Queen Sheba & King Solomon on riddle of too many cooks

many cooks on British Navy ship

Dating from no later than the seventh century, Syriac and Armenian texts of Queen Sheba’s questions to King Solomon include five riddles. One riddle concerns the modern English proverb “too many cooks spoil the broth.”[1] The ancient texts reject the modern “too many cooks” wisdom with sophisticated understanding of reception.

Queen Sheba’s statement of the riddle implicitly contains its answer. She presented King Solomon with a conundrum:

The head-cook of the king multiplies the cooks, and in order to create various tastes he labors and makes others labor, yet the taste is one. [2]

King Solomon responded:

If you have an excellent cook from your country, add him to our thousands. However, as you say, the taste is one. Nevertheless, the wicked is bitter and far from my Lord , and remains in judgment. [3]

The obscure phrase “the taste is one” makes sense in reference to the king. The many cooks make food for the one king. No matter how many cooks are in the kitchen, the king’s taste remains one. Too many cooks don’t create a problem.

This reception interpretation of the “too many cooks” riddle provides insight into the final sentence of Solomon’s answer. That final sentence introduces a contrasting claim with the adverb “nevertheless.” That claim seems to generate a contrasting allegorical interpretation of the king receiving food that many cooks make. In a plausible allegorical interpretation, the king is God. The many cooks are the many persons making lives in the world. The wicked isn’t incorporated into the oneness of God. The wicked is subject to condemnation (judgment). The king’s food has one, good taste, but the wicked remains apart with a different, bitter taste.

The “too many cooks” riddle allegorically addresses cultural diversity and divine unity. Humans differ in culture. That’s obvious in the daily matter of food. Too many cooks might well be a problem in a kitchen for a family or group, especially if the many cooks pursue their own preferred taste. But too many cooks isn’t a problem for serving God. Human wickedness is the problem in serving God. That’s the wisdom of Queen Sheba and King Solomon.

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Notes:

[1] The Syriac and Armenian texts begin with seven questions formally similar to the Problemata Aristotle, but encompassing theological concerns. The subsequent five riddles that Queen Sheba addresses to King Solomon concern:

  • the burning bush that Moses saw
  • Tamar, daughter-in-law of Judah and mother of two of his children (Genesis 38)
  • a menstruating woman
  • too many cooks
  • a bridegroom who didn’t show up for his wedding

The Armenian text concludes with Solomon posing to Sheba an allegorical riddle about a temple. The Syriac and Armenian texts are generally similar. The Syriac text appears to be a seventh-century translation from a Greek text. The Armenian text seems to be seventh-century translation from a Syriac text. Hovhanessian (2013) pp. 328, 332, 334.

The classical Armenian version of the Chronicle of Michael the Great includes an account of Queen Sheba’s questions and King Solomon’s answers. Here’s Robert Bedrosian’s translation of the relevant text. Hovhanessian (2013) is based on numerous, stand-alone Armenian manuscripts of the questions.  That textual tradition, thought to be older, expands question 2, includes praise of Queen Sheba after question 8, and doesn’t have praise of the Queen after question 13. Otherwise, the questions/riddles appear to be nearly identical in the Chronicle version and the free-standing version.

Elyse Bruce at Historically Speaking traces instances of “too many cooks spoil the broth” historically. The earliest instance she finds is a 1575 text that states “the more cooks the worse potage.”

[2] From Armenian trans. id. p. 342. The Syriac text is similar but adds the detail “through labour he changes fine food.” Id. p. 345 (Sebastian Brock’s translation of the Syriac).

[3] From Armenian trans. id. p. 342. The answer in the Syriac text:

Then Solomon laughed (and) said to her: If you have from your own country the fine food of your parable, then add our cook, that he may be filled with a thousand women, for in truth the species is the same.

Id. p. 345 (Brock’s translation). Id. p. 342  notes:

The Syriac answer is totally different and does not make sense. Brock suggests that it must be corrupt.

[image] Cooks in galley of British ship on a Malta convoy, 21 August 1942, while being attacked. By Hampton, J A (Lt), Royal Navy official photographer, Russell, J E (Lt). I’ve cropped the original, which is thanks to the Imperial War Museum (UK) and Wikimedia Commons.

