shun;
poetry yet unheard
I’ll write for you, if you enrich me.

{ Si remittas hunc reatum
et si ceto des mandatum,
cetus cuius os est latum
more suo dans hiatum
vomet vatem decalvatum
et ad portum destinatum
feret fame tenuatum,
ut sit rursus vates vatum
scribens opus tibi gratum.
…
vincam vita patrum vitas
vitans ea que tu vitas.
poetrias inauditas
scribam tibi, si me ditas. } [7]

The Archpoet’s intended port contrasts with the whore’s port, the “common port” that’s a well-known figure in medieval poetry of men’s sexed protest. While the whore’s vagina is wide, the Archpoet’s penis is made thin by hunger. It can then more easily be withdrawn. The Archpoet figuratively and literally vowed to shift his creative work from his penis to his pen. He recognized himself to be like the prodigal son leaving his father:

A stream of tears flows,
those that the fugitive pours out,
he only half-alive within the whale.
I was once your adopted son,
but my plural genitive testicles,
too evil and lascivious,
have been made injurious to me.

Wanting to enjoy pleasure,
I was comparable to a brute;
with a holy man I was not holy.
For that, fearing your anger,
like Jonah before his God,
I hurried, an exile seeking flight.
…
Already past time, I will speak plainly:
I’m pressed by the plague of poverty,
fool that I am, who in your service,
with money, horses, food, clothing,
led all festive days.
Now more insane than Orestes,
living badly and grievously,
dishonestly tramp-wandering,
I lead all sad days.
This matter needs no witness.

{ Lacrimarum fluit rivus
quas effundo fugitivus
intra cetum semivivus,
tuus quondam adoptivus;
sed pluralis genitivus
nequam nimis et lascivus
mihi factus est nocivus.

Voluptate volens frui
conparabar brute sui
nec cum sancto sanctus fui.
unde timens iram tui
sicut Ionas dei sui
fugam petens fuga rui.
…
Ut iam loquar manifeste:
paupertatis premor peste
stultus ego qui penes te
nummis equis victu veste
dies omnes duxi feste;
nunc insanus plus Oreste,
male vivens et moleste,
trutannizans inhoneste
omne festum duco meste;
res non eget ista teste. } [8]

The enraged Orestes sought, with some justification, to kill his mother. Then vengeful, female monsters relentlessly pursued him. The miserably impoverished Archpoet sought, with some justification, to withdraw from his rapacious whore-lover. Despite his wrongs, the Archpoet returned to his patron-father Rainald of Dassel. As a Christian bishop, Rainald should love generously, as did the father of the prodigal son. The Archpoet knowingly asked Rainald for goods. Expelled naked from the whale’s gap, the Archpoet rightly could hope to receive from Rainald a new cloak, an expensive ring, and an honorary feast.[9]

After having extensively discussed, well-understood experiences like that of Jonah, Orestes, and the prodigal son, the Archpoet proposed a classical horror and blasphemy against God’s blessing. He offered to sacrifice his genitals at Rainald’s wish:

Peace’s author, avenger of strife,
be gentle to your poet,
don’t believe the inexperienced;
already with testicles put to sleep,
I live holier with hermits.
Whatever you know to be evil in me,
I will amputate, if you wish.
So that thirst would not seize us,
I will be the branch and you the vine.

{ Pacis auctor, ultor litis,
esto vati tuo mitis
neque credas imperitis;
genitivis iam sopitis
sanctior cum heremetis:
quicquid in me malum scitis
amputabo, si velitis.
ne nos apprehendat sitis,
ero palmes et tu vitis. } [10]

Men deserve to have choice among alternate lifestyles, such as the life of a celibate hermit or poet. But having a man amputate his testicles differs categorically. No man should be compelled to castrate himself. Resist and reject castration culture!

In the context of castration, the Archpoet’s final verse is a gross misuse of holy scripture. Jesus in the Gospel of John declares:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch of mine that bears no fruit, he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit. … I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

{ ego sum vitis vera et Pater meus agricola est. omnem palmitem in me non ferentem fructum tollet eum et omnem qui fert fructum purgabit eum ut fructum plus adferat. … ego sum vitis vos palmites qui manet in me et ego in eo hic fert fructum multum quia sine me nihil potestis facere.

ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἄμπελος ἡ ἀληθινή καὶ ὁ πατήρ μου ὁ γεωργός ἐστιν. πᾶν κλῆμα ἐν ἐμοὶ μὴ φέρον καρπόν αἴρει αὐτό καὶ πᾶν τὸ καρπὸν φέρον καθαίρει αὐτὸ ἵνα καρπὸν πλείονα φέρῃ. … ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἄμπελος ὑμεῖς τὰ κλήματα ὁ μένων ἐν ἐμοὶ κἀγὼ ἐν αὐτῷ οὗτος φέρει καρπὸν πολύν ὅτι χωρὶς ἐμοῦ οὐ δύνασθε ποιεῖν οὐδέν. } [11]

For Jesus’s words “I am the vine, you are the branches {ego sum vitis vos palmites},” the Archpoet himself declared to his patron Rainald “I will be the branch and you the vine {ero palmes et tu vitis}.” Thus after adoring Rainald as if he were the Virgin Mary, the Archpoet figured him as Jesus! Even worse, the biblical context of pruning branches corresponds to the Archpoet offering himself to be castrated. Men’s seminal fruitfulness is essentially linked with men’s genitals. Enraged at obstinate heretics troubling his beloved Christian community, Saint Paul hurled the ultimate insult:

I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!

{ utinam et abscidantur qui vos conturbant

ὄφελον καὶ ἀποκόψονται οἱ ἀναστατοῦντες ὑμᾶς } [12]

The Archpoet’s offer to castrate himself draws from his thirst for wine. In Christian understanding, Eurcharistic wine is transubstantiated into the blood of Christ. Men’s genitals, in contrast, are themselves God-created flesh. Men’s genitals work to fulfill the fundamental blessing of Hebrew scripture. Surely men’s thirst for women is more dangerous than their thirst for wine. Yet men’s genitals should not be sacrificed for wine or any other worldly goods.

The Archpoet, swallowed by a rapacious whore’s whale-vagina, suffered like Jonah. Like the prodigal son, the Archpoet returned impoverished to his father-patron, Rainald of Dassel. The Archpoet’s poignant, enormously learned poem wasn’t censored and canceled in relatively liberal and tolerant medieval Europe.[13] Yet castration culture, then and now, is a scandal of social justice and an insult to God. All deserve to know fully the blessing of well-tended branches producing an abundance of fruit.

*  *  *  *  *

Read more:

• sailing to old Pavia as Archpoet: an eternal truth about humanity
• Hugh Primas: overcome sexual-market injustice with medieval education
• following the Archpoet: The Poet’s Repentance, updated

Notes:

[1] Archpoet of Cologne, “As Fame sounds the trumpet {Fama tuba dante sonum}” v. 14, Latin text from the Latin Library, my English translation benefiting from those by Robert Levine (who also provides a good scholarly overview of the Archpoet) and Adcock (1994). All subsequent quotes from “Fama tuba dante sonum” are similarly sourced. The currently best edition of the Latin text is Watenphul & Krefeld (1958). For this poem, it’s essentially identical to the Latin Library text.

Rainald of Dassel was arriving to be seated in honor in Vienne in Middle Francia, part of historical Frankish Burgundia. Vienne is in the present-day Isère department of France. In “Fama tuba dante sonum,” v. 6, the word “Vienna” doesn’t refer to the present-day city of Vienna in Austria. Skinner (1973), p. 2, wrongly identifies the Archpoet’s “Vienna.”

“Fama tuba dante sonum” suggests that the Archpoet was intricately engaged with musical representation and numerical relations. Howlett (2008) pp. 245-9. Howlett concluded, “If even a fraction of this analysis is correct, the Archpoet earned both his title and his keep.” Id. p. 249.

The German band Helium Vola recorded an impressive performance of “Fama tuba dante sonum” in 2001 on its studio album Helium Vola. That performance includes only selected verses from the original poem.

