Nine
Change and Continuity in Pagan and Christian (Invective) Thought on Women and Marriage from Antiquity to the Middle Ages
Moreover, it is the peculiar glory of your family that from the days of Camillus few or none of your women are recorded as having known a second husband's bed. Therefore you will not be so much deserving of praise if you persist in widowhood, as you would be worthy of execration if you, a Christian, failed to keep a custom which heathen women observed for so many generations.1
So, in his fifty-fourth epistle, De monogamia, addressed to the Roman aristocrat Furia, Jerome cites pagans as models for his Christian addressee. In doing so, he enters into an intellectual (semi)alliance with paganism that seems at odds with his usual combative asceticism.2 On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that Jerome often incorporates elements of pagan dissuasio matrimonii in his discussions of marriage and that he is neither the first nor the last of the Doctors of the Church to do so.
Why, then, did Christians turn to the traditions of ancient misogamy or to pagan ideals of monogamy and cultic virginity when looking for arguments in favor of their ascetically motivated skepticism toward marriage? One could cite the continuing influence of ancient modes of thought and ways of life, from which Christians could not have entirely emancipated themselves even if they had wished to do so, or the desire for legitimization through precedent.3 But that alone is not a satisfactory answer. First, it is clear that on other occasions, Christians were perfectly capable of breaking with pagan traditions if it seemed opportune to do so; this would seem to indicate a conscious strategy on their part. Second, classical arguments for and against marriage were not simply taken over but underwent a complex process of adaptation, whose causes, conditions, and manifestations are worthy of examination—not least as preconditions for the development of medieval misogamy.
CLASSICAL MARRIAGE AND MISOGAMY
The ancient world, with its patriarchal structures, was characterized by a view of marriage that made distinctions according to gender. For religious, economic, and social reasons, married life was usually the only alternative for a free woman.4 Unmarried women were the exception and were treated with suspicion;5 they were seen as pitiful creatures.6 Men had more room for maneuver and greater freedom of choice (aside from the social imperative of assuring the continuation of the family). There was, especially among men of high social standing, a desire to avoid the troublesome obligation of supporting a family and an unwillingness to marry that might be linked to the existence of prostitution, homoeroticism, or a philistine desire for independence. Skepticism toward marriage could even be felt in republican Rome, where the cult of the family played an important role. Gellius (1.6.2) mentions a comment by Q. Metellus Macedonicus, who says, “If we could get on without a wife, Romans, we would all avoid that annoyance; but since nature has ordained that we can neither live very comfortably with them nor at all without them, we must take thought for our lasting well-being rather than for the pleasure of the moment.” For this reason, official measures for making marriage compulsory were primarily directed at men who were unwilling to marry;7 but even in early times, when asked to promulgate marriage laws, Solon replied that women were a heavy burden.8
This differentiation between the genders led to a situation in which the ideal of successive monogamy, of univira/monandros, as a branch of classical discourse on marriage and in the context of pudicitia and fides, was only applicable (with unimportant exceptions)9 to women.10 Paradoxically, univira became increasingly important during the late Republic and early empire, at a time when marriages among the upper classes were particularly short-lived (due to divorce).11 Christianity, therefore, found in place a basic aversion toward the remarriage of women and was able to reinterpret it according to its own ideas—and eventually apply it to men.12
Classical pro- and anti-marriage discourse has three main characteristics: a strict concentration on the male perspective;13 emphasis on procreation as the (sole) purpose of marriage;14 and a close link with normative misogyny,15 the stereotypes of which can be traced in an unbroken line from Hesiod's warnings against women to the late high points of the ascetic philosophical movements of the empire.16 Although positive opinions of marriage and wives can be found,17 texts are dominated by cynical voices. The Roman satirist Lucilius, for example, is of the opinion that, for the unmarried, everything in life seems good, for the married, everything bad; one can tolerate marriage for the sake of the children, but only as a wealthy man.18
Ridicule, irony, and hyperbolic satire seem to be elements of central importance when men in the ancient world deal with the distorted images of the unavoidable19 inconveniences of married life. On the one hand, many of the poetical genres used in classical marriage discourse—the invective song, the epigram,20 satire, and comedy21—tend to convey a humorous view of affairs, even if the humor threatens, on occasion, to turn to sarcasm, as when Hipponax of Ephesus, the sixth-century composer of invectives and begging songs, says: “Two days of a woman are full of pleasure: the day when she is married and the day when she is carried out—dead.”22 On the other hand, there is an ambivalent view of marriage in the works of philosophers, who are detached23 or understanding about the inevitability of human weakness,24 though they, too, on the whole, despite differences of tone, see a wife as a handicap for a philosopher.25 Marriage was incorporated critically into the systems of the Hellenistic philosophical schools and related to their conceptions of human happiness. The Cynics took a skeptical attitude toward marriage (Diogenes exhorted philosophers not to marry)26, the Neoplatonists an ascetic one.27 Epicurus also explicitly spoke out against marriage and procreation, since for him they were simply a burden to the philosopher.28 Philosophers of the Peripatetic school—especially Theophrastus—were in favor of a reduction of passion in marriage, corresponding to their general theory of the reduction of emotions. Only the Stoics were on the whole convinced of the public and private necessity of marriage. From Antipater of Tarsus (third century B.C.) to Musonius Rufus and Hierocles of Alexandria, the Stoics sing the praises of marriage as an ideal form of humanitas.29 But Cynical-Stoic diatribe, with its elements of σπoυδoγ
λoιoν, was a rich source and fund
of complaints against marriage30 on which the Doctors of the Church in the East and West could abundantly draw.31 Epictetus's statement of the incompatibility of married life with a philosophical way of life anticipates the admonitions of the Christian patres to remain free from the claims of the family for the sake of God.
But in such an order of things as the present, which is like that of a battlefield, it is a question, perhaps, if the Cynic ought not to be free from distraction, wholly devoted to the service of God, free to go about among men, not tied down by the private duties of men or involved in relationships which he cannot violate and still maintain his role as a good and excellent man, whereas, on the other hand, if he observes them, he will destroy the messenger, the scout, the herald of the gods that he is. For see, he must show certain services to his father-in-law, to the rest of his wife's relatives, to his wife herself; finally, he is driven from his profession, to act as a nurse in his own family and to provide for them. To make a long story short, he must get a kettle to heat water for the baby, for washing it in a bath-tub. …32
Both the close links between misogamy and misogyny and the element of satirical mockery in the works of poets and philosophers are a result of the works' pragmatic social function and the nature of their intended addressees. The patriarchal social system of the ancient world, with its gender segregation,33 produced literary forms that were addressed from man to man, despite the existence of female readers and authors. Literature was primarily a medium for men to reflect on the world and on themselves. Texts pro and contra marriage are therefore statements by men on women and life with them. Their misogynistic tone has a double function in relation to its addressees: it is directly addressed to men and serves to reassure them of their dominance; indirectly, it is addressed to women, with an implicit exhortation to them to accept their inferiority and the norms that govern it. With an emphasis on philosophical argumentation, these texts underpin the social freedom of a privileged class of men by emphasizing the differences in status between men and women. Their prominent misogynistic elements are a reaction to the social and political consequences of liberalizing tendencies that improved the financial situation of women. A certain economic prosperity in urban society is a necessary prerequisite for a negative attitude toward marriage (a farmer struggling for his existence cannot do without his wife). Such attitudes came to the fore with particularly misogynistic undercurrents—for example, in Juvenal's satires on women—at the very times when the increasing freedom, power, influence, education, and financial independence of wives threatened to destabilize the patriarchal system.
