Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance Linda Marie Rouillard the New Middle Ages

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Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance Linda Marie Rouillard The New Middle Ages

Series Editor Bonnie Wheeler English and Medieval Studies Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX, USA The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14239 Linda Marie Rouillard Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance Linda Marie Rouillard The University of Toledo Toledo, OH, USA

The New Middle Ages ISBN 978-3-030-35601-9 ISBN 978-3-030-35602-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6

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This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Acknowledgements

During the course of my academic career, I have been fortunate to work with generous teachers, mentors, and colleagues. The late Dr. Susan Whitebook introduced me to Old French in a course at the University of Vermont. I continue to be inspired by her knowledge and constant curiosity in all things. I will always be grateful to Dr. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and to the late Dr. Daniel Russell of the University of Pittsburgh for their constant kindness, support, and advice. At the University of Toledo, I have been blessed to work with Dr. Ruth Hottell who has modeled for me the kind of teacher-scholar I have always aspired to be. Her guidance, care, and wisdom continue to sustain me. I also thank my husband, Gary Rafe, for agreeing to become an “accidental” medievalist: while his own professional interests tend toward the scientifc and the modern, he has happily visited many a Gothic cathedral (relics included), studied medieval tapestries, and attended medieval re-enactments with me. Always agreeable to a tour of the remains of a medieval city wall, or to a trip to another medieval art exhibit, his constant challenge to me to make the past relevant to the present has been a motivation to keep it simple and germane. His patience in helping me with all things technological has been stellar. One of the central medieval romances using the incest motif that informs this work, La Manekine, entered my intellectual sphere during my graduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh, just before my mother was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, an auto-immune disease that damages the peripheral nervous system and causes paralysis.

v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

She lived through months of hospitalization and rehabilitation, struggling, and eventually succeeding in reclaiming her body from that paralysis. Her recuperation was stunning, just as spectacular as the miraculous recovery and graft of the amputated hand of the protagonist in La Manekine. Studying La Manekine during this time made the moral of the story very clear to me: “Ne se doit on pas desperer” (l. 8533); “one must not despair.” Watching my mother courageously confront a devastating illness helped me believe in miracles and understand the medieval willingness to suspend disbelief when confronted with the unimagina- ble and unexplainable. One of the most joyous moments of my life was standing in the physical therapy room, watching my mother take her frst independent steps after her illness. I dedicate this work to her, my own “Manekine,” and thank her for the gift of believing in the possibility of recovering from loss, and for her demonstration of faith in the future. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the reviewer of this manuscript who made numerous helpful suggestions. And I thank the editors of Palgrave Macmillan who facilitated the whole publication process for me. Contents

1 Introduction: Too Close for Comfort 1 References 10

2 Kinship Matters: An Immodest Proposal 13 2.1 Medieval Defnitions and Examples of Incest 19 2.2 Incest from Antiquity to the Middle Ages 30 2.3 Anthropological Defnitions of Incest 40 References 70

3 Heroines, Villains, and Barbarians in Other Medieval Incest Narratives 77 3.1 La Manekine and Medieval Hungary 91 References 102

4 Medieval Marriage, Misogamy, Misogyny 107 4.1 Elements of Marriage 120 4.2 Monstrous Marriage 129 4.3 Contaminated Rhetoric 135 4.4 Containing Desire: Ritual Abstinence 141 References 161

5 The Hand of Forgiveness 169 References 212

vii viii CONTENTS

6 Regurgitation, Restitution, Resurrection, and Relics 217 References 240

7 Spirit and Letter: Speech Acts in Selected Medieval Texts 245 References 272

8 Conclusion: The Legacy of the Incest Motif 275 References 294

Index 299 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Too Close for Comfort

Why in the twenty-first century write a book about twelfth-and thirteenth-century medieval French poems preoccupied with incest, marriage, and penance? Can literary narratives from eight and nine centuries ago possibly enlighten us about current issues related to sexual abuse in particular, or to marriage and social relationships in general? For centuries, we have turned to stories and metaphors from literature to grapple with and understand the conflicts, suffering, and trauma of our lives: the Oedi- pal story in particular has shaped our views of parent–child relationships and of the destinies we feel doomed to live out. Biblical stories (such as the incest story from the Old Testament about Lot and his daughters) are common currency even in the world outside of religious practice. Fairy tales and folktales amuse us and instruct us. Poetry in particular consoles us and seduces us as it transforms reality at the most basic level: the linguistic level in which ordinary speech and syntax are “reformed” into an extra-ordinary language that allows us a new perspective on our lives. Indeed, it is sometimes only in this poetic language that we can address those experiences for which we have no words in everyday language. This book starts from the premise that medieval musings on social institutions and medieval definitions of human relationships remain pertinent to modern society, and can provide valuable insights into the manner of categorizing and prescribing human interactions and perceptions;

© The Author(s) 2020 1 L. M. Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6_1 2 L. M. ROUILLARD insights into the anxiety related to contemporary changing definitions of legally recognized relationships; and insights into modern customs of reconciliation for fractured social connections. In the modern era, we typically study incest to better understand the trauma experienced by victims, to develop treatment and support systems, and to find ways of preventing the abuse. For the twenty-first century, incest is a devastating reality of greater frequency than previously understood, but there is no reason to assume that incest did not occur with great frequency as well in the Middle Ages. This book will reference a long tradition of stories of incest, but a tradition that typically uses the motif as a metaphor for broader discussions of social relationships. It is also important to remember in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries when the majority of our referenced works were written, incest had a much more extensive definition, referring not only to interdicted consanguineous relationships, but also to marriage between those with spiritual connections— specifically, between godparent and godchild—and between those with affine connections, meaning relatives of relatives by marriage, or even relatives of a previous sexual partner. Because of these interdictions, many potential marriage partners, even though distant relatives by our standards, fell into the category of still “too close for comfort.” Chapters 2 and 3 of this book study numerous medieval examples of this classical metaphor, that of an incestuous relationship. While a modern reader is more likely accustomed to learn about incest in the form of survivor narratives, psychological analyses, and newspaper articles, it is unlikely that medieval readers interpreted medieval poems using the incest motif as exposés of sexual abuse or of potential sexual abuse in the Mid- dle Ages. As twenty-first century readers, however, informed by modern incest survivor narratives, we can interpret such stories on multiple levels, from the psychological experience of trauma to a symbolic parable about the potential positive or negative consequences of social change. As we study incest narratives against the ideological background of the medieval Church’s evolving definition of marriage, the institution that positioned itself to regulate sexual behavior, among other behaviors, often in competition with familial material interests, we will connect the themes of medieval texts to modern preoccupations and conflicts over the nature of matrimony in Chapter 4. During the High Middle Ages, the institution of marriage was being redefined by the Church, which now insisted that a valid marriage required the individual consent of both spouses to the union; a legitimate marriage, in theory then, could not be the result 1 INTRODUCTION: TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT 3 of parental coercion, though arranged and forced marriages nonetheless continued well beyond the Middle Ages. By the thirteenth century, however, the Church had come to exercise much more control over marital relationships that had historically been the purview of the male heads of households. The pronouncements of the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council reduced the Church’s previous extensive consanguinity regulations that had greatly limited potential marriage partners and had caused many headaches for noble families longing to consolidate lands and power through the arranged marriages of their children. The Church’s insistence on verifying the individual consent of the marriage partners certainly diluted some paternal authority in the matter of marriage, and thus could frustrate to a certain degree the conglomeration of dynastic wealth. The sacrament of penance had also undergone numerous changes by the mid-thirteenth century, evolving from a “tariff” system of formulaic punishments to an emphasis on the emotion of contrition, and to a renewed emphasis on the efficacy of absolution by the priest. The depiction of individualized repentance and public forgiveness in medieval narratives also resonates with our need for a modern form of public confession in order to reestablish faith and trust between the general public and those in power who abuse that faith, the subject of Chapter 5. One need only evoke the political careers of Bill Clinton or Andrew Weiner to understand the general public’s need and the media’s obsession for broadcasts of admission of personal failure by the famous and the powerful. The calls for public accountability and a televised day of reckoning make for good religious theater as well as for increased viewer ratings, just as medieval public performances of penance provided interesting occasions for the congregation to be reminded of God’s infinite mercy. In conjunction with the Church’s ever-increasing authority over human relationships through its changes of perspective on marriage and penance, Chapter 6 considers bodily fragmentation and miraculous grafts, in particular as related to the tradition of relics, another way of maintaining relationships severed by death, enabling the faithful to establish a connection with the saintly and the divine. Once again, the Church insists it has the ultimate authority to determine authentic relics and prevent abuse of such sacred objects by both the clergy and the laity. Because marriage and penance are sacramental traditions in which words play an important role, we consider the relationship between women and men with language itself in Chapter 7: rash boons, deceptive obedience, and forged missives produce a tension between the letter 4 L. M. ROUILLARD of the text and the spirit of the text. How are we to interpret “narratives” or declarations: is a knight really obliged to kill his sister because he blindly promised a rash boon to a seemingly innocent maiden? Is it disloyal for a vassal to save a maiden’s life by creating the appearance of obeying a written royal order to execute her? The early twentieth-century psychoanalyst Otto Rank studied a corpus of incest narratives with the goal of better understanding the imprint of an author’s psyche on his or her literary creation, insisting more specifically that “the incest fantasy is of primary importance in the psychic life of the author.”1 The purpose of this book, however, is not to better understand the life of medieval poets who wrote about incest, authors for whom we typically have limited knowledge; rather it is to use medieval narratives to better understand social and cultural mentalities of some twelfth- and thirteenth-century western European societies, as well as some of their beliefs and attitudes toward religious practices. In addition, such a study can help us to better understand our own twenty-first-century anxieties about social change to accepted forms of marriage, and even new anxieties about inadvertent incest resulting from technological advances such as assisted reproductive procedures, some of the topics in our concluding chapter. Just as in the Middle Ages, publicly redefining what constitutes accepted and acceptable relationships in the twenty-first century has important consequences and often triggers strong reactive stances in religious and legal arenas. For instance, the modern debate over the definition of marriage asks whether a valid marriage is limited only to a man and a woman, or will we recognize same-sex unions? The modern social fears and political conflict resulting from this question, along with the consequences for such issues as shared property, medical decisions, and adoption, are front-page news on a regular basis. While the June 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges made same-sex marriage legal in the U.S., the topic remains a rhetorical battleground for debates on state versus federal authority to define and “protect” the institution of marriage. The process of asserting the authority to define a legal marriage is just one of many issues that connect us to the medieval past. We conclude this work with some modern uses of the incest motif in a variety of genres, including films, novels, memoirs, and popular and sensational media accounts. As a narrative motif and metaphor used to discuss social changes, class conflict, and culture wars, the incest theme has a place in modern reflections on broad social problems as well. Gillian Harkins in her book Everybody’s Family Romance: Incest in Neoliberal America, 1 INTRODUCTION: TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT 5 observes, for instance, that the epidemic of incest and sexual abuse so prevalent in the popular media in the 1990s was racialized by the popular media. “Black women were positioned once again as the insignificant real of sexual violence, while white women were the hyperreal of narcissistic sex panic and self-aggrandizement. Privileged (coded as white) women took over the more legitimate stories of child sexual abuse among the poor and populations of color (where it really happens but doesn’t really matter) and used them to theatricalize their own middle-class angst on the stage of world historical suffering.”2 In Harkins’s assessment, modern popular media in the U.S. have used the incest motif to conduct their version of class and race warfare as they pit white women against black women, and upper classes against lower classes, portraying the latter as “the source of incestuous pathology,” sometimes to distract us “[from] a culture turning in on itself, more willing to hear stories of sexual scandal than social inequality.”3 Incest as a metaphor remains common currency in modern media that use the image to characterize a wide range of competing issues, including political and financial conflicts of interests, as evidenced by the following sample of news article titles: “Incestuous County Boards Preside over Ris- ing Texas Tax Bills.” “The Incestuous Relationship Between Media and Politics.” “Incestuous Relationship between MTR and the Government is at Root of Hong Kong’s High-Speed Rail Woes.” “Liberal Media Con- tinues Incestuous Relationship with Obama, Washes over Scandals.” “In- side Dallas’ Incestuous Mayoral Race.” “Rush Limbaugh: Sean Hannity is ‘Three Times’ as Honest as ‘Incestuous’ Washington Media.”4 Such examples demonstrate the relevance of the incest metaphor to modern social critiques, and also raise a troubling philosophic question about such rhetoric: what does it mean to describe everyday politics by appropriating as a metaphor such a traumatic experience? While creating eye-catching headlines, do such uses trivialize psychological pain? Television and the sensational press have often exploited incest accounts for their shock value and potential profit. A quick internet search with the entry “incest” results in hundreds of current or recent citations from newspapers and the sensational press worldwide, suggesting modern society’s concomitant prurient curiosity and horror: “‘I love incest’: Sick comments of accounting firm executive, 25, who lured children into sexually assaulting their siblings via social media.” “Teens in Trouble over Incest.” “Fired Alabama police chief indicted on rape, incest charges.” 6 L. M. ROUILLARD

“Widow, Son Sentenced for Incest.” “The State has a Place in this Bed- room; Some Suggest Incest Between Consenting Adults is a Personal Choice.” “That’s Life; Had She Been a Man She Would Have Gone Down for Good - but Because She’s a Woman Evil Incest Mum gets just 7 Years.” “The Last Taboo; Shocking Case Forces Britain to Confront theRealityofIncest.”5 Sensationalized titles only add to the tragedy of such stories; lest anyone think that incest lives merely in the long-distant, shadowy past of humans, these titles and thousands of others like them remind us otherwise. The truth that lies behind the lurid titles reminds us that humans are as capable of great, destructive behavior as they are of great, compassionate acts. We are no less brutish than our ancestors who were also no less human than their modern counterparts. While literary works focused on incest do not constitute documentation of systematic sexual abuse experienced by individuals, any historical, social survey of the subject of incest should also include an overview of the literary manifestations of incest as a narrative motif over time, for those literary occurrences can depict and explain anxieties, implications, and consequences for a given society at a given point in history. Is incest considered a sin, a crime, or both? Is it a private issue to be resolved within the family, or is it a public crisis requiring government intervention? Who defines incest? Who grants exemptions from interdictions? Anthropologi- cal and sociological research has cataloged some of the variances according to culture and history; literary depictions can help us to understand better the immediate implications of those differences. A useful point of reference and point of departure in this work is Philippe de Rémi’s thirteenth-century poem La Manekine. The protagonist in this work is so horrified by her father’s incestuous proposal that she cuts off her own hand in an attempt to make herself ineligible for a royal marriage. Her virtue is affirmed in the dénouement by the miraculous reattachment of her hand, which had been protected in a container described as a reliquary, a particularity not found in other medieval incest stories. While La Manekine may contain some classic motifs such as the sorely tried, ever loyal wife, and a happily-ever-after ending, its fantastic plot weaves a narrative focused on incest, marriage, and penance with: a proposed father–daughter marriage, self-amputation, death sentences, unbelievable sea voyages, a fairy-tale marriage, a wicked mother-in-law, a helpful sturgeon, a miraculous graft of a severed hand, the reunion of a long-separated husband and wife, and public forgiveness of a king’s sins by his victim. Behind the fantasy of this medieval poem are reflections on 1 INTRODUCTION: TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT 7 basic human emotions: anger, fear, courage, compassion, love, jealousy, fidelity, and hope. Its plot is motivated by family conflicts, destructive desires, institutional power struggles, and social anxiety over changing norms and institutions. While the actions and reactions of Philippe de Rémi’s protagonist, for instance, to potential incest are entirely believable to modern readers, we note that the incest motif as developed in this poem also functions as a metaphor for competing societal interests: that is, the Church’s apparent efforts to prioritize the individual’s desires or needs over the family’s collective interests ultimately pits Church authority against paternal authority. In La Manekine it is resistance to incest that leads to examples of virtuous laity, validated by the appearance of a living relic, an amputated hand, reattached to our heroine in the form of a miraculous graft. Epics, chronicles, histories, poems, prose, hagiography, founding myths, drama, romance, lais, whatever the genre or era, there abound numerous examples of stories of incest initiated, implied, assumed, or even unknowing. A bibliographic search of monographs will result in thousands of items related to this topic. Modern survivor narratives have rightly sensitized readers to the trauma and pain resulting from incest threatened and experienced, but medieval writers were no less able to depict the horror, the emotional, and physical consequences of such relationships, as exemplified in Philippe de Rémi’s protagonist who chops off her left hand to avoid someone else’s sin of incestuous desire. Medieval writers advised the use of shocking images as memory devices.6 The use of the most shocking example of a forbidden relationship, parent–child incest, would certainly have hooked listeners and readers in the Middle Ages, even as that example would subsequently later illustrate a particular dogma, for instance, God’s willingness to forgive even the most heinous of sins, as Jean-Charles Payen and Elizabeth Archibald have previously so well explained.7 In addition, medieval literary depictions of forbidden consanguineous relationships lead to larger discussions and explanations of how a society is organized and how it defines itself. Which relationships are deemed appropriate for bearing and rearing children; for inheriting property and wealth, and for ruling realms? What constitutes a family; a nation? And as we shall see, incest can be used as the rhetorical dividing line between virtue and evil, between humanity and divinity, between clerical culture and lay culture, or between civilization and barbary. 8 L. M. ROUILLARD

In addition to medievalists in general, students of such topics as images of woman and gender issues, sacramental history, Church history, and the history of family structures will find much of interest in the medieval literary narratives cited here as we study them alongside historical documents, ecclesiastical pronouncements, and modern fiction, memoirs, and current events. The challenge for the twenty-first-century reader is to construct interpretations of medieval texts about incest, texts grounded in founda- tional classical works, without applying anachronistic analysis, and yet still appreciate the poets’ psychological insights, and recognize the relevance of these tales to our modern society. While the Middle Ages are generally assumed to be a period that typically marginalizes women and uses offspring as political pawns in strategic marriages, many of the texts considered here will provide us with episodes that challenge our beliefs about medieval customs, beliefs, strictures, and politics. In our survey, we will see that some of the laity can be more virtuous than ecclesiastics; children sometimes know better than their parents; servants can outwit their lords, and a woman can even pre-empt the pope.

Notes

1. Otto Rank, The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend: Fundamentals of a Psychology of Literary Creation, trans. Gregory C. Richter (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 12. 2. Gillian Harkins, Everybody’s Family Romance: Reading Incest in Neoliberal America (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 91. 3. Harkins, Everybody’s Family Romance, 3; 57. 4. Kenric Ward, “Incestuous County Boards Preside over Rising Texas Tax Bills,” Foxnews, December 12, 2016, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/ incestuous-county-boards-preside-over-rising-texas-tax-bills, accessed February 21, 2019. Ginevra Marengo, “The Incestuous Relationship Between Media and Politics,” The Global Critical Media Literacy Project, October 20, 2016, /http://gcml.org/incestuous-relationship-media- politics-ginevra-marengo, accessed May 26, 2017. Alex Lo, “Incestuous Relationship Between MTR and the Government Is at Root of Hong Kong’s High-Speed Rail Woes,” South China Morning Post, December 1, 2015, https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/ 1885582/incestuous-relationship-between-mtr-and-government-root- hong, accessed May 26, 2017. Andrea Grimes, “Inside Dallas’s Incestuous Mayoral Race,” D Magazine, May 2011, https://www.dmagazine.com/ publications/d-magazine/2011/may/inside-dallas-incestuous-mayoral- race/, accessed May 26, 2017. Douglas Ernst, “Rush Limbaugh: Sean 1 INTRODUCTION: TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT 9

Hannity Is ‘Three Times’ as Honest as ‘Incestuous’ Washington Media,” Washington Times, April 17, 2018, https://www.washingtontimes. com/news/2018/apr/17/rush-limbaugh-sean-hannity-is-three-times- as-hones/, accessed February 21, 2019. 5. Alex Chapman, “‘I Love Incest’: Sick Comments of Accounting Firm Exec- utive, 25, Who Lured Children into Sexually Assaulting Their Siblings via Social Media,” Daily Mail (Australia), February 9, 2019, https://advance- lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id= urn:contentItem:5VCR-W9D1-JCJY-G46G-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed March 7, 2019. Bridgette Moyo, “Teens in Trouble for Incest,” The Chronicle, February 14, 2019, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy. ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem: 5VF1-W9D1-JCH9-G1DF-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed March 7, 2019. Associated Press, “Fired Alabama Police Chief Indicted on Rape, Incest Charges,” APNews, January 2, 2019, https://www.apnews.com/ b3467cbf41d6426fad26423cf0936110, accessed March 7, 2019. Editorial, “Widow, Son Sentenced for Incest,” The Herald-Harare, December 1, 2016, https://allafrica.com/stories/201612010150.html, accessed February 21, 2019. Margaret Somerville, “The State Has a Place in this Bedroom,” The Globe and Mail, April 20, 2009, https://advance- lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id= urn:contentItem:7VGY-B0P1-2RKY-72JF-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed March 7, 2019. Laura Lynott, “That’s Life; Had She Been a Man She Would Have Gone Down for Good—But Because She’s a Woman Evil Incest Mum Gets Just 7 Years,” The Sun, January 23, 2009, https:// advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection= news&id=urn:contentItem:4VFC-C640-TX5B-90N9-00000-00&context= 1516831, accessed March 7, 2019. Ross Clark, “The Last Taboo; Shock- ing Case Forces Britain to Confront the Reality of Incest,” The Express, November 27, 2008, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/ api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4V17-51J0-TX33- B10D-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed March 7, 2019. 6. See for instance, Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Mem- ory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 130–137, and her comments on a fourteenth-century ars memorativa by Thomas Bradwardine. In this text, Bradwardine provides a sample narrative for the memorization of the zodiac signs, using a sequence of violent interactions among the ﬁgures. 7. Jean-Charles Payen, Le Motif du repentir dans la littérature française médié- vale (des origines à 1230) (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1968), 522. Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 6–7. 10 L. M. ROUILLARD

References

Archibald, Elizabeth. Incest and the Medieval Imagination. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001. Associated Press. “Fired Alabama Police Chief Indicted on Rape, Incest Charges.” APNews, January 2, 2019, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy. ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem: 5V3N-WRT1-DY9S-T09H-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed March 7, 2019. Carruthers, Mary. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Chapman, Alex. “‘I Love Incest’: Sick Comments of Accounting Firm Exec- utive, 25, Who Lured Children into Sexually Assaulting Their Siblings via Social Media.” Daily Mail (Australia), February 9, 2019, https://advance- lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id= urn:contentItem:5VCR-W9D1-JCJY-G46G-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed March 7, 2019. Clark, Ross. “The Last Taboo; Shocking Case Forces Britain to Confront the Reality of Incest.” The Express, November 27, 2008, https://advance- lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id= urn:contentItem:4V17-51J0-TX33-B10D-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed March 7, 2019. Ernst, Douglas. “Rush Limbaugh: Sean Hannity Is ‘Three Times’ as Honest as ‘Incestuous’ Washington Media.” Washington Post, April 17, 2018, https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/apr/17/rush-limbaugh- sean-hannity-is-three-times-as-hones/. Accessed February 21, 2019. Grimes, Andrea. “Inside Dallas’s Incestuous Mayoral Race.” D Magazine, May 2011, https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-magazine/2011/ may/inside-dallas-incestuous-mayoral-race/. Accessed May 26, 2017. Harkins, Gillian. Everybody’s Family Romance: Reading Incest in Neoliberal America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Lo, Alex. “Incestuous Relationship Between MTR and the Government Is at Root of Hong Kong’s High-Speed Rail Woes.” South China Morning Post, December 1, 2015, https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/ article/1885582/incestuous-relationship-between-mtr-and-government-root- hong. Accessed May 26, 2017. Lynott, Laura. “That’s Life; Had She Been a Man She Would Have Gone Down for Good—But Because She’s a Woman Evil Incest Mum Gets Just 7 Years.” The Sun, January 23, 2009, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu: 9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4VFC-C640- TX5B-90N9-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed March 7, 2019. Marengo, Ginevra. “The Incestuous Relationship Between Media and Politics.” The Global Critical Media Literacy Project, October 20, 2016, /http://gcml. 1 INTRODUCTION: TOO CLOSE FOR COMFORT 11

org/incestuous-relationship-media-politics-ginevra-marengo. Accessed May 26, 2017. Moyo, Bridgette. “Teens in Trouble for Incest.” The Chronicle, February 14, 2019, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document? collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:5VF1-W9D1-JCH9-G1DF-00000- 00&context=1516831. Accessed March 7, 2019. Payen, Jean-Charles. Le Motif du repentir dans la littérature française médiévale (des origines à 1230). Genève: Librairie Droz, 1968. Philippe de Rémi. Le Roman de la Manekine. Edited and translated by Barbara Sargent-Baur. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999. Rank, Otto. The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend: Fundamentals of a Psy- chology of Literary Creation. Translated by Gregory C. Richter. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Somerville, Margaret. “The State Has a Place in this Bedroom.” The Globe and Mail, April 20, 2009, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/ api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:7VGY-B0P1-2RKY- 72JF-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed March 7, 2019. Ward, Kenric. “Incestuous County Boards Preside over Rising Texas Tax Bills.” December 12, 2016, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/incestuous-county- boards-preside-over-rising-texas-tax-bills. Accessed February 21, 2019. “Widow, Son Sentenced for Incest.” The Herald-Harare, December 1, 2016, https://allafrica.com/stories/201612010150.html. Accessed February 21, 2019. CHAPTER 2

Kinship Matters: An Immodest Proposal

In Philippe de Rémi’s thirteenth-century verse romance entitled La Manekine, the main character Joïe (later named Manekine), the only child of the King of Hungary, is confronted with the incestuous advances of her widowed father. The father is constrained by an oath he has sworn to his dying wife, that he will remarry only with a woman who resembles her exactly. A long, worldwide search for such a woman is futile. Nervous barons, anxious for a male heir, first pressure cowardly clerics to validate a marriage with the only candidate who fits that description: the king’s own daughter. The King of Hungary, in his turn, is convinced by his retinue that only by taking his own child in marriage can he be faithful to his late wife and to the needs of his kingdom. Joïe expresses her horror of this marriage proposal in an act of self-mutilation and chops off her left hand rather than commit the sin of incest. Her refusal to obey leads the king to condemn her to death, although she is secretly put out to sea by the king’s seneschal and arrives upon the shores of Scotland. Here she marries the king of that country, against the wishes of his mother who plots against Joïe. During the King of Scotland’s absence, Joïe gives birth to a son and, through two falsified letters, the mother-in-law has Joïe condemned to death. Once again she is saved by another seneschal who consigns her yet again to the perils of the sea along with her infant son Jehan. This time she arrives in Rome and remains in the home of a kindly senator until fate reunites her with her husband and with her father who has come to Rome to confess his sin to the Pope. These reconciliations are

© The Author(s) 2020 13 L. M. Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6_2 14 L. M. ROUILLARD followed by a miracle in which Joïe’s severed hand, regurgitated by a fish, is reattached to her arm by the pontiff. No less miraculous is the King of Hungary’s recognition of Joïe’s right to her inheritance: she finally receives the Kingdom of Armenia through her late mother, and Hungary through her father. At the conclusion of the romance, Joïe arranges the marriages of the senator’s two daughters with the two kindly seneschals, and she gives birth to more children, all of whom go on to contract royal marriages. In La Manekine, incest, or more precisely attempted incest by means of a marriage proposal clearly within forbidden degrees of consanguinity, functions as the fulcrum of the romance, allowing for both philosophi- cal and practical discussions of marriage and penance as social, political, and spiritual institutions. Both marriage and penance are recognized as religious sacraments by this time, and both function as rituals for the restoration and maintenance of social stability in general. La Manekine belongs to a long history of incest stories that teach about the power of God to forgive one of the most horrible sins: incest.1 Philippe’s narrative in particular depicts a sacrament of penance capable of reconciling man with God and with his human family through the compassion of a virtuous woman, and through a sacrament of marriage capable of producing social stability and virtuous spouses. Marriage and penance as envis- aged by Philippe are able to resolve some of the eternal power struggles between clerics and the laity, between men and women, as well as some of the generational conflicts between young royals and established dynasties that seek ever more power, or at least seek to remain in power. Philippe de Rémi (or Remy) who lived from approximately 1205– 1210 to 1265 or 1266, was a bailiff in Gâtinais for Count Robert of Artois (brother of King Louis IX), and most likely composed his poem La Manekine between 1225 and 1250.2 Since his family held land in fief from the Abbey of Saint-Denis, Philippe likely understood both the common interests and conflicts between the laity and the clergy. And as an administrator for an aristocrat, he was also cognizant of the dynastic consequences of the stewardship of royal realms. Philippe de Rémi’s use of incest becomes a lens through which to view medieval class and culture conflicts. Inheritance of the kingdom by a female is considered unacceptable by the monarch’s retinue who believe that the lack of a male heir threatens collapse for the King of Hungary’s dynasty. Says one of the barons: “‘Seignour,’ fait il,‘escoutés moi. / En cest païs avons un roy / Qui ot feme mout boine et sage; / En se mort avons 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 15 grant damage. / De cele femme n’a nul hoir / Fors une fille, au dire voir, / Qui est mout boine et mout courtoise. / Et nonpourquant en briquetoize / Ert li roialmes de Hongrie / Se feme l’avoit en baillie. / Pour c’est il bon que nous alons / Au roi, et de cuer li prions / Qu’il pregne feme a nostre los” (ll. 205–217). “‘Sirs,’ he said, ‘hear me. / In this land we have a king / Who had a very good and wise wife. / In her death we have a great loss. / Of that wife he has no heir / Except for a daughter, to tell the truth, / Who is very good and courteous. / Nevertheless the kingdom of Hungary / Will be in peril / If a woman had it in her power. / There- fore it is good that we go / To the king and beg him earnestly / That he take a wife by our advice.’”3 One of the barons then explains the situation of “li prelat qui ci sont, / Qui en grant orfenté seront / Se malvais sires vient sour aus” (ll. 325–327), “the prelates who are here, / Who will be in a difficult position / If a bad ruler comes over them.” The proposed solution of incest not only promises a solution to the lack of a male heir, but it also portends a downward spiral of social degradation as that dynasty metaphorically feeds on its young. La Manekine pits the younger, virtuous female laity in the person of Joïe against corrupt clergymen who understand that their interests align with those of the barons of the kingdom, hence the clerical complicity in arguing for a forbidden union. Joïe’s righteousness contrasts with the immorality of prelates who will support a suspension of Church law in order to protect their material well-being in the service of their monarch. And, as an innocent young woman, Joïe’s unwavering morality only highlights the deviousness of the king’s retinue who will sacrifice anyone, even an innocent young woman, to protect their own self-interests. Philippe depicts the competing interests between men and women, between parents and children; the laity and the Church; the wealthy and the poor; the powerful and the powerless; and between lords and servants. Indeed, Joïe is twice saved by wise seneschals who know how to give the appearance of obedience to the king or queen’s order while protecting the innocent protagonist with whom the common people identify and sympathize when they hear of the execution order: “Meïsmement les povres gens, / Cui elle donnoit vestimens, / Furent plain de dolour et d’ire” (ll. 865–867). “Especially the poor people, / To whom she used to give clothes, / Were full of grief and sadness.” Joïe is able to move between the noble class and the peasant class; she is brave enough to defy her monarch and father; and she will even speak out at St. Peter’s in Rome to generously forgive her father, even before the Pope can utter his absolution. 16 L. M. ROUILLARD

Defining and discussing incest in La Manekine then become ways of re-visioning the relationships and conflicts of interest between medieval social groups. La Manekine pits generational groups against each other, as exemplified in the conflict between parent and child; and it pits politically powerful lay members against vulnerable lay members, as in the instance of a vengeful monarch and the kind seneschals who secretly disobey him. The King of Hungary and his household consider incest permissible if it will protect their political and dynastic interests; they believe the clerics and the Church should bend the rules in light of the lack of a male heir and the potential ensuing turmoil for the kingdom, should it fall into foreign hands through marriage. The clergy closest to the king also clearly understand that they may not fare as well under another royal dynasty, but as Joïe sees it, the incestuous marriage proposal made by the king’s men betrays their very cultural identity as defined by their own systems of law: “Acenemeporroi[t]plaisier/Nus:quecemesan[l]astdroiture / Qu’uns hom peüst s’[en]genreüre / Espouser, selonc nostre loy; / Et tuit cil sont plai[n] de derroy / Qui contre Deu conse[l] vous dounent / Et de tel cose vous s[em]ounent” (ll. 550–556). “For by no-one could I be bent to this: / That it could seem right to me / That a man might marry / His own child according to our law; / And they are full of wickedness, all those / Who give you advice contrary to God / And exhort you to do such a thing.” More than an infraction against human law, this proposed marriage positions the King of Hungary as an authority competing with God himself. In Joïe’s estimation, the incestuous proposal functions as a declaration of war upon another king: “Mais miex ameroie morte estre, / Car c’est contre le Roy Celestre” (ll. 601–602); “But I would rather be dead, / For it is against the Heavenly King,” muses Joïe to herself, as she prepares to ally herself with the divine king against the incestuous proposal of an all-too-fallible human king. Joïe stands behind God’s law even when the clerics will not. Indeed, in this lay author’s depiction of both sacraments—marriage and penance— the clerics do not live up to their responsibilities as spiritual guides, but instead are depicted as submissive and subordinate. In response to the baron who articulates both the problem and the solution, provoking the clerics’ eventual complicity after significant disputing among themselves, the narrator tells us: “De tex [i a] qui s’i acordent / Et de tex [qu]i molt s’en descordent. / Long[u]e[me]nt entr’eus desputerent. / En l[a fin] li clerc s’acorderent / Que il le r[oy] en prieroient / et su a[us] le pecié penroient. / A l’Apo[stol]e monterront / Le gra[nt] proufit pour quoi fait 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 17 l’ont” (ll. 333–340). “There are those who agree / And those who dis- agree strongly. / For a long time they argued among themselves. / At last the clerics agreed / That they would entreat the king to do it / And would take the responsibility upon themselves. / They will show the Pope / The great benefit for which they have done it.” While one might understandably expect the barons to push aside laws and commandments in favor of their material well-being, one expects a higher standard of behavior from the clergy. While they do debate the issue, their ensuing self-interested decisions are clearly inferior to some lay people’s behavior, intentions, and spiritual experience, such as the conduct of the kindly seneschals who bravely defy royal orders and protect Joïe from execution. While the royal father debates within himself the morality of this plan, as a monarch, he also is seduced by idea, which he justifies by evoking the nexus of intricate social connections in his kingdom as he hides behind the wishes of his nobles and “proposes” to his daughter: “Et mi baron ne voelen[t m]i.e. / Que li roialmes de Hong[rie] / Demeurt sans hoir [ma]lle aprés moi. / Pour ce ai du clergié l’ot[roi] / Que de moi soiés espous[ee]; / Roïne serés couroun[ee]. / …Et j’ai or bien consel d[u fa]ire, / Mais quë il a vous v[oei]lle plaire”(ll. 531–542). “And my barons do not at all want / The kingdom of Hungary / To remain without a male heir after me. / Therefore I have the leave of the clergy / That you be wedded by me; / You will be crowned queen. / …And now I am indeed of a mind to do it, / Provided that it might be pleasing to you.” The king understands that he needs his barons’ goodwill as much as they need a male heir from him; the clergy understands that the barons’ interests are their interests as well. Joïe’s initial acceptance of her filial subjection before she learns the exact nature of her father’s plan (“Car ma vol[e]ntés me requiert, / De tout quanq[u]e fille doit faire / Pour pere, ne so[i.e.] contraire,” [ll. 516–518] “For my will requires me / In anything that a daughter should do / For a father, not to refuse”), however, turns to brave defiance when she learns the exact details of her father’s immodest proposal. The King of Hungary’s evolving lust for his daughter contrasts with Joïe’s modest blush as she is caught by her father during her toilette: “La damoisiele se pino[it]; / Ele se regarde, si voit / Son pere qui est dalés [li]. / De la honte qu’ele, r[ou]g[i]” (ll. 383–386). “The young lady was combing her hair; / She looks around, and sees / Her father, who is close beside her. / Out of embarrassment, she blushes.” While some critics read Joïe’s crim- son face as proof of her unconscious desire for her father,4 one could just as easily interpret the young girl’s blush to signal embarassment at having 18 L. M. ROUILLARD her father discover her in an act that traditionally depicts female vanity, the seriousness of which pales in comparison to the father’s sin. Joïe refuses to acquiesce to social needs and compromises that defy her Christian morals. She refuses to take her place in the social network of concession: “Pour riens ne m’i ac[or]deroie; / La mort avant en [s]oufferroie. / Ne sui mie tenue a [fa]ire / Ce qu’a m’ame seroit [c]ontraire. / …Car qui s’ame pert, trop compere” (ll. 557–572). “Not for anything should I agree to do it; / I should die first. / I am not obliged to do / What would be perilous to my soul. / …For the one who loses her soul, pays too dearly.”5 Joïe knows, however, that her refusal to consent will not suffice to save her from what she perceives to be a monstrous marriage. A declaration stating “no” does not mean that her decision will be respected, no matter Church doctrine about the need for individual consent, but a demonstration of her ineligibility for royal marriage might put an end to the proposal: “Bien pens faire le me feront; / Ja pour mon dit ne le lairont, / S’aucune cose en moi ne voient / Par quoi de ce voloir recroient” (ll. 605–608). “I do indeed think that they will make me; / They will not leave off for anything I say, / Unless they see in me something / For which they give up this intention.” That “something” is horrific: backed into a corner, Joïe recognizes her only option is to maim herself by slic- ing off her left hand. Then she can appeal to a traditional expectation that requires ruling persons to be physically whole: “Mais roïne ne doi pas estre, / Car je n’ai point de main senestre, / Et rois ne doit pas penre fame / Qui n’ait tous ses membres, par m’ame!” (ll. 795–798). “But I may not be a queen, / For I do not have a left hand, / And a king may not take a wife / Who does not have all her members, upon my soul!”6 Upon seeing her recent infirmity and hearing her articulate her ineligibility for a royal marriage, her father becomes enraged at her calculated defiance and charges his senechal to burn her to death, threatening the latter as well should he not comply: “Et se nel faites a estrous, / Saciés, je le ferai de vous; / Ne mar m’i atendrés jamais, / N’omme de vo lignage aprés” (ll. 831–834). “And if you do not do it promptly, / Know that I shall have the same done to you; / If ever I find you it will be the worse for you / And for any man of your lineage afterwards.” The price of defiance to an incestuous command or to an order of execution is death. In Joïe’s act of self-amputation and the seneschal’s cloaked defiance of the execution order, La Manekine presents models of resistance to immoral parents, to self-interested clergy, and to cruel monarchs, all the while protecting the 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 19 purity of lineage. Nonetheless, the protagonist pays with her own body the price of agency and morality.

2.1 Medieval Definitions and Examples of Incest The King of Hungary’s immodest proposal focuses on the closest of possible incestuous pairings, that between a parent and a child. However, that was only one example of countless forbidden unions. The Middle Ages defined incest as forbidden sexual relationships between blood relatives within certain degrees, but in addition to bans against marriage with a blood relative, the Church also forbade marriage with an adopted child; or with a godchild, or with the godparent of one’s child, considered to be “spiritual” incest, for the act of baptism creates another level of family.7 In fact, according to the Council of Estinnes of 743 C.E., should a parent attempt to serve as godparent to his or her own child, this spiritual incest would invalidate the marriage.8 The 813 C.E. council of Chalon, however, merely required the parent who presented himself/herself as godparent to his or her own child to do penance, refusing to sever the bonds of marriage over this.9 Just as incest taboos and regulations could pit one social class against another, they could also become the battleground on which to work out disputes over the nature of marriage as indissoluble or soluble. Finally, the Church also forbade marriage to relatives of in-laws, such as between a widower and his son’s sister-in-law, or even marriage to a relative of a former sexual partner, both of these instances qualifying as incest by affinity.10 Such a case was considered by Hincmar of Reims in the ninth century: a certain Stephen from the region of Aquitaine married but refused to have sex with his bride, claiming that it would be incestuous since, prior to this marriage, he had had intercourse with one of her relatives. In Hincmar’s view, the marriage had to be dissolved since the couple could not consummate the union without committing incest.11 The intricate details of all these types of prohibited unions are scrupu- lously described by Robert Grosseteste in his 1235 Templum Dei which contains explanatory diagrams.12 With the exception of incest by affinity, King Robert the Pious (972– 1031), for instance, appears to have violated the interdictions related to both spiritual incest and consanguineous incest in varying degrees, starting even before marriage: he fornicated with a woman (never identified by name) to whom he was related and who was a co-godparent; for these acts he did penance. Robert repudiated his first wife Rozala, purportedly 20 L. M. ROUILLARD because she was a cousin related to him in the sixth degree, but more likely because the marriage produced no son. He repudiated his second wife Berthe, with some insinuation by the monk Odorannus of Sens that it was due to the fact that she was related to him in the third degree. His third wife Constance was also a distant cousin; but once Constance engendered sons, Robert attempted to revert back to Berthe, with no success. Similarly, Count Geoffroi Martel, Count of Anjou (1006–1060), remained married for eighteen years to Agnès in incestuous affinity: she was a widow of Geoffroi’s cousin in the third degree. His third wife, Adèle was a cousin in the fourth degree, a fact that allowed him to eventually set her aside, to remarry his second wife Grécie. Geoffroi even managed a fifth marriage, but through all these unions, incestuous or not, never managed to sire a male heir, having to name nephews as successors.13 While La Manekine in its thirteenth-century iteration, does not refer to incest by affinity, the fourteenth-century dramatic version, included in the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnage does. In this theatrical version, when the King of Hungary approaches his daughter with the demand that she marry him, she first vociferously refuses on the grounds of incest by consanguinity. When that argument fails to move him, she moves to the incest by affinity argument: “Vous m’engendrastes une foiz; / Et, se vous n’estiés pas mon pére, / Si espousates vous ma mére: / Par ce point devez vous savoir / Que la fillet et la mére avoir / Ne pouez mie.”14 “You engendered me once; / And, even if you were not my father, / You nonetheless married my mother: / Even on this point you should know / That having the mother and the daughter / is completely forbidden” (translation mine). In order to buy herself some time, the girl pretends to acquiesce to her father’s order and then proceeds to chop off her left hand in the hopes of engendering repulsion in her father. The point of citing this passage is to demonstrate that incest by affinity was a concept and an interdiction known by the laity in the Middle Ages. Let us now consider how the closeness of biological relationships was calculated. There were two models for determining kinship. In Antiquity, the Romans counted the number of degrees or steps from the first individual to the common ancestor and then down to the second individual. In this model, siblings are related in the second degree with a step up from the first individual to the common relative and down to the second individual; and first cousins are related in the fourth degree with two steps up to the common relative, and then two steps down. In the Germanic 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 21 model, however, siblings are related in the first degree, first cousins in the second degree, second cousins in the third degree and so forth.15 In this model, one simply counted the generations back to a common ancestor, a practice that now greatly increased the number of people one was forbidden to marry if the interdiction covers four degrees or more.16 Early Christians inherited much from the Romans in terms of laws and customs which greatly influenced religious regulations on marriage, including Roman interdictions against marriage between close relatives.17 Michael Mitterauer notes that in Armenia, Christian since the beginning of the fourth century, the 347 A.D. synod of Astisat specifically forbade marriage between uncles and nieces and was thus “the earliest prov- able decision of a Christian synod against marriage between blood relations.”18 He further suggests that one of the precipitating factors for this interdiction seems to have been the need to distinguish Christians from Zoroastrians, making incest regulations a kind of religious or cultural lit- mus test, as we shall see in the section on anthropological definitions later in this chapter. When did medievals change from the Roman model to the Ger- manic model of determining kinship? It is difficult to determine the exact moment when the switch occurred, but there is evidence that medieval canon law used the Roman model until the first half of the eighth century when a forbidden union was limited to “a marriage between a man and his niece or first cousin.”19 David Herlihy notes more specifically that the 721 C.E. the Council at Rome referred to the Germanic model.20 When did the number of interdicted degrees of consanguinity increase? De Jong suggests a 517 C.E. synod in Epaon, concluding that “the first major extension of the circle of forbidden marriage partners occurred in the newly established Frankish kingdom,” with interdictions extending to the sixth degree in the Roman model or between second cousins.21 De Jong reports that prohibited relationships were extended to the seventh degree in the eighth century, as evidenced by a letter composed by Pope Gregory III in 732 which definitively outlawed marriage to any relation within seven degrees.22 Coupled with the switch to the Germanic system of calculating kinship, the number of potential marriage partners now off limits expanded greatly. In fact, Jean-Louis Flandrin estimates that in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, assuming parents all marry off at least two children, the interdiction of marriage with a consanguineous relative within the seventh degree in the Germanic model meant that “a marriageable youth would be forbidden to marry 2,731 cousins of his 22 L. M. ROUILLARD own generation, without counting their ancestors or descendants of marriageable age.”23 This, combined with the desire of aristocratic parents to marry their sons to women of equivalent social rank, made life quite difficult, as Hugues Capet complained to a Byzantine emperor: “We cannot find a wife of equal rank because of the affinity between us and the neighboring kings.”24 Why choose to forbid relationships within seven degrees? By the twelfth century, Peter Lombard explained the symbolism that he discerned behind the interdiction through the seventh degree: “Seven degrees are computed so that the groom may be joined to the bride after seven degrees, just as after this life, which is lived in seven days, the Church shall be joined in Christ.”25 In any case, it is clear that the ecclesiastical rules regarding interdicted relationships changed over time, increasing in complexity until the simplified directives of the Fourth Lat- eran Council of 1215 decreased the number of forbidden degrees from seven to four for both consanguinity and affinity.26 Canon 50 specifically states:

Summary. The prohibitions against marriage in the second and third degrees of affinity and against the union of the offspring from second marriages to a relative of the first husband, are removed. This prohibition does not apply beyond the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity. Text. It must not be deemed reprehensible if human statutes change sometimes with the change of time, especially when urgent necessity or common interest demands it, since God himself has changed in the New Testament some things that He had decreed in the Old. Since, therefore, the prohibition against the contracting of marriage in secundo et tertio genere affinitatis and that against the union of the offspring from second marriages to a relative of the first husband, frequently constitute a source of difficulty and sometimes are a cause of danger to souls, that by a cessation of the prohibition the effect may cease also, we, with the approval of the holy council, revoking previous enactments in this matter, decree in the recent statute that such persons may in the future contract marriage without hindrance. The prohibition also is not in the future to affect marriages beyond the fourth degree of consanguinity and affinity; since in degrees beyond the fourth a prohibition of this kind cannot be generally observed without grave inconvenience. This quaternary number agrees well with the prohibition of corporal wedlock of which the Apostle says that “the wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife” (I Cor. 7: 4); because there are four humors in the body, which consists of four elements. Since therefore the prohibition of conjugal union is restricted to 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 23

the fourth degree, we wish that it remain so in perpetuum, notwithstanding the decrees already issued relative to this matter either by others or by ourselves, and should anyone presume to contract marriage contrary to this prohibition, no number of years shall excuse him, since duration of time does not palliate the gravity of sin but rather aggravates it, and his crimes are the graver the longer he holds his unhappy soul in bondage.27

Anticipating criticism of changes to strict rules regarding interdicted unions, and additionally worried about challenges to ecclesiastic authority given such pronounced changes, this canon of the Fourth Lateran Council clearly seeks to justify what must have seemed to be radical alter- ations to rigid regulations. Additionally, the modifications require explica- tive symbolism: the number of four degrees of interdiction, by analogy with the four bodily humors, is used as a justification for the new cut-off point. Such a comparison is reminiscent of the seventh-century Isidore of Seville’s definition of incestuous relationships as extending through the sixth degree, in consonance with the Old Testament creation of the world in six days, or with the six periods of a man’s life, or with the six time periods attributed to the history of the world, as calculated as well by Isidore.28 In addition to such numerical symbolism, medieval definitions of kinships were often physically illustrated using body parts, trees, or crosses as metaphors. For instance, the Lex Salica used body joints as a visual mnemonic device to compute the degrees of consanguinity.29 An eighth-century manuscript of Isidore de Seville’s encyclopedia uses a crucifix to diagram blood relationships. And an eleventh-century manuscript of the same work uses a hybrid depiction (man/tree/cross). The eleventh-century Peter Damian uses the body itself as a schema. And the thirteenth-century Sachsenspiegel, a Saxon collection of customary law, also uses the human body as a device for calculating familial connections.30 Such an iconographical history intensifies Joïe’s amputation of her hand, which, in addition to manifesting her refusal to commit the sin of incest, also symbolizes shattered family relationships, if not severed kinship. While some scholars believe that the nobility of the tenth and eleventh centuries took great pains to avoid incestuous marriages,31 there remain, however, numerous examples of medieval marriages that were annulled on the basis of incest. Georges Duby, for instance, notes that the facts of consanguinity were sometimes held in reserve should a particular union prove 24 L. M. ROUILLARD childless, or should political considerations make a better alliance imperative.32 Twelfth-century Peter the Chanter related that he knew a knight who planned his marriage with the option of “remembering” incest by affinity if needed:

A knight said to him in taking a wife: ‘She has a large dowry and is related to me in the third kind of afﬁnity. If she doesn’t please me, I can procure a separation.’33

Peter especially criticized the post of questor who worked for bishops, as being particularly prone to manipulating regulations concerning incest by affinity in order to profit materially.34 John Baldwin explains that the complications which ensued from a highly complex system of incest regulations were often resolved by dispensations granted by the pope, but the pope often skirted the issue by referring requests for dispensation to bishops, relegating the issue to a more local jurisdiction. In addition, sometimes popes simply used dissimulation or feigned ignorance of the relationship and refused to end a long-standing marriage.35 Thus, in La Manekine, the clerics, finally convinced by the barons to advance the incestuous marriage, evoke this system of papal dispensation or even the papal tendency to avoid the issue and allow local church authorities to decide such matters: “En l[a fin] li clerc s’acorderent / Que il le r[oy] en prieroient / Et sur a[us] le pecié penroient. / A l’Apo[stol]le monterront / Le gra[nt] pourfit pour quoi fait l’ont” (ll. 336–340). “At last the clerics agreed / That they would entreat the king to do it / And would take the responsibility upon themselves. / They will show the Pope / The great benefit for which they have done it.” Modern explanations for the complexity of medieval incest prohibitions have sometimes included the “profit” motive: that is, problematiz- ing the establishment of legitimate marriage and potentially limiting the number of heirs made it more probable that wealthy individuals would give their wealth to the Church.36 Another explanation for the myriad of regulations was the desire of the Church to control what was historically a familial institution: controlling marriage, authorizing unions, and legitimizing matrimony was a sure way to augment clerical power and authority.37 Finally, the Church’s redefinition of incestuous relationships to impossible degrees can become a way of controlling particular social 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 25 groups,38 while on the other hand the laity’s reliance on previously “unknown” prohibited degrees of relationship could also facilitate annulment when divorce was forbidden.39 Georges Duby has written:

The Church, in order to resist the aggression of temporal powers, crystal- lized into rigorous principles. Marriage was an instrument of control. The leaders of the Church used it as a means of holding their own against the laity, and in the hope even of subjugating it. The heads of families used it as a means of keeping their power intact.40

While some scholars such as Constance Bouchard question the asser- tion that consanguinity was evoked as needed to exit unsatisfactory marriages,41 it seems quite likely that some individuals found the “need” to divorce after discovery of their previously unknown incestuous relationships to be a fortuitous solution to a lack of heirs, or to the desire to pursue a more advantageous union. Given that the family is a basic social unit, the institution that controls the organization of the family unit through the establishment of valid, legitimate marriages will thus establish its authority over a significant number of individuals in that society. Such authority and subsequent power, however, were most likely a fortuitous result of complicated interdictions rather than a deliberate strategy or “a unified policy … that served to further institutional self-interest.”42 Like Flandrin, James Brundage has suggested that the medieval Church’s most complicated incest interdiction could potentially eliminate “almost 3,000 relatives within the forbidden degrees of blood relationship,” or it could impede a marriage between two people descended from the same “great-great-great-great-great grandparent.”43 The Fourth Lateran Council’s reduction of the forbidden degrees implicitly acknowledges the weaknesses and dangers of such over-reaching regulations even as it emphasizes a more manageable system of exogamy. While complex incest regulations could suggest convenient, tactical escapes and legitimate extractions from “unproductive” though not necessarily childless marriages, De Jong notes that ninth-century bishops, clearly cognizant of the potential abuse of such regulations, typically terminated only those marriages contracted between partners related within three degrees; beyond that, the marriages would continue, but the spouses would be constrained to live chastely and do penance.44 Nonethe- less, dissolution due to even more distant consanguinity was used as a strategy by some aristocrats. While medieval incest regulations evolved 26 L. M. ROUILLARD into a highly complex set of interdictions which included an enormously large group of people considered “off-limits” as potential spouses, it is striking that literary narratives that incorporate the incest motif focus on very close consanguineous unions, as does La Manekine. There certainly were high-profile cases of individuals who invoked incest regulations to invalidate their unions. We note for instance the 1137 marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII who were related within the fourth degree on one side and within the fifth degree on the other.45 The couple’s first attempt to end their marriage on the basis of incest regulations was frustrated by Pope Eugene III who, in 1149, refused to dissolve the union, but instead endeavored to rekindle marital affection between the king and queen. John of Salisbury commented on the pope’s decision in the following manner: “He reconciled the king and queen after hearing sev- erally the accounts each gave of the estrangement begun at Antioch, and forbade any future mention of their consanguinity: confirming their marriage, both orally and in writing, he commended under pain of anathema that no word should be spoken against it and that it should not be dissolved under any pretext whatever.”46 While this pope might have been accused of violating the letter of the law, he clearly followed the spirit of the law regarding the indissolubility of marriage at the fringes of incest. Nonetheless, the couple did eventually divorce in 1152, on the authority of four archbishops, given their consanguinity traced to the fourth and fifth degrees. This divorce had serious geographical consequences, since it meant that the Aquitaine was removed from France’s immediate sphere of influence upon Eleanor and Louis’s divorce. Accounts of Eleanor’s life relate other instances of “incestuous” encounters ranging from a purported relationship with her uncle Raymond while on Cru- sade with Louis, to her subsequent marriage to Henry II, her fourth cousin. This latter relationship was complicated by rumors of a prior “relationship” between Eleanor and Henry’s father Count Geoffrey, with the insinuation of incest by affinity.47 Not to be forgotten, Louis VII had two daughters by his second wife Constance of Castile to whom he was also related within the forbidden degrees. He betrothed one daughter to the son of Eleanor and her second husband, after receiving a dispensation from the pope.48 Louis had a third wife, also an incestuous relationship, this time one of incest by affinity: he married Adèle of Champagne, sister to Louis’s son-in-law. From this union was born Philip Augustus. Observ- ing the family tradition, Philip Augustus who, having taken a dislike to his new bride Ingeborg of Denmark immediately after their wedding in 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 27

1193, repudiated her on the basis of consanguinity: they were fourth cousins.49 Ingeborg, however, courageously and even defiantly resisted his attempts at annulment. Philip eventually returned to her, for political reasons. His second marriage, to Agnès de Méranie, considered bigamous, was also seen as incestuous, though in this case it was incest by affinity since Agnès’s sister was married to Philip’s nephew.50 Like father, like son. Knowledge of a consanguineous but unconsummated union could also be a political strategy to withhold a desirable bride from an adversary. David d’Avray gives the example of the union by proxy of King Henry III of England with Joan of Ponthieu. After the ceremony, but before any sexual congress could take place, Henry considered applying for a papal dispensation to legitimize his marriage with Joan, to whom he knowingly was related in the fourth degree. In this way, Henry could effectively place Joan off limits to any other potential husband while he got his paperwork in order; however, before even initiating the request for a dispensation for that marriage, he turned his eye to Eleanor of Provence and subsequently married her. In 1254 Henry successfully petitioned Pope Innocent IV for an annulment of the first marriage.51 The sudden recall of a relationship within the forbidden degrees could also be a money saver even before the actual marriage, invalidating contractual promises to pay an indemnity should the union not take place. Tiburge of Aumelas saved her family the payment of a fine of 10,000 sous when her marriage to Guillaume IX of Montpellier did not occur: they were after all cousins and thus should not marry, which made the proposed union and hence any non-performance penalties invalid.52 Even the possibility of incest by affinity could be a way out of an unwanted potential marriage, as exemplified by a late thirteenth-century case presented to the Archbishop of Canterbury, Alice la Marescal c Elias de Suffolk. Elias extricated himself from a union with Alice by successfully proving a previous sexual relationship with Alice’s cousin.53 Mayke de Jong, among others, however, rejects these two rationales (the “profit” motive and the possibility of divorce) as explanations for the complex incest regulations of the Middle Ages, proposing instead a more hybrid rationale: a desire to contain and address an anxiety of “pol- lution” resulting from “a violation of the border between the holy and the sexual.”54 In other words, the anxiety over incest is both a secular and sacred anxiety, one that fears a mixing of categories or cultures, one that fears contamination of the holy by the physical experience of sex. 28 L. M. ROUILLARD

It is also important to note that kings made proclamations against incestuous marriages as well, beginning in the seventh century with a Visig- othic monarch, Chindasvindus, and later including Charlemagne himself.55 Thus both clerical culture and lay culture demonstrated, in varying degrees, concern for the deﬁnition and oversight of permissible relationships and interdicted unions in kinship matters. To defy the interdiction against mixing the sacred and the sexual as in De Jong’s model then provokes a kind of identity crisis, leading to social chaos and disorder in general. Complex incest interdictions function to reestablish order and delineate once again the needed and pronounced separation between anything holy and anything sexual.56 Or as De Jong stated: “The stronger the urge to ‘tame’ sexuality, the wider the circle of illicit relationships.”57 La Manekine’s scenario then, with the possibility of father–daughter incest, demonstrates the consequences of refusing to recognize the necessary separation of the sacred and the secular: forcing the clergy to bend to the will of the aristocracy could lead to monstrous behavior. And yet, the clergy must also be sensitive to the material concerns of the nobility, lest they also experience the consequences of foreign or even bad rulers. Given all these complicated rules and regulations about interdicted unions between cousins, relatives of in-laws, and godparents and god- children, and given these historical examples of more distant incestuous pairing, why does La Manekine use as its precipitating narrative event the closest incestuous relationship possible? The incest motif in La Manekine, consisting of a proposed marriage between the closest of familial relationships, that of parent and child, is one of the most horriﬁc examples of what happens when sexuality in general is not brought under control. While the penitentials gave plenty of consideration to incest in close degrees, Claude Roussel points out that one of the closest forms of incest, that of father– daughter, is often invisible in medieval inventories of sin.58 Some written legal documents did, however, consider instances of father–daughter relationships as potentialities that should indeed be punished, suggesting that people were aware of at least some instances of such occurrences. In 866, Pope Nicholas I, for instance, in a missive to Boris, King of Bulgaria, included among his examples of interdicted marriage partners that of father and daughter.59 Megan McLaughlin cites a mid-eleventh-century letter in which Peter Damian refers to the legal consequences of father’s sexual abuse of his daughter: “Clearly, if a father incestuously seduces his daughter, he will be promptly excommunicated, forbidden communion, and either sent to prison or exiled.”60 McLaughlin also cites a successor of 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 29

Peter Damian, Bonizo of Sutri who mentioned father–daughter incest in his Liber de vita christiana, declaring that such a father should “be exiled for seven years beyond the boundaries of his land. And thereafter, defense- less all the days of his life, let him do penance with weeping and lamenting, and let him never receive communion unless in danger of death.”61 Among the issues considered by ecclesiastical courts from the late twelfth century, Charles Donahue presents some incest cases, though historians who have studied court documents in England, for instance, note that jurists were much less preoccupied with marriages of incestuously related people and much more interested in the validity of vows made in the present tense versus the future tense.62 And so, while historical documentation may suggest a lack of extensive concern on the part of the laity over father–daughter incestuous relationships, and a moderate concern on the part of clerics, one has to wonder why parent–child incest motifs were so prevalent in medieval literary narratives. Even if such relationships appear not to have come before courts as often as one might anticipate, given the written legal texts addressing such issues, these unions or potential unions obviously had great symbolic, metaphoric, and shock value. The incest motif as used in La Manekine intensifies the attempted abuse by making the perpetrator doubly powerful: not only a father, but also a monarch, the King of Hungary is doubly heinous. The figure of the ruler who should protect his subject as a father protects his child; and the figure of the father who should valiantly and vigorously defend his child as a king would defend his kingdom from harm, accentuate the vulnerability of Joïe who must sacrifice a part of herself to save herself. As used here, the incest motif evokes a primal predatory scene of the powerless victim confronted by the all-consuming powerful assailant. The closeness of the proposed incestuous marriage between father and daughter in La Manekine is later inverted by the King of Scotland’s willingness to marry a stranger. Following his internal debates over his marriage with a one-handed woman who suddenly appears on the shore in a rudderless boat, and who refuses to give her true name, the King of Scotland decides that love is stronger than a lack of documented pedigree. And, in contrast to the medieval expectation related to the young woman’s deformity, he refuses to believe that Manekine’s missing hand might be punishment for a past crime (ll. 1550–1551).63 Joïe’s horror of extreme endogamy is contrasted with a less overt form of endogamy, as exemplified by Scotland’s dowager queen whose reaction to Manekine demonstrates a kind of jealousy (l. 2131) that may point to her own 30 L. M. ROUILLARD unconscious incestuous desires toward her son.64 On the other hand, the dowager queen’s hatred of Joïe could also be interpreted, ironically, as another form of the anxiety of incest: the possibility of unknowing incest. As John Boswell so aptly described in The Kindness of Strangers, one of the reasons that people in late Antiquity and the Middle Ages were warned about and taught to fear, or at least be leery of strangers (and prostitutes) was specifically to avoid unknowing incest. While Lactantius of the third century C.E. accused pagan priests of incestuous behavior,65 he also preached against child abandonment, warning of the dangers of such practices because the children might be sold into slavery or prosti- tution and unwittingly commit incest with family members.66 One could never know for sure if perhaps this unknown sexual partner was not a long-lost relative, sibling, or even child.67 This very same anxiety about unknown incest could explain the dowager queen’s objection and even hatred for this young woman her son takes as wife. Additionally, the King of Scotland’s willingness to marry a handicapped stranger can also be related to the consequences of complex incest interdictions which put thousands of individuals off limits as marriage partners, forcing nobles to consider even persons of apparent lower social rank as potential spouses, as demonstrated by Constance Bouchard’s historical examples from the tenth and eleventh centuries.68

2.2 Incest from Antiquity to the Middle Ages Classic tales of incest range far beyond the Greek Oedipus myth which was of course an important story in both Greek and Roman Antiquity, and was well-known in the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages inherited a wealth of stories that used the incest motif, going back to Antiquity and biblical times.69 Philippe de Rémi did not simply invent a conflict to be resolved in his romance. Rather, he chose a motif based on the most fundamental organizing principle of human societies: the definition of family. Indeed, delineating the boundaries that constitute incest also clearly explains the meaning of “family” in a given society. Many cultures in Antiquity used the incest motif. Mesopotamian mythology, dating as far back as the third millenium B.C.E, includes divinities who engage in incestuous unions such as that between Enlil and Ki, his mother, as part of a creation myth. Other incestuous relationships in this system include: Enki and his daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter; Ninurta with his mother Gula; Ninurta with 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 31 his sister Ninudzalli; Tammuz and his sister Istar. In the Babylonian creation myth, Apsu/Ocean/Father and Tiamat/Mother/Sea give birth to Mummu who then mates with his mother. In Egyptian mythology, the God Ra’s descendants procreate incestuously: Shu has children by Tefnut, his sister. In an especially complicated family of siblings, Osiris and his sister Isis are twins who mate in the womb and produce Arneris; these twins have two other siblings, Set and Nephthys, who also mate. Nephthys also has a child (Anubis) by her brother Osiris. As in La Manekine, the Osiris story also includes fragmentation: Set cuts up Osiris’s body into fourteen pieces which Isis reassembles, except for the penis which is swallowed by afish.70 In the fifth century B.C.E., Herodotus composed his Histories which include the curious tale of the Egyptian King Mycinerus. Herodotus describes the cow-shaped casket Mycinerus ordered for the body of his young daughter and a series of handless statues in an adjoining chamber of her tomb. Then he recounts a legend associated with this receptacle and the statues: Mycinerus raped his daughter who subsequently hanged herself. Her mother punished the servants complicit in the rape by cutting off their hands, as represented by the handless statues. Herodotus immediately dismisses this legend as an untenable explanation, saying the hands of the statues simply fell off over time and are still visible near the statues.71 The important point here is that the tragic victim of father–daughter incest is depicted as completely innocent, just as Joïe is repeatedly exonerated in La Manekine by the narrator who several times reminds us that “Souvent compere autrui pecié / Teuls qui n’i a de riens pecié” (ll. 409–410). “Often the wrong-doing of another / Is paid for by one who has done no wrong.” While we cannot prove the frequency of incest or sexual abuse in the past, such a conclusion on the part of a medieval author testifies to a compassionate insight into a victim’s experience. While Greeks of Antiquity prohibited marriage between people who were closely related by blood, and Romans prohibited marriage between those who were closely related by blood or by affinity,72 Greek and Roman mythologies, on the other hand, are filled with deities who mate with close relatives: Gaia has twelve offspring by her son Uranus. Of those children, Cronus and Rhea formed a sibling couple. Two of their children, Zeus (Jupiter) and Hera (Juno) in their turn produced offspring together. Zeus also had another child (Persephone) by his sister Demeter (Ceres). 32 L. M. ROUILLARD

The Gods Poseidon, Ares, and Apollo all have incestuous unions, according to Apollodorus, Hesiod, Homer, Ovid, and Pausanias.73 Ovid’s Meta- morphoses was also an important source of incest stories. For instance, in Book Nine, as the result of unrequited desire for her brother Caunus, Byblis is metamorphosed into a fountain. In Book Ten, Myrrha conceives the beautiful Adonis by her father Cinyras. In her shame, she is transformed into a tree. In contrast to Joïe in La Manekine, the blame is placed on Myrrha, for the inebriated father does not recognize the woman with whom he is sleeping.74 Like Euripides’s Phaedra in Hippolytus,Myrrha struggles to overcome her incestuous desires and tries to commit suicide, but unlike Phaedra, Myrrha is saved by her nurse who then helps her commit the incestuous act. Ovid also uses the Hippolytus story in his Heroïdes in which Phaedra addresses a love letter to her step-son and refers to Jove’s union with his sister as justiﬁcation for her own desires.75 While certain mythologies, such as those from Egypt or Persia, may or may not have been known to the West during the Middle Ages, we refer to them here as a reminder of the pervasiveness of certain motifs across cultures, a kind of anthropological common denominator. The biblical references to incest, on the other hand, certainly did serve as common currency for the European Middle Ages: no matter what other narratives were or were not known, the Bible certainly could have at least provided the basic stock motifs of incest scenarios. While Philippe de Rémi as a lay poet of thirteenth-century western Europe would not necessarily have known about the marriage practices of such peoples as the Babylonians and Egyptians (although St. Jerome, in his Adversus Jovinianum, II.7, does make mention of incestuous practices among Persians and Medes76), these unions and the laws controlling them demonstrate the pervasiveness of the concept of incest in many cultures of the classical and medieval worlds. Among the biblical incest narratives, the European Middle Ages would have certainly known the story of incest between Lot and his daughters in Genesis 19:30–36 which relates the desire to perpetuate the family line after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah:

Now Lot went up out of Zoar, and dwelt in the hills with his two daughters, for he was afraid to dwell in Zoar; so he dwelt in a cave with his two daughters. And the ﬁrst-born said to the younger, “Our father is old, and there is not a man on earth to come into us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 33

him, that we may preserve offspring through our father.” So they made their father drink wine that night; and the ﬁrst-born went in, and lay with her father; he did not know when she lay down or when she arose….So they made their father drink wine that night [the next night] also; and the younger arose, and lay with him…Thus both the daughters of Lot were with child by their father.

The daughters initiate the incestuous copulation out of a desire to have children in the wake of the divine annihilation of the two wicked cities. Because their mother was turned into a pillar of salt when she ignored the command forbidding any backward glances toward Sodom and Gomor- rah, their father Lot is in a sense “impotent” to extend the family and preserve the dynasty. That responsibility now falls to the daughters. Of particular interest in this passage is the exoneration of the father who is rendered unconscious of the whole transaction because of his inebriation. Similarly, in La Manekine, while the King of Hungary does eventually confess his sin, it is still significant that he is not the original instigator of the proposed incestuous marriage. Rather, it is one of his counts who first suggests the idea, making the king a little less odious and potentially more redeemable.77 In both the biblical narrative and the thirteenth-century narrative, incest is thus presented as a “reasonable” solution to a pressing social problem, intensified by the absence of the mother. David Herlihy in his study of biblical models for medieval incest regulations refers to Leviticus 18 with its list of prohibited marriage partners, which include mostly in-laws (or a form of incest by affinity), or people who would have been members of the household, in addition to blood relatives. The beginning of this chapter of Leviticus is particularly interesting since it gives what is one of the most important reasons for incest prohibitions: not only is incest forbidden because it would obviously create chaos in the household, but it would also lead to jealousy, and so forth.78 More significantly, the definition of incest also serves as a means of group identification:79

And the Lord said to Moses, ‘Say to the people of Israel, I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you dwelt, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall do my ordinances and keep my statutes and walk in them…None of you shall approach any one near of kin to him to uncover nakedness. I am the Lord. 34 L. M. ROUILLARD

You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father, which is the nakedness of your mother…You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s wife…You shall not uncover the nakedness of your sister…of your son’s daughter or of your daughter’s daughter…of your father’s wife’s daughter…’. (Lev. 18:1–11)

In other words, these incest prohibitions concerning both blood relatives and in-laws become a means by which the Israelites will define themselves as different from their captors and different from their neighbors. The Israelites will distinguish themselves as a nation by defining their sexual relationships in a different way from neighboring peoples.80 Similarly, Joïe’s initial response to her father’s devastating proposal is that such a marriage is not imaginable within “nostre loy” (l. 553) “our law.” Whether she is referring to Hungarian custom or Christian regulations, the point is that the interdiction is part of her identity and her sense of self. To ignore the prohibition would lead to a symbolic disintegration of self, a destruction literally exemplified in Joïe’s self-amputation. In a similar fashion, in I Corinthians 5:1, Paul chastises a Christian community for tolerating an incestuous relationship within its boundaries; the Christian community has failed to make its behavior distinct from that of the heathen:

It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father’s wife.

In James Brundage’s opinion, early Christian emperors used increasingly rigorous incest interdictions for the purpose of “weaning” people from identifying with pagan traditions and customs.81 Interdictions from the fourth century pointedly outlaw uncle–niece marriages, unions now punishable by death. Marriages between in-laws are also forbidden at this time, though not so severely punished.82 Nonetheless, the issue remains pertinent to the royalty of the Middle Ages. Let us not forget that John the Baptist also made a public accusation of incest against King Herod who married his sister-in-law Herodias even though her husband, Herod’s brother Philip, was still living (Matt. 14:3–4; Mark 6:17–18); this would have been a form of incest by affinity (as well as bigamy) in the Mid- dle Ages.83 John eventually lost his head in retribution. His accusation is depicted in the coronation cathedral of Rheims in the exquisite interior 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 35 sculpted west wall: in the third register on the right, John the Baptist condemns Herod and Herodias for their incestuous marriage.84 In fact, Herod was also Herodias’s uncle, though as Michael Mitterauer rightly points out, this was of less interest to both John the Baptist and to the Gospel writers (Matthew and Mark), perhaps because Mosaic Law toler- ated a union between uncle and niece.85 Nonetheless, it is significant that an incestuous, bigamist biblical couple is depicted in a thirteenth-century edifice associated with coronations, a specific reminder to royalty of the spiritual danger of ignoring ecclesiastic marriage regulations, and perhaps a warning to clerics who dared point out such infractions. Exceptions to the interdictions against incest, however, can also be a way of demonstrating one’s eliteness and separation from the common people. Indeed, Elizabeth Archibald’s concept of “holy incest”86 is exemplified in La Manekine by the King of Scotland in his long invocation of Mary as he prays to her for help during the long search for his missing wife: “Vierge fustes en concevant, / Vierge en portant, vierge enfantastes, / Et vierge celui alaitastes / Qui ert vos peres et vos fius” (ll. 5720–5723). “Virgin you were in conceiving, / Virgin in carrying, virgin you gave birth, / And virgin you suckled Him / Who was your Father and your Son.” Thus, even at the heart of Christianity we find mystical incest that separates the divine being and his mother from mere mor- tals. On an earthly plan, “tyrannical rulers may also be drawn to incest (and to other outrageous behavior) as a demonstration of their freedom from the moral and legal constraints which bind their subjects.”87 This is one way by which rulers can become almost god-like, or deified. Of course, there were other ways for leaders to transform themselves into earthly gods. Gábor Klaniczay gives the example of Alexander the Great whose conquests, along with strategic poetry campaigns, and well- designed genealogical declarations showing his descent from mythological Greek heroes turned him into an object of worship as the offspring of Zeus himself. Klaniczay explains that “for Alexander, the notion of divine descent was a way of making his empire congruent with the regal and religious traditions of Egypt and the Near East.”88 Caesar also re-created himself into a sacral ruler, a distinction clinched by his assassination. This Roman deification of emperors, often self-initiated, continued for centuries.89 The point of discussing here the process of deifying a ruler is that the Oedipal story can be interpreted as a cautionary tale against just this sort of sacral kingship, for as Klaniczay points out: “Oedipus saves Thebes from the monster oppressing it, but instead of being deified—or 36 L. M. ROUILLARD perhaps precisely lest he be—Sophocles has him turn out to be a monster who must be banished from the society of men.”90 The definition of this monster is one who commits incest with his mother, behavior that keeps Oedipus from attaining the heroic heights of a holy king. The King of Hungary’s proposal of marriage to his daughter in La Manekine becomes then his ultimate act of hubris, proof of his belief that he belongs to a class far above that of any of his subjects. Of such royal prerogatives, John Carmi Parsons states: “Royal marriage helped to construct social order, but at the same time had to be made subtly ‘different,’ and its sexual and other anomalies were closely scrutinized. The king’s marriage, for example, could model loving submission and peaceful community, but by marrying as they often did (by papal dispensation within prohibited degrees), kings committed permissible incest, common in royal annals but denied to others.”91 Our lay author Philippe de Rémi also depicts through this immodest proposal the dangers of a monarchy that seeks to be above the laws that constrain all others. In the case of the King of Hungary, the attempt to suspend both human law and divine law in unholy incest creates a monster who threatens to destroy his daughter, which ultimately could leave him without a dynasty. Instead of a creation or foundation myth propelled by incest, La Manekine becomes a story of the dynastic destruction promised by incest. While the Genesis version of the creation story of one man and from him one woman does not explicitly mention incest, the generation of the human race from two sole parents logically requires incestuous mating in the early period of human existence, as explained by St. Augustine:

The ﬁrst of all marriages was that between the man made out of dust and his mate who had issued from his side. After that, the continuance and increase of the human race demanded births from the union of males and females, even though there were no other human beings except those born of the ﬁrst two parents. That is why the men took their sisters for wives. The supreme human law is love and this law is best respected when men, who both desire and ought to live in harmony, so bind themselves by the bonds of social relationships that no one man monopolizes more than one relationship, and many different relationships are distributed as widely as possible, so that a common social life of the greatest number may be fostered…Thus, the love which holds kindred together, instead of being narrowed to a few, could have opened its arms to embrace a greater number of people spread over a far wider area…it is socially right to multiply and distribute relationships of love and wrong to have one person 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 37

needlessly monopolizing two relationships which could be distributed to two persons and thus increase the community of kinship.92

This is a clear and sophisticated recognition of the benefits of exogamy. Even this early Church Father understood the imposition and observance of an incest taboo to be the beginning of a new age, a new society, a transition and transformation of the human community. Once this set of regulations is in place, human society has turned a corner and become a different animal, so to speak. This explanation of the benefits of exogamy is used later in the Middle Ages as well. In the Journey Through Wales, dated around 1188, Gerald of Wales (or Giraldis Cambrensis) makes several references to the incestuous relationships of some of the Welsh, in spite of the fact that he himself had a Welsh grandparent and was born to an Anglo-Norman father in Wales. For example, he writes of Owain Gwynedd in Bangor whose body was removed from its tomb in the local cathedral by the Bishop “because he had committed public incest with his first cousin,” named Cristin.93 (Gerald does not tell us how Owain came to buried in the cathedral in the first place, given the public nature of his crime.) Furthermore, at the instigation of the Archbishop, Owain’s daughter Angharad is repudiated by her husband Gruffydd because they were first cousins. “According to the vicious habit of the country, he [Gruffydd] had long considered [her] as his wife,” writes Gerald.94 Having described the Welsh as “vindictive by nature, bloodthirsty and violent,”95 Gerald then explains one of their strategies for resolving conflict:

Incest is extremely common among the Welsh, both in the lower classes and the better educated people. ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes,’ and they have no hesitation or shame in marrying women related to them in the fourth or ﬁfth degree, and sometimes even third cousins. Their usual excuse for abusing the ordinances of the Church in this way is their wish to put an end to some family quarrel or other…Another reason given for their marrying women of their own family is their great respect for noble descent, which means so much to them. They are most unwilling to marry anyone of another family, who, in their arrogance, they think may be their inferior in descent and blood.96

As if to demonstrate the veracity of St. Augustine’s rationale that incest interdictions increase relationships and networks within a larger social group, a feature of civilized peoples, Gerald of Wales portrays the Welsh 38 L. M. ROUILLARD as barbarians who isolate themselves in their belief that incestuous relationships could in fact restore love and harmony within a family. In a similar fashion, the retinue of the King of Hungary sees an incestuous marriage between the monarch and his daughter as a viable strategy to protect dynastic power and wealth. For a nation, tribe, or clan to resume incestuous unions, as the King of Hungary proposes to his daughter in La Manekine, then, would be to regress to an earlier, inferior stage of social development. Peter Damian in his treatise on the degrees of kinship, dated 1063, explained it in a similar way: “When blood relationship, along with the terms that designate it, expires, the law of marriage takes up the function, and reestablishes the rights of ancient love among new men.”97 And like Augustine and her predecessor Peter Damian, the twelfth-century Hilde- gard of Bingen explains the allowance for consanguineous marriage as described in the Old Testament as one of practicality and strategy to maintain peace and reduce the likelihood of unions between Jews and pagans. The interdictions against such unions, however, coincide with Christ’s new order, as transmitted through Hildegard: “I also do not wish the blood of relatives to be mingled in marriage,…but let the blood of different families flow together, which feels no blood relationship burning within it, so that human custom may work there.”98 St. Augustine’s explanation for changes in the definition of permissible or forbidden relationships is based on the concept of maximizing alliances and increasing contacts. He describes this as a means to “spread the love” in a manner of speaking. Modern anthropologists describe it somewhat differently, studying incest taboos to determine “the different ways in which they moved women around the system in marriage,”99 and studying kinship structures as “special relationships set up between people who exchange spouses according to a set of rules.”100 Incest definitions and marriage interdictions focus then on sharing or circulating women as resources or commodities. In the case of La Manekine, the King of Hungary’s incestuous proposal marks an attempt to keep Joïe in her father’s household, withholding her and potential offspring from another man, and thus monopolizing a valuable commodity or asset. Using St. Augustine’s argument, the King of Hungary’s determination to marry his daughter is a form of selfishness that refuses the extension of loving relationships. It recalls the late twelfth-century lai by Marie de France, Les Dous Amanz, in which a father makes it impossible for any suitor to win the hand of his daughter.101 While this lai does not explicitly describe the 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 39 father’s actions as incestuous, it does highlight his short-sighted refusal to allow his daughter to participate in the social life that would assure her future, bringing new resources to his kingdom even as he might share his “resources” with others. St. Augustine’s comments on sexuality in general include an explanation of sex before the Fall and sex after the Fall. Post-Edenic sex is incited by lust and passion, uncontrollable urges that are our legacy of original sin. On the other hand, Edenic sexuality was purely reproductive, an act that was willed and controlled, rational, free of problematic lust.102 Like- wise, the late nineteenth-century sociologist Emile Durkheim suggested that, ironically, had siblings been obliged to marry each other and repro- duce for the clan or family, their proximity and familiarity could have just as logically led to an Augustinian Edenic sexuality: “the sexual feeling would be tempered and deadened; it would have taken on something of this imperative impersonality that characterizes domestic sentiment.”103 In La Manekine, however, duty to the kingdom has certainly not erased paternal lust, for the King of Hungary is described as burning with desire for his child: “Si est espris ne puet estaindre” (l. 475). “He is so much on fire that he cannot be extinguished.” He struggles between “Sens et Amours” (l. 478), “Sense and Love,” but is swayed by his barons and clergy, and his daughter’s beauty, which he compares to that of Helen of Troy (ll. 395–396). One of the most frequent modern explanations for the incest taboo involves the belief that children born of such unions will have physical deformities,104 a belief also held by medieval people. Gerald of Wales made a few references to incestuous practices and their punishing effects. He accused the Irish “barbarians” of practicing incest, which he believed, like Pope Gregory the Great, to be one of the causes of the high number of physical deformities among them:

Moreover, I have never seen among any other people so many blind by birth, so many lame, so many maimed in body, and so many suffering from some natural defect…And it is not surprising if nature sometimes produces such beings contrary to her ordinary laws when dealing with a people that is adulterous, incestuous, unlawfully conceived and born, outside the law, and shamefully abusing nature herself in spiteful and horrible practices. It seems a just punishment from God…105 40 L. M. ROUILLARD

Gerald here uses the accusation of incest to render even more barbaric a people he already considers to be less than civilized. Ironically, in Manekine’s case, her deformity, the result of fighting off incest, symbolizes her spiritual integrity, as if she has almost literally obeyed the Gospel according to Matthew 5:30: “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell.” G. Huet sees in this romance shadows of a written source from northern England (as reflected by the place names) and hears in this romance echoes of an oral source in France (particularly reflected by the sobriquet given to the heroine).106 More broadly, however, Philippe de Rémi’s incest narrative resonates within a long list of stories that use the incest motif: from Greek and Roman mythology to the Bible and onward, the scenario of interdicted relationships has an extensive history. Indeed the history of the incest motif is as complex and complicated as many of the prohibitions themselves.

