News from the Raven : Essays from Sam Houston State University on Medieval and Renaissance Thought [1 ed.] 9781443861199, 9781443857055

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News from the Raven

News from the Raven: Essays from Sam Houston State University on Medieval and Renaissance Thought

Edited by

Darci N. Hill

News from the Raven: Essays from Sam Houston State University on Medieval and Renaissance Thought, Edited by Darci N. Hill This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Darci N. Hill and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5705-X, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5705-5

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements ................................................................................... ix Darci N. Hill Introduction ................................................................................................ x Darci N. Hill Part I: Ancient and Modern in Medieval Literature and History Chapter One ................................................................................................. 2 MLA or MIA? Thoughts on Modernity in the Medieval Novel Richard North Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 37 The Heavener Rune Stone Revisited: Vikings in Oklahoma, or Swedish Railroad Workers in the Nineteenth Century? James Frankki Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 50 Common Misconceptions of the Medieval Period in Modern American Popular Culture Tara L. Sewell Part II: On the Genius of Italy Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 70 Dante and Orpheus: Ovidian Intertext in Inferno 5 Kevin West Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 81 A Theology of Eating in Dante’s Divine Comedy Mithuiel Barnes Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 101 The Central Plan, the Architectural Treatise and Leonardo Elizabeth Nogan Ranieri

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Part III: Ecclesiastical History and Law Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 114 Theodore of Tarsus: The Syrian Archbishop of Canterbury James Early Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 125 Anglo-Saxon Christianity: Militant and Violent Clinton K. Hale Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 133 Compiling and Writing a Legal Treatise in French: The Livre de jostice et plet Bernard Ribémont Part IV: Religion, Ethics, and Pedagogy in Renaissance Literature Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 144 Titus Andronicus Underwater Edward Plough Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 153 “From the Table of My Memory”: The Conflict of Memory and Will in Hamlet N. Rochelle Bradley Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 160 The Heroic Struggle: Classical and Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost Timothy M. Ponce Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 175 Teaching Paradise Lost: Let’s Be Honest Matthew W. Bennett Part V: Saintly and Unsaintly Women in Medieval and Renaissance Culture Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 186 “Un Nouvel Royaume de Femenie”: Christine de Pizan’s Construction of a Kingdom Come for Women Anne Babson

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Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 203 Saint Quiteria: An Investigation of a Saint’s Developing Iconography throughout Medieval Spain Katharine D. Scherff Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 228 Old Angels, Wasted and Spent: Representations of the Wanton Widow in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Pop Culture and “The Boke of Mayd Emlyn” Katherine Echols Part VI: Reflections on Thomas Aquinas Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 240 Traversing the Difficulties: An Explanation of Aquinas’ Fourth Way Phuc Luu Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 249 John Finnis and the Political Community John Macias Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 262 Eternal God: Divine Atemporality in Thomas Aquinas John Boyer Part VII: Sign and Signified in the Recovery of Medieval and Renaissance Music and Thought Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................... 288 The Case of Kennings: Aristotle, Beowulf, and Deep-Case Grammar John Thornburg Chapter Twenty-One ............................................................................... 317 The French Renaissance Viol Consort: Reevaluating the Sources and Reclaiming the Music John Romey Chapter Twenty-Two............................................................................... 339 The Persuasive Difference: Acknowledging Diversity in Rhetorical Approaches to Music of the Sixteenth Century Jamie Weaver

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Contributors’ Biographies ...................................................................... 352 Index ....................................................................................................... 360

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As this book becomes a reality, I want especially to acknowledge three people at my home institution, Sam Houston State University. They are, Dr. Helena Halmari, Chair of English, Dr. John De Castro, former Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Dr. Jaimie Hebert, Vice President for Academic Affairs. Thank you, Helena, for believing in my ideas and for guiding me in this pursuit. Thank you, John, for your unflagging enthusiasm and encouragement. Thank you, Jaimie, for your initial interest and for giving me the opportunity to bring to publication News from the Raven: Essays from Sam Houston State University on Medieval and Renaissance Thought. I would also like to thank the contributors to this volume, especially Dr. Richard North, who served as the keynote speaker at the conference and who wrote the leading essay in this book. Thank you, Richard. A special thanks also goes to Mrs. Anna Jennings, my editorial assistant. Her keen eye, her editorial skills, and her perseverance assisted me in tremendous ways. She gave able and cheerful support throughout this project. Thank you, Anna. Finally, I dedicate this volume to my students, who give me reason daily to celebrate Medieval and Renaissance thought. Darci N. Hill

INTRODUCTION

The collection of articles gathered in this volume happily and quite naturally grew out of the International Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Thought hosted by Sam Houston State University the first weekend in April of 2013. This collection reflects the diverse fields of study represented by speakers and presenters at the conference. Although other conferences exist that focus on both the medieval and renaissance periods of history, this conference was quite possibly the first one held in Texas that was indeed interdisciplinary and dealt with both medieval and renaissance thought. The purpose of the conference and consequently of this book of essays is to inquire what the place for medieval and renaissance scholarship is in the intellectual landscape today. What most of us have experienced--and North reflects on this in the opening essay—is that medieval and renaissance subjects in humanities departments are increasingly being relegated to a place not far from extinction. We closed our conference with a panel discussion on the place of medieval and renaissance thought in the academy, one which started with the question: have we lost our relevance to the humanities, simply by being medieval and renaissance scholars? In answer, we found that the conference itself had disproved this pessimism. During the conference—through collegial exchanges and robust debate— the fields representing medieval and renaissance studies appeared to be livelier and more relevant to the humanities than ever. In this way, as a collective body of conference speakers and attendees, we conclude that we have not lost our relevance, and that our conference—and hence this book—not only validates but also celebrates that relevance. As I compiled the essays for this collection, I realized that it offers some pretty sparkling intellectual investigations, not only for scholars of the various aspects of medieval and renaissance literature and culture, but also for any generalists who wish to augment their knowledge and appreciation of philosophy, literature, linguistics, art, history, music, religion, and law. Currently, many scholarly collections of articles are decipherable only by the experts who are at home in those categories. And herein lies the distinction of essays in this collection: each and every one of them will be readable by the generalist, offering important contributions to a multitude of disciplines.

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News from the Raven: Essays from Sam Houston State University on Medieval and Renaissance Thought is divided into seven parts, each containing three or four essays, with 22 essays in all. Topics range from ecclesiastical history to renaissance music, runic alphabets to architectural designs, saints to sinners, Thomistic thought to linguistic analysis: something for everybody. To appropriate some lines from Chaucer: And therfore whoso list it nat yheere, Turne over the leef, and chese another tale; For he shal fynde ynowe, grete and smale, Of storial thyng that toucheth gentillesse, And eek moralitee, and hoolynesse.

Part I: Ancient and Modern in Medieval Literature and History contains essays by Richard North, James Frankki, and Tara Sewell. The Modern Language Association recently proposed to slim down the literature of the Middle Ages by merging Old English, Middle English, and Chaucer into one division. Richard North argues in his essay “MLA or MIA? Thoughts on Modernity in the Medieval Novel” that the merging of these three divisions into one would trivialize medieval literature. He sets out to show the diversity of the literature of that era, while playfully dismantling the generic barriers that divide medieval literature from that of ‘modernity’. Frankki uses a linguistic approach to explain a muchdisputed discovery of runes in his article “The Heavener Rune Stone Revisited: Did Scandinavian Explorers visit Oklahoma in the 8th century?” This article adds much esoteric knowledge to the study not only of AngloSaxon and Scandinavian runes, but also of Germanic literature, language, archeology, and history. Tara Sewell’s “Common Misconceptions of the Medieval Period in Popular Culture” sets about to expose generally accepted myths about the medieval period. Her article is useful both to scholars who hold no illusions about the medieval period and to the general public, who may do so. Part II: On the Genius of Italy presents the contributions of Kevin West, Mithuiel Barnes, and Elizabeth Ranieri. West’s essay “Dante and Orpheus: Ovidian Intertext in Inferno 5” demonstrates the importance of focusing on the details of a literary work. His essay serves the important function of clarifying an important passage by linking Dante’s work to his classical background, a point driven home easily by the choice of Virgil as guide, but more subtly by Dante’s association with Ovid. Barnes’ “A Theology of Eating in Dante’s Divine Comedy” develops the argument that medieval people viewed eating as a corrupt experience resulting from the Fall, but the Eucharist redeems that experience. Barnes examines the

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repeated references to eating in the Divine Comedy in light of these medieval beliefs. Ranieri’s essay “The Central Plan, the Architectural Treatise and Leonardo” effectively traces the history of centrally planned buildings in European architecture and explains the significance they would have had for Leonardo da Vinci. Her article provides a useful background for researchers interested in Leonardo’s contributions to architecture, and she reiterates that all of Leonardo’s designs are worthy of study. Part III: Ecclesiastical History and Law presents essays by James Early, Clinton Hale, and Bernard Ribémont. Early’s article “Theodore of Tarsus: The Syrian Archbishop of Canterbury” offers a fascinating addition to the recently developing study of this figure in the medieval English church. Shedding further light on medieval literature and history, Clinton Hale in his essay “Ancient Christianity: Militant and Violent” explores literary treatments of Christians as warriors. From the Vercelli Book, the poem The Dream of the Rood is often analyzed by the critical community as containing a tension between pagan and Christian values. Hale, however, takes a different approach, shedding light, in this and other Old English works, on violence as an important aspect of both heathen and Christian Anglo-Saxon history. Bernard Ribémont’s “Compiling and Writing a Legal Treatise in French: The Livre de justice et de plet” offers a careful exploration of a representative medieval French legal treatise, placing this document firmly in the encyclopaedist’s tradition, yet acting as a transitional work as well. Ribémont’s essay illuminates an important thirteenth-century legal treatise while at the same time revealing that this piece represents a pivotal, transitional point between pre-encyclopaedic texts and the encyclopaedias yet to come. Part IV: Religion, Ethics, and Pedagogy in Renaissance Literature contains essays by Edward Plough, Rochelle Bradley, Timothy Ponce, and Matthew Bennett. Plough’s essay “Titus Andronicus Underwater” contributes to the growing corpus of scholarship on early Shakespearean drama and analyzes the playwright’s investment in aquatic imagery. Rochelle Bradley’s comment on Hamlet’s dilemma, in her “From ‘the Table of My Memory’: The Conflict of Memory and Will in Hamlet”, is significant for its fresh insight into this much-debated scholarly problem in the play. “The Heroic Struggle: Classical and Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost” by Timothy Ponce presents a detailed analysis of the language registers of Satan and Messiah, respectively, in the poem. Using Grice’s rubric of Conversational Maxims, Ponce uses a linguistic approach to contribute to the age-old debate surrounding the hero of Paradise Lost. Finally, Bennett in his essay “Teaching Paradise Lost: Let’s Be Honest”

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tackles the pedagogical issues one should address in considering the hero of the poem. Part V: Saintly and Unsaintly Women in Medieval and Renaissance Culture includes essays by Anne Babson, Katherine Scherff, and Katherine Echols. In her article “’Un Nouvel Royaume de Femenie’: Christine de Pizan’s Construction of a Kingdom Come for Women” Anne Babson seeks to demonstrate that Christine de Pizan writes The City of Ladies not to present an allegory or a fantasy, but rather to encourage women to believe in their spiritual and moral worth as well as their political rights. Her article contributes not only to scholarship on de Pizan but also to the growing field of women’s studies. Scherff’s essay “St. Quiteria, Virgin and Martyr: An Investigation of Saint Quiteria’s Developing Iconography throughout Medieval Spain” offers a delightful foray into the artistic representations of St. Quiteria gracing cathedrals and basilicas all over medieval Spain. Scherff assembles the various fragments of legends surrounding the saint and extracts from them a coherent narrative. By doing so, she adds knowledge to religious studies as well as to medieval art. Katherine Echols’ “Old Angels, Wasted and Spent: Representations of the Wanton Widow in the Early Ballad” traces the depiction of widowhood through selected literary works of the medieval and Renaissance periods. According to Echols, society feared widows for their financial independence and sexual freedom; thus, the widow became a popular subject of burlesque poetry. Examining a select group of literary pieces, Echols demonstrates that these pieces perpetuate a negative stereotype of widows. Part VI: Reflections on Thomas Aquinas brings us to the pieces written by Phuc Luu, John Macias, and John Boyer. Luu, in “Traversing the Difficulties: An Explanation of Aquinas’ Fourth Way,” argues that there remain unresolved problems with Aquinas’ “Fourth Way.” His arguments offer a thorough analysis of this topic and represent a significant contribution to the debate surrounding cosmological arguments for the existence of God. John Macias’ essay “John Finnis and the Political Community” asserts that Finnis, as a proponent of the “New Natural Law” movement, errs in his interpretation of Thomistic thought. Macias seeks to correct these misinterpretations in his article, particularly as it refers to civitas, or the political community. Boyer’s essay “Eternal God: Atemporality in Thomas Aquinas” examines Aquinas’ account of God as timelessly eternal. Boyer takes issue with Wolterstorff’s objection that Aquinas’ account of a timeless God is incompatible with omniscience, and he explains also that correctly answering this objection remains crucial in avoiding serious problems regarding theism. All three essays of Part VI

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make important contributions to medieval philosophy in general and to Thomistic thought in particular. Part VII: Sign and Signified in the Recovery of Medieval and Renaissance Music and Thought contains articles by John Thornburg, John Romey, and Jamie Weaver. Thornburg’s essay “The Case of Kennings: Aristotle, Beowulf, and Deep-Case Grammar” discusses uses of the kenning in Beowulf with the taxonomy of Aristotle’s commentary on literary devices. Thornburg offers a careful linguistic analysis of kennings and revisits case grammar, a subject overlooked for decades. Romey’s “The French Renaissance Viol Consort: Reevaluating the Sources and Reclaiming the Music” presents his historical research on a virtually overlooked musical instrument, the French viol. Romey contributes significantly to early musicology. In “The Persuasive Difference: Acknowledging Diversity in Rhetorical Approaches to Madrigals of the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries” Weaver contributes not only to the field of music but also to the study of rhetoric. She demonstrates that sixteenth- and seventeenth-century composers drew upon rhetorical conventions in creating emotionally moving madrigals. It is with great pleasure—as the editor and erstwhile conference coordinator of this, the first Texas gathering of its kind—that I present this volume to you to experience as readers a true celebration of medieval and renaissance thought. Darci N. Hill Sam Houston State University

PART I: ANCIENT AND MODERN IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE AND HISTORY

CHAPTER ONE MLA OR MIA? THOUGHTS ON MODERNITY IN THE MEDIEVAL NOVEL RICHARD NORTH

Years before Pulp Fiction (1994, prop. Quentin Tarantino) made it famous, the word medieval was understood to refer to the Middle Ages.1 To many viewers this word may connote remedial as well as die and evil, but its meaning is less clear, and for the literary period some more explication is due. What are the Middle Ages, especially where ‘Fiction’ is concerned? Right now the answer is ‘looking squeezed’. Another answer, less paranoid, is that middle for English literature consists of ‘Old English’ or Anglo-Saxon, which runs from about 600 to 1100, then ‘Middle English’ from then to about 1500, of which the chief draw is Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343 – 1400). Of the ages to either side of middle, one is antiquity, which may as well start with an Akkadian text of Gilgamesh in the twelfth century B.C.2 The other is modernity, not only present time but also (with the addition of ‘Post-’) the open-ended expansion of this into the future. Perhaps with the latter prospect in mind, and certainly thinking of Post-Colonial, Media and Disability Studies, early in 2013 the managerial board of the Modern Language Association proposed to slim down the Middle Ages by merging the existing three Medieval English divisions, Old English, Middle English, and Chaucer, into one. One division for nine centuries of literature! The fight-back started. At the time of writing the amended idea is that ‘Divisions’ and ‘Discussion Groups’ should be blended into ‘Groups’, and the number of Medieval sessions should depend on the numbers of delegates affiliating to the corresponding Groups, that is, on market sustainability.3 For academics, in this way, space is still limited; diachronic time looks as Darwinian as ever; and Medieval literature has to remain relevant. Nothing is more relevant than modernity, as the subject nomenclature shows. The period which follows Medieval is called Renaissance. By its

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name it claims to be a ‘rebirth’ from antiquity, half-hiding the implication that the Middle Ages are a mistake or dead end. Walter Benjamin and Ezra Pound among other modernist writers took a different view, 4 and so might any artist or historian, but people who teach English literature live in a world in which the terms ‘renaissance’, and its associates ‘enlightenment’, ‘modernity’ and ‘novel’ have long since implied an inverse taxonomy in which the Middle Ages suggest ‘decrepitude’, ‘darkness’, ‘antiquity’ and ‘old hat’. Yet even the ‘rebirth’ idea has become worn, and now Renaissance is co-opted into modernity. Perhaps this is due to William Caxton‘s printing press, the technology of which gives both literary and historical English modernity a start around the year 1500 in the reign of Henry Tudor (1485-1509).5 Renaissance is accordingly also called ‘Early Modern’ in university departments such as the English Department of University College, London, which co-founded a ‘Centre for Early Modern Exchanges’.6 This centre, which brings lecturers together from several disciplines in honour of the early part of modernity, is thriving. Although the new nomenclature of Renaissance may have little to do with its success as a university subject, in theory the term ‘Early Modern’ does give Renaissance specialists the option of facing forward to the future. Here the notion of a post-medieval rebirth of Classical civilisation, whether reborn in the fourteenth century in Italy or in the sixteenth in England, may be left behind in order to emphasize membership of a more prestigious group. The nomenclature thus speaks less for maintaining the temporal divisions than for enlarging a territory around Modern / Post-Modern literature. In the short term, the Early Modern designation might save the high or later medieval subjects by embodying them into this empire, but in a world where High Medieval joins Renaissance which joins Enlightenment which clings to the coat-tails of the nineteenth century, some subjects would still have to go. It is not hard to imagine Old and early Middle English under these conditions having to slip backwards into alignment with late antique and Classical literature, in order not to disappear. Much is at stake where the taxonomy is concerned. Even of the latest MLA proposal it still might be said that the idea of ‘membership numbers’ plays the same game, subordinating the principle of intrinsic value to the vagaries of university commerce. For the sake of its health the academy needs a better idea than sauve qui peut. As regards the relationship between Medieval and Modern, literature tells us that the debt runs backwards, not forwards. The term modern was coined in late antiquity, not in the enlightenment but in the Dark Ages. It derives from late Latin modernus ‘in the manner just now’, in the treatise

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Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum ‘foundations of devotional and secular learning’ which was written in the 540s by the retired senator Cassiodorus, formerly a minister to King Theoderic the Ostrogoth (ruled 493-526). Cassiodorus here uses the word moderni for ‘contemporary’ commentators on the Bible, as opposed to the ancient church fathers.7 In this work’s second section Cassiodorus coined the subjects which became artes liberales, the seven ‘liberal arts’: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, for the Roman trivium; on top of arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy for the Greek quadrivium.8 It may thus be of interest to some non-Medievalist teachers that modernity was invented in the same barbarian age as our university syllabus, at the dawn of the Middle Ages. No less ironic is the observation, in the world outside the same grove of academe whose threatened three gardens are the subject of this essay, that (post-)modernity itself might disappear as Western culture re-enters its medieval phase. This observation might hold up if such things as the devolution of corrupt governments, mass migrations from starvation and civil war, mob mentality and disorder and the ever-widening gap between rich and poor, are taken to be truer of the Middle Ages than any other time. A scholar might agree for different reasons, citing the medieval future as one of devolved cultural autonomy, cross-fertilization of global societies with powerful literary results, wider linguistic registers and a growing interest in science and manufacture. However, all perceptions are relative, and definitions are, too. Since modern means ‘contemporary’, we can say that modernity is older than Cassiodorus. As a perception of time which has accompanied our cultural and scientific endeavours from the time of cave paintings to the present, modernity has been true of the last 42,000 years. To go back to the idea of relevance, if Medieval is seen to lose ever more meaning by an alleged lack of relevance to our present, then Modern may well fare likewise by having its meaning diffused over all time to the point where it is no longer relevant to anything. For the sake of preserving the academy, I suggest we treat the two periods as coterminous. Medieval English is modern. Or, to put it the other way, the modern has also been medieval. One way of seeing this great blur illustrated is to review the idea of ‘fiction’ in the psychological novel. The novel is a long piece of fictional narrative, usually written in prose but sometimes in poetry. It has so far been a phenomenally successful form. It was mostly written in, and is now customarily associated with, the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It has even been claimed as a kind of self-help for the post-religious enlightenment: ‘The Novel is the epic of a world that has been abandoned by God’.9 However, few of these details are set in stone. Languages vary,

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and outside the English- and Spanish-speaking worlds, the name for the genre differs. In French the word for a novel is roman, in German Roman, in Portuguese romance, in Russian роман, in Danish roman, and so forth. In these languages and several more the word for ‘novel’ shamelessly proclaims its descent from the medieval romance. That is, the novel of these cultures is thought to have evolved from Arthurian chronicle through the prose Vulgate Cycle of France into the fictional forms of the roman. Their languages at least acknowledge a connection between modern prose fiction and medieval romances which the English taxonomy does not. It is true that we keep the word romance for a lower grade of fiction, something of the order of Mills & Boon, more than 70 million readers and 3 books per second sold. However, the novel aims for something higher.10 Like a novel, the romance can be a long piece of fictional narrative which features love, courtship and the prospect of marriage, but discerning people would say that the works of Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and others are a cut above. Some, forgetting the existence of the most popular Medieval literary mode, would even take these novelists for pioneers of romances. Thus the students who major in Eng Lit courses will be told that the prose romance is a lower narrative form which derives from the novel, which has its first foundation earlier, in the eighteenth century; that the Enlightenment novel was itself not new but based on Spanish fictions of the seventeenth century; or where the Elizabethan prose fiction is concerned, on Italian ones of the sixteenth; and that these were passed around and translated with the aid of the printing press.11 The English word novel derives from Castilian novela ‘new story on an interesting topic’, which was itself borrowed as a term for long prose fiction from the Italian novella, a feminine singular for ‘something new’. There are 100 novelle ‘short stories’ in Giovanni Boccaccio‘s popular Decameron, finished in the 1360s.12 Writers in England were aware of the old Italian ancestry of the novel. Not for nothing does Henry Fielding in his 1749 novel Tom Jones sprinkle many chapters with quotations from Ovid and other Classical Latin poets: many people like him believed, and some still do, that the novel is a graft from Classical antiquity. 13 This graft was made by means of the Castilian Don Quixote de la Mancha, a novela which the retired soldier and playwright Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra published in two instalments, in 1605 and 1615.14 Don Quixote is the story of an eccentric gentleman pushing fifty, Alonso Quijano, who goes mad when he tries to enact the knight errant fables he has read all his life. This work is a sophisticated satire of the libros de caballería ‘chivalric romances’ which had been popular for more than a

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century, having originated with the prose narratives of King Arthur which were themselves derived from the Vulgate Cycle of thirteenth-century France.15 By Cervantes’ time the chivalric romances had attenuated into popular narratives of courtship and free love. For Cervantes, the worst offender was the Amadís de Gaula ‘Amadís of Gaul’, published by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo in Zaragoza in 1508, almost a century before him.16 The young prince Amadís is the unwitting heir to Britain and Gaul. He grows up in Scotland, finds out his own noble origins, survives some magic and ends up marrying his sweetheart Oriana and reconciling with her father as well as with his own. The Amadís de Gaula, despite being popular fiction in all but name, was classified as one of many chivalric romances related to the court of King Arthur. In the twelfth century this genre had passed as history. By its relation to Arthuriana, the Amadís de Gaula novel claimed at least the appearance of a derivation from history, whereas the novel Don Quixote de la Mancha deliberately does not. Cervantes, in his laughing reaction to the Amadís and kindred books of chivalry, wrote the Don Quixote as a self-conscious anti-romance, by which it is indeed a novela ‘something new’. His satire demolishes not only the chivalric romances, but also the connection to a medieval literary heritage. The Don Quixote is a work of satirical fiction which consciously breaks with the Middle Ages, claiming a basis in the apocryphal truths of everyday life. Through the diffusion of early printed books, both this novela and the new genre of self-conscious fiction were planted in England. However, it would be a mistake to root the substance of the alleged first English ‘novel’ (the rival is Aphra Behn‘s Oroonoko, published in 1665) in the Don Quixote: despite the revolution in taste and nomenclature, it can be demonstrated that Daniel Defoe‘s Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719, has its origin in the Middle Ages.17 Robinson Crusoe tells the story of a Caribbean castaway sharing his desert island with a native companion until he is rescued. Ostensibly Defoe based this fictional narrative on history, on the four-year survival of Alexander Selkirk on an island off Chile in 1704-8. This is how it seems to represent a case of contemporary life. Yet fiction is stranger than history, and Defoe is also thought to have made use of a philosophical novel published by Simon Ockley in 1708, The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan.18 As the name in the title testifies, Ockley based his work on an earlier fiction written long before in Islamic Spain. He made the first direct English rendering of an Arabic philosophical novel otherwise known as Philosophus autodidactus ‘self-taught philosopher’, also about a young man living marooned on an island with a native companion helper. A

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Latin translation of this work had been available as early as the 1660s, and an English translation of the Latin since 1686. The Arabic original, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān ‘Awake, son of Alive’, was written in Andalusia, in the early twelfth century, by the Moorish physician Ibn Tufayl; he based it on a work of the same name which Al-Ḥusayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā, the Persian scientist and doctor better known as Avicenna, wrote in Isfahan, in the early eleventh century, as a dialogue between a sage and student on the nature of rational intellect and the soul. The fictional structure of Avicenna‘s allegorical work has its own precedents, in the Dialogues and Republic which the Athenian philosopher Plato (427-327), pupil of Socrates (c.469-399), wrote in the early fourth century BC.19 With all this complicated network of paths of transmission linking antiquity to the present through the Middle Ages, it is clear that self-conscious fiction, or the art of introducing and rehearsing philosophical and other ideas through a narrative with invented characters and plot, is nothing new at all. In English history the Middle Ages are said to end in the year 1485, when Henry Tudor defeated Richard III in the Battle of Bosworth Field. This year is also famous for a literary reason in that William Caxton then made the first printing of Le Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory.20 The collection of Malory’s books under this title makes up a grand romance which climactically celebrates Lancelot’s love for Guinevere in the court of King Arthur. Malory freely translated and adapted his books from the French prose romances about Arthur and Lancelot in the Vulgate Cycle of the thirteenth century.21 Malory may have put some of himself into Lancelot: it has been discovered that he was a cattle-rustler from Warwickshire who ambushed his patron during the War of the Roses, escaped from prison by swimming the moat, found himself charged with rape twice with the same woman by her husband, and died in the slammer in London.22 Yet Lancelot and the others, for all that their antics relive the Wars of the Roses, were visibly creatures of the past even then. It was during his final spell in jail in the 1470s that Malory finished his Morte, about a decade before Caxton printed it, in what became the only known text until the discovery of the Winchester manuscript in 1934.23 Perhaps this ignominious end to Malory helped the waves of translations of Italian novelle and Spanish novelas to displace both his work from memory and the utility of the term romance from the English lexicon. By the mideighteenth century the term romance was isolated from novel as something from history, unreal and inferior: Samuel Johnson‘s Dictionary of the English Language (1755) defines romance as ‘a military fable of the Middle Ages; a tale of wild adventures in love and chivalry‘, and the novel as ‘a smooth tale, generally of love’; in Clara Reeve‘s leading definition,

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in The Progress of Romance (1785), ‘The Romance is an heroic fable, which treats of fabulous persons and things. – The Novel is a picture of real life and manners, and of the times in which it is written’; in his ‘Essay on Romance’ (1824), Sir Walter Scott, who responds to Johnson, calls the romance ‘a fictitious narrative in prose or verse; the interest of which turns upon marvellous and uncommon incidents’, and the novel ‘a fictitious narrative, differing from the Romance, because the events are accommodated to the ordinary train of human events, and the modern state of society’. 24 That the word novel is still not felt sufficient to cover all prose fiction may be seen from the supplementary Modern English use of ‘saga’. A saga is now an interminable story, moving in time through the generations in order to show a family or even society at work on the grander scale.25 This might not appear to have much to do with the Vulgate Cycle or Malory‘s Morte Darthur, but like the term romance, which means ‘matter of Rome’, the Icelandic word saga is founded on a notion of history. Its meaning encompasses both history narrated (res narrata) and enacted (res gesta). It would be a mistake for this reason to classify the medieval saga as a novel, although it can work as a sort of historical novel.26 Modern Icelanders use a term skáldsaga, literally ‘poetic story’, to connote prose fiction as we know it. Among the subgenres of the medieval Icelandic saga, the most famous is the ‘saga of Icelanders’ from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, a long prose narration of local history which usually celebrates the lives of prominent ancestors who lived in the locality in the tenth and eleventh centuries.27 The earliest forms of vernacular prose composition in Iceland, undertaken in the twelfth century, are known to have attempted a record of universal and Icelandic history as well as the lives of Norwegian kings; and then mainly the lives of the Olafs: Saint Óláfr Haraldsson who died in battle in 1030; and the apostle of the Icelandic conversion, Óláfr Tryggvason, who also died in battle, in the year 1000. Here as also in other saints’ lives and Bible-based sermons, the true object was history. The earliest writings sometimes reveal the extent to which authors were haunted by the need, which was also a social expectation as much as anything, not to invent incidents without living up to some standard of truth. For a while this standard was monastic and happily encompassed fantasy in order to represent Christian truths as symbolically manifest in the world. As time went on, however, Icelanders settled on a more secular style which, when freed from miracles and didacticism, became emotionally restrained and apparently objective. Sagas of Icelanders have thus had the side effect of masquerading as history more plausibly than Arthurian romances. Sagas always seem historical to people when they

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first read them, as if the island demanded that the stories of ancestors’ lives be presented as true, even when everyone knew they were not. This remained the case at least until a rival genre of riddara sögur ‘stories of knights’ arrived in Iceland from Norway in the mid-thirteenth century.28 These were northern representatives of the Vulgate Cycle, having reached Norway through Low German translations. In this regard Iceland, just like the rest of Europe, enjoyed romances and later took these to extremes similar to the fantastical Spanish libros de caballería. Given their foreign origin, however, most Icelanders probably treated the chivalric riddara sögur as fictions right from the start. With sagas of Icelanders the case was different. Egils saga SkallaGrímssonar ‘the story of Egill son of Skalla-Grímr’ seems to have been finished off in about 1240. Most scholars believe that the author was the historian and mythographer Snorri Sturluson, who was himself terminated, by disgruntled ex-sons-in-law under orders from Norway, by his bath outside his home in Reykholt in 1241.29 Egils saga, which is correspondingly violent, claims to be the biography of a larger-than-life gentleman farmer from Borg in western Iceland. Egill would have died in the late tenth century and was also Snorri’s ancestor. In the saga he grows up part supernatural, falls out with his father and visits Norway a few times, where he earns the enmity of King Eiríkr (Eric) Bloodaxe and his queen Gunnhildr. From his part in the Battle of Vinheiðr on his first visit to England, it appears that the real Egill fought for King Æthelstan, grandson of Alfred, against the Vikings of Ireland in Brunanburh (Bromborough) in 937. The saga is punctuated by a host of traditional verses which Egill is said to have composed. The narrative has no dreams or other fabulous portents and presents itself as history, rather as does Heimskringla, a History of the Kings of Norway, which it is known that Snorri composed. The illusion of historicity continues even when Egill in later life is drawn overseas to York by the magic of Gunnhildr, who wishes him dead; and the saga says that Egill saves his head with a newfangled poem, the Head-Ransom. Few people would now call this work history, although the secular style of writing proclaims that it is. In the mid-thirteenth century, not many years after Snorri’s death, an unknown author finished Laxdœla saga ‘history of the people of Salmon River Valley’ for a locality some 50 miles north of Borg. As in Egils saga, the story in Laxdœla saga starts before the settlement of its chosen area and, as it moves forward in time, lays out the lives of what seem to be most of the district’s inhabitants. After a while, a pattern emerges. There is one matriarch at the beginning of the saga, the settler Auðr (or Unnr) the deep-minded, who builds up the area on arrival; and another towards the

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end, Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, about whom the story turns. Guðrún’s fate is to kill the man she most loved. The style of her saga encompasses an interest in Irish fairies, dreams, magic portents, ladies’ costume and other flashy European finery, all of which is consistent with Arthurian romances. At the same time, the love triangle at the climax, in which Guðrún sends her husband to kill Kjartan, the man she nearly married, is self-consciously patterned on the legend of Brynhildr in the Poetic Edda, a heroine who accomplishes the same by sending her husband Gunnarr to murder Sigurðr, who was the first love of her life.30 In this fictional way the author of Laxdœla saga was willing to part company with historicity, by using heroic poetry to embellish what can have been no more than a few facts about his or her ancestors from nearly two centuries before. An idea in Egils saga—that patterns of behaviour repeat from generation to generation in the same family—is here given new force in the case of unrelated people who repeat the same cycle of love and destruction in their own time. The move from one family to people in general shows the development of a broader reflection on human nature, one which amounts to an indigenous Icelandic interest in fiction for its own sake. Brennu-Njáls saga ‘story of the Burnt Njáll’ was probably written towards the end of the thireenth century. The saga is held to be the greatest example of the genre and focuses on a friendship between two men, Gunnarr and Njáll. In the case of Gunnarr, a physically perfect hero who achieves great honours in Norway and attempts to show them off back home in Iceland, the saga makes clear what happens when envious smallholders work together to bring a great man down. Gunnarr makes a bad marriage, gets dragged down by the district’s little men and dies in a last stand in his house facing some 80 attackers. His wife Hallgerðr colludes in killing him by refusing him a lock of her hair, with which he might make a new bowstring and hold off the end for a little longer. Njáll, his older friend who lives not too far away, is an apparently gentle sage whose sons, taking after their mother Bergþóra, cause much of the damage in the south-west of Iceland. In the second and greater part of the saga (which some consider to be developed out of a work solely devoted to Njáll), there is a concatenation of incidents whose climax consists of the killing of an innocent, a confrontation during the ensuing court case in the national assembly, and then the burning down of Njáll’s farm with his sons, his wife and saintly seven-year-old grandson inside. When this saga was written, a generation had passed since the loss of Iceland’s independence to the king of Norway in 1261. For three generations earlier there had been a bitter civil war, and after annexation many things about the island changed, including the law. Njáls saga is mostly about law and

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how this eventually fails to cope with snowballing violence when a small country risks anarchy. The author had read most of the older sagas including Laxdœla saga, whose plot he partially emulates in Gunnarr’s wife’s two earlier marriages. On the other hand, he puts something of the memory of Iceland’s civil war of the thirteenth century into his saga of the early eleventh, as if to plead that Icelanders, who had once been a proud, noble people, might be so again. The beginning of this saga shows Norse paganism working through Eiríkr’s queen Gunnhildr, who is now older but no less rapacious, as a socially disruptive force. It is paganism which initiates the great chain of cause and effect in Njáls saga’s narrative which only Christianity can end, when it unites the warring factions in the final chapter. This saga thus works less as a local history, and more as a novel about society. Within the conditions of its own time, and minus the interest in sexuality and stylized violence, George Eliot‘s Middlemarch (1874) works in a similar direction. A fourth saga, Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða ‘the story of Hrafnkell, chieftain of Freyr’, was probably written in the north-east of Iceland. It may be contemporary with Chaucer, or with the early European circulation of Boccaccio‘s novelle in the late fourteenth century. Research into the likely authenticity of local history and landscape of Hrafnkels saga showed early on that the story is almost entirely invented. Despite the fact that the hero’s name and the names of a couple of others in the narrative belonged to people who actually lived, his story is as fictitious as the hills, bogs and bluffs which the author makes up to serve his ideological narrative purpose. Hrafnkell is a chieftain, harsh with strangers and set in his ways. He swears an oath to kill any man who rides his stallion Freyfaxi in which he has given, Freyr, his tutelary god, a fifty-percent share. One day a hapless shepherd named Einarr rides the stallion in order to find 30 missing ewes. The circumstances which force him to ride Freyfaxi, when his employer Hrafnkell explicitly warned him not to, are contrived in the story by a mischievous fate. Beneath the surface, however, this is really the author at work, an apparent atheist who wants to manipulate what happens next. Hrafnkell kills Einarr in keeping with his religious oath but then softens when faced with the bereaved father, who surprisingly responds by taking him to court. Against all the odds, again by mysterious contrivance, a powerful chieftain and his brother from western Iceland appear out of nowhere and agree to help Einarr’s father win his case against Hrafnkell in the general assembly. The father’s lawyer, who is a cousin of Einarr’s named Sámr, surprises Hrafnkell with the aid of his providential new friends and then, sparing the chieftain’s life, takes over his farm, possessions and authority. Sámr exiles Hrafnkell to a wilderness

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further east, where the defeated man slowly builds himself a new chieftaincy through graft and yet more authorial contrivance. Soon the two chieftains, Sámr and Hrafnkell, are of equal power, when unexpectedly Hrafnkell takes revenge for his humiliation by killing Eyvindr, Sámr’s more capable brother who has naively ridden across his property after coming back from abroad. Hrafnkell follows up by capturing Sámr and sending him back to his old place to live for the rest of his life in poverty and subjection. Hrafnkels saga on this level is a narrative essay on the meaning, and deficiencies, of politics and power.31 It asks a sceptical question, whether men in high station are there through ability or by virtue of birth. This saga is the closest of all Sagas of Icelanders to being a novel of ideas. It is fiction in all but name, with little but the verisimilitude of landscape and objective style to say that it resembles the older, more historically oriented, sagas of tradition.32 On this evidence it can be shown that the Icelanders developed the art of fiction out of prose history as early as the fourteenth century. The sagas offer an early parallel for the way European romances led into the novel. The poems from the Poetic Edda about Brynhildr, with which the author of Laxdœla saga shaped his tragedy of Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, are themselves rooted in history. To its audiences, this heroic legend, just as the others in which Sigurðr and other heroes are involved, was a true legend from ancient times. Brynhildr loves Sigurðr the dragon-slayer, but his promise to reunite with her is broken by the queen of the Burgundians, who seeks to marry him to her daughter Guðrún Gjúkadóttir. Drinking a potion the queen offers, Sigurðr forgets that Brynhildr exists and marries Guðrún, whose brothers Gunnarr and Hǫgni become his sworn friends. Later Gunnarr himself wishes to marry Brynhildr. Unable to reach her himself, for she is kept prisoner behind a ring of fire, Gunnarr persuades Sigurðr to change into his shape and jump Gunnarr’s horse over the fire to get the girl inside. The honorable Sigurðr in disguise spends three nights alongside Brynhildr with his sharp sword placed between them, as unaware as she is of the connection they once had. He hands Brynhildr over to be married to Gunnarr. One day, Guðrún reveals to Brynhildr the trick that was played on her; Brynhildr avenges her honour by lying to Gunnarr about Sigurðr’s performance in bed. She then sends Gunnarr and his brothers to kill Sigurðr. This happens either in front of his wife, their sister according to the Norse tradition, or out in the forest according to the Bavarian Nibelungenlied (c. 1200).33 Gunnarr then marries off his sister Guðrún to King Atli, in whose court another disaster ensues: Attila puts Guðrún’s brothers to death over the whereabouts of Sigurðr’s old treasure, whereupon Guðrún serves their little sons up to him as a stew. After that,

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she marries a third time, and in a third story she lives to avenge Sigurðr’s and her daughter on King Jǫrmunrekkr of the Goths. Most of these extreme archetypes are based on shadowy historical figures. As a legend of heroic choices and loyalties, not to mention thwarted love, the poems about Brynhildr and Sigurðr had a clear value to audiences of the tenth to twelfth centuries; and were paraphrased in Norway or Iceland in the prose of Vǫlsunga saga ‘story of the Volsungs’ in the thirteenth century. However, these stories are not fiction, nor were they ever considered to be. Brynhildr is a tenth-century Norse version of a Frankish version of Brunichildis, a princess from Visigothic Spain. In history, Brunichildis was married to King Sigibert of the Merovingians in 567.34 Sigibert, possibly the prototype for Sigurðr, was assassinated by his brother’s mistress in 575. 35 Gunnarr, the dupe whom Brynhildr marries in the heroic poems, is a Norse version of a Frankish version of an older person in history: King Gundahari of the Burgundians, who died more than a century earlier in a Roman punitive action in 437. King Atli whom the bereaved Guðrún marries after Sigurðr is derived from Attila the Hun, whose own death occurred in 453. 36 King Jǫrmunrekkr of the Goths, who was known in the Old English poems Beowulf, Widsith and Deor as Eormanric, is a Norse version of a Germanic version of Ermanaric, an early king of the Greuthung Goths who committed suicide before a Hunnish invasion in 376, nearly a century before Attila’s death.37 Although all principals of the Brynhildr legend and its aftermath were famous people from history who lived apart from each other, if not also at widely different times, the poets of tradition have brought them together. Each poet in this long process of oral transmission would have both considered his story to be good history. To be respected in that preliterate age, history had only to be morally or ideologically true. The interest in Gothic or other barbarian history did not die out with the so-called ‘Dark’ or ‘Middle’ ages but continued until it became part of the English literary Renaissance. The young William Shakespeare made the ancient Goths his anti-hero’s initial Other when he wrote the play Titus Andronicus between 1588 and 1593. Elements of the Titus tale had been published in the novelle of Matteo Bandello in 1573, and translated by William Painter in a collection of short stories entitled The Palace of Pleasure in 1575.38 Shakespeare’s sources are unknown, but he may have dramatized his tale of Roman-Gothic intrigue and cannibalism partly on this, partly on the basis of a contemporary ballad, or even on a novel called The History of Titus Andronicus the Renowned Roman General which circulated for some time as a chapbook before 1594.39 Shakespeare’s longest tragedy, his Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark,

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which was first performed in or before 1602, is based on legends of the same Danish ‘skjoldung’ royal family that appears in the ‘scyldings’ of the Old English epic Beowulf.40 Whether or not Shakespeare knew an earlier Hamlet play, as is sometimes argued, he could have based his own Hamlet on the Histoires tragiques ‘tragical stories’ of François de Belleforest, which reached England in the 1580s; or even directly from Belleforest’s source, the Gesta Danorum ‘deeds of the Danes’ which the canon Saxo Grammaticus started writing in Lund in the last decade of the twelfth century.41 Each of these earlier traditions presented itself as history, even while their authors embellished the narrative with fictions to the point where a modern reader might align them with ‘novels’. Beowulf, which is an early analogue of Saxo’s sixteen-volume history because it shares some of the same ancient traditions, may itself have been treated as history by the Anglo-Saxons who heard or read it. Nonetheless, just as with Saxo, Belleforest and Shakespeare, the poet of Beowulf embroiders on his own version of Scandinavian history. None of the embroidery is to be found however in the narrative foreground for which the poem is justly famous. As a young hero, Beowulf slays the cannibal monster Grendel who has tormented the Danish king Hrothgar for twelve years, and then finishes the job by destroying Grendel’s Mother in her underwater cave. As an old king, some fifty years later, Beowulf attacks a dragon which has set fire to his own kingdom in revenge for the theft of a precious cup from its hoard. With the help of a distant relative named Wiglaf, Beowulf succeeds in killing the fifty-foot reptile but then dies of his wounds, leaving Wiglaf to order the funeral. This story is bold and suggestive (and indeed the inclusion of Wiglaf may date the poem to 827, just before a certain Wiglaf succeeded King Beornwulf on the throne of Mercia),42 but the poet’s less occasional ideas lie elsewhere. One of his intellectual interests is the utility of treasure, how on one hand this may help a royal economy through just rewards and the circulation of wealth; and how, on the other, treasure may destroy a man’s soul, particularly when he loves gold for its own sake, then hoards it in the ground so as to take it with him. King Hrothgar warns against this type of avarice when he delivers his sermon in the very centre of the poem. His cue for this sermon, after Beowulf’s success against the Grendels, is the serpentine sword-hilt which Beowulf has retrieved from Grendel’s Mother’s lair. We might note two things about this hilt. One is that it is inscribed with runes and images which tell their own tale of Noah’s Flood. The other is that the poet calls the hilt wreoþenhilt ond wyrmfah ‘a hilt with twisting patterns and ornamented with serpents’ (line 1698). This expression anticipates the reptilian love of gold which causes the Dragon to burn Geatland on

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finding his hoard robbed of one cup. There is another serpentine pattern in the sword-hilt that was displayed in the early-eighth-century Staffordshire hoard in 2009.43 The treasure in the dragon’s hoard towards the end of Beowulf turns out to have been cursed one thousand years earlier by the ancients who laid it in the ground (the Dragon has been there no more than 300 years). Since Beowulf is now a tomb-raider, we suspect that the curse may succeed in sending him to hell. It is not as if this destination, though unknown, were not already a problem for everyone in the poem. The poet’s heroes are all heathens and much here depends on the mercy of God. Yet Beowulf even now may have a slim chance of avoiding his reinforced prospect of damnation, if he remembers the prescient injunction to choose ece rædas ‘everlasting rewards’ in King Hrothgar’s sermon (line 1760), by refraining from taking a personal interest in the gold. The poet calls the Dragon’s gold ‘heathen’ as if to emphasize where it may lead. The importance of gold and salvation to Beowulf is as debatable as the ethics of a complex novel, but the virtue of this work is its ambiguity, and discussions can continue. The hero Beowulf may be read as the emblem of a bygone society which the poet both admired for its nobility and pitied for its flaws – chiefly for its present residence in hell. Although the poem’s ostensible genre is heroic history in versified form, on this level it works like a novel. Where literary form is concerned, heroic legends are often problematic, in that most of them initially seem to have been transcribed from oral recitations. Writing, in these cases, may occur at the end of the process of composition, and is usually taken to be a transcription in Roman letters at some more relaxed time in Anglo-Saxon monasteries, probably before the tenth-century Benedictine reform. Runes, however, the pre-Christian Germanic letters, continued to be cultivated, and there is even evidence that their alphabet was standardized in early English monasteries.44 Outside England, there are cases other than in King Hrothgar’s sword-hilt where history could be written in runes. One example is a codified form of the two or three runic alphabets which was used to memorialise an Old Scandinavian poem about Theoderic the Ostrogoth († 526), who is said to be mounted and ready for war. The poem was carved with other words less intelligible into the runestone of Rök in Sweden a third of the way into the ninth century.45 Theoderic, who is also celebrated in the contemporaneous English poems Widsith and Deor (copied into the Exeter Book in the later tenth century), was a Byzantine prefect, effectively the king, of post-imperial Italy.46 He was infamous in his own day for favouring the Arian version of Christianity, and after his day for executing his ‘master of the offices’ Boethius on a charge of high treason in 524.

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Boethius wrote his own philosophical novel, De consolatione Philosophiae ‘on the consolation of (Lady) Philosophy’, while sitting in his house on death row.47 He was succeeded in his minister’s role by the same Cassiodorus who founded our BA syllabus and coined the term modernus ‘contemporary’. Here is a poem about their patron, in runes, on a rock from the early Viking Age in Sweden. The image of another king on horseback was carved in England in c. 760, on the shaft of a cross in Repton near the royal Mercian mausoleum. It is thought that this ‘Repton Rider’ celebrates the memory of King Æthelbald of Mercia (ruled 716-756), murdered over a woman’s honour by his bodyguard.48 Further north, and a generation earlier, extracts from a poem on Christ the Warrior were carved also in runes on two sides of an upright cross raised in Ruthwell, some 25 miles west of Carlisle.49 The Northumbrian thegns or aristocrats who arranged for this inscription were members of a regional monastic community. Their heroic values are part of the larger poem, the first draft of which is thought to have been composed in this part of Northumbria in the 690s. The poem not only has a strong narrative line, but also relates the crucifixion of Christ as if this were a pitched battle against the devil, in which the cross unwillingly performs the role of executing his captain. The cross takes on several manifestations: world tree, bonfire, requilary, human lieutenant, even Jesus’ bleeding war-horse left to cool off after a cavalry charge. A version of the same poem, which we call The Dream of the Rood, was later copied into a manuscript which stopped at Vercelli, in northern Italy, at an unknown time after the book was compiled in the later tenth century. To the people who knew the Ruthwell poem near the beginning of its existence, this work was part of a wider set of inscriptions which were derived from Latin liturgy and otherwise written in Roman letters and in Latin. The cross is more famous for its many panels depicting the life and works of Christ in multivalent symbolic form.50 The genre of this poem is ecclesiastical: liturgy. It would be hard to establish the nearest secular genre: lyric is personal and corresponds with the persona’s desires, in the outer sections of the tripartite narrative; elegy conflicts with the resurrection which provides the cross with its joyful Easter theme; but history describes the political place of the rood poem as the Ruthwell locals understood it. In its own terms, the poem is a runic entry into the biblical history in which the Northumbrians wished to inscribe a place of honour for themselves. This pursuit of a place in biblical history defined the Anglo-Saxon world-view also in the Old English Exodus, which is an epic based on parts of Genesis and Exodus in the Old Testament. Exodus survives in a

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garbled vestigially Anglian form in a manuscript from the later tenth century, Oxford, Bodleian Library Junius 11. On these grounds it seems that it started as a work from Northumbria in the later eighth century, perhaps a generation later than the Ruthwell Cross.51 Were it not for the late Nicholas Howe, the Old English Exodus would have gathered little more than the same sporadic attention as its outliers in Junius 11, which are Genesis A and B, Daniel and Christ and Satan. But Howe was able to help demonstrate that the poet of Exodus drives three in hand, at once celebrating the Israelite crossing of the Red Sea, the baptism of Christian catachumens on Holy Saturday and last but not least, the migration of the first Northumbrians into biblical history.52 The Israelites in this poem move through a desert as if it were the sea, finally crossing the Red Sea as if it were land. They are called sæmen ‘seafarers’ and the pillar of cloud that shields them from the sun by day is described as if it were the sail on a mighty ship. The pillar of fire that guides them by night looks also like that other great navigational aid, the pole star. The promised land to which the Northumbrians sail with an Israelite name is implicitly Britannia, the land of their future conversion. Both The Dream of the Rood in Ruthwell and Vercelli and Exodus in Junius 11 contain a surrealism which resembles the devices of later modern prose fiction. The Anglo-Saxon tendency to seek connections with the Old Testament extended to royal genealogies. In the late eighth century these followed biblical patterning. In the late ninth, probably under King Alfred of Wessex (871-899), someone took this a step further and grafted the line of West Saxon kings on to the stem of Noah’s family in Genesis, apparently identifying Scyld Scefing’s boat in a text of Beowulf, which had already been appropriated for West Saxon ancestors, with Noah’s Ark.53 By this one swift connection King Alfred could claim living descent from Adam; and his people could treat themselves as kin to the tribes of Israel. This revolutionary genealogy was written into the obit of King Æthelwulf, Alfred’s father, for the year 855 in the 892 version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Chronicle survives in some six versions, testimony to its dispersal across the West Saxon-dominated England in the tenth century. In each version the impulse to place Alfred’s people in universal history is clear, but at the same time the Chronicle seems to have fostered the art of narrative prose. In the annal for 755 there is thus a striking short story about the death of King Cynewulf of Wessex, whose cousin Cyneheard surrounded him as he lay with his mistress in a hamlet named Merton, probably north of Oxford. In the annals of late ninth and early eleventh centuries there are longer stories in which a passing resemblance to Icelandic saga style comes over as even more pronounced. English prose

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then reached new heights in the Saints’ Lives and sermons of the clerics Ælfric and Wulfstan which it would not see again until the late sixteenth century. In Apollonius of Tyre (analogue of Shakespeare‘s Pericles, Prince of Tyre), from the mid-eleventh century, there is also evidence of an interest in Latin versions of late Greek prose romances.54 It seems likely that if the Normans had lost the Battle of Hastings in 1066, there would have been English and Anglo-Latin narratives to stand comparison with the stories in some of the Icelandic sagas. As it was, the tendency to write historically veneered fiction in England continued after the Conquest in the form of Latin Saints’ Lives and twelfth-century monastic chronicles which were themselves embroidered versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.55 More influential than these abbey chronicles was the Historia regum Britanniae ‘history of the kings of Britain’ which the Oxford scholar Geoffrey of Monmouth completed in 1135.56 Geoffrey was probably of Breton parentage and the aristocracy from which he came, in the Welsh Marches, derived from the Bretons who had assisted William the Conqueror. Geoffrey made his Welsh or Brythonic allegiance in his work of history clear by writing effectively a Roman-Welsh pre-history of Britain. His lineage for the Welsh royals starts with Brutus, whom he takes to be the great-grandson of Aeneas; and he continues to king no. 100, Cadwalladr of Gwynnedd, whose historical namesake died in 682. In this work the Saxons are the invaders, not the indigenous. Their claim to biblical ancestry is noisily displaced by the Trojan story of the opening chapters, in which Brutus leaves Italy, moves a new set of Trojans from Greece to the coast of Albion and renames this new land Britain after himself. Although Geoffrey, within two generations of his death, was criticised for making up most of his history, the high number of its listed manuscripts, 217 in all, attests to the popularity of this work, not only in Britain but also in Europe as well. With this changed perspective, there came a new interest in King Arthur. Even before Geoffrey, his legendary history was known across Europe, as may still be seen in the relief carving on the archivolt of the door to the Cathedral in Modena, northern Italy, from just before 1100. The historical footing for Arthur allowed him to become an image of modern history. The downtrodden English identified their cause with that of the ancient Welsh. First there was the Roman de Brut ‘story of Brutus’ of a poet from Jersey named Wace, who finished his narrative poem for Queen Eleanor in 1155; then there was the Brut ‘Brutus’ of an otherwise unknown south-west Midlands poet named Laƺamon, probably from the beginning of the thirteenth century.57 Both works emphasized the role of King Arthur for the first time, though they

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continued to write a chronicle of the kings of the Britons. The idea that Arthur was real history continued. Not only is the Alliterative Morte Arthur, from the east Midlands in the later fourteenth century, a designated Arthurian verse chronicle in the manner of Laƺamon’s Brut, but written as a reflection of the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453); but Edmund Spenser also wrote on King Arthur and allegorized Queen Elisabeth’s London as Troynovant ‘new Troy’ in his Faerie Queen (1590-96).58 In the midseventeenth century, John Milton, a reader of Spenser, seems to have considered making a part-Arthurian epic of his own, a narrative verse history of Britain, before he gave up the project in favour of Paradise Lost (published in 1667).59 This ongoing interest in historiography preserved what is called the ‘Insular tradition’ of King Arthur, which shifted the genealogical orientation from long-lost Germanic or Anglo-Saxon kings to praising the old Welsh kings of Britain. King Arthur reinforces the division between ‘Old’ and ‘Middle’ which to this day puts medieval English literature in two periods, one before and one after the Norman Conquest. The fact that the ‘Old-Middle’ distinction does not translate so well into other European vernaculars should remind us how contingent it is. Both historically and linguistically, however, this is what we have, and keeping a division for each is what an academy such as the MLA should do if it is serious about speaking for English literature. That a third division should be kept there for Chaucer is equally justifiable on ‘modern’ grounds. In one way he is the novel’s precursor: no Chaucer, no characters; no characterisation, no novel. In another way, less desirable to literary modernists, it can be argued that Chaucer wrote the first English novels himself. The seed for this literary form began to grow a long time before him, when the historical so-called insular tradition of Arthurian literature was changed into a more fictive form under Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204). When Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet in 1154, a new Angevin empire was created which connected most of Britain to the Occitan or Provençal region of her ancestors. The influence upon Eleanor was ultimately from Andalusia and other Muslim regions in Sicily and Palestine. The effects of the resulting fashion of fin’amor ‘refined loving’ in the twelfth century were no less far-reaching than the arrival of the Castilian novela in the seventeenth. The Continental Arthur stands in stark opposition to his insular archetype. King Arthur the pillaging conqueror is transformed into Arthur the mari complaisant, the cuckold who yields his place in the marital bed to Lancelot, a new third party. Lancelot is a French gallant in Camelot, invincible, loyal to Arthur and loving to Guinevere, all at the same time. His love for Guinevere was

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orchestrated in the 1170s by the poet Chrétien de Troyes in his Le Chevalier de la charrette ‘knight of the cart’.60 The Vulgate Lancelot of the thirteenth century extended this story with a preamble in which the noble knight Galehaut, former enemy of King Arthur and made to see the light by the noble Lancelot, forgoes his own interests in order to help him find true love with Guinevere.61 If we look back over the earlier history of this French literary development, we can see how the very notion of love in this case had been acquired through Eleanor from the lyrics of fin’amor in Provence. This came from further south, where the Ars amatoria and Amores, Ovid’s scandalous treatises on love, had long been imbibed by the poets of the Maghreb and Andalusia during the disintegration of the Caliphate of Cordoba in the early eleventh century. Ovid’s amatory cynicism was spiritualized with ideas from Plato‘s Dialogues. The principal literary work of the secularized al-Andalus was a treatise on the art of love, Tawq al-hamāmah ‘the ring of the dove’. This acclimatized revision of Ovid, with echoes of the Symposium, was written by the theologian Ibn Hazm in Cordoba in around 1022.62 It is reasonable to suppose that Duke William IX of Aquitaine, who joined with Castilian forces to besiege Cordoba nearly exactly a century later, knew of this treatise and learned the Castilian jarchas or other translated Arabic love poetry; and that he took this heady mixture back to his duchy of Poitiers.63 William was already a troubadour and he passed on his literary interests, along with his temperament, to his grand-daughter Eleanor, who brought this new literary culture of love into northern France and England. Eleanor’s daughter by her first marriage to King Louis VII of France was Countess Marie de Champagne, for whom, between 1184 and 1186, Andrew the Chaplain (Andreas Capellanus) wrote a new Latin Ovidian treatise De arte honesti amandi ‘on the art of loving honorably’.64 This third great codification of love affairs reflected a major change in taste in which the linguistic removes, from Latin and Greek to Arabic to Castilian to Occitan to French, had done nothing to dull the excitement. The brutish old chansons de geste ‘songs of deeds’, such as La Chanson de Roland from the later eleventh century, had focused on Charlemagne and the Matter of France, versifying history for baronial courts. The new romans courtois ‘courtly stories’ presented Kings Alexander and Arthur, the Matter of Rome and of Britain, to audiences of women with a refined interest in love.65 If love could not exist within marriage, then it would have to flourish illicitly outside it. The potion that brings Tristan together with Iseult, his uncle’s betrothed, clears them and their audience at the same time of responsibility for an adulterous affair. The highs and lows of Tristan’s

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escape and rescue of his uncle’s queen, their hideout in the Wild Wood of Cornwall and subsequent separation and decline, the madness of Tristan and finally his death, provide a tragi-comic view of love. In the 1170s, it seems likely that Chrétien mapped Lancelot, Guinevere and Arthur on the triangular Tristan-motif, though without the exonerating potion. Although Chrétien was conflicted, being priest as well as poet, it is probably he who created this adulterous love which would not have been suitable for northern Christian literature a century earlier. Its later development, in the French Vulgate Cycle of the thirteenth century, produced an even more adult affair in which Lancelot and later Guinevere wrestle with a Christian conscience which is further inflamed by the former’s failure to behold the Holy Grail closer than in a dream. This quest for this objet d’art, the cup of the Last Supper, had formerly been Percival’s, but later romance enforced it on all Arthur’s knights. The resulting ethical fracture between earthly and heavenly rules of love is creatively left unresolved in the verse and prose romances of the Continental Arthurian tradition. Worse still for any insular aficionados, the creation of Lancelot shifts the blame for Camelot’s ‘Day of Destiny’ collapse away from Arthur’s false sister’s son Mordred, who destroys Britain in the histories, to a more terrible civil war which is engendered by Lancelot’s affair with Guinevere. Their love is joyful but ultimately destructive; as is the history of Camelot, which, in Malory‘s adaptation, becomes a metaphor for earthly love in a Christian world. Psychological conflicts such as these are the staple of any decent novel. The question here is whether the Vulgate Cycle’s delayed offshoot, Malory‘s Le Morte Darthur, was the first English example. There are other contenders, for the same stories and conflicts are in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, a formulaic stanzaic poem from the mid-fourteenth century.66 If this had been written in prose, as the Arthurian romances and Nibelung poems were in contemporary Norway and Iceland, the form may have been formulaic minimalism. In the poem often taken as its companion piece, the Alliterative Morte Arthur from the late fourteenth century, there are moments where the poem’s long alliterative lines begin to read like a structured form of prose, an early novel. King Arthur is the ultimate dark lord in this poem as his Insular character demands, but even he, on the eve of taking the Roman empire and ending the European war he created, suffers a dream which brings him to his knees. Lady Fortune appears in Arthur’s dream whirling a wheel and first loves him, then rejects him, placing him on high and then hurling him to his ruin (lines 3349-93). The feminine mystery in these lines is a complement to the warchronicle aspect of this poem which otherwise might make it harder to read. Yet the masterful psychological portraiture of King Arthur in this

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scene is more subtle than anything in the clipped prosody of the Stanzaic. Both Arthurian romances, one with its lavish detail and the other with its intriguing minimalism, contain the techniques later found in modern novels. There again, if criteria such as characterisation, intricate plotting and formal experimentation are held to be part of a novel, Geoffrey Chaucer must be claimed as the true English pioneer. Though he had no time for Arthurian romances, as The Tale of Sir Thopas hilariously makes clear, as a younger man Chaucer may have translated part of The Romance of the Rose, the long allegorical or self-consciously fictional offshoot of romance which was cultivated over the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in France.67 Using English rather than French, his allegorical eulogy The Book of the Duchess then celebrated the life of Blaunche, first wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, by creating a pastiche of three or four Dream Vision Poems which had already been composed in French by masters including Jean Froissart and Guillaume de Machaut.68 The effect of the commoner and a king, Chaucer’s persona versus the ‘Man in Black’, talking at cross purposes in the dream setting here is so comic, besides panegyrical, that it seems unlikely that The Book of the Duchess was performed any time near Blaunche’s death in 1368. It looks more like an occasional poem from a few years later, and it may have been the act of kindness for which John of Gaunt (son of King Edward III, at this time himself the ruler of England, the uncle and regent of King Richard II) rewards Chaucer in a document of 1374.69 Chaucer acknowledges the historical presence of this royal family in his poems by presenting them fictitiously as dream figures, eagles or even the royal family of Troy. His Troilus and Criseyde, which he probably finished in 1387-88 largely on the basis of Boccaccio’s petulant Il Filostrato ‘the lovelorn’ of 1336, is a massive five-book Classical romance whose impact as a love story puts it qualitatively in the same league as Leo Tolstoy‘s Anna Karenina (1873-77). Its only obstacles to being accepted as the first novel in the English language by our reading public must be the poetic form, the relatively inaccessible language and the fact that it is, well, medieval. The scale of this undertaking, however, was such that Chaucer spent years planning the construction of his book. Troilus and Criseyde is without question the most accomplished work that he wrote. Chaucer plotted its narrative in advance in his short poem The Complaint of Mars, which he probably finished in 1385. The story in which Prince Troilus falls in love with Criseyde but then loses her to Diomede is tried out in The Complaint of Mars, in which Mars falls in love with Venus but then loses her to Mercury. That Chaucer was not

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content to leave things so simple is obvious to anyone who follows the astronomy in this poem, by which the conjoining gods in this story are also planets. It turns out that Mars in his battle-armour must follow his lover Venus so slowly around the rim of the zodiac that he is not around to stop her falling under the spell of the fast planet Mercury, as this seducer roars up behind her in his chariot. In fact, The Complaint of Mars can be plotted on the ecliptic in such a way that its incidents have dates over three months in the early part of 1385, when the corresponding planets were performing the same journeys anti-clockwise around the course of the zodiac.70 Chaucer, who was no amateur in astronomy, plays similar games in the background to Troilus and Criseyde. If Chaucer had been writing such multiple layers of fiction now or in the late twentieth century, he would probably be seen in full spate on a TV Late Show, up for an award as the author of a post-modern novel. His mature work The Canterbury Tales, in contrast, is not a production but a sporadic experiment in polyphony that is never going to end. Chaucer mixes narrative forms and perspectives in his Tales, an English emulation of Italian novelle rather than an amplification of French fabliaux, with such freedom that it seems likely that he was using Boccaccio to experiment with new forms. He read Dante and celebrates Petrarch, and there is some direct or indirect influence from Boccaccio’s Decameron, too. Both this and The Canterbury Tales are taken to have ‘paved the way for future literary developments, especially by creating a new space for popular fiction’.71 I would further suggest that Chaucer filled this new space he created. Of his Tales perhaps the most relevant here, but probably least read, is Melibee, a translated prose narrative at the heart of Fragment VII. In this work a certain Dame Prudence, though about to lose her daughter to wounds inflicted by burglars, argues the case for treating the offenders with mercy. She does so with a cogency similar to Lady Philosophy’s in the Boece, the philosophical novel by Boethius whose elements Chaucer, having translated it from a version in French, injected into his Troilus and Criseyde. The Melibee is itself a kind of exemplary novella. It is also the story which Chaucer, as if aware of the growth of prose fiction, gives to himself. Chaucer is the author with whom I will end my anti-generic review of fiction in the novel. I started by identifying modern with medieval, by backdating the novel’s beginnings to the early histories which were fables in all but name, and then by finding more obvious evidence of its development in the medieval fables, sagas, poems and romances which hint at living history. Although there are formal grounds for supposing that Sir Thomas Malory wrote the first English Medieval novel, there are more

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profound literary reasons to award that prize to Geoffrey Chaucer. There again, it is a moot point which of these writers we choose, for elements of the ‘modern novel’ predate even Chaucer by centuries, in France, Italy and Iceland as well as in England. Novels, though they are not everything in the European or Western literary canon, provide a good example of a genre which is often deemed more relevant to modern readers than any other, especially when they are written in a modern language. Yet the novel-genre is both older than it appears and more open to expression in different forms. In terms of their origins, modern novels are old, as are the ‘postmodern’ narratives – film, texts, tweets, whatever – which may one day supplant them. The MLA can expand in order to represent this openended future. Its desired capture of global quantity may yet show twentyfirst century literature to the fullest advantage. Yet instead of expanding outwards, the MLA still seems to want to grow inwards. By tying the survival of three Medieval divisions to the numbers of adherents, i.e., to market forces, the MLA seems set on making room for expansion out of what it has. An academy that squeezes one subject to accommodate another is, so to speak, playing games with its own health, and where the war against cultural illiteracy is concerned, may soon be regarded as Missing In Action.

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Figure 3: First Page of Preface to William Caxton’s Printed Edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Mort Darthure

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Bibliography Allard, Joe. “Sagas of Icelanders.” In ‘Beowulf’ & Other Stories: A New Introduction to Old English, Old Icelandic and Anglo-Norman Literatures, edited by Richard North and Joe Allard, 404-44. 2nd edition. Harlow: Pearson Ltd, 2011. Alter, Robert. Necessary Angels. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991. Andersson, Theodore M. The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (1180-1280). Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2006. Barron, W. R. J. English Medieval Romance. Harlow: Longman, 1987. Baugh, Albert C. A Literary History of England, 2nd edition. London: Rouledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1967. Benson, Larry D., ed., King Arthur’s Death: The Middle English ‘stanzaic Morte Arthur’ and ‘Alliterative Morte Arthure.’ Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986 [first published 1974]). —., gen. ed., The Riverside Chaucer, edited by Larry D. Benson and others, based on The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, edited by F. N. Robinson, 3rd edition. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Inc., 1987. Biddle, Martin, and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle. “The Repton Rider.” AngloSaxon England 14 (1985): 233-92. Blake, Norman F. William Caxton and English Literary Culture. London: Hambledon Press Ltd, 1991. Bullough, Geoffrey. Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare: Volume 6: Other “Classical” Plays. New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. Carey, John, and Alastair Fowler, ed. The Poems of John Milton. London and Harlow: Longman, 1968. Chadwick, Henry. Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981. Chambers, R. W. ‘Beowulf’: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932. Clunies Ross, Margaret. The Cambridge Introduction to the Old NorseIcelandic Saga. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Cooper, Helen, ed. Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Crow, Martin M., and Clair C. Olson, ed. Chaucer Life-Records. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Davidson, Herbert A. Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992.

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de Boor, Helmut, ed., and Karl Bartsch. rev., Das Nibelungenlied, 21st edition. Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1979. Dronke, Ursula, ed. and trans. The Poetic Edda: Volume I: Heroic Poems Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969. Edwards, Phillip, ed. Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Eisenberg, Daniel. Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age. Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta – Hispanic Monographs, 1982. Field, P. J. C. The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory. Arthurian Studies 29. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993. Fisher, Peter, trans., and Hilda Ellis Davidson. Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes: Books I-IX. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1980. García Gómez, Emilio, and José Ortega y Gasset. El Collar de la Paloma: Tratado sobre el Amor y los Amantes de Ibn Hazm de Córdoba, 3rd edition. Madrid: Alianza Editorial S.A., 1971. George, R., ed. The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Goolden, Peter, ed. The Old English ‘Apollonius of Tyre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958. Grossman, Edith, trans., and Harold Bloom. Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote. London: Vintage, 2005. Hansen, William. Saxo Grammaticus and the Life of Hamlet: A Translation, History and Commentary. Lincoln, NA: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Harris, Joseph. “Saga as Historical Novel.” In “Speak Useful Words or Say Nothing”: Old Norse Studies by Joseph Harris, edited by Susan E. Deskis and Thomas D. Hill. Islandica 53. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008. —. “The Rök Stone’s iatun and Mythology of Death.” In Analecta Septentrionalia. Beiträge zur nordgermanischen Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte, edited by W. Heizmann, K. Böldl and H. Beck, 467-501. Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 65. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009. Hassan, Nawal Muhammad. Hayy bin Yaqzan and Robinson Crusoe: A Study of an Early Arabic Impact on English Literature. London: Al Rashid House for Publication, 1980. Hatto, A. T., trans. and rev. The Nibelungenlied. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969. Helporn, James W., trans., and Mark Vessey. Cassiodorus: ‘Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning’ and ‘On the Soul.’ Translated Texts for Historians 42. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004.

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Howe, Nicholas. Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. Lacy, Norris J., gen. ed. Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation. 5 vols. Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2010. Le Saux, Françoise H. M. Laȝamon”s ‘Brut’: The Poem and its Sources. Arthurian Studies 19. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1989. Leahy, Kevin, and Roger Bland. The Staffordshire Hoard. London: British Museum Press, 2009. Lukács, György. The Theory of the Novel: a Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature. Translated by Anna Bostock. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971 [first German edition 1921]. Manley, Lawrence. Literature and Culture in Early Modern London. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Moorhead, John. Theoderic in Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Mutter, R. P. C., ed. Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966. Mynors, R. A. B, ed. Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937. Nelson, William. The Poetry of Edmund Spenser: A Study. New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1963. North, John D. Chaucer’s Universe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. North, Richard. The Origins of ‘Beowulf’: From Vergil to Wiglaf. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. North, Richard, and Joe Allard, with Patricia Gillies. Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic and Anglo-Norman Literatures. Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2011. North, Richard, and Martin Worthington. “Gilgameš and Beowulf: Foundations of a Comparison.” In Decoding Gilgameš, edited by Martin Worthington, 157-97. KASKAL: Rivista di Storia, Ambienti e Culture del Vicino Oriente Antico, 9. Florence: LoGisma, 2012. Ó Carragáin, Éamonn. Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the ‘Dream of the Rood’ Tradition. London and Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2005. Ó Cuilleanáin, Cormac, trans. Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron: A New English Version based on John Payne’s 1886 Translation. Ware: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2004.

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O’Donoghue, Heather. Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 2004. Parry, John Jay, trans. The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990. Parsons, David. Recasting the Runes: The Reform of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. Runrön 14. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1999. Pedersen, Olaf. The First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe. Translated by Richard North. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Penn, Thomas. Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2011. Raffel, Burton, trans., and Joseph J. Duggan. Lancelot: The Knight of the Cart: Chrétien de Troyes. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997. Reeve, Michael D., ed., and Neil Wright, trans. Geoffrey of Monmouth: ‘The History of the Kings of Britain’: An Edition and Translation of ‘De Gestis Britonum’ [Historia Regum Britanniae], Arthurian Studies 69. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2007. Regan, Stephen, ed. The Nineteenth-Century Novel: A Critical Reader. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Salzman, Paul. An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction, revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Schlauch, Margaret. Antecedents of the English Novel 1400-1600. Warsaw: PWN – Polish Scientific Publishers, and London: Oxford University Press, 1963. Schneidau, Herbert N. Awakening Giants. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Swanton, Michael J., ed. and trans. The Lives of the Two Offas: Vitae Offarum Duorum. Crediton: The Medieval Press Ltd, 2010. Swanton, Michael J. English Poetry before Chaucer. 2nd edition. Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2002. Thompson, N. S. Chaucer, Boccaccio and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of ‘The Decameron’ and ‘The Canterbury Tales.’ Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Thorpe, Lewis, trans. Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974. Visiak, E. H., ed., and Sir Arnold Wilson. Milton: Complete Poetry & Selected Prose. Glasgow: Nonesuch Press, 1948. Waith, Eugene M. Titus Andronicus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

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Watson, George, ed. The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature: Volume 2: 1660-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971. Windeatt, Barry A. Chaucer’s Dream Poetry: Sources and Analogues, Chaucer Studies 7. Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982. Wright, C. E. The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1939.

Notes 1

Marsellus Wallace, in the basement: “I’m gonna get medieval on yo’ ass”. The less said about the context the better. 2 The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts, ed. A. R. George (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Richard North and Martin Worthington, “Gilgameš and Beowulf: Foundations of a Comparison”, in Decoding Gilgameš, ed. Martin Worthington, KASKAL: Rivista di Storia, Ambienti e Culture del Vicino Oriente Antico, 9 (Florence LoGisma, 2012), 15797, esp. 181. 3 Modern Languages Association, March 2013, President Prof. Marianne Hirsch and First Vice-President Prof. Margaret Ferguson (Old English Language and Literature (DO21), Middle English Language and Literature, Excluding Chaucer (DO22), and Chaucer (DO23)). For now, see: http://groupsdiscussion.commons.mla.org/introduction/faq/. 4 Robert Alter, Necessary Angels (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991). Herbert N. Schneidau, Awakening Giants (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). 5 Thomas Penn, Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 2011), 8-11. 6 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/eme. 7 Cassiodorus: ‘Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning’ and ‘On the Soul’, trans. with notes by James W. Helporn, with introduction by Mark Vessey, Translated Texts for Historians 42 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2004), 131 (1.8.16). Cassiodori Senatoris Institutiones, ed. R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937), 32 (1.8.16). 8 Olaf Pedersen, The First Universities: Studium Generale and the Origins of University Education in Europe, trans. Richard North (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 41-43. 9 György Lukács, The Theory of the Novel: a Historico-Philosophical Essay on the Forms of Great Epic Literature, trans. Anna Bostock (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1971 [first German edition 1921]), 88. 10 As in Harlequin Books and the Romance Writers of America, the writers’ union founded in Houston, Texas in 1980. 11 Paul Salzman, An Anthology of Elizabethan Prose Fiction, revised edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), viii-ix. Margaret Schlauch, Antecedents

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of the English Novel 1400-1600 (Warsaw: PWN – Polish Scientific Publishers, and London: Oxford University Press, 1963). 12 Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin, Giovanni Boccaccio: Decameron: A New English Version based on John Payne’s 1886 Translation (Ware: Wordsworth Editions Ltd, 2004), xxxvi-xl. 13 Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding, ed. R. P. C. Mutter (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1966), pp. 233 (V.8), 240 (V.10), 242 (V.11), 468 (X.1), 559 (XII.3), 666 (XIV.3), and ff.. 14 Miguel de Cervantes: Don Quixote, trans. Edith Grossman, with an introduction by Harold Bloom (London: Vintage, 2005). 15 Daniel Eisenberg, Romances of Chivalry in the Spanish Golden Age (Newark, Delaware: Juan de la Cuesta – Hispanic Monographs, 1982), 27-34. 16 Eisenberg, Romances of Chivalry, 75-86. 17 Albert C. Baugh, A Literary History of England, 2nd edition (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1967), 803-5, 853. 18 Baugh, Literary History of England, 795. Nawal Muhammad Hassan, Hayy bin Yaqzan and Robinson Crusoe: A Study of an Early Arabic Impact on English Literature (London: Al Rashid House for Publication, 1980). Ockley’s translation is missing from his entry in The New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature, ed. George Watson, Volume 2: 1660-1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 1710-11. 19 Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect: Their Cosmologies, Theories of the Active Intellect, and Theories of Human Intellect (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 14-18. 20 Baugh, Literary History of England, 300-307. Norman F. Blake, William Caxton and English Literary Culture (London: Hambledon Press Ltd, 1991). 21 W. R. J. Barron, English Medieval Romance (Harlow: Longman, 1987), 147-53. 22 P. J. C. Field, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory, Arthurian Studies 29 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), 105-30. 23 Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript, ed. Helen Cooper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998). 24 The Nineteenth-Century Novel: A Critical Reader, ed. Stephen Regan (London and New York: Routledge, 2001), 13-22, esp. 14; and 22-23, esp. 22. 25 Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 14-20. 26 Joseph Harris, “Saga as Historical Novel,” in “Speak Useful Words or Say Nothing”: Old Norse Studies by Joseph Harris, ed. Susan E. Deskis and Thomas D. Hill, Islandica 53 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2008), 227-60. 27 Joe Allard, “Sagas of Icelanders”, in ‘Beowulf’ & Other Stories: A New Introduction to Old English, Old Icelandic and Anglo-Norman Literatures, ed. Richard North and Joe Allard, 2nd edition (Harlow: Pearson Ltd, 2011), 404-44. 28 Clunies Ross, The Old Norse-Icelandic Saga, 80-84. 29 Theodore M. Andersson, The Growth of the Medieval Icelandic Sagas (11801280) (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2006), 110-111. 30 Andersson, Medieval Icelandic Sagas, 138-40.

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Andersson, Medieval Icelandic sagas, 175-182. Heather O’Donoghue, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 2004), 40-46. 33 The Nibelungenlied, trans. and rev. A. T. Hatto (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1969), 124-32 (16). Das Nibelungenlied, ed. Helmut de Boor, rev. Karl Bartsch, 21st edition (Leipzig: F.A. Brockhaus, 1979), 153-65 (16). 34 Gregory of Tours: The History of the Franks, trans. with introduction, Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974), 221-22 (4. 27). 35 History of the Franks, trans. Thorpe, 248 (4. 51). 36 The Poetic Edda: Volume I: Heroic Poems, ed. and trans. Ursula Dronke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 29-34. 37 Poetic Edda I, ed. and trans. Dronke, 192-6. 38 Titus Andronicus, ed. Eugene M. Waith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 35. 39 Geoffrey Bullough, Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare: Volume 6: Other “Classical” Plays (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 7-20. 40 Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, ed. Phillip Edwards (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 41 William Hansen, Saxo Grammaticus and the Life of Hamlet: A Translation, History and Commentary (Lincoln, NA: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 2537. Saxo Grammaticus: The History of the Danes: Books I-IX, trans. Peter Fisher, with edition and commentary by Hilda Ellis Davidson (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1980), 83-101 (Amleth, in bk. 3). 42 Richard North, The Origins of “Beowulf”: From Vergil to Wiglaf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 297-331, esp. 316-17. 43 Kevin Leahy and Roger Bland, The Staffordshire Hoard (London: British Museum Press, 2009), 28-33. 44 David Parsons, Recasting the Runes: The Reform of the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc, Runrön 14 (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1999), 109-30. 45 Text and translation in Joseph Harris, “The Rök Stone’s iatun and Mythology of Death”, in Analecta Septentrionalia. Beiträge zur nordgermanischen Kultur- und Literaturgeschichte, ed. W. Heizmann, K. Böldl and H. Beck, Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde, 65 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 467-501, esp. 294 (A9-B11). 46 John Moorhead, Theoderic in Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 47 Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), 45-69. 48 Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle, “The Repton Rider”, Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985), 233-92, esp. 264 and 271-2. 49 Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems of the ‘Dream of the Rood’ Tradition (London and Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2005), xxvi-xxx. 50 Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood, 79-222. 51 Michael J. Swanton, English Poetry before Chaucer, 2nd edition (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2002), 93-101. Longman Anthology of Old English, Old 32

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Icelandic and Anglo-Norman Literatures, ed. and trans. Richard North and Joe Allard, with Patricia Gillies (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2011), 295-313. 52 Nicholas Howe, Migration and Mythmaking in Anglo-Saxon England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 73-107. 53 R. W. Chambers, ‘Beowulf’: An Introduction to the Study of the Poem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1932), 68-88, esp. 76-77. 54 The Old English ‘Apollonius of Tyre’, ed. Peter Goolden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), ix-xii. Longman Anthology, ed. North and Allard, 781-91. 55 C. E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1939). For an illustration of what was possible, see The Lives of the Two Offas: Vitae Offarum Duorum, ed. and trans. with introduction by Michael J. Swanton (Crediton: The Medieval Press Ltd, 2010). 56 Geoffrey of Monmouth: ‘The History of the Kings of Britain’: An Edition and Translation of ‘De Gestis Britonum’ [Historia Regum Britanniae], ed. Michael D. Reeve and trans. Neil Wright, Arthurian Studies 69 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 2007), vii-viii. 57 Françoise H. M. Le Saux, Laȝamon”s ‘Brut’: The Poem and its Sources, Arthurian Studies 19 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer Ltd, 1989), 24-58. 58 William Nelson, The Poetry of Edmund Spenser: A Study (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1963), 144-45. Lawrence Manley, Literature and Culture in Early Modern London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 168-85. 59 The Poems of John Milton, ed. John Carey and Alastair Fowler (London and Harlow: Longman, 1968), 422. Milton: Complete Poetry & Selected Prose, ed. E. H. Visiak, with foreword by Sir Arnold Wilson (Glasgow: Nonesuch Press, 1948), 743-52. 60 Lancelot: The Knight of the Cart: Chrétien de Troyes, trans. Burton Raffel, with afterword by Joseph J. Duggan (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 145, lines 4590-4617. 61 Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, gen. ed. Norris J. Lacy, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2010), Vol. 2 (The Prose Lancelot). 62 El Collar de la Paloma: Tratado sobre el Amor y los Amantes de Ibn Hazm de Córdoba, trans. Emilio García Gómez, with foreword by José Ortega y Gasset, 3rd edition (Madrid: Alianza Editorial S.A., 1971), 52, 66-7. 63 The Art of Courtly Love by Andreas Capellanus, trans. with introduction and notes, John Jay Parry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 7-13. 64 The Art of Courtly Love, trans. Parry. 65 Barron, English Medieval Romance, 30-40. 66 King Arthur’s Death: The Middle English ‘Stanzaic Morte Arthur’ and ‘Alliterative Morte Arthure’, ed. Larry D. Benson (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1986 [first published 1974]). 67 The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson and others, based on The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson, 3rd edition (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Inc., 1987), 685-6 (written by Larry D. Benson).

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Barry A. Windeatt, Chaucer’s Dream Poetry: Sources and Analogues, Chaucer Studies 7 (Woodbridge: D. S. Brewer, 1982). 69 Chaucer Life-Records, ed. Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 271-72. 70 John D. North, Chaucer’s Universe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 304-25. 71 N. S. Thompson, Chaucer, Boccaccio and the Debate of Love: A Comparative Study of ‘The Decameron’ and ‘The Canterbury Tales’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 2, 312-21.

CHAPTER TWO THE HEAVENER RUNESTONE: EVIDENCE OF VIKINGS IN OKLAHOMA, OR SWEDISH RAILROAD WORKERS IN THE 19TH CENTURY? JAMES FRANKKI

In the foothills of the Poteau Mountains in southeast Oklahoma, there stands a large slab of Savanna sandstone, 12’ high x 10’ wide and 16” thick, on which a runic inscription has been carved. The inscription consists of eight letters, or runes, ranging from 6 to 9 inches tall, increasing in size incrementally from left to right. The symbols found in this inscription do not appear in any writing system used by indigenous peoples from this area. Nor do they belong to any of the languages spoken by the native tribes, who were resettled in Oklahoma during the Trail of Tears (1830’s). In fact, among scholars who study runes and older Germanic languages, there is a solid consensus that the inscription conforms to the runic tradition of northern and central Europe in the early Middle Ages.

