The Dedalus Book of Medieval Literature

by Brian Murdoch

  Empires do not last, and the Roman empire, which had been characterised by fine stone buildings, declined pretty visibly, and those who came after watched this and commented on it, again sometimes with nostalgia, although much of what the Romans built was helped on its way; the magnificent basilica of Constantine in Trier, in Germany, has been knocked down and rebuilt with a positively monotonous regularity by different Germanic tribes since the Romans put it up, possibly because it is too large for any passing attacker to miss. Sadly, Allied bombers got it last, but it is up again. Societies can crumble all too easily as well, however, usually in the wake of weak leadership, or perhaps with a leadership that isn’t able to cope with the size of the organisation. Medieval society (if such a generalisation is possible) could be precarious. A very conservative German poet – a commoner called Konrad of Würzburg – wrote in the thirteenth century a little story designed to show that chivalry and honest knightly bravery are Good Things, even if they were, in his day, in somewhat short supply. In his tale, the eponymous Henry of Kempten leaps out of a bath, grabs a sword, and, though naked, saves the life of the Holy Roman Emperor, from whom he had become estranged. All well and good, but the underlying political sense of the story is in the reason why he was estranged. He had been attending a ceremonial and civilised feast in the Emperor’s presence with all the other knights (or more accurately: with all the other tough, independent, bloody-minded noblemen). One of his pages absent-mindedly eats a piece of bread before grace, the Emperor’s chamberlain clouts the lad and draws blood, Henry of Kempten knocks the chamberlain down and kills him, and when the Emperor demands punishment for Henry, the latter grabs the Emperor by the beard, points a sword (why was he armed at a formal feast?) at his throat and demands safe passage away from the court. It is true that there is a story-book reconciliation after Henry has saved the Emperor, but what Konrad of Würzburg is really saying is: ‘look, the feudal system is all very fine, but it would not take very much at all to bring the whole lot down about our ears.’ And he was right. The Holy Roman Empire collapsed into social chaos and a welter of private armies not long after.

  Getting a strong leader was a matter of luck, and usually temporary. In England Henry II sorted out the mess left by Stephen (so we can forgive Henry’s private indiscretions, perhaps, with Rosamund de Clifford), but his successor, Richard, is questionable, and so on. In medieval writings we often encounter a kind of desperate conservatism as a response to potential anarchy. One of the rhetorical set-pieces that the Middle Ages liked, and which is another sign of their awareness of man’s fallen state, was summed up with the Latin tag-name laudatio temporis actii, ‘praise of the good old days.’ Whether they ever were good is as much a matter of debate as how brave the new world has become. Even with a strong leader we are likely to be faced with another celebrated historical truism: that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The Roman world produced its share of examples, and so did the Middle Ages, men and women alike, in spite of the way that ‘great figures of the Middle Ages’ – like Charlemagne, for example – have always been presented.

  In their writings, medieval historians, clerics, satirists and especially poets show us over and over again that man is by nature corruptible, at least, although it was never a matter of despair. If you were wicked, you would get your just deserts eventually. Our own views of the Middle Ages may vary. Do we see the period as the Victorian genre painters did, with the lady in the long white frock and eccentric headgear, on a perfectly genuine pedestal, presenting a chaplet to a knight in improbably shining armour? Or do we revise our Boy’s Book of Heroes view of Richard Lionheart to see him as a greedy, self-centred, politically incompetent thug with unclear sexual habits? It would be impossible to pigeon-hole, to categorise the whole period anyway, even if we could decide when the Middle Ages actually were. Nevertheless, although books on the Middle Ages tend to show, as evidence of the onward march of civilisation, photographs of massive Gothic cathedrals, they are not often in close-up. If they were, you would be able to see the gargoyles better.

  One such cathedral has a gargoyle of a demon, grinning at you over his shoulder, whilst displaying his bare bottom, from which the rainwater falls from a great height. It’s a salutary comment on fallen humanity.

  PROLOGUE: ORIGINAL SINS

  The Middle Ages had in front of them the ultimate – or to be more accurate, the very first – example of a sin, that of Adam, who was at the same time the genetic reason for everyone’s predisposition to sinfulness. He was also a ghastly warning to his descendants. The fall of Adam and Eve was entirely real to the times: Darwin, Freud, and for that matter Milton, are all a good way off. However, it was left for Adam’s progeny to sort out the nice distinctions between original sin, original sinfulness, the original sin, and (just occasionally) an original sin. Here are two approaches, one desperately serious, and another that starts off in a familiar manner, but degenerates somewhat, rather proving the point about predisposition to sin. The first is a brief but very much quoted interpretation of the fall of man by Gregory I, Pope, principal pastoral theologian of the Middle Ages, and eventually a saint. He lived from about 540 to 604, and reputedly arranged for the conversion of England with a joke about Angles and angels.

