The Ripoll songs (Carmina Rivipullensia) are twenty Latin poems about love. These poems survive in a single medieval manuscript, MS Ripoll 74, now preserved in the Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó (Barcelona, Spain). According to the best current scholarly analysis, a cleric wrote the Ripoll songs in Metz in the Lorraine region of northeastern France, perhaps in 1150 or 1151. These poems show humane and generous appreciation for men’s hardships and struggles in love.
Men remember women who warmly and generously loved them. That leads to anguish and desperate hope, threatening men’s safety. Make love safe for men! … Read the post remembrance of love fills men with anguish and desperate hope
A distant girlfriend came to a dying, lovesick medieval man in a dream and urged upon him healing love-medicine. For a warm-hearted woman, that’s realistic. … Read the post warm-hearted medieval woman saved man dying from lovesickness
Arguments about sex don’t have to be nasty. Medieval literature shows girlfriends how to treat with dignity & respect sex-seeking boyfriends. Learn & love! … Read the post how to argue nicely about sex with your boyfriend: a medieval lesson
Men suffering under gender oppression desperately need loyal women. In these circumstances, women’s betrayal and disloyalty to men prompts bitter protest. … Read the post men’s sense of women’s disloyalty prompts men’s sexed protests
Men fear in loving women that they will be burned. As medieval poets knew, that real danger in part is men’s fault for so easily sliding into gyno-idolatry. … Read the post respect men’s real fears: dangers of gyno-idolatry
Medieval men’s dreams attests to enduring hope for gender justice amid men-abasing gynocentric norms of courtly love and contempt for men’s lives. … Read the post “I had a dream”: medieval imagining of gender justice
In medieval Europe, Ripoll love songs sing the joy of sex, with concern for women’s consent, without the totalitarianism of today’s rape culture. Swerve! … Read the post the now-inconceivable joy of sex in medieval times