The Western Literary Tradition: An Introduction In Texts [1, 1st Edition] 1624669107, 9781624669101, 1624669093, 9781624669095, 1624669115, 9781624669118

Table of contents :
Contents......Page 8
Chronology......Page 13
Preface to Volume One......Page 18
Introduction to Section I......Page 20
Introduction......Page 26
1. Genesis 22:1–18......Page 27
2. Exodus 20:1–21......Page 28
3. Job 38, 40, and 42......Page 30
4. Psalms 8 and 139......Page 32
5. Isaiah 40 and 55......Page 34
Introduction......Page 37
1. Homer, Iliad (c. 800–700 BCE)......Page 41
2. Hesiod, Works and Days (c. 700 BCE)......Page 48
3. Sappho, Poems and Fragments (c. 650 BCE)......Page 53
4. Aeschylus, Agamemnon (c. 458 BCE)......Page 56
5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King (c. 428–425 BCE)......Page 65
6. Euripides, Medea (431 BCE)......Page 73
7. Aristophanes, Clouds (423 BCE)......Page 81
8. Plato, Phaedo (c. 380–360 BCE)......Page 90
Chapter 3. Roman Innovations......Page 94
Introduction......Page 95
1. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (59 BCE)......Page 97
2. Catullus, Poems (before 54 BCE)......Page 102
3. Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE)......Page 105
4. Virgil, Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE)......Page 112
5. Cicero, Fourth Philippic (December 20, 44 BCE)......Page 119
6. Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia (c. 40–45 CE)......Page 124
7. Tacitus, Agricola and Germania (c. 98 CE)......Page 129
8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (167 CE)......Page 134
Introduction......Page 139
1. Matthew 5......Page 140
2. John 3:1–21......Page 142
3. Acts 17:16–31......Page 144
4. Revelation 21......Page 145
Introduction to Section II......Page 148
Introduction......Page 153
1. Saint Augustine, Confessions (397)......Page 159
2. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 526)......Page 164
3. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Sapientia (c. 970)......Page 170
4. Hildegard of Bingen, Know the Ways (1141–1151)......Page 177
5. Peter Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes (c. 1130)......Page 182
6. Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1430–1436)......Page 187
7. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (c. 1420–1427)......Page 191
Introduction......Page 196
1. Einhard, Life of Charlemagne (c. 817–836)......Page 201
2. Beowulf (c. 975–c. 1025)......Page 206
3. Song of Roland (c. 1040–c. 1115)......Page 212
4. Song of My Cid (c. 1140–1207)......Page 219
5. Marie de France, Lanval (c. 1155–1189)......Page 224
6. Andreas Capellanus, Art of Courtly Love (1184–1186)......Page 229
Introduction......Page 234
1. Marco Polo, The Description of the World (1298)......Page 239
2. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno (c. 1308–1320)......Page 244
3. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (1349–1351)......Page 251
4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (c. 1380–1400)......Page 255
5. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405)......Page 261
Introduction to Section III......Page 266
Introduction......Page 270
1. Francis Petrarch, Letters to Cicero and Homer (1345, 1360) and Sonnets (1327–1368)......Page 275
2. Leonardo Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence (1404)......Page 282
3. Poggio Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino Veronese (1416)......Page 287
4. Lauro Quirini, Letter to Pope Nicholas V on the Fall of Constantinople (1453)......Page 291
5. Cassandra Fedele, Oration in Praise of Literary Studies (1487)......Page 296
Introduction......Page 300
1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)......Page 304
2. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1518)......Page 309
3. Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince (1516)......Page 314
4. Thomas More, Utopia (1516)......Page 319
Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent......Page 324
Introduction......Page 325
1. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (Roland Goes Mad, 1516/1521/1532)......Page 329
2. François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534/1535)......Page 335
3. Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1580, 1587–1588)......Page 340
4. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605/1615)......Page 345
Introduction......Page 351
1. Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (c. 1582)......Page 356
2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1587/1588)......Page 361
3. William Shakespeare, Soliloquies (1594–1601) and Sonnets (1609)......Page 369
4. John Donne, Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets (1633)......Page 378
Introduction to Section IV......Page 382
Introduction......Page 386
1. Amerigo Vespucci, New World (1502/1503)......Page 392
2. Hernán Cortés, Second Letter of Relation (1520)......Page 397
3. Garcilaso de la Vega “the Inca,” Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609, 1616–1617)......Page 402
4. Saint Francis Xavier, Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues (1552)......Page 407
5. Luís de Camões, The Lusiads (1572)......Page 411
6. Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World (1666)......Page 416
7. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688)......Page 420
Introduction......Page 425
1. Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron (1558)......Page 431
2. Anonymous, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554)......Page 436
3. Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life (1565)......Page 440
4. María de Zayas y Sotomayor, Tales of Disillusion (1647)......Page 445
5. Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women (1600)......Page 449
6. Sarra Copia Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul (1621)......Page 452
7. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems (c. 1669–1694)......Page 457
Introduction......Page 462
1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Mayor of Zalamea (1640)......Page 466
2. Molière, The Misanthrope (1666)......Page 473
3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671)......Page 480
Credits......Page 489
INDEX......Page 492

Citation preview

EDITED, WITH INTRODUCTIONS AND NOTES   BY MARGARET L . KING

The

Western Literary Tradition

AN INTRODUCTION IN TEXTS

1

VOLUME

TH E H E B R E W B I B L E TO J O H N M I LTO N

The Western Literary Tradition An Introduction in Texts

$$$ Volume 1 The Hebrew Bible to John Milton

The Western Literary Tradition An Introduction in Texts

$$$ Volume 1 The Hebrew Bible to John Milton

Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by

Margaret L. King

Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. Indianapolis/Cambridge

Copyright © 2020 by Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 23 22 21 20        1 2 3 4 5 6 7 For further information, please address Hackett Publishing Company, Inc. P.O. Box 44937 Indianapolis, Indiana 46244-0937 www.hackettpublishing.com Interior design by Laura Clark Composition by Aptara, Inc. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020933148 ISBN-13: 978-1-62466-910-1 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-1-62466-909-5 (pbk.) Adobe PDF ebook ISBN: 978-1-62466-911-8

For my grandchildren, a look back, for the way forward

CONTENTS Chronologyxii Preface to Volume Onexvii

Section I Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature Introduction to Section I

1

Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises Introduction  1. Genesis 22:1–18 2. Exodus 20:1–21 3. Job 38, 40, and 42 4. Psalms 8 and 139 5. Isaiah 40 and 55

7 7 8 9 11 13 15

Chapter 2. Greek Origins 18 Introduction18 1. Homer, Iliad (c. 800–700 BCE) 22 2. Hesiod, Works and Days (c. 700 BCE) 29 3. Sappho, Poems and Fragments (c. 650 BCE) 34 4. Aeschylus, Agamemnon (c. 458 BCE) 37 5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King (c. 428–425 BCE) 45 6. Euripides, Medea (431 BCE) 54 7. Aristophanes, Clouds (423 BCE) 62 8. Plato, Phaedo (c. 380–c. 360 BCE) 71 Chapter 3. Roman Innovations 76 Introduction76 1. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (59 BCE) 78 2. Catullus, Poems (before 54 BCE) 83 3. Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) 86 4. Virgil, Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE) 93 5. Cicero, Fourth Philippic (December 20, 44 BCE) 100 6. Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia (c. 40–45 CE) 105 7. Tacitus, Agricola and Germania (c. 98 CE) 110 8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (167 CE) 115

vii

viii

Contents

Chapter 4. The New Testament: Repentance and Redemption 120 Introduction120 1. Matthew 5 (c. 80–90 CE) 121 2. John 3:1–21 (c. 90–110 CE) 123 3. Acts 17:16–31 (c. 80–90 CE) 125 4. Revelation 21 (c. 95 CE) 126

Section II The Middle Ages: Formation of the Western Literary Tradition Introduction to Section II129 Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture 134 Introduction134 1. Saint Augustine, Confessions (397)140 2. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 526) 145 3. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Sapientia (c. 970) 151 4. Hildegard of Bingen, Know the Ways (1141–1151)158 5. Peter Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes (c. 1130) 163 6. Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1430–1436) 168 7. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (c. 1420–1427) 172 Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles 177 Introduction177 1. Einhard, Life of Charlemagne (c. 817–836) 182 2. Beowulf (c. 975–c. 1025) 187 3. Song of Roland (c. 1040–c. 1115) 193 4. Song of My Cid (c. 1140–1207) 200 5. Marie de France, Lanval (c. 1155–1189) 205 6. Andreas Capellanus, Art of Courtly Love (1184–1186)210 Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations 215 Introduction215 1. Marco Polo, The Description of the World (1298)220 2. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno (c. 1308–1320) 225 3. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (1349–1351)232 4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (c. 1380–1400) 236 5. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) 242

Contents

ix

Section III Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal Introduction to Section III

247

Chapter 8. The New Learning251 Introduction251 1. Francis Petrarch, Letters to Cicero and Homer (1345, 1360) and Sonnets (1327–1368)256 2. Leonardo Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence (1404) 263 3. Poggio Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino Veronese (1416) 268 4. Lauro Quirini, Letter to Pope Nicholas V on the Fall of Constantinople (1453) 272 5. Cassandra Fedele, Oration in Praise of Literary Studies (1487) 277 Chapter 9. The High Renaissance 281 Introduction281 1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)285 2. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1518) 290 3. Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince (1516)295 4. Thomas More, Utopia (1516)300 Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent306 Introduction306 1. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (Roland Goes Mad, 1516/1521/1532) 310 2. François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534/1535) 316 3. Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1580, 1587–1588) 321 4. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605/1615) 326 Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England332 Introduction332 1. Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (c. 1582) 337 2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1587/1588) 342 3. William Shakespeare, Soliloquies (1594–1601) and Sonnets (1609) 350 4. John Donne, Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets (1633) 359

x

Contents

Section IV Early Modern: New Horizons Introduction to Section IV

363

Chapter 12. Other Places 367 Introduction367 1. Amerigo Vespucci, New World (1502/1503)373 2. Hernán Cortés, Second Letter of Relation (1520)378 3. Garcilaso de la Vega “the Inca,” Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609, 1616–1617) 383 4. Saint Francis Xavier, Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues (1552)388 5. Luís de Camões, The Lusiads (1572)392 6. Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World (1666)397 7. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688) 401 Chapter 13. Other Voices 406 Introduction406 1. Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron (1558)412 2. Anonymous, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554)417 3. Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life (1565) 421 4. María de Zayas y Sotomayor, Tales of Disillusion (1647) 426 5. Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women (1600)430 6. Sarra Copia Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul (1621) 433 7. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems (c. 1669–1694) 438 Chapter 14. Man Alone 443 Introduction443 1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Mayor of Zalamea (1640) 447 2. Molière, The Misanthrope (1666)454 3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671) 461 Credits470 Index473

CHRONOLOGY Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature BCE c. 800–700 Homer, Iliad c. 700 Hesiod,Works and Days c. 650 Sappho, Poems c. 586–539 Isaiah c. 600–200 Psalms c. 538–330 Genesis c. 538–330 Exodus c. 458 Aeschylus, Agamemnon 431 Euripedes, Medea c. 428–425 Sophocles, Oedipus 423 Aristophanes, Clouds c. 380–360 Plato, Phaedo 330–164 Job 59 Lucretius, Nature of Things Before 54 Catullus, Poems 44 Cicero, Fourth Philippic c. 29–19 Virgil, Aeneid CE c. 8 Ovid, Metamorphoses c. 80–90 Matthew c. 80–90 Acts c. 90–110 John c. 95 Revelation c. 98 Tacitus, Agricola 167 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

xii

Chronology

xiii

The Middle Ages: Formation of the Western Literary Tradition 397 Augustine, Confessions c. 526 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy c. 817–36 Einhard, Life of Charlemagne c. 970 Hrotswitha, Sapientia c. 975–1025 Beowulf c. 1040–1115 Song of Roland c. 1130 Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes c. 1140–1207 Song of My Cid 1141–51 Hildegard, Know the Ways c. 1155–89 Marie de France, Lanval 1184–86  Andreas Capellanus, Art of Courtly Love 1298  Marco Polo, The Description of the World c. 1308–1320 Dante, Inferno 1349–51 Boccaccio, Decameron c. 1380–1400 Chaucer, Canterbury Tales 1405 Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies c. 1420–27 Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ c. 1430–36 Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

xiv

Chronology

Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal 1327–68 Petrarch, Letters and Sonnets 1404 Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence 1416 Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino Veronese 1453 Quirini, Letter to Pope Nicholas V 1487  Fedele, Oration in Praise of Literary Studies 1513 Machiavelli, The Prince 1516 Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince 1516 More, Utopia 1516/1521/1532 Ariosto, Orlando furioso 1518 Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier 1534/1535 Rabelais, Gargantua c. 1582 Sidney, Astrophil and Stella 1587/1588 Marlowe, Faustus 1580, 1587–88 Montaigne, Essays 1594–1601, 1609 Shakespeare, Soliloquies and Sonnets 1605/1615 Cervantes, Don Quixote 1633  Donne, Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets

Chronology

xv

Early Modern: New Horizons 1502/1503 Vespucci, New World 1520 Cortés, Second Letter of Relation 1552 Xavier, Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues 1554 The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes 1558 Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron 1565 Saint Teresa, The Book of Her Life 1572 Camões, The Lusiads 1600 Fonte, The Worth of Women 1609, 1616–17 Garcilaso de la Vega, Royal Commentaries of the Incas 1621  Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul 1640 Calderón, The Mayor of Zalamea 1647 Zayas y Sotomayor, Tales of Disillusion 1666 Molière, The Misanthrope c. 1669–94 Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems 1671 Milton, Samson Agonistes 1688 Behn, Oroonoko

PREFACE TO VOLUME ONE This volume introduces students to major writers of the Western tradition from Antiquity to 1700. It cannot include all authors of high significance, but in the sum, it presents a sampling of essential literary texts, highlights significant themes, and traces prominent trends over a more than two thousand year span. It includes exemplars of a range of genres including epic, lyric, and dramatic verse; prose narrative including story, romance, and novel; and nonfiction prose including autobiography, biography, letter, speech, dialogue, and essay. Languages represented include the ancient languages Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, and the modern languages (in different stages of development) English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The decision to include selections from the works of the seventy authors represented here, and to do so within a volume of normal size, has meant that few of the component works are given in their entirety. The Greek plays and Shakespearean dramas that are commonly assigned for classroom use are readily available in multiple inexpensive editions, so that every instructor may choose his or her favorite play or translation. The broad array of texts provided here, however, displays the full panorama of the Western literary heritage through the seventeenth century.

xvii

SECTION I Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature Introduction to Section I The Western literary tradition sits on a three-legged stool. The three legs are the Mediterranean civilizations that gave birth to European culture when antiquity ended and a new age began: ancient Israel, ancient Greece, and ancient Rome. Not one of these three, at its origin, was impressive. All three were surrounded by nations, empires, and city-states that were wealthier, more populous, and more powerful. But as they developed, they gathered strength. After they no longer existed as independent entities, their cultural legacy continued to shape the vision of the Western world, and still does today. The Israelites were a small and beleaguered people among the occupants of the eastern Mediterranean region where civilization began—where, that is, approximately from the third to the first millennium BCE,1 agriculture, commerce, cities and states, writing, and law originated. By around 1200 BCE, they lived in the hills, clustered in villages, and tended their flocks. They did not occupy the more fertile plains along the coasts of the Mediterranean or bordering the great rivers of Mesopotamia (modern Iraq and adjacent regions) and Egypt. They were neither clever merchants like the Phoenicians; nor builders of temples and pyramids like the Babylonians and Egyptians; nor masters of a fierce military machine like the Assyrians; nor skilled at statecraft like the Persians. They shared in the religious culture of their Canaanite neighbors, who believed in many gods and goddesses whom they worshiped with ritual sacrifices of produce or livestock. But the Israelites were unique in believing that their god, whom the West later esteemed as the one God, had called them to a special mission: to worship him by obeying his commandments. The commandments that the God of the Israelites laid down were not about petty crimes or paying taxes: they demanded deeds of mercy and righteousness, an entire commitment of mind and spirit. This was new. Some ancient deities of other peoples, notably the Egyptians, issued judgment, 1. This volume employs the abbreviations BCE and CE (Before the Common Era and Common Era) to denote the principal divisions of past time that scholars now generally prefer to the older BC and AD (Before Christ and Anno Domini, “the year of the Lord”).

1

2

I. Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

reward, and punishment, but no other ancient religion framed the relationship between the divine and the human overall in terms of moral affiliation. The Israelites did not always follow God’s commandments, of course, and their sacred texts record their frequent failures—failures that were greeted recurrently by God’s anger, forbearance, and forgiveness. Those sacred texts were compiled in the last centuries BCE in what is called the Hebrew Bible; Hebrew is the language the Israelites spoke, and “bible” derives from the Greek word for “book.” From the eighth through the first century BCE, the Israelites were defeated in turn by the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, and the Romans; the latter two naming the region “Judea,” and its citizens “Jews,” as they are known in the modern age. Having lost their state and their independence, the Jews scattered throughout the Mediterranean region and into western and northern Europe. They never abandoned their ancient faith, inscribed in the Hebrew Bible. Like the ancient Israelites when the first millennium dawned, the inhabitants of the mainland and nearby islands of modern Greece were a poor and meager population. Farmers, herders, and fishermen, they lived in scattered settlements divided from each other by rugged mountains or stretches of sea. Their settlements, or poleis (from which term our word “politics” is derived), formed around a sacred site, usually a hill, called the acropolis. There, they believed, a patron deity dwelled, to whom they offered sacrifices, and for whom, by the seventh century BCE, they began to build wooden temples— the ancestor of one of the enduring architectural forms of Western culture. The Greeks were unified by their temple building; by their exquisitely crafted pottery; and above all by their language, which we know as Greek. The terms “Greek” and “Greece” derive from the Latin of the Romans who later triumphed over these people and renamed them. The inhabitants, however, called themselves the “Hellenes” and lived in “Hellas,” the place where their language was spoken. The civilization they created we call, accordingly, “Hellenic,” and in its later manifestations, after Greece was absorbed into the empire forged by the Macedonian prince Alexander the Great, “Hellenistic.” The brilliant civilization of these Hellenes rose on the ashes of an earlier civilization, the Mycenaean. The Mycenaean kingdoms resembled the states of the ancient Near East with which they were engaged commercially and militarily, where the fearsome incursions of their skilled warriors left scars and destruction. Their own civilization suffered annihilation not long after 1200 BCE. From the ruins of their burnt cities and palace complexes, the Hellenes emerged after a lapse of four centuries, their first great poet Homer celebrating in two-verse epics2 the heroic deeds of long-dead Mycenaean 2. epic: a long poem, often derived from oral tradition or earlier texts, celebrating in lofty language the deeds of a legendary hero or the origins of a nation.

Introduction to Section I

3

ancestors that had been preserved in folk memory and transmitted orally. Like those ancestors, the characters of Homer’s epics were warriors, intent on violence. They displayed on the battlefield not only their skill at arms, but also, vividly, their acuity, tenacity, and strength of will. Homer’s two epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey, describing respectively the Greek conquest of the non-Greek city of Troy and the long, arduous journey home of one of the victorious heroes, became the bible of the Greeks, and the source of much of Western literature. Soon after Homer composed his epics, other poets, now literate—the Hellenes having adapted the Phoenician alphabet for that purpose—wrote in both epic and lyric3 genres. The epic poet Hesiod told the origin of the gods of their people in his Theogony, while his Works and Days narrates the annual cycle of tasks incumbent on the striving peasant. Over the next centuries, lyric poets—natives of the many cities now sprouting throughout Hellas—described exquisitely their personal experiences of love, joy, and fellowship. Among them is the first known female poet, Sappho, whose verse depicting her erotic desires influenced much ancient poetry, although moderns did not recover her work until the twentieth century, reconstructing it from quoted fragments, recovered potsherds, and papyrus scraps buried in desert sands. In the fifth century, Greek literature reached new heights in the original genres of drama,4 both tragic and comic, and the prose genres of history, rhetoric, and philosophy. Greek tragedies returned, as had Homer, to the imagined ancestors of the Hellenes and their struggles with an implacable destiny. In the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, mortals of great vision and purpose strive against the relentless power of the gods, the athanatoi, who, unlike the humans with whom they toyed, were not bound by death. The comedies of Aristophanes, meanwhile, like Hesiod’s Works and Days, consider the events of the present moment, laying bare the absurdity of human interactions. Greek drama, like its precursors, was written in verse, as were the first philosophical speculations about the nature of the cosmos by the thinkers the Greeks called sophoi (sages), and we call “pre-Socratics.” They bear the latter name because they precede Plato’s depiction in prose dialogues of his mentor Socrates, who is often considered the Western world’s first philosopher, or “lover of wisdom.” Socrates does not seek to know about the cosmic realm, but rather the human one: what motivates humans to act; how they know; 3. lyric: lyric verse (originally, in the Greek context, poems sung to the accompaniment of the lyre, an ancient musical instrument) generally takes the form of a short, non-narrative poem, expressive of the poet’s emotions. 4. drama: a composition (at first in verse, later also in prose) narrating a story through the action and dialogue of characters, generally intended for theatrical performance.

4

I. Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

why they love; how best they can live; and will they indeed die. Socrates himself wrote nothing, but his pupil Plato conveyed his ideas, much elaborated, in elegant literary dialogues. Plato’s prose works followed a century of prose composition, coincident with the era of fifth-century dramatic verse, whose authors included the two inventors of historical writing, Herodotus and Thucydides, as well as the Sophists, professional teachers of rhetoric, whose willingness to manipulate language for advantage provoked the criticism of both the comedian Aristophanes and the philosopher Socrates. The thoughts and visions of the Greek poets and philosophers were not lost—as had been the palaces of the Mycenaeans—when the Greek cities fell to the Macedonian conqueror Alexander in the fourth century BCE, or to Roman generals in the second. The Hellenistic civilization hatched from Alexander’s conquest cherished, edited, copied, and circulated the works of the Greek masters throughout the Mediterranean region, and bestowed that legacy upon the Romans. The Romans, who would later conquer both Jews and Greeks, were at the outset a scanty band of farmers inhabiting a village in the orbit of the Etruscans, the lords of northern Italy. Their city on the river Tiber may indeed have originated, as is told in legend, in the eighth century, when Homer had not yet composed his epics, and the Hebrew Bible had not yet been codified in writing. Little more is known until the fifth century, when Rome, having freed itself from Etruscan sovereignty and the reign of kings, became a republic ruled by a Senate, the ancestor of our own, composed of elders from the ruling class of “patricians.” In time, the aristocratic Senate was balanced by the creation of an Assembly representing the whole of the adult male citizenry. With a few more modifications, by the second century BCE, the village of Rome had matured into the Roman Republic, the capital of an empire. For by this time, Rome dominated nearly the whole of the Italian peninsula, and had launched a series of wars that won them mastery of the entire Mediterranean region. Of all the great empires of the ancient Mediterranean world, Rome was the greatest. Rome’s political dominance, for a time, lacked corresponding cultural achievements. In its early stages, Rome borrowed from the neighboring cultures it admired and then conquered. From the Etruscans, it borrowed architecture, religious rites, funerary practices (including gladiatorial combat), and an evaluation of women higher than that of Near Eastern societies or the Greeks. From the Greek colonies clustered in southern Italy, the Romans took their gods, their mythology, and their theater. The earliest literary products of ancient Rome that are still extant—the plays of P ­ lautus— are Latin imitations, nearly translations, of Greek comedies. Into the last century BCE, Greek models shaped Roman literary works: Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things, which in Latin verse explains Greek

Introduction to Section I

5

Epicurean philosophy to a Roman audience; the lyric poems of Catullus; the poetry of Ovid, especially his Metamorphoses narrating the most appealing Greek myths; Virgil’s epic Aeneid, patterned on the Homeric epics. Prose works as well had Greek antecedents: Cicero’s speeches, saturated with principles of Roman law and particulars of Roman political life, were derived from Greek prototypes he had studied under expert rhetoricians trained in the tradition of the orator Demosthenes. Like Cicero, the elite youth of Rome sought an advanced education by journeying to Greece, whose language they had probably learned in childhood—if we are to believe the pedagogue Quintilian—even before they learned Latin. While Cicero was still delivering speeches in the Roman forum, and before Virgil wrote his epic of Rome’s founding, the Republic gave way, after a bloody unraveling, to an Empire. A monarch now ruled, surrounded by an ever-growing bureaucracy, consulting as he pleased with a hapless Senate that endured, nonetheless, until the Empire’s eventual collapse. In the first two centuries CE, when Rome was politically and militarily at its zenith, its boundaries at their maximum extent, it continued to produce writers of the highest quality. Their works, while they still hearkened back to Greek precedents, also gave expression to what was now a Roman tradition of thought. Seneca, a moralist, essayist, and playwright, and Tacitus, a historian and critic, exemplify this era of Roman civilization. So too does M ­ arcus ­Aurelius, at once emperor and scholar, whose Meditations, grounded in Greek philosophical Stoicism,5 were written, appropriately, in Greek. The last three centuries of the Roman era, in contrast, feature few Latin authors of comparable stature, the Empire’s literary fortunes waning along with its political stature. For Rome was losing traction as its borders were breached and its sovereignty frayed. Migrations of foreign tribal peoples, mainly Germanic, changed the demographic makeup of the Roman population and impaired its administrative and military machinery. In response to these challenges, Roman leaders divided the empire into two zones, headed by two emperors: a western zone anchored in Rome, and an eastern zone anchored in Constantinople—a new city founded by the emperor ­Constantine in the fourth century on the site of the older Greek one, Byzantium. During the turbulent decades of the late fifth and early sixth century CE, the western empire faltered or, as historians have described it, “fell.” Its governing structures crumbled, and Germanic kings took the place of senators and emperors. The eastern empire, soon abandoning Latin for Greek and now referred to as “Byzantine,” endured into the fifteenth century, 5. Stoicism: a school of late Greek (Hellenistic) philosophy that posits the cosmic order of the universe, governed by laws of nature, knowable by reason, to accord with which the sage must lead a life of virtuous self-restraint.

6

I. Antiquity: Foundations of Western Literature

when it, too, fell—to a new enemy, the Ottoman Turks. The administrative division of the Roman Empire into West and East prefigured a cultural divergence between the two zones as they developed from the fifth century. The cultural organism that emerged in the West in the aftermath of imperial Rome constitutes what we call Western civilization, whose literary product is Western literature. Meanwhile, during the same five centuries that saw the triumph and fall of the Roman Empire, the Hellenistic culture that Rome had adopted as its own was yielding to a competitor: Christianity. An offshoot of ancient Judaism, Christianity had become the principal cultural force in the Mediterranean region. Sheltering within the Roman shell, initially ignored, then persecuted, then legalized, and at last established as the official state religion, it refined its message and strengthened its institutions. When Rome fell in the West, the system of churches Christians had built survived, led by governors called bishops who wielded authority that secular leaders had vacated; and defined by a theology, or belief system, elaborated by the learned thinkers known as the “Fathers” of the church. Christianity centers on the figure of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jew learned in the Hebrew Scriptures, who preached compellingly the imminent coming of the kingdom of God. Jewish leaders viewed him as a threat, and the Roman governor of Jerusalem, the principal city of Judea, ordered his execution. According to his followers, the crucified Jesus rose from the dead, having atoned by his death for the sins of those who believed in him. Thus purified, or “saved,” they would, like Jesus, attain life after death, the very immortality the Greeks had deemed impossible for humankind. The story of Jesus the “Christ,” meaning “savior” in Greek and signifying “Messiah” in Hebrew, is told in the New Testament. For Christians, this brief collection of narrative accounts, or “Gospels,” history, letters, and prophecy, constitutes the counterpart and fulfillment of the Hebrew Bible, which they call the Old Testament.

Chapter 1 The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises

Introduction Composed in its final form over some five hundred years (eighth to third centuries BCE), and based on texts and legends reaching back perhaps as many more, the Hebrew Bible, known to Christians as the Old Testament, is an amalgam of histories, narratives, laws and ritual prescriptions, devotional poetry, wisdom literature, proverbs, and prophecy; it is distributed in thirty-nine (Jewish and Protestant Bibles), or forty-six (Catholic), or fiftyone (Eastern Orthodox churches) books.1 Of immeasurable richness and variety, it has a coherent theme: that the one God, creator of the universe and all living things, chose the Jews—the ancient Hebrews or Israelites—for a special relationship, or covenant, with him, laying upon them a special responsibility to obey his commandments. Those commandments, ranging from high moral injunctions to detailed rules for ritual practice and purity, are to be remembered and taught to each new generation so that the commitment to the worship of the one God winds through the ages in a great solemn chain linking past and future. Selections are included here from Genesis and Exodus, the first two books of the Bible (which are at the same time the first two of the Torah, or the “Law,” consisting of the Bible’s first five books); the Psalms; Job; and Isaiah. From Genesis is taken the account of Abraham’s response to God’s command to sacrifice his son Isaac—a response that demonstrates the magnitude of Abraham’s faith. From Exodus is taken the first narration of God’s delivery to Moses, the Israelite leader, of the Ten Commandments, the principal moral laws binding the Israelites in their covenant with God. From the one hundred and fifty Psalms, excerpts from two are selected that express wonderment at God’s majesty and reliance on his omniscience and omnipotence. From the Book of Job—an extended tale of one righteous man’s sufferings and questioning of God’s justice—is taken a passage in which God asserts the immensity of his power. From the second section of Isaiah are taken two chapters in which God comforts his people exiled in Babylon, and offers spiritual sustenance to those who are in eternal covenant 1. In addition to a scattering of others, mostly later, not included in the official, or “canonical,” collection, and referred to as deuterocanonical, pseudepigraphic, or apocryphal.

7

8

Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises

with him. The New International Version is used, a translation that gives the biblical text in readily accessible modern English. Examined here as a collection of literary texts, the Hebrew Bible is a sacred book for the some fourteen million Jews worldwide, cherished as the basis of their faith and their identity as a people. As the Old Testament, it is central as well for Christians, the world’s most populous religious group, and a respected book as well for Muslims, the second most numerous, whose own sacred book, the Qur’an, includes characters and themes drawn from its pages.

$$$ 1. Genesis 22:1–18 God tests Abraham’s faith Abraham must demonstrate his faith in God by sacrificing his son Isaac, the treasure of his later years—the sacrifice of a child to win the favor of a deity being a feature of many ancient religions. Isaac, unknowing, accompanies his father to the mountaintop where the deed is to be done; Abraham binds the child, and lays him on top of the wood that will burn the sacrificial offering. At that moment, an angel, a messenger from God, commands Abraham to stop and not harm his son. Abraham quickly finds a ram in the bushes to sacrifice instead. And the angel conveys God’s message: because his faith was so strong that he was willing to sacrifice his beloved son, God will make an eternal covenant with Abraham. His descendants will be “as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore,” they will vanquish their enemies, and through them “all nations on earth will be blessed,” because he obeyed the Lord.

Genesis 22:1–18 Some time later God tested Abraham. He said to him, “Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love— Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.” Early the next morning Abraham got up and loaded his donkey. He took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. He said to his servants, “Stay here with the donkey while

2. Exodus 20:1–21

9

I and the boy go over there. We will worship and then we will come back to you.” Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?” “Yes, my son?” Abraham replied. “The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together. When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!” “Here I am,” he replied. “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.” Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.” The angel of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven a second time and said, “I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed, because you have obeyed me.”

$$$ 2. Exodus 20:1–21 God’s words delivered by Moses to the Israelites On two stone tablets inscribed by the hand of God are displayed the Ten Commandments, as they are generally named: the principal laws of God by which his people are to be bound forevermore. The leader of the “exodus,”

10

Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises

or journey, of the Israelites who have fled enslavement in Egypt to seek the land God has promised them in Canaan,2 Moses has received the tablets from God at Mount Sinai in the desert, and delivers them to those whom God has chosen. Thus is sealed the covenant the Lord has made with his people.

Exodus 20:1–21 And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. “You shall have no other gods before me. “You shall not make for yourself an image in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. “You shall not murder. “You shall not commit adultery. “You shall not steal. “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male or female servant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.” When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.” 2. Canaan: region bordering the Mediterranean in the ancient Near East.

3. Job 38, 40, and 42

11

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.” The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

$$$ 3. Job 38, 40, and 42 From within a storm cloud, God rebukes Job A good man who has committed no wrong, Job suffers unimaginable pain: the loss of his wealth, the death of his children, his bodily afflictions; his wife counsels him to “curse God and die!” (Job 2:9) and his friends give him useless advice. Job does not blame God, but questions God’s justice. God replies, rebuking him from the depths of a storm cloud, challenging him to know what God knows, to see what he sees, or do what he can do. Job comes to understand his smallness, out of all proportion to God’s almighty greatness. He is sorry and he repents.

Job 38, 40, and 42 38 Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: “Who is this that obscures my plans   with words without knowledge? 3 Brace yourself like a man;   I will question you,   and you shall answer me. 2

“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?   Tell me, if you understand. 5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!   Who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its footings set,   or who laid its cornerstone— 7 while the morning stars sang together   and all the angels shouted for joy? . . . 4

“Do you know the laws of the heavens?   Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?

33

“Can you raise your voice to the clouds   and cover yourself with a flood of water?

34

12

Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises

Do you send the lightning bolts on their way?   Do they report to you, ‘Here we are’? . . .”

35

40 The Lord said to Job: “Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him?   Let him who accuses God answer him!” 3 Then Job answered the Lord: 4 “I am unworthy—how can I reply to you?   I put my hand over my mouth. 5 I spoke once, but I have no answer—   twice, but I will say no more.” 2

6

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm:

“Brace yourself like a man;   I will question you,   and you shall answer me. 7

“Would you discredit my justice?   Would you condemn me to justify yourself? 9 Do you have an arm like God’s,   and can your voice thunder like his? 10 Then adorn yourself with glory and splendor,   and clothe yourself in honor and majesty. 11 Unleash the fury of your wrath,   look at all who are proud and bring them low, 12 look at all who are proud and humble them,   crush the wicked where they stand. 13 Bury them all in the dust together;   shroud their faces in the grave. 14 Then I myself will admit to you   that your own right hand can save you. . . .” 8

42 Then Job replied to the Lord: “I know that you can do all things;   no purpose of yours can be thwarted. 3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’   Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,   things too wonderful for me to know. 2

4. Psalms 8 and 139

13

“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;   I will question you,   and you shall answer me.’ 5 My ears had heard of you   but now my eyes have seen you. 6 Therefore I despise myself   and repent in dust and ashes.” 4

$$$ 4. Psalms 8 and 139 The glory of God, the creator, guardian, and hope of humankind Psalm 8, one of the earliest composed, celebrates the majestic power and creativity of God, who has appointed human beings—whom he has made but “a little lower than the angels,” and “crowned . . . with glory and honor”—to do his work on earth. Psalm 139, one of the later psalms, celebrates God as well; but he is a personal God, who intimately knows the person who addresses him: it was he who had “created my inmost being,” the psalmist writes, and “knit me together in my mother’s womb.” God does not only know his worshiper, but will test him, and bring him to everlasting life.

Psalm 8 Lord, our Lord,   how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory   in the heavens. ...... 3 When I consider your heavens,   the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,   which you have set in place, 4 what is mankind that you are mindful of them,   human beings that you care for them? 5 You have made them a little lower than the angels   and crowned them with glory and honor. 6 You made them rulers over the works of your hands;   you put everything under their feet: 1

14

Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises

all flocks and herds,   and the animals of the wild, 8 the birds in the sky,   and the fish in the sea,   all that swim the paths of the seas. 9 Lord, our Lord,   how majestic is your name in all the earth! 7

Psalm 139 You have searched me, Lord,   and you know me. 2 You know when I sit and when I rise;   you perceive my thoughts from afar. 3 You discern my going out and my lying down;   you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Before a word is on my tongue  you, Lord, know it completely. 5 You hem me in behind and before,   and you lay your hand upon me. 6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,   too lofty for me to attain. 7 Where can I go from your Spirit?   Where can I flee from your presence? 8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;   if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. 9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,   if I settle on the far side of the sea, 10 even there your hand will guide me,   your right hand will hold me fast. 11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me   and the light become night around me,” 12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;   the night will shine like the day,   for darkness is as light to you. 13 For you created my inmost being;   you knit me together in my mother’s womb. 14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;   your works are wonderful,   I know that full well. 1

5. Isaiah 40 and 55

15

My frame was not hidden from you   when I was made in the secret place,   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;   all the days ordained for me were written in your book   before one of them came to be. 17 How precious to me are your thoughts, God!   How vast is the sum of them! 18 Were I to count them,   they would outnumber the grains of sand—   when I awake, I am still with you. . . . 23 Search me, God, and know my heart;   test me and know my anxious thoughts. 24 See if there is any offensive way in me,   and lead me in the way everlasting. 15

$$$ 5. Isaiah 40 and 55 God offers comfort to those suffering in desolation The prophet Isaiah, the second of the three authors gathered under that name, writes during the nearly fifty-year exile in Babylon of the leaders of the Israelites. In chapter 40, he delivers God’s comforting words to his people, conveying the promise of return and reconciliation. In chapter 55, he delivers God’s invitation to his people—freely offering spiritual food and drink to those who are “thirsty” for fellowship with the Lord—to live in everlasting covenant with him.

Isaiah 40 Comfort, comfort my people,   says your God. 2 Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,   and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed,   that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand   double for all her sins. . . . 1

16

Chapter 1. The Hebrew Bible: Commandments and Promises

Do you not know?   Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?   Have you not understood since the earth was founded? 22 He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,   and its people are like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,   and spreads them out like a tent to live in. 23 He brings princes to naught   and reduces the rulers of this world to nothing. 24 No sooner are they planted,   no sooner are they sown,   no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on them and they wither,   and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff. . . . 21

Do you not know?   Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God,   the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary,   and his understanding no one can fathom. 28

He gives strength to the weary   and increases the power of the weak. 30 Even youths grow tired and weary,   and young men stumble and fall; 31 but those who hope in the Lord   will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;   they will run and not grow weary,   they will walk and not be faint. 29

Isaiah 55 “Come, all you who are thirsty,   come to the waters; and you who have no money,   come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk   without money and without cost.

1

5. Isaiah 40 and 55

Why spend money on what is not bread,   and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good,   and you will delight in the richest of fare. 3 Give ear and come to me;   listen, that you may live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you,   my faithful love promised to David. . . . 2

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts,   neither are your ways my ways,”   declares the Lord. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth,   so are my ways higher than your ways   and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow   come down from heaven, and do not return to it   without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish,   so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth:   It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire   and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 12 You will go out in joy   and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills   will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field   will clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper,   and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown,   for an everlasting sign,   that will endure forever.” 8

17

Chapter 2 Greek Origins

Introduction The Hebrew Bible, recording the experience of a human community with an overpowering spiritual force, is the unique and incomparable literary product of the Israelites. Greek literature, documenting the quest for meaning in the cosmos beyond and the human soul within, is the startlingly original and profound achievement of the Hellenes, the inhabitants of the poor and remote mainland of Greece and nearby Aegean islands and colonies. As Greece emerged from its Dark Ages—the four-century era of cultural stagnation that followed the fall of Mycenaean civilization after 1200 BCE—its commerce and manufactures revived, polis-formation and temple-building thrived, and unnamed poets assembled the fragmentary oral accounts of gods and heroes that had never been forgotten, though the technology of writing had died and would need to be rediscovered. The epics of Homer (active late eighth to early seventh century BCE)—the earliest to survive, the first and unequalled expressions of this Archaic period, as it is known—circulated only in performance by professional reciters of verse, the rhapsodes, until they were written down most likely in the sixth century BCE. Homer’s epics depict an organized company of gods and goddesses, the chief twelve of whom dwell on Mount Olympus on the Greek mainland. Although they are moved by the same passions—though on a larger scale— that drive human actions, these deities are supremely powerful and sublimely immortal. At the same time, Homer portrays the gallery of heroes, the nearly forgotten shadows of earlier Mycenaean kings, who as rulers of the cities and regions of Hellas band together for a ten-year siege of Troy, a non-Greek city on the coast of Asia Minor facing Greece across the narrow Hellespont, the sea corridor between the Aegean and Black Sea. The Iliad narrates the last moments of the battle for Troy, and the Odyssey, the adventures of one of the survivors, the hero Odysseus, on his ten-year journey to return to his homeland, the island of Ithaca. The gods intervene variously and contradictorily in the war and its aftermath, favoring this or that Greek or Trojan combatant. But the key figures of Homer’s epics are the human beings who face fateful decisions and irremediable conflicts as they strive to do what they must in the face of inescapable destinies and inevitable death. 18

Introduction

19

The selection given here is from the Iliad, and focuses on the chief protagonist and victor of that battle, Achilles. Just as Homer had explored the interactions between gods and humans, crafting the Greek lexicon of twelve Olympian deities who are principal actors throughout the Greek literary tradition and its successors, Hesiod (active c. 750–c. 650 BCE), composing his Theogony some fifty or one hundred years later, assumes the task of explaining their origin and genealogy. His Works and Days, from which is taken the selection given here, acknowledges the supercelestial forces that control human action, but has the more humble purpose of prescribing, in the form of an instruction to his brother Perses, what the mere human mortal must do to prosper as best he can in a world corseted by the brutality of the rich and cosmic limitations beyond his control. In the seventh century, not long after Hesiod had composed his epic poems, a generation of authors designated as Lyric poets emerged in several Greek centers. Their verse is called “lyric” because it was meant to be sung to the accompaniment of the stringed musical instrument, the lyre, probably in the company of a small group in a domestic setting, in contrast to epic verse, which is believed to have been recited to large gatherings. As such, it was suited to the cultivation of aristocratic leisure characteristic of the mature polis system. The lyric genre flourished through the end of antiquity and again from the European Renaissance on into modern times. Lyric verse is intensely personal, giving expression to passions of anger, loss, and especially love. As such, it is especially interesting that one of the foremost lyric poets was Sappho (c. 630–570 BCE) of Mytilene, a city on the island of Lesbos. The only significant female author to emerge in antiquity, Sappho was highly admired into the first centuries CE, after which exemplars of her works disappeared from sight. Although some passages of her verse were preserved in quotations by others, much remained unknown until the late nineteenth century, when her works began to be recovered from potsherd troves unearthed by archeologists and papyrus scraps buried in desert sands. Through that process, adding to the fragments already in hand, perhaps ten percent of Sappho’s verse has been reconstituted. Likely composed within or for a community of women, it is remarkable for its powerful expression of homoerotic desire. As the Archaic gave way to the Classical age of Greece in the fifth century BCE, the two main forms of dramatic verse, tragedy and comedy, developed especially in Athens, then the region’s dominant city. Like epic— and unlike lyric poetry—dramatic verse was performed in a public arena, most importantly in the annual City Dionysia, a civic festival in honor of the god Dionysius. There, among other celebrations spanning many days, three days were eventually designated for the performance of tragedies and

20

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

one day for comedy. The playwrights were producers as well as composers of their plays, which were performed by male citizens, participating as actors (two or three in each play) or members of the chorus, who both sang and danced before an audience of some 15,000 viewers. A committee of judges selected a winner in each category, tragedy and comedy, a prize for which the participants competed vigorously. Like epic poetry, tragedy explores the corpus of myth and legend formed before the historical rebirth of Greek civilization but on a smaller scale. It focuses on moments of irreconcilable conflict between mortals—especially the searing conflicts between fathers, mothers, children, and siblings, or between male and female—within a cosmic framework dominated by the gods. Its aim is not to recall the glories of a lost heroic epoch, but to explore the passions driving those individuals and to assert of eternal truths of the limits of human life and action. The three playwrights Aeschylus (c. 525– c. 455 BCE), Sophocles (c. 496–c. 406), and Euripides (c. 480–c. 406)— whose careers overlapped—were the peerless creators of hundreds of tragedies, of which just thirty-two in total survive: seven by Aeschylus; seven by Sophocles; and eighteen by Euripides. Selections are included here from plays by each writer offering portraits of towering and doomed personalities: Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Oedipus the King by Sophocles, and Medea by Euripides.1 Comedy had a different purpose than tragedy. Its aim was to amuse and outrage, but in so doing, to criticize contemporary behavior, public policy, and cultural trends. As such, it was not concerned with gods and heroes—as was tragedy and before it epic—yet it was not dismissive of deity or ancient ideals. Aristophanes (c. 446–c. 386), in fact, the sole comic playwright whose work survives from this era (eleven of forty plays), was a conservative, and his biting satire and ruthless ridicule of political and cultural leaders summoned them to meet the standard set by an earlier generation. Among the targets of Aristophanes’s knife-sharp humor were the ­Sophists (sophistes), a group of thinkers and teachers who circulated through the Greek cities and were a major presence in Athens. They taught rhetorical skills to young aristocrats seeking powerful positions in government or success in cases brought before the law courts. As experts in verbal expression, they taught the skill of persuasion, a skill that sometimes entailed the manipulative use of language. Previously, the principal Greek intellectuals had been known as “sages” (sophoi), whose investigations of the nature of the cosmos, and whose theories about matter, being, and change remained 1. Texts in this chapter are discussed in chronological order of their composition with the exception of Euripides’s Medea, which was first produced a few years before Sophocles’s Oedipus; but since Euripides was the younger poet, and his work is generally understood to be more modernizing, his play is discussed after Sophocles’s.

Introduction

21

fundamental in subsequent scientific thought in the Western world. Aristophanes viewed the intellectual product of the Sophists, in contrast to their predecessors, as deceptive and dangerous. In the Clouds, an excerpt from which appears in this chapter, he mercilessly lampoons the Sophists, whom he mistakenly personifies as the Athenian thinker Socrates. But Socrates was not a Sophist, although in externals, he resembled them: he taught publicly in the Athenian marketplace and other venues, and he was an expert at making fine distinctions in argumentation. Unlike the Sophists, however, he consistently held that the object of reasoning was the discovery of truth, and certainly not career advancement or financial gain. He called himself a “philosopher” (philosophos)—not someone who was wise, that is, or a teacher of wisdom, but rather a lover, or seeker, of wisdom. He is often considered to be the first philosopher of the Western tradition. Socrates is the key figure in most of the works of Plato (c. 428/427– c. 348/347), his student. In engaging and readable literary dialogues, Plato depicts Socrates interacting with friends, students, and opponents, always gently leading them through ladders of reasoning that yield the certainty of truth. In the sum, these dialogues present a fairly consistent philosophy, called Platonism, in which the material world we encounter through our senses is viewed as only a filtered representation of a greater reality of abstract essences, or Forms. The philosopher’s goal is to know the ultimate truth of things, the Forms themselves—and may come to do so only when his immortal soul is released from the body in which it is held captive. That argument is especially well presented in the dialogue Phaedo, from which a selection appears here. It blasts apart the conundrum that lay at the core of Greek thought: the predicament of death-bound mortals in the face of deathless gods. From the era of Socrates and Plato, Athens became the center of philosophical thought not only in Greece, but also in the whole Mediterranean region. This political and cultural unification followed upon the conquests of the Macedonian prince Alexander the Great, who in his youth was the pupil of Plato’s pupil, the philosopher Aristotle. The era that followed the Alexandrian conquest is called Hellenistic, indicating its kinship to, and divergence from, the Hellenic civilization that is the subject of this chapter. In the Hellenistic era, the philosophical and literary products of the Hellenic were systematically studied, collected, imitated, diffused, and implanted throughout the Mediterranean region. The leaders of Rome, city, republic and empire, were schooled in the Hellenistic tradition, and thus inherited the legacy of Greece.

$$$

22

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

1. Homer, Iliad (c. 800–700 BCE) The Iliad is the epic account of the fall of Troy, or Ilion; but it is even more the account of the actions and destinies of the victorious Greek heroes, especially Achilles. Homer tells us so in line 1, where he invokes the Muse to empower him to sing of the anger that gripped his hero: “Sing, Goddess, Achilles’s rage.” Achilles was angry because Agamemnon, the chief of the expedition, had snatched away his concubine; proud and furious, he withdraws from the battle. The Greeks are hardpressed and need Achilles to return, and a delegation is sent to persuade him to do so. He refuses. But when his comrade Patroclus, determined to aid the Greek cause, dons Achilles’s armor, joins the battle, and is killed, the anger of Achilles surges to new heights. Determined to avenge his friend’s death, he charges to the front—unarmed, as his armor and weapons had been taken by Hector from the corpse of Patroclus—and howls murderous rage at the enemy. Soon his goddess mother will procure him a divinely wrought shield and weapons, and he will conquer Troy, and vanquish its defender, Hector. In these passages from books 9 and 18, Homer portrays Achilles as a fully developed individual, asserting his will, driven by ferocious passions, and possessing limitless strength, the foremost hero of the Greeks.

The Iliad A delegation sent by Agamemnon and led by Odysseus, seeks Achilles out in his tent to which he has withdrawn in anger. They went in tandem along the seething shore, Praying over and over to the god in the surf For an easy time in convincing Achilles. They came to the Myrmidons’2 ships and huts And found him plucking clear notes on a lyre3. . . Accompanying himself as he sang the glories Of heroes in war. He was alone with Patroclus, Who sat in silence waiting for him to finish. His visitors came forward, Odysseus first, And stood before him. Surprised, Achilles Rose from his chair still holding his lyre. Patroclus, when he saw them, also rose, And Achilles, swift and sure, received them:

2. Myrmidons: the followers of Achilles. 3. lyre: a stringed instrument.

1. Homer, Iliad

“Welcome. Things must be bad to bring you here, The Greeks I love best, even in my rage.” With these words Achilles led them in And had them sit on couches and rugs Dyed purple,4 and he called to Patroclus: “A larger bowl, son of Menoetius, And stronger wine, and cups all around. My dearest friends are beneath my roof.” . . . At Achilles’s request, Patroclus prepares food and drink for the Greek visitors. They helped themselves to the meal before them, And when they had enough of food and drink, Ajax nodded to Phoenix. Odysseus saw this, And filling a cup he lifted it to Achilles: “To your health, Achilles, for a generous feast. There is no shortage in Agamemnon’s hut, Or now here in yours, of satisfying food. But the pleasures of the table are not on our minds. We fear the worst. It is doubtful That we can save the ships without your strength. The Trojans and their allies are encamped Close to the wall that surrounds our black ships And are betting that we can’t keep them From breaking through. They may be right. Zeus5 has been encouraging them with signs, Lightning on the right. Hector trusts this— And his own strength—and has been raging Recklessly, like a man possessed. He is praying for dawn to come early So he can fulfill his threat to lop the horns From the ships’ sterns, burn the hulls to ash, And slaughter the Achaeans dazed in the smoke. This is my great fear, that the gods make good Hector’s threats, dooming us to die in Troy Far from the fields of home. Up with you, then, If you intend at all, even at this late hour, 4. Expensive purple dye was associated with royalty. 5. Zeus: the foremost of the twelve Olympian gods.

23

24

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

To save our army from these howling Trojans. Think of yourself, of the regret you will feel For harm that will prove irreparable. This is the last chance to save your countrymen. . . . Agamemnon is offering you worthy gifts If you will give up your grudge. Hear me While I list the gifts6 he proposed in his hut: Seven unfired tripods, ten gold bars, Twenty burnished cauldrons, a dozen horses— Solid, prizewinning racehorses Who have won him a small fortune— And seven women who do impeccable work, Surpassingly beautiful women from Lesbos He chose for himself when you captured the town. And with them will be the woman he took from you, Briseus’s daughter, and he will solemnly swear He never went to her bed and lay with her Or did what is natural between women and men. All this you may have at once. And if it happens That the gods allow us to sack Priam’s city, You may when the Greeks are dividing the spoils Load a ship to the brim with gold and bronze, And choose for yourself the twenty Trojan women Who are next in beauty to Argive Helen. And if we return to the rich land of Argos, You would marry his daughter . . . .” Odysseus names more benefits Achilles would have from Agamemnon if he returned to the fight. “All this he will do if you give up your grudge. But if Agamemnon is too hateful to you, Himself and his gifts, think of all the others Suffering up and down the line, and of the glory You will win from them. They will honor you Like a god. And don’t forget Hector. You just might get him now. He’s coming in close, 6. In this primitive era, there were few material goods of value; here are listed iron implements—tripods, cauldrons—along with gold, horses, and women.

1. Homer, Iliad

25

Deluded into thinking that he has no match In the Greek army that has landed on his beach.” And Achilles, strong, swift, and godlike: “Son of Laertes in the line of Zeus, Odysseus the strategist—I can see That I have no choice but to speak my mind And tell you exactly how things are going to be. Either that or sit through endless sessions Of people whining at me. I hate it like I hate hell The man who says one thing and thinks another. So this is how I see it. I cannot imagine Agamemnon, Or any other Greek, persuading me, Not after the thanks I got for fighting this war, Going up against the enemy day after day. It doesn’t matter if you stay in camp or fight— In the end, everybody comes out the same. Coward and hero get the same reward: You die whether you slack off or work. And what do I have for all my suffering, Constantly putting my life on the line? . . .” Achilles details his great exploits, and the insufficiency of rewards he received from Agamemnon, who to top it all off, took from Achilles the woman he loved. “What the others did get they at least got to keep. They all have their prizes, everyone but me— I’m the only Greek from whom he took something back. He should be happy with the woman he has. Why do the Greeks have to fight the Trojans? Why did Agamemnon lead the army to Troy If not for the sake of fair-haired Helen?7 Do you have to be descended from Atreus To love your mate? Every decent, sane man Loves his woman and cares for her, as I did, Loved her from my heart. It doesn’t matter That I won her with my spear. He took her, 7. Helen: the wife of Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon; her abduction by the Trojan prince Paris triggered the battle against Troy.

26

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

Took her right out of my hands, cheated me, And now he thinks he’s going to win me back? He can forget it. I know how things stand. It’s up to you, Odysseus, and the other kings To find a way to keep the fire from the ships. He’s been pretty busy without me, hasn’t he, Building a wall, digging a moat around it, Pounding in stakes for a palisade. None of that stuff will hold Hector back. . . .” Achilles threatens to load his ships tomorrow and set off for his home in Phthia. “So report back to him everything I say, And report it publicly—get the Greeks angry, In case the shameless bastard still thinks He can steal us blind. He doesn’t dare Show his dogface here. Fine. I don’t want To have anything to do with him either. He cheated me, wronged me. Never again. He’s had it. He can go to hell in peace, The half-wit that Zeus has made him. His gifts? His gifts mean nothing to me. . . . Not even if Agamemnon gave me gifts As numberless as grains of sand or dust, Would he persuade me or touch my heart— Not until he’s paid in full for all my grief. His daughter? I would not marry The daughter of Agamemnon son of Atreus If she were as lovely as golden Aphrodite Or could weave like owl-eyes Athena.8 Let him choose some other Achaean More to his lordly taste. If the gods Preserve me and I get home safe Peleus will find me a wife himself. . . . I’ve always wanted to take a wife there, A woman to have and to hold, someone with whom I can enjoy all the goods old Peleus has won. Nothing is worth my life. . . .

8. Aphrodite and Athena: goddesses of love and wisdom respectively, two of the Olympian gods.

1. Homer, Iliad

27

You can always get tripods and chestnut horses, But a man’s life cannot be won back Once his breath has passed beyond his clenched teeth. My mother Thetis, a moving silver grace, Tells me two fates sweep me on to my death. If I stay here and fight, I’ll never return home, But my glory will be undying forever. If I return home to my dear fatherland My glory is lost but my life will be long, And death that ends all will not catch me soon. As for the rest of you, I would advise you too To sail back home, since there’s no chance now Of storming Ilion’s height. Zeus has stretched His hand above her, making her people bold. What’s left for you now is to go back to the council And announce my message. It’s up to them To come up with another plan to save the ships And the army with them, since this one, Based on appeasing my anger, won’t work. . . .” Patroclus had donned Achilles’s armor and gone into the fight himself, but is vanquished. The news that Patroclus has died is reported to Achilles. Antilochus was in tears when he reached him And delivered his unendurable message: “Son of wise Peleus, this is painful news For you to hear, and I wish it were not true. Patroclus is down, and they are fighting For his naked corpse. Hector has the armor.” A mist of black grief enveloped Achilles. He scooped up fistfuls of sunburnt dust And poured it on his head, fouling His beautiful face. Black ash grimed His fine-spun cloak as he stretched his huge body Out in the dust and lay there, Tearing out his hair with his hands. The women, whom Achilles and Patroclus Had taken in raids, ran shrieking out of the tent To be with Achilles, and they beat their breasts Until their knees gave out beneath them. Antilochus, sobbing himself, stayed with Achilles

28

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

And held his hands—he was groaning From the depths of his soul—for fear He would lay open his own throat with steel. The sound of Achilles’ grief stung the air. . . . Thetis, Achilles’s mother, hears his cry, and with her companions runs to comfort him; she knows now that he must rejoin the fight and die, never to return to his homeland. She will ask the god Hephaestus to make glorious arms and armor for Achilles to wear in the struggle against Hector. Hector, meanwhile, attempts to seize Patroclus’s corpse. And while her feet carried her off to Olympus, Hector yelled, a yell so bloodcurdling and loud It stampeded the Greeks all the way back To their ships beached on the Hellespont’s shore. They could not pull the body of Patroclus Out of javelin range, and soon Hector, With his horses and men, stood over it again. Three times Priam’s resplendent son Took hold of the corpse’s heels and tried To drag it off, bawling commands to his men. Three times the two Ajaxes put their heads down, Charged, and beat him back. Unshaken, Hector Sidestepped, cut ahead, or held his ground With a shout, but never yielded an inch. . . . The goddess Iris is sent down with a message to Achilles: even unarmed, he must go into the battle and rescue the body of Patroclus; his mere appearance will turn the Trojans back. This he does by the power of his voice alone, boosted by the goddess Athena. Iris spoke and was gone. And Achilles, Whom the gods loved, rose. Around His mighty shoulders Athena threw Her tasseled aegis, and the shining goddess Haloed his head with a golden cloud That shot flames from its incandescent glow. . . . He went to the trench—away from the wall And the other Greeks, out of respect For his mother’s tense command. Standing there, He yelled, and behind him Pallas Athena

2. Hesiod, Works and Days

29

Amplified his voice, and shock waves Reverberated through the Trojan ranks. You have heard the piercing sound of horns When squadrons come to destroy a city. The Greek’s voice was like that, Speaking bronze that made each Trojan heart Wince with pain.        And the combed horses Shied from their chariots, eyes wide with fear, And their drivers went numb when they saw The fire above Achilles’s head Burned into the sky by the Grey-Eyed One. Three times Achilles shouted from the trench; Three times the Trojans and their confederates Staggered and reeled, twelve of their best Lost in the crush of chariots and spears. But the Greeks were glad to pull Patroclus’s body Out of range and placed it on a litter. His comrades Gathered around, weeping, and with them Achilles, Shedding hot tears when he saw his loyal friend Stretched out on the litter, cut with sharp bronze. He had sent him off to war with horses and chariot, But he never welcomed him back home again.

$$$ 2. Hesiod, Works and Days (c. 700 BCE) Addressing his brother Perses, one of the small farmers who were the bedrock of Greek society during the Archaic age, Hesiod offers in epic verse advice for the prudent management of the land. That advice is interlaced with larger meditations on the misery of this fallen age: the necessity of work; the ubiquity of injustice; and the eventual punishment of evildoing by the gods. It is our misfortune, he explains, to live in the fifth age of this world, the age of Iron, which had been preceded by a perfect Golden Age, increasingly imperfect ages of Silver and Bronze, and a fourth age of Heroes (of the Homeric sort). As dwellers in an Iron Age, we must work to eat; and we must develop rules of justice, so that the poor and struggling are not abused by the rich and powerful. The best that can be hoped for is a peaceful, modestly prosperous existence, where the “sheep are hefty with fleece,” children “look like their

30

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

parents,” and people “never travel on ships” (like merchants, soldiers, and adventurers), but stay on the land, for “the soil’s their whole life.”

Works and Days Having pursued the course of history from the first Golden Age through the fourth Heroic Age, Hesiod reflects on the hardships of those living in the last age of Iron. I wish I had nothing to do with this fifth generation, Wish I had died before or been born after, Because this is the Iron Age. Not a day goes by A man doesn’t have some kind of trouble. Nights too, just wearing him down. I mean The gods send us terrible pain and vexation. Still, there’ll be some good mixed in with the evil, And then Zeus will destroy this generation too, Soon as they start being born grey around the temples. Then fathers won’t get along with their kids anymore, Nor guests with hosts, nor partner with partner, And brothers won’t be friends, the way they used to be. Nobody’ll honor their parents when they get old But they’ll curse them and give them a hard time, Godless rascals, and never think about paying them back For all the trouble it was to raise them. They’ll start taking justice into their own hands, Sacking each other’s cities, no respect at all For the man who keeps his oaths, the good man, The just man. No, they’ll keep all their praise For the wrongdoer, the man who is violence incarnate, And shame and justice will lie in their hands. . . . Hesiod’s fable of the hawk paints a terrifying portrait of injustice, the sheer vulnerability of the weak at the mercy of the powerful. And here’s a fable for kings, who’ll not need it explained: It’s what the hawk said high in the clouds As he carried off a speckle-throated nightingale

2. Hesiod, Works and Days

Skewered on his talons. She complained something pitiful, And he made this high and mighty speech to her: “No sense in your crying. You’re in the grip of real strength now, And you’ll go where I take you, songbird or not. I’ll make a meal of you if I want, or I might let you go. Only a fool struggles against his superiors. He not only gets beat, but humiliated as well.” Thus spoke the hawk, the windlord, his long wings beating. But you, Perses, you listen to Justice And don’t cultivate Violence. Violent behavior is bad For a poor man. Even a rich man can’t afford it But it’s going to bog him down in Ruin some day. There’s a better road around the other way Leading to what’s right. When it comes down to it Justice beats out Violence. A fool learns this the hard way. Also, Oath, who’s a god, keeps up with crooked verdicts, And there’s a ruckus when the Lady Justice Gets dragged through the streets by corrupt judges Who swallow bribes and pervert their verdicts. Later, she finds her way back into town, weeping, Wrapped in mist, and she gives grief to the men Who drove her out and didn’t do right by her. But when judges judge straight, for neighbors As well as for strangers, and never turn their backs On Justice, their city blossoms, their people bloom. You’ll find peace all up and down the land And youngsters growing tall, because broad-browed Zeus Hasn’t marked them out for war. Nor do famine or blight Ever afflict folk who deal squarely with each other. They feast on the fruits of their tended fields, And the earth bears them a good living too. Mountain oaks yield them acorns at the crown, Bees and honey from the trunk. Their sheep Are hefty with fleece, and women bear children Who look like their parents. In short, they thrive On all the good things life has to offer, and they Never travel on ships. The soil’s their whole life.

31

32

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

But for those who live for violence and vice, Zeus, Son of Kronos, broad-browed god, decrees A just penalty, and often a whole city suffers For one bad man and his damn fool schemes. The Son of Kronos sends them disaster from heaven, Famine and plague, and the folk wither away, Women stop bearing children, whole families Die off, by Zeus’s Olympian will. Or another time He might lay low their army, or tumble down Their city’s walls, or sink all their ships at sea. Rulers and Lords! It’s up to you To observe this justice. There are, you know, Immortal beings abroad in this world Who do observe with what corruption and fraud Men grind down their neighbors and destroy the state, As if they’d never heard of angry gods. . . . Guard against this, you bribe-eating lords. Judge rightly. Forget your crooked deals. . . . Perses must work for justice, and work unceasingly, and so achieve prosperity. Perses, you take all this to heart. Listen To what’s right, and forget about violence. The Son of Kronos has laid down the law for humans. Fish and beasts and birds of prey feed on Each other, since there’s no justice among them. But to men he gave justice, and that works out All to the good. If you know in your heart what’s right And come out and say so, broad-browed Zeus will Give you prosperity. But if you bear false witness Or lie under oath, and by damaging Justice Ruin yourself beyond hope of cure, your bloodline Will weaken and your descendants fade out. But a man Who stands by his word leaves a strong line of kinfolk. . . . So at least listen, Perses—you come from good stock— And remember always to work. Work so Hunger’ll

2. Hesiod, Works and Days

Hate you, and Demeter,9 the venerable crowned goddess, Will smile on you and fill your barn with food. Hunger is the lazy man’s constant companion. Gods hate him, and men do too, the loafer Who lives like the stingless drones, wasting The hive’s honey without working themselves, Eating free. You’ve got to schedule your work So your sheds will stay full of each season’s harvest. It’s work that makes men rich in flocks and goods. When you work you’re a lot dearer to the gods And to people too. Everyone hates a lay-about. Work’s no disgrace; it’s idleness that’s a disgrace. . . . With wealth comes honor and glory. No matter your situation, it’s better to work, Better for you too, Perses, if you’d only Get your mind off of other folks’ property And work at earning a living, as I keep telling you. . . . Wealth’s better not grabbed but given by the gods. If a man lays hold of wealth by main force Or if he pirates it with his tongue, as happens All too often when greed hoodwinks a man’s sense And decency gets crowded out by its opposite, The gods whittle him down just like that, shrink His household, and he doesn’t stay rich for long. . . . Let the wages for a friend be settled on and fixed, Even if he’s your brother. You can shake hands and smile, But get a witness. Trust and mistrust both ruin men. Don’t let a sashaying female pull the wool over our eyes With her flirtatious lies. She’s fishing for your barn. Trust a woman and you’d as well trust a thief. There should be only one son to support The father’s house. That’s the way a family’s wealth grows. Die old if you leave a second son in the house. 9. Demeter: goddess of agriculture and nourishment, one of the Olympian gods.

33

34

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

Still, Zeus can easily supply plenty all around, And more hands mean more help, and a bigger yield. And if the spirit within you moves you to get rich, Do as follows:

Work, work, and then work some more.

$$$ 3. Sappho, Poems and Fragments (c. 650 BCE) This selection of seven poems and fragments—the poems are themselves fragmentary—illustrate the main features of Sappho’s unusually powerful verse: the interior self as the fulcrum of all experience, and piercing lovesickness as the consuming and irresistible passion felt by the human being, who is vulnerable, defenseless, and irrational in its presence. Brief headnotes for each poem or fragment identify its main focus.

Poems and Fragments 1: Sappho asks for the aid in her lovesickness of the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite. Shimmering, iridescent, deathless Aphrodite, child of Zeus, weaver of wiles, I beg you, do not crush my spirit with anguish, Lady, but come to me now, if ever before you heard my voice in the distance and leaving your father’s golden house drove your chariot pulled by sparrows swift and beautiful over the black earth, their wings a blur as they streaked down from heaven across the bright sky— and then you were with me, a smile playing about your immortal lips

3. Sappho, Poems and Fragments

35

as you asked, what is it this time? why are you calling again? And asked what my heart in its lovesick raving most wanted to happen: “Whom now should I persuade to love you? Who is wronging you, Sappho? She may run now, but she’ll be chasing soon. She may spurn gifts, but soon she’ll be giving. She may not love now, but soon she will, willing or not.” Come to me again now, release me from my agony, fulfill all that my heart desires, and fight for me,

fight at my side, Goddess.

5: Sappho takes poetic revenge, with malice touched by humor, against an enemy or rival. When you are dead you will lie forever unremembered and no one will miss you, for you have not touched the roses of the Pierian Muses.10 Invisible even in the house of Hades,11 you will wander among the dim dead, a flitting thing. 20: Sappho is the third person in a triangle, suffering passionate and unrequited love for someone loved by another person—a man. Look at him, just like a god, that man sitting across from you, whoever he is, listening to your close, sweet voice, your irresistible laughter And O yes, it sets my heart racing— one glance at you 10. Pierian Muses: the nine Muses, to whom the Pierian Spring in Macedonia was sacred; they were goddesses of poetry, music, and inspiration. 11. Hades: the underworld, to which souls were destined after death, was the realm of the god Hades.

36

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

and I can’t get any words out, my voice cracks, a thin flame runs under my skin, my eyes go blind, my ears ring, a cold sweat pours down my body, I tremble all over, turn paler than grass. Look at me just a shade from dead But I must bear it, since a poor 31: Sappho ranks the passion of love above the human appreciation of any other beautiful thing; no other emotion competes. Some say an army on horseback, some say on foot, and some say ships are the most beautiful things on this black earth, but I say it is whatever you love. It’s easy to show this. Just look at Helen, beautiful herself beyond everything human, and she left her perfect husband and went sailing off to Troy without a thought for her child or her dear parents, led astray lightly reminding me of Anactoria,12 who is gone and whose lovely walk and bright shimmering face I would rather see than all the chariots 12. Anactoria: the woman Sappho loves at this moment.

4. Aeschylus, Agamemnon

37

and armed men in Lydia13

but it cannot be

humans pray to share unexpectedly 36: Sappho has fallen in love with a boy (or possibly, a child, or a girl) and is helpless against the force of her passion. Sweet mother, I can no longer work the loom. Slender Aphrodite has made me fall in love with a boy. 61: Sappho finds that sexual passion wholly overcomes her reason. you came and you did it, and I wanted you and you thoroughly deceived my mind as it blazed with desire 73: Sappho sleeps alone; the lover she has wished for has not come. The moon has set, And the Pleiades.14 Midnight. The hour has gone by. I sleep alone.

$$$ 4. Aeschylus, Agamemnon (c. 458 BCE) Two dialogues are extracted here from a long and complex play. The first highlights Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s queen, the sister of Helen of Argos for whom Troy was besieged and destroyed, and the mother of Iphigeneia, who had been sacrificed by her own father in order to promote the expedition. She greets her husband on his return from the ten-year absence in Troy, pretending to love and 13. Lydia: a kingdom in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), adjacent to Greek coastal cities on that peninsula. 14. Pleiades: a brilliant cluster of stars, named for the seven daughters—all married—of the Greek god Atlas.

38

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

honor him, stretching out a crimson carpet for him to walk on as he enters his palace to resume his position of sovereignty. He demurs; to walk on crimson, signifying royalty, its color achieved by rare and expensive dyes, was to tempt the gods to strike him down for his pride. But he yields to her wishes and enters the house. The second dialogue opens as screams are heard offstage of the murder of Agamemnon. Clytemnestra stands at the palace door, a bloodied axe in her hand. She announces defiantly to the Chorus of city elders that she has slain her husband, and that the deed was just: the due revenge for the slaughtered Iphigenia, the horrors visited upon Troy, and the inherited sins of his dynasty, the house of Atreus. The Chorus, which usually speaks in one voice, breaks down into cacophony: What is to be done? Will Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus seize power over the city and rule as tyrants? Clytemnestra silences them: she is in charge, the deed is done, “And that is the end of that.”15

Agamemnon The Chorus of old men stands in the open space in front of the doors of Agamemnon’s palace, as Agamemnon, returning from Troy, arrives in a chariot. CHORUS: Come then, King, conqueror of Troy, Son of Atreus. How should I salute you? How to honor you correctly, neither exceeding the limit nor falling short of due homage? . . . When you were gathering the armies for the sake of Helen, my mind painted an ugly picture of you, I don’t deny it. I thought you must have lost all grip on your senses, when you dared that sacrifice,16 to save your dying men. But now, from a heart loyal and true I say: “Well done to all who wrought this joyful end.” You will soon find out for yourself which of your citizens, who stayed at home, were just, and which abused your absence. AGAMEMNON: First, it is right that I address Argos and the gods 15. Stage directions and the system of choral interludes are simplified. 16. That is, of Agamemnon’s daughter, Iphigenia.

4. Aeschylus, Agamemnon

of this land—my allies, who helped me exact justice from Priam’s city and return home safely. . . . You can still see the smoke from the sacked city, the storm-winds of ruin are alive! And as the embers die, the ashes of Troy’s wealth are scattered to the wind. . . . But now to matters of state and religion. We must meet in council and call an assembly, we will decide what is healthy and help it prosper, but the sickness in the state must be cut away, and burned clean to stem the spread of infection. Now I will enter my house, my home, and at the household hearth offer my first greeting to the gods, they sent me, and they have brought me back. Victory, you have been my constant companion, may you stand by my side forever. Enter Clytemnestra from the doors. CLYTEMNESTRA: Men of the city, elders of Argos, I feel no shame in telling you of my love for the man, shyness dies when one gets older. I will speak from the heart, I will tell you how unbearable my life has been while this man stood under Troy’s walls. To begin with, when a woman sits at home, parted from her husband, her loneliness is terrible, and the rumors she hears spread like a disease. A messenger comes to the house bringing bad news, then another and the reports grow worse. If this man had been struck as often as false rumors flowed into this house, then he would have more holes in him than a net. . . . These rumors ate away at me, to the point that I had to be released, against my will, from the noose of suicide, more than once. This is why our child, the seal of our pledge, is not here, standing by my side as is right.

39

40

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

Do not worry, Orestes our son is safe in the care of our loyal ally. . . . As for me, I once cried rivers of tears but I can’t any more, I have no more tears. I sat up night after night, waiting my eyes sore with weeping, straining to see the beacon-fires that were never lit. . . . I endured all this and now my mind is free from pain, I welcome this man, the watchdog of the fold, the steadfast broad-beam of the ship, the strong pillar of the towering roof, the one true heir to his father, the sight of land to shipwrecked sailors, the first fine day after the storm, a refreshing stream to a thirsty traveler, the sweet savior of all our stress. . . . Come now my love, step down from the chariot, do not place your kingly foot on common ground, this is the foot that stamped out Troy. Women! I have told you what to do. Enter servant women from the doors. They lay a path of crimson tapestries from the doorway to the foot of Agamemnon’s chariot. Strew the path of his feet with these fabrics, quickly! Cover his way with crimson, let justice lead him into the home he never expected to see again. . . . AGAMEMNON: Daughter of Leda, guardian of my house, your speech was like my absence, too long. You should not praise me this way, such words should come from others. Do not pamper me like a woman, nor grovel with a gaping mouth as if I were some barbarian chieftain. Do not bring Envy on me by strewing my path with cloths, only the gods should be honored this way. I am a mortal man and the thought of stepping on these beautiful embroideries fills me with dread. Give me the honors due to a man, not a god,

4. Aeschylus, Agamemnon

41

you do not need to add to my fame with these foot-cloths and fine fabrics. . . . CLYTEMNESTRA: Then trust your judgment and tell me this. AGAMEMNON: Don’t worry, my judgment will never be corrupted. CLYTEMNESTRA: Would you have promised this to the gods in a moment of terror? AGAMEMNON: Yes, if a seer told me that it would be for the best. CLYTEMNESTRA: What do you think Priam would have done if he had won? AGAMEMNON: I think he would have walked on these embroideries. . . . CLYTEMNESTRA: It becomes the fortunate man to yield a victory. AGAMEMNON: You really want your victory in this contest? CLYTEMNESTRA: Be persuaded, you have the power, surrender of your own free will, to me. AGAMEMNON: Well, if you want this so much. . . . And as I tread on these lavish sea-red cloths, let no god’s envious glare strike me from afar. I am ashamed to let my feet ruin the wealth of this house and waste these expensive threads. Enough! Agamemnon steps down from his chariot and onto the tapestries. It is done. . . .

42

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

And now since I have surrendered to your pleas, I will go into the halls of my house, treading on crimson cloths. Agamemnon turns and walks along the tapestries, and enters the doors. . . . Zeus! Zeus fulfiller! Fulfill my prayers! Complete your plans, once and for all! Exit women through the doors with the tapestries, followed by Clytemnestra. A long choral interlude follows, and a dialogue between the Chorus and Cassandra, Agamemnon’s Trojan concubine who had accompanied him back to Argos. ... The cries of Agamemnon are heard from inside the house. AGAMEMNON: Ai! Death strikes deep! CHORUS: Silence! Someone cries out, someone has been struck down! AGAMEMNON: Ai! Again! Struck down dead! The chorus splits into separate voices. CHORUS: Our King cries out in agony! It has been done! Quickly, we must decide what to do, common action! ——I’ll tell you this, we should raise the alarm,    Get the people to storm the palace! ——No! We must go in now, catch them red-handed,    while the blade is still dripping. ——Yes, you are right. I vote for action,    let’s do it now, there is no time to waste! ——Wait! Can’t you see what they are doing?    This is the first step towards tyranny. . . .

4. Aeschylus, Agamemnon

43

——Yes, I agree, we must first have a plan,    words won’t bring the dead back to life. ——What! So you would surrender to tyrants,    who defile our royal House, just to live a little longer? ——No! Never! I could not bear to suffer that!    I would rather die than be ruled by tyrants! . . . . Enter Clytemnestra from the doors of the palace. She stands amid the corpses of Agamemnon and Cassandra, which are shrouded in an embroidered robe. CLYTEMNESTRA: Words so many words I have said to serve my needs, and now, finally, I am not ashamed to speak openly, How else could I have hung high the vicious nets and caught my hated enemy in the inescapable trap, all the while pretending friendship? so long my mind has been preparing for this, this trial of an ancient vendetta. Now the day has come, I stand here where I struck, and the deed is done. This was my work, I do not deny it, he could not have escaped his destiny. I cast my vast net, tangling around him, wrapping him in a robe rich in evil. I struck him twice and he screamed twice, his limbs buckled and his body came crashing down, and as he lay there, I struck him again, a third blow for Underworld Zeus, the savior of the dead. He collapsed, gasping out his last breath, his life ebbing away, spitting spurts of blood, which splattered down on me like dark sanguine dew. And I rejoiced just as the newly sown earth rejoices, at the nourishing rain sent by Zeus! That is how things stand, elders of Argos, rejoice with me if you wish, the glory is mine. . . . CHORUS: I am amazed at your brazen tongue, that you dare to say these things, standing over your dead husband?

44

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

CLYTEMNESTRA: Am I on trial like some senseless woman? I don’t care if you praise me or blame me, It makes no difference to me. Here lies Agamemnon, my husband, dead, the work of this right hand a just craftsman. And that is the end of that. CHORUS: Woman! Have you eaten some kind of noxious herb? Has an evil potion from the sea driven you insane? How could you have done this? The citizens will curse you! You cut him down and cast him away, now you will be cast from the city, an exile, a figure of hate, reviled by the people, despised. CLYTEMNESTRA: Now you pass judgment! Exile from this land, the hatred of the people, public curses. But him! What charges did you ever bring against him? For all he cared he might as well have been killing an animal. Oh, he had plenty of sheep to choose from, but he sacrificed his own child, my labor of love, to charm away the cruel storm-winds of Thrace. He was the one you should have banished from this land, as punishment for the pollution he brought on us. But when you hear of what I have done, you judge so harshly. Go on, threaten away! I’ll meet your match. If you overthrow me, then you win, but if the gods have ordained another outcome, then you will learn discretion, however old you are. CHORUS: Megalomania! Such brazen speech, you must be mad! Crazed by the killing, I can even see blood streaked in your eyes! No one will stand by you, you have no allies. Revenge will come and you will pay, blow for blow. CLYTEMNESTRA: Listen then to my oaths, sanctioned by what is right. By the justice I exacted for my child,

5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King

45

by Ruin, and the Fury in whose honor I sacrificed this man. My hopes will never tread the halls of fear, as long as my hearth-fire is kept alight by Aegisthus,17 loyal as ever to me. He is like a shield to my confidence. . . . CHORUS: . . . Oh, my king, my king, how should I mourn you? How can I tell you how much you were loved? Lying there in this spider’s web, you have drawn your last breath, such a sacrilegious death. Oh, to see you shamed like this, struck down with a double-edged blade, by the treacherous hand of your own wife. CLYTEMNESTRA: So you confidently claim that this was my work but do not call me Agamemnon’s, no! For I am the age-old spirit of vengeance in the guise of this dead man’s wife . . . and I have sacrificed this full-grown victim, in payment for the slaughtered young.18 . . . Yes, he has suffered, deed for deed, for what he did to our daughter, Iphigenia, his own flesh and blood.

$$$ 5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King (c. 428–425 BCE) As portrayed by Sophocles, Oedipus is a good man—we might say innocent—who by a series of circumstances has unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and by that incestuous union—an intolerable sin in this ancient civilization—fathered both sons and daughters. In the meantime, he has become king of Thebes, one of the major ancient Greek cities 17. Aegisthus: the lover Clytemnestra had taken while Agamemnon was in Troy, and on whom she relies to perform strongman services in a city they will now jointly rule over as tyrants. 18. That is, for Iphigenia.

46

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

whose story is told by a whole legendary cycle secondary in importance only to the story of Troy. By another series of accidents, he and his wife, Jocasta, learn the truth about their past. Jocasta kills herself. Oedipus, taking from her corpse the golden pins that had held her robes in place, stabs his eyes and blinds himself, preventing his seeing ever again the people he has wronged, and making himself as blind in the body as he had been to the real truth of his existence. Given here are excerpts from the final pages of the play which relate her death and his blinding, both of which happen offstage, as is the discreet custom in these tragedies, and are described by onstage characters. Even amid these horrific events, the personalities of the characters are more human in scale than those in Aeschylus’s work, and the emotions of pain and horror that they experience more vividly drawn.19

Oedipus the King A messenger appears through the doors to tell the Chorus of city elders the news of Jocasta’s death. MESSENGER: Most honored elders of this land The things you will hear! The things you will see! The burden you will carry! It is grief. That is, if you care for this family as kin. . . . CHORUS: Nothing could be heavier than what we know Already. How can you add anything to that? MESSENGER: As brief a message as you could hear: She is dead. The queen, Jocasta, is dead. CHORUS: Poor, poor woman. What happened? MESSENGER: She killed herself. It’s horrible, but you weren’t there. 19. Stage directions and the system of choral interludes are simplified. The translation for the Latin title of the play varies in different editions. The edition of Meineck and Woodruff used for this selection is titled Oedipus Tyrannus, but has been translated here instead as Oedipus the King, as “tyrant” (tyrannus) has a different meaning in English than is intended.

5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King

You won’t see the worst of it. Listen, you’ll find out how much she suffered, If I have any power to tell a tale. Well, then. She was in a terrible state. She went inside and ran straight to the bedroom, To her marriage bed. She was tearing at her hair With both hands, and she slammed the doors As soon as she was inside, then called a dead man’s name— “Laius! Do you remember making love, making the child That later killed you, that left me to give birth To the children of your child, children of the curse?” And she was wailing at the bed where she had conceived, A double misery: a husband from her husband, And children from her child. Then she died. I don’t know more, because Oedipus plunged in, Shouting so loud we could not think about her troubles. We kept our eyes on him dashing up and down, Raving about, roaring, “Bring my sword. And where’s my wife—no, not my wife, Mother of two crops, myself and my children.” He was in a frenzy, and some spirit led him— It wasn’t any one of us servants— He went charging at the doors and bent them inward With a terrible shout, as if someone guided him, Plunged through the doors, fell inside the room. She was hanging there, his wife. We saw her Hanging in a noose of braided rope. Then he saw her. He howled in misery, Loosened the hanging rope, and laid her down On the ground, poor woman. Then a horrible sight: he tore out the long pins Of beaten gold that had adorned her clothes, Lifted them up, and plunged them into his eyes, Crying out, “Now you may not see the evil, Not the evil I have done—or suffered. From now on, you must gaze in darkness On forbidden faces, while the ones you should have seen You’ll never know.” That was his litany. Again and again he chanted it and struck his eyes. Blood was running down from the sockets,

47

48

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

Staining his cheeks red, an unstoppable flood Dashing down, a dense hail of gore. And so the storm has broken on them both— Husband and wife, their suffering commingled. It used to be happiness that they shared, Happiness indeed, but now, today: Grief, unseeing madness, death, disgrace, Every horror that we know how to name. CHORUS: Poor man. Is there no relief for him? MESSENGER: He shouts for someone to unlock the gates And show all Thebes the father-killer, The mother- (I cannot say what is unholy), And then he’ll cast himself out from this land And not stay on to be a curse at home, For he bears the curse that he called down. He begs for strength, and for someone to lead him, For he is sick beyond what he can bear. He’ll show you, himself. The doors are opening now. What you will see is loathsome; pity him. The Messenger exits stage right. Oedipus enters through the great doors. The gruesome effects of his blinding can be seen clearly. CHORUS: Amazing horror! Nothing worse can come upon a man. . . . OEDIPUS: Ai! Ai! My suffering! Where on this earth am I going, led by misery? My voice? It is scattered on the wings of the wind. How far Destiny has leapt. CHORUS: To terrors beyond what we can hear or see. OEDIPUS: Oh, darkness!

5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King

49

Hideous clouds engulf me, swept in By ill wind! Inescapable, unspeakable! Ohhh! Again and again, so much agony! Memories stabbing, piercing me with pain! . . . Damn that man, whoever he was, Who freed my feet from the shackles And rescued me from death.20 Call it cruelty, not kindness! I should have died there and then And spared them all this pain. CHORUS: It would have been for the best. OEDIPUS: Then, I would have never killed my father, Nor been known as the man Who married his mother. Now, I am the godless son of shame, Who slept in the same bed where he was bred. What evil could there ever be That could surpass the fate of Oedipus? CHORUS: I can’t agree with what you did: Better to die than to be blind. OEDIPUS: Don’t tell me that what I did was not for the best. I do not want opinions, I do not need advice. If I had eyes, how could I bear to see my father When I die and go down to the depths of Hades, Or face my wretched mother? My crimes Against them could not be cured by suicide. Could I ever long to see my children, born As they were born, and enjoy that sweet sight? My eyes could not bear to look at them! 20. Oedipus had been abandoned to the elements (“exposed”) as an infant, his ankles pierced and tied so he could not move. A servant rescued and untied him, but his feet remained swollen, which is the meaning of his name.

50

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

The finest man raised by Thebes Has deprived himself of his city, her walls The sacred idols of the gods. Wretch! I gave the order: Cast out the curse! The gods have exposed the impiety, And so stand I, the son of Laius, defiled. Now that my vile stain glares out, Could I ever meet the eyes of my people? Never! If only I could stem the stream of sound, Then I’d shut away my broken body Hearing silence, seeing nothing: Sweet oblivion, where the mind Exists beyond the bounds of grief. . . . The three ways at that hidden gully, The narrow track through the woods Where I spilled my father’s blood, My own blood! Do you remember? The triple path witnessed what I did. Do you see where you have led me? Marriage! The marriage bond bred me, Brought me up to wed my own blood. Kin created kin: fathers, brothers, sons Mixed with mothers, brides, and wives. Humanity’s foulest deeds! I cannot speak of such abhorrent acts. By all the gods, you must let me hide away, Cast me into the sea, kill me, shun me from sight. Oedipus moves toward the Chorus; they shrink back in fear. Come closer, I am not untouchable, You should not fear the wretched. My affliction cannot cause you any harm; No one but me is able to endure my pain. Enter Creon and attendants from stage right. CHORUS: The man you need for what you ask is here: Creon. Ready for action or decision, He alone remains our guardian in your place.

5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King

OEDIPUS: What could I ever say to him? Why would he believe a word I say, Now I’ve been shown to be so very wrong? CREON: Oedipus, I have not come to jeer at you Or cast any blame for past wrongs. To the attendants, who are afraid to go near Oedipus. Now, perhaps you’ve no respect for human Beings, but at least show reverence To the fiery sun that feeds us all: Do not openly display this cursed thing That earth and rain and light can’t bear to touch. Take him quickly inside our house. Close relatives alone may see and hear, With all due holiness, such evil in the family. OEDIPUS: O gods! My fears dispelled, You are the best of men and I the worst. Just one thing, for your sake, not for mine. CREON: What do you want, that you ask so earnestly? OEDIPUS: Cast me out, quick as you can, to a place Where I will never speak to another human. . . . I only ask this of you, I beg you: Do right by her, your sister.21 Give her A proper burial, a final place to rest. But do not sentence my father’s city To the curse of caring for me while I live. I will go to the mountains, to Cithaeron, My mountain, where my mother and father 21. Creon was Jocasta’s brother, and is uncle to Oedipus’s children.

51

52

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

Long ago marked out my tomb. There they wanted me dead. There I will die. Now I know that no ordinary end waits For me. There was a reason I was spared From death, some other daunting destiny. Let fate guide where I go, and what will be will be. My children? Creon, don’t spare a thought For the boys. They are grown men now; Wherever they go, they will survive. But my poor unhappy girls, They’ve never known another table. Everything I touched was theirs to share. Take care of them, Creon—please. If only I could hold them one last time. Let our tears fall together . . . O lord, my lord . . . Noble Creon . . . could I hold them in my arms? I can imagine them . . . as I used to see them. Enter Ismene and Antigone, his daughters, from stage right. What’s this? I can hear them, yes, by all the gods, my darlings! They’re crying, crying . . . Creon, you took pity, You sent me what I love more than anything . . . anything. Tell me that I’m right. CREON: You’re right. I brought them here. I knew how much they’d gladden you now, as always. OEDIPUS: Oh, bless you. May the gods guard your way. May your journey be so much better than mine. My children, where are you? Come here, Take my hands, the hands of your brother. Do you see what they did to your father, Who once looked at you with gleaming eyes? But, children, I saw nothing, I knew nothing, I fathered you in the soil where I was sown. I grieve for you, though I cannot see your faces. I can imagine how this cruel world

5. Sophocles, Oedipus the King

53

Will make you lead the rest of your lives. What people will share their city with you? What festivals will you ever enjoy? Shut away Out of sight, no more celebrations, only tears. And when the time comes for you to marry, Who can he be? Who, my daughters, Would ever dare to take on the disgrace That blights the children of this family? They won’t spare a single insult: Your father killed his father! Your father is your brother! Your brother is your father! Your father ploughed his mother! You’ll hear it all. Who would marry you? No such man exists. No, you’ll waste away Dry wombed, sterile, barren, Unmarried and all alone. Creon, son of Menoeceus, you are now Their only father; they are orphans, Their parents lost in one cruel stroke. Don’t let them become impoverished Spinsters, wandering vagrants, outcasts. Take pity on them. Look at these lost Children; they have nothing else but you. Swear it, noble Creon. Give me your hand. Creon reels back, and Oedipus turns to his children. Oh, children, there was so much I wanted To say to you, but now I can only ask this: Pray that you always lead measured lives, Better lives than lived by your own father. CREON: Enough tears! It’s time to go inside. Creon and the girls exit through the great doors, Oedipus alone stage left.

$$$

54

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

6. Euripides, Medea (431 BCE) More than his predecessors, Euripides is concerned with women, who alone give birth to children, and who may also, as is the case with Medea, kill them: an intensely unnatural act, the consequence of fierce and extreme passions. These are for Euripides, more than the actions of the gods, the main drivers of human behavior. To a world filled with myth and magic, he brings savage realism. Where Agamemnon, albeit cruelly, sacrifices his daughter, he does so for a lofty purpose; and where Oedipus commits both incest and patricide, he does so unconsciously and unwillingly; but Medea commits infanticide with deliberation and clear intent, for no other end than to destroy her husband, who has set her aside for another woman. She is both vicious and selfish—and yet she has been wronged. Euripides forces us to acknowledge that injustice, even as he leaves us aghast at the evil she has done. In the passage given here, Medea has accomplished the murder of her rival, the princess Glauce, her husband Jason’s betrothed, and Glauce’s father, the king of Corinth. Her weapon is a magical poison applied to the precious gifts for the bride, a golden robe and crown, which she has sent her two children to deliver. Crazed and furious, Jason comes to Medea’s house to confront her. But in the meantime, Medea has killed the children, their screams heard from offstage as she wields the sword. Ostensibly, she kills them to save them from the retribution of her enemies; more plausibly, she does so to destroy her husband. He breaks into the house to take his vengeance upon her, but cannot; for she has taken flight on a magic chariot that hovers above the stage, the two small mangled corpses visible on board.22

Medea A messenger reports that the princess Glauce, Jason’s betrothed, and her father Creon have died horribly, victims of the poison sent by Medea. MESSENGER: Medea, run away! Take any ship or wagon that will carry you. Leave now! MEDEA: Why should I flee? What makes it necessary? MESSENGER: The royal princess and her father Creon have just now died—the victims of your poison. 22. Stage directions and the system of choral interludes are simplified.

6. Euripides, Medea

MEDEA: This news is excellent. From this day forth I’ll count you as a friend and benefactor. MESSENGER: What are you saying? Are you sane at all, or raving? You’ve attacked the royal hearth— how can you rejoice, and not be frightened? MEDEA: I could tell my own side to this story. But calm down, friend, and please describe to me how they were destroyed. If you can say that they died horribly, I’ll feel twice the pleasure. MESSENGER: When we saw that your two boys had come together with their father to the bride’s house, all of us—we servants who have felt the pain of your misfortunes—were delighted; the talk was that you’d settled your differences, you and your husband. We embraced the boys, kissing their hands, their golden hair. And I, overjoyed as I was, accompanied the children to the women’s quarters. She— the mistress we now honor in your place— before she caught sight of your pair of boys was gazing eagerly at Jason. Then she saw the children, and she covered up her eyes, as if the sight disgusted her, and turned her pale cheek aside. Your husband tried to cool down the girl’s bad temper, saying, “Don’t be hateful toward your loved ones! Please, calm your spirit, turn your head this way, and love those whom your husband loves. Receive these gifts, and ask your father, for my sake, not to send these children into exile.” Well, when she saw the fine things, she gave in to everything the man said. They had barely set foot outside the door—your children and their father—when she took the intricate embroidered robe and wrapped it round her body,

55

56

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

and set the golden crown upon her curls, and smiled at her bright image—her lifeless double— in a mirror, as she arranged her hair. She rose, and with a delicate step her lovely white feet traversed the quarters. She rejoiced beyond all measure in the gifts. Quite often she extended her ankle, admiring the effect. What happened next was terrible to see. Her skin changed color, and her legs were shaking; she reeled sideways, and she would have fallen straight to the ground if she hadn’t collapsed in her chair. Then one of her servants, an old woman, thinking that the girl must be possessed by Pan or by some other god, cried out— a shriek of awe and reverence—but when she saw the white foam at her mouth, her eyes popping out, the blood drained from her face, she changed her cry to one of bitter mourning. A maid ran off to get the princess’ father; another went to tell the bride’s new husband of her disaster. Everywhere the sound of running footsteps echoed through the house. And then, in less time than it takes a sprinter to cover one leg of a stadium race, the girl, whose eyes had been shut tight, awoke, poor thing, and she let out a terrible groan, for she was being assaulted on two fronts: the golden garland resting on her head sent forth a marvelous stream of all-consuming fire, and the delicate robe, the gift your children brought, was starting to corrode the white flesh of that most unfortunate girl. She jumped up, with flames all over her, shaking her hair, tossing her head around, trying to throw the crown off. But the gold gripped tight, and every movement of her hair caused the fire to blaze out twice as much. Defeated by disaster, she fell down onto the ground, unrecognizable to anyone but a father. She had lost the look her eyes had once had, and her face

6. Euripides, Medea

57

had lost its beauty. Blood was dripping down, mixed with fire, from the top of her head and from her bones the flesh was peeling back like resin, shorn by unseen jaws of poison, terrible to see. We all were frightened to touch the corpse. We’d seen what had just happened. But her poor father took us by surprise: he ran into the room and threw himself— not knowing any better—on her corpse. He moaned, and wrapped her in his arms, and kissed her, crying, “Oh, my poor unhappy child, what god dishonors you? What god destroys you? Who has taken you away from me, an old man who has one foot in the grave? Let me die with you, child.” When he was done with his lament, he tried to straighten up his agèd body, but the delicate robe clung to him as ivy clings to laurel, and then a terrible wrestling match began. He tried to flex his knee; she pulled him back. If he used force, he tore the agèd flesh off of his bones. He finally gave up, unlucky man; his soul slipped away when he could fight no longer. There they lie, two corpses, a daughter and her agèd father, side by side, a disaster that longs for tears. About your situation, I am silent. You realize what penalty awaits you. About our mortal lives, I feel the way I’ve often felt before: we are mere shadows. . . . Exit the Messenger to the right. The Chorus of Corinthian women comment on Jason’s fate, and Glauce’s, without condemning Medea. CHORUS: On this day fortune has bestowed on Jason much grief, it seems, as justice has demanded. Poor thing, we pity you for this disaster, daughter of Creon, you who have descended to Hades’ halls because of your marriage to Jason.

58

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

MEDEA: My friends, it is decided: as soon as possible I must kill my children and leave this land before I give my enemies a chance to slaughter them with a hand that’s moved by hatred. They must die anyway, and since they must, I will kill them. I’m the one who bore them. Arm yourself, my heart. Why am I waiting to do this terrible, necessary crime? Unhappy hand, act now. Take up the sword, just take it; approach the starting post of pain to last a lifetime; do not weaken, don’t remember that you love your children dearly, that you gave them life. For one short day forget your children. Afterward, you’ll grieve. For even if you kill them, they were yours; you loved them. I’m a woman cursed by fortune. Medea enters the house. From within, screams ring out. CHILD: Oh no! CHORUS: Do you hear the shouts, the shouts of her children? Poor woman: she’s cursed, undone by her fortune. CHILD 1: Oh, how can I escape my mother’s hand? CHILD 2: Dear brother, I don’t know. We are destroyed. CHORUS: Shall I go inside? I ought to prevent this, the slaughter of children. CHILD 1: Yes, come and stop her! That is what we need.

6. Euripides, Medea

CHILD 2: We’re trapped; we’re caught! The sword is at our throats. . . . Jason enters from stage right, seeking Medea, and addresses the Chorus. JASON: Women, you who stand here near the house— is she at home, Medea, the perpetrator of all these terrors, or has she gone away? . . . Does she think she can murder this land’s rulers then simply flee this house, with no requital? I’m worried about the children more than her— the ones she’s hurt will pay her back in kind. I’ve come to save my children, save their lives. The family might retaliate, might strike the children for their mother’s unholy slaughter. CHORUS: Poor man. Jason, if you realized how bad it was, you wouldn’t have said that. JASON: What is it? Does she want to kill me now? CHORUS: Your children are dead, killed by their mother’s hand. JASON: What are you saying, women? You have destroyed me. CHORUS: Please understand: your children no longer exist. JASON: Where did she kill them? Inside the house, or outside? CHORUS: Open the gates; you’ll see your children’s slaughter.

59

60

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

JASON: Servants, quick, open the door, unbar it; undo the bolts, and let me see this double evil: their dead bodies, and the one whom I will bring to justice. Medea appears in a flying chariot, with the bodies of her children visible within, held aloft by a crane, the theatrical “machine” usually reserved in Greek tragedy for the intervention of a god. MEDEA: Why are you trying to pry those gates? Is it their corpses you seek, and me, the perpetrator? Stop your struggle. If you need something, ask me. Speak your mind. But you will never touch us with your hand. My father’s father, Helios,23 gives me safety from hostile hands. This chariot protects me. JASON: You hateful thing, O woman most detested by the gods, by me, by all mankind— you dared to strike your children with a sword, children you bore yourself. You have destroyed me, left me childless. And yet you live, you look upon the sun and earth, you who had the nerve to do this most unholy deed. . . . I couldn’t wound you with ten thousand insults; there’s nothing you can’t take. Get out of here, you filth, you child-murderer. For me, all that’s left is tears for my misfortune. I’ll never have the joy of my bride’s bed, nor will I ever again speak to my children, my children, whom I raised. And now I’ve lost them. MEDEA: I would have made a long speech in reply to yours, if father Zeus were unaware of what I’ve done for you, and how you’ve acted. 23. Helios: the sun god; Medea is his granddaughter.

6. Euripides, Medea

You dishonored my bed. There was no way you could go on to lead a pleasant life, to laugh at me—not you, and not the princess; nor could Creon, who arranged your marriage, exile me and walk away unpunished. . . . JASON: O children, you were cursed with an evil mother. . . . Let me bury their bodies. Let me grieve. MEDEA: Forget it. I will take them away myself and bury them with this hand, in the precinct sacred to Hera of the rocky heights. No enemy will treat their graves with outrage. . . . Do you think that you’re mourning them now? Just wait till you’re old. JASON: Oh, dearest children. MEDEA: To me, not to you. JASON: And yet you still did this? MEDEA: To make you feel pain. JASON: I wish I could hold them and kiss them, my children. MEDEA: You long for them now and you want to embrace them, but you are the one who pushed them away. JASON: By the gods, let me touch the soft skin of my children.

61

62

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

MEDEA: No. What’s the point? You are wasting your words. The chariot flies away with Medea and the bodies of the children.

$$$ 7. Aristophanes, Clouds (423 BCE) The Clouds—named after its chorus of misty goddesses who, for the ­Sophists (represented here by Socrates), take the place of the Olympian gods as masters of a wholly materialist universe—concerns the ambitions of the plebeian Strepsiades to free himself of the debts incurred by his wastrel son Pheidippides. He seeks out Socrates as a teacher of the rhetorical skills he needs to extricate himself from his difficulties, by making, as the Sophists purportedly claimed to do, the weaker argument the stronger. Socrates dismisses Strepsiades as uneducable, and the Chorus of Clouds suggests that Strepsiades bring his son to be schooled by, as he prefers, representatives of the Old and the New systems of education. Those two entities, personified as the “Superior Argument” and the “Inferior Argument,” battle it out in a vivid debate judged by the Chorus of Clouds. Inferior Argument emerges the winner and is tasked to teach sophistic rhetoric to Strepsiades’s son. Pheidippides is a ready pupil, and learns not how to rescue his father from his indebtedness, which had been his father’s intention, but how to repudiate paternal authority. Strepsiades, furious, burns down Socrates’s Pondertorium, or thinking-shop. 24

Clouds Socrates enters on a rack suspended over the stage by a crane. STREPSIADES: Who on earth is that man hanging about up there? STUDENT: Himself. STREPSIADES: Who’s “Himself ”? STUDENT: Socrates. 24. Stage directions and the system of choral interludes are simplified.

7. Aristophanes, Clouds

63

STREPSIADES: Socrates! Call him over for me, will you? STUDENT: You call him! I’m, eh . . . very busy. Student exits scurrying off stage left. STREPSIADES: Socrates! Oh Socrates! SOCRATES (contemptuously): Why do you call me, ephemeral creature? STREPSIADES: Socrates! What are you doing up there? SOCRATES: I walk the air in order to look down on the sun. STREPSIADES: But why do you need to float on a rack to scorn the gods? If you have to do it, why not do it on the ground? SOCRATES: In order that I may make exact discoveries of the highest nature! Thus, my mind is suspended to create only elevated notions. . . . And just why have you come? STREPSIADES: I want to learn to debate. I’m being besieged by creditors, all my worldly goods are under threat of seizure, the bailiffs are banging on my door! . . . I want you to teach me that other Argument25 of yours, the one that never pays its dues. Name your price, whatever it takes, I swear by the gods to pay you!

25. The form of sophistic reasoning that will later appear as “Inferior Argument,” in contrast to the sound reasoning (according to Aristophanes) of Inferior’s counterpart and enemy “Superior Argument.”

64

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

SOCRATES (laughing): “Swear by the gods”? We don’t give credit to the gods here. . . . Do you really want to know the truth regarding matters of religion? . . . And do you wish communion with the Clouds, to actually speak to our divinities? STREPSIADES: Oh, yes please! . . . SOCRATES (invoking the Clouds): O master, our lord, infinite Air, upholder of the buoyant earth. O radiant Ether, O reverend thunder-cracking Clouds, ascend! Reveal yourselves, sacred ladies, emerge for those with higher thoughts! . . . Come, you illustrious Clouds, come and reveal yourselves to this mortal. . . . The Clouds are heard singing offstage. CHORUS: Arise, appear, ever-soaring Clouds. . . . Shake off the rain and misty haze. . . . Upon this earth the Clouds will gaze Under the tireless gleam of heaven’s eye. . . . STREPSIADES: Zeus! Socrates, you must tell me, who are these ladies singing this amazing song? Are they some new breed of female idols? SOCRATES: No, no, no. They are the heavenly Clouds, magnificent goddesses for men of leisure. They grace us with our intellect, argumentative skills, perception, hyperbolization, circumlocution, pulverization, and predomination! STREPSIADES: That’s why my spirit has soared at the sound of their voices! I’m raring to split hairs, quibble over windy intricacies, set notion against notion, and strike down arguments within counter-arguments! Oh Socrates, I can’t wait any longer, I’ve just got to see them! . . . SOCRATES: Are you completely blind! Surely you can see them now?

7. Aristophanes, Clouds

65

The chorus of Clouds is now assembled on stage. . . . STREPSIADES: Oh, hail divine ladies! Please do for me what you do for others, sing a song to reach the very heights of heaven. CHORUS: (To Strepsiades): Hail, O geriatric one, you who quest for artful words. (To Socrates): Hail priest of pedantic prattle, what would you bid us do? . . . SOCRATES: You see, these are the only true gods, everything else is utter nonsense. STREPSIADES: What about Zeus? How can Olympian Zeus not be a god? SOCRATES: Zeus? Don’t be absurd! Zeus doesn’t exist. . . . STREPSIADES: Reverend ladies! It’s just a tiny little thing that I ask of you; I wish to be the finest speaker in all of Greece, a hundred times over! CLOUDS: So be it. From this day henceforth no man shall ever pass more motions in the public assembly than you . . . STREPSIADES: No, no, no! I’m not interested in politics and carrying on in the assembly! I want to twist Justice around and escape the clutches of my creditors. CLOUDS: Then you will have your heart’s desire, it is but a small thing you require. Just place yourself into the hands of our leading devotees. STREPSIADES: I’ll do it! I have to! I’ve got no choice, you see! . . . So here I am, take me now, I’m yours! . . . I’ll do anything to avoid the paying of my debts, And men will come to realize my newly won assets. . . .

66

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

Feed me on chop logic, I’ll feast on your split hairs, And all those who meet me should take extra care. So now I’ve told you what it is I yearn to be, Serve me to your students and make mincemeat out of me! . . . But Strepsiades proves to be uneducable, and Socrates chases him out of his thinking-shop, the Pondertorium. SOCRATES: By Breath, by Chaos, by Air! I have never before encountered such a feeble-minded, imbecilic, slow-witted country bumpkin in all my life! He forgets the tiniest scraps of knowledge before he’s even had a chance to learn them! . . . (To Strepsiades): Gods! You are nothing but a village idiot! STREPSIADES: You’re the idiot, I don’t want to learn any of this stuff. SOCRATES: Well, what DO you want to learn? STREPSIADES: The other thing, you know (whispering): the Wrong Argument. SOCRATES: That’s an advanced class, you can’t just start there, you have to master the basics first. . . . This is preposterous! I’ve had just about enough of this! You’ll get no more instruction from me. . . . Exit Socrates in disgust stage left. STREPSIADES: Oh no! I’m finished. This is terrible! If I don’t learn tongue-twisting, then I’m lost without a hope! Clouds! You have to help me out. What can I do?

7. Aristophanes, Clouds

67

CLOUDS: You have a grownup son, don’t you? If you take our advice, you will send him to take your place. STREPSIADES: Yes, I’ve a son, a refined, lovely lad, but he’s not interested in higher education. . . . But you’re right, it’s high time I set him straight, and if he says no, then he’s out on his ear, once and for all. Wait for me, I won’t be long. . . . Strepsiades exits stage right, and returns chasing his son Pheidippides. Socrates enters from stage left. STREPSIADES: Here is my son, as promised. I persuaded him to come along though he was dead set against it at first. SOCRATES: No, no, no, he simply will not do, he’s a mere child. He would never get the hang of the way we tackle things here. . . . STREPSIADES: You can do it! He’ll learn, he’s a natural, you’ll find out! You should have seen him when he was a little lad, gifted! . . . SOCRATES: He can learn it from the Arguments themselves. I must be off. Exit Socrates stage left. STREPSIADES: Remember, he needs to argue his way out of all types of legitimate lawsuits! Superior Argument enters from stage left, and Inferior Argument from stage right. They will now have an extended debate. SUPERIOR: Come out, let the audience have a look at you! You know how much you like to show off.

68

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

INFERIOR: Oh, “get you hence” dear (he sees the audience). Ohhh! What a crowd, the more to witness your thrashing, the better. I just love it! . . . CHORUS: Oh, stop all this fighting and arguing! (To Superior Argument): Why don’t you give an account of the schooling you used to give in the old days, and then you (To Inferior Argument): can tell us about your new educational methods. Then this boy can hear your conflicting arguments, Make his mind up, and enroll in the school of his choice. . . . Now our two antagonists Will decide which one is cleverest. The cut and thrust of confrontation, A war of words and machination. This ideological contest Will decide which one is best. . . . SUPERIOR: Then let me begin by explaining how education was run in the good old days when my just cause was predominant and discretion was the aspiration of every man. First, it was a given that boys should be seen and not heard and that students should attend their district schools marching through the streets in orderly pairs behind the lyre-master. Moreover, they were never allowed to wear cloaks, even if the snow was falling as thick as porridge. These boys were then taught fine, patriotic songs. . . . And if any boy engaged in classroom buffoonery or attempted to torture the music . . . he was given a damned good thrashing for deliberately perverting the Muses! . . . They were not permitted to entice older lovers with effeminate voices, or seductive looks, nor mince around pimping themselves out to all and sundry! . . .

7. Aristophanes, Clouds

69

INFERIOR: What a load of archaic claptrap! . . . SUPERIOR: Clearly you are missing the point. It was my system of student tutoring that raised the men who fought so bravely at Marathon.26 . . . So come on young fellow, the choice is clear: choose me, the Superior Argument. I’ll teach you to detest hanging about in the marketplace . . . No wasting precious time twittering away on absurd topics . . . nor bickering in the courts, splitting hairs . . . and wrangling over some insignificant little suit. We’ll see you at the Academy,27 bravely racing a friend under the boughs of holy olive-trees. . . . This is the right way for you, my lad, and if you do what I say you’ll be eternally blessed with a strapping body, a gleaming complexion, huge shoulders, a tiny little tongue, big buttocks, and a small cock. Should you choose to follow the fashion currently in vogue amongst the young men of this city, then it’ll be pasty skin, round shoulders, concave chest, an enormous tongue, no arse, a great hunk of meat, and a very long . . . turn of phrase! He will have you believe that what should be shameful is beautiful, and what should be beautiful is made shameful. . . . CHORUS (To Inferior Argument) : If you want to avoid looking completely foolish and win this argument, then I think you had better use some of your crafty techniques. INFERIOR: In point of fact, I’ve been standing here for quite some time literally busting a gut to confound his ridiculous statements 26. Marathon: the battle of Marathon (490 BCE), where a small force of allied Greek forces defeated a Persian advance that threatened the liberty of their homeland. 27. the Academy: a public park dedicated to the god Academos, later the site of the philosopher Plato’s school.

70

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

with my “counterintelligence.” Why else do you think the philosophers named me the Inferior Argument? Because it was I who created the concept of disputing entrenched ideals and ethics. My dear boy, don’t you see? to be able to take up the Inferior Argument and win is worth far, far more than any number of silver coins you could care to count. Let’s examine these educational methods that he regards with such confidence. . . . Inferior Argument demolishes Superior’s points one by one. Let me now take up the issue of the tongue, which he states is not seemly for the young to exercise. I have to disagree, and am of the opposite opinion. In addition, he pronounces that one must be discreet, a pair of fatal assumptions. I would dearly love for you to tell me anyone who gained the slightest benefit from behaving discreetly, just name them and prove me wrong. . . . Just consider, dear boy, what a life of discretion consists of, and all the hedonistic delights you would miss out on—boys, girls, drinking games, fancy food, fine wine, a good laugh. How on earth could you endure life without these necessities? . . . Inferior and Superior exchange more barbs, but it is clear that Inferior has won. SUPERIOR: I have to admit that you fuckers have beaten me. . . . Exit Superior Argument stage left. INFERIOR (To Strepsiades): Well then, what do you think? Are you and your son going to run off home, or are you going to leave the boy with me to learn my oratorical arts? STREPSIADES: He’s all yours to teach, and you have my permission to beat him too. Remember, I want him to have a razor-sharp tongue, and fully adjustable too, with one edge honed for petty lawsuits and the other sharpened for cutting to the chase on more serious matters. INFERIOR: Have no fear, he will return an expert in sophistry.

8. Plato, Phaedo

71

Pheidippides is an apt pupil, and emerges at the end of his education as a mincing, “pasty-faced fiend,” in his own words. Outraged, Strepsiades burns down Socrates’s Pondertorium.

$$$ 8. Plato, Phaedo (c. 380–360 BCE) Plato’s Phaedo is a dialogue of unique importance, both because of its theme—the immortality of the soul, which would have a long resonance in the literature, philosophy, and theology of later Western civilization—and for its dramatic impact: for it narrates the story of the last day of the life of Socrates, who has been imprisoned and condemned to death by an Athenian court. On the day he is to drink the poisonous hemlock that will end his life (in 399 BCE), in a scene Plato vividly describes in the voice of an eyewitness, Socrates sits cheerfully in prison surrounded by his friends and followers, discussing philosophy. Pressed, he explains that he does not fear death, but welcomes it: for death will free him from his body, which is an obstacle in the pursuit of truth. The passage given here contains this initial statement of Socrates’s—or Plato’s—position. It is followed in the full text of the dialogue by the presentation of four complementary arguments for human immortality. The first is the argument of opposites: in a cycle of opposites, death emerges from life just as life emerges from non-life, or death. The second is the argument of recollection: all that we know is a recollection of what we once knew in an earlier life, from which we are separated by an intervening death. The third is the argument from affinity: the body is in essence material, and so dies, but the soul is in essence immaterial, and so is immortal. The fourth is the argument from the Forms, the eternal universals that underlie and precede all perceived things: as the Form of the soul is life itself, the soul cannot not be alive, and so necessarily lives forever. As this discussion concludes, the prison guard announces that it is time for Socrates to prepare himself to drink the poison. He drinks it calmly, in full view of his circle of friends, a paragon of philosophical courage in the face of death.

Phaedo Echecrates encounters Phaedo, who will narrate the dialogue named after him, and asks what he knows of the death of Socrates. Echecrates: Were you with Socrates yourself, Phaedo, on the day when he drank the poison in prison, or did someone else tell you about it?

72

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

Phaedo: I was there myself, Echecrates. . . . Echecrates: What about his actual death, Phaedo? What did he say? What did he do? Who of his friends were with him? Or did the authorities not allow them to be present and he died with no friends present? Phaedo: By no means. Some were present, in fact, a good many. Echecrates: Please be good enough to tell us all that occurred as fully as possible, unless you have some pressing business. Phaedo: I have the time and I will try to tell you the whole story, for nothing gives me more pleasure than to call Socrates to mind. . . . I certainly found being there an astonishing experience. Although I was witnessing the death of one who was my friend, I had no feeling of pity, for the man appeared happy in both manner and words and he died nobly and without fear, Echecrates. . . . Echecrates asks Phaedo to report what the conversation was about on that day. Phaedo: I will try to tell you everything from the beginning. On the previous days also both the others and I used to visit Socrates. We foregathered at daybreak . . . [outside] the prison, and each day we used to wait around talking until the prison should open. . . . When it opened we used to go into Socrates and spend most of the day with him. On this day we gathered rather early. . . . We found Socrates recently released from his chains. . . . Socrates sits up from his bed for the whole conversation that follows, which turns to the question whether death is to be feared. Socrates addresses himself to Simmias and Cebes. I want to make my argument before you, my judges, as to why I think that a man who has truly spent his life in philosophy is probably right to be of good cheer in the face of death and to be very hopeful that after death he will attain the greatest blessings yonder. I will try to tell you, Simmias and Cebes, how this may be so. I am afraid that other people do not realize that the one aim of those who practice philosophy in the proper manner is to practice for dying and death. Now if this is true, it would be strange indeed if they were eager for this all their lives and then resent it when what they have wanted and practiced for a long time comes upon them. . . . Do we believe that there is such a thing as death? Certainly, said Simmias. Is it anything else than the separation of the soul from the body? Do we believe that death is this, namely, that the body comes to be separated by itself apart from the soul, and the soul comes to be separated by itself apart from the body? Is death anything else than that?