Antigamous literature in the ancient world had a dual function—as propaganda for endangered norms and values and as entertainment. Its philosophical argumentation served as propaganda in favor of the values of an intellectual and social elite (the minority that could at all afford to remain single). Furthermore, in the mundus perversas of hyperbolic satire, the distorted misogynistic images and the sarcastic generalizations of the dissuasio matrimonii underpin social norms and lead to increased conformity in society. Laughter—in particular, the iocari et delectare that accompanies satirical misogynistic discourse on marriage—has a noteworthy function in this context. Men's collective laughing at women—which goes well beyond the inherent amusement men sometimes display toward each other—clearly bonded and strengthened them, while at the same time excluding women and objectifying them. Women could only join in two awkward circumstances. They could distance themselves from the object of ridicule, thus breaking the phalanx of female solidarity: by laughing at the nonconformist behavior of other women, they confirmed and accepted stereotypical norms. Or they could identify themselves with the object of ridicule, feeling that they were themselves being ridiculed and, in so doing, accepting the role of the ridiculed, inferior object. Given their social freedom, men were able joyfully to utter lamentations about the burden of having a wife and children, only to cling unrelentingly to the social indispensability of marriage as the basis of male dominance. Ancient misogamy and misogyny therefore acted as a safety valve that, as might be expected, rarely called marriage into question by presenting alternative models for society as a whole. Consequently, like all social satire, it contributed in the end to the reform and maintenance of the existing hierarchical social system.
EARLY CHRISTIAN MISOGAMY
Early Christian misogamy differs in many ways from the situation just described. First, sexual abstinence, which had only been of peripheral importance in classical marriage discourse, came to play a central role.34 For early Christian ascetics, sexuality represented the situation of fallen humanity;35 marriage was no longer a divine institution.36 Second, the successive monogamy required by the New Testament not only altered the hitherto morally unimpeachable status of divorce37 but also led increasingly to a dissuasio matrimonii secundi following the death of a partner. In the following period, Manichaean dualism and Encratite movements, as well as eschatological tendencies, transformed the general resistance to second marriages and remarriage into a general rejection of marriage for the “true” Christian.38 Third, the eschatological and ascetic tendencies in early Christianity led to a fundamental and wide-reaching reinterpretation of the classical Platonic and Aristotelian inheritance: the concept of (collective and individual) immortality through marriage and procreation was transformed by the ascetic movements into the concept of immortality, or eternal life, through the renunciation of procreation.39 Procreation as an aim of marriage therefore lost its importance for some time to come. Fourth, early Christians were deeply preoccupied by the question of how to reconcile eschatological concerns with a meaningful existence within the social conditions of the time.40 It was no longer a question of choosing between the joys of life as a bachelor and the expensive boredom of married life; rather, one chose between eternal bliss and the futility of earthly life, denying marriage the self-evidence that it had maintained largely untouched throughout antiquity.41 Celibacy was no longer a positive or negative exception; it was the anticipation of heavenly angelic life and, as such, normal for a “true” Christian. Fifth, the gender-specific weighting in favor of a male-biased misogynistic misogamy was to a considerable extent abandoned as women, due to their early commitment to the Christian faith, increasingly became the direct addressees. Additionally, it became possible, thanks to ascetic tendencies, for women freely to choose celibacy, while the ideals of chastity and faithfulness were also applied to men. Consequently, the close links between misogamy and misogyny became looser, and both tendencies took on new, distinctive functions.
The apostolic pioneer of Christian dissitasio matrimonii was St. Paul.42 He combined Jewish sexual rigorism43 with an eschatological indifference toward marriage as the institution of a transitory world and justified his preference for celibacy Christologically—Christ demands undivided devotion.44
Both the ideal of successive monogamy and the rejection of marriage in favor of ascetic abstinence represented an unprecedented provocation for the family-centered ancient world and led to the accusation that Christians were socially intolerable misanthropists who lived contra naturam. The roots of the references to legitimizing pagan exempla, which Tertullian was one of the first to use, may well lie—especially during the persecutions—in attempts to moderate this provocativeness and gain acceptance for Christians. Nevertheless, the continued use of this strategy in the post-Constantinian period shows that the recourse to classical misogamy and misogyny also had other (sociopolitical) functions, which I will examine with reference to a comparison between Tertullian and Jerome.45
CHRISTIAN ADAPTATION OF CLASSICAL MISOGAMY AND MISOGYNY: TERTULLIAN AND JEROME
The recourse by Tertullian and Jerome to pagan traditions for the formulation of their Christian misogamy has similarities in structure and content: in their numerous statements on the subject, both authors respond to concrete cases that show that marriage and celibacy were hotly debated problems for their contemporaries. Both authors belong to the radical, ascetic wing of Christian thought and therefore come dangerously close to charges of heresy,46 which they attempt, more or less successfully, to ward off by grudgingly accepting marriage.47 Their views were of paramount importance for Christian asceticism.48 Both authors aim their advice at men as well as women; both address two different groups—(ascetic) Christians directly and pagans indirectly. Both have recourse to characteristic elements of the philosophical and satiricalmisogynistic branches of classical misogamy and recontextualize them, introducing new differentiations and intentions. In this respect, however, considerable differences can be seen between the two authors, resulting from their differing historical circumstances. I will confine myself to a brief summary here, since these two authors are treated extensively in Elizabeth Clark's chapter in this book (chap. 8).
In their ascetic Christian attacks on marriage, Tertullian and Jerome make reference to topoi belonging to classical marriage discourse and the misogyny closely connected to it. They thus seek legitimacy by linking themselves to tradition. The divergences between the two authors reflect clearly the changing social, political, and religious environment between the second and fourth centuries. On the one hand, Tertullian, working among the persecutions of the pre-Constantinian era, had to steer an often ambivalent and contradictory course in his use of classical misogamy, between the Scylla of annoying and provoking the pagans with a radical attack on marriage and the Charybdis of endangering the unique nature and value of Christian celibacy by connecting it too closely to pagan traditions. Jerome, on the other hand, after the establishment of Christianity as the state religion, felt obliged to defend ascetic celibacy within Christianity by using pagan misogamy, which he judged to be of continuing exemplary value. He attempted to establish his ascetic way of life in the face of competing Christian conceptions and to render them attractive, notably to the Roman aristocracy.49
The non-gender-specific ways of life that Christianity offered women led to a progressive weakening of the connection, inherited from the classical period, between dissuasio matrimonii and misogyny. It was simply not sensible to try and win women over to ascetic celibacy with misogynistic insults. Consequently, increasing reference was made to positive exempla of pagan chastity and monogamy to convince both men and women of the value of abstinence. Tertullian and Jerome now served to further the integration of Christianity by using the exemplary behavior of women to promote the acceptance of provocative (celibate and abstinent) lifestyles. Both writers use aspects of misogyny, on the one hand, to control ascetic Christian women through strict norms of behavior and, on the other, to draw a dividing line between ascetic Christian lifestyles and other ways of life that were branded as decadent. The clearly exemplary behavior of Christian women (and men), conforming to traditional pagan ideals, could thus signal to the world at large that Christians were the true representatives of a socially stabilizing value system in a decadent society. For Tertullian, this serves the purpose of safeguarding the Christian community at a time of crisis; for Jerome, the emphasis is on winning over the Roman senatorial aristocracy for asceticism. Thus these Christian authors achieved something of a coup: they managed with their stylizations to transform the originally deviant celibate lifestyle of ascetic Christian women into the norm, while maintaining and even strengthening traditional moral yardsticks.