Reference:

Hovhanessian, Vahan S. 2013. “Questions of the Queen of Sheba and Answers by King Solomon.” Pp. 326-45 in Bauckham, Richard, James R. Davila, and Alexander Panayotov. 2013. Old Testament pseudepigrapha: more noncanonical scriptures. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

learning & castration: crimes of the penis and the pen

writing with pen

In the eighth century, the caliph was enjoying the company of a slave girl in a desert camp. He noticed that the girl, even in that pre-iPhone era, wasn’t paying attention to him. She was listening intently to a far-away singer. The caliph recognized the fundamental biological problem:

the he-camel brays, and the she-camel comes running; the male goat cries out, and the female goat becomes sexually receptive; the male pigeon coos, and the female struts; a man sings, and a woman swoons. [1]

Recognizing biological reality is an important first step in formulating good public policy.

Scholarly failure, however, produced horrendous violence against men. Seeking to ascertain the population of men singers, the caliph, evidently a proponent of data-based policy-making, dictated an order: “count them.” Inscribing the caliph’s order, his secretary with a faulty action of the pen added a dot under an Arabic letter in the word for “count.” That dot changed the order from “count them” to “castrate them.”[2] An orthographic mistake thus produced mass castration of men singers in the early Islamic world.

Folk literature contested the value of scholarly learning in relation to castration. The 1001 Nights includes a story about a school teacher. The school teacher was cultured and sophisticated. He had knowledge of grammar, philology, jurisprudence, and poetry. Undoubtedly he was also an expert in orthography. One night, a guest at the teacher’s home discovered him in the wives’ quarters. He was unconscious and bleeding profusely. The guest revived the teacher and inquired about what happened. The teacher explained:

My brother, after I left you, I sat thinking about the works of Almighty God, and I said to myself: “Everything that God has created for man serves a useful purpose. He has made hands to apply force, feet for walking, eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, the penis for copulation and so forth and so on. These two testicles, however, serve no useful purpose for me.” So I took a razor that I had by me and cut them off, and this is what happened to me. [3]

The lesson is obvious: thinking too much can lead to castration. Even just attending college in the U.S. can now have that effect.

A companion of the Islamic prophet similarly jested about scholarly learning. A man asked this Muslim authority “whether touching the penis violates one’s pure state and obligates the devotee to perform ablutions.” The Muslim authority responded: “If you think it’s contaminating, cut it off!”[4] A penis is not intrinsically evil, dirty, or contaminating. Thinking otherwise is foolish and hateful. That was the point of the Muslim authority’s jest.

A pen and a penis differ significantly. Using a pen correctly requires learning. Using a penis correctly comes naturally. That’s good reason to fear wrongful learning and thinking more than sensational sex crimes.

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Notes:

[1] From Arabic trans. Rowson (1991) p. 690, modified slightly for clarity. The story exits in al-Jahiz’s Kitab al-Hayawan (Book of Animals), written in the ninth century; see edition Cairo, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 121-22. Versions of the story also exist in Abū l-Faraj’s Kitab al-Aghānī (Book of Songs), written in the tenth century; see edition Dar al-Kutub, Cairo, 1950, vol. 4, pp. 269 ff. The caliph is variously identified, most frequently as Sulaymān (reigned 715-17).

[2] The singers castrated were known as mukhannathūn (effeminates).Names of the castrated singers usually include al-Dalāl, who had considerable fame. The literature includes responding quips from the mukhannathūn:

  • We have become women in truth!
  • We have been spared the trouble of carrying around a spout for urine.
  • What would we do with an unused weapon, anyway?

Id. p. 691. In the Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., the entry for Khāsī (by Charles Pellat) states of this story:

despite the traditions which tend to make it an historical fact, the whole account is, by all appearances, nothing other than a pleasing anecdote, forged to provide evidence of the inconveniences of the Arabic script

I’m grateful to Geert Jan van Gelder for pointing me to this story in response to my post on Sincopus’s story of castration.

[3] 1001 Nights (Calcutta II edition), Night 403, from Arabic trans. Lyons (2008) vol. 2, p. 219.

[4] Shams al-Din al-Sarakhsi (died about 1096), al-Mabsut (Beirut: Dar al-Fikr, 1989) vol. 1, p. 66, from Arabic trans. Maghen (2008) p. 333. The first quote is from Maghen’s narration of the story, id. The Muslim authority was Sa’d ibn Abī Waqqās (died about 674), a companion of the prophet of Islam.