8. Plato, Phaedo

73

No, that is what it is, he said. Consider then, my good sir, whether you share my opinion, for this will lead us to a better knowledge of what we are investigating. Do you think it is the part of a philosopher to be concerned with such so-called pleasures as those of food and drink? By no means. What about the pleasures of sex? Not at all. What of the other pleasures concerned with the service of the body? Do you think such a man prizes them greatly, the acquisition of distinguished clothes and shoes and the other bodily ornaments? Do you think he values these or despises them, except in so far as one cannot do without them? I think the true philosopher despises them. Do you not think, he said, that in general such a man’s concern is not with the body but that, as far as he can, he turns away from the body toward the soul? I do. So in the first place, such things show clearly that the philosopher more than other men frees the soul from association with the body as much as possible? Apparently. . . . Then what about the actual acquiring of knowledge? Is the body an obstacle when one associates with it in the search for knowledge? I mean, for example, do men find any truth in sight or hearing . . . and surely if those two physical senses are not clear or precise, our other senses can hardly be accurate, as they are all inferior to these. Do you not think so? I certainly do, he said. When then, he asked, does the soul grasp the truth? For whenever it attempts to examine anything with the body, it is clearly deceived by it. True. Is it not in reasoning if anywhere that any reality becomes clear to the soul? Yes. And indeed the soul reasons best when none of these senses troubles it, neither hearing nor sight, nor pain nor pleasure, but when it is most by itself, taking leave of the body and as far as possible having no contact or association with it in its search for reality. That is so. . . . All these things will necessarily make the true philosophers believe and say to each other something like this: “There is likely to be something such as a path to guide us out of our confusion, because as long as we have a body and our soul is fused with such an evil we shall never adequately attain

74

Chapter 2. Greek Origins

what we desire, which we affirm to be the truth. . . . Only the body and its desires cause war, civil discord and battles, for all wars are due to the desire to acquire wealth, and it is the body and the care of it, to which we are enslaved, which compel us to acquire wealth, and all this makes us too busy to practice philosophy. . . . It really has been shown to us that, if we are ever to have pure knowledge, we must escape from the body and observe things in themselves with the soul by itself. It seems likely that we shall, only then, when we are dead, attain that which we desire and of which we claim to be lovers, namely, wisdom, as our argument shows, not while we live . . . [but only] after death. Then and not before, the soul is by itself apart from the body. While we live, we shall be closest to knowledge if we refrain as much as possible from association with the body . . . [and so] escape the contamination of the body’s folly. . . . Such are the things, Simmias, that all those who love learning in the proper manner must say to one another and believe. Or do you not think so? I certainly do, Socrates. And if this is true, my friend, said Socrates, there is good hope that on arriving where I am going, if anywhere, I shall acquire what has been our chief preoccupation in our past life, so that the journey that is now ordered for me is full of good hope, as it is also for any other man who believes that his mind has been prepared and, as it were, purified. It certainly is, said Simmias. And does purification not turn out to be what we mentioned in our argument some time ago, namely, to separate the soul as far as possible from the body and accustom it to gather itself and collect itself out of every part of the body and to dwell by itself as far as it can both now and in the future, freed, as it were, from the bonds of the body? Certainly, he said. And that freedom and separation of the soul from the body is called death? That is altogether so. . . . Therefore, as I said at the beginning, it would be ridiculous for a man to train himself in life to live in a state as close to death as possible, and then to resent it when it comes? Ridiculous, of course. In fact, Simmias, he said, those who practice philosophy in the right way are in training for dying and they fear death least of all men. . . . The discussion continues throughout the day, as all aspects of the question of human immortality are examined until satisfaction is obtained. The man bearing the cup of deadly poison then enters, and Socrates drinks.

8. Plato, Phaedo

75

And while he was saying this, he was holding the cup, and then drained it calmly and easily. Most of us had been able to hold back our tears reasonably well up till then, but when we saw him drinking it and after he drank it, we could hold them back no longer; my own tears came in floods against my will. So I covered my face. . . . Even before me, Crito was unable to restrain his tears and got up. Apollodorus had not ceased from weeping before, and at this moment his noisy tears and anger made everybody present break down, except Socrates. “What is this,” he said, “you strange fellows. It is mainly for this reason that I sent the women away, to avoid such unseemliness. . . . So keep quiet and control yourselves.” His words made us ashamed, and we checked our tears. He walked around, and when he said his legs were heavy he lay on his back as he had been told to do, and the man who had given him the poison touched his body, and after a while tested his feet and legs. . . . Then he pressed his calves, and made his way up his body and showed us that it was cold and stiff. He felt it himself and said that when the cold reached his heart he would be gone. . . . Socrates uncovered his head—he had covered it—and said—these were his last words—“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius;28 make this offering to him and do not forget.” “It shall be done,” said Crito, “tell us if there is anything else,” but there was no answer. Shortly afterwards Socrates made a movement; the man uncovered him and his eyes were fixed. Seeing this Crito closed his mouth and eyes. Such was the end of our comrade, Echecrates, a man who, we would say, was of all those we have known the best, and also the wisest and the most upright.

28. Asclepius: the god of healing; for in death, Socrates had been healed.

Chapter 3 Roman Innovations

Introduction Greek civilization first makes its mark in history with its pottery, its temples, and its poets. Rome, in contrast, makes its mark with military feats and political innovations. By 200 BCE, Rome had already defeated its archenemy, the Carthaginian general Hannibal, at the decisive battle of Zama, and was engaged in Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander the Great. As Rome expanded throughout the Mediterranean region, it encountered the Hellenistic civilization that flourished throughout the lands of the Alexandrian conquest. Although Rome imposed its political will on regions it vanquished, it could not compete with the superior civilization of the Greeks. Roman literature drew on Greek models, adding to them a specific Roman intonation. This chapter includes eight representative figures of the Roman literary tradition who flourished from the first century BCE through the second century CE: Lucretius, Catullus, and Cicero lived when the Roman Republic ruled an empire that stretched from west to east across the Mediterranean; Virgil and Ovid saw that Republic crumble and give way, after a prolonged struggle, to a monarchy; Seneca and Tacitus observed the crises of the first century of imperial Rome, which were followed by more serious external threats that mounted in the following century. Even as threats loomed, the Empire reached its maximum extent during the second century, reigning over, as it was claimed, a universal pax romana (Roman peace). Marcus Aurelius, the eighth author profiled in this chapter, was the last of the Five Good Emperors who ruled during that glorious era, struggling to maintain Roman primacy. The chapter begins with the poets Lucretius and Catullus, the earliest poets of what has been called the Golden Age (from c. 70 BCE to 18 CE) of Latin literature. In his philosophical poem On the Nature of Things, selections of which appear in this chapter, Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus, 94 BCE–c. 55 BCE) dispenses Greek wisdom to his Roman peers, presenting to them a material universe not guided by otherworldly deities, but subject to the random force of chance. In this setting death could not be defeated, but neither was it to be feared—for it was nothing more than the dissolution of atoms that had by accident agglomerated. 76

Introduction

77

Imitating the intensely personal style of the Greek lyric poets, especially Sappho (see Chapter 2, Text 3), Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus, c. 84–c. 54 BCE) composed more than one hundred poems (an anthology of 116 has survived, of which eight are given here) largely about his feelings: he is in love; he is jealous; he is betrayed; he is consumed with hatred. His vivid self-portrait and exquisite versification win him high honors in the ranks of great poets. In the next generation, the poet Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 BCE– c. 17 CE) wrote about Roman traditions, about his years in exile to which he was inexplicably sentenced, and about love. He was later remembered by Western authors especially for his Metamorphoses, an excerpt from which is given here, a poetic encyclopedia of Greek myths retold with Roman aplomb, describing the fabulous transformations of mortals into cows, trees, or constellations. Ovid’s older contemporary Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro, 70 BCE– 19 BCE), who witnessed the fall of the Republic and the ascendancy of Augustus, its first emperor, is the voice of a revivified Rome. He is principally known for his Aeneid, excerpts from which appear in this chapter, an epic modeled on those of Homer. In it, the hero Aeneas escapes the burning city of Troy to settle after many adventures in Italy, where he will be the progenitor of Romulus, the founder of Rome. Supported by Augutus as his doting patron, Virgil thrived in Rome and wrote other prized works besides the Aeneid: principally the Bucolics (or Eclogues) and the Georgics. But it is the Aeneid, more than his other works and more than any other single work of Roman literature, which shaped the later Western tradition. Ovid and Virgil both used Roman material in their poetry, but it is Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero, 106–43 BCE), the foremost prose author of the Golden Age, who virtually embodies the Roman state. His orations, models of the genre into modern times, convey Roman ideals of justice and administration, deplore corruption, and attack subversion—not that Romans always lived up to Ciceronian ideals, nor did Cicero himself. His treatises On Duties, On the Republic, and On the Laws, in addition, explicitly deal with political matters. Cicero’s works on oratory also touch upon politics. For Roman elites, oratory was an essential skill for advancement in political life. Cicero’s letters, likewise, report on major events and figures, and are an invaluable key to Roman political and cultural attitudes. His Philippics are a set of fourteen orations written in 44 to 43 BCE to decry the takeover of Roman power by Mark Antony, formerly the lieutenant of the general Julius Caesar. The fourth of these is excerpted here, and is a powerful witness to the last phase of the Roman Republic. Beyond these works with political implications,

78

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

Cicero’s philosophical works translated or paraphrased Greek thought for communication to a Roman audience. The works of Seneca and Tacitus, like Cicero’s, bear evidence of their participation in Roman elite circles during the eventful first century of the imperial era. Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca, c. 4 BCE–65 CE), who had been tutor to the emperor Nero and committed suicide by imperial order, wrote numerous philosophical essays, dialogues, and letters—among them three consolations, selections from one of which appears in this chapter—conveying in accessible prose the ideals of Greek Stoicism, appropriate for an age of crisis, as well as tragedies in imitation of Greek models. A Roman senator himself, Tacitus (Publius, or Gaius, Cornelius Tacitus, c. 55–c. 120 CE) is the historian of Rome’s first imperial century, his biting narrative recalling that of the Peloponnesian War by the Greek historian Thucydides. His dialogue on oratory, lamenting its loss of vitality, returns in a different key to a subject Cicero, in another age, had tackled. Most widely read of his works are his two miniature accounts of, respectively, the Roman conquest of Britain centered on the commander Agricola, Tacitus’s father-in-law, and of Germania, the lands inhabited by Germanic peoples who were Rome’s adversaries to the north. Excerpts from both are included in this chapter. Finally, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus, 121–180 CE; r. 161–180), whose reign saw military victories against the Parthians in the East and several Germanic tribes in central Europe, was at the same time a serious intellectual. His Meditations, a reflective work in Greek of which excerpts are given here, conveyed the outlook of late ancient Stoicism. Just as the Roman literary tradition begins with the Greek, so it culminates with the philosophical work of a Roman emperor whose preferred career was the life of the mind. Later Roman literature diminishes in quantity and quality as the Roman state, over the next three centuries, faced overwhelming threats. The most dynamic literary currents of Rome’s last centuries would be Christian, as will be seen (see Introduction to Section II).

$$$ 1. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things (59 BCE) Lucretius lived in dangerous and turbulent times—although the worst had not yet come, it was imminent, visible on the horizon. Like many others confronting dire circumstances, he turned to religion: the religion of mate-

1. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

79

rialism, theorized by the Greek philosopher Epicurus. Unlike the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic theisms (the latter two not yet invented), paganism offered little solace to the spirit. Epicureanism, however, did. One of the major strands of Hellenistic philosophy developed in the last centuries BCE, Epicureanism spoke directly to troubled souls. Withdraw from public life, it advised; engage in private study, and in pleasant conversation with friends of like mind; do not worry about the gods, for they are powerless; and do not worry about the forces of nature because they are purely material, and rationally explained. The infinite universe is made up of imperishable atoms, ceaselessly moving through space. The human body, mind (animus), and spirit (anima), as well, are composed of atoms and wholly material. At death, the atoms decompose and subsequently recombine to form some other material entity. The individual exists no more, feels no pain, knows no desire. The race is over, the victory won. Lucretius thus confronts, and conquers, the tragic Greek paradox that the gods who rule are deathless, but the human beings they rule over are subject to death. Plato had done so by positing the immortality of the soul; Lucretius does so by accepting and celebrating its material disintegration. In On the Nature of Things, Lucretius conveys in shimmering Latin verse the consoling wisdom of the Greek Epicurus to Roman friends who might be converted to that creed. The passages given here from book 3, after the theory of atomism has been introduced in books 1 and 2, speak of the ­joyful annihilation that is achieved in death.

On the Nature of Things Well, now that I have demonstrated the nature of the primary elements of all things, the diversity of their forms, the spontaneous manner in which they fly about under the impulse of incessant movement, and their ability to create everything, it is obvious that my next task is to illuminate in my verses the nature of the mind and the spirit, and send packing that fear of Acheron1 which disturbs human life from its deepest depths, suffusing all with the darkness of death, and allows no pleasure to remain unclouded and pure. To be sure, people often claim that they dread illness or a life of infamy more than Tartarus2 . . . ; they claim too that they have absolutely no need of our philosophy. But you may see from what follows that all these claims are a display of bravado to win applause rather than prompted by true conviction. For the same people, though banished from their homeland, driven far from the sight of other human beings, branded with the stigma of some foul crime, and afflicted, in a word, with every kind of tribulation, continue to 1. Acheron: the underworld river leading to Hades, or hell. 2. Tartarus: hell.

80

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

live. Wherever they bring their troubles, they offer sacrifices to their ancestors, . . . dispatch oblations to the infernal deities, and in their bitter plight turn their minds much more zealously to superstition. The lesson is this: it is advisable to appraise people in doubt and danger and to discover how they behave in adversity; for then and only then is the truth elicited from the bottom of their hearts: the mask is ripped off; the reality remains. Furthermore, avarice and blind lust for status, which drive wretched people to encroach beyond the boundaries of right and sometimes, as accomplices and abettors of crime, to strive night and day with prodigious effort to scale the summit of wealth—these sores of life are nourished in no small degree by dread of death. For as a rule the ignominy of humble position and the sting of penury are considered to be incompatible with a life of enjoyment and security, and are thought to imply a sort of premature loitering before the portals of death from which people, under the impulse of unfounded terror, desire to flee far away and be far removed. . . . Similarly it is often the same fear that makes them fret with envy that before their eyes another person possesses power and, parading in the brilliant array of office, attracts the gaze of all, while they complain that their own lot is to wallow in murk and mire. Some throw away their lives in an effort to gain statues3 and renown. And often, in consequence of dread of death, people are affected by such an intense loathing of life and the sight of the light that with mournful hearts they sentence themselves to death, forgetting that the source of their sorrows is this very fear, which prompts one person to outrage decency, another to break bonds of friendship, and, in short, to overthrow all sense of natural duty. . . . Just as children tremble and fear everything in blinding darkness, so we even in daylight sometimes dread things that are no more terrible than the imaginary dangers that cause children to quake in the dark. This terrifying darkness that enshrouds the mind must be dispelled not by the sun’s rays and the dazzling darts of day, but by study of the superficial aspect and underlying principle of nature. . . . Death is not to be feared, since both mind and spirit, the two aspects of the human soul, are mortal and will disintegrate at life’s end. Death, then, is nothing to us and does not affect us in the least, now that the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal. And as in time past we felt no distress when the advancing Punic hosts were threatening Rome

3. Statues were erected in public places to honor persons of high reputation.

1. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

81

on every side,4 when the whole earth, rocked by the terrifying tumult of war, shudderingly quaked beneath the coasts of high heaven, while the entire human race was doubtful into whose possession the sovereignty of the land and the sea was destined to fall; so, when we are no more, when body and soul, on whose union our being depends, are divorced, you may be sure that nothing at all will have the power to affect us or awaken sensation in us, who shall not then exist—not even if the earth be confounded with the sea, and the sea with the sky. . . . If it happens that people are to suffer unhappiness and pain in the future, they themselves must exist at that future time for harm to be able to befall them; and since death takes away this possibility by preventing the existence of those who might have been visited by troubles, you may be sure that there is nothing to fear in death, that those who no longer exist cannot become miserable, and that it makes not one speck of difference whether or not they have ever been born once their mortal life has been snatched away by deathless death. . . . Whenever people in life imagine that in death their body will be torn to pieces by birds and beasts of prey, they feel sorry for themselves. This is because they do not separate themselves from the body or dissociate themselves sufficiently from the outcast corpse; they identify themselves with it and, as they stand by, impregnate it with their own feelings. Hence their indignation at having been created mortal; hence their failure to see that in real death there will be no second self alive to lament their own end, and to stand by and grieve at the sight of them lying there, being torn to pieces. . . . Furthermore, suppose that nature suddenly burst into speech, and personally addressed the following rebuke to one of us; “What distresses you so deeply, mortal creature, that you abandon yourself to these puling lamentations? Why do you bemoan and beweep death? If your past life has been a boon, . . . why, you fool, do you not retire from the feast of life like a satisfied guest and with equanimity resign yourself to undisturbed rest? If, however, all your enjoyments have been poured away and lost, and if life is a thorn, why do you seek to prolong your existence, when the future, just as surely as the past, would be ruined and utterly wasted? Why not rather put an end to life and trouble? . . .” What can we say in reply, save that nature’s complaint is just, and that in her plea she sets out a true case? . . . Now and again you might well address yourself in the following terms: “Shame on you! Even good Ancus5 closed his eyes and left the light of 4. Lucretius here alludes to the terrifying years of the three Punic Wars (264–146 BCE), Rome’s struggle with its rival Carthage. 5. Ancus: Ancus Marcius, traditionally the fourth king of Rome (642–617 BCE).

82

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

life, and he was a far, far better person than you. Since then, many other kings and potentates, rulers of mighty nations, have passed away. Even that famous monarch6 who once constructed a roadway over the great sea and opened a path for his legions across the deep, teaching his infantry to march over the briny gulfs while his cavalry pranced over the ocean in defiance of its roars—yes, even he was deprived of the light of life and gasped out his soul from his dying body. Scipio,7 that thunderbolt of war, the dread of Carthage, surrendered his bones to the earth as though he were the meanest of menial slaves. Remember too the inventors of sciences and arts; remember . . . Democritus,8 warned by ripe old age that the motions of his mind’s memory were failing, voluntarily went to meet death and offered him his life. Epicurus himself died, when the light of his life had accomplished its course—he who outshone the human race in genius and obscure the luster of all as the rising of the ethereal sun extinguishes the stars. Will you, then, be hesitant and indignant, when death calls? You, even while you still have life and light, are as good as dead: you squander the greater part of your time in sleep; you snore when awake; you never stop daydreaming; you are burdened with a mind disturbed by groundless fear; and often you cannot discover what is wrong with you, when, like some drunken wretch, you are buffeted with countless cares on every side and drift along aimlessly in utter bewilderment of mind. People evidently are aware that their minds are carrying a heavy load, which wearies them with its weight; and if only they could also understand what causes it, and why such a mass of misery occupies their breasts, they would not live in the manner in which we generally see them living, ignorant of what they want for themselves, and continually impatient to move somewhere else as if the change could relieve them of their burden. . . . In this way people endeavor to run away from themselves; but since they are of course unable to make good their escape, they remain firmly attached to themselves against their will, and hate themselves because they are sick and do not understand the cause of their malady. If only they perceived it distinctly, they would at once give up everything else and devote themselves first to studying the nature of things; for the issue at stake is their state not merely for one hour, but for eternity—the state in which mortals must pass all the time that remains after their death. 6. Xerxes, king of Persia, who constructed a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont to enable his great army to invade Greece (480 BCE). 7. Scipio: Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus the Elder, who in 202 BCE defeated Hannibal at Zama (near Carthage), decisively ending the Second Punic War. 8. Democritus: it was said that the philosopher Democritus, who had proposed atomism even before Epicurus, starved himself to death.

2. Catullus, Poems

83

Finally, what is this perverse passion for life that condemns us to such a feverish existence amid doubt and danger? The fact is that a sure end of life is fixed for mortals: we cannot avoid our appointment with death. Moreover, our environment is always the same, and no new pleasure is procured by the prolongation of life. The trouble is that, so long as the object of our desire is wanting, it seems more important than anything else; but later, when it is ours, we covet some other thing; and so an insatiable thirst for life keeps us always openmouthed. Then again, we cannot tell what fortune the future will bring us, or what chance will send us, or what end is in store for us. By prolonging life we do not deduct a single moment from the time of our death, nor can we diminish its duration by subtracting anything from it. Therefore, however many generations your life may span, the same eternal death will still await you; and one who ended life with today’s light will remain dead no less long than one who perished many months and years ago.

$$$ 2. Catullus, Poems (before 54 BCE) The first lyric poet of the Roman era, Catullus lived only thirty years or so, but has been admired and imitated ever since for his powerful and meticulous versification. Lacking Roman predecessors, he turned as Lucretius had to the Greek tradition now in its later, Hellenistic phase, which offered a trove of models both from Archaic Greece and more recent, innovative ones from the major Mediterranean cultural centers, especially Alexandria (Egypt). Following the norms of lyric verse and supplied with material from his own life experience within the aristocratic fast set of first-century Rome, he wrote about his urgent and explosive feelings. He addresses his poets, politicians, friends, and lovers—both male and female—but especially Clodia, a married woman who received his attentions as well as those of other men, including her husband. In his twenty-six poems to or about Clodia, Catullus called her “Lesbia,” alluding to the poet Sappho encountered in the previous chapter, a native of the island of Lesbos. Catullus admired Sappho greatly, and imitated her often, nowhere more conspicuously than in poem #51, which is virtually a translation of Sappho’s #20, found earlier in this volume (see Chapter 2, Text 3). Although Catullus was often successful in love, with regard to Clodia, like his paragon Sappho in her amorous adventures, his passion was never quite reciprocated. The eight poems that follow evince the range of his emotions: he loves her, he doubts her, her other lovers enrage him.

84

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

Poems 2. Sparrow, my sweetheart’s delight, with whom she plays, folding you in her bosom, giving you her fingertip to peck, provoking nips from your sharp beak, whenever it pleases the glittering girl I love to play a pleasant little game (as some small solace for her pain, I think, when the fierce passion of love subsides)— would that I could play with you as she does and soothe the sorrows that sadden my soul! I would seek that joy as much as the eager girl sought the golden apple, for which, it is said, she loosed her enfolding girdle.9 5. Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love, and let us rate as worth just one little penny all the carping of old dried-out fools. Suns can set and rise again: but for us, once this brief spark of light goes out, we must sleep one long perpetual night. So give me a thousand kisses, and then one hundred more, and then another thousand, and one hundred yet again, and afterwards a thousand more, and after that, a hundred, until, when we have kissed so many thousand kisses, overcome by kissing, we can no longer count them— nor can any interfering lout know how many kisses we have kissed. 7. You ask, Lesbia, how many of your kisses are enough for me, and more than enough: as great as the number of Libyan sands

9. Catullus alludes to the myth of the Golden Apple, which Paris, the Trojan prince who would later abduct Helen and provoke the epical Trojan War, awarded to Aphrodite as the most beautiful of three goddesses. The three contenders had stripped naked—removing, therefore, the girdles around their private parts—for his inspection.

2. Catullus, Poems

85

that lie on Cyrene,10 fertile in silphium,11 between the temple of fiery Zeus12 and the sacred tomb of old Battus;13 or as many as the stars on a still night that gaze on the purloined loves of men; that many kisses are enough to be kissed by Catullus, crazed with love, and more than enough, more than peeping toms can count, or malicious tongues confound. 51. He looks to me just like a god, He looks—can it be?—like more than a god, who sits facing you, intently looking at you and listening to you sweetly laughing—which, wretched me, rips all my senses to shreds; for the moment, Lesbia, I see you, [. . .],14 my tongue goes numb, a thin flame streams down my limbs, an inward ringing strikes at my ears, the lights of my eyes are buried in darkness. Idleness, Catullus, is bad for you. Idleness arouses and overexcites you. Idleness has taken down great kingdoms and cities. 75. It’s your fault, my Lesbia, that my brain is reduced to this point, and has so lost its ability to think, that now it can neither love you if you act well, nor cease to love you, if you do not.

10. Cyrene: an important ancient Greek, later Roman city, near modern Shahhat, Libya. 11. silphium: a prized plant used in antiquity for seasoning and perfume, for medicinal purposes, and as an aphrodisiac—the last significance is suggested here. 12. The text says “oracle,” but the reference is to the temple of Zeus in Cyrene. 13. Battus: a name given to Aristotle of Thera, the founder of Cyrene. His tomb may have been found in the necropolis now under excavation. 14. A line of verse is missing in the Latin text at this point.

86

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

85. I hate and I love. Perhaps you will ask why? I do not know, but that is how I feel, and I am in torment. 92. Lesbia always bad-mouths me, and never stops talking about me: if Lesbia does not love me, I shall die. How do I know? Because it is the same with me: I bad-mouth her too; but if I do not love her, I shall die. 109. You tell me, my life, that this love of ours we share will be happy and forevermore. Gods above, make it so that what she promises is truly and sincerely said and from her heart, so that it may be that we may lead the whole of our life in this eternal pact of holy friendship.

$$$ 3. Ovid, Metamorphoses (c. 8 CE) Like Catullus, a fine artificer of verse, Ovid produced longer works in a broader range of genres than did his predecessor. They include principally his Ars amatoria (The Art of Love), a manual on the art of seduction; his unfinished Fasti (On the Roman Calendar), an investigation of Roman religious cult traditions; and his masterwork, Metamorphoses (Transformations), a massive catalogue of more than two hundred Greek myths, which was to have a massive impact on later Western literature. In Metamorphoses, Ovid tells stories of humans turned into animal, vegetable, or mineral form by gods depicted as capricious and, when not actually cruel, indifferent to the suffering they have inflicted. But though the riot of strange transmutations is entertaining, Ovid’s underlying message may be more serious: that all things change, nothing is certain, and no solace or direction is forthcoming from the gods. Ovid conveys this message during the age of Augustus, the new prince who, professing to restore the finest traditions of the Republic, instead established an Empire. The Augustan settlement had put an end, at least for a time, to the horrific events of the revolution that for nearly a century had convulsed the Roman state. But Ovid, whom Augustus sent into exile in 8 CE, is not convinced that the turbulence has reached an end. Told here, from the second of the fifteen books of the Metamorphoses, is the story of the risk-taking boy Phaëthon who induces his father, the sun

3. Ovid, Metamorphoses

87

god Phoebus (the Greek Apollo), to let him drive the chariot of the sun across the sky for one day. Phoebus is reluctant, and warns Phaëthon of the dangers he will face; but the boy insists, and off he goes, soon losing control of the team of fire-breathing horses. The horses run wild and the sun goes off its course, scorching the heavens and the earth, and wreaking great destruction. The goddess Earth implores Jupiter (or Jove, the Greek Zeus) to save the world. Jupiter hurls his thunderbolt, the chariot explodes, the horses bolt, and Phaëthon’s burning body crashes from the sky. Phoebus is grief stricken. What is transformed in this story is not the hapless boy, slaughtered by Jupiter, but Earth itself and all its creatures: the woodlands burn, the rivers dry up, and even the skin of African Ethiopians is turned from white to black by the fiery heat. And it is Earth, a nature goddess, not any of the great Olympians, who takes responsibility for the fate of the planet. Jupiter acts decisively and cruelly only when she presses him to do so. Phoebus, the boy’s father, whose irresponsibility allows the tragedy to occur, has in effect sacrificed his son, though he did not intend to do so. His acquiescence to the boy’s vainglorious plea recalls the contrasting case of Abraham (see Chapter 1, Text 1), the biblical father of Isaac, who sorrowfully intended his innocent son’s necessary sacrifice, but was rescued by a compassionate God from completing it.

Metamorphoses Phaëthon’s mother having assured him that his father was Phoebus (the Greek Apollo), god of the sun, Phaëthon seeks out that deity in his palace high in the sky, “bright with the glint of gold and fiery bronze.” Phaëthon asks Phoebus for a token “by which all may know me / As your true son.” Phoebus swears that he will grant whatever Phaëthon wishes, and Phaëthon asks to drive the chariot of the sun for a day. Drawn by a team of fire-breathing horses, that chariot causes the sun, as mortals perceive it, to make its daily journey from daybreak to nightfall. The father regretted his oath. Three times, Four times, he shook his luminous head, saying, “Your words show that my own were rash. I wish That I could take back my promise. I confess, This alone I would refuse you, my son, but now All I can do is talk some sense into you. What you want is not safe, quite beyond your strength And your boyish years. Your lot is mortal; What you ask for is not. Unaware,

88

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

You aspire to more than other gods can handle. Though each of them may do as he pleases, None, except myself, has the power to stand On the running board of the chariot of fire. Even the Olympian,15 for all his awesome thunderbolts, Cannot drive these horses. And who is greater than Jove? The first part of the road is steep, and my horses, Though fresh in the morning, struggle to climb it. In mid-heaven it is impossibly high. I often tremble To look down from there on the sea and the land, And my heart pounds with fear. The final stage Is a precipitous drop that needs a firm hand. . . . Then too, the sky’s dome Spins around in perpetual motion, drawing along The high stars with dizzying speed. I make my way Against this orbital motion, going in opposition To all else in the universe. Imagine yourself Driving my chariot. Do you think you could buck That whirling axis and not be swept away? . . . And the horses themselves, Breathing fire through their nostrils and mouths, Are not easy to control. They barely obey me When their spirits are hot and their necks fight the reins. But you, my son, don’t let me give you a fatal gift, And while there is still time, alter your request. If you really want assurance that you are my son, My anxiety should be all the assurance you need; I am proved your father by a father’s fear. . . . Finally, look around At everything the rich world holds, and choose From all the boundless goods of earth, sea, and sky Whatever you like. You will be denied nothing. But this one thing I beg you not to ask, a thing which, If called by its right name, is not a blessing But a curse. You are asking for a curse, Phaëthon. Why are your arms around my neck, foolish boy? Don’t worry; whatever you choose you will get— I have sworn by the Styx—but choose more wisely!” . . .

15. That is, Jupiter or Jove.

3. Ovid, Metamorphoses

89

At dawn, Phoebus orders the horses hitched up, and the “stallions, / Breathing fire and sated with ambrosia,” come out from their stables. Their bridles jingled While the father anointed his dear son’s face With a sacred unguent to protect it from fire And placed the rays on his head. Foreseeing grief, And drawing up sighs from his troubled heart, he said: “If you can take at least some of a parent’s advice, Spare the whip, boy, and pull hard on the reins. They run fast on their own; your job is to hold back A spirited team. And don’t just go where you please Driving straight across the five zones of heaven. The course is laid out on an oblique curve. . . . That is your road—you will see the tracks of my wheels. And so heaven and earth will receive equal heat, Do not drive too low or stampede the horses Up in to the aether! Too high will scorch heaven’s roof, Too low the earth. The middle course is safest for you. . . . I entrust the rest to Fortune. I pray that she helps you and guides you better Than you do yourself. . . . Phaëthon takes the reins and stands tall in the chariot, “delirious with joy”; the horses “Fill the air with fire as they stamp and whinny / And punish the paddock bars with their hooves.” And the horses were off, hooves pounding the air. They parted the clouds in their path. . . . But the weight was too light for these solar horses, And the yoke was without its accustomed drag. As curved ships without the right ballast Roll off kilter, prone to capsize in open water Due to their lightness, so too the chariot Without its usual burden was tossed around And bounced in the air as if it had not one onboard. As soon as they felt it, the team ran wild, Leaving the well-worn track and going off course. The driver panicked. He had no idea How to handle the reins entrusted to him

90

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

Or where the road was. And even if he had known He wouldn’t have been able to master the horses. . . . When the very unhappy Phaëthon looked down From heaven’s summit and saw the lands Spread out beneath him far, far below, the blood Drained from his face, his knees shook in fear, And his eyes swam with shadows, stunned by the glare. He wishes now he’d never touched his father’s horses Or succeeded in his quest to know his origin. . . . What should he do? Much of the sky was behind him, But more was ahead. He measured both in his mind, Looking toward the west he was not destined to reach, And then back to the east. Dazed, he has no idea Of what he should do, and can neither loosen the reins Nor manage to hold them, nor call the horses by name. And he saw in horror surreal images Of astral predators strewn though the sky. There is a place where Scorpio16 arcs its pincers And with its hooked tail and curving arms sprawls Over two constellations. When the boy saw it, Oozing black venom and threatening to wound him With its barbed stinger, his mind froze with fear And he dropped the reins. When the horses felt them Draped over their backs, they veered off course, And with nothing to stop them they galloped across Unknown regions of heaven. Rushing wherever Their momentum took them, they made incursions Into the fixed stars, hurtling the chariot Along uncharted tracks, climbing at times To the high stratosphere and then plunging down To airspace not much above ground level. . . . The heated clouds began to smoke, And the earth burst into flames, the highest parts first, As deep fissures open and its moisture dries up. Meadows are drifted over with ash, leafy trees burn, Scorched grain provides its own fuel for fire. But I bewail lesser things. Walled cities perish, 16. Scorpio: a constellation in the form of a scorpion, an insect with grasping limbs and a venomous stinger at the tip of its tail.

3. Ovid, Metamorphoses

91

Entire nations and whole populations Are reduced to ashes. . . . Phaëthon sees the whole world on fire, He cannot bear the terrible heat. The air he sucks in Feels like it comes from the depths of a furnace, And the chariot glows white-hot. The ashes And sparks are unendurable; he is enveloped In a dense pall of smoke, and in that pitchy blackness He doesn’t know where he is or where he is going, Swept along by the will of the winged horses. . . . Great mountain ranges burn up, the Ethiopians of Africa turn dark, the rivers and lakes are desiccated, the sea itself becomes “an ocean of sand”; “dolphins no longer dare / To arc through the air,” and the “lifeless bodies of seals / Float faceup on the sea.” At last, the goddess Earth protests to Jupiter, imploring him to rescue the universe from destruction. Though surrounded as she was by a shrinking sea, With her own streams withdrawn into the darkness Of her own womb, Mother Earth still lifted up Her parched and smothered face, and placing a hand Before her fevered brow, heaved with mighty tremors That shook the world. Then, sinking back a little lower Than she was before, she spoke in solemn tones: “If this is your pleasure and I have deserved it, Why, lord of the gods, is your lightning idle? If I must perish by fire at least let it be yours And lighten my loss by having it come from you. I can hardly open my mouth to speak these words.” The smoke was suffocating her. “See my scorched hair, The ashes in my eyes and all over my face. Is this how you reward my fertility, my service In bearing the wounds of plow and mattock, Worked and worked over year in and year out? Is it for this that I provide fodder for flocks, Grain for humankind, and incense for your altars? But, supposing that I deserve destruction, What does the sea, or your brother,17 deserve? 17. Jupiter’s brother, Neptune (the Greek Poseidon), god of the Sea.

92

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

Why are the waters—which are his share by lot— Reduced to shallows and so much farther from the sky? But if you could care less about me or your brother, Pity your own heavens! Look around: The entire vault of heaven is smoking. If the fire Weakens its structure, your mansions will be in ruins. Even Atlas18 is struggling and can barely support The white-hot dome on his shoulders. If the sea, The land, and the celestial realms perish, We will all be reduced to primordial chaos! Save from the flames whatever still survives And take counsel for the whole of the universe.” . . . Jupiter calls all the gods to witness that unless he acts, the whole world is doomed. He then ascended to heaven’s zenith, His accustomed station when he covers earth with clouds, Rolls out thunder, and hurls quivering lightning. But now he has no clouds to cover the earth Or rain to send down. He does have thunder, though, And in his right hand balances a lightning bolt Level with his ear, and hurls it at the charioteer, Jolting him from the car and from his soul as well, And quenching fire with caustic fire. The horses Went mad and leapt in different directions, Wrenching their necks from the yoke and breaking Free of the bridles. The reins lie here, the axle Over there, torn from the pole. The wheels Are shattered, the spokes strewn all over the place In the shower of debris from the chariot wreck. But Phaëthon’s red hair was a plume of flame As he was propelled in a long arc through the air, Leaving a trail the way a star sometimes does When it seems to have fallen from a cloudless sky. He was received in a distant part of the globe, Far from his native land, by the greatest of rivers, The Eridanus,19 who bathed his steaming face. 18. Atlas: the Titan god who bore the weight of the heavens on his shoulders. 19. Eridanus: in mythology, a river in remote central Europe.

4. Virgil, Aeneid

93

The Hesperian Naiads20 buried his body, Still smoking from that jagged lightning bolt And inscribed this epitaph upon the tomb: HERE LIES PHAËTHON, WHO TOOK HIS FATHER’S REINS. IF HE LOST HIS HOLD, HIS HIGH DARING REMAINS. The father, sick with grief, hid his face, And, if we are to believe it, an entire day passed Without the sun.

$$$ 4. Virgil, Aeneid (c. 29–19 BCE) Lucretius, Catullus, Ovid, and later Cicero, as will soon be seen, all mined the Greek tradition, but Virgil appropriates it for Roman purposes: he grafts a new epic onto Homer’s earlier two, knitting the story of Troy tightly to the story of Rome, and interweaving characters from the Greek tales with new ones of whom Homer never dreamed. Aeneas, the eponymous hero of the Aeneid, is a Trojan warrior who, as vanquished Troy burns, piously— piety being the core Roman virtue of loyalty to family and especially to fathers—bears his father on his back as he leads his family to safety (all but his unfortunate wife, lost in the confusion). He then sets off on his wanderings, which take him from the Hellespont to Carthage, on the North African coast, to Sicily, and on to Italy. There he vanquishes his enemies and establishes a city ancestral to the city of Rome, which would be founded in time by his grandson Romulus. The first six books of the Aeneid recount his travels and adventures; the next six, his military and political triumphs. The hinge between the two is a journey to the Underworld (Homer’s Odysseus had previously made such an expedition), where Aeneas encounters many familiar faces, including that of the woman who loved him and killed herself for love, Queen Dido of Carthage. But most especially he has come to the Underworld to see his father, Anchises. The selections given here relate the joyful reunion between father and son, after which Anchises shows Aeneas the spectacle of Rome’s future: “Now I will set forth the glory that awaits / The Trojan race, the illustrious souls / Of the Italian heirs to our name. / I will teach you your destiny.” He displays to his son a panorama of their descendants, who will be the first founders of the city of Rome, then triumphal rulers of its vast empire, followed by a parade of other Roman heroes—generals, 20. Naiads: nymphs of the river Eridanus.

94

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

statesmen, artists—who will defend and glorify that state whose mission is domination. As Anchises instructs his son: “Your mission, Roman, is to rule the world.”

Aeneid Anchises, deep in a green valley, was reviewing As a proud father the souls of his descendants Yet to be born into the light, contemplating Their destinies, their great deeds to come. When he saw his son striding toward him Through the grass, he stretched out His trembling hands, tears wet his cheeks, And these words fell from his lips: “You have come at last! I knew your devotion Would see you through the long, hard road. I can look upon your face, and we can hear Each other’s familiar voices again. I have been counting the hours carefully Until this day, and my love has not deceived me. All the lands and seas, all the dangers You have been through, my son! How I feared You would come to harm in Libya.” And Aeneas: “You, Father, your sad image, Kept appearing to me, leading me here. Our ships stand offshore in the Italian sea. Let me hold your hands in mine, Father, Do not pull away from my embrace!” As Aeneas said this he began to weep. Three times he tried to put his arms Around his father’s neck. Three times His father’s wraith slipped through his hands, As light as wind, as fleeting as a dream. While they talked in this sequestered valley A secluded grove caught Aeneas’s eye.

4. Virgil, Aeneid

95

A stream drifted past its rustling thickets— The river Lethe—and around it hovered Nations of souls, innumerable. . . . Aeneas was shaken at the sight And asked, in his ignorance, the reason For this congregation. What was the river, And who were the men crowding its banks? Father Anchises answered: “These are souls owed another body by Fate. In the ripples of Lethe they sip the waters Of forgetfulness and timeless oblivion. I have been longing to show them to you, The census of my generations, so that you May rejoice as I do at finding Italy.” “Father, can it be that souls go from here To the world above and return again To their gross bodies? What is the yearning For these poor souls to taste the light?” Aeneas asked this. “I will tell you, my son, And not keep you in doubt.” . . . Virgil inserts here in the mouth of Anchises a disquisition on the theory of the transmigration of souls that had been espoused by the philosophers Plato and Pythagoras: after an interlude of indeterminate length in the underworld, souls may drink the waters of Lethe, which erase all memory of their former life, and so be prepared to return to animate existence. Anchises paused, and he led his son, Along with the Sibyl,21 into the heart Of the murmuring crowd. He chose a mound From which he could scan all their faces As they passed by in long procession.

21. The Cumaean Sibyl: a prophetess Aeneas encountered at Cumae where he first arrived in Italy after leaving Sicily. She is his guide through the Underworld.

96

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

“Now I will set forth the glory that awaits The Trojan race, the illustrious souls Of the Italian heirs to our name. I will teach you your destiny.” Anchises introduces Aeneas to his descendants, who will found and build Rome. They include Romulus, the legendary founder of the city; Julius Caesar, whose family had from the second century BCE claimed descent from Venus (the Greek Aphrodite) and Aeneas, her son; and Augustus, Caesar’s adopted son and Virgil’s patron, who will extend the borders of the Roman Empire to unprecedented limits. “That youth you see leaning on an untipped spear Is first in line to be reborn, first in the upper air From Italian blood mingled with ours, Silvius, an Alban name, your last child, Born in your twilight years and reared by your wife, Lavinia, in a sylvan home, To be a king and father of kings. We shall rule through him in Alba Longa. Next comes Procas, pride of our race, Then Capys and Numitor, and then Your avatar, Aeneas Sylvius, Equal to you in piety and arms, If ever he succeeds to Alba’s throne. . . . Then a son of Mars will support his grandsire— Romulus, born to Ilia from the line of Assaracus. . . . Under his auspices, My son, Rome will extend her renowned empire To earth’s horizons, her glory to the stars. She will enclose seven hills within the wall Of one city, blessed with a brood of heroes. . . . Now turn your gaze here and let it rest upon Your family of Romans. Here is Caesar, And here are all of the descendants of Iülus Destined to come under heaven’s great dome. And here is the man promised to you, Augustus Caesar, born of the gods, Who will establish again a Golden Age

4. Virgil, Aeneid

97

In the fields of Latium once ruled by Saturn And will expand his dominion Beyond the Indus and the Garamantes, Beyond our familiar stars, beyond the yearly Path of the sun, to the land where Atlas Turns the star-studded sphere on his shoulders. Even now the Caspian Sea trembles As the oracles that foretell his coming, As does Persia, and the seven-mouthed Nile.” . . . Having identified the important descendants of Aeneas, Anchises proceeds to name other important Romans of the seven centuries since its founding: among them, its seven kings, and Brutus, who put an end to their reign; victorious generals and political leaders, including Camillus, Scipio Africanus, both Elder and Younger, Aemilius Paullus, conqueror of Greece, Cato the Elder, the Gracchi brothers Gaius and Tiberius, and Pompey and Caesar, opponents in a fatally disruptive civil war; and the artists and thinkers who also made Rome great. “But who is this in the distance, resplendent In his olive crown and sacred insignia? I know that white hair and beard. This is Numa, who will lay a foundation Of law in our city, sent from a small town In Sabine country to command a great nation. Coming up after Numa is Tullus, Who will shatter his country’s leisure And rouse to war men sunk in idleness And an army unaccustomed to triumphs. Hard upon Tullus’s heels is Ancus, flaunting himself, blowing even now In winds of popular favor. Would you like to see The Tarquin kings, the proud, avenging Spirit of Brutus, and the rods of office He will recover? He will be first to receive The power of consul, and the stern axes. When his sons stir up rebellious war Their own father will exact punishment In sweet liberty’s name, an unhappy man

98

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

However the future might judge his deeds. Love of country will prevail with him, And a boundless desire for glory. Look at the Decii and Drusi, still in the distance, And Torquatus ferocious with his battle-axe, And Camillus with the legion’s standards regained. But the two you see there, a match for each other In resplendent armor, harmonious souls While they are buried in night—what wars will they wage Against each other, what civil slaughter Should they ever reach the light, the bride’s father Marching down the Alps from Monaco, His son-in-law drawing up his Oriental troops! Do not inure yourselves to such war, my sons, Nor rend your country’s body with strife. And you, child of Olympus, should show Clemency first. Cast down your weapons, My own flesh and blood. . . . There is Corinth’s conqueror, whose chariot Will ascend the Capitoline Hill in triumph After the slaughter of his Greek enemies. . . . Who, great Cato, could leave you unsung, Or you Cottus? Or the Gracchi brothers; Or the two Scipios, twin thunderbolts of war And bane of Carthage. . . . Others will, no doubt, hammer out bronze That breathes more softly, and draw living faces Out of stone. They will plead cases better And chart the rising of every star in the sky. Your mission, Roman, is to rule the world. These will be your arts: to establish peace, To spare the humbled, and to conquer the proud.” Finally, Anchises points out two figures named Marcellus: the first is the unvanquished third-century hero, and the second is the nephew and heir of Augustus, whose death at age twenty-one in 23 BCE, even as Virgil was composing the Aeneid, shocked all of Rome.

4. Virgil, Aeneid

Thus Anchises, and as they marvel, he adds: “Look at Marcellus, proud in choice spoils Torn from the vanquished enemy commander, Towering triumphant over all the crowd! When the Roman state is falling in ruin He will set it upright; he will trample down The Carthaginians, crush the rebel Gauls, And offer to Quirinus a third set of arms.” At this, Aeneas, seeing a youth pass by Beautiful in his gleaming armor But with downcast eyes and troubled brow, Asked his father: “Who is this, At the hero’s side? His son, or another In his great line of descendants? What An impression he makes with his crowd of followers! But the shadow of death enshrouds his head.” And Anchises, tears welling up in his eyes: “Son, do not seek your people’s great grief. Fate will permit him on earth a brief while, But not for long. Gods above, you thought Rome Would be too powerful had your gift endured. What lamentation of the brave will hang Over the Field of Mars. O River Tiber, What a funeral you will see as you glide past His new tomb. No boy bred of Troy will ever raise The hope of his Latin forefathers so high, Nor the land of Romulus ever be so proud, Of any of its sons. O, lament His devotion, lament his pristine honor And his sword arm invincible in war! No enemy would have faced him unscathed, Whether he fought on foot or dug his spurs Into the flanks of a foaming stallion. If only you could shatter Fate, poor boy. You will be Marcellus! Let me strew

99

100

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

Armfuls of lilies and scatter purple blossoms, Hollow rites to honor my descendant’s shade.” And so they wandered every region of the wide, Airy plain, surveying all it contained. When Anchises had led his son Through every detail and enflamed his soul With longing for the glory that was to come, He told him of the wars he next must wage, Of the Laurentine people and Latinus’s town, And how to face or flee each waiting peril. There are two Gates of Sleep. One, they say, Is horn, and offers easy exit for true shades. The other is finished with glimmering ivory, But through it the Spirits send false dreams To the world above. Anchises escorted his son As he talked, then sent him with the Sibyl Through the Gate of Ivory. Aeneas made his way to the ships, Rejoined his men, and sailed along the coast To Caieta’s harbor. They cast anchor From the prow; the terns faced the shore.

$$$ 5. Cicero, Fourth Philippic (December 20, 44 BCE) In 79–78, the young Cicero journeyed to Greece, which three hundred years after its conquest by Alexander the Great, was still the intellectual hub of the Mediterranean region. There he studied philosophy and rhetoric with renowned experts, honing the rhetorical style that would open the door to his brilliant career as both statesman and author, and leave an indelible stamp on the prose literary tradition of the Western world. Back in Rome, Cicero began his career as an advocate of those needing legal defense, there being as yet no professional attorneys, delivering between 81 and 43 BCE some eighty-eight speeches on corruption, crime, and malfeasance of all kinds in the law courts, the Senate, and the Roman public forum. His polished and persuasive speeches won him advancement through the whole cycle of the cursus honorum (pathway of offices) through which anyone must journey who sought the chief Roman magistracy, the office of consul. In 63 BCE, as the son of a rural proprietor and

5. Cicero, Fourth Philippic

101

not a member of the Roman urban elite, Cicero was the first “new man” to attain that honor. By using his hands to write and his tongue to speak, Cicero had made his way to the top—the very hands and tongue that would be his potent weapons against Mark Antony, Caesar’s self-appointed successor after the latter’s assassination in 44 BCE. Between 44 and 43 BCE, Cicero denounced Antony as a public enemy in fourteen deadly speeches: they were called the “Philippics,” named after the vitriolic speeches the Greek orator Demosthenes had hurled against Philip of Macedon, the father of Alexander the Great, in fourth-century Athens. In 43, Antony and his rival, the young Octavian (later Augustus), Caesar’s adopted son and heir, reached a temporary truce. The former insisted on placing Cicero on a proscription list, a notorious Roman device that named persons who were to be killed. Octavian acquiesced. Antony’s thugs murdered Cicero, hanging his severed hands and tongue, now silenced, as trophies from the speaker’s rostrum in the public forum. Cicero’s speeches were by no means his only literary products. He wrote important works on rhetoric (among them, On the Orator and Brutus, in 55 and 46); on political theory (including On the Republic and On the Laws, both in 51); and on moral philosophical topics (including On Duties, On Friendship, and On Old Age, all in 44). He translated Greek philosophical ideas into Latin for a Roman audience (most famously the Tusculan Disputations and On the Nature of the Gods, both in 45), thereby inventing a new vocabulary for concepts Latin did not possess, greatly enriching a language that was poor in abstractions; he invented, for instance, the term res publica, one of great importance in the later West, translated to English as “commonwealth” or, more plainly, “republic.” Finally, Cicero invented the letter as a literary genre, writing nearly one thousand letters to his friends, family members, and to important figures such as Pompey and Caesar, packed with such detail that they could by themselves serve as a history of that era. Cicero’s speeches, however, display at once his prose mastery and his public and political involvement, and are therefore an ideal gateway to the Ciceronian corpus. Fifty-two of his speeches survive, including the fourteen Philippics. Of these, the fourth is given here nearly in its entirety. In it, Cicero speaks directly to the Roman people assembled in the forum, arousing their passions, and convincing them that Antony, an elected consul, is the deadly enemy of the state. He commends the Senate’s proclamation of support for young Octavian, who has marshalled the veteran troops of his adoptive father to oppose Antony, and for Decimus Junius Brutus,22 who will not surrender his legions to Antony. If Octavian and Brutus are supported by the Senate, Cicero argues, then Antony, whom they oppose, is nothing but “a hideous and slavering beast,” who has been trapped, and must be “crushed.” 22. Decimus Junius Brutus: a participant in Julius Caesar’s assassination, but not Marcus Junius Brutus, who was its ringleader.

102

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

Fourth Philippic My fellow citizens: The astonishing size of this crowd, a public assembly larger than I remember ever seeing before, gives me great energy for defending the commonwealth and hope for restoring it. I have always wanted that; the times were against it. But as soon as the first signs of light appeared, I was the first person to defend your liberty; if I had tried to act earlier, I would not be able to act now. Do not minimize, my fellow citizens, what has been accomplished this day; the foundation has been laid for everything else we will do. Through its actions, if not yet in its words, the senate has judged Mark Antony to be a public enemy. And right now, I can hold my head up much higher, since your great shout of approval shows that you agree he is a public enemy.23 My fellow citizens, there is no way not to believe one or the other: either the men who raised armies against a consul are disloyal, or arms were properly taken up against someone who is a public enemy.24 There was no real doubt about this, but today the senate has removed any possibility of doubt. Gaius Caesar,25 who has protected and continues to protect the commonwealth and your liberty with his energy, his wisdom, and not least his inheritance, has received the greatest official praise from the senate. I praise you, my fellow citizens, I praise you because you show such enthusiastic gratitude when I name this glorious young man—or rather, boy: his deeds are timeless, but the name for his chronological age is “boy.”26 I remember a lot, my fellow citizens: I have heard a lot and I have read a lot. But I know nothing like this to be recollected in all of history: when we were being crushed into slavery; when things were getting worse every day; when we had not protection; when we feared the fatal and destructive return of Antony from Brundisium27—just then he embraced a plan that was beyond the hopes of all of us and was certainly unprecedented, to put together an invincible army from his father’s veterans28 and fend off Antony, whose madness is intensified by the wickedness of his goals, from the destruction of the commonwealth. Does anyone not understand that if Caesar had not raised an army, Antony’s return would have demanded our destruction? He was on his way back, seething with hatred of you, . . . with no thought except to destroy the Roman people. And what protection was there for your well-being and your 23. Cicero records in his speech, to bolster his case, the positive response of his audience. 24. That is, those who are opposing Antony with force are defenders of Rome, and Antony, a consul, is its enemy. 25. Gaius Caesar: called Octavian, later Augustus. 26. Octavian was nineteen years old at this time. 27. Brundisium: modern Brindisi, a port city in southeast Italy; Antony landed there on his return from Greece. 28. That is, those who had fought under Julius Caesar.

5. Cicero, Fourth Philippic

103

freedom, if Caesar’s army had not been composed of his father’s bravest soldiers? Just now the senate agreed with my motion. At the earliest possible moment we should decide on the immortal honors that correspond to his immortal merits. By that decree it is completely obvious that Antony has been adjudged a public enemy, for if the people who lead armies against him are judged by the senate to deserve new and unique honors, then what else can we call him? . . . In supporting the senate’s authority, your liberty, the entire commonwealth, [Octavian’s soldiers] abandoned [Antony] as a public enemy, a brigand, and the butcher of his fatherland. . . . Well, Antony, what more damaging judgments are you waiting for? Caesar, who raised an army against you, is exalted to the skies; the legions that abandoned you are praised in the choicest terms—legions that you summoned and that would have been yours, if you had chosen to be a consul rather than a public enemy. The senate supports the extraordinarily brave and correct judgment of these legions; the entire people approves—unless, of course my fellow citizens, you consider Antony to be a consul rather than a public enemy! As you show, my fellow citizens, your judgment is what I thought it would be. And what about the towns, the colonies, the communities of Italy? Do you think they judge any differently? All humankind is unanimous: those men who want our way of life kept safe should take up every weapon against that monster. What about Decimus Brutus, my fellow citizens? You can see his opinion from the edict we received today; nobody makes light of that, do they? “No!” you say, my fellow citizens, and you’re absolutely right. . . . And what is Decimus Brutus’s judgment about Antony? He bars him from his province; he blocks him with his army; he urges on to war all Gaul, which had already risen spontaneously by its own decision. If Antony is a consul, Brutus is a public enemy; if Brutus is a savior of the commonwealth, then Antony is a public enemy. We can’t have any doubt, can we, which of these is true? . . . So other than bandits, who thinks of [Antony] as consul? And not even they actually believe what they say; and no matter how wicked and evil they may be (as they are), they can’t disagree with the judgment of all humankind. The hope of plunder and spoils blinds their hearts. They are men who haven’t been satisfied with gifts of money, assignment of land, and unending confiscations and sales; they have marked out for their spoils the city itself, the goods and fortunes of its citizens. These men think they will lack nothing so long as there’s something here for them to snatch and carry off; Antony has promised these men that he will give out shares of the city—I pray to the everlasting gods to turn aside and reject this omen! And so, my fellow citizens, may your prayers come true and may the penalty for his madness fall on himself and his household! I’m sure it will. Not only men but even the everlasting gods, I believe, have reached agreement on the preservation of the commonwealth. . . .

104

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

What remains, my fellow citizens, is for you to stick firmly to the opinion you have proclaimed. So I will do as generals do when the battle line has been drawn up; even though they see their soldiers completely ready to fight, they cheer them on, and so too I urge you, hot and eager as you are, to regain your freedom. You are not fighting, my fellow citizens, against an enemy with whom peace of any kind is possible. Enslaving you has ceased to be his goal; now he is angry and wants your blood. To him, no sport gives more pleasure than blood, slaughter, and the butchery of citizens before his very eyes. My fellow citizens, you have to deal not with a wicked criminal who is human but with a hideous and slavering beast, and since it has fallen into a trap, it should be crushed. If it gets out of there, it will know no limits in cruelty. But now that the beast is caught, pressed, squeezed by the forces we already control and soon also by those that the new consuls will gather in a few days. Stay firm for the cause, my fellow citizens: stay the course. You have never had such complete agreement for any cause; you have never been so tightly allied to the senate. No surprise in that: the issue is not the way in which we will live but whether we will continue to live or will die in torture and disgrace. Nature has set death itself before us all; but virtue, the property of the Roman stock and race, rejects a death that is marked by cruelty and dishonor. Keep this in mind, I urge you, my fellow citizens. It is as an inheritance left you by your ancestors. Everything else is deceitful and uncertain, fleeting and fickle. Virtue alone is anchored by the deepest roots and can never be shaken or moved by any force. This is the weapon with which your ancestors first defeated all Italy, then destroyed Carthage, overturned Numantia, and compelled the most powerful kings and the most warlike tribes to submit to our rule.29 Your ancestors, my fellow citizens, had to deal with an enemy who had a government, a senate house, a treasury, citizens bound by consent and concord, some kind of understanding, should that have been appropriate, of peace and of treaties; your enemy is laying siege to your commonwealth but has none of his own. He yearns to destroy the senate, the common council of the entire world, while he himself has no public council at all. He has drained your treasure but has none of his own. And who can have the consent of his citizens who has no city? . . . My fellow citizens, the Roman people, the conqueror of all nations, now has its entire struggle with an assassin, a brigand, a Spartacus.30 . . . And so just as you broke Catiline31 by employing my diligence, the authority of 29. Cicero alludes here to Rome’s triumphs and conquests over the previous several centuries. 30. a Spartacus: in the late 70s, Spartacus led a slave revolt against the Roman state. 31. Catiline: an aristocratic malcontent who fomented a conspiracy against the state that was discovered and exposed by Cicero during his consulship in 63 BCE. Cicero’s prosecution of Catiline, resulting in the death of his target, was the occasion for his series of four orations known as “Catilinarian.”

6. Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia

105

the senate, and your own enthusiasm and courage, so in a short time you will hear that the wicked brigandage of Antony has been crushed through your unprecedented harmony with the senate, through the good fortune and the courage of the armies and of your leaders. For my own part, as much as I can strive for and accomplish with attention, toil, wakefulness, authority, and planning, I will leave nothing undone that I believe useful for your freedom. . . . On this day first, . . . after a long interval we have been set ablaze with the hope of freedom.

$$$ 6. Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia (c. 40–45 CE) In his consolation to his mother for his absence in exile, Seneca interweaves two themes: first, that of consolation for a son lost but still alive; and second, that of a mother’s love. They intersect because Helvia’s son was a philosopher and because Roman mothers were held in high regard. Seneca’s consolation belongs to an already established genre, borrowing from the many “great works of the most famous writers written to suppress and diminish grief.” Yet it was different. Generally, then as now, consolations are written to console a mourner for someone who has died. But in this case, Seneca is himself the source of the sorrow he seeks to heal: he is alive, but exiled—purportedly for adultery with an imperial princess.32 As both the cause of her grief and its consoler, Seneca expounds the philosophical position common to many of his works. There is no reason to grieve since he is well, even happy. He does not miss his fine clothes, great palace, or rich adornments; these are merely things of the body and unnecessary: “the spirit—free, kin to the gods, and equal to every world and every age—can never be exiled.” Thus he assures his mother: “I am not miserable”; and even more, “It’s impossible for me to be miserable.” Rather, he writes, “my spirit, free of obligations,” rises above itself: it “becomes aware of its immortality and travels into what was and what will be forever.” These statements of Stoic philosophy would strike later readers, and may still strike some today, as similar to Christian views that were crystallizing in the same era in which Seneca wrote. To write such things to a mother in ancient times was surely unusual: ancient authors were almost always male and seldom wrote about women who were not goddesses; and women were rarely literate. But women of the Roman elite, especially mothers, held higher status than in other ancient societies. They were, of course, subordinated, as elsewhere, to their fathers; 32. Seneca lived in exile in Corsica 41–49 CE.

106

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

their husbands; and if widowed, their sons. Yet they could manage legal and financial affairs, if through intermediaries, assist the political careers of their sons, and contribute to their wealth. A few, moreover, were educated: if so, by those same fathers, husbands, or sons—as Helvia had been by her husband, Seneca’s father, also a learned man. Certainly she was familiar with her famous son’s literary works. Seneca imagines her thinking: “I miss our conversations—I could never get enough. Where are his writings, in which I shared . . . more as a friend than a mother?” What remedy for grief could such a son offer to such a mother? The answer is: the remedy of philosophy. She should employ her “voracious intellect” to pursue the only thing “that can snatch you from Fortune’s grasp,”33 and not merely “limit” grief, but “conquer” it. The deep bond between mother and son extended into the shared life of the mind.

Consolation to His Mother Helvia I have often, dearest mother, felt the urge to console you, and often I have held back. Many things pushed me to try. First of all, it seemed that I would have laid down all my own troubles for a while when I wiped away your tears, even if I weren’t able to put an end to them. Second, I didn’t doubt at all that I had enough influence to lift you up, once I had already lifted myself up. . . . There were also things that interfered with my intentions. I knew that I couldn’t confront your sorrow while it was still so fresh and causing pain, just in case the consolation itself aggravated and inflamed the sorrow. . . . And although I had looked through all the great works of the most famous writers written to suppress and diminish grief, I couldn’t find an example of someone writing to console his own family when he himself was the source of the sorrow. So I was . . . afraid that my words wouldn’t be a consolation, but would make your sorrow worse. . . . I’ll try as I can, then, . . . [and] hope that you, who could deny me nothing, won’t deny me this either: though all mourning can be obstinately persistent, I hope you are willing to have me set you a limit on missing me. . . . Fortune didn’t give you a break from the deepest kinds of sorrows; Fortune didn’t even allow the day you were born to be a happy one: you lost your mother as soon as you were born—or rather, while you were being born—and so you were abandoned just as your life was beginning. . . . You lost a very affectionate uncle, an exceptional and very brave man, just when you were expecting him to arrive home. And . . . thirty days later you laid your beloved husband to rest, with whom you had three children. 33. Fortune: often figured as a goddess, she was considered to be a capricious force that randomly brought good or evil to mortals.

6. Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia

107

This sad news was brought to you while you were still grieving your uncle and while all your children were away. . . . Only recently you took the bones of three grandchildren into your arms, the very same arms that sent them away on their trip. Twenty days after you buried my son, dead in your arms with your kisses on his face, you heard that I had been taken away into exile. This was the only thing left for you to experience: mourning as if dead one who was still alive. The recent wound, I confess, is the most serious of those that have been inflicted on you. It didn’t just break the skin, it split you right through the gut. . . . [Nonetheless,] you ought to offer yourself now . . . , bravely, to the cure I’m offering. Put aside your lamenting and your wailing, and the other ways women express their grief out loud. You’ve wasted so many bad events if you’ve not yet learned from them how to endure misery. Am I being too rough with you? If so, it’s because I haven’t left out any of the bad things in your life— I’ve piled them all together right in front of you. I did this with a generous spirit, because I’ve decided to conquer your sorrow after all, not merely set a limit on it. And I’ll conquer it, I think, if first of all I demonstrate that you couldn’t call me pitiable and sad because of anything I’ve endured. . . ; and second, if I . . . prove that your fortune, which depends entirely on mine, is not unfavorable at all. I’ll try first to prove something your love for me as my mother wants to hear, that I’m not in a bad way at all. If I can, I’m going to demonstrate clearly that the things you think have harmed me are quite bearable. But . . . I’ll be even happier to prove that I am alive, content and happy in circumstances that usually make men miserable. There’s no reason for you to believe otherwise. I can tell you myself, so you won’t be troubled by false speculation: “I am not miserable.” I’ll emphasize the point, so you’ll feel even better: “It’s impossible for me to be miserable.” . . . The universe has arranged it so that we don’t need much to live a happy life. . . . External things, which anyway don’t have much power for good or bad, aren’t all that important: favorable circumstances don’t lift a wise man up and adversity doesn’t get him down. He can always work hard to depend mostly on himself, and to find every joy within. . . . “But an exile will miss his clothes and his house.” He’ll miss only what he is used to. He’ll have a roof and a cloak. It takes little to cover the body and little to nourish it. . . . Now, he misses his cloth tinted with expensive purple dye, with gold woven in and decorated with many different colors and designs. . . . Even if you give him back what he lost, it won’t do any good. You see, after being recalled, he’ll want what he doesn’t have more than he wanted, as an exile, what he once had.

108

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

He’s missing his dinner table gleaming with gold dishes, his silver made by famous ancient artisans, . . . and the marble brought from all over the world. Even if you gather all those things together in one place, they won’t fill his empty spirit, any more than any amount of liquid will satisfy the thirst of a man driven not by lack of water but by a raging fever: it’s not a thirst he has, it’s a sickness. . . . Even places of exile supply all that is necessary, but not even kingdoms supply all that is unnecessary. It’s the spirit that makes men rich. It follows us into exile and, in our deepest isolation, after it has found enough to sustain the body, the spirit overflows with its own goods and enjoys them. Money matters no more to the spirit than to the immortal gods. All of the things men admire because of their unwise inclinations . . . are just earthly weight. A spirit that is free and true to its own nature can’t love them, since it is light and swift, prepared to spring toward the heavens whenever it is released. Until then, as much as it can, weighed down as it is by these limbs and this heavy bag of bones, it examines heavenly things on the swift wings of the mind. This is why the spirit—free, kin to the gods, and equal to every world and every age—can never be exiled. . . . This poor little body, the spirit’s guardian and prison, is tossed about here and there—it is tested by punishment, incarceration, illness. But the spirit itself is set apart from mortal things and eternal. . . . Since, dearest mother, you have no reason to weep forever for my sake, it must be that you are weeping for your own reasons. These are, it seems, two: either the fact that you seem to have lost your protection34 or that you aren’t able to endure your longing for me on your own. I should touch on the first concern briefly, because I know that you love your children with all your spirit for nothing other than what they are. Some mothers . . . use their sons’ power to control events. Others, because women can’t hold public office, are ambitious through their sons. And some both use up and seek to possess their children’s inheritance. . . . May all of them see what kind of mother you are. You take great joy in your children’s goodness but little in their usefulness. . . . You, although legally under your father’s control, gave gifts out of your own money to already rich sons. You managed our inheritance as if you were working to preserve your own. . . . You used our influence as sparingly as if you were using another’s property, and all you received from our elected positions was pleasure. . . . Your affection was given without a view

34. Roman women required the protection of a kinsman. Her sons were the protectors of a fatherless widow such as Helvia.

6. Seneca, Consolation to His Mother Helvia

109

to advantage. So, when your son has been taken away, you can’t miss what you never thought was yours when he was safe. I need to focus all my efforts to console you where the true force of a mother’s pain comes from: “I miss my dear son’s hugs. I can’t enjoy seeing his face or talking with him. Where is he? The sight of him relieved my sadness. . . . I miss our conversations—I could never get enough. Where are his writings, in which I shared . . . more as a friend than a mother?”. . . However difficult these events are, you need to call that much more upon your courage, and fight like you’re fighting an enemy you know and have beaten before. . . . This is why it’s better to conquer your heart than to trick it. You see, after grief has been deluded by pleasures and distracted by business it comes back, and . . . renews its savage attack. But whatever yields to reason is given up forever. . . . So, I’ll direct you where all who flee from Fortune ought to flee, the liberal arts.35 They will heal your wound and erase your every sadness. Even if you’ve not usually done so in the past, you’ll find them useful now. As much as my father’s old-fashioned strictness allowed, you have a passing familiarity with them even if you didn’t study them all. If only my father, a very great man, had been less devoted to tradition and had wanted you to be totally immersed in philosophy, rather than just dipped in it! If he had, you wouldn’t have to prepare it as a defense against Fortune. You’d just pull it out and use it now. . . . But, for the time, you did imbibe some wisdom because you have a voracious intellect. The foundations for these areas of study have been laid—go back to them now and they will keep you safe. They will also give you comfort and pleasure, and if they enter your spirit in good faith, sorrow and pain will never enter again. . . . Studies are the surest protection, and are the only thing that can snatch you from Fortune’s grasp. . . . But since it’s inevitable that . . . your thoughts turn to me sometimes . . . , here’s how you should imagine I am: as happy and as positive as in the best of times. And these are the best of times, since my spirit, free of obligations, has time for its own work, sometimes even to play with less serious pursuits or, rising up eager for the truth, to understand its own nature and the nature of the universe. My spirit looks for answers first in the earth and how it is arranged, then in the state of the sea that surrounds and its tides. Then it looks at the frightful space that lies between the earth and heaven, a volatile area with 35. liberal arts: in the Greco-Roman world those studies, especially literature, history, and philosophy, that enrich the mind and have no practical or “mechanical” purpose.

110

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

thunder, lightning, high winds, and all kinds of precipitation. And then . . . it bursts through to the highest point and takes pleasure in the most spectacular beauty of the gods: it becomes aware of its immortality and travels into what was and what will be forever.

$$$ 7. Tacitus, Agricola and Germania (c. 98 CE) Tacitus is best known for his Annals and the Histories, which narrate the events of Roman history from the death of the emperor Augustus in 14 CE to that of the emperor Domitian in 96. Although only parts are extant, they provide a stunning spectacle of political intrigue, corruption, and cultural decline written in mordant, incisive prose. His Dialogue on Oratory, similarly, examining the impact of political disorder on speechmaking, an activity at once literary and political, laments the diminution of free expression and lively debate in an age of imperial arrogance. The two narratives presented here, however, gemlike miniatures at once historical, biographical, and ethnographic, are still bolder, implicitly contrasting the innocence of the indigenous peoples the Romans opposed in their campaigns abroad with the decadence Tacitus perceived in contemporary Rome. In the Agricola, a portrait of the author’s father-in-law embedded in the history of Roman expansion, Tacitus juxtaposes the assured competence of the Roman advance in Britain (83 or 84 CE), a region they viewed as a remote wilderness swathed in mist and storm, with the last painful resistance of indigenous Celts to the inevitable Roman conquest. Calgacus, the Caledonian36 chieftain, delivers a polished speech in the Ciceronian mode, summoning his followers to defend their people and defy the Roman attempt to enslave them: for the Romans, he charged, had plundered East and West and now have come to despoil the extreme North—“and when they produce a wasteland, they call it peace.” Agricola’s own oration to his troops, encouraging them to complete the mission before them, is less impassioned—a contrast Tacitus surely intended. Although that oration is not included here, the eulogy of Agricola, which the author uses to close his work, is presented instead. In this eulogy, Tacitus depicts his father-in-law as a peerless servant of the state, yet as much a slave as the vanquished Caledonians: for though he had the good fortune to die before the worst atrocities ensued, he had lost his liberty, as had his colleagues in the Senate, to the tyrannical emperors who now ruled in Rome. 36. Caledonian: the Romans referred to as Caledonians a people living well to the north of today’s Scottish border, as well as north of the two defensive walls later built under emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius to mark the farthest extent of Roman occupation.

7. Tacitus, Agricola and Germania

111

The Germania, a taxonomy of the German tribes who in the author’s lifetime had begun to pose a threat to Roman dominance in western Europe, is a rare and extraordinary account, despite its inaccuracies, much read by later historians as well as by German nationalists. It identifies the many tribes by location, appearance, and customs, and describes as a whole the German economy and society, political and judicial practices, the role of women, and the education of the young. Underlying this ostensibly neutral report is a value-laden subtext. Even as Tacitus describes the Germans as violent, crude, and ill-equipped, he commends their essential innocence, courage, loyalty, and love of family, finding in those characteristics the traits that the Romans, when they were great, once possessed.

Agricola Calgacus spurs the Caledonians to resist the Romans. “As often as I consider the causes of war and our dire straits, I have great confidence that this day and your union will be the beginning of freedom for all Britain; for you have all joined together, you who have not experienced slavery, for whom there are no lands further on and not even the sea is safe, with the Roman fleet threatening us. . . . Since we are the most distant people of the earth and of liberty, our very isolation and the obscurity of our renown have protected us up to this day; now the farthest boundary of Britain lies open, . . . [and] there are no people further on, nothing except waves and rocks, and the Romans more hostile than these, whose arrogance you would in vain try to avoid by obedience and submission. Plunderers of the world, after they, laying everything waste, ran out of land, they search out the sea; . . . men whom neither the East nor the West has sated, they alone of all men desire wealth and poverty with equal enthusiasm. Robbery, butchery, rapine they call empire by euphemisms, and when they produce a wasteland, they call it peace. “Nature has willed that a person’s children and relatives be most precious to each one: these are carried off by levies to be slaves somewhere else; even if our wives and sisters have escaped the lust of enemies, they are defiled by men posing as friends and guests. Our property and fortunes are wasted for tribute, our land and its annual produce to provide grain, our very bodies and hands in laying roads through woods and swamps while suffering blows and insults. Slaves born to slavery are sold once and for all, and, in the bargain, are supported by their masters; Britain buys its slavery every day, she feeds it every day. . . . Thus, at last, put aside hope of pardon and take courage, whether safety or glory is most precious to you. . . . We, who are at full strength and unconquered and on the verge of advancing to

112

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

liberty and not repentance, let us right off, at the first clash, show the kind of men Caledonia has reserved for herself. . . . “All the inducements of victory are on our side; no wives encourage the Romans, no parents are going to reproach flight; many of them have no country, or a different one. Few in number, frightened because of what they do not know, anxiously gazing at the sky itself and the sea and the forests, . . . the gods have handed them over to you as if imprisoned and hypnotized. Do not be frightened by their delusive appearance nor the flash of gold and silver, which neither protects nor wounds. We shall find our allies in the enemies’ very battle line: the Britons will recognize that our cause is theirs, the Gauls will recall their former freedom, the rest of the Germans will desert them.37 . . . Here is a general, here an army; there are tributes and mines and the other punishments of slaves; the decision to endure these forever or to avenge them at once rests upon this field. Therefore, think of your ancestors and your descendants as you go into battle.” . . . Epilogue: a portrait of Agricola: Agricola was born on June 13 [40 CE] . . . ; he died in his fifty-fourth year, on August 23 [93 CE]. . . . Although taken away in the mid-course of his prime, [he] lived a very long life as far as glory is concerned. For . . . what else could fortune add for a man who had been consul and had been honored with the decorations of a triumph?38 . . . Since his daughter and wife survive him, he can even seem blessed, because he escaped what was to come, with his rank unimpaired, his reputation secure, his relatives and friends uninjured. For, although it was not permitted him to live to see this light of a most happy age and Trajan as emperor, . . . yet he has as considerable compensation for his hastened death the fact that he escaped that last period, in which Domitian drained the state, no longer at intervals and with respites of time, but with, as it were, one continuous blow.39 Agricola did not see the senate house under siege and the senate ringed by arms and, in one and the same massacre, the murders of so many men of consular rank, the exiles and flights of so many very distinguished women. . . . Nero40 at least withdrew his eyes and ordered his crimes but did not 37. The Romans had conscripted into their army the native peoples they had vanquished: the Celts of Britain and Gaul (modern Great Britain and France) and various German peoples. 38. It was the custom to welcome victorious generals back to Rome with a “triumph,” or victory parade, in which the hero was celebrated and the spoils of his conquest displayed. 39. The emperor Domitian (r. 81–96): a tyrant; Tacitus alludes here and in other works to his cruelties; by comparison, the emperor Trajan (r. 98–117), who succeeded after the intervening reign of Nerva (96–98), was a beneficent ruler. 40. The emperor Nero (r. 54–68): an earlier ruler notorious for his cruelty, and under whom Seneca had suffered.

7. Tacitus, Agricola and Germania

113

watch them; an especial part of misery under Domitian was to see and to be seen, when our signs were noted down, when that savage face and ruddy expression . . . were able to mark out the paleness of so many men. You were indeed fortunate, Agricola, not only in the fame of your life, but also by the timeliness of your death. . . . Whatsoever in Agricola we loved and admired, that remains and is going to remain in the minds of men, in the never-ending span of time. . . ; Agricola will survive, his story told and transmitted to posterity. . . .

Germania The land and the people: I personally incline to the views of those who think that the peoples of Germany have not been polluted by any marriages with other tribes and that they have existed as a particular people, pure and only like themselves. As a result, all have the same bodily appearance, as far as is possible in so large a number of men: fiery blue eyes, red hair, large bodies which are strong only for violent exertion. There is no comparable endurance of hardship and labors and they do not endure thirst and heat at all, but they have become accustomed to cold and hunger from their climate and soil. Although the land is somewhat varied in appearance, nonetheless on the whole it is gloomy with forests or unwholesome with swamps . . . ; it is fertile for grain crops, does not bear fruit trees, and is rich in livestock, but the animals are generally small. . . . I do not know whether the gods in their kindness or anger have denied them silver and gold. . . . They are not influenced by the possession and use of the precious metals as much as one might expect. For one can see among them that silver vessels, given as gifts to their ambassadors and chieftains, are considered no more valuable than those made out of clay. . . . Not even iron is found in abundance, as is inferred from the character of their weapons. Very few use swords or lances of great size; they wield spears . . . with a narrow and short iron point, but so sharp and easy to use that they fight with the same weapon either at close range or at a distance, as circumstance requires. And the horseman, indeed, is satisfied with a shield and a [spear]; the foot soldiers also hurl light weapons, each individual more than one, and they throw them a great distance, naked or lightly garbed with a cloak. . . . Their horses are not outstanding either in appearance or in speed. . . . Politics, war, and women: They pick their kings on the basis of noble birth, their generals on the basis of bravery. Nor do their kings have limitless or arbitrary power, and the

114

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

generals win public favor by the example they set if they are energetic, if they are distinguished, if they fight before the battle line, rather than by the power they wield. . . . What is a particular incitement to bravery, neither chance nor a miscellaneous grouping brings about the cavalry or infantry formation, but families and clans; and close by are their dear ones, whence are heard the wailings of women and the crying of children. These are each man’s most sacred witnesses, these are his greatest supporters: it is to their mothers and to their wives that they bring their wounds; and the women to not quake to count or examine their blows, and they furnish sustenance and encouragement to the fighters. It is recorded that some battle lines, when already broken and giving way, were restored by the women, by persistent prayers and showing their breasts and pointing to the nearness of captivity, which the Germans fear much more violently for the sake of their women. . . . The nobles make decisions about lesser matters, all freemen about things of greater significance. . . . They hold meetings on specified days, unless something has occurred unexpectedly and suddenly, either at the new or full moon. . . . The following is a fault that springs from their liberty, the fact that they do not assemble at the same time nor as if under orders, but two or three days are wasted by the delay of those who are coming together. When the crowd thinks it opportune, they sit down fully armed. Silence is demanded by the priests. . . . Soon the king or the chieftains are heard, in accordance with the age, nobility, glory in war, and eloquence of each. . . . If a proposal has displeased them, they show their displeasure with a roar; but if it has won favor, they bang their [spears] together: the most prestigious kind of approval is praise with arms. . . . When they have come into battle, it is shameful for the chieftain to be excelled in valor, shameful for the entourage not to match the valor of the chieftain. Furthermore, it is shocking and disgraceful for all of one’s life to have survived one’s chieftain and left the battle. . . . The chieftains fight for victory, the entourage for the chieftain. . . . For they claim from the generosity of their chieftain that glorious war horse, that renowned [spear] which will be bloodied and victorious; for banquets and provisions, not luxurious yet abundant, serve as pay. The wherewithal for generosity is obtained through wars and plunder, nor would one as easily persuade them to plow the earth or await the yearly crop as to challenge the enemy and earn wounds; nay, on the contrary, it seems slothful and lazy to gain by sweat what one could win by blood.

$$$

8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

115

8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations (167 CE) While campaigning on the Danube, where Roman armies held the Empire’s borders from invaders to the north, Marcus Aurelius—the last of the “Five Good Emperors” who had presided over a prosperous and peaceful age known as the pax romana (Roman peace)—wrote a book to himself and for himself. To Himself, indeed, was its intended title, as scholars can best determine. Later translators have generally entitled it Meditations, although one adventurously proposed a longer one that is quite apt: The Communings with Himself of Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome. The Meditations is often classed as a philosophical work, and certainly it could only have been composed by a person immersed in the philosophical theorizing of the Hellenistic era. Written in Greek, the language of philosophy, it contains ideas drawn from Epicurus, which Lucretius had also systematically explored; from other ancient philosophical schools, which Cicero had expounded; and especially from the Stoics, who had informed Seneca’s outlook. But it is not so much a philosophical work as a writer’s journal, a compilation of the thoughts of a lonely and conscientious author, arrayed in no discernible order, recording his attempts to reconcile his world-historical office of emperor with his understanding of his insignificant place in the cosmos. He views himself as a human being guided by reason within a rational universal order, whose task is to live in accord with the nature of both. Surrounded by luxury, he wishes to live simply; confronted with boundless civil and military tasks, he seeks time to think; raised above all other individuals, he wants to contribute to the whole of humankind; charged to judge others, he wants never to judge, but only to understand. He lives amid these ironies and contradictions, not knowing, when he wrote, what would be the supreme irony: that his then six-year-old son, who would succeed him on the imperial throne, was a monster—from whose reign might be traced the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. The selections from the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius appear in the order they are given in his book, which is to say they are in no particular order. The aim has been to identify extracts that represent the range of the author’s concerns.

Meditations From the reputation of my father and what I remember of him: self-respect and manly behavior. From my mother: piety, generosity, to avoid not only evil deeds but evil thoughts; to live simply without any display of wealth. From Rusticus: to come to realize that one’s character needs correction and training . . . ; not to write about one’s theories or preach one’s little

116

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

sermons, not to show off by posing as a trained philosopher or a benefactor; to abstain from rhetoric and poetry and clever talk; to write letters in a simple style . . . ; to read with care and not to be satisfied with a general understanding of the subject or agree easily with superficial chatter. . . . From Severus: love of family, love of truth, love of justice; . . . to grasp the idea of a Commonwealth with the same laws for all, governed on the basis of equality and free speech, also the idea of a monarchy which prizes the liberty of its subjects above all things. . . . From the gods: to have had good grandparents, good parents, a good sister, good teachers, a good household, good relations and friends, and almost everything. . . . That I had a brother whose moral character could rouse me to care for my own, and whose affection and respect brought me joy; that my children have not been dull or physically deformed; . . . that, while my mother was fated to die young, she yet lived her last years with me; that whenever I wished to help someone in poverty or need, I was never told that I did not have the means to do so. . . ; that my wife was so obedient, affectionate, and artless; that I could easily obtain suitable tutors for my children; . . . that, though I longed for philosophy, I did not fall in with any Sophist or withdraw from active life to analyze literary compositions or syllogisms, or busy myself with questions of natural science. . . . Say to yourself in the morning: I shall meet people who are interfering, ungracious, insolent, full of guile, deceitful, and antisocial: they have all become like that because they have no understanding of good and evil. But I who have contemplated the essential beauty of good and the essential ugliness of evil, who know that the nature of the wrongdoer is of one kin with mine . . . I cannot be harmed by any one of them, and no one can involve me in shame. How swiftly all things vanish; in the universe the bodies themselves, and in time the memories of them. . . . What is the nature of death? When a man examines it in itself, and with his share of intelligence dissolves the imagining which cling to it, he conceives it to be no other than a function of nature, and to fear a natural function is to be only a child. Death is not only a function of nature but beneficial to it. In human life time is but a point, reality a flux, perception indistinct, the composition of the body subject to easy corruption, the soul a spinning top, fortune hard to make out, fame confused. To put it briefly: physical things are but a flowing stream, things of the soul dreams and vanity; life is but a struggle and the visit to a strange land, posthumous fame but a forgetting. Never esteem as beneficial to yourself what will compel you to break faith; to abandon self-respect; to hate, suspect, or curse anyone; to dissemble; to long for anything which requires the privacy of walls and curtains.

8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

117

A man who has chosen the side of the mind and spirit within him and has become a worshipper of their excellence does not indulge in dramatics or lamentations; he needs neither solitude nor crowds; above all, he does not lead a life of pursuit and retreat. . . . Discard all else; cling to these few things only. Remember, moreover, that each man lives only this present moment; as for the rest, either it has been lived in the past or it is but an uncertain future. Small is the moment which each man lives, small too the corner of the earth which he inhabits; even the greatest posthumous fame is small, and it too depends upon a success of short-lived men who will die very soon, who do not know even themselves, let alone one who died long ago. Men seek retreats for themselves in country places, on beaches and mountains, and you yourself are not to long for such retreats, but that is altogether unenlightened when it is possible at any hour you please to find a retreat within yourself. For nowhere can a man withdraw to a more untroubled quietude than in his own soul. . . . You should always be ready for two things, first, to do only what reason, as embodied in the arts of kingship and legislation, perceives to be to the benefit of mankind; second to change your course if one be present to put you right and make you abandon a certain opinion. Such change, however, should always result from being convinced of what is just and for the common good, and what you choose to do must be of that nature, not because pleasure or fame may result from it. You exist but as a part of the Whole. You will disappear into the Whole which created you, or rather you will be taken up into the creative Reason when the change comes. When, in the early morning, you are reluctant to get up, have this thought in mind: “I rise to do a man’s work. Am I still resentful as I go to do the task for which I was born and for the sake of which I was brought into the world? Was I made to warm myself under the blankets?” . . . “Do you not see plants, sparrows, ants, spiders, and bees perform their proper task and contribute, as far as in them lies, to the order of the universe? Yet you refuse to perform man’s task and you do not hasten to do what your nature demands.” . . . You love your own nature less than the metalworker loves the art of working metals, the dancer the art of dancing, the money-lover his money, or the lover of glory his precious reputation. They, in their passionate eagerness, sacrifice food and sleep to promote the objects of their passion, whereas you believe public affairs to be less important and less deserving of devotion. I travel my path as it leads through what is in accord with nature until I fall by the wayside and find rest, breathing my last into that air from which day by day I draw breath, while my body falls to join the earth from which

118

Chapter 3. Roman Innovations

my father received the seed, my mother the blood, my nurse the milk which were mine, that earth from which day by day for so many years I have been fed and watered as I stepped upon it, and which I have made use of for so many things. If you had a stepmother and a mother at the same time, you would look after the former, but you would constantly return to the latter. This is what the palace and philosophy are to you. Frequently then return to, and find repose in, philosophy, which also makes the life of the palace bearable to you, and you bearable in it. Asia, Europe are corners of the universe. The whole ocean, a drop in the universe. Mount Athos, a clod of the universe. The whole of our present age is a point in eternity. All things are small, changeable, vanishing. As the performances in the amphitheater bore you because you are always seeing the same things and the monotony makes the spectacle tiresome, so too you feel about the whole of life: everything up and down is the same and due to the same causes. How much longer then? Does a man fear change? What can come to be without change? What is more dear or belongs more to the nature of the Whole? Can you yourself take a bath unless the furnace wood undergo change? Can you be fed, unless your nourishment suffer change? Can any other useful thing be done without change? Do you not see then that for you too to be changed is precisely similar, and similarly necessary to the universal nature? You will soon forget everything. Everything will soon forget you. Alexander, Caesar, Pompey—what are they compared with Diogenes, Heraclitus, Socrates?41 The latter men saw the nature of things, its causes and its substances, and their directing minds were their own, while the former had to care for so many things and were enslaved to so many ends. Remember that your ruling spirit is invincible when it is withdrawn into itself and satisfied with itself, not doing what it does not wish to do. . . . That is why a mind free from passions is a citadel, and man has no more secure refuge to make him safe for the future. He who has not seen this is stupid; he who has seen it and has not taken refuge there is unfortunate. Do not despise death, but find satisfaction in it, since it is one of the things which nature intends. As are youth and age, adolescence and maturity, growing teeth and beard and gray hairs, begging, gestation, and giving birth, and the other natural activities of the different seasons of life, such too is dissolution. This then is the thoughtful human attitude to death: not exaggerated or violent or arrogant, but to await it as one of nature’s activities, as now you wait for the time when the embryo will leave your wife’s

41. Marcus Aurelius juxtaposes three great conquerors with three great philosophers.

8. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

119

womb. Welcome in the same way the time when your soul will leave its present shell. Everything happens in such a way that you are by nature either able or unable to endure it. If it happens so that you can by nature endure it, do not complain but endure it as you are by nature able to do. If it happens so that you cannot endure it, do not complain, for it will anticipate your complaint by destroying you. . . . The time left to you is short. Live it as on a mountain, for it matters not whether you live here or there, if one can live anywhere in the world as in a community. Let men see, let them observe a true man living in accord with nature. If they cannot tolerate him, let them kill him. For death is better than to live as they do. Do not discuss in general terms the question of what is a good man. Be one. The properties of the rational soul: it sees itself, it shapes itself, it makes itself such as it wishes to be, it gathers its own fruit. . . . The rational soul achieves its end at whatever point life may be cut off, unlike a dance, a play, and the like, where the whole performance is incomplete if it is interrupted; but in every scene, wherever it is overtaken by death, its intended task is completely fulfilled, so that it can say: “I am in full possession of what is my own.” . . . If it is not the right thing, don’t do it; if it is not true, don’t say it. What a small part of the infinite abyss of time has been divided off for each of us, for very quickly it disappears into eternity. What a small part of the whole of matter, what a small part of the whole soul, what a small clod of the whole earth you creep on. As you reflect upon these things do not imagine anything to be important except this: to act as your nature urges you to do, and to endure what the common nature allots to you.

Chapter 4 The New Testament: Repentance and Redemption

Introduction Compiled over six decades from the mid-first to the early second century CE, the New Testament, understood by Christians to be the continuation and culmination of the Old Testament, has one predominant theme: the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,1 a Jew learned in Scripture who offered his followers hope for the realization of the kingdom of God. Born perhaps in 4 BCE, Jesus was crucified in 30 CE by the order of the Roman governor of the province of Judea. His followers attested to his rising three days later from the tomb where he had been laid, and won many adherents to a new movement promising that those who believed in the risen Jesus as Savior—in Greek, Christos, in Hebrew, the Messiah—would have eternal life. The number of the faithful, soon to be called Christians, grew steadily over the next four centuries, despite sporadic persecution. Christianity was recognized as a permitted religion by the fourth-century emperor Constantine, and by the end of that century, was made the official religion of the Roman Empire. The twenty-seven books of the New Testament, written in Greek, the dominant language of the Mediterranean region and of the Jews of the Diaspora,2 include four narratives of the life of Jesus, called the Gospels;3 the Acts of the Apostles, a historical narrative of the early church centered on the figure of Paul, its first missionary and principal theorist; twenty-one Epistles (letters) by Paul (mostly) and other early Christian leaders, which articulate fundamental Christian theological tenets; and the Book of Revelation, an apocalyptic work possibly written by the same John who authored the fourth Gospel and three of the Epistles. Included here are four excerpts 1. Nazareth: city in the region of Galilee and part of the Roman province of Judea, the remnant of the ancient Jewish kingdom of Judah. 2. With Judea under Greek and Roman rule, many Jews had scattered around the Mediterranean region, settling in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and other major centers, a dispersion known as the Diaspora. Legible to a large population of Jews and non-Jews, known as “gentiles,” Greek was chosen over Aramaic, the language commonly spoken in Judea, or Hebrew, the original language of most of the Old Testament. 3. Named for the authors Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John; the first three sharing an earlier textual source.

120

1. Matthew 5

121

sampling the range of themes represented in the New Testament: from the Gospel of Matthew, sections of what has traditionally been called the “Sermon on the Mount,” outlining a new concept of moral rectitude; from the Gospel of John, the conversation of Jesus with the Jewish leader Nicodemus, arguing the necessity of spiritual rebirth for seekers of God; from Acts of the Apostles, an episode depicting the apostle Paul’s announcement of the Christian message universalized for a gentile audience; and from the Book of Revelation, a selection in which are made manifest the Heavenly City of Jerusalem and the Lamb of God, identified with Christ. The New International Version is used, a translation that gives the biblical text in readily accessible modern English. Examined here as a collection of literary texts, the New Testament is for the some two billion Christians worldwide a sacred book (along with the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible of the Jews), and as such is cherished in the several branches of Christianity: Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Protestant, and post-Protestant. It is a respected book as well for Muslims, whose own sacred book, the Qur’an, includes characters and themes from both New and Old Testaments.

$$$ 1. Matthew 5 The Sermon on the Mount (c. 80–90 CE) Jesus attracted crowds: the scene depicted in Matthew 5, excerpted here, is one of several in which old and young, men and women, press around him, seeking to hear his message. They understand, as these narratives unfold, that he has something important and new to say. In this message, or “sermon,” delivered “on the mount,” Jesus says something new indeed: all they had been taught before about the responsibility of human to God and each other was wrong. They had been taught that God favored the powerful, but instead it is the powerless—the “meek,” the “poor in spirit,” the “merciful,” those who “thirst for righteousness,” those who are persecuted for Jesus’s sake—whom he seeks to comfort and reward. They had been taught not to murder, but Jesus has a higher standard: they must not even harbor anger against another person. Men had been taught that they must not commit adultery, but again, Jesus poses a higher bar: “anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” They had been taught that justice demanded “eye for eye, and tooth for tooth”; but Jesus incomprehensibly redefines the prescription: to injustice, respond with forgiveness; to an injury, respond with

122

Chapter 4. The New Testament: Repentance and Redemption

love; do not take, but give: “if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well.” They had been taught to love their neighbors and hate their enemies—but doesn’t everyone do that? The real challenge is to love the enemy as much as the neighbor: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Jesus is a disruptor of norms, who will be repudiated by all those whose business it is to preserve the norms at all cost.

Matthew 5 1 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them. He said: 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn,   for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek,   for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,   for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful,   for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart,   for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers,   for they will be called children of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,   for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. . . .” 21 “You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ 22 But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. . . .” 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’

2. John 3:1–21

123

28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. . . .” 38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. 40 And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. . . .” 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

$$$ 2. John 3:1–21 Jesus and Nicodemus (c. 90–110 CE) Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling establishment, comes at night to question Jesus: he is curious and seeks to know more. Jesus begins not at the beginning of his message but at its conclusion: “no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” Nicodemus is startled: How can a person be born a second time? “How can this be?” The first birth is of the body, Jesus explains, but the second is of the spirit. The spiritual rebirth comes from faith in God, who had sent Jesus, his Son, into the world: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Only the believer shall come “into the light.”

John 3:1–21 1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

124

Chapter 4. The New Testament: Repentance and Redemption

3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” 4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

$$$

3. Acts 17:16–31

125

3. Acts 17:16–31 Paul, Athens, and the Unknown God (c. 80–90 CE) Athens was the hub of intellectual culture in the ancient Mediterranean world, as the apostle Paul was well aware—he was himself a product of that Hellenistic tradition, as much as of the Jewish tradition he had imbibed under the great rabbi Gamaliel. Once a fierce persecutor of Christians, he was now a skilled missionary, communicating the new Christian message to gentile audiences in the Greek cities of the eastern Mediterranean. Invited to speak before the Areopagus, the Athenian council, whose members welcomed all varieties of metaphysical discussion, Paul cleverly pointed to the many statues—“idols,” as he saw them—to different gods from various nations that stood in the marketplace. Among them, so that none was excluded, was one erected to an “unknown god.” Paul addressed his audience, the “people of Athens”: “You are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.” That “unknown god” they did not know was, he explained, the God of the Jews and Christians, whose Son, Jesus Christ, had been crucified and resurrected for the salvation of all peoples.

Acts 17:16–31 16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.) 22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

126

Chapter 4. The New Testament: Repentance and Redemption

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

$$$ 4. Revelation 21 The Heavenly Jerusalem (c. 95 CE) Drawing on a tradition of apocalyptic literature that for the previous three centuries had circulated broadly among the Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora, John’s book of Revelation—possibly written by the same John who was the author of the fourth gospel—is a Christian vision of the end of time. Addressed to the “Seven Churches”4 of Asia Minor that had been savaged by Jewish, gentile, and Roman opponents, it promises that the reward for persecution would be eternal salvation for all who believed in Jesus Christ. In the passages given here, John reveals God on his throne, dwelling now among his people, who “will wipe every tear from their eyes”; the descent from heaven of the New Jerusalem, which “shone with the glory of God”; and the vision of the Lamb, the iconic animal sacrifice and representation of Christ, who, together with God, were themselves its temple.

4. Seven Churches: the Seven Churches were those early Christian communities of Asia Minor (modern Turkey) to which John addressed the book of Revelation: Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea.

4. Revelation 21

127

Revelation 21 1 Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 2 I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. 4 ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” 5 He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new!” Then he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” ... 9 One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 12 It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. 13 There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. 14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. . . . 22 I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. 23 The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. 24 The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. 25 On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. 26 The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it. 27 Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life.

SECTION II The Middle Ages: Formation of the Western Literary Tradition Introduction to Section II During the Middle Ages, the West took form. During the thousand years that followed the collapse of the Roman state in the West—its Eastern half would continue as the Byzantine Empire until its destruction in 1453—a new civilization took root in Europe, and its literary traditions began. For this reason, we still study, and even revere, the medieval, although we no longer pattern our lives on its norms; and even the Christianity that lay at its core, where it is still embraced, is in an altered state. The first several centuries of the Middle Ages were an era of shock, decomposition, invasion, and reorganization; the next, an era of creation, dynamism, and growth. The chaos of the early Middle Ages was profound. Roman institutions crumbled; cities shrank within their walls; gold and silver drained away to regions east and south; literacy declined, its remaining adepts enclosed in monastery walls or staffing the administrative machinery of nascent states. Aggravating this material and cultural diminishment were recurrent invasions of peoples from beyond the borders of the former empire: Germanic tribes, challenging the Germanic peoples who had settled there during the Roman era, driving the indigenous Celts to the continent’s western and northern limits; followed by Vikings from Europe’s northern tier; Slavs and Magyars from the east; and Muslims from the south, who having captured North Africa in the seventh century pushed onward into the Iberian peninsula, occupying that region for nearly eight hundred years. Beyond western Europe, meanwhile, other civilizations flourished: nearby, the Byzantine Empire, which had abandoned its Latin culture to revert to the earlier Greek, and the Islamic caliphates, with centers at Baghdad and Cairo as well as in Iberia; and farther away, the kingdoms and empires of South, Central, and East Asia, especially China. In contrast to these more prosperous civilizations, Europe’s languished; but empowered and unified by Latin, it did not die. Latin was the language in which all administrative business was transacted. The church based at Rome communicated in Latin not only to its agents, the clerical ranks of bishops and archbishops, abbots, priests, monks, and nuns, but also to the 129

130

II. The Middle Ages: Formation of the Western Literary Tradition

kings, dukes, and counts who exercised secular power, and to the people at large in ritual performance. Latin was the language of law; the Roman legal corpus, which had providentially been assembled and rationalized in the sixth century under the Byzantine emperor Justinian, was adapted to the needs first of the church, and later of Europe’s emerging nation states. The Latin language was the framework on which the European mental world was constructed: its literature, historical and political thought; philosophy; and, of course, theology, were all inscribed in Latin until, vernacular languages, at first only spoken, gradually became grafted onto Latin grammatical structures and so made capable of written expression. Through Latin, and the institutions and activities it enabled, “the West,” forged during the Middle Ages, though a new construct, rested squarely on ancient foundations. Once the menace of invasion ebbed in the tenth century, European civilization—an amalgam of Roman legacy and Germanic innovation— suddenly and forcefully grew, in multiple directions. Agricultural production surged, and cities formed, establishing the urban infrastructure still visible in modern times. The military adventures of the Crusades brought European armies and their adjuncts in contact with Byzantine and Islamic culture. The monasteries of Europe, to which those seeking spiritual solace and a refuge from chaotic conditions had retired, grew more numerous and diverse as new religious orders proliferated. Cathedrals sprang up in the major urban centers where bishops presided, and supported the creation first of schools, and soon after, of universities. By the late centuries of the Middle Ages—and despite the traumas in that era of warfare, famine, and the Black Death1—Europe was wealthy, dynamic, and expansive, primed for the new era of endeavor that would follow. The course of literary production in the Middle Ages would follow the trajectory of Europe’s material and cultural progress. Most literary works of the Middle Ages, and the earliest to appear, concerned Christian themes and were composed by clerics and theologians. These themes predominated over the thousand-year arc of medieval civilization, reflecting the preponderant influence within it of the church. The first chapter of this section presents seven authors whose works, extending from the fourth to the fifteenth centuries, and spanning several different literary genres and intonations, constitute a vibrant record of the Christian vision of the medieval era. The saint, monk, and bishop Augustine, and the Roman statesman Boethius, both theologians and philosophers whose works were among the most influential of the Western tradition, write from the late fourth to early sixth centuries as antiquity reaches its termination and the Middle Ages 1. Black Death: an epidemic of bubonic plague that took the lives of between one-third and one-half the population in its first onslaught (1347–1351) and then resurged periodically.

Introduction to Section II

131

begin. Augustine’s Confessions, a work of probing self-discovery, introduces the genre of autobiography to the West, while Boethius’s The Consolation of Philosophy, introduces its first great work of prison literature, portraying the individual’s search for dignity and meaning in the face of pain and despair. Over the next centuries, when first the monastery, and then the cathedral, became the cultural centers of Christendom, emerge the two women authors Hrotswitha of Gandersheim and Hildegard of Bingen. The tenthcentury canoness Hrotswitha, whose career unfolded within the walls of the abbey of Gandersheim, was the author of, among other works, six plays, which in structure and language imitated the six comedies of the Roman playwright Terence, but which dramatized Christian stories of conversion and martyrdom. The twelfth-century author Hildegard, German as well, also lived within convent walls, but in those of several different institutions, including one that she founded and then ruled as abbess. Hildegard authored several treatises in which she recorded her brilliant visions illustrating the dramatic moments and messages of the biblical story, as well as hundreds of letters written to some of the major personages of Christian Europe. Hildegard’s contemporary, the philosopher Abelard, later also both monk and abbot, shone in the schools that formed around major cathedrals, in an era when cathedral-building all over Europe, in the new Gothic style, was taking off; from these schools, the distinctive medieval institution of the university would soon emerge. Abelard was the most original and consequential thinker of the twelfth century, an expert logician who exploited newly available Aristotelian texts and established the theory of nominalism, opening the era of scholasticism that would characterize medieval thought. He was also the author of an autobiography, the Story of My Misfortunes, reminiscent of Augustine’s, though conspicuously unlike it in scope and style, for which he is today principally known. The last two authors representing the Christian tradition in medieval literature lived in the fifteenth century, an era in which vigorous urbanization had engendered a new reading population hungry for spiritual guidance and enrichment. The Englishwoman Margery Kempe, converted by her visions of Christ to the career of holy woman even as she lived robustly in the world, wrote the first autobiography composed in English, and the first by a woman in any language: The Book of Margery Kempe. It describes the intensity of her religious experience realized in the world and amid ordinary pursuits, a different note in the tradition of Christian literature. The German monk Thomas à Kempis wrote The Imitation of Christ, a compelling devotional work which, though its author lived in a monastery, inspired multitudes who lived outside monastery walls: not only Catholics but also, when they appeared, Protestants; and not only in his own day but ever since, into modern times.

132

II. The Middle Ages: Formation of the Western Literary Tradition

From the Christian experience of medieval authors, constructed in a world of monasteries and cathedrals, attention turns to secular literature generated in a world of courts and castles, the abodes of kings and nobles and those who served them. The works of the six authors represented in Chapter 6 of this section were written over the middle five hundred years of the Middle Ages, between 800 and 1300, some of them based on earlier materials transmitted orally. The first and the last of these wrote in Latin: the scholar Einhard attached to the courts of Charlemagne, king of the Franks and emperor of the Romans, and his son and successor Louis the Pious; and the cleric Andreas Capellanus, attached to the French royal court and the court at Troyes over which Countess Marie of Champagne presided. Einhard’s concise and elegant biography of the man he named “Charles the Great” (hence the French “Charlemagne”), written early in the ninth century, is the first of that genre in the post-classical era. Andreas’s treatise on the Art of Courtly Love, written in the late twelfth century, is a unique product, drawing (as does Einhard) on classical models while depicting an unusual cultural phenomenon, one at odds with Christian norms, that influenced not only medieval but also later European literature. Meanwhile, the vernacular languages of Europe, not yet sufficiently developed in the early Middle Ages to serve for literary expression, began to emerge, first in orally transmitted songs and stories, and eventually in formal literary compositions. Exemplars are given here of four works composed from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, all written in verse, designed to be sung or accompanied by a musical instrument, and all reflecting the ideals and values of the courts where they were performed: the epic Beowulf, in Old English; the epic Song of Roland, in Old French; the epic Song of My Cid, in Old Spanish; and the verse tales, or Lays, of Marie de France, in Old French. Medieval literature reaches its culmination in the period 1300 to 1500, when the currents of the previous eight centuries come together in a rushing stream of epochal works. Great cities had by now emerged—at once centers of commerce, laboratories of political innovation, and cultural nodes where the legacies of Christian, courtly, and classical culture converged—which fostered literary talents of great magnitude. Of these, Chapter 7 presents five, whose works are masterpieces of the Western literary tradition. The Venetian Marco Polo, having traversed some four thousand miles across the whole of Eurasia from the eastern Mediterranean coast to the Mongol court in Beijing, returned to compose, with the aid of a collaborator, an account of his journey. His The Description of the World, as it was modestly entitled, was the first solidly documented travel narrative by a Western European author, and the prototype of the many that would follow during the coming age of exploration. Ten years later, the Florentine poet Dante

Introduction to Section II

133

Alighieri, exiled from his native city for his political allegiances, crafted in his Divine Comedy a description not of the world before his eyes but of the entire Christian cosmos, seen by his imagination. It depicted three realms of the afterlife, in which the souls of the dead of all ages suffered for their sins or expiated them, or, having led heroically sinless lives, ascended in triumph to experience the vision of God reigning in paradise. Dante’s younger contemporary and biographer, the Florentine Giovanni Boccaccio, responding to the catastrophic Black Death whose impact on his city he vividly describes, created the Decameron, or “ten days,” a collection of one hundred stories told over ten days by seven young women and their three male companions who had sought refuge from the plague in a lovely countryside villa—suggesting that the practice of literature is a natural, and perhaps the only reasonable response to an unbearable reality. Drawn from oral tradition and other collections in circulation, Boccaccio’s hilarious tales celebrate ingenuity, mock clerical hypocrisy and aristocratic pretension, and descry the suppression of sexual desire. Boccaccio’s stories, and perhaps Boccaccio himself, were known to the Londoner Geoffrey Chaucer who had traveled to Italy. Chaucer, too, turned to storytelling in his later years, writing the Canterbury Tales, a series of stories in verse purportedly narrated by members of a company of pilgrims en route to England’s premier sacred site. Chaucer’s stories constitute a portrait of contemporary English society, his characters—among them a parson, a knight, a cook, a nun, a merchant, a clerk, and a housewife—revealing themselves in the tales they tell. The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan, a woman author who supported herself and her family with her pen, is the final work included in Chapter 7. Raised in the French royal court, and having achieved a high reputation for her works in both verse and prose, Christine here takes on a monumental project: to refute the prevailing misogyny of male writers by constructing a visionary “city of ladies” populated by the 165 women whose brief biographies display their capacity for reason, virtue, and great deeds. The “city” that Christine depicts resembles both the afterworld that Dante describes in his Comedy, and the portraits of women Boccaccio had presented, less adulatory than Christine’s, in his Latin treatise on Famous Women. Daring to comment on both these masterpieces in a masterpiece of her own, Christine offers in the City of Ladies the first major defense of women by a woman author in the Western literary tradition.

Chapter 5 Christian Faith and European Culture

Introduction From late antiquity, as Christianity spread to all corners of the former Roman Empire and attracted to positions of leadership the finely educated intellectuals who emerged from the dying patriciate, Christian thought, conveyed in Latin, saturated the literary corpus. For the next thousand years, Latin remained the language most suited for complex literary composition, although works produced by Christian believers constituted the mainstream of European literature and laid the foundation for its later development. This chapter traces the course of Christian literature as exemplified in the work of seven authors stretching from the late Roman era to the late Middle Ages, at the threshold of modernity. The first two of these seven, Augustine and Boethius, produced monumental works ranking as among the most important in the Western tradition. Saint Augustine’s vivid and searching account of his progress from childhood to Christian conversion was one of the most widely read books of the Middle Ages, and remains today the prototype and standard of the genre of autobiography. Born in 354 CE in the small town of Thagaste (modern Algeria) and educated in the metropolis of Carthage (modern Tunisia), Augustine belonged to the late-ancient Mediterranean world, which then encompassed North Africa: culturally Hellenistic and subject to Rome. His striving parents sacrificed to have him educated in the rhetorical studies that led to a successful career, although his mother, a Christian, also yearned for his conversion. That conversion came in time, but only after an intense struggle in which Augustine weighed the attractions of the world against the intellectual lure of philosophy and the increasingly potent truth, as he saw it, of Christianity. That struggle is mirrored in the episodes from Augustine’s life excerpted in this chapter, culminating with his conversion experience in 386. Soon thereafter, together with his friend Alypius and his son Adeodatus, the offspring of Augustine’s long-term relationship with a concubine whom he necessarily renounced, he accepted Christian baptism. Augustine returned to Africa to become a priest, a monk, and a bishop, and with his son Adeodatus, a shaper of Christian institutions. Above all, he was the preeminent theologian of the Latin West, a prolific author of foundational works that formulated the concepts of original sin; the nature 134

Introduction

135

of the Trinity; and in his masterwork The City of God, the relation between Roman power, the earthly “city of man,” and God’s. His biting critique of the secular state, which seeks only power, and crushes the bodies and still more the souls of human beings in its grasp, is still pertinent sixteen centuries later. Augustine died in 430 during the siege by invading Vandals of the city of Hippo, over which he presided as bishop, one incident in the prolonged series of Germanic invasions that dealt the deathblow to the Roman Empire. No other work of Augustine’s surpasses, however, the deeply personal, ardent, and agonizing Confessions, written in 397, on the brink of the fifth century that would see Rome’s downfall. It was written by a mature man of forty-three looking back on his youth, a spectacle of emotional crisis and growth, through which he learns that his “restless” heart would find rest only in God. Its insight and intensity would have a heritage in the works of Peter Abelard in the twelfth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth, and ever since. While Augustine was a Christian convert, Boethius (c. 475/477–c. 526) was born into a Christian world, but one that was still Roman.1 In 476, around the year of his birth, the last Western Roman emperor was deposed; yet the Roman Senate survived two centuries more under the rule of Germanic kings. Among the senators was Boethius, who translated from Greek to Latin the works of Aristotle, Plato, and the latter’s Neoplatonic successors, and authored several theological treatises. He was also a statesman who was awarded the title of “Master of Offices,” the highest position in the administration of Theoderic, the Ostrogothic king of Italy who then ruled the remnant of the Western empire.2 His fall was sudden. Betrayed by his enemies, Boethius was imprisoned on trumped-up charges, gruesomely tortured, and condemned to death. While in prison awaiting execution, he wrote The Consolation of Philosophy, the last work of ancient philosophy produced in the West. Enormously popular in the Middle Ages, it was fundamental for the philosophical development of Christian thought in medieval scholasticism. It is also a compelling work of literature that has been read ceaselessly since its composition, summoning up echoes of Plato’s Phaedo, and anticipating later works of prison literature, including those of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Oscar Wilde, and Antonio Gramsci. Yet The Consolation of Philosophy is a puzzling work: first, because Philosophy, and not Christianity, consoles the prisoner in his cell; and second, 1. Vital dates for Boethius vary, but many scholars attest to those given here. 2. The Ostrogoths were a major Germanic tribe that occupied Italy in the fifth and sixth centuries CE.

136

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

because Philosophy does not in fact console him. A Christian facing death in the hideous circumstances that Boethius endured might identify with the suffering of Christ, and welcome the redemption won by his crucifixion and resurrection. But Philosophy, personified as a female figure of mythic demeanor, enters his prison cell to call him to philosophy, not religion. She does not attempt to soothe his pain, but to renounce it. What he suffers is not real, because God, the master of the universe, the highest good (or summum bonum), creates nothing that is evil. The next three authors presented in this chapter lived in the central Middle Ages, from the tenth to twelfth centuries, when the predominant Christian institution was the monastery. The monasteries that thickly dotted the European landscape housed those who, by inclination or force of circumstances, lived (or were expected to live) lives wholly committed to Christian devotion, while performing the labor—manual, administrative, charitable, and intellectual—needed to sustain their institutions. By the end of this period, cathedrals also grew in importance. Planted in cities and directed by bishops, they supported schools that were the germs of the European universities, the laboratories of medieval thought. Both Hrotswitha (c. 935–c. 1000), a canoness3 of the abbey of Gandersheim, and Hildegard (1098–1179), abbess of Elbingen, an abbey she had founded, emerge from this monastic context.4 Peter Abelard (1079–1142) straddled the two realms: initially a teacher in the cathedral schools, he was subsequently a monk and abbot. The works of Hrotswitha are monuments at once of the Western literary tradition, of Christian thought, and of female authorship. Founded in 852 by the ancestors of the first Holy Roman Emperors Otto I (“the Great”), II, and III, Gandersheim Abbey was intended for the daughters and widows of the emperors and the Saxon nobility, to which elite caste Hrotswitha was born. There she was educated in the Latin classics and exposed to Greek as well—the Greek-speaking Byzantine princess Theophanu, consort of Otto II, frequently visited the abbey, as did her daughter Sophia, who later became abbess. With access to a major library, Hrotswitha drew on hagiographical and classical texts in constructing her legends (narratives of saints’ lives), plays, and history, which were all preserved in a single complete manuscript discovered and published in 1501 by the Renaissance humanist Conrad Celtis. Later fragmentary manuscripts were found in the twentieth century. Hrotswitha’s six plays—a deliberate mirroring of the six comedies of the Roman playwright Terence—dramatize the lives of saints who experienced conversion, redemption, and martyrdom during the late ancient Christian 3. canoness: a woman who lived in a religious community but had not taken vows and was not subject to a monastic rule. 4. The abbeys of Gandersheim and Elbingen are in northern Germany, the first about forty miles south of Hanover, the second about forty miles west of Frankfurt, on the Rhine.

