Polemic: Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse 1472425065, 9781472425065

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction / George Southcombe, Almut Suerbaum and Benjamin Thompson 1
Part I: Textual Strategies: Rhetoric between Invective and Lament
1. Between Autobiography and Apocalypse: The Double Subject of Polemic in Petrarch’s "Liber sine nomine" and "Rerum vulgarium fragmenta" / Francesca Southerden 17
2. The Ends of Polemic and the Beginning of "Lohengrin" / Alastair Matthews 43
3. Feeling the Polemic of an Early Motet / Sean Curran 65
4. "Why do you concern yourself with these words?" Rhetoric and Polemic in Medieval Castilian Female Saints’ Lives / Emma Gatland 95
Part II: Social Practice: Articulation of Dissent and Normative Practice
5. Dissing the Teacher: Classroom Polemics in the Early and High Middle Ages / Monika Otter 107
6. Language of Violence: Language as Violence in Vernacular Sermons / Almut Suerbaum 125
7. Psalms as Polemic: The English Bible Debate / Annie Sutherland 149
8. Maximos the Greek: Imprisoned in Polemic / C. M. MacRobert 165
Part III: Historical Narratives: Reformation, Renovation, Restoration
9. The Polemic of Reform in the Later Medieval English Church / Benjamin Thompson 183
10. Lamenting the Church? Bishop Andrzej Krzycki and Early Reformation Polemic / Natalia Nowakowska 223
11. The Polemics of Moderation in Late Seventeenth-Century England / George Southcombe 237
Bibliography 253
Index 287

Citation preview

Polemic

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Polemic

Language as Violence in Medieval and Early Modern Discourse

Edited by

Almut Suerbaum Somerville College, Oxford

George Southcombe Sarah Lawrence College, USA

Benjamin Thompson Somerville College, Oxford

First published 2015 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © Almut Suerbaum, George Southcombe and Benjamin Thompson 2015 Almut Suerbaum, George Southcombe and Benjamin Thompson have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editorsof this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Polemic : language as violence in medieval and early modern discourse / edited by Almut Suerbaum, George Southcombe and Benjamin Thompson. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4724-2506-5 (hardcover) 1. Rhetoric, Medieval. 2. Literature, Medieval. 3. Civilization, Medieval. I. Suerbaum, Almut, editor. II . Southcombe, George, 1978- editor. III . Thompson, Benjamin, 1963- editor. PN185.P65 2015 808.009’02–dc23

ISBN 97814724-25065 (hbk) ISBN 9781315601014 (ebk)

2014033501

Contents Acknowledgements   Notes on Contributors  

Introduction   George Southcombe, Almut Suerbaum and Benjamin Thompson

vii ix 1

Part I: Textual Strategies: Rhetoric between Invective and Lament 1

Between Autobiography and Apocalypse: The Double Subject of Polemic in Petrarch’s Liber sine nomine and Rerum vulgarium fragmenta Francesca Southerden

2

The Ends of Polemic and the Beginning of Lohengrin43 Alastair Matthews

3

Feeling the Polemic of an Early Motet Sean Curran

4

‘Why do you concern yourself with these words?’ Rhetoric and Polemic in Medieval Castilian Female Saints’ Lives Emma Gatland



17

65

95

Part II: Social Practice: Articulation of Dissent and Normative Practice 5 6

Dissing the Teacher: Classroom Polemics in the Early and High Middle Ages   Monika Otter

107

Language of Violence: Language as Violence in Vernacular Sermons   Almut Suerbaum

125

Polemic

vi

7

Psalms as Polemic: The English Bible Debate Annie Sutherland

149

8

Maximos the Greek: Imprisoned in Polemic C.M. MacRobert

165

Part III: Historical Narratives: Reformation, Renovation, Restoration 9

The Polemic of Reform in the Later Medieval English Church Benjamin Thompson

10

Lamenting the Church? Bishop Andrzej Krzycki and Early Reformation Polemic Natalia Nowakowska

223

The Polemics of Moderation in Late Seventeenth-Century England  George Southcombe

237

11

Bibliography   Index  

183

253 287

Acknowledgements For this second interdisciplinary collaboration at Somerville College, Oxford, we have stretched our chronology beyond the Middle Ages so as to address a question of continuity into the early modern period. Put polemically, we set out to challenge the notion that polemic is an invention of the early modern period, and our question has been whether its features are to be found earlier. We are grateful to our co-contributors for their participation and for the mutual enrichment which the process of discussion facilitated. Once again our (largely polemic-free) meetings took place over the lunches and workshops for which a college provides an ideal environment, and we are very grateful to our colleagues and staff at Somerville for all their support, notably to Dave Simpson and Richard Vowell for accommodation and meals. The college offered some of those Somervillians who now hold posts abroad academic visitor status for periods of research leave and thus enabled us to continue our academic dialogue across the Atlantic. Our library, one of the college’s ornaments, once again provided thought-provoking reading matter. We are grateful to Tom Gray and his colleagues at Ashgate for taking on the volume, and to the anonymous readers for their helpful suggestions. Others who have provided invaluable help and entertainment include Jen Southcombe, Peter West and Nancy-Jane Rucker. Since the publication of our previous volume in 2010, we have lost two of our predecessors at Somerville, Christina Roaf and Olive Sayce, after full and productive lives, and it is with as much pleasure as sadness that we remember them here. George Southcombe Almut Suerbaum Benjamin Thompson

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Notes on Contributors Sean Curran is a Junior Research Fellow in Music at Trinity College, Cambridge. He is currently working on the vernacular circulation and devotional use of the thirteenth-century motet and writing a book about changing medieval conceptions of the history of polyphonic song. Emma Gatland held Research Fellowships at Somerville College, Oxford, and at Cambridge. She is the author of Women from the Golden Legend: Female Authority in a Medieval Castilian Sanctoral (Tamesis, 2011). C.M. MacRobert is University Lecturer in Russian Philology and Comparative Slavonic Philology, University of Oxford, Fellow and Tutor, Lady Margaret Hall, and Lecturer, Somerville College. Her research is based around the interaction of the literary Church Slavonic with Slavonic vernaculars and concerns the Psalter, medieval translation technique, grammar, medieval textual criticism, hymnographical traditions and palaeography. Alastair Matthews is Stipendiary Lecturer at Somerville College, having held post-doctoral fellowships at Oxford and Bonn. He is the author of The Kaiserchronik: A Medieval Narrative (Oxford University Press, 2012) and is currently completing his second book, on the Middle High German Lohengrin narrative. He has published a number of articles on narratology and historiography in medieval German literature, as well as a number of translations. Natalia Nowakowska is Associate Professor in Early Modern History, University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor, Somerville College. She is the author of Church, State and Dynasty in Renaissance Poland: The Career of Cardinal Fryderyk Jagiellon (1468–1503) (Ashgate, 2007) and a forthcoming book about the Polish Reformation, and she is leading an ERC-funded research project on the Jagiellonian dynasty. Monika Otter is Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. Author of Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical Writing (University of North Carolina Press, 1996) and editor of Goscelin of St Bertin’s Liber Confortatorius (D.S. Brewer, 2004), she has written on many genres of central-medieval writing in three languages. She is currently writing a book about voices and characters in medieval Latin Literature.

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Francesca Southerden is Assistant Professor of Italian Studies, Wellesley College, Massachusetts. Her interdisciplinary research on the relationship between subjectivity, language, and desire in the poetry of Dante and Petrarch has so far resulted in Landscapes of Desire in the Poetry of Vittorio Sereni (Oxford University Press, 2012) and (as co-editor) Desire in Dante and the Middle Ages (Legenda, 2012). George Southcombe is Director of the Sarah Lawrence Programme, Wadham College, Oxford. He researches the history of seventeenth-century dissent, on which he is completing a monograph, and the relationship between early modern literature and history: he has edited three volumes of English Nonconformist Poetry, 1660–1700 (Pickering & Chatto, 2012). He has also co-authored a general survey with Grant Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland, 1660­–1714 (Palgrave, 2010). Almut Suerbaum is Associate Professor in Medieval German, University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor, Somerville College. With Manuele Gragnolati, she edited the first Somerville medievalist volume, Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture (de Gruyter, 2010). She has published widely on medieval German religious writing and has just completed a four-year collaboration as part of the Marie Curie Network on ‘Mobility of Ideas and Transmission of Texts’. Annie Sutherland is Rosemary Woolf Tutorial Fellow in Old and Middle English at Somerville College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in the English Faculty. Her book, English Psalms in the Middle Ages, 1300–1450, was published by Oxford University Press in 2015. She is currently working on an edition of the Wooing Group for Liverpool University Press. Benjamin Thompson is Associate Professor in Medieval History, University of Oxford, and Fellow and Tutor, Somerville College. Editor of books on Henry VII and monasticism in medieval Britain, his research encompasses the connections between religion, the church, society and politics between the Norman Conquest and the Reformation. He is completing a monograph, The Transformation of the Alien Priories in Late-Medieval England (Boydell & Brewer).

Introduction George Southcombe, Almut Suerbaum and Benjamin Thompson Chronology, Semantics and Theory Polemic is as widespread as it is troublesome, both in contemporary scholarly discourse and in the past. Jonathan Crewe, in a response to Michel Foucault’s famous interview, is blunt: ‘polemics has a bad name in the humanities academy’.1 It raises fundamental questions about the nature of violence in language, about the tension between rational argument and impassioned truth-claims, about the ethics of a mode of speech which may, in Foucault’s terms ‘wage war’ and aim to obliterate the opponent literally as well as rhetorically.2 Crewe points to the origin of Foucault’s anti-polemical stance in the anti-war ethos of intellectual circles since the 1960s and thus establishes the strong link between speech and ethics.3 Yet he also highlights the dilemma: where we read historical examples of polemical speech, it is clearly as inappropriate to judge these unquestioningly by modern standards and sensitivities, without due attention to their cultural context, as it is ‘to confine ethical judgement to the present only, leaving history to the historians’.4 Where polemical speech-acts trigger acts of violence, as in the case of medieval attacks on Jews and Muslims or in the Reformation controversies amongst Christians, they are troubling. This volume argues that it is important to understand the mechanisms through which such polemic operates. Amongst the problems posed by reading polemical speech across historical distance is the necessity to address how far ‘polemic’ can be said to exist avant la lettre, because the term and its derivations first enter European vernaculars in the seventeenth century. This has often been taken as an indication that polemic itself is an invention, or at least a re-invention along classical models, of the early modern period, yet the suggested chronology, that polemic emerged in the Reformation, equally claims the existence of the phenomenon before it acquired a name.5 In any case, pre-Reformation writers quite clearly use polemical modes Jonathan Crewe, ‘Can Polemic be Ethical? A Response to Michel Foucault’, in Jane Gallop (ed.), Polemic: Critical and Uncritical (New York: Routledge, 2004), 135–52, at 135. 2 Michel Foucault, ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault’, in Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley et al. (London: Penguin, 2000), 111–19, at 112. 3 Crewe, ‘Can Polemic be Ethical?’, 135–6. 4 Ibid. 146. 5 Thus, broadly, the thesis of Jessie Lander: ‘together the printing press and the Reformation produced polemic, a new form of writing, that animated the literary culture of 1

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of speech: the great phase of ecclesiastical reform in the High Middle Ages witnessed reforming discourses, religious controversies and church–state strife which bear all the hallmarks of polemic. Moreover they provide all-too-familiar examples of hate speech and its consequent actions: Henry II’s ‘will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?’ is the classic utterance, leading as it did to Thomas Becket’s brains being spattered over the floor of Canterbury Cathedral.6 Strong language as a way of undermining the intellectual position, social reputation, moral status or sense of identity of an opponent and of inciting violent action is very obviously not an invention of the modern period. Scholars of medieval culture routinely use ‘polemical’ when referring to discourses in which invective, satire or inflammatory language is used. They also assume that there was a genre of polemic, perhaps overlapping with other types of writing but in some cases clearly identified as a separate form. Cases in point are Ian Robinson’s ‘polemical literature’ of the investiture contest,7 Guy Geltner’s antifraternal polemic8 and the routine deployment of Wycliffite, Lollard and anti-heretical polemic in writings on the late-medieval English heresiarch.9 It has even been used of the manifestoes which became a feature of fifteenth-century mid sixteenth- to late seventeenth-century England’ (Inventing Polemic: Religions, Print, and Literary Culture in Early Modern England [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006], 1). 6 This is oral tradition’s conflation of various chronicle reports (W.L. Warren, Henry II [London: Eyre Methuen, 1973], 508). The most plausible source is Edward Grim: ‘What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and promoted in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born clerk!’ (Frank Barlow, ‘Becket, Thomas, 1120?–1170’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004], [accessed 25 Feb. 2014]). 7 I.S. Robinson, Authority and Resistance in the Investiture Contest‬: The Polemical Literature of the Late Eleventh Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1978); see also Helen L. Parish, Clerical Celibacy in the West, 1100–1700 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010). 8 Guy Geltner, The Making of Medieval Antifraternalism: Polemic, Violence, Deviance, and Remembrance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), especially William of St Amour’s ‘polemics’, although Geltner is also arguing that this was not very influential (ibid. 24); note also ‘polemicists’ throughout. 9 Anne Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), esp. 45–55; Kantik Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Ian Forrest, ‘Anti-Lollard Polemic and Practice in Late Medieval England’, in Linda Clark (ed.), Authority and Subversion, The Fifteenth Century 3 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2003), 63–74; Fiona Somerset, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge Universiy Press, 1998), index, s.v. ‘polemic, vs straightforward address to audience’. Rita Copeland clearly treats polemic as a genre alongside other forms of writing (Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004], 9, 13). This is also true of writing about earlier heresy (e.g. L.J. Sackville, Heresy and Heretics in the Thirteenth Century: The

Introduction

3

English politics.10 The common assumption that ‘polemic’ and ‘polemical’ can be used without further examination of their meaning is in itself a significant indicator of medievalist opinion, although it also provides a starting-point for this study’s attempt to provide more concrete definition and analysis.11 To date, there has been no study which assesses whether there are significant differences between medieval and modern forms of polemic or indeed whether that term is appropriate for pre-modern forms of linguistic social interaction. This volume therefore sets out to test such assumptions, in particular by focusing on a range of types of medieval writing. It aims to delineate the characteristics of polemical speech and writing and to assess what role polemical modes played in premodern discourse and social practice. Early modern definitions of the terms ‘polemic’ and ‘polemical’ are revealing, because they offer a brief social history of intercultural contact. The earliest evidence within Europe is from French, where it is used towards the end of the sixteenth century to describe forms of dispute in writing or language. Jean Benedicti (d. c.1590–5) included the following definition in his Somme de pêchez (Sum of Sins), first printed in 1584. Qui en voudra boire a souhait qu il puise en ceste fontaine: car quát à moy, ne me plaisant pas trop en ces cótrouersies & disputes polémiques & contentiueuses, ie retourne à ma Philosophie practicienne & Théologie morale.12 Whosoever wishes may drink his fill in this fountain: as for me, I return to my practical Philosophy and moral Theology, as these polemical and contentious controversies and disputes do not please me much.

From French, the word appears to have entered English within a generation. The OED’s first citation is now from a work published in the Netherlands in 1614, by a puritanical Scottish minister: ‘this polemick kinde of writing’.13 Another Calvinist controversialist in 1626 fixed the noun, ‘these late Polemickes Textual Representations (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2011), esp. ch. 1: ‘To Avoid Evil: Anti-Heretical Polemic’. 10 John L. Watts, ‘Polemic and Politics in the 1450s’, in M.L. Kekewich et al., The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book (Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1995), 3–42. 11 In the writings by medievalists surveyed for this volume (as in the notes above and others) – not at all comprehensive given the widespread use of these terms – it was rare to come across even an attempt to characterize, let alone define, what polemic and polemical might be (see flashes of definition in Hudson, Premature Reformation, 45; Ghosh, Wycliffite Heresy, 143). 12 Jean Benedicti, La somme des pechez et le remede diceux (Paris, 1587), 425. 13 Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), (accessed 16 Feb. 2014). ‘Polemical’ was used by another bishop in 1615 (ibid.), as Lander noted: ‘speculation

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of the Appealer’.14 The word’s French origin is sometimes apparent from its orthography; its use in martial contexts, or even to denote ‘verses treating of war’, indicates awareness that the term itself is Greek.15 While it is clear, therefore, that the term’s primary use was to refer to a speechact, the link with the original and literal meaning was often very prominent, and polemic was defined in terms of its aggressive nature. These early uses and early dictionary definitions, all centred on controversy, disputation and debate: the verbal aggression is directed at an ‘Other’ in a form of direct or indirect encounter.16 Furthermore, it is noticeable that from the eighteenth century on polemic appears to be seen as characteristic of certain forms of discourse: literary debate, politics and religion feature most prominently. This is confirmed by the linguistic history of the term in German, where adoption (also through French) started a generation later than in England.17 As in English, such forms of attack in language are considered particularly common in aesthetic, more specifically literary, debate and in religious dispute. The link between language and violence, and thus between polemic as a specific mode of writing and its etymological connection with forms of warfare, is still a constitutive element of contemporary reflections on polemic speech. Theoretical approaches to defining polemic and delimiting it from invective or satire have focused on two areas in particular: the asymmetry of the parties to polemic and the relationship between words and actions. Foucault summarized modern approaches to polemic in an interview: The polemicist … proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in advance and will never agree to question. On principle, he possesses rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking; the person he confronts is not a partner in search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. For him, then, the game consists not of recognizing this person as a subject having the right to speak but of abolishing him, as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue; and his final objective will be not to come as close as possible to a difficult truth but to bring about the triumph of the just cause he interchanged with experience; Positiue Theologie with Polemicall; Textuall with discursorie’ (Inventing Polemic, 13). 14 Oxford English Dictionary. 15 ‘A polemicall Counsell was erected for the conduct of the martiall affaires’ (1640) ‘Polemicks, verses treating of war, or treatises of war, or strifes; disputations’ (T. Blount, Glossographia, 1656): Oxford English Dictionary. 16 ‘our many and diverse Contentions, furious Polemicks, endless Variances, … Debates and Quarrels!’ (1649); Oxford English Dictionary. 17 ‘Polemik’, in Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, revd Matthias Lexer (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1854–1860), vol. 7, 1978.

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has been manifestly upholding from the beginning. The polemicist relies on a legitimacy that his adversary is by definition denied.18

In this definition, he harks back to the etymological origin of the term when he characterizes the polemicist as possessing ‘rights authorizing him to wage war and making that struggle a just undertaking’. He distinguishes three modes of polemical speech: the religious, aimed at identifying the opponent’s error of dogma simultaneously as a moral failing; the judicial, highlighting the essential asymmetry between judge and suspect in which polemics ‘allows for no possibility of equal discourse’; and the political, which, in establishing networks and alliances, ‘establishes the other as enemy’. Foucault is scathing of polemics, labelling it ‘parasitic’ discourse in which those who practice it never take any risks in search of truth but, rather, ‘fall back continually on the rights that they claim, on their legitimacy, which they must defend, and on the affirmation of their innocence’. Polemic therefore poses particular problems about how to see the relationship between words and actions, and this relationship has been construed in very different ways. On the one hand, language can be seen as a safety valve, so that aggression in language provides a focused yet ultimately safe outlet for aggressive potential: those who attack each other verbally do not then need to do so ‘for real’. This is a claim made both for Renaissance humanism and for the ‘medieval humanism’ of the twelfth century.19 Medieval narratives about knightly exploits at times employ such a rhetoric, in which the function of language is inherently irenic: where opponents are able to talk to each other, they can transcend the mechanisms of ritualized violence. Thus Arthurian romance often contrasts, anti-nostalgically, the times of the distant past, in which knights fought great battles, with a more sophisticated present in which narration and literature have taken the place of chivalric action. Equally, literary traditions of ‘flyting’, or literary contests, but also of schoolroom rhetoric, juxtapose words and action and construct a space in which aggression is part of a ludic exchange. Yet the schoolroom debates Monika Otter discusses in her chapter also highlight that such juxtapositions are undercut by an uneasy awareness that language has the power to inflict real and lasting harm and that, in certain circumstances, language has greater power to inflict harm than actions. This appears to be the case in anti-heretical sermons and treatises, where the rehearsing of arguments is itself a tool in the defence of doctrinal truth. Under such circumstances, violence is no Foucault, ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations’, 112, see also 112–13. On the increasing significance of ratio (‘reason’) within twelfth-century polemics, see Ryan Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative: Reading and Religious Authority in Medieval Polemic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013), 61–2; see also Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in Dispute: Disputational Literature and the Rise of AntiJudaism in the West (c.1100–1150) (Aldershot: Variorum, 1998). 18 19

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longer a stylistic metaphor but a description of actual potential, and polemic as a speech-act is indistinguishable in its results from other forms of action.20 For the sake of clarity, it will be as well to lay out the key features of polemic to which theory, historiography and our own researches have led us. Its original quality is strong and hostile language, suggestive of violence and warfare. Texts deploying this assert more than they argue: ostensibly they aim to offer selfevidently correct truths rather than to engage in debate, although in practice they are often doing so. Concomitantly the addressee – a person or thing – is in the wrong and self-evidently so. The speaker claims authority to represent the just cause, or (circularly), by articulating unquestionable propositions, establishes authority to speak. In doing so the polemicist establishes an identity, defined against the wrong or wicked Other and aims to consolidate this entity around its own authority. Polemic routinely denies the opponent, imagined or real, the authority to speak and sometimes works hard to avoid delineating an identity which might concretize the opponent’s existence. Although polemicists may lock horns directly, equally they may address not each other but a thirdparty audience, a public whom they claim for their authority and identity. These patterns produce intriguing paradoxes, such as dialogic texts which claim not to be (because they deny the possibility of an answer) and texts claiming to occupy a moderate middle ground which are in fact highly polemical and divisive. Sometimes all this may take place within texts, or even social situations, which are safely contained and where the extreme language takes the form of games, without practical consequences. But equally, many polemical utterances are performative in that they are intended to function as acts and have practical results. This spectrum is reflected in the structure of this volume in its broad movement from the literary to the social, from internal, textual use of and reflection on polemic to its application in society and the resulting consequences. It must be emphasized that this is an analytical not a chronological movement. Institutionalized Medieval Polemic The spheres of medieval society in which the deployment of language was formalized present obvious starting-points for the investigation of polemic. Classical rhetoric did not know the term ‘polemic’ but discussed aspects of it in dealing with invective within epideictic speech.21 In rhetorical treatises invective was rarely seen as a means in its own right; rather, it either served to 20 For a discussion of hate speech and the issue of agency, see Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 47. 21 Wolfgang Speyer, ‘Polemics’, in Hubert Cancik et al. (eds), Brill’s New Pauly: Encyclopedia of the Ancient World: Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2002–10), 11: 455–6.

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convey strategic advantage, for instance in juridical oratory, or it was part of an elaborate game justified by ultimate educational goals.22 Thus attacks on the political, religious, literary or philosophical views of others were common. Medieval rhetoric built on such examples and definitions of invective; moreover, polemics were an important aspect of defining Christians against opponents from within and without.23 As a result, invective and scurrilous language were an important vehicle for conveying the details of Latin grammar to schoolboys, and rhetorical exercises practised invective as much as its counterpart, panegyric.24 Schoolrooms were often scenes of violence and serve as a vivid reminder of the role which physical chastisement played in the educational enterprise of mastering certain techniques.25 Yet they illustrate that the dissociation between imagined and actual acts of physical violence may not always have been as great as speech-act theory suggests. Such complex linkage between words and the actions they variously invite or displace is even more precarious where it concerns religious difference.26 In the context of religious controversy, invective and linguistic aggression are not just matters of rhetorical style and choice of words but direct incentives for action. Certain text types, for example, are cast as instruments of religious conversion. Disputations, whether real or fictional, staged a dialogue between opponents which was designed to lead to a clear victory for one party. Reforming treatises and decrees asserted the self-evident righteousness of reformed purity, and concomitantly the evil of backsliding and sin, in order to purify the lifestyles of the clergy. Sermons both did the same for the laity and attacked religious enemies in order to persuade them to give up their erroneous beliefs or at Cicero concludes his early rhetorical treatise with a section on praise and censure (De inventione, 2177–8); cf. Ad Herennium 3.10–15 (see Valentina Arena, ‘Roman Oratorical Invective’, in William Dominik [ed.], A Companion to Roman Rhetoric [London: Wiley, 2008], 149–50; Jonathan W. Powell, ‘Invective and Orator: Ciceronian Theory and Practice’, in J. Booth [ed.], Cicero on the Attack: Invective and Subversion in the Orations and Beyond [Swansea: Classical Press of Wales, 2007], 1–23). 23 Speyer, ‘Polemics’, 456; Kurt Flasch, Kampfplätze der Philosophie: Große Kontroversen von Augustin bis Voltaire (Frankfurt: Vittorio Klostermann, 2008). 24 See Monika Otter, ‘Scurrilitas: Sex, Magic, Rhetoric, and Performance of Fictionality in Anselm of Besate’s Rhetorimach’, in Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum (eds), Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 101–24. 25 Jody Enders, ‘Rhetoric, Coercion, and the Memory of Violence’, in Rita Copeland (ed.), Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 24–55. Conversely, stories about a teacher pricked to death by his pupils’ styli serve as an articulation of dissent even where that gesture of difference is repressed (see Rita Copeland, ‘Introduction: Dissenting Critical Practices’, in ead. [ed.], Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, 1–23, at 13; Monika Otter, ‘Dissing the Teacher’, in this volume, ch. 5). 26 On the rise of disputation, see Speyer, ‘Polemics’, 458. 22

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least to dissuade the public from joining them. The spread of such formats is not confined to Christianity, and it is striking that Hebrew examples of antiChristian polemic appear to draw on very similar strategies to those in antiJewish polemics by Christian authors.27 Anna Sapir Abulafia and R.I. Moore have demonstrated the extent to which anti-Jewish writings proliferated in what it sometimes referred to as the period of medieval humanism and contributed to ‘the formation of a persecuting society’.28 Indeed, polemic was part of a social and institutional practice in a period which saw the spread of public disputations. Initially, arguments in defence of the Christian faith and against Judaism or Islam were collected in writings which served as manuals: they organized the material and occasionally used the dialogue form as a structuring principle. From the mid-thirteenth century onwards, such genres were increasingly translated into social practice, and we have evidence for a number of disputations staged according to agreed rules with the involvement of influential political figures – and with direct consequences: disputations were presided over by members of the royal family or university officials and witnessed condemnations of books, such as the Talmud at the disputation in Paris in 1240 and the subsequent burning of 20 to 24 wagon-loads of manuscripts in the Place de Grève in 1242.29 The consequences for the persecuted members of other religions were obvious and immediate, with repercussions for those on the margins of Christian communities as well. Marguerite Porete was burnt at the stake for heretical views in 1310, and news of this appears to have spread quickly across circles of semi-religious people. The sense of precariousness in those writing and thinking at the margins of orthodoxy is often manifest: when Mechthild of Magdeburg’s ‘Fließendes Licht der Gottheit’ (c.1270) articulates her fear that

Christian disputations against the Jews are collected and catalogued in Bernhard Blumenkranz, Les Auteurs Chrétiens Latins du Moyen Âge sur les Juifs et le Judaïsme (Paris: Mouton, 1963; repr. Paris: Peeters, 2006); for accounts of anti-Christian polemics, see Hanne Trautner-Kromann, Shield and Sword: Jewish Polemics against Christianity and the Christians in France and Spain from 1100–1500 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993); Daniel J. Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 2nd edn (Oxford: Littman, 2007). 28 Anna Sapir Abulafia, ‘Twelfth-Century Humanism and the Jews’, in Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (eds), Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), 161–275, at 174–5; R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987). 29 Alex Novikoff, ‘Towards a Cultural History of Scholastic Disputation’, American Historical Review 117 (2012): 331–64, at 361–2; cf. Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative, 124. 27

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detractors might burn not just the book but its writer, the sense of danger expressed is vivid.30 At the same time, the staging of disputations effected a shift which situated polemical modes of speaking. Novikoff sees disputations as a genre at the margins of hitherto closely demarcated discourses and highlights their theatricality: Taking place at the frontier between learned and popular culture, between public and private spheres, between polemic and poetry, and between tragedy and comedy, the rise of disputation out of dialogue represents a cultural mutation in medieval society that can be fully understood only with a broad and interdisciplinary approach to cultural history, one that adequately accounts for the evolution of ideas and practices, and across both time and place.31

Polemic, in his view, is a spectacle, efficient and dangerous because it engages the listeners in a way that mere written argument could not. Nevertheless, the converse may also be true: the rise of disputations, whether real or imagined, in the thirteenth century is almost certainly the result of an increasing emphasis on rationality, because disputations are seen as a way of establishing in dialogue the reasoned case for or against a specific proposition.32 That this in turn undermined the position of the authoritative speaker within Christian theological discourse may have been an unintended consequence of a polemic that was at first directed firmly at those perceived to be outside.33 Thus rhetoric and its use within specific institutional settings such as the classroom, ecclesiastical authority, sermons or the religious disputation offer one framework for understanding invective and its ways of operating within language, yet it is equally necessary to investigate the interplay between language and social action. Medieval and Early Modern A recent study suggested that medieval culture was characterized by consensus, that literary discourse is by nature ‘irenic’ and that the emergence of print media Bernard McGinn, Meister Eckhart and the Beguine Mystics: Hadewijch of Brabant, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete (New York: Continuum, 1994), 1–13; cf. Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1982); Amy Hollywood, ‘Reading as Self-Annihilation’, in Gallop (ed.), Polemic, 39–63, at 46–7. 31 Novikoff, ‘Towards a Cultural History of Scholastic Disputation’, 364. 32 On the increasing tendency to challenge auctoritas through rational proof and the development of what he calls ‘the polemical auctor’, see Szpiech, Conversion and Narrative, 68–76. 33 Ibid. 62. 30

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changed the nature of polemical discourse.34 As the contributors to this volume set out to demonstrate, such conclusions need to be modified in the light of complex medieval traditions of articulating dissent. Modern perceptions of the High Middle Ages in Europe are characterized by contrasts: we see them as a period of religious conflict as well as of ‘modern’ discoveries of the individual. Where scholars use terms such as ‘medieval humanism’, they make a claim that the long twelfth century was the high point of a ‘civilizing process’ and celebrated ideals of peacefulness and non-violent conflict resolution.35 Language and dialogue, so the argument suggests, were taking the place of battle and conflict, if not in historical reality, then at least in the ideals expressed in literary texts and sermons. In appropriating the concept of ‘humanism’ for the medieval period, such studies aim to undercut and correct a perception which is itself the product of (later) renaissance self-fashioning: the rhetoric of a new period of enlightened rationality in which humanist reformers differentiated themselves from the so-called ‘dark’ or ‘middle’ ages. The force of the term thus associates twelfth-century monastic and aristocratic culture, its emerging concern with the individual and its articulation of interior perspective with what is seen as central for humanist reform. It implies – though this is rarely made explicit – that the High Middle Ages marked a peak of rational relativism and tolerance towards other points of view, and it maintains this stance against an image of the period in which religious persecution and ruthless suppression of heterodox positions had traditionally been dominant. Yet such a presentation of twelfth-century culture as inherently irenic interestingly contradicts another part of early modern selfstylization with its contrast between earlier oppression and the role of polemic as an open and candid dialogue between those searching vigorously for the truth yet holding opposing views. As scholars entertain different views about historical cultures at different times, or indeed simultaneously, it perhaps becomes harder to detect change, and this volume largely argues for greater continuity in the realm of polemical expression. Nevertheless, it also makes suggestions for what did change in the centuries under review. After 107 lines, John Milton’s elegiac pastoral Lycidas explodes into polemic. Saint Peter attacks contemporary clergymen as slaves to their appetites and disgraces to their pastoral calling: See n. 5 above. C.H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

34 35

University Press, 1927); Stephen C. Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness: Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939–1210 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985); Colin Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 1050–1200 (London: SPCK for the Church Historical Society, 1972); R.W. Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970); David Knowles, ‘The Humanism of the Twelfth Century’, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, 30 (1941): 43–58; Novikoff, ‘Towards a Cultural History of Scholastic Disputation’, 337.

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Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers’ feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learned aught else the least That to the faithful herdman’s art belongs! What recks it them? What need they? They are sped; And when they list, their lean and flashy songs Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw, The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, But swoll’n with wind, and the rank mist they draw, Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread: Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw Daily devours apace, and nothing said, But that two-handed engine at the door, Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more.36

Milton was writing in 1637 and the poem was first published in 1638. By 1645, when it was republished, Milton’s prophetic powers had been vindicated, and a new headnote recorded, with some satisfaction, that the author of Lycidas ‘foretells the ruin of our corrupted clergy then in their height’.37 In terms of the majority of material surveyed in this book, Milton’s poem is late. And yet it is a potent reminder that even after the word ‘polemic’ had entered the English language and polemical writing had started to become a recognizable genre, the expression of polemic remained indebted to many earlier traditions. Indeed, the way in which Milton’s polemical utterance is at the same time contained within a lyric pastoralism and functions as an intervention into contemporary politics highlights two main themes that emerge from this study, themes at times in conflict, at times in creative tension, throughout the history of polemical writing. First, polemic was often contained within, and sometimes by, particular social, discursive or generic conventions. Secondly, on the other hand, it was used instrumentally to provoke change. As Milton’s example suggests, and as the chapters in this volume make clear, there was no linear progression from containment to instrumentality (or, to put the point more polemically, from a ‘medieval’ to an ‘early modern’ mode) but shifts in emphasis. The first group of essays investigate texts whose polemic is largely internal, or literary, and is thus contained within the text. As Francesca Southerden shows in her chapter, Petrarch (a figure often seen – not least by 36 John Milton, Lycidas, in Complete Shorter Poems, ed. John Carey, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1997), 251–2, lines 116–31. 37 Ibid. 243.

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Polemic

himself – as standing on the cusp of a modern age) ‘vehemently denounces the corruption of the papal court in Avignon and the general sinfulness of its populace, especially the clergy’. And yet the polemic is contained, as Petrarch himself was, by its relationship to Avignon. As Southerden writes, ‘Petrarch’s polemic, to really achieve the sustained level of apocalyptic he seeks, would need to be transhistorical, not merely in the sense of transcending contingent realities, but also and more crucially Petrarch’s personal history.’ In other texts polemic has to be contained before it is possible for a narrative to unfold. Alastair Matthews’ chapter on the beginning of Lohengrin points to the way in which the opening dispute between Wolfram and Clinschor is only ended by external intervention: ‘only with the intervention of the narrator to describe things and a third party in the form of the Landgrave to settle the matter is the circle of polemical backand-forth broken’. Matthews’ chapter thus also makes clear the ways in which polemic can be instrumental in provoking a particular response and ultimately in fixing the position of an observer on the side of the polemical victor. The capacity of polemic to have these effects was harnessed in a variety of social contexts. Sean Curran, reflecting on Foucault’s concerns with sensation, probes a thirteenthcentury motet whose textual excoriation of clerical corruption is enhanced by various musical devices, notably harmonic effects. Yet the corrupt Other is simultaneously rendered ambiguous and lacking in identity, encouraging the performing clerics to recognize corruption in themselves and thus to amend their lives. The motet’s fullest potential as an affective tool for training clerical character can only be realized in collaborative, polyphonic performance, and, as such, it must be both polemic and discussion, all at once. Emma Gatland shows how early female saints in late-medieval Castilian translations deployed both rhetoric and polemic as a means of transforming their tribulations. While capable of matching her torturer’s educated rhetoric, the virgin martyr finally resorts to ‘anti-rhetoric’ when she ‘does not shy away from but emphasizes dislocation in language in order to prolong her torture and achieve her goal of martyrdom’. It was this ability to move between dialogic engagement and polemical refusal which conferred on these saints their social power. If virgin martyrs did indeed behave in the ways their hagiographies describe, then they would also belong in our second section, where texts begin to have performative social roles. Monika Otter’s ludic schoolboy flytings both contain the linguistic violence in which the boys are educated and constantly threaten to move into the social world of beatings and perhaps violence against the master: they ultimately do so when the pupils graduate to manhood through their mastery of polemic. For Almut Suerbaum, writing on the thirteenth-century preacher Berthold of Regensburg, sermons could be used to produce cohesion within the Christian community by defining it against a constructed Other. This Other should not be thought of as a concrete heretical group, but as a composite

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of a wide range of fears, ‘defined not just by religious belief, but at least as strongly by gender’ and used functionally to create unity. At times, instrumentality was a consequence of unintended polemic. Mary MacRobert, in her discussion of Maximos the Greek’s biblical translations in early sixteenth-century Muscovy, points to how the choices he had to make as a translator (whether to use Russian Church Slavonic, vernacular Russian or South Slavonic) led him to be charged with heresy. Translation arguably always contained a polemical potential (as Erasmus discovered when he translated ‘metanoeite’ in Matthew 3:2 not as ‘poenitentiam agite’ [‘do penance’] but as ‘resipiscite’ [‘repent’]).38 In particular historical contexts, however, it required a polemical defence. As Annie Sutherland shows, in fifteenth-century England, in the face of peculiarly restrictive legislation following the Wycliffite challenge, those who wanted the Bible to be available in the vernacular sought to appropriate the voice of King David to legitimate their claims. The relationship of polemic to biblical translation leads naturally to questions about its role in the Reformation of the sixteenth century, and our third section addresses more fully the social application of texts. For some scholars, as discussed above, the Reformation produced polemic. It should be clear that such a claim is unsustainable. Benjamin Thompson shows how many of the anti-clerical tropes relied upon by the Henrician reformers were prevalent in medieval discourse in England. They had indeed originated from within the church and its earlier reforms but had been appropriated by the laity in a tug-ofwar of competitive polemic which bordered on the ludic. Medieval polemic was therefore instrumental in bringing about the Reformation. But it is important also to recognize that the Reformation did not mark the decisive moment at which polemic emerged from medieval attempts at veiling and containment. Natalia Nowakowska, in her examination of the Polish Bishop Andrzej Kryzcki’s De afflictione ecclesiae, argues that it is ‘anti-Reformation polemic which tries to deny its polemical nature – it does not name Martin Luther or the Lutheran publication it is written in response to. It is polemic masked as prayerful lament and scriptural commentary.’ Polemic remained a language that dare not speak its name. Finally, George Southcombe shows how polemics were used in late seventeenth-century England, once they had a name, and a bad one, which encouraged controversialists to claim the middle ground. Nevertheless such claims to moderation were used as polemical weapons and, ironically, formed part of the process that led to the formation of political parties. The structure of this book, ending with an essay on the late seventeenth century, might lead the reader to expect a progressive narrative. Certainly changes are suggested: for instance, in the way the deployment of orthodox Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490–1700 (London: Allen Lane, 2003), 99–100. 38

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polemic against the Lutheran challenge led to clearer definition of the Catholic Church which itself contributed to the splitting of Christendom, and how Henry VIII’s government deployed the medieval church’s own polemic with a new practical determination in order to reform it. Equally, the printing press and the increasing need to appeal to a wider public, followed by the development of political parties, intensified the application of polemic in public discourse. Clearly, too, the seventeenth century saw polemic as a genre of writing acquire a name (‘polemique’, ‘polemick’, ‘Polemik’). But this was some time after even proponents of an early-modern origin would date its appearance.39 What, therefore emerges most clearly is not change but continuity. Early modern polemic remained deeply indebted to medieval developments: in the albeit nameless existence of controversialist writings – for instance around heresy – but especially in the range of modes of polemical utterance and performance. The essays in this volume suggest that it may be more appropriate to think of polemic as a mode of speaking which can be realized in a variety of literary as well as institutional settings. Medieval polemic, however aggressive, may for the most part be contained within a framework in which the truth can ultimately be established, but this difference is one of degree rather than substance. Even the changes in the relationship between polemicist and audience are not straightforwardly linear, in that shifts towards greater equality in the debates between parliamentary opponents are counterbalanced by erasure or oppositions, while medieval polemic is capable of exploring the dynamics of reciprocated attacks as well as containing them in catechetical concerns for an ‘implied’ listener or the literary positioning of the imagined opponent. These essays therefore suggest the need to think of polemic as a mode of speaking which was realized in a variety of literary and institutional settings. Scholars have long stopped calling the period from around 1400 ‘the Renaissance’, but this study questions the validity of the supposedly more neutral term ‘early modern’. If so much of early modern discourse remained essentially medieval, can the term bear the weight it is expected to carry?

39 Cf. Kai Bremer, ‘Philologie und Polemik: Ein Forschungsabriss zum wissenschaftlichen Stand der Kontroverse in der Frühen Neuzeit’, Geschichte der Germanistik 29/30 (2009): 9–16; Joachim Knape (ed.), Rhetorica deutsch: Rhetorikschriften des 15. Jahrhunderts (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2002).

Part I Textual Strategies: Rhetoric between Invective and Lament

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Chapter 1

Between Autobiography and Apocalypse: The Double Subject of Polemic in Petrarch’s Liber sine nomine and Rerum vulgarium fragmenta Francesca Southerden The great feasibility of letter writing must have produced – from a purely theoretical point of view – a terrible dislocation of souls in the world. It is truly a communication with spectres, not only with the spectre of the addressee but also with one’s own phantom, which evolves underneath one’s own hand in the very letter one is writing or even in a series of letters, where one letter reinforces the other and can refer to it as a witness. Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

Petrarch and the Problem of Polemic Petrarch as polemicist is not perhaps the first image of the late medieval author that comes to mind. Although his Rerum vulgarium fragmenta contains a triptych of polemical sonnets,1 which denounce papal corruption and the ‘Babylonian captivity’ of the church in Avignon, it is tempting to regard them as somewhat extraneous to the dominant, amorous theme of the poet’s love for Laura or, conversely, as permutations of that same theme, with a fundamentally lyric discourse of desire dressed up as something else. The use of the rhyme words ‘sparsi’ (‘scattered’) and ‘arsi’ (‘burned’) in poem 137, for example, while they refer respectively to Babylon’s false images ‘strewn’ across the earth and the city’s towers ‘burning’ from within and without, recall both the scattering of Laura’s

Francesco Petrarca, Canzoniere, ed. Marco Santagata, rev. edn (Milan: Mondadori, 1989), poems 136–8; Eng. trans.: Petrarch’s Lyric Poems: The ‘Rime Sparse’ and Other Lyrics, trans. Robert M. Durling (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976). I refer to Petrarch’s Fragmenta with the definitive Latin title Petrarch gave to his work in the authorial codex Vaticano Latino 3195. 1

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image through the Fragmenta and the subjective origin of a torment that so often derives from the I’s experience of desire: as in the repeated syntagm, ‘I burned’.2 Nevertheless, Petrarch did cultivate and hone his ‘art of invective’ in diverse contexts and in a variety of genres through his career, often bringing them together in unexpected ways: from his series of Invective – contra quendem magni status hominem sed nullius scientie aut virtutis, contra medicum, and contra eum qui maledixit Italie – to the Bucolicum Carmen, Epistolae familiares, and Liber sine nomine.3 It is significant for the argument I wish to put forward, with respect to the latter work, that Petrarch’s Invective contra medicum are at once polemical texts denouncing the artless practice of medicine and a rhetorically linked sequence constituting a strenuous defence of the art of poetry.4 Moreover, since they stemmed from a real altercation with a French physician and preoccupied Petrarch for a period of more than ten years (c.1352 onwards), even after he left the original locus of contention in Avignon, they are emblematic of his polemical practice elsewhere insofar as they were ‘not only written in a particular context but also in his later revision still remained deeply bound to a specific biographical occasion’.5 Given Petrarch’s pursuit of invective as not just a formal genre to be mastered, like any other rhetorical mode, but rather a ‘functional rationale … that acknowledge[d] the epistemological power of literature within both its cognitive and affective dimensions’, it follows that his polemicist persona mattered just as much as his lyric one where some measure of authentic experience was at stake, especially regarding the fate of the soul.6 Petrarch’s Liber sine nomine (Book without a Name), roughly contemporaneous with his Invective contra medicum and also centred on Avignon, possesses a similar duality with respect to its interior and exterior For example, ‘arsi’ is present in an identical sequence of rhyme words in poem 90, a sonnet considered one of the most emblematic of Petrarch’s love lyrics with respect to his exploration of the temporality of desire and the impetus toward gathering what time and language disperse. 3 See Stefano Cracolici, ‘The Art of Invective (Invective contra medicum)’, in Victoria Kirkham and Armando Maggi (eds), Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 255–62. In terms of chronology, Petrarch’s Invective contra quondam magni status hominem sed nullius scientie aut virtutis dates to 1355; his Invective contra eum maledixit Italie to 1373; his Invective contra medicum probably dates to c.1352/53, but was revised into the 1360s; work on his Bucolicum carmen was begun in 1346 and completed in 1357; his Epistolae familiares were written c.1325–66 and organized into a collection of 24 books between 1345–66, during which time Petrarch removed certain letters, considered too vehement, to create his Liber sine nomine, which was published posthumously (see the ‘Chronology’ and individual essays on these works, in Kirkham and Maggi [eds], Petrarch). 4 Cracolici, ‘The Art of Invective’, 255–6. 5 Ibid. 256. 6 Ibid. 257. 2

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aims. However, since its invective, already two-fold in nature, is further embedded in an epistolary framework, in this text polemic progressively shades into autobiography and emerges out of it again. As Ugo Dotti states in his introduction to the Italian edition, the Sine nomine is seemingly not a unified project, not a book that came out of a single inspiration, nor is it assignable to a very specific period of time.7 Comprising 19 missives (and part-missives) written c.1342–59 in Latin, which the author excluded from his Epistolae familiares on the grounds that they could bring infamy to their author or his addressees, the Sine nomine is ostensibly a polemical text but one which the author chose not to publish until after his death.8 In it, Petrarch vehemently denounces the corruption of the papal court in Avignon and the general sinfulness of its populace, especially the clergy. Yet, the work is also frequently a meditation on the I’s status as a captive of the Babylonian city and as an exile from Rome, which often makes the writing subject as much the target of his own pen, and of God’s anger, as those he riles against. Through the epistolary mode, emphasis falls alternately on the speaker and his addressees. These include the unnamed individuals to whom the letters were written as well as others the speaker addresses through exhortation, including the Roman people, Christ, his people and the Babylonian city herself.9 Petrarch deliberately leaves his letters unsigned, establishing the intermediate ground of the work as a play of discursive positions, at once personal and impersonal, with the author himself present to differing degrees in the personae each letter creates. It is this duality in Petrarch’s polemic persona – not yet fully explored by critics – which I believe might help to explain the conflicting responses elicited by the Sine nomine itself: from Dotti’s view that there is little in the content or form of the work that can be thought of as ‘properly polemic’ or even especially original10 to Marco Ariani’s and, more recently, Ronald L. Martinez’s view that the work resonates with a ‘mordant invective’ and ‘rhetorical violence’ that merits it ‘being placed on the most inventive and experimental tangent of the Latin See Ugo Dotti, ‘Introduzione’, in Francesco Petrarca, Sine nomine: Lettere polemiche e politiche, ed. Ugo Dotti (Rome: Laterza, 1974), vii–xlvi, at vii. 8 There are brief allusions in the Epistolae familiares to the author’s plight in Avignon, but they appear sporadically and can ‘pass for a kind of conventional complaint not dissimilar to the Invective in curiales which would become a familiar topos of humanist literature in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries’ (Zacour, ‘Introduction’, in Petrarch’s Book Without a Name: A Translation of the ‘Liber sine nomine’, ed. and trans. Norman P. Zacour [Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1973], 11–26, at 22). 9 Petrarca, Sine nomine, letters 4, 12, 13, 18. 10 ‘After the letters to Cola, so full of civic passion and immediate historical concreteness, those in the Sine nomine follow one after the other in a single, if not exclusive, satirical portrait in which the lack of a biting polemic (in the political or historical sense) ends up making them all rather similar to each other, or different only in the greater or lesser degree of “colouristic” invention’ (Dotti, ‘Introduzione’, xxxv: my translation). 7

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Petrarch’.11 Perhaps the best designation remains Martinez’s, when he calls the Sine nomine an ‘ambiguous’ and ‘uncertain’ text, built on a ‘truncated’ edifice,12 precariously caught between Petrarch’s desire to achieve a supra-historical and apocalyptic authority (akin to Dante’s in the Commedia) and the irreducible presence of the self in the implicit autobiographical narrative that the work simultaneously creates and dissolves (unlike Dante’s, not so much integrated, as in tension, with the prophetic dimension of the work).13 Avignon emerges as the scene of encounter between the polemical and the personal. It is a hellish and Babylonian ‘fifth labyrinth’14 laying siege to a widowed Rome/Jerusalem, with whose loss and destruction the speaker of the Sine nomine repeatedly identifies himself, and the dual space of exile of poet and papacy. Both are enchained by cupiditas, in Petrarch’s case encompassing the misdirected desire of a subject conscious of having been led away from Italy to France by his unbridled passion for Laura (articulated through the length of the Fragmenta) and his excessive desire for power and position, which kept him bound to a ‘world which he despised all the more for his dependence on it’ (as documented in the Sine nomine).15 Petrarch’s inability to free himself from Avignonian/Babylonian captivity for much of the Sine nomine, despite opportunities to do so, mirrors his tenacity in the face of repeated invocations (mainly self-generated) to give up his love for Laura. This suspends the Petrarchan subject of the Sine nomine somewhere between the status of ‘weeping prophet’, whose lament for the forsaken city and its people’s fate valorizes the destruction wrought upon it as part of a providential and apocalyptic narrative of devastation and renewal, and something more like the subject of the Fragmenta, fixated on mourning the loss of the self, its fall into sin and alienation from God, with little hope of reparation or any higher providential meaning. Ibid. xxxv; Ronald L. Martinez, ‘The Book Without a Name: Petrarch’s Open Secret (Liber sine nomine)’, in Kirkham and Maggi (eds), Petrarch, 291–9, at 291; Marco Ariani, Petrarca (Rome: Salerno, 1999), 188. 12 Martinez, ‘The Book Without a Name’, 292. 13 For an intertextual reading of the vehement anti-papal polemic Dante stages in the Earthly Paradise cantos of Purgatorio and high Paradiso and Petrarch’s own approach in the Sine nomine as it interacts with the legacy of Dante’s poetico-religious ‘expressivity’, see Emilio Pasquini, ‘Il mito polemico di Avignone nei poeti italiani del Trecento’, in Aspetti culturali della società italiana nel periodo del papato Avignonese, Atti del XIX Convegno del Centro di studi sulla spiritualità medievale di Todi (15–18 ottobre 1978) (Todi: Accademia Tudertina, 1981), 259–309. 14 The worst after Egypt, Crete, Lemnos and Clusium (Petrarca, Sine nomine, letter 10). On Petrarch’s use of the image of the labyrinth, see Gaetano Cipolla, ‘Labyrinthine Imagery in Petrarch’, Italica 54/2 Dante-Petrarca (Summer 1977): 263–89. 15 Zacour, ‘Introduction’, 16. 11

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As Petrarch asks in the Sine nomine, letter 11, ‘quid primum aut quid penitus loquar?’ (‘Where to start and on what to dwell?’).16 Following the King’s advice to the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, we might do well to ‘begin at the beginning and go on till [we] come to the end; then stop’.17 But, like the proemial sonnet which opens the Fragmenta, the Sine nomine has a beginning which is also in many ways an end: the thread of the author’s discourse – which is to become an important motif in the book as a whole – begins by turning in circles. The Preface to the Sine nomine, which Petrarch added in the late 1350s, during a second reordering of the text, provides a fascinating window upon the process of selection and suppression that went into creating it but remains an enigmatic statement of the author’s intentions for endowing authority on the polemical aspects of the work.18 Petrarch begins the Preface conventionally enough by taking a moral stand against the ‘veri hostibus’ (‘enemies of truth’).19 His aim is to allow Truth to speak unhindered in the realm of the work, which she can do freely nowhere else, and to denounce all those who hold her in disdain. Yet it is clear that conferring authority upon Truth involves to some great degree the abdication of the self, or its identity in death and non-existence: Hic vero, quia nullum … velum erat, providebo si potero, ne vivo me cuiusquam talium in manus veniat. Si fefellerit, ego tamen veri studio quesitum odium non verebor et meritis partam invidiam inter titulos numerabo. Sin, usque dum abiero, bona fide latuerit, postmodum, ut libet, seviant, irascantur, tonent, fulminent. Quid ad me? Certe si, ut Satirico placet, viventi de mortuis loqui tutum est, multo est tutius mortuo de vivis. … Sit licet odiosa veritas, sit pestifera, sit funesta: ipse iam ‘in portu navigat’, ut ait Comicus, et in tuto est; iam terribilia cunta transgressus, omnes mortalium minas spernit.20 But since this collection has no veil … I shall do everything to keep it from falling into the hands of any such persons during my lifetime. If I fail, I shall not fear to be hated because of my fondness for truth, and I shall count an envy so earned as one of my proudest titles. If I succeed, then it will honestly remain hidden until I die. After that, let them rant and rave, thunder and flash as much as they like. So what? If, as the Satirist says, it is safe for the living to talk about the dead, surely it is much safer for the dead to talk about the living. … Though his truth be hateful,

Petrarca, Sine nomine, 116. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Boston: International Pocket

16 17

Library, 1960), 142. 18 On the editorial history of the Sine nomine, see Zacour, ‘Introduction’; Martinez, ‘The Book Without a Name’. 19 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 4. 20 Ibid. 6.

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destructive, calamitous, ‘his ship is in harbour’, as the comic poet says, and he is safe. He has come through the final terror and despises all threats of mortals.

Postponement and concealment are thus the dominant tropes here, made all the more necessary since Petrarch’s text, in the alleged absence of any veil of allegory, is apparently vulnerable in a way that his earlier Latin work, the Bucolicum carmen, never was.21 Since the author intends for the new work to be published only after his death (as in fact happened), the Sine nomine establishes itself as central to his legacy but paradoxically disguised as such until it can be safely reintegrated with the image of the dead author and so implies a temporal and spatial fracture between the two modalities (the living and the dead; discourse written and read). Petrarch situates the polemical force of his arguments in the power of his language to speak the truth and for that truth to act aggressively to incite others to hate or even to cause their destruction and downfall. Yet, that veracious storm, if it is not also to bring down its creator, can only be properly unleashed in a posthumous phase. It is thus a truth that will remain silent until its speaker – entering the extreme silence himself – can safely ‘speak’ again from beyond the grave.22 Petrarch’s purposeful concealment of all contemporary names in the Sine nomine functions in a similar way.23 While it is presented as a defensive strategy against iniquity that potentially elevates Petrarch’s discourse beyond the historically contingent to assume an apocalyptic status,24 it simultaneously draws the text towards an absence and forces the reader to grapple with the non-present in ways they might not expect given the otherwise highly tangible representation of contemporary realities (especially those the speaker lived through daily in Avignon). Though posterity has been able to speculate and sometimes fix upon the identity of some of the addressees of Petrarch’s letters – for example: Cola di Rienzo, a Roman politician in whom Petrarch placed his political hopes for the restoration of Rome’s glory, later dashed; Francesco Nelli, a Florentine priest and close friend of Petrarch’s; and other acquaintances of Petrarch’s from Avignon who shared his knowledge of the city or connections to the papacy – the lack of certainty tends to put the emphasis more upon the need for shared experience, in whatever form it takes, in order for Petrarch’s polemic to make ground. Avignon, by providing a common point of reference between addresser and addressee, is crucial to how the discourse of the text functions: at one time, it supports and reinforces Petrarch’s authority, since he is someone who has not just heard but The Bucolicum carmen, composed of 12 Eclogues, has several points of contact with the Sine nomine, especially in its harsh treatment of Pope Clement VI. 22 Cf. Martinez, ‘The Book Without a Name’, 292. 23 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 4. 24 Martinez, ‘The Book Without a Name’, 292–3. 21

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has actually seen and experienced these things; at another, it problematizes the speaker’s relationship to his material (including those he would denounce) and implicates him in a kind of web that draws him back to the site of transgression in the text even as he strives to disassociate himself from it. In this way, Petrarch cultivates what Lucia Re has termed a paradoxical ‘rhetoric of silence’, something which seems at odds with an idea of polemic as spoken outwardly and especially as synonymous with full-blown discursive violence or aggression. Letter 18 is emblematic in this respect with its rhetorical use of anaphora through which Petrarch lists the vices of the papal court but pre-emptively confines them to being unspoken, if still written down.25 As a consequence, as Re comments: Like Augustine … Petrarch renounce[s] the concept of rhetoric as a force intended to have a socio-political impact, and adopt[s] a ‘silent rhetoric’ of self-analysis which aims at expressing the individual’s isolated relation with philosophical truth and God.26

In fact, Petrarch rarely ‘speaks out’ in the Sine nomine. As we shall see, he more commonly speaks inwardly, or of interiority, speaks of being trapped in Avignon or later – when he manages to escape – of those still inside or of the part of himself which perhaps never left: Modo liberam vocem liceat emittere. Nunc tamen nemo est, qui mutire audeat, preterquam in angulis, in tenebris, in timore. Ego ipse, qui vobis hec scribo et forte pro veritate non recusem mori, si mea mors collatura aliquid reipublice videatur, nunc taceo.27 If only one might be free to speak out. But there is no one who dares even whisper except in corners, in the shadows, in fear. I myself, who write you this letter and who might not refuse to die for the truth if my death would do anything for the state, remain silent.

We can thus consider Petrarch’s reticentia as at once a polemical strategy that emphasizes the tyrannical constriction on individual freedom in Avignon and a problematic facet of the collection itself: a sign of the speaker being caught Petrarca, Sine nomine, 206–10. Lucia Re, ‘Petrarch’s Rhetorical Reticentia as Politics’, Quidditas: Journal of the Rocky

25 26

Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 4 (1983): 17–32, at 18. 27 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 54.

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without a firm (textual) ground in which to root the self or its discourse, polemical or otherwise. Although in his Preface, he claims that his truth is intended to be ‘hateful, destructive and calamitous’ to others,28 it turns out to be no less damaging to himself since he identifies as much with the site of the fall and transgression as he does with the locus of redemption or relief. In turn, while Petrarch suggests that he would seek to place his polemical authority in the impersonal features of the work and those which transcend history, in fact what is to prove most decisive for his polemic is the way in which his aspiration toward impersonality must confront and interact with the subjective voice that subtends it and occasionally breaks through to unbalance it. So what is specifically polemical about Petrarch’s stance in the Sine nomine? Some preliminary definition of what constituted polemic in the medieval and early modern periods, and how we might understand it today, is essential here. In the case of the Sine nomine, the issue importantly extends to questions of genre and of generic undecidability or multiplicity as significant for an understanding of polemic. The difficulty of defining the author’s polemical position in one way or another mirrors the dispersal, but also sporadic concentration, of Petrarch’s persona in specific ‘voices’, none of which finally wins out, but all of which are co-present. Reading recent scholarship that has sought to circumscribe polemical discourse within some kind of theoretical framework, it is clear that any definition we can make is necessarily tentative and must be open to further analysis based upon specific and localized examples. That said, certain general characteristics can and have been associated with polemic and those who engage in it. Beginning from the word’s etymology in the Greek polemos/polemikos, meaning ‘war-like’ or ‘hostile’, polemic is understood primarily as a form of verbal aggression, as necessarily combative and generally resistant to forms of moderation or reconciliation. Engaging with Michel Foucault’s definition of polemic,29 Jonathan Crewe highlights the ‘ethic of discourse’ at stake in polemic (and the ‘aversion to war’ that it provokes in response), while extending Foucault’s reasoning for why polemic is ‘disturbing’ to consider its inseparability ‘from belligerence and violence more broadly; from their effects; from their reasons or lack of reason; from their redemptive potentialities or lack of such potentialities’.30 In particular, Crewe contests the view that polemic is de facto destructive and non-productive, that it ‘has no constitutive role in intellectual history’.31 The Ibid. 6. See George Southcombe, Almut Suerbaum and Benjamin Thompson, ‘Introduction’,

28 29

in this volume, pp. 1, 4–5. 30 Jonathan Crewe, ‘Can Polemic be Ethical? A Response to Michel Foucault’, in Jane Gallop (ed.), Polemic: Critical or Uncritical (New York: Routledge, 2004), 135–62, at 136. 31 Ibid. 138.

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examples he presents from the early modern period – in the field of religious polemic – show, in fact, that polemic has been subject, amongst other things, to ‘decorous neutralization’ and ‘performative transformation’ (even if both ultimately lead back to its fundamental identity as polemos),32 the latter of which is crucial for understanding Petrarch, in which the question of voice and genre – and the hybridity of each – is central. Indeed, a preliminary analysis of the Sine nomine in Foucauldian terms immediately questions the adherence of Petrarch’s polemic to these rules or, conversely, the inadequacy of these rules to account for the complexity of polemic in the Sine nomine. As a polemicist, Petrarch possesses the degree of authority necessary to engage in such an undertaking but certainly does not enjoy the privileges that would abdicate the need for questioning. His discourse identifies an antagonist – the Avignon papacy – and a positive counterpoint – the myth of Rome – but these things are at times secondary to the awareness of the subject’s own relationship to both. Dialogue on some level has to be permissible, if not with the object of polemic then with his (external) addressee and his own (internal) self/audience, not least because polemic is articulated here in an epistolary mode, combined with several other literary and non-literary models. As several critics have noted, the Sine nomine perhaps finds its most significant rhetorical paradigm in Juvenal’s Satiricus,33 though it has recently been argued that it could also fit within the tradition of medieval court satire, which it may have influenced in its turn.34 The latter was a fruitful space for merging biblical tropes (especially the innocent virgin and ‘raddled whore’ of the book of Revelation) with courtly themes (of adulterous husbands and wives) on which Petrarch draws.35 To these satirical models the Sine nomine adds – at different times and in different ways – the influence of Latin comedy (for example, Terence); Virgilian epic (tragedy); and scripture (particularly the Psalms and Revelation, which Petrarch repeatedly cites). The depiction of Ibid. 140. Zacour, ‘Introduction’; Martinez, ‘The Book Without a Name’. 34 On this and Petrarch’s potential influence on an anonymous Latin play entitled 32 33

Comoedia sine nomine, probably written in the mid-fourteenth century in Avignon, perhaps in connection with Petrarch’s own circle, see Elizabeth Archibald, ‘The Flight from Incest as a Latin Play: The Comoedia Sine nomine, Petrarch, and the Avignon Papacy’, Medium Aevum 82 (2013): 87–100; on the influence of comic-realist vituperative poetics on the triptych of Anti-Avignonese sonnets in the Canzioniere, see Fabian Alfie, ‘Old Lady Avignon: Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 136 and the Topos of Vituperium in Vetulam’, Italian Culture 20/2 (Sept. 2012): 100–109. 35 Archibald, ‘The Flight from Incest’, 91–5; on the ‘raddled whore’ of Revelation, see also Amanda Collins, Greater than Emperor: Cola di Rienzo (ca. 1313–54) and the World of Fourteenth-Century Rome (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 108–9. Letters drawing on these tropes include 13, 14 and 18.

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popes Benedict XII (1334–42) and Clement VI (1342–52) as, respectively, a decrepit and blind helmsman leading the church to its destruction and a Babelic Nimrod indicates the breadth of the approach,36 as do the speaker’s repeated designations of himself as one of the ‘humble petitioners, in tearful prostration before [God’s] eternal throne’, a ‘fragile earthen vessel’ and a mourner.37 As Dotti notes, the tone of the letters consequently moves between a self-indulgently subjective lamentation on Petrarch’s own harsh fate to prophetic or pseudoprophetic language, or what Zacour speaks of as the range between ‘satirical invective’, ‘fevered hyperbole’ and ‘anguished psalmodic utterance’.38 In letter 16, Petrarch considers outright the possibility that he might be a new prophet,39 like Isaiah (whose voice he channels in letter 17),40 but he assumes the role only momentarily and with a certain disquietude, reflecting that God may hate his people more than love them or that his justice is delayed while people suffer.41 Most importantly, as one employed at the papal court since 1335,42 he is largely located within, rather than outside, the institutional forms he critiques and thus his language, rather than being able to wholly resist or counter the prevailing discourse of the time (as was the case for so many of the reformer prophets of the Old Testament), results as still subject to it in part and thus frequently equivocal rather than self-validating.43 As Martinez argues, Petrarch seems to be at his most vitriolic and splenetic when he adopts the satirical or comic modes, but both ultimately culminate in a sense of the tragic arc of history.44 Petrarch’s polemic is constantly shading off into other modes from which it gains its specific force but also its shadowy interplay between totality and fragmentation. Some letters are not really letters at all 38 39 40 41

Petrarca, Sine nomine, 12, 94–6. Ibid. 126. Zacour, ‘Introduction’, 19; Petrarch’s Book Without a Name, 76. Petrarca, Sine nomine, 166. Ibid. Ibid. 88, 130. This creates an interesting parallel with Jeremiah as well as the book of Job, which Petrarch cites at the close of the Sine nomine, letter 19, insofar as each figure questions or challenges some aspect of divine justice and the promise God made to the Israelites at the covenant. 42 Petrarch’s associations with the papal court began in 1330 when he entered Cardinal Giovanni Colonna’s service as chaplain. Colonna later recommended him for a papal appointment (see Zacour, ‘Introduction’, 15). 43 On the nuanced speech-acts inherent in prophetic discourse, see Yehoshua Gitay, ‘Reflections on the Study of the Prophetic Discourse: The Question of Isaiah I 2–20’, Vetus Testamentum 33 (1983): 207–21; James G. Williams, ‘The Social Location of Israelite Prophecy’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 37 (1969): 153–65; David Fishelov, ‘The Prophet as Satirist’, Prooftexts 9 (1989): 195–211. 44 Martinez, ‘The Book Without a Name’, 295–7. 36 37

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since they were never sent, others which were sent and purport to be whole are incomplete (their missing parts confined to the world of the Epistolae familiares or more ghostly still, to absence), or have been altered (shortened or reworked to dramatic effect). Petrarch’s language stands out for its uncompromising stance toward the object it denounces but this does not prevent its speaker from being compromised. All in all, the Sine nomine, like the Fragmenta, does not represent a stable textual universe, nor is it immune from that split subjectivity or conflict of the will that are perhaps the distinguishing features of the Fragmenta. Rather than separation between the two worlds there is identification, something explicitly registered in letter 5: Geminus michi Parnasus, alter in Italia est, alter in Galliis, qualisqualis exulantium late Pieridum duplex domus. In ausonio Helicone felicior ‘fui dum fata Deusque sinebant’, ut apud Maronem illa miserabilis amans ait, si tamen amans miserabilis et non pudicissima ac constantissima mulier fuit Dido. Nunc me gallicus orbis habet et occidentalis Babilon, qua nichil informius sol videt, et ferox Rodanus estuanti Cocyto vel tartareo simillimus Acheronti.45 I have a two-fold Parnassus, the one in Italy, the other among the Gauls – a sort of double temple for the far-wandering Muses. I was happier on the Italian Helicon ‘while fate and God allowed’ as that unhappy lover says in Vergil – if indeed Dido really was an unhappy lover and not a most chaste and faithful woman. Now the Gallic world holds me, and the western Babylon (than which the sun shines on nothing more deformed), and the savage Rhone, so like hell’s boiling Cocytus or Acheron.46

This passage on Petrarch’s two-fold poetic identity is significant for several reasons. Firstly, it suggests the topographical breadth with which Petrarch’s poetic imagination ranges; secondly, the interrelationship in his mind of France and Italy; thirdly, the inseparability of personal and political concerns in that domain – the amorous and the non-amorous.47 Like the ‘unhappy’ Dido, certainly a casualty of Aeneas’s passion (and politics) if not her own, Petrarch’s fate is apparently beyond his control though at the same time he cultivates that ambivalence as the source of his identity as a writer, and even takes pleasure in Petrarca, Sine nomine, 68. My italics. 47 For another example of this, see the beginning of letter 12, ‘Ve populo tuo, Criste 45 46

Jhesu! Ve populo tuo, Criste! Patere nos, misericordiarum fons, nostras tecum flere miserias! Quique lesorum amantium mos est eo fidentius conqueri quo ferventius amamus’ (‘Woe to your people, oh Christ Jesus, woe to your people, oh Christ! Oh fount of mercies, let us come before you to bewail our misfortunes. In the way of wounded lovers, the more desperately we love the more hopefully we complain’) (Petrarca, Sine nomine, 126: my italics).

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it. His translation from Parma and Vaucluse to Avignon is construed (primarily politically) as a descent ad inferos, but reading the Fragmenta, we can at times detect a certain nostalgia for the place that had been the site of the original vision of Laura,48 and thus essentially synonymous with the origin of desire itself, similarly viewed as evolving through a fall from a state of perfection into one of corruption and despair. Nonetheless, any positive associations Avignon has, or had, on the amorous plane remain in tension with its other much bleaker incarnation as a Davidic ‘viventium infernus’ (‘living hell’), so that the two sit uneasily side by side rather than transforming the city’s identity definitively in either direction.49 Polemically speaking too, the high point of the Sine nomine, letter 5, which immediately follows these reflections, sees Petrarch employ the same double temporal structure to measure the distance (fall) dividing the recollection of the perfect Edenic state of the church from its present destitution and disgrace. With the repetition of the idea of ‘turning’ from one (pious) way of life to another (impious) one, the author registers his horror and dismay at the loss of religious virtue, culminating in a gesture of complete exasperation with which he declares that he cannot go on. At this point, the letter takes a final – and crucial – turn back towards the I with which it began, as Petrarch beseeches his addressee, Lapo da Castiglionchio, ‘his igitur nunc in locis miserare sortem inquissimam amici aliud forte, sed hoc certe supplicium non merentis’ (‘pity now the evil fate that has befallen your friend in this place. He certainly does not deserve this punishment, though he might some other’).50 Petrarch ends by acknowledging that his words come from an ‘offensi animi’ (‘wounded soul’), who is weary, weakened and lost in the bowels of the city (‘confectus et affectus et defectus sum’), though actually if we consider how the letter began, the epithet of ‘lesorum amantium’ (‘wounded lover’), used in letter 12, might be even more appropriate.51 In both letters Petrarch plays on the suffering that comes from seeing joy turned to grief on the model of Jeremiah and the author of Lamentations.52 However, we feel that the memory of Petrarch’s own wounding by Laura cannot be far behind. Said to have taken place in the Church of Saint Clare in Avignon. Petrarca, Sine nomine, 96; on Avignon’s complex identity in the Fragmenta, see

48 49

Marco Santagata, I frammenti dell’anima: Storia e racconto nel ‘Canzoniere’ di Petrarca (Bologna: Mulino, 2004), 16–18; on its positive identity as a ‘locus amoris’ in tension with its Babylonian incarnation, see Michelangelo Picone, ‘Amor e Gloria nella composizione di RVF 110–19’, in id. (ed.), Il Canzoniere: Lettura micro e macrotestuale (Ravenna: Longo, 2007): 279–94, esp. 280–85. 50 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 72. 51 Ibid. 126. 52 Cf.: ‘All thy lovers have forgotten thee; they seek thee not; for I have wounded thee with the wound of an enemy, with the chastisement of a cruel one, for the multitude of thine

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Thus although critics of Petrarch have tended to try and separate the Sine nomine – as the author invites us to do – from his other works, at some point the Latin work re-enters the domain of the vernacular, lyric one. Re, for example, argues that, by choosing to separate all the ‘compromising’ political letters from the rest and from the Fragmenta, Petrarch ‘sharply separates the political and the literary spheres and confines the political to a book that is a “book without a name”’.53 However, that anonymity, and the apparent detachment it confers from literary concerns, is perhaps illusory. Certainly, Petrarch cannot resist the pull of semantic engagement and even the decision to renounce more outspoken rhetorical strategies speaks volumes about his position and that of the text: The Liber sine nomine … seems to enact a strategy quite different from that of the Canzoniere, where the name (of Laura) is semantically charged and rhetorically productive. However, by excluding specific names and dates – a move ostensibly dictated by ‘traditional’ political reasons – Petrarch guides the reader’s attention beyond the ‘matters’ of ‘traditional’ politics to the politics of the text.54

He thereby also ‘displaces’ any neat correlation between the arena of polemical engagement and its equivalent in history: the Sine nomine becomes as selfreflexive, potentially, as the Fragmenta.55 As in all of Petrarch’s works, there is a constant dovetailing of the author’s persona with its earlier incarnations and those articulated contemporaneously elsewhere, which turns the Sine nomine into a semiotically charged universe. The ‘later’ personae of the letters become witness to the ‘earlier ones’ (though of course the chronology may be false), retrospectively reassessing them in light of new knowledge or understanding or, more negatively, recognizing the lack of alteration in the subject’s state despite his outward movement or transformation. Above all, no element of discourse is neutral or free from retrospective scrutiny: polemic, in the latter part of Sine nomine, is constructed out of past recollections as much as present realities or future prophecy. The things that Jesse Lander stresses in his analysis of early modern polemic strategies also have a bearing on Petrarch’s Sine nomine for these reasons. For example, the necessity of viewing polemic as a discursive rather than a purely assertive, even dogmatic, practice; the notion of a ‘polemical consciousness’ that transcends more rigidly demarcated boundaries between polemic and non-polemic (‘literary’) texts;56 and the impossibility of fully understanding iniquity; because thy sins were increased’ ( Jer. 30:14). 53 Re, ‘Petrarch’s Rhetorical Reticentia as Politics’, 22–3. 54 Ibid. 23. 55 Ibid. 25. 56 ‘Intimately related to the invention of polemic is the simultaneous restriction of the literary to the imaginary. … It is aesthetic, not political; disinterested, not tendentious;

30

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polemic except when it is localized ‘and placed within the context of a particular engagement’: Polemic is simultaneously a genre, a concept, and a practice. … A useful, though by no means absolute, distinction exists between a formal entity, genre or kind, and a discursive dynamic or mode. This distinction helpfully allows one to see the ways in which other genres, such as history, prose fiction, the elegy, and drama, were capable of being put to polemical use.57

Combined with the hybridity of Petrarch’s discourse, in which all of the genres listed are present to some degree and in which literary concerns cannot ultimately be set apart from polemical ones, we might do well to speak in his case of the ‘polemical imagination’. This will be all the more pertinent when we go on to consider the importance (of the lack) of Petrarch’s capacity to mentally reimagine his compromised subject position: as outside rather than inside Avignon, as accuser rather than guilty party and as speaker for a collective rather than a subjective or isolated voice in the wilderness. From the Topographical to the Tropological: The Characterization of Avignon/Babylon from the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta to Sine nomine As Martinez has shown, the very way in which Petrarch reorders the letters in the second, expanded edition of the Sine nomine, leads the author to formulate an ‘implicit autobiographical narrative’ centred upon his ‘slow self-extraction from Avignon and Vaucluse’, which provides an additional thematic impetus to the central part of the work, peaking at letters 11–13 which precede the ‘breakthrough’ explicitly registered in letter 14.58 Having left Avignon for Rome and Parma in 1347, Petrarch returned to the city as late as 1351, all the time protesting his folly (as registered in several letters of the Sine nomine). Yet he was surprisingly slow to leave the place he had come to regard as a prison and his final – protracted – stay in the city, from 1351 to May 1353, was to be decisive both for the Sine nomine and for Petrarch himself. exploratory, not restrictive; imaginative, not dogmatic’ ( Jesse Lander, Inventing Polemic: Religion, Print and Literary Culture in Early Modern England [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006]: 4). However, the Sine nomine collapses these boundaries. 57 Ibid. 20, 35. 58 As Martinez notes, Petrarch first assembled 13 letters in 1350, while he was still in Avignon/Vaucluse, to which he added another 6 and a Preface between c.1353–59, following his departure. The later version rearranges the letters, particularly those to Cola, once placed as frames to the work and now relocated to the beginning so that they become ‘the past tense for a new, implicit autobiographical narrative’ (‘The Book Without a Name’, 293).