Little is known about the Archpoet apart from his ten surviving, attributed poems. Godman stated:

Facts about the Archpoet are few. One of them is fundamental: the identification of him with ‘Rainald H’, a notary in the service of Rainald of Dassel, archchancellor of Italy and archbishop of Cologne, between 1158 and 1167. The complicity which distinguishes patron and client, unparalleled in the Latin literature of the Middle Ages, developed within a context of companionship. Itinerant but no vagans, our author accompanied his chief in the chancery on journeys throughout Germany, Burgundy and Italy. Places and dates of their travels are provided by charters which ‘Rainald H’ composed and copied. They leave little room for doubt that, more than any other identifiable member of his master’s entourage, he remained at Rainald of Dassel’s side.

Godman (2011) p. 31. Peter Dronke was skeptical of the claim that the Archpoet was this Rainald H. Adcock (1994) pp. xx-xxi (written by Dronke).

[2] Archpoet, “Fama tuba dante sonum” vv. 31-47. The Archpoet’s diction picks up words from the Vulgate text of Jonah. Cf. Jonah 1:3, 2:1-2. “A fish swallows a man” is a well-established folktale motif.  For discussion of this motif (ATU 1889G), Ziolkowski (2007) Ch. 2. Ziolkowski (1984), an early version of that chapter, has the great advantage of being freely accessible online.

In Jonah, the sea-creature that swallows Jonah is described as a “large fish.” Jonah 1:17. Drawing upon the description of Jonah being swallowed in Matthew 12:40, Jerome influentially declared:

In Hebrew, however, we read “large fish” for what the translators of the Septuagint and the Lord in the Gospel call a whale. The later two make clear the same thing more concisely. For in the Hebrew is said “dag gadol,” which is translated as “large fish.” There is no doubt that it means whale.

{ In hebraico autem PISCEM GRANDEM legimus pro quo LXX interpretes et Dominus in Euangelio cetum uocant, rem ipsam breuius explicantes. In hebraico enim dicitur “dag gadol” quod interpretatur PISCEM GRANDEM. Haud dubium quin cetum significet. }

Jerome, Commentary on the Prophet Jonah {Commentarius in Ionam prophetam} 2.1a, Latin text and English translation (modified insubstantially) from Duval (1973), as cited by Ziolkowski (2007) p. 388, n. 79. For related discussion, id. pp. 80-1. Jerome’s enormously influential Vulgate translation of Matthew 12:40 employed the word “cetus {whale}.”

Jonah was important in Christian exegesis. Hebrew scripture tells of a large, powerful, threatening sea-creature — Leviathan or Behemoth. See, e.g. Job 40:15-41:34. In Job 41:1 (40:20 in the Vulgate), God challenged Job, “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook {Vulgate: an extrahere poteris Leviathan hamo}?” Jesus was understood to have done just that:

Christ was the fisherman (piscator) who made himself the bait (esca) and crucified himself on the hook (hamus) in order to catch the whale (cetus).

Ziolkowski (2007) p. 82. With the help of Matthew 12:39-41 and Jonah 2:2-6, Christians understood the mouth of the whale to be the entrance to Hell, the path to “the belly of Sheol” (Jonah 2:2). Jonah’s three days in the whale’s belly prefigured Jesus’s three days in the tomb before his resurrection.

[3] The Archpoet’s “Fama tuba dante sonum” is written in the meter of Hugh Primas’s poem “I was rich and cherished {Dives eram et dilectus}.” The Archpoet’s poem also shares with Hugh’s poem the theme of a fall into poverty and disgrace from being rich and cherished. On the close relation between these poems, Dronke (1997) pp. 97-8. Dronke declared of the Archpoet:

the relation between his poetry and that of Hugh Primas are in certain respects close enough, in my view, to suggest that at some stage, perhaps around 1150, he {the Archpoet} was a disciple of Primas at Orleans.

Id . p. 96. Similarly, id. p. 99 and Adcock (1994) pp. xxi-xxii (written by Peter Dronke). With respect to the Archpoet’s “Fama tuba dante sonum,” see in particular Hugh Primas, Carmen 7 (“What are you grieving for, poet? Why cry over a whore? {Quid luges, lirice, quid meres pro meretrice?}”) and Carmen 8 (“You’ve sent out for a whore, but she won’t leave the brothel before {Iussa lupanari meretrix exire, parari}”).