Introduction

137

era, when Rome became a Christian empire, foreshadowing the Christian empire in which she herself lived. Setting these devotional themes solidly in historical context, Hrotswitha narrates the process of the Christianization of the West. Her plays were likely performed at Gandersheim and elsewhere, or at least read aloud. Their crisp, quick repartee, reminiscent of Terence’s, makes them very performable. Women are central in Hrotswitha’s plays: not the manipulative prostitutes and brides who populate Terence’s comedies, but strong and valiant heroines who opt for virginity or martyrdom—as do those in her last play, Sapientia, of which excerpts are given here. For late ancient Christian women, as for their medieval counterparts, virginity offered autonomy and freedom not otherwise available to wives and daughters, and martyrdom offered them the chance to witness bravely for their convictions. These powerful motivations are brilliantly conveyed by the cloistered tenth-century German noblewoman, Hrotswitha of Gandersheim. Not quite two centuries later, another German noblewoman Hildegard founded and directed a convent that was to become a center of learning as well as devotion. She was, in addition, a composer, a natural historian, a medical theorist, a preacher, a playwright, and the author of some four hundred letters and three major theological works. Selections from the earliest of the latter are excerpted here: Scivias, translated as Know the Ways—the ways, that is, of God. Whereas Hrotswitha dramatized the lives of saints, Hildegard takes as her subject the whole of the cosmos—the process of creation, the omnipotence and omniscience of God, the tragedy of sin, the joy of redemption— vast themes, which she treats not analytically, but visually. For her theological works are records of her visions: visions unlike the trance-like experiences that mystics report, but rather like works of art that materialized before her eyes, depicting in the medium of form and color the messages communicated in the Bible and the works of the Church Fathers. Hildegard composed Scivias over the decade 1141 to 1151, at God’s instruction, as she reports. While the book describes twenty-six of her most detailed visions, the text was accompanied, in the illustrated manuscript she had made around 1165–1175, with thirty-five astonishing images in brilliant color. In 1942, during World War II, this unique book, known as the Rupertsberg manuscript, was sent to Dresden for safekeeping. There, tragically, it was either destroyed in the relentless bombing of that city, or it disappeared in the chaos that followed. It was later reconstructed by experts who had seen the manuscript before it was lost, aided by black-and-white photographs taken in 1925, and by a handmade facsimile created in 1933. The text itself had circulated widely, first printed in 1513 by the French humanist Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples.

138

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

Born in Brittany (modern France), but gravitating mostly around Paris, Peter Abelard inhabited a world undergoing dynamic change: the Gothic style of architecture was in its first flush; cathedral schools burgeoned everywhere; and the population surged. Amid these many forces, Abelard was himself a force: a charismatic teacher, an audacious thinker, and a brilliant debater. He was the leading philosopher of the twelfth century, the originator of the synthesis of Aristotelian logic and metaphysics with Christian theology that would become scholasticism, and dominate Christian thought into the Reformation era.5 His career was turbulent, his bold intellectual positions antagonizing powerful opponents who twice, in 1121 and 1141, obtained the official Church condemnation of his works. After the first condemnation, he retreated to a wilderness where, with his students, he constructed the oratory of the Paraclete.6 After the second, within a year, he died. Yet outside of the classrooms of philosophy, Abelard is known as the man who fell in love with Heloise, impregnated her, married her, and suffered castration at the hands of her vengeful kinfolk. Mutilated, Abelard became a monk; he pressed Heloise into entering the convent and taking binding vows. Abelard tells this story himself in his remarkable Story of My Misfortunes, an autobiography hearkening back to Augustine’s Confessions written seven centuries before. Abelard wrote ostensibly to persuade a friend that the latter’s adversities were dwarfed by his own. He may, rather, have written it for Heloise; indeed, she read the work, as is known from her letter to him written after two decades of silence, the first of a series of seven letters they would then exchange. At this time, Heloise was the revered abbess of the convent of the Paraclete, on the site of the oratory he had founded a decade earlier. When Abelard died in 1142, Heloise transferred his remains to the Paraclete for burial. Her own would be laid to rest beside his when she died, probably in 1163. In the nineteenth century, their remains, together still, would be installed under a Gothic-style canopy in the Parisian cemetery of PèreLachaise.7 For his relentless struggle against ecclesiastical repression, Abelard would become a hero of the Enlightenment (Volume Two, Introduction to Chapter 1). For their extraordinary experience of love and marriage, Abelard

5. Abelard, more particularly, was a leading exponent of “nominalism,” the philosophical position that there are in reality no universal essences, but that the mind constructs its general ideas based upon the experience of particulars. 6. Paraclete: Greek for the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity in Christian theology. The oratory was a small church, around which a monastic complex developed. 7. Scholars largely agree on the authenticity of the letters and the burial at Père-Lachaise, but there has been controversy about both.

Introduction

139

and Heloise have been celebrated since the Romantic era (see Volume Two, Introduction to Chapter 2) in novels, plays, and film. The last two authors considered in this chapter lived in the late Middle Ages, in a densely urbanized region that supported an energetic new class of Christian believers: the lay pious,8 men and women who were not professional clergy, cloistered or secular, but who sought access to Christian experience through books, sermons, and conversations. Margery Kempe (c. 1373–after 1438), the daughter of one prominent English burgher and wife of another, was one such laywoman. Even as she performed her duties as a mother and a businesswoman, she pursued the life of a holy woman, recording her experiences in what many scholars consider to be the first autobiography written in English, and the first by a woman: The Book of Margery Kempe. Her contemporary, the German monk and priest Thomas à Kempis (Thomas Hemerken von Kempen; 1379/80–1471), though cloistered himself, spoke to the needs of the lay pious, who responded enthusiastically to his summons to a life dedicated to The Imitation of Christ9—the title of his stupendously successful book. Margery Kempe’s religious journey began when, suffering in a state of extreme mental instability for several months following the birth of her first child, she experienced a vision in which Jesus Christ came to her bedside, spoke directly to her with words of comfort, and called her to a closer relationship with him. Immediately, she recovered from her illness, and undertook a lifelong program of intense prayer and austerity, church attendance, and frequent pilgrimages.10 Her extreme behavior—she engaged in severe ascetic practices and clothed herself in the white robes of martyrdom— aroused the suspicions of church officials, who smelled heresy whenever religious conventions were flouted. Like many holy women, her response to intense religious experience was often physical: she fell to the ground, writhing, or burst out frequently in uncontrollable crying and howling. She was encouraged in these behaviors by Jesus himself, who appeared to her often, and assured her that he loved her. This is the story told in Kempe’s book, an autobiography quite unlike the one crafted by Abelard, a polished intellectual. An illiterate, she did not write it with her own hand, but by dictation to two scribes over the period 1430 to 1438, the second revising and extending the efforts of the first. Yet the book that emerged from that process is not only by her, but also intimately and substantively about her. Thomas à Kempis, in contrast, who shares Kempe’s need for the intimate experience of God, writes in The Imitation of Christ not about himself 8. lay pious: laypersons, collectively the laity, were all those who were not clergy, the officials and functionaries of the church. 9. His authorship has been questioned, but most scholars credit the work to him. 10. pilgrimage: a journey to a sacred place, often in the company of others.

140

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

but for others, guiding those who seek a profound involvement of the whole self in religious devotion. Though stationed within monastery walls, he is a participant in the movement called the devotio moderna (new devotion), a largely lay pious movement that flourished especially in the Low Countries and German lands. The Imitation of Christ does not untangle logical conundrums, or examine theological complexities, or propose the regular performance of sacraments and penance, but instead offers nourishment to those who are hungry for God, urging both clergy and laity to follow Christ by looking within and identifying with his suffering and sacrifice. It frequently cites the Bible, which even when not cited is the substratum of nearly every statement. It does not name philosophers or theologians, except Aristotle once, to reject his message, and Saint Augustine twice, whose subjectivity prefigures Thomas’s own. Its tone is incantatory, its limpid prose hauntingly arrayed with complex rhymes and rhythms, its simplicity compelling—and it compelled many, crossing denominational lines and spanning centuries. Measured by the number of surviving manuscripts (some 770 in Latin, and in Dutch, German, French, Italian, Spanish, and English translations) and an unbroken stream of more than two thousand printed editions since its composition, it ranks as one of the principal books of the Western tradition. It influenced, among others, the seventeenth-century Spanish Catholic saint Ignatius of Loyola; the eighteenth-century English founder of Methodism John Wesley; and the twentieth-century German theologian, pastor, and enemy of Nazism Dietrich Bonhoeffer. At the onset of the Middle Ages, the Roman Boethius, a Christian, had sought in his extremity the consolation of Philosophy. At its dusk, the Christian faithful seek consolation in Christ alone.

$$$ 1. Saint Augustine, Confessions (397) The selections from the Confessions trace landmarks on Augustine’s road from rebelliousness to faith. They include the famous episode of the stolen pears in 369–370; his experiences as a student in Carthage in 370–373; his relocation to Milan and encounter with Ambrose in 384; and ultimately, the moment of his conversion in 386.11 11. The translation that follows is modified to make it more accessible to contemporary readers: modern terms are substituted for archaic ones; “thou” and “thee” are normalized to “you”; terms referring to the deity, except for “God” and “Lord,” are lowercased; biblical quotations are given in the NIV translation; spelling is Americanized; paragraph breaks are added for legibility.

1. Saint Augustine, Confessions

141

Book Two In this incident from his sixteenth year, when home in Thagaste and in the company of a group of boys who played late into the night in the streets, Augustine explores the psychology of his theft of pears from a neighbor’s garden. It was sin, not want of nourishment, which drove him to the deed.

Chapter Four Your law, O Lord, punishes theft; and this law is so written in the hearts of men that not even the breaking of it blots it out: for no thief bears calmly being stolen from—not even if he is rich and the other steals through want. Yet I chose to steal, and not because want drove me to it. . . . For I stole things which I already had in plenty and of better quality. Nor had I any desire to enjoy the things I stole, but only the stealing of them and the sin. There was a pear tree near our vineyard, heavy with fruit, but fruit that was not particularly tempting either to look at or to taste. A group of young [rascals], and I among them, went out to knock down the pears and carry them off late one night. . . . We carried off an immense load of pears, not to eat—for we barely tasted them before throwing them to the hogs. Our only pleasure in doing it was that it was forbidden. Such was my heart, O God, such was my heart: yet in the depth of the abyss you had pity on it. Let that heart now tell you what it sought when I was thus evil for no object, having no cause for wrongdoing save my wrongness. The malice of the act was base and I loved it—that is to say I loved my own undoing, I loved the evil in me—not the thing for which I did the evil, simply the evil: my soul was depraved, and hurled itself down from security in you into utter destruction, seeking no profit from wickedness but only to be wicked. . . .

Chapter Six What was it then that in my wretched folly I loved in you, O theft of mine, deed wrought in that dark night when I was sixteen? For you were not lovely; you were a theft. Or are you anything at all, that I should talk with you? The pears that we stole were beautiful for they were created by you, you who are most beautiful of all, creator of all, you who are good God, my sovereign and true good. The pears were beautiful but it was not pears that my empty soul desired. . . . For once I had gathered them I threw them away, tasting only my own sin and savoring that with delight; for if I took so much as a bite of any one of those pears, it was the sin that sweetened it. . . .

142

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

Chapter Ten Who can unravel that complex twisted knottedness? It is unclean, I hate to think of it or look at it. I long for you, O justice and innocence, joy and beauty of the clear of sight, I long for you with unquenchable longing. . . . He that enters into you, enters into the joy of his Lord and shall not fear and shall be well in him who is the best. I went away from you, my God; in my youth I strayed too far from your sustaining power, and I became to myself a barren land.

Book Three In his seventeenth to nineteenth year, Augustine is in Carthage, longing for something not understood, while he turns to sexual experimentation and dissipation in a company of adolescent peers.

Chapter One I came to Carthage, where a cauldron of illicit loves leapt and boiled about me. I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love. . . . I sought some object to love, since I was thus in love with loving. . . . For within I was hungry, all for the want of that spiritual food which is yourself, my God; yet . . . I did not hunger for it: I had no desire whatever for incorruptible food, not because I had it in abundance but the emptier I was, the more I hated the thought of it. . . . My longing then was to love and to be loved, but most when I obtained the enjoyment of the body of the person who loved me. Thus I polluted the stream of friendship with the filth of unclean desire and sullied its limpidity with the hell of lust. . . . And I did fall in love, simply from wanting to. O my God my mercy, with how much bitterness did you in your goodness sprinkle the delights of that time! I was loved, and our love came to the bond of consummation: I wore my chains with bliss but with torment too, for I was scourged with the red hot rods of jealousy, with suspicions and fears and tempers and quarrels.

Chapter Four He reads Cicero’s Hortensius, which inspires him to seek the higher truth of philosophy. With . . . [the] companions of my immaturity, I was studying the books of eloquence; for in eloquence it was my ambition to shine, all from a damnable vaingloriousness and for the satisfaction of human vanity. Following

1. Saint Augustine, Confessions

143

the normal order of study I had come to a book of one Cicero,12 whose tongue practically everyone admires, though not his heart. That particular book is called Hortensius and contains an exhortation to philosophy. Quite definitely it changed the direction of my mind, altered my prayers to you, O Lord, and gave me a new purpose and ambition. Suddenly all the vanity I had hoped in I saw as worthless, and with an incredible intensity of desire I longed after immortal wisdom. I had begun the journey upwards by which I was to return to you. My father was now dead two years; I was eighteen and was receiving money from my mother for the continuance of my study of eloquence. But I used that book not for the sharpening of my tongue; what won me in it was what it said, not the excellence of its phrasing. How did I then burn, my God, how did I burn to wing upwards from earthly delights to you. . . . For with you is wisdom. Now love of wisdom is what is meant by the Greek word “philosophy,” and it was to philosophy that that book set me so ardently. . . . But the one thing that delighted me in Cicero’s exhortation was that I should love, and seek, and win, and hold, and embrace, not this or that philosophical school but wisdom itself, whatever it might be. . . .

Chapter Eleven His mother weeps for him . . . And you . . . have delivered me from13 that depth of darkness, because my mother, your faithful one, wept to you for me more bitterly than mothers weep for the bodily deaths of their children.14 For by the faith and the spirit which she had from you, she saw me as dead; and you . . . heard her and did not despise her tears when they flowed down and watered the earth against which she pressed her face wherever she prayed. . . .

Chapter Twelve and she implores a “certain bishop” to intercede and lead her son on the right path. He refused, rightly as I have realized since. He told her that I was as yet not ripe for teaching because I was all puffed up with the newness of my heresy. . . . When he had told her this, my mother would not be satisfied but urged him 12. Cicero: the preeminent Roman rhetorician and philosopher as well as statesman, was the author of many works, including the dialogue Hortensius, now lost; see Chapter 3, Text 5. 13. Psalm 86:13. 14. Augustine’s mother, Monica, would later be recognized as a Christian saint.

144

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

with repeated entreaties and floods of tears to see me and discuss with me. He, losing patience, said: “Go your way; as sure as you live, it is impossible that the son of these tears should perish.” In the conversations we had afterwards, she often said that she had accepted this answer as if it had sounded from heaven.

Book Five Now thirty years old, Augustine assumes a professorship in Milan, where he meets Ambrose, renowned archbishop of Milan and later saint. He is inspired by Ambrose’s eloquence, not yet by his message.

Chapter Thirteen So I came to Milan, to the bishop and devout servant of God, Ambrose, famed among the best men of the whole world, whose eloquence did then most powerfully minister to your people. . . . All unknowing I was brought by God to him, that knowing I should be brought by him to God. That man of God received me as a father, and as bishop welcomed my coming. I came to love him, not at first as a teacher of the truth, which I had utterly despaired of finding in your Church, but for his kindness towards me. I attended carefully when he preached to the people, not with the right intention, but only to judge whether his eloquence was equal to his fame or whether it flowed higher or lower than had been told me. His words I listened to with greatest care; his matter I held quite unworthy of attention. . . . Yet little by little I was drawing closer, though I did not yet realize it.

Book Eight Now thirty-two, earnestly seeking God, Augustine is moved by a children’s chant to open Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, and reads the verse that finally prompts him to conversion. He is with his friend Alypius, who will in due course follow his lead.

Chapter Twelve When my most searching scrutiny had drawn up all my vileness from the secret depths of my soul and heaped it in my heart’s sight, a mighty storm arose in me, bringing a mighty rain of tears. That I might give way to my tears and lamentations, I rose from Alypius: for it struck me that solitude was more suited to the business of weeping. . . . So I felt, and he realized it. I suppose I had said something and the sound of my voice was heavy with tears. I arose, but he remained where we had been sitting, still in utter amazement. I flung myself down somehow under a certain fig tree and no

2. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

145

longer tried to check my tears, which poured forth from my eyes in a flood. . . . And I continued my miserable complaining: “How long, how long shall I go on saying tomorrow and again tomorrow? Why not now, why not have an end to my uncleanness this very hour?” Such things I said, weeping in the most bitter sorrow of my heart. And suddenly I heard a voice from some nearby house, a boy’s voice or a girl’s voice, I do not know: but it was a sort of sing-song, repeated again and again, “Take and read, take and read.”15 I ceased weeping and immediately began to search my mind most carefully as to whether children were accustomed to chant these words in any kind of game, and I could not remember that I had ever heard any such thing. Damming back the flood of my tears I arose, interpreting the incident as quite certainly a divine command to open my book of Scripture and read the passage at which I should open. For it was part of what I had been told about Antony,16 that from the Gospel which he happened upon he had felt that he was being admonished, as though what was being read was being spoken directly to himself: Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.17 By this experience he had been in that instant converted to you. So I was moved to return to the place where Alypius was sitting, for I had put down the Apostle’s book there when I arose. I snatched it up, opened it and in silence read the passage upon which my eyes first fell: Not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.18 I had no wish to read further, and no need. For in that instant, with the very ending of the sentence, it was as though a light of utter confidence shone in all my heart, and all the darkness of uncertainty vanished away.

$$$ 2. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (c. 526) Wretched in his prison cell, betrayed, tortured, and facing execution, Boethius looks up to see Philosophy, a monumental female figure curiously adorned. She offers to cure his disease of inconsolable sorrow— for its remedy can only be Philosophy. He has lost his possessions, his 15. In Latin, tolle, lege, tolle, lege, a phrase made famous by this passage in the Confessions. 16. Antony: Saint Antony of Egypt (251–356), whose life had recently been written by the Church Father Saint Athanasius. 17. Matthew 19:21. 18. Romans 13:13–14.

146

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

position, and his authority—but these are nothing. Happiness does not lie in these externals, but only in God. In book one, Philosophy diagnoses the cause of the prisoner’s disease, and promises to remedy it. In book three, she leads him back to the philosophical truths he has studied all his life. True happiness does not lie in wealth, position, or power, but in the summum bonum, the highest good, which is identified with God, the mover of the universe. Since God is goodness itself, and rules all things, evil cannot exist. However much Boethius suffers from the injustice done him, and the pain he has endured, he is in the end untouched: for only the eternal exists, and only that which is eternal matters.19

Book One In prison, Boethius laments his dismal state. Philosophy, a female figure oddly accoutered, appears to him.

Prose One While I was pondering thus in silence, and using my pen to set down so tearful a complaint, there appeared standing over my head a woman’s form, whose countenance was full of majesty, whose eyes shone as with fire and in power of insight surpassed the eyes of men, whose color was full of life. . . . One could but doubt her varying stature, for at one moment she repressed it to the common measure of a man, at another she seemed to touch with her crown the very heavens: and when she had raised higher her head, it pierced even the sky and baffled the sight of those who would look upon it. Her clothing was wrought of the finest thread by subtle workmanship brought to an indivisible piece. This had she woven with her own hands, as I afterwards did learn [from her]. Their beauty was somewhat dimmed by the dullness of long neglect . . . [and] the hands of rough men had torn this garment and snatched such morsels as they could therefrom. . . .

Prose Two. . . . Thus clothed in what was bright and new and also old and ragged, representing both her ever-present truth and her long history, Philosophy approaches the prisoner: “It is time,” she says, “for the physician’s art, rather than for complaining.” Then fixing her eyes wholly on me, she said, “Are you the man who was nourished upon the milk of my learning . . . ? Surely I had given you such 19. The translation that follows is modernized and Americanized for greater accessibility; in referring to the deity, “he” and “him,” etc., are lowercased.

2. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

147

weapons as would keep you safe, and your strength unconquered; if you had not thrown them away. Do you know me? Why do you keep silence? . . .” When she saw that I was not only silent, but utterly tongue-tied and dumb, she put her hand gently upon my breast, and said, “There is no danger: he is suffering from drowsiness, that disease which attacks so many minds which have been deceived. He has forgotten himself for a moment and will quickly remember, as soon as he recognizes me. That he may do so, let me brush away from his eyes the darkening cloud of thoughts of matters perishable.” So saying, she gathered her robe into a fold and dried my swimming eyes. ...

Prose Four The cure for his sorrow will be Philosophy. But Boethius, unconvinced, laments his present condition, bewailing the suffering he endures although he has led a just life. . . . Then did I rally my spirit till it was strong again, and answered, “Does the savage bitterness of my fortune still need recounting? Does it not stand forth plainly enough of itself? . . . Is this the library which you had chosen for yourself as your sure resting-place in my house? Is this the room in which you would so often tarry with me expounding the philosophy of things human and divine? Was my condition like this, or my countenance, when I probed with your aid the secrets of nature, . . . when you shaped our habits and the rule of all our life by the pattern of the universe? Are these the rewards we reap by yielding ourselves to you? . . .” He had merely tried to do what Plato advised, to be a statesman who was a philosopher. “You and God himself, who has grafted you in the minds of philosophers, are my witnesses that never have I applied myself to any office of state except that I might work for the common welfare of all good men. Thence followed bitter quarrels with evil men which could not be appeased, and, for the sake of preserving justice, contempt of the enmity of those in power, for this is the result of a free and fearless conscience. . . .” He attempted to act wisely and justly; and yet he has been condemned by evil men. . . . “For kindness I have received persecutions; I have been driven from all my possessions, stripped of my honors, and stained forever in my reputation. . . . I see the most abandoned of men intent upon new and evil schemes of spying: I see honest men lying crushed with the fear which smites them after

148

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

the result of my perilous case: wicked men one and all encouraged to dare every crime without fear of punishment, nay, with hope of rewards for the accomplishment thereof: the innocent I see robbed not merely of their peace and safety, but even of all chance of defending themselves. . . .”

Prose Five Philosophy listens and assures Boethius she can guide him back to health. While I grieved thus in long-drawn pratings, Philosophy looked on with a calm countenance, not one whit moved by my complaints. Then said she, “When I saw you in grief and in tears I knew thereby that you were unhappy and in exile, but I knew not how distant was your exile until your speech declared it. But you have not been driven so far from your home; you have wandered thence yourself: or if you would rather hold that you have been driven, you have been driven by yourself rather than by any other. No other could have done so to you. . . .”

Prose Six. . . . Philosophy will remind Boethius what he once knew: that there is a sure hand that rules the universe. “Now,” said she, “I know the cause, or the chief cause, of your sickness. You have forgotten what you are. Now therefore I have found out to the full the manner of your sickness, and how to attempt the restoring of your health. . . .You have forgotten by what methods the universe is guided; hence you think that the chances of good and bad fortune are tossed about with no ruling hand. These things may lead not to disease only, but even to death as well. But let us thank the Giver of all health, that your nature has not altogether left you. We have yet the chief spark for your health’s fire, for you have a true knowledge of the hand that guides the universe: you do believe that its government is not subject to random chance, but to divine reason. Therefore have no fear. . . . [I will] try to lessen this darkness for a while with gentle applications of easy remedies, that so the shadows of deceiving passions may be dissipated, and you may have power to perceive the brightness of true light. . . .”

Book Three In book two, Philosophy tries to persuade Boethius that the goods of Fortune— wealth, power, reputation—are illusions. Only true goodness can solace the soul. In book three, she will reveal to him what the highest good—the summum bonum—really is.

2. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

149

Prose Two Philosophy speaks of the summum bonum, the highest good. She lowered her eyes for a little while as though searching the innermost recesses of her mind; and then she continued:—“The trouble of the many and various aims of mortal men bring them much care, and herein they go forward by different paths but strive to reach one end, which is happiness. And that good is that, to which if any man attain, he can desire nothing further. It is that highest of all good things, and it embraces in itself all good things: if any good is lacking, it cannot be the highest good, since then there is left outside it something which can be desired. Wherefore happiness is a state which is made perfect by the union of all good things. This end all men seek to reach, as I said, though by different paths. For there is implanted by nature in the minds of men a desire for the true good; but error leads them astray towards false goods by wrong paths.” Those false goods include wealth, or honor, or pleasure. But only true happiness can bring joy. . . .

Prose Nine Philosophy discusses true happiness. . . . “Then you have before you the form of false happiness, and its causes; now turn your attention in the opposite direction, and you will quickly see the true happiness which I have promised to show you.” “But surely this is clear even to the blindest, and you showed it before when you were trying to make clear the causes of false happiness. For if I mistake not, true and perfect happiness is that which makes a man truly satisfied, powerful, venerated, renowned, and happy. And (for I would have you see that I have looked deeply into the matter) I realize without doubt that that which can truly yield any one of these, since they are all one, is perfect happiness.” “Ah! my son,” said she, “I do see that you are blessed in this opinion, but I would have you add one thing.” The one thing that must be added is God. . . .

Prose Ten Philosophy shows that the highest good is God. . . . “Now consider,” she continued, “where [this perfect happiness] lies. The universally accepted notion of men proves that God, the fountain-head of

150

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

all things, is good. For nothing can be thought of better than God, and surely he, than whom there is nothing better, must without doubt be good. Now reason shows us that God is so good, that we are convinced that in him lies also the perfect good. For if it is not so, he cannot be the fountain-head; for there must then be something more excellent, possessing that perfect good, which appears to be of older origin than God: for it has been proved that all perfections are of earlier origin than the imperfect specimens of the same: wherefore, unless we are to prolong the series to infinity, we must allow that the highest Deity must be full of the highest, the perfect good. But as we have laid down that true happiness is perfect good, it must be that true happiness is situated in his divinity.” True happiness resides in God, but God himself, the origin of all things, is himself the highest good; and since the highest good is happiness, God is happiness itself. . . . “Therefore,” said she, “we may safely conclude that the essence of God also lies in the absolute good and nowhere else. . . .”

Prose Twelve Philosophy demonstrates that, since God is the highest good, and guides the universe he has created, so that nothing occurs except by his will, there can be no such thing as evil. . . . “This world,” she said, “you thought a little while ago must without doubt be guided by God.” “And I think so now,” I said, “and will never think there is any doubt thereof. . . .” Then said she, “Since these are your feelings, I think there is but little trouble left me before you may revisit your home with happiness in your grasp. But let us look into the matter we have set before ourselves. Have we not shown that complete satisfaction exists in true happiness, and we have agreed that God is happiness itself, have we not?” “We have.” “Wherefore he needs no external aid in governing the universe, or, if he had any such need, he would not have this complete sufficiency.” “That of necessity follows,” I said. “Then he arranges all things by himself.” “Without doubt he does.” “And God has been shown to be the absolute good.” “Yes, I remember.”

3. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Sapientia

151

“Then he arranges all things by good, if he arranges them by himself, whom we have agreed to be the absolute good. And so this is the tiller and rudder by which the ship of the universe is kept sure and unbreakable.” “I feel that most strongly,” I said. . . . “Since we may reasonably be sure that God steers all things by the helm of goodness, and, as I have shown you, all things have a natural instinct to hasten towards the good, can there be any doubt that they are guided according to their own will: and that of their own accord they turn to the will of the supreme disposer, as though agreeing with, and obedient to, the helmsman?”. . . [And then] “there is nothing which could have the will or the power to resist the highest good?” “I think not.” . . . “Nobody would care to doubt that God is all-powerful?” “At any rate, no sane man would doubt it.” “Being, then, all-powerful, nothing is beyond his power?” “Nothing.” “Can, then, God do evil?” “No.” “Then evil is nothing, since it is beyond his power, and nothing is beyond his power?” “Are you playing with me,” I asked, “weaving arguments as a labyrinth out of which I shall find no way? . . .” Then she answered, “I was not mocking you. We have worked out the greatest of all matters by the grace of God. . . .”

$$$ 3. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Sapientia (c. 970) Sapientia (the name of the eponymous heroine, meaning “wisdom” in Latin) dramatizes the suffering of the second-century northern Italian woman Sophia (the name meaning “wisdom” in Greek), who witnessed the brutal torture and execution under Roman emperor Hadrian of her three daughters, Fides, Spes, and Caritas (the names meaning “faith,” “hope,” and “charity”).20 The three daughters are all martyr saints of the Catholic and Greek Orthodox Churches—their mother, who died three days after the burial of the daughters, is also considered a martyr saint for her suffering, although she was not executed by Hadrian. Hrotswitha may have known the legend, translating “Sophia” as “Sapientia,” through the Greek 20. Faith, hope, and charity are the three “theological virtues” (as opposed to the four “cardinal virtues”) first denoted by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:13.

152

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

traditions brought to Gandersheim by the Byzantine Theophanu, consort of Holy Roman Emperor Otto II, and her daughter (later abbess) Sophia. The play is a feminist manifesto: it celebrates the triumph of women over men. Sapientia has been converting Roman matrons to Christianity, who thereupon refuse to have sexual relations with their husbands—a threat to the masculine order. She is brought before Emperor Hadrian, the “ruler of the world” as his sidekick Antiochus styles him, but will not yield when questioned. Hadrian then examines the three girls in turn: vulnerable, virginal children, aged twelve (Fides), ten (Spes), and eight (Caritas). They do not tremble before Hadrian’s throne, but mock him and resist. By turns, each one is tortured and then executed, their severed heads brought to their mother Sapientia, who witnesses all these events, encouraging each child to be brave: her one hope is to be “crowned by [their] virginity” and “glorified by [their] martyrdom.” In the end, the mother buries the mutilated bodies of her daughters outside the city walls, then prays ecstatically for her own death and reunion with them in heaven where they are glorified, “radiant with the crown of inviolate virginity.”

Sapientia After Sapientia and her daughters had been imprisoned for three days by Emperor Hadrian’s order, he calls them in to be examined. HADRIAN: Antiochus, bring those Italian captives before us. ANTIOCHUS: Go ahead, Sapientia, and present yourself and your daughters to the emperor. SAPIENTIA: Come with me, my daughters, boldly; persevere without wavering in your faith, and so joyously win the palm of martyrdom.21 SPES: We go forth, and may Christ go with us, for the love of whom we are sent to our death. HADRIAN: By our mercy, you were allowed three days for reflection. Are you now ready to yield to our commands? SAPIENTIA: We have reflected and reached a decision: we will not yield. ANTIOCHUS: Why do you tolerate these haughty words from a woman who presumes so insolently to address you? . . . Examine the little girls instead. If they defy you, have no mercy on their youth, but have them 21. The palm branch, like those waved jubilantly by onlookers when Jesus rode into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:1–11; Mark 11:1–11; Luke 19:28–44; and John 12:12–19), was associated with martyrdom, a victory over the flesh and the attainment of immortality.

3. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Sapientia

153

slain, and so grievously torment this insolent mother with the deaths of her children. HADRIAN: Agreed. . . . Fides, look upon this solemn image of the Great Diana,22 and pour a libation to the sacred goddess, and so obtain her favor. FIDES: O the stupidity of the emperor’s command, deserving only contempt. HADRIAN: What mockeries are you whispering? At whom are you laughing? FIDES: I laugh at your stupidity. I mock your idiocy. HADRIAN: My idiocy? FIDES: Yours. ANTIOCHUS: The emperor’s? FIDES: His. ANTIOCHUS: What an outrage! FIDES: What could be more stupid, what more idiotic, than to command us to despise the creator of the universe and to worship an effigy made of metal? ANTIOCHUS: Fides, you are mad. FIDES: Antiochus, you lie. ANTIOCHUS: For is it not the height of insanity, and the extreme of madness, to call the ruler of the world an idiot? FIDES: I said it, and say so again, and will say so as long as I live. ANTIOCHUS: It will be a short life, for you shall soon be consumed by death. FIDES: That is what I wish for: to die in Christ. HADRIAN: Let twelve centurions, by turns, lash her body with whips. . . . Come here, mighty centurions, and avenge this insult. HADRIAN: Ask her, Antiochus, whether she will comply now. ANTIOCHUS: Fides, will you still dishonor the emperor with your usual storm of insults? FIDES: Why should I do so less than before? ANTIOCHUS: Because you are chastised with whips. 22. the Great Diana of the Ephesians: a highly popular late ancient goddess.

154

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

FIDES: Whips cannot persuade me to be silent, as I feel no pain. ANTIOCHUS: O wretched obstinacy! O scornful audacity! HADRIAN: Her body is beaten by the torture, yet her mind swells with pride. FIDES: You are wrong, Hadrian, if you think I am beaten by the torture, for I am not; but your weakling centurions are all worn out, and sweating from their efforts. HADRIAN: Antiochus, have her nipples cut off. Her shame at least may compel her. ANTIOCHUS: O would that she can be somehow be coerced! . . . FIDES: You have struck my undefiled breasts, but you have not wounded me. And see—not blood, but milk flows from them abundantly. HADRIAN: Put her on a rack and roast her over the flames; the heat will consume her. . . . FIDES: All your instruments of torture have no power to hurt me. I shall rest comfortably on your rack as though cradled in a little boat. . . . HADRIAN: Antiochus, what is to be done? ANTIOCHUS: She must not escape us. HADRIAN: Cut off her head. ANTIOCHUS: Otherwise we do not prevail. FIDES: Now is the time of rejoicing. Now I shall be raised up to the Lord. SAPIENTIA: Now may the unvanquished Christ, the devil’s conqueror, give strength to my daughter Fides. FIDES: O dearest mother, say a last farewell to your daughter, give your firstborn a little kiss, and do not be sorrowful, for I seek the prize of eternity. SAPIENTIA: O daughter, daughter, I am not dismayed, I am not distressed, but I say farewell as you ascend to the Lord, and I weep tears of joy as I kiss your mouth, your eyes. . . . FIDES: Come now, executioner, and perform the unfinished task of killing me. . . . Next Spes is brought in to be examined by Hadrian and his attendant Antiochus. She, too, impudently refuses to do as the emperor commands. Hadrian has her whipped, but she is not subdued.

3. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Sapientia

155

HADRIAN: If you are unconcerned by whips, you will be assailed with harsher tortures. SPES: Bring them on! Bring them on! However cruel, however deadly! The more savage you are, the more you will be defeated and confounded. HADRIAN: Have her suspended in the air and lacerated with hooks, until, when her bowels spew forth and her bones are stripped bare, her limbs will shatter to pieces. ANTIOCHUS: The imperial command, a fitting punishment. . . . The torture is performed, with an odd result—Hadrian detects a sweet odor.23 HADRIAN: What strange new sweetness do I smell? What stupendously lovely scent? SPES: The fragments of my lacerated body give off an aura of heavenly aroma, by which you will be forced, though unwilling, to admit that I cannot be harmed by your tortures. . . . The attempt to subdue Spes by throwing her in boiling oil is also unsuccessful. HADRIAN: Cut off her head. ANTIOCHUS: Nothing else will work. SPES: O my beloved Caritas, O my one remaining sister, do not fear the tyrant’s threats, nor tremble at the tortures, follow with unshaken faith the example of your sisters who have gone before you into paradise. CARITAS: I hate my present life, and I hate my earthly habitation, because, though only for a little time, I am separated from you. SPES: Set aside your distaste and reach out for the prize, for we shall not long be separated, but shall soon be reunited in heaven. CARITAS: May it be, may it be so. SPES: Come, worthy mother, rejoice, and let not your maternal heart be touched with sorrow by my death, but ponder the prize I shall attain when you see me die for Christ.

23. The “odor of sanctity” that was believed to exude from the bodies of the holy dead.

156

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

SAPIENTIA: I do now rejoice indeed, but still more will I gladly rejoice when I shall have sent your little sister, having met the same death, to paradise, and I, last of all, shall follow. SPES: The eternal Trinity will restore to you forever all three of your daughters. . . . SAPIENTIA: Take comfort, my daughter, the executioner arrives with drawn sword. SPES: Gladly I greet the sword. Christ, receive the spirit that bore witness to your name, now released from its bodily habitation. SAPIENTIA: O Caritas, splendid child, the one still living hope of my womb, do not disappoint your good mother who awaits the consummation of your suffering, but despise all present gain so that you may achieve that endless glory in which your sisters now shine, radiant with the crown of inviolate virginity. . . . Caritas now goes before Emperor Hadrian. HADRIAN: I am worn out by the chatter of your sisters and exasperated by their lengthy explanations, so I shall not waste my time with you. If you are compliant with my wishes, I shall decree all good things for you, but if you defy them, I shall respond with bad ones. . . . And so, being merciful, I propose an easy task for you. CARITAS: What is it? HADRIAN: Merely say, “Great is Diana,” and I shall not compel you to take the further step of offering a sacrifice. CARITAS: In no way shall I say that. HADRIAN: Why not? CARITAS: Because I will not lie. My sisters and I were born to the same parents, imbued with the same virtues, strengthened by our devotion to the same faith. You must see, therefore, that what we desire, what we feel, what we know, are all one and the same, nor could I ever act otherwise than they. ... Hadrian orders Antiochus to throw Caritas into a raging furnace. HADRIAN: Go, Antiochus, do what I command.

3. Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, Sapientia

157

CARITAS: He may obey your savage desire, but he will not harm me, for neither will whips flay my body nor flames consume my hair or garments. HADRIAN: We shall see. CARITAS: Yes, we shall see. Antiochus leaves, while Caritas is taken to be tortured. He returns, despondent. HADRIAN: Antiochus, what is wrong? Why have you come back so glum? . . . Speak up, don’t keep it a secret. ANTIOCHUS: That wicked girl you handed over to me to be tortured—I had her flogged, but her skin was not grazed in the slightest; then I had her thrown into a raging red-hot furnace. HADRIAN: Why do you hesitate? Say what happened. ANTIOCHUS: The flames exploded, and killed five thousand men. HADRIAN: And what happened to her? . . . ANTIOCHUS: She frolicked in the surging flames and smoke, and sang joyful hymns to her god. Those who stood by watching say that she was joined by three white-robed companions.24 HADRIAN: I am ashamed to see her again, as I am unable to harm her. ANTIOCHUS: It remains to silence her by the sword. HADRIAN: Have it done without delay. ANTIOCHUS: Uncover your stiff neck, Caritas, and receive the swordsman’s blow. CARITAS: In this case, I do not resist your command, but cheerfully obey. SAPIENTIA: Now, daughter, now is the triumph, now is the time to rejoice in Christ, nor do I have any further care, because I am certain of your victory. CARITAS: Now kiss me, mother, and bless the soul that is going to Christ. SAPIENTIA: He who breathed life into you in my womb, he will raise your soul up to salvation.

24. Angels, presumably, like the angel Gabriel who shut the mouths of the lions when Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den: cf. Daniel 6:22.

158

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

CARITAS: Christ, to you be the glory, who called me to you, bearing the palm of martyrdom. SAPIENTIA: Farewell, sweetest child, and when you have joined Christ in heaven, remember your mother. . . . With her Christian women companions, Sapientia anoints the mutilated bodies of her three children and buries them at the third milestone outside of Rome. She then offers an ecstatic prayer to God: she has freely sacrificed her three daughters and asks to be reunited with them for eternity. O Lord Emmanuel, Son of him who created all things before time began, and in earthly time of a virgin mother, who wondrously born of two natures is one Christ, . . . let the lovely serenity of angels exalt you, and the sweet harmony of the stars sing songs of praise . . . ; you, who alone with the Father and Holy Spirit are form without matter, who, by the will of the Father, and attended by the Holy Spirit, did not refuse to become man, . . . so that no one who believed in you might perish, but so that all the faithful might live eternally; and who did not disdain to taste the death of mortals, that death destroyed by your resurrection. And you also, perfect God and true man, promised that all who surrendered their earthly possessions for your name’s sake, or set aside the love of those related in the flesh, would be rewarded a hundredfold, and granted the prize of eternal life. In the hope of that promise, I have done what you commanded, willingly sacrificing the children I bore. Do not delay then to grant the promised gift, but free me soon from the chains of this body so that I might rejoin and rejoice with my daughters in heaven, . . . and with them eternally praise you who are not yourself the Father, but of the same substance as the Father, with whom and with the Holy Spirit are the one Lord of all, . . . who reigns and rules through the neverending ages of eternity.

$$$ 4. Hildegard of Bingen, Know the Ways (1141–1151) Whereas Hrotswitha foregrounds women of faith opposing and subduing male power, Hildegard sees visions of God’s works and paints them for her readers in the bright colors of words, so telling the whole Christian story. Selections from the first two visions of the first book of Hildegard’s Know the Ways are given here. The first presents the omniscient, omnipotent God, represented by a mountain of iron, with related images

4. Hildegard of Bingen, Know the Ways

159

capsulizing the Christian ideals of humility, service, and love. The second narrates the milestones of Christian history: the fall of Lucifer, the brightest of God’s angels;25 God’s creation of all things; the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden on account of their sin, causing the downfall of all humankind; and the delights of paradise to which human beings will return, redeemed by the incarnation and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the one Son of God. Hildegard paints a broad canvas in rich colors, evoking deep meanings with plain words and engaging images. She does so, she reports, at God’s command because the monks and priests who were charged to communicate his message have failed to do so.

Know the Ways Vision One Hildegard sees God enthroned atop a great and mighty mountain. I saw a great mountain made of iron, and upon its peak sat One shining so brightly that my eyes could not bear the brightness. . . . And in front of that mountain, at its foot, stood an image of something studded all around with many eyes, . . . and in front of it another image, of a child dressed in an ash-colored tunic and wearing white shoes. . . . Circling gently about those images were shimmering sparks, which showered down from him who sat atop that mountain. And I saw covering the surface of the mountain many little windows, from which human faces peered out, some ashen and some white. . . . God calls on Hildegard to communicate his message. And behold! He who sat upon the mountain called out to me with a mighty and penetrating voice saying, “O frail human, dust of the earth’s dust, and ash of its ash, declare and proclaim what is the source of perfect salvation! Instruct those who discern the truth of Scripture, yet do not tell or preach it, because they are dull and lazy servants of God’s justice; unlock for them the treasure of mysteries. . . . For your understanding of these profound things comes not from human beings, but from the stupendous supernal judge on high. . . . “Stand up therefore, declare and proclaim what is made known to you by the mighty strength of divine grace, since he who potently and tenderly rules all of creation pours out the splendor of his eternal truth upon those 25. The story of Lucifer’s fall is derived from several not always explicit biblical passages: see Ezekiel 28:12–18; Isaiah 14:12–17; Mathew 25:41; Luke 10:18; and Revelation 20:3.

160

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

who fear him and serve him devoutly and humbly, and leads those who persevere on the path of justice to the joys of the eternal vision.” The strength and stability of God’s eternal kingdom. That great mountain the color of iron, then, represents the strength and stability of God’s eternal kingdom, which no power of shifting mutability can destroy; and upon it is seated the One in such great brilliance, a brilliance the eye cannot bear, who in the kingdom of beatitude, in the splendor of his unfailing serenity ruling the whole of the cosmos by his supernal divinity, is incomprehensible to human minds. . . . They serve God who fear him and are poor in spirit. The image that stands at the foot of that mountain studded all around with many eyes represents the fear of God, which stands humbly before him and contemplates his kingdom. . . . And the image of the child dressed in an ash-colored tunic and wearing white shoes shows that the fear of the Lord leads, and those who are poor in spirit follow; for the fear of the Lord . . . powerfully upholds the blessedness of spiritual poverty, which does not seek boldness or elation of the heart, but rather cherishes simplicity and sobriety of mind; in ashen humility it attributes good works performed not to the self but to God, as represented by the child’s ashen tunic, and it faithfully follows in the footsteps of the Son of God, as represented by the child’s pure white shoes. . . . The shimmering sparks showering down from him who sits upon the mountain and circling around these images represent the many and mighty virtues, glowing with divine brilliance, that issue forth from the omnipotent God, ardently supporting and embracing with their help and protection those who truly fear God and faithfully cherish poverty of spirit. No human actions are unknown to God. The many little windows seen on the surface of the mountain, from which human faces peer out, some ashen and some white, show that the intentions of human actions cannot be hidden or concealed from the great loftiness and profound penetration of God’s knowledge. . . .

Vision Two Hildegard’s vision of creation, Lucifer, and hell. Then I saw what seemed like a huge multitude of living lamps of extraordinary brilliance, which glittered like fire, and possessed a splendor like crystal. And behold! A pit of great breadth and depth appeared, with a mouth like the mouth of a well, vomiting forth a fiery and fetid smoke, from which

4. Hildegard of Bingen, Know the Ways

161

exuded a filthy cloud spreading out almost as far as could be seen. Breathing upon a white cloud, which in a region of brightness had come forth from a beautiful human form containing within itself a multitude of stars, it expelled from that brightness both the cloud and the human form. Then a flashing radiance surrounded that region, whereupon all the elements of the world, which before had rested in deep quietude, now wracked by the greatest disturbance, produced fearsome horrors. And again I heard him who had spoken to me before, saying: “Those who follow God with faithful devotion, and delighting in him, burn with a holy love, are not kept by their terror of any evil power from the glory of eternal blessedness . . . as is shown by the huge multitude of brilliant and living lamps, which are the mighty army of celestial spirits, luminous in the blessed life where they live in great beauty and elegance. For when they were created by God, they were not seized by haughty pride, but stood firm in the love of God. . . .” When the devil was cast out from heaven, these angelic spirits who in rectitude remained loyal to God offered choruses of praise, since by their enlightened vision they clearly perceived that God is ever unmoved, without any change or diminution of his potency, such that he can never be vanquished by any foe. . . . Lucifer is cast out of heaven for his pride, and will rule in hell as Satan.  Now Lucifer, who had been cast out of celestial glory on account of his pride, . . . gazing upon his beauty, and pondering the mightiness of his strength, imagined in his pride that he could do whatever he wished. . . . And seeing a place where he might dwell and manifest his beauty and strength, he said to himself: “I want to reign there, just as God does here.” His whole army gave its assent, saying: “Whatever you wish, we wish also.” And when, puffed up with pride, intending to realize the plan he had formed, the Lord in his fury reached out into the fiery darkness and cast him down with all his followers. . . . Now that pit of great breadth and depth . . . is hell, containing within itself the breadth of vice and the depth of perdition. And it has a mouth like the mouth of a well, vomiting forth a fiery and fetid smoke, because in its lust to devour souls, it deceives them with tenderness and sweetness, but leads them instead by perverse deception to a place of torment, where a raging fire effuses a filthy smoke and exudes a boiling and deadly fetor. These fearful torments were prepared for the devil and his followers . . . , who had been cast out from the highest good, . . . not because they did not know what it was, but because, in their great pride, they held it in contempt. . . .

162

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

God then created Adam and Eve, the latter prefigured in a white cloud, containing within her a multitude of stars representing all her human descendants. The first man and woman walk carefree in the Garden of Eden, or paradise—“in childlike innocence, in the garden of delights”—until the devil causes the serpent to deceive them, and so bring about the downfall of humanity. Now in that place of delight Eve, whose soul was innocent—for she had been made from the innocent Adam, and bore in her body the entire multitude of the human race radiant in God’s preordination—would be tricked by the serpent, the agent of the devil, and so brought down. How did this happen? Because the devil knew that the woman’s softness would be more easily vanquished than the man’s strength; and he knew, seeing how Adam so dearly loved Eve, that if he conquered Eve, whatever she asked of Adam, Adam would do. . . . First Eve, then Adam, eat the fruit of the one tree in the Garden of Eden that God had forbidden them, and they are expelled: this epochal event theologians traditionally have called the Fall of Man. But God preserves paradise, which will receive the souls of those to be redeemed by the sacrifice of his Son. Now after Adam and Eve had been expelled from paradise because of their transgression, a brilliant splendor surrounded that region, for God . . . removed all contagion of sin from that place by the power of his divine majesty, and protected it with the brightness of his glory from any possible threat. By so doing, he also announced that he would one day, in his clemency and mercy, absolve the sin that had been committed there. . . . Now all of creation is in turmoil because of Adam’s disobedience. Thereupon all the elements of the world, which before had rested in deep quietude, rose up in mighty turbulence, threatening terrible disruptions. For the whole of Creation had been born to serve Adam, and sensing that he would no longer be their master—for he had rebelled against God, being disobedient to his creator—they renounced peace and chose chaos, threatening humankind with horrendous catastrophes, gaining mastery over Adam, who had turned from the path of righteousness. But paradise remains a place of delight, as God intended. But paradise is a place of delight, overflowing with an abundance of flowers and grasses, replete with aromas of spices and sweetness, endowed with the joy of the souls of the blessed, richly moistening the dryness of the earth, and giving to the earth a mighty power, just as the soul gives strength to the body. For paradise is not beclouded by the darkness of dire sin.

5. Peter Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes

163

Why then did God make humankind capable of sin? Now listen to me and understand, you who say in your hearts, “What is sin? And why are human beings sinful?” . . . This is why, O foolish humankind: how could humans who were made in the image and likeness of God not be subject to testing? For the human being must be examined before all other creatures, and therefore tested by all other creatures. . . . God is just; but humankind is unjust, defying God’s commandments when it strives to be wiser than God. . . . But in his compassion for the suffering of sinful humanity, God sends his only Son to be sacrificed for their sake, so redeeming all human beings who thereby regain paradise, fulfilling the destiny that God had preordained for them. And so human beings, liberated from sin, shine brightly in God, and God in them; for being in fellowship with God, they now possess in heaven a more dazzling resplendence than ever before. This would not have happened if the Son of God had not been clothed in human flesh—for if Adam had remained in paradise, Christ would not have suffered on the cross. But since Eve was persuaded to sin by the wily serpent, God in his vast mercy caused his only Son to be incarnated in the pure womb of the Virgin Mary. . . . But you, O humankind, burdened by the weight of the body, do you not see that great glory, without stain and without shame, in the full justice of God, that has been prepared for you, that can never again be lost? For before the creation of the world, all these things God in his infinite righteousness foresaw. . . .

$$$ 5. Peter Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes (c. 1130) In the 1130s, beset by conflicts and rivalries, Abelard wrote with searing candor the Story of My Misfortunes, the first major autobiography in the Western tradition since Augustine’s, whose Confessions it resembles in intensity and self-awareness. The work foregrounds the pivotal event of his life: his love affair with Heloise some twenty years earlier (c. 1116–c. 1118), which culminated with their marriage, his castration, and the entrance of both to the monastic life. As seen in the excerpts given here, it vividly recalls the course of their earlier relationship.

164

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

Story of My Misfortunes How I fell in love with Heloise, and was stricken in both mind and body So it happened that in this city of Paris there lived a young woman named Heloise, the niece of the canon Fulbert, who loved her so much that he strove mightily in every way to encourage her education. Though in beauty she was not deficient, in learning she was supreme. Now since, of course, such knowledge of the liberal arts26 is rare in women, all the more amply did it bring her honor, and she was celebrated throughout the realm. Carefully weighing, then, all the traits that men value in women, I decided that this girl was the one I wished to join with me in love, and believed I could do so easily. For my reputation was so great, and I so excelled by my youth and appearance that whichever woman I chose for a lover, I feared rejection by none. It would be all the easier to win her consent, I believed, since I knew how great was her learning, and her zeal to acquire more. Even when we were apart, we could send each other letters, writing more boldly than we could speak, and so always enjoy delightful conversation.27 Burning with love for this girl, then, I sought a means by which I could draw her close to me by daily intimate conversation and so gently win her consent. To accomplish this, I approached the girl’s uncle, . . . asking if I might for a small fee rent quarters in his household, which was close to the school [where I taught], on the pretext that managing my own household impeded my studies, and was too costly. Now he was a greedy man, and at the same time desirous for his niece to excel ever more in her studies. For these two reasons I was able easily to obtain his assent to what it was that I wished: he coveted both my money and his niece’s instruction. What is more, he begged me earnestly, beyond anything I could have dared to wish, facilitating my desires, to commit myself totally to teaching her whenever I returned from my school, instructing her both day and night and disciplining her if she neglected her studies.28 I was thunderstruck by his simplicity. . . . By 26. liberal arts: Abelard writes scientia litterarum, literally “knowledge of letters,” which in this era referred to the study of the seven liberal arts, three verbal and four mathematical, based on classical authors. For the ancient concept of the liberal arts as discussed by Seneca, see Chapter 3, Text 6. 27. Abelard’s plot to seduce a much younger and inexperienced woman would, in the twentyfirst century, be considered reprehensible; but in the twelfth century, it was not this behavior that would be condemned, but rather Abelard’s neglect of the chastity expected of him, and his disrespect for the girl’s uncle and legal guardian. 28. It was expected of teachers in this era regularly to punish students corporally not only for misbehavior but also for academic laxity. Abelard sees this as an erotic opportunity.

5. Peter Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes

165

permitting me not only to teach her alone, but even to discipline her, what had he done but effectively allow me to achieve my goal, allowing me . . . to seize by threats and punishments what I could not win by caresses. . . . What more is there to say? First we shared that house and then our souls. We took advantage of the schoolroom to surrender ourselves wholly to love, and our studies led us to the secret sanctums that our passion sought. With our books lying open before us, we spoke more words of love than of the lesson, exchanged kisses more than thoughts. . . . Not one step on the ladder of love did we deny our passions, and if any new dimension of love could be conceived, it was added to the sum. Inexperienced as we were in such delights, the more ardently did we seek them and the less we resisted them. The more these passions possessed me, the less care I gave to philosophy and my teaching. It became unbearable to go to lectures and attend to my students; and I was exhausted as well, because my nights were spent in lovemaking and my daytime hours in study. The lectures I gave were lazy and lackluster, . . . for I only repeated what I had often said before, and the only new things I composed were love songs. . . . Far and wide those songs were heard and sung, as you yourself know,29 especially by those who were themselves in love. . . . Such a state of affairs must have been obvious to everyone, except only, I believe, him who was most dishonored by it—that is, the girl’s uncle. Though many had hinted to him what was going on, he could not believe it, . . . both because of his inordinate love for his niece and his knowledge of my reputation for continence. . . . But what is widely known, known everywhere and always, and known to everyone, cannot long remain unknown to any. So also to us, after some months went by, did it happen. Oh, how great was her uncle’s grief when he learned the truth! How great the sorrow of the lovers when we were torn apart! How great the shame that confounded me! How sharp the pain I felt for Heloise’s pain! How fierce the agony my shame caused her to suffer! . . . Our bodies separated, our souls were wholly conjoined; its consummation denied, our love flamed all the more; as shame diminished, our passion made us more shameless than before; and as we felt less shame, that much more desirable seemed the act that had caused it. . . . Not long after this, Heloise learned that she was pregnant, and in jubilation wrote to tell me the news and ask what I thought should be done. One night when her uncle was away, as we had planned, I secretly stole her from

29. The “you” Abelard addresses here is likely Heloise, rather than the nominal dedicatee of the work.

166

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

his house and without delay, took her to my native land.30 There she stayed with my sister until she gave birth to a son, whom she named Astrolabe.31 When her uncle returned, meanwhile, he fell into a frenzy . . . not knowing how he could act against me or what schemes he might pursue. If he killed or injured me, he feared that his beloved niece might be harmed by my family, with whom she resided. He had no power to seize or imprison me, as I had particularly taken steps to avert that possibility. . . . Eventually, taking pity for his extreme anxiety, and upbraiding myself for the harm my love had caused, and for my betrayal of his trust, I went to him to ask forgiveness. . . . And to compensate him beyond anything he could have hoped, I offered to marry her whom I had seduced, so long as it might be done in secret, so as to protect my reputation. He agreed, . . . and entered into the agreement that I sought—all so that he might more easily betray me.

The arguments Heloise made against marriage I set out immediately for my homeland to bring back my lover and make her my wife. But she protested vigorously on two grounds: because of the danger and because of my reputation—nor would it ever placate her uncle, as turned out to be the case. How could she glory in my success, if she made me inglorious, and disgraced us both? What a penalty would the world exact from her, if she stole away its shining star? How the church would fulminate, how philosophers weep! What a scandal, what a tragedy, if he whom nature had created for all humankind were to stoop to take one woman as his wife. . . .32 Consider at least, she said, what the philosophers have said and written about this matter. . . . And leaving aside the impediment marriage posed to the study of philosophy, examine the conditions of married life. How can study accord with household tasks, writing with cradles, books and pens with distaff and spindle?33 How could anyone absorbed in sacred or philosophical reflection endure the crying of children, the lullabies of nurses who try to calm them, the raucous confusion of family life? Or bear the filthy mess that children make? . . .

30. Brittany, a duchy not yet incorporated into the kingdom of France. 31. Astrolabe: a most unusual name, but fitting for the child of two intellectuals; an Arabic invention, the astrolabe was an instrument used to observe the positions of celestial bodies. 32. Abelard was neither priest nor monk at this time, but a churchman attached to a cathedral school, whose celibacy, or at least abstinence from marriage, was expected. It would have been less damaging to his reputation to have a concubine than a wife. 33. distaff and spindle: the tools for spinning thread, a task associated with women.

5. Peter Abelard, Story of My Misfortunes

167

Finally, she argued that . . . she would rather be my mistress than my wife, so that I would be bound to her only by love, and not by the compulsion of the marriage bond. . . . Offering this and that argument without success, unable to sway me and not wanting to displease me, with a torrent of tears and sighs, she concluded thus: “For one last thing we two are destined: the sorrow we shall know will not be less than the love that we have known.” Heloise did not lack, as everyone now can see, the gift of prophecy. So when our little son was born and left in my sister’s care, we returned secretly to Paris. A few days later, . . . in a certain church at morning’s light, her uncle and his friends and ours in attendance, we were joined in holy matrimony. Then we departed in secret by separate paths, and saw each other thereafter only rarely and discreetly, determined to conceal what had been done. But her uncle and his familiars, seeking solace in their dishonor, began to divulge the marriage, violating the promise he had made to me, while Heloise riposted, refuting their story and swearing it was false. Enraged, her uncle showered her with abuse. When I learned of this, I brought her to the convent of Argenteuil on the outskirts of Paris where she had been raised and schooled as a child. I had them prepare garments and other accessories fitting for a nun, excepting only the veil,34 and had her put them on. When they heard about this, her uncle and his kinsmen concluded that I had betrayed them utterly, and made her a nun to rid myself of her forever. Furious, they plotted against me, and on a dark night while I slept in a secret room where I lodged, admitted by a servant whom they had bribed, they took their revenge. They inflicted on me a most cruel and shameful punishment, shocking the whole world: for they cut off the parts of my body by which I had committed the deed they hated. That done, they fled. . . .

Wounded in body At daybreak, the whole city crowded around me, stunned and astonished: how they cried and moaned, how they roared with shouts, how they shook me with their sorrow, is difficult—no, impossible—to describe. The clerics most of all, and particularly my students, tormented me with intolerable wails of lamentation, so that their sympathy grieved me more than did my injury, and I felt more humiliation than pain, suffering more from shame than from my wound. In my mind I thought how that great fame in which I gloried had been so swiftly and wretchedly humbled, indeed totally destroyed; how by God’s righteous judgment I had been struck in that part of 34. Only consecrated nuns wore the veil; Heloise was at this time a guest at the convent, as she had been when a girl.

168

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

my body by which I had sinned; . . . how my rivals would joyously celebrate so fitting a punishment; how this wound would inflict a burden of perpetual pain on my family and friends; how word of this infamous deed would fly to the ends of the earth. What path lay before me from here? How could I show my face in public, . . . when I should present to all a monstrous spectacle? . . . Left in this woeful condition, I confess it was the cloud of shame rather than my zeal for conversion that led me to the recesses of the monastic cloister. Heloise, at my bidding, had already taken the veil and become a nun. Both of us, then, took up the sacred habit: I in the abbey of Saint-Denis, and she in the convent of Argenteuil. . . .

$$$ 6. Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe (c. 1430–1436) Margery Kempe’s account of her life as a holy woman sprawls over ninetynine chapters, excerpts from three of which are given here, preceded by excerpts from the prologue. In this prologue she introduces her “little treatise” about her “feelings and revelations,” and tells how it came to be written down at her dictation some thirty years after her conversion. Chapter 1 follows, narrating her startling vision of Jesus Christ at her bedside that shocked her out of a prolonged depression triggered by her first childbirth. Chapter 28 describes her pilgrimage to the Holy City of Jerusalem, on which journey, as she viewed the sites where Jesus underwent his last days of torment and crucifixion, her intense identification with his pain caused her to erupt in wild, uncontrollable crying—initiating the “cryings” she would experience frequently thereafter, provoking ridicule and insults from those around her. In chapter 77, reporting one of her several conversations with Jesus, she asks him to stop her public crying, but he will not; that crying, he explains, is the expression of his spiritual union with her.

Prologue Kempe explains the purpose of her book and how it came to be written. Here begins a short treatise that will comfort sinful wretches, from which they may receive great solace and comfort and understand the great and inexpressible mercy of our sovereign savior Christ Jesus, whose name be worshipped and magnified without end, who now in our day deigns to share with us who are unworthy his greatness and his goodness. . . . And therefore,

6. Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

169

. . . this little treatise shall report some examples of his wonderful works, how mercifully, how benignly, and how lovingly he moved and spurred a lowly sinner into his love. . . . Looking back on her experience of conversion and devout life, Kempe goes on to tell how it happened that she composed her Book, first by dictation to her son, and after his death, to a local priest. The priest is unable at first to decipher the earlier manuscript, but manages to do so in time, and crafts a new and fuller version of the Book, dated 1436. And so from that time that this creature35 first had feelings and revelations, it was twenty years and more before she did any writing. At that time when it pleased our Lord, he commanded and charged her that she should write down her feelings and revelations and the manner of her living that his goodness might be known to all the world. But this creature had no writer who could fulfill her desire or give expression to her feelings until the time that a man living in Germany, an Englishman by birth who had gotten married in Germany and had there both a wife and a child, having good knowledge of this creature and her desire, moved I believe by the Holy Ghost, came to England with his wife and his goods and lived with the aforesaid creature until he had written as much as she could tell him during the time they were together.36 And then he died. Then there was a priest well liked by this creature, and so she discussed this matter with him and brought him the book to read. The book was so badly written that he could understand little of it, for it was neither good English nor German, nor were the letters shaped or formed as they should have been. Therefore the priest decided that no one would ever be able to read it, except by God’s grace. . . . Then she took the book again and brought it to the priest filled with hope, praying him to do his best with it, and she would pray to God for him and ask for grace so that he might read it and write further in it. The priest, trusting in her prayers, began to read the book, and it was much easier to do, he thought, than it had been before. And so he read it over, word by word, together with this creature, she sometimes helping where there was any difficulty. This book is not written in order, each event after the other as it was done, but rather as it came to the creature’s mind that the matter should be written, for such a long time passed before it was written that she had 35. Kempe writes in the third person, referring to herself as “this creature,” that is, one created by God. 36. It is believed that this man was Kempe’s son, living abroad in “Germany,” a term at this time encompassing the many regions where Germanic languages were spoken. This son and Kempe’s husband both died in 1431.

170

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

forgotten the time and the order in which things happened. And so she let nothing be written until she knew for sure it was absolutely true. . . .

Book One 1. Kempe describes her first vision of Jesus, which cures her depression. When this creature was twenty years old or a bit more, she was married to a respectable burgher and was with child within a short time, as nature willed. And after she had conceived, she was seriously ill until the child was born, and then, because of the labor she had undergone in childbirth and the sickness that preceded it, she despaired of her life, thinking she might not live. . . . The devil assailed Kempe, telling her she would be damned because of a sin she had not confessed; but berated by the priest to whom she attempted to make confession, she was unable to gain absolution.37 That failure provoked an episode of mental illness, from which she was saved by Jesus, who came to her in a vision. And soon, . . . this creature went out of her mind and was exceedingly vexed and troubled by demons for six months, eight weeks, and some days. And in this time she saw, as she thought, devils with open mouths inflamed with burning flames of fire as though they would swallow her up . . . ; and also the devils screamed at her with great threatenings and bade her to forsake her Christendom, her faith, and deny her God, his mother, and all the saints in heaven, . . . her father, her mother, and all her friends. And so she did. . . . She would have killed herself many a time at these apparitions and been damned with them in hell, in witness of which she bit her own hand so violently that the scar was seen all her life thereafter . . . and she would have done worse except that she was bound and guarded both day and night so that she could not have her way. And when she had long suffered this and many other torments . . . , then one time, as she lay alone and her guards had left her, our merciful Lord Christ Jesus, ever to be trusted, worshipped be his name, never forsaking his servant in time of need, appeared to this creature, who had forsaken him, in the likeness of a man the most seemly, most handsome, and most amiable that might ever be seen . . . , sitting upon her bedside, looking upon her so cheerfully that she was strengthened in all her spirits, said these words to her: “Daughter, why have you forsaken me, when I forsook you never?” And as soon as he had said these words, she saw in truth that the air opened up as bright as lightning and he rose up into the air . . . and she beheld him 37. Catholics believe that sins on their conscience may be confessed to a priest, who can then assign a penance and grant absolution, thus lifting any penalty in the afterlife for that sin.

6. Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

171

in the air until it closed up again. And immediately the creature was made stable in her wits and in her reason as well as she been before, and asked her husband as soon as he came to her that she might have the keys to the pantry so as to take her meat and drink as she used to do. . . . 28. Kempe arrives in Jerusalem, the goal of her first major pilgrimage, where she has her first experience of ecstatic crying as she identifies with Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. And so they went forth until they could see Jerusalem. . . . And when she came there, she said [to her fellow travelers], “Sirs, I pray you be not displeased though I weep sorely in this holy place where our Lord Jesus Christ lived and died.” Then they went to the temple in Jerusalem. . . . and stayed there until the next day. . . . Then the friars38 lifted up a cross and led the pilgrims about from one place to another where our Lord had suffered his pains and his passion,39 every man and woman bearing a wax candle in their hand. . . . And the foresaid creature wept and sobbed so plenteously as though she had seen our Lord with her bodily eye suffering his Passion at that time. . . . And when they came up to the Mount of Calvary40 she fell down as she could not stand or kneel, but thrashed and turned with her body, spreading her arms abroad, and cried with a loud voice as though her heart should break asunder, for in the depths of her soul she saw truly and freshly how our Lord was crucified. . . . And she had so great compassion and so great pain to see our Lord’s pain that she could not keep herself from crying and roaring though it might have killed her. And this was the first cry that ever she cried in any contemplation. And this manner of crying endured many years after this time for aught that any man might do, and on that account she suffered much reviling and much reproach. . . . And when . . . it was granted to this creature to behold so vividly his precious tender body, although rent and torn by scourges, . . . hanging upon the cross with the crown of thorns upon his head, his blessed hands, his tender feet nailed to the hard tree, the rivers of blood flowing out plenteously from every limb, the grisly and grievous wound in his precious side shedding out blood and water for her love and her salvation, then she fell down and cried in a loud voice, . . . and nothing could keep her from crying or stop the twisting of her body from the fire of love that burnt so fervently in her soul with pure pity and compassion. . . . 38. friars: members of a mendicant order charged to show pilgrims the holy sites of Jerusalem. 39. passion: Jesus’s suffering and death. 40. Mount of Calvary: the site of Jesus’s crucifixion.

172

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

77. Kempe asks Jesus to stop her public crying, but he will not and explains why. When the said creature . . . was at a time in spiritual conversation with her sovereign Lord Christ Jesus, she said, “Lord, why will you give me such crying that people are astonished at me because of it, and say that I am in great peril for, as they say, I am the cause for many men’s sin. And you know, Lord, that I would give no man cause or occasion of sin if I could, for I would rather, Lord, be in a prison ten fathoms deep, there to cry and weep for my sin and for the sins of all men. . . . Lord, the world may not suffer me to do your will nor to follow where you lead me, and therefore I pray you, if it be your will, take these cryings from me in the midst of sermons, so that I do not cry at the holy preaching of your word, but let me have them by myself alone. . . .” Our merciful Lord Christ Jesus answering her mind said, “Daughter, pray not for that; you shall not have your desire in this though my mother and all the saints in heaven pray for you, for I shall make you obedient to my will that you shall cry when I wish, and where I wish, both loud cries and soft ones, for I tell you, daughter, you are mine and I am yours, and so shall you be without end. Daughter, you see . . . that I send great winds that blow down steeples, houses, and trees from the earth and does much harm in many places, and yet the wind may not be seen but it may well be felt. And so it is right, daughter, that I wield the might of my Godhead; it may not be seen by human eyes, and yet it may well be felt in a simple soul where it can work grace, as I do in your soul. And as suddenly as the lightning comes from heaven, so suddenly I come into your soul, and illumine it with the light of grace and of understanding, and set it all on fire with love. . . . Also, daughter, you know well that sometimes I send many great rains and fierce showers, and sometime only small and soft drops. And so it is right what I do with you, daughter, when I choose to speak into your soul: sometimes I give small weepings and soft tears as a token that I love you, and sometimes I give great cries and roarings so as to make people afraid with the grace I bestow on you. . . .”

$$$ 7. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ (c. 1420–1427) Persistently, searchingly, powerfully, Thomas à Kempis summons his listeners to find true life with Christ. These excerpts from the second book of The Imitation of Christ, offering advice for the conduct of the interior life,

7. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

173

introduce three of the author’s recurrent themes. First, the true life of the spirit is found within, apart from external things and even other people, for in that external world of things and events and conversations, there is no peace and no real home. Second, true joy is found in friendship with Jesus, who enters within the self and resides in the recesses of the soul. No other relationship can satisfy as does friendship and union with Jesus. Third, the seeker must share the suffering of Jesus on the cross. Only those who bear the cross as Jesus did can achieve salvation; and they will bear that burden joyfully as they ascend by the royal road of the holy cross to eternal life.

The Imitation of Christ Chapter One: The conversation within Thomas implores the Christian to turn within his own soul to find there the kingdom of God; it is not to be found without. The kingdom of God is within you, says the Lord. Turn to the Lord with your whole heart, and flee this wretched world, and your soul will find peace. Learn to despise what is external and give yourself to what is internal, and the kingdom of God will nestle within you. For the kingdom of God is this: peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, a peace not given to sinners. Christ will come to you offering his consolation, if you have prepared within yourself a fitting home for him. All of his glory and splendor is found within, and there he will be pleased to reside. Many are his visitations to that inward man, sweet is his conversation, pleasing his consolation, great is his peace, his friendship wondrous beyond imagining. . . . Here you have no real home; wherever you go, you are a wandering stranger; nor will you ever have peace, unless within you, you are united with Christ. Why do you keep searching, when here there is for you no place of respite? . . .

Chapter Seven: The love of Jesus above all things Only the love of Jesus, Thomas promises, can bring solace to the soul. Blessed is he who knows what it is to love Jesus, and to despise himself for Jesus’s sake.

174

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

He must give up what he loves for the beloved, because Jesus wants to be loved alone above all other things. The love of created things is deceitful and unstable; the love of Jesus, is loyal and enduring. He who loves what is created flounders and falls; he who loves Jesus is forever steadfast. Love him, and you will always have him as a friend; he will not let you go when all others leave you, nor permit you ever to perish. One day, you will be parted from all others, whether you wish it or do not. Living or dying, hold fast to Jesus; and trust in his faithfulness, for when all others leave you, he alone can bring you solace. . . .

Chapter Eight: Close friendship with Jesus Jesus is the only true friend, Thomas declares, without whom there is no fulfillment. How dry and tough you are without Jesus! How foolish and useless, if you desire anything but Jesus! What greater loss is there than to lose the whole world? But what can the world give you, if you do not have Jesus? To be without Jesus is dark hell, and to be with Jesus, sweet paradise. If Jesus is with you, no enemy can harm you. He who finds Jesus, finds a treasury of goodness, good beyond all goodness. And he who loses Jesus, suffers loss beyond loss, more than the whole world. He who lives without Jesus is wretchedly poor; and wondrously rich is he who lives with Jesus. . . .

Chapter Eleven: How few are those who love the cross of Jesus Christians pretend to love Jesus, Thomas observes, but few are willing to share in his suffering. Jesus has many who now seek his heavenly kingdom, but few willing to bear his cross. He has many who desire consolation, but few who welcome tribulation. He finds many who wish to dine with him, but few who wish to fast with him. All want to rejoice with him, few want to suffer for him.

7. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

175

Many follow Jesus to the breaking of the bread, but few to the drinking from the cup of his passion.41 Many marvel at his miracles, few share in the shame of the cross. Many love Jesus, so long as no danger looms. . . .

Chapter Twelve: The royal road of the holy cross Only by bearing the cross of Jesus and sharing its shame and pain, Thomas insists, will the Christian come to eternal life. Why then do you fear to bear the cross, by which you will gain the kingdom? In the cross is salvation, in the cross life, in the cross protection from your enemies. In the cross a stream of heavenly sweetness, in the cross strength of mind, in the cross spiritual delight. In the cross, the highest virtue, in the cross, perfect holiness. There is no soul’s salvation, nor hope of eternal life, except in the cross. So take up your cross and follow Jesus, and you will enter life eternal. He has led the way for you, burdened by his cross, and for you he died on the cross; so that now you may bear your cross, and seek to die on the cross. Because if you die with him, with him also you will live. And if you share his suffering, you will share his glory. For in the cross is all that exists, and on your dying all depends; and there is no other road to life, and to true peace within, except the road of the holy cross, and the daily exercise of death. Go where you will, see whatever you wish: and you will not discover a higher road above, nor a surer road below, than the road of the holy cross. . . . The cross then is always ready, and waits for you everywhere. You cannot escape it, wherever you may run to, because wherever you may go, you bear it with you always, and you will always find it with you. Look above, look below; look without, look within; and in all these places, you will find the cross. You must everywhere endure all things if you are to have peace within and merit an eternal crown.

41. passion: a reference to the Last Supper, when Jesus broke the bread of his body and poured the wine of his blood, signifying the death he was going to suffer; the same cup that Jesus asked to be taken from him at Gethsemane: cf. Luke 22:42. Gethsemane was the garden just outside Jerusalem where Jesus spent a night of anguished prayer before his arrest.

176

Chapter 5. Christian Faith and European Culture

If you willingly carry the cross, it will carry you, and take you to the longed-for end which is the end of suffering, although here there will be no end to it. If you bear the cross unwillingly, it will be a burden, and will weigh on you greatly; and yet you must bear it. If you cast off one cross, you will surely find another one, and heavier perhaps. Do you think you can evade what no mortal can escape? Which one of all the saints on this earth was ever without cross and tribulation? Not even our Lord Jesus Christ was for even an hour free of the pain of his passion: while he still lived, he said: Christ must suffer and rise from the dead, and then enter his glory.42 How then can you seek any other road than this royal road, which is the road of the holy cross?

42. A conflation of two passages from Luke: “and he said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day’” (Luke 24:46), and “Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26).

Chapter 6 An Age of Courts and Castles

Introduction Outside of the monasteries and cathedrals, the centers of literary production in post-Roman Europe were the courts of the warrior kings and nobles who repelled waves of invasion and secured possession of the land. This literature was secular, though interlaced with Christian themes, and in time, it came to be written in the vernacular languages that emerged from the confluence of Germanic tongues with Latin, although initially Latin was the only language capable of written expression. The first major secular work of medieval literature is the Latin biography of the first major European monarch: Charles (742–814), reigning from 768 as king of the Franks (one of the Germanic tribes that had gained dominance in Europe) and from 800, as emperor of the Romans. His biographer Einhard (c. 770–840) called him “Carolus Magnus,” or “Charles the Great,” and he has since been known as Charlemagne, the French form of that name. The title “Great” seems well deserved. By constant war and strenuous diplomacy, he vastly increased the realm of the Frankish people, which expanded over nearly the whole of western and central Europe, its borders anticipating those of the European Union today. He was the benefactor of many monasteries and churches, and built the magnificent cathedral of Aachen, his capital, on the model of the Byzantine cathedral in Ravenna (Italy). Most important for the later development of European culture, he launched the Carolingian Renaissance (“Carolingian” deriving from Carolus, the Latin form of Charles), a resurgence of intellectual and artistic life marked especially by the transcription of nearly all that survives of ancient Latin literature. The ninth-century manuscripts produced in Carolingian monasteries are often the earliest exemplars of the classical texts that are the foundation of European literature and thought. Einhard, too, was a remarkable figure. Spotted early for his talents, he was brought to Charlemagne’s court, remaining there and in the court of Louis the Pious, Charles’s successor, until he retired in 828. In a crude and violent world, Einhard had mastered a pure Latinity, and avoiding the alternative model of the saints’ lives that were everywhere in circulation, took as his model the first-century Roman author Suetonius, a contemporary of Tacitus (see Chapter 3, Text 7), who had crafted the elegant Lives of the Twelve 177

178

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

Caesars, a set of concise biographies of the Roman rulers from Julius Caesar to Domitian. But Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne, composed probably between 817 and 836, is no mere imitation. A member of Charlemagne’s inner circle from 791 to 814, Einhard witnessed firsthand the events that transpired and observed the charismatic monarch himself; and for the years before his own arrival at court, he could draw on numerous chronicles and the collections of official documents that Charles had ordered compiled. Highly laudatory, and undoubtedly exaggerated at points, Einhard’s portrait of his beloved king is a rare eyewitness account. Both Charlemagne and Einhard were Franks, one of the many Germanic peoples who had penetrated and dominated most of Europe from the early years of the Common Era. The verse epic Beowulf, composed in Britain between the seventh and the tenth centuries, embodies the heroic ideal of those peoples. It celebrates Beowulf, a Geat from southern Sweden, for whom the poem is named. With his thanes, or followers, Beowulf comes to Heorot, the court of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose realm has been menaced by a man-eating monster. Beowulf vanquishes the monster Grendel with his bare hands, displaying not only superhuman strength but also keen intelligence. Then he vanquishes Grendel’s mother, who emerges from her forest lair to avenge the murder of her son. Beowulf slays her with a magical sword after his earthly one disintegrates mid-battle. Honored and rewarded by Hrothgar, Beowulf returns to the land of the Geats, where he will reign as king. Fifty years pass, when he must face a third challenger: a fire-breathing dragon, whose horde of gold has been disturbed and so runs rampant in the land. Aged now and uncertain, Beowulf confronts and kills the beast, but is mortally wounded in the process. Beowulf dies and is mourned by all, his funeral pyre erected over the heap of the dragon’s gold. This story depicting a pre-Christian Germanic society was composed in Old English—one of the vernaculars that would take form in these early centuries, the platforms on which modern European languages would rise. It was likely sung for years before it was written down. The author who did so was an unknown but evidently a Christian Anglo-Saxon scribe, probably a monk, who still remembered and understood the culture of an earlier age, as seen by his accurate report of sixth-century historical figures and events named in the poem. The Angles and Saxons, Germans closely related to other peoples of northern Europe and Scandinavia, had conquered Britain in the sixth century and were soon converted to Christianity. Composed earlier, Beowulf survives in a single manuscript dated between 975 and 1025. It consists of 3,182 lines of alliterative verse—verse lines bound together not by rhyme but by the patterned repetition of sounds—in which each line had two parts.

Introduction

179

The epic Song of Roland, like Beowulf, composed some three centuries after the historical events it celebrates, brings us back to the emperor Charlemagne. According to Einhard’s Life of that monarch (chapter 9), Charlemagne suffered only one defeat in his forty-seven years of nearly constant warfare: in 778 at Roncevaux (Spanish Roncesvalles), a pass in the western Pyrenees, where a small rearguard protecting the baggage train laden with valuables was attacked by Basque rebels1 and massacred to a man. Over the next three centuries, the story was told in song by the minstrels who circulated through the European courts, entertaining the lords and their households. It was composed between 1040 and 1115 in 4,002 lines of Old French—another early European vernacular—perhaps by Turoldus, whose name appears on the earliest extant manuscript, which is dated between 1129 and 1165. It may be considered the earliest chanson de geste (verse epic, or song, of great deeds), a characteristic genre of French and Spanish medieval literature. The story of Roland underwent three major transformations between 778 and its composition three centuries later. Charlemagne, who was thirtysix years old in Einhard’s account, is now an iconic emperor, old and benevolent, with a white beard. Roland, the leader of the unfortunate rearguard, who was a little-known prefect of the Breton march, is now Charlemagne’s nephew and a valiant knight, the greatest in Christendom. And the Basque rebels are now reborn as Saracens,2 followers of Mohammed—an identification likely made because most of Iberia, as a result of the Islamic conquest begun in 711, was in fact controlled by Muslim rulers, and because the Song of Roland was composed about the time the First Crusade was launched in response to the Islamic advance into the Levant. In its ultimate form, the Song of Roland encapsulates the values of the knightly elite who dominated European society: bravery in battle, unsparing service to one’s lord, and the quest for honor. Like Charlemagne, “El Cid”—meaning the chief, or master, or lord— was a real historical figure of imposing magnitude: Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1040–1099). Though he did not build an empire, he was a warrior, adventurer, and strategist of genius, who won many victories in the early stages of the Reconquista (Reconquest) of Iberia by the Christian kingdoms that the Islamic incursion of 711 had pushed back to the Pyrenees Mountains, the northern limit of the peninsula. Allied at times with Christian— 1. Basque rebels: The Basques are a distinct ethnic group speaking a non-Indo-European language, still pre-Christian at the time of Charlemagne, that are indigenous to the northwestern region of modern Spain. 2. Saracens: the name that, from the seventh century through the era of the Crusades, Europeans gave to the Muslims, adherents of Islam, who invaded the lands of the former Roman Empire.

180

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

at others with Muslim—rulers, he protected his family, maintained his loyal followers, and secured a realm of his own, the great port city of Valencia. Even during his lifetime, songs and stories circulated about El Cid. About a century later, they were composed in Old Spanish—the third primordial vernacular encountered in this chapter—as the Cantar del mio Cid (Song of My Cid), the earliest Spanish epic. The first extant manuscript, gathered in a fourteenth-century miscellany, bears what may be the name of its author, Per Abbad (Abbot Peter), and the date of composition, 1207. It contains about 3,700 lines of assonant verse, divided into three books, or cantos (cantares) and in 152 stanzas (tiradas) in all. Along with the Song of Roland, the Song of My Cid is considered to be one of the greatest of the chansons de geste. From the heroic deeds of Roland and El Cid, mounted on their brawny steeds, swords bloodied to the hilt, attention turns now to the unheroic lays, or verse tales, of Marie de France (active c. 1155–c. 1189), in which knights are conquered by the passion of love and ladies long for sexual fulfillment. Her twelve tales—based, as she tells us, on the songs (called lais, or lays) of Breton3 minstrels whose stories and themes bespoke their Celtic past—are told in deceptively simple singsong verse, yet are complex in their emotional and cultural message. In them, heterosexual love is an overmastering force that smashes familial bonds, hierarchies of power, and church strictures, while subordinating powerful men to women whose sexuality makes them more powerful still. Strikingly, Marie is a female author, the first medieval woman known to have written in a secular genre; she stirs remembrance of the Greek woman poet Sappho (see Chapter 2, Text 3), whose antiheroic lyrical celebration of sexual love responded unapologetically to the Homeric celebration of great deeds. Probably born in France, Marie lived much of her life in AngloNorman England,4 where several copies of her lays circulated, including the most complete manuscript version. Marie may also have written other works, including a collection of fables and two lives of saints. Marie’s lays exemplify a different strand of medieval literature than the chansons de geste, one centered on heterosexual passion, often adulterous and in defiance of all norms, and is a literary tradition that endures into modern times. Like the chansons, these lays, and the much longer romans (romances) that date from the same era, were performed for knights and ladies in their courts and castles. Centuries later, audiences of that ilk would read for themselves works descended from those lays and romances: stories 3. Breton: from Brittany; a region of northwestern France whose inhabitants were closely related to the Celtic inhabitants of Britain pushed back to Wales, Scotland, and Ireland by the sixth-century invasion of Germanic Angles and Saxons. 4. For several centuries following England’s conquest by the Norman William the Conqueror, its aristocratic elite was French-speaking.

Introduction

181

and novels whose major themes were courtship, seduction, and consummation of romantic love, or its thwarting. The lays of Marie de France, like the romances of her contemporaries, drew on the ideology of courtly love theorized in Provence, an independent region in the south of modern France, not as yet incorporated into the French kingdom and possessed of a distinctive culture. The nobles who presided in its major courts, which housed companies of young knights who served their lords in military ventures and as companions in the hunt, were entertained at times of leisure by itinerant poet-musicians, called troubadours, who sang songs of love. In some cases, the nobleman himself was poet and entertainer, as was William IX, Duke of Aquitaine (1071–1127). William was the grandfather of Eleanor (1122–1204), later queen, successively, of France and of England, and also, at her own court in Aquitaine, the patron of love poets. Eleanor, in turn, was the mother of Marie, Countess of Champagne (1145–1198), a poet herself, who likewise, at Troyes, ruled over a court where Provençal theories of courtly love were honed to their perfection. Troubadours trained at Marie’s court—notably Chrétien de Troyes, the renowned author of the Arthurian romances Lancelot and Perceval—broadcast the courtly love ethic across Europe; and the priest Andreas Capellanus (“Andrew the Chaplain”) inscribed it in his Latin treatise the Art of Courtly Love. Both the Middle French romances and the Latin treatise were immensely popular and had an enduring impact on later European literature. Andreas Capellanus (active late-twelfth century) wrote the Art of Courtly Love at Marie’s prompting, and perhaps even at her dictation, between 1184 and 1186 (an extraordinarily precise dating for this era). Like other clerics— a caste distinguished by its literacy—Andreas had been trained in a basic set of classical texts, including the Art of Love by the Roman poet Ovid, previously encountered as the author of the Metamorphoses (see Chapter 3, Text 3). Ovid’s treatise advocated heterosexual love, aggressively pursued, almost always adulterous, and to later Christian readers, shockingly immoral. Many of its precepts found their way into Provençal culture and were adapted to that society. Andreas himself was not a troubadour but a cleric who seems to have been only a reluctant vehicle of the courtly love principles he documents—his reluctance revealed in the third book of his treatise, a retraction of all that was said in the first two, amid a pastiche of misogynous clichés. The first two books, however, of which excerpts are given in this chapter, faithfully report the values of Marie’s court at Troyes. Here love relationships understood to be sexual, heterosexual, and adulterous existed, or were imagined to exist, between young men of noble rank and ladies often of higher rank—such that the male lover offered service and obedience to his beloved lady in a pattern that mimicked the feudal relationship between lesser and

182

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

greater members of the nobility. Book one offers general characterizations of love, and a set of exemplary dialogues between pairs of lovers of various social conditions. Book two, which assumes the love relationship has been consummated, explores how love may increase, decrease, or finally cease to be. It concludes, famously, with thirty-one “rules of love” that encapsulate the Provençal ideology. The Art of Courtly Love is a Latin treatise strikingly unlike the Latin biography of Charlemagne with which this chapter opens; yet the two works share the language of church and state that was the substratum of the European linguistic culture. In between Einhard’s work and Capellanus’s, as has been seen here, works derived from verse materials previously transmitted orally and in song, composed in languages prefiguring modern English, French, and Spanish, were the early creations of secular European literature.

$$$ 1. Einhard, Life of Charlemagne (c. 817–836) Einhard wrote his Life of Charlemagne not long after that monarch died, “rather than permit the remarkable life of this most magnificent king . . . and his glorious deeds . . . to be lost in the shadows of oblivion.” It is structured in imitation of the lives of the Caesars by Suetonius, dealing first with wars and foreign policy, then with the king’s personal character and cultural activities, and finally with his death and legacy. The passages here include Einhard’s statement of intention, the king’s conquest of Saxony (northern Germany), his patronage of literature and the arts, and his Christian benefactions. They culminate with the famous scene of his coronation as emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III.

Life of Charlemagne Preface Einhard will undertake to write this brief life of Charlemagne although other learned men of the realm, intent on their own fame, pay more attention to the heroic deeds of ancient times. Yet I have not held back from this task, since I was aware that no one could write of these events more accurately than I could, since I was there myself, and by the testimony of my own eyes, as they say, I truly came to know them. Nor could I know for sure whether anyone else would ever set them

1. Einhard, Life of Charlemagne

183

down. In the end I decided to record them in writing to be remembered in posterity, adding to the storehouse of other such accounts, rather than permit the remarkable life of this most magnificent king, the greatest of all others of his age, and his glorious deeds, unlikely to be matched by any others in our time, to be lost in the shadows of oblivion. . . .

7: The Saxon war Charlemagne fought wars all over Europe throughout his forty-seven-year reign, but the pacification of Saxony, an effort sustained over thirty-two years from 772 to 804, was particularly difficult. With the close of [the Italian] war, the Saxon conflict,5 which had been as it were suspended, started up again. No war the Frankish people had undertaken was so difficult, or pursued more tenaciously or fiercely than this one, and for this reason: the Saxons, like nearly all the Germanic tribes, were ferocious by nature, and as they worshiped demons and were hostile to our religion,6 did not hesitate to transgress and desecrate laws both human and divine. Then underlying causes occasioned a disturbance of the peace every day: among them, the boundary between our position and theirs lay on open ground and was nearly always uncertain, except in a few cases where it was marked by deep forests or mountain ridges, so that pillage, assault, and arson, perpetrated by both sides, were incessant. This chaos at last provoked the Franks to put an end to the strategy of retaliation and to engage instead in open war against the enemy. So war was launched against them and waged continuously for thirtythree years, with great ferocity on both sides, but with greater injury to the Saxons than to the Franks. Yet it would have ended sooner, except for the perfidy of the Saxons. It is difficult to say how many times they were defeated and, surrendering to the king, promised to comply with his commands, promptly handed over the hostages demanded of them, and received the legates who were sent to them to discuss peace. They were even, at times, so depressed and dispirited that they promised to give up their demon worship and accept the Christian religion. Yet even while they were at times amenable to these things, they were at the same time always ready to resist them, so that it could not be told which of these paths they were more likely to pursue—from the time the war began scarcely a year went by when they did not swing from acquiescence to defiance. 5. The Saxons were a Germanic people dwelling near the North Sea coast of modern Germany. 6. A prime objective of Charlemagne’s campaign was the Christianization of the Saxons, who still worshiped pagan deities, called “demons” or “devils.”

184

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

But the king’s greatness of soul and the constancy of his mind both in adversity and prosperity were such that their alternations could not defeat him nor deter him from doing what he had set out to do. For he never permitted those who had betrayed their promises to go unpunished, but either he himself or his agents at the head of an armed force exacted vengeance for their perfidy and inflicted a fitting punishment, until, finally, having overcome all those who had resisted and subjected them to his power, he took ten thousand men . . . with their wives and children and resettled them in small groups here and there throughout Gaul and Germany.7 The war that had been waged for so many years came to an end on the terms of peace offered by the king and accepted by the Saxons. The Saxons abandoned their worship of demons and other ancestral rites, accepted the sacraments of the Christian faith and religion, and were united with the Franks to form with them a single people. . . .

15: Charlemagne’s Frankish empire Einhard provides a summary of Charlemagne’s military successes, resulting in an empire that encompassed most of western and central Europe, reaching south beyond the Pyrenees into Iberia and beyond the Alps into Italy, north to the Danish border, and east to the territories of the Slavic peoples. These are the wars fought far and wide which this most powerful king waged wisely and successfully for forty-seven years—the whole span of years that he reigned as king. By so doing, he magnificently enlarged the already great and mighty domain of the Franks that he had inherited from his father Pepin, nearly doubling its expanse. . . . In sum, he subdued and subjugated all the fierce and barbarous German nations, speaking similar languages but varying greatly in dress and customs, who live between the Rhine and the Vistula, and between the Atlantic and the Danube.8 . . .

25: Charlemagne’s Renaissance Einhard describes Charlemagne’s linguistic abilities and his study of the “liberal arts” (perhaps a bit overstated), which in this era referred to the study of seven disciplines, three verbal and four mathematical, based on classical authors. Though Charlemagne was himself illiterate (he never learned to write and may 7. Gaul was the name of the Roman province in the region of modern France; Germany refers to the territories inhabited by Germanic tribes who had flooded into Europe in the last centuries of Roman rule. 8. The Rhine river flows from Switzerland to the North Sea; the Vistula from Poland to the Baltic; the Danube from southern Germany to the Black Sea. The Atlantic Ocean forms Europe’s western border.

1. Einhard, Life of Charlemagne

185

not have been able to read), he was a patron of scholars, many of whom he brought to his court, where they taught others and launched the Carolingian Renaissance. Charles spoke with rich and vigorous eloquence, and could express with great lucidity whatever he wished to say. Not content with just his native language, he energetically sought to learn foreign languages. Of these, he mastered Latin so well that he could speak it as well as his own, though Greek he could understand better than he could speak it. He spoke so fluently that he might even be called verbose. He earnestly promoted the liberal arts, greatly cherishing those who taught them, on whom he bestowed great honors. He studied grammar with the deacon Peter of Pisa, then an old man, while he studied other disciplines with Albinus, surnamed Alcuin, the most learned man to be found anywhere, also a deacon, a Saxon from Britain, with whom he studied rhetoric, dialectic, and especially astronomy, expending great time and effort. He learned how to reckon numbers, and with acute interest earnestly traced the motions of the stars. He also tried to learn to write, keeping wax tablets and notebooks in his bed under the pillows, so that he might practice forming the letters whenever he had a moment—but with little success; he had attempted the task at an unpropitious time, too late in life.

26–27: Charlemagne and Christianity Charlemagne was a zealous Christian. He was also the benefactor of Christian institutions throughout his realm and a patron of building projects including the splendid cathedral at Aachen where he was buried and where subsequent monarchs of the Holy Roman Empire were crowned. Following his father’s example, he defended the papacy, descending to Italy ahead of armies as needed, contributing much wealth, and visiting Rome four times. Charlemagne practiced the Christian religion, in which he had been imbued from infancy, most reverently and zealously. This is why he built an exquisitely beautiful cathedral at Aachen, and adorned it with gold and silver and lamps and gates and doors of solid brass. When columns and marble for this church could not be found elsewhere, he had them brought from Rome and Ravenna.9 He attended church often, both morning and evening, and even in the nighttime, and for early morning mass, so long as health permitted, and exerted himself greatly to see that all worship services were properly performed, often admonishing the sextons not to permit anything unworthy or unclean to be brought in or allowed to remain. He supplied the cathedral 9. Rome, once capital of the western empire, was the seat of the papacy; Ravenna was the administrative capital in Italy of the Byzantine Empire.

186

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

with sacred vessels of gold and silver and procured such a quantity of priestly vestments that not even the caretakers, who were the lowest ranking of the clerical staff, performed their duties in their everyday clothes. He established the highest standards for reading the lessons and singing the Psalms, for he was expert in both himself, although he did not read publicly and sang only softly, and in chorus with others. Charlemagne was deeply committed to assisting the poor to whom he showed an unforced generosity, . . . which he displayed not only in his homeland and in his own realm, but beyond the sea in Syria, Egypt, and Africa—in Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Carthage10—and wherever he heard that Christians lived in poverty, he would send them money out of compassion for their need. It is for this reason, especially, that he sought the friendship of foreign kings, so that he might assist and comfort the Christians living in their domains. He cherished above all other sacred and holy places the church of St. Peter the Apostle11 in Rome, whose treasury was packed with his magnificent gifts of precious gems and gold and silver coin. Innumerable were the gifts that were sent to the popes;12 nor for all the years of his reign did he have a goal more dear than that the city of Rome, by his aid and effort, might regain its former stature, and that he might not only protect and defend the church of St. Peter, but also enrich and adorn it by his wealth so that it exceeded all others. Nonetheless, during the forty-seven years that he reigned, he went there only four times to fulfill his vows and offer up his prayers.

28: Emperor Charlemagne On his last visit to Rome, the especially grateful Pope Leo III bestowed upon him the title of emperor of the Romans—a palpable rebuke to the Eastern Roman empress Irene in Constantinople—crowning Charlemagne with his own hands on Christmas Day, December 25, 800. These were not the only causes of Charlemagne’s last visit to Rome: the severe injuries inflicted on him by the Romans—for they had torn out his eyes and cut out his tongue—compelled Pope Leo to call for the assistance of the 10. Jerusalem was understood to be in the province of Syria, which incorporated what is now Israel; Alexandria was in the province of Egypt; and Carthage (Tunisia) in the Roman province of Africa. 11. The original St. Peter’s Basilica was built in the fourth century under the Emperor Constantine, and was replaced in the sixteenth by the present-day St. Peter’s in the Vatican City. 12. The reigns of Popes Stephen III, Adrian I, and Leo III were contemporary with Charlemagne’s.

2. Beowulf

187

king. Whereupon Charlemagne came to Rome13 to restore the condition of the church, which was in great turmoil, and stayed all winter. This was the moment when he received the titles of Emperor and Augustus.14 He was at first so opposed to this that he later declared that, had he known the pope’s intention, he would not have entered the church on that day, though it was the great festival day of Christmas. Yet he bore with great patience the jealousy aroused [in Constantinople] by the conferral of these titles, which infuriated the Roman imperial state.15 But he conquered their resistance by his magnanimity, a quality that he possessed to a much greater degree than they, and dispatched several legations to them, and in his letters called them “brothers.”

$$$ 2. Beowulf (c. 975–c. 1025) In the selections given here, the Geat warrior Beowulf and his thanes retire for the night at Heorot, the court of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, who has been beset by the monster Grendel, a descendant of the biblical Cain, murderer of his brother and archetype of malice. Grendel attacks, and Beowulf defeats him. Three points are especially noteworthy. The first is the ominous portrayal of Grendel’s arrival: “Now Grendel came / striding the shadows”; “Now Grendel came, / gliding like mist”; “Now Grendel came, / grim and joyless.” The second is the indomitable strength of Beowulf’s arm, which seizes Grendel’s, and will not let it go—the arm of the noble warrior and the arm of the vile monster juxtaposed: having dispatched one victim, Grendel “stretch[es] his stealthy / steel-clawed fingers” toward another; but Beowulf “grab[s] Grendel’s / groping forearm,” and “[t]he ruthless marauder / realize[s] at once / that he had never met / another man / anywhere on earth / with such awesome strength / in his ten fingers”; Beowulf “grasp[s] Grendel / in a grip of steel,” and “the brute’s shoulder . . . gave way / and massive stress / snapped his sinews.” The third is the immediate transformation into poetry of Beowulf’s triumph: a courtier poet “was already at work / blazoning Beowulf’s / brilliant achievement, / composing a poem / of praise, skillfully / weaving its web”—composing the epic that would become Beowulf.16 13. Charlemagne entered Rome on November 24, 800. 14. Imperator and Augustus were titles borne by the Roman emperors. 15. After the deposition of the last western Roman emperor in 476, the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople claimed sole lordship of the empire, a claim the pope defied in crowning Charlemagne. 16. In the translation given here, which ably captures the effect of alliteration, the two parts of each line appear separately in succession.

188

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

Beowulf After a joyful feast, all the warriors retire for the night. Then Grendel comes. Beowulf lay down, burying his face in a rich pillow, while around him his troop of seamen anxiously sank to their rest. Not a man among them imagined he would live to behold his hearth or homeland again, the dear precincts where his days had begun, for they knew that here in this benighted hall the fiend had slaughtered far too many of the men of the Danes. . . . Now Grendel came striding the shadows. The staunch warriors who defended the hall had fallen asleep, all but one. . . . Now Grendel came, gliding like mist across the bleak moorland, bearing God’s wrath. The merciless monster meant to ensnare fresh victims in the fear-stricken hall. He strode rapidly beneath the starless sky until at last Heorot loomed before him, gleaming with gold. . . .

2. Beowulf

189

Now Grendel came, grim and joyless, to the entrance door. Its iron, fire-forged bolts shattered at his bare touch. Raging and ravenous he wrenched open the mouth of the building and his monstrous feet trod on its precious tile-covered floor; in the eerie dark his eyes darted rays of raging red hellfire. . . . But fate would forbid him to eat people ever again after that night, for there lay Hygelac’s kinsman,17 alert and carefully watching how the murderer meant to proceed. Grendel seizes a victim and then approaches the sleeping Beowulf, who awakes and grabs Grendel’s arm with superhuman strength. The two struggle and Grendel’s screams echo throughout the hall arousing the terrified warriors from their sleep. The monster was not minded to dawdle but swooped suddenly on a sleeping man; slobbering with greed he slit him open, guzzled the blood gushing from his veins and gulped down great gobbets of flesh; 17. Hygelac’s kinsman: Beowulf, Hygelac’s nephew.

190

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

he polished him off completely, hands and feet included. The fiend stepped closer, stretching his stealthy steel-clawed fingers toward a still figure who stirred suddenly and braced himself, then sat bolt upright and grabbed Grendel’s groping forearm. The ruthless marauder realized at once that he had never met another man anywhere on earth with such awesome strength in his ten fingers; but the terror that froze his heart was of no help in escaping. Frightened now, he longed to flee to the darkness of his devils’ den; this dreadful encounter was nothing like those he had known before! Beowulf recalled his boasting words at last night’s banquet; he leapt to his feet and grasped Grendel in a grip of steel. Fingers shattered as the fiend made a lunge for the doorway, longing to get clear; the ogre intended, if only he could, to flee to the fens; his fingers, he knew,

2. Beowulf

191

were in his foe’s power. It was a fateful trip the twilight prowler had taken to Heorot! . . . The sounds grew louder, pulsing eerily; panic and dread harrowed the Danes who heard the noise, the wild wailing through the wall of the hall, the ghastly screams of God’s enemy, the horrid captive of hell keening, howling in defeat, held by Beowulf. A man with more might was not living in those days of this world. . . . Beowulf does not release his grip and Grendel’s arm is ripped off. Mortally wounded, the monster “felt death upon him,” and returns to his “dismal abode.” Beowulf nails Grendel’s arm at Heorot’s front gate. And now the brute’s shoulder could stand the enormous strain no longer; his muscles gave way and massive stress snapped his sinews. Success in battle was given Beowulf and Grendel fled, mortally hurt, to his marsh hideout, his dismal abode, doomed and despairing; he knew that his hours

192

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

were numbered and felt death upon him. The Danes, however, were filled with delight when the fight was over. . . . The hero was pleased with his night’s labors; he had now fulfilled the mighty promise he had made the Danes, ending their years of agony and wreaking ready and rough vengeance for the violence and vast cruelty they had suffered so long, as could be seen by them all when the noble Geat nailed Grendel’s arm and shoulder, all of the monster’s hideous grip, to Heorot’s gable. . . . The warriors celebrate Beowulf ’s victory. A court poet, one of Hrothgar’s retinue, already begins to compose the epic tale of Beowulf ’s amazing feat: a consummate poet who knew and could sing numberless tales, could relate them in linked language, in words arrayed properly, and who was already at work blazoning Beowulf ’s brilliant achievement, composing a poem of praise, skillfully weaving its web.

$$$

3. Song of Roland

193

3. Song of Roland (c. 1040–c. 1115) Roland commands a rearguard of 20,000 knights, when they are set upon in a narrow mountain pass by a much larger force of 100,000 Saracens. At the dramatic center of the whole work, as of this brief excerpt, are the repeated exhortations to Roland to blow his Olifant, his horn,18 and summon Charlemagne and his army to turn back to rescue the beleaguered rearguard. Three times Roland refuses the plea of his companion Oliver: it would be shameful to seek assistance, and more honorable to fight to the last and die. As the battle worsens for the French, however, another companion, the Archbishop Turin,19 again implores Roland to blow the horn: they will surely all die, but at least Charlemagne will come to bury the dead with proper reverence. So Roland blows—his three heroic horn blasts themselves a “song of Roland,” a microcosm of the larger epic—and Charlemagne comes, too late: his 20,000 brave knights are dead. He has the bodies of Roland, Oliver, and the Archbishop prepared and taken home, and vows to avenge the death of Roland.20

Song of Roland 66 The valleys are dark, and high up loom the cliffs. The rocks are shadowed, the narrow passes grim. The king’s knights ride all day, and their good mood slips. From fifteen miles you can hear their chain mail clink. . . . Now they remember the homesteads where they lived, The noble wives they had, the pretty girls. There’s not a one who doesn’t weep for pity. . . .

79 The pagans21 dress in chain mail to the thighs. . . . Their shields are wide, The lances that they carry are the pride Of Spain’s Valencia.22 Their ensigns rise 18. Olifant: derived from “elephant,” a horn made from an elephant’s tusk. 19. Archbishops and other clerics often bore arms in medieval warfare. 20. The translation used here captures the assonant verse of the original, in which the lines of each stanza (laisse) end with the same vowel sound. 21. In the poem, Roland’s opponents are Saracens, or Muslims; they were incorrectly considered to be “pagans.” 22. Valencia: port city and commercial hub.

194

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

And flutter scarlet, blue, and white. . . . The day is beautiful. The sun is bright. Every rider’s armor glints and shines. A thousand trumpets sound, and their music flies Across the ridges to the rearguard lines. “I think,” says Oliver, “we’ll get to fight With Saracens, my friend.” Roland replies, “God grant we do! Our business is to bide Here for our king. . . . —Frenchmen, prepare yourselves to strike and strike!”. . .

81 Oliver observes from a high mound And sees the land of Spain stretch to the south And Spaniards swarming toward where he looks out. . . . The crowd Of regiments is more than he can count Or measure. . . .

82 Oliver says, “The pagans I have seen! Never has anyone seen more than these. Their vanguard shows a hundred thousand shields; Their helms are strapped and their chain mail gleams. . . . Now for a battle, vicious beyond belief. —Frenchmen! Take strength from God and victory Is in our hands! Do not give up the field!” . . .

83 Oliver says, “The pagan power is more By many thousands than our little force. Friend Roland, lift up and wind your horn. Charles will hear it and ride back from the north.” Roland replies, “I’d be a fool to throw Honor away and lose in France my glory. With Durendal23 I mean to strike strong blows Till the blade runs blood. . . .” 23. Durendal: Roland’s sword, given to him by Charlemagne.

3. Song of Roland

84 “Roland, dear friend, sound Olifant. Its din Will summon far-off Charles. He will not linger, But hurry back with all his barons with him To rescue us.” Roland says, “God forbid A deed of mine bring shame upon my kin And lovely France be shamed for what I did. With Durendal I mean to strike until Its long steel blade is bloody to the hilt. . . .”

85 “Wind your horn Olifant, Roland dear friend! King Charles will hear us where the mountains end And ride to our rescue with the valiant French.” Roland says, “God forbid that it be said By any man alive that infidels Drove me to horn blowing! Not one breath Of blame will reach my kindred. In the press Of battle I will strike and strike again With Durendal, a thousand strokes and then Seven hundred as the blade runs red. . . .”

86 Oliver says, “I don’t see any blame! All I see is Saracens from Spain Flooding across the mountains and the plains, The meadows, hills, and valleys. Look how great The enemy army is. Look and compare Our little company.” Roland exclaims, “But my desire is great! God and his angels Save me from causing France to be dispraised! I’d rather die. Better be dead then shamed! The harder we hit, the greater love from Charlemagne.”

87 Roland is valiant. Oliver is wise. Both are marvelously noble knights. Now they’re on horseback, ready for the fight. . . . “Look,” says Oliver, “at their front lines. They’re close, and Charles is farther all the time.

195

196

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

You didn’t blow your Olifant, for pride. If Charles were here, our men would come out right. . . .” Roland: “Don’t waste your breath on bad advice. . . . We’ll win the melees and the single fights.”

88 When Roland sees the battle is impending, He grows more dangerous than lion or leopard. “Oliver!” he calls. “Hear me, you Frenchmen! . . . The Emperor of France, when he selected Us for his twenty thousand—he expected No cowardice from any that he left here. . . . Thrust with your spears! With Durendal, my present From Charlemagne, I’ll strike their regiments, And if I die, who owns my good sword next Will know that once a worthy knight possessed it!” . . .

91 Count Roland, leading twenty thousand French, On Veillantif, his swift warhorse, has led The rearguard through the Spanish passages. He is armed and in armor, handsome, confident. With a firm grip, he points his lance to heaven. . . .

92 “I’m done with talk,” says Oliver at last. “You didn’t care to blow your Olifant, Or care for Charles himself, that great good man. He’s not to blame. He thinks we’re through the pass. . . . —Lord barons! Hold the field of battle!” . . . A loud cheer rises from the rearguard ranks. . . . Each spurs his warhorse forward in a dash To strike the first foe with his lance. . . . Nor do the pagans fear the men from France. Frenchmen and pagans meet with a loud clash. . . .

105 Roland rides wherever the battle’s roughest, With Durendal, attacking, slashing, thrusting, Distributing death, trampling enemies under. . . .

3. Song of Roland

110 What a marvelous and bitter fight! Roland, Oliver! They strike with skill and might. . . . And every Frenchman thrusts and strikes and smites. Pagans by the hundreds—thousands!—die. . . . But now the battle turns and the French face defeat.

127 Roland sees his loyal barons down. He looks around to Oliver and shouts, “Brother! What do you think, dear noble count? Look at them all fallen, these men of ours. Poor lovely France, to have to do without So many valiant knights!” . . .

129 Roland says, “This battle’s getting hard. I’ll wind my horn and send news up to Charles.” Oliver says, “That wouldn’t show much valor. You wouldn’t blow your horn when all this started, Although I asked. If Charles were here, no harm Would come to us. It’s not their fault they’re far and riding ever farther. . . .”

131 Hearing the two friends quarrel, Archbishop Turpin Kicks forward with his mother-of-pearl spurs And rides between the two of them to urge, “Sir Roland, please! And you, Sir Oliver! Don’t turn against each other now. It’s certain Winding your Olifant will not defer Our dying, but it will, when it is heard, Avenge our deaths. Blow for the king’s return! . . . Our French will get down from their steeds and search, Looking for us about the trodden earth. They’ll find us, dead and tattered, and confer Our bodies back to France. . . . We will be buried

197

198

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

In holy ground within the walls of churches And not feed dogs, wild pigs, scavenger birds.” Roland replies, “You give good counsel, sir.”

132 Roland lifts up his Olifant and winds That ivory clarion with all his might. The road to the North is long. The hills are high. The horn blast echoes and re-echoes thirty miles. Charlemagne hears it. So do all his knights. “Our men back there,” he shouts, “they’re in a fight!” . . .

133 Despite the pain, Count Roland eagerly grasps And winds his horn with all the strength he has. Blood surges from his mouth. The pressure cracks His temples open and the blood spurts. The horn blast Rings out for miles across the craggy lands. Charlemagne hears it from beyond the pass. . . .

134 Count Roland winds his horn. Mouth bleeds. Blood trickles Out of his temples, and the pressure cinches His head with pain. The mountain crags are ringing. Charles hears the sound. The Frenchmen stop to listen. . . . The French fight to the last, pressing the enemy back. The Saracens hear the horns sounding the approach of Charlemagne with the main force and flee. Both Oliver and the Archbishop Turpin die bravely. With his last strength, Roland gathers their two bodies together and awaits his own death.

175 Beneath a pine tree, Roland lays his head, Face still toward Spain. How much he recollects! The countries that he conquered and subjected, The men of France from whom he is descended, And Charlemagne, who cherished him and fed him. He cannot help but weep as he remembers. But now he must recall himself, confessing

3. Song of Roland

199

His sins to God, and begging for His mercy. . . .. Then Roland rests His head upon his arm, clasps hands together, And goes on further to his end. God sends His cherubim. . . . They descend And carry Roland’s soul to Him in Heaven. . . . Charlemagne arrives at Roncevaux to find Roland and the entire rearguard dead. Although the others are buried on the site, he has the bodies of Roland, Oliver, and Archbishop Turpin gathered, their hearts ceremonially removed, as was the custom, and their bodies splendidly accoutered to be brought back to France. He vows that he will avenge Roland’s death, and leads his army home.

212 The emperor holds Roland back, and with him, Oliver, and Turpin the archbishop. Surgeons open their ribs in front of him, Remove their hearts, and wrap them in soft silk, Then place them in a small, white marble crypt. They wash the three knights’ heads and trunks and limbs Lovingly with wine and spiced elixirs And wrap them carefully in soft deerskins. . . . Over the three, they lay Galatan silk.24 . . .

226 Down from his steed the emperor descends And lies down prone upon the grassy meadow, Looking east to where the sun ascends. Deep from his heart he prays to God and says, “True Father, today stand by me and defend me, . . . Be with me Lord today, in love be present, And in Your mercy grant that I avenge The death of Roland, Roland, my dear nephew!” He finishes his prayer, stands up again, Makes the sign of the cross for God’s full blessing, And mounts. . . . He sits erect, 24. Galatan silk: a precious textile, probably from Galata, outside of Constantinople.

200

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

Handsome, hardy, confident, majestic. . . . Well seated on his horse, he guides its steps. The trumpets sound behind him and ahead, But Olifant rings out above the rest. . . .

$$$ 4. Song of My Cid (c. 1140–1207) In these selections from the second of the three parts of the epic, El Cid prospers while in exile, and achieves three of his goals: reconciliation with King Alfonso VI who had banned him from his native Castile;25 reunification with his wife and daughter, who had remained behind; and acquisition of a valuable domain, the prosperous port city of Valencia. He has entered Moorish territory,26 conducting profitable raids that enrich him and his loyal band, and terrify the natives. Now his sights are set on Valencia, which falls to him after a nine-month siege. He dispatches his emissary Minaya Álvar Fáñez to tell King Alfonso that Valencia had been taken for Christendom and to ask that monarch to permit his wife, Doña Jimena, and two daughters, who had taken refuge in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, to join him in the city he now ruled. Alfonso acknowledges the great achievements of El Cid and sends his wife and daughters to him. El Cid receives them joyfully in Valencia, displaying to them his new realm—which he must then soon defend from the attack of the king of Morocco. Notable features of this straightforward narrative are the display of feudal relationships and chivalric values, seen in El Cid’s deference to his lord, the king who had exiled him; his solicitude for his wife and daughters; his benevolence to his loyal followers; and, like a drumbeat, repeated demonstrations of peerless military prowess.27

Song of My Cid El Cid has conquered many of the towns and lands around Valencia, and now lays siege that city.

25. Castile: a Spanish Christian kingdom in the north of the Iberian Peninsula. 26. Moor: refers to the Arab and Berber Muslim peoples, adherents of Islam, who invaded Iberia in the eighth century and established flourishing states, dismantled in 1492, their domains having been steadily reduced during the centuries-long Reconquest pursued by the Spanish Christian kingdoms. 27. The prose translation used here of the original 152 verse stanzas clearly explicates the historical narrative, which in this work is paramount.

4. Song of My Cid

201

74 Wasting no time, Don Rodrigo [El Cid] headed straight for Valencia and immediately began to lay siege to it. He surrounded it completely, leaving no way to escape: he blocked off every way out, and every way in. . . . He held the city to a time limit, to see if anybody might come to their aid. Nine whole months he laid siege to the town, . . . and when the tenth month came around, they had no choice but to surrender. Great was the rejoicing all around, when the Cid took Valencia and entered into the town! All those who had fought on foot instantly became knights, while the gold and the silver—whoever could count it all up? They were all rich men now, all those there with him. The loot is divided, and El Cid takes a count of his forces; then he dispatches Minaya on a legation to King Alfonso, his lord, who had banished him from Castile.

77 “If you agree, Minaya, and if it isn’t too much trouble, I’d like to send you to Castile, where we hold lands, to see my liege-lord, King Alfonso. From this plunder that we’ve won here, I want you to go and give him one hundred horses. Then kiss his hand on my behalf, and earnestly entreat him—if it pleases his majesty—to let me take my wife and daughters out of Castile and bring them here. I’ll send for them; you, meanwhile, learn this message by heart: ‘A company will be sent to escort My Cid’s wife and two young daughters, so that they will be brought here in most honorable fashion, to these foreign lands that we have managed to conquer.’” Minaya then replied: “Gladly.” Minaya comes to the court of King Alfonso.

81 King Alfonso had just come out from mass, when Minaya Álvar Fáñez appeared at just the right moment and fell to his knees in front of all the people. Right at King Alfonso’s feet he fell, expressing grievous sorrow. Kissing the king’s hands, he spoke these timely words:

82 “A favor, Lord Alfonso, I beg of you, for the love of God! My Cid the Campeador28 kisses your hands, kisses your hands and feet, as befits so 28. Campeador: an untranslatable term, roughly “master of the battlefield.”