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Mirroring these events, letters 8–13 seem to have been designed to form an apocalyptic crescendo, decrying the church’s destruction and reiterating the speaker’s position in extremis and the need for God to deliver the world from sin as Avignon’s Babylonian ‘flood of evils’ threatens to consume it.59 At the same time, however, these letters represent the most intense recognition of the speaker’s fault and responsibility for his own condition, however pardonable, and mirror the development of similar themes (in more cyclical – and less chronological – fashion) in the Fragmenta. Such interesting observations invite a new model for analysing Petrarch’s polemic, one which can map the speaker’s shifting subject positions and the indexical markers through which meaning is constructed on the basis of discursive realities so often distorted in line with Avignon’s identity as a modern Babel. Letter 11 is a clear example of this indexicality in action, whereby the I’s relationship to its (linguistic) environment is intrinsic to his polemical consciousness. Written to Rinaldo Cavalchini of Villafranca (a former tutor of Petrarch’s son, Giovanni) around 1351–52, it details Petrarch’s impassioned plea for Cavalchini to rethink his desire to secure an office at the papal court and to stay away from Avignon as long as he can, especially given Petrarch himself is apparently doing everything he can to get out. As elsewhere in the Latin work, Avignon is portrayed as a realm of unbridled lust and avarice, the natural home of a widespread falsehood where truth cannot live,60 to which the speaker is exiled and where he is held captive. But Petrarch is also, by extension, an exile in language. While he declares that ‘non arma capiat, non hostem feriat oportet, lingua liberior pro gladio est, verax sermo pro vulnere’ (‘you do not have to take up weapons, or lunge at the enemy; an unbridled tongue is weapon enough, and to speak the truth is to inflict a wound’), he speaks in a persecuted as much as a persecutory tone.61 The letter culminates with an ambiguous admission of personal guilt, which at once reinforces Petrarch’s authority to speak about these things and puts it into doubt: Optat tibi salutem discipulus tuus, qui utinam tecum esset, nisi forsan utilius mecum est, ut ab annis teneris discat hoc infandum specus, hunc vere tartareum carcerem horrere, ne quando per errorem capi possit, ubi ego prope infans (nescio an parentum meorum an meis, sed certe nondum admissis illa etate piaculis) captus fui et nunc, cum sepius evasissem atque iterum et iterum in laqueos recidissem, ad postremum sponte mea iam vir, imo vero iam senior captivus preter meipsum non habeo quam accusem.

Petrarca, Sine nomine, 136. Ibid. 118–20. 61 Ibid. 116–18. 59 60

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Huic autem epistole neque manum meam neque anulum neque locum neque tempus apposui. Scis ubi sum, et vocem loquentis agnoscis.62 Your pupil wishes to greet you. Would that he were with you, though perhaps it is better to have him here with me, so that right from his tender years he might learn to abhor this abominable pit, this truly hellish prison. Thus he will never be taken unawares, as I was when I was so young – I know not whether for my sins or my parents’, though if mine I was still too young to have committed them. I have often escaped only to fall into bondage over and over again. Now at last I am captive by my own will – no longer a child, indeed an old man – and have no one to blame but myself. To this letter, however, I put neither my hand, nor my seal, nor the place of writing, nor the date. You know where I am. You recognize my voice.63

Thus, paradoxically, while Petrarch’s discourse does not give any clues to his reader beyond the fact that he is where he is and writing about these things, his voice is still topographically, or at least tropologically, identifiable within the space-sign system the Sine nomine creates. That he need neither sign nor stamp his missive to communicate his message simultaneously betrays the dependence of his authority on his captivity and a position at once compromised and privileged through negation. The passage from youth to old age that Petrarch maps sheds light not only on the dangers he would have his son avoid, but also the catastrophic falling away of the self from an unwilled or unwilling contamination by sin to a wilful subjection to it.64 Notwithstanding the author’s assertion that ‘omni enim studio festino irremeabile laberinthi huius limen attingere … generosi contemptus filum teneo’ (‘he is hurrying as fast as [he] can to reach the door of this hopeless labyrinth’ armed with ‘the thread of a noble contempt’), writing would seem rather to perpetuate that subjection than to liberate the speaker from it; in the end, it recreates for the addressee too the sense of being unable to move beyond the prison of the I.65 Overall, we are invited to view the letter’s ending both as a polemical strategy aimed at harnessing an Ibid. 120–22. My italics. 64 Cf. Gabriele Baldassari’s reading of this letter, where he argues that the speaker’s 62 63

admission of guilt retrospectively re-evaluates the terms within which his captivity was discussed in the Sine nomine, letter 5, there viewed as subject to the machinations of fate and not personal responsibility (‘Familarum rerum liber and Liber sine nomine’, in Claudia Berra [ed.], Motivi e forme delle “Familiari” di Francesco Petrarca: Atti del Convegno di Gargnano del Garda (2–5 ottobre 2002) [Bologna: Cisalpino, 2003], 723–60, at 750–51). 65 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 120.

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almost transcendental authority for the speaker’s voice66 and as recognition of its inevitable localization in contaminated ground. The full (moral) implications of the speaker’s commuted position become clearer when considered alongside other moments of Babylonian identification in Petrarch’s oeuvre, for example poem 114 of the Fragmenta, ‘De l’empia babilonia’ (‘From Wicked Babylon’), which inaugurates the anti-Avignon theme within the ‘lyric sequence’ of the Fragmenta.67 The poetic I has fled the ‘albergo di dolor’ (‘dwelling of sorrow’) so as to ‘prolong his life’ and takes shelter in Vaucluse, but in parallel with the Sine Nomine, letter 11, the speaker struggles to throw off the burden of memory and comfort comes only through denial (of the horrors he has witnessed and his present loneliness), rather than any positive value. The ‘tempi migliori’ (‘better times’) on which he reflects in his exile are ambiguous in their non-specificity, referring either to the (largely imagined) joys of his amorous past or the hoped-for reconciliation with the ‘two persons’ – Laura and Giovanni Colonna – whose Avignonese associations cannot be entirely dispelled even as the I declares himself unmoved by anything beyond them.68 Conversely, the ‘madre d’errori’ (‘mother of errors’),69 while referring to Avignon, also indirectly evokes the deviousness of erotic desire alternately feared and cherished as a ‘sweet prison’, for example in Fragmenta, poem 89, where the same motif of fleeing ‘la pregione ove Amor m’ebbe / molt’anni’ (‘the prison where Love had kept me for many years’) leads, like Fragmenta, poem 114, back into the place from where he has departed. The impossibility or failure of physical flight to truly liberate the subject from the locus of error suggests that Petrarch’s problem is primarily psychological and not geographical, as per his admission in the Sine nomine, letters 11 and 13 that perhaps the greatest sin of all is inertia in the face of known depravity, which ends up equating victim with aggressor and absorbing each into the same (im) moral space of the corrupt Avignon: ‘quid possim optare miserius quam ut nostri similes semper simus, coram adultero vigili nare stertentes ad calicem? Nescio, fateor, an illius impudentia an patientia nostra sit turpior’ (‘What more wretched future could I wish … than that we remain just as we are with only our noses awake, snoring in our cups before the adulterer? I confess that I do not know which is more shameful, his impudence or our indulgence’).70 To quote Fred J. Nichols, Avignon is ‘where [Petrarch] is whenever he tries to write about it. It is a state of mind, or to be more precise, a state of language where language can be Cf. Martinez, ‘The Book Without a Name’, 293. The designation is borrowed from Teodolinda Barolini’s discussion of the Fragmenta

66 67

in ‘The Making of a Lyric Sequence: Time and Narrative in Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta’, Modern Language Notes 104 (Italian issue) (1989): 1–38. 68 Petrarca, Fragmenta, poem 114, lines 7–8. 69 Ibid., line 3. 70 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 140: my italics; cf. Baldassari, ‘Familiarum rerum Liber’, 759.

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used to express only what is false’.71 Where discourse itself announces inaction, however many times Petrarch mentally reimagines the space of the encounter,72 his physical relocation alone is insufficient to secure the (psychological, textual) separation he seeks for his polemic to gain traction, suggesting that true liberation from the site of the fall can only come through relinquishing the self or its memory. Where both are still in play, the psychological chains remain in place and, as late as letter 15, there is a disturbing conflation of the unsurpassable derangement of the city and the discursive position of the speaker: Interque omnes miserias loci illius, quarum non est numerus, illud insigne ludibrium est, quod cunta ibi visco atque uncis et laqueis plena sunt, ut, dum evasisse videare, tum te arctius implicitum vinctumque reperias. Nulla ibi preterea lux, nullus dux, nullus index amfractuum, sed caligo undique et ubique confusio.73 And among all the innumerable miseries of the place, there is this final trick: that everything is smeared with birdlime, and is covered with hooks and nets, so just when you think you have escaped you find yourself more tightly held and bound. There is no light anywhere, no one to lead you, no sign to guide you along the twisted plans, but only gloom on all sides and confusion everywhere.

As a wordsmith, Petrarch is like Daedalus, who has built his own labyrinth and gets caught inside it. ‘Birdlime’ (Latin: visco) is a word that resonates with negative associations, several of them highly subjective. The avian metaphor is one that recurs no less than five times in the Fragmenta and always in relation to the seductive, tyrannical, entangling effects of desire and the language used to express it.74 It segues, at the end of the Sine nomine, letter 15, into a description of the ‘tenebrosa, inquam, et eterna nox’ (‘night of eternal darkness’), not so much a topographic metaphor as a representation of the dissoluteness of the souls lost in/to the city who, in a reversal of the traditional order of comparison, taint it by association with them.75 In the closing lines, 71 Fred J. Nichols, ‘Petrarch’s Liber sine nomine and the Limits of Language’, in Ann Moss et al. (eds), Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Hafniensis: Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Neo-Latin Studies, Copenhagen 12 August–17 August 1991 (Binghampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1994), 741–50, at 743. 72 The notion of a ‘mental reimagination’ of Petrarch’s subject position is one I borrow from Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner’s account of the reorientation of the Boethian subject in The Consolations of Philosophy in ‘Introduction: Encountering Consolation’, in Catherine E. Léglu and Stephen J. Milner (eds), The Erotics of Consolation: Desire and Distance in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 1–18, at 12. 73 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 158. 74 Petrarca, Fragmenta, poems 40, 83, 105, 257, 263. 75 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 158.

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Petrarch quotes from Psalm 34 saying, ‘denique nulli omnino gentium magis incubuisse daviticam imprecationem: “Fiant tanquam pulvis ante faciem venti et angelus Domini coartans eos. Fiant vie eorum tenebre et lubricum, et angelus Domini persequens eos”’ (‘David’s curse weighs upon no people more than upon this one: “Let them be as chaff before the wind, and let the angel of the Lord chase them; let their way be dark and slippery, and let the angel of the Lord persecute them” [Ps. 34: 5–6]’).76 David consequently has the last word, but Petrarch’s language is haunted by those afflictions even as it unleashes them upon the rest. Trapped Voices and Deviated Speech: Between Lamentation and Invective Thus if Petrarch’s stance in the Sine nomine is polemical, it is also at least in part lyrical or autobiographical. This creates a constant tension in the work between Petrarch’s aspirations towards a supra-individual objectivity and the irreducible quality of the I as it registers and recounts its experiences. To some degree, the latter is a product of the author’s own psychological make-up, but, in polemical terms, I believe it also has its origins in Petrarch’s decision to model his voice on that of Lamentations and Psalms (especially the penitential psalms).77 The choice is a highly appropriate one given the nature of the task Petrarch has set himself. Both fertile sources in the Middle Ages for the rhetorical tropes of conquestio (lament or complaint, individual and collective, often addressed directly to God) and indignatio (righteous anger or disdain),78 these models demand at the same time that those facets of invective be reconciled with a sense of personal guilt, of alienation from God and even of loneliness or not being heard. As places in which subjectivity re-enters and even valorizes the polemical equation, Petrarch is drawn to these paradigms as he is drawn to meditating upon his own condition. Yet, they also indicate the points of stress in his writing, where Petrarch must negotiate his relationship to the ultimate (polemic) authority, God, and often enters dangerous territory that makes himself vulnerable to the same (lyric) failings that made him enter into the plea in the first place. As Martinez has shown, Lamentations is a key intertext already in Petrarch’s Fragmenta in which the poet is engaged in a ‘double mourning’, not only for

Ibid. 158. Petrarch wrote his own set of seven penitential psalms, in Latin in around 1347,

76 77

although there is some disagreement about the date. 78 Cf. E. Ann Matter, ‘The Legacy of the School of Auxerre: Glossed Bibles, School Rhetoric, and the Universal Gilbert’, Temas Medievales 14 (2006): 85–98.

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the loss of Laura but also for the ‘sacrifice of his moral autonomy to desire’.79 I propose that it is this loss of/to the self – ultimately more troubling and enduring than the loss of the beloved in itself – that resurfaces in the Sine nomine in a different guise: not so much centred on unrestrained or faulty desire (lust) for the lady but excessive desire (lust) for power and position (libido dominandi). It is perhaps not by chance that Petrarch dwells most on the lustful in his presentation of the hell-like Avignon/Babylon of the Sine nomine, if always within the framework of the politically perverse and monstrous, looking back also to Dante’s Inferno, V, with the figures of Semiramis, Dido and Pasiphae in particular.80 Recasting Martinez’s argument about the Fragmenta in relation to the Sine nomine in fact uncovers a ‘double subject’ of polemic whereby the loss of the self and the soul’s recognition of its own fallenness (the admission of guilt and errancy) sporadically but forcefully undercut the more universalizing impulse toward communal recognition of sin and responsibility, and hope for reparation from God. As E. Ann Matter notes, an intensely personal reading of Lamentations was very common in the commentary tradition, beginning with the early Latin commentators like Radbertus. In Radbertus’s commentary, the lament over the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem dovetails with the monk’s lament for his own soul, one implicating the other.81 Private sorrow and public lament are thus inextricably linked and Lamentations results as a polysemous text in which the literal narrative of the historical destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, is understood in a moral sense as an allegory of the soul, besieged by sin, as it ‘suffers in its alienation from God’, while anagogically the widowed city itself is interpreted as a foreshadowing of Christ’s Passion.82 Ronald L. Martinez, ‘Mourning Laura in the Canzoniere: Lessons from Lamentations’, Modern Language Notes 118 (Italian issue) (2003): 1–45. Ultimately he argues that the distinction between the first and second parts of the Fragmenta is not between the so-called rime in vita and rime in morte but between single/simple and complex/double mourning, between Petrarch’s mourning the ‘vanity of love’ [Part 1] and the ‘vanity of love and remembrance combined [Part 2]’ (ibid. 42). 80 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 96; cf. Dante Alighieri, Inferno, V, 55–62; Purgatory XXVI, 86–7, in ‘La Commedia’ secondo l’antica vulgata, ed. Giorgio Petrocchi, Società Dantesca Italiana, Edizione Nazionale, 2nd rev. edn, 4 vols (Florence: Le Lettere, 1994). Rachel Jacoff argues that Semiramis is a figure conflating, in her associations with the city of Babylon (either founded or rebuilt by her), lust and lust for power: that is, ‘political and sexual cupidities’ (‘Transcendence and Transgression: Figures of Female Desire in Dante’s Commedia’, Romantic Review 79 [1988]: 129–42, at 130–32). 81 Matter, ‘The Legacy of the School of Auxerre’. 82 See, Martinez, ‘Mourning Laura in the Canzoniere’, 3; id., ‘Mourning Beatrice: The Rhetoric of Threnody in the Vita nuova’, Modern Language Notes 113 (Italian issue) (1998): 1–29, at 6. 79

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As has been noted, several voices coexist in the Lamentations text: from the speaker/witness who reports on the city’s destruction, to the fallen city herself hypostatized in anguish, at times becoming indistinguishable one from the other,83 in the same way that Petrarch in the Sine nomine identifies with both the widowed and destitute city (Rome) as well as with the wicked Babylonian whore (Avignon), responsible for her state. A few stanzas from Lamentations illustrate the point: Jerusalem hath grievously sinned; therefore she is removed: all that honoured her despise her, because they have seen her nakedness: yea, she sigheth, and turneth backward. Her filthiness is in her skirts; she remembereth not her last end; therefore she came down wonderfully: she had no comforter. O Lord, behold my affliction: for the enemy hath magnified himself. .  .  .  .  .  .  .   Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. From above hath he sent fire into my bones, and it prevaileth against them: he hath spread a net for my feet, he hath turned me back: he hath made me desolate and faint all day. The yoke of my transgressions is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck: he hath made me strength to fall, the Lord hath delivered me into their hands, from whom I am not able to rise up.84

When Alan Mintz reflects, in relation to the discursive context of Lamentations, that ‘perhaps … due to the darkening historical reality of 83 William F. Lanahan identifies five personae who speak within the text (‘The Speaking Voice in the Book of Lamentations’, Journal of Biblical Literature 93 [1974]: 41–9, at 43). 84 Lam. 1:8–9, 12–14.

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destruction and deepening exile … divine speech could not be imagined’,85 he describes one of the features that Petrarch’s Sine nomine seems to share with the Lamentations text.86 Dante had dramatically reversed that paradigm in the Commedia, in which both the pilgrim’s journey and the poem are not just divinely sanctioned, but revealed to be the product of divine speech in action (communication) with the human author.87 Petrarch, on the other hand, reverts to an earlier linguistic position, prior to the event of God’s speaking and conscious of being so. He aligns himself most with the downcast speaker of Lamentations, rather than the one who has faith in God’s reparation as registered in the hope of Lamentations 3, as evident in the Sine nomine 17: Tu Criste, qui potes, a quo imperia omnia et in terris et que sursum et que deorsum sunt precario possidentur, qui hanc meam et maxime publicam querelam vel in silentio audis, exaudi, quesumus, si iusta est! Scio quidem scriptum esse: ‘Si iniquitatem aspexi in corde meo, non exaudiet Dominus’. … ut verificatum sit in nobis ad literam illud psalmi: ‘Avertisti nos retrorsum post inimicos nostros, et qui oderunt nos, diripiebant sibi; dedisti nos tanquam oves escarum’.88 You, O Christ, you who can change things, you from whom all empires on earth, in heaven, or in hell are held at your will, you who, even in silence, hear this complaint which is not just my own but is made especially on behalf of all your people, hearken to us if it is just, we pray. I know indeed that it is written: ‘If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hearken to me’ [Ps. 65:18]. … Thus in us is the psalm confirmed to the letter: ‘You have turned us back from the

See e.g. ‘I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light. Surely against me he is turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day. …Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked’ (Lam. 3:1–3, 8–9). 86 Alan Mintz, ‘The Rhetoric of Lamentations and the Representation of Catastrophe’, Prooftexts 2, Catastrophe in Jewish Literature (1982): 1–17. 87 The three poetic-prophetic investitures Dante receives respectively from Beatrice (Purgatory, XXXII), his ancestor Cacciaguida (Paradise, XVII) and St Peter (Paradise XXVII) establish that paradigm, allowing Dante to transform the traumatic experience of his exile into grounds for writing his ‘sacred poem’ (Paradise, XXV, 1), ‘in pro del mondo che mal vive’ (‘to serve the world that lives so ill’) (Purgatory, XXXII, 103) (The Divine Comedy, trans. Robert Hollander and Jean Hollander, 3 vols [New York: Doubleday, 2000–2007]; see Manuele Gragnolati, ‘Rewriting Dante after Freud and the Shoah: Giorgio Pressburger’s Nel regno oscuro’, in Manuele Gragnolati, Fabio Camilletti and Fabian Lampart [eds], Metamorphosing Dante: Appropriations, Manipulations, and Rewritings in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries [Berlin: Verlag Turia + Kant, 2011], 235–50, esp. 237–40). 88 Petrarca, Sine nomine, 178–80. 85

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enemy, and those who hate us plunder us for themselves; you have given us like sheep to be eaten’ [Ps. 43:11–12].

The voice of complaint comes close to articulating the ‘cry’ in Petrarch’s De otio religioso, beseeching God to save our souls from being swallowed up by mortal sin: ‘excitate rationem sensusque compescite et clamate de terris celeste presidium invocantes. Clamate omnes, clamate singuli: “Salvum me fac, Deus, quoniam intraverunt aque usque ad animam meam”’ (‘rouse your reason, curb those senses, and cry out from the earth, invoking heavenly protection. Cry all together and individually, “Save me, God, for the waters have come in all the way up to my soul” [Ps. 69:1]’).89 The torrent evokes the rivers of Babylon as well as the fleshly pull of the senses, which reason must resist.90 It also represents the abyss separating the compromised human soul from God, which the voices of lamentation and psalmodic utterance similarly channel. There remains always the danger of a plea with no response, what Mintz describes as ‘deflected speech’, when God is unaddressable and the speaker is walled in and alone. The turning point happens, by contrast, when ‘the recognition of sin and the commitment to repentance … permit the sufferer to think of himself once again as a participant in a covenantal relationship, and, as such, as one who possesses the rights of entreaty and appeal’.91 In the medieval tradition, Lamentations was often viewed in a triptych with Psalms and the Song of Songs as a ‘meditation on desire’ that moved from the pain of God’s absence to the celebration of his return and the ensuing state of ‘repletion and plenitude’92– a ‘recovery of the meaningfulness of experience’ through the speaker’s progressive reorientation to the universe of his own discourse.93 Petrarch’s language in the Sine nomine negotiates the same space between despair and hope, loss and recovery, but without being able to fully transform one into the other. The residue (memory) that resists expiation is anchored to the self (because part of it) and roots it to the site of the earlier transgression, in the same way that memory and desire function in the Fragmenta to prevent any ‘conversion’ in the truest sense of the word. A final analysis of perhaps the most successful instance in the Sine nomine of Petrarch overcoming the bind, only to fall back into it, will serve to illustrate the Francesco Petrarca, De otio religioso, II, i, 84, in Opere latine di Francesco Petrarca, ed. Antonietta Bufano (Turin: Unione tipografico-editrice torinese, 1975), 1: 567–809; Eng. trans.: On Religious Leisure (De otio religioso), ed. and trans. Susan Schearer (New York: Italica Press, 2002). Besides the direct citation, there is a further echo of Ps. 69:2: ‘I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing: I am come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me’. 90 Petrarca, De otio religioso, II, i, 84–5. 91 Mintz, ‘The Rhetoric of Lamentations’, 11, 13 92 See Robert R. Edwards, ‘The Desolate Palace and the Solitary City: Chaucer, Boccaccio and Dante’, Studies in Philology 96 (1999): 393–416, at 404. 93 Mintz, ‘The Rhetoric of Lamentations’, 16. 89

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point. The penultimate letter of the collection, letter 18, addressed to Francesco Nelli, is notable both for its sustained apocalyptic perspective, in contrast to the Lamentations model dominant elsewhere, and for the extent to which Petrarch succeeds in bracketing the I or eliding our perception of it beneath a more impersonal voice which derives its authority directly from John in the Book of Revelation: Tu autem gaude, contrario saltem magistra virtutum! Gaude, inquam, et ad aliquid utilis inventa gloriare, bonorum hostis et malorum hospes atque asilum, pessima rerum Babilon, feris Rodani ripis imposita, famosa dicam an infamis meretrix fornicata cum regibus terre! Illa equidem ipsa es quam in spiritu sacer vidit evangelista.94 Now Babylon, foulest of cities, rejoice at least for being the opposite of the mistress of virtues. Rejoice, I say, and take pride that you have been found useful for something – you, the enemy of good, the dwelling-place and refuge of evil, seated on the savage banks of the Rhone, famous – or rather infamous – whore ‘with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication’ [Rev. 17:1–2; 18:3]. You indeed are the very one whom the holy evangelist saw in his vision.

Petrarch’s voice finally appears to speak from that beyond (of time and space) posited as the ultimate goal of the work in the Preface, which can only be synonymous with the eschatological horizon of the Last Judgement. Momentarily usurping John’s role as the vehicle of God’s message, Petrarch succeeds in identifying with him rather than with the corrupt city, even to the point of supplanting both, as he rewrites the apocalyptic narrative based on what he now witnesses: Recognosce habitum: ‘Mulier circumdata purpura et coccino et inaurata auro et lapide pretioso et margaritis, habens poculum aureum in manu sua, plenum abominatione et immunditia fornicationis eius’. Noscisne teipsam, Babilon? Nisi illud forsan errorem facit quod in illius fronte scriptum erat ‘Babilon magna’, tu vero Babilon parva es.95 Look again at the description: ‘the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a gold cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication’ [Rev. 17:4]. Do you recognize yourself Babylon? If he was right in saying that there was written on her forehead, ‘Babylon the Great’ [Rev. 17:5] then you are Babylon the Small.

Petrarca, Sine nomine, 202. Ibid. 202–4.

94 95

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Occupying a subject position safely on the outside, which allows Petrarch to directly address the Babylonian whore with a vehemently accusatory tone, the polemic voice does assume something of the apocalyptic status achieved more sporadically elsewhere in the Latin work. For a moment, Petrarch enacts the annihilating force of the polemicist who reduces his opponent – here, the Avignon papacy – to nothingness (recalling Petrarch’s Augustinian definition of sin as the negation of good96), negating its worth and reinforcing his own authority. Marred only slightly by the knowledge that this letter was never sent, and perhaps was never intended to be sent, within the limits of its own epistolary enclosure, Petrarch’s polemic bursts forth with renewed energy. A similar strategy, this time mediated through comedy rather than apocalyptic, functions later in the same letter to annihilate, through parody, a corrupt cardinal who abuses his position in two ways: by committing lewd acts of fornication on a grand scale and by using his authority to seduce one young courtesan in particular who resists his advances.97 As the Petrarchan I takes shelter in the overt theatricality of the piece and defuses its subjectivity for a moment by becoming part of a common audience to the folly, the author effectively registers his disgust without getting too close, concluding the story with a tour de force of comical sarcasm: ‘ad hunc modum Cupidinis veteranus, Baccho sacer et Veneri, non armatus, sed togatus et pileatus, de suis amoribus triumphavit. Plaude, fabula acta est’ (‘that was how Cupid’s old veteran, that priest of Bacchus and Venus, triumphed in his loves, not armed, but toga’ed and hated. Applaud. The fable is done’).98 Yet, just two pages earlier, Petrarch has betrayed – unwittingly or not – the true motivations for this polemical strategy, and perhaps his use of apocalyptic as well. To tell the story about the cardinal is not an offensive move, but a defensive one, designed to protect the self from suffering unduly: ‘Te hodie ad risum quam ad iracundium provocare. Ira enim que ulcisci nequit in se flectitur et in dominum suum sevit’ (‘I would rather provoke you to laughter than to wrath. For anger which cannot be satisfied turns in on itself and destroys its own harbourer’).99 The comment is perhaps directed to his addressee, but in the context of the Sine nomine as a whole, it also reads as a tacit admission of Petrarch’s own feelings. He too has to admit to being ‘disarmed’ and forced to follow a different approach to achieve his goals in an oblique but disturbing parallel with the corrupt cardinal. The I, earlier hidden, resurfaces and reminds us that it has not been forgotten (it may even be unforgettable) but merely put aside. It appears that Petrarch’s polemic, to really achieve the sustained level of apocalyptic he seeks, would need to be 98 99 96

97

See ibid. 26–8. Ibid. 210–14. Ibid. 214. Ibid. 210

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transhistorical, not merely in the sense of transcending contingent realities, but also and more crucially Petrarch’s personal history. The impossibility of fully achieving that break constitutes the problematic duality of the Sine nomine but also the tension that sustains the entire work and makes it especially resistant to existing categories. Conclusion For Petrarch to engage in polemic is consequently to enter the labyrinth of the self and its discursive identity. The association, even identification, between Petrarch’s lyric and polemic personae – the confusion or cross-over of the subject positions – is at odds with the disassociation and separation Petrarch claims for his Sine nomine, beginning in the Preface, which break down whenever or wherever the I re-enters the equation (and it often enters in the same place). In the field of language, the I constantly confronts itself, and Petrarch’s polemic thus needs to overcome the obstacles to separation in all senses: the things preventing the speaker’s escape from captivity, the psychological barriers preventing the subject’s liberation from the memory of sin and, finally, the return to the site of the fall by proxy and through letter writing. It is perhaps telling in this respect that a book that opens by affirming the identity of a voice that can safely speak only once its author is already dead, ends by reconfining that voice to silence through the gesture of suppressing anything that might come after: O quid dixi, o quid scripsi, o quid michi venit in animum? Quo prodiit lingua? Quo progressus est calamus? … Frenabo impetum et, cum eodem Job, ‘manum meam ponam super os meum et his ultra non addam’. Amen.100 Oh what have I said, what have I written, what have I been thinking of ? Where has my tongue led me? How far has my pen gone? … I shall now stop and, again like Job, ‘I shall put my hand over my mouth and add nothing more to these things’ [ Job 39:34–5]. Amen.

Between the utterance of the dead and a dead utterance, Petrarch has woven an entire polemic universe. It remains up to the knowing reader to unravel it.

Ibid. 224.

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Chapter 2

The Ends of Polemic and the Beginning of Lohengrin Alastair Matthews Introduction The depiction of poetic rivalry in works of art has a long tradition behind it, one that may be most familiar to a modern audience from such works as the Eclogues or Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Their counterparts in the intervening period that was shaped intellectually by Virgil and adapted creatively by Wagner are, perhaps, rather less widely known. This chapter introduces one particular example – the medieval German poem Lohengrin – and describes the polemic elements in its opening strophes. Starting from a modern scholarly dispute about the origins of the text and considering its contemporary literary context in the Middle Ages, the chapter develops the concept of polemic speech as a way of capturing the specifically linguistic strategies by means of which polemic unfolds. This provides the basis for a reading of Lohengrin that highlights its poetological interest as opposed to the derivative elements on which previous criticism has concentrated and thus shows that the creative depiction of polemic in the text is at least as important as academic polemic about it. The plot of Lohengrin in outline is straightforward: the hero arrives as the saviour of Elsam of Brabant, whom he marries on condition that she never ask him about his identity, and returns to the grail when she does. The work differs from other versions of the story of the Swan Knight, though, in several ways, not least among them the involvement of the hero in battles defending Christianity against the Hungarians and the Saracens.1 Preceding all this, we also find a depiction of the encounter between two rival singers that apparently led to the telling of Lohengrin’s story in the first place. This series of strophes, and the role of polemical elements in it, is examined in detail below. A guiding thought in On the Swan Knight narratives, see Lohengrin: Edition und Untersuchungen, ed. Thomas Cramer (Munich: Fink, 1971), 46–129; Beate Kellner, ‘Schwanenkinder – Schwanritter – Lohengrin: Wege mythischer Erzählungen’, in Udo Friedrich and Bruno Quast (eds), Präsenz des Mythos: Konfigurationen einer Denkform in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, Trends in Medieval Philology 2 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2004), 131–54, esp. 131–3, 139–41; Anthony R. Wagner, ‘The Swan Badge and the Swan Knight’, Archaeologia 2nd ser. 47 (1959): 127–38. 1

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the process is that ‘polemic’ is not simply a way of describing genres or entire discourses and texts but can also characterize strategies in the detailed use of language in potentially very different settings. The scholarship on the origins of Lohengrin provides a first example of this. What little information we have about the circumstances of the work’s composition is easily summarized: it was apparently written by an otherwise unknown Bavarian poet called ‘Nouhuwius’ (thus the acrostic in strophes 763– 5), probably around 1300.2 ‘Probably’, because the age of the earliest manuscript material – two leaves of parchment known as the Coblenz Fragments, now held in Berlin (Staatsbibliothek, Mgf 724) – is disputed. The debate about these fragments, on which hinges the question of whether Lohengrin was composed in the time of Rudolf of Habsburg or Ludwig of Bavaria, developed into a scholarly polemic that includes the following contribution from two literary scholars and experts on manuscript studies. They confidently highlight progress that has been made in their field – and observe that, as knowledge in it has grown, so its accessibility to outsiders has decreased: Die Entwicklung bringt es mit sich, daß das Feld immer unübersichtlicher wird und Außenstehende, die sich hineinwagen, zunehmend Gefahr laufen, sich zu verirren.3 It is a consequence of this development that the field is becoming harder and harder to navigate and that outsiders who try to enter it are in increasing danger of losing their way.

The construction of a boundary between the initiated and the uninitiated, and the deployment of language that draws attention to the dangers facing those who attempt to penetrate the specialism indicate that this may be more than a scholarly statement of fact. Christa Bertelsmeier-Kierst and Joachim Heinzle do, after all, have a particular figure and his views in mind: Heinz Thomas, a historian who had attempted, also by referring to manuscript material, to defend an opinion that differed from theirs regarding the time of Lohengrin’s composition. The fact that he had in the process described their work as an ‘in mancherlei Hinsicht erstaunliche Analyse aus Marburg’ (‘analysis from Marburg that is astonishing in many respects’)4 may go some way to explaining the tone of their response: Lohengrin, 20–23, 149–63. Christa Bertelsmeier-Kierst and Joachim Heinzle, ‘Paläographische Tücken! Noch

2 3

einmal zur Datierung des “Lohengrin”’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 115 (1996): 42–54, at 42. 4 Heinz Thomas, ‘Paläographische Tücken: Zur Datierung des “Lohengrin”’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 114 (1995): 110–16, at 114.

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Das Fazit der Musterung von Thomas’ Vergleichshandschriften lautet, daß ihr Aussagewert im Zusammenhang der Kontroverse gleich null ist. Das ist die unvermeidliche Folge mangelnder Vertrautheit mit dem materiellen Forschungsstand (Manesse-Codex!) und einer Mißachtung elementarer methodischer Grundsätze der Paläographie.5 The conclusion to be drawn from this assessment of the manuscripts which Thomas employs for comparison is that they are of practically no value in the context of this controversy. This is the inevitable consequence of insufficient familiarity with the state of research on the material (Codex Manesse!) and a disregard for elementary principles of palaeographical methods.

The irony that seems to have been lost on all concerned is that, by turning to strategies such as making inflammatory value-judgements, discrediting the character of an opponent and emphasizing boundaries between groups, the disputants find themselves in a situation not entirely dissimilar to the one portrayed in the opening strophes of the text. The figures there may not be academics in the modern sense of the word, but they are equally concerned – or profess equally to be concerned – with knowledge and the skill and legitimacy with which it is obtained. Specifically, we see Wolfram von Eschenbach vying with Clinschor ‘ûz Ungerlant’ (‘from Hungary’)6 in an encounter that leads to Wolfram being established as the narrator of the tale of the ill-fated marriage between Lohengrin and Elsam. The dispute is to be seen in part in relation to the work of the historical author Wolfram:7 the story of Lohengrin picks up a narrative thread that was left hanging at the end of Wolfram’s Parzival,8 the two texts are transmitted together in manuscript A (Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cpg 364) and Clinschor presents himself in Lohengrin as a descendant of the Bertelsmeier-Kierst and Heinzle, ‘Paläographische Tücken!’, 46–7.

5



6

7

Lohengrin, 3.21.

See Regina Unger, Wolfram-Rezeption und Utopie: Studien zum spätmittelalterlichen

bayerischen ‘Lohengrin’-Epos, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 544 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1990), 9–52; Hedda Ragotzky, Studien zur Wolfram-Rezeption: Die Entstehung und Verwandlung der Wolfram-Rolle in der deutschen Literatur des 13. Jahrhunderts, Studien zur Poetik und Geschichte der Literatur 20 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1971), 83–90. 8 See Joachim Bumke, ‘Parzival und Feirefiz – Priester Johannes – Loherangrin: Der offene Schluß des Parzival von Wolfram von Eschenbach’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 65 (1991): 236–64, esp. 255–64; Annette Volfing, ‘Welt ir nu hœren fürbaz? On the Function of the Loherangrin-episode in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s “Parzival” (V. 824, 1–826, 30)’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 126 (2004): 65–84; Horst Brunner, ‘Von Munsalvaesche wart gesant / der den der swane brahte: Überlegungen zur Gestaltung des Schlusses von Wolframs “Parzival”’, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift n.s. 41 (1991): 369–84, at 381.

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scribe of the conjuror of the same name in the earlier text (‘mîns enn uren sîn schrîber was’).9 Yet there is more at stake than a discourse of authorship defined by what came before. Wolfram’s argument with Clinschor turns on questions of knowledge and artistic skill, and in both cases, as we shall see, the discourse of confrontation comes to be pursued for its own sake, undermining the notion that there is actually a specific theme or issue that is meant to be settled. The concept of polemic speech provides one way of tracing how this takes place: it can be outlined with examples from the literature of medieval Germany up to the first decades of the fourteenth century, which will provide a context in which to see the techniques employed in Lohengrin. Polemic Speech in Middle High German Verse: Language and Voice The approach adopted here distances itself from understandings of polemic as a particular type of text that is set apart from others (such as the Streitgedicht, ‘debate poem’, or Streitgespräch, ‘disputation’) on the one hand or defined by its relationship to reality outside the text on the other (as suggested, albeit in rather different ways, by Burghart Wachinger and Günther Schweikle).10 Rather than categorizing texts along generic lines in this manner, the focus lies on matters of detail, on how language can be put to polemical effect in a variety of texts and contexts, and the phrase ‘polemic speech’ is intended to reflect this.11 Religion and literature, in some cases together, are involved in the examples below, starting with the twelfth-century Kaiserchronik (Chronicle of the Emperors) and ending with strophes from the Jenaer Liederhandschrift ( Jena Song Manuscript, one of the major sources for the medieval German lyric, c.1330).12 The passages, which represent only part of a much larger body of material, have been chosen because Lohengrin, 229.2289. Burghart Wachinger, Sängerkrieg: Untersuchungen zur Spruchdichtung des 13.

9 10

Jahrhunderts, Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 42 (Munich: Beck, 1973), 306; Parodie und Polemik in mittelhochdeutscher Dichtung: 123 Texte von Kürenberg bis Frauenlob samt dem Wartburgkrieg nach der Großen Heidelberger Liederhandschrift C, ed. Günther Schweikle, Helfant Texte T5 (Stuttgart: Helfant Edition, 1986), xi. 11 See Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), s.v. ‘polemic’, (accessed 30 Sept. 2013); Duden: Das große Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, 3rd edn (Mannheim: Dudenverlag, 1999), s.v. ‘Polemik’. 12 The first redaction of the Kaiserchronik breaks off in 1146. On the dating of the Jenaer Liederhandschrift, see Gisela Kornrumpf, ‘Der Grundstock der “Jenaer Liederhandschrift” und seine Erweiterung durch Randnachträge’, in Jens Haustein and Franz Körndle (eds), Die ‘Jenaer Liederhandschrift’: Codex – Geschichte – Umfeld (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 39–79, at 39.

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they illustrate not only the use of language for polemical purposes but also the significance of the presence of a speaker, or speakers, who direct what is said against an ‘Other’. The prologue of the Kaiserchronik contains an attack on those who are unwilling to listen to spiritually beneficial subject matter of the kind that its historiographical narrative purports to supply: die tumben dunchet iz arebait, sculn si iemer iht gelernen od ir wîstuom gemêren. die sint unnuzze unt phlegent niht guoter wizze, daz si ungerne hôrent sagen dannen si mahten haben wîstuom unt êre; unt wære iedoch frum der sêle.13 The foolish consider it laborious if they are ever to learn anything or to increase their wisdom. They are good-for-nothings who have renounced good sense, for they dislike hearing tell of what they could gain wisdom and honour from, even though it would benefit their souls.

The rhetorical effect of the passage lies in how it manipulates the relationship between two groups – those spoken to (the audience previously addressed directly in the second person plural as ‘ir’ and ‘iuh’) and those spoken about (‘die tumben’ [‘the foolish’]).14 The criticism is arguably made not in an attempt to persuade the latter to change their behaviour and thus to reduce the difference between them and the audience, but to underline and perpetuate that very difference: by describing the text as ‘daz guote liet’ (‘the good song’),15 the narrator positions his criticism as one that will be heard only by ‘die wîsen’ (‘the wise’) in the first place16 not by those whom he actually attacks. In this respect, this early section of the prologue of the Kaiserchronik proves to be subtly more complex than the subsequent, and better known, criticism of putting together lies that are bad for Die Kaiserchronik eines Regensburger Geistlichen, ed. Edward Schröder, MGH Deutsche Chroniken 1/1 (Hanover: Hahn, 1892), 6–14; on the prologue, see Christian Kiening, ‘Freiräume literarischer Theoriebildung: Dimensionen und Grenzen programmatischer Aussagen in der deutschen Literatur des 12. Jahrhunderts’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 66 (1992): 405–49, esp. 416–19. 14 Die Kaiserchronik, 3, 4. 15 Ibid. 42. 16 Ibid. 41. 13

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the soul, probably in the form of oral-heroic poetry.17 Rather than criticizing performance or production as in the latter case, the narrator here engages with the act of reception. He actively involves his audience in the opposition he establishes and, rather than criticizing with a view to constructively changing behaviour, excludes the possibility of engaging with those whom he attacks. The neglect of religious values could also be condemned in relation to specific historical contexts. Walther von der Vogelweide is perhaps best known for his love lyrics, but he also produced a significant body of political works, including a group of three strophes from the early thirteenth century that attack Pope Innocent III, albeit without identifying him by name (strophes VII–IX of the Unmutston; they are transmitted together in the Codex Manesse but not in other manuscripts). Strophe VII accuses him of abusing his position by causing murder and theft; VIII and IX allege that he is channelling money raised in Germany to fund the crusades into the coffers of the papacy. Walther employs a number of techniques to make his point. In strophe VII, the state of affairs in Innocent’s pontificate is likened to the situation ‘als hie vor bî einem zouberære Gêrbrehte’ (‘as it was before in the time of a conjuror called Gerbert’18) – a reference to Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II), who had come to be associated with black magic.19 Having thus cast doubt on the spiritual standing of its target, the strophe helps to make a reality of the response it calls for by at the same time performing it: ‘Alle zungen suln ze gote schrîen wâfen’ (‘Let every tongue cry out “to arms!” to God’).20 The strategy of depriving one’s opponent of a voice, implicit here, becomes explicit in the next two strophes. Strophe VIII puts words in the pope’s mouth with which he incriminates himself: ‘Ahî, wie kristenlîche nû der bâbest lachet, / swanne er sînen Walhen seit: “ich hânz alsô gemachet!”’ (‘Ha, how Christian is the laughter of the pope now when he says “I’ve done it!” to his Italians’).21 Strophe IX goes a step further by addressing an object – the collection box – which, being inanimate, cannot respond to See Ernst Hellgardt, ‘Dietrich von Bern in der deutschen “Kaiserchronik”: Zur Begegnung mündlicher und schriftlicher Traditionen’, in Annegret Fiebig and Hans-Jochen Schiewer (eds), Deutsche Literatur und Sprache von 1050–1200 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1995), 93–110, at 94–5. 18 Walther von der Vogelweide, Unmutston, VII, 2, in Leich, Lieder, Sangsprüche, ed. Karl Lachmann, 14th edn, ed. Christoph Cormeau with contributions from Thomas Bein and Horst Brunner, de Gruyter Texte (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1996), 64–5 (Lachmann 33.21, 34.4, 34.34); for the background, see Walther von der Vogelweide, Spruchlyrik, ed. and trans. Günther Schweikle, in Walther von der Vogelweide, Werke, vol. 1, rev. edn (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2005), 406–11. 19 Marco Zuccato, ‘Gerbert of Aurillac and a Tenth-Century Jewish Channel for the Transmission of Arabic Science to the West’, Speculum 80 (2005): 742–63, at 746–7. 20 Walther von der Vogelweide, Unmutston, VII, 5. 21 Ibid. VII, 1–2. 17

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the accusation levelled: ‘Sagent an, her Stoc, hât iuch der bâbest her gesendet, / daz ir in rîchet und uns Tiutschen ermet unde pfendet?’ (‘Tell us, collection box, good sir, did the pope send you here so that you can make him rich and us Germans poor and disposessed?’).22 Accordingly, the strophe ends by stating the allegation as fact: ‘her Stoc, ir sît ûf schaden her gesant, / daz ir ûz tiutschen liuten suochent tœrinne unde narren’ (‘Collection box, good sir, you have been sent here to cause damage, to seek out foolish women and stupid men among the Germans’).23 These devices are more than just rhetorical figures: in preventing opponents from speaking for themselves and denying the very possibility of an alternative viewpoint, the strophes present as unquestionable that which on a larger scale was debatable, as can be seen from Thomasin von Zerklære’s response to Walther’s criticism of the pope in Der Welsche Gast (The Italian Guest): Nu wie hât sich der guote kneht an im gehandelt âne reht, der dâ sprach durch sînn hôhen muot daz der bâbest wolt mit tiuschem guot vüllen sîn welhischez schrîn!24 How did this good man come to do the injustice of saying in his arrogance that the pope wanted to fill his Italian coffers with German property?

The strophes by Walther belong to what is known as Sangspruchdichtung – the corpus of German strophic compositions for sung performance that deal with themes, such as knowledge or political concerns, that set them apart from the courtly love lyric.25 Rivalry, including personal attacks on other poets, became increasingly common in this literary form in the course of the thirteenth century.26 Many of the authors involved are relatively obscure, and contextualizing them further is not always straightforward: while we are reasonably well informed about the identity of figures such as Konrad von Würzburg, our knowledge of others is much more sketchy. In this respect, it is worth bearing in mind that the attacks of interest here are not necessarily linked to biographical circumstances: Ibid. IX, 1–2. Ibid. IX, 9–10. 24 Der Wälsche Gast des Thomasin von Zirclaria, ed. Heinrich Rückert, Deutsche Neudrucke: Texte des Mittelalters (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965), 11191–5. 25 On the genre, see Helmut Tervooren, Sangspruchdichtung, Sammlung Metzler 293 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1995), 1–4, 81–9; Margreth Egidi, Höfische Liebe: Entwürfe der Sangspruchdichtung: Literarische Verfahrensweisen von Reinmar von Zweter bis Frauenlob, Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift-Beihefte 17 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2002), 37–54. 26 Wachinger, Sängerkrieg, 116–319. 22

23

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a poetological discourse of competition is also involved.27 One example occurs in the first of four strophes by the Meißner criticizing misguided beliefs about the ostrich, phoenix and pelican.28 Here, again, the figure under attack is not named openly: the criticism is directed at a generalized ‘swer’ (‘whoever’),29 but it would appear that the Marner, who makes the disputed assertions in his Sangspruch strophe 7.15, is meant.30 The Meißner discusses them at length, but begins with a direct attack on his opponent: Swer sanc, daz der pellicanus tode sine kint, her hat gelogen, her lese baz die bůch. Swer valsch singet, der mac wol wesen kunsten blint.31 Whoever sang that the pelican kills its offspring – he lied and would do better to read the books. Whoever sings wrongly is very likely blind to artistry.

The Meißner also links his criticism – oriented around abstracts such as ‘war’ (‘true’), ‘valsch’ (‘wrong, false’) and ‘kunst’ (‘artistry’) – to the physical body of the target under attack, part of which is singled out for punishment: ‘An valschem sange strafe ich lugeneres munt’ (‘Where song is false, I will punish the liar’s mouth’).32 It is significant that the mouth, the organ of speech and song, is singled out for punishment: the gesture of ‘gagging’ the opponent stands in the context of an active debate in a number of other strophes. Although it is not always possible to identify with certainty the authors involved or whether, for example, praise is meant genuinely or ironically, we do have a strophe, probably See Wachinger, Sängerkrieg, 303–6; Egidi, Höfische Liebe, 50–54; Freimut Löser, ‘Von kleinen und von großen Meistern: Bewertungskategorien in der Sangspruchdichtung’, in Dorothea Klein, Trude Ehlert and Elisabeth Schmid (eds), Sangspruchdichtung: Gattungskonstitution und Gattungsinterferenzen im europäischen Kontext: Internationales Symposium Würzburg, 15.–18. Februar 2006 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007), 371–96. 28 Meißner, XII, 1–4, in Georg Objartel, Der Meißner der Jenaer Liederhandschrift: Untersuchung, Ausgabe, Kommentar, Philologische Studien und Quellen 85 (Berlin: Schmidt, 1977); on the strophes and authors discussed here, see ibid. 292–4; Der Marner: Lieder und Sangsprüche aus dem 13. Jahrhundert und ihr Weiterleben im Meistersang, ed. Eva Willms (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 253–7, 386–94; Wachinger, Sängerkrieg, 121–7, 151– 70; Jens Haustein, Marner-Studien, Münchener Texte und Untersuchungen zur deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters 109 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1995), 14–47. 29 e.g. Meißner, XII, 1.1. 30 The strophe is numbered 7.15 in the most recent edition (Der Marner, 253), but much of the earlier critical literature refers to the earlier edition by Philipp Strauch, where it is numbered XV, 15. 31 Meißner, XII, 1.7–9. 32 Meißner, XII, 1.6 27

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by Fegfeuer, which refers explicitly to the Meißner and the Marner and comes to the latter’s defence: Danc habe der Mîzener, daz er sîner wort ist unverdrozzen! ich hœre sagen, daz er habe alle kunst beslozzen. in sîner hant des ist genuoch, er mac es wol gote danken. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   Ez wâren singer, alsô noch sîn, die tichten vil wol künnen. nû wil er dem Marner sînes sanges nicht gegünnen.33 Praise be to the Meißner for never tiring in his work with words! They say that he has laid claim to all artistry. He’s got enough of it in his hands; he can thank God for that. … There were singers, as there still are, who were skilled in poetry, yet he will not grant the Marner his song.

Passages such as the above are a reminder that considering strophes in isolation reveals only part of the picture: attacks could elicit responses. Another part of that picture takes shape in manuscript transmission. The strophes by the Meißner and Fegfeuer are both transmitted – in the case of the former, only – in the Jenaer Liederhandschrift. There, in turn, the Meißner’s strophes are followed by strophes by Konrad von Würzburg, which appear to have included one that is conventionally treated as an ironically exaggerated and thus critical praise of the Meißner.34 The manuscript as a whole, indeed, contains a number of texts ‘die – polemisch, mahnend, rühmend, trauernd – Autoren der Sammlung zueinander in Beziehung setzen’ (‘which – polemicizing, warning, praising, grieving – place authors in the collection in relation to one another’).35 This development of what might be described as a dialogicity in manuscript context is most distinctive in the case of a complex of material – also represented in the Jena manuscript – known as the Wartburgkrieg (Wartburg Battle), at whose core lies a confrontation between rival poets that was believed to have taken place at the court of Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia in the early thirteenth century.36 33 Fegfeuer, II, 4.1–5, in Wolfgang von Wangenheim, Das Basler Fragment einer mitteldeutsch-niederdeutschen Liederhandschrift und sein Spruchdichter-Repertoire (Kelin, Fegfeuer), Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe 1st ser. 55 (Berne: H. Lang, 1972). 34 Konrad von Würzburg, Die Klage der Kunst: Leiche, Lieder und Sprüche, ed. Edward Schröder, 3rd edn (Dublin: Weidmann, 1970), 32.286–300. The Jenaer Liederhandschrift has not been preserved in its original form (see Kornrumpf, ‘Der Grundstock der “Jenaer Liederhandschrift”’, 68–72). 35 Kornrumpf, ‘Der Grundstock der “Jenaer Liederhandschrift”’, 71. 36 The medieval sources are covered in Herbert Wolf, ‘Zum Wartburgkrieg: Überlieferungsverhältnisse, Inhalts- und Gestaltungswandel der Dichtersage’, in Helmut Beumann (ed.), Festschrift für Walter Schlesinger, Mitteldeutsche Forschungen 74

52

Polemic

It is to this material, specifically to that part of it known as the Rätselspiel (Game of Riddles), that the opening strophes of Lohengrin belong. Against the background of the tendencies traced so far, the exchange between Wolfram and Clinschor can be examined from three perspectives. The Opening of Lohengrin: Attacks on the Body, Argumentation and Character The challenges that Clinschor and Wolfram set each other are generally referred to as Rätsel (‘riddles’) in the secondary literature, and it will be convenient to draw on their conventional names in order to demarcate the different sections of the text. The first is the ‘Riddle of the Sleeping Child’, which Clinschor presents to Wolfram. The child, despite the efforts of his father to wake him with a horn-call and club, remains asleep and drowns when the dyke next to him bursts. Both disputants initially appear to be engaging with each other with the understanding that this puzzle can be solved. Clinschor envisages a solution to the challenge, ‘Swer mir nû loeset disen haft, / der hât in sîns herzen kunst guot meisterschaft’ (‘Whoever can untie this knot for me has good mastery in the artistry of his heart’),37 and Wolfram provides it: Hoert, wie er dem kinde rief, Altissimus der starke. ein iegelîch sünder ist des kint. gotes horn die wîsen meisterpfaffen sint.38 Take heed of how he – the great Almighty – called to the child. Each and every sinner is his child, and the wise master-priests are the horn of God.

At the core of the reading presented here, though, lies the observation that the dispute does not always amount merely to the ‘decoding’ of information (Cologne: Böhlau, 1973), 1: 513–16. The Wartburgkrieg has been edited by Karl Simrock (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1858) and by T.A. Rompelman (Amsterdam: Paris, 1939), but neither text is entirely satisfactory. On the preparation of a new edition, see Beate Kellner and Peter Strohschneider, ‘Wartburgkriege: Eine Projektbeschreibung’, in Martin J. Schubert (ed.), Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters zwischen Handschriftennähe und Rekonstruktion: Berliner Fachtagung 1.–3. April 2004, Beihefte zu editio 23 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2005), 173–202; Burghart Wachinger, ‘Überlegungen zu einer Neuausgabe des “Wartburgkriegs”: Mit Editionsproben zum Rätselstreit’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 133 (2011): 57–99. 37 Lohengrin, 4.31–2 38 Ibid. 5.47–9.

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‘encrypted’ in the form of a riddle.39 Wolfram, indeed, moves from the generalizing interpretation above to one that concentrates on Clinschor alone: ‘Wilt dû iht mêre in den sünden slâfen, / Des slegels wurf, daz ist der tôt, den er danne an dich sendet’ (‘If you choose to sleep a moment longer in your sins, then the club thrown is the death that he will send to you’).40 This leads to a breakdown of the framework of challenge and response. The boundary between the riddle as a linguistic puzzle to be decoded on the one hand and the situation of the disputants as characters on the other has become fluid: death is now a fate awaiting Clinschor personally, to whose life Wolfram further binds the riddle in his interpretation of the lynx that had according to God placed the child in its ‘valschen slaf ’ (‘false sleep’):41 ‘der luhs den tiuvel diutet, der dir sûren lôn / wil geben’ (‘the lynx means the Devil who hopes to give you an unpleasant reward’).42 Clinschor turns to a similar strategy when he links the figure of the Devil to Wolfram in order to undermine his ability to make sense of the riddle: Ich wil gelouben, daz den list dîn engel vindẹ oder daz der tiuvel in dir ist. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  her Sâtanas, ob ich iu hie entwîche, Daz kan sô balde niht geschehen.43 I’m convinced that your angel found this skill or that the Devil is in you. … Lord Satan, I’m not going to yield to you here that easily.

It is not only the distinction between the world of the riddle and the world of the characters that becomes blurred here: that between the metaphorical and literal senses of the language of violence is equally labile. If it is at least possible that Wolfram has not only likened Clinschor to the sinner whose eyes are closed to his guilt but also transposed him into the situation of drowning depicted in the riddle, so too ‘entwîche’ (‘withdraw from’, ‘make way for’)44 has a literal, physical sense that takes the imagery of confrontation out of the metaphorical plane. Both rivals draw on the same field of imagery elsewhere Ragotzky, Studien zur Wolfram-Rezeption, 48–62; Tomas Tomasek, Das deutsche Rätsel im Mittelalter, Hermaea n.s. 69 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), 50–54, 220–52. 40 Lohengrin, 6.56–7. 41 Ibid. 3.29. 42 Ibid. 7.69–70. 43 Ibid. 8.71–7. 44 Georg Friedrich Benecke, Wilhelm Müller and Friedrich Zarncke, Mittelhochdeutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1854–66), 3: 615–16, (accessed 30 Sept. 2013). 39

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in the context of this riddle: ‘Verwirrẹ ich mich in dînem ham …’ (‘If I get trapped in your net …’)45 and ‘Ich vindẹ iu noch daz iuch ze grunde kan senken’ (‘I’ll yet come up with something for you that will sink you all the way to the bottom’).46 The effect of such statements rests on the fact that they are not simply a way of expressing rivalry about the ability to solve problems but embody threats against the body. The shift into physical reality is finally and unambiguously completed later in the confrontation, when Clinschor summons a demon called Nazarus. He threatens Wolfram directly in terms of his potential to harm what he touches: Wolferam, sihst dû wie mir daz leben glüet? ruort ich den Emsenberc in disem zorne, Der müest ze üseln werden gar.47 Wolfram, can you see how my body is inflamed? If I were to touch the Emsenberg in this rage, it would be reduced to nothing but ashes.48

He then flees – ‘vuor enwec’ – when Wolfram draws the sign of the Cross,49 and reports to Clinschor thus: ‘bî dem ich was, der ist ein engestlîcher man, / er streich vür sich die lengẹ und ouch die breite’ (‘the person I met is a fearful man; he strode forth left, right and centre’).50 Before the encounter with Nazarus, though, there are two further challenges to consider. The ‘Riddle of the Sleeping Child’ is followed by the ‘Riddle of the Die’, which shows how the two rivals move away from the dialogue structure of reasoned argumentation such that they are no longer presenting each other with problems to be solved. Clinschor introduces this riddle – which concerns the interpretation of the numbers three and four on a die – by presenting the answer as one that cannot be found by legitimate means in the first place: Lohengrin, 5.44 (Wolfram to Clinschor); for ham as a net used to catch or trap, see Matthias Lexer, Mittelhochdeutsches Handwörterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1872–78), 1: 1162, (accessed 30 Sept. 2013). 46 Lohengrin, 8.80 (Clinschor to Wolfram). 47 Ibid. 17.162–4. 48 The Emsenberg is the modern-day Inselsberg near Schmalkalden in Thuringia (Wartburgkrieg, ed. Rompelman, 321). 49 Lohengrin, 17.172. ‘Wolfram daz kriuze vür sich reiz’ (ibid. 18.171), can be translated ‘Wolfram made the sign of the Cross’ following Wartburgkrieg, ed. Simrock, 142– 3 (strophe 114). The phrase ‘vür sich’ (‘in front of himself ’) would support this, but the verb rîzen in this context appears normally to describe writing, drawing or inscription (see Lexer, Handwörterbuch, 2: 477–8). 50 Lohengrin, 18.175–6. 45

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Nû sage mir, meister, sunder haz, wâ windet gotes tougen? nieman vürebaz gesuochen tar, swer blîben wil bî sinne.51 Now tell me, master, without hate, where do God’s mysteries end? Nobody will dare to seek further if he wants to stay sane.

By placing a taboo on the solution to the riddle, Clinschor thus seeks to deny Wolfram the opportunity to respond successfully to the challenge.52 This strategy is accompanied by a threat that picks up the physical mode of attack described above: swer nû dâ vürbaz sinnen wil, sô mac der ham im rîzen ûf des hirnes zil und belîbet doch vor witzen gar der vrîe.53 If anyone wishes to pursue this further, he may find his skin torn on the top of his head and yet remain quite without insight.54

Wolfram’s response initially disregards these threats with which Clinschor frames the riddle. He confidently asserts superiority over Clinschor: ‘Sô hiez ich nimmer Wolferam, / kundẹ ich dîniu wilden wort niht machen zam’ (‘I’d not be called Wolfram if I couldn’t tame your wild words’).55 He also correctly links the number 4 to the four Evangelists, whom he names in symbolic form (ox, lion, eagle and man). But, rather than completing the solution by interpreting the number 3, he abruptly switches into an attack on his rival: ‘ich rüerẹ an dînes sêwes grunt, / und schatt doch gote niht an sîner sterke’ (‘I have touched the bottom of your sea and even so have not done ill to the power of God’).56 On the one hand, Wolfram Ibid. 9.81–3. Beate Kellner and Peter Strohschneider, ‘Poetik des Krieges: Eine Skizze zum

51 52

Wartburgkrieg-Komplex’, in Manuel Braun and Christopher Young (eds), Das Fremde Schöne: Dimensionen des Ästhetischen in der Literatur des Mittelalters, Trends in Medieval Philology 12 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2007), 335–56, esp. 352–6. 53 Lohengrin, 9.88–90. 54 The interpretation of this passage turns on the word ham, which is here translated following Wartburgkrieg, ed. Simrock, 132–3 (strophe 105); see also Unger, WolframRezeption und Utopie, 49; Lexer, Handwörterbuch, 1: 1162; Benecke, Müller and Zarncke, Wörterbuch, 1: 624–45. 55 Lohengrin, 10.91–2. 56 Ibid. 10.99–100. The riddle can be seen in the context of such texts as Reinmar von Zweter’s strophe 109, where all six faces of the die are interpreted (Die Gedichte Reinmars von Zweter, ed. Gustav Roethe [Leipzig: Hirzel, 1887]). It has been suggested that Wolfram does

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thus asserts his ability to speak in spite of Clinschor’s efforts to prevent him from doing so, but, on the other, he does so by making recourse to the language of confrontation and thus himself adopts Clinschor’s strategy of realigning the discourse in a way that is no longer centred on solving the problem posed. In this respect, again, Nazarus takes matters a step further later, for he turns to the written word to cast aspersions against Wolfram’s character: ‘Dû bist ein leie, snippensnap, an dise want ich schrîbe’ (‘You’re a layman, Ha! I’ll write it on the wall’).57 Even the attempt to transcend the dialogue situation by means of the permanence of written language, though, does not lead to success, for Nazarus is, as we have seen, driven away by the non-linguistic sign of the Cross. In branding Wolfram a ‘leie’, Nazarus picks up a strategy of casting doubt on the character of one’s opponent that Clinschor and Wolfram have employed before him. Clinschor, for example, suggests after the ‘Riddle of the Die’ that Wolfram is familiar with the black arts of astronomy.58 Wolfram’s response has a similar flavour: Ich, Wolferam, muoz mich des bewegen, swaz dû und dîn tiuvel künste kunnest pflegen. die bringẹ alher, sô wil ich daz beziugen, Daz ich daz quater rehte vant.59 I, Wolfram, will have to do without any of the artistry that you and your Devil can pursue. Bring it all here, and then I will prove that I interpreted the four fittingly.

At stake here is not simply the factual content of his knowledge, but the way in which it is obtained and whether this reflects an association with the Devil. That these statements pursue rivalry in terms of character rather than by means of a coherent argument can be seen from the fact that Clinschor, having failed to ‘out’ Wolfram as a conjuror, later attempts to outdo him by boasting of his own provide the correct answer with his reference to the Evangelists – the riddle is usually known in German as the ‘Quater-Rätsel’ (‘Riddle of the Four’) – despite the fact that he never resolves the significance of the number 3 (see Tomasek, Das deutsche Rätsel im Mittelalter, 80–81; Kellner and Strohschneider, ‘Poetik des Krieges’, 352–3). 57 Lohengrin, 17.167. 58 Ibid. 11.103. The image of Wolfram as a layman has its roots in Wirnt von Grafenberg, Wigalois: ‘leien munt nie baz gesprach’ (‘a layman’s mouth never spoke better’; ed. J.M.N. Kapteyn, trans. Sabine Seelbach and Ulrich Seelbach, de Gruyter Texte [Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005], 6345); Clinschor contrasts this with his own self-image as a ‘meisterpfaffe’ (‘master-priest’; Lohengrin, 22.211). The astronomical expertise about which Clinschor and Nazarus interrogate Wolfram points back to Parzival (see Ragotzky, Studien zur WolframRezeption, 37–43, 53–6, 83–4; Unger, Wolfram-Rezeption und Utopie, 17–20). 59 Lohengrin, 12.111–14.

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knowledge in that very field: ‘Nigromanciam weiz ich gar, / der Astronomîe nim ich an den sternen war’ (‘I know all about black magic, and I can discern astronomy in the stars’).60 The precedence of attack over argument can be seen again in the ‘Brandan Riddle’. Here, Wolfram backs up his claim to have interpreted the 4 on the die ‘fittingly’ by referring to a number of authorities – Aristotle, Daniel and ‘Uranîas, der nam daz buoch Brandân ûz sîner hende’ (‘Uranias: he took the book from Brandan’s hands’).61 Clinschor’s response is to provide further information about Brandan: Ein engel brâht dem wîsen man daz buoch dâ von er manic herzen swaer gewan, dô er die schrift gelas an einer ecken. Er zêch den engel und daz buoch gar trügenhafter maere. vor zorne warf erz an die gluot. der engel sprach: ‘sint daz dîn ungeloube tuot, dû muost ez wider holn mit maniger swaere.’62 An angel brought the wise man the book that caused him much torment in his heart when he read the words in a corner. He accused the angel and the book of most misleading statements. He threw it onto the coals in anger. The angel said: ‘As it’s your lack of faith that’s done this, you’ll have to bring it back with many torments.’

This particular passage is clearly related to the German vernacular ‘ReiseFassung’ (‘Journey Version’) of the Brandan legend, in which Brandan burns a book describing God’s marvels because he did not believe them and replaces it by subsequently writing down what he witnesses on his travels.63 Yet it is hard Ibid. 19.181–2. Ibid. 12.117–18. The references to a book (or books) involving Brandan in Lohengrin

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and the Wartburgkrieg are complex (see Reinhard Hahn, ‘Ein engel gap dem wîsen man ein buoch: Anmerkungen zur Brandanlegende im “Wartburgkrieg”’, Neue Forschungen zur mittelhochdeutschen Sangspruchdichtung, special issue of Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 119 [2000]: 112–29, esp. 122–4). Mention is made of Brandan and a book on three separate occasions in Lohengrin (strophes 10, 12, 13), but it is not clear whether all involve the same book. 62 Lohengrin, 13.124–30. 63 For a summary, see Brandan: Die mitteldeutsche ‘Reise’-Fassung, ed. Reinhard Hahn and Christoph Fasbender, Jenaer germanistische Forschungen n.s. 14 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2002), 156–7, 206–7. The allusion is complicated by the fact that not all versions of the ‘Reise’-Fassung concur regarding the number of books Brandan read and the reasons for why he set off and wrote a ‘new’ one (see Walter Haug, ‘Brandans Meerfahrt und das

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to identify the place of the digression in terms of what has previously been a question-and-answer exchange. Its significance seems to lie instead in how it presents the relationship between the two protagonists. One reading, which detects a conciliatory element in the passage, is that Clinschor is pointing out the divine legitimacy behind the source of Wolfram’s knowledge.64 An alternative, though, is that Clinschor is attempting to outdo Wolfram by taking the latter’s reference to Brandan as a cue to display more of his own knowledge – and in the process casting Wolfram again in a shady light, for the aspects of Brandan’s story that he singles out are negative ones (the hardship caused by reading the book, the inability to believe its content, the trouble involved in making up for this). Nazarus, finally, likewise seeks to corner Wolfram into revealing dubious knowledge: Nû sage mir, hâst dû meisterschaft, wie daz firmamentum mit sô hôher kraft gein den siben plânêten müge kriegen.65 Tell me then, in your mastery, how the firmament is able to challenge the seven planets with such great power.

But Wolfram reiterates that what he knows, he knows in religiously legitimate terms, invoking Christ and Mary66 and treating God as the ruler of the universe: ‘Ich weiz, der alle dinc vermac, / der hât gezirkelt beidiu naht und ouch den tac’ (‘I know that he who can do all things has measured out both night and day’), before finally driving the demon away with the sign of the Cross.67 Resolution: Actions and Words We have seen so far how three kinds of polemic speech are employed in three different ‘riddles’ at the beginning of Lohengrin, culminating in the Nazarus Buch der Wunder Gottes’, in Laetitia Rimpau and Peter Ihring (eds), Raumerfahrung – Raumerfindung: Erzählte Welten des Mittelalters zwischen Orient und Okzident (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005), 37–55, at 46–7. 64 Cf. Hannes Kästner and Bernd Schirok, ‘Ine kan decheinen buochstap / Dâ nement genuoge ir urhap: Wolfram von Eschenbach und “die Bücher”’, in Martin Ehrenfeuchter and Thomas Ehlen (eds), Als das wissend die meister wol: Beiträge zur Darstellung und Vermittlung von Wissen in Fachliteratur und Dichtung des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit: Walter Blank zum 65. Geburtstag (Frankfurt: Lang, 2000), 61–152, at 129–30. 65 Lohengrin, 14.131–3. 66 Ibid. 15.147–50. 67 Ibid. 16.158–9.

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scene. It would be a mistake to treat these strategies as neatly separated and each bound to a different section of the text. The ‘Riddle of the Sleeping Child’, for instance, not only illustrates the introduction of violence and physical confrontation but also has Clinschor attack Wolfram’s character by identifying him with Satan,68 and Clinschor’s introduction of the riddle with ‘Swer mir nû loeset disen haft, / der hât in sîns herzen kunst guot meisterschaft’ (‘Whoever can untie this knot for me has good mastery in the artistry of his heart’)69 could, rather than signalling an initial readiness to engage in argument, be read as an ironic effort to make even the first riddle seem unsolvable. Likewise, Wolfram later introduces physical confrontation in the ‘Brandan Riddle’ by saying ‘Er zage, der hie den rücke vlühtic wende’ (‘Whoever turns tail in flight here will be a coward’).70 Combined, then, these strategies produce a situation in which, by the Brandan strophes, the participants are no longer engaging in a dispute that has the potential to be resolved by one party demonstrating superiority in terms of knowledge alone. This continues after Nazarus’s departure, when Clinschor returns to the fray with a series of strophes about how God made Lucifer and the existence of Arthur in a mountain, intertwined with boasts about how he cast a spell on the messenger of a Paris master and a maid from the Landgrave’s court and how his artistry has the force of violence: ‘sô kan ich kunst, dâ varent riutelinge mit’ (‘and I am skilled in artistry; it is accompanied by barbs’).71 Wolfram responds in like manner, highlighting what Clinschor does not know (the identity of a knight that Arthur sent out, later disclosed as Lohengrin)72 and likening his own artistry to a violent force: ‘mîn ûf geworfen kunst mit suoche gein im gât. / ob ich in einen vuoz danne hinder trîbe …’ (‘my artistry unsheathed comes at him to probe him. If I drive him back a footstep …’).73 Yet soon afterwards, by strophe 31, Wolfram is established as the narrator of the Lohengrin story proper and the exchange with Clinschor recedes into the background. On two out of the three occasions when it does resurface, Clinschor acknowledges Wolfram’s superiority: ‘von Eschenbach / her Wolferam singet vürebaz. als ich vor iach, / ich hôrt bî mîner zît nie sanc sô gerne’ (‘Wolfram von Eschenbach, sing on. As I said earlier, I’ve never enjoyed hearing a song this much’) and ‘sing vür dich, meister wîs. / ich gip dir an diser âventiur den prîs, / 70 71

Ibid. 8.76. Ibid. 4.31–2. Ibid. 12.120. Ibid. 19, 24–6 (on the background to the motif of Arthur in the mountain, see Roger Sherman Loomis, ‘The Legend of Arthur’s Survival’, in id. [ed.], Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959], 64–71), 20–21; 23.229 (Riutelinc appears to refer to a knife or small spear [Lexer, Handwörterbuch, 2: 471–2; Benecke, Müller, and Zarncke, Wörterbuch, 2/1: 748]). 72 Lohengrin, 27.264–5. 73 Ibid. 28.275–6. 68

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wan ich ir hân dekeiner slahte künde’ (‘Sing on, wise master. I’ll grant you fame on the basis of this tale, for I know nothing about it’).74 The polemical element has given way to consensus, at least regarding the specific question of who is the better teller of stories, raising the question of how, in the space of a few strophes, the nature of the encounter between Wolfram and Clinschor has changed so markedly. One explanation can be found by comparing this conclusive triumph over Clinschor with the earlier defeat of Nazarus described above. The crucial turning point in the Nazarus scene occurs when Wolfram takes the dispute out of the domain of language, described by the narrator thus: ‘Wolfram daz kriuze vür sich reiz. / der tiuvel vuor enwec’ (‘Wolfram drew the Cross. The demon departed’).75 It is not a further intensification of the verbal dispute that allows Wolfram to dismiss Nazarus and his threats, but a physical action – either that of inscribing a sign or that of making the sign of the Cross over his body.76 Likewise, his subsequent victory over Clinschor occurs when, rather than continuing to attack character, make threats and contest knowledge, he tells the story of Lohengrin. Wolfram sticks to the medium of language, but it is again an action, something that is done – in this instance narrating – that settles the issue. It is, however, not quite as simple as that, for even before Wolfram has begun his story, Clinschor appears to admit defeat in strophes 29 and 30: Clingesor sprach: ‘mir ist zornes buoz, von Dürgen herrẹ, ob ichz mit hulden sprechen muoz, sô hôrt ich selber singen nie sô gerne.’77 Clinschor said: ‘My anger has left me, Lord of Thuringia; if I may have leave to say this, then I’ve never wanted more to hear someone’s song.’

It is significant that these words are addressed to a new figure on the scene, Landgrave Hermann, who was mentioned briefly earlier with his wife in strophe 21 and has just called on Wolfram to tell the story of Lohengrin: Der Dürgenvürste sunder haz sprach: ‘wilt uns diu maere künden vürebaz wir müezen nâch den vrouwen allen senden. Kanst uns mit singen tuon bekant,

Ibid. 108.1071–3; 229.2281–3. In the third and final case (strophes 667–8), Clinschor and Wolfram exchange jibes about their relationships with women, including ironic deference to Wolfram on Clinschor’s part: ‘sing vür dich, meister guot’ (‘Sing on, good master’; ibid. 667.6664). The tension is resolved by the ladies of the court. 75 Ibid. 18.171–2. 76 See n. 49 above on the interpretation of the passage. 77 Lohengrin, 29.288–90. 74

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wie Lohengrîn von Artûs wart ûz gesant dâ von liez wir uns alle noete wenden. Al die wîle lâz wir iuch miteinander nimmer schernen.’78 The Landgrave of Thuringia said without hate: ‘If you will relate the tale to us from here, we’ll have to summon all the ladies. If you can reveal to us in song how Lohengrin was sent out by Arthur, we’d let all our concerns be banished. Throughout, we’ll never let you spar with each other.’

The Landgrave not only introduces an element of reconciliation by speaking literally ‘without hate’ and determining to prevent the two from conflicting with each other;79 he also defuses the situation by identifying the knight that Arthur sent out: in the end, it is neither Wolfram nor Clinschor who is first to name the unknown hero. Granted, the recipient is still confronted with a causal gap to fill in so far as it is not clear precisely what it is that makes Clinschor decide Wolfram is better than him, but what stands out is that this resolution is tied to the presence of a third party and his intervention in the dispute, particularly since the presence of others is underlined once the women have returned and Wolfram prepares to perform: Die lantgraevîn quam ouch aldar ze Wartberc ûf den palas. man wart dâ gewar bî ir wol vierzic vrouwen oder mêre, .  .  .  .  .  .  . nû siht man den von Eschenbach als man Hôrant vor der künigîn Hilden sach. der Clingesor sprach: ‘nû singet, meister wîse.’80 The Landgrave’s wife came to the palace on the Wartburg as well. Forty ladies or more were to be seen with her there. … Now von Eschenbach was seen as Horant had been seen before Queen Hilde. Clinschor said: ‘Now sing, wise master.’81

The comparison of Wolfram and Horant functions on two levels. Most obviously, it reinforces Wolfram’s physical presence in a public situation through Ibid. 29.281–7. Note, however, that the edition’s reading of the crucial line, 29.287, is the product of

78 79

considerable editorial intervention. The Landgrave and his wife have a similar role in strophe 21, where they assert the ability to judge Clinschor’s treatment of the court maid. 80 Lohengrin, 30.291–300. 81 The manuscripts diverge regarding the place name: ‘warpec’ (Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cpg 364, fol. 114v), ‘warpat’ (Heidelberg, Universitätsbibliothek, Cpg 345, fol. 6v), ‘wardpurg’ (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cgm 4871, p. 5).