Both Hugh Primas and the Archpoet were highly learned, court poets. Neither was a vagaband poet like the medieval poetic figure of Golias — “Bishop Golias as an incarnation of the libertine spirit in mediaeval culture.” Both Hugh and the Archpoet, however, contributed to that figure:

Certainly it is to Hugo of Orleans {Hugh Primas} and the Archpoet of Cologne that Golias primarily owes his substance, for without them he would be but the shadow of a name — the mere embodiment of a churlish reproach against freedom and the lust of life.

Hanford (1926) pp. 38, 57.

[4] Walter of Châtillon, St-Omer 22, “As I seek a cure for myself {Dum queritur michi remedium},” 5.6-10, Latin text from Traill (2013) p.46, my English translation benefiting from that of id. p. 47.

[5] Letaldus of Micy’s late-tenth-century poem About a Certain Fisherman Whom a Whale Swallowed {De quodam piscatore quem ballena absorbuit} seems to have informed the Archpoet’s figure of the whale. Letaldus describes the whale that swallowed the fisherman as having an “ever-gaping gullet {gutture semper hianti}.” De quodam piscatore, v. 39. Cf. Walter of Châtillon, Dum queritur michi remedium, vv. 5.7, 10. The whale has a mouth and eyes like those of the female sea-monsters Scylla and Charybdis (De quodam piscatore, v. 38). Those female sea-monsters lure men sailors to their deaths. Scylla and Charybdis are invoked in ancient and medieval men’s sexed protest. For example, Anaxilas states in Neottis:

And isn’t Phryne behaving just like Charybdis,
by grabbing the ship-owner and gulping him down, boat and all?

{ ἡ δὲ Φρύνη τὴν Χάρυβδιν οὐχὶ πόρρω που ποεῖ, τόν τε ναύκληρον λαβοῦσα καταπέπωκ᾿ αὐτῷ σκάφει }

Athenaeus, The Learned Banqueters 13.558c, ancient Greek text and English trans. Olsen (2010) pp. 238-9. See also Alan of Lille, Anticlaudianus 4.307, 314-18.

Letaldus also associated the whale with the frequently erupting Mount Etna and the Furies:

Raging like the whale, Mount Etna spews forth sulphurous fumes
and batters the bright stars with the ashes it discharges.
Scarcely otherwise, this Eumenides, incited by the swift fires,
seethes, thrusting its jaws through the loudly sounding waves.

{ Sulphureos velut ille fremens vomit Ethna vapores
lucidaque elatis diverberat astra favillis,
haut secus eumenides rapidis haec acta caminis
aestuat, altisonas fauces exerta per undas. }

De quodam piscatore vv. 73-6, Latin text from Bisanti (2010) and Wilmart (1938), English translation (with my minor changes) from Ziolkowski (2007) p. 245. In Boccaccio’s Corbaccio, the anus of the narrator’s ex-wife is described similarly to this description of Mount Etna. In outrageous caricature, a whore’s changing behavior toward a man customer, as well as her natural menstrual cycle, might be understood in relation to Mount Etna.

The Furies are ancient Greek female divinities of vengence. Often they are named with the apotropaic double-talk Euminedes (Εὐμενίδες {the kindly ones}). Double-talk is a characteristic way in which men attempt to appease women. The Furies were commonly thought to be three in number (Eumenides is a plural form for Eumedis {Εὐμενίς}). Letaldus uses Eumenides to represent a singular female Fury.

Letaldus further associated the Furies with the whale that swallowed the fisherman named Within (the fisherman’s Latin name is only inadvertently allegorical in English):

“I am Within,” he said, “whom with ravenous throat this tormenting
Eumenides has raped and engulfed in its embittering guts.

{ “Within,” ait, “sum, quem rabidis haec faucibus angens
eumenides rapuit et viscere mersit acerbo.” }

De quodam piscatore vv. 73-6, Latin text (with insubstantial changes) from Bisanti (2010) and Wilmart (1938), my English translation, benefiting from that of Ziolkowski (2007) p. 247, which has for the second quoted part, “whom with ravening throat this choking Fury has seized and submerged in it pitiless gut.” I’ve translated the two verses within the semantic range of the given Latin words, but with contextual relation to the whale swallowing the Archpoet in “Fama tuba dante sonum.” In that poem, the Archpoet described himself as “now more insane that Orestes {nunc insanus plus Oreste}.” That obscure reference makes best sense in relation to Letaldus’s association of the man-swallowing whale with the Eumenides.