Misogyny had served as fertile ground for classical misogamy, and it proved, once again, to be indispensable, but for different reasons, in an ascetic Christian context: it served to take the sting out of the strongly radicalized Christian dissuasio matrimonii by making connections possible in public discourse between endangered lifestyles and traditional values of norm and deviance, as well as hierarchical gender systems. Both Tertullian and Jerome, then, had good reason to turn to classical traditions of misogamic and misogynistic discourse.
MEDIEVAL MISOGAMY
It was, above all, Jerome's polemic Adversas Iovinianum that transmitted the traditional topoi of classical misogamy (in a modified ascetic Christian form) to the Middle Ages.50 With his borrowings from Tertullian, he had created a more or less canonical model of classical-Christian misogamy. He had placed philosophical misogynistic traditions in the service of his ascetic intentions and had put them to use in a new, strained relationship to satirical misogyny, as part of his elitist ascetic propaganda. The dominance of asceticism is superseded in medieval literary discourse by three closely connected, yet individual, branches of anti-marriage literature. Alongside ascetic misogamic tracts, philosophical anti-marriage treatises and popular misogamic writings with an emphasis on misogyny became important in their own right, each with their own aims and intended audiences. Jerome's Adversas Iovinianum, however, remained the transmitter, authority, and exemplary starting point for the developments in all three branches of medieval misogamy.
During the migrations of the Dark Ages and in the following period, relations between men and women took many varied forms, including monogamy as well as polygamy and concubinage, which were only marginally controlled by church and state. In the course of the important reforms within the church and the limiting of the power of the nobility in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, marriage in the classical sense became reinstitutionalized, and both the church and secular powers sought increasingly to influence it. The upsurge of misogamy in literary discourse at the time can be seen as a reaction to these developments:51 “For the church, it meant a clear enforcement of its own authority over lay marriages and insistence on celibacy for its own elite.”52
Ascetically Motivated Misogamy
The misogamy contained in ascetic treatises written for monks and nuns is continually present in manuscripts dating from the sixth to the twelfth centuries and strongly so thereafter. As might be expected, it is, both in form and function, the most direct descendant of patristic traditions. Only the emphasis has changed, from apologetic and persuasive attempts to integrate a provocative lifestyle to the maintenance of an accepted way of life. An important branch of ascetic, monastically oriented exhortatory literature came into being, extolling the virtues of virginity, condemning marriage, and aimed at reaffirming monks and nuns in their monastic abstinence.53 As long as ecclesiastical men and women were being addressed, the misogynistic elements in the texts remained small; when only (or mainly) men were being addressed, the presentation of distorted images of women knew practically no bounds. Using contrasting series of exempla. in malo (examples of evil and destructive women)— less prevalent in texts addressed to women—and exempla in bono (examples of chaste and virtuous women), as well as panegyrics of virginity, ascetic texts affirm the divinely ordained superiority of a celibate lifestyle. Like Tertullian and Jerome before them, they often have recourse to the letters of St. Paul and discredit the pro-marriage tendencies of the Old Testament by citing specific examples of asceticism in the New Testament, lending their claims an unchallengeable authority. Remarkably, these texts are not entirely free from obscenity, although, in contrast to generally misogynistic misogamy, it tends to be scatological, rather than sexual, in nature.
One of the continuing purposes of ascetic misogamy was to distinguish the respective status within the church of ascetics and nonascetics—a clear perpetuation of the aims of Tertullian and Jerome. In the Middle Ages, the aim of drawing a demarcation line between clergy and laymen also became increasingly important. Outside the monasteries, misogamic tracts—with an increasingly philosophical emphasis—started being addressed to priests. In such cases, the perspective was limited entirely to that of a man, since only a man could hold the office. Additionally, however, there was a visible tendency to play down the radical, ascetic rejection of sexuality and procreation based on eschatological and dualistic reasoning, in favor of the rejection of marriage as a legal institution. Marriage (for priests) in itself seems on occasions to be more despised than is promiscuity. This is the point at which ascetic misogamy becomes philosophical misogamy.
Especially from the eleventh century onward, these ascetic philosophical tracts serve the purpose of enforcing celibacy for a clerical elite.54 Whereas the church, on the one hand, was fighting against misogamic heresies and attempting to gain control over the marriage of laypeople, it was at the same time mobilizing all its forces against the marriage of priests, which was beginning to bring economic problems with it. Clerics had to be prevented from treating their benefices as private property that they could dispose of at will: the concept of the alienability of ecclesiastical lands was connected with the moral imperative of eliminating marriage among priests and abolishing simony.
Hugh of Folietto's De nuptiis libri duo—written in the form of a letter—is a noteworthy tract because it bridges the gap between ascetic and philosophical misogamy.55 The treatise assumes that the reader has a knowledge of Map's Valerius,56 yet its world is not that of an educated courtly elite but that of the monastery. Hugh (ca. 1100-74), who was a canon regular of St. Augustine at the Foundation of St. Lawrence near Corbie, addresses his treatise De medicina animae, which contains De nuptiis, primarily to an ascetic audience of monks. Nevertheless, the first part of the first book is an uncontaminated example of philosophical misogamy, discouraging the addressee—a “very dear brother”—from carnal nuptials; in it, the writer utilizes all the traditional arguments and examples of the genre.
The opening motif of De nuptiis, which takes the form of highly misogynistic thematic answers to the favorite medieval question Quid est mulier, is immediately underpinned by a long list of testimonies of philosophers and saintly men enumerating the burdens of wedlock. Theophrastus (via Jerome) is quoted at full length as a special authority;57 Cicero and Socrates (via Jerome) follow as deterrent examples. Toward the end of chapter 1, Xenophon and Columella are cited as new authorities. Chapter 2 of book 1 musters scriptural evidence against marriage. While part 1 is a dissuasion from marriage, part 2 is a persuasion to take monastic vows. The work's title, organization, and exhaustive compilation of pagan and biblical sources are strikingly similar to the theme of Jerome's Adversus lovinianum.
Philosophically Motivated Misogamy
Philosophical misogamy maintains the function, which it inherited from the ancient world, of distinguishing status and creating an intellectual elite.58 It increasingly stood in the service, however, of the emancipatory secularization of intellectual elites (in the universities and at courts) that anticipated humanism, despite the fact that it relied heavily on patristic conceptions of dissuasio matrimonii and had to assume, given the nature of medieval education, that intellectuals and clerics would be the same people.
All the dissuasiones are written by educated men, very much aware of their privileged state, standing on a lofty mountaintop (as Wilson and Makowski put it) surrounded by the mist of literary and mythological allusions, indignantly surveying the vices and follies of humankind.59 For these writers, misogamy is to a large extent an exercise in self-definition. This branch of medieval misogamy, therefore, once again restricts itself to a male perspective.60 As in the pre-Christian ancient world, the focus shifts from celibacy to a (sexually active) life as a bachelor,61 which is in blatant contrast to the ascetic ideal as represented by Jerome. Marriage is no longer placed in the context of threatened morality and sin, and virginity is of course no longer glorified as it was in ascetic treatises. Marriage is presented as simply being an unwise and career-damaging way of life for an intellectual elite striving for autonomy.
The treatises of philosophical misogamy, usually written in Latin prose, advise against marriage in the voice of well-intentioned friends. They are underpinned by catalogues of exempla in malo, taken preferably from pagan and mythological sources, which are seen as authoritative. Since only men are addressed, these texts contain absolutely no praise for women.