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the repetition of the ‘siht man’ / ‘man … sach’ (‘was seen’ / ‘had been seen’) construction. In addition, those familiar with the allusion to Kudrun would recognize the figure of Horant as he appears in its sixth âventiure, the model singer who is likened implicitly to Orpheus and attracts the admiration of the court with his art, in contrast to the warrior role that he adopts in later episodes.82 It is no accident that the end of the dispute in Lohengrin is accompanied by the presentation of Wolfram unambiguously as singer, dissolving the connection between art and violence that he has invoked repeatedly up to now. Conclusion: Textual Strategies and Historical Setting This chapter began by identifying a number of ways in which polemic speech was deployed in medieval German literary texts. Techniques such as those found in the Kaiserchronik, in Walther and in the Meißner–Marner controversy reverberate in the dispute in Lohengrin where Wolfram and Clinschor deny each other the ability to respond, threaten each other’s bodies and discredit each other’s characters. At the same time, performing actions – doing things – in front of an audience in a public context seems, at least in these early strophes of Lohengrin, to provide an alternative way of managing disagreement: only with the intervention of the narrator to describe things and a third party in the form of the Landgrave to settle the matter is the circle of polemical back-andforth broken. At least two conclusions can be drawn from this, one relating to Lohengrin in particular and the other to the wider questions about polemic that are addressed in this volume. First, it is clear that the opening strophes of Lohengrin do more than merely pick up a well-known tradition of Wolfram-reception in order to establish Wolfram as the narrator of the story. Indeed, it is arguably a tendency to concentrate on this, the outcome of the opening, as a teleological objective for what precedes it, that has proved to be a source of difficulty for critics in the past. It has, for example, been stated that Clinschor presents Wolfram with riddles ‘welche Wolfram sämtlich mit Bravour löst, womit er seine Meisterschaft als Dichter unter Beweis stellt’ (‘all of which Wolfram solves with a flourish, thus demonstrating his mastery as a poet’);83 yet, as we have seen, an unproblematic question-and-answer exchange of this nature is precisely what the text does not present. Equally, it does not seem satisfactory to steer round the issue by simply registering the sequence of elements in the text and observing that it ‘begins with a long exchange in riddle form … after which “Wolfram” tells the story of 82 See Werner Hoffmann, Kudrun: Ein Beitrag zur Deutung der nachnibelungischen Heldendichtung, Germanistische Abhandlungen 17 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1967), 61–70. 83 Unger, Wolfram-Rezeption und Utopie, 9.

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Lohengrin’.84 The concept of polemic speech provides a route between these two alternatives, a source of the coherence that might otherwise appear to be lacking from the strophes, by allowing them to be read as a process of confrontation and resolution.85 This reading also has implications for Lohengrin criticism in more general terms, for it underlines with reference to one particular series of strophes that the interest of the work does not, as previous research has often seemed to suggest, lie primarily in its relationship to what came before.86 Mathias Herweg has, indeed, argued in a recent study that it should be read not in terms of earlier ‘classical’ courtly literature but as one of a series of romances from around 1300 that have in common a historicizing tendency.87 What also begins to emerge, though, alongside an awareness of such broader traits, is a picture of the compositional techniques employed in Lohengrin on a more detailed level: just as style is manipulated at the end to present a distinctive narrative voice rather than merely reproducing an earlier source text (the Sächsische Weltchronik [Saxon World Chronicle]),88 so too the representation of polemic speech at the beginning contributes to an encounter between two figures that unfolds with its own dynamic rather than just invoking the legacy of an earlier author (Wolfram). Second, Lohengrin stands out because it presents the linguistic strategies of polemic in a particular context. Again and again in the introductory examples, we encountered texts that generated or envisaged an ‘Other’ by means of language – the ‘tumben’ (‘foolish’), the collection box, a ‘swer’ (‘whoever’). Polemic speech is thus bound to the presence of a target; the Jenaer Liederhandschrift gave a first indication of how this presence could be made explicit, and the process is developed further in Lohengrin, where both rivals are present and refer to Matthias Meyer, ‘Intertextuality in the Later Thirteenth Century: Wigamur, Gariel, Lohengrin and the Fragments of Arthurian Romances’, in W.H. Jackson and S.A. Ranawake (eds), The Arthur of the Germans: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Dutch Literature, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages 3 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 98–114, at 104. 85 On war and competition as a source of coherence in the Wartburgkrieg, see Kellner and Strohschneider, ‘Poetik des Krieges’; Franziska Wenzel, ‘Textkohärenz und Erzählprinzip: Beobachtungen zu narrativen Sangsprüchen an einem Beispiel aus dem “Wartburgkrieg”Komplex’, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 124 (2005): 321–40. 86 e.g. Unger, Wolfram-Rezeption und Utopie; Alain Kerdelhué, Lohengrin: Analyse interne et étude critique des sources du poème moyen-haut-allemand de la fin du 13ème siècle, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 44 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1986). 87 Mathias Herweg, Wege zur Verbindlichkeit: Studien zum deutschen Roman um 1300, Imagines Medii Aevi 25 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010), esp. 15–70. 88 Alastair Matthews, ‘Wolfram als Chronist? “Chronikstil” und Sprecher in den Schlussstrophen des Lohengrin’, in Elizabeth Andersen, Ricarda Bauschke-Hartung, Nicola McLelland and Silvia Reuvekamp (eds) Literrischer Stil: Mittelalterliche Dichtung zwischen Konvention und Innovation (Berlin: de Gruyter, forthcoming). 84

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each other in both the third and the second person – Wolfram, for example, says in quick succession both ‘hoer, Clingesor’ (‘listen up, Clinschor’) and ‘der Clingesor’ (in the third person).89 This combination is an oblique reminder of the fact that the confrontation is taking place before an audience at the Landgrave’s court, even if the presence of the latter is only rarely made explicit. In this respect, the strategies described cease to be merely a linguistic game but take up a place in a historical environment. Johannes Rothe recognized as much in the fifteenth century when he included an account of a dispute between Wolfram and Clinschor in the description of the song contest on the Wartburg in his Thüringische Landeschronik (Chronicle of Thuringia): In den selben gecziten quam meister Clingsor, der mit sinen dinern ging recht als eyn bisschoff, czu Wartperg uf dem ritther huße czu entscheidene die senger widder Heinriche von Affterdingen, dar umb her dar kommen was. Da was widder on Wolferam von Esschenbach mit synen lyden, die her gesungen hatte. Unde dae meister Clingsor den mit sinen reden nicht obirwinden mochte.90 In these times, Master Clinschor came, in the manner of a bishop with his servants, to the knights’ palace on the Wartburg to adjudicate between the singers and Heinrich von Ofterdingen; that was why he had come. Wolfram von Eschenbach opposed him there with the songs which he sang. And master Clinschor was unable to overcome him with his words.

The quotation makes a fitting conclusion. It is, as the reference to Clinschor’s role as an adjudicator in the song contest makes clear, to be seen against the background of the Wartburgkrieg complex as a whole, to which the approach outlined here could profitably be applied in future work. As well as opening up this perspective, though, the evidence from the historiographical tradition underlines how the strands of polemic considered in this book converge in the opening strophes of Lohengrin: the linguistic strategies of polemic speech employed in the text are combined with – and perhaps even inextricable from – the context of a historical setting. Ibid. 27.270; 28.272. Johannes Rothe, Thüringische Landeschronik und Eisenacher Chronik, ed. Sylvia

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Weigelt, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters 87 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007), 49–51, at 50. Rothe’s Eisenacher Chronik contains a parallel account of the contest (ibid. 104–6), as do his life of Elisabeth of Thuringia and the chronicle now known as the Thüringische Weltchronik (Johannes Rothes Elisabethleben, ed. Martin J. Schubert and Annegret Hase, Deutsche Texte des Mittelalters 85 [Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005], 225–690; Düringische Chronik des Johann Rothe, ed. R. von Liliencron, Thüringische Geschichtsquellen 3 [ Jena: Frommann, 1859], 330–36).

Chapter 3

Feeling the Polemic of an Early Motet Sean Curran1 Form, Sensation and Ethics: Listening to Polemic à la Foucault Several contributors to this volume make reference to Foucault’s opposition of polemic and discussion – an opposition in which, as he put it, ‘a whole morality is at stake, the morality that concerns the search for the truth and the relation to the other’.2 For Foucault, discussion is ‘the serious play of questions and answers’ and ‘the work of reciprocal elucidation’,3 in which the ‘rights of each person are in some sense immanent’.4 That ‘sense’ is an explicitly formal one: ‘questions and answers’, Foucault claims, ‘depend on a game – a game that is at once pleasant and difficult – in which each of the two partners takes pains to use only the rights given him by the other and by the accepted form of the dialogue’.5 The developing logic of an argument worked out between two interlocutors constrains the moves that each may make as the conversation progresses. Considered in a different way, that form grants to participants a rhetorical space within which they may continue to speak.6 The roles of questioner and respondent must pre-exist any given discussion, to be invoked and reinhabited as each new discussion takes shape, live and in time; they confer upon those that inhabit them rights pertaining only to that strip of speech, respected by all participants for the duration of their talk. In discussion, a particular kind of I am most grateful to Samuel Dwinell, Maura Nolan, Spencer Strub, Emily V. Thornbury and the editors of the present volume for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 2 Michel Foucault, ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations: An Interview with Michel Foucault’ in, Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, vol. 1: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley et al. (London: Penguin, 2000), 111–19, at 111. 3 Ibid. 4 Ibid. 5 Ibid. 111–12. 6 Clearly Foucault recognizes that the roles of questioner and respondent will pass from one interlocutor to another over the course of a dialogue. In work formative to my thinking here, linguistic anthropologist Michael Silverstein analysed ways in which roles and discursive contexts are renegotiated by interlocutors in real time and the emergent and dynamic nature of the forms according to which a strip of dialogue is structured. Among numerous publications, see esp. ‘“Cultural” Concepts and the Language–Culture Nexus’, Current Anthropology 45 (2004): 621–52. 1

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ethical relation is brought about between people, entailing their commitment to right verbal action for as long as talk lasts, all in pursuit of truth.7 By contrast, there is no reciprocity, no collaboration for the polemicist, who ‘proceeds encased in privileges that he possesses in advance and will never agree to question’. The ‘enemy’ appears to the polemicist urgently, as one who is ‘harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat’.8 Against this enemy, a war of words is waged. For the polemicist, ‘the game consists not of recognizing this person as a subject having the right to speak but of abolishing him, as interlocutor, from any possible dialogue’.9 The moral high ground he assumes is profoundly unethical, for he constitutes the polemical enemy mute and without rights by an act of speech whose politics is dictatorial. The polemicist’s stridently violent tone – one imagines him noisily shouting down his opponent – only confirms the deeper violence worked by his words. For what is contravened is the right of an other to linguistic life. Polemical utterance is, in this sense, deadly.10 When Foucault speaks of discussion, it is clear that the paradigm case is an actual, live conversation between two people. But where discussion clearly has the character of an event, the times and places and media belonging to polemic are much less defined. It is basic to Foucault’s definition of polemic that the polemicist’s enemy is deprived of the ability to speak, but on the basis of Foucault’s description, it is difficult to imagine a polemic at all in which both polemicist and enemy are present. Indeed, given that the polemicist’s righteousness brims with violence, it would probably be unsafe for the adversary to be present. The diffuseness with which the polemical enemy is constituted, and the uncertainty of his physical place in the event of polemical utterance, is brought out when one thinks of polemical objects that are not people. What if a thing or a characteristic is targeted for polemic? An abstract quality or a disposition, like envy, wickedness or feigned holiness? Whatever person, body, thing or practice may lie beyond polemic that polemic would decry, then, it exists first and foremost – perhaps only – in the polemical speech itself, which lambasts its target at the cost of circulating knowledge about it. Polemic’s ethics are dark and all the darker because its rhetorical logic is so cunning. As Foucault states, polemic leaves its enemy without the linguistic apparatus to speak back as a subject, but, as he only implies, it also makes that enemy present, lending it voiceless form.11 As he writes, ‘a whole morality is at stake’ in the distinction of discussion and polemic, ‘the morality that concerns the search for the truth and the relation to the other’ (Foucault, ‘Polemics, Politics, and Problematizations’, 111). 8 Ibid. 112. 9 Ibid. 10 Judith Butler considers the ‘linguistic survival’ and ‘linguistic death’ of subjects as part of her theoretical account of hate speech (Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative [London and New York: Routledge, 1997], 28). 11 My reading of Foucault here resembles Butler’s revision of Althusser’s theory of ‘interpellation’ (baldly put, an act of naming which inaugurates a subject). She finds that 7

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I submit here that Foucault’s thoughts on polemic and discussion involve ideas about the liveness of performed events – especially with regard to discussions – and about how identities are brought into existence (or made impossible) through performance.12 Moreover, in contrasting the loud vitriol of the polemicist with the muteness of the enemy that polemical speech renders, Foucault invites us to consider polemic as a kind of sensory work and one which involves the ear. Indeed, one aspect of the distinction between discussion and polemic is clearly that the discussant listens closely to his counterpart, while the polemicist cannot even hear his enemy’s voice, because he leaves the enemy without one as he rages. Thinkers in all periods of the Western intellectual tradition have found in music an art especially involved with time – one which comes into presence in and through time, only then to vanish. To the extent that Foucault ponders liveness and performance here, he might be considered affiliated with them. As will become clear, his words can be useful for thinking through the practical and aesthetic operations worked in time by polemical lyrics elaborated in song. That is especially true of the texts of the thirteenthcentury motet: a genre which (as I have suggested elsewhere) can be considered as a technology for shaping the experience of singers, live and in community, in relation to the images and ideas explored in its poetry.13 Several of the essays in this volume address clerical abuse as a perennial topos for medieval polemicists. It was a theme visited and revisited across many sung poems of the High Middle Ages also, including those sung in motets. After a brief introduction to the genre, I will explore how a motet’s musical setting could inflect the experience of its polemical poetry for listeners and singers, through a close analysis of a polyphonic song known from a rich variety of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century sources and in several different polyphonic adaptations. Althusser does not adequately account for ‘the situation in which one is named without knowing that one is named. … The name constitutes one socially, but one’s social constitution takes place without one’s knowing’ (Excitable Speech, 30–31). Perhaps it would be possible to describe Foucault’s absent polemical enemy, in Butler’s terms, as one that is socially constituted without knowing it. But Butler is talking about the constitution of human subjects, whereas I am deliberately leaving open the possibility that the decried enemy of a polemic, born mute in polemical speech, may also be a thing or quality or behaviour. 12 For a collection of essays addressing similar issues in cultural forms of the middle ages, see Manuele Gragnolati and Almut Suerbaum (eds), Aspects of the Performative in Medieval Culture (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010). 13 See Sean Curran, ‘Writing, Performance, and Devotion in the Thirteenth-Century Motet: The “La Clayette” Manuscript, F–Pn n.a.f. 13521’, in Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach (eds), Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); see also id., ‘Vernacular Book Production, Vernacular Polyphony, and the Motets of the “La Clayette” Manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouvelles acquisitions françaises 13521)’ (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2013), ch. 3.

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The Thirteenth-Century Motet The motet is a genre which needs some introduction.14 It seems to have been born at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris, when texts were added to the expansive melismatic phrases of rhythmically measured polyphony found in the cathedral’s liturgical compositions. By the middle of the thirteenth century, motets were being composed from scratch with one, two or even three texted voices (often to different texts) sung simultaneously over a repeating excerpt from a Gregorian chant. The individual pitches of the chant would not originally have had precise durations relative to one another or to an underlying pulse or beat when heard in their first liturgical form. In a motet, however, a strip of notes is spliced from the host chant and arranged into short phrases (called ordines by contemporary Latin commentators) that are in measured, ternary rhythm. Usually a single rhythmic pattern prevails for all ordines, or a pair of rhythms in a question-and-answer arrangement is repeated again and again, cycling through the pitches of the chant. Over this foundation, the texted parts spin threads of melody that often have a kaleidoscopic array of phrase lengths against the tenor’s rhythmic repetitions. The poetry itself may (but also may not) have verses of irregular length, given the formal properties of the musical style in which it was set, though often patterns of textual alliteration and rhyme will be detectable within a musical phrase, with the potential to produce still more dizzyingly kaleidoscopic relationships between the musical and textual designs – even within a single voice part, let alone in the relations between several voices and their texts. The most important feature of this music is its measured rhythm, which permits the relation of voice parts and their poems to be calculated in time with minute precision.15 As they cultivated this new kind of polyphonic song, composers and scribes also devised notations of increasing rhythmic specificity, in which each written sign specified the duration of its pitch much This is a very brief summary of a rich and developing scholarship. For overviews, see Richard L. Crocker, ‘French Polyphony of the Thirteenth Century’, in Richard L. Crocker and David Hiley (eds), New Oxford History of Music, vol. 2: The Early Middle Ages to 1300, 2nd edn (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 636–78; Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 1: 207–46; for the standard specialist account of the genre in English, see Mark Everist, French Motets in the Thirteenth Century: Music, Poetry, and Genre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 15 The motet is not the only thirteenth-century genre with measured rhythm. However, it is probably the only genre that was always in modal rhythm from its inception: the other polyphonic genres of conductus and organum, in their earliest (probably late twelfthcentury) manifestations, also contained passages which were not in measured rhythm. These genres seem largely to have fallen out of compositional practice in the second half of the thirteenth century, while polytextual motets were composed well into the fifteenth century. 14

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more precisely than ever before.16 To whatever degree this ‘mensural’ notation was involved in the act of composing a motet, it certainly permitted precisely calculated songs to be transmitted to new singers beyond the orbit of those who composed the pieces.17 In motets, the collaborative action required to bring a piece to life is specified in a kind of writing that allows the collaboration to be re-enacted over time and distance. Communities can be brought into being for the time of performance, again and again. The technological success of the motet is brought clearly into focus in pieces that shape singers’ experience devotionally:18 working together, singers make aesthetically present a musical effect or object rendered explicitly devotional by the texts, or one readily amenable to devotional or meditative explication. Images and sensations evoked by the texts of a motet are often carefully positioned in the order of a piece’s unfolding events, with parameters of musical design then drawing particular attention to them, so as to intensify the affective response an image invites (or so I have argued).19 But all this sensory and cognitive work cannot have uniquely been done in the service of devotion, simply because not all motets have texts that focus on devotional topics. The fund of aesthetic devices available in the genre could be used for other purposes – among them, polemical ones. For an overview, see Anna Maria Busse Berger, ‘The Evolution of Rhythmic Notation’, in Thomas Christensen (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 628–56. 17 Berger has observed that the use of modal rhythm in the Notre Dame organum (from which the motet descended) resembles the use of verse for memorizing information at the time. Modal rhythm could thus have been one (of several) mnemotechnic devices for composing, memorizing, and transmitting passages of discant (that is, the parts of Notre Dame organa that are in modal rhythm) without writing. She rightly characterizes the Notre Dame repertory as one in which ‘oral and written transmission coexisted and interacted’ (Medieval Music and the Art of Memory [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2005], 161–97, at 197). Catherine A. Bradley finds a similar interplay of oral and written processes at work in the composition of early motets (‘Contrafacta and Transcribed Motets: Vernacular Influences on Latin Motets and Clausulae in the Florence Manuscript’, Early Music History 32 [2013]: 1–70, esp. 22). 18 For a searching reflection on Foucault’s conception of ‘technology’ and its utility for describing musical practices, see Judith A. Peraino, Listening to the Sirens: Musical Technologies of Queer Identity from Homer to Hedwig (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006). Elsewhere, in a study on monophonic pieces called ‘motets entés’ (‘grafted motets’) by thirteenth-century witnesses, Peraino points out that ‘motets, like grafted trees, were also associated with technical skill and refinement’ by medieval people (Giving Voice to Love: Song and Self-Expression from the Troubadours to Guillaume de Machaut [Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011], 214). Although I am interested in polyphonic pieces rather than monophonic ones (for reasons which will become clear), Peraino’s studies cited here demonstrate the usefulness and historical appropriateness of considering thirteenth-century motets more broadly as technologies. 19 See n. 13 above. 16

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A Motet and Its Contexts, Historical and Liturgical The motet In veritate comperi (451) / Veritatem (M37)20 (‘In truth, I have discovered’ / ‘Truth’) as its incipits imply, is as concerned with truth as Foucault. It is a sharp polemic on clerical corruption, decrying a world in which prelates are ‘puffed up with vainglory’ and ‘inheritors of Lucifer’ himself.21 It is now found in nine extant manuscripts of thirteenth-century polyphony, all of which present the piece at least with the accompanying plainchant tenor Veritatem, and sometimes with other components as well.22 In one manuscript, In veritate comperi is attributed to the celebrated poet Philip the Chancellor,23 whose lyrics are notoriously caustic in tone.24 Scholars have often searched them for references to political events in which he was involved, or events which he otherwise witnessed.25 Indeed, Thomas B. Payne has suggested that the words ‘prelati / iam elati gloria’ (‘prelates now puffed up with vainglory’) in our motet may indicate that the text was written around the time of Philip’s difficult battle of wits with William of Auvergne, 20 Numbers in parentheses following a title indicate a lyric’s index number in the standard bibliography of thirteenth-century polyphony, Hendrik van der Werf, Integrated Directory of Organa, Clausulae, and Motets of the Thirteenth Century (Rochester, NY: by the author, 1989). In accordance with convention, tenor incipits are given in small capital letters. 21 For text and translation of the lyric, see below, p. 74. 22 For a complete listing of versions and sources of the piece, see Van der Werf, Integrated Directory, 68. The filial relationships among the various witnesses are complicated and would merit a study of their own. 23 British Library, London, MS Egerton 274. The attribution to Philip is on fo. 3r, and the song itself begins on fo. 50r. Scholars generally understand the attribution to pertain to the poems rather than the music, but he may also have been a musician – Peter Dronke points out some medieval evidence that he was one in ‘The Lyrical Compositions of Philip the Chancellor’, Studi medievali 3rd ser. 28 (1987): 563–92, at 565–6. As Thomas B. Payne put it, ‘the rhythmic vitality of [Philip’s] poems and the skill with which they are joined to music indicate, at the very least, a poet of no minor musical sensibilities’ (‘Associa tecum in patria: A Newly Identified Organum Trope by Philip the Chancellor’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 39 [1986]: 233–54, at 235). 24 Peter Dronke writes that Phillip’s oeuvre ‘is animated by an intense hatred of injustice; he scourges injustice to the point of cruelty. He is unafraid of the mighty in Church and State, he speaks out on behalf of the poor. He attacks the potentes perhaps more savagely than anyone before Dante, and, like Dante, with prophetic urgency and an anger that can sound overbearing’ (‘The Lyrical Compositions of Philip the Chancellor’, 574). 25 For example, Payne, ‘Associa tecum in patria’; id., ‘Datable “Notre Dame” Conductus: New Historical Observations on Style and Technique’, Current Musicology 64 (1998): 104– 51; id., ‘Aurelianis civitas: Student Unrest in Medieval France and a Conductus by Philip the Chancellor’, Speculum 75 (2000): 589–614; David A. Traill, ‘Philip the Chancellor and the Heresy Inquisition in Northern France, 1235–1236’, Viator 37 (2006): 241–54.

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who was bishop of Paris from 1228 to 1249.26 Such a reading is possible now, and perhaps would have been possible in the thirteenth century, for someone who knew (or believed) the lyric had been composed by Philip and knew of his strained relationship with this other prelate. However, the piece was transmitted in eight other manuscripts with no indication of its authorship, and at least one of them suggests that the piece circulated beyond clerical contexts, to groups who may not even have been able to hazard a guess at the poem’s author, much less use the attribution as a crutch for interpretation.27 For that reason, the question of Philip’s authorship will not be addressed further here, because it seems not to be a delimiting criterion for determining what medieval singers might have found and valued in this song. And because the object of this poem’s scorn is left open – that is, because the lyric does not name a particular person about whom it is written or an event which has occasioned its composition – medieval singers would doubtless have been able to ponder corrupt situations closer to home through the lyric’s words. In many pieces, the liturgical context of a chant serves as a thematic point of departure for the motet voices composed against it. That is certainly true in our piece. The tenor Veritatem is taken from a chant sung at Mass at the Cathedral of Notre Dame, Paris during the octave of the Feast of the Assumption and also for the Common of a Virgin: the Gradual Propter veritatem. Audi filia.28 Its text is as follows: See his edition of Philip the Chancellor, Motets and Prosulas, ed. Thomas B. Payne, Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance 41 (Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, 2011), xxvii n. 25, where Payne also rejects a former modern attribution of In veritate comperi to William himself as spurious. Payne outlines the circumstances of Philip’s disputes with William on pp. xxv–xxvi. 27 I have suggested that the ‘La Clayette’ manuscript (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, nouv. acq. fr. 13521) could have been used in practices of lay devotion. In veritate comperi appears in the manuscript at fos 378v–379v as one voice of a four-part, bilingual version of the motet, whose incipits are In salvatoris nomine (452) / Ce fu en tres douz tens de mai (452a) / In veritate comperi (451) / Veritatem (M37). Certainly La Clayette bears hallmarks of having been produced by scribes who specialized in copying vernacular texts and whose access to the materials they set out to collect seems to have been sporadic. See Sean Curran, ‘Composing a Codex: The Motets in the “La Clayette” Manuscript’, in Judith A. Peraino (ed.), Medieval Music in Practice: Studies in Honor of Richard Crocker (Middleton, WI: American Institute of Musicology, 2013), 219–53; id., ‘Reading and Rhythm in the “La Clayette” Manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, nouv. acq. fr. 13521)’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 23 (2014): 125–51. 28 The chant’s position in Notre Dame’s calendar was established by Craig Wright (Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1550 [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989], 261). Catherine A. Bradley suggests that the chant was also used for Lady Masses (‘Ordering in the Motet Fascicles of the Florence Manuscript’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 22 [2013]: 37–64, at 41 n. 17). 26

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[Respond:] Propter veritatem,* et mansuetudinem, et iustitiam: et deducet te mirabiliter dextera tua. [Verse:] Audi filia, et vide, et inclina aurem tuam: quia concupivit rex* speciem tuam.29 [Respond:] Because of truth and meekness and justice: and he shall conduct you wonderfully by your right hand. [Verse:] Hear, O daughter, and see, and incline your ear: for the king has desired your appearance.

Like all Graduals, Propter veritatem consists of two parts: a respond and a verse. The respond is intoned by a soloist or small group, joined (at the position marked with an asterisk) by the other members of the cathedral choir. The verse is sung by the soloists. In liturgical performance, the respond is often repeated after the verse, and it certainly was at Notre Dame.30 In this particular song, the text is woven from excerpted and redeployed stichs from Psalm 44 (Vulgate).31 The respond quotes the second part of Psalm 44:5. The first eight words of the verse quote the start of verse 11 verbatim, but the verse’s last five words paraphrase the opening of verse 12: in the Vulgate, verse 12 reads ‘et concupiscet rex decorem tuum’ (‘for the king will desire your beauty’) contrasting with the chant’s ‘quia concupivit rex speciem tuam’ (‘for the king has desired your appearance’). The new order of psalmic elements in the chant creates some interesting discrepancies which are best explained from back to front. Perhaps more significant than the contrast of ‘decorem’ (‘beauty’) in the psalm against ‘speciem’ in the Gradual (which can mean ‘beauty’ but also ‘appearance’ or ‘sight’) is the transformation of tenses from future to perfect and the conjunction ‘quia’ chosen for the chant: the king has desired the daughter’s appearance, and it is See Liber usualis, with Introduction and Rubrics in English, ed. Benedictine Monks of Solesmes, Society of John the Evangelist (Tournai: Desclée, 1952), 1676: my translation. 30 Edward H. Roesner reports the evidence in the introduction to his edition of Les Quadrupla et Tripla de Paris, Le Magnus liber organi de Notre-Dame de Paris 1, ed. Edward H. Roesner (Monaco: Éditions de l’Oiseau-Lyre, 1993), lxxxiv. 31 For which, see Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. Robert Weber, revd Roger Gryson (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007). Sylvia Huot discusses this tenor and the vernacular motets built above it in Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet: The Sacred and the Profane in Thirteenth-Century Polyphony (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 99–106. She also discusses the bilingual, four-part version of our motet found in the La Clayette manuscript (see n. 27, above) (ibid. 115–27). Although she identifies the psalm verses from which the gradual is formed (ibid. 212 n. 31), she does not analyse how they are reworked for their new context, or the grammatical alterations the reworking requires. She develops a rich reading of the bilingual version by comparing the imagery of each voice part, using an analytical method focused on thematics, allegory and figures of parody. By contrast, I am concerned with how ideas of sensation and perception are forgrounded by the reworking of psalm verses for the chant text, how those notions are taken up in In veritate comperi alone by formal procedures in the design of its poetry, in the relative disposition of its images in the time of performance, and in the piece’s musical setting. 29

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for that reason that the daughter must now hear. When the respond is repeated, its unexplained status as a subordinate clause is resolved, as it provides the reason the king has desired the daughter’s appearance: it is on account of her truth, meekness and justice – and this contrasts with the psalm, in which those properties belong to a male beloved exhorted to go forth and rule.32 ‘Dextera tua’ becomes an ablative of instrument, the hand by which the king will conduct her wonderfully. The Marian purpose of the chant is clear, and these subtle reworkings find within the psalm a figure not only for the Virgin’s miraculous Assumption, but for her still more miraculous act of hearing: the text describes a figure of incarnation and does so by emphasizing the sensory apparatus through which Mary conceived Christ as the Word of God at the Annunciation. As Sylvia Huot puts it, when discussing an explicitly Marian Latin voice added to the motet in one source, ‘the Virgin heard the greeting of the archangel; she conceived, the Word of God entering through her ear; the world fell silent to receive God’s Word made flesh’.33 But note too that the chant describes not only an act of hearing, but of correct listening secured through active attention. In order to hear properly, the psalmic daughter must also see, and incline her ear. Bearing Witness Just as the poet who crafted the chant text found a useful idea in the psalm, then built something new from it, so the poet of In veritate comperi (whoever he was) took from the fund of images and ideas in the chant when making his motet. As its opening words lay immediately plain, the motet is a meditation on truth that echoes the tenor’s incipit ‘Veritatem’. Here is a text and translation:34 32 Verses 44:4–5 read ‘accingere gladio tuo super femur tuum potentissime / specie tua et pulchritudine tua et intende prospere procede et regna propter veritatem et mansuetudinem et iustitiam et deducet te mirabiliter dextera tua’ (‘Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, O thou most mighty. / With thy comeliness and thy beauty set out, proceed prosperously, and reign. Because of truth and meekness and justice: and thy right hand shall conduct thee wonderfully’ [The Douay Rheims Bible Online, (accessed 15 Jan. 2014)]). The grammatical gender of the vocative addressee is clearly masculine. 33 Huot, Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet, 121. 34 The Latin text is taken from Philip the Chancellor, Motets and Prosulas, 71–2, with one alteration: I take the reading ‘domant’ in place of Payne’s ‘domat’ in v. 8, which is shared by all manuscripts except one – ironically, the source whose musical text I transcribe in the appendix, for reasons outlined below. A collation of the voice part is offered in James Heustis Cook, ‘Manuscript Transmission of Thirteenth-Century Motets’ (PhD diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1978), 2: 660–88: this word at 666. My translation here is based on Payne’s, but is significantly adapted. I am most grateful to Emily V. Thornbury for her thoughts on my version.

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74 In veritate comperi quod sceleri cleri studet unitas. Livor regnat; veritas datur funeri. Heredes Luciferi sunt prelati, iam elati gloria. Membra domant alia, capitis insania. Ceci ducesque cecorum, excecati terrenorum ydolatria. Querunt omnes propria. Manus patent, sed iam latent crucis beneficia. Luge, Syon filia! Fructus urit messium ignis in caudis vulpium. Tristes perypocritas! Simulata sanctitas, ut Thamar in bivio turpi marcens ocio, totum orbem inficit, nec deficit, sed proficit, data libertati; castitatem polluit, caritatem respuit, studens parcitati. Sedet in insidiis hominum pre filiis, pauperem ut rapiat et, linguarum gladiis, iustum ut interficiat. Non est qui bonum faciat istorum quorum consciencia spelunca latronum. Hanc vide, videns omnia, deus ultionum. Tenor: Veritatem

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In truth I have discovered that the unity of the clergy is eager for wickedness. Envy rules; truth is given over for burial. The prelates are Lucifer’s heirs, puffed up with vainglory. The other members rule Now that the head has gone insane, And the blind are leaders of the blind, blinded by the idolatry of worldly things. All men strive after their own things. They hold out their hands [in greed], But it is the benefits of the Cross that they   are now lacking. Weep, daughter of Sion! The fire in the foxes’ tails burns the fruits of the harvests. You miserable, thorough hypocrites! Feigned holiness, like Tamar at the crossroads weakening with shameful indolence, infects the whole world; and neither does it wane, but makes progress when give the liberty. It defiles chastity, spits out charity, eager for miserliness. It sits in ambush before the sons of men, so that it may pillage the poor, and, with the swords of [its] tongues, that it may murder the just. There is no-one of the sort who does good among them whose conscience is a den of thieves. See this, O all-seeing God of vengeance. [Because of ] truth

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How is clerical corruption made an enemy and made present in this lyric as it unfolds in time, and in what stylistic features may we locate the polemic’s violent force? Clerical corruption is an enduring topos and is hardly specific as a result. In one sense, this is confirmed by the poem’s investment in scripture, with which it is in both deep and palpable conversation: over its course, psalmist, prophets and gospellers lend words or topoi to the narrator, as Payne has shown.35 These older voices magnify the portentousness of the narrator’s tone with the gravity of deep textual history. But if the scriptural references confirm that wickedness is old and evergreen, the poem’s opening and closing verses assert another temporality in which ecclesiastical abuses are present and urgent. The lyric begins with a witness statement, intensified by a protestation of its veracity: ‘In truth I have discovered that the entire clergy is given over to wickedness.’ As such, the narrative voice looks backwards in time, to draw from memory the experience of corrupt things he will now unfurl in his song. At the end of the piece, in turn, the narrator calls upon an almighty eye to ratify all he has perceived – a ratification which, if it happens at all, must happen only after the song has come to a close. So the timelessness of clerical abuse is made acutely present in this lyric which draws close attention to the time of its enunciation, heightened in voluminous song, because a statement that the narrator has witnessed reaches an impassioned request that God will witness.36 The poem’s interlocked temporal structures – its insistence both on textual history and on the present moment of performance – give momentary form to a world in which we have always been called upon to decry wickedness, for wickedness has always been present, always now. A Note on Scholarly Models The final call on God is one that asks him to see as a result of having heard: a nexus of sensing, interpretation and action is constructed here similar to that 35 Payne is greatly to be thanked for the diligence with which he has reported the poem’s many biblical references and the images and ideas it shares with other lyrics attributed to Philip the Chancellor (see Philip the Chancellor, Motets and Prosulas, 71–2). I rely on that philological work in the paragraphs that follow. 36 In work which I have found useful for thinking about the live effects produced by motets, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht urges that we should pay attention to the ‘presence effects’ of artworks, as well as their ‘meaning effects’ (Production of Presence: What Meaning Cannot Convey [Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004], 2). But where Gumbrecht’s analysis of presence effects forms part of an analysis of aesthetic perception in general, my point here is that this motet draws heightened attention to its status as both thing and event, present in time. It does so in too particular a manner for the effect to be assimilated to a general theory of aesthesis.

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modelled by the chant text. But where the sensations narrated in the chant text have miraculous purpose, the motet’s sensory work disturbs. To analyse the sensory content of this motet’s poetic design, I draw on several strands of literary scholarship that address the cognitive life of stories in the Middle Ages and beyond. Sarah McNamer has recently examined Passion poetry from a cognitivist-historical perspective, construing texts used in affective meditation as ‘intimate scripts’ that conjured vivid mental pictures of the suffering Christ to induce the reader’s compassion.37 Bill Burgwinkle and Cary Howie have explored hagiographical texts through the lens of phenomenological theories of pornography, to argue that vitae offered experiences of fusion to their readers. Vividly picturing the suffering body of the saint in both text and manuscript image, they suggest, was a technology of bodily expansion in which impossible, miraculous experience could be fleetingly taken on as the reader’s own.38 Especially important for my argument is a recent article by Steven Justice on miracle stories.39 Studying the cognitive practices of medieval belief and their relation to doubt, Justice proposes that miracle stories goaded the intellect to confront its inability to grasp the miraculous, so as to train the will to exert command over the intellect itself. Importantly, he shows that ‘while the images [miracle stories] use are lurid and sensational, they are not vivid. Indeed they are strangely unformed, and almost always confront the reader with almost insuperable obstacles to composing them into imaginative coherence’.40 He finds that the imaginative difficulty required to cohere the images embodies precisely the toughest points of doctrine that stimulated both elaborate scholastic explanation and popular unbelief.41 Motet voices in general can be thought of as (among other things) sets of instructions for singers to follow – or better, sections of formed musical time for them to inhabit – through which they brought poetry and its images to life for real-time contemplation and live experience. They were especially potent ‘emotive scripts’. Our particular motet’s force as a polemic resides in the ways it elicits acutely unpleasant sensation through images which, like Foucault’s polemical enemy, are given only imprecise contours. Through shadowy bodies, described as capable of sensing and stimulating sensation, the general condition Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 1–21. 38 Bill Burgwinkle and Cary Howie, Sanctity and Pornography in Medieval Culture: On the Verge (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010). 39 Steven Justice, ‘Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 42 (2012): 307–32. Justice draws in turn upon work by Elaine Scarry, who has examined the means by which vivacity is achieved in literary works (Dreaming by the Book [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001], 1–71). 40 Justice, ‘Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt’, 324. 41 Ibid. 37

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of clerical corruption becomes urgent, all within a structure of enunciation which (as we have seen) draws heightened attention to the moment of performance. Whether or not that heightened urgency might have provoked singers to worldly action against corruption after their song was finished, we will see that the affective state the song aims to bring about, and the means by which that state is cultivated, were tailored to encourage personal change. A Monstrous Enemy At the outset of the song, that which the narrator has ‘in truth discovered’ is described in a subordinate clause governed by the noun ‘unitas’: he has found that ‘the unity of the clergy is eager for wickedness’. Although clerics are acting badly, it is their oneness that is first asserted, and so it is a oneness that first defines the figure standing for clerical abuses, the object of the poem’s polemic. In the verses that follow, the successive figures which stand for clerical corruption enact a division of oneness into fragmentation (that is, after envy itself takes on personified form in the act of reigning [v. 4], and truth is given a body in the horrible act of being buried by the frighteningly unknown agents of a passive verb [v. 5]).42 At verse 6, in a simple trick with grammatical number, oneness is replaced with plural ‘prelati’ (‘prelates’) that divide the polemical object into many bodies. Then with the words ‘membra domant alia capitis insania’ (‘the other members rule now that the head has gone insane’) and having turned the mind’s eye on many bodies springing out of one, the poem directs us to contemplate a single body in disarray: the seat of reason has been disturbed, and the members, free of governance, apparently flail in conflict with one another. Note too that the limbs themselves are the grammatical subject of the construction, ruling one another badly while the head is (appropriately for the image) rendered in a rather helpless ablative that barely achieves syntactic sense. We have progressed from a body of oneness, to a morass of many bodies, to the flailing parts of a single body. Whatever is encased in these figures (and it is very much to the point that the figures never last long enough to lend their referent coherence), it is so wicked that it is corrupting before our minds’ eyes. And it takes a step further. The logic of bodily partition continues by taking us from limbs to a single and vulnerable organ of sense, the eye, made present in the negative figure of blindness. The removal of sight is given heavy emphasis through annominatio on the stem cec-: ‘ceci ducesque cecorum / excecati terrenorum / ydolatria’. This is surely 42 On contemporaneous debates about parts and wholes, see Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), esp. pts 2, 3.

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meant to be recalled by the poem’s other moment of annominatio at verse 38: ‘Hanc vide, videns omnia’, where God is called upon to see. An apperception of confused motion is stimulated both in this figure of the blind leading the blind and in that of the competing and unregulated members upon which it follows. The poem offers up imaginary bodies in moving forms, ones capable of sustaining momentary recognitions of lived bodily experience: a singer can imagine losing their sight or their limbs falling out of control, and imagining these things is horrible to do. Thus the polemical object being decried is also indirectly experienced in this poem, and its experience is made deeply unpleasant. With the words, ‘Weep, daughter of Sion’, this common figure for the church offers the possibility that clerical corruption will be shed through a penitence displayed through tears. Only here does the church take on a figure in which human form and sensation are aligned, indicating that the reward for penitence will be a restoration to wholeness: it is only in this recuperative moment that the church, cleansed of sin, is hailed in a figure that could be imagined to speak back to the narrating polemicist. To arrive at the possibility of talk, and to fit the place in language made available to it, this shriven church would have to leave behind the corruption that first motivates the polemic. Powerful sensation is produced in the poem not only by appeals to experiences a singer could know on the basis of his own bodily existence but also by engaging scriptural stories known from beyond this text. As Payne points out in his critical notes to the poem, verses 17–18 contain a reference to 2 Judges 15:1–6, where Samson ties burning firebrands to the tails of 150 pairs of foxes, then has them run loose through the fields so as to burn the Philistines’ crops.43 When we hear that ‘the fire in the foxes tails consumes the fruits of the harvests’, are we to think of wicked clerics as burning creatures setting fire to the harvest of Christian souls or wasting the collective labour of the church? Clearly an interpretation like that is possible; however, the more one revisits the biblical story in the mind, the less it fits its new poetic context. Samson’s fiery foxes were in fact instruments of righteous vengeance: he burned the crops in angry punishment after his father-in-law had given Samson’s wife to another man. Moreover, when the Philistines learned why her cuckolded husband had set their crops alight, they responded by burning the adulterous wife herself. So the first effect of the device is most simply – and powerfully – to heighten the poem’s extremity of sensation by bringing to the listener’s mind the terrible image of burning animal flesh running confusedly amock. And those burning animals inaugurate a mental structure that drives ineluctably to the still more agonizing thought of burning human flesh. Philip the Chancellor, Motets and Prosulas, 72.

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The poem’s most virtuosic formal device begins at verse 20, when ‘simulata sanctitas’ (‘feigned holiness’), becomes the topic. It governs 14 verses as a grammatical subject. Over their course, this abstract essence performs actions that require it to take on varied and conflicting imaginative forms. It is likened first to the Old Testament character Tamar (vv. 21–2), who pretended to be a prostitute while sitting at the crossroads to ensnare her father-in-law when he passed by. (In fact, Tamar’s story strains the logic of the simile: she hardly feigned virtue.)44 The simile lends to ‘simulata sanctitas’ a human mental shape and the potential for human action, but no sooner is it given plastic form than that form is deliberately denied by a verb which demands that ‘simulata sanctitas’ be permeable and permeating, for, ‘like Tamar at the crossroads … [feigned holiness] infects [inficit] the whole world’ (vv. 20–23). The verb inficit (v. 23), in the sense of infect, or dye or stain, demands a misty or fluid subject capable of seeping infectiously through other bodies the world over. It does not wane, we are told, but ‘makes progress when given the liberty’ (vv. 24–5). Yet then it takes on a body again, one whose anatomy is not completely described, but only partially indicated by revolting actions: it ‘defiles chastity’ and ‘spits out charity’ in verses 26 and 27, and in verse 31 it may yet ‘pillage the poor’. This partially visible form is also hidden from sight because it is waiting around a mental corner: if it ‘sits in ambush before the sons of men’ (vv. 29–30), it is a thing which occupies an unknown space. ‘Simulata sanctitas’ is now a menacing and localized threat, but its actual location is unknowable, so in effect it is everywhere and nowhere, all at once. And because it lies in wait to ‘murder the just’ (v. 33) with ‘the swords of [its] tongues’ (v. 32), it must truly be a monster: for how many sword-like tongues does it have and on how many heads? Whatever ‘simulata sanctitas’ is, it is uncontrollably animated, but not fully realized as an image. Just like the miracle stories studied by Steven Justice, this motet does not give the mind a coherent set of instructions with which to produce vivid mental images, and those hazy forms which the poem does render are incompatible with one another.45 The poem works to produce intense, mixed and unpleasant sensations by describing a monster’s revolting physical gestures, and also denies full visual knowledge of that horrid thing. Thus in its formal work, the poem models a kind of blindness, making ‘blind people leading the blind’ of its singers as they contemplate the text. Foucault seemed to find a kernel of abject fear motivating the polemicist’s noisy zeal. By contrast, our poet has his wits fully about him: by sketching unruly forms with virtuosic poetic discipline, he hopes to induce fear in others. 44 Though Huot points out that in ‘exegetical tradition Tamar becomes a figure not for harlotry but for Ecclesia’ (Allegorical Play in the Old French Motet, 126). 45 Justice, ‘Eucharistic Miracle and Eucharistic Doubt’.

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An Enemy Rendered in Song How does music contribute to the lyric’s polemic? The appendix to this chapter gives a transcription of the motetus (the contemporary term for the first texted voice above the chant) and its tenor as they appear in the early fourteenth-century Las Huelgas manuscript, but with errors in the text corrected to the version reconstructed by Thomas B. Payne in his recent critical edition of works by Philip the Chancellor.46 Las Huelgas is probably the latest extant manuscript to witness the piece. However, it is useful for our purposes, because it transmits the motet in a fully mensuralized notation, where the earliest sources have very few indications of relative duration for the pitches at all.47 Hence this version can be transcribed without too involved a discussion of editorial principles.48 Each ‘perfection’ (group of three breves) is demarcated in the transcription with a single bar. The long–short pattern in Monasterio de Las Huelgas, Burgos, MS 9, fos 126r–127r; cf. Philip the Chancellor, Motets and Prosulas, 71–2. 47 Probably the earliest complete source of the piece (perhaps copied in the 1250s) is Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, Cod. Guelf. 1099 Helmst. (Olim 1206), fos 149r–150r, where the motet is also presented as a two-part piece. Still earlier (probably copied in the 1240s) is the incomplete witness in the manuscript Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, Plut. 29.1, fo. 398r–v, where the piece has three parts, with both upper voices singing the text In veritate comperi, but to two different melodies. However, the scribes began copying the piece on the final recto of a gathering, and the piece is incomplete at the end of the verso: an unknown number of leaves is now missing from the manuscript (Bradley, ‘Ordering in the Motet Fascicles of the Florence Manuscript’, esp. 61–3). The dating of these manuscripts has been the subject of extensive debates which cannot be reviewed here. There is greater consensus that the notations used for syllabic musical styles in both of these early books seldom give precise indications about rhythm. 48 I do not mean to imply that a late, mensural source gives transparent access to the rhythms intended by the scribes of earlier manuscripts. Several small differences of melodic flourish appear when the version in Las Huelgas is compared with the other sources, and there is reason to suppose that the Las Huelgas scribe sometimes expresses passages with a slightly different conception of rhythmic style than his earlier counterparts. Edward H. Roesner has cautioned in several publications that later sources providing mensural renditions of earlier pieces may express different tastes in rhythm from those of earlier composers (see his review of Hans Tischler, The Earliest Motets (to circa 1270): A Complete Comparative Edition, 3 vols [New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1982], Early Music History 4 [1984]: 362–75; Roesner, ‘The Problem of Chronology in the Transmission of Organum Purum’, in Iain Fenlon [ed.], Music in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe: Patronage, Sources, and Texts [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], 295–317). The famously elaborate and richly nuanced notation of the Las Huelgas manuscript has been studied meticulously by Nicolas Bell (The Las Huelgas Music Codex: A Companion Study to the Facsimile [Madrid: Testimonio Compañia Editorial, 2003]). 46

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the texted part and the ternary longs in the tenor are the same throughout the sources, as is the pitch content of the chant which undergirds the harmonies that may be made above it. (The more appropriate word for the grammatical principle underlying thirteenth-century ‘harmony’ is ‘discant’.)49 A more nuanced and rhythmically precise notation describes the piece in the Las Huelgas impagination than in earlier sources, then, but the piece described is still largely the same when one considers the relationship of the tenor and motetus in terms of their discant, articulated at the level of the perfection. This early fourteenth-century source shows that In veritate comperi could still be sung as a two-part song at that time without more upper voices, and probably the earliest complete source of the piece is the Herzog August Bibliothek manuscript, which also presents it as a two-part song. As witnesses to the twopart version appear close to the beginning of the manuscript tradition and right at its end, it is reasonable to suppose that the motet could have been sung in this way throughout the intervening decades. As a result, my observations here will concentrate on the two-part version. In veritate comperi is a sizeable lyric when read on the page, but when heard as a song it is impressive indeed.50 Lasting a total of 175 perfections, it is at the longer end of the spectrum for a thirteenth-century motet.51 Like most such I borrow the term ‘grammar’ from Margaret Bent’s demonstration of the dyadic grammar of counterpoint operative in polyphony of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (see esp. ‘The Grammar of Early Music: Preconditions for Analysis’, in Cristle Collins Judd [ed.], Tonal Structures in Early Music [New York: Garland, 1998], 15–59). The two-part framework of thirteenth-century discant has some important differences from counterpoint of the fourteenth century, however (see Richard L. Crocker, ‘Discant, Counterpoint, and Harmony’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 15 [1962]: 1–21; Sarah Fuller, ‘Organum – Discantus – Contrapunctus in the Middle Ages’, in Thomas Christensen [ed.], The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002], 477–502). 50 Although analysis of thirteenth-century polyphony has been practised for several decades, musicopoetic readings such as the one I offer here have been published only recently (see e.g. Suzannah Clark, ‘ “S’en dirai chançonete”: Hearing Text and Music in a Medieval Motet’, Plainsong and Medieval Music 16 [2007]: 31–59; Edward H. Roesner, ‘Subtilitas and Delectatio: Ne m’a pas oublie’, in Eglal Doss-Quinby, Roberta L. Krueger, and E. Jane Burns [eds], Cultural Performances in Medieval France: Essays in Honor of Nancy Freeman Regalado [Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2007], 25–43). For an extended meditation on the meanings that sung sound could carry through and beyond the words that were its vehicle, see Emma Dillon, The Sense of Sound: Musical Meaning in France, 1260–1330 (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). My analysis is indebted in different ways to the models provided by all three of these studies. 51 Danielle Pacha has observed the ‘monumental scope’ of the piece in her comparative study of all the Veritatem motets (‘The Veritatem Motets: Manipulation, Modeling and Meaning in the Thirteenth-Century Motet’ [PhD diss., Washington University, 2002], 110). 49

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pieces, it is an onslaught of words: the text of the upper part is mostly delineated in the long–short pattern of the first rhythmic mode, so that in most phrases, there are two syllables per perfection (that is, for each bar of my transcription). Against that default rate of recitation, certain words or phrases are highlighted for attention by being lengthened rhythmically. After the opening word ‘In’ (whose elongation through two whole perfections lets the piece’s referential sonority, an octave on F–f, sound out clear) the first word to be given emphasis is ‘comperi’ (‘I have seen’) at bars 5–7: the declaration that what follows is a witness statement is, appropriately enough, not something the composer wants us to miss. Rhythmic extensions also draw attention to the words ‘unitas’ (‘unity’, b. 13) and ‘prelati’ (‘prelates’, b. 29): part of the fragmentation from oneness into plurality is laid out clearly for the ear to pick up. But perhaps the most striking use of the effect is at bars 45–52, where the entire verse ‘ceci ducesque cecorum’ rings out one syllable to a perfection for eight measures. This is the first moment in which scriptural words are woven into the poem, and in the musical setting they are marked out portentously against the ground of the narrator’s quick-fire syllables. An older scriptural voice is made to sound out through this new kind of music, as a warning from a deeper textual past.52 It is significant that two later pairs of rhyming verses also contain scriptural citations, and are also given rhythmic emphasis on their rhyme syllables: the pair ‘beneficia’ (‘benefits’) / ‘filia’ (‘daughter’) at bars 71–3 / 77–9 and ‘bivio’ (‘crossroads’) / ‘ocio’ (‘indolence’) at bars 99–101 / 105–7. The effect of the second pair is richly expressive: the o of ‘bivio’ at the end of the motetus phrase at bar 101 is echoed not only by the final rhyme o at bar 107, but also by that rhyme word’s opening syllable, ‘o-ci-o’. As the singer is asked to bring to mind the debased acts to which Tamar stoops, these os which peal through the texture become like vocables of emotional intensity, as if the singer were being made to weep in anguish at the thought of Tamar’s indolence.53 Perhaps this is the action enjoined of the church earlier, the weeping that will wash away the church’s sin: in a subtle affective shift, horror at Tamar’s sin blends with contrition. Here the Pacha’s study centres on compositional process in the Veritatem motets and the relations of borrowing and modelling that may exist between some of them. She is less concerned with musicopoetic analysis of the sort I offer here. 52 Refrain citations are often set off from the surrounding texture with a change of rhythmic mode in Old French motets. It would be an important contribution to assess how often quotations from scripture in Latin motets are also projected with a change of rhythmic profile in the manner made so palpable here. 53 Emma Dillon has explored the significance of rhyme as an expressive device playing on the space between linguistic and purely musical meaning (The Sense of Sound, 146–74). After a detailed account of the figure of Mary weeping at the foot of the Cross, Dillon beautifully describes a Marian motet as ‘a sonorous equivalent of [Mary’s] wordless sob’ (ibid. 320–27, at 327).

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motet can be understood to offer its singer an emotive script for producing the repentant feeling that will expunge the corruption decried in the poem. The heightened emotive effect of the word ‘ocio’ also results from a collaboration between the phrase design and discantal structure of the piece. It is a confluence set up early. In so dense a texture of musical activity, the most striking moments by far are the silences. Including the very end of the motet, there are only eight occasions when both parts fall silent together following a cadence in which each articulates its final pitch at the same time. (See the diagram in Figure 3.1 for a schematic representation of the motet, dividing it by these eight cadences.) Recall that the opening sonority was extended through two perfections, anchoring the piece firmly about the F–f octave from the outset. This is also given referential emphasis by the cadential sonorities articulated by cadences 1 and 2 at bars 15 and 23. The word ‘unitas’, the first goal of the piece’s discantal procedures, finishes on a unison G between the parts at bar 15, and, after the brief re-uptake of the F-based sonority at the opening of the next phrase (b. 17), it is firmly answered by an F–c sonority at bar 23. Only eight perfections separate cadences 1 and 2, constituting the shortest amount of time between two cadences we will in fact hear over the course of the whole piece. This procedure endows the cadential F at bar 23 with the quality of a tonal home, and the procedure of contrast is rhetorically strong. The opening unit of the piece shapes a structural contrast between F and G, framing that contrast as an open progression answered by a closure.54 Consider now the sonorities on which each of the other important cadences comes to rest. After the D octave at bar 35 (cadence 3), all the other cadences are based on G: it is not until the very end of the piece that we are granted the sonority we have been invited to hear from the outset as the motet’s tonal ‘home’. One feature which makes the final o of ‘ocio’ at bar 107 so aching is that it is a still more elaborate variation on this succession of unanswered G cadences: where cadences 4 (b. 59), 5 (b. 79) and 7 (b. 159) have the G in unison again, ‘ocio’ at cadence 6 stands out for being marked with a G–d fifth. In the context of the upper part’s melodic motion to this point, its d here is heard as an upper auxiliary to its melodic reference pitch of c. Here, the G–d sonority is incomplete, twice over. I am deliberately connecting the contrast of discantal sonorities in the structure of the motet to the open/closed procedures that structure fourteenth-century songs. There is precedent for doing so when analysing thirteenth-century pieces. The terms are applied to paired melodic phrases in Notre Dame discant by Fritz Reckow (‘Das Organum’, in Wulf Arlt, Ernst Lichtenhahn and Hans Oesch [eds], Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade in Verbindung mit Freunden, Schülern und weiteren Fachgelehrten [Bern: Francke Verlag, 1973], 434–96, at 477). Reckow’s use of the terminology is endorsed and extended to motets by Alejandro Enrique Planchart (‘The Flower’s Children’, Journal of Musicological Research 22 [2003]: 303–48, at 309). 54

3.1  Schematic diagram of the motet In veritate / Veritatem, showing the eight full cadences and their tonal structure

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The constant reiteration of an open tonal question contributes to the searching and strident tone of the poem: in refusing to admit a tonal answer until the very last, the music has a polemical effect of its own. Its most unremitting passage is surely the one following from cadence 6, bar 107, on the word ‘ocio’. Having been attuned to the importance of strong cadences followed by silences, we are left waiting for one for longer here than in any other section of the piece. While the verses are mostly separated from one another by fleeting rests of a single breve (a quaver rest in the transcription), no full break comes until bar 159, at which point it is still not F, but that G unison that we hear once again. We might well wonder if all the questioning will ever end. Indeed, after all the preparation, the single perfection of F–f we hear at the piece’s close is hardly the emphatic answer we might wish for. Note that ‘simulata sanctitas’ as an image has insinuated itself into the poem in the middle of a musical phrase at bar 93 – rather appropriately for a thing which first acts as something infectious and fluid. After we are made to feel Tamar’s shame and to recall repentant tears through the potent fusion of symbol, musical memory, and tonal rhetoric at bar 107, the monstrous poetic transformations of ‘simultata sanctitas’ unfold in a succession of musical phrases that, though they remain anchored firmly within the tonal rhetoric cemented at the outset, virtuosically delay the full tonal closure we hope will come, and their motion never stops still for long. The unpredictable periodicity of this section – how long can the song keep going before it needs to rest? – is an apt musical vehicle for the unknowable and fearsome movements of a wicked thing the mind cannot picture. By inhabiting the motions that the music mandates while waiting for resolution to come, perhaps the singers would have experienced for a moment something of the monster’s terrible power, before they brought their song’s polemic to its final tonal close.55 Anna Zayaruznaya has offered a compelling analysis of the fourteenth-century motet In virtute nominum / Decens carmen edere / Clamor meus (possibly by Philippe de Vitry), whose triplum concludes with a paraphrase of the opening of Horace’s Ars poetica and its famous depiction of a monster that combines features of a human head, a horse, a bird and a fish (Anna Zayaruznaya, ‘Form and Idea in the Ars nova Motet’ [PhD diss., Harvard University, 2010], 234–84). Zayaruznaya observes that the composer alternates texted and textless passages in the triplum so that each attribute of the monster is introduced in a highlighted passage of its own, building a mental image of the monster step by step (ibid. 253). Her analytical attention to phraseology overlaps with my own interests here. She suggests that ‘14th-century motet composers were interested not in text painting but in a broader congruence of textual content and poetic form, and further that this form often has a visual component: motets have shapes’ (ibid. 274). Thus, ‘under a doctrine of verisimilitude, a motet about a chimera would actually need to embody a chimera in some ways, just as a poem needs to formally agree with its topic’ (ibid. 273–4). She argues that other rhythmicformal devices at work in the piece cut it into four distinct sections of different size, reflecting 55

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A Motet between Polemic and Discussion In this last respect, the music of this motet may be heard to lend its own voice to the poem’s polemic or, more specifically, may be heard to do so from outside the piece. But many features of design to which I have drawn attention seem tailored to inflect the experience of singers in ways that deliver the effects of polemic to their senses, more than to those of external listeners. By turns, the music offers scripture up in a portentous tone, imitates a weeping that will cleanse the church of sin, delivers intense vocables that shudder at Tamar’s lapse and provides an experience of the furtive and unrelenting motions of feigned holiness. Because these effects are all underwritten by careful calculations of musical time between the two voices, and a harmonic rhetoric that the two parts develop in collaboration, they rely foundationally upon effects available only in polyphony: the piece’s sensory work can only be brought about through the collaborative work of the singers involved – a type of work which, by extension, articulates or reinforces a community defined by the performance of the song and by the time in which it is sung. This warrants some consideration. In an article on a late fourteenthcentury piece by the composer Jacob de Senleches (the double balade Je me merveil / J’ay pluseurs fois), Elizabeth Eva Leach suggested that a late medieval song ‘is less an object than a collaborative rhetorical process which binds the composer, notation, singers and listeners within a machine, whose workings – when going well – should mirror in sonic ratios those that medieval thinkers posited in the heavens’.56 As they perform from a written part, singers must operate reason to construe the notes on the page before them, adjusting their interpretation of the inscription in response to the sonic cues provided by those singing the other parts – especially the tenor, which governs the contrapuntal in musical shape the four-fold nature of Horace’s chimera. Thus Zayaruznaya sees within the patterns of the motet a rendering of the plastic form of a monster – a form, indeed, which she makes fully visible with a hypothetical picture of the monster itself (ibid. 254 fig. 5.3) and a diagram of the motet’s ‘shape’ (ibid. 257 example 5.10). My purpose is different. What I have described as a monster in the motet In veritate comperi is foundationally unpicturable, always morphing and never at rest. It militates against rendition as a shape. I argue not that the musical phrases depict the shape of the monster ‘simulata sanctitas’, but rather that they are mimetic of its uncontrolled movements. Within that mimesis, other moments of dense affect are created through rhythmic and harmonic procedures, such that individual ideas in the text are, indeed, given audible emphasis in ways bordering on ‘text painting’. 56 Elizabeth Eva Leach, ‘Nature’s Forge and Mechanical Production: Writing, Reading and Performing Song’, in Mary Carruthers (ed.), Rhetoric beyond Words: Delight and Persuasion in the Arts of the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 72–95, at 79.

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grammar of songs in this later period.57 Studying such songs for the kinds of ‘distributed cognition’ they require,58 Leach reminds us: The memories of the singers who turn the music-writing of the composer into the music-making of their sonic performance are necessarily engaged in remembering a whole host of interactions in rehearsal, involving a number of decisions made together with the other singers, through discussion, doctrine, reason and understanding, none of which is represented directly in the notation.59

The composer of the particular song Leach uses to illuminate these pervasive issues is likely to have been one of its first singers, and Leach submits that ‘if the composer is one of them, it effectively turns the performers into a corporate body – a social extension of the individual’.60 In the song Leach examines, the texted parts complain about the mindlessness of those who sing without full understanding of what they do. Senleches was obviously well versed in a music-theoretical topos that had a long history by the fourteenth century and actively thematized that topos in his song, highlighting the difference between those who understand music and those who can do music. The piece foregrounds the trained skill of its performers, bringing to heightened awareness the skills upon which polyphonic singing in general relies. The music-theoretical discourse has moral stakes (played with cunningly in the song, as Leach shows), for singing without reason makes one only as good as a bird: an unwitting singer fails to be fully human if he does not operate reason, the faculty with which he is endowed above other animals.61 Much of Leach’s argument about the corporate quality of polyphonic singing is of direct relevance to our much earlier motet. To perform in In veritate comperi, like any polyphonic piece, notes must be learned and discrepancies between parts discussed and resolved, all before the work of shaping the piece as a performance can begin. This would have been as true of the piece whether it was read from the page as it was sung or whether it was learned by some other practice. The work would have been still more difficult – that is, it would have required still more deliberate dedication of those involved – if it was being learned from a manuscript that did not consistently use rhythmically unambiguous forms for the notes. The corporate quality of the piece would Leach sets out her understanding of counterpoint in ‘Counterpoint and Analysis in Fourteenth-Century Song’, Journal of Music Theory 44 (2000): 45–79. 58 Leach, ‘Nature’s Forge and Mechanical Production’, 86. 59 Ibid. 85. 60 Ibid. 88. 61 On the use of birdsong in medieval discussions of music and rationality, see Leach, Sung Birds: Music, Nature, and Poetry in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007). 57

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have been especially evident in the several different versions which set it as a three-part conductus motet: that is, a form in which two voices sing the same polemical poem to two different musical parts, all over the accompaniment of the tenor.62 Although our grasp of thirteenth-century discant is not yet as solid as our grasp of later medieval counterpoint, it does seem reasonable to suppose that right notes are much more readily determined as such in polyphony, especially in a piece like this which has such an evidently planned tonal shape. Before we leave Foucault to one side, it should be acknowledged that the effects of all this musical work, however they were achieved, closely model his notion of discussion: like conversation partners, each performer constrains the moves the others make, and each makes sense of one another’s music, as they unfurl together their polyphonic song about truth. Following Leach, we might say that clerical singers are recuperated into a single performing body in our motet, a body ruled by the head after all.63 The Care of the Soul In veritate comperi / Veritatem is not self-consciously involved with the Latinate tradition of music theory. It articulates its purpose not by reference to that literature, but, once again, by reference to a formal notion articulated in its chant source. Earlier I claimed that the motet’s poem responded to the chant by drawing attention to that older song’s investment in sensation. In a negative image, the lurid things which follow one another through the poem in only vaguely picturable succession are perhaps as horrible in sum as the These versions – whose added melodies for In veritate comperi are different from one another – are found in Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, Plut. 29.1 (fo. 398r–v, where the remaining leaves of the piece are missing, so that the end of the upper voices and the whole tenor is absent); Trinity College, Cambridge, MS O.2.1 (fo. 216r, also a fragmentary witness: the extant portion of the piece begins with the words ‘totum orbem’ at v. 23), and Châlons-sur-Marne, Archives départementales, 3.J.250 (fos 7v–10v). 63 It is also true that some Latin writers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries penned harsh polemics against polyphony, likening its performers to sodomites. For a review of those texts, see Bruce Holsinger, Music, Body, and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 137–87. Holsinger aims to reveal a ‘cultural homology between polyphony and male same-sex desire as it was understood around 1200’ (ibid. 173). His case must be assessed against the abundant evidence that Notre Dame polyphony was anthologized as a proud monument to the cathedral’s liturgical provisions. On Notre Dame anthologies as monuments, see Susan Rankin, ‘The Study of Medieval Music: Some Thoughts on Past, Present, and Future’, in David Greer, Ian Rumbold and Jonathan King (eds), Musicology and Sister Disciplines: Past, Present, Future (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 154–68. 62

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chant’s described act of audition is wondrous. But the chant also implied that hearing properly entailed active listening. Like the Virgin praised by the chant’s rewritten psalm verses, the singers here must incline their ears in the service of right action. The effects of our song on the singers are not quite so miraculous as were the effects of the angel’s words on Mary, but they are clearly meant to transform. For it is not only musicianship which must be practised and which should be governed by reason, it is also the inner life of the soul.64 Much remains unknown about the social contexts of thirteenth-century polyphony: we still lack an understanding of the practices in which musical scripts and written documents were used and how pieces were acquired and learned from the manuscripts in which they are now left to us. In most cases, we have only a very hazy sense of where thirteenth-century manuscripts were in the thirteenth century itself. On the basis of the sources, then, it is hard to determine empirically who sang the piece. However, the singers who encountered the piece over the course of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries surely included men in orders, even if other people may also have been capable of learning the song: this piece about clerical corruption is, unsurprisingly, aimed first at clerics.65 Whoever the piece’s singers were, we may still know something of them, because the motet enshrines beliefs about ways of living that it will help to bring about through its performance and the habits people will cultivate through singing it. That part of them which they may cultivate by following its example, at least, may be described. If my musicopoetic analysis holds, then this motet is really the answer to its own prayer (albeit that the text calls on God as it closes). It provides a tacit response to one of my opening questions – that is, what if the object of polemic is a quality, disposition or a behaviour, a thing not identical with a person but something a person might exhibit? The quality and its attendant behaviours must be made known and then either avoided or altered through action. Precisely the power of this polemical piece is that it models cohesion and dialogue between the clerics who are singing it. In their shared labour of performing it, clerical corruption is revealed to them as a thing they can feel. Through the scripts they inhabit, that corruption is made frightening, and vanquished.

Steven Justice argues that medieval belief is a thing practised, ‘a complex of intellectual and voluntary practices, irreducible to the propositions they are meant to maintain: this is what it means that faith is called a virtue, that is, a set of practices cultivated systematically with the goal of habituation’ (‘Did the Middle Ages Believe in Their Miracles?’ Representations 103 [2008]: 1–29, at 14). 65 Among several publications by Christopher Page, see esp. ‘Around the Performance of a Thirteenth-Century Motet’, Early Music 28 (2000): 343–57. 64

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Appendix Transcription of the motet In veritate comperi / Veritatem, from the Las Huelgas codex (Monasterio de Las Huelgas, Burgos, MS 9), fos 126r–127r. In this transcription, the poetic text preserves the orthography of the manuscript, with abbreviations expanded and indicated with italics. Errors have been corrected to the text reconstructed by Thomas B. Payne in Philip the Chancellor, Motets and Prosulas, 71–2. Where a part of the text or music is missing entirely in Las Huelgas, the added text is marked [ ]. Where the textual reading reconstructed by Payne replaces a word in Las Huelgas, this is indicated by ‹ ›. The tenor comprises three iterations of the same cycle of pitches (that is, three cursus), each with the same rhythm. These are indicated with roman numerals below the tenor staff. A breve of a single tempus is transcribed as a quaver; dashed barlines have been supplied to divide the tempora into ternary ‘perfections’. Where the scribe wrote more than one pitch with a single notational form (a ligature), the constituent elements are grouped with a bracket above the staff. The figure known as a plica – broadly speaking, a single grapheme representing two pitches – is rendered with a stroke through the modern note-stem: the second pitch is always transcribed as a neighbouring pitch-class of the first. There are never more than two semibreves per breve in this piece, and I have transcribed them as equal throughout, except in the single case where a texted semibreve is given a stem to indicate it is the shorter member of an uneven pair (in the motetus at b. 173). I acknowledge here that other interpretations of the semibreves may have been possible, but a different conception of their rhythmic nuance would not affect the argument I present in this chapter. The Huelgas copy of the piece has no accidentals, nor does it use a b-fa sign as a signature. I have suggested accidentals above the staff to create perfect fourths and fifths where these seem necessary. Much work remains to be done on unsigned practices of pitch inflection operated in the service of good discant in ars antiqua repertories, which will have an impact on future editorial decisions in ways that cannot be addressed here.

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Notes b. 6  Las Huelgas has a two-note ligature with ascending tail on the left, indicating two semibreves. However, a descending tail has been erased after the first note, which would have resulted in the correct, long-breve reading. b. 22  Las Huelgas has ‘fumeri’. b. 30  I have suggested a b-fa in the motetus to produce a perfect fourth with the tenor. But observe that the word here is ‘prelati’, who are being described as ‘heredes luciferi’ (‘heirs of Lucifer’). It may have occurred to contemporary singers that the barbarous augmented fourth is an apt musical response to the devilishness the text describes. b. 37  Las Huelgas has ‘menbra’. b. 38  Las Huelgas has ‘domat’. b. 56  Las Huelgas has a long on the pitch d. b. 58  I have suggested b-fa in the motetus to produce a perfect fourth with the tenor. But observe that, like the equivalent passage in b. 30, here the word ‘istorum’ describes detestable people among whom there is not one of the sort that does good. Again, the uncorrected augmented fourth could be interpreted as a musical indication of precisely the immorality the text decries – or the harsh tone of the polemic in which it is decried. b. 67  Las Huelgas has ‘et’. bb. 93–6  This passage of musical notes has been omitted by the scribe. I supply notes from the parallel portion of the previous tenor statement (bb. 29–32). b. 82  Las Huelgas has ‘uris’. b. 114  Las Huelgas has ‘nec’. b. 127  Las Huelgas has ‘renuit’.

Chapter 4

‘Why do you concern yourself with these words?’ Rhetoric and Polemic in Medieval Castilian Female Saints’ Lives Emma Gatland The components of the trivium, as defined by Isidore of Seville, were the first three arts that made up the seven liberal arts, the basis of education throughout the Middle Ages. The first was grammar, the ‘skill of speech’; the second, dialectic, from which we learn ‘how to talk sense, to argue, to prove and disprove’; and the third, rhetoric, associated with the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom.1 It was the third art, rhetoric, which was the most practical of the trivium, described by C.S. Lewis in his work on the medieval worldview, The Discarded Image, as the most persuasive or political: The ancient teachers of Rhetoric addressed their precepts to orators in an age when public speaking was an indispensable skill for every public man – even for a general in the field – and for every private man if he got involved in litigation. Rhetoric was then not so much the loveliest (soavissima) as the most practical of the arts.2

Rhetoric called for an ability to interpret, to deliberate about the contingent and the variable, about human actions and ethics; it involved the ability to see what was possibly persuasive in every given case and the use of symbols to induce cooperation in the listening party. In sociolinguistic terms, rhetoric concerns itself with a whole domain of language use – incorporating a totality of audience, speaker, language, meaning and effect.3 Whilst C.S. Lewis writes of rhetoric being indispensible for public generals and private litigating men, we know from collections of saints’ lives (which would have counted as staple reading material in monasteries and convents and also constituted one of the most predominant genre of books owned by C.S. Lewis, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 186–90. 2 Ibid. 190. 3 Rita Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 13–14. 1

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lay men and women in the Middle Ages) that young noblewomen were also often educated in the seven arts.4 Medieval hagiographic narrative is replete with female saints who are eloquent rhetoricians, most notably virgin martyrs whose verbal dexterity is, to a large extent, a product of traditional passio rhetoric.5 Of the twelve extant hagiographic collections translated into Castilian from Jacobus de Voragine’s Latin Legenda aurea in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, around one third of the lives are those of female saints, of which approximately two-thirds tell the stories of virgin martyrs – maidens tortured by pagan sovereigns on account of their devotion to Christ.6 The arena of torture of the virgin martyr constitutes a continuous struggle in which the saint and her pagan aggressor each employ the rhetoric in which she and he are schooled with a view to gaining or regaining (linguistic) power. The social and linguistic adaptability or amphibiousness that the saintly women display is, of course, primarily evidence of God’s Word at work and a manifestation of the connection that the saints share with divine authority. Such adaptability also involves, however, a deliberate crossing-over by the female saints into the institution in which their aggressors’ words and understanding are rooted, imbuing the women with an authority that is very much social as well as sacred. Yet, in other instances, the virgin martyr, as we shall see, seems in full awareness that the parties to an exchange are unable to negotiate the dislocation between languages. Is this simply awareness on the part of the virgin martyr – or Voragine or the male cleric who translated the life from the Latin – of an absence of rhetorical skill? Is it a point at which the narrative acknowledges the limitations of linguistic ability, including that of the saint albeit bolstered as it is by God’s Word? Or is it something else entirely? I suggest that the narratives display at these points not examples of the absence of rhetoric but examples of ‘anti-rhetoric’, when the virgin martyr does not shy away from but emphasizes dislocation in language in order to prolong her torture and achieve her goal of martyrdom. At these points, she uses language that comes into play when all argumentation is exhausted and that uses alienating and non-contingent expressions of truth: language that relies on a deliberate non-play of signifiers in order to ensure a breakdown of cooperative dialogue. These methods, for Michel Simon Gaunt, Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Catherine M. Mooney (ed.), Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 5 Andrew M. Beresford, The Legend of Saint Agnes in Medieval Castilian Literature (London: Department of Hispanic Studies Queen Mary, University of London, 2007), 48. 6 For a comprehensive study of the contents of the Castilian collections, see Vanesa Hernández Amez, ‘Descripción y filiación de los “Flores Sanctorum” medievales castellanos’ (PhD diss., Universidad de Oviedo, 2008), (accessed 1 July 2013). 4

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Foucault, are precisely the hallmarks of a polemicist.7 This article explores, through a series of examples, the way in which each strategy – of rhetoric on the one hand and of polemic on the other – is employed by the virgin martyrs at different points in the narratives, and the way in which both strategies serve in contrasting ways to shift the balance of power in the public arena of martyrdom. Rhetoric In the Vida de santa Petronila (Life of Saint Petronila), a pagan count desires a young virgin, Petronila.8 The virgin responds to her suitor’s marriage proposal not with a verbal rejection nor by showing explicit physical opposition but with a condition to her consent. She tells the pagan, ‘Si tú me deseas aver por muger, manda venir acá algunas vírgines que me aconpañen en casa’ (‘If you desire me as a wife, order that some virgins be brought here to the house to accompany me’).9 He responds by arranging for the virgins to accompany her; whilst he is doing this, Petronila is able to take to her bed, fast and pray to God for her death to come. She dies as a bride of Christ three days later. Petronila manages to avoid the routine trials of her counterparts: attempted sexual violation, torture and death at the hands of her male aggressor. With the skill of a rhetorician, Petronila seems aware that taking an utterance out of context can alter significantly the meaning and reception of the utterance, making it, in essence, something it is not.10 Her aggressor understands her words as a condition to her consent to be married when consent is clearly not the virgin’s underlying intention. The pagan, realizing Petronila’s deception, turns his attention to Fenicula, Petronila’s companion, whose outright refusal of the count’s demands differs markedly from Petronila’s rhetorical guile in offering what appears at least to be cooperation. See George Southcombe, Almut Suerbaum and Benjamin Thompson, ‘Introduction’, in this volume, pp. 4–5. 8 For more detail on the female saints’ lives from which these examples are drawn and an in-depth study of the extant Castilian hagiographic collections within the context, inter alia, of language and authority, see Emma Gatland, Women from the Golden Legend: Female Authority in a Medieval Castilian Sanctoral (Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2011), esp. 60–94. 9 Ibid. 161. All translations from the Castilian lives are my own. Unless otherwise stated, all quotations in Castilian are taken from Esc h-i-14, a sanctoral dated 1427 and housed in the Real Biblioteca Monasterio de El Escorial in Madrid. Full transcriptions of the female saints’ lives from Esc h-i-14 can be found in Gatland, Women from the Golden Legend. 10 Kay Halasek, ‘Starting with Dialogue: What Can We Do about Bakhtin’s Ambivalence toward Rhetoric?’, in Frank Farmer (ed.), Landmark Essays on Bakhtin, Rhetoric, and Writing (London; Routledge, 1998), 97–105, at 99. 7

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Veyendo … que era engañado, torrnóse a Fenícula, su conpañera de sancta Petronila, e mandóle que casase con él o que sacrificase los ýdolos. E ella estonce començó a negar amas las demandas que le fazía. E estonces él mandóla meter en la cárcel sin comer e sin bever e después mandóla aspar. E ella, con la grant pena, murió ý. After her death, the count, seeing himself so deceived, turns to Fenicula, Petronila’s companion and orders her to marry him or sacrifice to the Gods. And she refused to adhere to either of his demands. And so he ordered her to be imprisoned without food or water and then ordered that she be whipped. And she died there in great pain.11

In the Vida e passión de santa Ygnés (Life and Passion of Saint Agnes), the virgin martyr’s verbal dispute with her aggressor is more sensual and courtly than religious in its vocabulary.12 When courted by a Roman prefect’s son, she tells him: Yo he otro entendedor mejor que non tú, e que es más fijo dalgo que non tú e más rico e más fuerte e más poderoso. … Las riquezas nunca le fallescen … El su amor es castidad, el tañer es caridad, el su ayuntamiento es castidat e virginidat. E ya me dio el su anillo, e puso en el mi cuello los aljófares muy preciosos, e diome una vestidura cubierta de oro. E onrróme con muchas joyas, e puso señal en la mi cara que non amase a otro si non a él. E las tetillas son bermejas como la sangre e el mío cuerpo es ayuntado con el suyo. E mostróme muchos tesoros además e prometióme que duraría con él. I have another entendedor who is better than you, and who is wealthier, stronger, more noble and powerful. … His wealth never diminishes. … His love is chastity, his touch is charity. Being one with him means chastity and virginity. He has already given me his ring and put precious pearls around my neck, and he gave me a golden dress. And he showered me with jewels and put a sign on my face so that I shall not love anyone other than him. My nipples are red like blood and my body is joined with his and he has shown me many treasures and promised me that with him it will last.13

Agnes’ choice of language is striking and the effectiveness of her words is marked. In her service of the sacred, she actively uses rather than abandons the profane Gatland, Women from the Golden Legend, 161. For a detailed study of the legend of Saint Agnes and an edition of the Vida e passión

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de santa Ygnés, see Beresford, Legend of Saint Agnes. 13 Ibid. 85.