2.3 Anthropological Definitions of Incest Though a familiar topic in Greek mythology, Euripides (fifth century B.C.E.) maintained that incest was not a practice of his culture, but certainly was a practice of neighboring barbarians, thereby distinguish- ing Greeks from non-Greeks.107 Similarly, Tertullian, a second-century Christian from Roman Carthage, for instance, condemned Persian and Macedonian mother/son marriages as described in Ctesias’s History of Persia.108 We note, however, that some later “barbarian” tribes of Antiq- uity, such as the Frankish, Bavarian, Visigothic, Lombards, and Allemanic, were in fact concerned enough about incest to prohibit such unions.109 Once again, this sort of observation becomes an implicit way of using incest as a means of group identification; barbarian others engage in this practice, but civilized individuals do not. Defining incest thus is a way of defining cultural identity, a way of establishing who is the Other, a way of defining one’s social group,110 for as the anthropologist Roy Wagner has pointed out: “…[the] incest prohibition and exogamy are nevertheless both aspects or consequences of a more general phenomenon: the interdependence of social meaning and individual (personal or unit) identity.”111 Classifying incestuous relationships becomes an important way to determine one’s self-identity as well as cultural identity. 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 41

We have reviewed some mythological and literary examples of incestuous unions, some of which are creation stories, and some of which purport to demonstrate the moral consequences of such illicit behavior. Let us now consider some social and anthropological definitions of incest, along with historical instances of interdictions and exemptions. The anthropologist Roy Wagner defines incest or endogamy as: “acts of a sexual (or morally equivalent) nature as understood to be committed between persons manifesting kin roles that explicitly or implicitly exclude them.”112 He defines the opposite term, exogamy, as:

the moral injunction to select recognised sexual partners and/or spouses from social units other than those of which one is a member (or to which one is otherwise closely related). In all instances, these injunctions are contingent upon the ideal moral codes of the cultures concerned.113

Another anthropologist, Alan Bittles, deﬁnes incest as “a union between biological relatives that is genetically closer than permissible under pre- vailing civil legislation.”114 Both Wagner and Bittles recognize a certain level of cultural and legal relativity in the deﬁnition of incestuous relationships, in addition to biological factors. Likewise, another anthropologist, Robin Fox, among others, notes incest avoidance or taboo in some form or other across cultures and throughout history:

By and large incest does not occur or is forbidden or both (although this is less universal than is commonly imagined), but it does not follow that in all times and in all places it is outlawed for the same reasons and for the same motives.115

Fox also states: “At the last count, there were at least ninety-six societies with some evidence of permitted sexual relations among family members, including full marriage. In at least two—certain periods during the history of Iran and of Egypt—there is evidence that brother-sister marriage was the norm.”116 The important concept of note here is a certain relativity of the definition of incest (with the obvious exception of the parent–child taboo), for the definition of forbidden relationships can change from one culture to another, and can also change over time.117 Roman history, for instance, provides ample evidence of such modifications in its definition of eligible partners for marriage: for instance, in the third century B.C.E., those related within seven degrees were forbidden to marry. Two 42 L. M. ROUILLARD centuries later, however, Romans allowed first cousins to marry, at least those of the upper class.118 Many believe that the incest taboo evolved as a way to resolve the potential negative physiological consequences of inbreeding, and the concomittant need to reduce competition for females. Fox summarizes one theory that argues that a short life span and infant mortality during the early history of human existence made incestuous relations and interbreeding much less likely, and would thus explain some of the differing degrees of complexity in the taboo across cultures. In addition, he points out that permitted incest becomes a manner by which to delineate elite groups119; one need only remember brother–sister unions among royalty in Egypt, Persia, Peru, or much later among the Hawai- ians.120 W. Arens describes this contrast between incest forbidden to commoners and incest allowed for royalty as “unsanctioned violations” and “sanctioned violations.” He also posits that incestuous marriages among royalty may have been symbolic rather than sexual, “but this is not to overlook the possibility that such an arrangement symbolized the violation of sexual norms.”121 These incestuous relationships, allowed to the ruling classes in the societies mentioned above, mirror some of the mythological incestuous unions in these cultures, just as Greek and Roman mythologies privileged incestuous relationships among the gods.122 Thus, the privileged incestuous union for members of royalty in certain societies heralds one’s membership in a higher order: such a person is “the most social and antisocial of human beings, and as such the epitome of both divinity and humanity. He is a living paradox of social life, a god on earth.”123 Indeed, as we have already seen, Christianity uses a similar mystical explanation for Christ’s dual nature: the Son of God is also described as the father to his human mother, a doctrine made official at the 675 Council of Toledo.124 This type of incestuous identity is both allowed and then used as evidence of Christ’s divinity in that he occupies a seemingly contradictory, interdicted relationship with Mary who is both mother and daughter to him. In other examples of Antiquity’s concern with incest, we note that the Babylonian Code of Hammurabi, from the eighteenth century B.C.E., forbade marriage between individuals related in the first degree; it also specified the punishment for infractions, more severe for mother–son incest which was punishable by death, than for father–daughter incest 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 43 which entailed exile.125 P. B. Adamson provides extensive charts summarizing consanguineous Egyptian marriages. While he documents numerous unions of pharaohs and their sisters, of particular interest are the unions of fathers and daughters (Amenhotep IV and his daughter Akhsen- paaton in the fourteenth century B.C.E.; Rames II and his daughter Benanta in thirteenth century B.C.E.), behavior that was accepted presumably because the pharaohs were considered to be of the divine class.126 Among the fourth-century B.C.E. Persians, Adamson indicates a number of brother–sister unions as well as two father–daughter marriages: Artaxerxes II and his daughter Atossa, and Artaxerxes II and his daughter Amestris.127 These unions are outlawed only after the Roman conquest of these nations.128 In the sixth century, Justinian, Emperor of Byzantium, collected and archived Roman law. His Corpus Iuris Civilis, usually dated to 533 C.E., includes a chapter on marriage and its impediments, explaining: “…we cannot marry any and every woman. Some unions have to be avoided.”129 Among these forbidden unions are included those between: parent and child; and grandparents and grandchildren, which are specifically called out as “evil and incestuous.”130 Siblings may not marry, nor may uncles and nieces. Relationships created by adoption are also impediments to marriage, but cousins may marry, according to the Corpus Iuris Civilis. On the other hand, C. Leavitt’s research contradicts the belief that only members of the ruling class could indulge in incestuous marriages. Of Roman–Egyptian marriages, he says: “For the first three centuries C.E. it is apparent, from census and other documents, that brother-sister marriages were prevalent among Egyptian commoners.”131 One of his sources is Russell Middleton who states: “During the period of Roman rule in Egypt there is, for the first time, an abundance of papyrus documents which give evidence that commoners often practiced brother-sister marriage.”132 His explanation for this is “that it served to maintain the property of the family intact and to prevent the splintering of the estate through the operation of the laws of inheritance.”133 If incest prohibitions can change over time and can be defined differently across cultures, and across social classes within a given society, then what accounts for the origins of this sometimes polymorphous concept or taboo? Emile Durkheim defined taboos as “ritualistic prohibitions which have as their objective to avert the dangerous effects of a magical conta- gion by preventing all contact between a thing or a category of things, in which a supernatural principle is believed to reside, and others who do 44 L. M. ROUILLARD not have this same characteristic.”134 Thus a taboo protects individuals and society from contamination and defilement. The incest taboo specifically forbids sexual contact between clan members: “The two sexes must avoid each other with the same care as the profane flees from the sacred, and the sacred from the profane.”135 And Claude Lévi-Strauss stressed that the development and evolution of incest prohibitions mark human society’s passage from the primitive state to a more sophisticated state:

The prohibition of incest is where nature transcends itself. It sparks the formation of a new and more complex type of structure and is superimposed upon the simpler structures of physical life through integration just as these themselves are superimposed upon the simpler structures of animal life. It brings about and is in itself the advent of a new order.136

The incest motif then becomes a common feature of creation or re- creation stories, as well as foundation myths. The biblical creation story is, by force of logic, a story of brother–sister reproduction among the children of Adam and Eve, as acknowledged by St. Augustine. Even today, cultures such as that of the African Lovedu trace their beginnings to a brother–sister union and their renewal to a father–daughter union.137 Just as the story of Lucretia’s rape by Tarquinius delineates and explains the transformation of Rome from a monarchy to a republic, so does the definition of what constitutes incest also separate one nation, one culture from another, one epoch from another. As mentioned above, one often-cited reason for the incest taboo is related to the negative consequences of inbreeding, though here again we note a diversity of interdictions across cultures, even in modern times. Take for instance marriage between first cousins. According to one survey, twenty-four states in the U.S. currently do not allow first-cousin marriages, twenty do allow such marriages, and the remaining six allow them, but only under certain circumstances.138 In Wisconsin, for instance, such marriages are allowed if one of the spouses is known to be infertile.139 Bittles indicates that even now first cousins can marry in Pakistan, and indeed these represent approximately half of the marriages which currently take place in that country.140 Ayaan Hirsi Ali describes contemporary attitudes toward marital unions between cousins in Somalia, along with other African nations and some Middle Eastern nations that consider such marriages as among “the safest unions possible: they keep the family wealth together, and any possible conflict will be quickly resolved by the 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 45 couple’s relatives.”141 Hirsi herself married a maternal cousin, though it was a union that both partners later repudiated.142 With these definitions and examples in mind, we can see that by means of a proposed marriage between extremely close relatives, suggesting an exceptionally pronounced anxiety about outsiders, La Manekine demonstrates both the desire to consolidate familial and political assets through endogamy, as well as the dangers of endogamy or incest. Joïe’s horror when confronted with her father’s marriage proposal illustrates the potential peril for a society or culture that closes in upon itself, in defiance of rules perceived as coming from God himself, but sometimes in certain societies family interests must be gratified, even at the expense of the individual desires. Should family interests not be satisfied, the individual will be punished or at the very least, considered expendable. Likewise, the behavior and attitudes of the queen mother of the King of Scotland toward the anonymous young woman renamed Manekine also exemplify the endogamous fear of strangers or outsiders marrying into the clan. The claustrophobic characteristics of such behavior deprive the family or kingdom of the potential richness and material wealth, to say nothing of the genetic diversity, that can result from broad social connections. Extreme endogamy puts the group at risk of collapsing in on itself. The conclusion of Philippe de Rémi’s romance with the marriages between the Roman Senator’s daughters and the seneschals of different nation- alities highlights the benefits of exogamous unions that circulate wealth between social groups and different cultures. Having herself benefitted from an exogamous union, the new Queen of Hungary, reunited with her Scottish husband, then arranges intercultural marriages between Hun- garian and Scottish seneschals with young Roman women, thus bringing new prestigious blood into her kingdom; but while Joïe herself benefitted from the requirement of individual consent in marriage, she reverts to royally approved, though very exogamous marriages for her retinue. In contrast to the motherless Joïe who was vulnerable to her father’s incestuous desires, the two daughters of the widowed Roman senator were raised by a protective parent who recognized the benefits of marrying out. His tender, respectful care of Joïe is rewarded by wealthy marriages for his two daughters and gifts for himself of “c.m. mars, / Que d’or, que d’argent, que de soie, / Que de joiaus, que de monoie” (ll. 7986–7988); “a thousand marks’ worth / Of gold, silver, silk, / Jewels, and money.” With this conclusion, Philippe de Rémi reaffirms the need for and the 46 L. M. ROUILLARD benefits of exogamy: the father who is generous with his daughter(s) will be rewarded. This review of anthropological definitions of kinship systems allows us to discern another social question raised in La Manekine: who inherits and from whom? Does a husband inherit from a wife and vice versa?143 Can a daughter inherit property from both of her parents, and especially from her father? Or are women ineligible to inherit property, or a crown? Are property and thrones only passed down from fathers to sons? Regard- ing this last question, we note that the specific interdiction of a daughter inheriting the crown from a king of France does not arise until the early fourteenth century. Louis X was the first Capetian King to die without a son to assume the throne. Upon his death in 1316, he was succeeded by Philip V as regent who, in the next year, with the help of nobles, clerics, and the Estates General, declared female inheritance of the crown illegal, thus making sure that Louis’s daughter could never claim the throne. Eventually in the fifteenth century, this custom was “validated” by claiming it had always been part of earlier Salic Law, even though Salic Law was not used as an authoritative resource during the period of the Capetian dynasty.144 While Salic Law and its interdiction of female heirs of Salic land are often evoked in later legal documents and in literary narratives, the historical reality in French regions was quite varied and not always unfavor- able to women.145 In France, as Marc Bloch’s research shows, women did inherit fiefs in Normandy until the late twelfth century. And when there were no sons to inherit, women in France and Norman England were recognized as heirs to fiefs.146 Eleanor of Aquitaine was the sole heir to William X of Aquitaine and a minor at that; yet she acquired Aquitaine and maintained it even after her divorce from Louis VII.147 Of course, recognizing the right to inherit land was different from inheriting and defending a kingdom and assuming lordship over vassals. Blanche of Castille (1188–1252) comes to mind as a contemporary example of women rulers (though a temporary one) and the difficulties faced by such women. Blanche was regent for Louis IX during his minority from 1226–1234, just as Philippe de Rémi is supposed to have composed La Manekine, but as Joan M. Ferrante points out, Blanche “had to struggle valiantly to retain [her authority] against much opposition.”148 Thus the issue of inheritance is obviously dependent upon social organization along agnatic (patrilineal) or cognatic (bilateral) lines, as well as by marriage. Peter Damian even used eligibility to inherit as the test 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 47 for eligibility to marry: “One right excludes the other, so that the woman from whom one could inherit cannot be taken as a legitimate spouse, even as the woman whom one can legally marry can have no title of inheritance [over her husband’s property].”149 This definition posits “heir” as an antonym of “spouse.”150 R. Howard Bloch reminds us that while a husband or wife could hold and administer the property of the late spouse, upon that person’s death, said property would revert to the family of the first spouse if there was no offspring.151 Philippe de Beaumanoir, son of our author states the following:

If I have realty which came from my father and my father dies and then I die without heirs of my body, my realty which came from my father does not pass to my mother, but it passes laterally to my closest relative through my father, even if he were at the fourth degree of lineage; for my mother is a stranger to the realty which comes to me from my father, and my father is a stranger to the realty that passes to me from my mother. But as to my personalty and my purchased real property, wherever it came from, no one takes them laterally as next of kin before my father or my mother.152

Philippe de Beaumanoir, then, recognizes the possibility of inheriting from either the maternal or paternal line, but insists that spouses do not inherit from each other. Inheritance either follows a generational progression, or returns to the family of the deceased spouse. Or, as R.H. Bloch, summarizes it, “Primogeniture and the law of paterna paternis, materna maternis each piece of property follows, according to origin, its own particular course of descent…Property, like blood, flows downward in a straight line.” Land of one lineage cannot be transferred to another lineage, except through children.153 How does all this relate to La Manekine? Philippe’s narrative poem outlines the tension between agnatic and cognatic systems, and their resulting consequences: if, according to the patrilineal kinship system of primogeniture which transmits property through the male line only, such that Joïe cannot inherit the kingdom, and the King of Hungary has no male heirs, then, upon the king’s death, either some male from his family steps forward to claim the throne, or there is a free-for-all among the barons to lay title to the crown. If a daughter can inherit from both her parents, even as spouses cannot inherit from each other, then the King of Hungary may lose his influence over Armenia since it will pass to Joïe from her late mother. Should Joïe have no heirs, Armenia would then 48 L. M. ROUILLARD return to the late queen’s family. An incestuous marriage would at least prolong the King of Hungary’s control over this kingdom and potentially allow him the time to produce a male heir to the Kingdom of Hun- gary. Ultimately, the Armenians themselves recognize Joïe’s rightful claim through a messenger near the conclusion of the romance: “‘Dame,’ dist il, ‘je vous salu / De par Dieu qui nous a valu, / De par les barons d’Ermenie / Qui de vous ont novele oïe, / Dont grant joie leur est creüe; / Car il sevent que revenu / Estes. Ice mout les conforte, / Qu’il cuidoient que fuissiés morte, / Dont il menoient vie amere. / Car de par vostre bone mere / Devés avoir toute la tere. / Pour ce vous sui ge venus querre. / Venés i! Il vous recevront, / Et a vostre seigneur feront / Joie, feste, hommage et honnour” (ll. 8021–8035). “‘Lady,’ he said, ‘I greet you / In the name of God, who has helped us, / In the name of the barons of Armenia, / Who have heard news of you / From which great joy has come to them; / For they know that you have / Returned. This comforts them greatly, / For they believed that you were dead, / And so they led a bitter life. / For through your good mother / You are to have the whole land. / For this reason I have come to seek you. / Come! They will receive you, / And to your lord they will do / Joy, festivity, homage, and honor.’” By contrast, early in Philippe de Rémi’s poem, the king’s noble retinue considers it untenable for the princess to inherit the Hungarian kingdom. The barons are exceedingly concerned for “…en briquetoise / Ert li roialmes de Hongrie / Se feme l’avoit en baillie” (212–214); “…the kingdom of Hungary / Will be in peril / If a woman had it in her power.” While the possibility of Hungary being ruled by a woman might be unthinkable in the romance, it apparently was not illegal. There is no suggestion that Joïe is ineligible to inherit the kingdom; rather the fear is that indeed she will. And since the narrative will later demonstrate that the Armenians themselves recognize Joïe’s claim to their kingdom, perhaps the proposed incestuous marriage in our romance is motivated by the father’s desire to keep Arme- nia within Hungary’s realm, just as much as it is motivated by his desire to keep Hungary in the hands of a male.154 Joïe’s eventual acquisition of both kingdoms (or Hungary’s prolonged influence over Armenia), following her marriage to the King of Scotland and her reunion with her father, demonstrates the benefits of a cognatio system of kinship which recognizes the legitimacy of female heirs to inheritance of land and titles from both sides of the family.155 The handing off of the Kingdom of Hungary to Joïe by her father is of course made easier once the paternal king meets his most honorable son-in-law: “S’a fait saisir le roi d’Escoce 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 49

/ De Hongrie, aussi com par force, / Car il et Joïe s’amie / Leur pere ne voloient mie / De son roiame dessaisir; / Mais ainsi li vint a plaisir / Quë il tan priiet les en ot / Que mais point d’escondit n’i ot. / Si en firent sa volenté…” (ll. 7945–7953). “And so he made the King of Scotland take possession / Of Hungary, as if by force, / For he and his beloved Joy / Did not at all want / To dispossess their father of his kingdom; / But such was his inclination / That he had begged them so much / That there was no refusal. / So they did as he wished…” In this romance, recognizing a daughter’s right to inherit her father’s kingdom benefits her husband as well. Just as the audience for this tale is forced to acknowledge the moral virtue of a woman, so it is also required to accept the benefits and wisdom of transmitting land bilaterally.156 The conclusion of our romance clearly favors the cognatic organization of kinship and inheritance as the two kingdoms are finally recognized as Joïe’s rightful legacy, though, conveniently, only after she has married the King of Scotland and produced a son. At its most fundamental level, the proposed incestuous marriage between the King of Hungary and his daughter serves a basic social and political purpose: safeguarding the king’s power over his “territory.” His barons fear loss of regional power and hence their status if Joïe should marry “out”: she could take some land or perhaps the whole Kingdom of Hungary with her, along with the Kingdom of Armenia from her mother. Or her husband could bring competing interests into the land, perhaps destabilizing the local hierarchy. The barons then pressure the king to ward off these possibilities with their initial suggestion of the incestuous marriage. In contrast to this attempt to preserve the status quo, the proposed incestuous marriage would suspend Joïe in a kind of no-woman’s land in which her kinship ties, as well as those of any offspring, would become dangerously contradictory, for the sake of protecting the stability of the noblemen who serve the king. Joïe’s status as the potential wife of her father recalls in some ways the status of both Oedipus and his daughter Antigone conceived with his own mother. Judith Butler suggests that in the classical world, Antigone as a child of incest, “stand[s] for the transition from matriarchal to patriarchal rule, but also for the principle of kinship.”157 More specifically, the classical play about Antigone “poses questions about kinship and the state.”158 Inspired by Butler’s Lacanian analysis of the consequences of incest in the Oedipal myth, Miranda Grif- fin concludes: “Antigone, as the daughter of Oedipus, is therefore unread- able in terms of the social structures of kinship which dictate legibility 50 L. M. ROUILLARD and legitimacy. She eludes categorisation by these terms, occupying as she does more than one place in the family tree at once: she is her father’s sister and her brother’s daughter…Her symbolic position has been rendered incoherent by virtue of the fact that she is the heir of Oedipus.”159 If we consider Joïe’s drastic response to her father’s command, her self- amputation, we can understand more clearly her refusal of ambiguity and the blurring of her own social identity in an incestuous marriage, as well as the potentially equivocal social identity of future offspring. While the protagonist subsequently refuses to give her real name when she lands in Scotland and then in Rome, her sense of self and her sense of right and wrong nonetheless remain intact throughout the romance. Her identity resides not in her name, but in her actions. Like Antigone, symbolic of a change in the social order, Joïe as the object of incestuous desire will also figure as the protagonist of a transitional moment in social organization: she embodies changes in the relationships between the individual and the family, between families united in marriage, and between the family and the Church. Informing her of the clergy’s collaboration in validating a monstrous marriage, her father’s men explain: “car tuit vous mandent. / Li prelat qui la vous atendent / Ce lignage departiront; / Vous et le roy marieront” (761–764) “…for they are all asking for you. / The prelates who are awaiting you / Will sever this bond of kinship; / They will marry you and the king.” In order to effect this marriage, Joïe’s status must be transformed by the declaration of complicit clerics who, at the instigation of influential barons, will redefine and reformulate her relationship with the King of Hungary. The scenario here is one in which familial kinship is potentially regulated by politics, except Joïe preempts the plan: she does the severing, not a breaking off of kinship, but a graphic corporeal separation and refusal of sin. In contrast to the King of Hungary’s idea of stewardship in which one sacrifices individuals and personal desires to patrilineal interests, the King of Scotland’s grief over the loss of his wife prompts him to threaten to ignore once again his material responsibilities as a sovereign and an overlord. At the beginning of what will become a seven-year search for his missing wife, the King of Scotland vows: “Certes,jamaisn’iertmain- tenue / Tere par moi, se ne vous truis; / Ne sans vous joie avoir ne puis” (5570–5572). “Truly, never will a land be governed / By me, if I do not find you; / Nor, without you, can I have joy.” Early in their marriage, the King of Scotland’s behavior and pursuit of personal interest also left 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 51 his kingdom and Joïe vulnerable as he pursued chivalric honor and prestige abroad. During his absence the queen mother avenges herself of a marriage contracted against her wishes; she takes advantage of her son’s absence to pursue her own individual vengeance in response to the disregard for her marital advice. Manekine becomes the victim of substituted letters and false orders; while she narrowly escapes another death sentence, she is once again tossed out to sea, this time with her infant son, and the King of Scotland is subsequently deprived of his rightful heir. Like the Hungarian barons, the Scottish mother-in-law has an exaggerated fear of outsiders. In contrast, the King of Scotland favors a foreigner over the familiar as his spouse. His marriage to the anonymous one-handed woman who eventually inherits two kingdoms depicts the value of an exogamous social structure. In conclusion, let us remember Euripedes’s qualification of incest as a practice of barbarians. The accusation of incest is a common political strategy to attack enemies,160 witness the charges hurled against Marie Antoinette even at the end of the eighteenth century.161 In the early twentieth century, Iwein Bloch commented on a neighborhood in Paris reputed to be a hotbed of father–daughter incest: “Actual instances were probably not lacking, and many sexual relationships of this type, though not in the number supposed, were doubtless maintained in Paris, especially during the Republic of 1848. The French nature does not seem so filled with innate revulsion at the thought of incest as is, most noticeably, the German nature.”162 In this case, in Bloch’s opinion, the cultural superiority of the Germans is indicated by their horror of incest, in contrast to the perceived acceptance of incest among the French, or at the least the Parisians. Such tactics harken back to Suetonius in The Twelve Caesars who includes in his description of Caligula the accusation of incest with his sisters. He also includes the rumor of Nero’s incest with his mother Agrippina.163 Otto Rank notes that in some of his poetry, Catullus also uses the accusation of mother–son incest to attack his enemies,164 not unlike today’s most common insult of calling someone a “motherfucker.” The accusation of incest then is the ultimate insult that reduces the individual from another group or culture to the level of contemptuous barbarian not fit for cohabitation with civilized citizens. 52 L. M. ROUILLARD

Notes

1. Jean-Charles Payen, Le Motif du repentir dans la littérature française médiévale des origines à 1230 (Genève: Libraire Droz, 1968), 104–105; 518; 522. Elizabeth Archibald, “Incest in Medieval Literature and Soci- ety,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 25 (1989): 1–15; here 2, points out that classical stories of incest tend to end tragically while medieval incest narratives tend to have a happier resolution because of the element of penance. 2. Until relatively recently, the author of the 1283 Coutumes de Beauvaisis, Philippe de Beaumanoir (born circa 1250 and also known as Philippe de Rémi), son of the Philippe de Rémi in question here, was generally believed to be the author of La Manekine and another poem Jehan et Blonde, with a composition date for the ﬁrst work ranging between 1264 and 1270. See Henri-Louis Bordier, Philippe de Rémi, Sire de Beau- manoir: Jurisconsulte et Poète National du Beauvaisis (Paris: Techener, 1869; Geneva: Slatkine, rpt. 1980), 26; 57–59, and Hermann Suchier’s edition of Oeuvres Poétiques of Philippe de Rémi (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1884), xxxiii. However, Bernard Gicquel argues for Philippe de Rémi père as the author of La Manekine by demonstrating its inﬂuence, along with that of Jehan et Blonde,onWillehalm von Orlens dated from 1242 in “Le Jehan et Blonde de Philippe de Rémi peut-il être une source du Willehalm von Orlens?” Romania 102 (1981): 303–323; here 322–323. See also Un Roman à découvrir: Jehan et Blonde de Philippe de Remy, eds. Jean Dufournet et al. (Geneva: Slatkine, 1991): 8–10. Several contributors to the 1983 Actes du Colloque International Philippe de Beau- manoir et les Coutumes de Beauvaisis, ed. Philippe Bonnet-Laborderie (Beauvais: Groupe d’étude des monuments et oeuvres d’art du Beau- vaisis, 1983) attribute the composition of both La Manekine and Jehan et Blonde to Philippe de Rémi, père. These contributors are Robert- Henri Bautier, Louis Carolus-Barré, Christiane Marchello-Nizia, Henri Fromage, Pascale Bourgain, and Jacques Monfrin, along with Bernard Gicquel. There exists only one manuscript of La Manekine:folios2rto 114v in a fourteenth-century copy, BNF fr 1588. See Alison Stones, “The Manuscript, Paris BNF FR. 1588, and Its Illustrations,” 2–39, along with Roger Middleton, “The History of BNF FR. 1588,” 41– 68, in Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999) for a thorough study of the manuscript. For biographical information on Philippe de Rémi, as well as for her suggested date of composition being the second quarter of the thirteenth century, see Sargent-Baur’s introduction, 70–82; 83–91. 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 53

3. All citations and translations of La Manekine are taken from Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans., Barbara Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999). 4. See for instance Christiane Marchello-Nizia’s translation, Philippe de Beaumanoir: La Manekine: Roman du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Stock, 1980), 268–269. Thelma Fenster, “Beaumanoir’s La Manekine: Kin D(r)ead: Incest, Doubling, and Death,” American Imago 39 (Spring 1982): 41– 58; here 45. M. Shepherd, Tradition and Re-creation in Thirteenth- Century Romance: ‘La Manekine’ and ‘Jehan et Blonde’ by Philippe de Rémi (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 123. 5. Philippe de Rémi’s son, Philippe de Beaumanoir, echoes Joïe’s sense of morality when he describes the bailiff’s duties in his 1283 Coutumes de Beauvaisis: “The seventh virtue which a bailli should have is obedience to the will of his lord in all his commands, except the commands by which he could lose his soul if he carried them out, for the obedience which he owes should be understood to mean applying law and maintaining honest justice. And the bailli would have no excuse towards God if he knowingly did wrong at the command of his lord…” in The Cou- tumes de Beauvaisis of Philippe de Beaumanoir, trans. F.R.P. Akehurst (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 17. 6. Edith Rickert, in her 1908 ed. of The Romance of Emaré (London: Early English Text Society, 1908), a late fourteenth-century reworking of the father–daughter incest theme, assesses this issue of ineligibility for royal marriage if one is physically maimed, xlvi. She refers to E. Chobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Miracles (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1896), speciﬁcally 399–400 for the story of the ﬁfth-century Cornish St. Melor whose hand and foot were cut off by his uncle. According to Brewer, this physical deformity would make Melor ineligible to inherit his father’s throne as Duke of Cornwall because he would be unable to lead his men in battle. However, Melor was eventually miraculously supplied with a silver hand and foot. Obviously, as a woman, Joïe would not be expected to lead a military expedition, but as the King of Scotland’s mother later objects to her son’s marriage to a physically maimed woman, we can only assume that our protagonist here attempts to provoke a similar response in her father. Ad Putter, “The Narrative Logic of Emaré,” in The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, eds. Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert (Essex, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2000): 157–180; here 159. Putter traces Emaré back to a French tradition of the early eleventh century. 54 L. M. ROUILLARD

7. See Raymond of Penyafort, Summa on Marriage, trans. Pierre Payer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005), 39–48; 61– 63 for a thirteenth-century description of these interdicted relationships. David Herlihy, “Making Sense of Incest: Women and the Mar- riage Rules of the Early Middle Ages,” Law, Custom and the Social Fab- ric in Medieval Europe, Essays in Honor of Bryce Lyon, eds. Bernard S. Bachrach and David Nicholas (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publi- cation, 1990): 1–16; here 1. Mayke de Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship: Anti-Incest Legislation in the Early Medieval West (500–900),” in From Sappho to de Sade: Moments in the History of Sexuality, ed. Jan Bremmer (London: Routledge, 1989): 36–59; here 36; 39, believes regulations about spiritual incest date from the eighth century. Hugette LeGros, “Parenté naturelle, alliance, parentés spirituelle: de l’inceste à la sain- teté,” Les Relations de Parenté dans le Monde Médiéval (Aix: CUERM, 1989): 511–548; here 528, explains that the role of godparents first begins in the sixth century. See Michael Mitterauer, “Christianity and Endogamy,” Continuity and Change 6 (1991): 295–333; here 322. Raoul Manselli, “Vie Familiale et Ethique Sexuelle dans les Pénitentiels,” in Famille et Parenté dans l’Occident Médiéval, Actes du Colloque de Paris (6–8 juin, 1974), eds. Georges Duby and J. LeGoff (Rome: Ecole Française, 1977): 363–378; here 376, cites the following punishment for intercourse between godmother and godson: “vitam suam peregri- nando finiat et plus de tertia mansione non maneat in civitate vel ullo loco et non se mutet, nisis nativitate Domini, sive in Pascha et a commu- nione privetur,” cited from Poenit. Casinese, c. 24. Suzanne Wemple and JoAnn McNamara, “Marriage and Divorce in the Frankish Kingdom,” in Women in Medieval Society, ed. Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia: Uni- versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1976): 95–124; here 101. The St. Hubert Penitential of 850 A.D. in Ardennes contains the following reference to spiritual incest: “If anyone takes in marriage one who is his daughter or sister from the sacred font or the anointing, they shall be separated and shall do penance for five years. If he commits fornication [with such a person], each shall do penance for seven years. They shall go forth in exile, and alms shall be given for them,” 293–294 in Medieval Hand- books of Penance: A Translation of the Principal “Libri Poenitentiales” and Selections from Related Documents, eds. John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer (New York: Octagon Books, 1938; 1965 rpt.). See also James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 140–41 for his description of the development of all types of consanguinity regulations. 8. Herlihy, “Making Sense of Incest,” 3. 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 55

9. James Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London: Longman, 1995), 75. Herlihy, “Making Sense of Incest,” 3. The issue comes up again in Gra- tian’s causa 30. See Christopher Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Mar- riage (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 1989), 136–137. See Peter Lombard, The Sentences, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010), 226–230 for his survey of contradictory clerical authorities on this topic, while he himself concludes that a marriage should in fact not be dissolved for this reason. 10. Herlihy, “Making Sense of Incest,” 3–4. Wemple and McNamara, “Mar- riage and Divorce in the Frankish Kingdom,” 101. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 43–44. The twelfth-century Peter Lombard’s Sentences cites authorities who forbade marriages from three to seven degrees of affinity, 222–223. See A. Vacant and E. Mangenot, Diction- naire de théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1923), cols. 1539– 1555 for definitions and histories of incest by affinity and consanguinity, as well as for sexual relationships between a parent and an adopted child. See Robert of Flamborough, Liber poenitentialis, ed. J.J. Francis Firth (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1971), 78–85 for his definitions of consanguinity, affinity, and spiritual incest. See Philip Lyn- don Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments: The Sacra- mental Theology of Marriage from Its Medieval Origins to the Council of Trent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 51–53. 11. Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments, 73–74; 222– 230. 12. See an excerpt in Jacqueline Murray, ed., Love, Marriage and Family in the Middle Ages: A Reader (Peterborough, ON, 2001), 211–214. 13. Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest: The Making of Mod- ern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1983), 75–81; 91–92. 14. Gaston Paris and Ulysse Robert, eds., Miracles de Nostre Dame par per- sonnages (Paris: Librairie de Firmin Didot et Cie, 1880), vol. 5, Miracle 29, ll. 298–303. See also Linda Marie Rouillard, “Playing with Romance: A Fourteenth-Century Dramatic Adaptation of La Manekine,” Le Moyen Français 48 (2001): 77–92. 15. Constance B. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” Speculum 56 (April 1981): 268–287; here 270. Richard McCabe, Incest, Drama and Nature’s Law 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 39. In his Summa on Marriage, Rayond of Penyafort distinguishes between calculating relationships according to civil law or canonical law. In his examples, siblings are related in the first degree in canonical law, corresponding to the Ger- manic model, but related in the second degree according to civil law or 56 L. M. ROUILLARD

Roman model. See Raymond of Penyafort, Summa, trans. Pierre Payer, 40. 16. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 269–270. McCabe, Incest, Drama and Nature’sLaw, 39. 17. Jane F. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1986), 25–27. 18. Michael Mitterauer, “Christianity and Endogamy,” Continuity and Change 6 (1991): 295–333; here 315–318. 19. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 269. See also McCabe, Incest, 39. 20. Herlihy, “Making Sense of Incest,” 5. David Herlihy, Women, Family and Society in Medieval Europe (Providence: Berghahn, 1995), 160. David Herlihy, “The Family and Religious Ideologies in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Family History 12 (1987): 3–17; here 7. 21. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 38. The laws and customs of the Salian Franks certainly inﬂuenced the development of legislation in France. The Pactus Legis Salicae, dating from the reign of Clovis in the early sixth century, also mentions regulations about incest: “He who joins to himself in profane marriage the daughter of his sister or brother, or a cousin of further degree [i.e., the daughter of a niece or nephew or of a grandniece or grandnephew], or the wife of his brother, or of his mother’s brother, shall be subjected to this punishment: the couple shall be separated from such a union and, if they have children, these will not be legitimate heirs but will be marked with disgrace,” in Kather- ine Fischer Drew, trans., The Laws of the Salian Franks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 78. See also 41–42 for incest regulations among the Franks. 22. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 40–41. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 270. McCabe, Incest, 39. Herlihy notes that even the suspicion of kinship could be considered an impediment to marriage in Women, Family and Society, 160. Herlihy, “The Family and Religious Ideologies,” 7. 23. Jean-Louis Flandrin, Families in Former Times: Kinship, Household and Sexuality, trans. Richard Southern (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 24. See also Mitterauer, “Christianity and Endogamy,” 307. See Peter Lombard’s The Sentences, 220 for his summary of the manner in which consanguinity was determined. 24. Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Mod- ern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1983): 78–79. 25. Lombard, The Sentences, 221. 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 57

26. This council has much significance for the development of the sacraments of marriage and penance for it “instituted a vast technology for impos- ing ecclesiastical discipline upon the moral lives of the laity throughout Western Christendom,” John Baldwin, The Language of Sex: Five Voices from Northern France Around 1200 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 7. Also, Evelyn Birge Vitz, “The Impact of Christian Doc- trine on Medieval Literature,” in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989): 82–88. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 44–45. 27. Paul Halsall, ed., Medieval Sourcebook: Twelfth Ecumenical Council, Lateran IV 1215, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp, accessed July 4, 2012. See Murray, ed., Love, Marriage, and Family, 211–214 for Robert Grosseteste’s diagrams explicating the new level of interdicted relationships, as he presented in his early thirteenth-century Templum Dei. 28. Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments, 51 and Philip Lyndon Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage During the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001), 75. 29. Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 142. 30. Goody, Development of the Family, 36–139; 273–274. Herlihy, “Mak- ing Sense of Incest,” 5. See also Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, eds., A History of Private Life, trans. A. Goldhammer (Cambridge: Belknap, 1988), vol. II, 89–90 for similar examples, including the association between head, shoulder, arm, forearm, hand, fingers, and the chrono- logical ordering of generations. 31. Georges Duby, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 65. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 269; 272–273. 32. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 269. 33. “Sicut audivit magister militem quemdem de uxore ducenda dicentem: Bene est michi quia magna est dos. In tercio genere afinitatis forsitan est illa mihi, et ideo non ita mihi proxima, quod ab ea separer. Sed si voluero et non placebit michi, per affinitatem illam discidium procurare potero. Ecce quanta derisio in ecclesia propter huiusmodi tradiciones,” as cited and translated in John Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter & His Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), vol. I, 335; vol. II, 225, footnote 179. See also David d’Avray, Medieval Marriage: Symbols & Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 94; and 104–108 for his discussion of incest regulations and the changes instituted by the Fourth Lateran Council; 58 L. M. ROUILLARD

and 108–116 for the relative paucity of legal documents in respect to marriages declared invalid for reasons of incest. 34. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, 176. 35. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, 333–334. 36. Goody, Development of the Family, 66. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 192–193, modifies this stand somewhat: “The eleventh-century reformers drew a firm legal line, for example, between bequests of land to the Church and the residual interests in those estates held by members of the donor’s family. Restricting the capacity of families to create extensive webs of interrelations through marriage helped to safeguard Church property from the legal claims of numerous relatives.” Her- lihy, Medieval Households, 13 and “The Family and Religious Ideolo- gies,” 6–7, challenges Goody’s argument, reminding us that the Church needed clergy as much as it needed material wealth. See also Herlihy, Women, Family and Society, 160–161. See also De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 47, for similar objections to Goody’s theory. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage, 135, also questions Goody’s argument. Her- lihy, Medieval Households, 61–62, suggests that the complicated incest prohibitions were designed to circulate women among different social classes, rather than allowing one powerful man to hold many women in his household. I find this argument unconvincing. Allowing a woman to marry someone of a lower social class would represent a wasted opportunity for a political marriage. 37. Mitterauer, “Christianity and Endogamy,” 303. Duby, Medieval Mar- riage, 20. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 46–47, on the other hand, believes that the Church simply took advantage of secular society’s complex of forbidden relationships to insert itself in the process, suggesting that a better strategy for the Church to increase its control would simply have been to insist much earlier on the obligation for a priest to officiate or bless the marriage. 38. Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, trans. J.H. Bell, J.R. von Sturmer and R. Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), 42–43; 45. Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, “Grégoire ou le double inceste: le rôle de la parenté comme enjeu (XIIe-XIXe siècles),” Réception et identification du conte depuis le Moyen Age,eds.M.ZinketX.Ravier (Toulouse: Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1987): 21–49; here 29, for incest in the Gregory legend, she says, “Au XIIe siècle, date probable de composition de la version de Grégoire que nous étudions, la lutte entre Eglise et aristocratie à propos de l’organisation de la parenté est extrêmement vive…” See also Duby, Medieval Marriage, 72. Herlihy, Women, Family and Society, 161–162, criticizes Duby’s lack of differen- tiation between prescriptive and descriptive models of marriage. See also Goody, Development of the Family, 59. 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 59

39. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 65. 40. Duby, The Knight, 283. 41. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 268–274. While she concedes that nobles in the twelfth century may very well have used incest to end unwanted or no-longer useful alliances, she argues that previously there is much evidence pointing to noble compliance with incest regulations. 42. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 47. 43. James Brundage, “The Canon Law of Divorce in the Mid-Twelfth Cen- tury: Louis VII C. Eleanor of Aquitaine,” in Eleanor of Acquitaine: Lord and Lady, eds. Bonnie Wheeler and John Carmi Parson (New York: Pal- grave Macmillan, 2003): 213–221; here 214. 44. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 42–43. 45. Brundage, “The Canon Law of Divorce,” 215. Ralph V. Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France Queen of England (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 2009), 89. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 335– 336. 46. Brundage, “The Canon Law of Divorce,” 216. See also Murray, Love, Marriage, and Family, 216–218. 47. Duby, The Knight, 193–197. Constance Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 268. Brundage, “The Canon Law of Divorce,” 215. Marion F. Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France 987–1234,” in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History,vol.v,ed. William Bowsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968): 3–47; here 8. Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage, 124. Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine, 101–102. 48. See Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 284–285. Charles Duggan, “Equity and Compassion: Papal Marriage Decretals to Eng- land,” in Love and Marriage in the Twelfth Century, ed. W. Van Hoecke and Andries Welkenhuysen (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1981): 59–87; here 79, relates that papal legates accepted this union, although the prime concern seemed to have the young age of the spouses, rather than the issue of afﬁnity. Duby, The Knight, 191–192. Angela Lucas, Women in the Middle Ages: Religion, Marriage and Letters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 90–91. Gabriel Le Bras, “Le Mariage dans la théologie et le droit de l’église du XIe au XIIIe siècle,” Cahiers de Civil- isation Médiévale, No. 2 (June 1968): 191–202; here 196–197, on the political goals of papal dispensations. 49. Duby, The Knight, 192. 50. Duby, The Knight, 204–205. Charles Donahue, Jr. Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: Arguments about Marriage in Five Courts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 562 warns readers against assuming that incestuous relationships, “discovered” after 60 L. M. ROUILLARD

the marriage provided an easy exit: “The visible is not necessarily the usual; high politics affect both the law and its application in ways that make it difficult, if not impossible, to draw conclusions about the normal from the spectacular.” On the other hand, Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship,” believes that Philip’s interest in Ingeborg was strictly due to financial support from Denmark against England, 9–10. 51. David d’Avray, “Annulment of Henry III’s ‘Marriage’ to Joan of Pon- thieu Confirmed by Innocent IV on 20 May 1254,” in Medieval Chris- tianity in Practice, ed. Miri Rubin (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009): 42–49. 52. Cynthia Johnson, “Marriage Agreements from Twelfth-Century South- ern France,” in To Have and to Hold: Marrying and Its Documentation in Western Christendom, eds. Philip L. Reynolds and John Witte, Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007): 215–259; here 238, footnote 67. 53. Sam Worby, Law and Kinship in Thirteenth-Century England (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2010), 92–93. Worby also notes that incest by affinity could simply be a cooperative effort to exit an engagement, or marriage, 95–96. 54. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 51. De Jong believes that the proliferation of incest regulations first takes place in recently converted Germanic kingdoms, rather than in the Roman Christian realm, as a whole 37. 55. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 38–39; 52. Mitterauer notes the role of early Christian emperors in defining incest regulations, for instance in the 342 interdiction against marriage with fraternal nieces, “Christianity and Endogamy,” 315. 56. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 51. 57. De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 52. 58. Claude Roussel, “Aspects du père incestueux dans la littérature médié- vale,” Amour, mariage et transgressions au moyen âge, eds. Danielle Buschinger and André Crépin (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1984): 47–62; here 47. 59. As cited in Murray, Love, Marriage, and Family, 237. 60. Megan McLaughlin, “‘Abominable Mingling’: Father-Daughter Incest and the Law,” Medieval Feminist Newsletter 24 (1997): 26–30; here 27. 61. McLaughlin, “Abominable Mingling,” 28. 62. Donahue, Jr., Law, Marriage, and Society, 564. 63. David King, “Learning from Loss: Amputation in Three Thirteenth- Century French Verse Romances,”Modern Philology (2012): 1–24; here 14. 64. Elizabeth Archibald, “Gold in the Dungheap: Incest Stories and Family Values in the Middle Ages,” Journal of Family History 22 (April 1997): 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 61

133–149; here 137. See also Shepherd, Tradition, 28–29 and Rosalind Brown-Grant, French Romance of the Later Middle Ages: Gender, Moral- ity, and Desire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 197. See also King, “Learning from Loss,” 4. 65. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 63. 66. John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Vintage, 1988), 160–161. 67. Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers, 3; 334. 68. Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 277–279. See Duby, The Knight, 79 for Hugues Capet’s complaint that regulations governing marriage and blood relatives forced aristocrats to search far and wide for suitable marriage partners. 69. The best overview of the incest motif in Greek and Roman mythology is Elizabeth Archibald’s Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 53–103. 70. Otto Rank, The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend: Fundamentals of a Psychology of Literary Creation, trans. Gregory C. Richter (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992): 317. 71. Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (London: Pen- guin, 1954, rpt. 1988), 180–181. See Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 172. 72. See Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 14 and 36. 73. P.B. Adamson, “Consanguinous [sic] Marriages in the Ancient World,” Folklore 93 (1982): 85–92, for a brief history of incest as practiced among ancient civilizations (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Greece) and as described in religious mythology. See also Rank, The Incest Theme, 226–228; 230, 248–249. 74. Ovid, Metamorphoses, vol. IV, trans. Frank Justus Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 35–51; 87–101. 75. Daryl Hine, Ovid’s Heroines: A Verse Translation of the Heroïdes (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 45: “…But why should incest shock / You? Don’t believe that pious poppycock: / Nowadays such scruples seem as old- / Fashioned as the fabled age of gold. / Jove, who proclaimed all pleasure sanctiﬁed, / To prove it took his sister for his bride.” 76. As cited by Huguette LeGros, “Parenté naturelle, alliance, parenté spirituelle: de l’inceste à la sainteté,” Les Relations de Parenté dans le Monde Médiéval (Aix: CUERM, 1989): 511–548; here 513. 77. See Rouillard, “Playing with Romance.” 78. Herlihy, Women, Family and Society in Medieval Europe, 97. This was Thomas Aquinas’s reasoning as well, 10. 79. Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, 479. Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988), 29, 62 L. M. ROUILLARD

points out Clement of Alexandria’s interpretation of Jesus’s remarks on marriage. Clement believed Jesus attempted to further differentiate his followers from pagans by forbidding certain sexual practices (including incest) common to pagans. 80. Leslie Dunton-Downer, “The Horror of Culture: East West Incest in Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligés,” New Literary History 28.2 (1997): 367– 381; here 368, makes a similar observation about this biblical passage: “Incest, practiced in a prior time and in another land, is explicitly prohibited partly to establish temporal and spatial boundaries within which a moment of cultural rupture (introduced by Mosaic Law) may be defined in terms of differences that ultimately serve the necessity of cultural continuity.” She concludes that “Correlations between incest and culture in Chrétien’s romance in particular suggest that identities of all kinds (semantic, textual, psychological, familial, religious, historical, and so on) systematically require differences in order to be identities at all,” 378. Calum Carmichael, Sex and Religion in the Bible (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 155–157, notes that while even certain biblical patriarchs were guilty of incestuous unions (i.e., Abraham weds his half- sister Sarah; Jacob is simultaneously husband to two sisters, incest by affinity according to medieval standards, in addition to bigamy, according to Christian standards), they should be excused because of the lands and cultures in which they lived, even though modern scholars have no evidence of the loose morals attributed to those peoples. The strategy seems to be one of insisting on the dominant culture’s hedonistic habits as the contextual cause of the patriarchs’ problematic behavior which must now be outlawed. Thus, one must first “establish” the barbarians’ immorality as the source of the weaknesses of the Old Testament fathers and then outlaw the barbarian behavior. See also Mitterauer, “Christian- ity and Endogamy,” 310. 81. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 88. See also Mitterauer, “Christianity and Endogamy,” 313–314. 82. Mitterauer, “Christianity and Endogamy,” 299. 83. Duggan, “Equity and Compassion,” 73 for Duggan’s description of the case brought before Pope Alexander III. A man had married a woman who was related to a woman with whom he had previously had a sexual relationship; the pope concluded that if the circumstances were publicly known, the man should separate from his wife and enter a monastery. If the circumstances were not public, the man could be married after performing penance. 84. Patrick Demony, Notre-Dame de Reims: Sanctuaire de la monarchie sacrée (Italie: Instituto Grafico Bertello, CNRS éditions, 1995), 68–73. 85. Mitterauer, “Christianity and Endogamy,” 295–298. 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 63

86. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 138 footnote 72; 230. We note that the baron who proposes that the King of Hungary marry with his daughter makes his proposal during the Christmas season (l. 279). 87. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 146. 88. Gábor Klaniczay, Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 31. 89. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, see 27–43 for a history of the deiﬁcation of Greek and Roman rulers. 90. Klaniczay, Holy Rulers, 28. 91. John Carmi Parsons, “Introduction: Family, Sex, and Power: The Rhythms of Medieval Queenship,” in Medieval Queenship, ed. John Carmi Parsons (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993): 1–11; here 4. 92. Augustine, City of God, intro. Etienne Gilson, trans. Gerald Walsh (New York: Doubleday, 1958), Book XV, Chapter 16, 350–352. The idea that incest prohibitions force people to establish more social connections is reiterated by Pope Alexander II in the mid-eleventh century. See Duby, The Knight, 73. 93. Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Middlesex: Penguin, 1978), 192. 94. Gerald of Wales, Journey, 200. 95. Gerald of Wales, Journey, 251. 96. Gerald of Wales, Journey, 262–263. 97. David Herlihy, “The Making of the Medieval Family,” 123. 98. Hildegard of Bingen, Scivias, trans. Mother Columba Hart and Jane Bishop (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990), 81–82. See also Murray, Love, Marriage, and Family in the Middle Ages, 186–187. 99. Robin Fox, Kinship and Marriage (Middlesex, UK: Penguin, 1967), 23. 100. Robin Fox, The Red Lamp of Incest: An Enquiry into the Origins of Mind and Society (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 140. 101. Marie de France, Lais, trans. Laurence Harf-Lancner and ed. Karl Warnke (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990), 168–181. See Chapter 3 of this work for more on this lai. 102. St. Augustine, City of God, 316–319. 103. Emile Durkheim, Incest: The Nature and Origin of the Taboo, trans. Edward Sagarin (New York: Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1963), 106. 104. W. Arens, The Original Sin: Incest and Its Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 17–19, summarizes three studies from the late sixties to early seventies on this topic which concluded that human inbreeding within the ﬁrst two degrees (parent and child and between 64 L. M. ROUILLARD

siblings) resulted in a significantly higher number of physical and mental handicaps. Studies of reproduction between cousins also evidenced deformities, 19–21. 105. Gerald of Wales, The History and Topography of Ireland, trans. John J. O’Meara (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press Inc., 1982), 117–118. Alternatively, Gregory the Great also believed that incestuous unions were sterile. See David Herlihy, “Making Sense of Incest,” 6. See also De Jong, “To the Limits of Kinship,” 49. 106. G. Huet, “Les Sources de La Manekine de Philippe de Beaumanoir,” Romania 45 (1889–1919): 94–99. Huet reviews the possibility that “Manekine” or manke derives from manca, but that is not consistent with the development of the intervocalic schwa of “Manekine,” an impossibility according to the history of French as derived from vulgar Latin. Huet goes on to suggest that it is “une déformation arbitraire de ce mot, du fait d’un conteur populaire, un sobriquet burlesque dans le genre de ’ cendrillot, cendrillon’, etc., qui proviennent également des contes folkloriques.” In note 2, p. 98, Huet points out that “Manekine” is perhaps a borrowed Dutch word, manneken. This seems more likely and I would go one step further: it is perhaps a reflection of medieval “etymologies” in the manner of Isidore of Seville, or an “etymologi- cal” memory device such as described by Mary Carruthers in an oral communication at the University of Pittsburgh in 1994. See also Karin Ueltschi, La main coupée: métonymie et mémoire mythique (Paris: Cham- pion, 2010), 124–126, for her comments on the etymology of the word. Putter, “The Narrative Logic of Emaré,” also considers the etymology of Manekine’s name, 171, and footnote 20. 107. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 14. Pagels, Adam, Eve, and the Serpent, 29. LeGros, “Parenté Naturelle,” 7, points out Jerome’s reference to the practice of incestuous marriages among the Persians and Medes in Adversus Jovinian, II. See also Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 64. 108. As cited by McCabe, Incest, Drama and Nature’sLaw,7. 109. Angela M. Lucas, Women in the Middle Ages: Religion, Marriage and Letters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 69. 110. See Rank, The Incest Theme, 341 for his discussion related to the creation of an elite based on that group’s ability to disregard consanguinity regulations. See Herlihy Women, 102–104; 160–161; De Jong, “To the Lim- its of Kinship,” 37. See also Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 88 for his conclusion that Christian emperors tried to make incestuous unions more difficult in order to separate the Christian behavior from pagan behavior; and 130–131 for his comments on Germanic kings who considered themselves exempt from such regulations. 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 65

111. Roy Wagner, “Incest and Identity: A Critique and Theory on the Subject of Exogamy and Incest Prohibition,” Man 7 (December 1972): 601– 613; here 609. 112. Wagner, “Incest and Identity,” 602. 113. Wagner, “Incest and Identity,” 602. 114. Alan H. Bittles, “Genetic Aspects of Inbreeding and Incest,” in Inbreed- ing, Incest, and the Incest Taboo, eds. Arthur P. Wolf and William H. Durham (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005): 38–60; here 38. 115. Fox, Kinship and Marriage, 63. 116. Fox, The Red Lamp of Incest, 6. See also Walter Scheidel, “Brother-Sister and Parent-Child Marriage Outside Royal Families in Ancient Egypt and Iran: A Challenge to the Sociobiological View of Incest Avoidance?” Ethology and Sociobiology 17 (1996): 319–340; here 321–324. 117. Wagner, “Incest and Identity,” 611. Lévi-Strauss, Elementary Structures of Kinship,8–9. 118. Gardner, Women in Roman Law and Society, 35. 119. Fox, Kinship and Marriage, 64–68. 120. Arens, The Original Sin,8;10.SeealsoRank,The Incest Theme, 339– 343. Gardner, Women in Roman Law, 36, notes that some members of the lower classes in Roman Egypt also married their siblings, but certainly there were greater beneﬁts for upper-class married siblings who had more power and wealth to consolidate. 121. Arens, The Original Sin, 8 and 10. See also 115–116 for a discussion of the possible consequences of royal sibling marriages: “If such a union is devoid of sex and reproduction, and the latter seems to be the case most often, then [the woman] is rendered socially sterile by this peculiar royal custom. The ‘incestuous’ relationship in effect neutralizes the sister, who becomes a pawn, rather than queen.” 122. Nonetheless, we note that in theory the ancient Greeks and Romans did not permit blood relatives of very close relationship to marry. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, 14; 36. 123. Arens, The Original Sin, 118. See also Rank, The Incest Theme, 341. 124. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 239. 125. Vacant and Mangenot, Dictionnaire de la théologie chrétienne, col. 1540– 1541. See also Rank, The Incest Theme, 339–341 for his discussion on sociological evidence of incestuous marriages. 126. P.B. Adamson, “Consanguinous [sic] Marriages in the Ancient World,” Folklore 93 (1982): 85–92; here 87–88; 91. Adamson also notes a mother–son marriage among the pharaohs, that of Merenptah-siptah and Twosre near the end of the thirteenth century B.C.E., and a mother– son marriage among the Persians, that of Artystone and Darius I, in 500 B.C.E., 91. See also Russell Middleton, “Brother-Sister and Father- Daughter Marriage in Ancient Egypt,” American Sociological Review 27 (October 1962): 603–611; here 604–605. 66 L. M. ROUILLARD

127. Adamson, “Consanguinous [sic] Marriages,” 86, 91. He also states consanguineous marriages were contracted by the Inca dynasty, 85. 128. Adamson, “Consanguinous [sic] Marriages,” 86–87. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Chris- tianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 250, indicates that in Egypt, brother–sister marriages were forbidden by Roman law in the fourth century under the Emperor Diocletian. 129. “… non omnes nobis uxores ducere licet: nam quarundam nuptiis absti- nendum est.” All citations and translations of this work are taken from Justinian’s Institutes, trans. Peter Birks and Grant McLeod (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 42–43. 130. Birks, Justinian’s Institutes:“…si tales personae inter se coierint, nefarias atque incestas nuptiascontraxisse dicuntur,” 42–43. 131. C. Leavitt, “Sociobiological Explanations of Incest Avoidance: A Criti- cal Review of Evidential Claims,” American Anthropologist 92 (1990): 971–993; here 973. In this article, Leavitt questions the validity of the traditional explanation for the incest taboo (the increased possibility of defective offspring), arguing that a stronger gene pool is just as likely to result from inbreeding as from outbreeding, 974–975. 132. Middleton, “Brother-Sister and Father-Daughter Marriage in Ancient Egypt,” 603–611. This contrasts with the period of Greek rule when brother-sister unions were an option only for royalty. See also Carmichael, Sex and Religion in the Bible, 135. 133. Middleton, “Brother-Sister and Father-Daughter Marriage in Ancient Egypt,” 610. 134. Durkheim, Incest, 70. 135. Durkheim, Incest, 71. 136. Lévi-Strauss, The Elementary Structures of Kinship, 25. See also Wagner, “Incest and Identity,” 612. Rank, The Incest Theme, 359. See also Emma Campbell, Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography (Woodbridge, UK, 2008), 80–81. 137. Arens, The Original Sin, 118–120. 138. According to the Washington Post, 2005, http://www. washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/metro/daily/graphics/cousins_042505. html?noredirect=on, accessed February 24, 2019. See also Alan Bittles, “Commentary: The Background and Outcomes of the First-Cousin Marriage Controversy in Great Britain,” International Journal of Epi- demiology 38 (December 2009), 1453–1458, https://academic.oup. com/ije/article/38/6/1453/673854, accessed February 24, 2019. While first-cousin marriages remain legal in many countries, including Britain, there remain concerns, justified or not, about negative genetic consequences to such unions. Bittles also refers to Charles Darwin’s marriage to his first cousin, his subsequent anxieties about possible 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 67

detrimental biological outcomes for his eleven children with Emma Wedgwood, and his eventual reassurance that first-cousin marriages did not produce significantly increased instances of negative outcomes on offspring. Bittles also relates that worldwide, more than 10% the population is either married to a second cousin or a partner of closer consanguinity, or is the child of such a union. Historically, there are numerous famous examples of first-cousin marriages: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins who had nine children together. Albert Einstein’s wife Elsa Löwenthal was his first cousin. Charlotte Perkins took as her husband George Houghton Gilman, and they were first cousins. Darwin’s marriage with his cousin continues to interest modern researchers, as reported by Nicholas Wade, “In Darwin Family, Evidence of Inbreeding’s Ill Effects,” The New York Times, May 4, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/science/04darwin. html, accessed February 24, 2019. See also Bittles, “Genetic Aspects of Inbreeding and Incest,” 42. 139. Bittles, “Genetic Aspects of Inbreeding and Incest,” 42. 140. Bittles, “Genetic Aspects of Inbreeding and Incest,” 38. 141. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Infidel (New York: Free Press, 2007), 140. 142. Ali, Infidel, 175–177. 143. Fox, Kinship and Marriage, for a discussion of the competing interests between recognizing only paternal ancestors or agnatic relatives, and recognizing ancestors of both parents or cognatic relatives, 51. Fox, The Red Lamp of Incest, explains that a patrilineal society will attribute closer kinship to children of the father and brother; a matrilineal society will attribute closer kinship to children of the mother and sisters, and both will define incest and taboos accordingly. Consequently, in a matrilineal society, “if the interpretation of kinship is strict, a man’s daughter is not kin to him. From the point of view of the daughter, at least, her father is an affine---a relative by marriage to her mother,” 63–66. See our earlier discussion in this chapter of the fourteenth-century play based on La Manekine. 144. See Craig Taylor, “The Salic Law and the Valois Succession to the French Crown,” French History 15 (2001): 358–377; here 358–361. Taylor notes that while Salic Law’s De allodio stated that men inherited land and women inherited moveable property, in the early fifteenth century: “[Jean] Montreuil inserted the words ‘in regno’… Thereafter a series of scholars, all connected with the French royal chancellery, cited the Salic Law in connection with the French royal succession, even though no manuscript could be found which included the words ‘in regno’inthe De allodio clause,” 359. 145. Herlihy, Medieval Households, 51–52. 68 L. M. ROUILLARD

146. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, Volume I: The Growth of Ties of Dependence, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 200– 201. 147. Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship,” 13. 148. Joan M. Ferrante, Woman as Image in Medieval Literature from the Twelfth Century to Dante (New York: Columbia, 1975), 10. 149. Herlihy, Women, Family and Society, 47. David Herlihy, “The Family and Religious Ideologies in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Family History 12 (1987): 3–17; here 8–9. 150. While the Romans prohibited marriage with a relative of the fourth degree (ﬁrst cousin), one could still marry an heir, since inheritance was a possibility up to the seventh degree. Goody, The Development of the Family and Marriage in Europe, 56 and 137. See Herlihy, “The Making of the Medieval Family,” 123. Herlihy still situates Damian’s model as part of the bilineal system. 151. R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 71. 152. Akehurst, ed., The Coutumes de Beauvaisis, 173 and Chapter 12: 494. While this 1283 work is dated after our accepted time period of 1225– 1250 for La Manekine, Philippe de Beaumanoir is likely committing to parchment long-standing customs that would have existed even during the early thirteenth century. See also R.H. Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies, 72. 153. Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies, 73; 85. See more generally 70–75. Herlihy, Women, Family and Society, 52, believes that until the eleventh century, descent and inheritance were calculated bilineally, that is, both paternally and maternally. But around the year 1000, patrilineal lineage is emphasized over the matrilineal. Rather than receiving an equitable part of the family wealth, daughters received a marriage dowry and younger sons had to postpone marriage, thus keeping more wealth in the hands of fewer male heirs. See also David Warren Sabean and Simon Teuscher, “Kinship in Europe: A New Approach to Long-Term Development,” in Kinship in Europe: A New Approach to Long Term Development,eds. Sabean and Teuscher (Berghahn Books, 2007): 1–32; here 4. Recent work by Amy Livingstone on noble families of the Loire suggests, however, that “both maternal and paternal kin were important and recognized, thus making aristocratic families collateral…far from adhering to one monolithic form of family structure or inheritance, the aristocracy of the Loire implemented a variety of practices,” Out of Love for My Kin: Aristocratic Family Life in the Lands of the Loire, 1000–1200 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010), 2–3. 2 KINSHIP MATTERS: AN IMMODEST PROPOSAL 69

154. Regarding inheritance customs in Hungary, a document of 1222 states that in the absence of sons, a daughter or daughters would receive a quarter of the father’s wealth. Pál Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 176. While there is no way of knowing if Philippe de Rémi was informed of Hungarian inheritance customs, his narrative addresses the general anxieties and ambiguities of female inheritance practices. 155. See Herlihy, Women, Family and Society, 143 and Herlihy, Medieval Households, 82–83 for his views on the coexistence of these two systems. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 165–166, reads the conclusion of the romance as one in which patriliny dominates matriliny. 156. Aside from the material or inheritance issues, an agnatic society which privileges male ancestry ironically dilutes that privilege as it introduces incest. As Miranda Griffin explains: “Incest diverts the paternal legacy of the law and rewrites it, providing it with a spectral double, reproduc- ing an uncanny family tree in which genealogy is at once polluted and purified, at once too singular and too overburdened with meaning to be legible,” in “Writing Out the Sin: Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spec- tre of Incest,” Neophilologus 88 (2004): 499–515; here 513. Regarding agnatic and cognatic kinship systems, see Livingstone, Out of Love for My Kin, 2–3, where she presents her thesis that in the Middle Ages, families in the Loire used both systems to calculate inheritance. 157. Judith Butler, Antigone’s Claim: Kinship Between Life and Death (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 1; 3. 158. Butler, Antigone’s Claim,2. 159. Griffin, “Writing Out the Sin,” 500–501. 160. See also Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 145; and her “Sex and Power in Thebes and Babylon,” The Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (2001): 38–60; here 28. 161. Lynn Hunt, “The Many Bodies of Marie Antoinette: Political Pornogra- phy and the Problem of the Feminine in the French Revolution,” in The French Revolution: Recent Debates and New Controversies, ed. Gary Kates (New York: Routledge, 1998; 2nd ed. 2006): 201–218; here 206–207; 212. Interpreting the accusation at a more global, social level, Hunts concludes: “On the most explicit level, incest was simply another sign of the criminal nature of royalty,” 207. 162. As cited in Rank, The Incest Theme, 356. 163. Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars, trans. Robert Graves (London: Penguin, 1957), 161; 223–224. See also Elizabeth Archibald, “Flight from Incest: Two Late Classical Precursors of the Constance Theme,” Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 259–272; here 267–268. 164. Otto Rank, The Incest Theme, 347. 70 L. M. ROUILLARD

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Heroines, Villains, and Barbarians in Other Medieval Incest Narratives

As we have seen, there is a long tradition of incest stories, reaching back to Antiquity, specifically in the Greek and Roman cultures, as well as in biblical literature, and through the Middle Ages. Stith Thompson, continuing the work of Antti Aarne, established an extensive classification of folktales in the form of a catalog of motifs, including those using the incest motif. La Manekine recycles many of those motifs: especially that of the Maiden Without Hands, often included in folk tales precipitated by incest.1 Elizabeth Archibald notes an increased predilection for incest stories beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, not surprisingly accompanying an increased interest in penance and contrition along with a preoccupation for redefining potential marriage partners, or eliminating potential spouses. Archibald does point out, however, that incest is “seldom mentioned in early Christian hagiography and imaginative literature,” likely because early Christians were often accused of incest, hence their understandable initial reluctance to treat such a topic in narrative form.2 While early Christian writers may have hesitated to use this motif, other writers from late Antiquity did not, as demonstrated in the fourth- century Clementine Recognitions,knownfromGreekandLatinversions, and possibly derived from an earlier Greek version of the second or third century. In contrast to the Oedipal incest by consanguinity, here incest by affinity expressed by a brother-in-law’s sexual desire for Clement’s mother motivates her to flee with her children before the incest and implied rape can occur. Many adventures and shipwrecks later, the family is reunited,

© The Author(s) 2020 77 L. M. Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6_3 78 L. M. ROUILLARD the mother being recognized after she explains that she had gnawed her fingers (leading to paralysis of her hands) in her grief. Here, the potential victim of incest, Clement’s mother, in her subsequent sorrow and trials, precipitated by threat of a monstrous union, causes herself bodily harm,3 while in comparison, our heroine Joïe’s self-mutilation was a direct strategy to put off her father’s incestuous desire. Nonetheless, both instances of potential incest provoke self-harming behavior on the part of the vulnerable women as either a form of self-protection or as a consequence of a traumatic experience. In contrast to potential incestuous victimizers stand reputed villains who do in fact realize their incestuous intentions. In the legend of Apol- lonius of Tyre, a tale most likely first composed in late Greek Antiquity, repeated throughout the Middle Ages and included in the fourteenth- century Gesta Romanorum,4 King Antiochus becomes enamored of his own daughter and rapes her. Because the girl is also desired by many suitors, Antiochus, refusing to marry his daughter to any other man, com- poses a riddle which any successful suitor must solve, or lose his head. Passing by the displayed heads of previous losers, Apollonius of Tyre presents himself and successfully solves Antiochus’s riddle about incest. Nonetheless, Antiochus sends him away and promises a reward to anyone who brings him the head of Apollonius, who flees to Tarsia, and then to Pentapolis where he marries the daughter of King Archistrates. Antiochus’s perverted relationship with his daughter is inverted by the Archistrates, the model father, who lovingly arranges his daughter’s marriage with a worthy man of her choice.5 In the Historia Brittonum, often attributed to the ninth-century author Nennius, Vortigern is described as responsible for the incursion of Hengest and the Saxons into Britain, with Vortigern having exchanged the region of Kent for Hengest’s daughter in marriage. As if this were not enough to taint his reputation, we find in the section devoted to the life of Saint Germanus references to Faustus, a son born of an incestuous relationship between Vortigern and his own daughter. Saint Germanus makes a public accusation of Vortigern who strategically instructs his daughter to claim the saint as the father of her child. But the true paternity is revealed by the child himself, who, when instructed to present himself before his “father after the flesh” immediately stands before Vortigern.6 The national traitor thus is further blackened by the crime of incest. 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 79

In Saxo Grammaticus’s work on the history of Denmark, dated from the late twelfth to early thirteenth century, we read of revenge accom- plished by incest. The maiden Thora is raped by Helgi; Thora avenges herself by inviting Helgi to have intercourse with their daughter Yrsa (conceived during the rape and now unrecognized by Helgi). The narrator condemns Thora, saying: “Senseless mother, to allow her daughter to throw away her chastity merely to avenge herself and to care nothing for the purity of her own kin as long as she could make him guilty of incest for having formerly cost her her virginity! What a depraved mind this woman had, to grant what might be called a second defilement of herself in order to punish her ravisher, when by her very action she was not diminishing the wrong, but the reverse!”7 In this narrative, incest is used by the rape victim as a retaliatory weapon against the rapist: if the rapist escapes punishment, perhaps the accusation of incest will lead to some form of sanction. The narrator, however, professes that duping a man into sleeping with his daughter is more heinous than rape, all the while emphasizing Thora’s guilt and her debauchery over Helgi’s act of rape, turning the rapist into the victim. In contrast, Philippe in his story uses the incest motif to taint both the clergy for their complicity in the most egregious form of interdicted marital unions and the nobility for their voluntary sacrifice of cultural and religious norms for political power. Directing his reproach toward male weakness and folly, Philippe’s narrator recognizes the complete innocence of his protagonist Manekine in this romance: “Mais avenu est as p[l]uisours / Que par feme ont esté destruit / Li plus sage et li miex estruit. / Et tel fois coupes n’i avoient / Les femmes pour qu’il emprenoient / Les folies et les outrages; / S’en tournoit sur euls li damages, / Et sur eles tout ensement, / Car on retrait et dist souvent: / Souvent compere autrui pecié / Teuls qui n’i a de riens pecié. / Ausi fist Joïe la bele” (ll. 400–411). “But it has befallen many / That through a woman have been destroyed / The wisest and the most learned. / And in this at certain times no guilt attached / To the women for whom they undertook / The follies and excesses; / The consequences turned upon the men / And upon the women also, / For it is often repeated and said: / Often the wrong-doing of another / Is paid for by one who has done no wrong. / So did lovely Joy.” In yet another example of the category of stories of “incest realized,” there is a Middle High German work dated from the late twelfth century by Hartmann von Aue, the story of Pope Gregorius, a child of brother– sister incest who himself unwittingly also commits incest with his mother.8 80 L. M. ROUILLARD