G-N-O-M-E-D-A-L The Heavener Inscription (author’s file)

The Heavener inscription, with two possible exceptions, is composed of eight runes from the Elder, or Germanic Futhark ̶ a system of writing

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used in Scandinavia and in mainland Europe from the 2nd to the 8th century A.D. The second rune a may be a variant form of n = [n] in the Elder Futhark, if it is reversed and the cross-bar on the right is removed, or l = [l] if we read it retrograde with the cross-bar lower down. The form of this rune also appears in the short-twig Younger futhark, where it represents [a] or again [n] in a retrograde form. However, attributing this rune to the Younger Futhark would require us to consider a later dating of the inscription, since this form first came into use in Scandinavia in the 8th century.1 The inscription thus has several proposed readings. If the second rune (a) is viewed as a retrograde n-rune (Younger Futhark) and the last rune (t) is read as a retrograde l-rune (Elder Futhark), then G-N-O-M-ED-A-L is the reading, but if both runes are perceived as belonging to the Younger FuÞark then G-A-O-M-E-D-A-T is possible.2 If one is inclined to read all the runes as Elder FuÞark runes (or variants thereof) with some runes being read retrograde (in reverse), then: G-L-O-M-E-D-A-L.3 A fourth possibility suggested by Paul Chapman in 1986, but which has gained little acceptance among scholars and other runic enthusiasts, is to read the entire inscription from right to left as was sometimes done in medieval Scandinavia. In this way, we get a transliteration of L-A-D-E-MO-N-G.4 For too long, this runic inscription has been ignored by specialists in the fields of linguistics, runology, and older Germanic languages. Mainly, this has to do with the perceived impossibility that someone with knowledge of these runes could have traveled so far into the interior of the North American continent at such an early date (pre-800). Although there exist other rune stones and runic inscriptions in North America, none has yet been established conclusively as authentic, and most are considered to be either hoaxes, frauds, copies of other rune stones, or cultural artifacts that Scandinavian immigrants brought with them when they resettled here during the 19th century. Exceptions to this are the many authentic runic inscriptions dating to the time of the Norse colony on Greenland (A.D. 985-?).5 A well-known example is the 14th century Kingitttorsuaq inscription discovered on the northwest coast of Greenland, which was carved long after the date ascribed to the Heavener Rune stone by those who would view it as an authentic Viking artifact. (8th century or earlier).6 Gloria Farley, 7 an amateur runologist and self-taught epigraphist,8 was obsessed since childhood with the idea that Vikings could have carved this rune stone in Oklahoma. For decades, she campaigned tirelessly for recognition of the Heavener stone as a testament to Viking exploration into the interior of the North American continent. Her promotional campaign resulted most significantly in the preservation of the stone in

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situ at its present location in Heavener Runestone Park–where it was claimed to have been seen more than 140 years ago.9 While her detailed research into the origins of the inscription and history of the stone is also to be commended, she was unable to resolve fully the issues of the Heavener stone’s authenticity as a Viking artifact prior to her death in March of 2006. Until recently, the only unambiguous evidence we had of Viking exploration or settlement in the “New World” dated to around 1000 A.D. when, according to the Vinland Sagas,10 Leifur Eiríksson established a Viking base camp on the northeast coast of North America, at the L’anse aux Meadeaux archaeological site in Newfoundland, Canada.11 Whether this Norse outpost was the actual site of Leif Eriksson’s Vinland has been questioned, especially in light of the recent discovery of early Norse settlements on Baffin Island.12 But the question here is this: did the Vikings also travel to Oklahoma prior to the ninth century?13 How would this have been possible? A few years ago I interviewed Dr. Richard Nielsen, one of the first translators of the stone and graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, in regards to the possible route of Viking explorers coming to Oklahoma. His response follows: By the 9th century the navigational skills of the Vikings would have allowed them (Vikings) to reach the Straits of Florida via the southern coastal currents (at an average speed of 2 knot/hr. from Baffin Island to the Florida Straits at the Keys). Ingress via the Mississippi River and the Arkansas River basin would have given them easy access to eastern Oklahoma via the Arkansas River (along the recognized trading route of the natives living there at the time.)… The northern Gulf Stream, whose currents approach near the coast of Iceland, could have allowed a rapid return to Iceland after leaving [sic]: the Gulf of Mexico and entering the Atlantic.14

While we have no archeological evidence to support this theory, we also cannot rule it out completely, since we know that the Vikings had the technological capability, with their longships, to travel up and down all but the smallest rivers. It has been well established by historians that Vikings traveled in the 9th century far into the interior of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Russia by means of the major river systems.15 Certainly, they could have traveled to Oklahoma in the 8th century or before. Problematic is the paucity of evidence that they actually traveled to Oklahoma. Linguistic or runic evidence is only reliable when we have a known date for the carving event or can establish that particular runic forms could not have been copied from modern publications. Unless, and until we find supporting archaeological evidence of a Viking presence in Oklahoma or establish conclusively an earlier dating for its creation, there

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will remain serious questions regarding the authenticity of the Heavener inscription. But in the remainder of this essay, I would like to focus on the interpretation of the message the stone conveys and discuss the most recent research on the stone. In the 2011 issue of Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers (ESOP), the archaeologist Lyle Tompsen conducted an in-depth analysis of the Heavener Stone, together with the other rune stones found in the area, (the Poteau Rune Stone, the Shawnee Rune Stone, Heavener 2 and Heavener 3), with the intent to determine whether these inscriptions might be of Viking origin. He concluded that all of these except the big Heavener Stone are in all likelihood copies, (or fakes), and carved in modern times. Regarding the Heavener Stone, he does not dismiss its authenticity outright, claiming, “[T]here is nothing in the Scandinavian runic corpus that definitively negates the Heavener stone as a Viking remnant.”16 He does, however, find it more probable that the stone was carved in the late nineteenth century and not during the Viking Age. Like many other scholars, Tompsen disregards the oral tradition of the Choctaw Indians in Oklahoma, which claimed that the inscription was first discovered during their arrival in the late 1830’s. Should this oral tradition ever be verified, Tompsen’s assumption that the Heavener Stone was carved by Swedish immigrant railroad workers in the late 19th early 20th century cannot hold up. Unfortunately, it is difficult to arrive at conclusions acceptable to the academic community based solely on the evidence of oral tradition. But I would maintain that such evidence should also not be discounted completely and deserves further investigation. Specialists in the study of oral tradition in preliterate societies generally agree that most oral tradition contains some core element of truth. In the same volume of ESOP where Tompsen’s article appears, Bart Torbert argues the case for viewing the Oklahoma Rune Stones (specifically the Heavener) as “authentically ancient.”17 He rightly points out serious flaws in Tompsen’s arguments, as well as factual errors. He notes further Tompsen’s selective use of the evidence provided by Farley in her book In Plain Sight. Specifically, he points to Tompsen’s disregard for a signed statement by Ben King testifying to the fact that his father had seen the stone before his birth in 1874 and his dismissal of the potential evidence of the Native American oral tradition which, if verified, would suggest a much earlier dating.18 Torbert claims that there exists no proper epigraphic context to support Tompsen’s supposition that a Scandinavian railroad worker working in Oklahoma could have carved the inscription in the late 19th century. (In other words, it is unlikely and unproven that these workers, even if they existed, would have had the knowledge of the runes

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at their disposal, or the opportunity or motivation to carve them.) In addition, Torbert argues that the irregularities and inconsistencies in the runic forms provide evidence for the authenticity of the stone rather than against it, since in the 8th century there existed no standardized runic alphabet in the modern sense. We find instead much variation among rune stone carvers, as well as individual idiosyncrasies, and texts that reflect dialectical and regional variation. If we posit a modern-day carver who might be copying from, or have learned his runes from books published in the 19th century, then we would expect more consistency among the forms since he would not be inclined to copy the unusual or variant forms.19 Although Torbert makes a good case against many of Tompsen’s arguments for a modern-day provenance of the stone, he overstates his own conclusion when he claims that the Heavener Stone cannot be from the late 19th century and consequently must be “authentically ancient, dating it to the beginning of the Viking Age“ (8th century).20 In October of 2010, for the first time, a renowned scholar and specialist in runic inscriptions, Dr. Henrik Williams of Uppsala University in Sweden conducted a formal study of the Heavener Rune Stone as part of his North American Runic Tour. This trip took him to the site of runic inscriptions in several states, specifically to the Kensington Rune Stone in Alexandria, Minnesota, the Spirit Pond Rune Stone in Maine, and the Heavener Rune Stone in Oklahoma. The significance of Williams’ visit to the Oklahoma stone can hardly be overstated, since the Heavener stone has long been considered unworthy of study by academics, who most often dismiss it as a fake or a hoax carved in modern times. “Everyone knows that Sweden is the home of the runes,” can be heard from the majority of runologists—especially in Sweden!—and most think it is simply impossible that anyone with knowledge of runic lore could have traveled to Oklahoma in the 8th century. Williams, however, takes a different approach and believes that rune stones in North America—even if they prove to be modern-day creations—are still worthy of study. During his lecture in Oklahoma at Northeastern State University in October of 2010 he strongly emphasized this point, remarking that All runic inscriptions deserve to be inspected by professional runologists, including American ones…. At present there is no such person, no such runologist in this country… or on this continent. (2010)

Like Williams, I deplore the lack of trained specialists in this country who are qualified to study these inscriptions and advocate the involvement of academics in unraveling the mysteries of these stones, regardless of whether they have a medieval or modern provenance. Even if the

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inscriptions are established to be carved in modern times, as in the case of the recently translated Kansas City rune stone,21 their value as a piece of Americana and the insight they provide into immigrant life in America is invaluable and certainly of great interest to local historians, among others. I was fortunate to participate in Williams’ “Messages in Stone” tour, which brought him to the Heavener Rune Stone on October 3, 2010. At the site we were able to examine the rune stone close up, from behind as well as on the inside of the protective glass, in order to determine the precise forms of the runes. Williams’ reaction after examining the runes was quite positive. During his lecture the next day at Northeastern University, he stated that the Heavener runes were “very well-made” and…”looked nice.”22 He identified the runes, with two possible exceptions, as belonging to the very oldest of the runic alphabets, the Elder futhark, which he emphasized were very rare. Of the eight runes on the inscription, he mentioned specifically the second rune (reading from left to right) as a potential source for problems, since there seemed to be several readings for it. Williams’ preference is to read this rune as a retrograde variant of the n-rune in the Elder Futhark, which yields the modern Norwegian word: “Gnomedal,” meaning a “little valley” or “poor valley,” or perhaps “gnome valley.”23 Another reading using an [n] in the second position yields the modern Norwegian name: G. Nommedal, with the name Nommedal being attested to as the name of a farm in Agder, Norway.24 Tompsen, in his examination of recent telephone directories in southern Norway, found further support for reading the second rune as [n]. There he found 21 entries for the name Nomedal, and additional examples in the 1900 census in Iowa.25 However, his search for the name Nomedal or Gnomedal in the historical records of Heavener and Le Flore County in Oklahoma yielded no results.26 Although the most recent research by the runologist Williams and the archaeologist Tompsen supports a reading of the second rune as [n], the official position of the Heavener Runestone Park continues to reflect Nielsen’s 1986 interpretation of rune number two as an l-rune, with a consequent transliteration of the inscription as G-L-O-M-E-D-A-L (usually translated as Glome’s valley). 27 This reading stems from the research Nielsen conducted in 1986 and 1987, in which he found evidence on bracteates and ninth-century rune stones, of l- runes with a form similar to that of the second rune on the Heavener.28 In an appendix to the 1987 article, he presents several examples of l-runes with downward slanting with cross-bars on the right side, but only one, the Elgesem Stone, sports a cross-bar to the left, but this is expected since the inscription is read from right to left. In addition, the cross-bar is in a horizontal position,

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intersecting the main staff at the very top. Even if we allow for the possibility of a retrograde reading of those runes with right side cross-bars, the fact remains that few of the examples he presents match the form of the second rune on the Heavener. A further problem arises when we consider that there already exists an l- rune in the eighth position on the inscription, which deviates significantly from the form of the second rune, and only with difficulty and special pleading should we read this as the same rune. Nielsen claims to have found a similar situation on the Randbol stone, where [l] is represented by two different runic forms, but this stone was carved later than the supposed dating of the Heavener,29 after the advent of the Younger futhark runes.30 In addition, the photographs of the Randbol stone I have seen do not support Nielsen’s claim that the [L] on the Randbol stone displays the same form as the second rune on the Heavener. Among the Upplandic inscriptions discussed by Thompson, (referenced by Nielsen, 1987) we find a mirror image rune of Heavener’s rune number 2, but these inscriptions come from the 10th and 11th centuries, long after the period when the runes of the Elder futhark had fallen into disuse.31 Of the remaining rune stones Nielsen presents in the two articles, (Årstad, Kinneve Stone, Gørlev) none of them match precisely the form found on the Heavener. In a prepublication draft of his research conducted on the Heavener stone, Williams discusses further the evidence on which Nielsen bases his conclusions. He notes that primarily, much of it relies on outdated sources (i.e., Sophus Bugge, 1891-1903). He points to Wolfgang Krause‘s Die Runeninschriften im älteren Futhark as a more reliable source (quoted, with permission): The most modern collection of inscriptions with the older runic characters is Krause 1966. None of the parallels advanced of reading a (the second rune) as an l-rune by Nielsen can be upheld. Charnay has a [variant with bar at bottom], which…” and, which is not the same as a n, and in either case Krause (1966, p. 22) writes that the interpretation of this rune remains uncertain. Nordendorf’s fifth rune is not even transliterated by Krause (op. cit., p. 294). Bad Ems does indeed contain a rune transliterated as l by Krause (op. cit., p. 282), but the commentary is sparse and on the picture (Tafel 61) nothing can be seen. However, in an earlier edition of his book (1937, p. 635/ [213]) Krause comments that the branch crosses the staff a little under the top. It is thus clear that we have an l-rune, not an n, which may be seen in a much better picture (Abb. 116b) on p. 636/ [214]. Freilaubersheim contains a sequence read as mal by Bugge (1891–1903, p. 137) but as something completely different by Krause (1966, p. 283 f.). As can be seen, none of the examples of n read as an l–rune is unambiguous, which they have to be to carry any proof.

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Williams questions also the quality of the evidence provided by Nielsen, being based for the most part on bracteates,32 which are considered by most runologists to be unreliable sources of evidence. Barnes, in “14.4: Inscriptions in Metal” (172) alludes to the fact that “unusual rune forms on bracteates” can arise during “this (presumably tricky) process” of inscribing mirror-images onto dies. Another problem with bracteates is that they are mass-produced on one die by individuals with little or no knowledge of runic traditions. Eric Moltke warns that one should “be wary of inscriptions, whether antique or medieval, on any kind of metal object. The craftsman who does not know his letters will make mistakes much more readily than someone who does” (116). Williams, thus, finds insufficient evidence to support Nielsen’s reading of this rune as an [L] and emphatically rejects the reading “G-L-O-M-E-D-A-L on which this is based, declaring it to be “impossible.”33 Most recently in a personal e-mail to the current author, dated April 1, 2013, Williams further clarifies his position, stating that a “[modern] carver might very well have intended the second rune to be an …[but] a carver in ancient times would not.” He also bases his conclusion that the Heavener is likely modern in part on the fact that in Krause’s survey of the inscriptions, he is unable to find an e-rune dated after 700 A.D., which has a form like that on the Heavener Runestone.

Final Remarks In conclusion, there is insufficient evidence at this time to support the claim that the Heavener Runestone is a Viking artifact, or that Viking explorers visited Oklahoma in the early Middle Ages. Nor can it be said for certain that it was carved in modern or recent times, although the evidence for a modern-day dating is far more credible. The archaeologist Lyle Tompsen’s most recent arguments for a late nineteenth-century dating of the Heavener rune stone are, however, unconvincing, since they do not account for all of the testimonial evidence, nor do they speak to the existence of an oral tradition regarding the first sighting of the stone. His theory that a Scandinavian railroad worker in Oklahoma carved the stone in the late nineteenth century remains wholly speculative, due to the lack of specific evidence that Scandinavian immigrants came to Oklahoma in the 19th century, or that a railroad worker there would have had access to the runic knowledge necessary to carve these stones. On the other hand, Bart Torbert‘s conclusion that “at least some of the Oklahoma rune stones are authentically ancient” also lacks sufficient evidentiary support. (Elsewhere in his article, it is made clear that he is referring here to the Heavener Stone).34 Torbert presupposes that the stone was carved in either

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the 8th century or the 19th century and having in his mind disproved Tompsen‘s thesis of the earlier date, he declares his own to be correct. Yet the only positive support he provides for his conclusion is that none of the idiosyncrasies of the Oklahoma Rune Stones “fall outside of what can be found in ancient Scandinavian examples.”35 From this it can only be concluded that the possibility exists for these runes to have been carved in ancient times. Based on his recent investigation of the stone, the runologist Henrik Williams attests to the similarities of these runes to 8th century runes of known authenticity in Scandinavia, but he is unable to find unambiguous evidence that all runes in the inscription could have existed in the form found on the Heavener in the same time period (8th century or before). Williams finds particularly problematic the second rune which he claims cannot be read as an l-rune if the inscription is to be viewed as authentic— and if read as an n-rune is attested numerous times in the modern Norwegian names G. Nommedal or gnomedal. This leads him to the conclusion that “The Heavener Runes were most probably carved at the end of the 19th century, possibly somewhat later.”36 There remain many unresolved questions. Who was G. Nommedal? What was he doing in Oklahoma in the 19th century? Where did he acquire his knowledge of the runes? Why would he have carved his name on this slab of rock in rural Oklahoma? How did he carve it? And what should we make of the Choctaw oral tradition discussed by Gloria Farley? Was this story merely fabricated or is there some truth to it? Did someone actually see the stone in the 1830’s? If so, it may be possible to reopen this case at some point. But for now, barring the discovery of new evidence, the runological and archaeological evidence does not support claims that Vikings visited Oklahoma in the early Middle Ages.

Bibliography Barnes, Michael. Runes: A Handbook. Boydell: Woodbridge, 2012. Bugge, Sophus. Norges Inskrifter Med de Aeldre Runer. Vol. 1, Oslo: Christiana, P.W. Bröger, 1891. Chapman, Paul. “Oklahoma Runestones.” ESOP 16 (1987): 91-95. “Evidence of Viking Outpost found in Canada.” National Geographic. November, 2012, http://news.nationalgeographic.com/.news/2012/10/121019-vikingoutpost-second-new-canada-science-sutherland. Farley, Gloria. In Plain Sight: Old World Records in Ancient America. Columbus, GA: ISAC Press, 1993.

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Frankki, James. “The Kansas City (Slater) Rune Stone: a Modern-Day Runic Inscription.” ESOP 29 (2011): 92-103. —. “Runic Inscriptions in North America: An Interview with Dr. Richard Nielsen.” ESOP 27 (2009): 83-93. Jones, Gwynn. A History of the Vikings. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. Krause, Wolfgang. Die Runeninschriften im älteren Futhark 1–2. Mit Beiträgen von Herbert Jankuhn. Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen. Philologisch-historische Klasse. Dritte Folge, Nr. 65. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966. Keneva Kunst, trans. The Vinland Sagas: The Icelandic Sagas about the First Documented Voyages across the North Atlantic. The Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga. Introduction by Gisli Sigurdsson. London: Penguin, 2008. Nielsen, Richard. “An Old Norse Translation of the Heavener Runes.” ESOP 15 (1986): 133-141. —. “The Runestones of Oklahoma.” ESOP 16 (1987): 183-95. Odenstedt, Bengt. “On the Origin and Early History of the Runic Script. Typology and Graphic Variation on the Older Futhark.” Acta Academiae regiae Gustavi Adolphi 69. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1990. Siever, Kirstin. The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America, ca. A.D. 1000-1500. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1997. Stephens, George. The Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England. Vol. 1, London: John Russell Smith, 1866-67. Stoklund, Marie. “Greenland Runes: Isolation or Cultural Contact?” In The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic. Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Eleventh Viking Congress, Thurso and Kirkwall, 22 August - 1 September 1989, edited by Colleen E. Batey, Judith Jesch, Christopher D. Morris, 528-34. Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press. 1993. “Strand of Ancient Yarn Suggests Early European Presence in Canada” New York Times Science, 2001. 8 May 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/08/science/08VIKB.html. Tompsen, Lyle. “An Archaeologist Examines the Oklahoma Rune Stones.” ESOP 29 (2011): 5-43. Torbert, Barton J. “Reply to an Archaeologist.” ESOP 29 (2011): 44-58. Williams, Henrik. “The Reading of the Second Rune of the Heavener Inscriptions.” (pre-publication draft), April 1, 2013. —. Personal e-mail correspondence, April 1, 2013.

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Williams, Henrik, and Richard Nielsen. “Messages in Stone.” Lecture presented at Northeastern State University, Talequah, Oklahoma, October, 2010.

Notes 1

See Michael Barnes, “Runerows,” in Runes: A Handbook (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012), 4-7. According to Barnes, “the younger fuÞark… appears in the North shortly after AD 700”, 5. 2 If we admit to the possibility of reading the inscription using more than one futhark, and then read the second rune as an [l], this means that the last rune with its different form, should no longer be read as an [l], but rather a [t] from the same futhark. 3 This is the current reading supported and promoted by the Heavener Runestone Park, based on Richard Nielsen’s 1986 translation. “An Old Norse Translation of the Heavener Runes,” ESOP 15 (1986): 133-141. 4 Paul Chapman, “Oklahoma Runestones,” ESOP 16 (1987): 91-95. 5 See Siever, Kirstin, The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America, ca. A.D. 1000-1500 (Stanford UP, 1997) for a good account of the Greenland colony and why it was abandoned sometime in the 15th century. 6 For a photo of this rune stone see my 2009 article: “North American Rune Stones: An Interview of Richard Nielsen” ESOP (2009): 83-93, here, fig. 6, p. 88, and the discussion, 88-89. For an overview of the rune stones in Greenland, see Marie Stoklund, “Greenland Runes: Isolation or Cultural Contact?” The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic. Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Eleventh Viking Congress, Thurso and Kirkwall, 22 August - 1 September 1989. Eds. Colleen E. Batey, Judith Jesch, Christopher D. Morris (Edinburgh University Press. 1993), esp. the Appendix, 541-543. 7 See ch. 9, “The Oklahoma Rune Stones” in In Plain Sight: Old World Records in Ancient America (Columbus OH: ISAC, 1994), 217-245. 8 Epigraphy deals with the study and decipherment of ancient inscriptions. 9 The earliest (unsubstantiated) reports of the stone’s existence date to an oral tradition of the Choctaw Indians from the 1830’s, when they were resettled to Oklahoma during the “Trail of Tears”. The earliest eyewitness reports are claimed to date back to 1874 and before. Laura Callahan claims to have run her hand over the moss-covered inscription as a young child in 1904. Luther Capps stated before witnesses that he saw the stone in 1898, and Ben King testified that his father, Wilson, and two other bear hunters had seen the carvings on the stone prior to 1874. See Farley, In Plain Sight, 217-245. 10 The two sagas relating the story of Leif’s “discovery” of the North American mainland, Grænlaendinga Saga and Eirík’s Saga Rauðr, are often referred to collectively as the “Vinland Sagas.” For an English version of the sagas see: Keneva Kunst, trans., The Vinland Sagas: The Icelandic Sagas about the First Documented Voyages across the North Atlantic. The Saga of the Greenlanders and Eirik the Red’s Saga, Introduction by Gisli Sigurdsson (London: Penguin, 2008).

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Since the 1960 discovery of this site by the Norwegian explorer Helgi Ingstadt, and its subsequent excavation by an archaeological team led by his wife Anna Stine, L’ anse aux Medeaux has been accepted as proof that Vikings established camps on the mainland of the North American continent, around the year 1000 AD, as reported in the Vinland Sagas. See Ingstad, Helge; Ingstad, Anne Stine, The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Medeaux, Newfoundland (New York: Checkmark, 2001). 12 See New York Times Science, May 8th 2001, “Strand of Ancient Yarn Suggests Early European Presence in Canada” at http://www.nytimes.com /2001/05/08/ science/08VIK.html and most recently the November 2012 issue of National Geographic: “Evidence of Viking Outpost found in Canada,” http://news. nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121019-viking-outpost-second-newcanada-science-sutherland. 13 No unambiguous evidence of Viking exploration or settlement has ever been found near the Heavener Stone, or in the surrounding area. 14 James Frankki, “Runic Inscriptions in North America: An Interview of Dr. Richard Nielsen,” ESOP 27 (2009): 89. 15 For a good discussion of this see the chapter: “The Movement East: The Baltic Lands, Russia, Byzantium,” in Gwynn Jones, A History of the Vikings (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001), 241-268. 16 Lyle Thompson, “An Archaelologist Examines the Oklahoma Rune Stones,” ESOP 29 (2011): 5-43. Here, 18. 17 Bart Torbert, “Reply to an Archaeologist” ESOP 29 (2011): 44-58., esp. 56. 18 Torbert, 46-47. 19 I refer here to one of the earliest publications of runes and rune stones from the 19th century: See George Stephens, The Old-Northern Runic Monuments of Scandinavia and England, Vol. I of 3 (London: John Russell Smith, 1866-67). All the runic forms on the Heavener inscription can be found in volume 1 of this collection, in a variety of contexts, and could, theoretically, have been copied from this text by a modern-day carver. See especially 134-37, 141-42 and 144-150. 20 Torbert, 56. 21 James Frankki, “The Kansas City (Slater) Runestone,” ESOP 29 (2011): 92-103. 22 “Messages in Stone,” Lecture presented on October 4th, 2010 at Northeastern Oklahoma University in Talequah, Oklahoma. 23 Williams, “Messages in Stone,” as reported by Friederick Pohl, Aslak Liestøl was one of the first runologists to suggest a reading of the second rune as [N], and the translation as a whole as “G. Nomedal.” See F. Pohl, Atlantic Crossings Before Columbus (New York: Norton, 1961), 54. 24 Williams, “The Reading of the Second Rune of the Heavener Inscription,” 1. 25 Tompsen’s search of these records is based on the presumption that the stone was carved in the late 19th century. Given the reported affidavits of eye witnesses, and the Choctaw oral tradition from the 1830’s, census data and birth and death records from the earlier period still need to be checked for persons bearing the name Nomedal, or some variant thereof. 26 Tompsen, 17.

The Heavener Rune Stone Revisited

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Thus, visitors to the park find pictures, posters, post cards, etc., bearing the translation: G-L-O-M-E-D-A-L. [According to the poster this equals: Glome’s valley, possibly named after a province in Norway.] 28 In his 1986 article published in ESOP, Vol. 16, he argues that the l-rune with its unilateral bar could appear on either side of the main staff, and need not be read as a younger futhark rune. This breakthrough allowed him to claim that all the runes could be viewed as Elder futhark runes. He argues for the authenticity of the Heavener (1) as an example of an inscription carved in the Primitive Norse period (AD 50-750). 29 This is dated to the second runic period (Wimmer and Jacobsen, 1914, 960-970), which puts it well outside the time period suggested for the inscription as a whole (prior to the 8th century). 30 Nielsen argues that “it is not unusual to find [l] carved in different ways in these new runic texts…” and bases this argument on evidence found on the Gørlev stone from about 900 AD, which employs two types of runes to represent [l]. But this would suggest a much later dating for the Heavener, which the forms of the other runes do not support. 31 The reference to Thompson—not to be confused with L. Tompson! Here: Clairborne Thompson, Studies in Upplandic Runography (Austin: UP Texas), 1975. 32 Bracteates are one-sided medals stamped on thin metal and produced in numbers. 33 Williams, “The Reading of the Second Rune…” In a personal e-mail to the author, dated April 1, 2013, he clarified his position, stating that a “(modern) carver might very well have intended the second rune to be an … (but) a carver in ancient times would not.”. 34 Torbert, 56. 35 Ibid. 36 Williams, “The Reading of the Second rune….” (1)

CHAPTER THREE COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS OF THE MEDIEVAL PERIOD IN MODERN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE TARA L. SEWELL

Within the last ten years, a veritable revolution has occurred in the way information is gathered for use in popular culture media. With the availability of information on the Internet, libraries are becoming less popular, and books are seen as relics of the past. This change has some good aspects; we are a civilization with an unfathomable amount of information at our finger tips—just a Google search away. However, this wide-ranging availability of information has its problems as well; much of the information so readily available is exaggerated, incorrect, or falsified. There have been several examples of this trend in the media within the last few years. For example, in 2009 a college student from Dublin University posted a quote on the website Wikipedia, which he attributed to the recently deceased composer, Maurice Jarre. Soon after, blogs and newspaper websites in the U.S., Britain, Australia, and India made use of the false quote in published obituaries of the composer.1 This lack of fact verification is becoming commonplace in popular media, and as the above example shows, the field that is the most affected by this change in the way information is gathered is the portrayal of history in popular culture. Since so much misinformation is available via the Internet, many incorrect stereotypes have become “common knowledge” or even seen as “fact.” In some of the more popular fields of history, this problem has been exacerbated by portrayals of historical figures in movies. For example, as an educator in the field of ancient and medieval civilizations, this author has endless problems with students confusing the accuracy of the always popular Greek Spartans with the recent movie 300. In areas where there is a smaller amount of information readily available, like the field of medieval history, stereotypes have developed seemingly out of thin air. Since the medieval period is one that has less contemporary

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records and many as of yet unexplainable events, these stereotypes have developed in an attempt to create knowledge where none is available, and they have then been propagated through the years, especially in this modern age of television and Internet, to become seen as fact in popular culture. In this essay, several of the most prominent stereotypes will be examined. In order fully to explore each of the stereotypes, each misconception will be reviewed, and then evidence for how the particular stereotype developed and entered into popular culture will be examined. Three topics will be examined in this way. First, the concept and origin of the title “The Dark Ages” will be examined. Then, the mythology of the Viking horned helmet will be traced. Thirdly, the view of medieval peasant life, specifically perceived notions of medieval hygiene and diet, will be surveyed. Before the three main topics are discussed, the methodology for determining the three stereotypes must be explained. First, a survey of various questions concerning the medieval period was created. This survey asked questions on topics such as post-Roman Europe, the Viking Age of Invasion, the Norman Invasion, the Crusades, Chivalry, the lives of the peasantry, laws and punishments, and the Church and religion. The survey participants were volunteer students enrolled in classes at both San Antonio College and Texas A&M at San Antonio. They were asked to answer a set of prewritten questions dealing with the above topics, and there were also areas designated for free-form answers and opinions. At the end of the survey, demographic information, including gender and education level, was requested. Data was collected from this survey to determine a general, modern consensus on these topics. From this survey and its results, a shorter survey was compiled dealing solely with the topics of the “Dark Ages” and “Middle Ages” titles, the Vikings, and medieval peasant life (see Appendix A). This shorter survey was also administered to volunteer students both at San Antonio College and Texas A&M at San Antonio. Overall, between the two versions of the survey, eighty were completed. The results will be examined within each topic.

Stereotype I: The Title the “Dark Ages” The most prevalent stereotype of the Middle Ages springs from one of the period’s most often-used titles. The term “Dark Ages” is used frequently in popular culture to describe the medieval period. Although this title has lost popularity among medieval scholars, it is still regularly used in popular media like movies, television shows, and publications. For example, the History Channel, whose very name implies an attempt to

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promote historical accuracy, produced a documentary on the medieval period entitled The Dark Ages. The stereotype is furthered by pop-culture movies which depict the period as one of backwardness, superstition, filth, and idiocy. Unfortunately, film adaptations of the period which use exaggerated depictions of medieval life to create humor, like “Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail,” have been labeled within popular culture as including accurate aspects of medieval life. While it seems that some people realize that the depictions of the medieval people in this movie are somewhat exaggerated, as a professor who teaches medieval history, one regularly comes into contact with students who argue that this particular movie has “historical merit” in the way the overall dirtiness, superstition, and lack of intelligence is portrayed. This misconception of the period is inherent within the title “Dark Ages.” The title implies two main themes. The first is that with the inclusion of the adjective dark, the title “Dark Ages” indicates that the period is between two periods of light, specifically the Roman period and the Renaissance. Secondly, the title has a connotation of value which hints that not only was this period dark culturally, but also that it was in some way inferior to the preceding and succeeding periods. These two themes of the medieval period being considered a culturally dark period occurring between two culturally superior periods is echoed in the results of the survey. Of the eighty surveys taken, sixty participants indicated they were familiar with the term “Dark Ages” as being a correct interchangeable title for the medieval period. When asked to describe what they believed the title implied, the most commonly used adjectives were varying synonyms of violence/fighting/war, darkness, no development/backwardness, bad/ evil/hard, and death.2 In conjunction with that question, when asked what the medieval period means, two of the most common answers were a middle period and a period of violence/fighting/warfare.3 While scholastically there are fewer primary sources for the medieval period, since there was a drop in literacy after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, it should not be said that the medieval period was altogether without culture. The medieval period was the time during which the foundations of Europe were laid by the emerging European kingdoms. Archaeological evidence from various sites, like the Sutton Hoo burial, and various sub-time periods, like the Carolingian Renaissance, show the medieval period developed new and unique types of artistic expression. During this period, the Catholic Church flowered and produced new types of literature. In the areas of art and architecture, the distinct Romanesque and Gothic styles developed. So, it is hardly accurate to imply that the Middle Ages was a dark time period without culture.

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The evidence for the medieval period’s being one of unique cultural and artistic development is well-established among modern scholars. This concept that the period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire was lacking culturally actually began with the medieval scholars themselves. For example, Gregory of Tours prefaced his History of the Franks by admitting that he had “rude speech” and that “it has often been said by men of our day, that few understand the learned words of the rhetorician but many the rude language of the common people.”4 Gregory’s work shows that there were still educated people during the Early Middle Ages. Yet, in claiming that his work was in the “rude” Latin used during his time, rather than the proper Classical Latin used by the Classical Roman writers, he was comparing his own writing as being less than that of a Classic Roman. So, from the writer’s own hand is given a judgment that claims his unpolished work was less than that produced during the culturally superior Roman period. However, it was with the works of Renaissance scholars that the idea of the medieval period being one of darkness gained prominence. The concept of the Middle Ages as a distinct time period was first put forth by the early scholars of the Renaissance. Specifically, Petrarch was the first scholar to present the idea that human culture had reached its high point in the ancient world, then fell with the Roman Empire, and was only beginning to revive during his lifetime in the fourteenth century.5 “According to Petrarch, what followed was an age of tenebrae (‘shadows’), a ‘sordid middle time’ with only the hope of a better age to follow.”6 Petrarch was followed by scholars like Lorenzo Valla who claimed that “the culture that came between the fall of Rome and [his] own day was distinctly different from and worse than either the classical culture that preceded it or the classical revival of [his] own time.”7 By the sixteenth century, specifically between the years of 1514 and 1530, the terms media tempestas (middle time), media antiquitas (middle antiquity), media aetas (middle era), or media tempora (middle time) were all first used to describe the medieval period.8 The ways in which these terms were used to indicate a period of inferior cultural productions would cause the terms to take on distinctly negative connotations.9 This idea of a culturally backwards and inferior period developed by the early humanists then mixed with the emerging ideas about religious corruption, put forth by authors like reformer Martin Luther and the Catholic Caesar Baronius,10 to transform the concept from just a middle period into the pejorative Dark Ages. By the Enlightenment period of the eighteenth century, writers like Voltaire and Edward Gibbon continued to describe the Middle Ages in a

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negative light. Gibbon simply ascribed the perceived backwardness of the period to the “triumph of barbarism and religion.”11 By the nineteenth century, a view of romanticism had enveloped the medieval period which viewed it in the more favorable light of a period during which the foundations of Modern Europe had developed. Although still seen as a culturally inferior period to the preceding and succeeding periods, the Middle Ages were seen to hold some value in the eyes of Romantic scholars as the originating period of their modern nation-states. While the eighteenth-century Romantic scholars’ views of developing nationalism are now seen as over-simplified, during the Romantic period changes occurred in the discipline of history so that by the twentieth- and twentyfirst centuries new evidence of distinct cultural, artistic, and literary achievements finally moved scholarly opinion of the medieval period away from the derogatory “Dark Ages” term.12 Unfortunately, although recent scholarly opinion has turned away from labeling the Middle Ages as an inferior or stagnant period, the original, pejorative use of the term Dark Ages developed by the Renaissance and Enlightenment scholars is the view that has entered into popular culture as common knowledge. As shown by the survey results listed above, the violent, inferior, dirty, and backward view of the Middle Ages has stayed entrenched within popular culture due to recurring depictions in popular movies, books, and television programs. This stereotype is then furthered by a modern bias. For example, on the Guardian Website, in response to the question “How did they manage to produce so many wonderful buildings in the middle ages when the rest of the culture was so primitive?” one participant commented, “because they lacked DVD technology to record how wonderful the performing arts were” medieval people were primitive?13 Modern people believe that because medieval people did not have computers or electricity they were lacking in some way or unable to produce adequate cultural achievements. This idea feeds into the inferior/dark view of the Middle Ages to make it more believable than a true portrayal of a period brimming with cultural achievement despite disease and warfare.

Stereotype II: The Viking Horned Helmet The second most often misunderstood aspect of the Middle Ages surrounds the iconic figure of the medieval Viking. In modern popular depictions, the Viking is a larger-than-life warrior figure. He is usually shown with long blond hair, a muscular physique, warrior accoutrements like armor and weapons, and a distinct horned helmet. When Vikings are

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depicted in artistic representations, they are almost always shown wearing a large horned helmet. The horned Viking helmet has become synonymous within popular culture with the Viking warrior. In costume shops and at festivals and fairs, hat vendors produce varying styles of the horned helmet, some complete with blond yarn or hair braids at the temples. On the survey, one of the questions asked participants to draw a picture or write a description of the appearance of the medieval Viking. Of the eighty surveys, seventy people answered the question. Of the seventy responses, forty people either drew a picture of a horned helmet or mentioned it in their description. Among modern scholars, the idea of the Viking horned helmet has been disproven. The Vikings were a fierce, combat-based culture, and as such, they did place a lot of value on armor and weapons. Viking warriors had no common uniforms as modern soldiers do; rather, they would have had an overall similarity in protective wear and weaponry.14 Armor for regular soldiers would have been made of leather, possibly including a simple leather skull cap. Metal protective wear was reserved for the higher-ranking or veteran soldier, and metal helmets were similar to the Anglo-Saxon style hemispherical or conical-shaped helmet with noseguard.15 Although no leather helmets and few metal helmets survive in the archaeological record, regular depictions of the above-described type of helmet can be seen in contemporary Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon art and burial items. For example, a series of gravestones from tenth-century North England depict the Viking warriors with a variety of weapons, clothing, armor, and conical helmets, none of which bear horns.16 Some sources claim that a type of horned helmet may have been a part of ceremonial dress for Viking religious rituals. A small bronze plaque was discovered on the Swedish Island of Oland in 1870 which depicts a male Viking warrior with what appears to be a helmet bearing two horns, possibly made of snakes or dragons.17 Hall argues that the wolf-like figure in the picture may be “a warrior dressed in a wolf’s skin,” so the image “thus has a ritual rather than war-like connotation.”18 Since there is archaeological evidence that proves that it was highly unlikely that the Vikings regularly wore a horned type of helmet, the path of how this misconception entered into popular culture must be traced. This idea that the horned helmet was a common part of Viking warrior dress started to gain popularity during the 19th century. It was common practice of the seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century antiquarians to attribute Viking origin to artifacts they thought had Vikinglike qualities, regardless of proof or location.19 For example, in 1822 in Kent, the remains of a ship were discovered in the channel of the River

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Rother; it was identified as a Danish Viking ship abandoned after their defeat by King Alfred, even though pottery evidence put the vessel’s date some 700 to 800 years after that event.20 So, in this period when anything that seemed “Viking-ish” was declared to be evidence of the Viking way of life, several helmet artifacts were mistakenly attributed to the Vikings as evidence of their use of horned helmets. Bronze Age images, such as the Grevensvænge figurines, and Iron Age artifacts, like the Waterloo Helmet21 and an image on the Gundestrup Cauldron,22 were cited as proof of the use of the horned helmets by Viking warriors even though these artifacts were from pre-Viking periods. Hall claims that “there was simply a long-cherished belief that Viking helmets should have some form of embellishment; even classical representations of the Roman god Mercury’s winged helmet seem to have been copied in nineteenth-century pictures of Vikings.”23 Orrling writes, “the antiquarian stylings of nineteenth-century artists is the most likely source of Viking helmets with wings or horns.”24 She describes a period of “Nordic Romanticism” during the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries during which paintings and written works were produced by various artists and scholars. In these works the Viking Age peoples, heroes, and pagan gods were conformed to the aesthetic idea of the Classic Greek and Roman gods in an attempt to elevate the status of postMedieval Europe.25 This image gained further popularity when it was used in Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung (1852-74) where the main female, Brynhild, is shown with a metal breastplate, spear, shield, and winged helmet.26 Additional characters in the production were given horned helmets by the productions costume designer, so as the musical gained popularity so did the image of the winged or horned Viking. Prior to 1878, horned headgear had never been depicted in reference to the Nibelungenlied story.27 During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries the idea of the Viking or Norse past became even more romanticized as Viking/Scandinavian Societies were founded. These organizations would host masquerades, balls, and theatrical performances in which the participants dressed in Viking-themed costumes, usually complete with winged or horned helmets.28 Now in the modern period, specifically in America, the Viking image has become particularly skewed through depictions of the perceived “classic Viking warrior” in popular culture. Most Americans are familiar with the football team the Minnesota Vikings. The team’s logo is a head of a Viking warrior complete with braided blond hair, handlebar mustache, and large horned helmet. The football helmet worn by players on the field has stylized horns on each side. At one point, the team’s official fan page

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even read, “The Vikings are named after Norsemen, the Scandinavian warrior that settled modern-day Minnesota.”29 This idea alludes to the Kensington Stone which was found in Minnesota in 1898; the stone has been labeled a hoax by Viking scholars, but for Americans of Scandinavian descent it is still considered an important piece of cultural heritage. In Minnesota, the stone is housed in the Runestone Museum, and in the nearby Runestone Park there is a colossal replica. Even though it has been disproven, the stone represents an idea of the Vikings as heroic explorers that is still an important concept of self-identity and nationalism for Scandinavian-Americans.30 Ward claims that “the strong, white, and independent Viking male put forward by Scandinavian-Americans has been gradually incorporated into American popular culture,” and “in this process, the Vikings as a concept in the U.S. became disassociated with concrete facts about Viking culture, and the inaccurate horned helmet icon” prevailed.31 This idea of the strong and valorous warrior has become a common motif of modern popular culture. In this motif, historical inaccuracies are brushed aside in favor of the overall depiction of what it means to be a fierce warrior. This is evidenced by the recent increase in interest in Viking culture and Norse mythology inspired by the popularity of the movie Thor. Throughout the movie, Norse mythology and Viking culture is referenced; the three main characters, Thor, Odin, and Loki, each has a helmet bearing stylized versions of wings and horns.

Stereotype III: Medieval Peasant Life, specifically hygiene and food Finally, the third and last misconception about the Middle Ages is the modern view of medieval peasant life, specifically in regard to their hygiene and what foods they ate. On the survey, three main general questions were presented concerning medieval peasant life. Participants were asked to describe how often they thought peasants32 would wash/rinse their faces and/or hands, how often they would fully bathe, what they would wear, and of what a meal would consist. In response to the washing/bathing question, the most common response for washing/rinsing was once a week or more,33 and for bathing the most common response was once a month or less and various synonyms of the term “rarely.”34 The most common response in regard to clothing was a variety of descriptive terms that indicated clothing was hand-made/ rough/unfinished/of poor-quality.35 In regard to food, a majority of the survey participants listed items like bread, vegetables, and meat.36 Specifically, many of the survey answers described diets consisting almost

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exclusively of meat, and of the thirty answers that included listings of vegetables, half mentioned the specific crops of corn and potatoes. In regard to medieval hygiene, while medieval personal hygiene was not as strictly maintained as modern Western hygiene, with the use of chemically enhanced and scented soaps and disinfectants, it should not be thought that medieval people were without personal hygienic values. It is true that a medieval person would rarely fully bathe since it was timeconsuming and labor-intensive to haul and heat enough water to fill a tub. However, foul odors and visible dirtiness were considered to be signs of moral and spiritual laxity, so people would wash the parts of the body that were visible, usually the hands and face, several times a day in small wash basins.37 It was also considered proper medieval table etiquette to rinse the hands immediately before eating.38 Hair could be rinsed in a basin as well. But again, medieval clean hair was not the same as the modern view of clean hair that would be washed and shampooed, as shampoo had not yet been invented. Rather, medieval clean hair was neat and combed hair. Married men would have their hair combed and deloused by their wives, and a woman’s hair was considered presentable when it was combed and styled or covered since the societal norms of the period dictated women should not go into public with loose hair.39 Dental hygiene was also viewed differently during the medieval period. Rather than focusing on keeping the teeth clean, white, and free of disease, the medieval view of proper dental hygiene was concerned with the breath. Various mixtures of spices were used to keep the breath smelling fresh as it was believed that foul breath carried disease; it did not matter if a medieval person had lost most of his teeth to rot as long as the mouth did not smell foul.40 Finally, a way to keep the overall body clean was to change one’s undergarment linens. The main materials used to make medieval clothing were wool and linen; wool was used for outer garments and linen was used for undergarments.41 Linen was soft and would absorb perspiration and oils, so it was worn close to the body. Wool was itchy and could not be washed, as linen could, without being damaged. Mortimer notes that “in winter, when few people wish to bathe in a river or even strip off the upper body to wash under the arms in a basin, fresh linen is the most common form of cleaning. The linen soaks up the sweat. The body may then be scented, and once more you are presentable in public.”42 It was easier for medieval people to wash their undergarments and smallclothes in a stream or small basin than it was fully to bathe their bodies. A majority of people would launder their undergarments weekly by rinsing them with water and lye soap and then allow the sun to dry and bleach them.43 Wool outer garments were never washed; rather, they were brushed to flake off dirt

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and build-up.44 This was important as most peasant-class people would own only one or two sets of undergarments and one woolen outer garment.45 Next, in reference to the medieval peasant diet, as the survey results show, most modern people labor under the false belief that most medieval people were eating meat regularly. Several of the free-form answers written on the food questions included phrases such as “peasant farmers raised animals to eat,” or “people would eat what they could kill or hunt.” While a peasant may have owned animals, including cows, sheep, goats, pigs, or chickens, live animals which could produce steady supplies of milk, wool, or eggs were more valuable if kept alive. So, a peasant would slaughter an animal only when it had grown too old to be productive. As for hunting, during the medieval period, since the nobility owned the land on which the peasants lived, hunting was reserved exclusively for the landowner and his circle, with few exceptions.46 Thus, meat was consumed by the peasantry only on very rare occasions. Rather, the main staples of their diets would have included brown bread, pottages, and home-grown, seasonal vegetables like onions, cabbage, garlic, peas, leeks, etc.47 As shown above, the view of medieval hygiene and diet are woefully misunderstood in popular culture. However, whereas the other two misconceptions examined in this paper have origins in the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, the stereotypes surrounding medieval life seem to be recent developments propagated by modern ideas of what constitutes proper hygiene and diet. These ideas are then supported by views of medieval peasant life in television, films, and popular quasihistorical entertainment venues. The misconceptions surrounding medieval hygiene are modern constructs because we, as modern people, view hygiene very differently than a medieval person would have. We have modern notions of cleanliness and the causes of disease. To deal with things of which medieval people had no knowledge, like germs, we have developed chemical cleaners, disinfectants, and remedies. To highlight this conception, Mortimer points out, “to regard a medieval kitchen as ‘dirty’ because it has not been wiped down with modern detergent is to apply our own standards inappropriately. It is like someone from the distant future telling us our kitchens are dirty because we have not wiped them down with some superdetergent invented in the twenty-third century.”48 As described above, medieval people had different ideas of cleanliness; while they might not have showered daily, medieval people would not have appeared in public with dirt on their faces, dirty hands, or unkempt, uncombed hair as they are usually shown in movies. The dirty-faced,

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filthy-looking peasant that is a staple character in modern medieval-period movies is a false concept that has developed out of the modern belief that since medieval people did not have liquid body-wash, showers, and hand sanitizer they must have been visibly filthy and dirty at all times. As with the ideas about hygiene, the main misconception about the medieval diet is also directly related to how modern people view a proper diet. In this modern period, it would be strange for most people to eat a main meal, especially lunch or dinner, which did not include a meat portion; most modern meals are built around a main protein with vegetables and starches as side dishes. Furthermore, potatoes and corn are two of the main starches used in many modern dishes, so modern people assume they were a main staple food during the medieval period as well. These ideas of what constitutes a proper meal then skew the way modern people view how people in the past must have eaten. This misconceived notion is further propagated by venues like the Medieval Times Restaurants and Medieval and Renaissance Festivals. At these events, the patrons are served what is depicted as being “authentic” medieval cuisine. For example, at the Medieval Times Restaurant in Dallas the “Bill of Fare” includes oven- roasted chicken leg, garlic bread, tomato bisque soup, and herb-roasted potato.49 Along these same lines, one of the biggest draws for patrons to Medieval and Renaissance festivals around the country are large roasted turkey legs and roasted corn. Since these ingredients have become staple foods at medieval and renaissance festivals, they have thus also come to be viewed as authentic medieval foods. The problem with these types of foods being viewed as authentic medieval fare is that most of these foods, including turkey, potatoes, corn, and tomatoes, were all domesticated in the New World.50 These foodstuffs were not introduced into Europe until the late sixteenth century, and even after their introduction into Europe, most of these foods, since they were foreign and exotic, did not initially gain enough popularity to be considered common foods.51 So, although Medieval Times advertises its dinner service as an authentic medieval experience, the only part of the menu that would have actually been eaten by a medieval person would be the chicken and garlic, as tomatoes and potatoes were not yet introduced to Europe in the Middle Ages. Similarly, although Medieval and Renaissance festivals have a perceived impression of historical accuracy, the main food offerings of large turkey legs and roasted corn would not have been eaten by a medieval person as the New World in which these foodstuffs were domesticated had not yet been colonized by Europeans. As previously mentioned, the prevalence and accessibility of information in the modern period has good aspects, like the wide-ranging availability

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of knowledge, and bad aspects, like the pervasiveness and availability of misinformation. The area of history is one most affected by the new ease and speed with which information, both correct and incorrect, can be found. On the one hand, students and amateur historians alike are able to do in-depth research from the comfort of their homes through online journal databases and e-books. On the other hand, in areas where knowledge is not as readily available or as widely published, like the field of medieval history, stereotypes and misconceptions develop and are perpetuated. These stereotypes then gain acceptance and dominate how the medieval period is depicted in popular culture. As has been shown throughout this essay, there are a variety of stereotypes and misconceptions surrounding the Middle Ages. The three most ubiquitous misconceptions of the Middle Ages, as ascertained by administering a survey questioning general knowledge of the medieval period to a varied demographic group of students, were the perceived correctness of the term “Dark Ages,” the use of the Viking horned helmet, and false impressions of medieval peasant hygiene and diet. The term Dark Ages, along with the notion that the Middle Ages was a culturally dark period between two superior periods, originated during the Renaissance. Both the title and the connotations of cultural darkness continued to be used until the modern period when medieval scholars realized the inaccuracy of both. A similar development occurred with the idea of the Viking horned helmet. Romantic scholars mistakenly identified horned depictions and artifacts as having Viking origin. The idea that Viking warrior paraphernalia should have had some form of embellishment gained popularity and was then perpetuated by the use of winged and horned helmets in popular culture venues like the Ring of the Nibelung Opera and Viking society masques. In the modern period, this motif was furthered by the use of the horned helmet- bearing Viking as a football mascot. Whereas the first two stereotypes have long histories of development, the stereotype of the visibly dirty, turkey-leg-gnawing peasant is a modern creation. Since modern people hold a certain level of hygiene as being proper, anything less than that is identified as being dirty. Similarly, it is very difficult for a modern person to perceive a diet where meat and modern staple crops are not key ingredients. Even though modern medieval scholars have disproven these misconceptions, they, nonetheless, survive into modern popular culture. As shown by the survey results, the use of the term Dark Ages, the belief that Viking warriors wore distinct horned helmets, and the negative view of medieval hygiene and diet are well established as truth or fact in general knowledge. It is the combination of the wide-spread availability and ease

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of access to misinformation and the inability of the modern person to believe people in the past lived without modern conveniences that allow these stereotypes to continue to exist and spread when there is concrete evidence to disprove them. Nevertheless, it is important for historians to continue to expose stereotypes and misconceptions within popular views of history. Finding the origins and tracing the history of these stereotypes is the key to eliminating historical misconceptions and ignorance. Modern advancements are based on the achievements of the past, so understanding these periods as they really were can give insight into our modern world and who we are.

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Appendix A: Short Version of Survey Medieval Period Survey Research to determine the common misconceptions of the Medieval Period in Modern Popular Culture Tara Sewell Texas A&M University at San Antonio San Antonio College

1.

When do you think the Medieval Period began (either what year or with what event)?

2.

How long did it last or when did it end?

3.

Where did the Medieval Period occur? (Geographical Area)

4.

What does the word “Medieval” mean or represent to you?

5.

Have you heard the Medieval Period referred to by any of these other titles? (circle all that apply) Middle Ages Dark Ages other: _________________

6.

If you circled Dark Ages, what do you think this title means or implies? Do you think it is an accurate title for the Period?

7.

In the box to the right, describe, draw, or use a combination of both to present what you think a Medieval Viking was like. Please include in your drawing/description- Physical appearance, clothing, other accoutrements, and perceived attitude or personal characteristics.

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8.

In regards to the lives of normal medieval people (meaning nonelite/non-aristocracy, normal farmers): What did they eat? Briefly describe what you think a normal dinner would consist of: What did they wear? Briefly describe what you think a medieval man and/or woman would wear: In general, how often do you think a medieval person would wash (rinsing face and/or hands)? Fully Bathe? What do you think was the common age for marriage during the Medieval Period? For men? For women? What do you think was the normal life expectancy for a medieval person? (Circle one) 10-15

9.

15-20

20-30

30-40

40-50

50-60

60-70

70-80

Any additional thoughts/facts/questions you would like to share about the Medieval Period? Are there any topics you think might be a misconception about the Medieval Period that were not covered in the survey?

Demographic information: Sex: M F Age: Highest education level: High School, attended college, graduated college, attended technical school, graduated technical school, attended graduate school, graduated graduate school, other If you circled college, technical school, or graduate school what is/was your Major(s):

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Bibliography Adamson, Melitta Weiss. Food in Medieval Times. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004. Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. “The Idea of the Middle Ages.” Accessed March 20, 2013, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/ topic/195896/history-of-Europe. Fordham University: Internet Medieval Sourcebook. “Gregory of Tours (539-594): History of the Franks: Books I-X.” Accessed March 15, 2013, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/gregory-hist.asp. Frank, Roberta. “The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet.” In International Scandinavian and Medieval Studies in Memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber, 199-208. Grafton, Anthony. “Middle Ages.” Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 308-9. Vol. 8, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987. Hall, Richard. The World of the Vikings. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007. Harris, David R. “New Light on Plant Domestication and the Origins of Agriculture: A Review.” Geographical Review 1(1967): 90-107. Langer, Johnni. “The Origin of the Imaginary Viking.” Viking Heritage Magazine 4 (2002): 6-9. Medieval Times Dallas Castle. “Bill of Fare.” Last modified 2013, http://www.medievaltimes.com/dallas/abouttheshow/billoffare.asp. Mommsen, Theodore E. “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages’.” Speculum 17 (1942): 226-42. Mortimer, Ian. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century. New York: Touchstone, 2008. Orrling, Carin. “The Old Norse Dream.” In Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward, 354-64. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000. Pogatchnik, Shawn. “Student Hoaxes World’s Media on Wikipedia: Phony Quote Appears in Obituaries for French Composer Maurice Jarre.” NBC News, May 12, 2009, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/ 30699302/#.USO3zfWHfTo. Singman, Jeffrey L. Daily Life in Medieval Europe. Wesport: Greenwood Press, 1999. The Guardian. “Notes and Queries: How did they manage to produce so many wonderful buildings in the middle ages when the rest of the culture was so primitive?” Accessed March 20, 2013,

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/aug/02/notes-andqueries?INTCMP=SRCH#start-of-comments. Ward, Elisabeth I. “Reflections on an Icon: Vikings in America Culture.” In Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward, 365-73. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000.

Notes 1

Shawn Pogatchnik, “Student Hoaxes World’s Media on Wikipedia: Phony Quote Appears in Obituaries for French Composer Maurice Jarre,” NBC News, May 12, 2009, http://www.nbcnews.com/id/ 30699302/#.USO3zfWHfTo. 2 Violence/fighting/war used eleven times. Darkness used twenty-two times. No development/backwardness used twenty times. Bad/evil/hard used eighteen times. Death used eight times. 3 Varieties of the phrase “Middle Period” were written twenty-four times. The terms violence, fighting, and/or warfare were used fourteen times. 4 Fordham University: Internet Medieval Sourcebook. “Gregory of Tours (539594): History of the Franks: Books I-X.” Accessed March 15, 2013. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/gregory-hist.asp. 5 Anthony Grafton, “Middle Ages.” Dictionary of the Middle Ages, Vol. 8. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1987), 308. 6 Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. “The Idea of the Middle Ages." 7 Grafton, “Middle Ages,” 308. 8 Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. “The Idea of the Middle Ages." 9 Grafton, “Middle Ages,” 308. 10 According to the Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. “The Idea of the Middle Ages," Luther believed the church had become corrupted when it was adapted as the state religion of the late Roman Empire, and it was thus inferior to the original foundational or apostolic Christianity, on the other hand, was a firm Catholic. In his main work the Annales Ecclesistici he coined the term saeculum obscurum (Dark Age) to describe the period within the history of the church between the Carolingian Empire and the Gregorian Reforms. 11 Encyclopædia Britannica Online, s.v. “The Idea of the Middle Ages." 12 Ibid. 13 ThermoStat, August 2, 2011(16:30 EDT), comment on Anonymous, “How did they manage to produce so many wonderful buildings in the middle ages when the rest of the culture was so primitive?” The Guardian Notes and Queries, August 2, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/aug/02/notes-and-queries? INTCMP=SRCH#start-of-comments. 14 Richard Hall, The World of the Vikings (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2007), 68. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid, 69.

Common Misconceptions of the Medieval Period

17

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Ibid, 219. Ibid. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 The Waterloo Helmet has been dated to the period of 150-50 BCE (pre-Roman Celtic), and was discovered in London in 1868. 22 The Gundestrup Cauldron has been dated to the period of 200 BCE- 300 CE (Roman Iron Age) and was found in 1891 in Denmark. 23 Hall, The World of the Vikings, 219. 24 Carin Orrling, “The Old Norse Dream,” in Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, ed. William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 364. 25 Ibid., 356. 26 Ibid., 364. 27 Roberta Frank, “The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet,” International Scandinavian and Medieval Studies in Memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber (2000): 199. 28 Orrling, “The Old Norse Dream,” 360. 29 Elisabeth I. Ward, “Reflections on an Icon: Vikings in America Culture,” in Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward. (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000), 365. 30 Ibid., 367. 31 Ibid., 368. 32 The term peasant was described on the survey as meaning non-elite/nonaristocracy, simple farmers. 33 Eleven participants listed more than once a week, and eighteen listed once a week. 34 Sixteen participants listed once a month or less, and twenty-eight used varieties of the term rarely. 35 Thirty participants listed a variety of the descriptive terms hand-made, rough, unfinished, or poor-quality. 36 Twenty-eight participants listed bread, thirty listed vegetables, and thirty-six listed meat as common foodstuffs. 37 Ian Mortimer. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century. (New York: Touchstone, 2008), 197. 38 Ibid., 90. 39 Ibid., 199-200. 40 Ibid., 200. 41 Jeffrey L. Singman. Daily Life in Medieval Europe. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999), 36. 42 Mortimer, The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, 199. 43 Singman, Daily Life in Medieval Europe, 46. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Mortimer. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, 172. 18

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Ibid., 171. Ibid., 195. 49 Medieval Times Dallas Castle. “Bill of Fare.” Last modified 2013. http://www.medievaltimes.com/dallas/abouttheshow/billoffare.aspx 50 Plants and animals domesticated in the New World and introduced to the Old World: turkey, potato, sweet potato, tomato, common beans (pinto, lima, kidney, etc.), bell pepper, chocolate, chili peppers, corn, etc. 51 Melitta Weiss Adamson, Food in Medieval Times (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2004), 123-4. 48

PART II: ON THE GENIUS OF ITALY

CHAPTER FOUR DANTE AND ORPHEUS: OVIDIAN INTERTEXT IN INFERNO 5 KEVIN R. WEST

In Inferno, Canto Five, as Dante and Virgil enter Hell proper, Dante has his first and most famous encounter with a condemned sinner. Canto five concerns the lustful, who are punished by being eternally buffeted by infernal winds for having let their stormy passions lead them astray. Among the thousands of sinners, Virgil points out Cleopatra, Dido, Helen, and Tristan, but Dante feels most drawn to two sinners who “move together / and seem to be so light upon the wind.”1 The sinners turn out to be Francesca da Rimini and her lover and brother-in-law Paolo Malatesta, and Francesca’s compelling story of the beginning of their affair makes the pilgrim Dante swoon as though to die to close the canto. “One day, to pass the time in pleasure, / we read of Lancelot, how love enthralled him,” says Francesca. Innocent and alone, they came to a fateful (indeed, fatal) moment in their reading, when they read of Lancelot and Guinevere kissing and then imitated their kiss. “A Galeotto was the book and he that wrote it,” she laments,2 meaning that the Lancelot du Lac served her and her brother-in-law as a go-between—a pimp, even—just as the character Galeotto (Galehot) brought together King Arthur’s queen and his best knight for their ruinous liaison. Yet a theological conundrum seems to be introduced here in canto five. The lustful souls are said to be buffeted by a wind that never ceases, “la bufera infernal, che mai non resta.” They are driven “here and there, down and up,” so that “never are they comforted by hope / of rest or even lesser punishment.” And yet, some fifty lines later, Francesca manages to converse with Dante “here, while the wind has calmed” (“mentre che ‘l vento, come fa, ci tace”).3 Have the infernal winds that never rest somehow come to a halt for Francesca and Paolo? And if the winds have stilled, for whatever the reason, or if Francesca and Paolo have managed temporarily to escape them, does this not entail a moment of rest and

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lesser punishment? As Cato will ask upon seeing Virgil and Dante ascend from Hell into the southern hemisphere through an unexpected route, “Are the laws of the abyss thus broken?”4 Critics have sought to account for this actual or apparent contradiction in canto five in a variety of ways. Benvenuto da Imola, a fourteenthcentury commentator, acknowledges the contradiction but cites other lines (Inf. 5.121-23) in a compensatory fashion: whatever rest the sinners enjoy pales in comparison with what Francesca herself terms the “greater sorrow” of remembering “our time of joy / in wretchedness.”5 Gabriele Rossetti allows the contradiction as the essential corollary to the ongoing suspension of the laws of justice that allows Dante into Hell as a living man.6 Some have posited a wave-like ebb and flow to the winds, such that a sinner or a pair of sinners will necessarily come to a moment’s rest before being blown again in the opposite direction. Natalino Sapegno notes that this view “seems most faithful to the text and the situation imagined by the poet, even if some doubt remains” (“sembra la piú aderente al testo e alla situazione immaginata dal poeta; e pur lascia qualche dubbio”).7 Lines 28-30 and 43 could conceivably support such an idea—”a place mute of all light, / which bellows as the sea in tempest / tossed by conflicting winds”; “here and there, down and up, it drives them”—yet the tenor of these lines seems one of almost constant change of direction, certainly with no hope of the sort of pause that would allow Francesca and Paolo to leave Dido’s flock and come to Dante to declaim thirty-eight lines of fetching poetry. Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio state flatly that “a pause for only these two souls who have to speak with Dante, or an alternating rhythm of pause and reprise of the wind, contradicts the peremptory statement in lines 31-33” (“una sosta per le sole due anime che debbono parlare con Dante, o un ritmo alterno di pause e di riprese della bufera, contraddicono all’affermazione perentoria dei vv. 31-33”).8 C. H. Grandgent‘s position is consistent with an ebb-and-flow model, even if he, too, quickly dismisses the problem: “The poet tells us that the ‘bufera infernal’ never rests. But the ‘bufera’ seems to indicate the whole storm of conflicting blasts: in a single spot the gust may die down for a moment.”9 I should note that it is possible to read si tace for ci tace in line 96, or to take the ci to mean either “here” or “for us” or even to function pleonastically, but none of these possibilities seems determinative.10 As Charles Singleton observes, Either the wind could hush “for us,” i.e., for Francesca and her lover, and so allow them to hover before Dante and Virgil while she tells her story, or the wind could hush “here,” i.e., in this place before Dante and Virgil where Francesca and her lover have been given a brief respite that makes it

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Chapter Four possible for her to speak. Essentially the meaning is the same in either case. Divine Providence may cause the wind to “be silent” for the special benefit of the wayfaring Dante, so that he may hear of this sinful and tragic love; or Divine Providence may allow this pair to come out of the wind to where Dante and Virgil stand unassailed by the blast.11

Generally speaking, critics are willing to grant an exceptional moment of rest for Francesca and Paolo only so long as it is stressed that the rest occurs for Dante’s education and does not, in fact, represent any real diminution of punishment. As Giacomo Poletto writes, “By divine dispensation the wind, though continuing to blow everyone else about, momentarily calms [. . .] for the brother and sister-in-law [. . .]; but this does not mean that because the wind ceases, their punishment ceases as well” (“Per divina disposizione il vento, pur continuando per le altre anime, momentaneamente si tace [. . .] per i due cognati [. . .]; ma ciò non vuol dire che se per loro cessava il vento, cessasse anche la pena”).12 Yet I want to insist that it may well mean exactly that, for if these lovers cease to be blown about by the tempest, then they necessarily cease to experience, for this moment of discourse, the very contrapasso of the second circle. In Renato Poggioli‘s skillful and lengthy reading of the fifth canto, he acknowledges that “nothing less than a miracle” occurs here, since “it is clear that God has granted Dante’s wish, that he has allowed the two sinners to heed his friendly and tender call,” his “affettüoso grido” of line 87.13 I wish now to propose a particular means by which to account for the miracle that I, with Poggioli, will assume in fact occurs, a means that makes much of the “force” of Dante’s “affectionate call.” In a conference presentation,14 I sought a connection between what I termed Dante’s “anaesthetic presence” in canto five and the intertextual pressure of the Visio Sancti Pauli, the Apocalypse of Paul, a non-canonical Christian apocalypse well known to medieval Europe in which the Apostle descends into Hell and, overcome with compassion, manages to secure “Sundays off” from punishment for the damned. Although I remain convinced that Dante knew the Apocalypse of Paul, I now think that a different intertextual pressure, and a different descent into the underworld, may better serve to account for Dante’s “anaesthetic presence” in canto five. I am referring to Orpheus’ descent into Hades to save his bride Eurydice, who has died the most untimely of deaths: bitten by a viper just after their marriage. As Ovid writes in book ten of the Metamorphoses, drawing on and expanding Virgil’s fourth Georgic, when Orpheus “had mourned his fill in the wide world above, / He dared descend to the Styx by the

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Taenarian gate.” Coming to Persephone and Hades, “and touching his strings in concert with his words,” he addressed them as follows: O positi sub terra numina mundi, in quem reccidimus, quicquid mortale creamur, si licet et falsi positis ambagibus oris vera loqui sinitis, non huc, ut opaca viderem Tartara, descendi, nec uti villosa colubris terna Medusaei vincirem guttura monstri: causa viae est coniunx, in quam calcata venenum vipera diffudit crescentesque abstulit annos. posse pati volui nec me temptasse negabo: vicit Amor. supera deus hic bene notus in ora est; an sit et hic, dubito: sed et hic tamen auguror esse, famaque si veteris non est mentita rapinae, vos quoque iunxit Amor. per ego haec loca plena timoris, per Chaos hoc ingens vastique silentia regni, Eurydices, oro, properata retexite fata. ............................................ Talia dicentem nervosque ad verba moventem exsangues flebant animae; nec Tantalus undam captavit refugam, stupuitque Ixionis orbis, nec carpsere iecur volucres, urnisque vacarunt Belides, inque tuo sedisti, Sisyphe, saxo. tunc primum lacrimis victarum carmine fama est Eumenidum maduisse genas, nec regia coniunx sustinet oranti nec, qui regit ima, negare, Eurydicenque vocant.15 O ye Deities of the world that lies beneath the earth, to which we all come at last, each that is born to mortality; if I may be allowed, and you suffer me to speak the truth, laying aside the artful expressions of a deceitful tongue; I have not descended hither from curiosity to see dark Tartarus, nor to bind the threefold throat of the Medusæan monster, bristling with serpents. But my wife was the cause of my coming; into whom a serpent, trodden upon by her, diffused its poison, and cut short her growing years. I was wishful to be able to endure this, and I will not deny that I have endeavoured to do so. Love has proved the stronger. That God is well known in the regions above. Whether he be so here, too, I am uncertain; but yet I imagine that even here he is; and if the story of the rape of former days is not untrue, ‘twas love that united you two together. By these places filled with horrors, by this vast Chaos, and by the silence of these boundless realms, I entreat you, weave over again the quick-spun thread of the life of Eurydice. [. . .] As he said such things, and touched the strings to his words, the bloodless spirits wept. Tantalus did not catch at the retreating water, and

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Chapter Four the wheel of Ixion stood still, as though in amazement; the birds did not tear the liver of Tityus; and the granddaughters of Belus paused at their urns; thou, too, Sisyphus, didst seat thyself on thy stone. The story is, that then, for the first time, the cheeks of the Eumenides, overcome by his music, were wet with tears; nor could the royal consort, nor he who rules the infernal regions, endure to deny him his request; and they called for Eurydice.

I will be suggesting several possible points of connection between Orpheus’ descent and that of Dante’s, but the overarching similarity that I see may be easily stated: in each case a poet shows up in Hell and changes things with his voice. With his words and with his lyre Orpheus stops Sisyphus in his tracks and makes the bloodless spirits weep. With his “affettüoso grido,” his “affectionate call,” Dante draws Francesca and Paolo out of the winds such that Hell stops for them. Indeed, Dante’s “anime affannate,” his “wearied souls,” his “breathless souls” are reminiscent of Ovid’s “animae exsangues,” his “bloodless spirits,” although, admittedly, Italian generally recalls Latin.16 Orpheus offers an elaborate captatio benevolentiae to the deities under the earth, whereas Dante’s hail in lines 80-81 is much briefer: “O wearied souls, / if it is not forbidden, come speak with us.” (Perhaps Francesca’s more elaborate captatio to come compensates.) Intriguing also is the phrasing that Orpheus uses for his coming to Hell: I have not come here out of curiosity, nor have I come here as a conquering hero but to seek my wife. Could one hear an echo of this non/nec in Dante’s famous “double denial” in canto two? “I am not Aeneas, nor am I Paul” (“Io non Enëa, io non Paolo sono”), says Dante, such a champion as might undertake such an arduous passage.17 Of course critics everywhere agree that he really means that he is both another Aeneas and another Paul, a fusion of the classical and the Christian. Marthe Dozon, one of the few critics avidly to pursue a DanteOrpheus connection, will term Dante’s visit a “totalization” of the descents of Orpheus and Aeneas and the biblical ascent of Paul (“Le voyageur de la Divine Comédie totalise l’expérience catabasique d’Orphée et d’Enée et l’expérience anabasique de Paul”).18 The “love talk” one finds in Ovid’s Orpheus scene may influence Dante’s rendering in canto five, although it is also the case, as Dozon shows, that Aeneid book 2 impinges.19 Though he tried to be strong, says Orpheus, Love conquered him and compelled his journey. Love, indeed, united Persephone and Pluto. Love has conquered, love has united (“Amor vicit, Amor iunxit”). Francesca, memorably, will claim in her triple oration that Love “seized this man with the fair form taken from me”; Love “seized me so strongly with his charm that, / as you see, it has not

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left me yet”; and “Love brought us to one death” (“Amor [. . .] prese costui de la bella persona / che mi fu tolta”; “Amor [. . .] mi prese del costui piacer sì forte, / che, come vedi, ancor non m’abbandona”; “Amor condusse noi ad una morte”).20 Indeed, when Virgil points out to Dante that he may entreat the lovers “by the love / that leads them” (“per quello amor che i mena”),21 it is difficult for me not to hear the resonance of Metamorphoses, Book eleven. Although Orpheus loses Eurydice a second time when he looks back to make sure she follows, and subsequently loses his mind, his relentlessly tragic story has a bit of a happy ending when he reunites with his lover in death: Umbra subit terras, et quae loca viderat ante, cuncta recognoscit quaerensque per arva piorum invenit Eurydicen cupidisque amplectitur ulnis; hic modo coniunctis spatiantur passibus ambo, nunc praecedente, nunc praevius anteit Eurydicenque suam iam tuto respicit Orpheus.22 His ghost descends under the earth, and he recognizes all the spots which he has formerly seen; and seeking Eurydice through the fields of the blessed, he finds her, and enfolds her in his eager arms. Here, one while, they walk together side by side, and at another time he follows her as she goes before, and again at another time, walking in front, precedes her; and now, in safety, Orpheus looks back upon his own Eurydice.

Critics generally resist any romantic reading of Francesca and Paolo, but unless we conclude that Virgil only mistakenly or ironically refers to that love of theirs that carries them along, and which must surely be the source of their exceptional lightness upon the winds, there seems to be some persistence of their love in Hell, an analogue of the post-mortem union of Orpheus and Eurydice.23 Two more details from canto five are worthy of brief mention. As Dante and Virgil enter the second circle, they first meet Minos, who pronounces, by means of the coiling of his tail, the depth into Hell that each damned soul must fall. When Minos sees the living Dante, he addresses him directly with a foreboding message to be careful whom he trusts (perhaps in anticipation of Francesca). But in order to make the direct address, Minos has to pause in the exercise of his office (“lasciando l’atto di cotanto offizio”).24 Already Dante’s presence disturbs the normal order, creating a hiatus, and this disruption will continue with Francesca. The second detail involves a possible bit of wordplay. When Francesca and Paolo float like doves toward Dante and Virgil, they “leave the troop where Dido is,” which in Italian reads as “uscir de la schiera ov’ è Dido.”25

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“Ovedido” is somewhat close to “Ovidio,” “Ovid.” I would not wish to make too much of this, but Peter Hawkins, who has traced many an Ovidian resonance in Dante, makes a similar connection in the explicitly Ovidian canto twenty-five, where “Ovidio” rhymes with “non lo ‘nvidio” (“I grudge it not”).26 Madison Sowell adds to the possibility of more covert invocation of Ovid with his claim of Ovidian reference in the “naso” of Inferno 25.45, Naso being Ovid’s cognomen.27 Dante claims in canto twenty-five to have outdone Ovid in describing a tremendous metamorphosis: “Let Ovid not speak of Cadmus or Arethusa, [. . .] for never did he change two natures, face to face, / in such a way” as I have done with Cianfa and Agnello.28 Has he outdone, or at least re-done, Ovid in canto five, as well? Ovid only wrote of Orpheus; Dante became him and more successful voyagers to boot. It needs no argument, of course, that Dante has an ongoing engagement with Ovid more generally; Ovid appears by name sixteen times in Dante’s various works.29 Ovid is one of the five great classical poets with whom Dante associates himself in Inferno canto four; Dante seeks to surpass him in canto twenty-five. In looking for an Orphic resonance in Inferno five, I am working in some sense to address Dante’s apparent and surprising lack of interest in Orpheus’ descent, which would seem to be both ready-athand and exceptionally relevant. We are speaking, after all, again, of living men, both poets, descending into Hell at the urging of love. Dante does cite Orpheus as one of the virtuous pagans he sees in Limbo, but he makes no mention of Eurydice or of Orpheus’ daring descent to retrieve her.30 Part of the problem seems to be that Dante himself has no Eurydice to retrieve from Hell, so his journey necessarily has different aims. As Lee Foust argues in a 2008 dissertation, Dante the pilgrim is never figured as Orpheus nor is Beatrice ever likened to Eurydice in the Commedia because the roles of saviour and saved are reversed: Beatrice is the lover saving Dante not from death already suffered but from potentially eternal death to come. Foust also claims that Orpheus sets a negative precedent, since his descent comprises “an impious and illicit attempt to drag a dead spirit back into the land of the living, rather than a faith-affirming journey into the otherworld.”31 Yet that argument could easily be spun another way: whereas Orpheus’ self-willed descent fails—although not in any clearly rebukable way; he errs only in looking back too soon—Dante’s descent, sought by the Virgin Mary herself, will necessarily succeed. Just as Dante the poet must surpass Ovid, so must Dante the pilgrim outperform Orpheus. (And we see this pattern as well in Dante’s presentation of Ulysses in Inferno 26: a self-willed transgressive journey fails, whereas Dante’s divinely sanctioned transgression succeeds.) Indeed, Dozon will

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term the inversion of male-female roles in Beatrice’s pursuit of Dante an “Orphic scheme reprised and corrected” (“ce schème orphique revu et corrigé”).32 Ultimately, there seems to be no reason that would have prevented Dante from more explicitly invoking Orpheus’ descent had he been so minded; indeed, as Foust also acknowledges, there was even medieval Christian precedent for an allegorical association between Orpheus’ descent and Christ’s harrowing of Hell, an event which Virgil vividly describes in Inferno, canto four.33 Perhaps in canto five we do have the subtlest memory of the descent of Orpheus, which Dante seems deliberately to have avoided referencing directly. Orpheus stops Ixion’s wheel, if only for a moment, just as Dante momentarily stops the whirling of the winds for two lustful souls. And if we think of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus from Luke chapter 16, where even a finger dipped in water to cool the tongue would be welcome, then a moment’s escape from the storm seems substantial. Neither Dante nor Orpheus is a Paul or a Jesus, affecting Hell so profoundly and enduringly with his visit (allowing for a Pauline visit, of course), but each does more than simply observe. Each is a charming, poetic presence capable of compelling attention as he dares to journey living into the realms of the dead.

Bibliography Benvenuto da Imola. Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam. Florence, 1887. Dartmouth Dante Project, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. Bosco, Umberto, and Giovanni Reggio, eds. La Divina Commedia. Florence: Le Monnier, 1979. Dartmouth Dante Project, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. Dante Alighieri. The Inferno, edited and translated by Robert and Joan Hollander. New York: Anchor-Random, 2002. —. Purgatorio, edited and translated by Robert and Joan Hollander. New York: Anchor-Random, 2004. Dozon, Marthe. Mythe et Symbole dans la Divine Comédie. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1991. Foust, Lee. “Dante’s Commedia and the Poetics of Christian Catabasis.” Diss. New York U, 2008. ProQuest/UMI, http://search.proquest.com/. Grandgent, C. H., ed. La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1909-1913. Dartmouth Dante Project, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/.

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Hawkins, Peter. “The Metamorphosis of Ovid.” In Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality, edited by Madison Sowell, 17-34. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991. Lund-Mead, Carolynn. “Dido Alighieri: Gender Inversion in the Francesca Episode.” In Dante and the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression, edited by James Miller, 121-50. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2005. Ovid. Metamorphoses. The Latin Library, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/. —. The Metamorphoses of Ovid. Trans. Henry T. Riley. London, 1893. Project Gutenberg, http://www.gutenberg.org/. Paratore, Ettore. “Ovidio.” Enciclopedia dantesca, edited by Umberto Bosco, 225-36. Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1973. Poggioli, Renato. “Tragedy or Romance? A Reading of the Paolo and Francesca Episode in Dante’s Inferno.” PMLA 72 (1957): 313-58. Poletto, Giacomo, ed. La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri. Rome, 1894. Dartmouth Dante Project, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. Rossetti, Gabriele, ed. La divina commedia di Dante Alighieri. London, 1826-27. Dartmouth Dante Project, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. Sapegno, Natalino, ed. La Divina Commedia. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1968. Dartmouth Dante Project, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. Singleton, Charles, Trans. The Divine Comedy. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1970-75. Dartmouth Dante Project, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. Sowell, Madison U. Introduction to Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality, edited by Madison Sowell, 1-16. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991.

Notes 1

Dante, Inferno, trans. and ed. Robert and Joan Hollander (New York: AnchorRandom, 2002), canto 5, lines 74-75. Italian text and English translation of the Inferno and Purgatorio are from the facing-page Hollander editions. All other translations in this essay, with the exception of Ovid, are mine. The Ovid translation is that of Henry T. Riley (London, 1893; Project Gutenberg [http://www.gutenberg.org/]), with occasional silent emendation. 2 Inferno, canto 5, lines 127-28, 137. 3 Inferno, canto 5, lines 31, 43-45, 96. 4 Dante, Purgatorio, trans. and ed. Robert and Joan Hollander (New York: AnchorRandom, 2004), canto 1, line 46. 5 Benvenuto da Imola, Comentum super Dantis Aldigherij Comoediam (Florence, 1887), n. to Inferno, canto 5, lines 94-96, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. 6 Gabriele Rossetti, ed., La divina commedia di Dante Alighieri (London, 182627), n. to Inferno, canto 5, line 96, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/.

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7 Natalino Sapegno, ed., La Divina Commedia (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1968), n. to Inferno, canto 5, line 96, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. 8 Umberto Bosco and Giovanni Reggio, eds., La Divina Commedia (Florence: Le Monnier, 1979), n. to Inferno, canto 5, lines 95-96, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. 9 C. H. Grandgent, ed., La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1909-1913), n. to Inferno, canto 5, line 96, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. 10 See Carolynn Lund-Mead, “Dido Alighieri: Gender Inversion in the Francesca Episode,” in Dante and the Unorthodox: The Aesthetics of Transgression, ed. and intro. James Miller (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2005), 143, n. 11. 11 Charles Singleton, trans., The Divine Comedy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970-75), n. to Inferno, canto 5, line 96, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. 12 Giacomo Poletto, ed., La Divina Commedia di Dante Alighieri (Rome, 1894), n. to Inferno, canto 5, lines 94-96, http://dante.dartmouth.edu/. 13 Renato Poggioli, “Tragedy or Romance? A Reading of the Paolo and Francesca Episode in Dante’s Inferno,” PMLA 72 (1957): 325. 14 Kevin R. West, “The Pilgrim’s Presence: Disruption, Mitigation, and Contradiction in Dante’s Inferno,” Paper delivered at Texas Medieval Association Conference, Texas A&M University, October 2007. 15 Ovid, Metamorphoses (The Latin Library), book 10, lines 11-48, www.thelatinlibrary.com/. 16 Inferno, canto 5, line 80; Metamorphoses, book 10, line 41. 17 Inferno, canto 2, line 32. 18 Marthe Dozon, Mythe et Symbole dans la Divine Comédie (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1991), 82. 19 Ibid., 265-66. 20 Inferno, canto 5, lines 100-107. Ettore Paratore finds in Francesca’s various declamations a memory of Ovid’s Heroides, and he sees in the “great Achilles, / who battled, at the last, with love” (“’l grande Achille, / che con amore al fine combatteo” [Inferno canto 5, lines 65-66]) a memory of that character in both Ars amatoria and the Metamorphoses (“Ovidio,” in Enciclopedia dantesca, vol. 4, ed. Umberto Bosco [Rome: Istituto della enciclopedia italiana, 1973], 226). 21 Inferno, canto 5, lines 77-78. 22 Metamorphoses, book 11, lines 61-66. 23 See the Hollanders’ notes on Inferno, canto 5 (pgs. 105-112) for an overview of critical commentary on Francesca and Paolo, including the romantic versus moralizing readings. 24 Inferno, canto 5, line 18. 25 Inferno, canto 5, line 85. 26 Inferno, canto 25, lines 97-99; Peter S. Hawkins, “The Metamorphosis of Ovid,” in Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality, ed. Madison Sowell (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991), 19. 27 Madison U. Sowell, Introduction, Dante and Ovid: Essays in Intertextuality, ed. Sowell (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991), 6, n. 6. 28 Inferno, canto 25, lines 97-101. 29 Sowell, 6, n. 6.