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world and its language. She replies to the pagan’s advances using the vocabulary of carnality, desire and economic exchange in order to express her devotion to Christ. She describes him as her ‘entendedor’, meaning that whilst the pagan is and will only ever be a mere (and rebuffed) supplicant of her affections, Christ is her recognized suitor with whom pledges have been interchanged.14 Her nipples are reddened, her body is by her own account joined with that of her ‘entendedor’, whose gifts of treasures are signs of his fidelity. This flexibility of discourse allows Agnes to respond in the only language that her aggressor understands in order to achieve power in the profane world in which his words and understanding are rooted. It has been suggested that Agnes’s language actually compromises her inviolate position because of its profane resonances.15 Such an interpretation, however, does not account for the deliberateness of Agnes’s choice of words, the result being that the pagan loses the game of seduction even when playing by his own rules: on hearing her sexually euphemistic words of devotion to Christ, he throws himself onto his bed like a madman and is subsequently declared by his physicians to be suffering from lovesickness. There is little room for doubt: when used in this way, Agnes’s rhetorical skill is endowed with a force that easily overpowers the pagan’s physical strength. At the beginning of the Vida de Proto e Jacinto (Life of Protus and Hyancinthus), we are told explicitly that the young virgin Eugenia is schooled in the seven arts and all the other sciences: the study of rhetoric is inculcated in her way of thinking, speaking and acting. When Eugenia first hears Christians preaching the Word of God, she realizes the inferiority of the human word to which all humans have been consigned and confined since the Fall. Inherent in this, of course, is her awareness that all humans reside in the post-lapsarian realm, vulnerable to the arbitrariness of the sign and it is this awareness that seems to account for the extraordinary versatility of Eugenia’s words. At the beginning of the narrative, Eugenia explicitly renounces the art of classical oratory in favour of the Christian word, telling her companions: ‘Pasamos los silogismos de los filósofos, e los gramáticos, e los retóricos; e todos se encierran

For a more detailed discussion of Agnes’s response to the pagan, particularly within the context of courtly love, see Gatland, Women from the Golden Legend, 78–81; see also H.J. Chaytor, The Troubadours (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 15. 15 Coyne Kelly writes that Agnes, so willing to speak and so willing to allow her words to be used against her, ‘is produced by an appropriate discourse in which the language of carnal love is used to represent a purely spiritual ardour’, concluding that ‘the struggle for her body/the Church’s body is explicitly located in a discourse that never fully escapes or suppresses its original context’ (Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages [London: Routledge, 2000], 62). 14

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en esta palabra’ (‘Let us dispense with the syllogisms of the philosophers and the grammaticians and the rhetoricists: they are all contained in this word’).16 In Voragine’s Legenda aurea, Eugenia then watches whilst the abbot of the monastery to which she wishes to be accepted quarrels with a heretic.17 In two Castilian versions, however, it is Eugenia herself who outmanoeuvres the heretic, who finds himself unable to withstand her strong arguments.18 It is unclear whether the debate forms part of an organized disputatio or is merely an unplanned quarrel. Either way, in these Spanish versions of the narrative, Eugenia debates with eloquence and force until the heretic is burned alive and she is believed to be a man. Having explicitly and deliberately renounced rhetoric in favour of the word of God, Eugenia shows herself nonetheless to continue to be a worthy advocate of its virtues. Her shift in position according to the demands of the moment and the needs of a constantly changing audience reflects, if not a conscious quest for advantage, a heightened degree of self-awareness and control of the will. Eugenia goes on to live in the monastery for many years disguised as a monk, before altering her strategy again. When threatened by the lies of a lustful woman, she tells those around her: ‘Ya passó el tienpo de callar, e vino el tienpo de fablar. … ¡E dexemos el engaño e pongamos la verdat!’ (‘The time to be quiet has now passed and it is now the time to speak. … And let us leave behind deceit and deal in the truth!’).19 Her final words in the narrative echo the sentiment in Ecclesiastes 3.1–8 that recognizes that one must act in ways appropriate to the times, in particular ‘omnia tempus habent et suis spatiis transeunt universa sub caelo … tempus tacendi et tempus loquendi’ (‘To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: … A time to keep silence and a time to speak’).20 Polemic In Istoria de santa Margarita (bajo el nombre de Marin) (the Life of Saint Margaret known as Marina), the virgin martyr and her pagan aggressor take turns to counter the other’s rhetoric. Their dialogue is characterized by what sociolinguists might call ‘turn-taking’, according to which conversation is seen as a sequence of conversational turns and the contribution of each participant is Gatland, Women from the Golden Legend, 204. Jacobus de Voragine, The ‘Golden Legend’: Readings on the Saints, trans. William

16 17

Granger Ryan, 2 vols (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 165. 18 Fundación Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid, MS 15.001; Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, Santander, MS 9. 19 Gatland, Women from the Golden Legend, 206. 20 Eccles. 3:1, 7.

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seen as part of a coordinated and rule-governed behavioural interaction.21 The conversational structure is particularly notable in the lives that reserve a larger space for direct speech: E [Olibrius] preguntóla si estava aún en la porfía de ante o si creia en Jhesu Christo, e ella dixo que sí. E dixo Olibrius, ‘O niña, … quítate de porfiar e adora nuestros dioses … .’ E dixo santa Marina, ‘A aquel Dios adoro yo … .’ E díxol Olibrius, ‘Si non consie[n]tieres a lo que yo te digo, faré depedaçar el tu cuerpo todo.’ E dixo Marina, ‘Jhesu Christo tomó muerte por mí, e pués ¿non mor[r]é por Él?’ Estonce el adelantado mandóla aspar, e que la rascañasen muy fuertemente con peines de fierro, e esto le fizieron tanto que salía la sangre de su cuerpo así commo agua de la fuente. E colgáronla de los cabellos de una viga, e açotáronla. 22 And [Olibrius] asked her if she was still being stubborn as before and whether she believed in Jesus Christ, and she said ‘Yes.’ And Olibrius said: ‘Oh child, stop with this stubbornness and adore our Gods!’ And Saint Marina said: ‘I worship God.’ And Olibrius said: ‘If you fail to agree to what I say, I shall have your body torn to pieces.’ And Marina said: ‘Jesus Christ suffered death for me; why shall I not now die for him?’ So the prefect ordered her to be crucified and raked over violently with iron combs. And they did this to her until blood flowed from her body like a fountain of water. And they strung her up to a rafter by her hair and whipped her.

The verbal jousting between virgin and pagan assumes a level of complicity between the two participants: a game in which each opponent requires the other’s participation for the game to take place, and each takes turns to play his or her hand as part of a coordinated and rule-governed behavioural interaction. When those around her, taking their own turn, beg her to change her mind, Marina meets the infliction of pain with expressions of pleasure, exclaiming to them: ‘Consageros malos, partidvos de me e it vuestra carrera, ca yo bien sé que esta tormenta de la carne es salud del alma’ (‘Wretched advisors, go away from here and follow your own path, because this torture of my flesh heals my soul!’)23 Argumentation becomes exhausted and Olibrius urges Marina to be quiet: ‘Marina, pártete de roido e adora los ídolos’ (‘Marina, stop with that

David Crystal, A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997),

21

399.

Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, MS 8; see Fernando Baños Vallejo and Isabel Uría Maqua (eds), Flos sanctorum del ms. 8 de la Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo (Santander: Año Jubilar Lebaniego and Sociedad Menéndez Pelayo, 2000), 2034. 23 Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, MS 8; see Baños Vallejo and Uría Maqua, Flos sanctorum, 204. 22

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noise and worship the Gods’).24 The virgin does not stop speaking but continues with the same argument – an argument that she now knows calls to mind not comprehension on the pagan’s part but anger and desperation. Marina counters the pagan’s focus on the corporeal with emphasis on the spiritual and eternal in order to achieve her own goal: ‘E tu, leon fanbriento, que nunca te has de fartar, tu as poderio sobre la carne, mas Jhesu Christo … guarda el anima mia’ (‘And you, insatiable lion! You have power over my flesh, but Jesus Christ guards my soul!’).25 In so doing, the virgin firmly constitutes as enemies the pagan and the public who look on in the process. In the Vida e Passión de santa Lucía (Life and Passion of Saint Lucy), the young virgin makes it clear to her aggressor from the outset that she does not function according to the rules that he follows and vice versa. Her language is rigid, fixed and alienating and highlights the need to keep contrasting truths separate: E díxole santa Lucía, ‘Tú guardas los decretos de los tus príncipes e enperadores, e yo guardo la ley de Jhesu Christo. E tú as miedo a los enperadores, e yo a Dios. Tú non les fazes pesar, nin yo a Dios. Tú deseas de les fazer plazer, yo a Dios. E pues así es: tú fazes tu pro e yo faré la mía’ And Saint Lucy said to him, ‘You keep the decrees of your princes and your emperors and I keep the law of Jesus Christ, and you fear your emperors and I fear God. You do not cause them grief and I do not cause God grief. You desire to please them, and I desire to please God. And so it is: you do what is right for you and I shall do what is right for me.’26

There is a lack of a foundation of shared belief – a lack of shared morality – between the two combatants, which the pagan also recognizes, as he suggests that Lucy’s judgement, assessment, and words are best directed to a different audience, ‘Estas razones a los christianos las di tú, e non a mí, que guardo la ley de los enperadores’ (‘Say these things to your Christians and not to me, who keeps the emperors’ law’).27 Meanwhile, in the Vida de santa Águeda (Life of Saint Agatha), the pagan offers the virgin an ultimatum: ‘¡De dos cosas faz la una: o sacrifica los dios o sufre muchos tormentos!’ (‘You can do one of two things: either sacrifice to the Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, MS 8; see Baños Vallejo and Uría Maqua, Flos sanctorum, 205. 25 Biblioteca de Menéndez Pelayo, MS 8; see Baños Vallejo and Uría Maqua, Flos sanctorum, 204. 26 Gatland, Women from the Golden Legend, 148. 27 Ibid. 24

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Gods or suffer many tortures!’).28 Agatha replies with a scathing attack on the worshipping of pagan idols, to which the pagan replies, confused: ‘¿Por qué andas en [es]tas palabras?’ (‘Why do you concern yourself with these words?’). He then reiterates the same challenge, ‘¡O sacrifica los dios o fazerte he morir atormentada!’ (‘Either sacrifice to the Gods or I shall have you tortured to death’), only to be met with the same response.29 There is a deliberate attempt on the part of the virgin martyr to reach inadequate communication, as her words simply do not correspond to what the pagan hears or wants to hear. He asks her, filled with incredulity borne out of miscomprehension: ‘¿Aún osas nonbrar a Jhesu Christo, que yo non quiero oýr?’ (‘Still you dare to speak of Jesus Christ, whose name I do not want to hear?’).30 Agatha berates the pagan for being ‘mezquino sin seso e sin entendimiento’ (‘without sense and understanding’) and deems his response to consist of ‘las tus palabras son locas e vanas’ (‘vain and insane words’).31 Of hagiography, Kathleen Coyne Kelly notes that, as Tertullian and other patristic writers assert over and over again, chastity is best maintained by ‘a deliberate non-play of signifiers, by absence and silence’.32 She goes on to warn that ‘hagiography, in which the virgin is made subject of narration, which is inherently unstable and mutable, forces the virgin into play, and it is this motion, not stasis, that puts her at risk’, as her words incite everyone who hears her to anger, lust and, finally, murder.33 Agatha’s narrative, I suggest, exposes the very nature of the complicity predicated on misunderstanding involved in the arena of martyrdom: the virgin plays the game, she participates in the (rape) narrative, but her discourse is monologic, in that it has but a single meaning.34 Her discourse is demarcated and inert, in that it is static and unmovable. More importantly, it reflects her will. We are told by a pagan attempting to convert her: ‘Más de ligero se podrían las piedras e el fierro torrnarse en polvo muy blando ante que trastornar esta niña de la fe de Jhesu Christo’ (‘It would be easier to turn stones and iron to fine dust than turn this girl away from her faith’).35 Agatha seems fully aware that she can count on the dislocation between her understanding and that of her aggressor to ensure that she achieves martyrdom through prolonged 30 31 32 33 34

Ibid. 151. Ibid. Ibid. 153. Ibid. Coyne Kelly, Performing Virginity, 61. Ibid. 62. I understand ‘monologic’ here in the Bakhtinian sense, that the letter ‘is fully complete, it has but a single meaning, the letter is fully sufficient to the sense and calcifies it’ (M.M. Bakhtin, ‘Discourse in the Novel’, in Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan [eds], Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd edn [Oxford: Blackwell, 2004], 674–85, at 683). 35 Gatland, Women from the Golden Legend, 151. 28

29

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torture. There is nothing of persuasion here, nothing of rhetoric – only polemic, designed to obliterate any common ground that might be sought to exist. It is clear that at times the female saints use compromise to deceive and vocabulary to cross boundaries of discourse. On these occasions, with recourse to the rhetoric in which they are schooled, they adapt their language to the situation to which they want to progress. At other points, however, their discourse is firmly monologic and undivided. Their words are without a sideways glance, without a loophole; they are adequate to themselves and can neither penetrate nor be penetrated by another’s discourse.36 Often there exists an incongruence between the meaning behind the virgin’s words and what the pagan aggressor understands or, at least, wants to hear, and the virgin martyr exploits the nature of polemical discourse – the very dislocation between her perspective and her adversary’s – in order to ensure that she continues to be tortured right up to the desired goal of martyrdom. Whilst it is the Word of God that accounts for the virgin martyr’s spiritual authority, it is often the continual shifting between the two linguistic strategies that accounts for her social power.

Ruth Coates, Christianity in Bakhtin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 96. 36

Part II Social Practice: Articulation of Dissent and Normative Practice

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Chapter 5

Dissing the Teacher: Classroom Polemics in the Early and High Middle Ages Monika Otter Most medievalists have come across this story before: it is almost ritually invoked in discussions of medieval schools. In the times of the persecutions of Christians, a certain Cassian of Imola is brought before the judge and condemned to die for his faith. Since he is a teacher of grammar and shorthand, the judge thinks it would be amusing to turn him over to his own pupils to kill. So the boys are brought in, the teacher is stripped and the boys go at it, hitting him with their tablets, stabbing him with their pens in imitation of the little dots and points of shorthand, taunting him all the while: ‘Quid gemis?’ exclamat quidam, ‘tute ipse magister istud dedisti ferrum et armasti manus. Reddimus ecce tibi tam milia multa notarum quam stando flendo te docente excepimus. Non potes irasci quod scribimus; ipse iubebas numquam quietum dextera ut ferret stilum. … Emendes licet inspectos longo ordine versus, mendosa forte si quid erravit manus. excerce imperium: ius est tibi plectere culpam, si quis tuorum te notavit segnius.’ ‘Why do you complain?’ calls one, ‘you yourself as our teacher gave us this iron and put the weapon in our hands. You see we are giving you back all the thousands of characters which as we stood in tears we took down from your teaching. You cannot be angry with us for writing; it was you who bade us never let our hand carry an idle stylus. … You may examine and correct our lines in long array, in case an erring hand has made any mistake. Use your authority; you have power to punish a fault, if any of your pupils has written carelessly on you.’1

1 Prudentius, ‘Passio Cassiani Forocorneliensis (Peristefanon, IX)’, in Prudentius, ed. and trans. H.J. Thomson, vol. 2, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), lines 69–82, pp. 226–7.

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Much is made of the painful slowness of being done to death by so many tiny wounds and of the paradox that the tenderest, weakest of torturers inflict the most pain. This story is one of the chapters in Prudentius’s Peristephanon, a fourthcentury collection of metrically ambitious and varied poems about Christian martyrs. Prudentius, too, was a teacher, and he clearly identified with Cassian. In about the year 900, Hucbald of Saint Amand, himself a master of the trivium, of shorthand and of music – perhaps notation, too, which also involves a lot of tiny punctus and pen marks – retold the story in prose for his students.2 It has been retold by others, not very often, but steadily.3 And it is frequently told in modern scholarship, too, as I am telling it now, for we can all relate, both to the students turning the tables on their master and the poor master meeting such a horrific end.4 The vignette is a good starting point, for it encapsulates many of the features of a fairly substantial tradition of texts in which pupils attack masters and, casting a wider net, also the other way around or pupils attacking pupils or masters attacking masters. They all need to be considered together because, for reasons that I hope will become clear, the boundaries are blurred. There are more such texts than one might think, widely scattered in time and geography, even counting only those already published and noticed: more may lurk in the archives. Since they are often occasional poems, letters or school exercises, they are not the kind of text likely to be transmitted with care, so, as Jan Ziolkowski, Ineke Sluyter and Michael Lapidge have all noted, what we have is probably a thin record of

Hucbald of St Amand, ‘Passion de S. Cassien d’Imola composée d’après Prudence par Hucbald de Saint-Amand’, ed. François Dolbeau, Revue Bénédictine 87 (1977): 238–56. 3 Ludwig Bieler, ‘Vindicta scholarium: Beiträge zur Geschichte eines Motivs’, in Robert Muth et al. (eds), Serta philologica Aenipontiana, Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft 7–8 (Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Gesellschaft zur Pflege der Geisteswissenschaften, 1962), 383–5; F. Lanzoni, ‘Le leggende di San Cassiano d’Imola’, Didaskaleion n.s. 3 (1925): 1–44; William F. Diebold, ‘Changing Perspectives of the Visual in the Middle Ages: Hucbald of St. Amand’s Carolingian Rewriting of Prudentius’, in Mariëlle Hageman and Marco Mostert (eds), Reading Images and Texts: Papers from the Third Utrecht Symposium of Medieval Literacy, Utrecht, 7–9 December 2000 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 161–76, esp. 174 n. 38. William of Malmesbury tells the same story of John Scott Eriugena, although it is not clear whether he means it literally or figuratively, as a humorous way of saying that Eriugena ended his career wasting his talents on far too elementary teaching (Gesta Pontificum Anglorum: The History of the English Bishops, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R.M. Thomson, 2 vols, Oxford Medieval Texts [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007], 1: 588–89; see Deirdre Carabine, John Scottus Eriugena [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000], 14). 4 On the role of identification in this poem, see Michael Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 144–8. 2

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a more pervasive phenomenon.5 The texts range in time and in tone: from the mild to the astonishingly ferocious; from the enigmatic seventh-century Hisperica famina to the much gentler school colloquies by Aelfric and Aelfric Bata, which only occasionally get polemical; a colloquy from St. Gall; the little school play ‘Terence and His Critic’; several of the animal poems or ‘mummings’ described by Jan Ziolkowski.6 The outer limit of outrageousness is perhaps Warner of Rouen’s Moriuht, an eleventh-century invective against an Irish poet and teacher, vile enough to offend us even at this temporal distance, and the only slightly less offensive Altercatio magistri et discipuli from tenth-century England, which does not go quite as far in terms of sexual invective but does parallel the xenophobic, anti-Celtic theme, the teacher Iorwerth clearly being Welsh.7 There is the boisterous and weird Rhetorimachia by Anselm of Besate, backed by a long tradition of semi-comic (but functional) rhetoric textbooks; the Italian Gunzo’s offended (or mock-offended) letter about his scandalous treatment at the hands of the Reichenau students, who sniggered at his Latin;8 the elegant self-defence Jan Ziolkowski, Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750–1150 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 145; Michael Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems from Aethelwold’s School at Winchester’, Anglo-Saxon England 1 (1972): 85–137, at 102; Ineke Sluiter, ‘Persuasion, Pedagogy, Polemics: Two Case Studies in Medieval Grammar Teaching’, New Medieval Literatures 11 (2009): 177–94, at 177. 6 The Hisperica Famina: I. The A-Text: A New Critical Edition with English Translation and Philological Commentary, ed. Michael W. Herren (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1974); Latin Colloquies from Pre-Conquest Britain: Edited from Oxford, St. John’s College, MS 154 and from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Bodley 864, ed. Scott Gwara, Toronto Medieval Latin Texts (Toronto: Centre for Medieval Studies, 1996); AngloSaxon Conversations: The Colloquies of Aelfric Bata, ed. Scott Gwara, trans. David W. Porter (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997); Scott Gwara, ‘The Hermeneutmata pseudodositheana, Latin Oral Fluency, and the Social Function of the Cambro-Latin Dialogues Called De raris fabulis’, in Carol Dana Lanham (ed.), Latin Grammar and Rhetoric: From Classical Theory to Medieval Practice (London: Continuum, 2002), 109–38; the St Gall colloquy in ‘Zu Notker dem Stammler’, ed. J. Schwalm and P. von Winterfeld, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde 27(1902): 740–43; Un conflictus terenziano del X secolo: Il Delusor, ed. Marco Giovini (Milan: Archipelago, 2007), also in Hrotsvitae Opera, ed. Paul Winterfeld, MGH Scriptores (Berlin: Weidmann, 1902), xx–xxiii; Ziolkowski, Talking Animals, 142–5. 7 Warner of Rouen, Moriuht: A Norman Latin Poem from the Early Eleventh Century, ed. and trans. Christopher J. McDonough (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1995); Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems from Aethelwold’s School at Winchester’. 8 Gunzo, ‘Epistola ad Augienses’, in Gunzo, ‘Epistola ad Augienses’ und Anselm von Besate, ‘Rhetorimachia’, ed. Karl Manitius, MGH, Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 2 (Weimar: Böhlau, 1958); for comic grammar and rhetoric books, see Virgilius Maro and Martianus Capella (Vivien Law, Wisdom, Authority and Grammar in the Seventh Century: Decoding Virgilius Maro Grammaticus [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995]; William Harris Stahl and Richard Johnson, Martianus Capella and the Seven Liberal 5

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by an eleventh-century magister in Trier;9 the quarrel between the Würzburg and the Worms students;10 the querelle between Matthew of Vendôme and Arnoul d’Orléans, detailed by Bruno Roy and Hugues Shooner.11 And the genre is, of course, still recognizable today. It has always existed, and it has never stopped. What these texts have in common is that they attack school from within, as it were, critiquing scholastic speech even as they employ it – or, if we prefer, employing it even as they critique it. They are playful – appropriately so, as ludus means not only ‘play’ but also ‘school’.12 The school polemics we are about to examine are ludic in a double sense and with a double edge: in the sense that the hostility and violence of the language is framed, bounded, contained and therefore made permissible by the rules of a flyting game and in the sense that, precisely by playing, by consciously performing the speech-acts and calling attention to them, the pupils lay bare and critique the ludus, both the game and the school. One might object that the discourses sketched here fall short of genuine polemic. The linguistic violence is contained, almost ritualized, and at least in part playful. The animosity between the combatants is not entirely genuine: teachers and pupils may be, in Walter Ong’s words, ‘natural enemies’,13 but the antagonism is not complete and not entirely serious. Teachers and pupils are after all engaged in a common pursuit. Despite the ‘enmity’, generation after generation of children enter school, if not quite voluntarily then at least with their own and their parents’ acquiescence. If the mutual aggression between pupils and teachers is, as we shall see, to some extent directed outward towards Arts, 2 vols [New York: Columbia University Press, 1971–7]); see also Carin Ruff, ‘“Desipere in loco”: Style, Memory, and the Teachable Moment’, in Antonina Harbus and Russell Poole (eds), Verbal Encounters: Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Studies for Roberta Frank (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 91–103. Gunzo’s attack has always been read more or less literally in the (limited) scholarly discussion – see most recently Ronald Witt, The Two Latin Cultures and the Foundation of Renaissance Humanism in Medieval Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 91–6 – and was elevated to a major, near-tragic plot element in the once-popular historical novel Ekkehard by Johann Viktor von Scheffel, in 1857. I wonder if it might be time for a reassessment, keeping in mind the possibility of playfulness and satire. 9 Querela magistri treverensis: Neuedition, Übersetzung und Kommentar, ed. Annastina Kaffarnik (Bern: Lang, 2011). 10 Discussed, among others, by C. Stephen Jaeger, ‘Ironie und Subtext in lateinischen Briefen des 11. und 12. Jahrhunderts’, in Horst Wenzel et al. (eds), Gespräche–Boten–Briefe: Körpergedächtnis und Schriftgedächtnis im Mittelalter (Berlin: Schmidt, 1997), 177–92. 11 Bruno Roy and Hughes Shooner, ‘Querelles de maîtres au xiie siècle: Arnoul d’Orléans et son milieu’, Sandalion 8–9 (1985): 315–41. 12 Stanley F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome: From the Elder Cato to the Younger Pliny (Berkeley: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 56. 13 Walter J. Ong, ‘Agonistic Structures in Academia: Past to Present’, Daedalus 103 (1974): 229–38, at 229.

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the institution itself, that aggression is also not entirely in earnest. The aim is hardly to destroy school – on the contrary, its perpetuation is a very large part of the shared goal, especially in a medieval context where schooling is neither universal nor compulsory – but aims precisely at the recruiting and training of new members of a narrow literate class. School is a rite of passage for the next generation of masters and clerics, and both sides, masters and pupils, know and accept this. But if we must therefore redefine our school polemics as mockpolemics, it is nonetheless true that real antagonism, if not exactly enmity, is felt; that the exchanges can rise to an appreciable level of mutual verbal violence; and that genuine issues of power differentials, of aggression and acquiescence, complicity and protest are negotiated through them. We might begin by asking why this submerged but long-lived tradition of dissing the teacher exists. As a first, simple and absolutely correct answer one could say: because teaching is often done in dialogue form, which leads naturally into debate, and disputation, from antiquity down through the Middle Ages and beyond, was central to education. Ziolkowski points to this fundamental feature, citing the famous vignette from William FitzStephen’s twelfth-century description of London, describing the rhetorical exercises of schools on feast days: Pueri diversarum scholarum inter se versibus conrixantur; aut de principiis artis grammaticae, aut de regulis praeteritorum vel futurorum contendunt. Sunt alii qui in epigrammatibus, rhythmis, et metris, utuntur vetere illa triviali dicacitate; licentia Fescennina socios, suppressis nominibus, liberius lacerant. Loedioras jaculantur et scommata; salibus socraticis sociorum, vel forte majorum, vitia tangunt; ne mordacius dente rodant procaciori, audacioribus convitiis. Auditores ‘multum ridere parati, Ingeminant tremulos naso crispante cachinnos’ Boys from different schools fling versified arguments against each other, disputing matters of grammatical principles or rules governing the use of the future or past tenses. There are those who make use of epigrams, rhymes, and metrical verse – types of sarcasm traditionally heard at street-corners; with ‘Fescennine Licence’, they freely ridicule their associates, without naming names. They hurl ‘abuse and jibes’; with Socratic wit they take digs at the character flaws of their fellows, or even their elders, and ‘bite more keenly even than Theon’s tooth’ with their ‘bold dithyrambs’. The audience being ‘ready to laugh their fill’, ‘with wrinkling nose repeat the loud guffaw’.14

Ziolkowski, Talking Animals, 142–3; Liber Custumarum, ed. H.T. Riley, Rolls Series 12, vol. 2 (1860), trans. Stephen Alsford, Florilegium Urbanum (2001–12), 6, (accessed 15 Aug. 2013). 15 Ward Parks, ‘Flyting, Sounding, Debate: Three Verbal Contest Genres’, Poetics Today 7 (1986): 439–58; Gabriele Knappe, ‘Flyting und die Rhetorik des verbalen Konflikts in der angelsächsischen Kultur’, in Oliver Auge (ed.), Bereit zum Konflikt: Strategien und Medien der Konflikterzeugung und Konfliktbewältigung im europäischen Mittelalter (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2008), 31–46. 16 Bruce Holsinger, Music, Body and Desire in Medieval Culture: Hildegard of Bingen to Chaucer (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 272–82 et passim. 17 Ong, ‘Agonistic Structures in Academia’. 18 This link has been made by, among many others, Jody Enders, ‘Delivering Delivery: Theatricality and the Emasculation of Eloquence’, Rhetorica 15 (1997), 253–78; Marjorie Curry Woods, ‘Rape and the Pedagogical Rhetoric of Sexual Violence’, in Rita Copeland (ed.), Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 56–86. 19 Hucbald of St Amand, ‘Passion de S. Cassien d’Imola’, 255.

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this aspect much less. Classroom violence is barely mentioned (although it was, as we know, commonplace in Roman schools), only the judge cites it as a reason why the pupils would make ideal executioners.20 The boys themselves do not complain of beatings. Their most specific grievance is that Cassian has worked them too hard has not given them enough free time.21 But the gist of their taunts is another: they are paying him back with the very tools he gave them, the pens he put in their hands, the language he put in their mouths.22 One might be reminded of Prospero’s plaintive admonition to Caliban that after all it was he who brought him into language and Caliban’s unmoved retort that in giving him language, Prospero has taught him how to curse. One might also think of Frantz Fanon’s celebrated reading of that scene, and its powerful resonance within the discourse of postcolonialism: in both cases, the exchange poignantly evokes and critiques a difficult power dynamic. Hucbald, however, is addressing his retelling of the Cassian legend directly to his pupils. His appeal to them is that they have a common goal, that they are in this together. He is challenging them to accept their harsh treatment willingly and to submit to the pedagogical contract that not only permits but requires teachers to discipline pupils: if we do not, he says, your uncorrected behaviour and language reflects back on us, the teachers.23 In effect, he pleads with them to love him not despite but because of his severity (‘magistros pro vobis decertantes diligite ut patres’ [‘love your masters, who are fighting for you, like fathers’]). This may seem, and in fact is, rather sado-masochistic. One could certainly write a psycho-pathology of medieval schooling, just as one could with nineteenth-century public schools, and Hucbald would not be a bad place to start.24 But the violence does not go in one direction only; nor is it all dark or pathological. For in truth, the teacher also finds himself in a weak position, no matter how almighty he may seem to a young child. In late Roman society, the term Prudentius, ‘Passio Cassiani Forocorneliensis’, line 38. Ibid., lines 75–6. 22 Ibid., lines 69–82; see Simon Goldhill, ‘Body/Politics: Is There a History of 20 21

Reading?’, in Thomas N. Falkner, Nancy Felson and David Konstan (eds), Contextualizing Classics: Ideology, Performance, Dialogue. Essays in Honor of John J. Peradotto (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999), 89–120, at 117. 23 ‘Si enim vos aut ignorantes non erudiunt aut delinquentes non cohercent, se ipsos in vestra iniquitate condempnant’ (Hucbald of St Amand, ‘Passion de S. Cassien d’Imola’, 255). 24 Another disturbing, sadistic episode of pedagogical violence in Hucbald’s works, which he even pauses to consider and defend at length, is the near-fatal beating of young St Gertrudis at the hands of her brother and at the behest of her mother (Hucbald of St Amand, Vita Sanctae Rictrudis, Patrologia Latina 132, ed. J-P. Migne [Paris, 1844–64], cols 843–6).

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grammaticus (elementary teacher) was almost an insult,25 and the schoolmaster is a familiar figure of fun throughout history. Society does not back him up, and his authority is precarious, if only because he is outnumbered. In the Cassian story, the thin line of authority is breached, which is every teacher’s worst nightmare. It is natural, then, that alongside teacher flytings, there is also the lament of the master, and often they go together or are even hard to keep separate. Eberhard the German’s thirteenth-century rhetoric textbook Laborintus ends with a sharp attack on pupils and their parents as complainers and schemers. But he also tells how Nature, when she formed humans, only reluctantly went ahead in creating the Schoolmaster; she wanted to stop when she saw how he was turning out and how miserable he would be in his later life – and how laughable. That, of course, cuts both ways, both commiserating with and poking fun at all involved.26 Another instructive feature of Hucbald’s adaptation of Prudentius is the framing. In all its tellings, the story is both distanced and personalized. In Prudentius, uniquely among the chapters of the Peristephanon, it is told to the author by way of an ekphrasis.27 The narrator sees a painting of Cassian’s martyrdom, and the shrine’s custodian tells him the story. It is both distanced – the narrator does not even know, initially, what he is looking at – and made vividly present, by way of a picture. It is told in the first person, and the narrator clearly relates personally to his martyred fellow teacher, but the narrator then delegates the telling to a nameless caretaker, himself an eyewitness not to the action but only the painting thereof. Hucbald has the advantage of recreating that framing precisely, but adds another layer to it, with yet another first person added on top of Prudentius’s. He places his retelling explicitly in a school context: he is turning Prudentius’s verse into prose, ostensibly to make it easier for the pupils (although his prose is hardly easy). Turning prose into verse, and the other way around, was a standard school exercise. The Cassian story, then, becomes distanced as merely a writing exercise; however, since it is a story about school, it is also revivified, reactualized by its scholastic reframing. The innermost layer of direct speech, what the boys say to Cassian as they stab him, is in one sense very far away inside the layered perspectives. It is represented in the painting, hence re-verbalized by the custodian, whose speech is reported by Prudentius, and then rewritten by Hucbald. On the other hand, Hucbald takes these far-away horrible schoolboy taunts into his frame, the outermost layer of Alan D. Booth, ‘Some Suspect Schoolmasters’, Florilegium 3 (1981): 1–20; Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, 58–62; Sluiter, ‘Persuasion, Pedagogy, Polemics’, 179. 26 Évrard l’Allemand, ‘Laborintus’, in Les Arts poétiques du xiie et du xiiie siècle, ed. Edmond Faral (Paris: Champion, 1924), 338–77, lines 835–990 (invective against students and parents), lines 11–118 (Nature reluctantly fashioning the Schoolmaster). 27 See Diebold, ‘Changing Perspectives of the Visual in the Middle Ages’; Goldhill, ‘Body/Politics’, 109–17. 25

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the boxes-within-boxes, and they suddenly take on a new meaning in the current frame of communication. Finally, let us note how very self-referential the children’s polemical speeches are. The taunts talk about themselves. The boys are not just randomly saying hurtful things to their teacher, not just wounding him with their speeches. They say, ‘I am wounding you with the very speech (and the very stylus) that you gave me’, and that in itself becomes the ultimate insult. This direct thematizing of the language – putting the words into quotation marks, as it were, and considering them as words – is typical of the genre. In fact, all our texts are in the service of acquiring a shared language, arguably the goal of any formal schooling, and certainly the goal of all medieval schooling. That explains, on the one hand, the underlying spirit of ‘we are in this together’ – sometimes perhaps merely an ineffectual plea by the master but often, one senses, real camaraderie.28 It also explains the often extreme, deliberate linguistic difficulty of almost all the school polemics: perhaps the opposite of what one might expect if one thought these texts simply rendered the actual spontaneous speech of youngsters in the schoolyard. Hucbald says he wants to render Prudentius more accessible by turning him into prose but actually his prose is, to me at least, thornier than Prudentius’s quite legible verse: this is clearly for Hucbald’s advanced pupils.29 Many readers will find the Trier Querela magistri hard going. We have yet to understand and explain everything that happens in the English Altercatio magistri et discipuli. The earliest texts I mentioned, the Irish Hisperica famina, have even given their name to a sort of precious, difficult Latin with lots of recherché ‘glossary words’: Hisperic Latin, which only a handful of modern specialists understand fully. At the more elementary end, the classroom colloquies of Aelfric Bata are intended simply to teach Latin, with an emphasis on a varied vocabulary. One such colloquy, famously, involves a torrent of Latin abuse, here directed by the Master at a student, and the student’s reply: Tu sochors! Tu scibalum hedi! Tu scibalum ouis! Tu scibalum equi! Tu fimus bouis! Tu stercus porci! Tu hominis stercus! Tu canis scibalum! Tu uulpis scibalum! Tu muricipis stercus! Tu galline stercus! Tu asini scibalum! Tu uulpicule omnium uulpiculorum! Tu uulpis cauda! Tu uulpis barba! Tu nebris uulpiculi! Tu uechors et semichors! Tu scurra! Quid uis habere ad me? Nihil boni, autumno. Ego uellem, ut totus esses caccatus et minctus pro his omnibus verbis tuis. 28 Julia H. Smith, ‘The Hagiography of Hucbald of Saint-Amand’, Studi medievali 3rd ser. 35 (1994): 517–42, at 531. 29 Smith argues that Hucbald’s hagiographical texts are conceived pedagogically, in ascending order of difficulty, with the Cassian text being the most advanced (ibid. 530–32).

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Habeto stercus in mento tuo. Habe scibalum in barba tua et in ore tuo stercus et scibalum tria et duo, octo et unum, et ego nullum, habeto semper. Modo uerba tua uerum manifestant, quod unus mimus et unus sottus es et insipiens et fatuus. Nihil melius scis agere, quam omnes, qui ad te peruenerint, turpiter cum tuis caccare et fedare foetidis uerbis et insensatis. Non sum sensatus adhuc, nec tam sapiens sicut tu es. Nullo modo usurpare mihi possum sapientiam nec nullatenus scio, quia mea adolescentia non ualet facere hoc omnino. [Teacher:] You idiot! You goat shit! Sheep shit! Horse shit! You cow dung! You pig turd! You human turd! You dog shit! Fox shit! Cat turd! Chicken shit! You ass turd! You fox cub of all fox cubs! You fox tail! You fox beard! You skin of a fox cub! You idiot and halfwit! You buffoon! What would you have for me? Nothing good, I think. [Pupil:] I would like you to be totally beshat and bepissed for all these words of yours. Have shit in your beard! May you always have shit in your beard, and shit and turds in your mouth, three and two times and eight and one, and I none at all ever! Now your words reveal the truth, that you are a buffoon and a fool and a silly blabbermouth. You don’t know how to do anything better than to use your stinking stupid words to beshit and befoul those who come to you. I’m not learned yet, or as smart as you. I can in no way use wisdom; I don’t know how at all, because my young age is entirely unable to do so.30

One can imagine the class’s delight during that lesson! The more difficult colloquies teach advanced, even abstruse, ‘Hisperic’ vocabulary, but they also show it off, as a scholastic weapon in and of itself. In what is known as the ‘Hisperic Colloquy’, a newly arrived foreign student first converses with the master, but then other, already established pupils intervene and engage him in a very Hisperic verbal duel, at the end of which the master explains that this is what happens to new students, along with practical jokes in the dormitory.31 In either case – basic or Hisperic – the words are displayed for their own sake, in quotation marks, as ‘vocabulary words’ to be learned, and that, too, is a form of self-referentiality. A sentence like ‘go and guard my horses in the field or in the meadow or in the pasture’ is not so much about tending horses as it is about learning words for tending horses.32 Many of the more advanced polemical texts are about the writing of poetry. Moriuht, Warner of Rouen’s vicious invective against an Irish magister, is primarily about Moriuht’s bombastic vainglory and beastly ineptitude as a poet Anglo-Saxon Conversations, 138–9. Latin Colloquies from Pre-Conquest Britain, 100–110. 32 Scott Gwara, ‘The Hermeneutmata pseudodositheana’, 125. 30 31

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– of which his sexual degradations appear to be only an outer correlative. The Altercatio magistri et discipuli is also about verse-making: in fact, the context seems to be a metrics lesson. After an exchange of surprisingly mean-spirited insults between the student and Iorwerth, the Welsh master, the last part is a sample poem by the pupil alone, in a rare and showy metrical form, on the topic, ‘Don’t you dare say that we boys don’t know how to write verse!’ de reliquo nec talia cures uerba profari: te fore comptum artibus, et nos posse poesim fingere nullam. desipis. For the rest, may you not care to say such words: that you are accomplished in the arts and that we can compose no poetry. You’re being foolish.33

At this point, the whole project of dissing the teacher looks hopelessly circular, self-involved, convoluted even and perhaps defanged, able to bite no-one and nothing except its own tail. And indeed it is a contained form of verbal violence, carefully delimited to particular speech (or writing) situations and officially licensed, if not even mandated. Geoffrey of Vinsauf ’s Poetria nova specifically counsels pupils on how to insult a master – ‘you might say something like: though himself still fit for the ferule, now he sits above others freely endowed with the dignity of a master’.34 In Aelfric’s Bata insulting contest, the master explicitly challenges the pupil to respond: ‘quid uis habere ad me?’ (‘so what have you got for me?’) One can read this in different ways: as a playfully egalitarian game, the master risking a letting-down of his authoritarian guard; or, on the contrary, as the ultimate assertion of one-sided, crushing power in the classroom, where the teacher owns the very words of protest and sarcastically offers them to the pupil: ‘You want to cuss me out? OK, here’s some language you can use!’ It is probably both those things. A power differential is certainly maintained: Aelfric Bata’s student does not respond in exactly the same key: he begins by wishing for certain scatological ills to befall the teacher – in the subjunctive – and ends by acknowledging his rhetorical inferiority, indeed his powerlessness. Whether

Lapidge, ‘Three Latin Poems from Aethelwold’s School at Winchester’, 124–5. Geoffroi de Vinsauf, ‘Poetria nova’, in Les Arts poétiques, 195–262, lines 439–40.

33 34

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these games are intimidating or liberating surely depends on the teacher and his rapport with his students. If school flyting is rule-bound and contained, it shares that feature with other kinds of ritualized insult. Much research has been done on ‘the dozens’, an insulting game among African-American adolescents, and the conditions and mechanisms by which it can remain (reasonably) peaceful despite the quite horrendous things being said.35 But the violence is there, and perhaps not so far from the surface. The dozens have been known to end in fistfights or worse. And the nightmare of the Cassian story is precisely that: that apparently inconsequential school speech, done for practice purposes only and not in earnest, can suddenly turn into a very real, lethal weapon. This is, perhaps, the most important unifying characteristic of all the school flytings: they often reframe a classroom genre, call its bluff and make it, at least for a brief moment, unexpectedly real. This works well because an aura of unreality attaches to school and to its verbal genres. Recall the common modern habit of contrasting school with ‘real life’. Recall the Roman name ludus (game) for elementary school: in the sense of ‘insignificant, made for children’; in the sense of ‘not for real, for exercise only’; in the sense of ‘protected, enclosed, sheltered from real consequences’ (apart from often brutal scholastic punishments). We have already noted the importance of the teaching dialogue, from antiquity to today, and reproduced in many medieval class texts. Dialogue presents itself as a ‘natural’ genre, one that corresponds well to everyday language use, with more or less spontaneous turn-taking, with the more or less gradual, spontaneous development of themes. That is what makes it popular for teaching texts. But teaching dialogue, as its modern critics note, is far from natural.36 Standard classroom dialogue is too scripted, directed, lopsided, top-down, consisting of fake questions requiring predetermined answers: other answers will be set aside. The students have little meta-linguistic control over the progress of the dialogue: a directive like ‘let’s leave this now and turn to something else’ can usually only come from the teacher. Conversational initiatives coming from below will be ignored, quickly dealt with, or squelched (‘interesting question, but not now, Johnny’). The medieval classroom knew the catechism style only too well and probably spent hours and hours in that mode. (Consider, for instance, Priscian’s stultifyingly thorough parsing grammar or the eleventh-century grammar Among the classic studies are William Labov, ‘Rules for Ritual Insults’, in D. Sudnow (ed.), Studies in Social Interaction (New York: Free Press, 1972), 120–69; John Dollard, ‘The Dozens: Dialectic of Insult’, in Alan Dundes (ed.), Mother Wit from the Laughing Barrel (Oxford: University Press of Mississippi, 1973), 277–94. 36 Konrad Ehrlich, ‘School Discourse as Dialogue’, in Marcelo Dascal and Hubert Cuyckens (eds), Dialogue: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1985), 383–411. 35

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lesson from England, ‘Beatus quid est’.)37 There are more free-wheeling kinds of educational dialogue, but they have obviously come down to us, if at all, in an equally scripted form (such as Aelfric’s and Aelfric Bata’s colloquies). We can only guess to what extent the reality they attempt to convey allowed for freely improvised answers. What is said in school is, then, not a real conversation; it is, if you will, in quotation marks. It is a pretend dialogue, although the pretence is so natural, even defining, to the classroom situation, that all play along as a matter of course, probably without even knowing that they are doing it. Many of the more sophisticated school polemics call this bluff. Consider this passage from a fragmentary ninth-century poem, ‘Qui terram variis’. After a long, lofty, very Virgilian hexameter passage on cosmos and nature, we find this: Quae tantis poterit verborum copia dictis Respondere tuis vel quae vox ferrea sensum Explanare tuum? Iam pectore et ore fatigor. Verba latent sensusque fugit. Noli inde mirari. Arte carens nuper stultorum garrula proles Librorum despector eram ceu Tullius essem. Desine quapropter forti me tangere versu. Quidam ‘fessus’ ait ‘bos calcat firmiter arva’. Quodsi multa velim percurrere dicta Maronis Aut revocare tuos gentili sorte poetas … Who could reply to all the things you said with your copious words, or what iron voice could make plain your meaning? Already [at the thought of it] I am tired in chest and mouth. The words are obscure, the meaning escapes me. Nor is it any wonder. Until recently I lacked art; the loquacious child of ignorant parents, I was a scorner of books, even if I were Cicero. Therefore stop hitting me with strong verse. Somebody said, ‘a tired ox will dig in its hooves’. Much as I would like to go over Vergil’s sayings, or bring back your poets, if a kind fate permits [here the poem breaks off ].38

The genre – the protest of an exhausted, unwilling schoolboy – is familiar to this day. (One well-known example is the jingle ‘Latin is a dead tongue’.) The ‘Partitiones duodecim versuum aeneidos principalium’, in Prisciani Caesariensis opuscula, ed. Marina Passalacqua, vol. 2 (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1987); Martha Bayless, ‘Beatus Quid Est and the Study of Grammar in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Historiographica Linguistica 20 (1993): 67–110. 38 Poetae Latini aevi Carolini, ed. Ernst Dümmler, Ludwig Traube and Paul von Winterfeld, MGH Poetae 4.3 (Berlin 1923), lines 27–36: ‘ceu Tullius essem’ (line 32), is puzzling, perhaps incorrect. 37

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boy’s remonstrance is evocatively physical: from his tired mouth and chest to the recalcitrant ox digging in its hooves, he balks with his entire being at being asked to perform, at being asked to absorb and then to body forth himself this ancient, strange literature. But this joke is more sophisticated than an outright refusal. Its method is to take what at first seems to be a bit of neutral, non-attributed textbook poetry and re-frame and re-voice it retroactively as a speech by the teacher. It is only the reply that makes it so: until then, it was ‘just a bit of poetry’, of the sort that this hapless Carolingian schoolboy will now have to stand up and explicate. This move initiates a double-edged game. It exploits the features of the pretend dialogue of the classroom. On the one hand, it calls the bluff of the scholastic game: it strips the participants of their masks. This is not really Virgil; it’s the teacher droning on. It is not really reception of classical poetry in any lofty sense; it’s me having to recite my homework. On the other hand, it does this with the language and the role-play made available by the scholastic game. Note that the schoolboy articulates his protest in correct hexameters that follow on seamlessly from the teacher’s speech; but for the modern editor’s punctuation, one could not immediately tell where the teacher’s poem leaves off and the pupil’s protest begins. Another text, of the ninth or tenth century, known as the ‘Delusor terentii’ or ‘Terence and His Critic’, actually dramatizes this situation. What we have is only a fragment: the beginning of a sort of dramatic skit, in which a young student directly challenges the ‘old’ Terence – who clearly blends with the figure of the teacher and may well have been played by the teacher. Whether the scene was meant to be actually played, or only read, is a matter of some debate, but these are hardly exclusive.39 There are many forms of representation between a plain reading and a fully staged, fully impersonated performance, and Ziolkowski, among others, has shown that the medieval classroom employed acting, ‘mummings’ and recitations of various kinds.40 ‘Delusor terentii’ is undeniably dramatic in that it explicitly stages an impersonation of a sort: whether the actors actually wore costumes, changed their voices, gesticulated, got up from their seats and moved in a performance space of whatever kind, is really quite secondary. The skit begins without a stage direction or anything Marco Giovini and Claudia Villa both categorically deny the possibility of a performance (Marco Giovini, ‘Elementi poetici e drammatici del delusor’, Studi umanistici piceni 26 [2006], 129–48, at 134; Claudia Villa, ‘Il linguaggio del “Delusor”’, in La Lectura Terentii, vol. 1: Da Ildemaro a Francesco Petrarca [Padua: Antenore, 1984], 67–98, at 98); Peter Dronke believes that it would have been performed, possibly as a prelude to a staged or semi-staged reading of a Terence comedy (Women Writers of the Middle Ages [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984], 58). 40 Ziolkowski, Talking Animals, 131–52. 39

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at all to set the scene – much like ‘Cum Terram variis’ – and launches directly into an aggressive, mocking address to Terence: Mitte recordari monimenta vetusta, Terenti: Cesses ulterius: vade, poeta vetus. Vade, poeta vetus, quia non tua carmina curo; Iam retice fabulas, dico, vetus veteres. Dico, vetus veteres iamiam depone Camenas, quae nil, credo, iuvant, pedere ni doceant. Stop mentioning your antiquated works, Terence; just stop it; go away, old poet. Go away, old poet, because I do not care for your poems. Enough, old man: silence your old comedies. I tell you, old man: let go of the old muses who, in my view, have no purpose other than to teach us how to fart.41

It is only now that the characters are said to enter. Regardless of how we want to imagine that entrance in practice, the stage direction reads: ‘nunc terentius exit foras audiens haec et ait …’ (‘Now Terence comes out, hearing this, and says …’).42 Terence, menacing and authoritarian, summons his ‘delusor’ to a debate. Now appears the ‘persona delusoris’, as if he had not been there before: ‘Ecce persona delusoris praesentatur et hoc audiens inquit’ (‘Now the character of the Mocker comes forward and, hearing this, responds in this manner’). Even the reply that follows insists on his appearing, his making himself present: ‘ego sum’, ‘huc praesens adero’ (‘It is I’, ‘I will be here, present’).43 The two debaters, then, present and impersonate themselves before our eyes, whether physically or in our imagination. The fragment breaks off not long afterwards, having accomplished little of substance. The boy, in various asides audible to us but not to ‘Terence’ (‘secum’), admits that he is in hot water. He really does not know what to say to the great poet, and when Terence advances arguments in defence of his works, the delusor, ‘secum’, grants them readily: he continues to argue his side only to avoid, or delay, an admission of defeat. The discussion quickly degenerates into threats of violence, which would suggest a kind of slapstick performance, with corresponding gestures (whether actually executed or only imagined). The verbal discourse harps almost exclusively on the single topic strongly signalled at the beginning: ‘you are so old and I am so young’. tu vetus atque senex, ego tyro valens adulenscens. tu sterilis truncus, ego fertilis arbor, opimus.

Un conflictus terenziano del X secolo, lines 1–6: my translation. Ibid., stage direction before line 13. 43 Ibid., lines 21–2. 41 42

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You are old and senile, I am a healthy adolescent. You are a barren tree stump, I a fertile, excellent tree.44

It is hardly a masterpiece of comic literature, even though it is more sophisticated than meets the eye: there are, for instance, many references to Terence commentaries and other intertextual citations, as Giovini and Villa have demonstrated. And since the text breaks off so quickly, it is hard to know how it might have continued, or whether it might have become funnier later on. Yet the general dynamic of the piece is not unlike that of the texts we have already seen. As in ‘Cum Terram variis’, the encounter is imagined in physical terms, here realized in the insistence on the characters’ coming forward and also in the blows and slaps that are threatened and perhaps mimed. It is notable that only the boy’s physical presence is at issue: Terence’s is, oddly, taken for granted. It is the boy who ‘is presented’ – Terence just enters. Only the delusor is referred to as a ‘persona’ – and consistently so – although, arguably, he is more ‘himself ’, a schoolboy playing a schoolboy, than his interlocutor is: but Terence is called Terence, not ‘persona’. What is dramatized is once again the schoolboy’s reluctance to perform, to assume into his own body and show forth in his own body what the old poet forces on him. Yet he does so – as we have seen before – in the old poet’s own terms. Not that the skit successfully parodies Terentian comedy, but it does pick up on certain features of the staging, which does not go without saying, for although there must have been theatrical entertainments of some sort, the theatre as a fixed place and cultural institution must have struck early medieval readers as an alien element of Roman culture, vaguely and uncertainly inferred from Terence’s text and Isidore’s less-than-clear definitions.45 At a minimum, what ‘Delusor terentii’ has picked up on is the very idea of entering on a stage, as well as the device of the comic aside to the audience, and the insubordinate schoolboy evokes the ubiquitous comic slaves of Roman comedy. Moreover, the skit ‘stages’ elements in the scholiastic tradition, such as the remark that Terence’s verse is so hard to scan that one could mistake it for prose (‘an sit prosaicum, nescio, an metricum’).46 Most importantly, ‘Delusor terentii’ stages not so much the comedies themselves as their prologues, in which Terence does indeed defend himself against an aggressive critic and which seem Ibid., lines 28–9. For a discussion and further references, see Monika Otter, ‘Vultus adest (The Face

44 45

Helps): Rhetoric, Expressivity and Interiority’, in Mary Carruthers (ed.), Rhetoric beyond Words (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 151–72, at 160–66; see also Mary Hatch Marshall, ‘Theatre in the Middle Ages: Evidence from Dictionaries and Glosses’, Symposium 4 (1950): 1–39; Joseph R. Jones, ‘Isidore and the Theater’, Comparative Drama 16 (1982): 26–48; Sandra Pietrini, Spettacolo e immaginario teatrale nel Medioevo (Rome: Bulzoni, 2001), 115–22, 165–93. 46 Un conflictus terenziano del X secolo, line 10.

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to have appealed to medieval readers. A later, but very evocative illustration is the frontispiece of an early-twelfth-century collection of Terence’s plays.47 It shows a sort of courtroom scene, with all the players identified by written labels: Terence is on the left, the malicious critic Lanuvius and another detractor on the right; Calpurnius presides as a judge. (The real Calpurnius was a late-classical compiler and editor of Terence’s plays; most medieval copies contain his sign-off at the end of each play.) Underneath we see the audience (‘Romani’), who look more to the trial scene above than to the comedic scenes underneath, which seem to be emerging from the trial, as if framed by it and presented as evidence for it. It is easy to see that ‘Delusor terentii’ stages a similar notion of the theatrical author and his ‘critics’. Hence, despite its gesture of refusal, it reiterates and puts on display Terence’s language and the language of his scholastic afterlife. If we ask ourselves how ‘Delusor terentii’ may have ended, the Terence prologues give us one possible indication. It may have understood itself as a dramatized prologue. It might well have led into a performance or a kind of bench reading of a Terentian play, as Peter Dronke has suggested: how else could ‘Terence’ ultimately defend his work, except by showing a sample? In this case, ironically, but also logically, the student’s staged refusal to embody, pronounce, perform the ancient text would have been turned on its head, and the scene would finish actually with a recital or even a staging of Terence. ‘Delusor terentii’ would then be an invitation to the pupils to overcome their resistance and enter into the comic world of the text. Or else one could imagine – as prefigured by Terence’s and the boy’s threatening to come to blows – that in the end the authoritarian ‘Terence’ is unmasked, shown to be ‘only’ the teacher and hence no more frightening than him. Maybe even the teacher himself is not as frightening as the pupils imagined. That is, the skit would be dramatizing the obvious fact that the great auctores are, for us, impersonated in the more immediate authorities of school, borrowing the bodies and the voices of the teachers. It would be revealing and demystifying that impersonation, in a moment of disenchantment, of initiation. At this point, it is helpful to think back to Cassian of Imola and perhaps another reason why his story resonates so strongly. As the students turn on their master, we contemplate the nightmare of an initiation, an empowerment gone horribly wrong. In his book on games and play, Roger Caillois offers this description of an initiation rite among the Dogon people of West Africa:

Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, Ms. Vat. lat. 3305; see David H. Wright, ‘The Forgotten Early Romanesque Illustrations of Terence in Vat. Lat. 3305’, Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 56 (1993): 183–206, at 190; L. Webber-Jones and C.R. Morey, The Miniatures of the Manuscripts of Terence Prior to the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954), vol. 1, pl. 10; Pietrini, Spettacolo e immaginario teatrale nel Medioevo, 42. 47

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Initiation, the passage rite of puberty, frequently consists of revealing the purely human nature of the mask wearers to the novices. From this viewpoint, initiation is an atheistic, agnostic, or negative teaching. It exposes a deception and makes one a party to it. Until then, adolescents were terrorized by masked apparitions. One of them pursues the novices with whips. Instigated by the initiator, the youths grab him, pin him down, disarm him, tear off his costume and remove his mask: they recognize one of the elders of the tribe. Henceforth, they belong to the other camp. They inspire fear [in non-initiates]. … The initiates learn that the supposed spirits are only men in disguise, and that their cavernous voices are such because they issue from particularly powerful bull-roarers.48

Seen in this light, the story of Cassian is the nightmare of an initiation gone awry, in which the ludic boundaries are breached and the pretend violence and pretend revenge become real as the pupils win and the master goes down to ignominious defeat. But when all goes well – as in the Dogon ritual but also in ‘Delusor terentii’, which shares its structure in some important ways – the pupils do not ‘win’ nor do they want to. They want to be inducted, in their own right, into the fraternity of literati; they want to become masters themselves. It is a conferral of power, of autonomy – in short, an initiation. And thus it would be right for ‘Delusor terentii’ to end also in a performance of a Terentian comedy. Freed from their fear of the ‘masks’, those of the old, distant and weird classical theatre but also those of scholastic and intellectual life, the boys can now participate as fully vested, autonomous participants. They have been given the freedom of the classical text.

Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games, trans. Meyer Barash (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 95–6: I have slightly altered the translation. 48

Chapter 6

Language of Violence: Language as Violence in Vernacular Sermons Almut Suerbaum Sermons and Polemic Sermons were one of the earliest media of mass communication, and in the thirteenth century, they began to reach large audiences of lay people.1 Whereas scholarly attention has usually focused on sermons to monastic audiences because of their theological complexity, the preachers addressing lay people have often figured prominently in the popular imagination of the Middle Ages as an age of hell-and-brimstone rhetoric of fear. While many of these sermons lack theological subtlety, they clearly played an important part in shaping public opinion. Moreover, they are marked by an inherent tension: their theological justification lies in their catechetical and didactic function, yet as a social phenomenon, they appear so successful precisely because they take on the role of public entertainment, where display of rhetorical skill can become a spectacle to be enjoyed for its own sake. Polemical attacks are a common ingredient in such sermons to lay people: within the German-speaking area, critical attention has been concentrated on the generation preceding Martin Luther, such as John of Capestrano and Geiler of Kaisersberg, whose sermon cycle ‘The Ship of Penitence’ (printed in Augsburg in 1514), conceived as a companion piece to Sebastian Brant’s ‘Ship of Fools’, sought to inspire Christian devotion to the Passion by peddling the stereotype of the evil Jews, thereby fuelling and indeed sanctioning persecution.2 This essay will instead focus on an early and influential Franciscan preacher whose sermons have a distinctive and often polemical voice. It will argue that such elements of polemic need to be seen in three different contexts: as a way of affirming Christian identity Georg Steer, ‘Bettelorden-Predigt als “Massenmedium”’, in Joachim Heinzle (ed.), Literarische Interessenbildung im Mittelalter (Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1993), 314– 36; Hans-Jochen Schiewer, ‘German Sermons in the Middle Ages’, in Beverley Kienzle (ed.), The Sermon (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 861–961; Ursula Schulze, ‘“Wan ir unhail … daz ist iwer hail”: Predigten zur Judenfrage vom 12. bis 16. Jahrhundert’, in ead. (ed.), Juden in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters: Religiöse Konzepte – Feindbilder – Rechtfertigungen (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2002), 109–33, esp. 109–11. 2 On the increasingly anti-Semitic stance of Luther’s sermons and treatises, see Schulze, ‘“Wan ir unhail … daz ist iwer hail”’, 124–33. 1

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by contrasting it aggressively with heretical forms of belief; as speech-acts with the potential to harm, both directly and indirectly, in sparking actions of aggression; and as complex forms of interaction which contain as well as unleash violence and are often strongly gendered. Berthold of Regensburg and Franciscan Preaching in Central Europe Berthold of Regensburg was prolific, and we have a large body of surviving texts in Latin and the vernacular; moreover, historical records allow us to reconstruct at least stages of his career as a prominent Franciscan preacher.3 Born around 1210 in Regensburg, he entered the Franciscan convent founded in the city in 1221 at some time in the first half of the century;4 together with David of Augsburg, he took part in a visitation of the female convent of Niedermünster in 1246; and he died in Regensburg in 1272. Fifteenth-century chronicles record him as a preacher in Augsburg and vicinity between 1240 and 1250,5 and we have evidence for extensive preaching tours throughout the central European area from Bavaria and Austria to Moravia and Hungary; when preaching outside the German-speaking area, he appears to have been accompanied by an interpreter.6 Contemporary annals also credit him with political action in lecturing Otto, duke of Bavaria, on the imprudence of siding against Pope Innocent IV in his conflict with the emperor.7 In 1263, Pope Urban IV ordered him to join Albertus Magnus in preaching a crusade in German-speaking areas. Contemporary accounts create the image of a legendary preacher whose rhetorical prowess attracted huge crowds – Salimbene suggests 60,000–100,000 listeners.8 Such contemporary accounts highlight a peculiar difficulty: they underline Berthold’s success in attracting lay audiences in the towns he visited, to whom he must have preached in the vernacular. Even if the figures are hagiographical Joachim Heinzle, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit: Wandlungen und Neuansätze im 13. Jahrhundert (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), 69–70; Ariane Czerwon, Predigt gegen Ketzer: Studien zu den lateinischen Sermones Bertholds von Regensburg (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 15–24. 4 Czerwon, Predigt gegen Ketzer, 16. 5 Ibid. 17. Czerwon notes that records dating from two centuries after the event may need to be treated with a degree of caution. 6 ‘Bertoldus predicavit in Bohemia, ubi habuit interpretem fratrem Petrum, cognomento Oderincium’ (‘Berthold preached in Bohemia, where he had brother Peter Oderinicium as his interpreter’) (Analecta Franc. II, 38; cited ibid. 18). 7 Ibid. 8 Heinzle, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit, 70; Czerwon, Predigt gegen Ketzer, 18. 3

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hyperbole, they suggest that his sermons were a public spectacle as much as a catechetical exercise, and his success is attributed to his unusually forthright language. Yet the bulk of the transmission of his sermons is in Latin, and these Latin sermons are likely to be outline structures, samples or model versions to be adapted by other preachers – a form of literacy which stands in a complex relationship with the spoken performance, but is almost certainly not its exact record.9 Inserted German glosses in some manuscripts suggest that these were intended to be used by preachers who were functionally bilingual.10 The literary status of these Latin sermons is difficult to assess: Dagmar Neuendorff considers them rough sketches without literary pretensions;11 conversely, David D’Avray, one of the greatest experts on mendicant sermons, notes their unusual quality of voice, which he considers ‘more powerful than Latin sermons in other contemporary collections’.12 While the Latin transmission indicates the importance of Berthold as a historical figure, the vernacular sermons, which are the focus of this paper, are significant as a literary form: transmitted in a redacted version, they present a highly stylized authorial persona, and the most distinctive group is characterized by repeated self-references in which the preacher apostrophizes himself as ‘bruoder Berthold’ (‘Brother Berthold’).13 Older scholarship has read these as traces of Berthold’s authentic voice, yet they represent deliberate literary strategies by means of which redactors, probably from the context of the Austin friars in Augsburg, constructed the fiction of a direct appeal to the audience in sermons which were almost certainly intended for devotional reading.14 Whereas 9 David D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 105–6; Rüdiger Schnell, ‘Bertholds Ehepredigten zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit’, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch 32 (1997), 93–108, at 100–101; Georg Steer, ‘Berthold von Regensburg’, in Ingeborg Glier (ed.), Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfänge bis zur Gegenwart, vol. 3: Die deutsche Prosa im späten Mittelalter: 1250–1370, pt 2: Reimpaargedichte, Drama, Prosa (Munich: Beck, 1987), 321–6. 10 Steer, ‘Bettelorden-Predigt als “Massenmedium”’, 70; Johannes M. Depnering, ‘Sermon Manuscripts in the Late Middle Ages: The Latin and German Codices of Berthold von Regensburg’ (DPhil diss., Oxford University, 2013), 62–66. 11 Dagmar Neuendorff, ‘Bruoder Berthold sprichet – aber spricht er wirklich? Zur Rhetorik in Berthold von Regensburg zugeschriebenen deutschen Predigten’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 101 (2000): 301–12, at 301. 12 D’Avray, The Preaching of the Friars, 152. 13 Almut Suerbaum, ‘Formen der Publikumsansprache bei Berthold von Regensburg und ihr literarischer Kontext’, in Volker Mertens et al. (eds), Predigt im Kontext (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2013), 21–33. 14 Dieter Richter, Die deutsche Überlieferung der Predigten Bertholds von Regensburg: Untersuchungen zur geistlichen Literatur des Spätmittelalters (Munich: Niemeyer, 1969); Steer, ‘Bettelorden-Predigt als “Massenmedium”’; Suerbaum, ‘Formen der Publikumsansprache bei Berthold von Regensburg’.

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the Latin sermons are collected according to their use in the church year, the principles underlying the ordering of the German sermons are less obvious: the group originating from the Austin friars is held together through the conceit of the self-referential voice; other groups appear to be more loosely connected. Yet the forcefulness attributed to the voice of Berthold is one of the defining characteristics. It will be the aim of this chapter to assess how the vernacular sermons use strident criticism in order to engage with their audience. Rather than a concrete historical person, the paper will therefore consider a fictional and constructed but very influential polemical voice. The vernacular sermons, addressed to lay people, are part of the pastoral care for urban communities which took on increasing importance in the thirteenth century.15 They differ from earlier sermon collections in their reference to listeners in the here and now: both in the way listeners are repeatedly addressed and in the subject matter, which often refers to issues of everyday life, from the problems of married couples to the question of appropriate dress. They are thus part of a turning towards humanity which is characteristic of early Franciscan spirituality.16 Yet the mode which Berthold uses is not that of fatherly advice, but rather strident criticism, and it has been argued that Berthold addresses the needs of these lay communities in two quite different modes, simultaneously castigating the shortcomings of those Christians who form the audience for his sermons and attacking heretics for the falseness of their beliefs, while at the same time warning his Christian audiences of the dangers of succumbing to such heretical beliefs.17 To date, such statements have occasionally been studied as material for a history of medieval heresy, but the literary and rhetorical strategies they use to attack opponents have not been the subject of detailed analysis.18

Whether it is possible to define this lay audience more precisely has been the subject of debate for the German-speaking area (see Schiewer, ‘German Sermons in the Middle Ages’, 900). 16 Heinzle, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit, 72. 17 On the contrast with David von Augsburg, who uses the mode of gentle guidance, see Kurt Ruh, Geschichte der abendländischen Mystik, vol. 2: Frauenmystik und Franziskanischen Mystik der Frühzeit (Munich: Beck, 1993): 524–37; Heinzle, Geschichte der deutschen Literatur von den Anfängen bis zum Beginn der Neuzeit, 73. 18 See the brief discussion in Schulze, ‘“Wan ir unhail … daz ist iwer hail”’, 114–18; cf. Ute Dank, Rhetorische Elemente in den Predigten Bertholds von Regensburg (Neuried: Ars Una, 1995), 116–19. 15

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Attacking the ‘Other’: Polemic against Heathens, Heretics and Jews Sermons traditionally serve two functions: they address matters of theological doctrine, especially where, as homily, they offer an elucidation of the liturgical readings of the day, and they provide more general spiritual guidance.19 They have their place within a specific liturgical framework, and their intended audience is therefore very clearly Christian. Nevertheless, they often define Christian doctrine with reference to an external group rather than purely on its own terms, and, as a result, sermons against heretics and heresies play an important role in articulating central elements of Christian doctrine. From the beginning, vernacular sermons often contain an undercurrent of anti-Jewish sentiment.20 In thirteenth-century southern France and Italy, in particular, attacks against Cathars and Waldensians were a prominent feature employed by preachers.21 It has usually been argued that such attacks are less common in sermons to lay audiences, where the focus is on translating theological teaching into catechetical instructions on how to lead a Christian life and where, therefore, discussion about disputed areas of doctrine is less appropriate; moreover, because Cathars and Waldensians by this time did not play as important a role in the German-speaking area as in southern France, it has been considered natural that attacks against heretics would not feature as prominently in German sermons.22 Against this background, the sermon which opens the German collection attributed to Berthold in most manuscript redactions is striking. The rubric frames it in firmly catechetical terms by evoking the general maxim of Christian life ‘das etlîche jehent: tuo daz guote und lâ daz übele’ (‘many say: do good and avoid evil’).23 Yet the sermon quickly moves to an argument ex contrario, Hans-Jochen Schiewer, ‘Computing Middle High German Sermons’, in Jacqueline Hamesse and Xavier Hermand (eds), De l’homélie au sermon: Histoire de la prédication médiévale (Louvain: Publication de l’institution d’études, médiévale, 1993), 341–52. 20 See David Wells, ‘Attitudes to the Jews in Early Middle High German Religious Literature and Sermons’, London German Studies 4 (1992): 27–69. 21 R.I. Moore notes the shift in historiographical attitudes: whereas such sermons were originally taken as evidence for widespread dualist heresies, more recent scholarship has established that heretical views were more prominent amongst aristocratic families in southern France and Italy than amongst merchants or the poor and that there is no link between social diversity and theological heterodoxy (The War on Heresy: Faith and Power in Medieval Europe [London: Profile, 2012], 19–46). 22 Schulze, ‘“Wan ir unhail … daz ist iwer hail”’; Czerwon, Predigt gegen Ketzer, 120–21. 23 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, ed. Franz Pfeiffer (Vienna: Wilhelm Braunmüller, 1862), p. 1, line 1. Translations of Berthold’s German sermons are my own. 19

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contrasting Christian wisdom with the snares of the Devil and the resulting dangers, which afflict in particular those who are unable to defend their soul: ‘wan ir leider dannoch ze vil ist, die den tuiveln werdens âne kristenliute: jüden, heiden, ketzer’ (‘for alas, there are many non-Christians who fall to the Devil: Jews, heathens, heretics’).24 Whereas Aquinas distinguishes between apostates – Jews as well as heretics – and those who do not believe, that is, Muslims, Berthold levels such distinctions and focuses on the commonalities which set these three groups apart from Christians.25 It is clear therefore from the start that all three serve as exemplary embodiments of ‘Otherness’, where groups are defined not on their own terms or through their own characteristics but merely in opposition to the speaker’s own position.26 Within the German sermons, this tripartite grouping is the standard way of referring to heresy, and there is no attempt at differentiating between the three groups. Yet the sermons are not addressed to the heretics, unlike Latin treatises ‘adversus Judeos’ (‘against the Jews’), in which dialogue, whether real or imagined, is the vehicle for dispute.27 Instead of persuading heretics towards the true faith, the German sermons focus firmly on their Christian audience, for whom the attack against the heretics serves as advice to avoid their mistakes if they want to further their own spiritual wellbeing. Heretics are not here attacked for their own errors of belief, but turned into an example of the kinds of errors besetting the Christian listeners. Nevertheless, the sermons give an account of the origins of heresy, highlighting that it is not an inherited state but rather a decision of the will: as a result, Berthold mounts a curious argument in defence of infant baptism in order to save those who are not yet capable of that act of will.28 Whereas Latin sermons usually engage with heretical positions in order to expound the Ibid., p. 2, lines 3–4. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, 2a 2ae, q. 10 art. 9, S. 90; Czerwon, Predigt

24 25

gegen Ketzer, 123. 26 ‘Otherness’, first introduced by Hegel as a way of defining self, has become an important concept for the study of cultural contact (see Hans Robert Jauss, ‘The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature’, trans. Timothy Bahti, New Literary History 10 [1979]: 181–229; Edward Said, Orientalism, 2nd edn [London: Penguin, 2003]). 27 Isidore of Saville, De fide Catholica contra Iudeos (Patrologia Latina 83, ed. J-P. Migne [Paris, 1844–64], cols 449–50) is one of the earliest examples of the genre. It provides a collection of biblical testimonies to be used, according to the dedicatory letter to Isidore’s sister Florentine, ‘to confirm the blessing and the faith and condemn the ignorance of the faithless Jews’ (see Gilbert Dahan, The Christian Polemic against the Jews in the Middle Ages, trans. Jody Gladding [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999], 42–3). 28 For the suggestion that children of Jews and heretics will also go to limbo – explained as the ante-chamber of hell – if they die before having accepted the Christian faith, see Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 126, lines 23–9.