The earliest medieval meditations on philosophical misogamy come, not surprisingly, from the pen of Pierre Abelard, the first professional scholar of the Middle Ages. As early as his Theologia Christiana, Abelard emphasizes the importance of complete autonomy and the necessity of freedom from social obligations for intellectual scholars and philosophers.62 Abelard makes a connection between financial obligations and marital burdens in the teachings of Theophrastus in Adversus lovinianum, which he cites at length. He looks for and finds a precedent for his own position as an intellectual (not an ascetic) in the example of classical philosophers and Jerome's judgment (from his ascetic Christian standpoint) and transmission of them. Abelard chose a direction that was to have momentous consequences and that prefigured the developments of the Renaissance: the patristic tradition was being examined no longer for its own sake but as a legitimizing intermediary between pagan antiquity and the present, furthering the emancipation of an increasingly secular intellectual class. In contrast to the Theologia Christiana, which represents a basic theoretical exposition of Abelard's position, his Historia calamitatum is a subjectively colored text on dissuasio matrimonii.63 The Historia was written about 1132, when Abelard was abbot of St. Gildas in Brittany and Heloise was abbess of the Paraclete in Champagne. Chapter 7 contains an autobiographical letter in a consolatory style to a friend, in which Abelard enumerates the standard authoritative arguments against marriage by using Heloise—his mistress and, later, wife—as a mouthpiece. Thus the dissuasio is put in the mouth of a sympathetic, loving, educated, and intelligent woman, whose persona provides a convenient and effective distancing device for the author.
According to Abelard, Heloise disapproved of his marrying her for two reasons: the danger it entailed and the disgrace that was bound to result from it. Her uncle, she maintains, would never come to terms with the arrangements, and Abelard would be lost to both the church and philosophy. Once again, Jerome is the main source for the dicta of the Apostle Paul, as well as for the sententiae of Theophrastus, Cicero, and Seneca and for antithetical sua voce catalogues, which are modeled on Adversus Helvidium and Jerome's Episties 22 and 54.
To say no more of the hindrance of the study of philosophy, consider the status of the dignified life. What could there be in common between scholars and wet-nurses, writing desks and cradles, books, writing tables and distaffs, stylus, pens and spindles? Or who is there who is bent on sacred or philosophic reflection who could bear the wailing of babies, the silly lullabies of nurses to quiet them, the noisy horde of servants, both male and female; who can endure the foul and incessant degrading defilement of infants?64
Once again, the authority of the Doctor of the Church is called upon to set the dissuasio in a philosophical and pagan, rather than patristic, framework and to advocate freedom and dignity rather than asceticism. The extent to which Abelard's dissuasio matrimonii differs from Jerome's aim of ascetic abstinence is illustrated by Heloise's argumentation in favor of free love, which is influenced by amour courtois and Ovidian conceptions of love. She refuses to marry Abelard, making clear that she would much prefer to be called his mistress—even his whore—than his wife, so that her charm, not marital chains, would tie him to her.65 The absence of both catalogues of bad wives and exempla of pagan virgins are a testimony to the internal consistency of the text.
One of Abelard's most talented students at Montagne Sainte Geneviève, the Englishman John of Salisbury, who became secretary to Theobold, archbishop of Canterbury (whose court was also frequented by Peter of Blois), also expressed his views on—or, rather, against—marriage, in book 8 of Policraticus de nugis curialium et vestigiis phihsophorum (1159).66 John's dissuasion from marriage, under the title “The Annoyance and Burdens of Wedlock according to Jerome and other Philosophers,”67 is embedded in his list of capital vices, in which he criticizes (courtly) lasciviousness and counsels moderation in all things. The title itself makes clear that clerics and philosophers are seen as being the same people and that the author is attempting subtly to balance philosophy and asceticism, celibacy and virtue in general.
John's explicit borrowings from Jerome's misogamy, despite their seeming congruence, bear witness to a certain amount of adaptation. Jerome justifies his recourse to pagan philosophers and exempla with reference to the stimulus and integration they provide in the face of the disturbing failure of Christian regulations.68 John, however, sees pre-Christian traditions as real alternatives for his readers, who seem to be put off by Christian rigor and asceticism.
In this respect [that the burdens of marriage detract from the freedom of the philosopher] the whole chorus of serious philosophers are in agreement, so that those who are repelled by the strict doctrine of Christian religion, may learn chastity and virtue from the pagans.69
In the Christianized Middle Ages, it was no longer a question of winning recognition for or defending ascetic or celibate lifestyles (as long as they remained within the bounds of orthodoxy). Instead, philosophers and clerics had to be presented with alternative forms of nonascetic celibacy. Jerome secularizes misogamy, freeing it from the highly ascetic context of antiquity.70 In imitating the “Theophrastus” section of Jerome,71 John makes fun of those who are so obtuse as to take on the burdens of marriage more than once;72 John shifts the emphasis of his misogamy from the supposed sinfulness of marriage to its stupidity, turning from Jerome's critique of the institution itself to a critique of the misuse of marriage and poor behavior within marriage (which John attributes especially to women).73 He makes it clear that only unmarried (though not necessarily chaste) philosophers and clerics can be sure of avoiding public humiliation due to their indiscreet wives.74 Whereas Jerome cites as an exemplum in bono the virtuous Bibia, who did not complain of her husband's bad breath because she thought all men smelled like that, John uses a similar argument for the opposite purpose, introducing the type of the embarrassing, emasculating wife into the misogamic canon via the exemplum of the wife who openly calls her husband's virility into question.75
The public image of the cleric within courtly etiquette clearly took on considerable importance, as cleric-philosophers sought a suitable image for themselves. After mentioning the famous examples of the wives of Cicero, Phillipus, and Socrates (handed down by Jerome), John quotes verbatim the story of the Widow of Ephesus from Petronius's Satyrica, introducing it with a borrowing from Juvenal's sixth satire76. He then once again cites Jerome as an authority legitimizing the statements of Petronius. All this is aimed at upgrading the moral status of educated clerics by condemning the poor behavior of women. John, as a serious churchman, an older man, and a man imbued with strong moral principles, may, with his renewed connection of misogamy and misogyny, have been protesting against the specific atmosphere of—as well as the irritating background of new ideas from—the English court, which was patronized so lavishly by Queen Eleanor and in which troubadour poetry and courtly love flourished so richly.
Walter Map's Dissuasio Valerii Rufino ne ducat uxorem (1180-90)77 was one of the most widely disseminated and widely used works of philosophical misogamy.78 Not unlike John of Salisbury, Map included this epistolary pamphlet in his collection De nugis curialium, a work criticizing the court of King Henry II, whom Map admired for his education, eloquence, courtly cultivation (facetia curialium), cosmopolitan elegance, and intellectual wit.
Map's Valerius is probably the rhetorically most perfect dissuasio in the antigamous tradition and follows Quintilian's model closely.79 In it, the author chooses the persona of a certain well-meaning Valerius, who writes to his (redheaded) friend Rufinus in an urgent attempt to dissuade him from marriage. The exposition of the letter is reminiscent not only of Juvenal's sixth satire (which also associates marriage and death),80 but also of the letter of Abelard's Heloise, which it also resembles in its use of the metaphors of elegiac and courtly love (reminding one of Andreas Capellanus's De arte honeste amandi) and in its opposition of love and marriage (uxorari tendebat, non amari). The method of documentation is the favorite medieval device of frequentatio, a rhetorical figure designed to bring scattered references together to elaborate a principle.81
There is no need to insist upon the great similarity to Jerome, especially in light of the fact that the letter was originally attributed to him (Migne lists it as Ep. 36 in PL 30). There are, however, significant changes. As with John of Salisbury, misogamy and misogyny are linked, and examples are reinterpreted misogynistically. For example, Map lists parts of the canonical catalogue of virgin births—traditional exempla in bono—to prove that neither age nor high walls can protect a maiden's virginity: “a virgin verging on old age and eminent in repute for chastity, at last by a vision of Apollo conceived and bore Plato.”82 This statement about Perictione is a verbatim quote from Jerome's Adversus Jovinianum, where she is used as an exemplum in bono to exemplify the Christlike virgin births of antiquity. Valerius, however, transforms the incident into an exemplum in malo to demonstrate women's incapacity to resist a lover. The exempla almost invariably end with a final apostrophe applying the moral of the paragraph to Rufinus himself. Thus the ancient illustrative example is turned into a genuine medieval exemplum, complete with moral and application. Map's lengthy apology for his use of pagan exempla is worthy of note in this connection.