202

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

fine a lord. He begs you grant him this favor, so help you God. You cast him out from the land, and he remains in disgrace with you. Although in a strange country, he does the best he can. . . . [Minaya details El Cid’s conquests.] Along with all these places, he is also now lord of Valencia. . . . Great are the spoils that the Creator has granted him, and behold, here before you, the proof of it. . . : one hundred horses, stout and swift, all fully harnessed with saddles and bridles—kissing your hands, he bids you accept them as a gift. He still considered himself your vassal, and holds you to be his lord.” Raising his right hand, the king crossed himself: “Concerning these great spoils the Campeador has won . . . I rejoice in my heart, and rejoice as well at the Campeador’s exploits. I hereby accept these horses he sends me as a gift.”. . . Then Minaya spoke out boldly: “The Cid begs a favor of you, if it please your majesty, on behalf of his wife, Doña Jimena, and of his two daughters. He begs that they might leave the monastery where he left them, and go join the good Campeador in Valencia.” Immediately the king answered: “Granted with all my heart. I will have them supplied with provisions as long as they are within my lands, and will see to it that they are protected from all shame, harm, or dishonor. After the noble ladies cross the border of my kingdom, look to serve them as best you can, you and the Campeador. . . .” Minaya leaves the king and goes to the monastery of San Pedro to collect El Cid’s wife and daughters.

83 Minaya made his way to San Pedro, where the ladies were staying. Great indeed was the rejoicing as they saw him arrive! Minaya got down from his horse and . . . turned to the ladies: “My deepest respects, my lady Jimena. God keep you from all harm, and likewise both your daughters. My Cid sends you greetings, from the place where he now lives. I left him in good health, and in possession of great riches. The king has graciously deigned to release you to me, so that I may conduct you to Valencia, of which we are now the rightful lords. If the Cid could only see you again, safe and sound, he would be overjoyed, and his sorrows would be over.” Doña Jimena replied: “The Creator will it so!” . . . Minaya and his men escort the ladies to Valencia.

4. Song of My Cid

203

84 Amid great rejoicing and glorious tidings they approached to within three leagues of Valencia.

85 The message came to Valencia, to My Cid, the man born in a lucky hour. Never in all his life had he known such joy. For now he had news of those he loved most in all the world. . . . My Cid ordered all the men in his household to keep watch over the citadel, the town’s lofty towers, all its gates, and all roads in and out. He then sent for his horse Babieca, which he had newly won in battle. . . . El Cid puts on a display of horsemanship for the ladies.

86 At the end of his ride, the Cid got down from his horse, and went over to his wife and two daughters. When Doña Jimena saw him, she fell to her knees in front of him: “Thank you, Campeador, you who girt on sword in a lucky hour! You have saved me from many shameful indignities. Now, behold me here, along with both your daughters—thanks to you and to God they are good girls, well brought up.” The Cid hugged his wife and daughters tight, as they all wept tears of joy. . . . Hear now what he said, the man born in a lucky hour: “You, my dear and honored wife, and both my daughters, my very heart and soul: come with me into this city of Valencia, this heritage I have won for you.” Mother and daughters kissed his hands, and entered with him into Valencia, amid general rejoicing and acclaim.

87 My Cid took them with him into the citadel. There he took them up to the very top of the highest tower. From that vantage point, shining eyes looked all around. They saw how Valencia lay around them on one side, and beheld on the other the blue expanse of the sea . . . and lifted up their hands in prayer, thanking God for a prize so rich and great. . . . Meanwhile, the king of Morocco is on his way to retake Valencia.

204

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

89 News of these developments soon reached My Cid.

90 “Thanks be to the creator and to our Holy Father! All the wealth that I have won, I see before my eyes. I have won Valencia with the sweat of my brow, and now hold it by right of possession. Nothing short of death will make me give it up. Thanks to the Creator and to our Holy Mother Mary, I now have my wife and daughters here with me. A piece of good luck now comes my way, from the lands beyond the sea. I must now take up arms. I have no choice. Now my wife and daughters will see me fight, and see how we win a place for ourselves here in these foreign lands, and see for themselves, with their own eyes, how our bread is won.” He took his wife and daughters up into the citadel. Lifting up their eyes, they saw all the tents set up. “What is all this, Cid, the Creator be with you?” “There, there, my beloved wife! Don’t worry! All this means more wealth for us, a marvelous fortune—no sooner do you arrive, then these infidels show up to give you a present! . . . Now then, my wife, stay in this palace, or even up here in the citadel if you like. Don’t be afraid at seeing me in combat. By God’s favor, and that of Holy Mary, our mother, my heart now soars because you are here with me. I am bound to win this fight.”. . . The battle begins.

95 My Cid charged forth, fully armed and equipped, on his horse Babieca. Bearing their battle standard high, they sallied out from Valencia. Four thousand men less thirty went forth at the Cid’s side, eagerly attacking the fifty thousand Moors. . . . They routed the enemy. . . . Wielding his spear with one hand and his sword with the other, blood dripping down to his elbows, My Cid killed so many Moors you could not even count them. . . . Fifty thousand prisoners were counted, for no more than a hundred and four had gotten away. My Cid’s companies had plundered the field, and the captured gold and silver amounted to three thousand marks. As for the rest of the loot, there was too much to count. My Cid was happy indeed, and all his vassals with him, that with God’s favor they had won the field. With the king of Morocco thus defeated, the

5. Marie de France, Lanval

205

Cid left Álvar Fáñez in charge of everything and went back into Valencia with a hundred of his knights. . . . The ladies welcomed him back, for they had been eagerly awaiting his return. My Cid halted in front of them, reining in his horse. “Most humbly I salute you, ladies. I have won you a great prize, for while you held Valencia, I have prevailed in the field. This has been God’s will, and that of all His saints: that to celebrate your arrival so great a prize has been granted us. Do you see the sword, all bloody, and my horse, all covered with sweat? This is how Moors are vanquished in the field. Praying to the Creator to let me live on yet another year or two, you will surely gain in honor, and men will kiss your hands.” This My Cid said as he got down from his horse. When they beheld him, dismounted and standing there before them, the ladies-in-waiting, his two daughters, and his noble wife, all fell to their knees in front of the Campeador. “We are in your hands, and may you live many more years!” . . .

$$$ 5. Marie de France, Lanval (c. 1155–1189) About one-third of Marie de France’s fifth lay, Lanval, is given here, exemplifying the courtly setting, chivalric customs, and erotic themes that characterize the collection. The knight Lanval, a king’s son from a foreign land, is despondent at King Arthur’s court, as the monarch dislikes him. He wanders off into the country and encounters a fairy queen, scantily clad, who invites him into her bed and bestows many favors upon him—asking only that he pledge himself to secrecy. Back at court, Arthur’s queen, Guinevere, professes her love for Lanval and he rejects her advances, pleading that he loves another more beautiful than she. He has not only betrayed his lover, but must face Arthur’s court of barons for having disparaged the queen. But his beloved appears and defends him by demonstrating the truth of his claim: she is indeed more beautiful than Guinevere. The two lovers escape to a magic island. Like Marie’s other lays, this one is about love. It overmasters mighty knights, refuses deference to kings and queens, and stands firm against the force of law and custom. It is indifferent to social convention and Christian strictures, which seek to confine it. The power of a woman’s beauty invokes love, promising the joy of sexual passion; its consummation is the point of human existence and admits the lovers to a magical realm of incomparable bliss.29 29. Marie’s lays were written in rhymed couplets, totaling a brief few hundred octosyllabic lines each; they are rendered here in a prose translation that captures its tone and simplicity.

206

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

Lanval Arthur, the noble and courtly king, was staying at Carlisle. . . . He gave a great many rich gifts. He gave women’s hands in marriage and distributed lands to both counts and barons and to the knights of the Round Table. . . . He gave to all with the exception of one single knight who had served him. This was Lanval. The king did not remember him, nor did any of his court express concern for him. Just about everyone envied him for his valor, . . . for his beauty, and for his prowess. . . . He was a king’s son, of high birth, but far from his ancestral land. . . . He spent all his wealth; for the king gave him nothing, nor did Lanval ask for anything. And so Lanval . . . was very sad and most downcast. . . . Lanval, dispirited, goes out on his own and lies down in a lovely meadow. Two beautiful maidens arrive, and invite him to come with them to meet their lady who awaits in her exquisitely furnished tent. The knight went with them. . . . They led him as far as the tent, which was very beautiful and well appointed. . . . The lady, inside this tent, surpassed in beauty the lily of the valley and the blossoming rose that blooms in the summertime. She lay on a most beautiful bed (the bedcovers were worth a castle), dressed only in her shift. Her body was most lovely and comely. To keep warm, she had put over herself a costly mantle of white ermine . . . ; her entire side was bare, as were her face, her neck, and her breasts; her skin was whiter than hawthorn flowers. The knight advanced, and the lady spoke to him. He sat at the food of the bed. “Lanval,” she said, “fair friend, it was for you that I left my own country; I have come seeking you from afar. If you are valiant and courtly, neither emperors, nor counts, nor kings will have had as much joy or good fortune as you; for I love you above all others.” He looked at her, and saw how beautiful she was. Love struck him with its spark, which lit up and inflamed his heart. He answered her fittingly. “Fairest one,” he said, “if it pleased you and if I felt the joy of your wanting to love me, there is nothing you could order that I would not do to the best of my ability, be it utterly foolish or wise. I will do your bidding; for you I will forsake everyone else. I never wish to leave you; this is what I most desire.” When the lady heard what this knight who could love her so much had said, she gave him her love and her heart. Lanval was now on the true path! Then she gave him a gift: simply by wishing for it, he will not want for anything that he desires. He may give and spend liberally, she will grant

5. Marie de France, Lanval

207

him what’s needed. Lanval is well provided for now: the more mightily he spends, the more gold and silver will he have. “Friend,” she said, “now I caution you, and command you and beseech you: do not speak of this to any man! I shall tell you the crux of the matter: if this love were known, you could no longer see me nor take possession of my body.” He answered that he would certainly do whatever she commanded. He lay in the bed beside her; now Lanval was well ensconced with her! They tarried in bed until nightfall, and he would have stayed longer, if he could have and if his beloved had agreed. “Friend,” she said, “get up! You cannot stay here any longer. Go; I will stay. But I will say one thing to you: whenever you wish to speak with me, you will never think of any place, where one could meet his beloved without reproach and without villainy, where I will not come to you in order to satisfy all your desires. No man, save you, shall see me nor will anyone else hear me speak.” . . . Lanval leaves as bidden. He returns home, splendidly clothed, richly entertains his friends and dallies often with his beloved. Lanval gave fine presents, Lanval freed prisoners, Lanval dressed minstrels, Lanval bestowed great honors, Lanval spent lavishly . . . ; there was no stranger nor close friend on whom he did not bestow gifts. Lanval was joyous and pleased. As often as he wanted, he could see his beloved, who was totally at his beck and call whether during the day or the night. . . . Not long after, a company of Arthur’s knights visit Queen Guinevere, and bring Lanval with them. In the queen’s garden, he stands apart, thinking of his beloved. Guinevere approaches him and announces her love. He refuses; and the spurned queen insults him, provoking him to betray the secret of his beloved lady. When the queen saw that he was alone, she went to him straightaway. She sat down beside him, spoke to him, and opened her heart to him. “Lanval, I have honored you very much and cherished you and loved you. You may have all my love; now tell me what you desire! I offer my love to you; you ought to be very happy because of what I am doing!” “Lady,” he said, “let me be! I have no interest in loving you. I have served the king for a long time, I do not wish to break faith with him. Neither for you nor for your love will I betray my lord!” The queen got angry, she was furious, and she spoke without thinking. “Lanval,” she said, “I am quite convinced you are scarcely interested in such pleasures. People have often told me as much, that you have no liking for women. You like handsome young men, and it’s with them that you take your pleasure. . . .”

208

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

When he heard this he became quite distressed. . . ; he said something in anger, which he later often regretted. “Lady,” he said, “I do not show any competence whatsoever for such a calling.30 But I do love a woman who is to be prized above all the women I know, and I am loved by her. And I’ll say this to you: let me tell you quite openly that any one of the maidens who serves her, even the very poorest one, is more worthy than you, my queen, in body, visage, beauty, in knowledge and in goodness!” . . . Lanval has not only angered the queen, but has also betrayed his beloved, to whom he had promised he would never speak of her and the love they shared. Furious, Guinevere complains of him to King Arthur and insists that he punish Lanval. Arthur has him summoned. Those whom the king had sent to him . . . told him to come to court without delay because the king had summoned him. The queen had accused him. Lanval . . . came before the king. He was very downcast, quiet, and mute; he looked to be in great distress. The king said to him angrily: “Vassal,31 you have grievously wronged me! You embarked on a most vile affair to bring shame on me and to revile me and to slander the queen. You are a foolish braggart! Your beloved is so very noble that her maidservant is more lovely and more distinguished than the queen.” Lanval, maintaining that he had not sought the queen’s favors, defended himself against every word of the king’s accusation that he had dishonored and shamed his lord; but he admitted the truth of what he had said about the beloved of whom he boasted. He was bereft because of all this, for he had lost her. He told them he would do whatever the court decided. . . . King Arthur directs his barons to consider Lanval’s case. They tell Lanval that he must have his beloved come forward to defend him by proving the truth of his claim that she was more beautiful than the queen; Lanval replies that she would not come. Just then, two beautiful ladies mysteriously appear and ask Arthur to ready a room for their lady, who will be coming after them, to spend the night. The barons, having been interrupted, begin their deliberations anew. Then once again: two beautiful ladies come, a room is prepared, and the barons resume their discussion. The king now demands that the barons come to a decision, when there arrives the most beautiful lady in the entire world.

30. Lanval counters the charge of homosexuality obliquely; the French text here reads: “de cel mestier / Ne me sai jeo nïent aidier, . . .”; signifying “I know nothing at all about that trade.” 31. vassal: a knight or nobleman who serves a superior lord.

5. Marie de France, Lanval

209

Thereupon they truly set to judging the case, when a lady seated on a horse came riding into town; in the entire world there was none so beautiful. She was riding a white palfrey, which carried her along nice and gently; . . . there was no more noble beast under heaven. . . . The lady was dressed in a white linen shift and a tunic, laced on both sides in such a way that the entire side of her body was exposed. Her body was comely, . . . her neck was whiter than snow on the branch; her eyes were sparkling, her face fair, a beautiful mouth, a most pleasing nose, dark eyebrows, and a lovely forehead and curly hair, rather blond; a golden thread does not shine so lustrously as her hair does in the daylight. . . . There was in town neither highborn nor low, neither old nor young, who, as they saw her coming along, did not go out to look at her. About her beauty, there was no exaggeration. She came slowly. The judges who saw her were astonished; there was not a single one of them who looked at her who was not set aglow with true joy. . . . Lanval’s friends run to tell him about the lady and by their words he knows it is his beloved. Now she enters the palace and speaks to King Arthur, asking the court to declare Lanval innocent. The lady entered the palace; never had such a beautiful woman come there before. She dismounted before the king, so that she was clearly seen by everyone. She let fall her mantle, so that they might see her better. The king, who was very well mannered, immediately went toward her, and all the others honored her and strove to serve her. After they had examined her closely and sufficiently praised her beauty, she spoke in such a way that it was clear she did not wish to stay. “Arthur,” she said, “and these barons whom I see here, hear me! I have loved one of your vassals. There he is! It is Lanval! He was accused in our court; I do not in the least want things to go badly for him because of what he said. Know well that the queen was wrong; never did he solicit her love. If he can be acquitted because of me for the boasting he did, may he be exonerated by your barons!” What they decided lawfully, the king agreed to accept. There was not a single one who did not declare that Lanval had substantiated all that he had said. He was exonerated by their decision, and the lady left. . . . Lanval and his fairy lover ride off together on the lady’s palfrey to a magic island. Outside the chamber there stood a large step made of dark marble from which knights in heavy armor mounted on their horses as they left the king’s court. Lanval climbed onto the stone. When the maiden came out of the door, in a single bound Lanval jumped onto the palfrey behind her. He went

210

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

with her to Avalon, according to what the Bretons say, to a most beautiful island; it was to there that the young man was carried off. No one heard any more about this, and about this I don’t know anything more to say.

$$$ 6. Andreas Capellanus, Art of Courtly Love (1184–1186) This twelfth-century love manual mixes at least three perspectives, as seen in the selections here: the ancient Roman, which sees every woman as a target for sexual conquest; the medieval, which imports into the discussion of love contemporary notions of service and obligation; and a nascent modern attitude, which values loyalty, honesty, and mutuality in loving relationships, and finds worthy traits of mind and character in women as well as men. Given these three impulses, the message conveyed is inconsistent. On the one hand, love is viewed primarily as sexual, satisfied by the possession of the body of the beloved with little attention to emotional intimacy; on the other, the lover must accommodate himself to the needs and desires of the beloved, while love is seen as “endow[ing] everything ugly and crude with beauty,” and excessive lustfulness is deemed to be antithetical to true love. On the one hand, marriage is seen as the great enemy of love— understandable in an age when marriages were arranged by family elders to maximize economic and social benefits; but on the other, the two lovers are joined as one “in a unity of faith and will,” the goal, even today, of a happy marriage; and one lover is expected to mourn the death of the other for two full years, beyond even the usual expectation of married couples. On the one hand, love is fragile, easily destroyed by too much contact or publicity; on the other, it is powerful, overwhelming other concerns, as thoughts of the beloved incessantly possess the mind of the lover. Although Art of Courtly Love is an imperfect window into the lives of the twelfth-century men and women who inhabited noble and royal courts, it suggests that they were capable of intense emotions and apparently of genuine, if transitory, commitments.

Book One Chapter 1: What love is Love is a certain innate suffering caused by the sight of and excessive dwelling upon the beauty of the opposite sex, causing the one so stricken to desire

6. Andreas Capellanus, Art of Courtly Love

211

beyond all things to possess the body of the other, and to enact all the deeds of love that both desire in the other’s embrace. . . . That this suffering is innate is plainly demonstrated, since close examination makes clear that it originates from no action; rather, this passion is produced solely by the mind’s cogitation about what it sees. For when a man sees an attractive woman who is suited for love, he immediately begins to desire her from his heart; and then whenever he thinks about her, he is entirely consumed with love for her, which causes him to think about her all the more. Now he begins to think about her body, and to consider all of its parts and how they move, and in his imagination he explores the secret places of her body, longing to gain mastery of each of her members. . . . Then he begins to think how he might gain her favor, and to find a place and time when they might have an opportunity to speak, and finds each brief hour as long as a year, because to the desirous soul nothing happens quickly enough. . . .

Chapter 2: What persons can experience love Now this especially is to be understood about love, that love can only exist between persons of different sexes. For love has no place between two men or two women; for between two persons of the same sex there is absolutely no means for the rendering of mutual services of love or of performing natural acts. For what nature forbids, love blushes to perform. All the lover’s efforts are exerted to this end, and concerning this is his constant rumination: that he may enjoy the body of the woman he loves; for he hopes that he may fulfill with her all the dictates of love—all those, that is, that are detailed in treatises on love.32 For in the mind of the lover nothing can compare to the act of love; and he who truly loves would rather be denied possession of all the riches or other goods that humans think they cannot live without, than be deprived of the love he yearns for, or has acquired. . . .

Chapter 4: What is the effect of love . . . Love endows everything ugly and crude with beauty; it enriches even those lowborn with nobility of character; it confers humility on the proud; and it teaches the lover to behave graciously to all. O what a wondrous thing is love, which makes the lover resplendent with so many virtues, and causes his nature, whoever he may be, to abound in goodness! . . .

32. Ovid’s Art of Love and other explicitly erotic works were circulated in Latin in the Middle Ages.

212

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

Chapter 5: Which persons are capable of love Now we must see which persons are capable of bearing the arms of love. So you should know that all those of sound mind . . . can be pierced by the arrows of love33 if they are not too old or too young, or blind, or too lustful. Age is an impediment, because men over sixty years of age, and women over fifty, although they can have sexual intercourse, their passion does not lead to love, because at that age . . . people suffer various discomforts and are troubled by diverse illnesses, such that . . . their only delight is in food and drink. Similarly, girls under twelve years of age and boys under fourteen cannot wage war in the army of love. . . . Blindness is an impediment to love, because as the blind man cannot see, his soul cannot be aroused to thoughts of pleasure, and so love cannot be born in him. . . . Excessive lust is an impediment to love: there are those who are possessed by so great a desire for pleasure that the bonds of love cannot restrain them. Such men, although they have yearned greatly for a woman or even possessed her, then see another and immediately desire to possess her, and so, forgetting the favors they had received from the first lover, are ungrateful to her. Men such as these who desire every woman they see are glutted with lust, and are no more capable of love than a lecherous dog. . . .

Book Two Chapter 1: How love, once acquired, may be conserved . . . He who wishes his love to long endure must make certain that no one but the two lovers has any knowledge of that love, but it should be kept secret from everyone. For once love comes to be known to many, immediately it ceases to grow as it naturally would, and it falls back to a less satisfactory earlier stage. In addition, the lover must seem to his beloved to be at all times sensible, prudent, and moderate, and must in no way annoy her by doing anything disagreeable, but rather assist his beloved at any time of need and support her in all her trials and agree to her just desires. . . .

Chapter 2: How love, once consummated, may be increased . . . Love increases above all if the lovers see each other only rarely and with difficulty; the more difficult it is for lovers to achieve the delight of 33. Cupid, the god of desire in the Greco-Roman pantheon, is the son of Venus, goddess of love, and generally portrayed as a small child who causes those whom he shoots with his arrow to fall uncontrollably in love.

6. Andreas Capellanus, Art of Courtly Love

213

being together and embracing each other, more greatly and urgently does the craving for love increase. Love increases, as well, if one of the lovers displays anger toward the other; for right away the lover fears desperately that the other’s displeasure will last forever. Love greatly increases, likewise, when the other lover is seized by fierce jealousy, which for that reason is called the nurse of love. . . . Further, when one lover dreams of the other, love is aroused and once aroused, grows greater. So also, if you learn that someone else is attempting to steal your lover from you, that will most certainly increase your love for her, and you will begin to love her with renewed affection. . . .

Chapter 3: How love is diminished . . . When the opportunity is too great to see the beloved or talk at length with her or enjoy her favors, love grows less, as happens as well if the lover is disheveled or ungainly or suddenly loses his wealth. For a lover distressed by poverty thinks only of his possessions and immediate needs, so cannot perform the deeds of love nor attend to its growth. Thereupon everyone disparages his character and way of life, and finds him hateful and contemptible, and his friends desert him. . . .

Chapter 4: How love ends . . . Love comes to an end, first of all, if one of the lovers betrays or tries to betray the other. . . . Love also comes to an end if it has been spread abroad and talked about by everyone. . . . And love comes to an end, as well, if a new love supervenes, since no one can have two beloveds at once. Inequality of love, hypocrisy, and deceit will always drive love away; for a deceitful lover deserves to be rejected by every woman. . . . For love demands that both lovers be joined as one in a unity of faith and will. . . . Moreover, if two lovers marry, love is totally put to flight. . . . Further, if by any chance one of the lovers becomes incapable of sexual intercourse, the love between them cannot endure, but wholly deserts them. . . .

Chapter 8: The rules of love. . . . These then are its rules: 1. Marriage is not a sufficient explanation for not falling in love. 2. He who is not jealous cannot love. 3. No one can have two lovers at once. 4. Love always grows or grows less. 5. A lover knows little pleasure if the beloved is unwilling.

214

Chapter 6. An Age of Courts and Castles

6. A boy who has not yet reached puberty does not love. 7. If one’s beloved has died, the lover who survives must mourn for two years. 8. Except for an extraordinary reason, no one should be denied love. 9. No one can love, unless love has persuaded him to do so. 10. Love is always a stranger to the abodes of avarice. 11. It is not right to love a woman whom it would be shameful to marry. 12. A true lover, because of his love, desires to embrace no one but his beloved. 13. Love that is noised abroad rarely endures. 14. When love is acquired with ease, it is cheapened; but if with difficulty, it is treasured. 15. When he looks at his beloved, every lover’s face turns white. 16. When his beloved appears suddenly before him, the heart of the lover trembles. 17. A new love sends the old one away. 18. Only goodness makes a man worthy of love. 19. If love diminishes, it fails quickly, and rarely recovers. 20. A man in love is always fearful. 21. Fierce jealousy always increases the force of love. 22. Love’s zeal and intensity increase when a lover suspects his beloved. 23. The lover disturbed by thoughts of love eats and sleeps little. 24. Everything the lover does is bound up with his thoughts of the beloved. 25. He who loves truly is pleased by nothing but what he thinks will please the beloved. 26. Love can deny nothing to love. 27. The lover is never surfeited by the favors of the beloved. 28. A mere hint persuades the lover to suspect ill of the beloved. 29. A man beset by overwhelming passion usually does not love. 30. The true lover is possessed by constant and ceaseless thought of the beloved. 31. Nothing prevents a woman from being loved by two men, nor a man by two women.

Chapter 7 Medieval Culminations

Introduction Leaving behind the world of monasteries and cathedrals, and that of courts and castles, the third chapter enters, in the last two centuries of the Middle Ages, the world of cities. The five works gathered here are all by secular writers from four cities that had boomed during the previous period of rapid urbanization: Venice and Florence in northern Italy, at the fulcrum of that process; and London and Paris, the capital cities of England and France. Composed in little more than a century between 1298 and 1405, they represent the culmination of the medieval outlook, blending Christian, courtly, and urban perspectives, even amid the huge challenges of an era that featured devastating famines, plague, and chronic warfare. They include Marco Polo’s description of his travels from Italy to China and back again; Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, an epic portrayal of the Christian cosmos; the stories by Giovanni Boccaccio and Geoffrey Chaucer gathered in their respective storybooks in prose and verse, the Decameron and Canterbury Tales; and The Book of the City of Ladies, a monumental defense of women by the female author and feminist theorist Christine de Pizan, written in the face of a wall of literary misogyny. The first of these works records the expedition begun in 1271 by the young Venetian Marco Polo (c. 1254–1324)—accompanying his father and uncle who had previously made the journey and were among the first Europeans to do so—across the more than four-thousand-mile expanse that stretched from Acre (modern Israel) on the eastern Mediterranean coast to Beijing, the capital of China then under Mongol rule. The lure of these eastern lands was great: Italian merchants held a tight grip on Mediterranean commerce, but their commercial domain halted in the Middle East, where Asian products, brought by Arab or Jewish intermediaries, were purchased for shipment to Europe. Enormous profits awaited those who could gain direct access to Asian markets. The Polos sought that access, gaining acceptance at the Mongol court. There they lived for seventeen years (1275–1292), employed by the emperor Qubilai Khan, returning to Venice as his emissaries by way of India and Persia. Polo’s journey is astonishing for the boldness of the deed and the originality of the report, The Description of the World,1 composed in 1298 by 1. Its original title; also known as Il milione, “the million,” and The Travels of Marco Polo.

215

216

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

dictation to Rustichello of Pisa—the latter a well-known author of chivalric romances who wrote in the Franco-Italian dialect then standard for prose narrative. It is the book its title announces: it describes and does not analyze, the peoples and places its author encountered, all radically different from those he had known in Europe. Polo’s reports of places he visits are substantial and meticulous, stressing dimensions, layouts, and structures, as well as commodities, textiles, spices, and gems. His reports on persons he meets note and commend achievement while omitting comment on culture, ethnicity, or personality. His aptitude for precise observation made him a useful agent for the Khan, who dispatched him to distant provinces and cities to relay accounts of their economy and culture and to perform various administrative services; even, he claims, governing Yangzhou, “a noble and large city,” which “Messer Marco Polo himself, whom this book is about, ruled . . . for three years” (#144). The many editions and translations of Polo’s book both in manuscript and print testify to its diffusion, influencing later travel literature produced in abundance as Europeans ventured around the globe. While he traversed Afghanistan, China, India, and Persia, he does not himself reach Japan; but the descriptions of Japan that Polo records from contemporaries, as well as his reports of booming Asian spice markets, inspired Christopher Columbus, who possessed a copy of his book, to seek a route to East Asia. Polo’s sparse, plain observations seductively depict a world beyond Europe, waiting for exploitation. Whereas Marco Polo records in his The Description of the World the tangible conditions he observed in a mammoth journey across two continents, the Florentine Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) envisions the three realms of the afterworld in his Divine Comedy:2 the Inferno (or Hell), Purgatory, and Paradise (or Heaven). Like Hildegard of Bingen’s (see Chapter 5, Text 4), Dante’s vision is cosmic; but where images of God’s creation came to Hildegard, Dante planned and constructed the Christian cosmos through which he journeys with mathematical precision: each of the three realms is depicted in a separate book of thirty-three cantos, which record his encounters with hundreds of figures from biblical, classical, or recent history. In the Inferno the first afterworld realm, from which (selections are given here), the souls of those eternally damned are eternally punished. In Purgatory, where souls burdened by unforgiven sins perform their penance until they can enter the third and ultimate realm of Paradise, where the souls of the righteous live forever in the presence of God. Guiding Dante through these realms are two figures who had affected him profoundly: the first, the Roman poet Virgil (see Chapter 3, Text 4), a pagan, who fittingly leads him through the 2. As Boccaccio named it; originally, just the Comedy.

Introduction

217

fallen world of the Inferno and into the more hopeful one of Purgatory; the second, Beatrice, is the spiritualized figure of a woman he had once loved, who leads him through Paradise to the culminating vision of God. Dante is famed as one of the “three crowns” of Italian literature—the other two being Giovanni Boccaccio (see Text 3 in this chapter) and Francesco Petrarca, or Petrarch (see Chapter 8, Text 1). His Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1320) is considered one of the greatest poems not only in the Italian language but in the whole Western tradition. He was the author as well of many other works, in both Italian and Latin, ranging from poetry, in which he adapted Provençal verse and courtly love themes to forge an original Italian tradition, to language theory and political thought. In his youth, as well, he had been a statesman, active in the turbulent political life of Florence until 1301, when he was exiled as a member of the losing faction in a deadly civil struggle. He never returned to the city he loved. After 1348, Giovanni Boccaccio, a fellow Florentine who lectured publicly on Dante’s work, wrote his biography, and in 1373–1374, an exposition of the Comedy. A generation younger than Dante, Boccaccio (1313–1375) was, like the predecessor he so esteemed—having resisted his father’s determination to make him a lawyer—both a poet and a scholar. Like Dante, too, he wrote works both in Italian and Latin that bridged disciplinary boundaries: among the latter, a work on the pagan gods of classical literature, and collective biographies both of famous men of antiquity and of famous women; the latter becoming a fundamental work in the debate over women’s moral and intellectual worth that would stretch over the next three centuries. Overshadowing both Boccaccio’s Latin treatises and his earlier Italian verse is the Decameron (1349–1351): a collection of one hundred stories told over the “ten days” signified by the Greek title, an allusion to the “seven days,” or Heptameron, of God’s creation of the cosmos often treated by theologians. The seven female and three male storytellers take turns as “queen” or “king” of the company, and each day each of the ten tells a tale adapted from story collections in circulation, and drawn from medieval and classical, and even Islamic, Persian, Buddhist, and Sanskrit traditions. The ten fabulists have taken refuge from Florence, a city engulfed by the Black Death, where scenes of horror took place that Boccaccio describes vividly in the preface to the Decameron: a dark and ominous framework for the lighthearted, witty, and refined exchanges of the ten young people who have survived the catastrophe. The one hundred stories encompass a profusion of themes, among them the hypocrisy of the clergy, whose greed and lust are mocked incessantly; the sexual appetites of men and women of all social ranks; the clever deceits by which merchants, soldiers, peasants, and noblemen obtain wealth and get ahead; lovers who pine for their beloved—an echo of the courtly

218

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

love ethos; wives and daughters who outwit husbands and fathers; marital disruptions and reconciliations; adulteries both comic and tragic; the male abuse of women, to which women respond both submissively and vengefully; a tolerance for difference, most famously for Jews, as told in the story (often later retold) of three identical rings representing the three theisms of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These diverse tales, elegantly narrated, are disciplined by the tight decimal order imposed by the storytelling regimen pursued in an idyllic rural setting whose refined civility counters the chaotic and deadly external reality of the plague. The Englishman Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340–1400), the son of wealthy merchants who rose to high position and frequented aristocratic and royal circles, was also a storyteller. His Canterbury Tales are narrated by some twenty-nine disparate characters, named in the Prologue to the work, united only by their common purpose to journey on a pilgrimage to Canterbury to participate in the sacred power of the relics held there of the native saint and martyr Thomas Beckett. Like Boccaccio’s, Chaucer’s tales are drawn from a rich store of ancient and medieval fables—as well as from Boccaccio himself, whom Chaucer may have met (along with Petrarch) on one of his several journeys to Italy. Again like Boccaccio’s, they mock clerical hypocrisy, avaricious schemers, marital foibles, and pretensions of all sorts. Chaucer gives more attention than does Boccaccio, however, to the analysis of character; his narrators are fully formed individuals, who in the aggregate represent the panoply of contemporary English society. He constructs those in-depth portraits in Middle English verse—at a time when the denizens of high society conversed in French—with its rich Germanic rhythms, thick consonants, and voiced word endings. Chaucer composed the Canterbury Tales over the last two decades of his life and left it unfinished at his death: 120 stories were initially envisioned in the Prologue, of which only twenty-four were written, although these are interspersed with important prologues and intervening conversations. In greater or lesser completeness, it circulated widely in about eighty manuscript versions, a number signifying its robust popularity. With the arrival of the printing press, it was the first secular book to be published in England—probably in 1476, by the renowned printer William Caxton. At least three more editions appeared before 1500, and the work has since been recognized as one of the most important in the English literary tradition. Christine de Pizan (1364–c. 1430), the final author considered in this chapter is a storyteller, too, writing some fifty years after Boccaccio’s Decameron and just five after Chaucer’s death brought the Canterbury Tales to an end. Her stories, however, gathered in her The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), are all about women—165 of them—and have more in common with Boccaccio’s Famous Women (1361–1362), a compilation of 106 biographies of

Introduction

219

notable women, than with his Decameron. But where Boccaccio’s aim is to identify women renowned for their deeds, both praiseworthy and notorious, drawn mostly from pre-Christian times, Christine’s larger goal is to challenge at its core the prevailing view of women, embedded in the inherited literary corpus, as fickle, devious, lecherous, mindless, and incompetent. Christine’s purpose is set forth in an elaborate frame story. Sitting in her study, she has idly read one of the many misogynist books that abounded in that era,3 and is distressed by its message. At this fraught moment, there appear to her three female figures (a female Trinity, in effect, an analogue of the Christian Trinity), much as the female personification of Philosophy had long ago appeared to Boethius in his prison cell (see Chapter 5, Text 2). These three ghostly visitors, introduced as Lady Reason, Lady Rectitude, and Lady Justice, urge Christine to build a City of Ladies, as a fortress to defend women attacked on all fronts and a monument to the excellence of the female gender. The first Lady will assist her to build the foundations, accomplished by reviewing the lives of thirty-six women who excelled by their reason; the second, to build the structures within the walls, by reviewing the lives of ninety-two women who excelled by their virtue; and the third, to build the high battlements from which the city is defended, over which the Virgin Mary will reign as queen, by reviewing the lives of thirtyseven saints and other holy women. Within this elaborate feminist system, the biographical cameos testify in their amplitude to the courage, wisdom, chastity, eloquence, and effectiveness of female rulers, wives, creators, and exemplars of faith. Just as Dante’s Divine Comedy had envisioned the three realms of the kingdom of God, Christine’s The Book of the City of Ladies envisions the threefold dimensions of the polity of women. The Italian-born Frenchwoman Christine de Pizan, the daughter and wife of learned men, is considered to be the first professional woman writer—ever and anywhere. Neither the first nor the last of her many works, The Book of the City of Ladies is recognized as foremost among them for its fierce defense of women’s creativity and competence. It is the first major work of the feminist literary tradition.4 Common to the five works sampled in this chapter is the exploration of large spaces: they are journeys across horizontal space and constructions in vertical space, their authors seeking the meanings of human experience on a universal scale employing the materials of genre and thought inherited from 3. Notably, as will be seen later in this chapter, Chaucer’s character Jenkin (the fifth husband of the Wife of Bath) taunts his wife by reading to her from a volume of such misogynist texts. 4. This claim does not diminish the pathbreaking contributions of earlier women writers, including those represented in this volume: Sappho, Hrotswitha, Hildegard of Bingen, Margery Kempe, and Marie de France (see Chapter 2, Text 3; Chapter 5, Text 3, 4, and 6; and Chapter 6, Text 5).

220

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

their literary forebears and the tools of their insight and imagination. Marco Polo, through his scribe, describes a real journey stretching thousands of miles and arching across at least three major civilizations, in which a European Christian encounters physical and metaphysical worlds inconceivably different from his own. Dante builds a cathedral of the mind that is a compilation of Christian belief told in images both ancient and contemporary. Boccaccio creates an alternate universe in a lovely countryside in response to the real world of death that has gripped the city, a place for storytelling, the recapitulation in refined prose of the congeries of folk tales and village yarns that circulated from mouth to mouth. Chaucer adapts the commonplace event of the pilgrimage as a setting for storytelling that, like Boccaccio’s, translates into literary form the adventures conceived by everyday people. Christine de Pizan, finally, without leaving her study, constructs a cathedral reaching, like Dante’s, into a perfect other world, where the aspirations of women both saintly and secular are finally realized. All five authors offer literary texts that are summations of the meanings and lessons of the Middle Ages as that era reached its culmination.

$$$ 1. Marco Polo, The Description of the World (1298) By 1275, Marco Polo had arrived at the court of Qubilai Khan,5 ruler of China, which was now part of the Mongol Empire forged by his grandfather Chinggis Khan. The selections given here introduce the Khan as “the most powerful in men, land, and treasure that the world has ever seen or who ever will be,” and describe the great New Year celebration at his court, the capital city of Khanbilac/Dadu (modern Beijing). Some features of Qubilai’s administration are also depicted, including his management of the mint, the roads, reserves of grain and livestock, and poor relief.6

5. Qubilai (also Kubilai, Kublai) Khan: Mongol emperor of China (r. 1260–1294). 6. The translation used here is modified somewhat for easier legibility: concise chapter titles are substituted for discursive ones, and bracketed words in the original Franco-Italian and alternate spellings of Chinese place-names are omitted. The bracketed [Kinoshita] identifies the translator of this volume as the author of a note. Polo and his scribe Rustichello use rhetorical devices typical of medieval narrative prose which are retained in this translation, among them frequent repetition and such recurrent transitional phrases as “now I will tell you” and “it is true that.”

1. Marco Polo, The Description of the World

221

The Description of the World #76: The deeds of the Great Khan Now I want to start telling you in this book about all the very great deeds and all the very great marvels of the Great Khan now reigning, who is called Qubilai Khan; in our language, this means great lord of lords. And certainly he is rightly called this, for everyone knows in truth that this Great Khan is the most powerful in men, land, and treasure that the world has ever seen or who ever will be, from Adam our first father until now. And in our book I will show you very clearly this is the truth, in such a way that everyone will be satisfied that he is the greatest lord that the world has ever seen, or who ever will be, and I will how you the reasons why. . . . After describing the palaces of the Great Khan and his son, Polo describes the capital city of Khanbaliq/Dadu (modern Beijing), in which those palaces stand.

#85. Khanbaliq/Dadu, the great city of Cathay (northern China) Now . . . I will tell you about the great city of Cathay, where these palaces are located: why it was built and how. It is true that there was an ancient city there, large and noble, called Khanbaliq, which in our language means “the lord’s city.” Through his astronomers, the Great Khan learned that this city was destined to rise up and greatly oppose his rule. For this reason, the Great Khan had this city built next to that one, with only a river in between. And he took people from that city and put them in the city he had established, which is called Dadu; it is large, as I will tell you. It is 24 miles around and square, so that no one side is greater than the others; it is walled with walls of earth, 10 paces thick at the base and 20 high; but I will tell you it is not as thick up top as down below, because from the foundation upward it steadily decreases, such that the top is about three paces thick. They are all crenellated and white; they have twelve gates, and above each gate is a very large and beautiful palace, such that on each side of the square walls there are three gates and five palaces, because there is also a palace in each corner. These palaces have very large halls in which are kept the arms of those guarding the city. I tell you that the streets of the city are so straight and wide that you can see from one part to the other; they are arranged so that each gate can be seen from the others.7 There are many beautiful palaces, many beautiful 7. This rectilinear plan contrasts sharply with the windy streets (and waterways) of Venice and other medieval European cities. [Kinoshita]

222

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

lodgings, and many beautiful houses. In the middle of the city is a very large palace in which there is a large bell, which is rung at night so that when it rings three times, no one goes about in town. For after this bell is rung as many times as ordered, no one dares go out in the city, except when necessary on account of women giving birth or men getting sick. Those venturing out for these reasons must carry a light. I tell you that it is arranged so that each gate is guarded by 1,000 men; and don’t think that they guard them out of fear of the people, but in honor of the great lord residing within, and also because they don’t want thieves to do damage in town. . . .

#86. How the Great Khan is guarded by 12,000 horsemen Now know that the Great Khan is guarded by 12,000 horsemen called . . . “knights and vassals of the lord”—because he is great, not because he fears any men. These 12,000 men have four captains, each captain of 3,000; and these 3,000 stay in the great lord’s palace for three days and three nights, eating and drinking within. Here’s how it goes: when these 3,000 have been on guard three days and three nights, then they leave and another 3,000 come and stand guard for another three days and three nights; and so it goes until they have all stood guard; then they start anew, and so it goes all year-round. . . .

#89. The Great Khan’s New Year’s feast It is true that they have their New Year’s in the month of February, and the great lord and all those subject to him hold a celebration that I will describe to you. It is custom that the Great Khan, with all his subjects, dress in white clothing: both men and women, as far as they are able. They do this because white clothing seems to them auspicious and good. So they wear it on their New Year so that they will have wealth and happiness all year. On this day, everyone, [the heads of ] all the provinces, regions, and kingdoms that hold land and authority from him, bring very great presents of gold, silver, pearls, and precious stones, and many rich white cloths; they do this so that their lord will have much treasure, and that he be pleased and happy all year long. I also tell you that the barons, knights, and all the peoples all give each other white things as presents; they hug and make merry and celebrate; and they do this so that they will have wealth and good fortune all year. . . .

#95. The Great Khan holds court in Khanbaliq . . . I tell you that in this city there is such a great multitude of houses and people, both inside and outside the town—for know that there are as many suburbs as gates (that is, twelve), which are very large—that no man could count the number. For many more people are in these suburbs than in the city. Merchants

1. Marco Polo, The Description of the World

223

and all other men who come for business stay and lodge in these suburbs. They come in very great numbers . . . because the city is such a good market. . . . Know that no one who dies is buried in the city. Rather, if he is an idolator,8 he is carried to the place where bodies are burned, which is outside all the suburbs; it also happens that the other dead are also buried outside the city. I tell you another thing: that no sinful women dare reside within the city—that is, women of the world who service men for money—but I tell you they stay in the suburbs. Know that there is such a great number of them that no man could believe it, for I tell you that they number a good 20,000, all servicing men for money. . . . Know very truly that more costly and worthy things come to this city of Khanbaliq than to any city in the world, and I will tell you what they are right away, for I tell you that all costly things coming from India—precious stones, pearls, and other costly things—are brought to this city; also, all the beautiful and most costly things from the province of Cathay and all other provinces are brought there. . . . Concerning what I have told you, greater quantities of the most costly and most worthy things come to this city than to any city in the world; and more merchandise is sold and bought there; for know in truth that each day, more than 1,000 carts loaded with silk enter this city, for many cloths of gold and silk are produced there. . . .

#96. The Great Khan uses paper notes for money It is true that the great lord’s mint is located in this city of Khanbaliq. It is established in such a way that you could well say that the Great Khan knows its secrets perfectly. . . . Now know that he has money made in the way I will tell you: he takes tree bark—from mulberry trees, whose fronds are eaten by the worms who make silk—and the inner bark between the bark and the wood of the tree; and from this inner bark, he has notes made like paper;9 these are all black.10 . . . All these notes are stamped with the seal of the great lord; he has them made in such a great quantity that he could buy all the treasure in the world. When these notes are made in the way I have described to you, he pays for everything with them and has them distributed through all the provinces, kingdoms, and lands under his rule; and no one dares refuse them, in pain of losing his life. I also tell you that all the people and populated regions under his rule willingly take these notes in payment, because with them 8. idolator: a worshiper of pagan gods and images, as most would have been. Polo speaks as a Christian. 9. Though paper currency had first appeared several centuries earlier under the Tang [dynasty], the Mongols used it on a wider scale than ever before. [Kinoshita] 10. They are cut into pieces of various sizes to represent different quantities of value.

224

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

they’ll go and make all their payments [for] merchandise, pearls, precious stones, gold, and silver. You can buy everything with them. . . .

#98. The many roads leading from Khanbaliq to the provinces Now know in truth that many roads going to many provinces depart from this city of Khanbaliq. . . . Know that when one leaves Khanbaliq by all the roads I have mentioned to you and has gone 25 miles, then the great lord’s messenger who has gone these 25 miles finds a post . . . [where is found] a very large and beautiful palace, where the great lord’s messengers are lodged; this lodging has a very rich bed, adorned with fine silk sheets, and all the things messengers needs. If a king came there, he would be well lodged. I also tell you that at this post, the messenger finds a good 400 horses that the great lord ordered should be there ready for his messengers at all times. . . .

#99. The Great Khan helps his people in need of grain and animals Now also know in truth that the great lord sends his messengers throughout his lands and kingdoms and provinces to find out from his men if they have had damage to their grain, whether from bad weather, locusts, or other plagues. If he finds that any peoples have sustained damages and have no grain, he does not take from them the tribute that they owe him that year but has them given some of his crop so that they have something to sow and eat. . . . He does this in summer. In the winter, he does the same for those who live off their animals. For if there are found to be men whose animals have died from diseases that have come to them, he gives them some of his animals and helps them and does not take tribute that year. In this way, . . . the great lord helps and sustains his men. . . .

#100. The Great Khan has trees planted for the roads Now know in all truth that the great lord has ordered trees planted along the major roads traveled by his messengers, merchants, and other people—two ­paces apart; and I tell you that they are large enough to be seen from afar. The Great Khan had this done so that everyone could see the road and not get lost. . . .

#103. The Great Khan collects and distributes quantities of grain to his people Now know that it is true that when the great lord sees that grain is in great abundance and that it is inexpensive, he amasses a very great quantity and has it put in a house and has it so well watched that it does not spoil for three years or four. Understand that he stockpiles all grains—wheat, barley, millet, rice, . . . and other grains—and has a very great amount of these

2. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno

225

grains assembled. When it happens that there is no grain and that the lack is great, then the great lord withdraws some of his grains. . . . He withdraws enough for everyone to have; thus everyone has his fill and abundance of grain, and in this way, the great lord provides for his men so they do not go short; and he does this for all the lands under his authority. . . .

#104. The Great Khan gives charity to the poor Since I have told you how the great lord provides his people their fill of all grains, now I will tell you how he distributes charity to the poor people in the city of Khanbaliq. It is true that he chooses many poor households in the city of Khanbaliq that don’t have anything to eat . . . and the great lord gives them wheat and other grains so that they have something to eat; and he does this in very great quantities. . . . This is quite a great goodness, that the lord takes pity on his poor people, and the people hold him in such great regard that they pray to him like a god.

$$$ 2. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno (c. 1308–1320) Guided by Virgil, Dante descends from higher and larger circles to lower and smaller ones as he journeys through the cone of hell that will culminate in a point at the earth’s center. In each circle, souls of the dead are punished by a distinctive torment suited to the sin they had committed when alive, the consequences for which they must now suffer eternally. As he passes through these increasingly hideous vistas, he encounters individuals known to him by experience or hearsay, and seeks to know their stories. Selections are given here from Canto 5, describing the fate of the lustful; Canto 10, describing the fate of those condemned for heresy; and Canto 26, describing the fate of those who had counseled fraudulent action. Note Dante’s ranking of sins: the least serious are those of the flesh and of instinct; the most heinous are those of the mind.

Inferno Canto 5 In Canto 5, Dante comes to the second circle of hell where fierce blasting winds drive souls ceaselessly in circles, as the passion of love had driven them in the world of the living.

226

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

There an infernal wind that never rests whirls the damned spirits around and around with stinging blasts that torture them in flight. . . . I came to understand that those condemned to this torment were the souls of the lustful who put rational thought below carnal desire. . . . And as cranes fall into long lines in the sky, chanting their rounds as they wing their way on, so too I saw coming, with songs of grief Shadows blown on by the force of that wind. And I asked: “Master, who are these people, and why does the black air punish them so?” . . . They are the ancient lovers of legend and history, Virgil answers: Semiramis, Cleopatra, Paris, Tristan, and one thousand others or more, leaving Dante “seized with pity, bewildered, and lost.” And I began: “Poet, I would gladly speak to those two who go together and seem to move so light on the wind.” He answered me: “Wait until you see them move closer to us. Then implore them by the love that leads them on, and they will come to you.” As soon as the wind had whirled them nearer I shouted to them: “O troubled souls, come speak with us, if no one forbids it.” . . . Thus bid, Francesca tells her story. “The city where I was born lies on the shore where the river Po comes down to the sea with all its tributaries to rest in peace.11 Love, which kindles quickly in the gentle heart, impassioned this man with my beautiful form, taken from me in a way that still wounds. Love, which excuses no one beloved from loving, filled me with passion so strong for this man, that, as you see, it has not left me yet. Love led us both to share in one death. 11. That is, in Rimini.

2. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno

227

Caina12 awaits him who snuffed out our life.” These words drifted upon the wind to us. The lovers are Paolo and Francesca, whose tale of love recalls the prescripts of Andreas Capellanus (see Chapter 6, Text 6), and also the tale of Abelard and Heloise who had fallen in love over the books they read together (see Chapter 5, Text 5). The book seduced them; and Paola’s husband killed them both. Dante sadly reflects on the great desire that had possessed them; and when he hears their story, struck himself by the power of love, he collapses. Then turning to the lovers I spoke again. “Francesca, the suffering you endure moves me to weep in pity for your pain. But tell me this. In that time of sweet sighs, how, by what means, did Love grant to you the knowledge of your hesitant desires?” And she answered: “There is no greater sorrow than to recall a time of happiness in a time of misery, as your teacher knows. But if you have so great a desire to learn what first made us fall in love, I will tell it as one who weeps and tells. One day we two were reading for pleasure of Love’s mastery over Lancelot.13 We were alone, and suspected nothing. As we read the story our eyes would meet and our faces pale at each other’s glance, but at one point only did we taste defeat. When we read how the longed-for smile was kissed, the smile of Guinevere, by her great lover— this man, with whom I keep eternal tryst, Trembling all over, placed his lips on mine. That book and its author were our Galahalt,14 And that day we read not another line.”

12. Caina: one of the lowest regions of hell, to which Francesca’s husband, who killed both lovers, is now condemned. 13. Lancelot: famed as one of King Arthur’s knights, and as the adulterous lover of Arthur’s queen Guinevere. 14. Galahalt [elsewhere Galahad]: the go-between who promoted the affair between Lancelot and Guinevere.

228

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

While this spirit spoke, the one at her side wept with such a piteous sound that my senses failed, and as if I had died My body fell like a corpse to the ground.

Canto 10 In Canto 10, Dante enters the sixth circle of hell, in which heretics who had strayed from the path of true Christian belief, as it was thought, are eternally punished. They are held, amid flames that torment them, in the open tombs that will close over them forever at the end of time; their punishment for having denied God’s omnipotence. Until that day, they have knowledge of the present moment— but then, of nothing. Here Dante encounters the nobleman Farinata, who displays the arrogance of his superior status even amid the torments of hell. He hears Dante speaking to Virgil, and by the accent recognizes a fellow Florentine. “O Tuscan, speaking with such civility as you go alive through the city of fire, may it please you to stop a while in this place. Your manner and accent clearly show you to be a native son of that noble city to which I perhaps caused too much harm.”15 The sound of this voice issued so suddenly from one of the monumental coffins that in fear I drew closer to my guide, Who said, “What are you doing? Turn around! Look at Farinata there, who has risen upright. You will see him all from the waist on up.” I had already fixed my eyes on his as he rose with chest and brow thrown back as if he had nothing but scorn for Hell. The assured and ready hands of my guide were pushing me through the tombs to him, and he told me, “See that your words are apt.” When I was at the foot of Farinata’s tomb he looked me over briefly, and then asked, “Who were your ancestors?” as if with disdain. I was eager to comply, and hid nothing from him but told him all, at which he lifted his brows a little, 15. As a leader of the Ghibelline faction, Farinata degli Uberti had wreaked havoc on Florence and on the rival Guelph faction to which Dante’s family belonged.

2. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno

229

And then said, “They were hostile to me, and so not once but twice I scattered them, enemies to my family and to my party.” “If they were driven out, they always returned from every quarter,” I answered him, “an art your people have hardly learned.” Another shade recognizes Dante’s voice as that of the friend of his son, the poet Guido Cavalcanti,16 and from Dante’s reply sadly (and wrongly) concludes that his son has died. Locked in the depths of hell, the minds of both Farinata and Cavalcanti are uselessly fixed on earthly matters. Then there rose beside him another shade in the open tomb. Visible from his chin up, he seemed as if he had risen onto his knees. He looked about me as though he wanted to see someone else in my company, and when this hope was disappointed, He said weeping, “If it is your genius by which you journey through this blind prison, where is my son, and why is he not with you?” I said to him: “I do not come on my own, My guide over there leads me through this place, perhaps to someone your Guido held in scorn.”17 His words and the mode of his punishment had already announced his name to me, and this is why my response was so full. Straightening up suddenly, he cried out: “Did you say ‘held’? Is he not still alive? Does the sweet light not still fall on his eyes?” When he perceived my hesitation in answering, he fell supine again, and after that he appeared no more.

Canto 26 In Canto 26, Dante enters the eighth circle, where those who had counseled others to commit fraud walk each wrapped in an individual flame, the fiery and fatal tongue by which they must now converse. Ulysses (the Latin form of 16. Guido Cavalcanti: with Dante, one of the innovative poets of the dolce stil nuovo, the “sweet new style.” 17. Dante alludes to Beatrice, who in Purgatory will take over the role of guide from Virgil.

230

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

Odysseus, the wily counselor of Homer’s Iliad) is there, together with Diomedes in a double flame, jointly condemned for the fraudulent ploy of the Trojan horse which achieves the fall of Troy. Dante, the author of the epic Divine Comedy, asks Virgil, the author of the epic Aeneid, to question these heroes of Homer’s epic about their final destiny. Ulysses, “the greater flame,” responds with the tale of his last voyage westward across the Mediterranean past the Pillars of Hercules—the Straits of Gibraltar—and beyond, into the infinite, known only to God. He epitomizes the nobility of character of the ancient, pre-Christian hero, boundlessly ambitious in the pursuit of existential freedom. When the double flame came close enough that it seemed to my guide the right time and place, I heard him speak in a manner like this: “O you who are paired within one fire, if I deserved anything of you while I lived, deserved anything of you either great or small, When in the world I wrote high poetry, stop for a moment, and let one of you tell where he wandered lost and met his death.” The greater horn of that ancient flame began to quiver and murmur low as if it were a candle vexed by the wind; And then, wagging its tip back and forth as if it were a speaking tongue, the flame flung out a voice and said, “When I left Circe,18 who had held me back a year or more on her isle near Gaeta, before Aeneas gave it that name, Neither the sweet thought of my son, nor reverence for my old father, nor the love I owed Penelope19 and that would have made her glad Could overcome my burning desire for experience of the wide world above and of men’s vices and their valor. I put forth on the deep, open sea with one ship only, and a skeleton crew of companions who had not deserted me. I saw one coast, then another, as far as Spain, as far as Morocco; I saw Sardinia 18. Circe: in Homer’s Odyssey, whose protagonist is Odysseus/Ulysses, an enchantress who holds Odysseus and his men captive. 19. Penelope: Odysseus’s famously faithful wife.

2. Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy: Inferno

231

and the other islands lapped by the waves. My crew and I were old and slow when we pulled into the narrow straits where Hercules had set up his pillars To mark where men should not pass beyond. I had left Seville on the starboard side and off the port left Ceuta behind. ‘Brothers,’ I said, ‘who through a hundred thousand perils have reached the West, do not deny to the last glimmering hour Of consciousness that remains to us experience of the unpeopled world that lies beyond the setting sun. Consider the seed from which you were born! You were not made to live like brute animals but to live in pursuit of virtue and knowledge!’ This little speech steeled my crew’s hearts and made them so eager for the voyage ahead I could hardly have restrained them afterward. We swung the stern toward the morning light and made our oars wings for our last, mad run, the ship’s left side always gaining on the right. All of the stars around the opposite pole now shone in the night,20 while our own was so low it did not rise above the ocean’s roll. Five times had we seen it wax and wane, the light on the underside of the moon, since we began our journey on the main, And then a mountain loomed in the sky, still dim and distant, but it seemed to me I had never seen any mountain so high. We shouted for joy, but our joy now turned into grief, for a whirlwind roared, out of the new land and struck the ship’s prow. Three times it spun her around in the water, and the fourth time around, up the stern rose and the prow plunged down, as pleased Another,21 Until above us we felt the waters close.” 20. They have crossed the Equator and see the stars of the southern hemisphere. 21. Another: God, who will not permit these mortals to venture into his domain. The mountain they saw briefly before plunging to their deaths was the mountain of Purgatory.

232

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

$$$ 3. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron (1349–1351) In this first story of the third day of the Decameron, the peasant laborer Masetto seizes the opportunity to work as gardener at a small convent housing eight nuns and an abbess, and realizes his ambitions to the full as they one-by-one seduce him—only to find the demands made of him overwhelming. They all put their heads together and find a solution that will preserve the convent’s reputation for sanctity, accommodate Masetto’s requirements, and see to the sexual needs of all concerned. This tale illustrates several characteristic Boccaccian themes. In a playful tone, ostensibly harmless, it squarely confronts monasticism—in this case, female monachization—as an institution contrary to nature. Natural desires cannot be suppressed, and the moral and religious structures established to do so are absurd, as witnessed hilariously by the ease with which the nuns jettison their sacred vows in order to follow the path of instinct. Human beings, gifted with reason, will nimbly employ their wits to conquer obstacles and realize their goals.

Decameron Masetto of Lamporecchio,22 pretending to be a mute, becomes gardener for a convent of nuns, who can’t wait to get into bed with him. Most beautiful ladies, many are the men and also the women who foolishly believe that when a white veil is placed on a girl’s head and a black cowl on her back,23 she is no longer a woman and no more feels a woman’s desires than if, in becoming a nun, she had been turned to stone. And if perhaps they hear of some doings that challenge their belief, they go into a frenzy as though some gigantically wicked sin had been committed. . . . But I would like to show you how widely these folks have missed the mark . . . by telling you this little story. In our neighborhood there was, and still is, a convent renowned for its sanctity, which I shall not name so as not to diminish its reputation in the slightest. Here not long ago, serving the little community of eight nuns and one abbess, all young, the good chap who cared for the convent’s lovely

22. Lamporecchio: a small town about nineteen miles west of Florence (Tuscany), Italy. 23. The nun’s religious habit, which she put on when she made her vows, included a veil and a cloak or cassock.

3. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron

233

garden, unhappy with his wages, settled his accounts with the steward and returned to his home town of Lamporecchio. There, among the others who welcomed him back, was a young workman, strong and fit, and—for a villager—quite handsome, whose name was Masetto. Masetto asked the man where he had been all this time, and Nuto, as he was called, told him; then Masetto asked what kind of work he had done at the convent. To which Nuto replied: “I took care of their big, beautiful garden . . . and did other little things for them; but the women paid me so little, that I scarcely had enough to pay for my shoes. And worse, they are all young and it seemed to me they were all little devils, and I could never do enough for them . . . and they annoyed me so much that I dropped my work and hid in the garden. And so, what with one thing and another, I didn’t want to stay there anymore and so took myself off. Before I left their steward begged me, that if when I got here I found anyone who could do the job, I should send him along, and so I promised; but by God, I will not seek out or send anyone to him.” Hearing Nuto’s words, Masetto’s soul was seized by so great a desire to be with these nuns that he was quite overcome with longing; and from what Nuto said, he believed that he could in fact achieve that which he desired; and realizing that nothing would happen unless he said something to Nuto, he spoke: “Well, you have done well to return here—how can one man live with a bunch of women? It would be better to live with a bunch of devils, since six times out of seven, they do not know themselves what it is they want.” But then, the conversation over, Masetto began to think what he must do to be able to be with those women. Knowing that he was quite able to perform the job Nuto described, he had no doubts on that score, but he feared that he would not be welcome because he was too young and goodlooking. Having thought it over, he decided: “The place is far enough away from here, so no one will know me by sight; if I can pretend to be mute, I will surely be taken in.” With this plan devised, with an axe on his shoulder, dressed like a pauper, not telling anyone where he was bound, off he went to the convent. . . . Masetto goes to the convent and gains employment with the steward. He works well, and catches the eye of the abbess—and the other nuns. Now it happened that one day, after a bout of hard work, Masetto stretched out to rest, while two young nuns walking in the garden came near to where he lay and, as he pretended to be asleep, began to look him over. Then one of them, a little bolder than the other, said to her companion: “If I believed that you would keep it a secret, I would tell you a thought that has come to

234

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

me many times, which perhaps you might also find appealing.” The other answered: “Tell me, by all means, for certainly I shall never repeat it to anyone.” And so the daring nun began: “I don’t know whether it has occurred to you how confined we are here, nor can any man dare enter within these walls, except for the doddering steward and this mute; and I have often heard it said by many ladies who have visited us here that all the other pleasures in the world are a trifle compared to that which a woman knows with a man. And so it has often struck me, because I cannot with any other, to explore with this mute if what they say is true. And he is the best man in the world for this purpose, because even if he wanted to, he could not tell anyone: you see that he is a totally stupid boy, who has grown huge in body but not in mind. I would gladly hear what you think of this plan.” “Oh my,” said the other, “what are you saying! Do you not know that we have promised our virginity to God?” “Oh,” said the first, “how many promises are made to him all the day long, and none of them are kept! If we have so promised, let him find another, or others, who will do so in our place.” To which her companion replied: “Or if we became pregnant, how would that turn out?” The other said: “You are beginning to think of disasters before they even happen; we shall think about it when we need to; there are a thousand ways to ensure it will never be known, so long as we ourselves do not reveal it.” Hearing this, the second nun said, now having a greater desire than the first to find out what kind of beast was a man: “So then, how do we proceed?” To which the first responded: “You see that we are past Nones;24 I believe that all the sisters are asleep, except for us. Let us check the kitchen garden to see if anyone is there, and if not, then all we need to do is to take him by the hand and lead him into the little shed where he shelters when it rains, and there one can be inside with him while the other stands guard. He is so stupid, he will do whatever it is we want.” Masetto heard this entire discussion, and ready to obey, he hoped for nothing more than to be summoned by one of them. The nuns having checked everything out well and certain that nothing could be seen from any angle, the one who had first spoken approached Masetto, who jumped to his feet with a silly grin on his face. With encouraging signs she took him by the hand and led him to the shed, where without requiring further invitation, Masetto did what she desired. She then, as a true friend, having had what she wished, made way for the other, and Masetto, always acting the simpleton, did as she bid him. Whereupon, before they left, each one 24. Nones: one of the canonical hours, the time for midafternoon prayer at the ninth hour of the day.

3. Giovanni Boccaccio, Decameron

235

of them wanted one more time to assess how well the mute knew how to ride; after which, discussing the matter often, they agreed that it was indeed a thing as delightful, and more so, as they had been told. And so, whenever it was convenient, they seized the occasion to go and amuse themselves with the mute. . . . After this first adventure, Masetto is sought out by all the other nuns and the abbess herself, whose favorite he becomes. Finally the abbess, who to this point knew nothing of these matters, wandering one very hot day all alone in the garden, came upon Masetto. As he spent his nights vigorously servicing the nuns, he was easily worn out by his labors in the daytime, and had stretched out his limbs in the shade of an almond25 tree to get some sleep; and as a brisk wind had whipped his clothes to disarray, he lay there nearly naked. Seeing this, and seeing that she was alone, the lady succumbed to the same desire to which her little charges had succumbed. So she took Masetto, now awakened, into her room with her, and kept him there for many days—to the great distress of the nuns, whose gardens were left untended by their gardener. There she tasted and tasted again the sweetness of that consummation which she had often condemned in others. In the end, having sent him back to his own room from hers, she called him back again and again, demanding more of him than Masetto could supply, as he could not satisfy so many. He realized that his being mute, if this went on, could be ruinous for him. And so one night when he was with the abbess, he untied his tongue, and began to speak: “My lady, while I understand that one cock can service ten hens, ten men can scarcely, or poorly, satisfy one woman, whereas I must service nine, which is too much for me to bear; in fact, given what I have had to do up to now, I have come to the point where I can do nothing at all. And so, either let me go with God, or find some way out of this impasse.” Stunned to hear him talk, when she had thought him mute, the lady said: “What is this? I believed you to be mute?” “My lady,” said Masetto, “I was mute, though not by birth, but by an infirmity that tied my tongue, and only this very night did I find it restored, for which I thank God with all my heart.” The lady believed him, and asked what he meant when he said that he had served nine women. Masetto told her the truth, which caused the abbess, upon hearing it, to understand that none among her nuns was a greater fool than she. Whereupon, being prudent, rather than send Masetto 25. In the Christian tradition, the almond was the symbol of promise, and particularly the promise of the birth of Jesus to the Virgin Mary; Boccaccio likely alludes to the pretended virginity of the nuns, and their inevitable impregnation by Masetto.

236

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

away, and so risk injury to the convent’s reputation, she decided to arrange things with her nuns so that he could remain. And so, their steward having died in recent days, by general consent of the abbess and nuns . . . and with Masetto in accord, things were so arranged that the neighbors came to understand that by the prayers of the nuns and the merits of the saint to whom the convent was dedicated, Masetto, though long mute, regained the power of speech, and was made steward; and further, his duties were redefined in such a way that he was able to perform them all. In the performance of which, though he fathered not a few little monks and nuns, the thing was so discreetly managed that nothing was known of it until, after the death of the abbess, the truth came out, and Masetto, now an old man and rich and eager to return home, was swiftly given permission to do so. . . .

$$$ 4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales (c. 1380–1400) In the Wife of Bath’s Prologue (her tale will follow) Chaucer portrays a robust, experienced widow, who in a sequence of five marriages exploits to the utmost the possibilities available to her—and they were limited, as to all women in this era—to achieve her sexual; economic; and, in a sense, political goals. Acceding to a system where men dominate in all those activities, she demands sexual fulfillment, accumulates wealth with the demise of each of her husbands, and gains control of the marital kingdom. Like Boccaccio’s Masetto, she cleverly maximizes her advantages to win a position in life greater than might have been expected given her initial status. The Wife opens by claiming her prerogative to speak as an expert on marriage—“My life gives me authority, / . . . To speak of all the woe in marriage” (lines 1, 3)—since she has had five, of whom “three were good and two were bad” (line 203). Addressing the prescripts of Jesus and the apostle Paul on marriage, which she claims not to have violated, she proceeds to justify her numerous remarriages. She “always picked the best,” she boasts, “For manly wares and all the rest,” (lines 47–48), and though still married to the fifth, she will “welcome the sixth when he appears” (line 53). The excerpts given here tell the story of that fifth marriage, to a handsome fellow half her age (he was twenty, she was forty), and who had studied at Oxford, a mark of considerable achievement. Jenkin is a fine and ardent lover who not only beats his wife regularly, but taunts her by reading from a large tome containing an assortment of misogynist works by classical, Christian, and contemporary authors. In a fury one day, she rips out the

4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

237

pages he is reading; he strikes her with a blow so hard she goes deaf in one ear; she cuffs him back. Eventually, they make peace, but on her terms: she will rule, and he must obey.26

Canterbury Tales Now of the fifth one let me tell. I pray his soul is not in hell! He was the sharpest one, God knows! Why even now I feel his blows And will until my dying day, But in our bed he was so gay, And wheedled with so fine a grace To pleasure me in his embrace That though he beat on every bone, He held my heart, and he alone. . . . My fifth man, then, God bless his spirit, Was not a tycoon—nowhere near it. No, he was once a clerk at Oxford, And later he returned to board With my best friend in all our town— God save her soul!—my Alison. She knew my heart and secrets too Far better than our priest could do. . . . It happened that one time in Lent27— A season I as much as spent With Alison to flirt and play And gad abroad from March to May— That Jenkin, Alison, and I Walked out into the fields nearby. My husband was in town that spring, Which left me free as any king, To see the people and be seen. How could I live out what was fated, Unless I went where it awaited?. . .

26. The rhythmic octosyllabic lines of the verse translation used here capture well the opulence of Chaucer’s Middle English verse with its varied patterns and line lengths. 27. Lent: the forty days before Easter, a season of penitence and self-abnegation.

238

Across the fields we tripped along, Caught up in foolish play and song. We blushed and mooned and flirted so That I at last let Jenkin know He was the man, and only he, I’d wed if I were ever free. For I’m the sort, sirs, understand, Who’s never caught without a plan In love or in my other interests. . . . I claimed he had enchanted me (My mother’s brand of subtlety) And said I dreamed of him all night— He slew me as I lay upright And all the bedclothes swam in blood, But I took comfort in that flood, For blood betokens gold, I thought. A pack of lies, for I dreamed naught, But spoke as Mother said I should. Her love advice was always good. But tell me, sirs, . . . what was I saying? It’s here, by God. My tale again! When Husband Four was on his bier, I moaned and groaned with sorry cheer, As good wives must, for that’s our place. Yet I took care to hide my face. Because I’d found another man, My tears held back, as dry as sand. Men bore the corpse to church next day With neighbors sighing “Welladay!” Jenkin himself was in the crowd Behind the bier, and I allowed, I’d never seen another pair Of legs and feet so clean and fair. I gave him all my heart to hold. Now he was twenty winters old, And I was forty; that’s the truth. . . . What can I say? A few weeks later, This pretty Jenkin, no one greater, Married me with pomp and pleasure. I gave him all my land and treasure,

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

239

All the gains I’d won before, And afterward repented sore. I’d ask for things. He wouldn’t hear. He cuffed me so upon the ear (I ripped a leaf out of his book), My ear went dead where I was struck. But I was cross-grained as a cat And talked him down in every spat. I vowed I’d roam just as before, No matter how he scowled and swore. He paid me back, for he would quarry His book for every hurtful story. . . . Jenkin begins to lecture his wife from his collection of misogynous tracts. Now let me tell, by holy Thomas, The reason I ripped out the page, For which he struck me in his rage. He had some works that night and day He’d read aloud to my dismay. . . . All these were bound in one great book, And all the time he could he took, Each time he had the least vacation From other worldly occupation, To read to me of wicked wives, For he knew more bad women’s lives Than there are names in Holy Writ. No clerk28 will willingly admit That any good is found in wives, Except in some saints’ pious lives. They slander us. You know they do. . . . When clerks are old and cannot do Dame Venus’s labor29 worth a shoe, They all endeavor to disparage The female sex along with marriage. But, as I said, it was my luck 28. clerk: Middle English for “cleric,” the title given not only to all clergymen, but more generally to what was virtually the same thing, all who were literate—as was Jenkin, the Oxford scholar. 29. Dame Venus’s labor: sexual activity, referring to Venus, goddess of love and beauty.

240

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

To lose my hearing for a book! Once Jenkin sat beside his fire Reading like a country squire, Of Eve,30 who for her appetite Caused all of us to share the blight For which the Son of God was slain And bought us with his blood again. Of course, it was a she who thus Loosed sin and death on all of us. . . . A long series of misogynous attacks follows. Concerning later wives, he read How some had killed their men in bed And frolicked with a paramour, Their husbands dead upon the floor. Some drove nails through their men’s brains And watched the blood drip from their veins, Or else put poison in their drink. He spoke more harm than you can think. And then he’d start rehearsing proverbs. They sprang up in his head like herbs. “You’d be,” he said, “far less at risk With lions or a basilisk, Than with a woman prone to chide.” “Climb up on the roof and hide,” He said, “from angry wives below. They’re always fractious, as you know. They hate whatever their men love.” And “A woman’s shame is like a glove: It slides right off her with her smock.” And “A fair face in the Devil’s flock Is a golden ring in an old sow’s nose.” I swear to you no nonwife knows How my rage grew with each new libel. I saw he’d never quit his bible, His bale of lies, his book of sages, So I reached out and snatched three pages Clean from the book, beneath his nose. I hit him too, you may suppose, 30. Eve: the reference is the account of the original sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden recounted in Genesis 3, for which Eve was regularly blamed.

4. Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales

So he fell backward in the fire. Up he jumped—his rage was dire— And punched me roundly in the head. Lord! I collapsed and acted dead. Now when he saw how still I lay, He made as if to run away, But I began to stir instead. “You’ve killed me now, false thief,” I said, “Robbed and murdered, what a crime! But come and kiss me one last time.” He ventured near and knelt beside me, And said, “No matter what betides me, I’ll never buffet you again. You pushed till I was half insane. Forgive me, dear, that’s all I seek.” By God, I clubbed him on the cheek! And said, “There, thief, accept your pay! I’m dead. I have no more to say.” But, still, at length with care and tact We found our roles and made a pact. He put the bridle in my hand, The government of house and land, And of his tongue and his behavior. We burnt his book, as God’s my savior. And when I gathered in to me All the rule and sovereignty, And when he said, “My own true wife, Do as you will throughout your life: Preserve your name and my possessions”— We had no more head-knocking sessions. As God’s my hope, I was as kind As any wife you’ll ever find, And true to him, and he to me. I pray great God in majesty May bathe his soul in heaven’s glory. And now, sirs, I will tell my story.

$$$

241

242

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

5. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) Of Christine de Pizan’s 165 portraits of exemplary women, two are featured here: one of a pagan, and one of a Christian. Christine portrays the pagan Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, as physically courageous, skilled both in the hunt and in warfare, a fine administrator, a loyal wife, exceptionally learned, and—only in this regard, perhaps, departing from a modern understanding of an admirable woman—chaste. Her depiction closely follows that offered by Boccaccio in his Famous Women, except at a few points where Boccaccio betrays a misogyny Christine rejects. When Zenobia assumes power in Palmyra, for instance, Boccaccio comments that she “ruled the empire in her son’s name longer than was suitable to her sex.” In commending her chastity, Boccaccio notes that such virtue is found “very rarely indeed” among women. Finally, while Christine omits all mention of Zenobia’s rebellion against Rome resulting in her capture and humiliation by Emperor Aurelian, who will parade her in the triumphal celebration of his victory over Palmyra, Boccaccio highlights it: made to walk with her children in front of the conqueror’s chariot, “fettered with gold chains around her neck, hands, and feet and burdened by her crown and royal robes and pearls and precious stones, she was exhausted by their weight and often had to stop, despite her inexhaustible vigor.”31 No Boccaccian analogue of the Christian saint Catherine of Alexandria exists as Boccaccio mainly profiled pre-Christian women in his collective biography. Christine, however, includes Christian as well as pre-Christian exemplars of female excellence. Her portrayal of saintly women recalls Hrotswitha’s depiction of Saint Sophia (Sapientia) and her daughters (see Chapter 5, Text 3), who were not only fiercely devoted Christians, but extraordinarily brave in defying secular authority. Christine’s Catherine of Alexandria is supremely brave as well; for this feminist biographer, Catherine’s resistance to the tyranny of the state is the principal message of her martyrdom.32

Book of the City of Ladies 1.20: Zenobia, queen of Palmyra Upon the death in 260 CE of Odaenathus (king of Palmyra, an independent kingdom in Syria nominally subject to the Roman Empire, which then 31. Giovanni Boccaccio, Famous Women, trans. and ed. Virginia Brown (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), #100, 210–15; quoted passages at 212, 213, 215. 32. The translation used here is slightly modified, with references to the deity as “He,” “Him,” or “His” lowercased.

5. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies

243

dominated much of the Middle East), Zenobia, his cultivated and capable consort, ruled as regent for her son. The Amazonians were not the only brave women in history. Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, a lady of noble blood descended from the Ptolemies, kings of Egypt, was no less celebrated. This lady’s great courage and love for the pursuit of arms became apparent early in her childhood. As soon as she was strong enough, no one could stop her from leaving the walled cities and royal palaces and chambers to roam the woods and forests where, armed with her sword and spears, she avidly hunted wild game. First she went after stags and hinds, then lions, bears, and all sorts of other wild animals, which she fearlessly attacked and brought down with marvelous skill. . . . This maiden despised all carnal love and for a long time refused to marry, determined to preserve her virginity for the rest of her life. In the end, however, and under pressure from her parents, she married the king of Palmyra. The noble Zenobia had a perfectly beautiful body and face but paid no attention to her beauty. Fortune favored her by giving her a husband who shared her values. This king, an outstanding knight, decided to use military force to conquer the entire Orient and the surrounding empires. At that time, Valerian, ruler of the Roman Empire, was captured by Sapor, king of the Persians. The king of Palmyra assembled his great army and Zenobia, who could not be bothered to worry about her beauty and complexion, prepared to share the hardship of battle with her husband, don the armor, and take part with him in all the physical effort inherent in the military profession. The king, whose name was Odaenathus, appointed Herod, a son he had fathered with another woman, to lead part of his army as an advance guard against King Sapor of Persia, who occupied Mesopotamia at that time. Then he ordered his wife Zenobia to take another part of his army and attack the king from one side while he himself would move in from the other side with the remaining third of his army. Off they went, but what shall I tell you? The way it ended, as you can read in the history books, was that Zenobia acted with such vigor and bravery, fighting so boldly, that she won several battles against this Persian king. Thanks to her bravery, she defeated him and placed Mesopotamia under her husband’s rule. Finally she besieged Sapor in his stronghold and captured both him and his concubines, seizing great treasures in the process. After this victory, her husband was killed by one of his relatives who wanted to take over the throne. It did him little good, however, because this noble-minded lady put a spoke in his wheel. Brave and valorous, she took possession of the empire on behalf of her children, who were still young. She crowned herself empress, took over the government, and ruled with skill and vigilance. To make a long story short, she governed with so much wisdom

244

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

and combat readiness that neither Gallienus nor, after him, Claudius, both Roman emperors who occupied part of the Orient on behalf of Rome, dared move against her. . . . Zenobia governed so wisely that she was honored by her princes, obeyed and loved by her people, and feared and respected by her knights. When she rode out at the head of her army, which happened often, she never spoke to her soldiers unless she was fully armed and wearing her helmet. She did not even have herself carried in a litter while in battle, although the kings of that time all had themselves transported that way. She always rode a war horse and sometimes, to spy on her enemies, she even went incognito ahead of her troops. Just as this noble Zenobia in her time surpassed all the knights in the world in the arts of war, she outshone all other ladies in her noble and upright conduct and her integrity. She led a very sober life but still often held great assemblies and feasts for her barons and guests. Those were occasions of great magnificence and royal largesse in all things, when she would generously hand out beautiful gifts, well aware of how to attract eminent people to her benevolent affection. She paid strict attention to her chastity, not only keeping herself from other men but also sleeping with her husband for the sole purpose of having children. She made this very clear by refusing to sleep with her husband when she was pregnant. And to ensure that her conduct was in harmony with her values, she made sure that lewd and morally corrupt men were banned from her court. She insisted that anyone seeking her favor be virtuous and wellbred. She honored people based on their qualities, bravery, and virtue, not on wealth or lineage, and she liked serious people and experienced knights. . . . In addition to everything I’ve said, her prime virtue was her knowledge of literature, both that of the Egyptians and that of her own language. When she wasn’t busy, she diligently devoted herself to study and she arranged for the philosopher Longinus to teach her. He was her master and introduced her to philosophy. She knew Latin and Greek and used those languages to produce an elegant summary of historical works. She also wanted her children, whom she raised very strictly, to be introduced to academic learning. So you can judge for yourself, my dear friend, if you have ever seen or read about any prince or knight more perfectly versed in every virtue.

3.3: Saint Catherine of Alexandria Christine opens her discussion of Christian heroines with Saint Catherine of Alexandria, legendarily a fourth-century Christian who had won many converts by her eloquence and power of persuasion before her cruel torture and martyrdom.

5. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies

245

To show how much God approved of the female sex, he gave young, delicate women the constancy and strength to tolerate dreadful torment for the sake of his holy faith, just as he gave this to men. These women are crowned with glory and the stories of their lives, beautiful to hear, are more edifying to all other women than anything else. . . . Let us start with the most excellent and blessed Catherine, daughter of King Costus of Alexandria. This holy virgin became her father’s sole heir at the age of eighteen. She admirably governed herself and her inheritance, but being a Christian and having dedicated her life to God, she refused to marry. One day, [the Roman] Emperor Maxentius came to the city of Alexandria on the occasion of an important celebration of their gods. He had made elaborate arrangements for the great sacrifice. Catherine was in her palace when she heard the blare of musical instruments and the bellowing of the animals being prepared for the sacrifice, so she sent someone over to find out what was going on. When she learned that the emperor was already in the temple making sacrifices to the gods, she rushed over there. Using all the eloquence at her disposal, she tried to convince him that he was doing the wrong thing. Since she was highly educated in theology and well versed in the sciences, she used philosophical arguments to prove that there is but one God, the Creator of all things, and that he alone should be worshipped and no one else. Hearing this beautiful, noble maiden speak with such authority, the emperor was astounded and did not know what to say, but he watched her intently. Then he sent for the wisest philosophers of all of Egypt, which was famous in the field of philosophy at that time. When they discovered why they had been summoned, they were displeased and said it had been foolish to cause them to travel from far-away places merely to have a debate with a maiden. To make a long story short, the blessed Catherine threw so many arguments at them on the day of the debate that they didn’t know how to counter them and became completely convinced. The emperor was greatly vexed by this but to no avail: by the grace of God, the virgin’s holy words convinced them all to convert and profess the name of Jesus Christ. The emperor punished them by having them burnt at the stake, but the holy virgin comforted them in their martyrdom, assuring them they would be received in eternal glory, praying to God to sustain them in their true faith. Thanks to her, they joined the ranks of the holy martyrs. Then God made a great miracle happen: the fire did not destroy either their bodies or their clothing. When the fire died down, the men had lost not a single hair; they remained whole and their faces looked as if they were still alive. Then the tyrannical Maxentius, who lusted after the blessed Catherine for her beauty, began an assiduous courtship in an attempt to bend her to his will, but when he realized that this had no effect, he tried threats and

246

Chapter 7. Medieval Culminations

then torture. He had her severely beaten and thrown into jail in solitary confinement for twelve days, thinking he would weaken her with hunger, but our Lord’s angels were with her and comforted her. When she was brought before the emperor at the end of the twelve days, he saw that she looked fitter and healthier than before. Convinced that she must have had visitors, he gave orders for the prison guards to be tortured, but Catherine felt sorry for them and assured him that the only comfort she had received came from Heaven. The emperor, at his wit’s end, tried to think of an even harsher form of torture. He consulted his prefect, who suggested he should have wheels made that were covered with razors. With the wheels turning against each other, anything between them would be cut to pieces. He had Catherine tied between these wheels, naked. She continued to worship God, her hands folded in prayer. Then the angels descended and broke the wheels apart with such force that those administering the torture were killed. . . . The emperor’s wife converts when she hears of these miracles, and is beheaded by Maxentius. When he asks Catherine to marry him and she refuses, he has her beheaded as well. Thus she was martyred and milk flowed from her body instead of blood. The angels took her holy body and carried it to Mount Sinai, some twenty days’ travel away, and buried it there. . . . As to Emperor Maxentius, God inflicted a horrible punishment on him.

SECTION III Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal Introduction to Section III Overlapping the later Middle Ages and the Early Modern periods, and concurrent with the religious movement of the Reformation, the Renaissance was an era of intense creativity extending from the late fourteenth into the early seventeenth centuries. Humanism, its principal intellectual movement, consisted in an awakened interest in the literary, philosophical, and scientific legacy of antiquity, resulting in the recovery of forgotten outlooks, an improved command of the Latin and Greek languages, and the broadening of the topics and genres featured in literary production. The new technology of printing, available from the mid-fifteenth century, triggered a surge in the generation and circulation of new ideas. Both humanist activity and print technology, in turn, encouraged the development of the European vernacular languages, as more writers engaging with more genres wrote in these rather than in Latin, enriching them with a plethora of classical lore and disciplining them with the application of Latin grammatical principles. Meanwhile, the intense religiosity of the late Middle Ages, especially among the growing population of urban dwellers, joined with a critique of the practices and even the dogmas of the Catholic Church to yield the revolutionary movement of the Reformation, with repercussions throughout Europe and around the globe. These cultural phenomena were not only components of the Renaissance, but also part of a larger history, for these same centuries were a time of demographic recovery after the cataclysm of the Black Death (1347–1351); of economic and political innovation; and of commercial, military, and missionary ventures abroad. The first chapter of this section looks at five of the humanist authors who pioneered a renewed enthusiasm for ancient texts that would shape the future of European literature and thought. The first is Francesco Petrarca, known as Petrarch to English readers, whose desire for a deep rapprochement with ancient authors is seen in the ten letters he wrote to them, of which two are considered in this chapter. The intimacy between Petrarch and his ancient correspondents is startling, the consequence of an imaginative leap over a vast expanse of time. Half a century later, the papal secretary and humanist scholar Poggio Bracciolini experienced a similar encounter with classical authors while 247

248

III. Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal

book hunting in an eighth-century monastery in St. Gallen, Switzerland. There he found a manuscript of the Roman rhetorican Quintilian’s Principles of Oratory, the most important ancient rhetorical work, which had been known to exist but had fallen out of circulation. Poggio copied the manuscript carefully for further distribution and broadcast his discovery to his friends, rejoicing that Quintilian “has been restored to his original condition and worth. . . .” With equal fervor, following the conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Venetian nobleman and humanist Lauro Quirini grieved for the books destroyed in conflict. The invaders had “obliterate[ed] . . . the civilization that was Greece,” destroying “more than 120,000 volumes,” with the result that all that the ancient Greeks had created with such effort and skill was now “annihilated, extinguished!” Meanwhile, the humanist scholar Leonardo Bruni had paid tribute to Greek learning by a different means: that of imitation. He wrote an oration in praise of the city that, in its structure and rhetoric, was modeled on one written by a late-ancient Greek rhetorician in praise of Athens, the epicenter of Greek civilization. In crafting this imitation, Bruni not only offers a brilliant portrait of an urban society, but also establishes his own equivalence to a well-known ancient author and the equivalence of modern Florence to ancient Athens. Near the close of his oration, Bruni praises Florence for its dedication to the “liberal arts,” the set of studies that the humanists had formulated as the proper curriculum for citizens and scholars alike: “[T]he liberal arts which are particularly suited for free men—which have always flourished among every great people, flourish vigorously in this one city.” In Venice in 1487, the female humanist Cassandra Fedele delivered an oration in praise of these same liberal arts, while stressing their importance for women: for although women could not hope for career advancement, as men could, on the basis of their literary studies, “every woman ought to seek and embrace [them] for the pleasure and delight alone that comes from them.” Chapter 9 features four authors of the High Renaissance, the climactic first three decades of the sixteenth century. All four were thoroughly imbued with humanist learning—although only Erasmus was a professional humanist—which they employ, in the prose works excerpted here, to reflect on the political and social milieu in which they lived. Two of those works, by the Italian Niccolò Machiavelli and the cosmopolitan, but Dutch-born Desiderius Erasmus, offer starkly different visions of the “prince,” or ruler. Machiavelli notoriously advises the prince to pursue and maintain power by any means, ignoring traditional rules of statecraft and the norms of morality. Erasmus, in contrast, admonishes the prince to observe the highest standards of Christian morality: avoiding time-wasting amusements and the

Introduction to Section III

249

blandishments of courtiers, as it is his duty to serve his people, the poorest and most vulnerable first of all. Although Machiavelli’s work is renowned for its daring, Erasmus’s prescription for an ideal ruler outlines expectations that have won approval often since. Even as this dialogue between Machiavelli and Erasmus transpires, Machiavelli’s compatriot Baldassare Castiglione portrays a different ideal figure: that of the courtier, a man who serves the prince in diplomatic and advisory roles. Castiglione’s courtier is a nobleman expert in war, as had been the ideal of the medieval nobleman; but he must display, in addition, the refined manners suitable for polite society in which women as well as men participate, engage in informed conversation about topics of importance, and possess a charismatic grace and elegance. The Englishman Thomas More, the fourth of these representatives of the High Renaissance outlook, proposes in his Utopia a radically new kind of society. In Utopia—the word itself means “no place,” as the community More portrays existed nowhere—things are different: the governors are elected by the citizens; there is no private property; everyone labors, but labor requirements are modest; meals are taken in common; and there is no established church. Somehow More has anticipated, amid the convulsive events of sixteenth-century Europe, the ideal society that modern socialism has imagined and its advocates have celebrated. Chapters 10 and 11 turn to the abundant literary harvest that the Renaissance era produced: a multitude of works by major authors in several modern languages and in a full range of genres, both traditional and new, of poetry, epic, romance, story, novel, essay, and drama. Chapter 10 considers four Continental authors—one Italian, two French, and one Spanish. Chapter 11 presents four leading English authors of the Elizabethan Renaissance. The four texts presented in Chapter 10 are highly provocative: by extravagant plots, interjected absurdities, and the confounding of traditional norms, they announce a major redirection of literary creation. The Italian poet Ludovico Ariosto targets the tropes of the ever-popular chivalric romances in his epic Orlando furioso (Roland Goes Mad), ridiculing them at great length by an elaborate complexification of character and events. The French author François Rabelais constructs a lavish prose narrative featuring two preposterous giants, a father-and-son duo, who undertake equally preposterous adventures, their hijinks commenting slyly on contemporary society and religion. Rabelais’s compatriot Michel de Montaigne invents a new genre, the essay, which makes his own protean and indeterminate ego the fulcrum of deliberately digressive musings on philosophy and society. The Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, lastly, introducing another new genre, the novel, explores at length the mind of his unlikely hero: a minor

250

III. Renaissance Revisions: Recovery and Renewal

nobleman of middle age who, convinced he is a knight errant from the age of chivalry—in a world that has left such things behind—pursues improbable adventures in the service of an illusory lady and futile aspirations. The English authors included in Chapter 11 all wrote in the concentrated space of the Elizabethan era, a period dominated by the personality of Queen Elizabeth I, “the Great,” whose reign achieved a delicate settlement of the political and religious turmoil that characterized the first half of the sixteenth century. Their works focus on the emotional life of the inner self, sharing with Montaigne an intent to anatomize the soul. The poet Philip Sidney, the first to adapt the Petrarchan model of lyric verse to the English language, is himself the subject of the love story told in his sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella. In his compelling dramas, Christopher Marlowe examines the dynamics of ambition, violence, and lust that drive his characters to bold actions: in the case of Doctor Faustus, the protagonist of the tragedy included here, the extraordinary action of committing his soul to the devil in exchange for the knowledge and power he craves. Like Marlowe, William Shakespeare, the premier dramatist of English literature, dissects the psychological motivations of his towering heroes and heroines, among them those portrayed in the five tragedies and history plays from which excerpts are included in this chapter. In his sonnets, at the same time, writing as both lover and narrator as Sidney had done, Shakespeare explores his own conflicted feelings. Adding a new dimension to this sequence of Renaissance authors, John Donne employs rugged rhythms and complex metaphors to give powerful expression in his poems to yearnings of love and anticipation of death. Roughly a century extends from Ariosto’s first version of the Furioso to Donne’s composition of his Holy Sonnets, the first and last exemplars of Renaissance works included in Chapters 10 and 11. It is a century uniquely rich in the quality, quantity, and originality of its literary production.

Chapter 8 The New Learning

Introduction Even as medieval literature reached its culmination, scholars entranced by the literature of antiquity mapped out a different road, viewing that literature not merely as a model of correct Latinity and a storehouse of genres and themes, but as something alive, different, and provocative. These scholars, called “humanists,” proposed a new learning, based on the texts that had been known for one thousand years and more, as well as on new ones “discovered,” or rather recovered from monastic libraries where they had been copied, recopied, and left unread. But it was not only the few new recovered works that made this learning new. It was also the energy and insight with which authors pursued the meaning of those ancient books, to which they brought a historical awareness of the circumstances in which they were composed, and a psychological openness to unfamiliar ideas. Thus equipped, they entered a mental world not available to their predecessors, the medieval thinkers for whom the disruption of the Roman tradition had posed an impassable barrier. This chapter presents five authors who encountered the ancient tradition with an enlivened awareness, for whom not only the words and arguments, but also the sense and purpose of classical texts, had transformative power, enabling them to open the path to a new phase of Western literary development. They are Francesco Petrarca, Leonardo Bruni, Poggio Bracciolini, Lauro Quirini, and Cassandra Fedele. All five are Italian, for it was in the dynamic cities of northern Italy—laboratories of political, economic, and social change—that the new learning had its first home. Although the cosmopolitan Petrarch (as his name was Anglicized) belonged to no single place, two of the five were prominent Florentine citizens, though born outside of Florence; and two were native Venetians, the first a nobleman, the second belonging to the cittadino (citizen) stratum. Four of the five humanists, finally, were male, and one female. Although humanists in general wrote in many genres, including full-length treatises, dialogues, and histories, the five selections appearing in this chapter are from brief works, given nearly in their entirety, which convey a fresh response to cultural change: letters and orations, to use the classical term the humanists preferred for public speeches. 251

252

Chapter 8. The New Learning

Born to a Florentine family but reared abroad and later much traveled, Petrarch (1304–1374) was celebrated alongside Dante (see Chapter 7, Text 2), his elder by a generation, and Boccaccio (see Chapter 7, Text 3), his contemporary, as one of the “three crowns” of Italian literature. All three wrote both poetry and prose, and in both Italian and Latin. Petrarch was widely known for his Italian sonnets,1 a genre he had inherited from earlier poets but perfected. In them he powerfully expresses his feelings for the shadowy Laura, the partly real and partly imagined woman he loved and lost. With these lyric poems detailing male desire for a woman, Petrarch launched a literary tradition that flourished in several European languages and persists into modern times. Four sonnets are included in this chapter to represent this aspect of his literary work. Although the Petrarchan love sonnet is the contribution for which he is best known, Petrarch’s Latin prose works constitute the larger part of his written legacy, and constitute as well the first substantial works of the humanist movement. They include biographies of classical figures; reflections on his own life ranging from the inward-looking Secret to the selfconfident address To Posterity; a treatise On His Own Ignorance and That of Many Others, both a personal statement and a defense of humanistic studies; and several volumes of letters to his friends and various important figures, inspired by the letters of the Roman author Cicero, one manuscript of which Petrarch had discovered by chance in a cathedral library. The last section of Petrarch’s Familiar Letters contains a series of ten, written between 1345 and 1360, addressed to classical authors: to longdead poets, philosophers, rhetoricians, and historians. These intimate letters, which question, challenge, and berate those to whom they are directed, sweep away the more than one thousand years which had passed since antiquity until Petrarch’s own day, and which had distanced Latin Christian Europe from the Greco-Roman world—a distancing Petrarch bridled at, and wished to overcome. Two of these letters appear in this chapter: one to Cicero (see Chapter 3, Text 5), the first of two he wrote to that orator, scholar, and statesman, rebuking him for abandoning the philosophical studies of his last years to become involved in the deadly maelstrom of Roman politics; and one to Homer (see Chapter 2, Text 1), lamenting with the Greek poet that the “negligence” of Greek by “modern” scholars2 made 1. sonnet: a poem of fourteen lines, generally divided between the opening eight, the octet, and the closing six, or sextet. Petrarch’s octets consisted of two sets of four lines, normally using the rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA, and his sextets two sets of three, using the rhyme scheme CDE CDE or CDC DCD. 2. “modern” scholars: Petrarch considered his own age, which he called “modern,” to be inferior to that of antiquity, and the “modern” scholars he deplored were the scholastic philosophers who had neglected the classics.

Introduction

253

it impossible for him and his fellow humanists to read the great epics by Homer that had inspired Virgil—an impossibility that would be overcome as later generations of humanists mastered the Greek language and literary corpus. Leonardo Bruni (1370–1444), Petrarch’s literary grandson, as he might be called (his mentor Coluccio Salutati had admired and imitated Petrarch), was born in Arezzo, not far from Florence, and studied in Florence with Salutati and the Byzantine diplomat Manuel Chrysoloras, thus acquiring Greek. He then moved to Rome to assume a position as secretary in the papal curia, later returning to Florence to become in 1427 the chancellor of that city, at this time the center of the world of humanism. His many works include histories; biographies; a famous letter to the Italian noblewoman Battista da Montefeltro outlining a humanist program of education; and translations from the Greek, including works of Aristotle, employing humanist principles of translation that he had developed to correct the earlier versions used by scholastic philosophers. Bruni was still a young man when, in 1404, he wrote his oration In Praise of the City of Florence, of which excerpts are given here. In this work, he marries his deep identification with the classical world and his loyalty to Florence, which was for him a paragon of political, cultural, and aesthetic achievement. Bruni’s oration is an imitation of a eulogy of Athens written by the fourth-century Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides. In employing that literary model, Bruni not only showcases his knowledge of Greek, but also establishes the parity of contemporary Florence with ancient Athens, the cultural center of ancient Greek and Hellenistic civilization. Like Bruni, his younger contemporary Poggio Bracciolini (1380–1459) was both a prolific humanist author and a chancellor of Florence. His works include several treatises, a history of Florence, a large correspondence, and important dialogues addressing the issues of avarice, viewed from both a traditional Christian and a modern civic perspective, and nobility, reenvisioned not as a hereditary social caste but as the category of those possessing a lofty character formed by a serious education. In 1416, Bracciolini was a member of the papal entourage at the Council of Constance (Konstanz, modern Germany), an international assembly of prominent clerics.3 While posted there, he engaged in a famous book hunt at the nearby abbey of St. Gallen, which housed, it was said, a horde of old books. One of a group of papal secretaries seized by a zeal for classical learning, he found piled at the foot of a tower a treasure trove of manuscripts: fine copies of classical texts, including a few priceless books that had been lost to view. The letter 3. The Council of Constance met from 1414 to 1418 to resolve matters about the future of the papacy, the nature of church governance, and the threat of heresy.

254

Chapter 8. The New Learning

presented in this chapter documents both the find itself and the excitement of the humanist book hunters who won the prize. St. Gallen, founded seven centuries earlier in 719, was one of those monasteries whose scribes diligently copied the ancient books deposited with them during the centuries of Roman collapse. Without their labors, especially encouraged during the Carolingian Renaissance of the eighth and ninth centuries (see Chapter 6, Text 1), much of the Latin tradition would have been lost. While many books had been copied in numbers sufficient so that the early humanists, like their medieval predecessors, had access to them, others lingered in unique copies in remote locations—their value often not recognized by the more recent monastic occupants, whose discipline had slackened over time. It was such rare exemplars of texts considered “lost” that Poggio found at St. Gallen, as he reports to his friend Guarino Veronese, one of the first humanists to master Greek, in a letter remarkable for its freshness and immediacy. In it, he describes the book he has found as though it were a living human being, tormented by his long imprisonment. Born on the island of Crete, part of the Venetian maritime empire, the nobleman Lauro Quirini (1420–1475/1479) was educated in Venice and at the nearby University of Padua. In these years, he wrote three treatises on the then controversial topic of nobility, defending the notion of the inherent superiority of privileged groups—and thereby rebutting Poggio Bracciolini, whose dialogue On Nobility had argued that true nobility consisted in virtue, honed by education. Further, Quirini wrote a treatise On the Republic in defense of the Venetian political system, anticipating later advocates of its republican governance. In addition, he wrote various orations and letters to other humanists, including a letter to the Veronese noblewoman Isotta Nogarola prescribing a curriculum of advanced study, thereby recognizing and applauding a woman’s capacity to pursue it. He was expert in both Greek and Latin, and promoted the study of Aristotle in the original language. But in 1452, renouncing his first public office, Quirini departed with his new bride for Crete, where his family had extensive business interests. He managed his estates, and traded in wine, textiles, and alum. At the same time, he bought, circulated, and read books, serving for a number of years as the agent of the Greek-born Cardinal Bessarion4 in procuring important manuscripts. Quirini had been in Crete scarcely more than a year when Constantinople fell, scattering the refugees who had escaped the slaughter throughout the Mediterranean region. Hearing the news from eyewitnesses, he picked up his pen for the salvation, as he saw it, of Christendom. His 4. Cardinal Bessarion: one of those who, following the fifteenth-century councils held to advance the reunion of Eastern and Western Christianity, adhered to the “Uniate” church. Named a cardinal by the pope, Bessarion (1403–1472) was a major diplomat, humanist, and book-collector, famous for the donation of his books to Venice.

Introduction

255

letter to Pope Nicholas V of July 15, 1453, written just seven weeks after the fall of Constantinople, is presented in this chapter. It describes the military assault; the massacre that followed; the devastating cultural loss; the political threat posed by the Turkish advance; and worse, as Quirini saw it, the danger it posed to Christian civilization. He urged the pope to launch a new crusade against this now fearsome enemy. Pope Nicholas V was not uninterested in a Crusade, but neither he nor his successor was able to get one together. No Western European power acted with sufficient force to counter the Turkish threat, although Hungary and Albania, which faced it frontally, were necessarily engaged. Venice struggled with the choice between compromise and offense. It tried offense unsuccessfully in the Long War of 1463 to 1479, and lost ignominiously— after which, it sued for peace. By that date, however, Quirini had died, having written three times more (in 1458, 1464, and 1470) to bestir the West against the Turk. He feared for all of Christendom, but particularly for Crete—yet Crete, ironically, survived the Ottoman threat longer than Venice’s other Mediterranean possessions, falling only in 1669. A Venetian like Quirini, Cassandra Fedele (1465–1558) was one of a small group of Italian women who, taught by their fathers or uncles or their brothers’ tutors, acquired the skills that enabled them to enter into elite humanist circles. For the classical works treasured by the male humanists visited in this chapter—Petrarch, Bruni, Bracciolini, and Quirini—also came to be valued by women, a phenomenon heralding the entry of women from the sixteenth century onwards into the mainstream of European literary production. As many as a dozen of these women humanists, but three most notably (Isotta Nogarola and Laura Cereta, in addition to Fedele), wrote in the major humanist genres of oration, dialogue, and letter, winning the admiration of male authorities who publicly validated their achievement.5 While several of the women humanists were of noble rank, Fedele belonged to a special caste specific to Venice, immediately subordinate to the nobility, of cittadini originari (native-born citizens); from this stratum were recruited the secretaries who managed important business for a multitude of state councils, especially the Senate. Male relatives who held such secretarial roles provided Fedele with a sound humanist education, for which she became famous, so adding luster to the Fedele clan. In a city dominated by a hereditary noble class, the recognition given Fedele is impressive. Her three orations (her other works were formal humanist letters) were delivered in Padua (1487), Venice (1487), and Venice again (1556)—the last sixty-nine 5. The prominent Florentine humanist Angelo Poliziano celebrated Fedele in a famous letter, while Lauro Quirini, as noted above, attested to Nogarola’s skills in his letter guiding her philosophical studies.

256

Chapter 8. The New Learning

years after the first two, when Fedele was ninety-one, celebrating the arrival in Venice of Bona Sforza, the Italian-born queen of Poland. That she was chosen to perform in these elite settings is a remarkable testimony to her talents, and to the willingness of powerful men to permit such an honor to a woman. The 1487 oration in praise of the liberal arts, delivered to the Venetian doge (ruler) and Senate, is given here. In little more than a century, humanism transformed the intellectual culture of Western Europe, interjecting into the stream of its already sophisticated philosophical, theological, and literary currents a set of themes and concepts drawn directly from Greek and Roman authors, and with these, a very different worldview. The impact of humanism on the literature of the next centuries would be massive and unmistakable.

$$$ 1. Francis Petrarch, Letters to Cicero and Homer (1345, 1360) and Sonnets (1327–1368) Two of Petrarch’s letters to classical authors are followed here by four sonnets from his Canzoniere.

Letters to Cicero and Homer In Petrarch’s haunting letters, a man of the fourteenth century reaches out to touch the soul of long-dead classical authors. He questions them, reproves them, admires them, and says farewell, as though to bury them a second time after a brief moment of contact, when the normal flow of time had been suspended. Two letters appear here: the first, nearly entire, to the Roman statesman and author Marcus Tullius Cicero, written in 1345; and the last, excerpted, to the Greek poet Homer, written in 1360. Petrarch speaks to Cicero as though to a contemporary, rebuking him for his decision to reenter political life in the last years of the Roman Republic, a decision that would result in his assassination in 43 BCE. Cicero was a renowned orator, the author of treatises and dialogues on political and philosophical matters, the inventor of the familiar letter, and the translator of major works from the Greek to the Latin. But upon Julius Caesar’s rise to power, he had joined other senators in opposition to the dictatorship; and after Caesar’s death he wielded the full power of his pen and tongue against Caesar’s former lieutenant and would-be successor, Mark Antony (see Chapter 3, Text 5). Antony was unforgiving: when he came to power, he assigned Cicero to the list of his enemies proscribed (written down) for

1. Francis Petrarch, Letters to Cicero and Homer and Sonnets

257

death. Cicero was murdered by Antony’s thugs as he left his country villa for a dash to the sea and safety. Petrarch takes Cicero to task for abandoning the life of letters to become mired in politics, viewing Cicero’s resistance to tyranny not as heroic, but as foolish. For Petrarch was constructing a different form of heroism, of which he was the principal exemplar: that of the man of letters, who avoids the minutiae of civic or religious officialdom to dedicate himself to study and to creation. Cicero had chosen a different path. In closing, Petrarch reframes his relationship with Cicero in time and place. Alive and sitting in Verona, he sent his “eternal farewell” to a friend far away, among the dead below, who had not lived long enough to know the Christian savior born soon after Cicero’s death, but more than thirteen centuries before Petrarch’s own: “From the land of the living, on the right bank of the [river] Adige, in the city of Verona in Italy north of the [river] Po, on the sixteenth of June, in the one thousandth three-hundredth and fortyfifth year since the birth of that God whom you never knew.” A different kind of dialogue transpires between Petrarch and Homer, the Greek author of the monumental epics the Iliad (see Chapter 2, Text 1) and the Odyssey, nearly unknown in fourteenth-century Europe. Petrarch’s letter raises a matter of crucial concern to him: the problem of blocked communication. It was hard enough to talk to dead men—but what if they only spoke Greek? Petrarch raises the issue in the first sentence of the letter: “For some time I have been meaning to write you a letter, and I would have done so except that we have no common language.” He knew of Homer’s achievement because it had been mentioned by other writers, and yearned to encounter Homer’s text directly; but there was hardly anyone in contemporaneous western Europe who could assist. Together with his friend, Giovanni Boccaccio (see Chapter 7, Text 3), Petrarch had commissioned Leonzio Pilato, a Calabrian-born scholar of Greek ethnicity and mediocre ability to translate Homer for them. In his letter, Petrarch tells Homer how imminently, and how passionately, he awaits Pilato’s translation; he already possesses a copy of Homer’s text in Greek, although he cannot read it, and “if that Thessalian Greek [as Petrarch thought he was] of whom I have spoken completes what he has begun,” he will soon “have you whole in Latin.” After Petrarch addresses Homer’s complaints—the complaints of a fellow author, beset by third-rate imitators—he returns at the end to his main theme: the chasm that lay between him and his correspondent, severed from each other by language, by culture, and by time and space. “All these words I have spoken to you as though you were standing here with me,” but now he realizes “how far away you are,” and fears that the Greek will have difficulty reading his letter “in the shadows of the Underworld.” Now that their conversation has ceased, Homer will return to his “eternal home,” so Petrarch says “Farewell forever.” As with his letter to Cicero, Petrarch concludes this letter by noting from where he writes—“the

258

Chapter 8. The New Learning

land of the living”—and when—“on the 9th day of October in the onethousandth three-hundredth and sixtieth year of the final age of mankind,” which is to say, the last age of Christian history, soon to be consumed in the Apocalypse.

Letters to Cicero and Homer To Cicero (June 16, 1345) Hungrily did I read your letters which I had sought for so long and found at last where I least expected them to be.6 In them, O Marcus Tullius, I heard you speak: discoursing of many things, complaining much, revising your views often. I had always known what kind of mentor you had been to others; now finally I understand how much you were also mentor to yourself. Now it is your turn to listen, wherever you may be: not to the counsel but to the lament of one of your descendants who loves you without limit, a lament born of deep love, poured forth not without tears. O ever restless and unquiet wretch, or to recall your own words, O rash and disastrous old man,7 why did you choose to throw yourself into so many quarrels and contests promising no possible useful outcome? By which you sacrificed the leisure suited to your age, your profession, and your destiny? What false glimmer of glory lured you, in your old age, into young men’s wars, and dragged you through senseless turmoil to a death unworthy of a philosopher? Alas, disregarding your brother’s advice and your own numerous and wholesome principles, it seems that you forged through the dark night holding your lantern high to show others the right path—while you yourself stumbled and fell. I pass by Dionysius, I pass by your brother and nephew, I even pass by Dolabella, if you please, men whom you alternately praised to the skies and lashed out at with unexpected fury—these outbreaks were perhaps forgivable.8 Nor will I comment on your treatment of Julius Caesar, whose unstinting mercy was a refuge even for those who had injured him; nor will I speak 6. Earlier in 1345, Petrarch had made the historic discovery of Cicero’s Letters to Atticus in the cathedral of Verona. Here he gives his first response to the new voice and spirit he detected in the genre of the familiar letter. 7. Petrarch believed that Cicero used these words in his letter to Octavian, now considered apocryphal. 8. Petrarch names Dionysius, Cicero’s slave-secretary; also Cicero’s brother Quintus Tullius Cicero, his friend Marcus Junius Brutus, and his son-in-law Publius Cornelius Dolabella. The other figures named in this paragraph—Caesar, Pompey, Mark Antony, and Octavian, known as Augustus—are prominent figures of the late Republican era.

1. Francis Petrarch, Letters to Cicero and Homer and Sonnets

259

of Pompey the Great, with whom, given your friendship with him, you might have been able to get somewhere. But what madness impelled you to take on Antony? Love of the republic, I believe you would say, although you already knew it to be wholly defunct? But if it was pure idealism, your devotion to liberty that drove you, why then were you so cozy with Augustus? . . . You made one last mistake, O unlucky Cicero, and this one was decisive: that very man whom you had so praised you then denounced, although he had really done you no harm, except to accommodate those who wished to harm you. I grieve for your fate, my friend, and am ashamed and sorry for your errors. . . . Seriously, what is the point of teaching others, what profit is there in always preaching grandiloquently about virtue, if you yourself ignore the sermon? Oh, how much better it would have been to have grown old in the tranquil countryside, especially for a philosopher, reflecting on the life that is eternal, as you write somewhere, and not on this present brief one; never to have cherished the trappings of office, never to have dreamed of triumphs, never to have inflamed your soul in the pursuit of Catiline.9 But all these things are said in vain. An eternal farewell, my Cicero. From the land of the living, on the right bank of the Adige, in the city of Verona in Italy north of the Po, on the sixteenth of June, in the one thousandth three-hundredth and forty-fifth year since the birth of that God whom you never knew.

To Homer (October 9, 1360) For some time I have been meaning to write you a letter, and I would have done so except that we have no common language. For neither have I been happy in my efforts to master the Greek language, nor have you been able to speak to me in Latin, as you once were with the aid of our authors10 who knew both languages—an ability which, through the negligence of their descendants, has since been lost. Since we have no means of communication, I have said nothing. But there is now one man,11 inhabiting this age in which 9. Catiline: when Cicero was consul in 63 BCE, he vigorously suppressed the conspiracy of the aristocratic malcontent Lucius Sergius Catilina, a prosecution accompanied by a nowfamous series of four orations known as “Catilinarian,” and resulting in the death of his target. 10. our authors: for Petrarch and the other humanists, are the ancient Roman writers who generally knew Greek, and who in some cases—Cicero is a prime instance—translated Greek works into Latin for contemporary readers. Later Latin authors of the European Middle Ages, whom Petrarch disparages, had (with few exceptions) no Greek. 11. one man: Leonzio Pilato, mentioned above, whom Petrarch and Boccaccio had commissioned to translate Homer’s work into Latin. As a modern, he was an inhabitant of “this age,” referred to twice later in this letter as the “last age” of the world or of human existence.

260

Chapter 8. The New Learning

I live, who will restore you to us in Latin. Assuredly, the Ulysses12 you sang of in your Odyssey did not await his reunion with Penelope more patiently or passionately than I await your reappearance. Yet that hope languished; for other than a few opening phrases of your works, in which I could see far in the distance the dim and shimmering image of my longed-for friend, or perhaps of his fleeting shadow, no Latin text has materialized, and I began to doubt that I would ever see you face to face. . . . Petrarch reviews Homer’s account of his life and the loss of his works, before addressing his complaints about literary imitation. You complain much about your imitators, about those ingrates who filch your ideas and ignoramuses who besmirch your work. Justly do you complain about all these things—if you alone had suffered them, and if it were not common to the human condition that other men annoy us. . . . Now what can I say about imitation? You should have known, as you soar on the wings of your imagination, that you would have imitators. Rather than complain, you should rejoice that many men wish to be like you, but not many can. And why should you not be pleased that you have imitators, assured as you are of always standing in first place, when even I, the least of men, am pleased, but more, greatly rejoice that I have won such fame that others—if it can really be that there are such—choose to imitate and mimic me? I shall rejoice even more if my imitators surpass me. . . . Now Petrarch must part, fearful that Homer will be unable to read his letter in the distant place where he eternally dwells. All these words I have spoken to you as though you were standing here with me. But coming down to earth now from the realm of the imagination, I realize how far away you are, and I fear that you may struggle to read my missive in the shadows of the Underworld—except that in those same shadows you were able to compose so long a letter to me. Farewell forever; say hello for me to Orpheus and Linus and Euripides and the others when you have returned to your eternal home.13

12. Ulysses: the Latin form of the name Odysseus, the hero of Homer’s Odyssey. 13. Petrarch here is imagining Homer as a resident of the Greek Underworld, populated by the principal mythological and historical figures of the classical Greek era, including the musician Orpheus; Linus, the inventor of melody and rhythm; and the playwright Euripides.