The sister, committed to her brother’s care upon the death of the father, becomes the object of her sibling’s desire and conceives a child: Gre- gorius. The brother immediately goes off to the Holy Land and confesses his sin. The sister delivers the child in secret and sets him adrift in a chest with a written explanation of his incestuous conception. The child is rescued and raised by a fisherman’s family, under the supervision of an abbot. When he strikes his foster brother, his stepmother blurts out the story of his parentage. Gregorius, determined to leave this humiliating situation, sets himself adrift at sea, taking with him the narrative of the circumstances of his birth, and by coincidence arrives in his mother’s country where he proceeds to defend her land from the assaults of the neighboring duke. Recognizing the need for a defender (but not yet recognizing her own son), she marries the valiant Gregorius. Because he had saved the written narration of his origins, his wife now recognizes her husband as her lost child. He banishes himself once again and when he begs for help in finding a solitary place in which to do penance, a fisherman “kindly” offers to chain him to a rock and throw away the key, a solution Gregorius finds most appealing. He remains in this state for seventeen years, until two Romans, desperately seeking a new pope, and acting upon the directives of a heavenly voice, come to the rock, miraculously find the key to his chains in a fish, and proclaim him pope. Once again unable to recognize her son, the mother comes to Rome to confess her sin to the pope who finally identifies himself to her as her son. This story deals with consummated incest resulting in a child, whereas La Manekine deals with attempted incest, though there are still several similar motifs between the two: the long sea voyages of exile, the self-imposed penance, the container-fish, heavenly voices, the setting of Rome and the confession to the pope, the church authority to whom is reserved the right and responsibility of forgiving the sin of incest. The notable differences are the incestuous mother/sister and father/brother in contrast to the potentially incestuous father. The Middle Ages made numerous literary contributions to the development of the consummated incest motif, not the least of which were clarifications and additions to the Charlemagne myths and Arthurian romance. Tradition has it that Charlemagne’s dark secret was the sin of incest,9 and some have interpreted his notable reluctance to give up his daughters as evidence, vague though it may be, of the historical emperor’s incestuous desires.10 The ninth-century biographer of the emperor, Ein- hard, states: “These girls were extraordinarily beautiful and greatly loved 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 81 by their father. It is a remarkable fact that, as a result of this, he kept them with him in his household until the very day of his death, instead of giving them in marriage to his own men or to foreigners, maintaining that he could not live without them.”11 Later literary works make reference to a horrible, unmentionable sin committed by Charlemagne: the late twelfth-century Vie de Saint Gilles by the Anglo-Norman Guillaume de Berneville; and an entry in Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend,being two examples.12 But in the mid-thirteenth century, there is a version of the story of Charlemagne and Roland which now specifies Charlemagne’s sin: incest with his sister, Gilem, from which is born Roland.13 This legend is contained in Chapter XXXVI, Part I of the Old Norse version known as the Karlamagnus Saga,muchofittranslatedfromFrenchnar- ratives:

King Karlamagnus went to Eiss, and there he found Gilem, his sister. He led her into his sleeping hall, and slept next to her, so that he felt love for her, and they lay together. Afterwards he went to church, and confessed to Egidius all his sins except this one; Egidius blessed him and went to Mass. And as he sang low Mass, Gabriel, God’s angel, came, and laid a letter on the paten. On it was written that King Karlamagnus had not confessed all his sins: ‘He has lain with his sister, and she shall give birth to a son who shall be named Rollant. And he shall give her in marriage to Milon of Angler; she shall be delivered seven months after they shared a bed; and he shall know that he is both his son and his nephew, and he should see that the boy is well looked after, for he has need of him.’14

Egidius, or Gilles, confronts the emperor with the facts stated in the celestial missive; Charlemagne admits his fault and receives absolution. The emperor obeys the celestial directives to marry off his sister to Milon who raises Roland as his child. Upon Milon’s death, Gilem marries Ganelon, but they are later discovered to be related within forbidden degrees and must separate. Ganelon remarries with Geluviz who later tricks Roland into sleeping with her. Roland, after going to confession, accuses himself before Ganelon who enjoins Roland to keep this secret “saying that he could not be angry with him about it since she had caused it herself. But thenceforth he bore ill will towards Rollant.”15 Charlemagne’s conscious incest is thus mirrored by Roland’s unknowing act of incest by affinity with his stepfather’s second wife. In addition to this literary development, scholars find visual references to this legend in a fresco dating to around 1200 in a chapel in Loroux-Bottereau near Nantes, illustrating 82 L. M. ROUILLARD the marriage of Charlemagne’s sister to Milon; on a carved capital dating to about 1125, in the church of Luna, Spain illustrating St. Gilles with the divine missive; and in a mid-thirteenth-century psalter containing a painted miniature of St. Gilles celebrating mass, with Charlemagne and a woman in attendance, a depiction taken to illustrate the sinful emperor and his sister.16 The evolution of this part of the Charlemagne legend is in turn mirrored by the evolution of Mordred as Arthur’s son by an incestuous relationship between Arthur and his sister in the thirteenth-century Mort Artu.17 While incest figured in the earlier Arthurian material, such as Wace’s Roman de Brut (during a confrontation with the Romans in Gaul, Mordred, Arthur’s nephew, seduces Guinevere),18 Mordred as the product of brother–sister incest is presented first in the French prose Vulgate of the thirteenth century.19 James Douglas Bruce says of the author of the Mort Artu:

This writer was endowed with a dramatic sense beyond any other in the whole domain of mediaeval romance and he endeavored to intensify the tragedy of Arthur’s downfall by representing the chief agent in this catas- trophe as being the offspring of the monarch’s incestuous relations with his own sister.20

In this Arthurian view, incest is the context within which the aristocracy becomes responsible for its own downfall.21 More specifically, it explains the crumbling of the ideal of Camelot while in another sense it reen- acts the fall of mankind into Original Sin.22 While some tales present brother–sister incest resulting in saintly offspring, as in the example of Saint Gregorius, Arthur’s sibling incest will produce his own assassin.23 M. Victoria Guerin proposes a most interesting model of the influence of the incest motif from the Charlemagne legend on the Arthurian legend. She points out that Charlemagne was often compared to the Old Testament King David. When Geoffrey of Monmouth composed his Historia Regum Britonniae, he “replaced Charlemagne by Arthur in his concept of Britain as a new Israel, and this may have led to the transfer of the incest motif as well.”24 While the Frankish emperor is depicted as weak, he is nonetheless also associated with a glorious biblical counterpart, King David, who may have slain Goliath, but was himself ignoble regarding the wife of Uriah. Ironically, David’s descendants brought even more shame to the lineage: his son Amnon committed 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 83 incestuous rape upon his sister Tamar. While the historical Charlemagne’s political power remained high, at least during his lifetime and in spite of his legendary sin,25 the literary Arthurian incest made Arthur’s decline that much more dramatic and tragic. In contrast, Philippe de Rémi’s use of the incest motif makes his female protagonist that much more admirable: in contrast to powerful men such as the legendary Charle- magne and Arthur, who gave in to their lustful desires, that creature, Woman, typically depicted as diabolically oversexed, has remained pure, saving herself for a legitimate marriage. In a true messianic fashion, her virtue leads her to publicly forgive her father even after his thwarted order for her execution. In contrast to the Arthurian tradition and the Charlemagne legend which relate the fall of great heroes, La Manekine is a story about the rehabilitation and preservation of a noble family which could have degenerated into incest, but is instead invigorated by a new line of descendants and alliances, eventually consolidating the power, authority, and prestige of three kingdoms. Where legendary and heroic kings are eventually undone by their own incestuous desires, Joïe is strong enough to stand up against the sinful urges of men and contribute to a new flourishing dynasty. The new Queen of Scot- land, Armenia, and Hungary humbly triumphs over paternal weakness. In the thirteenth-century De l’avènement antecrist of Berengier, the antichrist is described as the product of father–daughter incest. “Del pere et de la fille corporelment naistra, / De la lignie Dan, com Deus devisé l’a. / Icil ert antecris, qui de ces ii istra. / […]Ensement Belzebub le femme esgardera / Qui plus ert de putage, en celi se metra; / Mais n’ert pas caste- ment, car de pechié venra, / Del pere et de la fille cil engenrés sera. / Li peres ert maldis qui tel enfant fera / Et la mere autresi qui le concevera, / Et maldis ert li fius, qui antecris sera. / Ses perés ert ses aves, qui engenré l’ara, / Et sa mere ert sa suer, de cui ventre il naistra.”26 “He will be born of a father and a daughter, / Of the tribe of Dan, as God willed it. / This one will be the antichrist, who will come from these two. / … In this way, Belzebub will see the woman / Who is more like a whore, and will enter into her; / But it will not be chastely, for it will come from sin, / He will be conceived of a father and his daughter. / The father who sires such a child will be damned / And the mother as well who will conceive him, / And the son will be damned, who will be the antichrist. / His father will be his grandfather, who will have sired him, / And his mother will be his sister, from whose womb he will be born” (translation mine). 84 L. M. ROUILLARD

The narrator of this text describes a saint’s vision which includes a piti- ful prayer to Mary at the end of time. In the anonymous version of this story, Mary, moved by the entreaty, in turn pleads with her son saying: “Sire, je vein seürement / A toi si cume a mon seignor / E mon pere e mon criator; / Tu es [e] mon fil e mon peire, / E je sui ta fille e ta meire.”27 “Lord, I come confidently / Before you as my lord / And my father and my creator; / You are my son and my father, / And I am your daughter and your mother” (translation mine). So with these two versions of the antichrist legend, we have on the one hand father–daughter incest that will lead to the birth of the antichrist, versus what Archibald has termed “holy incest,”28 or the description of the Virgin Mary as both mother and daughter to her son. Such duality is reserved for divinities, a reminder that humans are separated from the godly in part by the nature of relationships allowed or forbidden to them. This “holy incest” is evoked in La Manekine as well when Mary is invoked and described by the King of Scotland as she who nourished Christ her son and her father: “Vierge fustes en concevant, / Vierge en portant, vierge enfantastes, / Et vierge celui alaitastes / Qui ert vos peres et vos fius” (ll. 5720–5723). “Virgin you were in conceiving, / Virgin in carrying, virgin you gave birth, / And virgin you suckled Him / Who was your Father and your Son.” Just as in De l’avènement antecrist, La Manekine portrays both extremes of close relationships: the father–daughter relationship which threatens evil consequences and certainly tragic consequences for the protagonist; and the other extreme relationship which portrays the godhead, son and father to his mother, the divine being who saves humanity. The King of Hungary’s attempted incest marks him both as evil and as prideful in an act of hubris that assumes divine privilege. The genre of miracle stories also uses the incest motif to great advantage, though often modulating to incest between mother and son. One of Gautier de Coinci’s (ca. 1177–1236) Marian miracles, “De une noble fame de Rome,” tells the story of a wealthy couple from Rome. After years of longing for a child, they finally have a son whom they adore. The husband eventually concludes that his love for his child endangers his spiritual well-being and so he decides he must leave his family to save his soul. The devastated wife obsessively keeps her son by her side, even in bed, such that she conceives a child by him. The lady, reputed by all to be among the most saintly in the city, gives birth and immediately murders the child, throwing the little body into the privy. Her virtuous reputation provokes the devil to put on a human form and denounce her to the emperor, 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 85 promising ruin for the city if she is not punished. Contrite and repentant, begging the aid of the Blessed Virgin, the haggard lady presents herself before the pope for confession and absolution, which transforms her appearance from one deadened by sin to one radiating God’s love and forgiveness, a sight which chases away the devil, thus eliminating the charge of incest by eliminating her accuser.29 Writing in the early fourteenth century, Jehan de Saint-Quentin included in his collection of didactic and religious Dits tales of incest as well, along with the forgiveness of the sin30; in fact, these narratives would have nicely served as promotional material for the sacrament of penance. In the Dit de la Bourgosse de Romme, a woman falls in love with her son because he resembles her late husband, just as Joïe’s resemblance to her mother eventually makes her the object of her father’s desires. The widow has a child by her son, but immediately after the birth, she strangles the infant. Both the mother and the son are eventually forgiven their sin by a merciful God. In the Dit du Buef, there is a similar scenario: a widow falls in love with her son and has a daughter by him. All three go to Rome to be forgiven by the Pope, who orders they spend the next seven years each sewn up in his own prison: leather hides.31 While La Manekine tells a story of incest attempted, in contrast to these tales of realized incest, all these narratives eventually lead to an episode of repentance and reconciliation. In his collection of saints lives known as the Golden Legend (or Legenda Aurea), compiled in the mid-thirteenth century, Jacobus de Vor- agine recounts Judas’s incest with his mother, narrated within the context of the story of St. Matthias, Judas’s replacement in the group of the Twelve Apostles.32 Like Jocasta, Ciborea dreams she will give birth to a son who will destroy his family. When Judas is born, his mother Ciborea and father Ruben, rather than murder their own child, set him adrift at sea. He is found and raised by the Queen of the Island of Iscariot. Judas later murders his stepbrother and is forced to flee for his life, whereupon he enters into the service of Pilate, whose court neighbors the home of Ciborea and Ruben. Pilate is impressed by his neighbors’ apple orchard, and Judas, attempting to steal some of the fruit for Pilate, is interrupted by Ruben. In the ensuing conflict, Judas kills his father. Pilate awards the lands and wife of Ruben to Judas who thus unknowingly marries his own mother. Only when Ciborea narrates her tale of woe, and Judas tells of his life do they recognize each other as mother and son. It is at the urging of Ciborea that Judas makes his way to Christ for forgiveness and becomes 86 L. M. ROUILLARD one of the Apostles. Jacobus tells this story of incest only to then discount it: “Should we put faith in this strange story? Let the reader decide: but I, for one, deem it more worthy of being rejected.”33 Jacobus’s commentary suggests that while a tale of parent–child incest is hard to believe, it still makes for good drama. Philippe, on the other hand, makes no apology for the salacious details in his tale, but rather uses the attempted incest motif for a didactic purpose, and, one can suppose, also as a way to draw in his listener/reader. We note, however, that attempted incest rather than realized incest leaves the protagonist’s progeny free from any “stain of sin.” Instead, the impure desire is presented as sinful enough to demonstrate the power of forgiveness, whether divine or human. Elizabeth Archibald’s extensive study of incest narratives allows her to categorize these medieval stories on just this basis: consummated incest or thwarted incest which she qualifies as “the flight from the incestuous father.”34 It is this second category of unrealized incest narratives that Archibald sees as the innovative contribution of the Middle Ages to this literary motif. Indeed, she sees La Manekine as “the earliest extant vernacular version of this plot.”35 In contrast to these types of medieval texts that revolve around consummated incest, Archibald groups together the following medieval texts whose plots feature attempted, but not realized incest: Vitae Duorum Offarum, Yde et Olive, Mai und Beaflor, Der König von Reussen and the vita for St. Dymphna from the thirteenth century; Ystoria Regis Franchorum et Filie in qua Adulterium Comitere Voluit, Comedia sine nomine, Emaré, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou, Lion de Bourges, Le Miracle de la fille duroydeHongrie,andLa Istoria de la Fiyla del Rey d’Ungria, Novella della Figlia del Re di Dacia from the fourteenth century, in addition to fifteenth-century prose retellings of some of these tales.36 Space precludes discussion of all these stories here, but let us consider for a moment the thirteenth-century anonymous German tale of Mai und Beaflor, one of these narratives in the category of the flight from incestuous fathers. This poem includes an episode of the attempted rape of Beaflor by her widowed father the Holy Roman Emperor. Beaflor flees to Greece where she meets and marries Count Mai, much to her mother- in-law’s anger. Like Manekine, Beaflor is victimized by her mother-in- law who falsifies missives from the Count, ordering the execution of the young woman who must flee once again. The romance concludes with a general family reunion and the Emperor’s confession before the Pope. An additional motif of this romance is both Beaflor’s suicidal thoughts 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 87 after the attempted rape, as well as Mai’s suicide attempt upon learning the false news of his wife’s supposed execution.37 A significant difference between this romance and that of La Manekine is that Manekine never once contemplates suicide. She may harm herself in the strategic effort to save herself from her father’s marriage proposal, but she never attempts to kill herself in spite of her horrific experiences. Indeed that is one of the morals of the poem, as we are instructed by the narrator who enjoins us to: “Prendés garde a la Manequine, / Qui en tant d’anuis fu si fine / Que par deus fois fu si tentee, / N’onques puis n’eut cuer ne pensee / De cheoir en nul desespoir, / Ains eut tous jors en Dieu espoir / Et en sa beneoite Mere, / Qui de pitié n’est mie avere” (ll. 8545–8552). “Pay heed to Manekine, / Who in so many trials was so pure / That she was twice thus tempted, / Yet never had the heart or the thought / To fall into despair, / But always had hope in God / And in His blessed Mother, / Who is not sparing of pity.” Manekine’s steadfast faith is justified “Car Dix puet bien restorer tout, / Toutes pertes et tous tormens. / Et tous pechiés, petis et grans, / Puet bien Dix et veut pardonner” (ll. 8568–8571). “For God can well restore everything, / All losses and all afflictions; / And all sins, small and great, / These God can and will pardon.” Such a concluding moral is mirrored by the material restoration of Joïe’s hand and her inheritance, demonstrating God’s willingness to recreate both spiritual and material integrity. Consider also the legend of Saint Dymphna, a seventh-century Irish saint known as the “Lily of Eire,” a decapitated saint long venerated as the patron saint of the mentally ill and of epileptics.38 Dymphna was the daughter of a very pagan king of Ireland and a beautiful, devout Chris- tian mother whom she resembled in both appearance and in behavior.39 Upon the mother’s death, the king’s retinue searched for an equally worthy second wife, with no possible candidates save one: horrified, Dymphna escaped her widowed father’s incestuous overtures, and with the help of her confessor Gerebern, along with her father’s court jester and his wife, she ran away to Gheel where she was pursued and ultimately beheaded by her enraged father. Because of her virtue, angels miraculously reattached her head to her corpse. While there has been some disagreement over the year of her martyrdom, tradition dates it to about the year 600, with her feast day celebrated on May 15 commemorating the translation of her relics. According to Lovasik, pilgrims began to appear at the place of her martyrdom around 900.40 Her first biography, written by Canon Peter of Cambrai, dates from the 1240s, also the time of the translation 88 L. M. ROUILLARD of her relics from one site in Gheel to another site in the same city.41 If La Manekine dates from 1225 to 1250, as Sargent-Baur suggests,42 moving St. Dymphna’s relics, combined with a fresh vita could have possibly inspired (along with many other possible sources of influence) Philippe’s tale, or made his narrative seem even more realistic, though his is a story in which the virtuous daughter lives to become a model of lay virtue and is reunited in life with her lost limb. Why was Dymphna, a potential victim of rape and incest, associated with epilepsy and mental illness? Some see Dymphna’s special connection to the mentally ill as related to the state of mind of her widowed father who was “under the stress of mental illness and passion,” whose mourn- ing “unhinged his mind,” making him a “crazed monarch.”43 While her vita specifically mentions two cases of resolved ergotism, a freed prisoner, and a resurrected child, there were incidents of epileptics relieved of their illness, and of the insane who recovered their sanity.44 The best explanation of this attribution of Dymphna as a patron saint to epileptics, however, comes from Muriel LaHarie who concludes that Dymphna is the logical saint for issues of insanity and epilepsy: victim of a paternal “folie meurtrière,” she lost her head at her father’s hands and then was able to “‘retrouver’ sa tête.”45 Similarly, Manekine recovers her lost limb, the hand of forgiveness which she generously extends to her father at the end of the romance. Dymphna’s story offers a miraculous compensation to the young woman who pursued virtue: bodily integrity, though after death. Manekine’s story offers also offers a miraculous outcome to the pure protagonist: restoration of her bodily integrity in the form a spectacular graft.46 Another thirteenth-century incest tale, also mentioned above, is La Chanson d’Yde et Olive, part of the larger epic poem devoted to Huon de Bordeaux and dated from the early thirteenth century.47 In the Chan- son d’Yde et Olive, the protagonist Yde is the daughter of King Florent of Aragon and Clarisse, the latter being the daughter of Huon. Four- teen years after Clarisse’s death, Florent explains: “Maint haut homme ont ma fille demandée / Jou ne sai homme u mix fust marïée / Dedens un mois l’auerai espouzée / Jou le pour l’amour de sa mere” (ll. 6357–6360). “Many a high-born man has asked for my daughter’s hand / I know of no better man to whom she could be married / Within a month I will have taken her in marriage / I will marry her for the love I bore her mother” (translation mine). Like King Antiochus, King Florent’s marriage to his daughter seems perfectly acceptable…to him, and death to 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 89 anyone who tries to keep him from his plan. Designating his proposal as sinful does nothing to dissuade the king; however, unlike King Anti- ochus who does rape his daughter, King Florent attempts and fails, for Yde escapes, dressed as a man to run away from her father’s kingdom and his lascivious embraces. Since she becomes a very successful knight, she of course receives compensation from the king she now serves: his daughter in marriage. Just as astounding as Manekine’s miraculous hand graft is the dénouement of Yde et Olive: on the point of being “unveiled” as a counterfeit male, Yde is in fact miraculously transformed into a man. Years later, after she has in fact been spectacularly transformed into a bona fide male, thus invalidating the accusation of homosexual marriage with the daughter of King of Oton, Yde returns to her homeland of Aragon, osten- sibly to lay claim to the kingdom of her now-deceased father. There is no mention that the late father had a change of heart, or came to regret his incestuous desire, and certainly no hint that he attempted penance. His kingdom is now in the hands of King Desiiers, who has in fact already been condemned by the pope for his land grab. Says Yde: “Li sains papes a ja chiaus condampnéz / Qui li tenront amour ne feaute / Se mon regné ne me rent aquité” (7718–7720). “The Holy Father has already condemned anyone / Who will pledge loyalty to him [Desiiers] / If he does not return to me my rightful kingdom” (translation mine). King Huon eventually involves himself and it is to him that a confession is made by Desi- iers: “Jentieus hons sire dist Desiiers merchi / Mesfait a[i] vos dont j’ai le cuer mari / De l’amender sui pres ce vous affi / Vostre voloir pöés faire de mi” (7974–7977). “Good noble lord, says Desiier, mercy / I have wronged you and my heart is sorrowful / I swear that I am ready to make amends to you / Do with me as you will” (translation mine). Here, admission of transgression followed by amends or restitution takes place in the arena between overlord and vassal. The terrible crime requiring forgiveness in Yde et Olive is not the one against Yde’s person by her father; instead, the great sin is the one of wrongful seizure of the kingdom. Whether the perpetrator Desiiers is transformed, whether his character is made better, we do not know; all we do know is that his exterior behavior has changed following a public admission of his fault. There is no moral modification here as in La Manekine or other incest tales. Some critics in fact consider Yde “as a sort of anti-Manekine […] in a sense, the same character until their flight from incest takes them down different paths.”48 Their stories also have very different perspectives on forgiveness, with Yde et Olive serving as the exception that proves the “rule” 90 L. M. ROUILLARD about medieval incest stories and the power of penance. While there is mention of a pardon in Yde et Olive, it belongs to the temporal realm for the theft of property. By contrast, La Manekine, while it also refers to the withholding of an inheritance that will eventually be awarded, reaches its resolution in a penitential setting related to the attempted incest and order of execution. Then there is the meandering, long-winded fourteenth-century chanson of La Belle Hélène de Constantinople consisting of over 15,000 verses.49 Antoine, Emperor of Constantinople has a daughter Hélène by the niece of Pope Clement. After the mother dies, Antoine is left alone with his beautiful daughter and engenders the desire to take her to wife. A renewed Saracen assault on the pope gives Antoine the opportunity to extract a rash boon, which, once granted, guarantees the Emperor will receive the pope’s blessing on his criminal marriage. Hélène, to no avail, reminds her father of the serious nature of this sin, and manages to escape his clutches, marries Henry, King of England, gives birth to twin sons, and then becomes the target of her mother-in-law’s hatred. During Henry’s absence, the mother-in-law contrives to have Hélène killed, but the latter escapes once again, though one of her arms is cut off and attached to one of the twin sons. Meanwhile, Antoine embarks on a search for his daughter and in the process is baptized and “crut sy bien en Dieu que sen ame a saintie” (l. 4258); “he believed so ardently in God that his soul was sanctified” (translation mine). Antoine finally comes to understand the pain he caused his daughter Hélène (l. 4399) when he meets another potential incest victim, Clarïande (who longs to be baptized a Christian), daughter of the pagan and devil worshipper King Graibaut. Thirty-four years later, Hélène is reunited with all members of her family and is reunited with her cut-off arm, still in the possession of one of her sons. The joyous reunion also includes her father Antoine who manages to ask her forgiveness: “‘S’en prie a Dieu merchy et a vous ensievant.’/ Adont ly va Elaine bonnement pardonnant” (ll. 15378–15379). “‘I pray to God for his mercy and to you as well.’ / Then Hélène fully forgives him” (translation mine), though there is no mention that he formally undergoes penance. The sacrament of choice in this romance is baptism, a ritual of transformation that certainly effaces at least one sin, original sin. Nonetheless, there are several similarities with La Manekine:afather who attempts to commit incest with his daughter; an amputation that marks the victim and allows for identification after years of separation, a miraculous graft, and forgiveness of the perpetrator by the victim. 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 91

In the fourteenth century, incest tales include the Roman du Comte d’Anjou by Jean Maillart, the English Emaré, and the epic Lion de Bourges, the latter containing a long section which retells the Manekine story. In the fourteenth century, the Miracles de Nostre Dame par Person- nages include a play based on Philippe’s romance: Miracle de la ﬁlle du roy de Hongrie.50 A subsequent reworking of the story occurs in the ﬁfteenth century with Jean Wauquelin’s prose redaction of Manekine, demonstrating the continued interest in this tale and the incest motif.51

3.1 La Manekine and Medieval Hungary The view of incestuous behavior as characteristic of barbarians, or as something so depraved that only pagans would engage in it, may perhaps explain the choice of a faraway country such as Hungary as the initial setting for La Manekine. Hungary was at the border between Western and Eastern Europe, the last region to be Christianized and feudalized.52 So Philippe de Rémi’s literary depiction of the King of Hungary’s acquiescence to a marriage with his daughter is a reminder of the sort of behavior one could expect from people who lived on the fringes of civilization, one step away from barbary. Given the number of potential spouses who were excluded from consideration due to extensive incest regulations (as we saw in Chapter 2 of this work), nobles might very well have to look to “barbarous nations” for marriage partners, places where those very illicit unions might be allowed. Geographically and historically located “on the frontier of Christendom,”53 Hungary as a setting for this romance situates the narrative in a liminal space which allows for a questioning of traditional deﬁnitions of marriage and legitimate partners. There are certainly other reasons that might explain why a thirteenth- century French poet might choose Hungary as a setting for his romance. The area of Pannonia or the Carpathian Basin (which includes modern Hungary), once a Roman province, became a Frankish territory under Charlemagne. Between 926 and 937, Hungarians made incursions into the late Charlemagne’s empire and plundered various regions.54 Histo- rians note that by the mid-twelfth century, Hungary had invaded many nations, including Armenia. Such actions would make them good candidates for villains in a medieval French poem. Hungary was also on the path of the Crusaders on their way to Jerusalem, which provided people of Western Europe with direct contact with the “borderland.” Clearly, Hungary was not unknown to French-speakers.55 92 L. M. ROUILLARD

Traditionally evoked as a barbarian race, the Hungarians were believed to be related to Gog and Magog, giants named in the Old Testament, two ancestors of the antichrist, according to the ninth-century monk Rémi of Auxerre.56 (We have already noted in this chapter that the antichrist himself was depicted as the child of incest.) The Hungarian Bishop Hartvic, author of the saintly King Stephen of Hungary’s vita, describes the natives as people who “had once been the scourge of Christians.”57 We note that Christianization of the region had already begun under Prince Géza who ruled the area from about 970–997.58 Then, a member of the Árpád dynasty and future saint, Stephen (969–1038), converted to the Chris- tian religion and was subsequently made king.59 Just as the 496 conversion to Christianity by the Frankish King Clovis initiated a set of politically advantageous alliances between the Merovingian dynasty and the Church, so does King Stephen’s adoption of the Christian faith bring prestige and powerful influence to the Kingdom of Hungary. Hartvic’s vita of St. Stephen, written between 1100 and 1116, added some politically useful “details” to his biography, including the invention of the pope himself offering the crown to Stephen, thus potentially augmenting Hungary’s political status.60 Historically, Hungary had experienced some minor tension with the pope. Pope Gregory VII (1020–1085), for example, wanted to incorporate the kingdom into his sphere of influence, which, according to Hartvic, King Stephen tactfully refused by claiming he had already placed his kingdom directly under the protection of the Blessed Virgin, so there was no need of any other security.61 Stephen was declared a saint in 1083, less than fifty years after his death, and his relic, specifically, his right hand is venerated even today in an elaborate and dazzling reliquary.62 An interesting parallel between Stephen’s vita and Philippe’s romance exists in the detail of Stephen’s hand, miraculously preserved from decomposition after his death, just as Manekine’s amputated hand was preserved for future miraculous graft- ing. Forty-five years after Stephen’s death, the pope decided to have his remains elevated in preparation for canonization. Along with removing his bones, the Hungarians searched his tomb for the ring from his right hand. In the meantime, the monk Mercurius, having been forbidden access to the ceremony and the holy remains, was privileged to secretly receive the said arm, hand, and ring “of marvelous craftsmanship” for safekeeping until the divine notification to reveal them.63 Stephen’s incorrupt hand demonstrated his holiness and God’s favor upon him; in La Manekine, Philippe has transformed this motif of a lost hand returned, but now in his 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 93 poem, it is a demonstration of the holiness of its still living royal owner. The miraculous discovery of Joïe’s missing limb is now, not a sign of the virtue of a deceased individual, but rather proof of God’s favor bestowed upon the still living righteous royal lay heroine. Nonetheless, even though Hungary became Christian, it is important to note that several religions coexisted there: Christians, Greek Ortho- dox, Jews, Muslims along with “pagans.”64 Indeed, King Stephen was depicted as very welcoming to settlers of different cultures and regions, as demonstrated by the following citation attributed to Stephen’s counsel to his son from the Admonitions, composed by a cleric in his entourage: “As guests come from various areas and lands, so they bring with them various languages and customs, various examples and forms of armament, which adorn and glorify the royal court and discourage the pride of foreigners. For a kingdom of one language and one custom is weak and fragile. Therefore, my son, I order that you should feed them with good will and honour them so that they will prefer to live with you rather than inhabit any other place.”65 Part of Hartvic’s vita of Saint Stephen includes specific examples of the king’s protective attitude toward foreigners: when his retainers slaughtered some of the Pechenegs hoping to settle in Hungary, King Stephen was so outraged that potential immi- grants were treated in such a manner that he sentenced his aggressive attendants to death.66 This appreciation of other cultures, enviable even in our own twenty-first century, is quite different from the suspicion of strangers and the obsessive endogamy depicted in the Hungary of La Manekine. It also stands in stark contrast to Joïe’s mother-in-law’s attitude toward the foreigner who marries her son. Historically, however, the presence and even acceptance of non-Christians made Hungary’s relatively recent conversion seem somewhat tenuous, at least to Rome.67 And indeed in the eleventh century, frustrated pretenders to the Hungarian throne attacked ecclesiastical property and clerics because of their association with royal power, giving rise to the fear that Hungary might regress to paganism, or to that time of “barbaric crudity,” as the twelfth-century Hungarian King Kálmán described the epoch preceding King Stephen’s conversion.68 In 1061, even the pagans felt empowered to request of the then King Béla I permission to execute all the priests.69 King Stephen’s openness toward strangers contrasts with the extreme endogamy depicted in La Manekine, both in the attitude of the Hungarian barons and clergy regarding Joïe’s potential marriage with an outsider, and in the attitude of the queen dowager of Scotland who disdains the unknown woman 94 L. M. ROUILLARD who washes up on the shores of her country only to marry her son the king. The role of the Roman Senator who demonstrates a paternal protection of the stranger who washes up on Rome’s shore provides a vivid contrast to the barbarian behavior of Manekine’s father and the brutish jealousy of her mother-in-law. With the character of the wise Roman Sen- ator, Philippe evokes both Christian compassion and the rule of law in contrast to barbarian lawlessness. Given its liminal status on the border of Christendom, Philippe de Rémi’s choice of Hungary as one of the settings for La Manekine thus invokes a time and place where an incestuous father–daughter marriage could be portrayed as possible or likely. In this way, Philippe de Rémi warns his readers and listeners of the dangerous regression to barbary if society is not able to achieve a balance between spiritual and material concerns. Christianity may have penetrated Hungary, but in our romance, it is a Christianity which must continually battle paganism at a time when the clergy can be all too easily dominated by the nobility, and when the nobility can push aside spiritual authority in favor of dynastic power. Karin Ueltschi’s work on the theme of the cut-off hand reminds us that in battle warriors cut off the right hand of their opponent to neutralize his ability to attack with the sword, while cutting off the left hand to eliminate the opponent’s ability to protect himself.70 Philippe’s use of the cut-off hand motif in Manekine certainly symbolizes a spiritual battle in which the Christian Joïe is engaged in battle against a barbarian father; ironically, the loss of her “protective” left hand is the assurance of her spiritual salvation. It takes a young woman to demonstrate the desired political and spiritual virtue needed to eventually protect her soul, her dynasty, and her kingdom’s interests.

Notes

1. Antti Aarne, The Types of the Folktale: A Classiﬁcation and Bibliography, trans. and enlarged by Stith Thompson (Helsinki: Helsingin Liike Kir- japaino Oy, 1961), 240–241. The Maiden without Hands is labeled as type 706. Type 510B or The Dress of Gold, of Silver, and of Stars also includes a father who desires his daughter, 177. See also Stith Thomp- son, The Folktale (New York: The Dryden Press, 1946), 120–122; 128. All citations and translations of La Manekine are taken from Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999). 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 95

2. Elizabeth Archibald, “Gold in the Dungheap: Incest Stories and Fam- ily Values in the Middle Ages,” Journal of Family History 22 (1997): 133–149; here 133–135. See also her “Incest in Medieval Literature and Society,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 25 (1989): 1–5; here 1– 2. Elizabeth Archibald, “The Appalling Dangers of Family Life: Incest in Medieval Literature,” in Medieval Family Roles: A Book of Essays,ed. Cathy Jorgensen Itnyre (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996): 157–171; here 166–167. 3. Elizabeth Archibald, Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations, Including the Text of the Historia Apollonii regis Tyri with an English Translation (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 1991), 34. See also Elizabeth Archibald, “Flight from Incest: Two Late Classical Precursors of the Constance Theme,” Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 259–272; here 264– 267. 4. Gesta Romanorum or Entertaining Moral Stories, eds. and trans. Charles Swan and Wynnard Hooper (New York: Dover, 1959; Bohn Library Edi- tion 1876), 259–299. 5. The incest in Apollonius is perpetuated by means of the father’s riddle: the longer he can thwart the courtship process, the longer he can keep his daughter with him. The twelfth-century Marie de France’s Les Dous Amanz is a tale about another father who cannot bear to give away his daughter and imposes an unrealizable test upon would-be suitors: he who can carry the girl up a high mountain without stopping will win her hand. Instead of holding on to his daughter, he eventually loses her: the young man she loves undertakes the test and dies in the process. The young girl, heartbroken, lies down beside her beloved and dies alongside him. See Marie de France, Lais, trans. Laurence Harf-Lancner, ed. Karl Warnke (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990), 168–181. 6. Nennius, British History and the Welsh Annals, ed. and trans. John Morris (London: Phillimore and Co., 1980), 29 and 33. See Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 186, footnote 85. See also Norris J. Lacy and Geoffrey Ashe, The Arthurian Handbook (New York: Garland Publishing, 1988), 403–404. 7. Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes,Vol.I,ed. Karsten Friss-Jensen, trans. Peter Fisher (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2015), 107–109. My thanks to Dr. Dolores Buttry for pointing out this story to me. 8. Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius: A Medieval Oedipus Legend, trans. Edwin H. Zeydel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955). See Jean-Charles Payen, Le Motif du repentir dans la littérature française médiévale des origines à 1230 (Geneva: Droz, 1967), 104–107 on the French version of this legend. See the translation of the German version into French, La Vie de Saint de Saint Grégoire, Jean-Marc Pastré 96 L. M. ROUILLARD

and Brigitte Herlem-Prey (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1986), dating from the eleventh or twelfth century, with six extant manuscripts from the thirteenth through the beginning of the fifteenth century, ii–iii; xv– xvi. See Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 111–119. See Emma Campbell, Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Commu- nity in Old French Hagiography (Woodbridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2008), 86–89 for her Lacanian reading of this story. 9. This motif of the sorrowful, sinful Charlemagne is usually dated back to the tenth-century Vita Aegidii. Rita Lejeune et Jacques Stiennon, La Légende de Roland dans l’art du Moyen Age (Bruxelles: Arcade, 1967), 145. See Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 132–137. Auguste Demoulin, “Charlemagne, la légende de son péché et le choix de Ganelon pour l’ambassade,” Marche Romane 25 (1975): 105–126; here 108, reads an oblique reference to this tradition in the Oxford Chanson de Roland. Roland’s suggestion that Ganelon, his step-father, be the ambassador to Marsile, and Charlemagne’s acceptance of this idea have long puzzled readers. However, when one takes this incest motif into account, the suggestion becomes more logical: married to the emperor’s sister, Ganelon is a reminder of Charlemagne’s dishonorable conduct. Joseph Duggan, “Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont Proclaims the First Cru- sade,” in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989): 18–22; here 22, suggests that the specific reference to Saint Gilles in lines 2096–2098 suggests familiarity with the legend of an incestuous Charlemagne. See Léon Gau- tier, Les Epopées françaises: Etude sur les origines et l’histoire de la littéra- ture nationale (Paris: Société Générale de Librairie Catholique, 1880), 64–66. Baudoin de Gaiffier, “Le Péché de Charlemagne,” in Recueil de Travaux offert à M. Clovis Brunel (Paris: Société de l’Ecole des Chartes, 1955): 490–503; here 502–503, describes another tradition which accuses Charlemagne of necrophilia. 10. Janet L. Nelson, “Women at the Court of Charlemagne: A Case of Monstrous Regiment?” in Medieval Queenship, ed. John Carmi Parson (Gloucestershire, UK: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1993): 43–61; here 58–59. Nelson explains that the more likely explanation is that Charlemagne kept his daughters unmarried and by his side to use both as informal ambassadors and informants within a very political palace. 11. Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne,ed.and trans. Lewis Thorpe (London: Penguin, 1969), 75. And in a thirteenth- century biography, based on Einhard, we find the following statement: “They [his daughters] were very beautiful, and he loved them very much; it was remarkable that he would not let them marry, except for the eldest, who was given to Constantine, the emperor of the Greeks. He watched 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 97

over them always, keeping them in his palace until he died, for he said that he could not live without them. If, at times, he heard rumors about them, he had a heart so patient and kind, that he behaved as though he had no suspicions.” A Thirteenth-Century Life of Charlemagne, trans. Robert Levine (New York: Garland, 1991), 65. 12. Guillaume de Berneville, La Vie de Saint Gilles, eds. Gaston Paris and Alphonse Bos (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1881). This story dates back to an anonymous tenth-century narrative. See Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 199–202. See De Gaiffier, “Le Péché de Charlemagne,” 496. The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger (New York: Arno, 1969), “Saint Gilles, September 1,” 516–519. 13. Elizabeth Archibald, “Arthur and Mordred: Variations on an Incest Theme,” Arthurian Literature 8 (1989): 1–27. See 3 for her research on the appearance of this twist related to Charlemagne’s unnameable sin. See also Miranda Griffon, “Writing out the Sin: Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spectre of Incest,” Neophilologus 88 (2004): 499–519; here 515. 14. Karlamagnus Saga: The Saga of Charlemagne and His Heroes, trans. Constance B. Hieatt (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975), 117. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 200–201. This text is also discussed in the context of the sacrament of penance in our Chapter 5. 15. Hieatt, Karlamagnus Saga, 152–153. 16. Lejeune and Stiennon, La Légende de Roland, 145–150. See also Demoulin, “Charlemagne, la légende de son péché,” 105–126. 17. See James Douglas Bruce, “Mordred’s Incestuous Birth,” in Medieval Studies in Memory of Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927): 197–208; here 204. A. Micha, “Deux sources de la Mort Artur: II, La naissance incestueuse de Mordred,” Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie 66 (1950): 369–372; here 371–372. See also Helen Adolf, “The Concept of Original Sin as Reflected in Arthurian Romance,” in Studies in Language and Literature in Honor of Margaret Schlauch (Warsaw: Polish Scientific Publishers, 1966): 21–29; here 29. And see Archibald, “Arthur and Mordred,” 1–3 and her “The Appalling Dangers,” 165–166. Also Jean Frappier, Etude sur ‘La Mort Artu’ (Paris: Droz, 1961), 32–36. Griffon, “Writing out the Sin,” rightly points out a significant difference between the uses of the incest motif in the Charle- magne and Arthurian traditions: Roland and Charlemagne maintain their prestigious reputations while the confrontation between Arthur and Mor- dred symbolizes a crumbling order, 501–502. In La Manekine, it is not consummated incest, but a proposed incestuous marriage that symbolizes barbarity and potential decay. 98 L. M. ROUILLARD

18. Bruce, “Mordred’s Incestuous Birth,” 204. Archibald, “Arthur and Mor- dred,” 10, notes that the incestuous relationship between Mordred and Guinevere is portrayed as less important than their adulterous relationship. One could say the same for Tristan and Isolde. Tristan sleeps with his uncle’s ﬁancée and then wife, Isolde, which would indeed qualify as incest by afﬁnity, and yet the emphasis is on the adulterous nature of their relationship. 19. Archibald, “Arthur and Mordred,” 2, footnote 3. Among the Arthurian romances which include Mordred as Arthur’s son are: Mort Artu, Vulgate Merlin, Merlin-Huth, Estoire del St Graal, according to A. Micha, “Deux sources,” 371. Frappier, Etude, 31–33, suggests the motif originates in the Agravain rather than in the Mort Artu. See Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 203–204. 20. Bruce, “Mordred’s Incestuous Birth,” 197–198. 21. Archibald, “Flight from Incest,” 268. She reads the development of the Arthurian motif as a parallel to the Carolingian motif in “Arthur and Mordred,” 3: “The French authors who apparently introduced the incest motif may have intended to equate his moral standing with that of their own Worthy Charlemagne.” 22. Archibald, “Appalling Dangers,” 165 and “Arthur and Mordred,” 2–3. 23. Archibald, “Appalling Dangers,” 166. 24. M. Victoria Guerin, “The King’s Sin: The Origins of the David-Arthur Parallel,” in The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition, eds. Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe (New York: Garland, 1988): 15–30; here 20. Amnon rapes his half-sister Tamar and is killed by order of his half-brother Absalom, 2 Samuel 13. Also Archibald, “Arthur and Mordred,” 3–4. 25. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, suggests that the development of the legend of Charlemagne’s sin of incest may have been in fact an effort to warn the emperor’s descendants “contre tout abus d’autorité vis-à-vis de l’Eglise,” 134. 26. E. Walberg, Deux versions inédites de la légende de l’antéchrist en vers français du XIIIe siècle (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1928), ll. 19–35. See also Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cor- nell University Press, 1990), 134–135. 27. Walberg, Antéchrist anonyme, ll. 924–928. 28. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 146. 29. Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. Frédéric Koenig (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1966), tome II, 130–157. 30. Dits en quatrains d’alexandrins monorimes de Jehan de Saint-Quentin,ed. B. Munk Olsen (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1978), 39–46; here 217–245. Translations are mine. 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 99

31. See Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 138–140 for her comments on the Dit du Buef. 32. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, 172–174. See Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 107–110. 33. Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, 173. 34. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 146–147. 35. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 147, 153. 36. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 149. See pages 153–161 for her comments on La Manekine. See Linda Marie Rouillard, “Read- ing the Reader: Jean Wauquelin’s Prose Adaptation of La Manekine,” Medieval Perspectives 15 (2000): 93–104. 37. This romance has been edited by Albrecht Classen, Mai und Beaflor (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006). See also his article “Roman Sen- timental in the Middle Ages? Mai und Beaflor as a Literary Reflection of the Medieval History of Emotions,” Oxford German Studies 2 (2006): 83–100. See also Jutta Eming, “Questions on the Theme of Incest in Courtly Literature,” in The Court Reconvenes: Courtly Literature Across the Disciplines, eds. Barbara K. Altmann and Carleton W. Carrol (Cam- bridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2003): 153–160; here 155–157 for her analysis of Mai und Beaflor. Eming notes the unconscious incestuous desire implied by the mother-in-law’s hostility toward Beaflor, 156–157. 38. Rev. Lawrence G. Lovasik, S.V.D., Saint Dymphna (Pittsburgh: Divine Word Missionaries, 1971), 1. Louis Réau, Iconographie de l’art chrétien (Paris: PUF, 1958), tome III, 407. See also La Manekine: Text, Trans- lation, Commentary, ed. and trans. Irene Gnarra (New York: Garland, 1988), xxvi, for the possible influence of this Saint Dymphna’s life on Philippe’s romance. Another Irish saint associated with incest is Saint Barr whose father was the child of father–daughter incest. The Irish King Echach’s offspring were especially incestuous: his daughter gave birth to a child after having sex with all three of her brothers. See Herlihy, Medieval Households, 37. 39. The king in question was Damon or perhaps Oriel, and the mother may have been known as Odilla, according to Lovasik, Saint Dymphna,6– 7, who also points out that Dymphna’s name had many different permutations: Damnoda, Damnad, Damphnod, Dimphna, Dimpna, Dinna, Dynna, Digna, Dignen, Dingenen, 7. Lovasik traces the etymology of the name to the Latin digna, or “to be worthy,” 8. 40. Lovasik, Saint Dymphna, 19–23; he reports that some people date Dym- phna’s martyrdom to a much earlier period, to the fourth century, 6–7, and some situate her death as late as 650. 41. Recorded in the Acta Sanctorum published by the Bollandists beginning in the seventeenth century. Of the vita’s date, see L. Van der Essen, Etude 100 L. M. ROUILLARD

critique et littéraire sur les vitae des saints mérovingiens de l’ancienne Bel- gique (Paris: Imprimerie Joseph Van In & Cie, 1907), 316, which places composition between 1238–1247. Ferdinand Heuckenkamp, Die Heilige Dimphna (Königliche Vereinigte Friedrichs-Universität, 1887), 9, notes the existence of a paper copy of this vita dating from 1640 in the archives of the Gheel church. 42. Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 83–91. 43. Lovasik, Saint Dymphna, 10. “Because she had been able to resist the insane desires and demands of her father and to remain pure, the belief spread that God had granted her the privilege of being the special saint of the victims of mental maladies,” Lovasik, 64. 44. Muriel LaHarie, La Folie au Moyen Age (Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1991), 182 and 198, footnote 26. 45. LaHarie, La Folie, 182. Ironically, Gerebern, who was also beheaded by Dymphna’s father, seems to have lost his head a second time, since his body, minus his skull, lies in Munster, Lovasik, Saint Dymphna, 23. We note that Saint Dymphna is especially relevant to Massillon, Ohio, the location of a national shrine devoted to Saint Dymphna, and inaugurated in 1938 on the grounds of the state hospital, dedicated in 1939 on May 15, and now run by the Heartland Behavorial Health Center. See also Thomas Timoux Thomas, Anatomy of an Asylum (Medina, OH: Human Services House, 1981), 31. 46. See Linda Marie Rouillard, “Marriage and Mutilation in La Manekine,” Romance Language Annual 10 (2001): 99–104. 47. Esclarmonde, Clarisse et Florent, Yde et Olive, ed. Max Schwigel (Marburg: N.G. Elwert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1889). 48. Robert Clark, “A Heroine’s Sexual Itinerary: Incest, Transvestism, and Same-Sex Marriage in Yde et Olive,” in Gender Transgressions: Crossing the Normative Barrier in Old French Literature, ed. Karen J. Taylor (New York: Garland Publisher, 1998): 89–105; here 91 and 93. 49. La Belle Hélène de Constantinople: Chanson de geste du XIVe siècle, ed. Claude Roussel (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1995). All citations are taken from this edition. See also Alexandre Haggerty Krappe, “La Belle Hélène de Constantinople,” Romania 53 (1937): 324–353. See Huguette LeGros, “Parenté naturelle, alliance, parenté spirituelle: de l’inceste à la sainteté,” in Les Relations de Parenté dans le Monde Médiéval (Aix: CUERM, 1989): 511–548; here 511–513 for her discussion of this epic. 50. See Linda Marie Rouillard, “Playing with Romance: A Fourteenth- Century Dramatic Adaptation of La Manekine,” Le Moyen Français 48 (2001): 77–92. 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 101

51. See Jean Wauquelin, La Manequine, ed. Maria Colombo Timelli (Paris: Editions Classiques Garnier, 2010). See Linda Marie Rouillard, “Read- ing the Reader: Jean Wauquelin’s Prose Adaptation of La Manekine,” Medieval Perspectives 15 (2000): 93–104. 52. M. Shepherd, Tradition and Re-creation in Thirteenth-Century Romance: La Manekine and Jehan et Blonde by Philippe de Rémi (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 49–50 and 57. Legros, “Parenté,” 523, footnote 35; 543, footnote 13; 547, footnote 36; 548. 53. Nora Berend, At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and ‘Pagans’ in Medieval Hungary, c.1000–c.1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17. See also Pál Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2005), 88. 54. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 3–4; 14. Joseph Lynch, The Medieval Church: A Brief History (London: Longman, 1992), 102, explains that the Magyars, from whom the Hungarians are descended, invaded the eastern edge of Frankish territory and were converted in the early eleventh century during the reign of King Stephen. 55. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 50–51 reminds us that Louis VII passed through Hungary on his way to the Second Crusade. 56. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, Volume I: The Growth of Ties of Dependence, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 55. 57. Hartvic, “Life of King Stephen of Hungary” trans. Nora Berend, in Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology, ed. Thomas Head (London: Routledge, 2000): 379. 58. Nora Berend, “How Many Medieval Europes? The ‘Pagans’ of Hungary and Regional Diversity in Christendom,” in The Medieval World,eds. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (New York: Routledge, 2001): 77– 92; here 91. 59. Bloch, Feudal Society, Vol. 1, 13. 60. See also Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 20. And Berend, “Hartvic,” 376. 61. Berend, “How Many Medieval Europes,” 80. 62. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 33. 63. Hartvic, Life of King Stephen of Hungary, 392–396. 64. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 40–41. 65. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 40. Berend supplies the Latin original: “Sicut enim ex diversis partibus et provinciis veniunt hospites, ita diver- sas linguas et consuetudines, diversaque documenta et arma secum ducunt, que omnia regna [variant: regiam] ornant et magniﬁcant aulam et pert- erritant exterorum arrogantiam. Nam unius lingue uniusque moris regnum inbecille et fragile est. Propterea iubeo te ﬁli mi, ut bona voluntate illos nutrias, et honeste teneas, ut tecum libentius degant, quam alicubi habitent.” 102 L. M. ROUILLARD

66. Hartvic, Life of King Stephen of Hungary, 389–390. 67. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 54–55. 68. Berend, At the Gate of Christendom, 55. 69. Engel, The Realm of St. Stephen, 31. 70. Karin Ueltschi, La main coupée: métonymie et mémoire mythique (Paris: Champion, 2010), 27.

References

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Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate. Not of Woman Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. Bruce, James Douglas. “Mordred’s Incestuous Birth.” In Medieval Studies in Memory of Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis. New York: Columbia University Press, 1927. 197–208. Campbell, Emma. Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography. Woodbridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2008. Clark, Robert. “A Heroine’s Sexual Itinerary: Incest, Transvestism, and Same-Sex Marriage in Yde et Olive.” In Gender Transgressions: Crossing the Normative Barrier in Old French Literature. Edited by Karen J. Taylor. New York: Garland Publisher, 1998. 89–105. Classen, Albrecht. “Roman Sentimental in the Middle Ages? Mai und Beaflor as a Literary Reflection of the Medieval History of Emotions.” Oxford German Studies 2 (2006): 83–100. De Gaiffier, Baudoin. “Le Péché de Charlemagne.” In Recueil de Travaux offert àM.ClovisBrunel. Paris: Société de l’Ecole des Chartes, 1955. 490–503. Demoulin, Auguste. “Charlemagne, la légende de son péché et le choix de Ganelon pour l’ambassade.” Marche Romane 25 (1975): 105–126. Duggan, Joseph. “Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont Proclaims the First Crusade.” In A New History of French Literature.EditedbyDenis Hollier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. 18–22. Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne. Edited and translated by Lewis Thorpe. London: Penguin, 1969. Eming, Jutta. “Questions on the Theme of Incest in Courtly Literature.” In The Court Reconvenes: Courtly Literature Across the Disciplines.Editedby Barbara K. Altmann and Carleton W. Carrol. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2003. 153–160. Engel, Pál. The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary, 895–1526. London: I.B. Tauris, 2005. Esclarmonde, Clarisse et Florent, Yde et Olive. Edited by Max Schwigel. Marburg: N.G. Elwert’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1889. Frappier, Jean. Etude sur ‘La Mort Artu’. Paris: Droz, 1961. Gautier de Coinci. Les Miracles de Nostre Dame. Edited by Frédéric Koenig. Genève: Librairie Droz, 1966. Gautier, Léon. Les Epopées françaises: Etude sur les origines et l’histoire de la littérature nationale. Paris: Société Générale de Librairie Catholique, 1880. Gesta Romanorum or Entertaining Moral Stories. Edited and translated by Charles Swan and Wynnard Hooper. New York: Dover, 1959; Bohn Library Edition 1876. 104 L. M. ROUILLARD

Guerin, M. Victoria. “The King’s Sin: The Origins of the David-Arthur Parallel.” In The Passing of Arthur: New Essays in Arthurian Tradition.Editedby Christopher Baswell and William Sharpe. New York: Garland, 1988. 15–30. Griffon, Miranda. “Writing out the Sin: Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spectre of Incest.” Neophilologus 88 (2004): 499–519. Guillaume de Berneville. La Vie de Saint Gilles. Edited by Gaston Paris and Alphonse Bos. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1881. Hartmann von Aue. Gregorius: A Medieval Oedipus Legend. Translated by Edwin H. Zeydel. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955. Hartvic. “Life of King Stephen of Hungary.” Translated by Nora Berend. In Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology. Edited by Thomas Head. London: Routledge, 2000. 375–398. Heuckenkamp, Ferdinand. Die Heilige Dimphna. Königliche Vereinigte Friedrichs-Universität, 1887. Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend. Translated by Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger. New York: Arno, 1969. Jehan de Saint-Quentin. Dits en quatrains d’qlexandrins monorimes de Jehan de Saint-Quentin. Edited by B. Munk Olsen. Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1978. Karlamagnus Saga: The Saga of Charlemagne and His Heroes. Translated by Constance B. Hieatt. Toronto: Pontiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975. Krappe, Alexandre Haggerty. “La Belle Hélène de Constantinople.” Romania 53 (1937): 324–353. Lacy, Norris J., and Geoffrey Ashe. The Arthurian Handbook.NewYork: Garland Publishing, 1988. LaHarie, Muriel. La Folie au Moyen Age. Paris: Le Léopard d’Or, 1991. LeGros, Huguette. “Parenté naturelle, alliance, parenté spirituelle: de l’inceste à la sainteté.” In Les Relations de Parenté dans le Monde Médiéval. Aix: CUERM, 1989. 511–548. Lejeune, Rita, and Jacques Stiennon. La Légende de Roland dans l’art du Moyen Age. Bruxelles: Arcade, 1967. Lovasik, Lawrence G. (Rev.), S.V.D. Saint Dymphna. Pittsburgh: Divine Word Missionaries, 1971. Lynch, Joseph. The Medieval Church: A Brief History. London: Longman, 1992. Mai und Beaﬂor. Edited by Albrecht Classen. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006. Marie de France. Lais. Translated by Laurence Harf-Lancner and edited by Karl Warnke. Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990. Micha, A. “Deux sources de la Mort Artur: II, La naissance incestueuse de Mordred.” Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie 66 (1950): 369–372. 3 HEROINES, VILLAINS, AND BARBARIANS IN OTHER MEDIEVAL … 105

Nelson, Janet L. “Women at the Court of Charlemagne: A Case of Mon- strous Regiment?” In Medieval Queenship. Edited by John Carmi Parson. Gloucestershire, UK: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited, 1993. 43–61. Nennius. British History and the Welsh Annals. Edited and translated by John Morris. London: Phillimore and Co., 1980. Payen, Jean-Charles. Le Motif du repentir dans la littérature française médiévale des origines à 1230. Geneva: Droz, 1967. Philippe de Rémi. Le Roman de la Manekine. Edited from Paris BNF fr. 1588. Translated by Barbara Sargent-Baur. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1999. ———. La Manekine: Text, Translation, Commentary. Edited and translated by Irene Gnarra. New York: Garland, 1988. Réau, Louis. Iconographie de l’art chrétien. Paris: PUF, 1958, tome III. Rouillard, Linda Marie. “Marriage and Mutilation in La Manekine.” Romance Language Annual 10 (2001): 99–104. ———. “Playing with Romance: A Fourteenth-Century Dramatic Adaptation of La Manekine.” Le Moyen Français 48 (2001): 77–92. ———. “Reading the Reader: Jean Wauquelin’s Prose Adaptation of La Manekine.” Medieval Perspectives 15 (2000): 93–104. Saxo Grammaticus. Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes,Vol.I.Editedby Karsten Friss-Jensen and translated by Peter Fisher. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2015. Shepherd, M. Tradition and Re-creation in Thirteenth-Century Romance: La Manekine and Jehan et Blonde by Philippe de Rémi.Amsterdam:Rodopi, 1990. Stiennon, Jacques. La Légende de Roland dans l’art du Moyen Age. Bruxelles: Arcade, 1967. A Thirteenth-Century Life of Charlemagne. Translated by Robert Levine. New York: Garland, 1991. Thomas, Thomas Timoux. Anatomy of an Asylum. Medina, OH: Human Services House, 1981. Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. New York: The Dryden Press, 1946. Ueltschi, Karin. La main coupée: métonymie et mémoire mythique. Paris: Champion, 2010. Van der Essen, L. Etude critique et littéraire sur les vitae des saints mérovingiens de l’ancienne Belgique. Paris: Imprimerie Joseph Van In & Cie, 1907. La Vie de Saint de Saint Grégoire. Translated by Jean-Marc Pastré and Brigitte Herlem-Prey. Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1986. Walberg, E. Deux versions inédites de la légende de l’antéchrist en vers français du XIIIe siècle. Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1928. Wauquelin, Jean. La Manequine. Edited by Maria Colombo Timelli. Paris: Editions Classiques Garnier, 2010. CHAPTER 4

Medieval Marriage, Misogamy, Misogyny

While at first glance one is struck by the fantastic even outlandish aspects of La Manekine, there are within this poem references to many con- crete social and legal issues of the times, for example, marriage, including conflicting ecclesiastical and lay views on matrimony and sexuality. In Philippe’s poem, we see a range of attitudes toward marriage. It can be contracted to protect the interests of a kingdom, or fall vulnerable to familial jealousy. It can nonetheless survive horrific tribulations when based on love and individual volition. A narrative whose plot includes a proposed incestuous marriage, but also depicts happily married couples suggests at least some ambivalence about the institution and more than a few concerns about contemporary attitudes and legalities related to marriage. The purpose of this chapter is to briefly consider the evolution of the institution leading up to the time of Philippe Rémi’s early thirteenth- century composition of La Manekine to better understand the political meaning of the proposed incestuous marriage versus marriage by consent. What does this poem have to say about the role of the Church in material affairs through the depictions of two extremes of marriage: the union proposed by paternal fiat and clerical complicity at one end of the spectrum, and the union formed by Church-championed individual consent, with its vulnerability before an unconsulted, disgruntled parent at the other? Just as we continue in the twenty-first century to grapple with the definition of marriage and the determination of who is eligible to marry

© The Author(s) 2020 107 L. M. Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6_4 108 L. M. ROUILLARD whom, so too did medieval people. Just as marriage today has implications for such practical material matters as health insurance, taxes, and child custody, so did the medieval definition of marriage have serious consequences for the protection, control, and transmission of property. Whether we consider the modern debates addressing gay marriage, or the medieval debates over young adults consenting to their choice of spouse, the official understanding of what constitutes a legal marital union is a central issue for social stability. Whether one views matrimony as a relationship to be regulated by religion, by the state, or by the family, there is no doubt that it is a fundamental institutionalized relationship common in some form or other to most societies, and thus shapes and qualifies our lives and communities. In her book Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage, Stephanie Coontz succinctly characterizes the basic sociological function of marriage: “It converted strangers into relatives and extended cooperative relations beyond the immediate family or small band by creating far-flung networks of in-laws.”1 Such a definition recalls the function of extended incest prohibitions as a way to extend social networks and bring new blood into the community. Coontz’s characterization of marriage as the creation of a network also echoes St. Augustine’s rationale for the prohibition of incest in that it promotes a “common social life of the greatest number.”2 We must, of course, note that changing definitions and conditions of marriage were once part of a larger ecclesiastical effort to assert the Church’s authority over the laity more broadly. From Roman Antiquity when marriage was basically a family affair, to the Middle Ages when the Church progressively absorbed authority over marriage, it is clear that the Church understood the politics of marriage as one way of increasing its general social influence. James Brundage aptly summarizes the Church’s general social reform efforts which he dates to the twelfth century, saying:

The partisans of reform emphasized as a key element in their program the renewal of canon law, which they believed must play a key role in the gov- ernance of Christian society. From the very beginning, the reformers had sought to create a working system of Church courts and to expand the Church’s jurisdiction, so as to bring into its courts a growing portion of the business of conﬂict resolution in the West. Reformers argued that the Church’s courts ought to function as the primary forum for the settlement 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 109

of disputes in any way affecting public or private morals, ecclesiastical institutions, or the administration of Church property. Church courts were to be a mechanism for the orderly regulation of Christian society.3

One of the most effective ways of regulating a society is to control marriage: define it, administer it, ritualize it, and for the Middle Ages, make it a focus of medieval canon law. As Ruth Mazo Karras has pointed out, however, this is but one side of the process: on the one hand we can examine the Church’s use of the institution to expand and legitimize its authority, but we must not neglect the Christianization,4 or what could also be called the “mystification” of marriage, the process of making marriage more than simply a legal written agreement. Such a transformation imbues the institution with ceremony, symbolism, and spiritual meaning well beyond the contractual. Of course, like many other institutions, marriage has not been static, even in the modern era: its status, traditions, and ceremonies have evolved over time. It has been celebrated, denigrated, and revalued. In modern times, marriage has been alternately viewed as the validation of adult life, or condemned as a circumscribed, stifling relationship, an unnecessary bourgeois contrivance. Likewise in the classical and medieval world, attitudes toward marriage could be ambivalent and changeable. While the Roman state emphasized the importance of marriage in determining the legitimacy of children and in facilitating inheritance, some saw such unions as socially confining and stifling. For instance, the misogamous second-century poet Juvenal was so contemptuous of the institution that he suggested his friend Postumous would be better off hanging himself or throwing himself off a bridge rather than marrying.5 Nonetheless, for the state, marriage was necessary to clearly identify legitimate offspring, which obviously had significant implications for the management of property and inheritance. The Roman definition of marriage did not necessarily include elaborate rituals or ceremonies and was primarily a family matter rather than a religious matter. There were also clearly defined interdictions against incestuous unions as defined by consanguinity and affinity.6 Among the most stable elements of marriage were intent, dowry, consent, and marital affection, again, not to be equated with our twenty-first-century notion of love, though this certainly does not mean that spouses did not come to love each other. Affectio maritalis was demonstrated by honor matrimonii:the dignity and respect with which one treated one’s spouse. And similar to 110 L. M. ROUILLARD

Roman law, Germanic law recognized as a legitimate marriage the permanent cohabitation of a man and woman who intended to have children.7 In contrast to the respect accorded to marriage by the Roman state, some early Christians living within the Roman empire expressed some ambivalence, such as St. Paul who at least half-heartedly accepted marriage, conceding: “It is better to marry than to burn,” (I Corinthians 7:9). In this view, married sexuality is slightly less dangerous than “free- range” sexuality. On the other hand, the Encratites, early Christians from the second century, practiced sexual abstinence as did the slightly later Montanists who believed that Christ’s resurrection marked the passage into a new era and thus procreation and marriage need no longer continue.8 The fourth-century Church father Saint Jerome disdained marriage, accepting as its only redeeming feature procreative sex because it could generate virgins.9 Like Xystus, a Pythagorean philosopher who believed that “‘he who too ardently loves his own wife is an adulterer,’”10 Jerome viewed marriage with more than a little disgust. Jerome invited young virgins to “Learn from me a holy arrogance: know that you are better than they [married women] are,”11 though Jovinian counseled virgins: “Do not be proud; you and your married sisters are equally members of the same church.”12 Medieval clerics, then, certainly inherited some of their contempt for marriage from such misogamous opinions of Romans and early Christians of Antiquity. The pretext for the Letter of Valerius to Ruffinus, Against Marriage (c. 1180) by Walter Map, Archdeacon of Oxford, allows the narrator to catalog all the sins of a woman in order to protect his philosopher friend from the supreme evil of matrimony.13 In the late fourteenth- century, Jehan Le Fèvre translates a misogamous poem from about 1295 by the married cleric Mathieu of Boulogne, Les Lamentations de Math- eolus. In this work, Mathieu rues the day he married, an act which cost him his clerical career for such an infraction against canon law.14 Why did this misogamy continue into the Middle Ages, even during the time during which Philippe de Rémi was active? We must remember that the early thirteenth century was a time of the suppression of heretical sects which often rejected the institution of marriage. In 1233, for instance, Pope Gregory IX sent the Dominican Robert le Bougre to investigate accusations of heresy in northern France.15 And in the south of France the Cathars’ beliefs were particularly dangerous because of their condemnation of reproduction and marriage, for these entrapped yet more souls in the evil material world. It is also interesting to note that in Cathar mores, 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 111 marriage is considered to be as sinful as incest. For example, Rainier Fecconi, a former Cathar turned Dominican and Inquisitor in the mid- thirteenth century said: “It is the common opinion of all Cathars that carnal marriage is always mortal sin and that in the future one will not be more severely punished for adultery or incest than for lawful marriage.”16 Likewise, Radulf Ardens said the following about Cathar opinions of marriage which was likened to incest: “They say it is as great a crime to enter into one’s wife as into one’s mother or daughter.”17 This heretical insistence on the inherent evilness of the body and the material world required serious rebuttal. In spite of the Church’s sometimes ambivalent attitude toward the married state, some clerical writers had a vested interest in finding something positive about a sacramental institution vilified by heretics. From all its sources, the barrage of negative statements about marriage certainly affects the secular view of the married state and triggers certain defenses, especially by lay writers, of an institution so important to the transmission of property and inheritance. To validate the aristocratic laity’s ability to define, oversee, direct, and control such matters as marriage and sexuality according to Christian doctrine, Philippe must prove that the laity can practice virtue. To this end, he glorifies Joïe’s performance as an exemplary wife and mother. Contrary to the misogynist and misogamous authorities and attitudes, and also contrary to the heretical views which condemned procreation, Philippe de Rémi creates a virtuous, sexual, married protagonist, Joïe, who is steadfast in her faith and firmly anchored in her own physical and sexual humanity. Even as it seeks more control and authority over marriage, the Church’s gradual and intensifying insistence on celibacy for priests, and consequently on the rejection of marriage for those who were ordained, contributed to this culture of misogamy, producing tension between lay culture and clerical culture as to whose lifestyle was more virtuous. Cleri- cal celibacy protected the Church’s priests from a perceived sexual defilement and separated and elevated them from the laity.18 Canon 21 of the 1123 First Lateran Council says, “We absolutely forbid priests, deacons, subdeacons, and monks to have concubines or to contract marriage. We decree in accordance with the definitions of the sacred canons, that marriages already contracted by such persons must be dissolved, and that the persons be condemned to do penance.”19 While there had already been attempts to declare marriage off limits to deacons, priests, and bishops as early as the fourth century, clearly it was a hard sell.20 The First Lateran 112 L. M. ROUILLARD

Council might well declare marriage off limits, but it still could not necessarily prohibit sexual activity for clerics. We have only to evoke the story of Abelard and Heloise, the laconic comments of Andreas Capellanus, or the descriptions of monkish activities by Jean de Meun to understand that one canon does not a celibate cleric make.21 Thus, in an attempt to discourage clerical marriage in particular, some clerical writers seem to have eagerly disparaged marriage across the board,22 but in contrast to the misogamous opinions expressed by some clerics, the Church eventually elevated marriage to the status of a sacrament, a move which certainly afforded the Church more control over the laity’s marital partnerships. Though scholars refer to the 1563 Council of Trent as the official declaration of marriage as a sacrament, some medieval theologians were already classifying the union as such. While in the twelfth century, the monk and jurist, Gratian (lived in the first half of twelfth century) expressed some ambivalence over its qualification as sacrament, his contemporary Peter Lombard, in his mid-twelfth-century Sentences, was definite about the issue, as was the thirteenth century Albert the Great.23 No longer merely an arrangement between families, the sacrament is seen as conferring an official spiritual status to marriage. While this in no way terminated the material interests of the families implicated in the contract, this sacred union was deemed at this time to be effected not by the will of the father or even the presence of the priest, but rather by the exchange of mutual consent between the spouses, a distinct departure from paternal directives designed to advance familial interests and politics. Indeed, so essential was the role of mutual consent that couples could even contract a legal marriage based on mutual agreement without a priest, family members, or even other witnesses. Such clandestine marriages were soundly condemned, but remained valid.24 And while mutual consent may appear to be an acquiescence to the laity’s functional role in the sacrament, the mutual consent of individuals had to be protected and regulated by the Church often against dissenting patres. The importance of the concept of individual consent in contracting a valid marital union de-emphasizes the authority of one group of the laity, the paternal heads of households, in favor of the authority of the Church to verify the consent of another part of the laity, the couple who desires to be united in the sacrament of matrimony. The requirement of mutual consent in marriage then could potentially pit one part of the family against another part of the family or household, positioning the Church as mediator and ultimate authority over one of the most important contracts in the daily 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 113 life of the laity, as it happens in the context of Joïe’s marriage with the King of Scotland. Such control, however, comes with its own problems. Sometimes the medieval Church had to choose between its own contradicting practices and stipulations (extensive rules regarding incest which were observed or ignored as needed, and proclamations about the indissolubility of marriage), as in the following case described by the twelfth-century John of Salisbury: Count Hugh of Molise, born in Apulia to a family of Norman ancestry, wanted to divorce his wife, and brought his case to Pope Euge- nius III, claiming that their consanguinity should invalidate the union. Hugh supplied testimony from persons “who had come to bear witness to the truth and purge their relative from the sin and shame of incest.”25 Forced to decide between the competing issues of indissolubility of marriage and the invalidation of marriage due to consanguinity in the case of the Count of Molise’s desire to separate from his wife, the twelfth- century Pope Eugenius III came down on the side of indissolubility and offered an indulgence to the conscience-stricken husband to remain in the “incestuous” marriage. “‘And my dearest son,’ he added, ‘to per- suade you to do as I ask more fully and freely, behold I…will grant if you consent that this my daughter, your wife, may bring and confer on you a priceless dowry, namely the forgiveness of your sins, for all the sins you have yet committed shall be laid on me in the judgment day, if henceforth you remain loyal to her.’”26 Like the prelates in the early episode of La Manekine, Pope Eugenius offers to shoulder the celestial moral responsibility for Count of Molise’s actions and overlook the issue of consanguinity, though not incest as egregious as that suggested in La Manekine. Additionally, the pope sees a spiritually ennobling quality in marriage, a significant departure from early Church fathers. La Manekine is also concerned from its very beginning with just these internal institutional con- tradictions: in his poem, Philippe de Rémi portrays a Church that proclaims and retracts incest regulations, even those aimed at the closest of interdicted relationships; a Church that promotes individual consent, but then collaborates with forced marriage. Like Pope Eugenius, the prelates in Philippe’s romance also believe that moral responsibility or guilt can be transferred, much like an inheritance, or even like Original Sin. As long as someone pays, it matters less who. Among those who reevaluated the regulations, characteristics, and legalities of marriage during the High Middle Ages was Pope Gregory 114 L. M. ROUILLARD

IX who asked the Dominican Raymond of Penyafort to write a compilation on the topic in a work he completed in 1234, the same time period during which Philippe de Rémi likely composed his poem.27 Raymond’s Summa on marriage uses the concept of marriage as an indissoluble union of husband and wife to symbolize the indissoluble union of Christ and the Church, in what had become a classic analogy, and one that acknowledges the sanctity, if not the sacramentality, of matrimony.28 Raymond of Penyafort’s treatise is an important document approximately contempora- neous to Philippe de Rémi’s romance. While not exactly an encomium to marriage, Raymond’s treatise considers the institution of enough worth to require definitions and protocols, acknowledging the Augustinian view of marriage whose purposes include: “the raising of children and the avoidance of fornication,” along with “… the maintenance of peace, the wife’s beauty, riches, and similar reasons.”29 While the Church sometimes offered a lukewarm appreciation or even explicit misogamous pronouncements, the Church did also produce positive, even mystical images of marriage by using the sacrament’s qualification of the union as indissoluble to symbolize the relationship between God and the Church. Saint Bernard, for instance, in his seventh sermon on Song of Songs explains: “For no names can be found as sweet as those in which the Word and the soul exchange affections, as Bridegroom and Bride…So then love especially and chiefly belongs to those who are married and it is not inappropriate to call the loving soul a Bride.”30 Bernard’s goal may have been to explain the longing of the soul for God, but his analogy consequently affords great dignity and spiritual value to marriage and to Woman. One of the most important qualifications of the sacrament of marriage was that of this eternal bond of the union, symbolizing the eternal union between Christ and his Church.31 This concern for permanence is reflected in La Manekine in the seven-year separation and eventual reunion of Joïe and the King of Scotland (ll. 1159–1181). According to Pope Alexander III (1159–1181), a long absence (ten years or more), which implied death of one of the spouses, was one of the few circumstances in which remarriage was permitted. Pope Lucius III (1181–1185) required proof of death before allowing remarriage. Pope Celestine III (1191–1198) insisted on only a seven-year wait. And the Fourth Lateran Council also demanded proof of death of the spouse in order to allow remarriage.32 Given these regulations, the King of Scotland’s long search for his wife becomes more understandable and heroic. He will either 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 115 recover his beloved wife or acquire proof of Joïe’s death, though he does not seek this knowledge in the hopes of being free to remarry. Should he discover the bad news that Joïe has died, he himself will surely die from abrokenheart:“Se mauvaises sont, j’en morrai,” (l. 4334). “If the news is bad, I shall die of it,” but he cannot envisage a remarriage, unlike his father-in-law who came to accept the possibility of an incestuous remarriage. Medieval Christian mystics also depicted marriage in a positive, metaphorical way. The twelfth-century St. Hermann of Steinfeld, for instance, believed himself to be married to the Blessed Virgin. The thirteenth-century Angela of Foligno saw herself as the wife of Christ. The fourteenth-century Heinrich Suso characterized himself as married to Holy Wisdom.33 In contrast to certain negative clerical opinions on marriage, then, there coexisted a spiritual appreciation of the symbolic value of matrimony to represent the mystical relationship between divinity and humanity. David d’Avray has studied medieval sermons related to the Gospel passage about the wedding at Cana and has highlighted some other very positive medieval pronouncements about matrimony. He notes that the Dominican Hugh of St. Cher (d. 1263) extolls this institution because it was created by God. Henry of Provins, also a thirteenth-century Domini- can, praises the long history of this sacrament and recognizes marriage as a much older and more venerable order than his own or that of the Franciscans. Guibert of Tournai, a thirteenth-century Franciscan, classified marriage as the first sacrament. D’Avray resolves the conflict between these positive pronouncements and the vituperative misogamous statements made by some Church Fathers by suggesting that the medievals would have viewed marriage as “a lesser good, not a lesser evil,”34 still not a ringing endorsement. In this work, we are particularly interested in how the medieval aristocratic laity in particular viewed this matrimonial evolution toward individual consent. La Manekine depicts a range of attitudes toward marriage: from the materialistic perspective of the King of Hungary’s barons, to the affective, emotional perspective of Manekine and the King of Scot- land, to the obedient perspective of the Roman Senator who advises sexual abstinence for the married couple according to the Church calendar, we see in Philippe de Rémi’s poem, extensive reflection on the strategic importance of this social institution in the Middle Ages. Modern historians such as Georges Duby tend to emphasize the politics and economics 116 L. M. ROUILLARD of medieval marriage. If we use Duby’s vocabulary, then we would conclude that in La Manekine, Philippe de Rémi contrasts the aristocratic form of marriage, which sacrificed individual preference to the profit of a kinship group, with the ecclesiastical form of marriage, which emphasized individual consent as the basis of matrimony.35 In his first book on the subject, Duby claims that the ecclesiastical form of marriage eventually supersedes the aristocratic form.36 However, in his subsequent book, The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest, he modifies and nuances his stance, summarizing the situation in the following manner: “Marriage was an instrument of control. The leaders of the Church used it as a means of holding their own against the laity, and in the hope even of subjugating it. The heads of families used it as a means of keeping their power intact…Society and Christianity had changed together. Neither one nor the other model had been vanquished: they merged.”37 And indeed, this is how Philip Reynolds, in his 2016 book HowMarriageBecameOneof the Sacraments: The Sacramental Theology of Marriage from Its Medieval Origins to the Council of Trent, summarizes recent studies on the evolution of this medieval institution: it should not be viewed as “the victory of one model or one social group over another, but rather as the result of a complicated interplay of shared convictions, self-advancement, and opportunism.”38 Christopher Brooke likewise has described the relationship of mutual interest between the aristocracy and the Church in the development of the institution of marriage: “There had come to be so deep a bond of common interest between landlords seeking an orderly system of inheritance and the Church trying to enforce Christian monogamy, that the aristocracy was prepared for most purposes to be subject to the jurisdiction of the Church–not only in fits of penitence, but actually when making marriage treaties affecting their inheritances and standing in the world.”39 This is to say that if that aristocracy was willing to “subject” itself to the Church in this matter of marriage by consent instead of marriage by paternal decree, it was because there were some economic and legal benefits to do so. Similarly, Ivan Ermakoff’s research on the evolution of the institution of marriage focuses on the question of why aristocrats eventually accepted, for the most part, the Church’s strictures about relationships that had such great implications for property holdings and transfer. He concludes that nobles came to see the efficacy of appealing to and abiding by written canon law on these matters rather than customary law, particularly when their daughters (and their dowries) could be 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 117 vulnerable to their husbands’ political needs and ambitions. In addition, prelates increasingly positioned themselves as mediators in conflicts.40 He sees these marital issues as “a bargaining game between two classes of actors endowed with distinct resources and preferences.”41 These four historians then conclude that changes in marital customs and definitions produced nuanced compromises and benefits for both lay and clerical culture. Or, as Tracy Adams has described it: “The Christian marriage doctrine that emerged throughout the twelfth century must be seen as the result of a long-term negotiation between the Church with its court systems and the aristocracy with its belief that marriage was a family matter. Moreover, it must be seen also as the result of negotiations that took place within each of the two entities, for both of their marriage practices were inconsistent and problematic. Each influenced the other as they struggled together to redefine the meaning of marriage in society and the meaning of love within the context of marriage.”42 In contrast, David d’Avray’s research on the evolution of marriage in the Middle Ages minimizes the aristocratic preoccupation with material wealth; instead, he highlights the symbolic role that marriage offered in explanations of religious doctrine or even legal principles.43 D’Avray also believes that the increasing difficulty in obtaining quick and easy annul- ments in the thirteenth century is strongly related to the evolving system of marriage symbolism which would have been rendered weaker if annul- ments were too easily obtained.44 For his part, our medieval poet Philippe de Rémi did not simply counter traditional misogamy with lavish praise of marriage as a holy sacrament; in La Manekine, he describes the complexity of matrimony at its most personal, familial, and material levels, along with the tender affection and devotion of one spouse toward the other, an attachment that can survive long separations. Philippe develops his own symbolic system around a potentially incestuous marriage and a fragmented physical body interwoven with analogies that challenge both misogynistic and misogamous stereotypes as well as evolving Church doctrine. In this poem, we have numerous examples of the intimate tenderness that exists between loving married couples. The King of Hungary’s devotion to his wife is evident: in response to his wife who professes that she has been tenderly loved by him (“…cele tres grant amour / Que m’avés monstree maint jor” (ll. 117–118); “ …that great love / That you have shown me many a day”), he promises to faithfully keep his promise to his dying spouse (“Sur ma loialté le vous jur,” l. 127; “I swear it on 118 L. M. ROUILLARD my fidelity”). He reacts to her death by fainting, weeping and lamenting (“…Meïsmement li rois / Se pasma sur li mainte fois, / …Molt se plaint, molt se desconforte” (ll. 153–158); “…Even the king / Fainted over her many times, / …He laments and grieves very much”). The reunion of Manekine and the King of Scotland after seven years of tribulation is equally touching: “Le rois keurt vers li eslaissiés, / Si l’a plus de c fois baisie / Ançois k’il li puist dire, ‘Amie!’ / Et ele lui, tout ensement. / Bras a bras furent longuement / Avant que il parler peüssent” (ll. 6506–6511). “The king rushes towards her, / And has kissed her more than a hundred times / Before he was able to say, ‘Beloved!’ / And she did the same to him. / There were in each other’s arms for a long while / Before they were able to speak.” Philippe de Rémi’s poem La Manekine does not present a polemical view of marriage; it does not appear to favor one model of marriage over another, either the ecclesiastical or the aristocratic, to use Duby’s terms. Instead this poem recalls the practical exigencies of property and power even as it emphasizes the compatibility of love and matrimony, in ways that recall Chrétien de Troyes’s depiction of the eventual triumph of love in marriage in Erec et Enide,orYvain, le chevalier au lion. In addition, Philippe depicts marriage as the context for a sinless sexuality, provided certain Christian guidelines are observed, such as the goal of procreation or periodic sexual abstinence. And in contrast to the traditional diatribes by Tertullian45 and Jerome on the general wickedness of women, and the horrors and pitfalls of marriage, as described by such writers ranging from Juvenal to Walter Map,46 La Manekine presents an admirable female protagonist and a view of marriage as the setting for two people to be fully human and entirely good, while their marriage coincidentally benefits three kingdoms: Scotland, Hungary, and Armenia. Philippe’s romance then, is a very good example of this cultural coexistence or compromise, as described by scholars such as Duby, Brooke, Ermakoff, Reynolds, and Adams, albeit at times a reluctant coexistence of both cultures, ecclesiastical and lay, in the shaping of the sacrament of marriage on the one hand, and penance on the other, all the while keeping an eye on the smooth transmission and protection of wealth. Philippe accepts the Church’s model of marriage based on mutual consent, even as he obliquely criticizes clerics for their self-interest and willingness to subordinate their authority to aristocratic preferences,47 but our poet still maintains the responsibility and the right of aristocrats to consider political, familial, and even communal interests of the household as regards 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 119 marriage.48 The wisdom of entrusting political alliances to young would- be spouses was far from settled, even in the face of Church pronouncements on individual consent, dogma, and canon law. Nearly two centuries after Philippe de Rémi, Christine de Pizan says the following about a young widow’s desires and marital choices in conflict with the greater good and counsel from her circle of friends and advisors: “cardesemarier a sa voulenté sans leur bon consentement, acquerroit trop grant blasme, et s’elle assennoit a mauvaise partie et que mal lui en prenist, jamais ne seroit plainte et si perdroit leur grace. Si doit penser qu’ilz sauront mieulx cong- noistre ce qui lui est bon qu’elle meismes ne feroit.” “By marrying at will, without their consent, she would incur both danger and blame. If, for example, she chose unwisely and the marriage failed, she would never be pitied and would forfeit her friends’ good will. Therefore, she must realize that they recognize her best interests better than does she herself.”49 In other words, long after the Church has proclaimed the role of individual consent in contracting a legitimate union, Christine de Pizan still recognizes the equal importance of acquiring the seal of approval or support for that union from her household and her entourage. Philippe’s narrative expresses a certain amount of respect for individual consent over parental decree, though at its conclusion the poem returns to marriages arranged, or at least facilitated by the queen (Manekine) to reward faithful seneschals and kind companions: “Cil dui de lor senescaucie / Avoient mout grant signorie. / Cil dui nule femme n’avoient; / Mais de cuer durement amoient / Les ii files au senatour, / Qui bones et de bel atour / Estoient; pour çou, les amerent, / Në il leur cuers si ne celerent / Que la roïne nel seüst / Et qu’ele ne s’en perceüst. / Lie en fu et bien i parut. / De leur volenté ne leur nut, / Ains pourcacha tant et pourquist / Que ces deus mariages fist” (ll 8085–8098). “These two, from their seneschals’ office, / Had very great power. / These two had no wives; / But from their hearts they dearly loved / The senator’s two daughters, / Who were good and elegant; / They loved them for this, / And did not hide their feelings to the point / That the queen did not know about it / And did not perceive it. / She was happy about this, and showed it. / She did not oppose their wishes, / But projected and intervened so much / That she brought about these two marriages.” The poem goes on to mention the dowries the queen vested upon the Senator’s daughters, but there is no mention that the young women were consulted about these unions. Presumably, all four individuals were happy about these events since “Toute leur vie avoec li furent, / Et ensement li senescal, / Comme 120 L. M. ROUILLARD bonetfinetloial” (ll. 8104–8106). “They were with her all their lives, / And also the seneschals, / Like good and true and loyal men.” Even if the family should accept the need for the individual consent of their offspring in marriage, the romance’s conclusion suggests that kings and queens continue to have pressing royal and vested interests in the politics of marriage, but obviously exogamous unions, for their retainers, who, if they are lucky, just happen to love those who are also loved by their ruler.