My Friend, are you amazed or are you, the rather, affronted, because in my parallels I point out heathen as worthy of your imitation, idolatries to a Christian, wolves to a lamb, evil men to a good. … I know the superstition of the heathen; but … the unbelieving perform very many things perversely; nevertheless they do some things which, although barren in their case, would in ours bring forth fruit abundantly.83
Map argues that all the advantages of Christianity are worthless if people (men) turn their back on philosophy for the sake of marriage and become animals (“I do not wish thee to be the bridegroom of Venus, but of Pallas!”).84 He then emphasizes the interest of the pagans, who are of course disadvantaged in comparison to Christians, in (philosophical) education and cultivation.85 Despite heavily biblical language, the emphasis has clearly changed from ascetic abstinence to philosophical humanitas; pagan antiquity is recognized more and more in its own right as an integral part of education for the cultivated court and clergy. Map's increasing distance from the ascetic intentions of Tertullian and Jerome is underlined by his absolute lack of reference to St. Paul's statements on marriage. All this suggests that the Valerius was written for the school and the learned at court, rather than for the monastery. For the budding young scholar and the educated courtier, the Valerius provides a wealth of classical and mythological allusions, a witty and clever use of language, a wealth of ironic and enigmatic passages, and a fine rhetorical model. Its considerable success justified its methods.86
Map presents a whole set of new dissuasive exempla, most of which are included in the misogamic canon for the first time. Essentially—as Wilson and Makowski emphasize—Map takes a dim view of marriage and women while, at least in theory, exalting love. Thus his treatise can be read as a counter-gospel of courtly love. The ironic use of the iconography of courtly love in the setting of his poem would have raised expectations among his audience that they were about to be presented with a genuine romance, but Map presents instead an inverted eulogy of courtly ladies, cataloguing a remarkable multitude of wicked women. At the same time, he claims to be attacking marriage, not love—thereby providing a convenient camouflage for his attacks on women. In Map's dissuasio, a contemporary misogamic preoccupation (amour courtois), an ancient theme (philosophical misogamy), and a timeless satirical topos (misogyny) are conflated. As such, the work had a demonstrably large and lasting appeal for a wide audience.87
Both John of Salisbury and Map included their dissuasiones in works criticizing the court of Henry II. Map, the younger man, finds different shortcomings—too much ambition and too little polish. Even the Muses, he argues, refuse to frequent so uninspired a court. His criticism, therefore, is less moral and more urbane than that of John of Salisbury. The differences between John's and Map's treatments might also, of course, reflect a change of situation: in 1173 Eleanor supported the rebellion against her husband by their eldest son and was subsequently imprisoned in Winchester Castle. Consequently, the pronounced emphasis of Map's dissuasio on the wicked and potentially destructive effect of women is hardly surprising, especially in view of the fact that Map was one of King Henry's particular favorites.88
Peter of Blois's dissuasio matrimonii, which is included as the seventy-ninth letter ad R. amicum suum in his (successfully) published correspondence,89 is inconceivable, both in its title and in many details, without Map's Valerius. There are also biographical similarities: Peter of Blois was a Frenchman by birth, but he spent most of his adult life in England, first in the service of the archdeacon of Salisbury, then under Archbishop Richard. In 1182 he was made archdeacon of Bath. Like John of Salisbury and Walter Map, Peter was associated with the court of Henry II. Peter's letter is unusual for several reasons. First, it is a post facto dissuasio, because the addressee is already married. Second, Peter is the first medieval misogamic writer to refer to Juvenal's sixth satire as a canonical text on the vices of women and wives. Third, no scriptural arguments are found in the letter; the dissuasive arguments are directed toward a professional scholar and are entirely philosophical, historical, and rhetorical. Fourth, and most important, Peter is original in his incorporation of exemplary material into the Theophrastus fragment.90 Peter's work of philosophical misogamy creates a paradox: although its innovative use of Theophrastus was only possible through the intermediary of Jerome, its end result is as different as possible from the ascetic Christian perspective of the Doctor of the Church.
Andreas Fieschi's treatise De dissuasione uxorationis is a witty and elegant, if somewhat conventional, example of the continued reception of Map's Valerius. It also confirms as canonical the establishment of a (largely nonascetic) philosophical misogynistic tradition, which saw Pallas Athene as the only woman appropriate for the members of the secular and clerical elite of the time.91
Popular Misogynistic Misogamy
It was in the aggressively satirical elements of misogynistic misogamy, rather than in philosophical treatises, that the desire to control women socially and keep them in check survived and resurged. This tendency had already been present in early antiquity and had reemerged in late antiquity—with altered and more limited aims—as part of the dissemination of Christianity and asceticism. Its resurgence in the Middle Ages may have been a reaction to the economic prosperity and relatively high social status of women of all classes.92 In the final analysis, misogamy was transformed in this context into little more than an integral part of misogyny.
The background for this upsurge of misogynistic marriage literature, which now could be written without even a nod in the direction of religious values, was supplied by a change in the cultural climate around the middle of the thirteenth century. At this time, medieval Europe reached its demographic peak and was moving in the direction of urban market economies and secularization. Works filled with humor, wit, and biting satire replaced exhortations to perfection. Gone, too, was any mention of the possibility of the spiritual equality of the sexes (achieved through sexual abstinence) that had been stressed by the ascetic tendencies of early Christianity. In the face of altered economical and social conditions, the misogynistic discourses of the end of the thirteenth century accompanied and promoted the ousting of women from public life and positions of power. This decline in genuine female influence was supported by two factors: first, by an excessive veneration of the ideal woman, culminating in the cult of the Virgin, which seems to have fortified the belief in the moral and social dangers of women of flesh and blood; second, by a misogynistic discourse of derision, reflecting Juvenal's caricatures of the relatively emancipated, financially independent, and powerful women of imperial Rome, which revived stereotypical images of the female body and biological functions, their moral instability and general inferiority. These theories were “scientifically” legitimized by the rediscovery of Aristotle's theories.93 Even holy women were suspect—thirteenth- and fourteenth-century monastic “reform” for convents involved provision for stricter supervision by male superiors and stern rules of enclosure.
In the context of Augustine's teachings connecting the Fall and sexuality—concepts central to medieval theology—marriage, as the legal setting for the sexual act, remained ambivalent. The unavoidable closeness of marriage to the sins of the flesh led to a corresponding rigor in the sphere of canon law, which began, during the twelfth century, to establish itself alongside theology as a discipline in its own right. The growth at this time of rigid antisexual positions strongly suggests the existence of vigorous conflicts during the development of marital canon law and the establishment of marriage as a sacrament, with its concomitant economic problems.94
Popular misogamy at this time can therefore be read both as a parody of the excesses of canonical marital casuistry perpetrated by the educated elite and as a medium for expressing social change. It not only anticipates the downfall of courtly culture and the rise of the cities but also mirrors the strategies within society for depriving women of power resulting from altered economic conditions, as well as representing the emancipation of the masses from the clerical monopoly on literature.