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Inferno., canto 4, line140. Lee Foust, “Dante’s Commedia and the Poetics of Christian Catabasis” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 2008), 302, 349-50. http://search.proquest.com/. 32 Dozon, 72. 33 Foust, 299-301. 31

CHAPTER FIVE A THEOLOGY OF EATING IN DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY MITHUIEL BARNES Eating has profound theological implications in the medieval mind. The recurrence of eating as a theme in Dante’s Divine Comedy suggests that it is a core theme for his narrative, and one that is integral to his overall message. Beginning with an overview of eating in medieval religious experience, including a survey of Aquinas’ theology on the subject, this essay will explore both Dante’s incorporation of existing ideas of eating and nourishment in a religious sense and his own contribution to a complex and profound theme in medieval religious thought. The theology of food is both an obscure topic and one on which there is a staggering amount of material. In the wake of the burgeoning interest in the exploration and understanding of the natural world that accompanied scholasticism and the rediscovery of Aristotle (and his Arabic commentators), theologians and scholars delved into the theological question of food and eating with the same exacting zeal as they seem to have done everything else. The investigation of food and its interaction with the body was both underpinned and complicated by the alimentary metaphors found in both Old and New Testaments, the association of the Fall from Grace with an act of eating, and more importantly, the complex and potentially problematic nature of Eucharistic doctrine. In grappling with the questions of how food nourishes the body, how some of the food eaten by humans (to say nothing of the puzzling question of what part that might be) passes back out of the body, and how the body can grow, scholars and theologians from Jerome to Aquinas employed a dizzying array of explanations,1 employing much of Aristotle‘s metaphysics, together with the necessarily flawed medieval medical understanding. Ultimately, eating occupies an odd place in medieval Christian thought—it is both a result of mankind’s fallen nature, yet it is given by

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God for human sustenance. It is inescapable, yet it is somehow corrupt. It exists, as does all creation in the postlapsarian universe, imperfectly, subject to time, change, death. What is eaten was once there, and is no longer. The consumption of a physical thing, which was once outside ourselves and is now inside, can only occur within the context of time, and necessitates the destruction of what is eaten. If the prelapsarian state in the Garden is outside time, beyond time, then eating as we understand it is impossible before the Fall. The pseudepigraphic accounts confirm this, and specifically acknowledge a physical change in the bodies of Adam and Eve after the Fall: ‘O God, while we were in the garden we did not require, or care for this water; but since we came to this land we cannot do without it.’ Then God said to Adam, ‘While you were under My command and were a bright angel, you knew not this water. But now that you have transgressed My commandment, you can not do without water, wherein to wash your body and make it grow; for it is now like that of beasts, and is in want of water.’2

That Adam almost perishes from not knowing that he must eat and drink (some accounts say he does indeed die), makes clear the fallen nature of nourishment, and by itself implies that an ‘essential’ sustenance or pure form of nourishment existed before the Fall. With these newly limited bodies, however, comes the debased need for baser sustenance; physical food. “But after thy transgression, thy bright nature was withdrawn from thee; and it was not left to thee to see things afar off, but only near at hand; after the ability of the flesh; for it is brutish.”3 Though eating is not, in itself, considered evil in the medieval mind, it is, like the very nature of human existence, a shallow echo of what it was. It is also interesting to note that many of the theologians of the time argued that all mankind was, in some sense, present for the Fall. Reynolds points to one such treatise, known as the Sententiae divinae paginae, wherein the argument goes thus: When Adam transgressed God’s commandment, his complexion was made weak and corrupt through that transgression, and all of the parts [of his body] were weakened. Now since we were all in Adams’s loins, particles have flowed from him into us, and from him too corruption has flowed into us. This corruption is called ‘sin’ because it is the penalty for sin, and it is called ‘original’ because it flows from the original source of mankind.4

Since that original sin, which of course took the form of eating, was in this sense committed by each of Adam’s descendants, then eating is, for each and every human being, not only a necessity born of the corrupt

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human nature which followed the Fall, but also a reenactment of the first sin. Therefore, as itself an imperfect act, eating cannot nourish perfectly, as it had in the Garden. In this sense, the Eucharist becomes not only a logical counterpart to physical eating but also a necessary one. The spiritual sustenance of the perfected prelapsarian existence cannot sustain the newly corrupt body, and similarly, corrupt food cannot feed the higher essential self; something higher is needed. That higher form of nourishment is of course the Eucharist. Aquinas related the Eucharist to ordinary eating by outlining the same distinction we have seen, namely the nourishment of the body versus that of the soul: Material food first changes into the one who eats it, and then, as a consequence, restores to him lost strength and increases his vitality. Spiritual food, on the other hand, changes the person who eats it into itself. Thus the effect proper to this Sacrament is the conversion of a man into Christ, so that he may no longer live, but Christ lives in him; consequently, it has the double effect of restoring the spiritual strength he had lost by his sins and defects, and of increasing the strength of his virtues.5

What is significant here is one of many connections between Christ and the Fall. The Fall occurred with the eating of the Fruit of the Tree in the Garden, but the redemption comes from eating the fruit of that same tree, Christ on the cross. More than a typological parallel, there is a direct connection between the fruit of the Edenic tree and Christ, the ‘fruit’ of the cross in pseudepigraphic texts (which will be explored below), and this connection was well known in the medieval period.

Eating in the Commedia: Inferno Gluttony is not about eating but about limits, about restraint. According to Aquinas, “Gluttony denotes not any desire of eating and drinking, but an inordinate desire. Now desire is said to be inordinate through leaving the order of reason, wherein the good of moral virtue consists: and a thing is said to be a sin through being contrary to virtue.”6 Since eating is, at its core, corrupt even in its moderate form, its ‘inordinate’ form is more so. Once subject to inordinate desire, Gluttony becomes, like Lust, about distraction, about missing the goal, losing sight of what is ‘real.’ The food, like the body itself, is not what is real. The nourishment of the spirit is real, and the idea of physical eating is a distraction from the true nourishment. While gluttony is perhaps the most immediately visible element of consumption in Hell, it is not, I think, a

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major part of the spectrum of eating, nourishment and consumption with which Dante is most concerned. Where the true threads of Dante’s conversation about consumption manifest in Inferno are the many ways in which sinners are consumed and the forms of ‘negative’ or ‘sterile’ consumption in Hell, which directly contrast not only the perfect nourishment of the Eucharist, but also the natural order of physical eating and bodily nourishment. However, there is in the circle of the gluttonous a pivotal figure, which gives the reader a prefiguring of what is to follow, and sets the tone for the journey through Hell—Cerberus. Known from classical myth as the threeheaded hound which stands watch over the entrance to Hell, it is unsurprising to see him in Dante’s Inferno. After all, Dante draws heavily on Classical myth for his symbols, and peoples all three of the realms of the afterlife with figures drawn not only from his beloved Florence but also from antiquity, both real and mythical. However, it is significant that Cerberus is placed here, in this circle, with this group of sinners, rather than nearer the entrance as we are accustomed to finding him in classical myth. Cerberus in Dante’s Inferno embodies ‘sterile eating;’ that is, eating or consuming with no nutritive value. In contrast to Virgil‘s own Cerberus, who quiets when thrown honeyed cakes, Dante’s Cerberus is satisfied with filth: “When the slimy Cerberus caught sight of us / he opened up his mouth and showed his fangs; / his body was one big mass of twitching muscles. / My master stooped and, spreading wide his fingers, / he grabbed up heaping fistfuls of the mud / and flung it down into those greedy gullets.”7 It is interesting to note Dante’s descriptFig. 1. Cerberus in the ring of the Gluttonous. Inferno, tion of Cerberus, MS Holkham misc. 48, N Italy, early 14th C. particularly in light of illustrations found in some of the earliest known manuscripts of the Commedia such as the MS Holkham misc. 48 (1st quarter, 14th C.) and MS Egerton 943 (2nd quarter, 14th C.). Dating from the early fourteenth century, both show Cerberus as far more human-like than he is typically shown in classical myth, and possessed of bat-like wings. (Fig. 1) In this

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regard, he is explicitly prefigurative of Lucifer. While Dante does not describe him with wings, he does say “he has claws for hands.”8 This alone may tend to make the reader envision him as half-human, more in keeping with so many monsters of classical myth, a detail which seems to be ignored in most of the depictions of Cerberus in Inferno, which tend to refer to classical depictions. Regardless, his three heads also prefigure Lucifer, and represent one of many inverted Trinitarian images in the Inferno. While further down in Hell we will find eating which neither nourishes nor consumes, Cerberus is a signpost that we have descended a level, even farther from grace than is the human world. Eating without any sort of nourishment is a further departure from the divine eating of the Garden, and a step below that of physical human eating which, if fallen, is still of a natural sort. Cerberus’ eating, though empty, is still in time, at least this once; he consumes. He is, therefore, a sort of halfway point; we have descended below the level of human eating (by both the sin of Gluttony, and the sterile eating of Cerberus), but there are depths yet to plumb. Cerberus is also a signpost, alerting the reader to be watchful for inverted forms of eating, and there are plenty to be seen. In the circle of violence, in the woods of the Suicides (themselves transformed into Trees which bear no fruit, an inversion of the Tree of the Garden) we find sinners pursued and torn by ravaging dogs: “Behind these two the wood was overrun / by packs of black bitches ravenous and ready / like hunting dogs just broken from their chains; / they sank their fangs in that poor wretch who hid, / they ripped him open piece by piece, and then / ran off with mouthfuls of his wretched limbs.”9 While one could read this as the dogs devouring the sinners they have run aground, we must know from logic that they cannot, in fact, do so. If they did indeed devour the sinners, there would eventually come a time when the sinners would ‘perish’ or cease to exist in their present ‘form,’ but we know that those in Hell can hope for no such surcease. Instead, they will be restored only to be torn again. Dante does not say how in this case, though he does later discuss the restoration of the Schismatics torn asunder over and over. The ‘how’ doesn’t really matter, however, only that we know they must be restored. It is a clue as well that Dante compared the hounds to hunting dogs, which are trained to bring down a kill but not to eat from it without their master’s bidding. Therefore, these hounds are indeed, hounds of Hell, sent to harry and torment their prey, not feed upon it. Another motif of eating in the Inferno is redolent of Dante’s dark humor, with clever use of puns to convey his meaning, intermingled with

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the capering antics of the demons who torment the barrators and grafters. When he describes the demons keeping the sinners under the roiling pitch, he uses a cooking metaphor: “They were like cooks who make their scullery boys / poke down into the cauldron with their forks / to keep the meat from floating to the top.”10 When the imps, run afoul of their own games, land themselves in the pitch, the culinary metaphor is even clearer: “They stretched out their hooks to reach the pitch-dipped pair, / who were by now deep-fried within their crusts.”11 For all the slapstick humor of this section, Dante does not, I think, apply the metaphor of eating lightly; the jumble of eaten and eater, the reversals and inversions, all allude to a deeper thread of meaning. Predation, cannibalism, self-cannibalism; all run throughout the Inferno. It is significant that the most detailed and evocative scene in all of the Inferno, to say nothing of the one perhaps most deeply redolent of an inverted, perverted sense of eating, involves the tale told by Ugolino. This is a crystalline allegory of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The innocent son, offering himself for the life of another, for the saving of another evokes the pathos of Christ’s offering of himself. The resounding hammer-falls of nails in the door that seal Ugolino’s doom evoke the nails of the crucifixion. Even the words of the child echo the cry from the cross: “Why won’t you help me? Why my father?”12 But even more to the heart of the allegory is that the sacrifice was one offered for the salvation by sustenance: “O, father, you would make us suffer less, / if you would feed on us: you were the one / who gave us this sad flesh; you take it from us!”13 That the nature of the sacrifice of Ugolino’s children is one of flesh and sustenance both echoes and inverts the salvific sacrifice of Christ and the recurring theme of innocent flesh offered and consumed in the Eucharist. The reader is confronted with the haunting and unspoken implication of the sacrifice’s acceptance: “Poscia, più che’l dolor, poté ‘l digiuno.” The ambiguity remains in translation: “Then hunger proved more powerful than grief.” 14 “And then the hunger had more / power than even sorrow had over me.”15 Though made in innocence and love, the sacrifice is not saving for Ugolino; it is damning. There is, however, another incident later, in Purgatorio, which will bring Ugolino back to our recall, and add entirely new layers to the understanding of eating, sacrifice, sustenance, and corruption, which will be discussed below. For now let us focus on the contrapasso of emptiness in Ugolino’s suggested consumption, reflected again as we close Ugolino’s tale, and remember with a start that dispels any inclination towards sympathy for him, that he is here, frozen in the

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depths of Inferno. As his consumption was empty and corrupt, so is it now, in Hell, as he chews, eternally, on the head of his jailer.

Fig. 2. Lucifer in Hell. Inferno, MS Holkham misc. 48, N Italy, early 14th C.

So, too, at the very bottom of Hell, frozen in the center of Caina, the center of the fallen world, and as far from God as possible, Lucifer eats those sinners who have earned the dubious honor of this most extreme of judgments. (Fig. 2) His three heads, chewing mindlessly, echo the earlier image of Cerberus, but here, the act of eating has been stripped of all its qualities—it is neither nutritive, nor does it even consume, as Cerberus consumed the gobbets of mud. It exists wholly out of time, and in this sense, ironically, it is closer to the highest form of Edenic eating, by being its closest opposite. Eternally chewed, never consumed, never nourishing, never whole, yet never diminishing, Cassius, Brutus and Judas reflect the most extreme negation of life, and of nourishment. The notion of Lucifer as devouring the damned is Fig. 3. Lucifer in Hell. Mosaic, Baptistery of San also not unique to Dante. In Giovanni, Florence. c.1300. the Florence of Dante’s

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day, the baptistery of San Giovanni bore on its cupola a three-headed, devouring Satan rendered in mosaic, as did the frescoes of Giotto at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.16 (Fig. 3) When the beasts tear the flesh of the profligates, or the harpies eat the leaves of the twisted and blasted trees which house the shades of suicides, their flesh returns, so they may be eaten again. Ugolino forever gnaws on Ruggieri; Lucifer eternally devours the three betrayers. It is eating out of time, for as noted above, consumption requires temporality. In Hell, Dante tells us, there is but an echo of time, and after the Final Judgment, there will be no time at all. Therefore eating in Hell is necessarily constant, ever-present, and simultaneously purposeless. However, even this arc of alimentary metaphor is encased within a larger program, that of Hell itself as a mouth, a gullet, eternally devouring. The symbol of Hell as a mouth is also not new to Dante. It is, along with his conception of Lucifer as a devourer, a known staple of medieval thought. Hell appears as a mouth on cathedral tympana and in Fig. 4. Souls entering the mouth of Hell. manuscripts. (Fig. 4) Isaiah Tympanum (detail), Abbey Church of Saintespeaks of the mouth of Foy, Conques, 1125-35 Hell: “Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite and opened its mouth beyond measure; the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude go down, her throng and all who exult in her.”17 Dante’s evocation of this idea, however, is subtle, and (like much of his more profound allegory) relies upon his reader to perceive the layers of his meaning. While he never refers to Hell as a mouth explicitly, he alludes to it everywhere. The Gate of Hell, while it is indeed a gate of stone and marble, nevertheless, speaks via its inscription: I am the way into the doleful city, / I am the way into eternal grief, / I am the way in to a forsaken race. / Justice it was that moved my great Creator; / Divine omnipotence created me, / and highest wisdom joined with primal love. / Before me nothing but eternal things, / Were made, and I shall last eternally. / Abandon every hope, all you who enter.18

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For a poet as meticulous as Dante, we can in no sense assume his use of the first person in the inscription to be coincidental, or accidental. The Gate speaks, in the first person. And what is it that speaks but the mouth? Further, Dante’s Hell is by turns hot and cold, it is wet, and rains down noxious substances. “Thick hail and dirty water mixed with snow / come down in torrents through the murky air / and the earth is stinking from this soaking rain.”19 It roils with stench and rumbles with thunder. “And the disgusting overflow of stench / the deep abyss was vomiting forced us / back from the edge.”20 Here the poet even uses the term ‘vomit,’ enhancing the images of this place as some sort of massive gullet. Ironically, the idea of Hell as a mouth and stomach may have been reinforced, not merely for Dante’s readers but for the theological mind of the Middle Ages, by yet another theological quandary inherent in the idea of the transformed Eucharist. If indeed, the Eucharist becomes the body and blood of Christ himself, can it be said that Christ passes through (and out of) the digestive tract? This notion was clearly untenable, and many of the theological arguments on the question of both food and the Eucharist attempted to deal with resolving the issue. Aquinas addresses this idea, and the implied cannibalism which it suggests, by using a doctrine of accidents and species: It is evident to sense that all the accidents of the bread and wine remain after the consecration. And this is reasonably done by Divine providence. First of all, because it is not customary, but horrible, for men to eat human flesh, and to drink blood. And therefore Christ’s flesh and blood are set before us to be partaken of under the species of those things which are the more commonly used by men, namely, bread and wine.21

In other words, the bread and wine remain bread and wine as to their species (types of things that they are) according to their accidents (outward attributes), even as they do not remain bread and wine as their substance or essence (true nature). However, this and other theological formulations engineered to circumvent the awkward implications of transubstantiation did not allay the general uneasiness which surrounded it, as evidenced by further arguments, and continuations of several literary motifs which wrestle with the idea; to be explored below. The idea of Hell as an alimentary one, together with the discomfort with the idea of Christ in the human gut, leads to an inevitable corollary between the digestion of the Eucharist and the Harrowing of Hell, hinted at by Price;22 a notion I find both amusing as well as thoroughly and believably medieval. In addition, it renders an entirely new reading of Dante’s escape from Hell by climbing down Lucifer’s shaggy sides and

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“between the tangled hair,” “past the point where the thigh begins;” albeit a reading that I will leave to braver scholars.

Eating in the Commedia: Purgatorio Gluttony in Purgatory is the same entity as it is in Inferno, with the difference that these souls can expunge their gluttony through a combination of denial and reminders of generosity and abstinence. The fruit of the tree which represents the corrupt earthly eating is denied, always. The tree cries out, echoing the first punishment by God on the expulsion, “This fruit and water is denied to you.”23 However, the tree, by no means the first or last tree we will encounter, is pivotal. It provides a reflection of the sterile trees of the suicides, who bleed (associated with corrupt nourishment) but do not bear fruit. This tree bears but does not yield. The inverted tree, a symbol of inverted, flawed, bodily nourishment, must be set right. The tree evokes the Fall, so its removal from the grasp of the soul beneath, in effect, prevents it and rewrites history for the penitent: ‘this time, you will not eat.’ The tree is explicitly identified as being connected with the tree of Eden: “there is a tree which gave its fruit to Eve, Fig. 5. Mary in the Tree of Jesse. Hours of Catherine and this plant is an of Cleves, Duchess of Guelders 1417-76 offshoot of its root.”24 This phrase, not accidentally, evokes yet another layer of meaning, that of the lineage of Christ: “There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”25 (Fig. 5) “But the figurative image of the Tree of Jesse only emerged as an iconographic trope in the twelfth century, when it began to convey additional meanings….”26 Dante suggests this trope, alluding to the fact that “after

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all, it was on a tree that God had become incarnate and entered into matter; and thus a tree guaranteed the doctrine of the incarnation of the transcendent. Also, it was on a tree that the God-man dies, providing new life for humanity; a tree thus also guaranteed the doctrine of salvation.”27 The tree which bore the fruit of the Fall shall bear the fruit of redemption, first as the tree of Jesse, and ultimately as the tree of the cross. The symbols overlap, recur, invert, and invoke. Indeed all the trees in Dante’s Commedia evoke a single tree, the Tree of the Garden, the Tree of Jesse, the Tree of the Cross - all these are, in the medieval understanding, fed by apocryphal texts and legends, the same tree. The medieval legend of Seth and the True Cross acts as a parallel narrative to that of sacrifice and nourishment. With the Fall, of course, the tree is present as the source of the fruit whose consumption brings about that Fall. According to the legend, then, Seth the son of Adam retrieves from Eden, in lieu of the Oil of Mercy, either a twig or three seeds from the tree (depending on the version). He plants the seeds or twig in Adam’s mouth (Fig. 6), another allegory for sterile eating, Fig. 6. Seth plants the twig from the Tree in analogous to the eating in Adam’s mouth. Hours of Catherine of Hell, for the dead can neither Cleves, Duchess of Guelders 1417-76 consume nor receive nourishment, but also an analogy for the reception of redemption, for it is from the tree that a new fruit which will grant life by its consumption will spring. From Adam’s grave, it springs forth in yet a new incarnation of the tree, three staves of sacred woods: cypress, cedar and pine. After several transformations, including the merging of three staves into one in the garden of David (a pesher gloss alluding to the Trinity), the tree finally becomes the cross. Once again, the tree bears fruit,28 and in this fruit, Christ, lies the return to the time before the Fall.

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It has long been a tradition to attribute the name “Golgotha,” meaning “the place of the skull” to the presence of Adam’s skull beneath the mount on which Christ was crucified. Further, it is traditional, if less popular, that Adam, “bathed in the Blood of the Lord, was resuscitated.” 29 It is the case that Adam’s tomb is part of the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, though the structure currently on the site is arguably a Crusade-era structure. However, the iconography of the skull at the foot of the cross, or just beneath it, is pervasive in medieval art, and given the medieval popularity of the legend of the Seth, it seems a natural conclusion. (Fig. 7) The tree, once Fig. 7. Crucifixion showing the planted in Adam’s mouth or over his skull of Adam under Calvary. head at his burial, is planted once more Pulpit, St. Andrea, Pistoia, in or over his head. The blood of the Giovanni Pisano, 1301 ‘fruit of the tree,’ Christ, returns to Adam’s mouth, and, though not alive to receive the Eucharist, he nevertheless receives Christ’s redemptive blood. The circle is thereby completed, and at long last, Adam is granted the mercy of the Tree. Likewise, with the consumption of the fruit of the cross, the consumption of the fruit of the first tree is rewritten, and the tree itself is redeemed. To return to Purgatory, we must note that, unlike the privation of Adam and Eve newly expelled from Eden, the denial of the gluttonous in Purgatory is not punitive (as nothing in Purgatory is), but corrective, designed to cleanse the soul of the unwholesome longings of gluttony. However, this privation begs the question of how it is that spirits, having no true bodies, can, in fact, be starved. On leaving the terrace, Dante questions this: “How could they have become so lean since, anyway, they have no need for food?”30 Statius answers him with a doctrine of food and blood and reproduction largely out of Aristotle, and, to a lesser degree, Avicenna.31 What is of particular interest for our consideration of eating is the notion advanced by Statius of “The perfect blood — the blood that’s never drunk / by thirsty veins...but is preserved entire—acquires, within the heart, formative powers / to build the members of the human shape (as does the blood that serves to nourish them).”32 Statius here is describing

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the medieval notion of conception. He goes on to discuss how the ‘perfect blood,’ once ‘purified’ flows downward to the genitals (which he demurs to name) and then, once within the womb, forms the fetus, which is nourished by similarly purified ‘passive’ blood, i.e., the menstrual blood of the mother. This idea of fetal nourishment deriving from the blood of the mother is critical, as it returns us to another core idea of eating in the medieval mind: motherhood and cannibalism. This principle comes into play in Dante’s reference to Maria of Jerusalem in Purgatorio. The iconographical tale of the mother who devours her child, particularly in times of war or other hardship, is a common trope from antiquity onward, and one found in several instances in the Bible: “In the desperate straits to which the enemy siege reduces you, you will eat the fruit of your womb, the flesh of your own sons and daughters whom the Lord your God has given you.”33 Originally found in the section of Josephus’ The Jewish Wars which recounts the fall of Jerusalem, the legend of Maria ben Eleazer becomes a common motif in the eleventh through sixteenth centuries, which fuels a “growing discourse of cannibalistic monstrosity…”34 The trope revolves around the story of Maria, a resident of Jerusalem in the time of the siege of the city, who becomes desperate for food and fearful for the future of her child. She attempts and fails sufficiently to incite the rebels roaming the city into killing her and ending her torment and despair. Finally, despairing of her own Fig. 8. Maria and Josephus (?) on the walls of life, and that of her son, Jerusalem. La Guerre de Juifs, Paris, BNF, MS lat. she kills, roasts, and eats 16730 her child. She is not unaware of the monstrosity of the act; she says “Come be my food, and an avenging omen for the partisans, and to the world the only tale as yet untold of Jewish misery.”35 Consistent in all the various versions of the Mary’s legend tale, her child is an unweaned boy. 36 Price goes on to note that “The juxtaposition here of breastfeeding and cannibalism is interesting, given that ... breast-feeding is a direct feeding on and from the female

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body, understood in medieval physiological terms as a lactation of transmuted blood.”37 Price is referring here to the medieval understanding of menstrual blood and breast milk as the same substance, transmuted in the latter instance to its white color and more ‘wholesome form’ by the mercy of God (as the blood of the male is transformed into semen). Not only did the infant suckle its mother’s blood, but also in utero, the child, constituted entirely of the semen of the father (from Statius and Aquinas) feeds upon this blood as well, which accounted for a woman’s lack of menstruation during pregnancy. Maria has, as Price puts it, “...eaten of the child that has eaten of her.” Here we have another twist to the idea of nourishment versus consumption, and another instance in which an unwholesome substance, blood (menstrual blood in particular) is transformed by the grace of God into a more fitting substance, milk. In this context, it is also not surprising that the human soul elevated highest in heaven (next to Mary, of course) is St. Bernard, who is famously depicted being fed on the milk of the Virgin. This not only echoes the transubstantiation of the Eucharist into the body and blood of Christ, but, also, in a sense, inverts it. One substance is transformed from blood to something less corrupt (milk), the other from something more corrupt (bread), into sacred blood. Consumption of one blood is profane, the other sacred, just as consumption of the fruit of Eden’s tree is profane, and consumption of the fruit of the Cross is sacred. In any case, clearly Dante knows of Maria’s tale and the ‘trope’ of the devouring mother; he references it explicitly in Purgatorio: “And I said to myself, ‘Look at those souls! They could be those who lost Jerusalem, when Miriam sunk her beak into her son.”38 I think it is entirely valid to read his heartbreaking and emotionally climactic telling of the fate of Ugolino as another reference to the same tension, for it is, in many ways the same tale. Maria, like Ugolino, inverts the sacred communion, the sacred sacrifice and makes of it something barbarous, yes, but not without pathos. That Maria resides in Jerusalem, the center of the medieval world is also telling. “Her presence at the very center is ipso facto more fundamentally disturbing than if she had been relegated to the outer margins…,”39as are other monsters. Maria does, indeed, reside squarely in the center of the world, both historically, and as an analogue of Mary, of whom she presents such a clear inversion. Mary, like Maria, suckles her son, the Christ child who will be sacrificed, not for one human, but for all, and devoured, not by one, but by all. The centrality of the image of Maria then, attests not only to the poignancy of her tale, but also to the depth of disquiet surrounding the ideas of nourishment and the Eucharist in the medieval mind.

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This disquiet is not surprising. “Anxieties about cannibalism can never be completely absent in the symbolic and literal act of eating the body and blood of a sacrificial victim, especially when that victim is frequently represented as a child.”40 According to Price, this anxiety may be reflected not only in the persistent trope of the devouring mother, but also in the recurring ‘blood libel’ claims against Jews, accused of sacrificial murder and of the ritual eating of Christian children.41 In being herself a Jew, Maria may be located a little farther from the center of the world after all, being numbered among the eternal ‘outsiders within’ the Jews. If this is the case, clearly, then, the anxiety over the cannibalistic dimension of the Eucharist endures past Dante’s time, as blood libels persist well into the fifteenth century.

Eating in the Commedia: Paradiso Purgatory is return, where the last vestiges of debased humanity fall away before the return to the Garden. As the soul returns to its perfected form in the Garden, so too, must the tree itself be restored, and the fruit thereof, return. This is accomplished when the Griffon (a typology for the dual nature of Christ, the fruit of the tree) brings the chariot (the church) back to the tree in the earthly paradise: Then turning to the pole which he had pulled, / he brought it up against the widowed tree, / returning to it what it had once brought forth. / Just as the trees on earth in early spring…begin to swell, burst into bloom, renew, / the color that was theirs before the sun / hitches his steed beneath some other stars, / just so, that tree whose boughs had been so bare, / renewed itself, and bloomed with a color not quite / roselike but brighter than a violet.42

While Dante does not say so explicitly, nor am I aware of any textual mention of it, I think it is entirely possible that Dante means for us to understand the chariot-pole as the last and final incarnation of the tree taken from Eden and given to Seth. After all, the cross is, like the chariot pole, the means by which Christ draws the church to salvation, just as the chariot-pole is the means by which the Griffon draws the chariot back to the Tree. Christ, himself the fruit of the tree, the sacrifice, brings the chariot, the church (composed, of course of all the souls of humanity) back to the tree, and in so doing, reverses time, undoes what was done. The church, languishing so long in the stream of history, as seen in the pageant which precedes this gesture, is brought back out of history, to a time of no

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time, when death and decay no longer hold sway, and where corrupt eating is no longer needed. In Paradiso, then, no physical eating is needed, and there is no longer any sort of body, even an allegorical, or aerial one,43 as described by Statius. However, eating is, as we saw earlier, only part of the equation. As the farthest reaches of Hell entail eating that is wholly devoid not only of nourishment but also of consumption, so the highest planes of Heaven entail a nourishment that is also without consumption at all (as Aquinas ascribed to the Eucharist), but is, contrary to that in Hell, perfect nourishment. Therefore, Dante continues to provide alimentary metaphors in Paradiso—though they do not refer to food as they did in Hell and Purgatory—rather, they refer to the ineffable nourishment of pure spiritual sustenance. In the sphere of the sun, Dante’s St. Thomas says that Dominic was “not like those men who toil for worldly gain / studying Thaddeus and the Ostian, / but for the love of the eternal bread, / he soon became a mighty theologian…”44 Here, of course the “eternal bread” refers to true knowledge, spiritual insight. Dante also uses the metaphor of a banquet of joy, of which the reader has had but a foretaste, and his words are the food he provided: “Now reader, do not leave the table yet, / reflect upon what you have only tasted, / if you would dine upon joy before you tire. / I put the food out; now feed yourself…”45 Later, less optimistic about the reception of this poetry, he is reassured by Cacciaguida, who tells him: “Though when your words are taken in at first / they may taste bitter, but once well-digested / they will become a vital nutriment.”46 However, the most salient aspect of Dante’s cycle of eating and nourishment comes in the understanding that true, perfect nourishment can come only from God, and this highest form of sustenance surpasses even the prelapsarian dependence on the ‘essential’ food of the Garden. “O, fellowship of those chose to feast / at the greatest supper of the Lamb of God / Who feeds you, satisfying all your needs…”47 Thus, Beatrice beseeched the elect in the highest heavens to allow Dante a ‘foretaste’ (as he has offered his readers) of the sweet truth from God.

Conclusion Dante’s use of food, eating, sacrifice, and nourishment throughout the Commedia is not, in any of its component instances, revolutionary, as we have seen. He refers to extant understandings, incorporates known symbols, and speaks in a metaphorical language which predates him, in

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some cases by centuries. And so he must; he is a poet with a story to tell, both for his own salvation (both in terms of spiritual immortality, and that same immortality dreamt of by all poets, that his work may live on), and that of his audience. To effect these aims, he must use words, symbols, pictures, and allegories his reader can, albeit with diligence and effort, understand. This he does with great facility and subtlety, weaving layers of meaning and connotation, providing reflection, inversion, return, doubling, and pattern to construct a rich and multilayered tapestry. It is this that makes Dante revolutionary and neither the symbols he employs nor the words he uses, but the way he uses them, relates them, connects and interconnects them in a comprehensive picture of the religious life of his day. He constructs a framework for expressing the sometimes inexpressible with clear-eyed order and discipline, and on it he then arrays all the truths of Christian mankind. Quinn puts it well in the conclusion of her exploration of the legend of Seth: In concluding we might observe that the study of the legend of the roodtree provides us with a unique view of the medieval Christian legendmaking mind at work, incorporating the apocryphal quest of Seth into its theology, drawing on dozens of unlikely sources, eliminating and adding, shifting and altering elements, and in the process creating a strange and intricate tale which...links the great themes of the Fall and the Redemption.48

The same can certainly be said for Dante, and for the tradition on which he draws. The arc of eating and nourishment is only one of these arcs; there are many more. But in exploring this matrix of eating, nourishment, consumption, blood, sacrifice, violence, and redemption, one can see not only the richness of Dante’s tapestry but also of the medieval experience as well.

Bibliography Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy. Vol. 1, Inferno. Translated by Mark Musa. London: Penguin Books, 2003. —. The Divine Comedy. Vol. 2, Purgatory. Translated by Mark Musa. London: Penguin Books, 1987. —. The Divine Comedy. Vol. 3, Paradise. Translated by Mark Musa. London: Penguin Books, 2004. —. The Inferno of Dante. Translated by Robert Pinsky. New York: Noonday Books, 1994. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae, Accessed 07/19/13,

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http://www.newadvent.org/summa/3148.htm. —. “Commentary on Book IV of the Sentences, d.12, q.2, a.11.” St. Thomas Aquinas on the Eucharist, Accessed 07/19/13, http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/131/st._thomas_aq uinas_on_the_eucharist.html. Bagati, Fr. Bellarmino, OFM, “Note on the Iconography of Adam under Calvary.” Liber Annus 27 (1977): 5-32. Bynum, Caroline Walker. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987. Gibbons, David. “Alimentary Metaphors in Dante’s Paradiso.” The Modern Language Review 96 (2001): 693-706. Kidd, B. J. The Later Medieval Doctrine of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. London: S.P.C.K., 1958. Lubac, Henri de, Laurence Paul Hemming, and Susan Frank Parsons. Corpus Mysticum: The Eucharist and the Church in the Middle Ages: Historical Survey. Faith in Reason. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Murdoch, Brian. Adam’s Grace: Fall and Redemption in Medieval Literature. Rochester, New York: D.S. Brewer, 2000. Platt, Rutherford H. Jr., ed. The Lost Books of the Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden. New York: Alpha House, 1926. Price, Merrall Llewelyn. Consuming Passions: The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe. New York: Routledge, 2003. Plummer, John. The Hours of Catherine of Cleves. New York: George Braziller, 1965. Quinn, Esther Casier. The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life. Chicago: Univesity of Chicago Press, 1962. Quinones, Ricardo J. Foundation Sacrifice in Dante’s Commedia. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. Reynolds, Philip Lyndon. Food and the Body: Some Peculiar Questions in High Medieval Theology. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Ritchey, Sara. “Spiritual Arborescence: Trees in the Medieval Christian Imagination.” Spiritus 8 (2008): 64-82. Turner, Alice K. The History of Hell. San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1995.

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Notes 1

Philip Lyndon Reynolds, “Introduction,” In Food and the Body: Some Peculiar Questions in High Medieval Theology (Boston, MA: Brill, 1999). 2 Rutherford H. Platt, Jr., ed., The Lost Books of the Bible and The Forgotten Books of Eden (New York: Alpha House, 1926) Book of Adam and Eve, ch. 10, par. 4-6. 3 Ibid., ch. 8, par. 2. 4 Reynolds, 25. 5 Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Book IV of the Sentences, d.12, q.2, art.11, http://www.crossroadsinitiative.com/library_article/131/st._thomas_aquinas_on_th e_eucharist.html (accessed Nov 29, 2009). 6 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol 2., q.148, art.1, al1. http://www.newavent.org/summa/3148.htm. (accessed 11/19/09). 7 Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Inferno. Mark Musa, trans. (London: Penguin Books, 2003), canto 6, lines 22-27. 8 Alighieri, Musa, trans. Inferno, canto 6, line 17. 9 Ibid., canto 13, lines 124-29. 10 Ibid., canto 21, lines 55-57. 11 Ibid., canto 22, lines 149-50. 12 Ibid., canto 33, line 69. 13 Ibid., canto 33, line 61-63. 14 Ibid., canto 33, line 74-75. 15 Dante Alighieri, Robert Pinsky, trans. The Inferno of Dante. New York: Noonday Books, 1994, canto 33, lines 71-72. 16 Alice K. Turner, The History of Hell (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1995), 141. 17 Isaiah 5:14, New Revised Standard Version. King James reads “Therefore hell hath enlarged herself, and opened her mouth without measure.” The insertion of the female is interesting, and is the subject of a fascinating article: “The Textual Problems of Isaiah V 14” by J. A. Emerton in Vetus Testamentum, Vol. 17. 18 Dante Alighieri, Mark Musa, trans. Inferno, canto 3, line 109. 19 Ibid., canto 6, lines 10-12. 20 Ibid., canto 11, lines 4-6. 21 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, q75, art. 5. 22 Merrall Llewelyn Price, Consuming Passions: The Uses of Cannibalism in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York: Routledge, 2003), 19-20. 23 Dante Alighieri, Mark Musa, trans. The Divine Comedy: Purgatorio (London: Penguin Books, 2003), canto 22, line 141. 24 Ibid., canto 24, lines 116-17. 25 Isaiah 11:1 (NRSV). 26 Sara Ritchey, “Spiritual Arborescence: Trees in the Medieval Christian Imagination,” Spiritus 8 (2008): 66. 27 Ibid., 65.

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Esther Casier Quinn, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life (Chicago: Univesity of Chicago Press, 1962), 2-3. 29 Bellarmino Bagati, OFM, “Note on the Iconography of Adam under Calvary,” Liber Annus 27 (1977): 3. 30 Alighieri, Musa, trans. Purgatorio, canto 25, lines 20-21. 31 Mark Musa, Purgatorio, notes on canto 25, line 275. 32 Alighieri, Musa, trans. Purgatorio, Canto 25, lines 37-42. 33 Deut. 28:53 (NRSV). 34 Price, 65. 35 Price, citing Josephus, 67. 36 Price, 66. 37 Ibid., 69. 38 Alighieri, Musa, trans. Purgatorio, canto 23, lines 29-30. 39 Price, 80. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Dante Alighieri, Mark Musa, trans. The Divine Comedy: Paradiso (London: Penguin Books, 2003), Canto 32, lines 49-60, emphasis mine. 43 The ‘aerial body’ as explained by Statius in Canto 25 of the Paradiso is an invention of Dante’s necessary to allow for the souls in the Inferno and Purgatorio to ‘feel’ the effects of their punishments or labors. The rest of Statius’ explanation adheres to Aristotelian and later scholastic doctrine regarding the vegetative and sensitive souls. 44 Alighieri, Musa, trans. Paradiso, canto 12, lines 82-85. 45 Ibid., canto 10, lines 22-25. 46 Ibid., canto 17, lines 130-32. 47 Ibid., canto 24, lines 1-3. 48 Quinn, 136.

CHAPTER SIX THE CENTRAL PLAN, THE ARCHITECTURAL TREATISE AND LEONARDO ELIZABETH NOGAN RANIERI

One of the best-known folios from Leonardo‘s many Codices is his Design for a Centralized ‘Temple’.1 Folios such as this one have inspired many scholarly essays on the topic of Leonardo as architect even though there are no examples of architectural projects built after the artist’s particular designs. The fact that Leonardo did not physically build any centrally planned churches or “temples” after his own designs raises many questions for art and architectural historians. The same scholars frequently ask why Leonardo would draw so many churches with a centralized plan if he were not intending to see them to completion. An examination of geometrical symbolism, ancient and Renaissance architectural treatises, and the Renaissance architectural precursors and contemporaries of Leonardo reveals possible motivations for Leonardo’s fixation on the central plan. The centrally planned building has been used in sacred architecture in the East and West for thousands of years. In Rome it is still possible to visit ancient, centrally planned temples like Figure 1. Leonardo. Design for a the Pantheon, the ruins of the Temple Centralized “Temple.” 1488. Paris, of Vesta, and the Temple of Hercules Bibliotheque de l’Institut de France. Victor. In the Christian East, the

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“Greek cross” plan has been used as long as churches have been constructed. Even many Buddhist temples like the famous example at Borobudur use various forms of the central plan. The Renaissance author and architect Leon Battista Alberti writes that centrally planned temples, or churches, “differ in that some are round, some quadrangular, and some polygonal,” and some are even composite, but the most common universal shape, as many other Eastern and Western traditions also suggest, is a circle.2 The circle is a significant choice for the plan of a central sacred space because of its religious, natural, and cultural symbolism. Alberti is an advocate of the circular sacred space because he writes, “It is obvious from all that is fashioned, produced, or created under her influence that Nature delights primarily in the circle. Need I mention the earth, the stars, the animals, their nests, and so on, all of which she has made circular?”3 Serlio begins “with the circular form because [he says that] it is more perfect than all the others.”4 The circle has always received special sacred consideration because it has no beginning and no end. Christians have used this symbolic shape from their beginnings for worship. Just as Christian doctrine states that God was not created and will always exist, so does the circle symbolize eternity. Wittkower explains that the symbolism of the circle in Christianity goes even deeper than a simple geometric representation of eternity. For Nicholas of Cusa, says Wittkower: Mathematics is ... a necessary vehicle for penetrating to the knowledge of God, who must be envisaged through the mathematical symbol. Cusanus ... visualizes Him as the least tangible and at the same time the most perfect geometrical figure, the centre and circumference of the circle; for in the infinite circle or sphere, centre, diameter and circumference are identical.5

In ancient Greece and Rome, the centrally planned temple was a common sight. By the Medieval period, the basilica, shaped commonly like a Latin cross with a transept, had become the most common shape for Western Christian churches. While Eastern churches continued to construct centrally planned buildings, the Christian West largely employed the basilica in the Gothic period “although baptistries were centrally symmetrical.”6 Kemp comments on the architectural myth behind the Florence Baptistery (Fig. 2): “So strong was the belief in the Roman pedigree of centralized designs that the twelfth-century Baptistery in Florence continued to be regarded as an ancient temple of Mars adapted to Christian use.”7 For many years in Italy, however, the centrally planned church was replaced by the basilica. Wittkower states, “It is strange that the normal

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and traditional type of church, the basilica, was not among those recommended by Alberti. The fact that churches were built in the form of the basilica appears only incidentally when Alberti explains that the habit was introduced by the early Christians who used private Roman basilicas as their places of worship.”8 To a large extent, it was the celebrated group of Italian artist-architects of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries who reintroduced the central plan to the West. This eminent group of men included among others Alberti, Bramante and Leonardo, who were humanists and were acquainted with second-century Vitruvius’ seminal De Architectura and other classical literature. In his formative De Architectura, Vitruvius distinguishes between a “temple” and a “basilica.” The idea Figure 2. Florence Baptistery. 12th that these two forms of architecture Century. Florence, Italy. are very different may be initially confusing to modern readers because both buildings are now associated with sacred Christian architecture. Vitruvius and the other ancients did not use the basilica for sacred rituals but instead as a secular meeting house.9 Alberti, however, with his understanding of the origins and the evolution of the basilica, has a slightly different view. Alberti acknowledges the basilica as being very similar to the temple but slightly less sacred. Alberti writes that the basilica “should give the impression of seeking to imitate rather than rival the temple.”10 He demonstrates this by saying that the basilica’s podium should be “one Figure 3. Leonardo. Vitruvian Man. eighth less” than that of the temple.11 Accademia, Venice. When Vitruvius writes about

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“temples” he intends sacred spaces that were dedicated “to the immortal gods” and meant to house cult statues.12 Even in Vitruvius’ writings, not all “temples” were centrally planned. Some ancient temples were rectangular like the Parthenon in Athens, incorporating a completely different interpretation of geometrical symbolism. The unifying principle of the temple as described by Vitruvius is that the “design of temples depends on modularity ... modularity originates in proportion ... For without modularity and proportion no temple can be designed rationally, that is, unless its elements have precisely calculated relationships like a well-proportioned man.”13 The key, therefore, to an acceptable temple design is in its proportions. Leonardo’s famous Vitruvian Man (Fig. 3) demonstrates a Renaissance interpretation of Vitruvius’ lengthy discussion of human proportion which is likened to the ideal building. Vitruvius’ detailed discussion about the relationship between human and sacred proportion inspired many early modern artists and architects. Of the many depictions of the Vitruvian Man, Leonardo’s is undoubtedly the most famous. The basic concern of the artists depicting the Vitruvian Man was to use the human figure to “square the circle” as noted mathematician and author Paul Calter remarks. Vitruvius’ treatise states: Again, the central point of the human body is naturally the navel. So that if a man were laid out on his back with his hands and feet spread out and compasses are set at his navel as the centre and a circle described from that point, the circumference would intersect with all his fingers and toes. In the same way, just as the figure of a circle can be traced out on the human body, so too the figure of a square can be elicited from it.14

The human figure that fits in the circle that rests inside of a square has been illustrated by Fra Giocondo, Cesariano, and Scamozzi as well as Leonardo.15 However, it was not only the square and circle that interested Vitruvius but also the relation of human proportion to sacred architecture on a larger scale. Vitruvius continues: Therefore, if nature has composed the human body so that its individual limbs correspond proportionately to the whole figure, it would seem that the ancients had good reason to decide that, when constructing their buildings, the individual components should be exactly commensurable with the configuration of the whole structure. Therefore, while they handed down rules for all kinds of buildings, they did so especially for the temples of the gods, constructions of which the merits and defects usually last forever.16

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Renaissance artists and architects, however, took the Vitruvian Man past the idea of squares within circles. Two drawings from Francesco di Giorgio display the Renaissance architect’s desire to use human proportion in other sacred architectural forms.17 One drawing shows the plan of a Latin cross basilica superimposed over the sketch of a standing male contrapposto. Another sheet of drawings shows a caryatid column for which the female figure’s height and width dictate the size and shape of the column, a common classical function. On the same sheet as the column are two sketches of Ionic capitols superimposed over drawing studies of male heads. Again, the head is used as a reference to Figure 4. Francesco di guide the proportion of the segments of the Giorgio. Drawing from Cod. Magliab. Biblioteca capitols. In these images by Francesco di Giorgio the superimposed geometrical shapes Nazionale, Florence and architectural sketches do not function in exactly the same way as in the classic Vitruvian Man, but they are created in the same spirit of capturing human proportion in architecture.18 Vitruvius’ discussion of the man who could fit perfectly into the square/circle was described not only for the sake of discussing human proportion, but also to introduce the use of the centrally planned building in sacred architecture. Again, the “well-proportioned man” is Vitruvius’ inspiration, but the significance of the square and the circle must also be considered.19 If the square symbolizes humanity and the earthly realm and the circle represents the everlasting and the divine, then the Vitruvian Man represents the intersection of the earthly and the sacred in human proportion.20 It is no coincidence that the two main shapes that occur in centrally planned buildings and sacred architecture in general are squares and circles. The combination of the square and the Figure 5. Francesco di circle in the architecture of a sacred place Giorgio. Studies in Proportion. Turin Codex. mimics the temple as the holy place where

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humans go to encounter the divine. One of the most “perfect” centrally planned temples of the Renaissance with which Leonardo would have been familiar is the Tempietto (1510) designed by Donato Bramante. According to Wittkower: The Tempietto fulfills every demand Alberti had made for the ideal church; it was planned in the centre of a beautiful square, it is free on all sides, it stands Figure 6. Giulio Sangallo. isolated on a high platform; the perfect Floor-plan of Santa Maria delle roundness, the quiet semi-circle of the Carceri. c. 1485. Prato, Italy. dominating dome, the austere Doric order with horizontal entablature, the abstention from painted decoration and the planned use of statues (which, characteristically, Palladio included on his plate): all this- and more could be added- shows Bramante in the line of descent from Alberti as the executor of Alberti’s fondest ideas.21

Giorgio Vasari, one of the greatest advocates of humanism in Renaissance art and architecture wrote about Bramante that he made a surer path for those architects who came after him.22 There is no doubt that Bramante’s Tempietto (Fig. 7) was the apex of centrally planned architecture in the Italian Renaissance and that it would be difficult for any other architect to make a more “perfect” building after him. Again Vasari writes: It seems to me that the minds that study the ancient works still have that eternal obligation to owe the works of Bramante. Because even if the Greeks were the inventors of architecture and the Romans were their imitators, Bramante taught us not only by imitating them with new innovations, but still with beauty and difficoltà that would add greatly to Art, we see today that which was made more beautiful by him.23

Vasari thought that the Renaissance architects had brought classical architecture back to life in a way that not only imitated the architecture of the ancient Greeks and Romans but also improved upon it. The “invenzion nuova” that Vasari mentions is a device used commonly by the author to show how his contemporaries were not only equal to the ancients, but also surpassed them in many ways. To say that Bramante’s Tempietto was well received by his peers and those who came immediately after him is an understatement. The monument was praised for many years as the perfect

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centrally planned temple as dictated by Vitruvius and Alberti. Since the perfectly round temple/church had already been designed and built, the next logical step for Renaissance architects was to design a centrally planned temple that continued to expand upon accepted architectural principles and would begin to complicate the perfect circle. In Alberti’s treatise on architecture, De re aedificatoria, the author proposes alternatives to the round, centrally planned temple. Wittkower neatly summarizes Alberti’s ideas, writing that “Alberti recommends nine basic geometrical figures in all for churches: apart from the Figure 7. Donato Bramante. circle, he lists the square, the hexagon, the Tempietto. c.1510. San Pietro octagon, the decagon and the dodecagon,” all in Montorio, Rome. of which can be seen in Leonardo’s drawings of centrally planned buildings.24 Wittkower continues that, “All of these figures are determined by the circle and Alberti explains how to derive the lengths of their sides from the radius of the circle into which they are inscribed. In addition to these six figures, he mentions three developments from the square.”25 Not only does Alberti mention all of these shapes that are acceptable for the sanctuary of the “temple,” but he also suggests, “These nine basic forms can be enriched by chapels.”26 Since Alberti avoids Christian-specific terminology by calling these sacred buildings “temples,” it is not surprising that his so-called side chapels, or apses, are often translated as “tribunals.”27 As with the shapes of the temples, Alberti gives some license to the architects when it comes to the side chapels. For each temple shape, he suggests not only different ways to place the “tribunals” but also how many there may be, giving the desired proportions for each scenario. For example, Alberti can be relatively unspecific when he recommends that “[w]ith round and, likewise, polygonal plans several tribunals may conveniently be added; depending on the number of sides, either each side should have a tribunal or they should alternate, one side having one, the next being without.”28 Alberti, however, does not always allow this much freedom to the architect. He later sets up specific scenarios and then explains the ideal proportions for the tribunals depending on their shape and number.29

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Despite Alberti’s specificity, it is possible to see his ideas take shape in Leonardo’s many drawings of centrally planned buildings. Not only were both Leonardo and Alberti reading Vitruvius’ architectural treatise, but Leonardo was also greatly influenced by Alberti. Leon Battista Alberti lived from 1404 to 1472, overlapping Leonardo by only twenty years. Like Vitruvius, he divided his treatise, which was “the first book on architecture since antiquity,” into ten books, or chapters.30 Alberti’s De re aedificatoria, differs from Vitruvius’ De Architectura in that “the ancient writer tells you how the buildings that you may admire as you read him were built, while Alberti is prescribing how the buildings of the future are to be built.”31 There were many Renaissance architects, like Leonardo, who were ready to accept the charge. Leonardo’s architectural studies put into practice many of the principles that are outlined in Alberti’s De re aedificatoria. Kemp states that although Leonardo’s architectural drawings appear in many of his codices, the Ashburnham Codex contains “the substantial part of Leonardo’s designs for churches and ‘temples.’”32 In these drawings, it is possible to see Leonardo’s experimenting with the proportions of side chapels on a centrally planned temple. One of his most striking drawings is his Design for a Centralized ‘Temple’ (Fig. 1), which was most likely a preliminary sketch for a Sforza mausoleum.33 What makes this drawing stand out above many others is that, in this drawing, Leonardo provides both an aerial floor plan and a “sculptural” sketch of how the completed building would look from the outside.34 These two separate points of view show the proportions of the side chapels from two different angles. Not only is the viewer able to see how the diameters of the eight smaller side chapels relate to the diameter of the octagonal central part of the temple, but also it is possible to see how the heights of the chapels relate proportionally to the height of the central octagon. The aerial floor plan style sketch reveals that each of the side chapels also play off of the octagonal shape. The side chapels are even more complex than they seem in the perspectival top rendering. Leonardo makes each chapel into a quatrefoil, using a rounded Greek cross inside of a square to create what look like three even smaller apses inside of each side chapel. This drawing does exactly as Alberti is proposing; it uses the recommended shapes for the centrally planned temple, but it expands and complicates the simple forms. It is hard to believe that Leonardo’s complex design is in the same tradition as Bramante’s simple and elegant Roman Tempietto, but both architects are pulling from the same sources. More than twenty years before the construction of the Tempietto began, Leonardo was already thinking about what should come after. Because none of Leonardo’s

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“temples” was ever built, all that is known about Leonardo’s architectural designs has been learned from his drawings. The fact that Leonardo continued to sketch floor plans and threedimensional models for centrally planned buildings even though none of them was ever built is a testament to the importance of the central plan to architectural practices of the Renaissance. More than anything, the architectural treatises and the drawings like those seen in Leonardo’s notebooks show that the centrally planned temple was valued for its perfect proportions, geometry, and reference to antiquity. Renaissance architects like Leonardo, who were known for designing centrally planned “temples” and churches, were not as concerned with the primary function of their buildings as they were with proportion, design and form.

Bibliography Ackerman, James S. “Architectural Practice in the Italian Renaissance.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 13 (October 1954): 3-11. —. Origins, Imitation, Conventions: Representation in the Visual Arts. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002. Adorni, Bruno. La Chiesa a Pianta Centrale: Tempio Civico del Rinascimento. Milano: Electa, 2002. Alberti, Leon Battista. On the Art of Building in Ten Books. Translated by Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988. Calter, Paul. Squaring the Circle: Geometry in Art and Architecture. New York: Key College Publishing, 2008. Cordera, Paola. L’Architettura, le Feste, e Gli Apparati: Disegni di Leonardo dal Codice Atlantico. Novara: De Agostini, 2010. Galluzzi, Paolo. Leonardo Da Vinci, Engineer and Architect. Montréal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1987. Javier, Joao Pedro. “Leonardo’s Representational Technique for CentrallyPlanned Temples.” Nexus Network Journal 10 (2008): 77-100. Jones, Mark Wilson. “The Tempietto and the Roots of Coincidence.” Architectural History 33 (1990): 1-28. Kemp, Martin. Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Payne, Alina A. The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament, and Literary Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pedretti, Carlo. Leonardo, Architect. New York: Rizzoli, 1985.

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—. “Newly Discovered Evidence of Leonardo’s Association with Bramante.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 32 (October 1973): 223-27. Rivoira, G. T. Lombardic Architecture, Its Origin, Development, and Derivatives, Vol. 1, New York: Hacker Art Books, 1975. Rosenthal, Earl. “The Antecedents of Bramante’s Tempietto.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 23 (May 1964): 55-74. Thomson, David. Renaissance Architecture: Critics, Patrons, Luxury. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993. Vitruvius. On Architecture. Translated by Richard Schofield. New York: Penguin Classics, 2009. Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1971.

Notes 1

Martin Kemp, Leonardo da Vinci: The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 91. 2 Leon Battista Alberti, On the Art of Building in Ten Books, trans. Joseph Rykwert, Neil Leach, and Robert Tavernor (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988), 196. 3 Alberti, 196. 4 Rudolf Wittkower, Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1971), 18. 5 Ibid., 28. 6 Paul Calter, Squaring the Circle: Geometry in Art and Architecture (New York: Key College Publishing, 2008), 119. 7 Kemp, 89. 8 Wittkower, 6. 9 Vitruvius, On Architecture, trans. Richard Schofield (New York: Penguin Classics, 2009), 120. 10 Alberti, 230. 11 Ibid. 12 Vitruvius, 69. 13 Ibid., 66. 14 Ibid., 67. 15 Calter, 237. 16 Vitruvius, 67. 17 Wittkower, 177. 18 Kemp, 88. Kemp calls Francesco di Giorgio Leonardo’s “rival and companion.” 19 Vitruvius, 66. 20 Calter, 120. 21 Wittkower, 24.

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22 Alina A. Payne, The Architectural Treatise in the Italian Renaissance: Architectural Invention, Ornament, and Literary Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 245. 23 Payne, 245. 24 Wittkower, 3. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid. 27 Alberti, 196. 28 Ibid. 29 Ibid., 196-7. 30 Alberti, ix. 31 Ibid., x. 32 Kemp, 89. 33 Ibid., 91. 34 Ibid., 90-91.

PART III: ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY AND LAW

CHAPTER SEVEN THEODORE OF TARSUS: THE SYRIAN ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY JAMES R. EARLY

In 667, the English church was in crisis. The influence of the Archbishop of Canterbury had declined as rulers of the various AngloSaxon kingdoms pushed for autonomy for their own bishops. Bubonic plague had swept through the land, claiming the lives of many monks, priests, and bishops and sparing not even Archbishop Deusdedit, who had died soon after the Council of Whitby in 664. Three years after Deusdedit’s death, the kings of Northumbria and Kent had selected a monk named Wighard to be the new archbishop and sent him to Rome. After Wighard’s arrival in Rome, Pope Vitalian consecrated him as the new archbishop, but before he could return to England, Wighard himself succumbed to the plague. Vitalian would have understood that in order for the English church to avoid total collapse, it needed strong, effective leadership, and soon. Sending a letter to the rulers of the various English kingdoms could take months, and there was no guarantee that the letter would reach its destination at all. Even if it did, it would take many more months for another archbishop-elect to arrive in Rome, and that was assuming that the Anglo-Saxon kings could quickly agree on whom to select—a dubious assumption, considering they had taken three years the last time. So Vitalian decided to do something that had not been done since Pope Gregory I appointed Archbishop Augustine: he would appoint and send a new archbishop himself. Vitalian first offered the position to Hadrian, the scholarly abbot of a southern Italian monastery, a man whose qualifications were impeccable. Unfortunately for Vitalian, Hadrian declined the offer, feeling himself unworthy for such an exalted position. He recommended another monk named Andrew, who also demurred, citing ill health. Vitalian again urged Hadrian to take the archbishopric, and again, the humble abbot declined.

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Hadrian then recommended a Syrian monk named Theodore, who lived in a monastery near Rome. According to the Venerable Bede, Theodore “was learned in both sacred and secular literature, in Greek and in Latin, of proved integrity, and of the venerable age of sixty-six.”1 Being an elderly man and a native of the Greek-speaking East, Theodore was an unlikely candidate for this key position in the Latin West. But Pope Vitalian was in a hurry and had no good reason not to appoint Theodore. On the condition that Hadrian go with Theodore to make sure that the new Archbishop “did not introduce any Greek customs which conflicted with the teachings of the true Faith,”2 Vitalian accepted Hadrian’s recommendation. On March 26, 668, Theodore of Tarsus was consecrated the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury; two months later, he set out for his new home. This essay will explore the life and work of this great but little-known Archbishop of Canterbury, including his life prior to becoming archbishop, his reform of the English church, and his accomplishments as a scholar and teacher.

Theodore’s Pre-Canterbury Life and Activities Primary sources reveal little information about Theodore’s life prior to his consecration as Archbishop of Canterbury. But recent scholarship, particularly that of Bernard Bischoff and Michael Lapidge,3 has pieced together details from documents recently determined to have been penned by Theodore or his students to present a solidly reasoned and highly plausible picture of Theodore’s life and career prior to 668. Theodore was born around the year 602 in the Syrian, Greek-speaking town of Tarsus, the birthplace of the Apostle Paul. When Theodore was born, Tarsus lay firmly within the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. During most of late antiquity, bright young Syrians who wished to further their studies would do so in Antioch, the financial, political, and intellectual capital of Roman Syria; Theodore is not likely to have been an exception. As Bischoff and Lapidge have shown, evidence from the biblical commentaries produced by the school of Theodore and Hadrian at Canterbury has pointed to Theodore’s having also spent time in the eastern Syrian city of Edessa. Theodore’s exposure in Edessa to Syriac Christianity enriched his theological thought, especially his Christology. 4 Sometime before or slightly after the Muslim armies’ capture of Syria in 637, Theodore seems to have joined the thousands of other Christians who fled west to areas still under Christian control. Based on a remark made by Pope Zacharias in a 748 letter to the English missionary Boniface, scholars of previous generations concluded that Theodore went

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to Athens to study. 5 More recent scholars, basing their view on comments made by Bede and by Theodore’s disciples, believe that Theodore went to Constantinople rather than Athens.6 In the first half of the seventh century, Constantinople was experiencing a cultural and intellectual revival under the patronage of the Emperor Heraclius. While in the imperial capital, Theodore would have studied many disciplines, including biblical exegesis, theology, literature, rhetoric, the sciences and even medicine.7 Whether Theodore’s studies were done in Athens, or, as is more likely the case, Constantinople, they would bear a lasting imprint on his thought that would in turn impact the Anglo-Saxon church. Sometime after completing his studies, Theodore made his way to Rome. Exactly when he chose to relocate to Rome is unknown, but it is almost certain that, by 649 at the latest, the now middle-aged Theodore had settled into an Eastern-rite monastery near the ancient city. As with many other details of Theodore’s life, the exact monastery where he lived is uncertain. According to Lapidge, the most likely candidate is the community of Cilician monks called ad Aquas Salvias, which later became better known as the monastery of St. Anastasius the Persian.8 While in the monastery of St. Anastasius, Theodore would have worked to improve his knowledge of Latin and continued to study Scripture, Western and Eastern patristic theology, and the other subjects that he had studied in Constantinople. Meanwhile in 649, Pope Martin I convened the Lateran Council, which condemned the Monothelite heresy. The list of signatories to the council’s decisions includes the name Theodorus Monachus. This, together with Theodore’s expertise in Greek patristic theology, strongly suggests that Theodore participated in the council and may even have helped craft its statement.9 Theodore’s work with the Lateran Council must have solidified his reputation in the Roman church as a brilliant scholar with a firm grasp of both the Western and Eastern Christian theological traditions, and as a man well qualified to teach a nation of relatively new converts to the Christian faith.

Theodore’s Reform of the Church Theodore arrived in Canterbury on May 27, 669, exactly one year after he left Rome. According to Bede, the new archbishop soon “visited every part of the island occupied by the English peoples, and received a ready welcome and hearing everywhere.”10 Theodore found a church that was growing rapidly in numbers but was in need of structural reform. The extensive territory ruled by Anglo-Saxon kings was divided into only six bishoprics, of which Kent had only two (Canterbury and Rochester), while

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Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia and Northumbria had only one each. What was worse, only two of these dioceses had bishops leading them; Bishop Wini of London (controlled at the time by Mercia) had purchased his office, while Bishop Chad of Northumbria had been uncanonically inserted into the see of York while its rightful bishop Wilfrid traveled to Gaul to be consecrated.11 As a result, in Nicholas Brooks’ words, “many local churches and monasteries were without ordained priests and deacons,…the education of the clergy had been interrupted, …and the Christian gospel had ceased to be preached in many areas.”12 Theodore moved swiftly to correct this lamentable situation. He restored Wilfrid as Bishop of York and deposed Chad, whom he soon afterward appointed as bishop of Mercia.13 He also appointed bishops for Rochester, East Anglia, and Wessex. Each of the six English bishoprics now had a leader, but this was only the beginning of Theodore’s plan of reform. He realized that the English dioceses were too few in number and were too large for one bishop adequately to serve the pastoral needs of his ever-increasing flock. Therefore, Theodore decided to divide the dioceses into small, manageable units. He unveiled his plan at the Council of Hertford, which he convened in 673. This Council, despite agreeing on canons containing rules concerning marriage, behavior of clergy, meetings of the English synod, and the celebration of Easter, apparently could not agree on the division of dioceses. The Council’s ninth canon reads, “It was generally discussed, ‘[t]hat more bishops shall be consecrated as the number of the faithful increases.’ But we have announced no decision in the matter for the present.”14 The lack of his fellow bishops’ support made Theodore unable to enact any reorganization of the English dioceses, save to create one new bishopric for Essex and to divide the bishopric of East Anglia into two. Further changes to the English ecclesiastical structure would have to wait. In 678, however, a quarrel arose between Bishop Wilfrid and King Egfrith of Northumbria, who expelled his bishop from the kingdom. Ecgfrith’s removal of Wilfrid, who was strongly opposed to the division of his diocese, gave Theodore the opportunity he needed; Theodore quickly divided Wilfrid’s former see into three, appointing bishops for the Northumbrian subkingdoms of Deira, Bernicia, and Lindsey. Three years later, he created two more bishoprics in Northumbria, one in Hexham and another in Ripon. Wilfrid’s biographer Stephanus condemns Theodore for these actions, accusing him of accepting bribes from Ecgfrith and his queen.15 Nearly all modern Anglo-Saxon scholars, however, dismiss this charge as pure partisanship. 16 Theodore certainly acted opportunistically and somewhat

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high-handedly, but his basic motivation was pastoral; he wanted to have more and smaller dioceses to assure that English bishops could serve the needs of their growing flocks. In the meantime, Wilfrid traveled to Rome and pleaded with Pope Agatho to restore him to his see, correctly arguing that he had done nothing worthy of his deposition, which was uncanonical. Agatho called a council to hear the matter; the council ruled that the original division of the diocese into three smaller units was valid but that the two additional bishoprics must be abolished. In addition, Wilfrid was re-established as Bishop of York. Theodore and Wilfrid later reconciled; even more significantly, a precedent had been established for AngloSaxon kingdoms to contain multiple dioceses rather than merely one or two. Theodore convened a second major council at Hatfield in 680. Whereas the Council of Hertford had concerned itself primarily with church organization and clerical behavior, this council served a primarily theological purpose. Under Theodore’s leadership, this council affirmed a belief in the Trinity and formally accepted the teachings of the five Ecumenical Councils that had thus far been held, as well as the 649 Lateran Council (in which Theodore had almost certainly served as a theological advisor). The primary purpose of the Council of Hatfield was to respond to the Monothelite controversy that was raging in the East at the time, but Theodore may also have been responding to possible charges of heterodoxy raised by Wilfrid while in Rome pleading his case before Pope Agatho.17 The last ten years of Theodore’s archiepiscopate proved to be relatively uneventful, save for his creation of a few additional bishoprics. By the time of Theodore’s death in 690 at the age of 88, the see of Canterbury had been re-established as the leading bishopric in England, the church had a much more effective structure and stable leadership, and its orthodoxy and communion with Rome were unquestionable.

Theodore as Teacher and Scholar In addition to reforming the English church’s ecclesiastical structure and working to bring its theology and practice firmly in line with that of the Church of Rome, Theodore distinguished himself in one other way: with the help of his friend Hadrian, he founded a school in Canterbury to educate the English clergy. According to Bede, Theodore and Hadrian “attracted a large number of students, into whose minds they poured the waters of wholesome knowledge day by day. In addition to instructing them in the Holy Scriptures, they also taught their pupils poetry,

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astronomy, and the calculation of the church calendar.”18 The school of Theodore and Hadrian proved to be highly effective, for sixty years after the school’s founding, when Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History, he reported that “some of their students still alive today are as proficient in Latin and Greek as in their native tongue.”19 So well did Theodore and Hadrian’s students know Latin and Greek that Eddius Stephanus would later note that a group of representatives of Theodore’s successor Archbishop Berhtwald, when on business in Rome, spoke Greek among themselves. 20 Theodore and Hadrian’s students included many future bishops and abbots, including John of Beverley, Bishop of Hexham and of York; Oftfor, Bishop of Worcester; Tobias, Bishop of Rochester, Albinus, who succeeded Hadrian as head of the Canterbury school and Berhtwald, the eighth Archbishop of Canterbury.21 None of the Canterbury school’s students, however, exceeded in sheer brilliance the future Bishop of Sherborne and great Anglo-Latin writer Aldhelm, who composed some of the most complicated Latin poetry ever written. Oxford historian John Blair describes the Canterbury school’s impact, writing that “the creative meeting of Roman and insular cultures, combined with patronage on a huge scale, empowered an exceptional group of individuals and enabled some of the greatest intellectual and artistic achievements of seventh- and eighth-century Western Europe to occur among the recently barbarian, illiterate English.”22 Theodore was also a theologian and biblical scholar in his own right, a fact that has been little-known and appreciated until relatively recently. Until the mid-twentieth century, scholars believed that none of Theodore’s writings, nor those of his disciples save Aldhelm, had survived. Writing in 1970, Cambridge scholar Peter Hunter Blair lamented “the lack of...surviving books of Theodore’s age, whether imported or written in Canterbury itself.”23 This had begun to change in 1936, when the German scholar Bernard Bischoff discovered a group of manuscripts in Milan that contained biblical commentaries written in Latin with glosses in Greek and Old English. For a variety of reasons, Bischoff did not publish his findings in English until 1994, when, together with Michael Lapidge, he published Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian. This magisterial work contains the Latin text of the commentaries, the Old English and Greek glosses, and English translations of all. The commentaries, while almost certainly written by members of the Canterbury school rather than by Theodore himself, clearly reflect the Archbishop’s thoughts on the included scriptural passages and reveal much about Theodore’s background, his interpretation of scripture, and his theology.

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At about the same time that Bischoff and Lapidge finished their work on the Canterbury commentaries, Jane Stevenson published a detailed study of a late-seventh-century theological work called the Laterculus Malalianus. Stevenson demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that the Laterculus, a reworking of a chronology by the Byzantine scholar John Malalas, was written by none other than Archbishop Theodore.24 James Siemens of Cardiff University in Wales took Stevenson’s work one step further, showing that the Laterculus demonstrates a Christology heavily influenced by the Eastern Church Fathers Irenaeus of Lyons and Ephrem the Syrian. Like his two Eastern predecessors, Theodore saw Christ’s work primarily in terms of “recapitulation”: that is, Christ became man and lived through each of the stages of human existence, in full obedience to God, in order to set right what Adam and all his progeny had ruined through their self-centeredness and disobedience.25 A third major work that reveals much about Theodore’s theology is his Penitential, which, like his biblical commentaries, was not written by him personally but was a collection of his teachings that was assembled by his disciples after his death. Penitentials were written guides for priests and bishops who heard confessions that offered relatively standardized penances for a wide variety of sins. Theodore’s Penitential was influenced by earlier Irish examples and was one of the first to appear in western Christendom outside of Ireland. Contrary to the prevailing practice of Latin Christianity at the time, Theodore’s penances reveal an optimistic view of humanity and are focused less on punishment than on restoring the sinner to spiritual wholeness. Theodore designed his penances, in the words of James Siemens, “with a view to the individual taking up his or her place again among the members of the liberated and restored…[and] to deal with an individual’s sins…as if they were wounds on the body as a whole and in need of healing lest they should corrupt what has been restored.” 26

Theodore’s Legacy English historian Frank Stenton has described Theodore’s archiepiscopate as “the prelude to a new period in the history of the Anglo-Saxon church.”27 Theodore unified the English church, increased the number and quality of its bishops, strengthened the authority of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and provided the church with a solid organizational footing that made it better able to grow and to minister to the spiritual needs of the Anglo-Saxons.

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The Canterbury school of Theodore and Hadrian, the first of its type in England, “acted as a potent stimulus to the already incipient movement of the Anglo-Saxons away from barbarism and towards literate civilisation.”28 While the school itself does not seem to have long outlived its founders, it left a living legacy through the scholar-leaders that it trained, most notably Aldhelm. And while scholars of previous generations generally held that Theodore’s biblical and theological teaching had little influence on future Anglo-Saxon or Continental scholars, recent work by James Siemens has demonstrated that no less a scholar than the Venerable Bede is likely to have used the Laterculus Malalianus and Theodore’s biblical commentaries as sources for his own writings.29 Perhaps none of Theodore’s teachings had as great an impact as those that came to be preserved in his Penitential. Theodore’s Penitential became highly popular and widespread throughout the Western church, becoming, in the words of W. F. Bolton, “the standard form for such a work in the Western church for centuries afterwards.”30 No Archbishop of Canterbury during the early Anglo-Saxon period was more effective or influential than Theodore. Considering all that the Syrian Archbishop of Canterbury did for his church and nation, it is no wonder that Bede would later write of Theodore’s time that “never had there been such happy times as these since the English settled in Britain.”31

Bibliography Bede. Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Translated by Leo Shirley-Price. London: Penguin, 1968. Bischoff, Bernard, and Michael Lapidge, eds. Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Bolton, W. F. A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, Vol. 1, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967. Brooks, Nicholas. The Early History of the Church of Canterbury. Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984. Browne, C. F. Theodore and Wilfrith. London: SPCK, 1897. Cook, Albert Stanburrough. “Theodore of Tarsus and Gislenus of Athens,” Philological Quarterly, Vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1923): 1-25. Deanesly, Margaret. The Pre-Conquest Church in England. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961. Lapidge, Michael. “The School of Theodore and Hadrian.” Anglo-Saxon England 15 (October 1986): 45-72.

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—., ed., Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991. Siemens, James, The Christology of Theodore of Tarsus: The Laterculus Malalianus and the Person and Work of Christ. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepolis Publishers, 2010. —. “The Poenitentiale Theodori in Theological Perspective: Soteriological Aspects of Confession according to Theodore of Tarsus,” Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies Vol. 53, nos. 1-2 (Winter 2012), 83-91. —. “The Intellectual Legacy of Theodore of Tarsus.” in From the East to the Isles: Contacts between Early Celtic, English, and Orthodox Christianity, ed. Andrew Louth and J. Wooding (forthcoming). —. “Another Book for Jarrow’s Library? Coincidences in Exegesis between Bede and the Laterculus Malalianus.” The Downside Review Vol. 131, no. 462 (January 2013): 15-34. Stenton, Frank, Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. Stevenson, Jane, The ‘Laterculus Malalianus’ and the School of Archbishop Theodore. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Notes 1 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. Leo Shirley-Price (London: Penguin, 1968), 203. 2 Bede, Ecclesiastical History, 203. 3 Bernard Bischoff and Michael Lapidge, eds. Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 4 Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, 27-37; see also Sebastian Brock, “The Syriac Background,” in Archbishop Theodore: Commemorative Studies on his Life and Influence, ed. Michael Lapidge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 30-53, and James Siemens, The Christology of Theodore of Tarsus: The Laterculus Malalianus and the Person and Work of Christ (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2010), 6-9. 5 James Siemens, “The Intellectual Legacy of Theodore of Tarsus,” in From the East to the Isles: Contacts between Early Celtic, English, and Orthodox Christianity, ed. Andrew Louth and J. Wooding (forthcoming), note 11. For an example of the view that Theodore studied in Athens, see Albert Stanburrough

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Cook, “Theodore of Tarsus and Gislenus of Athens,” Philological Quarterly, vol. 2, no. 1 (January 1923), 1-25. 6 Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, 42; Siemens, “Intellectual Legacy,” note 12. 7 Siemens, Christology, 11-12; Guglielmo Cavallo, “Theodore of Tarsus and the Greek Culture of his Time,” in Lapidge, Archbishop Theodore, 54-67; Michael Lapidge, “The Career of Archbishop Theodore,” in Lapidge, Archbishop Theodore, 1-29. 8 Bischoff and Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries, 19-26; Siemens, Christology, 1415. 9 Lapidge, “The Career of Archbishop Theodore,” 22-23; Cavallo, 66. The Council’s decision was consistent with both the Western and Eastern Christian patristic tradition. Monotheletism, the idea that Christ had two natures but only one will, was a doctrine devised by Emperor Heraclius and Patriarch of Constantinople Sergius in an attempt to reconcile Monophysites, who believed Christ had a single merged divine-human nature, and Chalcedonian Christians, who held that Christ had separate divine and human natures. 10 Bede, 205. 11 John Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 79; Nicholas Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1984, 71; Henry Mayr-Harting, in The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 2nd ed. (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 130, has a different view, claiming that England had five bishops when Theodore arrived. For more on the complex background of Wilfrid’s and Chad’s consecration to the same bishopric, see Mayr-Harting, 129-147. 12 Brooks, The Early History of the Church in Canterbury, 71. 13 As bishop of Mercia, Chad’s seat was in Lichfield rather than London; London’s bishop Wini seems to have died in or slightly before 672, and Theodore did appoint a new bishop for London until 675. By that time, control of London had passed to Essex, and so the new bishop of London, Eorconwald, is called Bishop of Essex by Bede. 14 Bede, 214. 15 Eddius Stephanus, Life of Wilfrid, trans. J. F. Webb, in The Age of Bede (London: Penguin, 1983), 132. 16 See, for example, Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971), 135-138; Margaret Deansley, The Pre-Conquest Church in England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1961), 95; Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 130-193; Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury, 72-75. 17 Henry Chadwick, “Theodore, the English Church, and the Monothelete Controversy,” in Lapidge, Archbishop Theodore, 94-95. 18 Bede, 205. 19 Ibid., 205. 20 Deansley, The Pre-Conquest Church in England, 104.