4.1 Elements of Marriage The eleventh-century church looked to Roman history and law for inspiration and guidance when compiling canon law, which, as described by Brundage, underwent significant change and reform throughout the eleventh and twelfth centuries. We noted earlier that Roman marriage was organized as a familial concern with legal implications, rather than as a religious institution. While medieval canon law found Roman legal practices to be most useful, it nonetheless, over time, recast marriage with numerous religious and spiritual overtones, thereby increasing the authority of the Church on the institution of matrimony.50 The association of Christian marriage with clerical ceremonial participation begins around the fourth century. In Italy, for instance, there was a nuptial blessing said during mass before communion, though this was not required for a valid marriage. In sixth-century Gaul and Spain, we have evidence of clerical participation in the form of a blessing of the bridal couple and their nuptial bed.51 Between the ninth and twelfth centuries, the Church gradually acquired a more active role in the performance of the ceremony and the definition of the institution by verifying observance of consanguinity regulations and by verifying spousal consent.52 The twelfth-century Pope Alexander III is identified as the first to make consent part of canon law,53 a requirement restated by the Fourth Lateran Council as well.54 In this process, the ceremony moved from the home to the church door.55 In the thirteenth century, the synod at Coutances formally insisted that marriage ceremonies take place in front of the church. This requirement was reiterated in Rouen and Paris and in 1300 in Bayeux.56 What other factors qualified a valid union? If a sexual relationship created an affinity that prohibited future relationships with a relative of that sexual partner, just what role did sexuality play in the validation of the marriage contract itself? For the eleventh-century Benedictine 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 121

Peter Damian and later for the twelfth-century canonist Gratian, marriage meant the free exchange of vows of consent by both spouses, a consent then “ratified” by sexual relations57; but for Gratian’s contemporary, Huguccio, “A joining of bodies is not marriage, nor does it make a marriage.”58 Rather for him, marriage was first of all a union of two souls. The twelfth-century theologians Hugh of Saint Victor and Peter Lombard were also of the opinion that marriage was effected by the exchange of vows of consent, and not by consummation, a view of marriage idealized in the union of Mary and Joseph.59 Brundage suggests that decretists and theologians who insisted primarily on the exchange of consent alone as effecting marriage, with consummation supplying the ratification, “seem to have been motivated in part by a desire to reduce the significance of sex in marriage.”60 Huguccio did concede, however, that vows using the future tense followed by sexual intercourse also established a marriage, a distinction acknowledged by Pope Innocent III and Pope IX.61 The carnal aspect of a marriage also affected the system of analogies and symbolism of the sacrament. Hugh of Saint Victor discerned “two sacraments in marriage, one greater than the other.”62 The first level or the “office of marriage” included sexual intercourse between husband and wife, symbolizing in this union “the sacrament of Christ and the Church.”63 The second, more significant sacrament was that spiritual union of husband and wife, representing the relationship between God and the soul.64 Peter Lombard’s definition of marriage consisted of one sacrament, still analogous to the relationship between Christ and his Church, but having two aspects: the physical and the spiritual.65 The point here is that in addition to an increasingly prominent role given to individual consent, many of the contemporary definitions and discussions on marriage do validate the role sexuality plays in marriage as a sacrament. Likewise, Philippe de Rémi portrays married sexuality in a positive light. The narrator attempts to play coy about the wedding night of Joie and the King of Scotland: “Assés avoient de deduis, / Plus que conter ne vous saroie / Quand lonc tans i pensé aroie” (ll. 2110–2112). “They had much delight, / More than I could relate to you / Even if I had thought about for a long time.” Nonetheless, he does manage to find the words to describe their sexual delight in each other: “Mout leur avoit bonne savour / Li acolers et li sentirs, / Li baisiers, li biaus maintenirs, / Li biaus deduis, li biaus souslas / Que il avoient bras a bras” (ll. 2120–2124). “Very sweet to them were / The embraces and touches, / The kisses, the tender gestures, / The fine delight, the fine solace / That they had in each other’s arms.” 122 L. M. ROUILLARD

Traditional fin’amor rhetoric insists that true love could not even possibly exist within the confines of marriage since the choice of spouses was not based on individual preference, but rather on political interests and familial directives. Only outside of marriage could lovers “freely” choose whom to love. And yet, Philippe, among other poets such as Chrétien de Troyes, has described a marital union between Manekine and the King of Scotland, grounded in affection and tender sexuality, a union initiated by individual choice. Of course, the Church’s increasing insistence on the need for individual consent to a marriage calls into question, to a certain extent, the philoso- phy and rhetoric of what Gaston Paris termed “amour courtois.” Whether fin’amor was a bona fide practice, or whether it was a poetic convention, no longer is the concept of a consensual union the purview of courtly-love couples, for now, marriage, at least in theory, emphasizes the individual’s free will and choice. The ecclesiastic concept of individual consent, however, should not be interpreted as synonymous with our modern conception of love, though neither should we assume that the medieval couple was incapable of love; but this concept of individual consent does emphasize the role of the individual over solely family interests in the institution of marriage. The persistence of courtly-love rhetoric, on the other hand, suggests that perhaps the concept of individual consent in marriage was not easily recognized or completely accepted. This distinction between consent and compliance is at the heart of the King of Hungary’s proposal to his daughter when he first speaks to her about the barons’ plan of incestuous marriage: “Et j’ai or bien consel d[u fa]ire, / Mais quë il a vous v[oei]lle plaire” (ll. 541–542). “And now I am indeed of a mind to do it, / Provided that it might be pleasing to you.” The Church’s insistence on the role of individual consent certainly still does not preclude the possibility of forced marriage, as noted by Margaret Burrell referring to an episode of Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide: the Count of Limor, believing he has killed Erec, forces a marriage with the “widowed” Enide who “molt le refusa; / mes totevoies l’esposa” (ll. 4733–4734). “She adamantly refused him. Nevertheless, the count married her according to his will.”66 As Burrell notes, Erec’s subsequent revival clearly invalidates the so-called marriage with the Count of Limor, but so should the use of the force used by the Count on Enide. In Marie de France’s twelfth- century Vie seinte Audree, the story of a seventh-century Northumbrian queen, the widowed Audrey is compelled to remarry with King Egfrid, though “volentiers li constresteut / Si ele osast, si ele peut” (ll. 859–860); 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 123

“she would willingly have rejected him / if she had dared and if there had been any possibility.”67 But family pressure was too great: “[Mes] tant l’ont ses parens requise / Ne pot desdire en nule guise. / Tout encon- tre sa volenté / Lors a la virge gra[a]nté. /…/ Prist la virge ceo mariage, / Sanz volenté de son curage” (ll. 796–803). “However, her relatives so insisted on the marriage / that finally there was no way she could refuse. / Quite against her will, / then, the virgin agreed to the marriage. /…/ but without the consent of her heart, / the virgin accepted this marriage.” Nonetheless, Church doctrine notwithstanding, we cannot ignore the fact that marriage by coercion was still accepted as a possibility in the late Middle Ages, just as Marie de France’s story presents Audrey’s forced nuptials. The rise of romance in the twelfth century along with the genre’s consideration of both “courtly love” and “married love” thus coincides with the ever-increasing emphasis on individual consent of spouses in contracting a valid union. A poet such as Chrétien de Troyes can argue both sides of the issue, suggesting in one romance that true love can only exist outside of marriage, while also presenting another romance in which marriage becomes the ideal place for the development of true love. And the poet Philippe de Rémi presents a romance in which marriage is far more virtuous and satisfying than the superficiality of “courtly love,” and in which a potentially coerced marriage is absolutely monstrous. When the King of Hungary addresses his daughter with the hopes that this plan “a vous voeille plaire,” he perpetuates the fiction of consent as it pertains to marriage at this time, and blurs consent and compliance. Of course, Joïe is horrified at this infraction of human law and divine law and refuses her father. That Joïe’s consent is in fact considered by her father to be merely pro forma is highlighted in the King’s reaction to her refusal: “Certes, fille, je le ferai, / Puis que je le congié en ai. / Folement respondu m’avés; / Mais bien sai que miex ne savés. / Se mon voloir ne volés faire, / Tost vous tournera a contraire. / Ne vous em priërai ja mais” (ll. 577–583). “Surely, daughter, I shall do it, / Since I have leave to do so. / You have answered me foolishly; / But I know that you do not know any better. / If you do not wish to do my will, / You will soon suffer for it. / I shall never entreat you again.” This attitude is consonant with the later Roman interpretation of “consent” taken to mean parental agreement followed by the obedience of the offspring.68 It is also similar to the role of consent in the Visigothic code and Roman vulgar law where the lack of paternal consent to marriage leads to disinheritance for the daughter who defiantly marries in spite of her father.69 It is obvious that 124 L. M. ROUILLARD the King of Hungary does not truly desire Joïe’s acceptance, but rather her compliance and filial obedience. His reproof of her “foolishness” only serves to point out how much power he has over her, a condition that makes consent impossible. In this case, the extreme incestuous marriage only emphasizes the vulnerability of that child who refuses to consent. With this plot motif, Philippe demonstrates the worst-case scenario when marriage is not based on mutual agreement: coercion could lead to the most abominable of unions. Peter Lombard in his Sentences, also considers this issue in Book 4, Distinction 29: “Coercion prevents marital consent, according to Pope Urban. Moreover, marital consent ought to be free from coercion. For coerced consent, which ought not to be called consent, does not make marriage.”70 Raymond of Penyafort declares “that by its very nature, even without the constitution of the Church, the impediment of violence or fear excludes matrimonial consent. For consent has no place where fear or force is present, so neither does marriage…”71 In a twelfth-century Rouen pontifical, a thirteenth-century scribe glosses a section on marriage, writing: “Sufficit secundum leges solus eorum consenus; si solus in nuptiis forte defuerit, cetera omnia, etiam cum ipso coetu celebrata, frus- trantur.” “Selon les lois suffit leur seul consentement; s’il arrivait que dans un mariage il manquât, tout le reste même célébré en assemblée, ne sert à rien.”72 These statements demonstrate the Church’s understanding that despite canon law, consent could often be a legal fiction in medieval contracts of marriage. This same distinction between consent and compliance is at the heart of two historical cases as described by David d’Avray. In the first which occurred in 1231, the pope refused to intervene on behalf of the father of a spurned childhood fiancé after the young girl in fact married someone else. Parental promises were not to trump the girl’s consent, declared the pontiff. In the second case, dating from 1233, the pope ordered the release of a young girl, promised in marriage successively by her father to two brothers who died; she had been held captive in order to force her to marry the remaining third brother.73 The concept of mutual consent continued as a point of contention, and Saint Thomas Aquinas also addressed the issue in the third quarter of the thirteenth century, saying: “The maid is in her father’s power, not as a female slave without power over her own body, but as a daughter, for the purpose of education. Hence, in so far as she is free, she can give herself into another’s power without her father’s consent, even as a son or daughter, since they are free, may enter religion 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 125 without their parents’ consent.”74 Again, such examples demonstrate the difference between the ideal of mutual consent and the reality of family pressures related to marital decisions: the life of the twelfth-century Saint Oda also exemplifies the tension between Church decrees and familial coercion. During her wedding ceremony, “on lui demanda selon la cou- tume si elle voulait accepter le dit époux, elle ne répondit à aucune des paroles du prêtre.”75 Fearful that her parents would renew their efforts to compel the marriage, Oda sliced off her nose with a sword.76 Whether Oda literally voiced her refusal, or simply refused to answer, it was clear she was not consenting to the union. Like Joïe, Oda is compelled to resort to violence against her own person to publicly register that refusal. Shortly after the confrontation cited above from La Manekine (ll. 541– 583), when she realizes her father’s determination to force her into marriage, Joïe cuts off her left hand in an effort to make herself ineligible for a royal marriage77 or perhaps to signify literally her refusal to give her hand in marriage.78 Her horrific act is the recognition of the insignifi- cance of her voice and the need to register her horror on some textual surface—her own body. The self-amputation is reminiscent of a terrified animal that will gnaw off its own limb when caught in a trap, leaving Joïe with what some would call a “divided self.”79 It is also reminiscent of the life of Saint Christina who, tortured by her father when she refuses to worship his pagan gods, bites off a piece of her own flesh and throws it at him.80 Joïe’s amputation of her hand also effectively destroys her likeness to her mother.81 This self-mutilation becomes symbolic of the alienation between father and daughter, but the miraculous graft at the romance’s resolution makes the estrangement temporary. Indeed, one of the themes of this romance is the indissolubility of certain relationships: between father and daughter, between husband and wife, and especially between God and his people. This amputation is furthermore a symbolic break with marital traditions as practiced before Gratian’s response to the question: “May a daughter be given in marriage against her will?” His response resonates in Joïe’s actions: “By these authorities it is evident that no woman should be coupled to anyone except by her free will.”82 The cruelty of the King of Hungary’s marriage order to his unwilling and horrified young daughter is consonant with his subsequent order of execution upon his daughter’s defiance. In fact, that very death sentence proves the king understands that a coerced marriage will not solve his dilemma. Like a torturer, the King of Hungary asks a question with only one acceptable answer; any other answer will lead to annihilation 126 L. M. ROUILLARD of the victim. If Joïe does not consent, she risks rape and potentially a death sentence; if she does consent, she risks the tortures of hell in the Christian afterlife. Joïe’s act of self-mutilation can also function as both a public testimony to her father’s cruelty and his potential order to torture or kill her, and as an effort to distance herself from that cruelty, even as she inflicts a horrific wound upon herself. In her study of physical agony and psychological suffering, Elaine Scarry reminds us that “physical pain is able to obliterate psychological pain because it obliterates all psychological content, painful, pleasurable, and neutral.”83 And so for a brief moment, Joïe’s physical pain can obscure the crushing emotional pain of her father’s betrayal and depravity. The King of Hungary’s command to his daughter certainly leaves her in anguish before her fate, a destiny that leaves her speechless, except for the message she writes with one hand upon her other hand. When her vocal refusal to accept an incestuous proposal is ignored, Joïe inscribes that refusal on her own body and makes visible upon her own self the agony she feels and the greater agony that awaits her. In cutting off her own hand, she demonstrates the consequences of her father’s sadistic order and vengeful dominance of her. Speaking of the corporal suffering related to torture Scarry also says: “In physical pain, then, suicide and murder converge, for one feels acted upon, annihilated, by inside and outside alike.”84 While Joïe is victim of her father’s brutal will and threats of torture, she retains some tragic agency as the actor who causes the amputation and the physical pain. The protagonist’s act plays out the torture threatened and the annihilating anguish at parental betrayal. In contrast to the aristocratic view of marriage as subjugating the individual to the needs of the family, in the form of the poem’s proposed incestuous marriage, the actual marriage between Joïe and the King of Scotland appears to exemplify the contemporary canon definition of the sacrament, which had by this point undergone much evolution.85 The King of Scotland makes his avowal of love to Joïe and his proposal of marriage: “Së il vous plaist que je vous aie, / De cuer bonement vous otroi / Que vous serés dame de moi / S’avrés en vostre cief couronne,” (ll. 1940–1943). “If it pleases you that I may have you, / I grant you whole-heartedly / That you will be my lady wife / And will have a crown on your head.” Joïe’s response is calculated humility: “Ne moustra pas aperte ment / La grant joie que ses cuers sent,” (ll. 1955–1956). “She did not show out- wardly / The great joy that her heart feels.” Instead, she replies that she did not dare assume that a king would lower himself (“abaissiés,” line 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 127

1960) to marry her. While Joïe is in fact the daughter of a king, she has not revealed her genealogy, and the King of Scotland is potentially marrying beneath his station.86 However, Joïe’s refusal of such a fine offer would be an act of extreme pride to which she will not succumb and which she can use to humbly disguise her pleasure at this proposal: “Nepourquant pas ne vous refus. / De grant orguel seroit tenus / Mes cuers, se de vous s’escusoit / Et si grant honeur refusoit. / Mais, s’il vous plaist que me prenés, /En loialté me maintenés” (ll. 1975–1980). “Nevertheless I do not refuse you. / My heart would be considered very proud / If it with- drew from you / And refused so great an honor. / But if it pleases you to take me in marriage, / Keep me with faithfulness.” It is significant that Joïe accepts this proposal of marriage by pronouncing her non-refusal, and not by an expression of direct consent. Instead, she wraps her personal preference in the rhetoric of humility and honor. We know that she is quite capable of declaring her refusal verbally and corporally, but declaring consent for our protagonist is disguised as non-rejection. Iron- ically, Joïe’s refusal of consent before her father was loud and clear; her acceptance of the King of Scotland’s proposal is demure. In her world, a woman should certainly at least have the right to refuse marriage, if not to actively, explicitly consent to it. Joïe and the king have contracted their betrothal with no familial inter- mediaries. In fact, Joïe’s refusal to identify her genealogy allows the King of Scotland to demonstrate his desire for her as an individual, rather than a desire for political alliance and material goods. The couple immediately proceeds to the marriage ceremony itself, which also lacks family witnesses, as is demonstrated in the following passage describing the ceremony: “Li rois dedens le palais vient, / La Manequine les lui tient. / Tost a son capelain mandé. / Cil vint, quant il l’ot commandé. / Li rois li a dit et retrait / Çou, quë il li plaist qui soit fait. / Li prestres refuser n’osa / Sa volenté, ançois posa / Maintenant leur ii mains ensamble / Et par parole les assamble. / Plevie l’a et espousee; / Tantost fu la messe cantee. / Ce fu fait si priveement, / Fors sa maisnie seulement / N’avoit; mais si menant i erent, / Qui durement se mervillierent / De ce que li rois avoit fait. / Tost fu a sa mere retrait. / Si l’en prist une tele envie / Que ainques puis jor de sa vie / Ne fist fors que s’entente metre / A la Manequine demetre / De toute honeur, s’ele seüst / Et que’ele faire le peüst!” (ll. 2029–2052). “The King comes into the palace, / Keeping Manekine close to him. / He has promptly sent for his chaplain. / This man came when he had been sum- moned / The king has told and explained to him / What he wishes to 128 L. M. ROUILLARD be done. / The priest did not dare oppose / His will, but rather placed / Their two hands together immediately / And unites them by word. / He has plighted her his troth and wedded her; / The mass was sung straightaway. / It was done so privately / That no-one was present except for his household; / But his own retainers were there, / Who were much astonished / At what the king had done. / It was soon related to his mother. / Then such ill-will seized her / That never afterward, on any day of her life, / Did she do anything but concentrate / On bringing Manekine down / From all honor, / If she knew how / And was able to do it.” It is important to notice the surprise of the household over this marriage: there has been no conference with the king’s barons, nor with his mother. The incredulity of the household suggests that the king has done something unexpected and contrary to tradition, be it his union with a “stranger” or his refusal to solicit the advice of his retainers. His lack of consideration of anyone else’s opinion about Joïe’s suitability for royal marriage triggers the mother’s subsequent machinations.87 In contrast to the barons of the King of Hungary’s court who convince their lord to enter into a questionable union, the retainers of the King of Scotland do not question their lord’s decision, even though marriage with a stranger was of contestable wisdom. We also note that just as the prelates in the King of Hungary’s court easily acquiesce to incestuous marriage, the King of Scotland’s chaplain is pointedly described as one who does not dare do anything but the King’s will. Clerics in this romance are depicted as sub- jugated to kings who can reward or punish them. Aristocratic lay culture dominates ecclesiastical culture here, much as kings historically exercised authority over and protected certain churches on their lands.88 Lines 2029–2052 do, however, exemplify some important features of twelfth- and thirteenth-century rituals of marriage. First, the priest pre- sides over the ceremony, although here, he is still subject to the king’s wishes, accentuating the importance of the couple’s desire to marry over the sacramental role of the cleric, which is clearly portrayed as secondary;89 however, the ceremony is followed by a mass, thus according some respect to the clerical role in the celebration of the sacrament of the Eucharist. The ceremony between the King of Scotland and Joïe as described here revolves around the joining of the couple’s hands by the priest, symbolizing their consent to the conjugal union. The spontaneous nature of this ceremony, however, has required the suppression of some 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 129 other contemporary features. First, there is no mention of banns publicizing the pending nuptials as stipulated by the Fourth Lateran Council.90 And the priest does not, in fact, cannot verify consanguinity regulations as part of the ceremony since Joïe has remained adamantly silent about her family identity. In effect, the king’s marriage to a “stranger” shows a complete lack of interest in the usual warnings about potentially incestuous relationships with outsiders who could not provide their genealogy.91 The absence of these features of the marriage ritual (the banns and the verification of non-consanguinity) between Joïe and the King of Scotland has the following implication: this marriage is first and foremost a relationship based on consent, to which all other considerations are secondary. The need for individual consent of the spouses allows both the King of Scotland and Joïe to defy parental control, though in both cases, the defiance has a high cost. This, however, does not later prevent Manekine as Queen of Hungary, Armenia, and Scotland from facilitating profitable marriages for those who served her well. In Philippe’s poem, loosening parental control over offspring is one thing, but loosening royal influence over subjects was quite another.

4.2 Monstrous Marriage The widowed King of Hungary’s dynasty is in a state of anxiety and so is his noble entourage, as is made clear by one of the barons who says to his companions: “Seignour,’ fait il,‘escoutés moi. / En cest païs avons un roy / Qui ot feme mout boine et sage; / En se mort avons grant damage. / De cele femme n’a nul hoir / Fors une ﬁlle, au dire voir, / Qui est mout boine et mout courtoise. / Et nonpourquant en briquetoize / Ert li roialmes de Hongrie / Se feme l’avoit en baillie. / Pour c’est il bon que nous alons / Au roi, et de cuer li prions / Qu’il pregne feme a nostre los” (ll. 205–217). “‘Sirs,’ he said, ‘hear me. / In this land we have a king / Who had a very good and wise wife. / In her death we have a great loss. / Of that wife he has no heir / Except for a daughter, to tell the truth, / Who is very good and courteous. / Nevertheless the kingdom of Hungary / Will be in peril / If a woman had it in her power. / Therefore it is good that we go / To the king and beg him earnestly / That he take a wife by our advice.’” Note that the barons actually admit Joïe is an heir in lines 209–210, but they simply refuse to have the kingdom in the hands of a woman, most likely because her potential marriage to an outsider would bring competing interests to the kingdom and to them.92 The 130 L. M. ROUILLARD

King recalls his promise to the late Queen, that he will remarry only with one who resembles her exactly, doubting that such a woman exists. But he acquiesces to his barons that this is: “Pour le pourfit de la contree”(l. 236); “for the benefit of the country,” a perfect example of the goal of marriage for the aristocracy. Royal nuptials can protect the interests of the dynasty and the nation. Any king bears responsibilities greater than those of the average head of household: he must keep his kingdom intact and stable, for the sake of the barons as well as for his own sake.93 In some ways, the state of the Kingdom of Hungary at this early point in the romance recalls the creation myth: by all logic, even narrative logic, the children of Adam and Eve had to commit incest to populate the world. In order to create stability for the kingdom, the king must be exempted from incest prohibitions and allowed to do the unthinkable to protect the future of his realm. The king’s actions have consequences for everyone, lay and religious alike. It is only after a long search for the woman who resembles the late Queen of Hungary proves fruitless that the father/daughter marriage is proposed, but first, the barons must convince the prelates. They manage this by underscoring the prelates’ vulnerability, suggesting that if the kingdom is broken up, the clerics may fall under the subjugation of a less generous king. The clerics eventually agree to the plan and offer to shoulder the moral responsibility for it: “En l[a fin] li clerc s’acorderent / Que il le r[oy] en prieroient / Et sur a[us] le pecié penroient. / A l’Apo[stol]e monterront / Le gra[nt] pourfit pour quoi fait l’ont” (ll. 336–340). “At last the clerics agreed / That they would entreat the king to do it / And would take the responsibility upon themselves. / They will show the Pope / The great benefit for which they have done it.” At this point it is clear that a monstrous marriage match is a small price to pay for the greater good, according to the prelates. That both monarch and clergy could be complicit in exploiting the letter of the law as well as in reshaping the laws for political purposes is demonstrated by the story of Ralph of Vermandois, cousin and seneschal to King Louis VII. The monarch wished to marry his sister-in-law to Ralph who in fact already had a wife. To contract this second marriage, Ralph and his supporters argued that his first wife was related to him within the forbidden degrees, the degrees having been miscal- culated at the time of the first marriage. Three bishops accepted this argument and dissolved the union, thus making way for a second wife. Ralph’s divorce case was only part of a larger conflict between Louis VII 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 131 and Saint Bernard who had close ties to the Count Theobald of Cham- pagne, an uncle of Ralph’s first wife. This case became an opportunity for Saint Bernard to continue some old arguments with King Louis VII and advance some other political causes and appointments. With his statement that a union made by mutual consent superseded any issues of blood ties, St. Bernard criticized the king’s family, alliances and judgment, all the while attempting to force Louis to acquiesce to his favorite candidate as archbishop of Bourges. When Louis persisted in refusing to acknowledge St. Bernard’s favored candidate, the pope placed the king’s lands under an interdict, depriving all those living in the kingdom of the sacraments. In the face of Ralph’s successful divorce, St. Bernard encouraged the Count of Champagne to undermine the king’s authority and arrange marriages of two of his children without consulting the monarch. In Duby’s estimation, this constitutes “the first sign of a mutation in the lay model of matrimonial practices that was taking place in northern France at that time, namely, the usurpation of the right to control the dynastic strategies of his vassals by the seigneur.”94 Louis VII objected to these marriages once again on the grounds of incest only to have St. Bernard accuse Louis himself of an incestuous marriage.95 The persuasion, machinations, and political intrigue here are similar to those that we find in La Manekine: clerics looking out for their own interests, future, and fortunes will support the nobles in their plan to convince the King of Hungary of the need to marry his daughter. The clerics will pave the way to a dispensation from the Church’s own regulations since it is in their ultimate interest to do so. And nobles will hide behind the clerical cloaks of approval of exceptions to the rules about incest. Incestuous marriages were not an uncommon occurrence in European medieval history, although a valid marriage between father and daughter was surely a possibility only within the realm of fiction. Since most of the medieval incest interdictions specifically address all kinds of possible familial permutations up to seven and then four degrees, one won- ders why Philippe de Rémi or any medieval author would choose such an obviously generally unacceptable pairing of father and daughter. After all, even consanguinity at a much further remove than what is described in La Manekine often allowed the nobility an escape from an undesirable marriage, particularly if it proved childless.96 One possible explanation for a plot focused on potential father–daughter incest is related to the historical use of papal dispensations to allow marriages between individuals within the forbidden degrees of kinship, even as the Church refused to dissolve 132 L. M. ROUILLARD other marriages on the basis of the same relationships of consanguinity or affinity.97 Thus Philippe considered the consequences of changes in the sacrament of marriage and definitions of forbidden unions in a context where surely there could be no doubt that this was a monstrous case of incest which should entail no possibility whatsoever of a papal dispensation. In addition, could not the attempted incestuous relationship proposed in Philippe’s romance also be a rhetorical stance developed in reaction to ecclesiastical changes such as those related to incest and referenced in the Fourth Lateran Council, a kind of “slippery slope” argument: if the Church can reduce the number of interdicted relationships, when will it stop? First one can marry a fourth cousin, and then a second cousin; soon, one will be able to marry one’s own daughter! While it would be in the interest of aristocratic families to have the Church reduce the complexity of incest regulations, the very fact that the Church or its clergy would “change” its own rules could be interpreted as an implicit admission of erroneous judgment, something the Church clearly anticipated in the language of Canon 50 of the Fourth Lateran Council: “It must not be deemed reprehensible if human statutes change sometimes with the change of time, especially when urgent necessity or common interest demands it, since God himself has changed in the New Testament some things that He had decreed in the Old.”98 The father–daughter incest motif in this romance can also serve then as a criticism of the mutabil- ity of church pronouncements. Peter the Chanter in fact was concerned about this very issue of the Church’s changing opinions, recounting an anecdote about Master Yves of Chartres who was so frustrated by conflicting ecclesiastical pronouncements that during one of his classes, he flung to the floor his own commentaries on papal declarations and refused to continue teaching.99 Philippe de Rémi’s exaggerated example allows him to depict both a group of aristocratic lay leaders in desperate need of spiritual mentors as well as a complicit clergy submissive to its monarch and his barons, all dominated by self-interest rather than by moral virtue. The prelates at the court of the King of Hungary are, in this way, no different from the laity over whom they claim spiritual authority. Philippe de Rémi for his part, describes in his romance just this anxiety or conflicts of interest over the close, perhaps too-close-for-comfort relationship between clerics and their monarch. Among some of the historical instances of incestuous marriage, we note for example Robert I who, in 988 or 989, married Rozala, to whom he 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 133 was related in the sixth degree. He repudiated her in 991–992 and remarried with Berthe, to whom he was related in the third degree. Berthe was also cast aside, this time to allow Robert a marriage with Constance, possibly another distant cousin. Peter Damian, in a letter to the Abbey Didier of Mont-Cassino, dated between 1060 and 1072, writing about the consequences of such incestuous marriages, says that Robert was punished for them by the birth of a monstrous son with the head and neck of a swan.100 The belief that birth defects were often the consequence of incestuous coupling may explain the false accusation in La Manekine’s Scottish Queen mother’s deceptive, substituted letter to her son. In order to turn the King of Scotland against his wife, the dowager falsely claims Manekine has given birth to a monster: “Mais onques mais en ceste vie / Tel creature ne fu nee / Comme ele a en ses flans portee, / Ne si laide cose veüe. / IIII piés a, et s’est velue; / Ex enfossés et grosse teste; / Nus hom ne vit si laide beste / Ne si hideuse creature; / Deable samble a s’entraiture. / Si tost comme ele en fu delivre, / Il s’enfuï, comme une guivre,…” (ll. 3114– 3124). “But never before in this life / Was there born such a creature / As she has carried in her body, / Nor was there seen anything so ugly. / It has four feet, and is hairy; / Sunken eyes and a big head; / No-one ever saw so ugly a beast / Or so hideous a creature; / By its appearance it seems like a devil. / As soon as she was delivered of it, / It fled away, like a viper,…” The claim of a monstrous birth evokes the specter of an incestuous coupling, made more likely when one of the parents is of unknown origin. And of course, the evocation of a serpentine-like creature certainly conjures up an image of the consequences of sin.101 Consider also the marriage in 1032 between Count Geoffroi Martel and Agnès, his relative by affinity, described in the Annales of Saint-Aubin which give the following punitive consequences to such an act of defiance: “Geoffroi took Agnès in incestuous marriage, and the town of Angers was burned down in a horrible conflagration.”102 The moral of the story is that the behavior of one aristocratic individual has consequences for the rest of the community which may be punished by God: a nobleman’s actions can unleash divine fury upon society. Marriage at this time may increasingly stress individual consent to effect marriage, but marriage also affects the community at large. Other historical instances of consanguineous unions include William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, who was excommunicated for an incestuous marriage.103 And in 1092, King Philip I repudiated his wife of 20 years, Bertha of Frisia, and remarried with Bertrade, actually the wife of his 134 L. M. ROUILLARD cousin (making her a relative by affinity) and vassal, the Count of Anjou. Philip’s ensuing excommunication was explained thus by Yves of Chartres: “Philip I was accused ‘having carried off the wife of the count of Anjou, she being his cousin, and having wrongfully kept her…The king was excommunicated by the Council of Clermont because of this accusation, and also because of proof of incest.’”104 Duby explains these types of royal marriages and remarriages as the reflection of the aristocracy’s and particularly the monarchy’s need and responsibility to safeguard the patrimony:

…I do suggest that when Philip dismissed his ﬁrst wife, then took and kept another, he was not giving way to senile passion but applying a set of moral standards. These rules were related to lineage; he was responsible for a patrimony. This of course included his ‘domain,’ the lordships that had belonged to his ancestors. It also included the ‘crown,’ which had been incorporated into these. But ﬁrst and foremost it included the glory of his race—and all that had come down to him from his father and was his duty to hand on to his lawful son.105

This then provides us with another insight into the King of Hungary’s desperate proposal: from a royal perspective, he is caught between a rock and a hard place. The sole way for him to keep his promise to his late wife to only marry someone who resembles her exactly and protect his kingdom and legacy is to marry his daughter, in the most obvious violation of Church regulations on incest. The King of Hungary is caught between a past promise and the future of his realm; and between secular interests and ecclesiastical rules. While at this time the Church had certainly not completely solidified its grasp on the institution of marriage, people such as Yves of Chartres used occasions such as the excommunication of Philip I to increase the amount of control the Church could exercise over the laity, particularly royal laity.106 From the point of view of the aristocracy, however, the stakes were high: one could jeopardize one’s soul, but not one’s lands, so while consanguinity interdictions complicated marriage, some nobles attempted to use these as a “convenient escape-hatch.”107 Peter the Chanter gives the following example of a knight who proposes to exploit just this very loophole: “She has a large dowry and is related to me in the third kind of affinity. If she doesn’t please me, I can procure a separation.”108 At least in Peter’s view, then, the laity consciously availed itself of alternatives to 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 135 remaining in an unsatisfying marital contract by conveniently “discovering” a consanguineous relationship to one’s spouse, though according to d’Avray, this changed significantly with the Fourth Lateran Council.109 We have already noted the historical precedent of papal dispensation for “complicated” marriages, for example, Louis VII’s infant daughter’s marriage to the infant son of Henry II, a relationship of affinity, allowed during the papacy of Adrian IV (1154–1159).110 Similarly, the subsequent Pope Alexander III (reigned from 1159–1181) advised ignoring the issue of incest if the charge was brought forward long after the marriage had been contracted; he was also known for his willingness to provide dispensations for marriages between individuals related in the third and fourth degrees,111 but the intended incestuous union described here in La Manekine does not occur at the fringes of the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, which had been reduced from the seventh to the fourth degree by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. The kinship of the proposed marriage partners in Philippe de Rémi’s poem is not ambiguous, unknown or forgotten, for there is no doubt about the nature of this proposed union. Instead this literary incest functions as recrimination against the complicity of the Church in validating relationships it has already redefined and forbidden, when it is politically advantageous to do so. In other words, no interdiction is so great, that it cannot be assailed by rhetoric. This proposed incestuous marriage also functions as a comment on the nature of the basic bond between a father and a child, and more generally, as a comment on the nature of relationships that are not established and maintained by legal definition only, but by actions and emotion as well. La Manekine is concerned with the indissolubility and immutable nature of relationships: between husband and wife, God and his people, and parent and child.

4.3 Contaminated Rhetoric Carole Harvey has rightly noted the courtly aspects which underlie La Manekine, noting a signiﬁcant innovation: instead of a courtly protagonist who challenges a knight to perform a daring deed, it is Manekine who performs heroic acts.112 While we need not engage in any debate concerning the historicity or veracity of social behavior governed by what Gaston Paris termed “courtly love,” or ﬁn’amor as it was referred to in medieval romance, there is no doubt that there was a system of styl- ized language and a repertoire of literary behavior evoked by such terms. 136 L. M. ROUILLARD

Furthermore, the romance genre grounded in courtly culture evolves alongside the evolution of the sacrament of marriage’s emphasis on consent. According to the rhetoric of courtly love or fin’amor, marriage was incompatible with true love, for the marital union was typically not freely chosen, a belief in stark contrast with the simultaneous evolution of the Church’s insistence on mutual consent in contracting matrimony. Iron- ically, both the narrator and the King of Hungary in La Manekine use courtly-love vocabulary and rhetoric to describe the monarch’s incestuous desire for his daughter, thus demonstrating the seductive danger of that rhetoric, or as Harvey has put it: “Philippe [de Rémi] finds in the margins of courtliness a distorted image of love.”113 The narrator describes the King of Hungary’s struggle between Love and Reason in conven- tional courtly terms, just as Lancelot, for instance, debated internally the question of embarking upon the cart: Love commanded him, but Rea- son reminded Lancelot of the humiliation of such an act for a knight. In reporting the King of Hungary’s dilemma, the narrator describes the King of Hungary as manipulated by Love; he is the victim of the allegori- cal conflict between Reason and Love: “Car ses peres, de l’estincele / Dont Amors seit si les siens batre, / Se laisse en son cemin embatre / Si soutilment qu’il ne s’en garde, / Fors que de tant quë il l’esgarde / Plus volentiers c’ainc mais ne fist.” (ll. 412–417) “For her father, from the spark / With which Love knows so well how to strike her own, / Lets himself enter her path / So subtly that he does not notice, / Except that he looks at Joy / More willingly than he ever did before.” The King of Hungary’s complicity in the sinful incestuous proposal is cloaked by courtly-love rhetoric used by the narrator to portray him as the unfortunate target of Cupid’s arrows: “Mais od lui em porte le dart / D’amours, qui grant anui li fait, / Car si soutilment li a trait / Parmi les iex que dusc’al cuer / Le feri; mais puis a nul fuer / N’en pot trouver la garison, / S’en eut mainte grant marison” (ll. 424–430). “But he carries away with him the dart / Of Love, which causes him much distress, / For she has shot him so subtly / Through the eyes that she has struck him / In the heart; never afterwards, by any means, / Could he find a cure/ Until he had much affliction.” The king himself uses the same personifications: “Par outrequiderie esploite / Amors qui ensi me demaine;…” (ll. 436–437). “Love, which treats me thus, / Is behaving outrageously,…” The king finds himself the object of conflict between Love and Reason,114 another rhetorical attenuation of his moral responsibility in this marital matter (“Sens et amours le font doloir, / Qui dedens sen cuer se combatent” [ll. 478–479]. “Sense and Love make him 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 137 suffer, / Who are at war within his heart,”), and he eventually accepts his subjugation to the social convention of “courtly love” which now serves the very institution (marriage, albeit incestuous marriage) it professes to disdain. On the one hand, the use of courtly-love rhetoric to explain the King of Hungary’s sudden acceptance of an incestuous marriage contaminates the fin’amor tradition: the king’s victimization by Love suggests a comparison between incestuous pairings and the typical adulterous relationships, making the latter that much more scandalous. Additionally, using the traditional rhetoric of fin’amor to describe an incestuous pairing diminishes the personal responsibility for such a too-close-for-comfort partner since the lover cannot help falling in love, but rather is the play- thing of Cupid. Attributing the king’s willingness to contract marriage as the effect of Love’s dart undermines the concept of free will and individual consent: the concept of fin’amor may have traditionally declared love incompatible with marriage because the partner was not freely chosen, but evoking Love’s arrows in the context of contracting marriage also seems to declare individual consent to be irrelevant to marriage. The King of Hungary is thus “forced” to feel a forbidden love while his daughter is potentially forced into a reprehensible union. Scholars such as Rosalind Brown-Grant have rightly seen in this episode of La Manekine a portrayal of Joïe as a “courtly scapegoat for her father’s illicit desires…the courtly paradox of women’s innocent culpability.”115 In addition, however, the use of courtly-love rhetoric in this incestuous context forms a commentary on the nature of such a code: the traditional personifications and allegories of the courtly-love rhetoric used to describe such a monstrous union become tainted far beyond the adulterous relationship exemplified by Lancelot and Guinevere, and are purified only in the context of Joïe’s marriage with the King of Scotland. We have moved from the conflict between Love and Reason in adulterous unions to the conflict between Love and Reason in an incestuous union. Marriage as subsequently exemplified by Joïe and her husband later gives new meaning to courtly-love rhetoric. Or to put it another way: “For those who see women in a more tolerant and positive light, the manifestations of fin’amor will often include mutual love and even marriage as the logical goal or state.”116 Thus, in La Manekine, fin’amor language can eventually be rehabilitated in service of consensual marriage. 138 L. M. ROUILLARD

That love is perfectly compatible with marriage is evident from the beginning of this romance.117 The love of the King and Queen of Hun- gary, the love of Joïe and her husband, the King of Scotland, are the opposite of the adulterous love of literary couples such as Lancelot and Guinevere, or Tristan and Isolde. Instead, the model of exemplary love in La Manekine extolls married love, the depth of which is proven by the reaction of one spouse at the loss of the other. Indeed, the grief the King of Hungary feels at the death of his wife is a testimony to their married love: he weeps and faints over her lifeless body. Of Joïe and the King of Scotland, the Scottish people recount that: “mout s’entramerent andui” (l. 2456). “…[They] loved each other very much.” When they are separated by the king’s need to maintain his knightly reputation and participate in the tournaments in France, Joïe weeps and faints. The king also weeps and those tears are interpreted by people as the sign of mutual love: “Et quant il se parti de li, / S’i estoit encore l’amour; / Bien le peut on savoir al plor / Qu’il firent a la departie” (ll. 3600–3603). “And when he left her, / The love was still there; / One can know it by the weeping / That he [sic] did at their separation.” Contrary to Andreas Capellanus in whose book it is decreed, whether ironically or not, that love cannot exist within marriage,118 and contrary to the typical troubadour and trouvère poetry extolling the dangers and delights of adulterous relationships, the King of Scotland begins with the premise that love outside marriage is wrong and not even genuine: “Se je la tieng en soignentage, / L’amours sera fausse et volage, / Durement blasmés en seroie,…” (ll. 1543–1545). “If I keep her as my mistress, / That love will be false and fleeting; / I should be strongly blamed for it.” Joïe experiences the same preoccupations regarding the shame of unmarried love as well as anxiety over her position as a stranger in Scot- land without status in a kinship group to establish her eligibility for marriage. Of her own feelings and obsessions about the king she says: “Quide je pour çou qu’il se donte / A çou qu’il aint une esgaree / Et qui a une main colpee? / Enne me souvient il et membre / Que je colpai pour çou mon men- bre: / Que roïne ne deüsse estre? / Dont pens je ce qui ne poet estre, / Que je ne serai ja sa femme; / Et j’ameroie miex en flame / Ardoir que fuisse sa soignant” (ll. 1704–1713). “Do I believe, for this, that he condescends / So much as to love a wanderer, / One who has her hand cut off? / Don’t I remember and recall / That I cut off my hand / So that I might not be queen? / And so I am thinking what cannot be, / Since I shall 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 139 not be his wife; / And I would rather burn / In a flame than be his mistress.” Unlike her twelfth-century predecessor, Héloïse, who would have preferred to be Abelard’s “whore” rather than a married empress,119 Joïe considers marriage to be the proper context for love. Yet the early stages of the love between the King of Scotland and Joïe are in fact described with the traditional oxymorons of fin’amor rhetoric and allegory. The narrator describes the paradoxes of love: “Et bonne et malë est amours / Mors et vie, joie et doulours. / Uns i pert, autres i gaaigne; / Pour c’est drois c’on s’en lot et plaingne. / Li max d’amours est frois et cax, / Or est glacë, or est soulaus” (ll. 1481–1486). “Love is both good and bad, / Death and life, joy and sorrow. / One person loses from it, another gains; / Therefore it is right to rejoice and complain at her. / The ill of Love is cold and hot; / Now it is ice, now it is sun.” He employs the usual conveyor of love as the sense of sight (l. 1421) and speaks of the lovers as being wounded (l. 1490). Joïe’s and the king’s relationship is endangered by the Queen Mother, who warns Joïe to stay away from her son. While this losengier, the Queen Mother, has a function similar to that of the vicious gossipmonger in most courtly romances, there is an interesting twist here: it is the losengier who finally provokes the king’s avowal of love for Joïe (ll. 1895–1952). After hearing of the queen dowager’s threatening encounter with Manekine, the King of Scotland is finally moved to reveal his feelings and offer the young woman a place in his kingdom: “Sires en serai, et vous dame. / Si n’avrés garde de ma dame / Ne de nului qui mal vous face. / Ainsi vous donne amours ma grace” (ll. 1947–1950). “I shall be the lord of it, and you the lady. / And you will have no fear about my mother / Nor about anyone who might do you harm. / Thus Love gives you my favor.” Love between Joïe and the king is born in a courtly setting and proceeds according to the courtly-love rhetoric, but the progression of the romance depicts a loving relationship that far and away exceeds the bounds of this rhetoric. When many years later the King of Scotland describes his feelings for his long-lost wife to the Roman Senator, Joïe’s protector, he says he loved her “de bonne amor fine” (l. 6374), “out of good, true love,” which the narrator repeats in line 6924. One cannot help but compare their true married love to fin’amor of troubadour poetry and courtly romances with their frequent descriptions of adulterous love. The fidelity Joïe and her husband show each other is based on mutual love and affection, which recalls Hugh of Saint Victor’s definition of marriage: “…the substance of the sacrament itself is the mutual love of 140 L. M. ROUILLARD souls which is guarded in turn by the bond of conjugal society and agreement.”120 Raymond of Penyafort likewise included some concept of love (“coniuxit ex quo enim vir consentit per verba de praesenti in mulierem maritali affectu [my emphasis], et mulier in virum;…” “from the fact that a man consents through words in the present tense to a woman with marital affection, and the woman to the man…”121) in his definition of marriage. The narrator of La Manekine describes the consummation of the marriage to impress upon us the sensual delights of the legitimate union versus the illicit relationship of adulterous love. “Et li rois ert avoec s’amie, / Ou il menoient bonne vie. / Ensamble gisoient les nuis; / Assés avoient de deduis, / Plus que conter ne vous saroie / Quant lonc tans pensé i aroie. / Mais selonc çou k’estoient grant / Li desirier et li torment / Quë il en avoient souffert, / Selonc çou Amours les resert / De si tres grant joliveté / Comme amant ont en priveté / Quant il maintienent bonne amor. / Mout lour avoit bonne savour / Li acolers et li sentirs, / Li baisiers, li biaus maintenirs, / Li biaus deduis, li biaus souslas / Que il avoient bras a bras” (ll. 2107–2124). “And the king was with his beloved, / Where they were leading a happy life. / They lay together at night; / They had much delight, / More than I could relate to you / Even if I had thought about it for a long time. / But in equal measure to the great / Desire and torment / That they had suffered, / Love now serves them / With such great delight, / As lovers have in private / Who maintain true love. / Very sweet to them were / The embraces and touches, / The kisses, the tender gestures, / The fine delight, / the fine solace / That they had in each other’s arms.” In this description, the joys of marital sex are the reward for deferring sexual gratification until after marriage. In a sense, Philippe has appropriated the traditional fin’amor rhetoric with its depiction of suffering lovers and has transformed it into the justification of sensual marital pleasure, for those who express true love or bonne amor. Furthermore, while consummation is not considered at this time to effect a marriage, according to Tancred, the immediate predecessor to Raymond of Penyafort, it is certainly a confirmation of consent.122 Thus, this passage points out the “perfection” of Joïe’s and the King of Scot- land’s marriage, while also insisting on the sinless pleasure of a legitimate union.123 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 141

4.4 Containing Desire: Ritual Abstinence While the Roman Senator is touched by the joyous reunion of Joïe and her husband after an anguishing seven-year separation, he brings the couple down to earth again with a reminder of the penitential season: their remarkable reunion has taken place during Holy Week. The Senator suggests that they show their thanks to God by doing penance and abstaining from intercourse until Easter:124 “S’il vous a fait vostre talent, / Vous ne devés mie avoir lent / Le cuer de faire penitance; / Car c’est une riens qui avance / Celui qui le fait. De l’amour, / Dont nus ne puet faire clamour, / Tenu vous estes ambedoi, / Maugré vostre, si com je croi, / Que vous ensamble ne jeüstes; / Mais c’ert pour çou que ne peüstes. / Mais desor i poés jesir, / Së il vous en vient a plaisir. / Mais, par mon los, la consiree / En ferés tant que soit passee / La Passions [sic] Nostre Signeur, / Pour çou qu’il vous tiegne en honeur” (ll. 6631–6646). “If He has granted your wish, / You ought not to have a heart that is slow / To do penance; / For this is a thing that profits / The one who does it. From that love / That no-one can reproach / You have both abstained / In spite of yourselves, as I believe, / So that you have not slept together; / But that is because you could not. / But from now on you can sleep together, / If it pleases you. / But, by my advice, you will abstain / From it until the Passion / Of Our Lord is over, / So that He may hold you in honor.” Such an exhortation betrays more than a little anxiety about sexuality and represents an attempt to channel the sexual drive into acceptable and sanctioned behavior rather than condemning it altogether.125 Considerations of periodic ritual sexual abstinence within marriage also reflect theological discussions on the nature of marital sex: from Augustine (and later Gratian) who classified marital lust as a venial sin, to Rufinus who regarded lustful marital sex as a mortal sin, to Huguccio who considered even procreative sex as a venial infraction, the sexual arena was a minefield of dangerous sin and required serious control and regulation.126 James Brundage has produced an infor- mative flow chart indicating the interdicted times for sexual activity: sex during Lent, Easter, Advent, and on Sundays was prohibited, or certainly discouraged at various times.127 Such prescriptions are reflected in the life of the ninth-century monk Iso whose holy virtue allows him to rise above his lenten conception by parents too lustful to wait for Easter. In good post-edenic fashion, Iso’s parents immediately begin penance for their sin and are finally able to receive Easter communion from an angel disguised as a local priest.128 The early eleventh-century Corrector by Burchard of 142 L. M. ROUILLARD

Worms continues to advocate such abstention: “have you not abstained from sexual intercourse during the whole of Lent …and five days before receiving the sacred Body of the Lord? If you have neglected this, you should do twenty days of penance on bread and water.”129 Such conjugal penitential acts of sexual abstinence in marriage were commonly encouraged by the thirteenth-century canonists as well, but according to Johannes Teutonicus (d. 1245) in his Glossa ordinaria, not mandatory.130 In contrast, the mid-thirteenth-century William of Waddington in his Manuel des pechiez insists that lenten sex is a sin: “Ta femme ne deis aprocher / En seint tens pur pechier. / A blamer est chescun home / Qe le fet de custume”131 (ll. 2497–2500). “You must not come together with your wife / During Lent for it is a sin. / Any man is a sinner / Who habitually does this.” On the other hand, such anxiety about sexual purity troubled some, such as Robert of Courson (d. 1219) who was especially worried that sexual abstinence based on the liturgical calendar suggested a certain sympathy with heretical sects who rejected procreation.132 Nonetheless, Joïe and her husband happily agree to this suggestion of abstinence which the King of Scotland describes as “mout courtois et biaus” (l. 6665), “very courteous and fine.”133 In contrast to her own lascivious father who was willing to sacrifice his daughter for the good of the kingdom, and unlike the self-interested clerics who do the bid- ding of their lay lords, the Roman Senator, having provided Manekine with a chaste and safe harbor, and having reunited her with her husband, presents a fatherly figure who dispenses wise, kindly Christian counsel on sexual matters. When the obedient couple has observed Christian guidelines for married sex, their ensuing physical relationship is described once again by the narrator as one in which: “Tant de joie ont que ne poroie /Direlamoitiédeleurjoie” (ll. 7843–7844). “They have so much joy that I could not / Tell the half of it.” Unlike Jerome who reported Xys- tus’s belief that the man who loves his wife too much is an adulterer,134 the narrator of La Manekine obviously believes that the heroine and her husband live happily and virtuously ever after. In this romance, there is room for a blameless sexual union, even without the immediate mention of procreation, following the mutual consent to briefly abstain from the carnal union, consent being the operative concept here. In summary then, what then is the narrative function of the proposed incestuous marriage between the King of Hungary and his daughter, along with the barons’ and clerics’ promise of dispensation and justification? First of all, it serves as a sharp contrast to consensual marriage, 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 143 making the latter appear that much more normal and effective, for in the case of Joïe and her husband, their marital bond survives a seven-year separation. Consensual marriage as promoted by the Church emphasizes the role of the individual couple, separate from heads of families, in effecting an indissoluble union. In contrast to some individual, weak-kneed clerics willing to change the definition of a valid marriage to suit the circumstances of the powerful aristocrats who controlled them, consensual marriage as well as consensual abstinence accentuate the importance of the decisions and desires of lay individuals, including women. By recognizing such Church regulations concerning individual consent and periodic sexual abstinence, Philippe professes a limited submission to religious authority, even as he will undermine that authority with his depiction of a female lay protagonist who will publicly forgive her father for his sin and later proceed to facilitate the marriages of the Senator’s daughters with the kind seneschals. That the ecclesiastical model of marriage did not completely sup- plant the aristocratic model is evident in Joïe’s arrangement of marriages between the Senator’s two daughters and the two seneschals near the end of the romance. The seneschals fall in love with the girls, though there is no explicit mention of their feelings for these men. As queen, Joïe orches- trates the unions: “Cil dui nule femme n’avoient; / Mais de cuer durement amoient / Les ii filles au senatour, / Qui bones et de bel atour / Estoient; pour çou les amerent, / Në il leur cuers si ne celerent / Que la roïne nel seüst / Et qu’ele ne s’en perceüst. / Lie en fu, et bien i parut, / De leur volenté ne leur nut, / Ains pourcacha tant et pourquist / Que ces deux mariages fist. / Et fist donner au mariage / A tous jours com leur yretage, / Deus duchees as damoiseles / Que mout furent bones et beles. / Mais pour çou de li ne se murent; / Toute leur vie avoec li furent, / Et ensement li senescal, / Comme bon et fin et loial” (ll. 8087–8106). “These two had no wives; / But from their hearts they dearly loved / The senator’s two daughters, / Who were good and elegant; / They loved them for this, / And did not hide their feelings to the point / That the queen did not know about it / And did not perceve it. / She was happy about this, and showed it. / She did not oppose their wishes, / But projected and intervened so much / That she brought about these two marriages. / And at the marriage she caused to be given / Forever, as their heritage, / Two duchies to the young ladies, / Very fine and beautiful ones. / But for all that they did not leave her; / They were with her all their lives, / And also the seneschals, / Like good and true and loyal men.” Love 144 L. M. ROUILLARD plays a role in these two marriages, but it is the love of men for women while the unions themselves are arranged with the sanction of the new Queen of Scotland, Hungary, and Armenia. We know the sentiments of the seneschals though the feelings of their soon-to-be wives remain something of a mystery; the queen certainly benefits from the unions because she and her husband are assured of loyal subjects in the seneschals, and we are assured that the wives benefit at least materially in that they have unalienable duchies in their names. Thus, this romance certainly depicts the importance of some level of individual consent in the formation of a valid and happy marriage, as exemplified by Joïe and the King of Scotland, but there is a subtle reminder of the practicalities of life: loyalties must be assured and political stability must be maintained. Philippe has subtly disguised aristocratic interests with an ecclesiastical veil, much as the literary seneschals appeared to obey their royal masters in carrying out execution orders. Summing up Joïe’s tribulation and ultimate favor from God in lines 8577–8578, the narrator concludes: “Il fait bon tel maistre servir / Et sa volenté poursivir.” “It is well to serve such a Master / And carry out His will.” As Joïe is rewarded by God for her steadfastness and devotion, so will Joïe’s vassals be rewarded by her for their loyalty. Compensation follows fidelity and in this system, and marriage is too useful a political tool to be left entirely subject to feelings of love. Individual desires and consent must not be completely overlooked if marriage is to be such a useful tool, but in this romance, it is a tool best wielded by a woman who rewards virtue, rather than by an authoritarian male figure trading in female bodies. It is certainly the view of a secular person which we have from the quill of Philippe de Rémi, a bailiff in the employ of a member of the royal family,andamanwhoheldland(TerredeBernart)infieffromtheabbeyof Saint-Denis.135 These circumstances and connections explain in part our poet’s concerns with sacramental issues, ecclesiastical pronouncements, and the implications for kings and queens. In contrast to the usual difficulty of reconciling sexuality, marriage, and virtue sometimes espoused by clerical writers, Philippe de Rémi creates in La Manekine an aristocratic, lay heroine who experiences matrimony and virtue as compatible. While the Blessed Virgin is evoked and invoked several times during the romance, representing the union of marriage and virtue, but excluding the possibility of active sexuality, Joïe as a married and sexual woman is clearly depicted as a virtuous woman in her own right. The question remains: why this change of heart as regards the spiritual worth of the 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 145 married woman? How does the married woman come to be favorably depicted in conjunction with the Blessed Virgin, the image of mother- hood without taint of sexuality? It is not simply due to a new regard for the sacrament of marriage, nor is it simply due to a decrease in the value attributed to virginity, which after all afforded women considerably more freedom from social and familial responsibilities. While these ideas are certainly present in La Manekine, we must keep in mind certain material concerns such as the transmission of wealth. The event which propels the entire romance is the promise the Queen of Hungary extracts from her husband on her deathbed: that if his barons will not allow Joïe to inherit the kingdom, the King of Hungary will only remarry with someone who resembles her exactly.136 By making the condition of remarriage nearly impossible (or so she thought), perhaps the Queen had hoped the kingdom would pass to Joïe by default. And indeed, one of the happy consequences of Joïe’s reunion with her father is the restoration of her inheritance, the Kingdom of Armenia, from her mother.137 And, since the King of Hungary is so impressed with his new son-in-law, he is only too happy to finally pass along the Kingdom of Hungary as well. In other words, this narrative is, among other things, a story about material transmission facilitated by marriage: like the hand preciously protected in the reliquary/belly of the fish and then restored to its rightful owner, so are the Kingdoms of Hungary and Armenia restored to their rightful owner, Joïe, or rather, eventually to her husband and her son.138 Upon this foundation is erected the romance of incest, marriage, and forgiveness. Women are connective tissue in this social fabric. While Mary is to be admired, Joïe’s steadfastness (but not her self-mutilation) is to be imitated as an ideal that has been humanized and feminized.139 As a religious emblem, the Virgin embodies an irresolvable paradox that no earthly woman could live up to—sexually untouched yet also a biological mother. The acceptance of a virtuous married woman’s sexuality, contained through ritual abstinence, transforms Joïe into another kind of emblem that other women could in fact emulate. Jerome insisted that to achieve a virtuous state, a woman needed to be masculinized: “as long as a woman is for birth and children, she is different from man as body is from soul. But when she wishes to serve Christ more than the world, then she will cease to be a woman, and will be called man.”140 Jerome may have believed that saintly women overcame their femininity to achieve a virile or masculine virtue, but Philippe believes in a heroine whose virtue is firmly anchored in the feminine life. 146 L. M. ROUILLARD

Notes

1. Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Penguin, 2005), 6. 2. Augustine, City of God, intro. Etienne Gilson, trans. Gerald Walsh (New York: Doubleday, 1958), 350. 3. James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 180. 4. See Ruth Mazo Karras, “The Christianization of Medieval Marriage,” in Christianity and Culture in the Middle Ages: Essays to Honor John Van Engen, eds. David C. Mengel and Lisa Wolverton (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 1–24; here 12–14 in particular. 5. “Postumus marrying? You used to be sane; no doubt about that. / What Fury, then, with her maddening snakes is hunting you down? / Can you bear to be the salve of a woman, when so much rope is at hand, / when those vertiginous top-ﬂoor windows are standing open, / and when the Aemilian bridge nearby offers assistance?” Juvenal, The Satires, trans. Niall Rudd and ed. William Barr (Oxford: Oxford Uni- versity Press, 1991), 38. See Katharina M. Wilson and Elizabeth M. Makowski, Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage: Misogamous Litear- ture from Juvenal to Chaucer (Albany: State University Press of New York: 1990), 23–24. For an historical overview of marriage in Roman times, see Ruth Mazo Karras, Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2012), 16–18. 6. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 32–39 for an overview of Roman marriage. 7. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 130–131. 8. Peter Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renuncia- tion in Early Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 83–86. 9. Jerome, “Letter to Eustochium,” Women’s Lives in Medieval Europe: A Sourcebook, ed. Emilie Amt (New York: Routledge, 1993), 24: “I praise wedlock, I praise marriage; but it is because they produce me virgins.” 10. The Principle Works of St. Jerome, trans. W.H. Fremantle, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, vol. 6 (New York, 1893), at http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/ ~chaucer/canttales/wbpro/jer-men.html, accessed March 3, 2014. See also Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 90. 11. Elaine Pagels, Adam, Eve and the Serpent (New York: Random House, 1988), 90. 12. Pagels, Adam, 93. 13. Walter Map, Letter of Valerius to Rufﬁnus, Against Marriage (c. 1180), as cited by Alcuin Blamires, ed., Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 103– 114. 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 147

14. Blamires, Woman Defamed, 177–197. 15. James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (London: Longman, 1995), 92. 16. From the Thesaurus Novus Anecdotorum of 1761, as cited in J. Noonan, Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 185. 17. As cited by Noonan, Contraception, 185. 18. Derek Neal, “What Can Historians Do with Clerical Masculinity?” in Negotiating Clerical Identities: Priest, Monks and Masculinity in the Mid- dle Ages, ed. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010): 16–36; here 23–24. Charles Duggan, “Equity and Compassion in Papal Marriage Decretals to England,” Love and Marriage in the Twelfth Century, ed. Wills van Hoecke and Andries Welkenhuysen (Leu- ven: Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, 1981), 59–87, summarizes the allowance of clerks below the level of subdeacons to marry, though they were then barred from promotion. 19. H.J. Schroeder, Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Trans- lation and Commentary (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1937), 177–194, as cited in Paul Halsall, Medieval Sourcebook: Ninth Ecumenical Council Lateran I, 1123 (November 1996), www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/ lateran1.asp, accessed July 5, 2016. 20. See Andrew Holt, “Between Warrior and Priest: The Creation of a New Masculine Identity during the Crusades,” in Negotiating Clerical Iden- tities: Priest, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages, ed. Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 185–203; here 188. 21. See Tracy Adams, Violent Passions: Managing Love in the Old French Verse Romance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 76–78. 22. Eleanor Commo McLaughlin, “Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Woman in Medieval Theology,” Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974): 213–266; here 247. Jean- Charles Payen, “La Crise du Mariage à la ﬁn du XIIIe siècle d’après la littérature française du temps,” Famille et Parenté dans l’Occident Médié- val, Actes du Colloque Paris (6–8 juin, 1974), eds. G. Duby and J. LeGoff (Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1977), 413–430, cites later thirteenth-century ecclesiastical preoccupations with “bigamous” clergy, that is clerics who remarried or who married widows, as possibly one of the forces behind misogamous literature, 422. He believes another cause of misogamy to be the general decline of the courtly esthetic and its (in his opinion) positive views of women, 426. 23. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 254, 432. Charles Donahue, Jr., Law, Marriage, and Society in the Later Middle Ages: Arguments About Marriage in Five Courts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 148 L. M. ROUILLARD

2007), 16. See also Philip L. Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments: The Sacramental Theology of Marriage from Its Medieval Origins to the Council of Trent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 1–5. 24. Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments, 28. 25. John of Salisbury, Memoirs of the Papal Court, trans. Marjorie Chibnall (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1956; rpt. 1965), 81: “venisse ut testimonium perhibeant veritati, et cognationem suam purgent a crim- ine et infamia incesti.” The degrees of consanguinity are not specified by John of Salisbury, presumably because the point of the incident is to demonstrate the indissolubility of marriage in the face of anything but the closest of incestuous relations. In this story, the pope will not allow shadowy claims of consanguinity as an excuse for divorce. 26. John of Salisbury, Memoirs, 82: “Et quo facias, inquit, dilectissime fili, libentius et utilius quod imploro, ecce ego…facio, si acquieveris, ut haec filia mea, uxor tua, inestimabilem tibi afferat et conferat dotem, immu- nitatem videlicet peccatorum ut quicquid hactenus peccasti a me in die iudicii exigatur dum illi de cetero serves fidem.” See also R.W. Southern, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (New York: Penguin, 1970; Pelican rpt., 1990), 136–137. See also Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 289, footnote 143. See also Adams, Violent Passions, 84–85. 27. See Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999) for her suggested date of composition being the second quarter of the thirteenth century, 70–82; 83–91. All citations and translations of Manekine are taken from Sargent- Baur. 28. Raymond of Penyafort, Summa Sancti, ed. M. Vestrius Barbianus, ed., 518–519: “Ita nota, quod tertium bonum coniugii diciture sacramentum, non quod sit ipsum coniugium, sed quia eiusdem rei sacrae signum, id est spiritualis, et inseparabilis coniunctionis Christi, et Ecclesiae...” “Again, note that the third good of marriage is called sacrament, not that it is the marriage itself but because it is a sign of a holy thing itself, that is, of the spiritual and inseparable union of Christ and the Church,” Raymond of Penyafort Summa on Marriage, trans. Pierre Payer (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005), 25. 29. Raymond of Penyafort, Summa, trans. Payer, 21. 30. Bernard of Clairvaux, Selected Works, trans. G.R. Evans (New York: Paulist Press, 1987), 231–232. See also June Hall McCash, “Mutual Love as a Medieval Ideal,” Courtly Literature: Culture and Context,eds. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper (Philadelphia: John Benjamin Publishing Co., 1990), 429–438; here 431. 31. McLaughlin, “Equality of Souls,” 222. 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 149

32. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 334; 374–375. 33. David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard, 1985), 118– 119. 34. David d’Avray, “The Gospel of the Marriage Feast of Cana and Marriage Preaching in France,” The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Mem- ory of Beryl Smalley, eds. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 207–224; here 210–211; 214. 35. Georges Duby, Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France, trans. Elborg Forster (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978; 1991), 3–10; 17. 36. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 17–18. 37. Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Mod- ern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (Chicago: Univer- sity of Chicago Press, 1983), 283–284. See David Herlihy, “The Family and Religious Ideologies in Medieval Europe,” Journal of Family His- tory 12 (1987): 3–17. Herlihy criticizes Duby’s models concluding that Duby does not consider the difference between the prescription of an ideal and the description of reality, 7. 38. Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments, 39. 39. Christopher Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 154. 40. Ivan Ermakoff, “Prelates and Princes: Aristocratic Marriages, Canon Law Prohibitions, and Shifts in Norms and Patterns of Domination in the Central Middle Ages,” American Sociological Review 62 (June 1997): 405–422; here 418. 41. Ermakoff, “Prelates and Princes,” 413. 42. Adams, Violent Passions, 79. 43. David d’Avray, Medieval Marriage: Symbolism & Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 2. 44. D’Avray, Medieval Marriage, 73. 45. Tertullian, in De cultu feminarum, says to women: “You are the gateway of the devil; you are the one who unseals the curse of that tree, and you are the ﬁrst one to turn your back on the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the devil was not capable of corrupting; you easily destroyed the image of God, Adam. Because of what you deserve, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die,” as cited in Blamires, Woman Defamed, 51. 46. Philippe Delhaye, “Le Dossier anti-matrimonial de l’Adversus Jovini- anum et son inﬂuence sur quelques écrits latins du XIIe siècle,” Medieval Studies 13 (1951): 65–86; here 70; 79–83. 47. Clerics certainly did advance aristocratic interests by facilitating dispensations from church laws, if not divine law. See Philip Lyndon Reynolds, 150 L. M. ROUILLARD

Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage Dur- ing the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods (Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, Inc., 2001), 150 and footnote 21, 150. 48. See Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 332–335 on Pope Alexan- der III’s writings on consent. Laurent Morelle believes the Church also harnessed familial concern for property transfer by preparing copies of dower charters with appropriate insertions of institutional attitudes towards the sacrament, “Marriage and Diplomatics: Five Dower Char- ters from the Regions of Laon and Soisson, 1163–1181,” in To Have and to Hold: Marrying and Its Documentation in Western Christendom, eds. Philip L. Reynolds and John Witte, Jr. (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- versity Press, 2007), 165–214; here 195. 49. Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, ed. Charity Cannon Willard with Eric Hicks (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1989), 90. Christine de Pizan, A Medieval Woman’s Mirror of Honor: The Treasure of the City of Ladies, trans. Charity Cannon Willard, ed. Madeleine Pelner Cosman (Tenaﬂy, NJ: Bard Hall and Persea Books, 1989), 124. 50. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 179. James Brundage, “Con- cubinage and Marriage in Medieval Canon Law,” Journal of Medieval History 1 (1975): 118–128; here 120. 51. Jean-Baptiste Molin and Protais Mutembe, Le Rituel du mariage en France du XIIe au XVIe siècle (Paris: Beauchesne, 1974), 25–27. See also Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments, 34, and Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church, xviii–xxi. 52. Molin and Mutembe, Le Rituel du mariage, 31. 53. Herlihy, “Family,” 10. See also Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Soci- ety, 352. 54. Herlihy, “Family,” 10. An example of the role of consent in marriage is contained in Tancred’s early thirteenth-century Summa de matrimo- nia, ed. Agathon Wunderlich (Gottingae, 1841) dating just prior to the Fourth Lateran Council: “Sequitur videre, qualiter contrahatur matimo- nium. Et dicendum est, quod solo consensu.” [“It remains to see how marriage is contracted. And it is by consent alone,” (translation mine)], tit. 8, 12. See also Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 352. John Shinners, ed., Medieval Popular Religion 1000–1500: A Reader (Peter- borough, ON: Broadview Press; 1997; rpt. 1999), 10 for a citation of the Fourth Lateran Council, Canon 51 which stipulates the need to pub- licize the bans, and for the priest to verify there are no violations of incest regulations. 55. Molin and Mutembe, Le Rituel du marriage, 26–33. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 20; 91. 56. Molin and Mutembe, Le Rituel du marriage, 37, footnote 48. 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 151