Although the genre contained considerable potential for innovation and explosive social comment (the personae of late medieval satires subvert by ridicule the ideals of the two dominant classes—in this case, the aristocracy and the clergy), popular misogamy, which was increasingly being turned into misogamic misogyny, remained faithful to common themes and conventional literary traditions. The misogynistic basis for the guessing game involving the question Quid est mulier can be found not only in the usual ancient sources but also in great quantities in the sermons and other works of ecclesiastical writers, the popular genres of the vernacular, and the Latin comedia elegiaca.
The existence of numerous vernacular texts suggests that the genre had a broad public appeal.95 This public would include laity and clerics, the educated and uneducated. As in classical satire, men are the direct and women the indirect addressees.
The texts, usually in verse form, work by inverting values, demonstrating their illusory nature. Their argumentation is supported not by biblical or classical authority but by the (hyperbolically distorted) experience of a normal man.
So much misogynistic literature with a misogamic content was produced between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries—for example, the Couplets sur le mariage or the Chanson de mal mariage—that it is difficult to make a representative selection.96 The thirteenth century produced the anonymous treatise De conjuge non ducenda, whose setting seems to be a modernization of the setting of Walter Map's Valerius. Instead of the anti-marriage advice of a friend, a number of well-meaning angelic personae are presented, who may represent John Chrysostomos, to whom several spurious antifeminist works were ascribed in the twelfth century; John the Evangelist; John the Apostle; Peter of Corbeil (Petrus de Corbolio), the arch defender of the celibate and chaste ideals; or Laurentius of Durham, to whom the De conjuge has been mistakenly attributed. They advise against marriage, presenting the full array of misogynistic motifs and prejudices. The thematic accusations against women are all-inclusive: all nubile women are under attack, as is the institution of marriage.
As a text of general misogamy, the De conjuge is in full methodological, ideological, and topographical agreement with the prototype of this branch of misogamy, Juvenal's sixth satire, even though it contains clear traces of the ascetic Christian filter through which the genre had passed since late antiquity. Nevertheless, the poem lacks any direct mythological, literary, or scriptural allusions. The limited literary and biblical echoes are paraphrased but not identified. Thus the poem would have appealed not only to an educated audience that would appreciate and enjoy the text's ironic subtleties and complex scriptural echoes but also to a bourgeois audience that could enjoy the topography and the coarse obscenities without any understanding of the subtleties. All of these observations suggest that the author was consciously trying to project a persona less educated and of lower social class than himself. A full-fledged satire in the general Juvenalian misogamic tradition, De conjuge ridicules both celibate and marital propaganda while playing to contemporary prejudices.
The Roman de la rose, not only one of the most widely disseminated and influential vernacular poems of the Middle Ages but one that justified Jean de Meung's long-lasting reputation as a savage misogynist, puts all of its misogynistic and misogamic statements into the mouths of unsympathetic characters (the Jaloux, La Vieille), stock figures of medieval comedy delivering stock tirades. Juvenal, Valerius Maximus, Theophrastus (quoted entirely), and Ovid are the predecessors of the Roman, but parts of the Abelard-Heloise correspondence are used to underpin the misogamic arguments. In the Roman, the canon of arguments of philosophical misogamy is closely connected to misogyny in general and to personal complaints on the vices of women.
Similar qualities can be found in the Matheoli lamentationes, an enormously long Latin work of the thirteenth century by a clerk named Matheolus, who was unfrocked for bigamy (i.e., for marrying a widow) and laments his misfortune in four books containing 10,508 half-lines of alternately rhymed verses. It is one of the most bitter and certainly the longest tirade against women and marriage, pronouncedly eclectic and learned, making use of the whole topography of the misogamic canon, yet claiming to rely on personal experience rather than authority.
One of the last genuine works of medieval general misogamy, the Quinze joyes de mariage, is an anonymous satire from the turn of the fourteenth century (between 1372 and 1461). The framework of the satire is a prayer to the Virgin Mary enumerating her fifteen joys, a persuasio to moral improvement through reflection and imitation. Conversely, the Quinze joyes de mariage is a dissuasio from marriage by means of a meditation on and contemplation of the miseries of married life. It is not an ostensibly learned work. The catalogues of mythological, historical, and biblical exempla are missing.
Eustache Deschamps's Miroir de mariage remains, in its content, more faithful to the philosophical and ascetic traditions of misogamy. However, it breaks new ground formally in its use of the altercatio. The Miroir is a debate weighing the advantages and disadvantages of the married state. False friends— Desir, Folie, Servitude, Faintise—present the addressee, Franc Vouloir (a personification of free will), with the usual arguments of laymen and clerics in favor of marriage; at the same time, Repertoire de Science, as a true friend, counsels against worldly marriage in favor of spiritual marriage, borrowing extensively from Theophrastus's Liber aureolus and Jerome's Adversus Iovinianum. His use of a letter is reminiscent of both Map's Valerius and Hugh of Folieto. Misogynistic elements are used extensively, but the argumentation is essentially elitist: marriage is appropriate neither for scholars (miles scientiae), nor for knights (miles armati), nor for clergymen (miles christiani); others, however, may submit to the necessity of marriage in order to ensure the survival of the human race. Deschamps's work anticipates the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both in its form as an altercatio and through its use of allegorization, which transforms the traditional dispute an vir ducat uxorem [should a man take a wife?] into a psychomachia between reason and the emotions.
Finally, the prologue to the “Wife of Bath's Tale” in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales can be included in the category of general misogamic satire, defined as a dissuasion by inversion employing everyday specificity, exemplary documentation, and current misogynistic topoi presented by an experienced persona. In addition to her full use of the general misogamic canon, Dame Alice also manages to incorporate into her speech the standard arguments of the philosophical and ascetic branches of misogamy in a masterfully ironic way, which not only incriminates her but ridicules the arguments of the misogamic canon. Dame Alice's prologue is a dissuasio disguised as a persuasio. The tone of her speech is one of sustained irony, and her method of argumentation is the systematic inversion of the aristocratic and ecclesiastical models of marriage, augmented by three categories of well-known misogamic arguments: the ascetic, the philosophical, and the general corpora.
Particularly interesting is the treatment of Jerome's polemic Adversas Iovinianum, which is the main source for the first part of the Wife of Bath's prologue (lines 1–130): Alice uses Jovinian's well-known exempla and arguments in favor of marriage in the form of an inversion of the ascetic misogamic canon. She herself turns out to be the stock female character of the ascetic misogamic canon: Dame Alice is the personification of the ardens corpus [burning body] accusation hurled at wives by preachers of asceticism. Like most competent misogamic writers, she takes quotations out of context and disregards parts of quotations that do not suit her immediate purpose. In this speech, she uses the ironic inversions of arguments of ascetic misogamy, while at the same time personifying the canon's topography. The traditional accusations made against women are turned into subtle survival techniques in the battle of the sexes in a period when women were despised. In the prologue to the “Wife of Bath's Tale,” which masterfully combines a satire on and a topology of the three distinct strains of medieval misogamy, the long tradition of misogyny and misogamy involving the pointed ambivalence of values seems to take on a new quality.