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Cook, “Theodore of Tarsus and Gislenus of Athens,” 8. Blair, The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society, 92. 23 Peter Hunter Blair, The World of Bede, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 243. 24 Jane Stevenson, The ‘Laterculus Malalianus’ and the School of Archbishop Theodore (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995). 25 Siemens, The Christology of Theodore of Tarsus, 137. 26 James Siemens, “The Poenitentiale Theodori in Theological Perspective: Soteriological Aspects of Confession according to Theodore of Tarsus,” in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies vol. 53, no. 1-2 (Winter 2012), 90. 27 Stenton, 131 28 Hunter Blair, The World of Bede, 120. 29 Siemens, Christology, 169-173; see also his “Another Book for Jarrow’s Library? Coincidences in Exegesis between Bede and the Laterculus Malalianus,” in The Downside Review 131, no. 462 (January 2013): 15-34. 30 W. F. Bolton, A History of Anglo-Latin Literature, Vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967), 61-62. 31 Bede, 205. 22

CHAPTER EIGHT ANGLO-SAXON CHRISTIANITY: MILITANT AND VIOLENT CLINTON HALE

Burdened after being admonished by Bishop Aidan, King Oswin threw himself at the feet of the bishop, asking for pardon. At this demonstration of humility, the bishop began to weep, acknowledging that the king would not live long, saying: “for I never before saw so humble a king; whence I conclude that he will soon be snatched out of this life, because this nation is not worthy of such a ruler.”1 Bede’s account of the short, but humble, reign of King Oswin hints at two important realities of Anglo-Saxon life— it was a heroic age and an era of endemic violence.2 In six centuries, Anglo-Saxon culture evolved from being thoroughly pagan to robustly Christian, reinterpreting its pagan past through the lens of the new religion. At the same time, the Anglo-Saxons never lost elements of that past, and it shaped their acceptance and understanding of Christianity itself. Archaeology, historical inquiry, and a perusal of primary historical documents provide rich resources for gathering information on the culture, and by analyzing select pieces of literature, the relationship between the heroic pagan heritage and the Christian spirituality that came to define Anglo-Saxon religion is clearly evident. This spirituality has been described as “vigorous…eschatological, heroic, and liturgical in nature.”3 The Anglo-Saxon era was bookended by periods of violence, with an interim punctuated by even more violence. In the estimation of St. Gildas, the Anglo-Saxons were used by God to enact punishment on the Britons for falling into sin. The saint went on to describe how the Anglo-Saxons came to lay waste to the land. These pagan Germanic immigrants soon became dominant and eventually began to adopt the local religion. They brought their pagan heritage with them, and rather than discarding it as they became Christianized, they integrated it in a syncretistic fashion, not quite blending the two but supplementing their new religion with elements

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from the past. While warfare was a constant reality during most of the Anglo-Saxon period, the final portion was especially brutal, with Viking raiders in the ascendancy, culminating with the defeat of the dual Viking/Anglo-Saxon leadership at the hands of William the Conqueror. The Anglo-Saxons had taken the land with violence, and with violence it was taken from them.4 It is appropriate to mention that when the Roman Church sent missionaries to the region in the late sixth century, Pope Gregory instructed his clergymen to accommodate the pagans’ heritage by incorporating whatever was possible, from worship sites to feast days, into Christianity— in effect, “Christianizing” the pagan past.5 Pagan idols were removed to be replaced with objects of Christian worship, but worship itself focused on familiar places. Pagan sacrifices were done away with, to be replaced with devotion to Christian martyrs. While Gregory’s directive was focused upon worship, this same principle was applied to literature. Anglo-Saxon poetry abounds with vocabulary that highlights the “accoutrements of heroism,”6 demonstrating that the spirit of the Germanic pagan heroic ethos was transferred to the Anglo-Saxon understanding of Christianity. In other words, the poets of the era were sensitive to an inherited poetic tradition and carried the militant and violent heritage forward into their works.7 Henry Mayr-Harting asserts that it was this ability of Christianity to “come to terms with the values of the Heroic Age [that served] as a primary factor in its success among the Anglo-Saxons.”8 The Anglo-Saxons tended to utilize a binary dualism: good vs. evil, God vs. Satan. It was Christianized, yet mired in the past. Focusing upon power and strength, Christian stories, whether biblical or hagiographical, were recast and retold. The culture eschewed meekness and timidity, glorifying strength, boldness, and loyalty. Emmerson points out that it was a “muscular [spirituality], not mystical” and appealed to a people who idolized strong leaders and heroic acts.9 Rather than a meek and mild Christ who was overcome by circumstances, Anglo-Saxon culture revelled in the Christ of the “Dream of the Rood,” where he was portrayed as “the warrior king who climbs the cross like a hero mounting his steed and seizing his sword.”10 In this sense, he was “a hero with whom a Germanic warrior could readily identify.”11 The introduction of violence to these stories, which often were devoid of such in their original forms, was to render the stories as intelligible to a people inured to violence.12 “Christ and his apostles and saints on the one hand, and Satan and his rebellious angels on the other, are equally depicted in language that seems more suitable to the mead-hall than the monastery.”13 Somehow, these authors were able to meld the dominant masculine Germanic warrior culture with

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the “spiritual ethos of Christianity, which technically disapproved of participation in pastimes such as warfare…”14 Anglo-Saxon literature is broken into many different sub-categories, and it is to be expected that in heroic sagas, such as Beowulf, the violent aspects of the culture would be evident; what is more surprising is that even their religious poetry contains multiple elements of this warrior ethos. Topics such as warfare, loyalty, and bloodshed are prevalent in these religious works, and the Anglo-Saxon ideal of loyal thanes serving their king even unto death provides an important clue for the manner in which Christianity was so readily accepted, and in turn interpreted, by that culture. “St. Andrew’s Mission to Mermedonia” is one such poem, and a careful evaluation of the terminology in the poem allows for an intriguing look into the mind of the Anglo-Saxons. The poem details St. Andrew’s assignment to rescue his fellow Apostle, St. Matthew, who had been imprisoned by the cannibal Mermedonians. The plot presents St. Andrew’s sea voyage, confrontation with the Satan-led enemy, and ultimate victory. Of particular interest to this study is a key phrase, “…the Living Lord will never forsake/ Eorl on earth if his courage holds.”15 Just as good AngloSaxon thanes were expected to remain loyal to their king, giving their lives in service to him and thereby receiving his continued good favor, so the Lord God would remain faithful to his own thanes, as long as they remained loyal. The worst action for a warrior was to desert his King, regardless of circumstances, and the author of the poem reminds his readers that the Apostles were not cowards, but faithful retainers of their Sovereign. “[T]he holy man…the happy warrior,” as St. Andrew is described, provides heartening instruction to his companions, keeping this Anglo-Saxon moral imperative before them. With the culture thusly framed and defined, it only makes sense that the poem describes St. Andrew and the other Apostles as “twelve mighty heroes/ Honoured under heaven…Thanes of God. Their glory failed not/ In the clash of banners, the brunt of war /…/Brave-hearted leaders and bold in strife/ When hand and buckler defended the helm/ On the plain of war…”16 There is no subtle designation, requiring twisting of words but a clear description of these men as warriors, in the finest Anglo-Saxon sense of the word. They are brave, honored by their king, never losing glory in battle—and make no mistake; they were involved in heavy warfare. There is no reason to believe that those who heard these lines would fail to picture the very Anglo-Saxon warriors who were in their midst. This is no mild Christianity but one that is taking the fight to the enemy on the plain of war. The Christian message may have called for followers to “turn the

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other cheek,” but this poem indicates that there was another perspective to dealing with conflict, one involving bloodshed and death, yet glory and heroism. As the story unfolds, and St. Matthew is imprisoned, the enemy is described in terms that could hardly be less flattering. They are cannibals, who eat only flesh and drink blood. In true Anglo-Saxon fashion, the Apostles and their companions represent the good, while the Mermedonians are the manifestation of evil, in this dualistic reality. There seems to be little hope for St. Matthew to survive, though it should be remembered that faithfulness until death, especially in a losing cause, was viewed as an Anglo-Saxon ideal. Due to St. Matthew’s loyalty, he is not abandoned, and St. Andrew is dispatched to render service. Though the sea journey is long and hard, St. Andrew’s companions refuse to abandon him, indicating that they are steadfast and loyal, just as the Apostles were: “if we desert you whither shall we wander/ Lordless and lonely, lacking all good/ We shall be loathed in every land, / hated of all men where valiant heroes/ Sit in assembly holding debate/ who best has bolstered his lord in battle/ when hand and buckler were bearing the brunt, / hacked with swords, on the field of fate.”17 They clearly describe the conflict in this poem as physical combat, not relegated to a spiritual form. Loyalty is again a key description of a good Anglo-Saxon warrior, destined for warfare; the fact that these men are associates of an Apostle, whose ultimate goal is to spread the Gospel of Christ to the world, only serves to blur the distinction that exists between a Christian worldview of peace and that of the Anglo-Saxons. In the poem, St. Andrew certainly undergoes tremendous trials, as described in lines 1396-1406: “The Saint was beaten, cunningly bound, / pierced with wounds while the long day passed/ …/ Brave in his bondage, he called upon God/…/[saying] I have never endured…more grievous lot/ whereby I must honour the law of the Lord/ my limbs are loosened, my body broken/ my bone-house bloody, my wounds well forth, / my gashes are gory…” Yet he remained faithful, and recalling the Lord’s promise to those followers who remained courageous and loyal, beseeched his Sovereign, “Thou didst give us pledge/ that the hate of the hostile should harm us not/ nor ever the body be broken in twain/ or bone or sinew be brought to earth/ or lock of hair be lost from the head.” God promptly restores him, healing his physical ailments, and so St. Andrew “rose in might.”18 Through his prayers, God wrought destruction on the pagan cannibals, leading many of them to throw in their lot with the Apostle, renouncing their former way of life and accepting Christianity. So the “heroic saint” called for the building of a church.19 Due to St. Andrew’s

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faithfulness, loyalty, strength, and bravery, Satan’s minions were destroyed or converted to Christianity, acknowledging that the Lord God was the true power in the universe, with the Apostles and their associates as his representatives. The success of St. Andrew’s mission, to the Anglo-Saxon mind, was predicated upon his manly virtues. The heathen were converted and God glorified because of steadfast devotion in the heat of battle. The language used to describe the Apostle, as well as his actions, move him beyond the meek and mild variety of Christian thought, and place him squarely in the Anglo-Saxon camp, where violence and heroism were laudable attributes. “St. Andrew’s Mission to the Mermedonians” is hardly the only example of this adaptation of the Anglo-Saxon system into Christian literature. “Judith,” a religious heroic poem, is based upon the same warrior mentality, with the protagonist being a young woman, transcending the traditional male/warrior connection. Based upon the story from the biblical Apocrypha, considered scripture by the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, and therefore also by the Anglo-Saxons, “Judith” demonstrates that violence and bloodshed were often used to produce good, when directed by godly intention. Unfortunately, we only have a fragment of the whole poem, but what has survived is considered to be an extraordinary poem of the latter portion of the Anglo-Saxon era. Permeated with the language of war, including references to warriors, battle armaments, warfare, and conquest, the graphic violence nonetheless stands out. Confronted with the enemy of God’s people in the person of the Assyrian General Holofernes, who took Judith into his bedchamber, this young heroine was inspired by God “with courage as he does for all/ who dwell here who seek help from him.”20 The opponent overcome with wine, “she took the heathen man/ hard by his hair, drew him with her hands toward her scornfully and skillfully laid/ the wicked one down…/…/[after slitting his throat] earnestly she struck him/ the bold lady, with another blow/ this heathen hound, so that his head fell onto the floor.”21 Acknowledging that her victory was from God, Judith placed the severed head into a sack and carried it to her people, demonstrating that the enemy had been defeated. Since Holofernes had been at the head of an army that still existed in opposition to God’s people, Judith admonished them to “bear forth your shields/ and your boards before your breasts and your coats of mail/ your shining helmets into the host of enemies! / Fell the leaders of that folk with decorated swords/ the lead-spears fated to die! Your foes are/ doomed to death, and you will gain glory/ fame in the fight…”22

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The warriors did just that, and after a massive victory over the enemy, where “few came back/ alive to their home country…/ the warriors turned to the way back among that carnage/ reeking of raw bodies…/…/ the wardens of the homeland/ had overcome their enemies gloriously/ on that battlefield, send with their swords/ their old enemies to sleep…”23 The author of the work proclaims that Judith, and by extension the AngloSaxon audience, “did not doubt/ the reward for which she long yearned. For this may the beloved Lord/ be given glory forever…/…/…all through his own mercy!” 24 So the poem ends, but it is evident that a strong AngloSaxon expectation of violence and warfare is the centerpiece of the action. In that sense, the story is a solid reworking of the “Hebrew legend, transformed by the spirit and traditional embellishments of the heroic lay.”25 Both of these poems are possibly dated to the tenth century, and if that is accurate, it indicates that the heroic tradition had continued to thrive throughout the Anglo-Saxon era, since the martial and violent aspects of the poems are clearly evident.26 Both are infused with violence and a strong martial component but are peculiar in that this violence and warfare is God-directed and -sanctioned. The violence is not in opposition to Christian values but simply an ever-present reality of life. For a culture steeped in bloodshed, Christianity could only make sense on those terms. This is not to say that there was never a call for peace. Consider the story of King Oswin, who was a humble and contrite man. As Bishop Aidan lamented, the society was not ready for such a leader. It was too violent. In the end, any analysis of Anglo-Saxon literature will show that the Germanic pagan expectations for manliness, leadership, and courage were not lost when Christianity entered the picture. Instead, those values were incorporated into the new religion. Christ would only be accepted as God if he were a warrior, in some sense of the word. Those who served as his thanes would have to continue to demonstrate that same cultural ideal. When a warrior emerged from battle victorious, it would be because he had remained faithful and loyal. That was true whether the battleground was physical or spiritual. Christ was accepted because he was able to motivate the Anglo-Saxons to live up to their social expectations in that regard. The people interpreted Christianity through the lens of their pagan past, but they also reinterpreted their past through the new lens of Christianity. Violence was endemic to their society, so it was included. To exclude it would have been to ignore reality. Christianity was successful because it was able to absorb and use that past. These poems, just two examples of the many literary works available, are just two indicators of

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how the Anglo-Saxons made sense of their world and their role in it. Christianity had come to stay, but its inclusion did not mean that the past was ignored. The violence that permeates this poetry is a clear indication of that. St. Andrew and Judith were successful because they upheld AngloSaxon values: loyalty, courage, and the willingness to shed a little blood if need be. As Christianity spread across their land, it should never be forgotten that for the Anglo-Saxons, this Christianity was militant, and it was violent.

Bibliography Bede. The Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Translated by B. Colgrave and R.A.B Mynors. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969. Boenig, Robert. Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 2000. Earl, James W. “Violence and Non-Violence in Anglo-Saxon England: Aelfric’s ‘Passion of St. Edmund’.” Philological Quarterly 78, no. 1 and 2 (1999): 125-149. Emmerson, Richard K. “Preface.” In Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings. New York: Paulist Press, 2000. Fisher, Verity. “Muscular Sanctity? Masculine Christian Ideals in AngloSaxon Latin Texts.” Journal of Australian Early Medieval Association, Vol. 5 (2009): 21-34. “Judith.” Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings, edited by Robert Boenig. New York: Paulist Press, 2000. Kennedy, Charles W. Earliest English Poetry. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1971. Mayr-Harting, Henry. The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. University Park, PA: PSU Press, 1991. Orchard, Andy. “The Word Made Flesh: Christianity and Oral Culture in Anglo-Saxon Verse.” Oral Tradition. 24, no. 2 (2009): 293-318. “St. Andrew’s Mission to Mermedonia (Andreas, entire).” Early English Christian Poetry, edited by Charles W. Kennedy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971.

Notes 1 Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1969), Vol. 3, 14. 2 Verity Fisher, “Muscular Sanctity? Masculine Christian Ideals in Anglo-Saxon Latin Texts,” Journal of Australian Early Medieval Association 5 (2009): 27.

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Robert Boenig, Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), xii. 4 Ibid., 3. 5 Ibid., 6. 6 Ibid., 22. 7 Andy Orchard, “The Word Made Flesh: Christianity and Oral Culture in AngloSaxon Verse,” Oral Tradition 24, no. 2 (2009): 302. 8 Henry Mayr-Harting, The Coming of Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (University Park, PA: PSU Press, 1991), 221. Richard K. Emmerson, “Preface,”in Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), xiii-xv. 10 Ibid., xvi. 11 Robert Boenig, Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings, 42. 12 James W. Earl, "Violence and Non-Violence in Anglo-Saxon England: Aelfric's 'Passion of St. Edmund'," Philological Quarterly 78, no. 1-2 (1999): 129. 13 Andy Orchard, “The Word Made Flesh,” 298. 14 Verity Fisher, “Muscular Sanctity?”, 22. 15 Lines 458-9. 16 Lines 1-10. 17 Lines 407-14. 18 Line 1469. 19 Lines 1632-33. 20 Robert Boenig, Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings, 182. 21 Ibid., 182. 22 Ibid., 184. 23 Ibid., 188. 24 Ibid., 189. 25 Charles W. Kennedy, Earliest English Poetry (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1971), 289. 26 Ibid., 288.

CHAPTER NINE COMPILING AND WRITING A LEGAL TREATISE IN FRENCH: THE LIVRE DE JOSTICE ET PLET BERNARD RIBÉMONT

Written in the second part of the 13th century, the Livre de jostice et de plet (roughly, “The Book of Justice and Pleading”) is a French-language collection of various laws which attempts to present in the most coherent way a synthesis which at the same time compiles and reinterprets based on a range of texts drawn from different legal traditions: Roman law, customary (or common) law, and canon law. The most cursory inspection of the only available, but partial, edition of the single surviving manuscript, written in 1850 by Pierre-Nicolas Rapetti, reveals immediately that Roman law occupies the lion’s share, with some 195 titles, most being translations/adaptations of the Digest. Moreover, as Rapetti showed, the author of our text took his cue from the division of the Pandects used in legal instruction, particularly at the Faculty of Law in Orléans: Digestus vetus, then the Infortiatum (the second part of the Pandects dealing with civil law), explicitly quoted in Book XII, and, at the end, the Digestus novus, itself also mentioned several times.1 This format suggests close links between the author of Jostice et plet and university circles. When one examines references to chapters touching upon customary law (96 titles), it becomes immediately apparent that our text had close ties to the compilation known as the Établissements de Saint Louis (the edicts or decrees of Louis IX, published in 1269). Significantly, both texts mention in particular a customary law practice from Orléans, a usage d’Orlenois.2 This affinity lends additional plausibility to the hypothesis that the author of Jostice et plet had studied law in Orléans. We also find 31 titles treating canon law, most inspired by the Decretals of Gregory the 9th from 1230. Taken together, these elements point to an author who probably studied law—both Roman and canon law—in Orléans,3 and indeed, some incoherent passages in the text even suggest an undergraduate compiler.4 It

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is nevertheless patently obvious that the author of Jostice et plet intended to produce a compilation encompassing the entire range of his contemporary legal culture. While it would be an exaggeration to speak of a profound syncretism, it is however possible to advance the thesis, following the suggestion of Henri Klimrath,5 that the Jostice et plet reflects the intention of its author to follow the contemporary practice of compilers of customary law with the aim of producing the most coherent legal treatise possible, incorporating all available materials for his time and, as for customary law, all available materials from his own geographical area. The large part devoted to Roman law, moreover, attests, within the context of this specific compilation, to the irresistible growing influence of Roman law in 13th-century France—at a time, we need to remember, when the teaching of Roman law was still prohibited in Paris. Even so, the Livre de jostice et de plet is all the more interesting due to the fact that, unlike some contemporary compilations, like the Conseil de Pierre de Fontaines (1260) or the Établissements de Saint Louis, it refrains from completely juxtaposing the various elements of different laws. Instead, the technique adapted by our author could actually be compared, mutatis mutandis, to that followed by the first literary translators in medieval French narrative literature of the so-called “matière de Rome.” In this context, if one examines how the Jostice et plet translates the Digest, we can speak more productively of a comparable process of “medievalisation.” For this reason, in this essay I will suggest how to consider the Livre de jostice et plet from the perspective of this literary process. I have just spoken of the process found in the first French romances, such as the Roman de Thèbes, the Roman d’Eneas or the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure. As is well known, Benoît de Sainte-Maure best explained this technique in the prologue to his work, when he clearly identifies himself as the translator of his Latin source. The author of Jostice et plet found himself in a more complex situation, and this for several reasons. First of all, his main purpose is not to entertain—even if entertainment also meant to educate at the same time (the famous docere et prodess)—as was the case for our romance writers. For the author of Jostice et plet, his major objective was to provide a working tool for legal consultation. His modus operandi, as I have suggested above, bears close comparison with that of the encyclopaedists. He is not an “original” writer but a compiler, even if, unlike the encyclopaedists, he refrains from explaining how he went about compiling. Secondly, it is inescapable that the author of Jostice et plet was working with Latin sources, which he had to translate. In this context, he assumes the position of a compiler-

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translator, much like encyclopaedists writing in the vernacular, such as Brunetto Latini, whose Livre dou Tresor contains new translations of passages from Aristotle’s Ethics. In this context, what were the techniques employed by our author? The first technique which I would stress concerns the so-called “medievalisation” of the sources, a kind of medieval aggiornamento, as it were, and admittedly anachronistic. In the most immediate terms, this process entails finding contemporary equivalents for terms related to political and legal institutions in Antiquity. In this way, technical Latin terms such as praetor, praeses, senator, imperator, are translated into “bailiff” (“bailli”), “provost” (“prévôt”), “lord” (“seigneur”), “king” (“roi”). Around these words and expressions, the author constructs his translation in order to provide an easily readable text, which a contemporary reader could immediately grasp. By way of example, let us consider the case of the duties of the Roman prefect of the praetorian guard as outlined in D. 1, 11 (De officio praefecti praetorio). This rubric is rendered as “Concerning the office of the provost” (p. 68, (De l’ofice au prevost). Here the author not only redefines the relevant duties but also modifies significantly the entire context: HIS CUNABULIS PRAEFECTORUM AUCTORITAS INITIATA IN TANTUM MERUIT AUGERI, UT APPELLARI A PRAEFECTIS PRAETORIO NON POSSIT. NAM CUM ANTE QUAESITUM FUISSET, AN LICERET A PRAEFECTIS PRAETORIO APPELLARE ET IURE

LI ROIS EN SON CONSEIL ESGARDA QU’ IL CONVENOIT AS CITEZ ET AS VILES PREVOZ, QUI TENISSENT LES PLEZ, ET EUSSENT GRANT POER ; ET FURENT ESLEUZ QU’IL FEISSENT DROIT, ET TENISSENT LES COMMUNS PLEZ, ET NE PEUSSENT FERE QUE DROIT ; ET

LICERET ET EXTARENT EXEMPLA EORUM QUI PROVOCAVERINT: POSTEA PUBLICE SENTENTIA PRINCIPALI LECTA APPELLANDI FACULTAS INTERDICTA EST.

ORTROIE L’EN QUE S’ IL FONT TORT, QUE L’EN PUISSE D’ AUS APELER AU BAILLIF. (P. 68). (THE KING WITH HIS COUNCIL THOUGHT IT WAS FITTING FOR THE CITIES AND THE TOWNS TO HAVE PROVOSTS ABLE TO WIELD GREAT POWER AND TO MAINTAIN ORDER. THEY WERE SELECTED IN ORDER TO RULE ON LEGAL MATTERS AND TO ENTERTAIN LEGAL TRIALS ACCORDING TO COMMON LAW, AND THEY COULD ONLY RULE ON LEGAL MATTERS; AND THEY WERE ADMONISHED THAT IF THEY MADE MISTAKES, ONE COULD APPEAL THEIR RULINGS TO THE BAILIFF.)

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This brief passage, it must be noted, while translating Latin sources, in fact follows the chapters in customary law, which define the duties of lawyers. Following this tradition, the author of Jostice et plet inserts a paragraph exclusively related to medieval customary law: Prevolz ne puet tenir plet qui atoche a la borse le roi. Prevolz puet tenir jotices de terres, de vignes, de mesons, de prez, de cens, de mobles, et puet fere jotice de fet. Que nus prevolz ne doit tenir plet de chose ou il a plus de .xl. sols d’amende, et de mains puet tenir le plet. (The provost may not hear trials which concern the royal treasury. A provost may rule on cases concerning lands, vineyards, commons [grazing meadows], rents and chattels and he may issue binding decrees. No provost may hear a case involving a fine of more than forty sous; in cases involving less, he may hear the case.)

Following the same practice, our author similarly ascribes discretionary powers, originally assigned by Roman law to the ruler, to regular tribunals in a manner conforming to medieval categories. For instance, where the Digest speaks of the power of the ruler to rule in the case of a child’s adoption (D. 1, 7, 2, 2, quae per principem fit), the Jostice et plet instead delegates this matter to “the command of the regular court” (“le commendement a l’Ordenaire,” 59). Likewise our medieval French author specifies, when he thinks it necessary, the function of the regular court, translated to the medieval world: for instance, Magistratum, apud quem legis actio est, et emancipare filios suos et in adoptionem dare apud se posse, Neratii sententia est (D. 1, 7, 4, “the court, where the legal action is held, may free its sons and give them up for adoption among its jurisdiction, as was the opinion of Neratius” [Lucius Neratius Proculus, a second-century Roman senator]) is translated as “Li Ordenaires puet metre hors de sa main fiz, fille set doner les en avoemanz” (60). (“The regular court can put away from his charge a son or daughter and give them up for adoption”). I would characterize the second technique regularly used by the author of Jostice et plet as a “rerouting of authority” which works on two levels: the first entails a kind of onomastic detour, which reassigns the opinions of Latin authorities to medieval jurists: in place of Ulpian, Pomponius, Florentinus, et alii, one finds instead Geoffroy de la Chapelle,6 Jean de Beaumont, etc. We can take one example: When the Digest (38, 14) begins with an edict from Ulpian, clearly quoted in the title: Praetor ait: ‘Uti me quaque lege senatus consulto bonorum possessionem dare oportebit, ita dabo’ (“The praetor said: will it be necessary that I invoke a decree of the senate in order to award the possession of property, I shall do

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so”), the French author writes, “Geufroi de la Chapelle said: it will be appropriate that I award possession of property either by law or by the decree of the lord of the province” (Geufroi de la Chapelle dist: il convendra que ge donge la possession des biens par la loi ou par le conseil do seignor de la province). We find this practice regularly invoked in our compilation.7 The first fragment of Digest 1, 6—De his qui sui vel alieni iuris sunt is so attributed to Jean de Beaumont.8 Moreover, the author of Jostice et plet does not hesitate to drop the names of various jurists, whether Roman or canonist. For instance, the prologue of the first title of Digest 38, 16, taken from Ulpian, suddenly becomes attributed to the bishop of Orléans, Guillaume de Bussy (1237-38—an additional connection of our author to the faculty of law in Orléans, since Gregory IX authorized the teaching of Roman law in Orléans in a bull dated January 17, 1235—and the building housing the faculty of law in the Middle Ages still survives, only a short distance from the cathedral).9 There are numerous other examples of this same technique scattered throughout the work. Of course, our compiler might have been quoting his source correctly, not from the original, but via the contemporary legal authority. For example, he alludes, albeit vaguely, to Digest 4, 9 which begins, Nautae caupones stabularii ut recepta restituant (“Sailors, innkeepers and the owners of stables must restore property entrusted to them”), except that what he says has a very different context all together. Ulpian spoke of nautae, our compiler speaks of the acts of sea-faring adventurers, “Ulpian, and so forth. And here Johan de Beaumont wrote regarding the acts of seafaring adventurers, and also spoke about what should be done if the cargo had not yet been taken on board” (“Ulpianus. Et ita. Et issit escrit Johan de Beaumont dou fez aveinturiers, et ausi en dit com se les choses n’estoient encore en la nef receues…,” 121). The second way in which the original Latin authorities have been rerouted amounts to a complex rhetorical play on the well-known auctoritas topos. Here our compiler plays off ostensibly identifying his source against actually erasing the true reference. The first chapter of Book X, which discusses a question of bigamy, offers a good example. Our compiler translates excerpts from the fourth book of the Decretals of Gregory IX, giving a reference which any good canonist could immediately identify. Thus the rubric of the first title is correctly quoted in De Francia; and it is so for the following ones, identifiable either by the first word of the rubric or by the author’s comment. The rubric may have been more or less correctly cited, but the following content has been clearly modified, always with the purpose of delivering a more

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contemporary lesson, a more “up-to-date” message as it were, which, if possible, emphasizes aspects of customary law, and which, sometimes, stresses instead a lay aspect of the law. Let us come back to the De Francia, concerned with the question of a man who has married a Saxon woman, in regard to the Lex Saxonum, and who got a child from her. Then, he married another woman, in regard to the Frankish law. The canon title specifies that the second marriage is to be invalidated and that the man has to repent: De Francia nobilis quidam homo nobilem mulierem de Saxonia lege Saxonum duxit in uxorem, tenuitque eam multis annis, et ex ea, filios procreavit. Verum quia non eisdem utuntur legibus Saxones et Francigenae, causatus est, quod eam non sua, id est Francorum lege desponsaverat, vel acceperat, vel dotaverat, dimissaque illa aliam superduxit. Diffinivit super hoc sancta synodus, ut ille transgressor evangelicae legis subiiciatur poenitentiae, et a secunda coniuge separetur, et ad priorem redire cogatur. (“A certain nobleman from France married a woman from Saxony according to Saxon law, kept her as his wife for many years and had sons with her. But since the Saxons and the French did not follow the same laws, it became a matter of legal dispute whether he could accept her or include her in his will, since he had not married her according to his own laws, those of the French, and so he sent her away and married another woman. A holy synod passed sentence on this matter that he be subjected to penance as a transgressor of the Gospel law, and that he separate himself from the second wife and that he be forced to return to his first wife.”)

This Latin text has been reformulated: Un bacheler François qui cuidoit que la costume de France fust de sustance de mariage, une feme qu’il avoit prise segont la costume où il estoit, lessa, et prist une autre. Et l’en commende qu’il lesse la segonde et prenge la premère, et face sa pénitence de ce que il a fet contre le commendement de l’Évangile. (“A unmarried Frenchman who believed that French customary law applied in marriage, left his wife according to the customary law from where he came from and took another wife. And he was commanded to leave the second wife and take the first one, and that he do penance for what he had committed against the commandment of the Gospel.”)

We can see that any reference to the Saxon law has been eliminated and that the word lex has now been translated as “customary law”. Moreover, the author of Jostice et plet also conveniently omits the decision passed by a church synod. By using the indefinite personal

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pronoun “one,” he introduces ambiguity into the resolution of the dispute between two different forms of customary law, and thus gently manipulates his readers into considering that the question here is related to customary rather than canon law. It should also be observed that, even though the subject stems from canon law and also that, even though most of Book X refers to canonical decrees, this introduction recontextualizes the entire subject according to customary law, replacing canon law with a “customary coloring” which the chosen title De Francia re-enforces, yet which uses a particular case as a precedent, the well-known appeal in common law to stare decisis, the standard argument invoked by writers on customary law to expose a more general law or procedure. Another method that our author employs, much like his technique of “medievalisation,” is to transform ancient edicts in decrees (or “établissements”) issued by the king or queen. For instance, Digest 1, 4, 3: Beneficium imperatoris, quod a divina scilicet eius indulgentia proficiscitur, quam plenissime interpretari debemus (“We must interpret as widely as possible a favor of the emperor which proceeds in fact from his divine indulgence”) becomes “we must call far and wide the favor of the king [to be] a decree, this favor stemming from his indulgence” (“Nos devons apeler le bienfet le roi plenièrement establissement, celui bienfet qui ist de sa déboneretié”).10 In the text of Digest 38, 17, 9 (“Sacratissimi principis nostri oratione cavetur, ut matris intestatae hereditas ad liberos, tametsi in aliena potestate erunt, pertineat,” “it is ordered by the wish of our most holy prince, that the following applies to the inheritance of an intestate mother to freed slaves, even if they are in the power of others”), our compiler translates prince with provost, the principis nostri oratione is rendered as the establissement au prevoz: “Il est convenu en l’establissement au prevoz” (“it is ordered in the provost’s decree…”). The same process occurs in the canonical field: for instance, the title 40 of chapter 26 of Book V of the Decretals becomes also a king’s “établissement” (12). The author makes an enormous effort to recast a question of canon law as a civil one. The most striking example turns up when he applies, or rather, perhaps extends, the papal agreement for the University of Paris to the bakers of Paris!11. In conclusion, I would like to return to the style of Jostice et plet. In his translation/adaptation, the compiler uses vividly direct and earthy language, with an undeniable literary intention. This can be particularly appreciated in the case of Book X, devoted to familial law. Here he uses, for instance, a crude vocabulary which, mutatis mutandis, recalls that found in many contemporary fabliaux. The third paragraph of this book discusses the case of a young man who married a girl not even seven years

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old. In speaking about the case, the author of Jostice et plet draws his inspiration from Decretals, 4.1.3: “whether the justice of public decency is at stake from such a [marriage] contract when an adult man marries a wife who is a minor of seven year and takes her into his household” (Si maior septennio duxit in uxorem minorem septennio, et eam traduxit ad domum, oritur ex tali contractu publicae honestatis iustitia). After citing the decretal, the French text raises the following question: if a man cannot fulfil his marital duty with his wife, can he marry his wife’s cousin? The background of this question—and this at a time when proxy marriages with princesses at a similar age were common—is concerned with the marriage’s consummation by copulatio carnalis. The decretal focuses on the problem of doubt arising in such a situation and on the position of the Church, which recommended, for obvious reasons, precaution. When the Latin text is translated into the vernacular, ut vulgo dicitur, it also becomes vulgar. Without wishing to endorse the vulgarity of our author, I wish all the same to stress that our compiler does not shy away from using the verb foutre, “to fuck”—and this practice comes as no surprise, for this compilation is contemporary to the compilation of the fabliaux where this word of course is frequently employed. As for the principle of precaution, it suddenly attains proverbial status! Uns vallet esposa une feme qui n’avoit pas sept anz; il la volt foutre, mes il ne pot ; donc l’en demende s’il porra avoir sa cosine à femme? Et l’en dit que non; car ce seroit contre bonesté. Note que nos devon tenir certaine chose, et lessier ce que l’en dote. (178-9). (“A young man uncovered his wife who was not even seven years old. He wanted to fuck her, but he could not – for this reason one wonders if he could take her cousin as his wife. And the answer was no, because this would be in breach of civility. Take note that we should hold on to that which is certain and leave what is doubtful.”)

It is possible to multiply comparable examples where, whenever the question of copula carnalis arises, the French text uses again and again, apparently with obvious delight, the verb foutre.12 After this brief tour in a quite original—sometimes amazing—text, I would conclude by considering Jostice et plet in a wider context, that of the 13th century, often characterized as the century of encyclopaedism. If, at this time, encyclopaedic texts became all the more common, all the more popular, with their attention to the res naturales, from God to the earth, Jostice et plet, in very much the same manner as Books II and III of Brunetto Latini’s Tresor, documents this popularity of vernacularization in the thirteenth century. For this reason, I think that it is directly pertinent to

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consider this legal compilation in Jostice et plet as a parallel to the increasingly important encyclopaedic tradition of books devoted to nature. In this manner, Jostice et plet represents a kind of intermediary text, reminiscent of earlier twelfth-century “pre-encyclopaedic” texts13 which paved the way for forthcoming encyclopedias on the nature of things. The author of Jostice et plet, far from denying his sources which, in fact, are regularly quoted, attempted to build a coherent ensemble based on the compilation process, in the same way practiced by contemporary encyclopaedists who tried to organize their matter in an encompassing manner. Moreover, from a literary/historical point of view, our author can indeed be compared to the first translators/writers on the “matière de Rome,” and, like them—and also like somewhat later vernacular mythographers—he openly steals from some of his sources and transforms his others. In the end, Jostice et plet represents an attempt to produce a synthetic work, fashioned at the interface of different legal traditions, with an original style of writing anticipating the style adopted in subsequent vernacular treatises on common law, but with a clear intention to present this new synthesis self-consciously in a highly literary form.

Notes 1

Ed. P. N. Rapetti, Paris, Didot, 1850, 12-13. See P. Viollet, “Les sources des Établissements de Saint Louis”, Mémoire de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, (Paris: Champion, 1878), and the commentary of de M. (?), B.E.C., 1877, 38, p. 620-22 (on line on the website Persée). P. Viollet even saw the last part of the Établissements as a copy of this Usage. For the editor of Jostice et plet, this text could borrow from the Établissements and, therefore, would be later (13-14). 3 G. Sicard, “Observations sur quelques chapitres du Livre de jostice et plet concernant le droit des obligations”, Études d’histoire du droit privé offertes à Pierre Petot, Paris, 1959, p. 519-32. P. Petot, “Pierre de Fontaines et le droit romain”, Études d’histoire du droit canonique offertes à G. Le Bras, Paris, 1965, t. 2, p. 955-964. J. Foviaux, “Établissements de Saint Louis”, Dictionnaire des Lettres françaises. Le Moyen Âge, rééd. Paris, 1992, p. 416-418. See also E. M. Meijers, Études d’histoire du droit, t. 3, published by R. Feenstra et H.F.W.D Fischer, Leiden, 1959, 27-107. 4 Ch. Donahue, “What Causes Fundamental Legal Ideas? Marital Property in England and France in the Thirteenth Century”, Michigan Law Review, 78, no.1, 1979: 59–88. here 62, n. 16. See the arguments of P. N. Rapetti, éd. cit., 27-33. The arguments presented by these two scholars are entirely convincing. 5 “Cet ouvrage nous met en quelque sorte dans le secret du travail des anciens légistes pour la composition d’un coutumier”, “Note sur le Livre de jostice et de 2

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plet”, Travaux sur l’histoire du droit français, t. 2, Paris, Joubert, 1843, 128. (Paper of the Year, 1837). 6 Jostice et plet, 244. 7 See also 58, 76, 81, 85, 88, 93, 139, 161, 234, 312 for Geoffroy de la Chapelle; 60, 65, 75, 79 for Jean de Beaumont… 8 “Mes ore li seignor ne puent fere outrage à lor serf sanz cause et sanz reson : car, se comme Jehanz de Beaumont, chevaliers de France, le establi et dit : Cil qui aucit son serf sanz cause, ne doit pas meins estre puniz que s'il avoit ocis autrui serf. Et la constitucion, Johan de Beaumont atempre la cruauté as seignors” (57). 9 Intestati proprie appellantur, qui, cum possent testamentum facere, testati non sunt. / “Guillermes, evesques d’Orliens, dit que cil mort proprement sanz fere testament, qui pot fere testament, et ne le fist pas” (246). 10 Jostice et plet, 10. 11 Ibid., 23. 12 For instance, “Cum un n’eust pas volenté de soi marier, ne ne queroit que foutre, et dist issi a une femme : Johen te espose, et il n’avoit pas nom Johan ; et quant il ot ce fet, il la foutit” (184). 13 See Bernard, La “renaissance” du XIIe siècle et l’encyclopédisme, Paris, Champion, 2002, coll. Essais sur le Moyen Âge.

PART IV: RELIGION, ETHICS, AND PEDAGOGY IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

CHAPTER TEN TITUS ANDRONICUS UNDERWATER EDWARD PLOUGH

What fool hath added water to the sea, Or brought a faggot to bright-burning Troy? My grief was at the height before thou cam’st, And now like Nilus it disdaineth bounds. (3.1.68-711)

Titus’ hyperbolic grief, likened here to the overflowing Nile River, typifies Shakespeare‘s dramatic strategy of mounting grief in Titus Andronicus. Shakespeare heaps calamities on Titus as if to see when his breaking point might come, and what the human, social, and political cost of that breakdown is. To highlight this crux, the horrendous disasters of the play are focally subordinate to the coping strategies the characters employ in reaction. Titus Andronicus is a powerfully emotional play in which plot defers to the “extraordinary pitch of emotion to which a person may be raised by the most violent outrage.”2 As Titus’ characters endure anguish and heartache, Shakespeare delicately places the very language they use to describe such emotions in opposition with semantic significance. If grief is expressible in terms, what are those terms? By framing Titus Andronicus’ curiously abundant liquid imagery in terms of early modern humoral theory, Shakespeare was arguably able to fortify and make more plausible his play’s grief-stricken poetry. Shakespeare’ career-spanning investment in aquatic poetry continues to be studied in scholarship, even if Titus Andronicus has not frequently been considered in such studies. In her book Prospero’s Island: The Secret Alchemy at the Heart of The Tempest Noel Cobb argues for water’s psychoanalytic value, stating that if we are “following Jung, we consider the sea to be the psychological symbol of the unconscious and that itself to be feminine.”3 Later, she remarks that “tears often seem to be condensations of tremendous clouds of creative energy in turmoil.”4 Finally, she links the sea with tears, suggesting that “the immense, open

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horizon of the sea is contained psychologically within the bright fluid jewels which spring from our eyes.”5 Cobb’s connection allows her to make even broader claims, as she proposes that “the streams of our tears unite us to that unbounded ocean of grief and poignant awareness which runs through the lives of humanity in all ages.”6 Though she does not discuss Titus Andronicus, Cobb’s argument accounts for the notion that when Titus exclaims in Act 3, scene 1, “For now I stand as one upon a rock / Environed with a wilderness of sea” (3.1.93-4), the connection of the sea to tears and grief still resonates with modern audiences. However, other critics are not as ready as Cobb to give one specific meaning to a particular poetic image. Charney complicates Cobb’s conclusions in his examination of Titus Andronicus’ blood imagery. He maintains that blood “contains within itself opposing and contradictory impulses both negative and positive. It is the sign of murder,” continues Charney, “as well as the indication of everything most noble and distinguished in one’s family—one’s blood.”7 Similarly, G. Wilson Knight, in his book The Shakespearean Tempest contends that the sea need not have one fixed poetic connotation: Physical tempests are primarily cruel in Shakespeare; yet often their presence serves to indicate a tempestuous reality even more cruel in terms of spiritual experience. The tempest is kind by comparison and is, apparently, introduced primarily that we may be aware of this kindness. Tempests thus vary from play to play. We cannot finally say that tempests are to be absolutely and always equated with tragedy when they are as likely to be contrasted with it.8

Though Knight is discussing the stormy [Shakesperean] romances, the same semantic diversity of oceanic imagery can be found in Titus Andronicus. Humoral theory, which proposes an emotional difference between hot blood and cold blood, seems to have provided Shakespeare with a rational basis for Charney’s dichotomy. Given the play’s abundance of aquatic imagery employed for the purposes of emotional healing, an analysis through the lens of Galenic humoral theory helps us see how Titus’ language of grief is at least partially grounded in popular science. When Titus declares, “I am the sea” (3.1.218), he is not only expressing hyperbolic rage; he is also giving voice to the Galenic notion that the body is, as Gail Kern Paster writes, a “vessel of liquids.”9 Throughout Titus Andronicus, the unusually high volume of blood seems to generate a reaction within various characters that curiously sends them straight to aquatic imagery as a coping strategy. Just as humoral theory endorses curing a blood-based malady with a

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water-based solution, Titus Andronicus’ characters attempt to cope with the play’s high volume of blood with their tears. Titus Andronicus’ entire system of liquid imagery takes on a denotative quality once cross-examined with humoral theory, which figures people as “vessels of liquid” in which “substance embodies significance.”10 When Titus tells young Lucius, “Peace, tender sapling, thou art made of tears” (3.2.50), Shakespeare’s metaphor is primarily connotative, but the metaphor’s scientific credibility lends it denotative stability. Elsewhere in the play, characters similarly figure their peers in aquatic terms. In his devious lecture to Aaron regarding how he will take Lavinia for himself, Demetrius imagines Lavinia as sexually objectified water by noting that “more water glideth by the mill/ Than wots the miller of” (2.1.85). As Titus loosely interprets Lavinia’s sign language in Act 3, scene 2, he guesses that “She says she drinks no other drink but tears/ Brewed with her sorrow, mashed upon her cheeks” (3.2.37). Importantly the cyclical image of Lavinia drinking her own tears hinges on the notion that her tears are “brewed with her sorrow,” that is, Lavinia’s physical state is synonymous with her emotional state. In Alan Somers’ essay, entitled “‘Wilderness of Tigers’: Structure and Symbolism in Titus Andronicus,” Somers describes the tragedy as “a rich phantasmagoria of the passional element, luxuriating, dissolving and sublimating pain and the knowledge of error.”11 In a play that is so deeply saturated with grief and grieving, the extensive range of water imagery helps to throw into relief the grieving process. The play’s spectrum of aquatic poetry traces the kind of emotional moderation that was mirrored by humoralism’s belief that the body’s liquids must be balanced in order for the body to be healthy. The same water that gives life can be deadly in excess, as in Act 3, scene 1, when Marcus tells his brother, “dry thine eyes.” In response, Titus remarks that Marcus’ “napkin cannot drink a tear of mine, / For thou, poor man, hast drowned it with thine own” (3.1.1401). Not too much later in the same scene, Titus has his hand cut off in exchange for his sons’ lives, only to discover their severed heads forty lines later. Marcus, who earlier tried to keep Titus from grieving too much, uses aquatic imagery in his advice to Titus that “Now is a time to storm.” Instead, Titus begins to laugh, exclaiming, “Why, I have not another tear to shed. / Besides,” Titus continues, “this sorrow is an enemy, / And would usurp upon my wat’ry eyes / And make them blind with tributary tears” (3.1.262-68). As Titus responds to changing circumstances in his environment, his internal liquids seem to shift in accommodation. Perhaps in order to ensure the power of his aquatic poetry, Shakespeare carefully accounts for water’s various physical qualities. Collectively, the

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characters of Titus Andronicus produce a comprehensive outline of water’s material phases. Water can exist as a liquid, as when characters refer to rivers such as the river Styx (1.1.87), the Cocytus (2.3.231), the Nile (3.1.68), and the Acheron (4.3.43). Water can exist as a solid, as when Marcus laments that Titus’ “kiss is comfortless / As frozen water to a starvèd snake” (3.1.249). Finally, water can exist as a gas, as when Titus declares, “with our sighs we’ll breathe the welkin dim / And stain the sun with fog, as sometime clouds / When they do hug him in their melting bosoms” (3.1.210). In Act 3, scene 1, Titus calls attention to the fact that water can fall, fill a space to capacity, and overflow its boundaries: “When heaven doth weep,” cries Titus, “doth not the earth o’erflow?” (3.1.218). As a poetic image, liquid’s changeable nature accommodates the emotional maelstrom that Titus’ characters experience. Galenic humoral theory, which was still predominant in Elizabethan England, saw emotional experience as the incorporeal representation of the body’s balance of black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm. Marcus’ metaphorical “frozen water” is analogous to cold, dry black bile, which contained melancholy. Humoral theory helps us see here that Marcus is helping Titus to see that his melancholic tears cannot treat Lavinia’s melancholy. In Act 3, scene 1, Titus accounts for the numerous ways that his body’s liquid can behave during the different seasons as he speaks to the ground. His tears will rain more on the ground “[t]han youthful April shall with all his showers.” “In summer’s drought,” says Titus, “I’ll drop upon thee still.” Finally, Titus claims that “In winter with warm tears I’ll melt the snow / And keep eternal springtime on thy face, / So thou refuse to drink my dear sons’ blood” (3.1.10). Titus’ warm tears, to those familiar with humoral theory, would have foreshadowed Titus’ subsequent reawakening as an agent of revenge. As Paster writes, “a Galenic commonplace” was that “heat stimulated action and cold depressed it.”12 Because humoral theory figured old men as cold and dry, Titus’ warm tears suggest an internal change, which will manifest itself in noble action more typical of a young man. Additionally, Titus figures his tears as curative agents in different seasons. When it gets too hot, Titus’ tears will cool the ground; when it gets too cold, his tears will melt the snow. Titus’ proposed cure is one of balancing temperature and liquids in precise alignment with humoral theory. That tears serve as physical indicators of the grievers’ emotional condition is common sense, but Shakespeare’s application of humoral theory magnifies the commonplace idea by confirming that tears do not only suggest emotion, but they also contain emotion. In her desperate plea for Titus to have mercy on her son, Tamora asks Titus to feel sorry for her

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tears, which contain her deepest desire: “Victorious Titus, rue the tears I shed / A mother’s tears in passion for her son” (1.1.105). In an ironically similar situation later on, Titus uses Tamora’s metaphor to beg the indifferent judges for the mercy of his sons: “And let me say,” cries Titus, “that never wept before, / My tears are now prevailing orators!” (3.1.23). Although Titus has lost faith in the tribunes, he has discovered a new kind of “orator,” one that is incapable of falsehood. Tears in Titus Andronicus serve both protagonist and antagonist by allowing the grievers to connect to something true and undeniable about themselves. Throughout the play, characters engage in debates over how to cope, and to punctuate the debate, I suggest that Shakespeare includes hints of what Richard K. Stensgaard refers to as the “Galenico-Paracelsian Controversy.”13 As explained by Robert B. Gayhart, Galenic humoral theory endorsed cure by contraries, whereas Paracelsian theory endorsed cure per similia. In Galenic medicine, a malady would be treated by its humoral opposite. For example, an illness thought to have emerged from too much cold, wet phlegm could be treated by its contrary hot, dry yellow bile. Paracelsus, known as the first Iatrochemist, held that all diseases were based on one of three ‘principles’ known as the tria prima: mercury, salt, and sulphur. In Paracelsian medicine, if a disease were salt-based, the cure would involve treating it with a salt-based chemical compound.14 The debate manifests itself in Titus Andronicus whenever characters are arguing whether more tears or more blood are the proper cure for their agony. For example, in Act 3, scene 1, Titus tries to figure out how to console the weeping Lavinia. At first, he takes the Paracelsian approach, suggesting that more tears will cure her tears. The word “brine” is operative here, suggesting the salty component of tears: Shall thy good uncle, and thy brother Lucius, And thou, and I, sit round about some fountain, Looking all downwards to behold our cheeks How they are stained, like meadows yet not dry With miry slime left on them by a flood? And in the fountain shall we gaze so long Till the fresh taste be taken from that clearness, And made a brine pit with our bitter tears?

Titus goes on to suggest more per similia solutions: Or shall we cut away our hands like thine? Or shall we bite our tongues, and in dumb shows Pass the remainder of our hateful days? (3.1.122-32)

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In the next scene, Titus advises the grief-stricken Lavinia: “get some little knife between thy teeth,” instructs Titus, “And just against thy heart make thou a hole, / That all the tears that thy poor eyes let fall / May run into that sink and, soaking in, Drown the lamenting fool in sea-salt tears” (3.2.16). Titus’ emphasis on “sea-salt tears” recalls the Paracelsian tria prima principle of salt, but his suggested gruesome remedy here is to cure by contraries, which specifically refers to the Galenic application of Phlegmatic humor to Melancholic humor. Titus’ suggestions here amount to a medical mixed metaphor, underscoring the apparent and hopeless incurability of Lavinia’s grief. By refracting the popular GalenicoParacelsian controversy in his poetry, Shakespeare was able to fuse hyperbolic grief with scientific plausibility. In accordance with humoral theory, Titus Andronicus’ poetic figuring of water and blood, respectively, signify phlegmatic passivity and sanguine agency. For example, in Act 2, scene 3, Aaron tells Tamora that her sons, after raping Lavinia, will “wash their hands in Bassianus’ blood” (2.3.44). If we employ humoral theory as a hermeneutic here as Shakespeare seems to have done, the oxymoronic notion of the brothers washing their hands in blood calls attention to the outward liquid excess as a signpost of the brothers’ emotional instability. Aaron’s famous quip, “all the water in the ocean/ Can never turn the swan’s black legs to white, / Although she lave them hourly in the flood” (4.2.100) connotatively flags racial themes, but the image denotatively suggests Aaron’s resistance to water. Aaron is hot and dry – a fiery, choleric figure – despite the notion that he is swimming in cold, wet, phlegmatic Rome, where people, like cold water, are changeable and passive. Maurice Charney has suggested that Titus Andronicus is a “tragedy of blood,”15 but in terms of humoral theory, it would be more accurate to call the play a tragedy of liquid. Providing the counterbalance against all of the hot blood that is shed in Titus Andronicus, tears remind us that humans also have the capacity for remorse, regret, and shame, which are all forms of compassion. The word “tear” outdoes the word “blood” in Titus with forty-three usages to blood’s thirty-two usages, and most of the ‘tear’ quotes are placed at the play’s most bloody and decisive moments. Tamora, as her son Alarbus is about to be disemboweled, cries “a mother’s tears in passion for her son” (1.1.105), suggesting a compassionate dimension of her character that will tragically dry up soon after these lines are spoken. The tragedy of liquid is clear here, as Tamora’s phlegmatic tears make way for hot, dry yellow bile, turning the grieving mother into one of Shakespeare’s most choleric villainesses. When Titus decides that it is time for action in Act 3, he declares that he has “not another tear to

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shed. / Besides,” continues Titus, “this sorrow is an enemy, / And would usurp upon my wat’ry eyes / And make them blind with tributary tears” (3.1.266). The choleric drying up of phlegmatic tears is, for both protagonist and antagonist, the only way to proceed with bloody revenge. In his first speech in the play, Aaron uses aquatic imagery to meditate upon Tamora’s ability to be simultaneously wonderful and terrible. Aaron affectionately equates Tamora with the legendary Queen Semiramis, whose name means “gift of the sea,” but two lines later, he sees her as the “siren that will charm Rome’s Saturnine / and see his shipwreck and his commonweal’s” (2.1.23-26). Tamora, at once a gift and a scourge of the sea, strikes Aaron as almost too impossible to believe. In one of the play’s most complex semiotic explorations of water imagery, Titus similarly sees the ocean’s semantic emptiness as a significant signpost of the current state of Rome. In Act 4, scene 3, Titus and his friends are preparing to shoot arrows into the sky in supplication to the gods. Titus, who remarks in Latin, Terras Astraea reliquit (the Goddess of Justice has left the Earth), tells his friends to “Go sound the ocean and cast your nets / Happily you may catch her [Astraea, goddess of justice] in the sea; / Yet there’s as little justice as at land” (4.2.6-9). Given the Galenic holding that water is an essentially feminine element, Titus’ hopeless outlook in this scene is grounded in his inability to detect the goddess in the sea. When the Nurse proposes the killing of Aaron’s newborn baby, Aaron threatens that “the ocean swells not so as Aaron storms” (4.2.138). Aaron’s threatening language here is evocative of the sanguine disposition in humoral theory, which suggests idealism and masculine passion. Aaron’s righteous rage in protection of his son stands in direct contrast to his threatening language earlier in the play. In Act 2, scene 3, lines 30-1, Aaron tells Tamora, “Madam, though Venus govern your desires, / Saturn is dominator over mine.” Of course, ‘saturn’ is primarily a pun that implicates Saturninus, but the word’s secondary meaning is confirmed just a few lines later when Aaron refers to his own “cloudy melancholy” (2.3.33). As John Draper explains in his important monograph entitled The Humors and Shakespeare’s Characters, each of the four Galenic elements was associated with a planet, and “black bile (melancholy) was under Saturn.”16 Aaron’s evolution from a stock villain to an arguably tragic figure is underscored by his physiological shift from cold, dry melancholy to hot, wet sanguinity. Shakespeare’s remarkably extensive treatment of the semantic volatility of water serves as a powerful correlative for human spiritual volatility. Water can function as a profound signifier of the greatest potential of human compassion. Aaron’s interactions with his infant son

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reveal the villain’s unmistakably hot, wet sanguine heart despite his earlier insistence upon his cold and dry melancholy. Finally, there is Titus Andronicus himself, who spends the second half of the play grieving over the death and desecration of his children despite having shed an untold amount of blood during his military career. In a play curiously devoid of any actual rivers, oceans, or tempests, the water imagery of Titus Andronicus works hard to soak the arid brutality of a Rome that has forgotten its humanity. Though medicine has long since moved past Galen and Paracelsus, the notion of the physical world’s ability to act as a psychological force remains perennial. By grounding its imagery in humoral theory, Titus Andronicus reveals an entire system of language dedicated to supporting the play’s crisis of civilized Rome versus barbarous Goths, passion versus nihilism, and blood versus water.

Works Cited Charney, Maurice. Titus Andronicus. Harvester New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990. Cobb, Noel. Prospero’s Island: The Secret Alchemy at the Heart of The Tempest. London: Conventure, 1984. Draper, John W. The Humors and Shakespeare’s Characters. New York: AMS Press, 1965. Gayhart, Robert B. “Outline: History of Chemistry.” Bradley University. Accessed March 1st, 2013, Website. Knight, G. Wilson. The Shakespearian Tempest. 3rd ed. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1953, reprinted 1960. Kolin, Phillip, ed. Titus Andronicus: Critical Essays. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995. Paster, Gail Kern. Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004. Shakespeare, William. The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, compact edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, Reprint, 1998. Stensgaard, Richard K. “All’s Well That Ends Well and the GalenicoParacelsian Controversy.” Renaissance Quarterly 25, no. 2 (Summer, 1972): 173-88. Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self: Making of the Modern Identity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989.

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Notes 1

William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, in The Oxford Shakespeare: The Complete Works, ed. Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor, compact edition. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), reprinted 1998. All Shakespearean references are from this edition and will be cited parenthetically. 2 Eugene Waith, “The Metamorphosis of Violence in Titus Andronicus,” in Titus Andronicus: Critical Essays, ed. Phillip C. Kolin (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995), 109. 3 Noel Cobb, Prospero’s Island: The Secret Alchemy at the Heart of The Tempest, (London: Conventure, 1984), 30. 4 Cobb, Prospero’s Island, 50. 5 Ibid., 49. 6 G. Wilson Knight, The Shakespearian Tempest, 3rd ed. (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1953), reprinted 1960, 15. 7 Maurice Charney, Titus Andronicus, Harvester New Critical Introductions to Shakespeare (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990), 110. 8 Knight, The Shakespearian Tempest, 15. 9 Gail Kern Paster, Humoring the Body: Emotions and the Shakespearean Stage, (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 4. 10 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 189. 11 Alan Sommers, ‘“Wilderness of Tigers”: Structure and Symbolism in Titus Andronicus,’” in Titus Andronicus: Critical Essays, ed. Phillip C. Kolin (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1995), 126. 12 Paster, Humoring the Body, 13. 13 Richard K. Stensgaard, “All’s Well That Ends Well and the Galenico-Paracelsian Controversy,” Renaissance Quarterly, 25, no. 2 (Summer 1972): 173-88. 14 Robert B. Gayhart, “Outline: History of Chemistry,” Bradley University. Accessed March 1st, 2013. Website. 15 Charney, Titus Andronicus, New Critical Introductions, 111. 16 John W. Draper, The Humors and Shakespeare’s Characters, (New York: AMS Press, 1965), 11.

CHAPTER ELEVEN “FROM THE TABLE OF MY MEMORY”: THE CONFLICT OF MEMORY AND WILL IN HAMLET N. ROCHELLE BRADLEY

When Hamlet first begins to speak to the Ghost in Act 1, he urges the Ghost to tell him the details of “this most foul, strange, and unnatural” murder (1.5.28) so that “wings as swift / As meditation or the thoughts of love / May sweep to [his] revenge” (1.5.29-31).1 Despite his sense of urgency, however, Hamlet is painfully slow in his move towards revenge once the exact nature of the wrong done by his uncle is revealed to him by the Ghost. We, as readers and audiences of this play, often bemoan the fact that Hamlet will not stop talking and thinking about revenge instead of doing it. Our impatience, however, might be reconsidered in light of the larger theological concerns in the play, for I would argue that Hamlet’s struggle to act is grounded in conflicts of memory and will—that is, a conflict between the memory of his father’s murder and the memory of his theological knowledge, and a conflict between the will to carry out revenge and the will to live as he ought. In considering the problem of memory in Hamlet, a number of critics have focused on the applications and tools of memory in the early modern period.2 Some others, however, have positioned the problem of memory within the context of the Reformation. Garrett Sullivan notes that the “uses and significance of memory are different for Roman Catholicism than for Protestantism,” though both consider memory “integral to moral judgment … [and] various valorized models of selfhood.”3 A large part of Hamlet’s struggle with his memory and will in the play arises from a tension between two schools of religious thought and how they inform Hamlet’s conception of his identity. He is the prince of a Catholic country, and the Ghost speaks of confession and last rites and supposedly comes to visit him from the fires of Purgatory, yet we learn in Act 1, scene

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2, that Hamlet has been studying in Wittenburg, the home of Martin Luther, which suggests an interest in and an engagement with theological questions and problems, particularly those posed by the Reformation. If Hamlet were Catholic, he would more easily accept what the Ghost tells him about his origins and the murder of the King, but if he were Protestant, he would question the origins and motives of the Ghost because the idea of Purgatory had been rejected by Reformers, meaning it would be more likely the Ghost has come from Hell to tempt Hamlet. Hamlet’s consideration of these two possibilities, one Catholic and one Protestant, makes him hesitant to act because he wants more definite proof that the Ghost speaks the truth—that his true goal is to bring the king’s murderer to justice rather than only to tempt Hamlet to sin. Despite Hamlet’s uncertainties that surround the Ghost’s revelations, Hamlet promises to act on what the Ghost has said. After the Ghost has revealed the atrocities allegedly committed by Claudius against Hamlet’s father and has urged Hamlet towards revenge, the Ghost’s last admonition to Hamlet is to “Remember me” (1.5.91).4 Hamlet responds to this command with a vow to remember: Remember thee? Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat In this distracted globe. Remember thee? Yea, from the table of my memory I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past, That youth and observation copied there, And thy commandment all alone shall live Within the book and volume of my brain Unmixed with baser matter (1.5.96-104).

In this vow, Hamlet is acknowledging a relationship between memory and his will that can either inform or hinder his ability to carry out this revenge. There have been numerous accounts of the importance of memory as a faculty. Augustine writes in the Confessions about the extraordinary powers of memory and, like Hamlet later, suggests how complex memory is: “Great is this power of memory, exceeding great, O my God—an inner chamber large and boundless! Who has plumbed the depths thereof? Yet it is a power of mine, and appertains unto my nature; nor do I myself grasp all that I am.”5 In modern thought, John Locke connects the function of memory to the formation of identity:

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[S]ince consciousness always accompanies thinking, and it is that which makes every one to be what he calls self, and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things; in this alone consists personal identity, i.e., the sameness of a rational being: and as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person; it is the same self now it was then; and it is by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that action was done.6

Memory involves more than mere remembrances of the past; it is also the source of all one knows and is, gathered together from everything a person has experienced, learned, and sensed during his life. Memory is also at the center of his relationship with God—as the memories that form his identity, the memories of all he has learned and experienced—direct the will in particular ways and allow a person to act intentionally, whether aligning the will to his own desires and ends or aligning the will with God’s will, the particulars of which he must have committed to memory. Given the power of memory, Hamlet believes that a “wiping clean” of his memory—the removal from his memory of all his past experiences and knowledge—will enable him to remember only the Ghost and what the Ghost has revealed, the better to fulfill the Ghost’s command for revenge. Indeed, Hamlet must remember what the Ghost has revealed at the expense of allegedly forgetting, aggressively, everything else he has ever learned. Hamlet’s use of the word “commandment” in his vow to the Ghost further suggests the theological complexities with which Hamlet is consumed in his attempt to obey the command of the Ghost because the Ghost’s commandment is inherently at odds with God’s Commandments.7 In privileging the Ghost’s commandment above all else in his memory, Hamlet is committing, or at least approaching, blasphemy by forgetting the first of God’s commandments. Were Hamlet to reflect on his commitment to the Ghost’s will, he would have to admit that he is relegating the greater commandment of God to “baser matter”—as if even what he knows and remembers about God is less important than what the Ghost has told him. Furthermore, when Hamlet considers carrying out the Ghost’s commandment, he knows he will be breaking God’s commandments against murder, to say nothing of forgetting that it is God’s exclusive right to avenge as revealed in the Book of Romans where God claims, “Vengeance is mine.”8 The consequences of violating the commandments and usurping God’s role are the crux of Hamlet’s struggle. To follow God’s commandments is to align one’s will with God’s, but to negate or forget the commandments is to turn away from God and to pursue apostasy. Thus, for Hamlet to act as the Ghost has commanded

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means that Hamlet must renounce himself—to forget what he knows of himself in order to act in a way that is fundamentally at odds with who he is as a Christian. Soon after his vow to the Ghost, Hamlet reveals his awareness of what following the Ghost’s command and acting on this vow will entail. In terms that all but echo Christ’s description of Judas Iscariot, that it were better for him that he were never born,9 Hamlet tells Horatio that it is a “cursèd spite / That ever [he] was born to set it right!” (1.5.189-90). In carrying out revenge, Hamlet knows he will damn himself. Though Hamlet feels compelled (and perhaps even fated) to enact revenge against his uncle, he also clearly feels it is a curse to have to do so, which in turn makes him even more hesitant to act in such a damning way without absolute proof that Claudius is indeed guilty of the murder of which he has been accused. While waiting to discover that proof, Hamlet ponders these questions and his own hesitation most obviously in the “To be or not to be” soliloquy. In contemplating why he chooses to endure the suffering brought on by his knowledge of his father’s murder rather than act on the information, why he refuses to take immediate action against Claudius, he comes to the following conclusions: But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the past cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action (3.1.80-90).

Here, Hamlet reveals that he fails to act against Claudius because his will is “puzzled” when it is directed to act in contrary ways. On the one hand, his will is directed—by the memory of what the Ghost has revealed—to avenge his father’s death by murdering Claudius. On the other hand, Hamlet’s will is directed to leave such vengeance to God, as God demands. Though scriptures and religious teachings are presumably the kinds of “books and forms” that Hamlet intended to wipe from his memory in the first act in order to be able to act, he has clearly not forgotten them at this moment when he agonizes over the fear of his death and the damnation of his soul that would result from taking the act of

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vengeance upon himself rather than leaving such vengeance to God. Hamlet, therefore, has very clear cause to dread the “something after death” if he takes the action urged by the Ghost. Hamlet further reveals that his conscience, prompting him to act in accordance with God’s will, prevents him from acting. Hamlet’s conscience knows that taking vengeance upon Claudius is expressly against the will of God. Hamlet cannot quickly keep the commandment of the Ghost, as Hamlet’s thoughts, resolutions, and memories are all working together to keep him from acting as directed by the Ghost, despite his vow to remember only what the Ghost has said. As long as he doubts what the Ghost has said, Hamlet is unwilling to risk his soul for revenge. Rather, he is content to use whatever uncertainties to which he can appeal as excuses not to act. Once he is presented with evidence of Claudius’ guilt through the Mousetrap, Hamlet becomes almost resolved to act, yet we find him hesitating once more when he comes upon Claudius at prayer. It seems to be a perfect opportunity to avenge his father, but Hamlet again hesitates to act—for a different reason. Hamlet has no way of knowing whether Claudius is sincere in his prayers or not, and he reasons with himself that he cannot take the chance that Claudius might actually be sincere when apparently seeking reconciliation with his Lord for his sin against his own brother and king. Hamlet does not think his father, who was killed with all his sins upon his soul, can be properly avenged if his father’s murderer is killed “in the purging of his soul, / When he is fit and seasoned for his passage” (3.4.85-86). Further, it would be unjust for Claudius to be pardoned while Hamlet himself will surely be damned for assuming the role of avenger. Hamlet’s decision to wait is coldly calculated, but that coldness expresses how lost Hamlet believes his soul will be once he kills Claudius. Hamlet cannot accept the possibility that Claudius will find forgiveness while he himself will be damned.10 Soon after that most compelling moment of hesitation, Hamlet believes he has found Claudius in a compromising position, so he finally acts without any forethought. Yet, here, Hamlet makes a grave error. By accidentally killing Polonius, Hamlet, I would argue, completely loses himself and descends fully into madness (if only temporarily—he seems to regain his senses in Act 4), which point to Hamlet’s complete loss of himself with this action, as madness in part is a forgetting of who and what one is. Hamlet points to this loss of himself when he says that he was “not himself” when he wronged Laertes by killing his father (5.2.172). Certainly in the later language of Locke, Hamlet was “not himself” when he finally acted because it was then that he had actually forgotten all that

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he was or had ever been. He says that he repents, but his claim of repentance is followed by an important “but” (3.4.157)—despite his repentance, he believes that God is punishing him by making him the “scourge and minister” to bring justice to Denmark. While he had been prepared for the consequences of killing Claudius, which might be considered justified because of Claudius’ own vile deeds, Hamlet is not prepared for the implications of killing an innocent man, and it is easier to forget himself entirely (at least temporarily) than to feel the weight of his damnation. Hamlet’s belief in his pending damnation also allows him coldly and cruelly to arrange the deaths of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern after Claudius sends him away from Denmark. When Hamlet tells Horatio of the events that occurred on the voyage towards England, he expresses no guilt or remorse for sending them to their deaths, saying, “They are not near my conscience” (5.2.59). While Hamlet was rendered a coward by his conscience earlier in the play, his conscience is now silent, and that silence suggests a further forgetfulness of right action and will on Hamlet’s part. In contemplating his current choices, he asks Horatio, is’t not perfect conscience To quit [Claudius] with this arm? And is’t not to be damned To let this canker of our nature come In further evil?” (5.2.68-71).

Hamlet comes to feel that he is damned no matter what he does since he has already killed innocent men, so the best possible choice is, finally, to avenge the murder of his father. When Hamlet returns to Denmark, he seems to have found a new sense of peace in dealing with both Claudius and Laertes. With Laertes in particular, Hamlet is remorseful and cannot begrudge Laertes’ anger since he knows that anger is entirely justified. Laertes feels toward Hamlet what Hamlet feels toward Claudius. So when Hamlet is forced into the duel with Laertes, he is not hesitant to act as asked, regardless of his uneasy feeling about the outcome, a feeling which he cannot even clearly articulate to Horatio. Horatio urges Hamlet to withdraw from the duel, but Hamlet’s response suggests a significant change in Hamlet’s consideration of his circumstances. He insists to Horatio: “We defy augury. There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, ‘tis not to come. If it be not to come, it will be now. If it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all. Since no man has aught of what he leaves, what is’t to leave betimes?” (5.2.157-61). Despite all of Hamlet’s previous uncertainties—who and what the Ghost is, Claudius’ guilt, his own

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culpabilities and damnation—Hamlet finally finds the will to act with thought. Here, Hamlet faces the probability of his own death without fear or anger, and he has shifted from blaming God for making him the “scourge and minister” to accepting God’s control in all aspects of his life. Though he still thinks he is damned, his belief that there is a providence in the fall of a sparrow means there can also be a providence in his own fall. In this recognition, he has remembered what he already knew: that God is in control despite all the actions of humankind.

Notes 1

Shakespeare, Hamlet, in The Norton Shakespeare, vol. 2, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, et al., 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 2008). All quotations from Hamlet come from this edition and will be cited parenthetically. 2 See, for example, Peter Stallybrass, et al., “Hamlet’s Tables and the Technologies of Writing in Renaissance England,” Shakespeare Quarterly 55, no. 4 (2004): 379419, who looks at the use of tables and notebooks to aid one’s memory, and Rhodri Lewis, “Hamlet, Metaphor, and Memory,” Studies in Philology 109, no. 4 (2012): 609-41, who examines the use of metaphors as mnemonic devices. 3 Garrett Sullivan, Memory and Forgetting in English Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 4. 4 Stephen Greenblatt, Hamlet in Purgatory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), argues that “what is at stake in the [Ghost’s] shift of emphasis from vengeance to remembrance is nothing less than the whole play” (208), though Greenblatt focuses on the implications of Hamlet’s fading memory of the Ghost and his father. 5 Augustine, The Confessions, trans. John K. Ryan (Garden City, NY: Image Books, 1960), bk. 10, ch. 8, no. 15. 6 John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1841), Google Books, bk. 2, ch. 27, no. 9. 7 Peter Stallybrass, et al. point out the resonances between the “tables of memory” and the Ten Commandments—the stone tablets upon which the Ten Commandments were written are referred to as tables in both the Geneva and the King James Bibles (414). 8 Rom. 12.19 (King James Version). 9 Mark 14.21 (King James Version): “The Son of man indeed goeth, as it is written of him: but woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! Good were it for that man if he had never been born.” 10 The irony that Claudius is not actually praying brings us back to questions of uncertainty since Hamlet has no way of knowing with any certainty what is in Claudius’ mind and heart; he can only act on what is merely apparent. The connections between memory and uncertainty need to be further developed elsewhere.

CHAPTER TWELVE THE HEROIC STRUGGLE: CLASSICAL AND CHRISTIAN HEROISM IN PARADISE LOST TIMOTHY M. PONCE

Since its creation, John Milton‘s epic, Paradise Lost, has confounded critics with regard to Milton’s treatment of the heroic protagonist. Numerous critics, from John Dryden to C.S. Lewis, have attempted to address the question, “Who is the true hero of Paradise Lost: Messiah or Satan?” Literary scholars have used a variety of methods, including sociohistorical research and the application of various literary theories to answer this question, causing an equally vast array of answers to be put forth for the consideration of the academic community. Although scholarship on both sides of the debate is interesting, the answer that stands out as the most substantial is one in which Satan’s heroic qualities are not ignored, but Messiah is ultimately seen as the true hero of the poem. This is accomplished by showing how Satan fulfills the definition of a classical military hero, such as Homer’s Achilles, while at the same time acknowledging that Milton elevated the idea of the Christian hero through Messiah. My purpose in this essay is to provide linguistic evidence that exemplifies these two kinds of heroism, thus corroborating this interpretation of the poem. Specifically, I will analyze the discourse turns of Satan and Messiah, looking at their use of pronouns and the quantity of words both use, with specific attention to changes in tenor. I will also investigate the adherence to or departure from Paul Grice’s four conversational maxims. To understand the debate concerning Milton’s use of heroism in Paradise Lost, a brief history of the scholarship surrounding this topic should be introduced. In 1671, four years after its publication, Paradise Lost was adapted for the theater by John Dryden. Entitled The State of Innocence, the play clearly glorified Satan as the hero, supporting Dryden’s claim concerning the heroic protagonist of Paradise Lost – the

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claim “that the devil was in reality Milton’s hero”.1 Although this perspective was met with criticism, it continued to be a part of the critical milieu surrounding the poem, and in 1790, William Blake, in his work The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, celebrated Satan’s rebellion stating, “Those who restrain desire, do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer of reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling”.2 Blake goes as far as to say that Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it”.3 Thirty years later, the noted romantic poet Percy Shelley, in the preface to his Prometheus Unbound, works from the assumption that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost, although not an effective one.4 In 1942, C.S. Lewis published his influential A Preface to Paradise Lost, in which he attempts to dismantle the notion of Satan as the hero, for “to admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only to a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography”.5 Lewis’ inclusion of the phrase “of incessant autobiography” hints at Satan’s adopted mindset of the classical military hero that elevates glory above all else. In his book The Heroic Argument: A Study of Milton’s Heroic Poetry, M.V. Rama Sarma acknowledges Satan’s classic military focus6 but points out that Milton was not “in love with martial heroism. [Milton] feels that glorification of daring adventures, heroic exploits and hair-breadth escapes is a remnant of the past; it is antiquated”.7

Definitions and Methodology Before fully delving into the analysis of the text, it would be prudent to define several terms that will be used during the analysis and explain how the quantitative results used in the analysis were obtained. The term “classical military hero” can be extremely nebulous and carry with it a variety of connotative, as well as denotative meanings. A classical military hero, for example, Homer’s Achilles, lives to gain immortality through kleos (κλέος), glory, good report, and fame in the eyes of the community.8 Kleos is gained through completing unparalleled acts of excellence or arete (αρετή),9 and is made visible by physical symbols of glory known as time (τιμη).10 This focus on self and attaining glory is the primary motivation for a classical military hero. Richmond Lattimore points out that this self-centered desire for kleos can lead to tragic consequences, as seen in the Iliad with regard to “the treatment of Hektor’s body[,] the slaughter of captives[, and] the motive [of] the quarrel in the first book”.11 The classical military hero is obliged to use

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whatever means necessary to attain kleos, whether brute force, open deception, or covert guile. In contrast, the Christian hero lives to serve others and sacrifice self. The basic understanding of the victorious Christian life can be found in the Sermon on the Mount from the gospel of Saint Matthew. Clair Crissey even goes as far as to say that “Matthew saw Jesus as a second Moses giving God’s new law to his people” during The Sermon on the Mount, the law being the primary instruction for victorious life in the Old Testament.12 One of the key aspects of the Christian hero is that he is to be defined by his meekness.13 The word “meek” is not typically part of a standard, daily vocabulary; to prevent confusion, in this essay the definition used for “meek” will be that of the Oxford English Dictionary: “Not proud or self-willed; piously humble; patient and un-resentful under injury or reproach”.14 One of the practical ways this meekness displays itself in the life of the Christian hero is through living not for the approval of others but rather for that of God the Father. This is addressed in the Sermon on the Mount: “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven”.15 Likewise, meekness is displayed in the hero’s commitment to truthful communication. From omission of facts to pure deception, all dishonesty is seen as unheroic: “All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one”.16 Clearly, based upon these criteria, the classical military hero and the Christian hero stand in strong contrast to each other, as their primary motivations differ wildly. Working with these two heroic definitions, I turned my attention to the text of Paradise Lost in an attempt to discover if the linguistic patterns in the discourse turns of the two characters, Satan and Messiah, confirm that Satan is a glory-driven classical military hero and Messiah is a meek Christian hero. To aid my research, I chose to use a digital corpus of the poem and concordancing software to help me identify linguistic patterns within the text. The digital corpus used for this research was taken from the Dartmouth College “John Milton Reading Room” edition of Paradise Lost, edited and annotated by Alison G. Moe and Thomas Luxon. A copy of the text can be found at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading _room/contents/index. All word location and counting was conducted using Monoconc Pro 2.2, concordancing software used by publishers and scholars not only to construct concordances but also to find words that collocate with key terms. All of the discourse turns for the two characters, Satan and Messiah, were extracted from the Dartmouth corpus, and then inserted into Monoconc for analysis. For this essay, the term “discourse

The Heroic Struggle: Classical and Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost 163

turn” will be defined as a continuous monologue spoken by a character, one that can only be interrupted by the narrator. For example, in book 10 of Paradise Lost, Messiah speaks to Adam in lines 175-181; however, the narrator then states: So spake this Oracle, then verifi’d/ When Jesus son of Mary second Eve, / Saw Satan fall like Lightning down from Heav’n, / Prince of the Aire; then rising from his Grave / Spoild Principalities and Powers, triumpht/ In open shew, / and with ascention bright/ Captivity led captive through the Aire, / The Realm it self of Satan long usurpt, / Whom he shall tread at last under our feet; / Eevn hee who now foretold his fatal bruise, / And to the Woman thus his Sentence turn’d.17

Then from lines 193-196 Messiah speaks to Eve. According to the definition used in this essay, the speech delivered by Messiah to Adam and Eve would be counted as one discourse turn, although the words spoken by the narrator would not be counted as part of that discourse turn’s total word count.

Findings and Discussion Although there is a host of linguistic evidence to support the particular reading of Paradise Lost that this essay is focused on, I will address only three key areas: 1) the use of first-person pronouns in the discourse turns of the respective characters, 2) the quantity of words used during the discourse turns of the respective characters, and 3) the adherence to or departure from Paul Grice’s four conversational Maxims.

First Person Pronouns: Self-Focus Versus Selflessness The use of the first-person singular pronoun by these two characters can provide evidence of their varying heroic natures. I will only address the use of I, although further investigation of this phenomenon would require the examination of the use of me and my. Messiah uses the firstperson singular pronoun I thirty-one times throughout Paradise Lost, whereas Satan uses I one hundred eighteen times. Although it appears that Messiah uses I much less than Satan, when the numbers are taken in light of the total amount of words spoken by the respective characters, Messiah speaking a total of 1646 words and Satan speaking a total of 7664 words, the percentage is almost identical. Where the two characters begin to differ greatly with regard to their use of I is in their purpose, specifically the focus created when used.

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Messiah uses I 41.93 percent of the time to indicate self-sacrifice or being part of a larger group. For example, in book 3, Messiah tells his father: 1. Behold mee then, mee for him, life for life/ I offer, on mee let thine anger fall.18

The moving dialogue from example 1 is a clear instance of Messiah’s using I to denote self-sacrifice. Another example occurs in book 11 when Messiah speaks to the Father concerning the fate of Man: 2. Let him live/ Before thee reconcil’d, at least his days/ Numberd, though sad, till Death, his doom (which I/ To mitigate thus plead, not to reverse)/ To better life shall yeeld him.19

At the conclusion of the discourse turn that example 2 is taken from, Messiah uses I to indicate his dismissal of selfhood and his embrace of humanity and the Father: 3. Where with mee/ All my redeemd may dwell in joy and bliss, / Made one with me as I with thee am one.20

In none of these examples does Messiah focus on self; rather, he sees himself as part of a larger group, a community that lives to worship the Father. This supports the meek nature of Messiah that is instrumental to his characterization as a Christian hero. Satan uses I to cause the focus of the discourse turn to fall on himself as opposed to Messiah’s focus on others. He does this in two primary ways: 1) he pairs I with the auxiliaries should, could and might, indicating a second-guessing of his actions, and 2) he pairs I with mental processing verbs such as suppose, know, feel and thought, indicating internalization and a self-reflective focus in his discourse turns. At the end of book 2, Satan second-guesses his reaction to Paradise, specifically Man, by pairing I with the auxiliary should: 4. And should I at your harmless innocence/ Melt, as I doe, yet public reason just,/ Honour and Empire with revenge enlarg’d,/ By conquering this new World, compels me now/ To do what else though damnd I should abhorre.21

The second-guessing seen in example 4 causes the focus of the discourse turn to fall on himself, a hallmark of the self-focused, classical military hero. This self-focus can also be seen in Satan’s pairing of mental

The Heroic Struggle: Classical and Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost 165

processing verbs with I. In book 6, when Satan mocks the angel Abdiel for abhorring the thought of rebellion and returning to serve the Father, he turns this discourse turn to himself: 5. At first I thought that Libertie and Heav’n/ To heav’nly Soules had bin all one; but now/ I see that most through sloth had rather serve,/ Ministring Spirits, traind up in Feast and Song.22

Although there are numerous examples in the text that show Satan using I to turn the focus of his discourse onto himself, there are occasions in the text that appear to contradict this pattern of self-focus. For example, when Satan speaks to Sin at the gates of Hell, he says: 6. I come no enemie, but to set free/ From out this dark and dismal house of pain.23

However, although the use of I in example 6 appears to indicate selfsacrifice, his corrupt, self-centered motivation is easily recognizable based upon the charge he was bestowed with in the first half of book 2. The only reason that he makes this seemingly selfless statement is to persuade Sin to unlock the gates of Hell. Because the motivation of Satan is continually self-focused, instances like the one presented in example 6 do not deviate from the pattern of focus on self; rather, they ironically substantiate it. This self-focus validates the notion that Satan is a classical military hero, as focus on self is part of the struggle for kleos. The frequency of first-person plural pronouns (we, us, our) in a discourse turn can also indicate the level of self-focus and even arrogance in a character. This is true of both the exclusive and inclusive forms; for example, the use of the exclusive form (i.e., “We believe this to be true”, an individual speaking for a perceived or literal group) raises the value of the speaker so that his opinion is being expressed as representative of the group as a whole, while the inclusive form is often used in political rhetoric (i.e.: “We will create a strong country”, spoken to a group) to rally the audience around the goals of the speaker. Both instances can indicate a focus on self, depending on the motive of the speaker. In his book The Secret Life of Pronouns: What our Words Say about Us, James Pennebaker discusses this linguistic pattern by arguing that when speakers are overconfident and self-assured, they will use a much higher frequency of we, us, and our in their discourse turns. To illustrate his point, Pennebaker provides dialogue from two individuals who, in the past, have been generally accepted as overconfident and self-assured, one from a real-world speech situation, the early speeches from Rudolph Giuliani’s

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mayoral career, and the other from a literary text, the early speeches of King Lear from the Shakespearean play that bears his name. In both instances, the use of first-person plural pronouns was high.24 In Paradise Lost, Satan uses 118 first-person plural pronoun references, which comprise 1.58% of his total dialogue; in contrast, Messiah never uses first-person plural pronouns. The lack of any usage of first-person plural pronouns on the part of Messiah is extremely odd, especially with the prevalence of the Pluralis Majestatis in royal English dialogue, and foregrounds this aspect of his speech. This linguistic phenomenon supports the idea of Satan as the embodiment of the classical military hero and Messiah as the Christian hero. The classical military hero is completely self-assured, even to the point of arrogance. The search for and attaining of kleos is what drives this type of hero and is personified by a preoccupation with self. In contrast, the Christian hero is “not proud or self-willed”25; he is never focused on himself or on his own desires.

Quantity of Words Used: Empty Verbiage versus Substance Another linguistic feature that can give insight into the heroic natures of Satan and Messiah is the quantity of words used during their discourse turns. Satan’s classic heroic struggle to obtain kleos can be seen in his total word count per discourse turn. Satan averages 225.41 words per discourse turn; however, when the data is subdivided into two groups, Satan speaking to himself and subordinates, versus Satan speaking to equals, it truly reveals Satan’s desire to obtain kleos. Table 1 shows all of the discourse turns that Satan takes with himself and his subordinates. The second column of Table 1, “Discourse Event”, refers to the order in which the discourse turns appear in a respective book, with one being the first time the character speaks in the book, two being the second, and so on. I created this numbering system to bring consistency to my research methodology. As seen in Table 1, when Satan speaks to himself or his subordinates, he uses an average of 258.77 words per discourse turn. This is 33.36 words more than the average of all of his discourse turns; however, the average length of Satan’s discourse turns when he is addressing an equal is 164.25 words (See Table 2), a difference of 94.52 words when compared with the average discourse turn spoken to a subordinate.

The Heroic Struggle: Classical and Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost 167

Table 1 Satan Discourse Turns with Subordinates Book Number

Discourse Event

Word Count

1

1

315

1

2

266

1

3

244

1

4

313

2

1

244

2

2

268

2

3

54

2

4

72

2

5

229

2

6

138

4

1

631

4

2

278

4

3

241

5

1

165

5

2

230

5

3

144

6

3

200

6

4

275

6

5

85

9

1

770

10

1

200

10

2

331 Average 258.77

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Table 2 Satan’s Discourse Turns with Equals Book Number

Speech Event

Word Count

3

1

208

4

4

141

4

5

134

4

6

157

4

7

55

6

1

157

6

2

148

9

3

124

9

4

346

9

5

40

9

6

27

9

7

434 Average 164.25

These figures reveal a desperate attempt by Satan to establish credibility and glory in the eyes of his subordinates by using significantly more words to argue his perspective. When confronted by an equal, such as an archangel, he generally does not attempt to use as many words. One could even argue that Satan knows that his equals will not buy into his arguments of self-glorification, knowing him only as a pitiful rebel who was easily defeated by Messiah. For example, in book 4, Satan argues back and forth with Gabriel, a fellow archangel. His replies are quick and angry, never attempting to justify his actions because he knows that Gabriel can quickly spot the flaws in all of his justifications and self– glory. In his last reply to Gabriel, Satan shoots back a harsh 55-word retort: 7. Then when I am thy captive talk of chaines, / Proud limitarie Cherube, but ere then/ Farr heavier load thy self expect to feel/ From my prevailing arme, though Heavens King/ Ride on thy wings, and thou with thy Compeers, Us’d to the yoak, draw’st his triumphant wheels/ In progress through the rode of Heav’n Star-pav’d.26

The Heroic Struggle: Classical and Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost 169

The discourse turn found in example 7, which is spoken to an equal, can be contrasted with Satan’s address to the fallen angels in book 1, in which he uses lengthy speeches to convince his followers of his kleos and remind them of their disenfranchisement. The word count for Messiah’s discourse turns stands in contrast to those of Satan. Messiah averages only 149.63 words per discourse turn, 75.78 words fewer than Satan. What is more striking than simply the raw data is when the discourse turns are again divided into two groups: subordinates versus superiors. This is a slightly different grouping than that used for Satan, as Messiah does not have equals; however, the substitution is appropriate given the hierarchical structure set up by the poem. When the discourse turns are divided in such a way, the data show that Messiah follows a completely opposite pattern of word usage than Satan. Table 3 Messiah Discourse Turns with Subordinate Book Number

Speech Event

Word Count

6

2

176

10

2

99

10

3

45

10

4

101

10

5

187 Average 121.6

Table 4 Messiah Discourse Turns with Superior Book Number

Speech Event

Word Count

3

1

174

3

2

311

5

1

58

6

1

181

10

1

131

11

1

183 Average 173

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When Messiah speaks with a subordinate, such as an angel or human, he uses an average of 121.6 words per discourse turn (See Table 3); however, when he is speaking to his superior, God the Father, he uses an average of 173 words per discourse turn (See Table 4). Using fewer words with his subordinates, unlike Satan, indicates that Messiah is not attempting to convince them of his glory, for the Father has already given and substantiated his glory. For example, in Book 10, Messiah travels to Paradise to speak with Adam, at which time he uses only forty-five words in his first discourse turn to communicate with him quickly: 8. My voice thou oft hast heard, and hast not fear’d,/ But still rejoyc’t, how is it now become/ So dreadful to thee? that thou art naked, who/ Hath told thee? hast thou eaten of the Tree/ Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat?27

Clearly example 8 shows that Messiah is not seeking the approval of his subordinates like Satan, who desperately seeks for kleos. This supports the idea that Messiah is the representation of the Christian hero. A Christian hero does not “practice [his] righteousness in front of others to be seen by them”28; rather, he disregards what others think of him and he lives only to serve the Father. When Messiah speaks with the Father, his superior, he uses more words than with his subordinates. Satan attempts to limit communication with his equals because they will not believe his selfglorying speeches; however, Messiah has nothing to fear by speaking with the Father, as he lives only to serve him.