57. Brundage, “Concubinage,” 124. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Soci- ety, 231–236. Penny S. Gold, “The Marriage of Mary and Joseph in the Twelfth-Century Ideology of Marriage,” Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church, ed. Vern Bullough (Buffalo, 1982), 102–117; here 102. See also 106 where she cites Gratian: “‘Coitus without will to contract marriage and deflowering of virginity without conjugal agreement do not make a marriage. But the precedent will of contracting marriage and the conjugal contract effect that the man in the deflowering of her virginity or in coitus is said to marry the man or to celebrate marriage.’” See Reynolds, How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments, 47. 58. Brundage, “Concubinage,” 124. 59. Gold, “The Marriage of Mary and Joseph,” 102. 60. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 268. 61. Brundage, “Concubinage,” 125. 62. Gold, “The Marriage of Mary and Joseph,” 107. 63. Gold, “The Marriage of Mary and Joseph,” 107. 64. Gold, “The Marriage of Mary and Joseph,” 107. See D’Avray, Medieval Marriage, 58–73 for his discussion of the different ways in which marriage as a symbol could be used rhetorically to explain other relationships in the social and political spheres. 65. Gold, “The Marriage of Mary and Joseph,” 111. 66. Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. Mario Roques (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1981). Chrétien de Troyes, Arthurian Romances, trans. D.D.R. Owen (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1987), 63. Margaret Burrell, “‘Tel seit la lei de mariage’: Fact and Fiction in Models of Twelfth-Century Marriage,” Parergon 18 (2001): 1–15; here 11. 67. The Life of Saint Audrey: A Text by Marie de France, trans. June Hall McCash and Judith Clark Barban (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., Inc. 2006), 62–67. 68. John T. Noonan, Jr., “Power to Choose,” Viator 4 (1973): 419– 434; here 426 and footnote 21. He explains the apparent contradic- tion between consent and obedience by citing Justinian’s sixth-century Digest 23.2.22: “‘Si patre cogente, ducit uxorem, quam non duceret, si sui arbitrii esset, contraxit tamen matrimonium, quod inter invi- tos non contrahitur, maluisse enim hoc videtur.’” “‘If, at a father’s compulsion, a son marries a wife he would not marry if he were able to follow his own decision, he has nonetheless contracted marriage; it is not contracted between the unwilling, [but] he appears to have preferred it,’” (Noonan trans.). Nonetheless a medieval father risked excommunication for such coercion, as explained by d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, 127. Sons were not exempt from such patriarchal coercion: Duby, The Knight, 77, suggests that Robert the Pious may have repudiated his first wife Rozala for the very reason that his father had imposed the union. 152 L. M. ROUILLARD

69. Reynolds, Marriage in the Western Church, 103–107. 70. As cited in Love, Marriage, and Family, ed. Jacqueline Murray (Peter- borough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001), 175. 71. Raymond of Penyafort, Summa on Marriage, trans. Payer, 54. 72. Molin and Mutembe, Le Rituel du marriage, 64. 73. David d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, 128. 74. As cited by Ian P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theolo- gians and the University c. 1100–1330 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer- sity Press, 2012), 257. 75. Molin and Mutembe, Le Rituel du marriage for a reference to the ritual interrogation and proclamation of consent regarding St. Oda’s refusal of marriage, 66. 76. Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 147–148. See also Linda Rouillard, “Marriage and Mutilation in La Manekine,” Romance Language Annual X (2001): 99–104. 77. Edith Rickert, ed., Emaré (London: Early English Texts Society, 1906; 1908), a late fourteenth-century reworking of the father–daughter incest theme, addresses this issue of ineligibility for royal marriage if one is physically maimed by analogy with bodily integrity and the eligibility to reign, 46. See also Elizabeth Archibald, “Flight from Incest: Two Late Classical Precursors of the Constance Theme,” Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 259–272; here 267. 78. Jean-Guy Gouttebroze, “Structure narrative et structure sociale: Notes sur la Manekine,” Seneﬁance 26 (1989): 201–213; here 204: “La blessure est symbolique. Dans la cérémonie du mariage, la main représente déjà toute la personne: la jeune ﬁlle se retranche ainsi d’un processus matrimonial odieux.” 79. Alicia Ostriker, “The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Mythmaking,” in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Liter- ature, Theory, ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 313– 338; here 331. 80. Brigitte Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 148. 81. Irene Gnarra, ed. and trans., ‘La Manekine’: Text, Translation, Com- mentary (New York: Garland, 1988), 395. M. Shepherd, Tradition and Re-creation in Thirteenth-Century Romance: ‘La Manekine’ and ‘Jehan et Blonde’ by Philippe de Rémi (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 24. 82. Noonan, “Power to Choose,” 420–422 and footnote 6, 422: “‘His auc- toritatibus evidenter ostenditur, quod nisi libera voluntate nulla est copu- landa alicui,’” dictum post c. 4. See also 426–427. Angela M. Lucas, Women in the Middle Ages: Religion, Marriage and Letters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 67. 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 153

83. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 34. 84. Scarry, TheBodyinPain, 53. 85. Noonan, Jr., “Power to Choose,” 429, summarizes Gratian’s view of the sacrament, based on Augustine, saying: “Marriage became a seedbed for the heavenly city being freed from domination by the family and subjected to regulation by the Church.” 86. Marion F. Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship: Capetian France 987–1234,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 5, ed. William Bowsky (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), 3–47; here 11– 12, discusses the origins of the Capetian queens: between 987–1223 all the queens came from aristocratic families. She also notes the importance the Capetians placed on tracing genealogical ties with the Carolingian dynasty. While La Manekine does not include references to the Capetian dynasty, or any other French dynasty for that matter, this tradition of royal lineage for Capetian queens would have been part of the cultural knowledge of readers and listeners, and would have made the King of Scotland’s choice of a stranger with no known pedigree as a spouse that much more remarkable. 87. One possible historical model for tensions between aristocratic mothers and sons are: Philip II Augustus and his Champagnois mother, Adèle. Philip marries Isabel of Hainaut without his mother’s approval, Marion Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship,” 44. For another possible historical model of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law tensions known to readers of the second half of the thirteenth century, consider Blanche of Castille and Marguerite of Provence (who married Louis IX in 1234), as described by JoAnn McNamara and Suzanne F. Wemple, “Sanctity and Power: Medieval Women,” Becoming Visible: Women in European His- tory, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mif- flin, 1977), 92–118; here 113. Joinville, in his Histoire de Saint Louis,ed. M. Natalis de Wailly (Paris: Hachette, 1865) says of these two queens: “Les duretés que la reine Blanche fit à la reine Marguerite furent telles, que la reine Blanche ne voulait pas souffrir, autant qu’elle le pouvait, que son fils fût en la compagnie de sa femme, si ce n’est le soir quand il allait coucher avec elle,” 271–272. See also Margaret Wade Labarge, A Small Sound of the Trumpet (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 55. I am not, however, arguing the Philippe de Rémi was directly inspired by this legend, but certainly later audiences/readers might very well have reflected on such similarities. 88. Ralph Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 62, explains: “A number of episcopal sees and great abbeys outside the royal domain were considered ‘royal churches’ under the king’s special protection. In political terms, 154 L. M. ROUILLARD

royal protection for these churches reinforced royal power and prestige, giving the king excuses for intervening in regions far from Paris to protect religious institutions from local lords.” 89. The requirement of an officiating priest at the marriage ceremony will not become a formal ecclesiastical law until the Council of Trent in 1563. Molin and Mutembe, Le Rituel du marriage, 122. 90. Molin and Mutembe, Le Rituel du marriage, 49. Also Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 362. And Gabriel LeBras, “Le mariage dans la théologie et le droit de l’Eglise du XIe au XIIIe siècle,” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale (Juin 1968): 191–202; here 197. See Ruth Kar- ras, “Christianization of Medieval Marriage,” 15–17 for her explanation about the connection between publicizing the banns announcing an upcoming marriage and the concept of the indissolubility of marriage. On the other hand, the lack of banns could reflect the concern of the King of Scotland’s need or desire to “facilitate” a subsequent, more advantageous marriage in the future in spite of his great love for Manekine. 91. John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe in Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Pan- theon Books, 1988), 151 in reference to Talmudic law which prohibited marriage with foundlings because of the fear of potential incest. Clement of Alexandria and Justin Martyr tried to dissuade people from commerce with prostitutes for the same reason, 158. See also Gnarra, trans. and ed., La Manekine, 406. Noonan, Jr., “Power to Choose,” 430, makes the following claim: “The incest prohibitions were dispensable--in theory in Gratian, they were all dispensable; in practice relatives as close as first cousins could obtain license without difficulty,” referring to Gratian, dictum post c.1, c.35, q.1. 92. There was in fact precedent for women as heirs. Eleanor of Aquitaine was the sole heir to William X of Aquitaine and a minor at that; yet she acquired Aquitaine and maintained it even after her divorce from Louis VII, Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship,” 13. Blanche of Castille again comes to mind as a contemporary example of women rulers and the difficulties faced by such women. Blanche was regent for Louis IX during his minority, but Joan M. Ferrante, in Woman as Image in Medieval Literature from the Twelfth Century to Dante (New York: Columbia, 1975), 10, points out that she “had to struggle valiantly to retain [her authority] against much opposition.” See Chapter 2 of this work. 93. Facinger, “A Study of Medieval Queenship,” 11. 94. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 68. 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 155

95. See Duby, Medieval Marriage, 65–73 for his account of the story of Ralph of Vermandois, Louis VII and Saint Bernard. Duby bases his comments on Ralph of Vermandois’s divorce on a text by Abbot Herman of Saint-Martin of Tournai. Duby explains that Herman himself had a political interest in this case because the Bishop of Noyon, one of the three bishops who contributed to the favorable divorce decision lost his position, including his oversight of Herman’s abbey. Herman hoped to take advantage of this by asking the pope to now name a Bishop of Tournai who would oversee Herman’s abbey instead of the Bishop of Noyon. John of Salisbury also comments brieﬂy on the Vermandois case, as cited by Jacqueline Murray, ed., Love, Marriage, and Family in the Middle Ages: A Reader (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001), 215–216. See Turner, Eleanor of Acquitaine, 62–66. Turner speciﬁcally mentions the punishing interdict as a way to exert control over Louis VII who insisted on naming certain bishops, 62–63. 96. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 65. 97. John Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter & His Circle, 2 vols. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 332–337. 98. “Twelfth Ecumenical Council, Lateran IV 1215,” in Medieval Sourcebook, ed. Paul Halsall, http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp, accessed July 4, 2012. 99. Baldwin, Masters, Princes, and Merchants, 332. 100. Duby, The Knight, 84. Note that over time, incest has been used to explain both the birth of an exceptionally beautiful child, for example Adonis, and the birth of a deformed child. See Note 104 in our Chapter 2 for Gerald of Wales’s explanation of birth defects as a possible consequence of incest. See also Elizabeth Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), 50–51. See Emily Francomano, “The Hands of Phillip de Remi’s Manekine,” Mediterranean Studies 15 (2006): 1–20; here 2, footnote 6. 101. Carol Harvey, “Incest, Identity and Uncourtly Conduct in La Manekine,” in The Court Reconvenes: Courtly Literature Across the Dis- ciplines, eds. Barbara K. Altmann and Carelton W. Carrol (Cambridge, UK: 2003), 161–168; here 165–166: “In the Middle Ages, monstrous birth was thought to reveal the will of God and was often interpreted as a punishment for past misdeeds.” 102. Duby, The Knight, 91. 103. Duby, The Knight, 123. 104. Duby, The Knight, 6. See also 4–14. While others accused Philippe merely of adultery, Yves persisted in accusing the king of incest. 105. Duby, The Knight, 16. 156 L. M. ROUILLARD

106. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 1. Duby, The Knight, explains the use of excommunication as a strategy to impose greater control by the Church over the monarchy, part of the reformers’ agenda, in contrast to the more traditional practice which left some clerics subjected to the king. Duby also says: “But above all there was a clash between two irreconcilable conceptions of the Church: on the one hand, the traditional Carolingian view, which saw the prelates of each nation gathered together under its divinely appointed king; on the other, the disquiet- ing vision of reformers like Urban II, according to which the spiritual was above the temporal and kings were therefore subject to bishops, and bishops themselves subject to the unifying authority of the bishop of Rome. If these new structures were to be accepted, kings must be made to yield. To force the king of France to bend the knee, the leaders of the reform excommunicated him, first at Autun and then at Clermont,” 5. 107. Constance Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” Speculum 56 (1981): 268–287; here 269. 108. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, vol. i, 335; vol. ii, endnote 179, 225: “‘Sicut audivit magister militem quemdem de uxore ducenda dicentem: Bene est michi quia magna est dos. In tercio genere affinitatis forsitan est illa mihi, et ideo non ita mihi proxima, quod ab ea separer. Sed si voluero et non placebit michi, per affinitatem illam discidium procurare potero.’” See also d’Avray, Medieval Marriage, 94; see also 104–108 for his discussion of incest regulations and the changes instituted by the Fourth Lateran Council; and the relative paucity of legal documents in respect to marriages declared invalid for reasons of incest, 108–116. 109. D’Avray, Medieval Marriage, 116. 110. See Bouchard, “Consanguinity and Noble Marriages,” 284–285. Charles Duggan, “Equity and Compassion: Papal Marriage Decretals To Eng- land,” in Love and Marriage in the Twelfth Century, ed. W. Van Hoecke and Andries Welkenhuysen (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1981), 59–87; here 79, relates that papal legates accepted this union, although the prime concern seemed to have the young age of the spouses, rather than the issue of affinity. Duby, The Knight, 191–192. Angela Lucas, Women in the Middle Ages: Religion, Marriage and Letters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983), 90–91. Gabriel Le Bras, “Le Mariage dans la théologie et le droit de l’église du XIe au XIIIe siècle,” Cahiers de Civil- isation Médiévale, No. 2 (June 1968): 191–202; here 196–197, on the political goals of papal dispensations. 111. Duggan, “Equity and Compassion,” 70. Donahue, Jr., Law, Marriage, and Society, 28. 112. Carol Harvey, “Philippe de Rémi’s Manekine: Joie and Pain,” in Women, the Book and the Worldly, eds. Lesley Smith and Jane H.M. Taylor (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D.S. Brewer, 1995): 103–110. 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 157

113. Carol Harvey, “Incest, Identity and Uncourtly Conduct in La Manekine,” in The Court Reconvenes: Courtly Literature Across the Dis- ciplines, eds. Barbara K. Altmann and Carleton W. Carrol (Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2003), 161–168; here 167. Shepherd, Tradition, 31– 32. 114. Francomano, “The Hands of Phillip de Remi’s Manekine,” 6, compares the King of Hungary’s conﬂict between his incestuous Desire and Reason to a form of psychomachia. 115. Rosalind Brown-Grant, French Romance of the Later Middle Ages: Gen- der, Morality, and Desire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 184. 116. McCash, “Mutual Love as a Medieval Ideal,” 436. 117. Henry Ansgar Kelly, “Clandestine Marriage and Chaucer’s ‘Troilus,’” Viator 4 (1973): 435–457; here 435, documents his position against the traditional view of courtly love as contradictory to the idea of love exist- ing in marriage. James Brundage, “‘Allas! That Evere Love Was Synne’: Sex and Medieval Canon Law,” Catholic Historical Review 72 (January 1986): 1–13; here 11, refers to a twelfth-century author named only as William who wrote about the importance of love in marriage, and to Anselm of Laon who believed that the affection between a husband and wife eliminated sin from their sexual intercourse, even if the goal was not procreative. 118. Andreas Capellanus, The Art of Courtly Love, trans. J. Parry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941, rpt. 1990), eighth dialogue of Book I, 106–107. 119. Betty Radice, trans., The Letters of Abelard and Heloise (London: Pen- guin, 1974), 114. 120. As cited in McCash, “Mutual Love,” 430. See also Wei, Intellectual Cul- ture in Medieval Paris, 258–260. 121. Barbianus, ed., Summa Sancti Raymundi De Peniafort, 511. Raymond of Penyafort, Summa on Marriage,trans.PierreJ.Payer,19. 122. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 365. Also A. Vacant and E. Mangenot, eds., Dictionnaire de la théologie catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1923–1950), col. 2150 regarding consummated marriage as a “perfected” marriage. See as well cols. 2153, 2159. 123. This description of Joïe’s sexual relationship with her husband is that much more signiﬁcant since canonic writers, Huguccio (d. 1210), for instance, often insisted that even marital relations relations were sinful. See James Brundage, “Sexual Equality in Medieval Canon Law,” Medieval Women and the Sources of Medieval History, ed. Joel Rosenthal (Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 1990), 66–79; here 68. 124. See I Cor. 7: 5–6 for biblical advice to observe sexual abstinence: “Do not refuse one another except perhaps by agreement for a season, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, 158 L. M. ROUILLARD

lest Satan tempt you through lack of self-control. I say this by way of concession, not of command,” Dyan Elliott, Spiritual Marriage: Sexual Abstinence in Medieval Wedlock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 22–23. See Pierre Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: The Develop- ment of a Sexual Code 550–1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 23–25 for periods of abstinence. 125. See Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 154–164. See Brundage, “‘Allas! That Evere Love Was Synne,’” 4–9, for the evolution of negative views about sexuality from Gnostics and Stoics, and their inﬂuence on the Middle Ages. 126. Elizabeth M. Makowski, “The Conjugal Debt and Medieval Canon Law,” Journal of Medieval History 3 (1977): 99–114; here 100–103. Huguccio was also accused of heresy because of this. The thirteenth- century Raymond of Penyafort saw procreative sex as blameless; however, lust leading to intercourse even within marriage he considered to be a mortal sin, 106. See also Wei, Intellectual Culture, 264–265. 127. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 162. See John Baldwin, The Language of Sex: Five Voices From Northern France Around 1200 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 177 for the calculation of “permissible” days for intercourse which he reckons to be about 93 per year. He calculates that of these permissible days, there would be only 44–57 days when conception would be possible, 213. He also notes that in the course of the twelfth century, these restrictions are relaxed. The Christian practice of ritual abstinence stands in sharp contrast to Tal- mudic writings which actually encouraged marital sex particularly on the sabbath, William Phipps, Genesis and Gender: Biblical Myths of Sexuality and Their Cultural Impact (New York: Praeger, 1989), 97. 128. Sarah Hamilton, “The Unique Favour of Penance: The Church and the People c.800–c.1100,” in The Medieval World, eds. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London: Routledge, 2001), 229–245; here 229–230. See also her Practice of Penance, 900–1050 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2001), 197–199. 129. As cited in Shinners, ed., Medieval Popular Religion, 444. 130. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 368. This follows Pope Alexander III’s views on abstinence as well, Elliott, Spiritual Marriage, 196. Such practices may have been based on early beliefs such as those of the Romans who feared that too much sex weakened a man, according to Brown, The Body and Society, 18–19; or on those of the Jews who “believed that abstinence from sexual activity, and especially virginity, made the human body a more appropriate vehicle to receive divine inspiration,” 67. Brown goes on to explain that Moses had declared the meat of the hyena as unﬁt for consumption because of its frequent mating, 132–133. For the Jews, impurity can also result from sexual activity 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 159

because “intercourse causes a division within the soul,” Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 53. See also Brundage, “‘Allas! That Evere Love Was Synne,’” 3 and 9, on ritual impurity in the Judaic tradition. 131. Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Robert of Brunne’s “Handlying Synne,” with those parts of the Anglo-French Treatise on which it was founded, William of Waddington’s “Manuel des pechiez” (London: Early English Text Soci- ety, 1901), 72. All citations are taken from this edition and translations of the Anglo-Norman are mine. In line 113, William specifically states that he produced this text for members of the laity. 132. Baldwin, The Language of Sex,4. 133. Gratian in Decretum C 32.2.2 reminds the dutiful Christians that mutual consent is required for sexual abstinence in marriage, just as mutual consent is essential to the establishment of a legitimate marriage: “It is for this reason that the married owe a mutual debt to each other and cannot deny each other. So the apostle says, ‘Do not defraud one another except perhaps by consent for a time in order to give yourselves [more ] to prayer. But return to it again lest Satan tempt you…[1 Cor. 7:5],’” as cited in Pierre J. Payer, The Bridling of Desire: Views of Sex in the Later Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 185–186. 134. Delhaye, “Le Dossier anti-matrimonial,” 70. Delhaye tells us that Peter Lombard also uses this reference to Xystus, 76. 135. Henri-Louis Bordier, Philippe de Rémi, Sire de Beaumanoir: Jurisconsulte et Poète National du Beauvaisis (1246–1296) (Paris: Techener, 1869; Geneva: Slatkine reprints, 1980), 11–21; 96–97; 100–104. See also Louis Carolus-Barré, “Origines, mileu familial et carrière de Philippe de Beau- manoir,” Actes du Colloque International Philippe de Beaumanoir et les Coutumes de Beauvaisis (1983), ed. Philippe Bonnet-Laborderie (Beau- vais: Groupe d’étude des monuments et oeuvres d’art du Beauvaisis, 1983), 19–36; here 20. 136. “‘Sire, si vous requier et proi / Que vous ja mais femme aprés moi / Ne voelliés prendre a nes un jor. / Et si li prince et li contour / De ce païs ne voelent mie / Que li roialmes de Hongrie / Demeurt a ma fille apres vous, / Ançois vous requierent que vous / Vous mariés pour fil avoir, / Bien vous otroi: Se vous avoir / Poés femme de mon sanlant, / Qu’a li vous alés assanlant,’” (ll. 129–140). “‘Sir, and so I require and entreat / That after me you never / Will take a wife, not on any day. / And if the princes and the counts / Of this country do not wish / That the kingdom of Hungary / Should pass to my daughter after you, / But require that you / Marry to have a son, / I concede this to you: if you / Can have a wife who resembles me, / That you form a union with her.’” 137. See Katherine Fischer Drew, Laws of the Salian Franks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 45 and 198. Here she explains 160 L. M. ROUILLARD

that among the Franks, women could inherit allodial land, but generally, when there were male heirs, women did not inherit terra Salica, land requiring service. This custom is later re-invoked in the early fourteenth century, Suzanne Wemple and JoAnn McNamara, “Sanctity and Power, 112–113. See our Chapter 2, page 46, and Note 143. See Diana Owen Hughes, “Fashion’s Captives: Medieval Women in French Histo- riography,” in Women in Medieval Historiography, ed. Susan Mosher Stu- ard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987): 59–80; here, 72–73. Hughes describes the political failures of two powerful queens, Eleanor of Aquitaine, emprisoned by Henry II, and Adele of Cham- pagne who pitted her brothers against her own son Philippe II. Because the monarchy in both France and England was now stronger and more centralized, the power of these women was reduced. This change in kingship and queenship allowed for the emergence of Salic inheritance customs which disqualiﬁed women from passing on the inheritance of the throne. The Queen of Hungary’s carefully-worded oath seems to be based on a similar distinction of inheritance since Joie’s inheritance of the two kingdoms would entail military obligations to her subjects. On the other hand, in the late twelfth-century romance by Gautier d’Arras, Ille et Galeron, Yves Lefèvre, ed. (Paris: Champion, 1988), Galeron’s brother remained single in order to allow his sister to inherit: “‘Amee m’a tant comme soi, / si laisse por amor de moi / qu’il ne prent feme a mariage, / qu’il veut que j’aie l’iretage,’” (ll. 1395–1398). “‘He loved me as much as himself, /in fact he loved me so much /that he did not take a wife, /because he wanted me to have the inheritance,’” [translation mine]. 138. Shepherd, Tradition, 124, points out that if Joïe herself is ineligible to inherit the kingdom, her marriage and the birth of a son effectively sup- ply an heir for the King of Hungary. 139. See Elliott, Spiritual Marriage, 176–177 for the medieval distinction between admiration and imitation. And Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Signiﬁcance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 7 for a similar discussion on this distinction. 140. As cited by Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 4. See also Jacqueline Murray, “Gendered Souls in Sexed Bodies: The Male Construction of Female Sexuality in Some Medieval Confessors’ Manuals,” in Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, eds. Peter Biller and A.J. Minnis (York, UK: The University of York, 1998; 2013): 79–93; here 79–80. 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 161

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McLaughlin, Eleanor Commo. “Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Woman in Medieval Theology.” In Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions. Edited by Rosemary Radford Ruether. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974. 213–266. McNamara, JoAnn, and Suzanne F. Wemple. “Sanctity and Power: Medieval Women.” In Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Edited by Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz. Boston: Houghton Mifﬂin, 1977. 92–118. Medieval Popular Religion 1000–1500: A Reader. Edited by John Shinners. Peter- borough, ON: Broadview Press; 1997; rpt. 1999. Molin, Jean-Baptiste, and Protais Mutembe. Le Rituel du mariage en France du XIIe au XVIe siècle. Paris: Beauchesne, 1974. Morelle, Laurent. “Marriage and Diplomatics: Five Dower Charters from the Regions of Laon and Soisson, 1163–1181.” In To Have and to Hold: Mar- rying and Its Documentation in Western Christendom. Edited by Philip L. Reynolds and John Witte, Jr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. 165–214. Murray, Jacqueline. “Gendered Souls in Sexed Bodies: The Male Construction of Female Sexuality in Some Medieval Confessors’ Manuals.” In Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages. Edited by Peter Biller and A.J. Minnis. York, UK: The University of York, 1998; 2013. 79–93. Neal, Derek. “What Can Historians Do with Clerical Masculinity?” In Negoti- ating Clerical Identities: Priest, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages. Edited by Jennifer D. Thibodeaux. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 16–36. Newman, Barbara. From Virile Woman to Woman Christ: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995. Noonan, J. Contraception: A History of Its Treatment by the Catholic Theologians and Canonists. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986. Noonan, John T., Jr. “Power to Choose.” Viator 4 (1973): 419–434. Ostriker, Alicia. “The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Myth- making.” In The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, Theory. Edited by Elaine Showalter. New York: Pantheon, 1985. 313–338. Pagels, Elaine. Adam, Eve and the Serpent. New York: Random House, 1988. Payen, Jean-Charles. “La Crise du Mariage à la ﬁn du XIIIe siècle d’après la littérature française du temps.” In Famille et Parenté dans l’Occident Médiéval. Actes du Colloque Paris (6–8 juin, 1974). Edited by G. Duby and J. LeGoff. Rome: Ecole Française de Rome, 1977. 413–430. Payer, Pierre. Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code 550– 1150. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. ———. The Bridling of Desire: Views of Sex in the Later Middle Ages. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1993. 166 L. M. ROUILLARD

Philippe de Rémi. Le Roman de la Manekine. Edited and translated by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999. Phipps, William. Genesis and Gender: Biblical Myths of Sexuality and Their Cul- tural Impact. New York: Praeger, 1989. The Principle Works of St. Jerome. Translated by W.H. Fremantle. A Select Library of Nicene and Post-nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series,vol. 6. New York, 1893. http://sites.fas.harvard.edu/~chaucer/canttales/wbpro/ jer-men.html. Accessed March 3, 2014. Raymond of Penyafort. Summa on Marriage. Translated by Pierre Payer. Toronto: Pontiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005. ———. Summa Sancti Raymundi de Penyafort, Barcinonensis Ord. Praedicator, de poenitentia et matrimonio. Edited by M. Vestrius Barbianus. Rome, 1603. Reynolds, Philip Lyndon. How Marriage Became One of the Sacraments: The Sacramental Theology of Marriage from Its Medieval Origins to the Council of Trent. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. ———. Marriage in the Western Church: The Christianization of Marriage Dur- ing the Patristic and Early Medieval Periods. Boston: Brill Academic Publish- ers, Inc., 2001. Rouillard, Linda. “Marriage and Mutilation in La Manekine.” Romance Lan- guage Annual X (2001): 99–104. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. Schroeder, H.J. Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text, Translation and Commentary, 177–194. St. Louis: B. Herder, 1937. Cited by Paul Hal- sall, Medieval Sourcebook: Ninth Ecumenical Council Lateran I, 1123 (Novem- ber 1996). www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran1.asp. Accessed July 5, 2016. Schulenburg, Jane Tibbetts. Forgetful of Their Sex: Female Sanctity and Society, ca. 500–1100. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Shepherd, M. Tradition and Re-creation in Thirteenth-Century Romance: ‘La Manekine’ and ‘Jehan et Blonde’ by Philippe de Rémi. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990. Southern, R.W. Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages. New York: Penguin, 1970; Pelican rpt., 1990. Turner, Ralph. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. “Twelfth Ecumenical Council, Lateran IV 1215.” In Medieval Sourcebook. Edited by Paul Halsall. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/lateran4.asp. Accessed July 4, 2012. Walter Map. Letter of Valerius to Rufﬁnus, Against Marriage. In Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Edited by Alcuin Blamires. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. 103–114. 4 MEDIEVAL MARRIAGE, MISOGAMY, MISOGYNY 167

Wei, Ian P. Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University c. 1100–1330. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Wilson, Katharina M., and Elizabeth M. Makowski. Wykked Wyves and the Woes of Marriage: Misogamous Litearture from Juvenal to Chaucer. Albany: State University Press of New York: 1990. Woman Defamed and Woman Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts. Edited by Alcuin Blamires. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. CHAPTER 5

The Hand of Forgiveness

Vergil’s Prophetess in Book Six of the Aeneid identifies incest as one of the hideous sins punished in the underworld: “Here a man had sold his country for gold and imposed a powerful master on her, fixed laws for a price, then annulled. That man had invaded his daughter’s bedroom for incestuous marriage.”1 The medieval Church also certainly identified incest as one of the most offensive acts and as one, along with murder, adultery, and perjury that required public penance.2 In his Decretum,the twelfth-century jurist and theologian Gratian ranked the “sexual” sins in the following manner: “The evil of adultery surpasses fornication but it is surpassed by incest. For it is worse to sleep with one’s mother than with another man’s wife. But the worst of all these things is what is done contrary to nature as when a man wishes to use a member of his wife not conceded to this.”3 Incest here is placed on a continuum, sandwiched between adultery and sodomy, but in contrast to Antiquity when incest was perceived as a vile act to be punished for eternity, the Middle Ages often depicted incest as the occasion for God’s infinite mercy in forgiving, if not the worst, than at least one example of heinous human crimes.4 Where Antiquity condemned perpetrators of incest to eternal damnation, the Middle Ages offered that same sinner the hope of divine clemency following penance. In addition to the evolution of the penitential doctrine, this chapter considers some of the numerous medieval literary examples of the sin of incest eventually forgiven through the sacrament of penance, along with La Manekine in particular, where incest, or more specifically,

© The Author(s) 2020 169 L. M. Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6_5 170 L. M. ROUILLARD the intent to commit incest, also becomes an occasion to demonstrate God’s willingness to forgive monstrous desire. The King of Hungary does come to sorrowfully regret his intended incest and his order to execute his daughter, and sees the penitential sacrament as a way to find “confort” and reassurance from God; but we shall see, however, that in this romance, forgiveness by the victim, as well as restitution also play significant roles, which I argue is a reflection of Philippe’s secular and juridical perspective on the sacrament. It is important to note the exact nature of the King of Hungary’s sin which he will confess later in the romance: his transgressions consist not of actions completed, but rather of actions intended, of evil intentions to which he gave his full consent, an important concept in the twelfth- and-thirteenth-century discussions about sin and penance. What exactly is the nature of sin? What exactly effects God’s grace and forgiveness? The twelfth-century Abelard was one of the first theologians to consider more thoroughly the relevance of one’s intention or consent to commit an evil action as the defining point of sin, followed in this by his contemporary Hugh of Saint-Victor.5 Just as the sacrament of marriage emphasized the effective role of consent in establishing a valid union, so too does the sacrament of penance stress the role of an individual’s conscious consent and intent to do wrong. While the incestuous marriage is first proposed by a member of the King of Hungary’s retinue as a way to protect the kingdom from outside influences, thus diminishing to a certain extent the king’s culpability, La Manekine nonetheless depicts the monarch’s eventual acceptance of the plan, and his intent to commit a transgression, even if the act never occurs. While obedience to the order of his daughter’s execution is dissimulated by the seneschal, the king nonetheless intended to have his daughter burned to death. The incest and murder do not actually take place, but the King of Hungary remains all the same a sinner because he intended to commit these evil actions. By the thirteenth century, and the time during which Philippe composed La Manekine, the sacrament of penance had undergone numerous changes in ritual and definition. Like the development of the Church’s control over the institution of matrimony, the changing definitions and customs associated with penance also consequently strengthen the Church’s authority over social behavior, consequently further delineating class distinctions between clerics and the laity.6 Prior to this time period, theologians certainly stressed confession or narration of one’s sins to a priest, along with the importance of penitential acts, fasting, charity, and 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 171 suffering.7 Priests were guided in the confession ritual by penitentials with their catalog of sin and quantifications for atonement, texts which orig- inated in Wales and Ireland, and were exported to the continent during the sixth century.8 At the heart of the penitential tariff system is secrecy or at least privacy, both in the admission of sin to a confessor, and in the acts of atonement, satisfaction, or penance, along with an understanding that confession and forgiveness will be repeated during one’s lifetime. While confession itself continued in importance, the twelfth century, however, introduced an emphasis on the specific experience of contrition, or sorrow and regret for one’s sins.9 Abelard (1079–1142) extensively considered the importance of contrition in obtaining pardon. Sorrow and regret for one’s sin could effect God’s mercifulness, even before the act of specifically narrating one’s sins.10 Abelard and his contemporary Peter Lombard saw the role of priests in the sacrament of penance as one of verification: like the lepers in the Old Testament who, once healed, were obliged to present themselves before the rabbis, so the sinner was obliged to give proof of his contrition and forgiveness by coming before the priest to make a formal, albeit private, confession. In Abelard’s system and subsequently in Gratian’s Decre- tum as well, the priest’s role was a rather perfunctory one: he provided the external signs or proof of forgiveness, a position the twelfth-century Hughes of Saint-Victor and Richard of Saint-Victor, though, found overly reductive. They in their turn emphasized the clergy’s role in the sacrament by insisting that the elimination of eternal punishment occurred directly because of the priest’s absolution, even as they agreed that contrition was indeed a component in the process leading to forgiveness.11 Later, in a kind of formula of equivalence, William of Auvergne (d. 1248) explained that attrition (fear of punishment) plus confession are the equivalent of contrition (deep regret and sorrow for one’s sins). Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274) similarly taught that absolution transforms attrition into contrition.12 While already in the twelfth century there was some debate over the more effective component of the sacrament (the penitent’s contrition or the priest’s absolution of the sinner), there followed in the mid-thirteenth century more importance given to the priestly act of absolution, aided by the Fourth Lateran Council’s (1215) requirement of private annual confession to a priest,13 and by the formulaic change in the clerical pronouncement from “May God forgive you” to “I absolve you.”14 Clearly, priestly absolution takes on increased significance in the experience of the 172 L. M. ROUILLARD penitential sacrament with this change in formulaic expression. Of course, this is not to say that contrition no longer mattered, nor that priestly absolution had been of no consequence in the twelfth century, but the thirteenth-century shift does highlight the clerical role in the sacramental process, transforming a subjective experience of confession by a sorrowfully contrite sinner into a more objective experience orchestrated and effected by the clergy.15 Alexander Murray suggests that this transformation in the sacrament of penance also changes the clerical role in a very specific way, quoting the De modo confitendi by the thirteenth-century Robert Grosseteste: “penances are to be gauged, heavier or lighter, by the discretion of a confessor as he considers the quantity and quality of the offences and the person’s condition.”16 The confessor then will be the one responsible for evaluating sincerity of contrition and seriousness of the sin in question. In this shift, the now official obligation to confess annually transforms the emotional acknowledgment of wrong-doing into a more formulaic ritual. For instance, Robert de Courson (d. 1219) tells a story about Yves de Chartres (d. 1115) who heard the confession of a young girl regarding her incestuous union with her father. He refused her demand of an excessive one-hundred-year penance and the more she wept in shame, the more he reduced her penance. The father, however, refused to confess his sin because his daughter had already narrated the offense and had been forgiven. Yves reputedly damned the father for his unwillingness to give voice to his own sin.17 Here, the horrifying nature of the sin of incest is exemplified by the expectation of an arduous penance on the part of the daughter. God’s infinite mercy for even one of the more dreadful sins is demonstrated by Yves’s willingness to progressively reduce the amount of penance for she who is contrite, while the refusal to at least orally narrate his own sin leads to damnation for the father. Contrition here remains an important component of the sacrament, leading to forgiveness for the daughter, authenticated by a priest who prescribes penitential acts, but the father’s rejection of the formal ritual of confession to a priest, and the clerical refusal to declare divine pardon demonstrates the authority and power of the cleric in the sacrament of penance. How are these components of the sacrament of penance illustrated, for instance, in La Manekine? How can an understanding of the sacrament’s history and evolution advance our understanding of this and other poems using the incest motif, or describe differences between lay and clerical cultures? In order to address these questions, let us begin by returning 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 173 once again to the beginning of La Manekine. After the fruitless search for the late Queen of Hungary’s mirror image, recall that it is a baron in the king’s retinue who first proposes the actual father–daughter marriage followed by its validation by the clerics in attendance: “…Se Dix me beneïe, / Signeur, li rois ja mais n’avra / Femme, n’on ne le trouvera / Tele comme il le veut avoir, / S’on ne fait tant, au dire voir, / Quë il pui[s]t sa fille espouser; / Ou mon[de] n’a, fors li, son per. / Mais se li prelat qui ci sont, / Qui en grant orfenté seront / Se malvais sires vient sour aus, / Voloie[n]t faire que loiaus / Fust l[i] mariages d’auls deus, / Je croi que ce seroit li preus / A tous [ci]aus de ceste contree” (ll. 318–331). “…So help me God, / Sirs, the king will never have / A wife, nor will anyone find one / Such as he wants to have, / Unless, truth to tell, it is arranged / That he can marry his daughter; / Except for her, her mother’s peer is not in the world. / But if the prelates who are here, / Who will be in a difficult position / If a bad ruler comes over them, / Wished to bring it about that / The marriage of those two would be valid, / I believe that it would be to the benefit / Of all in this country.” Since it is a baron (later identified as a count) serving the king who first suggests the idea of an incestuous marriage, the monarch himself is a little less odious and potentially more redeemable even as the baron challenges the prelates to make acceptable a union that is “too close for comfort,” if they do not want to find themselves subject to a prince.18 Let us not forget that some clergy were in fact subject to lords from the laity.19 Indeed, in La Vie de Saint Gilles, the monks in that abbey remind him that when Charlemagne summons him to his court, St. Gilles would do well to obey, for after all “Se nus vulum en peis tenir, / Il nus covent mut obeir / Les riches homes de la terre: / Kar si en cest pais surt guerre, / Mester avra lur maintenance; / Numéement li reis de France / Nus pot sur tuz homes valeir” (ll. 2573– 2579).20 “If we want to live in peace, / It behooves us to obey / The rich lords of the land: / For if war should come to this land, / We will need their support; / The King of France especially / Above over all others can be of value to us.” While the order in question here is one of appearing at court rather than an order to legitimize a sinful action as in La Manekine, St. Gilles’s monks clearly understand that it is in their self- interest to placate the wealthy aristocrats upon whom their safety depends. Clearly, the social hierarchy is not always subject to a spiritual hierarchy in which clerics outrank nobles. At other times, however, lay and ecclesiastic rulers joined forces to condemn egregious infractions such as incest. For example, Robert the Pious and the complicit bishops who allowed his 174 L. M. ROUILLARD marriage to Berthe, related to him in the third degree of consanguinity, an incestuous marriage for the additional reason of spiritual affinity as well, were roundly condemned and sanctioned by a 997 council: “le roi Robert qui, malgré l’interdiction apostolique, a épousé sa parente, doit se rendre auprès de nous pour nous donner satisfaction, de même que les évêques qui ont autorisé ces noces incestueuses. S’ils refusent de venir, qu’ils soient privés de la communion.”21 The group was treated to a second round of punishment by the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and Church officials in 998. The complicit bishops and Robert and Berthe received a seven-year penance.22 In La Manekine the baron’s threatening reminder to the prelates of their dependence on the warrior class succeeds and the prelates agree that “sur a[us] le pecié penroient” (l. 338); “[they] would take the responsibility upon themselves.” The King of Hungary, meanwhile, can excuse his complicity as something he was forced to do, out of concern for the realm and his retainers. Philippe de Rémi’s poem with its extreme example of a father–daughter marriage “approved” by intimidated clergy challenges the description of the priestly role in penance as an effective evaluator of sin and a just administrator of penitential acts. Just as La Manekine demonstrates the danger of fathers who refuse to recognize a daughter’s consent or refusal to contract marriage, so too does the poem point out the danger of overreliance on clerics’ subjective, self-interested evaluation of what constitutes sin. Clergy who serve two masters undermine their spiritual authority over the laity. In contrast to the variability of the clerics’ definitions of legitimate marriage, Joïe tolerates no compromise with the laws of her homeland, laws from which she derives in part her cultural and spiritual identity: “Ace ne me porroi[t] plaisier / Nus: que ce me san[l]ast droiture / Qu’uns hom peüst s’[en]genreüre / Espouser, selonc nostre loy; / Et tuit cil sont plai[n] de derroy / Qui contre Deu conse[l] vous dounent / Et de tel cose vous s[em]ounent” (ll. 550–556). “For by no-one could I be bent to this: / That it could seem right to me / That a man might marry / His own child according to our law; / And they are full of wickedness, all those / Who give you advice contrary to God / And exhort you to do such a thing.” The disjuncture between Joïe’s view of God’s law and the prelates’ fluid view of right and wrong evokes a time when Christianity had newly arrived in Hungary.23 In addition to alluding to laws which in effect now shape her country’s cultural identity, or at least her personal cultural identity, Joïe’s statement is remarkable for another reason: with 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 175 this statement, she defies her father’s marriage plans, and announces her refusal to sin; she will in no way consent to this shameful proposal. She attempts to be her father’s moral conscience (since the priests under her father’s thumb have refused that role), exemplifying the strength and wisdom of full obedience to God’s laws which, for our protagonist, trump human laws and paternal orders. The tone of her rebuke recalls the example given by the thirteenth-century bishop Jacques de Vitry in one of his sermons in which the son reproaches his father, threatening to mistreat him in the same way his father abuses the grandfather; in other words, the son’s sense of ethics and morality surpasses that of his father. Jacques concluded: “May such children be blessed who do not consent to their parents’ wrongdoing.”24 Similarly, in the mid-thirteenth century Manuel des pechiez the Anglo-Norman William of Waddington states: “Mes nul peché ne devez fere / Pur comandement de pere ou mere”25 (ll. 1551– 1552). “But no one should commit a sin / On the order of a father or mother.” Instead of a father advising and guiding his daughter to do the right thing, daughter Joïe is the one demonstrating moral and spiritual maturity as she refuses to consent to sin. And at the conclusion of the romance, the daughter will magnanimously pardon her father the wrongs he has done to her, even before the proclamation of papal absolution for the proposed incest and attempted execution. While the narrator tells us that the lesson of this romance is that “Ne se doit on pas desperer / Mais tous jours en bien esperer” (ll. 8533–8534), “One must not despair / But always hope in the right,” it is clear that La Manekine also has much to say about pardon and reconciliation between God and Man, and between human beings. La Manekine demonstrates that the determination of what is right or wrong is not limited to the priestly class, but even a member of the laity, and a woman at that, is sometimes more capable of judging the morality of an action than clerics are. While the King of Hungary does not suffer physically for the consequences of his sin, he does eventually suffer emotional anguish and regret that certainly qualify as contrition: “Si furent li ix an passés. / Mas a don- ques fu il assés / Par repentance, qui li vint, / Et du grant mesfait li souvint / Qu’il fist faire sa fille a tort. / Ceste pensee mout le mort, / Si tost comme il fu repentans, / Qu’il ne fu semaine passans / Qu’il ne plourast pour le pecié / Dont il se sent si entechié. /…/ …li rois si se repenti, / A poi li cuers ne li menti / Quant l’en souvint, par mout de fois. / Tant fu courechiés et destrois / Qu’il haoit quanques il avoit / Ne conforter ne s’en savoit. /…/ ‘Si m’en doi las, dolent clamer, / Car ele avoit droit et je tort. / Se je n’en 176 L. M. ROUILLARD quier a Dieu confort, / Je sai bien que m’ame est perie. / Mais atant ne le lairai mie; / A Rome a l’Apostoile irai, / Et ce pechié li gehirai; / Si en prendrai ma penitance. / Comment k’il me tourt a grevance, / Je doi bien comparer tel fais. / Trop durement me sui mefais. / Dix, s’il li plaist, le me pardoinst! / Car c’est la riens qui plus me point’” (ll. 6705–6760). “And so the nine years had passed. / But then he was assailed / By repentance, which came to him, / And he remembered the great wrong / That he unjustly caused to be done to his daughter. / This thought gnawed at him a great deal, / As soon as he was repentant, / So that no week passed / when he did not weep for the sin / With which he feels himself so stained. /…/ …the king repented so much / His heart was close to breaking / When he remembered her, many a time. / He was so anxious and distressed / That he hated everything he possessed / And did not know how to comfort himself. /… / ‘And so I must call myself unfortunate and wretched, / For she was right and I was wrong. / If I do not seek comfort from God, / I well know that my soul is lost. / But I shall not leave it at that; / I shall go to Rome, to the Pope, / And shall confess this sin to him / And shall take my penance. / However painful it may be for me, / I must indeed pay for such a burden. / I have erred too gravely. / May God, if He pleases, forgive me! / For this is the thing that most troubles me.’” The narrator’s description in the indirect discourse of the monarch’s tearful sorrow is followed by the king’s direct discourse and avowal of his sinfulness and Joïe’s innocence: in the presence of his seneschal he finally says the words of sorrowful contrition. More importantly, he will eventually publicly pronounce his guilt before his daughter and the pope. While the king does not specifically identify his sin in this passage cited above, we can assume that he is referring to both his incestuous proposal, rightly refused by Joïe, along with his order to kill his righteously disobedient daughter, actions he will narrate publicly years later. Witness to his monarch’s contrition, the kindly (and much relieved) seneschal in his turn confesses that he disobeyed his lord and did not execute the princess as ordered, but rather set her out to sea, an act he considers also requires formal forgiveness, presumably because he believes she likely died (ll. 6761–6766). Manekine, as the one against whom her father sinned, and as the one who physically suffers the consequences of her father’s sin, will eventually have the opportunity to publicly identify herself as the one wronged, and therefore as the one who can and should forgive, in addition to the pope who has the ultimate power to forgive the sin of incest. 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 177

In addition to the penitential components of contrition, the confession narrative, and absolution, let us now consider the element of satisfaction, or “doing penance,” some act that repairs or makes up for the wrong, and reduces time in purgatory, as demonstrated by the King of Hungary’s promise to “Si en prendrai ma penitance” (l. 6755). Peter Lombard used the fourth-century John Chrysostom’s definition of penance, including the concept of satisfaction: “Perfect penance compells the sinner to bear all things cheerfully in his heart, contrition in his mouth, confession, in deed all humility. This is fruitful penance. Just as we offend God in three ways, that is with the heart, the mouth and the deed, so in three ways we make satisfaction.”26 Alan of Lille (d. 1202) in his Art of Preaching,similarly explained the role of satisfaction in penance: “Just as we sin in three ways, so we should repent in three ways. Because we sin in thought, let us against this sickness bring the remedy of contrition. Because [we sin] with our mouth, let us bring to bear the antidote of confession. Because by deed, let us set against this the remedy of reparation [italics mine].”27 Penitential acts of satisfaction typically could include prayers, self-sacrifice or mortification, and pilgrimage.28 The important point in these definitions of penance is that some deed, gesture, or act of reparation is required, but in La Manekine, the only designation of penitential acts is the pope’s request to his congregation, following a general confession climaxing with the King of Hungary’s public confession on Holy Thurs- day, to say an “Ave Maria”and“et par itant en soiiés cuites” (l. 7540); “and therewith may you be absolved.” While no special penitential act in particular, other than a short prayer, is assigned to the King of Hungary by the pope in his spiritual role, likely because of the format of general confession as presented in the narrative, Philippe de Rémi’s experience as a baillif likely accentuates in his poetic depiction of the penitential sacrament a sense of needed justice and legal repair: that which was taken away must be restored, be it land or hand. Satisfaction in the form of restitution or reparation plays a significant role in his depiction of forgiveness, and so the wronged protagonist eventually recovers her rightful inheritance and her bodily integrity. We have considered the different components of the sacrament (contrition, confession, absolution, satisfaction), but what were the different forms or performances of the sacrament, and how do La Manekine’s penitential episodes compare to these? The early thirteenth-century Robert of Flamborough, a canon in Paris, classified the different forms in the following manner: “Some penance is solemn, some public, some private. Solemn 178 L. M. ROUILLARD is that which is done on Ash Wednesday, when the penitents are expelled from the church, with solemnity, in ashes and sackcloth. This also is public, because it is done publicly. Public and nonsolemn is that which is done before the church without the above-mentioned solemnity, like pilgrimage. Private is that which is done daily and privately before a priest. No one except a bishop or someone acting on his authority imposes solemn penance. A simple priest may enjoin public penance, as well as private, and at any time.”29 A few years later, Raymond of Penyafort, confessor of Pope Gregory IX and compiler of the Liber Extra (a compilation of decretals up to Pope Gregory’s time, edited by Raymond in 1234 and used as a reference by the Church until 1917) uses the same classification of penance in his Summa casuum or the Summa de poenitentia et de matrimonio (dated between 1222 and 1230): “Species paenitentiae sunt tres: nam alia est solemnis, alia publica, alia privata.”30 “There are three kinds of penance: now one is solemn, another is public, another private” (translation mine). Public penance, also known as canonical penance, in the early Church signified an act of satisfaction or atonement, a “one-time only” offer reserved for the complete change of heart regarding a serious public wrong, and often postponed until near death.31 As non-reiterative public penance evolved into solemn public penance, it took place before a bishop for a public crime. Its humiliating nature generally made it the result of coercion rather than a voluntary act, and it traditionally included a ritual excommunication, which took place after confession on Ash Wednes- day, followed by acts of penance during Lent. Solemn public penance concluded with absolution and reintegration into the Christian community on Holy Thursday.32 Such public ceremonies were especially necessary and humiliating when sinful kings were the center of the spectacle. In 1105, the French King Philip I made a solemn public penance over his second marriage to Bertrade, the wife of his cousin, while his first wife Berthe was still living. As described by Duby: “In the presence of the abbots of Saint-Denis, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, Saint-Magloire, and Etampes, the king, barefoot and dressed as a penitent, swore an oath: ‘I will never again have relations or converse with this woman except in the presence of trustworthy persons.’”33 While such a ceremony of solemn public penance might have momentarily put Philip in his place vis-à-vis the Church, it appears to have been only momentary, since Duby reports that Philip and Bertrade continued to cohabit. King Henry II of Eng- land performed a variation of this form of penance as retribution for his 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 179 role in the murder of Thomas Beckett: while not excommunicated for the period of Lent, in 1172 Henry did have to perform a public humiliation in which he demonstrated tearful contrition before the bishop who publically absolved him.34 A less austere, abbreviated form of public penance included “‘stations’ of penitents,” in which the identified sinners were positioned in specific places inside and outside the Church, and occasionally clothed in sackcloth and marked with ashes. This penitential ritual is evoked in the biography of the ninth-century monk Iso whose parents publicly repented on Holy Saturday for their infractions against sexual abstinence during Holy Week. Clad in sackcloth garb, they publicly confessed their sin and were assigned as penance to stand by the church doors for a day and a night. Their obvious and sincere contrition earned them forgiveness from their parish priest, though he forbade them communion on Easter Sunday.35 This was a theater of humiliation, known as exomologesis, which partially expiated sin. We can easily imagine a living tableau depicting the range of sinners visibly demonstrating their moral failure to the rest of the congregation. The sign of forgiveness was the laying on of hands, a visible assurance of God’s pardon.36 These penitential acts were separate from any actual verbal acknowledgment of one’s sins which could take place privately for “private” sin, or publicly, should a bishop determine that the public nature of the wrongful act required an equally public avowal.37 Another form of public penance, referred to as non-solemn public penance, consisted in undertaking a pilgrimage for a serious or mortal sin.38 McNeill sees in the penitential pilgrimage a gentler version of punitive exile, a symbolic separation and casting out of the sinner, though with term limits, so to speak.39 The thirteenth century provides us with a literary example of non-solemn public penance in the form of pilgrimage in the prose rendition of LaFilleduComtedePontieu, often considered one of the first instances of French novella.40 While on pilgrimage to Com- postello, the daughter of the Count of Pontieu and her husband Tibaut are attacked by eight thieves. Tibaut kills three of them but is overcome by the remaining five who bound him and gang rape his wife while he is forced to watch. After their departure, instead of freeing her husband from his bonds, the young woman attempts, unsuccessfully, to kill him because he was witness to her dishonor. Upon their return home, the Count of Pontieu learns of the attack, as well as of his daughter’s attempt to kill her spouse. It is the latter action, and not the violence done to her, which angers him the most and he orders that she be shut up in 180 L. M. ROUILLARD a barrel and cast into the sea for trying to kill her husband. Eventually, the father comes to regret his action, and he and his son-in-law confess their sin of vengeance in Rome, and then go on pilgrimage/crusade to the Holy Land. “Un jor li qens pensa et douta du pecié qu’il avoit fait de se fille, il traist a l’archeveske de Roem, si se confessa a lui et prist le crois. Et qant mesire Tiebaut seut et vit ke li qens ses boins sires estoit croisiés, si se confessa et croisa…Fisent leur pelerinage molt saintement en tous les lius u il seurent c’on devoit Diu servir.”41 “One day the count reflected on and regretted the sin he committed against his daughter, he traveled to the archbishop of Rome, confessed to him, and took up the cross. And when Lord Tibaut learned and saw the count his lord had taken up the cross, he also confessed and took up the cross… They made their pilgrimage very devoutly to all the places where they knew they could serve God” (translation mine). Here, one act of non-solemn public penance triggers another, though there is but perfunctory mention made of the interior sorrow the count and his son-in-law feel for their sin. The narrative does not indicate that the pope assigned them a pilgrimage as penance but rather the count and his son-in-law undertake the religious journey (or possibly go on crusade) on their own initiative. Whereas the first pilgrimage mentioned in the story is undertaken to ask Saint James of Compostella to intercede for the couple who desires an heir, the second pilgrimage serves as a penitential act, recognition by the Count and his son-in-law of the seriousness of their sin.42 Next, there was private penance, which, unlike public penance, was a reiterative sacrament and was performed individually.43 Private confession began with the Desert Fathers, for whom it was not a sacrament, but rather a spiritual exercise,44 and with Celtic rituals of fourth-century Ireland which gave rise to the penitentials. Private penance, also known as tariff penance, and the penitentials arrived on the European continent in the sixth century, although the Council of Toledo of 589 denounced this practice of private penance because it allowed individuals to repeat the rite. However, the Council at Chalon-sur-Saône in 644–656 finally approved the private rite of confession. By the ninth century, public confession was retained for public sin and private confession was the norm for private sins.45 And by the second half of the eleventh century, penance was now counted among the sacraments.46 P. Amedeus Teetaert believes that Raymond of Penyafort’s cursory treatment of the first two forms (solemn public and non-solemn public) suggests that they were rarely practiced by the thirteenth century. Teetaert 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 181 maintains that public penance began to be practiced less and less starting when contrition was stressed as the element which effects forgiveness.47 This view has been questioned, most recently by Mary Claire Mansfield who has discovered in numerous pontificals the presence of rituals of public penance well beyond the twelfth century.48 Finally, we must address two other forms of penance: confession to a layperson in which the sinner admits his or her sins to another member of the laity, and collective penance with general absolution in which a group would collectively acknowledge sin and receive a generic formula of forgiveness. In the New Testament, James 5:16 seems to suggest a ritual along the lines of confession to a layperson: “Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed,”49 though Payen notes that the eleventh-century Gregorian reform strongly discouraged lay confession except in extenuating circumstances.50 This is also the opinion of Raymond of Penyafort who addresses the question of “emergencies”: if a penitent is in some sort of danger and needs to confess a mortal sin immediately but there is no priest available, then he may confess to another layperson.51 Payen notes among examples of general absolutions the epistolary formulas in the closing of letters from popes and bishops, though by the twelfth-century, the efficacy of such formulas was disregarded.52 Regard- ing literary references to collective confession or group absolution, let us remember the episode in the Chanson de Roland in which the Archbishop Turpin calls together Charlemagne’s soldiers before they go into battle, exhorting them: “‘Clamez vos culpes, si preiez Deu mercit; / Asoldrai vos pur voz anmes guarir.’ / … / Franceis descendent, a tere se sunt mis, / E l’arcevesque de Deu les beneïst: / Par penitence les cumandet a ferir. / Fran- ceis se drecent, si se metent sur piez. / Ben sunt asols et quites de lur pecchez” (ll. 1132–1140); “‘Confess your sins and pray to God for mercy. / I will absolve you to save your souls. / If you die, you will be holy martyrs: / You will have places in highest heaven.’ / The French dismount, lie prone on the ground, / and the archbishop blesses them in God’s name: / for penance he commands them to strike. / The French rise to their feet; / They are well absolved, free of their sins.”53 This is, of course, a literary description of a confession episode taking place under the emergency of impending battle, and not documentation of a ritual as it was practiced; nonetheless, it must have evoked something recognizable and believable to twelfth-and thirteenth-century listeners. After all, in 1095 Pope Urban II had proclaimed automatic absolution of sin to all those knights who 182 L. M. ROUILLARD died in combat on crusade.54 While the urgency of imminent combat does not allow for explicit narration of sin in the narrative episode mentioned above, La Chanson de Roland does later cite Roland’s individual prayer for God’s forgiveness of his all sins (“Deus, meie culpe vers les tues vertuz / De mes pecchez, des granz e des menuz, / Que jo ai fait dés l’ure que nez fui / Tresqu’a cest jur que ci sui consoüt!” [ll. 2369–2372]; “God, mea culpa toward your powers / For my sins, the great and the small, / That I have committed since the hour of my birth / Until this day, when I am here overcome!”). While no priest is present to hear Roland’s avowal at the moment of death, the hero’s plea for forgiveness and mercy are heard, since his soul receives an angelic escort into heaven. Presum- ably Olivier’s similar prayer and confession (“Durement en halt si recleimet sa culpe,” [l. 2014]; “very loudly he acknowledges his sins”) earned him forgiveness as well. Nonetheless, the general group confession first mentioned in the Chanson de Roland along with the vague confessions of the solitary heroes accentuates not extensive, sorrowful contrition but rather either the role of priestly absolution in the first case, or the role of the individual admission of sin in the second and third examples.55 While those who committed horrible sins were still required to go through humiliating public rituals, such performances did not protect the community as a whole from the responsibility and consequences of its own collective shortcomings. In her description and analysis of Holy Thursday rituals and prayers related to general absolution in an early thirteenth-century pontifical from Laon, Mansfield notes, “No longer does the expiation of a few scapegoats alone promise the salvation of the many. Collective expiation now supplements individual public penance.”56 And so, even as public penitents were formally forgiven and readmitted to the community, the community itself needed to recognize its own human failings in a collective ritual of general confession followed by “quasi absolutions.”57 Mansfield explains that additionally such priestly pronouncements over a congregation were likely a ritual designed to help individuals better prepare for their own individual and private confession, functioning as a form of examination of conscience.58 She gives numerous examples of medieval pontificals containing specific rituals for penitents expelled on Ash Wednesday and returning on Holy Thursday: for instance, an eleventh-century Beauvais pontifical with an “absolutio poenitentium in Coena Domini” (“absolution of penitents on Maundy Thursday”). In addition, Mansfield also provides examples of general confession or absolution targeting the congregation at large 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 183 in Holy Thursday ceremonies: a thirteenth-century Cambrai pontifical includes a prayer of “absolutio alia super penitentes et super populum in cena domini” (“another absolution for the penitents and for the people on Maundy Thursday”); a thirteenth-century Laon pontifical with general absolutions of clergy and congregation; a thirteenth-century Parisian pontifical explaining “deinde surgat episcopus manuque extenta super populum dicat sequentem orationem absolutionis” (“then the bishop shall rise and, with his hand extended over the people, say the following prayer of absolution”).59 Mansfield describes several iterations of rituals of general confession, noting that while the word “absolutione” is used, the consequences of such rituals would not have eliminated the need for private or public penance but instead represented collective expiation, or forgiveness of a community, rather than individual pardon. Despite the numerous surviving examples, such customs, both for Holy Thursday in particular, or collective confession, in general, were discouraged by the Fourth Lateran Council, and roundly condemned by the thirteenth-century Caesarius of Heisterbach who criticized a particular priest who practiced general confession. This priest would absolve a small group of six to eight penitents and “would dictate to them a general confession in German, making them say it after him, word by word; then after assigning to all of them the same penance, would send them away together.”60 The confusion surrounding the nebulous use of the word “absolutio” caused by these rituals of collective confession and general absolution continued even into the sixteenth century when the Peycht Spiegel condemned them as being inadequate to effect the forgiveness of sin.61 Clearly, the efficacy of such general absolution was disputed, even as the practice continued and was used outside of Lent.62 Such a ritual of general absolution is, however, included in La Manekine, suggesting that it must have had some recognizable features for an audience or for readers, even in the first part of the thirteenth century. It is during just such a ceremony that the King of Hungary’s penitential narrative occurs in St. Peter’s Church in Rome on Holy Thurs- day. According to the narrator, the tradition in Rome at this time was the following: “A Saint Piere erent absolu / Tous jors le Joedi Absolu” (ll. 6907–6908). “At St. Peter’s they were absolved, / Always, on Holy Thursday.” The King of Hungary’s Roman host further explains the local customs related to this type of confession: “Se vous estes a cele presse, / Vous i orrés mainte confesse; / Car chascuns dist haut ses peciés / Dont ce jor se sent entechiés; / Puis s’est assaus de tous les fais / Dont il se sent cel 184 L. M. ROUILLARD jour confés” (ll. 6885–6890). “If you are in that crowd, / You will hear many a confession; / For each one speaks aloud his sins / With which on that day he feels himself sullied; / Then he is absolved of all his deeds / Of which on that day he has made confession.” Philippe de Rémi’s poem suggests then a ritual in which everyone pronounces his weaknesses aloud together. While the documents examined by Mansfield do not mention such recitation aloud, referring instead to the cleric’s pronouncement of a kind of general absolution for the community as a whole,63 our poet has obviously taken poetic license in his description of a ritual that allows each member of the laity to publicly acknowledge his human weakness in a Holy Thursday ritual ceremony known for its papal general absolution. It is in this setting of a collective ritual that the pope in La Manekine solicits a kind of public confession from the general assembly: “Et se ci en a nul presant / Qui en soi sente fais pesant, / En penitance je li carge / Quë devant tous s’en descarge; / Puis ferai l’assolution / Bien selonc nostre entention” (ll. 6963–6968). “And if there is anyone here present / Who feels within himself a heavy burden, / In penance I exhort him / That here before everyone he unburden himself; / Then I shall give the absolution / According to our intention.” In response to this invitation for general confession the King of Hun- gary begs the pope: “Or escoutés bien mes paroles / Et si me donnés penitance” (ll. 6980–6981). “Now listen well to my words / And then give me penance.” The monarch then publicly tells his story about the development of his sinful desire for his daughter and of his murderous rage upon her rejection. This narration is strictly under the control of the penitent and there is only the most limited place in this episode allotted to the role of confessor/priest as advisor, guide, or promptor, though the king’s narration does end with once again a direct address to the pope for an assigned penance: “Sire Apostoiles, repentans / En sui, et a vous jehissans; / Si vous en requier penitance / Pour oster m’ame de grevance” (ll. 7121–7124). “Lord Pope, I repent / Of this, and confess to you; / And I request penance of you / To remove my soul from affliction.” While the king requests “penitance” from the pope, it is our virtuous lay heroine who will respond to this request before the pope can insert a word.64 The act of confession in La Manekine is thus a conflation of various penitential rituals rather than an example of a specific category. The La Manekine episode certainly contains a hint of non-solemn public penance, since the King of Hungary recognizes his sin as a public one, which 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 185 requires public confession before a bishop, hence his voyage or pilgrimage to Rome to see the pope, here named Urban.65 It is unclear whether the King of Hungary is inserting himself into a solemn public penance ritual of reconciliation of other public sinners who had been previously excommunicated on Ash Wednesday, or if this is simply a general absolution as part of the Holy Thursday rituals.66 It is also important to point out, though, that the King of Hungary is not humiliated by the pope in the course of this confession, in contrast to the description of the public penance performed, for instance, by Count Pierre de Courtenay of Nevers before the Bishop of Auxerre, complete with “sackcloth and ashes before a great crowd of nobles, prelates and people.”67 From a narrative point of view, the King of Hungary’s confession needs to be public in order to allow Manekine to identify herself to her father, but there is no clerically imposed ceremony of humiliation. On the other hand, while the Manekine penance episode does not completely correspond to solemn or non-solemn public penance, neither does it fit exactly the category of private penance. A private confession, bound by the Seal of Confession, a concept dating from the second half of the twelfth century, would not have allowed Manekine to publicly acknowledge and forgive her father.68 Philippe’s text does emphasize the actual confession narrative, which occupies 145 lines (ll. 6979–7124), including the explicit mention of the King of Hungary’s sinful plan to marry his daughter, acknowledging that “ele avoit colpé son poing / Pour le redout et pour le soing / Qu’ele avoit que ne l’espousiasse” (ll. 7083–7085), “for she had cut off her hand / Out of the fear and the concern, / She had that I might marry her.” While the King of Hungary has requested a penance from the pope, he saves his request for pity and forgiveness from his daughter. The following passage of direct discourse increases the dramatic effect of the encounter between father and daughter, and the specific request for “merchi”: “‘Bele fille,’ dist il, ‘merchi / De cuer plus de cent fois vous pri / De la grant laidure et du tort / Dont je vous cuidai mettre a mort, / Par cruel outrequiderie / Et par ma grant foursenerie. / Merci vous en pri et demant; / Ne le doi avoir autremant.’ / Joïe son pere relieve, / Et au cuer durement li grieve / Ce que agenoilliés se fu. / ‘Sire,’ dist ele, ‘grans maus fu / Quant devant cele qu’engenrastes / A jenous merci querre alastes. / La merci que vous me priiés / Vous doing; et Dix soit grassi- iés / Qui a nous vous amena chi / Pour querre de ce fait merchi! / Je le vous pardoing bonnement.’ / Dont s’entrebaisent maintenant” (ll. 7181–7200). “‘Dear daughter,’ he said, ‘from my heart / More than a hundred times 186 L. M. ROUILLARD

I beg your pardon / For the great injury and the wrong / In meaning to put you to death / Through cruel arrogance / And through my great madness. / For this I entreat and ask your pardon; / I may not have it any otherwise.’/ Joïe raises her father, / And is heartily sorry / That he had gone down on his knees. / ‘Sir,’ she said, ‘it was a great shame / When, before the one you engendered, / You went down on your knees to beg pardon. / The pardon that you begged of me, / I give it to you; and God be thanked / Who brought you here to us / To seek pardon for this deed! / I forgive you wholeheartedly.’/ Then they immediately kiss each other.” The king obviously seeks a reconciliation with his God but when given the opportunity, he also acknowledges his crime before his daughter, in a form of public confession, while suggesting that in fact his daughter is the key to his forgiveness.69 This in turn augments the importance of Joïe’s pardon of her father, in contrast to the pope’s general collective absolution as related by the narrator in indirect discourse. It is stunning that the victim here has the opportunity to publicly forgive her incestuous, murderous father, before the pope can even exercise his spiritual authority to do so. The Christian charity demonstrated by Manekine who has experienced such trauma as a consequence of her father’s sin is a tribute to the spiritual virtue and social worth of this female member of the laity. While the royal sinner recognizes the need for sacramental forgiveness, our poet recognizes the heroism and compassion of a woman seriously wronged, but nonetheless able to pardon. Clearly, forgiveness in this poem is not the sole purview of the Church. Indeed, Hamilton notes that medieval “penitential practice was a reflection of the symbiotic relationship between the spiritual and the secular worlds,” giving as an example the case of the Italian Arduin of Ivrea who in 997 murdered a bishop. He confessed before and was punished simultaneously by both Pope Silvester II and Emperor Otto III.70 We do well, then, to keep in mind this interdependence between the secular and spiritual world as we analyze medieval literature in general, and La Manekine in particular. Philippe’s scenario does not depict one entity entirely dominating or obliterating the other; instead he depicts a vision of the sacrament of marriage and of rituals related to the sacrament of penance which addresses the concerns and authority of both the laity (in this case that of an aristocratic woman) and the Church. How does the depiction of penance and forgiveness in La Manekine compare to other medieval literary illustrations of the sacrament in general? The King of Hungary’s willingness to accuse himself publicly of his 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 187 sins, including his desire to marry his own daughter, presents a striking contrast to a twelfth-century narrative, La Vie de St. Gilles by Guillaume de Berneville. In this poem, Charlemagne longs to confess his sins and seeks out St. Gilles known for his holiness. With the tears characteristic of twelfth-century contritionism,71 the emperor begins his confession: “Li reis li ad merci crié, / Tut en plurant se feit confès; / Unkes a hume nel dist mès / Ço ke il ad iloc gehi; / E tut tens ad crié merci, / Meinte lerme leissa le jur” (ll. 2792–2797). “The king pleaded with him for mercy, / All the while crying during his confession; / He never told anyone that / Which he confessed to this one; / And all the while he cried for mercy, / He wept many tears that day.” While Charlemagne may have tearfully confided some things to St. Gilles, there is, however, one sin he cannot bring himself to say aloud. “…Ja meis dit ne serrad: / Ja nel dirrai a home né; / Ne pur estre tuz jurs dampné / Ne serra il par mei gehi; / Pur Deu amur merci vus cri, / kar depreez vostre seignur / Ke il pur la sue dulçur / Me face, si lui pleist, pardun” (ll. 2832–2839). “It will never be said: / I will never say it to a living soul; / Not even if I were to be damned for ever / Will it be confessed by me; / For the love of God I beg you for mercy, / So that you pray your Lord / That in His sweet mercy / He forgive me, if it pleases Him.” St. Gilles stays with Charlemagne for twenty days, trying all the while to convince him to reveal his sin, to no avail.72 The saint does not succeed in persuading Charlemagne to pronounce the name of this sin, but during mass, an angel appears to the saint, bearing a piece of paper with Charlemagne’s sin written upon it (ll. 3019–3058), thus allowing him to give absolution. But the narrator does not even reveal this sin to the reader, as if, like St. Gilles, he is also bound by the Seal of Confession. Finally, Charlemagne acknowledges his sin when St. Gilles reads it aloud in private (ll. 3146–3160) but still the narrator does not identify the sin for the reader.73 This poem depicts the model of contritionism as exemplified by tearful sorrow and emotional anguish over one’s wrongful acts. St. Gilles’ discretion about the actual name of the sin allows Charlemagne’s sorrowful remorse to remain in the foreground in this depiction of the efficacy of the sacrament of penance. The thirteenth-century Golden Legend includes a similar tale regarding Charlemagne but with a slightly different emphasis: “The saint’s fame reached King Charles, who asked Giles [sic] to come to him, and received him with reverence. As they were speaking together of the things of the soul, the king begged the saint to pray for him because he had committed an enormous sin, which he durst not confess to anyone, nor even 188 L. M. ROUILLARD to the saint himself. On the following Sunday, while Giles was praying for the king at Mass, an angel of the Lord appeared to him and placed a paper on the altar, whereon was written the king’s sin, Giles’ prayer, and God’s pardon, on condition that the king did penance and shunned the sin thenceforth …The paper was shown to the king who avowed his fault and humbly sued for pardon.”74 Here, the emphasis is on acknowledgment, even passive, of one’s sin in order to merit God’s forgiveness, without the theatrics of tears, or even the sinner’s pronouncement of the actual terms of his sin. We have moved from subjective contritionism to a more formal structure of penance which values acquiescence and absolution. The Golden Legend describes an intimate moment in which a helpful cleric serves as the conduit between a sinful king and a merciful God, but a moment without tears. As we have already discussed in Chapter 3 of this work, Charlemagne’s secret sin of brother–sister incest surfaces more explicitly in the thirteenth- century Karlamagnus Saga which describes Roland as the offspring of Charlemagne and his sister Gilain, and in the fourteenth-century Tristan de Nanteuil which continues this legend.75 As we previously saw, the narrator of the Karlamagnus Saga tells us that Charlemagne committed incest with his sister and then went to Egidius (Gilles) to confess but could not bring himself to utter the words naming his transgression. For- tunately for him, a divine messenger delivers the written details to Egidius who “took the letter from the paten and at once he went, in his vest- ments, to King Karlamagnus and read it before him. He confessed, and fell before his feet begging forgiveness, promising that he would never again commit that sin…”76 Charlemagne here is reported as confessing his fault though with no narrative details regarding the actions in question nor any extended description of contrition. The subtle evolution of Charlemagne’s sin, from the twelfth-century version’s emphasis on tearful sorrow, to the thirteenth-century versions in which the written narratives (produced by celestial hands) lead to a perfunctory contrition mentioned in passing on the way to clerical absolution, thus makes for an interesting comparison and contrast with the King of Hungary’s confession to the pope. Philippe de Rémi’s monarch has expressed tearful remorse for his acts; as we saw earlier, many years after his incestuous marriage proposal, followed by his order of execution, “…il ne fu semaine passans / Qu’il ne plourast pour le pecié / Dont il se sent si entenchié” (ll. 6712–6713); “…no week passed / When he did not weep for the sin / With which he feels himself so stained.” In La 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 189