CONCLUSION: MEDIEVAL MISOGAMY AND COURTLY LOVE
The individual branches of medieval misogamic discourse—ascetic, philosophical, and popular misogamy—not only have much in common with each other (indeed, individual texts often mix the various genres). Each is also linked, in its own specific way, to the concept of courtly love.97 This is only possible because a skeptical attitude toward marriage is an integral part of the code of courtly love, which idealizes extramarital love.
In ascetic misogamy, the conception of spiritual love was enlarged by contemporary ideals of courtly love and etiquette. At the same time, the poetry of courtly love was eliminating, with the help of ascetic-Platonic ideas, any erotic traces that might have been left over from its classical roots (in particular, Ovid). This reconciliation of spiritual and courtly love (which of course never lost their basic differences) led to the use of almost identical images in courtly love lyrics and poetry on the Virgin Mary.
Philosophical misogamy and the concept of courtly love were aimed at similar groups of people: the clergy, scholars in the upcoming universities, and the courtly elite. Their intentions were also similar—the creation and maintenance of intellectual social elites through cultural refinement and distinction. Both the codes of courtly etiquette and philosophical misogamy involved the use of exclusive forms of expression. The texts were not translated into the vernacular but continued to be copied in Latin for the entertainment and education of the same type of educated audience for which they were written. In theory, their code of values was presented as an ideal for everyone, yet it remained deliberately inaccessible to the masses.
When elements of the code of courtly love were actually included in misogamic texts (it should not be forgotten that, apart from Hugh and Abelard, all writers under consideration were associated with the court), it was usually ironically. It would seem that John of Salisbury, Walter Map, and Peter of Blois, who were patronized by Henry II and associated with the first major European court to encourage literature propagating the courtly ideal, fill out the contemporary view of the role of women, complementing the distancing idealization of women in courtly love with elements of a distancing pejorative view of women. In both cases, an elitist group of men defined itself via hybrid concepts of the role of women, leading to or even aiming at the de facto absence and powerlessness of women.
The upsurge in misogynistic marriage satire seems, for its part, to be a reaction of the lower classes to the norms propagated by intellectual discourse. The philosophical rejection of marriage by careerist clergymen was perverted through exaggeration and generalization: not only an intellectual elite rejects marriage; everybody does so. The ascetic rejection of marriage was undermined by explicit and blunt worldliness and the idealization of extramarital promiscuity. At the same time, misogynistic marriage satire became involved, not without aggression, in the progressive takeover of married life by the church. It served to break down the almost religious worship of idealized womanhood by the upper classes: it satirized it, accused women of every possible vice, and treated them as the root of all evil.98 In this respect, the misogynistic misogamy of the Middle Ages, which at first sight would seem to have little in common with courtly love, can be seen to complement it and share its aims. Both attempted to control and restrict female authority and influence in political, religious, and economic life by imposing a system of norms upon them. Exaggerated idealization served just as much as aggressive defamation to restrict a woman's tangible sphere of activity and her practical freedoms.
Notes
1. Jer. Ep. 54.1.2 (CSEL 54.466); translation by Wright (1963).
2. Elsewhere, Jerome tirelessly preaches the necessity of breaking with pagan traditions; cf. Feichtinger 1995.
3. On a formal level, the rules of classical rhetoric were certainly important in influencing the use of historical exempla.
4. Since domestic worship was to some extent in the hands of the wife and death rites were performed by legitimate sons, marriage was indispensable for the survival of the clan. In its struggle to maintain the number of citizens in the face of high infant mortality and low life expectancy, the state was aided by the censors, who kept an eye on procreation and would not hesitate to fine even older celibates or annul childless marriages, even if the couple protested and was in love (cf. Gell. 4.3.2, 17, 21, 44; PW5.1244).
5. Temporary celibacy existed among female priests of Apollo and Isis (Xen. Eph. 3.11.4-5) and among vestals. The respect for virginity among pagans must be judged with care: the requirement, e.g., that the bride of the flamen dialis be a virgin is mentioned only in Christian sources (Tert. Exh. cast. 13 [CCL 2.2.1033-35]; Jer. Ep. 123.7 [CSEL 56.80-81]); cf. Kötting 1988, 8).
6. Terms such as xera or vidua refer to the “emptiness” of life without a husband and children. A girl who died without having married was especially pitied.
7. For the marriage laws of Augustus, see Csillag 1976; Raditsa 1980; Galinsky 1981. They notably encouraged marriages with numerous children, offering advantages in taxation (see Gai. Inst. 2.286; Suet. Aug. 34).
8. Successive monogamy may have been required for certain pagan priesthoods, since the marriage of the priest was often considered to be a hieras gamos (cf. Gell. 10.15, 23-24; Plut. Aetia Romana 50; Kötting 1957, 1018-19). But in general, Christians had no obvious role models for abstinence or monogamy.
9. See Humbert 1972. Religious rules in the ancient world opposed only the remarriage of women (see Kötting 1988, 8-11). In the Greek (and Jewish) world, women who had only been married once were not held in such high regard as they were in Rome (see Kötting 1957, 1017-18).
10. See Val. Max. 2.1.3; Funke 1965-66; Lightman and Zeisel 1977; Kötting 1988. The importance of univira can originally be traced back to attempts to maintain the purity of the gens and to fear of a perturbation sanguinis; it was restricted to the upper levels of society.
11. For the transferral of the secularized term meaning “good woman” to Christian widows, see Lightman and Zeisel 1977, 24-32.
12. See Kötting 1988, 24. John Chrysostomos, in Ad viduam iuniorem, points out the low regard in which the people held second marriages. Tertullian also made use of popular attitudes in the ancient world, which saw second marriages as unseemly: cf. Tert. Monog. 10.7 (CCL 2.1243); Hilar. Tract. in Ps. 131.24 (PL 9.742-43; CSEL 22.680-81); Zeno Tract. 1.5.4, 6 (PL 11.303-5, 311-18; CC 22.172-73 [= II.7]; 31-37 [= I.4]). For the continuing problems of the exegesis of the Letter to Timothy, see Kötting 1988, 22-23. The church of the fourth century in Asia Minor and later in the West promulgated laws against remarriage while sanctioning their being disregarded; see Basil Ep. 199.18, 188.4 (PG 32.717-20, 673-74). Jerome (Adv. lov. 1.14 [PL 23.244]) mentions the denial of the consecrated Bread for the unmarried. See Kötting 1964; 1988, 15, 33-36.
13. Ironically enough, one of the few statements on marriage by a woman, defending and pitying the plight of her own sex, is the complaint of Medea in Eur. Mea. 230-51.
14. Eratosthenes says that virginity is a treasure but that it would die out if practiced by everybody (Anth. Pal. 9.444); cf. Lucilius frag. 633, 634-35, 638-43 Krenkel. Pessimistic opinions of procreation can be found in Eur. frag. 908 Nauck, commented on by Clement of Alexandria (Strom. 3.3.22.2).
15. Wilson and Makowski (1990, 1-11) point out that a precise differentiation between misogamy and misogyny is essential for the understanding of medieval misogamy.
16. See Hes. Theog. 585-602; Erga 53-82. Semonides of Amorgos says mockingly that women were created, devoid of reason, from the bristly pig and other creatures (Stob. 22.193 [4.561-66 Wachsmith and Hense = frag. 7 Diehl). Whether the “Weiberjambos” of Phocylides of Milet (frag. 2. Diehl) should be placed chronologically before or after Semonides remains unclear: see Kakridis 1962; Verdennius 1968-69.
17. Cf. Homer's representation of marital affection between Hector and Andromache (Il. 6.407-96). Hesiod (Erga 702-5) says that an understanding woman is a treasure trove of virtue but difficult to find.