The Four Conversational Maxims: Dismissal for Glory In any discourse situation, there are unspoken expectations regarding the nature of communication; in 1975, Paul Grice, a philosopher and linguist, codified these expectations in his Four Conversational Maxims. The Maxims can be defined as follows: 1) The Quality Maxim: We expect that people will communicate only what they know or believe to be true. 2) The Quantity Maxim: We expect that events will be described with an appropriate amount of detail. 3) The Relation Maxim: We expect that all information will be relevant to the primary topic of communication. 4) The Manner Maxim: We expect that the communicator will avoid ambiguity without being overly loquacious.29, 30

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An analysis of a character’s adherence to or departure from these conversational maxims can be used to indicate that character’s level of commitment to truthful communication. Satan chooses to be dishonest, thus dismissing all four of the conversational maxims. The purpose of his dishonest communication is to bring glory to himself and validate his pursuit of kleos; this pursuit of glory mirrors that of the classical military hero. Although numerous examples exist in the text of Satan’s dismissal of the Maxims, I will provide only a limited number. In book 5, Satan openly breaks the Quality Maxim when he claims to be self-created.31 Satan knows that he is a created being, understanding that he does not possess the power to create. He chooses to communicate this false information so that he can glorify himself by hinting that he has more power then he truly does. Satan breaks the Relation Maxim in book 9 in his response to Eve’s inquiry about his ability to speak. Satan falsifies a story about his ability to speak, which would be a violation of the Quality Maxim, but at the end of the discourse turn (example 9), Satan violates the Relation Maxim by veering off topic, addressing why he came over to speak with her, then flattering her: 9. But all that fair and good in thy Divine/ Semblance, and in thy Beauties heav’nly Ray/ United I beheld; no Fair to thine/ Equivalent or second, which compel’d/ Mee thus, though importune perhaps, to come/ And gaze, and worship thee of right declar’d/ Sovran of Creatures, universal Dame.32

Satan’s violation of the Quantity and Manner Maxim can be seen in his overly verbose nature (See Tables 1 and 2). He consistently speaks more words than are necessary, while at the same time creating ambiguity and deception through omission of vital details. Satan embraces dishonest communication so that he can bring glory to himself, a sign of his classical heroic nature. Messiah is dedicated to truthful communication, a sign of his Christian hero status; this can be seen in his adherence to the four quality maxims. In example 10, Messiah accurately paraphrases Genesis, which states, “And the LORD God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die’”.33 Messiah asks Adam: 10. Hast thou eaten of the Tree/ Whereof I gave thee charge thou shouldst not eat.34

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Satan inaccurately paraphrases this section of scripture when he asks Eve: 11. Hath God then said that of the Fruit/ Of all these Garden Trees ye shall not eate, / Yet Lords declar’d of all in Earth or Aire?”35

Messiah’s adherence to the Quality Maxim seen in example 10 is paralleled to the instance of Satan breaking it in example 11. This juxtaposition demonstrates Messiah’s commitment to truthful communication while at the same time highlighting Satan’s rejection of it. Messiah chooses to adhere to the Relation Maxim by staying on topic and being “to the point” in his communication. This can best be seen in book 10 when he speaks with Adam and Eve in the garden after their fall. In example 12, Messiah uses a short phrase to communicate with Eve quickly and concisely: 12. Say Woman, what is this which thou hast done?”36

Messiah uses short discourse turns to stay completely on topic, never veering from the task at hand. Messiah’s adherence to the Quantity and Manner Maxim can be seen in the limitation of words used in his discourse turns (See Tables 3 and 4). Messiah restricts his word usage and never “[uses] two words where one will do”.37 Messiah’s overall commitment to truthful communication reinforces his Christian hero status.

Conclusions Based upon the linguistic evidence presented in this essay, the reading of Paradise Lost that acknowledges the classical military heroism of Satan while highlighting Messiah as the Christian hero of this Christian epic is greatly substantiated. This essay represents the beginning of a lifetime of research that can be conducted regarding Milton’s use of language in the construction of this poem. The next phase of this research will be to expand the areas of linguistic focus for Satan and Messiah and see if the findings of this essay continue to hold true. In addition, to further substantiate Satan as a classical military hero, an analysis of the discourse turns of Achilles from Homer’s Iliad will be conducted in order to see if the linguistic tendencies of Satan and Achilles parallel. I also think it prudent to begin an analysis of Adam’s discourse turns, as he is also seen by some as a contender for the title of Milton’s epic hero.

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Bibliography Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Boston: John W. Luce and Company, 1906. Crissey, Clair M. Layman’s Bible Book Commentary: Matthew. Vol.15, Nashville: Broadman, 1981. Grice, H. Paul. “Logic and Conversation.” Syntax and Semantics 3, no.1 (1975): 41-58. The Holy Bible. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003. (New International Version). “Kleos (κλέος)”. Greek-English Lexicon. Ed. H.G. Liddell and R. Scott. 9th ed., 1996. Lattimore, Richmond. “Introduction.” The Iliad of Homer. By Homer. Translated by Richmond Lattimore. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. Lewis, C.S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1942. “Meek”. The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed., 2012. Milton, John. Paradise Lost. The John Milton Reading Room. Dartmouth College. Ed. Thomas H. Luxon. N.p. N.d., Web. 3 March 2012. Pennebaker, James W. The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say about Us. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011. Sarma, M.V. Rama. The Heroic Argument: A Study of Milton’s Heroic Poetry. Bombay: Macmillan and Company, 1971. Shelley, Percy. Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts. Rutgers University. Ed. Jack Lynch. N.p. N.d. Web. 24 April 2012. Short, Mick. Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose. Harlow: Pearson Education, 1996. Steadman, John. “The Idea of Satan as the Hero of Paradise Lost.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Aug. 13, 1976. 120, no. 4 (1976): 253-294.

Notes 1

John Steadman, “The Idea of Satan as the Hero of Paradise Lost,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 120, no. 4 (1976): 253-294. Date Originally Delivered Aug. 13, 1976. 2 Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (Boston: John W. Luce and Company, 1906), 9-10. 3 Ibid., 10. 4 Percy Shelley, “Prometheus Unbound: A Lyrical Drama in Four Acts” Rutgers University, http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Texts/prometheus.html. 5 C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1942), 102.

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Rama M. V. Sarma, The Heroic Argument: A Study of Milton’s Heroic Poetry (Bombay: Macmillan and Company, 1971), 83. 7 Ibid., 78. 8 Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed., s.v. “κλέος (kleos).” 9 Ibid., “αρετή (arête).” 10 Ibid., “τιμη (time).” 11 Richmond Lattimore, “Introduction,” The Iliad of Homer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 47. 12 Claire M. Crissey, Layman’s Bible Book Commentary: Matthew. Vol. 15 (Nashville: Broadman, 1981), 30. 13 Matt. 5:5 (New International Version). 14 Oxford English Dictionary. Online ed. s.v. “meek”. 15 Matt. 6:1 (NIV). 16 Matt. 5.37. (NIV). 17 Milton, Paradise Lost. The John Milton Reading Room- Dartmouth College. 3 March 2012. bk. 10, lines 182 -192. 18 Ibid., bk 3, lines 236-237. 19 Ibid., bk. 11, lines 38-42. 20 Ibid., bk. 11, lines 42-44. 21 Ibid., bk. 2, lines 388-823. 22 Ibid., bk. 6, lines 164-167. 23 Ibid., bk. 2, lines 822-823. 24 James W. Pennebaker, The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say about Us (New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2011), 113. 25 Oxford English Dictionary. Online ed. s.v. “meek”. 26 Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. 4, lines 970-976. 27 Ibid., bk.10, lines 119-123. 28 Matt. 6:1 (NIV). 29 Paul H. Grice, “Logic and Conversation,” Syntax and Semantics 3, no. 1 (1975): 41-58. 30 Mick Short, Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose (Harlow: Pearson Education, 1996), 240-241. 31 Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. 5, line 860. 32 Ibid., bk. 9, lines 606-612. 33 Gen. 2:16-17 (NIV). 34 Milton, Paradise Lost, bk 10, lines122-123. 35 Ibid., bk 9, lines 666-668. 36 Ibid., bk. 10, line 158. 37 Short, Exploring the Language, 241.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN TEACHING PARADISE LOST: LET’S BE HONEST MATTHEW W. BENNETT

Upon examining opinions and modes of thinking in any text, the scholar becomes aware that every text is an organism. Texts carry with them limitless avenues and applications—each open for exploration and analysis from endless points of view. Additionally, readers, scholars and critics bring to texts preconceived thoughts, ideologies, biases, and opinions that all have tenable applications. This is the central struggle of interpretation—where debate, accomplishment, decision, praise and offense are born—as the organic text clashes with its audience in infinite permutations. Invariably, this dynamic relationship results in varying degrees of intellectual honesty that, I believe, are dependent on the reader’s devotion to the background of the text and to the degree of liberty that he or she assumes therein. This is the central struggle of interpretation in all texts, and few texts have created such a controversy of readings as Milton’s Paradise Lost. In the relationship between Paradise Lost and its readers, two interpretations have overwhelmed the scholarly conversation since Milton published the first edition: first, a Christian reading characteristic of Milton and his contemporary audience and famously represented by C. S. Lewis, and second, a secular reading presently characteristic of a postmodern audience and evidenced famously by Stanley Fish. In this essay, I mean to assert that these two schools of thought do not necessarily represent mutually exclusive viewpoints. I believe they are two possibilities vying for the best interpretation of the text and are not obligated to oppose one another. It is the standard practice in modern scholarship that attempts to force one reading as supreme and render all others nil. Thus, in this essay, I attempt to answer the questions: if more than one understanding of Paradise Lost is at least very common, why has no definitive decision been more widely accepted? Why is the conflict still

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so prevalent and the meaning still so widely debated? And ultimately, if no resolution is present, how does a professor teach such a text in a way that is both intellectual and honest? To better understand each of the available readings, one may investigate a characteristic sample of C. S. Lewis’ Preface to Paradise Lost and Stanley Fish’s first chapter from Surprised by Sin, “Not so much a Teaching as an Intangling.” Lewis’ case exemplifies the characteristically Christian understanding of Paradise Lost as he explains its “overwhelmingly Christian” nature.1 Lewis defends the position that Paradise Lost was “calculated to produce” a specific effect on “the ordinary educated and Christian audience in Milton’s time.”2 This purpose, according to Milton, was to “justify the ways of God to men.”3 But Milton’s motives, for Lewis, would have undoubtedly been evangelical—to further his Christian moral agenda. This being the case, much has been complained with regard to Satan’s being the overwhelming focal point for much of the text. However, according to Lewis, Satan’s prevalence is no issue, as he explains, “the imitation in art of unpleasing objects may be a pleasing imitation” nonetheless.4 Lewis states that it is “of course, true that Satan is the best drawn of Milton’s characters;” however, his audience was one that “still believed that there really was such a person as Satan, and that he was a liar.”5 Therefore, it would have been an exact impossibility for the Puritan of Milton’s day to see the father of falsehood exhibit a single heroic characteristic in any sense of the definition. Lewis explains, [I]t was the poet’s intention to be fair to evil, to give it a run for its money—to show it first at the height, with all its rants and melodrama and ‘Godlike imitated state’ about it, and then to trace what actually becomes of such self-intoxication when it encounters reality.6

Lewis contends that this bringing to light of evil “is what makes Paradise Lost so serious a poem:”7 that it was intended for an audience incapable of conceiving Satan as anything good and thus capable of receiving revelation—Milton’s repentance message beginning with the Fall of man. Conversely, the implication is that the poem is contemporarily interpreted by an audience that has no Puritan conviction of Satan’s evil and only a marginal Puritan belief in his existence; the audience is, in effect, left out in the cold trusting the authority of a fictional character the author firmly believed to be non-fiction. This unintentional falsifying of Milton’s reality of Satan serves as a convenient transition to Fish’s argument in “Not so much a Teaching as an Intangling,” where he vies to view the Satan character, and Milton’s

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fixation on him, as an intentional technique to lull the reader into a trusting relationship. Satan, regardless of his reality, is a means to an end. Fish explains that Milton’s “fine phrases [are meant to] flatter the desires of the cupidinous self, and perpetuate the disorder which has reigned in the soul since the fall.”8 He also explains, “the danger is not so much that Satan’s arguments will persuade” but compromise the righteousness of Adam and Eve— “that [his] intricacy will engage the reader’s attention and lead him into error” residually.9 It is a game of rhetoric, meant to tempt into an action, not persuade a point of view or even gain loyalty; to be effective for Milton’s audience, Satan’s rhetoric and leading was relegated to the realm of proximity and humanity, giving him human characteristics and constant narrative presence to gain favor from an audience hostile to the character’s non-fictional counterpart. Thus, to summarize the camps represented by Fish and Lewis, they unanimously agree at two junctures: Satan is a clear focal point with a constant narrative presence, and Milton’s faith “would hardly allow him to write an epic which did not attempt to give his audience a basis for moral action.”10 While Milton’s intentionality cannot be gainsaid, there remains the issue of debate over which interpretation ought to be viewed as more authoritative. To be completely honest to the text, one must not disregard any reading that has survived the entire life of that text; if collaborative reason has not yet disproved it, it mandates at least some recognition. Placing Paradise Lost in its original historical context, in a culture dominated by Puritan Christianity, will offer a strictly Christian understanding in which readers will immediately distance themselves from the main character, Satan. John Dryden is arguably the first to counter this Puritan reading, controversially, just a few years after the first publishing of Paradise Lost, and herein, it is exemplified by Stanley Fish. If the effect is two interpretations that have survived the life of the text, it may seem improbable for the cause to lie within the space-time gap. However, I believe the true cause lies within the composition of the majority audience across this time-gap. Between 1667 and today, the majority audience has redistributed from being overwhelmingly Puritan to primarily secular. Furthermore, a secular reading of Paradise Lost, such as that demonstrated by Fish, is not dissimilar to reader-response criticism. Informed by this theory, the reader’s focus is free to shift “from Milton’s interests and intentions” that are available “only at a distance, to our responses which are available directly.”11 Thus, in the reading that encompasses much of today’s scholarship, modern culture and ideologies take precedence over Milton’s.

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It becomes clear that the gridlock can seem irresolvable as both camps have merit and have arrived at logical conclusions. Yet, if there are two viewpoints represented by these samples that can trace back to Milton’s time, how does one do justice to Paradise Lost and teach it in a way honoring the author, the text and ourselves? If we teach the poem, which reading ought to take precedence in the classroom? I believe the answer is not one or the other, but both. If both have survived over 300 years of scholarship and criticism, then both have merit, and both necessitate discussion. Yet, further to understand the scope and relationship between the readings and the text, the text must be consulted to discover the evidence supporting why some scholars choose one respective reading over another, and if teaching both is a valid option. From the onset, a Christian in Milton’s time will view Satan to be a predetermined villain, judged, convicted and sentenced with no trial. He can serve no other purpose in the reality of the Christian—which, for a Christian or Puritan, supersedes the reality of literature—or as Lewis puts it, “mere Christianity commits every Christian to believing that ‘the Devil is (in the long run) an ass’” prior to addressing the text.12 For this reason, it is possible many Christians may miss instances of Milton’s intentional enrichment of Satan’s pagan heroic qualities many scholars have enumerated. A Christian reader may only gather Milton’s intentional degradations. Thus, when a Christian encounters Satan’s pomp and circumstance and “Godlike imitated state” clouded with glorious imagery of his “throne of royal state, which far/ Outshone the wealth of Ormuz and of Ind,” he or she instantly calls Satan’s bluff; in Book 2, he’s already sentenced and deemed a mockery deserving of Hell.13 The text clearly wishes to show “Satan exalted,” not worshipfully, but exalted; he’s lifted up, enthroned, in Hell, but enthroned nonetheless in a clear allusion.14 The presence of the demonic inhibits the Christian from sympathizing with Satan’s lowly dejection and parody of God’s glory. His “sense of injured merit” becomes a comic joke, rather than a closing of the rhetorical gap between reader and text that, for a Puritan author, is in no way accidental.15 With the primary figure of the first nine books of Paradise Lost taken out of the equation of heroism, the only remaining character capable, and arguably the only one available for the Puritan, is Messiah. For the Christian audience, Messiah represents a salvific hero, a Christian hero whose heroism surpasses that of Beowulf, even Sir Gawain, and certainly Achilles. No matter the story, if Christ is present, he is the ultimate figure, the surpassing hero. For Milton’s original Puritan audience, these ideas

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would have been engrained and fundamental: detest Satan; exalt Christ, regardless of his comparably minor physical presence. Though a Christian’s ideas of heroism and Satan would have been preconceived and transcendent from the text itself, those of a secular audience, today’s majority, are far more ambiguous. A postmodern interpretation does not conceive of any inherent good, nor inherent evil. Buchholz and Mandel explain, “Even as society [has] moved to a secular focus from a religious one, people’s powerful struggles to maintain goodness continued to infiltrate thoughts and feelings.”16 They continue by explaining that Christianity’s imprint is still relatively intact as its conceptions of good and evil “remain—that acting in a manner similar to God is good, while acting in a manner that conflicts with God and the commandments is bad.”17 The primary difference in the two camps is that those ascribing to a secular reading do not find it distasteful to empathize with the character of Satan. Thus, as A. J. A. Waldock explains, the reader’s first view of Satan in Book 1 is a figure of “fortitude in adversity, enormous endurance, a certain splendid recklessness, remarkable power of rising to an occasion, [and] extraordinary qualities of leadership.”18 So supporting him as the heroic protagonist is relatively effortless. In contrast, from a Christian perspective, Satan’s soliloquy in book 4 holds no founding except to confirm his evil and villainy at its end. The Christian may tend to gloss over the sympathetic notions toward Satan and augment the diction condemning him, drawing inspiration from lines such as, “The tempter ere the accuser of mankind, / To wreak on innocent frail man his loss.”19 But from a secular perspective, this line is simply plot summary, setting up the events to come; there’s no struggle viewing him as battalion commander plotting an attack. Thus, when Satan “slumbered, wakes the bitter memory/ Of what he was, what is, and what must be/ Worse; of worse deeds worse sufferings must ensue,” they serve only to characterize the foreshadowing of injustice and recompense that only the secular perspective may entertain as necessary or even possible; for Satan needs no reparation for the Christian.20 The soliloquy then serves to once again shrink the distance between reader and Satan, allowing the secular reader the ability to find in Satan qualities of himself. At the beginning, an introspective Satan sits alone, venturing down a line of thought that starts in sadness and bitterness and moves through a series of emotions ending with anger, something all of humanity can relate to. To the same end, like an angry and punished child, Satan asserts to the sun, symbolic of God’s glorious Light and God himself, “I hate thy beams.”21 Here, Satan begins a long exposition on his fallen state as the result of God’s injustice. He later questions, “Is there no place/ Left for

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repentance, none for pardon left?”22 Still later, he answers his own question by saying, “This knows my punisher; therefore as far/ From granting he, as I from begging peace:/ All hope excluded thus, behold instead/ Of us outcast, exiled.”23 For a secular audience, this process of pleading with a punisher for repentance, then accepting its denial, is one universally understood that evokes emotions easy to access. Thus it is easy to see the character of Satan’s availability to a secular audience as well as Satan’s mandated distance from a Christian audience. Therefore, with a wealth of evidence in such a small piece of the twelve-book epic displaying the overt accessibility of two readings, how then does one choose which is more authoritative and deserving of the classroom? The answer must be made simpler rather than more complex. If a professor were to delineate a single reading in a course on Milton or Paradise Lost, the audience in the respective classroom will, in that instant, become divided while only half-represented. The one taught would subjugate the other. Marginalization in any classroom is counterintuitive to the function and purpose of liberal education. To teach a single perspective, when others are present, is to cause a rift not only in the audience but also in the text itself. To do a text and an audience complete justice, instructors must be intellectually honest and rhetorically sound by giving equal time to all parties. Now what of Milton? When one brings the author into the equation, by virtue, his or her intentionality follows. Was one reading or interpretation intended over the other? There are three possible scenarios available to the astute reader. First, Milton may have simply been ignorant of the impending argument now prevalent. Waldock speaks to this notion in saying, “Milton’s central theme denied him the full expression of his deepest interests… as [they] could not find outlet in his poem in the right way, they might find outlet in the wrong way.”24 However, Fish counters, “Milton is correcting not a mistake of composition, but the weakness all men evince in the face of eloquence. The error is his, not Milton’s; and when Waldock invokes some unidentified critical principle he objects to an effect Milton anticipates and desires.”25 So if Fish is accurate, and Milton is not ignorant of this dichotomy of readings and interpretations but in fact is expectant, then second, he could be committing mutiny on his own culture. He could be aware of his own Puritan culture and the audience’s perspective but desires to subvert and desert his own philosophies, opting for a secular reading alone—thus, this could be his motive: to focus on Satan as a possible protagonist. However, with even a cursory understanding of Milton’s life and other writings, this is a complete impossibility. Again, Milton himself did not say his motive is to

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justify the ways of Satan and man, to God.26 Lastly, if Milton is not ignorant, nor desirous of a wholly secular reading, it is conclusively possible that he intended both readings to occur and potentially, I submit, for one to lead into and achieve the end of the other. This idea reveals a deeper meaning to the text. Milton, with a Puritan moral agenda, utilized Satan as the only character available for his audience to relate to. I believe he keeps Messiah high and lifted up, God gloriously abstract, Adam and Eve beautifully, wonderfully and perfectly created, and thus all four other main characters are rendered unavailable for relation to an audience, Christian or secular, comprised fully of fallen individuals. A fallen angel, though very different from fallen man, is vastly more similar to his audience than anything unfallen. From this perspective, Satan becomes the audience’s acting protagonist; though his task is inherently evil, he remains the only being capable of drawing commonplaces with the audience, Milton’s intentional rhetorical strategy. To me, it’s not until Book 9 that Satan’s character becomes universally detestable, as he states, “For only in destroying I find ease/ to my relentless thoughts.”27 It is here that Satan’s darkness and deceit cross over into the realm of maniacal sadism. From this point to the events of the Fall of man, the audience is in a state of confusion. But after the Fall, I believe, the audience is left empty and introspective of their own darkness that they would stand in company of such evil, and are left, like Adam and Eve, in need of a savior. Fish explains, “In the manner of the Old Law, the poem is designed to ‘call forth and develop our natural depravity; … that it might impress us with a slavish fear… that it might be a schoolmaster to bring us to the righteousness of Christ’.”28 Thus, for Milton, his evangelistic and didactic agenda is apparent throughout his focus on Satan as well as in the books after the Fall. He intended his audiences, secular and Christian, to encounter and share in Satan’s complaints, but then have abruptly revealed to themselves their own depravity through commonplaces with Satan prior to his true revealed identity. It is this interpretation that is most honest for professors to understand and teach. It encompasses both the author and the text and all angles of approach. Since the birth of the secular perspective with John Dryden’s calling Satan a hero a mere four years after Milton’s first edition, both a secular reading and Christian reading have survived in conversation, yet neither proves more favorable when honestly surveying the text alone. However, given Milton’s incredibly adept mastery of language and the epic style, he is not an author ignorant of the effects of his rhetoric, nor does he hide an anti-Christian agenda. Milton both expected this dilemma

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of interpretation and intended its controversy as a rhetorical strategy that is necessary for the intellectually honest teacher to comprehend and teach.

Bibliography Buchholz, Ester S. and Joshua K. Mandel. “Reaching for Virtue, Stumbling on Sin: Concepts of Good and Evil in a Postmodern Era.” Journal of Religion and Health 39, no. 2 (2000): 123-142. Fish, Stanley. “Not So Much a Teaching as an Intangling.” In Literary Theory: An Anthology. 2nd ed., edited by Julie Rivken and Michael Ryan, 195-216. Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Lewis, C. S. A Preface to Paradise Lost. New York: Oxford University Press, 1961. Milton, John. “Paradise Lost.” in The Major Works, edited by Stephen Orgel and Johnathan Goldberg, 355-669. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Waldock, A. J. A. Paradise Lost and its Critics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1947.

Notes 1

C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (New York: Oxford UP, 1961), 92. Ibid., 91. 3 Milton, Paradise Lost, in The Major Works, ed. Stephen Orgel and Johnathan Goldberg (New York: Oxford UP, 2008), bk. 1, line 26. 4 Lewis, 94. 5 Ibid., 100. 6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. 8 Stanley Fish, “Not So Much a Teaching as an Intangling,” in Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd ed., ed. Julie Rivken and Michael Ryan (Boston: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 197. 9 Ibid., 199. 10 Ibid., 195. 11 Ibid., 196. 12 Lewis, 95. 13 Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. 2, lines 1-2. 14 Ibid., bk 2, line 5. 15 Ibid., bk. 1, line 98. 16 Ester S. Buchholz and Joshua K. Mandel, “Reaching for Virtue, Stumbling on Sin: Concepts of Good and Evil in a Postmodern Era,” Journal of Religion and Health 39, no. 2 (2000): 131. 17 Ibid., 132. 2

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18 A. J. A. Waldock, Paradise Lost and its Critics (New York: Cambridge UP, 1947), 77. 19 Milton, Paradise Lost, bk 4, lines 10-11. 20 Ibid., bk. 4, lines 24-26. 21 Ibid., bk. 4, line 37. 22 Ibid., bk. 4, lines 79-80. 23 Ibid., bk. 4, lines 103-106. 24 Waldock, 24. 25 Fish, 198. 26 Milton, Paradise Lost, bk. 1, line 26. 27 Ibid., bk. 9, lines 129-130. 28 Fish, 212.

PART V: SAINTLY AND UNSAINTLY WOMEN IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE CULTURE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN “UN NOUVEL ROYAUME DE FEMENIE”:1 CHRISTINE DE PIZAN’S CONSTRUCTION OF A KINGDOM COME FOR WOMEN ANNE BABSON

The word “utopia” does not apply to Christine de Pizan‘s City of Ladies, for the word utopia, in its root meaning, is “nowhere,” a place that neither is nor ever can be. True, the narrative of The Book of the City of Ladies is wholly allegorical in its telling. Three female allegorical figures—Lady Reason, Lady Justice, and Lady Rectitude—pull Christine out of a despair she feels at reading misogynist texts of her day and assure her that the revered men of letters have misunderstood women entirely. They then have her, by use of the ink of her pen as mortar, write and rewrite the stories of great women of antiquity and the present day. These women constitute “stones” in the building of a city that will admit women of virtue who will never die. How, then, can one reasonably assert that this is not simply a utopian pie-in-the-sky vision of a place for which one may yearn but never see on Earth, not a utopia but a true topos, at least in the vision and exhortation of its author? One must examine the notion of Heavenly Jerusalem as it was understood by medieval Christians and specifically Christine de Pizan. Far from imagining an eternity of a stagnant and ghostly eternal existence in Heaven—think of twentieth-century cartoons of people with haloes sitting on clouds with nothing to do but play harps and blissfully sigh—many Christians in Christine’s day, including Christine herself, believed in a return of Jesus to Earth with a holy city of Heaven descending to Earth to remain on the planet for eternity in glory. This belief was so generally held in a literal manner by medieval Christians that it in great part inspired the undertaking of the Crusades, for to take Earthly Jerusalem from the non-Christians who held it was to ask Christ to return now that the church was waiting for him in the place of his foretold return.

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It was a motif in the visual arts, in architecture, song, and poetry of Christine’s time. Furthermore, this notion of a Heavenly Jerusalem was one that was both individuated and expressive of the individual, not solely the communal. Most particularly interesting to the work of Christine de Pizan, the city of Heavenly Jerusalem is expressed in the feminine in scripture. In this essay, I present a context for the thinking and rhetorical strategies of The Book of the City of Ladies in light of this recurring trope in the late Middle Ages and argue that this city was an individuated, feminized redemption that was neither merely allegorical nor fantastical, that it was, in fact, an exhortation to the women of her time and ours to be believers in our own spiritual and moral worth, and consequently, our inalienable political rights. I will start by addressing the multiple functions of Christine’s “stones” by contextualizing them in biblical discourse of a simultaneous, layered understanding of the sacred as expressed around, but not exclusive to, the person of Christ. I will then demonstrate that the feminized and polyvalent nature of Christine’s City corresponds to the sacred feminine elements of the Bible’s Heavenly Jerusalem, which is also multiple in iteration, and the Church’s veneration of the Virgin Mary. I will show that, far from being mere speculative fiction, Le Livre de la Cité des Dames2 is a call to construct a better world for women, one where misogyny will be cast into Hell, as all heresies will be with the descent of the Holy City to Earth. Paul writes that God has made believers sit (and continue to sit) in heavenly places through the power of Christ3. To believe this to be true in a present-tense way, for the medieval Christian, does not mean that Earth has been replaced by Heaven in his or her life—rather, Heaven and Earth are simultaneously present in the quotidian experience of living. If all the people who believe in Jesus and who are alive today were made to sit in Heaven, it would not eliminate the experience of daily life on this planet, which remains more often than not a struggle. Saint Augustine reconciled this notion for the early church with the metaphysical understanding of the philosopher Plotinus, who believed that the visible realm was a mask for an invisible one, often including a kind of symbolic mirroring in this realm.4 For Augustine, influenced by Plotinus, the world’s physical manifestations, in all its myriad iterations, are an invitation to a greater understanding of all things metaphysical. The natural is indicative of the spiritual. This lends to the early and medieval church a multilayered understanding of the physical realm—the physical is in itself, but it indicates the invisible state of affairs. This exists, too, throughout the

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discourse of the Bible, without apostrophe from early patriarchs of Rome. One simple and direct example of this can be seen in John’s epistle to Gaius, in which he writes—I offer it in the Vulgate available to Christine de Pizan—“carissime de omnibus orationem facio prospere te ingredi et valere sicut prospere agit anima tua.”5 In other words, for the ancients, as well as the medieval thinkers, the outer prosperity, or thriving, of a person, circumstance, or thing would logically be mirrored by an interior, spiritual thriving. The allegorical and the natural are so intertwined in this manner of viewing existence that the creation of an allegory can be understood as a petition to natural people to change the world around them by human efforts, which they would find, to use the words of Jesus, loosed on Earth as it is in Heaven.6 Meyer understands medieval architecture and Christine de Pizan’s own architecture of a city of ladies in similar terms. She says, “The Plotinian metaphysical process that Augustine adapted to serve his own spiritual vision is also the intellectual basis for the medieval understanding of the symbol”.7 In other words, for the world of the Middle Ages, “heaven begins on earth”.8 The allegorical truth is forever also a concrete truth. Reality as it is understood in the era of the early fifteenth century is multilayered, the seen and the unseen realms interacting together, mirroring each other. This kind of thinking about allegory, the one that permeated the grand architectural structures in the region where Christine lived— where within the literary tradition of vernacular middle French the lais9 and the folk tales used allegory as a strategy to tell both fable and truth— would have given her a foundation from which to choose an allegorical strategy constructing the rhetoric of her Livre de la Cite des Dames.10 Furthermore, the theological thinking behind the construction of great French cathedrals would have been readily available to a woman as welleducated as she was and as fascinated as she was by all matters pertaining to the Church. If ever a space were multiple in its iterations in the era of Christine de Pizan, it is the city of Jerusalem. The very name Jerusalem—“Yerusalaim” in Hebrew, is in the plural—“Jerusalems,” not Jerusalem, a single location located on Earth alone. The founding of Jerusalem is linked for both Christians and Jews to the vision Jacob has of a ladder, where angels travel to and from a stone on Earth.11 It is on this stone that Jerusalem is founded. Jews and Christians both look to this text as the place of the discovery of Heavenly Jerusalem, located directly above the place where the Earthly Jerusalem would be founded. Meyer writes of the medieval implications of Genesis 28:19 that Jacob’s stone represents a multiple space. She calls it: “a location for communication between God and his

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people. It is, literally, a stone on the ground where he lays his head but figuratively… a stairway to Heaven”.12 This understanding of a Jerusalem above connected to a Jerusalem below was often represented in the iconography of Christine de Pizan’s era. In Liber Floridus,13 Lambert of SaintOmert includes in his illustrated, twelfth-century encyclopedia a picture of a Heavenly Jerusalem14 that is directly stationed over the Earthly city of Jerusalem. This idea did not originate with him but is part and parcel of the thinking of his time. Of course, the church is interested in Heavenly Jerusalem most particularly, as it is the city that anticipates the return of Christ to Earth and will be his seat of governance from which he will judge the living and the dead. We see in this illumination a city anchored on the Earth, complete with vegetation and gates to keep out Earthly enemies, but it is crowned by a second city, one with no fortress needed, for it is the Jerusalem above, where the turrets are impregnable by any enemy. We see two towers that seem to connect the two municipalities together, suggesting a commerce between them. This reflects Jacob’s dream of passage between the sacred and the profane. As Meyer writes, in such a vision realized, “Jacob’s stone is as least as important as the ladder”.15 This image of an attainable, yet celestial, Jerusalem above is, in fact, the archetypal image of Heavenly Jerusalem for the Middle Ages. Churches built in the era in which Christine de Pizan lived and wrote were meant to evoke the descent of Heavenly Jerusalem onto the Earth.16 Jesus says multiple times in the Gospels that the Kingdom of God is at hand. Not only was the medieval expectation of the imminent arrival of New Jerusalem tangible; it could be, at least for the wealthy and powerful, rendered personal. Meyer observes, “In the late Middle Ages…the nobility built their Heavenly Jerusalems on intimate, personal scales” in Figure 1– Lambert, Canon of Saint-Omer "Heavenly Jerusalem", an illumination appearing in Liber Floridus, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

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the form of private chapels, with Sainte Chapelle being one of the most lovely surviving examples, chapels of their own making and with a liturgy selected by the families to whom they belonged.17 Hence, notions of Heavenly Jerusalem as embodied by the church became individuated both in structure and to a large degree in word, at least among those of the noble and royal classes. Christine de Pizan, like members of the nobility, too, may have well imagined herself qualified to construct such a site, at least with words. One of the examples of this evocation of Jerusalem on Earth by master builders was Saint Denis. And it is very likely that Christine knew him. It is inscribed with text that indicates this, as the Abbé Suger wrote above its doors that identify Christ as the “true door.” “Bright is the noble work; but, being nobly bright, the work / Should brighten the minds, so that they may travel through the true lights, / To the true Light where Christ is the true door.…”18 This declaration of Christ as the door allows us to understand far better than we otherwise would, examining Le Livre de La Cité des Dames through a twenty-first century optic, the project of building a city where women constitute the architectural building blocks, the very stones of the edifices found there. The multiple and simultaneous iterations of reality that are found in medieval thinking about sacred space are also true for her characters—they are stones; they are women; they are buildings, walls, gates and doors. Of course, both the ladies of Christine’s book and the person of Jesus are also made up of words. The Abbé Suger takes his notion of Christ as the “true door” from the Gospel of John, but this is not the only relevant expression of Jesus’ existence germane to a medieval understanding of the polyvalent existence of Christ, for like the space that is evoked on Earth as it is in Heaven, so is Christ multiple things at once that might seem in a modern optic to be mutually exclusive—not so for a pre-modernist mindset at all. He exists as many things at once for the Church. Here are some of the multiple and simultaneous iterations of the person of Jesus that in no way contradicted another to the thinkers within the Church of Christine’s day. See how they also apply to Christine’s ladies: • Jesus as Word: Jesus in John is referred to as “The Word Made Flesh.”19 Of course, in the strictest sense of literal reality, the only incarnation that Christine’s characters have is on the page. They are made of words. • Jesus as Building Stone: Jesus is evoked prophetically in the Psalms as a building stone.20 Christine declares her ladies the “stones” of her city. She builds with them.

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• Jesus as door, gate, or entryway: In the same psalm, Jesus is prophetically invoked as a gate, or door.21 If readers had any reason to doubt this was the evocation of Jesus, He himself says in Matthew and John that he is either the path or the door.22 For Christianity, this element of Jesus’ existence is indispensable. While certain ladies certainly make up window frames and porticoes in her city, walking through the door that is Christ is what allows Christine here to even construct a new reality for women in her imagination. Jesus as door renews the spirit of the individual and removes not only the curse of Adam’s original sin but also the original sin of Eve. • Jesus as human: This is surely the most self-evident iteration of the person of Christ. That he is historically a human male, although his identification with the female, especially given his fleshly incarnation, comes via a human female, not via male descendants of Adam, is significantly understood by many in the Middle Ages to transcend strict notions of human gender.23 This transcendence of gender allows Christine to apply the same blessings that men get from Christ to herself and all women of virtue. • Jesus as Lord and Bridegroom: For the Church, the resurrection of Jesus establishes him as the ruler who will return to judge the quick and the dead when the prophecies of the Book of Revelation are fulfilled. In this role, we see him anticipating a celestial marriage with Heavenly Jerusalem.24 Each of these Christological iterations but the very last corresponds to the iterations of the women who are Christine de Pizan’s city’s “pierres”25—they are most obviously people, of course, about whom Christine recounts a narrative exemplum. This element of narrative, too, is self-evident; these women are words, and words make up the mortar of the city. The building is the same activity as the writing of the book of the City of Ladies. In the choice of wording in the middle French, we can see multiple meanings that point to strategies of political rhetoric as well as speculative fiction in Le Livre de la Cité des Dames.26 Quilligan notes the pun that exists in the writing of this text, which is a book, as well as a city, when both Rectitude and Reason exhort Christine, “maçonnes fort à la trampe de ta plume, car assez de quoy te livreray”.27 The word “livreray” means several things here—first, quite literally—it means that, as Quilligan translates, “I will deliver you” enough material for building the city. It also, as Quilligan further points out, involves a

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play on the word “livre,” meaning “book.” Further, though, I add that “te livreray” means “I will deliver you” equally—deliver you from captivity, from spiritual bondage, and from quite literal earthly political oppression. Quilligan also notes that even the allegorical ladies who do not make up the masonry of the city are the instructors of Christine as she builds. Raison, Justice and Rectitude exist in a place of multiple iteration as well. Christine is using the many layers of meaning available in the French vernacular to communicate a richly embroidered message—she is right to see the layers of meaning as a thickness of a wall that defends women.28 Kate Langdon Forhan, in her book The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan, observes that in writing an allegorical tale with political implications, Christine was innovating within an established rhetorical mode, the Christian mirror for princes. Forhan sees the approach, especially in the inclusion of the tales of pre-Christian heroines as “pierres”,29 as innovative, particularly as she sees Christine inventing texts or distorting existing authorities to convey her own ideas. She finds that in Christine’s work, “the authorities and the conventions of genre are turned upside down”.30 The very fact that Christine writes a text that is modeled after a book designed to instruct princes allows us to see that Le Livre de la Cité des Dames31 is a demand for the full inclusion of women in the power structures of her day. That the text describes a loftily perfect city without blemish does not remove this text from a political debate. Rather, it places her book squarely in the realm of political discourse precisely because she has used the metaphor of a perfect city-state as a rhetorical strategy in her argument. This text about the creation of a truly new place for women begins in a topos indicative of the condition of the world for women as Christine picks up her pen to begin her reinvention of that condition. She writes, “Selon la maniere que j’ai en usage et a quoy est dispose le exercise de ma vie, c’est assavoir en la frequentacion d’estude de lettres, un jour comme je feusse seant en ma cele, anvironnee de plusieurs volumes de diverses matieres…”.32 Here Christine situates herself in her “cell,” surrounded, it turns out, by misogynist texts that distress her. Given the spatial nature of the writing project she undertakes allegorically as architecture, the fact that she is in a cell lets us understand two things about what she calls “le exercise de ma vie”33—first, that like a monk, her residence is in a pious place, not a world-focused one, and her meditative reading is meant as an exercise in piety. Second, she is in a cell, walled up in books something like a prisoner in a jail, for the nature of these books written by male experts is to rob her of her liberty and her sense of her identity. A life of letters that are designed to disempower her is a life of captivity.

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Christine refers to herself three times in this book as a “clergece,”34 a term she seems to have coined to feminize “clerc”35—giving herself a comparable role to a man in a monastic position, rather than making herself like a bonne soeur,36 who might not have had the literacy or authorship of an expert in her day. Indeed, today, a woman preacher would be unlikely to raise eyebrows, but Christine in her methodology was excluded, as she would still be today by the Catholic Church, from the priestly function of giving sermons. Despite this, Josette A. Wisman points out that her writing used the structure of sermons, reflecting how much she was “a woman who empathized with the sufferings of all women.”37 As Christine despairs, both for herself and for other women, at the misogyny she reads, Christine places the discourse of misogyny in Cité immediately in theological terms: “Ha! Dieux, comment puet cecy estre? Car se je ne erre en lay foye, je ne doy mye doubter que ton infine sapience et tres parfaite bonté ait riens fait que tout ne soit bon?”38 Brown-Grant notes that Christine sees that viewing women as inferior creatures represents a theological error, in direct conflict with Genesis 1:31, where God sees that all He has created is very good, including woman. This portion of the text “not only establishes Christian doctrine as the criterion by which Christine can undermine the credibility of misogynist writers; it also uses theology in order to provide her with a model for her own authority”.39 Indeed, the advantage of using God, scripture, and Church doctrine as a basis to reclaim the rights of women, when other writers are using the same kinds of strategies to exclude and demean women, is a stroke of genius on Christine’s part, for if she can prove her case using the imagery and strategies of Christian thinking and narrative, she cannot be credibly refuted on the grounds most often used to condemn women to a lower status. Rather than abide in the direct rhetorical strategy of church doctrine, borrowing from the tradition of medieval romance, Christine enters the realm of allegory once she has established her central conflict—and her three noble ladies arrive. Brown-Grant points out that the arrival of the three allegorical women—Reason, Rectitude and Justice, resembles the arrival of the angel in Luke 1:29 for the annunciation (1991, 146), as does Christine’s reaction when she says, “Doubtant que ce fust aucune fantosme pour me tempter, fis en mon front le signe de la crois”.40 There is a kind of a literary subtext for this comparison that Brown-Grant doesn’t explore—for if the Virgin Mary is evoked at the moment of her annunciation, Mary’s response to the news of the angel is “Be it unto me according to your word”.41 It is, after all, a city that is a word made flesh that Christine will construct under the tutelage of these ladies. In fact, that

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is the notion that Reason explains to Christine that inhabits the person of Mary: “trop plus hault degre a acquis par Marie qu’il ne perdi par Eve, quant humanité est conjointe a deité”42 (1982, 24). In other words, Mary gave much, much more to humanity than Eve ever took away, since today man, or humanity, now reigns with God. The rubble Christine clears away in the initial phase of construction seems to be the shattered stone-story-person of Eve.43 Indeed, the monumental blame laid at Eve’s feet for every single sin ever committed by a man, not to mention all the subsequent sins of women, was the central excuse given by male misogynist writers for their disdain for the entire female gender, and therefore a trash heap indeed needed to be removed by Christine under the guidance of Reason. Literally, she must clear away all the rubbish that the men have strewn about. As Reason explains to Christine as work begins, “ignorence grasse ne fait mie a excuser. [. . .] Et semblablement se pourroit dire de toutes bonnes choses de quoy on peut et bien et mal user, toutevoies ne les doit on pas blasmer pourtant se les folz en abusent”44—gross ignorance does nothing to excuse the blaming womankind for the faults of one. There are too many narratives of women who deserve praise, not blame, and Christine builds her world with them. Reason takes Christine to the site of the city and tells her, “Fair daughter and dear friend, now I have prepared for you a large and wide ditch, completely cleared of earth, which I have carried out in large basketfuls on my shoulders….Take the trowel of your pen and ready yourself to lay down bricks and to labor diligently, for you can see here a great and large stone which I want to place as the first in the first row of stones in the foundation of your City…. I will throw it down for you”.45 It is thus a building of flesh made words, a mirror of Jesus’ iteration of the Word made flesh that is the project undertaken here by Reason and Christine. The invocation of this New World Order by the writing of this book is no less earnest in the beckoning of Heavenly Jerusalem than was the construction of Chartres. The stones Reason throws down are the narratives of great ancient women who have completed marvelous deeds, and the building of Pizan is to use her pen to rhetorically refute all the antifeminist propaganda of her era, refashioning a fortress of narratives in which women may comfortably dwell 46. Each story constitutes a building block, an argument, constituting ultimately a city built of the ephemera of ideas—each building block a heroic tale of Old Testament and pagan heroines, where women’s essential virtue is fully recognized.47 Some of these women are in fact narrated along the lines of the tradition of their narratives within the culture of the world Christine inhabited. Many more, however, are recast in Christine’s

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recounting of them or given apocryphal episodes entirely outside of the traditions that bring them to light. The apocryphal elements are surely indicative of the argument that Christine intends to present. Christine apocryphally attributes words of praise from Jesus to the Syro-Phoenecian woman, who reasons with Christ that she is deserving of the whole blessing of God despite not being Jewish,48 and she convinces him to heal her daughter, also a non-Jew. Christine says, “…Our Lord, turning to His Apostles, testified from His mouth that He had never found such faith in all of Israel…”.49 Hence, in reattributing what was said in fact by Jesus to a man, a Roman centurion who asks for the healing his servant,50 instead of to a wise woman, she is already appropriating the New Jerusalem to a group of wise women early on in her discourse. In keeping with her interest in the symbolic nature of the edifice of her city, she attributes apocryphally to the Queen of Sheba, who seeks out Solomon’s wisdom in the tenth chapter of First Kings in the Bible, the following story: “…While she was in Jerusalem and Solomon was leading her to see the noble temple which he had built, she saw long board lying over a mud puddle which served as a plank to cross his mire. Thereupon, seeing this board, the lady stopped and worshipped it, saying, ‘This board, now held in such great contempt and set underfoot, will, when the time comes, be honored above all other pieces of wood in the world and adorned with precious gems from the treasuries of princes. And He who will destroy the law of the Jews will die on the wood of this plank’…And it is said that from this plank the Cross was fashioned upon which our Savior suffered His death and passion, and thus this lady’s prophecy was fulfilled”.51 The Bible reports no such prophecy. However, for this world of Christine de Pizan’s New-Jerusalem-like city, a prophecy about a building material—a wooden plank, lowly in the building of Solomon’s temple, delicately echoes a biblical prophecy about Jesus, “The stone [which] the builders refused is become the head [stone] of the corner”52. This notion of the rejected, lowly piece of architectural material becoming essential to the edifice—this resonates both with notions of Christ and with Pizan’s understanding of the status of women in her society. In her view, women are much maligned and yet utterly essential to the soundness of the human experience. In feminizing this apocryphal tale through the Queen of Sheba, she is reappropriating a scriptural metaphor for women. Interestingly, too, in the realm of the pagans, Christine recasts classical goddesses as noble ladies of science. Christine asks Lady Reason what women have discovered new phenomena and techniques in the activities traditionally reserved for men; Pizan apocryphally converts the pagan goddesses Minerva, Ceres and Isis to queens and mortal women of

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learning,53 whom she seems to interpret as having been deified by the ancients, although they were mortal women, in a manner similar to the church’s beatification of the saints. However, the reasons these imagined mortal women allegedly turned to deity by ancient Greeks and Egyptians were acknowledged coincide with Christine’s argument—that wise women are in themselves sacred beings. They were, per Pizan, the discoverers of agriculture and horticulture, and in the case of Minerva, of math, shorthand, and wool crafts. Of course, the most sacred and important woman to this text is the Virgin Mary. Bynum points out that The Virgin Mary was referred to in the Middle Ages as the “Tabernacle of God” and that the Church constructed vierges ouvrantes,54 statuary of Mary that would open to show Jesus contained within her. This architectural notion—that the woman houses God, corresponds to Christine’s reference to Mary as the “Temple of God”.55 She is thus both queen of the new city and the architecture within it. Adams points out that Christine’s text “begins and ends with the Virgin Mary, a regent, a woman who ruled on behalf of her son”.56 Indeed, she is selected by Christine to be queen of the women who reside here. We must therefore understand this text as an allegory representing an earthly political agenda, given Christine’s frequent and repeated advocacy for Isabeau de Bavière’s right to a regency. Indeed, were this not clear, the last pages of Le Livre de la Cité des Dames57 leaves no room for doubt when Rectitude says, “Now a New Kingdom of Femininity is begun…the ladies residing here will not need to leave their land in order to conceive or give birth to new heirs to maintain their possessions throughout the different ages, from one generation to another”.58 There is no need for men here, as reproduction is no longer necessary—the inhabitants have achieved immortality, and all things are sufficient for the needs of all, as if it described the descent of Heavenly Jerusalem in the last pages of the Bible. Christine as author, character, and politician opens her city with an exhortation that reads like a political speech: “Most excellent, revered, and honored princesses of France and of all lands, and all ladies and maidens, and indeed, all women who have loved and do love and will love virtue and morality, as well as all who have died or who are now living or who are to come, rejoice and exult in our new City which thanks to God, is already formed and almost finished and populated.”59 Christine says that her city “…has been built and established for every honorable lady”.60 She writes, “…This City of Ladies, of it may be said, ‘Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, civitas Dei’…”61 This quote from the psalms hearkens back to Saint Augustine‘s Civitas Dei,62 which uses it, too. But more intriguingly, given

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the project at hand, the psalm in question, 86 in the Vulgate, offers a feminized iteration of Zion.63 Augustine, too, who uses this same psalm as a foundational text for his Civitas, sees Jerusalem in the feminine, as “mater nostra”.64 We find, too, in the Book of Revelation, an image of a feminine Heavenly Jerusalem”.65 The notion of preparing the bride for a wedding, used throughout the Gospels as an image for the church preparing for the return of Christ, shares extraordinary similarities with what Christine has done in her book—she has built a new city that has rendered the daughters of Eve virtuous and ready for full fellowship with God. The radical idea of applying scripture to emphasize the femininity of Heavenly Jerusalem is a direct hit against the story of the fall of Eve as justification for the exclusion of women from places of power. For in 1405, when this text was written, all the leaders of the Church were men and almost all the leaders of the known world were men, but in days to come, those who would continue into the age of Heaven on Earth must resemble a bride. Can the men of the church, can men of the world make themselves ready for this new era? Christine does not directly address this question. What she does instead is suggest that the moment is soon coming where those who do not conform to the image of a virtuous bride will be cast into the fire; let every man or woman examine himself or herself and change accordingly. Because women are closer by gender and habits to the celestial bride already, she closes her Livre de la Cite des Dames with a rhetorical flourish that puts the men who categorically dismiss women on notice—not her own notice but the notice of the Book of Revelation’s promised wrath against wrong-doers. Blaming their own shortcomings on the fall of Eve will not excuse them from judgment on that day. Hence, a segregated city of Ladies may be the only way a New Jerusalem might actually find its way to Earth, if only the pure of heart may be admitted there. Christine radically advocates with an unmistakable sincerity for a retelling of the tale of women of all eras. Her resort to building a Heavenly city is precisely borne of her ex cathedra status as a female, but she courageously reappropriates the things that the culture has attempted to take from women—the right to learn, the right to live in dignity and integrity, the right to think independently, the right to give sermons, the right to exhort, the right to live free, the right to rule, the right to be seated, in fact, in heavenly places. She believed in a materialization of that which was spiritual. Her “Utopia” has a topos, a ladder that links it between Heaven and Earth, between 1405 and 2014 and beyond. She believes that in becoming word, she appropriates for flesh a kingdom that has no end,

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where women, with Christ, are the stones that the builders rejected, forever becoming the cornerstones. We may not have arrived at her city yet, but look up. Surely, given her absolute conviction in its possibilities for her times and our own, it must be closer than we think.

Bibliography Adams, Tracy. “Christine de Pizan, Isabeau of Bavaria, and Female Regency.” French Historical Studies 32, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 1-32. Augustine. De Civitate Dei. April 2, 2011, http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/augustine/civ15.shtml (accessed April 2, 2011). Brabant, Margaret and Brint, Michael. “Identity and Difference in Christine de Pizan’s Cite des Dames,” edited by Margaret Brabant. Politics, Gender and Genre: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan, 207-219. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992. Brown-Grant, Rosalind. Christine de Pizan and the Moral Difference of Women: Reading Beyond Gender. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Bynum, Carolyn Walker. Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion. New York: Zone Books, 1992. Canon of Saint-Omer, Lambert. “Heavenly Jerusalem.” Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. Liber Floridus. Saint Omer, 1120. Case, Mary Anne C. “Christine de Pizan and the Authority of Experience.” In Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, edited by Marilynn Desmond, 71-88. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Cosman, Madeleine Pelner. “Christine de Pizan’s Well-Tempered Feminism.” In A Medieval Woman’s Mirror of Honor: The Treasury of the City of Ladies. Translated by Charity Cannon Willard, 11-26. Tenafly: Bard City Press, 1989. Fenster, Thelma. “‘Perdre son latin’: Christine dePizan and Vernacular Humanism.” In Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, edited by Marilynn Desmond, 91-107. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. Forhan, Kate Langdon. The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2002.

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Holderness, Julia Simms. “Feminism and the Fall: Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan and Louise Labe.” Essays in Medieval Studies 21, no. 1 (2004): 97-108. Jerome. The Complete Latin Vulgate with Douhay-Rheims English Translation with Commentary. April 2, 2011. Latinvulgate.com (accessed April 2, 2011). McLeod, Glenda. “Poetics and Antimisogynist Polemics in Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames. In Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards, 37-47. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Meyer, Ann R. Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem. Rochester: D.S. Brewer, 2003. Pizan, Christine de. The Book of the City of Ladies. Translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards. New York: Persea Books, 1982. Quilligan, Maureen. The Allegory of Female Authority. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. Ribémont, Bernard. “Christine de Pizan et les Arts Liberaux: un Modele a Geometrie Variable.” French Studies 63, no. 2 (2009): 137-147. Richards, Earl Jeffrey. “Poems of Water Without Salt and Ballades Without Feeling, or Reintroducing History into the Text: Prose and Verse in the Works of Christine de Pizan.” In Christine de Pizan and the Medieval French Lyric, edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards, 206-30. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1998. Rouillard, Linda. “‘Faux Semblant ou Faire Semblant?’: Christine de Pizan and Virtuous Artifice.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 46, no. 1 (2009): 16-28. Stecopoulos, Eleni. “Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la Cite des Dames: The Reconstruction of Myth.” In Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards, 48-62. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992. Walters, Lori. “Translatio Studii: Christine de Pizan’s Self-Portrayal in Two Lyric Poems and in the Livrede la mutacion de Fortune.” In Christine de Pizan and Medieval French Lyric, edited by Earl Jeffrey Richards, 155-67. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1998. Wilson, Christopher. The Gothic Cathedral: The Architecture of the Great Church 1130-1530. London: Thames and Hudson, 1990. Wisman, Josette A. “The Resurrection According to Christine de Pizan.” Religion and the Arts 4, no. 3 (September 2000): 338-50.

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Notes 1

Translation: “A new kingdom of womankind.” Translation: The Book of the City of Ladies, which is used interchangeably in English in this article with the Middle French title Christine de Pizan originally gave it. 3 Eph. 2:6 4 AnnMeyer. Medieval Allegory, 31. 5 3 Jn. 2, “Dearly beloved, concerning all things I make it my prayer that you may proceed prosperously and fare well, as your soul prospers.” 6 Matt. 18:18. 7 Meyer, 45. 8 Meyer, 45, 65. 9 The Lais were a form of chivalric romances used by Middle French writers. Subjects often included Arthurian imagery and allegorical figures. 10 See note 2. 11 Gen. 28:10-11. 12 Meyer, 56. 13 Translation: literally, “The Book of Flowers.” 14 Canon of Saint-Omer. 15 Meyer, 85. 16 Wilson, 8. 17 Meyer, 97-100. 18 Translated in Meyer, 70. 19 Jn.1:14. 20 Ps. 117: 22, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the stone of the head of the corner.” 21 Ps. 117:20, “This is the door of the Lord. The just people will enter through it.” 22 Mt. 7:14, “How narrow is the doorway and closed is the way that leads to life, and how few there are that find it!” See also Jn 14:6, “I am the way.” 23 Bynum, 100 ff. 24 Rev. 21:12. 25 Translation: “stones.” 26 See note 2. 27 Translation: “Mortar well with the ink of your pen, for I will deliver you enough [building] material.” See Quilligan, 105. 28 Quilligan, 170-71. 29 See note 9. 30 Forhan, 35. Forhan particularly notes the influence of Augustine’s Civitas Dei on Christine in describing an idealized city dedicated to people of faith and good will. Chrsitine seems to imagine that only women might actually possess enough virtue to inhabit such a city. 31 See note 2. 32 The Book of the City of Ladies, 3. Translation: “According to the manner that is my habit and to which is disposed the [daily] exercise of my life, to wit, the 2

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frequent study of literature, one day as I was sitting in my cell, surrounded by many volumes on a variety of subjects.” 33 Translation: “The [daily] exercise of my life.” 34 A Middle French term used only by Christine de Pizan to mean a woman scholar of holy texts. See Richards, 213. 35 Like the Middle English term “Clerk,” which meant a seminarian, a monastic scholar, or sometimes any sort of cleric. 36 Translation: “nun.” 37 Wisman, 340. 38 Translation: “Ha! God, how can this be? For if I do not err in faith, I must not doubt that your infinite wisdom and very perfect goodness has nothing made that is not good,” 20. 39 Brown-Grant, 142-5. 40 Translation: “Concerned that this might be some sort of phantom [sent] to tempt me, I made on my forehead the sign of the Cross,” 23. 41 Lk. 1:38, emphasis added. 42 Translation: “So very much higher standing has been acquired by Mary than was lost by Eve, such that humanity is conjoined with deity,” 38. 43 Holderness, 100. 44 Translation: “Gross ignorance does nothing to excuse [a total indictment of all womankind]…and seemingly one could say [the same] of all good things, of which one could either speak good or ill. In any case, one should not blame all [women] if the fools speak ill of them.” (Note about the translation: I have understood the word “user” here to be akin to the early modern English notion of “ill-used,” which connotes the giving of a bad reputation through words.), 38. See also Rouillard, 17. 45 City of Ladies, 39. 46 See Forhan, 124. 47 See Quilligan, 152 and Brown-Grant, 128. 48 Matt. 15:27. 49 City of Ladies, 39. 50 Matt. 8:10. 51 City of Ladies, 106. 52 See note xix for citation (Vulgate translation). 53 City of Ladies, 73-77. 54 Translation: Literally, “Opening virgins.” See Bynum, 101. 55 City of Ladies, 218. 56 Adams, 26. 57 Ibid. 58 City of Ladies, 117. 59 Ibid., 214-15. 60 Ibid. 61 Ibid., 254:Translation: “Glories are said of you, Oh City of God.” 62 See note xxiv.

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Ps. 86: 5, “Won’t Zion say, ‘this man and that man is born in her?’ And the Most High God Himself has founded her.” 64 Augustine, Civitas Dei, bk. 15, ch. 2, Translation: “But the [city] above is Jerusalem, is free, and [she] is the mother of us all.” 65 Rev. 21: 12, “And I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem, descending out of Heaven from God, readied like a bride adorned for her bridegroom.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN SAINT QUITERIA: AN INVESTIGATION OF A SAINT’S DEVELOPING ICONOGRAPHY THROUGHOUT MEDIEVAL SPAIN KATHARINE D. SCHERFF

Saint Quiteria was a fifth-century saint who enjoyed great popularity in Spain during the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. In fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Spain, the saint is a patron of several concerns, such as plague and pestilence. Quiteria’s image appears in many retablos, Spanish devotional altarpieces, as well as in their framing components, such as the side guardapolvos or lower bancos. In the early stages of veneration, Quiteria is presented as an unambiguous martyr simply holding either a palm leaf or her own head, traditional symbols of her martyred injuries (Fig. 1). This straightforward depiction of the saint is seen throughout Spain during the Middle Ages as far back as the eleventh century. The inclusion of standard attributes, such as the palm leaf and object related to their physical martyrdom, is similar to many ancient saints’ devotional paintings and is a direct reference to her legend. As the medieval period progressed, so did Quiteria’s cult, and the uniformity of her visual depiction began to vary. Previously unseen attributes, such as small male figures and identical women begin to appear paired with Quiteria (Fig 2). These attributes are observed in several later Spanish retables, including a large altarpiece from Joan Loert‘s studio from Palma de Mallorca, dated to the fourteenth century. From this comparable survey of imagery a question arises: How does Quiteria’s devotional imagery expand from that of a recognizable, standard martyr to include an extensive array of attributes and elaborate narratives? In order to understand the imagery, further analysis of the saint’s legends, the Quiteria’s cult history and distribution, as well as her diverse

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venerations across Western Europe, is imperative. These factors mold her image in Spain and are direct influences on her portrayal in the fourteenthand fifteenth-century retablos. The traditional Spanish legend is the narrative after which Quiteria is first modeled. Derived from the Breviary of the Diocese of Bordeaux,1 the narrative describes her as the daughter of a Galician noble. Her father insisted that she marry a pagan man and that she renounce Christianity.2 Rather than consent to her father’s wishes, Quiteria fled to the south of France, but her father’s men found her in Gascony. According to the Breviary, her refusal of marriage led to her imprisonment and ultimate decapitation, which took place on May 22, 476.3 Quiteria’s Spanish patronage against the viral disease rabies stems from the initial evasion of her pursuers’ rabid dogs by holding them at bay with her saintly voice. Spanish scholars maintain that her remains are preserved at Marjaliza, close to Toledo, at the foot of a mountain where there is a fountain, which invokes the protection of Saint Quiteria against rabies. Variations of the Saint’s patronage are reported throughout Spain and include the Madrid community of Alpedrete’s legend of the comb where Quiteria fought off a rabid dog with a comb in her possession. She then pledged herself to the church.4 Another version from Madrid reports that Quiteria saved a shepherd from his dog’s rabid bite.5 These specific narratives are revered in Spain where Saint Quiteria is invoked against not only rabies but also the plague. The French legend of Quiteria is derived from the Breviary of the Diocese of Bordeaux, the Breviary of Bayonne, and the Breviary of Dax. 6 The plot is almost identical to the Spanish version. However, the French legend is set in a period of Visigothic dominion in France and includes additional miracles. For example, while the saint was in prison, the earth shook, the walls collapsed, the prison flooded with heavenly light, and jailers converted to Christianity, all because of Quiteria’s prayers.7 Through the saint’s light and prayer, the mad saw reason, the blind saw light, the lepers were healed, the deaf heard again, and demons were driven from the bodies of many people.8 Soon after her incarceration, Quiteria’s pagan suitor, now named Germain, approached her and proposed marriage. Upon another refusal of his hand and her rejection of his Arian faith, Germain struck off her head.9 At the site where Quiteria’s head fell a spring flowed freely. Upon her execution and guided by a guardian angel, she picked up her head and placed it in her apron.10 “She [Quiteria] was brought to the church of Aire-sur-l’Adour.”11 The saint’s sarcophagus remains in this church, but her relics were scattered in the sixteenth century by the Huguenots.

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Portuguese religious tradition asserts that Saint Quiteria was the leader of nonuplet sisters and thoroughly addresses Quiteria’s birth, life, sisters, and various miracles. The Portuguese version of Saint Quiteria’s life is also recounted in two later Spanish sources, the Breviary of Valencia and the 1561 version of the Breviary of Siguenza. The Portuguese place Quiteria’s origins in Old Balcagia or Baiona.12 The legend concurs with the Spanish version in that she was born in Galicia and ultimately beheaded. However, her upbringing and short life differs greatly from the previous French and Spanish legends. Quiteria’s mother, Calsia, gave birth to Quiteria and her eight sisters in one delivery. According to the Calsia Legend, the delivery of nine children may have been construed as a product of adulterous love. Calsia asked her chambermaid to drown her daughters in a distant river.13 The maid took pity on the girls and spared their lives,14 and as they grew to young adults, the nine sisters pledged their love and devotion to the Church.15 Quiteria’s father later discovered the identity of the sisters and begged his daughters to sacrifice to the pagan gods. The nine sisters avoided this sacrilege by escaping their father’s kingdom.16 Quiteria fled but was commanded by an angel to return home. She returned to her parents, and similar to the Spanish legend, a pagan marriage was advocated. After her refusal, she was decapitated and thrown into the sea. This legend states that she emerged from the waters, head in hand, and is thus often represented in local narratives doing so. The various accounts of Quiteria’s life, miracles, and martyrdom, share many factors, yet the discrepancies among her regional legends facilitate the saint’s cult and iconographical diversity in devotional paintings, which will be subsequently noted in this essay. In twelfth-century Spain, the Bishop of Agen, who declared Quiteria patron of Siguenza, introduced her cult. From central Spain, her worship spread eastwards to the Crown of Aragon, particularly to Zaragoza, Huesca, and across the sea to Palma de Mallorca where an extensive cult emerged around Saint Quiteria. Her veneration was called upon often due to plague of all kinds, as well as various other diseases running rampant. Pilgrims, crusaders, municipal townships, and regional agriculture alike suffered greatly from these occurrences and had no choice but to look to the divine mediators for protection. Pilgrimage especially facilitated the popularity and spread of Quiteria’s cult throughout Western Europe. The years 711-1492 were a period of As the resulting Christian ReMuslim presence in Spain (Fig 3).17 conquest progressed, more and more European pilgrims began to make the long journey west to the church of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. Churches and local cults began to line the pilgrimage routes. Pilgrims and

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inhabitants of regional townships spread the various legends and miracles of Quiteria throughout Western Europe and looked to her for protection from the wilds and plague of Europe.18 In the first variation from the Spanish standard, Quiteria is depicted as a pilgrim in the retablo panels attributed to the Andalusian school of Juan De Borgoña, who was active in Madrid throughout the fifteenth century (Fig 4). Holding a palm and paired with a new attribute of two crisp white dogs, she is depicted with a canonized Pope, perhaps Saint Gregory. This depiction of Quiteria wearing the robes of a humble Christian pilgrim assured travelers that she would intercede for their safety during the perilous journey. The enclosed garden that surrounds Quiteria in Borgona’s painting solidifies the message of protection. The growing stability of the routes to Santiago made the religious journey one of the most important Christian pilgrimages during the late medieval period and ensured that Saint Quiteria’s cult, along with others, would be well established. Following the lines of the pilgrimage routes, the saint’s cult flourished either on or near the various routes to Compostela. The images discussed in this essay are predominately from Aragon, where due to her popularity, Quiteria’s image is reproduced throughout the province. Other locations, such as Portugal, Navarra in southern France, Andalusia, and as far west as Galicia, hold her in great reverence.19 Along with an extensive following and elaborate legend come various examples of imagery ranging from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. Saints appear identified by recognizable attributes that are connected with their legends. Saint Quiteria, in particular, appears in retablos according to her cult veneration. Even in Spain her image has its variances, such as a saint’s palm. The significance of the palm is associated with a martyr’s death, namely the saints’ triumph over death20 (Fig 5). As a martyred saint, Quiteria is commonly seen with this symbol, especially, as was discussed before, in early depictions. An altarpiece attributed to the Aragonese artist Benito Arnaldín from the first half of the fifteenth century depicts a fashionable Quiteria holding a large palm frond in her left hand and in the other the word of the Lord. Her right hand, in accordance to Christian tradition, is covered. She stands on a geometric tiled floor; behind her, a diamond-patterned, gilded background emphasizes the otherworldly space in which she resides, a very different setting from the austere garden in the previous Borgoña panel. Here Quiteria is only anchored to a contemporary Spain by a high collared tunic, which was a fashion of the time. Though the spaces are dissimilar, the Borgoña and Arnaldín icons share many similarities in significance. Here Quiteria is also depicted as a guardian of

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the devout, whereas she is generally personified as a protector from one evil or another, giving Christians comfort as they battled a multitude of foreign invaders. One of these was biological: rabies was a great problem in Western Europe at this time and invariably fatal.21 Here, at Quiteria’s feet, lies a familiar small white dog. As discussed earlier, Quiteria is the patron saint who is invoked against rabid dogs and, as she defended herself against them in her Spanish legend, she, too, will defend the weak. In Spain, Quiteria also evolves as a conqueror of evil spirits, a depiction represented by a demon-man hybrid, as madness is often associated with rabies. In addition, it refers to another miracle attributed to the Saint, the French legend that while imprisoned she cured those with hysteria. This narrative is represented by the attribute of a man-demon in the retablo of Our Lady of the Rosary in Zaragoza Cathedral from a retablo that emanated from the shop of Juan Rius22 (Fig 6). In the banco, here seen paired with Saint Blaise, Quiteria is depicted with this Medieval symbol of madness. Chained by his feet, the man-demon sits submissively while Quiteria, seated on a large gilded throne of heaven, lightly grasps her familiar attribute of a palm, once again a protective guardian. Quiteria is consistently shown with these three attributes throughout Spain in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.23 From 1348 to the end of the fifteenth century and beyond, recurring outbreaks of plague in the Crown of Aragon constantly caused steep decreases in population. Population recovery was slowed by emigration into the newly reconquered areas of Valencia, Mallorca, and Murcia, immigrations the people undertook to escape the pestilence. They took their local traditions along with them24 (Fig 2). This role of a healing saint is further perpetuated in Loert‘s Retable of Santa Quiteria, which originates from the Hospital de San Antonio de Viana. An immense altarpiece, one of the largest dedicated to her, chronicles her life, miracles, and martyrdom. Quiteria is enrobed in a tunic and cloak. An angel, who descends from the tip of the central point, crowns her head. She is depicted holding her traditional palm and holy book while standing on a base or pedestal similar to a cult statue. In the traditional central figure’s format, she is flanked by detailed side strips of narrative recounting her life and martyrdom according to all three legends. As asserted earlier, this large retablo is a culmination of Quiteria’s power, legends, and imagery. These narrative panels are painted in a style similar to the center panel in the central pinnacle.25 In Palma de Mallorca, Quiteria was claimed to have aided slow-developing children to walk, but here again she is invoked against rage and madness.26 A hospital setting would be appropriate for this depiction of Quiteria considering her association with other patron

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saints of Hospitaliers and plague. The retablo’s pinnacles over the four columns of narrative show the evangelists, each holding inscriptions of their names. The wings of the altarpiece are a compilation of twelve scenes from the saint’s life and are represented in bright colors on a golden background. Despite the dubious nature of the Saint’s legends, the Spanish author Gabriel Llompart deciphered each scene.27 Reading vertically, the narrative begins in the top left corner: Birth of the Saint, Declaration of Faith to Saint’s Pagan Father, Doing Penance in the Aufragia Valley with Her Classmates, Denunciation to the Apostate King Lentimanus; The Presence of a Dragon on the Mountain Galganus, and A Devil on the Mountain Ungulus, Quiteria’s Imprisonment by the King, Baptism of the Converted Jailers on Showing them the Miraculous Opening of the Prison, Return of the King Lentimanus Having Been Punished for His Wickedness, Imprisonment of the Evil Demon of the Mountain, The King and Two Bishops Together with the Saint Practicing Charity to the Poor, an unidentifiable scene, Decapitation of the Saint; Angel Leading Quiteria to Her Final Resting Place, Whilst Carrying Her Head, and finally the Martyr’s Funeral. As suggested in the Abadía retable, the French legend manifests itself in Quiteria’s miracles performed while she was in prison and her decapitation scene where she is approached by the angel. In the following scene she carries her head to her place of burial and finally in her funeral. Quiteria’s head in hand is reminiscent of early icons such as the abbey mosaic in Figure 1. As illustrated in this retablo, in the fourteenth century, various aspects of her life are adopted into the Saint’s account as a seamless narrative. For instance, her defeat of a dragon on Mount Galganus and a devil on the mountain Ungulus can be traced to the French legend, however obscure. Whether in the original legends or not, this scene, along with several others in this retablo, are examples of Spanish Christians’ representation of as many narratives as possible that are associated with the Saint in order to the evoke the benefit of her power. Accompanying Quiteria in several scenes is a grouping of identical young girls, or, as Llompart identifies them, Quiteria’s “classmates”, who are only delineated by separate robes. This is a reference to the Portuguese legend of Queen Calsia’s Nonuplet daughters. The girls are clustered together in support of their sister, Quiteria. In addition to the identical siblings, the “unidentifiable scene” in the far left corner appears to show Quiteria submerged in water. Perhaps this is a reference to her submersion in the Portuguese legend during her martyrdom. It is difficult to say. Nonetheless, the mid-fourteenth century, if not earlier, variations of the

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Saint’s accounts traveled throughout the Iberian Peninsula and across the sea evident in the Breviaries from Spain, which recounted the Portuguese narrative. The miracles described by the French breviaries appear in a fifteenthcentury Spanish altarpiece by Juan de la Abadía and can be found in the Parish Church of Alquézar Castle in Huesca (Fig 7). There are five scenes in the retablo’s body and banco with four supporting saints and a central resurrected Christ, a common altarpiece format.28 The scenes from Quiteria’s life include Declaration of Faith, The Healing of the Lame, Death of the Martyr, and the Martyr’s Funeral. Above the central figure, a rectangular space indicates a missing panel where a depiction of Christ on the cross was traditionally placed. José Gudiol comments on the central Christ figure: “He [Christ] raises his hand to bless or heal the disabled who approach him”.29 This observation is interesting as Quiteria’s role in this retablo is that of the healer. This is illustrated in the bottom left panel where Quiteria is depicted performing her miracles of relieving leprosy, curing the lame, and restoring sight, according to the French. Also appropriated from the French narrative, in the execution panel, Quiteria holds her decapitated head in her clasped hands before she places it in her apron. The panel that depicts Quiteria’s martyrdom is different from earlier versions. Rather than a static icon, the composition captures a moment in time. Quiteria is depicted holding her head, which she seems to have caught after the blow of the executioner. Still kneeling, she holds her haloed head with her hands in a prayer-like fashion as if waiting for the angel of God to lead her to her burial site as prescribed in the legend. The narrative panel below her decapitation illustrates Quiteria’s sarcophagus already prepared by angels, another reference to the French narrative within this Spanish retablo. However, the central image is more Spanish: Quiteria holds a palm with a man-demon resting at her feet. The background of the central panel is adorned with a floral-patterned coat of arms, a coat possibly belonging to the patrons of the retablo.30 The combination of palm, man-demon, and French narrative scenes surrounding the central figure supports the developing complexities of the contributing foreign narratives to the Saint’s iconography in the second half of the fifteenth century. Saint Quiteria is a particularly complex saint and martyr. The investigation of her life, legends, historic significance, and impact on the devout culminates in a translatable pattern of narrative, icon, and veneration. Her legends from France, Spain, and Portugal and their exchange along pilgrimage routes greatly influenced her dynamic representation in the late Medieval period from her simple early

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beginnings. A developed cult throughout the same regions embellished her ascribed powers. These powers were combined with the needs of these regions as they battled against foreign and biological invaders, and these elements were employed in reading the elaborate and often convoluted imagery in Spain. Quiteria commanded multiple instances of intercession, which secured her visual veneration in Western Europe. These varying components ultimately culminate in the centralized development of Catholicism in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and are demonstrated through the maturation of the Saint Quiteria legend in Spanish retablos. The Loert and Abadía retablos illustrate the coalescence of the three legends into a concise narrative. Along with the Saint’s venerable depiction throughout Spain, her narrative retablos illustrate a ripened Spanish comprehension of Quiteria’s cult and veneration throughout France and Portugal.