[image] Photograph by Douglas Galbi.

References:

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

Maghen, Ze’ev. 2008. “The Merry Men of Medina: Comedy and Humanity in the early days of Islam.” Der Islam. 83 (2): 277-340.

Rowson, Everett K. 1991. “The Effeminates of Early Medina.” Journal of the American Oriental Society. 111 (4): 671-693.

grammar of sex in marriage for Matheolus and Petra

Donatus, Ars Grammatica

Matheolus wished he had looked at Medusa rather than married Petra. A well-educated cleric in thirteenth-century France, Matheolus was learned in grammar and logic. Matheolus learned too late that his wife Petra was a superior subject. Even the great scholar Aristotle was subjected to a woman. Turning from laughter to tears, from joy to grief, Matheolus applied his learning to lamenting philosophy’s failure and the book of his life, now gray and sad.[1]

In his book, Matheolus described women’s power to teach. He headed the relevant section, “How a woman leads her husband to the goal of solecism {Quod mulier ducit virum suum ad metam solecismi}.”[2] Medieval clerics studied exhaustively how to use Latin words correctly. Intentional solecism was a higher literary art in which women led. Citing the leading scholastic learning in medieval Europe, Matheolus declared:

What good is Perihermeneias, the Elenchi, or Prior Analytics
against her? What good is Posterior Analytics or
all of logic and everything in the school curriculum?
If one were to confess the truth, woman made both serve her.
She led Aristotle, the master of the five goals,
to solecism, with reins and halter.

{ Quid Perihermenias, quid Elenchi, quidve Priora
Prosunt adversus illam, quid Posteriora,
Totaque quid logica, trivium quid quadriviumque?
Ut verum fatear, mulieri servit utrumque.
Duxit Aristotilem metarum quinque magistrum
Ad solecismum, cui frenum sive capistrum }[3]

Matheolus here refers to the figure of Alexander the Great’s mistress riding Aristotle like a mare. A man’s behavior is always predicated on women modifying it.

Matheolus vehemently protested husbands’ subjection to their unschooled wives. As Aristotle proved, the root of subjection is men’s physical desire for women. The beautiful maiden named Nature in Alain de Lille’s About the Complaint of Nature {De planctu naturae} described desire uniting opposites and up-ending normal order.[4] That’s what happened when Aristotle accepted a bridle in his mouth and lowered himself to his hands and knees to have a woman ride him like a mare. Matheolus protested:

It’s a shameful riding figure called solecistic;
It’s misuse of language, that clearly shows this displacement of tongue.
It’s incongruous, improper to be so ridden
Order is disorder, our signifying
offends in many ways. The art of grammar
is made dazed, the art of logic is embarrassed,
hence also Nature is astonished and in revulsion refuses to speak.

{ Est equitatura solestica dicta probrosa;
Est barbastoma, quod plane docet hic data glossa.
Est incongruus, est improprius hic equitandi
Ordo non ordo, qui nostros significandi
Offendit quoscumque modos. Ars grammaticalis
Istud posse stupet fieri, rubet ars logicalis,
Hinc etiam Natura loqui miranter abhorret. }[5]

Nature in De planctu naturae did speak. She observed:

Does not Desire, performing many miracles, to use antiphrasis,
change the shapes of all mankind?
…
Here reasonable procedure is to be without reason, moderation
means lack of moderation, trustworthiness is not to be trustworthy.
Desire offers what is sweet but adds what is bitter.
It injects poison and brings what is noble to an evil end.
It attracts by seducing, mocks with smiles, stings as it
applies its salve, infects as it shows affection, hates as it loves.

{ Nonne per antiphrasim, miracula multa Cupido
Efficiens, hominum protheat omne genus.
…
Hic ratio, rationis egere, modoque carere
Est modus, estque fides non habuisse fidem.
Dulcia proponens assumit amara, venenum
Infert, concludens optima fine malo.
Allicit illiciens, ridens deridet, inungens
Pungit, et afficiens inficit, odit amans. } [6]

This great confusion is enough to baffle even the great scholar Aristotle:

He knew the power of Nature and Reason.
But why is Nature’s own minister of Reasoning
not being helped, is astonished, such a great master?
What we say logically with our words
concludes like it did for this great scholar?
It’s embarrassing. What will philosophy say
when its great scholar is deceived by amphiboly?