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theological basis for Christian doctrine, the vernacular sermons either describe heresy as the result of a single act of rejection and otherwise cast heretics merely as the opposite of believers, or they define heretics through their relationship with the Devil.29 Moreover, the sermon suggests that heretics are stubborn – hardened and turned to stone in their position, like the Devil, and just as it is impossible to turn crystal back into water, so it is impossible to turn a heretic into a Christian unless he has only very recently become a heretic.30 This presupposes that heresy is a state which, once acquired, is virtually immutable – a position which is incompatible with attempts to proselytize or persuade heretics to abandon their false beliefs and convert.31 The aim is clearly not conversion but an act of exclusion, so that Christianity comes to be defined by means of a contrast with those who are not true Christians. Perhaps the most remarkable detail about heretical beliefs within the sermon collection is the etymology offered: the heretics are called ‘ketzer’ because the term is related to the word for cats. This etymology goes back to Alan of Lille, and Berthold follows Alan in justifying the derivation by recourse to natural observation: cats are secretive.32 Yet he offers an extended description of the supposed behaviour of cats which goes beyond the Latin sources: a cat, so the sermon says, may lick a toad hard until the toad starts to bleed; when the cat drinks from a fountain in order to quench the thirst caused by the toad’s pus, it fouls the water which human beings subsequently drink, so that they fall ill. Equally, cats may sneeze into the water or drinking vessels, spreading fatal disease. The best advice is therefore to drive cats out of house and kitchen, because they are impure. Significantly, heresy is located in the power of persuasive language: as the cat, the heretic endangers those with whom he comes into contact by the power of his persuasive (‘sueze’) language. A sexual subtext is suggested when the preacher implies that women are most susceptible to such corruption: if he had a sister, and if there was but a single heretic in the entire country, he would fear that heretic as the greatest danger to her.33 On the surface, that is simply a rhetorical statement about the extreme danger of heresy which is contagious even in very small concentrations – but the choice of a female relative as in need of protection suggests special vulnerability. The focus is therefore not so much On heretics having made their peace with the Devil, see ibid. 242, lines 8–30. See ibid. 437, lines 8–13: heretics are like crystal which has turned from water to

29 30

stone.

See ibid. 436, lines 6–8: devils can no more turn back into angels than heretics to Christians. 32 Alanus ab Insulis, De fide contra haereticos, Patrologia Latina 210, ed. J-P. Migne (Paris, 1844–64), cols 305–430, lib. I, cap. 63; Czerwon, Predigt gegen Ketzer, 134. 33 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 403, lines 21–4; see Alexandra Cuffel, Gendering Disgust in Medieval Religious Polemic (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 108–13. 31

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on the willingness of heretics to believe something which may be wrong, but in their power to subvert. Despite the lack of differentiation between types of heresies, apostates who have renounced the true faith are singled out for polemical opprobrium. Berthold lists an extraordinary number of these in Sermon XIX. All are condemned for having given themselves over to the power of the Devil, yet beyond that, they remain names in a catalogue – a catalogue, moreover, which conflates current with historical and regional with foreign examples of heretical belief.34 One of the few specific references is to the Cathar and Waldensian refusal to swear oaths: a fact which became a central issue in the inquisitorial processes led by the Dominicans.35 Yet even in passages ostensibly addressed at the heretics who untruthfully claim that one should not swear an oath, the more important addressees of such advice are in fact Christians in danger of swearing false oaths lightly, especially traders at the various markets: ‘pfî, ir kramer unde pfragener und ir schuochsiuter und ir andern alle, die ze market stent mit ir veile koufe, wie ofte und wie dicke ir das ander gebot zebrechet!’ (‘woe, you merchants and peddlars and you shoe-makers and all you other traders going to market with your wares – how often do you break the second commandment’).36 Thus, a seemingly sharp and specific attack against an outside group in fact serves to highlight a failing common amongst the Christian listeners. Ridicule is often the central tool in undermining the position of an opponent. While the debate about oaths relates to social practices which are attested for Cathars and Waldensians, the focus of Berthold’s polemic is often not the specific details of unorthodox belief, but a general warning to the audience on the need for prudent judgement. In many ways, therefore, this is not so much an attack against the heretics as subtle flattery of the listeners – if they want to be different from the simple rustics who may be taken in by heretical claims, all they need to do is accept the warning of the preacher. Heresy is therefore not Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 130, lines 27–31; on the various names for Waldensians – Leoniste (followers of Leon), poverleun (the Poor of Lyons), Runclarii (followers of John of Ronco) – see Czerwon, Predigt gegen Ketzer, 128. 35 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 266, lines 9–12. Significantly, some aspects which feature prominently in late-medieval polemics against Waldensians, for example, their rejection of the sacraments and in particular the Eucharist, are not mentioned at all. Bernd Hamm contrasts heretical rejection of sacraments by latemedieval Waldensians, Nikolaits, and the ‘non-polemical’ side-lining of sacramental and institutional piety in mystical circles, such as those of Johannes Tauler and Johannes von Staupitz, Luther’s mentor, both of whom concentrate on the direct and immediate experience which the soul has of God as her bridegroom (Bernd Hamm, ‘Augustins Auffassung von der Unmittelbarkeit des göttlichen Gnadenwirken’, in Johanna Haberer and Berndt Hamm (eds), Medialität, Unmittelbarkeit, Präsenz [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2012], 55). 36 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 266, lines 19–22. 34

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predominantly an issue of truth or untruth, but one of insight – and heresies are dangerous precisely because they are plausible. All of the subsequent invective exposes those who do not share Christian belief to ridicule. The rhetorical suggestion is that their belief is irrational, a sign of insufficient understanding. Rhetorically, the passage also underlines another layer of the invective: whereas Christian faith is true and therefore singular, the sheer multiplicity of different beliefs held by those taunted as heathens and heretics reveals their error. Allegorically, they are compared to the moon which waxes and wanes, is never the same from one day to the next. Against this, the truth is asserted as static, monolithic and unchanging. Hence the list of different heresies is not concerned with how they differ, but in the sheer number of divergent views – the fact that there are the Poor of Lyons as well as Arians, followers of John of Ronco as well as Manicheans, followers of Sporer and Sifrid and Arnold in itself is invoked as proof that what they believe cannot be true.37 Whereas the point of departure for this diatribe was a ‘real’ aspect of Cathar and Waldensian practice, the next step attributes a belief to them which is patently formulated from the perspective of Christian orthodoxy: they are accused of saying that man was created by the Devil. While this may have its origins in elements of Manichean thinking within Cathar sermons, there is no evidence that anyone actually claimed this. In ascribing to the opponent views which put them manifestly in the wrong according to the speaker’s own system of values, his or her position is undermined as both dangerous and implausible – associating humans with the Devil can never be right, given the Devil’s position as the antagonist of God. Yet the passage also underlines the importance of rational rather than purely theological superiority: Berthold disproves the heretical belief in creation by the Devil not just by means of theological statements but by a demonstration ad oculos: human faces carry their origin from God in divine writing, because eyes and nose spell out the letters O-M-O for homo (‘man’), whereas the ear represents D, the nostrils E and the mouth I, together spelling out that man is created in God’s image: Nû sult ir mir lesen ein O und ein M und aber ein O zesamen: sô sprichet ez homo, Sô leset mir ouch ein D uen ein E und en I zesamen: sô sprichet ez dei. homo dei, gotes mensche, gotes mensche!38 Now read with me – O plus M plus O spell out homo, and read out to me D and E and I together, which say dei. homo dei, man of God, man of God!

For another list of heretical groups, see ibid. 130, lines 27–31. Ibid. 404, lines 33–6.

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Most of the accusations levelled against the Jews are similarly unspecific and unoriginal, and they derive their sharpness from the way in which conventional prejudice is used in personalized forms of attack. Thus a reference to the particular evil of the Talmud, the accusation of inconstancy and untruthfulness, for example, reflects the spirit of the papal constitution ‘Licet perfidia Iudaeorum’ (‘The Perfidy of the Jews’) issued by Innocent III in 1199 and condemnation of the Talmud by Innocent IV in 1248 and the subsequent wave of book-burnings.39 Yet the passage gains its polemical sharpness from the personalized attack which follows: Frâget mir den jüden, wâ got sî unde waz er tuo, sô sprichet er: ‘er sitzet ûf dem himel unde gênt im diu bein her abe ûf die erden.’ Owê, lieber got, so müestst dû zwô lange hôsen hân nâch der erden.40 If we ask the Jew who God is and what he does, he replies: ‘He sits in heaven and his legs reach down to earth.’ Dear God, you would need a pair of long trousers reaching down to earth.

Anti-Semitic polemic in the sermons is often indirect rather than direct, as in a comment on the seventh commandment requiring Christians to be generous with their own goods. In his advice, the preacher engages with seemingly rational arguments for limiting such generosity, especially where those too poor to have any reasonable hope of repaying a loan ask for help. The advice given to listeners who may find themselves in this situation contains two elements of common anti-Semitic polemic: keeping the poor away from Jewish money lenders is portrayed as a good in itself; at the same time, the audience is reminded that those who offer such an advance must under no circumstances accept anything beyond the straightforward repayment, either in money or in kind. Doing so will be punished with eternal damnation – implying that the Jewish moneylenders who secure their capital by charging interest have chosen a practice which is proscribed and condemns them to hell.41 To summarize, therefore, polemical statements about heretics derive their significance from articulating Christian identity. Their focus is often not an attack against specific theological positions with a view to changing the opponent’s view, as in conversion dialogues, but rather the definition of cultural identity in opposition to an external ‘Other’. This need for the ‘Other’ in turn Dahan, The Christian Polemic against the Jews in the Middle Age; Schulze, ‘“Wan ir unhail … daz ist iwer hail”’, 112–3. 40 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 401, line 38 – 402, line 3. 41 Ibid. 281; cf. 438, lines 2–30. 39

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explains why the opposition is carefully preserved – most strikingly so when Berthold considers the role of secular rulers in protecting their subjects, who are presented as an undefined, collective ‘we’ comprising the speaker as well as the listeners of the sermons. While it appears at first as if that collective is defined in the familiar opposition against the unbelievers, who pose a threat, the following sentence extends this ‘we’ in a surprising way: Die jüden suln sie also schirmen alse die Kristen an ir lîbe und an ir guote, wan sie sint in den fride genomen. Und swer einen jüden ze tôde sleht, der muoz in gote büezen unde dem rihter alse einen Kristen, wan sie habent eht die keiser in den fride genomen.42 Their duty is to protect the life and possessions of the Jews as well as of the Christians, for they have been granted the peace. Whoever kills a Jew needs to do penance before God and answer to the judge in the same way as if he had killed a Christian, for they have been granted the peace by the emperor.

The sermon appeals to the common humanity, which means that all can be, or are, the recipients of God’s mercy and protection: all, whether young or old, baptized or unbaptized, whether heathen, heretic, Jew or Tartar, had been given an angel to guard over them – just as every human being had a devil to tempt them towards sin.43 Polemic, in these cases, is directed from within and aims at inclusion, even where it frames this in strategies of exclusion. Polemic from Within: Social Satire in Addressing Christian Listeners Many of Berthold’s German sermons make explicit that the divide between Christians and heretics is far less important than that between good and bad Christians. While some sermons draw on the conventional opposition between orthodox and heterodox positions by contrasting ‘kristenliute’ (‘Christian 42 Ibid. 363, lines 1–5. This is a legal arrangement underlining the extent of imperial power to suspend religious difference, not an act of toleration. The sermon continues with a moral rather than legal justification, seeing the benefit for Christians in two notably antiSemitic commonplaces, as a reminder that the Jews are held responsible for the Crucifixion and because they may be converted at the arrival of the Antichrist. 43 Ibid. 365, lines 30–38. Wells notes the resumption of royal protection of the Jews after the massacres of 1096 and highlights that the thirteenth-century Sachsenspiegel (Mirror of the Saxons), a collection of common law cases transmitted in close proximity to Berthold’s German sermons, emphasize the legal rights of German Jews to imperial protection (Wells, ‘Attitudes to the Jews’, 32–5; cf. Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987]).

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people’) and ‘ketzer’ (‘heretics’), Berthold uses terms of heresy in non-literal ways when he attacks those guilty of moral shortcomings of ‘ketzerîe’ (‘heresy’), such as those who constantly find new ways of sinning. Here, ‘ketzerîe’ is used in parallel with ‘schalkheit’ (‘deceitfulness’), describing misdemeanours which risk eternal damnation, but appear to be common. As a result, ‘lüge’ (‘mendacity’) and ‘ketzerîe’ can be used as synonyms, both referring to actions committed or contemplated by Christians, whereas ‘ketzerie’, the specific term for heterodox beliefs, becomes synonymous with a vice – that is, the problem is not its objective status as false but the willingness of a subject to believe it.44 At times, the sermons make explicit that concern with heretics and their views is a strategy for addressing Christian listeners – so when Berthold’s marriage sermon states in bald terms that all Jews, heretics and pagans are damned, whether they are married, widowed or virgins, the focus is not the universal fate of those who do not believe, but rather the danger faced by many Christians: Juden, heiden ketzer, das sîn êliute, witwen oder meiden, die sint aller vorteiles verdampt. Ich rede hiute niuwen mit kristenliuten, wan leider der vert ein michel teil zer helle.45 Jews, pagans, heretics: they are all damned, whether they be married, widowed, or virgins. Today, I am addressing only Christians, because unfortunately, many of them will go to hell.

The aim here is to undermine the simple bipartisan view: heretics face eternal damnation but that does not mean that Christians are all saved – on the contrary, the brief polemical swipe against the unbelievers serves as a reminder that Christians are likely to share their fate. This focus on the Christian audience is evident even where the difference between Christians and heretics is highlighted: heathens and heretics are less at risk, because the Devil, recognizing them as his own, does not lay as many snares for them as he does for the Christians.46 Moreover, Berthold concedes that there are no heathens amongst his listeners – so although heathen belief is considered one of the temptations of the Devil, he admits ‘der enhaben wir hie niht’ (‘we don’t have any of those here’)47 and instead focuses on superstitions which are common amongst Christians.48 46 47 48

Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 304, line 13. Ibid. 309, lines 18–21. Ibid. 410, lines 32–3. Ibid. 529, line 29 – 530, line 2. On the Latin transmission of marriage sermons, which include warnings to preachers to be careful with references to sex or to be silent, see Schnell, ‘Bertholds Ehepredigten zwischen Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit’, 100–103; for evidence of Jewish listeners in a 44 45

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Berthold’s preacher persona is characterized by the frequency with which he turns away from his intended audience and addresses other groups. Perhaps the most unusual of these apostrophes occurs when the preacher addresses himself to the devils: Ir tiuvel, ir tiuvel, seht, nû schamet iuch! Wan ir ein sünder und ein verraeter und ein vorvarer aller sunder sît wesen, sô müget ir iuch des iemer wol schamen, daz iuch dirre getoufte kristenmensche überschalket und übermeinsamet an sünden hat. Des müezet it halt iemer laster unde schande hân, daz die sünde ein getoufet kristenmensche wol getar bestân, der ir niht bestên getürret.49 O you devils, be ashamed of yourselves! If you have been a sinner and traitor and the ancestor of all sins, you should always be ashamed of the fact that baptized Christians have triumphed over you in sin. It shall always be your shame that baptized Christians dare to commit the kinds of sins of which you are afraid.

The sarcasm of the indirect attack against the Christian listeners is obvious: they are more unscrupulous than even the Devil, who is known to be the father of all falsehood. This raises the question of how such polemic directed at Christians relates to social satire, which plays an important part in conveying group identities in thirteenth-century literature: religious plays castigate the way in which irresponsible craftsmen are a danger to the community, while highlighting that this tendency is all-pervasive by deliberately eliding the division between audience and actors.50 Berthold’s sermons draw on such tropes of social satire when they lament the widespread use of lies and deceit: craftsmen trick their customers by selling water as wine, bread from adulterated flour, substandard meat.51 Like the religious plays, the sermons focus on the harm this does to the fabric of society. Yet they differ markedly from the stance of the plays, whose aim is to remind the spectators that they themselves are actors in the drama presented to them and that there is no distinction between the actors on stage and themselves. In the sermons, the theological point is the same, yet it is conveyed by very different means where the preacher attacks those committing such crimes directly: ‘Dû trüegener, dû mörder, dû wirst schuldic an den liuten! … Wie sol ich dich trügenheit lêren? Sô kanst dû ir selber ze vil der trügenheit’ (‘You trickster, you murderer, you commit a crime fifteenth-century manuscript illumination (Österreichische National-Bibliothek, Vienna, Cod. 2829, fo. 1r), see Schulze, ‘“Wan ir unhail … daz ist iwer hail”’, 126–9. 49 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 283, lines 16–22. 50 Cf. Rainer Warning, The Ambivalences of Medieval Religious Drama (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001). 51 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 16, line 7 – 17, line 9.

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against others! … How could I teach you such trickery? You already know too much!’)52 Unlike the plays, where stage-directions suggest that actors may draw members of the audience into the action on stage, the use of the second person singular here serves a complex function: in singling out a – fictional – member of the audience, the sermon simultaneously stages the power of the preacher over his listeners and allows the ‘ordinary’ audience a way of distancing themselves from the behaviour proscribed in the apostrophe. In attacking those who behave in such a way as murderers, the polemical accusation robs them of any defence and polarizes positions. Yet the litany of accusations underlines rhetorically that deception and evil are all-pervasive and therefore corrosive: if everyone who loses out through trickery aims to regain their lost goods by in turn tricking others, then everyone loses: ‘Alsô stilt der dem, sô stilt er dir morgen her wider mit sînes amtes trügenheit’ (‘If one steals from another, then he in turn will steal from you tomorrow by virtue of his deceitful office’).53 A similar movement can be observed in the polemic against avarice. Those guilty of this sin are located at the bottom of hell, accompanied by thousands whom they brought to perdition: ‘Owê gîtiger, daz dich die wüetenden hunde ab dîner muoter brüste niht zarten unde daz diner muoter ir brüste niht erdorreten, daz sô manic tûsent sêle von dînen schulden iht verlorn waeren!’ (‘Woe, you avaricious person, that the rabid dogs did not tear you away from your mother’s breasts and that your mother’s breasts did not dry up, since so many thousands of souls were lost because of you’).54 Again, the polemical impact lies not in the theological accusation but in the mode of address. Unlike the sarcasm of the previous example, the preacher here utters a lament with biblical allusions (Job) which moves close to a curse – by invoking what might have happened, the utterance expresses regret that such things had not in fact happened to the transgressors. In both cases, social satire derives its aggressiveness from the fact that it is turning from a generalized satire of estates to an attack against an individual whose position is constructed in such a way that it is indefensible from the start. Invective as a means of belittling the false reasoning of those who think they might get away with sin thus becomes a central ingredient of polemical discourse: Nû wie zimt hôhvart und armuot sament? Als der affe ûf dem künicstuole. Waenest dû, armer mensche tumber, daz dir got dine hôhvart vertrage ze langer

Ibid. 16, lines 16–17. Ibid. 17, lines 37–8. 54 Ibid. 209, lines 13–16. 52 53

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vrist? Jâ muost im Lucifer daz himelrîhe rumen, der dâ der hôhvart hundertstunt glîcher was danne dû.55 So how do pride and poverty fit together? As a monkey on a royal throne. You poor stupid human being, do you think that God will forgive your pride in the long run? Even Lucifer had to vacate heaven, who was a hundred times closer to pride than you.

Theologically, Lucifer is the reminder of the ultimate consequence of pride, yet such knowledge is taken for granted and only forms the background to which the attack can allude: it focuses instead on the smallness and pettiness of ‘ordinary’ sin and sinners by comparison – followed later in the same sermon by a sequence about Alexander. Both examples underline the theological commonplace that hubris will be punished, but both at the same time serve to undermine the position of the ordinary sinner through belittling their status. They are thus doubly inferior – as Christians, because they fall short of what is expected of them, and as sinners, because they do not measure up to the greatness of Lucifer or Alexander. Unlike the heretics, however, the listeners are given a way of protecting themselves against such attacks – through their conduct they have a way of distancing themselves from the vices castigated. The polemical attacks therefore have a double aim: they satirize vices while simultaneously allowing the listeners an opportunity to dissociate themselves from them. Whereas direct polemical attack serves to undermine the opponent, attacks against a fictional sinner in the singular use a strategy of misplaced invective – direct in its linguistic attack, yet distanced in order not to alienate the listeners. Gender: Misogynist Polemic Perhaps the most vicious instances of polemic in Berthold’s sermons are directed at women – though there is a debate to be had about whether that means the sermons are addressed to women or whether their intended audience is male, using women as a negative foil. Use of proverbial sayings suggests that knowledge about the nature of women is considered a universal truth: ‘einer frauen rômvart und einer hennen flug über einen zûn ist allez glîch nütze’ (‘a woman’s pilgrimage to Rome is as much use as a hen’s flight across a fence’).56 While the sermons are not Ibid. 397, lines 30–34. Ibid. 356, lines 29–30; on the use of proverbs to suggest universal acceptance and to

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create consensus, see Manfred Eikelmann and Silvia Reuvekamp, Handbuch der Sentenzen und Sprichwörter im höfischen Roman des 12. und 13. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2012), 4–12.

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normally innovative in their invective, instead drawing on the well-worn arsenal of misogynist beliefs, they turn such commonly held beliefs about the nature of women into polemical attack by inserting them into direct address. Thus, women are taunted for their propensity to take bad advice: Als ir frouwen, ir habt einerleie râtgebe, die heizent trüllerin: die verrâtent ir sêle und êre: wan daz der tiuvel in vier jâren oder in sehs jâren nicht geschaffen mac noch greaten, daz râtent si in vier wochen oder lihte ê.57 In the same way, you women all have the same advisers; they are called madams or brothel-keepers – they endanger their soul and their honour, for their advice brings about in four days or less what the Devil could not achieve in four or six years.

Criticism here is two-edged: against the foolishness of those who take bad advice, but also against those who offer such advice in the first place. Both groups are identified as exclusively female; both the reference to women as listeners and the use of the feminine noun ‘trüllerin’ make the gendered perspective explicit.58 Where general pastoral advice to avoid sin is directed at women, the polemical tone is often sharpest, assuming the worst of every woman, generalizing from a fictional and hypothetical case, which turns into a condemnation of the entire sex: Mörderin dins eigen kindes, wie stet ez umbe dine buoze? Pfî! aspis, aller natern boeste unde wirste, diu tuot ditz niht day dû tuost. Under ahtleie spinnen diu grüne spinne,aller spinnen wirste, diu mordet it kint niht als dû. Pfî dich, day ie dehein touf ûf dich kam!59 You, who murder your own child – what about your penance? Fie! No serpent, most evil and deadly of all snakes, does what you do. Even the green spider, the most evil of the eight types of spider, does not murder its own child. Woe that you ever came close to the baptismal waters!

At times, Berthold polemicizes against female vanity by means of literary allusion and polemical tone: in castigating the sin of luxuria, he warns against its ubiquity in language which appears generalizing and gender-neutral: Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 6, lines 20–23, cf. 335, lines 31–6; for another term of invective, ‘Pfî, trüllerin, des tiuvels blâsbalc!’ (‘Fie, madam, you bellows of the Devil’), see ibid. 335, lines 38–9. 58 For another example of gendering, when women are described as particularly prone to being misled by heretical statements, see ibid. 403, lines 21–4. 59 Ibid. 71, lines 22–6. 57

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Die dritte sünde, mit der diu meiste menige ouch ze der hellen vert, … die heizet üppikeit. Dâ gêt allez daz mit umbe das dâ lebt und nâch menschen ist gebildet, ez sî jung, ez sî alt, ez sî arm, ez sî rîch.60 That third vice, which takes the largest number of people to hell, is called luxuria. All who live and are formed in the image of man have commerce with it, whether they be young or old, rich or poor.

Yet this is directed at women, not human beings in general: Unde sô ez niht mê mac fürbringen ze hôhverte, sô rücket daz den gürtel heher, sô krümbet daz den huot ûf, sô hohvertete daz sîn genge, daz sîn sprâche.61 And when they can’t produce any more pride, they ruck up their girdle, slant their hats upwards, some show vanity in the way they walk, others in the way they speak.

At the same time, the preacher asserts a tone of mocking authority by belittling both the vice and those afflicted by it – he resorts to a series of diminutives, all neologisms: ‘Armez hôchvertelîn! Möhtest dû ez vollebringen, waz taetest dû danne?’ (‘Poor little pride! If you were only able to, what would you do?’)62 Even where the rhetorical framing is one of symmetry, women are often singled out as the subject of invective. Sermon XXIII on the three (allegorical) walls which defend Christianity highlights God’s mercy and wisdom in not meting out swift punishment but allowing good and bad to grow up together as in the Parable of the Sower. The parallel structures underlying the biblical parable are brought out by correspondingly parallel syntactical constructions, which are built around biblical figures representing virtuous and sinful actions without the need for abstract terms: thus, Cain and Abel or Saul and David represent the two opposing forces. The introduction of a female pair shifts the ground: where Jezebel is the type of human pride, St Elizabeth represents humility. Where virtue is embodied by a contemporary saint rather than a biblical figure, vice is equally tangible in the reality of the listeners, and what follows is a vicious attack against female vanity and licentiousness:

Ibid. 83, lines 12–15. Ibid. 83, lines 5–17; on the gendering of instructions to moderate language, see Elke

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Brüggen, ‘Minne im Dialog. Die “Winsbeckin”’, in Henrike Lähenmann and Sandra Linden (eds), Dichtung und Didaxe: Lehrhaftes Sprechen in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 223–38. 62 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 83, lines 20–21.

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Nû wachset miteinander, ir gilwerinne und ir verwerinne mit dem gelwen gebende, und ir reinen frouwen mit iuwerm dênüetigen gewande! … Pfî, was sitzest dû dâ vor mînen ougen, mâlerin? Wiltû dich baz mâlen danne dich der almehtige got hât geschaffen, dir geschicht als Iesabêln: des tages dô sie sich geverwet hete, dô nam sie ein lesterlîchez ende und einen schemelîchen tôt unde fuor des selben tages in die stinkenden helle, dâ ir nieme mêr rât wird, unde die hunde laften ir bluot des selben tages.63 Grow tall together, you women engaged in gilding and painting, you with the yellow ribbon, and you pure women with your humble form of dress. … Fie, what do you sit there in front of my eyes, you paint-artist? Do you want to paint yourself prettier than almighty God has created you? You will have the same fate as Jezebel: on the day she had painted herself, she came to a despicable end and a shameful death, and on that same day, she went to hell, full of stench, from which she will never escape; and that same day, the dogs licked up her blood.

As a result, the appeal to the listeners is forceful if indirect: they are reminded of the consequences of living like Jezebel – but the substitution of the living saint for the biblical anti-type also underlines that the choice is theirs and that God’s unwillingness to mete out instantaneous punishment has left them time for making the right choices. While this section of the sermon constitutes a cutting attack on prostitutes, its main focus is not reformation of their habits so much as an appeal to female listeners more generally.64 Often, the change from a general, gender-neutral discussion of a particular sin to a direct attack addressed at women is swift: the sermon on the Ten Commandments, for example, frames the first commandment as a warning against superstitions and starts from familiar examples, locating these superstitions in the biblical groups associated with this, the Babylonians, Egyptians, and Greeks.65 As soon as the factual statement is turned into a direct address to the audience, though, both the audience and the figures representing the superstition are identified as female: ‘pfî, du rehte toerin!’ (‘Fie, you truly foolish woman!’)66 In a sermon on the sacrament of Confession, and the need for true penitence, a fictional interlocutor voices possible exceptions, all of which are revealed as excuses. At first sight, they appear to be gender-neutral, pleading coercion as the reason for sinful behaviour. Yet the rebuttals reveal the hidden misogyny: Ibid. 369, lines 19–32. For similar examples of a shift from general statements to gender-specific polemic,

63 64

see ibid. 264, lines 16–7; 485, lines 27–33. 65 Ibid. 264, lines 12–15. 66 Ibid. 265, line 2.

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‘Wie, bruoder Bertholt, dû maht reden waz dû wilt. Ez lag ein man über mînen danc bî mir, daz ich mich sîn nie kunt erwern.’ ‘Nû wie lute riefe aber dû?’ ‘Wie, bruder Berthold, daz liez ich durch miner êre willen.’ ‘Jâ sô habe dir die sünde mit den êren! Got unde diu werlt waere dir holder gewesen, haetest dû lûter gerüefe.’ ‘Well, Brother Berthold, you may say what you want. A man lay with me against my wishes, and I could not defend myself against him.’ ‘But how loudly did you cry out?’ ‘Well, Brother Berthold, I didn’t, for the sake of my honour.’ ‘In that case, take sin and honour. God and the world would have looked more kindly on you had you called out more loudly.’67

The staged dialogue thus insinuates that women make excuses about their misdeeds but also that they are unable to distinguish between the importance of absolute moral standards and social transgression, or, put differently, between sin and social reputation and indeed care more about the latter. 68 The Preacher as Polemicist: On the Power of Language So far, we have considered statements within the sermons and the linguistic strategies they use to undermine, belittle and at times endanger an opponent, assessing the extent to which they use language as a means of attack. Yet the sermons are significant also because they contain reflections on the complex nature of such speech-acts. Language and the facility of its use are an ambiguous good in Berthold’s sermons. The sermons offer a view on two quite different groups of language users: they contain advice to the listeners about how to avoid the specific sins of the tongue and they reflect, directly and indirectly, on the particular importance which speaking with authority in the role of the preacher carries. Medieval catalogues of sins give theological justifications for the fact that some sins are considered graver than others. Modern condemnations of antiSemitic or misogynist polemic often focus on the connection between words and actions, and, for this reason, the anti-heretical sermons of the fifteenth century appear more problematic than Berthold’s sermons, since they are demonstrably and directly linked to acts of persecution in the communities where they were preached.69 Medieval assessments are closer to postmodern theories of hate Ibid. 347, lines 14–19. Hartmann von Aue’s Gregorius suggests that in the initial brother–sister incest,

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the sister is as culpable as her brother, because she refrains from calling out loud for fear of making the incest public and thereby damaging her reputation (see Ann Marie Rasmussen, Mothers and Daughters in Medieval German Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997). 69 Schulze, ‘“Wan ir unhail … daz ist iwer hail”’, 124–9.

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speech as an action, in that they consider sins of the tongue amongst the gravest, irrespective of their pragmatic consequences – because they affect the speaker as much as the listener.70 Berthold’s sermons display a striking concern for the position of the speaker, and although not all of Berthold’s sermons agree on what constitutes the gravest sin, those of the tongue feature prominently: ‘übel zungen … diu ist aller sünden schedelîchste und wirstiu’ (‘an evil tongue … is the most harmful and the worst of all sins’).71 Yet unlike other treatises on the sins of the tongue, Berthold’s prime concern is truthfulness and the spiritual harm done by lies, not the potential of language to harm through aggression. The attitude of the sermon-collection towards invective is equally interesting and complex. On the one hand, cursing and invective are spurned, especially when they involve the name of God.72 Yet the collection uses a complex rhetorical ploy in order to voice precisely the kind of language that it prohibits. It adduces a (mock) scriptural quotation which justifies the severity of the punishment meted out to anyone who profanes the name of God, yet also serves as a legitimate way of quoting an example of such proscribed invective: ‘Man liset in dem heiligen ewangeliô: swer zuo dem andern also sprichet in rehtem ernst: dû affe, der ist des schuldic, daz er iemer brinnen muoz.’ (‘We read in the Gospel: whoever says to another in all seriousness: you ape, is guilty and will have to burn in hell for ever’).73 The danger of using such language ‘for real’ is such that the preacher relies on allusion, implying that his audience knows the kind of language referred to without the need for explicit quotation: Nû sich, schelter, wie gevellet dir daz, sô dû danne alse boesiu wort sprichest, daz ich dehein guot dar umbe naeme, daz ich diu selben wort dar umbe wolt sprechen vor disen engelen hie? Wan sie würden alle dâ von betrüebet unde disen liuten allen samt ir ôren geunreinet und ir herzen beswaeret.74 So look, you detractor, how do you enjoy using language which is so bad that I would not for any price quote these words in front of these angels? For they would all be distressed and their ears would be defiled and their hearts grow heavy.

Judith Butler, ‘Burning Acts – Injurious Speech’, in eadem, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 43–69. 71 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 83, lines 29–30; on the eight types of lie described by Augustine and whoever causes another human being to lose his life because of a lie is a murderer and a cannibal, see ibid. 283–4. 72 Ibid. 266–7. 73 Ibid. 267, lines 21–4. 74 Ibid. 267, lines 24–9. 70

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Nevertheless, the seriousness of the potential harm, if anything, serves to heighten the play with the knowing audience. Invective, while dangerous, is clearly also highly pleasurable for those who are able to appreciate it. Such passages draw attention to the role which the personified and apostrophized preacher plays in this collection of sermons. For this reason, use of language by those who have authority over others is central to its concerns, and many sermons offer detailed reflection on the role of the preacher. Here, the danger is not invective but flattery and the ability to please and seduce. Facility with language is presented as an inherent danger, because often the rhetorical skills of those who hold heretical views are considered superior to those of Christians, and they therefore expose the listeners to the danger of being misled. Significantly, this is presented from the perspective of an internal Christian communication: the focus is not on how to prevent heretics telling what are considered lies, but rather on how to instruct the listeners so that they are better able to assess the dangerousness of what they are hearing. Heretics pose a threat because of their special facility with language75 – but where this is proposed as an excuse for succumbing to their persuasiveness, the preacher suggests a simple remedy: they are easy to detect and therefore to resist, because they only teach in secret. Again, the preacher attacks the fictional heretics directly, challenging them to speak openly and face to face about their belief, suggesting that they only dare do so to simple people in their remote corner.76 Yet dangers are not just associated with heretical preachers but also with those who, through avarice, misuse sermons to make money. The German sermons coin a particular term to attack those who misuse language in this way to corrupt others: they are attacked as ‘pfennicprediger’ (‘penny-preachers’), those who endanger others for material gain and through their use of rhetoric.77 The term appears to be an invention of the German Berthold sermons: in polarizing the debate about what a true sermon should offer, it is analogous to the attacks against heretics in transposing tropes from a debate with non-Christians to an internal dispute about true Christian standards. From the preceding discussion, it will have become clear quite how distinctive the voice of the – fictional – preacher Berthold is in the body of the German sermons and quite how vicious his attacks can be. Remarkably, the collection itself articulates the risk of such polemical speech when a fictional interlocutor admits he is driven to despair by the sharpness of the criticism: Ibid. 295, lines 25; on nervousness expressed in eleventh-century complaints about the rapid rise of literacy amongst heretics, see Moore, The War on Heresy, 34–5. 76 Berthold von Regensburg, Vollständige Ausgabe seiner Predigten, 295, lines 32–3. 77 For repeated attacks against a ‘pfennicprediger’ who is a murderer because his words endanger the souls of his listeners, especially when he offers quick absolution, see ibid. 117; for a ‘pfennicprediger’ who preaches greed and avarice for the sake of a penny deserving to be thrown to the bottom of hell, see ibid. 251, 393. 75

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Unde dâ von sprichet einer etewenne: ‘owê, bruoder Bertholt, dû predigest sô griulîche von unrehtem guote, daz man rehte verzwîveln möhte.’ Sich, daz waere mir gar leit, daz dû verzwîfeltest. Ich wil, daz dû deheinen zwîfle dran habest, dû engeltest unde gebest wider, daz diener verdampten sêle iemer, rât werde: des soltu rehte dehienen zwîvel hân.78 For this reason, someone may say: ‘O dear, Brother Berthold, your sermons about stolen goods are so frightful that they induce despair.’ See, I’d be sorry if you were to despair. I want you to know beyond doubt that your soul will be damned unless you return and recompense stolen goods so that your condemned soul may be saved: don’t doubt this.

Ultimately, therefore, responsibility is firmly handed back to the listener. Nevertheless, the exchange highlights the precarious balance which the preacher considers it necessary to strike between fear and hope. Despite the theoretical force of the sermons, the limitations of persuasive language are equally harnessed to a polemical purpose – especially in the attack against avarice. Sermon XXVII suggests that as a vice, this is so deep-rooted that even God might be powerless: when preaching to an avaricious person, God, the ultimate preacher, had to give up when after three years of preaching and several miracles, the miser threatened to sell the preacher for 30 shillings.79 The allegorical reference to Judas is evident only with the final statement, and the allegory of Christ as preacher is unusual. While it clearly serves as a way of authorizing the act of preaching, it also raises the possibility of failure, and, against objections that surely God would have been able to convert Judas, the sermon asserts the importance of free will. That is theologically orthodox as well as strategically wise, because it shifts responsibility for sermons failing to convince away from the preacher and on to the audience – they are free to decide, and they therefore have responsibility. Berthold’s sermons thus recognize that language is both a means of nonrational persuasion and the instrument of rational disputation. Both can be dangerous when used by the wrong party, and the sermons frequently refer to the persuasive flattery of heretical preachers. Where listeners are warned against disputations, it is because the Jews, here singled out as opponents, may easily be the better orators: Dir mac ein jüde eine rede vor getuon, daz dû iemer deste swacher bist an dînem glouben. Dâ vor sult ir iuch hüeten, ir einvaltigen liute. Ir wellent allez mit den jüden einen kriec haben; sô sît ir ungelêret, sô sint sie wol gelêret der heiligen

Ibid. 166, lines 14–20. Ibid. 439, lines 7–13.

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schrift, und er hât sie alle zît wol bedâht, wie er dich üerrede, daz dû iemer deste swacher bist. A Jew may easily say something to you which will weaken your faith. Beware of that, you simple people: you always want to debate with the Jews, but you are not learned, and they are learned in the scriptures, and he has thought long and hard about how to persuade you, so that your faith is weakened.80

This, the sermon continues, is the reason why disputations with the Jews have been forbidden and are the prerogative of the learned. The advice to ordinary listeners is therefore not to engage in debate, but to report to their priest or someone who is learned and trained in defending the Christian faith. Debate may, on the other hand, be a force for good when handled by the right people: thus it is useful if the masters in Paris debate which saint is the greatest or which virtue is superior to all the others or whether John the Evangelist or John the Baptist is the greater saint because such debate furthers the faith.81 In the right hands, moreover, language can be medicinal – while the so-called ‘pfennicprediger’ may be condemned as a murderer of souls, elsewhere, sermons are be compared to the music of David’s harp which cures the madness of Saul.82 Both prohibition of debate and praise for the powers of a good sermon to move listeners underline the extraordinary power and responsibility of the preacher, and it is clear now how consistent the literary construction of a body of sermons is in which the fiction of ‘Brother Berthold’ serves to embody precisely this power of speech. What does this mean for the role which polemic plays in these sermons? Judged by the effect they have on potential listeners, we can answer that in three different ways: (i) It would be misleading to read this group of German sermons as sustained polemic against concrete heresies. Many of them use polemical attacks against those who differ, but this is not part of a sustained debate about differences of faith. In this respect, the sermons differ from earlier medieval debates and conversion narratives. Nor are they focused on inciting particular action against those whose position they polemically undermine, unlike late-medieval missionary sermons. Finally, they conceive the ‘Other’ in terms which are defined not just by religious belief but at least as strongly by gender. It is thus quite different from religious disputation and debate. (ii) The sermons use polemical constructions of an ‘Other’ in order to support a strong sense of Christian unity. Division is projected outside to an externalized ‘Other’, which in turn allows a differentiated sense of Christian identity to be Ibid. 530, lines 14–19. Ibid. 537–8. 82 Ibid. 136, lines 23–9. 80

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developed through means of contrast rather than precept. Polemic thus serves a function which in other genres may be fulfilled by social satire. It is a means of persuading listeners towards a normative ideal of behaviour which might not be as persuasive if presented in terms of straightforward precepts. (iii) Polemic in these sermons differs from social satire in focusing on individuals, albeit individuals who are cast as representing their group. Unlike religious debates, in which the strength of the victor depends on an acceptance that the opponent is evenly matched and near-equal, polemical use of invective has the effect of undermining the position of the opponent. The sermons themselves raise the ethical dilemma of such asymmetrical superiority by highlighting the danger it poses if used in the ‘wrong’ hands. As a coherent group of texts for devotional reading, the sermons diffuse this ethical tension through their content of Christian reflection. Yet this particular group of sermons may also display the ‘ludic’ element of such controversy: although, or perhaps because, they reserve the most vicious polemic for groups who may not actually be among the listeners, and because they develop a strongly personalized figure of the preacher within the texts, they allow their readers to enjoy a display of linguistic violence under conditions in which they need not fear the consequences of such violence and its power to harm.

Chapter 7

Psalms as Polemic: The English Bible Debate Annie Sutherland The question of biblical translation has long been contentious. Who should be allowed to translate the Bible, how should they translate it and who should be allowed to read their translation? In late medieval England, the issue of biblical vernacularization was particularly fraught, thanks to tensions between an ecclesiastical conservatism that held to the belief that Jerome’s Vulgate was itself the authoritative Word of God and more egalitarian schools of thought which proposed that the people of God deserved access to his Word in their own languages. The late fourteenth-century production of the first complete English Bible, associated with the Oxford scholar and, later, heretic John Wyclif was one of many factors that contributed to draconian legislation enforced by Thomas Arundel, archbishop of Canterbury, in 1409. Among several intentionally repressive measures, Arundel’s Constitutions inhibited the unlicensed circulation of English translations of the Bible or any part of the Bible produced since the time of Wyclif: Statuimus igitur et ordinamus, ut nemo deinceps aliquem textum sacrae scripturae auctoritate sua in linguam Anglicanam, vel aliam transferat, per viam libri, libelli, aut tractatus, nec legatur aliquis hujusmodi liber, libellus aut tractatus jam noviter tempore dicti Joannis Wycliff, sive citra, compositus, aut inposterum componendus, in parte vel in toto, publice, vel occulte, sub majoris excommunicationis poena, quousque per loci dioecesanum, seu, si res exegerit, per concilium provinciale ipsa translatio fuerit approbata. We enact and ordain that none hereafter translate upon his own authority any manner of text of Holy Scripture into the English tongue or any other tongue in manner of a work, book or treatise. And that no such work, book or treatise be read openly or privily, in part or in whole, which was made lately in the time of the said John Wycliffe, or since, or hereafter shall be made, under the pain of great excommunication, until such time as that translation be approved by the Diocesan of that place, or if the thing so require by the Council Provincial.1

Text and translation in H. Leith Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 175, 429–30 n. 139. Unless otherwise specified, all further translations are my own. 1

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For the purposes of this chapter, what is most interesting about Arundel’s legislation is its deployment of the name Wyclif since it indicates not only this figure’s centrality to the fraught consciousness of the late-medieval church but also the pivotal role which the ecclesiastical establishment perceived him to have played in the Bible translation project. Certainly the scriptures were vernacularized by ‘men sympathetic to Wyclif ’, and it is more than likely that he had a direct and influential hand in the enterprise at its outset.2 But the mention of his name, whilst polemically powerful, is not entirely helpful, contributing to the misapprehension that advocacy of the English Bible was the sole preserve of the heterodox.3 In fact, by no means all supporters of biblical vernacularization were Wycliffite.4 Several anonymous English tracts circulating in the very early fifteenth century prior to the promulgation of Arundel’s Constitutions strongly endorsed the availability of ‘God’s law in the people’s language’, and not all of these can be identified as Wycliffite.5 In this chapter, my primary interest in these tracts is not in their status as either orthodox or heterodox. Instead, I propose to consider them all, doctrinal designations aside, as inherently polemical insofar as each of them is, to a varying degree, committed to the articulation of viewpoints contentious in their contemporary context. In particular, I will focus on their specific and pointed deployment of quotations from the Psalms in bolstering their claims for the devotional, theological and biblical validity of the English vernacular. For reasons that I will go on to explore, the use that these tracts make of the Psalms in this context is unsurprising. In the long and tortuous medieval history of biblical translation into English, the Psalms had always occupied a very particular place. They were, by some considerable margin, the most frequently translated biblical The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible: The Texts of the Medieval Debate, ed. Mary Dove (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2010), xix. 3 For an interesting discussion of this issue, see Fiona Somerset, ‘Professionalising Translation at the Turn of the Fifteenth Century’, in Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson (eds), The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 145–57. 4 The most famous orthodox proponent of biblical translation was Richard Ullerston; see Anne Hudson, ‘The Debate on Bible Translation, Oxford 1401’, English Historical Review 90 (1975): 1–18. 5 The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible, xix. Dove’s volume is a very useful edition of these tracts. She includes texts whose associations with the Wycliffite movement are clear (the Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible, the Prologue to Isaiah and the Prophets, and the Prologues and Epilogue to the Glossed Gospels), but the heterodox associations of many of the other tracts that she edits are much less clear. As Dove also points out, not all of the texts that she edits contain arguments in favour of a complete English Bible in written form: some suggest simply that the Gospel should be preached to all people (e.g. Cambridge Tracts III and IV). 2

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texts of the Middle Ages, surviving in five complete English renditions as well as several shorter paraphrases and adaptations.6 The most widely circulated and influential of the complete translations was the mid-fourteenth-century English Psalter and commentary of Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole (d. 1349). In fact, Richard Rolle’s English Psalter was cited approvingly more than once in tracts related to the translation debate. In his 1401 determinacio in favour of an English Bible, the orthodox Oxford academic Richard Ullerston made no less than three references to Rolle. First he added him to his impressive list of precedents for biblical translation, referring to ‘Ricard[us] … heremita … qui totum psalterium transtulit in uulgare’ (‘Richard … the hermit … who translated the entire psalter into the vernacular’).7 Slightly later he quoted ‘Richardus hampole’ in support of the Gospel in English: Ne aufferas de ore meo uerbum ueritatis vsque quamque ubi sic scribit. Nonnulli sunt qui pro deo uolunt sustinere uerbum falsitatis sciencioribus et melioribus credere nolentes similes amicis Iob quia cum deum defferendere intebantur, offendunt tales inquit si occidantur quamuis miracula faciant sunt tamen ut uulgus dicit fetentes martyres. Hec Ricardus.8 ‘Take not thou the word of truth utterly from my mouth’ [Ps. 118:43]. Where thus he writes: ‘There are some who for God wish to sustain a word of falseness, unwilling to trust more knowledgeable and better men, like the friends of Job because when they contemplated defending God, they offend [sic]. Such men, he says, if they were slain, even if they did miracles, they are, as the common people say, stinking martyrs.’ This is what Richard says.

The fact that this excoriating exegesis originated in Rolle’s earlier Latin Psalter rather than in his later English rendition is an interesting anomaly in a For editions of the complete translations, see The Psalter or Psalms of David and certain Canticles with a translation and exposition in English by Richard Rolle of Hampole, ed. Henry Ramsden Bramley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1884) (Rolle’s English Psalter); The Middle English Glossed Prose Psalter edited from Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2498, ed. Robert Ray Black and Raymond St-Jacques (Heidelberg: Winter, 2012) (glossed prose Psalter); The Holy Bible ... made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers, ed. Josiah Forshall and Frederik Madden, 4 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1850) (early and late versions of the Wycliffite Bible); Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, an English Father of the Church, and his Followers, ed. Carl Horstmann, 2 vols (London: Sonnenschein, 1895–6) (metrical Psalter). 7 Ullerston, determinacio, fo. 198v. The unedited text is in Österreichische NationalBibliothek, Vienna, Cod. 4133, fos 195r–207v. I am grateful to Anne Hudson for the loan of her transliteration of the text. 8 Ibid., fo. 199r. 6

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determinacio so fulsome in its praise of Rolle as translator, but, given Ullerston’s academic credentials (he was a fellow of Queen’s College from 1391), it is not entirely surprising.9 The third and last of his approving references to Rolle came in the conclusion to the treatise, where he cited the hermit as definitive precedent for the ‘lawfulness’ of biblical translation: Sicut licuit Ricardo heremite trium linguarum principalium periciam non habenti transferre psalterium in uulgare, ita licet alijs parem ydoneitatem habentibus & eodem spiritu dei ductis.10 Just as Richard the hermit was permitted to translate the Psalms into the vernacular, not having knowledge of the three main languages, so others are permitted who have an equal suitability and are led by the same spirit of God.

Two of these references to Rolle surfaced again in First Seiþ Bois, one of the aforementioned early fifteenth-century vernacular treatises in favour of the vernacularization of biblical and doctrinal material. The majority of First Seiþ Bois was, as Mary Dove states, a ‘translation or paraphrase’ of Ullerston’s determinacio.11 The translator expanded on Ullerston’s first citation of Rolle: the At the same point (Ps. 118:43) the English gloss (in Bramley’s edition) reads ‘many ere rad and dare noght ay say the soth. forthi he prayes til god. that he be nan of thaim. bot that god suffire noght sothfastnes be reft fra him … for life na for ded. for in thi domys. that is, in pynys, thorgh whilke thou chastis, I ouyrhopid. that is, that punyssynge refes me noght hope, bot ekis it ouyre that it was bifore’ (‘Many are afraid and do not always dare to tell the truth. Therefore he prays to God that he does not become one of them, but that God does not allow truthfulness to be stolen from him, for life or death. For in your judgements, that is, in torments, through which you chastise, I hoped greatly. By which I mean that punishment should not rob me of hope, but increase it above that which it was previously.’) However, the commentary in Rolle’s Latin Psalter reads: ‘Nota quod dicit verbum veritatis quia nonnulli pro deo volunt sustinere verbum falsitatis, alijs credere nolentes quamuis melius literatis: hi sensu proprio sunt indurati, et non possunt vinci, sed fugiendi tales. Si occidantur, quamvis miracula faciant, tamen, vt vulgus dicit, sunt foetentes martyres [quia in iudicijs tuis] id est, in flagellis iustorum [super speraui] quod non sunt condignae passiones huius temporis ad futuram gloriam’ (‘Note that he says the word of truth because some for God wish to sustain a word of falseness, unwilling to trust others though better erudite: these men are in the proper sense hardened, and cannot be defeated, but such men are to be fled from. If they were killed, even though they did miracles, yet, as the common people says, they are stinking martyrs [because in your judgments] that is, in the whips of just men [I have hoped above] because the passions of this time are not worthy for future glory.)’; cited in M.L. Porter, ‘Richard Rolle’s Latin Commentary on the Psalms to which is prefaced a Study of Rolle’s Life and Works’ (PhD diss., Cornell University, 1929). 10 Ullerston, determinacio, fo. 207v. 11 The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible, xlix. 9

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‘totum psalterium’ (‘entire Psalter’) vernacularized by the hermit became, in the English tract, the ‘Sauter wiþ a glose of longe process, and lessouns of Dirige and many oþer tretis, by wiche many Engliche men han ben gretli edified’ (‘the Psalter with a lengthy gloss and lessons from the Office of the Dead and many other treatises, by which many English men have been greatly edified’).12 But First Seiþ Bois retained the second citation (of Rolle on Psalm 118:43) without alteration, thus providing an English translation of a passage of commentary that is actually derived from Rolle’s Latin: Þer he seiþ þus: ‘þer ben not fewe but many þat wolen sustene a word of falsenes for God, not willing to beleue to konynge and better þan þei ben. Þei ben liche to þe frendes of Iob, þat wiles þei enforsiden hem to defende God þei offendeden greuosly in hym. And þouȝ suche ben slayne and don myracles, þei neuerþeles ben stynkyng martirs.’13 There he speaks thus: ‘There are not few but many who will maintain a word of falseness for God, not willing to believe those who are more knowing and better than they. They are like the friends of Job who, while they tried to defend God, they offended grievously against him. And even if such men were slain and did miracles, they would nevertheless be stinking martyrs.’

Presumably he was working from a copy of Ullerston’s text without independently verifying his quotations. But whatever the reason, the fact remains that the English Psalms and Rolle’s English Psalter in particular, played a vital role in the polemical writing of those who advocated a vernacular Bible in the late Middle Ages. Those who opposed the translation of biblical material into English were, by the authoritative witness of the translated Psalms, no better than thieves of ‘the word of truth’. In fact, according to Rolle’s impassioned commentary on the Psalter, they were ‘stynkyng martirs’. The prominence of the Psalms in polemic advocating the availability of scriptural and devotional material in English is explicable, at least in part, by historical exigency. Rolle’s translation of the Psalms pre-dated the Wycliffite Bible by some decades and could therefore circulate with impunity even in the postArundelian era. Moreover, Rolle’s Psalter provided the advocates of the English Bible (Ullerston and the author of First Seiþ Bois among them) with a cogent example of successful, doctrinally acceptable, scriptural vernacularization. In more general terms, the Psalter enjoyed an unsurpassed reputation in the Middle Ages. No other biblical book matched it in range, depth and beauty, and no voice could speak more authoritatively in support of the democratization of God’s Ibid. 146/112–3. Ibid. 147/121–126.

12 13

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Word than that of David, supposed author of the Psalter. In fact, according to Richard Rolle, the Psalms were nothing less than perfect, encapsulating biblical doctrine in its entirety. [I]n [this boke] is perfeccioun of dyuyne pagyne. for it contenys all that other bokes draghes langly. that is, the lare of the ald testament … & of the new.14 In [this book] there is perfection of the divine page, for it contains all that other (biblical) books draw out at length, that is, the teaching of the Old Testament and the New.

To the medieval Christian, the perfection of the Psalter demonstrated itself most clearly in the fact that it was both a handbook to basic Christian morality and a guidebook for the spiritually sophisticated. A mainstay of patristic exegesis, translated readily into the medieval context, was that the ten-stringed harp on which David played before God was representative of the Ten Commandments. Alluded to by Augustine and following him by Peter Lombard,15 this glossing tradition was also cited by Rolle: This boke is cald the psautere, the whilk nam it has of an instrument of musyke … and it is of ten cordis and gifes the soun fra the ouerere thurgh touchynge of hend. Alswa this boke leres to kepe the ten comaundments and to wyrk noght for erthly thynge.16 This book is called the Psalter, which name it takes from a musical instrument … and it has ten cords and brings forth sound from its upper part by means of the hand touching it. Also, this book teaches (us) to keep the commandments and not to strive after earthly things.

It was also referenced in the anonymous fourteenth-century English Prose Psalter, where Psalm 32:2’s ‘psalterio decem cordarum‘ (‘a psaltery with ten strings’) became ‘þe techynges of þe x. comaundementȝ’ (‘the teachings of the Ten Commandments’).17 No other biblical book taught basic Christian The Psalter or Psalms of David ... by Richard Rolle of Hampol, 4. Peter Lombard, Commentarium in Psalmos, Patrologia Latina 191, ed. J-P. Migne

14 15

(Paris, 1844–64), col. 326D. 16 The Psalter or Psalms of David ... by Richard Rolle of Hampol, 3.

This is a reading that the Prose Psalter shares with Rolle: ‘syngis til him in psautery of ten cordis, that is, stire ȝou to serue til charite, in the whilke ten comaundmentis is fulfild‘ (‘sing to him with the psaltery of ten strings, that is, stir yourself to serve in charity, in which the ten commandments are fulfilled’). See also the remarks that Walter Hilton makes in ‘Bonum est’, his commentary on Psalm 91: ‘In decacordo psalterio: cum cantico 17

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catechesis more effectively than the Psalter when read correctly. Yet the perceived adaptability of the Psalms to the needs and abilities of different audiences was emphasized by the fact that for all their appeal to novice readers, they were also of unique value and resonance for those more advanced in the spiritual life. For example, in his late fourteenth-century devotional treatise The Scale of Perfection, the Augustinian canon Walter Hilton was careful to set psalm-based prayer apart from more rudimentary devotions: The most special praiere that the soule useth and hath most confort in, I hope, is the Pater Noster, or elles psalmes of the sautier; the Pater Noster for lewid men, and psalmes and ympnes and othere servyce of Holi Chirche for lettred men.18 The most special prayer that the soul uses and takes most comfort in, I believe, is the Our Father or else psalms of the Psalter; the Our Father for unlearned men, and psalms and hymns and other ecclesiastical acts of worship for learned men.

For psalmic prayer to be effective in such circumstances, it had to be uttered ‘ne in comone manere of othere men by highnesse of vois or bi renable spekynge oute; but in ful greet stilnesse of vois and softenesse of herte’ (‘not in the common manner of other men with highness of voice or by eloquent speaking out; but in very great stillness of voice and softness of heart’). If undertaken thus, it had the potential to lead to the heights of contemplation: There dare no flesch flie resten upon the pottis brynke boiland over the fier; right so mai ther no flesch flie resten on a clene soule that is lapped and warmed al in fire of love, boilende and plaiand psalmes and lovynges to Jhesu. This is verray praiere.19 No fleshly fly would dare to rest on the side of a pot boiling over the fire; in just the same way may no fleshly fly rest on a clean soul that is entirely wrapped and warmed in the fire of love, boiling and playing psalms and praises to Jesus. This is true prayer.

in cithara’ (‘on the ten-stringed psaltery: with song on the harp’); ‘þe rihtwys man makeþ murþe to god, fforhe scheweþ to him his Merci, and his soþfastnes in a ten-stringed sautri, þat is, in folfillyng of his comaundemens’ (‘The righteous man makes mirth before God, for he shows him his mercy and his truthfulness in a ten-stringed psaltery, that is, in fulfilling his commandments’); An Exposition of Qui Habitat and Bonum Est in English,

ed. Björn Wallner, Lund Studies in English 23 (Lund: Gleerup; Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1954, 57). 18 Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo: TEAMS, 2000), Scale II, ch. 42, 246/3167–9. 19 Ibid. 247/3194–6.

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This characterization of psalm-based devotion as standing at the threshold of elevated spiritual experience was found also in the writings of Richard Rolle. As he told us in the autobiographical Incendium amoris, it was the recitation of psalms that propelled him towards the revelatory experience of canor, at the peak of his tripartite model of spiritual progress. He also suggested, in the lyrical preface to his English Psalter, that ‘grete haboundance of gastly comfort and ioy in god comes in the hertes of thaim at says or synges deuotly the psalmes in louynge of ihū crist’ (‘a great abundance of spiritual comfort and delight enters the hearts of those who say or sing devoutly the psalms in praise of Jesus Christ’), going on to claim that for ‘thaim that lastes in thaire deuocioun, rays thaim in til contemplatyf lyf & oft sith in til soun & myrth of heuen’ (‘for those who persevere in their devotion, [the Psalms] raise them to contemplative life and often afterwards into the sound and joy of heaven’). The Psalter’s pre-eminent status in the mind of the medieval Christian was also due to the fact that, in the person and voice of David, it offered the devout penitent a uniquely personal model of piety. For example, in his De usu psalmorum, the eighth-century ecclesiastic Alcuin of York characterized the Psalms thus: ‘In psalmis invenies tam intimam orationem, si intenta mente perscruteris, quantum non potes per teipsum ullatenus excogitare’ (In the Psalms, if you study them with an attentive mind, you will find prayer so intimate that you would not yourself be able to devise any greater).20 Understood to intercede on behalf of – or even in the person of – the repentant sinner, David demonstrated both the difficulty and the necessity of personal access to the divine. As the speaker of the Psalms, he drew insistent attention to God’s never-ending mercy: ‘For according to the height of the heaven above the earth: he hath strengthened his mercy towards them that fear him’ (Psalm 102:11). Yet his words also left the reader in no doubt of the unflinching absolutism of God’s moral imperatives. According to the psalmist, he demands nothing less than total purity: Who shall ascend into the mountain of the Lord: or who shall stand in his holy place? The innocent in hands, and clean of heart, who hath not taken his soul in vain, nor sworn deceitfully to his neighbour.21

The Psalter, appealing to both novice Christian and advanced contemplative, thus served as a reminder of God’s high ethical standards. However, it did not address the private individual alone but spoke also of public morality. Its Alcuin of York, De usu psalmorum, Patrologia Latina, 101, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1844–64), cols 465–508, at 465D; cited in Rachel Fulton, ‘Praying with Anselm at Admont: A Meditation on Practice’, Speculum 81 (2006): 700–733, at 712. 21 Ps. 23:3–4. 20

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injunctions were as relevant to the church as whole body of Christ as they were to the self as single limb of that body. As Michael Kuczynski comments: The Psalmist’s double persona, as both Christ and ecclesia, implies a double role for him as prophet. He is both a visionary poet and a moral reformer or teacher, whose poetry can repair the damage done by original sin, thus making whole again Christ’s corporate self.22

This awareness of the Psalms’ moral standards as corporately applicable is illustrated well by the tendency of medieval poets and psalmic paraphrasers to turn the psalmist’s singular ‘I’ into the plural ‘we’ when reflecting on or translating the Psalms. This tendency has often been read as a disappointing dilution of the psalmist’s introspective intensity, a failure to grasp the intensity of his personal grief. However, it could also be argued to be indicative of a profound awareness of the Psalms’ applicability to all Christians and of the psalmist as a model for each and every one of them. The adoption of the first person plural ‘we’ in an early fourteenth-century anonymous verse paraphrase of the intensely introspective Psalm 50 is a case in point. In response to the psalmist’s agonized personal plea (‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy great mercy’), the English poet states: Lord God, to þe we calle, Þat þou haue merci on ous alle, & for þi michel mekenisse Þat we mot comen to þi blisse.23 Lord God, to you we call / that you have mercy on us all / and that through your great meekness / we might come to your bliss.

And going on to paraphrase the psalmist’s words ‘according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity’, he writes: Astow art lord of mest pouste, Ful of merci & of pite, Do oway our wickednisse & of our sinnes forgiuenisse.24

Michael P. Kuczynski, Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 9. 23 The Auchinleck Manuscript, ed. David Burnley and Alison Wiggins. National Library of Scotland, 2003, (accessed 29 Mar. 2012). 24 Ibid. 22

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As you are Lord of most power, / full of mercy and of pity, / Cast away our wickedness / and [grant] forgiveness of our sins.

The repentant David is a model for the church as a corporate, public body: he speaks for and to the community as much as the individual. One of the most striking Middle English articulations of this can be found in an early fifteenth-century poem attributed to a certain Thomas Brampton, about whom little is known. Based on a paraphrase of the seven penitential psalms, the poem begins with a narrator lying alone ‘in my bed’, ruminating upon his past transgressions (‘what maner life þat I had led’ [‘what manner of life I had led’]). He is visited by ‘a brodir ful dere’ (‘a very dear brother’), who prescribes the recitation of the penitential psalms as remedy for his sins. However, his personal penance quickly becomes a public performance, designed to call others from a life of sin: Lord from sorowe and schame me schelde Myne help myne hele it lieth in the For euer I cry in town and felde Aftir ne reminiscaris domine.25 Lord shield me from sorrow and shame / I rely on you for my help and my health / For always I cry out in town and field / ‘Do not remember, Lord.’26

In Brampton’s paraphrase, the solitary penitent has become an itinerant preacher, roaming ‘town and felde’, enacting his remorse for all to see. To return to the polemical tracts with which this chapter began, it is in these that we see most clearly the public role that the Psalms (and the psalmist) could play in exhorting others to live according to God’s exacting moral standards. In arguing for the availability of biblical texts in the vernacular, David’s insistent emphasis on the purity and probity of God’s Word was foregrounded. If people are denied access to this Word in their own vernacular, how can they even begin to live according to its dictates? Nowhere was this question more powerfully raised than in the anonymous tract which begins ‘the holi prophete Dauid seiþ’.27 ‘Thomas Brampton’s Metrical Paraphrase of the Seven Penitential Psalms: A Diplomatic Edition of the Version in MS Pepys 1584 and MS Cambridge University Ff 2.38 with Variant Readings from all Known Manuscripts’, ed. James R. Kreuzer, Traditio 7 (1949– 51), 359–404, at 373. 26 My italics. 27 It survives in a unique copy in the common-profit book of John Colop. See Vincent Gillespie’s invaluable essay on the common-profit books,‘ Vernacular Books of Religion’, in Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375– 1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 317–44; see also Wendy Scase, 25

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Arguing against the monopoly on biblical interpretation held by immoral ‘clerkis’ and for the availability of the scriptures in a language comprehensible to the many, at its outset The Holi Prophete Dauid Seiþ makes dramatic use of a catena of psalm quotations: The holi prophete Dauid seiþ, in þe persone of a iust man, ‘Lord, how swete ben þi spechis to my chekis’, þat is, to myn vndirstondyng and loue, and þe prophete answeriþ and seiþ ‘þo ben swettere þan hony to my mowþ’. Eft þe same prophete seiþ, in þe persone of a iust man, ‘Lord, I was glad of þine spechis as he þat fyndiþ many spoilis eiþir praies’. Eft þe same prophete seiþ ‘þe domes of þe Lord ben trewe and iustified in hemsilf; þo ben more desiderable þan gold and precious stones, and swettere þan hony and honeycomb; forwhi þi servant kepiþ þo and moche reward is to kepe hem’.28 The holy prophet David says, assuming the person of a just man, ‘Lord, how sweet are your speeches to my mouth’, that is, to my understanding and love, and the prophet answers and says, ‘they are sweeter than honey to my mouth.’ After, the same prophet says, assuming the person of a just man, ‘Lord, I was glad of your words as he who finds many spoils or booty.’ Afterwards the same prophet says, ‘the judgements of the Lord are true and justified in themselves; they are more desirable than gold and precious stones, and sweeter than honey and honeycomb; for this reason your servant keeps them and there is much reward in keeping them.’

Quoting from Psalm 118:103 (‘How sweet are thy words to my palate! more than honey to my mouth’) and 118:162 (‘I will rejoice at thy words, as one that hath found great spoil’), the catena proceeds to cite Psalm 18:10–12: The fear of the Lord is holy, enduring for ever and ever: the judgments of the Lord are true, justified in themselves. More to be desired than gold and many precious stones: and sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. For thy servant keepeth them, and in keeping them there is a great reward.

Focusing on God’s ‘spechis’, his ‘lawe’, his ‘comaundement’ and his ‘word’, this opening catena could not be more emphatic in its deployment of psalm quotation to bolster its assertion of the unique value and appeal of God’s Word. It goes on to include Psalm 118:165 (‘Much peace have they that love thy law, and to them ‘Reginald Pecock, John Carpenter and John Colop’s “Common-Profit” Books: Aspects of Book Ownership and Circulation in Fifteenth-Century London’, Medium Aevum 61 (1992): 261–74. 28 The Earliest Advocates of the English Bibles, 150/1–8. Psalm quotations are taken from the late version of the Wycliffite Bible.

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there is no stumbling block’) and Psalm 1:1 (‘Blessed is the man who hath not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the chair of pestilence’): Þerfore, he sei, ‘moche pees is to hem þat louen þi lawe, and to hem is no sclandre’, for þei ȝyuen no sclandre to oþere men bi euel dede ne bi euel word, and þei ben not sclandrid for tribulacioun and persecucioun for þe laue of God. Eft þe same prophete seiþ, ‘blessid is þe man þat ȝede not in þe counceil of vnfeiþful men and stood not in the wei of synneris and sat not in þe chaier of pestelence’, þat is, pride eiþir worldli glorie, ‘but his wille is in þe lawe of þe Lord and he schal hawe mynde bi nyȝt and bi day in þe lawe of þe Lord’.29 After, the same prophet says, ‘blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of unfaithful men and has not stood in the way of sinners nor sat in the seat of pestilence’, that is, pride or worldly glory, ‘but his will is in the law of the Lord and he shall have his mind on the law of the Lord by day and by night’.

The implication here is that those who are denied access to God’s Word cannot avoid ‘sclandre’: if one’s mind cannot be on ‘þe lawe of þe Lord’, one has little option but to become caught in ‘the wei of synneris’. The catena then concludes with a series of quotations (Pss 118:105; 18:9; 118:130) that draw attention to the ‘liȝt’ emitted by the Word of God: For, as þe same prophete seiþ, ‘Lord, þi word is a lanterne to my feet’, þat ys, to rule myne affeciouns and myne werkis, ‘and þi word is liȝt to my paþis’, þat is, myne þowȝttis and myne counceilis’. And eft he seiþ ‘þe comaundement of þe Lord is liȝtful, and liȝtneþ iȝes of þe sowle’, þat is, resoun and wille, and eft he seiþ, ‘þe declaring of þyne wordis ȝyueþ goostli liȝt, and ȝyueþ vndirstondyng to meke men.30 For, as the same prophet says, ‘Lord, thy word is a lantern to my feet’, that is, to rule my affections and my deeds, ‘and thy word is a light unto my paths’, that is, my thoughts and my counsels’. And after he says ‘the commandment of the Lord is full of light, and enlightens the eyes of the soul’, that is, reason and will, and after he says ‘the declaration of your words gives spiritual light, and gives understanding to meek men’.

Those from whom this ‘liȝt’ is hidden are condemned, through no fault of their own, to lives of darkness. Ibid. 150/13–16. Ibid. 150/16–22.

29 30

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Having cited the ‘holi prophete Dauid’ no less than eight times in this opening catena, the anonymous author of the tract then offers his own comment: For þise auttorites and siche oþere, sum men of good wille redin besili þe text of holi writ for to kunne it and kepe it in here lyuynge, and teche it to oþere men bi hooli ensample, and for þe staat þat þei stondyn ynne and for þis werk, þei han þe blissyng of God.31 By reason of these authorities and others like them, some good men will read the text of Holy Writ attentively in order to know it and to live according to it, and teach it to other men by holy example, and because of the state in which they stand and because of this work, they have the blessing of God.

According to the authority of the psalmist and others, those who know, keep and teach the Word of God are blessed. Although the author does not state explicitly that the teaching of the Word of God necessarily involves the translation of that Word into the vernacular, it is implicit in the fact that all of his quotations from the Psalms (and from other biblical books) in the tract are in English. How can one claim to ‘teche’ if one is speaking in a language which one’s audience cannot understand? The so-called Cambridge Tract I also uses the Psalms to polemical purpose, yet its author deliberately quotes from the Latin Psalms to highlight flaws in the logic of those who would prohibit the circulation of the vernacular scriptures: Men of holy chirche euery day preien to God not only for hemself but principaly for þe pepel, seynge on þis manere: ‘da michi intel[le]ctum et scrutabor legem tuam et custodiam illam in toto corde me. Da michi intell[e]ctum ut s[c]iam testamonia tua; da michi intell[e]ctum ut vivam.’ Lord, seiþ he, ȝeue me vnderstondynge and I schal ransake vp þi lawe and kepe it wiþ al my hert; ȝy[f ] me vnderstondynge and I schal kunne þi witnes and þi comaundementis, and so leue wiþouten eende. And siþen þei preien so bisili þat cristyne peple schulde vnderstonde Goddis lawe wu[n]der I haue whi þei ben so looþe to teche Englyshe pepel Goddis lawe in Englische tunge. For wiþouten Englische tunge þe lewed Englische pepel mowen not knowe Goddis lawe. And me merueleþ moche why þei ben so besi to let folke for to vnderstonde Goddis lawe and holy writ.32

Ibid. 150/23–6. Dove suggests that The Holi Prophete Dauid Seiþ might be by the person responsible for the Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible (ibid. 89–102). 32 The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible, 100/397–408. The paraphrasing English translations here are not those of the Wycliffite Bible. Prior to Dove’s 2010 edition, the 12 ‘Cambridge Tracts’ (so-called as they appear together in Cambridge University Library, MS Ii.6.26) were edited by Simon Hunt, ‘An Edition of Tracts in Favour of Scriptural Translation and of Some Texts Connected with Lollard Vernacular Biblical Scholarship’ (DPhil. diss., 31

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Polemic Men of Holy Church pray every day to God, not only for themselves but principally for the people, saying in this way: ‘Give me understanding and I will search thy law and I will keep it with my whole heart’ [Ps. 118:34]. ‘Give me understanding that I may know thy testimonies’ [Ps. 118:125]; ‘Give me understanding that I may live’ [Ps. 118:114]. Lord, says he, give me understanding and I shall ransack thy law and keep it with all my heart; give me understanding and I shall know your testimony and your commandments, and so live without end. And since they pray so intently that Christian people should understand God’s law, I marvel at why they are so unwilling to teach God’s law to the English people in the English language. For without the English language, the unlearned English people are not able to know God’s law. And I marvel greatly at why they are so occupied in preventing people from understanding God’s law and Holy Writ.

If ‘men of holy chirche’ preach the Word of God and draw attention to the value of that Word, in a language incomprehensible to the majority of their audience, they are occupied in futile, hypocritical activity. They are, in fact, no better than the ‘stynkyng martirs’ alluded to by the author of First Seiþ Bois. By contrast, chapter 15 of the ‘General Prologue’ to the Wycliffite Bible relies, at its outset, on the authority of the vernacular Psalms to bolster its argument that ‘þe gospel shal be prechid in al þe world’: Crist seiþ þat þe gospel shal be prechid in al þe world, and Dauiþ seiþ of þe postlis and her prechyng ‘þe sown of hem ȝede out into ech lond and þe wordis of hem ȝeden out into þe endis of þe world’, and eft Dauiþ seiþ ‘þe Lord shal telle in þe scripturis of pupils, and of þese princes þat weren in it’, þat is, in hooli chirche, and as Ierom seiþ on þat vers ‘hooli writ is þe scripture of puplis for it is maad þat alle puplis shulden knowe it’.33 Christ says that the Gospel shall be preached in all the world, and David says of the Apostles and their preaching, ‘their sound hath gone forth into all the earth, and their words under the ends of the earth’ [Ps. 18:4], and afterwards David says ‘the Lord shall tell in his writings of peoples and of princes of them that have been in her’ [Ps. 86:6], that is, in Holy Church, and as Jerome comments on that verse, ‘Holy Writ is the scripture of the people for it is made in order that all peoples should know it’. University of Oxford, 1994). As Dove clarifies, seven of the tracts are unique, three are copies of texts found elsewhere and two are reworkings of other texts (The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible, xxxiii). She suggests that the tracts were deliberately assembled into a collection advocating scripture in English (ibid. xxxiii), possibly in response to Arundel’s 1407 legislation. 33 The Earliest Advocates of the English Bible, 80/2777–2783. Again, the psalm translations correspond almost exactly to those in the late version of the Wycliffite Bible.

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This foregrounding of the voice of David in polemic advocating an English Bible (or at least some vernacular version of the basics of the faith) should come as no surprise. Voiced by one who meditates on God’s law, who receives instruction from God, who speaks to him from the depths of despair and from the heights of joy and who tells others of his glories, the Psalms urgently dramatize the necessity of access to the divine unmediated by any barrier of language.34 And of all the Psalms, it is in 118 (used with the greatest frequency by advocates of the vernacular) that this urgency is most extensively articulated. Given the powerful voice in which this psalm speaks of hunger for God’s word (‘my soul hath fainted after thy salvation and in thy word I have very much hoped’) and of thirst for his commandments (‘I opened my mouth and panted because I longed for thy commandments’), its appeal to those arguing for the availability of the scriptures in a comprehensible vernacular is clear.35

34 In referring to the Psalms as voiced by ‘one’, I am reading them as they were so often read in the Middle Ages: that is, as the personal utterances of David. 35 Psalm 118:81, 131.