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Notes 1

Sabine Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, Vol 5 (London: J. Hodges, 1873). 333; Bonnie Wheeler, , Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Dallas: Boydell & Brewer, 1995), 323. 2 In the Spanish legend, Quiteria’s community is dominated by the pagan faith rather than Arianism. At the beginning of this narrative Quiteria is already a convert to Christianity being asked to marry a pagan. 3 Le marriage demeure un danger. Son refus est, il faut le rappeler, une injure faite à sa famille et aux droits de celle-ci, droits qu’elle ne pourra transmettre. Elle refuse son role de pilier de la société gothique. Mussot-Goulard, Sainte et Gothe (Versailles: Editions de Paris, 2007), 87. Saint Quiteria’s current feast day. Eglise Catholique. Last Modified, June, 28, 2008. Accessed August 2010. websitehttp:// catholique-aire-dax.cef.fr/spip.php?article1176. 4 Church of the Assumption of Our Lady Library Archives, Santa Quiteria: La Leyenda del Peine. Accessed January 10, 2011. http://www.parroquiadealpedrete.es/biblioteca/quiteria.html. 5 Church of the Assumption of Our Lady Library Archives, “Santa Quiteria”. Accessed January 10, 2011. http://www.parroquiadealpedrete.es/biblioteca/ quiteria.html. 6 Baring-Gould, The Lives of the Saints, Vol 4, 333. 7 Jean-Claude Louty, Sainte Quitterie: Legende ou Verite (Dax: 72 Route de Tercis, 1997), 20. 8 Mussot-Goulard, Quitterie, 96-7. 9 Jean Chauvet, Mystérieuse Sainte Quitterie - Vierge et Martyre (Pau: Imprimerie commerciale des Pyrénées, 1968), 6. 10 Mussot-Goulard, Quitterie, 86: “dialouges reported in direct speech between Quitterie and The Angel who is both a guardian angel, the Messenger of Christ, "Lord Jesus Christ ... send me your Angel" (Archangel Gabriel),” translated from French. 11 Louis Reau, Iconographie de l’Art Chretien (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), 1131-32. 12 Era natural de Balcagia (provavelmente integrada na hoje cidade de Bayona la Real, província de Pontevedra), na Galiza. James Cruz and Miguel Lealarre. Burro-Associação Recreativa dos Amigos da Praia do Baleal. http://arreburro.weblog.com.pt/arquivo/2004_10.html. 13 Some legends name the midwife as Sila. …“creyendo que era obra diabólica y temiendo que su esposo la pudiera acusar de infidelidad, manda a Sila, su comadrona, que las arroje al río.” “Church of the Assumption of Our Lady Library Archives”. Santa Quiteria.; “ACIPresa”. Santa Quiteria, Accessed: July 9, 2010, http://www.aciprensa.com /santos/santo.php?id=630. 14 “Eglise Catholique,” Sainte Quitterie, Or la servante est chrétienne, elle ne se résout pas à ce crime et elle confie les neuf petites filles à des nourrices chrétiennes

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comme elles. Toutes seront baptisées par l’évêque Ovide, élevées dans la foi chrétienne et termineront leur vie dans le martyre. 15 “ACIPresa,” Santa Quiteria. 16 Louty, Sainte Quitterie, 20. 17 Angus MacKay, Medieval Spain: Culture, Conflict, and Coexistence (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 51. 18 Stephen Wilson, Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 2. 19 The Saint’s cult presence is evident in the saint’s depiction in parish retable and a particular narrative housed in Huesca’s Catillo de Alquezar. These images will be addressed in the subsequent chapter. La Virgen Santa Quiteria es la patrona de la localidad de Mora de Santa Quiteria, a la que da su nombre, desde épocas muy antiguas. La mayor parte de la información sobre esta santa procede o está basada en leyendas. Esta virgen goza de gran popularidad en España, Portugal, el sur de Francia e incluso el Reino Unido. Al igual que en Mora de Santa Quiteria hay en España muchos lugares donde es venerada: Bayona la Real, provincia de Pontevedra; Bigüezal y Tudela de Navarra; Mejina, Adobes, Tordesillas, Monasterio, Bujacayado, y Santamera de Guadalajara, en la catedral de Sigüenza hay un altar dedicado a las ocho hermanas mártires. En la provincia de Ciudad Real se venera en Fuente el Fresno, en Alcázar de San Juan y en Minas de Santa Quiteria; Nava de Santiago, en Badajoz; Marjaliza, Orgaz, Alcázar de Consuegra, en la provincia de Toledo; y en Huete, provincia de Cuenca. Igualmente es venerada en algunos pueblos de Huesca, como Panticosa y en alguno de la provincia de Valencia. En Murcia existe un pueblo que se llama "Santa Quiteria" así en Albacete es venerada además en Higueruela y Elche de la Sierra. La Balsa de la Santa, a la que se le atribuyen propiedades curativas, para el alivio de dolores histéricos, la lepra y la sarna. Antiguamente existían junto a la balsa, unos baños de piedra. Historia de Santa Quiteria. Accessed July 12, 2010. http://members.fortunecity.es/moratera/santa.htm. 20 George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 36. 21 Adamson, P.B., “The Spread of Rabies into Europe and the Probable Origin of This Disease in Antiquity,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, no. 2 (1977), 142. 22 Observamos en la primera casa del banco la representación de San Blas, obispo de Sebaste y protector frente a las enfermedades de garganta, vestido de pontifical, portando báculo y tocado con mitra episcopal. En su mano izquierda muestra el rastrillo con el que fue martirizado. En la segunda casa del banco vemos la imagen de Santa Quiteria que era invocada como protectora contra la rabia (producida por la mordedura de perros rabiosos, de ahí que en su iconografía se la representa a veces con un perro encadenado a sus pies) y contra la locura (por ello se la representa con frecuencia con un hombrecito-demonio símbolo de la locura, encadenado a sus pies). Jesús Díaz Gómez, Pintura gótica en Aragón: Gótico Naturalista. Nicolás y Martín Zahortiga, Domingo Ram y Juan Rius, y Bernardo de Arás. Published: February 2009. Accessed March 4, 2010,

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http://pintura-gotica-aragon.blogspot.com/2009/02/7-gotico-naturalistanicolas.html. 23 Chandler Post, History of Spanish Painting, Vol. 8 (Cambrige: Harvard Univeristy Press, 1941), 417-19. 24 MacKay, Medieval Spain, 165. 25 Gabriel Llompart, La Pintura Gotica en Mallorca (Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafa, S.A, 1987), 17-18. Estos retable son el dedicado a Santa Quiteria, antes en el Hospital de San Antonio de Viana, el de Santa Eulalia, hoy en el Museuo de la Catedral, y el de las santas Magdalena y Lucia, del que estan solo fragmentos procedentes de su capilla de la catedral. Se trata de retables apaisados de una envergadura aproximada de 2 x 2.50 m. con la figura o figuras de la titulares en el centro, a gran tamaño y a imitación de estatuas de culto, flanqueadas por tiras o bandas laterales en las que se narra la biografia o el martirio correspondientes, con una técnica parecida a la miniatura. La relación patente con la miniatura hace viable la opinion de que, en el fondo, la pintura del libro y la del retable ques la más sensacional del segundo cuarto del siglo XIV procedan, como dijimos, del mismo taller insular. 26 Reau, L’Art Gothique en France, 1131-32. Elle aidait les enfants arriérés à marcher; mais on l'invoquait surtout contre la rage et la folie. 27 Llompart, La Pintura Medieval Mallorquina: Su Entorno Cultural y Su Iconografia. Vol 3, 26-27. Retable de cinco calles (o puntes) - con dimensions manimas 2'59 x 2'20 m.- de las cuales la central (a) (2'02 x 0'62 m.) está consagrada a la titular y las cuatro restantes, dos por cada lado, llevan cada una tres escenas alusivas a la vida y al martirio de la santa (b-11) (0'44 x 0'44 m. ca.). Las escenas en cuestión van separadas, naturalmente, por el mismo dibujo. En el recuadro central (a) se ve a la santa con tunica y manto, cubierta la cabeza con un mantoncito y una corona que deposita sobre ella un angel que desciende por la punta. Los atributos son los propios de una martir: palma y libro. Está en pie sobre peana imitando asi una estatue liturgica. Las alas del retable con la descripcion de la biografia han sido descifradas por Post, aunque algun episodio haya quedado al aire, debido a la rareza de la leyenda que la describe y no concuerda con la conocida por las Acta Santorum: Las cuatro puntas del retable (0'44 x 0'34 m.) llevan los cuatro evangelitas de medio cuerpo (c 1-4) con una didascalia con el nombre escrito (m: San Lucas, n: San Juan, o: San Mateo, p: San Marcos). Las escenas estan representadas con colores vivos sobre el fondo dorado que no lleva la decoracion que alcanzara más adelante. Respecto a la paternidad de la obra, vease cuanto se dice en el numero siguiente. 28 José Gudiol, Pintura Medieval en Aragón. (Zaragoza: Institucion “Fernando el Católico”, 1971), 56. Poco posterior a las obras ejecutadas en Barcelona, y quizá la obra más antigua de su etapa aragonesa, es el retable dedicado a Santa Quiteria, de la iglesia del castillo de Alquézar (Huesca). La imagen de la titular, en la gran tabla central, es una de las mejores muestras del estilo de Juan de la Abadía, en lo que tiene de huguetiano y tambien en lo que tiene de personal creación. Las cinco tablas de la predela y las cuatro laterales corroboran lo indicado, debiéndose

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destacar la belleza del Cristo resucitado del compartimento central inferior y la escena del lado izquierdo, en que la titular, desde su prisión... 29 Guidol, Pintura Medieval, 56. Alza la mano para bendecir o curar a unos lisiados que se le acercan. 30 Judith Berg Sobre, Behind the Altar Table: The Development of the Painted Retable in Spain, 1350-1500. (Colombia: University of Missouri Press, 1989), 103.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN OLD ANGELS, WASTED AND SPENT: REPRESENTATIONS OF THE WANTON WIDOW IN THE EARLY BALLAD KATHERINE ECHOLS

At the death of her husband, the widow’s “Sorrow for a Husband is like a Pain in the Elbow—sharp and short,”1 says one of many adages on widows collected by Thomas Fuller, an eighteenth-century British physician and preacher. The widow, portrayed as a lecherous, deceptive creature, was a popular figure in the early broadside ballad. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, two of the most famous widows of medieval literature, Geoffrey Chaucer‘s Wife of Bath of The Canterbury Tales and his Criseyde of Troilus and Criseyde, provided material for bawdy poems and broadside ballads. Whether she was the gap-toothed, outspoken Wife of Bath or the noble Criseyde, the widow who saw herself as her “owene woman, wel at ese—,”2 was a cause for concern in the medieval and renaissance periods. A stock figure cast as an immoral woman, the widow was a fitting subject for burlesque poetry, ballads, and broadsides such as The Boke of Mayd Emlyn, the Wanton Wife of Bath, The Cunning Age, and The Wiving Age. Historically, though, the widow was a figure of some importance. In the Old and New Testaments, the widow is pitied and revered as a pathetic creature who personifies “vulnerability . . . grief and loss” and “function[s] as the chief mourner.”3 Early Christianity honored widows whose position “rank[ed] as the second degree of chastity.”4 Saint Paul prefers these women remain in a state of perpetual widowhood, perhaps like Judith. Dressed in sackcloth, Judith spent her days praying, fasting, and supervising her late husband’s estate. Ideally widows should follow Judith’s example and, like her, turn their thoughts to God, avoiding pleasure. For “she that liveth in pleasure, is dead, while she liveth,”5 according to the sixteenth-century Geneva Bible. The virtue of lively

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young widows posed more of a problem, however. These idle, gossipy young women, now free of their husbands, exhibit immodest behavior and go “about from house to house prattlers and busybodies, speaking things which are not comelie” [sic].6 If a widow cannot bear living without a mate or living a life strictly devoted to God, Saint Paul concedes that she should then marry: “for it is better to marie [than] to burne” from lust and risk eternal damnation.7 Fuller‘s clever, though misogynistic, aphorism “A good Season for Courtship is, when the Widow returns from the Funeral”8 seems an appropriate opening for a discussion about the widow’s fictional image in early popular print culture, especially with regard to the ballads studied here. In this selection of ballads, widows are cast as calculating, wanton women who are eager to remarry before their husbands’ bodies have gone cold in their graves. Yet the widow’s reality was much different. Demographic studies of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries disprove the assumption that recently widowed women ignored their mourning period and remarried as hastily as these broadside ballads suggest. Furthermore, by the Middle Ages, the widow’s status actually shifted as her position in medieval society evolved. In fact, contrary to the status they held as wives, widows exercised economic freedom and control. Perhaps the autonomy some widows possessed produced this anxiety about her state. As long as she remained a widow, “‘free widowhood’” permitted a woman to “hold property, sue and be sued, and borrow or lend money.”9 A widow’s economic independence remained a matter of apprehension after the fourteenth century, a period transforming from a land-based economy to a money-based economy.10 In fact, marriage between a younger man and an older widow had become a matter of such national significance that a bill brought before Parliament in the 1530s attempted to “stop young men wasting their virility by marrying old widows,”11 a concern comically illustrated in the broadside ballad aptly titled The Wiving Age, or, A Great Complaint of the Maidens of London, Who now for Lacke of Good Husbands are Undone. Also, inheritance laws seemed to “favor” the widow by permitting her to “inherit at least one third or more of her husband’s estate,” “regain control of her dowry” as well as whatever “goods she brought to the marriage,” and to inherit all of the property owned jointly by the couple while her husband was living.12 Obviously, women profited after their husbands’ deaths, a touchy point raised in three of the four ballads discussed here. Later, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, propriety went so far as to make it a condition that a “widow not remarry before [her husband] was in

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his grave and until his estate had been . . . inventoried,”13 a dictate obviously meant to protect his children’s inheritance. Despite the widow’s legal sovereignty, moralists worried that her reputation suffered as a result of her new status. In order to protect the widow, the Church supported a widow’s retirement from public life or her remarriage. Some women considered other alternatives and chose to enter the cloistered or semi-cloistered life. Either option ensured the widow was prohibited from enjoying the full advantage of her new-found independence. Evidently not all widows chose this path. Some women remarried, not once but multiple times like Chaucer‘s Wife of Bath and Emlyn, the lecherous widow of the bawdy The Boke of Mayd Emlyn. These widows selected a man of their husband’s caliber, such as his “secular or socio economic equal, if not his friend or associate.”14 Consequently these women left their “independent status of ‘free widowhood’”15 for greater financial security. In fact the widow who chooses remarriage is the primary target in three of the four broadside ballads considered here, The Boke of Mayd Emlyn, The Wiving Age, and The Cunning Age. Even though the topic of the Wanton Wife of Bath alludes to the religious debate on the matter of personal salvation—and not directly to a widow’s lecherous life on earth, or even to her remarriage for financial gain for that matter—it is included in this study because the Wanton Wife of Bath is technically a widow. After all, she has been married and widowed five times. More to the point, this particular ballad, and to some extent these other ballads as well, represent divisive topics at the height of the broadside ballads’ popularity. That is why the representation of the widow in this selection of ballads presents such an interesting analysis, though it is narrow at best. In his extensive study of the history of the broadside ballad, Eric Neberker finds that “[c]ontroversies were integral to broadside ballad culture in the sixteenth century. Some of the earliest surviving broadsides . . . belonged to flytings arguing over . . . both serious and trivial [topics].”16 This sample of broadside ballads illustrates just such a controversy since all four perpetuate the widow’s negative stereotype as a lecherous, devious woman to be ridiculed. The Wanton Wife of Bath, an example of the flyting motif, follows the Wife of Bath after her death just as her soul tries to enter Heaven. Here she debates with various figures from scripture, including Christ himself, on the matter of personal salvation. Even though a widow’s legal status and her potentially unrestrained sexuality caused concern and was the subject of debate, it was her remarriage that remained a popular theme taken up in The Boke of Mayd Emlyn, The Wiving Age and The Cunning Age. Read together, The Wiving Age, and The Cunning

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Age engage in the flyting motif. They pit young, single women against experienced, older women. Written as a mockery of widowhood, all of these broadside ballads represent the widow as a comical figure to be ridiculed. Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrim the Wife of Bath transforms into a figure of religious dissent following her death in The Wanton Wife of Bath, an allusion to the parable of the Prodigal Son found in the New Testament and an adaptation of the old French tale “Of the Churl Who Won Paradise.” In this early tale, a churl dies, and his soul departs for Heaven. As he tries to pass Saint Peter and enter Heaven’s gate, the churl is turned away as a “disloyal soul”17 who has no right to Paradise. However, churl or not, in his encounters with various saints and even God, this lowly soul proves to be such a skilled debater that he is permitted to enter Heaven. Likewise, the Wife of Bath’s escapades while she was alive, and perhaps her five marriages, bar her access to Heaven. She, too, is an unworthy churl. Clearly mistress of her sexuality, the Wanton Wife of this broadside ballad is still the quarrelsome nonconformist of the Canterbury Tales, a woman to be reckoned with in life as well as in death. Constructed as a flyting, a form typical of the ballad genre, the subject is the widow of Bath’s salvation. As she makes her way toward the gates of Paradise, the Wanton Wife is stopped by various biblical figures trying to prevent her progress with each one engaging her in an argument: Adam and the notorious sinners Solomon, David, and Mary Magdalen, among others. During these exchanges the Wanton Wife counters their verbal attacks by citing her challengers’ own various transgressions, noting that despite their fall from grace, they, too, sought and then found Christ’s forgiveness. For instance, the Wife of Bath has no other recourse in her debate with Solomon than to point out that he was forgiven even though he possessed “seven hundred Wives at once” and “three hundred Whores besides.”18 Solomon not only pursued the joys of the flesh, but he also denied God. The Wanton Wife wonders why a sinner such as he can enter Heaven? This sends the “whorson” scurrying away.19 Using a similar argument to thwart the Wanton Wife’s progress, Mary Magdalen reminds her that Heaven remains closed to sinners. The Wanton Wife counters Mary Magdalen’s argument just as she did Solomon’s by pointing out that she never denied “Christ, as thou thy self hast done,”20 thus quieting the other woman’s protest. Still composed, the Wanton Wife then argues that Mary Magdalen would have been damned had it not been for Christ himself, since it was not through her own “occupation, / [that she has] become Divine.” She only hopes that like Mary Magdalen her own “Soul in Christs passion, / shall be [just] as safe.”21 Despite her immorality on

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earth, the Wanton Widow of Bath presumes for herself the same forgiveness Christ gave his prodigal son. In her final verbal exchange with Christ, the point at which she repents, the Wanton Wife of Bath is forgiven and gains her admittance. On the question of what women desire most, according to the Wife of Bath’s Tale in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, women “love to be widowed and [to be] wed.”22 The Boke of Mayd Emlyn, a satire on widows, is an account of Emlyn, a woman who, like the Wife of Bath, enjoys the benefits of marriage but prefers widowhood. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath and Criseyde are analogs for this anonymously-written ballad. Married and widowed five times, Emlyn has either driven her mates to suicide or murdered them. She plays the part of the grieving widow in deep mourning, who coaxes tears with the help of an onion hidden within the folds of her hanky. Written as a burlesque poem, yet nevertheless a moral tale meant for public consumption, Emlyn’s ballad perpetuates the widow’s negative image. As a “rich Widow [who] cries with one Eye, and Laughs with the other,”23 the notorious Emlyn remarries quickly and often, treating marriage as sport. Described as a “female Bluebeard” by an early critic, 2424 Emlyn frequents the taverns, chasing gallants while searching for a new husband. According to the ballad’s most likely male narrator, her various husbands soon discover her true nature is that of a “proper shrew.”25 Husband number two, the young Nycholl, dies a cuckold soon after their marriage and after recognizing Emlyn as one of those “wanton dames” who “change their names often.”26 She is treacherous, venomous as a snake, false in love and proud to a fault. Nycholl believes that marriage for women like Emlyn is like a game of chess. Though men wear the breeches, “They will ever be checkemate,”27 he says. Nycholl’s comment recalls Criseyde’s declaration that as a widow she is comfortable with the freedom widowhood offers and who will have “. . . noon housbonde seyn to me ‘Check mat!’”28 Emlyn tires of Nycholl and disposes of the “untaught ape”29 in order to marry husband number three within days of his funeral. At this point, the ballad’s narrator redirects his attention to the audience, briefly breaking away to address wives in general. Wives like Emlyn, he says, commit adultery and then lie with conviction, passing another man’s child as their husband’s. Emlyn’s ballad voices the real concern over the matter of the rightful inheritance of a man’s legal children. For instance, the fear was that a widow might pass off the child to secure an inheritance, thus causing “lands” to “fall into the wrong hands,”30 according to The Boke of Mayd Emlyn. If this warning fails to warn men away from preying on wanton widows like Emlyn, such

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behavior assures the “wedlock breaker”31 himself that he risks eternal damnation if he remarries a widow, according to this ballad. As the Boke ends, Emlyn receives her comeuppance. She buries her fifth and last husband, becomes a beggar on the street, and dies in poverty. A prayer concludes Emlyn’s tale with the narrator’s wish that the lesson in this ballad not be ignored to avoid this widow’s lot. Both The Wiving Age and The Cunning Age also express the anxiety widowhood generated. The Wiving Age voices the “Great Complaint” of the “Maidens of London” that few “good Husbands”32 are available to marry because of these “old Angels . . . wasted and spent.”33 Experienced widows cornered the market on young men, thus reducing the number of eligible bachelors. According to both ballads, old and young widows alike compete for men who would provide them with financial security. With their prospects in tow, brazen old widows “flocke to the Church, like Bees to the Hive.”34 Such ballads might charge widows with preying on younger men, but it was just as likely that ambitious young men saw rich widows as promising prospects as well.35 Criticism directed at the widow possibly derives from the sovereignty they enjoyed and had more to do with their economic freedom than anything else, as mentioned earlier. In contrast to The Cunning Age, the broadside ballad titled The Wiving Age, attributed to Martin Parker, is sympathetic to the plight of young women, who lack the same respect given to widows. Mocking widows as “impudent women,” this ballad claims that their silver and gold tempt young men. Riches are welcome compensation for marrying women with “foule faces.”36 Before concluding that men then are just as blind to their wives’ treachery as Chaucer’s cuckold husband January of The Merchant’s Tale, or even Emlyn’s dead husbands, this broadside ballad argues that these men marry widows for profit in “a liaison based on ambition rather than affection.”37 According to the complaints of the women represented in The Cunning Age, with nothing but her virtue and dowry to offer, a maiden has little hope of competing against the seasoned veterans of marriage, women who re-married purely for economic reasons. The experienced wives of The Wiving Age warn young men who marry for wealth that, in addition to risking eternal damnation, they will “repent”38 anyway since men will be willing to commit adultery. Not all widows wed out of lust, however. The broadside’s presumably male narrator concedes that though some widows do perhaps marry for love, he has yet to see this happen. As already mentioned, widows are attacked for using their inheritance as bait to lure potential mates. Yet money draws younger men to older women and widows to wealthy older men. The Cunning Age, or A

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Remarried Woman Repenting Her Marriage, Rehearsing Her Husbands [sic] Dishonest Carriage. Being a Pleasant Dialogue between a Remarried Woman, a Widdow [sic], and a Young Wife mocks wives in general and perhaps influenced by William Dunbar’s fifteenth-century poem and satire of married women The Tretis of the Tua Marit Wemen and the Wedo. The Cunning Age, attributed to John Cart, ridicules wives by turning their own words against them, though it allows the Old Widow an opportunity to criticize men who marry widows for their wealth. Finally, in this ballad the Widow speaks for her kind, vilifying the broadside balladeer who writes such slanderous ballads. The Cunning Age is a conversation among three women, a widow, a married woman, and a young wife, who are comparing notes on their experiences of marriage. The widow vows never to remarry after listening to her companions’ complaints. Lamenting her recent marriage to a younger man, the Married Woman says her husband is only interested in spending her gold on whores and knaves.39 Kate, who is newly married and purposely sought her own husband for mercenary reasons, remarks that marriage brought her suffering as well. Believing that she had married a wealthy man who “bragged for his riches,”40 Kate quickly discovered that she had only been duped into marrying a “beggarly slave” who never spoke “a word” about his poverty or “his Children.”41 The Married Woman easily identifies with Kate’s misfortune. If what Kate says is true, says the Married Woman, she would rather their “Husbands be dead.”42 Recalling the Wife of Bath‘s and Criseyde’s experiences as widows, she, too, considers death preferable to matrimony. The Cunning Age concludes with the Widow’s defense of widowhood. In the last few stanzas of the broadside, both widows and bachelors are equally presented as being guilty of playing the marriage game “[s]ince . . . both do miscarry,”43 says the Widow. But this is a “lying Age,” she says, a time when London gossips claim that widows bury their husbands and marry within a month.44 Widows are blameless victims. Ballad singers, these “Poets of the times,” such as the one who “goes upon crutches,” compose “Ballads and Rimes” that spout “bitter invective satirical lines”45 that “humiliate widows . . . as though we had done some notorious crimes,” says the Widow.46 In the ballad’s concluding stanzas, the Widow vows that if she could get that “Poet . . . in [her] clutches, He [would do] better [to] write ballads against the Arch-dutches”; “but it’s no great matter,” she says, “let Knaves say their worst.”47 As part of the new print culture, the broadside ballad in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries was a vehicle for current events, advertising, bawdy tunes, and the more serious subjects of politics, protest, and

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religion. Broadside ballads such as those that perpetuate the myth of the wanton widow are only a small sample of the various controversies explored and even ridiculed at the height of the ballads’ popularity.

Bibliography The Boke of Mayde Emlyne. “The Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times.” The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21, http://www.bartelby.com/213/0504.html. Butler, Isabel. “Of the Churl Who Won Paradise.” Tales from the Old French. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910. Carlton, Charles. “The Widow’s Tale: Male Myths and Female Reality in 16th and 17th Century England.” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 10, no. 2 (1978): 118-29, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4048338. Cart, John. The Cunning Age. / or / A Re-married Woman Repenting Her Marriage, / Rehearsing Her Husbands Dishonest Carriage. / Being a Pleasant Dialogue Between a Re-married Woman, a Widdow, and a Young Wife. London, ca. 1625. Pepys Collection. English Broadside Ballad Archive. University of California at Santa Barbara. Accessed November 6, 2012, http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20194. Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006. Fuller, Thomas. Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs: Wife Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British. Collected by Thomas Fuller, M.D. London, 1732. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Accessed October 31, 2012, http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.uh.edu/ecco/infomark.do?&sour ce=gale&prodId=ECCO&userGroupName=txshracd2588&tabID=T00 1&docId=CW3324583333. The Geneva Bible. A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 2007. Goodland, Katharine. Female Mourning and Tragedy in Medieval and Renaissance English Drama: from the Raising of Lazarus to King Lear. Studies in Performance and Early Modern Drama. Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing Co., 2005. Hallissy, Margaret. Clean Maids, True Wives, Steadfast Widows: Chaucer’s Women and Medieval Codes of Conduct. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993.

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Here is the Boke of Mayd Emlyn that Had. v. Husbandes and all Kockoldes She Wold Make Theyr Berdes Whether They Wold or No, and Gyue Them to Were a Praty Hoode Full of Belles. (London, ca. 1525). Early English Books Online. Nebeker, Eric. “The Broadside Ballad and Textual Politics.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. 51, no. 1 (2011): 1-19. Project Muse. doi: 10.1353/sel.2011.0004. Parker, Martin. The Wiving Age. / or / A Great Complaint of the Maidens of London, / Who Now for Lacke of Good Husbands are Undone, / for Now Many Widows Though Never so Old, / Are Caught Up by Young Men for Lucre of Gold. London, ca. 1627. Pepys Collection. English Broadside Ballad Archive. University of California at Santa Barbara. Accessed November 6, 2012, http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20178. Rosenthal, Joel T. “Widowhood: Bereavement, Reintegration, and Life Choices.” In Wife and Widow in Medieval England, edited by Sue Sheridan Walker, 33-58. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1993. Walker, Sue Sheridan, ed., Introduction to Wife and Widow in Medieval England. Ann Arbor, Michigan: U of Michigan Press, 1993. The Wanton Wife of Bath. London, ca. 1624-1680. Euing Collection. English Broadside Ballad Archive. University of California at Santa Barbara, http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/31985.

Notes 1

Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia: Adages and Proverbs: Wife Sentences and Witty Sayings, Ancient and Modern, Foreign and British, Collected by Thomas Fuller, M.D. (London, 1732), 181, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.uh.edu/ecco/infomark.do?&source=gale&pr odId=ECCO&userGroupName=txshracd2588&tabID=T001&docId=CW33245833 33. 2 Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2006), lines 75, 99. 3 Margaret Hallissy, Clean Maids, True Wives, Steadfast Widows: Chaucer’s Women and Medieval Codes of Conduct (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1993), 136. 4 Ibid., 138. 5 The Geneva Bible. A Facsimile of the 1560 Edition. 1 Tim. 5:6 6 Ibid., 1 Tim. 5:13. 7 Ibid., 1 Cor. 7:9. 8 Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 7.

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Sue Sheridan Walker, ed., Introduction to Wife and Widow in Medieval England. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: U of Michigan Press, 1993), 3-4. 10 Hallissy, Clean Maids, 143. 11 Charles Carlton, “The Widow’s Tale: Male Myths and Female Reality in 16th and 17th Century England,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 10, no. 2 (1978): 121. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4048338. 12 Hallissy, Clean Maids, 143. 13 Carlton, “The Widow’s Tale,” 120. 14 Joel Rosenthal in Wife and Widow in Medieval England, ed. Sue Sheridan Walker (Ann Arbor, Mich.: U of Michigan Press, 1993), 38. 15 Walker, Wife and Widow, 3. 16 Eric Nebeker, “The Broadside Ballad and Textual Politics.” SEL Studies in English Literature 1500-1900. 51, no. 1 (2011): 5, Project Muse. dai: 10.1353/sel.2011.0004. 17 Isabel Butler, “Of the Churl Who Won Paradise.” Tales from the Old French (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1910), 126. 18 The Wanton Wife of Bath (London, ca. 1624-1680). Euing Collection. English Broadside Ballad Archive. University of California at Santa Barbara. http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/31985. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid. 21 Ibid. 22 Hallissy, Clean Maids, 135. 23 Fuller, Gnomologia, 204. 24 The Boke of Mayde Emlyne, “The Progress of Social Literature in Tudor Times” The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21), accessed October 31, 2012, http://www.bartelby.com/213/0504.html. 25 Here is the Boke of Mayd Emlyn that Had. v. Husbandes and all Kockoldes She Wold Make Theyr Berdes Whether They Wold or No, and Gyue Them to Were a Praty Hoode Full of Belles. (London, ca. 1525), Early English Books Online. 26 Ibid. 27 Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, lines 754, 99. 28 Here is the Boke. 29 Ibid. 30 Ibid. 31 Ibid. 32 Martin Parker, The Wiving Age. /or/ A Great Complaint of the Maidens of London, / Who Now for Lacke of Good Husbands are Undone, / for Now Many Widows Though Never so Old, / Are Caught Up by Young Men for Lucre of Gold (London, ca. 1627) Pepys Collection. English Broadside Ballad Archive (University of California at Santa Barbara), accessed November 6, 2012, http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20178. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid.

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Carlton, “The Widow’s Tale,” 120. Parker, The Wiving Age. 37 Carlton, “The Widow’s Tale,” 120. 38 Parker, The Wiving Age. 39 John Cart, The Cunning Age /or/ A Re-married Woman Repenting Her Marriage, / Rehearsing Her Husbands Dishonest Carriage. / Being a Pleasant Dialogue Between a Re-married Woman, a Widdow, and a Young Wife. (London, ca. 1625) Pepys Collection, English Broadside Ballad Archive. (University of California at Santa Barbara), accessed November 6, 2102, http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/20194. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 36

PART VI: REFLECTIONS ON THOMAS AQUINAS

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN TRAVERSING THE DIFFICULTIES: AN EXPLANATION OF AQUINAS’ FOURTH WAY PHUC LUU

[The Fourth Way] is a strange argument, and the stranger the notion of explanation we claim is being used in it, the better chance we have of being right. Or perhaps I should say, the slightly less chance we have of being wrong. Good luck to the next person to approach the Fourth Way. —C. F. J. Martin1 [The Fourth Way] is a proof which I sometimes suspect of being one of the indefensible remnants of Platonism in Aquinas’s thought… —P. T. Geach2 The notion of Ipsum Esse Subsistens, therefore, so far from being a profound metaphysical analysis of the divine nature, turns out to be the Platonic Idea of a predicate which is at best uninformative and at worst unintelligible. —Anthony Kenny3

The above critiques highlight the difficulties encountered in this fourth argument in Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae (ST) concerning the proof for the existence of God. These “analytical” Thomists have called attention to problems with this proof that center around several issues: 1) Thomas’ use of the Platonic notion of form, 2) that this notion implies a causal relationship between the exemplar and that which it exemplifies, which is established by participation, and 3) that one form is also convertible with other, which would be later be termed as “transcendentals.” The essential problem is establishing a proof or explanation on the existence of a standard, i.e., the forms that pre-exist and are, in some way, exchangeable with one another. Because of these difficulties, the fourth way is the most puzzling of Aquinas’ “five ways” found in the ST. In order to traverse this

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perilous road, I will guide the reader through the problems and offer possible solutions on this route to understanding the cause that one can call “God.” The argument from ST (1a, q.2, art.3, co.) can be outlined as follows: 1. In things we find some things that are more or less good, or true, or noble, than other things. 2. Things are said to be more or less F to the extent to which they approach that which is the most F. 3. The things that come closest to F are the most existent in being. 4. Whatever is the most F is the cause of whatever is F. 5. Therefore there is something that is the cause of the existence, and goodness, and any perfection of all things. And this we call “God.”4

The first difficulty is in the form of the argument. Aquinas first posits that some things are more or less good, true, or noble than other things. He makes this assertion as a starting premise without arguing that that there is something that is an actual gradation. He simply says that the fourth way is formulated “from a gradation that is found in things” (gradibus qui in rebus inveniuntur) and that this gradation of F leads to conclude there is a maximum F. We can take the following argument to be invalid: “All students like a good professor. Therefore, there is some good professor that all students like.”

And this can be seen as parallel to: “Things are said to be more or less F. Therefore, there is some F that all things approach (2).”

Then Aquinas jumps a step to say that the most F is the most in being. This leap from most in F to most in being is not explained. Neither is it explained how the most in being is also the cause of being in things that have the quality of F. Somehow, the reader is forced to equate the most in F to the most in being, and the most in being to the cause of being (and goodness, and the perfection of things) and the most in F, and finally to conclude that this most in being is what all people call “God.” Can one sense the gradation in things in a way that would lead one to conclude there is a maximum in the genus of things? The relative hotness of a thing is in comparison to the hottest thing, but things can be relatively cold, and is that relative coldness in relation to something that is the coldness? The objection can be easily answered that cold is only the

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privation of hot, and a cold bottle of beer is simply a beer lacking heat. However, this lack or privation of heat does not explain the presence of a maximum cause of heat. The human body produces heat and the temperature is set by the functions of the organism. Things intrinsic to the organism govern its internal temperature. Other things are by their nature cold, e.g., ice. What one can establish by heat and lack of heat is a range of temperature from hot to cold. The second difficulty arises in the problem of transcendentals. “Good” (bonum), “true” (verum), and “noble (or highest)” (nobile), and such, transcend the categories. These transcendentals describe things, but they are not distinguished by the categories. However, the transcendentals are not purely mental judgments about the things (as Kant would use the term to describe an a priori mode of cognition).5 The difficulty is how the transcendentals work into the structure of this argument, and this may be telling as to the nature of the transcendentals themselves. Either these notions of “good,” “true,” and the “noble” are established by the things themselves, which raises the above difficulties, or they exist outside of these things, which forces one to take the transcendentals as types of Platonic forms, as Kenny does. Kenny points out the problem in the expression of the conclusion: “God IS F.”6 This statement follows the premise, “Whatever is the most F is the cause of whatever is F.” We can substitute F with the transcendental predicates, but when we substitute what they are convertible for, namely “ens” (or “being,” taken abstractly) we have a problem of this being applied to God. God is not merely maximum ens but ipsum esse subsistens (subsistent being itself). To the same extent, to say that “God is esse” does not yield any meaning beyond “God IS,” which is a circular argument. This is why the conclusion is uninformative; it does not take the reader closer in answering the question of God’s existence. A way to begin working around these difficulties is to look at what the notions of the transcendentals imply, i.e., by answering the question: “what is the causal relationship between the transcendentals and things?” The term good can be used in the predicate position, which then is a description of the thing in itself. However, “the good” or “the best” can be used in other ways in which to predicate something in terms of the transcendental notions. Aertsen describes three ways in which these terms can be used: by participation, as a maximum, and by analogy.7 In ST 1a, q. 13, art. 2, the question of what names can be applied to God arises in the general context of the “names of God.” These “names” are given to God to signify God’s simplicity, in abstract names, and God’s substance and perfection, as concrete names (a. 1). Aquinas gives two considerations to

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names said of God, such as “God lives” or “God is good.” For Rabbi Moses Maimonides, “God lives” indicates that God is not an inanimate thing. For Alain of Lille, “God is good” signifies God’s relationship to creatures, as God is the cause of goodness in creatures.8 However, Thomas rejects both views: Therefore the aforesaid names signify the divine substance, but in an imperfect manner, even as creatures represent it imperfectly. So when we say, “God is good,” the meaning is not, “God is the cause of goodness,” or “God is not evil”; but the meaning is, “Whatever good we attribute to creatures, pre-exists in God,” and in a more excellent and higher way. Hence it does not follow that God is good, because God causes goodness; but rather, on the contrary, God causes goodness in things because God is good; according to what Augustine says (De Doctr. Christ. i, 32), “Because He is good, we are.”

One of the reasons that Thomas gives for this position is found in the example of “health,” that said of the medicine. The medicine is called “healthy” in a dissimilar way to how the animal is called “healthy;” healthy is the cause of the medicine and only said of it secondarily (by analogous notion). In a similar way, God cannot be called “good” in this secondary way, as the “cause of goodness.” The primary way in which God is called “good” is if goodness pre-exists in God. This pre-existent goodness can be used as a predicate in the several ways mentioned. By participation, then, things participate in “the good” that exists in God. By the maximum mode, because God is the greatest good, things are called “good” because of God. By analogy, “good” is said primarily of God and secondarily of things. Analogy moderates things said univocally and equivocally, providing an order of priority and posteriority. This ordering, in turn, gives way to the participation of things in the preexistent name. The notion of “pre-existent” goodness provides the metaphysical foundation for what is good in creatures. However, another problem arises in this mode of explanation. What is called or “signified” as good is not the same as being good, in the unqualified sense. The analogous use of the term cannot be used as a predication for things. Hence, the notion of goodness used in terms of a maximum and participation remain. In the following possibilities these remaining terms are used. The cause for the gradations in the world is the existence of the perfection in God. Since the transcendentals disregard the categories of entities, they also disregard the explanations of causation of entities, as Geach shows another route toward understanding the problem:

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Because this argument starts from gradation, it is about what limits the world has in participation to that which is without limits. God is the perfection and, therefore, the cause of perfection found in creatures. However, this appears to make the demonstration a propter quid demonstration based on the causes and not the effects and thus contradicting what Aquinas had said prior to the Five Ways in answering the question as to how existence of God could be demonstrated. Another way we can think of the transcendentals is the means by which things participate in being. The existent is an existent by way of participation in the being that is in God. Geach describes “intensive magnitude” in comparison to the coming to be or falling away of an existent: What Aquinas gives us is a philosophical analysis of intensive magnitude. When a thing x passes from a lower to a higher degree of the quality F, or vice versa, the Fness of x remains while the degree of Fness changes; there is thus a real distinction between the individualized form ‘whereby’ x is F and the degree to which x is F.

A note’s increase in volume can be compared to a “coming to be,” and the diminishing of a note is like a “passing-away.” Perhaps the same can be said about color, as different colors approach different intensities of color. Leaves and skin change color, and one color is replaced with another. However, this does not explain things that are “good,” or “true,” or “noble.” In what sense is a thing more “good” and therefore more “being” and conversely less “good” and less “being”? Is “loud” a transcendental category? There are many added difficulties when attempting to fill the lacunae made by the assumption of convertibility. Lastly, Etíenne Gilson provides another way through a metaphysical explanation: Having to illustrate the truth that in each particular order “more” and “less” are always predicated with reference to an absolute Thomas Aquinas notes that a thing is said to be “hotter” according as it more nearly resembles that which is hottest”; namely, “fire,” which, being “the maximum of heat,” is the cause that all hot things are hot. Such propositions as fire is one of the four elements, or else, fire is the maximum of heat, is meaningless from the

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point of view of molecular physics. This example can the more easily be discarded since, in the mind of Thomas Aquinas, it was no more than an illustration of a metaphysical truth for which no adequate example can be found in the physical world. This metaphysical truth is that, in any one of the many ways of being, “more” and “less” are predicated according as things more or less resemble absolute being. If this is true, a new way lies open for us to the knowledge of the existence of God.10

What is intelligible is not the object of sense perception, e.g. hotness, but the “act of being” found in existents. If beings have an “act” then this informs us that God is the source of actualizing that being. In this case, then, Gilson is right to say, “In a sense, this fourth way can be said to be the deepest one from the point of metaphysical knowledge.”11 Gilson sees Thomas’ use of several different modes of explanation as a way of discrediting the notion that this proof “derives its inspiration from the Platonic doctrine of participation,” and Gilson asserts that Thomas has not “committed himself to following any particular philosophy implicitly, be it even that of Aristotle.”12 Moreover, this fourth way reveals the features of several sources, and used together, creates a picture of the metaphysical effort to “reach the prime cause of all things starting from their degrees of perfection–that is, their being.”13 Aquinas uses Plato to show that even among a diversity of things, they share something in common, and this unity is caused by a single cause: “And this seems to have been the reason of Plato, who required, prior to all plurality, the existence of a certain unity, and this not only in numbers, but in the natures of things as well” (De Potentia, q. 3, art 5). In this work that is prior to the ST, Thomas points to the causal reason of the common natures found in things: If one and the same nature is found to be common to several beings, it needs be that this common nature is caused in the same beings by some one cause. For it cannot be that a common nature exists of itself in two or more individual things. Indeed either of the two individual things, if you take each as it is in itself, is different from the other thing, and it is a diversity of causes to which a diversity of effects is to he traced. Since, therefore, being is common to all things, all of which, as they are singly in themselves, are different from one another, it must needs be that these things are not of themselves, but that being has been communicated to them by some one cause. (q. 3 art. 5)14

Aquinas also employs Aristotle to show that when things are said to be more or less, they approach a unique term. In De Potentia, Thomas is quoting from the same Metaphysics passage that he used in the ST and

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concludes that “one being, that is to say, the most perfect and truest being, which, as has been proved by the philosophers, is an absolutely immobile mover and is most perfect. Whence it follows that all the less perfect beings must needs receive from Him their existence. And this is the proof of Aristotle in his Metaphysics.”15 In Aristotle’s text, the discussion is regarding the subject of philosophy, and Aristotle says here, as he says many places elsewhere, that philosophy is about knowledge of the causes. The cause of hot things is fire, and the cause of that which is true is that which is the most true. So the connection between “being” and “truth” is made because “as each thing is in respect to being, so is it in respect of truth.”16 The greatest cause must also be the greatest in respect to being, and in the same way, the causes of things have a greater degree of truth than the effects. Truth and being are convertible terms because of their causal relationship to their effects. Lastly, Aquinas invokes Avicenna in showing that “because all that which is by something else is reducible to something that is by itself.”17 Things that are self-subsisting are the cause of all things in that genus, e.g. fire and all hot things. Since there are many beings caused by something else, there must be a being that is “pure act and simple.” Thomas says, “It is therefore necessary that all the other beings, which are not their own being, should hold it from this unique being by mode of participation. This is the argument of Avicenna in the Metaphysics, bk. VIII, ch. 7, and bk. IX, ch. 4.”18 If Aristotle’s answer is inconclusive because it cannot be reduced to one primary cause, then Avicenna‘s proof closes the argument of the Fourth Way by asserting one ultimate cause that is both pure (actus purus) and not composed, i.e., simple (nulla sit compositio). Even though Gilson does not answer all the objections I raised, his attempt is to understand Thomas’ overall metaphysical approach. Either the notion of “being” does not hold any philosophical weight (analytical Thomism) or it holds the most profound weight (existential Thomism); there are still difficulties in this explanation. Just as Thomas used his philosophical sources as an attempt to explain God’s existence through the features of the world, I have used contemporary philosophical sources to attempt to explain Thomas and hope this attempt moves closer to an explanation. Perhaps there is no single satisfactory explanation of Aquinas’ use of this “fourth way,” and in working out the proof, one is working toward the cause, i.e., the highest truth, in Aristotle’s view, and perhaps this explanation is strange enough to help a person make a way around the difficulties.

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Bibliography Aertsen, Jan A. Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: A Case of Thomas Aquinas. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Aristotle. Metaphysics. Translated and edited by W.D. Ross. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924. Anscombe, G.E.M, and P.T. Geach. Three Philosophers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961. Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologiae. Italy: Marietti, 1962. Gilson, Etienne. The Elements of Christian Philosophy. New York, New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1960. Kenny, Anthony. The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas’ Proofs of God’s Existence. New York, New York: Schocken, 1969. Martin, C. F. J. Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997.

Notes 1

C. F. J. Martin, Thomas Aquinas: God and Explanations (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 171. 2 G.E.M Anscombe and P.T. Geach, Three Philosophers (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1961), 116. 3 Anthony Kenny, The Five Ways: St. Thomas Aquinas' Proofs of God's Existence (New York, New York: Schocken, 1969), 95. 4 These lines of the argument are taken from the text: Quarta via sumitur ex gradibus qui in rebus inveniuntur. Invenitur enim in rebus aliquid magis et minus bonum, et verum, et nobile, et sic de aliis huiusmodi. Sed magis et minus dicuntur de diversis secundum quod appropinquant divcrsimode ad aliquid quod maxime est, sicut magis calidum est, quod magis appropinquat maxime calido. Est igitur aliquid quod est verissimum, ct optimum, ct nobilissimum, et per consequens maximc ens, nam quae sunt maxime vera, sunt maxime entia, ut dicitur II Metaphyics. Quod au tern dicitur maxime tale in aliquo genere, est causa omnium quae sunt illius generis, sicut ignis, qui est maxime calidus, est causa omnium calidorum, ut in eodem libro dicitur. Ergo est aliquid quod omnibus entibus est causa esse, et bonitatis, et cuiuslibet perfectionis, et hoc dicimus Deum. 5 Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy and the Transcendentals: A Case of Thomas Aquinas (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 21–22. 6 Kenny, 94. 7 Ibid., 378–387. 8 Ibid., 378. Aertsen states that Alain of Lille is the main proponent of the view to which Aquinas is objecting. 9 Geach, 118–119.

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Gilson, Etíenne, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Doubleday and Co. Inc., 1960), 81–82. 11 Ibid., 82. 12 Ibid. 13 Ibid., 84. 14 Oportet enim, si aliquid unum communiter in pluribus invenitur, quod ab aliqua una causa in illis causetur; non enim potest esse quod illud commune utrique ex se ipso conveniat, cum utrumque, secundum quod ipsum est, ab altero distinguatur; et diversitas causarum diversos effectus producit. Cum ergo esse inveniatur omnibus rebus commune, quae secundum illud quod sunt, ad invicem distinctae sunt, oportet quod de necessitate eis non ex se ipsis, sed ab aliqua una causa esse attribuatur. Et ista videtur ratio Platonis, qui voluit, quod ante omnem multitudinem esset aliqua unitas non solum in numeris, sed etiam in rerum naturis. 15 Gilson, 83. The text cited by Aquinas is from Aristotle’s Metaphysics Beta (2), [993b]. 16 Translation from Aristotle, Metaphysics, ed. W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), from the Greek text: ὥσθ᾽ ἕκαστον ὡς ἔχει τοῦ εἶναι, οὕτω καὶ τῆς ἀληθείας. 17 Gilson, 83. 18 De Potentia q. 3 art. 5, quoted in Gilson, 83.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN JOHN FINNIS AND THE POLITICAL COMMUNITY JOHN MACIAS

John Finnis, a leader in the “New Natural Law” movement, has provocatively argued (1) that law has as its goal merely the lack of conflict necessary for individuals to pursue their own good, as well as (2) that the common good does not, in fact, hold any kind of good in itself but is merely instrumentally good. These claims must be taken very seriously, for they have important consequences regarding the kind of aims that legislators may legitimately seek in forming particular laws for a given community. Moreover, the relation of the common good to the individual citizen will also have a decided impact on what obligations individuals have towards one another. In what follows, I will argue that Finnis’ claims regarding (1) the aim of law and (2) the place of the common good both fail. The purpose of law is, in fact, to make individual men and women good, not merely to preserve a basic level of tranquility. The common good, also, is not something that is only instrumentally good and thus an object of pursuit but is, in fact, a good in itself that has priority over the individual good. Our analysis of this question will first begin by presenting Finnis’ argument concerning (1) the place of law and its ultimate aim, and then will move to his view on (2) the instrumentality of the common good.

Aquinas and Finnis on Law and the Common Good In St. Thomas’ Summa Theologiae, he asks specifically, “Whether the effect of law is to make men good?”1 He distinguishes between the notions of men being good simpliciter and good secundum quid. In regard to a good ruler, St. Thomas states, “if the intention of the one giving the law tends toward the true good, that is, the common good according to the rule of divine justice, it follows that men become good without qualification through law.”2 If the law is made by rulers for the true good

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of men, it will make them good without qualification. Finnis interprets St. Thomas as arguing that, “Human law must inculcate virtues because it will only work well as a guarantor of justice and peace if its subjects internalize its norms and requirements and—more important—adopt its purposes of promoting and preserving justice.”3 Finnis argues that it is not, in fact, the purpose of law to make man truly virtuous but only virtuous enough to secure peace and order. One reason that Finnis offers is the kind of competency that human reason has for judging actions. St. Thomas states that the mode of the virtue (modus virtutis) consists in three things: (1) that something be done knowingly, (2) that it be done for its own sake, and (3) that it be done from a firm and stable habit.4 Human law cannot judge the interior actions of the individual, and thus it cannot command or punish an individual for willing or failing to will what he ought to will or not will. Only the divine law is competent to judge the interior movements of the human soul. Finally, as to the performance of virtue from a firm and stable habit, St. Thomas states that not even God can command such an act. “According to this, the mode of virtue does not fall under a precept of either the divine law or the human law, for an individual is not punished as a transgressor of a precept by man or God for giving a due honor to his parents, although he does not have the habit of piety.”5 It would imply a contradiction that a habit could be commanded. A particular action is done habitually only after a series of actions is performed, and a firm and stable disposition has developed. It is impossible that someone without a habit can act from habit, and thus not even God can command such an act. Thus, one of the clear reasons why human law cannot have the inculcation of virtue as an end is because it is not competent to judge the inner states of man. “We can often reasonably judge the intentions with which someone is acting, but never the furthest and deepest interests and dispositions underlying the action chosen. The lack of competence (capacity) is ground for denial of competence (jurisdiction, authority, right): God, not any human ruler, is the judge of secrets.”6 The lack of competence in man to command acts of virtue is one reason why law does not aim at the true virtue of man. This conclusion, however, also rests on a deeper claim concerning the purpose of human society and the role of the common good. Finnis points to texts in which St. Thomas claims that the purposes of human law and divine law are different. Aquinas is clear that the nature of the law will be determined by the kind of community. Thus, the common good of one community will not be the same as the common good of another. In ST 1-3, q.100, art. 2, St. Thomas distinguishes between the community of men and the divine

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community. St. Thomas states clearly, “there is one end of human law and one end of divine law. For the end of human law is temporal tranquility…the end of divine law is to lead man to the end of eternal felicity, which is impeded by sins (not only exterior acts but also interior acts).”7 Thus, as Finnis argues, “In other words, divine and civil government, in Aquinas’ view, differ in method—the latter’s prohibitions, unlike the former’s, being restricted to external acts—because they differ in purpose.”8 What do we mean by “tranquility”? Finnis claims that, for St. Thomas, tranquility refers to: (1) a lack of acts and speech detrimental to that tranquility, (2) care of individuals as for oneself and a lack of physical destruction, and (3) securing the necessities for sustaining life. “In short,” Finnis states, “it is the peaceful condition needed to get the benefits {utilitas} of social life and avoid the burdens of contention. It is a peace which falls short of the complete justice which true virtue requires of us.”9 Thus, the purpose of the state is to preserve the tranquility and safety for the individual. This purpose, however, is the consequence of a further relationship between the individual and the political community. The deeper reason why Finnis takes this view of the political community is because of the way it fails to instantiate one of his “basic goods” of human life.10 Finnis, when speaking of the family, states that it is, …prior to the complete community not historically but in a more important way: in their immediate and irreplaceable instantiation of basic human goods. The need which individuals have for the political community is not that it instantiates an otherwise unavailable basic good. By contrast, the lives of individuals and families directly instantiate basic goods, and can even provide means and context for instantiating all the other basic goods: education, friends, marriage, virtue...11

Thus, Finnis argues, the political community does not instantiate one of the basic goods that individuals seek as human beings. Finnis lists life, knowledge, play, aesthetic experience, friendship, practical reasonableness, and religion as “basic goods.”12 Such goods can be given in the family. Within marriage, the husband and wife are able to achieve the goods of life through the propagation of offspring, friendship with one another, educating children and bringing them to maturity, and even through the practice of virtues. The political community is not necessary for these goods. Rather, the political community supplies “the non-basic goods needed to support life and other basic goods…”13 Finnis, pointing to the description of the state by Aristotle,14 argues that the family is capable and sufficient for the basic goods that are sought in all human actions. The

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reason why we need various relationships is that the individual person is not sufficient on his own. The individual is not sufficient to produce offspring, nor be his own friend, nor fully educate himself. For each of these goods, others are needed. These other goods are supplied in the family. What does the family fail in providing? Finnis states, “What is it that solitary individuals, families, and groups of families inevitably cannot do well? In what way are they inevitably ‘incomplete’? In their inability (1) to secure themselves well against violence (including invasion), theft, and fraud, and (2) to maintain a fair and stable system of distributing, exploiting, and exchanging the natural resources…”15 Therefore, the political community allows the individuals and families to pursue basic goods by providing the non-basic goods. To summarize, there are three claims made by Finnis: (1) human law is incapable of judging interior movements of the soul and of commanding interior acts; (2) the purpose of society is only to preserve peace and tranquility; and (3) political community is not a good to which we are naturally inclined as a basic good. In what follows, we will see that each of these claims fails. We will first examine whether or not it is possible for a human law to have as its goal the virtue of the individual. Next, we will address the purpose of the political community and the kind of good instantiated by it together, because these two questions are closely related. We will see that the aim of law and the purpose of political society depend ultimately on what kind of good is provided by the political community.

Virtue as the End of Law Since we have seen that human law cannot command that virtuous acts be done for their own sake or from a firm and stable habit, we must see what law can, in fact, command. Lawrence Dewan examines the claims made by Finnis regarding the role of law and the common good. 16 After presenting Finnis’ position, he then addresses the question of the goal of law. He points us first to St. Thomas’ writing in ST 1-2, q. 100, art. 9. It is important to see St. Thomas’ response to an objection, as it offers us an important look into what his view is regarding the purpose of law. The second objection argues that the intention of the legislator is that men do virtuous actions. Part of virtuous actions are, as we have seen, that they be done virtuously. Therefore, the objector concludes, it does fall under the precept of law to command that the citizen do virtuous actions virtuously. St. Thomas argues in the corpus of this article that human law is only competent to command the external action of performing virtue. Thus, it might seem that Finnis is supported. In St. Thomas’ response to the

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objection, however, we see how St. Thomas views the relationship between the virtuous act prescribed by the law and the virtue of the citizen. He states, The intention of the legislator is twofold: One is that which he intends (quod intendit) through the precept of the law: and this is the virtue. The other concerns that about which he intends (de quo intendit) the precept: and this is what leads to or disposes one to virtue, namely the act of virtue.17

First, we see that what a legislator intends might not necessarily be the same as what he commands. To put it another way, the command given in a precept might not necessarily be the same as the reason for the command. Dewan summarizes, “Thomas is very clear. Virtue is not merely ‘an important aim’ of the law. It is the end of the law. The limited matter upon which the law is obliged to bear is rather an ad finem situation relative to virtue.”18 Michael Pakaluk offers a very illuminating illustration. He states that, “It would be possible, then, that the laiver intend all-round virtue in citizens, while commanding much less.”19 He offers the example of a father who wants his sons to be virtuous men. The father could simply command that the sons be virtuous individuals. Such a command could take the form of either a command to pursue certain virtuous goods for their own sake (e.g. he could tell the sons to paint a room because they want to honor their father), or he could command that they perform this action from a virtuous habit (habitually doing what is virtuous because it is virtuous). From what we have already seen, such commands would be worthless and ineffective. The father cannot command that the sons desire to do his will simply because it is good to do so, nor can he command that they do so from a virtuous habit. Both commands would be entirely ineffective, and the second would be impossible even if the sons wanted to have a virtuous habit. If the father wants his sons to be virtuous, how should he proceed? If we consider what St. Thomas has told us, we can recognize that the father has the intention of his sons being good men (what St. Thomas calls quod intendit), but must find the material (de quo intendit) with which to achieve this end. While the father cannot directly act on the desires of his sons, he can in fact command that they work together to paint a room. If they are actually going to paint the room together in a reasonable amount of time, they must achieve some level of cooperation. Thus, one son will not be able to trip the other or push another out of the way in order to paint a wall. The sons will have to perform the physical actions with some

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modicum of virtue in order to achieve the command of a well-painted room. The sons may have commenced performing this activity in order to avoid punishment (e.g. grounding, loss of privileges, etc.), but then eventually develop an affinity for working together and spending time with each other. Once the sons develop delight in spending time together, they may then do so on their own and begin performing virtuous actions for one another. Thus, while the father was limited in precisely what material he can control, this does not change his goal. We now see that the first argument presented by Finnis fails. Finnis claims that, because the virtue of individual citizens is something that is ultra vires of the political community, the lawmaker cannot even have as a legitimate aim the virtue of the citizens. We have seen that this is philosophically incorrect. In order to show, however, that the virtue of the citizens is in fact the goal of the legislator (as opposed to a possible aim), we must address the question of whether or not the political community is an intrinsic and necessary good for human beings.

Family as a Fully Sufficient Community? Finnis, as we have seen, ultimately argues that the political community provides the non-basic goods that allow individuals to attain basic goods. In explaining how the political community is natural, Finnis explains, “the civitas could be called ‘natural’ if participation in it (a) instantiates in itself a basic human good, or (b) is a rationally required component in, or indispensable means to instantiating, one or more basic human goods.”20 Thus, Finnis will grant that, in some sense, man has a “natural” inclination to the political community. This inclination, however, is not an inclination toward an intrinsic good that should be sought for its own sake. The inclination toward political life is only the result of the “rationally required” character that the political community has in relation to truly basic goods. As was previously seen, Finnis believes that the human family is sufficient to provide the basic goods of human flourishing. Thus, we might look at what problems might arise in regards to Finnis’ claim that the family is sufficient for all the basic goods of human life. Pakaluk, commenting on Finnis’ claim, draws attention to the particular view of the family that Finnis seems to hold. Pakaluk states, “The chief problem in Finnis’ view, it seems, is that it apparently presumes that families (or households) are rightly understood as themselves stable and enduring associations…”21 Instead, Pakaluk argues that, “families are relatively transient associations, easily disrupted, broken up, or displaced by death or other causes, with relatively slight ability to

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remain intact if they lack governance from without.”22 What do we seek when we enter into family life? Aristotle states that the individual joins with another (of the opposite sex) for the procreation of children. He explains, “In the first place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; namely, of male and female, that the race may continue (and this is a union which is formed, not of deliberate purpose, but because, in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind them an image of themselves).”23 We see Aristotle argue that individuals have a natural desire to reproduce and continue the human species. Clearly an individual is not sufficient by himself to reproduce, and thus he needs another human being (of the opposite sex) to reproduce. Sexual reproduction is meant to continue the species, but also, as Aristotle points out, so that individuals can “leave behind them an image of themselves.” Finnis himself seems to hold something of this kind of understanding of the purpose of childbearing. He states that, We can distinguish the desire and decision to have a child, simply for the sake of bearing a child, from the desire and decision to cherish and to educate the child. The former desire and decision is a pursuit of the good of life, in this case life-in-its-transmission; the latter desires and decisions are aspects of the pursuit of the distinct basic values of sociability (or friendship) and truth (truth-in-its-communication), running alongside the continued pursuit of the value of life that is involved in simply keeping the child alive and well until it can fend for itself.24

What is interesting to note is that Finnis clearly sees the good of transmitting life. Regardless of his analysis of whether or not childrearing is its own basic good or fits into one or more of the other basic goods, we can see that Finnis grants the transmission of life to be a basic good. Considering Aristotle’s comments that human sexual reproduction is meant as a furtherance of the species, we can then ask whether or not the family is in fact a sufficient community to fulfill this desire. The transient and contingent nature of the family shows us that it is not. As Pakaluk notes, the family comes and goes, and is very fluid when considering the maturing of children and death of parents. If man is able to achieve the kind of permanence of his own “image,” it seems that the political community must provide this stability. Thus, Aristotle states that “he who first founded the state was the greatest of benefactors. For man, when perfected, is the best of animals…”25 It is only in the political community that man attains the basic good of life in its fullest and richest sense.

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Pakaluk points to a further difficulty with Finnis’ understanding of the family. “It is unclear in what way one can maintain that political association is simply a ‘necessary means for the instantiation of basic human goods,’ without being committed, at the same time, to holding that familial association is merely that sort of necessary means.”26 Clearly, the individual person is not sufficient on his own to provide for this flourishing. Thus, he seeks out others who will allow him to achieve happiness. Marriage, children, truth, and the pursuit of the other goods are parts of that happiness. Thus, “why is it not the case that a spouse is no more than the ‘necessary means’ for a person’s instantiating the basic human good of sociality? If we say that one’s relationship to one’s spouse is somehow constitutive of a person’s happiness, and thus not a mere means to it, why not say the same of one’s relationship to fellow citizens generally?” 27 Pakaluk poses the critical question. If the political community is only a necessary means to attain the goods of the family, why are a wife and children no more than necessary means? A clear problem in Finnis’ thought is that he fails to recognize that “civic life appears to provide something different in kind from familial life, yet not insignificant in value.”28 Finnis offers very insightful understandings of the different kinds of friendships. He recognizes the difference between what Aristotle referred to as friendships of use, pleasure, and virtue. Finnis argues, “Aristotle thought that the three sorts of community of action and interest are sufficiently similar to warrant applying a common name to all these relationships, which he called three sorts of philia…But he was, of course, insistent that what we call friendship in the full sense is the central case of philia.”29 Finnis seems to believe that the virtuous friendship, and the desire for such a friendship, is fully satisfied in the family. He also seems to think that the familial friendship is the only kind of friendship that fulfills this category. Since this is not the case, we are again able to conclude that the family is not a sufficient community for supplying the basic goods of human flourishing.

Self-Sacrifice and the Common Good A final problem that we find with Finnis’ account concerns the consequences it has on the possibility of self-sacrifice for the sake of the common good. Nations bestow medals and honors for soldiers who die in battle, and national holidays are set aside and days of remembrance for the fallen. Not only soldiers, but police and firemen are praised for their willingness to sacrifice themselves to protect their fellow citizens. We might ask: what view of political society supports these honors and

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praises? Finnis has argued that an individual family seeks political community only because it is a rationally necessary tool for the preservation and pursuit of basic goods within the family. Thus, the political community does not constitute a basic good. It is not a good that an individual seeks for its own sake, but only for the sake of something else. The view of the common good of political community that we have attempted to present in response is one that is in fact a good in itself, and in fact a good greater than the individual good. Pakaluk offers a very helpful illustration. Imagine a number of independent homesteaders—pioneers, perhaps, on the edge of civilization—who are not associated in any way, except for some occasional commerce, but who learn of some threat to them—say, the approach of a boat of invading marauders—and, as a consequence, resolve to form an association for mutual defense. What happens in that case is: each farmer realizes that he cannot defend his homestead well, or defend it at all, through his own efforts; so he chooses to cooperate with other homesteaders for this purpose.30

Thus, we can imagine a local farmer who chooses to join a particular organization of farmers so as to protect himself and better his interests. It could be that each individual farmer takes turns at a particular defense post. What happens if an enemy attempts to attack the farming village? The farmer could be forced to give his life in defense of the village. In fact, he must be willing to do so. Were it not the case, none of the other farmers could be assured that the village is in fact protected. The whole purpose of creating the organization would be defeated. “Precisely because individuals form an association to attain a good that they cannot or cannot easily each attain through individual effort, in joining the association, each gives up the seeking that good for himself and through his own efforts, and each gains the effort of the association on his behalf (through its pursuit of some common or general goal).”31 Thomas Osborne offers a clear analysis and explanation for the reason that the individual member must be willing to sacrifice his own good for the common good. “The concern of the complete community for living well is connected with the ability of the political community to justify that its members risk their lives for its preservation.”32 The fact that we recognize that the individual who sacrifices himself for the community has done something honorable and praiseworthy requires that the political good be a good in itself. Finnis has argued that the family needs the political community only in order to provide the necessary conditions for the family to pursue basic goods. Osborne comments, “The problem is

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that [the political community’s] services may justify the payment of taxes, but they cannot justify the sacrifice of one’s own life. There are no services which could pay for such self-sacrifice.”33 If the political common good is merely something that is only instrumentally good, then it seems entirely rational to abandon the common good when it actually becomes detrimental to the individual’s good. Finnis claimed that the political community only serves to preserve the means to attaining basic goods. What should we do, however, when the common good requires my death? What had been the instrument for my attaining basic goods becomes the precise reason why I will fail to attain them. Finnis claimed that the political community is “natural” because it is “a rationally required component in, or indispensable means to instantiating, one or more basic human goods.”34 Clearly, however, there are instances where not only is the common good not an indispensable means to the individual’s attaining of basic goods, but it actually becomes a barrier to those goods. The willingness of individual citizens to sacrifice their own lives for the good of the community is necessary for the community to exist and thrive. As Osborne states, “the nation-state must rely on police officers, firemen, and soldiers. In order to perform their jobs well, members of these professions must at times risk death and even die.”35 The community will cease to exist should citizens no longer sacrifice their own lives. Imagine a community where no citizens were willing to risk their lives. Firefighters would fail to rescue individuals from burning buildings, police might perhaps refuse to answer distress calls due to fear of death, and an enemy force could invade entirely unopposed. If no citizens are willing to suffer death for the good of the community, the community will soon fall apart. Thus, not only will the community fail, but the individual will also lose any possibility of attaining the basic goods of human flourishing. Thus we see that the political community does in fact instantiate a good that is sought for its own sake. Moreover, the political community is in fact a greater good than that of the individual.

Conclusion We began by looking to the question of whether or not law has as its end the overall virtue of the citizens. Finnis has claimed that the virtue of the citizens is not the ultimate goal of law, but only the modicum of virtue required for citizens to live in peace with one another. Finnis argued that human law lacked the competence to judge the interior movements of the human soul, and therefore is unable to command virtue. While it is

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certainly true that political communities can only judge external actions, it does not follow that the virtue of the citizen is not in fact the aim of human law. While the material that human law can command is external actions, it does in fact have as its end the overall virtue of the citizens. Next, we considered whether or not the family is actually sufficient to constitute the basic goods individual men seek. Due to the transient and contingent nature of the human family, the individual cannot fully achieve the enduring and lasting existence of the human species that is the goal of procreation. Finally, we ended with a discussion of the consequences that follow from Finnis’ instrumental view of the common good. Ultimately, by giving the common good an entirely instrumental character, there is no longer any reason for the individual to sacrifice his life for the community. This consequence follows from the fact that the sacrifice of one’s life would permanently prevent the individual from attaining basic human goods.

Bibliography Aquinas. Summa Theologiae. Rome: Editiones Paulinae, 1962. Aristotle. Politics. In Complete Works of Aristotle: The revised Oxford Translation., ed. Jonathan Barnes. Vol. 2. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984. Dewan, Lawrence. “St. Thomas, John Finnis, and the Political Good.” The Thomist 64 (2000): 337-74. Finnis, John. “The State: Its Elements and Purposes.” In Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory. 219-254. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. —. Fundamentals of Ethics. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983. —. Natural law and natural rights. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980. Pakaluk, Michael. “Is the Common Good of the Political Society Limited and Instrumental?” The Review of Metaphysics 55 (2001): 57-94. Thomas Osborne. “MacIntyre, Thomism, and the Contemporary Common Good.” In Revolutionary Aristotelianism: Ethics, Resistance, and Utopia., eds. Kelvin Knight, Paul Blackledge. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, 1984.

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Notes 1

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, part 1-3, q. 93, art.1 (Rome: Editiones Paulinae, 1962), 949. 2 Ibid., “Si enim intentio ferentis legem tendat in verum bonum, quod est bonum commune secundum iustitiam divinam regulatum, sequitur quod per legem homines fiant boni simpliciter.” All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 3 John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 232. 4 Cf., St.Thomas, ST, parts 1-3, 100.9c, 989. 5 Ibid., “Et quantum ad hoc, modus virtutis non cadit sub praecepto neque legis divinae neque legis humanae: neque enim ab homine neque a Deo punitur tanquam praecepti transgressor, qui debitum honorem impendit parentibus, quamvis non habeat habitum pietatis.” 6 Finnis, Aquinas, 240. 7 St. Thomas, ST, parts 1-3, q. 98, art.1: “Est autem sciendum quod est alius finis legis humanae, et alius legis divinae. Legis enim humanae finis est temporalis tranquillitas civitatis, ad quem finem pervenit lex cohibendo exteriores actus, quantum ad illa mala quae possunt perturbare pacificum statum civitatis. Finis autem legis divinae est perducere hommem ad finem felicitatis aeternae; qui quidem finis impeditur per quodcumque peccatum, et non solum per actus exteriores, sed etiam per interiors,” 971. 8 Finnis, Aquinas, 224. 9 Ibid., 227-228, emphasis mine. 10 For a fuller list and description of the “basic goods” of the New Natural Law Theorists, cf. Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980); Fundamentals of Ethics (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1983). 11 Ibid., Aquinas, 245. 12 Ibid., Natural Law and Natural Rights, 86-90. 13 Ibid., Aquinas, 245. 14 Cf. Aristotle, Politics, bk. 1, sec. 2. 15 Finnis, Aquinas, 247. 16 Lawrence Dewan, “St. Thomas, John Finnis, and the Political Good,” The Thomist 64 (2000): 337-74. 17 St. Thomas, ST I-II, 100.9, ad.2. My emphasis. “Intentio legislatoris est de duobus. De uno quidem, ad quod intendit per praecepta legis inducere: et hoc est virtus. Aliud autem est de quo intendit praeceptum ferre: et hoc est id quod ducit vel disponit ad virtutem, scilicet actus virtutis. Non enim idem est finis praecepti et id de quo praeceptum datur: sicut neque in aliis rebus idem est finis et quod est ad finem,” 989. 18 Dewan, “St. Thomas, John Finnis,” 348. 19 Michael Pakaluk, “Is the Common Good of Political Society Limited and Instrumental?” The Review of Metaphysics 55 (2001): 73.

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Finnis, Aquinas, 246. Pakaluk, “Limited and Instrumental,” 61. 22 Ibid, 62. 23 Aristotle, Politics, 1.2, 1252a. 25-30, trans. Benjamin Jowett, in Complete Works of Aristotle, vol.2, ed. Jonathan Barnes (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1986. 24 Finnis, Natural Law, 87. 25 Aristotle, Politics, I.2, 1253a31. 26 Pakaluk, “Limited and Instrumental,” 64. 27 Ibid. 28 Ibid. 29 Finnis, Natural Law, 141. 30 Pakaluk, “Limited and Instrumental,” 88. It is important to recognize the deficiencies of this example. One clear deficiency is that the farmer chooses to join a particular community of farmers for the protection of his own farm. It could be interpreted that the citizen likewise chooses to join political society only for protection, and therefore the political community takes on a kind of Lockean arena for the pursuit of private goods. As I hope the argument will show, such an arena will not consistently justify the requirement for individuals to sacrifice themselves for the common good. 31 Ibid, 89. 32 Thomas Osborne, “MacIntyre, Thomism, and the Contemporary Common Good,” in Revolutionary Aristotelianism: Ethics, Resistance, and Utopia ed. Kelvin Knight and Paul Blackledge (Stuttgart Lucius & Lucius 2008), 84. 33 Ibid. 34 Finnis, Aquinas, 246. 35 Ibid. 21

CHAPTER NINETEEN ETERNAL GOD: DIVINE ATEMPORALITY IN THOMAS AQUINAS JOHN H. BOYER

The recent trend among many philosophers of religion has been to interpret divine eternity as an everlasting temporality in which an omnitemporal God exists in and throughout the whole of time. The fundamental distinction between the classical account of eternity as timelessness and the more recent, personalist account of eternity as unlimited temporality rests upon the question of God’s immutability. Proponents of the classical view say God is timeless because he is immutable. If God were in time, he would be subject to change and thus would not be the first cause of motion or the creator of the world. Those adhering to divine temporalism assert that God cannot be atemporal because acts of creation and causation necessarily entail that the agent undergo some change and thus must be in time. An influential classical account of divine eternity comes from St. Thomas Aquinas, who builds upon Boethius’ famous definition of eternity: “the whole, perfect, and simultaneous possession of endless life.”1 In this essay, I will examine Aquinas’ account of God as timelessly eternal. First, I will look at how Aquinas derives the various parts of the Boethian definition of eternity from the concepts of time and mutability. Second, I will consider a famous objection that posits that Aquinas’ account of a timeless God is incompatible with omniscience because God would not have knowledge of what is past, present, and future at any time. I will explain how answering this objection correctly is necessary to avoid serious problems regarding theism. I will then propose a solution to this problem and attempt to show that Aquinas’ notion of divine atemporality is not incoherent. Before beginning, several disclaimers are necessary. Since this essay focuses on Aquinas’ account, I will take as granted that his arguments for divine immutability are sound. In addition, I will also take the Aristotelian

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definition of time to be correct. I will not provide any direct critique of temporalist accounts, since by and large such arguments are reducible either to debates over immutability or treatments of time far too technical for my purposes. In this first section, I will examine Aquinas’ account of eternity. I will first show how Aquinas derives the definition of eternity from time and its connection with change. Second, I will explain what it means to call eternity a measure. Finally, I will briefly show that God is eternal and is his own eternity. Boethius defines eternity as “the whole, perfect, and simultaneous possession of endless life.”2 Aquinas explains that this definition is derived from the definition of time. Time, as Aristotle says, is the number or measure of motion according to the before and after.3 Since mutable creatures, insofar as they undergo motion or change, have a certain measure of their motion, i.e., time, an immutable being, insofar as it does not undergo motion or change, will possess its own measure of its changeless existence. Just as Aquinas comes to the notion of immutability from mutability, he likewise derives his notion of eternity from time: Just as it is fitting that we come to knowledge of the simple from the composite, so it is fitting that we come to knowledge of eternity from time, which is nothing other than the number of motion according to before and after.4

Aquinas considers two aspects of mutability and immutability in order to derive his account of eternity. First, and most importantly, he considers time as the measure of motion according to its succession, from which we see that eternity is simultaneously whole and perfect. This will be the essential aspect of eternity. Second, he considers time as the measure of motion insofar as motion is an activity that begins and ends, from which we see that eternity is interminable life. Concerning the first aspect, eternity as simultaneously whole and perfect, Aquinas begins by noting that time is the measure of motion insofar as it consists of successive parts: For since there is succession in any motion, and one part is after another, from this, that we number the before and after in motion, we apprehend time, which is nothing other than the number of before and after in motion.5

Time, as a property of motion, follows necessarily from the successive nature of motion. This succession, i.e., the order of the parts of motion as

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prior and posterior, allows us to measure motion by numbering its distinct, successive stages. Before continuing, let us clarify what it means to call time the measure of motion.6 After giving his definition of time as the measure of motion in Physics 4.11, Aristotle provides an important qualification. We may speak of a number or measure in two ways: the number of what is numbered and the number by which we number. The former corresponds to numbers like five horses or twelve feet of fabric. The quantity “twelve feet” in “twelve feet of fabric” refers to the particular quantity of the fabric. It is an individual, as opposed to universal, accident that does not exist apart from the fabric. Aristotle calls it a numbered number because it is the numerable aspect of the fabric. Even if no one were to measure the fabric, it would still have this particular measurable quantity. We might say that a numbered number is properly distinguished as the number of some particular thing. On the other hand, the number by which we number is not the number of any particular thing. It is a purely logical being which exists apart from the particular quantity we are counting or measuring. The counting numbers one, two, three, etc. are not multitudes of any particular kind of units; they can be used to number any sort of numerable thing. As the measure of motion, time is a numbered number. It does not exist apart from motion—it is not some separate, independent entity like Newton’s reified Absolute Time or some accounts of space-time. Time is the quantifiable duration of motion. Thus, since eternity is analogously related to time as the immutable activity of an uncreated being is to the mutable activity of a created being, eternity will be in an analogous sense the quantifiable duration of an immutable being. Since time is the measure of motion according to the prior and posterior, we must turn to how priority and posteriority belong to, or rather do not belong to, an immutable being. From understanding the relation between temporal priority and posteriority and eternal uniformity, we can begin to understand eternity as the measure of immutable activity. Aquinas explains that we come to eternity by negating the succession of motion: Now in that which lacks motion, and is always the same, there is no before and after. Just as the account of time consists in the numbering of prior and posterior in motion, so the account of eternity consists in the apprehension of the uniformity of that which is wholly outside motion.7

Time consists in apprehending the different successive parts in the totality of motion and numbering them. Motion is an imperfect being because its parts exist successively rather than simultaneously. Viewed as a whole composed of parts, motion consists of a plurality of states of a single kind

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of actuality.8 For an immutable being wholly without motion, there is no succession in its states of existence. Its existence, taken as a whole, is not composed from a plurality of states of some one species of actuality; since there are no differences in its act, there is no distinction of parts, for there are no parts. Put another way, it is like a whole composed of parts that all coincide simultaneously with one another and thus cannot be distinguished. Compared with temporal duration, which is composed of successive parts, eternal duration has no distinction of parts because there is no succession of parts in an immutable existence. Eternity is a whole simultaneously, not successively. Thus Aquinas, following Boethius, states that eternity is simultaneously whole. One might object that this does not sufficiently distinguish an immutable being from mobile beings that are at rest. For what is at rest does not have different successive states present in it. Nevertheless, we can measure how long some object A is at rest. For example, Socrates sits from 10:00 am to 11:00 am. Even though there is no change in the truth of the proposition “Socrates is sitting” from 10 am to 11 am, “Socrates sitting at 10:00” is different from “Socrates sitting at 11:00.” By considering these different states insofar as one comes before and the other after, we may measure the duration of Socrates’ sitting. This is accomplished by relating the succession of different states of a motion occurring simultaneously with A’s resting, such as the motion of a clock B. We mark off the different states in the motion of B and, insofar as A and B are simultaneous, we distinguish corresponding states in A. This succession of temporal states in A (resting at time t, resting at t1) constitute what Peter Geach calls a “merely Cambridge change.” These states are identified in A according to the changing relations of B to A. This change of relation consists in some real change in B considered independently of A and no real change in A considered independently of B. There is no succession of really distinct states in A considered on its own. It simply rests. But in relation to B, the duration of this rest can be measured. Since we can measure the temporal duration of a resting body that has no succession of really distinct states in it, might we not do the same for an immutable being by merely Cambridge relations to the various parts of a motion? If so, it seems that we may likewise measure the duration of an immutable being. By doing so, even though, just like a resting being, it does not have a succession of really distinct states per se, an immutable being will nonetheless have a measurable temporal succession consisting of merely Cambridge changes. However, this will not do. An immutable being has no actual or potential multiplicity of states that can be distinguished in any way. As

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Geach points out, it makes no sense to speak of distinguishing different states in a wholly immutable being: Would a changeless being whose duration co-existed with that of changeable beings be anything more than a temporal being whose successive states were alike rather than variegated? —I deny the right to speak of ‘successive states’ in regard to such a being. For how would the states be differentiated? Perhaps it will be said: By relational properties; if a changing being has various states, then one state of the unchanging being will co-exist with one state of the changeable being and another with another state, and this will be enough to differentiate the states of the unchanging being. But once again, I deny that there are any ‘states’ of the unchanging being to be differentiated.9

While it is true that we can measure the rest of a mutable being, it is only measurable per accidens. Insofar as it is potentially movable, we can meaningfully distinguish different states that could be the beginning of a motion or change. While not actually distinct, these states are potentially distinct. A Cambridge change may refer actually (per se) or potentially (per accidens) to distinct states in some subject. Since the merely Cambridge changes of A’s relation to the simultaneous motion B are temporal relations, they constitute a measurable temporal succession in A, albeit a per accidens succession. However, Cambridge changes do not apply to God in this manner. In a wholly changeless being, there are no different states at all, either actually or potentially, because such a being has no potency. Thus, it has no parts that could be distinguished by these propositions. If God is eternal, there is no time at which the proposition “God exists” is false; thus, it seems that God’s existence runs parallel to time. This mistake can be traced to thinking of God’s simultaneously whole duration as having quasi-spatial extension. As Geach explains, My imaginary opponent is held captive by a picture: some such picture as a uniform blue line with a graduated ruler laid against it, so that we can discriminate the successive bits in the blue line. But time-order (as I have argued elsewhere) is categorically different from spatial order; and any such picture is limited in usefulness and profoundly dangerous. Nothing is sillier than to think you can settle philosophical problems about time by drawing diagrams.10

Those who think there is a parallel between a resting mutable being and a perfect immutable being fail to distinguish the potentially changeable uniformity of rest from the changeless simplicity of the immutable. They

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conflate the uniformity of the two. A uniformly blue line, which cannot be distinguished into different colors, can still be distinguished into various spatial parts because its color is different from its extension. The latter’s composition from extended parts is in no way dependent upon the former’s qualitative uniformity. Whether or not the line varies in color from segment to segment, it will still maintain its spatial composition. The eternity of an immutable being, on the other hand, does not have distinguishable parts. To continue the spatial metaphor, it is more like a point than a line. This image of a partless point may lead us to think we should not call eternity a whole at all. For “what has parts is called a whole. But this does not belong to eternity, since it is simple. Therefore, it is improperly said to be a whole.”11 Above I spoke of a whole whose parts are identical and unable to be distinguished to express that there is no succession in eternity. The lack of distinct states follows from removing the imperfect states of successive existence. Aquinas tells us that we properly call eternity a whole “not because it has parts, but insofar as it lacks nothing.”12 It lacks nothing because succession implies imperfection. If motion were not a succession of imperfect actualities, then, at each and every moment of a motion, the mobile would possess the full actuality of the motion’s terminus ad quem. In fact, this would correspond to rest. However, as I just noted, even what is at rest has a succession of different states in potency. But eternity does not have different states in act or potency, for it lacks nothing. Thus, because eternity lacks any imperfection, Aquinas adds ‘perfect’ to ‘simultaneous whole’ in the definition of eternity. From motion’s succession, Aquinas considers the second aspect of time and mutation: possessing a beginning and an end. The negation of this yields the other aspect found in Boethius’ definition of eternity: interminable life. Aquinas, again following Aristotle, tells us that time measures motion insofar the total duration of motion is limited, i.e., insofar as motion has a beginning and an end.13 Motion is a limited whole because it is the actuality of what exists in potency as potential. Motion, considered as a whole, is an imperfect state existing between a state of potency to some actuality and the actuality of this potency. Considered according to its whole duration, something is terminated or limited which has a beginning and an end.14 This follows from being composed of successive parts. In a finite whole, since the parts cannot exist together, the whole will have a beginning which differs from its end. Even if we suppose some motion to be everlasting, any part of this motion, considered as a whole in itself, will have a beginning and an end. What is wholly immutable will not.15 What wholly lacks succession

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possesses its act as a simultaneous whole. It neither has a starting point from which it begins to be actualized nor a term toward which it proceeds to full act. It is interminable and not able to be limited. But note that we say interminable life rather than interminable existence. As said above, we come to eternity from time as we come to immutability from mutability because motion itself is a terminable operation or activity, so immutable existence is also an activity. In fact, it causes mutable activity16 and thus must be an activity itself, for an agent cannot cause what it does not have in the same way or in a more excellent way. Thus, we say eternity is interminable life, because life is a kind of activity. In fact, it is the highest activity.17 In replying to an objection, Aquinas explains the last part of the definition: possession. Eternity is the possession of interminable life because possession implies “that what is possessed is held firmly and quietly. Therefore, the word possession is used to designate the immutability and permanence of eternity.”18 From this derivation of eternity, it is short work for Aquinas to show that God is eternal. Having established in ST 1, q. 9 that God alone is immutable, Aquinas concludes that God is eternal because he is immutable: The idea of eternity follows upon immutability, just as the idea of time follows upon motion, as was said above. Hence, since God is most immutable, it most properly belongs to him to be eternal. Not only is he eternal, he is his eternity, since whereas no other thing is its own duration, because nothing else is its own existence. God however is his own uniform existence, whence, just as he is his essence, so he is his own eternity.19

As we have seen throughout the derivation of the Boethian definition of eternity, immutability is the foundation for understanding eternity. God is eternal because he is immutable.20 A number of additional conclusions follow. God is identical with his own eternity; that is, his uniform existence without succession does not differ from his essence because of his simplicity. Furthermore, only God is eternal since only God is truly immutable.21 Last of all, and most importantly, God as eternal is timeless. Aquinas explains that the distinction of time from eternity is fundamentally based on succession or the lack thereof: “But still these differences follow upon that first and per se difference, that eternity is wholly simultaneous and time is not.”22 Aquinas gives two ways to distinguish eternity from time. First, eternity has no potentially or actually distinguishable beginning or end.23 Since only God is eternal and immutable, both the eternal and

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eternity itself have no beginning or end. Time does have a beginning and end, both in its subject—motion—and in itself. However, this is not the most fundamental difference between time and eternity. For if we suppose motion to be everlasting, the totality of motion would be without beginning or end. The same applies to time. Thus, time and eternity, taken as wholes, will not be distinct. Nevertheless, even if they are everlasting, motion and time still have succession. We can always distinguish the beginning and the end of any one part of motion. The same applies to time. Even if the totality of time is without beginning or end, any particular period of time will have a beginning or an end. This does not apply to eternity. As a whole, it has no beginning or end; as a simultaneous and perfect whole, it has no succession because it has no parts whose limits we could mark out. Nevertheless, one may still think that time and eternity as measures are related as part to whole, for measures of duration cannot co-exist without one containing the other, as a day contains an hour. But eternity co-exists with time: there is never a time at which it is true to say, “God does not exist.”24 Thus, time and eternity seem to be continuous with one another, i.e., the latter contains the former as a measurable part. This would make God temporal by making eternity and time part of one measurable continuum. This brings us to the second and more fundamental way eternity differs from time: what is measured by each essentially differ; eternity measures what is without succession, being simultaneously whole; time is a measure of successively existing being.25 They are not the same kind of measure.26 But what does it mean to speak of eternity as a measure of immutable being? Prima facie, this is an odd statement to make, for we measure by marking off equal parts of what is measured. But an eternal being has no parts. In his Commentary on the Physics, Aquinas explains how eternity and time are both measures but ones that differ in subject: For the “now,” insofar as it corresponds to a mobile object, differently related, distinguishes the before and after in time. And by its flux it produces time, as a point produces a line. Therefore, when different dispositions are removed from a mobile object, there remains a substance, which is always the same. Hence the “now” is understood as always stationary, and not as flowing or as having a before and after. Therefore, as the “now” of time is understood as the number of a mobile object, the “now” of eternity is understood as the number, or rather the unity, of a thing which is always the same.27

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Measuring considers a whole as divided into equal parts. Since motion is an imperfect act, motion as a whole exists successively. The only aspect of motion that actually exists in re is the current indivisible state of the mobile. The totality exists as a whole only in our minds. By numbering the different states that we experience, we measure the motion and perceive time. The totality of eternity, on the other hand, exists in re without succession. By numbering the eternal “now,” i.e., the eternal subject according to its different states, we arrive at our measure. Since it is nonsuccessive, there is no plurality to number; its measure is unity. Thus, eternity essentially differs from time in that its measure is not properly a number at all.28 To be a temporal being is to have some measure of its change; its duration consists of a multitude of states in some constant subject. An eternal being is not in time because its duration cannot be measured quantitatively. 29 Its measurable aspect is not a multitude. Eternity is wholly apart from time. Having explained Aquinas’ account of God’s timeless eternity, I will now move to an important objection to this account. In his famous essay “God Everlasting”,30 Nicholas Wolterstorff presents a strong critique of Aquinas’ notion that God is an eternal being “which is without beginning and without end, and which has no succession among its aspects.”31 Wolterstorff maintains God is “everlasting” rather than eternal32 (i.e.: God’s interminable existence is temporal rather than atemporal.) by pointing to an apparent inconsistency that arises from divine omniscience belonging to an atemporal deity. First, Wolterstorff argues that because knowing an event is past or present or future involves temporality, these acts of knowing are distinct temporal events, and, therefore, God’s knowledge that an event is past, present, or future is a temporal act. From this he concludes that God is temporal. Second, he argues that just as an event changing from future to present to past is successive, so also these three distinct acts of knowing occur successively. Therefore, there is a changeful succession of states in God, making God mutable. It is worthwhile to quote Wolterstorff at length: Three such acts [of God which are infected with the temporality of their objects] are the diverse though similar acts of knowing about some temporal event that it is occurring (that it is present), of knowing about some temporal event that it was occurring (that it is past), and of knowing about some temporal event that it will be occurring (that it is future). Consider the first of these. No one can know about some temporal event e that it is occurring except when it is occurring. Before e has begun to occur one cannot know that it is occurring, for it is not. Nor after e has ceased to occur can one know that it is occurring, for it is not. So suppose that e has

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a beginning. Then P’s knowing about e that it is occurring cannot occur until e begins. And suppose that e has an ending. Then P’s knowing about e that it is occurring cannot occur beyond e’s cessation. But every temporal event has (by definition) either a beginning or an ending. So every case of knowing about some temporal event that it is occurring itself either begins or ends (or both). Hence the act of knowing about e that it is occurring is infected by the temporality of e. Also, the act of knowing about e that it was occurring, and the act of knowing about e that it will be occurring, are infected by the temporality of e. But God, as the biblical writers describe him, performs all three of these acts, and performs them on temporal events. He knows what is happening in our history, what has happened, and what will happen. Hence some of God’s actions are themselves temporal events. But surely the nonoccurrence followed by the occurrence followed by the nonoccurrence of such knowings constitutes a change on God’s time-strand. Accordingly, God is fundamentally noneternal.33

According to Wolterstorff, the act of knowing that an event is occurring34 must itself occur simultaneously with the event, i.e., there can be no time at which the act of knowing occurs at which the event does not also occur. Knowing that an event e is present is only possible when e is actually occurring. Before e is occurring, we cannot know that e is present because it is not the case. Likewise, after e has occurred, we cannot know that is present because it is not the case. Because knowing e is occurring is simultaneous with e occurring, the temporal measurability of e will also belong to the act of knowing that e is occurring. Since God must have true knowledge of any temporal event, it appears that the same conditions must apply. He cannot know that e is occurring before or after e occurs. When e is not yet occurring or is no longer occurring, God must know that e is future or past. God knows that e is present only when e is presently occurring. Thus, when e is actually occurring, he cannot believe e has ceased to occur or has yet to occur. Such belief would be false, and, as Aquinas notes, we cannot attribute a false belief to God.35 But if we deny that God has any false belief, his knowledge of e occurring must have a beginning and an end, which places a distinct temporal state in God. The successive transition of e from future to present to past will be accompanied by a succession of three distinct states in God: i.e., God will be mutable. How can we solve this problem? First, we must address Wolterstorff’s assumption that if God knows temporal events, he must be temporally simultaneous with these events. It is true that even though God is timeless, he is said to co-exist with temporal beings. We say God exists

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simultaneously with them. However, we must make a distinction between different senses of simultaneity. We say that two entities are simultaneous in the most basic sense when they co-exist. Let us therefore define simultaneity simpliciter thus: (1) Two things A and B are simultaneous simpliciter if at some time t it is true to say that both A and B exist.