{ Qui vim Nature cognoverat et Rationis
Sed quare Natura suo Ratioque ministro
Non succurrerunt, miror, tantoque magistro.
Nostri verbosi quid dicent inde logiste,
Cum sic conclusus fuerit doctor suus iste?
Erubeo fari. Quid dicet philosophia,
Cum sibi doctorem deceperit amphibolia? } [7]

Husbands of ordinary learning are even less discerning. Wives can make husbands deny what their own eyes saw, disbelieve that they can distinguish between a man and an ass in bed, and affirm that anti-men gender bigotry advances gender equality.

Marriage is no longer a figure of the world overthrown, like Alexander the Great’s mistress riding Aristotle. Alain de Lille’s concern for the grammar of sex figured more than a person of one sex conjoined with a person of the same sex.[8] The conjunction of woman and man can also have more than a literal meaning. Using the clerical language Latin in thirteenth-century Europe, Matheolus counseled men not to marry:

Don’t take one woman, but, reader, have a hundred!
Women have bound thousands of persons together in chains.
If a man has a thousand women, none has him. He is his own man.

{ Non unam capias, sed centum, lector, habeto!
Femina millenis hominem ligat una catenis.
Si quis habet mille, nullas habet; est suus ille. }[9]

For fear of violating the new grammar of sex, readers must read Matheolus literally. Now no one knows anything more than being his own person. The marital debt is no longer being paid. Marriage is bankrupt. If Abelard had listened to Heloise, he would have remained the man he was. And the world would have remained as it always was.

Men and women must find a new grammar of sex. Then they can form a new verbal bond of incarnation in which every rule is struck senseless.[10]

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Notes:

[1] On Matheolus wishing he had looked at Medusa before marrying Petra, Lamentations of Little, Little Matheus {Lamentationes Matheoluli} l. 111-2:

Why didn’t I meet Medusa herself,
and allow myself to benefit from being turned into stone?

{ Obvia cur pridem mihi non fuit ipsa Medusa,
Et licet in lapidem convertere visa sit usa? }

Klein, Rubel & Schmitt (2014) p. 53. All subsequent Latin text is from id., unless otherwise noted. Cited line numbers are the cumulative numbering across the four books of Lamentationes Matheoluli. For an online Latin text, based on just one, quite good manuscript, Van Hamel (1892). Lamentationes Matheoluli was written about 1290.

Matheolus (Matheus of Boulogne) was well-educated and well-connected in clerical circles. He studied law and logic for six years in Orléans. He studied under Jacques de Boulogne, who became Bishop of Thérouenne, and Nicaise, who became Canon of Fauquembergue. Matheolus spent many years living in Paris, practiced canon law as a cleric, and attended the Council of Lyon in 1274. Van Hamel (1892) pp. cx-cxii (pdf pages 578-80).

Matheolus began his Book IV (l. 3768) with:

I turn from laughter to tears, from joy to mourning

{ Risus in lacrimas, in luctus gaudia verto }

That’s quoting nearly verbatim from Alain de Lille, De planctu naturae I.1. Cf. James 4:9. Book III of Lamentationes Matheoluli draws extensively on De planctu naturae. Van Hamel (1892) pp. cxxxv (pdf page 603).

Matheolus’s section on wives leading their husbands to solecisms ends (l. 503):

May your title not be written with red dye, nor your paper treated with oil of cedar.

{ Nec titulus minio nec cedro charta notetur. }

That quotes Ovid, Tristia 1.1.7. It indicates a book that doesn’t have colorful, luxurious materiality.

[2] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 459-503. On grammatical metaphors, Ziolkowski (1985).

[3] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 459-64. The cited works are works of Aristotle newly recovered in western Europe via the Islamic world. The five goals seem to be five categories of sophisms set out in Aristotle’s Elenchi I.3.

[4] Alain de Lille, The Complaint of Nature {De planctu naturae}, Metre 5.