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Chapter 8

Maximos the Greek: Imprisoned in Polemic C.M. MacRobert The translation of scriptural and other religious texts for the benefit of the Slavs was from its inception a subject of controversy and an occasion for polemic. The first translator, St Cyril (Constantine, d. 869), feared that he might be charged with heresy if he rendered sacred texts into the vernacular, especially without an adequate system to fix them in writing.1 His apprehensions were justified, when he faced repeated criticism from Western clergy for conducting Christian worship in a language not hallowed by tradition: his polemical exchange with them is depicted at some length in his Vita.2 What he perhaps did not foresee is that his translations would be for centuries the focus of recurrent, albeit implicit, debate about translation technique and linguistic norms among the Orthodox Slavs. In the early sixteenth century these debates surfaced in a polemic which was conducted on two levels: through explicit charges of heresy and through underlying disagreements over linguistic usage, which were articulated through the catalytic involvement of an outsider to the linguistic culture of Muscovy. That catalyst was Michael Triboles, known in Muscovy as Maximos the Greek. He was born around 1470 in Arta (Epirus), studied and worked as copyist and printer in Italy from 1492 and became a Dominican in Florence in 1502. He returned to Greece in around 1505/6 and became a monk in the Vatopedi monastery on Mount Athos, taking Maximos as his name in religion. In 1516, he was recommended to the ruler of Muscovy, Vasilij III, as a translator, and in 1518 he arrived in Muscovy, where he re-translated (or more probably revised) the commentated Psalter, commentated Acts and Epistles and other church books. He also produced a number of original compositions, including polemical writing on controversial issues of the time, such as the relationship between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate in Constantinople and the propriety of land ownership by monastic houses. He was twice brought to trial, in 1525 and 1531, on various charges, including errors in translation susceptible of heretical interpretations and consequent corruption of church books. He was imprisoned in a monastery in Tver′, moved

1 2

A. Vaillant, Textes vieux-slaves (Paris: Institut d’études slaves, 1968), 1: 30; 2: 19, 32. Ibid., 1: 32–7; 2: 20–23.

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to the Trinity Monastery of St Sergius of Radonež in 1551, where he apparently revised his version of the Psalter, and died there in 1556.3 The digests of the trial records4 and the writings of Maximos5 contain accounts of the charges against him and the rebuttals which he offered. The supposed errors in translation have often been attributed, on occasion by Maximos himself, to his limited knowledge of the Church Slavonic language into which his translations were made or to the advice which he received from his Russian assistants.6 Although it has been suggested that Maximos may have acquired some knowledge of Church Slavonic on Mount Athos,7 it is clear, from what he and his contemporaries say, that when he arrived in Muscovy, he did not feel competent to translate directly from Greek into the local variety of Church Slavonic: he used Latin to produce an intermediary translation, which his Russian assistants rendered into what they called ‘Russian’, but in fact was a Russified variety of Church Slavonic, the liturgical and high-style literary language of the Orthodox Slavs.8 By the 1550s, Maximos had become sufficiently familiar with this language for his pupil Nil Kurljatev to regard him as fully competent in it.9 However, both that competence and the earlier linguistic choices made in his name must have been informed by the notions of usage imparted to him by his assistants. In the case of Dmitrij Gerasimov, who worked on the compilation of the Gennadian Bible at the end of the fifteenth century and produced various Church Slavonic translations from Latin, such as Donatus’s Latin Grammar and J. Haney, From Italy to Muscovy: The Life and Works of Maxim the Greek (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1973); V.S. Ikonnikov, Maxim Grek i ego vremja: Istoričeskoe issledovanie, 2nd edn (Kiev: Tipografija Imperatorskago Universiteta Sv. Vladimira, 1915); N.V. Sinicyna, Maxim Grek v Rossii (Moscow: Nauka, 1977). 4 N.N. Pokrovskij (ed.), Sudnye spiski Maxima Greka i Isaka Sobaki (Moscow: Akademija nauk SSSR, Arxeografičeskaja kommissija, 1971); A.I. Pliguzov, Polemika v russkoj cerkvi pervoj treti XVI stoletija (Moscow: Indrik: 2002), 207–52. 5 Maximos the Greek, Sočinenija prepodobnago Maksima Greka, 3 vols (Kazan′: Tipografija Gubernskago pravlenija, 1856–62); Russ. trans. in Prepodobnyj Maksim Grek: Tvorenija, 3 vols (Svjato-Troickaja Sergieva Lavra, 1996), reprint of Sočinenija Prepodobnago Maksima Greka v russkom perevode (Svjato-Troickaja Sergieva Lavra, 1910). 6 Maximos the Greek, Sočinenija, 1: 33–4. 7 Ikonnikov, Maxim Grek i ego vremja, 146–8; M. Baracchi, ‘La lingua di Maksim Grek’, Rendiconti, Istituto lombardo di scienze e lettere: Classe di lettere, scienze morali e storiche 105/2 (1971): 253–89, at 270. 8 L.S. Kovtun, Leksikografija v Moskovskoj Rusi XVI–načala XVII v. (Leningrad: Nauka, 1975), 8 n. 2. 9 I.Ja. Porfir′ev, A.V. Vadkovskij and N.F. Krasnosel′cev, Opisanie rukopisej Soloveckago monastyrja, naxodjaščixsja v biblioteke Kazan′skoj duxovnoj akademii, 3 vols (Kazan′: Kazan′skaja duxovnaja akademija, 1881), 1: 12–20, at 19–20; L.S. Kovtun, ‘Russie knižniki XVI stoletija o literaturnom jazyke svoego vremeni’, in S.I. Kotkov (ed.), Russkij jazyk: Istočniki dlja ego izučenija (Moscow: Nauka, 1971), 3–23, at 6–8. 3

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the commentary on the Psalms by Bruno of Würzburg,10 we can to some extent infer what those notions might have been, though we cannot be certain that Maximos’s other assistants, Vlasij, Mixail Medovarcev, Selivan, and Isak Sobaka, shared Gerasimov’s linguistic judgements in every particular.11 Fluidity and variability in the Church Slavonic usage of sixteenth-century Muscovy, and especially in the wording of scriptural translations, was a natural reflection of the Church Slavonic textual traditions among the East Slavs in the medieval period. This can be illustrated from the history of the Psalter text in Russia. Three early but linguistically distinct versions of the Church Slavonic Psalter, redactions I and II and a translation of the commentary on the Psalms by Theodoret of Cyrrhus, circulated more or less widely among the East Slavs up to the late fourteenth century, when redaction V, a modification of the literalistic redaction IV, was introduced, apparently by Metropolitan Kiprian.12 Although that version commanded sufficient authority to be incorporated into the Church Slavonic Bible compiled under the direction of Archbishop Gennadij of Novgorod at the end of the fifteenth century, it would be rash to assume that it had entirely supplanted previous versions by the early sixteenth century. Indeed, the process of updating by means of corrections to pre-existing manuscripts was a recipe for conflation of traditions and norms.13 Nor was its linguistic authority universally accepted: for instance, Nil Kurljatev expressed a markedly negative view of the variety of Church Slavonic found in the texts associated with Metropolitan Kiprian, though his criticisms seem to have been based principally on divergences between Russian and South Slavonic spelling, and his list of objectionable lexical items is borrowed from glossaries of rare or antiquated words already in circulation before Kiprian’s time.14 In addition, not V.S. Tomelleri, Il salterio commentato di Brunone di Würzburg in area slavo-orientale (Munich: Otto Sagner, 2004), 1–49. 11 Maximos the Greek, Prepodobnyj Maksim Grek: Sočinenija, ed. N.V. Sinicyna (Moscow: Indrik, 2008), 1: 165. 12 F.J. Thomson, ‘The Slavonic Translation of the Old Testament’, in J. Krašovec (ed.), Interpretation of the Bible (Ljubljana and Sheffield: Sheffield University Press, 1998), 605– 920, at 797–825; C.M. MacRobert, ‘The Textual Tradition of the Church Slavonic Psalter up to the Fifteenth Century’, in Krašovec (ed.), Interpretation of the Bible, 921–42. 13 C.M. MacRobert, ‘The Historical Significance of the Frolov Psalter (Russian National Library, F.п.I.3)’, Die Welt der Slaven 42 (1997): 34–46; ead., ‘The Textual Peculiarities of the Luck Psalter of 1384 (Acquisti e Doni MS 360, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence)’, Ricerche Slavistiche n.s. 8/54 (2010): 101–25. 14 Porfir′ev, Vadkovskij and Krasnosel′cev, Opisanie rukopisej Soloveckago monastyrja, 19–20; N.N. Tolstoj, ‘Starinnye predstavlenija o narodno-jazykovoj baze drevneslavjanskogo literaturnogo jazyka (XVI–XVII vv.)’, in Istorija i struktura slavjanskix literaturnyx jazykov (Moscow: Nauka, 1988), 108–27, at 118–119; L.S. Kovtun, Russkaja leksikografija ėpoxi srednevekov′ja (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademija nauk, 1963), 217–25, 421–31. 10

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only redaction V but also the so-called Athonite redaction III was to some extent known in Muscovy in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.15 At the same time revisions to redaction II undertaken in the East Slav lands drew on the early translations of commentated Psalters and on local linguistic preferences to produce hybrid versions, most strikingly in the idiosyncratic blends of old and new, East and South Slavonic, literary and vernacular usage presented by the early fifteenth-century Jaroslavl′ and Barsov commentated Psalters ( J and B in the discussion below).16 There was thus ample scope for different normative perceptions. It will here be argued that the perception of infelicities in Maximos’s version arose from divergences among three competing types of linguistic usage: traditional Russian Church Slavonic, the South Slavonic norms of Church Slavonic introduced into Muscovy in the later fourteenth century (associated with a literalistic approach to translation which Maximos shared) and developments in vernacular Muscovite Russian. The various choices which Maximos, his assistants and his readers made among these divergent varieties gave rise to misunderstanding and dissent and so bring out into the open a wider and mostly tacit contemporary polemic over the normalization of Russian Church Slavonic as a literary language. Illustrative material is drawn from the earliest available witnesses to the revisions carried out by Maximos in 1519– 1522 and 1552 to the Church Slavonic version of the Psalter,17 supplemented by a pair of manuscripts in the library of the Hilandar Monastery which, on the evidence of their watermark datings,18 may be the earliest complete extant copy of Maximos’s catena on the Psalms. 15 E.V. Češko, ‘Vtoroe južnoslavjanskoe vlijanie v redakcii psaltyrnogo teksta na Rusi XIV–XV vv.’, Palaeobulgarica 5/4 (1981): 79–85. 16 C.M. MacRobert, ‘The Compilatory Church Slavonic Catena on the Psalms in Three East Slavonic Manuscripts of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’, CyrilloMethodiana 2005 ad honorem Zdeňka Ribarova et Ludmila Pacnerová, special issue of Slavia 74/2–3 (2005): 213–38; ead., ‘The Impact of Interpretation on the Evolution of the Church Slavonic Psalter Text up to the Fifteenth Century’, in A. Lemaire (ed.), Congress Volume Ljubljana 2007, Supplements to Vetus Testamentum 133 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), 423–40. 17 L.S. Kovtun, N.V. Sinicyna and B.L. Fonkič, ‘Maksim Grek i slavjanskaja Psaltyr′ (složenie norm literaturnogo jazyka v perevodčeskoj praktike XVI v.)’, in L.P. Žukovskaja and N.I. Tarabasova (ed.), Vostočnoslavjanskie jazyki. Istočniki dlja ix izučenija (Moscow: Nauka, 1973), 99–126, at 100–102; Sinicyna, Maxim Grek v Rossii, 12–13, 65, 71. The versions in the two manuscripts from the Soloveckij collection, 752 and 753, both contain ascriptions to Maximos but diverge so frequently and markedly that their witness is problematic, see Porfir′ev, Vadkovskij and Krasnosel′cev, Opisanie rukopisej Soloveckago monastyrja, 17–18; Kovtun, Leksikografija, 90–93. 18 D. Bogdanović, Katalog ćirilskih rukopisa manastira Hilandara, 2 vols (Belgrade: Srpska akademija nauka i umetnosti, Narodna biblioteka SR Srbije, 1978), 1: 86–7; P. Matejić and H. Thomas, Catalog: Manuscripts on Microform of the Hilandar Research

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In discussion these manuscripts are represented by the abbreviations indicated after each one in the following list: MS 63 Ovčinnikov Collection, Russian State Library, Moscow (1520s, Maximos’s catena on the Psalms, Ps. 77–end): 63. MS ДА A.I. 171  Russian National Library, St Petersburg (1540s, Maximos’s catena on the Psalms, Pss 1–54): 171. MSS 116/117  Hilandar Monastery, Mt Athos (1550s, Maximos’s catena on the Psalms): 116/117. MS 315  Troickij Collection, Russian State Library (late 15th c., annotated by Maximos at an uncertain date): 315. MS 78 Sofijskij Collection, Russian National Library (1540, annotated by Maximos and Veniamin): 78. MS 752/862  Soloveckij Collection, Russian National Library (late 16th c., version of Maximos’s later translation): 752. MS 753/863  Soloveckij Collection (late 16th c., version of Maximos’s later translation): 753. MS 1143  Pogodinskij Collection, Russian National Library (17th c., selected variants from Maximos’s later translation): 1143. Where evidence for a reading has to be inferred from the absence of annotation, as sometimes in 315, 78 or 1143, the relevant abbreviation is supplied in brackets. Three points of linguistic dispute are known from the digest of the trial documents; a fourth emerges from Maximos’s correspondence and a fifth from an anti-heretical text by the sixteenth-century polemicist Zinovij Otenskij. The most important issue, which was raised in the trial of 1525,19 was the charge of heresy levelled against Maximos because he had altered the verbal forms in expressions referring to Christ’s place at the right hand of God, such as: ekathisen ek deksiōn tou theou (Mk16:19) ‘[he] sat on the right hand of God’, en deksia tou theou kathēmenos (Col. 3:1), kathezomenon ek deksiōn tou patros (Creed) ‘seated on the right hand of God / the Father’

The traditional Church Slavonic wording in such passages employed variously sěde, the aorist tense of the verb sěsti ‘to sit down’, and sědjaj / sědjašča, the present Library (The Ohio State University), 2 vols (Columbus, Ohio: Resource Center for Medieval Slavic Studies, 1992), 1: 353–4. 19 Pokrovskij, Sudnye spiski Maxima Greka i Isaka Sobaki, 109, 126, 140 and subsequent iterations; A.I. Pliguzov, Polemika, 226, 238–9.

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participle of the verb sěděti ‘to sit’, to render the corresponding forms of the Greek verbs kathizõ and kathēmai. By substituting the perfect tense of sěděti ‘to sit’, sědělŭ esi ‘you have been sitting’ and the past participle, sěděvŭ / sěděvšago, Maximos was held to have implied that Christ’s enthronement in glory was a thing of the past. Maximos’s initial response20 at the trial to this accusation was, on the face of it, curiously intransigent: he insisted that these past tense forms were appropriate, mimošedšee i minuvšee,21 ‘past and gone’. Later, in his Confession of Faith,22 he was more circumspect, claiming that any wording susceptible of a blasphemous interpretation resulted from the linguistic guidance supplied by his Russian assistants. What prompted these changes, and why were they controversial? Maximos’s position is generally thought to stem from a concern for grammatical precision: in Greek the second and third person singular forms of the aorist tense were clearly differentiated, but in Church Slavonic they were homophonous and therefore potentially ambiguous. The systematic substitution of the second singular perfect for the aorist removed the ambiguity and is indeed characteristic of Maximos’s translations.23 What is more, there is clear evidence that at least one of Maximos’s Russian assistants observed the same practice: in his translation of Donatus, Dmitrij Gerasimov consistently presents, as equivalents to the Latin imperfect, perfect and pluperfect tenses, suppletive paradigms in which second (and third) singular perfect forms appear beside aorist or imperfect in the other persons.24 Indeed it has been suggested that the intermediary use of Latin, in which there was no distinction between aorist and perfect tenses, might have been a conditioning factor in the equivalence set up in Maximos’s translations between Church Slavonic second singular

Pokrovskij, Sudnye spiski Maxima Greka i Isaka Sobaki, 109, 126, 140 and subsequent iterations. 21 Both these expressions seem to have had some currency as terms for ‘past tense’ (see D.S. Worth, The Origins of Russian Grammar: Notes on the State of Russian Philology before the Advent of Printed Grammars [Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1983], 16, 96). 22 Maximos the Greek, Sočinenija, 33–4. 23 Baracchi, ‘La lingua di Maksim Grek’, 275; Kovtun, Sinicyna and Fonkič, ‘Maksim Grek i slavjanskaja Psaltyr′’, 108; E.V. Kravec, ‘Knižnaja sprava i perevody Maksima Greka kak opyt normalizacii cerkovnoslavjanskogo jazyka XVI veka’, Russian Linguistics 15 (1991): 247–79, at 249–50; H.M. Olmsted, ‘Recognizing Maksim Grek: Features of his Language’, Palaeoslavica 10/2 (2002): 1–26, at 15. 24 V. Jagić, Codex Slovenicus rerum grammaticarum (Rassuždenija južnoslavjanskoj i russkoj stariny o cerkovno-slavjanskom jazyke) (St Petersburg: Otdelenie russkago jazyka i slovesnosti Imperatorskoj akademii nauk, 1896; repr. Munich: Fink, 1968), 566–94; Worth, The Origins of Russian Grammar, 143–6; V.M. Živov, ‘Slavjanskie grammatičeskie sočinenija kak lingvističeskij istočnik’, Russian Linguistics 10 (1986): 73–113, at 99–102. 20

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perfect and Greek aorist.25 Maximos’s opponents, who probably did not have his competence in Greek, are thought to have derived their notion of norms partly from what they met in the Church Slavonic textual tradition and partly from vernacular Russian usage,26 so they were less troubled than he by the homophony of second and third person forms, which were differentiated by custom and context. While they understood sěde, the aorist of sěsti, as a past perfective verbal form, carrying the implication of a change in position whose effect continues to hold good, they took the perfect tense form of the stative (therefore imperfective) sěděti to refer to a state which obtained at some previous stage but not up to the present.27 This account of the dispute raises as many questions as it answers. Granted that Maximos clearly aimed at accuracy and clarity in his translations, where did he, or more likely his helpers, get the idea of systematizing the use of second singular perfect in aorist function? And why did he invite trouble by forming his second person perfect from sěděti rather than sěsti, the Church Slavonic equivalent of Greek kathizõ? An answer to the first of these questions is ready to hand. The practice of employing second singular perfect to avoid the ambiguities caused by the formal coincidence of second singular aorist both with third person aorist and with second person imperative had a long history in Church Slavonic, extending back to Old Church Slavonic.28 It was already common in redactions I and II of the Psalter, no doubt because the psalmist alternates between addressing the deity and referring to his past actions. In the fourteenthcentury redactions III, IV and V the tendency to use second singular perfect became still more pronounced,29 so that when Maximos turned his attention to the Psalter text those second singular aorist forms which still survived must have struck him and his assistants as anomalies. The process by which second singular

V.A. Romodanovskaja, ‘“Sede odesnuja otca” ili “sidel esi”? K voprosu o grammatičeskoj pravke Maksima Greka’, in E.K. Romodanovskaja (ed.), Problemy istorii russkoj knižnosti, kul′tury i obščestvennogo soznanija (Novosibirsk: Sibirskij Xronograf, 2000), 232–8. 26 Kovtun, Sinicyna and Fonkič, ‘Maksim Grek i slavjanskaja Psaltyr′’, 110–11, 127; B.A. Uspenskij, Istorija russkogo literaturnogo jazyka (XI–XVII vv.) (Moscow: Aspekt Press, 2002), 344–5; S. Matxauzerova, Drevnerusskie teorii iskusstva slova (Prague: Universita Karlova, 1976), 48; Kravec, ‘Knižnaja sprava i perevody Maksima Greka’, 247, 265–6. 27 V.M. Živov and B.A. Uspenskij, ‘Grammatica sub specie theologiae: Preteritnye formy glagola byti v russkom jazykovom soznanii XVI–XVIII vekov’, Russian Linguistics 10 (1986): 259–62. 28 Uspenskij, Istorija, 241–7; R. Večerka, Altkirchenslavische (altbulgarische) Syntax, vol. 3 (Freiburg: U.W. Weiher, 1993), 167–8. 29 I. Karačorova, ‘Kăm văprosa za Kirilo-Metodievskija starobălgarski prevod na psaltira’, Kirilo-Metodievski studii 6 (1989): 177–8. 25

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perfect ousted the aorist can be seen from the following tabulation of forms in Psalm 43 from the various Church Slavonic redactions: 43:10a apōsō > ōtrinǫ I II III IV V ōtrinuv JB → ōrinoulŭ esi 171 116 752 753 1143 ‘thou hast cast (us) aside’ 43:10a katēskhunas > posrami ny I II IV → posramilĭ jesi nas III JB V 171 116 752 753 ‘thou hast put us to shame’ 43:11a apestrepsas > vŭzvratilŭ ny esi I II III vŭzvratilĭ esi nasĭ IV JB V 171 116 ōvrati esi na 752 753 1143 ‘thou makest us to turn our backs’ 43:12a edōkas > dalŭ ny esi I II III dalĭ esi nasĭ IV JB V 171 116 vyda esi na 752 753 1143 ‘thou hast given us up’ 43:12b diespeiras > rasějalŭ ny esi I II III V 171 116 razsěalŭ esi nasŭ IV JB 752 753 1143 ‘thou hast scattered us’ 43:13a apedou > prodastŭ I III J prědastĭ II proda IV ōdastĭ V → prodal esi 171 116 ōda esi 752 753 1143 ‘thou hast sold (us)’ 43:14a ethou > položilŭ ny esi I II položilĭ esi nas III IV JB V 171 116 752 753 ‘thou hast placed us’ 43:15a ethou > položilŭ ny esi I II III položilĭ esi nasĭ IV JB V 171 116 752 753 ‘thou hast placed us’

In this development Maximos’s revisions of the 1520s (represented by MSS 171, 116, 63, 78) and the 1550s (MSS 315, 752, 753, 1143) played a relatively small role. In six of the eight instances here, the second singular perfect was well established as a translation of Greek aorist by the fourteenth century, and in five instances its use goes back to the earliest versions, extant from the eleventh century. To a Muscovite of the sixteenth century the vestigial second singular aorists would have seemed unaccountable: ōtrinǫ would have been obscure, since by this time Russian, unlike the South Slavonic languages, had lost the aorist tense forms; and ōdastĭ would normally have been understood as future tense. Maximos’s assistant Dmitrij Gerasimov would have been alerted to the extended use of the second singular perfect through his involvement in the compilation of the Gennadian Bible at the end of the fifteenth century. Those Muscovites who objected to Maximos’s translations might not have been alive to the problem of ambiguity, but they were surely familiar with its resolution: redaction V of the Psalter and other revisions of church texts had been in

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circulation in Russia since the end of the fourteenth century, and Russian scribes appear to have seen no difficulty in adopting their new wording, for instance in: 9:5 ekathisas epi thronou ho krinōn dikaiosynēn sěde na prěstolě sǫdęi pravĭdǫ I II → sělŭ esi III IV JB V 171 116 (315) 752 753 (1143). ‘thou art set in the throne that judgest right’

The uncontroversial status of this revision indicates that the underlying source of the problem for Maximos’s contemporaries lay not in the use of the perfect tense but in the verbal stem on which it was based. Because the second/third singular aorist of most verbs coincided with the infinitival stem, the majority of perfect participles could be derived from second/third singular aorists by means of the suffix -lŭ. Consequently, corrections could be introduced into a manuscript very simply by the addition of a superscript l and the auxiliary esi above the line or in the margin. This is precisely the way in which the text of MS 315 was brought into line with Maximos’s version, and it may well have been the simplified rule supplied to him by his assistants. However, where the infinitival stem was different from the second/third singular aorist, this mechanical approach could yield unintended results, such as a change from sěde,30 the aorist of the perfective verb of movement sěsti, indicating change of state ‘you sat down, took your seat’, to sědělŭ esi, the perfect of the imperfective stative sěděti, meaning ‘you were / have been sitting’. This was indeed a mistake. If Maximos had had a clearer understanding of the morphological relationship between the aorist paradigm and the forms of the infinitive and perfect participle, he would surely have altered sěde in other texts to the correct perfect form of sěsti, sělŭ esi ‘you have sat down, taken your seat’, on the model of the wording in Psalm 9:5 which he inherited from the fourteenth-century redactions. In this way he would have secured his translations against attack, since his frequent use of the perfect tense elsewhere seems not to have been an issue at his trials. True, Maximos himself reports31 that one of his own sympathizers, Bishop Akakij of Tver′, was unhappy at the substitution of second singular perfect for aorist at the beginning of Psalm 89: Or possibly the variant spelling sědě, see Živov and Uspenskij, ‘Grammatica sub specie theologiae’, 279 n. 2. Strictly speaking sědě is the 3rd person singular aorist of sěděti, and its use interchangeably with sěde from an early date in Russian sources may be due to the loss of the aorist in vernacular Russian. Nevertheless, it seems that sěde/sědě was associated semantically with sěsti rather than with sěděti, which as a stative verb was rarely used in the aorist tense (see R. Aitzetmüller, Belegstellenverzeichnis der altkirchenslavischen Verbalformen [Würzburg: U.W. Weiher, 1977], s.v. ‘sěsti’). 31 Živov and Uspenskij, ‘Grammatica sub specie theologiae’, 263–5. 30

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89:1 kyrie kataphygē egenēthēs hēmin en genea kai genea ‘Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another’

Akakij favoured the traditional translation, g(ospod)i priběžište bystĭ namŭ vŭ rodŭ i rodŭ, because, for him, Maximos’s use of the perfect bylŭ esi here implied that the Lord’s protection was no longer available. It has been suggested that this is further evidence for a perceived aspectual contrast between the two tenses: from Old Church Slavonic onward the sense of the aorist bystĭ was predominantly perfective and inchoative, ‘you came to be’, whereas in sixteenth-century Russian vernacular the perfect tense bylŭ esi, although formed on the same stem, was probably understood as stative and therefore imperfective, ‘you were / used to be’.32 It is hard to tell whether Akakij was more influenced by vernacular usage or by the sheer unfamiliarity of bylŭ esi in Church Slavonic translations of scriptural texts, where ‘you were / used to be’ is expressed by the forms bě or b(ě)jaše and the perfect of the verb ‘to be’ is extremely rare.33 However, it appears that, although Maximos regarded Akakij’s objection as a misunderstanding, he may nevertheless have taken it into account. The manuscript evidence suggests that he tended to retain bystŭ as equivalent to the Greek aorist egenēthēs, deploying bylŭ esi to render the Greek imperfect egenou: 58:17c egenēthēs antilēmptōr mou > bystŭ zastǫpĭnikŭ moi I II III IV JB V 116 752 753 (78 315 1143) ‘thou hast been my protector’ 60:4a egenēthēs elpis mou > bystŭ oupovanĭe moe I II III IV JB V 116 752 753 (78 315 1143) ‘thou hast been my hope’ 62:8a egenēthēs boēthos mou > bystŭ pomoštŭnikŭ moi I II III IV JB V 753 (78 315 1143) → by esi 116 752 ‘thou hast been my helper’ 89:1 kataphygē egenēthēs > priběžište bystŭ I II III IV JB V 63 116 753 (78 315 1143) → bylŭ esi 752 ‘thou hast been our refuge’ 117:21b egenou moi eis sōtērian > bystŭ mĭně vo sp(as)enie I II III IV JB V 1143 753 (315) → byl mi esi 63 116 78 752 ‘thou art become my salvation’

D. Freydank, ‘Sein und Werden im Kirchenslawischen des 16. Jahrhunderts’, Zeitschrift für Slawistik 26/5 (1981): 710–14; Živov and Uspenskij, ‘Grammatica sub specie theologiae’, 264. 33 See Aitzetmüller, Belegstellenverzeichnis der altkirchenslavischen Verbalformen, s.v. ‘byti’. 32

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117:28d egenou moi eis sōtērian > bystŭ mĭně vo sp(as)enie I II III IV JB V 753 (315 1143) → byl mi esi 63 116 78 752 ‘thou art become my salvation’

What emerges from this debate is that, while Maximos’s critics clung to older Church Slavonic wording, even if they drew on vernacular intuitions to interpret it, Maximos and his collaborators started precisely from that linguistic model introduced to Russia under Metropolitan Kiprian which Nil Kurljatev was to stigmatize as alien and unintelligible. At the trial of 1531, an additional accusation of heresy was raised in relation to Maximos’s translation of passages in the Metaphrastean Life of the Mother of God.34 One of these describes the way in which Mary’s status as devotee to God was reconciled with her arrival at marriageable age: a bridegroom, Joseph, was chosen from her kin, and their union was to go as far as (but not beyond) the point of betrothal. That is to say, it was to be a token marriage. The Greek wording is concise: hē de synapheia mekhri mnēsteias ēn35 ‘the union was up to the point of betrothal’

As was usual at the time, Maximos’s translation followed its original word for word: sovokuplenie že do obručenija bě

To a reader well versed in Church Slavonic this laconic formulation could in context have conveyed the same meaning as the Greek, since the constituent words are all employed in standard senses. To a Muscovite of the sixteenth century, however, it was susceptible of an alternative and highly unfortunate interpretation, ‘sexual intercourse took place before betrothal’. The reasons for this are two-fold. Firstly and most obviously, the word sovokuplenie, though still available in its various senses of ‘union, blend, unity, combination, concentration, assembly’, had come to be associated with sexual activity, whether in the consummation of marriage, bračnoe sovokuplenie, or more general union of the flesh, plotnoe sovokuplenie. This is why in his evidence at the trial of 1531

Pokrovskij, Sudnye spiski Maxima Greka i Isaka Sobaki, 100–104, 127–8, 150–53. Gregory of Nyssa (?), In diem natalem Christi, Patrologia Graeca 46, ed. J.-P. Migne

34 35

(Paris: 1844–64), cols. 1127–50, at 1140; Symeon Metaphrastes, Oratio de Sancta Maria, Patrologia Graeca 115, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris 1844–64), cols 529–66, at 531.

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Mixail Medovarcev claimed to have queried Maximos’s choice of words and to have substituted on his own initiative an alternative wording:36 soveščanie že do obručenija bě ‘the consultation was before the betrothal’

However, it is possible that Medovarcev was being wise after the event and that Maximos would not have accepted this revision, because it is based on a second misunderstanding, of the word do.37 In Church Slavonic this preposition means ‘up to, as far as’ and introduces the goal of movement, the temporal or spatial limit of an activity or area, and definitions of size, extent, deadline or culmination.38 In Russian it developed a derived sense, ‘before, prior to’, which is occasionally attested from the late thirteenth century onwards but is commonly found only from the mid-sixteenth century.39 So in this instance Maximos’s assistants supplied him with standard Church Slavonic expressions which were intended to be taken in their traditional acceptations, and Maximos’s indignant denial of any vernacular sous-entendre should have carried conviction with an impartial and informed contemporary. A charitable interpretation of his judges’ less generous reaction is that they were concerned about the possible impact of Maximos’s translations on a general public less well versed in Church Slavonic. An alternative possibility is that those judges themselves understood the words in their current Russian, rather than their traditional Church Slavonic, sense. The other point of difficulty which arose from Maximos’s translation of the Life of the Mother of God gave rise to a similarly unfortunate ambiguity.40 It appears that Maximos’s Russian collaborators offered him the Russian Church Slavonic word aky, meaning ‘as’ in the senses ‘like’, ‘similarly to’, ‘as if ’, ‘as though’ as translational equivalent of Greek hōs, hōsper, hōsei, hate and that this equivalence was extended, perhaps by Maximos rather than them, to include the sense ‘in that, in the capacity of ’, which can also be conveyed by the Greek Pokrovskij, Sudnye spiski Maxima Greka i Isaka Sobaki, 101, 128, 153. This was pointed out by E.E. Golubinskij (Istorija russkoj cerkvi, 2 vols [Moscow:

36 37

Imperatorskoe obščestvo istorii i drevnostej rossijskix, 1900], 2/1: 720–21 n. 1); however, his brief comment, which presupposes a knowledge of Greek, does not seem to have been picked up by subsequent investigators. 38 J. Kurz (ed.), Lexicon Linguae Palaeoslovenicae, 5 vols (Prague: Academia, 1966–95), s.v. ‘do’. 39 R.I. Avanesov (ed.), Slovar′ drevnerusskogo jazyka (XI–XIV vv.) (Moscow: Russkij Jazyk, 1988), s.v. ‘do’; S.G. Barxudarov (ed.), Slovar′ russkogo jazyka XI–XVII vv. (Moscow: Nauka, 1975), s.v. ‘do’. 40 Pokrovskij, Sudnye spiski Maxima Greka i Isaka Sobaki, 100–103, 128; Olmsted, ‘Recognizing Maksim Grek’, 18.

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words. For the most part such an extension would have been unobjectionable, even unnoticeable; indeed in early Church Slavonic aky could be so used.41 By the sixteenth century, however, it appears to have been specialized to similes and counterfactual use.42 Thus Maximos translated the Greek wording (or something similar to it): hoti spermatos andros oudamōs ekoinōnei43 ‘because she had no part in the seed of man’

into Church Slavonic as: aki semeni mužeska nikako že pričastivše sę

He therefore laid himself open to the accusation that he implicitly cast doubt on Mary’s virginity, ‘as if she had no part in the seed of man’, and this interpretation received support from another example in the same text: hate houtō dikaios ōn44 ‘in as much as he was a just man’

which Maximos rendered: aki pravedenŭ.

When taken in the sense ‘as if he was a just man’, this could be read as a slight on Joseph’s probity.45 Medovarcev claimed to have felt so uneasy about the wording of these passages that he altered aky to the cognate expression jako, which was acceptable because it carried no counterfactual connotation. Once again, his account of events may not have been entirely ingenuous: it is hard to believe that Maximos would not have grasped the difference between the two words if Medovarcev had explained it to him. Indeed it appears that in his early version of the Psalter, Maximos made a conscious effort to differentiate consistently among words and meanings. Where previous redactions mostly rendered Greek hoti, hōste, hōs, hōs(ei) indifferently by jako or jakože (except where they preferred aky), Kurz, Lexicon Linguae Palaeoslovenicae, s.v. ‘akij’. Avanesov, Slovar′ drevnerusskogo jazyka, s.v. ‘akij’; Barxudarov, Slovar′ russkogo

41 42

jazyka, s.v. ‘aki (aky)’. 43 Symeon Metaphrastes, Oratio de Sancta Maria, col. 533. 44 Ibid., col. 535. 45 These unintentional mistranslations were explained by E.E. Golubinskij (Istorija russkoj cerkvi, 720–21 n. 1).

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Maximos seems to have taken pains to reduce polysemy and its potential for ambiguity: his first version extended the use of zane in place of jako to translate hoti in the sense ‘because’ and used kolĭ and aky for hōs in the senses ‘how much’ and ‘like’ respectively, reserving jako(že) to convey hōs in the sense ‘how’ or ‘that’ and to translate hōste ‘so that’. It is possible that the frequent, though by no means universal, disambiguation of hoti owes something to the working method which Maximos and his early assistants are reported to have used: when Maximos turned the Greek text into an intermediary Latin version, he could well have exploited the differentiating options quoniam / quia and quod, and his Russian translators could then have equated quoniam / quia with zane and quod with jako. But this hypothesis depends on the assumption that Maximos improvised his Latin version, rather than using the Vulgate itself, in which quoniam is used to introduce indirect statement as well as causal clauses. Equally, Latin mediating influence on the differential use of kolĭ and aky for hōs is plausible, because the Vulgate disambiguates by means of quam / quemadmodum / quomodo in contrast to sicut, the equivalent of hōs(ei) in the sense ‘like’, ‘as if ’. Latin influence may also explain why in Psalm 132:1 Maximos’s early translation follows the old reading kolĭ dobro i kolĭ krasno I II 63, which can be referred back to Latin quam, rather than the fourteenthcentury correction čĭto … čĭto III IV V JB 1143, based on Greek ti. At all events, in making these distinctions Maximos, or more probably his assistants, drew on the resources of earlier Church Slavonic usage, long familiar in Russia. A different picture emerges from Maximos’s later work on the text of the Psalms in the 1550s, when hard experience had taught him caution. There is no trace of the perilous word aky, and while kolĭ is retained to convey the quantitative sense of hōs, zane is abandoned as a translation of hoti; instead hōs(ei) is systematically translated as jakože and hoti as jako.46 The differences between the two approaches and their antecedents can be seen in the following tabulation, where MSS 171, 116, 63 represent Maximos’s early translation, the glosses in MS 78 suggest an interim stage and MSS 315, 752, 753 and 1143 reflect his later practice: hoti ‘because’ > ide ×3 I II, ×1 III; zane ×10 I, ×7 II, ×8 III, ×7 J(B), ×4 V, ×3 IV; otherwise jako Maximos: zane up to ×10 171 116 63 78 752 753 1143, plus ×77 zane 171 116 63 hōste ‘so that’ > jako I II III IV JB V and Maximos hōs ‘how / that’ > jako(že) I II III IV JB V Maximos: zane x1 63 116, kolĭ ×1 753 1143 (ps. 86:7), otherwise jako(že) hōs ‘how much’ > kolĭ x7 I II III V, ×6 JB, otherwise jako, as in IV throughout Maximos: kolĭ up to ×7 171 116 63 (315 1143), plus kolĭ ×5 171 63 78 315 1143

Kravec, ‘Knižnaja sprava i perevody Maksima Greka’, 257–8.

46

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hōs(ei) introducing a simile > jako(že) I III IV JB V, jako(že) or aky II Maximos: aky ×23 171 116 63 78; jakože throughout 315 752 753 1143

Once again it emerges, in a particularly striking way, that the linguistic model which Maximos elaborated with the help of his Russian assistants reflected the usage, not of traditional Russian Church Slavonic, let alone the vernacular language of Muscovy, but of an imported variety, the South Slavonic normalization of Church Slavonic which was introduced into Russia with the authoritative fourteenth-century revisions of scripture. The charges brought against Maximos in relation to his revisions were based officially on the possibility of heretical interpretations; no objections seem to have been raised on grounds of congruity or dignity to the vernacular lexical items which Maximos and his assistants occasionally introduced in place of Church Slavonicisms.47 However, this attitude was not universal in sixteenthcentury Russia. Maximos’s younger contemporary Zinovij Otenskij inveighed against velmoži xristoborci, ‘enemies of Christ in high position’, who advocated revising one of the formulae of the Creed:48 prosdokō anastasin nekrōn ‘I look for the resurrection of the dead’

The traditional Church Slavonic wording here employed the verb čajati, which could mean ‘to expect, hope for, suppose’, but apparently in vernacular Russian the last of these senses had already come to predominate, and so the verb žĭdati, ‘to wait for, expect, await, delay’, was thought to be preferable. For this change they invoked the authority of Maximos, who had indeed, when revising his Psalter translation in the 1550s, substituted žĭdati for čajati in Psalms 54:9, 315 752 753 143. Zinovij, who seems to have been well read and consequently familiar with Church Slavonic usage, identified the source of misunderstanding in the divergence between knižnaja rěč ′, the formal written variety based on Russian Church Slavonic, and obščaja rěč ′, everyday vernacular Russian: čaju voskresenija mertvymŭ ‘I expect / hope for the resurrection of the dead’ (Church Slavonic usage) ‘I have a feeling the resurrection of the dead may come’ (vernacular usage) ždu voskresenija mertvymŭ

Kovtun, Sinicyna and Fonkič, ‘Maksim Grek i slavjanskaja Psaltyr′’,105–26. Tolstoj, ‘Starinnye predstavlenija o narodno-jazykovoj baze drevneslavjanskogo

47 48

literaturnogo jazyka’,113–15; R.M. Maina, Zinovij von Oten’: Ein russischer Polemiker und Theologe der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts (Rome: Pontifical Institute of Oriental Studies, 1961), 75.

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‘I wait for the resurrection of the dead’ (Church Slavonic usage) ‘I await in confidence the resurrection of the dead’ (vernacular usage)

His comments can be taken to imply that in Church Slavonic čaju conveyed the actively hopeful attitude of the living, while ždu was appropriate to those in the grave, who have nothing to do but wait for the day of resurrection, but his main objection seems to have been to the intrusion of ‘common’ expressions into literary language, and he excused Maximos only on grounds of ignorance.49 In short, Maximos was caught in a net of distinct and sometimes divergent linguistic perceptions. His Russian assistants offered him a combination of traditional Church Slavonic usage and new Church Slavonic standard sponsored by Kiprian, with an admixture of vernacular Russian in place of locutions which they found alien or antiquated. As practical translators rather than scholars or theologians, they were not best placed to alert him to differences of nuance among these varieties, nor were his readers inclined to make allowance for them. Some, more old fashioned or better read, took their stand on an informed command of traditional Church Slavonic phraseology, others assumed that intuition based on current usage was a sufficient guide to understanding. Faced with these conflicting reactions, Maximos seems, as it were, to have said ‘A plague on both your houses’, to have turned his back on the ill-defined and unpredictable usages of Russian Church Slavonic and Russian vernacular and to have opted instead (pace Nil Kurljatev) for the linguistic model which offered him clear-cut norms and transparent equivalents to his Greek originals, the literalistic and grammatically standardized Church Slavonic introduced into Russia from the South Slavonic lands at the end of the fourteenth century.50

It has been suggested that Zinovij implicitly aligned himself with Maximos’s linguistic position on the past tense forms of the verb ‘to be’, since he held that the inchoative aorist bystŭ was inappropriate in references to the Son of God (see Živov and Uspenskij, ‘Grammatica sub specie theologiae’, 264–5). However, it does not follow that he favoured Maximos’s use of byl esi. Zinovij was arguing against latter-day Arians that Christ was coeternal with God; consequently he was concerned not with the copular use of the verb byti ‘to be’, as in Ps. 89:1, but with its existential use as in Jn 1:1, and here his preference was for bě or b(ě)jaše. In his allusions to the Creed he employed the traditional wording sědjašča odesnuju otca and sede odesnuju prestola veličestvija (see V.I. Koreckij, ‘Vnov′ najdennoe protivoeretičeskoe proizvedenie Zinovija Otenskogo’, Trudy otdela drevnerusskoj literatury 21 [1965]: 166–82, at 174, 178). 50 The similarity between Maximos’s approach and that of the fourteenth-century South Slavonic revisions was noted by Tolstoj (‘Starinnye predstavlenija o narodno-jazykovoj baze drevneslavjanskogo literaturnogo jazyka’, 121–2). 49

Part III Historical Narratives: Reformation, Renovation, Restoration

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Chapter 9

The Polemic of Reform in the Later Medieval English Church Benjamin Thompson Introduction Forasmuch as manifest sin, vicious, carnal and abominable living is daily used and committed among the little and small abbeys, priories and other religious houses … whereby the governors of such religious houses, and their convent, spoil, destroy consume and utterly waste [their churches, lands and ornaments] to the high displeasure of Almighty God, slander of good religion, and the great infamy of the King’s highness and his realm if redress should not be had thereof … Act suppressing the lesser monasteries, 1536

So opened the statute which inaugurated the wholesale dissolution of the monasteries in England between 1536 and 1540. The text allows no virtue to these houses, continuing that all efforts ‘for an honest and charitable reformation of such unthrifty, carnal, and abominable living’ have failed. The only solution is to close them down and commit the religious to greater monasteries ‘where they may be compelled to live religiously, for reformation of their lives’. The argument of this preamble exhibits a rhetorical pattern common to the discourse of reform in the medieval church. The wrong to be righted is set out in more or less detail, in order to explain why the consequent measures for correction are necessary. Since this particular act was implementing radical action, it is not surprising that it painted the evil to be corrected in fairly lurid colours, and indeed the reports of the monastic visitors of 1535 were presented to parliament so as to give the impression of widespread specifically sexual activity amongst the religious.1 Nevertheless, the basic discursive structure long pre-dated the Reformation, nor was it confined to the ecclesiastical sphere. This examination of some reform texts of the late medieval English church will therefore show that the English reformation statutes were firmly located in a long tradition of reform rhetoric: in so far as they were innovative, it was in their effects more than their language. My further contention, of course, is that this discourse was fundamentally polemical. First the language deployed is negative and extreme, often with G.W. Bernard, ‘The Dissolution of the Monasteries’, History 96 (2011): 397–8.

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connotations of violence: that is surely the reason for equating ‘carnal’ with ‘abominable’ and in particular ‘vicious’. Moreover the evils which will result are equally extreme, typically in medieval rhetoric leading to the damnation of souls and the destruction of the church. Second, the righteousness of the author’s position is strongly asserted as self-evident, both in the calamity of the evils abroad and in the need for firm corrective action in response (‘redress’). This endows the author with the authority to take such action: he (sic) may in any case have that officially, by virtue of his position as king, pope, bishop or other ruler (in 1536 as ‘supreme hede [in] erthe under God of the Churche of Englonde’), but he now also proceeds to explain why this particular reform is warranted by necessity. These texts therefore make the classic polemical move of closing down debate rather than opening it up: they assert authoritatively rather than discuss open-mindedly, and stake out positions which polarize the good from the evil. Their logic is unassailable: if this is indeed going wrong, then it must be put right if disaster is to be averted. The evils, whether persons or actions, are thus isolated as an Other which needs to be, respectively, reformed or extirpated: ‘the totall extirpyng & dystrucc’on of vyce & synne’ in the 1536 statute. The text is addressed by the author, about third-party evil-doers, to an addressee who is rhetorically required to accept the logical outcome without question, although in practice it may be being persuaded to do so (as will become clear in genres other than edicts and statutes and was the case before the Act was passed by parliament). This process therefore entrenches authority and forms identity, claiming the addressee for the righteous against the wicked; it consolidates the true church against its opponents, from backsliders and the worldly to heretics, Jews and Saracens. The polemicism of these texts therefore extends from the force of their language to their divisive performativity in re-forming the church so as to avoid the ‘high dyspleasour of Almyghty God’ and ultimately to secure the salvation of souls. In order to show that these patterns of thought were endemic to the discourse of the medieval church, I shall analyse the language and structures of the English church over the three centuries which bridge the culmination of the high-medieval period of reform at Lateran IV in 1215 to the Reformation. The records of church councils take the form of both decrees, from ecclesiastical authorities, and petitions, to the Crown or higher clergy; and they are supplemented by episcopal acts and sermons.2 The exposition of the besetting sins of the clergy opened up a big space for polemical language, Councils and Synods with Other Documents relating to the English Church, II, 1205– 1313, ed. F.M. Powicke and C.R. Cheney, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964); Records of Convocation, ed. G. Bray, 20 vols (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2006); also the older edition with additional documents, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, a Synodo Verolamiensi A.D. CCCCXLVI. ad Londinensem A.D. MDCCXVII, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols (London, 1737). Below I also use some papal, archiepiscopal and episcopal documents 2

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because the more lurid the account of what was to be corrected, the more persuasive, indeed necessary, was the need for action and thus the authority of the author. I will then probe the less straightforward ways in which this discourse was deployed and referred to, which made ecclesiastical polemic at once more pervasive and more dangerous. But polemic also attracted counterpolemic, which served to undermine the very authority which polemic aimed to establish. Finally, it was also deployed by the laity long before the Reformation, which will bring us back to the statutes of the 1530s and the ways in which they pick up the structures of thought established by the church in the preceding centuries. Ecclesiastical Polemic The broad discursive structure common to these texts is three-fold: first the prevailing evils are identified, then the resulting effects are diagnosed and finally the necessary corrective action is taken, either in the form of an authoritative decree (in a conciliar or episcopal act) or as a recommendation urged on the addressee of a petition or a sermon. This pattern is seen in a routine commission from the beginning of the archiepiscopate of Thomas Bourchier (1454–86), who ruled the see of Canterbury throughout the Wars of the Roses. In 1455, he addressed his commissary-general, ‘ad reprimandum et corrigendum crimina et excessus clericorum et laicorum’ (‘to repress and correct the crimes and excesses of clergy and laity’).3 He had heard by frequent and clamorous insinuation, public rumour and notorious report, with heavy bitterness of heart4 of a series of evils: regulars discarding the habit and going abroad presumptuously like secular priests,5 secular clergy abandoning their cures and residence, hospitality and almsgiving, to be dissolute wanderers indulging in worldly pursuits – feasts, drinking-sessions, impious adulteries and fornications and many other vices,6 thus consuming the fruits of their benefices in forbidden profanities and allowing – especially from the register of William of Wykeham – some sermons, and parliamentary documents. 3 Registrum Thome Bourgchier, Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi, A.D. 1454–1486, ed. F.R.H. du Boulay, Canterbury and York Society 54 (London: Oxford University Press, 1957), 20–23. 4 ‘frequenti et clamosa multorum insinuatione, famaque publica, ac notorietate facti referentibus … non sine gravi cordis amaritudine’. 5 ‘spreto ac abjecto habitu regulari … ac ad modum secularium presbyterorum temere ac praesumptim incedunt’. 6 ‘tanquam vagi ac dissoluti per regnum, animarum, quibus astringuntur, curis neglectis ac spretis, discurrunt questibus mundanis, comessationibus insuper, potationibus,

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their churches and buildings to fall down;7 other chaplains and mass-priests were ignorant and unlettered wanderers who took up cures with considerable risk to souls;8 laypeople, driven by blind and obstinate error against God and the church, refused to pay their tithes, defending this corrupt and damnable error as inveterate custom;9 men and women wandering about the diocese indulged in nefarious and adulterous embraces and illicit unions forbidden by divine law and the canons;10 finally, clandestine marriages and wills were not witnessed properly, producing illegal unions and illegitimate children.11 In a polemical peroration the archbishop listed the consequences of these evils: many wrongs in contempt of God and sacred religion were perpetrated daily, the clergy were dishonoured, the safety of souls was dangerously neglected, the poor lost hope without alms, ecclesiastical buildings were ruined, goods were vainly consumed, unskilled and unlearned (or frequently unordained) priests administered the sacraments and captivated souls, illicit unions, fornication and adultery flourished, and wills were quashed.12 In order to avoid so many dangers, the commissary was entrusted with the correction of these defects, crimes and ac ebrietatibus, nefariisque adulteriis ac fornicationibus inserviunt, aliasque vitiis multimodis vacant’. 7 ‘res, bona, fructus, ac proventus beneficiorum suorum hujuscemodi dilapidant, ac in usibus vetitis et profanis frustra ac inaniter consumunt, cancellos ecclesiarum suarum, domus insuper, ac aedificia beneficiorum suorum hujuscemodi in muris, tectis, ac caeteris notabiles et enormes defectus notorie pacientes irreparatos relinquendo et relinquunt’. 8 ‘peregrini penitus ignoti ac incogniti conversacionis, … idiotae et indocti, literarum imperiti ac pene prorsus ignari, animarum curam infra eandem dioecesim nostram non sine magno animarum discrimine, summoque periculo gerentes’. 9 ‘quodam caeco et obstinato errore contra Deum et ecclesiam impulsi qui decimas … solvere recusant et renuunt, ad erroris sui hujuscemodi defensionem inveteratam consuetudinem, verius corruptelam damnabilem, allegantes’. 10 ‘utriusque sexus nonnulli viri ac mulieres sparsim de dioecesi in dioecesim vagantes, et ad dictam dioecesim nostram se divertentes, nefariis ac adulterinis amplexibus contra divinae legis vetita ac sacrorum canonum instituta sese mutuo confoventes’. 11 ‘illicita contubernia contrahunt, filios spurios ac adulterinos ex eisdem procreant’. 12 ‘ex quibus nimirum fit, quod plura nefaria in Dei ac sacrae religionis contemptum indies a nostris perpetrantur, honor clericalis dehonestatur, salus animarum periculose negligitur, spes pauperum deperit, dum sacrae hospitalitatis officium ab ecclesiasticis, apud quos potissimum vigere debeat, deseritur, deformitas ac ruina multiplex aedificia ecclesiastica occupat; bona ecclesiastica frustra ac inaniter dilapidantur et consumuntur; presbyteri imperiti, indocti, ignoti ac incogniti, ac ut saepe inordinati, aut ab executione ordinum suspensi, sacramenta ac sacramentalia praesumptim conferendo, subditorum nostrorum animas in precipium ducunt et captivant, plura illicita ac nefaria contubernia, fornicationes, et adulteria apud nostros confoventur, successoria pervertuntur edicta, ultimae testantium voluntates persaepe impie cassantur et irritantur.’

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excesses,13 by rounding up and punishing apostates and others, and ensuring that marriages and wills were witnessed properly. In the first place, it is evident that the language in which the evils are outlined, both the original wrongs and their consequences, was negative in the forcefulness of its portrayal of the woes of church and society. There was a whole range of words to describe the ‘defectus, crimina et excessus’ of Bourchier’s 1455 commission which were common throughout this period, ‘excesses’ headlining the seventh canon of Lateran IV on the correction of clergy.14 In 1425 the provincial council met to correct ‘certain defects in the church of England then growing more than usual’.15 Abuse was another favourite, again found in Lateran IV, but perhaps growing in usage in the fifteenth century, so that the convocation of 1529 which enacted the Reformation was intended ‘pro reformatione abusum’.16 Corruptela (‘corruption’), found in the 1455 commission,17 ‘morbus’, ‘pestis’, ‘plagae’ (‘disease’ and ‘plague’)18 and, more personally, ‘vitia’ (‘vices’)19 were alternatives. Even before it became routinely associated with heresy, error loomed large in this canonical vocabulary: in 1235–6 Bishop Grosseteste summarized the evils he was urging his archdeacons to uproot as ‘quosdam perniciosos errores per devium tenebrosam et lubricum ad inferos deducantes’ (‘pernicious errors leading by dark and slippery ways to ‘ad debite corrigendum et reformandum defectus, crimina, et excessus’. ‘ad corrigendos subditorum excessus maxime clericorum et reformandos mores’ (‘to

13 14

correct the excesses of their subjects, above all the clergy, and reform their behaviour’); note also ‘correctionis et reformationis officium’ (‘the duty of correction and reform’) (Concilium lateranense IV, a. 1215¸ in Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, ed. J. Alberigo et al. (Bologna: Instituto per le scienza religiose, 1973), 230–71, (accessed 18 Feb. 2014), c.7. For ‘crimina et excessus’, see e.g. 1434 (Records of Convocation, 5: 345); for ‘excessus et delicta’, see Wykeham’s Register, ed. T.F. Kirby, 2 vols (London and Winchester, 1896–9), 2: 472. 15 ‘certos defectus in Ecclesia Anglicana tunc plus solito succrescentes’ (Records of Convocation, 5: 161). 16 Concilium lateranense IV, c.15 (on clerical drunkenness); Records of Convocation, 7: 128; see also ‘novas insolentes et deformes abusiones’, 1463 (ibid., 6: 158). 17 And esp. ‘pessima corruptela noviter inolevit’ (‘the worst corruption has newly grown up’) 1342, c.9 (Records of Convocation, 3: 212); also in York 1364, c.7, from where it was picked up in York constitutions in 1466, c.3, 1518 (ibid., 13: 157; 14: 24; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 671). 18 ‘morbo’ (Concilium lateranense IV, c.26); ‘morbo pestifero’, 1362 (Records of Convocation, 3: 295); ‘pestem’, 1222, c.10 (Councils and Synods, 1: 108); ‘pestiferum virus’, 1532, c.17 (Records of Convocation, 7: 172); ‘Apparitorum turba pestifera’ (‘the pestiferous crowd of apparitors’), 1341, c.8 (ibid., 3: 178); ‘plagas diras’, 1281, c.25 (Councils and Synods, 2: 916). 19 1362 (Records of Convocation, 3: 293).

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hell’).20 In fact, the laity of 1455 were said to be driven by blind and obstinate error against God and the church, and in 1532 monastic apostasy was described as error in a document which also associated heresies with errors, as had been standard for over a century.21 A word which grew in popularity was ‘enormitas’ to become the enormities – or ‘dyverse greate enormyties’ – of the Reformation.22 Henry VIII was given power right at the start of the Act of Supremacy ‘to represse & extirpe all errours, heresies, and other enormyties & abuses’.23 Other descriptors identified the causes of these evils. Malice featured in Lateran IV and in the headline first article of the Oxford Council of 1222 – the archetype of late-medieval English ecclesiastical councils – against those ‘malitiose’ presuming to deprive the church of its rights.24 ‘Malitia hominum’ was said to be growing in 1342, in a constitution about wills which had an afterlife into the sixteenth century, as well as in the post-plague Effrenata constitutions attempting to limit priests’ wages.25 The extensive canons of 1342 highlight the problem of ambition, whereas in Archbishop Pecham’s council of 1281, disobedience was thought to be the cause of the church’s difficulties.26 A more general sense of contempt for God, the church and its laws is endemic in this rhetoric, not least in the ‘plura nefaria in Dei ac sacrae religionis contemptum’ of 1455.27 Since, as the creed in clause one of Lateran IV put it, ‘homo vero diaboli suggestione peccavit’ (‘humanity sinned at the suggestion of the Devil’), it is hardly surprising that the old enemy lurks in these texts in various guises, as 20 Councils and Synods, 1: 203–4; see also 1281, in the crucial canon about the ignorance of priests (for which see below) leading to error, as well as ‘errorum laqueis’ (‘the snares of error’) (Councils and Synods, 2: 892, 900). 21 1532, cc.19, 22 (Records of Convocation, 7: 151, 175). 22 ‘reformacyon of diverse greate enormities’, 1518 (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 660); ‘enormitas’, 1281, c.17 (Councils and Synods, 2: 911); ‘enormia’, 1356 (Records of Convocation, 3: 269); ‘exorbitancia et enormia’, 1421 (Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, 1215–1540, ed. W.A. Pantin, Camden Society 3rd ser. 47 [London, 1933], 2: 110). 23 Statutes of the Realm, 12 vols (London: Record Commission, 1810–28), 3: 492. 24 e.g. Concilium lateranense IV, cc. 45, 46, 48; ‘excommunicamus omnes illos, qui ecclesias malitiose suo jure privare praesumunt, aut per malitiam libertates earundem infringere vel perturbare contendunt’, 1222, c.1 (Councils and Synods, 1: 106). 25 1342, cc.9[26], 9, 16; 1362, 1466 (Records of Convocation, 3: 196, 212, 218, 294; 13: 157; 14: 24); 1518 (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 671). 26 1342, proem, c.8 (Records of Convocation, 3: 204, 212); ‘Hanc enim inobedientiam causam mutationis miserabilis utriusque parietis ecclesie Anglicane’, 1281 (Councils and Synods, 2: 893). 27 See also e.g. 1258, 1261 (Councils and Synods, 1: 573, 670); 1342, c.1[18] (Records of Convocation, 1: 189).

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a roaring lion, the ancient serpent or the wolf amongst the flock.28 In the York constitutions of 1466 and 1518, derived from much earlier texts, he is found constantly suggesting new evils in his envy of human salvation so that he might drag souls to Tartarus by labouring to undermine the faith, unsettle mortal peace and disrupt ecclesiastical liberty.29 Hence the perpetrators of wickedness were naturally ‘filii perditionis’ or ‘eterne dampnacionis filii’ (‘sons of perdition’ or of ‘eternal damnation’).30 At the beginning of John Colet’s convocation sermon of 1510, one of the high watermarks of this polemic, the wicked are portrayed as the foulest offspring of the faithful city which has become a harlot and fornicated with numerous lovers: ‘Civitas fidelis facta est meretrix. … Fornicata est cum amatoribus multis: unde concepit multa semina iniquitatis, et parit fructus quotidie turpissimos.’31 The consequences of all this wickedness were also characterized in various general ways which were woven into these texts. It was routine to allege that the misdeeds of clergy and laity were scandalous, ‘in scandalum plurimorum’ and set a bad example, ‘perniciosum exemplum’.32 If contempt for the church was a cause, then damage to it was also a result. The clergy were disgraced and the church’s honour was befouled: ‘honor clericalis dehonestatur’, in the words of 1455, or ‘decor ecclesie graviter maculatur’ (‘the church’s honour is gravely defiled’), in another common phrase.33 Thus the laity took to mocking the church and laughing at it – ‘in derisum et ridiculum laicorum’34 – or indeed being openly hostile.35 The ignoring of ecclesiastical law (‘pervertuntur edicta’ in Bourchier’s commission of 1455) and the decline of devotion were inevitable 28 Concilium lateranense IV, c.1; ‘sicut leo rugiens’ (‘as a roaring lion’), 1222, c.19; ‘contra versuciam hostis’ (‘against the cunning of the enemy’), 1222, c.39; ‘serpens antiquus’ 1222, c.48 (Councils and Synods, 1: 112, 118, 121); ‘gregem dominicum lupus rapax invadat’ (wolf in the flock) (Concilium lateranense IV, c.23). The Devil headlined the 1237 Council (Councils and Synods, 1: 245); see ‘inimicoque homine procurante’, 1455. 29 ‘antiquus tamen hostis admodum invidens saluti fidelium et semper suggerens mala, ac, quoad potest, nova priscis adiciens, quo plurimos secum ad tartara trahat, miris in dies singulos artibus laborare non desinit, ut orthodoxam fidem avertat, quietem perturbet mortalium, libertatemque ecclesiasticam labefactet’ (Records of Convocation, 14: 19); 1518 (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 662). 30 1281, c.25 (Councils and Synods, 2: 916); Wykeham’s Register, 2: 187, 453. 31 Samuel Knight, The Life of Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul’s in the reigns of K. Henry VII. and K. Henry VIII. and Founder of St. Paul’s School, new edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1823), 239. 32 1279, c.3 (Councils and Synods, 2: 837); 1362 (Records of Convocation, 3: 295). 33 1237, c.16 (Councils and Synods, 1: 252). 34 1287 Exeter (ibid., 2: 1013); 1460, c.9 (Records of Convocation, 6: 115): both also have scandal; see below. 35 See below.

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results.36 The concern with ‘libertas ecclesie’ (‘the liberty of the church’), one of the key watchwords of the heroic high-medieval phase of papal reform, is ubiquitous, and not only in the series of petitions or ‘gravamina’ (‘grievances’) addressed to the Crown on the subject.37 Hence the possibility of the ruin of the church.38 And with the destruction of the church the same fate would befall the kingdom, bound together rhetorically as they so often were, not least in the routine phrases of the summons to convocation. In 1460, the neglect of divine law threatened damage to church, king and kingdom and perhaps final destruction.39 Thus occasionally it was said, as in 1484, that ‘the grace of God is gretely withdrawen, and allmighty God provoked unto dyvers vengeances and punishments’.40 Hence, ultimately, the threat to salvation, another endemic discourse woven into these texts, present in 1455 (‘non sine magno animarum discrimine’) and culminating in ‘animarum multarum manifestissimum periculum’ (‘the most manifest danger to many souls’) of 1532.41 Indeed, a routine rhetorical triad developed which connected scandal, example and the danger to souls: ‘in animarum suarum periculum, ordinis clericalis ecclesiae Dei grave scandalum, aliorumque Christi fidelium exemplum perniciosum’.42 Finally, these evils had to be tackled, typically by correction and reform in the near-universal phraseology, as at the end of the 1455 text, taking its cue from Lateran IV, c.7: ‘ad corrigendum … excessus … et reformandum mores’.43 Correctio and reformatio were closely allied concepts, so that the connotations of the latter were often much narrower than the wholesale upheaval suggested by ‘reformation’; thus reform or ‘re-form’, is usually a better translation. The same 1425 (Records of Convocation, 5: 161). On ecclesiastical liberty, see Benjamin Thompson, ‘Prelates and Politics from

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Winchelsey to Warham’, in Linda Clark and Christine Carpenter (eds), Political Culture in Late Medieval Britain, The Fifteenth Century 4 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2004), 69–95; on clerical gravamina, see W.R. Jones, ‘Bishops, Politics, and the Two Laws: The Gravamina of the English Clergy, 1237–1399’, Speculum 41 (1966): 209–45. 38 1481, 1487, 1510 (Records of Convocation, 6: 264, 332; 7: 2). 39 ‘in magnum praejudicium ecclesiae, regis, et regni, et fortassis in destructionem finalem’ (ibid., 6: 108). 40 Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 614; for divine anger, see e.g. Concilium lateranense IV, c.14; 1222, c.37 (Councils and Synods, 1: 118); 1342, c.6 (Records of Convocation, 3: 209–10). 41 Records of Convocation, 7: 178. 42 1364, c.8 (ibid., 13: 158); Wykeham was particularly fond of variants on this formula (e.g. Wykeham’s Register, 2: 387). 43 To give two routine examples: a 1272 papal commission was to investigate what in the church was worthy of ‘correctionis et reformationis’, and a 1341 provincial council was called ‘pro excessibus corrigendis et moribus reformandis’ (Councils and Synods, 2: 804; Records of Convocation, 3: 165).

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clause refers to the prelates’ ‘office of correction and reform’. As common as the verb, reformatio could continue to have narrow connotations, as when statutes were reformed (that is, corrected), but the sense that its application became wider, to apply to the clergy or the whole church, is inescapable: Colet called for ‘reformatione rei ecclesiasticae’.44 In terms of their strength and hostility such words are not intrinsically polemical, like the notions of emendation and remedy which were also deployed.45 However, more violent language came into play with the notions of repression and punishment (present at both ends of the 1455 commission) and above all of extirpation. Grosseteste instructed his archdeacons ‘ad extirpandum igitur tantorum malorum radicem … ad evellendum et destruendum et disperdendum et dissipandum’ (‘to extirpate the root of such great evils and uproot and destroy and disperse and dissipate’).46 Vices were commonly to be extirpated, as in 1342: ‘ad vitia extirpanda ac deformata in ecclesia, clero et populo reformanda’.47 This was before heresy became the main target of extirpation.48 Nevertheless, the language of reform depended more for its polemical feeling on the description of the evils to be removed than on the language of correction. This discourse drew on roots going back to the Bible (sometimes quoted) and the Church Fathers, particularly as mediated through papal decrees and church councils: the seven deadly sins were ultimately a construction of Gregory I. Although it is correct not to over-emphasize the dualistic tendencies in medieval thought, in this field it is difficult to ignore the tendency of polemical language to divide: each sin, for instance, had its own

Knight, Life of Colet, 239. 1342 provided a still more specific sense, the reform of morals amongst other remedies: ‘remedia ad quorundam correctionem excessuum, reformationemque morum, libertatem et immunitatem ecclesie conservandam’; and, in 1527, Warham was reforming statutes (Records of Convocation, 3: 184; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 710). But for the more general sense, see ‘universalis ecclesie reformacio tam in capite quam in membris’ 1422 (typical of the conciliar era); ‘in clero reformanda, pro cleri reformatione’, 1518; ‘proque huiusmodi reformatione fienda’, 1523 (Records of Convocation, 5: 130; 7: 66, 82; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 661). 45 1425 (Records of Convocation, 5: 161); for remedy (even more ubiquitous), see n. 44. 46 Councils and Synods, 1: 203. 47 Records of Convocation, 3: 204; later examples of general extirpation tend to be re-enactments of earlier decrees, e.g. 1391, 1466 (Records of Convocation, 4: 134; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 604). But simony and perjury were to be extirpated in 1472 (Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, ed. C. Given-Wilson et al. (Leicester: Scholarly Digital Editions, 2005), (accessed 18 Feb. 2014), 1472, App. 1. 48 1428, 1531 (Records of Convocation, 5: 238; 7: 151). 44

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matching virtue, and many of the categories sketched above suggest their opposite (vices/virtues, Devil/God, reformation/deformation and so on).49 Nevertheless, polemic is not defined only by extreme or violent language. It is also a matter of demonstrating one’s own righteousness and the manifest wrongness of one’s opponent, whether a person or a thing. The aim of polemic is partly to remove any middle ground of debate by asserting an unarguable position. One tactic to create this impression in rhetoric was to sigh at the beginning of a pronouncement, ‘Proh dolor!’50 or, in the commission of 1455 and quite commonly, ‘non sine gravi cordis amaritudine’ (‘not without heavy bitterness of heart’).51 Indeed, acting on public rumour, notorious report and complaint, as in 1455, similarly gave the impression that the whole world was up in arms about the evil to be corrected.52 If the prime target of internal reform was clerical worldliness – Colet’s ‘secular and worldly lyuynge in clerkes and pristes’, than which ‘nothynge has so disfigured the face of the churche’ – it was enough to assert its existence to justify corrective action: there could be no argument about the evil nature of the facts.53 It was in any case not very difficult to portray the evils of the times in highly coloured language, not least in the application of the seven sins to the clergy.54 Coloured and secular – even military – clerical dress, or ‘iactantia lasciviae corporalis’ (‘the boasting of bodily wantonness’), was associated with pride.55 A constant issue in conciliar reforming decrees throughout this period, and the first problem highlighted in 1455, it was routinely described as scandal, abuse, deformity, ruin and so on.56 Gluttony was another mainstay of decrees, 49 See e.g. Ignorantia sacerdotum’s balancing of seven sins and virtues (Councils and Synods, 2: 904–5). 50 1281, c.22 (ibid., 2: 914). Arundel was fond of the expression (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 265, 266, 303). 51 1413 (Records of Convocation, 4: 411): also weeping; 1490 (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 630). Tears: ‘non sine lacrimis et singultu’, 1222, c.37 (Councils and Synods, 1: 117–18); ‘Cordis dolore concutimur’ (‘we are convulsed by sadness of heart’), 1342, c.9 (Records of Convocation, 3: 212). 52 ‘prout discurrens fama denuntiat’ (‘as reports abroad denounce’), 1329 (Records of Convocation, 3: 101): a text also full of dolour. 53 Knight, Life of Colet, 252. 54 As, systematically, in the Worcester statutes of 1240 (Councils and Synods, 1: 306– 12). 55 1364, c.8, York (Records of Convocation, 13: 157–8). 56 1240, c.40 discussed dress in detail under pride, ‘de superbia’ (Councils and Synods, 1: 306–7). Also on clerical dress, Concilium lateranense IV, c.16; ‘grave scandalum laicis generatur’, 1237, c.14; ‘gravem et perversum nimis abusum’, 1268, c.5; ‘abominabile scandalum’, 1342, c.2; ‘abusus’, ‘magnum scandalum’, 1460, c. 9; ‘insolentes et deformes abusiones’ 1463; ‘inordinato apparatu et abusu vesturarum suarum’, 1510; these constitutions were commonly repeated in later councils: e.g. 1466, 1484, 1487, 1518. (Councils and Synods, 1: 251–2; 2:

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although often for the undesirability of consorting with the laity, and for the ruinous effects of drunkenness, not least lust and anger, as is implied by the grouping of these vices in Bourchier’s commission.57 Grosseteste was concerned about marring the image of divine reason in humanity.58 Gaming was equally to be deplored, along with feasts of fools.59 Lust and clerical marriage were also issues with long histories and great futures, which were easy to depict in alarming language, as they were in 1455, such as ‘putridum spurcitiae libidinosae contagium’ (‘the putrid contagion of libidinous filth’).60 Avarice was applied to various manifestations of clerical life, beginning in the heroic reforming period with simony,61 which made a comeback in the constitutions of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.62 A variety of phrases such as ‘omnes cupiditatis et avaritie cultus’ (‘all cults of cupidity and avarice’) and ‘nova et insatiabilis cupiditas’ (‘new and insatiable cupidity’) were applied to a whole range of clerical activity such as the receipt of fees for sacraments from the laity and for ecclesiastical services from the clergy, the trade in benefices and pluralism, the pursuit of secular office, the accumulation of mass obligations, and even nepotism.63 A classic denunciation came after the Black Death in the form of decrees attempting to limit the stipends of mass-priests:

752–4; Records of Convocation, 3: 205–7; 6: 114–15, 158–9, 304, 331–4; 7: 9–10; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 669–70). 57 Concilium lateranense IV, c.15; 1222, c.34 (Councils and Synods, 1: 117); associated feasts and partying, 1362; 1518 York; 1532, c.17 (Records of Convocation, 3: 292–3; 7: 171–2; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 669). 58 ‘Deformat insuper in homine dei ymaginem usum rationis auferendo, ligat actus naturales, morbos inducit pessimos, vitam abreviat, principium est apostasie, aliaque mala procreat innumera’ (Councils and Synods, 1: 203). 59 Concilium lateranense IV, c.16; ‘execrabilem … consuetudinem’, 1239, c.35 (Councils and Synods, 1: 273); for a particularly thorough denunciation of gaming, especially at vigils and funerals, see 1364, c.2, York (Records of Convocation, 13: 153–4). 60 Concilium lateranense IV, c.14; ‘putridum illud turpitudinis libidinose contagium’, 1237, c.16 (Councils and Synods, 1: 252); and all the way to 1532, ‘De clericis et religiosis lapsis in vitium carnis’ (Records of Convocation, 7: 169). 61 For the final manifestations of this phase, see Concilium lateranense IV, cc.63–6. 62 Records of Convocation, 6: 113; 7: 9, 151, 170; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 361, 717. 63 1222, cc.10, 17, 28 (Councils and Synods, 1: 108, 111, 114); 1342, cc.2[19], 6[23], 12[29] (Records of Convocation, 3: 189, 192, 198). For nepotism, headed ‘de avaritia’, with a whole set of polemical recommendations from Oxford University for the reform of the church at large at Constance with ‘cupiditas’, ‘avaritia’ and ‘simonia’ throughout, see 1414, c.13 (ibid., 5: 360–65). For pluralism painted in lurid terms, see 1281, c.25 (Councils and Synods, 2: 916).

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Effrenata generis humani cupiditas, cuius conatus nisi justicia sua virtute reprimeret, ita ex sibi malicia innata excresceret quod caritas extra mundi terminos exularet. … moderni temporis sacerdotes adeo iam cupiditatis et accediae vitia infecerunt. … Sacerdotesque praedicti sic delicati et cupidi, salariis excessivis huiusmodi saturati evomunt, indomiti deliriant et deficiunt, et post ventris ingluviem et varias carnis illecebras, spumant in libidinem, et tandem in malorum voraginem penitus demerguntur, in virorum ecclesiasticorum detestabile scandalum, et exemplum perniciosum laicorum. 64 The unbridled greed of the human race, out of its innate malice, would grow to such a point that charity would be driven off the earth, unless the strength of justice restrained its effects. [We have heard that] the vices of greed and sloth infect the priests of modern times. … Such soft and greedy priests saturated with such excessive salaries uncontrollably binge and falter, and after gluttony of belly and various temptations of the flesh, foam in libido, and eventually sink deep into a pit of wickedness, to the detestable scandal of ecclesiastical men, and pernicious example to the laity.

Greed led not only to lust and sloth, but also to envy and wrath, as competition for property and jurisdiction generated disputes amongst the clergy.65 In 1514, the proctor of the lower clergy in convocation in a wide-ranging address castigated first of all the prelates for their dissensions: Ante omnia igitur dissolvant deponantque paternitates vestrae (enixe oramus) lites et controversias ingratas, totius Ecclesiae Anglicanae statui damnosas, perditissimo perniciosissimoque subditorum exemplo inchoatas, quas inter se invicem diu gessere (vestrae enim contentiones sine non paucis subditorum molestiis, damnis et perturbationibus exerceri non possunt); … per singulos ecclesiastici status gradus pallida serpit invidia, et fomenta et pestiferae discordiae nutrimenta late spargit.66 Above all therefore you, Fathers, should solve and put aside the unacceptable disputes and controversies waged for a long time amongst yourselves, damnable to the state of the whole Anglican Church and begun in utterly abandoned and extremely pernicious example to your clergy (for your contentions cannot be pursued without molestation, damage and perturbation to your subordinates) …

Records of Convocation, 3: 294–5; a different version is translated in The Black Death, ed. Rosemary Horrox (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 307, from which I have taken the first sentence of translation. 65 For the association of anger and envy with disputes, see Councils and Synods, 2: 904. 66 Records of Convocation, 7: 44–5. 64

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pale envy crawls onto each rung of the ecclesiastical ladder, and spreads widely the incentive to and nourishment of pestiferous discord.