Manekine, while the King has expressed contrition, there is no mention of this occurring before any priest; and while he later displays no reluctance to present himself publicly as a sinner, he certainly does not weep and wail before the pope. In contrast to the weeping Charlemagne, the dignified King of Hungary of La Manekine requests pardon in a public ceremony of general absolution, different from the absolution administered by St. Gilles in a form of private penance. La Manekine describes a public confession by a king who expects full absolution in a ceremony designed to be more of a review of conscience than a formal administration of the sacrament of penance. Beyond any church ceremony or sacrament, the climax of the King of Hungary’s confession results not only in the eventual general absolution promised by the pope in l. 6967 (and only referenced again by the narrator more than five hundred lines later in l. 7540 in the context of the general pardon of the congregation as a whole) but results more significantly in the pronouncement of forgiveness by the victim of his sins: Joïe. Significantly, at no point does the pope specifically turn to the King of Hungary to individually forgive him. Instead, the pope appears dumbfounded by the miracle of forgiveness that has unfolded before him: “Car en un moment apaisié / Vit illue- ques maint cuer corcié” (ll. 7367–7368); “For in a moment he saw set at peace / In that place many a troubled heart.” Unlike the legendary Charlemagne on whom “the spectre of incest exerts its pressure…, as it is simultaneously not mentioned and rendered very present by Charle- magne’s repetitive and emphatic refusal to confess in full,”77 the King of Hungary straightforwardly, willingly, and publicly declares his past intention to commit incest along with his ultimately unsuccessful command to execute his daughter. He depicts himself as a cruel father and, more importantly, asks forgiveness directly of his victim. The emphasis in La Manekine is on public acknowledgment and a detailed narration of sin by the sinner. This change in emphasis is in keeping with Payen’s characterization of twelfth-century penance as one of contritionism and thirteenth- century penance as one of narration.78 However, Philippe additionally emphasizes the importance of directly asking for forgiveness from those one has harmed, in addition to asking for God’s pardon. In this medieval poem, reconciliation includes the human face of the victim of one’s sin. Another useful text for comparison is Chrétien de Troyes’s late twelfth- century romance Li Contes del graal which contains a reference to the sacrament of penance with the description of sorrowful contrition so emphasized at that time. In an episode that interrupts the insertion of 190 L. M. ROUILLARD the narration of Gawain’s adventures, Perceval meets an unknown uncle, a hermit, to whom he tearfully confesses his lack of attention to his spiritual duties, along with his failures to ask the appropriate questions about the bleeding lance he saw at the home of the Fisher-King. The hermit assigns him penitential acts in the form of attending mass and prayers at church, respecting priests, and saving damsels in distress, but the poem does not specifically mention absolution, saying only that Perceval subsequently took Communion at Easter. It is enough to have enumerated his wrongs to a hermit and to have wept over his sins. Formulaic absolution is implied; description of that act appears unnecessary.79 The thirteenth-century Chevalier au Barisel provides yet another comparison with Philippe’s vision of the sacrament of penance.80 In this short, charming tale, a nobleman is finally convinced by his barons and a hermit to confess his avarice to the latter; however, his confession entails no contrition, simply the knight’s compliance to avoid further badgering by his barons. After negotiating over the penitential acts of satisfaction, the noble finally agrees to accomplish what he thinks is the easiest penance: to fill the hermit’s barrel with water. Of course, the task proves impossible and after a year of wandering the world over, trying to fill the container, the noble returns to the hermit to admit defeat. The hermit, ever fearful for the salvation of the nobleman’s soul, begins to weep, which then finally moves the noble to tears. And it is the nobleman’s tears which finally fill the barrel. As in the earlier Vie de St. Gilles,the“Chevalier au Barisel pushes contritionism to its extreme consequences,”81 but still maintains the need for the confession narrative itself; additionally, the latter text also emphasizes the role of penitential acts in the sacrament, something not addressed in the Charlemagne episode of the ViedeSt. Gilles nor in La Manekine which stresses rather some form of restitution, though not ordered by the pope. Finally, the Chevalier au Barisel illustrates the intimate and effective role of the holy hermit whose concern for the spiritual well-being of the knight provokes the much-needed contrition, whereas La Manekine stresses the reconciliation between sinner and victim over priestly power in its depiction of the sacrament. In the third chapter of this work, we introduced Gautier de Coinci’s eleventh miracle from his collection of Les Miracles de Nostre Dame,a tale of incest and the healing sacrament of penance. As required in such offenses, the sacrament of penance must be administered by a bishop, in this case, the pope himself, Bishop of Rome.82 The sinner, a woman who gives birth to and murders the child conceived with her own son, 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 191 approaches the pope as a healer: “…Je me conseil / A vous, qui estes mes bons pastres. / Vos oignemens et vos emplastres / Doit tout le monde asoagier.” “…I entrust myself / To you, who are my good shepherd. / Your ointments and dressings / Assuage everyone.”83 The pontiff evokes for the sinner the story of St. Mary the Egyptian on whose behalf the Blessed Virgin interceded, saying: “Par la prïere et par l’aïe / De ma dame sainte Marie / La visita li rois de gloire. / S’en cuer l’avez et en mimoire, / Si hautement vos secorra / Que nus grever ne vos porra. / Metez seur li tout vostre affaire: / N’ara pooir de vos mesfaire / Nus qui vive, bien le sachiez” (ll. 473–482). “Through the prayers and help / Of our Lady Mary / The King of Glory visited her [Mary the Egyptian]. / If you keep this in your heart and mind, / She will thus rescue you / Such that no one will be able to hurt you. / Confide all this to her: / There will be no possible threat to you / By any living one, this you must believe.” The Virgin’s intercession on the protagonist’s behalf is such that the woman’s outer appearance is transformed: her beauty gives lie to the hideous public accusation, and the devil who had previously denounced her sin to the pope now simply vanishes. The sacrament of penance here makes the former sinner, disfigured by sin, now transfigured into a beautiful being: “Confessïons, c’en est la some, / Si durement embelist home / Nel reconoist li anemis” (ll. 711–713). “Confession, in short, / So thoroughly beautifies man / That the devil does not recognize him.” Similarly, the confession episode in La Manekine will be followed by a miraculous healing that dramati- cally changes physical appearance, though in this case, not the appearance of the sinner but the appearance of the victim whose amputated hand is reattached. Chapter 3 of this work also introduced the Dits of Jehan de Saint- Quentin (active in the early fourteenth century), who provided a retelling of Gautier de Coinci’s incest tale mentioned above. The most interesting aspect of this version of the tale, Le Dit de la Bourjosse de Romme,is the equal weight given to all aspects of the sacrament of penance: contrition, confession, absolution, and satisfaction. In the Dit de la Bourjosse de Romme, the purpose is clearly revealed in the first strophe: “Aladouce loenge de la Vierge Marie / Veil dire un biau dit qui est sans vilenie / Por prendre bone essemple en ceste mortel vie / De confesser touz ceus qui n’en on eu envie” (ll. 1–4). “In praise of the Virgin Mary / I wish to tell a beautiful tale which is without baseness / To give a good example in this mortal life / To those who have not so been moved to confess.”84 The narrator then goes on to relate the tale of a bourgeois widow who becomes 192 L. M. ROUILLARD so enamored of her son that she has a child by him, a child she murders immediately after its birth. Before the delivery, however, the woman already gives evidence of two parts of penance: she gives even more to charity than she used to (a form of satisfaction), and she weeps over her sin. After the infanticide, she continues with acts of satisfaction and contrition, but “Ne s’osa confessier” (l. 104), “did not dare confess.” The devil hopes to assure her damnation by revealing her sin to the emperor who has the woman arrested. However, before the emperor can make a pronouncement on the accusation and subject the widow to secular punishment, the Blessed Virgin instructs the pope to go to the widow, unseen by anyone else because he is made invisible, and hear the poor woman’s confession. She can then righteously defend herself: “…Or se traië en ça / Qui m’encuse de rien! Bien me desfendré ja!” (ll. 195–196) “…Let him withdraw [his accusation] / Whoever would accuse me of anything! Now I will rightly defend myself!” The confused devil promptly disappears while the woman has been saved through the power of the sacrament of penance: her sin of incest has been rendered as invisible as the pope and no one can accuse her, not even the secular authority. While the organizing theme of both Gautier de Coinci and Jehan de Saint-Quentin was the mediating power of the Blessed Virgin, both authors use a similar incest motif and both portray the sacrament of penance as a transforma- tive experience capable of altering outer appearance or enhancing one’s moral status. While Manekine is not depicted as a sinner, both the consequences of someone else’s sin and the healing feature of the sacrament of penance in Philippe’s poem are performed on her body: after her father’s public confession, the young woman’s maimed body is made whole by the spectacular graft of her cut-off hand, miraculously reappearing in the pope’s fountain. In the second tale of incest and penance in Jehan’s collection, Le Dit du Buef, again a widow becomes enamored of her son and has a child by him, a daughter named Philippa who comes to learn of her incestuous conception and takes upon herself a share of the guilt. In this tale, confession is “l’espee de vertu” (ll. 23 and 25), “the sword of virtue.” “L’espeedevertu c’est confession pure / Qui des mains au dëable gete la creature; / Celui qui par confesse se nestoie et escure, / Fait a Dieu grant honnour et aus mauvais laidure” (ll. 26–28). “Sincere confession is the sword of virtue / That removes a person from the devil’s hands; / He who cleanses and washes himself by confession / Does a great honor to God and a great 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 193 dishonor to the evil one.” As is typically the case, incest requires absolution from a higher authority than that of a parish priest and the sinner must in this case address the pope (ll. 99–100; 265–268; 352–354).85 It is the son/father who first requests forgiveness from the Holy Father, who assures the youth that “Diex t’aidera, soiez asseüréz! / Diex est misericors, de toi avra pitié. / … / Diex qui te racheta, ne t’a pas oublié. / Puis qu’en ta plaine vie quiers absolution, / Feréz vous penitance en grant devocion. / Dieux, qui pour toi souffri et mort et passion, / Contre les anemis sera ton champion” (ll. 136–144). “God will help you, be assured! / God is merciful and will have pity on you. / … / God who redeemed you has not forgotten you. / Since you seek absolution, / You will do penance with great devotion. / God who suffered torture and death for you / Will be your champion against the enemy.” Fearing a relapse of the incestuous behavior, the pope even offers the young man a job as his chamberlain, thus effectively separating him from his mother and from further temptation. Twelve years later the daughter born of this incest finally learns to her horror the identity of her father. Believing herself tainted by the sin of her parents, she asks her parish priest for absolution but is also referred to the pope. While having been too ashamed all these years to confess her sin, the mother now undertakes the trip to Rome with her daughter. They make their confession, and the mother recognizes her son, the father of her daughter in the assembly. Finally, before the whole congregation, the pope announces their group penance: each of them will be sewn up in leather hides to travel around the land separately for seven years and he absolves them: “De tretous vos pechiéz je vous fais pardonnance” (l. 447). “I absolve you of all your sins.” When the group reunites seven years hence, the pope tells them that: “lors vous seréz quites de vos pechiéz trestouz” (l. 519). “Then you will be acquitted of all your sins.” Dur- ing their acts of penance, or satisfaction, they are not to speak with each other or even see other again for seven years, though at the moment of parting the narrative provides the direct address of the son who explicitly asks forgiveness of his mother and his daughter/sister and it is accorded. In indirect discourse we are told “Tous iii vont li uns l’autre pardonner bonnement” (l. 505). “All three of them forgive each other.” This particular detail of the individuals pardoning each other follows the model depicted in La Manekine and suggests a more global vision of penance that goes beyond ritual and purification, requiring the sinner to personally confront the harm he has done to another human being. The happy ending occurs when the three penitents have terminated their penance, 194 L. M. ROUILLARD die in spiritual bliss, and become the sources of many healing miracles. The dit concludes with the following moral: “Vous qui avéz oÿ ce biau dit recorder, / En cest example ci vous devéz remirer / Aussi de vos pechiéz et de vous confesser. / Nus ne puet tant pechier com Diex puet pardonner; / Mais nus ne doit pechier en ycelle esperance” (ll. 789–793). “Those of you who have heard recounted this beautiful tale / Following this example / You should consider / Your own sins and confess. / No one can commit so great a sin that God cannot pardon it; / But one should not sin with the expectation of automatic forgiveness.” Particular emphasis in this dit is placed on the act of confessing and the act of penance or satisfaction. Similarly, La Manekine focuses on the confession narrative, and on satisfaction, or more specifically restitution, minimizing, though not eliminating contrition. It is the confession narrative that allows for the familial reunion and identification. It is because the father requests forgiveness of his daughter that she grants it, not because she is moved by any overwhelming, tearful scene. That Philippe emphasized the ritual aspect of the sacrament over the emotive is not surprising, since he is writing after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which in Canon 21 clearly established (or at least reiterated) the requirement of yearly confession for all Catholics during the Easter season. While not rejecting the need for contrition, he is addressing the formal requirement to acknowledge one’s sins. In addition, however, Philippe, as a bailli with a juridical formation, preoccupied with material concerns, also addresses the need for restitution,86 a preoccupation he shared with Raymond of Penyafort whodeclaredinhissumma on penance: “Likewise there are some sins for which no one may do penance unless he restores or renounces—if indeed he can—what he has sinfully received [quod male accepit]: namely, simony, pillage or plunder, arson, robbery, sacrilege, usury, and dishonorable and fraudulent commerce.”87 However, in La Manekine, it is not the pope who enjoins any restitution but the King of Hungary himself who initiates the transmission of Joïe’s inheritance withheld since the beginning of the romance. It was in fact the perceived danger of a woman inheriting the kingdom that launched the King of Hungary on his incestuous program. The Kingdom of Armenia, held back from Joïe after the death of her mother, is now finally transmitted to the daughter who is recognized as the rightful heir. The concept of restitution is related to the acknowledgment of individual responsibility for an action. We note, however, that Philippe de Rémi’s narrator clearly separates the issue of individual responsibility for 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 195 one’s action from the consequences of that action on another individual, specifically pointing out that victims are not always responsible for the bad things that happen to them. The narrator describes the King of Hungary’s comparison of Joïe to Helen of Troy as he feels the stir- rings of desire for his daughter, concluding with a common saying: “Molt le regarde enten[ti]eument, / Et voit c’onques plus [so]utilment / Nature feme ne ne fourma / Fors Joïe, qu’ele aourna / De plus grant biau[té] quë Elay[ne], / Dont as Troïiens c[ru]t tel pain[e] / Qu’il en furent tout peril- lié, / Mort et vaincu et escillié, / Dont ce fu tristeurs et dolors. / Mais avenu est as p[l]uisours / Que par feme ont esté destruit / Li plus sage et li miex estruit. / Et tel fois coupes n’i avoient / Les femmes, pour qu’il emprenoient / Les folies et les outrages; / S’en tournoit sur euls li damages / Et sur eles tout ensement, / Car on retrait et dist souvent: / Souvent compere autrui pecié, / Teuls qui n’i a de riens pecié. / Ausi fist Joïe la bele” (ll. 391– 411). “He looks at her very attentively / And sees that never did Nature more / Form a woman more skillfully / Than Joy, whom she adorned / With greater beauty than Helen’s, / From which such suffering came upon the Trojans / That they were all imperilled, / Dead and vanquished and exiled, / For which there was sorrow and grief. / But it has befallen many / That through a woman have been destroyed / The wisest and the most learned. / And in this at certain times no guilt attached / To the women for whom they undertook / The follies and excesses; / The consequences turned upon the men / And upon the women also, / For it is often repeated and said: / Often the wrong-doing of another / Is paid for by one who has done no wrong. / So did lovely Joy.” The narrator moves from the king’s comparison of Joïe to a legendary beauty whose abduction triggered a war, to consideration of the possibility that women, even beautiful women, are not always the cause of men’s foolish desires. Joïe is comparable to Helen of Troy in beauty, but unlike the classic condemnation of Helen, Joïe is not considered by the narrator to be responsible for the tragedy which will unfold in La Manekine. Instead, he points the finger of blame at the baron who first proposes the incestuous marriage: “Al mangier seoit la dansele. / Uns des barons de l’escüele / Le servi (cui Dieus destourbier / Doinst! Qu’il avint grant encombrier / A la damoisele par lui, / Ainsi com vous orrés ancui)” (ll. 299–304). “The young lady was sitting at table. / One of the barons in attendance / Served her. (May God give him suffering! / For great misery came upon / The young lady through him, / As you will soon hear.)” A few lines further, the reader learns that the clerics come to understand that it is in their interest that 196 L. M. ROUILLARD the king contract the best possible marriage alliance and they as a group will shoulder the responsibility for this incestuous marriage: “En l[a fin] li clerc s’acorderent / Que il le r[oy] en prïeroient / Et sur a[us] le pecié penroient” (ll. 336–338). “At last the clerics agreed / That they would entreat the king to do it / And would take the responsibility upon themselves.” While the narrator explains that Joïe will pay for her father’s sins, he also attenuates the monarch’s guilt by implicating the barons and the clerics as complicit and responsible, though they do not experience any public rebuke for their folly. Another instance of the narrator’s refusal to blame the victim in La Manekine occurs about one thousand lines later, this time voiced by one of the main characters. When Joïe washes up on the shores of Scotland, the king of that land becomes enamored of her, but he debates the question of matrimony. His interior conflict is due in part to her missing hand: “Que ferai dont? Je la penrai. / Penrai? Que di ge? Non ferai! / Je ne sai ou ele fu nee. / Espoir qu’ele a la main colpee / Par son mesfait, est envoïe / Seule par mer sans compaignie / Par son mesfet–Ce ne puet estre. / Ja le fist Dix de sa main destre. / Voir, a çou que je voi en li, / Çou c’on li fist ne desservi. / Mais il avient en mainte court / Que tex ne peche qui encourt” (1547–1558). “What shall I do, then? I shall take her in marriage. / Take her? What am I saying? I shall not! / I don’t know where she was born. / Perhaps she had her hand cut off / Through a misdeed of hers, was sent out / Alone on the sea without company / Through her misdeed.– That cannot be; / God made her with His own right hand. / Truly, from what I see in her, / She did not deserve what was done to her. / But it happens in many a court / That someone who has done no wrong is punished.” In this passage, the King of Scotland clearly distinguishes between a perpetrator’s guilt for a sin or a crime, and the victim’s innocence. The King of Scotland’s refusal to identify Joïe’s deformity as a punishment for any offense she might have committed also enables him to surmount the social interdictions against marrying a woman of unknown origin. Con- trary to Genesis, woman is not necessarily the originator of every sin; but, as in the Genesis story, woman’s body will become the site or the stage for the ensuing drama: Eve is condemned to the physical pain of child- birth because of her sin, but Joïe’s body is inscribed with the horrifying results of her father’s sinful desires in an act of self-mutilation. More importantly, Joïe herself is very clear about her innocence regarding the consequences of her father’s desires and actions. Of her plight at sea she says: “Je ne l’ai mie desservi” (1003). “I have not deserved it.” 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 197

She clearly places the responsibility for this situation upon her father and hopes he will find forgiveness for what she identifies not simply as a sin against God, but as a sin against herself: “Et si pri de cuer Dieu le voir / Que il a mon pere pardoinst / Le pecié de mi, et li doinst / Joie plus qu’il ne m’en demeure” (1010–1013). “And also from my heart I pray the true God / That he forgive my father / His sin against me, and that He give him / Greater joy than remains to me.” The narrator further endorses Joïe’s assessment of who is responsible for this sin even as she refuses to reveal her identity in Scotland: “Ele nommer ne se voloit, / Pour çou que li cuers li doloit / De la vilenie son pere, / Qu’ele en mainte guise compere” (1343–1346). “She did not want to speak her name / Because her heart ached / At the baseness of her father, / Which she is paying for in many a way.” While Joïe keeps her horrifying past secret, whether to protect her father’s reputation, to protect herself from further harm from him, or to distance herself from a painful experience, the narrator recognizes Joïe’s personal tragedy to be a common social condition in which the innocent suffer because of others’ sins. Following the traditional comparison of sin to sickness, and the confessor/priest to a physician,88 in La Manekine, sin is depicted as a physical affliction visited upon those victimized by sin, even sin committed by others. Joïe’s mutilated body takes on the quali- ties of a savior-figure, one who has consciously sacrificed her physical body because of someone else’s actions. The King of Hungary has refused or fragmented the father–daughter relationship in the attempt to establish an unwanted and ignoble relationship, and Joïe’s body bears witness to her pain in the form of her severed hand. Forgiveness of the King of Hun- gary is then made manifest by the miraculous graft of his victim’s hand through the healing sacrament of penance. That Joïe functions as a redeemer is most evident at the moment when the pope holds the mysterious hand which has been regurgitated by a sturgeon. Just before taking up the limb, says the narrator, the pontiff gives the general absolution: “Li bons Apostoiles, ançois / Qu’il meïst a la main les dois / (De cou vous fa ge mention) / Fist toute l’asolution, / Ensi comme au jour apartint” (ll. 7551–7555). “The good Pope, before / Putting his fingers to the hand / (I point this out to you), / Gave the general absolution, / As was customary on that day.” The narrator then associates Joïe’s hand with the Eucharistic host that is handled by the pope: “Puis prent la main et si la tint / Entre les sains dois, humelement, / Dont il levoit le sacrement” (7556–7558). “Then he takes the hand and 198 L. M. ROUILLARD held it / Humbly in the holy fingers / With which he was used to elevating the sacrament.” Joïe’s flesh, held within the papal hands just as is the host, is thus implicitly compared to Christ’s sacrifice. Her severed hand earlier signified her shattered relationship with her father. The image of the pope holding Joïe’s hand in his own hands also suggests a modified feudal gesture, symbolizing this virtuous woman’s devotion and loyalty to the Church. In addition, the hand, now miraculously grafted to her arm, signifies the reintegration of the King of Hungary within the Church, and the reconciliation of father and daughter.89 This is a romance grounded in complex human relationships torn apart and then mended. The King of Hungary willingly submits himself to judgment, though in this case, the spiritual judgment and forgiveness come first, not from a spiritual guide but from the individual most cruelly affected by his actions: his daughter. Curiously enough, there is no admission in the poem of regret on the part of the complicit clergy who agreed to condone the wrongful act. Perhaps the description of a pope who allows the wronged daughter to publicly forgive her father before any clerical declaration of absolution is Philippe’s implicit call to the Church to listen to its (aristocratic) subjects’ concerns about sacramental matters. Just as a monarch can humble himself before a congregation, and accept forgiveness from his daughter, perhaps Church leaders could accept the aristocracy’s wisdom and interests in marriage and the problematic role of individual consent in such unions. And indeed, in this confession episode, the pope is humble enough to momentarily afford Joïe center stage as she publicly pardons her father. In contrast to the clerics depicted in the beginning of the romance and their willingness to redefine incest regulations so as to protect their own interests, the pope demonstrates a wisdom and humility that puts the familial relationship between father and daughter first, even before exercising his spiritual authority. La Manekine’s depiction of a public episode of personal forgiveness suggests that public penance must have still had some familiarity for the thirteenth century, just as Mary Mansfield has argued. In our own times, Pope Francis has come to understand the value and even the need to publicly request pardon, as he demonstrated in his remarks to the crowds in St. Peter’s Square in early October 2015: “I would like to ask for forgiveness in the name of the church for the scandals that have happened in this last period, both in Rome and at the Vatican.”90 Twelve-step programs aimed at treating alcoholism and drug abuse also value the public (albeit in a small, anonymous group setting) confession of one’s weaknesses and 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 199 recognition of behaviors that have harmed others. Public confession and penance should also seem familiar to us in the twenty-first century for another reason as well, for we have our own version of a kind of secular, public penance in the form of the ritualized public press conference. What would a news week be like without a politician’s public admission of a sex scandal? Political figures and celebrities who stray, particularly those who stray in a sexual way, are under pressure to humble themselves before the public at large and admit to just how weak and vulnerable they are to temptation. This secular penance is well described by Susan Wise Bauer in her book The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Public Confession in America, in which she analyzes the factors that make a public penitential campaign successful. Bauer explains, for instance, former President Clinton’s success as a penitent and consequently his continuing political career as due to his judicious use of public confession, “[showing] that, as a leader, he had no intrinsic, inborn superiority, but was simply a sinner among sinners, a man struggling (and sometimes failing) to fight against wrongdoing. It placed him on the right side of a holy war against evil. It granted power to the listeners, by acknowledging their right to judge their leader and allowing them the chance to take part in the cleansing ritual of forgiveness.”91 The implication here is that the public scandal of a political leader betrays the public trust, which requires some sort of public atonement; even a leader must subject himself to judgment in order to earn forgiveness from his public. The medieval church at different times required public penance for public offenses, and modern secular society also requires a public ritual, separate from religious practices, even as this ritual uses similar religious rhetoric evoking sin, weakness, regret, and forgiveness. While circulation of news about modern sex scandals thrives on modern technology (which is also often an essential enabling feature of many a scandal), modern secular society demonstrates a profound need for some kind of public penance, a form only too recognizable to those of us who are readers of medieval texts, with scenarios very similar to the narrative of confession and forgiveness in La Manekine. Philippe de Rémi has provided us with a complex depiction of sin that affects the sinner’s relationship with his God, his neighbor, and his community.92 And the depiction of the sacrament of penance here is a comprehensive ritual which allows the sinner to address directly the consequences of his actions on another human being,93 consequences which are visible on someone else’s body and which literally depict the fragmentation resulting from sin. 200 L. M. ROUILLARD

We have reviewed these literary examples of the practices of the penitential sacrament, not as incontrovertible documentation of religious rites as they were historically performed but rather as glimpses of shared societal concerns and cultural anxieties related to human connections. How can we mend broken relationships? How do we restore faith in God and in each other? Literature does not provide proof of the solutions, but rather illustrations, hypotheses, and possibilities, which, in order to be useful need to offer plausible examples. Poetry may speak in a mystical language, but it is not divorced from reality or history. Marc Bloch likens the evolution of the medieval genre of romance with its psychological analysis and self-contemplation to the development of the more individ- ualistic experience of confession in the twelfth-century contrition move- ment, saying: “The whole tendency of the new literature was towards the rehabilitation of the individual; it encouraged the growth of a more intro- spective habit of mind, reinforcing in this direction the inﬂuence of the religious practice of auricular confession which, after having been long conﬁned to the monastic world, became widespread among laymen during the twelfth century.”94 Elizabeth Archibald cites this very shift toward contrition as one reason for the increase in incest narratives at this time.95 The thirteenth-century La Manekine certainly acknowledges the twelfth- century emphasis on the subjective component of contrition, but additionally, Philippe includes the interpersonal and the subjective experience of sin, sorrow, and forgiveness as lived by the sinner-penitent himself, and by the person who has been wronged. The stage on which this drama of sin and forgiveness is presented is that of Joïe’s own body, making her into the redeemer of her father, and making her hand a true hand of forgiveness.

Notes

1. Vergil, Aeneid, trans. L.R. Lind (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962), 121. See also Jean-Charles Payen, Le Motif du Repentir dans la littérature française médiévale des origines à 1230 (Geneva: Droz, 1968), 20. 2. A. Vacant and E. Mangenot, eds., Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1923–1950), col. 881. 3. Gratian, Decretum 2.32.7.11, as cited in J. Noonan, Contraception (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 175. 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 201

4. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 104–105; 518–523. Elizabeth Archibald, “Incest in Medieval Literature and Society,” Forum for Modern Language Studies 25 (1989): 1–15, here 2. 5. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 59–63; 66–70. John Wei, Gratian the The- ologian (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016), 91. 6. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 9–93 gives a concise history of the evolution and nature of the sacrament of penance. Thomas N. Tentler, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 12–13; 154; 220; 345. Thomas N. Tentler, “The Summa for Confessors as an Instrument of Social Control,” in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, eds. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974): 103–137; here 103–105. David Bachrach, “Confession in the Regnum Francorum (742–900): The Sources Revisited,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 54 (2003): 3–22. He criticizes recent scholarship as “frequently protraying religion as a chasm that divided a Christian clerical elite from the vast majority of people,” 3. I believe that the clergy and the laity certainly believed in a uniﬁed Christian community but their experience of the same practices, rituals, and dogma was quite different. 7. Tentler, Sin and Confession, 18. 8. While a long-standing resource for priests, penitentials were sometimes viewed with suspicion by many a bishop worried about indiscriminate use by renegade priests. John T. McNeill and Helena M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the Principle ‘Libri Poenitentiales’ and Selctions from Related Documents (New York: Octagon Books, 1938; rpt. 1965), 23–27. In contrast to the penitentials with their categories of sin and penances, the late-twelfth- and early-thirteenth centuries saw the introduction of the summa, or confession manuals which provided the confessor with helpful scripts to elicit from the penitent the names of his sins, Peter Biller, “Confession in the Middle Ages: Introduction,” in Handling Sin: Confession in the Middle Ages, eds. Peter Biller and A.J. Miller (York: York Medieval Press,1998; 2013): 3–33; here 9–12. 9. Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1015 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2001), 11–12. 10. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 55. 11. Marcel Villier et al., eds., Dictionnaire de spiritualité ascétique et mystique, doctrine et histoire (Paris: Beauchesne, 1989), cols. 973–974. See also Paul Anciaux, La Théologie du sacrement de pénitence au XIIe siè- cle (Louvain: E. Nauwelaerts, Gembloux, Duculot, 1949), 67–76; 201. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, notes that even the Gregorian Reform of the late eleventh-century was motivated in part by a desire to “acentuer le rôle du prêtre dans toute la vie sacramentaire,” and especially in the 202 L. M. ROUILLARD

context of the sacrament of penance, 50–51. Wei, Gratian the Theologian, 84–95 for a summary of the different scholastic positions on the function of contrition and absolution in the forgiveness of sin. More specifically for Gratian’s pro and con discussion of the moment of forgiveness (contrition or absolution), see 102–119; 147. 12. Villier, Dictionnaire de spiritualité, col. 974. See also Amédée Tee- taert, “La Doctrine Penitentielle de Saint Raymond de Penyafort., O.P.,” Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 4 (1928): 5–62; here 1–14 for a summary of the different aspects of penance emphasized at different times. Tentler, Sin and Confession, 24–25. See also Marie Claire Mansfield, The Humil- iation of Sinners: Public Penance in Northern France in the Thirteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), 235. 13. Payen, Motif du repentir, 10, 18, 55, 76–81, and 591. Tentler, Sin and Confession, 19. He also refers to Charles Lea on the importance of Canon 21, which he evaluates as turning confession into a “legislative act,” and cites Dietterle: “confession was no longer a religious but only a legal act,” 21. Pierre Michaud-Quantin, Sommes de casuistique et manuels de confession au Moyen Age XII - XVI Siècles (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1962), points out that this was certainly not the first time the Church tried to impose regular mandatory confession: Alan of Lille (d. 1202) in his Summa de arte praedicatoria refers to a lay obligation of confession three times per year (Christmas, Easter, Pentecost), 7. Atria A. Larson, Master of Penance: Gratian and the Development of Penitential Thought and Law in the Twelfth Century (Washington, DC: Catholic University of Amer- ica Press, 2014), 436; 482–484 attributes this policy to Pope Innocent III’s admiration for Gratian’s De penitentia; and suggests the Council’s requirement of annual confession, deliberately or not, at the very least de- emphasized contrition, 485–486. Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Coun- cil states: “Every one of the faithful of both sexes after reaching the age of discretion should at least once a year faithfully confess alone [solus] all his sins to his own priest, and should attempt to fulfill the penance [penitentia] imposed with all his strength, receiving the sacrament of the Eucharist reverently at least at Easter, unless perhaps by the advice of his own priest for some reasonable cause he should abstain from receiving it for a time. Otherwise let him be kept from entering the church during his lifetime andonhisdeathlethimbedeniedChristianburial,”ascitedinMansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 66. See also John Shinners, ed., Medieval Popular Religion 1000–1500: A Reader (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1997; rpt. 1999), 9. See Evelyn Birge Vitz’s “1215: Christian Doc- trine and Medieval Literature,” in A New History of French Literature,ed. Denis Hollier (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 82–88 for the effect of the Fourth Lateran Council on lay writers’ conceptions 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 203

of sin and confession. See also Wendy R. Larson, “Confessing Something New: The Twenty-First Canon of the Fourth Lateran Council and English Literature,” in Literary Echoes of the Fourth Lateran Council in England and France, 1215–1405, ed. Maureen B.M. Boulton (Toronto: Pontical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2019), 229–270. 14. Payen, Motif du repentir, 49. See also Mansﬁeld, Humiliation of Sinners, 235 for a discussion of Thomas Aquinas’s insistence on the role of the clerical pronunciation of “Ego te absolvo” in the remittance of sin. See also Joseph Goering, “The Internal Forum and the Literature of Penance and Confession,” in The History of Medieval Canon Law in the Classical Period, 1140–1234: From Gratian to the Decretals of Pope Gregory IX,eds. Wildfried Hartmann and Kenneth Pennington (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 379–428; here 399, footnote 66. See also Alexander Murray, Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 52–53. 15. Tentler, Sin and Confession, 24; 281. See also Tentler, “The Summa for Confessors,” 104; 109–110 for his discussion of the development of the genre of summa on confession, and discussion of the “‘keys of power’” related to the priestly power to grant absolution. See Teetaert, “La Doc- trine Penitentielle de Saint Raymond de Penyafort., O.P.,” 30 for a summary of the changing emphasis of penance. Gratian in the twelfth century accepts contrition alone as effecting forgiveness in those circumstances where formal penance is not available but he still believes in the role of the priest in at least remitting sin, Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 70; 76–77. Alexander Murray, “Confession as a Historical Source in the Thirteenth Century,” in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages, ed. R.H.C. Davis and J.M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 275–322; here 280. 16. Murray, Conscience and Authority, 90. See also Alexander Murray, “Coun- selling in Medieval Confession,” Handling Sin: Confession in the Middles Ages, eds. Peter Biller and A.J. Minnis (York, UK: University of York, 1998; 2013), 63–77; here 65–66. 17. Payen, Motif du repentir, 74–75. See also John W. Baldwin, “From the Ordeal to Confession: In Search of Lay Religion in Early Thirteenth- Century France,” in Handling Sin: Confession the Middle Ages, eds. Peter Biller and A.J. Minnis (York: York Medieval Press, 1998; 2013), 191–209 for a succinct summary of the different components of penance, as well as for Baldwins use of medieval romances in discussing and illustrating medieval theological issues. 18. Sarah Hamilton, “The Unique Favour of Penance: The Church and the People c.800–c.1100,” in The Medieval World, eds. Peter Linehan and Janet L. Nelson (London: Routledge, 2001), 229–245; here 242. See 204 L. M. ROUILLARD

also Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, for her examples on consangi- neous marriages that were “assisted” by clergy, 200–201, in particular the eleventh-century case of Thiefried, married to a woman within the forbidden degrees but supported by the Archbishop of Trier. All citations and translations of La Manekine are taken from Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Barbara Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999). 19. See Ralph Turner, Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of Eng- land (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 62 for a brief description of such relationships. 20. Guillaume de Berneville, La Vie de Saint Gilles,ed.GastonPariset Alphonse Bos (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1881). All citations are taken from this edition and all English translations of this text are mine. 21. Christian Pfister, Etudes sur le règne de Robert le Pieux (996–1031) (Paris: F. Vieweg, 1885), 53 cites a document from the 997 Council at Pavia. See also Sarah Hamilton, “A New Model for Royal Penance? Helgaud of Fleury’s Life of Robert the Pious,” Early Medieval Europe 6 (1997): 189–200. 22. Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 79–83. 23. See Chapter 3 of this work for the use of Hungary as a setting. 24. Shinners, ed., Medieval Popular Religion, 32. 25. Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Robert of Brunne’s “Handlying Synne,” with those parts of the Anglo-French Treatise on which it was founded, William of Waddington’s “Manuel des pechiez” (London: Early English Text Society, 1901), 38. 26. Elizabeth Frances Rogers, Peter Lombard and the Sacramental System (New York: Richwood Publishing, 1917, rpt. 1976), 171. Peter Lom- bard, The Sentences, trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto, ON: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010), 88. 27. Alan of Lille, Art of Preaching, trans. Gillian R. Evans (Kalamazoo: Cis- tercian Publications, 1981), 127. 28. Payen, Le Motif du Repentir, 52. Tentler, Sin and Confession, 16–18. 29. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 29. 30. M. Vestrius Barbianus, ed., Summa Sancti Raymondi De Peniafort (Rome, 1603), 440. Tentler, Sin and Confession, 283, considers Raymond to be a “contritionist.” For a description of the Summa casuum, see A. Teetaert, “La Summa de Poenitentia de S. Raymond de Penyafort,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 5 (1928): 49–72; here 57–60. 31. McNeill and Gamer, Medieval Handbooks, 14; 20. 32. Pierre Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: Development of a Sexual Code 550– 1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984), 7 also explains the 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 205

lifelong consequences of solemn public penance: after receiving this form of the sacrament, one was ineligible for marriage, or for continuing the sexual part of marriage if one was already married; the penitent could no longer be a soldier or a cleric. 33. Duby, The Knight, 13. 34. Payen, Motif du repentir, 40, footnote 101. Hamilton, “The Unique Favour of Penance,” 235. 35. Hamilton, “The Unique Favour of Penance,” 229. 36. McNeill and Gamer, eds., Medieval Handbooks, 4–9; 16. See also Payen, Motif, 23–24. 37. McNeill and Gamer, eds., Medieval Handbooks, 9–14. 38. Mansﬁeld, The Humiliation of Sinners, 125. 39. McNeill and Gamer, eds., Medieval Handbooks, 34. 40. Clovis Brunel, ed., La Fille du Comte de Pontieu: Conte en prose, versions du XIIIe et du XVe siècles (Paris: Champion, 1923), vii. 41. Brunel, ed., La Fille du Comte de Pontieu, 24–25. 42. The ambiguous references to the journey of the Count and his son-in-law as both a crusade and a pilgrimage are a reminder that, as Helen Nicholson notes, these words were sometimes used interchangeably in the Middle Ages. See Helen Nicholson, ed., Palgrave Advances in the Crusades (New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 3 of introduction. Jean Flori, “Ideology and Motivations in the First Crusade,” Palgrave Advances in the Crusades, ed. Helen Nicholson (New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 15–36; here 19–20, notes that the formula “pro remissione peccatorum” is used in church documents referring to both pilgrimages and crusades. 43. Teetaert, “La Doctrine Penitentielle,” 28–29. See also, Mansﬁeld, The Humiliation of Sinners, 21; 79–80 for a general discussion of the types of penance. Of private penance, Tentler, Sin and Confession, 82, reminds us that the practice of secluded confession dates from the sixteenth century. Until then, private confession could still occur openly, though presumably out of ear-shot. Biller, “Confession in the Middle Ages,” 5, highlights passages in the thirteenth-century Caesar of Heisterbach’s Dialogues,which demonstrate the practice of listening to individual confessions privately while the priest and penitent were still visible to others circulating in the church building. 44. Villier et al., eds., Dictionnaire de spiritualité, cols. 966–967. 45. Villier et al., eds., Dictionnaire de spiritualité, cols. 966–969. Vacant cols. 845–848. See also Anciaux, La Théologie du sacrement de pénitence, 44. 46. Villier et al., eds., Dictionnaire de spiritualité, col. 970. Peter Lombard puts penance in the same category as marriage, saying both date from the beginning of time. See Anciaux, La Théologie du sacrement de pénitence, 147. See also Wei, Gratian the Theologian, 76–79. 206 L. M. ROUILLARD

47. Teetaert, “La Doctrine Penitentielle,” 7, 29. 48. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 187–247. Larson, Master of Penance, 5–6. Cyrille Vogel, Le Pécheur et la pénitence au Moyen Âge (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1969), 36, believes that solemn and non- solemn public penance continued alongside private penance even in the thirteenth century. 49. Villier et al., eds., Dictionnaire de spiritualité, cols. 953–954; 977–978. Anciaux, La Théologie du sacrement de pénitence, 41. See Payen, Motif du repentir, 23. 50. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 50–51. Wei, Gratian the Theologian, 87, explains that the anonymous author of the Pseudo-Augustine (late eleventh-to-twelfth century) De vera et falsa penitentia expressed a similar attitude toward confession to a member of the laity in case of emergency. 51. Teetaert, “La Doctrine Penitentielle,” 51–52. See also Vogel, Le Pécheur et la pénitence, 31 and 15–36 for a general overview of the evolution of the sacrament of penance. 52. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 49. 53. Gerard Moignet, ed., La Chanson de Roland (Paris: Bibliothèque Bordas, 1969), 100–101. All citations of the Chanson are taken from this edition. All translations are taken from The Song of Roland: Translations of the Versions in Assonance and Rhyme of the Chanson de Roland, trans. Joseph J. Duggan and Annalee C. Rejhon (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2012). See also Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 49. Bachrach, “Confession in the Regnum Francorum,” 3–22, examines documentation from the carolingian period suggesting that soldiers even during military campaigns were able to make individual confessions to priests. Nonetheless, in spite of that historical practice, the passage quoted above from the Chanson de Roland describes a greatly different penitential act. 54. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 46. 55. See Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 109–131 for his analysis of Roland’s direct confession to God in the death scenes. While the poem highlights Roland’s later, individual narration of his sins to God, the earlier group confession before the Archbiship Turpin specifies that the knights have been absolved of their sins. 56. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 216. 57. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 228. 58. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 132. 59. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 196–197; 214–217. 60. Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, Vol. 1, trans. H. Von Essen Scott and C.C. Swinton Bland (London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd., 1929), 184. See Mansfield, Humiliation of Sinners, 67 for her account of Caesarius’s anecdote. Payen, Le Motif du repentir, 49 refers to a similar “cérémonie grotesque.” See Biller, “Confession in the Middle 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 207

Ages: Introduction,” 5–6. In the late fourteenth-century Le Menagier de Paris, eds. G. Brereton and Janet M. Ferrier (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), a guide book for a young wife, the husband refers to a general confession ritual after the Sanctus of the Mass, I, iii, 12, 14. Anciaux, La Théologie du sacrement de pénitence, 50–51, explains that examples of “absolution générale,” were not limited to lenten ceremonies but were sometimes used after sermons, during pilgrimages, and as an epistolary formula concluding papal letters. Tentler, Sin and Confession, 112–113, describes a form of general confession as preparation for private confession as illustrated in the Modus confitendi by the fourteenth-century Andreas de Escobar. This text included a review of the seven deadly sins and the Ten Commandments, along with a “review of conscience” designed as a thorough identification of one’s potential sins including the following: “I have desired to perform and commit adultery, incest, rape, and sins against nature.” 61. Tentler, Sin and Confession, 112–115. He also makes an analogy between general confession and the dispensing of “blessed bread” in place of the consecrated host: “In both cases a ritual appears as a substitute for a sacrament--a ritual that is clearly not a sacrament, yet is strongly reminiscent of the sacrament,” 79–80. 62. See also Payen, Motif du repentir, 49 for a description of general pronouncements of forgiveness. 63. Mansfield’s descriptions of general absolution do not mention the saying aloud of sins but one can certainly assume that people perhaps murmured to themselves. She also refers to Caesarius of Heisterbach’s “omnibus confessions,” Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 67 in which a group of people would confess together. See also 131: “Maundy Thursday was the day for general absolutions as well as for the reception of individuals.” She continues on 132: “…Richard of Middleton carefully distinguished what he called sacramental general confession, by which he meant the individual penitent’s general statement of guilt in secret confession to the priest, from what he called non-sacramental general confession, the collective, liturgical declaration in the publicity of the church. Only the former remits venial sin ex vi sacramenti; the latter does not itself remit sin, but helps men and women experience redemptive contrition.” In fact, Canon 21 of the Fourth Lateran Council emphasizes the penitent’s “solitude” (solus) in the sacramental procedure, in direct contrast to this previous tradition, described by Caesarius of Heisterbach, 67 and 174. Mansfield further explains that Holy Thursday general confessions and absolutions seem to have developed first in Rome (perhaps because solemn public penance disappears there first) and only later in northern France, 184– 185. 208 L. M. ROUILLARD

64. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 88 points out that even in the first part of the thirteenth century, satisfaction after absolution of the sinner’s guilt required some sort of penitential act in an effort to cancel the “temporal penalty.” 65. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 7. For certain sins which had to be confessed before a bishop, see 82 and 94. Incest figures in this list. See also Pierre Payer, “Sex and Confession in the Thirteenth Century,” in Sex and the Middle Ages, ed. Joan Salisbury (New York: Garland, 1991), 126– 142; here 131. And Tentler, “The Summa for Confessors,” 117. See also Stephen Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 13, introduction. 66. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 60–61, discusses the difficulty of knowing just which penitential procedures were in effect in thirteenth- century France. However, there does exist one document, Eudes Rigaud’s Regestrum Visitationum from Rouen, which describes a ritual excommunication, 97, footnote 16. She also describes a late thirteenth- or early fourteenth-century pontifical from Meaux whose procedures for Holy Thursday and Ash Wednesday are virtually identical. This, along with the absence of any mention of expulsion leads Mansfield to conclude: “Pub- lic penance now meant public reconciliation more than public expulsion,” 221. 67. Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 1; 110. To avenge himself of an episcopal interdict imposed upon his realm, the Count buried a body under the room of the bishop, but the bishop had the last word. 68. On the duty to maintain the secrecy of confession, see Murray, Conscience and Authority, 53–57. 69. The King of Hungary has also recognized the social disruption his sin caused for his kingdom in general for, prior to his departure for Rome, had requested the forgiveness of his subjects: “Pria leur qu’il li pardonaissent / Et le vrai Dieu pour li priaissent. / Issi fisent de leur bon gré. / Ensi s’en part tout a leur gre” (ll. 6811–6814). “He asked them to pardon him / And to pray for him to the true God; / So they did, willingly. / Thus he leaves with their good will.” 70. Hamilton, Practice of Penance,1–2. 71. Payen, Motif du repentir, 10: “Or, le repentir du douzième siècle exige très souvent la présence des larmes. Telle est la conséquence d’une certaine doctrine théologique de la pénitence, qui a prévalu au douzième et au début du treizième siècle, et qu’on appelle le contritionnisme…les larmes sont le signe extérieur du pardon divin, et s’il fallait prendre à la lettre l’enseignement des grands clercs, seuls pourraient être absous les pénitents qui manifestent par leur contrition larmoyante qu’ils ont reçu la grace rédemptrice.” See also 132–134 for his comments on la Vie de Saint Gilles. 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 209

72. While the Vie de Saint Gilles does not identify Charlemagne’s sin, several other literary traditions identify it as incest with his sister, resulting in the birth of Roland. See Chapter 3 of this work. 73. For a history of this motif—confession of a sin too horrible to pronounce—see Baudoin de Gaiffier, “La Légende de Charlemagne: Le Péché de l’Empereur et son pardon,” in Recueil de Travaux Offert à M. Clovis Brunel (Paris: Société de l’Ecole des Chartes, 1955), 490–503; here 496– 501. Miranda Griffin, “Writing Out the Sin: Arthur, Charlemagne and the Spectre of Incest,” Neophilologus 88 (2004): 499–519, here 506 where she suggests that the refusal of the narrator to literally identify Charle- magne’s sin for the reader is not so much that “the sin is not necessarily unnamble, then, but it is unknowable.” Griffin also points out that in this case “our ignorance underlines the divine omniscience which incorporates the knowledge of Charlemagne’s sin,” 507. 74. Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, trans. Granger Ryan and Helmut Ripperger (New York: Arno, 1969), 518–519. 75. Léon Gautier, Les Épopées françaises, Vol. III (Paris: Société Générale de Librairie Catholique, 1880), 64–65. 76. Karlamagnus Saga: The Saga of Charlemagne and His Heroes, trans. Constance B. Hieatt (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1975), 117–118. She refers to Halvorsen’s dating of this saga as mid- thirteenth century, 21–22. Payen, Motif du repentir, situates it earlier, around 1100, 136–137; for the possible “political” uses of this Charle- magne legend, see 134. 77. Griffin, “Writing Out the Sin,” 505. 78. Payen, Motif du repentir, 18, notes that the thirteenth century valued explicit acknowledgment of specific sins in response to clerical questions. We note that La Manekine presents a voluntary, extensive narrative in response to a brief papal invitation to everyone to confess. There is no questionnaire or inventory of possible sins offered by the pope to the King of Hungary. On the other hand, Griffin, “Writing Out the Sin,” 508, overlooks Charlemagne’s copious tears in the St. Gilles version, declaring that absolution without explicit pronounciation of the sin on Charlemag- ne’s part is an example of “the possibility of redemption in the absence of confession.” 79. See Chrétien de Troyes, Der Percevalroman: Li Contes del Graal,ed. Gerhard Rohlfs (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1966), ll. 6217–6518. Arthurian Romances, trans. D.D.R. Owen (London, England: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1988, rpt.), 456–460. 80. Le Chevalier au Barisel: Conte pieux du XIIIe Siècle, ed. Félix Lecoy (Paris: Champion, 1955). Payen, Motif du repentir, 534–544; 535, identifies the three versions of this story: the anonymous Chevalier au Barisel, Le Conte du Baril by Jouhan de la Chapelle, and a version in La Vie des Pères. 210 L. M. ROUILLARD

Adrian P. Tudor in his recent translation of and introduction to the anonymous version, The Knight and the Barrel: Le Chevalier au barisel, ed. Félix Lecoy (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2019), 1, argues for a composition date near 1218. His introduction also provides an intricate analysis of the knight’s progressive moral transformation throughout the poem. 81. Tudor, The Knight and the Barrel, 9. See also Linda Marie Rouillard, “Warrior relationships with God: From Roland to the Chevalier au Barisel,” Medieval Perspectives 17 (2003): 129–150. 82. The ninth-century Aix capitularies charge bishops specifically to uncover acts “de incestu, de patricidiis, fratricidiis, adulteriis, cenodoxiis et alia mala, quae contraria sunt Deo” [“of incest, patricide, fratricide, adultery, vanity and other evils which are offronts against God,” translation mine], as cited by Murray, Conscience and Authority, 25. 83. Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame,Vol.II,ed.Frédéric Koenig (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1966), ll. 406–409. All translations of this work are mine. 84. All citations from the Dits are taken from B. Munk Olsen, ed., Dits en Quatrains d’Alexandrins Monorimes de Jehan de Saint-Quentin (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1978). English translations are mine. 85. Le Dit du Buef is consonant with early medieval penitentials which also made provisions for such cases. Though Regino’s Ecclesiastical Discipline of 906 does not specify that incest must be confessed to a bishop specifically, it does provide guidelines for the cleric hearing confession: “And inquire diligently of him if he is incestuous or unfaithful to his superior; and if he will not abandon his incest, thou canst not give him penance but if he will, thou canst. When these matters have been dealt with, the priest ought affectionately to address the penitent in these words…,” as cited by McNeill and Gamer, eds., Medieval Handbooks of Penance, 316. 86. This is not to say the Church did not find restitution to be an important component, for the Second Lateran Council of 1139 addressed the issue in canon 22, as pointed out by Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners,55 and also 85. 87. Tentler, “The Summa for Confessors,” 120. See also Tentler, Sin and Confession, 340–341. 88. See Tentler, “Summa for Confessors,” 104 for a translation of a passage of Omnis utriusque sexus from the Fourth Lateran Council on confession: “Let the priest be cautious and discreet, so that, like a skilled physician, he may pour wine and oil on the wounds of the injured man, diligently examining the circumstances of both sin and sinner, through which he may prudently learn what kind of advice he should offer, and what kind of remedy he should apply—trying various methods—to heal the sick man.” 5 THE HAND OF FORGIVENESS 211

89. Huguette LeGros, “Parenté naturelle, alliance, parenté spirituelle: de l’inceste à la sainteté,” Les Relations de Parenté dans le Monde Médiéval (Aix: CUERM, 1989): 511–548; here 537. This is in contrast to the Vie de Saint Grégoire which emphasizes the superiority of the spiritual family over blood ties. See Anita Guerreau-Jalabert, “Grégoire ou le Double Inceste: le Rôle de la Parenté comme Enjeu,” in Réception et Identité du Conte depuis le Moyen Age, eds. M. Zink and X. Ravier (Toulouse: Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail, 1987): 21–38; here 28. 90. Elisabetta Povoledo, “Pope Francis Issues Apology for Scandals at Vat- ican,” New York Times (Wednesday, October 14, 2015), https://www. nytimes.com/2015/10/15/world/europe/pope-francis-issues-apology- for-scandals-at-vatican.html, accessed July 31, 2017. 91. Susan Wise Bauer, The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Public Confession in America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 7. Even press reports of the punishment meted out for embezzlement sometimes use the lexicon of public penance. Bill Pennington, in a July 7, 2016, New York Times article, “The Trusted Grown-Ups Who Steal Millions from Youth Sports,” reported on the recent theft of funds by the treasurer of a Youth Soccer Club, and described the penalty in the following fashion: “A county court judge had ordered Mr. Farley to repent publicly [my emphasis] to club members as part of his guilty plea…” Accessed on July 12, 2016 at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/10/ sports/youth-sports-embezzlement-by-adults.html. 92. See Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 41–43 for the description of Peter of Poitiers and Peter Cantor’s classification of sin as an offense against God, the Church, and one’s neighbor, and Alan of Lille’s classification of sin as an offense against God and one’s neighbor. 93. See Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, 41, for Peter of Poitiers’ (1170) analysis of sin: “When someone sins against his neighbor in mortal sin, he offends three persons: God, the church and neighbor…Therefore if he wishes to make satisfaction to God, he should be deeply contrite and do penance for his sin…Then he shall make satisfaction to the church by confessing his sin and doing temporal penance. Finally he shall make satisfaction to the neighbor he sinned against.” This latter satisfaction is also occasioned by asking for pardon from the person the sinner has offended. See Mansfield, The Humiliation of Sinners, for a subsequent discussion on restitution, 55–59. 94. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, Vol. I: The Growth of Ties of Dependence, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 106. See Payen, Motif du repentir, 231 who expresses some doubt about the totality of this statement but he concedes: “que la pratique de l’examen de conscience a pu donner à certains auteurs et à leur public un sens plus affiné 212 L. M. ROUILLARD

de la responsabilitié individuelle, voire un certain goût pour les débats ou pour la description du scrupule que provoque une passion naissante.” 95. Archibald, “Incest in Medieval Literature and Society,” 5.

References

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———. Sex and the Penitentials: Development of a Sexual Code 550–1150. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984. Pennington, Bill. “The Trusted Grown-Ups Who Steal Millions from Youth Sports.” New York Times, July 7, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/ 10/sports/youth-sports-embezzlement-by-adults.html. Accessed on July 12, 2016. Peter Lombard. The Sentences. Translated by Giulio Silano. Toronto, ON: Pon- tiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2010. Pﬁster, Christian. Etudes sur le règne de Robert le Pieux (996–1031). Paris: F. Vieweg, 1885. Philippe de Rémi. Le Roman de la Manekine. Edited and translated by Barbara Sargent-Baur. Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999. Povoledo, Elisabetta. “Pope Francis Issues Apology for Scandals at Vatican.” New York Times, Wednesday, October 14, 2015. https://www.nytimes. com/2015/10/15/world/europe/pope-francis-issues-apology-for-scandals- at-vatican.html. Accessed July 31, 2017. Raymond of Penyafort. Summa Sancti Raymondi De Peniafort.EditedbyM. Vestrius Barbianus. Rome, 1603. Rogers, Elizabeth Frances. Peter Lombard and the Sacramental System.NewYork: Richwood Publishing, 1917, rpt. 1976. Rouillard, Linda Marie. “Warrior Relationships with God: From Roland to the Chevalier au Barisel.” Medieval Perspectives 17 (2003): 129–150. The Song of Roland: Translations of the Versions in Assonance and Rhyme of the Chanson de Roland. Translated by Joseph J. Duggan and Annalee C. Rejhon. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2012. Teetaert, Amédée. “La Doctrine Penitentielle de Saint Raymond de Penyafort., O.P.” Analecta Sacra Tarraconensia 4 (1928): 5–62. ———. “La Summa de Poenitentia de S. Raymond de Penyafort.” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses 5 (1928): 49–72. Tentler, Thomas N. Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. ———. “The Summa for Confessors as an Instrument of Social Control.” In The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion.Editedby Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1974. 103–137. Turner, Ralph. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England.New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009. Vergil. Aeneid. Translated by L.R. Lind. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962. Vitz, Evelyn Birge. “1215: Christian Doctrine and Medieval Literature.” In A New History of French Literature. Edited by Denis Hollier. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989. 216 L. M. ROUILLARD

Vogel, Cyrille. Le Pécheur et la pénitence au Moyen Âge. Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1969. Wei, John. Gratian the Theologian. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2016. Wilson, Stephen, editor. Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. CHAPTER 6

Regurgitation, Restitution, Resurrection, and Relics

While a reunion of a husband and wife separated for over seven years, a miraculously grafted hand, and a public confession of a royal father who regrets his foolish incestuous marriage proposal and his subsequent death sentence for his daughter, could all certainly suffice as a more than ade- quate resolution, Philippe de Rémi still has a few more narrative surprises and polemical issues to discuss in his poem La Manekine. Concerns with spiritual artifacts, specifically reliquaries and their contents, as well as their meanings and value, are reflected in the conclusion of Philippe’s romance, in addition to the restoration of a lost body part during the paschal or resurrection season. One of the most fantastic yet charming episodes in La Manekine is the restoration of the protagonist’s amputated hand, effected when the hungry sturgeon who had happily gobbled it up years before, regurgitates it in the pope’s fountain. Following the King of Hungary’s narration of his sin and his reunion with his daughter, two servants of the pope, off to collect the water to be blessed for the baptismal font, find in the papal fountain a persistent hand which keeps floating into their water pail: “Pour

All citations and translations of La Manekine are taken from Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Barbara Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999).

çou estoient mis en paine / Li clerc d’aler a la fontaine / Pour aporter de l’iauwe as fons. / Baissié se sont a jenoillons / Pour leur seel faire puisier. / Dedens l’iauwe l’ont fait puis[ier], / Si l’ont a aus sachiet tout pl[ain]; / Et voient dedens une main / Qui se tenoit dedens leur iauwe. / Ariere ont regetee l’iauwe; / Puis repuissent a la fontaine, / Qui mout ert de bele iauwe plai[ne]. / Mais la main en leur cauderon / Rentra, u volsissent u non. / Dont le regeterent arriere. / Trois fois u quatre en tel [maniere] / Le seel qu’il orent [vuidierent] / Car sans la main [avoir quidierent] / De l’iauwe, mais [ce] fu noie[ns]; / Tous jours se relançoit deve[ns]” (ll. 7413–7432). “For this reason the clerks had exerted themselves / To go to the fountain / In order to bring water to the fonts. / They have gone down on their knees / To let their pail fill up. / They have let it down into the water, / Then have drawn it towards them brim-full; / And in it they see a hand / That was in their water. / They have thrown the water back, / Then draw again from the fountain, / Which was full of much good water. / But the hand came back into their vessel, / Whether they wanted it or not. / And so they threw it back again. / In such a way, three or four times / They emptied the pail that they had, / For without the hand they thought to obtain / Water; but it came to nothing; / It kept on returning.” The pope directs the clerks to bring the hand back to him directly and marvels at its condition: “S’ele fust maintenant colpee, / Ne fust si fresce ne si vive” (ll. 7480–7481). “If it had just been cut off, / It would not look so fresh or so living.” Lest we feel too modern to accept such a narration, if not as truth but at least as a whale of a good tale, consider the following stories from the twentieth century. On December 1, 1994, a report entitled “One Fish Story You Can Sink Your Teeth Into,” appeared in the St. Louis Post- Dispatch. A certain Cor Stoop lost his dentures during a fishing trip. A few months later another fisherman purportedly found the same teeth in the belly of a cod.1 In the March 29, 1996 issue of the Journal of Commerce, we read: “Engagement Ring Lost at Sea Returns to Owner.” In this report, a mussel was cut open to find that piece of jewelry, with an inscribed name.2 In a more recent story, a lost class ring turned up in the stomach of an eight-pound bass more than twenty years after it was lost.3 Certainly, such stories would have seemed entirely logical to the medieval Caesarius of Heisterbach (1180–1240) who told a similar story in his Dialogue on Miracles. A certain provost, Conrad, lost his gold ring while boating on the Rhine. A year later, some fishermen caught the pike who had swallowed the ring which they subsequently returned to Conrad.4 These urban legends, if you choose to call them that, are nothing new, but rather are part of a tradition of objects lost and amazingly found. There 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 219 is great satisfaction when the universe gives back the valuable possession that had gone missing. While these anecdotes may make us chuckle in amused disbelief, they nonetheless demonstrate a desire to find continuity and security in a more benevolent universe that practices restitution. The motif of the fish-container is an old one and predates the Middle Ages. In the fifth century B.C.E. for instance, Herodotus told the story of Polycrates who worried that his unceasing good fortune would eventually give way to very bad luck. In an effort to ward off future disaster, he voluntarily threw away a valuable ring that was eaten by a fish that eventually found its way to his dinner table, with the ingested ring.5 Sub- stantial loss feeds the fantasy of spectacular restitution, perhaps especially in the Middle Ages. In some traditions, Charlemagne protects Pope Leo from the barbarians who have already plucked out his eyes. Fortunately for the pontiff, and in a manner similar to the protection of Manekine’s cut-off hand, his eyes are kept safe in the belly of a fish and later restored to him.6 In some cases, one’s willingness to give up a part of oneself as punishment for sin is rewarded by miraculous restoration, as in a story told by Jacobus de Voragine: Pope Leo punished himself when he felt sexually aroused after a woman kissed his hand as he was offering her communion. Following the biblical advice to cut off one’s right hand if it leads one into sin (Matt. 5:30), he sliced off his own hand which was eventually restored to him by the Virgin Mary.7 In another legend about divine forgiveness for incest, the twelfth-century Hartmann von Aue tells the piscine tale in which a fish preserves the key to the future Pope Grego- rius’ penitential chains. Having discovered that he was conceived in incest, and having unknowingly married his mother, Gregorius asks a fisherman to chain him to a rock by the sea. The fisherman complies, and tosses the key into the sea, predicting that recovery of the said key will be a sign that God has forgiven Gregorius for his sinful origins. When the current pope dies seventeen years later, God informs the cardinals of Gregorius’s location. The fisherman takes them in and serves them the very fish that had swallowed the key seventeen years earlier. Recovery of the key preserved in a fish’s gullet demonstrates a dazzling sign of forgiveness for a heinous sin and demonstrates Gregorius’s worthiness of the pontificate.8 As in La Manekine, the spectacular reappearance after many years of a valuable object protected in a fish’s stomach demonstrates divine favor. All these stories, including La Manekine, end with a form of restitution, and in the case of Pope Gregorius, with professional promotion, but other stories using this “fishy” container motif evoke Christian resurrection theories. In the face of Christian dogma about the resurrection of 220 L. M. ROUILLARD the physical body, early Church fathers had to reconcile violent martyrdom and dismemberment with the promise of new life and literal, physical resurrection at the Last Judgment. In addition, they had to address questions about transformation: what would this newly risen body look like, what gender would it have? Would saints be reconstituted with all their collected relic bits? What would be the appearance of the early martyrs eaten by ferocious brutes? Would animals who snacked on human bits will be required to return these fleshy morsels to the rightful owners on Judgment Day? In her book Resurrection of the Body in Western Chris- tianity, 200–1336, Caroline Walker Bynum has provided us with a social history of this anxiety over bodily integrity. In answer to this last question in particular about the physical appearance of martyrs at the end of time, Church writers, such as Tertullian (ca. 160–220 A.D.), quoted Enoch 61:5 “And I will command the fishes of the sea and they shall cast up the bones which they have devoured.”9 Tertullian then mitigates the literal meaning of this sentence, explaining that while the marauding animals themselves might not be literally resurrected in order to relinquish their human bits, “…the beasts and fishes are mentioned…in relation to the restoration of flesh and blood, in order the more emphatically to express the resurrection of such bodies as have even been devoured.”10 Tertul- lian clearly appreciated the metaphoric value of Enoch’s piscine image. Likewise, the fourth-century Syriac Ephraim wrote: “Death will be overcome by trembling, and will vomit up all it has eaten, so that no dead will be left who is not brought to that place of judgment…All whom the sea has drunk, whom the wild animals have eaten, whom the birds have ripped asunder, whom the fire has burnt, all these will awaken and arise and come forth at the twinkling of an eye.”11 Ephraim also used the New Testament Garden of Gethsemane episode of the restoration of the servant’s cut-off ear as another analogy to illustrate the ability of God to raise whole bodies at the time of the Last Judgement: “For, if the divine one bent down and took the ear that was cut off from Simon [sic] and thrown away, and attached it again so that nothing was lost, how much more will he then at the resurrection search for every bit so that nothing of their dust remains behind.”12 The early twelfth-century Honorius derived the word for death, “mors” from the word for bite, “morsus,” thus equating death with inges- tion and digestion.13 Such an “etymology” was thus perhaps related to early Christian anxiety over bodily bits lost to injury or to ferocious lions complicit in the martyrdom of early saints: how could such bodies be 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 221 resurrected in their totality on the Day of Judgment if they had been mauled and eaten? Peter Lombard, whose Sentences date from the mid- twelfth century, addresses this concern, stating “…the natural substance of the body will be reintegrated by the collection of all the particles that were dispersed before. And the bodies of the saints will rise without any defect, shining like the sun, all deformities they had here being cut off.”14 While Peter Lombard also suggests that this resurrection would entail the essence of the person more than the “details” of the individual, he also believes the revived body would have the appearance it had at age 32 and 3 months, the age of Christ at his resurrection.15 The Hortus deliciarum, a medieval encyclopedia whose production was supervised by the twelfth-century Abbess Herrad of Hohenbourg, insists that those people eaten in part or in their entirety by animals will be resurrected whole at the end of time.16 C. Grant Loomis records a similar analogy in his book White Magic with the story of the seventh-century Saint Moling who is horrified at the sight of the organic process in action. Having seen a cat eat a bird who had just eaten a fly, the saint inverted the natural order of things and ordered the feline to bring up its meal; the bird in its turn gave up its delicacy. A witness interpreted the scene as a demonstration of resurrection: “Ego vidi modo, fratres, resurrectionem mortuorum ex artis sepulcris.”17 “I saw instantly, brothers, the resurrection of the dead from the grave” (translation mine). Here is a very clear instance of regurgitation equated with resurrection, which becomes, as Caroline Bynum has put it: “[a] triumph over the food chain.”18 Obviously, the Old Testament episode of Jonah swallowed and then ejected by the whale, an image also used by Ephraim, is a constant analogy for Christ’s Resurrection, a metaphor which Bynum dates as beginning in the third century.19 Closer in time to the corpus of texts considered in this work, we find iconographic depictions of this motif. A Byzantine mosaic, dated from the eleventh century in the Torcello cathedral uses the regurgitation motif to describe the reassemblage that will occur at the moment of resurrection. Ferocious, man-eating animals are depicted as rendering up those bodily bits they previously ingested, though those already in hell or shortly to be so, remain piecemeal.20 The twelfth- century Hortus deliciarum manuscript also uses this motif of regurgitation to depict the scenario of the Last Judgement in which the dead rise up from their tombs, and those eaten by animals are released from their digestive tombs.21 Once again, predators must relinquish their prey to reestablish the bodily integrity of humans. Herrad states: “The bodies and 222 L. M. ROUILLARD members of people once devoured by beasts, birds and fish are brought forth by God’s command, because the members of the saints will rise incorrupt as if of whole humanity, and not only via beasts as is depicted here, and they will be presented at God’s command.”22 The doctrine of bodily resurrection was reiterated in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, in the face of recent experiences with heretics, requiring everyone to acknowledge that: “all rise with their own individual bodies, that is, bodies which they now wear.”23 Let us consider in closer detailed references to the renewed integrity of the protagonist’s body in La Manekine. Just after the reunion of the protagonist and her husband in the home of the Roman Senator, and after the public confession of the King of Hungary, a celestial voice instructs the pope to return to the fountain where the human hand was found and where he will also find the marauding fish. He is instructed to cut open the sturgeon which had regurgitated Manekine’s long-ago amputated hand. According to the celestial voice instructing the pope: “Vous trouverés en sa mulete, / En la guise d’un gant pourtrete, / Le liu ou la mains a esté / Par maint yver, par maint esté. / Lueques a la Virge Marie / Gardee la main de s’amie. / Bien en devés grant joie faire, / Car mout i a biau saintuaire” (ll. 7601–7608). “In its stomach you will find, / In the shape of a glove, / The place where the hand has been / For many a win- ter and summer. / It is there that the Virgin Mary / Has kept the hand of the woman who loves her. / You must rejoice greatly at this, / For there is a very beautiful reliquary there.” Following this divine order, the Pope has the fish dressed and finds the object / container as predicted: “S’a dedens la forme trouvee / Ou la mains s’estoit reposee. / Faite ert par itel maiëstire / Quë il n’est nus qui sace dire / De coi ele est, n’en quele guise / Ele puet estre lueques mise. / Mais mout par avoit douce oudeur / Et si ert de mainte couleur. / A Saint Piere s’en retournerent; / A grant feste la le porterent. / (Encore est a Romme veüe,/ Se par nos pechiés n’est perdue)” (ll. 7651–7662). “And within it [the pope] has found the form / In which the hand had rested. / It was made by such mastery / that there is no-one who might say / What it is made of or how / It can be placed there. / But it had a very sweet odor / And was of many a color. / They returned to Saint Peter’s, / They carried it there with great festivity. / (It is still to be seen at Rome, / If it is not lost through our sins.)” In line 7608 quoted above, the narrator refers specifically to the container or compartment which held the hand in its piscine host as a saintuaire. The reference is repeated in line 7665 as well (“Quant li Papes du 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 223 saintuaire / Eut fait çou quë il en dut faire / …” [ll. 7664–7655]; “When the Pope had done with the reliquary / What he ought to do…”). One of the meanings of saintuaire is in fact “reliquary,” other interpretations, as defined in the Godefroy Lexique, being: “chose sainte, sacrée, reliques des saints, asile.” A saintuaire then can be both the saintly object, or the container of a holy thing, and it can also designate a refuge. Now, it is important to note that Joïe is not strictly speaking a saint, but she is certainly depicted as a saintly, virtuous woman, and the use of the word saintuaire adds to this characterization. The choice of the word saintuaire taken from ecclesiastical vocabulary and used to refer to the piscine compartment that protected her hand is a significant validation of a living laywoman who was a devoted wife and mother, a rehabilitation of the feminine in the face of traditional misogyny and misogamy. If her amputated hand has been protected for many years in a container qualified as a reliquary, then that part of herself must have some virtuous quality akin to a relic, but now a living relic returned to its source near the conclusion of the poem. What were general medieval beliefs about relics? First, let us note that the cult of relics was not an invention of Christianity. In his study of relics, Charles Freeman notes that the Greek hero Achilles, for instance, cherished the bones of his slaughtered war comrade Patroclus.24 In the Middle Ages, saints’ relics were traditionally believed to be a sign of the saint’s continued presence and power on earth. Peter Brown reminds us that: “the saint in Heaven was believed to be ‘present’ at his tomb on earth.”25 Relics served as symbols of the saint’s victory over death, a promise to those still struggling through life. André Grabar has pointed out that “the imagery of a martyr’s relics is never in any case an imagery of the memento mori; rather it strives by all means in its power to proclaim the suppression of the fact of death.”26 Relics were also an integral part of the church altar, for ecclesiastical regulations stipulated that the altar stone contain the bones of martyrs or other saints,27 making the deceased holy ones part of everyday life. The discovery, acquisition or appearance of relics also symbolized the presence of God’s clemency. As Peter Brown describes it, “The discovery of a relic, therefore, was far more than an act of pious archaeology, and its transfer far more than a strange new form of Christian connoisseurship: both actions made plain, at a particular time and place, the immensity of God’s mercy. They announced moments of amnesty. They brought a sense of deliverance and pardon into the present.”28 Thus in the context of La Manekine, the role of her 224 L. M. ROUILLARD amputated hand preserved in the reliquary container in the belly of a fish demonstrates both God’s spectacular favor of the heroine and his willingness to forgive all sins, as well as the particular sins of the protagonist’s father. The conspicuously protected body part that reappears so long after its amputation resonates within this tradition of venerated saintly bits, tes- tifying to the protagonist’s virtue and to her emblematic value. Medieval Christianity displayed both skepticism of and reverence for a wide variety of saintly body parts and material objects that had touched saintly bodies. The desire to maintain a connection with holiness led to imaginative collections that ranged from the Redeemer’s foreskin and the breast milk of the Virgin, to saintly nail clippings, strands of hair, and holy teeth, objects venerated by both clergy and laity, and denigrated by both clergy and laity. And yet, what appears ludicrous or even grotesque to us in the modern age, is in some sense nothing more than a desire to preserve a link to a sanctified individual, to calm spiritual anxiety, and to feel a little bit closer to the divine. Modernity has its own version of relics: clothing and other objects belonging to modern heroes and idols fetch high prices as fans attempt to appropriate pieces of rock stars and astronauts. Holding on to material corporeal remains or material posses- sions allows us to maintain some sort of connection with dear, departed ones. It comforts us over our loss, and allows us to cope with our mortality and the mortality of those who once walked among us; it can also bolster sagging egos as we cling to objects that once belonged to the late great stars. And yes, there are still saintly relics for sale in the twenty-first century, as a quick trip on the internet and eBay will reveal, though, as is the case with all relics, authenticity remains elusive. The Venerable Bede (673–735 C.E.) writes about the relics of St. Cuthbert’s hair, which cause a tumor on the eyelid of a young man to disappear.29 Bede also writes that King Oswald’s virtue and his generos- ity to the poor were made visible after his death: “…for when Oswald was killed in battle, his hand and arm were severed from his body, and they remain uncorrupted to this day. They are preserved as venerated relics in a silver casket at the church of Saint Peter in the royal city…,”30 but relics did not always come from a deceased person. Aldebertus (late eighth century) was recognized as holy during his lifetime and his admirers placed great faith in his nail clippings and locks of hair.31 Royalty had long had a tradition of collecting relics. Charlemagne, for instance, who wore on his person amulets that held strands of the Vir- gin’s hair and bits of the True Cross, believed that the western cult of 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 225 relics effected better relationships with the saints than the eastern tradition of icons. His Aachen chapel housed clothing from Mary and Jesus.32 Charlemagne’s throne is also said to have contained relics, as did his sword Joyeuse.33 Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, an epic poem from the twelfth century, describes Charlemagne’s acquisition of numerous other relics: Saint-Simeon’s arm, the head of St. Lazarus, blood of St. Stephen, a piece of the Holy Shroud, a nail from the Crucifixion and the crown of thorns, utensils from the Last Supper and pieces of St. Peter’s beard, milk from the Blessed Virgin, and her tunic.34 Among other literary references to the power and value of relics, one need only remember the Chanson de Roland’s description of Roland’s sword Durendal which was said to contain relics in its hilt: a tooth of Saint Peter, hair from Saint Denis, a piece of the Virgin’s clothing, and blood from Saint Basil.35 Thirteenth-century examples of the thirst for relics include Saint Louis himself, who had such an extensive collection of saintly artifacts, including the Crown of Thorns,36 that he constructed his Sainte-Chapelle (dedicated in 1248) to house his assemblage of holy objects. Louis’s inventory included a piece of the True Cross, the Holy Lance, Jesus’s swad- dling clothes, some of the Virgin’s breast milk, strands of her hair, and a fragment of her veil.37 In this case, the edifice itself was designed to function as a reliquary in the second degree, so to speak, or a reliquary which housed reliquaries containing relics.38 The saintly Louis’s corpse was itself treated as a relic to be displayed after his death,39 thus providing an important symbol of both lay and aristocratic virtue. And the possession of and faith in relics was not reserved to the laity who needed physical contact with the spiritual. Jacques de Vitry, a thirteenth-century bishop who had official, daily contact with the divine, was said to have carried with him a reliquary with a finger of Marie d’Oignies who died in 1213.40 The poet Rutebeuf describes in La Vie de Sainte Elysabel (dated approximately 1264) the dismemberment of St. Elisabeth of Hungary’s corpse by those eager for a powerful relic: “Asseiz i vin grant aleüre / De gent copeir sa vesteüre; / Des cheveux et dou mameron / Li copa hon lou soumeron; / Doiz de piez et ongles de mains / Li copa hon; ce fu dou mainz: / Toute l’eüssent derompue / Qui ne lor eüst deffendue” (ll. 1891–1898). “Beaucoup de gens vinrent très vite / découper ses vêtements; / on lui coupa le bout / des cheveux et du sein; / on lui coupa les doigts de pieds et les ongles des mains; / c’était le minimum: / les gens l’auraient toute mise en pièces / si on ne les en avait empêchés.”41 Here, the saint’s 226 L. M. ROUILLARD body is no longer her own; instead it is carved up and served to those hungry for her intercession before God, a reflection of that belief that the saint’s uncorrupted body was proof of her continued presence among the faithful.42 As Bridge Cazelles remarks on St. Elizabeth of Hungary: “The idealized portrayal of female sanctity inevitably leads to a dispersion and eradication of the heroine.” Returning to one of our primary texts, Philippe’s virtuous female heroine, by contrast, is made whole at the end of her odyssey.43 Having collected her long-ago amputated hand and her rightful inheritance, Manekine goes on to extend the dynasty with more children. Sacred relics could be useful tools for generating income.44 That individuals would take advantage of people’s religious beliefs to make a profit through the sale of objects of dubious provenance should not surprise us. That an institution would take advantage of such spiritual anxieties to accumulate wealth should also not surprise us, but we should remember that the authenticity and profit potential of relics was, for some people, very separate and very insignificant compared to their faith in a particular saint to intercede for them. When contemplating relics, some medievals saw dollar signs; others saw the hope of prayers to be answered and miracles to be effected. Nonetheless, the Fourth Lateran Council in Canon 62 addressed the issue of authenticity of relics: “In the future prelates shall not permit those who come to their churches [for the sake of venerating relics] to be deceived by worthless fabrications or false documents as has been done in many places for the sake of gain.”45 The power and importance of relics is further highlighted by the often extravagant, elaborate containers or reliquaries, made of precious metals, sometimes fashioned in the shape of the body part they contained,46 just as the reliquary found in the sturgeon’s stomach is described as having the shape of a glove which protected Manekine’s hand (“Vous trouverés en sa mulete,/En la guise d’un gant pourtrete / Le liu ou la mains aesté” [ll. 7601–7603]; “In its stomach you will find, / In the shape of a glove, / The place where the hand has been,”). The following are just some of the dazzling examples of such containers: the New York Metropolitan Museum medieval collection includes a thirteenth-century silver-gilt reliquary in the shape of a head, made to hold parts of Saint Yrieix’s skull in the abbey church of Attane in Limousin.47 The collection of the Cloisters Museum also in New York contains another good example: a thirteenth-century arm reliquary from Mosan, made of silver plate with filigree, gems, and pictorial decorations,48 fashioned to hold the arm 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 227 bone of an anonymous saint. And the Cleveland Museum of Art owns a late twelfth-century silver-gilt arm reliquary.49 Because La Manekine has functioned as an anchoring text in this work, we note another important relic that now resides in St. Stephen’s Basilica in Budapest, a reminder of one of Hungary’s holy rulers: a hand relic from Saint Stephen himself, the first of the Christian kings in Hungary. Arm-shaped reliquaries were often used to bless parishioners at the end of the mass, thus magnifying the effect of the clerical act of blessing.50 Having first appeared in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, these types of reliquaries are sometimes referred to as “speaking reliquaries,” sometimes used as “liturgical props” in ceremonies and rituals to dramatize more vividly the saint’s engagement.51 A blessing gesture made with the reliquary surely produced a more spectacular benediction than that offered by the simple arm of the priest. Inspired by Saint Jerome, Cynthia Hahn proposes viewing arm reliquaries and their gestural use in blessings as “parts of bodies, cut off from a metaphorical whole, working as limbs of the ‘Church.’”52 Manekine’s amputated hand then, can become an occasion for reflection upon the body politic and the relationship between its parts and the composition of its whole. Her miraculously grafted limb demonstrates God’s love and approval of her actions, and certifies divine favor upon an exemplary living member of the laity. Her fish-generated reliquary speaks volumes about her virtue; her miraculous grafted hand is proof of God’s blessing upon those who remain faithful to him. Abbot Suger (1081–1151) justified ecclesiastical opulence in general by arguing that material splendor could lead one to God: “Thus, when– out of my delight in the beauty of the house of God–the loveliness of the many-colored gems has called me away from external cares, and worthy meditation has induced me to reflect, transferring that which is material to that which is immaterial, on the diversity of the sacred virtues: then it seems to me that I see myself dwelling, as it were, in some strange region of the universe which neither exists entirely in the slime of the earth nor entirely in the purity of Heaven; and that, by the grace of God, I can be transported from this inferior to that higher world in an anagog- ical manner.”53 Abbot Suger would have surely approved of the reliquary for the arm of Saint Jerome, acquired by Abbot William and described by the Benedictine monk Matthew of Paris (1200–1259) in his chronicles as “a superbly made goldsmith’s work embellished with gems.”54 Matthew also refers to a crystal container holding some of the blood of Christ, sent to the King of England in 1247 by the Templars and 228 L. M. ROUILLARD