1. Francis Petrarch, Letters to Cicero and Homer and Sonnets

261

From the land of the living, . . . on the 9th day of October in the onethousandth three-hundredth and sixtieth year of the final age of mankind.14

$$$ Four sonnets from the Canzoniere Alongside Petrarch the humanist and inhabiting the same body and mind, was Petrarch the poet. The former, writing in Latin, looked to antiquity; the latter, writing in Italian, was absorbed in the present. His Canzoniere (Book of Poems), particularly, concerns his obsessive love for a woman—a love never consummated, never reciprocated, and perhaps even wholly imaginary, as there can be no certainty that the Laura he longs for ever lived. The four sonnets included here, ##61, 211, 278, and 364, are selected from the 317 sonnets—the great majority—of the 366 poems composing Petrarch’s Canzoniere, the title most often used to describe the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta (Some Vernacular Fragments), the title Petrarch himself employed. The poems of the Canzoniere were composed across the forty-year span of Petrarch’s career, with revisions and reordering continuing until the poet’s death in 1374. The Canzoniere overall looks to two pivotal moments: April 6, 1327, the day the twenty-three-year-old Petrarch first saw Laura during a church service in Avignon; and April 6, 1348, the day she died. In the first part (##1–263), Petrarch speaks of his love for a living woman; in the second (##264–366), still in love, he reconciles his love for a woman now resurrected and his love for God. The first and second of those given here, ##61 and 211, speak of Petrarch’s love for the living Laura; the third and fourth, ##278 and 364 (datable to 1350 and 1358), speak of her after her death.

Sonnets #61: Petrarch recalls the day he first saw Laura A blessing on the month and day and year; and on the season, on the time, hour, moment, on all that region and the place where I was captured by two eyes that hold me fast. A blessing on the first sweet perturbation I suffered as my being fused with Love, 14. Once again, Petrarch calls attention to his temporal identity as living during the “last age.”

262

Chapter 8. The New Learning

and on the bow, the arrows piercing me, and on the wounds that reach right to my heart. A blessing on the many words that I have broadcast calling out my lady’s name, and on my signs, my tears, and my desire. And blessings fall on every single page where I win fame for her, and on my thoughts; all are of her, and leave room for no other.

#211: Petrarch is entrapped by love—and has been since April 6, 1327 Lust spurs me on, Love guides me and directs me, and Pleasure pulls and Habit hurries me, and Hope’s there, wheedling and encouraging, stretching his hand out to my weary heart, which the fool takes and doesn’t realize our escort is both blind and treacherous. The senses are in charge and reason’s dead, and from one restless urge another’s born. Virtue, Honor, Beauty, a noble way, sweet words—these brought me to the branches, which trap the heart in pleasurable lime. It was in 1327, precisely at the first hour on the sixth day of April, that I entered the maze. I see no exit.

#278: Laura has been dead for two years; why didn’t he die, too? At her most beautiful, her most blossoming, at that age when Love’s at his strongest in us, leaving on earth her earthly covering, my vital inspiration went from me, and living, lovely, naked, rose to heaven. From there she rules me, drives me on from there. Why is my mortal part not stripped away by my last day, which is the next life’s first?

2. Leonardo Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence

263

For, as the thoughts I have go after her so may the soul too follow—light, untrammeled, joyful—and I be free of all these troubles. All this delay is just to do me down, to make me weigh the heavier on myself. A third year’s starting since I should have died!

#364: Love kept him enthralled for twenty-one years; now he will turn to God Love kept me twenty-one years in his fire, happy to burn, and, if hurt, full of hope, and, when my lady and my heart together rose up to heaven, he kept me ten more weeping. I’m weary of it now and blame myself for errors that have almost killed all seeds of good in me, and, God above, I duly render this last part of my life to you, saddened and contrite for the wasted years, which ought to have been spent to greater profit, seeking for peace and keeping clear of passion. Lord, who have shut me in this earthly prison, release me safe from everlasting torment; I know my fault, and I make no excuses.

$$$ 2. Leonardo Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence (1404) This showpiece oration—a work for paper only, never delivered—revamps the eulogy of the city of Athens by the late-ancient Greek rhetorician Aelius Aristides to celebrate a new city in a new age. Just as Athens had represented all that was admirable in Greek civilization, Leonardo Bruni suggests by his imitation, and then demonstrates in his words, that Florence embodies all that is great in his own. The oration is not only a

264

Chapter 8. The New Learning

clever revision of its model, but also a careful characterization of his city. His carefully filtered portrayal focuses on its monuments and its political life, expending only a few scattered words on the mercantile activity that sustained Florentine wealth and power. The first section of In Praise of the City of Florence describes the physical city. From this rich rhetorical excursus, he turns to the people of Florence, especially concerned to demonstrate that Florence was founded during the Republican phase of Roman domination of Italy, and the citizens were thus descended from the free citizens of that ancient city. Next he profiles the role played by Florence in the political affairs of the northern Italian cities, showing the city to be a peacemaker and a defender of liberty against the pull of tyranny. In the final section, he describes the Florentine government system and the liberal ethos that animates it—an ethos that also supports the psychological energy and cultural attainments of its citizens. The selections given here are taken from the first and the last of these major themes in Bruni’s oration.

In Praise of the City of Florence Florence is ideally located, Bruni observes, opening his description of the physical city: neither too high, “on the mountaintops,” nor too low, on a spreading plain that would make it vulnerable to impure air and fog; nor is it exposed to extremes either of cold and heat. Next, he considers the built environment, which exceeds all others for the splendor of its architecture and the cleanliness of its streets. A handsome circuit of walls crowns the city—which itself is so large it encompasses both highlands and valleys—neither so imposing as to intimidate or humiliate by its mass, nor so modest as to seem negligible or deficient. How can I describe the throngs of people, the splendor of the buildings, the magnificence of the churches, the incredible and marvelous elegance of the entire city? By Hercules, every part of it is resplendent and aglow with exceptional beauty. But its excellence can be told better when it is compared to other cities. That is why only those who have spent some time away fully understand, when they return to Florence, how much this flourishing city greatly exceeds all others. For there is no city in all the earth which does not lack some major component of excellence. One is deficient in the number of its inhabitants, another in the splendor of its buildings, still others, while they do not lack these benefits, are located in an unwholesome site. Some cities, indeed, are so dirty that all the filth produced at night greets the eyes of the citizens in the morning, thrown into the streets to be pounded underfoot—than

2. Leonardo Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence

265

which nothing more disgusting can be imagined. Even if it had a thousand palaces, and endless wealth, and an infinite number of inhabitants, still I would condemn such a city for its filth, and could never esteem it. For . . . cities, if they are filthy, even if they are otherwise worthy, absolutely cannot be considered beautiful. And who does not see that if a city lacks beauty, it lacks the highest and noblest excellence? In my judgment, Florence is so sparkling clean that no other city can be found that is tidier. Unique indeed is this city, unmatched in all the world, where no foul sight offends the eyes, no rank stench the nose, and no pile of filth the feet. . . . Thus Florence exceeds in magnificence all the cities perhaps that now exist, and in elegance, certainly, all those that are now and ever shall be. . . . Another city may be clean, but lack elegant buildings; or it may have elegant buildings, but lack a wholesome climate; or it may have a wholesome climate, but lack a population that is numerous and active. But from first to last, Florence has all the qualities that make a city ideal. For if you delight in antiquity, you will find an abundance of antique objects both in its public and private buildings. If you love what is modern, nothing is more magnificent or splendid than Florence’s new buildings. Whether the river that flows through the center of the city offers more utility or more pleasure it is difficult to say. But four magnificent bridges built of squared stone blocks join the two banks of the river at such convenient intervals that there is no interruption of the movement of traffic through the principal streets, so that you may proceed as easily through the city as if no river traversed it. As you wander through every quarter, you will see splendid piazzas, the decorated porticos of the houses of noble families, and the streets alive with crowds of people. Of the houses built along the river, some face the riverfront, their walls washed by the waves; others are set further back on the other side of an intervening street, where a busy crowd may gather to engage in business or in pleasure. There is no place more pleasant for strolling than here along the river, either at midday in the winter, or at dusk in the summer. . . . Now clearly, in other cities, a visitor should not stay too long. For if it has anything worth seeing, it is probably on display out in front and on the surface, for all visitors to see as soon as they have entered the town. But if they leave the public places, . . . what they see will not accord with their first impression: for instead of homes they will see hovels, and instead of elegance outside, filth inside. The case is different with Florence, where the full beauty of the city cannot be experienced unless one probes deeply. . . . For there is found no less adornment or magnificence behind the walls of its buildings than on the surface; nor is just this or that street splendid and sparkling, but all of them, in all parts of the city. For just as blood flows

266

Chapter 8. The New Learning

throughout the body, so beauty and delight are diffused throughout the city. . . . Bruni turns next to the people of Florence, descended from the ancient Romans who first founded the city, and to the leading role Florence plays in the political world of the Italian city-states, which transitions to a discussion of the Florentine government system. Just as this city is to be admired for its actions abroad, so too for its governance and institutions at home. Never has there been such order, such elegance, and such harmony. . . . All its components are assigned a particular role, each one clearly defined, but all part of a system: distinct offices, distinct magistracies, distinct tribunals, distinct ranks. First of all, every provision is taken so that in this city justice is held to be sacred, without which a city cannot even exist; and secondly, that there may be liberty, without which the people of Florence could not live. To these two conjoined principles, as though to a guiding star or safe haven, all the institutions and laws of this republic are directed. So as to preserve justice, magistracies are constituted with the authority to control malefactors, so that they may assure that no force is stronger in the city than that of law. To these magistracies, then, both worthy citizens and even men of the lower order must all obey and defer, showing respect to the insignia of office. But lest any of these guardians of the law assume absolute power for themselves, working not to protect the citizens but to tyrannize over them, and so, in exercising unjust power, endanger liberty, many safeguards are instituted. The first of these is the supreme magistracy, which has the highest executive power, yet is constrained by this precaution, that it is held by not one but by nine men equally, and not for the term of a year but of just two months. In this way it manages the republic most excellently, as the diversity of opinions guards against bad decisions, and the brief term of service prevents arrogance of office. From each of the four quarters in which the city is divided, . . . two men are elected to serve in this supreme magistracy, not by lot but by the judgment of the people who deem them competent and worthy of such an honor. Set above these eight citizens designated to govern the republic, a ninth man, excellent in virtue and authority, chosen from one of the four quarters by lot, serves as head of the council, and as a sign of his power over disturbers of the peace, bears the flag of justice. These nine men, then, to whom the governance of the republic is committed, live together for their term of office in an official residence, the signoria, so as to always be ready to carry on the business of the republic; nor may they go forth from that place without an armed escort, so as to proclaim visibly the dignity of their office.

2. Leonardo Bruni, In Praise of the City of Florence

267

Having introduced the nine-man Priorate, the most important of the Florentine government councils, Bruni surveys the others, stressing again that the number of officials and councils is itself protective of liberty, since no individual’s ambitions can prevail against the collective judgment of so many officials. Finally, he commends the political ideology that underlies the Florentine government system, and praises the Florentines for their intellectual and moral virtues. Under these magistracies, therefore, so diligent and excellent is the governance of this city that no prudent father ever ruled a more disciplined household. Accordingly, no one here can suffer an injury, nor unwillingly suffer loss of his property. For the courts and the magistracies are always available, and the councils and even the highest tribunal always open. . . . Nor is there any place on earth where the law is more equitable to all; for nowhere else does liberty thrive so vigorously, available equally to men of high and low station. Now in this also may be seen the prudence of this city, the greatest I hazard than of all other cities: for when the great magnates, protected by their wealth, menace and injure the less wealthy, the republic itself defends the interests of those who are less able to defend themselves, and extracts from the wealthy due compensation for their losses and bodily harm. The consensus has been reached that it is reasonable that different penalties should be applied to men of different condition, and both prudent and just that whoever is in greater need, to him more aid should be given. And so a kind of equity is achieved among the different ranks of men: their own power protects the great, the state protects the poor, and the fear of punishment restrains both. From these arrangements arises the phrase often hurled against the magnates, to whom when they menace those of lesser rank, the victim retorts, “I, too, am a Florentine citizen.” These words attest and clearly warn that no one may disregard him because he is weak, nor threaten to harm him because he is powerless. The condition of all men becomes equal, because the state promises to defend those of lowly station. ... But now, who can adequately describe, in the time remaining, the honorable manner of living and high moral standards of the Florentines? Men of great genius are found in this city, and whenever there is a task that needs doing, those who can easily exceed all other men in doing so. Whether they enter the military, or commit themselves to governing the state, or pursue knowledge or business, or any other career or task, they greatly surpass all other mortals, nor do they cede their place to any others. They endure trials in times of danger, seek glory avidly, offer counsel expertly; they are industrious, generous, magnificent, pleasant, affable, and above all, urbane.

268

Chapter 8. The New Learning

Now what can I say about the oratorical skill and verbal elegance of the Florentines, who in these matters undoubtedly reign supreme? For it is agreed that, of all of Italy, in this city alone is found the purest and finest speech. All who wish to speak well and correctly, therefore, follow the pattern of this one city, where there are such experts in the common vernacular tongue that, compared to them, their rivals look like children. The study of letters, moreover—not the vulgar curriculum found in mercantile schools, but the liberal arts which are particularly suited for free men—which have always flourished among every great people, flourish vigorously in this one city.15 What ornament, then, does this city lack, and in what way does it fall short of the highest honor and greatness? In the greatness of its ancestors?—who are descended from the Romans! In glory?—when Florence has done and daily does such great deeds, both honorable and excellent, both at home and abroad! In the splendor of its buildings? In its adornment and elegance? In its wealth? In its bustling population? In its healthful and pleasant location? What more is there that any city could desire? Nothing whatever! What then shall we say now, and what remains to be done? Nothing other than to thank the creator for his great beneficence and to offer him our praise. You, therefore, omnipotent and everlasting God . . . ; and you, most holy mother . . . ; and you, John the Baptist, the patron saint of this city; protect this most beautiful and precious city and guard its people from every danger and every evil.

$$$ 3. Poggio Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino Veronese (1416) In this letter to the prominent humanist Guarino Guarini of Verona, one of the first native Italians to master the Greek as well as the Latin literary traditions, Poggio describes a book hunt in the Swiss abbey of St. Gallen, not far 15. Bruni here describes the two options available for schooling: schools that trained future merchants and artisans in vernacular and numerical literacy, and more selective schools that trained future leaders and the children of elites in the “liberal arts.” The standard medieval curriculum of the seven liberal arts—three verbal and four mathematical studies (see Chapter 5, Text 5)—had now been transformed by humanism to stress the study of classical texts. The studia humanitatis (studies of humanity), now regarded as constituting the liberal arts, included the studies of grammar (that is, literature), rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy.

3. Poggio Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino Veronese

269

from Constance where the serious business of international ecclesiastical politics was underway. In it he announces the discovery of the Principles of Oratory by the Roman author Quintilian, the most important classical work on the subject. The humanists had known of the existence of this work from references in other texts; but they possessed only fragments of the whole—“so mutilated, so mangled, ravaged, no doubt, in the toils of time”—which did not permit them to comprehend it fully. But at the foot of a derelict tower at St. Gallen, they found a complete, clean manuscript of Quintilian, one of the major humanist finds during this era. Poggio mentions, as well, the recovery of works heretofore thought lost by the Roman poet Gaius Valerius Flaccus and the historian Quintus Asconius Pedianus. He had copied all of these “by my own hand,” he reports, and had sent those copies off to two others of their circle: Leonardo Bruni (see Chapter 8, Text 2) and Niccolò Niccoli, a Florentine collector and connoisseur. Guarino, Poggio knew, would want a copy as well, but Bruni’s claim was preeminent: “Leonardo must be satisfied first.” Revealing in this coda the existence of a network of humanists who shared intellectual values and circulated works among themselves—what the Venetian Francesco Barbaro would famously name the “republic of letters”—Poggio counsels Guarino to claim his own copy of the recovered Quintilian: “But you know where it is, so that if you wish to have it (as I think you will right away) you can easily obtain it.” For these literati, the ancient authors are alive; they are real, and so are their books, described as living, but tormented, human beings. Poggio speaks of Quintilian’s book—not Quintilian, the author, as Petrarch would have done, but the book itself, the physical object—as a living creature. Quintilian’s work had been so mutilated “that it was impossible to recognize in him”—that is, the book—“his form or his nature.” Since the discovery, “our sorrow and grief on account of this man’s”—the book’s—“mutilation” has turned to rejoicing, for “he”—the book—“has been restored to his original condition and worth, to his ancient form and complete good health.” They had recovered “this one and unique star of the Roman firmament . . . not merely from exile, but virtually from annihilation,” for if they hadn’t come when they did, “he”—the book again—“would have died the next day”; indeed he, that is to say, the book, looked “[d]ejected, dressed in tatters as though in mourning, with unkempt beard, hair matted with dirt,” as though he was about to be marched off to “an unjust execution.” But Poggio and his friends came just in time and “found Quintilian”—once again, the book—“still safe and sound but full of mold and mired in filth.” Such a protracted metaphor of book as man, capable of suffering pain, humiliation, death, and restoration to health, in the hands of a master author like Poggio, is surely intentional. In it, he gives expression to the passion for the classical past that the humanists were engaged in unearthing—sometimes by recovering books from a trash heap at the bottom of

270

Chapter 8. The New Learning

a tower staircase, sometimes by reclaiming the meanings that they contained. This moment of humanist fervor is a hinge in the history of the Western intellectual tradition, a turning point, after which all is changed.

Letter to Guarino Veronese Greetings, my friend Guarino— I know well that, on account of your generosity to all and your particular kindness to me, even when you are pressed you always welcome the arrival of my letters. Yet I beg you earnestly to pay special attention when you read this one: not because there is anything special about me that should claim the attention even of a person without pressing business, but because of the worthiness of the matter about which I shall now write, which I assure you, knowing how vastly learned you are, will bring you great pleasure, as it will to other men of learning. For by eternal God, what is there that could be either to you or to others among the literati, more pleasing, more delightful, more welcome, than the knowledge of those things which make us more wise, and what is even more important, more elegant in our power of expression? Poggio celebrates the endowment of the human species with intellect and reason by nature, and above all for the faculty of speech, and expresses gratitude to those who transmitted to us “the rules and norms of proper speech,” allowing us to “greatly surpass the common run of men.” Many excellent Latin authors were expert in the crafting and adornment of the language, as you know, yet of these one stands out conspicuously: Marcus Fabius Quintilian, who so skillfully and with such absolute mastery established the principles that pertain to the training of the ideal orator, that he may be judged supreme in both the highest learning and exceptional eloquence. From this man alone, even if we did not have Cicero, the father of Roman eloquence, we would have acquired the perfect science of proper oratory. But up until now, here among us in Italy, he had been so mutilated, so mangled, ravaged, no doubt, in the toils of time, that it was impossible to recognize in him his form or his nature. . . . We should mourn, surely, and weep, that we had caused by the cruel mutilation of so eloquent a man so great a calamity for the art of oratory. But however great then was our sorrow and grief on account of this man’s mutilation, more greatly now are we to be congratulated, since by our diligence he has been restored to his original condition and worth, to his ancient form and complete good health. For if Marcus Tullius Cicero

3. Poggio Bracciolini, Letter to Guarino Veronese

271

rejoiced when Marcus Marcellus returned from exile16 . . . what now should learned men do, and especially those devoted to eloquence, when we have recovered this one and unique star of the Roman firmament . . . not merely from exile, but virtually from annihilation? For God knows, if we had not brought aid, he would have died the next day. Nor can it be doubted that this splendid man, cultivated, elegant, conscientious, humorous, could not have endured any longer the foulness of that prison, the filth of that hole, the savagery of the guards. Dejected, dressed in tatters as though in mourning, with unkempt beard, hair matted with dirt, he seemed by his face and bearing to declare that he had been sentenced to an unjust execution. He seemed to reach out, to implore the citizens of Rome to protect him from unfair judgment, to rage and complain that he who had once by his support and eloquence defended many, now could find neither patron to take pity on his misfortune nor anyone at all to look out for his welfare or save him from being subjected to an unjust punishment. But. . . [b]y a stroke of good fortune—partly his, but even more ours—while we were at Constance with time on our hands, a longing seized us for seeing that place where he was kept captive: that is, the monastery of St. Gallen, about twenty miles from Constance. And so several of us set out, both for our amusement, but also to hunt for books, of which it was said there were a great number. There amid a huge pile of books, which it would take too long to itemize, we found Quintilian still safe and sound but full of mold and mired in filth. For these books were not in the library, as their worth required, but in a kind of dark and loathsome prison at the base of a tower, where not even criminals condemned to die would be incarcerated. Yet I know for certain, that if others like us rummaged through these barbarian dungeons in which they detain these prisoners, and recognized them to belong to our ancestral heritage, those authors would have experienced a fate similar to that suffered by Quintilian, which we now lament. Besides Quintilian, we found the first three books and half of the fourth of the Argonautica of Gaius Valerius Flaccus, and some a commentary or digest of eight of Cicero’s orations by Quintus Asconius Pedianus, a most accomplished author whom Quintilian himself mentions. These I copied by my own hand, and with great haste, so that I might send them on to Leonardo Bruni and Niccolò Niccoli, who when they learned from me about the discovery of this treasure, pressed me urgently in their letters to send them Quintilian as soon as possible. My dearest Guarino, you now have from me all that a man most devoted to you can offer at the moment. I would have liked also to be able to send 16. Cicero, Against Verres, 2, book 4.

272

Chapter 8. The New Learning

you the book, but Leonardo must be satisfied first. But you know where it is, so that if you wish to have it (as I think you will right away) you can easily obtain it. Farewell, and love me, as I do you. Constance, December 15, 1416

$$$ 4. Lauro Quirini, Letter to Pope Nicholas V on the Fall of Constantinople (1453) In his palace on the island of Crete, the Venetian patrician and humanist Lauro Qurini (1420–c. 1475/1479) received from the exiled Paduan jurist Paolo de’ Dotti a letter dated June 11, 1453, giving an eyewitness report of the fall of Constantinople barely two weeks after it occurred. Some two weeks after that, Quirini heard another eyewitness report, in person, from the Russian-born Cardinal Isidore of Kiev,17 who had fled to Crete from devastated Greece. On July 15, some six weeks after the fall of the last bastion of ancient Rome, Quirini wrote the pope in Rome to tell the story he had heard, and to urge the pontiff to take swift action against a threat to all of Christendom. Quirini’s was not the only account of Constantinople’s fall—subsequently, he himself would write three more—but it has special significance, because it is the account of a man who was at once both positioned on Crete, the midpoint of the Venetian maritime empire, and a major actor in the Venetian humanist scene. It is also a fresh and largely accurate narrative, delivered in lucid and pointed Latin prose. Quirini’s letter to Pope Nicholas has three parts. In the first, he announces the catastrophe that befell Constantinople. In the second, he assesses the Turkish position and intentions. In the third, he beseeches the pope to take the lead in a new crusade effort against the Turkish invader. “The most lamentable fall, then, of this lamentable city happened in this way, as I have learned from reliable men who were themselves participants in the events.” So Quirini opens his narrative of events that takes us through a mere eight weeks, from April 4, 1453, when the Turkish army of some 240,000 men took its position before the city, through May 29, when the city fell and the three-day program of sack, desecration, and rape began: “Wherever you went you heard nothing but groans and wails. . . . Never, . . . I think, has there ever been a more horrific spectacle.” The facts established, Quirini laments the loss of this last outpost of the Roman Empire. But most striking, perhaps, is Quirini’s lament for the civilization of Greece itself—he does not distinguish here between ancient 17. Isidore of Kiev (1385–1463): adherent of the Latin “uniate,” or unified church, was made a cardinal and sent as papal legate to Constantinople when its capture was imminent.

4. Lauro Quirini, Letter on the Fall of Constantinople

273

Greece with its classical works of philosophy and literature and modern Byzantium with its mostly religious culture: Add to this that the raging barbarians who did all these heinous deeds not only captured a royal city, destroyed its churches and defiled their sacred ornaments, but accomplished the ruin of an entire nation, obliterating the civilization that was Greece: more than 120,000 volumes, as I have learned from Cardinal Isidore of Kiev, destroyed. And so, the Greek language, and the literature of the Greeks created, extended, and perfected by so great an expenditure of time, so much labor, so much skill—annihilated, extinguished! Thus speaks the humanist. But the man of affairs returns quickly, as Quirini assesses the nature of the enemy, not mistakenly alluding to the absence among the Ottoman Turks of a literary or legal tradition—and their allegiance to an alien faith: “A savage people, a crude people, living by no set principles, no laws, but shapeless, shiftless, purposeless, swollen with trickery and perfidy, shamefully and despicably grind all Christendom under their heel.” This last is the principal issue as Quirini pivots from the eastern Mediterranean and turns to the pope in Rome: the great danger posed by the Turks to the Christian faith, and the whole of Christian civilization. On you, Quirini instructs Pope Nicholas V, the responsibility falls: “Come, then, you must see, most blessed father, that this is a fierce enemy of Christianity, powerful, proud, and angry, whose nightly dream . . . is to destroy the Christian faith. . . . Therefore, you must and can defend the name of Christ, lest it perish entirely; and more, if it is necessary, for Christ willingly to die. . . .” Students today, schooled in the dangers of Orientalism18 and the need for multicultural tolerance, will shudder a bit at Quirini’s laments for Constantinople, his triumphalist celebrations of Christianity and the West, and his unenlightened attacks on the Turkish nation and its goals. But moderns must also recognize that where he sat, on the island of Crete in the center of the maelstrom that was the Turkish advance in the eastern Mediterranean, the peril was great, and his allegiance to his own faith and culture perhaps allowable.

Letter to Pope Nicholas V on the Fall of Constantinople To the most blessed Pope Nicholas V, Lauro Quirini sends wishes for good health in the name of the Lord who is the true health of all: 18. Orientalism: a term originally meaning the study of Islam and its culture, it has acquired a negative connotation as a result of post-colonial criticism, viewed as implying the inferiority of Islamic civilization.

274

Chapter 8. The New Learning

Although my intellect may not be equal to the material, and though I may be consumed to such an extent with grief, bitterness, and sorrow that I am, as the Greek proverb says, sweating blood, yet I shall try, most blessed father, to describe the grievous calamity that has befallen the most unfortunate city of Constantinople,19 and to delineate how great is the danger that now threatens Christendom; and lastly to exhort, pray, beg, and finally, to summon your blessedness in the name of all Christendom to take up arms in defense of the Christian faith against the most impious and cruel enemy of Christianity. The most lamentable fall, then, of this lamentable city happened in this way, as I have learned from reliable men who were themselves participants in the events. On April 4, 1453, as they relate, the Turks with an army of about 240,000 men set up fortifications some 2,000 paces from the city, and stationed some light troops. Then on April 12, a fleet arrived with 14 triremes, and 236 larger and smaller biremes;20 and since they could not enter the harbor, which is protected by its own natural topographical and geological features, as well as fortified by the military engineers, and defended by a multitude of our ships, 60 biremes were hauled overland for 2,000 paces across hill, valley, and plain, and lowered into the water. Then on April 20, three Genoese ships appeared, plus one command ship. The whole Turkish fleet went out to meet them, with the exception of the biremes that had been dragged to the harbor, and a tough four-hour battle ensued, without effect. . . . Then on May 15, a huge bombardment of cannonfire issued from Pera,21 damaging not only our ships, but also the walls of the city, and so heavy was the bombardment each day thereafter, that the gunpowder alone, it is estimated, cost 1,000 ducats. Meanwhile, the Turks set up a fabulous display of machinery—scaling ladders, ballistas,22 catapults, testudos,23 and thirteen cages24—it is said they had in their employ expert metallurgists, including Serbian silversmiths and Turkish bronze­ smiths—but neither did these mechanical devices do any harm to the city. But there was one cannonball that they shot of an extraordinary 19. Constantinople: modern Istanbul, Turkey. 20. Triremes (activated by three tiers of oars on each side) and biremes (activated by two) were the standard design of warships prior to the age of sail. 21. Pera: modern Beyoğlu, Turkey; a quarter of Constantinople in which many Europeans lived, north of the Golden Horn. 22. ballista: a premodern siege machine that hurled heavy projectiles large distances. 23. testudo: “turtle,” is a premodern siege device, a movable screen that shields attackers approaching a target. Those in action at Constantinople may have taken the form of small movable wooden castles. 24. cages: these may possibly have held dogs or other animals that had military functions.

4. Lauro Quirini, Letter on the Fall of Constantinople

275

magnitude, such as no age has ever seen before—made of stone, easily thrown, weighing 1,300 pounds. It had been crafted in Adrianople25 and, it is said, transported with great difficulty by 500 men hauling twenty carts; and the shot of this cannonball, according to witnesses, caused the land and the sea for 4,000 paces around to shake long afterward. This bomb quickly shattered the walls of the city, crafted with such art, and razed them to the ground. After this, on May 25, the public criers instructed the people to remove the bodies and to prepare arms. . . . With all things thus arranged, on May 28, at the first hour of the night, the battle began on land with the soldiers massed on the frontlines, and raged the whole night. But then when the day at last dawned, that terrible pestilence, the Turk, riding in a golden chariot, approached the walls . . . and let loose a golden arrow at the city, condemning it to destruction. When his troops saw this, and heard the great clamor that followed, their souls were aroused with such alacrity and ardor that they fired numberless missiles and arrows so fiercely that the walls collapsed, their fragments soaring through the air, onlookers said, as though they were birds in flight. In this way in our wretched age this ancient, noble, wealthy city, once the seat of the Roman Empire, the mistress of the whole Orient, captured by raging barbarians, was sacked for three days and reduced to wretched servitude, which is the worst of all evils. O how miserable is the human condition! O how fragile and fleeting is fortune! Constantinople, the imperious city, once the bulwark of the Roman Empire, the victor and captor of provinces—ah! it is now a vanquished captive, cruelly and basely destroyed; its citizens, descendants of the Romans, brutally slaughtered before their fathers’ gates, noble virgins, innocent boys, worthy matrons, venerable nuns, seized, slain, raped; its churches, wondrous for their size and splendor, torn to pieces, the holy objects, the sacred ornaments foully desecrated. What more is there to say? Wherever you went you heard nothing but groans and wails. O the shameful barbarity, O the inhuman cruelty, O the intolerable viciousness and savagery of the perpetrators! For who can bear I won’t say the sight, but even the report of such slaughter, such destruction, such bloodshed, such pillagery? Never, most blessed father, I think, has there ever been a more horrific spectacle. . . . Add to this that the raging barbarians who did all these heinous deeds not only captured a royal city, destroyed its churches, and defiled their 25. Adrianople: modern Edirne, Turkey; the ancient city of Hadrianople, later Anglicized as Adrianople, was the Turkish base on the European mainland before the conquest of Constantinople.

276

Chapter 8. The New Learning

sacred ornaments, but accomplished the ruin of an entire nation, obliterating the civilization that was Greece: more than 120,000 volumes, as I have learned from Cardinal Isidore of Kiev, destroyed. And so, the Greek language, and the literature of the Greeks created, extended, and perfected by so great an expenditure of time, so much labor, so much skill—annihilated, extinguished! Is there anyone either so ignorant or so heartless that he can hold back his tears? That literary tradition has perished that illuminated the whole world, bestowing righteous laws, sacred philosophy, and all the other liberal arts which refine human existence. And shall we not mourn, shall we not grieve over this most horrible disaster, this most unlucky catastrophe, this unbearable calamity? Ah, what sorrow! A savage people, a crude people, living by no set principles, no laws, but shapeless, shiftless, purposeless, swollen with trickery and perfidy, shamefully and despicably grind all Christendom under their heel. Quirini recalls the prompt and stern response of the successive popes who, following the reconquest of Jerusalem in 1187, supported the launch of the Third Crusade (1189–1192) against enemies of the same faith, but not the same ethnic origin, as the Turks who captured Constantinople in 1453. But this is not the time for stories or tears. For what is at stake, most blessed father, what is at stake is the well-being of all of Christendom. . . . What is at stake is whether the name of Christ shall be worshiped in all the earth, or Mohammed’s. For this fearsome monster aims to eradicate the Christian religion not merely by words, but by deeds. . . . Come, then, you must see, most blessed father, that this is a fierce enemy of Christianity, powerful, proud, and angry, whose nightly dream . . . is to destroy the Christian faith. . . . “How great is the Turk’s power,” Quirini laments, whose empire comprises “a vast and most fertile part of the habitable earth.” The present advance of that nation has caused “the entire Orient [to become] convulsed with fear,” so that “terror and dread prevail, and melancholy has seized all men’s souls, and desperation is seen in each man’s face.” Therefore, you must and can defend the name of Christ, lest it perish entirely; and more, if it is necessary, for Christ willingly to die. . . . Act therefore, most blessed father, for the peace of Italy and of all Christianity, arouse, inspire Christian power to the defense of the Christian faith against this most fearsome enemy of Christianity. . . . Let the Highest Pope lead the way, then, with the redemptive banner of the Holy Cross raised high; let the most Christian Emperor follow, then all the kings and princes of Christendom. For I believe that the rest of the

5. Cassandra Fedele, Oration in Praise of Literary Studies

277

Christian people . . . will display the same courage that I see in the citizens of Crete, whose one desire is to die gloriously in defense of the faith. Candia, Crete, July 15, 1453

$$$ 5. Cassandra Fedele, Oration in Praise of Literary Studies (1487) A most extraordinary event occurred in 1487: a twenty-two-year-old woman, not of the nobility but of the privileged secretarial class that served the Venetian Republic, delivered a Latin oration on the liberal arts to the Venetian doge, Agostino Barbarigo, and the gathered dignitaries of the Senate—many of whom, as she notes, were themselves learned men. She had been encouraged to do so by Giorgio Valla26 (despite some criticism for her audacity, to which she alludes). Valla, a foreign-born humanist whom the Senate two years earlier had elevated to the high status of official teacher of rhetoric and philosophy, must have encountered during his brief stay in Venice, and been impressed by, the young woman who had acquired a respectable literary education from the learned males of her family. The literary studies Fedele celebrates—the “liberal arts” as the humanists had redefined them—were by this date a well-established curriculum of language-based disciplines grounded in classical texts, and her accolades to that program would have been, at this date, more than familiar to her listeners. What is new is that it is a woman who delivers the message, which she does capably, while demurring a bit about her inadequacy—as would be expected given the requirements of the “modesty topos”—the rhetorical formula expressing humility before expertise is demonstrated. What is newer still is that in her closing words she urges other women, even though they will gain no professional advancement or worldly fame by their efforts, to pursue the liberal arts for their personal satisfaction: “[E]very woman ought to seek and embrace these studies for the pleasure and delight alone that comes from them.”

Oration in Praise of Literary Studies Giorgio Valla, that great orator and philosopher, who has found me worthy of his attention, most illustrious Prince, Senators, and learned men, encouraged and exhorted me, as I considered how women could profit from assiduous and laborious study, thereby to seek immortality. Though a blush 26. Giorgio Valla: In 1485, the Senate invited Giorgio Valla (1447–1500), born in Piacenza, to teach rhetoric and philosophy in Venice, which he did until his death.

278

Chapter 8. The New Learning

comes to my cheeks, as I am aware of the weakness of my sex and the paucity of my talent, I decided to honor and obey him, who vigorously urged and persuaded me to deliver this public oration. So now the common crowd should be ashamed and should cease to carp at me because of my devotion to the liberal arts. No one should be surprised if at the outset of her speech, Cassandra’s mind and spirit hesitate a bit and falter. For when I reflected upon the magnitude of the matter about which I had decided to speak to this most distinguished and splendid assembly, I realized that nothing could be so eloquent, lustrous, and polished, even if presented by the most eloquent speaker, that it would not seem pale, obscure, and ordinary in comparison with the vastness of your knowledge and excellence. For who is there who has the capacity of mind or skill in speaking sufficient to praise the liberal arts or suit your learned ears? Thus daunted by the difficulty of the task and conscious of my weakness, I might easily have shirked this opportunity to speak, if your wellknown kindness and generosity toward all had not urged me to do it. For I am not unaware that you are not in the habit of demanding or expecting from anyone more than the nature of the subject itself allows, or than a person’s own strength can sustain. Moreover, I am persuaded to speak on this matter by that which at first deterred me, your welcome courtesy and kindness, which encourage me to believe that no speech could be more pleasant and more agreeable to learned men (for you are all learned) and to those yearning for edification, than one which in every way affirms and celebrates the liberal arts and letters. Therefore, moved by these thoughts and by your attention to me, let me explain very briefly how useful and honorable the investigation of the LIBERAL ARTS is for humankind, and also how delightful and spendid. Even an ignorant man—not only a philosopher—sees and admits that it is particularly the capacity for reason that separates the human being from the beast. For what else so greatly delights, enriches, and elevates the human being than the study and understanding of letters and the liberal arts? Teaching and understanding, indeed, not only separate humans decisively from beasts, but so also clearly distinguish those educated nobly and liberally27 from ignorant and crude persons—such that surely, as I see it, just as real and living humans are distinct from their portraits and reflected likenesses, so also those who have been educated are distinct from those who are without learning and or knowledge. Moreover, simple men, ignorant of literature, even if they have by nature this potential seed of genius and reason, leave it alone and uncultivated throughout their whole lives, stifle it 27. That is, educated in the liberal arts.

5. Cassandra Fedele, Oration in Praise of Literary Studies

279

with neglect and sloth, and render themselves unfit for greatness. For like wanderers they walk in darkness through all of life’s events, and through imprudence, ignorance, and ineptitude, they are beset with calamities and live their lives as though by chance. These are they who make Fortune their goddess, place all their trust in her, and when she is favorable kiss and commend her, but when she is unfavorable, berate her and lament. . . . Fedele here inserts eleven lines from two discontinuous passages of Lucan’s Pharsalia, both apostrophizing the potency of Fortune.28 But learned men, filled with a rich knowledge of divine and human things, direct all their thoughts and mental activity toward the goal of reason, and thus free the mind, so burdened with many anxieties, from its afflictions. No longer subject to the innumerable weapons of fortune, they are fully prepared to lead pleasant and happy lives. They follow reason as a guide in all things, considering in any situation not only their own welfare, but also that of others, whom they regularly assist, in both private and public matters, with diligent action and sound advice. Hence Plato, a man almost divine, wrote that those republics were blessed either when their rulers are trained in philosophy or when philosophers become their rulers.29 He observes, I believe, that those upon whom fortune had bestowed bodily strength or wealth are much more prone to vice and more often swayed by evil than those who lack these benefits; but the good intelligence that nature has bestowed on some, if it is not cultivated through study, is utterly lost, rendering these ignorant persons unsuited to managing public affairs.30 And rightly so. The study of literature refines the mind, sharpens and brightens the power of reason; it either nearly erases or completely washes away every blemish of soul, and richly perfects its talents; and it adorns and amplifies all bodily graces and gifts of fortune. States and princes, moreover, who nurture and cultivate these studies are made more benevolent, charming, and noble, and purely by doing so win for themselves a most gratifying reputation for humanity. Indeed, even those who by nature are rustic and crude are made civil and polished by means of these studies, and who often because of their limited means or opportunities are boastful, impudent, and wanton, acquire from the study of the liberal arts modesty, gentleness, and a certain pleasing graciousness toward all men. For just as places that in their natural state are rough and wild, by the work and care of men become not only fertile and

28. Lucan, Pharsalia 7.250–52, 8.701–8. 29. Plato, Republic 5.471C–474B. 30. Plato, Republic 6.494.

280

Chapter 8. The New Learning

fruitful but even delightful, likewise our minds are refined, polished, and amplified by the good arts.31 Now Philip, king of Macedon—by whose strength and effort the Macedonians gained a rich empire and ruled over many peoples and nations—understood this very well. In a letter to the philosopher Aristotle, in which he announced the birth of his son, Alexander, he said honorably and wisely that he rejoiced more greatly that his child had been born when Aristotle was alive than that he was born the heir to so great an empire.32 O excellent utterance, worthy of so great a ruler! O weighty imperial judgment! For that king and emperor, extraordinary for having spent his whole life engaged in the business of war and victories, recognized that an empire could not be rightly, prudently, and gloriously governed by one who had not been steeped in the liberal arts. Alexander himself came to the same realization soon afterwards. Instructed in liberal studies by Aristotle, he greatly surpassed all princes and emperors who had come before him, or were born after him, in ruling, maintaining, and extending an empire. For this reason the ancients rightly judged all leaders who lacked a liberal education, however skilled they were in military affairs, to be deficient and incompetent. Enough said, then, about the utility of literary studies, which not only produce copious, abundant, and divine seeds, but also yield rich, delightful, and eternal fruits. Of these fruits I myself have tasted a little and deem myself in that enterprise not entirely incapable or hopeless; and armed with distaff and needle—women’s weapons—I march onward in the belief that even though literary studies promise no reward for women and can confer no glory upon them, every woman ought to seek and embrace these studies for the pleasure and delight alone that comes from them.33

31. good arts: again, the liberal arts. 32. Philip brought Aristotle to the Macedonian court, where he was tutor to the future Alexander the Great. 33. The oration, unfinished, ends mid-sentence here.

Chapter 9 The High Renaissance

Introduction By 1500, humanism had become the dominant current of European culture, infusing literature, political thought, philosophy, and the arts. It did so to such an extent that, while some scholars, as specialists, dedicated themselves especially to the study of ancient texts, other thinkers and writers turned to the task of applying the knowledge and outlooks that humanism had generated to the creation of new intellectual products. This chapter considers four major figures who looked anew at the relations of state and society during the first decades of the sixteenth century, a period known as the High Renaissance, when this integrative energy was particularly intense. These figures include the Italians Niccolò Machiavelli and Baldassare Castiglione; the Dutch-born Desiderius Erasmus; and the Englishman Thomas More. Discussion will focus on four prose works (Machiavelli’s and Castiglione’s in Italian, Erasmus’s and More’s in Latin) composed in the remarkably brief period from 1513 to 1518, and published in the not much longer span of years from 1516 to 1532. Widely read during the Renaissance, their message resounded long afterward, and still resounds today. In The Prince1 (composed 1513), Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) advised the ruler of any state how to gain and hold power by bold use of military force as well as, more controversially, the deft use of cruelty as needed and the abandonment of the whole roster of moral niceties traditionally required of a ruler. Equipped with a humanist education, Machiavelli rose rapidly in political affairs from 1498, when he was made second chancellor of the Florentine Republic—an entity formed after the unraveling of the four-year theocracy that had in turn followed the dissolution of the previous Medici regime. During the period 1498 to 1512, amid constant invasion, shifting alliances, and warfare, he served on government councils; performed important diplomatic missions to France and the papal court, among other destinations; and advised on military organization and recruitment. In November 1512, Spanish troops having overrun Florentine territory and restored the Medici regime, Machiavelli lost his position. And in 1. Machiavelli and others in this era use the term “prince” as the generic title for the ruler of a state, who might hold the title of king, duke, count, or other official.

281

282

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

February 1513, charged with conspiracy, imprisoned, tortured, and released, he retreated to his country villa not far from the city he had so long served. There he wrote most of his many works, including political treatises, histories, and plays. Among them were the Discourses on Livy and The Prince, his two great contributions to political thought, neither published until after the author’s death: the Discourses in 1531 and the Prince in 1532. Long an agent of the republican regime, Machiavelli had been an ardent supporter of republicanism, as evidenced in the Discourses on Livy.2 Yet suddenly, in The Prince, Machiavelli seems to renounce those principles he had supported. Perhaps he is disingenuous, and is simply seeking the patronage of those who had imprisoned him and extinguished the republican state. Perhaps, confronted with the realities of the political situation in 1513, when Italy lay prey to the armies of invading powers, he despaired of a republican restoration. Certainly, in its focus on the lone ruler, one man with an army, The Prince seems to anticipate the coming age of dominant monarchies at the head of large nation states. In any case, its repudiation of morality—Christian and humanist alike—as an absolute requirement in the ruler is utterly novel and thoroughly shocking. Machiavelli spells out his new moral program in chapters fifteen through nineteen of the work’s twenty-six chapters—the central chapters in terms of length, and the pivotal ones in terms of theme. Selections from these chapters are given here. In the same year that Machiavelli composed The Prince, the nobleman and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529) began his The Book of the Courtier, a handbook of manners for a gentleman attached to the court of a prince. Where Machiavelli depicts the perfect prince, Castiglione portrays the person who will serve him. Princes ruled everywhere; the prudent man learned how to please them. Schooled by humanists, Castiglione perfected his skills as a courtier serving at the courts of Milan, Mantua, Urbino, Rome (the papal see), and Spain. Though his Courtier is set in 1507, when Castiglione was in residence at the court of Urbino, it was not begun until 1513; and though finished by 1518, not printed until 1528. In the four sections, or books, of the Courtier, Castiglione records fictional conversations held on four successive evenings at the court of Urbino—conversations in which the ladies and gentlemen in residence participated; intellectuals, warriors, and diplomats alike. On the first evening, the topic set for consideration is the nature of the perfect courtier. The discussion that follows (selections from which are given in this chapter) not only details the role of the courtier, it is itself a model of how courtiers and court ladies behave. The courtier is to be a man of noble birth, attractive in 2. Livy had been the historian of the Roman Republic, whose chronicle offered innumerable instances of political success and failure permitting Machiavelli to develop his analysis.

Introduction

283

appearance, and accomplished in arms. But he should not be a sullen warrior unequipped for life at court; rather, he must wear his physical attainments lightly, cultivating a kind of nonchalance, and by pretending that the task is easy, to make its accomplishment appear all the more impressive: “[T]o display in every act a certain sprezzatura, which conceals art and makes it seem that all that is done and said is achieved without effort and as though without thought.” The term sprezzatura (one as famous as it is untranslatable, which the speaker himself introduces, aware that it is a neologism), implies an attitude of easy superiority, an elegant disdain for the difficulty of the task. If there is one quality that characterizes Castiglione’s courtier, it is this one. On the second evening, the ladies and gentlemen of the court continue their discussion of the courtier’s attributes, among them the reserve and calculation that will be required in his interactions with the prince. On the third evening, the conversationalists turn to the qualities required of the lady at court, the essential counterpart of the courtier. Where he must display manliness, she must appear delicate and in all things unlike her male analogue. The gender division between the courtier and lady could not be more starkly displayed. That expectation of gender difference will characterize not only the courts of Europe, but European society more generally, for the next three centuries. The fourth evening is devoted to two discussions, which end only with the break of dawn. The first returns to the courtier, who is to be praised for his intellectual capacity, honed by a sound education, and his adroitness, acquired in the experience of court life, in advising the prince. The second is a discourse on platonic love, the spiritualized love informed by the study of Plato, which filters and refines the notions of courtly love that had prevailed since the twelfth century (see Chapter 6, Text 6). The prince and the courtier whom Machiavelli and Castiglione instruct inhabit a world of uncertainty and danger, of shifting realities within which the individual must cultivate, for his own self-protection, a certain inauthenticity, employing guile, indirection, and the appearance of probity where candor is impossible. The posture they recommend is emphatically rejected by Erasmus and More. The “archhumanist” Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469–1536)—who, though Dutch-born, considered himself a citizen of “Christendom,” and whose Latinized name announces his preference to converse only in Latin— portrays a prince quite unlike Machiavelli’s. His concern in The Education of a Christian Prince (composed in 1516), excerpts of which appear in this chapter, is primarily cultural, as was the case with nearly everything he wrote, and he wrote a great deal: his treatises, translations, and letters, on religion, philosophy, and the classics, extend to eighty-six volumes in their

284

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

modern English edition. Equipped with a sound humanist education and protected from the malign influences of the court, the ideal prince will rule justly and compassionately, avoid war, and practice peace. The contrast between Erasmus and Machiavelli is sharp and obdurate. Machiavelli grooms a prince who will ruthlessly pursue power, crush any opposition, and practice cruelty and deceit with his own subjects and other rulers. Erasmus proposes instead that the prince, educated from childhood to be not only learned but also instilled with traits of character that will enable him, as ruler, to serve his subjects. He will protect them from harm, advancing their physical and material welfare, while showing special consideration for the poor, preyed on by the rich and powerful; settle disputes fairly; and pursue peace and avoid war, which is the ruination of states. Whereas Machiavelli’s analysis seems to predict accurately the ruthlessness of modern rulers, Erasmus’s concern for the welfare of the people anticipates the norms of the most enlightened and beneficent modern states. Erasmus disapproves, moreover, not only of Machiavelli’s prince, but also of Castiglione’s courtier. Groomed to serve and flatter the prince, the courtier’s inauthenticity—evidenced in that “air” Castiglione commended—will corrupt the ruler’s character, leading him to ignore the needs of his subjects. Such courtiers, for Erasmus, are evil counselors to be removed entirely from the prince’s orbit. The English humanist and statesman Thomas More (1478–1535), following the lead of his good friend Erasmus, defines the well-being of the citizens as the primary goal of the fictional state he describes in Utopia (composed in 1516, like Erasmus’s Christian Prince). An island in a vast unknown sea like those that, in More’s day, European navigators were busily exploring, Utopia is the ancestor of all the utopian societies that later authors would create. It is a place that does not and cannot exist, as the title itself declares: “utopia” is the Greek word for “no place.” Utopia anticipates modern socialism, and even communism, in many regards. Indeed, More was hailed as a Communist hero by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Kautsky, his contribution to “the liberation of humankind” commemorated—at Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin’s suggestion—on a monument erected in 1918 in Aleksandrovsky Garden near the Kremlin. As seen in the selections included in this chapter, Utopia is governed by a series of elected councils, which elect a monarch whose term is lifelong unless he attempts to undermine the constitution and make himself tyrant—exactly what a Machiavellian prince would attempt to do. All people are equal in Utopia (except for a handful of slaves captured in one of the very few wars the Utopians rarely fight, and always win), and all are expected to work, but not too hard; for the workday is structured so as to allow plenty of time for cultivated leisure. All property is shared, goods

1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

285

are freely distributed at public markets, and the citizens take their meals together in public halls—where the subordination of women and children to elder males constitutes one social pattern inherited from contemporary Europe not transformed by Utopian principles. Notably in Utopia, however, religious practice is completely free, and no set of dogmas or priestly caste is established. That condition of universal religious toleration was quite unlike conditions in More’s England which, soon after he wrote, would be roiled by religious conflict. After serving the king loyally for much of his career, More himself fell victim to that conflict. A Catholic who had prosecuted dissenters for heresy, More refused to accept King Henry VIII’s religious revolution that would institute, after much struggle, a Protestant church. He was beheaded in 1535, a martyr for his faith. More refused to play the courtier; but Henry performed well the role of Machiavelli’s prince.

$$$ 1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince (1513) Around the midpoint of The Prince, in the pivotal chapters fifteen through nineteen, Machiavelli prescribes a new moral code suited to—and necessary for—the successful prince. In chapter fifteen, he announces the inversion of the moral universe that is proposed. Others have written on the fine qualities a prince should possess, but he is dissatisfied with their advice: “But my hope is to write a book that will be useful”; and so it is best to “not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world.” A ruler equipped with good qualities would be a fine thing; but since we do not live in an ideal world that requirement must be abandoned. In chapter sixteen, Machiavelli discusses the perils of generosity, a virtue that had always been seen as admirable in princes. But the generous prince runs out of money, so must tax and oppress his subjects; a parsimonious prince, however, builds up his stores and wins their gratitude. In chapter seventeen, Machiavelli similarly subverts the usual assumptions about cruelty and compassion. The prince who shows compassion may endanger his state, whereas the prince who acts cruelly may ironically benefit his subjects: “for it is more compassionate to impose harsh punishments on a few than, out of excessive compassion, to allow disorder to spread.” Accordingly, although the prince should avoid being hated, it is useful if he is feared: “fear restrains men because they are afraid of punishment, and this fear never leaves them.” In chapter eighteen, Machiavelli recommends another inversion of accepted morality: it is admirable, in general, to keep one’s word, but a prince may need to break his. In the present disturbed times, those rulers willing to break their word have won

286

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

out over those who kept theirs. In short, the prince must be able to act at times like a fox, and at other times like a lion: the fox avoids traps, while the lion holds off wolves. In chapter nineteen, finally, Machiavelli urges the prince at all costs to avoid the hatred and contempt of his subjects. To do so, he must stay away from “the possessions and the women of your subjects.” The prince who does not arouse the resentment of his subjects will hold onto power. By carving out a political realm apart from normal life, one in which the moral laws of church and social custom are suspended, Machiavelli shocks his readers: those who first read his work and those who read it today. But can the state, he dares you to consider, if lodged within the moral order, operate successfully?

The Prince Chapter Fifteen: About those factors that cause men, and especially rulers, to be praised or censured Our next task is to consider the policies and principles a ruler ought to follow in dealing with his subjects or with his friends. Since I know many people have written on this subject, I am concerned it may be thought presumptuous for me to write on it as well, especially since what I have to say, as regards this question in particular, will differ greatly from the recommendations of others. But my hope is to write a book that will be useful, at least to those who read it intelligently, and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world. For many authors have constructed imaginary republics and principalities that have never existed in practice and never could; for the gap between how people actually behave and how they ought to behave is so great that anyone who ignores everyday reality in order to live up to an ideal will soon discover he has been taught how to destroy himself, not how to preserve himself. . . . Machiavelli presents the fine qualities that people often think a prince should possess, such as generosity, kindness, courage, and honesty. But vices, rather than virtues, make it possible to hold on to power. Above all, do not be upset if you are supposed to have those vices a ruler needs if he is going to stay securely in power, for, if you think about it, you will realize there are some ways of behaving that are supposed to be virtuous, but would lead to your downfall, and others that are supposed to be wicked, but will lead to your welfare and peace of mind.

1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

287

Chapter Sixteen: On generosity and parsimony [Although] it would be good to be thought generous; nevertheless, if you act in the way that will get you a reputation for generosity, you will do yourself damage. For generosity used skillfully [virtuosamente] and practiced as it ought to be, is hidden from sight, and being truly generous will not protect you from acquiring a reputation for parsimony. So, if you want to have a reputation for generosity, you must throw yourself into lavish and ostentatious expenditure. Consequently, a ruler who pursues a reputation for generosity will always end up wasting all his resources; and he will be obliged in the end, if he wants to preserve his reputation, to impose crushing taxes upon the people, to pursue every possible source of income, and to be preoccupied with maximizing his revenues. This will begin to make him hateful to his subjects, and will ensure no one thinks well of him, for no one admires poverty. The result is his supposed generosity will have caused him to offend the vast majority and to have won favor with few. Anything that goes wrong will destabilize him, and the slightest danger will imperil him. Recognizing the problem, and trying to economize, he will quickly find he has acquired a reputation as a miser. . . . So we see a ruler cannot seek to benefit from a reputation as generous without harming himself. . . . So a ruler should not care about being thought miserly, for it means he will be able to avoid robbing his subjects; he will be able to defend himself; he will not become poor and despicable, and he will not be forced to become rapacious. This is one of those vices that makes successful government possible. . . . So it is wiser to accept a reputation as miserly, which people despise but do not hate, than to aspire to a reputation as generous, and as a consequence, be obliged to face criticism for rapacity, which people both despise and hate.

Chapter Seventeen: About cruelty and compassion; and about whether it is better to be loved than feared, or the reverse Going further down our list of qualities, I recognize every ruler should want to be thought of as compassionate and not cruel. Nevertheless, I have to warn you to be careful about being compassionate. . . . A ruler ought not to mind the disgrace of being called cruel, if he keeps his subjects peaceful and law-abiding, for it is more compassionate to impose harsh punishments on a few than, out of excessive compassion, to allow disorder to spread, which leads to murders or looting. The whole community suffers if there are riots, while to maintain order the ruler only has to execute one or two individuals. . . .

288

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

This leads us to a question that is in dispute: Is it better to be loved than feared, or vice versa? My reply is one ought to be both loved and feared; but, since it is difficult to accomplish both at the same time, I maintain it is much safer to be feared than loved, if you have to do without one of the two. For of men one can, in general, say this: They are ungrateful, fickle, deceptive and deceiving, avoiders of danger, eager to gain. As long as you serve their interests, they are devoted to you. They promise you their blood, their possessions, their lives, and their children, as I said before, so long as you seem to have no need of them. But as soon as you need help, they turn against you. Any ruler who relies simply on their promises and makes no other preparations, will be destroyed. . . . Men are less nervous of offending someone who makes himself lovable, than someone who makes himself frightening. For love attaches men by ties of obligation, which, since men are wicked, they break whenever their interests are at stake. But fear restrains men because they are afraid of punishment, and this fear never leaves them. Still, a ruler should make himself feared in such a way that, if he does not inspire love, at least he does not provoke hatred. For it is perfectly possible to be feared and not hated. You will only be hated if you seize the property or the women of your subjects and citizens. Whenever you have to kill someone, make sure you have a suitable excuse and an obvious reason; but, above all else, keep your hands off other people’s property; for men are quicker to forget the death of their father than the loss of their inheritance. . . .

Chapter Eighteen: How far rulers are to keep their word Everybody recognizes how praiseworthy it is for a ruler to keep his word and to live a life of integrity, without relying on craftiness. Nevertheless, we see that in practice, in these days, those rulers who have not thought it important to keep their word have achieved great things, and have known how to employ cunning to confuse and disorientate other men. In the end, they have been able to overcome those who have placed store in integrity. You should therefore know there are two ways to fight: one while respecting the rules, the other with no holds barred. Men alone fight in the first fashion, and animals fight in the second. But because you cannot always win if you respect the rules, you must be prepared to break them. A ruler, in particular, needs to know how to be both an animal and a man. . . . Since a ruler, then needs to know how to make good use of beastly qualities, he should take as his models among the animals both the fox and the lion, for the lion does not know how to avoid traps, and the fox is easily overpowered by wolves. So you must be a fox when it comes to suspecting a trap, and a lion when it comes to making the wolves turn tail. Those who

1. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

289

simply act like a lion all the time do not understand their business. So you see a wise ruler cannot, and should not, keep his word when doing so is to his disadvantage, and when the reasons that led him to promise to do so no longer apply. Of course, if all men were good, this advice would be bad; but since men are wicked and will not keep faith with you, you need not keep faith with them. Nor is a ruler ever short of legitimate reasons to justify breaking his word. . . . You will find people are so simple-minded and so preoccupied with their immediate concerns, that if you set out to deceive them, you will always find plenty of them who will let themselves be deceived. . . . So a ruler need not have all the positive qualities I listed earlier, but he must seem to have them. . . . So you should seem to be compassionate, trustworthy, sympathetic, honest, religious, and, indeed, be all these things; but at the same time you should be constantly prepared, so that, if these become liabilities, you are trained and ready to become their opposites. You need to understand this: A ruler, and particularly a ruler who is new to power, cannot conform to all those rules that men who are thought good are expected to respect. . . . As I have said, he should do what is right if he can, but he must be prepared to do wrong if necessary. . . .

Chapter Nineteen: How one should avoid hatred and contempt Because I have spoken of the more important of the qualities I mentioned earlier, I want now to discuss the rest of them briefly under this general heading, that a ruler must take care . . . to avoid those things that will make him an object of hatred or contempt. As long as he avoids these he will have done what is required of him, and will find having a reputation for any of the other vices will do him no harm at all. You become hateful, above all . . . if you prey on the possessions and the women of your subjects. You should leave both alone. . . . You become contemptible if you are thought to be erratic, capricious, effeminate, pusillanimous, irresolute. You should avoid acquiring such a reputation as a pilot steers clear of the rocks. Make every effort to ensure your actions suggest greatness and endurance, strength of character and of purpose. . . . A ruler who is thought of in these terms has the sort of reputation he needs. . . . For rulers ought to be afraid of two things: Within the state, they should fear their subjects; abroad, they should fear other rulers. Against foreign powers, a good army and reliable allies are the only defense; and, if you have a good army, you will always find your allies reliable. And you will find it easy to maintain order at home if you are secure from external threats, provided, that is, conspiracies against you have not undermined your authority. . . . The best protection against these is to ensure that you

290

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

are not hated or despised, and the people are satisfied with your rule. It is essential to accomplish this. . . .

$$$ 2. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier (1518) In Castiglione’s narration, on the first evening of four devoted to conversations on various subjects that occurred in 1507 in the Duke of Urbino’s great hall, the Count Ludovico da Canossa, himself a courtier of high standing, describes the ideal qualities of the Renaissance courtier. He must be handsome, adept at all martial arts (which he is expected to exercise on the battlefield, both on foot and on horseback, as in the duels that sometimes arise “between one gentlemen and another”), loyal to his superiors, and above all, in all his actions, possessed of a “certain grace” or “air,” which is famously, in the passage given here, accorded the name of sprezzatura. An echo of the knight Roland (the hero of the Song of Roland; see Chapter 6, Text 3), along with all the other heroes of chivalric romance and chanson de geste, resonate in Castiglione’s courtier. Roland is brave, loyal, and skilled, dying in the service of his lord and for the honor of his family. The requirements that bound Roland remain in force for Castiglione; but they are wrapped in a layer of new expectations, more aesthetic, more psychological, more cerebral in nature. They will groom a modern courtier to serve a modern prince. His skills now must extend to the ballroom and the council hall, where the intellectual and strategic talents of an adviser as well as the prowess of a warrior may be needed. In this world, too, much is gained by indirection, artifice, and cunning. The courtier endowed with sprezzatura will flourish here.

The Book of the Courtier Emilia Pia,3 as hostess, has commissioned Count Ludovico da Canossa4 to describe the attributes of the ideal courtier. He must be nobly born, as such men are driven by desire to match or exceed their ancestors; and because a “hidden seed” implanted in them by nature causes them to develop into simulacra of their ancestors, unless a deficient education prevents it.

3. Emilia Pia: noblewoman resident at the court of Urbino, companion to the duchess. 4. Count Ludovico da Canossa: Castiglione’s friend, a bishop and diplomat, at this time resident at the court of Urbino.

2. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier

291

1.14 This courtier of ours, then, should be of noble birth and distinguished family, as it matters less for a commoner to fail to perform valiant deeds than for a nobleman. If a nobleman deviates from the path of his ancestors, he stains his family’s name, and not only gains nothing, but suffers the loss of what had already been gained. Nobility is like a bright lamp that reveals and exposes both good and evil deeds, and prompts and spurs to virtue5 by arousing both the fear of infamy and more, the desire for praise. As this lamp of nobility does not shine on those born ignobly, they are not moved by fear of infamy, nor do they feel obligated to exceed what their ancestors had done; but for those born nobly it is shameful not to at least meet the standard set by their forebears. So nearly always in feats of arms and other valorous deeds, the most distinguished contenders are noble. Nature has implanted in every being a hidden seed, which instills in all things a certain essential power that shapes whatever grows from it, making it similar to itself. That process is seen not only in the breeding of horses and other animals, but also in trees, whose offshoots usually look like their trunks—and if they sometimes vary, it is the fault of an unskilled arborist. And so it happens with men, who, if they are properly reared, most often resemble their forebears, and often exceed them; but if a good caretaker is lacking, they grow wild, a state from which they never emerge. . . . The courtier, then, beyond his noble birth, should possess also other gifts of nature: not only intelligence and comeliness of face and body, but a certain grace and what might be called an air that makes him immediately pleasing and attractive to all who meet him—and let this be an ornament that informs and accompanies all his actions and marks him as one worthy of the confidence and favor of any great prince.6 . . .

1.17 But to get down to details, I believe that the principal and true profession of the courtier must be that of arms, which above all else he should engage in vigorously, and impress others as ardent, brave, and loyal to whomever he serves.7 And he will win this reputation by displaying these qualities in every time and place, for great shame awaits if he ever fails in this matter; for just as a woman’s chastity, once sullied, can never be recovered, so the reputation 5. virtue: Castiglione, like Machiavelli, uses the word “virtue” in the classical sense to mean excellence in the performance of both body and mind. 6. Clearly, the courtier is being groomed for service to a higher nobleman, whom he will serve in the council chamber as much as on the battlefield. 7. A military commander, or the prince.

292

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

of a gentleman who bears arms, if at any time in the slightest degree it is lessened by cowardice or some other fault, it is forever damaged and defiled in the eyes of the world. The greater excellence our courtier displays in this art, the more he will be worthy of praise. Yet I do not deem it necessary for him to have that perfect knowledge of military matters and other qualities that are useful to a commander. Rather than seek that immensity, let us be content, as we have said, with his deep loyalty and unconquered spirit, and may he always be seen to possess them. Now very often courage is displayed more in little things than in great ones. For there are some who, at a moment of danger, surrounded by witnesses, propelled only by shame or the presence of onlookers, although their hearts are dead in their bodies, and as though with eyes shut tight, go forth and perform their duty, and God knows how; yet on lesser occasions, when it seems they can remove themselves from danger without being seen, they quickly seek out a place of safety. But others, in contrast, even when they think there is no one to admire, or see, or recognize them, display their ardor and neglect nothing, however small, that might be incumbent on them to do—that is the virtuous spirit that we seek for in our courtier. Not that we wish him to behave so fiercely that his mouth is always full of bluster. . . . To such a person one could rightly say what a spirited lady in refined company said pleasantly to one whom I shall not name. She had invited him to dance, as a courtesy to him; but he refused to dance, or to enjoy the music, or the many other entertainments offered, saying that such amusements were not his profession. Finally the lady said: “What then is your profession?” He replied, scowling, “To fight.” To this the lady quickly responded: “I would have thought,” she said, “that now that you are not on the battlefield, nor about to fight, you might do better to have yourself greased along with all your weapons and stowed away in a wardrobe until you are needed, so that you do not become more rusty than you already are.” And so she rendered him ridiculous, as all present laughed at his foolish presumption. Here then is what we seek in a courtier: where there are enemies, to confront them fiercely and boldly, standing always in the first ranks; but in all other places, to be cordial, modest, and reserved, avoiding all ostentation and impudent self-praise, by which a man always excites the hatred and disgust of all listeners. . . .

1.20 As for the courtier’s physical appearance, I say it is enough that he be neither too short nor too tall, because both of these conditions arouse a kind of surprised disdain, and such men are stared at as though they were monsters. . . . On this account, I would wish the courtier to be well built and with

2. Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier

293

well-formed limbs, and that he possess strength, speed, and agility, and be expert in all the physical exercises useful for a warrior. Of these, I think the first must be the ability to manage well every kind of weapon on foot and on horseback, and to know the advantages of each. It is especially important to be familiar with those arms that are ordinarily used by gentlemen; because, beyond using weapons in wartime (where perhaps there is no great need for subtlety), there often arise differences between one gentleman and another, leading to duels.8 As sidearms are generally used for this purpose, it is necessary, for safety’s sake, to be acquainted with them. Nor am I one of those who say that at this critical moment skill is set aside; for he whose skill fails him at this time signals that he has already surrendered his heart and his head to fear.

1.24 After some further discussion, Messer Cesare Gonzaga9 interposes a question. If I recall well, Count, it seems to me that you have often said this evening that the courtier must accompany his movements, his gestures, his manners, in effect his every act, with grace, such that, it seems, you are proposing this as a universal ingredient, without which all the other proprieties and niceties are of little value. . . . But since you say that this quality very often is the gift of nature and of heaven . . . , it seems to me that those who are born as fortunate and as rich in this treasure as some we know . . . have little need for any further training. . . . But those who have been endowed by nature with more limited capacities, which yet are capable of being increased and perfected by effort, labor, and struggle, I would like to know by what art, with what teaching, and by what method they can acquire this grace which you find to be so necessary both in bodily exercises as in all the other things they do or say. For since your praise of this quality has aroused in all of us, I believe, a burning thirst to attain it, you are obligated, by instructing us, to extinguish it.

1.25 To which the count replies. I am not obligated, said the count, to instruct you how to possess this grace, nor anything else, but only to propose what is required to be a perfect 8. duels: a common means of settling disputes and perceived slights to honor between gentlemen from the Middle Ages up to the nineteenth century. 9. Cesare Gonzaga: a cousin of Castiglione’s, at this time in the service of the Duke of Urbino as soldier and diplomat.

294

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

courtier. . . . However, to answer your question as much as it is in my power to do so, although it is almost proverbial that grace cannot be learned, I say that he who is to become skilled in bodily exercises (assuming from the start he is not by nature incapable of doing so), he must begin early and learn the fundamentals from the best teachers. . . . Examples of famous teachers are given, followed by the introduction of a momentous new word, and concept, sprezzatura.

1.26 But having often considered from whence this grace comes (leaving aside those who have it from the stars), I have discerned a most universal rule, which seems to hold in this matter more than any other in human action or conversation: and that is utterly to avoid affectation as though it was a jagged and deadly reef; and, to use perhaps a new word, to display in every act a certain sprezzatura,10 which conceals art and makes it seem that all that is done and said is achieved without effort and as though without thought. It is from this, I believe, that grace effectively derives. Since everyone knows how difficult it is to perform rare and difficult deeds, their accomplishment with ease generates enormous wonder; and in contrast, to struggle with a task and, so to say, to pull out your hair over it, is an embarrassment, and devalues the accomplishment, however great it might be. So it might be said that true art is art that does not seem to be art; nor does one need so much to expend effort as to disguise it; because if it is evident, the effort expended erases the value of the deed and diminishes the man who created it. . . . You see, then, that the demonstration of art, or of any kind of intense effort, diminishes the grace of any deed. Who among you does not laugh when our Pierpaolo dances as he does, leaping about and stretching on tiptoe, never moving his head as though he were a block of wood, with an intent look that makes it clear he is counting his steps? What eye is so blind as not to see in this the awkwardness of affectation? While the grace displayed by the men and women gathered here in our company, evident in the nonchalant ease of their bodies, who show with a comment or laugh or gesture that they feel no need to think about anything but what they are doing right now, causes the observer to believe that they cannot, and do not even know how to err?

$$$ 10. sprezzatura: a coolness, or attitude of not caring; often translated as “nonchalance.”

3. Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince

295

3. Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince (1516) After first delineating the proper education for a Christian prince, Erasmus turns to the question of how the prince should govern, as in the passages given here. He addresses issues of taxation and fiscal management, advising the prince to “diligently seek and devise ways so that as small a burden as possible is laid on the people.” He recommends that the prince create very few laws, and only those that “have no other end than to promote the common good.” In peacetime, the prince must act for the welfare of all his subjects, not favoring the wealthy, but intervening as needed to protect the poor against the rich: “Ways must be sought by which to lighten the load of the humble folk, to free the realm from thievery and plunder with the least expenditure of blood, [and] to foster and promote lasting concord among his subjects. . . .” Above all, the prince should avoid going to war, the most deadly enemy of the people: “For although other actions have other consequences, from war uniquely comes the destruction of all good things; it is an ocean overflowing with everything evil, nor is any other evil more tenacious.” In contrast to Machiavelli, Erasmus views the prince not as the necessary sovereign whose authority must be maintained at all costs, but as the servant and benefactor of the people who live under his rule.

The Education of a Christian Prince On tributes and taxes If we search the annals of past times, we find that many revolts originate from excessive taxation. So a good prince will take care to stir up popular feeling on such matters as little as possible. If he can, he should reign without exacting taxes. . . . If he is a good prince, then all that his loving subjects possess, he, too, possesses. . . . There are those who serve the prince who, so as to constantly increase his reputation, wring the people dry, and who believe that they are properly pursuing his interests when they turn his subjects into enemies. But if he follows their advice, he should know that he falls far short of what befits a prince. Instead, he should diligently seek and devise ways so that as small a burden as possible is laid on the people. It would be an excellent plan for raising revenues if the prince cut back on unnecessary expenses, if he eliminated useless agencies, if he avoided wars and other foreign ventures, if he restrained the greed of his officials, and if he exerted himself more for the proper management of his dominions than their increase. . . .

296

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

The good prince will tax the least, then, those things which are commonly used, including by the poorest folk, such as grain, bread, beer, wine, clothes, and other such things without which human life cannot subsist. . . . Yet if it is impossible to avoid any kind of exaction, and if it is for the good of the people, then those foreign and exotic items should be taxed— such as cottons and silks and richly dyed textiles, pepper and spices, ointments and gems, and any other things of this kind—which are not needed so much for subsistence as for luxury and delight and whose use is limited to the rich. For in this way the pain will be felt by those whose fortunes can best bear it, and who will not be reduced to poverty by this blow, but perhaps be made more frugal, so that the loss to their purse may be repaired by the improvement of their morals. . . .

On princely beneficence Since generosity and beneficence are the qualities that bring honor to good princes, how do they dare call themselves “prince” the sum of whose policy is to promote their own interests to the disadvantage of others? The wise and vigilant prince will find the way to be of service to all, not necessarily by bestowing gifts. Some he will assist by his generosity and others he will aid with a favor; some he will free from the hand of unjust authority, while to others he will offer sound advice. And in his soul he will feel that the day is lost to him on which he has not bestowed some benefit on someone. . . . But if in our day, when the prince approaches, the citizens put away their best possessions, lock up their lovely daughters, send away their young sons, hide their wealth, and say to themselves, as if their actions did not already reveal it, what opinion they have of him, when they do the things they would do at the approach of an enemy or a predator? . . . When the wealthiest of cities so distrusts the prince, when at the advent of the prince all the ruffians rush out to greet him, while the best and most reliable men are wary and silent—clearly they announce by their actions what opinion they have of the prince. . . .

On making and emending laws That city or kingdom is most fortunate that has the best laws under the best prince; and their condition is happiest when all obey the prince, and the prince himself obeys the laws—provided that the laws meet the standard of justice and honor, and have no other end than to promote the common good. A good, wise, and righteous prince is in himself a living law. He should labor, therefore, not to create many laws, but to create the best laws, those

3. Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince

297

most salutary for the republic. For if the city is well-ordered under a good prince and with worthy magistrates, a very few laws will suffice. And if these conditions are not present, no multitude of laws will be enough. . . . Erasmus explores how the laws differentially impact people of different social ranks. This, though, should be the universal goal of all laws: that no one should suffer injury, neither the poor man nor the rich, the nobleman nor the commoner, the serf nor the free man, the public official nor the private citizen. But the laws should incline more to assisting the weak, since the condition of the more humble folk is more vulnerable to harm, and to the degree that they lack the benefits of fortune, then humanity demands that the laws compensate. Consequently, they should punish more severely an assault on a poor man than a wealthy one, a corrupt magistrate than an ordinary thief, a criminous burgher than a commoner. . . . To review, then, let there be as few laws as possible, and principally those that are fair and conducive to the public welfare; and they should be clearly communicated to the people. . . . For some public officials shamefully use the laws as a kind of trap, trying evidently to ensnare as many victims as possible, not so much pursuing the interest of the state as stalking their prey. Finally, the laws should be written in plain words without convolutions, so that there will be no need to consult those crafty operators who call themselves jurists and advocates—which profession indeed, when it was the preserve of honorable men, had great dignity, although it yielded little profit, the thirst for which now corrupts it as it does everything else. . . .

What princes should do in peacetime The prince, then, instructed in Christ’s decrees and the precepts of wisdom, will cherish nothing more—nor indeed will he cherish anything else—than the happiness of the people, whom he should both love and nurture as his one body with himself. And to this one end he will direct all his thoughts, all his efforts, and all his strength, so that he may discharge his duty in such a way that, at the last day, he will render his account to Christ as judge, and among mortals leave a remembrance as himself as honorable in all things. . . . There are bad morals to be remedied with good laws, perverse laws to be improved, evils to be corrected; honest magistrates to be identified, and corrupt ones to be punished or restrained. Ways must be sought by which to lighten the load of the humble folk, to free the realm from thievery and plunder with the least expenditure of blood, to foster and promote lasting concord among his subjects. There are other lesser tasks which are yet not

298

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

unworthy of a great prince: he may tour his cities, but with the intention of making them all better: he may strengthen their weak fortifications, adorn them with public buildings, tend to bridges, porticoes, churches, embankments, and aqueducts; clear places that are a source of plague either by rebuilding or draining swamps. He may divert rivers that flow in the wrong direction, build dams or open channels on the waterfront as required. He may promote the cultivation of fallow fields so as to increase the grain supply, and improve productivity, as for instance by removing vineyards where grapes do not grow well so that more wheat can be grown. There are six thousand things of this kind which would be a splendid undertaking for a prince, and enjoyable even for a good prince, so that there would never be need because of lack of occupation to go to war or spend the night gambling. . . . It follows, then, as has been shown, that if the prince concerns himself especially with the things that strengthen and improve the state, he will control and expel those, in contrast, which diminish it. For by his example of his wisdom and diligence, the good prince promotes the integrity of the magistrates and officials, the holiness of the priests, the selection of capable teachers, the fairness of the laws, and all pursuits conducive to virtue. By advancing these goods, those things that are harmful to the state may be easily eliminated, since they will be rooted out from the start before they have had a chance to take over. To be skillful and diligent in these matters is the philosophy of the Christian prince. To engage in these projects for the good of all, to lend them all possible support, this, in sum, befits the Christian prince. . . .

On going to war While the prince should never act precipitously, he must be especially careful and circumspect—more than in all other matters—in going to war. For although other actions have other consequences, from war uniquely comes the destruction of all good things; it is an ocean overflowing with everything evil, nor is any other evil more tenacious. War gives rise to more war: from a small one is born a great one, from a single one its twin, from one that is foolish, one cruel and deadly; and wherever the pestilence of war arises it infects those nearby first, but soon spreads also abroad to those far, far away. The good prince will hardly ever go to war, unless, after all other remedies have been tried, it can in no way be avoided. If we had observed this principle, people would scarcely ever have gone to war. For if so malignant a thing cannot be avoided, then it must be the first concern of the prince that as little as possible be spent of the blood and treasure of his subjects— I would prefer to say a minimum of blood and expense of any Christian people—and that it be swiftly brought to an end.

3. Desiderius Erasmus, The Education of a Christian Prince

299

First, the truly Christian prince should weigh how great is the distinction between man, an animal born for peace and kindliness, and wild beasts, born to hunt and fight. Then he should consider how great is the distinction between man and a Christian man. Thereafter he should consider how desirable, how honorable, how salutary a thing is peace; and in contrast, how calamitous and depraved a thing is war, and what a parade of evils follows in its train, even if it is a truly just war—if any war can ever be called just.11 Finally, all feelings put aside, let him apply a little reason to the issue: Does he really imagine he can know what will be the outcome of war? And whether its costs are justified, even if victory—which doesn’t always fall to the better cause—is certain? . . . The good prince should strive for the kind of glory which sheds no blood and harms no one. In war, the best that can happen is that one side is victorious, while the other side is vanquished. But often, even the victor grieves a victory purchased at too great a cost. If piety does not move us, or the calamity war inflicts on the world, certainly we should be moved by the harm done to the reputation of the Christian religion. What do we think the Turks and Saracens12 are saying about us, when they see that after so many centuries the Christian princes have been unable to reach any agreement? Or achieve peace, despite all the treaties? With no end to the spilling of blood? When they suffer fewer conflicts between nations than do we who, according to the doctrine of Christ, preach perfect peace? . . . Nor do I think that war against the Turks should be hastily undertaken considering above all that Christ’s realm was created, spread, and established by very different means. It is perhaps not right that it should be defended in a way other than that it was begun and increased. . . . Indeed, given the kind of people who now fight this kind of war, it is more likely that we will become Turks, than that we can turn them into Christians. First let us establish that we ourselves are truly Christians—and thereafter, if need be, we can rise up against the Turks. But I have written much elsewhere concerning the evils of war, which I will not repeat here. But this much I will do: I will urge the princes of Christendom to put aside their empty claims and false pretexts and take action seriously and wholeheartedly to put an end to the madness of war between Christians, so protracted and so pernicious, so that among those who have 11. The definition of a “just” war had long been a subject of philosophical discussion, and remains so still. 12. The Turks Erasmus refers to are the Ottoman Turks who had conquered Constantinople in 1453 (see Quirini, Chapter 8, text 4) and who continued to threaten Europe’s southeastern border; “Saracen” was the European term for Arab Muslims who had threatened the Byzantine Empire from the seventh century and conquered Iberia in the eighth.

300

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

so much in common, peace and concord may reign. To this end they should apply their mind, exert their strength, offer their counsel, and expend all their energy. Those who strive to great, will also prove their greatness. Anyone who does this will have achieved a victory far more splendid than if he had by his might conquered all of Africa. . . .

$$$ 4. Thomas More, Utopia (1516) The selections given here from More’s Utopia are taken from the four sections on government, trades and employments, society, and religion. The government consists of a series of greater and smaller councils, with elected representatives and an elected constitutional monarch; it is designed with safeguards against usurpation of power by any would-be tyrant. All Utopians must work, and are trained to do so; but they have a choice of occupations; and in any of these, they are not required to labor too hard, for “as much time as possible,” they believe, “should be spared from the service of the body and devoted to the freedom and cultivation of the soul.” Their society is based on the unit of the household, which is ruled by the eldest male; women are assigned domestic tasks and the nursing of young children; older children owe service to their parents. Foodstuffs are gathered in central markets and the citizens dine together in large halls. There is no established religion, although most Utopians worship a creator god with attributes not inconsistent with Christianity as practiced in More’s day—but not quite like it, either. Religious dissonance is inevitable, because the conscience must remain free; but none may deny two principles More establishes as an absolute minimum requirement of faith: the immortality of the soul and the governance of the universe by providence, not chance. In sum, the Utopian system promises happiness to all, where no one lives in want; all enjoy leisure, and having no fears for the future, live “with a joyous and tranquil heart.”

Utopia On government Each year, every thirty households elect a magistrate, who is called the Wiseacre. . . .13 Over every ten Wiseacres, together with the households that elected them, are in turn grouped under the authority of a Timeserver. . . . 13. More invents outlandish names from Greek and Latin fragments for Utopian government offices. Modern equivalents for these are substituted here.

4. Thomas More, Utopia

301

All the Wiseacres in each city, of whom there are two hundred,14 having sworn to choose the best qualified person from the four names the people present to the Senate15 (one from each quarter of the city), by secret ballot elect the Prince. The Prince holds his office for life, unless he is removed on suspicion of plotting to make himself a tyrant. . . . The Timeservers meet in council with the Prince every third day, and more often if necessary. . . . Each day two Wiseacres are assigned in rotation to witness Senate deliberations, which must take place for at least three days before any matter of state business can be decided. On pain of capital punishment, it is forbidden to discuss state matters outside of the Senate or other public councils. All these guidelines were instituted to prevent a conspiracy of the Prince and the Timeservers to subject the people to a tyrant, and alter the constitution of the republic. . . .

On trades and employments Agricultural work is common to all, men and women equally, and in it no one is more expert than another. All learn how to do this work from childhood, partly in school where its principles are explained, and partly in fields near the city to which they are taken as though for sports, where they do not merely observe, but using the opportunity of exercising their bodies, engage in labor themselves. Beyond farming (which is, as was said, the common task of all), everyone also learns a particular craft of his own, such as wool- or linen-manufacture, masonry, metal-work or carpentry. No other craft is practiced by any number of them worth noting, since clothing is made at home: for there is only one kind of garment worn throughout the whole island, pleasing in design, accommodated to all physical activity, equally suited for hot and cold weather, the same for all ages of life, and varying only to distinguish male from female, and married and unmarried. But of those other trades already mentioned, everyone learns one, women as well as men. But women being weaker engage in the less strenuous tasks of making wool or linen. To men are consigned the other, more laborious trades. For the most part, the child is trained to his father’s trade, to which they are most inclined by nature. But if someone aspires to another occupation, he is transferred, by adoption, to a household which practices that trade. . . . The Wiseacre’s first and, really, principal responsibility is to supervise and ascertain that no one succumbs to laziness, but diligently performs his 14. The Utopian government system is based on the unit of the city, each of which contains six thousand households, electing two hundred Wiseacres under twenty Timeservers. 15. Senate: The assembly of Timeservers.

302

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

particular craft—not that he is required to wear himself out like a beast of burden with remorseless toil from sunrise to sunset. For just about everywhere else, such a toilsome life, worse than slavery, is the lot of every laborer—but not for Utopians. Of the twenty-four equal hours into which they divide day and night, they assign only six to work: three before noon, when they go to dinner, after which they enjoy a two-hour period for rest, followed by three more hours of labor until suppertime. . . . At eight they go to bed, and eight hours are given to sleep. Whatever time is left after the hours for working, sleeping, and eating, each person may use as he wishes. ... Accordingly, since there is available a great abundance of everything, with everyone working at useful trades which require no great toll of labor, from time to time a great number of workers are summoned to repair the public roads (if there are any in disrepair). But when there is no need for this kind of work, a public announcement is made shortening the workday. For the magistrates do not compel the citizens to perform unnecessary labor, since the constitution of this republic obeys this preeminent principle: that for all citizens, to the extent that common utility permits, as much time as possible should be spared from the service of the body and devoted to the freedom and cultivation of the soul. For in such pursuits, they believe, human happiness lies.

On society Now we shall consider what kinds of social relations exist among the citizens, and how they manage the distribution of goods. The city, then, is made up of households, and the households of many persons related by blood. On reaching maturity, the women relocate to the households of their husbands. Male children and grandsons, however, remain in their household of birth, and are obedient to the eldest male, unless because of his great age he is no longer mentally competent; then the next elder becomes householder.16 Since each city is made up of six thousand households (not counting those of the outlying villages), to make sure that the city neither diminishes nor increases too much in population, no family is permitted to have fewer than ten or greater than sixteen adults; for no limit can be placed on the number of children. The limitation of household size is easily managed by

16. Notably, More does not here describe the essentially conjugal family system that prevailed in western Europe and especially in England, but an extended household system more characteristic of other cultures.

4. Thomas More, Utopia

303

transferring those who have been reared in larger households to those with fewer members.17 . . . The eldest male, as was said, is the head of the household. Wives are subordinate to their husbands, children to their parents, and the younger children to the elder. Every city is divided in four equal quarters, in the middle of each of which is a general marketplace. The goods produced by each family are brought here and stored in storehouses, each different commodity in its own separate area. From these same storehouses each householder asks for whatever goods he requires for himself or family members, and without payment of money or any kind of pledge of recompense, whatever he asks for is provided. . . . Each district of the city has, in addition, its own large halls, equally distant from each other, each known by its own name. . . . To each of these halls thirty families are assigned to take their meals, fifteen from each half of the district. The purveyors for each hall gather in the marketplace at a prescribed hour, and request the foodstuffs needed for the number of persons for whom they are responsible. . . . In the hall, the dirty and laborious chores are assigned to slaves.18 The other tasks of planning the meals and preparing and cooking the food are assigned to the women alone, those of each family doing so in rotation. The diners sit at three or more tables, depending on their numbers.19 Men sit along the wall, women on the outside of each table, so that if they are suddenly taken ill, which occasionally happens to the pregnant women, they may rise and seek the assistance of the nurses without disturbing the dinner. The nurses, together with their charges, the nursing infants, take their dinner in a separate room equipped with a warm fire, clean water, and cradles where they can lay the babies down near the fire and, when they wish, free them from their swaddling clothes for playtime.20 Each woman nurses her own child unless death or sickness prevents her. . . .21 All children up until the age of five stay in the nursery. The other minors, in which group are included all those of either sex not yet of marriageable age, either wait at table, or if they are not yet old enough, stand 17. More does not admit the possibility of birth control for the limitation of household size, but is untroubled by compelled transfer of members between households, regardless of blood ties. 18. slaves: war captives, acquired in those few cases where Utopia is forced to wage war against an enemy after having exhausted all alternatives. 19. More envisions long tables placed parallel to the walls of the dining hall. 20. Infants were normally swaddled in traditional society. In a warm and safe setting, the nurses may release them from the swaddling bonds so the babies can crawl about and play. 21. Like many learned men of his age, More was an advocate of maternal breastfeeding of infants, although that was not the usual practice.

304

Chapter 9. The High Renaissance

nearby without saying a word. Both sets of children are fed what the adults at the table offer them, nor is any other time for dining set for them.22 . . . . Food is passed to the elder participants first, then shared to the others. Meals are accompanied by reading on a serious topic, by music, and by the pleasant aromas of incense and sweet-smelling herbs.

On religions Religions vary not only across the island of Utopia, but even within the cities. Some people worship the sun as divine, others the moon, others one or another of the planets. Others consider some man who excelled long ago for his virtue or his valor to be not only a god, but the supreme god. But by far the greatest number, and clearly the most sensible, have no faith in these gods but recognize a spirit, whom they call Father: unknowable, eternal, immense, inexplicable, beyond the comprehension of the human mind, a force, not a substance, diffused throughout the universe. To him alone they attribute the origin and increase of things, all natural processes, changes, and outcomes; only this one spirit do they consider divine. . . . Even before his takeover of Utopia, its founder Utopus had heard that the inhabitants quarreled constantly among themselves about religion, and saw that their dissent caused disunity, with different sects each fighting separately for the homeland, making it easier for him to conquer them all. Once victory was won, he ordained immediately that everyone was free to follow whatever religion he preferred, and even convert others to his beliefs so long as he did so by peacefully and modestly presenting reasons—not by attacking other religions if persuasion doesn’t work, nor by descending to violence and insult. Anyone persisting in religious conflict would be punished with exile or slavery. . . . And so the whole issue of religion was left open for discussion, and each person was permitted freely to decide what he wanted to believe in; except that it was solemnly and strictly prohibited that anyone so betray the dignity of human nature as to believe that the soul dies with the body, or that the world is ruled not by providence, but blind force. . . .

Conclusion I have described to you as faithfully as I can the nature of that republic which I am convinced is not only the best but indeed the only one to which 22. Odd as this sounds to moderns, for whom even a separate children’s table is a dim memory, it was common in traditional society for children to wait on adults and accept, having no plate or utensils of their own, pieces of food from their elders’ meal.

4. Thomas More, Utopia

305

the term “republic” can rightly be applied. . . . For everywhere else, everyone knows that unless he looks out for himself, however much the republic may flourish, he may still die of hunger—which fear urges him to provide for himself, and not for other people, that is to say, the public. But here, where all things belong to everyone, all know that so long as the public storehouses are full, no individual will ever lack a sufficiency, . . . . and though no one possesses anything, yet all are wealthy. For who could be wealthier than the person who, relieved of all disquietude, lives with a joyous and tranquil heart? Not concerned about his next meal, untroubled by a nagging wife, not fearing that his son will live in poverty, not anxious about a dowry for his daughter, but secure in the knowledge that all of his family—wife, sons, grandsons, great-grandsons, great-great-grandsons, as long a series of descendants as elsewhere only the privileged assume will succeed them—will have the means of subsistence and of happiness?

Chapter 10 The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

Introduction The revival of classical literature, accompanied by the broadening of the reading public, the greater availability of books achieved by the printing press, and the maturation of vernacular languages enriched by humanist learning and refined by master authors, yielded an abundant literary harvest. This chapter considers four exemplary works from that surge of literary products, in genres including epic, romance, essay, and novel, by authors writing in Italian, French, and Spanish. They are designated Continental authors to distinguish them from the English writers considered in the following chapter. The first of these four is Ludovico Ariosto, a courtier poet immersed in humanist culture and author of the Italian epic Orlando furioso (Roland Goes Mad), which parodies the tradition of chivalric literature that had long outlived the civilizational environment from which it emerged centuries earlier (see Chapter 6, Introduction). The second is the French monk and physician François Rabelais, whose prose chronicle of a father-son pair of fantastical giants also celebrates the freedom of thought he found in humanism, and excoriates the narrowness and inhumanity, as he sees it, of Catholic traditions then under siege in the era of the Reformation. The third is the French nobleman Michel de Montaigne, writing a generation after Rabelais, who withdraws into his study from the endemic conflicts of the world to muse in his essays—a genre of which he is the principal inventor—about himself and about the nature of things. The fourth author is Miguel de Cervantes, a Spanish solder, redeemed slave, and accountant in government employ, whose novel Don Quixote, generally recognized as the first of that genre, describes the adventures of a man who believes he is a knight errant, whose absurdities expose the even greater absurdity of the world he inhabits. Ludovico Ariosto (1474–1533) combined his courtly and literary ambitions in the single task of composing Orlando furioso, an epic, the genre employed by Virgil to tell the story of the founding of Rome (see Chapter 3, Text 4), and which Ariosto will employ to establish the antiquity and legitimacy of the Este dynasty that ruled Ferrara. But Ariosto has other aims in his sprawling poem, one of the longest written in a European language, extending to forty-six cantos containing nearly 40,000 verse lines and filling nearly 306

Introduction

307

fifteen hundred pages in modern editions. Begun in 1506 and finalized in 1532, Orlando furioso is one of the two major Italian epics produced after Dante’s Divine Comedy (see Chapter 7, Text 2)—the other being Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered, 1581)—and builds on two earlier poems that introduce the characters and situation that Ariosto will further develop: Luigi Pulci’s Morgante (1483) and Matteo Maria Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato (Roland in Love, 1483/1495). Ariosto’s main project is to lampoon the chivalric tradition that entertained the Italian reading public, which was unmoved by the Latin treatises and orations the sober humanists composed. In mocking the chivalric romances, Ariosto invents a madcap world whose storylines intersect in exuberant abandon. Engaging all the tropes of the medieval tradition, with characters plucked from its various narrative strands, he splashes his pastiche of love stories, battlefield accounts, and intrigue across the expanse of Europe, Africa and Asia, reaching all the way to China—for which scenario he utilizes Marco Polo’s The Description of the World (see Chapter 7, Text 1), whose scribe, it will be recalled, had been a writer of romances. The epic principally features Orlando, the hero Roland of the twelfthcentury Song of Roland, who in the service of the emperor Charlemagne fought to the death a superior force of Saracens (see Chapter 6, Text 3). In Boiardo’s Orlando innamorato, that champion had fallen madly in love with Angelica; and in Ariosto’s sequel to Boiardo, he is so disordered by unrequited love that he loses his wits—literally; they fly off to the moon, and need to be fetched back and reinstalled in his body. But the more compelling story, arguably, is that of Bradamante, a Christian warrioress,1 who is in love with the noble Saracen warrior Ruggiero. Ruggiero becomes a Christian so that they can marry: and a good thing, too, because their descendants will become the Este dukes of Ferrara, Ariosto’s patrons, for whom he writes his verses, as the poet states in III.1:7–8: “for to my lord I owe this service, to sing of the ancestors from whom he has his birth.”2 Monk, priest, physician, humanist, and evangelical,3 the protégé of bishops, sponsored by two kings of France, François Rabelais (c. 1483/1494–1553) wrote not quite a novel, but an immense prose 1. warrioress: female warriors appear frequently in Renaissance literature, in imitation of the female warrior Virgil had introduced in the Aeneid, in the person of Camilla, daughter of the king of the Volsci. 2. That after-story is told in Canto III.24 and again in Canto XLI.64: Ruggiero, the son to be born to Bradamante and Ruggiero, will avenge his father’s death, defeat Desiderius, king of the Lombards, and be made by Charlemagne’s decree first lord of the Este dominion. 3. evangelical: in early sixteenth-century France, evangelicalism was a proto-reform movement within Catholicism, closely related to humanism, which stressed atonement by grace and valued Scripture over ritual performance.

308

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

narrative, extending to nearly one thousand pages in a modern English edition. It is a preposterous chronicle in five parts, called books, about the lives and deeds of a father-son pair of giants of ever-shifting dimensions, which outrageously reconfigures the intellectual world of the early sixteenth century. Composed between 1532 and 1552, Rabelais’s Gargantua (book one), about the elder giant, and Pantagruel (books two to five),4 about the younger, like Ariosto’s even longer Furioso, bury old norms and conventions in a firestorm of absurd antics, torrential obscenities, verbal effusions, and social parody. The very excess of Rabelais’s rhetoric seems to be the message he intends to convey: by creating clouds of extravagant language and describing excesses of behavior, of dress, and of belief, he rejects the constraint imposed by the church especially, but also all other constraints on human thought and action. That message is summed up in the final chapters of Gargantua, of which selections appear here, in which the giant establishes the abbey of Thélème. Thélème is an institution that is like a monastery in its self-containment and organization, but which repudiates not only the monastic ideal, but the moral limits intrinsic to the Christian worldview. Instead, it is a paradigm of a society that Rabelais promotes: one permitting complete human freedom and the opportunity for the unlimited exploration and actualization of the self. Like Thomas More’s, the world Rabelais portrays is utopian; but where More is wholly rational, Rabelais employs irrationality to smash the walls of the mental prison—emblematized as the monastery—that has held the human being captive for too long. As had Ariosto and Rabelais, the French nobleman and mayor of the city of Bordeaux, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), delighted in profusion and disorder, which he managed by creating a new literary genre that accommodated those traits: the essay, a brief work of prose non-fiction. Ensconced in his study in the tower of a castle, as wars raged all around him, Montaigne found in his own mind more congenial matter than what he observed beyond the walls. In his refuge, he read books—mostly Latin books. He had been immersed in the classical tradition since early childhood, learning Latin before he learned French, and by the age of six was dispatched to a boarding school where his conversational Latin would be honed by perusal of the classics. In later life, when he began to write the three volumes of his Essays, he would spice the meanders of his sentences with crisp epigrammatic Latin, always ready at hand in his capacious memory. Montaigne published his first volume of Essays in 1580, and by his death in 1592 had composed two more, which he edited and corrected himself, 4. The first book of the five was published, but actually written in 1534/1535, after the second book, composed in 1532, the first of the Pantagruel sequence. The fifth book of the series may not have been written by Rabelais.

Introduction

309

appointing a successor—the woman author Marie de Gournay, whom he viewed as an adoptive daughter—to continue that task after his death. The essay is a prose form tailor-made to present what Montaigne had to say. In these short prose pieces, he introduces himself to the world, and introduces the literary world to a new kind of thinking and creating: a means of communication that is less rigorous, but more open, inventive, and daring than any previously available. Montaigne’s essays, by design, reject system. His message is his method, and his method is wandering, associative, and fluid, as are, in his view, the qualities of the human mind and the nature of the human heart. In consequence, Montaigne is both an easy read and a difficult one: easy because he demands no long expanses of the reader’s attention; difficult, because the reader can lose track of the route taken through the wilderness of his thoughts. The chaos is intentional: Montaigne makes use of confusion to question and challenge the accepted meaning of things. Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), Montaigne’s slightly younger Spanish contemporary, also relishes chaos and confusion, qualities embodied in his principal character: the hidalgo5 Don Quixote, a middle-aged nonentity, in love with a woman who is the creature of his fantasies, entrapped in a world that exists only in his head, constructed of rags and remnants of chivalric fiction. Those tales of knights errant who pursue adventure while serving their beloved still circulated in 1600 as they had in 1500 when Ariosto addressed them, but in greater quantity, now spewed forth copiously by the printing press. The largely unsuccessful career of Cervantes, the son of an apothecary-surgeon, had moments of glory (when he participated in the battle of Lepanto that halted the Islamic advance in the Mediterranean) and tragedy (he was captured by Ottoman pirates and enslaved for five years) before the publication of the first part of Don Quixote in 1605, when he was nearly sixty years old, made him famous. A second part followed in 1615, by which time Spain’s long decline had already begun. Over the previous century, it had become a major world empire, funded by the extraction of the natural resources from Mexico and much of South America. But the wealth that flowed through Spain did not enrich it: the huge influx of precious metals fueled rampant inflation, but failed to engender a merchant class and commercial economy, among other deficiencies. All of this means nothing to Quixote, locked in his own reality, whose innocence overcomes the havoc around him. As this scrawny knight—fed only on the vapors of his imagination, accompanied by the round-bellied peasant Sancho Panza as his squire—journeys forth in search of adventure, 5. hidalgo: member of the multitudinous Spanish nobility.

310

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

it is he who emerges as truly noble in contrast to those he encounters; for the absurdity of his actions unmasks the greater absurdity of the ostensibly sane world outside of his head. The delusional protagonist of Cervantes’s Don Quixote not only made his creator famous, it also circulated in hundreds of translations and editions, established the modern Spanish language, and by launching the new genre of the novel (an extended fictional narrative that observes the emotional and psychological development of its characters in response to the events detailed), shaped the future course of literary history.

$$$ 1. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (Roland Goes Mad, 1516/1521/1532) Ariosto’s splendid portrayal of the two lovers, Ruggiero and Bradamante, both endowed with impressive intensity and psychological depth, winds through the Furioso and especially the last three Cantos XLIV to XLVI. Ruggiero is a gallant knight and a virtuous man, who for the love of Bradamante converts from Islam to Christianity, a step necessary for their eventual union. Bradamante’s vibrant heroism, however, outshines his and arguably that of the entire Ariostean cast of characters. Resisting her parents’ choice of spouse, she secures Charlemagne’s permission to decide her own fate through her own valor: she will not marry any man whom she can defeat in battle. But though she does not yield, neither can she defeat Ruggiero, disguised as Leone, the suitor she wishes to reject. Ruggiero evades or parries all her blows, and does so without injuring the warrioress he loves. Charlemagne declares Ruggiero—thinking he is Leone—the victor, and after the confused identities are untangled, Ruggiero and Bradamante are wed.6

Orlando furioso Canto XLIV: 40, 41, 43 Bradamante’s father is urged to choose Ruggiero as a husband for Bradamante, but he will not: Ruggiero owns no land, and wealth, not virtue, is a first 6. A selection of nineteen from the hundreds of stanzas that tell the story of Bradamante and Ruggiero are given here in blank verse translation—closer to the original than prose, but without the jingling that can result when fluid Italian rhyme is rendered into English. The rhythms of the names are important, with all syllables pronounced and the stress falling on the penultimate syllable: thus Brah-da-MAN-te, Le-O-ne, and Ru-GGIE-ro.

1. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso

311

requirement. Bradamante’s mother is still more set against Ruggiero: she has determined her daughter will marry Leone, the heir to the Byzantine Empire, and become an empress. Bradamante is torn: it is wrong to disobey her parents; but she is possessed by Love, and cannot resist its power. 40 She could not utter no, and neither yes, A sigh the only answer she could give. She went within to where no one would hear her, And gushed forth waves of tears from out her eyes; Distressed by pain, she tortured her own body, Beating her breast, tearing her golden tresses, which fell around her face all snarled and tangled; And voiced her thoughts with lamentation wrought: 41 “What I want she does not, and she it is who has the power, more than I, to choose.7 My mother’s will do I so little rate That I would put my own ahead of hers? There is no sin, alas, so dark as this, no deeper hell awaits me as a daughter, who disobedient to her mother’s wishes chooses the husband that she herself prefers. . . .” 43 “I know, alas, the thing that I must do, what is demanded of a proper daughter; I know this well; and yet what force has knowledge if reason has been overcome by passion? If Love drives reason out, and overwhelms me? and does not let me act as best I should, but only lets me choose what Love desires, and do and speak precisely what it wishes? . . .”

Canto XLIV: 68–70 Bradamante has sent Ruggiero a letter declaring her undying love, lest he think that she has been won over by the prospect of marriage to the wealthy and 7. Strange to modern ears, it was generally understood in premodern times that children must obey their parents, and daughters, specifically, defer to their mother’s choice of mate.

312

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

prominent Leone. She then turns to Charlemagne with a new plan: she proposes that the suitors for her hand be challenged to fight her. She will marry the one who defeats her in battle, while the other, whom she will defeat, must seek someone else to wed. 68 Now Bradamante, wishing to achieve more than what already she had done, summoning up her customary courage, and setting aside the usual formalities, went one day to Charlemagne, and said: “Sire, if any deeds that I have done have weight with you, and you have found them worthy, listen to me, and honor my request.” 69 “And before I say what boon it is I ask, promise me, by your royal faith and power, you will indulge me; and then I shall give proof that my request is just and also worthy.” “Your own great courage has earned for you the right To gain what you request, my dearest lady,” responded Charles; “and if you wished to have one half my kingdom, I pledge that I would grant it.” 70 “The gift I seek your majesty to grant is that no husband ever be forced upon me,” the lady said, “who has not given proof of valor in battle greater still than mine. He who marries me must first with lance or sword in hand fight me and defeat me. The first who triumphs over me may have me; Who cannot do so must seek another bride. . . .”

Canto XLV: 56–58 Charlemagne agrees to Bradamante’s plan. Meanwhile, Ruggiero has decided he must kill Leone, his rival. He assists enemy Bulgars in defeating Leone on the battlefield, but is himself captured, and then rescued by none other than Leone—to whom he now owes an inviolable debt of gratitude. As Leone requests,

1. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso

313

Ruggiero agrees to fight Bradamante disguised as Leone, and so gain her for his rival. Honor demands that he must fight; but he would rather die than see his lover become Leone’s wife. 56 The Greek’s persuasive words were very potent, but weightier still than all Leone said was the debt Ruggiero owed the man who saved him— a debt that could not ever be denied. It mattered not how hard it was to do— impossible, it seemed—Ruggiero smiled, his heart within him breaking: whatever it was Leone wished, Ruggiero would perform. 57 No sooner had he given his assent, his heart was pierced by anguish and by sorrow, ceaseless pain that grieved him day and night, stabbing him with unrelenting torment, telling him that he would surely die. Yet he does not regret what he has done; rather than fail to satisfy Leone, he’d die a thousand times, and not just once. 58 Surely he must die; to lose the lady was to lose his very life as well as her; either he would succumb to grief and pain, or otherwise he would himself rip out the bonds that held his soul within his body and wrench it forth, and throw it to the wind. For anything at all would be preferred To seeing her, if she were not his own. . . .

Canto XLV: 69, 70, 74, 76–78, 80 The battle between Ruggiero and Bradamante proceeds with Ruggiero, disguised as Leone, intent on not harming Bradamante, and Bradamante intent on vanquishing her opponent. Ruggiero fends off her blows and she succumbs to weariness as nightfall looms.

314

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

69 Ruggiero donned the coat that was Leone’s so he could play the part convincingly; And bore Leone’s shield, on which there shone a golden eagle on a bright red field. And so with ease the fiction could be managed: both men were of an equal height and weight, exactly like each other. One could be seen; The other was invisible to all. 70 What Bradamante wanted was quite different from what Ruggiero sought; since he aimed only not to harm, he blunted his sword-edge so it would not cut or pierce and cause her pain; but she took hers and made it razor-sharp, so with each thrust it would slice and plunge and tear, and every stinging blow would hit its mark, until at last it reached his heart, and triumphed. . . . 74 But every time she slashed him with her sword, her sword could never pierce the armor joints, wherever she struck, iron rang on iron; she wearied with each stroke, while anger mounted. She lunged at him from here and then from there, while he from here and there rebuffed her blows; madly charging, whirling, driving, pounding, never could she gain what she desired. . . . 76 Showers of sparks flew when she hit his shield or struck his helmet or smashed against his breastplate, battering without effect arm, head, and chest, a thousand blows from the front and from the back and then some more, like merciless hailstones pounding a farmhouse roof without surcease; and still Ruggiero held his ground and deftly parried her jabs and thrusts, and never caused her harm.

1. Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso

315

77 Now he stands firm, now swerves, and now steps back, where his arm goes, there his feet go too. Now he raises his shield, now aims his sword, to meet his foe from everywhere she comes. He will not wound her, or if he must, he seeks to wound her so as not to cause much pain. She hopes only to see the battle done before the winding down of this long day. 78 The edict she recalls, and knows full well the danger she would face if she should lose; she must seize or kill her suitor within the day, or if she fails, his captive she becomes. Already on the horizon to the west the sun is sinking downward toward the sea, when she begins to fear that she might not have strength enough to win, and loses hope. . . . 80 O wretched warrioress, if you had known who it was you labor so to kill, if you had known it was Ruggiero, on whom your hopes and your desires all depend, I know for certain your own death, not his, you would intend, whom more than self you love; and when you learn he is the one you fight, you will regret, I know, the blows you struck. . . .

Canto XLVI: 54 Night closes in, and Charlemagne intervenes to declare Ruggiero/Leone the winner. Ruggiero is in utter misery because he has lost Bradamante to Leone; and Bradamante equally so, because she must marry Leone. But after much confusion and newly disclosed identities, Leone surrenders his claim, presenting Ruggiero to Charlemagne as the knight who fairly won Bradamante’s hand. 54 This is the cavalier who fought so bravely from daybreak until daylight was no more; and Bradamante could not all that time

316

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

slay him, take him, or cause him to retreat. Most worthy sire, according to your edict, since he it is who surely won the field, and earned the right to marry Bradamante, he comes before you now, to claim his bride. . . .

Canto XLVI: 73, 75 Ruggiero’s real identity revealed, Bradamante’s parents relent, and Ruggiero and Bradamante are wed, Charlemagne presiding. 73 A wedding celebration now is planned splendid in every way, worthy of kings, For Charlemagne himself takes charge as though a daughter of his own was to be wed. Bradamante’s merits were so great, her family entire so well-deserving, that Charlemagne was willing to be lavish, and spend on her the worth of half his kingdom. . . . 75 Not even the city of Paris could have held the numberless swarms of people who attended, poor and rich and those of middling rank, Greeks and Romans, visitors from afar. So many lords, so many delegations sent from every corner of the world; and all who came hospitably were housed in spacious tents and bowers and pavilions.

$$$ 2. François Rabelais, Gargantua (1534/1535) The culminating chapters of Rabelais’s comic tale of the boisterous giant Gargantua, depict an ideal antimonastery: the abbey of Thélème. It is an institution that counters the major features of cloistered life with their opposites, inverting the values of that early and premier Christian institution, and implicitly challenging the Catholic Church itself. In place of poverty—the first of the three monastic vows normally taken by both

2. François Rabelais, Gargantua

317

male and female entrants to the conventual life—the Thelemites live in sumptuous luxury, surrounded by splendid and expensive architecture, objects, and textiles, and supported by an ample service staff for both indoor and outdoor activities. In place of chastity—the second monastic vow—men and women live together, although in separate wings; the reader may speculate about sexual adventures, but Rabelais says only that they may fall in love, freely leave when they so choose, and marry. In place of obedience—the third monastic vow—the Thelemites owe none to anyone, and the only rule they observe—when all monastic establishments were governed by a regula, or “rule,” mapping out a complete way of life—is that mandated by the single sentence, “DO WHAT YOU WILL”; that is to say, whatever you will do, and whatever you want to do. For the antimonastery of Thélème conveys not only a message of resistance to the constraints on behavior imposed by Catholic institutions; it conveys also the larger message of liberation from all constraints of any sort. Looking well into the future, it identifies liberty as the foremost requirement for a happy life and fully human existence. The excerpts that follow describe Thélème’s layouts and furnishings, and the way of life of its attractive and cultivated male and female residents.

Gargantua Chapter 50: How Gargantua came to build the abbey of Thélème for the Monk Seeking to reward his loyal companion, the Monk, for his signal contribution to victory in the Picrocholean War, Gargantua offers him possible monasteries that he might rule as abbot. The Monk, Friar John, replies: “How could I govern others, since I am not able to govern myself? If it seems to you that I have served you well, . . . let me build a monastery of the kind I wish.” That request pleased Gargantua, who offered the area of Thélème along the banks of the Loire river. . . . And the Monk asked Gargantua to create a monastery unlike all the others. “Well then, to start,” said Gargantua, “there is no need to enclose it with walls; for all other monasteries are ringed with sturdy walls.” “Quite right,” said the Monk. . . . And since in other monasteries, if a woman entered, . . . it was customary to scrub the area through which she had passed, . . . so, at Thélème, if any professed monks or nuns happened to enter, the area through which they passed must be thoroughly scrubbed. And because in other monasteries, everything was measured, numbered, and ruled by hours,8 it was 8. Both male and female monasteries followed the schedule set by the liturgical hours, which assigned both ritual and ordinary duties to specific times of the day and night.

318

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

decreed that at Thélème, there would be no clocks or sundials at all, but all that needed to be done would be done as necessity dictated or opportunity allowed. For, Gargantua said, it was a complete waste of time to count the hours: What good was that? What idiocy it was to be ruled by a bell, and not by the dictates of common sense and understanding. Further, because ordinarily the women committed to a convent were blind, deformed, lame, ugly, pock-marked, ill-proportioned, stupid, crazy, and weird, and the men cloddish, diseased, foolish, and annoying, . . . it was decreed that women would only be welcomed if they were pretty, comely, and amiable, and men only if handsome, well-made, and good-natured. . . . Further, because elsewhere men entered female convents only secretly and furtively, it was decreed that at Thélème, no women could be present in the absence of men, nor men in the absence of women. Further, since in other monasteries both male and female religious, after a year of probation, were forced and constrained to live there for the rest of their lives, at Thélème it was established that any men and women received there could leave freely whenever they wished, without impediment. Further, since normally those entering the religious life made three vows, those of chastity, poverty, and obedience, it was decreed that at Thélème they might be honorably married, possess riches, and live at liberty. . . .

Chapter 51: How the abbey of Thélème was built and endowed Gargantua provides heaps of cash to fund the new abbey, and provisions for an income stream from rents and fees to support its maintenance in perpetuity. The building itself was in the form of a hexagon, with identical huge round towers, sixty paces in diameter, at each of the six angles, . . . each 312 paces from the next. [Each of the six towers was given a distinctive name.] It was six stories high, counting the cellars below ground as one. . . . This building was one hundred times more magnificent than is [the famous chateau of ] Bonivet, as it had 932 apartments, containing a bedroom, study, wardrobe, and chapel, and opening onto a great hall. . . . Between [two of the towers] were splendid libraries, each dedicated to works written in a particular language, containing books in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, Italian, and Spanish. . . . Between [two other towers] three extended broad galleries, decorated with paintings of ancient deeds, stories, and maps. In the middle a staircase led down to the main gate alongside the river, over which was written, in ancient lettering, the following inscription. . . . A long verse inscription follows in Chapter 52, advising hypocrites, bigots, cheats and tricksters, crafty lawyers, greedy clerics, senile judges, as well as a raft of

2. François Rabelais, Gargantua

319

repellent and imaginary creatures, that they are not welcome within; only amiable gentlemen, preachers of the true Gospel, and beautiful ladies are allowed.

Chapter 53: What life was like in the abbey of Thélème A description is given of the courtyards, fountains, and arcades of the abbey, along with an athletic arena, theater, and swimming pools, lovely gardens, tennis courts, and stables equipped with hounds and a variety of falcons for the hunt. All the halls, chambers, and studies were covered in different sorts of tapestries varying with the season of the year. All the floors were covered with green drapery. The bedspreads were embroidered, and in each bedroom was a crystal mirror framed in fine gold and garnished all around with pearls; and this mirror was of so great a height that it reflected the whole body of the viewer. Just outside the hall to which the ladies’ apartments opened were positioned the perfumers and hairdressers, through whose hands the gentlemen passed when they came to visit the ladies. These servitors each morning supplied the ladies’ apartments with rose-water and orange-water, and in each was placed an elegant casket of herbs from which issued the most delightful aromas.

Chapter 54: How the monks and nuns of the abbey of Thélème were dressed The professed religious of the Catholic Church—monks, nuns, friars—in the sixteenth century, as before and since then, wore distinctive garments: sober in design, modestly covering the body, and announcing, by colors and fabrics and the details of headdresses or belts or capes, the order—Benedictine, Capuchin, Franciscan, etc.—to which they belonged. The male and female residents of the abbey of Thélème, in contrast, departing from the norm here as elsewhere, dressed flamboyantly. . . . [The ladies] wore red or purple stockings that reached above the knee by the width of precisely three fingers, the hems embroidered and decoratively pierced. The garters [that held the stockings in place] circled their legs just above and below the knee, and were the same color as their bracelets. Their shoes, pumps, and slippers were of crimson, red, or violet velvet. . . . Depending on the season, their gowns were of cloth of gold embroidered with silver, of red satin worked with gold, of taffeta [in any number of colors], or of silk . . . or satin [elaborately embroidered]. . . . Their hairstyles varied according to the season: in winter, in the French style; in spring, the Spanish; in summer, the Turkish. . . .

320

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

The men had their own style of dress. On their legs they wore stockings of worsted or serge, in red, purple, white, or black. Their trousers were of velvet in much the same colors, embroidered or patterned as they preferred. Their doublets were of cloth of gold or silver, or velvet, satin, damask or taffeta, in the same colors, and splendidly embroidered and patterned to match. . . . Their silken belts were of the same color as their doublets, and each wore at his side a beautiful sword, with a gilded handle and a velvet scabbard. . . . And so that all these accoutrements might be readily available, around the wood that surrounded the abbey was a large cluster of houses . . . where lived the goldsmiths, jewelers, tailors, weavers, embroiderers, [and others], . . . who each according to their skill, produced whatever was required for the ladies and gentlemen of Thélème. . . .