[5] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 473-9. Jehan Le Fèvre, responding to Lamentationes Matheoluli in The Book of Gladness {Le Livre de Leesce}, interpreted Aristotle’s equine position much differently:

He {Aristotle} was full of great love; he always upheld the truth, for which we should praise him highly. And if he let himself be ridden like a horse, it was for joy and for pleasure. Love led him to do this by his great gentleness; so he ought not to be blamed. He clearly showed that we ought to love women, without slander or ill speaking, for they are not guilty at all for this

{ Plain estoit de grant charité;
Par tout soustenoit verité,
Dont on le doit moult essaucier.
Et s’il se laissa chevauchier,
Ce fu par joye et par deduit;
Amour a ce faire le duist
Par sa grant debonnaireté;
Si ne doit pas estre reté.
Bien monstra qu’on doit amer femmes
Sans leur dire lait ne diffames;
Car pour se ne sont point coulpables }

l. 885-95, from French trans. Burke (2013) p. 82. Le Fèvre’s figure of love lacks imagination. It’s just men as cats for women. Men loving women should not require them to be made like animals in subordination to women and silent about women’s faults.

[6] Alain de Lille, De planctu naturae, Metre 5, vv. 21-2, 59-64, from Latin trans. (modified slightly) of Sheridan (1980) pp. 150, 152-3. The best edition of Alain’s works is Wetherbee (2013).

[7] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 490-6. Roman rhetoricians strongly criticized amphibolia (grammatical ambiguity creating multiple possible meanings). Ziolkowski (1998) pp. 49-55. Matheolus himself utilized semantic ambiguity to make points memorable. Consider l. 1724-8:

If you are seeking more
witnesses, witness what’s given in Ovid’s text:
“the hands of women are fitted for any crime.”
What they dared to do, I did not dare to write.
Therefore, to summarize, there is much more that women have done!

{ Si plures tibi queris
Testes, testis in his textus datur Ovidianus:
“Feminee faciunt ad scelus omne manus.”
Quod facere ausa {sua} est, non ausa est scribere dextra;
Ergo, quod restat, hic nondum quere, sed extra! }

The term witness could also be translated as testicles/balls, carrying the connotation of male boldness. That’s a well-established pun in Latin, e.g. Plautus, Miles Gloriosus 1420, 1426; and Priapea 15.7 (magnis testibus ista res agetur), available in Parker (1988) p. 92. Matheolus above generalized Ovid, Epistle 6.128: Medeae faciunt ad scelus omne manus.

[8] Ziolkowski (1985) makes clear Alan of Lille’s broad interpretive concerns. Subsequent scholarship has developed Ziolkowski’s insights to the point that “one might claim De planctu naturae as a queer text.” Johnson (2005) p. 189.

[9] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 2286-8. In case his point isn’t understood, Matheolus goes on to counsel, “No uxorem, sed amicas, lector, habe {Reader, have not a wife, but girlfriends}!” Id. l. 2297-8.

[10] Alain de Lille’s “The Incarnation of the Lord {De incarnation Domini}” speaks of a new translatio (metaphor):

In this verbal bond
every rule is struck senseless.

{ In hac Verbi copula
Stupet omnis regula. }

Cited and trans. Ziolkowski (1985) pp. 135-6.

[image] Page from Aelius Donatus, Ars grammatica, Ars minor. Xylographic book printed c. 1500. Thanks to Old Prints Department, University of Wrocław, Poland.

References:

Burke, Linda, ed. and trans. 2013. Jehan Le Fèvre. The book of gladness / Le livre de Leesce: a 14th century defense of women, in English and French. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Johnson, Michael A. 2005. “Translatio Ganymedis: Reading the Sex Out of Ovid in Alan of Lille’s The Plaint of Nature.” Florilegium 22:171-90.

Klein, Thomas, Thomas Rubel, and Alfred Schmitt, eds. 2014. Lamentationes Matheoluli. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann.

Parker, W. H., ed. and trans. 1988. Priapea: poems for a phallic god. London: Croom Helm.

Sheridan, James J., ed. and trans. 1980. Alan of Lille. The plaint of nature {De planctu naturae}. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies.

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.

Wetherbee, Winthrop, ed. and trans. 2013. Alan of Lille {Alanus de Insulis}. Literary works. Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library, vol. 22. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. (online review)

Ziolkowski, Jan M. 1985. Alan of Lille’s grammar of sex: the meaning of grammar to a twelfth-century intellectual. Cambridge, Mass: Medieval Academy of America.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. 1998. “Obscenity in the Latin Grammatical and Rhetorical Tradition.” Pp. 41-59 in Ziolkowski, Jan M. 1998. Obscenity: social control and artistic creation in the European Middle Ages. Leiden {The Netherlands}: Brill.