Hospitallers.55 The austere Bernard of Clairvaux, however, criticized the extravagant practice of adorning the containers of relics, saying: “ordinary people think them much more holy if they are plastered with precious stones…The eyes are fed with gold-bedecked reliquaries, and the money boxes spring open…People run to kiss it; they are invited to give; and they look more at the beauty than venerate the sacred.”56 Such sumptuously crafted reliquaries contrast sharply with the description of the container in La Manekine, a description which, even while acknowledging the general quality of craftsmanship, accentuates the protective nature of the “glove” rather than any dazzling precious metals and jewels. It is referred to as a “biau saintuaire,” (l. 7608), a beautiful reliquary. And it is described as: “Faite ert par itel maiëstire / Quë il n’est nus qui sace dire / De coi ele est, n’en quele guise / Ele puet estre lueques mise. / Mais mout par avoit douce oudeur / Et si ert de mainte couleur” (ll. 7653–7658); “It was made by such mastery / that there is no-one who might say / What it is made of or how / It can be placed there. / But it had a very sweet odor / And was of many a color.” In a sense, Philippe has referred to the tradition of brilliant metalwork without explicitly focusing on material details or the monetary value of the object, but rather calling attention to substance and function over form, to spiritual belief over material objects. Bernard’s opinion aside, reliquaries in themselves then signified the respect and confidence of the Christian community in the holy object protected in these containers, even though the sale and circulation of relics became a problem for the Church. This anxiety is addressed in Canon 62 of the Fourth Lateran Council which states, “From the fact that some expose for sale and exhibit promiscuously the relics of saints, great injury is sustained by the Christian religion. That this may not occur hereafter, we ordain in the present decree that in the future old relics may not be exhibited outside of a vessel or exposed for sale. And let no one presume to venerate publicly new ones unless they have been approved by the Roman pontiff.”57 Reliquaries then protected the holy body part just as the pope hoped to protect the faithful from charlatans peddling fake relics. Clearly, such objects needed oversight. Indeed, just as the institution of marriage became an arena in which laity and the Church tussled over authority, so too did the authentication and veneration of relics become yet another arena in this contest. Returning to La Manekine, we note that Philippe’s treatment of the glove/reliquary suggests a gentle reproach of luxurious contemporary practices. In contrast to the opulent containers or reliquaries of the period 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 229 made from precious metals and jewels, this literary object is described rather vaguely as beautiful, varied in color, and of great craftsmanship. Additionally, the narrator validates the sanctity of this container by referring to a fragrant scent emanating from the fish as it is cut open, and from the reliquary itself, sweet odors being a traditional characteristic of a holy corpse. (In fact, the attempt to have the thirteenth-century Albert of Val d’Ogna canonized was aborted because of an unpleasant scent which emanated from one of his relics. It was later discovered to be due to a clove of garlic inserted in the relic.58) The pope follows the celestial instructions: “Quant fu ouvers, trestuit sentirent / Une odeur si bonne et si douce / Qu’a chascun le sien cuer adouce. / … / A Saint Piere s’en retournerent, / A grant feste la le porterent; /(Encore est a Romme veüe, /Separnospechiésn’estperdue)” (ll. 7646–7662). “When it was opened, they all smelled / An odor so good and so sweet / That everyone’s heart is filled with sweetness. / … / They returned to St. Peter’s, / They carried it with great festivity. / (It is still to be seen in Rome, / If it is not lost through our sins.).” While the description of the sweet fragrance emanating from the fish itself and the reliquary is consonant with traditional depictions of sanctity, the reference made in the last four lines of the citation above regarding the veneration of an empty container is most curious. In a sense, the reliquary by its very function of having contained a relic has become itself a kind of secondary relic worthy of attention. That the continued existence of the glove-shaped reliquary relinquished by the sturgeon in La Manekine could or should be dependent upon the virtue of the laity then attributes great importance and even power to that very group. Does the statement suggesting that potential loss of the reliquary could be attributed to sin (ll. 7661–7662) refer to the practice of selling relics, or putting them on tour to raise money? Does it refer to a loss of faith in such objects? Perhaps these verses imply that the value or authenticity of relics and reliquaries depends not on papal pronouncement, but on the very virtue of the laity and its belief in the signification of such objects. Canon 62 of the Fourth Lateran Council may have stipulated that only the pope can declare a relic, but in this poem, determination of what will be considered a sacred object has been appropriated by the laity from the clergy. In effect, the vague description of the reliquary container accentuates function over sumptuous appearance. More importantly, the container itself, by virtue of its emptiness and its function, is displayed as a spiritual artifact itself. Its very emptiness comes to signify if not sainthood, then at 230 L. M. ROUILLARD least saintliness. While the secular world has produced in Joïe a virtuous married woman, the symbol of her goodness is validated by the display of the empty container. The laity here has reabsorbed the most vibrant, living part of the glove-reliquary and left the Church with an “empty” shell whose continued visibility and legitimacy is somehow dependent on the state of grace of the Christian community. This coexistence of the reliquary and communal grace is reminiscent of the relic of the Virgin’s tunic at Chartres. Hearing that the tunic had been destroyed in the 1194 fire, some believed it to be a sign of the Virgin’s judgment for the sins of the parish.59 While the preservation of the protagonist’s amputated limb for a spectacular reattachment demonstrates her moral excellence and God’s love, the continued presence or existence of the glove-reliquary in Rome, according to La Manekine, constitutes proof of the Christian lay community’s moral worthiness. Philippe’s narrator portrays the reliquary as a valuable object, but precious because of its function rather than because of expensive, luxurious materials. Joïe’s protected hand becomes a symbol of her virtue and of God’s favor as if the hand of God himself was upon her. Philippe’s treatment of Manekine’s hand preserved in a spe- cially secreted reliquary and then returned to her, subverts the traditional attitudes (both ecclesiastical and popular) toward relics and reliquaries, and also provides a secular redefinition of the meaning of these spiritual artifacts. Like marriage, which historically had been a ritual and an institution under the control of the family, tombs and ceremonial burial rituals were also the domain of the family rather than the early Christian church. According to Peter Brown, the cult of relics represents in part the Church’s attempt to wrest control of these important sites from the family.60 We can certainly sense this in the passages cited above from Canon 62 of the Fourth Lateran Council. But in Philippe de Rémi’s later construction of a living relic which returns to its “rightful” owner and a reliquary housed in a fish, now on display in Rome, one can sense a certain amount of lay resistance to the Church’s control of such objects. The simple description of the container, the strength of the heroine, the steadfastness of the King of Scotland who never waivers in his seven-year search for his wife, and the King of Hungary who confesses his sin, not in an atmosphere of humiliation,61 but in a dignified manner, all serve as a secular response to the Church’s power, control, and definition of sacraments and virtue. 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 231

Like typical descriptions of the incorruptible bodies of the saints with their rosy complexions,62 Joïe’s hand has remained as “living” or lifelike as it was before she cut it off. Like St. Margaret who emerges from the belly of the dragon unscathed, or Jonas who is vomited up by the whale, unharmed, Joïe’s hand emerges from the sturgeon none the worse for the wear and fully functional.63 This miraculous reappearance of the hand and the even more miraculous graft suggests a very positive view of the human body in general. In this romance, this body is not reviled, but protected, a sign of God’s love for humanity. The restoration of Joïe’s hand is a reminder that humans are a union of body and soul.64 And as in the story of Saint Oswald, a royal saint whose right arm was sliced off in battle, hung up by the victor as a trophy, but remained fresh and lifelike, the amputated hand which resists decay is a sign of purity.65 The piscine resting place for Joïe’s limb had already created an implicit analogy between the protagonist and her redeemer, for as Gnarra and Ueltschi remind us, the Greek word for fish, “ichthys,” was used as an anagram for Christ.66 More importantly, the narrator associates Joïe’s severed hand with the Holy Eucharist, believed to be the actual body and blood of Christ, a mystery of transubstantiation, enunciated by the Fourth Lateran Council in Canon 1.67 Peter of Poitiers (d. 1205) in fact described the theory of transubstantiation by suggesting that Christ’s physical body is present in the host “like a hand in a glove,”68 just as Manekine’s hand was preserved in its similarly shaped container. The eucharistic host was kept in containers that often resembled or were modeled on reliquaries, thus accentuating the host as a relic and by extension the relic as part of a living God.69 The Manekine narrator tells us that the pope picks up Joïe’s hand with the same fingers that touch the host: “Puis prent la main et si la tint / Entre les sains dois, humelement, / Dont il levoit le sacrement” (ll. 7556–7558). “Then he takes the hand and held it / Humbly in the holy fingers / With which he was used to elevating the sacrament.” To be literally held by the human hands that also touch the host / God is to be divinely favored. The description of the pope’s hands as hands which touch the Eucharist then adds to this image of Joïe’s limb (which in this narrative has literally been a hand in a glove) as a living relic.70 The fact that transubstantiation or consecration of the bread and wine was a power reserved to ordained priests highlights another profound difference between clergy and laity,71 a gulf which Manekine’s virtue has allowed her to cross when her hand rests between the sanctified hands of the pope. 232 L. M. ROUILLARD

There follows the narration of the graft which would be the envy of twenty-first century medicine. In fact, God is here described as a physician: “Si tost comme li puigs toucha / A son lieu, Diex le rassauda, / Qui mires est deseur nature” (ll. 7569–7571). “As soon as the hand touched / Its former place, God reattached it, / He who is a better healer than Nature.” The miraculous graft occurs after Joïe identifies herself to her father, forgives him, and is reunited with him. In this context, the graft functions as a healing metaphor: as a severed body part can be reunited with the body by God, acting as physician, so can a severed human familial relationship be healed by the sacrament of penance.72 In contrast to saints such as Denis or Justus of Beauvais who merely retrieve their decapitated heads and then proceed to their graves, Manekine will “retrieve” her amputated body part and continue living a fruitful, fecund, and socially useful life. The textual description of this detached body part recalls another iconographical tradition: that of the hand of God. For instance, in the ninth-century Stuttgart Psalter, the isolated and detached hand of God is blessing the psalmist. And in the ninth-century Utrecht Psalter, Psalm 2, the hand of God blesses Christ. In the eleventh-century Codex d’Uta from Ratissbonne, the hand of God is depicted, palm facing the reader and superimposed on a circle and triangle. A twelfth-century carved ivory cof- fret depicts Christ ascending toward the hand of the Father. In the Livre de prière dit de Hildegarde de Bingen, in a late twelfth-century manuscript from Munich, the illuminations of the Beatitudes include numerous examples of the detached hand of God.73 Karin Ueltschi reminds us of the motif as it appears in La Queste del Saint Graal: upon Galahad’s demise, the hand of God reaches down to scoop up the grail.74 Given this tradition, Joïe’s hand miraculously preserved in a fish becomes another iteration of the “hand of God” motif: that is, the return of Joïe’s own hand becomes proof of the presence of the hand of God in human life.75 And certainly, in the more terrestrial context, Philippe de Rémi’s use of the glove-shaped reliquary evokes a potent feudal symbol. One need only remember the significance of the glove in the Chanson de Roland: while the glove offered by the emperor to Ganelon is a symbol of Charle- magne’s authority to be vested in his brother-in-law, the dropped glove predicts Ganelon’s treachery: “Li empereres li tent sun guant, le destre; / Mais li quens Guenes iloec ne volsist estre. / Quant le dut prendre, si li caït a tere. / Dient Franceis: ‘Deus! Que purrat ço estre? / De cest message nos avendrat grant perte,’” (ll. 331–335). “The emperor holds out to 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 233 him his glove, the right one, / but Count Ganelon wishes he were else- where. / As he is about to take it, it falls to the ground. / The French say: ‘God! What can this be? / From this messenger will suffer a great loss.’” Later, Roland’s boast that he will not drop the ball, so to speak, contrasts with the prophecy of Ganelon’s crime, validating the heroism and virtue of the emperor’s nephew: “Quant ot Rollant qu’il ert en la rereguarde, / Ireement parlat a sun parastre: / ‘Ahi! culvert, malvais hom de put’aire, / Quias le guant me caïst en la place, / Cume fist a tei le bas- tun devant Carle?’” (ll. 761–765). “When Roland hears that he will be in the rearguard, / he speaks in fury to his stepfather: / ‘Ah, wretch, evil man of base extraction, / did you think the glove would fall from me to the ground / as the baton did for you before Charles?’” The miraculous appearance of a glove-shaped reliquary in La Manekine then evokes the reciprocal relationship of seigneur and vassal, of God’s faith in and protection of she who has served him so faithfully.76 Manekine never allows the authority of God himself to be displaced; a faithful servant and vassal, she never drops the glove. The temporary piscine resting place of the reliquary in La Manekine is hardly a dignified residence when compared to the then-contemporary, dazzling materials of many other spiritual artifacts. The undescrib- able/undescribed substance of the container and its final emptiness and display in Rome suggest a criticism of the traditional veneration of parts of dead bodies and the obsession with exterior materials at the expense of the true sign of saintliness: virtuous acts. Augustine warned that humans must “esteem the things signified more than their signs,”77 and Saint Bernard later cautions Christians against worshipping objects.78 Augus- tine was specifically referring to the difference between words and the things they denoted, but since objects can also signify, we can see that an empty container-object becomes a commentary on the role of objects as signifiers and the need to pay more attention to the signifieds rather than the signifiers. The empty reliquary also suggests a comparison with the empty rhetoric of courtly love, drained of any signification of love, given its association in La Manekine with a proposal of incestuous marriage. With this symbolic gauntlet, Philippe challenges his readers to redefine piety and love in a secular context while attending to the practicalities of everyday life, which can also lead one to God. And so a sturgeon, who happily gobbled up our protagonist’s hand, then dutifully renders it up in the pope’s fountain, before being itself sacrificed for Easter dinner. Philippe de Rémi’s thirteenth-century romance 234 L. M. ROUILLARD

La Manekine, by means of a ﬁsh who contains, preserves, and regurgitates, participates in the on-going discussion about corporeal suffering, disintegration, resurrection, and bodily integrity. Manekine’s amputated hand, in pristine condition, protected as a relic in a container compared to a reliquary, is returned to its owner during the holiest of times in the Church’s yearly calendar: the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ and the reminder that all mankind will be resurrected at Judgment Day. For Manekine, restitution of her long-ago amputated hand is associated with the restitution of her previous life and royal status, now over three kingdoms; Manekine is reborn and reconﬁgured and will eventually give birth to more children. This plot resolution uses a traditional spiritual motif to portray a kind of secular life everlasting built on progeny and inheritance. However, while there is a surface similarity between La Manekine’s expression of the regurgitation motif and its use by Church writers, Philippe gently redirects our attention from the afterlife to the present: like the servant (Simon or Malchus) whose ear was cut off and then immediately restored in the Garden of Gethsemane, described in Luke 22:50–51 and in John 18:10, Philippe’s protagonist need not wait for the Judgment Day to recover her bodily integrity. In La Manekine, corporeal issues belong to the living in the here and now. In contrast to early writers such as Tertullian and Ephraim who were concerned about God’s ability to reassemble bodily bits at the moment of resurrection, or the Fourth Lateran Council’s use of resurrection theory to ferret out heretics, Philippe’s poem demonstrates a concern for the physical fragmentation and reintegration of the person during this life, as well as by the metaphoric possibilities of the body to illustrate the mending of fractured social relationships. In addition, his insistence on the pressing physical contingencies of aristocratic life—marriage, forgiveness, reconciliation— issues which more and more have come under the purview of the Church by early thirteenth-century, makes way for another sort of resurrection: a restoration of the responsibilities and power of the noble class to assure social stability by managing marital engagements and material wealth.

Notes

1. “One Fish Story You Can Sink Your Teeth Into,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri), December 1, 1994, 18A, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy. ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem: 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 235

3TYV-TJK0-006K-W185-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed March 15, 2017. 2. “Engagement Ring Lost at Sea Returns to Owner,” Journal of Com- merce, March 29, 1996, Section B, 12, col. 1, https://advance-lexis- com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn: contentItem:3TD9-9PP0-009G-H0MR-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed March 15, 2017. 3. Associated Press, “8-Pound Bass Yields Long-Lost Ring,” Telegraph Herald (Dubuque, IA), December 4, 2008, https://advance-lexis- com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/documentcollection=news&id=urn: contentItem:4V2W-KG90-TX70-V09D-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed February 24, 2019. 4. Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, trans. H.von E. Scott and C.C. Swinton Bland (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1929), vol. II, 221. 5. Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (London: Penguin, 1954, rpt. 1988), 220–222. See also Stith Thompson, The Folktale (New York: The Dryden Press, 1946), 142, footnote 29, and 266. Thompson categorizes this motif as N211.1 in his classification of folktales. 6. See Jean-Louis Picherit, “La Légende de la mutilation du Pape Léon et le conte de la jeune fille à la main coupée,” Neuphilologische Mitterlungen 3 (1983): 297–300; here 298. See also Karin Ueltschi, La Main coupée: métonymie et mémoire mythique (Paris: Champion, 2010), 155. See also Irene Gnarra, trans. and ed., La Manekine: Text, Translation, Commentary (New York: Garland, 1988), 429. 7. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, trans. Granger Ryan and Hel- mut Ripperger (New York: Arno, 1969), 231. See also Ueltschi, La Main coupée, 52. See David S. King, “Learning from Loss: Amputation in Three Thirteenth-Century French Verse Romances,” Modern Philology (2012): 1–24; here 6. 8. Hartmann von Aue, Gregorius: A Medieval Oedipus Legend, trans. Edwin H. Zeydel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955). See Chapter 3 of this work. 9. Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Chris- tianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia, 1995), 42. 10. Bynum, Resurrection, 42. 11. Bynum, Resurrection, 75. 12. Bynum, Resurrection, 76. See Luke 22: 50–51. John 18:10 identifies the high priest’s slave whose ear was cut off as Malchus. 13. Bynum, Resurrection, 148, 198. 14. Bynum, Resurrection, 123. 15. Philipp W. Rosemann, Peter Lombard (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 180–182. 236 L. M. ROUILLARD

16. Bynum, Resurrection, 117–119. 17. C. Grant Loomis, White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Chris- tian Legend (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948), 63. Also John O’Hanlon, Lives of the Irish Saints (New York: Catholic Publishing Society, 1873), 714–715. 18. Bynum, Resurrection, 149. 19. Bynum, Resurrection, 75; 193. 20. Bynum, Resurrection, plate 6 and detail of plate 6; also 188–190. 21. Bynum, Resurrection, plate 2. This manuscript no longer exists; it was destroyed in a ﬁre in 1870 in Strasbourg, but its illustrations had been extensively traced prior to the ﬁre, 117. 22. Bynum, Resurrection, 119. 23. Bynum, Resurrection, 154–155. See also Caroline Walker Bynum, Frag- mentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 240. See also Paul Halsall, Fourth Lateran Council, Canon 1, www.fordham.edu/halsall/ basis/lateran4.asp, accessed November 11, 2014. 24. Charles Freeman, Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), 9. 25. Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Chris- tianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 3. 26. As cited in Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 75. Brown continues on 78: “For how better to suppress the fact of death, than to remove part of the dead from its original context in the all too cluttered grave? …Fur- thermore, how better to express the ‘inverted magnitudes,’ by which the object around which boundless associations clustered should be tiny and compact?” 27. Michael Goodich, “The Politics of Canonization in the Thirteenth Cen- tury: Lay and Mendicant Saint,” in Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History, ed. Stephen Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 169–187; here 5, regarding the 787 C.E. Seventh General Council of Nicaea. Freeman, Holy Bones, 72, indicates that Charlemagne also insisted on the inclusion of relics in Church altars. 28. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 92. 29. Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, trans. L. Sherley-Price (London: Penguin, 1990), 264–265. 30. Bede, The Ecclesiastical History, 152. 31. Patrick Geary, Furta Sacra: The Theft of Relics in the Central Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978), 35–36. 32. Freeman, Holy Bones, 69–73. 33. A. Frolow, Les Reliquaires de la Vraie Croix (Paris: Institut Français d’Etudes Byzantines, 1965), 82. Geary, Furta Sacra, 44. 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 237

34. Anna Cooper, ed. and trans., Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne (Paris: A. Lahure, 1925), ll.160–189. 35. Stephen Wilson, Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 36– 37. See La Chanson de Roland, ed. Gérard Moignet (Paris: Bordas, 1969) where Roland says: “‘E! Durendal, cum es bele e seintisme! / En l’oriet punt asez i ad reliques, / La dent seint Perre e del sanc seint Basilie, / E des chevels mun seignor seint Denise; / Del vestement i ad seinte Marie…’” ll. 2344–2348. All citations of this epic poem come from this edition. “‘Ah! Durendal, how fair and holy you are! / In your gilded hilt are many relics: / Saint Peter’s tooth, some blood of Saint Basil, / and some hair of my lord Saint Denis, / some of the clothing of Saint Mary.’” All translations are taken from The Song of Roland: Translations of the Versions in Assonance and Rhyme of the Chanson de Roland, trans. Joseph J. Duggan and Annalee C. Rejhon (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2012). 36. The crown of the French king traditionally contained a piece of the Crown of Thorns. Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediae- val Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 339. See also Freeman, Holy Bones, 132–133. 37. Freeman, Holy Bones, 135–136. 38. Frolow, Les reliquaires, 86–87. 39. Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “The Cult of St. Denis and Capetian Kingship,” Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folkore and His- tory, ed. Stephen Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 141–168; here 160. St. Louis’s own hat came to effect miracles as well. See also Henry A. Myers, Medieval Kingship (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1982), 168 and 397, note 93. See also Freeman, Holy Bones, 138. 40. M. Bolton, “Mulieres Sanctae,” in Women in Medieval Society,ed.Susan Mosher Stuard (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976): 141–158; here 144–145. 41. Rutebeuf, Oeuvres Complètes, ed. and trans. Michel Zink (Paris: Cham- pion, 1982). 42. JoAnn McNamara, “The Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sanctity in theMiddleAges,”inImages of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991):199–221. McNamara, 209, also mentions Umiliana de Cerchi, a holy woman who practices charity against her family’s wishes and plans to “cheat” her family out of her corpse: “With the connivance of female friends, she managed to give them her dead body as well, depriving her family of control of her relics.” But unfortunately, her corpse was still fragmented by her admirers. The Provençal beguine Douceline de Digne suffered a similar fate. See Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 187 for a reference to Douce- line. 238 L. M. ROUILLARD

43. Bridget Cazelles, The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991). 44. Geary, Furta Sacra, 76. 45. John Shinners, Medieval Popular Religion 1000–1500: A Reader (Peter- borough, ON, 1997; rpt. 1999), 11. 46. See the descriptions and illustrations of such vessels in the shape of hands, arms, and legs in J. Braun, Die Reliquiare des Christlichen Kultes and ihre Entwicklung (Freiburg: Herder and Co., 1940). 47. Metropolitan Museum of Art: Europe in the Middle Ages, introduction by Charles T. Little and Timothy Husband (New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1987), Fig. 117. 48. James Lorimer, The Cloisters: the Building and the Collection of Medieval Art in Fort Tryon Park (New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1963), 140– 141. 49. Selected Works: The Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art). 50. Freeman, Holy Bones, 82. 51. Martina Bagnoli, Holger A. Klein, C. Grifﬁth Mann, and James Robinson, eds., Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe (London: British Museum Press, 2011), 83–84; and the essay by Cynthia Hahn in the same collection, entitled “The Spectacle of the Charismatic Body: Patrons, Artists, and Body-Part Reliquaries,” 164–171; here 164– 166. 52. Hahn, “The Spectacle of the Charismatic Body,” 166. 53. Erwin Panofsky, ed. and trans., Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.- Denis and Its Art Treasures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979, 2nd ed. Gerda Panofsky-Soergel), 63–65. 54. Richard Vaughan, ed., Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Monastic Life in the Thirteenth Century (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984), 55. 55. Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 118–119. 56. Freeman, Holy Bones, 119. 57. Shinners, Medieval Popular Religion, 11. See also Freeman, Holy Bones, 143; 146–150. 58. Goodich, “Politics of Canonization,” 174–175 for this description of a malodorous disqualiﬁcation. 59. Freeman, Holy Bones, 115. 60. Brown, The Cult of the Saints, 31–32. 61. Contrary to M. Shepherd’s view of the confession episode in Tradition and Re-creation (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990), 71. 62. Brown, The Cult of Saints, 76–77 for Gregory of Tours’s description of Gregory of Langres’s body. Also 157, regarding Bede on Saint Ethelberga. When her body was translated: “…they found the body untouched by decay as if it had been immune from the corruption of sinful desires.” 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 239

63. Shepherd, Tradition and Re-creation, 23. 64. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 223: “Those who wrote about the body in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were in fact concerned to bridge the gap between material and spiritual and to give to body positive signiﬁcance.” 65. Ueltschi, La main coupée, 38, cites Liber exemplorum. See 152–155 for other tales of piscine receptacles (the vita of St. Adalbert, for instance), and other miraculous grafts. 66. Ueltschi, La main coupée, 152–155. Gnarra, La Manekine, 429. 67. Shinners, Medieval Popular Religion, 7, Canon 1 speaks of: “Jesus Christ, whose body and blood are truly contained in the sacrament of the altar under the forms of bread and wine; the bread being changed [transsub- stantiatis] by divine power into the body, and the wine into the blood, so that to realize the mystery of unity we may receive of him what he has received of us.” 68. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Sig- niﬁcance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California, 1987), 51. 69. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption, 144–145. Also 185. See also Joseph H. Lynch, The Medieval Church: A Brief History (New York: Longman, 1992), 258. And Sidney Packard, Europe and the Church Under Innocent III (New York: Russell and Russell, 1927, revised 1968), 97. 70. On the sanctity of priestly hands, see Sarah Hamilton, The Practice of Penance, 900–1050 ( Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2001), 119–120 who recalls that in some rituals of Holy Thursday reconciliation of penitents is effected when the bishop’s hands actually touch them. 71. Freeman, Holy Bones, 195. 72. Shepherd, Tradition and Re-creation, 71. 73. Jean-Claude Schmitt, La Raison des gestes dans l’occident médiéval (Paris: Gallimard, 1990), 104–112; 156–159; plate IV. See also Gaston Duchet- Suchaux and Michel Pastoureau, La Bible et Les Saints: Guide Icono- graphique (Paris: Flammarion, 1990), 211–212 for the entry on “Main de Dieu” with its description of the earlier tradition of this motif. Michael Camille, Image on the Edge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), 24, suggests another earlier tradition in which a scribe’s hand was preserved as a relic because it had transmitted the Scripture. 74. Ueltschi, La main coupée, 85. See also 84–94 for her discussion of other examples of the hand of God motif. 75. Emily Francomano, “The Hands of Phillip de Remi’s Manekine,” Mediter- ranean Studies 15 (2006): 1–20; here 5, saying of hands in our poem that they “function like the pointing hands in the margins of many amedieval manuscript.” 240 L. M. ROUILLARD

76. See also Ueltschi, La main coupée, 102–104 for her comments on the glove as metaphor. 77. As cited by R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 49. 78. James Bentley, Restless Bones (London: Constable, 1985), 214.

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Chronicles of Matthew Paris: Monastic Life in the Thirteenth Century. Edited by Richard Vaughan. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1984. Duchet-Suchaux, Gaston, and Michel Pastoureau. La Bible et Les Saints: Guide Iconographique. Paris: Flammarion, 1990. “Engagement Ring Lost at Sea Returns to Owner.” Journal of Commerce, March 29, 1996, Section B, 12, col. 1, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink. edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:3TD9-9PP0- 009G-H0MR-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed March 15, 2017. Francomano, Emily. “The Hands of Phillip de Remi’s Manekine.” Mediterranean Studies 15 (2006): 1–20. Freeman, Charles. Holy Bones, Holy Dust: How Relics Shaped the History of Medieval Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011. Frolow, A. Les Reliquaires de la Vraie Croix. Paris: Institut Français d’Etudes Byzantines, 1965. Geary, Patrick. Furta Sacra: The Theft of Relics in the Central Middle Ages. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Goodich, Michael. “The Politics of Canonization in the Thirteenth Century: Lay and Mendicant Saint.” In Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociol- ogy, Folklore and History. Edited by Stephen Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 169–187. Hahn, Cynthia. “The Spectacle of the Charismatic Body: Patrons, Artists, and Body-Part Reliquaries.” In Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe. Edited by Martina Bagnoli et al. London: British Museum Press, 2011. 164–171. Halsall, Paul. Fourth Lateran Council, Canon, www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/ lateran4.asp. Accessed November 11, 2014. Hamilton, Sarah. The Practice of Penance, 900–1050. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2001. Hartmann von Aue. Gregorius: A Medieval Oedipus Legend. Translated by Edwin H. Zeydel. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955. Herodotus. The Histories. Translated by Aubrey de Selincourt. London: Penguin, 1954; rpt. 1988. Jacobus de Voragine. The Golden Legend. Translated by Granger Ryan and Hel- mut Ripperger. New York: Arno, 1969. Kantorowicz, Ernst. The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political The- ology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. King, David S. “Learning from Loss: Amputation in Three Thirteenth-Century French Verse Romances.” Modern Philology (2012): 1–24. Loomis, C. Grant. White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend. Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948. Lorimer, James. The Cloisters: The Building and the Collection of Medieval Art in Fort Tryon Park. New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1963. 242 L. M. ROUILLARD

Lynch, Joseph H. The Medieval Church: A Brief History. New York: Longman, 1992. McNamara, JoAnn. “The Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages.” In Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe. Edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991. 199–221. Metropolitan Museum of Art: Europe in the Middle Ages. Introduction by Charles T. Little and Timothy Husband. New York: Metropolitan Museum, 1987. Myers, Henry A. Medieval Kingship. Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1982. O’Hanlon, John. Lives of the Irish Saints. New York: Catholic Publishing Society, 1873. “One Fish Story You Can Sink Your Teeth Into.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Mis- souri), December 1, 1994, 18A, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink. edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:3TYV-TJK0- 006K-W185-00000-00&context=1516831. Accessed March 15, 2017. Packard, Sidney. Europe and the Church Under Innocent III. New York: Russell and Russell, 1927; revised 1968. Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne. Edited and translated by Anna Cooper. Paris: A. Lahure, 1925. Philippe de Rémi. La Manekine: Text, Translation, Commentary. Edited and translated by Irene Gnara. New York: Garland, 1988. Picherit, Jean-Louis. “La Légende de la mutilation du Pape Léon et le conte de la jeune ﬁlle à la main coupée.” Neuphilologische Mitterlungen 3 (1983): 297–300. Rosemann, Philipp W. Peter Lombard. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Rutebeuf. Oeuvres Complètes. Edited and translated by Michel Zink. Paris: Cham- pion, 1982. Schmitt, Jean-Claude. La Raison des gestes dans l’occident médiéval. Paris: Galli- mard, 1990. Selected Works: The Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art. Shepherd, M. Tradition and Re-creation. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1990. Shinners, John, editor. Medieval Popular Religion 1000–1500: A Reader. Peter- borough, ON, 1997; rpt. 1999. The Song of Roland: Translations of the Versions in Assonance and Rhyme of the Chanson de Roland. Translated by Joseph J. Duggan and Annalee C. Rejhon. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2012. Spiegel, Gabrielle M. “The Cult of St. Denis and Capetian Kingship.” In Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folkore and History. Edited by Stephen Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 141–168. Thompson, Stith. The Folktale. New York: The Dryden Press, 1946. Treasures of Heaven: Saints, Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe. Edited by Martina Bagnoli et al. London: British Museum Press, 2011. 6 REGURGITATION, RESTITUTION, RESURRECTION, AND RELICS 243

Ueltschi, Karin. La Main coupée: métonymie et mémoire mythique. Paris: Cham- pion, 2010. Wilson, Stephen. Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. CHAPTER 7

Spirit and Letter: Speech Acts in Selected Medieval Texts

The King of Hungary briefly debated within himself the legality and ethics of a marriage with his own flesh and blood, thinking he should reject the plan simply on the basis of custom: “Car ce n’est mie li usages / Que nus doie sa fille prendre” (ll. 456–457). “For it is not at all the custom / That anyone should take his daughter in marriage.” Such musings, however, could not mitigate the force of his dying wife’s words, nor the pressure by his barons to marry his daughter, nor the words of a self-serving clergy. While the king sees himself constrained by the words of his late spouse, among others, he nonetheless dismisses the words and thoughts of other women, especially those of his daughter: “De l’escondit ne li caloit / Que sa fille fait li avoit, / Car il metoit en son pourpens / Que pensés de feme c’est vens” (ll. 625–628). “He cared nothing for the refusal / That his daughter had made him, / For he took it into his mind / That a woman’s thought is so much wind.” How can the king take his wife’s words as ironclad, but completely ignore the words of his own daughter? Just what is the value of women’s speech in this romance? How do women use language in this poem? What do women say, how do they say it? What

All citations and translations of La Manekine are taken from Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Barbara Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999).

© The Author(s) 2020 245 L. M. Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6_7 246 L. M. ROUILLARD are they not saying? When and where does a woman speak or refuse to speak? Is she even allowed or expected to speak? How do male characters interpret female speech? How are male speech acts undermined by women and by other men in this romance? How are the sacraments of marriage and penance performed and affected by words? And what are the consequences of speech in general as demonstrated in La Manekine? Much of La Manekine is indeed about the tension between the literal and figurative meaning of words, and about the different perceptions and meanings of speech acts originating from different social groups. In this chapter, we compare and contrast speech acts between male and female characters; between lords and vassals; parents and children; and between lay and clerical characters in La Manekine. Let us begin first with the concept of speech acts in general. J. L.Austin in his now classic study How to Do Things with Words studied a category of language he called performative utterances which he defined as specific speech that is the equivalent of “the performing of an action,” his classic example being the utterance “I do” in the marriage ceremony in response to the question “Do you take…to be your lawfully wedded husband/wife?”1 We could add to this example numerous others taken from daily life, including boardroom and legislative voice votes, and oaths of office and investiture, as examples of speech acts that perform and transform. The medieval church’s insistence on mutual consent in marriage has important consequences for women in particular, and young couples in general, validating a particular category of their speech acts, though we have seen that this requirement can be easily subverted. In a performative utterance, words become actions, sometimes causing a change in one’s social position, or engaging one in a binding contract with serious consequences for failing to respect its terms. And thus, in the context of marriage, the pronouncements “I do,” or “I do not” are equally performative utterances. In Manekine’s case, her refusal of her father’s marriage proposal takes the following form, directed to her father upon the first suggestion of an incestuous marriage, though not in a ceremonial context: “A ce ne me porroi[t] plaisier / Nus,… / Pour riens ne m’i ac[or]deroie, / La mort avant en [s]oufferroie” (ll. 550–558). “For by no-one could I be bent to this: / … / Not for anything should I agree to do it; / I should die first,” a fairly clear and definite refusal if ever there was one. In addition to refusing her consent to this marriage, Manekine’s words represent another kind of action: defiance of royal authority, which will 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 247 be countered by her monarch’s authoritative order that she be burned; at this point, paternal, monarchic words dominate filial words, no matter what the Church says about consent or lack thereof. The father/king’s words outweigh his daughter/subject’s words in that he has power over her life. By the end of the romance, though, Manekine demonstrates that even her silence is more powerful than the destructive words of many of the male characters: through her silence she has protected herself until her reunion with her beloved husband. Her eventual public pronouncement in the last section of the story (“La merci que vous me priiés / Vous doing” [ll. 7195–7196] “The pardon that you begged of me, / I give it to you,”) will establish a kind of spiritual superiority, even power over her father whom she forgives even before the “legitimate” authority, the pope, can pronounce any kind of absolution over the sinner. Thus, at the end of many years of silence about herself, Manekine does not hesitate to make her voice heard over that of the pope, in a sense, taking over his ritual of general confession and absolution to personally forgive her father. It is Manekine’s words that complete the reconciliation with her cruel father. It is here where she literally has the last word. Some of the best examples of performative utterances are in fact those pronounced in the administration of the sacraments, such as in the ritual for penance (Ego te absolvo a peccatis tuis), or in the celebration of the Eucharist at the moment of transubstantiation or consecration of the host (Hoc est einim corpus meum), and of course, in the exchange of marriage vows. In addition to insisting on individual consent to a marriage, medieval canonists deliberated at length over the consequences of vows made in the future tense effecting engagement, versus vows made in the present tense effecting actual marriage. The thirteenth-century Raymond of Penyafort explains: “From the fact that a man consents through words in the present tense to a woman with marital affection, and the woman to the man, either with customary words when he says ‘I take you as mine’ and she replies ‘I take you as mine’ or thus ‘I wish to have you from now on as my wife’ and she says ‘I wish to have you as my husband,’ or consent is expressed by some other words or even signs, there is a marriage immediately. I say ‘signs’ because the mute and the deaf can contract marriage.”2 These are the words or signs that bind, but Ray- mond’s explanation also allows us to more fully understand the sign by which Joïe refuses her consent: her self-mutilation is a clear sign that she refuses to offer that very consent, the essential cause of marriage. On the other hand, consonant with contemporary thought and dogma on marriage, the union between the King of Scotland and Manekine is effected 248 L. M. ROUILLARD by word: their words of individual consent to marriage, their speech acts, occur just prior to the wedding ceremony. Manekine clearly proclaims: “nepourquant pas ne vous refus” (l. 1975); “nevertheless I do not refuse you.” The King of Scotland straightforwardly promises: “trestous les jours que je vivrai / De loial cuer vous amerai” (ll. 1983–1984); “every day I live / I shall love you with a faithful heart.” Consequently, the priest “par parole les assamble” (l. 2038) “unites them by word,” his words acting as an authoritative recognition of a valid union. Another example of a performative speech act is the swearing of an oath. Anthologies of medieval French texts typically begin with the ninth- century Serments de Strasbourg in which Louis le Germanique and the vassals of Charles le Chauve take a sacred oath that neither Louis’s nor Charles’s men will ally themselves with their other brother Lothaire. The terms are clear and concise on Louis’s side: “for the love of God and for the protection of the Christian people and our common salvation, …I shall help this my brother Charles…as one should rightly help one’s brother, provided that he does the same for me. And I shall never enter into an agreement with Lothair which, to my knowledge, will be detrimental to this my brother Charles…”3 Louis invokes God in his promise of the alliance to Charles, or at the very least, no alliance with the third brother. This oath functions as a performative speech act, more specifically, as defined by J. L. Austin, as a contractual speech act,4 made that much more obligatory by its reference to divine authority. The terms of the contract are unequivocal. In medieval literature, sometimes solemn oaths are sworn on sacred relics in an effort to prove the veracity of one’s honesty or intentions, for, to prevaricate while touching a relic would be to risk the wrath of God. Some medieval characters, however, shrewdly calculate and focus strictly on literal, surface meaning of their oaths or testimony to circumvent the accusation at hand when swearing on holy relics. Take, for instance, the twelfth-century Béroul’s iteration of the adulterous Iseut who swears her equivocal oath on sacred relics that no man has been between her legs except for King Mark…and most recently the leper who publicly carried her on his shoulders. In order to respond to the accusation of adultery with her husband’s nephew, Iseut has disguised her lover Tristan as that obliging leper who assists her as she travels on her way to the swearing ceremony. Fearing no divine retribution for her ambiguous statement, Iseut declares: “Seignors,’ fait el, ’ por Deu merci, / Saintes reliques voi ici. / Or escoutez que je ci jure, / De quoi le roi ci aseüre:/Si m’aït Dex et saint Ylaire, / Ces reliques, cest saintuaire, / … / Q’entre mes cuises 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 249 n’entra home, / Fors le ladre qui fist soi some, / Qui me porta outre les guez, / Et li rois Marc ces esposez.”5 “My Lords,’ she says, ‘for the love of God, have mercy, / I see holy relics here. / Now listen to what I swear here, / So that the king may be assured: / So help me God and Saint Hilaire, / On these relics and this reliquary, / … / That there has been no man between my legs, / Except the leper who made himself into a beast of burden, / Who carried me over the moats, / And King Marc my husband” (translation mine). Men engage in these kinds of word games as well as women, as in the case of the thirteenth-century chanson de geste Ami et Amile:engendered on the same night, born on the same day to different parents, Ami and Amile resemble each other identically. When Amile compromises the honor of Charlemagne’s daughter Belissant, and is challenged to swear to his innocence by ordeal, Ami presents himself as Amile and swears by God and the holy relics that he did not have sexual relations with that woman: “Si m’aït Dex et li saint qui sont ci, / Qu’o Belissant ne couchai ne dormi, / Sa blanche char nu a nu ne senti, / Se Dex me laist de cest champ issir vif / Et sain et sauf arriere revertir.” “So help me God and all the saints whose relics are here, I have never lain or slept with Belis- sant, nor has her naked flesh ever touched mine. God grant me, then to leave this field of battle alive and return home safe and sound.”6 And it is true: Ami did not sleep with Belissant. The equivocal oath clears Amile, but Ami is stricken with leprosy as a divine punishment for his equivocal oath. Amile gets away with his offense, but God will not let Ami get away with his lie, and requires penitential suffering. Another example of performative language is the promise, which Austin categorizes as a “commissive,”7 such as the commitment made by the King of Hungary to his wife on her death bed. It is in fact the Queen of Hungary’s rash boon that launches both the barons’ search committee for a suitable but ultimately nonexistent identical wife, and then the subsequent incestuous marriage proposal. As is typical with the rash boon, the promise is made before all the terms are known. The queen asks her husband “quemedonésundon” (l. 119); “I beg that you grant me something,” to which the king responds: “Sur ma loialté le vous jur” (l. 127); “I swear it on my fidelity.” The queen then continues with the details of what her husband has just promised to accomplish: “Sire, si vous requier et proi / Que vous ja mais femme aprés moi / Ne voelliés prendre a nes un jour. / Et se li prince et li contour / De ce païs ne voelent mie / Que li roialmes de Hongrie / Demeurt a ma fille apres vous, / Ançois vous requierent que vous / Vous mariés pour fil avoir, / Bien vous otroi: se vous avoir / Poés femme de mon sanlant, / Qu’a li vous alés assanlant; / Et des autres 250 L. M. ROUILLARD bien vous gardés / Se vous mon convenant gardés” (ll. 129–142). “Sir, and so I require and entreat / That after me you never / Will take a wife, not on any day. / And if the princes and the counts / Of this country do not wish / That the kingdom of Hungary / Should pass to my daughter after you, / But require that you / Marry to have a son, / I concede this to you: if you / Can have a wife who resembles me, / That you form a union with her, / And that you keep away from the others / If you are to keep your promise to me.” Is this a demonstration of a wife’s jealousy over the possibility of being replaced by another woman? Or is this the queen’s calculated way of protecting her daughter’s inheritance by dominating her husband with her words, entangling him in an impossible and irresolvable situation? Furthermore, the Queen of Hungary’s insistence that her soon-to-be widowed husband remarry only with someone who resembles her could just as easily refer to resemblance in virtuous behavior as it could to physical resemblance. The dying queen might also with this promise exacted from her spouse have been trying to protect her daughter from a less-than-kind stepmother. The Queen of Hungary’s request bears some similarity to that of Queen Ingund, one of the wives of King Lothar. As Gregory of Tours recounts the story in his sixth-century History of the Franks, Ingund made this request of her husband: “To complete my happiness, listen now to what I have to say. I ask you to choose for my sister, who is also a member of your household, a competent and wealthy husband, so that I need not be ashamed of her, but rather that she may be a source of pride to me…”8 Lothar kept his promise and found no better candidate than himself, which of course constituted incest by affinity, in addition to bigamy. Like Queen Ingund, the Queen of Hungary surely did not anticipate that the literal observance of her request could end in incest. The King of Hungary and his retainers will later justify his incestuous marriage proposal by appealing to the literal nature of his promise to his dying wife. While Austin would qualify this as an infelicitous performative or a mis- application, explaining that “the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked,”9 the king and his entourage conveniently choose to limit themselves to the literal level of the promise made, rather than consider the substantive message of the queen’s oath. The rash boon, the don contraignant,orthepromesse en blanc10 entan- gles many a medieval protagonist in complex relationships and compro- mising positions. An indeterminate vow made by a knight in exchange 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 251 for an immediate, specific service rendered by a damsel, is hardly a fair exchange, but nonetheless one that motivates many a plot. Even clearly specified exchanges can leave the most valiant knight tangled in knots. Whether a sacred oath or an equivocal oath, these rash boons also function as performative speech acts that create contracts or debts that must be discharged and forgiven, even if the rash boon is exacted by a vassal of his overlord, such as that of Sir Kay, agreed to by King Arthur in Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier de la charette (see below). Additionally, they can create an inverted, ironic divide between those who are empowered by words, often vulnerable maidens, and those who are powerless before those words, often brawny knights. Though these boons do not invoke God or involve sacred relics, they are perceived as binding and obligatory. Analyzing a later poem that uses the rash boon motif (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), Susan Sara Thomas cogently summarizes the issue of promises, concluding that “the Gawain-poet challenges the reader to question the nature and validity of all oaths and promises, and, on this level, the poem is a discourse on the nature of social contracts.”11 Likewise, even in the earlier texts we have mentioned above, we discern an evolution in the definition of social contracts and binding relationships: with or without a reference to God and his saints, one’s words and promises still create an obligation. However, as we shall see, some medieval narratives, including La Manekine, implicitly criticize the lack of judgment in entering into such foolish obligations.12 For instance, in Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide, the couple comes to a garden controlled by a damsel and a knight named Mabonagrain who decapitates all his victims. He has in fact accumulated an extensive collection of heads but for all his military prowess, Mabonagrain is in fact the prisoner of his lady because of his rash boon: “Al’un et a l’autre abeli / et l’amors crut et amanda, / tant que ele me demanda / un don, mes el nel noma mie. / Qui veheroit neant s’amie? / … / Creantai li sa volanté, / et quant li oi acreanté, / si vost ancor que le plevisse. / Se plus volsist, plus an feïsse, / mes ele me crut par ma foi. / Fïancié li, si ne soi quoi…”13 “Our love grew and developed until she asked me a favour, but without naming it. Who would deny his sweetheart anything…I agreed to her wish. And when I’d agreed, she wanted me to go further and swear to it—had she wanted still more, I’d have done more. Still, she took me at my word. I made her the pledge, but without knowing what.”14 When the lady reveals the terms, Mabonagrain learns that he has promised to never leave the garden and his lady unless he is vanquished in battle. Yet Mabonagrain concedes: “Reisons fu que je remainsisse, / ainz que ma 252 L. M. ROUILLARD fïance mantisse, / ja ne l’eüsse je plevi” (ll. 6029–6031). “It was right that I should stay rather than break my oath, even though I should never have pledged it.”15 While Chrétien has cleverly illustrated the weakness of fin’amor rhetoric about prisoners of love, that which is of interest to us here is Mabonagrain’s belief that his promise (with no invocation of God or saints) is still of the strongest obligation despite his subsequent regret in having made this vow. He has made himself the prisoner of love, and of his own prowess. The fourteenth-century prose rendition of Erec includes numerous episodes of rash boons. In one instance, Erec had received the help of an unknown maiden in his search for Perceval’s sister. In thanks, he blindly promises to do anything she asks in the future. When they next meet again, the maiden reveals her frightful demand: “Eret, je vous demant la teste d’une damoiselle qui lassus est que je vous moustreray, et quant vous m’en avrés moustré le chief, ja puis ne vous appelleray de[l] convenant qui entre nous soit.” “Erec, I demand from you the head of a maiden who is over there where I will show you, and when you will have brought me her head, I will never again appeal to the agreement between us.”16 And it turns out that the head in question belongs to Erec’s own sister. To win forgiveness of his debt, Erec must commit sororicide or be dishon- orably branded as a liar. As knights live and die for and by their reputations, Erec acquiesces and commits the deed only to be condemned by the maiden: “mais certes, se tu ne feusses plus desloyal que autre chevalier, ja ainsi n’eusses ta seur occise pour une seule parole que tu m’avoyes acre- antee.” “If you were not more disloyal than any other knight, you would have never killed your sister in this way on account of an oath you had promised me.”17 Erec cannot win in this web of speech acts: damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. The virile, potent knight is entangled in a web of feminine words and he cannot discharge his debt without committing a heinous crime, though, from Erec’s perspective, the perceived obligation of the promise relieves him of the responsibility of evaluating the ethics of his acts. The dangers of rash boons should be evident to anyone with an ounce of common sense. That King Arthur allows himself to be bound by Guin- evere’s blind promise to Kay tells us much about how the monarch has slipped from his reputed position of power. In another of Chrétien de Troyes’s romances, Lancelot ou le chevalier de la charette, an unknown chevalier, later identified as Meleagant, appears in Arthur’s court and reveals that he is holding hostage a number of Arthur’s subjects and the 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 253 king is powerless to free them. Increasingly impotent, Arthur sighs that he will just have to accept the situation. The knight then suggests that if one man in Arthur’s retinue could vanquish him in battle, with Guinevere as collateral, then he will honorably return the queen and the hostages to court. This compels Kay to suddenly declare that he will no longer stay in Arthur’s court. Guinevere begs him to stay and agrees to do anything and to get Arthur to do anything to keep him at court. Since this is a rash boon, no details are negotiated in what has been qualified by Neil Thomas as “bizarre conduct”18 on the part of a king with Arthur’s reputation. Only when he is before the king does Kay reveal “…quex est li dons /donvosm’avez asseüré; / … / la reïne que je voi ci / m’avez otroiee a bail- lier; / s’irons aprés le chevalier / qui nos atant an la forest;” “… the nature of the favour you’ve promised me; … you’ve agreed, sire, to hand over to me my lady here, and we shall go after the knight who is waiting for us in the forest.”19 With no appeal to a divine authority, Arthur meekly hands over his wife; predictably, Kay fails to win the combat, and both he and Guinevere become spoils of war. The rash boon here, promised by Guinevere who thus enmeshes Arthur in her promise to Kay, has undermined what little remains of Arthur’s royal authority, demonstrating his impotence as king. Read against these other examples of rash boons, the King of Hun- gary’s vow to his dying wife puts him in the same category as the impotent King Arthur and other foolish knights. In La Manekine, women’s thoughts, and by extension, their words, are on the one hand described as being as changeable as the wind (“…pensés de feme c’est vens” [l. 628] “…a woman’s thought is so much wind”), and yet some men allow themselves to be controlled by those very puffs of airs. Other men are unwittingly undermined by the words of women. This is the case of the King of Scotland whose mother’s words are substituted for his missive in order to persecute Manekine, a clear example of woman’s power versus man’s authority. Austin in his work on speech acts further categorizes utterances as illocutionary (words that perform an act as they are pronounced) and perlocutionary (words that lead to acts).20 In this romance, there is an attempt to transform perlocutionary into illocutionary utterances: saying it makes it so, awarding what Judith Butler calls a “magical efficacy,”21 for instance, to clerical pronouncements in La Manekine. The incestuous marriage, proposed by the baron who serves at table, and seconded by 254 L. M. ROUILLARD the other barons, will be valid and legitimate because the clerics, real- izing their own self-interest, will simply declare it to be so: “Mais se li prelat qui ci sont, / Qui en grant orfenté seront / Se malvais sires vient sour aus, / Voloie[n]t faire que loiaus / Fust l[i] mariages d’auls deus, / Je croi que ce seroit li preus / A tous [ci]aus de ceste contree” (ll. 325– 331). “But if the prelates who are here, / Who will be in a difficult position / If a bad ruler comes over them, / Wished to bring it about that / The marriage of those two would be valid, / I believe that it would be to the benefit / Of all in this country.” The clerics certainly come to understand the implicit threat in this statement. Their well-being is tied to the future of the kingdom, and thus they eventually indicate their willingness to say whatever needs to be said if it means they can protect their interests: “Long[u]e[me]nt entr’eus desputerent. / En l[a fin] li clerc s’acorderent / Que il le r[oy] en prieroient / Et sur a[us] le pecié penroient. / A l’Apo[stol]e monterront / Le gra[nt] pourfit pour quoi fait l’ont” (ll. 335–340), “For a long time they argued among themselves. / At last the clerics agreed / That they would entreat the king to do it / And would take the responsibility upon themselves. / They will show the Pope / The great benefit for which they have done it.” With this pronouncement, the clergy renounces any claim to spiritual authority and instead acquiesce to the barons’ words and wishes, clearly recognizing themselves as vassals to the noble laity and blurring the traditional social hierarchy of “those who pray, those who fight, and those who labor.” In fact, the clerics’ disposition to do whatever is in their material interests suggests that we must not attempt to categorize thirteenth-century society by the same rigid divisions enumerated by the tenth-century Bishop Adalbero of Laon in his poem Carmen ad Robertum regem.22 Historians such as Constance Brittain Bouchard have pointed out that many a priest and bishop came from noble families and thus had other interests besides spiritual and theological ones.23 Instead of maintaining the spiritual high ground and insisting that the king obey the traditional church impediments to marriage, Philippe de Rémi’s prelates agree to advise the king to do whatever needs to be done for the kingdom, sinful or not. By their words, these clerics demonstrate that they identify more with noble society than with religious society, yet their pronouncements, however biased, still carry weight. This then, allows the king to take advantage of the traditional social hierarchy, and feign subordination to “those who pray,” hiding behind the willingness of the clerics to assume the moral responsibility for the proposed incestuous marriage. This also exemplifies what 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 255

Marc Bloch identifies as a particular tenet of feudal society: a vassal who obeys his lord is relieved of moral responsibility for that act,24 this in contrast to the admonitions of Jacques de Vitry and William of Waddington who assure children that they are not duty bound to obey sinful parental orders (see our Chapter 5). In this sense, the King of Hungary postures as a vassal of the church who will simply obey the clerics’ recommenda- tion, who are themselves bending to the will of the barons, who profess subordination to a king bound by the words of his dying queen. Thus the king extracts himself from the moral responsibility for resolving the logocentric dilemma (the rash boon) by an equally logocentric and, additionally, incestuous solution. Members of the praying “class” will say it is permissible and that proclamation, along with a subsequent explanation to the pope, will make it so. The King of Hungary knows that he rules because his vassals, the barons, support him, and therefore, preservation of his power lies in his acceptance of their “wise words.” We note, however, that Philippe de Rémi writes his romance during the period when this first feudal age, as described by Marc Bloch is winding down.25 The clerics’ pronouncement ironically recognizes the power of the rash boon exacted by the dying queen, and exempts the king from some of the moral responsibility for his incestuous proposal, demonstrating a kind of permeability among the three social orders. Thus, we see the shared interests that can temporarily reorganize or realign social groups. While we have seen in this work specific instances of very different perspectives on human behavior according to one’s membership in one social group or another, there exists nonetheless the possibility of shifting alliances. Clergy as a group may profess strict belief and observance in church doctrine and church rules regarding marriage in contrast to the preferences of aristocrats, for instance, but within that first group, clergy who come from noble families share material interests with lay nobles, so issues such as marriage impediments can be enforced or not, according to the interests involved. Just after her first verbal defiance, Manekine understands that her words will likely be ineffectual: “Bien pens faire le me feront; / Ja pour mon dit ne le lairont, / S’aucune cose en moi ne voient / Par quoi de ce voloir recroient” (ll. 605–608). “I do indeed think that they will make me; / They will not leave off for anything I say, / Unless they see in me something / For which they give up this intention.” Ironically, while her mother’s words are binding, Joïe anticipates that her speech will be 256 L. M. ROUILLARD disregarded. She can only resort to a dramatic symbolic corporeal language in which she will inscribe her permanent and public refusal upon her own body, spilling her own blood, though this also remains a dangerous pronouncement: “Car se jou ai ma main colpee, / De moi nule pitié n’av[r]a / Li rois, car vraiement savra / Que colpee l’arai pour lui/ Escondire…” (ll. 696–700). “For if I cut off my hand, / The king will take no pity / On me, for in truth he will know / That I shall have cut it off / To thwart him…” Having moved to another linguistic register to voice her lack of consent now through an act of self-mutilation, Joïe cooly and calmly explains that she cannot marry her father because she has no left hand and, being handicapped, is not eligible to be a king’s wife, and then exhibits her gruesome wound: “Mais roïne ne doi pas estre, / Car je n’ai point de main senestre, / Et rois ne doit pas penre fame / Qui n’ait tous ses membres, par m’ame!” (ll. 795–798) “But I may not be a queen, / For I do not have a left hand, / And a king may not take a wife / Who does not have all her members, upon my soul!” As Cicero stated: “by action the body talks;” “est enim actio quasi sermo corporis.”26 In this romance, Joïe’s body screams: “No!” Her moral outrage has been subli- mated into corporeal parole. Arguing that traditions, customs, and injunctions require bodily integrity for ruling royalty, Joie experiences momentarily a kind of rhetorical “upper hand” over her father; her audacity in even rejecting his proposal with her statement based on rational arguments, though, upsets the normal power relationship between king and subject, between father and daughter. For as Bourdieu has reminded us: “one must not forget that the relations of communication par excellence – linguistic exchanges—are also relations of symbolic power in which the power relations between speakers or their respective groups are actual- ized.”27 Like her mother, she attempts to overpower her father by the literalness of her words as she responds to his irrational proposal with a most logical refusal, similar to the way he himself first attempts to refute the incestuous marriage proposed by his retainers. Instead, Joïe’s attempt to obey the letter of customary law, along with her act of self-mutilation, a defiant disobedience, ignites her father’s fury: it is as if she had slapped her father with her now absent hand. According to the King of Hungary, women’s thoughts or words are perceived as empty rhetoric and mere puffs of air. Men’s words, on the other hand, are given and received as authoritative, even if their orders might subsequently turn out to be contradictory. The Hungar- ian seneschal deliberates obedience to the king’s order to burn Joïe to 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 257 death, but what if the king later changes his mind? “Et d’autre part souvent avient / Que, tant quë ons son courous tient, / Que il fait tel cose u fait faire / Qui bien li puet apres desplaire” (ll. 891–894). “And on the other hand it often happens / That while a person is angry, / He does or causes to be done such things / That can displease him afterwards.” Given Philippe de Rémi’s own career as a bailiff,28 it is not surprising that he creates in the character of his fictional seneschal (a step up from a bailiff) a wise man who will attempt both to appear to obey the king’s commanding words even as he anticipates the complete reversal of that order. The seneschal will eliminate the daughter, not by fire but by water, setting her out to sea in a rudderless boat with a week’s worth of food and water, tempting fate or God to resolve the matter, thus absolving himself of moral responsibility for that act even as he appears to obey his lord. Then, like our poet, he will create his own fiction: “Por çou c’on ne puisce retraire / Que je l’aie de mort salvee, / Ferai faire grant aünee / D’espines, et a l’adjourner, / Quant ele sera en la mer, / Ferai les espines bruïr, / Avant que nus i puist venir. / Puis si lor ferai entendant / Quë ele est arse…” (ll. 928–936). “In order that no-one may report of me / That I have saved her from death, / I shall have a big pile made / Of thorny branches, and at daybreak, / When she is out at sea, / I shall make the branches burn / Before anyone can get there. / Then I shall give them to understand / That she is burned up…” His fiction constructed “par tel maiestire” (l. 1045), “through such a ruse,” succeeds because of his mastery of projecting appearances through outward signs, allowing him to create the impression of being bound by the King of Hungary’s words. Like Iseut and Ami, this seneschal plays on the surface level of meaning; in this case, a fire allows the king and his people to believe that the literal command to burn Joïe has been carried out. Having secretly survived her father’s death order, Joïe washes up on the shores of Scotland, though she refuses to pronounce her name or describe her misfortunes, saying to the first person who meets her: “Sire, [je] sui une caitive / Ici endroit venue a rive. / S’il vous plaist, si me sauverés. / Saciés, par moi plus n’en sarés.” (ll. 1209–1212) “Sir, I am an unfortunate woman / Come to shore here. / If it pleases you, you will save me. / Know that through me you will know no more.” The narrator reiterates the protagonist’s refusal to speak about herself: “Joïe est a court demouree, / Mout esjoïe et mout amee. / Mais il ne la sevent nommer, / N’a ce ne la pueent donter: / Qu’ele voelle dire son non, / Son païs et sa regïon” (ll. 1325–1330). “Joy has remained at court, / Much attended 258 L. M. ROUILLARD to and much loved. / But they do not know what to call her, / And have not been able to bring her / To wishing to say her name, / Her country, or her part of the world.”29 In contrast to the classic medieval trope of the garrulous female, Joïe envelopes herself in a veil of silence regarding her identity and her origins. Reflecting upon Lacan’s analysis of Antigone, Emma Campbell suggests that the family history of incest obliges that Greek character to “experience her life at its limit: to live it as if she were already dead. Antigone thus exemplifies what is, in Lacanian terms, life between two deaths (l’entre-deux-morts): life that exists in the gap between biological death and symbolic death….”30 Joïe’s refusal to give her name places her in a similar space. Her silence becomes a speech act in itself, symbolizing her moral integrity, as she lives in anonymity, presumed dead by those in the Kingdom of Hungary. Having recognized her innate nobility, the King of Scotland finally names her himself, “Menekine” (l. 1340), “Manekine,” in a kind of Adamic act or pronouncement which legitimizes Joïe’s existence in this land, providing our protagonist with, what Judith Butler would term “a certain possibility for social existence.”31 The word “Manekine” derives from Flemish term “mannekijn,” meaning “little man.”32 “Manekine” is also the Old French word used to refer to the dummy or mannequin used in military exercises and in medieval miracle plays’ scenes of torture,33 or even to represent the body of a dearly departed during the long vigils.34 Joïe/Manekine is in this romance most definitely a mannequin, an actor but one who will not be forced to speak her story, even as her body reveals it in the scars from her self-mutilation, making her a model of the virtuous woman. The king’s bestowal of this new name upon this stranger to his kingdom is not presented as an insult, or as a form of domination; rather it is a prescient appellation predicting the protagonist’s eventual victory over her father’s sinful desire and her potential as a role model. In contrast, the dowager queen’s “names” for Joïe are insulting and diminishing. The vehemence with which she denounces her future daughter-in-law implicitly testifies to the young woman’s threat and power: the queen refers to her as “une esgaree, / Une chaitive, une avolee, / Une femme o tout une main” (ll. 2059–2061); “a wanderer, / A miser- able woman, a foreigner, / A woman with one hand.” To reduce Joïe to being “merely” a one-handed woman is a serious statement, given the medieval attitudes toward bodily integrity or lack thereof. There was no medieval concern for a politically correct reference to a person’s lack of limbs given the enormous symbolic interpretation of such conditions. 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 259

Such a form of disability could traditionally disqualify royalty to rule, as Manekine herself had previously tried to argue to her father in lines 794– 798. To refer to her as “avolee” or someone of no known origins puts Joïe in the dangerous and suspicious class of stranger, always a threatening figure in medieval literature as is often the case in modern tales. Once married, Joïe, now renamed Manekine, has the misfortune of delivering her baby son during the absence of her husband, the King of Scotland, thus requiring the Scottish seneschal to compose an announce- ment for the father by way of a messenger. It is by substituting her own deceptive words for those of her son’s seneschal that the dowager queen redirects the action of the story: after plying the messenger with drink (ll. 3061–3074), she charges her clerk to substitute for the news of the birth of a happy, healthy boy, a forged missive bearing news of the birth of a monstrous hairy beast. On the messenger’s return trip with the King of Scotland’s response to the false news of the birth of a grotesque baby, the dowager dictates another substituted letter after the messenger over- imbibes yet again (ll. 3393–3398): in place of her son’s letter ordering his retainers to protect his wife and newborn, the monstrous mother-in-law substitutes yet another forgery with a purported order by the king to execute the mother and her beastly child. While the late Queen of Hungary’s rash boon may have been intended to protect her daughter from a mali- cious stepmother, the mother-in-law’s words are deliberately intended to persecute our protagonist. The dowager queen had left court after her son’s marriage in protest and retired to her dower lands, since it was clear that her opinion would not carry any sway but perhaps her lies, told under the seal of her son’s seneschal, and later under the seal of her son himself, will carry more weight. Like Joïe who believes that when confronted with certain traditions, customs or beliefs, her father will surely renounce his irrational desire, the dowager queen believes that once presented with written “proof” of Manekine’s social and biological inadequacy, as “wit- nessed” by one of the monarch’s own men, the King of Scotland will surely come to his senses and give up his irrational love for this stranger. Where the king saw Manekine as an exemplary woman who happened to have lost a limb, the queen mother sees a usurper, a gold-digger, a likely criminal, justly punished for some unknown crime. The mother-in-law will now precipitate more horrors for the young queen; her forgeries will allow her to control her despised daughter-in-law, reminding us of Lévi- Stauss’s belief that “a necessary corollary of writing [is] the reinforcement 260 L. M. ROUILLARD of the ability of some individuals to dominate others.”35 The mother-in- law’s verbal objections to Manekine did not sway her son, so perhaps by submitting her written words in the guise of authoritative males, she may yet convince the King of Scotland and his retainers of what she believes to be Manekine’s inferior nature. The queen dowager’s clerk ably and willingly writes the dictated lies, just as the Hungarian clerics indicated they would explain and justify the King of Hungary’s incestuous marriage. In this romance, women’s words are powerful, sometimes downright evil, clerics are complicit, and messengers are naive and easily duped. What remedy is there to right the wrongs perpetrated by such deceitful written words? The King of Scotland’s prayer to the Virgin during his sea-voyage search for his missing wife includes a reference to the legend of Theophilus who was well acquainted with Mary’s powers and virtues since she saved him from his own linguistic nightmare. Confessing his belief in Mary’s efficient mediation, the King of Scotland identifies with Theophilus’s desperate need resolved by the Blessed Virgin: “Theofilus bien s’en perçut, / Qui li Dyables tant deçut / Quë il le besa en hommage, / Et prist de lui en tiemoignage / La lettre de son sanc escrite; / Par tant, le quida avoir cuite. / Mais non eut, car vostre secours / Pour lui secourre vint le cours” (ll. 5739–5746). “Theophilus perceived this, / Whom the Devil so deceived / That he was kissed by him in homage / And in testimony took from him / The letter written with his blood; / Thereby he believed he possessed him entirely. / But he did not, for your help / Came speedily to help him.” Theophilus had made and signed a pact with a devil and thus betrayed himself by his own written word. It is Mary who retrieves the document from the devil and frees Theophilus from the diabolical power enabled by Theophilus’s own words. Since the only written words in question in La Manekine are the letters substituted by the queen dowager, letters which betrayed Joïe and her husband, this reference to Theophilus highlights the mother-in-law’s diabolical nature and her pernicious and toxic words: having created the illusion of messages from men in authority, she has used those very words to betray her son and daughter-in-law in another linguistic nightmare. We also note that this reference to Theophilus evokes the dangers of foolish contracts in general, much like the rash boon the King of Hungary promised before knowing the terms and how they could be twisted by his barons. The narrator, then, gives us the remedy to deceitful words: “Par ce rommans poés savoir, / Vous ki le sens devés avoir, / Que en cascune necessité / C’on a en sa carnalité, / Ne se doit on pas desperer / Mais tous jours en bien esperer 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 261

/ Que de çou qui griafment nus point / Nous remetra Dix en bon point. / … / Prendés garde a la Manequine, / Qui en tant d’anuis fu si fine / Que par deus fois fu si tentee, / N’onques puis n’eut cuer ne pensee / De cheoir en nul desespoir, / Ains eut tous jors en Dieu espoir / Et en sa beneoite Mere, / Qui de pitié n’est mie avere” (ll. 8529–8552). “By this romance you may know, / You who must have sense, / That in every necessity / That one has in this fleshly life, / One must not despair / But always hope in the right: / That out of whatever grievously afflicts us / God will restore us again. / … / Pay heed to Manekine, / Who in so many trials was so pure / That she was twice thus tempted, / Yet never had the heart or the thought / To fall into despair, / But always had hope in God / And in His blessed Mother, / Who is not sparing of pity.” Mary saves Theophilus by snatching the incriminating letter from the devil, and she also answers the prayers of the King Scotland, leading him to the very city where his long-lost wife has found refuge (ll. 5773–5798). When she washes up in Rome, Manekine remains silent about her origins before her rescuers, just as she did in Scotland: “Ne ne vous caille de savoir / Qui je sui ne de quele terre. / Je vous requier, de cest afaire / Ne me voelliés or plus enquerre, / Se vous volés mon talent faire” (ll. 4942–4945). “Do not concern yourselves to know / Who I am or from what land. / Do no inquire any more, / I entreat you, about this affair / If you want to respect my wishes.” Manekine agrees to live in the Roman Senator’s home provided that: “… vous ne voelliés enquerre / Dont je sui ne de quele tere” (ll. 5181–5182); “… you will not inquire / Where I come from or from what land.” In response to the Senator’s insistence to know her name, she simply responds that she has been called Manekine. The Sena- tor’s daughters’ inquiries about her troubles and sorrow receive the same response: “Mais onques a çou ne la misent / Qu’ele leur volsist son mescief / Dire ne son duel ne son grief ” (ll. 5348–5350). “But they never brought her to the point / Where she was willing to tell them her trouble / Or sorrow or grief.” Consistent with the Aristotelian revival of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Manekine is emblematic of the virtue so highly esteemed by that philosopher: “All classes must be deemed to have their special attributes; as the poet says of women, ‘Silence is a woman’s glory;’ but this is not equally the glory of man.”36 In a generational contrast to her mother and mother-in-law, both of whom caused such difficulties due to their choice of words, Joïe/Manekine, once launched on her heroic adventures, remains silent about her name and origins, as if she fears what her own words might do: 262 L. M. ROUILLARD identifying herself might make her vulnerable to her father if he learned that she was in fact not executed as he ordered. Additionally, we can also discern in her response an understanding of other consequences if she should make a public statement or accusation of her father’s behavior. Such a declaration could be construed by some as defamation and according to a passage in the Decretum of Gratian: “Whosoever devises in public words or writing insulting to another’s reputation and once having been discovered does not defend the writings, should be beaten.”37 Should Joïe discuss her father at the court of the King of Scotland, her words could be considered slanderous. Why should a king trust a woman whose words could paint such a demonic picture of another king? To defy her father face-to-face was one thing; to tell her tragic story in another court could endanger the King of Scotland’s confidence in her; and it could also lead her father straight to her. And even more importantly, Joïe’s father’s damaged reputation could consequently damage her reputation should her identity ever be revealed, for in this courtly society, reputation was the basis of the social economy. Christine de Pizan’s explanation of the workings of this system in her own lifetime is perhaps the most detailed and intricate account of the delicate nature of this part of social relationships but the concept was certainly central to the functioning of earlier time periods as well. Courtly love poetry is based on the need to maintain one’s reputation even as one pursues extramarital relationships, amorous or platonic. Joïe’s predicament, while not due to an adulterous intrigue, nonetheless entails similar consequences: words and insinuations have consequences for reputations. The queen’s immediate dislike of Joie is related in part to her lack of reputation: as a stranger who has washed up on the shores of Scotland, Joïe is already an awful creature, but a mutilated stranger could also be perceived as someone with a nefarious past. The dowager queen’s later crime is much more serious than tampering with the mail: her first forgery, describing a monstrous birth in the form of a hairy, diabolical, viper-like creature insinuates sexual depredation on Joie’s part,38 and makes the purported death sentence by the King of Scotland in the second forgery that much more believable. Even though men consider their words to be law, part of the plot of this romance demonstrates the means by which their pronouncements can be subverted, by other men, by women, and by social inferiors. A wife can constrain her husband by a rash boon; a mother can impersonate her son and make royal decrees. The King of Hungary issues his orders for the execution of his daughter, but a seneschal who can see beyond 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 263 the letter of the law anticipates his monarch’s regrets and circumvents the command. The King of Scotland who believes his orders to protect his wife and offspring are inviolable will learn that his mother can out- maneuvre him. Clerics who identify with the interests of the nobility can undo the language and commands of official church doctrine. And finally, the pope himself will learn that a woman can preempt his ecclesiastical power to forgive sin, daring to speak up during ecclesiastical ceremonies that traditionally excluded women’s speech. Joïe’s courageous and virtuous defiance does have precedents in history. The twelfth-century Hildegard of Bingen, for instance, was known for some of her disobedient acts toward her religious superiors, acts for which she did not repent. Hildegard’s defiant act of founding a new house for nuns in Rupertsberg, even though her Abbot was against her project, is a famous instance of female defiance and disobedience.39 That same transgressive spirit gave rise to another occasion of disobedience when Hildegard buried in her convent the body of an excommunicated man, thus desecrating the sanctity of churchly space, and then absolutely refused to relocate the body when so ordered. As Prudence Allen points out, these acts of disobedience became acts of virtue for Hildegard40; likewise for Joïe, her insubordination illustrates her moral superiority. In addition to refusing to obey, Joïe goes even further by preaching to her own father that he should do penance for having made such a foolish promise to the dying queen (ll. 561–564), thus enacting a serious inversion of traditional gender and familial roles. The twelfth-century Eliz- abeth of Schönau described similar inversions: “People are scandalized that in these days the Lord deigns to magnify His great mercy in the frail sex. But why doesn’t it cross their minds that a similar thing happened in the days of our fathers when, while men were given to indolence, holy women were filled with the Spirit of God so that they could proph- esy…”41 Abelard had also stated a similar belief in women’s experience of God’s grace and in women’s merit: “Because, as we have said, inasmuch as the female sex is naturally weaker, so is its virtue more acceptable to God and more worthy of honour…And just as the sex of women is feebler, so is their virtue more pleasing to God and more perfect, according to the testimony of the Lord Himself, wherein exhorting the weakness of the Apostles to the crown of strife he says: ‘My grace is sufficient for these; my strength is made perfect in weakness.”42 Abelard’s backhanded com- pliment suggests to readers of La Manekine another important analogy: if women, the frailer sex both physically and spiritually, could be virtuous 264 L. M. ROUILLARD and outshine their male counterparts, then perhaps so could the laity in Philippe’s romance surpass and outshine the clergy. Such a virtuous lay woman, created by the quill of a nonclerical writer stands in stark contract to misogynistic depictions of women which were part of the clerical curriculum in the Middle Ages. Helen Solterer discusses the traditional progression to becoming a medieval magister. She explains that learning how to articulate and win arguments about the worth of women was a rite of passage to becoming a teacher.43 To be educated meant one was able to construct persuasive arguments on customary themes, including the inferiority of women. This was the environment that generated clerks, those men of the lower orders who might or might not continue on to higher orders and become ordained priests. During the course of their academic training and formation, they were often asked to write rhetorical arguments about the nature and virtue (or lack thereof) of women. As Solterer has summarized it: “The Aristotelian model set a rigorous standard for representing the mastery of the idea of woman as a significant form of knowledge. In this, it strengthened the symbolic domination of women that the Ovidian model introduced in much French writing of the later Middle Ages.”44 Thus to write about Woman was to control and dominate her. The disciple who could demonstrate this rhetorical power over the female was on his way to becoming a magister.45 When Philippe de Rémi proclaims his lack of “clerical” knowledge (“Car molt petit sai de clergie” [l. 32], “For I know little of learnèd matters”) in a version of the humility topos, he also distances himself from the clerical rhetorical tradition, which typically included expositions on the inferiority of woman’s nature, and writes instead a poem about an exceptionally virtuous married woman. The woman who valiantly rejects her father and the throne he offers her, the woman who cuts off her own hand to avoid sin, the woman who is sorely tried and tested for years and years, only to forgive her father, would have been a difficult model for the everyday medieval woman to imitate. But by analogy, this fictional woman can also be a lofty response to clerical attitudes of moral superiority over the laity: the poet/layman offers the weaker sex as an example of the highest virtue. If woman as the weakest link can be so strong, then perhaps so can the laity surpass priestly virtue; and the unlearned man can teach the clergy a lesson or two, both in morality and in writing. Reunited with his daughter and introduced to his son-in-law, the King of Hungary wants to hear as soon as possible the tale about his daughter: “Tant desir a oïr sa vie, / Coment Dix le m’a garandie, / Qu’il n’est nus ki le peüst 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 265 dire, / Ne clers qui le seüst descrir” (ll. 7235–7238). “I desire so much to hear about her life, / How God has preserved her for me, / That there is no-one who could say it, / Nor clerk who could write it.” And yet Philippe de Rémi, poet/bailiff, not-a-clerk, writes that very story. Addressing the subject of women who respond and dispute, women who talk back and argue in such texts as Response au bestiaire d’amour and Christine de Pizan’s contribution to the Querelle du roman de la rose, Solterer studies women who construct dialectical arguments: intellectual and intelligent women who can handle and manipulate language with the best of clerks and the best of seducers. While these two medieval texts postdate La Manekine, Solterer’s thesis remains pertinent for our discussion of Philippe de Rémi’s romance. How does Joïe function as a respond- ing woman? First, when her father proposes marriage she unequivocally refuses: “Pour riens ne m’i ac[or]deroie” (l. 557), “Not for anything should I agree to do it.” She reminds her father that filial obedience does not require her to put her soul in peril: “Ne sui mie tenue a [fa]ire / Ce qu’a m’ame seroit [c]ontraire” (ll. 559–560). “I am not obliged to do / What would be perilous to my soul.” She also points out that in addition to ignoring the customary and religious interdictions of incest, her father was also quite foolish to have made such a constraining promise to his dying wife in the first place: “Miex vous vient [pre]ndre penitance / Du convent et de la fiance / Que vous a ma dame feïstes, / Car fol convent li prameïstes” (ll. 561–564). “It is better for you to repent / Of the agreement and the pledge / That you made to my lady mother, / For you promised her a foolish agreement.”46 This in itself is a bold statement demonstrating that Joïe will not be coerced, seduced, or lulled into complicity, in marked contrast to the clergy who will rewrite church law to fit their own self-interest, in stark contrast to her father who will eventually meekly agree with his retainers’ advice and desires, or to her mother-in- law who will rewrite official missives to fit her own view of things. While Joie has been dominated and tortured by other people’s words, she finally finds in the Senator at Rome someone who values and respects her words and wishes. When the Senator proposes to “buy” her from the fishermen who first found her on the River Far, he insists that she must consent to the proposal: “Mais or li requier jou et prie, / S’ele veut bone compaignie / Et bon hostel a son voloir /… / Et ele veut que je l’acat, / Qu’ele me die, sans barat / S’ele le vaurra maintenir / En bien et avoec moi venir. / … / Or me responde son ensé: / Se ce est mix sa volenté / D’estre asseür en ma maison, / Que la ou ele ait desraison. / L’un de ces jeus chi li 266 L. M. ROUILLARD depart; / Or m’en responde son esgart” (ll. 5131–5150). “But now I ask and entreat her: / If she wants good company / And a good place to live, to her liking, / … / And if she wants me to buy her, / Let her tell me, without quibbling, / If she will want to keep herself / Decently and come with me. / … / Now let her answer me her thought: / Whether it is more to her liking / To be in safety in my house / Than someplace where she might have ill-treatment. / I giver her to choose one of these options; / Now let her answer me with her decision.” Unlike the King of Hungary who believes that “pensées de femmes sont ven,” the Senator understands and believes in the sanctity of a woman’s verbal consent, even when “purchasing” that woman. What Joïe did not experience with her father, namely safety and the respect of her wishes, she will find in the Roman Senator’s home. Here, her word and consent are respected. In spite of the role of promises on Manekine’s life, she exacts and believes in the promise the Senator makes to her after he purchases her from the fisherman: that in his household she will in no way be dishon- ored. The appearance of the King of Scotland who lodges in the Sen- ator’s home finally propels Manekine to reveal “Unepartiedel’anui/ Que onques mais ne dis nului” (ll. 5917–5918); “Part of the affliction / That never before have I told to anyone.” She explains her fear that if the king sees her, he will try to kill her, for no justifiable reason because “…il avient souvent a court / Que tex ne peche qui encort” (ll. 5925– 5926); “…it often happens at court / That it’s the innocent one who pays.” It is curious that Manekine locates this concept of undeserved punishment specifically at court. More importantly, she judges her undo- ing to be the result of “mesdisans” (l. 5929) or “slanderers,” the classic threats in courtly love rhetoric. The Senator regrets his promise of lodg- ing to the King of Scotland but feeling bound by his word or promise, “J’en aquiterai mon couvent” (l. 5960), “I shall keep my word,” even as he promises to protect Manekine. In contrast to her dying mother who extracts a promise that will eventually harm the daughter, the Senator will keep his promise to the King of Scotland while still observing his promise to defend Manekine. In summary, we note a significant contrast between male language and female language in La Manekine. In some ways, women’s words here are more powerful, binding, and effective than men’s words. Compare the effects of the dying Queen of Hungary’s words on her husband, constraining him to remarriage only with a woman who completely resembles her in every way. In an effort to protect her daughter’s inheritance, she 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 267 creates a dilemma that he can resolve only with clerical words that will erase the sin he will have to commit in order to keep his word. Danger ensues for Joïe because her father has allowed himself to be confounded by a woman’s words and by the promises of weak and fearful clerics. On the other hand, consider Joïe’s refusal to consent to her father’s command, a refusal that stands in stark contrast to the king’s acquiescence to his dying wife’s rash boon. And while the King of Hungary’s seneschal can find a way to give the appearance of obeying to the letter the king’s pronounced order of execution of his daughter, the king is himself twisted into a moral knot by a woman’s words. Substituted for the legitimate words of the King of Scotland, the dowager queen of Scotland’s evil words are powerful enough to cause more pain for Joïe. If these deceitful words substituted for the King of Scotland’s missive can be undone, it will take another seneschal to overcome the power of the malevolent dowager, even as he gives the appearance of obeying what were apparently his king’s commands. While the words of male characters in La Manekine are often thwarted, nonetheless their speech has much more authority and is generally perceived as having more legitimacy. The Kings of Hungary and Scotland assume their orders will be obeyed without question. The clerics assume they have but to say the word to change sinful acts into acceptable acts. These characters call to mind Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, who, in contrast to some of the male characters in La Manekine, embodies linguistic ignorance. He has no concept of the difference between the letter and the spirit of an utterance, of the potential importance or power of his words, or of the different value of women’s speech versus men’s speech. When his mentor Gorhaut advices him to go to church regularly, Perceval responds in the following manner and is reprimanded by Gorhaut: “De toz les apostres de Rome / Soiiez vos beneoiz, biaus sire; / Qu’autel oï ma mere dire.’ / ‘Or nel dites ja mes, biaus frere,’ / Fet le prodon, ‘que vostre mere vos et apris ne anseignié. / De ce mie ne vos blas gié, / Se vos l’avez dit jusque ci; / Mes des or mes, la vostre merci,/ Vos pri que vos an chastiiez; / Car se vos plus le disiiez, / A folie le tandroit l’an.” “‘A blessing on you by all the popes in Rome, good sir, for I heard my mother say the same!’ ‘Now, dear brother,’ says the gentleman, ‘never say that your mother has taught you something: just say I have. But don’t think we blame you for having said it up to now; however in the future, if you please, I beg you to drop the habit; for if you went on saying that, people would think it foolish.’”47 In his romance, Chrétien depicts a naive, ignorant boy who 268 L. M. ROUILLARD has not yet learned the manly power of his voice, his words, and questions in particular, to heal the Fisher-King. He is bound by the letter of language, and fails to attend to meaning and context since he lacks inter- pretive skills; Perceval fails to ask the relevant questions or produce the speech acts that would effectively heal the Fisher-King. While Perceval may obey some of Gorhaut’s advice, for instance to go to church regularly, he has not learned the power of his own words in relation to other people, though he is exhorted to dismiss the speech of women. Manekine, on the other hand, understands from the very beginning of the romance the power and consequences of words. She knows the power of her father’s commands, and she fully comprehends the consequences of her declaration of her defiant “No.” Manekine knows the power of one’s name and hence protects herself by refusing to reveal her identity in Scotland or Rome, thus guarding herself from her father’s potential future abuse and also preserving her father’s reputation as well as her own. Her silence is shrewd and defensive, while Perceval’s silence in the presence of the Fisher-King is naive and destructive. Furthermore, Manekine is subsequently capable of using her words to publicly forgive her father in Rome, thus spiritually healing him, and coincidentally, preempting the papal pronouncement of pardon in an example of a laity confident in its own judgment. In contrast to the centurion who asked Jesus to heal his sick servant, saying “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word, and my servant will be healed” (Matt. 8: 8), Perceval never understood the power his words could have to heal and regenerate. Manekine, on the other hand, demonstrates the reconciliatory function that words, even a woman’s words, can operate. Joïe’s relationship to language is thus an inversion of Perceval’s in Chrétien de Troyes’s romance. Perceval does not actually know his name until verse 3561: in a conversation with a woman bemoaning her decapitated lover, Perceval can finally identify himself. “Et cil qui son non ne savoit / Devine et di que il avoit / Percevax li Galois a non, / Et ne set s’il dit voir ou non, / Et il dit voir, si ne le sot” (ll. 3573–3577). “Then he, who did not know his name, intuitively answered that he was called Perceval the Welshman, not knowing whether he spoke the truth or not. But what he said was true, though he did not know.”48 His general lack of self-knowledge and his linguistic disability inhibit his potential to ask the right questions or say the right thing to heal the Fisher King. Joïe, on the other hand, has a highly advanced and sophisticated understanding of the intricacies of language: she knows when to say “No,” when not to 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 269 speak her name, and when to pronounce the forgiving words that heal her father, and ultimately lead to her own physical healing.