  Gregory the Great

  Moral Lessons from the Book of Job IV, 27

  There are four stages by which sin is perpetrated in the heart, and four in which it is actually put into practice. In the heart, these stages are: suggestion, delight, consent, and brazening-it-out. In practice, the suggestion comes from the Old Enemy, delight from the flesh, consent from the spirit, and brazen self-justification from a general over-confidence in the self … Now, the serpent made the persuasive suggestion, Eve delighted in it, Adam consented, and when he was called upon to confess his guilt, he brazenly denied it. And, I do assure you, all this happens with mankind every day, the very same things experienced by our first natural parents. The serpent did the persuading, just as now the Old Enemy secretly makes evil suggestions to mankind. Eve delighted in it, just as the sensual flesh gives way to pleasure when it hears the old serpent’s words. Adam consented to what the woman put to him, just as, once the flesh has been seized with delight, the weak spirit then bends towards it. And when he was required by God to confess his guilt, Adam would not do so, just as the spirit, turned from the true path by sin, becomes – to its own ruin! – hardened by brazen audacity.

  A German Adam-and-Eve Parody

  This anonymous German poem is the very first piece in a large collective manuscript from the early fifteenth century, now in Karlsruhe. One wonders whether the compiler of the collection had read past the first dozen lines, which are disarmingly orthodox-looking. Anyway, fully (and completely spuriously) supported by Biblical quotations, Adam develops preoccupations here which have absolutely nothing to do with scrumping, and the medieval German word kunterlin (translated here as ‘pussy’) genuinely does mean (also) ‘a little furry animal.’ The ending is nicely ambiguous.

  Adam and Eve

  IN THE BEGINNING GOD CREATED HEAVEN AND EARTH

  Dearly beloved, for today

  the text on which I want to say

  a few words, really does begin

  the Scriptures (although in Latin).

  Now you, each woman and each man,

  should say ‘Our Fathers’ when you can,

  and an ‘Ave Maria’ too,

  so that, through God’s great mercy, you

  may all experience as well

  the things that I’ve a mind to tell.

  In the beginning, then, God’s hand

  made air, fire, water and the land –

  the ‘elements’ we call these four,

  from which, now and for evermore

  all things are created – at least

  that’s what we’re all told by the priests.

  And God created after this

  the angels in their heavenly bliss,

  of which one w
as an angel fair

  who bore the name of Lucifer.

  He coveted the holy crown,

  and afterwards he was cast down

  because of his great sin of pride,

  to hell’s abyss, there to reside.

  After that fall, God straight away

  made man upon the earth to stay;

  He wanted humankind for sure

  to live on earth for evermore.

  Now when God had created man,

  the name He gave him was ‘Adam,’

  a name that God Himself thought fit.

  He took a rib and fashioned it

  into a woman, and when done

  He said: ‘You two shall be as one,

  and shall increase upon the earth,

  and all your kin shall show their worth.

  What joined together is by me,

  shall never put asunder be.’

  The next thing God wanted to do

  was breathe His life into the two.

  Adam stood up, began to move,

  and God put in him thoughts of love,

  made him behave as if, that time,

  Adam was thirty, in his prime,

  and he behaved accordingly.

  I’m telling all this honestly!

  These were his words, I do believe,

  when first he laid his eyes on Eve:

  ‘My bones and flesh the Lord did take

  so that He could a woman make.’

  Then Adam added something new

  (which instinct prompted him to do).

  He pointed with his finger where

  the short and brown and curly hair

  is seen above a woman’s thighs.

  On this he set adoring eyes –

  the little pussy pleased him so.

  He said with passion: ‘Eve, I know,

  because of this sweet little place,

  man will part from his parents’ grace,

  and to his wife will wish to cleave,

  because of pussy, and not leave.

  It’s in the Book – I shan’t deceive!

  THEREFORE SHALL A MAN LEAVE HIS FATHER AND HIS MOTHER, AND SHALL CLEAVE UNTO HIS WIFE ETC.

  We read that Adam only sinned

  the once, and only in one thing –

  he took the apple, and he bit,

  and very much regretted it,

  and undertook a great penance

  to clear his disobedience.

  But nowhere will you find at all

  that sex was ever culpable,

  nor was it ever deemed a vice

  to cause the loss of Paradise –

  such nonsense never could be thought!

  How could mankind enjoy as sport

  something seen as a mortal sin?

  Now, evidence may be found in

  the letters of St Paul, a saint

  of holiness beyond complaint.

  He was a teacher, widely read,

  so we must mark his words. He said

  that loving isn’t sin at all,

  He says, the holy man St. Paul,

  in an epistle, in Latin

  (the language I shall cite it in):

  MELIUS EST NUBERE QUAM URI

  ‘It’s best to wed and get a bit,

  than be on fire for lack of it!’

  The commentaries add this gloss:

  ‘Girls, if in thoughts of sex you’re lost

  so you can’t serve God properly,

  nor concentrate wholeheartedly,

  then always give in to the man

  who occupies your thoughts. You can,

  by doing so, remove all stress,

  and pray again, your mind at rest.

  Whatever you desire of God

  it shall be granted by His word.