The archetypes of dispute were schisms and heresies, the ubiquity of which from the late fourteenth century provided plenty of opportunities for polemic. In 1408, Archbishop Arundel addressed a lament to convocation on the schism, quoting the Lamentations of Jeremiah.67 At a more mundane level, disputes were the stuff of institutional life, featuring prominently in the statutes of colleges and monasteries.68 Other sins prevented the clergy from doing their job properly. According to Effrenata (quoted above), sloth as well as greed led to the abandoning of cures, thus endangering the souls of the laity: ‘parochiae et capellae destitutae, non absque gravi animarum periculo’ (‘their parishes and chapels destitute, not without grave danger to souls’). The 1455 text equally lamented the moral consequences of neglect of clerical duty and connected it with the dissipation of ecclesiastical resources in worldly living, which permitted ecclesiastical buildings to deteriorate and poor relief to be neglected.69 Pluralism and nonresidence, attacked by Pecham in 1279–81, connected greed and neglect, as well as pride: ‘Sane ecclesia Anglicana a membris putridis ac falsis clericis abolim sustinuit plagas diras, qui pompae et avaritiae aestubus inflammati’ (‘the church in England has borne dire plagues from its putrid members and false clergy, who are inflamed with the fury of pomp and avarice’).70 Or, as a canon of 1487 on residence had it, ‘pastore gregis sibi crediti custodiam negligente et se absentante lupus rapit et dispergit oves’ (‘when the shepherd neglects the custody of the flock entrusted to him and absents himself, the wolf ravages and disperses the sheep’).71 Perhaps the eighth deadly sin for the clergy was ignorance, noted in Bourchier’s commission of 1455 and the subject of the 1281 decree of Archbishop Pecham outlining what priests needed to teach their flock which became the standard text: 67 Ibid., 4: 324–5; see also Arundel’s characterization of those fomenting schism as driven by ‘zizaniae seminatoris invidia’ (‘the envy of the sower of tares’) (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 321); see further below on schism and heresy. 68 e.g. Statutes of the Colleges of Oxford, 3 vols (Oxford and London, 1853), Balliol 15, New College 18, 30, where ‘invidiam, odium, iram’ (envy, hatred and anger) are related to ‘discordias, contumelias, rixas’ (quarrels, reproaches, brawling); The Register of Thomas Bekynton, Bishop of Bath and Wells, 1443–1465, ed. H.C. Maxwell-Lyte and M.C.B. Dawes (Frome and London: Somerset Record Society, 1935), 2: 551; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 571–2 (Lichfield Cathedral, 1454). 69 See further below on the laity. 70 1281, c.25 (Councils and Synods, 2: 916). 71 Records of Convocation, 6: 333.

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Ignorantia sacerdotum populum praecipitat in foveam erroris; et clericorum stultitia vel ruditas, qui de fide catholica mentes fidelium inftruere jubentur, magis aliquando ad errorem proficit quam doctrinam.72 The ignorance of priests throws the people into the pit of error; and the stupidity and rudeness of the clergy, who are obliged to instruct the minds of the faithful in the catholic faith, profits error more than doctrine.

Although, therefore, individual conciliar decrees treated different defects individually, collectively they amounted to a portrait of worldliness whose coherence is seen in the way the sins overlapped with each other. This is evident at the beginning of the period in Lateran IV’s run-through of the symptoms of clerical worldliness73 but perhaps above all in the English context in John Colet’s address to the 1510 convocation, in which he castigated the clergy under four headings: ‘in diuilysh pride, in carnall concupiscence, in worldly couetousnes, in secular busynes’.74 Pride also involved avarice: ‘howe moche gredynes and appetite of honour and dignitie is nowe a dayes in men of the churche? Howe ronne they, ye almost out of brethe from one benefice to an other: from the lesse to the more, from the lower to the hygher?’ Concupiscence echoed the strictures of 1215: ‘They gyue them selfe to feastes and bankettynge: they spend them selfe in vaine bablyng: they gyue them selfe to sportes and plays: they applye them selfe to huntynge and haukynge: they drowne them selfe in the delytes of the worlde. Procurers and fynders of lustes they set by.’ Covetousness took Colet back to careerism: This abominable pestilence hath so entred in the mynde, almoost of all pristes, and so hath blynded the eies of the minde, that we are blynde to all thynges, but onely unto those, whiche seme to brynge vnto vs some gaines. For what other thinge seke we nowe a dayes in the churche, than fatte benefices and hygh promotions? To be shorte, and to conclude at one worde: all corruptnes, all the decaye of the churche, all the offences of the worlde, come of the couetousnes of pristes. Accordyng to that of saynt Paule, that here I repete agayne, and beate in to your eares: Couetousnes is the roote of all euyll.

1281, c.9 (Councils and Synods, 2: 900); reiterated e.g. for York 1466, 1518 (Records of Convocation, 14: 19; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 662); and translated by Thoresby for York in 1357 (The Lay Folks’ Catechism, ed. T.F. Simmons and H.E. Nolloth, Early English Text Society o.s. 118 [London: Kegan, Paul, 1901]). 73 Incontinence, drunkenness, hunting and keeping dogs; holding secular office and engaging in dishonest pursuits; seeing mimics, buffoons and plays; visiting taverns, playing games of dice or chance and wearing secular dress (on which there is a mass of specific detail) and getting up late so as to neglect divine office (Concilium lateranense IV, cc.14–17). 74 Knight, Life of Colet, 241–3, 253–5. 72

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Finally, ‘continuall secular occupation: wherin pristes and byshops nowe a dayes doth besy them selfe, the seruantes rather of men than of God: the warriours rather of this worlde than of Christe’. Thus the whole priestly order is despised, and the worldly living of the clergy causes the laity too to fall into love of the world. Whatever the reality behind the church of 1510, Colet echoed – or indeed summarized – centuries of polemic in a way which causes little surprise to readers of English ecclesiastical councils.75 So far the analysis has focused on the sins of the secular clergy. The same exercise could be repeated for monasteries but with little gain other than to pile up more examples of the same rhetorical structures.76 A classic of the genre is Innocent VIII’s Quanta in dei ecclesia of 1490, giving Archbishop Morton power to visit and correct in 1490, ‘ne per vitiorum atque excessuum tolerantiam, hostis antiqui operante versutia, majores errores et scandala cum inemendabili jactura exinde valeant verisimiliter exoriri’ (‘lest through tolerance of vices and excesses, with the wiles of the old enemy at large, major errors and scandals should arise irrecoverably’). The monks’ laudable ancient observance has now grown tepid: ‘vitam lascivam ducunt, et nimium dissolutam, in animarum suarum perniciem, divinae majestatis offensam, religionis opprobrium malumque exemplum et scandalum plurimorum’ (‘they lead a lascivious life, and indeed dissolute, to the ruin of their souls, offence to the divine majesty, the opprobrium and bad example to religion, and the scandal of many’).77 The polemic of reform was also applied to the laity. Perhaps the complaint which attracted the most endemic invective was the assertion of the immunity of the church to lay violation, summarized in the ‘libertas ecclesie’. Lateran IV contained the simple statement, often repeated thereafter, that ‘laicis quamvis religiosis disponendi de rebus ecclesiasticis nulla sit attributa potestas’ (‘to the laity even though pious no power of disposing of ecclesiastical goods should be attributed’);78 similarly, we have noted that the Oxford council of 1222 opened with the excommunication of those who dared to deprive the church of its rights or infringe its liberties.79 Denunciation of the various ways in 75 On the relation of the sermon to the situation on the ground, see C. Harper-Bill, ‘Dean Colet’s Convocation Sermon and the Pre-Reformation Church in England’, History 73 (1988), 191–210. 76 The first malefactors in the 1455 text were monks who had thrown off their habits. 77 Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 660–62. 78 Concilium lateranense IV, c.44. 79 See above, n. 24. See also, for example, the English denunciations recorded for the 1434 convocation: ‘alle they ar accursed that presume to take a wey or to pryve any churche of the ryght that longeth therto or elles ageyn right stryve to breke or trouble the libertees of the churche’ (The Register of Henry Chichele, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1414–1443, ed. E.F. Jacob, 4 vols [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945], 3: 257; Records of Convocation, 5: 347).

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which laymen might do so found its high water-mark in the bull Clericis laicos: ‘Clericis laicos infestos oppido tradit antiquitas’ (‘that the laity are extremely hostile to the clergy antiquity relates’) – a text occasionally echoed thereafter in English texts.80 As an almost random example, a meeting of bishops in 1346 lamented: Anglicam ecclesiam modernis temporibus per laicorum machinationes initas et minitas eis, tam contra clericos quam contra libertates, iura et privilegia ecclesiastica dolosis insidiis durius solito conspicimus infestari, intolerabilibus lacessiri iniuriis, eiusque iura et libertates undique concutiari.81 We see the English church in modern times infested more than usual with insidious plots through the machinations begun and threatened by the laity against both clergy and ecclesiastical liberties, rights and privileges; the church is attacked with intolerable injuries, and her rights and liberties everywhere wrecked.

The frequent repetition of this entirely engrained and standard trope of ecclesiastical discourse was designed to leave no room for response; after all, the king routinely guaranteed the church’s liberty in the first clause of Magna Carta.82 It was difficult to contradict, discursively at least, the right of the church to its inviolability. It was the essence of the priestly office to correct the sins of the laity, and we find the seven mortal sins featuring in the canons of reforming councils. The systematic listing of them in the Ignorantia sacerdotum of 1281 as part of the canonical preaching repertory ensured their prominence thereafter, and they therefore featured in surviving sermons.83 Lust and greed were perhaps most prominent, in that sex and money were most pertinent to matters under ecclesiastical jurisdiction: marriage and wills – two subjects prominent in the 1455 text – as well as the laity’s relationship to ecclesiastical property. Clandestine marriage produced such general statements as: ‘Humana concupiscientia, semper ad malum procliva, quod est prohibitum frequenter ardentius appetit Les régistres de Boniface VIII, ed. G. Digard, M. Faucon and A. Thomas, 4 vols [Paris: Ernest Thorin, 1907], 1: no. 1567. The convocation of 1399, c.29 has both ideas: ‘Item, cum clericis laici oppido sunt infesti, ipsisque laicis quam religiosis disponendi de rebus ecclie nulla sit attributa potestas … contra ecclesiae libertatem’; Records of Convocation, 4: 201. 81 Records of Convocation, 3: 233–4. 82 Statutes of the Realm, 1: 9–44; the first clause of the Commons’ petition in parliament often requested and received confirmation of the charters (e.g. Parliament Rolls, 1376, no. 52; 1377 Jan, no. 23; etc.). 83 e.g. Middle English Sermons, ed. W.O. Ross, Early English Text Society o.s. 209 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 49–59. 80

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quam quod licet’ (‘human concupiscence, which always tends to evil, more frequently and keenly prefers what is forbidden to what is permitted’).84 Lords in particular were routinely portrayed in sermons as both lecherous and grasping.85 A savage petition in the convocation of 1323 accused them of breaking the sixth commandment (adultery), of failing to fear God and love their neighbour and of depredations of churches and their liberties, exactions on the clergy, oppression of the poor, widespread rapine and perversion of justice.86 The besetting sin of the lower orders, especially after the Black Death, was sloth, although, as we have already seen, this sin was also connected to many other evils – theft, rape, greed, lechery, incest and adultery according to the famous late fourteenth-century preacher Bishop Brinton, leading to failure in war, barren harvests, pestilence and injustice.87 Brinton was specifically commenting on the failure to get up in the morning for church, and a particularly upsetting feature of lay lethargy was the tendency to replace religious observance with games, even in churchyards on the vigils of saints or funerals – undeniably a grave peril to souls, as well as a threat to the windows of Winchester Cathedral in 1384.88 These could be more sinister if they blasphemously became ‘conventiculae, negotiationes, et alia exercitia illicita’ (‘conventicles, business and other illicit exercises’), as well as feasting and drinking, adultery, fornication and theft.89 Exceptionally this led to accusations of unbelief amongst the laity, voiced at the beginning of the 1323 petition, which alleged that magnates erred in the Catholic faith, specifically about the 1342, c.11 (Records of Convocation, 3: 213). e.g. Thomas Brinton, The Sermons of Thomas Brinton, Bishop of Rochester (1373–

84 85

1389), ed. M.A. Devlin, Camden Society 3rd ser. 85–6, 2 vols (London: Royal Historical Society, 1954), 1: 196, 216. 86 ‘plures magnatum … Dominum non verentur, proximum non diligunt, ecclesias ac loca sacra depraedantur et exspoliant, libertates ipsius infringunt et violant, dominam ancillam filii degeneres, et ex matre faciunt novercam, ministris ecclesiae iniurias sacrilegas inferunt, exactiones indebitas gravius quam a laicis exigunt et extorquent, sicque pauperes Christi debitis alimoniis defraudant, quia quanto plus capit fiscus, tanto minus capit Christus; simplices opprimunt, rapinas undique committunt, iustum iudicium pervertunt, claves ecclesiae vilipendunt’, 1323 (Records of Convocation, 3: 70). 87 ‘vbi est ociositas, ibi omne malum quia furtum, rapina, gula, luxuria, incestus, et adulterium’; ‘si regno Anglie accidant infortunia, pestilencie, atque guerre, multum debent imputari accidie nostre’ (Brinton, Sermons, 1: 216; trans. in Black Death, 141). 88 Wykeham’s Register, 2: 409–10; ‘qui versi in sensum reprobum ludis noxis, et vanitatibus, … et in defunctorum exequiis, de domo luctus et orationis, domum risus faciunt et excessus, in animarum suarum periculum perquam grave’, 1364, c.2, York (Records of Convocation, 13: 153); Grosseteste was very concerned about games (see Councils and Synods, 1: 204, 273). 89 1342, c.10; 1362 (Records of Convocation, 3: 213, 293).

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resurrection, as well as the commandments.90 From there it was a short step to polemic against those most evidently outside the church, heretics, infidels or Saracens, and Jews: these largely lie outside the present purpose, although it should be noted that sometimes they were used metaphorically, in that sins of the faithful were said to be worse than those of Jews and Saracens.91 At that point, the unanswerable quality of this polemic became supremely evident: no case could be made for Jews, infidels or heretics. This is the essence of this survey of the range of evils at which ecclesiastical polemic was aimed, to highlight not just the extremity of the language deployed but also its assertion of truths against which there could be no argument. Who could deny the church’s duty to correct the seven deadly sins, whether amongst its own clergy or the laity? The wicked could have no voice in their self-evident iniquity, and the need to take corrective action was therefore undeniable. This discourse was intended not to persuade but to denounce, and in denouncing to open up the path of correction. The assertion of incontrovertible evil demanded reform. Uses of Polemic The polemic of reform thus conferred authority on ecclesiastical powers. In many cases the author of a reform text was also the authority whose duty it was to act (‘auctoritate nostra’ in Bourchier’s 1455 commission): such texts are conciliar canons and decrees, and papal and episcopal acta. These performative texts initiated the act of correction, or might even enact it in the case of ipso facto excommunication. They involved three parties: the author, their explicit recipient, and the evil-doers they denounced. The audience, from ecclesiastical officials (as in 1455) to the whole church or indeed world (‘Universis sanctae matris ecclesiae filiis’ [‘To all the sons of holy mother church’]), were implicated in both the assertion of evil and the duty to carry out correction, against the wicked and their sins. In polarizing opinion on the side of righteous authority against the sons of perdition, these texts consolidated the authority of their authors and thus played a part in the construction and maintenance of ecclesiastical identity and authority. The existence of evil was perennial, indeed theologically necessary, and its continued presence conferred constant authority on the church whose duty it was to enact the never-ending work of ecclesiastical and moral reform. As n. 86: ‘plures magnatum errant in fide catholica, in articulo videlicet resurrectionis’. Brinton, Sermons, 1: 196; ‘clerici plurimi huius inclitae religionis iudaeorum

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antiquam insaniam imitantes’, 1281, c.22 (Councils and Synods, 2: 914); see below for a lay usage in 1376. In 1320, Irish statutes branded those who attacked churches as ‘gentibus et Judaeis crudelior’ (‘crueller than gentiles or Jews’) (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 2: 504).

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Although this polemic by its very nature denied the need to persuade the audience of its case, in practice it was usually doing so. Indeed some genres of text genuinely needed to persuade: petitions, tracts and speeches looked upwards in attempting to goad the authorities into taking action, often against third-party sinners and/or their sins: the 1323 convocation petition against the magnates is a case in point. In some cases, such as the lower clergy’s castigation of disputes amongst prelates in 1514, the authorities were also the target. The same is true of the University of Oxford’s 1414 proposals for the reform of the church at Constance.92 In this configuration the triangular structure of speaker– evil-doer–audience was reduced to a dialogue in which the audience was also the object of correction. Sermons operated in the same way, addressed as they were to those who were being urged to reform, although normally this looked downwards from an authoritative figure to his flock.93 One might say that in these cases the third-party enemy was the sins, not the people committing them, a structure encouraged by blaming external agents such as the Devil for causing evil. Indeed, in principle all ecclesiastical polemic should have been aimed at sins, which required extirpation, not sinners, who needed salvation. But whether the target was performatively present or not, the technique of persuasion was a polemical one: to present the case as so open-and-shut because of the selfevident evil of the wrongs outlined as to brook no argument and thus to oblige the authorities or the recipients to take action. Perhaps texts which were the outcome of a process, either of petitioning for remedy or of discussion in council, seemed especially authoritative, with the weight of both broad participation and high office behind them, just as when it was alleged that rumour and complaint prompted action. Thus persuasive genres of text – petitions, tracts and sermons – share the polemical structures of official acta. Many of the problems described above were prima facie fundamental to the church: the deadly sins, clerical simony, fornication and neglect of duty, lay attacks on ecclesiastical rights and property and heresy. Nevertheless, reform polemic could be used where the supposed evils seem rather less important, and their consequences hardly as disastrous as alleged. In thirteenth-century English law the action of trespass for lesser wrongs was introduced, but it was still necessary to assert that the defendant had performed the wrong ‘vi et armis’ (‘by force of arms’).94 Similarly, ecclesiastical texts often deployed the full polemical arsenal before revealing that their focus was rather more specific than the forthcoming destruction of the realm. Even the 1455 commission, when it Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 360–65. But anti-heretical and other sermons did attack an absent Other; see Suerbaum,

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‘Language of Violence – Language as Violence in Vernacular Sermons’, in this volume, ch. 6. 94 F.W. Maitland, The Forms of Action at Common Law, ed. A.H. Chaytor and W.J. Whittaker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 39–40.

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came to its corrective clauses, essentially aimed to round up a few apostates and ensure that marriages and wills were properly witnessed. Clerical complaints could be portrayed in startling terms, as by the lower clergy in 1356: ‘ex quibus et per quae, censurae ecclesiasticae et claves ecclesiae contemnuntur, quinimmo fides periclitatur catholica, et maximum incurritur periculum animarum’ (‘as the means by and through which ecclesiastical censures and the keys of the church are despised, and furthermore the catholic faith is endangered, and the greatest danger to souls is incurred’).95 Yet lists of clerical gravamina frequently address detailed matters of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, such as the tithes of cut wood which lamely open the clerical petitions in the Good Parliament.96 Similarly, Edward IV’s 1462 charter of liberties for the church initially expounded the calamities of the kingdom caused by sin, which included the neglect of the church’s liberties, prerogatives and customs, thus attracting God’s anger if unremedied; but it proceeded to grant seven clauses about jurisdictional procedure and relationships between royal and ecclesiastical officials – as well as tithes of cut wood.97 Bishops’ documents display a similar trait: Wykeham opened one constitution with Detestanda perversorum iniquitas ab horrendis sacrilegii seviciis nesciens abstinere, … contra execrabiles eorum sevicias contra Dei ecclesias ac libertates et immunitates earundem perpetratas efficaciter apponenda. Since the detestable iniquity of perverse people does not know how to abstain from the horrific cruelty of sacrilege, [remedy is required] against their execrable savagery, perpetrated against the churches and liberties and immunities of God.

The text turns out to concern the failure to feed those in sanctuary, ‘in ecclesie Dei dispendium, ipsorumque animarum periculum’ (‘in despite of God’s church, and danger to their souls’).98 Similarly, Ad ecclesiarum tuicionem, ne cuiusquam temerariis ausibus prophanentur, aut ipsarum honestas quavis turpitudine seu spurcicia inquinetur, … quanto

Records of Convocation, 3: 270. Parliament Rolls, 1376, no. 199. 97 ‘inter alias causas multarum et ingentium calamitatum, quibus omnipotens Deus 95 96

hoc regnum nostrum Angliae, peccatis exigentibus, hactenus incessanter affligi suftinuit, … quod praelati et ministri ecclesiae Anglicanae libertatibus, praerogativis, ac consuetudinibus ecclesiae univerfalis, quas violare absque poena multiplicis censurae nemo fidelis poteft, non sunt pro se et rebus suis pacifice seu libere jam multis annis gaudere permissi. Ne igitur nos … iram ipsius Dei adversum nos exasperare videamur’ (Records of Convocation, 6: 152). 98 Wykeham’s Register, 2: 272.

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immunitatis et decoris ipsarum violacio, in divine magestatis injuriam et contemptum dampnabilius noscitur redundare [Bishops must attend] to the safety of churches, lest they be profaned by daring temerity, or their honour be polluted by turpitude or filth … in so far as violation of their immunity and decorum is known to redound more damnably to the injury and contempt of the divine majesty

is the opening of a constitution against playing games in the cathedral close.99 Parliamentary petitions used a similar polemic, not least on the central issue of provisions, said in 1351 to be ‘un tresgrande meschief et destruccion qe se monstre au roialme d’Engleterre ore de novel’ (‘a very great misfortune and destruction which has recently appeared in the realm of England’): Qar homme purra bien monstrer, qe ceste chose tourne a plus grande destruccion du roialme qe toute la guerre nostre seignur le roi, desicome celle monoie s’enva a la court de Rome d’an en an, saunz james retourner. Et si amount ele annuelment plus qe le roi emport de son roialme. Et ensi piert il clerement, qe les ditz reservacions sont compassez subtilement et par mal engyn, en destruccion du roi et de tout le roialme, et en eide et comfort des enemys.100 For it can be easily shown that this matter has resulted in greater destruction to the realm than the entire war of our lord the king, inasmuch as this money is sent to the court of Rome year after year without ever returning, and that it annually amounts to more than the king takes from his realm. And it is commonly said that our same treasure goes to the profit of enemies for making war against us. And thus it clearly appears that the said reservations are cunningly and deceitfully planned, to the destruction of the king and of all the realm, and to the aid and comfort of enemies.

No-one now thinks that provisions to foreigners were widespread or damaging,101 but the habit of portraying these evils in lurid terms was ingrained amongst both clergy and laity. That such powerful language could be applied to serious and passing evils alike must beg the question as to how seriously this polemic was taken. Indeed, the fact that some thirteenth-century constitutions were recycled in later centuries, including the sixteenth – replete with allegation of ‘recent’ evils – raises a similar

Ibid., 2: 409. Parliament Rolls, 1351, no. 13; the statute is no. 46. 101 Cecily Davis, ‘The Statute of Provisors of 1351’, History 38 (1953): 118–31. 99

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query.102 Perhaps this was a textual community in which the participants knew the rules, a game in which violent language was deployed without necessarily relating to anything seriously threatening. This ludic quality is noticed elsewhere in this volume, but it is perhaps surprising to find it in contexts some of which, at least, one would expect to have been matters of life and death, or indeed after-life and after-death. This may reinforce our sense of the identity-forming and authority-reinforcing function of this language. But it also points to the ingrained pattern of this polemic. Perhaps the point is not so much that ludic language could be used for serious matters, but that serious language had come to be applied to less weighty issues, because this was the way in which reform and authority were routinely justified. By no means all reforming texts were couched in polemically negative language, nor were most of them consistently polemical in tone. Nevertheless, this body of material still participated in the polemic of reform in various ways. Some instruments adopted positive rather than negative language and advertised the goods which would result from reforming activity. The bishop or council was acting for the utility of the church, the good of the realm, the salvation of souls, exaltation of the faith, the teaching of sound doctrine, the honour of God and so on. Such were the elements of standard summons to convocation: in 1460 this was ‘ad honorem Dei et ecclesie sue et utilitatem regni et tocius reipublice’ (‘to the honour of God and his church, and the utility of the realm and the whole state’).103 In 1518, Wolsey, summoning bishops to a council on the basis of his legatine commission, announced that he would spare no effort to be of use to the whole of Christianity, acceptably to God, and to profit the church of this realm, in reforming the church and in augmenting the faith.104 This positive approach was the obverse of negative polemic. To the bitterness of Clericis laicos one may juxtapose the positivity of Unam sanctam, which opens with the unity of the church and the faith and concludes that subjection to the pope is necessary for salvation – a polemical argument, but one couched almost entirely in positive terms.105 Similarly, the 1539 Act translating monasteries into bishoprics is the positive counterpart of the 1536 Act with which we began: e.g. the York constitutions of 1466 and 1518 (‘mala … nova’) (Records of Convocation, 14: 19–29; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 604–5, 662–81); in 1463 a constitution on clerical dress alleged ‘novas insolentes et deformes abusiones’ which they had been trying to suppress for years (Records of Convocation, 6: 158–9). 103 ‘ad honorem Dei et ecclesie sue et utilitatem regni et tocius reipublice’ (Records of Convocation, 6: 101). 104 ‘rem toti christianitati perutilem, Deoque altissimo acceptam facere, ac demum huius incliti regni ecclesiae imprimis prodesse queamus. … quae in clero reformanda, quaeque ad nostrae fidei augmentum’ (ibid., 7: 66). 105 Régistres de Boniface VIII, 3: no. 5382. 102

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to thentent that from hensforthe many of them myght be turned to better use as hereafter shall followe, wherby Gods worde myght the better be setforth, Childern brought upp in lerning, Clerkes norished in the Universyties, olde servants decayed to have lyvyngs, Almeshouses for poore folke to be susteyned in, Reders of Grece, Ebrewe, and Latten to have good stipend, daylie Almes to be ministred, mendinge of highe weyes, exhibic’on for mynisters of the Churche.106

These better uses were the corollary of the almost-unspoken evils now being reformed.107 Thus positive polemic implied its negative opposite: its argument was equally irresistible because the goods represented were as manifestly right as the implied evils were necessarily to be corrected. The fact that this Act began with a brief nod to the ‘slouthfull and ungodly lief ’ formerly lived by the monks indicates that positive and negative linguistic modes were often mixed. Some texts opened with a vision of a better future before descending into the abuses requiring correction. Thus the 1240s statutes for the Durham peculiars expounded at length the magnificent honours and liberties with which Christ had endowed his spouse, the church, to enable priests to minister by doctrine and example, but they moved onto the dire consequences of serving earthly greed and carnal desire, like a eunuch with a virgin who corrupts but cannot inseminate.108 Alternatively, a negative polemical opening outlining the evils to be corrected was succeeded by a positive statement of the post-reform state: thus the sons of Levi (the priesthood) must be purged like silver and gold so that their sacrifices will please God when he sees their purity and sanctity.109 Sometimes texts moved back and forth between positive and negative registers. My predecessors, announced Wolsey, have promulgated various constitutions to preserve ecclesiastical liberty and fortify the faith, but the enemy is always thinking up new evils to drag souls to Tartarus, pervert orthodox faith, perturb the peace of mortals and disrupt the church’s liberty; we therefore wish to obstruct the exertions and snares of the Devil and the malice of men to the benefit and increase of the faith, reform of morals and defence of ecclesiastical liberty. Thus the positive and negative were intrinsically linked, in rhetoric as well as in fact.110 Statutes of the Realm, 3: 728. Compare Arundel’s lament at the disunity of the church in his summons to the

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mid-1408 convocation with his positive vision of church unity six months later (Records of Convocation, 4: 324, 338). 108 Councils and Synods, 1: 437; 1268, similarly (ibid., 2: 747–9); for this movement in a single canon, see ibid., 1: 245; and, in a single sentence, see ibid., 2: 1078. Other nice examples juxtapose the unity of the church, faith and doctrine with schism and heresy in 1407–9 (Records of Convocation, 4: 307, 334, 338). 109 Councils and Synods, 1: 227. 110 Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 662, repeating Nevill (ibid., 3: 604). An earlier example is the preamble to the Exeter statutes of 1287 (Councils and Synods, 2: 984–5).

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Much of the textual material of ecclesiastical reform is couched in neutral language, without value-laden words evoking either a positive or a negative polemical tone. This was particularly true of the substance of prelatical or conciliar decrees, the active parts of the text which implemented specific reforming measures. Thirteenth-century episcopal statutes, for instance, often opened without preamble and plunged into detailed clauses providing for the right ordering of ecclesiastical provision: they largely performed the work of reform rather than discussing it.111 Nevertheless, these neutral clauses were linked to the polemic of reform in various ways. One common pattern was for a polemical preamble (or even summons to an assembly) to be succeeded by neutral performative canons. The preamble might be brief but telling. In the 1391 convocation, Archbishop Courtenay re-enacted Winchelsey’s 1305 statute regulating stipendiary priests. This was a neutrally toned text, but it was now introduced with references to grave fault, theft and sacrilege, equivalent to attacks on ecclesiastical goods, so that the archbishop wished ‘hanc avaritiae pestem omni volentes, qua potuit, vigilantia extirpare’ (‘vigilantly to extirpate completely this plague of avarice’).112 Arundel’s famous constitutions of 1407 regulating the language and substance of theological discussion were promulgated at a convocation summoned by a paean to the unity of the church, baptism, faith and doctrine, now disrupted by the errors and heresies sown by the Devil.113 This pattern often took place within a single canon. The first article of Grosseteste’s Lincoln statutes stated baldly that there was no salvation of souls without observance of the Ten Commandments, which it proceeded at length to enjoin priests to know and preach.114 Many acta deployed a few of the key polemical phrases, but sparingly. The 1222 Council of Oxford, for instance, made passing reference in some of its clauses to the malice of those attacking church rights (c.1), avarice as the service of idols (c.10) and as plague and leprosy (cc.10, 17), the various wiles of the Devil (cc.19, 48), the scandal caused by clergy luxuriating in temporal things As a random example, 1222×25 statutes for an unnamed English diocese (Councils and Synods, 1: 140). No doubt, of course, the textual tradition and the frequent recycling of these texts may account for the loss of some preambles. Similarly, the common form of monastic visitation reports offered no general background to the reasons for visitation or the authority of the visitor, although those visited would have heard them in a preliminary sermon: they reported the comperta, sometimes recording what each individual alleged, sometimes just listing the resulting injunctions for change (see e.g. Visitations of the Diocese of Norwich, AD 1492–1532, ed. A. Jessopp, Camden Society n.s. 43 [London, 1888]). 112 Records of Convocation, 4: 134. Examples could be multiplied: see, for example, seven fairly neutral constitutions on clerical behaviour introduced polemically, 1410 (Records of Convocation, 4: 370–2). 113 Records of Convocation, 4: 307–8. 114 Councils and Synods, 1: 268. 111

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(c.21), and so on.115 It was particularly common to drop the well-worn phrases of prejudice to the church, damage to the realm, damnable example, great scandal and danger to souls into passages which are otherwise not violent or extreme.116 This added a polemical aura to measures which might otherwise seem straightforwardly administrative: short phrases excerpted from much fuller polemic made more neutral texts polemical by association. They could thus be used as a series of code-words to signal a polemical intent without the need to deploy fully polemical rhetoric. This even extends to words like ‘correction’ and ‘reform’, so universally deployed in different types of act, including summonses to meetings: even without specific mention, they implicitly suggest the excesses, abuses and even enormities to be corrected (and which were spelled out in other texts) and thus, almost by themselves, conjure up the whole polemical discourse. For a range of reasons, therefore – positive tone implying negative, mixed modes, neutral clauses being governed by polemical ones and the use of codewords – reforming texts which are not explicitly polemical in the negative tone of their language nevertheless participate in polemical rhetoric through their association with and reference to its rhetorical structures. Polemic was not only a matter of rhetoric, however, but also performance. Reform texts sometimes opened by establishing the authority of their ecclesiastical author to act, as with Wolsey emphasizing his duty to promulgate the 1518 constitutions. Archbishop Meopham outlined in 1329 that his job was to promote peace and the liberty of the church, to tend the flock and lead the laity to truth and justice, especially by ensuring that the clergy led the laity by merit of life; but, with the peace of the church disturbed by many griefs and difficulties, a council was needed to oppose such dangers, with the aid of divine clemency, by administering medicine to the illness.117 Resolving disputes was another task of ecclesiastical authorities, and one which enabled them to rise above discord and contention and to replace the expense, scandal and inconvenience of contest with peaceful arbitration.118 But even prelates’ Ibid., 1: 106–33; Concilium lateranense IV is rather similar. e.g. 1397 Wykeham, providing for the infirmity of the Prior of St Mary Overy, which

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had allowed laxity to creep in: ‘in grave animarum suarum periculum, dictique prioratus et ordinis ipsorum scandalum manifestum; quorum excessus et delicta nunc minime corriguntur’ (Wykeham’s Register, 2: 472). 117 Records of Convocation, 3: 101–2; 110 from the same council is not dissimilar in theme. ‘It is our office to promote the honour of the church and the health of souls, and to restrain and repress the excesses and abuses of our subordinates, and thus to prevent the errors and abuses growing in the church’, announced Archbishop Thoresby in 1364 (Records of Convocation, 13: 153). 118 ‘dispendia, scandala, et incommoda varia’ (Wykeham’s Register, 2: 391; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 562). See also the preamble to the 1268 constitutions, framed as reconciling the sinner with God (Councils and Synods, 2: 747). Other good

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claims to rise above the polemics of warring parties were themselves polemical, in that they established incontrovertible authority to correct the self-evident evil of discord. Thus the impartial, administrative, tone routinely adopted by decrees, which enacted reform rather than inveighing against the evils which required it, was performatively polemical. The devil was in the detail, of what was being corrected. There is therefore a broad (but by no means absolute) distinction between the polemical tone of reform discourse, whether positive or negative, and the performance of reform, whose tone is often discursively moderate. It is tempting to relate this disjunction to the church’s ambiguous attitude to evils. On the one hand, the church defined itself against them and their causes and manifestations, in the form of the Devil, sins, evil-doers of all sorts – laity who attacked the church, clergy who were negligent or greedy, lustful or otherwise sinful – as well as schismatics and heretics, and non-Christians – pagans, infidels and Jews. On the other, the aim of reform was to remove evils, and thus an over-insistent rhetorical identification of them risked reifying them and cementing their existence in discourse, which is at least half-way to ‘reality’. Thus, in rhetoric, evil was denounced and identified as a way of recruiting the audience, clerical or lay, into the identity of the church and the faithful; but in action texts often avoided negative polemical language in taking concrete measures for correction. This also provides an explanation for the deployment of a positive rather than negative polemical tone, to prompt aspiration to the good rather than reminding the faithful of the attraction of evil. Nevertheless, even texts which are not polemical in tone participate in the polemic of reform through their action, in authoritatively striving for evidently desirable perfection and against evidently damaging defects, even if the latter are implied more often than delineated. The very need for these decrees was a polemical assertion of the endemic need for reform in a fallen world. Counter-Polemic Needless to say, the polemical claim to inescapable unanswerability did not always go unchallenged. In many circumstances the addressees of polemical reform were largely voiceless, and their response was in actions not words, at least none that were recorded or have survived: such were the lay audiences of sermons and the clergy against whom prelates fulminated. In councils and synods, however, the clergy were petitioners and contributed to reforming decrees, and sometimes complained about their superiors. This alerts us to the examples are Arundel’s 1408 lament about the schism and the 1514 convocation speech against prelates’ disputes, above, nn. 66–7.

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potential multiplicity of voices, even when they are not explicitly recorded or when the variety has been reduced in the written record to a single authoritative text. In a number of circumstances, however, we do have access to competing polemics: in monastic visitations, for instance, the religious were specifically asked to complain about their peers and superiors. And the records of later English ecclesiastical councils recount the processes of discussion and petition which underlay decisions, as with the diatribe against prelates’ disputes of 1514.119 Counter-polemic was often an index of competition within the church.120 This might simply be competition for office, in disputes for parochial benefices played out in the courts, over bishoprics between electors, kings and popes, or ultimately for the papacy itself. Or it resulted from competition between orders – regulars versus seculars, seculars and monks versus friars – or tensions between different national churches. It might involve resistance to superior jurisdiction, especially visitation and correction, all the way up from rectors against archdeacons to prelates against the pope. Some interactions involved both vertical and horizontal competition, for instance when secular archbishops sought to reform monastic orders. If the laity were involved, this added another dimension which yet further complicated the picture, as when kings or lay patrons resisted visitation of their chapels or monasteries. And finally some were prepared to resist ecclesiastical authority altogether, in schism and heresy. Counter-polemic often adopted the discursive structures of the authoritative polemic it imitated, not only in its language but also the threefold structure of evils, their consequences and the proposed remedy. It may indeed have been most effective where it shared polemical ground with what it was resisting and even agreed on the facts of the case. The various petitions from English clergy, French religious and English laity about the plight of the alien priories in the late fourteenth century were routinely polemical, all agreeing that the priories were ruined, thus threatening suffrages and therefore souls: ‘les quelles divines services et almoignes sont grantment sustretz, et lour esglises et mesons … destruitz et anientiz’ (‘which divine services and alms are greatly diminished, and their churches and houses ruined and destroyed’), a situation which threatened ruin to church and realm as well.121 Many of these From the 1350s the records of councils start to offer a daily narrative of proceedings which sometimes contains the substance of discussions (Records of Convocation, 3: 265ff.; 19: 44). 120 See Thompson, ‘Prelates and Politics’, 89–91. 121 Parliament Rolls, 1390 Jan, no. 19; see also the 1377 petition: ‘Et en cas qe remedie ne soit eut hastiement ordeigne y purront [lacuna] destruction de tout le roialme’ (‘if a remedy should not be quickly ordered then ruin will befall the entire realm’) (The National Archives, London, SC 8/102/5052, [accessed 3 Mar. 2011]). 119

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texts expounded the fundamental patronal narrative which claimed that the church had been endowed by kings and nobles to support such suffrages. But they disagreed as to the causes and therefore the solutions to the problem. Both the alien priors and convocation blamed the occupation by the laity to whom the king had farmed the priories during the war.122 But the alien priors asked for reinstatement of themselves, whereas the English clergy argued for their replacement by English monks and chaplains, to the common end of maintaining divine services. Petitions from the Commons in parliament, perhaps partly inspired by these different constituencies,123 reflect a similar division of opinion, but they were also more inclined to blame the sloth and worldliness of the French monks in allowing spiritual observance to slip (‘avenont notoirement feble vie’, ‘they live a notoriously poor life’), a claim exacerbated by the assertion that the alien religious were no doubt spies.124 And they also saw the financial benefit of diverting the surplus incomes of the priories to support king and people and the war.125 Much of the Wycliffite view of the clergy was based in entirely orthodox criticism of the kind already outlined in detail. Priests were to live holy lives, not ones of greed, lechery and sloth, nor indeed pride; they were not to covet goods for worldly gain; they were to be resident and preach wholesomely the law of God and the Gospel, not pomp and vainglory. Such is a summary of De officio pastorali, whose English version opens uncompromisingly: ‘þer ben two offisis þat fallen to purging of þe chirche’.126 Of course Wyclif then drew unacceptable conclusions: parishioners could withhold tithes from negligent and sinful priests; the laity should remove excess goods from the clergy, especially possessioners, to force them to live simply; and the Word of God should be available in English to the people. But even these views grew out of orthodox thinking and were not without support. Once Wyclif had put himself and thus his opinions beyond the pale, elements of his reform programme persisted, as the Oxford reformers 1399, c.54 (Records of Convocation, 4: 206); petitions in parliament from alien priors, Parliament Rolls, 1390 Jan, no. 19; 1393, no. 7. 123 See e.g. Parliament Rolls, 1376, no. 94, which seems to be arguing on behalf of alien priories, as does no. 46; at other times the Commons supported the replacement of aliens with English clergy (see e.g. ibid. 1376, no. 124; 1377 Oct, no. 91, and original petitions in n. 121 and n. 124). 124 Ibid. 1376, no. 128. 125 e.g. ibid. 1377 Oct, no. 91. See next section for the lay appropriation of reform polemic. 126 John Wyclif, The English Works of Wyclif hitherto unprinted, ed. F.D. Matthew, Early English Text Society o.s. 74 (London: EETS, 1880), 1; in Latin it begins: ‘purgare ecclesiam militantem a spuriis vitulaminibus’ (id., Johannis de Wiclif Tractatuts De officio pastorali, ed. G.V. Lechler (Leipzig: A. Edelmann, 1863), 7; Eng. trans. in Advocates of Reform, from Wyclif to Erasmus, ed. M. Spinka (London: SCM Press, 1953), 32–88. 122

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continued to press his ideal of a resident, sufficiently endowed, educated priesthood ministering and preaching to their flocks.127 Thus the discourses of reform polemic were available not only to those in authority imposing reform from above but also to petitioners and competitors in different parts of the church and ultimately outside it. Reform polemic was appropriated by those without authority in order to persuade powers both ecclesiastical and lay to reform (other) parts of the church. The endemic and authoritative nature of this discourse facilitated this appropriation and legitimized the competition which was such a fundamental characteristic of the late-medieval church. It might even be said that its deployment was essential: no petition or tract could be persuasive without adopting the structures and language of reform. And we shall soon see that the laity were just as capable of deploying it as competing clergy The problem with the use of an authoritative polemical mode of discourse within the church was that it tended to close down the space for discussion rather than to open it up. Polemic proceeds by assertion more than by proof, and, even when competing polemics shared common ground, their differences were based on polemical assertions more than on carefully adduced evidence. Their persuasiveness rested more on the irresistible force of their structures of argument than on their relation to the facts. Thus competing polemics just ended up contradicting each other with mutual unassailable assertion. Were the alien priories failing because of the neglect of foreign monks or the wastefulness of secular farmers? Would the clergy be improved by lay withholding of tithes or by ensuring sufficient substance in vicarages? This contradictory quality is most obvious and least edifying in the case of competition for office, and above all the schism of 1378–1417, which called for the deployment of extreme polemic painting the other party as well beyond the pale. Urban VI opined, ‘the church is compelled to emit deep sighs of bitterness because the sons of her womb, the alumni of iniquity and perdition, have prepared the seeds of scandals and schisms’.128 The breakaway cardinals countered that they must publicize ‘those things which have brought the stain of deceit upon the faith, subversion among Christian people, a weakening of the status of the church and

J.I. Catto and T.A.R. Evans (eds), Late-Medieval Oxford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 245, 254. See Oxford’s 1414 reform proposals, which are highly polemical: ‘Rex regum et Dominus dominantium de excelso caelorum throno prospiciens almae matris ecclesiae tunicam insutilem vesanis haereticorum latratu et morsibus lacerari’ (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 360–65). 128 ‘ecclesia … amaritatis visceribus gravia emittere suspiria cogeretur, ex eo quia filios uteri sui … viz. iniquitatis et perditionis alumnos, … scandalorum et schismatum seminaria praeparabant’ (Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 138). 127

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a perceptible danger to souls’.129 Even then they were referring to the same facts, but spun differently: Urban had clearly been elected, but either properly or under duress from the Roman people; he had tried to reform the recalcitrant curia, or he had attacked the cardinals unreasonably and proved impossible to work with. But once the schism had got under way, the competing polemic was irreconcilable. Similarly, once the Wycliffites were declared heretical, standard forms of abuse were piled upon them: the wolves who had put on sheep’s clothing to ravage and disperse the flock, the sons of eternal damnation who had renounced human conversation, life and mores under the cloak of sanctity and preached false and erroneous opinions repugnant to the church in the wickedest sermons.130 Just as humility is the mother of virtues, disobedience removes honour from God and reverence from the church; it attempts to pervert the polity and is the first root of the heresies, errors and schisms which now perturb the church.131 The descent into invective is a manifestation of the increasingly stark division between the parties and the disappearance of any meeting-point between them. When polemic competed in this way, authority began to falter, even that of the ostensibly legitimate power. Each side was making its case against the other, as is evident in the early stages both of the schism, when the competing popes and cardinals appealed across Europe, and of Wycliffism, when it might still have been possible to persuade the authorities (at least the secular ones) of some elements of reform. Petitions were similarly presenting a case by persuasion, as were sermons; and in a sense the same is true of authoritative reforming decrees and acts aimed at the recalcitrant who by definition were not falling into line as the self-evident rightness of polemic asserted they should. But the paradox of this mode of proceeding, even in the normal situation of an authoritatively ‘ea que dissimulatam in fide maculam, subuersionem in Christicola populo, status ecclesiastici eneruacionem ac euidencia pericula animarum inducerent’ (The St Albans Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, I, 1376–1394, ed. and trans. J. Taylor, W. Childs and L. Watkiss (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 252–3; see also the reply of the Roman cardinals (ibid. 258–9). 130 ‘lupos intrinsecus ovium vestimentis indutos ad rapiendum et dispergendum oves … eterne dampnacionis filii, … sub magne sanctitatis velamine virtutem eius abnegantes, et a communi hominum conversacione, vita, et moribus dissidentes, nonnullas opiniones falsas et erroneas, determinacionibus sacrosancte Romane ecclesie repugnantes, in eorum sermonibus nephandissimis’ (Wykeham’s Register, 2: 338–9, 453–4; see also e.g. Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 265; Records of Convocation, 4: 316–17). 131 ‘mater virtutum sit humilitas, … viceque versa, inoboedientia a Deo subtrahens honorem, ab ecclesia reverentiam, ac quamlibet conata pervertere politiam, sit praecipuus fomes peccati, haeresium, errorum et schismatum prima radix; non mirum quod omni genere haereticae pravitatis, dissensionis, et schismatis modernis temporibus nostra turbatur ecclesia, cum paene ab eius finibus praelatorum reverentia ac oboedientia debita proscribuntur’, 1411, c.13 (Records of Convocation, 4: 383). 129

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issued text, is that the attempt to persuade was framed in polemic which denied the necessity of the need for persuasion. Polemic presented an open-and-shut case which was incontrovertible. When it was resisted in practice, the claims of polemic began to appear empty. The use of the language of authority when that authority was not complete – because of competition amongst orders, or resistance to authority, or the silent refusal to conform – exposes the gap between the polemical claim to authority and the resistance of the world. By itself, polemic was ineffective: ultimately there needed to be a mechanism of physical enforcement and an invocation of the secular arm, as proved necessary both against the Wycliffites and in resolving the schism. The Laity and Reform The laity were just as capable of appropriating reform polemic as competitors and challengers within the church. They routinely did so in matters involving ecclesiastical property. The laity’s approach to the church was frequently framed by the patronal narrative, the argument that they had endowed the church and could therefore demand a high standard of performance of ministry and suffrages to optimize salvation, or, in case of misuse and abuse, could resume and redistribute the property. This was the argument applied in the context of papal provisions and the alien priories, set out in its classic form in the 1307 petition which became the Statute of Provisors in 1351.132 These texts first outlined (in positive mode) the claim that kings and nobles had endowed the church so that it would teach them the law of God and perform hospitalities, alms and works of charity in their churches for the souls of founders, their heirs and all Christians.133 Then it delineated the evils which flowed from the pope reserving benefices to himself, ‘a very great misfortune and destruction which has recently appeared in the realm of England’,134 likely to result in the annulment of elections and the withdrawal of spiritual services, ‘to the annulment of the estate of the holy Church of England, and in disinheritance of the [king and nobles], and to the 132 Councils and Synods, 2: 1233; Statutes of the Realm, 1: 316–18; Parliament Rolls, 1351, no. 46. There are many petitions on the subject from the 1340s for the rest of the century and beyond (see e.g. [but highly select] Parliament Rolls, 1343, nos. 59–60; 1351, no. 13; 1365, nos. 7–9; 1390 Jan, no. 32). 133 ‘seinte eglise d’Engleterre estoit founde en estat de prelatie deinz le roialme d’Engleterre par le dit ael et ses progenitours, et countes, barons et nobles de son roialme, et lour auncestres, pur eux et le poeple enfourmer de la lei de Dieu, et pur faire hospitalites, almoignes et autres oevrs de charite, es lieus ou les esglises feurent foundez pur les almes des foundours et de lour heirs, et de touz Cristiens’. 134 ‘un tresgrande meschief et destruccion qe se monstre au roialme d’Engleterre ore de novel’.

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offence and destruction of the laws and rights of his realm, and to the great damage of his people and the subversion of the state of all his aforesaid realm’.135 One particularly striking statement of the theme is to be found in the Good Parliament, when the government’s apparent collusion with the papacy provoked a strong anti-clerical reaction. It opened with a more elaborate statement of the patronal narrative than the earlier texts, culminating in a vision of the benefits of ecclesiastical endowment: Et si longement come celes bones custumes furent usez, le roialme fuit pleine des toutez prosperites, come des bonez gentz, et bone loialte des clerks et de clergie, des chivalers et des chivalrie qe sont deux choses qe touz jours regnent ensemble, de pees et de quiete, de tresour, bledz et de bestail et d’autre richesse assetz.136 And for as long as these good customs [ecclesiastical observance funded by lay donation] were followed the realm was full of all prosperity, such as good people, and good lawful conduct of clerks and clergy, of knights and knighthood (which are two things which always rule together), of peace and quiet, of treasure, corn, cattle and other rich assets.

But in the very next sentence this utopia is subverted: Et puis qe les bones custumez feurent pervertiez empesche de covetyse et de symonye, le roialme ad este plein des diversez adversitez, come des guerres et pestilences, feym, moreyns des bestes et de autres grevances. Par qoi le roialme est si empovery et destruyt q’il n’y ad mye la tierce partie des gentz ne des autres choses susditz come soloit estre, par la cause susdite, et par enchesons desouzescriptz. And since the good customs were corrupted and obstructed by covetousness and simony, the realm has been full of various adversities, such as wars and pestilences, hunger, cattle murrains and other grievances. Wherefore the realm is so impoverished and destroyed that there is not one third the people or other aforesaid things there used to be, for the aforesaid reason and for the reasons written below.

The evils turn out to be papal donation and alien occupation of benefices, and these appear to be held responsible for the war and the Black Death. In this very long petition the themes of withdrawal of divine services, danger to souls and 135 ‘et desheritisoun del dit ael et des countz, ‹barons et nobles,› et en offense et destruccion des leies et droitures de son roialme, et grande damage de son poeple, et subversion del estat de tout son roialme susdit’. 136 Parliament Rolls, 1376, nos. 94–103, at no. 94.

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impoverishment and destruction of the realm are reiterated endlessly, amounting to an almost apocalyptic vision.137 ‘Et si est seint esglise plus destruyt par tielx malveis Cristiens qe par touz les Jewes et Saracyns de monde’ (‘and so holy church is destroyed by such evil Christians more than by all the Jews and Saracens in the world’).138 This is an extreme version of the theme, but the regular petitions about provisions, and from the 1370s about alien priories too, used all but the most exotic language to persuade the king to take a firmer line with the papacy or to expel French religious or, in statutes, to explain why the prohibition on papal provision was essential.139 Another petition about provision to benefices, even after the reissue of the statute in 1390, predictably alleged offense de Dieu, confusion de lour almes, grevouse desolacioun de tout la paiis et des parochiens, final destruccioun del clergie, graunt empoverissement del roialme, et irrecuperable ruine de seinte esglise d’Engleterre.140 offence to God, tribulation of souls, grievous desolation of the entire land and of parishioners, final destruction of the clergy, great impoverishment of the realm, and irrecoverable ruin of the holy church of England.

The laity also broadened their interest in clerical reform beyond the use of resources. A series of petitions about non-residence may reflect the gentry’s interest as patrons of the benefices, but they opened up into a full concern with the evil effects of clerical neglect. It constituted the dispersal, reduction and waste of the goods of holy church, to the great peril of their own souls and those of parishioners … in contempt of God, thereby stifling and destroying divine service (and the reason why they are absent is because they do not intend to distribute their goods amongst their poor parishioners, which is a wicked and damnable example to other Christians).141

137 In fact it looks as if a bundle of petitions were transcribed, without having been edited into a single statement by the Commons (see ibid. 1376, nos. 104–116, 120); and various other agencies are blamed as well as the pope, reiterating the point made in the previous section about the common ground of polemic being deployed to blame different people. 138 Ibid., 1376, no. 98. 139 There is no space here to consider the sources of this language, especially in 1376 (Wyclif ?) and how far the patronal narrative adopted ecclesiastical language or was a laygenerated discourse. Indeed, a further question is the relationship of ecclesiastical reform to the polemic of secular legislation, which adopts a similar form from quite early on. 140 Parliament Rolls, 1391, no. 38. 141 Ibid. 1406, no. 114.

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The failure to administer the sacraments or to preach, leaving parishioners spiritually unprovided-for, was a regular theme:142 Whereby in many parishes in the realm old men and women have died without confession or taking another sacrament of holy church, and infants have been born and die without baptism, whereby many misdeeds and misfortunes have occurred from day to day for this reason to the great dishonour of holy church’.143

And in 1426, non-residence was said to lead to heresy: wher þourgher þaire paroshyns and oþer, been not enfourmed of þe lawes of God, but fallen into lollardies and erisies for defaute of techyng, ne þe sacraments of holy chirch duely ‹ministred› unto þayme, but somme, for defaute of þaire curats, dyen, the ryghtes of holy chirche not received, and hospitalite not kept, to greet hyndryng of þare povere paroshyns, ayens lawe and consciens. 144 as a result of which their parishioners and others have not been taught about the laws of God but have fallen into lollardies and heresies for lack of instruction, nor have the sacraments of holy church been duly administered to them, but some, because of the lack of those who have care of their souls, have died without receiving the rites of holy church, and without hospitality being maintained, to the great harm of their poor parishioners, contrary to law and conscience.

Some of these petitions were robust in their description of the effects of absence and appropriation, citing ‘graunt peril et dampnacioun de lour almes, et de toute la seinte foye et de seinte esglise perversioun et overt destruction’ (‘the great peril and damnation of souls, and the perversion and manifest destruction of the entire holy faith and of holy church’).145 As ever, there is sometimes a ludic quality to the strength of this language, for instance when the occupation of Pontefract Hospital’s property ‘by grete might, mayntenaunce, and other undue meones’ was projected to result in ‘the likly finall destruccion of the saide hous, and withdrawyng of divine service there’.146 But the lay ability to manipulate this language merely highlights how expertly they had learnt to deploy the ecclesiastical polemic of reform. In addition to the examples which follow, see ibid. 1394, no. 43; 1402, no. 58; 1406, no. 114; 1410, no. 70; 1425, nos. 37–8. 143 Ibid. 1432 April, no. 40 144 Ibid. 1426, no. 31. For Commons petitions against heresy, see ibid. 1406., no. 62 (‘causing public unrest amongst your people and bringing about the ultimate ruin and subversion of your kingdom forever’); 1414 April, no. 24; 1417, no. 18. 145 Ibid. 1402, no. 52. 146 Ibid. 1447, no. 12. 142

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Concern with clerical failure perhaps underlies some other polemical – if occasional – lay petitions to amend secular behaviour which would normally have been the clergy’s responsibility. In 1449, the Commons considered ‘þe abhomynable wrongys and vylanys don to Our Lord God, and his holy Seyntis, our synguler helpers and socourers alwey at our most nedys’ on fair- and marketdays, when people are defiled by manual labour: for grete wordely covetyse, … noþyng alas havyng in mynde þe horrible fowlyng of here soule, in gylefull bying and sellyng, moche liyng and fals forsweryng, with drounkenshipp and debatyng, and specially in withdrawyng hem self and all her meyny holich fro divine service, … and þis unkyndly and most wykedly provoke our meke Saviour, and his holy seints, alwey to hy wrath and dredefull vengeaunce, puttyng hem a wey wrongfully and cruelly alas for her longe dieu possessid worshipp, directly doyng not onlich ayenst þe commaundement of all holy chirch, but also a yenst Our Lordis irrevocable wordis.147 On account of great worldly covetousness … having nothing else in mind other than the horrible corruption of their souls by guileful buying and selling, much lying and false swearing, with drunkenness and debating, and especially in removing themselves and all their company from divine service … and this unnaturally vile and most wicked behaviour provokes our humble Saviour and his holy saints always to high wrath and dreadful vengeance, diverting them away wrongfully and cruelly alas from their long due possessed worship, directly acting not only against the commandment of all holy church, but also contrary to Our Lord’s irrevocable words.

Similarly in 1467 they petitioned for high treason to include the theft of pyxes, taken with the blessed sacrament: irreverently, as Lollardes and heretikes, … wherby is not oonly caused the dampnable lettyng of divine service to of the ornamentes, and other juelx and goodes, of many chirches of this reame, belongyng to the administration of divine service, to the moost dampnable and cursed ensample that may be suffred in eny Cristen reame, and grettest offence to God.148 As irreverently as Lollards and heretics … which not only causes damnable obstruction to the performance of divine service, but also, if it continues, will cause an extreme want and shortage of the ornaments and other jewels and goods

Ibid. 1449 Feb, no. 24. Ibid. 1467, no. 40.

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in many churches of this realm which pertain to the administration of divine service: the most damnable and cursed example that may be suffered in any Christian realm, and the greatest offence to God.

Whether implicitly or explicitly, these petitions which addressed clerical responsibilities were critical of clerical neglect.149 Lay petitions and statutes should therefore also be seen as participating in the counter-polemic of competition. Complaints in the classic territories of clerical–lay conflict like tithes, probate fees and fines, clerical wages, prohibitions and mortmain directly involved property, like provisions and the alien priories, but also had wider consequences. For instance, the practice of taking fines in punishment for sins was objected to because it did nothing to stop them, but rather was the ‘the cause, perpetuation and encouragement of sins, to the open shame and bad example of all the commonalty, which, if it continues and is not duly punished, is to the detriment of the king and of all the realm’.150 Similarly, sanctuary and benefit of clergy had an effect on good order: murdres, manslaghters, roberies and other theftes, wythinne this your rewme dayly encrecen and multiplien, by thoo felons that ben clerkes and can rede, by cause of þe grete boldnes of thair clergie … yn fynall destruccion of your seide people in every part of this rewme.151

One might even regard the regular royal summonses to convocation as deploying shorthand polemic in their insistence on ‘urgent and evident necessity’ to address ‘common’ and ‘imminent dangers’ both for the defence of the realm and for the business of the church.152 In some cases we can see the negotiations to which such summonses led, with necessity and poverty polemically opposed, although refusal to pay was rarely an option because of the polemical irresistibility of the The concerns of the petition against the playing of games (specifically ‘dise, coyte, foteball, and such like pleys … and dyvers newe ymagyned pleys called closshe, keyles, halfbowle, handyn and handowte, and quekeborde’) were mainly secular, but included the traditional clerical concern that ‘persones of goode reputation as of litell havour, not godly disposed, [do not] dowten to offende God in not kepyng dyvine service in halydayes’, mirroring ecclesiastical petitions above (ibid. 1478, no. 29). 150 ‘quele chose est cause, meintenance et norisement de lour pecche, en overte desclandre et mal ensaumple de tut la commune; quele chose issint continue nient duement puny est desesploit au roi et a tout le roialme’ (ibid. 1372, no. 41; see also 1351, no. 35; 1414, no. 24). 151 On benefit, see ibid. 1449 February, no. 22; 1489, no. 42; 1497, no. 11; on sanctuary, see ibid. 1394, no. 46; 1402, no. 70. 152 1342, 1415, ‘urgentissima’ 1425 (Records of Convocation, 3: 181–2; 5: 4, 157); on imminent dangers in royal persuasion to convocation, see ibid. 5: 146. 149

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royal demand based on necessity.153 Clerical gravamina were also part of this competitive polemic between clergy and laity, addressed as they were explicitly to the king to complain about infringements on the liberty of the church.154 Occasionally the clergy’s views appeared in parliament, for instance in a lament of 1416 about the ban on provisions, as a result of which the universities and thus the clergy were debilitated:155 grauntz et intollerables errours et heresyes envers Dieu, et homme, et rebellion et obstinacie encountre vous, tressoverain seignur, entre les commune poeple de vostre roialme sount nadgairs ensurdez, encountre auncien doctrine de noz seintz piers, et determinacione a tout seint esglise; et si l’avauntditz universitees ount mys en hautz lamentacione, desolacione, et disheritaunce de sez espirituelx fitz et profitables studiantz, a graunt descomfort et prejudice de toute seinte esglise suisdite, et extinccione de foie Cristien, et male exemple a toutz autres Cristians roialmes, si hasty remedie ne soit fait en ceste matere si bosoinable. Great and intolerable sins and heresies against God and man, and rebellion and defiance against you, most sovereign lord, among the common people of your realm have recently arisen, against the ancient doctrine of our holy Fathers and the teaching of all holy church; and so the aforesaid universities are placed in total despair and desolation at the loss of their spiritual sons and fruitful students, to the great distress and prejudice of all the aforesaid holy church and the extinction of the Christian faith, and a bad example to all other Christian realms, unless a speedy remedy is provided on this most urgent matter.

This reply to the ubiquitous polemic of provisions did not challenge the grounds for the legislation but rather addressed its negative effects – another case of contrary polemics not engaging with each other but in mutual polemical assertion. The fact that this text (evidently from a clerical source, to judge by its phraseology) was owned by the Commons shows again how reform polemic was shared between clergy and laity, and indeed that the duality of that relationship was far more complex than formal structures and institutions suggest. The clergy may have attempted to keep their internal mutual polemic to themselves. Being in Latin, it was shielded from all but the highest class of laity. Sermons for the laity seem to have tried to avoid too much or too emphatic comment about the sins of the clergy, even when the logic of social surveys, 1424–25 (ibid., 5: 144, 161). As well as series in 1376 and 1399 cited above (nn. 80, 96, 122), see the English

153 154

articles in 1434 and 1439 in nn. 79 above, 160 below. 155 Parliament Rolls, 1416 March, no. 39; for a petition from Archbishop Arundel about benefit of clergy, see ibid. 1402, no. 30.

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such as the three-orders structure, demanded it.156 Archbishop Thoresby’s 1357 English translation of Pecham’s Ignorantia sacerdotum succeeded in omitting the specific point of Pecham’s title, opening much more positively. Only around line 40 did it hint that priests defaulting on their preaching might be the problem.157 Arundel’s constitutions of 1407–9 stated the injunction clearly: preachers were to comment only on the sins of their audience, clergy or laity, and not about one to the other.158 Hence the threat posed by the radical and Wycliffite critique in exposing the sins of the clergy in English. On some subjects the clergy felt freer to express themselves more wholeheartedly: the sins of the laity, lay infringements against ecclesiastical property, and of course heresy. Even then, many of their petitions about property and jurisdiction were couched in respectful language.159 As they began to petition in English, however, their language became tougher, in a series of fifteenth-century gravamina which denounced infringers of ecclesiastical liberty: ‘Alle they ar accursed’, they pronounced in 1434.160 In 1484, convocation petitioned Richard III, that the clergy ‘contrary to the law of God, and determination of all Christs church …crewelly, grievously, and daylye be troubled, vexed, indighted, and arrested, drawn out of the church, and without deu reverence from the auttor by malicious and evil disposed parsones, not dreding God’, thus preventing them from exercising their ministry. ‘Fearing also that through the said unquietness, the grace of God is gretely withdrawen, and allmighty God provoked unto dyvers vengeances and punishments’.161 This flexing of the full polemical armoury against the laity was perhaps a long-term response to the secular deployment of polemic against the clergy. It was in the very next year that Henry VII legislated uncompromisingly ‘for the more sure and likly reformacion of preestis, clerkys and religious men, culpable or by their demerites openly noised of incontunent lyvyng in their bodies, contrarie to their ordre’.162 In fact this Act licensed bishops to imprison those H.L. Spencer, English Preaching in the Late Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 66–8. Middle English Sermons contains very few references to clerical sins (see 53, 58). Brinton addressed clerical sloth, but right at the end of a long sermon, whose audience is unknown (Sermons, no. 48). His Sermon no. 69 criticized preachers only for not speaking out, and no. 70 is rather indirect in its criticism. Other Brinton critiques were in sermons for clergy (see e.g. ibid., nos. 13, 17, 28, 80). 157 Lay Folks’ Catechism, 2–6. 158 Records of Convocation, 4: 313 (c.3). 159 See the gravamina to Edward I, compared to those in the Barons’ Wars (Councils and Synods, 1: 573–85, 671–85, 2: 955–67, 1206–18), or the contrast between the modest clerical complaints in the Good Parliament and the vitriolic lay bill against pope and cardinals (Parliament Rolls, 1376, nos. 94–116, 198–208). 160 Records of Convocation, 5: 347 (quoted above, n. 79), 403–6. 161 Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 614. 162 Parliament Rolls, 1485, no. 67. 156

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convicted of ‘aboutrie, fornicacion, inceste or eny other flesshely incontinency’ without risk of an action for false imprisonment. But its implication of a royal lead in reform was not new. Henry V had attempted to reform ‘exorbitancia et enormia’ amongst the Benedictines in 1421, including their ‘sumptuosa et nimium ipsorum equitatura scandalosa’, their ‘magnus excessus’ in clothing (‘magia militaris censetur quam monachalis’), the ‘execrabile et detestabile scelus’ of owning property and their ‘inobediencie temeritas’.163 When the Reformation Parliament convened in 1529 and began to unleash a volley of legislation against the church, therefore, it had precedent both in practice and in language to draw on. Its subject matter was initially as predictable as its rhetoric: fees (‘outragious and grevous fynes and sommes of Money’), benefit of clergy, sanctuary, property, non-residence and lack of learning, so that ‘both the poor of the parish lacked refreshing, and universally all the parishioners lacked preaching and true instructions of God’s word, to the great peril of their souls’.164 And when the subject matter became less predictable, with the renunciation of papal jurisdiction and the attack on the monasteries, the language had long been available to justify these moves as ecclesiastical reform. Both the negative and positive tonal modes were deployed, as we have seen in the contrasting rhetoric of the 1536 and 1539 suppression acts; or in the Appeals Act – ‘this Realme of Englond is an Impire, and so hath ben accepted in theworlde, governed by oon Supreme heede and King having the Dignitie and Roiall Estate of the Imperiall Crowne of the same’ – and the 1536 Act for the extirpacion abolucion and extinguyshment, out of this Realme … of the pretended Power and usurped auctorite of the Bisshop of Rome … which did obfuscate and wreste Goddis holy worde and testament a long season from the spirituall and trew meanyng therof, to his worldly and carnall affections, as pompe glory avarice ambicion and tyranny, coveryng and shadowyng the same with his humayne and polytyke dyvyses tradicions and invencions sett forth to p’mote and stablissh his only Domynyon.165

What had changed in 1530s England was that the Crown had not only discovered the determination to reform, but also assumed the physical power to do so in a way that the medieval church had not possessed for centuries. The king’s deployment of medieval ecclesiastical polemic now looked genuinely authoritative. Certainly these texts have shed their ludic quality, but, paradoxically, it may have been Documents Illustrating the Activities of the General and Provincial Chapters of the English Black Monks, 2: 110–15. 164 Statutes of the Realm, 3: 285; Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, 3: 739–40; for the statutes, see Statutes of the Realm, 3: 285–9, 292–6, 334–8, 362–3, 377–9, 383–8. 165 Statutes of the Realm, 3: 427, 663–4. 163

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that wide and routine deployment of these polemical modes which conferred familiarity and thus authority on them. The church was now faced with the very polemic which it had so habitually deployed to frame its own authority. Despite their authoritative tone, however, even these statutes retained an element of persuasion: they were addressed to a parliament whose two chambers had to agree to them. The laity had long appropriated ecclesiastical reform discourse, but for specific purposes. The secular adoption of the full range of this polemic now helped the Crown to appear as the natural reforming authority and its revolution as both necessary and unanswerable.

Chapter 10

Lamenting the Church? Bishop Andrzej Krzycki and Early Reformation Polemic Natalia Nowakowska When Martin Luther issued his attack on indulgences in 1517, religious polemic was already a venerable mode of writing in the Western church – found in medieval polemics around Catharism, Waldensianism, Lollardy and Hussitism, and before that in late antique polemics on Donatism and Arianism.1 In its first years, the Luther affair was itself simply a polemical exchange conducted before all of Europe, in text and disputations, as the Augustinian friar locked horns with figures such as Professor Johannes Eck (1486–1543), Cardinal Cajetan (1469–1534) and many others.2 These early Reformation polemics differed from those written against Hussites a century earlier in two important respects – stylistically and methodologically, they tended to employ (or be influenced by) a humanist rhetoric of persuasion, rather than an older scholastic model of devastating logical argument.3 Secondly, they overwhelmingly took the physical form of printed books rather than hand-copied manuscripts – easier to produce en masse and disseminate at speed, with the potential to accelerate theological debate. Jesse Lander has suggested that the decades from 1517 saw the birth of what we would recognize as modern polemic, produced by the elemental forces of printing and the Reformation itself, a new technology coupled to a new

See e.g. Gedaliahu Stroumsa, ‘Anti-Cathar Polemic and the Liber de Duobus Principiis’, in Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner (eds), Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter (Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz, 1992), 169–83; Anne Hudson, ‘Thomas Netter’s Doctrinale and the Lollards’, in Johan Bergströn-Allen and Richard Copsey (eds), Thomas Netter of Walden: Carmelite, Diplomat and Theologian (Faversham: Saint Albert’s Press, 2009), 179–97; David. M. Gwynn, The Eusebians: The Polemic of Athanasius of Alexandria and the Construction of the Arian Controversy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 2 David Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents: Catholic Controversialists, 1518–25 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991); John Dolan, ‘The Catholic Literary Opponents of Luther and the Reformation’, in Erwin Iserloh, Joseph Glazik and Hubert Jedin (eds), Reformation and Counter Reformation, trans. Anselm Biggs and Peter W. Becker, History of the Church 5 (London: Burns & Oates, 1980), 191–207. 3 For the prominence of humanists in early anti-Luther polemic, see David Bagchi, ‘Luther’s Catholic Opponents’, in Andrew Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation World (London: Routledge, 2002), 97–108, at 98. 1

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idea.4 However, beyond these new elements, was there anything fundamentally, historically distinctive about the polemics produced in, by, about and against the early Reformation? Early Reformation polemic has been the subject of extensive research in the past half-century, but this otherwise impressive body of work might be said, collectively, to suffer from two shortcomings. Firstly, it has mostly taken place within separate disciplinary boxes. Literature scholars have generally paid attention to how particular works use literary techniques to achieve a polemical effect.5 Theologians, led by David Bagchi, have pored over the religious arguments deployed in early Reformation polemic, considering their origins and evolution.6 Historians, meanwhile, have been interested in measuring the quantity of such works, identifying their patrons and audiences and speculating as to the impact which these tomes and pamphlets ultimately had on the course of the Reformation.7 Jürgen Schutte’s pioneering 1973 interdisciplinary study of Thomas Murner’s polemic Von dem Grossen Lutherischen Narren (1522) has had few notable successors, with the result that although we know much about early Reformation polemics, this knowledge remains highly fragmented.8 Secondly, this corpus of scholarship has simply omitted polemical works against Luther composed and printed east of the Holy Roman Empire in Central Europe, a region where his influence was immediate and profound, in Prussia, Silesia and Bohemia, to name but a few hotspots.9 In the Polish Jagiellonian Jesse Lander, Inventing Polemic: Religion, Print and Literary Culture in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1. 5 e.g. Douglas Trevor, ‘Thomas More’s Responsio ad Lutherum and the Fictions of Humanist Polemic’, Sixteenth Century Journal 32 (2001): 743–64; Alexandra da Costa, Reforming Printing: Syon Abbey’s Defence of Orthodoxy, 1525–34 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 6 The fullest such treatment remains Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents. 7 Dolan, ‘The Catholic Literary Opponents of Luther’; M.U. Edwards, ‘Catholic Controversial Literature, 1518–55: Some Statistics’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 79 (1988): 189–205; id., Printing, Propaganda and Martin Luther (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); Pierre Deyon, ‘Sur certaines formes de la propagande religieuse au XVIe siècle’, Annales: économies, sociétés, civilisations 36 (1981): 16–25; David Birch, Early English Reformation Polemics (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Universität Salzburg, 1983); Wilbirgis W. Klaiber, Katholische Kontroverstheologen und Reformer des 16. Jahrhunderts: ein Werkverzeichnis (Münster: Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1978); Andrew Pettegree and Matthew Hall, ‘The Reformation and the Book: A Reconsideration’, Historical Journal 47 (2004): 785–808. 8 Jürgen Schutte, ‘Schympff red’: Frühformen bürgerlicher Agitation in Thomas Murners ‘Grossem Lutherischen Narren’ (1522) (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1973). 9 See Andrew Pettegree (ed.), The Early Reformation in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992); Julian Bukowski, Dzieje Reformacyi w Polsce od wejścia jej do Polski aż do jej upadku, 2 vols (Kraków, 1883); Zdeněk V. David, Finding the Middle 4

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monarchy alone – with its Polish, Prussian and Mazovian territories – at least 13 Latin polemics were printed against the Reformation before 1540. Composed by bishops, archdeacons and cathedral canons, they ranged from chunky theological treatises such as the Propugnaculum ecclesiae (1536) produced by the Poznań lecturer Walenty Wróbel, to vituperative little pamphlets, such as those zealously penned by Piotr Rydziński (1524), a young canon of Poznań.10 With Reformation polemic, just as with the wider history of Renaissance Europe, our tendency to accept Western Europe as constituting the entire and normative story risks producing an infelicitous picture of the past. In a small-scale attempt to approach Reformation polemic in a more interdisciplinary spirit and to put neglected Central European materials into the picture, this chapter will take as its focus an anti-Luther polemic from the kingdom of Poland, De afflictione ecclesiae, written by the bishop, humanist and court poet Andrzej Kryzcki and printed in Kraków in 1527.11 After introducing Krzycki himself and his book, I will explore how this work, by one of Poland’s leading neo-Latin writers of the period, functioned as a polemic: how it attacked and characterized heresy and heretics, how in the process it constructed orthodoxy itself. It will be argued that the literary techniques which Krzycki uses in De afflictione ecclesiae to discredit Luther and elicit sympathy for the old church are not purely of literary concern – rather, if we define the Reformation as the terminal splitting up of the medieval church, then the very act of imagining and articulating religious difference through polemical works constitutes the heart of the Reformation itself, an act which made that Reformation possible, while building on the medieval church’s experience of identifying itself against a heretical or non-Christian Other. Theologians have argued stridently that Luther’s new ideas about salvation were the prime mover behind the Reformation as a historical event, but printed polemic surely played a crucial role in mediating them and in expressing and finding for those theologies a place in the world.12 Indeed, Lander’s formula Way: The Utraquists’ Liberal Challenge to Rome and Luther (Washington DC: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). 10 For a full list, and an analysis of the role played by printing in Reformation polemics, see Natalia Nowakowska, ‘High Clergy and Printers: Anti-Reformation Polemic in the Kingdom of Poland, 1520–36’, Historical Research 87 (2014), 43–64, at 56; Walenty Wróbel, Propugnaculum Ecclesiae adversus Varias Sectas huius Tempestatis (Frankfurt, 1536); Piotr Rydziński, Petri Risinii in Iohannis Hessi Cachinni Sycophantias Responsio (Kraków, 1524). 11 Andrzej Krzycki, De afflictione ecclesiae, commentarius in psalmum XXI (Kraków, 1527; 2nd edn, Rome: F.M. Calvo, 1527). 12 For views on the state of Reformation research by two leading historians of theology, see Euan Cameron, Enchanted Europe: Superstition, Reason and Religion, 1250–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 13–14; Susan E. Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011),

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could easily be inverted: rather than the Reformation giving birth to polemic, the opposite might be true.13 Andrzej Krzycki was the golden boy of the Polish court, in its golden age under King Zygmunt I Jagiellon (1506–48). The favourite nephew of Piotr Tomicki (d. 1535), bishop of Kraków and the king’s de facto first minister, Krzycki was showered with ecclesiastical benefices from his late teens, becoming a royal secretary in 1515.14 Krzycki produced fine neo-Latin poetry for royal weddings, funerals and military victories, while his oeuvre included satires and erotica.15 In 1527, he was appointed bishop of Płock, in Mazovia, a diocese which bordered Ducal Prussia, Europe’s first officially Lutheran polity. In this new role, and with the dawning of the Reformation, the Polish Crown now looked to Krzycki to provide eloquent rebuttals of luteranismo rather than dynastic panegyrics. Oswald Balzer, one of interwar Poland’s preeminent legal historians, unearthed strong circumstantial evidence that Krzycki was responsible for the first draft of King Zygmunt I’s most draconian antiheresy decree (1523), which stipulated burning as the penalty for Lutheranism.16 In 1524, that decree was printed in Kraków by the Wietor workshop as an appendix to Krzycki’s first polemical work, Encomia Luteri, a denunciation of Luther, framed with satirical verses by Krzycki and his Kraków humanist circle, which was politely praised by Erasmus himself.17 When, in 1525, the radical Lutheran party in Danzig sent a delegation of artisans to the Kraków court to commend Luther’s teaching to their monarch, it was Andrzej Krzycki who was charged with drafting the Crown’s icy official reply.18 He had, in effect, gone from de facto court poet to the Crown’s chosen anti-Lutheran speech-writer. viii–x; for studies of antecedents to Luther’s theology of salvation in the late medieval church, see e.g. Heiko Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963). 13 See Nowakowska, ‘High Clergy and Printers’, 61. 14 See Stefan Zabłocki, ‘Andrzej Krzycki’, Polski słownik biograficzny (Wrocław: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1970), 15: 544–9; Halina Kowalska, ‘Andrzej Krzycki’, in P.G. Bietenholz and Thomas B. Deutscher (eds), Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985–7), 2: 275–8. The most recent Polish biography is by Leszek Barszcz, Andrzej Krzycki: poeta, dyplomata, prymas (Gniezno: TUM, 2005). 15 For Kryzcki’s poems, see Andreae Cricii carmina, ed. Kazimierz Morawski (Kraków, 1888). 16 Corpus Iuris Polonici, ed. Oswald Balzer (Kraków: Polska Akademia Umiejętności, 1910), 4: 21–30, no. 9. The wording of the decree was altered before its promulgation. 17 Krzycki, Encomia Luteri (Kraków, 1524; repr. Regensburg, Dresden, Strassburg, Speyer and Rome), in Opus Epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P.S. Allen et al. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1906–58), 6: 193–5, no. 1629. 18 Acta Tomiciana, ed. T. Działyński (Poznań, 1857), 7: CXXXIV, 400–405.