Matheolus: medieval Latin literature protesting church & wife

Christ suffering passion in Isenheim Altarpiece

Late in the thirteenth century, Matheus of Boulonge married the widow Petra. Matheus suffered double punishment for his marriage. Because the Council of Lyon in 1274 tightened regulations on clerics marrying, Matheus’s marriage destroyed his church career. Petra delivered a second blow by destroying his personal life. Matheus began referring to himself as Matheolulus — little, little Matheus. Despite Matheus’s reduced stature (his name is commonly reduced only to Matheolus in modern literary study), he retained enormous wit. Matheolus’s suffering from the rule of mother church and his wife prompted him to write Lamentationes Matheoluli. That work is a masterpiece of medieval Latin literature of men’s sexed protest.

While most men are rightfully fearful of criticizing women, Matheolus dared to criticize Christ himself. Matheolus in a dream declared:

Allow me to say — it’s on the tip of my tongue —
it may be too bold — Christ, you don’t dare
to get married. Why? Because you supposed
that if you married, you would be expelled from paradise.

{ Dicam, michi cum sit in ore,
Nescio si temere, non ausus, Christe, fuisti
Uxorem capere. Quare? quia disposuisti
Quod, si quam caperes, expelleret a paradiso
Te. } [1]

Christ, however, had no need of marriage because he was already united to divinity. Ordinary men, in contrast, need marriage to provide for salvation and union with the divine. Christ in Matheolus’s dream explained:

Look, I don’t want sinners to die. I’m their redeemer.
I fought for them. When you’ve paid a lot for something
you don’t just throw it away, and so I’ve decided
to make several purgatories for them to
purge themselves in — treatment makes sick people better —
and the best one is marriage. You’ve already experienced punishment.
I needn’t reopen it; rather, I’d say that even those toasted
on a flaming gridiron don’t suffer as much punishment as
those who are imprisoned in marriage.
There is no greater martyrdom than the day-to-day
punishment like yours, refined in the furnace of marriage.
You are truly a martyr, and so if you take your suffering well
have no doubt that after you die you’re coming straight to me.
Nothing will stand in your way, no punishment will intervene.
Why? Because you have already been purged under your wife.

{ O! peccatorum quia mortem nolo, redemptor
Et pugil ipsorum, cum res non debeat emptor
Emptas tam care pessundare, janque parare
Iccirco volui sibi purgatoria pllura,
Ut se purgarent; egros sanat data cura;
Inter que majus est conjugium. Quia nosti
Penas, non resero; tamen hoc dico, quia tosti
Ferro flammifico, to penas non patiuntur
Quot patiuntur ei qui conjugio capiuntur.
Non est martirium majus quam continuata
Pen velut tua, conjugii fornace probata.
Es vere martier; ergo, bene si patiaris,
Non dubites quin me post mortis bella sequaris,
Obice sublato, nulla pena mediante,
Quippe sub uxore quoniam purgatus es ante. } [2]

Speaking ideas of Genius, Christ instructed church leaders:

It’s necessary and right for cities and towns to be replenished
with babies. If male hadn’t joined with female,
now there would be no religious orders, nor Peter being keeper of the keys.
Therefore would the clergy please stop contradicting me on this?

{ Expedit atque decet urbes et castra repleri
Filiolis. Nisi se junxisset mas mulieri,
Nil modo religio, nil Petrus claviger esset;
Ergo clerus in his michi contradicere cesset! }

The clergy of Talavera with all their heart and soul and might strove to obey such urging.

Matheolus represented his own marital suffering in devotional and liturgical contexts. In the Christian liturgical week of Christ’s passion, the three days preceding Easter in medieval Europe included Tenebrae service. That’s a service of darkness and lamentations. Matheolus in marriage experienced Tenebrae daily all year long from his wife:

Litany, the word of God, and the Mass she changes,
and sings Tenebrae to me daily from her own composition.
She curses on every canonical hour,
cries and brawls, never holding back her reins.
My wife daily chants every one of her hours for woman.
The first response is growling, singing darkly.
Then begins the antiphon: “Woe, woe, woe to you husband!”
or there are her lamentations or her quarrelsome songs.