Since we are temporal beings, our knowledge that two things co-exist is itself temporal. For this reason, we include the qualifier “at some time t.” This simple co-existence is logically prior to temporal co-existence, for temporal simultaneity adds an additional condition to this co-existence. For temporal beings, to exist simultaneously means there are distinct states in each being which co-exist and which can be identified by the same temporal indexical. We may understand the temporal relation of simultaneity in terms of co-existence at some time t. It was explained above that “Socrates is sitting at 10:00 a.m.,” and “Socrates is sitting at 11:00 a.m.” identify two different temporal states in Socrates. Socrates’ act of sitting at 10:00 a.m. was simultaneous with a certain position of the sun. His act of sitting at 11:00 a.m. was simultaneous with a different position of the sun. The resting state from 10:00 to 11:00 has a relation of simultaneity with the intervening motion of the sun. Even though he has not changed, his sitting is in time because of these relations of simultaneity. Let us therefore define temporal simultaneity thus: (2) Two things are temporally simultaneous if it is true to say at some time t that both A and B exist and it is true to say that both A and B exist at time t.

By saying “A and B exist at time t,” we mean that A and B have states which are actually or potentially distinguished by time t. When we turn to God, we see that God is simultaneous simpliciter with temporal events, but he is not temporally simultaneous. Since God is pure existence, he always exists. It is false to say at any time t that God does not exist. Furthermore, it is true to say at 10:00 a.m. that both God and Socrates exist for God coexists with everything that exists at 10:00 a.m. The same holds true for 11:00 a.m. However, God’s simultaneous existence with creatures is not temporally simultaneous. “It is the case that Socrates exists at 10:00 a.m,” and “It is true to say at 10:00 a.m. that Socrates exists” are both true statements about Socrates. However, on my explanation, these formulations are not both true of God. The proposition “It is true to say at 10:00 a.m. that God exists” is true, for God always exists. There is no time

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when saying “God exists” is false. On the other hand, we cannot say, “It is the case that God exists at 10:00 a.m.” Temporal references to God do not refer to distinct states in God since God is simple. “It is the case that God exists at 10:00 a.m.” is false since He does not exist at any time. To exist at a time is to be temporal, i.e., to possess a multitude of actually or potentially distinct states. If God existed at time t, then references to God at t would indicate a state in God distinguishable from a state indicated at time t1. This would necessitate that there be a multitude of distinct states in God temporally corresponding with every possible time, which entails change or the possibility of change in an immutable being. However, since there are two senses of simultaneity, we may maintain that God’s coexistence with creatures is simultaneous simplicity without making God temporal. There is no temporality in God based on relations of simultaneity. Wolterstorff, in analyzing Aquinas, fails to make this distinction. Although he recognizes that Aquinas does not allow for a multitude of actually distinct states in God, he does not realize this also implies that there cannot be a multitude of potentially distinct states in God. “[God’s act of being omnipotent] occurs simultaneously with every temporal event whatsoever. Since God’s being omnipotent is always occurring, it ‘overlaps’ all temporal events whatsoever.”36 Wolterstorff’s language of God’s simple act “overlapping” temporal events suggests he is conceiving of eternal existence in a similar manner to Geach’s imaginary opponent who thinks of eternity like a uniform blue line.37 Although Wolterstorff grasps the uniformity of immutability implied by “interminable existence,” the other part of the definition of eternity, “simultaneously whole and perfect,” rules out both actual and potential distinctions of states in God resulting from Cambridge changes. There is no “overlap” since overlap implies a distinction of parts, which implies potency, which is contrary to simplicity and immutability. Thus, Wolterstorff makes the assumption that God’s eternity is temporally measurable, and that this follows from Aquinas’ admission that God’s existence is simultaneous with all times. However, based on our distinction, the application of this assumption to Aquinas’ account is unwarranted. The non-temporal simultaneity of God and creatures allows for God to know all times without any succession in him. Aquinas explains that from the perspective of eternity, events that occur at different times are simultaneously present to God. Each event e occurs simultaneously with God knowing e, but God knowing e is not temporally measured by e: Things which are reduced to act temporally are known by us successively in time, but [they are known] by God in eternity, which is above time.

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Chapter Nineteen Whence because we know future contingents insofar as they are such, they cannot be certain to us but only to God, whose act of understanding is in eternity above time. Just as that man who goes on the road does not see those who come after him, but he who looks at the whole road from some height sees together all travelling on the road.38

The man on the hill, in one glance, takes in the entire stretch of the road and sees all those who are on the road. In this single glance, he can distinguish where one traveler on the road is from where one travelling behind him is. He does not anticipate or guess where someone on the road is, for each traveler is present to him. Transferring the metaphor to God’s knowledge of temporal events, God knows events occurring at different times without incurring the temporal character of these events. Even though an event begins and ends, the temporal limits of this event do not mark off distinct states in God. By seeing all events simultaneously, the beginning, end, and all intermediate states are present together in his knowledge. Thus, for God, knowing the succession of events is not a temporal act. It is akin to knowing, by one single glance, that different parts of a line are successive. When Aquinas speaks of God’s knowledge of the future, he says that such an event “must be understood as it is subject to the divine knowledge, namely as it is in its presentality.”39 If God knows all things in their “presentality,” it seems we may maintain that God’s relation with temporal events allows us to say that God knows that e is present without infecting or transferring the measurable duration of e onto the non-measurable eternal duration of God. Wolterstorff assumes that because God is simultaneous with all events, his existence is “present” in time rather than in eternity and thus must be measurable. But there is a difficulty with this solution. To say that past and future events are known by God “in their presentality” implies he does not know past events as past or future events as future. If God is like an observer on a hill to whom every moment in time is present, the distinction of events as past, present, or future will be meaningless for God. If event e is present, event e1, which is earlier than e, will be past. But since all events are known by God “in their presentality,” we may just as well suppose e1 to be present, in which case e will be future. Since all events are present to eternity, the eternal observer will simultaneously know an event as presently past, presently present, and presently future, which renders the real distinction between past, present, and future incoherent. Thus, events at different times will only be actually distinguished insofar as they are earlier than, later than and simultaneous with other events. From this we end up denying the reality of time and change for the eternal observer since the distinction of past, present, and future are

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essential aspects of time. Time, as the measurable quantity of motion, follows necessarily upon change. Thus, if there is no time, change is not actually or even potentially measureable. Since this measurability arises from the successive states of change, the denial of measurability means there is no succession. But change is essentially successive. Put succinctly: no time, no change. Since all times are simultaneously present to eternity, two different states of a motion are not distinguished insofar as one does not exist and one does exist; they both exist simultaneously in the subject. They are merely distinguished by having different temporal positions in the subject. Therefore, for the eternal observer, there is no changeful succession among events in which a continuum of states comes to be and ceases to be in a subject. However, to remove succession from God by removing from his knowledge of creation the changeful succession of states in creation does not solve the problem pointed out by Wolterstorff. Per Geach, Put succinctly, if God does not know things as they are, then God is mistaken. If we throw this out by protesting that God does know things as they are yet all things are present to God “in their presentality,” that God is like an observer on a hill who sees every moment in time as present, we end up denying the reality of time. To deny the reality of time is to deny the reality of change, for since time follows necessarily upon change, if there is no time, there is no change. For in [Jewish and Christian] theism an absolute distinction has to be made between the eternal unchangeable God and his mutable creatures: they depend upon God’s will from moment to moment, and by that will could at any moment sink into nothingness. If we reject the reality of time, there cannot be this relation between God and creature, and therefore traditional theism must be rejected as false.40

As Geach points out elsewhere, “God sees creatures as changing and as being in different states at different times, because that is the way things are and God sees things the way things are.”41 To maintain the “man on the hill” account of eternal knowledge denies that God knows things the way they are. If God does not know things as they are, i.e., as temporal, then God is mistaken. He is under an illusion. On the other hand, if the divine observer, from his vantage point on the hill of eternity, does know things as they are, then time and change are not real. This has disastrous consequences for theism: the doctrine of the creation of a mutable world must be rejected along with any real distinction between the immutable God of theism and his mutable creation.42 Therefore, in order for Aquinas’ account of eternity to be consistent with divine simplicity, immutability, and omniscience, we must show how temporal things being subject to

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divine knowledge “in their presentality” do not make time and change unreal for either God or creatures. However, this problem only obtains if we conceive God as knowing motion and time in the same way we do. Thus, we may find the solution to our dilemma by considering how God knows temporal things. Wolterstorff posits that knowledge of whether a thing is present depends on the succession of states of beginning to know that a thing is present, knowing it is present, and ceasing to know that it is present. And this is quite true for those who are in time. But for a timeless God, this does not apply. Why not? God knows causally rather than observationally. Both our knowledge of temporal acts and God’s knowledge of temporal acts concern what exists successively. However, our knowledge of this succession is itself successive whereas God’s knowledge of this succession is not successive. 43 As temporal creatures, we come to know observationally. Our concepts of motion and time are formed by our sense experience of motion. I know that Socrates is walking because I see Socrates walking. Because motion is an imperfect act, the actualities of being in each location belong to Socrates successively. I see Socrates passing through different locations and mark these out successively in my memory. Thus, my knowledge of the temporal event “Socrates is walking,” a successive act, is itself a successive act. God, however, does not know motion and time observationally by conforming himself to the way things are. Rather, God knows insofar as things conform to him; that is to say, his knowledge is not caused but causal. As Aquinas notes in the Summa Contra Gentiles, “The divine intellect does not gather its knowledge from things, as does ours; rather…it is through its knowledge the cause of things.”44 What exactly does such causal knowledge entail? Aquinas provides an analogy: The knowledge of the divine intellect is to other things as the knowledge of an artisan to artifacts, since through his knowledge he is the cause of things. Now, the artisan knows through his art even those things that have not been yet fashioned, since the forms of his art flow from his knowledge to external matter for the constitution of the artifacts. Hence nothing forbids that there be in the knowledge of an artisan forms that have not yet come out of it. Thus nothing forbids God to have knowledge of things that are not.45

God knows future contingents because he knows what he is going to do. Although the effect is brought about successively in time, the artisan comprehends his effect without succession. He knows the form that will

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be brought about because he has the form of the effect in him. Likewise, God does not need to observe his effects in order to know them. The series of temporally ordered events is present all at once to the divine knowledge because God knows everything by one simple act. Just as the artisan knows every effect he will cause before he causes it, so, too, God knows every event before it occurs, when it occurs, and after it occurs. God’s knowledge of an event does not depend on observing it. There is no succession in God’s knowledge because God does not understand motion or time by composing the whole from successive experiences of the parts. Rather he understands simultaneously every effect that he may cause because he pre-contains all effects in his power. But what is the proper object of God’s knowledge? It is not the temporal events but himself. Since God knows himself—and by this knowledge he knows all things insofar as he knows all the effects that he can bring about— all events at all times are “present” to him. He knows them insofar as he intends them as effects. This “presentness” does not imply actual existence outside God. At this moment, God knows that I am going to be eating dinner tonight with my wife. Being a future contingent, we cannot say with certainty whether it will. However, it is not the case that God believes this event actually exists in the order of things as we speak. He knows it because it is present in his will as an intended effect. When it does in fact occur, it will be temporally present and actual in the thing. God knows change insofar as he knows that a subject is one way at one time and a different way at a different time. This does not involve change in God, but in things. God knows all things by one unchanging act. He causes all things by this same, one, unchanging act. When what is currently future becomes present, there is no change in God but a change in the subject of the event. I am sitting here now, but later I will be at a restaurant. I am not eating a steak at the local diner now, so I change. God, on the other hand, being eternal, is not subject to my successive states because he causes it all by one act. His knowledge and plan are not present to him like a strip of film which contains every shot in a movie but can only be comprehended by successively examining one frame after another one. Rather, his knowledge and plan are present together without any distinction of parts. The succession that we experience is brought about in creation without any change or succession in him. The succession occurs entirely on the side of things, not God. What effects occur depend on the state of the object being acted upon. There is succession in creatures because matter must be disposed to receive forms. Taking an example from Aquinas, fire does not change its

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temperature when heating water but remains the same throughout. It is the water that undergoes change. Are we to posit that there are different states of heat in the fire successively as there are different states of heat in the water successively? Of course not. Nevertheless, each state that comes to be in the water pre-exists in the fire through the fire’s power to heat. Even though we may attribute to the fire the successive states of causing 90° and causing 100°, this does not mean there are different states in the fire when the water is at these different temperatures. This succession exists solely in the water. Likewise, there are not different states of knowledge in God regarding the past or present or future. God knows what he knows by a single, perfect act devoid of potency, and he cannot know more than he knows. The changes of creatures do not imply any real change in God nor does his knowledge of what he causes change. This causal knowledge is simple and invariant. To posit that God does not know things as changing because he does not change is to assert that the only way to know change is to change. It is to presuppose that God is in time. We know past, present, and future insofar as these events are temporally simultaneous with us. God, as eternally present to any time and any instant of time, is not temporally simultaneous. He does not know past, present, and future in the same way we do, namely as temporally related to our awareness, since he is not in time. Aquinas elaborates on this principle (using a spatial metaphor): Furthermore, since the being of what is eternal does not pass away, eternity is present in its presentiality to any time or instant of time. We may see an example of sorts in the case of a circle. Let us consider a determined point on the circumference of the circle. Although it is indivisible, it does not coexist simultaneously with any other point as to position, since it is the order of position that produces the continuity of the circumference. On the other hand, the center of the circle, which is no part of the circumference, is directly opposed to any given determinate point on the circumference. Hence, whatever is found in any part of time co-exists with what is eternal as being present to it, although with respect to some other time it be past or future. Something can be present to what is eternal only by being present to the whole of it, since the eternal does not have the duration of succession. The divine intellect, therefore, sees the whole of eternity, as being present to it, whatever takes place through the whole course of time. And yet what takes place in a certain part of time was not always existent. It remains, therefore, that God has a knowledge of those things that according to the march of time do not yet exist.46

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Aquinas notes that “eternity is present in its presentality to any time or instant of time.” However, this does not mean temporally simultaneous. What does it mean to be present other than to be actual? As Wolterstorff himself points out, what is past is not occurring and likewise for what is future. But for an event to be occurring is nothing other than to be actual. The actuality of a thing, as opposed to the potentiality of a thing, is what we mean when we say something is present. Thus God is present to all times. We may make true statements about God at any time (“God is eternal” or “God is good”) and the different times at which we say this do not imply any difference in God, for as noted by Geach above, we cannot distinguish states in God based on external relations of succession. Moreover, we can truly say that God causes different things at different times without positing any change in Him because he is simple and present (i.e., actual) to all times through his causal act of sustaining creation. This likewise does not create any succession in God, for since God acts by one single, simple act which contains all possible effects, the changes which we see around us are not a result of God performing a different act, as if parting the Red Sea and the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah are accomplished by numerically different states of divine power. God can do all these actions by one power, one act. Similarly, since God knows all things causally, the knowledge of these things will not differentiate his act of knowing. God is present to all times unchangingly, unlike temporal creatures that are only present to what is temporally simultaneous. Thus, God does not know what is present in the sense of being temporally simultaneous. “Whatever is found in any part of time co-exists with what is eternal as being present to it, although with respect to some other time it be past or future.”47 As we analyzed above, all things are present which are actual. Something is present to an eternal God insofar as it is actual. It is past or future to us insofar as these relate to a non-actual state in us as simultaneously actual. But for God, there is no potency. Temporal events do not relate to God as past or future as they relate to us. God knows the past as past insofar as he has caused it, but this does not involve a change in his act of causing. Since he knows what he causes, there is no change in knowing that his effect is no longer actual. While it is difficult fully to understand how an eternal being knows time because our own knowledge of time and change is itself in time, what we do see is that we ought not to attribute to God the same mode of knowledge as creatures. Knowing past, present, and future belongs to God in a different way than it does to us. We may not be fully able to explicate

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the constitution of this mode, but on the basis of Aquinas’ account, we may consistently hold that this different mode exists.

Bibliography Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Translated by Richard Green. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1988. Aquinas. Summa Contra Gentiles, edited and translated by Anton C. Pegis. Vol. 1, Notre Dame, IN: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1995. —. Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics. Translated by Richard J. Blackwell, Richard J. Spath and W. Edmund Thirkel. Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1995. —. Summa Theologiae. Vol. 1 Madrid: Biblioteca Autores Chrsstanos, 1951. Geach, P. T. God and the Soul. 2nd Edition. South Bend, Ind.: St. Augustine’s Press, 2000. —. Truth, Love, and Immortality: An Introduction to McTaggart’s Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. Leftow, Brian. Time and Eternity. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. McTaggart, J. M. E. “The Unreality of Time.” Mind 17, no. 68 (Oct. 1908): 457-474. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. “God Everlasting.” In Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology, edited by Brian Davies, 485-504. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Notes 1

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Richard Green (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1988). Bk. 5, Prose 6, 115. 2 Ibid. 3 Physics, bk. 4, ch. 11. 4 ST, vol. 1, q. 10, art. 1c: Sicut in cognitionem simplicium oportet nos venire per composita, ita in cognitionem aeternitatis oportet nos venire per tempus; quod nihil aliud est quam numerous motus secundum prius et posterius. (All translations are mine unless otherwise noted. Latin for all Summa Theologiae passages are taken from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Vol. 1 (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Crisstanos, 1951)).

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5 Ibid., Cum enim in quodlibet motu sit succession, et una pars post alteram, ex hoc quod numeramus prius et posterius in motu, apprehendimus tempus; quod nihil aliud est quam numerous prioris et posterioris in motu. 6 When we measure something continuous, we take some particular continuous amount as the unit and apply it to the thing being measured. After seeing how many times the unit may be applied, we express its measure in terms of a number of units (five degrees, ten yards). Since time and motion are continuous, to number motion is to measure it. Thus, I shall be using “number” and “measure” interchangeably. 7 ST, vol. 1, q. 10, art. 1c: In eo autem quod caret motu, et semper eodem modo se habet, non est accipere prius et posterius. Sicut igitur ratio temporis consistit in numeratione prioris et posterioris in motu, ita in apprehension uniformitatis eius quod est omnio extra motum, consistit ratio aeternitatis. 8 By a single kind of actuality, we are merely noting that all changes involve changing from a privation of an act to that act. The intermediate state between these—motion—will not involve any acts of a different kind. The intermediate stages of a change are the same in species as the initial and final states. Change in temperature does not consist in going from hot to cold by becoming sweet or orange. Changes from hot to cold involve becoming warm and then cool before finally ending in the state of being cold. We are not considering the case of substantial change, which, because it is instantaneous, does not involve a plurality of successive states. However, there is a succession insofar as what proceeds and follows a substantial change are two different substantial forms. 9 P. T. Geach, God and the Soul, 2nd Edition (South Bend, Ind: St Augustine’s Press, 2000), 73. 10 Ibid., 73. 11 ST, vol. 1, q. 10, art. 1, obj. 3: Praeterea, totum dicitur quod habet partes. Hoc autem aeternitati non convenit, cum sit simplex. Ergo inconvenienter dicitur tota. 12 Ibid., ad. 3: In eo autem quod caret motu, et semper eodem modo se habet, non est accipere prius et posterius. Sicut igitur ratio temporis consistit in numeratione prioris et posterioris in motu, ita in apprehension uniformitatis eius quod est omnio extra motum, consistit ratio aeternitatis. 13 Cf. ST, vol. 1, q. 10, art. 1c. 14 Cf. Super Sent., Lib. 1, d. 8, q. 2, art. 1c. 15 Cf. ST, q. 10, art. 1c. 16 Cf. ST vol. 1, q. 2, art. 3c. 17 Cf. ST, vol. 1, q. 10, art. 1, ad. 2. 18 ST, vol. 1, q. 10, art. 1, ad 6: Ad sextum dicendum quod illud quod possidetur, firmiter et quiete habetur. Ad designandam ergo imutabilitatem et indeficiendtiam aeternitatis, usus est nomine possessionis. 19 ST, part 1, q. 10, art. 2c: Respondeo dicendum quod ratio aeternitatis consequitur immutabilitatem, sicut in ratio temporis consequentur motum, ut ex dictis patet. Unde, cum Deus sit maxime immutabilis, sibi maxime competit esse aeternum. Nec solum est aeternus, sed est sua aeternitas: cum tamen nulla alia res sit sua

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duration, quia non est suum esse. Deus autem est suum esse uniforme: unde, sicut est sua essentia. 20 Cf. SCG, bk 1, 15. 21 Cf. ST, vol. 1, q. 9, art. 2c. 22 ST, vol.1, q. 10, a. 4c: Sed tamen istae differentiae consequuntur eam quae est per se et primo, differentiam, per hoc quod aeternitas est tota simul, non autem tempus. 23 Cf. Ibid. 24 Cf. Ibid., obj. 1. 25 Ibid., c. 26 Ibid., ad. 1. 27 Commentary on the Physics, bk. 4, Lec. 18, n. 586 (translation from Thomas Aquinas, Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, trans. Richard J. Blackwell, Richard J. Spath, and W. Edmund Thirkel (Notre Dame, IN: Dumb Ox Books, 1995), 285. 28 For Aquinas, one is not a number. Only a multitude of units is a number. Rather one is the principle of number. Cf. Euclid, The Elements, Bk. 7, Definitions 1 and 2. This unity is akin to that of a point. It is essentially indivisible. This aspect is the key to understanding how the unity of eternity differs from the modern mathematical understanding that number is continuous and that one can be divided. Far from being at odds with the Thomistic understanding of number, this modern notion neatly fits into the conception of the number by which we number, rather than the number of the thing numbered. We may divide a nominal unit into parts or speak intelligently of one half of one because we are speaking of logical creations. On the other hand, it is absurd or at the very least odd to say there are five and a half goats in a room with five live goats and one stuffed goat. The unity of essence is not divisible. A stuffed goat is not part goat. It is not a goat at all, properly speaking. It is the corpse of a goat, or the skin of a goat stretched on a sculpture. It is this indivisibility of essence that is the unity of eternity. The divisibility of a unit of time, on the other hand, comes from the continuous nature of its subject. When we measure a continuous quantity, we take some length as a nominal unit. However, as a measure, its character as a unit also comes from it sharing the same nature as what is measured, i.e.: it is extension. 29 One might object that God could be in time based on the similarity between the indivisible instant of motion and the indivisible whole of eternal existence. As Aquinas says, “Nor is anything concerning motion actually found in things except a certain indivisible part of motion, which is a division of motion” (Comm. Phys., bk. 4, lec. 23, no. 629). Moreover, as Brian Leftow suggests in Time and Eternity, such indivisible states are timeless entities, which nonetheless exist within time. “A being is intrinsically timeless if it does not ‘contain’ time, i.e., does not endure through time. If there are events without duration, they are intrinsically timeless even if they are located in time. But arguably, if there is a distinct event that is my beginning to write this chapter, it is a nonenduring or ‘point’ event. For it makes no sense to ask how long I have been beginning to write. We can certainly conceive that events of beginning exist. There seems to be no contradiction or other impossibility in this” (Brian Leftow, Time and Eternity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell

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University Press, 1991), 31). However, as noted above, the essential difference between an instant of motion and the simultaneously whole duration of eternity is that one is partless because it is imperfect while the other is partless because it is perfect. The instantaneous state cannot be measured by time, but it is a principle of time; it is in time as its principle, just as a point is in a line, even though neither time nor a line are composed of their partless principles. What is composed from an infinity of non-contiguous points is only a whole accidentally. When we speak of a line being composed of points, taking the limit of a continual division of a line, we do nothing more than provide a conceptual device, albeit a useful one. Parallel lines are said to meet at infinity, even though there is no particular distinguishable point we can mark out where both lines coincide. 30 Nicholas Wolterstorff, “God Everlasting,” in Philosophy of Religion: A Guide and Anthology, ed. Brian Davies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 485504. This essay is a standard found in many anthologies on philosophy of religion. 31 Ibid. p. 498 32 Wolterstorff treats of temporality in terms of two basic sets of temporal relations: “A series” relations and “B series” relations. This distinction was first set out by J. M. E. McTaggart in his famous article “The Unreality of Time” (Mind 17, no. 68 (Oct. 1908), 457-474). In this article, McTaggart presents two ways we may consider the series of temporal positions. The first, called the “A series,” considers the time of an event in terms of past, present or future. We may refer to these as the A-characteristics of an event. The second, called the “B series,” considers whether the time of one event is earlier than, later than or simultaneous with the time of another event (Ibid. p. 458). We may refer to past, present and future as Acharacteristics and to the relations of earlier than, later than and simultaneous with as B-characteristics. An event e1 in the A series will have a different Acharacteristic depending on whether the time of its occurrence is future, present or past. On the other hand, when we consider the same event e1 in the B series, it will always have the same B-characteristics regardless of whether it has yet to occur, is occurring or has already occurred. If e1 has the B-characteristic of being earlier than another event e2, then e1 will be earlier than e2 when both e1 and e2 are future, when e1 is present and e2 is future, when e1 is past and e2 is present, and when both e1 and e2 are past. McTaggart argues that these unchanging relations only take on their temporal character in terms of past, present and future, making Bcharacteristics logically posterior to and dependent upon A-characteristics (Ibid. p. 461). To this, Wolterstorff adds that, among A-characteristics, the present is most basic, for an event is only past, present or future if it is presently past, presently present or presently future (Wolterstorff, “God Everlasting”, p. 490). For the purposes of his argument, Wolterstorff treats the B-characteristics of events as “the decisive feature of temporality” (Ibid. p. 487). From this it follows that Wolterstorff has a different conception of timeless eternity than Aquinas. For a being to be timelessly eternal “none of its aspects [may] be related by any temporal order-relation to any event whatsoever” (Ibid. p. 489). If God is truly timeless, none of his aspects will be part of an event with B-characteristics. Put another way, if ‘α’ is truly predicated of God, then any proposition in which A-characteristics or

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B-characteristics are predicated of ‘α’ will either be false or meaningless. 33 Wolterstorff, “God Everlasting”, 485-504, 499. 34 Wolterstorff defines an event as some aspect of a subject: “[An event] consists in something’s actually having some property, or something’s actually performing some action, or something’s actually standing in some relation to something” (Wolterstorff, “God Everlasting,” 487). An event may be something such as “being tan” or “running on the beach” or “being Plato’s teacher.” Moreover, one event may belong to multiple subjects (Ibid., 488). For example, the event of Socrates sitting under a tree belongs both to Socrates and the tree. The aspect “sitting under this tree” belongs to Socrates and the aspect “being sat under by Socrates” belongs to the tree. Insofar as this has temporal relations to other events, the subjects of these events will be called temporal. However, this seems to imply that every event of being related will belong to both subjects as distinct aspects of each subject. Consider Wolterstorff’s own example of Euclid referring to the number three. On his account, this event will belong to both Euclid and the number three. Thus, he explains that the event of “being referred to by Euclid” constitutes a distinct aspect belonging to the number three (Ibid., 489). This is an example of what Aquinas calls a relation which is only real in one direction (ST, vol. 1, q. 13, art. 7c), which Geach calls a merely Cambridge change. In such cases, “A is related to B” refers to a real, distinct state in A; “B is related to A” is a logical predicate which refers to an idea, a logical state rather than a real, distinct state in B. When Plato thinks of Socrates, there is a real change in Plato; the idea of Socrates comes to exist in his mind. When Socrates is thought of by Plato, no such state comes to be in Socrates. If this were not the case, Socrates would be aware that he had begun to be thought of, even though anyone watching Socrates would not observe a change in him. There is no real distinction of states in Socrates when he is thought of and when no one pays him any mind. However, as far as I can tell, Wolterstorff does not recognize that this logical state “being thought of by Plato” is fundamentally different in kind from the real aspect “thinking of Socrates.” Although he notes that a series of successive references to the number three would not constitute “changeful succession,” it constitutes as succession of distinct states nonetheless. Presumably for Wolterstorff, the event “A is related to B” occurs because A has the aspect “relating to B.” But since every relation involves two terms, this event can only occur if B has the corresponding aspect “being related to by A.” Since “B is being related to by A” may be assigned both an A-characteristic and a B-characteristic, it is involves a temporally distinct state in B. Thus, every relation of some term A to another term B necessarily entails that both A and B possess distinct aspects in themselves. This of course goes against what I noted above, namely that merely Cambridge changes do not imply a really distinct state in the subject. They indicate a logically distinct state, which either corresponds per accidens to a potentially distinct state in the subject (in the case of a resting body) or does not correspond to any state at all (in the case of an immutable being). 35 Cf. SCG, bk. 1, par. 66.

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Ibid., 498. At the risk of going against Geach’s warning about using spatial images to solve problems with time, let us suggest a different image. Wolterstorff should not think of eternity as a uniformly colored straight line running parallel another straight line representing time. Rather, he should think of eternity as the vertex of a cone with time as the circumference of a circle somewhere on the cone’s surface. The vertex point is “simultaneous” with every point on the circumference insofar as we may pass a straight line through both the vertex and any point on the circumference. Although every point on the circumference is present to the vertex, the vertex does not “overlap” any segments of the circumference. It is present to the whole circle without being a circle or being on the circumference. Even though different points on the circle are related to the vertex, these relations do not entail that there are parts in the vertex. 38 ST, vol. 1, q. 14, art. 13, ad. 3: Ad tertium dicendum quod ea quae teporaliter in actum reducuntur, a nobis successive cognoscuntur in tempore, sed a Deo in aeternitate, quae est supra tempus. Unde nobis, quia cognoscimus futura contingentia inquantum talia sunt, certa esse non possunt: sed soli Deo, cuius intelligere est in aeternitate supra tempus. Sicut ille qui vadit per viam, non videt illos qui post eum veniunt: sed ille qui ab aliqua altitudine totam viam intuetur, simul videt omnes trnseuntes per viam. 39 ST, vol. 1, q. 14, art. 13, ad. 2: Et similter si dicam, si Deus scivit aliquid, illu erit, consequens intelligendum est prout subset divinae scientiae, scilicet prout est in sua praesentialitate. 40 P. T. Geach, Truth, Love, and Immortality: An Introduction to McTaggart's Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 163. 41 Geach, God and the Soul, 93. 42 “Even if there were not decisive reasons for rejecting as logically incoherent the theory that time and succession do not exist ‘from God’s point of view’, we should still need to notice that no Christian apologist can use this theory. For the one thing that is clear about Divine creation is that the things created have to be temporal, even if the Creator and his creative act are held to be eternal. If time is an illusion, then there is not the sort of mutable world that can be supposed to be a creation; so in this case the Judaeo-Christian doctrine of creation has to be rejected. Significantly the doctrine was rejected by great metaphysical thinkers, Spinoza and Bradley and McTaggart, who denied the reality of time. And again, if time is an illusion, this strikes at something that is central to the Christian creed: its reference to a datable event in time—the crucifixion of Christ under Pontius Pilate.” Geach, God and the Soul, 92-93. 43 Cf. ST I, q. 14, art. 13, ad. 3. 44 SCG, bk. 1, par. 65, from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, ed. Anton C. Pegis, trans. Anton C. Pegis, Vol 1 (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), 215. 45 SCG, bk 1, par. 66, from Ibid., 218-19. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid. 37

PART VII: SIGN AND SIGNIFIED IN THE RECOVERY OF MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE MUSIC AND THOUGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY THE CASE OF KENNINGS: ARISTOTLE, BEOWULF, AND DEEP-CASE GRAMMAR JOHN N. THORNBURG

A Riddle My clan and I are clever, wisdom-making wonders, but my form he finds a northern style-berserker, Greek tongues, yet nowadays some know If ye ken or need me,

claims Aristotle, word-smiths’ friends, foreign and barbaric, a gnarly strangler of torturing eloquence, my natural beauty. call my name.

Overview Old English poetry relishes compound words. Philologist Friedrich Klaeber observes, “[F]ully one third of the entire vocabulary [of Beowulf,] or some 1070 words are compounds.”1 Most of these compounds are compound nouns. Philologist Arthur Bradeur counts 903 compound nouns in the 3,182 lines of the epic poem Beowulf, of which 518 are unique to the poem.2 Many of the compound nouns in Beowulf and Old English poetry in general are synonyms or near-synonyms for the second word in the compound: the first word has little effect on the overall meaning and serves largely to fill out “the rhythm of a line” and supply “alliteration,” as medievalist Peter Baker explains.3 For example, Baker notes that many of the compound nouns from Beowulf that end with -rinc, “warrior,” simply refer to “warriors” in general. He lists gūþ-rinc (Beowulf line 838), “combat-warrior”; beado-rinca (line 1109), “battle-

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warriors’” (genitive plural); hilde-rinc (line 1307), “fight-warrior”, and heaðo-rinc (line 2466) “war-warrior.”3 Though kennings are also compound nouns, the first word in a kenning always interacts with and transforms the meaning of the second. Thus, in Beowulf, as Baker points out, the following compounds are kennings: beado-lƝoma (line 1523), “battle-gleam,” “a sword that gleams in battle,” and beado-hræƥl (line 552), “battle-garment,” “a coat of armor, or chainmail garment.” From the rhetorical tradition, three types of kennings based on meaning can be distinguished: metaphoric, metonymic, and synecdochic. Metaphoric kennings, unlike metonymic and synecdochic kennings, are figures of comparison based on four-term analogies (A is to B as C is to D), as Aristotle’s discussion of simile, metaphor, and other figures of transference contends in On Rhetoric. Typically, there is one nominal or adjectival concept for each term in the classical four-term analogy; however, one concept can fill terms B and D: (1)

A sword (A) has sparks (B) as a torch (C) has sparks (D).

Viewed from the theory of generative-semantic grammar, two semantic propositions underlie each analogy. Alternatively, two deep sentences are part of the syntactic structure underlying the surface form of an analogy as seen through the lens of generative-transformational grammar. A third way of describing metaphor and its deep structure comes from the theory of cognitive linguistics. Linguists George Lakoff and philosopher Mark Johnson propose in the Afterword to the Metaphors We Live By that metaphors arise from neurological mapping between source and target domains such that “[m]etaphors are fundamentally conceptual in nature; metaphorical language is secondary.” Revising their analysis from the 1980 text, they state in the 2003 afterword, “In addition, a metaphorical mapping is multiple, that is, two or more elements are mapped to two or more other elements.” A fourth approach is deep-case grammar. Deep cases can be added to the generativesyntactic or the generative-semantic models. Charles Fillmore originally proposed a generative-semantic-syntactic case grammar in the 1986 paper “The Case for Case.”9 He proposed a generative-semantic case grammar in the 1971 paper “Some Problems for Case Grammar.”10 Deep cases are suggestive of the relationships among the four or more terms in deep analogies that underlie simile and metaphor. Synecdochic and metonymic kennings are derived from deep-case relations in one semantic proposition or a single sentence in the deep

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syntactic structure. Synecdochic kennings relate a constituent part, component, or material to its entirety (the whole) through deep-case relations. For example, the kenning sund-wudu (line 1906), “sea-wood,” for “ship” is based on the deep-case relations of Material and Place or Purpose as in (2) and (3). Deep-Case Relations: (2) Agent | A carpenter

Action | builds

Created Entity | a ship

Material | of wood

Purpose | for sailing on the sea.

Deep-Case Relations: (3) Unaffected Entity | A ship

Material | of wood

Action | floats

Place | on the sea.

Metonymic kennings relate distinct entities that are closely associated with one another through deep-case relations in a single deep sentence or semantic proposition that underlies the surface structure of language. For example, frum-gār (line 2856), “first-spear” for “leader” is based on the deep cases of Number and Possession or Affected Entity as in (4) and (5). Deep Cases: (4) Possessor | The leader

Possessive Verb | holds (has)

Number | the first

Possession | spear.

Deep Cases: (5) Agent | The leader

Action Verb | throws

Number | the first

Affected Entity | spear.

Such deep-case relations, or roles, may be employed by critics to analyze imaginative figures such as metaphors, similes, and kennings; moreover, they may serve as heuristics for the composition of imaginative figures.

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Examples of Kennings from Beowulf In the quotations from Beowulf below,11 the examples of kennings are in bold type, and the Old English is glossed by a fairly literal, close to word-for-word, translation into Modern English:12 Oft Scyld Scēfing sceaþena þrēatum monegum maēgþum mēodo-setla oftēah

Often Scyld, Scef’s son, from troops of enemies, from many peoples, seized benches of mead (lines 5-6).

The compound noun mēodo-setla, (line 6), which ends with a genitiveplural suffix, means “‘mead-benches’,” or “benches of mead” and signifies the “royal halls,” emblematic of the power and prestige taken from the kings defeated by Scyld Scēfing. Out of context, “mead-benches” seems to be a near synonym to “benches”; however, the compound is a metonymic kenning, an important article of furniture referring to the royal hall where it sits. Further, the kenning symbolizes the mutual obligations of the monarchy and thanes. þone god sende folce tō frōfre; fyren-ðearfe ongeat þæt hīeǣr drugon, aldor-lēase, lange hwīle him þæs līf-frēä wuldres wealdend worold-āre forgeaf.

God sent him to comfort the folks; He had seen the pain-need (painful need) that they suffered before, leader-less, for a long while; therefore, the Life-Lord, the Wielder of Glory, granted world-honor (worldly honor) (lines 13-7).

The compound noun līf-frēä (line 16), which ends with a nominative singular suffix, means “Life Lord,” or “Lord of Life,” a metaphoric kenning for God. An analogy such as (6) underlies it: (6)

The Lord rules life as the king rules the people.

In the compound wuldres wealdend (line 17), written as two separate words, the first word ends with a genitive singular suffix. The compound may be translated as “Glory’s Ruler,” or “Ruler of Glory.” This laudatory compound for God is a metaphoric kenning based on analogy such as (7):

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God wields glory as a thane wields a sword. ǣr æt hȳðe stōd hringedstefna

there at the harbor stood a ringed-prow (line 32).

The compound noun hringedstefna, (nominative singular suffix), which means “ringed-prow,” or “ringed-stem,” is a ship part referring to an entire ship; hence, it is a synecdochic kenning. The compound noun below Ingwina (line 1044), with a genitive plural suffix, means “Ing-friends’” and refers to the Danes (Hrothgar’s Scyldings). The compound “Ing-friends” is a metonymic kenning based on a deep sentence such as (8): (8)

Ing befriends (is friends with) Danes.

Ing is the name of an old Anglo-Saxon god or hero. The word eodor (line 1044), which has a nominative singular suffix, means “sheltering building” and by metaphoric extension “the protector, the lord who protects.” Thus, eodor is a metaphor based on analogy similar to (9). (9)

The lord protects his people as a shelter protects the people inside. ond ðā Bēowulfe bēga gehwæþres eodor Ingwina onweald getēah

and then to Beowulf both of the treasures the protector of friends of Ing gave possession (lines 1043-4).

With the addition of the word eodor to Ingwina (line 1044), the compound should be translated as “Ing-friends’ protector,” or the protector of the friends of Ing, in effect a double genitive compound that refers to Hrothgar. Thus, the triple-word compound functions as a metonymic kenning based on a deep sentence like (10): (10) Hrothgar protects the Danes.

Aristotle’s Theory of Metaphor, Simile, and Other Figures of Transference from the Poetics and On Rhetoric Aristotle uses the word metaphor (metaphora, μεταφορὰ), which means “transference” in the Poetics and On Rhetoric, as both a genus and a species—both as a general class of figures of transference and a specific subclass of such figures based on analogy, observe philosophers Paul

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Ricour13 and John Kirby.14 Simile (eikon, εἰκὼν), which means “likeness,” or “comparison,” is also included within the genus of figures of transference in On Rhetoric.15 Aristotle’s theory of simile, metaphor, and other figures of transference is a cognitive theory in which Aristotle considers the transference of not only words but also concepts. As Kirby points out, Aristotle exemplifies analogies that underlie proportionate metaphors--to analogon, τὸ ἀνάλογον, “in proportion,” or “by analogy”-with concepts for which there is no word in Greek.16 Aristotle writes, In certain cases, the language may contain no actual word corresponding to one of the terms in the proportion [underlying analogy], but the figure, nevertheless, will be employed. For example, when a fruit casts forth its seed the action is called “sowing,” but the action of the sun casting forth its flame has no special name. Yet this nameless action (B) is to the sun (A) as “sowing” (D) is to the fruit (C); and hence, we have the expression of the poet, “sowing a god-created flame.”17

In The Art of Poetry (Poetics), Aristotle lists four species, or subclasses, of figures of transference. Perhaps the best translation in English of the four Aristotelian subclasses is by Lane Cooper, professor of English language and literature: (i) the name of the genus may be applied to a subordinate species; (ii) the name of the species may be applied to the inclusive genus; (iii) under the same genus, the name of one species, may be applied to another; or (iv) there may be a transference of names [words] on the basis of analogy, or proportion.18 Aristotle’s examples of figures of transference in chapter 21 of the Poetics include both nouns and verbs, not only name-words. Greek grammarians classify nouns, pronouns, and adjectives as name words. The figures of transference in the Poetics, as Stephen Halliwell, professor of Greek, notes, include “things which now might be classified as synecdoche or metonymy.”19 In the modern sense of the word metaphor-”a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them”--only the fourth figure described by Aristotle, the figure of transference on the basis of analogy, is a metaphor proper.20 A metaphor proper is based on transference by analogy, transference of words and concepts from two distinct genera, two categories of thought, unrelated literally but analogically similar.

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The first three types of figures of transference classified by Aristotle refer to words from only one genus, from one general category of thought. The first two of these, genus-for-species and species-for-genus figures are the rhetorical tropes of metonymy and synecdoche. For example, the words killer, slayer, and murderer are nominalizations based on a deep sentence such as, “A person kills (slays or murders) people.” Such words are synonyms for an inclusive class that contains the meanings of subsidiary words. Such subsidiaries can be single or compound words: cutthroat, for example, is a metonymic kenning for “killer” from the deep sentence, “A killer cuts throats.” The single words garrotter, strangler, choker, slasher, ripper, and shootist (a nineteenth-century, nominalizedverb coining) are metonyms for killer. The word gun-hand is a compound noun based on a deep sentence like, “A person kills skillfully with a gun in hand”; it is a synecdochic kenning for killer since hand is a part of a person. The word gunfighter is a metonymic kenning from the sentence, “A person fights and kills with a gun,” while gunslinger is a twentiethcentury metaphoric kenning for killer based on analogy with hash slinger and gunfighter of nineteenth-century coinage: “A person fights with a gun as skillful as a cook or waiter slings hash.” The word cook is a metonymic nominalization from the sentence, “A person cooks food well or professionally.” The compound serial killer is a metonymic compound from the deep sentence, “A person kills serially (repeatedly over time),” and the compound mass murderer a metonymic compound from the deep sentence, “A person murders people in mass.” Unlike the kennings gunslinger and gunfighter, the compounds serial killer and mass murderer sound as if the second word in the compound is excessively close to what is being referred; therefore, they do not seem to be good kennings. Their meaning is transparent, and they completely lack the riddle-like quality of good kennings. The third category of Aristotle’s figures of transference, species-forspecies substitution taken from within an inclusive genus, seems to be a substitution of synonyms or near-synonyms, a choice of diction, such as selecting a word from among the synonyms garrotter, strangler, and choker. Aristotle’s examples are the verbs “cut” (τέμνω) and “draw away from” (ἀρύω) as species of the inclusive genus of removing (taking away): “with a knife of bronze drawing away the life-blood” and “cutting with unwearing bronze.”21 These passages translated into English seem to contain nearly synonymous verbs and do not appear to be imaginative figures in the modern sense of the word. The difficulty in understanding this category from Aristotle’s examples may be that the meanings of the examples are unclear without a larger context than Aristotle provides. The

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full contextual meaning could be an analogy like, “A priest cuts the lifeblood from a sacrificial animal with a bronze knife; likewise, a priestess draws water away from sacred springs with bronze vessels”; then “a priest drawing life-blood away from a sacrificial animal” and “a priestess cutting water from a sacred pool with bronze vessel” would be examples of verbs functioning as implied metaphors. Such appear to be examples of Aristotle’s fourth category of metaphor by analogy, not the third category of the substitution of a species for a species when both are contained by inclusive genus. While the Aristotelian theory of figures of transference is much less elaborate than Hellenistic and Roman theories of tropes, Aristotle’s theory has a fundamental insight neglected by other classical rhetorical theories and often undeveloped or underappreciated by contemporary cognitive and syntactic theories of metaphor. Aristotle defines metaphor and simile in four-term analogies (A is to B as C is to D), two complete underlying sentences. Since the same concept may serve both B and D, there are at least three concepts or syntactic categories in the analogy underlying each metaphor or simile. Most theories atomize metaphors into two words or concepts and do not acknowledge or develop their multi-concept nature. In semantic deep-case terms, metaphors and similes are based on the adverbial deep case of Comparison-Similarity, which provides a link between two semantic propositions. In syntactic deep-case terms, metaphors and similes are derived from Comparison-Similarity transformations that link two sentences in the syntactic structure that underlies the surface structure of the figures. Aristotle’s examples of proportionate metaphors in The Art of Poetry (Poetics) make the underlying analogies clear: (11) The wine bowl [A] is to Dionysus [B, the god of wine] as the shield [C] to Ares [D, the god of war]: so one will call the wine-bowl [A] “Dionysus’ shield” [B’s C] and the shield [C] “Ares’ wine bowl” [D’s A]. (12) Or old age [A] is to life [B] as the evening [C] to day [D]: so one will call evening [C] “the day’s old age” [D’s A] or like Empedocles, call old age [A] the “evening of life” or “life’s sunset” [B’s C].22

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Examples of a deep-case syntactic and semantic grammatical analysis of analogy (11) are given in Figure (1) below and Figure (2) in Appendix A.

| Action V. | ride

Sentence 1 | | Agent | thane

| Place | road

t | Comparison-Similarity | | as Sentence 2 | | | Action V.

t | Agent

Place | swim

| whale

| sea

Fig. 1: The Semantic Case Structure of Analogy, Simile, and Metaphor (Adapted from “Some Problems for Case Grammar” by Charles Fillmore)

Old English kennings in poems such as Beowulf are formed by (i) genitive compounds, which link a noun with a genitive suffix with another noun and (ii) compound nouns that combine two or more nouns or an adjective with a noun. All of Aristotle’s examples of proportionate metaphors (metaphors by analogy) from chapter 21 of the Poetics are genitive compounds. They could be contracted further in English into compounds such as “old-age day,” or “evening-life.” The only stylistic principle that would keep Aristotle from becoming a fan of Old English kennings is that Aristotle states that overuse of compound words (by which he means combining two or three words into one too frequently) is a stylistic fault, or frigidity of style.23 Nevertheless, metaphoric kennings are also figures based on analogy: they are compound proportionate metaphors that are still being coined today in expressions such as “tramp stamps” and “beer goggles” as Professor of English Kip Wheeler notes.24

Grounding Terms with Definitions Based on the Surface Structure of Language: Simile, Implied Metaphor, Definitive Metaphor, and Metaphoric Kenning In arguing that the difference between a metaphor and a simile is superficial, Aristotle cites an example of a simile from the Iliad where Homer says that Achilles rushed forth like a lion.25 Aristotle’s quotation is

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not exact but close enough for the purpose of illustrating a simile. Examples (12) through (15) illustrate distinct surface forms of imaginative figures: (12) is an abridged translation of Homer’s epic simile and (13) through (15) are paraphrases of Homer’s comparison. (12) Aeneas first strode forth with threatening mien. . . . And on the other side, the son of Peleus [namely, Achilles] rushed against him like a lion, a ravening lion that men are fain to slay . . . with glaring eyes . . . [that rushes] straight on in his fury.26 (13) Achilles rushed to meet Aeneas. The lion sprang on Aeneas with fury. (14) Achilles rushed forth to meet Aeneas. Furiously on Aeneas leapt Achilles, the lion. (15) Achilles rushed forth to meet Aeneas. On Aeneas leapt Achilles, the fury lion (or fury’s lion or a lion of fury).

Based on the surface structure of the words and sentences above, the independent clause in bold type from Homer’s expression (12) “the son of Peleus rushed against him like a lion” is clearly a simile, a portion of the entire epic simile. The simile compares Achilles, the son of Peleus, to a lion and asserts that Achilles and the lion are similar in fury of movement. The word Achilles in the simile can be called the reference word because the word refers to the dramatic character whose action is being narrated in the poem. The word lion can be identified as an imaginative word because it refers to a type of imagery, a visual image in motion, an image both imaginative and imaginary, which Homer figures forth in his mind’s eye to convey the fury of Achilles to the eyes in the minds of his listeners and readers, or their mind-eyes to use a compressed kenning. The word like is an explicit word of comparison, which distinguishes the surface form of a simile from the surface form of a metaphor. Similes contain, whereas metaphors lack, explicit words of comparison in their surface structure. Or to put it another way, the comparative structure words (such as like, as, than, and the way) are deleted in the deep structure of metaphors before they reach their surface structure. Expression (13) in bold type “The lion sprang on Aeneas with fury” is an implied metaphor. The actual reference word Achilles does not appear in this sentence; it is replaced by the imaginative word lion, which implies that Achilles, in the context of the entire metaphoric expression, is like the imaginative concept of a lion in its fury.

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In expression (14), “On Aeneas furiously leapt Achilles, the lion,” what is the specific term for the figure in bold type? We don’t have a specific term to distinguish this type of metaphor from an implied metaphor. We can call expression (14) in bold type a metaphoric expression; however, expression (13) in bold type is also a metaphoric expression. After due apologies to Aristotle and William of Ockham for the multiplication of critical terms--let us say that the metaphor in bold type in expression (14) is a definitive metaphor because both a reference word (Achilles) and an imaginative word (lion) are specified within the same sentence (which is to say, the independent clause including any subordinate or appositive clauses and phrases). In a definitive metaphor, an imaginative word does not replace or substitute for a reference word as in an implied metaphor, for both words are specified just as they are in a simile. A reader or listener does not need to puzzle out the reference concept or recall the meaning of a reference word from a previous sentence. Similes, implied metaphors, and definitive metaphors are imaginative figures of comparison. However, of these three, only an implied metaphor is a figure of substitution in which the imaginative word poses a little riddle to the reader or listener: “Who or what am I?”

Metaphoric Kenning Expression (15) in bold type On Aeneas leapt Achilles, the fury-lion is a metaphoric kenning, a compound-noun imaginative term, which can also be expressed in a possessive (or genitive) noun phrase (fury’s lion) or in a Noun-of-Noun phrase in Modern English (a lion of fury). The sentence and kenning in bold in (15) is also a definitive metaphor. But metaphoric kennings can be found in the context of implied metaphors as in expression (16) in which the reader or listener must puzzle out who the fury-lion is by recalling the previous sentence: (16) Achilles rushed forth to meet Aeneas. On Aeneas leapt the furylion.

Similes in Beowulf Similes are rare in the epic poem Beowulf; however, the superlative form of like, gelīcost, “most like,” is used in four similes in lines 218, 727, 985, and 1608. The first two similes, fugle gelīcost, “most like a bird,” and ligge gelīcost, “most like a flame,” are exemplified in bold type within their expressive context in the passages from Beowulf below.

The Case of Kennings: Aristotle, Beowulf, and Deep-Case Grammar GewƗt þƗ ofer wۘg-holm winde gef‫ܢ‬sed flota fƗmƯ-heals fugle gelƯcost .......................................... on fƗgne flǀr fƝond treddode· Ɲode yrremǀd· him of Ɲagum stǀd ligge gelƯcost lƝoht unfۘger

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Then they went over the water-waves urged by the wind, in the floater with foam-stem (in the ship with a foamy prow), most like a bird. .......................................... on the bright floor the fiend treaded, advanced angrily; in his eyes stood (from . . . shone), most like a flame, a light unlovely. (lines 217-8, 725-7)

In the line 727, flota fƗmƯ-heals, “the floater with foam-stem,” or “the ship with a foamy prow” is an interesting triple-word compound. The Old English word flota, which is usually translated as “ship” and means “float” or floater” in Middle English, presumably is a general term for a floating vessel in Old English--a floating or sailing thing generally so that the word flota would seem to be applicable to both rafts and ships. Thus, as Aristotle might put it, a more general word flota “a floater,” a genus-word, is “brought before the eyes” by the specific compound species fƗmƯ-heals “foam-stem” or “foam-neck, prow” a synecdoche kenning,” which has the deep-case relation of Part (stem, neck, or prow) to the entire Entity, the whole ship.

Metonymy and Synecdoche Metonymy and synecdoche are classified as two of ten classical tropes listed at the end of the figures of diction in Rhetoric for Herennius. The classical definitions provided by the author (traditionally identified as Cicero) differentiate the two figures: “Metonymy [Denominatio] is” a figure that employs a word for a reference “closely akin” to “or associated” with a reference but distinct from it. 27 “Synecdoche [Intellectio] occurs when the whole is known from a . . . part or a part from the whole.”28 Metonymy is said to include (a) greater for lesser, (b) lesser for greater, (c) invention for inventor, (d) inventor for invention, (e) instrument for possessor, (f) cause for effect, (g) effect for cause, (h) container for content, and (i) content for container,29 whereas in the same Roman textbook, synecdoche is said to include (a) whole for part, (b) part for whole, (c) plural for singular, and (d) singular for plural.30 Most of these definitions and examples from the Rhetoric for Herennius seem to

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represent an elaborated Hellenistic and Roman tradition somewhat similar to Aristotle‘s first two types of figures of transference: transference “from genus to species, or species to genus” in the Poetics.31 Further, most are the same as or closely related to proposed deep-case relations. The distinction between the metonymy and synecdoche can be made clear by restricting the meaning of synecdoche to the substitution of concepts in which one concept is clearly a constituent part, component, or material substance of the other and by limiting the meaning of metonymy to the substitution of concepts that are distinct entities but closely associated.

Metonymy Let us define metonymy as an imaginative figure in which a reference word (typically a noun designating a person, place, object, action or idea) is replaced with an imaginative, concrete word, closely related or associated with the concept of the reference word but not a part of it or a substance from which it is composed. The relationship between the reference concept and the imaginative substitution for it in a metonymy illustrates a deep-case relation: for example, (Action for Agent) “a grip” for a worker who handles scenery, properties, or lights on a stage in a theater or on a movie set in a film studio; (Instrument for Product-Created Entity) “pen” for literature; (Instrument for Agent) “sword” for army; (Possession for Possessor) “crown” for monarch. The relationship between the reference concept and the imaginative concept in a metonymy implies a sentence in deep syntactic structure (or a semantic proposition): The author uses a pen to write literature; the army uses swords to fight battles; the monarch wears a crown as a symbol of office. Such deep-case meanings must be discerned to understand the metonymy. Deep Sentences Underlying the Metonymy of Crown for Monarch Deep Cases: (17) Possessor | The monarch

Ownership Verb | has

Possession | a crown

Purpose-Reason | to symbolize his office

Deep Cases: (18) Actor | The monarch

Action Verb | has

Affected Entity | a crown

Purpose-Reason | to symbolize his office

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Metonymic Kennings The kennings stage-grip and mƝodo-setla “mead-bench” (Beowulf, line 6) are examples of metonymic compound nouns: stage-grip for a stage-play worker and mead-bench for furniture in the royal hall that stands for the mutual duties and loyalties between the monarchy and the thanes. Hence, the compound nouns are metonymic kennings. The first word in the compound has a deep-case relation to the reference concept and provides a clue to the readers or listeners to help them surmise the identity of the reference concept. The second word is a metonym, distinctly separate from the reference concept but related to it through a deep-case relationship. For example, the deep sentences (19) and (20) underlie the kennings stage-grip and mead-bench, respectively. Deep Cases: (19) Agent Action Affected Entity Purpose Place Time | | | | | | The workers grip scenery to set up sets on the stage between scenes. Deep Cases: (20) Agent Action Affected Receiver Place Place-Container Purpose Possessor | | | | | | | | The to the on their serves mead in the hall to honor queen thanes benches loyalty

Synecdoche A synecdoche is an imaginative figure in which a concept referring to an entire entity (a complete person, place, object, action, or idea) is replaced with an imaginative concrete noun that is a part, component, or material substance of the entire entity or vice versa. The following figures are synecdoches: “a hand” for a person who works with his or her hands (Part for Agent), “fifty head in the herd” for fifty animals in a herd of cattle (Part for Unaffected Entity), and “counting noses” for counting the number of persons present (Part for Unaffected Entity).

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Deep Sentences for Head and Noses Synecdoches Deep Cases: (21) Perceiver | Janice

Action Number Part Place-Container | | | | saw fifty head in the herd. Deep Cases: (22)

Action Number Part Place-Container | | | | eightynoses in the auditorium Lashonda counted three Agent |

Time Performance | | the start of before the play

Synecdochic Kennings Synecdochic kennings are compound nouns containing synecdoches. The first word is related to the reference concept by a deep-case relation and provides a clue to the identity of the reference concept. The second word is a synecdoche with the deep-case relation of Part or Material of the whole reference concept. For example, in the kennings deckhand and stagehand, deck and stage come from the deep case of Place, and hand comes from the deep case of Part and Instrument-Means as in (23) and (24). Deep Cases: (23) Possessor Ownership Verb Part | | | Sailors have hands Deep Cases: (24) Agent Action Verb Possessor Part Means Purpose Place Part | | | | | | | | use their hands to work on the deck Sailors

Possessor | of the ship

Analogy In essence, Aristotle conceives of an analogy as a relationship between two relationships (or two sentences) with at least four terms altogether in

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the Poetics, (ch. 21). Such an analogy has the basic form of A is to B as C is to D, the four terms are in bold in (25)-(27). (25) A whale is to the sea as a horse is to a running-place. (26) A whale swims in the sea as a horse runs on a running-place. (27) Achilles rushes at Hector with fury as a lion leaps upon a hunter furiously.

Analogy (25) has four terms. Analogy (26) has six terms. Analogy (27) has eight terms and seven concepts, counting “with fury” and “furiously” as the same concept shared by both terms. Each analogy potentially can generate at least two basic forms of imaginative figures, which may take the form of an implied metaphoric expression, a definitive metaphoric expression, a simile, or a metaphoric kenning. (28) whale’s running-place, whale-running-place, running place of the whale, like the whale’s running-place, like the running-place of whales (29) horse’s sea, horse-sea, sea of the horse, like the horse’s sea, like the sea of horses.

The ten imaginative figures in (28) and (29) are based on analogy (25). The potential number of imaginative figures for analogies with six concepts such as (26) and analogies with seven concepts such as (27) are substantially greater than four-term analogies such as (25).

Imagination and the Riddle-Like Quality of Kennings Imagination is a general creative ability of the mind that forms mental images of things not present to the senses or never before wholly perceived in reality. Mental images can be visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory, or tactile—employing the mind’s eye, the mind’s ear, the mind’s nose, the mind’s taste buds, and the mind’s fingertips. The five genitive noun phrases concluding the previous sentence are examples of kennings, compound impliedmetaphors for five specific imaginative abilities. Two words typically constitute the Old English compound-noun surface form of a kenning: first, a contextual-clue word, which is related to an unnamed reference concept by a deep-case relationship, and second, a substitute noun, which replaces the reference word. Finding a substitute noun requires an act of imagination that creates a metaphor, a metonymy, or a synecdoche. The puzzling aspect of a kenning occurs because the reference concept is not mentioned by name—that is to say, it does not

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appear in the compound noun. The reader or listener must identify the reference concept. Such may puzzle the reader or listener confronted with an implied metaphor where the reference word does not occur in the sentence with the imaginative word. If the imaginative substitute-noun of a kenning is a metaphoric, the deep-case feature of comparison-similarity will connect the imaginative word with the reference concept by analogy. If the imaginative substitute noun is synecdoche, the cognitive association will be between a deep case of Part or constituent Material and a deep case of whole Entity. If the kenning substitute noun employs metonymy, another distinct deep-case relation will connect the imaginative word to the reference concept.

Deep-Case Relations and Compounds Concepts

Nominal Concepts

Verbal Concepts

Nouns

Adverbs

Verbs

Adjectives

hunger thirst the quick the dead

hungrily thirstily quickly dead

hunger thirst quicken die

hungry thirsty quick dead

Fig. 3: The Derivation of Lexical Words from Concepts

Deep cases are postulated as either deep syntactic relations or deeper yet semantic relations or roles, which appear in the surface structure as verbs, nouns, and adverbs. For the heuristic purpose of composing imaginative figures, adjective categories should also be included. From the theoretical perspective of semantics, an argument for deep-case adjective categories could be made from the derivation of lexical words from concepts. First, concepts can be split into nominal concepts and verbal concepts; then nominal concepts can be divided into nouns and adverbs, and verbal concepts can branch out into verbs and adjective. Figure (3) illustrates this derivation.

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The number of case relationships or roles is deliberately kept low in proposals for deep-case grammars for the sake of simplicity, or mathematical elegance. Not counting classes of verbs or adjectives, various case grammars range from five to ten deep-cases noun and adverb categories in seven case grammars analyzed by case-grammar linguist Walter Cook.32 Case grammar theorists disagree over which deep-case functions to include. Linguist Barry Blake explains that the principle of complementary distribution allows complementary verb-noun roles to be combined.33 Thus, the Unaffected Entity of the fish in sentence (30), (30) The pelican saw the fish while the fish did not see the pelican.

can be considered in the same case role as the Affected Entity, or the Undergoer, fish in (31). (31) The pelican ate the fish.

Blake proposes classifying the word fish in both sentences as belonging to the case role of Patient. However, dividing the Patient role into Unaffected Entity and Affected Entity-Undergoer seems to preserve an important semantic role or function in sentence formation. (Besides, it’s difficult to imagine a fish being eaten by a pelican as being patient.) Blake points out that employing complementary distribution fully turns semantic functions into syntactic relations.34 Sacrificing mathematical elegance for greater semantic specificity of deep cases may increase the pragmatic effectiveness of case grammar theory. In particular, increasing the number of deep cases may help critics increase their discernment of imaginative figures and help writers create more effective imaginative imagery. Blake provides a good discussion of proposed deep-case roles and their definitions.35 The following proposed deep-case functions have fairly selfevident labels. Eighteen Nominal Deep Cases: Agent, Inanimate Cause, Content, Part-Component, Undergoer-Affected Entity, Becomer, Emotion-Experiencer, Perceiver, Accompanier, Created Entity-Product, Unaffected Entity, Instrument-Means, Recipient, Beneficiary, Process, Performance, Possessor, and Possession.

For critical analysis and heuristic purposes, Unaffected Entity may need to be further divided into Nonliving, Living, and Animate Unaffected Entities.

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Chapter Twenty Nineteen Deep Adverb Cases: Place, Container, Source, Direction, Extent, Destination-Goal, Time, Frequency, Duration, Completion, Reason-Motive, Purpose, Result, Necessary Circumstance, Preventative-Inhibitory Circumstance, Manner, Comparison-Hypothetical, Comparison-Similarity, Contrast-Difference. Four Deep Verb Categories: Action, State of Being, Process, and Ownership-Possession. Eighteen Adjectival Deep Cases: Quantity-Number, Quality-Evaluation, Size, Height, Length, Shape, Age, Amplitude, Tone, Temperature, Texture, Odor, Flavor, Intensity-Tint, Color, Emotion, Nationality, Religion-Sect, and Material.

These adjective categories are the traditional cumulative-adjective categories of Modern English, which tend to accumulate in the order listed above in front of nouns whose qualities they specify. The traditional list has been extended with additional sensory qualities and the quality of emotion. All or most of them may be universal, adjectival deep cases, closely related to verbal concepts. The surface-structure adjective category of Type-Kind contains nominal word forms used as adjectives in compound nouns and genitive compounds such as tree house, kitchen table, mead-bench, master’s degree, cow’s milk, and baptism of repentance. Some examples of adjective deep cases are illustrated by sentences (32), (33), and (34). (32) Unaffected Entity State Verb | | The sky is

Color | blue.

(33) Becomer Process Verb Intensity | | | grew bright. The flame

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(34) Evaluation Possession Possession Verb Possessor | | | | arm belonged to Grendel. The gruesome

At the semantic level of concepts, State case relations can be transformed into Process case relations, and Process case relations can be transformed into Action relations. A Possessive case relation such as Grendel’s arm and his body can be added to any nominal deep case. (35) Part | The arm

State | is

Place-Source | off the body.

(36) Possessor | Grendel’s

Part | arm

State | is off

Possessor | his

Place-Source | body

(37) Becomer | The arm

Process | came

Place-Source | off the body.

(38) Agent | Beowulf

Action | ripped

Undergoer | the arm

Place-Source | off Grendel.

Deep Cases and the Composition of Imaginative Figures In Chapter 22 of the Poetics, Aristotle makes clear that being able to discover similarities or resemblances between prima-facie dissimilar things is the mark of a great epic poet like Homer or a great tragic poet like Sophocles:

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Chapter Twenty It is, indeed, important to make right use of each of the elements mentioned—lengthened, curtailed, and altered words—as well as compounds and strange words [compound words and loan words]. But most important by far is it to have a command of metaphor. This is the one thing the poet cannot learn from others. It is the mark of genius; for to coin good metaphors involves an insight into the resemblances between objects that are superficially unlike.36

While this passage from Chapter 22 of the Poetics does assert that great poets are naturally gifted by imaginative capacity beyond the normal range, it does not assert that one must be an imaginative genius to employ commonplace metaphors or to coin good, original metaphors in speech and writing. With lucid argument and apt quotations from Aristotle’s Poetics and Rhetoric, James Mahon demonstrates that Aristotle’s theory of metaphor does include the following claims: (i) “original metaphors coined by tragedians and epic poets are unusual, and outside the normal idiom, insofar as they are new combinations of words,” and they are extraordinarily moving; (ii) “the ability to coin new metaphors that are “pleasing and informative,” both good and original, “is the greatest kind of creative [imaginative, linguistic] ability” that poets such as Homer and Sophocles exhibit; (iii) it is this type and quality of “creative [imaginative, linguistic] ability” that is “rare” and “cannot be taught”; (iv) metaphors can “convey truths about ‘resemblances’ that actually exist” among material things; and (v) metaphors can be lucid, and that those of a good writer always are” or usually are; and (vi) people enjoy and learn to “understand things better through metaphor.”37 Further, Aristotle asserts that metaphoric usage is commonplace in human speech and writing, and metaphoric invention and usage like comparison can be improved by study and practice of students who are not necessarily geniuses: A word in its prevailing and native meaning and metaphor are alone useful in the lexis [style, diction, word choice] of prose. A sign of this is that these are the only kinds of words everybody uses; for all people carry on their conversations with metaphors [albeit often with conventional, imaginatively-dead metaphors] and words in their prevailing meaning.38 Fables are suited to speeches in a popular assembly; and they have an advantage in that it is hard to find parallels in history, but easy to find them in tales. In fact, the speaker must contrive with the fable as he contrives a comparison; all he needs is the power to see [in some fable] the analogy [to the case in hand]—and facility in this comes from literary training.39

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Kennedy notes that Aristotle probably means that a student is trained to see likenesses through “dialectal exercises in the philosophical schools, with their frequent use of the Socratic technique of analogy.”40 Since these things [urbanities, imaginative visualization, or visually active imagery, and metaphor] have been defined, there is no need to say what the sources of urbanities and well-liked expressions are. Now it is possible to create them by natural talent or by practice, but to show what they are belongs to this study. . . . To learn easily is naturally pleasant to all people, and words signify something, so whatever words create knowledge in us are pleasurable. Now glosses [γλῶττα, glōtta, “strange, foreign, or obsolete words”] are unintelligible, but we know words in their prevailing meaning. Metaphor most brings about learning; for when he [Homer in Odyssey 14. 213] calls old age “stubble” [stubs of grain stalks after reaping], he creates understanding and knowledge through the genus, since old age and stubble are [species of the genus of] things that have lost their bloom [are withered and have lost vitality].41 Homer’s Original Passage from the Odyssey [B]ut now all my might has failed me, yet even so I deem that thou mightest guess from seeing the stubble what the grain has been, for of trouble I have plenty and to spare.42

Aristotle suggests the near-synonyms (the species within a genus) of “stubble” and “old age” are figures of transference, members of the inclusive class (genus) of “lost bloom, strength, or vitality; failed might”; which would mean a sentence like (39) underlies Homer’s implied metaphor. (39) Old age and stubble are types of lost vitality.

Such an analysis excludes the Homeric passage from being a metaphor proper. However, we should remember that Aristotle may have been writing or dictating while quoting Homer from memory for his lecture notes, which were later entitled On Rhetoric. Thus, considering Homer’s original words and imagery, an implied metaphor by analogy appears to be a better analysis. Thus, an analogy such as (40) would be part of the deep structure of the passage: (40) Youth is to old age as a green grain field is to stubble after harvest.

The tenets of the Aristotelian theory of metaphor are insightful and suggestive of methods for teaching students how to composed effective

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original metaphors and related imaginative figures. Students should be encouraged to create analogies, to imagine different things with comparable qualities to the case at hand. Questions about the aptness of similarities should be posed. Adjectival and adverbial qualities can be added or subtracted to the terms in analogies, which will form the basis for the invention of figures. Deep-case relations provide heuristic categories on which creative analogies can be constructed. For example, given topic A, simile questions, such as “What is A like?” or “What distinct other thing C is like A?” are often not highly productive. Such questions are so general and expansive that students find it difficult to respond. However, examples of analogy formulae such as an analogy with four terms but only two nominal concepts and one adjective concept—namely, Noun A is to Adj. B as Noun C is to the same Adj.—together with a list of the Deep Adjectival Cases is far more suggestive. For example, selecting the Adj. Case of Color, the analogy could become “John is as Color as C [is Color].” This analogy could suggest the cliché, “John is as white as a sheet [is white].” Likewise, the analogy “John is as Tint as C [is Tint]” could suggest the cliché “John is as pale as a ghost [is pale].” However, to a young T. S. Eliot or a student who has read her Homer and studied her rhetoric, the formula “John is as Tint and Color as C [is as Tint and Color]” might suggest an original analogy, “John is as pale and sickly green as a patient etherized upon a table.” Of course, such would be an original analogy only providing that the student had not read or heard of the simile from Eliot’s “Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” An adjectival deep case (such as the quality of “might” or “vigor”) can be added between the two sentences in an analogy, such as the analogy formula, A is to B in Adj. as C is to D. For example, using Homer’s quotation from Book 14 of the Odyssey, we can construct analogy 41. Deep Case: (42) PlacePlaceManner Comparison Becomer Process Container Contain | | | | | | | | barley matures in a field. A girl grows up in a family as rapidly as

Becomer Process

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Deep Case: (43) Becomer PlaceProcess Action Manner Compar. Agent Action / Agent Contain | | | | | | | | and the A boy mature as egrets graze and fly as fast leaves family

Place | the field.

Likewise, nominal deep-case relations help suggest the A, B, C, and D entities-terms in analogies. After students create original analogies, they readily can invent good similes, definitive metaphors, and implied metaphors. Examples of metonymies and synecdoches in their singular and compound forms (kennings) together with lists of deep cases and sentence patterns will also help students to create metonymic and synecdochic figures.

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Appendix A

Sentence 1 | t | | Modality Proposition | t | | | | | | Action Verb Place Agent | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Present ride on the road by the thane whale

t | Comparison-Similarity | | | Sentence 2 | t | | | | Modality | | t | | | | | Verb | | | as Past swim

t | Proposition | __ t | | Place Agent | | on the sea by the

Fig. 2: The Syntactic Case Structure of Analogy, Simile, and Metaphor (Adapted from “The Case for Case” by Charles Fillmore)

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Works Cited Aristotle. Appendix I. “Supplementary Texts, G: On Word Choice and Metaphor from Aristotle’s Poetics, Chapter 21.” Translated by George Kennedy. In Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 275-7. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. —. Aristotle on the Art of Poetry. Translated by Lane Cooper. Rev. ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1947. —. On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse. 2nd ed. Translated by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. —. Poetics. Translated by Stephen Halliwell, Vol. 23, Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995. —. The Rhetoric of Aristotle. Translated by Lane Cooper. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1932. Baker, Peter S. The Electronic Introduction to Old English: An On-line Analogue of Introduction to Old English. 3rd ed. Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2012. Accessed March 15, 2013, http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/. Beowulf: A Glossed Text. Rev. ed. Edited by Michael Alexander. London: Penguin, 2005. Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts. Rev. ed. Edited by Bruce Mitchell and Fred Robinson. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1998. Blake, Barry. Case. 2nd ed. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Bradeur, Arthur G. The Art of Beowulf. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium (Rhetoric for Herennius). Translated by Harry Caplan. 1954. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Reprint, 1968. Cook, Walter A. Case Grammar Theory. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1989. Fillmore, Charles J. “The Case for Case.” Universals in Linguistic Theory, edited by Emmon Bach and Robert Harms. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968. 1-88. —. “Some Problems for Case Grammar.” Georgetown University Roundtable on Language and Linguistics, 35-57. Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1971. Glossary. In Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts, edited by Bruce Mitchell and Fred Robinson, 238-307. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1998.

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Homer. The Iliad. Trans. A. T. Murray. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1924. Perseus Digital Library. Tufts University. Accessed 20 March 20, 2012, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/. —. The Odyssey of Homer. Trans. S. H. Butcher and A. Lang. Rev. ed. The Harvard Classics, Vol. 22, 1879. New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1914, bk. 14, par. 16. Accessed March 20, 2013, http://www.bartleby.com/22/. Kirby, John T. “Aristotle on Metaphor.” American Journal of Philology 118, no. 4 (1997): 517-521. Klaeber, Friedrich. “Tone, Style, Meter.” In Beowulf and the Fight at Finsburg, lix-lxxi. Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1922. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. 1980. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Reprint, 2003. —. Afterword, 2003. In Metaphors We Live By, 243-76. 1980. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Reprint, 2003. Mahon, James Edwin. “Getting Your Sources Right: What Aristotle Didn’t Say.” In Researching and Applying Metaphor, edited by Lynne Cameron and Graham Low, 69-80. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed., s.v. “Metaphor.” Chicago: Merriam-Webster.Com, 2003. Accessed March 15, 2013, http://www.merriam-webster.com/. Ricoeur, Paul. The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language. Translated by Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and John Costello. Reprint 1975. London: Routledge Classic, 2009. Wheeler, Kip. Literary Vocabulary. s.v. “Kenning.” 8 April 2013. Accessed March 15, 2013, http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms_K.html.

Notes 1

Friedrich Klaeber, “Tone, Style, Meter,” in Beowulf and the Fight at Finsburg (Boston: D. C. Heath and Co., 1922), lxv. 2 Arthur G. Bradeur, The Art of Beowulf (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 7. 3 Peter S. Baker, Ch. 13 in The Electronic Introduction to Old English: An On-line Analogue of͒ Introduction to Old English, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), accessed March 15, 2013, http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/resources/IOE/. 4 Glossary in Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts, ed. Bruce Mitchell and Fred Robinson (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1998), 238-307. The line

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numbers of the vocabulary in Beowulf are derived from information in this detailed glossary. 5 Aristotle, “Simile,” in On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, 2nd ed., trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 1406b, bk. 3, ch. 4, 205-6. 6 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, afterword, 2003, in Metaphors We Live By, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 272. 7 Ibid., 265. 8 Walter A. Cook, Case Grammar Theory, (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1989). This textbook by case-grammar linguist Walter Cook, S. J., provides an excellent introduction to the history and evolution of case-grammar theory. 9 Charles J. Fillmore, “The Case for Case,” in Universals in Linguistic Theory, ed. Emmon Bach and Robert Harms (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1968), 1-88. 10 Fillmore, “Some Problems for Case Grammar,” in Georgetown University Roundtable on Language and Linguistics (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1971), 35-57. 11 Beowulf: An Edition with Relevant Shorter Texts, ed. Bruce Mitchell and Fred Robinson (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1998). The Old English passages quoted from Beowulf are based in large measure on this textbook. 12 Beowulf: A Glossed Text, Rev. ed., ed. Michael Alexander (London: Penguin Books, 2005). This textbook is also quite helpful in translating the Old English and understanding compound constructions of Beowulf. 13 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and John Costello, 1975 (London: Routledge Classic, Reprint, 2009), 18. 14 John T. Kirby, “Aristotle on Metaphor,” in American Journal of Philology 118, no. 4 (1997): 519 n 7. 15 Aristotle, “Simile” in On Rhetoric, bk. 3, ch. 4, 205-6. 16 Kirby, “Aristotle on Metaphor,” 540. 17 Aristotle, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, trans. Lane Cooper, Rev. ed. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1947), 1457b, bk. 2, ch. 21, 69. 18 Ibid., bk. 2, ch. 21, 68. 19 Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Stephen Halliwell, Rev. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995), note c; 1457b, ch. 21, sec. 6, 105. 20 Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., 2003, s. v. “Metaphor,” (Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 2003), http://www.merriam-webster.com/ dictionary/metaphor (accessed March 15, 2013). 21 Aristotle, Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, trans. Cooper, 1457b, bk. 2, ch. 21, 68. 22 Ibid. 23 Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. Kennedy, bk. 3, ch. 3, 202. 24 Wheeler, Kip, Literary Vocabulary, s.v. “Kenning,” accessed 15 March 2013, http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/lit_terms.html. 25 Aristotle, On Rhetoric, bk. 3, ch. 4, 205. 26 Homer, The Iliad, trans. A. T. Murray (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,

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1924), Perseus Digital Library, Tufts University, ch. 20; 160-74, accessed March 15, 2013, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/. 27 [Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium (Rhetoric for Herennius), trans. Harry Caplan, 1954 Reprint (Cambridge: Loeb-Harvard University Press, 1968), bk. 4, ch. 21, 43, 335. 28 Ibid., bk. 4, ch. 33, 44; 341. 29 Ibid., bk. 4, ch. 31, 43; 335-7. 30 Ibid., bk. 4, ch. 33, 44-5; 341-3. 31 Aristotle, Poetics, trans. Halliwell, 1457b. ch. 21, sec. 6, 105. 32 Cook, Case Grammar Theory, 189. 33 Barry Blake, Case. 2nd ed., Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), ch. 3, sec. 4; 70. 34 Ibid., ch. 3, sec. 4; 71. 35 Ibid., ch. 3, sec. 4; 66-70. 36 Aristotle, Art of Poetry, trans. Cooper, bk. 2, ch. 22, 74. 37 James Edwin Mahon, “Getting Your Sources Right: What Aristotle Didn’t Say,” in Researching and Applying Metaphor, ed. Lynne Cameron and Graham Low (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 70, 73. 38 Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. Kennedy, bk. 3, ch. 2, sec. 6; 199. 39 Aristotle, The Rhetoric of Aristotle, trans. Cooper, bk. 2, ch. 20, 149. 40 Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. Kennedy, note 101, 163. 41 Ibid., bk. 3, ch. 10, sec.1-2; 218. 42 Homer, The Odyssey of Homer, trans. S. H. Butcher and A. Lang, The Harvard Classics, Vol. 22, 1879 (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1914), bk. 14, par. 16, accessed March 20, 2013, http://www.bartleby.com/22/.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE VIOL CONSORT: REEVALUATING THE SOURCES AND RECLAIMING THE MUSIC JOHN ROMEY

Fueled by the interest of both professionals and amateurs in the Historical Performance Practice movement, as well as organizations such as the Viola da Gamba Societies of Great Britain (founded 1948) and of America (incorporated 1962), there has been an energetic revival of the viola da gamba and its repertoire since the mid-twentieth century. In its infancy, this interest, and the subsequent flourishing of scholarly activity, was focused on the English consort tradition and French and German solo and chamber repertoire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. However, as historically-informed scholars, luthiers, and musicians began to investigate the history of the instrument, the interest logically spread backwards into the Renaissance. Early instruments, repertoire, and treatises were examined, and important works, such as Ian Woodfield‘s monumental The Early History of the Viol were published.1 Woodfield’s work focused primarily on the early migration and evolution of such bowed string instruments as the vielle and rabāb from Moorish Spain across Europe, and the Italian Renaissance viol traditions, which were more varied by region than in other countries, with a more cursory approach taken regarding the French and German traditions. Shockingly, little research has been undertaken on the French Renaissance viol tradition since Woodfield’s important book was published in 1984. This is perhaps in part because no original instruments have survived, but the fact that the instruments were probably quite large by our modern standards, had five strings instead of six, and were tuned in fourths, should at least pique the interest of performers, scholars, and luthiers. This project was birthed when it became evident that we lacked a thorough understanding

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of the instruments and the repertoire, and that reexamination and reevaluation of the sources were necessary. Due to the lack of extant historical instruments this essay will focus primarily on treatises and historical documents. The goals are to establish issues pertaining to organology and explore primary sources to gain a better understanding of the construction of the instruments. Additionally, potential repertoire will be explored with a particular emphasis on the instrumental fantasia tradition in an an attempt to determine if any this repertoire was intended for performance on the French viols, rather than those of the Italian typology. French Renaissance treatises concerned with musical instruments are limited in number, although three sixteenth-century sources do mention the use of five-string viols tuned in fourths in France. However, by examining both contemporary sources as well as seventeenth-century retrospectives, the existence of these viols is confirmed and details are remarkably consistent, with the number of sources rising to five. In sixteenth-century France, the playing of the viol began to spread to amateur musicians, as evidenced by the publication of Claude Gervaise‘s Premier Livre de violle (Paris, 1554) and Philibert Jambe de Fer’s L’Épitome musical (Lyons, 1556). Still in the sixteenth century, Samuel Mareschall published his Porta musices (Basle, 1589), mentioning the early French five-string viols and providing a system for tuning consorts. Finally, in the seventeenth century there are two retrospective accounts that mention the early form of the viol in France—Marin Mersenne‘s Harmonie universelle (Paris, 1636) and Jean Rousseau’s Traité de la viole (Paris, 1687). Claude Gervaise (fl. 1540–1560) was a French editor, composer, and arranger who was employed as a musicen compositeur by the publisher Pierre Attaingnant. Although his Premier Livre de violle is, unfortunately, currently lost, we do know some details of its nature and scope from Sebastian Brossard’s Catalogue des livres de Musique theorique et pratique, vocalle et instrumentale (1724).2 In his annotation of the entry he writes, “Premier Livre de Violle contains ten chansons with an introduction to the basic rudiments of viol playing, tuning and fingering, in the manner we have been accustomed to play, all of the compositions are by Claude Gervaise. Curious collection.”3 Philibert Jambe de Fer (1515–1566) was a Protestant French composer and writer on music. In 1556 he published L’Épitome musical, which included a chapter on the viol that has become one of the most important surviving primary sources regarding French Renaissance viols. Jambe de Fer was sensitive to the differences between the Italian and French schools

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of viol playing, and mentions that the French viols had five strings and were tuned in fourths, while the Italian viols had six strings and were tuned in fourths with a major third in the middle, like a lute.4 A woodcut towards the end of the treatise illustrates a five-string French viol (Figure 1) and reveals that each string had its own nomenclature, namely from the top string to the bottom: Chanterel, Seconde, Tierce, Quarte, and Bordon. Jambe de Fer uses the voice names dessus, hautes contres, tailles, and bas to refer to the tuning of the viol that would have played a particular musical line. Regarding the tuning, his prose is admittedly a little convoluted: The key to our viols used in France, regarding the bas and dessus begins with the second open string from the top, we call it G sol re ut, so this one the bas, is the second contained in the scale, and the one of dessus is the third, constituting the span of eight notes that we call an octave. The tailles and haute contres tune their chanterelle just as the second of the dessus, open, as illustrated in the figure.5

Alone, this description would surely lead to arguments of interpretation, but when viewed in conjunction with the image at the end of the treatise, it becomes immediately clear that Jambe de Fer was merely stating that the Seconde, or the second open string from the highest string, was tuned to a G for the bas and dessus instruments (with the bas tuned an octave lower than the dessus), and that the Chanterelle, or the highest open string was the same G for the tailles and haute contres. This is confirmed by the tuning provided for the dessus and bas on the strings on the image of the viol at the end of the treatise, from lowest to highest: E A d g c’. Therefore, Jambe de Fer intended a consort tuned in the following manner (Table 1). Jambe de Fer also provides some clues as to the usable ranges of the instruments, which clearly implies a limited virtuosity, at least in consort playing. He explains that there are three pitches on each string, including the open string, and that generally the fifth fret is useless because it is the same pitch as the neighboring open string, which has a clearer and more focused sound. He concedes that in some passages or diminutions it is easier to use the fifth fret to avoid string crossings, and that it is sometimes necessary to play the fifth or sixth fret on the chanterelle string.6 This pedagogical advice implies a two-octave usable range on each of the viols. One other sixteenth-century writer mentions the practice of using fivestring viols tuned in fourths in France, Samuel Mareschall in his Porta musices. Mareschall was a Swiss composer, writer on music, organist, and teacher who was born in Tournai in 1554 and died in Basel in 1640. Porta

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musices is a short treatise and viol tutor that was probably published to be used as part of the curriculum at the gymnasium where he was hired as Professor Musices. Mareschall provides identical tunings as previously prescribed by Jambe de Fer, with the exception of his dessus tuning, where he has the entire instrument tuned a whole tone higher. Jambe de Fer and Mareschall’s system of consort tuning are compared in Table 2. Mareschall’s dessus tuning was most likely tuned higher to facilitate less shifting for repertoire where the dessus would often be forced to play notes on the fifth through seventh frets, although this tuning would lack some of the sympathetic resonance characteristic of a viol consort with paired identical tunings (at a unison or octave). Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) was a French mathematician, philosopher, and music theorist. He was a leading French thinker of the seventeenth century; his work was central to the contemporary academic and scientific movements, and he devoted a considerable amount of his writings to the science, theory, and practice of music. In 1636, Mersenne published his Harmonie universelle, where he reproduced the woodcut (Figures 1 and 2) of a five-string viol from Jambe de Fer’s treatise, noting that this was a type of viol that was used in the past. He then presents an image of a sixstring viol (Figure 2) and explains that this is the type of viol that can be constructed in a variety of sizes up to seven or eight feet in length and is currently used in France. Therefore, the five-string, fourths-tuned instruments were no longer in use, at least in Paris, by 1636. Mersenne gives the tuning of the bas instrument only, which he extrapolates from Jambe de Fer’s reproduced woodcut, so it is questionable if Mersenne was even familiar with the tuning of an entire consort of these viols, or if he felt presenting the tunings for all of the viols was unnecessary for an instrument that had fallen into disuse. One final French writer who produced some retrospective evidence regarding the five-string, fourths-tuned viols is Jean Rousseau (1644– 1699) in his 1687 Traité de la viole. Rousseau was an important viol player, theorist, and composer, and was part of the generation of French viol players who studied directly with Sainte-Colombe. In his treatise, Rousseau states: The first viols that were played in France had five strings, were very large, and were used for accompaniment. The bridge was very low and was positioned below the sound holes; the bottom of the fingerboard almost touched the table; the strings were very thick, and they were tuned throughout in fourths. We know the Chanterelle was tuned C Sol Ut, la Seconde was G Ré Sol, la Tierce or third was D La Ré, the fourth was A

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Mi La, and the fifth which they also called the Bourdon was E Si Mi. The shape of this viol strongly resembles that of the basse de violon.7

Interestingly, if Rousseau had only mentioned the tuning of the instruments it would be possible to presume that he was merely referencing Jambe de Fer’s treatise, but the fact that he comments on the relative size of the instruments (compared to the size of viols used in France in the second half of the seventeenth century), as well as setup characteristics such as bridge position, string thickness, and overstand of the neck, suggests that he must have been familiar with surviving instruments to some extent. Although a much longer version of this essay examines iconography in a thorough and systematic manner, there is time here briefly to mention a few of the most important images. While there is evidence of viols being played at the French court dating back to the reign of François I, there is a lack of surviving iconography until Jambe de Fer’s woodcut in 1556. Following the publication of this treatise, there is another gap until the 1580s, when suddenly several important images survive. First, we know that viols were used in the performance of the Ballet comique de la Reine, and the surviving lavishly decorated program from 1582 includes two images of viols (Figures 3 and 4). The only iconography depicting a consort of viols performing is portrayed in a drawing attributed to Nicholas Houel in 1584 (Figure 5), as part of a series of images entitled Procession de Louise de Lorraine. Finally (Figures 6 and 7), a more problematic set of images was made by Jacques Cellier, published as a series of images of musical instruments circa 1585. Around the beginning of the seventeenth century the first instrumental fantasias were published in France by Eustache du Caurroy in his Fantaisies à III, IIII, V, et VI parties (1610) and, posthumously by Claude Le Jeune in Second livre des meslanges (1612). While these publications do not specify viol consort, the frontispiece for the Le Jeune illustrates a viol consort reading from part books (Figure 8). Shortly afterwards, Etienne Moulinié (1639) would publish four fantasias that were specifically composed for viols, and Nicholas Métru (1642) would publish thirty-six fantasias for two viols reusing the frontispiece, although obviously changing the text, from Le Jeune’s Second livre des meslanges. Denise Launay notes in her book chapter entitled “La fantasie en France jusqu’au milieu du XVIIe siècle” that the earliest French fantasia for viols is undated and only survives in a manuscript currently housed in the National Library in Vienna. It is composed by Nicholas de La Grotte after a madrigal by Cipriano de Rore.8 Because the La Grotte manuscript was unable to be examined, and because Moulinié and Métre published after Mersenne stated unequivocally that the French viols were no longer used

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and were replaced by Italian/English viols, this essay will explore primarily the forty-one fantasies by Du Caurroy and the three fantasies by Le Jeune, in an attempt to determine their suitability for the five-string, fourths-tuned French viols. Before these fantasias can be examined comprehensively, the key and clef distribution must be examined. It can then visually be seen that the distribution of the number of voices varies considerably with ensembles ranging from three to six voices. This reveals that although ensemble size varied, the quartet was still by far the most common ensemble makeup, as shown in Table 3. This is a direct consequence of the prevalence of the four-voice Parisian chanson and the role of viol consorts in accompanying in this repertoire. It is also the number of voices which Jambe de Fer and Mareschall provided tunings for in their treatises. The next logical step is to examine global ranges for voice names to determine the tuning configuration most suitable for each ensemble. It can be seen in Table 4 that the dessus, haute contre, taille, and basse-contre voices all fit into the tunings provided by Jambe de Fer very comfortably (Jambe de Fer’s bas being equivalent to the basse-contre voice in this repertoire). The lowest range rarely ventures onto the lowest string, which with thick raw gut strings sounded unfocused, and the highest pitch never ventures past the seventh fret on the chanterelle. The sole exception to this rule is a single D2 occurrence, which falls outside the range of the bas instrument. It would be perfectly acceptable and not unheard of in English consort repertoire for the bas simply to tune its lowest string down a whole tone to accommodate this slight range expansion. The cinquiesme and sixiesme parts are not mentioned in any of the treatises, but the instrument type can be determined based on their global ranges. The range for the sixiesme part obviously calls for a tuning and instrument sized similarly to a hautes contre or taille. Determining the instrument for the cinquiesme voice is a more complicated endeavor because the global range is too large to be performable on a single instrument. However, the data is skewed by only three outliers, and it appears that the cinquiesme part could have meant several different instruments depending on the composer’s desire (Table 5). One fantasia includes a range that would imply a second bas instrument, and two fantasias imply a second dessus. However, the majority of the time the cinquiesme part, like the sixiesme, implies an instrument sized and tuned like a haute contre or taille. One other peculiarity of this repertoire that might be mined from the data set is clef frequency for voice parts (Table 6). It is acknowledged that clef and range are intimately related, and the goal here is to examine if

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there might be a normative clef association for each voice part. The dessus, haute contre, basse-contre, and siexiesme parts all reveal normative clefs that take precedence in at least half of the compositions. The cinquiesme is more divided because, as explained above, this fifth part could imply a variety of instruments depending on the composer’s desire. The taille does not quite make it to the 50% association for a single clef, but clef C4 comes close at 47.7%. However, upon closer examination, the F3 and F4 clefs are used only for the taille when in a trio format, effectively allowing the instrument to function as a bass in lieu of the presence of a bas instrument. When the F3 and F4 clefs are filtered out of the data, the taille then comes into line with the other voices with the C4 clef being associated with the voice part 55.3% of the time (Table 7). The tenor uses the C3 clef most frequently while the taille uses the C4, with C3 coming in a close second at 42.9%. This essay is merely an opening statement presenting the available sources and painting a broad overview of French Renaissance viols. The next goal of this project is to attempt a reconstruction of a quartet of French viols, inspired by iconography, treatises and historical documents, and by examining extant Italian instruments and their construction techniques. The only method of understanding how these viols sounded and what they were capable of doing is to explore a reconstruction experiment that would increase our tactile knowledge of the instruments. There is evidence, as presented in this essay, to suggest that the fantasia repertoire that survives from Le Jeune and Du Caurroy could have been intended for and performed on five-string, fourths-tuned French viols. This should be the repertoire that is first explored, followed by sixteenthcentury polyphonic dance repertoire as published by Attaingnant in the volumes of Danceries, as well as sixteenth-century Parisian chansons.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Professor David Rothenberg, whose Fall, 2011 seminar at Case Western Reserve University inspired this research. I am also indebted to Prof. Ross Duffin, Ray Nurse, and Herbert W. Myers, who have all helped to guide me with their expertise on various aspects of Renaissance string instruments, as well as luthier John Pringle, whose unyielding enthusiasm and support in collaborating and reconstructing a consort of French Renaissance five-string, fourths-tuned viols has continued to inspire me. Finally, I would like to thank the Department of Music and the Office of Graduate Studies at Case Western Reserve

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University for providing travel funding to support this project. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own.