Skinner superficially interpreted as comic the whale that engulfed the Archpoet:

The great fish is a particular source of fun. The monstrous size of his {sic} jaws is caricatured …  Technique is deliberately stressed at the expense of content.

Skinner (1973) pp. 1-2. The content of “Fama tuba dante sonum” is actually ingenious and full of significance.

Godman similarly effaced in conceptual abstraction the whale that engulfed the Archpoet:

Looming large in the sea of the client’s alienation from his patron, it is not only a figura of punishment but also a figure of fun.

Godman (2014) p. 218 (footnote omitted that documents “the metaphor of the sea as alienation”). Godman interpreted “Fama tuba dante sonum” as cryptically conveying signals between the Archpoet and his patron Rainald. Medieval masters, who did not marginalize men’s sexed protests under superficial, virtue-signaling labels (“anti-feminist”), probably more readily understood “Fama tuba dante sonum” than have modern professors.

[6] Skinner interpreted the Archpoet to be figuring his patron Rainald as God:

the symbolic association between Reinald von Dassel and God has almost become an identity. … the symbolic identification of the patron with the biblical Jehovah {sic} is developed by use of this extended metaphor {of the Archpoet as Jonah}.

Skinner (1973) p. 3. That’s too abstract of an interpretation. Ideologically deluded men tend to regard women as gods. The Archpoet’s god-like treatment of Rainald is explictly contextualized with respect to human love and gyno-idolatry. A more detailed and perceptive reading of the relation between the Archpoet and Rainald reconized “the complicity between them, which is expressed in their shared sense of humour.” Godman (2011) p. 57.

[7] Archpoet, “Fama tuba dante sonum” vv. 48-56, 68-71. Jewish scriptural interpreters and Christian artists understood Jonah to have lost his hair (and according to some, his clothes) when he was in the belly of the large fish. Ziolkowski (2007) pp. 85-88, Friedman (1988). A man who loses clothes and is more generally impoverished through paying women for sex is common in literary history. See, e.g. Johannes de Hauvilla, Architrenius 9.242-7; poems of Hugh Primas; and Alphabetical song concerning the evil woman {Canticum alphabeticum de mala muliere}, stanzas 9, 17, 20, 24.

[8] Archpoet, “Fama tuba dante sonum” vv. 18-30, 72-81. The phrase pluralis genitivus is clearly a grammatical metaphor for the poet’s testicles. Medieval poetry such as Alan Lille’s The Plaint of Nature {De Planctu Naturae} and Matheolus’s Lamentationes Matheoluli used grammatical metaphors for sexual organs and acts.

The Archpoet in vv. 72-81 alludes to Venantius Fortunatus’s sixth-century Easter hymn, “Hail, festive day {Salve festa dies}.” That hymn associates Jesus’s death, his harrowing of Hell, and his resurrection with Jonah’s experience after being swallowed by the large fish:

The greedy monster,
whose huge throat
had swallowed all mankind,
is now thy prey, O God!

Hail, thou festive…

The savage beast now trembling
vomits forth the victims he had made,
and the lamb tears the sheep
from the jaw of the wolf.

Hail, thou festive…

{ Inferus insaturabiliter
cava gruttura pandens,
Qui rapuit semper,
fit tua praeda, Deus.

Salve festa dies…

Evomit absorptam
trepide fera belua plebem,
Et de fauce lupi
subtrahit agrnus oves.

Salve festa dies… }

St. 17-8, Latin text and English translation from SSPX.

On the reference to Orestes, see note [5] above concering the reference to Eumenides in Letuldus of Micy’s De quodam piscatore quem ballena absorbuit. In v. 83, trutannizans is “a medieval verb of vagrancy.” Godman (2014) p. 224.

[9] Cf. Luke 15:22-3 (the prodigal son returns home to his father).

[10] Archpoet, “Fama tuba dante sonum” vv. 82-90. As v. 84 points out, celibate hermits or celibate clerics, inexperienced in the ways of women, shouldn’t naively judge men’s claims of being victimized by women.