{ Litania, Dei verbum versa vice, missa
Et tenebre mihi cottidie cantantur ab issa.
Hec maledicatur, quoniam sub qualibet hora
Flet vel rixatur, numquam retrahens sua lora.
Cottidie sponso canit horas femina quasque,
Primo reponso frendens, cantat tenebrasque.
Incipit antiphona sic: “Ve, Ve veque maritis!”
Vel sunt luctisona, vel sunt sua cantia litis. } [3]

The high culture of Latin and church liturgy became for Matheolus a rich resource for protesting his suffering in marriage.

Matheolus broadly considered spirituality and following Christ. Exhausted, wounded, and exasperated, he lamented:

No rest for the husband, when night and day he is chosen
fifteen times for the passion. He is continually crucified.
Thus it is, my god Hercules! The torment of marriage
is far worse than the torment of the Stygian abode.

{ Nullo vero requies, cum nocte dieque legatur
Passio quindecies illi: semper cruciatur.
Est, medius fidius, tormentum conubiale
Iam multo gravius quam tormentum Stygiale. } [4]

Matheolus’s lament alludes to the common medieval view of sexual deficit accounting. In that accounting, women when widowed became sexually voracious. Experiencing the passion refers in part to Matheolus’s responsibility to have sex with his wife.

Experiencing the passion fifteen times daily also suggests extreme devotion to Christ’s crucifixion. St. Francis of Assisi in the twelfth century made prominent the Stations of the Cross. In that devotion, the faithful represent Jesus’s condemnation, crucifixion, and burial through fourteen stages of visual representations, narratives, and prayers arranged around a church. Matheolus described his suffering as a crucifixion that occurred daily with one more stage than the Stations of the Cross.

Matheolus in his spirituality of marital suffering encompassed Greco-Roman traditional religion. The ejaculation “It is, my god Hercules!” starts with a statement of being that could be interpreted as a parody of the Mosaic god’s name “I am.” “My god Hercules” was a traditional Greco-Roman invocation that Jews and Christians would associate with following a false god. The Stygian abode similarly was the non-Christian, Greco-Roman underworld. Marriage had become a sacrament in the Christian church by the thirteenth century. In his invocation of god and by describing marriage as far worse than being in the Greco-Roman underworld, Matheolus was playing with Christian heresy.

Matheolus also protested against marriage in economic and legal terms. The conditions of Matheolus’s marriage naturally caused him to lose sexual potency. Unlike in marriage today, spouses in medieval Europe had a legal obligation to have sex with each other even if one of them didn’t want sex. That legal obligation was known as the marital debt. Matheolus lamented:

My wife wants it, but I can’t. She petitions for her right.
I say no. I just can’t pay.

{ Vult uxor, sed ego nequeo; petit hec sua jura;
Non sovendo nego factus } [5]

Even given his sexual incapacity, Matheolus’s wife Petra sought for him to be bodily punished:

Acting as her own advocate, Petra puts forward
the law that if a destitute shriveled sack can’t
pay, under statute recompense for that injury is corporal punishment.

{ allegat enim Petra pro se
Ius, quod, si nequeat inopis rugosa crumena
Solvere, pro noxa statuatur corpore pena. }

A fundamental principle of communication economics is the criminalization of men in relation to women. In this civil case, the injury wasn’t the effect of Petra and Matheolus’s marriage on Matheolus’s genital function. The injury was depriving Petra of sex that Matheolus was required under law to provide non-consensually and regardless of ability to pay. Modern readers should be able to find some appreciation for Matheolus’s sexed protest.

Lamentationes Matheoluli deserves much more attention from scholars and the general public. For decades, scholars have associated Lamentationes Matheoluli with “tired old antifeminist commonplaces” and a “vast echo-chamber of antifeminist commonplaces.”[6] That greatly mischaracterizes the wide-ranging wit and creativity of Lamentationes Matheoluli. Moreover, dividing medieval literature into the binary categories “feminist” and “anti-feminist” is anachronistic and conceptually imperialistic.[7] Most importantly, injustices of institutionalized paternity deception, forced financial fatherhood, acute anti-men discrimination in family law, and social devaluation of men’s lives are important issues suppressed today under dominant ideology. Vibrant intellectual life needs open, diverse, fearless critical thinking. Rebirth of such thinking could start with medieval Latin literature.