  Now, young women, take notice all:

  first, make yourselves look beautiful

  then go and find yourselves a man

  and take the best advice I can

  give you. And if the monks should say

  that you should rather turn away,

  then to their strictures pay no heed,

  to follow them there is no need.

  They have one thought, and only one:

  that you should service them alone!

  But listen if your monk should say:

  he’s not sinned who with women lay.

  Of course there is no doubt of it

  that you can’t sin a little bit

  if you leave women totally.

  But still he’s wrong as wrong can be

  if he says it’s a mortal sin

  (I mean it!) to enjoy women.

  I’ll tell you something else as well.

  Men won’t be heading straight for hell

  if they should bed a woman for

  the usual night-time sports and more.

  I say all this and know it’s true

  because that’s in the Bible, too.

  You’ll find it in Isaiah IV

  that seven women battled for

  a single man – it’s so, I swear,

  without a lie, it tells us there.

  Now the sermon is at an end

  and for your souls I you commend

  that you get on your knees and pray

  and one act of contrition say.’

  ‘I’ve been a naughty girl, alas,

  and I have been very remiss,

  not giving men all that they ask.

  To remedy that is my task.

  That I’ve not let them go too far,

  that I repent – mea culpa.

  And furthermore I do confess

  that I have frequently done less

  than men wanted me to, and so

  to do a penance I shall go,

  and show my full contrition true.

  Dear brother, now I ask of you,

  your holiness, to absolve me,

  and all the years I live, I’ll see

  that I do penance while I can

  for having said ‘no’ to a man.

  For if my body made him hot

  I played the silly little clot;

  and if he held my hand one day,

  I quickly would snatch mine away;

  and if he tried to fondle me,

  I slapped his hand down off my knee.

  And when he whispered in my ear,

  far too often I would not hear.

  But I’m a woman, and still young,

  and my body is fit and strong,

  so I can make up soon enough

  for missing out on all that stuff.

  I’m wiser than I used to be

  so I shall furnish willingly

  all I rejected in the past.

  Whatever he shall of me ask,

  whether his wants are big or small,

  believe me, I shall fill them all.

  Oh yes, this year I’m more mature –

  whoever asks will get for sure

  all that he wanted right away,

  his heart’s desire, this very day.

  Yes, I’ll do penance here below

  to help my soul to heaven go;

  may God His wings of grace unfurl

  over a silly little girl.

  And in God’s name I’ll work away

  so one day He will let me say

  that I’ve fulfilled all this and more

  of what I missed out on before.

  All things a man desires of me

  twofold to him shall granted be;

  I’ll give it happily I know –

  and even monks can have a go!

  So now absolve me sir,’ she said.

  ‘I shall my dear. Right! Into bed!

  The Lord pass down His mercy mild

  upon your head, you naughty child,

  and may He then your soul commend

  to Paradise at your life’s end.

  For God sits there, the Trinity,

  forever in His majesty,

  and His law ever shall hold
sway.’

  That’s it, that’s all I’ve got to say.

  If you’ve taken my sermon in,

  and afterwards, for all your sin

  made no contrition in your heart

  and from your sins you will not part,

  then to you I offer freely

  a thousand days off Purgatory.

  So you must say ‘Amen’ with me

  to signal that you all agree.

  Unoriginal Sins

  Whenever the Church established itself in a new country (such as Germany in the eighth century), it provided lists of sins and formulas for confession, which presumably had the implicit instruction ‘strike out those which do not apply.’ They were based on the Ten Commandments and the Seven Deadly Sins, of course, but included quite a range. As warnings, here are two examples, one from a Latin list, the other from an early German Form of Confession. Some of the others have additional sins, like not paying tithes and taxes. These are the ones that lead directly to hell. The first list (the manuscript has handy translations of them into German, in fact) are probably not in order of importance (or preference), and the omissions in the second piece (from Würzburg) are not for the sake of propriety, but because of linguistic obscurity, though it does seem to cover pornography.

  Two early Forms of Confession

  These are the wicked sins by which the devil lures men down to hell:

  sins of the flesh

  false witness

  fornication

  avarice

  idolatry

  impurity

  bellicosity

  quarrelling

  jealousy

  anger

  brawling

  dissent

  wrangling

  envy

  obstinacy

  homicide

  bullying

  drunkenness

  adultery

  theft

  Lord God Almighty, I confess to Thee and to the saints Thy companions, the sins which I have committed from the beginning in thought, word and deed: swearing, cursing, lying, talking nonsense; envy, hatred, lust and greed; unsavoury thoughts whilst asleep, turning my mind to things which are not allowed, lusts of the eye, the will and the ears … I confess also to God that I have committed idolatry, theft, murder, excessive fornication both in the body and in the mind; I have coveted other men’s goods; I have lied under oath and borne false witness … I have committed unchaste things and sodomitic practices, polluted my body with unpermitted lusts, and gazed at things that I was not supposed to look upon … I have gone against the Commandments in overeating, overdrinking until I vomited, in envy, hatred, lying … and countless other sins … many are my sins in thought, word and deed.