Chapter 55: What were the rules that governed the lives of the residents of Thélème They spent their lives entirely unencumbered by laws, statutes, or rules, but solely according to their desires and free will.9 They rose from their beds when it seemed a good thing to do. They drank, ate, worked, and slept whenever they pleased. No one woke them, no one forced them to drink, nor to eat, nor to do anything whatever. Thus it had been established by Gargantua. The rule10 by which they lived had only this one instruction: DO WHAT YOU WILL. Rabelais pauses here to interject a lesson in moral philosophy: those born free, which in his world implies those born to elite families, naturally incline to virtue and so need no rules; whereas those born humbly are necessarily ruled by others, and chafing against the limits imposed on them, they lose their natural inclination to virtue. The freedom Rabelais celebrates, ironically, is available only to members of a privileged social caste. No other rule was needed, because people who are born free, reared in good families, educated properly, and circulating in decent society, are prodded by a natural instinct to behave virtuously and avoid vice: this instinct they call honor. Those who are subordinated to others and live in servitude, in 9. The doctrine of free will, fundamental in Christianity as the principle of the human capacity to make moral choices, is here transferred to a zone where the notion of moral choice is irrelevant. It is noteworthy that thelema in Greek—and Rabelais was a master of the Greek language—means “will.” 10. As in the matter of prescribed dress, where Thelemite practice flouted a disregard for monastic custom, so here is mocked the “rule” that governed the way of life for each religious order.

3. Michel de Montaigne, Essays

321

contrast, are debased and degraded: defying and resisting the yoke of servitude, they lose that noble inclination to freely choose virtue; for we seek always that which is forbidden us, and desire that which is denied. This philosophical interlude completed, Rabelais returns to his depiction of Thelemite existence. By this liberty they embraced a praiseworthy ambition to do anything that might be pleasurable to any one of them. If anyone, male or female, says “let us drink,” they all drink. If anyone says “play,” they all will play. If someone says “let us go out to the fields,” they all go, and if to falconry and the hunt, the ladies mounted on beautifully outfitted mares and ponies, each daintily carrying on her wrist a [bird of prey]. . . . So nobly had they been taught that there was not one among them, male or female, who could not read, write, sing, play musical instruments, speak in five or six languages, and compose in these either a poem or an oration. Never had there been seen gentlemen so valiant, so gallant, so agile on foot or on horseback, so graceful, so quick, so skilled with every kind of weapon as were these. Never had there been seen ladies so proper, so dainty, less peevish as were these, and more expert with hand or needle for any wholesome and worthy woman’s task. For this reason, when the time came that any gentleman of this abbey . . . wished to leave, he brought with him among these ladies that one whom he had taken as his beloved, and they would marry. And if they had lived at Thélème in friendship and harmony, even more so would they continue so to live when married, and they would share that love until the end of their days that they had known on the first day they were wed. . . .

$$$ 3. Michel de Montaigne, Essays (1580, 1587–1588) The two excerpts that follow admit us to Montaigne’s conception of human nature. The first is Montaigne’s message “to the reader,” the preface to his three volumes of essays, in which he introduces himself in a few brief sentences. The second is drawn from the extended essay On Experience, the last chapter of the last volume of the Essays. Addressing “the reader” in the singular, Montaigne explains at the outset that his purpose is purely “personal and private.” He does not write to advance his own interests, or to instruct his audience. He has not dressed up, as for a formal portrait—indeed, if custom permitted, he would gladly have presented himself entirely naked, so he might be more fully revealed—for his purpose is to display Montaigne whole: “You see, reader,

322

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

I am myself the matter of my book,” if there is any reader out there who might for some reason wish to spend his time on a subject so “frivolous and vain.” In the essay On Experience, Montaigne rejects knowledge as difficult to attain, and settles for experience as a “weaker tool” that may yet lead us to the truth. Since the human mind really cannot attain certainty, Montaigne will examine himself because he at least can know something about Montaigne: “I study myself more than any other subject.” He will not present his ideas systematically, as learned experts do, but rather “without system, vaguely and tentatively . . . in disconnected parts.” But that disconnection, that complexity, actually corresponds to reality, which is a synthesis of diverse elements, just as things both good and bad “are consubstantials of our existence.” In exploring himself, he explores the capacity of the human mind and spirit, which are greater than all that the philosophers and the physicians can encompass.

Essays To the Reader Here is a book written in good faith, reader. It lets you know from the start that my only purpose is personal and private. I do not plan to offer you any service, nor to win for myself any glory. My capacities are insufficient for such ends. I intend it for the particular use of my friends and relatives, so that when they have lost me (which will happen soon enough) they may be able to find here some traces of my moods and opinions, and so cultivate a more complete and vital understanding of who I was. If I had sought the world’s favor, I would have dressed up more, and presented myself in a more formal posture. I want to be seen in my natural aspect, unadorned and ordinary, without artifice or contrivance: because the portrait I paint is of me. My defects will be vividly apparent, and my figure as bare as norms of public decency permit. If only I were a citizen of one of those lands which are said to live still in sweet liberty according to the primal laws of nature: then I assure you I would gladly have shown myself fully, entirely in the nude. You see, reader, I am myself the matter of my book: there is no reason for you to spend your leisure on a subject so frivolous and vain. Farewell then, from Montaigne, on the first of March, 1580.

3.13: On Experience No desire is more natural than the desire for knowledge. We try every means in our power to achieve it. When reason fails us, we employ experience . . . , which is a weaker tool, and less esteemed. But truth is so great a thing, that

3. Michel de Montaigne, Essays

323

we must not disdain any device that can lead us to it. Reason has so many dimensions that we do not know where we stand; experience has quite as many. The conclusion we wish logically to draw from the similarities between things is uncertain, because those same things are also at the same time dissimilar. There is no quality so universal among things that appear to be the same as their diversity and variety. . . . I don’t know what can be said about [the diversity of opinions], but experience suggests that such a whirlwind of interpretations dissolves and disrupts the truth. Never have two men reached the same judgment about the same matter, and it is impossible to find two opinions exactly alike held not only by two different men, but even by the same man at different hours of the day. . . . Men do not understand the inborn weakness of their mind: it hunts and seeks, and ceaselessly twists, turns, and thrashes about, as silkworms do in a bucket, and so strangles itself. . . . From a distance, it perceives some kind of illusory vision of light and truth; but in the pursuit, so many difficulties impede the way, so many traps and detours that distract and confuse it. . . . There is always room for a new seeker, and yes, for ourselves, another road. Our seeking will not here reach its end; our end is in the other world. The spirit signals its evanition when it rests content, or its exhaustion. No noble spirit stops of its own accord: it struggles onward and exceeds its strength; it surges forward beyond what is possible; if it does not advance, charge, resist, strike, it is only half alive. . . . I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics. . . . Immersed in this university of my own mind, I allow myself stupidly and idly to be ruled by the general law of the world—a law I shall know sufficiently when I feel it. My wisdom will not change its direction; it will not alter its path for me. It is folly to hope it will, and much greater folly to worry about it, because that law is necessarily plain, public, and common. I would much rather know all about myself than about Cicero [see Chapter 3, Text 5]. From the experience that I have of myself, I find enough matter to make me wise—if I were a good student. He who summons up in memory the excess of anger he once felt, and how beyond control that fever carried him, sees the ugliness of this passion better than Aristotle11 did, and hates it more effectively. He who recalls the dangers he has faced, and those that menaced him, and the trivial events that altered him from one state to another, prepares himself through these experiences for future dislocations and for an understanding of his condition. The life 11. Aristotle (384–322 BCE): the ancient Greek philosopher whose ideas underlay much theological and philosophical thought from the twelfth through seventeenth centuries.

324

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

of Caesar12 does not offer a better example to us than our own; whether a man who rules an empire, or a man of the people, it is always his own life that is hammered by the circumstances of human existence. Let us only listen: we tell ourselves exactly what it is we need. . . . It is from my experience that I target human ignorance, which is, to my mind, the most [durable ingredient] of the school of the world. . . . The savants divide and denote their fantasies with the greatest specificity, and in detail. I, who see nothing beyond what my experience tells me, present mine without system, vaguely and tentatively. As I do here: I pronounce my thoughts in disconnected parts, as though I speak of something that cannot be said at one time and in one bloc. Coherence and conformity cannot be found in base and common minds like mine. . . . I leave it to artists—and do not know if they can untangle something so confused, so meager, and so accidental—to arrange and frame this infinite diversity of appearances, and to stanch my incoherence and put it in order. Not only do I find myself unable to link my thoughts one to another, while keeping each distinct, but I find myself unable to group them properly according to some guiding category, so are their images doubled and blurred in a cacophony of lights. . . . We must learn to endure what cannot be avoided. Our life is composed, like the harmony of the cosmos, of contrary things, as it is of contrary tones—sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud. The musician who likes only some of these has nothing to say. He must learn to make use of all of them in combination. As must we as well with good things and bad, which are consubstantials of our existence. Our being demands this mixture, and neither component is less necessary than the other. . . . I seldom call in the doctors about the pains I suffer, because these fellows take over when they have you at their mercy. They stuff your ears full of their prognostications. Once, finding me weakened by illness, they patronized me with their dogmas and magisterial scowls, threatening me now with grave diseases, now with imminent death. I did not yield and held my own, but I was mauled and battered; if my judgment was not muddled or disturbed by them, it was certainly challenged. There is always agitation and conflict. . . . Would you like an example? They tell me that it is for the best that I have the stone;13 that this aging body will naturally suffer some deterioration—it is time for it to let go and break down. It is our common fate, so 12. Gaius Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE): Roman general and author who brought the Republic to an end and laid the way for the establishment of an empire. 13. the stone: since about the time he began writing his Essays, Montaigne was a chronic sufferer from kidney stones.

3. Michel de Montaigne, Essays

325

why would I be spared by some miraculous intervention? So I pay in this way the price of old age, knowing that I have been given a bargain. . . . Fear of this disease, I tell myself, used to torment you, when it was unknown to you. The cries and the despair of those whose lack of courage made it worse aroused your horror. . . . The fear that people have of this disease, and the pity they feel for those who suffer it, cast glory upon you—a quality which, even though you have purged it from your mind and deleted it from your conversation, still your friends find a hint of it in your makeup. It is pleasurable to hear people say about you: “Now there is strength, now there is fortitude!” They see you sweat in pain, turn pale, turn red, tremble, vomit blood, suffer strange contractions and convulsions, gush forth huge tears from your eyes, pass urine that is thick, black, and horrid to behold, or to have it obstructed by a stone bristling with spikes which cruelly pokes and tears the neck of your penis. Meanwhile you chat normally with those in attendance, jest now and then with your friends, join in a lengthy conversation, apologize for your pain and make light of your suffering. . . . Do you remember those knights errant of old who avidly sought out danger, so as to hone and exercise their virtue? Consider that nature is leading and pushing you to a glorious endeavor of that sort, in which you would never otherwise have willingly entered. If you tell me that it is dangerous, a mortal malady, which maladies are not? The doctors deceive us when they make exceptions, naming diseases that do not progress directly to death. What is the difference if they do so nonchalantly, gliding and sliding along the road that leads us to that end? But you do not die because of that which makes you ill; you die because you are alive. Death finishes you off without the help of illness. And for some, their malady has postponed death: they lived all the longer while they were busy dying. . . . We are great fools. “He has lived his life in idleness,” we say; “I have done nothing at all today.” What, have you not lived? That is not only the fundamental but the most worthy of your occupations. “If I had been placed in a position to manage great affairs, I would have shown what I could do.” Have you known how to guide and manage your life? Then you have performed the greatest task of all. To show herself and her powers, nature has no need of fortune: she shows herself equally to all viewers, and completely, from all angles. To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our behavior. Our grand and glorious masterpiece is to live properly. All other things—to wield power, to hoard wealth, to build monuments—are at most only appendices and addenda. For me, then, I love life, and cultivate it just as it has pleased God to grant it. . . . I accept wholeheartedly, and gratefully, all that nature has done for me, and am pleased that I do, and praise myself for doing so. One

326

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

wrongs this great and all-powerful Giver by refusing his gift, annulling it, and disfiguring it. He is all good, and all that he does is good. “All things that are according to nature are worthy of esteem.”14

$$$ 4. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote (1605/1615) In the famous chapter 8 of Part One of Don Quixote, the hero “tilts”—that is, charges on horseback with his lance extended—at a cluster of some forty windmills,15 taking them to be giants of the sort that knights errant often encountered. His sidekick Sancho Panza does not see them, but his master provides some details: they have long arms, some nearly two leagues (about six miles) long. Sancho insists they are windmills, to which Don Quixote responds testily that, as he is not up to such adventures, Sancho should go off and say his prayers while Quixote dispatches the enemy. So he charges and is himself dispatched, along with his horse, by the whirling vanes of the first windmill. Such things happen in battle, he explains to Sancho who runs up to assist. An evil spirit must have changed the giants into windmills. It is soon dinnertime, and while Sancho eats heartily, Quixote abstains, feeding instead on the illusions that throng his brain. He declines breakfast as well, preferring the food of imagination. So profound is his lapse into unreality that it seems unlikely he can survive—but survive he does, on the nourishment provided by his fantasies. In his quest for what only he can see, Quixote is both endearing and impressive—qualities that cannot be said to inhere in the other inhabitants of the troubled land through which he journeys in search of adventure. The chapter closes with a further encounter with two monks and a furious Biscayan muleteer, as seen below.

Don Quixote Part One, chapter 8: Our valiant Don Quixote’s triumph in the frightful and unprecedented adventure of the windmills, together with other incidents worthy of record Just then, they spotted thirty or forty windmills scattered across the plain, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them, he said to his squire: 14. Cicero, De finibus, 3.6. 15. The purpose of the windmill was to grind grain into flour, thus supplying the principal ingredient of the ordinary person’s diet—yet Quixote is oblivious to this important reality.

4. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

327

“Fate is guiding our affairs better than we could ever have hoped, for you see there before you, Sancho, my brother, thirty or more colossal giants with whom I intend to do battle and relieve every last one of them of their lives. With the spoils from this adventure we shall take our first step toward enriching ourselves, because this is a just war, and it is a great service to God to sweep such bad seed from the face of the earth.” “What giants?” asked Sancho Panza. “Those you see over yonder,” said his master, “with those long arms, which on some giants reach up to two leagues in length.” “May your grace observe,” replied Sancho, “that those objects aren’t giants but windmills, and what looks like arms are the vanes the wind drives to turn the millstone.” “It is obvious,” said Don Quixote, “that you are not versed in this business of adventures. Those are giants, but if you are so afraid, go off somewhere and say your prayers while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat.” And as he said this, he dug his spurs into Rocinante’s16 flanks, paying no heed to his panic-stricken squire, who was shouting that those objects he was about to attack were undoubtedly windmills and not giants; but so strong was his conviction that they were giants that he failed to hear his squire’s shouts or to notice, now that he was quite near, what they were. On the contrary, he rode forward shouting: “Flee not, ye cowardly, detestable creatures! It is but a single knight who opposes you.” At this moment, the wind increased slightly and the large vanes began to revolve. When Don Quixote saw this, he said, “Even if ye wave more arms than those of the giant Briareus,17 ye shall have me to reckon with!” As he said this, he commended himself heart and soul to his lady Dulcinea,18 imploring her to assist him at this moment of peril. Then with his buckler shielding his body and his lance in its socket, he charged as fast as Rocinante could run, striking at the first mill he encountered. But just as he thrust at the vane with his lance, the wind suddenly gave the vane such a furious turn that it made splinters of the lance and sent him and his horse sprawling on the ground, badly mauled. To assist him, Sancho rode toward

16. Rocinante: Don Quixote’s horse, an accessory essential for a knight errant; the word for “knight” (caballero, in Spanish) means a horse-mounted warrior. 17. Briareus: in Greek mythology, a giant with one hundred arms and fifty heads. 18. Dulcinea of Toboso: the peasant woman that Don Quixote has in his mind reinvented as a noblewoman, his beloved, and the lady that he serves, in accord with the courtly love playbook (see Chapter 6, Text 6). El Toboso is a small town in Castile-La Mancha, in central Spain.

328

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

him as fast as his jackass could run, and when he arrived, he found him so battered that he was unable to move. Such had been his fall from Rocinante. “Heaven help me!” cried Sancho, “didn’t I warn your grace to consider what you were doing, since those were only windmills, and anyone who couldn’t see that must have some sort of windmills in his own head?” “Hold your tongue, my friend,” said Don Quixote. “Affairs of war more than all others are subject to continual change. I am more convinced than ever of the truth of this observation when I think that the sage Frestón,19 who made off with my study and books, has transformed these giants into windmills to rob me of the satisfaction of overcoming them, such is the hatred he bears me; but when all is said and done, his evil arts shall be powerless against the excellence of my sword.” “May God grant that, which He is certainly capable of doing,” said Sancho. After being helped to his feet, Don Quixote once again seated himself on Rocinante, whose back had nearly been dislocated. Then while discussing the adventure they had just concluded, they set out once again on the road to Puerto Làpice,20 where Don Quixote said they could hardly fail to meet with numerous and varied adventures. . . . When Sancho reminded him that it was mealtime, his master told him he had no need to eat just then, but that Sancho might eat whenever he felt like it. No sooner was Sancho given permission than he made himself as comfortable as possible atop his jackass and proceeded to remove from his saddlebags what he had stored inside them. Following along behind his master in this fashion, he road and ate at his own pace, taking a draught from time to time from his wineskin, and with such zest that it would have aroused envy in the most intemperate wine merchant in Málaga.21 While riding along thus, taking one drink of wine after another, he was unmindful of any promises his master had made him, nor did he consider it laborious (on the contrary, quite restful) to be riding about in quest of adventures, however dangerous they might be. In short, they spent the night among some trees, from one of which Don Quixote tore a dead limb that could serve him as a makeshift lance, to which he attached the iron tip he had removed from the lance that had gotten broken. He failed to sleep a wink that night from contemplating his lady Dulcinea, thereby imitating what he had read in his books, in which knights 19. Frestón: a fictive magician Don Quixote has imagined, who stole his collection of books of chivalry, and apparently converted giants into windmills. 20. Puerto Làpice: a small town in central Spain, in the region of Don Quixote’s native La Mancha, and a most unlikely place for adventures. 21. Málaga: a port city on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, a major commercial center especially known for its wines.

4. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

329

were accustomed to spending any number of sleepless nights in the forests and wilds, given over to thoughts of their ladies. But this is not how Sancho Panza spent it, for, having his belly full, . . . he spent the entire night dreaming, and had his master not roused him the following morning, he would not have been awakened either by the sun’s rays, which struck him squarely in the face, or by the sounds of the numerous birds greeting the arrival of a new dawn with their joyous chirping. As soon as he got up, he took a swig from his wineskin, which he found somewhat flatter than the night before, a circumstance that grieved his heart, for it seemed to him they were on the wrong road for remedying that situation any time soon. Don Quixote refused to eat breakfast, because, as we have already mentioned, he was in the habit of getting nourishment from his savory memories. They resumed their journey to Puerto Làpice. . . . Soon that town is in sight, a place where, as Don Quixote rhapsodizes to Sancho Panza, “we can plunge our arms up to the elbows in this thing called adventure. . . .” While they were engaged in this conversation, there appeared down the road two friars of the Order of Saint Benedict22 astride two dromedaries, for the two mules they were riding were actually that large. They wore dust masks and carried parasols, and behind them came a coach with four or five men on horseback, followed by two muleteers on foot. Traveling in the coach, as they later learned, was a lady from Biscay23 on her way to Seville24 to join her husband, who was headed for the Indies25 to occupy a most prestigious post. The friars were not in her party, even though they were traveling on the same road. When Don Quixote saw them, he said to his squire: “Unless I am mistaken this will be the most fabulous adventure ever seen, for those dark forms up ahead must be, and are without a doubt, enchanters transporting some abducted princess in that coach. Thus, it is imperative that I right this wrong to the best of my ability.” “This will be worse than the windmills!” said Sancho. “Pray observe, master, that those are friars of Saint Benedict, and the coach probably belongs to someone who’s on a journey. Your grace should heed my advice and be careful what you do lest you be deceived by the Devil.” 22. Order of Saint Benedict: the order of Benedictine monks founded in the sixth century who lived according to the rule of Saint Benedict of Nursia. 23. Biscay: a Spanish province on the Bay of Biscay, historically part of the Basque region. 24. Seville: large city of southwestern Spain in historical Andalusia; in Cervantes’s time, a major port city engaged in commerce with Spanish colonies in the Americas. 25. Indies: the Americas (West Indies); the Spanish also had possessions in Asia (the East Indies).

330

Chapter 10. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: The Continent

“I have told you before, Sancho,” said Don Quixote, “that you have little understanding of this business of adventures. What I am telling you is the truth, and you shall now see.” Having said this, he rode forward and stationed himself in the middle of the road on which the friars were traveling, and when he thought they were close enough to make himself heard, he cried out in a loud voice: “Ye demons and monsters, release at once those highborn princesses you hold against their will in that coach, or prepare to die on the spot as just punishment for your evil deeds!” The friars drew up on the reins of their mules and sat there astonished not only at Don Quixote’s appearance but at his words as well. “Sir knight,” they replied, “we are neither demons nor monsters, but two Benedictine monks on a journey, nor do we know if there are any princesses in that coach being held against their will.” “Honeyed words will not mollify me,” said Don Quixote. “I already recognize you, you lying scoundrel!” And without waiting for anyone to respond, he spurred Rocinante, lowered his lance, and attacked the first friar with such fury and daring that, had the friar not let himself slide down from his mule, he would have been knocked to the ground and, contrary to his wishes, badly wounded, if not in fact killed. The second ecclesiastic, observing the way his companion had been treated, slapped the sides of his mountainous mule with his legs and took off across the field faster than the wind itself. When Sancho saw the friar on the ground, he quickly dismounted from his jackass, rushed over to him, and began stripping him of his habit. At this moment two of the friars’ servants came up and demanded to know why he was removing their master’s clothing. Sancho informed them that it now all legitimately belonged to him as spoils of the battle his master Don Quixote had just won. The servants, who were in no mood for jokes, understood none of this talk of battles and spoils, so when they saw that Don Quixote was now some distance away conversing with the ladies in the coach, they charged at Sancho, knocked him to the ground, and began to kick him and pull all the hair from his beard, leaving him prostrate on the ground, unconscious, and barely breathing. . . . The friar mounts his mule and joined his companion, and they both resume their journey. Meanwhile, Don Quixote is conversing with the lady in the coach. “Your beauteous ladyship may now dispose of your person as you see fit, for those robbers’ arrogance lies there in the dust, laid low by this mighty arm of mine, and so that you won’t be troubled by not knowing who your liberator is, be advised that I am Don Quixote of La Mancha, errant and venture knight, and captive of the beautiful and peerless Dulcinea of Toboso. As

4. Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote

331

compensation for the benefits your grace has received at my hands, my only request is that you travel to Toboso and present yourself to that lady on my behalf, informing her of all I did to win your ladyship your freedom.” Hearing these words and not wishing the coach to be diverted to Toboso, one of the squires accompanying it—a Biscayan, whose Basque origin is betrayed when he speaks—determines to drive Don Quixote away, threatening “if you leave coach not, I kill you as sure as I be here Biscayan.” Challenged, Don Quixote draws his sword, intending to kill the Biscayan. A conflict ensues, but its outcome is unknown; for just at this point, the narrator can say no more, leaving “the battle hanging in midair, . . . having found nothing more recorded about the exploits of Don Quixote already narrated.” Persisting in the pretense that Don Quixote’s story is based on the evidence of chronicles, the narrator assures the reader that the author of Part Two of this work has searched diligently, and will reveal the outcome of these events in due course.

Chapter 11 The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

Introduction The Renaissance came to England at the same time as the Reformation, and coincident with the establishment of a new royal dynasty, the Tudor, which promoted both. Although writers flourished in the early decades of the sixteenth century, it is only with the ascension to the throne of Queen Elizabeth I (r. 1558–1603), granddaughter of the first Tudor monarch, that the religious and political turbulence of the previous generations subsided. The Elizabethan era constituted a moment of stabilization that permitted an outburst of literary creativity. This chapter considers four of the many important authors who wrote in these years, all born within the eighteen years from 1554 to 1572, whose works illustrate the development of genres and themes characteristic of the English Renaissance. Philip Sidney, the first of these four, a courtier and occasional government agent, was a scholar in the humanist tradition, and a poet’s poet, author of the first major English sonnet sequence. Christopher Marlowe pioneered new developments in drama as it emerged from the medieval morality play, crafting plays that explored in a brief two or three hours (rather than the near one thousand pages Cervantes required in his novel), the struggle waged by the human individual against social, political, or cosmic realities. William Shakespeare, who many believe to be the greatest writer in the English language, rivaled Marlowe in portraying the psychological experience of his characters and Sidney in the depth of poetic expression. John Donne, a dashing figure in his youth but a melancholy sage in later years, wrote poems of extraordinary complexity, intellectual depth, and emotional power about love and about God. A courtier in Castiglione’s mold (see Chapter 9, Text 2), although not rich enough, or noble enough (his mother was a duke’s daughter, his father a mere gentleman), or successful enough in winning the prince’s ear to meet Castiglione’s expectations, Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586), knighted in 1583, was above all a poet: he was a defender of poetry as an essential cultural activity in his Apology for Poetry, displaying his fine humanist education and command of Latin and Greek; and a practitioner in his sonnet sequence Astrophil and Stella, excerpted here; his prose pastoral Arcadia (dedicated to his sister, the learned author Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke); 332

Introduction

333

and his verse translation of the Psalms (unfinished at his death, and completed by Mary Sidney). Sidney is known as well for his ardent devotion to the Protestant cause—a cause for which he died in 1586, at the age of thirty-two, some three weeks after being wounded in the Netherlands at the battle of Zutphen. His funeral was mammoth and expensive, ruining his father-in-law, who insisted upon it. All of England mourned the youthful martyred poet, perhaps even Queen Elizabeth who had welcomed him only grudgingly to her court and contributed nothing to his lionization. In Astrophil and Stella, Sidney brought to England the Petrarchan sonnet tradition (see Chapter 8, Introduction), which was itself descended from the courtly love tradition as reinvented by Dante (see Chapter 6, Introduction; Chapter 7, Introduction). Petrarch’s 366 sonnets for the illusory Laura, beloved while she lived and still when she was dead, established the genre of love lyric that would be central for European literature for all centuries since. Sidney adapts the rhyme scheme of Petrarch’s fourteen-line template to accommodate the more intractable sounds available in the English language, while preserving key features of the Italian’s work. Foremost among these is the exploration of the lover’s inner suffering, caused in turn by the utter failure of consummation: the lady is loved, but never possessed. Petrarch’s Laura died, or had never existed, and so was unreachable; Sidney’s, wholly real and fully alive, was married to another man. Composed probably in 1582, Astrophil and Stella (the names meaning “Starlover” and “Star,” placeholders for Sidney himself and the unattainable Penelope Devereux Rich) is the first sonnet sequence in English literature, consisting of 108 sonnets and eleven interpolated songs. In it, Sidney domesticates Renaissance lyric poetry and initiates a new chapter in the history of English literature. Like Sidney, Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593) died young, and by violence. Sidney was thirty-two when he died nobly, wounded in battle; Marlowe died ingloriously at age twenty-nine, stabbed in the eye in a tavern brawl that was perhaps over religion, a dangerous topic in that contentious age, or was perhaps an assassination—for Marlowe seems to have been a spy for Queen Elizabeth’s busy intelligence service, a profession in which such things happen. Further contrasts between the two contemporaries are notable. Sidney was an aristocrat, while Marlowe was the son of an artisan, a shoemaker; yet Marlowe had acquired nonetheless an elite education that prepared him for the clergy, a destination he avoided. Sidney wrote sonnets in exquisitely crafted rhyme, while Marlowe, a playwright, was the first great practitioner of blank verse, whose flexible, rolling lines of five stressed syllables were capable of powerful dramatic expression. Sidney was heterosexual, while Marlowe probably was not. Sidney, finally, wrote in classical genres about faith and love, while Marlowe wrote plays about sex, violence, and

334

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

deviancy displayed in characters of prodigious dimensions: among them, in Tamburlaine the Turko-Mongolian would-be world conqueror; in Edward II the deposed and (probably) murdered English king; and in Doctor Faustus the German polymath who sold his soul to the devil.1 Faustus practiced necromancy, or “black magic,” an activity midway between witchcraft and science, winning the censure of the Protestant reformers Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon. His unorthodox career and terrible death were told in a German History of Johann Faust published in Frankfurt in 1587, which spawned multiple editions and translations. An English translation published in 1588/1589 was likely the basis of Marlowe’s play, composed soon afterward, and likely staged in 1592 or 1593. Doctor Faustus portrays a human being driven by an insatiable ambition for knowledge and power, caught in a theistic universe that denied sovereignty to the individual, and condemned the transgressor to eternal torment in hell. Hell is ruled by Lucifer (or Satan), the brilliant angel who had rebelled against God and was cast out of heaven, who now, aided by his minions, seeks out the souls of those who, as they had themselves, defy God’s omnipotence, and win them for their diabolic domain. In Marlowe’s play, Faustus promises his soul to the devil in exchange for a twenty-four-year span in which, attended by Lucifer’s demonic servant Mephistopheles (Mephastophilis), he may exercise magical powers. Yet Faustus cannot alter God’s universe or his decrees. When his final hour comes, with crashes of thunder and flashes of lightning, a platoon of devils arrives—bestial and viperous, with horns and pitchforks and demonic paraphernalia, a riotous show on-stage before an audience that, Protestant or Catholic, absolutely believed in the devil—to drag Faustus down to hell and to damnation. Like Marlowe, William Shakespeare (1564–1616) wrote plays, and like Sidney, he wrote sonnets, exceeding his illustrious predecessors, it is generally agreed, in both genres. Even more doggedly than they, Shakespeare probed the inmost thoughts and passions of his characters: in his plays, figures facing some kind of personal, political, or cultural crisis; in his sonnets, himself, as the protagonist of his love for his beloved. Born in Stratford, England, a town some one hundred miles northwest of London, Shakespeare was the eldest surviving son of a glove maker and civic leader. His education in the local grammar school was sufficient for his later work; it would have taught him Latin, though it did not give him the humanist polish that both Sidney and Marlowe acquired from theirs. By 1592, he was established in London, having founded a company of actors, 1. All three were historical figures: Marlowe’s Tamburlaine is Tamerlane (or Timur; 1336– 1405); Edward II (1284–1327), who reigned from 1307–1327; Faustus (Latin form of the German Faust; d. 1539).

Introduction

335

later called the King’s Men, for whom he wrote plays, and with whom he himself performed. He returned intermittently to Stratford, where he purchased a home and raised a family, dying there at age fifty-two. Shakespeare wrote (probably) thirty-seven plays, 154 sonnets, and other poems. His plays, utilizing the blank verse that Marlowe had pioneered (with occasional interpolations of prose passages and songs) were first performed between 1590 and 1613 and published in various editions during his life and after his death. Generally classed as tragedies, comedies, histories, and romances, they dramatize narratives drawn from chronicles, classical authors, and stories. These sources offer intricate plots that Shakespeare exploits for the examination of multiple personalities, motivations, and conflicts, and the exploration of such themes as power, ambition, greed, justice, family dynamics, friendship, race, ethnicity, love, sex, death, and old age—virtually every aspect, in short, of human existence. No one of Shakespeare’s plays reflects the full range of these issues, and though best read as whole works, none is brief enough to be included in full in this volume. Instead, five soliloquies are chosen that represent a range of the situations he dramatizes and offer a sampling of the portraits he paints of individuals undergoing emotional crisis or change. The speeches include, in the chronological order of first performance of the plays: an adolescent girl’s impassioned anticipation of her wedding night, from Romeo and Juliet; the reflections of a king soon to meet his doom on the meaning of kingship, from Richard II; the grieving of a widowed mother for the death of her son, who had dared to challenge the king, from King John; the adroit manipulation of public sentiment for political gain by the ambitious Mark Antony, from Julius Caesar; and the existential questioning of the young prince of Denmark, bereaved and betrayed, from Hamlet. Similarly, of his 154 sonnets collected and published in 1609, an exemplary four are given here: two celebrating the power and fulfillment that love bestows, one professing love though its object is not the perfect type of the beloved that poets prefer, and one reflecting candidly and bitterly on the sexual act. John Donne (1572–1631), the youngest of our cohort of Elizabethan authors, was also a giant, though of a different sort. His father a prosperous ironmonger (and thus the third Elizabethan author born into the social stratum of the skilled artisan), and his mother a descendant of the martyred Thomas More (see Chapter 9, Text 4), Donne was born a Catholic in fiercely Protestant England—a not inconsequential fact since his natal religion, which he would one day reject, and his ties to Catholic family members and associates would affect his later career. Among other disabilities, it prevented him from receiving a university degree—to do so would have required his accepting the Thirty-Nine Articles of the established, or

336

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

Anglican, church—although he had studied at Oxford and perhaps also Cambridge. By 1597, after some years of youthful irresponsibility, Donne renounced Catholicism and became secretary to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of England. Four years later, he lost that prestigious position and the opportunity to advance in any other, having wooed and clandestinely married Anne More (1584–1617), his employer’s niece and the daughter of a prominent nobleman. Her father initially refused to accept the match and the couple lived in poverty, sustained by Donne’s writing commissions and assisted by friends and patrons, until he finally obtained Anne’s dowry in 1609. In 1615, encouraged by King James I, he became an Anglican priest and was appointed Royal Chaplain—and received an honorary doctorate in divinity from Cambridge University. In 1621, Donne was made dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a prominent and lucrative ecclesiastical preferment, a position he held until his death in 1631. Donne’s literary production followed the same arc as his career. In his early years, he wrote love poems that (like Sidney’s) circulated in manuscript to a limited coterie of friends and noble patrons. These Songs and Sonnets were first published posthumously in 1633. From about the age of forty, he turned to religious themes, writing nineteen Holy Sonnets that appeared, again posthumously, in 1633. Two of the four poems representative of Donne’s work that appear in this chapter come from the first of these collections, and two from the second. Donne’s poetry is profoundly introspective and highly complex. In a departure from the limpid Petrarchism of Sidney and Shakespeare, his verse is characterized by elaborate metaphors and extended philosophical “conceits,” or riddles, and features dense sound, turbulent shifts, and abrupt rhythms. Admired in limited circles in his generation, it was neglected for more than two centuries until its monumental artistry was again recognized in the last decades of the nineteenth. Alongside his poems, Donne also wrote prose religious works. His polemical tracts include the crucially important Pseudo-Martyr written in 1610, which argues that English Catholics could swear an oath of loyalty to a Protestant king without injuring their allegiance to the pope, and thereby won the support of King James. Of his brilliantly crafted sermons, 160 were eventually published, all posthumously, beginning in the 1640s. On February 25, 1631, just weeks before his death, he delivered his last sermon in Whitehall before King Charles I: entitled Death’s Duel, it is a meditation on the journey toward death—his own, clearly—that is the essence of life.

$$$

1. Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella

337

1. Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (c. 1582) The six of 108 sonnets comprising Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella included here trace moments in the arc of the poet’s doomed passion for Penelope Devereux: with great emotional force, intelligence, and artistry, they describe his falling in love, his writing about love, and his despair about the futility of the relationship. Like Sidney’s other works, Astrophil and Stella was published posthumously; during his lifetime, the author circulated it in manuscript among a coterie of friends. It was printed in three unauthorized editions five years after his death in 1591, and in the famous 1598 edition prepared by his sister Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, which contained her brother’s Arcadia and Apology for Poetry, along with the complete Astrophil and Stella and other works. Mary Sidney was herself an author and learned literary patron who completed the verse translation of the Psalms that Sidney had begun, which she published in 1599.2

Astrophil and Stella 1: Look in thy heart, and write The subject of Sidney’s first sonnet is his experience of writing the sonnet. Astrophil, the “lover of the star,” addresses the “star” (Stella), here referred to only as “she” and “her,” intending “in verse my love to show.” But he is at a loss for words to describe his desperation, “to paint the blackest face of woe.” He seeks inspiration in what others have written, often “turning others’ leaves.” But “Study,” the seeking of ideas in books, must fall second to “Invention,” or imagination, which is born of “Nature.” His Muse (the goddess of poetry according to the ancient Greeks) impatient, tells him to look within: “look in thy heart, and write.” Loving in truth, and fain3 in verse my love to show, That she, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain: Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know, Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain; 2. The sonnets appearing here are based on the 1877 critical edition of Alexander B. Grosart, utilizing the titles he assigned to each sonnet, but modernizing the text. Specifically, orthography is modernized and Americanized; punctuation is modified for easy legibility; but, as was standard usage in sixteenth-century English, past tense verbs apostrophized for rhythm (e.g., seem’d, lov’d) are retained, while for those verbs with a voiced ending, an accent is supplied (e.g., wailèd). The pronouns “thee,” “thy,” and “thou” for the singular “you” and “your” are retained, as are the verb forms “dost,” “doth,” “hast,” and “hath” (second and third person indicative of “do” and “have”). Other archaic terms are identified in the notes. 3. fain: wanting.

338

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

I sought fit words to paint the blackest face of woe, Studying inventions fine, her wits to entertain, Oft turning others’ leaves,4 to see if thence would flow Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburn’d brain. But words came halting forth, wanting Invention’s stay, Invention, Nature’s child, fled step-dame5 Study’s blows, And others’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way. Thus, great with child6 to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen,7 beating myself for spite— “Fool,” said my Muse8 to me, “look in thy heart, and write.”

2: Love gave the wound In sonnet 2, Astrophil reviews his experience of falling in love. He did not do so at first sight, nor immediately when struck by Cupid’s arrow9—although that wound will bleed forever—but slowly, as he came to know Stella’s worth, progressing from liking to love, which eventually triumphed over him (“Till by degrees it had full conquest got”). Now his love for her so possesses him that he delights in its power (“I call it praise to suffer tyranny”). With what is left of his mind (“the remnant of my wit”), he pretends that all is well, but in truth, he is in agony, and in his tormented verse, “I paint my hell.” Not at first sight, nor with a dribbèd10 shot Love11 gave the wound, which while I breathe will bleed; But known worth did in mine of time12 proceed, Till by degrees it had full conquest got: I saw and liked, I liked but lovèd not; I loved, but straight did not what Love decreed. At length to love’s decrees I, forc’d, agreed, Yet with repining at so partial lot.13 Now even that footstep of lost liberty 4. leaves: the leaves, that is, of their books. 5. step-dame: stepmother; Study is the stepmother, but Nature the true mother of Invention (imagination), which flees the blows rained down on it by Study. 6. great with child: pregnant. 7. truant pen: his pen will not obey him. 8. Muse: in antiquity, a goddess who provides inspiration in creative tasks. 9. Cupid’s arrow: in Greek polytheism, the boy-god Cupid, the son of Venus, goddess of love, causes those to fall in love whom he shoots with his bow and arrow. 10. dribbèd: accidental or random 11. Love: i.e., Cupid. 12. mine of time: in the course of time. 13. repining at so partial lot: he grieves at how unfairly love’s decrees burden him.

1. Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella

339

Is gone; and now, like slave-born Muscovite,14 I call it praise to suffer tyranny; And now employ the remnant of my wit To make myself believe that all is well, While with a feeling skill15 I paint my hell.

20: My death’s wound In sonnet 20, Astrophil has received his “death wound” from Cupid, and urges his friends to “fly” to safety. What better place for the “murthering [murdering] boy” to lurk in ambush than in the “sweet black” of Stella’s dark eyes? Astrophil was passing by, enjoying the “prospect of the place,” when he saw “motions of lightning grace” and the “glist’ring of his dart” as Cupid took aim and shot his arrow. Before he could flee, the arrow—shot from Stella’s glance—“pierc’d [his] heart.” Fly, fly, my friends; I have my death wound, fly! See there that boy,16 that murthering17 boy, I say, Who, like a thief, hid in dark bush doth lie, Till bloody bullet18 get him wrongful prey. So, tyrant he, no fitter place could spy, Nor so fair level19 in so secret stay,20 As that sweet black which veils the heav’nly eye:21 There himself with his shot he close doth lay. Poor passenger,22 pass now thereby I did, And stayed, pleas’d with the prospect of the place, While that black hue from me the bad guest hid: But straight I saw motions of lightning grace, And then descried the glist’ring23 of his dart: But ere24 I could fly hence, it pierc’d my heart.

14. Muscovite: Muscovy, an earlier name of modern Russia, was characterized by widespread slavery and serfdom. 15. feeling skill: his poetic skill communicates his emotions. 16. that boy: Cupid, who has wounded Astrophil with his arrow. 17. murthering: murdering. 18. bullet: in fact, an arrow. 19. fair level: so clear a shot. 20. so secret stay: in so secret a hiding place. 21. Cupid has found the perfect refuge in Stella’s “heav’nly” dark eyes. 22. passenger: passer-by. 23. glist’ring: glistening, flashing. 24. ere: before.

340

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

37: No misfortune but that Rich she is The thirty-seventh sonnet is a riddle, jesting yet sad. Penelope Devereux, Sidney’s Stella, has married someone else: Robert Rich, Third Baron Rich.25 Astrophil puns on her new name: she is “rich” in beauty (“all beauties which man’s eye can see”); “rich” in reputation (“in the treasure of deserv’d renown”); “rich” in her “royal heart”; “rich” in spirit (“in those gifts which give th’eternal crown”); and so in sum, “rich” in all things that make for earthly happiness (“worldly bliss”). There is only one defect: that “Rich she is”—married, that is, to Rich. In this joking mode, by indirection, Sidney announces the hopelessness of his undiminished love. My mouth doth water, and my breast doth swell, My tongue doth itch, my thoughts in labor be: Listen then, lordings,26 with good ear to me, For of my life I must a riddle tell. Towàrd Aurora’s court27 a nymph28 doth dwell, Rich in all beauties which man’s eye can see: Beauties so far from reach of words, that we Abase her praise, saying she doth excel:29 Rich in the treasure of deserv’d renown, Rich in the riches of a royal heart, Rich in those gifts which give th’eternal crown;30 Who, though most rich in these and every part Which make the patents31 of true worldly bliss, Hath no misfortune, but that Rich she is.

40: Now of the basest In sonnet 40, Astrophil cannot sleep, so it is better to write than “to lie and groan,” a state of distress that Stella has “wrought” by her “power.” He asks her to condescend “from the height of Virtue’s throne” and to consider his condition: “Weigh then how I by thee am overthrown.” Since he still loves her, he begs her, who has “so far subduèd” him, not to destroy the Temple to her that is built in his heart, which is “offer[ed] still to thee.” As good to write as for to lie and groan, Oh Stella dear, how much thy power hath wrought, 25. They were married in 1581, not long after Sidney’s return to England from European travels. 26. lordings: his circle of friends, who are his audience. 27. Aurora’s court: toward the east, where Aurora, the dawn, appears. 28. nymph: in Greek literature, a mythological spirit of nature; here, Stella. 29. abase . . . excel: saying she excels is an insufficient statement of her worth. 30. th’eternal: the eternal crown of salvation, abbreviated to maintain the rhythm of the line. 31. patents: certificates, providing documentary proof

1. Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella

341

That hast my mind, now of the basest,32 brought My still-kept course, while others sleep, to moan. Alas, if from the height of Virtue’s throne, Thou canst vouchsafe the influence of a thought Upon a wretch that long thy grace hath sought; Weigh then how I by thee am overthrown: And then, think thus—although thy beauty be Made manifest by such a victory, Yet noble conquerors do wrecks avoid. Since then thou hast so far subduèd me, That in my heart I offer still to thee, O do not let thy Temple be destroyed.

87: Duty to depart In sonnet 87, where Astrophil has been forced “by iron laws of duty” to leave Stella, he is surprised by her reaction, “that she with me did smart”: her eyes filled with tears, sighs parted “her sweetest lips,” and she spoke “sad words.” He was sorry for her sorrow; but he also rejoiced, for the cause of her sorrow was her love, however grudging, for him. He might have been dismayed to see her feelings revealed, but in truth he was delighted: “I had been vexed, if vexed I had not been.” When I was forced from Stella, ever dear— Stella, food of my thoughts, heart of my heart— Stella, whose eyes make all my tempests clear— By iron33 laws of duty to depart: Alas, I found that she with me did smart; I saw that tears did in her eyes appear; I saw that sighs her sweetest lips did part, And her sad words my sadded34 sense did hear. For me, I wept to see pearls scattered so; I sigh’d her sighs, and wailèd for her woe; Yet swam in joy, such love in her was seen. Thus, while th’effect35 most bitter was to me, And nothing than the cause more sweet could be, I had been vexed,36 if vexed I had not been.

$$$ 32. now of the basest: she has completely overwhelmed his mind. 33. “iron,” in the 1591 ed., preferred to Grosart’s “Stella’s.” 34. sadded: his sense of hearing, already made sad, now hears more sadness. 35. th’effect: the effect, abbreviated to maintain rhythm of line 36. I had been vexed: I would have been vexed.

342

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (1587/1588) The selections from Doctor Faustus given here focus on three pivotal events. The first (Act I Scene 1) is when Faustus, finding the usual studies of philosophy, medicine, law, and theology inadequate, determines he will learn to control the world through magic. The second (Act I Scene 3 and Act II Scene 1) is when Faustus, having summoned Mephistopheles (Mephastophilis), signs in his blood a contract with Lucifer, whereby he shall have unlimited magical powers for twenty-four years, after which he will be consigned to hell forever. The third (Act V Scene 2) is when Faustus faces his last minutes on earth, and though he has been urged repeatedly by others to repent and turn to God, he cannot or will not do so: midnight strikes, and demons come to drag him down to hell.37

Doctor Faustus Act I Scene 1: Faustus in his study FAUSTUS: Settle thy studies,38 Faustus, and begin To sound the depth of that thou wilt profess. Having commenced, be a divine in show,39 Yet level at the end of every art,40 And live and die in Aristotle’s works. . . . Is, to dispute well, logic’s chiefest end? Affords this art no greater miracle? Then read no more; thou hast attained that end: A greater subject fitteth Faustus’ wit.41 . . . Faustus continues to consider and dismiss as unworthy of him the arts of medicine, law, and theology. He then picks up a book of magic. 37. This modern edition of Marlowe’s text, close to the original 1604 version, retains the use, current in the sixteenth century, of the pronouns “thy,” “thine,” “thou,” and “thee” for the second person familiar possessive, nominative, and accusative, as well as of such inflected verb forms as “dost,” “doth,” “hath,” “hast,” “wilt,” etc. Orthographical conventions are British. 38. Settle thy studies: decide what it is you will study. 39. Having commenced . . . show: since you have a degree in theology, pretend that is your profession. 40. Yet level . . . art: aim to excel at every art or study. 41. wit: intelligence.

2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

343

These metaphysics42 of magicians, And necromantic books are heavenly; Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and characters43— Ay, these are those that Faustus most desires. O, what a world of profit and delight, Of power, of honour, of omnipotence, Is promised to the studious artisan!44 All things that move between the quiet poles45 Shall be at my command. Emperors and kings Are but obeyed in their several provinces,46 Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the clouds; But his dominion that exceeds in this Stretcheth47 as far as doth the mind of man; A sound magician is a mighty god: Here, Faustus, try thy brains to gain a deity.48 Conversations follow between Faustus, a GOOD ANGEL, and an EVIL ANGEL, the former attempting to dissuade him from his pursuit of magic, the latter encouraging it; and between two Scholars, Faustus’s students, and his servant Wagner, on the same issue.

Act I Scene 3: Faustus enters carrying a book of magic FAUSTUS: ......... Faustus, begin thine incantations, And try if devils will obey thy hest,49 Seeing thou hast prayed and sacrificed to them. With an elaborate Latin incantation, Faustus summons Mephastophilis,50 the demon servant of Lucifer,51 and he appears. Faustus tells him that he is “too ugly to attend on me,” and sends him away to come back dressed as a 42. metaphysics: the study of what is beyond and unexplained by the physical world. 43. Lines, . . . characters: symbols used by magicians. 44. artisan: a skilled practitioner of some art. 45. quiet poles: the North and South Poles, quiet because they are stationary. 46. several provinces: each is obeyed only in his own country. 47. his . . . stretcheth: the magician’s dominion is greater than theirs, as it stretches further. 48. try . . . deity: use your brains to become a god. 49. try . . . hest: see if devils will obey your commands. 50. Mephastophilis: more usually spelled Mephistopheles. 51. Lucifer: also Satan; the principal devil, formerly the brightest of all God’s angels, who had rebelled and been cast out of heaven.

344

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

Franciscan friar—thereby not only demonstrating Faustus’s magical powers, but interpolating Marlowe’s mockery of the Franciscan order, often portrayed in this era as hypocritical, or as it were, demons in disguise. Mephastophilis obeys, and returns so costumed. MEPHASTOPHILIS: Now, Faustus, what wouldst thou have me do? FAUSTUS: I charge thee wait upon me whilst I live, To do whatever Faustus shall command, Be it to make the moon drop from her sphere, Or the ocean to overwhelm the world. MEPHASTOPHILIS: I am a servant to great Lucifer, And may not follow thee without his leave: No more than he commands must we perform. FAUSTUS: Did not he charge thee to appear to me? MEPHASTOPHILIS: No, I came hither of mine own accord. FAUSTUS: Did not my conjuring speeches raise thee? Speak. MEPHASTOPHILIS: That was the cause, but yet per accidens,52 For when we hear one rack53 the name of God, Abjure the Scriptures and his saviour Christ, We fly in hope to get his glorious soul; Nor will we come unless he use such means Whereby he is in danger to be damned. Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring 52. per accidens: only an accidental, or secondary cause; the principal cause, as Mephastophilis goes on to explain, is that Faustus had defied God, making him a likely target of demonic interest; Faustus is annoyed, as he would like to think his magical powers alone summoned Mephastophilis. 53. rack: disrespect.

2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

345

Is stoutly to abjure the Trinity54 And pray devoutly to the prince of hell. FAUSTUS: So Faustus hath already done. . . . But, leaving these vain trifles of men’s souls, Tell me what is that Lucifer thy lord? MEPHASTOPHILIS: Arch-regent and commander of all spirits. FAUSTUS: Was not that Lucifer an angel once? MEPHASTOPHILIS: Yes, Faustus, and most dearly loved of God. FAUSTUS: How comes it, then, that he is prince of devils? MEPHASTOPHILIS: O, by aspiring pride and insolence, For which God threw him from the face of heaven. FAUSTUS: And what are you that live with Lucifer? MEPHASTOPHILIS: Unhappy spirits that fell with Lucifer, Conspired against our God with Lucifer, And are for ever damned with Lucifer. FAUSTUS: Where are you damned? MEPHASTOPHILIS: In hell. FAUSTUS: How comes it then that thou art out of hell? 54. Trinity: the Christian doctrine of a threefold deity, a miraculous unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

346

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

MEPHASTOPHILIS: Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it.55 Thinkst thou that I, who saw the face of God And tasted the eternal joys of heaven, Am not tormented with ten thousand hells, In being depriv’d of everlasting bliss? O Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, Which strike a terror to my fainting soul! FAUSTUS: What, is great Mephastophilis so passionate For being deprivèd of the joys of heaven? Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, And scorn those joys thou never shalt possess. Go bear these tidings to great Lucifer: Seeing Faustus hath incurred eternal death By desp’rate thoughts against Jove’s deity:56 Say he surrenders up to him his soul, So57 he will spare him four and twenty years, Letting him live in all voluptuousness, Having thee ever to attend on me, To give me whatsoever I shall ask, To tell me whatsoever I demand, To slay mine enemies and aid my friends, And always be obedient to my will. Go and return to mighty Lucifer, And meet me in my study at midnight, And then resolve me of thy master’s mind. MEPHASTOPHILIS: I will, Faustus. (Mephastophilis exits.) FAUSTUS: Had I as many souls as there be stars, I’d give them all for Mephastophilis. By him I’ll be great emperor of the world. . . .

55. Devils and demons have been damned eternally; wherever they are is hell. 56. Jove: the Greek name of the principal Olympian god; Faustus flouts orthodoxy, addressing the Christian God in pagan terms. 57. So: in exchange, provided that.

2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

347

The Emperor shall not live but by my leave, Nor any potentate of Germany. Now that I have obtained what I desire, I’ll live in speculation of this art58 Till Mephastophilis return again.

Act II Scene 1: Faustus in his study FAUSTUS: Now, Faustus, must thou needs be damned, and canst thou not be sav’d: What boots it,59 then, to think of God or heaven? . . . Now go not backward; no, Faustus, be resolute! Why waverest thou? O, something soundeth in mine ears, “Abjure this magic, turn to God again.” Ay, and Faustus will turn to God again. To God? he loves thee not: The god thou servest is thine own appetite. . . . The GOOD ANGEL and EVIL ANGEL appear again to move Faustus, respectively, to repent and to persevere in the quest for power and wealth. They exit. FAUSTUS: . . . Come, Mephastophilis, And bring glad tidings from great Lucifer;— Is’t not midnight?—come, Mephastophilis! . . . Mephastophilis enters. Now tell me what says Lucifer thy lord? MEPHASTOPHILIS: That I shall wait on Faustus whilst he lives. So60 he will buy my service with his soul. FAUSTUS: Already Faustus hath hazarded that for thee. 58. I’ll live . . . art: he will practice magic until Mephastophilis returns. 59. What boots it: what good is it. 60. So: by doing so.

348

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

MEPHASTOPHILIS: But, Faustus, thou must bequeath it solemnly And write a deed of gift with thine own blood, For that security craves great Lucifer. If thou deny it, I will back to hell. Faustus will do as Mephastophilis demands: produce a formal document signed in his blood. ........ FAUSTUS: (Stabbing his arm) Lo, Mephastophilis, for love of thee, I cut mine arm, and with my proper blood Assure my soul to be great Lucifer’s, Chief lord and regent of perpetual night! View here the blood that trickles from mine arm, And let it be propitious for my wish. MEPHASTOPHILIS: But, Faustus, thou must Write it in manner of a deed of gift. FAUSTUS: Ay, so I will. But, Mephastophilis, My blood congeals, and I can write no more. . . . What might the staying of my blood portend? Is it unwilling I should write this bill?61 Why streams it not, that I may write afresh? . . . Mephastophilis has left to fetch a chafer of coals by which to warm the blood, and having now returned, heat is applied. So; now the blood begins to clear again: Now will I make an end immediately. . . . Consummatum est! 62 This bill is ended And Faustus hath bequeath’d his soul to Lucifer. 61. bill: a formal and legally binding document. 62. Consummatum est: Latin for “It is finished,” the same words Jesus spoke on the cross at the moment of his death; voicing them, Faustus conflates the demonic and the divine.

2. Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

349

But what is this inscription on mine arm? “Homo, fuge!”63 Whither should I fly? If unto God, he’ll throw me down to hell. My senses are deceiv’d, here’s nothing writ— I see it plain; here in this place is writ, “Homo, fuge!” Yet shall not Faustus fly. . . . Faustus reads the terms of the contract aloud and hands it to Mephastophilis, who for twenty-four years will be his companion and facilitator. In Acts III and IV, he journeys throughout the world, stopping in Rome to mock the pope, and displaying his magical talents at the court of Holy Roman emperor Charles V. In Act V Scene 1, however, nearing the end of his allotted twenty-four years, in terror, he seeks to renege, and must, at Mephastophilis’s instruction, sign again in blood a confirmation of the agreement. He asks to see Helen of Troy, whose “sweet embracings” will erase his doubts, and Mephastophilis complies, summoning Helen to Faustus’s study. Overwhelmed by her beauty, Faustus speaks lines for which Marlowe is famous, beginning: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?64 Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss. Faustus exits with his paramour Helen of Troy, but her embraces cannot alter his fate. In the next scene, the eleventh hour strikes, and Faustus stares at death and damnation.

Act V Scene 2 FAUSTUS: Ah, Faustus–— Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn’d perpetually. Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come! . . . The stars move still; time runs; the clock will strike; The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. . . . See, see, where Christ’s blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop. Ah, my Christ!— 63. Homo fuge: Latin for “flee, O man,” or more informally, “man, run for your life.” 64. topless towers of Ilium: Ilium is another name for the city of Troy, whose towers are so tall they reach into the sky.

350

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ!— Yet will I call on him—oh, spare me, Lucifer! . . . The clock strikes the half hour. Ah! half the hour is past! ’Twill all be past anon. O God, If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul, Yet for Christ’s sake, whose blood hath ransomed me, Impose some end to my incessant pain; Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at last be saved. . . . Cursed be the parents that engendered me! No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer, That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven. The clock strikes twelve. O, it strikes! It strikes! Now, body, turn to air, Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell. Thunder and lightning . . . My God, my God, look not so fierce on me! Enter DEVILS. Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! Ugly hell, gape not! Come not, Lucifer! I’ll burn my books—ah, Mephastophilis! DEVILS exit with Faustus. In a brief Epilogue, the Chorus announces that “Faustus is gone,” and exhorts the viewers to “regard his hellish fall.”

$$$ 3. William Shakespeare, Soliloquies (1594–1601) and Sonnets (1609) Drawn from three tragedies and two histories, and spoken by two women and three men, the five soliloquies included here address themes of love,

3. William Shakespeare, Soliloquies and Sonnets

351

both sexual and maternal; the nature of power; the force of ambition; and the ultimate existential choice between life and death. The four exemplary sonnets chosen from Shakespeare’s 154 speak of the joy experienced by the lover (#29); the enduring power and generous openness of true love (##116 and 130); and the pain and disillusionment that can be its consequence (#129).65

Soliloquies Romeo and Juliet (1594/1595): Act III Scene 2 Alone in her garden, sixteen-year-old Juliet welcomes darkness and a first night of rapturous love with Romeo—their wedding night, for they have been secretly married. Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, Towards Phoebus’s66 lodging: such a wagoner As Phaethon67 would whip you to the west, And bring in cloudy night immediately. Spread thy close curtain, love-performing night! That runaway’s eyes may wink, and Romeo Leap to these arms, untalk’d of and unseen! Lovers can see to do their amorous rites By their own beauties; or, if love be blind, It best agrees with night. Come, civil night, Thou sober-suited matron, all in black, And learn me how to lose a winning match, Play’d for a pair of stainless maidenhoods: Hood my unmann’d blood, bating in my cheeks, With thy black mantle; till strange love, grown bold, Think true love acted simple modesty. Come, night! come, Romeo! come, thou day in night! For thou wilt lie upon the wings of night Whiter than new snow on a raven’s back. Come, gentle night; come, loving, black-brow’d night, 65. The 1914 Oxford edition of Shakespeare’s complete works utilized here has been altered slightly to modernize spelling. The dates given are of first known performance and are approximate. Orthographical conventions are British. 66. Phoebus: the Latin name of the Greek Apollo, the sun god; Juliet is urging on the horses pulling the chariot of the sun across the sky so that night will come soon. 67. Phaethon: in Greek mythology, the son of Helios (another name for Apollo); Phaethon drove his father’s chariot and lost control, crashing the sun into the earth.

352

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

Give me my Romeo; and, when he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun. O! I have bought the mansion of a love, But not possess’d it, and, though I am sold, Not yet enjoy’d. So tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them. O! here comes my nurse, And she brings news; and every tongue that speaks But Romeo’s name speaks heavenly eloquence.

Richard II (1595/1596): Act III Scene 2 King Richard returns to England from his Irish campaign to learn that all his friends and allies, even his kinsmen, have joined the insurrection his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV, has mounted against him. Aware that calamity, deposition, and death await, Richard reflects on kingship, which cannot protect the man who is a king—who is, in the end, only a man. No matter where; of comfort no man speak: Let’s talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs; Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth, Let’s choose executors and talk of wills: And yet not so, for what can we bequeath Save our deposed bodies to the ground? Our lands, our lives and all are Bolingbroke’s, And nothing can we call our own but death And that small model of the barren earth Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings; How some have been deposed; some slain in war, Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d; All murder’d: for within the hollow crown That rounds the mortal temples of a king

3. William Shakespeare, Soliloquies and Sonnets

353

Keeps Death his court and there the antic68 sits, Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, Allowing him a breath, a little scene, To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks, Infusing him with self and vain conceit, As if this flesh which walls about our life, Were brass impregnable, and humor’d thus Comes at the last and with a little pin Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king! Cover your heads and mock not flesh and blood With solemn reverence: throw away respect, Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty, For you have but mistook me all this while: I live with bread like you, feel want, Taste grief, need friends: subjected thus, How can you say to me, I am a king?

King John (1596/1597): Act III Scene 4 Constance is the widowed Duchess of Brittany and mother of sixteen-year-old Arthur, who had challenged his uncle King John for the throne of England. She speaks inconsolably of her love for her son, who is imprisoned in one of John’s castles and likely dead. The anguished expression of a mother’s grief is rarely heard in literature, or as in this case, by a male author. Thou art not holy to belie me so; I am not mad: this hair I tear is mine; My name is Constance; I was Geffrey’s wife;69 Young Arthur is my son, and he is lost! I am not mad: I would to heaven I were! For then, ’tis like I should forget myself: O! if I could, what grief should I forget! Preach some philosophy to make me mad, And thou shalt be canoniz’d, cardinal;70 For being not mad, but sensible of grief, My reasonable part produces reason 68. antic: i.e., clown, fool. 69. Geffrey’s wife: Constance was the wife of Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, fourth son of English King Henry II by Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, and brother of King John. Arthur was Henry’s grandson, and a plausible claimant to the throne. 70. Cardinal Pandulph, papal legate, present at this scene. To be a cardinal is a high dignity; to be canonized, or named a saint of the church, would be a higher one.

354

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

How I may be deliver’d of these woes, And teaches me to kill or hang myself: If I were mad, I should forget my son, Or madly think a babe of clouts were he.71 I am not mad: too well, too well I feel The different plague of each calamity. . . . Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form: Then have I reason to be fond of grief. Fare you well: had you such a loss as I, I could give better comfort than you do. I will not keep this form upon my head72 When there is such disorder in my wit. O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort, and my sorrows’ cure!

Julius Caesar (1599/1600): Act III Scene 2 In his funeral oration for the slain general and Roman ruler Caesar, Mark Antony, Caesar’s lieutenant, stirs up the populace against the men who plotted and executed the murder, of whom Brutus was the leader and most eminent. He carefully insinuates their guilt while pretending to extol their virtues—and reminds the people of Caesar’s. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears; I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him. The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones; So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus Hath told you Caesar was ambitious; If it were so, it was a grievous fault, And grievously hath Caesar answer’d it. Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest,— 71. Or madly think a babe of clouts were he: think that some unrelated diapered baby was her son. 72. I will not . . . upon my head: she tears off her headdress.

3. William Shakespeare, Soliloquies and Sonnets

355

For Brutus is an honourable man; So are they all, all honourable men,— Come I to speak in Caesar’s funeral. He was my friend, faithful and just to me: But Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. He hath brought many captives home to Rome, Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill: Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept; Ambition should be made of sterner stuff: Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man. You all did see that on the Lupercal73 I thrice presented him a kingly crown, Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition? Yet Brutus says he was ambitious; And, sure, he is an honourable man. I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know. You all did love him once, not without cause: What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him? O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts, And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;74 My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, And I must pause till it come back to me.

Hamlet (1600/1601): Act III Scene 1 Hamlet’s father, the king of Denmark, has been murdered by his mother’s lover with her connivance, the two conspirators now usurping his throne: Should Hamlet struggle against this “sea of troubles,” or succumb to them, and kill himself? To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, 73. Lupercal: the Lupercalia, an annual Roman festival, at which Mark Antony recently had three times offered Caesar a king’s crown, but Caesar, the ruler of republican Rome, declined to take it. 74. bear with me: Mark Antony excuses himself for a moment, overcome by emotion.

356

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep; No more; and, by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,75 Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely, The pangs of dispriz’d76 love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of the unworthy takes,77 When he himself might his quietus make78 With a bare bodkin? who would fardels79 bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover’d country from whose bourn No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. . . .

Sonnets #29 When I am overcome with despair, and despise myself, I think of you, and my memory of your love fills me with such joy “that then I scorn to change my state with kings.” 75. When we have shuffled off this mortal coil: when we are released from our bodies. 76. dispriz’d: love that is despised, or unrequited. 77. spurns . . . unworthy takes: the scorn that the meritorious suffer from those less worthy. 78. might his quietus make: find peace in death. 79. fardels: burdens.

3. William Shakespeare, Soliloquies and Sonnets

357

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee,—and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

#116 When two people are truly in love, nothing shakes their faith in each other: it is a fixed mark amid turbulence, it is a star by which a ship is guided. Although the lovers may age, their love endures, not just for “hours and weeks,” but also until “the edge of doom.” It is no more possible for what I say to be false than it is to say I have not written this poem, or that “no man ever loved.” Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come: Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error, and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.

#129 Lust exhausts and debases the actor: it is “perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame, / savage, extreme, rude, cruel.” The object is obtained and enjoyed, but

358

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

then immediately regretted; it is “a very woe.” Everyone knows this; yet everyone, in pursuit of pleasure, succumbs to lust. The expense of spirit in a waste of shame Is lust in action; and till action, lust Is perjur’d, murderous, bloody, full of blame, Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust; Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight; Past reason hunted; and no sooner had, Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait, On purpose laid to make the taker mad: Mad in pursuit, and in possession so; Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme; A bliss in proof,—and prov’d, a very woe; Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream. All this the world well knows; yet none knows well To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

#130 Playfully, the poet will not adopt the tired metaphors poets have used to describe the women they love—or wish to flatter: he jettisons lips redder than coral, cheeks like roses, perfumed breath, melodious speech. His beloved is no goddess, but “treads on the ground.” And yet he loves her, as much as one can love. My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun Coral is far more red than her lips’ red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound: I grant I never saw a goddess go,— My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

$$$

4. John Donne, Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets

359

4. John Donne, Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets (1633) Presented here are two of Donne’s love poems (from his posthumous 1633 Songs and Sonnets, composed much earlier) and two religious sonnets (from his posthumous 1633 Holy Sonnets, several composed in the years 1609–1617), which give in small compass some insight into the range of his feelings, thought, and poetic style. Evident in the love poems are the irregular rhythms and rhyme patterns for which Donne is famous, as well as his use of extended, abstract, and elaborate metaphors. The religious sonnets, more conventional in verse pattern than the love poems, forcefully witness Donne’s passionate Christian faith and profound meditation on death.80

Songs and Sonnets Love’s Growth During the winter, Donne had thought his love was as great as it could be; but spring has come, and he finds it has grown even greater. Like the ripples of water that spread from a point of disturbance in circles of ever increasing breadth, his love increases; but all those circles have one center—all are “concentric unto thee”—that is, his beloved. I scarce believe my love to be so pure As I had thought it was, Because it doth endure Vicissitude, and season, as the grass; Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore My love was infinite, if spring make it more. But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow With more, not only be no quintessence, But mix’d of all stuffs, vexing soul, or sense, And of the sun his active vigour borrow, Love’s not so pure, and abstract as they use To say, which have no mistress but their Muse;81 80. The 1896 edition of Donne’s poems utilized here retains sixteenth-century forms of verbs and pronouns. Orthographical conventions are British. 81. which have no mistress but their Muse: persons who do not actually love another person, but merely theorize.

360

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

But as all else, being elemented too, Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do.82 And yet no greater, but more eminent, Love by the spring is grown; As in the firmament Stars by the sun are not enlarged, but shown, Gentle love deeds, as blossoms on a bough, From love’s awaken’d root do bud out now. If, as in water stirr’d more circles be Produced by one, love such additions take, Those like so many spheres but one heaven make, For they are all concentric unto thee; And though each spring do add to love new heat, As princes do in times of action get New taxes, and remit them not in peace, No winter shall abate this spring’s increase.

A Valediction Forbidding Mourning He must go away; but the lovers are confident and secure in their love. They are like the two arms of a compass: though one wanders away from the center, the other stays firm, and when the circle is complete and whole, mirroring the perfection of the cosmos, the lovers—whose “two souls . . . are one”—come together again. As virtuous men pass mildly away, And whisper to their souls to go, Whilst some of their sad friends do say, “Now his breath goes,” and some say, “No.” So let us melt, and make no noise, No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move; ’Twere profanation of our joys To tell the laity83 our love. Moving of th’ earth brings harms and fears; Men reckon what it did, and meant; But trepidation of the spheres, Though greater far, is innocent. 82. elemented . . . do: love is not a pure essence, but composed of several elements, both material and ethereal. 83. laity: that is, ordinary people, not like ourselves, whose love makes us sacred.

4. John Donne, Songs and Sonnets and Holy Sonnets

361

Dull sublunary84 lovers’ love —Whose soul is sense—cannot admit Of absence, ’cause it doth remove The thing which elemented it. But we by a love so far refined, That ourselves know not what it is, Inter-assurèd of the mind, Care less eyes, lips and hands to miss. Our two souls therefore, which are one, Though I must go, endure not yet A breach, but an expansion, Like gold to airy thinness beat. If they be two, they are two so As stiff twin compasses are two; Thy soul, the fix’d foot, makes no show To move, but doth, if th’ other do. And though it in the centre sit, Yet, when the other far doth roam, It leans, and hearkens after it, And grows erect, as that comes home. Such wilt thou be to me, who must, Like th’ other foot, obliquely run; Thy firmness makes my circle just, And makes me end where I begun.

Holy Sonnets 10. Death, be not proud Death is not to be feared, as it cannot kill. Sleep gives us pleasure, and so, too, will death; and after “one short sleep,” “we wake eternally,” in God’s presence. We, then, shall live, but Death will die. Death, be not proud, though some have called thee Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so; For those, whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow, 84. sublunary: lovers, that is, who are earthbound, unlike ourselves.

362

Chapter 11. The Renaissance Literary Harvest: England

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. From rest and sleep, which but thy picture be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more must flow, And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.85 Thou’rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well, And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then? One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

14. Batter my heart Donne invites God in his three persons—in Christian theology, the Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—to batter, and not merely knock on his heart, as though on the door to his soul; for otherwise it will not be opened to receive God’s presence, as he is “betroth’d” to God’s enemy, the devil, and cannot be made anew. He entreats God to “Divorce” the tie between him and sin, and take him by force: “Take me . . . imprison me”; paradoxically, he must be “enthrall[ed],” which is to say enslaved, or “ravish[ed],” which is to say, stunningly, raped. Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you As yet but knock; breathe, shine, and seek to mend; That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new. I, like an usurp’d town, to another due,86 Labour to admit you, but O, to no end. Reason, your viceroy87 in me, me should defend, But is captived, and proves weak or untrue. Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,88 But am betroth’d unto your enemy; Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again, Take me to you, imprison me, for I, Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish89 me. 85. Rest . . . delivery: the destiny of humans is to shed their flesh (thus “bones”) so that their souls may be freed (thus “deliver[ed]”). 86. usurp’d town . . . due: a town that has been captured. 87. viceroy: reason is God’s “viceroy,” or representative, within the human being. 88. fain: willingly. 89. chaste . . . ravish: he cannot become pure and without sin (i.e., “chaste”) unless he is “ravish[ed]” (i.e., overcome, or raped) by God.

SECTION IV Early Modern: New Horizons Introduction to Section IV The Early Modern era is a recent and not yet well-defined category. For some scholars, unimpressed by humanism or the revival of ancient ideas and forms, the Early Modern engulfs the Renaissance and makes the independent consideration of that movement unnecessary. For others, the Early Modern succeeds the Renaissance, the latter being a prelude to the more momentous later epoch. For still others, the Early Modern partially overlaps the Renaissance in time, beginning around 1500 and extending to around 1700, but is shaped by a different set of historical developments: included among the latter are the formation of modern nation states and military forces, and the exploration and colonization of other regions around the globe, with huge consequences for the European economy and culture. This volume adopts this third understanding of the Early Modern era; during which new streams of literary production spring forth, continuous with— yet distinct from—Renaissance precursors. The three chapters of Section IV explore three of those streams of literary development. Chapter 12 considers “Other Places”: literary responses by seven authors to the project of European global expansion.1 Chapter 13 considers “Other Voices”: seven texts giving urgent expression to the grievances and aspirations especially of women, who during the Early Modern period erupted into the mainstream of literary culture; but also of children, whose arrival into public consciousness is announced by a single work of enormous importance, authored not by a child—for children could not write—but by a male observer of a corrupt society that corrupted even its progeny. The third chapter in this section, Chapter 14, entitled “Man Alone,” looks at three dramas by leading Spanish, French, and English playwrights. These draw on the explorations of the self by Renaissance authors—among them Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes—depicting individuals who confront predicaments calling for their utmost exertion of mental and spiritual strength. 1. Earlier travel accounts, including in this volume those of Marco Polo (Chapter 7, Text 1) and Chaucer (Chapter 7, Text 4), were necessarily of a different character than the works generated by the new surge of explorations beginning in the late fifteenth century.

363

364

IV. Early Modern: New Horizons

The seven authors represented in Chapter 12 include three eyewitness observers of the European arrival in the Americas, two of its ventures in Asia, and two authors offering imaginative accounts of new worlds that had not been thought before to exist. Those attending to the Americas include the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci—after whom the “Americas” are named—who establishes that the newly discovered lands were not a mere cluster of islands but in fact a continent, a “new world”; the Spanish conquistador (conqueror) Hernán Cortés who vanquishes the Aztec civilization of central Mexico and establishes the pattern for Spanish domination of its new American territories; and the mestizo Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, who recalls his childhood awareness of Inca civilization conveyed to him by his mother and his maternal kin. Turning to ventures in the eastern hemisphere, the Jesuit missionary to Asia Francis Xavier describes the people and culture of Japan, previously unknown to Europeans; and Luís de Camões celebrates the Portuguese empire that stretched from Asia to South America in a verse epic, The Lusiads, which made him the literary giant for the Portuguese that Cervantes was for Spain and Shakespeare for England. The sixth and seventh authors, both Englishwomen, are Margaret Cavendish, who draws inspiration from the voyages of discovery to write a fictional account of a new world of her invention, The Blazing World; and Aphra Behn, who in her novel2 Oroonoko, which ranges from Africa to the Caribbean, exalts the nobility of an African prince who is enslaved and destroyed by a colonial elite blind to the horrors of the perverse world they have created. The seven authors represented in Chapter 13—six female and one male—have a powerful tale to tell; and it is a new one.3 The French queen and duchess Marguerite de Navarre tells stories of rape and deception, documenting in seemingly artless prose the victimization of women of all sorts and circumstances—a theme later in the chapter conveyed more brutally and relentlessly by the Spanish storyteller María de Zayas y Sotomayor. Between the texts of Marguerite and Zayas, two other Spanish authors take their places: the anonymous humanist author (likely male) of Lazarillo de Tormes, who details the steps by which cruel masters destroy the soul, and 2. novel: a modern genre, developing from epic and romance, as well as the shorter genres of story, tale, and novella; a long prose narrative detailing the complex circumstances of human experience. See above (Chapter 10, Introduction) for Cervantes as originator of the genre. 3. It is a new tale that is told, but women authors had long been participants in the history of European literature: see earlier in this volume Sappho (Chapter 2, Text 3); Hrotswitha (Chapter 5, Text 3); Hildegard (Chapter 5, Text 4); Margery Kempe (Chapter 5, Text 6); Marie de France (Chapter 6, Text 5); Christine de Pizan (Chapter 7, Text 5); and Cassandra Fedele (Chapter 8, Text 5 ); and in Chapter 12, Cavendish and Behn.

Introduction to Section IV

365

nearly also the body of a child; and the great theologian and mystic Teresa of Ávila, who portrays herself as an imaginative child in a loving home who later chooses a life in the convent where, in peace and security, she can open her heart to God. In an extended dialogue set in the flourishing city of Venice purportedly engaging seven women of different stages of life and experience, the Italian author Moderata Fonte decries the institution of marriage, which permits fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons to exploit women and condemn them to spiritual servitude. Her contemporary Sarra Copia Sulam, also an inhabitant of Venice but as a Jew, a tolerated guest and not a citizen, brilliantly defends her religious beliefs to a Christian opponent, previously a friend, who now accuses her of denying the immortality of the soul. In faraway Mexico, the New Spain that Cortés had opened, the poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, who had, like Teresa, sought refuge in a convent, lashes out against men and marriage, and professes ardent love for other women. Her exquisite verses, laced with anger, could not contrast more starkly with those of Renaissance poets of love, such as Sidney and Shakespeare (see Chapter 11, Texts 1 and 3), who so magnificently anatomize male desire for female lovers to an audience of male initiates. Chapter 14 turns to an age-old theme of European literature: the hero. The heroes Achilles, Odysseus, and others featured in Homer’s epics; the heroes of Greek tragedy; Virgil’s epic Aeneid; the medieval chansons de geste; and even the ironic heroes of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Cervantes’s Don Quixote were all major protagonists in the literary tradition.4 In a different key, the three authors represented in this chapter—Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Molière, and John Milton—all paint pictures of heroic action. In the comedy The Mayor of Zalamea, Calderón pits an earnest and wily peasant, the chosen village head, against a military commander of noble rank who has raped his daughter and dishonored her father. The mayor masterfully achieves a just resolution and the destruction of the man, his superior according to the social hierarchy, who had wronged him. In the comedy The Misanthrope, Molière portrays a man who—like the playwright himself—has renounced the posturing and hypocrisy of high society, to the point where his principles demand that he break with the woman he loves and forswear society altogether. Finally, in the tragedy Samson Agonistes, drawing together the threads of Greek tragedy and Scripture, Milton presents the biblical warrior Samson as a Greek hero, who, though blinded, imprisoned, and enslaved, obtains the liberation of his people by a momentous and sacrificial act. All three dramas signal the victory over 4. See the discussions of these authors in the Introductions to Chapters 2, 3, 6, and 10.

366

IV. Early Modern: New Horizons

evil—the arrogance of power, the falsity of social conventions, the threat to national existence and religious truth—won by intelligence, perseverance, and strength of character. With the end of the Early Modern era, this volume ends. The next observes the course of the Western literary tradition as it encounters a modern world.

Chapter 12 Other Places

Introduction Even as humanists explored the classical tradition and reformers challenged the established church, navigators, explorers, merchants, and missionaries breached the frontiers of Europe to venture across the Atlantic to the Americas and around the southern tip of Africa to the Indian Ocean, the gateway to Asia. As they roamed abroad, they wrote about what they saw; and what they saw inspired others to imagine new vistas and pose new questions. Other places, real and invented, would help shape the European literary tradition in unanticipated directions. This chapter looks at seven authors who contributed to the written record of these distant journeys, offering an account of the European encounter with astonishing new worlds. Three of these seven report their experience of the Americas. The fourth and fifth turn to Asia, where Europeans encountered long established and advanced civilizations. The sixth and seventh, both Englishwomen, write fictional accounts of foreign lands: the first invents a new world of her own that improves upon the old, while the second pinpoints the problem of slavery as the original evil inherent in the European project of colonization in the Americas. The son of a notary, born in Florence at the height of the Renaissance, Amerigo Vespucci (1452/1454–1512) entered the service of Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici1 in 1480 as secretary, estate manager, and banker. Sent to Seville (Spain) in 1492—the year of Christopher Columbus’s first voyage of discovery—he worked in the office of the Medici bank and undertook various commercial ventures. From this platform, his career as explorer was launched: he undertook his first and second voyages (1497–1498 and 1499–1500) to the Americas in Spanish employ; and then, after a move to Lisbon, his third and fourth (1501–1502 and 1503–1504) for the Portuguese. Returning to Seville in 1505, he was appointed “Chief Pilot” by the Spanish king in 1508, tasked to train young navigators in astronomy and cartography. There he died in 1512, his position as royal pilot (for lesser compensation) transferred to his nephew. 1. Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici: cousin of Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” the ruler of the city of Florence.

367

368

Chapter 12. Other Places

Reporting on the author’s third voyage of 1501–1502, Vespucci’s Mundus novus (New World), excerpts from which are given here, is a letter addressed to Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, whose death in May 1503 fixes the terminal date for its publication. An astonishing success, it was reprinted within weeks in Venice, Paris, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Cologne, Strasbourg, and among other print centers. It provides in clear Latin, translated from the original Italian, some extraordinary data: the circumstances of the transAtlantic voyage; the configurations of the sky of the southern hemisphere; the appearance and habits of the natives, whose perpetual nudity and taste for human flesh were particularly noted; and above all, the features of the coastline south from Brazil to Patagonia, a distance of some three thousand miles, proving that the landmass it bordered was not an island but a continent—and therefore, a “new world.” This last claim was unprecedented; it was surely Vespucci’s; and it electrified Europe. Less than twenty years after Vespucci’s third voyage to the New World he had identified, Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) arrived on the coast of Mexico and would soon add its vast territory—to be named at his suggestion “New Spain”—to the expanding Spanish realm in the Americas. Born to the minor nobility, Cortés received a Latin education sufficient for him to become a notary and gain familiarity with Spanish law. At age eighteen, he went to Hispaniola,2 the capital of the burgeoning Spanish regime in the West Indies. There he married and acquired an encomienda (a grant of land and labor services) before setting out in 1519 for the yet unknown territory of Mexico. From the Gulf Coast at Veracruz, he led a daring expedition to Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City), the capital of the Aztec empire, which he finally conquered on August 13, 1521. The events of the initial expedition are told in the second of Cortés’s five Cartas de Relación (Letters of Relation), dated October 30, 1520, from which excerpts are given here: an account of Cortés’s 1519 march to Tenochtitlan; his courting and imprisonment of the Aztec ruler Moctezuma;3 and the Aztec rebellion against the Spanish begun in Cortés’s absence, which succeeded in July 1520, once Cortés had returned, after an epic battle in which most of the Spanish force was killed. Although Cortés was more of a conqueror than a writer, his narrative of the conquest of Mexico is an extraordinary literary text and a primary (though not the only) documentation of those events. Writing in a basic Spanish, with long, strung-together sentences of multiple phrases joined by “and,” with none of the Latinisms that pepper the prose of humanistically trained professionals, he is nonetheless a masterful narrator. His five Letters of Relation, written 1519–1526, are carefully crafted accounts of the 2. Hispaniola: an island shared today by the Dominican Republic and Haiti. 3. Moctezuma: also Montezuma, Motecuçoma, etc.

Introduction

369

Mexican conquest in which the author foregrounds his own, nearly singlehanded role, depicting himself as the loyal and efficient servant of the king of Spain, Charles I (r. 1515–1556).4 With a few hundred well-armed Spaniards, Cortés confronts native forces numbering in the hundreds and thousands. He acquires territory by diplomacy as well as force, and systematically pursues opportunities for the extraction of precious metals and agricultural commodities. At the same time, while admiring the commercial and architectural accomplishments of the natives, he recruits Franciscan and Dominican missionaries to achieve their conversion to Christianity. The Mexican conquest as told in Cortés’s Letters would become the model for Spanish domination of its vast American empire. Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), who always added to his name a further designation, “the Inca,”5 did not discover a new world, but rather, uniquely among European authors of the era, belonged to it—and simultaneously, to the old world as well. Born in Peru, the illegitimate son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, he would later write the history of his homeland: the Commentarios reales de los Incas (Royal Commentaries of the Incas). He dedicated the first volume of the work (published 1609) to the Inca heritage—his mother’s book, as it were—and the second (published 1616–1617) to the Spanish conquest—his father’s. The structure of his history perfectly mirrored the two dimensions of Garcilaso’s identity: the scion of a royal Inca lineage, on the one hand; and on the other, a Spanish Christian and humanist. Until the age of ten, Garcilaso was raised in his mother’s household and in the tradition of the Incas. His first language was the native Quechua, and his religious beliefs were based on the myths and legends of the Children of the Sun. Each week, the remnant of the Inca community gathered at his mother’s table and retold the stories of the glorious Inca civilization. From these colloquies, Garcilaso gathered a matchless knowledge of preconquest Indian civilization: their beliefs and customs, their family life, their understanding of nature and the environment; the origins and course of Inca rule; and its administrative, architectural, and engineering feats. Although some elements of his account may be mythologized or colored by nostalgia, nonetheless his access to original information was exceptional and key points ring true. Thus recovering and preserving his Inca past, Garcilaso wove together the histories of his mother’s people and his father’s civilization, refusing to write only of the conquerors, but inscribing for posterity the story told to him by aging kinsmen who had wept for the loss of Inca civilization. 4. Charles I of Spain: also held, as Charles V, the even loftier title of Holy Roman Emperor (r. 1519–1556). 5. “the Inca”: importantly, this sobriquet also distinguishes the historian Garcilaso from the earlier poet, also Garcilaso de la Vega (1503–1536).

370

Chapter 12. Other Places

One of the founders of the Jesuit order dedicated to the twin projects of re-Catholicization in Europe and Christianization abroad, the Basque-native Francis Xavier (1506–1552) led the Christian missionary effort in Asia. Arriving first in India, where the mission would be based, Xavier journeyed on to Japan, as yet unknown to Western travelers— although Marco Polo had noted its existence (see Chapter 7, Text 1). He returned to India after a stay of thirty months in Japan, but soon left again, bound for China. He died on an island offshore of China where he had hoped next to bring the Christian message, which he called the “Law of God.” He was canonized in 1622. The European venture in Asia was unlike that in the Americas. Asia was home to advanced civilizations, possessing their own elaborate political, social, and cultural systems, which had long existed and were well fortified against foreign intervention. Yet Europeans voyaged to Asia during the era of exploration, especially the Portuguese, whose maritime empire expanded greatly following the discovery by Bartolomeu Dias of a sea route around the southernmost point of Africa. Along with the soldiers and merchants who established depots in India from which to develop trade relationships in other Asian regions, Jesuit missionaries arrived to bring Christianity, as they hoped, to the native Buddhists, Hindus, and adherents of the numerous religious sects that flourished there. Xavier’s letter excerpted here, dated January 29, 1552, and addressed to his Jesuit colleagues in Europe, describes his first arrival in Japan and subsequent missionary work. It gives a glimpse of what Europeans first encountered when they entered Asian lands, neither understanding the language of their peoples nor knowing anything about their way of life. Written in Portuguese, this is one of 137 attested letters Xavier wrote, mostly in Portuguese or Spanish, to document his missionary journeys. Loosely structured, unembellished, and lacking ponderous references to ancient authorities, they are compelling narratives of Xavier’s exploits. The first four works appearing in this chapter are prose letters or memoirs recording actual encounters abroad. In contrast, the next work to be considered is of a different genre and has a different aim. The epic poem Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads; 1572)6 by Luís de Camões (c. 1524–1580) is a celebration of the burgeoning Portuguese empire and of its founding hero Vasco da Gama, the navigator who established Portuguese footholds in Africa and Asia. Whereas for Francis Xavier the conversion of newly encountered peoples to Christianity was the purpose and justification for empire, for his contemporary Camões, as for Cortés before, imperial expansion was 6. Lusiad: the name means the epic story of Lusitania, which was the Latin name of the ancient Roman province in western Iberia that would one day be Portugal.

Introduction

371

inherently worthy and the extension of the Christian faith ancillary. In The Lusiads, Camões has found a perfect vehicle for that ideological outlook, since epics traditionally heroize political aggression and conquest;7 his work places poetry in the service of imperialism. The Portuguese empire was the first modern empire, born in 1415 with the conquest of Ceuta on the North African coast, and lasting until 2002, when Portugal surrendered its last colony. The empire was both maritime, a network of coastal stations and commercial ports, and territorial, extending at one time over expanses of land and exercising rule over diverse native peoples from Brazil in the west to China, Japan, and Indonesia in the east. In the last canto of The Lusiads, excerpted in this chapter, the sea goddess Tethys gives Vasco da Gama a guided tour of Portugal’s eventual global empire. Camões played an active role in the Portuguese imperial venture. Educated in the classics by a learned uncle, he enlisted in the imperial forces, and later lived mostly in Asia. His full curriculum vitae would boast military adventures, bureaucratic posts, and sundry prosecutions for fraud and assault. All the time, he wrote poems, composing The Lusiads mainly during a bureaucratic stint in the Portuguese port at Macau (China). The epic made him a national hero; a fitting honor, for though his past had not been untroubled, he was nonetheless the architect of Portugal’s modern language and literature. In imaginative works of prose fiction, later authors would explore further the ideology of empire Camões had declared in The Lusiads. Among them are the two prolific English writers, Margaret Cavendish and Aphra Behn. The aristocrat Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673), a poet, philosopher, essayist, and scientist, constructed in The Blazing World an imaginary empire over which a woman held sovereign power, populated by humanoids of different colors and complexions and assorted anthropomorphic beasts of high mental aptitude. The playwright and novelist Aphra Behn (1640–1689), whose origins were uncertain and whose reputation was notorious, confronted in her novel Oroonoko the reality of African slavery in the American colonies. Cavendish and her husband, thirty years older, a marquis (later raised to duke) and commander of royalist forces during the English Revolution, had lived in exile in the Netherlands until, in 1660, with the restoration of the monarchy, they returned to England. There she astonished London society with her outlandish dress, her uncensored tongue, and her bold forays into 7. As did such earlier epics as Homer’s Iliad, Virgil’s Aeneid, the Song of Roland, the Song of My Cid, and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso: see Chapter 2, Text 1; Chapter 3, Text 4; Chapter 6, Texts 3 and 4; and Chapter 10, Text 1.

372

Chapter 12. Other Places

male intellectual circles including, famously, the Royal Society, a gathering of leading scientific and philosophical thinkers. She descended upon that group in 1667, a year after publishing The Blazing World as a madcap companion piece, bound in the same volume, to the sober Observations Upon Experimental Philosophy, a work more suited to the gentlemen of the Royal Society. The Blazing World is a mock-utopian romance that features a wholly new phenomenon, modeled upon its author: a female potentate and intellectual, who welcomes the talents and wisdom of the extraordinary inhabitants of the new world she governs. The unnamed lady is curious and energetic in her exploration of new ideas, presented to her by the brainy, semi-human creatures who populate the new world where she has by accident landed. She inquires about their laws and form of government, their religious beliefs and practice, and their many fields of learning, including astronomy, geometry, mathematics, chemistry, philosophy, logic, and rhetoric, among others. As empress, moreover, she is endowed with the wealth and power needed to support the individuals and institutions that will achieve the advancement of civilization. For civilization is possible, Cavendish makes clear, in other worlds than the world in which we live, and crafted by creatures of a different sort than we ourselves are. Her imaginary world, implicitly, surpasses in many regards the European world she has left behind. In Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688), Aphra Behn does not create an imaginary world but observes a real one: specifically the colonial society of Surinam, then under English rule, on the Caribbean rim of South America. In it she critiques that society’s most loathsome feature: the enslavement of African laborers for American plantations. Told by an unidentified female narrator, it is the story of the noble African Oroonoko, the grandson of a king, who is in love with the beautiful maiden Imoinda—and so is his grandfather. An ugly rivalry ensues; Imoinda is snatched from Oroonoko and sold into slavery, as he himself is soon afterward. The lovers are reunited in Surinam and with the names assigned them of Caesar and Clemene, serve their new masters. Clemene is now pregnant, and to win their freedom and that of his fellow slaves, Caesar leads a rebellion that is brutally suppressed. To save his beloved from recapture and rape, and with her enthusiastic assent, Caesar kills Clemene. Caesar is captured and dismembered alive as he stoically smokes his pipe, courageous to the end, indomitable in death. Juxtaposed here to the savagery of slavery is the essential and radiant nobility of the hero Oroonoko, an African of royal blood. Complicating these interactions is the vivid voice of the female narrator: as a member of the slaveholding class, she is a superior; as an admirer of male heroism, a subordinate; and as a helpless observer of the royal slave’s murder, a disenfranchised woman in a male-dominated colonial society. Embracing all these tensions is a global perspective, evoking a triangle of England, Africa,

1. Amerigo Vespucci, New World

373

America—echoed in the racial triangle of white, black, and Indian—that is not only the superstructure of the novel but maps the history of the Atlantic world in the Early Modern era. Oroonoko was published in 1688: the year of the Glorious Revolution in England, which would unseat a king and establish the authority of Parliament; and the same year, as well, in which four Quakers in Germantown, Pennsylvania, issued a statement against slavery that inaugurated the first abolitionist movement in the history of the world. The other places encountered by the authors in this chapter are real places, geographic entities and cultures never seen before; new visions of mission and empire; and imagined realms deemed worse or better but certainly different from the ones in which they lived.

$$$ 1. Amerigo Vespucci, New World (1502/1503) In this famous letter to his patron, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, Amerigo Vespucci reports on his third journey across the Atlantic and along the eastern coast of the South American continent. Some of his key observations are found in the selections given here. Notably, he asserts that the land to which he journeyed was in fact a “New World,” “since our forebears had absolutely no knowledge of it,” or of any landmass south of the equator. He reports that the new continent—for he found it to be of “continental” dimension—is densely populated, and describes the appearance and some of the customs of its inhabitants. He is struck by the beauty of the women, fully apparent since they, like their menfolk, wore no clothing; by the cannibalism of the natives; and by the abundance of gold to which they are indifferent. They fish but do not hunt, not having weapons able to confront the lions and bears roaming the lush forests—although they fight wars against their human enemies. In all, they are “a gentle people who will be easily led to God,” the conversion of the natives being from the outset, along with the exploitation of their natural resources, a goal of their European conquerors.

New World A few days ago I wrote you at some length about my return from those new regions, which we searched for and found with the fleet, at the expense and by the command of the most serene King of Portugal8—and which can properly 8. Manuel I, king of Portugal (1495–1521).

374

Chapter 12. Other Places

be called a “New World,” since our forebears had absolutely no knowledge of it, nor do any of those who are hearing about it today. Indeed, it surpasses all that the ancients had conceived, since most of them say that there is no continent beyond the equator and toward the south, but only an ocean which they call the Atlantic; and those who believed that there was a continent in that region declared that for many reasons it was uninhabitable. But my recent voyage establishes that their view is false, and entirely contrary to the truth, since in that southern zone I came upon a continent inhabited more fully than Europe or Asia or Africa by an abundant population of humans and animals, and possessed of a climate more temperate and pleasant than can be found in any region known to us. You shall hear of all this below, where I shall give a succinct description of the principal features most worthy of recording and remembering which I saw or heard in this New World. On May 14, 1501, at the command of the said king, we departed in three ships from Lisbon on our prosperous mission to explore new regions toward the south, and sailed in that direction steadily for twenty months.9 . . . [After stopping near Cape Verde off the African coast] to recover our strength and take on supplies for our journey, we weighed anchor and unfurled our sails to the wind, and setting our path across the vast ocean toward Antarctica, bearing westward for a while before a southeasterly wind.10 From the day that we left [the African coast], we sailed for two months and three days11 before we sighted land. What we suffered as we crossed that great expanse of sea, what dangers we faced of shipwreck and bodily harm, and what anxieties tormented us, I leave to the imagination of those who know from long experience what it is to seek a goal which is uncertain and to explore a reality which is totally unknown. To sum it up in a word, know that of the sixty-seven days we sailed, for forty-four days on end we had rain, thunder, and lightning, with a sky so dark that we never saw the sun by day or the stars at night. We were so overcome by fear that we nearly abandoned all hope of survival. Yet amid these many and mighty terrors of sea and sky, it soon pleased the Almighty to reveal to us a wholly new continent and an unknown world. When we saw it, we were overcome with such joy as you might imagine comes to those who have been rescued from dire calamities and misfortunes. On August 7, 1501, therefore, we dropped our anchor off the shores of that new land, thanking God with solemn prayers and the celebration of the Mass. 9. twenty months: somewhat less; the entire voyage extended from May 1501 to July 1502, or fourteen months. 10. The text reads, “the wind known as Vulturnus,” in classical mythology, a southeasterly one. 11. two months and three days: but sixty-seven days is written below.

1. Amerigo Vespucci, New World

375

Once there, we determined that the new land was not an island but a continent, both because its long coastline did not bend to close a circle and because it abounded with countless inhabitants. For innumerable species of people and tribes, and of wild animals not found in our homeland, as well as many other things which none of us had ever seen, which it would be tedious to enumerate. . . . We adopted the plan of sailing along the eastern shore of this continent, never losing sight of it. . . . I had forgotten to tell you that the distance from the promontory of Cape Verde to the first point we came to on this continent was about seven hundred leagues;12 but I estimate that we sailed more than 1,800, due partly to our ignorance of the region and the incompetence of the pilot, and partly because of the storms and winds impeding our straight path and forcing us into frequent detours. Indeed, if my companions had not approached me for assistance, since I knew something of cosmography, no one would have known—as neither the captain nor any pilot did—where we were within five hundred leagues. For we wandered about aimlessly, and our instruments, the quadrant and the astrolabe,13 could only measure the altitude of the heavenly bodies from the horizon, as everyone knows. From this point on, they showered much honor upon me. For I showed them that even without a knowledge of marine charts I excelled more at the art of navigation than all the pilots in the world. For these men had no knowledge of it, except for those places which they regularly sailed.14 We decided to sail farther along the coast beyond the aforesaid point of land where it began to curve southward, and to discover what could be found in these regions. So we sailed along this second stretch of coastline about six hundred leagues. We often landed and gathered and spoke with the inhabitants of those regions, who received us cordially, and so we sometimes stayed with them fifteen or twenty days on end, amicably and comfortably. . . . I shall now proceed to tell what I saw there and learned about the nature of those people and their manner of life and their gentleness, about the fertility of the land, the healthfulness of the air, and the disposition of the heavens and heavenly bodies and especially of the fixed stars of the eighth sphere,15 never seen or described by the ancients. 12. league: a measure of distance, approximately three miles. 13. quadrant and astrolabe: the standard instruments of navigation at this time. 14. Vespucci is vaunting his knowledge of cartography and astronomy at a time when most navigators relied on maritime charts to guide them to familiar ports. 15. eighth sphere: the outermost sphere of Ptolemaic cosmological system, the sphere of the fixed stars, arranged in constellations. Those of the southern sky would look different than the familiar ones of the northern hemisphere.

376

Chapter 12. Other Places

First, therefore, as for the people, we found in those regions such a multitude of peoples that no one could ever count them . . . , a gentle people who will be easily led to God. All of them, of both sexes, walk about in the nude, covering no part of the body, and just as they exit from their mothers’ womb, so they proceed until death. Their bodies are large, sturdy, wellformed and well-proportioned, their skin rather reddish in color, the result, I think, since they go about naked, of being burned by the sun. They have a mass of black hair on their heads, are agile in walking and running, and have open, comely faces, which nonetheless they themselves destroy. For they pierce their cheeks and lips and noses and ears. Do not think that these piercings are small or that they have only one of them: I saw several whose faces each had seven piercings, any one of which could hold a plum. They fill these cavities with exquisite stones of cerulean, marble, crystalline, and alabaster hue, or with bright white bones and other things, artfully worked according to their custom. You would be awestruck if you saw such a sight, really almost monstrous, as a man having a stone in his cheek or jaw, or seven in his lips, of which some are the longer than a handsbreadth. . . . They have no textiles—not of wool, nor linen, nor silk—because they do not need them. Nor do they own their own property, but all things are held in common. They live at once without king and without governance, and each person is his own lord. They take as many wives as they want, and the son copulates with his mother, brother with sister, and every man with every woman he encounters. They divorce as often as they wish, following no rules in these matters. For they have no churches and obey no laws, and do not even worship idols. What more shall I say? They live according to nature, and can be called Epicureans rather than Stoics.16 There are among them no merchants nor any commerce. The different peoples wage wars among themselves without art or order. The older men convince the youngsters to follow them, and incite them to fight wars in which they cruelly destroy each other. They take captives from the battlefield not to save their lives, but to butcher them for dinner; for those who are victorious eat those who have been vanquished, and along with other kinds of meat, human flesh is commonly consumed. Let me make this quite clear to you: for a father has been known to eat his children and his wife, and I knew a man—one with whom I had conversed—who boasted that he had eaten the flesh of more than three hundred human bodies. And again, I stayed twenty-seven days in one village, where I saw salted human 16. A witticism; humanists often debated the relative virtues of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophies—both developed during the Hellenistic era—of which, naturally, the natives of South America had never heard.

1. Amerigo Vespucci, New World

377

flesh hanging from the rafters of their huts, in the same way that we are accustomed to hang bacon and salt pork. Still more: they wonder why we do not eat our enemies and eat their flesh for dinner, for they say that it is very tasty. . . . The women, as I have said, who both walk about in the nude and are most lecherous, yet have bodies that are quite lovely and shapely. . . . We noted with wonder that we saw none among them who had sagging breasts, and those who had given birth had wombs as shapely and taut as those of the virgins; and the same could be said for other parts of their bodies, which I shall not mention for the sake of decency. When they could copulate with Christians, impelled by their great lust, they abandoned all chastity. They live for 150 years, rarely get ill, and if they ever experience poor health, they cure themselves with certain roots of herbs. These are the more notable things that I observed among these people. . . . They are ardent fisherman, and the waters there are amply supplied with fish of every kind. They are not hunters, most likely because, since there are many species of wild animals and especially lions and bears and countless serpents and other horrid and fearsome beasts, and since also there are huge forests with trees of immense magnitude, they do not dare expose themselves, naked and without clothing or arms, to the great dangers to be found there. The land in these regions is certainly fertile and pleasant, abounding with many hills, mountains, and numberless valleys, watered with great rivers and wholesome springs, covered with extensive forests, dense and nearly impenetrable. . . . Huge trees grow there without cultivation, which produce many fruits delicious to eat and useful for human bodies—while others are quite the opposite—and none of these fruits are like ours at home. Innumerable types of grasses and roots grow there as well, from which they make bread and excellent salads. They have also many kinds of grains completely unlike our own. They have no kinds of metals except gold, in which these regions are rich. . . . The inhabitants told us about it, saying that there was a great abundance of gold in the interior and they seemed to esteem it or prize it not at all. Pearls are found in abundance, as I have already written. If I were to record all the details of what is found there and note all the numerous kinds of animals and their multitude, I would go on endlessly. . . . A willing interpreter17 has translated this letter from Italian into Latin, so that all Latins18 may understand what wonders are daily to be discovered. And may the boldness of those be checked who scrutinize the majesty 17. Vespucci writes iocundus interpres, which may mean a willing or amiable translator; and it is likely a pun on the translator’s name, Fra Giovanni del Giocondo, giocondo being the Italian form of iocundus. 18. That is to say “all Europeans,” or all who share the Latin-based civilization of western Europe.

378

Chapter 12. Other Places

of the heavens, and who wish to know more than it is fitting to know—since for all of time since the world began, no one has known the vastness of the earth and all the things contained in it. May God be praised.

$$$ 2. Hernán Cortés, Second Letter of Relation (1520) The selections given here are taken from the middle pages of Cortés’s long letter, beginning with his arrival in Tenochtitlan after an eventful journey from Veracruz, on Mexico’s Gulf Coast. Over the next several months, he will meet with Moctezuma, persuade him of the superior authority of the Spanish king over the Aztec domains, and arrange that ruler’s confinement. At this point as well, he takes the opportunity to describe the city and its religious customs to King Charles. The reader will be struck by Cortés’s account—a self-serving one—of Moctezuma’s prompt and willing acceptance of Spanish rule; his description of the city whose commerce and buildings are comparable to those in Spain—he notes, for instance, a cotton market as busy as the silk market in Granada, and a temple as lofty as the cathedral of Seville; and his abhorrence of the Aztec practice of the ritual human sacrifice, prompting his swift imposition of Christian norms.

Second Letter of Relation Entering by the causeway leading across the lake, Cortés arrives at the gates of the city of Tenochtitlan. Here he is greeted by about one thousand evidently important persons, each of whom performed a ceremony of welcome. He then crosses a bridge to enter the city. After we had crossed this bridge, the lord Moctezuma came to greet us with some two hundred notables, all barefoot and . . . even more richly dressed than the previous delegation. They came in two columns, formed along the two sides of a broad and beautiful boulevard about two miles long, but so straight that the eye can see from one end to the other. . . . Moctezuma himself came down the middle of the boulevard with two attendants, one on his right and the other on his left. . . . When the time came that I could speak with Moctezuma, I took off a chain I was wearing studded with pearls and glass gems, and I placed it around his neck. And as we walked along, one of his servants came with two chains of strung shells, wrapped in a cloth, which were made of the shells of red snails, which they valued highly; and from each necklace there hung

2. Hernán Cortés, Second Letter of Relation

379

eight prawns made of gold, beautifully wrought, each nearly a foot long. And when they were brought, he turned to me and placed them around my neck. . . . Moctezuma then led Cortés to a great hall where he bestowed more gifts on the Spaniard. When both had taken their seats on handsome thrones, Moctezuma speaks: “We have long known from the chronicles of our ancestors that neither I nor all those who live in this place are its indigenous peoples, but descend from foreigners who came here from abroad. We know that a great lord brought our people to this region, whose vassals we were, who returned to his own land. He later returned to find that over time his people had intermarried with the women native to this land, and had raised families and built houses in which they lived; and when he asked them to return with him, they did not wish to go or to recognize him as their lord; and so he left. We have always known that those who had descended from him would one day return to subjugate this land, and us as his vassals. Since you say that you have come from the east, where the sun rises, and given what you have said about the great lord, your king, who sent you here, we believe most assuredly that he is our natural lord. . . . As such, you may be certain that we shall obey you and recognize you as our lord and delegate of that great lord of whom you speak, in which commitment there is no defect or deception whatever. Therefore all this land, wherever I myself have dominion, you may command according to your will, for you will be obeyed and respected, and all that we possess you may dispose of as you wish. . . . Now I shall go to my other houses, where I will live. Here you will be provided with all things necessary for you and your people, without any recompense, to live here as though in your own land and your own house.” Cortés explains to King Charles that he thought it best to take Moctezuma into custody. Six days having passed, Most Invincible Prince, since I entered the great city of Tenochtitlan, . . . it seemed to me, given what I had seen of the country, that it would serve your sovereign interests and our safety if [Moctezuma] were in my power, and not wholly at liberty, so that he not waver in his determination and intention to serve Your Highness. It seemed especially opportune in that we Spaniards are somewhat hasty and irascible, such that our annoying him could cause much damage, given his great power, and erase all memory of our existence. Moreover, if I held him, all the other domains subject to him would come more quickly into the knowledge and service of Your Majesty. . . . I decided, therefore, to take him and hold him in my own residence, which was well fortified. . . .

380

Chapter 12. Other Places

Cortés convinces Moctezuma to accept confinement under most generous conditions. I implored him fervently not to feel slighted by this arrangement, because he would not be held as a captive, but would retain full liberty, and he could exercise his sovereignty in his domains without any impediment. He could choose whatever room he wished in my residence, where he would live there as he wished, in the certainty that he would not be in any way annoyed or discomfited by my staff, which in addition to the ministrations of his own servants would be ready to obey his commands. Beyond this, many assurances and explanations were discussed that would be tedious to note here, . . . and of little importance. I will say no more than that, in the end, he agreed to go with me, and gave the order that the room he chose should be made ready, which was furnished and properly prepared. . . . And so all was quiet as before and continued to be so all the time that I held Moctezuma captive, because he was much at his ease . . . and I and those of my company did everything to accommodate him as much as we possibly could. . . . While holding Moctezuma in velvet captivity, Cortés informed himself about the mineral and agricultural resources and the waters and harbors of the Aztec dominions, and kept order in the face of rebellions. On his urging, Moctezuma summoned an assembly of his lords and vassals to announce the transfer of his authority to the king of Spain. “My brothers and friends, you know that for a long time you and your ancestors have been the subjects and vassals of me and my ancestors, and you have always been well-treated and respected by them and by me. . . .” Moctezuma now reprises the narrative given in his earlier speech: that the Aztecs had been led to this land by a great lord who had left, and would one day return to rightly rule over them. The time had now come to transfer his own authority to Cortés, as representative of the descendant of that lord, the king of Spain. “Since our predecessors did not perform their obligations to their lord, we now must do so, and give thanks to our gods that in our time he has come who has been so long awaited. I urge you now, since all this is known to you, that as in the past you have recognized and obeyed as your lord, you must from this moment recognize and obey this great king, since he is your rightful lord, and as his legate, this captain. And all the tribute and service that up until now you owed to me, you now owe and must give to him, as I myself will offer and convey to him whatever he commands. In doing this you will be performing the duty you owe and are obliged to do, and in doing so you will give me much pleasure.”

2. Hernán Cortés, Second Letter of Relation

381

All this he said while weeping with tears and sighs as great as any man could weep, and so also wept all the assembled lords that for a long time they could make no response. And I can bear witness to Your Majesty that there was not one among the Spaniards who heard him speak who did not pity him greatly. . . . Cortés pauses in his narration of events to describe the city of Tenochtitlan. Most mighty Prince, to give an account to Your Royal Excellency of the grandeur of this great city of Tenochtitlan, of its rare and marvelous wonders, of the dominions and possessions of Moctezuma, its sovereign, of the rites and customs practiced by its people, and of its manner of governance . . . , would require much time, and more numerous and more expert narrators. I shall scarcely be able to tell you one-hundredth of all that could be told, but as best I can, I shall tell you a little of what I have seen. . . . But Your Majesty may be certain that if my account errs in any way, it is because I have said too little and not too much, since not only in this report but in all those I give to Your Highness, it has seemed right to me to tell my Lord and Sovereign the exact truth, without interposing anything that would diminish or inflate it. . . . Tenochtitlan is located in a valley in which lie two lakes, one salt and one fresh, amid which the city stands, reached by four causeways and navigated by canoes. The city is as large as Seville or Córdoba.19 . . . It has many public squares where markets operate continuously. . . . In one such square, twice the size of the main square of Salamanca,20 surrounded by porticoes, at least sixty thousand people come each day to buy and sell; here are found all the kinds of merchandise produced anywhere, including such necessities as victuals, objects of gold and silver, lead, brass, copper, tin, stone, bones, shells, and feathers. . . . In one street they sell game, and all types of birds . . . ; in another there are sellers of herbs . . . and apothecary shops . . . and barber shops where they wash and cut hair. . . . There are sold all kinds of vegetables . . . and fruits of all sorts, including cherries and plums like those in Spain. . . . They sell honey and wax from bees, and a syrup made from corn canes, which is as sweet and sticky as that made from sugar. . . . They sell different sorts of cotton thread in all colors, much like the silk market in Granada,21 although this one is much larger. They sell as many different colors of paint as are available in Spain, of a quality as excellent as there can be. . . . They sell 19. Seville and Córdoba: two important cities of southern Spain. 20. Salamanca: located in Castile in northern Spain, was a major university center. 21. Granada: a southern city-state, which had been an independent kingdom under Islamic rule for nearly eight centuries, was reclaimed for the Christian domain only in 1492, its acquisition marking the completion of the Spanish Reconquista (Reconquest).

382

Chapter 12. Other Places

ground corn and corn bread . . . [and] pies made of birds and fish . . . and an abundance of fish, both fresh and salted, raw and cooked. . . . Cortés now describes the Aztec temples and form of worship. The city has many temples22 or houses for idols, very beautiful buildings situated throughout the city and surroundings. . . . No human language can describe the grandeur and splendor of the foremost of these temples; for it is so large that within the circuit of its high walls there is room for a town of five hundred households. . . . It has some forty towers, very tall and wellbuilt, the largest having fifty stairs from bottom to top; the main tower is taller than that of the largest church in Seville. . . . Within this huge temple are three halls where stand the principal idols, of amazing height and breadth, on which many elaborate patterns are carved, both in stone and in wood. . . . I tore these idols . . . from their pedestals and hurled them down the steps of the temple, and purified the chapels where they had stood, because they were all polluted by the blood of the human victims that had been sacrificed there. I placed there instead images of Our Lady [the Virgin Mary] and of other saints, which greatly saddened Moc­ tezuma and the natives, who had asked me not to do it, because if it were known in the villages, they would rise up against me; for the people believed that those idols provided them with all earthly goods, and if they were mistreated, they would be angry and give them nothing, and deny them the fruits of the earth, and the people would die of famine. I explained to them through the interpreters that they were deceived in placing their hope in these idols, which had been made by human hands from impure matter, and that they should know that there was only one God, the universal Lord of all people, who had created both heaven and earth and all things, and had made both them and us, who existed from all time and would live eternally, and that they must worship him and believe in him, and no other creature or thing whatsoever. . . . Moctezuma and many of the leading citizens stayed with me until the idols were dismantled and the chapels purified and the sacred images put in place, and all seemed well. I forbade them to sacrifice human beings to the idols, as they had customarily done, for besides being abhorrent to God, Your Sacred Majesty’s laws prohibited it, ordaining that he who killed another should himself be killed. And so from that time forward they abandoned the practice, and in all the time that I lived in that city never did I see a human being slaughtered for sacrifice. . . . 22. temples: the word used is mezquita, or “mosque,” a kind of building familiar to Cortés from the many mosques in Spain, much of which had been under Islamic rule for many centuries; but as the interpolation of Islam in the discussion of native American culture is distracting, “temple” has been preferred.

3. Garcilaso de la Vega “the Inca,” Royal Commentaries of the Incas

383

After describing the city’s houses, aqueducts, and waterways, and Moctezuma’s magnificence and court rituals, Cortés pauses to comment on his stay in Tenochtitlan to that point. In this great city I have seen to those things by which I could best serve Your Sacred Majesty, by pacifying and controlling many provinces, and lands settled with many very great cities, towns, and fortresses; by discovering mines; and by inquiring into and learning about the many secrets of Moc­ tezuma’s dominions, as well as of neighboring lands of which he had knowledge—which are so many and so wondrous that they are almost incredible. And all this I did with the full consent and acquiescence of Moctezuma and of all the natives of these lands, as though they had always recognized Your Sacred Majesty as their king and rightful lord; and with no less willingness have they done all that I commanded in your royal name. In these matters, and in others no less useful to the interests of Your Highness, I have been occupied since the eighth of November, 1519, until the beginning of the month of May of the present year [1520].

$$$ 3. Garcilaso de la Vega “the Inca,” Royal Commentaries of the Incas (1609, 1616–1617) Garcilaso de la Vega, the son of a Spanish conquistador and an Inca princess, conveys in elevated Spanish prose the account of the preconquest Incan past that he had learned from stories heard from his kinsmen when he was still a child, and living in his mother’s house. He depicts native life prior to the advent of civilization; the institution of a benevolent and just system of laws by the son and daughter of the Sun, the Inca god; the establishment of an economy based on agriculture, which required the gendered performance of labor tasks; and the religious rites and beliefs of his ancestors. The excerpts presented here from the first volume of the Royal Commentaries record, first, a conversation of the child Garcilaso with an elder kinsman recalling the origins of Inca civilization; and second, the mature author’s first person statement about his purpose and method in writing.