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In 1527, Krzycki completed his second work of Reformation polemic. Just as the title of his Encomia Luteri had been a nod to Erasmus’s celebrated Moriae encomium (Praise of Folly) the title of this piece, De afflictione ecclesiae, commentarius in psalmum XXI, was a reference to a 1522 publication by Martin Luther on the same biblical text.19 Printed by Hieronymus Wietor, Kraków’s most prestigious humanist publisher, the frontispiece of the quarto book featured classical architectonic devices, which framed a poem by the English humanist Leonard Cox, praising Krzycki’s willingness to save the spiritual sheep from the wolves.20 The work opens with a dedicatory letter addressed to Bona Sforza, queen of Poland, which sketches Martin Luther’s career as a theologian, before stressing the evils which Lutheranism had already caused within the Polish kingdom, not least in Danzig, which had experienced a major Reformationinspired revolt in 1525. The heart of De afflictione ecclesiae, however, is a 20-page meditation on Psalm 21 (22), ‘Deus meus … quare me dereliquisti?’ (‘My God … why have you forsaken me?’), the psalm which (in the synoptic Gospels) is quoted by Christ from the cross and which formed a central feature of the Good Friday liturgy in the late medieval church. In this commentary, Krzycki adopts a prophetic voice, outlining the sufferings of the church and their causes, and, in certain passages, the church herself speaks in the first person, lamenting her own sufferings. At the end of the book, Krzycki and Wietor included an extract from a commentary on the book of Job here ascribed to Origen, which paints heresy in fiery terms as diabolical, two devotional poems by Krzycki on the Passion, a poem by his friend Antonius Medicus on the afflicted church and a closing verse in praise of Krzycki by his client, the young Stanisław Hozjusz (Hosius), who later found fame as a leading Counter-Reformation cardinal.21 The key features of polemic are that it is combative, part of controversy, an attack on an opposing position and claims for itself the authority to explain what is right.22 One might also add that a polemic is a text which identifies, seeks to undermine and juxtaposes itself against an Other – it is the expression Martin Luther, Martini Luteri lucubrationes in psalmum XXI (Basel, 1522). For Leonard Cox’s career in Kraków, see Jacqueline Glomski, Patronage and

19 20

Humanist Literature in the Age of the Jagiellons: Court and Career in the Writings of Rudolf Agricola Junior, Valentin Eck, and Leonard Cox (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); see also S.F. Ryle, ‘Cox, Leonard (b. c.1495, d. in or after 1549)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), (accessed 26 Feb. 2014). 21 Although Krzycki entitled his epilogue ‘verbis Origenis, ex tractatu primo in exposition libri Iob’, modern scholarship holds that the commentary on Job was in fact written by Julian of Halicarnassus, see Petrus Ferhat, ‘Der Jobprolog des Julianos von Halikarnassos in einer armenischen Bearbeitung’, Oriens Christianus n.s. 1 (1911): 26–31. 22 See George Southcombe, Almut Suerbaum and Benjamin Thompson, ‘Introduction’, in this volume, pp. 5–6.

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of, and search for, difference and identity. De afflictione ecclesiae meets many of these criteria for classification as a polemic – there are indeed sarcastic attacks on Luther and his doctrines, and it forms part of a well-established wider controversy: the early Reformation. However, the 1527 Kraków-printed book functioned as a polemic on multiple levels, some of them more subtle – the dominant tone of the work, for example, is one of lamentation rather than anger or even ‘disputation’. A polemic, in other words, can clearly function as such without adopting a persistent tone of outrage, or vituperation. De afflictione ecclesiae is arguably the most sophisticated and (in literary terms) ambitious early anti-Reformation text composed in the Polish monarchy. Much early Reformation polemic in this kingdom, as elsewhere, fell into the simple category of invective – quick-fire personal insults against a named heretical opponent – such as those produced in 1520s Kraków by Canon Piotr Rydziński or Archdeacon Grzegorz Szamotulski in 1530s Poznań.23 Other high-ranking Polish and Prussian clergy, meanwhile, took up their pens to write lengthy theological treatises, sermons or public letters against the new teachings.24 By adopting or improvising the unusual genre of lamentation-cumbiblical commentary in De afflictione ecclesiae, Krzycki was clearly experimenting with polemical forms or genres in a way that his local contemporaries did not – although, as Francesca Southerden shows, a writer such as Petrarch could use lamentation and prophecy as polemical modes in the fourteenth century.25 In the early Reformation, polemic was therefore a mode of writing which could encompass multiple genres and multiple modes of speech – it was its desire to halt the advance of Lutheranism through the persuasive written word which gave its shared purpose and character. How then did De afflictione ecclesiae function as a polemic? This text is polemical, firstly, in its treatment of Martin Luther, albeit ambiguously so. Martin Luther might seem the obvious first point of attack in any antiReformation polemic, but he was not – in Jagiellonian Poland, both the Crown and many local polemicists alike viewed Lutheran Wittenberg as a place of secondary importance, responding instead to luteranismo predominantly as a domestic problem. High clergy tended, accordingly, to write against local followers of the new teaching, rather than its most famous exponent. On the Baltic coast, for example, Copernicus’s good friend Canon Tiedemann Giese directed his weighty anti-Reformation polemic against Johannes Briessman, Rydziński, Petri Risinii in Iohannis Hessi; id., In Axiomata Ioannis Hessi Wratislaviae edita (Kraków, 1524); Grzegorz Szamotulski, Anacephaleosis Flosculos monogrammos ex progymnasmatis Christophori Endorfini (Kraków, 1535); id., Vincula Hippocratis (Kraków, 1536). 24 e.g. Tiedemann Giese, Flosculorum Lutheranorum de fide et operibus anthelogikon (Kraków, 1525); Wróbel, Propugnaculum. 25 Francesca Southerden, ‘Between Autobiography and Apocalypse’, in this volume, ch. 1. 23

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Lutheran bishop and theologian in Ducal Prussia; Krzycki’s own deputy as bishop of Przemyśl, Stanisław Byliński, composed his anti-Lutheran polemic against Laurentius Corvinus, a key figure in the Reformation in Breslau, in Bohemian Silesia.26 Indeed, of the 13 anti-Reformation polemics composed in Jagiellonian Poland before 1540, only three took Martin Luther as their explicit focus, and one of those (the Encomia Luteri) had come from Krzycki’s pen.27 In contrast to Krzycki’s 1524 satire, De afflictione ecclesiae is not, however, obviously directed against Martin Luther himself. He is not referred to by name in the title or indeed anywhere in the publication. There is only a single, indirect and pejorative reference to the ‘horned calf ’ of Saxony who led the people to rebellion, akin to Aaron and the Golden Calf.28 Luther is, nonetheless, an unquiet and distinct presence throughout the text. Dedicating this work to Queen Bona, Krzycki opens by declaring that ‘among the other monsters of our turbulent age, excellent queen’ is ‘the Evangelical’.29 Sticking with this term ‘Evangelicus’, Krzycki then outlines the theological views of this anonymous individual. It remains unclear to the reader whether ‘the Evangelical’ refers to a specific individual (Martin Luther, the father of the doctrines identified in the letter) or to an abstracted type of person, a putative and generic ‘evangelical’ type. There is a strong hint, however, that Luther himself was in Krzycki’s mind as he composed his letter to the Polish queen. In its style and rhetorical structure, the description of ‘evangelical’ teachings in this 1527 dedication, which relentlessly juxtaposes Catholic and heretical, old and new, good and bad, closely echoes Krzycki’s earlier direct attack on ‘Lutherus’ in the Encomia Luteri, addressed to King Zygmunt I in 1524.30 But if Luther was in Krzycki’s mind, he was not prepared to name him. This is further seen in De afflictione ecclesiae’s refusal to make any reference whatsoever to Martin Luther’s own Lucubrationes, which inspired Krzycki’s polemic and to which this 1527 book constitutes a response. It was the norm, in both early Reformation polemic and in the humanist polemic which Giese, Flosculorum Lutheranorum; Stanisław Byliński, Defensorium Ecclesiae adversus Laurentium Corvinum (Kraków, 1531); see also Szamotulski, Anacephaleosis, composed against his fellow lecturer at the Poznań Academy, Kristoph Hegendorff. 27 The others were Bishop Jan Konarski’s brief preface to the papal bull Exsurge Domine (Kraków, 1520), which can be viewed as a proto-polemic, and Nuncio Ferreri’s Oratio legati apostolici habita Thorunij in Prussia ad Serenissimum Poloniae regem contra errores Fratris Martini Lutheri (Kraków, 1521); repr. in Zacharius Ferreri (1519–21) et nuntii minores (1522–53), ed. Henryk Wojtyska (Rome: Institutum Historicum Polonicum Romae, 1992), 108–16. 28 Krzycki, De afflictione ecclesiae, fo. C. 29 ‘Inter alia monstra huius turbulenti seculi nostril, Inclyta Bona Regina, haud scio, an sit aliud quod mirere magis, quam sonum illum Evangelicum’ (ibid., dedication). 30 Krzycki, Encomia Luteri, fos 2–5. 26

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had preceded it, for antagonists to treat such exchanges as a personal duel, a combative public dialogue, relentlessly naming and citing one another.31 This was the style of polemic which Luther himself had wholeheartedly adopted from 1517, not least in his most celebrated combat in print, with Erasmus of Rotterdam.32 By contrast, De afflictione ecclesiae, although obviously a reply to the 1522 Lucubrationes, does not anywhere mention that text or its author. Krzycki’s direct debts to Luther’s commentary would, however, be obvious to any sixteenth-century or indeed modern reader who happened to have both works before them. Part of a series of commentaries on the book of Psalms, Luther’s treatment of Psalm 21 (22) was largely an exposition of his doctrine of redemption, in pedagogic mode. For a few paragraphs in the middle of the text, however, reaching the line ‘diviserunt sibi vestimenta mea’ (‘they divide my clothes among themselves’), Luther abruptly adopted a polemical tone. Reading the Crucifixion as an allegory for the state of the contemporary church, Luther claimed that the crown of thorns symbolized ‘impious men’, popes, cardinals, bishops and high clergy living in pomp and luxury, whereas afflicted parishioners were the suffering head of Christ. Spelling out his point, Luther concluded that the high clergy ‘make the church suffer’.33 It is this germ of a literary idea or conceit, tucked away within Luther’s commentary, which Krzycki adopted, extended and inverted, making the notion of the Reformation as the Passion of the (Catholic) Church central to his own De afflictione ecclesiae. Krzycki is, then, in direct dialogue with Luther and his Lucubrationes, but pretends not to be. By attempting to render Martin Luther invisible in De afflictione ecclesiae, Krzycki is perhaps grappling with a central paradox of anti-heretical (or indeed any) polemic – how to mitigate the risk that entering into dialogue, however hostile, with an opponent legitimizes them and their views, amplifying them. Having put Luther at the heart of his 1524 polemic, in 1527 Krzycki kept the ex-Augustinian at the margins, at a distance, petulantly ignoring him, even as he took direct issue with Luther’s teachings and publications. This is a polemic which tries to deny its dialogic nature and obscure its unnamed interlocutor. The book also attacks heresia in general as a dangerous crime. Heresy is however presented here in an abstract and diffuse way, and the label luteranismus – a noun very widely used in Polish writing and royal documents of the period – is not employed, even though Luther’s celebrated doctrines are discussed in the text. Unlike much European anti-Reformation polemic of this period, in e.g. Johann Reuchlin, Defensio Joannis Reuchlin Phorcensis II. contra calumniatores suos Colonienses (Tubingen, 1514); Jakob van Hoogstraten, Ad Joannem Ingewinkel apologia secunda (Cologne, 1519). 32 The Erasmus–Luther controversy included the following works: Erasmus, De libro arbitrio (Basel, 1524); Luther, De servo arbitrio (Wittenberg, 1525); Erasmus, Hyperaspistes diatribae adversus Servuum Arbitrium Martini Lutheri (Basel, 1526). 33 ‘indoctos et infulsos homines patitur Ecclesia’ (Luther, Lucubrationes, fos Kii–Kijv), 31

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attacking heresy, Krzycki’s chief tactic is not the straightforward rebuttal of Lutheran theology by presenting a set of intellectual arguments which might prove Luther to be irrefutably wrong. Instead, Krzycki discredits heresia by taking a more emotional-devotional approach, presenting heretics, in early sixteenth-century Poland’s heavily Passion-focused devotional landscape, as perpetrating nothing less than the crucifixion of the church, the mystical body of Christ. The vinegar offered to Christ is thus ’falsis et venenatis dogmatibus’ (‘the false and poisonous dogmas’) spread by heretics among the people.34 The dividing up of Christ’s robe among the soldiers is, says Krzycki, the looting of churches, iconoclasm, the seizure of funds designated for the poor and other such atrocities committed by heretics.35 Reaching line 18 of the psalm, ‘foderunt manus meas et pedes meos’ (‘they have bound my hands and my feet’) it is explained that this binding of the psalmist’s/Christ’s hands and feet is the denial of the doctrine of good works, which is the foundation of the church, the body of Christ.36 Similarly, glossing the line ‘dispersa sunt omnia ossa mea’ (‘all my bones are scattered’), Krzycki says that the bones of the church, which hold the body together, are the high clergy, who have been subjected to such attack in heretical writings.37 De afflictione ecclesiae even treats the death of the church as imminent, as a result of attacks by heretical ‘serpents’ – ‘iam (inquit ecclesia) in pulverem mortis… deduxisti me’ (‘now, says the church, you lead me into the dust of death’).38 By identifying the late medieval church so closely with the person of Christ, Krzycki is thus vividly and uncompromisingly casting its Lutheran opponents as his tormentors. The theme of heresy as death-bringing in general is found throughout the work. Glossing line 15 of the psalm, ‘sicut aqua effusus sum’ (‘I am poured out like water’), Krzycki quotes Jerome and Peter’s descriptions of the church as a fountain of life, but heretics as dry fountains.39 Elsewhere, a church fragmented by heresies is compared to a tree with broken branches, which cannot bear fruit.40 The starkest comment comes, however, in the extract from the commentary on Job attributed to Origen, printed as an appendix to the work. ‘Origen’ declares that (ancient) heresies are the work of that three-horned demon the Devil and are nothing less than ‘verae ianuae mortis’ (‘the true doorway to death’).41 Heresy, in this reading, brings death to the mystical body of Christ, and eternal death to its damned followers. 36 37 38 39 40 41 34 35

Krzycki, De afflictione ecclesiae, fo. Bij. Ibid., fo. Bij–Bijv Ibid., fo. Civv Ibid., fos Cv–Cij. Ibid., fo. Ciijv. Ibid., fo. Cv. Ibid., fo. Ciiv. Ibid., fo. E.

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As part of De afflictione ecclesiae’s polemical assault on heresy, heterodoxy is also portrayed as being full of contradictions and inversions. The most sustained attack on the new teachings found in this work, in the dedicatory letter to the Queen of Poland which lambasts Evangelicus, makes the alleged inconsistency of the Evangelical’s thinking his defining characteristic: ‘what he used to praise, he now condemns; what he agreed to he now disagrees with, what he used to persuade people of, he now dissuades them from’.42 Teaching on good works as necessary for salvation has thus been replaced by a belief in faith alone, sola fide; a dedication to clerical celibacy has been shed by the Evangelical, in lieu of an insistence on clerical marriage; the man who was once venerated as pope is now identified as the Antichrist, and so on, in a roll call of Lutheran doctrines. Presenting Reformation teachings as novel and the product of fickle minds was clearly meant to undermine any claims they might make to religious or intellectual authority. This presentation of Luther’s theology as a direct inversion of traditional teaching would, however, have had particular resonance in the sixteenth century. As Stuart Clark convincingly demonstrated in his study of early modern witchcraft, and as others have shown in work on vagrancy and carnival, sixteenth-century European society had a horrified fascination with the idea of inversion – of a world turned upside down, of a photographic negative of the ordered Christian world, in which anarchy (and perhaps the Devil) reigned.43 Evangelical heresy is presented in De afflictione ecclesiae as the dark inverted image of the church itself. De afflictione ecclesiae also functioned as a polemic in that it sought to construct or articulate an identity for opponents of the Reformation. To define and depict heresy is, inevitably, to define and depict the orthodox church itself. Like two magnets, they exist in relation to (and creative tension with) one another. Throughout De afflictione ecclesiae, Krzycki tries to present a coherent, authoritative statement of the ‘orthodox’ alternative to Lutheranism. In the act of polemicizing against the Reformation, he makes identity claims for his church in a number of ways – theologically, literarily, historically, metaphysically and finally eschatologically. The work contains passages of traditional ecclesiology, such as theological statements about the nature of the church. Krzycki, for example, defends the Roman papacy by arguing repeatedly that one of the hallmarks of the universal church is its unity, which can only be ensured through the rule of the one ‘qui ea quae olim commendavit, nunc vituperet, quae consuit, rursus dissuat, & quae denique persuasit, vicissim dissuadeat ’ (ibid., fo. Aij). 43 Stuart Clark, ‘Inversion, Misrule and the Meaning of Witchcraft’, Past and Present 87 (1980): 98–127; Bob Scribner, ‘Reformation, Carnival and the World Turned Upside Down’, Social History 3 (1978): 303–29; A.L. Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England, 1560–1640 (London: Methuen, 1985). 42

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vicar of Christ.44 Statements such as this are theological commonplaces in anti-Reformation polemic, and Krzycki found room for them in his oftenunconventional commentary-lament.45 Using more adventurous literary techniques, Krzycki gave the church an identity, immediacy and even a personality by allowing her regularly to speak in the first person. The prose of De afflictione ecclesiae – with its quotations from scripture and the Church Fathers, and third-person allegorical commentary by the author – is occasionally interrupted by bracing declarations such as these, where another voice cuts in: ‘quod una sim catholica ecclesia, in qua est communion sanctorum, & remissio peccatorum’ (‘I am the one Catholic Church, in which exists the communion of saints and in which there is forgiveness of sins’).46 Elsewhere, ‘ecclesia’ addresses God directly, ‘Tu deus, inquit ecclesia, qui in lege veteri…’ (‘You, God, says the church, who under the old law …’).47 This first-person voice of ‘ecclesia’ sits alongside, and merges with, the first-person voice of the psalmist David and of Christ quoting this psalm from the cross, thereby making the claim that the church is the authentic vessel of God. Here we see an appropriation of the psalmist’s voice, similar to that explored by Annie Sutherland in English contexts.48 Krzycki seeks to provide further evidence for the late-medieval church’s status as the true universal church by presenting that institution as historically rooted in the Apostolic period, yet also timeless. Krzycki, in a bread-andbutter anti-Lutheran technique, quotes regularly from the New Testament and Church Fathers against ‘heretics’, but in so doing he effectively collapses the great distance in time and space which separated those men from the church of his own day, thereby presenting the church of the early 1520s and the church of late antiquity as the same, unchanging institution. The inclusion of the vivid anti-heretical passage (purportedly) from Origen at the end of De afflictione ecclesiae, for example, in effect claims that the ‘heresies’ of which the third-century North African cleric speaks are the same spiritual phenomenon as sixteenth-century North European Lutheranism. If the humanist project was at its heart about historicizing the ancient past, where polemic was concerned it suited even keen lovers of the bellis litteris, such as Krzycki the Neolatin poet, to turn back to older, diachronic notions of church and heresy in their readings of the Church Fathers. This central claim, that the early sixteenth-century Latin church was the one eternal church of Christ, is also buttressed in this polemic by making reference 46 47 48 44 45

Krzycki, De afflictione ecclesiae, fos Cij, Diij. See e.g. Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents. Krzycki, De afflictione ecclesiae, fo. Div. Ibid., fo. Biv. ‘Psalms as Polemic’, in this volume, ch. 7.

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to the metaphysical, to supernatural events outside the text. In his dedication to Queen Bona, Krzycki tells the story of a consecrated host which began to bleed at Mass in an (unnamed) royal Prussian town, during Lutheran disturbances in the area, to the amazement of the many worshippers present. In this ‘prodigium’, Krzycki spelt out, ‘our redeemer wanted to show us abundantly how his church suffers in that region’.49 Here the polemical text points to something more powerful and persuasive than itself, a miracle. Krzycki, furthermore, linked De afflictione ecclesiae directly with the bleeding host miracle, by stating that it was upon learning of this incident that he decided to write on the afflictions of the church.50 The book in the reader’s hand is therefore born with the holy vision which occurred in Prussia. There are also eschatological elements in De afflictione ecclesiae, which seek to persuade the reader that the church led by the pope is a transcendental entity. In the book’s finale, Krzycki looks beyond historical time, to describe graphically the final triumph of ‘ecclesia’ at the end of time. In a passage spoken almost entirely by the church in the first person – an extended closing speech for ‘ecclesia’ – and printed largely in capital letters, it is explained that all ‘heretics’ and ‘infidel’ will confess the one Lord, all kings and peoples of the earth bow down, the doctors of the church will enter heaven, and there will be but the one sheepfold and the one shepherd.51 Here, the polemic adopts a tone reminiscent of (and images from) the book of Revelation, moving into apocalyptic mode, before metamorphosing at its close into a prayer, ‘Ipse enim fecit nos, & non ipsi nos, cui honor & Gloria in saecula saeculorum, Amen’ (‘to [the Lord] be honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen.’)52 There are grounds for believing that Krzycki’s characterization and celebration of the old church, rather than the attack on evangelical heretics per se, was the primary function of De afflictione ecclesiae. The title already offers the reader a clue that ‘ecclesia’ is at the heart of the work, its chief protagonist. All polemic, of course, by drawing lines between two parties, inevitably defines the author’s camp, just as much as that of his opponents. However, this element, while embedded within all polemic, was particularly significant in the early Reformation period. By the 1520s, the need for those in the ‘old church’ to define that ‘ecclesia’ had grown acute. It is mainly historians of theology who have noted that, in the fifteenth century, the Latin church entered a period of doctrinal ‘Quod prodigium … redemptor noster abunde nobis indicare visus esset, quanta in regione illa cum ecclesia sua pateretur’ (Krzycki, De afflictione ecclesiae, fo. Aiv). For holy blood miracles in German-speaking areas of northern Europe, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). 50 Krzycki, De afflictione ecclesiae, fo. Aiv. 51 Ibid., fo. Div. 52 Ibid., fo. Divv. 49

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Unklarheit, a fuzziness around its core teachings and intellectual uncertainty over the boundaries of religious orthodoxy.53 David Bagchi, for example, has captured how difficult it was for the first anti-Luther polemicists, such as Johannes Eck, to formulate definitive rebuttals of Luther, when there was no definitive body of doctrine, for example on indulgences, which he could clearly be said to have broken from.54 Krzycki’s bullish picture in 1527 of the ‘ecclesia catholica’ as the one true church, under papal leadership, in keeping with the teachings of the Church Fathers, must be read in this light. By the 1520s, when it was no longer clear who had the moral, intellectual or institutional authority to define Christian orthodoxy in the Latin west, it thus fell to (self-appointed) polemicists to tell their fellow Christians what, and where, the church was. De afflictione ecclesiae is, then, anti-Reformation polemic which tries to deny its polemical nature – it does not name Martin Luther or the Lutheran publication it is written in response to. It is polemic masked as prayerful lament and scriptural commentary. It is also characterized by a complex intertexuality, between at least three texts. There is the original Psalm 21 (22) itself in the Old Testament (the first line of which is, in the gospel accounts, spoken by the dying Christ); Krzycki’s ‘ecclesia’, who in effect quotes Christ quoting the psalm; and, always in the background, there is Luther’s own exposition of this psalm in light of the Passion, and Reformation teaching, in his 1522 Lucubrationes. Yet, whether he liked it or not, Andrzej Krzycki’s primary purpose in De afflictione ecclesiae is, surely, to give his readers a working definition of the church they had inherited from the late Middle Ages, a church led by the pope, based on the teachings of the Fathers, with a strong clerical caste, which believed that works were crucial to salvation, while using age-honoured forms of worship. That was not a definition which all ‘Catholics’ in Jagiellonian Poland would have agreed with, in a kingdom where there had long been serious ambivalence towards the papacy and where the central works-versus-faith argument of the Reformation struck many as a rather specialized quarrel between theologians.55 De afflictione ecclesiae is an attempt to make a church, which was institutionally a little flimsy by 1500, look like an impenetrable stronghold, and this strong 53 See Joseph Lortz, Die Reformation in Deutschland (Freiburg: Herder, 1941); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, vol. 4 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 10–68; Lucy E.C. Wooding, Rethinking Catholicism in Reformation England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 3, 14, 20, 48. For a recent interpretation of late medieval religious trends, see Stephen Mossman, Marquand von Lindau and the Challenges of Religious Life in Late Medieval Germany: The Passion, the Eucharist, the Virgin Mary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 54 Bagchi, Luther’s Earliest Opponents, 5–6, 17–43. 55 For Polish anti-papalism, see e.g. Natalia Nowakowska, ‘Poland and the Crusade in the Reign of King Jan Olbracht, 1492–1501’, in Norman Housley (ed.), Crusading in the Fifteenth Century: Message and Impact (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004), 128–47.

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Catholic church which Andrzej Krzycki imagined in 1527, defined explicitly against Lutheranism, is a pre-emption of what would indeed come to pass in the Counter Reformation, under the leadership of men such as Stanisław Hozjusz, whose little poem in praise of his patron graces the final page of this Krakówprinted polemic. Medieval polemics had long articulated how the church differed from those who were identified as its opponents – heretics and non-Christians. Early Reformation polemic differed from these medieval predecessors in their application of humanist rhetoric to theology and in their use of the printing press. More significantly, because they were writing in a world where central ecclesiastical authority was weakened and where issues such as the role of the pope, indulgences, utraquism and even theologies of salvation were actively debated among ‘Catholics’, there was in the 1520s and 1530s a special burden on polemicists to define orthodoxy clearly, and this in turn made them powerful players in the early Reformation. In other words, in a situation where the fifteenth-century church had generated a wide variety of possible Catholicisms, polemicists such as Krzycki, in responding to Luther, were able to pick which Catholicism to defend and enshrine in their texts. Polemics such as De afflictione ecclesiae, by drawing red lines, by offering confident definitions of a Roman church which was in the eyes of many poorly defined, were therefore not merely commentaries on the Reformation – they played a crucial role in bringing it into being, in successfully prising open a gap in European society and culture and thus splitting medieval Christendom.

Chapter 11

The Polemics of Moderation in Late Seventeenth-Century England George Southcombe1 VErtues be founde in thynges that have a mean betwene extremities, which are ether to muche or to littel The Ethiques of Aristotle, trans. John Wilkinson So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Revelation 3:16

The interplay of two great traditions – Aristotelianism and revelation – was central to early modern thinking. However, those traditions were potentially in tension with one another. The Aristotelian concentration on virtue as a mean that lies between two extremes was not always easy to reconcile with the binaries present in scripture: sheep and goats, Christ and Antichrist.2 This tension has implications for any history of polemical writing. A polemic, it might be thought, is set up against a constructed Other. But the pervasiveness of the language of moderation, and the widespread assumption that it provided a powerful means of legitimation, led authors to make polemical claims while seeking to maintain that they occupied a moderate position. This might initially seem to be a simple Earlier versions of this paper were presented at conferences in Princeton, Oxford and at the British Academy. I am grateful to the participants – particularly Felicity Heal and Alex Walsham – for their comments and questions. I would also like to thank Alexandra Gajda and Grant Tapsell for taking the time to read this essay in draft and making a number of helpful suggestions, and the British Academy for electing me to a postdoctoral fellowship in 2008–11, during which some of the research presented here was completed. 2 Luc Racaut and Alec Ryrie, ‘Introduction: Between Coercion and Persuasion’, in eid. (eds), Moderate Voices in the European Reformation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 1–12; see also Ethan Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); id., ‘Beyond Good and Evil: Thinking with Moderates in Early Modern England’, Journal of British Studies 49 (2010): 488–513. The classic discussion of the significance of binaries to early modern thought is Stuart Clark, ‘Inversion, Misrule and the Meaning of Witchcraft’, Past and Present 87 (1980): 98–127. 1

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act of dissimulation. Certainly it was made possible by the essential plasticity of the Aristotelian framework: as individual authors could control the definition of the extremes they could always place themselves at a mid-point.3 However, as Shagan has recently demonstrated, appeals to moderation were not (or at least not necessarily) simply cynical ploys and reflected genuine, if often mutually exclusive, attempts to examine issues within a dominant intellectual framework. What is more the close link between ideas of moderation and the exercise of restraint meant that the language of moderation could logically be used to justify violence.4 The link between moderation and violence makes the notion of the polemics of moderation perhaps less paradoxical than it might first appear (after all a language used to vindicate violence is close to the etymological root of ‘polemic’), and it is therefore unsurprising that the polemics of moderation has a long history that might be traced. This essay, however, concentrates on a specific period in English history when appeals to moderation in polemical writing took on a special significance and shaped political and religious developments in particular ways. The civil wars of the mid-seventeenth century had a profound impact on the history of English polemical writing. While in the early seventeenth century the English political nation had sought to conduct its affairs using a carefully mediated language of consensus – in which apparently different constitutional understandings were elided in favour of claims to have shared interests – the events of the 1640s and 1650s showed that this language was a facade hiding profound ideological differences.5 These differences were expressed with growing vehemence and in increasing quantity. The collapse of censorship, which came with the abolition of the Courts of Star Chamber and High Commission in 1641, drove forward an expansion of print that was already in process. Between 1641 and 1642, there was an almost eight-fold increase in the number of printed items published each year, and many items engaged directly with the immediate political contexts in which they were produced.6 The printed The rhetorical figure of paradiastole – the redescription of vices as virtues – is related to this plasticity (see Quentin Skinner, ‘Paradiastole: Redescribing the Vices as Virtues’, in Sylvia Adamson, Gavin Alexander and Katrin Ettenhuber [eds], Renaissance Figures of Speech [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 149–66). 4 Shagan, ‘Beyond Good and Evil’; id., The Rule of Moderation. 5 Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603–1642 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992); for a strong assertion of the potency of the ideological divisions overlaid by the language of consensus, see Clive Holmes, ‘Parliament, Liberty, Taxation, and Property’, in J.H. Hexter (ed.), Parliament and Liberty from the Reign of Elizabeth to the English Civil War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 122–54, 299–304. 6 Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), chs 5, 6; John Morrill, ‘The Causes and Course of the 3

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newsbook developed, and the conflict between Royalists and Parliamentarians was carried out in words as well as with arms.7 This was not a period in which the polemics of moderation were forgotten – the Leveller newspaper was called The Moderate8 – but in contrast much of the writing was vituperative and worked through the expression of sexual, religious and political binaries. On the eve of the Restoration, John Milton expressed his fears about the return of the monarch in terms which, while they were unusual in their literary quality – and indeed in the depth of the republicanism they announced – were typical of the force of polemical writing in this age. He wrote warning those who now sided with the Royalists: Let our zealous backsliders forethink now with themselves, how thir necks yok’d with these tigers of Bacchus, these new fanatics of not the preaching but the sweating-tub, inspir’d with nothing holier then the Venereal pox, can draw one way under monarchie to the establishing of church discipline with these newdisgorg’d atheismes9

He ended with a jeremiad, seeking to appeal to those few (those very, very few) who were ‘justly and timely fearing to what a precipice of destruction the deluge of this epidemic madness would hurrie us through the general defection of a misguided and abus’d multitude’.10 Despite Milton’s warnings the king did return in 1660, and polemical writing entered a new phase. It was directly affected by the experience of the civil wars in two ways. First, there was in part a reaction against the violent, polarizing languages of 1640–60.11 The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion (1660) enshrined in statute the attempt to remove the preceding years from collective memory. It imposed a lexical straitjacket, outlawing those divisive terms which

British Civil Wars’, in N.H. Keeble (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Writing of the English Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 13–31. 7 Joad Raymond, The Invention of the Newspaper: English Newsbooks, 1641–1649 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); David Underdown, A Freeborn People: Politics and the Nation in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), ch. 5. 8 I am grateful to Sir Keith Thomas for reminding me of this fact. See further Shagan, The Rule of Moderation, 268–9; for a fuller discussion of moderation in the mid-seventeenth century, see ibid., ch. 7. 9 John Milton, The Readie and Easie Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth, 2nd edn, in Complete Prose Works of John Milton, ed. D.M. Wolfe et al., rev. edn (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 7: 452–3. 10 Ibid. 463. 11 Steven N. Zwicker, Politics and Language in Dryden’s Poetry: The Arts of Disguise (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984), 85.

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might ‘revive the memory of the late differences or the occasions thereof ’.12 But, secondly, while there was an attempt to place constraints on language, genuine reconciliation was impossible. The issues over which the civil wars were fought remained unresolved.13 The experience of the wars thus produced two seemingly contradictory effects. It heightened a desire to present a case in moderate terms, but it also precluded the possibility of genuine compromise. These effects reinvigorated the use of moderation as a polemical strategy. The development of this strategy might be traced throughout the late seventeenth century, but here its use at two critical moments and its ultimate impact will be discussed. The Restoration Religious Settlement The years of religious experimentation in the 1640s and 1650s witnessed the abolition of the episcopal Church of England, compulsory church attendance and the Prayer Book. It is now clear that in the face of these trials, the church continued to enjoy widespread covert support.14 Nonetheless, it could hardly experience the years in which it was proscribed as anything other than traumatic. In 1660, recovering from that trauma opened up the genuine possibility of returning the Church of England to a stable and relatively comprehensive position. Some felt that an opportunity was being presented which had not been seen since the reign of Elizabeth: a new religious settlement could be established, and debates which had ravaged the church could be settled. Ironically after what used to be called the Puritan Revolution, it even seemed possible that the problem of Puritanism itself could be solved. From 1660 to 1662, debates raged again over questions of church government and the Prayer Book, and they continued even after the Act of Uniformity of 1662, demonstrating that while this was a defining moment in the history of English religion, the nature of the Church of England remained contested and debated.15 Cited in David Norbrook, Writing the English Republic: Poetry, Rhetoric and Politics, 1627–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 1. 13 Jonathan Scott, England’s Troubles: Seventeenth-Century English Political Instability in European Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 14 Kenneth Fincham and Stephen Taylor, ‘Vital Statistics: Episcopal Ordination and Ordinands in England, 1646–60’, English Historical Review 126 (2011): 319–44; Judith Maltby, ‘Suffering and Surviving: The Civil Wars, the Commonwealth and the Formation of “Anglicanism”’, in Christopher Durston and Judith Maltby (eds), Religion in Revolutionary England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 158–80; John Morrill, ‘The Church in England, 1642–9’, in id. (ed.), Reactions to the English Civil War 1642–1649 (London: Macmillan, 1982), 89–114. 15 For short guides to these events and issues, see George Southcombe and Grant Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture: Britain and Ireland, 1660–1714 (Basingstoke: 12

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In the debates of the early 1660s, authors with a range of different religious identities turned to the polemics of moderation to seek to shape the church in their image. John Durel, minister to the French congregation newly established at the Savoy Chapel in 1661, took the theme of moderation as the keynote of his inaugural sermon, which was published in English in 1662.16 Taking his text from 1 Corinthians 11:16 (‘But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God’), Durel sought to show that any Nonconformist objections to matters indifferent were illegitimate. ‘Religion as well as Morality’, he opined, ‘requires that men be of a mild, facile, and complying disposition, that they shun contests and disputations’.17 What is more, while ‘the Tertullians, the Ireneuses, the Athanasiuses, the Augustins, with the rest of those valiant Champions of the Primitive Church’ did ‘contend, exclaim, make a noise, and stoutly oppose’ they only did so against ‘such Arch-hereticks, who did (as it were) strike God directly in the face: and that there crept into it such errors as assaulted the very heart of Religion, and made deadly thrusts at it’.18 The break with Rome was thus necessary, but to continue in a spirit of contention thereafter was wrong. The English ‘Arch-Bishops, Bishops, and other Ministers’ certainly ‘cryed aloud’ but they ‘temper[ed] their zeal, joyning with it such moderation, prudence and understanding, that they have not exclaimed against any thing, but what was altogether intollerable’.19 Indeed, ‘there never was any Church less contentious then this Church of England’.20 In spite of this, the exasperated and faux naïf Durel said: ‘never did any, from the first beginning of the Reformation unto this present day, meet with so many contentious spirits as she hath done’.21 With his eyes fixed firmly on those who at that moment were seeking to reconfigure the Church of England and its customs, Durel sought to produce an argument that demonstrated the falseness of their position and worked in part by adopting arguments which had found favour among them. Most obviously, Durel sought to place the English church within continental Protestantism (and to extend that heritage back before Luther).22 He wrote: Macmillan, 2010), ch. 2; George Southcombe, ‘Dissent and the Restoration Church of England’, in Grant Tapsell (ed.), The Later Stuart Church, 1660–1714 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012), 195–216. 16 Durel’s sermon was also published in French: John Durel, Sermon Prononcé en L’Eglise Francoise (London, 1661). 17 John Durel, The Liturgy of the Church of England Asserted (London, 1662), 4. 18 Ibid. 5. 19 Ibid. 14. 20 Ibid. 16. 21 Ibid. 22 John McDonnell Hintermaier, ‘Rewriting the Church of England: Jean Durel, Foreign Protestants and the Polemics of Restoration Canterbury’, in Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (eds), From Strangers to Citizens: The Integration of Immigrant

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Polemic I may venture to tell you by the way, that the Churches of Hungary, Transylvania, Lithuania, Poland … and the remainders of the Church of the Brethren of Bohemia (who of all Christians were the first Reformers in these latter times) have not onely their Liturgies very like unto ours both in matter and form, but that they use them also after our manner.23

He thus brought his conformist vision of the Church of England into line with an internationalist history for the church and removed that argument from the weaponry available to his detractors. Durel’s argument, based around the virtue of the Church of England’s moderation, was intended to hobble his Nonconformist opponents. It rewrote and constructed a historical vision of the Church of England that allowed for both its internationalism and for the nature of its Reformation. His moderation was two-fold. First, in the claim that the Church of England occupied a middle ground, maintaining the best of the church that had not been corrupted by Rome. Secondly, in his internationalism, which rejected the notion of wholesale English exceptionalism and tried to stress the English church’s position within Europe. The articulation of both claims was ultimately polemical. Is it possible to be any more precise about the polemical position that underpinned Durel’s views? As John Hintermaier and Anthony Milton, among others, have argued, it obviously set Durel apart from the view developed by the Laudian author Peter Heylyn which attacked many of the international manifestations of Protestantism.24 It is no surprise that when Durel reviewed Heylyn’s work Aërius redivivus before publication he could not recommend it to Archbishop Sheldon as ‘it would be very offensive, as it is very injurious, to the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas, and would gett no credit, either to him or those that should have a hand in the printing of it, if published, being so full of mistakes, passion and uncharitableness’.25 Hintermaier, however, sees Durel as a new kind of Laudian. This is less clear, although Durel’s links with the Laudians John Cosin and Thomas Sydserff might make him guilty by Communities in Britain, Ireland and Colonial America, 1550–1750 (Brighton and Portland, OR: Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland and Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 353– 8; see also Tony Claydon, ‘The Church of England and the Churches of Europe, 1660–1714’, in Tapsell (ed.), The Later Stuart Church, 173–92, at 182–3; Tony Claydon, Europe and the Making of England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 284–5, 290–2, 304–5; Noel Malcolm, Aspects of Hobbes (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 287–8. 23 Durel, The Liturgy of the Church of England Asserted, 19. 24 Hintermaier, ‘Rewriting the Church of England’; Anthony Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic in Seventeenth-Century England: The Career and Writings of Peter Heylyn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 210–13. 25 Milton, Laudian and Royalist Polemic, 211.

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association.26 What is clear is that Durel was a clergyman who used a moderate pose in his endeavours to fashion a narrow, authoritarian and ceremonialist Church of England. Others would take these arguments further and push more firmly towards calling for the reinvigoration of William Laud’s vision for the church. John Barbon, vicar of Dallington, Northamptonshire, most probably published his Leitourgia theiotera ergia, or, Liturgie a Most Divine Service in 1663. The comments it contains on his Arminian theology, the church of Rome and Archbishop Laud identify him clearly as one of those who sought to resurrect the church of the 1630s. Given the centrality of reactions to that church in bringing about the collapse of Charles I’s government, Barbon’s position was nothing if not polemical.27 He was nonetheless able to obscure much of his own extremeness by defining his position in contradistinction to one at an opposite extreme. The Welsh Fifth-Monarchist Vavasor Powell had been an early disputant in the Prayer Book debates and one whose tract had been much republished.28 Powell himself had attempted to suggest that his argument represented a broad swathe of Protestant opinion, but Powell’s known political radicalism made him an easy target for Barbon who, following a page-long table outlining Powell’s failings, commented rather disingenuously: But, I restrain my self from the farther pursuit of this matter, and propose it to the Reader, whether the condemnation of our Church-Government and Service by such a person, be not a very vocal strong advocate for it, according to that of Tertullian concerning Nero, Whom, saith he, who so knows, may understand that it was some grand Good, that was condemned by Nero.29

Through the simple expedient of using Powell’s example to define an extreme, Barbon was able to construct and occupy a middle-ground. Sharon Adams, ‘Sydserff, Thomas (1581–1663)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), (accessed 22 Sept. 2013); Vivienne Larminie, ‘Durel, John (1625–1683)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (accessed 22 Sept. 2013); Anthony Milton, ‘Cosin, John (1595–1672)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, (accessed 22 Sept. 2013). 27 See e.g. John Morrill, ‘The Religious Context of the English Civil War’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th ser. 34 (1984): 155–78. 28 Vavasor Powell, Common-Prayer-Book No Divine Service (London, 1660). A further three editions were published in 1661. 29 Barbon, Leitourgia theiotera ergia, or, Liturgie a Most Divine Service (Oxford, 1663), 186. 26

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Moderation was thus a keynote of the arguments used by those who erected the narrow, intolerant late seventeenth-century Church of England.30 Indeed, it has become increasingly clear that even those churchmen whose thought may be characterized as Latitudinarian did not in any simple way lay the foundations for future toleration.31 S.P. (normally identified as Simon Patrick), in a classic description of Latitudinarian principles, provided a further set of definitions of the moderation of the Church of England: As for the Rites and Ceremonies of Divine worship, they do highly approve that vertuous mediocrity which our Church observes between the meretricious gaudiness of the Church of Rome, and the squalid sluttery of Fanatick conventicles.32

The liberty of conscience which Latitudinarians were accused of espousing was in fact defined within tight parameters: And now let us soberly consider what was before said; they sincerely embrace all the Articles of Doctrine held forth by the Church, they cheerfully use and approve her Liturgy and Ceremonies, they cordially love and obey her government: how then can they pursue any Liberty that can be dangerous to her? for in all other things the Church her selfe leaves them to their liberty, and who shall blame them for using it? but there are some men it may be, are offended that the Church is so indulgent a Mother that will not unnecessarily impose upon the judgement or practise of her Children; they would have all things bound up, and nothing free; they would fain be adding some ciphers to their significant Articles she now prodounds, and instead of 39 would make 39000.& tis well if they would content themselves with ciphers, and not add falsityes to make up the tale: they have it may be, an ambition to out-do the Assemblies Confession; they would be content that Aquina’s Summs were put into the Creed, and all the janglings of the Schools into the Prayers of the Church; that so by their Longitude, they might 30 The intellectual underpinnings of the argument for intolerance are brilliantly surveyed in Mark Goldie, ‘The Theory of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England’, in Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke (eds), From Persecution to Toleration: The Glorious Revolution and Religion in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 331–68; see also Southcombe, ‘Dissent and the Restoration Church’, 199–204. 31 Although, as John Spurr showed, it is incorrect to think of a Latitudinarian party within the Restoration Church, the label still retains its usefulness in characterizing the thought of some churchmen (see ‘“Latitudinarianism” and the Restoration Church’, Historical Journal 31 [1988]: 61–82). For a defence of the continued use of the term, see Jon Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s: Daniel Scargill and Samuel Parker’, Historical Journal 42 (1999): 85–108, at 87 n. 7. 32 S.P., A Brief Account of the New Sect of Latitude-Men (London, 1662), 7.

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be even with their neighbors of the Latitude. Others it may be think we have not ceremonies enough, and if they can find any antiquated Rite in some motheaten Author, they have an itch presently of bringing it into the Church, without considering whether there be the same reason or use of it now, that may have been in other times and places; and then if their Neighbors will not follow their example, but think it enough to do what the Rubrick and Canons require, they shall be cryed out on for disaffected; this is all that liberty of conscience they can justly be accused of, unless I should add that they are so merciful as not to think it fit to knock people on the head because they are not of our Church.33

S.P.’s dismissal of the ‘sluttery’ of fanatics and his ironic location of mercy in the refusal to ‘knock people on the head’ provided little immediate hope for religious dissenters. In fact, as Jon Parkin has shown, arguments developed from the basis of Latitudinarian principles could be used to defend strongly intolerant ecclesiological positions. In particular, the argument from natural law that sovereigns had the power to decide upon adiaphora – things indifferent – and should adopt forms which would keep society at peace was used to define those who sought freedom of worship outside the national structure as dangerous political radicals.34 The polemical use of moderation therefore shaped the religious landscape of Restoration England, being used to defend an intolerant Church of England and the persecution of dissent. The continued intimate connection between religion and politics in this period means that it is unsurprising that it was also instrumental in driving and consolidating political developments.35 Exclusion and the Devaluing of Moderation During the period 1678–81, England entered a new era of crisis. Spurious tales of a ‘popish plot’ escalated political tension, and in parliaments called from 1679 to 1681 bills were presented that sought to exclude the Catholic James, duke of York from the succession to the English Crown. The issue of exclusion, while only one among many, was the one around which everything coalesced, and previously more fluid political identities hardened into political parties. Whigs (supporters of exclusion) were opposed by Tories, and the emergence of Ibid. 11–12. Jon Parkin, ‘Liberty Transpros’d: Andrew Marvell and Samuel Parker’, in Warren

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Chernaik and Martin Dzelzainis (eds), Marvell and Liberty (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999), 269–89; Parkin, ‘Hobbism in the Later 1660s’. For further thoughts on how particular Latitudinarian positions could lead to intolerance of certain other positions, see Shagan, The Rule of Moderation, 310–17. 35 Tim Harris, Paul Seaward and Mark Goldie (eds), The Politics of Religion in Restoration England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).

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two clear sides fed into fears that England was poised on the edge of a new civil war.36 Indeed, the symmetry between the early 1640s and the 1670s could seem unnervingly precise. The lapse of the Licensing Act in 1679 led once again to the collapse of censorship and fuelled another print explosion. Sharply satirical and polarizing political materials were again produced. Even after the apparent Tory victory, and Charles’s reassertion of control, signalled by the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament in March 1681, partisan division remained the leitmotif of English political life.37 Fiercely polemical writing was instrumental in the crystallization of political division.38 However, within this writing appeals to moderation remained potent.39 Most famously, the Historiographer Royal and Poet Laureate John Dryden, in his mock-biblical satire, Absalom and Achitophel (published in late 1681), made extensive claims to moderation.40 In the preface to the work he wrote: ’Tis not my intention to make an apology for my poem: some will think it needs no excuse, and others will receive none. The design, I am sure, is honest, but he who draws his pen for one party must expect to make enemies of the other: for wit and fool are consequents of Whig and Tory, and every man is a knave or an ass to the contrary side. … Yet if a poem have a genius it will force its own reception in the world: for there’s a sweetness in good verse which tickles even while it hurts; and no man can be heartily angry with him who pleases him against his will. The commendation of adversaries is the greatest triumph of a writer, because it never comes unless extorted. But I can be satisfied on more easy terms: if I happen to please the more moderate sort I shall be sure of an honest party, and, in all probability, of the best judges, for the least concerned are commonly the least corrupt; and, I confess, I have laid in for those by rebating the satire (where justice would allow it) from carrying too sharp an edge.41

Southcombe and Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture, ch. 3; Mark Knights, Politics and Opinion in Crisis, 1678–81 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 37 That division along party lines remained central to English political life is the key argument of Grant Tapsell, The Personal Rule of Charles II (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007); see also Gary S. De Krey, London and the Restoration, 1659–1683 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pts 3 and 4. 38 Tapsell, The Personal Rule of Charles II, ch. 5. 39 Abigail Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), ch. 2. 40 On Dryden and the Tory party, see Phillip Harth, Pen for a Party: Dryden’s Tory Propaganda in its Contexts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). 41 John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, in The Poems of John Dryden, ed. Paul Hammond and David Hopkins (London and Harlow: Longman, 1995), 1: 450–51. 36

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So strong were Dryden’s protestations that much twentieth-century criticism accepted unquestioningly his self-positioning. However, as Steven Zwicker and Derek Hirst showed, this was to collapse ‘the poem’s political rhetoric and its political argument’.42 Rather than being a measured work, deliberately removed from the world of partisan conflict, Dryden produced a scathing attack on Whig principles.43 David’s speech at the end of the poem was ultimately a vindication of Tory desires for Charles to draw his sword against any who continued to pose a threat and to ensure that they felt the full force of ‘necessary law’.44 Dryden attempted to situate his Toryism in a middle-ground against Whig extremism, but in fact he produced a diametrically opposed ideological position. Adopting a moderate pose was thus a frequently used polemical strategy in late seventeenth-century England. The ultimate impact of this, though, was to devalue the language of moderation. Some questioned the efficacy of the notion of the mean in the moral realm. In the Baptist Benjamin Keach’s quasi-epic poem The Glorious Lover (1679) the personified Depraved Judgment pours scorn on Soul: Poor silly Soul! and is thy choice so hard? In two extreams can thy weak thoughts reward Two so unequal, with the like respect? Know’st thou not which to slight, which to affect? Submit to me, tis Judgment must advise, In this great case take heed and be thou wise. Fix where thou wilt, thy doubt-depending cause Can ne’r expect a Verdict ’twixt two Laws

Steven Zwicker and Derek Hirst, ‘Rhetoric and Disguise: Political Language and Political Argument in Absalom and Achitophel’, Journal of British Studies 21 (1981): 39–55, at 39. It may be that, post-Shagan, the reason for the disparity between the contemporary responses – which immediately identified Dryden’s poem as intensely partisan – and twentieth-century responses noted by Zwicker and Hirst is easier to understand. Seventeenthcentury readers need not have understood claims to moderation as necessarily conciliatory. Indeed, they may have expected an argument for moderation to have included a vindication of corrective violence (see Shagan, The Rule of Moderation). 43 In addition to Zwicker and Hirst, ‘Rhetoric and Disguise’, see Zwicker, Politics and Language, 85–103; Southcombe and Tapsell, Restoration Politics, Religion and Culture, 144–7; Williams, Poetry and the Creation of a Whig Literary Culture, 58–63; Matthew Jenkinson, Culture and Politics at the Court of Charles II, 1660–1685 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010),168–77. 44 Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, 530 (l:1003); Zwicker and Hirst, ‘Rhetoric and Disguise’, 51–2. Harth offers a narrower interpretation of the context in which Dryden vindicates the application of the sword (Pen for a Party, 134–6). 42

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}

Which differ, and are opposit in kind, Yet a fit medium I’le attempt to find To ease thy sad, and sore perplexed mind. .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .   Nay, furthermore, I’le speak to thee again, Thou mayst love him, and yet mayst thou retain Respect and love to other objects too. Love thy God well, but why shouldst thou let go This world, with all the precious joys therein?45

The claim of Depraved Judgment to be able to find a mean between Soul’s wholly unequal earthly and divine lovers demonstrates the way in which the language of moderation could easily be perverted. In the political realm those who genuinely sought to steer a middle course between both extreme Tory and Whig positions – so-called Trimmers – became objects of ridicule.46 Their claims to moderation were treated as false – either a mask for party allegiance or a strategy adopted for personal, material gain.47 From November 1682, Roger L’Estrange, the savage Tory propagandist, in his The Observator, moved his attention away from the Whigs and focused his ire through the character of the Trimmer.48 The Trimmer’s claims to moderation Benjamin Keach, The Glorious Lover, in English Nonconformist Poetry, 1660–1700, ed. George Southcombe (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2012), 2: 313. 46 The language of ‘trimming’ was originally nautical. It refers to those practices intended to keep the ship on an even keel. As George Savile, marquis of Halifax wrote: ‘This innocent Word Trimmer signifieth no more than this, that if men are together in a Boat, and one part of the Company would weigh it down on one side, another would make it lean as much to the contrary, it happneth there is a third Opinion, of those who conceave it would do as well, if the Boat went even, without endangering the Passengers’ (George Savile, The Character of a Trimmer, in The Works of George Savile Marquis of Halifax, ed. Mark N. Brown [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989], 1: 179). 47 Tapsell, Personal Rule of Charles II, 193–5; Mark N. Brown, ‘Trimmers and Moderates in the Reign of Charles II’, Huntington Library Quarterly 37 (1974): 311–36. The existence of those committed to trimming as an ideological position is a source of controversy. For a robust defence, see Steve Pincus, ‘Shadwell’s Dramatic Trimming’, in Donna Hamilton and Richard Strier (eds), Religion, Literature and Politics in Post-Reformation England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 253–74. Pincus’s identification of Shadwell as a Trimmer does not itself ultimately convince. 48 Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London: Allen Lane, 2005), 325; Brown, ‘Trimmers and Moderates’; Donald R. Benson, ‘Halifax and the Trimmers’, Huntington Library Quarterly 27 (1964): 115–34; Thomas C. Faulkner, ‘Halifax’s The Character of a Trimmer and L’Estrange’s Attack on Trimmers in The Observator’, Huntington Library Quarterly 37 (1973): 71–81. L’Estrange’s Observator was an extraordinary project in propaganda. From 1681 to 1687 L’Estrange produced two million 45

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were relentlessly satirized. The attempts to appropriate the memory of Elizabeth (‘She was a kind of Trimmer … betwixt the Papists, and the Protestants’) were met with derision (‘She Trimm’d the Jayles, and the Gibbets too, with a Puritan against a Papist: And One Plot against Another, to keep the Ballance Even’), and other more pertinent historical precedents for trimming were suggested: Was not Judas a Trimmer? with his Thirty pieces of Silver, on the One hand, and his Hail Master, on the Other? Were not the Forty-One-Men Trimmers too; with Liberty and Property on One side of their Mouths, and the Kings Just Prerogative, Honour, and Greatness on the Other? In short, Who were they that Destroy’d the Last King? Not his Enemyes in the Field, but his Lukewarm, Pretending Friends; The Trimmers, that kept off, and would not help him.49

The search for the mean could easily lead to vice if the principle of balance was dogmatically applied in all circumstances: Thou hast drawn the very Picture of the Trimmer that I speak of: A Creature of so Lewd and Servile a Character, that Every Honest Worthy man should avoid it, as he would do Infamy and Ruine. False in Conversation, Example, Government, Religion: False, and Treacherous, even to Falshood, and Treachery it self. He Deceives the Deceivers; and Betrays the Traytors; And that which is Virtue to Another man, is yet a Vice in him; because if he does Well at any time, it is either by Chance, or to a Wrong End. Whereas a Good Subject stands Firm to his Allegeance, without ever Computing whether he shall Get or Lose by’t. He does not Weigh his Conscience, or his Duty, against his Benefit, or Safety: He does not put his Prince and his Country in One Scale, and his Little Harlot; (perhaps) or his Bratts in Another: (Or rather his Avarice (under the Disguise of a more Plausible Pretence) but He keeps his Oath Inviolate, both to God, and Man; And Esteems his Word as Sacred as his Oath.50

Some things were simply incommensurable and could not be weighed against one another. Ultimately the Trimmer’s actions strengthened those he claimed to oppose: words, viciously denouncing those whom he saw as enemies of the kingdom (see Mark Goldie, ‘Roger L’Estrange’s Observator and the Exorcism of the Plot’, in Anne Dunan-Page and Beth Lynch [eds], Roger L’Estrange and the Making of Restoration Culture [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008], 67–88). 49 The Observator 245 (22 Nov. 1682): bold indicates black letter in the original. The relationship of the typography of The Observator to its polemical purposes is discussed in Harold Love, ‘L’Estrange, Joyce and the Dictates of Typography’, in Dunan-Page and Lynch (eds), Roger L’Estrange and the Making of Restoration Culture, 167–79. 50 The Observator 246 (23 Nov. 1682).

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What does all your Clamour amount to, but the Decrying of Popery in Words, and Setting of it up iu [sic] Practice. The Translating of Infallibility from Rome to Westminster. And the setting up of One Implicite Faith upon the Ruines of Another. And in One Word; The whole Controversy Resolves but into a True=Protestant Popery in the Conclusion.51

What is more, attempts at moderation actually created partisanship: That which you call a Reconciling, is in Truth, an Enflaming Councell; and only a Very Ill Office done, in Smooth Words. You set up for Mediators; and you make your selves Parties: And in favour of an Unrighteous Cause too, the Peoples; against Law, Duty, Religion, and all the Rules of Government. How comes it that the Biaß of all your Countenances, Discourses, & Actions, should still run that way else?52

L’Estrange, prince of late seventeenth-century polemicists, thus eroded the power of appeals to moderation. Some, most notably George Savile sought to reinvigorate the language and in his The Character of a Trimmer, which circulated in manuscript from 1685, he launched a defence of certain moderate principles, concluding resoundingly: That our Clymate is a Trimmer between that part of the world where men are roasted, and the other where they are froazen; That our Church is a Trimmer between the frenzie of Phanatick Visions, and the Lethargick Ignorance of Popish dreams; That our Laws are Trimmers between the excesses of unbounded power, and the Extravagance of Libertie not enough restrained; That true Vertue hath ever been thought a Trimmer, and to have its dwelling in the middle between the two extreams; That even God Allmighty himself is divided, between his two great Atributes, his Mercy and his Justice.53

As Mark N. Brown has demonstrated Halifax was responding to particular political events, but the general polemical context was undoubtedly that provided by L’Estrange,54 and it was, historically speaking, L’Estrange who had the better of the argument. As he had written in 1682:

53 54

The Observator 260 (18 Dec. 1682). The Observator 264 (27 Dec. 1682). Halifax, The Character of a Trimmer, 243. Mark N. Brown, ‘Introduction’ in Halifax, The Character of a Trimmer, in The Works of George Savile, 1: 33–68; Faulkner, ‘Halifax’s The Character of a Trimmer’. 51 52

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’Tis enough to make ye of a Party, to be a Neuter. You have Cast-off the Duty of a Subject, in your Bare Neutrality. And Neuters are a Faction as well as Enemies55

The political position espoused by Halifax looked increasingly forlorn, as partisanship grew from the roots it had set down in the exclusion crisis. The ‘rage of party’ – a term which still captures an essential truth about the period following the revolution of 1688–9 – had little place for those who sought to steer a middle course between opposed positions.56 The appropriation of the language of moderation for polemical purposes meant that all who used it were liable to be seen as disingenuous. The apparently paradoxical situation therefore emerged whereby appeals to moderation served to drive division and partisanship. It may be surprising that the development of political parties and the collapse of consensual languages owed much to the use of a language of moderation. It is, however, wholly predictable that those developments were in some ways the product of polemic.

The Observator 264 (27 Dec. 1682). Geoffrey Holmes, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rev. edn (London: Hambledon,

55 56

1987); Tim Harris, Politics under the Later Stuarts: Party Conflict in a Divided Society, 1660– 1715 (London: Longman, 1993), chs. 6–7.

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Index Abel 141 Absalom 246–7 Acheron 27 Achitophel 246–7 Aelfric of Eynsham 109, 119 Aelfric Bata 109, 115–17, 119 Aeneas 27 Agatha, St 102–4 aggression 24, 97–8, 110–12, 126, 138 Agnes, St 98–9 Akakij, bishop of Tver’ 173–4 Alan of Lille 131 Albertus Magnus 126 Alcuin of York 156 Alexander the Great 139 alien priories 209–10, 211, 213, 215, 218 ambiguity 20, 33, 176, 228 Anselm of Besate 109 antagonism 110–11 Antichrist 135n42, 232, 237 anti-heretical 2, 5 anti-semitism 133, 143; see also Jews Aquinas, Thomas 130 Arianism 180n49, 223 Aristotle 57, 237 Arnold of Brescia 133 Arnoul of Orléans 110 Arta (Epirus) 165 Arthur, King 59 Arundel, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury 149–50, 192n50, 195, 206, 219n155, 220 Augsburg 126–7 Augustine of Hippo, St 23, 41, 154 Austin friars 127–8 Austria 126 Authority 6, 24, 31–3, 40, 57, 114, 145–6, 161, 167, 184, 200, 204, 208, 211–12, 222, 227 authorship 46

autobiography 30, 35 Avignon 12, 17–42 Babel, see Babylon Babylon 17, 27, 30, 31, 33, 36, 39, 40 Babylonians 142 Bacchus 41 Bavaria 126 Becket, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury, 2 Benedict XII, pope 25–6 Benedicti, Jean 3 Benedictine monks 221 Berthold of Regensburg 12, 125–48 Bible 25, 82 Ecclesiastes 100 Job 138, 227 Judges 78 Lamentations (of Jeremiah) 28, 35–9, 195 Psalms 25, 35, 72–3, 150–63, 167, 171, 230 Revelations 25, 40, 234 binary structure 19, 39, 191, 205, 239 body 53, 77, 88, 99, 102 Bohemia 224, 242 Bona Sforza, queen of Poland 227, 232, 234 Bourchier, Thomas, archbishop of Canterbury 185–7, 189–90, 193, 195, 200 Brampton, Thomas 158 Brandan 57–9 Brant, Sebastian 125 Breslau, see Wrocław Briessman, Johannes 228–9 Brinton, Thomas, bishop of Rochester 199, 220n156 Bruno of Würzburg 167 Byliński, Stanisław 229

288

Polemic

Cain 141 Cajetan, Thomas, cardinal 223 Caliban 113 Calpurnius 123 Calvinism 4 Canterbury 2, 185–93, 195, 198, 200–2 Cassian of Imola 107, 112–14, 118, 123–4 Catharism 129–35, 223 Cavalchini of Villafranca, Rinaldo 31 Charles I, king of England 243 Charles II, king of England 246, 247 Christ, Jesus 19, 27n47, 36, 38–9, 58, 73, 76, 96, 97, 99, 101–3, 146, 156–7, 162–3, 169–70, 179, 180n49, 190, 197, 199, 205, 220, 227, 230, 231, 233, 235, 237 Cicero 119 Clement VI, pope 26 Clinschor ûz Ungerlant 12, 45–6, 52–64 Cocytus 27 Colet, John, dean of St Paul’s, London 189, 191, 192, 196–7 Colonna, Giovanni 33 comedy 25–6, 41, 122 compromise 104 concealment 21–2 consensus 60, 238, 251 Constantine, St, see Cyril Constantinople 165 controversialists 2, 14 conversation 66, 100–1, 119 Copernicus Nicholaus, 228 corruption 75–8, 138, 183, 186 Cosin, John 242 councils, ecclesiastical 149, 184, 187–212, 218–20 counter-polemic 185, 209–13, 218 Courtenay, William, archbishop of Canterbury 206 Cupid 41 Cyril, St (Constantine) 165 Daedalus 34 Dallington (Northants) 243 Daniel 57

Dante 20, 36, 38 Danzig, see Gdańsk David, King 35, 141, 147, 154, 156, 158–63, 233, 247 David of Augsburg 126 detachment 29, 114 Devil, Lucifer, Satan 53, 56, 59–60, 74, 130–3, 136–40, 188–9, 192, 197, 201, 205–7, 208, 231, 232 dialectics 95 dialogue 10, 51, 56, 96, 111, 118, 230 diatribe 133 Dido 27, 36 disputation 5–8, 46, 53, 64, 145–7, 223, 228 dispute 45, 60–1, 98, 169, 171, 195, 201, 207, 209 dissent 168 Dogon people 123–4 Dominican friars 132, 165 Donatism 223 Donatus 166, 170 Dryden, John 246–7 Durel, John 241–3 Durham peculiars 205 early modern 9–12, 29–30 Eberhard the German 114 Eck, Johannes 223, 235 Edward IV, king of England 202 Egyptians 142 Elizabeth I, queen of England 249 Elizabeth, St 141 Elsam of Brabant 43, 45 England 13, 119, 149, 183–222, 237–51 English parliament, see parliament Erasmus, Desiderius 13, 226, 227, 230 error 187, 206 L’Estrange, see under L ethics 24–5, 65–6, 156 Eugenia, St 99–100 Evangelists, the four 55 fear 79, 89 Fegfeuer (author) 51

Index Fenicula (St Petronila’s companion) 97–8 Ferreri, Nuncio 229n27 FitzStephen, William 111–12 Florence 165 flyting 5, 112, 114, 118 Foucault, Michel 1, 4–5, 12, 24–5, 65–7, 76, 79, 88, 96–7 France 20, 27, 129 Franciscan friars 125–8 game, see ludic Gdańsk 226–7 Geiler of Kaiserberg 125 Genadij, archbishop of Novgorod 167 gender 95–7, 104, 131–2, 139–43 genre 24, 30, 44, 110, 119, 201 Geoffrey of Vinsauf 117 Gerasimov, Dmitrij 166, 170, 172 Gerbert of Aurillac, Pope Sylvester II 48 Germany 48, 125, 129 Giese, Tiedemann 228 Giovanni, son of Petrarch 31 grammar 79, 95, 99, 107, 118, 170 Greece 165 Greeks 142 Gregory I, pope 191 Grosseteste, Robert, bishop of Lincoln 187–8, 193, 206 Gunzo of Italy 109 Halifax, marquis of, see Savile Hegendorff, Kristoph 229n26 Helicon 27 Henry V, king of England 221 Henry VII, king of England 220 Henry VIII, king of England 14, 188 heresy 100, 128–31, 149, 165, 169, 175, 187–8, 195, 206, 225, 231, 236, 241 Hermann, landgrave of Thuringia 12, 51, 59–61, 64 Heylyn, Peter 242 High Commission, Court of 228 Hilandar, monastery, see Mount Athos Hilde, queen 61

289

Hilton, Walter 155 Horant 61–2 Hozjusz, Stanisław 227, 236 Hucbald of St Amand 108, 112–15 humanism 5, 10, 229, 233 Hungary 126, 242 Hussitism 223 Hyacinthus St, 99– identity 42, 43, 134, 147, 184, 204, 228, 232, 241 imagination 76–8 Innocent III pope, 48, 134 Innocent IV pope, 126, 134 Innocent VIII pope, 197 invective 2, 18–19, 109, 116–17, 133, 139, 141, 144 Iorwerth, master 117 irenic 9–10 Isidore of Seville 95 Islam 8, 130, 215; see also Muslims, Saracens Italy 20, 27, 129, 165 Jacobus de Voragine 96, 100 James, duke of York (later James II of England) 245 Jeremiah 28 Jerome, St 149, 162, 231 Jerusalem 20, 36–7 Jews 1, 8, 125, 129–136, 146–7, 184, 200, 208, 215; see also anti-semitism Jezebel 141–2 Job 42, 138, 153, 227, 231 John, St, the Baptist 147 John, St, the Evangelist 40, 147 John of Capistrano 125 John of Ronco 133 Joseph, husband of Mary 177 Judas 146, 249 judicial speech 5 Julian of Halicarnassus 227n21 Juvenal 25 Kafka, Franz 17

290

Polemic

Kiprian, metropolitan of Muscovy 167, 175, 180 Konarski, Jan 229n27 Konrad von Würzburg 49, 51 Kraków 225–8, 236 Kryzcki, Andrzej, bishop of Płock, archbishop of Gneizno 13, 223–36 Kurljatev, Nil 166, 167, 175, 180 lament 26, 36, 219, 228, 235 Lanuvius 123 Lapo da Castiglionchio 28 Lateran, Rome, fourth council at 184, 187–8, 190, 196–7 Laud, William, archbishop of Canterbury 242–3 Laura (in Petrarch) 17–18, 20, 28, 29, 33, 36 L’Estrange, Roger 248–50 Lithuania 242 Lohengrin 43, 45, 59–61 Lollardy, 223; see also Wycliffism London 111–12 Lucy, St 102 ludic 101, 110, 117–9, 124, 148, 204, 216 Ludwig of Bavaria 44 Luther, Martin 13, 125, 223–36, 241 lyric 35, 42, 48–9 Manicheanism 133 Marburg 44 Margaret, St 100–2 Marner, der 50–1, 62 Mary, Blessed Virgin 58, 73, 89, 175–7 Matthew of Vendôme 110 Maximos the Greek 13, 165–80 Mazovia 225–6 Mechtild of Magdeburg 8–9 Medicus, Antonius 227 Medovarcev, Mixael 167, 176, 177 Meissner, der 50–1, 62 Meopham, Simon, archbishop of Canterbury 207 Milton, John 10–11, 239 misogyny 139–143

moderation 208, 237, 244–51 morality 102, 154–8, 195 Moravia 126 Morton, John, archbishop of Canterbury 197 motet 67–9 Mount Athos 165–166 Hilandar Monastery 168 Vatopedi Monastery 165 Murner, Thomas 224 Muscovy 13, 165–180 Muslims 1, 130, 215; see also Saracens Nazarus, demon 54, 56, 58–60 Nebuchadnezzar 36 negation 41 Nero 243 Niedermünster 126 Nimrod 26 Nouhuwius (of Bavaria) 44 Olibrius 101 Origen 227, 231, 233 Otenksij, Zinovij 169, 179–80 ‘Other’ 63, 134, 147, 227, 237 Otto, duke of Bavaria 126 Oxford 149, 151, 152, 188, 197, 201, 206–7 papacy 19, 25–6, 49, 214, 249–50 Paris 8, 68, 71–2, 147 parliaments, English 14, 183–4, 198n82, 202, 203, 210, 214–15, 217, 220n159, 221–2, 245–6, 250 Parma 28, 30 Parnassus 27 parody 41 Pasiphae 36 Patrick, Simon (‘S.P.’) 244–5 Paul, St 196 Pecham, John, archbishop of Canterbury 188, 195–6, 220 performance 48, 61, 67, 72, 87–9, 121–7, 207 performative act 6, 25, 184, 200–1 persona 18, 29, 137

Index persuasion 131, 146, 201, 212, 222–3, 234 Peter, St 231 Peter Lombard 154 Petrarch 11–12, 17–42, 228 Petronila, St 97–8 Philip, chancellor of Notre Dame, Paris 70–1, 80, 90 Philistines, the 78 Płock 226 Poland 223–36, 242 politics 5, 27, 29, 48, 238, 245, 248 polyphony 67 Pontefract Hospital 216 Porete, Marguerite 8 Powell, Vavasor 243 power 104, 113, 117, 123, 132, 221 Poznań 225, 228 print media 9–10, 238–9, Priscian 118 Prospero 113 Protus, St 99 provisions, papal 203, 213, 214–15, 218–19 Prudentius 108, 112–15 Prussia 224–5, 226, 220, 234 Radbertus, Paschasius 36 reception 47–8, 129 reciprocity 66 reconciliation 61, 240 reform 183–91, 197, 200, 204, 210, 219 Reformation, 183, 221, 223–5, 228, 232, 234, 242 Regensburg 126 Reichenau 109 Restoration 245 rhetoric 6–7, 49, 86, 95, 99, 104, 125, 131, 183–4, 190, 207, 223 Rhône 27, 40 Richard III, king of England 220 ridicule 132 Rienzo, Cola di 22 rivalry 43, 49, 53–6 Rolle, Richard 151–4, 156

291

Rome 19–20, 22, 25, 30, 37, 203, 241–3, 250 Rothe, Johannes 64 Rudolf of Habsburg 44 Rydziński, Piotr, canon of Poznań 224, 228 St Gall 109 Salimbene 126 Samson 78 Saracens 43, 184, 200, 215; see also Islam, Muslims satire 2, 25–6, 137–9, 148, 226, 246 Saul 141, 147 Savile, George, marquis of Halifax 248n46, 250–1 Savoy Chapel, London 241 Scripture, see Bible Selivan (assistant to Maximos the Greek) 167 Semiramis 36 Senleches, Jacob 86 sermons 5, 125–48 Sheldon, Gilbert, archbishop of Canterbury 242 silence 23, 42, 44–50, 66–7, 85, 103 Silesia 224, 229 Sobaka, Isak 167 speech acts 2, 143 Star Chamber, court of 238 Sydserff, Thomas 242 Sylvester II, pope, see Gerbert of Aurillac Szamotulski, Grzegorz, archdeacon of Poznań 228, 229n26 Tamar 74, 79, 82, 85, 86 target 63 Tartars 135 Tartarus 189, 205 Terence 25, 109, 120–4 Tertullian 103, 243 Theodoret of Cyrrhus 167 Thomasin von Zerklære 49 Thoresby, Robert, archbishop of York 220 Tomicki, Piotr, bishop of Cracow 226

292

Polemic

torture 96–7, 104, 108 translation 149, 153, 165 Transylvania 242 Triboles, Michael, see Maximos the Greek Trier 110 Trinity Monastery 166 truth 21–4, 31, 50, 70, 77, 96, 102, 133, 139, 144, 192 Tver’ 165 Uranias 57 Urban IV, pope 126 Urban VI, pope 211–12 Vasilj III, ruler of Muscovy 165 Vatopedi Monastery, see Mount Athos Vaucluse 28, 30, 33 Venus 41 violence 6, 19, 23, 59, 66, 110–2, 118, 121, 184, 191, 237 Virgil 25, 27, 43 Vlasij (assistant to Maximos the Greek) 167 voice 23, 32, 35, 39–41, 48–9, 63, 75–6, 86, 125–8, 153, 163, 200, 209, 227, 233

Wagner, Richard 43 Waldensianism 129–35, 223 Walther von der Vogelweide 48–9, 62 warfare 6, 24 Warner of Rouen 109, 116–17 Wartburg 61, 64 Wietor, Hieronymus 227 Winchelsey, Robert, archbishop of Canterbury 206 Winchester 199 Wittenberg 228 Wolfram von Eschenbach 12, 45–6, 52–64 Wolsey, Thomas, archbishop of York 204, 205, 207 Worms 119 Wróbel, Walenty 224 Wrocław 229 Würzburg 110 Wyclif, John 149–50, 210 Wycliffism 2, 150, 153, 162, 210, 212–13, 220; see also Lollardy Wykeham, William, bishop of Winchester 184n2, 202–3 Zygmunt I Jagiellon, king of Poland 226, 229