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Notes:

[1] Matheus of Boulogne (Matheolus), Lamentations of Little, Little Matheus {Lamentationes Matheoluli} l. 2393-7, from Latin, my translation, benefiting from that of Correale & Hamel (2005) p. 392. The Latin text is available in Klein, Rubel & Schmitt (2014) (preferred) and Van Hamel (1892). Jehan Le Fèvre loosely translated the work into French late in the fourteenth century. The English quotations above are exclusively based on the original Latin version.

[2] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 3024-38, from Latin trans. Correale & Hamel (2005) p. 392, with some minor changes. The claim that marriage works like Purgatory is taken up in the 15 Joys of Marriage. Matheolus dreamed that, in recognition of their martyrdom in marriage, husbands earned a higher place in heaven than virgins and any conventional martyrs. That reversed common Christian understanding of holy status. Jerome influentially described the Christian status ranking in his work, Adversus Jovinianum. Matheolus is awaken from his dream by his wife’s nagging (l. 372-3767). The subsequent quote above is from l. 3515-18, trans. id.

[3] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 671-8 from Latin, my translation. Tenebrae is known from the ninth century. Le Fèvre’s French version is translated in Blamires, Pratt & Marx (1992) p. 182.

[4] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 341-4, my translation. Here’s discussion of medius fidius as an oath/interjection to Hercules. The translation in Correale & Hamel (2005), p. 386, flattens the allusions and pagan references:

There is no rest for the husband, fifteen times a day and night passion is his lot; his is tortured continually. I swear, marital torment is a lot worse than the torment of hell.

Matheolus is far more interesting than merely as a source for Chaucer. Matheolus apparently also was a source for the 15 Joys of Marriage, written in French about 1400. More importantly, Matheolus’s text itself rewards careful study.

[5] Lamentationes Matheoluli l. 577-8, trans. Correale & Hamel (2005) p. 388, modified slightly. The medicalized condition “erectile dysfunction” now supports highly profitable pharmaceuticals. The implicit biological norm seems to be that a properly functioning man should in the presence of a woman be able to get an erection on demand. Such medicine can abuse masculine biology like attention deficit medicine can abuse boys’ natural level of activity. The subsequent quote above is from id. l. 582-4, trans. id. I’ve brought out the legal terminology obscured in the translation.

[6] Mann (2002) pp. 28, 40. Among the rare scholarly works that mentions Lamentationes Matheoluli, it is commonly characterized as “antifeminist.” An anthology of texts declared:

Le Fèvre’s version {of Lamentationes Matheoluli} proved an effective propagation of the satire, ensuring that “Matheolus” continued to be a name to match Jean de Meun’s for brutal antifeminism in fifteenth-century debates about women.

Blamires, Pratt & Marx (1992) p. 177. Jean de Meun was an author of the literary masterpiece Romance of the Rose.

[7] After referring to the “monstrous bulk of antifeminist literature in the Middle Ages,” Mann added a footnote explaining:

Since I have recently encountered some misunderstanding of the term “antifeminism” among non-medievalists, I had better make clear that medievalists have traditionally applied it to literary expressions of hostility to women, and not hostility to feminism (which would clearly be anachronistic).

Mann (1991b) p. 2; p. 31, n. 3. Medieval tradition, or the tradition of medievalists, doesn’t provided reasoned justification for conceptual imperialism.

[image] Christ’s passion, detail of Isenheim Altarpiece. Painted by Matthias Grünewald in 1512–1516. On display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar, Alsace, in France.

References:

Blamires, Alcuin, Karen Pratt, and C. William Marx. 1992. Men Impugned, Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: an anthology of medieval texts. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Correale, Robert M., and Mary Hamel. 2005. Sources and analogues of the Canterbury Tales. Vol. 2. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.

Klein, Thomas, Thomas Rubel, and Alfred Schmitt, eds. 2014. Lamentationes Matheoluli. Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann. (review by Linda Burke)

Mann, Jill. 1991a/ 2002. Geoffrey Chaucer. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press International. Republished as Feminizing Chaucer. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: D.S. Brewer.

Mann, Jill. 1991b. Apologies to women: inaugural lecture delivered 20th November 1990. Cambridge: Cambridge University 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.