Appendix A: Charts and Iconography Philibert Jambe de Fer‘s Consort Tunings dessus

e a d’ g’ c”

hautes contres

B e a d’ g’

tailles

B e a d’ g’

bas

E A d g c’ Table 1

dessus

Philibert Jambe de Fer’s Consort Tunings e a d’ g’ c”

Samuel Mareschall’s Consort Tunings f# b e’ a’ d’’

hautes contres

B e a d’ g’

B e a d’ g’

tailles

B e a d’ g’

B e a d’ g’

bas

E A d g c’

E A d g c’

Table 2

The French Renaissance Viol Consort

Figures 1 & 2

325

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Figure 3: Carlot de Minerve from Ballet comique de la Reine (Paris, 1582)

Figure 4: A large viol played by a triton from Ballet comique de la Reine (Paris, 1582)

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327

Figure 5: A drawing that depicts a viol quartet performing at the School of Music in Paris attributed to Nicholas Houel (Paris, 1584: Bibliothèque Nationale, Département des Estampes, Pd. 30, Pl. 11)

Detail

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Figure 6: Five-string French viol, from a series of drawings of musical instruments made by Jacques Cellier (c.1585 Bibliothèque nationale, ms. Fr. 9152, fol.175) and published in François Merlin, Recherches de

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329

Figure 7: A second five-string French viol, from a series of drawings of musical instruments made by Jacques Cellier (c.1585 Bibliothèque nationale, ms. Fr. 9152, fol.175) and published in François Merlin, Recherches de

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330

Figure 8: Fac-similés Fuzeau – Partie de Basse-Contre “Claude LE JEUNE” – Réf 5929

Ensemble Size* Trios

9

20.5%

Quartets

22

50.0%

Quintets

9

20.5%

Sextets

4

9.1%

Table 3 *All percentages are rounded to the nearest tenth

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331

Voice Name

Global Range

Tuning

dessus

B3-G5

e a d’ g’ c”

hautes contre

C3-D5

B e a d’ g’

taille

E2-B4

B e a d’ g’

basse-contre

(D2)* E2-E4

E A d g c’

cinquiesme

A2-E5

(See Table 7)

sixiesme

C3-A4

B e a d’ g’

Table 4 *D2 has one single occurrence, which happens to fall outside the range of bass tuning.

The Cinquiesme Tuning Clef(s)

Global Range

Occurrences

Tuning

F3

A2-E4

1

E A d g c’

C1

C4-E5

2

e a d’ g’ c”

C3

C3-F4

4

B e a d’ g’

C4

C3-F4

5

B e a d’ g’

F3

D3-D4

1

B e a d’ g’

Table 5

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332

Voice Name

Clef

Frequency

Percentage of Frequency*

dessus

G2

14

31.8%

dessus

C1

22

50.0%

dessus

C2

5

11.3%

dessus

C3

2

4.5%

dessus

G1

1

2.3%

haute contre

C2

15

34%

haute contre

C3

23

52.2%

haute contre

C4

3

6.8%

haute contre

C1

3

6.8%

taille

C3

15

34.1%

taille

F3

2

4.5%

taille

F4

4

9%

taille

C4

21

47.7%

taille

C1

1

2.3%

taille

C2

1

2.3%

basse-contre

F4

21

60.0%

basse-contre

C1

1

2.9%

basse-contre

F3

12

34.3%

basse-contre

C4

1

2.9%

cinquiesme

C1

2

15.4%

cinquiesme

F3

2

15.4%

cinquiesme

C4

5

38.5%

cinquiesme

C3

4

30.8%

sixiesme

C3

1

75.0%

sixiesme

C4

3

25.0%

Table 6 *All percentages are rounded to the nearest tenth

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Voice Name

Clef

Frequency

Percentage of Frequency*

taille

C3

15

42.9%

taille

C4

21

55.3%

taille

C1

1

2.6%

taille

C2

1

2.6%

Table 7 *All percentages are rounded to the nearest tenth

Bibliography Baird, Margery Antea. “Aspects of Secular Music and Music-making in the Pays-Bas Meridionaux during the Lifetime of Charles-Quint (15001558).” Diss., Queen’s University of Belfast, 1958. Baron, John H. and Georgie Durosoir. “Moulinié, Etienne.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/192 40 (accessed October 23, 2011). Benade, Arthur. Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics. New York: Dover Publications, 1990. Blaze, François Henry Joseph. Dictionnaire de Musique Moderne. 2nd ed. Paris: Magasin de musique de la Lyre Moderne, 1784-1857. Bol, J. Hans D. Le Basse de Viole du Temps de Marin Marais et de d’Antoine Forqueray. Bilthoven: A. B. Creyghton, 1973. Bonniffet, Pierre. Le Cantus Firmus et le Chant Commun dans la Musique de Claude le Jeune: Place et Déplacements du Sujet du Chant. In Itinéraires du Cantus Firmus IV: De l’Église à la Salle de Concert, edited by Edith Weber, 81–101. Paris: Presses de l’Université de ParisSorbonne, 2001. Bridgeman, Natalie. La Vie Musicale au Quattrocentro et Jusqu’ à la Naissance du Madrigal (1400-1530). N. p.: Gallimard, 1964. Brossard, Yolande, ed. La Collections Sébastien de Brossard 1655–1730. Paris: Bibliotèque Nationale de France, 1997. Catholic Church. The Liber Usualis: With Introduction and Rubrics in English, edited by the Benedictines of Solesmes. Tournai, Belgium: Society of St. John the Evangelist, Desclée, 1950.

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Charpentier, Marc-Antoine. Concert Pour Quatre Parties de Violes, edited by Catherine Cessac. Tours: La Sinfonie d’Orphée, 2004. Jambe de Fer, Philibert. L’Épitome Musical. Lyons, 1556. Du Caurroy, Eustache. Fantasies à III, IIII, V et VI parties. (Paris, 1610), edited by Bernard Thomas. London: London Pro Musica, n.d. Dobbins, Frank and Isabelle His. “Le Jeune, Claude.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com /subscriber/article/grove/music/16365 (accessed October 23, 2011). Edmunds, Martin. “Venetian Viols of the Sixteenth Century.” Galpin Society Journal 33 (1980): 74-91. —. “Venetian Viols of the Sixteenth Century,” In A Viola da Gamba Miscellany: Procedings of the International Viola da Gamba Symposium, edited by Johannes Boer and Guido van Oorschot, 15-26. Utrecht: STIMU, 1994. Fuller, David, et al. “Couperin.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/ 40182pg1 (accessed October 23, 2011). Ganassi, Sylvestro. Regola Rubertina. Venice: Author, 1542. Gaultier, Denis. La Rhétorique des Dieux et Autres Pièces de Luth. Paris: La Société Française de Musicologie, 1932. Gerle, Hans. Musica und Tablatur: Auff die Instrument der Kleinen und Grossen Geygen, auch Lautten, Welcher Massen die mit Grundt und Art Jrer Composition aus dem Gesang in die Tabulatur zu Ordnen und zu Setzen Ist. Nürnberg: [Formschneider], 1532. Guillet, Charles. Vingt-quatre fantaisies. Paris: Editions Musicales Chanvrelin, 2005. Greenberg, Michael D. “The Perfect Storm: The Rise of the Double Bass in France 1701-1816.” Online Journal of Bass Research. 1 (July 2003). Heartz, Daniel. Pierre Attaingnant: Royal Printer of Music: A Historical Study and Bibliographical Catalogue. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. His, Isabelle. “Les Mélanges de Claude Le Jeune.” Diss., University of Tours, 1990. His, Isabelle, Françoise Glenission, and Jean Guichard. “Les Modèles Italiens de Claude Le Jeune,” Revue de musicologie 77 (1991): 25–58. His, Isabelle. Claude Le Jeune (v. 1530–1600): Un Compositeur entre Renaissance et Baroque. Arles: Actes Sud, 2000. —. “Claude Le Jeune et la Publication de ses Airs Mesurés.” In Poetry and Music in the French Renaissance, edited by Jeanice Brooks, Philip

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Ford, and Gillian Jondorf, 241–280. Cambridge: Cambridge French Colloquia, 2001. Hitchcock, H. Wiley. “The Instrumental Music of Marc-Antoine Charpentier.” Musical Quarterly 47 (1961): 58–72. —. “Charpentier, Marc-Antoine.” In Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/ article/grove/music/05471 (accessed October 23, 2011). Jacquot, Jean. La Musique Instrumentale de la Renaissance. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique, 1954. Jurgens, Madeleine. Documents du Minutier Central Concernant l’Histoire de la Musique (1600 1650). Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1968. Le Cerf de la Viéville, Jean Laurent. Comparaison de la Musique Italienne et de la Musique Françoise. (1705) Genève: Minkoff Reprints, 1972. Le Jeune, Claude and Etienne Moulinié. Fantaisies pour les Violes. (1612, 1639) Courlay, France: Editions Fuzeau classique, 2005. Leppert, Richard D. “Viols in Seventeenth-Century Flemish Paintings: The Iconography of Music Indoors and Out.” Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. 15 (1978): 12-13. Lunay, Denise. “La Fantaisie en France Jusqu’au Milieu du XVIIe Siècle,” In La Musique Instrumentale de la Renaissance, edited by Jean Jacquot, 327-338. Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique, 1954. Macey, Patrick “Italian Connections for Lupus Hellinck and Claude Le Jeune,” In Migration of Musicians to and from the Low Countries (c. 1400–1600), edited by Eugeen Schreurs and Bruno Bouckaert, 151164. Antwerp: Alamire Foundation, 1999. Mareschall, Samuel. Porta Musices: Das Ist, Eynführung zu der Edlen Kunst Musica: Mit Einem Kurtzen Bericht und Anleitung zu den Violen: Auch wie ein Jeder Gesang Leichtlich Anzustimmen Seye. Getruckt zu Basel: Durch Sebastianum Henricpetri, 1589. Mersenne, Marin. Harmonie Universelle: The Books on Instruments. Translated by Roger E. Chapman. The Hague: Martinue Nijhoff, 1957. —. Harmonie Universelle, Contenant la Théorie et la Pratique de la Musique. (Paris, 1636). Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1963. Métru, Nicholas. Fantasies a Deux Parties: Pour les Violes. (1642), edited by Paul Hooreman. Paris: Heugel & Cie, n.d. Monson, Craig. Voices and Viols in England, 1600-1650: The Sources and the Music. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982. Moureau, François. “Nicolas Hotman, Bourgeois de Paris et Musicien.” Recherches sur la Musique Française Classique.” 13 (1973): 1–22.

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Myers, Herbert W. “Renaissance Viol Tunings: A Reconsideration.” Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America 44 (2007-2008): 13-40. Ortiz, Diego. Trattado de Glosas. Rome: Valerio Dorico & Luis Dorico, 1553. Otterstedt, Annette. The Viol: History of an Instrument. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2002. Parran, Antoine. Traité de la Musique Théorique et Pratique Contenant les Précepts de la Composition. (1639) Genève: Minkoff Reprints, 1972. Planyavsky, Alfred. Geschichte des Kontrabasses. Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1970. —. The Baroque Double Bass Violone. Translated by James Barket. Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1998. Riemann, Hugo. Riemann Musik Lexikon: Personenteil L-Z. London: B. Schott’s Sohne, 1961. Rousseau, Jean. Traité de la Viole. (Paris: C. Ballard, 1687) Genève: Minkoff Reprints, 1975. Schwendowius, Barbara. Die Solistische Gambenmusik in Frankreich von 1650 bis 1740. Regensburg: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1970. Sicard, Michel. “The French Viol School before 1650.” The Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America 18 (1981): 76–93. Slim, H. Colin, and Edward Lowinsky. Musica nova Accommodata per Cantar et Sonar Sopra Organi, et Altri Strumenti. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Straeten, Edmond Vander. La musique aux Pays-Bas avant le XIXe. New York: Dover Publications, 1969. Thoinan, Er. Maugars: Célèbre Joueur de Viole, Musicien du Cardinal de Richelieu, Conseiller, Secrétaire, Interprète du Roi en Langue Anglaise, Traducteur de F. Bacon, Prieur de Saint-Pierre Eynac: Sa Biographie, Suivie de sa Response Faite à un Curieux sur le Sentiment de la Musique d’Italie: Escrite à Rome le Premier Octobre 1639: Avec Notes et Éclaircissements. London: Baron, 1865, Reprint, 1965. Trichet, Pierre. Traité des Instruments de Musique (vers 1640). Genève: Minkoff Reprint, 1978. Walker, D.P. “The Influence of Musique Mesurée à l’Antique, Particularly on the airs de cour of the Early Seventeenth Century.” Musica Disciplina: A Journal of the History of Music 2 (1948): 141–63. Walker, D.P., and François Lesure. “Claude Le Jeune and Musique Mesurée.” Musica Disciplina: A Journal of the History of Music 3 (1949), 151–70.

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Woodfield, Ian. The Early History of the Viol. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.

Notes 1 Ian Woodfield, The Early History of the Viol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). 2 Yolande Brossard, ed., La Collection de Sébastien de Brossard 1655–1730 (Paris: Bibliotèque Nationale de France, 1997), 367. 3 Premier Livre de Violle contenant dix chansons avec l’introduction d’accorder et apliquer les doigts selon la manière qu’on a accoutumé de jouer, le tout de la composition de Claude Gervaise. Recueil Curieux. 4 Philibert Jambe de Fer, L’Épitome musical des tons, sons et accordz, es voix humaines, fleustes d’Alleman, flesustes à neuf trous, violes, & violons (Lyons: 1556), 58-59. La Viole à l’usage de France n’a que cinq cordes, & celle d’Italie en à six, la viole Fracoise s’accorde à la quarte de corde en corde sans exception aucune. Celle d’Italie s’accorde justemet come le lucz, assauoir, quarte, & tierce. 5 Philibert Jambe de Fer, L’Épitome Musical, 59. La clef de noz violes à l’usage de France, sus la partie du bas, & du dessus, se prend sus la seconde corde d’en haut à vuyde, que nouse appellons G sol re ut, donc celay da bas, est le second contenu en la game, & celuy du dessus est le troizieme, faisant difference de l’un à lautre de huit voix, que nous appellons octave. Les tailles & haute contres accordent leur chanterelle justement sus la seconde du dessus, à vuyde: Comme le tout est contenu en la figure. 6 Philibert Jambe de Fer, L’Épitome Musical, 60-61. En chacune corde nouse faisons trois tons, ou voix, dont le plus bas desdicts est à vuyde: & mettant la main sus la premiere, ou seconde taste, nouse faisons un ton, ou demy ton, plus haut que le premier, selon que l’afsiete de Musique nouse le monstre. Pareillement nous faisons lautre qui est le troisiesme, sus la tierce, our quarte taste, car d’aller jusqu’a la quinte c’est chose perdue, parce que la corde suyuate enmontat à le mesme ton que trouvons sus icelle quinte, ou cinquiesme taste, & si est plus clair sonant plus naturel & moins cotrainct. Vray est que pour fair quelque passage our diminution il est beaucoup plus facisle & comode de chercher ceste quinte taste que d’aller à lautre corde. En descendant vous estes cotrains, veuilles our no, de tomber sus autres cordes apres avoir fait les trois tons sus celle que par vous lors est empeschee la chanterelle à puissance (pour estre la derniere) de faire quartre, cinqu, voyre six tons, & plus s’il estoir necessaire mais il ne se void guyere Musique si contrainte qu’elle passe les six voix (ou tons) dessus nommez. Ladicte Viole contient en soy de dixsept, à dixhuit tons, & plus s’il est necessaire, autant end à une partie que lautre, car toutes on autant de cordes l’une que l’autre, & de taste tant que lon veut aucuns bons joueurs n’en y veullent nulle, comme bien assurez sans marque, ou ils doivent asseoir leurs doigts. 7 Jean Rousseau, Traité de la Viole (Paris: C. Ballard, 1687), 19.

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Les premieres Violes dont on a joüé end France estoient à cinque chordes & fort grandes, leur usage estoit d’accompagner: le chevalet estoit fort bas & placé au dessous des oüyes, le bas de la touche touchoit à la table, les chordes estoient fort grosses, & son accord estoit tout par Quartes; Sçavoir la Chanterelle en C Sol Ut, la Seconde en G Ré Sol, la Tierce ou Troisiéme en D La Ré, la Quatriéme en A Mi La, & la cinquiéme qu’ils appelloient Bourdon estoient en E Si Mi. La figure de cette viole aprochoit fort de la Basse de Violon. 8 Denise Lunay, “La Fantaisie en France jusqu’au milieu du XVIIe siècle,” in La musique instrumentale de la renaissance, ed. Jean Jacquot (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Reserche Scientifique, 1954), 330.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO THE PERSUASIVE DIFFERENCE: ACKNOWLEDGING DIVERSITY IN RHETORICAL APPROACHES TO MADRIGALS OF THE LATE SIXTEENTH AND EARLY SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES JAMIE WEAVER

Recently, scholars such as George Buelow and Dietrich Bartel, among others, have increased our awareness of the relationship between music and rhetoric. Bartel encourages the rethinking of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century composers’ views on setting text, showing that aspects of rhetoric appear in most Western music of the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries.1 Buelow expresses the view that, though composers embraced the goal of moving auditors’ passions through music, this impulse resulted not from a set of stock figures but rather from a rekindled interest in classical rhetoric during the Renaissance.2 Acknowledging the hypothesis that sixteenth-century composers drew upon rhetorical conventions in creating emotionally moving works deepens our understanding of Renaissance vocal music. I believe, however, that acknowledging diversity among national approaches to musical rhetoric promotes even greater understanding of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century madrigals. Rhetoric maintained a prominent place in liberal arts instruction from antiquity but did not remain unchanged. Moreover, regional trends developed for its study and practice as time passed. These trends directly affected the way in which composers applied oratorical structure, the elements of style, and the art of delivery to many of their works. This essay will explore the differences in national rhetorical approaches, particularly those of Germany and Italy, and their effects on much of the secular vocal chamber music produced during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

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In order to understand rhetorical practices of the late sixteenth century, we must understand the varying national trends in education and rhetoric that prevailed in the Renaissance. It is true that the concepts of humanism shaped education in this period, yet humanistic principles varied nationally. In Germany, the ideals of the Lutheran reformation, as well as an increased sense of patriotism, flavored northern humanism. The Latein Schule included both classical and more modern works in their curricula and presented a combination of traditional medieval, and revised humanist subjects. The curriculum expanded to include commentaries on or summaries of the classical sources by Luther and his contemporaries. These schools maintained as their primary goal the spiritual education of their students, whose beliefs would be strengthened by learning to question or to re-evaluate the wisdom of the ancients. One theorist, a Frenchman best known by his Latinized name, Petrus Ramus, re-evaluated dialectic and rhetoric in ways that continue to dominate our views on these subjects today. In his works, published between 1543 and 1556, Ramus destroyed the five-canon division of rhetoric, placing the arts of invention and arrangement in the logical realm of dialectic, thus reducing rhetoric to the components of style and delivery. He re-interpreted, and indeed, re-wrote at will the classical sources to make them conform to his views. For Ramus, the goal of dialectic was the discovery of truth, and he felt that truth could best be found through dialectical invention. Rhetorician Thomas Conley explains that for Ramus, “rhetoric is simply the vehicle of transmission of truth to an audience unprepared to accept it.”3 Ramus’ educational reform was widespread and enjoyed enormous success. He made the complexities of rhetoric accessible to many, reducing them to those principles needed for practical use only. Though his works were published repeatedly in France, Germany, England and other countries, they remained virtually unknown in Italy and Spain. Conley theorizes that his works were valued exclusively by Protestant readers.4 The rejection of Ramus’ works in Catholic regions appears not to have hindered their success and influence north of the Alps. Ramus’ destruction of the five-canon rhetoric acted as a catalyst for changes in literature and theater. Poets, authors, playwrights, and rhetorical theorists began to view style— or the dressing up of a work with figures—as the ultimate means of persuasion. These artists perceived that style and the power of delivery could entice audiences to believe, or rather, to feel, the truth.

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By the seventeenth century, and even by the late sixteenth century, rhetoric had become associated with psychology, and theorists taught that figures were products of natural law. If, for example, an orator or poet employed a specific figure correctly, the user believed that this figure would generate a predictable emotional response in auditors. Rhetoric, as understood in post-Ramus terms, became a science of emotional buttonpushing. Rhetoricians produced, for practical use, copious lists of figures and their supposed affective properties. It is from this style-based tradition that the concept of musica poetica, as presented by Faber, Dressler, and especially Burmeister, developed. Though the late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century idea of a “doctrine of affections” is obviously flawed—a doctrine in which composers consulted one unchanging list of stock figures with which to pepper their compositions—twentieth-century music historians such as Schering and Bukofzer are understandably confused about it. Part of their confusion possibly stems from the fact that Burmeister and other creators of the musica poetica aesthetic borrowed not only the vocabulary of rhetoric to name musical figures, but also the idea that figures, whether literary or musical, were natural and possessed specific affective properties that could be, and often were, listed. Burmeister defines the musica poetica concept, clarifying the fact that it is a system of composition rather than of performance when he writes, “Musica Poetica is that discipline of music which teaches how to compose a musical work…in order to sway the hearts and spirits of individuals into various dispositions.”5 Burmeister‘s discussion of musical invention and arrangement, published in 1606, but circulated before that time, bears some exploration. He proposes that if a composer used a logical plan based upon rational principles of music theory and the careful application of figures in appropriate ways, auditors, no matter how untrained their ears, will be moved and will recognize truth.6 Burmeister‘s perception of truth shares many remarkable similarities with Ramus’ ideas about the division of rhetoric and dialectic; Ramus believed that truth was best discovered through dialectical invention and that rhetoric was merely the means of delivering this truth to an unprepared audience. Perhaps, for Burmeister, an unprepared musical audience was an audience with untrained ears? The musica poetica system is a beautifully complete compositional system that guides composers through every step in the creation of an affective musical composition, and its influence on German and French Baroque music is particularly important. Within it, little is left to the discretion of the performer. Yet, it seems possible that the musica poetica discipline is more than a system of musical rhetoric. I propose that it also

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incorporates the ideas of Ramistic dialectic in its use of invention and arrangement to deliver truth. In any case, this rich system, conscious of every available tool for the movement of passions, shaped musical composition in Germany, particularly Protestant Germany, and to a lesser degree, France and England, to such a degree that scholars in many disciplines now tend to judge all composition of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries according to its standard. Therefore, a discussion of whether or not the musica poetica theory applies to rhetoric and to music in Italy will prove fruitful. A study of humanism in broad terms often overlooks the specific nature of humanistic practices in Italy. Our modern idea of humanism as a movement that rejects nationalism in favor of a supranational, cosmopolitan approach is due, in large part, to the influence of Erasmus, whose ideas, in Italy at least, did not take hold quickly. This broad view of humanism ignores Italy’s quest to rediscover the lost traditions of its own national past. The sources placed in Italy’s sanctioned humanist canon were, essentially, Italian. Despite their non-Christian origins, the Roman classics were accepted readily by the Roman Catholic Church and considered appropriate materials for study. The goal of the Italian studium humanitatis, or humanist curriculum, was the acquisition of practical knowledge through the internalization of the classical sources. The scope of its curriculum was not as broad as some imagine and included only four subjects: grammar, rhetoric, poetry, and history. As a by-product of these four subjects, students also received generous doses of moral philosophy, although it was not treated separately. A survey conducted by the church in 1587, when 258 Venetian schoolmasters appeared by order of law to profess their faith, demonstrates the narrowness of the curriculum. Only four of these masters taught logic, or dialectic, and only six taught mathematics.7 Arguably the most important event in the creation of the studium humanitatis was the rediscovery, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, of many of Cicero’s works. These discoveries changed the Latin curriculum from the fifteenth century through the seventeenth. Students learned to emulate the style of Cicero’s prose as found in his letters, and were drilled in the composition of periodic sentences. As a result of the new discoveries of his works, scholars re-evaluated Cicero’s moral character and presented him as a model of civic virtue. Therefore, teachers assigned the copying of maxims and aphorisms from his letters into personal notebooks.8 In fact, the works of Cicero formed the core of the Latin curriculum, and students read from them in three of their four subjects. Paul Grendler‘s studies of educational records kept by church

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and civic authorities illuminate the vast influence of Ciceronianism in Italy during the sixteenth century by showing that his works were taught more frequently than those of any other author.9 Though other sources, such as Donatus, still formed the basis for the grammar curriculum, students were assigned to read and emulate the works of Cicero when writing prose. The rhetoric curriculum included the study of rhetorical principles, the art of letter writing, and the study of oratory; the works of Cicero served all of these.10 Though teachers preferred the works of Seneca and other historians for the study of history, students frequently learned about the art and results of civic diplomacy by reading orations of Cicero. This information, while not new, allows us to extrapolate that Italian composers of the late sixteenth century received an education centered on the principles of Ciceronian rhetoric. They were trained to write clear and persuasive letters, create speeches for civic occasions, and recognize the characteristics of well-organized, persuasive oratory. At the same time, we must also assume that Italian composers and poets would not have been familiar with the educational reform and rhetorical developments initiated by Ramus and his students. The late sixteenth century is a period characterized as much by novelty as is the early seventeenth century. Eventually, experiments developed into new genres, and composers employed new ideas in notation. A renewed interest in Aristotle surfaced in the late sixteenth century, prompting the exploration of the nature of music in Italy, but division and experimentation do not necessarily reflect the association of psychology with the principles of Ciceronian, or even Aristotelian, rhetoric. The experiments of the late sixteenth century flourished, at least in part, because of a fascination with antiquity in which the ideals of classical rhetoric, rather than recent reconstructions of rhetoric, were respected. Bartel clarifies the nature of the musica poetica tradition, confirming that it is uniquely German and that it cannot be applied accurately to music composed outside the scope of its system.11 The concept of style as the best means of moving the passions, and the understanding of figures as natural phenomena that possessed specific affective capabilities stemmed from northern trends, and were not part of the rhetorical or musical aesthetic in Italy. It is difficult to determine why, in a time when ideas were exchanged between countries with relative freedom, and when it was not uncommon for artists and scholars to travel, the northern rhetorical trends failed to penetrate Italy. I can offer three preliminary hypotheses. The first is that the rift between Catholicism and Protestantism was felt particularly strongly in educational circles. In Germany and France, Protestant

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educators grew concerned about teaching a canon of non-Christian sources approved by the Catholic Church. Conversely, Catholics in Italy and Spain were asked to avoid any educational material not sanctioned by the church. Since Ramus was strongly allied with the Lutheran faith, his works would have fallen into the category of proscribed works. Second, classical rhetoric maintained its usefulness in Italy due to the careful and volatile political environments of small courts and independent city-states. Many scholars, students, courtiers, and artists functioning in such environments still practiced public oratory. My last hypothesis is that humanist education, and hence the study of rhetoric, provided some unity for the collection of political entities we now call Italy. Although some Italian cities were governed by foreign powers, rhetoric, as practiced in oratorical and written forms, empowered their inhabitants and served as a means of communicating across cultures and social barriers. Whatever the reason for the rejection of the “doctrine of affections” or the musica poetica system in Italy, it did not keep Italian composers from experimenting with their own brand of musical rhetoric. The productive period at the end of the sixteenth century saw numerous and rapid changes. That Italian composers of this period drew upon exciting new sources and arguments as well as upon more venerated traditions for their compositional ideas cannot be disputed. Their exploration of Aristotle, combined with familiar knowledge of Ciceronian principles and the continuing attention to recovery of ancient music, meant that music assumed several unique roles, not the least of which was the attendant and glorifier of classical rhetoric. Text expression and explanation had long been a vital part of musical composition. The idea that changed during the late sixteenth century, however, was the notion that music must always maintain supremacy when interacting with other arts. I posit that rather than using the conventions of rhetoric to assist in composition, Italian composers created orations enhanced through music. Music expanded oratorical possibilities. The range of vocal inflections expected in a piece of oratory or theater could be widened if music were added. Music allowed greater flexibility in the speed with which phrases could be declaimed. Opportunities for persuasion through silence could possibly be effective if silence followed musical speech. Given the familiarity of musicians with Monteverdi’s comments about the seconda prattica, a discussion of Italian music as the servant of oratory might seem redundant, but I hope that an expanded concept of musical oratory will display composers’ choices in a new light. I do not subscribe to the idea that all music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth

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centuries in Italy functions as heightened speech. On the contrary, I believe that much of this music serves a more direct affective purpose. For Cicero and Quintilian, oratory was not about manipulating the passions in a psychological way. It was about persuasion. Manipulating auditors’ emotions is only one possible method of persuading them. An alternative method involves presenting information in such a way that auditors will consider and judge it. For example, in this essay I hope to persuade my readers that my ideas about rhetoric in music are true, but I trust that inserting pathetic figures to move them to tears would not strengthen my argument. Italian music of the late cinquecento could also persuade in more than one way. Little has been written about musical rhetoric in Italy. Scholars do refer generally to the practice of filling madrigals with figures, so prominent that musicians often refer to them as “madrigalisms.” Moreover, Dietrich Bartel devotes a section of his book to a description of the differences between German and Italian musico-rhetorical practices during the Baroque period. Since his admirable goal is the treatment of rhetoric in German Baroque music, this necessarily brief section details what Italian rhetoric is not, rather than describing its nature. Though Bartel acknowledges that Italian composers used rhetoric in musical composition, he asserts that they relied on a “pathos-laden delivery” and on elements of style to make their music convincing. He explains further that the Italian brand of rhetoric imitated the actor rather than the playwright.12 It is true that the Italians developed no specific system for musical rhetoric, but Bartel’s conclusion that Italians reduced musical rhetoric to the components of style and delivery troubles me. Several factors indicate that the components of invention and arrangement were not only present in, but also essential to Italian compositions. The most important evidence comes from the music itself. Composers of late Cinquecento madrigals demonstrate their presentation and organization of ideas (rhetorical invention and arrangement) through a variety of means. They decide whether or not to follow or to alter the structure of a selected text, for example. Often, composers use texture changes, tempo differences, or harmonic shifts to identify poetic sections such as quatrains, tercets, or strophes, and, in so doing, preserve or even heighten the original rhetorical structure of the text. In settings of shorter poems, such as sonnets, composers often create an expanded sense of structure, engaging portions of the text to add musical introductions and conclusions less prominent in the poetry. Not infrequently, composers make the bold choice to destroy the strophic nature of a poem by disguising the text’s repeated refrains or by ignoring the standard practice of setting each strophe of a text to the same melody, rendering it familiar

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to listeners. They also engage in choices about whether to repeat lines or phrases of the text utilized only once by the poet. In music, as in speech, repetition of phrases or words acts as a signal of emphasis. A composer’s choice to reiterate a word or phrase, whether by separate presentation in each voice or through simultaneous statements in all of the voices, is to heighten, expound upon, or change the poet’s original intentions for the text. Finally, composers possessed the option of choosing a new message or meaning for the poetic text by refocusing or changing the poet’s intended message rather than presenting it in its original context. In the hands of a skillful composer, a light strophic poem contrived for trivial entertainment can become a dramatic musical exhibition filled with pathos and longing while a gravely sad sonnet can express as many sweet emotions as it does bitter ones. Style, the third canon of rhetoric, has been compared to the clothes or trappings in which a composition is adorned, and Italian composers of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries treated it with care as the means of making ideas enticing to an audience. It includes, but is by no means limited to, the study of figures. Since few musical compositions claim teaching as their primary goal, most were not written in the plain or low style described by Greek and Roman rhetoricians as the style meant for instruction. Since most vocal compositions of this period have as their purpose the pleasure or emotional movement of auditors, they will belong to either the medium or high styles within the tri-level system articulated by Cicero. In fact, styles and stylistic features may be mixed within individual works, and compositions may alternate styles, or adapt techniques of several during a performance. Due to their stylistic aims, madrigals of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods exhibit the use of figures of both speech and of thought at elevated levels. The invention and inclusion of musical patterns and devices that would enhance or change the meaning of the words would have been quite natural to Italian composers of the Renaissance and Baroque periods who were taught to add them to their prose and letters since childhood. The handling of figures to express the text as well as to explain it was, therefore, skillful. Because today’s students and performers are less familiar with the uses of Ciceronian rhetoric than were the Italian composers and performers whose works we study and sing, studying the rhetorical figures with which they were so familiar is useful for understanding style in general terms. The most appropriate list of figures for modern musicians to consult when discovering the possibilities of interpreting this music through the exploitation of figures is that found in the Rhetorica Ad Herennium.13 This is, in all likelihood, the “list” with

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which most of the composers in this study were familiar. Some examples of the various methods by which composers treat or create rhetorical figures in their works follow. Composers of madrigals often exercised discretion and taste in the writing of their madrigals by allowing some rhetorical figures present in the chosen poetry to speak for themselves, remaining undeveloped within the music. Madrigal composers possessed a great deal of knowledge about poetry, and if a figure was already sufficiently enriched by the poet, it is more likely that its delivery would be trusted to the discretion of the performer rather than over-emphasized through musical enhancement. Because today’s audiences are often unfamiliar with these literary figures that composers expected listeners to understand, performers of madrigals should strive to recognize and to draw audience attention to these figures through some tasteful alteration in word accent or vocal production. Just as performers must now decide how much ornamentation is distasteful in Renaissance and Baroque music, composers faced an analogous decision concerning the presentation of figures. They often relied upon performers to know their own skills well enough to make appropriate decisions about the eloquence of their deliveries. More often, however, a composer will endeavor to enhance a figure in the text through musical means. If, for example, a poet has written an exclamation such as “ohimè!” a composer will usually choose to set it in a way that resembles the exclamation of surprise or grief. The word could be placed in the singer’s highest register or ascend sharply into that register. It might also contain a descending figure resembling a sob or a groan. Alternatively, the exclamation could be set in the lowest part of the singer’s range, indicating that it is to be sung quietly, expressing disbelief or inward grief. Today’s performers can interpret the composer’s idea of a narrator’s or a poetic character’s emotional state by attaching rhetorical meaning to the way in which the exclamation has been set. More sophisticated figures may also be enhanced. For instance, Petrarch’s expression “ridono i prati” could be enhanced by figures resembling laughter in the vocal parts.14 Composers seem particularly attached to the enhancement of figures of antithesis through musical means. They may alternate major and minor chords or harmonic passages to describe the sweetness of pain or the burning of snow in a Petrarchan sonnet, for instance. A useful example of this enhancement of figures may be drawn from Luca Marenzio‘s madrigal “Zefiro torna” published in 1585. In this setting of a Petrarch sonnet, noted for its antithetical imagery, Marenzio juxtaposes fast, rhythmic, dance-like passages to represent the joyous

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aspects of spring with slow minor sections to underscore the narrator’s wintry, personal pain in unrequited love. In addition to developing textual figures, composers often add meaning of their own to a piece by adding musical figures not suggested by the poet. The description of laughing in a poem, for example, is not always heightened through the use of an onomatopoeia figure. Yet, a composer may choose to add a rhetorical figure, musically imitating the laughter described in the poem to strengthen its description. A sad text, on the other hand, might prompt a composer to augment a specific passage with weeping or sighing figures, although the poet did not, or could not include figures imitating the grief-stricken sounds. Marenzio’s “Zefiro torna” will serve to illustrate this technique as well. As Petrarch’s words remind listeners of the disturbing Ovidian story of Procne and Philomel, Marenzio interrupts the energy of the opening section of the madrigal to place a downward sighing figure in several of the vocal parts on the utterance of “progne,” the Italian equivalent of Procne’s name, lengthening the note values to draw attention to the figure. Although Petrarch could not, by simply including the names of the betrayed women in his poem, draw additional attention to the sadness of their situation, Marenzio succeeded in offering madrigal listeners an emotionally-charged reminder of their anguish through a musical figure. In some cases, composers may add musical figures that represent a character’s state of mind, such as when setting a portion of text narrated by a youthful or joyous protagonist in a popular dance rhythm, though the poetic text does not reference dancing. A clear example of this may be seen in Monteverdi’s madrigal “Non si levava ancor l’alba novella” from his second book of madrigals. Tasso’s sonnet describes a pair of lovers who, to avoid scandal, must part as they observe the dawning of a new day. In the sixth and seventh lines of this poem, “ch’una felice notte aggiunse insieme, come Acanto si volge in vari giri,” Tasso refers to the happy night the couple has just passed. To enhance the romantic image of the couple’s nocturnal activities, Monteverdi repeats the brief phrase “ch’una felice note,” setting both utterances of the phrase in a popular dance rhythm that all auditors would have recognized at once. For listeners, Monteverdi’s pairing of this dance rhythm with Tasso’s words would provide a vivid mental image of the pleasurable night described. Educated audiences who listened to madrigals delighted in being encouraged, through the use of a composer’s musical gestures, to experience an emotional response to a situation in the past, while still acknowledging the more obvious emotional state of the poetic characters or narrator. This emotional layering is complex, as listeners are still

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expected to believe in the emotion felt by the poetic characters although they need not feel it themselves. In the case of Monteverdi’s madrigal, listeners still believe in the anguish felt by the parting lovers while delighting in the clever depiction of their time together. These richly dense layers of meaning give madrigals of this period their unique sense of depth. The comprehension of figures also remains crucial to the fifth canon of rhetoric, that of delivery. The classical orators divided the study of delivery into two parts: voice and gesture. In addition to the study of hand, arm, and head movements, the study and practice of gesture during the sixteenth century also included attention to facial expression and body position. The vocal portion of delivery encompassed study of the ways in which the orator (or singer) would execute performance of figures. In Italian music of the late Renaissance and early Baroque, delivery continued to depend heavily upon the singer’s ability to recognize and interpret during performance the tools given them by the composer. For performers and students of today, this information about delivery implies the need to perform works in ways that transcend the notes on the page. Performers often speak of wanting to preserve the intentions of the composer. Concerning late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century madrigals, the study of rhetoric and the ways in which composers have developed it teaches us that composers intended for performers to render educated and involved interpretations of their works rather than to restrict themselves to instructions found in the score. These interpretations could be weakened substantially through a lack of understanding concerning the use of rhetoric in or the content or meaning of the poetic text. The Greek and Roman rhetoricians defined rhetoric loosely as the art and science of persuasion. To be sure, style and figurative language formed an important part of the classical orator’s arsenal, but they were not psychologized and connected with the passions in the way that French and German sixteenth-century rhetoricians, like Ramus, perceived them. The legacy left us by Ramus and his followers is the steady narrowing of our modern definition of classical rhetoric to the point that scholars in several fields view it as a mere collection of figures and tropes designed to accessorize composition. Broadening our definition of rhetoric to include persuasive techniques not associated with style and that do not seek to manipulate the passions, and acknowledging diversity among national approaches to its practice will lead us to ask new questions about why, and through what means, music persuades us.

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Bibliography Bartel, Dietrich. Musica Poetica: Musical Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. —. Rhetoric in German Baroque Music. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Buelow, George J. “Teaching Seventeenth-Century Concepts of Musical Form and Expression: An Aspect of Baroque Music.” College Music Symposium 27 (1987): 1–13. Cicero, Marcus Tullius. Rhetorica ad Herennium. Translated by Harry Caplan. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954. Conley, Thomas. Rhetoric in the European Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Grendler, Paul F. Books and Schools in the Italian Renaissance. Collected Studies Series. Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Variorum, 1995. —. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989. Petrarca, Francesco. Canzoniere, edited by Alberto Chiari. Milan: Oscar Classici, 1985.

Notes 1 Dietrich Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music (Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press, 1997). 2 George J. Buelow, “Teaching Seventeenth-Century Concepts of Musical Form and Expression: An Aspect of Baroque Music,” College Music Symposium 27 (1987): 1-13. 3 Thomas Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 130. 4 Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition, 131. 5 Bartel, Musica Poetica: Musical Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Music, 65. 6 Ibid., 80. 7 Paul F. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 13001600 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), 205-6. 8 Ibid., 205-210. 9 Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy. See also Grendler, Paul F., Books and Schools in the Italian Renaissance (Aldershot, Hampshire, Great Britain: Variorum Collected Studies, 1995). These works provide a clear overview of information gleaned from a wide variety of sources. Though Grendler is careful to clarify that it is impossible to present a complete picture of education in Italy between 1300 and 1600, he draws many useful conclusions based on the available sources.

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Ibid., 213. Bartel, Musica Poetica, 62. 12 Bartel, Rhetoric in German Baroque Music (Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), 58-60. 13 Marcus Tullius Cicero, Rhetorica ad Herennium, trans. Harry Caplan (Cambridge MA: Loeb-Harvard University Press, 1954.) 14 From “Zefiro torna” Petrarch’s Canzoniere #310. 11

CONTRIBUTORS

Anne Babson – “‘Un Nouvel Royaume de Femenie’: Christine de Pizan’s Construction of a Kingdom Come for Women” Anne Babson holds a bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a Masters from The City College of New York. She is currently working on her PhD with a dissertation focused on Middle English and Middle French authors, at the University of Mississippi, where she teaches writing and literature. Her articles have been anthologized in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Her poetry, nominated five times for The Pushcart Prize, is published on five continents. Her latest short collection, entitled Poems under Surveillance (Finishing Line Press, 2013), is available on Amazon. Mithuiel Barnes – “A Theology of Eating in Dante’s Divine Comedy” Mithuiel Barnes completed a BA and a Master of Arts in Humanities, focused on medieval and religious studies, at the University of Louisville. She currently teaches in the Interdisciplinary Core program at Bellarmine University in Louisville, where she brings literature, religious studies, and medieval studies to undergraduates. Her current areas of research include Dante’s contribution to both eucharistic theology and cosmology in the Middle Ages and beyond, as well as the interaction between religion and politics, particularly with regard to modern ‘medievalisms.’ Ms. Barnes lives in Louisville with her husband, a philosophy professor, her teenage son, and their two cats. Matthew Bennett – “Teaching Paradise Lost: Let’s Be Honest” Matthew Bennett is a graduate student at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas. He is working to receive a Master of Arts degree in English. His emphases are the Classics, both Greek and Medieval, Old Testament studies, and Early American Literature. John Boyer – “Eternal God: Divine Atemporality in Thomas Aquinas” John Boyer is currently working on his doctorate in philosophy from the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas (Houston, Texas). His dissertation addresses methods of discovery in Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts from

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Thomas Aquinas College (Santa Paula, California) in 2007 and his Master of Arts in Philosophy from the Center for Thomistic Studies in 2011. Boyer is also an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas, where he teaches Philosophy of the Human Person. His research interests include philosophy of nature, philosophy of religion and Aristotelian philosophy of science and logic. Rochelle Bradley – ‘“Wiping “the table of [his] memory’: The Conflict of Memory and Will in Hamlet” N. Rochelle Bradley is an Instructor of English at Blinn College in Bryan, Texas. She earned her MA at Pennsylvania State University and PhD at Texas A&M University. Rochelle has research interests in Renaissance literature and its intersections with philosophy and theology. James Early – “Theodore of Tarsus: The Syrian Archbishop of Canterbury” James R. Early is the assistant priest at St. Joseph Orthodox Church in Houston, Texas. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from The University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts inHistory at Sam Houston State University, with an anticipated graduation date of May, 2015. He is the author of the book From Baptist to Byzantium (Regina Orthodox Press, 2009). His primary research interests include early Christian History and the history of AngloSaxon England, Byzantium, and Serbia. Katherine Echols – “Old Angels, Wasted and Spent: Representations of the Wanton Widow in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Pop Culture and ‘The Boke of Mayd Emlyn.’” Katherine Echols, who received her MA in English in 2007 from Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas, is a doctoral student at the University of Houston in the Department of English and an adjunct instructor with Lone Star College System in Houston, Texas. Her interests include medievalism and the revival of the Middle Ages and adaptation studies, especially adaptations of Chaucer, Robin Hood, and King Arthur in popular culture. Recent publications include: “Radio Adaptations of Robin Hood’s Legend during the Golden Age of Radio,” Journal of Radio and Audio Media, Illinois State University, Illinois, May 2013; “Mary Butts, British Modernist and Early Ecofeminist, Writes the ‘Cult of Nature,’” Watermark, California State University, Long Beach, California. Her forthcoming article “The Discrete Occupational Identity of Chaucer’s

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Contributors

Knyght” will be published by Dialogues in Language and Literature, University of Houston, Texas 2013. James Frankki – “The Heavener Rune Stone Revisited: Vikings in Oklahoma, or Swedish Railroad Workers in the 19th century?” James Frankki is an Assistant Professor of German at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas, where he teaches German language, literature and culture, as well as a course on the Vikings. He studied medieval German literature and Old Norse at the University of Wisconsin Madison, where he received his PhD in 2007. He has done extensive research in gender studies, especially transvestism in medieval literature, which is the subject of his forthcoming book on Ulrich von Lichtenstein’s Frauendienst (Service to Ladies). His long-standing interest in the Vikings and older Germanic languages has recently developed into a fascination for all things runic. Currently he is researching runic inscriptions in North America, particularly the Heavener Runestone in Oklahoma. He has worked with inscriptions in the Elder and Younger fuÞarks, and the Anglo-Saxon fuÞorc. In 2012 he published the first complete translation of the Kansas City rune stone in the journal Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers (ESOP). He currently holds the position of runic adviser for this journal. Clinton Hale – “Anglo-Saxon Christianity: Militant and Violent” Clinton Hale is Instructor at Blinn College, Brenham, Texas, where he also serves as Director for the Writing Room. He earned an MA in Teaching English from the University of West Alabama and a BA in English from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Hale is currently pursuing the MFA in Creative Writing at University of Texas at El Paso. His article “Umberto Eco Takes Semiotics to the Masses” was recently published by ETC: A Review of General Semantics. Additionally, he was recently involved in a collaborative presentation “Building TeacherStudent Relationships in Developmental Writing Classrooms.” Hale’s research interests include the connection between literature and economics/political theory, and Eastern Orthodoxy. Phuc Luu – “Traversing the Difficulties: An Explanation of Aquinas’ Fourth Way” Phuc Luu is an instructor of philosophy at Sam Houston State University while pursuing his PhD at the University of St. Thomas, the Center for Thomistic Studies. He holds the MA in philosophy from St. Thomas and the MDiv from Baylor University, Waco, Texas. His areas of interest are

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philosophy of religion, theology, analytic philosophy, virtue theory, history of philosophy, and hermeneutics. His most recent publication is “Three Speaking about Transcendence: Medieval Theologians” in the festschrift, Thriving in Babylon (Pickwick Publications, 2011). John Macias – “John Finnis and the Political Community” John Macias is a doctoral candidate at the Center for Thomistic Studies, University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. He received his BA in philosophy from Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas, and his MA from University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas. His main interests are in ancient philosophy, politics, ethics, and the work of Alasdair MacIntyre. Richard North – “MLA or MIA? Thoughts on Modernity in the Medieval Novel” Richard North received his BA from the University of Oxford (1983) and PhD from Cambridge (1987), was a postdoctoral student in Groningen (1987-9), and has since been teaching English literature of all periods, but mainly Old and Middle English, and also Old Icelandic, to students of all kinds at University College, London. His interest in Anglo-Saxon paganism came out in Pagan Words and Christian Meanings (Rodopi, 1991), Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 1997) and a number of articles published since then. He has also written on Beowulf and other Old English poetry, especially on poems from the Exeter Book, including The Seafarer, The Wanderer, Deor and Widsith, as well as on The Dream of the Rood and the Ruthwell Cross, in which he did some collaborative work with Professor Éamonn Ó Carragáin (Emeritus) of Cork. His more recent books are The Origins of Beowulf: from Vergil to Wiglaf (Oxford University Press, 2006), an introductory book (co-edited with Joe Allard) for sixth-formers and firstyear undergraduates, ‘Beowulf’ & Other Stories (Pearson Education Ltd, 2nd edition, 2012), and (as principal editor, with Joe Allard and Patricia Gillies) the Longman Anthology of Old English, Old Icelandic and AngloNorman Literatures (Pearson Education Ltd, 2012). His book on Beowulf had the temerity to argue for a date and author’s name (AD 826-27, Abbot Eanmund of Breedon), on the premise that this work was commissioned after the death of King Beornwulf of Mercia (823-6) by the latter’s wouldbe successor, an ealdorman named Wiglaf. North has also edited Skaldic poems, the Haustlöng of Þjóðólfr of Hvinir (c. 900) and the Húsdrápa of Úlfr Uggason (c. 995) and has written essays on Færeyinga saga and Víga-Glúms saga, as well as an essay on illusion in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Currently he is researching the influence of Beowulf on the

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Contributors

Old English poem Andreas, and on the early fifteenth-century Grettis saga. Edward Plough – “Titus Andronicus Underwater” Edward Plough is an Assistant Professor of Literature at Delta State University in Cleveland, Mississippi. He received his BA in English from Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois, his MA in Shakespeare Studies from Royal Holloway, University of London, and his PhD in Medieval & Renaissance Literature from Purdue University. In addition to Renaissance playwrights and poets, Plough’s research interests include Modern American Drama, Musical Theatre, and Adaptation Studies. As an active musician and theater artist, Plough has co-composed three original fulllength musicals with Stephen Clark and Kalena Dickerson in Chicago. The most recent musical, “Of Moonjays & Motorcycles,” is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Pericles. Timothy Ponce – “The Heroic Struggle: Classical and Christian Heroism in Paradise Lost” Timothy Ponce holds the MA in English from Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas and is currently pursuing a PhD in English at the University of North Texas in Denton. Publications include “Head, Heart, and Hand: A Simple yet Powerful Construct for Teaching Homer’s Odyssey,” published by Quint and reprinted in Classis. Presentations include “A Marriage of Classical Content from Ethics, Western Civilization, and American Traditions and Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) in Freshman Composition English Classes,” offered at the AAUP Conference, Washington, D. C. Ponce has presented his research as well to the Texas Association of Deans of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences and to the recent Traditio conference. His research focus centers on Renaissance literature, the Classical tradition, as well as pedagogical approaches to teaching these subjects. Elizabeth Nogan Ranieri – “The Central Plan, the Architectural Treatise and Leonardo” Elizabeth Ranieri is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Dallas. Her MA thesis research focuses on problems of female artists and patrons in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy. Her areas of expertise are Neapolitan history, Italian Renaissance and Baroque art and architecture, Medieval and Early Modern trade and travel, and sacred space. Her dissertation focuses on the history, architecture, and artistic plan of a Neapolitan monastery.

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Bernard Ribémont – “Compiling and Writing a Legal Treatise in French: The Livre de jostice et de plet” Bernard Ribémont is Professor of History of Medieval Literature and Culture at the University of Orléans where he also serves as the University Vice President. He has earned two PhDs, one in Mathematics from the University of Paris and the other in Medieval Literature from the University of Orléans. Dr. Ribémont holds office as the Director of the international review Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et HumanistesJournal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies. In addition, he directs the research team POLEN (Power, Literature and Norms, in English translation). John Romey – “The French Renaissance Viol Consort: Reevaluating the Sources and Reclaiming the Music” John Romey is a current PhD student in historical musicology, with an emphasis in Historical Performance Practices, at Case Western Reserve University. Research interests include, seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury French music, with emphasis on French spectacle and theater; Latin American colonial music, with special emphasis on the music of Peru and Bolivia; the history of musical instruments; musical iconography; and instrumental virtuosity. In 2012 his paper “Representations of Virtuosity: Portraits of Cellists and Gambists in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” was chosen as one of six papers at the bi-annual National Conference for the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music for publication in a forthcoming volume by Steglein Press entitled Haydn and His Contemporaries II. Romey is also the editor of a forthcoming Urtext edition of an anonymous Eighteenth-Century Trio for Viola, Violoncello, and Violone by Editions Violone. He has presented at numerous scholarly conferences on a variety of topics, has given lecture recitals on the Viennese violone at Ithaca College, Syracuse University, The Cleveland Institute of Music, and Oberlin Conservatory, and has taught music courses at Ithaca College. An active performer, John Romey can be heard professionally playing a variety of instruments ranging from medieval to classical. Katharine Scherff – “Saint Quiteria: Virgin and Martyr” Katharine Scherff is Professor of Art History at the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. In October 2012 she published her master’s thesis Saint Quiteria: Virgin and Martyr: An Analysis of Her Cult Veneration and Iconography in France and the Iberian Peninsula.

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Contributors

Scherff’s interests are largely in Western European art, religion, cult veneration, and iconography. She first discovered Saint Quiteria during her graduate studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio where she completed her Master of Arts degree in 2011. Tara Sewell – “Common Misconceptions of the Medieval Period in Modern Popular Culture” Tara Sewell is Adjunct Professor of Medieval History at Texas A&M University – San Antonio and of humanities at San Antonio College. She holds two bachelor’s degrees from Baylor University in archaeology and history and a master’s degree in history from the University of Texas at San Antonio. Her research interests include ancient civilizations, the Medieval Period, and historiography. John Thornburg – “The Case of Kennings: Aristotle, Beowulf, and DeepCase Grammar” John N. Thornburg, BA, Purdue University, MA, MA in Teaching, Indiana University, is Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing at San Jacinto College, Central Campus, Pasadena, Texas. His recent publications include “Translations of Martial’s Epigrams on Epigrams,” Reflections 2012; “Kenning Metaphor,” Reflections 2009; and “Fictional Stance, Perspective, and Viewpoint,” Reflections 2008. His research interests include imaginative figures as well as Medieval and Renaissance English literature. Jamie Weaver – “The Persuasive Difference: Acknowledging Diversity in Rhetorical Approaches to Music of the 16th Century” Jamie Weaver holds a Master of Music from Texas Christian University, specializing in vocal performance and pedagogy. She earned her PhD in Musicology, with a secondary area in vocal performance from the University of Oregon in 2006. She is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, Texas. As the recipient of an International Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Scholarship, Dr. Weaver conducted her dissertation research in Bologna, Italy, exploring compositional ethics of composers in Florence and in northern Italy during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Her current research interests include compositional ethics, rhetoric in Italian music of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and the intersection between music and disability studies. She continues to perform actively with early music and contemporary music ensembles.

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Kevin West – “Dante and Orpheus: Ovidian Intertext in Inferno 5” Kevin R. West is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He obtained his Ph D in comparative literature from Indiana University and also holds an MA in theology. His research interests are primarily in religion and literature and literary hermeneutics. He has published and presented on authors such as Umberto Eco, Philip Roth, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Julian of Norwich.

INDEX

Abadía, Juan de la, 209, Ch. 15 n28 Abbé Suger, 190 Alain of Lille, 243, Ch. 17 nviii Alberti, Leon Battista, 102–9 Aldhelm, 119. See under Bishop of Sherborne Alfred the Great. See under King Alfred Alliterative Morte Arthur, 19, 21, Ch. 1 nlxvi Amadís de Gaula, 6 Amores, 20 Andrew the Chaplain (Andreas Capellanus), 20 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 17 Anna Karenina, 22 Apocalypse of Paul, 72 Apollonius of Tyre, 18, Ch. 1 nliv Aquinas, Thomas, 240–80 account of divine eternity, 262– 80 explanation of human law and divine law, 249–51 Fourth Way, 240–47 Summa Theologiae, 240–62 Aristotle, 81, 245–46, 263–64, 267, 292–97, 299, 300, 302, 307–10, 343 On Rhetoric, 289, 292–93, 309 Poetics, The, 292–93, 295–96, 300, 303, 307–8, Ch. 20 n19, n31 artes liberales, 4 Arthurian chronicle, 5 Augustine of Canterbury, 114 Augustine of Hippo, 154, 187–88, 196–97, 243, Ch. 11 nv, Ch. 14 n29, n62 Austen, Jane, 5

Avicenna, 7, 92, 246, Ch. 1 nxix Baker, Peter, 288–89, Ch. 20 n3 Baronius, Caesar, 53, Ch. 3 n10 Bartel, Dietrich. See under musica poetica Battle of Bosworth Field, 7 Beaumont, Jean de, 136–37, Ch. 9 nviii Beaumont, Johan de, 137, Ch. 9 nviii Behn, Aphra. See under Oroonoko Belleforest, François de, 14 Beowulf. See Ch. 1, Ch. 20 Berhtwald, Archbishop, 119 Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian, 119, 121, Ch. 7 niii-iv, nvi Bishop of Agen, 205 Bishop of Sherborne. See under Aldhelm Bishop Wilfrid, 117, Ch. 7 nxi, nxv Blake, Barry, 305, Ch. 20 n33 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 5, 11, 22–23, Ch. 1 nxii, nlxxi Boethius, 15, 16, 23, 262–63, 265, 267, Ch. 1 nxlvii, Ch. 19 ni Boke of Mayd Emlyn, The, 228, 230–32, Ch. 16 nxxv Bolton, W. F., 121, Ch. 7 nxxx Book of the City of Ladies, The. See Ch. 14 Book of the Duchess, The, 22. See under Chaucer, Geoffrey Bosco, Umberto, 71, Ch. 4 n8 Bradeur, Arthur, 288, Ch. 20 n2 Bramante, Donato, 103, 106–8 Brennu-Njáls saga, 10 Brontë sisters, 5

News from the Raven Brooks, Nicholas, 117, 121, Ch. 7 nxi-nxii, nxvi Brown-Grant, Rosalind, 193, Ch. 14 n39, n47 Brutus, 18 in Dante's Inferno, 87 Buelow, George, 339, 351 Burmeister, Joachim, 341 Bussy, Guillaume de, 137 Caliphate of Cordoba, 20 Calter, Paul, 104, Ch. 6 nvi, nxv, nxx Cambridge change, 265–66, 273, Ch. 19 nxxxiv Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian, 121 Canterbury Tales, The, 23, 228, 231–32. See under Chaucer, Geoffrey, Ch. 1 nlxxi Carolingian Renaissance, 52 Cassiodorus, 4, 16, Ch. 1 nvii Cassius, 87 Caurroy, Eustache du, 321–22, 323 Caxton, William, 3, 7, Ch. 1 nxx Cellier, Jacques, 321, 328–29 Cerberus, 84–85, 87 Cervantes, Miguel de, 5–6, Ch. 1 nxiv Cesariano, 104 Champagne, Countess Marie de, 20 Chapman, Paul, 38 Charney, Maurice, 145, Ch. 10 nvii, nxv Chaucer, Geoffrey, 11, 19, 230–32, 228, 230–32, Ch. 1 niii, nli, nlxvii-lxxi, Ch. 16 nii-iii, nxxvii chivalry, 6, 7, 51, Ch. 1 nxv-xvi Choctaw Indians. Ch. 2 n9 Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 299, 342– 46, Ch. 20 n27, Ch. 22 n13 Classical rhetoric, 339–49 Commedia, 83–84, 90–91, 95, 96. See under Divine Comedy, The Commentary on the Physics, 269, Ch. 19 nxxvi Complaint of Mars, The, 22, 23

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Conley, Thomas, 340, Ch. 22 n3-4 Conseil de Pierre de Fontaines, 135 Consolation of Philosophy, The, 16, Ch. 19 ni Council of Hatfield, 118 Cunning Age, The, 228, 230–31, 233–34, Ch. 16 nxxxix da Imola, Benvenuto, 71 da Vinci, Leonardo, 101, 103–9, Ch. 6 ni, nxviii De Architectura, 103, 108 De arte honesti amandi, 20. See under Andrew the Chaplain De Francia, 137–39 De Potentia, 245, Ch. 17 nxviii De re aedificatoria, 107–8 Decameron, 5, 23, Ch. 1 nxii, nlxxi Decretals, 133, 137, 139. See under Gregory IX Deep-Case Grammar. See Ch. 20 Defoe, Daniel, 6 Denis, St., 190 Deor, 13, 15 Design for a Centralized ‘Temple’, 101 Dewan, Lawrence, 252, Ch. 18 nxvi Dialogues, 7, 20 Dictionary of the English Language, 7. See under Johnson, Samuel Die Runeninschriften im älteren Futhark, 43 Digest, 133–34, 136–37 Divine Comedy, The. See under Commedia Inferno, 70–90 Paradiso, 95–96, Ch. 5 n42-44 Purgatorio, 86, 90–95 theme of eating in, 83–96 divine eternity. See Ch. 19 divine immutability, 262–63, 268, 273, 275 divine law, 250–51 divine temporalism, 262 Don Quixote, 5–6, Ch. 1 nxiv Dozon, Marthe, 74, 76 Draper, John, 150, Ch. 10 nxvi

362 Dream of the Rood, The, 16–17, 126, Ch. 1 nxlix Dressler, Gallus, 341 Dryden, John, 160, 177 Dunbar, William, 234 Early History of the Viol, The. See under Woodfield, Ian Edda, 10, 12, Ch. 1 nxxxvi-xxxvii Egill. See under Egils saga Egils saga, 9 Eiríksson, Leifur, 39, Ch. 2 n10 Elder (or Germanic) Futhark, 38, 42, Ch. 2 n28 Eleanor, Queen, 18 Eliot, George, 11 Enlightenment, 3, 5, 53–54, 59 Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers, 40 ESOP. See under Epigraphic Society Occasional Papers Établissements de Saint Louis, 133– 34, Ch. 9 nii-iii Eucharist, 81, 83–84, 86, 89, 92–96 Exodus, 16–17 Faber, Heinrich, 341 fabliaux, 23, 139–40 Faerie Queene, The, 19. See under Spenser, Edmund Fall from Grace, 82–83, 81, 90–91 Farley, Gloria, 38, 40, Ch. 2 n9 Fer, Philibert Jambe de, 318–22, 324, Ch. 21 n4-6 Fielding, Henry, 5, Ch. 1 nxiii Fillmore, Charles, 289, Ch. 20 n910 Final Judgment, 88 Finnis, John. See Ch. 18 Fish, Stanley, 177, 180–81, Ch. 13 nviii, nxi, nxxv, nxxviii Forhan, Kate Langdon, 192, Ch. 14 n30, n46 Four Conversational Maxims, 170– 72 Fourth Georgic, 72 Foust, Lee, 76–77 Francesca and Paolo, 70–72, 74–75

Index Fuller, Thomas, 229, Ch. 16 ni, nviii, nxxiii Gayhart, Robert B., 148, Ch. 10 nxiv Geach, Peter, 240, 243–44, 265–66, 273, 275, 279, Ch. 17 nii, nix Ch19 nxxxiv, nxxxvii, nxl-xlii Geneva Bible, 228, Ch. 16 nv Geoffrey of Monmouth, 18, Ch. 1 nlvi Gervaise, Claude, 318, Ch. 21 n3 Gesta Danorum, 14 Gibbon, Edward, 53 Gildas, Saint, 125 Gilgamesh, 2, Ch. 1 nii Gilson, Etíenne, 244, 246, Ch. 17 nx, nxvii-xviii Giocondo, Fra, 104 Giorgio, Francesco di, 105, Ch. 6 nxviii Grandgent, C. H., 71 Gregory IX, 137 Gregory of Tours, 53, Ch. 1 nxxxiv, Ch. 3 n4 Grendler, Paul, 342 Guardian, The, 54, Ch. 3 n13 Gudiol, José, 209, Ch. 15 n28 Gundestrup Cauldron, 56, Ch. 3 n22 Halliwell, Stephen, 293, Ch. 20 n19 Hamlet, 13–14. See Ch. 11, Ch. 1 nxl Haraldsson, Óláfr, Saint, 8 Harmonie universelle, 318, 320 Hayy bin Yaqzan. Ch. 1 nxviii Head-Ransom, 9 Heavener inscription, 37, 40, Ch. 2 n19, n24 Heavener Runestone. See Ch. 2 "Heavenly Jerusalem", 189 Heavenly Jerusalem, 186–97 Heimskringla, 9 Histoires tragiques, 14 Historia regum Britanniae. See under Geoffrey of Monmouth Historical Performance Practice movement, 317

News from the Raven History Channel, 51 History of the Franks. See under Gregory of Tours Holy Grail, 21, 52 Houel, Nicholas, 321 Hrafnkels saga Freysgoða, 11–12 Humoral theory. See under Chapter 10 Hundred Years’ War, 19 Ibn Hazm, 20, Ch. 1 nlxii Il Filostrato. See under Boccaccio, Giovanni Improvement of Human Reason, 6. See under Ockley, Simon Institutiones divinarum et saecularium litterarum, 4, Ch1, nvii. See under Cassiodorus Jerome, 81 Jerusalem. See under Heavenly Jerusalem Jewish Wars, The. See under Josephus, Flavius Johnson, Mark, 289, Ch. 20 n6 Johnson, Samuel, 7–8 Josephus, Flavius, 93–94, Ch. 5 n35 Judas Iscariot, 87, 156 “Judith”, 129–31 Kemp, Martin. See under da Vinci, Leonardo Kennedy, Charles. Ch. 8 nxxv, Ch. 20 n23 Kennedy, George A.. Ch. 20 n5 Kennings. See Ch. 20 Metaphoric, 289, 291–92, 294, 296–98 Metonymic, 289–92, 294, 301 Synecdochic, 289–90, 292, 294, 302 Kenny, Anthony, 240, 242, Ch. 17 niii, nvi Kensington Rune Stone, 41 King Alfred, 17, 56. See under Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Kingitttorsuaq inscription, 38 Kirby, John, 293. See under Aristotle

363

Klaeber, Friedrich, 288, Ch. 20 n1 kleos, 161–62, 165–66, 169, 170– 71, Ch. 12 nviii Klimrath, Henri, 134 Knight, G. Wilson, 145, Ch. 10 nvi, nviii Krause, Wolfgang, 43 L’anse aux Meadeaux, 39 L’Épitome musical, 318, Ch. 21 n46 La Chanson de Roland, 20 La Grotte, Nicholas de, 321 Lakoff, George, 289 Lambert of Saint-Omert, 189. See under "Heavenly Jerusalem" Lapidge, Michael, 115–16, 119–20, Ch. 7 niii-iv, nvi-ix, nxvii Latein Schule, 340 Lateran Council, 116, 118 Laterculus Malalianus, 120, 121, Ch. 7 niv, nxxiv, nxxix Latini, Brunetto. See under Livre dou Tresor Laxdœla saga, 9–11, 11 Le Chevalier de la charrette, 20. See under Troyes, Chrétien de Le Jeune, Claude, 321–23 Le Morte Darthur, 7, 21, Ch. 1 nxxiii Lewis, C. S., 160–61, 175–78, Ch. 12 nv, Ch. 13 ni, niv, nxii Lex Saxonum, 138 Liber Floridus, 189 libros de caballería, 5, 9 Livre de jostice et plet. See Ch. 9 Livre dou Tresor, 135 Llompart, Gabriel, 220 Locke, John, 154, 157, Ch. 11 nvi Loert, Joan, 203, 207, 210 Luther, Martin, 53, 154, 340, Ch. 3 n10 Mahon, James. See under Aristotle Maimonides, Rabbi Moses. See under Fourth Way Malalas, John. See under Theodore of Tarsus

364 Malory, Sir Thomas, 8, 21, 23, Ch. 1 nxxii Marenzio, Luca, 347–48 Mareschall, Samuel, 318–20, 322 Maria of Jerusalem, 93. See under Josephus, Flavius Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The, 161, Ch. 12 nii. See under Blake, William Martin, C. F. J., 240, Ch. 17 ni Mayr-Harting, Henry, 126, Ch. 7 nxi, nxvi, Ch. 8 nviii Media Studies, 2 Melibee, Tale of, 23. See under Chaucer, Geoffrey Mersenne, Marin, 318, 320 Metamorphoses, 72, 75. See under Ovid Metaphor. See under Kennings; See Ch. 20 definitive, 298, 303, 311 Homeric, 309 proper, 293, 309 Metaphors We Live By, 289, Ch. 20 n6 Metaphysics, 245–46, Ch. 17 nxvi. See Aristotle Middle English, 2, 3, 299, Ch. 1 niii, nlxvi, Ch. 14 n34 Middlemarch, 11 Milton, John, 19. See Ch. 12, Ch. 13, Ch. 1 nlix MLA, 2, 3, 19, 24 Modern Language Association. See under MLA Modernus, 3, 16 modus virtutis, 250, Ch. 18 nv "Monty Python’s Search for the Holy Grail", 52 Mortimer, Ian, 58–59, Ch. 3 n37, n42, n46 Moulinié, Etienne, 321 musica poetica. See Ch. 22 musical rhetoric, 339, 341, 344–45, Ch. 22 n1, n5 “New Natural Law” movement. See

Index under Finnis, John Nibelung poems, 12, 21, 56, 61, Ch. 1 nxxxiii Nibelungenlied. See under Nibelung poems Nicholas of Cusa, 102 Nielsen, Richard, 39, 42–44, Ch. 2 n3, n6, n14, n30 Norse, 11–13, 38–39, 56–57, Ch. 1 nxxvi, Ch. 2 n3, n11, n28, Ch. 3 n24, n28 Novel, development of. See Ch. 1 novelle, 5, 7, 11, 13, 23 Ockley, Simon. See under Improvement of Human Reason Old English, 2, 13–14, 16–17, 119, 288, 291, 296, 299, 303, Ch. 1 niii, nxxvii, nxlix, nli, nliv, Ch. 20 n3, n11-12 poetry, 288 Oroonoko, 6 Orpheus, 70–77 Ovid, 72, 74–76 Palace of Pleasure, The, 13 Pandects, 133 Paracelsus, 148 Paradise Lost. See Ch. 12, Ch. 13 Paster, Gail Kern, 145, 147, Ch. 10 nix, nxii Paul, Saint. See under The Apocalypse of Paul Penitential, 120–21. See under Theodore of Tarsus Pennebaker, James, 165, Ch. 12 nxxiv Petrarch, 23, 53, 347–48, Ch. 22 n14 Pizan, Christine de. See Ch. 14 Plantagenet, Henry, 19 Plato, Platonic Idea, 7, 20, 240, 242, 245, Ch. 17 nxiv, Ch. 19 nxxxiv Poggioli, Renato, 72 Poletto, Giacomo, 72 Porta musices, 318–20 Post-Modern Studies, 2–3 Premier Livre de violle, 318, Ch. 21

News from the Raven n3 Progress of Romance, The, 8 Prometheus Unbound, 161, Ch. 12 niv Pulp Fiction, 2 quadrivium, 4 Quilligan, Maureen, 191–92, Ch. 14 n27-28, n46 Quiteria, Saint. See Ch. 15 Ramus, Petrus, 340–41, 343–44, 349 Rapetti, Pierre-Nicolas, 133, Ch. 9 ni, niv Reeve, Clara, 7. See under Progress of Romance, The Reggio, Giovanni, 71 Republic, The, 7. See under Plato Reynolds, Philip Lyndon, 82, Ch. 5 n1, n4 Richard III, 7. See Shakespeare, William Richardson, Samuel, 5 Ricour, Paul, 293 riddara sögur, 9 Robinson Crusoe, 6, Ch. 1 nxviii Roman de Brut, 18 Romance of the Rose, The, 22 romances, 5–10, 12, 18, 21–22, 23, 134, 145, Ch. 1 nxv-xvi, Ch. 14 n8 Rore, Cipriano de, 321 Rossetti, Gabriele, 71 Rousseau, Jean, 320–21, Ch. 21 n7 Runestone Museum, 57 saeculum obscurum. See Baronius, Caesar San Giovanni Baptistery, 88 Scamozzi, Vincenzo, 104 Scott, Sir Walter, 8 Scrovegni Chapel, 88 seconda prattica, 344 Sententiae divinae paginae, 82 Serlio, Sebastiano, 102 Seth and the True Cross, legend of, 91 Shakespeare, William, 13–14, 18.

365

See under Chapters 10 & 11 Shelley, Percy. See under Prometheus Unbound Siemens, James, 120–21, Ch. 7 nivviii, nxxv-xxvi, nxxix Singleton, Charles, 71 skáldsaga, 8 Socrates, 7, 265, 272, Ch. 19 nxxxiv Spenser, Edmund, 19, Ch. 1 nlviii “St. Andrew’s Mission to Mermedonia”, 127–30 Stanzaic Morte Arthur, 21, Ch. 1 nlxvi Statius, 92–94, 96, Ch. 5 n43 Stenton, Frank, 120, nxxvii, Ch. 7 nxvi Stevenson, Jane, 120, Ch. 7 nxxiv studium humanitatis, 342 Sturluson, Snorri, 9 Summa Contra Gentiles, 276, Ch. 19 nxliv Sutton Hoo burial, 52 Symposium. See under Plato Tawq al-hamƗmah, 20 Tempietto, 106–8 Theoderic the Ostrogoth, 4, 15 Theodore of Tarsus. See Ch. 7 Thor, 57 Tolstoy, Leo, 22. See under Anna Karenina Tom Jones. See under Fielding, Henry Tompsen, Lyle, 40–42, 44–45, Ch. 2 n25-26. See under ESOP topos, 137, 186, 192, 197 Torbert, Bart, 40–41, 44–45, Ch. 2 n17-18, n20, n34-35 Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, 13. See Ch. 11 Tragedy of Titus Andronicus, The, 13. See under Shakespeare. See under Chapter 10 Traité de la viole, 318, 320 Transcendentals, 240, 242–44, Ch. 17 nv Tree of Jesse, 90–91

366 Tree of the Cross. See under Tree of Jesse Tristan and Iseult, 20–21 Trivium. See under Seven Liberal Arts Troilus and Criseyde, 22–23, 228, Ch. 16 nii, nxxvii Troyes, Chrétien de, 20, Ch. 1 nlx Troynovant, 19 Tryggvason , Óláfr, 8 Tudor, Henry, 3, 7 Ugolino, 86–88, 94 Upplandic inscriptions, 43 “Utopia”, 186, 197 Valla, Lorenzo, 53 Venerable Bede, 115 Viking Age of Invasion, 16, 40–41, 51, 56, Ch. 2 n6 Viking horned helmet, 51, 54–57, Ch. 3 n27 Vinland Sagas, 39, Ch. 2 n10-11 viola da gamba, 317 Viola da Gamba Society of America, 317 of Great Britain, 317

Index Virgil, 70–73, 75–77, 84 Visio Sancti Pauli, 72. See under Apocalypse of Paul Vitalian, Pope, 114–15 Vitruvius, 103–8 Vǫlsunga saga, 13 Vulgate Cycle, 9, 21 Wanton Wife of Bath, The, 228, 230–32, Ch. 16 nxviii Waterloo Helmet, 56, Ch. 3 n21 Widsith, 13, 15 Wife of Bath, 228, 230–32, 234 Wiglaf, 14, Ch. 1 nxlii Williams, Henrik, 41–45 Wisman, Josette A., 193, Ch. 14 n37 Wittkower, Rudolf, 102–3, 106–7, Ch. 6 niv-v, nviii, nxvii, nxxi, nxxiv-xxvi Wiving Age, The, 228–30, 233, Ch. 16 nxxxii, nxxxvi, nxxxviii Wolterstorff, Nicholas, 270–76, 279 Woodfield, Ian, 317, Ch. 21 n1 Younger futhark, 38, 43, Ch. 2 n28