Royal Commentaries of the Incas The origin of the Inca kings of Peru After having prepared many schemes and taken many ways to begin to give an account of the origin and establishment of the native Inca kings of Peru,

384

Chapter 12. Other Places

it seemed to me that the best scheme and simplest and easiest way was to recount what I often heard as a child from the lips of my mother and her brothers and uncles and other elders about these beginnings. For everything said about them from other sources comes down to the same story as we shall relate, and it will be better to have it as told in the very words of the Incas than in those of foreign authors. My mother dwelt in Cusco,23 where she was born, and was visited there every week by the few relatives, both male and female, who escaped the cruelty and tyranny of Atahuallpa.24 . . . On these visits the ordinary subject of conversation was always the origin of the Inca kings, their greatness, the grandeur of their empire, their deeds and conquests, their government in peace and war, and the laws they ordained. . . . In short, there was nothing concerning the most flourishing period of their history that they did not bring up in their conversations. From the greatness and prosperity of the past they turned to the present, mourning their dead kings, their lost empire, and their fallen state, . . . and on recalling their departed happiness, they always ended these conversations with tears and mourning, saying: “Our rule is turned to bondage,” et cetera. During these talks, I, as a boy, often came in and went out of the place where they were, and I loved to hear them, as boys always do like to hear stories. Days, months, and years went by, until I was sixteen or seventeen. Then it happened that one day when my family was talking in this fashion about their kings and the olden times, I remarked to the senior of them, who usually related these things: “Inca, my uncle, though you have no writings to preserve the memory of past events, what information have you of the origin and beginnings of our kings? For the Spaniards and the other peoples who live on their borders have divine and human histories from which they know when their own kings and their neighbors’ kings began to reign and when one empire gave way to another. They even know how many thousand years it is since God created heaven and earth. All this and much more they know through their books. But you, who have no books, what memory have you preserved of your antiquity? Who was the first of our Incas? What was he called? What was the origin of his line? How did he begin to reign? With what men and arms did he conquer this great empire? How did our heroic deeds begin?” The Inca was delighted to hear these questions, since it gave him great pleasure to reply to them, and turned to me . . . saying: “Nephew, I will tell you these things with pleasure: indeed, it is right that you should hear them and keep them in your heart. . . . You should 23. Cusco: city in Peru, formerly the capital of the Inca Empire. 24. Atahuallpa: last ruler of the Inca Empire (c. 1502–1533), his reign ended by the Spanish conquest in 1532.

3. Garcilaso de la Vega “the Inca,” Royal Commentaries of the Incas

385

know that in olden times the whole of this region before you was covered with brush and heath, and people lived in those times like wild beasts, with no religion or government and no towns or houses, and without tilling or sowing the soil, or clothing or covering their flesh, for they did not know how to weave cotton or wool to make clothes. They lived in twos and threes as chance brought them together in caves and crannies in rocks and underground caverns. Like wild beasts they ate the herbs of the field and roots of trees and fruits growing wild and also human flesh. . . . In short, they lived like deer or other game, and even in their intercourse with women they behaved like beasts, for they knew nothing of having separate wives.” I must remark, in order to avoid many repetitions of the words “our father the Sun,” that the phrase was used by the Incas to express respect whenever they mentioned the sun, for they boasted of descending from it, and none but Incas were allowed to utter the words: it would have been blasphemy and the speaker would have been stoned. The Inca said: “Our father the Sun, seeing men in the state I have mentioned, took pity and was sorry for them, and sent from heaven to earth a son and a daughter of his to indoctrinate them in the knowledge of our father the Sun that they might worship him and adopt him as their god, and to give them precepts and laws by which they would live as reasonable and civilized men, and dwell in houses and settled towns, and learn to till the soil, and grow plants and crops, and breed flocks, and use the fruits of the earth like rational beings and not like beasts. . . . “Finally he told them: ‘When you have reduced these people to our service, you shall maintain them in reason and justice, showing mercy, clemency, and mildness, and always treating them as a merciful father treats his beloved and tender children. Imitate my example in this. I do good to all the world. I give them my light and brightness that they may see and go about their business; I warm them when they are cold; and I grow their pastures and crops, and bring fruit to their trees, and multiply their flocks. I bring rain and calm weather in turn, and I take care to go round the world once a day to observe the wants that exist in the world and to fill and supply them as the sustainer and benefactor of men. I wish you as children of mine to follow this example sent down to earth to teach and benefit those men who live like beasts. And henceforward I establish and nominate you as king and lords over all the people you may thus instruct with your reason, government, and good works.’ “When our father the Sun had thus made manifest his will to his two children he bade them farewell. They . . . reached a small inn or resthouse seven or eight leagues south of this city . . . [and] reached the valley of Cusco, which was then a wilderness. . . .

386

Chapter 12. Other Places

“Then our Inca said to his wife: ‘Our father the Sun bids us remain in this valley and make it our dwelling place and home in fulfillment of his will. It is therefore right, queen and sister,25 that each of us should go out and call together these people so as to instruct them and benefit them as our father the Sun has ordained.’ Our first rulers set out from the hill of Huanacauri, each in a different direction, to call the people together. . . . The prince went northwards, and the princess south. They spoke to all the men and women they found in that wilderness and said that their father the Sun had sent them from the sky to be teachers and benefactors to the dwellers in all that land, delivering them from the wild lives they led and in obedience to the commands given by the Sun, their father, . . . bringing them to dwell in settled valleys and giving them the food of men instead of that of beasts to eat. Our king and queen said these and similar things to the first savages they found in those mountains and heaths, and as the savages beheld two persons clad and adorned with the ornaments our father the Sun had given them . . . and saw that their words and countenances showed them to be children of the Sun, and that they came to mankind to give them towns to dwell in and food to eat, they wondered at what they saw and were at the same time attracted by the promises that were held out to them. Thus they fully credited all they were told and worshipped and venerated the strangers as children of the Sun and obeyed them as kings. . . . “When our princes saw the great crowd that had formed there, they ordered that some should set about supplying open-air meals for them all, so that they should not be driven by hunger to diperse again across the heaths. Others were ordered to work on building huts and houses according to plans made by the Inca. Thus our imperial city began to be settled. . . . “At the same time, in peopling the city, our Inca showed the male Indians which tasks were proper to men: breaking and tilling the land, sowing crops, seeds, and vegetables . . . , and for which purpose he taught them how to make ploughs and other necessary instruments, and . . . showed them how to draw irrigation channels from the streams that run through the valley of Cusco, and even showed them how to make the footwear we use. On her side the queen trained the Indian women in all the feminine occupations; spinning and weaving cotton and wool, and making clothes for themselves and their husbands and children. . . . In short, there was nothing related to human life that our princes failed to teach their first vassals, the Inca king acting as master for the men and the Coya,26 queen, mistress of the women. . . .”

25. As the Egyptian pharaohs often did, Inca rulers married their sisters. 26. coya: title of the Inca queen.

3. Garcilaso de la Vega “the Inca,” Royal Commentaries of the Incas

387

Garcilaso’s declaration of his own history I was brought up among these Indians, and as I frequented their society until I was twenty I was able to learn during that time something of all the subjects I am writing about, for in my childhood they used to recount their histories, just as stories are told for children. Later, as I grew up, they talked to me at length about their laws and government, and compared the new rule of the Spaniards with that of the Incas . . . . They told me how their kings acted in peace and war, in what manner they treated their vassals, and how their vassals served them. Moreover, they told me, as if I were their own son, all about their idolatry, their rites, ceremonies, and sacrifices, the greater and lesser festivals, and how they were celebrated. They told me their superstitions and abuses, good and evil auspices, including those they discerned in sacrifices and others. In short, I would say that they told me about everything they had in their state; and if I had written it down at this time, this history would have been more copious. Apart from what the Indians told me, I experienced and saw with my own eyes a great deal of their idolatry, festivals, and superstitions, which had still not altogether disappeared in my own time, when I was twelve or thirteen. I was born eight years after the Spanish conquered my country, and as I have said, was brought up there till I was twenty: thus I saw many of the things the Indians did in the time of their paganism and shall relate them and say that I saw them. I have also listened to many accounts of the deeds and conquests of those kings in addition to what my relatives told me and what I myself say, for as soon as I resolved to write this history, I wrote to my old schoolmates at my primary school and grammar school, and urged each of them to help me with accounts they might have of the particular conquests the Incas made in the provinces their mothers came from, for each province has its account and knots27 to record its annals and traditions, and thus preserves its own history much better than that of its neighbors. My schoolfellows earnestly complied with my request, and each reported my intention to his mother and relatives, and they, on hearing that an Indian, a son of their own country, intended to write its history, brought from their archives the records they had of their histories and sent me them. . . .

$$$

27. knots: the Incan quipus, knotted cords used as memory devices.

388

Chapter 12. Other Places

4. Saint Francis Xavier, Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues (1552) The selections given here are from the long letter Xavier writes to his European colleagues detailing his Japanese venture from August 1549 to November 1551, by which the first Christian communities were established in that distant land whose existence had only recently become known to Portuguese mariners. Accompanied by three Japanese converts, Xavier landed at the port of Kagoshima at the southern tip of Japan. He later moved on to, among other destinations, Yamaguchi on the southwestern coast, and Bungo on the southernmost island of Kyushu. At Kagoshima, Xavier first encountered the congeries of Buddhist sects whose beliefs and practices he needed to engage if his program of Christianization was to be successful. Various groups of professional religious, called “bonzes,” managed these sects, and commanded the respect of the natives. The bonzes performed sacrificial penances for the laity, who acquired from them a kind of certificate, to be buried with them, which would allow their escape from hell. The hell they fear is not eternal, Xavier reports, and heaven does not exist; nor does there exist any notion of the divine creation of the universe, or of individual, immortal souls. It is these points of difference that Xavier and his colleagues stressed to the Japanese they hoped to convert. To reach this audience, Xavier and his associates learned Japanese, which took about a year, and then constructed a primer of Christian theology written in the Japanese language, but using the European alphabet. This primer then became the principal tool of their mission: they read from it aloud, expanding upon the concepts contained there, and inviting questions from the listeners, while challenging the precepts of the bonzes, exposing what they see as the failures of the Japanese sects to respond to profound religious issues. Xavier and his companions were convinced that sufficient argument, grounded in evidence and calling on the rational faculties, would lead to acceptance of what they called the “Law of God,” and Christian conversion. At the end of the letter, written on his return to India in early 1552, Xavier exhorts his fellow Jesuits to go to Japan to nurture the newly planted Christian communities. Christianity did indeed make inroads in Japan, until its harsh suppression by the Tokugawa shogunate in the following century, when it became a prohibited religion.

Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues May the grace of the Holy Spirit rest always in our souls. Amen. On August 20, 1549, in peace and good health, we landed in Japan at the city of Kagoshima, the homeland of the Japanese natives who had come with us. The people of the land received us with kindness, especially the

4. Saint Francis Xavier, Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues

389

relatives of Paul, the Japanese to whom our Lord God wished to bring the knowledge of the truth, and so about a hundred of them became Christians during the time we stayed in Kagoshima. These pagans were delighted to hear the Law of God, about which they had never heard or known. The land of Japan is exceedingly large, and consists of islands. Only one language is spoken throughout the land, and it is not very difficult to understand. The Portuguese discovered these islands eight or nine years ago. The Japanese people have a very high opinion of themselves, believing that none can rival them in arms and chivalry, and they have little regard for foreigners. They delight in arms, which they hold in high esteem, and prize nothing so much as fine weapons studded with gold and silver. They carry swords and daggers constantly, both indoors and out of doors, and when they go to sleep, they keep them by their pillows. . . . They behave courteously among themselves, but do not extend those courtesies to foreigners, whom they despise. They spend all they have on clothing, weapons, and servants, putting no wealth aside. They are bellicose and always waging wars, and whoever is strongest gets to rule over the others. They have only one king, but it is 150 years since they have shown him any obedience;28 and this is why they are constantly at war among themselves. The land has a large number of men and women who make profession of religion, of whom the men are called bonzes.29 There are many kinds of bonzes: some who wear gray habits and some who wear black habits; and there is little friendship between them, those with black habits despising those with gray habits, saying they are ignorant and immoral. Among the women there are also bonzes with gray habits and others with black, and each shows obedience to the male bonzes who wear the same color habit. Japan has a great number of these male and female bonzes, which has to be seen to be believed. . . . The teachings of the sects come from a mainland which lies near Japan, called China. . . . There are nine distinct creeds, and both men and women, each according to his preference, holds to the teaching he desires, and no one is compelled to belong to this sect or the other, in such a way that there are households where the husband adheres to one sect, and the wife to another, and the children to another; and this is not considered strange among them, for each one follows his own will. Differences and controversies arise among them about which sect is better, and often these lead to wars. None of these nine sects address the creation of the world or of souls. All say that there is a hell and a heaven, without declaring what heaven is, 28. Since 1338, that is, the beginning of the Ashikaga shogunate. 29. bonzes: Buddhist monks of various sects.

390

Chapter 12. Other Places

nor explaining by whose law or decree some souls are sent to hell. These sects only teach that the men who founded them performed great penances—that is, of a thousand or two thousand or three thousand years—and that they performed these penances for the many souls who were damned because they never performed any penance for their sins. . . . I shall now tell you what happened to us in Japan. We had first come to Paul’s native city of Kagoshima, as I have said, where as a result of the many sermons which Paul preached to his kinsfolk, he won over nearly one hundred Christians; and he would have won over nearly all of them, if the local priests had not stood in the way. Here we stayed for more than a year. Meanwhile the bonzes told the ruler of this land, who had extensive holdings, that if he permitted his vassals to accept the Law of God, he would lose his lands, and his pagodas would be destroyed and sacked by the people, because the Law of God was contrary to the native creeds, and those who accepted the Law of God would lose their earlier faith in the saints who had founded them. In the end these bonzes persuaded the duke of the land to decree that, on pain of death, no one should become a Christian; and so he decreed that no one should accept the Law of God. During the year we stayed in Paul’s city, we busied ourselves in teaching the Christians, learning the language, and translating much of the Law of God into the Japanese language. We began with a brief presentation of the creation of the world, explaining what was essential for them to know, that there was one creator of all things, about which they had absolutely no knowledge, and also other necessary things. Then we came to the incarnation of Christ, and told the story of the life of Christ and all its mysteries up through the ascension, concluding with the day of judgment. This book, then, on which we labored much, we wrote down in the Japanese language but using our alphabet. We read it to those who had become Christians to teach them how they must worship God and Jesus Christ in order to be saved. The Christians rejoiced greatly to hear these things, and also those who were not Christians, for it seemed to them to be the truth, since the Japanese are highly intelligent and clear-thinking. If they failed to become Christians, it was from fear of the duke, and not because they did not understand that the Law of God was true and their own ways false. At the end of this year, seeing that the duke of the land was displeased that the Law of God was spreading, we set out for another land. We took leave of those who had become Christian, who wept to see us go since they felt great love for us, and thanked us greatly for all we had done to teach them how to gain salvation. I left Paul with these Christians, a native of the land and a good Christian, to teach and guide them. From there we went to another land, whose lord received us warmly, and when we had been there a few days about one hundred people became

4. Saint Francis Xavier, Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues

391

Christians. By this time one of us knew how to speak Japanese, and reading from the book, which we had translated into the Japanese language, and by other teaching, many became Christians. In this place I left Father Cosmo de Torres with the new converts. Juan Fernandez and I went to Yamaguchi, a land ruled by a great Japanese lord. It is a city of more than ten million inhabitants, with houses all made of wood. Here were many nobles and also others who greatly desired to know what creed it was that we preached. So we determined to preach in the streets twice each day for several days, reading from the book that we had brought, and commenting on what we read. Many people listened to our preaching, and we were called to the houses of the great nobles so that they could ask us about the creed that we preached, and they told us that if it was better than their creed, they would accept it. Many showed their delight in hearing the Law of God; others scoffed, and still others pondered it. . . . In this city of Yamaguchi, in the space of two months, after many questions were asked and answered, five hundred persons, more or less, were baptized, and by the grace of God, some were baptized each day. Many revealed to us the schemes of the bonzes and their sects; if it were not for them, we would have learned nothing about the idolatry of the Japanese. Those who became Christians love us with a heartfelt love, and believe me, they are Christians in truth. . . . After two and a half years, Xavier returns to India, the base from which the Jesuits pursued their missionary work in Asia. Having left Yamaguchi for Bungo, I decided to sail on a Portuguese ship to India to meet with and be consoled by the Brothers in India, and to recruit Jesuit priests suited for Japan, and also to gather in India some necessary supplies that are lacking in Japan. I arrived in Cochin30 on January 24, 1552, and was warmly received by the Viceroy. This April, priests will go from India to Japan, and the envoy of the Duke of Bungo will return in their company. I hope in the Lord God that they will bear much fruit in those regions; for among a people so prudent and intelligent, eager for knowledge, obedient to reason, and capable in every way, they cannot fail to bear much fruit. May our labors achieve their end, and may they last forever. Because I landed in Cochin at a time when the ships are preparing to sail, and I have been occupied by so many visits from my friends, which interrupted my writing, this letter has been written in much haste, its points not put in order, and the narrative faulty. Accept it for its good intentions. There is so much to write about Japan that the task is endless. I fear that what I have 30. Cochin: now Kochi, on the southwestern coast of India.

392

Chapter 12. Other Places

written will annoy you, as there is so much to read. I console myself that those who find it tedious to read may ease their discomfort by setting it down. With this I shall close, without being able to do so, since I write to my loved and cherished fellow priests and brothers, and about such dear friends as are the Christians of Japan. And so I close by asking our Lord God to reunite us all in the glory of paradise. Amen. Cochin, January 29, 1552

$$$ 5. Luís de Camões, The Lusiads (1572) In the final canto of Camões’s epic Lusiads, excerpts from which follow, the sea goddess Tethys, who has lured the explorer Vasco da Gama and his men to an island paradise, reveals to the hero the full future expanse of the Portuguese empire to which his explorations have vitally contributed. She begins by presenting the framework of the cosmos, reviewing the main features of the Ptolemaic model, which by the time Camões was writing, had already been challenged by Copernicus. Then focusing on Earth at the center of that cosmos, she shows him the lands where Portugal would exercise dominion: from the Cape of Good Hope, which da Gama was the first European to traverse; up the east coast of Africa to Egypt; across the Red Sea to Arabia and the Persian Gulf to Iran; on to India, the Indochinese peninsula, China, and Japan; southward again to the islands of Oceania; back, via Sri Lanka, to Madagascar, off the African coast; and finally looking westward to Brazil. This guided tour of the future Portuguese empire completed, Tethys bids farewell to her guests and sends them on their way to their homeland, to inform their king of the new lands to which he, through their efforts, now holds title. From his own travels, Camões knew many of the sites Tethys describes from her mountaintop perch. To the narrative of his personal experience, he added what he had learned from the reports of other Portuguese mariners, and supplied further details drawn from the ancient geographers Strabo and Pomponius Mela. With these materials, the poet weaves together his own past with Portugal’s, in a grand epic celebration of empire.

The Lusiads Tethys speaks to da Gama: [76] . . . “Follow me, you and the others, with bold and forceful step, but cautiously, up this forested path.” So she spoke, and led him through a dense wilderness, steep and perilous for mere humans to traverse.

5. Luís de Camões, The Lusiads

393

[77] Soon they reached a lofty peak, surrounded by a meadow which sparkled so with emeralds and rubies that it seemed to declare the ground they walked on was divine. Here they beheld a globe, floating in the air, penetrated by a light so brilliantly clear that its center was as visible as its circumference. [78] . . . Every part of it, as contrived by a divine hand, its beginning and its end, [79] was uniform, perfect, and sufficient to itself, like the Archetype, God himself, who had created it. Struck with marvel and delight, da Gama stood and gazed upon it, deeply moved. Then the goddess said: “Here before your eyes is an image, in miniature, of the cosmos, in which you may see where you now stand, and where you will go, and what it is that you desire. [80] You see here the great machine of the universe, ethereal and elemental, as it was fashioned by the wisdom of God, high and profound, who is at once the beginning and the final end of all things. God is he who encircles and encloses this round and sparkling globe; but what he is, no one knows, for to such knowledge the human mind cannot extend. . . .” After laying out the whole plan of the Ptolemaic cosmos, describing the spheres of fixed stars and the known planets, Tethys comes to Earth. [91] “This central sphere is the home of men, who not content to suffer only the perils met on solid ground, boldly venture out on the shifting waters. Those wild seas divide the world into various regions, as you see, inhabited by different peoples and ruled by different kings, with different customs and different laws. [92] This one is Christian Europe, grander and finer than the others for its governance and might. That one is Africa, greedy for the goods of this world, uncivilized and savage, with its promontory, the Cape of Good Hope,31 looming at its southernmost point, that until now had been denied you. Observe this vast land, nearly infinite, inhabited by a people who know not the Law of God. [93] “Here is the great empire of Mwenemutapa,32 with its wild people, naked and black. . . . From this unknown portion of the earth comes gold, the metal most sought-after by men. There is the lake from which the Nile flows, and at the same time, the Zambezi;33 [94] and there the huts of the Negroes, which have no doors, for they trust as they lie abed in the protection of the king’s justice, and their neighbors’ good will. . . .

31. Cape of Good Hope: named by da Gama, the first European to navigate around it, in 1497. 32. Mwenemutapa: a southern African Shona state, corresponding roughly to modern Zimbabwe and Mozambique. 33. Nile . . . Zambezi: Camões errs; these two rivers do not originate from the same lake.

394

Chapter 12. Other Places

[95] “See there how the Nile originates from lakes unknown to the ancients; teeming with crocodiles, it waters the land of Abyssinia, faithful to Christ,34 whose inhabitants, uniquely, without fortifications, defend themselves all the better against their enemies. There is the once-famous island of Meroë,35 now called Noba by the natives. . . . [97] There is the cape once called Aromatic by the natives and now Guardafui,36 from where begins the passage to the mouth of the famous Red Sea, which takes its color from the bed beneath. This body of water marks the boundary between Africa and Asia. . . . [100] “Here are the three Arabias,37 a wide expanse peopled by oliveskinned nomads, where thoroughbred war-horses are raised, fleet-footed and high-spirited. . . . [102] See there Cape Asaborus, which our mariners now call Musandum,38 the entrance to the Persian Gulf which nourishes Arabia on one coast and Persia39 on the other. There is the island of Bahrein,40 where the ocean floor is adorned with rich pearls, the color of the dawn; and there the Tigris and Euphrates rivers together enter the salt water of the Gulf. [103] Beyond is Persia, a great and noble empire, always at war and on horseback . . . .” Pointing out the Strait of Hormuz which leads from the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, Tethys’s gaze continues eastward toward India, which da Gama had first opened for Portugal. [105] . . . “See there the lovely Indus, which rises in those mountains, and joined to it, but flowing from another mountaintop, the Ganges.41 [106] Here is the Sind, a most fertile land, and . . . Cambray, most fruitful, . . . and a thousand other cities, which I shall pass by, now held by you Portuguese. [107] . . . All along this coast, the Portuguese will come in force and, victorious, seize lands and cities, and live there for ages to come. . . .” Tethys describes the Indian kingdoms of Narsinga (with a long digression on the life of Saint Thomas, the supposed apostle of India) and Orissa, as they were 34. Ethiopia, Christian since antiquity. 35. Meroë: a conflation of the city Meroë, capital of the ancient kingdom of Kush, and the nearby island of Meroë, surrounded by branches of the Nile, both in modern Butana, Sudan. 36. Guardafui: at the apex of the Horn of Africa, on the Gulf of Aden. 37. three Arabias: The “stony,” the “desert,” and the “blest,” as they were then construed. 38. Musandum: a peninsula jutting into the Persian Gulf, in modern Oman. 39. Persia: modern Iran. 40. Bahrein: there is one main island, but Bahrein is actually an archipelago made up of many. 41. A description of the Indo-Gangetic river system, which spans from Pakistan across northern India.

5. Luís de Camões, The Lusiads

395

known to the Portuguese, and the Burmese kindoms of Arakan and Pegu. She then proceeds southward through the Indochinese peninsula. [123] “Now behold the city of Tavoy,42 the portal to the great and sprawling empire of Siam.43. . . Farther on lies Malacca, that you Portuguese will make the noble emporium for all the wealth and merchandise that flows among the regions bordering these seas. [124] Powerful ocean waves, they say, invaded the mainland and cut off from it this noble island of Sumatra.44 . . .[125] And there, where the land comes to a point, lies Singapore, where ships must pass through waters narrowed to a strait.45 . . . [126] And here you see an immense land, studded with the diverse names of a thousand nations of which you’ve never heard. This one is Laos, mighty in extent and in peoples. . . . [127] Here is Cambodia, through which the Mekong River runs, the “prince of rivers.” Even in summer, its tributaries feed it so that it overflows and overcomes the expansive fields, flooding them as does the colder Nile. . . . [129] . . . “Here the proud empire of China, famed for its lands and wealth beyond all measure, holds sway from the burning tropics to the Arctic.46 [130] Behold the Great Wall, an edifice not to be believed, which marks the boundary between this empire and its neighbor, a demonstration and proof of its sovereign power, wealth, and worth. Its emperors are not born monarchs, nor do fathers make kings of their sons, but the people choose a ruler renowned for his nobility, wisdom, and virtue. [131] Many other regions must remain hidden from you until the time comes to reveal it all. But do not ignore these islands in the sea where nature most displays its bounty. That one, half hidden in the distance, facing China from whence it may be sought, is Japan, with its abundance of fine silver, soon to be renowned for its obedience to the Law of God. . . .”47 From China and Japan, Tethys looks south past the South China Sea—conspicuously omitting the Philippines, a Spanish possession—to Indonesia, naming the Banda islands (in the Moluccas, or Spice Islands), Borneo, Timor, Java, and Sumatra; then northwest, to Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), and the Maldives, islands located just south of the Indian subcontinent; and farther west, finally, 42. Tavoy: modern Dawei, a city on the southern coast of Myanmar (previously Burma). 43. Siam: modern Thailand. 44. Sumatra: the largest island of modern Indonesia. 45. Singapore: the island city-state at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. 46. Camões exaggerates the northern extent of China here, and below, misrepresents the process of imperial succession. 47. In the lifetime of Camões, Saint Francis Xavier had reached Japan and succeeded in converting many to Christianity (see Chapter 12, Text 4). Although Japan is no longer a major producer of silver, it was such in the sixteenth century.

396

Chapter 12. Other Places

to Madagascar, completing her tour off the African coast not far from where she had begun. [138] “These are the new parts of the Orient that you Portuguese are now bestowing upon the world, opening a road to the boundless open sea across which, with such bold hearts, you sail. But it is time also to turn to the west, to view the deed done by a different Portuguese who, aggrieved with his own king sailed for another, opening a route never before taken.48 [139] Behold this huge territory stretching from the northern to the southern pole, which will be famed for its mines glittering with Apollonian gold. Your neighbor Castile49 will have the honor of bending its rude neck to the yoke, with its many nations of different peoples, diverse in customs and beliefs. [140] “But here where the land bellies outward, you too will have your share, to be discovered by the next Portuguese fleet to sail; it will be called Santa Cruz at first, but later Brazil after its native red brazilwood. Along its coast Magellan will sail in search of its farthest point, a Portuguese venture in truth, even if Spanish in name. [141] After journeying more than half the distance from the equator to the southern pole, he will find living in the land of Patagonia men nearly the size of giants. Then farther on, he will come to the Strait that now bears his name, and pass through it to another sea and another land, embraced by Antarctica’s chill wings. [142] “Thus far, O men of Portugal, it has been conceded to you to know of the future deeds that will be done by bold explorers on the seas that are because of you no longer unknown. And now . . . [143] you may board your ships, and set off, while the sea is calm and the wind gentle, for your beloved homeland.” So she spoke; and quickly they departed that happy and blessed island . . . . [144] The sea serene, the wind always mild and never astir, they journeyed on until they caught sight of the land of their birth, for which they always longed. They entered the mouth of the lovely Tagus River, and bestowed upon their country and their king, loved and revered, the glorious prize he had sent them to win. . . .

$$$ 48. The Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, who in 1519–1521 sailed for King Charles I of Spain through the Strait of Magellan, so named after him, and across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines, where he was killed, while his shipmates completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. 49. By the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, the lands of the newly discovered American continents to the west of a meridian 370 leagues (a league measured approximately three miles) west of the Cape Verde islands, were allotted to Castile (modern Spain), and those east, including most significantly Brazil, to Portugal.

6. Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

397

6. Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World (1666) A ridiculous romance, a phantasmagoric epic, a witty utopia, The Blazing World is a feminist fantasy of indeterminate genre. In this work, an unnamed young Lady is abducted by a ship’s captain and remains the only survivor when the ship founders in an ice storm. She finds her way to an unknown island, captivates its ruler, and is made Empress. In that role she engages in scientific and literary investigations, of the sort that her creator, Margaret Cavendish, also pursued back home in England. The passages given here from the first part of the work begin with the Lady’s reception by the Emperor of the new World, who vests her with absolute power. It is followed by a description of the inhabitants of her new World, discussions of their governance (monarchical) and religion (monotheistic), and highlights of her interviews with its scientists and philosophers. In the epilogue to her work of which some excerpts are given here, Cavendish prods her readers to engage in their own imaginative projects: if they do not like “the Worlds I have made,” she taunts, they may make worlds of their own, and govern them.50

The Blazing World No sooner was the Lady brought before the Emperor, but he conceived her to be some goddess, and offered to worship her; which she refused, telling him (for by that time she had pretty well learned their language) that although she came out of another world, yet was she but a mortal. At which the Emperor, rejoicing, made her his wife, and gave her an absolute power to rule and govern all that World as she pleased. But her subjects, who could hardly be persuaded to believe her mortal, tendered her all the veneration and worship due to a deity. . . . [A]s for the ordinary sort of men in that part of the World where the Emperor resided, they were of several Complexions; not white, black, tawny, olive- or ash-colored; but some appeared of an Azure, some of a deep Purple, some of a Grass-green, some of a Scarlet, some of an Orangecolor, &c. Which Colors and Complexions, whether they were made by the bare reflection of light, without the assistance of small particles; or by the help of well-ranged and ordered Atoms; or by a continual agitation of little Globules; or by some pressing and re-acting motion, I am not able to determine. The rest of the inhabitants of that World were men of several different sorts, shapes, figures, dispositions, and humors . . . ; some were Bear-men, some Worm-men . . . ; some Bird-men, . . . some Fly-men, 50. The orthography and punctuation of the original 1668 edition is modernized and Americanized for legibility, but Cavendish’s lavish and expressive capitalization of many terms and names is largely retained.

398

Chapter 12. Other Places

some Ant-men, some Geese-men, some Spider-men, some Lice-men, some Fox-men, some Ape-men, some Jack-daw-men, some Magpie-men, some Parrot-men, . . . and many more, which I cannot all remember . . . ; and of these several sorts of men, each followed such a profession as was most proper for the nature of their species, which the Empress encouraged them in, especially those that had applied themselves to the study of several arts and sciences; for they were as ingenious and witty in the invention of profitable and useful arts as we are in our world, nay, more; and to that end she erected schools, and founded several societies. The Bear-men were to be her experimental philosophers, the Bird-men her astronomers, the Fly-Worm- and Fish-men her natural philosophers, the Ape-men her chemists, . . . the Fox-men her politicians, the Spider- and Lice-men her mathematicians, the Jackdaw- Magpie- and Parrot-men her orators and logicians, . . . etc. . . . But before all things, she having got a sovereign power from the Emperor over all the World, desired to be informed both of the manner of their religion and government; and to that end, she called the priests and statesmen, to give her an account of either. Of the statesmen she inquired, first, Why they had so few laws? To which they answered, that many laws made many divisions, which most commonly did breed factions, and at last broke out into open wars. Next she asked, why they preferred the monarchical form of government before any other? They answered, that as it was natural for one body to have but one head, so it was also natural for a political body to have but one governor; and that a commonwealth, which had many governors was like a monster with many heads. Besides, said they, a monarchy is a divine form of government, and agrees most with our religion: For as there is but one God, whom we all unanimously worship and adore with one faith; so we are resolved to have but one Emperor, to whom we all submit with one obedience. Then the Empress seeing that the several sorts of her subjects had each their churches apart, asked the priests, whether they were of several religions? They answered her Majesty, that there was no more but one religion in all that World, nor no diversity of opinions in that same religion; for though there were several sorts of men, yet had they all but one opinion concerning the worship and adoration of God. The Empress asked them, whether they were Jews, Turks, or Christians? We do not know, said they, what religions those are; but we do all unanimously acknowledge, worship and adore the only, omnipotent, and eternal God, with all reverence, submission, and duty. . . . The Empress then confers with these diverse groups of experts, whose disputes recall those among the author’s contemporaries.

6. Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World

399

The Empress . . . caused a convocation first of the Bird-men, and commanded them to give her a true relation of the two celestial bodies, that is, the sun and moon, which they did with all the obedience and faithfulness befitting their duty. The sun, as much as they could observe, they related to be a firm or solid stone, of a vast bigness; of color yellowish, and of an extraordinary splendor: But the moon, they said, was of a whitish color; and although she looked dim in the presence of the sun, yet had she her own light, and was a shining body of herself, as might be perceived by her vigorous appearance in moon-shiny-nights. . . . Concerning the heat of the sun, they were not of one opinion; some would have the sun hot in itself, [recalling] an old tradition, that it should at some time break asunder, and burn the heavens, and consume this world into hot embers. . . . Others again said, this opinion could not stand with reason; for fire being a destroyer of all things, the sun-stone after this manner would burn up all the near adjoining bodies. . . . Wielding their telescopes, another group of experts evoke memories of Galileo’s astronomical observations. [Then] the Empress. . . . to avoid hereafter tedious disputes, and have the truth of the phenomena of celestial bodies more exactly known, commanded the Bear-men, which were her experimental philosophers, to observe them through such Instruments as are called telescopes, which they did according to her majesty’s command; but these telescopes caused more differences and divisions amongst them, than ever they had before; for some said, they perceived that the sun stood still, and the earth did move about it; others were of opinion, that they both did move; and others said again, that the earth stood still, and sun did move; some counted more stars than others; some discovered new stars never seen before; . . . At last, the Empress commanded them to go with their telescopes to the very end of the pole that was joined to the world she came from, and try whether they could perceive any stars in it: which they did; and, being returned to her majesty, reported that they had seen three blazing-stars appear there, one after another in a short time, whereof two were bright, and one dim; but they could not agree neither in this observation. . . . After they had thus argued, the Empress began to grow angry at their telescopes, that they could give no better intelligence; for, said she, now I do plainly perceive, that your glasses are false informers, and instead of discovering the truth, delude your senses; wherefore I command you to break them, and let the Bird-men trust only to their natural eyes, and examine celestial objects by the motions of their own sense and reason. . . .

400

Chapter 12. Other Places

The Bear-men being exceedingly troubled at her majesty’s displeasure concerning their telescopes, knelt down, and in the humblest manner petitioned, that they might not be broken; for, said they, we take more delight in artificial delusions, than in natural truths. Besides, we shall want employments for our senses, and subjects for arguments; for, were there nothing but truth, and no falsehood, there would be no occasion to dispute, and by this means we should want the aim and pleasure of our endeavors in confuting and contradicting each other; . . . wherefore we most humbly beseech your imperial majesty to spare our glasses, which are our only delight, and as dear to us as our lives. The Empress at last consented to their request, but upon condition, that their disputes and quarrels should remain within their schools, and cause no factions or disturbances in state, or government. . . . The Empress turns to the rhetoricians and logicians—and is not pleased with the confusion they sow. After this, the Empress was resolved to hear the Magpie-Parrot- and Jackdawmen, which were her professed orators and logicians; whereupon one of the Parrot-men rose with great formality, and endeavored to make an eloquent speech before her majesty; but before he had half ended, his arguments and divisions being so many, that they caused a great confusion in his brain, he could not go forward, but was forced to retire backward, with great disgrace both to himself, and the whole society. . . . Lastly, her imperial majesty, being desirous to know what progress her logicians had made in the art of disputing, commanded them to argue upon several themes or subjects; which they did; and having made very nice discourse of logistical terms and propositions, entered into a dispute by way of syllogistical arguments, through all the figures and modes. . . . Thus they argued, and intended to go on, but the Empress interrupted them: I have enough, said she, of your chopped logic, and will hear no more of your syllogisms; for it disorders my reason, and puts my brain on the rack; . . . and I’ll have you to consider, that art does not make reason, but reason makes art; and therefore as much as reason is above art, so much is a natural rational discourse to be preferred before an artificial: for art is, for the most part irregular, and disorders men’s understandings more than it rectifies them, and leads them into a labyrinth where they’ll never get out, and makes them dull and unfit for useful employments; especially your art of logic, which consists only in contradicting each other, in making sophisms, and obscuring truth, instead of [clarifying] it. . . . After further adventures, culminating in the abolition of the schools and learned societies the Empress had originally founded, Cavendish closes with an “epilogue to the reader” in which she conflates the Lady’s role as Empress and her own as author.

7. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave

401

By this poetical description, you may perceive, that my ambition is not only to be Empress, but Authoress of a whole World; and that the Worlds I have made, . . . are framed and composed of the most pure, that is, the rational parts of matter, which are the parts of my mind; which creation was more easily and suddenly effected, than the conquests of the two famous monarchs of the world, Alexander and Caesar.51 Neither have I made such disturbances, and caused so many dissolutions of particulars, otherwise named deaths, as they did. . . . And in the formation of those Worlds, I take more delight and glory, than ever Alexander or Caesar did in conquering this terrestrial world; and though I have made my Blazing World a peaceable world, allowing it but one religion, one language, and one government; yet could I make another world, as full of factions, divisions and wars, as this is of peace and tranquility. . . . [A]nd if any should like the World I have made, and be willing to be my subjects, they may imagine themselves such, and they are such, I mean in their minds, fantasies, or imaginations; but if they cannot endure to be subjects, they may create worlds of their own, and govern themselves as they please. . . .

$$$ 7. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave (1688) The excerpts from Oroonoko given here are glimpses taken from a much longer work of extraordinary range and complexity. They include the narrator’s opening with its offer of plain truth; the hero’s capture and shipment to South America; the tragic murder of Imoinda/Clemene by the hand of her lover Oroonoko/Caesar; and the gruesome execution of the latter, an African and a slave, the culmination and central claim of the narrative delivered in five stark monosyllables: “Thus died this great man.”

Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave I do not pretend, in giving you the history of this Royal Slave, to entertain my reader with adventures of a feigned hero, . . . nor in relating the truth, design to adorn it with any accidents but such as arrived in earnest to him: 51. Cavendish names two great conquerors of the ancient world: Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE), Macedonian conqueror of much of the eastern Mediterranean world, and Julius Caesar (100–44 BCE), who conquered Gaul (modern France) for Rome and subsequently became dictator of the Roman Republic.

402

Chapter 12. Other Places

and it shall come simply into the world, recommended by its own proper merits and natural intrigues; there being enough of reality to support it, and to render it diverting, without the addition of invention. I was myself an eyewitness to a great part of what you will find here set down; and what I could not be witness of, I received from the mouth of the chief actor in this history, the hero himself, who gave us the whole transaction of his youth. . . . Following the story of Oroonoko and Imoinda in Africa, Oroonoko is captured and transshipped to Surinam. Possessed with a thousand thoughts of past joys with this fair young person, and a thousand griefs for her eternal loss, [Oroonoko] endured a tedious voyage, and at last arrived at the mouth of the river of Surinam, a colony belonging to the King of England, and where they were to deliver some part of their slaves. . . . Oroonoko was first seized on, and sold to our overseer. . . . When he saw this, he found what they meant; for, as I said, he understood English pretty well; and being wholly unarmed and defenseless, so as it was in vain to make any resistance, he only beheld the captain with a look all fierce and disdainful. . . . So he nimbly leaped into the boat, and showing no more concern, suffered himself to be rowed up the river, with his seventeen companions. Oroonoko’s life as slave Caesar; reunion with Imoinda: It was thus for some time we diverted him; but now Imoinda began to show she was with child, and did nothing but sigh and weep for the captivity of her lord, herself, and the infant yet unborn; and believed, if it were so hard to gain the liberty of two, it would be more difficult to get that for three. Her griefs were so many darts in the great heart of Caesar, and taking his opportunity, one Sunday, when all the whites were overtaken in drink . . . , he . . . [gathered] about an hundred and fifty were able to bear arms, such as they had, which were sufficient to do execution with spirits accordingly: for the English had none but rusty swords. . . . Caesar, having singled out these men from the women and children, made an harangue to them, of the miseries and ignominies of slavery; counting up all their toils and sufferings, under such loads, burdens, and drudgeries as were fitter for beasts than men; senseless brutes, than human souls. . . . “And why,” said he, “my dear friends and fellow-sufferers, should we be slaves to an unknown people? Have they vanquished us nobly in fight? Have they won us in honorable battle? And are we by the chance of war become their slaves? . . . [N]o, but we are bought and sold like apes or monkeys, to be the sport of women, fools, and cowards; . . . And shall we

7. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave

403

render obedience to such a degenerate race . . . ? Will you, I say, suffer the lash from such hands?” They all replied with one accord, “No, no, no; Caesar has spoken like a great captain, like a great king.” . . . To this Caesar replied that honor was the first principle in Nature, that was to be obeyed; . . . To which they all agreed—and bowed. After this, he spoke of the impassable woods and rivers; and convinced them, the more danger the more glory. . . . He said they would travel towards the sea, plant a new colony, and defend it by their valor; and . . . at least they should be made free in his kingdom, and be esteemed as his fellow-sufferers, and men that had the courage and the bravery to attempt, at least, for liberty; and if they died in the attempt, it would be more brave than to live in perpetual slavery. They bowed and kissed his feet at this resolution, and with one accord vowed to follow him to death; and that night was appointed to begin their march. . . . Failure of the slave rebellion; Caesar makes a deal with Tuscan, but both are captured. But they were no sooner arrived at the place where all the slaves receive their punishments of whipping but they laid hands on Caesar and Tuscan, faint with heat and toil; and surprising them, bound them to two several stakes, and whipped them in a most deplorable and inhuman manner, rending the very flesh from their bones, especially Caesar, who was not perceived to make any moan, or to alter his face, only to roll his eyes on the faithless Governor, and those he believed guilty, with fierceness and indignation; and to complete his rage, he saw every one of those slaves, who but a few days before adored him as something more than mortal, now had a whip to give him some lashes, while he strove not to break his fetters; though if he had, it were impossible: but he pronounced a woe and revenge from his eyes, that darted fire, which was at once both awful and terrible to behold. When they thought they were sufficiently revenged on him, they untied him, almost fainting with loss of blood, from a thousand wounds all over his body; . . . and led him bleeding and naked as he was, and loaded him all over with irons, and then rubbed his wounds, to complete their cruelty, with Indian pepper, which had like to have made him raving mad. . . . They spared Imoinda, and did not let her see this barbarity committed towards her lord, but . . . shut her up; which was not in kindness to her, but for fear she should die with the sight, or miscarry, and then they should lose a young slave, and perhaps the mother. . . . Caesar, still alive, plots his end.

404

Chapter 12. Other Places

Being able to walk, and, as he believed, fit for the execution of his great design, he begged Trefry to trust him into the air, . . . which was granted him: and taking Imoinda with him . . . , he led her up into a wood, where . . . he told her his design, first of killing her, and then his enemies, and next himself, and the impossibility of escaping, and therefore he told her the necessity of dying. He found the heroic wife faster pleading for death that he was to propose it, when she found his fixed resolution; and, on her knees, besought him not to leave her a prey to his enemies. He . . . took her up, and embracing of her with all the passion and languishment of a dying lover, drew his knife to kill this treasure of his soul. . . . All that love could say in such cases being ended, . . . the lovely, young, and adored victim lays herself down before the sacrificer; while he, with a hand resolved, and a heart breaking within, gave the fatal stroke, first cutting her throat, and then severing her yet smiling face from that delicate body. . . . As soon as he had done, he laid the body decently on leaves and flowers . . . . but when he found she was dead, and past all retrieve, . . . his grief swelled up to rage; he tore, he raved, he roared like some monster of the wood, calling on the loved name of Imoinda. A thousand times he turned the fatal knife that did the deed toward his own heart, with a resolution to go immediately after her; but dire revenge, which was now a thousand times more fierce in his soul than before, prevents him: and he would cry out, “No, since I have sacrificed Imoinda to my revenge, shall I lose that glory which I have purchased so dear, as the price of the fairest, dearest, softest creature that ever Nature made? No, no!” . . . He remained in this deplorable condition for two days, and never rose from the ground where he had made her sad sacrifice; at last rousing from her side, . . . he resolved now to finish the great work; but . . . found his strength so decayed that he swayed to and fro, like boughs assailed by contrary winds; so that he was forced to lie down again. . . . Caesar is captured. Caesar heard he was approached: and though he had, during the space of these eight days, endeavored to rise, but found he wanted strength, yet looking up, and seeing his pursuers, he rose, and reeled to a neighboring tree, against which he fixed his back; and being within a dozen yards of those that advanced and saw him, he called out to them, and bid them approach no nearer, if they would be safe. . . . So that they stood still, and . . . asked him what he had done with his wife. . . . He, pointing to the dead body, sighing, cried, “Behold her there.” . . .

7. Aphra Behn, Oroonoko, or the Royal Slave

405

The death of Caesar: And turning to the men that had bound him, he said, “My friends, am I to die, or to be whipped?” And they cried, “Whipped! no, you shall not escape so well.” And then he replied, smiling, “A blessing on thee”; and assured them they need not tie him, for he would stand fixed like a rock, and endure death. . . . He had learned to take tobacco; and when he was assured he should die, he desired they would give him a pipe in his mouth, ready lighted; which they did. And the executioner came, and first cut off his members, and threw them into the fire; after that, with an ill-favored knife, they cut off his ears and his nose and burned them; he still smoked on, as if nothing had touched him; then they hacked off one of his arms, and still he bore up, and held his pipe; but at the cutting off the other arm, his head sunk, and his pipe dropped, and he gave up the ghost, without a groan or a reproach. . . . Thus died this great man, worthy of a better fate, and a more sublime wit than mine to write his praise; yet, I hope, the reputation of my pen is considerable enough to make his glorious name to survive all the ages, with that of the brave, the beautiful, and the constant Imoinda.

Chapter 13 Other Voices

Introduction In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, women enter the mainstream of literary culture for the first time in history—not just contributing to a tradition whose framework had been set by men, but altering it. They acquire the tools of high culture, but speak with a different voice. And their voice is heard especially when they speak of love and marriage. Repudiating both the courtly (see Chapter 6, Introduction and Text 6) and the Petrarchan (see Chapter 7, Introduction; Chapter 11, Introduction) love ethos—by which men, desirous of the women they elevate as goddesses, speak to other men of their passion—these female writers express instead their own desires, fears, or disdain. Moreover, they draw the curtain on male abuse, exploitation, and ignorance of women, exposing the female experience of rape, humiliation, assault, and even murder, while articulating and resisting the coercive nature of the European marriage system. As in earlier centuries, they often turn to the refuge of religion, now offering Protestant as well as Catholic alternatives. As women become prolific authors of story, romance, verse, and prose nonfiction, writing in the newly polished vernaculars and finding their way into print, their voices are the most clamorous among the other voices of the Early Modern period. Among them are the six heard in this chapter’s selections writing in French (Marguerite de Navarre), Spanish (Teresa of Ávila, María de Zayas y Sotomayor, and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz), and Italian (Moderata Fonte and Sarra Copia Sulam). Two of these authors, in addition to being female and thereby marginalized, belonged at the same time to other marginalized groups: Sulam was a Jew, and Sor Juana a Mexican Creole,1 as well as a poet of same-sex love. Along with these women’s voices, heard here too is the voice of a child, the most inaudible of all—for children cannot communicate in the high language of literature and have no access to print. The child’s voice is heard at last in the story composed by an anonymous male humanist of Lazarillo de Tormes, a little boy who experiences and responds to the evils of the world. 1. Creole: a person born in the Americas of European ancestry, generally Spanish, and perhaps also often of a non-European lineage.

406

Introduction

407

Sister of one king of France (Francis I, the patron of Rabelais; see Chapter 10, Text 2) and grandmother of another (Henry IV, who settled the disastrous French Wars of Religion), Marguerite de Navarre (1492– 1549) was not only a French royal princess and queen of Navarre, but also an outspoken supporter of religious reform and advocate for women in an age when such advocacy was scarcely imaginable. As a reformer, she protected the proto-Protestant evangelical movement until, following its suppression in 1534 by her brother the king, it became too dangerous to do so. At the same time, she boldly wrote and published, in 1531, the widely read verse devotional, The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, displaying her considerable learning and her evangelical beliefs. Retiring from religious controversy and from public affairs generally, Marguerite turned to her compilation of stories known as the Heptameron, or “the seven days,” modeled on Boccaccio’s earlier Decameron (see Chapter 7, Text 3), a collection of one hundred tales supposedly told by a company of ten storytellers over a period of ten days. Unlike the Decameron, Marguerite’s collection is unfinished: as the stories stand in various manuscripts and editions of varying content and disposition, they total something more than seventy, as would be told over seven days by ten narrators (five male and five female, overseen by Oisille, the group’s spiritual leader of a decidedly evangelical stamp); but it is possible that Marguerite’s intent, unrealized when she died in 1549, was to match Boccaccio’s one hundred. Her tales (some gathered from earlier collections and oral tradition, and some acquired from her entourage of female friends and servants) are bound together by common themes: those of the abuse, seduction, rape, exploitation, control, and the silencing of women, but of these, above all, rape. The stories not only bewail female victimization, but also vigorously defend women’s resourcefulness and intelligence in the face of ruthless male aggression, perpetrated especially by monks and friars, enmity toward whom was common both to proto-feminist writers and Protestant reformers. While the French author Marguerite de Navarre re-creates the storytelling genre established by Boccaccio from the perspective of women, her anonymous contemporary, the Spanish author of La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes, sus fortunas y adversidades (The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes: His Adventures and Adversities), creates a new literary genre centered on a child whose innocence is lost as he journeys into an adult world of cruelty, hypocrisy, and greed. That child, or picaro, is the progenitor of all later instances of “picaresque” literature in the European tradition, including such classics, in English, as Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones, Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist (Volume Two, Chapter 3, Text 3), and Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March.

408

Chapter 13. Other Voices

Lazarillo’s world, like that of Marguerite de Navarre, was riven by religious struggle: an epochal conflict, in sixteenth-century Spain, between Christians (who had recently captured the last of the Muslim strongholds that had for eight centuries dominated the Iberian peninsula), Moors (Iberian Muslims, mostly of African origin), and Jews (of whom a large population had flourished under Muslim rule but were increasingly pressured, and finally expelled from Spain in 1492). In early modern Spain, religious identity became racialized, with the descendants of Moors and Jews, even if converted to Christianity, demeaned and persecuted as lacking limpieza de sangre (purity of blood). Lazarillo himself was the child of a Christian mother and Moorish father, a theme that underlies his story; and the succession of masters who corrupted him, with one exception (a feckless nobleman), were representatives of the Christian hegemony: if not actual monks and friars, their agents, including a blind man who survived by selling prayers, and a pardoner who lived high on the trade in indulgences. Taught by a series of these masters to scheme and cheat, Lazarillo, now the adult Lazaro,2 ends up with a government job—he becomes a town crier, the intermediary between the mighty and the powerless; and he acquires a wife, the maidservant of a high-ranking cleric who thus arranges for his own continued sexual access to the new bride. It is to the friend of that cleric that Lazarillo addresses his autobiography, written in the form of a letter to an unnamed vuestra merced (Your Honor). Both his job and his marriage are dishonorable; but Lazaro has survived, and proved himself to be no worse than his father, a condemned thief, as his mother predicted when she conveyed him at age seven into the hands of his first teacher, the blind man. The villainous blind man is featured in the first chapter of Lazarillo de Tormes, from which selections are given here. The Libro de la vida (The Book of Her Life, 1567) of Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582) begins with her reflections on her unusual childhood, one quite different than Lazarillo’s. The daughter of a wealthy family (and descended, on her father’s side, from conversos, Jewish converts to Christianity), Teresa notably recalls the strong influence of her pious parents and her early love for books. Inspired by the stories of martyred saints and holy hermits in her early years, though lured away by the frivolities and chatter of other girls in her adolescence, she eventually entered a convent where she developed the practice of mental prayer (as opposed to chanted or voiced prayer, which was the norm), outlined in, among her other works, The Way 2. Lazaro: or Lazarus; the name is itself expressive, recalling the two New Testament figures: Lazarus, the impoverished beggar whom God prefers to a selfish rich man (Luke 16:19–25); and Jesus’s friend Lazarus, dead and buried, whom Jesus resurrects (John 11:1–12:11). Lazarillo begs in order to live; and more than once, nearly dead of starvation, he is saved.

Introduction

409

of Perfection (by 1567) and The Interior Castle (1577). Teresa was equally committed to religious reform, particularly to the ideals of strict conventual enclosure for women and observance of apostolic poverty. To achieve those goals, overcoming the resistance of ecclesiastical superiors, she launched a new religious order—that of the Discalced (“barefoot”) Carmelites—and founded fourteen convents. A mystic, theologian, and reformer, Teresa was a leading figure in the history of both Spanish literature and Christian spirituality. Teresa’s autobiography recalls that of Margery Kempe (see Chapter 5, Text 6), a fourteenth-century wife and mother who told in hers how she pursued, once those roles could be shed, the life of a holy woman. For Kempe, as for Teresa and many other women in the premodern West, the religious life offered an alternative to a world determined by fathers and husbands, and the opportunity for self-expression and growth. The visions for which Teresa is famous recall as well those of Hildegard of Bingen (see Chapter 5, Text 4), the prolific twelfth-century author and mystic. If Marguerite de Navarre implicitly reveals the unequal power positions of men and women and the consequent abuse of the latter by the former, María de Zayas y Sotomayor (1590–1650) declares open warfare. Male cruelty is everywhere—or epidemic, at least, in the aristocratic circles that Zayas knows and portrays. It is evidenced in the physical violence and mental torment inflicted by fathers, husbands, brothers, and lovers on women young and old, virginal and married. Endangered by male predators, women’s best choice is to seek refuge in the convent: what had been for Saint Teresa the place where the soul might find its way to God, was for Zayas the only place of safety available to women. These are the messages Zayas conveys in her collection of ten stories, Desengaños amorosos (Tales of Disillusion, 1647), which is the companion volume to her earlier collection of ten stories, the Novelas amorosas y ejemplares (Exemplary Tales of Love, 1637). These two important collections, which join her other works of prose and poetry, were reprinted, translated, and widely read for nearly two centuries thereafter. Unlike the Exemplary Tales, narrated by both men and women, the Tales of Disillusion are narrated only by women and they are relentlessly ominous. Although men are the perpetrators of violence and venom, women, too, commit evil. These women are driven by irresistible desire, as in the last tale of disillusion from which selections are given here: an enraged husband murders his wife, but the circumstances that lead him to do so are created by his mistress. The story’s narrator is also, fittingly, the hostess of the salon whose gathered guests are the audience for the tales told in this volume and its precursor. Her defense of women is told in a frame story that winds through both volumes, and closes with her decision to decline her intended marriage and

410

Chapter 13. Other Voices

instead to retire to a convent—a woman’s most sensible response, Zayas suggests, to an implacably hostile world. A similar message, expressed with somewhat less venom, is conveyed in Moderata Fonte’s dialogue, Il merito delle donne: ove chiaramente se scuopre quanto siano elle degne e piu perfette de gli uomini (The Worth of Women: In Which It Is Clearly Demonstrated How Greatly Meritorious They Are and More Perfect Than Men). Featuring seven female interlocutors of different ages and marital conditions, it is divided into two parts, corresponding to two days. While the second day offers a rambling discussion of scientific and cultural subjects, including botany, zoology, and physics, as well as law, politics, literature, music, and the visual and decorative arts—a lavish demonstration of female knowledge, implicitly challenging the failure to educate women—the first consists of a lively debate on the cruelty of men: fathers, husbands, and brothers. Where Zayas exposes in narrative mode the subjugation of women to men, Fonte’s female speakers do so analytically. Their targets include the coerced marriage of women for financial benefit; the dowry system that supports it; male indifference, callousness, and cruelty toward women; and men’s self-indulgent behavior that undermines their families. The issue of marriage is paramount, and the selection given in this chapter focuses on that institution’s deficiencies. Moderata Fonte, the pseudonym of Modesta da Pozzo (1555–1592), was ironically, to all appearances, a happily married woman of respectable status (though not of the nobility), whose guardian, brother, and husband had all supported her education or her literary career. The works she produced in her brief lifetime included devotional poems and an unfinished chivalric romance, Il Floridoro, as well as her masterpiece, The Worth of Women. She completed the latter in 1592, at age thirty-seven, only hours before her death in childbirth. The work was published in 1600 by her daughter, prefaced by her daughter’s dedicatory letter, two sonnets by her son, and her former guardian’s biography. The Worth of Women is one of two full-length works demanding recognition for women’s intellectual and moral capacity—in effect, their “worth”—published in the same year by two Venetian women of similar social standing.3 The two works are prominent titles in the huge series of works in several languages written in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries making up the querelle des femmes, or “debate about women,” a major subset of the era’s literary endeavors. Like Fonte, the remaining two authors considered in this chapter engaged in intellectual debate about women’s pursuit of literary and 3. The other, by Lucrezia Marinella (1571–1653), is entitled La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne, co’ difetti et mancamenti de gli uomini (The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men); ed. and trans. Anne Dunhill, introd. Letizia Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999).

Introduction

411

philosophical studies, a central theme of the querelle des femmes. The first of these, also a Venetian, is Moderata Fonte’s younger contemporary Sarra Copia Sulam (c. 1600–1641).4 She is an exemplary case of such a woman: highly educated, expert in several languages, and an author of works in prose and verse. She was also a Jew, the daughter and wife of wealthy Jewish merchants and financiers, and a resident of the Ghetto of Venice—the world’s first, founded in 1516 not only for the containment of that city’s Jewish residents, but also for their protection. An outsider as both a woman and a Jew, Sulam nonetheless flourished, winning fame in Venetian intellectual circles and even hosting in her own ghetto home a literary salon that was frequented by both Christians and Jews. Notably, she carried on a lengthy correspondence (from 1618–1623) with the Christian Ansaldo Cebà, documented by his letters responding to hers, which are not extant, and engaged in a debate on the immortality of the soul with the Christian Baldassare Bonifaccio (1619–1621). Closer to home, she had as mentor the great Jewish scholar Leone Modena, who would in 1541, when Sulam died at around age forty, write her epitaph. Both Cebà and Modena wrote works celebrating Esther, the prototypical heroine of the biblical book of that name; Cebà’s a verse epic, and Modena’s a tragedy. In both cases, Sulam was clearly viewed as the modern counterpart of the ancient original. Sulam was a prolific author, writing copious letters and nearly two hundred poems, now mostly lost, and known largely from the comments they elicited from others. Her Manifesto5 on the Immortality of the Soul (published July 1621) against Bonifaccio, selections from which appear in this chapter, is an exception. It is the one intact prose composition by her hand that survives; and it was, as well, the first and only work in which, during her lifetime, she appeared in print. Like Sulam, who defended her stance as a woman and as a Jew against powerful males, Juana Inés de la Cruz (1651–1695), a Creole of illegitimate birth, defended herself in the race-and-gender obsessed culture of early modern Mexico as a woman committed to study and creation. Known as “Sor” (Sister) Juana, the title denoting her lifelong career as a nun in the convent of Santa Paula of the Order of San Jerónimo near modern Mexico City, to which, declining to marry, she retired in 1669 at age eighteen to pursue a career as a writer and scholar. Less regimented than the first convent she had entered and rejected—one that would have been more to Saint 4. These vital dates are persuasively established by Don Harrán, editor and translator of Sulam’s works: Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Seventeenth-Century Venice: The Works of Sarra Copia Sulam in Verse and Prose, Along with Writings of Her Contemporaries in Her Praise, Condemnation, or Defense (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), pp. 15–17. 5. manifesto: a public statement of position or intentions, as in The Communist Manifesto.

412

Chapter 13. Other Voices

Teresa’s liking (see Text 3)—Santa Paula allowed her a comfortable apartment complete with a study housing the library she had inherited from her learned grandfather and augmented to a total of several thousand volumes (the largest private collection in New Spain), as well as a trove of rare musical instruments. From within its walls, where she entertained prominent and learned visitors in her literary salon, she asserted her posture of resistance with verve and genius. Sor Juana wrote poems of all sorts, four of which appear in this chapter. Written in a variety of metrical forms over a twenty-five year period (their chronological order not established), they total more than two hundred titles. Some were commissioned for special occasions, some on philosophical themes, some devotional, some introspective, some on the faults of men, and some about love—her passionate love for other women, recalling those of the first great woman poet, Sappho (see Chapter 2, Text 3). Self-taught in philosophy and theology, skilled in Latin and even the ancient Aztec language Nahuatl, Sor Juana also wrote drama and prose nonfiction. Her Response to the Most Illustrious Poetess Sor Filotea de la Cruz (1690) is of the latter genre: a vehement response to the polemic hurled against her by a prominent male cleric—and not, as titled, by the nun Filotea, a pseudonym—denouncing her views, which he regarded as heretical, and more broadly of her intellectual activity. In the Response, amid its moving autobiographical passages depicting the author as a young girl yearning for intellectual freedom, Sor Juana engages the querelle theme of women’s equal moral and intellectual worth to men’s and her right to education and freedom of expression. Sor Juana’s eloquent response did not placate the authorities. She was forced, in 1694, to dismantle her library, discard her musical instruments, and stop writing. She died a year later, in the convent, of an epidemic disease she contracted while nursing her fellow nuns. With the outspoken Sor Juana writing in the last decades of the seventeenth century from within sheltering convent walls, this exploration of other voices in the early modern era closes. Their message, at the same time, is the opening act of a modern tradition of self-expression and self-vindication to be continued in the second volume of this work.

$$$ 1. Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron (1558) The two stories given here are chosen from the seventy-two that may have been the total number of the collection Marguerite envisioned. They work well in juxtaposition. The first, told by one of the female storytellers,

1. Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron

413

illustrates the frequent theme of sexual exploitation of women by men, and as so often happens in these stories, by clerics. At the same time, it celebrates the targeted woman’s ability to outthink and triumph over her wouldbe abusers. The second, told by one of the male storytellers, features a male hero who perseveres in his love for an older woman despite the excessive and unreasonable demands she makes upon him, and is rewarded in the end for his loyalty. In this case, the woman is not a victim of a male predator, but a canny and sexually experienced woman who controls her suitor’s desires at will—almost to the point, while tormenting him, of denying herself the gratification she seeks—so as, in the end, to acquire an impressively ardent lover. In both cases, existing in a society that empowered men and disparaged women, women gifted with psychological and intellectual strength defy male aggression and escape subjugation.

Heptameron Day 1 Story 5: The Boatgirl At the port of Coulon6 near Niort, there was a boatgirl who day and night ferried passengers across the river. It happened that two Franciscan friars from Niort were alone in the boat with her, and since the passage was one of the longest that exists in France, to alleviate her boredom, they badgered her for sex—to which request she gave the fitting response. But they, who had not been tired by the arduous journey, nor chilled by the freezing waters, much less shamed by the woman’s rebuke, decided that the two of them would take her by force, and if she complained, to throw her in the river. But she was as quick and resourceful as they were vicious and slow, so said to them: “I am not so unwilling as you think; but I ask you to do two things for me, and then you will know that I desire to obey you more than you do to command me.” The two friars swore to her by their holy Saint Francis that there was nothing she could ask of them that they would not agree to in order to have what they desired from her. “First of all,” she said, “I ask that you swear and promise that neither of you will ever reveal our affair to any man alive.” This they most willingly promised. Then further she said: “Second, I ask that you take your pleasure of me one by one, because I am too shy to have the two of you look upon me together. See which one of you wants to have me first.” They found her request quite sensible, and the younger agreed that the older friar should take first place. 6. Coulon: in southwestern France, a village on the Sèvre river that flows from Niort, some seven miles to the east, to the Atlantic.

414

Chapter 13. Other Voices

And so, as they approached a small island, she said to the younger friar: “Good Father, stay here saying your prayers until I have taken your companion over here to another island; and if, when he returns, he has had his fill of me, you and I shall leave him here and go off together.” The young man jumped onto the island, to await there the return of his companion, whom the boatgirl took to another one. And when they had arrived, pretending to tie her boat to a tree, she said to him: “My friend, look for the place where we shall do it.” The good Father strolled onto the island to search for the place that suited him best; but as soon as she saw him on land, she kicked the tree to push off down the river in her boat, leaving the two good friars on their separate desert islands. She shouted to them at the top of her voice: “Wait, good sirs, until an angel of God comes to console you, because today you will have nothing from me that will please you.” Those two poor friars, seeing they had been tricked, got down on their knees on the bank of the river, pleading with her not to shame them in this way, promising that if she just rowed them to the port, they would ask nothing more of her. But as she sailed away from them, she said: “I would be doubly mad, having escaped, to put myself back into your hands.” And on entering the village, she called on her husband and the police to go pick up those two rabid wolves, from whose jaws she had escaped by the grace of God; and they went off in great force, for young or old, they all wanted to take part in this joyous hunt. The hapless friars, seeing so large a company arrive, took cover, each one on his little island, like Adam when he realized he was naked before the face of God.7 Shame put their sin before their eyes, and the fear of being punished made them tremble so much that they were half-dead. But she did not spare them being caught and made prisoners, and there was no one, male or female, who did not mock and taunt them. Some said: “These fine friars who preach chastity to us, and then seek to violate our women!” And the others said: “They are sepulchers that are white on the outside, and inside full of death and putrefaction.”8 And yet others said: “You will know what kind of trees they are by their fruit.”9 You can be sure that all the verses of the Gospel directed against hypocrites were lobbed against these wretched prisoners. . . .

Day 2 Story 18: The Fortunate Student In one of the fine cities of the kingdom of France lived a young nobleman from a good family who was a student, desiring to acquire that knowledge 7. Genesis 3:7–8. Not only are the friars shamed, but as evidenced by the two Gospel verses next hurled against them, shown to be less worthy Christians than the villagers. 8. Cf. Matthew 23:27. 9. Cf. Matthew 7:16–20.

1. Marguerite de Navarre, Heptameron

415

by which virtue and honor is to be obtained among worthy men. And so learned was he that, at between seventeen and eighteen years of age, he was ready to instruct and set an example for others; but after all his lessons, Love10 could not yet call him his own. So as to be better known and embraced, Love hid himself behind the eyes and visage of the most beautiful woman who existed in all the country, who had come to the city for some business. But before Love attempted to vanquish this fine youth by the beauty of this woman, he had vanquished her heart, for she had seen the perfections that he possessed; for in beauty, grace, good sense, and fine speech, there was no one of his estate who exceeded him. You who know how quickly this fire burns when it has been kindled deep within the heart and the imagination, you will understand that between two such perfect subjects love cannot be resisted, for he so has them at his command, and so fills them both so full of his bright light, that their thoughts, desires, and words are nothing but the blazing of this love. Youth made him hesitant, causing him to pursue the affair as gently as he could. But she, who had been vanquished by love, did not need to be compelled. Nonetheless, the sense of shame that accompanies women as much as it can, kept her for a while from revealing her desire. But in the end it is in the fortress of the heart that honor dwells, and there it lay in utter ruination such that the helpless woman yielded to those passions that she was unable to resist. But, to test the patience, strength, and love of her suitor, she granted him what he wanted but on one most difficult condition, assuring him that if he always observed it, she would love him absolutely, and that, if he failed, he would be certain never to possess her in his lifetime. The condition was that she was willing to speak with him, in bed, both of them lying in their nightshirts, but that he must not demand of her anything more than to talk and to kiss. He agreed, thinking that there was absolutely no happiness worthy of being compared to what she had promised. And so when night came, the promise was kept; not for any caress that she offered, nor for any temptation that he felt, did he break his word. And though he judged that the pain he suffered was not less than those of purgatory, so great was his love and so strong his hope, being assured of the perpetual continuation of the intimacy that he had acquired at so great a cost, he remained patient, and left her side without ever having done anything to displease her. The lady, however, as I believe, was more amazed than pleased with this success—suspecting he was unfaithful, or that his love was not so great as she thought, or that he had found her to be less than he expected—and did not appreciate his great decency, patience, and fidelity in keeping his word. 10. Love: i.e., Cupid, the Greek god of love.

416

Chapter 13. Other Voices

She decided to make one more test of the love that he bore her, before fulfilling her promise. To do so, she asked him to speak to a girl who was in her household, younger than she and very beautiful, and to strike up a friendship with her, such that those who saw him enter the house so often thought that it was for this young girl and not for her. The young gentleman, who was certain that he was as much loved as loving, obeyed her commands completely, and forced himself, for love of her, to court this girl who, seeing that he was handsome and well-spoken, believed the lie more than the truth and loved him as though she was truly loved by him. And when her mistress saw that things had moved ahead so far and that nonetheless this gentleman never ceased to keep his promise to her, she instructed him to come to see her at one hour after midnight, for she had sufficiently tested the love and obedience that he bore toward her, and it was right that he should be recompensed for his great patience. The joy her loving suitor felt because of this cannot be imagined, and he did not fail to arrive at the assigned hour. But the lady, to test the force of his love, said to the pretty girl: “I know well the love that a certain gentleman feels for you, and I believe you have no less passion for him; and I have such compassion for you both that I have decided to give you the time and place to speak together at length and at your ease.” The girl was so transported that she could not conceal her feelings, and told her mistress that she would not fail. So obeying her counsel, and at her command, she undressed, and lay on a fine bed all alone in a chamber, the door to which the lady left open and set a lamp inside, so that the beauty of this girl could be clearly seen. Pretending to go away, she hid nearby where she could not be seen. Her unlucky suitor, expecting to find his beloved as she had promised, did not fail to enter the chamber at the set hour as quietly as was possible. And after he had closed the door and removed his cloak and his fur-lined shoes, he lay down on the bed where he expected to find that which he desired. Unknowing, he reached out his arms to embrace her whom he believed to be his lady; and the poor girl, who believed he was all hers, wrapped hers around his neck, and spoke to him so passionately and was so beautiful that even a holy hermit, had he been there, would have lost his paternosters.11 But when he recognized the girl by sight as well as by hearing, and understood that she was not the lady for whom he had suffered so much, the love that had caused him to lie down with such great haste now caused him as quickly to rise. Angry with his mistress as well as with the girl, he said to her sharply: “Your folly and the malice of her who has put you 11. paternoster: “Pater Noster,” the Latin version of the Christian Lord’s Prayer, which a presumed holy hermit would have recited frequently as part of his devotions.

2. Anonymous, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes

417

here will not force me to be other than I am; but be a decent woman—you will not lose your good name on my account.” In saying this, so shaken that he could do no more, he left the chamber, and for a long time did not return to see his lady. Love, however, which never gives up hoping, assured him that the greater his constancy and the testing he had endured, the greater and more enduring would be the joy it would merit. The lady, who had seen and heard everything, was delighted to see the greatness and constancy of his love, and grieved that she could not see him again, asked his pardon for the wrongs that she had done in testing him. And as soon as she could, she made him such honest and good proposals that not only did he forget all his suffering, but considered it fortunate, for it witnessed his constancy and testified to the certainty of his love. On account of which, from that hour forward, without impediment or trial, he was granted everything he could desire.

$$$ 2. Anonymous, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes (1554) The passages given here are excerpted from the first chapter of The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes: His Adventures and Adversities, which describes the first stage of his degradation in the employ of a blind beggar. This unnamed man’s blindness is crucial: blindness is a great misfortune, which arouses our compassion; but it is also an incentive to malfeasance by one who must cheat and connive in order to survive; who can use his misfortune hypocritically as a tool to manipulate others; and whose physiological blindness, furthermore, is the outward expression of a psychological or spiritual vacuum. Lazarillo’s blind master teaches his young charge—whom he has promised to treat as his own son, and indeed he does—to trust no one, to deceive others, and to use violence to realize his goals. In the end, Lazarillo has learned his lessons well, and takes revenge on his vicious master, not even caring to know whether the man he has left behind is dead or alive.

The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes First chapter: The blind man Lazarillo’s mother puts her son in the care of a blind man. And she asked him to treat me well and look out for me, as I was an orphan. He responded that he would do so, and treat me not as a servant but as his own son. And so I began to serve and guide my new but old master. . . .

418

Chapter 13. Other Voices

We left Salamanca and arriving at the bridge saw there at its entrance the stone statue of an animal that looked like a bull. The blind man told me to go up close to the animal and when I was there, said to me: “Lázaro, put your ear up to this bull and you will hear a great roar come from inside him.” Unsuspecting, I went over to it, thinking that was so and when he felt my head up against the stone, he held it there with his hand and with a great blow rammed my head against that devil of a bull, whose painful horns I still felt more than three days later. And he said to me, “Idiot, learn that a blind man needs to be smarter than the devil.” And he laughed heartily at the joke. In that moment, I think, I awoke from the innocence in which, as a child, I had been sleeping. I said to myself: “This fellow speaks the truth, and I need to keep an eye out and be alert, since I am alone, and must think about taking care of myself.” We set out on our way and in just a few days, he taught me the trade. Seeing that I was quick to learn, he was pleased, and said: “I cannot give you silver or gold, but I can teach you a lot about life.” And so it was that, after God, it was this man who gave me life and, though blind himself, lit a lamp for me and guided me down the road of life. . . . Although not a cleric, the blind man operates within the Catholic world of his day, acquiring what he can by saying prayers for other people, mostly poor, many female and in distress. He was an eagle at his trade: he knew more than one hundred prayers by heart. He prayed in a deep, calm, and sonorous voice that resounded through the church, putting on a pious and devout expression and imposing air, without gesticulating with his mouth or eyes as others often do. Besides this, he had another thousand ways and methods of getting ahold of money. He offered prayers for many and various purposes: for women who could not give birth, for those who were in labor, for those who were unhappily married that their husbands might desire them. . . . As for medicine, he said that Galen12 did not know half as much as he did for toothache, dizziness, or female complaints. . . . So everyone ran after him, especially women, who believed whatever it was he told them. From these women he raked in fine profits by the arts I’ve told you, and earned more in a month than a hundred other blind men did in a year. But I also want Your Honor to know that with all the money he got and hoarded, there never was a man more greedy or stingy. He nearly starved me to death, giving me only half of what I needed to stay alive. I mean it: 12. Galen (129–c. 200): ancient Greek physician whose works were fundamental for Early Modern medicine.

2. Anonymous, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes

419

if I had not known how to remedy the matter by my cleverness and quick hands, I would have died of hunger many times. But with all his shrewdness and sharpness, I was lucky enough to outwit him so that nearly always I grabbed the better and larger share. To this end I played some devilish tricks on him to save myself, some of which I will tell you about, but not all. He carried bread and all his other vittles in a canvas bag that he sealed at the mouth by an iron ring with padlock and key. He exercised such vigilance and care in putting things in and taking them out that no one in the world could have snatched even a crumb. But I took the smidgen that he gave me, which I dispatched in less than two mouthfuls. After that he closed the padlock and set the bag aside, thinking that I was attending to other things. But through a small length of the seam on one side of the bag that I had repeatedly ripped open and sewn up again, I bled the miserly bag, extracting not just a crumb but big chunks of bread, bacon, and sausage. And so I looked for the chance to repair not the bag, but the devilish hunger that that devil of a blind man had caused. . . . Lazarillo found other clever ways to raid the blind man’s hoard of bread and wine, but the blind man found him out and beat him severely, regaling spectators with stories of Lazarillo’s wickedness. But so as not to be long-winded, I won’t bother to tell of many things both amusing and notable that occurred while I was in the service of my first master. I want to tell how it ended, and so be done with it—and him. We were staying at an inn in Escalona . . . , and he gave me a piece of sausage for me to roast for him. And by the time the sausage had begun to sizzle and he had eaten the drippings, he took out a maravedí13 and sent me to get wine for him from the tavern. He had put the devil’s tool before my eyes, which, they say, makes the thief. At this moment there fell into the fire a small turnip, stubby and withered, which not having been worth putting in the pot, had been discarded. And since at that moment no one was there but the two of us, and since I was ravenously hungry, I stood awash in the savory odor of the sausage, which I knew was all I was going to get. Not considering what might happen, I put aside all fear so as to satisfy my desire. While the blind man reached into his purse for the coin, I reached for the sausage and quickly put the aforementioned turnip on the spit—which, having given me the money for the wine, my master took and began to turn over the fire, seeking to roast the wretched thing that had escaped the pot. I went for the wine, and downed the sausage on the fly. When I came back, I found that sinner of a blind man laying the turnip between two slices 13. maravedí: a small coin.

420

Chapter 13. Other Voices

of bread—for not having yet touched it with his fingers, he did not realize what it was. When he picked up the bread and bit into it, expecting to taste a mouthful of sausage, he turned to stone as hard as the stony turnip. In a fury, he said to me: “What is this, Lazarillo?” “Come on!” I said, “do you want to lay this on me? Didn’t I just come back with the wine? Someone else came by, and tricked you.” “No, no,” he said, “not a chance; my hand never let go of the spit.” I swore again and again that I had nothing to do with this snatch-andgrab, but it didn’t help, since nothing escaped the wits of this cursed blind man. He stood up and clutched my head and pulled it close so as to get a whiff of my breath, just like a bloodhound, and so get to the truth. Seized by anguish, holding my head in his hands, he pried my mouth open way too far and foolishly inserted his nose, which was long and sharp, and had grown by a handbreadth in the heat of the moment, and stabbed with its tip at my gullet. And because of this, and the terror I felt, and the short space of time since I had consumed the black sausage, it had not yet settled in my stomach. The result was, with his gigantic nose poking down my throat and almost choking me, all these things came together at once and caused the discovery of my gluttony and my crime. What was his was returned to its owner, in this way: even before the beastly blind man removed his proboscis from my mouth, my stomach heaved and gave his loot back to him. As luck would have it, his nose and the half-chewed black sausage jumped out of my mouth all at once. O God Almighty! Would that I had been buried at that moment, since I was already dead! The ferocity of that perverse blind man was such that I would not have escaped alive if everyone within earshot had not rushed to the uproar. They extracted me from between his hands, leaving them full of the few tufts of hair I had left. My face was scratched, my neck and throat scraped—which my wicked throat deserved, since it had been the cause of the many torments that I suffered. . . . After relating more instances of the blind man’s cruelty, Lazarillo tells how he took his revenge and made his escape. Given . . . all the nasty tricks that the blind man played on me, I determined once and for all to leave him. I had been thinking about it and was determined to do it, and this last stunt of his egged me on. And so it was that the next day when we went begging through the town, it having rained heavily the night before, and was still raining, he did his praying under one of the porticos they have in that town so that we would not get soaked. But when night came, and the rain did not stop, the blind man said to me: “Lazaro,

3. Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life

421

this rain keeps falling, and at night when it gets darker, the rain gets heavier; let us go back early to the inn.” To go there, we had to cross a gully that was engorged with all the rain that had fallen. I said to him: “Uncle, the gully is very wide, but if you wish, I see a place where we can cross more easily without getting wet, for it narrows there a lot and we can jump across and keep our feet dry.” The advice seemed good to him, and he said: “You’re smart, which is why I love you. Take me to this place where the gully narrows, since it is winter now and getting wet is bad and having wet feet is worse.” Seeing the means to my end, I led him out from under the portico and stood him in front of a stone pillar or post that stood in the square, one of those that supported the portico and its roof, and I said: “Uncle, this is the point at which the gully is narrowest.” As it was raining heavily, the sorry fellow was getting wet. In our haste to get out of the downpour, but most of all, because God had at that moment blinded his understanding (so I could have my revenge), he believed me and said: “Put me right there while you jump the gully.” So I put him right in front of the pillar, while I jumped right behind it, like someone taking shelter from the charge of a bull, and said: “Now! Jump as far as you can, so you can make it across the gully.” I had hardly finished speaking when the wretched blind man leapt like a billy goat and charged with all his strength, taking a step backwards so as to vault forward mightily—and so he dashed his head against the pillar, which rang out as though it had been struck by a giant pumpkin. Then he fell backward, half dead, his head split open. “What? You could smell the sausage but not the post? Smell it, smell it!” I said. And I left him with the crowd of people who had come to his aid, and I took myself off at a gallop out the village gate and, before night fell, made it to Torrijos.14 I never knew what God had done with him, nor did I care to know.

$$$ 3. Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life (1565) The forty chapters of Saint Teresa’s The Book of Her Life mostly describe her spiritual experience as an adult, particularly her prayer life, and her successful mission to found a strictly reformed convent of Discalced Carmelite nuns. But in the first several chapters, she provides a rare and 14. Torrijos: a town northwest of Toledo, Spain.

422

Chapter 13. Other Voices

charming account of her childhood. The daughter of two pious parents, she was reared on the lives of saints and martyrs, whom as a young child she yearned to emulate. As she approached adolescence, however, she was exposed to the “vanities” of the world—apparently conversations with female friends about fashion and flirtations—and neglected “to cultivate the virtues” that were more properly, as she later wrote, her concern. Her mother having died and her older sister, a steadying influence, married, her father placed her in a convent school about which, at first, she had reservations.15

The Book of Her Life Chapter 1 Treats of how the Lord began to awaken this soul to virtue in her childhood and of how helpful it is in this matter that parents also be virtuous. To have had virtuous and God-fearing parents along with the graces the Lord granted me should have been enough for me to have led a good life, if I had not been so wretched. My father was fond of reading good books, and thus he also had books in Spanish for his children to read. These good books together with the care my mother took to have us pray and be devoted to our Lady and to some of the saints began to awaken me when, I think, six or seven years old, to the practice of virtue. . . . My father was a man very charitable with the poor and compassionate toward the sick, and even toward servants. So great was his compassion that nobody was ever able to convince him to accept slaves. And his pity for them was such that once having in his home a slave owned by a brother, he treated her as though she were one of his children. He used to say that out of pity he couldn’t bear seeing her held captive. He was very honest. No one ever saw him swear or engage in fault-finding. He was an upright man. 2. My mother also had many virtues. And she suffered much sickness during her life. She was extremely modest. Although very beautiful, she never gave occasion to anyone to think she paid any attention to her beauty. For at the time of her death at the age of thirty-three,16 her clothes were already those of a much older person. . . . Great were the trials she suffered during her life. Her death was a truly Christian one. 15. In the excerpts given here, chapter divisions and subdivisions in the original text are retained, as are uppercased references to the deity as they occur in the edition utilized. The italicized headings for each chapter are in the original. 16. Teresa’s mother died probably in late 1528, when Teresa was not yet fourteen years old.

3. Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life

423

3. We were in all three sisters and nine brothers. All resembled their parents in being virtuous, through the goodness of God, with the exception of myself—although I was the most loved of my father. . . . 4. My brothers and sisters did not in any way hold me back from the service of God. I had one brother about my age. We used to get together to read the lives of the saints. (He was the one I liked most, although I had great love for them all and they for me.) When I considered the martyrdoms the saints suffered for God, it seemed to me that the price they paid for going to enjoy God was very cheap, and I greatly desired to die in the same way. I did not want this on account of the love I felt for God but to get to enjoy very quickly the wonderful things I read there were in heaven. And my brother and I discussed together the means we should take to achieve this. We agreed to go off to the land of the Moors17 and beg them, out of love of God, to cut off our heads there. It seemed to me the Lord had given us courage at so tender an age, but we couldn’t discover any means. Having parents seemed to us the greatest obstacle. We were terrified in what we read about the suffering and the glory that was to last forever. We spent a lot of time talking about this and took delight in often repeating: forever and ever and ever. As I said this over and over, the Lord was pleased to impress upon me in childhood the way of truth. 5. When I saw it was impossible to go where I would be killed for God, we made plans to be hermits. And in a garden that we had in our house, we tried as we could to make hermitages piling up some little stones which afterward would quickly fall down again. And so in nothing could we find a remedy for our desire. It gives me devotion now to see how God gave me so earlier what I lost through my own fault. 6. I gave what alms I could, but that was little. I sought out solitude to pray my devotions, and they were many, especially the rosary, to which my mother was very devoted; and she made us devoted to it too. When I played with other girls I enjoyed it when we pretended we were nuns in a monastery, and it seemed to me that I desired to be one, although not as much as I desired the other things I mentioned. 7. I remember that when my mother died I was twelve years old or a little less. When I began to understand what I had lost, I went, afflicted, before an image of our Lady18 and besought her with many tears to be my mother. It seems to me that although I did this in simplicity it helped me. For I have found favor with this sovereign Virgin in everything I have asked of her, and 17. land of the Moors: Africa, perhaps; the Moors had lost all autonomy in Spain with the conquest of Granada in 1492. 18. our Lady: the Virgin Mary.

424

Chapter 13. Other Voices

in the end she has drawn me to herself. It wearies me now to see and think that I was not constant in the good desires I had in my childhood. . . .

Chapter 2 Treats of how she lost these virtues and of how important it is in childhood to associate with virtuous people. What I am going to tell about began, it seems to me, to do me much harm. I sometimes reflect on the great damage parents do by not striving that their children might always see virtuous deeds of every kind. For even though my mother, as I said, was so virtuous, I did not, in reaching the age of reason, imitate her good qualities; in fact hardly at all. And the bad ones did me much harm. She loved books of chivalry. But this pastime didn’t hurt her the way it did me, for she did not fail to do her duties; and we used to read them together in our free time. . . . Our reading such books was a matter that weighed so much upon my father that we had to be cautioned lest he see us. I began to get the habit of reading these books. And by that little fault, which I saw in my mother, I started to grow cold in my desires and to fail in everything else. I didn’t think it was wrong to waste many hours of the day and night in such a useless practice, even though hidden from my father. I was so completely taken up with this reading that I didn’t think I could be happy if I didn’t have a new book. 2. I began to dress in finery and to desire to please and look pretty, taking great care of my hands and hair and about perfumes and all the empty things in which one can indulge, and which were many, for I was very vain. . . . I had some first cousins who often came to our house, though my father was very cautious and would not allow others to do so; please God he had been inspired to do likewise with my cousins. For now I realize what a danger it is at an age when one should begin to cultivate the virtues to associate with people who do not know the vanity of the world but rather are just getting ready to throw themselves into it. They were about my age—a little older than I—and we always went about together. They liked me very much, and I engaged in conversations with them about all the things that pleased them. I listed to accounts of their affections and of childish things not the least bit edifying; and, what was worse, I exposed my soul to that which caused all its harm. 3. . . . So it happened to me. For I had a sister much older than I whose modesty and goodness (of which she had a great deal) I did not imitate at all; and I imitated all that was harmful in a relative who spent a lot of time at our house. She was so frivolous that my mother tried very hard to keep her from coming to our home. . . . This relative was the one I liked to associate

3. Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Book of Her Life

425

with. My talks and conversations were with her, for she encouraged me in all the pastimes I desired and even immersed me in them by sharing with me her conversations and vanities. Until I began to associate with her when I was fourteen, or I think older (I mean when she took me for her friend and confidante), I don’t think I would have abandoned God by a mortal sin or lost the fear of God, although the fear of losing my honor was stronger in me. This sense of honor gave me the strength not to completely lose my reputation. Nor do I think anything in the world could have made me change my mind in that regard. . . . Would that I had had the fortitude not to do anything against the honor of God just as my natural bent gave me fortitude not to lose anything of what I thought belonged to the honor of the world. And I did not see that I was losing it in many other ways. 4. . . . This friendship pained my father and sister. They often reproached me for it. Since they couldn’t do away with the occasion for her coming to our home, their careful efforts were useless, for I was strikingly shrewd when it came to mischief. It frightens me sometimes to think of the harm a bad companion can do, and if I hadn’t experienced it I wouldn’t believe it. Especially during adolescence the harm done must be greater. . . . 6. . . . From all these occasions and dangers God delivered me in such a way that it seems clear He strove, against my will, to keep me from being completely lost, although this deliverance could not be achieved so secretly as to prevent me from suffering much loss of reputation and my father from being without suspicion. For it doesn’t seem to me that three months, during which I engaged in these vanities, had gone by when my father brought me to a convent in that place where they educated persons like myself, although not with habits as bad as mine.19 This was done so cautiously that only I and some relatives knew about it because they waited for an opportunity when it would not seem surprising for me to go to the convent school; that is, once my sister was married it seemed no longer good for me to stay at home without a mother. 7. So excessive was the love my father bore me and so great my dissimulation that he was unable to believe there was much wrong with me, and so he was not angered with me. Since this period of time had been brief, and though he knew something, nothing could be said with certainty. For since I feared so much for my honor, I used every effort to keep my actions secret, and I never considered that one can never do this with Him who sees all things. . . . 8. The first eight days I felt very unhappy because of my being in that convent school, and more than that because of my suspicion that they knew 19. A convent in her town of Ávila. Girls not necessarily intended for the religious life were often sent to convents for a rudimentary education.

426

Chapter 13. Other Voices

about my vanity. For already I was wearied and did not fail to have great fear of God when I offended Him, trying to go to confession at once. Although at the beginning I was very unhappy, within eight days—and I think even less—I was much more content than when in my father’s house. . . . And although at that time I was strongly against my becoming a nun, it made me happy to see such good nuns, for there were many good ones in that house, very modest, religious and circumspect. . . . My soul began to return to the good habits of early childhood, and I saw the great favor God accords to anyone placed with good companions. It seems to me that his Majesty [that is, God] was considering and reconsidering in what way He could bring me back to Himself. May You be blessed, Lord, who put up with me so long! Amen.

$$$ 4. María de Zayas y Sotomayor, Tales of Disillusion (1647) Five of the seven married female protagonists of Zayas’s Tales of Disillusion are killed, while two narrowly evade that fate—outcomes bespeaking the author’s view that male cruelty always and everywhere threatens the lives of women. The selection given here from the tenth tale of the ten gathered in that volume, entitled “The Ravages of Vice,” portrays the slaughter of one of these unlucky wives. Three malefactors are responsible. The first is the victim’s husband, Dionís, who has betrayed his wife, Magdalena, by carrying on a long-term affair with her half-sister Florentina. Then, thinking wrongly that Magdalena has been unfaithful to him, he murders her. The second is Florentina’s maidservant, unnamed, who conspires with her mistress to achieve the death of Florentina’s rival (and, incidentally, the defamation and sacrifice of the servant Fernando), so that she may marry her brother-in-law. The third is Florentina, who had initiated the adultery with Dionís, not only deceiving her lifelong companion Magdalena, but also sanctioning and enabling her death. Even the hero of the story, Gaspar, who had hoped to woo and marry Florentina and later rescues her from the house of horrors she managed to survive, is no innocent. The penitent Florentina, who now cares only for the salvation of her soul, narrates to Gaspar the tragic events of this dark tale.

Tales of Disillusion The next day, don Dionís said he would go with some friends to see the running of the bulls at a place a few miles outside of Lisbon. And he so arranged

4. María de Zayas y Sotomayor, Tales of Disillusion

427

this outing that Fernando, who normally accompanied him, would not attend him on this occasion, nor any other servant; for the two days he would be away, the servants of his companions would assist him. And with this he left, on that day that would be followed by the tragic night on which you found me. And so he came back alone, just past midnight, signaling to my maidservant, who was ready for him, and asked him to wait for a moment; taking a lamp, she then went to the room of the ill-fated boy, awakening as she entered, saying: “Fernando, my mistress calls that you should go to her right away.” “Why should my mistress call for me now?” replied Fernando. “I do not know,” she said, “only that she sent me to call you to come quickly.” As he rose and started to dress, she said, “Do not dress yourself, except to throw on this cape and your slippers, and go to see what she wants of you; and if you need to get dressed, you can do that later.” Fernando did so, and just as he approached where his mistress was, the crafty maidservant opened it for her master. Fernando reached the bed where the lady Magdalena was sleeping, and awakening her, asked: “Mistress, what is it you want from me?” At this lady Magdalena, frightened, as she had awakened and saw him in her room, said: “Go away, go away, boy, for God’s sake. What are you looking for here? For I did not call you.” When Fernando heard this, he ran out of the room, and ran into his master who had arrived at that moment; who when he saw the boy halfnaked and leaving his wife’s chamber, believed he had been sleeping with her; and he struck him twice with the bared sword he held in his hand, one blow after the other, knocking him down on the floor, unable to say anything more than “Jesus be with me!” He spoke these words in such sorrowful tones that I, who was in my own room, greatly anxious and frightened—rightly so, since I was the cause of so great an evil, and author of so cruel an event, and the impetus for the shedding of that innocent blood that already was crying out to the high tribunal of divine justice. Bathed in a cold sweat, I attempted to get up to go out and assist him, but either because all my strength deserted me, or because the devil, who had taken charge of that house, paralyzed me, I could not move. Meanwhile don Dionís, now entirely blinded by his rage, entered the room of his innocent wife, who had fallen asleep with her arms over her head, and coming to her pure and chaste bed, which to his furious eyes and deceived imagination was filthy, debased, and violated by the stain of his dishonor, said to her: “Ah, traitor, do you dare to sleep in the face of my disgrace!” And drawing out his dagger, he stabbed her as many times as his ferocious anger demanded. Without being able even to cry out, her saintly soul quit her body, the most beautiful and chaste to be found in the kingdom of Portugal.

428

Chapter 13. Other Voices

By this time I had left my room and stood where I could see what was happening, my soul destroyed, annihilated by tears; but I dared not go farther. And I saw that don Dionís pressed on into a small room adjacent to his wife’s bedroom, and finding there two unlucky maidservants asleep, he slaughtered them saying: “Thus you will pay, sleeping sentinels of my honor, for your negligence, which has allowed your treacherous mistress to strip me of my honor.” And descending the back staircase that led to a courtyard, he came to the front door, and calling for the two pages who slept nearby, who sprang up terrified at his cry, he repaid their punctuality by taking their lives. And like a lion enraged and thirsty for human blood, he turned to ascend by the main staircase, and entering the kitchen, killed the three slaves who slept there. The fourth had gone to call me, hearing the clamor and the wailing of my maidservant, who was sitting in the corridor. She—either because she repented of the evil she had done although there was no remedy for it, or because God demanded that she pay for her crimes, or because the honor of lady Magdalena must not be left stained but that the world should know that all those who had been killed were without sin, and that only she and I were guilty, which was certainly true—she then grabbed the torch on the wall that he himself had lit who had so brazenly followed her wicked design, for when she had gone to open the door for him the light of the candle was insufficient—for when we stray from God’s divine hand, we sin as though we were paragons of virtue. All shame abandoned, she sat down and began to cry, saying: “Ay, woe is me, what have I done! There is no forgiveness for me in heaven nor on earth, since by committing a sin based on such great falsehoods, I have been the cause of such disasters!” At this very moment her master came out of the kitchen, and I came from the other side with the slave who had come to get me, with a candle in her hand. And when I heard my maidservant wailing, I stopped, for don Dionís was approaching her, and said: “What are you saying, girl, about lies and tragedies?” “Ay, my master,” she responded, “what can I say? Except that I am the worst girl ever born in this world? That my mistress lady Magdalena, and Fernando died without sin, along with all the others who have lost their lives. Only I am guilty, and do not deserve to live, since I have caused this catastrophe, calling poor Fernando, who was sleeping in his room, telling him that my mistress called him, whereby you, seeing him the way you saw him, believed what I had said to you, in order that by murdering my mistress lady Magdalena you could marry lady Florentina, my mistress, and, by becoming her husband, saving and restoring to her what you owe her, her honor.” “Oh, false traitor! And if what you say is true,” said don Dionís, “it is insufficient vengeance to take away your life; if you had even a thousand

4. María de Zayas y Sotomayor, Tales of Disillusion

429

lives they would be too few, and I would take away each one with a different kind of death.” “It is true, master; it is true, master, and any other is a lie. I am the evil one, and my mistress is good. I deserve death, and hell as well.” “I can give you both the one and the other,” don Dionís replied, “and satisfy the death of so many innocents by that of one traitor.” And saying this, he drove his sword through her breast, pinning her against the wall, shouting at the wretched creature, “Receive, hell, the soul of the worst woman that heaven ever created, and even there, I think, no place will be found for her.” And as he said this, she delivered her soul to the devil to whom she had offered it. At this point I came forth with the black slave girl, and confident in the love I had for him, intending to calm and soothe him, I said: “What is this, don Dionís? What has happened? How long will you be angry?” He, who by this point was deranged by rage and sorrow, charged at me, saying: “Until I kill you and I kill myself, you false, faithless, lecherous whore, you must pay for having caused such evil; for not content with the injury that, by your wanton appetite, you have done to her, whom you considered a sister, you have not stopped until you ended her life.” Saying this, he gave me the wounds that you have seen, and would have succeeded in killing me if the black slave girl had not placed herself between us; who when don Dionís saw her, grabbed her, and while he killed her, I escaped to a room and closed the door, totally bathed in my own blood. Finishing, then, with the life of the slave, and since there was no one left alive in the house except for him, since he surely believed that there was no way I could have escaped, and driven by the devil, don Dionís put the pommel of the sword on the ground and the point in his cruel heart, saying: “I need not wait for human justice to punish me for my crimes, for it is better that I myself now execute the verdict of divine justice.” He let himself fall on the sword, the point running him through, while he called on the devil to take his soul. Seeing him dead, while I myself was bleeding to death, gripped by fear as you can imagine seeing myself amid such horror and bodies without souls, what I was feeling cannot be spoken, yet it was so great that I do not know how I did not do what don Dionís had done, except that God did not permit it, since he wished these disgraceful circumstances come to be known; still with more courage than I could have imagined having in this instance, I opened the door of the room and taking the candle that stood on the ground, I went down the stairs and exited onto the street intending to go in search of a confessor (seeing that I was in the state that I was) so that, if I died, I might save my soul. Yet in the state I was in, I still took care to close the door from the street with the bolt that was there, and walking with despairing steps down the street, not knowing where I went, my strength

430

Chapter 13. Other Voices

failing me with the loss of blood, and I fell where you, lord don Gaspar, found me, where I lay until that moment when your mercy came to rescue me, so that, owing you my life, I might spend the time that remained for me in weeping, groaning, and doing penance for the great evils I had caused and also to pray to God to guard you for all time. With this the lovely and beautiful Florentina fell silent; her eyes were not silent, but sent floods of tears that dispersed in streams down her more than beautiful cheeks, by which she showed fully the passion that she felt in her soul, overcome by which she fell into a deep and beautiful faint, leaving don Gaspar confused and horrified by what he had heard, and I do not know if he was not more faint than she, seeing that, along with the many other deaths that the dead honor of Florentina had caused, so also had died his love; for Florentina was neither now fit to be his wife, nor really to be his mistress, seeing her determination to achieve a condition where she would be safe from other misfortunes similar to those that she had suffered. And he prided himself for his prudence in not having declared his love until he knew what had occurred.

$$$ 5. Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women (1600) The widow Leonora has invited a group of Venetian noblewomen for conversation and relaxation in her beautiful garden, which features not only splendid shrubs and flowers but also sculptures inscribed with antimale sentiments. Those present include three married women (Cornelia, Lucretia, and the recent bride Helena); two virginal adolescents (Virginia, destined for marriage, and Corinna, who declares her intention never to marry); and two once-married widows (Leonora, the hostess, and Adriana, mother of Virginia). On the first day of their gathering, the discussion will range widely to touch on male hostility to women, male cruelty, and male vices, all appurtenant to the social institution of marriage. For it is the implicit message of Fonte’s dialogue that the marriage system is at the core of the victimization of women. Early in the conversation, the key question is raised: Can women find happiness in marriage? The interlocutors are not sanguine: some dismiss the possibility altogether, others argue that it is not impossible, while the young bride and soon-to-be-married maiden hope for the best. The latter is not pleased that her male relatives have determined that she must marry, while Corinna, the most compelling of the speakers, declares that she will never marry, because she wishes to be free: “[A] free heart dwells within my breast,” she proclaims; and she will “seek fame and glory while I live,

5. Moderata Fonte, The Worth of Women

431

and when I die.” It is a startling claim, anticipating a feminist outlook that will, two centuries and more in the future, mature into a social movement.

The Worth of Women The new bride Helen arrives by gondola to join her friends gathered at Leonora’s home. The ladies were delighted to learn of [her] arrival, for she was a most congenial young woman. When she came to the top of the stairs, they all came forward to embrace her a thousand times, because it had been some time since they had seen her. Then they all settled down in the parlor and filled their eyes with the sight of her, and Virginia asked, as Helen had been away for some time, how she was faring. But Leonora, who was a high-spirited young woman, did not await Helen’s response, but said: “Virginia, my dear, why do you ask a question that everyone can answer for themselves, because according to the common consensus, a new bride cannot be anything but happy.” “Or rather,” added Lucrezia, “don’t say ‘happy,’ but rather ‘as well as can be expected.’” “To this question,” Helen answered, “I really can’t say yet whether I am happy or unhappy, because although my husband is a fine companion, there is just one thing that displeases me: he does not want me to leave the house, whereas I for my part desire nothing more than to go out often to the weddings and parties to which I am invited, both because they amuse me, and for the sake of his honor and mine, lest anyone think that I am not suitably clothed and properly treated.” “God willing,” responded Cornelia, “he will always treat you properly, and nothing worse ensues. You need to know that you must eat the wedding cake quickly, before it ages.” “Our young bride,” said Lucrezia, “is not quite clear on this point, and so she wavers, and she is right to do so, because when something is new, it is always wonderful.” “Or rather,” said Leonora, “you should say that everything seems wonderful when it is new.” “But that is the same thing,” replied Lucrezia. “The one is just like the other, since, for example, if I say that something I eat seems good, even though it isn’t, it is as though it were.” “You make me laugh!” Leonora responded. “Isn’t it then a wonder that a baker woman who stands all day in front of an oven, stifled by the heat, rushes outside to undress her little children playing in the cold, as it is the middle of winter, but she assumes that they, like her, are suffering from the heat?”

432

Chapter 13. Other Voices

Laughing at this, Cornelia said: “Praise be to God, that we are able here to tell stories like this and laugh at them among ourselves and do whatever we please, with no one to notice or rebuke us.” “Exactly,” Leonora replied, “for if by chance some man overheard us telling these jokes, would he find them amusing? No, he would have our heads.” “To tell the truth,” Lucrezia observed, “we are not happy unless we are alone, and a woman is really best off if she can live without the company of any man.” “I agree,” added Leonora. “I live quite comfortably by myself, and derive great happiness from being without one, recognizing how fine a thing is freedom.” “It cannot be,” said Helen, “that they are so wicked.” “But they are,” Cornelia replied. “May God save you from finding out very soon how true it is.” “Who knows?” said Virginia, “perhaps Helen has been lucky.” “It could be,” Lucrezia replied. “Be of good cheer.” “With all the bad things you are saying,” Helen said, “I don’t believe that Virginia will want to try out for herself what it is to be married.” “As for that,” Virginia then said, “I know for certain I would not choose to marry. But I must obey my elders.” “As to that, my dear child,” Adriana added, “I would back you up, but your uncles have decided that I must arrange for you to marry because of the great wealth that you have inherited, so that no one robs you of it. So there’s nothing else that I can do. But don’t be downcast, and don’t think that all men are the same. Perhaps, who knows, you may get a husband better than other women have.” “Oh, that is no comfort to the unlucky ones!” Leonora said. “That slim hope, which is rarely realized, is the certain ruin of helpless young girls.” “Others may nurture this infinitesimal hope of yours,” said Corinna, “but it does not tempt me at all, as I would rather die than subject myself to any man. The life that I live here with you is the best for me, with no fear of some bearded creature who can order me about.” “O fortunate Corinna,” Lucrezia responded, “what other woman in the world could be likened to you? None, certainly: not a widow, who cannot boast that she had not first suffered before becoming free; not a wife, who suffers still; not a virgin who awaits a husband, as what she awaits is to suffer. . . . You then, Corinna, are blessed with good fortune, as are those who follow your example, and much more so because God has given you a sublime intellect. With it you may enjoy and achieve excellence, engaging your great powers in the delightful study of humane and divine letters. You have already embarked on a heavenly existence even while still immersed

6. Sarra Copia Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul

433

in the trials and dangers of this world—which you cast off, rejecting the society of flawed males, giving yourself wholly to the virtues that will make you immortal. And surely, employing that sublime intellect, you must write a book on these matters, as a kindness persuading poor young girls who do not yet know how to tell good from bad what would be the best course for them. By so doing, you would acquire a double glory, performing at the same time a service to God and to the world.” “That would indeed be a good undertaking,” Corinna replied, “and I thank you for a suggestion that one day perhaps I might pursue.” “In the meantime is it not possible,” added Adriana, “that you have at least composed a sonnet on this subject?” “I have attempted to do so,” Corinna said, “but I have not yet succeeded.” “Please, you would do us a great favor to give us a taste of it,” replied Adriana. Then all the ladies circled round and pressed her so much that at last, to please them, she recited with graceful modesty the following sonnet: A free heart dwells within my breast, I serve no one, and belong to no one but myself, I dine on modesty and courtesy, Virtue dignifies me, and chastity adorns me. My soul comes from God alone, and returns to him, Even while enclosed and enfolded in the body; And it despises the world, and detests its perfidy, which deceives and degrades the vulnerable. For beauty, youth, pleasure, and pageantry, I care not, nor am I bound to anything, but pure thoughts, of my own choosing, not born of chance. So it shall be when I am young and when I age, For undisturbed by the faults of men, I seek fame and glory while I live, and when I die.

$$$ 6. Sarra Copia Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul (1621) Sulam’s Manifesto, excerpted here together with its preface, is written to refute the charge made against her by Baldassare Bonifaccio that she had, in a letter to him, denied the immortality of the soul. The Manifesto does not constitute a philosophical discussion of that doctrine, however, as Sulam explains, but an exemplar of the exchanges that female intellectuals

434

Chapter 13. Other Voices

had with male critics—in this case amplified because the male critic was a Christian who had attempted to convert Sulam, a Jew. The preface “To whoever reads this” assumes that the author is known to the public she addresses (for she was well known in Venetian intellectual circles), and explains why she has rapidly gone into print with a work that would not otherwise, except for the urgency of the situation, be her first (or as it happens, only) printed work. It was necessary, she believed, to respond immediately to the slander that she, a Jew, had denied the immortality of the soul. In fact, that doctrine was as central to Judaism as it was to Christianity; and it was, moreover, a matter on which her mentor, the great Jewish scholar and author Leone Modena, was a premier authority. The Manifesto itself asserts again unequivocally the doctrine of the immortality of the soul before turning to Bonifaccio, the author responsible for the calumny: Why had he written the book attacking her? to gain fame as an orthodox Christian believer, or as the opponent of a woman, and a Jew? Sulam eloquently defends her position, critiques his presentation, and neutralizes the venom of a man who had been her guest and interlocutor at polite sessions in her salon in the Venetian ghetto. He had challenged her to further debate; but she, having demolished his premises and his arguments, invites him, in closing, to lay down his arms.

Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul Title and preface Manifesto by Sarra Copia Sulam the Jewess, in which she refutes the detestable charge falsely made against her by Signor Baldassare Bonifaccio that she had denied the immortality of the soul. Venice, 1521, printed by Antonio Pinelli To whoever reads this: I can imagine, kind readers, that it may seem strange to you that my name, not wholly unknown in this city or abroad, appears in print for the first time in connection with a matter quite distant from what perhaps could have been expected from my pen. But the malice, or ignorance, or heedlessness of my opponent has forced me to do what I would not have done willingly for any other purpose. Yet I have expended some effort to publish a work other than one that, I suspect, the public would have more eagerly and happily welcomed. Let me just say that I have been compelled to compose and quickly publish this brief work not with the purpose—or with any thought—of achieving fame, but only to defend myself against the false calumny cast upon me by Signor Baldassare Bonifaccio. He claims, in

6. Sarra Copia Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul

435

his Discourse on the Immortality of the Soul that just came out in print, that I deny that incontrovertible truth that the human soul is immortal. Such a view is as far from my opinion as knowing what is inside my heart is beyond his capacity. . . . Dear readers, may it please you then out of simple curiosity to view this defense I have had to make, and as fair and benevolent judges, absolve her who has been falsely accused, and banish from your presence the false accuser. Farewell. The preface to her readers is followed by a dedication to her father and a sonnet.

Manifesto of Sarra Copia to Signor Baldassare Bonifaccio The human soul, Signor Baldassare, is incorruptible, immortal, and divine, created by God and infused into our body at that moment when the conceptus20 in the maternal womb is ready to receive it. This truth is for me as certain, infallible, and incontrovertible as it is, I believe, for every Jew and Christian. . . . Since the truth of the soul’s immortality is beyond contestation, Sulam wondered when she first saw his book why it had been written. And so I wondered what need could there be of such a treatise—at this moment, and in Venice of all places—and for what purpose was it circulated in print among Christians? But when I read a little further and discovered that the treatise was directed against me, and falsely charged that I was one who held an opinion contrary to the clear truth of the matter, I could not but wonder at, and at the same time abhor, the outrageous calumny boldly leveled against me, as though you were a prosecutor of the human heart, and knew my inmost thoughts that are known only to God! If in some exchange of ideas I named some philosophical or theological difficulties, I did so not because of doubt, or vacillation, which have never troubled my faith, but only out of curiosity to hear from you some interesting and original resolution of those arguments. To make such inquiries, I judged, is permitted to any person who seeks knowledge, and certainly to a woman, and more, a Jewish woman, who is forever being drawn into such discussions by those who exert themselves, as you know, to convert her to the Christian faith. Clearly, then, your calumny of me was reckless, and I could have responded with other measures, suited to its merits, than with that of my pen, even by having your book prosecuted. But since Jewish law is 20. conceptus: the product of conception, the fetus. The Italian is l’organizato, that which has been organized, or created.

436

Chapter 13. Other Voices

compassionate, I felt compassion for your ignorance, which has led you to believe that you would win the immortality of fame by discussing the immortality of the soul; and not having any particular occasion for doing so, you have gone ahead and invented one. In response, then, rather than accept your challenge,21 I have exerted myself, in the labor of but two days, to demolish this huge case you have contrived against me in your useless efforts of some two years. By means of this Manifesto I will demonstrate before the world the charge that I denied the immortality of the soul, which you laid against me in your Discourse, is absolutely false, unjust, and absurd. My purpose is solely to defend myself and so convince all those who, not knowing me, could have given some credence to your accusation concerning the religion that I profess. The rest I leave to the judgment of any person of average intelligence as to whether your pen is up to the task of conferring fame, or tarnishing it. So as to remove any doubt about my opinion in this matter, however, it should be sufficient that I remained a Jew: since if I had not believed in a life after death, as you allege, and had not feared losing the possibility of that happiness, I would not have lacked the opportunity to convert to Christianity and so improve my condition—as is known to persons of great authority, who have relentlessly attempted to persuade me to do so. But now that, having written these few lines, I believe I have sufficiently lifted the shadow of impiety that you have rashly attempted to cast on my reputation, I ask that you give me the pleasure of discussing this matter between ourselves a bit more freely and familiarly. Have the kindness to tell me, then, Signor Baldassare, what moved you to write that Discourse, and print it, and take it upon yourself to sully my reputation? . . . Bonifaccio claimed that God chose him to do so. Astounding arrogance! Why would the Lord God not have chosen for such a sublime and important matter a mind more elevated and an agent more learned than you? Why choose you alone from among the roster of all the scholars better equipped to treat of so lofty a subject? If the issue of immortality had to be raised for discussion by no better instrument than human reason, it is unfortunate that there were supplied no reasons other than yours, which, although you took them from learned authorities, you understood them badly, and conveyed them still worse. . . . You discussing the soul? You discussing immortality? These are the most difficult and arduous matters dealt with by philosophy, which you would have found perhaps somewhat obscure, if theology had not lent its aid. In 21. In his Discourse, Bonifaccio had challenged her to a further debate on the immortality of the soul.

6. Sarra Copia Sulam, Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul

437

truth, you know in conscience that you are neither a philosopher nor a theologian, and if I am not mistaken, I have heard you say yourself that those branches of knowledge are not within your remit. . . . More is needed, my friend, than the degree of juris utriusque doctor22 to qualify you to expound on the immortality of the soul. To make you aware of the meager experience you have of either theological doctrines or philosophical principles, it is enough to remind you of the calumny you made against me at the start. You say, claiming falsely that I deny immortality, that I alone of all Jews, after so many thousands of years, have fallen into this error. . . . Sulam counters that this is not the case; rather, there had long been some diversity of opinion among Jews on this matter. If it would not cause me to digress, I could point out so many of these errors and contradictions that your argument would be reduced to tatters. But that lies beyond my purpose, and I would not want anyone to think that in challenging your reasoning, I opposed in any way the truth of your conclusion. Moreover, to expose the flaws and failures of your Discourse would require a whole tome, and not just this short piece of paper, for it has no merit other than the cause that it defends. In brief, it is so full of wrongly used terms; of distortions and misunderstandings of texts; of improperly constructed syllogisms; of logical flaws and strange transitions from one topic to another; of incorrect citations of authors; and, finally, grammatical errors, that no one can press on to read it without reviling the author. We still have not discovered, however, what caused you to undertake so remarkable a project. I cannot believe it was malice, because you have always assured me of your friendship and peaceful intentions. . . . But in short, without further straining my mind to find other reasons, I believe I have divined the true one, and I know that you will readily agree: it is the folly of ambition that has induced you to expend such considerable and futile effort, and sent you racing off into print in the belief that fame consists in having published many books, regardless of what esteem they may win in the world—which, as I believe you know from experience, is impatient with mediocrity, not to mention works that are crude and clumsily written. . . . Sulam’s situation as both a woman and a Jew is raised again in the final paragraphs of the Manifesto. 22. juris utriusque doctor: a doctorate in “both laws,” i.e., civil and canon law, roughly equivalent to the modern Juris Doctor, or JD.

438

Chapter 13. Other Voices

And so it ends here, O bold challenger of women. The field of battle is entirely yours, stroll through it triumphantly, thrust your sword at the wind, O valorous champion, O noble warrior; undisturbed by any other clamor than your own raucous voice, shout to yourself alone, “Victory! Victory!” You may think, perhaps, hearing these brief words of mine, that you have found an opportunity to launch a new joust. But I reply to you now, as I declared to you before, that what I write here is not a response to your challenge but simply a manifesto, a declaration, of why I do not intend to accept it. For there is no reason for combat where there is no difference of opinion, neither in words nor in action. Therefore, so far as I am concerned, you may lay down your arms; for even if you provoke me again with a thousand insults, I shall make no further reply, so as not uselessly to waste my time, especially as I am unwilling to bare myself in print to the eyes of the world as you eagerly seek to do. Be well, and hope to be rewarded with the immortality that you preach if you live as much as a Christian as I intend to do as a Jew.

$$$ 7. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems (c. 1669–1694) The four poems selected here give expression to four different themes of Sor Juana’s verse: ##92, 145, 146, 164 in their standard numeration, the first a redondilla,23 the others sonnets, with the heading appearing for each her own. The first, #92, mocks men for their foolishness, but more, for their deceitfulness: they are foolish when they blame women for misbehavior that they themselves instigate; but they are deceitful when they complain of women’s coldness—and then, when they have succeeded in their seductions, denigrate women as whores. In the second, #145, she gazes on a portrait painted of herself, presents only “this colorful sham”: a sham that suppresses the ruination caused by time; it is a “decrepit effort”—“it is corpse, it is dust, it is shade, it is naught.” The third, #146, justifies her pursuit of truth, for which the “World” faults her; but she would rather expend wealth to enrich her mind than waste her mind on thoughts of wealth, and is committed to destroy life’s “vanities” so that they may not destroy her life. The fourth, #164, is a profession of love to an unknown lover who has suspected her unfaithfulness; Juana responds with a flood of tears that leaves her heart “undone,” reduced to a liquid her lover holds in her hands.24 23. redondilla: a poem composed of a sequence of four-lined stanzas, or quatrains; in this case, seventeen. 24. The translator of the poems given here is David Frye; the bracketed [Frye] identifies the translator as the author of a note.

7. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems

439

Poems #92: Philosophical satire Contending that men’s appetites and critiques are inconsistent, for they denounce in women what they themselves have caused: Mulish men, you like to accuse woman without reason, never seeing how you occasion the very thing you blame on them: when you court and woo their scorn with such anxious eagerness, why expect them to do well as you urge them to do ill? Their stiff resistance you assail, and then, in tones of gravity, you call it mere frivolity, what your hard work has gained. Your bold and mindless judgment reminds me of a little boy who called upon the bogeyman, then cowered in fear of him. You hope, presuming mulishly, to find the woman you seek a lusty Thaïs when you court her; when you have her, a loyal Lucretia.25 Whose humor could be odder than his who, lacking judgment, fogs up his own mirror, then regrets it isn’t clear?

25. Thaïs, the lover of Ptolemy and, in rumor, of Alexander the Great as well, became the classical symbol of the libertine woman. Lucretia, a woman in Roman legend who was betrayed and raped and who committed suicide to prevent her husband’s dishonor, represented the type of the virtuous woman. [Frye]

440

Chapter 13. Other Voices

Shown favor or shown scorn, your ill temper stays the same: complaining when they put you off, but love you well and you just scoff. No matter how discreet she be, she never can win your esteem. If she won’t let you in, she’s mean; but let you in, she’s easy. You’re always foolish as a mule, so on your faulty scale you blame the first for being cruel, and the next for being loose. How could the one you woo in love maintain her temperance, when one who’s cruel offends you and one who’s loose enrages? Yet between the anger and the grief that your appetite recalls, bless the woman who loves you not, and whine about her for all you’re worth. The love-making lengths to which you go Give wings to women’s liberties, yet after making them so bad you expect them to be so good. Whose blame should be the greater in a passion this ill-starred: she who, begged-for, falls, or he who, fallen, begs her? Or, though they both do ill, who is the more to blame: she who sins for pay, or he who pays for sin? Why do you cower, then, in fear of blame that’s all your own?

7. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Poems

441

Love them as you’ve made them, or make them as you’d have them. Stop your courting and your woo, and then, with more the reason, you may denounce the infatuation of any woman who begs for you. With these weapons I have proved the arrogance of your arguments, for in your promises and your demands you’re the sum of devil, flesh, and world.

#145 Rebutting the praises that the sort of truth that she calls passion inscribed to a portrait of the poetess: This thing you see, this colorful sham which, with its fine display of art’s best skill and its false syllogisms of paint, may cunningly scam your sense; this thing, in whom flattery has sought to erase the horrors of the passing years and, by overcoming time’s harsh rigors, to triumph over old age and oblivion: it is a futile artifact of care; it is a flower delicate in the wind; it is a pointless safeguard against fate; it is a foolish business, wrongly wrought; it is a decrepit effort, and, rightly seen, it is corpse, it is dust, it is shade, it is naught.

#146 Complaining of her lot: she hints at her aversion to vices, and accounts for her enjoyment of the Muses.26 26. Muses: nine Greek goddesses, the guardians of poetry, the arts, and the sciences.

442

Chapter 13. Other Voices

What is your interest, World, in pestering me? How do I offend you when I just try to add some beauty to my mind, not set my mind to watching beauty? I’ve no esteem for treasure, worldly riches; I always find it, then, more to my liking to add some richness to my thinking than thinking about how I might get rich. I’ve no esteem for prettiness—for, past its prime, it’s plundered in the civil war of growing old; nor do deceitful riches please my mind. I find it better, if my truth be told, to consume the vanities of life, and not consume my life in vanity.

#164 In which she quiets a jealous suspicion with the rhetoric of tears: This afternoon, my love, when I spoke to you, seeing in your face and in your actions how my words could not persuade you, I longed for you to see through to my heart; and Love,27 helping me in my endeavor, won over what had seemed impossible: for through the tears that in my grief I spilled my undone heart came seeping out. No more bitterness, now, my love, no more; let not despotic jealousies torment you, nor vile mistrust set your peace contending against vain shadows, against foolish hints, for in this liquid humor you’ve already seen and touched my heart, undone into your hands.

27. Love: that is, Cupid, the Greek god of love.

Chapter 14 Man Alone

Introduction After viewing other places and attending to other voices, this chronicle returns to the mainstream of the Western literary tradition as it reaches a new peak in the second half of the seventeenth century. This chapter considers three dramas—two comedies and one tragedy1—representing the creative activity of this final phase of the Early Modern era. Composed by the three male authors Pedro Calderón de la Barca, writing in Spanish; Molière, writing in French; and John Milton, writing in English, they address the related themes of defending honor, resisting injustice, witnessing truth, and exalting heroism. All three works concern a man alone, confronting the giant forces arrayed against him. In 1635, the death of Lope de Vega, the first great dramatist of the Spanish Golden Age, made way for Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600– 1681), the second. The son of a government official originally destined for the clergy, he had studied law and theology at the universities of Alcalá and Salamanca before taking up, instead, the vocation of playwright. During his long career, he wrote more than one hundred plays, intended not only for the public theater but also for the royal court, where he joined a circle of dramatists in the service of King Philip IV, and for the church, to which he returned, entering the priesthood in 1651 and becoming the king’s honorary chaplain in 1663. His plays are characterized by the meticulous development of the intersecting themes of honor, power, and love, and a probing exploration of moral character viewed in relation to social class. In El alcalde de Zalamea (The Mayor of Zalamea), written around 1640,2 selections from which follow in this chapter, Calderón revises the concept of honor, satirized famously by Cervantes in his epochal Don Quixote (see Chapter 10, Text 4). Conventionally viewed as the property of the nobility (an especially numerous and influential class in Early Modern Spain) honor required that an insult of any kind, from a verbal slight to the sexual 1. Comedies are concerned with social issues, and tragedies with timeless and existential ones, as is true of these three works. Both genres are rooted in the ancient Greek tradition; see Chapter 2, Introduction. 2. Various dates are found; this one is given by Alexander A. Parker, Encyclopedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pedro-Calderon-de-la-Barca.

443

444

Chapter 14. Man Alone

violation of a daughter, be repaired immediately. Restoration of honor could be obtained by a violent act of revenge, by a public and abject apology, or by some other form of compensation. Such is the understanding of honor held by Pedro Crespo, the play’s protagonist. But Crespo is not a nobleman; rather, he is a peasant landowner, the richest man in the village of Zalamea, who has made his wealth and won his standing by the labor of his hands. When a military company comes to town and is billeted, as was the norm, with the local householders, the captain, a nobleman like all officers, is assigned to Crespo’s house. There he sees, desires, abducts, and rapes Isabel, the daughter of his host. Crespo, as much as any nobleman, must have satisfaction. He makes the captain an astonishing offer: the gift of all his wealth, his son’s entire inheritance, in exchange for that nobleman’s marriage to his daughter—an act that would restore her honor, and his. Amid these events, in the meantime, Crespo has been chosen by the villagers to be mayor of the town. Wielding the staff of justice and attired in his magisterial robes, he arrests the captain. When the latter scornfully declines to accept Crespo’s offer, the mayor of Zalamea collects the depositions of witnesses, prosecutes the alleged rapist, and after a verdict of guilty is rendered, orders the captain’s execution. By his proper and official actions, the peasant Pedro Crespo, mayor of Zalamea, regains his honor. Calderón redefines honor as a quality of heart and soul, detached from rank, and portrays a mere peasant as possessing the intelligence and strength of character that were conventionally considered to be—although they often were not—the attributes of aristocracy. Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–1673), as the son of a prosperous artisan and entrepreneur, was destined for worldly success. He duly attended the prestigious Jesuit Collège de Clermont in Paris, where he mixed with the sons of the aristocracy. In 1643, however, he renounced his paternal inheritance, and in 1644, taking the name of Molière, he became an actor: a vocation then viewed as shameful. He joined with a team of other professionals in a new acting company, the Illustre Théâtre (Illustrious Theater), with which he would perform in the leading roles until the day he died. Thus Molière was by choice an outsider, having rejected the high society of Paris in the orbit of the king. As an outsider, he would write comedies critiquing the false values, as he saw it, of that milieu. From 1643 to 1658, Molière’s troupe toured the provinces, performing where opportunities arose in a pattern reminiscent of the earlier itinerant companies of the Italian commedia dell’arte.3 During this period, although 3. commedia dell’arte: improvisatory comic theater, developed in Italy in the sixteenth century, utilizing stock characters and plots; an enormous influence on the further development of drama throughout Europe.

Introduction

445

the plays presented mostly had been composed by others, Molière wrote two original plays. In 1658, the troupe returned to Paris and won the favor and patronage of the brother of King Louis XIV, who arranged for their use of the large hall at the Petit-Bourbon palace for rehearsal and performance; in 1661, they relocated to a hall in the Palais Royale. In 1665, the king himself became their patron and the company was dubbed the Troupe du roi (The King’s Company). During their years in Paris from 1658 to 1673, Molière’s troupe performed nearly one hundred plays, of which he himself wrote twenty-nine. Several of these are considered masterpieces, especially L’école des femmes (The School for Wives, 1662); Tartuffe (1664); Le Misanthrope (The Misanthrope, 1666); Le bourgeois gentilhomme (The Would-Be Gentleman, 1670); and Les femmes savantes (The Learned Ladies, 1672). In 1680, seven years after his death, his theatrical company was merged with others to form the famous French national theater, the Comédie-Française. Molière is considered the greatest French author of comedies, and one of the greatest French authors in any medium. Molière’s comedies mock the pretensions of aristocratic society. None does so more forcefully than The Misanthrope, of which selections appear in this chapter. Its hero, Alceste, is determined not to engage in the pandering, flattery, and posturing characteristic of upper-class behavior, to the distress of his friends, who urge him to bend a little to prevailing social mores. Alceste is absurd in his rigidity: he will not compromise to give false praise to a friend’s idiotic sonnet or to protect his own interests in a lawsuit. He is pure in all things—except in his love for the wealthy young widow Célimène, the embodiment of all he detests. Célimène is a coquette and a flirt; more, she is an artful, glittering, and shallow narcissist who deceives all her aspiring lovers for sport. Her deceptions at last force Alceste to repudiate her. The play ends as he sets off to live a solitary and loveless life in the country, far from the corruption of Paris and the court. But is The Misanthrope in fact a comedy, a genre that normally has a successful and hopeful resolution? Perhaps Alceste does achieve success, in Molière’s eyes: he has not betrayed his principles, which lead him where they must. Calderón’s Pedro Crespo defied the overlords of a peasant society, outwitted them, and redeemed what had been lost. Molière’s Alceste confronts the fraudulence of Parisian high society, cannot overcome it, and refusing to surrender his ideals or his freedom, abandons it. Now Milton’s Samson, in a tragic mode, in the final drama to be considered in this chapter, will battle fate like a Greek hero and by his sacrifice, will save his people like a Hebrew prophet. John Milton (1608–1674) was one of the greatest English authors, ranking alongside, and some would say ahead of, Shakespeare (see Chapter 11, Text 3). Whereas Shakespeare’s understanding of the human condition

446

Chapter 14. Man Alone

is peerless, Milton adds another dimension: he is a complex thinker and a considerable scholar, urgently engaged in issues that were at once timeless and immediate, as England underwent religious strife and political revolution—a revolution he served in as a loyal servitor until, in 1660, it was reversed, with the monarchy he had hated restored, and the Puritan faith he had championed sidelined. The issues of free speech, free thought, love and marriage, slavery, providence, death and redemption inform his literary works as they did his life’s actions. Such matters are raised notably in Milton’s three greatest works, all grounded in biblical sources: Paradise Lost (1667/1674), the story of Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, based on Genesis 3; Paradise Regained (1671), the story of Christ’s triumph over sin and the devil, based loosely on Luke 4 in addition to other scriptural texts; and Samson Agonistes (1671),4 the story, closely following Judges 13–16, of the Old Testament hero who singlehandedly liberated Israel from Philistine domination. Samson is a biblical figure whom Milton casts as a Greek hero in a verse drama modeled strictly on the principles of Greek tragedy. He observes all the Greek unities of time, place, and action: the drama unfolds within the space of a day, in a single setting, with all characters and events tightly related to the culminating climactic event. A Chorus comments on the significance of dramatic episodes and the key event, the horrific slaughter of the entire Philistine leadership, occurs offstage. The play was not meant to be enacted, but read aloud—a “closet drama,” performed by and for a small gathering—thus differentiated both from epic verse, read in solitude, and staged drama, a public event inhospitable to the concentrated intensity of Milton’s play. Milton hews closely to the biblical text describing Samson’s captivity, blindness, and triumph over the Philistines, while amplifying some features of the story: the determined kindliness of the hero’s father Manoa (the biblical Manoah); the utter viciousness of his wife and seductress Dalila (the biblical Delilah); and the taunting arrogance of the Philistine giant Harapha (an invention). Betrayed by Dalila, Samson has been blinded, imprisoned, and compelled to labor for the Philistines, who by their neutralization of the mighty hero have secured their sovereignty over Israel. He bemoans his fate but accepts responsibility for the fault of having succumbed to the seductions of his wife. His father Manoa enters, hoping to ransom him, as the Philistines need no longer fear the man they have mutilated. Samson’s treacherous wife Dalila enters, pretending remorse. A Philistine champion, the giant 4. Agonistes: untranslated in the English title, a Greek term meaning “struggling.” In Greek thought, athletes, warriors, or other contenders engage in agon, a struggle, or contest, to gain victory.

1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Mayor of Zalamea

447

Harapha, enters to relish Samson’s humiliation, but will not accept Samson’s challenge to fight a duel. Finally, a Philistine officer arrives to bring Samson to the theater in the center of the city where a great festival of thanksgiving to the god Dagon is underway: here Samson will be commanded to perform feats of strength for the amusement of the assemblage. Samson refuses at first, but on further reflection agrees to go and exits. Soon Manoa and the Chorus hear a terrible noise. They learn from a friendly messenger who has escaped the devastation that Samson—his hair regrown and his strength restored—has wrapped his arms around the two pillars holding up the temple roof, and brought the whole edifice down on the heads of the entire Philistine elite. Israel is freed, Samson has completed the heroic mission for which he was divinely chosen, and his father will bring his body home for honorable burial. Appointed by God to be the avenger of Israel against Philistine domination, but rendered powerless by the machinations of Dalila, in the end Samson becomes the hero he was meant to be, and triumphs over his enemies at the moment of his necessary martyrdom—foreshadowing the necessary martyrdom of Christ, which was for the Puritan Milton the key event of all human history. In the figure of Samson, he has melded the heroic ideals of the Bible and of Greek tragedy, knitting together the two traditions, GrecoRoman and Judeo-Christian, sustaining Western thought and literature. In these three seventeenth-century dramas by master authors writing in Spanish, French, and English, the portrait of the individual in confrontation with destiny, a preeminent theme of Western literature, is fully realized. With this achievement, the consideration presented here of the pre-modern stages of that tradition may close. It will take radical new directions in the centuries to come, as will be seen in Volume Two.

$$$ 1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Mayor of Zalamea (1640) Crespo’s daughter Isabel has been raped, and Captain Álvaro wounded by Crespo’s son Juan and arrested. Meanwhile, Crespo has been chosen mayor of Zalamea. He had resolved to avenge his lost honor as a father; now he will do so as a magistrate. The selections below are taken from the second and fourth scenes of the final “Third Day,” or Act III. In Scene 2, Crespo talks to Álvaro in prison, attempting to find a solution for his wounded honor short of a violent act of revenge. Álvaro bristles at being controlled by a peasant, even if the

448

Chapter 14. Man Alone

mayor, and he insists that he can only be tried by a military tribunal; Cres­po brushes this aside, asserting the judicial authority of the village. Crespo reveals his emotional distress, and insists that there must be a remedy for the great wrong done him. He offers Álvaro all his wealth and his son’s inheritance in exchange for Álvaro’s marriage to his daughter. But Álvaro will not condescend to marry a peasant’s daughter. He is an aristocrat, the class from which military officers were drawn, and cannot accept marriage below his rank. As mayor, not an aggrieved father, Crespo has Álvaro arrested, determined to proceed to a trial and, as the evidence will permit, execution. In Scene 4, the last of the play, Álvaro’s superior don Lope insists that Crespo cannot proceed against Álvaro, but Crespo has already done so: he has gathered depositions, a trial has ensued, and a verdict reached. These events are revealed when King Philip II arrives in Zalamea en route to Portugal. He examines the documents and agrees that Álvaro was guilty—but says he must be tried elsewhere. At this, Crespo explains that Álvaro had already been tried; and throwing open the prison door, reveals Álvaro’s body, executed by garrote, the standard Spanish method of judicial killing into the late twentieth century. He should have been beheaded as befits a nobleman and an officer, the king observes; but Crespo replies that, there being no miscreant nobles in Zalamea, the executioner was not experienced at beheading; instead, the condemned suffered the death of a common criminal. The king accedes, designates Crespo the permanent mayor of Zalamea, and leaves for Portugal along with his military escort. Crespo’s honor has been restored by judicial means rather than by a personal act of violence; Isabel is safe in a convent serving a Lord who does not bow to the aristocracy; and Crespo’s son, who had assaulted Álvaro, joins the military in the service of don Lope.5

The Mayor of Zalamea Act III Scene 2: Pedro Crespo has told his assistants to bar the doors so that no miscreants can get away; then, attended by the town clerk and guards, he enters bearing the staff of justice and speaks to Álvaro. ÁLVARO: Now, what is this that I see? . . . You enter with all this paraphernalia? CRESPO: And why not? The power of justice is very great, so I believe, and goes where it will. . . . I have come representing justice, so as to command your respect 5. The text that follows translates Calderón’s verse original in prose.

1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Mayor of Zalamea

449

and compel you to listen to me. But now I set down the staff of justice and remove these robes, and as a man and no more I wish to tell you of my troubles. So now that we are alone, sir don Álvaro, the two of us can speak to each other more openly, so that those feelings that are locked in the prisons of our heart can break forth from those tombs of silence. I am a good man, who would not exchange his peasant birth, as God is my witness, for the title of nobility; it is a scruple, a defect in me, for I could attain any ambition I desired. Here among my equals I have been treated with respect. The village and its council have honored me. I have ample property, such that, thanks be to God, no peasant is richer than I am in all the villages of this region. My daughter has been brought up to be just like her mother—may God cherish her in heaven!—so earning the highest approval, esteem, and commendation of the world. It should be sufficient, sir, I would think, to prove her worth, that I am rich, yet no one complains of me, and I am modest, yet no one whispers rumors about me. More, we live in a small village, where it is all too common that people gossip about the faults and deficiencies of others; and it has pleased God, sir, that no one has found any in us. That my daughter is beautiful, your actions have declared—although in saying so I am so overcome I could weep. So great, sir, is my misfortune. But let us not swallow all the poison in that cup; some other remedy may be found for this suffering. We need not, sir, let it grow greater; we must try in some way to diminish it. It has already swelled up enormously, so that even though I try to suppress it, I cannot. God knows, that if I could keep it buried and hidden within myself, if this suffering could be contained, I would not come to you as I do, and talk to you. Seeking to remedy so grievous a wrong, I must have a remedy for the insult done me. There is vengeance, but that does not restore my honor. So considering one possible course after another, I see only one that would be good for me and would cause you no harm. Here it is: you will take all my property in its entirety, leaving nothing for my sustenance or that of my son, whom I shall have kneel down at your feet to plead for a maravedí,6 or else we are left beggars, as we will have no path, no means by which we can live. And if you prefer to brand us both as slaves and sell us, that will add another sum to the dowry that I offer you. Restore to me the honor that you have taken from me. You will suffer no dishonor, I believe, sir, on account of any loss of status your children will realize because they are my grandchildren, for they will enjoy the greater privilege, sir, of being your children. . . . What am I asking for? I ask for my honor, which you have stolen from me. Yet, although it is mine, it seems, as I am here before you humbly 6. maravedí: a copper coin of little value.

450

Chapter 14. Man Alone

pleading, that I am not asking you for what is mine, but what is yours. Consider: I have the power to take it by my hand, but I ask only that you give it with yours, willingly. ÁLVARO: (aside) Enough with all this suffering! (to Crespo) Tiresome and voluble old man. . . . If you seek vengeance for your honor, I have nothing to fear; so far as justice goes, you have no jurisdiction over me.7 . . . CRESPO: Consider: I have prostrated myself before you, and I am begging you to restore my honor. ÁLVARO: You are annoying me! CRESPO: Consider who I am: facing you is the mayor of Zalamea. ÁLVARO: You have no jurisdiction over me. I will face a military tribunal. CRESPO: So this is your decision? ÁLVARO: Yes, stupid and tedious old man. CRESPO: You offer me no remedy? ÁLVARO: The remedy is for you to shut up. CRESPO: Nothing else? ÁLVARO: No. CRESPO: Then, I swear to God [picking up his staff of justice], this staff of justice will require you to pay me back. [To those waiting outside] Enter! The town clerk and armed guards enter at Crespo’s call.

7. As an officer, Álvaro is confident that he can only be tried by a military tribunal.

1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Mayor of Zalamea

451

TOWN CLERK: Sir? ÁLVARO: What are these peasants here for? TOWN CLERK: What is your command? CRESPO: Arrest his excellency the captain. ÁLVARO: You are going too far! You cannot do this to a man like me, in the service of the king! CRESPO: We shall soon see. From here you exit either a captive or a dead man. . . . ÁLVARO: You must treat me with respect! CRESPO: (to the guards) With respect, take him to jail; and with respect, bind him with chain and shackles; and with respect, take great care that he speak to no one. . . . (aside to don Álvaro) And now, at last, . . . with exceedingly great respect, I must garrote you. ÁLVARO: Ah! Peasants with power!

Act III Scene 4: Don Lope has returned to Zalamea to release Álvaro, his captain, and has learned that his friend Crespo is the mayor who had arrested the officer. Don Lope is about to storm the prison with a company of soldiers when King Philip arrives. The scene takes place in front of the prison, where Crespo stands to one side with his clerk and guards, and don Lope and his men enter from the other. LOPE: (To his soldiers) Soldiers, this is the prison where the captain is held. If they don’t release him immediately, burn the place down. And if they resist, burn down the whole town. TOWN CLERK: (To Crespo and his guards) By this time, even if they destroy the prison, they will not set him free.

452

Chapter 14. Man Alone

LOPE: Death to the peasants! CRESPO: And what good will that do? LOPE: Help has arrived. Tear down the prison, come, tear down the gate! King Philip and his entourage arrive between don Lope’s men and Crespo’s. KING PHILIP: What is this? Is this how you welcome your king? LOPE: Your Majesty, this is the worst scoundrel of a peasant that ever lived. And, God be praised, if you hadn’t arrived so soon, my lord, you would have seen the town in flames. KING PHILIP: What has happened here? LOPE: A mayor arrested an officer and when I came for him they did not hand him over. KING PHILIP: Who is this mayor? CRESPO: I am. KING PHILIP: How do you explain yourself? CRESPO: Here are the records of the trial, which prove that a crime took place deserving the death penalty: he abducted a girl, raped her in a wilderness, and refused to marry her though her father offered full compensation if he did so. LOPE: This is the mayor, who is also her father. CRESPO: That is irrelevant in this situation—for if anyone else had come to me with the same complaint, would I not have done justice in the same way? Absolutely. Why would I not do for my own daughter what I would do for

1. Pedro Calderón de la Barca, The Mayor of Zalamea

453

anyone else’s? . . . See for yourself that the trial has been properly performed. See for yourself if anyone claims that I erred in any way, if I have suborned any witness, if I have misstated any deposition, and if so, then condemn me to death. KING PHILIP: (Reading the documents Crespo has provided) The charge is well substantiated. But you do not have the authority to execute a sentence that should be referred to a different tribunal. That is the law and you must surrender the prisoner. CRESPO: Your Majesty, I am not able to surrender him—because this is a small village, which has only one court, and whatever verdict it decides upon, it also executes. And so it has been executed. KING PHILIP: What is this you say? CRESPO: If you do not believe I am telling the truth, Your Majesty, look over here and see. (The prison door is opened, revealing don Álvaro seated and garroted.) This is the captain. KING PHILIP: What, you dared to do this? CRESPO: You yourself said that the verdict was just—so there was no wrong in doing so. KING PHILIP: A military court would not have known how to execute the verdict? CRESPO: Your Majesty, the king’s justice is one whole body, but it has many hands— so tell me, what does it matter if a man is killed with this hand who should have been killed with that one? And what does it matter if a small error is made if the right result is achieved in the end? KING PHILIP: That’s all as it may be, but how is it, since he was a captain and a nobleman, that you saw fit to garrote him? CRESPO: And why not? Your Majesty, the noblemen in these parts are so well behaved that our executioner never learned how to behead people. The captain may

454

Chapter 14. Man Alone

have some basis for complaining that he was improperly executed, but until he himself lodges a complaint, it doesn’t concern us. KING PHILIP: Don Lope, the deed has been done, the death was warranted, and it does not matter if a small error was made if the right result is achieved in the end. No soldier must remain here now; we must march on shortly, as it is important that I arrive soon in Portugal. (To Crespo) I designate you, Pedro Crespo, the mayor of Zalamea in perpetuity. CRESPO: You alone have truly understood what justice is. King Philip, the soldiers, and his attendants leave. LOPE: You should be grateful that His Majesty arrived in time. CRESPO: By God! Even if he hadn’t, there would have been no out for him (indicating Alvaro). LOPE: Wouldn’t it have been better to do it my way, so I could have made him restore your daughter’s honor? CRESPO: She has chosen to enter a convent, where she has a heavenly spouse8 who has no use for noblemen. . . .

$$$ 2. Molière, The Misanthrope (1666) Alceste is repelled by the artificiality of Parisian society and refuses to engage in it—but he is in love with Célimène, a rich widow who has no material need of any male attachment, who exemplifies that artificiality. He believes that she loves him, but she evades giving him any real assurance that she does, even as her toying with three other suitors, not surprisingly, arouses his suspicions. When he raises the predicament to her, she responds with slippery witticisms. When he obtains evidence—provided 8. Pledged to celibacy, nuns were considered to be brides of Jesus Christ.

2. Molière, The Misanthrope

455

by an unappealing older woman Arsinoé, who seeks to win his affection for herself—that she has written a passionate love letter to one of the other contestants in her romantic games, Alceste confronts her. His friend Philinte and Célimène’s cousin Éliante, voices of reason, urge caution, but they cannot calm him—and although he is tempted, he does not turn his affections to Éliante, a more worthy target than Célimène. In the end, her deceptions now revealed, Célimène refuses to respond with the authenticity that Alceste demands. He cuts the cord, and announces his intention to retire to a secluded place far from the hypocrisy of Paris and the court. As the play closes on an unfinished note, Philinte and Éliante, now having found each other, plan to rescue their unhappy friend, while we, as spectators, hope Alceste will find in the wilderness the perfection that he seeks.9

The Misanthrope Act I Scene 1: Philinte, Alceste PHILINTE: What’s this? What’s the matter with you? ALCESTE: Please—leave me. PHILINTE: Come on, tell me what this strange behavior . . . ALCESTE: Leave me alone, run away, disappear. PHILINTE: You should at least listen to people without being angry. ALCESTE: I want to be angry, and I don’t want to listen. PHILINTE: I can never understand you when you’re suddenly in one of these moods, and even though we’re friends, I’m always the first . . . ALCESTE: I—your friend? Scratch me off the list. I may have said I was, but after what I just saw I’m telling you straight off that I’m not your friend any longer. I don’t want to be loved by anyone who’s so corrupt. 9. The prose version of The Misanthrope given here is translated from Molière’s original French text in rhymed couplets. All the scenes are set in Célimène’s apartment in Paris.

456

Chapter 14. Man Alone

PHILINTE: Then by your standards, Alceste, I’m a sinner? ALCESTE: You—you should be dying of shame. . . . Alceste recounts to Philinte his wrongdoing, particularly his hypocritical shows of affection to persons in high society whom he actually has no regard for at all. PHILINTE: But seriously, what do you want people to do? ALCESTE: I want people to be sincere. An honorable man should never say anything that he doesn’t truly believe. . . . PHILINTE: But when you live in the world you have to behave civilly, the way the world expects. ALCESTE: No: I tell you we should condemn without mercy this disgraceful trade in false friendship. We should be men, and every time we meet someone we should show what we really are; our hearts should speak and our feelings should never hide behind false compliments. . . . I’m not joking. I won’t spare anyone. I am disgusted; all I see in the Court and the city are things that enrage me. I’m in a black mood. I’m appalled when I see how human beings behave in society: there’s nothing but cowardly flattery, injustice, self-interest, treason, deceit. I can’t stop; I’m furious; I intend to challenge and defy the whole human race. . . . PHILINTE: So you want to condemn all humanity? ALCESTE: Yes, I hate it, intensely. . . . Damnation! Such things cut me to the quick; sometimes I feel I must escape to some remote place, away from all human beings. . . . Philinte brings up the matter of a pending lawsuit against Alceste, who will suffer a painful loss because of his refusal to compromise.

2. Molière, The Misanthrope

457

PHILINTE: But this moral rectitude about which you’re so punctilious, this virtue in which you wrap yourself, do you see it in the woman you love? . . . You’ve rejected truehearted Éliante, who is attracted to you; and prudish Arsinoé, who eyes you longingly. But you’ve been captivated by that flirt Célimène, whose cutting wit seems to reflect the manners of the time. You despise that kind of behavior; how can you put up with it in this pretty woman? Isn’t it a defect in your sweetheart? Don’t you see it? Do you simply make excuses for it? ALCESTE: No, the love I feel for this widow doesn’t make me blind to her defects. I’m the first to see them and condemn them, even though I adore her. I can’t help it; I admit it; I’m weak; she is lovable. Her charms are stronger than I am, and besides, my devotion to her will surely purge her of these vices. PHILINTE: That would be no small accomplishment! You think, then, that she loves you? ALCESTE: Yes, certainly! I wouldn’t love her if I didn’t think I was loved. PHILINTE: But if she’s shown you that she favors you, why are you so irritated by your rivals? ALCESTE: Because someone who’s in love wants to have his beloved all to himself; I’ve come here precisely to tell her how I feel. . . .

Act IV Scene 3: Célimène, Alceste Célimène’s other suitors—Oronte, Acaste, and Clitandre—are introduced, while Alceste presses her for an assurance of her love for him. The aging prude Arsinoé, hoping to win Alceste’s affections, shows him passionate love letters Célimène has written to someone else. In a rage, he confronts her. ALCESTE: O Heavens! Can I master my rage? CÉLIMÈNE: Oof! Why do you seem so upset? What’s the meaning of these sighs and those somber glances?

458

Chapter 14. Man Alone

ALCESTE: No evil of which the human soul is capable can be compared to your disloyalty. No fate, no demon, no angry Heaven has ever created a being as wicked as you. CÉLIMÈNE: Your kindness is admirable. ALCESTE: No witticisms, please; this is no laughing matter. You would do better to blush: I have certain proof of your treachery. This explains my misery; not for nothing was I anxious. My suspicions, which some found offensive, prompted me to look for harm, and I found it. Despite your caution, your ability to pretend, my instincts told me what I ought to fear. Don’t assume that I will put up with this outrageous betrayal without taking revenge. Yes, I know: desire can’t be controlled; love can come unbidden; a heart can’t be captured by force; it’s free to choose its master. If you had told me the truth, if you had sent me away at the start, I would have had no cause for complaint. But encouraging me deceitfully—that is treachery, that is a crime for which no punishment is enough. I have a right to be resentful. I’m warning you; this blow is killing me. I can’t stop myself; reason doesn’t control my emotions now. Yes: I am overwhelmed by anger; I am justifiably enraged; I will not be responsible for what I might do. CÉLIMÈNE: And what accounts for this frenzy? Have you lost your wits? ALCESTE: Yes indeed I have. Just the sight of you infected me with deadly poison, the poison of believing that your fraudulent, bewitching behavior was sincere. ... Alceste shows her the evidence he has gotten from Arsinoé: the letter she has written to Oronte. Célimène pretends that the letter, which has incensed Alceste, is quite innocent and written to a woman. He does not accept the explanation and she admits it is written to a suitor, one of Alceste’s rivals. ALCESTE: I beg you, explain to me how a letter like this could be written to a woman and I’ll be satisfied. CÉLIMÈNE: No, it’s written to Oronte, and I want everyone to believe it. I enjoy his attention, I admire what he says, I value him, and I agree with anything

2. Molière, The Misanthrope

459

you’d like. Please, go off, don’t let me delay you. And please stop screaming at me. ALCESTE: Dear Heaven! Has anything more cruel ever been created? Has any heart ever been treated this way? What? I’m justifiably angry with her, I come to plead my case, and I’m the one who is attacked! I’m devoured by grief and suspicion; I’m allowed to believe things while others smile about it; and I’m a coward, I’m chained to her and can’t break away, I can’t bring myself to denounce someone whom I still love. Oh, you know all too well how to use my weakness against me, how to take advantage of my desperate love for you. Acquit yourself of a crime that devastates me, stop pretending to be guilty—let me believe in the innocence of that letter. I love you, I’ll meet you halfway; do your best to seem faithful, and I, for my part, will do my best to believe you. CÉLIMÈNE: Come, come: this jealous rage has made you mad; you scarcely deserve to be loved. What could possibly make me degrade myself by deceiving you? If I began to love someone else, why wouldn’t I tell you the truth? Can’t my willingness to reassure you overcome your doubts? Does my assurance mean nothing? Aren’t you insulting me by believing your suspicions? A woman’s honor prevents her from admitting desire; it’s only after a struggle that we are able to confess that we love. And if a lover hears such a confession, how dare he distrust it? Isn’t he wrong to doubt what she says? When I listen to your suspicions I feel I’m right to be angry; you don’t deserve to be taken seriously. I’m annoyed at myself for being foolish and weak enough to continue to care for you. I should look for someone else and give you a legitimate reason to complain. ALCESTE: Oh, you traitor! Loving you is pure insanity. There’s no doubt you’re deceiving me with these sweet phrases, but what can I do? I must submit to my fate. I surrender to you; I’m determined to believe you. Come what may I’ll see how it all ends, I’ll see what your heart is like, and whether it will be corrupt enough to betray me. CÉLIMÈNE: No. You do not love me as one ought to love. ALCESTE: Ah . . . no one has ever loved as intensely as I. My love is so strong that it has even made me wish you ill. Yes, I wish that no one liked you, that you were reduced to a miserable life, that Heaven had robbed you of

460

Chapter 14. Man Alone

everything—rank, family, wealth—so that I could have the joy of knowing that my glorious sacrifices had repaired your misfortunes, and that everything you had was due to me. CÉLIMÈNE: That’s a strange way to wish me well! Heaven forbid that you should succeed. . . .

Act V Scene 4: Acaste, Clitandre, Arsinoé, Philinte, Éliante, Oronte, Célimène, Alceste More letters are divulged! Célimène has been playing with the affections of all her suitors, while mocking each in turn to the others. Acaste, Clitandre, and Oronte make this discovery, while Alceste and the others present listen. After much outrage is expressed by all his rivals, Alceste speaks, offering Célimène the opportunity to share his solitude in the country. She will not. Declining to engage her very worthy cousin Éliante, who will now marry his loyal friend Philinte, he goes his way alone. ALCESTE: Well, I have been silent despite what I have seen; I let everyone else speak first. Have I controlled myself long enough, may I now . . . ? CÉLIMÈNE: Yes, you may say what you like. You have the right to complain, to find fault with me. I am in the wrong; I confess it. I am ashamed of myself; I won’t try to buy you off with empty excuses. I’m not disturbed when others attack me, but I agree that I have acted shamefully toward you. You may well be displeased; I know how guilty I appear, that everything suggests that I was capable of betraying you; you are entitled to hate me. Do: I consent. ALCESTE: Oh! You traitor, could I do such a thing? Do you think I can stifle my emotions? And even if I wanted with all my heart to hate you, is my heart ready to obey me? [To Éliante and Philinte.] You see what shameful love can do to a man; you’re witnesses to my weakness. But you haven’t seen everything; I’m about to go further, to show you how foolish it is to claim to be wise. In the end, all we are is human. Yes, you sorcerer, I can make excuses for your crime: I will convince myself it was only the weakness of a young woman influenced by the vices of the times. I’ll forgive you if you are willing to adopt my plan, to abandon society, to live with me hidden deep in the country. That is the only place where you can repair the damage your

3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes

461

letter has caused; after this disgraceful episode, it’s only there that I could love you again. CÉLIMÈNE: I! Renounce the world before I’m an old woman? Bury myself in your splendid isolation? ALCESTE: And if your emotions are like mine, why do you need the rest of the world? Am I not enough to satisfy you? CÉLIMÈNE: Solitude is frightening to a twenty-year-old; I don’t feel strong enough to be able to take such a step. If giving you my hand is enough to satisfy you, I could do that, and marriage . . . ALCESTE: No. Now I detest you. You refuse: that has affected me more than anything else you could have done. Since I by myself cannot satisfy you, as you by yourself would satisfy me, I reject you. This insult frees me from the shameful love I had for someone so unworthy. Célimène exits. Alceste turns to Éliante, praises her virtues, but declines to court her—which Philinte is most eager to do. Alceste wishes them well, and retires to his chosen solitude. ALCESTE: May you both continue to feel this way, and enjoy true happiness! But I, betrayed at every turn, overwhelmed by injustice, I will leave this hellhole where vice is triumphant, and find some lonely spot where I may live freely as an honorable man. Alceste exits.

$$$ 3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes (1671) Six key moments of Milton’s drama are captured in the excerpts below: Samson’s opening monologue, reflecting on his desperate circumstances; the arrival of his hopeful father Manoa; the entrance of the vicious Dalila, who was responsible for his downfall; the entrance of the Philistine giant Harapha, who mocks Samson, but declines to face him in combat; the

462

Chapter 14. Man Alone

summoning of Samson to perform at the festival for the Philistine god Dagon; and Samson’s revenge on the Philistine nation and liberation of Israel, achieved by his martyrdom.10

Samson Agonistes Samson’s monologue Samson asks himself why he, who was intended by God to serve his nation and for that purpose given extraordinary strength, is now the humbled captive of his enemy. The Philistines have blinded him, and set him to forced labor in their prison. Yet the fault was his: he had “weakly revealed” the secret of his strength to a woman, his wife, who betrayed him to the Philistines. The secret was that his strength was in his hair, without which he would be as weak as any man (lines 30–36, 38–46, 67–70, 80–82, 102–9). Why was my breeding ordered and prescribed [30] As of a person separate to God,* Designed for great exploits; if I must die Betrayed, captived, and both my eyes put out, Made of my enemies the scorn and gaze; To grind in brazen fetters* under task [35] With this heaven-gifted strength? . . . Promise was that I Should Israel from Philistian yoke* deliver; Ask for this great deliverer now, and find him [40] Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves, Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke; Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt Divine prediction; what if all foretold Had been fulfilled but through mine own  default,* [45] Whom have I to complain of but myself? . . . O loss of sight, of thee I most complain! Blind among enemies, O worse than chains,

*His birth was foretold by an angel who appeared twice to his mother; Samson was to be a Nazarite, a special caste of those pledged to serve God’s will; their hair was never to be cut, and they might drink no wine. *His feet are chained, and he has been set to milling. *Philistine domination

*Perhaps all that was foretold would have happened if he had not failed by yielding to Dalila.

10. The original 1671 text is here emended for a modern audience, with spelling and punctuation adjusted. Some archaisms necessarily remain, with explanations provided. Line numbers in brackets are given to assist readers in referring to the full text. Allusions and unfamiliar terms are not footnoted, but for the reader’s greater ease are marked with an asterisk, with explanations given in the adjacent right-hand column.

3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes

Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age! Light the prime work of God to me   is extinct.* . . . [70] O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, [80] Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse Without all hope of day! . . . My self, my sepulcher,* a moving grave, Buried, yet not exempt By privilege of death and burial From worst of other evils, pains and wrongs, [105] But made hereby obnoxious more To all the miseries of life, Life in captivity Among inhuman foes.* . . .

463

*He cannot see the light, which was God’s first creation (Genesis 1:3).

*He is himself his tomb.

*All the ills he suffers are made worse because he is the captive of his enemies.

The Chorus of Hebrew friends and neighbors observe Samson’s desolation (lines 124–27, 151–55). Can this be he, That heroic, that renowned, [125] Irresistible Samson? whom unarmed No strength of man, or fiercest wild beast could withstand . . . ? Which shall I first bewail, Thy bondage or lost sight, *He is in prison, and further Prison within prison* imprisoned by his blindness. Inseparably dark? Thou art become (O worst imprisonment!) [155] *He is himself his dungeon, The dungeon of thy self.* . . .

Encounter with Manoa

as before, he was himself his tomb.

Samson’s father, Manoa enters, sees his son and bewails his fate—but has plans to ransom him, and bring him home (lines 340–48, 365–67). O miserable change! is this the man, [340] That invincible Samson, far renowned, The dread of Israel’s foes, who with a strength Equivalent to angels walked their streets, None offering fight; who single combatant Dueled their armies ranked in proud array, [345] Himself an army,* now unequal match To save himself against a coward armed At one spear’s length? . . .

*He had been a one-man army, overcoming his enemies one by one in single combat, but now could not oppose a challenger a spear’s length away.

464

Ensnared, assaulted, overcome, led bound, [365] Thy foes derision,* captive, poor, and blind Into a dungeon thrust, to work with slaves?

Chapter 14. Man Alone *In his condition, enemies who once feared him now laugh at him.

Samson responds to his father: the fault is not heaven’s, but his (lines 373–76) because he had succumbed to the schemes of his deceitful wife (lines 532–40). He does not wish to be released to live out a useless life; his wish is to die now, and speedily (lines 563–67, 648–51). Appoint not heavenly disposition, Father, Nothing of all these evils hath befallen me But justly; I myself have brought them on, [375] Sole author I, sole cause. . . . . . . swoll’n with pride into the snare I fell Of fair fallacious looks, venereal trains,* Softened with pleasure and voluptuous life; At length to lay my head and hallowed pledge [535] Of all my strength* in the lascivious lap Of a deceitful concubine who shore me Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece,* Then turned me out ridiculous, despoiled, Shaven, and disarmed among my enemies. . . .

*sexual lures *He had laid his head in Dalila’s lap, and with it, his pledge to God to never relinquish the secret of his strength. *Having tricked him to learn his secret, Dalila has cut off his hair like a young sheep that has been shorn.

Now blind, disheartened, shamed, dishonoured, quelled, To what can I be useful, wherein serve My nation, and the work from heaven imposed, [565] But to sit idle on the household hearth, *a burdensome parasite A burdenous drone.*. . . Hopeless are all my evils, all remediless; This one prayer yet remains, might I be heard, No long petition, speedy death, [650] *Immediate death would bring The close of all my miseries, and the balm.*

Encounter with Dalila

an end to his sorrows and heal the pain.

Dalila enters, falsely penitent and full of excuses, offering to take Samson home to care for him; but Samson, deriding her “feigned religion, smooth hypocrisy” (line 872), is not tempted (lines 928–37), and, speaking to the Chorus, sends her on her way (lines 999–1002). No, no, of my condition take no care; It fits not; thou and I long since are twain;*

*Dalila’s feigned concern for Samson is out of place; the two are long since parted.

3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes

465

Nor think me so unwary or accursed [930] To bring my feet again into the snare Where once I have been caught; I know thy trains *her tricks, traps, and ruses Though dearly to my cost, thy ginns, and toyls;* *her magic potion Thy fair enchanted cup,* and warbling charms No more on me have power, their force is nulled,* [935] *they have no force So much of adders’ wisdom I have learned To fence my ear against thy sorceries.* To Chorus, as Dalila exits:

*He has learned from adders, snakes thought to be deaf, not to hear her deceptive pleas.

So let her go, God sent her to debase me, And aggravate my folly who committed [1000] To such a viper his most sacred trust Of secrecy, my safety, and my life.

Encounter with Harapha The Philistine giant Harapha comes to mock Samson, as a blind laborer in a common prison (lines 1156–67). Samson will then challenge the Philistine to single combat to determine “whose god is God” (line 1176)—the Philistine Dagon or the God of Israel. Harapha declines three times: “To fight with thee no man of arms will deign” (line 1226). Presume not on thy God, whatever he be, Thee he regards not, owns not, hath cut off *Samson should not expect Quite from his people, and delivered up his God to save him; God has abandoned him to his enemies. Into thy enemies’ hand,* permitted them To put out both thine eyes, and fettered send thee [1160] Into the common prison, there to grind Among the slaves and asses thy comrades, As good for nothing else, no better service With those thy boisterous locks,* no worthy match *Samson’s hair, in which his strength lay, now has no For valor to assail, nor by the sword [1165] purpose. Of noble warrior, so to stain his honor, *No honorable warrior would But by the barber’s razor best subdued.* . . . fight Samson now; he is overcome not in honorable combat but by the barber’s razor.

466

Chapter 14. Man Alone

Samson’s triumph A Philistine officer orders Samson to perform a show of strength at the Philistine festival of thanksgiving for their god Dagon. Samson refuses to perform like a jester at a religious festival he cannot in conscience attend (lines 1334–42). Myself? my conscience and internal peace. Can they think me so broken, so debased [1335] With corporal servitude, that my mind ever Will condescend to such absurd commands? *servant Although their drudge,* to be their fool or jester, And in my midst of sorrow and heart-grief To show them feats and play before their god, [1340] The worst of all indignities, yet on me Joined* with extreme contempt? I will not come. . . . *indignities contemptuously laid on him

But then, sensing new strength, his long locks of hair having regrown, he tells the Chorus he will go, and so exits with the Philistine officer (lines 1381–89). Be of good courage, I begin to feel Some rousing motions in me which dispose To something extraordinary my thoughts.* I with this Messenger will go along, Nothing to do, be sure, that may dishonor [1385] Our Law, or stain my vow of Nazarite. If there be aught of presage in the mind,* This day will be remarkable in my life By some great act, or of my days the last. . . .

*Samson senses his strength is returning, which has turned his thoughts in a new direction. *The mind may intuit what lies ahead; if so, he thinks it will be something remarkable—he may accomplish something great, and meet his death.

As Manoa tells the Chorus of his attempts to gain Samson’s release, he hears a terrible noise. He and the Chorus react; perhaps Samson has recovered and is slaughtering the Philistines? (lines 1508–18, 1523–24, 1527–30) MANOA:  . . . O what noise! Mercy of heaven what hideous noise was that! Horribly loud unlike the former shout. [1510] CHORUS: Noise call you it or universal groan As if the whole inhabitation* perished, Blood, death, and deathful deeds are in that noise, Ruin, destruction at the utmost point. MANOA: Of ruin indeed methought* I heard   the noise, [1515] Oh* it continues, they have slain my son.

*the entire population

*“I thought” *If

CHORUS: Thy son is rather slaying them, that outcry From slaughter of one foe could not ascend. . . .

3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes

467

This evil on the Philistines is fallen, From whom could else a general cry be heard? . . . *If his eyesight has been What if his eyesight (for to Israel’s God restored, he may now be causNothing is hard) by miracle restored, ing pain to the enemy, killing He now be dealing dole* among his foes, many. And over heaps of slaughtered walk his way? . . . . [1530] A Hebrew Messenger arrives who has just witnessed the catastrophe that has befallen. With renewed strength, Samson has destroyed the “sons of Gaza”—and taken his own life—by tearing down the massive pillars supporting the roof of the theater under which the Philistine dignitaries sat. The Chorus responds (lines 1596–627, 1629–30, 1632–664). MESSENGER: Occasions* drew me early to this city, And as the gates I entered with sunrise, The morning trumpets festival proclaimed* Through each high street: little I had dispatched* When all abroad was rumored that this day [1600] Samson should be brought forth to show the people Proof of his mighty strength in feats and games; I sorrowed at his captive state, but minded Not to be absent at that spectacle. The building was a spacious theater [1605 ] Half round* on two main pillars vaulted high, With seats where all the lords and each degree Of sort,* might sit in order to behold, The other side was open, where the throng On banks and scaffolds under sky might  stand;* [1610] I among these aloof obscurely stood.* The feast and noon grew high, and sacrifice Had filled their hearts with mirth, high cheer,    and wine, When to their sports they turned.* Immediately Was Samson as a public servant brought, [1615] In their state livery clad;* before him pipes And timbrels,* on each side went armed guards, Both horse and foot, before him, and behind Archers and slingers, cataphracts and spears.* At sight of him the people with a shout [1620]

*Business *Public criers and trumpeters announced the festival of thanksgiving for the god Dagon. *He had accomplished only a little.

*A semicircular theater whose roof was held up by two mighty pillars. *Dignitaries in their various ranks are seated under the roof. *Meanwhile, the common folk stand outside under the open sky. *The messenger stands among them, not calling attention to himself. *The pagan festival began with sacrifice and feasting, followed by the show in which Samson was to perform. *Samson is brought out as a slave dressed in the Philistine colors. *wind instruments and tambourines *Marching before him are musicians and guards, on horseback and on foot; and behind him are companies of soldiers bearing different kinds of weapons.

468

Chapter 14. Man Alone

*They split the air with their Rifted the air clamoring their god with praise, of praise to the god Who had made their dreadful enemy their thrall.* shouts (Dagon) who has defeated He patient but undaunted where they led him, their deadly enemy Samson. Came to the place, and what was set before him Which without help of eye, might be assayed, [1625] *Samson is placed in front an array of objects that he To heave, pull, draw, or break,* he still performed ofis able to manipulate, even All with incredible, stupendous force. . . . though he cannot see them, to demonstrate his strength. At length for intermission sake they led him Between the pillars; he his guide requested . . . [1630] As overtired to let him lean a while With both his arms on those two massive pillars *Samson is allowed to rest, That to the arched roof gave main support.*  leaning on the two pillars He unsuspicious led him; which when Samson [1635] holding up the roof, with one arm around each. Felt in his arms, with head a while inclined, *Embracing the pillars, he And eyes fast fixed he stood, as one who prayed, bends his head as though Or some great matter in his mind revolved.* praying or thinking with great At last with head erect thus cried aloud: concentration. Hitherto, Lords, what your commands imposed [1640] *Then he raises his head and I have performed, as reason was, obeying, addresses the dignitaries gathNot without wonder or delight beheld.* ered before him, saying that up Now of my own accord such other trial to now they have been impressed by the feats of strength he has I mean to show you of my strength, yet greater; As with amaze shall strike all who behold.* [1645] performed on their orders, . . . *but now, of his own will, This uttered, straining all his nerves he bowed, he will show them something As with the force of winds and waters pent, mightier still, which will When mountains tremble, those two massive pillars amaze them. With horrible convulsion to and fro,* *He bends and pulls the two pillars back and forth until they He tugged, he shook, till down thy came collapse, bringing the roof down   and drew [1650] upon all gathered below it. The whole roof after them, with burst of thunder *The roof falls and crushes the Upon the heads of all who sat beneath, entire Philistine elite: nobles, lords, ladies, captains, councillors, or priests,* military leaders, political Their choice nobility and flower, not only advisers, and priests. Of this but each Philistian* city round [1655 ] *Philistine Met from all parts to solemnize this feast. *Samson’s body lies among the Samson with these immixt,* inevitably corpses of the Philistines he has Pulled down the same destruction on himself; destroyed. The vulgar only scaped who stood without.* *The only survivors are the common people, who were not permitted to sit under the roof.

3. John Milton, Samson Agonistes

469

CHORUS: O dearly-bought revenge, yet glorious! [1660] Living or dying thou hast fulfilled *In his life and in his death, The work for which thou wast foretold Samson has completed the misTo Israel, and now liest victorious sion for which he was born, to Among thy slain self-killed. . . .* save Israel from the Philistines; and though he has sacrificed his life to that end, he dies a victor.

Manoa rejoices at Samson’s victory: Samson has triumphed as the hero he was always meant to be, and has freed Israel from the Philistines. His body will be recovered and honorably buried (lines 1708–12, 1718–37). Come, come, no time for lamentation now, Nor much more cause,* Samson hath quit himself Like Samson, and heroically hath finished [1710] A life heroic, on his enemies Fully revenged, hath left them years of mourning. . . . And which is best and happiest yet, all this With God not parted from him, as was feared, But favoring and assisting to the end. [1720] Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast, no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame, nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble. Let us go find the body where it lies [1725] Soaked in his enemies’ blood, and from the stream With lavers pure and cleansing herbs* wash off The clotted gore. I with what speed the while (Gaza is not in plight to say us nay) Will send for all my kindred, all my friends [1730] To fetch him hence and solemnly attend With silent obsequy* and funeral train  Home to his father’s house: there will I build him A monument, and plant it round with shade Of laurel ever green, and branching palm,* [1735] with all his trophies hung, and acts enrolled in copious legend, or sweet lyric song.* . . .

*There is no longer cause for mourning: Samson has triumphed over his enemies and ours.

*fine soaps and cleansing lotions

*funeral observance

*laurel and palm: leaves that signify undying heroic triumph *The graves of heroic warriors were often adorned with trophies of their victories, and their deeds recorded in tales (legends) and songs.

CREDITS Except where noted below, all texts are in the public domain or were translated by Margaret L. King. Credits are listed in order of appearance. Chapter 2 Homer. Iliad. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Introduction by Sheila Murnaghan. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1997. Selections from 9:186–438; 18:17–38, 158–254 (pp. 165–71, 355–56, 359–62). Hesiod. Works and Days and Theogony. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Introduction by Robert Lamberton. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1993. Selections from lines 200–24, 235– 304, 316–28, 341–72, 416–29 (pp. 28–35). Sappho. Poems and Fragments. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Introduction by Pamela Gordon. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2002. ##1, 5, 20, 31, 36, 61, 73 (Campbell ##1, 55, 31, 16, 102, 48, and 168b). Aeschylus. Oresteia. Translated by Peter Meineck. Introduction by Helene P. Foley. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1998. Selections from Agamemnon, lines 782–974, 1343–526 (pp. 31–38, 53–60). Sophocles. Oedipus Tyrannus. Translated and edited by Peter Meineck and Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000. Selections from lines 1223–514 (pp. 53–62). Euripides. Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus. Translated by Diane Arnson Svarlien. Introduction and notes by Robin Mitchell-Boyask. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007. Selections from Medea, lines 1138–455 (pp. 106–20). Aristophanes. Clouds. Translated, with notes, by Peter Meineck. Introduction by Ian C. Storey. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2000. Selections from lines 218–367, 429–56, 627–58, 782–803, 866–92, 934–1111 (pp. 18–28, 32–33, 42–45, 55–56, 60–61, 65–75). Plato. Phaedo. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1977. Selections from 57a–60a, 63e–67e, 117c–118a (pp. 5–8, 12–16, 66–67). Chapter 3 Lucretius. On the Nature of Things. Edited and translated by Martin Ferguson Smith. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1969. Selections from 3:32–93, 830–951, 1024–93 (pp. 68–70, 89–93, 96–98). Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Introduction by W. R. Johnson. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010. Selections from 2:52–107, 128–50, 169–255, 296–364 (pp. 34–43). Virgil. The Essential Aeneid. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Introduction by W. R. Johnson. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006. Selections from 6:805–57, 891–1074 (pp. 97–104). Cicero. Ten Speeches. Translated and edited by James E. G. Zetzel. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009. Fourth Philippic, 292–301, excerpts.

470

Credits

471

Seneca. Selected Dialogues and Consolations. Translated and edited by Peter J. Anderson. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2015. Selections from Consolation to His Mother Helvia, 1.1–1.4, 2.4–5.1, 11.1–11.7, 14.1–15.4, 17.2–17.5, 20.1–20.2. Tacitus. Agricola, Germany, and Dialogue on Orators. Translated and edited by Herbert W. Benario. Rev. ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006. Selections from Agricola, 30–32, 44–46; and Germania, 4–8, 11, 14. Marcus Aurelius. The Meditations. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1983. Selections from 1.2, 3, 7, 14, 17; 2.1, 12; 3.7, 10; 4.3, 12, 14; 5.1, 4; 6.12, 36, 46; 7.18, 21; 8.3, 48; 9.3; 10.3, 15, 16; 11.1; 12.17, 32 (pp. 3–11, 15, 21–22, 25, 28, 37–38, 50, 55–56, 58, 64–65, 74, 82–83, 87–88, 98, 102–3, 110, 125, 128–29). Chapter 5 Augustine, Saint. Confessions. Translated by F. J. Sheed. Edited by Michael P. Foley. Introduction by Peter Brown. 2nd ed. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006. Selections from Book Two, Chapters 4, 6, 10; Book Three, Chapters 1, 4, 11, 12; Book Five, Chapter 13; Book Eight, Chapter 12 (pp. 29–31, 34, 37, 40–41, 49–51, 90–91, 159–60). Chapter 6 Beowulf: A New Translation for Oral Delivery. Translated by Dick Ringler. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2007. Selections from Sections X–XIII, lines 1374–91, 1403–9, 1419–31, 1439–54, 1468–1532, 1564–80, 1629–48, 1654–72, 1734–47 (pp. 38–43, 45–48). The Song of Roland. Translated by John DuVal. Introduction by David Staines. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2012. Selections from laisses (stanzas) 66, 79, 81–88, 91–92, 105, 110, 127, 129, 131–34, 175, 212, 226 (pp. 25, 30–35, 39, 41, 49–51, 68, 83, 87). The Epic of the Cid, with Related Texts. Translated and edited by Michael Harney. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2011. Book (canto) 2, tiradas (stanzas) 74, 77, 81–87, 89–90, 95 (pp. 36–41, 45–50). The Lays of Marie de France. Translated and edited by Edward J. Gallagher. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010. Selections from Lanval (pp. 34–38, 41–42). Chapter 7 Marco Polo. The Description of the World. Translated and edited by Sharon Kinoshita. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2016. Selections from ##76, 85–86, 89, 95–96, 98–100, 103–4 (pp. 67, 75–76, 79, 85–87, 89, 91–92). Dante Alighieri. Inferno. Translated by Stanley Lombardo. Introduction by Steven Botterill. Notes by Anthony Oldcorn. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009. Selections from Canto 5, lines 31–33, 37–39, 46–51, 73–81, 97–108, 115–42; Canto 10, lines 22–72; Canto 26, lines 76–142 (pp. 45, 47, 49, 51, 93, 95, 251, 253, 255). Geoffrey Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales, in Modern Verse. Translated and edited by Joseph Glaser. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2005. Selections from The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, lines 510–19, 532–39, 550–60, 569–77, 581–607, 633–48, 672–76, 687–97, 713–26, 771–834 (pp. 120–25, 127–28). Christine de Pizan. The Book of the City of Ladies, and Other Writings. Translated by Ineke Hardy. Edited by Sophie Bourgault and Rebecca Kingston. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2018. Selections from 1.20, 3.3 (pp. 59–61, 191–93).

472

Credits Chapter 8

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca). The Essential Petrarch. Edited and translated by Peter Hainsworth. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2010. Poems ##61, 211, 278, 364 (pp. 34, 79, 101, 145). Chapter 9 Machiavelli. The Prince. Translated by David Wootton. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1995. Selections from Chapters 15–19 (pp. 47–57). Chapter 10 Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote. Translated by James H. Montgomery. Introduction by David Quint. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009. Excerpts from Part One, Chapter 8 (pp. 51–57). Chapter 11 Christopher Marlowe. Doctor Faustus. Edited by David Wootton. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2005. Selections from I.1, I.3, II.1, V.2 (pp. 1–6, 13–18, 22–25, 62–25). Chapter 12 Garcilaso de la Vega “el Inca.” Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru. Translated by Harold V. Livermore. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966. Excerpt from the abridged edition by Karen Spalding. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2006 (pp. 2–7). Chapter 13 Teresa of Ávila, Saint. The Book of Her Life. Edited and translated by Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez. Introduction by Jodi Bilinkoff. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2008. Excerpts from Chapters 1 and 2, pp. 2–9. Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor. Poems. Translated by David Frye, for Hackett Publishing. Poems ##92, 145, 146, 164. Chapter 14 Molière (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin). The Misanthrope. In Tartuffe and The Misanthrope. Translated by Prudence L. Steiner. Introduction by Roger W. Herzel. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2009. Excerpts from Act 1, Scene 1; Act 4, Scene 3; Act 5, Scene 4 (pp. 143–48, 151–52, 207–8, 210–12, 229–31).

INDEX Abelard, Peter, 131, 135–36, 138–39, 163–68, 227 Abraham (patriarch), 7–9, 87 Achilles, 19, 22–29, 365 Acts of the Apostles (New Testament), 120, 125–26 Adam (Genesis), 159, 162–63, 221, 240n30, 414, 446 Aeneid, by Virgil, 5, 77, 93–100, 230, 307n1, 365, 371n7 Aeschylus, 3, 20, 37–46 Africa, 87, 91, 93, 129, 134, 186, 300, 307, 364, 367, 370–72, 374, 392–94, 396, 401–2, 408 Agamemnon, 23–27, 37–45, 54 Agamemnon, by Aeschylus, 20, 37–45 Agricola, by Tacitus, 78, 110–13 Alexander the Great, 2, 4, 21, 76, 100–101, 118, 280, 401 Ambrose, Saint, 140, 144 Americas, 329nn24–25, 364, 367–68, 370, 373, 406n1. See also Brazil, Mexico, Peru, South America Andreas Capellanus, 132, 181–82, 210–14, 227 Angles, Germanic people, 178, 180n3 Anglo–Saxon. See Angles, Saxons Annals, by Tacitus, 110 Aphrodite (Roman Venus), 26, 34, 37, 84n9, 96, 212n33, 239, 338n9 Apollo (Roman Phoebus), 86–93, 351 Apology for Poetry, by Philip Sidney, 332, 337 Arcadia, by Philip Sidney, 332, 337 Ariosto, Ludovico, 249–50, 306–16, 326–33, 365, 371n7 Aristophanes, 3, 4, 20–21, 62–71 Aristotle, Aristotelianism, 21, 131, 135, 138, 140, 253–54, 280, 323, 342 Art of Courtly Love, by Andreas Capellanus, 132, 181, 210–14 Art of Love (Ars amatoria), by Ovid, 86, 181, 211n32 artisans (social group), 268n15, 333, 335, 343, 444

473

Asia, 118, 129, 215–16, 307, 329n25, 364, 367, 370–71, 374, 391, 394. See also China, India, Indonesia, Japan astronomy, astrology, 185, 221, 367, 372, 375, 398–99 Astrophil and Stella, by Philip Sidney, 250, 332–33, 337–41 Athena (Roman Minerva), 26, 28 Athens, 19–21, 71, 101, 125–26, 248, 253, 263 Atlantic Ocean, 184, 367–68, 373–74 Augustine (Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis), Saint, 130–31, 134–35, 138, 140–45, 163 Augustus (Octavian), Roman emperor, 77, 78, 86, 96, 98, 101–103, 110, 258n8, 259 autobiography and life writings (literary genre), xvii, 131, 134, 138–39, 163, 408–9, 412, 421–22 Aztecs, 364, 368, 378–83, 412 barbarians. See migration Beatrice, beloved by Dante, 217, 229n17 Behn, Aphra, 364, 371–73, 401–5 Beowulf (anonymous), 132, 178, 187–92 Bible, biblical, 2–3, 6, 87, 120–21, 131, 137, 140, 145, 159, 187, 216, 307n3, 344, 365, 411, 446–47, 461–69; Hebrew Bible, 1–18, 120–21, 446; New Testament, 6, 120–27 biography (literary genre), xvii, 110, 132–33, 177–78, 182–87, 217–19, 242, 252–53, 410 Black Death, 130, 133, 217, 247 blank verse, 333, 335 Blazing World, by Margaret Cavendish, 364, 371–72, 397–401 bliss. See happiness Boccaccio, Giovanni, 133, 215, 217–20, 232–36, 242, 252, 257, 407 Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus, 130–31, 134–36, 140, 145–51, 219 Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 307 Bonifaccio, Baldassare, 411, 433–36

474 Book of Her Life, The, by Teresa of Ávila, 408, 421–26 Book of Margery Kempe, The, by Margery Kempe, 131, 139, 168–72 Book of the City of Ladies, The, by Christine de Pizan, 133, 215, 218–19, 242–46 Book of the Courtier, The, by Baldassare Castiglione, 282–83, 290–94 Bracciolini, Poggio, 247–48, 251, 253–55, 268–72 Bradamante, 307, 310–16 Brazil, 368, 371, 392, 396 Bruni, Leonardo, 248, 251, 253, 255, 263–69, 271 Brutus, by Cicero, 101 Bucolics (Eclogues), by Virgil, 77 Buddhists, 217, 370, 388, 389n29 burghers. See merchants Byzantine Empire, 5, 129, 132, 136, 152, 177, 186, 253, 273 Calderón de la Barca, Pedro, 365, 443–45, 447–54 Camões, Luís de, 364, 370–71, 392–96 cannibalism, 373, 376 Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer, 133, 215, 218, 236–41 Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta), by Petrarch, 256, 261. See also Sonnets, by Francis Petrarch Caribbean (region), 364, 372 cartography, 367, 375n14 Castiglione, Baldassare, 249, 281–84, 290–94, 332 cathedrals, 130–32, 136, 138, 177, 185, 215, 220 252, 258n6, 336, 378 Catherine of Alexandria, Saint, 242, 244–46 Catiline (Lucius Sergius Catilina), 104, 259 Catullus, 5, 76–77, 83–86, 93 Cavendish, Margaret, 364, 371–72, 397–401 Cebà, Ansaldo, 411 Celtis, Conrad, 136 Celts, Celtic peoples, culture, 110–13, 129, 180 Cereta, Laura, 255 Cervantes, Miguel de, 249–50, 306, 309–10, 326–32, 363–65, 443

Index chanson de geste (literary genre), 179–80, 290, 365 Charlemagne, Frankish king, emperor of the Romans, 132, 177–79, 182–87, 193–96, 198–99, 307, 310, 312, 315–16 chastity, 164n27, 219, 242, 244, 291, 317–18, 362, 377, 414, 427, 433. See also virginity Chaucer, Geoffrey, 133, 215, 218, 220, 236–41, 363n1 children, childhood, 5, 8, 10, 11, 20, 29, 31–32, 36, 37, 39, 44, 47, 49, 52–62, 80, 106–8, 111, 115, 116, 134, 139, 143–45, 151–60, 162, 166–70, 184, 242–44, 268, 280, 284–85, 288, 300–304, 308, 311n7, 338, 352–54, 363–65, 369, 376, 383–87, 389, 402, 406–8, 410, 417–26, 431, 449 China, 129, 215–16, 220–25, 307, 370–71, 389, 392, 395 chivalric tradition, 200, 205, 216, 249–50, 290, 306–7, 309–16, 326–31, 328n19, 389, 410, 424. See also romance Christ, as Messiah (savior). See Jesus Christ Christendom, 131, 170, 179, 200, 252, 254–55, 272–77, 283, 299, 393 Christianity, 6–8, 78–79, 105, 120–27, 129–40, 152, 158–59, 173–86, 215–16, 218–20, 228, 242, 244–45, 248, 252–54, 257–58, 273–77, 283–84, 295–300, 308, 310, 316, 359, 361–62, 365, 369–71, 378, 388–93, 398, 408–9, 411, 422, 434–38, 447; Catholic (Roman Catholic), 7, 121, 131, 140, 151, 247, 285, 306, 316–17, 319, 334–36, 370, 406, 418, 443; Orthodox, 7, 121, 151; Protestant, 7, 121, 131, 285, 333–36, 406–7. See also churches, Reformation Christine de Pizan, 133, 215, 218–20, 242–46, 364n3 chronicle (literary genre), 306, 308, 331, 335 Chrysoloras, Manuel, 253 churches, 6, 7, 120, 126, 129–30, 139, 144, 166, 177, 182, 185–87, 249, 264, 273, 275, 286, 298, 367, 376, 382, 398, 443

Index Cicero, 5, 76–78, 93, 100–105, 110, 115, 142–43, 252, 256–59, 270–71, 323 cities, urbanization, 1, 3–6, 18–21, 24, 29, 30–32, 38–39, 44–45, 50–51, 53, 69, 77, 85, 90, 96–97, 101, 103–4, 121, 125, 127, 129–33, 135–37, 139, 152, 164, 167–68, 180, 186, 200–201, 203, 215–26, 228, 242–43, 247–48, 251, 253, 255, 257, 259, 263–68, 272–77, 282, 296–98, 301–4, 308, 316, 365, 378–79, 381–83, 385–86, 388, 390–91, 394–95, 411, 414–15, 447, 456, 467–68 citizens, 2, 4, 20, 38, 44, 46, 100–105, 248–49, 251, 255, 264, 266–267, 271, 275, 277, 282–84, 285, 288, 296–97, 300, 302, 322, 365, 382. See also republic, republicanism City of God, The, by Augustine, 135 classical tradition, 132, 135, 164n26, 177, 181, 184, 216–17, 236, 247–48, 251–81, 283, 306, 308, 335, 367. See also Greek, Latin clergy (Catholic Church), 6, 155, 129–31, 134–36, 138–39, 143–44, 152, 159, 166n32, 169–71, 178, 180–81, 186–87, 193, 197–99, 232–33, 235–37, 254–55, 272–73, 276, 285, 290n4, 298, 306–7, 317, 319, 326, 329–30, 336, 344, 353, 391–92, 398, 407–8, 413–14, 443. See also Jesuits, religious orders Clodia. See Lesbia Clouds, by Aristophanes, 21, 62–71 Clytemnestra, 22–26, 37–45, 54 colonialism, 363–64, 367–69, 371–73, 378–83. See also encounter, exploration, imperialism Columbus, Christopher, 216, 367 comedy (literary genre), 3, 4, 19, 20, 131, 136–37, 335, 365, 443–45. See also drama commerce, 1, 2, 18, 193n22, 215–16, 223, 247, 285, 300, 303, 309, 328n21, 329n24, 367, 369, 371, 376, 378, 381, 383, 385–86 commonwealth. See republic, republicanism Confessions, by Augustine, 131, 135, 138, 140–45, 163

475 Consolation of Philosophy, The, by Boethius, 131, 135, 140, 145–51 Consolation to His Mother Helvia, by Seneca, 105–10 Constantine, Roman emperor, 5, 120 Constantinople, 5, 186–87, 248, 254–55, 272–76 convents, 131, 137–38, 167–8, 232–36, 317–21, 365, 408–12, 421–22, 425–26, 448, 454. See also monasticism, nuns conversion, 79, 131, 134–36, 140, 144–45, 152, 169, 178, 244–45, 304, 369–70, 373, 388, 391, 408, 434–36. See also mission, missionaries Cortés, Hernán de, 364–65, 368–70, 378–83 cosmology, 3, 18, 20, 115, 133, 137, 160, 215–17, 324, 360, 392–93 courtier, 187, 249, 282–85, 290–94, 306, 332 courtly love, 132, 180–82, 205–14, 217, 250, 309–16, 326–31, 333, 406. See also Art of Courtly Love; love: romantic, sexual courts, courtly culture, 132–33, 177–82, 185, 187, 192, 201, 205–6, 208–10, 215, 217, 220, 222, 244, 281–84, 290–94, 306, 333, 349, 353, 383, 406, 443, 445, 454–61 Creole, 406, 411 crucifixion, 6, 120, 125, 136, 168, 171 Crusades, 130, 179, 255, 272, 276 Cruz, Juana Inés de la (Sor Juana), 365, 406, 411–12, 438–42 Cupid (Greek Eros), son of Venus, 212n33, 338–39, 415, 442 Dalila (Delilah), wife and seductress of Samson, 446–47, 461–62, 464–65 Dante Alighieri, 132–33, 215–17, 219–20, 225–31, 252, 307, 333 death, 21, 22, 27, 35–36, 42–43, 45–46, 48, 49, 52, 56–57, 59, 71–76, 79–83, 99, 104, 106–7, 112–13, 116, 118–20, 127, 135–36, 143, 148, 152–53, 155–56, 158, 175, 191–93, 196–99, 204, 210, 220, 226, 230, 240, 250, 257–58, 261, 269, 288, 307, 315, 324–25,

476 334–36, 339, 346, 349, 351–53, 356, 359, 361–62, 372, 376, 390, 401, 403–5, 410, 422, 425, 427–31, 433, 436, 446, 448, 452–54, 463–69 Death’s Duel, by John Donne, 336 Decameron, by Giovanni Boccaccio, 133, 215, 217–19, 232–36, 407 demon. See devil Demosthenes, 5, 101 Description of the World, The, by Marco Polo, 132, 215–16, 220–25, 307 devil, 154, 159–62, 170, 183–84, 190, 240, 250, 329–30, 334, 342–50, 362, 427, 429, 441, 446 devotional works (literary genre), 7, 131, 137, 407, 410, 412 dialectic. See logic dialogue (literary genre), xvii, 4, 21, 37–38, 42, 71, 78, 110, 182, 249, 251, 253–57, 365, 410, 430 Dialogue on Oratory, by Tacitus, 78, 110 Dias, Bartolomeu, 370 Díaz de Vivar, Rodrigo (El Cid), 179, 201. See also Song of My Cid Discourse on the Immortality of the Soul, by Baldassare Bonifaccio, 435–37 Discourses on Livy, by Niccolò Machiavelli, 282 Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri, 133, 215–17, 219, 225–31, 307 Doctor Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe, 250, 334, 342–50 Domitian, Roman emperor, 110, 112–13, 178 Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes, 306, 309–10, 326–31, 365, 443 Donne, John, 250, 332, 335–36, 359–62 drama (literary genre), xvii, 3, 19, 249–50, 332–33, 363, 365, 412, 443–47, 461. See also comedy, tragedy Early Modern, literary tradition, 247, 363–366, 373, 406, 408, 411–12, 418n12, 443 education, 5, 62, 67–68, 70–71, 106, 111, 130, 134, 136, 164, 245, 253–55, 277–81, 283–84, 290, 295–300, 320, 332–334, 368, 371, 410–12, 414, 422,

Index 444. See also humanism, liberal arts, schools, universities Education of a Christian Prince, The, by Desiderius Erasmus, 283–84, 295–300 Edward II, by Christopher Marlowe, 334 Einhard, 132, 177–79, 182–87 Elizabethan era. See Renaissance: English (Elizabethan) encounter, with global cultures, 367–92 English Renaissance. See Renaissance: English (Elizabethan) epic (literary genre), xvii, 2, 3–5, 18–20, 22–34, 77, 93–100, 132, 178–80, 187–205, 215, 225–31, 249, 253, 257, 306–7, 310–16, 364–65, 370–71, 392–97, 411, 446 Epicurus, Epicureanism, 5, 79, 82, 115, 376 epistle (literary genre). See letter Epistles (New Testament), 120, 144 Erasmus, Desiderius, 248–49, 281, 283–84, 295–300 Eros (Roman Cupid). See Cupid essay (literary genre), xvii, 5, 78, 249, 306, 308–9, 321–24, 371 Essays, by Michel de Montaigne, 249–50, 308–9, 321–26 Euripides, 3, 20, 54–62, 260 European literary tradition. See Western literary tradition evangelicalism, 307, 407. See also Christianity: Protestant; Reformation Eve (Genesis), 159, 162–63, 240, 446 Exemplary Tales of Love, by María Zayas y Sotomayor, 409 Exodus (Hebrew Bible), 7, 9–11 exploration, global, 132, 363, 367, 370, 373–78, 392. See also colonialism; encounter; imperialism; Vespucci, Amerigo faith (religious), 2, 7, 8, 17, 120, 123, 134, 140, 143, 151–52, 155–56, 158, 160–61, 170, 174, 184, 245, 273–74, 276–77, 285, 300, 359, 365, 371, 390, 394, 435, 446 Familiar Letters, by Petrarch, 252 families, familial relations. See love: of family, friends, and country

Index Famous Women, by Giovanni Boccaccio, 133, 217–18, 242 Fasti (On the Roman Calendar), by Ovid, 86 Fathers of the church, 6, 137 fathers, relationships with. See love: of family, friends, and country Fedele, Cassandra, 248, 251, 255–56, 277–80, 364n3 feminism, proto-feminism, 152, 215, 219, 242–46, 397, 407, 431. See also women: defense of fiction, 309, 371 Floridoro, by Moderata Fonte, 410 Fonte, Moderata (Modesta da Pozzo), 365, 406, 410–11, 430–33 fortune (mystic or divine force), 57–58, 83, 85, 105–7, 109, 112, 116, 148, 206, 243, 271, 275, 279, 297, 325, 355, 357, 432 Fourth Philippic, by Cicero, 77, 100–105 freedom. See liberty friars. See clergy, monasticism, religious orders friendship. See love: of family, friends, and country Gama, Vasco da, 370–71, 392–96 Gargantua, by François Rabelais, 307–8, 316–21 Genesis (Hebrew Bible), 7–9, 446 Georgics, by Virgil, 77 Germania, by Tacitus, 78, 110, 113–14 Germanic peoples, culture, 5, 78, 110–14, 129–30, 135, 177–78, 182–84 Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), by Torquato Tasso, 307 gods, goddesses. See polytheism Gospels (New Testament), 6, 120, 319, 414; Gospel of John, 120–21, 123–24, 126; of Matthew, 121–23, 145 Gournay, Marie de, 309 Greek, language, xvii, 2, 4–6, 18, 78, 115, 120, 126, 135–36, 143, 151, 185, 217, 244, 247, 252–54, 257, 259, 268, 273, 276, 284, 300n13, 318, 320n9, 332 Greek literary tradition, 1–6, 18–79, 83, 86–87, 93, 96, 100–101, 125, 129, 151, 180, 248, 252, 256, 263, 272–73, 276, 307, 337, 365, 443n1, 445–47

477 Guarino Veronese, 254, 268–72 Guinevere, 205, 207–8, 227 hagiography (saints’ lives), 136 Hamlet, by William Shakespeare, 335, 355–56 happiness, 25, 48, 52, 57–58, 72, 81, 86, 90, 97, 105–7, 109, 112, 142, 146, 148–50, 204–5, 207, 210, 222–23, 227, 233, 259, 263, 279, 296–97, 300, 302–3, 305, 317, 340, 345–46, 349, 358, 384, 396, 410, 415, 418, 424–26, 430–32, 436, 455, 461, 469 heaven (site of divine power, dwelling of saved souls), 9–11, 13–14, 16–17, 32, 64, 108, 121–24, 126–27, 133, 144–45, 152, 155–56, 158–59, 161–63, 170, 172, 174–75, 199, 216–17, 241, 246, 262–63, 293, 328, 334, 343, 345–47, 350, 357–58, 382, 384–85, 388–89, 392, 423, 428–29, 432, 449, 454, 458–59, 462, 464, 466 Hebrew, language, xvii, 120, 318 Hebrew people. See Israel, Israelites Hector, Greek hero, 22–24, 26–28 Helen of Troy, 24, 25, 36–38, 84n9, 349 hell (grim afterworld, place of punishment), 25–26, 79nn1–2, 142, 160–61, 170, 174, 189, 191, 225, 228, 237, 311, 334, 338–39, 342, 345–46, 348–50, 358, 388–90, 429 Hellenic civilization. See Greek literary tradition Hellenistic civilization, 2, 4, 5n5, 6, 21, 76, 79, 83, 115, 125, 134, 253 Heloise, beloved of Abelard, 138–39, 163–68 Heptameron, by Marguerite de Navarre, 407, 412–17 Herbert, Mary Sidney, sister of Philip Sidney, 332–33, 337 hero, heroine, heroism, 2, 3, 18, 20, 22, 25, 29–30, 77, 93, 96, 98–99, 133, 137–38, 151, 178, 182, 192–93, 230, 244, 249–50, 257, 284, 290, 307, 310, 326, 365, 370–72, 384, 392, 401–5, 411, 413, 426, 443, 445–47, 463, 469 Herodotus, 4 Hesiod, 3, 19, 29–34

478 High Renaissance. See Renaissance: High Hildegard of Bingen, 131, 136, 137, 158–63, 216, 219n4, 364n3, 409 Hindus, 370 history (literary genre), 3–7, 78, 101, 109n35, 110–11, 120, 130, 136, 243–44, 250–253, 268n15, 282, 335, 350, 369, 384, 387 Holy Roman Empire, 132, 136, 152, 177, 182, 185, 186, 349 Holy Sonnets, by John Donne, 250, 259–62, 336, 359, 361–62 holy women. See women: and religion Homer, 2–5, 18, 22–29, 77, 93, 180, 230, 252–53, 256–261, 365, 371n7 honor (cultural value), 10, 12–13, 24, 30, 33, 38, 45, 55, 99–101, 127, 149, 164, 179, 194, 205, 222, 256, 259, 262, 266, 268, 278, 290, 293n8, 296, 313, 320, 343, 355, 365, 371, 375, 396, 403, 415, 425, 427–28, 430–31, 443–44, 447–50, 454, 456, 459, 461, 464–65 Hortensius, by Cicero, 143–43 Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, 131, 136–37, 151–58, 219n4, 242, 364n3 humanism, humanists, 136–37, 247–48, 251–84, 295–307, 332, 334, 363–64, 367–69, 406 Ignatius of Loyola, Saint, 140 Iliad, by Homer, 3, 18–19, 22–29, 230, 257, 371n7 Imitation of Christ, The, by Thomas a Kempis, 139–40, 172–76 immortality, 6, 18, 21, 34, 71–75, 79, 81, 103, 105, 108, 110, 120, 123–24, 143, 158, 173, 175, 277, 300, 361–62, 365, 388, 411, 433–38. See also salvation imperialism, ideology of, 371, 373, 384, 392. See also colonialism; Portuguese Empire; Roman Empire; Spanish Empire In Praise of the City of Florence, by Leonardo Bruni, 248, 253, 263–68 Incas, 364, 369, 383–87. See also indigenous peoples India, 215–16, 223, 370, 388, 391–92, 394–95

Index Indians (American). See indigenous peoples indigenous peoples (Americas), 368, 373–87. See also Aztecs, Incas individual, individualism, 20, 22, 79, 131, 218, 249–50, 267, 283, 308–9, 321–26, 332, 334–35, 355–56, 363, 412, 443, 445–47, 456, 461, 464, 466, 468. See also hero, heroine, heroism Indonesia, 371, 392, 395 Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, 216–17, 225–31, 307. See also Divine Comedy Interior Castle, by Teresa of Ávila, 409 invasions. See migration Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, 37–40, 43–45, 54 Isaac (patriarch), 7–9, 87 Isaiah (prophet), 7, 15–17 Isidore of Kiev, Cardinal, 272, 273, 276 Islam, Islamic, 79, 129, 130, 179n2, 197, 200n26, 218, 273n18, 276, 309–310. See also Muslims Israel, Israelites, 1–2, 7, 9, 15, 18, 124, 127, 445–47, 462–63, 465, 467, 469 Japan, 216, 364, 370–71, 388–92, 395 Jerusalem, 6, 15, 121, 126–27, 168, 171, 186, 276, 307 Jerusalem Delivered, by Torquato Tasso. See Gerusalemme liberata Jesuits (Society of Jesus), 364, 370, 388–92, 444 Jesus Christ (Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Messiah), 6, 120–26, 131, 136, 139–40, 145, 152–59, 163, 170–76, 236, 245, 257, 273, 276, 297, 299, 344, 349–50, 390, 394, 446–47, 454 Jesus of Nazareth. See Jesus Christ Job (Hebrew Bible), 7, 11–13 John (apostle), 120–21, 123–24, 126–27 Jove. See Zeus Judaism, Jews, 2, 4, 6–8, 79, 120–21, 123, 125–26, 215, 218, 365, 398, 406, 408, 411, 433–438 Julius Caesar, Roman general and dictator, 77, 96–97, 101, 18, 178, 256, 258, 324, 401 Julius Caesar, by William Shakespeare, 335, 354–55 Jupiter. See Zeus

Index justice, 7, 11–12, 29–32, 39–40, 44, 57, 60, 65, 77, 116, 121, 126, 142, 147, 159–60, 163, 219, 266, 296, 335, 385, 393, 427, 429, 443–44, 448–54 Kempe, Margery, 131, 139, 168–172, 219n4, 364n3, 409 Khan, the Great (Qubilai), See Qubilai Khan King John, by William Shakespeare, 335, 353–54 Know the Ways (Scivias), by Hildegard of Bingen, 137, 158–63 labor, 10, 13, 17, 24, 29, 32–34, 37, 43–45, 107, 109, 113, 117, 147, 172, 187, 192, 232–33, 235, 239, 249, 254, 273, 276–77, 279, 284, 293, 296, 300–303, 315, 328, 340, 363–64, 368, 372, 383, 386, 390–91, 436, 439, 444, 462, 465, 469 Lanval, by Marie de France, 205–10 Latin, language, xvii, 2, 4, 5, 76, 79, 101, 129–136, 140, 151, 177, 181–82, 185, 217, 229, 244, 247, 251–52, 254, 256–57, 259–61, 268, 270, 272, 277, 281, 283, 300, 307–8, 318, 320, 328, 332, 334, 343, 368, 377, 412 Laura, beloved by Petrarch, 252, 255, 261–63, 333 law, 1, 5, 7, 9, 11, 20, 32, 77, 97, 101, 116, 130, 141, 183, 205, 266–67, 273, 276, 287, 295–98, 320, 322–23, 342, 356, 368, 370, 372, 376, 382–85, 387–91, 393, 395, 398, 410, 435–36, 443, 448, 453, 466 lay piety, 139–40, 247 Lays, by Marie de France, 132, 205 Learned Ladies, The, by Molière, 445 Leo III, Pope, 182, 186 Lesbia (Clodia), beloved of Catullus, 83–86 letter (literary genre), xvii, 6, 77–78, 101, 116, 120, 131, 137–38, 164, 187, 247, 251–61, 268–77, 280, 283, 311, 368–70, 373–83, 388–92, 408, 410–11, 432–33, 455, 457–61 Letter to Battista da Montefeltro, by Leonardo Bruni, 253

479 Letter to Guarino Veronese, by Poggio Bracciolini, 253–54, 268–72 Letter to His Jesuit Colleagues, by Francis Xavier, 370, 388–92 Letter to Isotta Nogarola, by Lauro Quirini, 254, 255n5 Letter to Pope Nicholas V on the Fall of Constantinople, by Lauro Quirini, 254–55, 272–77 Letters to Cicero and Homer, by Francis Petrarch, 252, 256–61 Letters to classical authors, by Francis Petrarch, 252 liberal arts, 109, 164, 184–85, 248, 256, 268, 276–80, 398. See also humanism liberal studies. See liberal arts liberty, 4, 71, 73–74, 97, 102–5, 108–14, 116, 137, 163, 230, 237–38, 248, 259, 263–64, 266–67, 279, 284–85, 295–97, 300, 302–4, 306, 308, 317–18, 320–22, 331, 338, 365, 372, 379–80, 402–3, 412, 430, 432–33, 440, 445–47, 461–62, 469 library, libraries, 136, 147, 251–52, 271, 318, 412 Life of Charlemagne, by Einhard, 132, 177–78, 182–87 Life of Lazarillo de Tormes, The (anonymous), 364–65, 406–8, 417–21 logic, 66, 131, 138, 140, 185, 342, 372, 398, 400, 437 love: courtly, see courtly love; homoerotic, 19, 34–37, 68, 211, 365, 406, 412, 438, 442; of family, friends, and country, 8–9, 22–23, 27–30, 43–53, 57, 58, 86–93, 105–11, 116, 144, 158, 203, 230, 244, 258, 287–88, 297, 335, 351, 353–55, 364–65, 369, 376, 396, 422–26, 443–44, 456; of God, God’s love, 10, 17, 122–24, 139, 143, 158–59, 169, 171–76, 199, 217, 250, 332, 336, 345, 347, 359, 361–62, 390–92, 421–26; platonic, 4, 21, 74, 283; romantic, sexual, 3, 19, 22, 24–25, 34–39, 47, 77, 83–86, 93, 133, 138, 142, 162–68, 180–81, 205–210, 217, 225–27, 232–41, 243, 250, 252, 261–63, 307, 310–17, 321, 332–41, 350–52, 356–61, 365, 372, 401–6,

480 409, 413–17, 426–30, 440–41, 443, 445–46, 454–61, 464–65 Lucifer. See devil Lucretius, 4–5, 76, 78–83, 93, 115 Lusiads, The, by Luís de Camões, 364, 370–71, 392–96 lyric (literary genre), xvii, 3, 5, 19, 77, 83, 180, 250, 252, 333, 469. See also sonnet Machiavelli, Niccolò, 248–49, 281–90, 291n5, 295 magic, 54, 205, 209, 278, 328n19, 334, 342–50, 465 Manifesto on the Immortality of the Soul, by Sarra Copia Sulam, 410–11, 433–38 manuscript, 136–37, 140, 169, 177–80, 216, 218, 248, 252–54, 336–37, 407 Marcus Aurelius, Roman emperor and philosopher, 5, 76, 78, 115–19 Marguerite de Navarre, 364–65, 406–7, 409, 412–17 Marie de France, 132, 180–81, 205–10, 219n4, 364n3 Marie of Champagne, countess of Troyes, 132, 181 Marinella, Lucrezia, 410n3 Mark (Marc) Antony (Marcus Antonius), 77, 101–5, 256–57, 258n8, 259, 335, 354–55 Marlowe, Christopher, 250, 332–35, 342–50 marriage, 24, 26, 45, 47, 49, 50, 53, 57, 61, 83, 113, 114, 138, 163, 166–67, 169–70, 206, 210, 213–14, 218, 236–41, 243, 245–46, 301, 303, 307, 310–13, 315–18, 321, 333, 336, 340, 351, 365, 368, 376, 379, 386n25, 406, 408–11, 418, 422, 425–33, 444, 446, 448, 452, 460, 461 martyr, martyrdom, 131, 136–37, 139, 151–52, 158, 242, 244–46, 285, 333, 335–36, 408, 422–23, 447, 462, 468 Mayor of Zalamea, The, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca, 365, 443–44, 447–54 Medea, by Euripides, 20, 54–62 medieval literary tradition, 129–76, 179–82, 215–20, 247, 251, 307 Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius, 5, 78, 115–19

Index Mediterranean (civilization), 1, 2, 4, 6, 21, 76, 83, 100, 120, 125, 134, 254, 273, 309 Mephistopheles (Mephastophilis). See devil merchants (social group), 1, 30, 133, 139, 170, 215, 217–18, 222, 224, 268n15, 297, 367, 376, 370, 411, 444 Messiah (savior), 6, 120, 176n42. See also Jesus Christ Metamorphoses, by Ovid, 5, 77, 86–93, 181 Mexico, 309, 364–65, 368–69, 378–83, 411 Middle Ages, literary tradition. See medieval literary tradition migration, of peoples, 5, 129–30, 135, 177, 248 Milton, John, 365, 443, 445–47, 461–69 Minerva. See Athena minstrel, 179–81, 207 Mirror of the Sinful Soul, by Marguerite de Navarre, 407 Misanthrope, The, by Molière, 365, 445, 454–61 misogyny, 33, 75, 133, 181, 210, 215, 219, 236, 239–40, 242, 377 mission (Christian), missionaries, 120, 125, 247, 364, 367, 369–70, 373, 378, 382, 388–92 Moctezuma (Montezuma), Aztec ruler, 368, 378–83 Modena, Leone, 411, 434 Molière, 365, 443–45, 454–61 monasticism, monasteries, 129–31, 136, 138, 140, 153, 163, 168, 177, 200, 202, 215, 232–36, 248, 251, 253–54, 268, 271, 308, 316–21, 349, 423. See also convents Monica, Saint, mother of Augustine, 140–44 Montaigne, Michel de, 249–50, 306, 308–9, 321–26, 363 Moors, 200, 204–5, 408, 423 More, Thomas, 249, 281, 283–85, 294, 300–305, 308, 335 Morgante, by Luigi Pulci, 307 mothers, motherhood, 10, 13, 14, 22, 27–28, 37, 45–62, 87, 91, 105–10, 114–16, 118, 124, 134, 139, 143, 151–58, 170–71, 178, 181, 203, 238, 303, 311, 332, 335, 351, 353–55, 364,

Index 369, 376, 383–84, 387, 403, 408–9, 417, 422–25, 449, 462. See also love: of family, friends, and country Muslims (adherents of Islam), 8, 121, 129, 179–80, 200n26, 299n12, 408. See also Islam mystic, mystical, 137, 365, 409 myth, mythology, 4, 5, 20, 54, 77, 86, 369. See also polytheism narrative, xvii, 6–7, 78, 110, 120–21, 132, 136, 200, 216, 220n6, 249, 272, 307–8, 310, 335, 364n2, 368, 370, 380, 391–92, 401, 410. See also novel, romance, story natives. See indigenous peoples nature (generative power), 5n5, 79–82, 87, 104, 108–9, 111, 115–19, 147–49, 166, 170, 183, 211, 232, 269–70, 273, 278–79, 290–92, 293–94, 301, 304, 306, 309, 321–22, 325–26, 337–38, 369, 376, 398, 404 New Spain. See Spanish Empire New Testament. See Bible: New Testament New World (Mundus novus), by Amerigo Vespucci, 364, 368, 373–78 New World (“new world” concept), 364, 367–69, 372–78, 397, 401 Nicholas V, Pope, 255, 272–77 Nicodemus, 121, 123–24 Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men, The, by Lucrezia Marinella, 410n3 nobles, nobility (social category and concept), 113–14, 132, 136–37, 177, 181–82, 193, 195, 197, 202, 205, 208n31, 210, 217, 228, 243–44, 248–51, 253–55, 277, 282, 290–91, 297, 306–21, 327n18, 332–33, 336, 365, 368, 391, 408, 410, 414, 430, 443–45, 448–49, 453–54, 468 Nogarola, Isotta, 254–55 nominalism, 131, 138n5 nonfiction, xvii, 308, 406, 412 novel (literary genre), xvii, 139, 181, 249, 282, 306–7, 310, 332, 364, 371, 373 nuns, 129, 133, 167–68, 232–36, 275, 317, 319, 411–12, 421, 423, 426, 454n8. See also convents, monasticism

481 Observations upon Experimental Philosophy, by Margaret Cavendish, 372 Octavian. See Augustus Odysseus (Latin Ulysses), 18, 22–26, 93, 229–30, 260, 365 Odyssey, by Homer, 3, 18, 257, 260 Oedipus the King, by Sophocles, 20, 45–53 Old Testament. See Bible: Hebrew Bible On Duties, by Cicero, 77, 101 On Friendship, by Cicero, 101 On His Own Ignorance and that of Many Others, by Francis Petrarch, 252 On Nobility, by Lauro Quirini, 254 On Nobility, by Poggio Bracciolini, 254 On Old Age, by Cicero, 101 On the Laws, by Cicero, 77, 101 On the Nature of the Gods, by Cicero, 101 On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius, 4, 76, 78–83 On the Orator, by Cicero, 101 On the Republic, by Cicero, 77, 101 On the Republic, by Lauro Quirini, 254 oration (literary genre), 77–78, 104n31, 110, 248, 251, 253–56, 259n9, 263–71, 277–80, 307, 321, 354–55, 398. See also rhetoric, speech Oration in Praise of Literary Studies, by Cassandra Fedele, 277–80 Orlando furioso (Roland Goes Mad), by Ludovico Ariosto, 249–50, 306–8, 310–16, 365, 371n7 Orlando innamorato (Roland in Love), by Matteo Maria Boiardo, 307 Oroonoko, by Aphra Behn, 364, 371–73, 401–5 Ottoman Turks, 6, 248, 255, 272–77, 299, 309, 334, 398 Ovid, 5, 76, 77, 86–93, 181, 211n32 pagans, paganism. See polytheism Pantagruel, by François Rabelais, 308 Paradise Lost, by John Milton, 446 Paradise Regained, by John Milton, 446 paradise. See heaven Patroclus, 22–23, 27–29 Paul (apostle), 120–21, 125–26, 144, 236, peasants (social group), 3, 217, 232, 309, 327n18,, 365, 444–45, 447–49, 451–52

482 Persia, 1, 97, 215, 243, 392, 394 Peru, 369, 383–87 Petrarca, Francesco. See Petrarch, Francis Petrarch, Francis (Francesco Petrarca), Petrarchism, 217–18, 247, 250–53, 255–63, 269, 333, 336, 406 Phaedo, by Plato, 21, 71–75, 135 Phaëthon, son of god Phoebus (Apollo), 86–93 Philip, king of Macedon, 101, 280 philosophy (thought system and literary genre), 3–5, 21,71–76, 78–83, 100–101, 105–10, 115–19, 125, 130–31, 134–36, 138, 140, 143, 145–51, 165–66, 244–45, 247, 249, 252–53, 256, 258–59, 268n15, 273, 276–81, 283, 298, 320–23, 336, 342, 371–72, 397–99, 411–12, 433–38 Phoebus (Roman Apollo). See Apollo Pilato, Leonzio, 257, 259n11 pilgrim, pilgrimage, 133, 139, 168, 171, 218, 220 Plato, platonism, 3–4, 21, 71–75, 79, 95, 135, 147, 279, 283 play. See drama Poems, by Catullus, 83–86 Poems, by Juana Inés de la Cruz, 411–12, 438–442 Poems and Fragments, by Sappho, 34–37 poetry, xvii, 2–5, 7, 18–19, 20, 29, 34, 77, 79, 83, 86, 116, 132–33, 144, 178–80, 182, 187, 215, 217–18, 230, 249–50, 252, 268n15, 306–7, 318, 332–33, 335–338, 359, 364–65, 371, 406–7, 411–12, 414, 435, 438, 446. See also epic, lyric, drama political thought, systems, 2, 20–21, 76–77, 100–105, 110–13, 130, 132, 217, 236, 247, 251, 253–56, 258–59, 263–69, 281–305, 352–53, 370–72, 377, 385–87, 392–98, 401, 410, 446 Polo, Marco, 132, 215–16, 220–25, 307, 363n1, 370 polytheism, 1, 3, 4, 10, 18–23, 26, 28–30, 32–35, 38–40, 44, 50, 54, 62–65, 79, 86–93, 101, 103, 108, 110, 112, 113, 116, 123, 125, 153, 183, 193, 212n33, 216, 217, 223, 239n29, 242, 245, 279,

Index 304, 337, 371, 380, 382–93, 447, 462, 465–66, 468 Pompey the Great, 97, 101, 118, 258n8, 259 Portuguese Empire, 364, 369–71, 373, 392–96 Prince, The, by Niccolò Machiavelli, 248–49, 281–90 Principles of Oratory, by Quintilian, 248, 269 printing, 137, 140, 216, 218, 247, 282, 306, 309, 337, 368, 406, 411, 434–38 prison literature (literary genre), 131, 135, 145–51, 446–47, 461–69 property, 33, 108, 111, 249, 267, 284, 288, 302, 376, 449 prophet, 15, 122, 445 prose, xvii, 3–5, 77–78, 100–101, 110, 133, 140, 215–16, 220, 248–49, 272, 281, 306–9, 332, 335–36, 364, 368, 370–71, 383, 406, 409, 411–12. See also particular genres such as biography, essay, oration, story, etc. Protestantism. See Christianity: Protestant Psalms (Hebrew Bible), 7, 13–15, 186, 333, 337 Pseudo-Martyr, by John Donne, 336 Pulci, Luigi, 307 Puritanism, 446–47. See also Christianity: Protestant; Reformation Qubilai Khan, 215–16, 220–25 querelle des femmes. See women: defense of Quintilian, 5, 248, 269–72 Quirini, Lauro, 248, 251, 254–55, 272–77, 299n12 Qur’an, 8, 121 Rabelais, François, 249, 306–8, 316–21, 407 race, racialism, 335, 373, 403, 408, 411 rape, 272, 275, 362, 364–65, 372, 406–7, 414, 439n25, 444, 447, 449, 452 reason (faculty of), 21, 37, 62–71, 73, 75, 79, 109, 115, 117, 119, 125, 133, 148, 150–51, 171, 219, 226, 232, 262, 267, 270, 278–80, 299, 304, 308, 311, 322–23, 353, 355, 358, 362, 385, 388, 391, 399–401, 424, 436–37, 439, 455, 458

Index rebirth. See salvation Reconquista (Reconquest), 179, 200n26, 381n21 redemption. See salvation Reformation, 138, 247, 306, 332, 446. See also Christianity: Protestant; evangelicalism; Puritanism religion, 1–2, 4, 6, 8, 39, 64, 78, 86, 120, 125, 130, 136, 139, 140, 183–85, 232, 247, 249–50, 257, 273, 283, 285, 289, 300, 304, 318–19, 332, 335–36, 359, 365–66, 370, 372, 378, 383, 385, 389, 397–98, 401, 406–9, 426, 436, 446, 464, 466. See also Christianity, Islam, Judaism, polytheism religious orders (Catholic), 171n38, 319, 320n10, 329, 344, 369–70, 409, 411, 413–14. See also Jesuits Renaissance (cultural movement, fifteenth to seventeenth centuries), 19, 136, 247–363, 365, 367; Carolingian, 177, 185, 254; English (Elizabethan), 249–50, 332–33; High Renaissance, 248–49, 281–305 republic, republicanism, 4, 101–5, 116, 254, 259, 264, 266, 267, 277, 279, 281–82, 286, 297, 301–302, 304–305, 398. See also citizens, citizenship Response to Sor Filotea de la Cruz, by Juana Inés de la Cruz, 412 resurrection, 120, 125, 136, 158, 261. See also immortality, salvation Revelation (New Testament), 120–21, 126–27 rhetoric (persuasive prose), 3–5, 20, 62, 100–101, 116, 134, 185, 248, 252–53, 263–64, 277, 308, 372, 400. See also oration, speech Richard II, by William Shakespeare, 335, 352–53 Roland Goes Mad, by Ludovico Ariosto. See Orlando furioso Roland in Love, by Matteo Maria Boiardo. See Orlando innamorato Roman Catholic Church. See Christianity: Catholic Roman Empire, 6, 76–78, 93–100, 115, 120, 134–135, 151, 187, 242–245, 272, 275

483 Roman literary tradition, 1, 2, 4–6, 76–119, 134–137, 140, 177, 181, 210, 216, 242, 248, 252–54, 256, 266, 268–72, 275, 306, 354–55, 447. See also Latin Roman Republic, 4–5, 21, 76–77, 86, 101, 256, 259, 264, 266, 268, 282n2 romance (literary genre), xvii, 180–81, 216, 249, 290, 306–7, 335, 364n2, 372, 397, 406, 410 Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare, 335, 351–52 Royal Commentaries of the Incas, by Garcilaso de la Vega, 369, 383–87 Rustichello of Pisa, 216, 220n6 sacrifice (religious rite), 1–2, 7–9, 37, 38, 44–45, 54, 80, 87, 126, 140, 156, 158–59, 162–63, 245, 343, 365, 378, 382, 387–88, 404, 426, 445, 460, 467, 469 saints, 130, 134, 136–37, 140, 144, 145n16, 151, 170, 172, 176, 177, 180, 205, 218–20, 235, 239, 242, 244, 268, 329, 353n70, 382, 388, 390, 394, 408–9, 411, 413, 421–23. See also Catherine of Alexandria; Xavier, Francis; Teresa of Ávila saints’ lives, legends. See hagiography salon, 409, 411–12, 434 salvation, 121, 123, 125–26, 157, 159, 171, 173, 175, 254, 290, 426, 446. See also immortality Samson Agonistes, by John Milton, 365, 446–47, 461–69 Sancho Panza, 309, 326–31 Sapientia, by Hrotswitha of Gandersheim, 137, 151–58, 242 Sappho, 3, 19, 34–37, 77, 83, 180, 219n4, 364n3, 412 Saracens, 179, 193–95, 198, 299, 307, 397 Satan. See devil savior. See Jesus Christ, Messiah Saxons, Germanic people, 136, 178, 182–85 scholasticism, 130–31, 135, 138, 252n2, 253 School for Wives, The, by Molière, 445

484 schools, 62, 68, 130–31, 136, 138, 164–65, 167, 268, 301, 308, 334, 387, 398, 400, 422, 425 science, scientific, 21, 116, 247, 334, 371–72, 397–98, 410 Scivias, by Hildegard of Bingen. See Know the Ways Scripture. See Bible, biblical Second Letter of Relation, by Hernán Cortés, 368–69, 378–83 Secret, by Francis Petrarch, 252 self, self–fashioning, See individualism Seneca, 5, 76, 78, 105–10, 115, 164n26 sermon (literary genre), 116, 121, 139, 172, 259, 336, 390 Sermon on the Mount. See Gospels: of Matthew Shakespeare, William, 332, 334–35, 350–58, 363–65, 445–46 Sidney, Philip, 250, 332–334, 336–41, 365 sin, 6, 10, 15, 38, 45, 133–34, 137, 141, 159, 162–63, 170, 172, 199, 216, 225, 232, 240, 311, 362, 390, 414, 425–26, 428, 440, 446 slavery, 10, 82, 102, 104, 110–12, 284, 302–4, 306, 309, 339, 362, 364–65, 367, 371–73, 401–5, 422, 428–29, 446, 449, 456, 462–65, 467 social class, 4, 255, 277, 309, 372, 443, 445–46, 448. See also artisans, clergy, merchants, nobles, peasants, soldiers Socrates, 3–4, 21, 62–75, 118 soldiers (social group), 30, 103–4, 113, 217, 244, 275, 370, 448, 451, 454, 467 Soliloquies, by William Shakespeare, 335, 351–56 song (literary genre), 132, 165, 179–82, 333, 335, 469 Song of My Cid, by Per Abad (Abbot Peter?), 132, 179–80, 200–205, 371n7 Song of Roland, by Turoldus (?), 132, 179–80, 193–200, 290, 307, 371n7 Songs and Sonnets, by John Donne, 336, 359–61 sonnet (literary genre), 250, 252, 332–37, 410, 433, 435, 438, 445 Sonnets, by Francis Petrarch, 252, 261–63. See also Canzoniere, by Petrarch

Index Sonnets, by William Shakespeare, 334, 356–58 Sophists, 4, 20, 21, 62–75, 116 Sophocles, 3, 20, 45–53 Sor Juana. See Cruz, Juana Inés de la (Sor Juana) soul, 18, 21, 28, 57, 71–74, 79–82, 84, 92–96, 98, 100, 108, 116–17, 119, 133, 135, 141, 144, 148, 157, 161–62, 165, 171–73, 175, 184, 199, 203, 211–12, 216, 225–26, 233, 237, 241, 250, 256, 259, 263, 275–76, 279, 296, 300, 302, 304, 313, 327, 334, 344–50, 359–62, 264–65, 365, 388–90, 402, 404, 407, 409, 411, 422, 424, 426–30, 433–37, 444, 458 South America, 309, 364, 372–78, 401–5. See also Brazil, Peru, Portuguese Empire, Spanish Empire Spanish Empire, 309, 365, 368–69, 373–87 speech (literary genre), xvii, 5, 81, 100–101, 110, 116, 231, 236, 251, 268, 270, 278, 335, 380, 400, 446. See also oration, rhetoric sprezzatura, 283, 290, 294 Stoicism, 5, 78–83, 105–110, 115–19, 125, 372, 376 story (literary genre), xvii, 6, 46, 55, 71–72, 86–87, 93, 113, 131–33, 138–39, 158, 159n25, 163–64, 167, 178–80, 215, 217–20, 225–27, 232, 236, 239, 241, 245, 249–50, 272, 276, 307, 310, 318, 331, 335, 352, 364, 369, 372, 383–84, 387, 390, 402, 406–9, 412–13, 419, 426, 432, 446 Story of My Misfortunes, by Peter Abelard, 131, 138, 163–68 studia humanitatis. See humanism, liberal arts Suetonius, 177, 182 Sulam, Sarra Copia, 365, 411, 433–38 Tacitus, 5, 76, 78, 110–14, 177 Tales of Disillusion, by María de Zayas y Sotomayor, 409–10, 426–30 Tamburlaine, by Christopher Marlowe, 334 Tartuffe, by Molière, 445 Tasso, Torquato, 307

Index Ten Commandments, 7, 9–11 Terence, 131, 136–37 Teresa of Ávila, Saint, 365, 406, 408–9, 412, 421–26 Thélème, abbey of, 308, 316–21 Theogony, by Hesiod, 3, 19 theology (thought system and literary genre), 6, 71, 120, 130, 134–35, 137–38, 140, 162, 217, 245, 256, 342, 362, 365, 388, 390, 409, 412, 435–37, 443 Thetis, mother of Achilles, 27–28 Thomas à Kempis, 131, 139, 172–76 Thucydides, 4, 78 To Posterity, by Francis Petrarch, 252 toleration (religious and cultural), 218, 273, 285, 304, 365 tragedy (literary genre), 3, 19–20, 46, 78–79, 137, 218, 250, 335, 350, 365, 411, 443, 445–47. See also drama travel account (literary genre), 132–33, 215–16, 363n1, 367–68, 370, 392. See also Description of the World, The, by Marco Polo; New World, by Amerigo Vespucci treatise, tract (literary genre), 77, 131–33, 135, 168–69, 181–82, 211, 217, 251–54, 256, 282–83, 307, 336, 435 Trinity (Christian doctrine), 135, 156, 219, 345, 362 troubadour. See minstrel Troy, Trojan War, 3, 18, 22–29, 36–40, 42, 46, 77, 84n6, 93, 96, 99, 230, 349 Turks. See Ottoman Turks tyranny, 38, 42–43, 46n19, 110, 155, 242, 245, 256–57, 264, 266, 284, 300–301, 338–39, 384 Ulysses. See Odysseus universities, 130–31, 136, 254, 323, 335–36, 443 urbanization. See cities, urbanization Utopia, by Thomas More, 249, 284–85, 300–305 utopianism, 284–85, 308, 372, 397 Valla, Giorgio, 277 Vega, Garcilaso de la, “el Inca,” 364, 369, 383–87

485 Vega, Lope de, 443 Venus. See Aphrodite vernacular languages (development of ), 130–32, 140, 177–80, 182, 184, 216–18, 247, 249–50, 252, 261, 268, 281, 306, 308, 310, 318, 333, 368–71, 377, 383, 388, 391, 401, 406, 443, 445, 447 verse. See poetry Vespucci, Amerigo, 364, 367–68, 373–78 Virgil, 5, 76, 77, 93–100, 216, 225–26, 228, 230, 253, 306, 365, 371n7 Virgin Mary, 158, 163, 219, 235n25, 382, 423 virginity, 137, 152, 234, 243, 409, 430, 432. See also chastity virtue, 5n5, 93, 104, 133, 151n20, 156, 160, 175, 211, 219, 231, 242, 244, 254, 259, 262, 267, 285–86, 291–92, 298, 304, 310, 320–21, 325, 340–41, 395, 415, 422–24, 428, 433, 457 vision (mystical), 126, 131, 133, 137, 139, 158–63, 168, 170, 217, 323, 409 Way of Perfection, by Teresa of Ávila, 408–9 West Indies, 329n25, 368. See also Caribbean Western literary tradition, xvi–xviii, 1–3, 6, 21, 71, 77, 86, 100–101, 128–137, 140, 163, 177, 181–82, 217, 247, 251, 255, 270, 273, 281, 333, 364–67, 409, 443, 447. See also Greek, Roman, medieval, Early Modern literary traditions; and Renaissance widow, 106, 108n34, 136, 335, 353–54, 430, 432, 445, 454, 457 Wife of Bath’s Prologue (Chaucer, Canterbury Tales), 236–41 women: abuse and subordination of, 105, 167, 218, 237, 239, 241, 285, 300–303, 364–65, 372, 406–7, 409–10, 412–14, 426–30, 438–41. See also marriage, rape; as authors, 251, 309, 332–33, 363–65, 367, 371–73, 397, 401, 406–12, 433. See also Behn, Aphra; Cavendish, Margaret; Christine de Pizan; Cruz, Juana Inés de la; Fedele, Cassandra; Fonte, Moderata; Hildegard of Bingen; Hrotswitha of Gandersheim;

486 Kempe, Margery; Marguerite de Navarre; Marie de France; Sappho; Sulam, Sarra Copia; Teresa of Ávila; Zayas y Sotomayor, María de; defense of, 4, 133, 215, 217–20, 242–46, 316–21, 410–13, 430–38. See also feminism, misogyny; and learning, 164, 248–49, 251, 253–55, 277–80, 363, 372, 406, 408, 410–12, 432–38, 445; and religion, 131, 139, 168, 232–36, 317–21, 365, 389, 408, 411–12, 421–23, 426. See also Catherine of Alexandria; Cruz, Juana Inés de la; Hildegard of Bingen; Hrotswitha of Gandersheim; Kempe, Margery; Sulam, Sarra Copia; Teresa of Ávila

Index work. See labor Works and Days, by Hesiod, 3, 19, 29–34 Worth of Women, The, by Moderata Fonte, 410, 430–33 Would-Be Gentleman, The, by Molière, 445 Xavier, Francis, Saint, 364, 370, 388–92, 395n47 Zayas y Sotomayor, María de, 364, 406, 409–10, 426–30 Zenobia, 242–44 Zeus (Roman Jove or Jupiter), 23, 25–27, 30–32, 34, 42–43, 60, 64–65, 85, 87–88, 91–92, 346

This compact anthology provides a thorough introduction to the major works of the Western literary tradition from Antiquity to 1700. It includes excerpts from seventy texts translated from eight ancient and modern languages in genres as diverse as epic, lyric, and dramatic verse; prose narrative including story, romance, and novel; and nonfiction prose including autobiography, biography, letter, speech, dialogue, and essay. Further distinguishing this collection is the inclusion of works by women writers often overlooked in other literary anthologies. Margaret L. King’s clear, engaging introductions and notes support an informed reading of the texts while extending students’ knowledge of particular authors and problems of interest. The Western Literary Tradition’s modest length and cost allow for the use of full-length works— many of which are available in Hackett Publishing’s own well-regarded and inexpensive translations and editions—alongside the anthology without adding undue cost to a student’s total textbook fees.

Visit www.hackettpublishing.com/literature-anthology to learn more about: • Low-cost, freestanding ebook versions—ideal for use in online courses—of chronologically and thematically arranged selections drawn from The Western Literary Tradition • Curated lists of key full-length texts, available in Hackett editions, that will complement this anthology most effectively • Special discounts on print editions of Hackett books purchased in conjunction with The Western Literary Tradition

Forthcoming in September 2021 The Western Literary Tradition: An Introduction in Texts, Volume 2—Jonathan Swift to George Orwell. Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by Margaret L. King.

Margaret L. King is Professor of History Emerita, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her numerous books include the pioneering monographs Venetian Humanism in an Age of Patrician Dominance (Princeton, 1986) and Women of the Renaissance (Chicago, 1991); translations of humanist works, including Francesco Barbaro’s The Wealth of Wives: A Fifteenth-Century Marriage Manual (Toronto, 2015); the textbook A Short History of the Renaissance in Europe (Toronto, 2016); and three text anthologies published by Hackett: Renaissance Humanism (2014), Reformation Thought (2016), and Enlightenment Thought (2019).

www.hackettpublishing.com/literature-anthology

Cover image: Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, detail from Orlando Furioso fresco (1822–27), Casa Massimo, Rome, Italy. Image by Sailko, via Wikimedia Commons.

ISBN-13: 978-1-62466-909-5 90000

9 781624 669095