[11] John 15:1-2, 5, Latin text (Vulgate) and Greek text (MGNT) via BlueLetterBible.

[12] Galatians 5:12, Latin text (Vulgate) and Greek text (MGNT) via BlueLetterBible. Translations of this verse vary in explicitness. The King James Version has “cut off”; the English Standard Version and the New International Version, “emasculate”; and the New Revised Standard Version, “castrate.” Paul and his opponents are arguing over the necessity of circumcision for Christians.

[13] Such work of the Archpoet, along with similiar poems of Hugh Primas and Walter of Châtillon, was often in medieval literature compilations distinguished with the term “Goliardic.” In historical context, “Goliardic” apparently “identifies difference, otherness, potential danger.” Bridges (2012) p. 78. In contrast to modern pieties about celebrating difference and welcoming otherness, medieval culture seems to have been actually more supportive of such characteristics of symbolic works.

[images] (1) clothed Jonah going into whale’s mouth (right), naked, bald Jonah leaving whale’s mouth (left). Wall painting by Albertus Pictorin the Härkeberga Church (Uppsala County, Sweden). Painted c. 1480. Image thanks to Lars-Olof Albertson and Wikimedia Commons. (2) Sword-bearing Scylla with a sea-monster’s tail and three dog heads protruding from her waist. Painting on a Boeotian red-figure bell-crater. Made between 450 and 425 BGC. Preserved as accession # CA 1341 in the Louvre Museum (Paris). Image thanks to Jastrow and Wikimedia Commons. (3) The Remorse of Orestes or Orestes Pursued by the Furies. Painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Painted in 1862. Preserved as accession # 71.623 in the Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA; USA). Image thanks to Google Art Project and Wikimedia Commons.

References:

Adcock, Fleur, trans. 1994. Hugh Primas and the Archpoet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (review by Paul Pascal)

Bisanti, Armando. 2010. “Il Within piscator (De quodam piscatore quem ballena absorbuit) di Letaldo di Micy.” Course resource, academic year 2010-2011, University of Palermo, Italy.

Bridges, Venetia. 2012. “‘Goliardic’ Poetry and the Problem of Historical Perspective: medieval adaptations of Walter of Châtillon’s quotation poems.” Medium Aevum. 81 (2): 249-270.

Dronke, Peter. 1997. “The Archpoet and the Classics.” Ch. 4 (pp. 83-100) in Dronke, Peter. Sources of Inspiration: studies in literary transformations, 400-1500. Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura. Originally published in  Godman, Peter, and Oswyn Murray, eds. 1990. Latin Poetry and the Classical Tradition: essays in medieval and Renaissance literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Duval, Yves-Marie. 1973. Le livre de Jonas dans la litterature chretienne grecque et latine: sources et influence du Commentaire sur Jonas de saint Jerome. Paris: Etudes augustiniennes.

Friedman, John B. 1988. “Bald Jonah and the Exegesis of 4 Kings 2.23.” Traditio. 44: 125-144.

Godman, Peter. 2011. “The Archpoet and the Emperor.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes. 74: 31-58.

Godman, Peter. 2014. The Archpoet and Medieval Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hanford, James Holly. 1926. “The Progenitors of Golias.” Speculum. 1 (1): 38-58.

Howlett, David. 2008. “Notes on the text and the name of the Archpoet.” Bulletin Du Cange. 66: 237-249.

Olson, S. Douglas, ed. and trans. 2010. Athenaeus VI, the learned banqueters. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Skinner, Marilyn B. 1973. “The Archpoet’s use of the Jonah-figure.” Neophilologus. 57 (1): 1-5.

Traill, David A., ed. and trans. 2013. Walter of Châtillon, the Shorter Poems: Christmas hymns, love lyrics, and moral-satirical verse. Oxford Medieval Texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Watenphul, Heinrich and Heinrich Krefeld, eds.. 1958. Die Gedichte des Archipoeta. Münchener Texte, 6. Heidelberg: C. Winter.

Wilmart, André. 1938. “Le poème héroïque de Létald sur Within le pêcheur.” Studi Medievali (new series) 9: 188-203.

Ziolkowski, Jan. 1984. “Folklore and Learned Lore in Letaldus’s Whale Poem.” Viator. 15: 107-118.

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