Notes

1. J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed., eds. J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 6; 12–13. 2. Raymond of Penyafort, Summa on Marriage, trans. Pierre Payer (Toronto: Pontiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005), 19–20. 3. Wendy Ayers-Bennett, A History of the French Language Through Texts (New York: Routledge, 1996), 18. 4. Austin, How to Do Things with Words,6–7. 5. Béroul, Le Roman de Tristan, ed. Ernest Muret (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1979), ll. 4197–4208. 6. Peter F. Dembowski, ed., Ami et Amile, Chanson de geste (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1987), ll. 1426–1430. Samuel N. Rosenberg and Samuel Danon, trans., Ami and Amile: A Medieval Tale of Friendship (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1996), 71. 7. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 162. 8. As cited in Jacqueline Murray, ed., Love, Marriage, and Family in the Middle Ages (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001), 332. See also David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 49. 9. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 34. 10. Jean Frappier, “Le motif du ‘don contraignant’ dans la littérature du Moyen Age,” in Travaux de Linguistique et de littérature 2 (Strasbourg: Centre de Philologie et de littératures romanes, 1969): 7–46. 11. Susan Sara Thomas, “Promise, Threat, Joke or Wager: The Legal (In)Determinancy of the Oaths in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Exemplaria 10 (1998): 287–305; here 287. 12. Thomas, “Promise, Threat, Joke or Wager,” 293 cites Thomas Aquinas who insists that the validity of an obligation rests in part on the legality of the act in question. An oath taken to commit a crime or an immoral act is not to be treated as binding. She furthers cites A.W.B. Simpson who reminds us of the same stipulation in customary law. 13. Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. Mario Roques (Paris: Librairie Hon- oré Champion, 1981), ll. 6004–6018. All citations of this poem are taken from this edition. 14. D.D.R. Owen, trans., Chrétien de Troyes Arthurian Romances (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1987), 80. All translations are taken from this edition. 15. Owen, trans., Chrétien de Troyes, 80. 270 L. M. ROUILLARD

16. Cedric E. Pickford, ed., Erec: Roman Arthurian en prose (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1968), 153. All citations of this text are taken from this edition; all translations are mine. 17. Pickford, ed., Erec, 165. 18. Neil Thomas, “The Fortunes of Arthur in Later German Romances,” in The Fortunes of King Arthur, ed. Norris J. Lacy (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005): 166–180; here 167. 19. Chrétien de Troyes, Le Chevalier de la charrette, ed. Mario Roques (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1981), ll. 172–179. Owen, trans., Chrétien de Troyes, 187. 20. Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997), 3, 17. 21. Butler, Excitable Speech, 21. 22. See Constance Brittain Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister: Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980–1198 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 23. 23. Bouchard, Sword, Miter, and Cloister, 46. See also Georges Duby, The Chivalrous Society, trans. Cynthia Postan (Berkeley, CA: University of Cali- fornia Press, 1980), 8–10 for a summary of the changes to and subsequent alliances among members of the traditional social orders. 24. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, Volume 1: The Growth of Ties of Dependence, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 234. 25. Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, Volume 2: Social Classes and Political Organi- zation, trans. L.A. Manyon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 283. 26. As cited by Jody Enders, The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Mem- ory, Violence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 19. 27. Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, trans. Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 37. 28. See Henri-Louis Bordier, Philippe de Rémi, Sire de Beaumanoir: Juriscon- sulte et Poète National du Beauvaisis (Paris: Techener, 1869; Geneva: Slatkine, rpt. 1980), 57–59 for a description of Philippe’s career, including his position as bailiff for Count Robert d’Artois, brother of Louis IX. See also Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), 70–82. 29. At its most primal level, refusing to give her name is a form of self- protection, similar to the experience Lévi-Strauss recounts in his time with the Brazilian Nambikwara people who refused to identify themselves by name. Meeting a group of children for the ﬁrst time, Lévi-Strauss was struck by their reluctance to give their names. Only when the games led to playground hostilities did the offended parties ﬁnally name the offenders, as a form of vengeance. R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 271

Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), 6–9. 30. Emma Campbell, Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Commu- nity in Old French Hagiography (Woodbridge, UK: 2008), 82. 31. Butler, Excitable Speech,2–5. 32. Thelma Fenster, “Beaumanoir’s La Manekine: Kin D(r)ead: Incest, Dou- bling, and Death,” American Imago 39 (1982): 41–58; here 58. Fenster uses this meaning to conclude her Oedipal analysis of the romance. See also G. Huet, “Les Sources de la Manekine de Philippe de Beaumanoir,” Romania 45 (1918–1919): 94–99; here 98, footnote 2. See also Chris- tiane Marchell-Nizia’s epilogue to her translation La Manekine: Roman du XIIIe siècle (Paris: Stock, 1980), 256. 33. Georges Duby, Love and Marriage in the Middle Age, trans. Jane Dun- nett (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 58. Philippe de Rémi, Oeuvres Poé- tiques, ed. Hermann Suchier (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1884), xxxiv, footnote 2. Christiane Marchello-Nizia, La Manekine, 257. Fenster, “Beau- manoir’s La Manekine,” 52. See Marie-Madeleine Castellani, “L’Eau dans La Manekine de Philippe de Beaumanoir,” Seneﬁance 15 (1985): 79–90; here 85–86 for her interpretation of “Manekine” as a synonym of “man- chote” signifying someone who lacks a hand. Also Huet, “Les Sources de la Manekine,” 97, 98, footnote 2. Jean Dufournet and Marie-Madeleine Castellani, “La Manekine de Philippe de Beaumanoir: Temps littéraire et temps folklorique,” in Le Nombre du Temps. En hommage à Paul Zumthor, ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner (Paris: Champion, 1988): 63–72; here 70, they point out the Carnaval mannequin burned during Mardi Gras celebrations as a possible source for the nickname. See also Philippe de Rémi, La Manekine: Text, Translation, Commentary, ed. and trans. Irene Gnarra (New York: Garland, 1988), 401. 34. Emily Francomano, “The Hands of Phillip de Remi’s Manekine,” Mediter- ranean Studies 15 (2006): 1–20; here 10 which also includes her etymo- logical analysis of the nickname. 35. As cited by R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies, 14. 36. As cited by Sister Prudence Allen, The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C.–A.D. 1250 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerd- mans, 1997), 110. 37. As cited by Helen Solterer, The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 149. 38. Peter Damian claimed that Robert I was punished by God for his incestuous marriages with the birth of a deformed baby who had a head and neck like a swan, Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France, trans. Barbara Bray 272 L. M. ROUILLARD

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1983), 84. See Chapter 4 of this work. 39. Allen, The Concept of Woman, 312. 40. Allen, The Concept of Woman, 312. 41. As cited by Allen, The Concept of Woman, 312. 42. As cited by Allen, The Concept of Woman, 278. See also 271. 43. As cited by Helen Solterer, The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 18. 44. Solterer, The Master and Minerva, 58. 45. Solterer, The Master and Minerva, 62, 77–78. 46. A late seventh-century penitential considered the work of Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury states: “Foolish vows and those that cannot be performed, are to be set aside.” As cited by Murray, ed., Love, Marriage, and Family, 46. Thus the King of Hungary could have considered himself released from his vow when his courtiers suggested such a literal observance of that promise. 47. Chrétien de Troyes, Der Percevalroman: Li Contes del Graal,ed.Ger- hard Rohlfs (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1966), ll. 1672–1683. D.D.R. Owen, trans., Chrétien de Troyes Arthurian Romances (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1987), 396–397. All citations and translations of this romance are taken from these sources. 48. Owen, Arthurian Romances, 421.

References

Ami and Amile: A Medieval Tale of Friendship. Translated by Samuel N. Rosen- berg and Samuel Danon. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1996. Allen, Sister Prudence. The Concept of Woman: The Aristotelian Revolution, 750 B.C.–A.D. 1250. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1997. Ami et Amile, Chanson de geste. Edited by Peter F. Dembowski. Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1987. Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed. Edited by J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975. Ayers-Bennett, Wendy. A History of the French Language Through Texts. New York: Routledge, 1996. Béroul. Le Roman de Tristan. Edited by Ernest Muret. Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1979. Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society, Volume 1: The Growth of Ties of Dependence. Trans- lated by L.A. Manyon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. 7 SPIRIT AND LETTER: SPEECH ACTS IN SELECTED MEDIEVAL TEXTS 273

———. Feudal Society, Volume 2: Social Classes and Political Organization. Trans- lated by L.A. Manyon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961. Bloch, R. Howard. Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. Bordier, Henri-Louis. Philippe de Rémi, Sire de Beaumanoir: Jurisconsulte et Poète National du Beauvaisis. Paris: Techener, 1869; Geneva: Slatkine, rpt. 1980. Bouchard, Constance Brittain. Sword, Miter, and Cloister: Nobility and the Church in Burgundy, 980–1198. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. Bourdieu, Pierre. Language and Symbolic Power. Translated by Gino Raymond and Matthew Adamson. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Butler, Judith. Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative. New York: Rout- ledge, 1997. Campbell, Emma. Medieval Saints’ Lives: The Gift, Kinship and Community in Old French Hagiography. Woodbridge, UK: 2008. Castellani, Marie-Madeleine. “L’Eau dans La Manekine de Philippe de Beau- manoir.” Seneﬁance 15 (1985): 79–90. Chrétien de Troyes. Le Chevalier de la charrette. Edited by Mario Roques. Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1981. ———. Erec et Enide. Edited by Mario Roques. Paris: Librairie Honoré Cham- pion, 1981. ———. Der Percevalroman: Li Contes del Graal. Edited by Gerhard Rohlfs. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1966. ———. Arthurian Romances. Translated by D.D.R. Owen. London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1987. Duby, Georges. The Chivalrous Society. Translated by Cynthia Postan. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1980. ———. The Knight, the Lady and the Priest: The Making of Modern Marriage in Medieval France. Translated by Barbara Bray. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983. ———. Love and Marriage in the Middle Age. Translated by Jane Dunnett. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Dufournet, Jean and Marie-Madeleine Castellani. “La Manekine de Philippe de Beaumanoir: Temps littéraire et temps folklorique.” In Le Nombre du Temps. En hommage à Paul Zumthor. Edited by Emmanuèle Baumgartner. Paris: Champion, 1988. 63–72. Enders, Jody. The Medieval Theater of Cruelty: Rhetoric, Memory, Violence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999. Erec: Roman Arthurian en prose. Edited by Cedric E. Pickford. Genève: Librairie Droz, 1968. Fenster, Thelma. “Beaumanoir’s La Manekine: Kin D(r)ead: Incest, Doubling, and Death.” American Imago 39 (1982): 41–58. 274 L. M. ROUILLARD

Frappier, Jean. “Le motif du ‘don contragnant’ dans la littérature du Moyen Age.” In Travaux de Linguistique et de littérature 2. Strasbourg: Centre de Philologie et de littératures romanes, 1969. 7–46. Huet,G.“LesSourcesdelaManekine de Philippe de Beaumanoir. Romania 45 (1918–1919): 94–99. Murray, Jacqueline, editor. Love, Marriage, and Family in the Middle Ages. Peter- borough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001. Philippe de Rémi. La Manekine. Translated by Christiane Marchell-Nizia. Paris: Stock, 1980. ———. La Manekine: Text, Translation, Commentary. Edited and translated by Irene Gnarra. New York: Garland, 1988. ———. Le Roman de la Manekine. Edited and translated by Barbara N. Sargent- Baur. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999. ———. Oeuvres Poétiques. Edited by Hermann Suchier. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1884. Raymond of Penyafort. Summa on Marriage. Translated by Pierre Payer. Toronto: Pontiﬁcal Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2005. Solterer, Helen. The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. Thomas, Neil. “The Fortunes of Arthur in Later German Romances.” In The Fortunes of King Arthur. Edited by Norris J. Lacy. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2005. 166–180. Thomas, Susan Sara. “Promise, Threat, Joke or Wager: The Legal (In)Determinancy of the Oaths in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Exem- plaria 10 (1998): 287–305. CHAPTER 8

Conclusion: The Legacy of the Incest Motif

We have seen how prevalent the incest motif was in a range of medieval texts. And whether we consider high culture or pop culture, the incest motif is just as frequently a component of modern literature, film, and memoirs as well. Twentieth-century writers and directors have treated the subject extensively or used it as a secondary narrative motif. Any internet search of the topic in film and literature will yield hundreds of titles (in no particular order or grouping) such as the 1970 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison who chronicles the traumatic events that transform a man into the rapist of his daughter, and the consequences of family history on that child.1 The 1974 film Chinatown, a film by Roman Polanski uses the incest motif along with rape to provide another layer to a story about water rights in California. Hotel New Hampshire (1981) features brother– sister incest, and Ciderhouse Rules (1985) includes father–daughter incest, two novels by John Irving later made into films. The Color Purple, a novel from 1982 by Alice Walker (made into a film in 1985) features a main character Celie who is repeatedly raped by the man she believes to be her biological father. The genre of modern detective mysteries often uses the

All citations and translations of La Manekine are taken from Philippe de Rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. by Barbara Sargent-Baur (Amsterdam & Atlanta: Rodopi, 1999).

© The Author(s) 2020 275 L. M. Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6_8 276 L. M. ROUILLARD incest motif, as, for instance, Elizabeth George does in one novel from her popular series about Inspector Lynley. A Great Deliverance, published in 1988, is the story of two daughters sexually exploited by their father. The younger daughter Roberta avenges herself of her father’s sexual and emotional cruelty by hacking his head off with an axe. The recent best seller, also made into a film, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo bythelateStieg Larsson is another example of a modern mystery novel revolving around a story of incest. Henrik Vanger hires Mikael Blomkvist to discover the murderer of the niece he believes to have been killed decades ago. The novel concludes not with the revelation of her assassin, but rather with the discovery that Harriet Vanger is very much alive, living in Australia with a new identity that has allowed her to survive the trauma of having been repeatedly raped by her father and her brother during her adolescence. Like our medieval protagonist, Larsson’s main character found refuge with a new name abroad. Thus, whether it is used as social metaphor, social commentary, or a titillating plot device, incest remains a powerful image. Consider, for instance, another modern incest story: the novel Mor- pho Eugenia, published by A. S. Byatt in 1992 and made into a 1995 film directed by Philip Haas under the title Angels and Insects.2 Set in the mid- nineteenth century, this is a tale of sibling incest, hidden behind a marriage that disguises the paternity of several children, for a while. William Adamson is a shipwrecked naturalist who finds a comfortable haven in the home of minister Harald Alabaster and in the arms of the Alabaster daughter, Eugenia. While William studies, categorizes, and organizes Har- ald’s eclectic collection of natural specimens, and continues his own observation and studies of local ant colonies, his three-year marriage to Euge- nia results in five children. William says of his children: “It is as though environment were everything and inheritance nothing, I sometimes think. They suck in Alabaster substance and grow into perfect little Alabasters— I only very rarely catch glimpses of myself in their expression.”3 And indeed, their paternity is called into question by William’s discovery of Eugenia’s long-lived incestuous affair with her stepbrother Edgar. While Harald has been writing his book on the proof of God’s existence, and William has been writing his book about the natural world, and studying the habits of ant colonies, Edgar and Eugenia have been mating together. The film by Philip Haas highlights the comparison between humans and insects: women wear wasp-colored ballgowns and Mother Alabaster is a plump queen bee constantly gorging on sweets. Unlike the proposed incestuous marriage in La Manekine, marriage in Angels and Insects is a 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 277 facade that hides the ongoing sibling incest. More importantly, the film opens with a scene in which William is still in the Amazon, partaking of native customs, of a sexually licentious nature. William has crossed forbidden boundaries in his past: he has crossed that taboo known as the racial divide, though as a white man exploring native cultures, he would be allowed certain liberties without penalty. His cultural superiority is not diminished; in contrast, his wife and brother-in-law are relegated to the insect world because of their degenerative behavior. The play on words between “incest” and “insect” reminds us that the development of incest taboos marks a significant moment in the evolution of human society and culture. The implication is that without such interdictions, we remain like beasts. In a similar fashion, the incestuous marriage proposed in La Manekine suggests a return to the barbarian, sub-human world, when the laws of God are overridden by the laws of Nature. Bertrand Tavernier’s 1987 film La Passion Béatrice tells the story of a young girl violated by her father François Cortemart in France during the Hundred Years’ War.4 This story is based on Percy Bysshe Shelley’s nineteenth-century dramatic account of the sixteenth-century Beatrice Cenci who murdered her father after he repeatedly raped her.5 And Michel Peyramaure published La Passion Béatrice, a novel based on Colo Tavernier-O’Hagan’s screenplay.6 Upon discovering she is pregnant by her father, Beatrice begs her brother Arnaud to beat her in the hopes of causing a miscarriage. The abbot in the cinematic La Passion Béatrice is horrified beyond words when Cortemart requests a marital benediction for his marriage with his daughter, while the novel suggests that Béatrice does not completely resist her father at all times, and concludes with Beat- rice’s murder of her mad parent as he lies in what he calls their marriage bed. The film was poorly received, according to the director because of “the misogyny [sic] of the period that the film portrayed.”7 While the reasons for François Cortemart’s brutality toward his daughter lie in his traumatic experiences during the war, in contrast to the King of Hun- gary’s need to maintain a peaceful transition of power to a future male heir, both fathers attempt to orchestrate a marriage with their daughters. La Passion Béatrice depicts what we suspect could have happened to Joïe, but for the plan instigated by the Hungarian seneschal. Also inspired by the story of Beatrice Cenci was George Elliott Clarke who in 1999 published his play and opera libretto entitled Beatrice Chancy.8 The story is set in 1801 Nova Scotia in the Annapolis Valley. Like Beatrice Cenci, the nineteenth-century African-Canadian character of Beatrice Chancy is raped by her slave-owner father whom she later 278 L. M. ROUILLARD murders. Rape committed by a slave-owner was no doubt a reality of life for many slaves, and so too was incest. As a literary motif, the father’s rape of his bi-racial daughter inverts the explicit fear of miscegenation, highlighting the hypocrisy of an institution that refused marriage between blacks and whites even as it institutionalized rape and incest. In modern literature then, as in medieval narratives, incest continues to be the marker of human degeneration, the proof, and mark of regression to a brutish state of existence. Gayl Jones’s 1975 novel Cor- regidora presents incest as one of the horrific twentieth-century legacies of nineteenth-century slavery, an institution in which masters raped black women and then violated their daughters born of such violence. The main character, Ursa Corregidora feels the moral imperative to bear witness for the atrocities experienced by her great-grandmother, who was raped by her master who then raped their daughter as well. “I’m leaving evidence. And you got to leave evidence too. And your children got to leave evidence. And when it come time to hold up the evidence, we got to have evidence to hold up. That’s why they burned all the papers, so there wouldn’t be no evidence to hold up against them,” said Ursa’s great- grandmother.9 Incest often condemns each generation to bear the legacy of the pain and suffering of previous generations. In her own way, Joïe produces evidence of the threat presented by her father: her cut-off hand gives proof of the potential sin or crime that was almost perpetrated upon her, and documents the trauma that resulted from the attempt itself. The miraculous graft, her own compassionate forgiveness of her father, the happily married offspring and retainers at the end of La Manekine suggest that here at least, there will be no generational consequences. In 1992, Dorothy Allison published her autobiographical novel Bas- tard Out of Carolina, the story of a father who rapes his young step- daughter, in a work that explores the interplay between patriarchy and poverty, a tension played out on the backs of girls and women.10 Kathryn Harrison’s 1997 memoir entitled The Kiss recounts her father’s exploita- tion of his daughter’s vulnerability, an autobiographical story she had originally presented as fiction in her 1991 novel Thicker than Water.11 In both works, the child, profoundly wounded by the absence of her father and rejection of her mother, is easy prey. Thus, the father’s sudden interest in his twenty-year-old daughter begins as a long-delayed wish ful- fillment, until paternal affection turns sexual. Mackenzie Phillips told a similar story in her 2009 memoir High On Arrival, describing an incestuous relationship with her father that occurred during her twenties.12 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 279

Perhaps the last genre that one would expect to use incest is the comic strip, but in fact, in Japan, a modern comic strip entitled Aki-Sora features sibling incest in its storyline. This publication will now have to deal with new regulations that will “block the sale to anyone under 18 of comics or animated films that ‘improperly laud or exaggerate’ incest, rape and other sexual activity that contravenes ‘social norms.’”13 While far from exhaustive, what does this miscellaneous enumeration of modern titles of incest narratives have to do with medieval narratives in general about incest, or a specific thirteenth-century poem about incest? For one thing, this unsorted collection demonstrates that the incest motif continues to have significant narrative value in our own day and age, and across literary genres, such that we cannot read medieval literature “in- nocently” or in a detached manner; rather we are all too likely to shape our understanding of Philippe’s poem, for instance, by our experience as modern readers and film viewers. Without anachronistically assuming that Philippe was documenting a social problem, and without dismissing incest as actual historical fact, we can certainly appreciate the power of incest as a metaphor in part because of its literary history and because of what appears to be its likely tragic occurrence in some form or other in most societies over time. Numerous modern narratives treating incest obviously fall within the realm of non-fiction as well: quantifying the titles of modern autobiographical accounts of survivors of incest would be overwhelming, as would constructing a list of therapeutic narratives. Equally sobering is the number of accounts in the press, leading Elaine Showalter, professor of English and the History of Medicine, to compare these incest narratives to cases of hysteria, not to discount the accounts of incest, but to note that, like hysteria, such accounts have great cultural symbolic value: “[…] the silent or nonverbal ‘body language’ of hysteria can be seen as a Mother Tongue that contests patriarchal culture.”14 Such a protest is less about documenting specific incidents and more about portraying the global experience of oppression and suffering. Showalter argues that incest survivor narratives can symbolize the oppression, constraints, and violence women feel, as they attempt to articulate their sense of impris- onment in a culture that objectifies and dismisses them. “The end of the nineteenth century, as Foucault argued, produced the widespread critical hysterization of women’s bodies; with the rise of literary theory, the end of the twentieth century has produced a widespread critical hysterization of women’s stories.”15 In the case of incest survivors, Showalter discusses the role of the creation of a narrative, a partnership between therapist 280 L. M. ROUILLARD and patient. She suggests that some incest-survivor narratives can provide a structure, an explanation for the patient’s long-suffering, mental pain and overwhelming emotions; in this view, the incest narrative serves as a kind of cultural metaphor symbolizing the individual’s pain and despair.16 In this work, I make no statement about the validity of recovered memories of sexual abuse and incest, but I do assume that the frequency of documented instances of such trauma in our own times suggests that these acts were likely to have been just as common in the past as well. Others, however, believe that the high number of self-reporting victims of incestuous sexual abuse calls into question the validity of such reports. For instance, Showalter discusses the proliferation of incest narratives in the 1980s and 1990s in the media and in therapeutic communities. Part of her book treats recovered memory alongside hysterias such as alien abduction, Gulf War Syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, conversion hysteria, to name a few, not to dismiss any of these as rantings and ravings of attention-starved lunatics, but as explanatory narratives that provide causes and answers for psychological pain. Hysteria in its “classical” form “is a particular form of symbolic somatization; it represents a transfer of libido to a bodily organ that expresses a forbidden wish and its feared consequences.”17 Putting aside the Freudian perspective that insists on a patient’s unconscious Oedipal desires as the root cause of the hysteria, one can observe that such hysteria narratives provide some form of coherent explanation for complex sets of symptoms that medical science has not yet been able to treat, and for deeply felt psychological pain whose root cause resists diagnosis. Hysteria manifests psychic conflict as physical symptoms; and by extension, the proliferation of certain collective cultural symptoms (anxiety over satanic ritual abuse, the hunt for witches, for instance) that perhaps are the result of social oppression, can also be treated as hysterias. Of the exceptional male hysteric cryptically identified as La…sonne, studied by Charcot near the end of the nineteenth century, Showalter suggests his bizarre behaviors and “symptoms might be a reaction against brutal injustice, against a whole life of poverty and frus- tration.”18 Or as she says of recovered memory: “I have come to doubt the validity of therapeutically recovered memories of sexual abuse, but I do not wish to belittle those who believe in their memories. People do not generate these confabulations out of an intention to deceive. They may need to define an identity, to work out anger toward the accused, or to respond to cultural pressures.”19 In a similar vein, Carol Tavris considers what seems to some people to be a large number of first-person accounts 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 281 of sexual abuse, remarking that while it may be impossible to document the truth of such statements, one can interpret such accounts as a manifes- tation of the struggle to understand trauma in general. She suggests that many people continue to use this narrative device of incest in an effort to make the trauma of their lives understandable to themselves.20 While some may feel so horrified by the sheer numbers of reports of such abuse that they simply cannot or will not validate survivor accounts, Showalter and Tavris’s perspective nonetheless recognizes the extensive and inten- sive metaphoric possibilities and symbolic potentials of the incest motif to illustrate complex relationships and competing interests. In Philippe de Rémi’s case, his narrative uses incest to depict what can happen to a society that is both too closed in on itself, and unable to reconcile competing class or group interests. Some sociobiologists believe that “the incest taboo is a cultural reflection of natural selection processes,” particularly because this taboo in some form or other is virtually universal in human societies.21 And yet there are exceptions, which suggest that some of the strictures regulating more distant consanguineous unions have cultural origins. Nature or nurture; divine law or human law: fact and fiction seem to contradict one view or the other at different times. Leavitt concludes that “while it would seem that natural selection, or evolution more generally, has played a fundamental role in shaping human behavior, the evidence at hand best suggests a human genotype characterized by a flexibility that allows symbolic learning and thus rapid changeability in a species that has confronted extremely diverse environments.”22 Such a view of the incest taboo also recognizes the highly emblematic value of incest regulations, whether in everyday social life or in literary narratives. Incest narratives in general shock and titillate, horrify and fascinate. From child abuse and rape by family members, to media accounts of children born from brother–sister incest, or fathers who exploit their daughters, the twenty-first century is no stranger to any of these topics, especially in the popular and tabloid press. In spring 2008, The Mirror and The Sun ran a story about a brother and sister who were separated very early in life and only reunited in their twenties. Shortly after they met, they began a sexual relationship together.23 Likewise, an April 9, 2016 article of the New York Post reported on the lurid story of a sexual relationship between a mother and the son she gave up for adoption, though they face potential prosecution in Michigan where they were recently residing.24 In January 2016, the BBC News reported that the Scottish government 282 L. M. ROUILLARD was yet again petitioned by Richard Morris to reconsider the illegality of incest “so that it no longer applies to consenting adults aged over 21.”25 While the Scottish Parliament had to hold a discussion on the topic, it was thankfully a very short discussion that led to a dismissal of the subject. Among other documented cases of incest, there surfaced in 1999 accusations of long-standing child abuse on the island of Pitcairn, as recounted in Kathy Marks’s book Lost Paradise.26 A journalist who reported on the investigations and the trials which extended from 2004 to 2007, Marks gives an account of this now sparsely populated island of just under 50 individuals, describing the horrors of young girls “initiated” by much older men in systematic episodes of rape and incest, though there are no specific reports of fathers raping their daughters.27 Founded by acts of brutality against women, Pitcairn was settled in 1780 by mutinous sailors of HMAV Bounty who the previous year had abducted some Tahitian men and women.28 This society, closed in upon itself devolved into an abusive, secretive community in which violence perpetuated upon children was known and accepted, even considered “normal” and “cultural.” For instance, Marks quotes a grandmother who had herself been abused, but did nothing later in life to protect other girls from the same abuse: “We all went though it, it’s part of Life on Pitcairn.”29 One of the more recent victims explained: “That’s the way of life on Pitcairn. You get abused, you get raped. It’s the normal way of life on Pitcairn when I was growing up.”30 Resorting to a cultural and biological excuse for such brutality, Dr. Herbert Ford, a minister of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, which has had a long relationship with the island, remarked of the rape charges: “There’s been an awful lot of Polynesian blood put into the island. The girls resorted to sexual activity at a very early age, and that was carried on by the women into Pitcairn.”31 In other words, Ford held that the Polynesian women were responsible for this behavior. Some people even attempted to defend the men accused of rape on the basis of ignorance. A British colony with little oversight and the most perfunctory of exchanges with Great Britain, Pitcairn was pretty much left on its own, like an abandoned child, and so Pitcairn men sometimes defended themselves by claiming ignorance of the law. Said one defendant: “We didn’t know anything about English law until Gail Cox arrived,”32 a reference to the British police officer first sent to the island in 1997 to conduct general law enforcement training for the sole local police officer. Cox quickly became aware of pervasive sexual abuse on Pitcairn and prosecuted the offenders, beginning an investigation that led to charges of sexual assault 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 283 against half of the men on the island.33 Given the small number of individuals on the island, rape and incest would eventually go hand in hand here, as Emily Fielden reported that “six Pitcairn men were found guilty of 32 child sex crimes on the island over a period of 40 years. Their crimes included incest, rape, and indecent assault against girls as young as seven.”34 There are several commonalities between events on Pitcairn and in Philippe’s La Manekine in particular. First, there is the question of which law governs behavior: local law or colonial law? On Pitcairn Island, the custom is taken to be law, when convenient, just as the King of Hun- gary and his barons “choose” the system of law or exemptions that justify and facilitate their current desires and needs. Next, on Pitcairn Island, sexual behaviors construct social identity. Sexual abuse was rewritten as sexual freedom and early initiation, because after all, according to apolo- gists, this society was of Polynesian descent, a culture perceived and often romantically portrayed as “free” from western sexual anxiety. Likewise, classical and medieval authors used certain types of sexual relationships, in particular, incest, to signify membership in a barbarian society or in a non-civilized group, just as Gerald of Wales did in his descriptions of the Irish (see our Chapter 2). On Pitcairn Island, girls were commodities, possessed and exchanged. As one woman described one of the defendants: “He seemed to take it upon himself to initiate all the girls, and it was like we were his harem.”35 Similarly, in La Manekine, women are objectified and considered to be all alike, even though, ironically, the King of Hun- gary cannot find a woman identical to his late wife anywhere in the world. Group rape was also a common occurrence on Pitcairn Island, forming a kind of bonding experience among the men. And finally, occurring in a small, tightly knit and closely related society, accusations of rape will in turn eventually lead to accusations of incest. Equally as lurid in recent modern reports is the 2008 account of a father in Amstetten, Austria who forced incestuous relations on his daughter. For more than twenty years Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter Eliz- abeth in the basement of their apartment building and fathered seven children by her: one died as an infant, three were then raised upstairs with their grandmother, the other three kept in the basement with their mother-sister.36 Having admitted that he repeatedly raped his daughter, Fritzl’s explanation was that he needed both to correct and contain his wayward daughter and that he was “addicted to incest.”37 He further justified his paternal abuse by citing his own coming-of-age during the 284 L. M. ROUILLARD

Nazi era which shaped his sense of discipline and control. Far from being merely provocative, this story genuinely shocked and outraged people. At first glance, it appears that this story of documented incest is of a different nature than the fictional story of publicly proposed incest in La Manekine in which the projected endogamous marriage serves to highlight and criticize social changes and clerical collusion. Philippe de Rémi’s story of potential incest illustrates both conflicting and shared interests between clerical culture and aristocratic families, but Fritzl’s documented incest story also contains the paternal prerogative of defining the nature of family relationships. He terrorized and brutalized his wife and children publicly and privately. The traditional right to give or withhold a daughter was exercised by Fritzl in the most perverse of ways, reserving this “resource” for himself, not unlike the kinds of paternal behavior we have seen in some of the examples from medieval literature including King Antiochus in Apollonius of Tyre, the story of Saint Dymphna, the father inMariedeFrance’sLes Dous Amants, or King Florent in Yde et Olive (see our Chapter 3). Documented accounts of father–daughter incest continue. On March 15, 2012, the Montréal Gazette reported the conviction of a man who fathered three children by his biological daughter. Adopted as an infant, she eventually found her biological father who, according to the charge, manipulated her and controlled her over a thirteen-year period.38 Recently, The New York Times reported on the 2016 sentencing of a Mon- tana man convicted of repeatedly raping his twelve-year-old daughter: while the prosecutor advocated for one hundred years in prison, the judge delivered a thirty-year suspended sentence, on condition of the defendan- t’s registration as a sex offender and his payment for any medical treatment needed by his daughter.39 Among the plethora of incest stories is the 2019 story about a Nebraska daughter who finally met her father seventeen years after her birth. They began a sexual relationship and managed to get married since the father’s name was not on the daughter’s birth certificate. A medical test proved they were parent and child, and they have been charged with incest.40 The popular press sensationalizes brother–sister incest as well, as in the following story that appeared in the National Post: separated shortly after birth, a twin sister and brother eventually met later as adults, and not knowing their true biological identities, fell in love and married. They discovered their relationship and their marriage was annulled.41 In Ger- many, the brother–sister couple Susan and Patrick Stubing have produced 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 285 four children and they seek to change the laws which criminalize incest in that country.42 And according to C. Carmichael, in Sweden a brother may marry his half-sister, having first obtained the required license.43 In a December 16, 2018 column in the Washington Post,DanLamothe provided the account of Jennifer Elmore who alleges she was repeatedly raped by her father over a six-year period between 1983 and 1989. Her father, retired Major General James J. Grazioplene, was acquitted of the charge in a 2017 military trial on the grounds of the statute of limitations, but he was indicted in Virginia on December 3, 2018, on charges of rape and incest, and may face a new trial there for incidents that occurred when the family lived in that state in 1988 and 1989. Begging his daughter to forgive him, Grazioplene admitted to her that “the only thing worse that I could have done to you is murder you.”44 Even when laws allow marriage between extended family members such as first cousins, there still sometimes remain modern instances of coercion. Most recently Rebecca Tan reported in the Washington Post the story of an 18-year-old young British woman of Bangladeshi descent who was taken to Bangladesh by her parents under false pretenses. Once there, the parents attempted to force her to marry her first cousin in order to facilitate his request for a visa to Great Britain. The young woman refused and was physically attacked by her father. The British embassy in Bangladesh protected the young woman who continued to refuse the marriage and helped her return to Great Britain. It should be noted that in Great Britain and many states in the U.S., marriages between first cousins are legal, but the parents in the British case eventually received prison sentences for attempting to coerce their daughter into marriage. And a few months before this case, another British citizen, this time of Pakistani descent was found guilty and imprisoned for attempting to coerce her 17-year-old daughter into a forced marriage.45 Clearly, issues of consent to marriage remain pertinent to our own modern age, even as definitions of incest can vary by nation or state. The 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges made same- sex marriage legal in the U.S., to the dismay of those who perceive gay marriage to be the first step on the “slippery slope to legalizing now- taboo sexual arrangements like polygamy and incest.”46 In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court had declared unconstitutional the law against gay sodomy. In his op-ed piece, Jeff Jacoby cited Senator Rick Santorum’s condemnation of this decision: “‘If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual sex within your home,’ he told a reporter, ‘then you 286 L. M. ROUILLARD have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.’”47 While there is no logic in believing that legalizing gay marriage will lead to legalizing incest and polygamy, it certainly does not require leaps of logic to understand the incestuous implications of polygamy as practiced in closed societies. Sooner or later, in such communities, close relatives may marry and have children. Some fundamentalist Mormons, for instance, have continued the practice, even though the Church of Latter-Day Saints banned polygamy in 1890. Polygamy does not incite people to commit incest and rape, but one of the 2007 charges against fundamentalist Mormon leader Warren Jeffs was incest, along with other sexual accusations.48 The Middle Ages recognized several categories of incest: incest by consanguinity, incest by affinity and legal adoption, and spiritual incest. While we in the modern age have relaxed many of these definitions, we have produced a new category of our own. The media now speak of incest related to assisted reproduction. I referred earlier in this work to Boswell’s description of the medieval fear of unknowing incest in relationships undertaken with strangers (see Chapter 2 of this work).49 Whether a passing sexual encounter or marriage with a stranger, there was always the perceived danger of consanguineous incest or incest by affinity. Now, modern reproductive technology allows us to generate children through in vitro fertilization from anonymous donations of ova and sperm; while the positive attributes of such medical treatment are certainly not in dispute, these same medical advances have paradoxically revived the fear of inadvertent incest in some communities. For instance, Canadian Ms. McTeer warned of the dangers of “reproductive” incest if sperm donations and IVF are not carefully monitored.50 A 2001-case in Britain provoked concern about “reproductive” incest when a woman asked to have an in vitro procedure to implant a donor egg fertilized by her brother’s sperm.51 Incidents of physicians working in sperm banks and making multiple personal donations, allowing them individually to father hundreds of children in the same region, have given rise to a new anxiety: such offspring could theoretically meet and unwittingly commit incest with possible ensuing genetic complications. A 2016 case in Indianapolis, Indiana raised this very issue when a physician used his sperm for 50 artificial inseminations.52 In Adelaide, Australia, there is a case of more than twenty-five half-brothers and sisters who all share the same donor-father, many of whom reside in the same general area. 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 287

It is entirely possible that these half-siblings could meet, marry, and have children.53 Fearful of just such consequences, some governments such as that of Hong Kong limit a donor to three offspring in an effort to reduce the possibility of incest.54 The Lancet has reported on DNA tests of children with certain types of disability, tests which show “an absence of heterozygosity caused by uniparental disomy or identity by descent,” or more simply, consanguineous parents.55 Obviously, there is no implication or suggestion that all disabilities are the result of incestuous conception, but only that some births resulting from incestuous relationships may give rise to disabilities. The same article goes on to point out the legal ramifications of this information for health care professionals who will have to report suspicions of sexual abuse on the basis of biological laboratory evidence.56 Courtney Megan Cahill examines the possible consequences of certain potential legal constraints that might be placed on assisted reproduction for fear of accidental incest occurring among individuals conceived by a common donor in such procedures. Since accidental incest can and does happen among individuals conceived by those she calls “roving sexual inseminators,”57 why, she asks, have alternative reproductive procedures restimulated a fear of incest accompanied by the perceived need to leg- islate control of and perhaps even outlaw such procedures? Given some of the recent headlines we have just examined, we can see that some regulation is indeed needed. Cahill suggests, however, that there is another layer to this anxiety over incest: it displaces social anxiety over profound changes in the family structure which no longer requires a married het- erosexual couple as its foundation, destabilizing traditional family, sex, and gender identity.58 The need to regulate certain assisted reproductive procedures, then, uses the fear of inadvertent incest to displace the fear of social change. In our study, we have demonstrated similar underlying anxiety in Philipe de Rémi’s romance: institutional changes to marriage without consideration of material consequences could lead to social upheaval in which individual and legal relationships become more complicated and difficult to control by traditional authority figures. Clearly, La Manekine is not just one story motivated by an incestuous proposal: it invokes and recalls all stories about incest at once. Eliz- abeth Archibald reminds us of the poet Shelley’s assessment of incest: it is “like many other incorrect things a very poetical circumstance.”59 The incest motif in literature is a powerful metaphor and while we should not categorize it as a “mere” figure of rhetoric, one obviously cannot and 288 L. M. ROUILLARD should not mistake medieval narratives about incest for documented history, though we can certainly use such poems to get a sense of social mentalities and anxieties. A story such as La Manekine is all the more compelling because of the heroine’s only too realistic vulnerability, particularly for modern readers of a medieval text who cannot and should not put aside our knowledge and documentation of the trauma of incest. In fact, our twenty-first-century understanding of the issue makes the literary metaphor that much more powerful. There is no doubt that incest and sexual abuse occurred in the Middle Ages as they do now; the potential emblematic value of a literary motif based on only too-familiar exploita- tion and abuse can nonetheless symbolize numerous abstract concepts, including “the misuse of political power.”60 Or as Claude Roussel puts it: “Ce que la littérature retient prioritairement de l’inceste c’est peut-être son aptitude à brouiller le clivage de l’altérité et de l’identité.”61 “What literature takes from incest is perhaps the potential to blur the distinction between the Other and the Self.” The incest motif then launches a “re- conquête d’une identité perdue,”62 or “a quest for a lost identity” (translations mine). Addressing anxieties about one’s place in society starts with a clear sense of self: the protagonist Joïe/Manekine demonstrates all along that she is a daughter who cannot and will not replace her father’s wife. Once married to the King of Scotland, she will not relinquish her identity as his wife, no matter her mother-in-law’s opposition to Manekine’s status as royal bride. While in the home of the Roman Senator, Manekine may keep her identity a secret to others, but she nonetheless comports herself with dignity and virtue befitting a person who knows who and what she is. Our study of the incest motif can help us better understand the debate and evolution of religious practices through its literary depictions of the sacramental aspects of matrimony and penance. The nature of the sacrament of penance is highlighted in numerous works considered here, from the Charlemagne legend, to the story of Gregorius, to the Dit du buef. And while God is capable of forgiving such a heinous sin, it is that much more astonishing when the victims of such criminal sin do, as in the Dit du buef and La Manekine. Pierre Michaud-Quantin has made the following analogy between the evolution of these two sacraments, saying: “… la confession ainsi organisée a été, à côté du libre consentement matrimonial, la grande contribution de l’Eglise à la découverte et à l’affirmation de la personnalité de chaque chrétien, se manifestant par la responsabilité qu’il a de sa conduite;”63 “…confession, as it was practiced, was, along 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 289 with individual consent in marriage, the Church’s great contribution to the discovery and affirmation of the individuality of each Christian, as demonstrated by the responsibility attributed to each one for his actions” (translation mine). Manekine’s refusal to sin, or despair, along with her faith in God, motivate her agency: whether it is the drastic action of cutting off her own hand to save herself from an incestuous marriage, or surviving exile in foreign lands, she is never completely one who is acted upon, controlled, or manipulated. Indeed, the King of Hungary’s downfall, his acceptance of incest, his naïf belief that one woman is just like every other woman demonstrates the refusal of that individuality. Years later after a long unsuccessful search for a woman who resembles his departed wife, the King of Hungary still believes women are interchange- able. After Manekine identifies herself to her father in Rome, he briefly hesitates before accepting her as his daughter, saying: “‘femmes s’entres- sanblent assés’” (l. 7161); “‘women resemble each other quite a lot.’” If women are all alike, in the King of Hungary’s mind, then it is no wonder that he was able to rationalize an incestuous coupling. But if women are all alike, just why was it so difficult for the King of Hungary to find someone (besides his daughter) like his late wife? In contrast, the Roman Senator clearly recognizes Manekine’s individuality: “C’onques mais ne vis sa pareille” (l. 6263); “I never saw her equal.” In this respect, Manekine is indeed her mother’s daughter. Just as no one was able to find a woman who looked like the late Queen of Hungary except for her daughter, Manekine is also without peer.

Notes

1. See Christine Grogan, Father-Daughter Incest in Twentieth-Century Amer- ican Literature: The Complex Trauma of the Wound and the Voiceless (Madison, WI: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2016), for her review of works using this motif, in particular 78–95. 2. A.S. Byatt, Angels & Insects: Two Novellas (New York: Random House, 1992). Philip Haas, dir., Angels and Insects (Los Angeles, CA: Orion Home Video [1998], 1995). 3. A.S. Byatt, Angels & Insects, 123. 4. Bertrand Tavernier, dir., La Passion Béatrice (Los Angeles, CA: Virgin Vision, Clea Productions, 1989). 5. Percy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenci: A Tragedy in Five Acts, Given from the Poet’s Own Editions (New York: Phaeton Press, 1970). See also Elizabeth 290 L. M. ROUILLARD

Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination (Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 2001), 110 note 14, and 183–184. 6. Michel Peyramaure, La passion Béatrice: roman d’après le scénario original de Colo Tavernier O’Hagan pour le film de Bertrand Tavernier (Paris: R. Laffont, 1987). 7. Stephen Hay, Bertrand Tavernier: The Film-Maker of Lyon (London: I.B. Tauris, 2000), 130, footnote 3. 8. George Elliott Clarke, Beatrice Chancy (Victoria, BC: Polestar, 1999). 9. Gayl Jones, Corregidora (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), 14. 10. See Grogan, Father-Daughter Incest, 95–120. 11. Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss: A Memoir (New York: Random House, 1997) and Thicker than Water (New York: Avon Books, 1991). See Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 3 for her comments on The Kiss. 12. Mackenzie Phillips, High on Arrival: A Memoir (New York: Simon Spot- light Entertainment, 2009). 13. Mure Dickie, “Explicit Comics Leave Tokyo Unamused,” Financial Times, Tuesday, December 21, 2010: 3. My thanks to Professor Don Wedding for bringing this article to my attention. 14. Elaine Showalter, Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), 57. 15. Showalter, Hystories, 91. 16. Showalter, Hystories, 147. 17. Showalter, Hystories, 44. 18. Showalter, Hystories, 71. 19. Showalter, Hystories, 147. 20. Carol Tavris, The Mismeasure of Woman (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 312–329. See Janice Doane and Devon Hodges, Telling Incest: Narratives of Dangerous Remembering From Stein to Sapphire (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 92–95 for a discussion of the evolution of Tavris’s writing on abuse narratives, moving from her recognition of individual trauma to her board membership in the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. From her initial understanding of the individual’s suffering and her concern for a larger political and systemic understanding that would lead to change, Tavris shifted to a concern for false memory and personal profit from the sale of survivor stories, 94–95. 21. Gregory Leavitt, “Sociobiological Explanations of Incest Avoidance: A Critical Review of Evidential Claims,” American Anthropologist 92 (1990): 971–993; here 983. 22. Leavitt, “Sociobiological Explanations of Incest Avoidance,” 984. 23. Kerry Harvey, “I Will Wed My Sis,” The Sun, February 9, 2008, https:// advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection= news&id=urn:contentItem:4S3G-S0K0-TX5B-9018-00000-00&context= 1516831, accessed February 24, 2019. This article defines GSA or 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 291

genetic sexual attraction as a condition that may result when siblings are raised separately: “normal sexual taboos are not formed properly because family members have not grown up together.” Tom Pettifor, “Forbidden Sex Appeal,” The Mirror, March 22, 2008, https://advance- lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id= urn:contentItem:4S3W-BYJ0-TX36-R14V-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed February 24, 2019. This article refers to ﬁndings about sibling attraction as reported in the British Medical Journal (1995). 24. Lindsay Putnam, “Mom and Son Admit to Incest,” New York Post, April 9, 2016, http://nypost.com/2016/04/09/mom-and-son-admit-to- incest-go-into-hiding-to-avoid-jail/, accessed July 1, 2016. Also Christo- pher Bucktin, “Incest Couple Go into Hiding; Mother-and-Son Lovers Face 15 Years’ Jail,” Daily Mirror, April 9, 2016, https://advance-lexis- com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn: contentItem:5JGT-TN71-DY9P-N49S-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed July 1, 2016. 25. BBC News, Scotland Politics, “MSPs Throw out Petition on Legal- ising Adult Incest,” January 26, 2016, http://www.bbc.com/news/ uk-scotland-scotland-politics-35401195, accessed July 1, 2016. See also Mikey Smith, “Scottish Parliament Debated Legalising Incest Today,” Mirror, January 26, 2016, http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/ scottish-parliament-debated-legalising-incest-7251773, accessed August 2, 2017. 26. Kathy Marks, Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island Revealed (New York: Free Press, 2009). 27. Marks, Lost Paradise, 264. See Claire Harvey, “The Pitcairn Par- adise, or an Island of Depravity?” The New York Times, October 20, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/20/world/asia/the-pitcairn- paradise-or-an-island-of-depravity.html, accessed February 10, 2019. 28. Marks, Lost Paradise, 259. 29. Marks, Lost Paradise, 47. 30. Marks, Lost Paradise, 92. 31. Marks, Lost Paradise, 64. 32. Marks, Lost Paradise, 105. 33. See William Prochnau and Laura Parker, “Trouble in Paradise,” Van- ity Fair, January 2008, https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/01/ pitcairn200801, accessed July 31, 2017. 34. See Emily Fielden, “‘He Knew It Was Wrong’,” The Guardian,Octo- ber 27, 2004, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2004/oct/ 27/familyandrelationships.southpaciﬁc, accessed February 10, 2019. 35. Marks, Lost Paradise, 100. 36. Kate Connolly, “Austrian Incest Case: Reunion: Emotional Scenes as Family Meets ‘Cellar Siblings’ for First Time,” The Guardian, 292 L. M. ROUILLARD

April 30, 2008, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/ api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4SD7-S6S0-TX37- G0FB-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed October 28, 2016. 37. Derek Scally, “Fritzl Claims He Is No Monster but Addicted to Incest,” The Irish Times, May 9, 2008, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink. edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4SG4- B430-TX39-J058-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed October 28, 2016. See also John Glatt, Secrets in the Cellar: A True Story of the Austrian Incest Case That Shocked the World (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 2009). 38. Sue Montgomery, “Man Gets Three Years in Incest Case; Daugh- ter Describes Having Three Children with Biological Father over 13 Years,” The Gazette (Montreal), March 15, 2012, https://advance-lexis- com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn: contentItem:555Y-7HG1-DY2T-C29H-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed October 28, 2016. 39. Niraj Chokshi, “Montana Judge Is Criticized for 60-Day Incest Sentence,” The New York Times, October 21, 2016, http://nyti.ms/2eo4G28, accessed October 21, 2016. 40. Emily Crane, “Woman, 21, and Her Father, 39, Are Charged with Incest,” Daily Mail, February 5, 2019, https://www.dailymail.co. uk/news/article-6669699/Nebraska-woman-charged-incest-having-sex- father.html, accessed March 7, 2019. 41. Adrian Croft, “Boy Meets Girl, Learns They Are Twins; Separated at Birth; Judge Annuls Marriage, Keeps Identities Secret,” National Post, January 12, 2008, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/ api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4RJY-V2B0-TWD3- S0CX-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed October 28, 2016. See also Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, footnotes 87, 99 for a story about potential incestuous relationships inadvertently discovered in internet chat rooms. 42. Jeff Jacoby, “Lawful Incest May Be on Its Way,” The Boston Globe, May 2, 2007, http://www.jeffjacoby.com/308/lawful-incest-may-be-on- its-way, accessed January 9, 2009. 43. Calum Carmichael, Sex and Religion in the Bible (New Haven: Yale Uni- versity Press, 2010), 138. 44. Dan Lamothe, “A Soldier Rose to Become a General. His Daugh- ter Says He Abused Her for Years,” Washington Post, December 16, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/a- soldier-rose-to-become-a-general-his-daughter-says-he-abused-her-for- years/2018/12/16/965a976a-fd61-11e8-83c0b06139e540e5_story. html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.864f437ec5a0, accessed December 19, 2018. 8 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE INCEST MOTIF 293

45. Rebecca Tan, “This British Couple Tried to Force Their Daughter to Marry Her Cousin. Now They’re Going to Jail,” Washington Post, August 1, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/ wp/2018/08/01, accessed August 5, 2018. 46. Errol Louis, “Courtin’ Trouble. Gay Marriage Victory in Albany Stirs Valid Fears That Incest and Polygamy Could Come Next,” Daily News (New York), June 21, 2007, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink. edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4P19- 9CB0-TWCR-42M3-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed October 28, 2016. 47. Jacoby, “Lawful Incest.” 48. Andrew Gumbel, “Rape Trial of ‘Polygamy Prophet’ Kicks off in USA,” The Independent (London), September 15, 2007, https:// www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/rape-trial-of-polygamy- prophet-kicks-off-in-usa-402397.html, accessed February 10, 2019. 49. John Boswell, The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (New York: Vintage, 1988), 384. 50. Sharon Kirkey, “Baby-Making ‘Barter’ Looms, McTeer Warns: Canada Risks ‘Reproductive Incest’ by Not Regulating Sperm, Egg Donors,” The Ottawa Citizen, November 16, 1999: A1, https://advance-lexis- com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/document?collection=news&id=urn: contentItem:3XWR-GVM0-00KD-31FK-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed October 28, 2016. 51. Lois Rogers, “Woman to Have Brother’s IVF Child,” Sunday Times, August 26, 2001, https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-68736/ Woman-brothers-IVF-baby.html, accessed September 17, 2008. 52. Vic Ryckaert and Shari Rudavsky, “Indianapolis Fertility Doctor Accused of Using Own Sperm,” IndyStar, September 13, 2016, https://www. indystar.com/story/news/crime/2016/09/12/fertility-doctor-facing- charges/90253406/, accessed February 10, 2019. 53. Tory Shepherd, “Sperm Clinics Expert Calls for State Registry; Incest Fears for Children of Donors,” The Advertiser (Australia), October 2, 2007: 29, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/ document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4PT8-N5W0-TX52- N0MX-00000-00&context=151683, accessed September 17, 2008. See also Susan L. Crockin, J.D. and Howard W. Jones, Jr., M.D., Legal Con- ceptions: The Evolving Law and Policy of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), 172–176. 54. Ella Lee, “Database to Track Sperm and Offspring; Records Kept to Avoid Incest, Unethical Acts,” South China Morning Post,February 13, 2008, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/ 294 L. M. ROUILLARD

document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:4RTV-MXN0-TX36- 91N4-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed October 28, 2016. 55. C.P. Schaaf, D.A. Scott, J. Wiszniewska, and A.L. Beaudet, “Identiﬁcation of Incestuous Parental Relationships by SNP-Based DNA Microarrays,” The Lancet, 377 (February 12, 2011), http://www.thelancet.com/ journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736%2811%2960201-8/fulltext, accessed March 9, 2011. 56. Dan Vergano, “Tests Could Conﬁrm Incest: Analysis May Uncover Abuse,” The Arizona Republic, February 11, 2011, http://archive. azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/20110211usat-incest0211. html, accessed February 24, 2019. My thanks to Professor Don Wedding for bringing this to my attention. 57. Courtney Megan Cahill, “The Oedipus Hex: Regulating Family After Marriage Equality,” UC Davis Law Review 49 (November 2015): 1–53; here 8, https://advance-lexis-com.proxy.ohiolink.edu:9100/api/ document?collection=news&id=urn:contentItem:5H94-3NP1-F03R- N4BC-00000-00&context=1516831, accessed June 30, 2016. 58. Cahill, “The Oedipus Hex,” 2–3. 59. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination,8. 60. Archibald, Incest and the Medieval Imagination, 18. 61. Claude Roussel, “Aspects du père incestueux dans la littérature médié- vale,” in Amour, mariage et transgressions au moyen âge, eds. Danielle Buschinger and André Crépin (Göppingen: Kümmerle Verlag, 1984): 47– 62; here 58. 62. Roussel, “Aspects du père incestueux,” 58. 63. Pierre Michaud-Quantin, Sommes de Casuistique et manuels de confession au Moyen Âge (Louvain: Nauwelaerts, 1962), 110.

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A Arthur, 82, 83, 251–253 Abbess Herrad of Hohenbourg, 221 Augustus, Philip, 26 Abbey of Saint-Denis, 14, 144 Abelard, Peter, 112, 139, 170, 171, 263 B Absolution, 3, 15, 81, 85, 171, Bede, 224 172, 175, 177, 178, 181, 182, Berengier, 83 186–191, 193, 198, 247 Béroul, 248, 269 Biblical incest narratives, 32 Abstinence, 110, 115, 118, 141–143, Blanche of Castille, 46, 153, 154 145, 158, 159, 179 Bodily fragmentation, 3 Affine connections, 2 Brother-sister marriage, 41, 43 Agnatic and cognatic systems, 46, 47, 69 Alan of Lille, 177, 202, 204, 211 C Ami et Amile, 249 Cathars, 110, 111 Anthropological definitions of incest, Charlemagne, 28, 69, 80–83, 91, 173, 40, 41 181, 187–190, 219, 224, 232, Anthropological definitions of kinship, 288 46 Chevalier au Barisel, 190 Antigone, 49, 50, 258 Church authority, 7, 80 Apollonius of Tyre, 78, 284 Clementine Recognitions, 77 Armenia, 14, 21, 47–49, 83, 91, 118, Clergy, 3, 14, 16–18, 28, 39, 50, 79, 129, 144, 145, 194 93, 94, 130, 132, 171–174, 183,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 299 license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 L. M. Rouillard, Medieval Considerations of Incest, Marriage, and Penance, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35602-6 300 INDEX

198, 224, 229, 231, 245, 254, De une noble fame de Rome, 84 255, 264, 265 de Vitry, Jacques, 175, 225, 255 Clerics, 13, 14, 16, 24, 29, 35, 46, de Voragine, Jacobus, 81, 85, 219 50, 93, 110, 112, 118, 128, Dispensations, 24, 131, 135 130–132, 142, 143, 147, 149, Dowager queen, 29, 30, 258, 259, 156, 170, 173–175, 195, 196, 262, 267 198, 254, 255, 260, 263, 267 Coercion, 3, 123–125, 178, 285 E Collective penance, 181 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 26, 46 Consanguinity, 2, 3, 14, 20, 22, 23, Elizabeth of Schönau, 263 25–27, 54, 55, 77, 109, 113, Endogamy, 29, 41, 45, 93 120, 129, 131, 132, 134, 135, Erec et Enide, 118, 122, 251 174, 286 Euripides, 32, 40 Container-ﬁsh, 80, 219 Exogamy, 25, 37, 40, 41, 46 Contrition, 3, 77, 171, 172, 175–177, 179, 181, 182, 188–192, 194, 200, 202, 203, 207 F Count Geoffrey, 26 Father–daughter relationships, 28, 29, Count Geoffroi Martel, 20, 133 84, 197 Fin’amor, 122, 135 Fish, 14, 31, 80, 145, 219, 220, 222, D 224, 229, 231, 232, 234 Damian, Peter, 23, 28, 29, 38, 46, Folktales, 1, 77 121, 133 Forced marriage, 113, 122, 285 de Beaumanoir, Philippe, 47 Fourth Lateran Council, 3, 22, de Berneville, Guillaume, 81, 187 23, 25, 114, 120, 129, 132, de Coinci, Gautier, 84, 190–192 135, 171, 183, 194, 222, 226, de Courson, Robert, 142, 172 228–231, 234 de France, Marie, 38, 122, 123, 284 Fritzl, Josef, 283, 284 De Jong, 21, 25, 28 De l’avènement antecrist, 83 de Pizan, Christine, 119, 150, 262, G 265 General absolution, 181–185, 189, de Rémi, Philippe, 6, 7, 13, 14, 30, 197 32, 36, 40, 45, 46, 48, 83, 91, General confession, 177, 182–184, 94, 107, 111, 113–119, 121, 247 123, 131, 132, 135, 136, 144, Genesis, 36, 196 174, 177, 184, 188, 194, 199, Geoffrey of Monmouth, 82 217, 232, 233, 254, 255, 257, Gerald of Wales, 37, 39, 283 264, 265, 281, 284, 287 Germanic model, 21 de Saint-Quentin, Jehan, 85, 191, 192 Gesta Romanorum, 78 de Troyes, Chrétien, 118, 122, 123, Golden Legend, 81, 85, 187, 188 189, 251, 252, 267, 268 Grammaticus, Saxo, 79, 95 INDEX 301

Gratian, 112, 121, 125, 169, 171, 129, 133, 137, 143, 144, 198, 262 247, 248, 289 Greek and Roman mythologies, 31, Inheritance, 14, 46, 47, 49, 90, 109, 42 111, 113, 116, 177, 194, 226, Gregory of Tours, 250 234, 276 Grosseteste, Robert, 19, 172 Iseut, 248, 257 Isidore of Seville, 23, 64

H Heir, 13–17, 20, 47, 48, 51, 180, J 194, 277 John of Salisbury, 26, 113, 148, 155 Herodotus, 31, 219 John the Baptist, 34, 35 Hildegard of Bingen, 38, 263 Joïe (Manekine), 13–18, 23, 29, 31, Hincmar of Reims, 19 32, 34, 38, 45, 47–51, 78, 83, Historia Brittonum, 78 85, 87, 93, 94, 111, 113, 114, Historia Regum Britonniae, 82 123–129, 137–140, 142–145, History of the Franks, 250 174, 176, 186, 189, 195–198, “Holy incest”, 35, 84 200, 247, 255–263, 265–268, Hortus deliciarum, 221 277, 278, 288 Hugues Capet, 22 Judas, 85 Hungary, 14, 48, 49, 83, 91–94, 118, 144, 145, 174, 227, 245, 258 K King Antiochus, 78, 88, 89, 284 I King Henry III, 27 Inadvertent incest, 4, 286, 287 King of Hungary, 13, 14, 16, 17, 19, Incest, 1, 2, 4–8, 13–16, 19, 21, 20, 29, 33, 36, 38, 39, 47–50, 23–45, 49, 51, 77–86, 88–92, 84, 91, 115, 117, 122–126, 128, 108, 111, 113, 130–132, 134, 129, 131, 132, 134, 136–138, 135, 145, 169, 170, 172, 173, 142, 145, 170, 174, 175, 177, 175, 176, 188–193, 198, 200, 183–186, 188, 189, 194, 195, 219, 250, 258, 265, 276–281, 197, 198, 217, 222, 230, 249, 283–289 250, 253, 255–257, 260, 262, Incest as a metaphor, 5, 279 264, 266, 267, 277, 283, 289 Incest by afﬁnity, 19, 20, 24, 26, 27, King of Scotland, 13, 29, 30, 35, 45, 33, 34, 77, 81, 250, 286 48–51, 84, 113–115, 118, 121, Incest motif, 2, 4, 5, 7, 26, 28–30, 122, 126–129, 133, 137–140, 40, 44, 77, 79, 80, 82–84, 86, 142, 144, 196, 230, 247, 248, 91, 132, 172, 192, 275, 276, 253, 258–260, 262, 263, 266, 279, 281, 287, 288 267, 288 Individual consent, 2, 3, 18, 45, 107, King Robert the Pious, 19 112, 113, 115, 116, 119–123, King Stephen, 92, 93 302 INDEX

L 107, 108, 110–118, 120–129, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, 86, 131–135, 137–145, 174, 188, 90 217, 228, 230, 233, 234, La Chanson d’Yde et Olive, 88 245–247, 249, 253, 255, 260, La Fille du Comte de Pontieu, 179 276, 277, 284–286, 289 Laity, 3, 8, 14, 15, 20, 25, 29, 108, Marriage between ﬁrst cousins, 44 111, 112, 115, 116, 132, 134, Mary, 35, 42, 84, 121, 145, 198, 170, 173–175, 181, 184, 186, 219, 225, 260, 261 224, 225, 227–231, 254, 264, Medieval incest prohibitions, 24 268 Memory device, 7 La Manekine, 6, 7, 13–16, 18, 20, 24, Miracles de Nostre Dame par 26, 28, 29, 31–33, 35, 36, 38, personnage, 20, 91 39, 45, 46, 52, 77, 80, 83–94, Miraculous grafts, 3 107, 113–118, 125, 131, 133, Misogamy, 107, 111, 117, 223 135–138, 140, 142, 144, 145, Monstrous marriage, 18, 50, 130 169, 170, 173–175, 177, 183, 184, 186, 189–191, 193–200, N 217, 219, 222, 223, 227–230, Non-solemn public penance, 179, 233, 234, 246, 251, 253, 260, 180, 184, 185 263, 265–267, 276–278, 283, 284, 287, 288 Lancelot, 136–138 O Language, 1, 3, 93, 132, 135, 200, Oaths, 246, 248, 251 245, 246, 249, 256, 263, 265, Oedipus, 30, 35, 49 266, 268 La Vie de Sainte Elysabel, 225 Lay confession, 181 P Le Fèvre, Jehan, 110 Parent–child incest, 7, 29, 86 Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, 225 Paternal authority, 3, 7 Li Contes del graal, 189 Penance, 3, 6, 14, 16, 19, 25, Lombard, Peter, 22, 55, 112, 121, 29, 52, 54, 57, 62, 77, 80, 124, 171, 177, 221 89, 90, 97, 111, 118, 141, Louis IX, 46 142, 169–172, 174, 177–181, Louis VII, 26, 46, 130, 131, 135 183–186, 188–190, 192–194, 199, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 210, 211, 246, 247, 263, 288 M Penitentials, 28, 171, 180 Mai und Beaﬂor, 86 Perceval, 190, 267, 268 Manuel des pechiez, 142, 175 Peter the Chanter, 24, 132, 134 Map, Walter, 110, 118, 146 Pitcairn, 282, 283 Marriage, 2, 6, 13, 14, 16, 19, Pope Eugene III, 26 21, 23–34, 38, 41–43, 45, 46, Pope Gregorius, 79, 219 48–50, 77, 81, 82, 89, 91, 93, Private penance, 180, 185, 189 INDEX 303

Public confession, 3, 177, 180, Self-mutilation, 13, 78, 125, 126, 184–186, 189, 192, 199, 217, 145, 196, 247, 256, 258 222 Seneschals, 14–17, 45, 119, 120, 143, Public forgiveness, 3, 6 144 Public penance, 169, 178–183, 185, Sexual abuse, 1, 2, 5, 6, 28, 31, 198, 199 280–283, 287, 288 Sexuality, 28, 39, 121 Sir Kay, 251 R Solemn public penance, 178 Ralph of Vermandois, 130 Speech acts, 245, 246, 248, 251–253, Rape, 31, 77–79, 83, 86–89, 126, 268 179, 275, 278, 279, 282, 283, “Spiritual” incest, 19, 54, 286 286 St. Augustine, 36–39, 44, 108, 141, Rash boons, 3, 90, 249–253, 255, 233 259, 260, 262, 267 St. Bernard, 114, 131, 233 Raymond of Penyafort, 114, 124, St. Denis, 225 140, 178, 180, 181, 194, 247 St. Dymphna, 86–88, 284 Relics, 3, 87, 223–226, 228–230, St. Jerome, 110, 227 248, 251 St. Peter, 15, 222, 224 Reliquary, 6, 92, 145, 222–230, Survivor narratives, 2, 7, 279 232–234 Resurrection, 110, 217, 219–222, 234 T Rhetoric, 5, 122, 127, 135–137, 139, “Tariff” system, 3, 171 140, 199, 233, 252, 256, 287 Theophilus, 260, 261 Robert of Flamborough, 177 Thora, 79 Roman model, 21 Transubstantiation, 231, 247 Roman senator, 45, 94, 115, 139, 141, 142, 222, 261, 266, 288, V 289 Vergil, 169 Rutebeuf, 225 Vie de Saint Gilles, 81, 173 Vie seinte Audree, 122 S Virtuous laity, 7 Sacrament, 14, 16, 112, 114, 115, von Aue, Hartmann, 79, 219 117, 121, 126, 131, 139, 171, Vortigern, 78 177, 189, 190, 194, 198, 231, 247 W Sacrament of marriage, 14, 114, 118, William of Waddington, 142, 175, 132, 136, 145, 170, 186 255 Sacrament of penance, 3, 14, 85, 169–172, 186, 187, 189–192, 197, 199, 232, 288 Y Salic Law, 46 Yves of Chartres, 134