18. Anth. Pal. 11.388. Cf. Palladas on the domination of women, even of those who do not go as far as to lash out with a slipper (Anth. Pal. 10.55).
19. Although certain groups within society (e.g., soldiers) were not allowed to marry and there probably existed a shortage of women (see Pomeroy 1985, 102-6, 250-60), it is safe to assume that the great majority of men married on at least one occasion.
20. A collection of aphorisms by Johannes Stobaios includes the headings “marriage is very good” (4.494.2-4.512.15 Wachsmith and Hense); “it is not good to get married” (4.513.2-4.523.8 Wachsmith and Hense); and “for some, marriage turns out useful; for others it is unhealthy” (4.524.1-4.531.23 Wachsmith and Hense).
21. Aristophanes, who, e.g., in Lysistrata takes married life as one of his themes, provides an explosive cocktail of misogyny and positive attitudes toward women. The cynical sentences of works of New Comedy reflect contemporary ambivalence: see, e.g., Menand. frag. 578 (“Marriage, if one will face the truth, is an evil, but a necessary evil”), 59, 575-76 Körte. For skepticism toward marriage in the comedies of Plautus, see Braund, chap. 3 in this volume.
22. Quoted in Stob. 22.35 (4.515 Wachsmith and Hense).
23. The question of whether or not to get married was a favorite topic in the schools of rhetoric for training in reflective Genos. See Quint. 3.5.5-8. These rhetorical exercises find their counterpart in the Middle Ages; see Curtis 1965, 164.
24. Cf. Anth. Pal. 10.116: “ ‘No married man but is tempest-tossed,’ they all say, and marry knowing it.”
25. Cf. the collection of passages in Buddenhagen 1919 and the summary in Oepke 1959, 653-54.
26. See Diog. Laert. 6.29; Hübner [1828-33] 1981, 2:21; Epict. 3.22.67ff.
27. See, e.g., Porph. Ad Marcell.
28. Epict. 1.23.3. For Democritus and Epicurus, cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. 2.23.138.3 (Stählin and Früchtel 1985, 2:189). Cf. also the Sophist view of Antiphon frag. 49 Diehl; Grilli 1953, 77.
29. For the books by the Stoics with pro-marriage tendencies, see Bickel 1915. In his sixth satire, Juvenal seems to be satirizing the Stoic marriage ideal by inverting it.
30. See Oltramare 1916, 51-60. Jerome (e.g., Adv. lov. 1.13 [PL 23.241]) makes clear that he is referring to a traditional topos within a genre; cf. Ep. 22.22.3 (CSEL 54.174-75).
31. Early examples of Christian reception of diatribes can be found in the apocryphal Acts of Thomas, in which Jesus appears in the figure of the apostle to a couple on the evening of their wedding day and gives them (successfully, of course) ascetic advice. Gregor of Nyssa, in De virginitate, speaks out in favor of the ascetic ideal, not only by glorifying mystically profound virginity but also (chap. 3 [PG 46.325-36]) by portraying the disadvantages of marriage in a manner reminiscent of diatribe; John Chrysostomus, who also wrote a De virginitate in his youth, does not miss the opportunity of dealing with this theme (from a more female perspective). Neither does Gregor of Nazianzus, in his poem Perì partheniou. There are also extant under the name of Basil the Great two treatises on virginity (perhaps predating Gregor of Nyssa), which also mention the molestiae nuptiarum. See Capelle and Marrou 1957, 1003; Hansen 1963.
32. Epict. 3.22.69-71 (trans. Oldfather [1928] 1985). Cf. the analogies in Tert. Ux. 2.4-5 (CCL 1.388-89).
33. Free women were almost entirely excluded, especially in ancient Greece, from the symposia in which literature was created and received, as well as from theatrical performances.
34. Marriage in the ancient world was defined by consensus and procreation. The ascetic tendencies of Christianity were directed against sexuality and/or procreation, although fine dividing lines are discernible between the two. As a kind of compensation, ideas were developed (by Augustine, among others) that saw a spiritual bond between husband and wife as an integral part of marriage. For the development of Augustine's concept of marriage, see Clark 1991.
35. As Clark (1991) shows, the majority of the Doctors of the Church in the East and West believed that after the Resurrection, as in Paradise, there would be no sexuality or gender, since humans would be “like the angels.” Augustine irrevocably connects earthly sexuality, which to a large extent goes against the will, with the fallen status of humanity, saying that the refusal of the limbs to obey the will is a consequence of the refusal of man to obey God.
36. Neither God the Father, nor God the Son, nor the Holy Ghost have anything similar to the married life of the ancient gods.
37. For an interpretation of this radical change, which broke both with Jewish and with pagan traditions (Matt. 19:6; Mark 10:9; 1 Cor. 7:27), see Tert. Monog. 9.4-5 (CCL 2,2.1241-42); Ux. 2.2 (CCL 1.1.384-87); Lact. Div. inst. 6.23.33; Clem. Alex. Strom. 2.145.3, 2.146.2 (Stählin and Früchtel 1985, 193). Divine right is placed in opposition to state law, which recognized marriages after divorce from or the death of the partner.
38. The attitude toward marriage inherited from the Jewish tradition, which contained few ascetic currents, was a positive one; see Oepke 1959, esp. 655-56. In the New Testament, St. Paul's emphasis on the superiority of a celibate lifestyle can largely be explained by his millenarianism, which brought with it two contrasting answers to the futility of earthly existence: libertinism (the body is unimportant, therefore one can do with it what one will) and asceticism (celibacy, abstinence, rejection of procreation). Both lifestyles put into practice the idea that all earthly circumstances were invalid.
39. Cf. Eijk 1972.
40. One of the earliest documents on the question of the integration into the community of those in favor of marriage is Ignatius of Antioch's (ca. 110) Letter to Polycarp (5.2); see Niebergall 1974. Certain anti-Gnostic and anti-Manichaean groups saw marriage as a divine institution and wished to place it under the protection of the church. Other groups took an attitude of tolerant indifference toward marriage as a worldly institution. Encratic movements within Christianity, however, wished to precipitate the desired end of the world through a rejection of procreation and preached a radical rejection of marriage in favor of abstinence.
41. (Successively monogamous) wedlock as the “normal state” in the ancient world had maintained throughout antiquity the status of a kind of natural law. Alternative blueprints for society existed only as myths, and even Plato's utopian marriage-communism remained a fleeting episode.
42. Still worthy of discussion is the question whether St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 7:1-16 and with his recommendations of celibacy, paved the way for an “unbiblical” asceticism or whether he saved the institution of marriage from radical ascetic attacks; see Niederwimmer 1975.
43. For the intensification of Jewish sexual rigorism, see Niederwimmer 1975, 12-74.
44. St. Paul's decision that baptism and marriage were not mutually exclusive was not self-evident; see Niederwimmer 1975, 90. A strong trend in favor of celibacy existed from the start, and the coexistence of marriage and celibacy was only a result of the process of catholicization; see ibid., 223. However, Paul's positive attitude toward marriage was—in analogy to courts within the church or the manumission of slaves— limited to an indifferent acknowledgment of its status as a necessary secular institution.
45. I have chosen Tertullian because he is the first postbiblical author to have treated the theme at length. His techniques of argumentation therefore form the basis for the structure, repertoire of motives, and topics of ascetic Christian dissuasio matrimonii. For Jerome as an explicit recipient of Tertullian's writings, see Petitmengin 1988; Clark, chap. 8 in this volume.
46. For Tertullian as a heretic, see Hilar. Com. in Mt. 5.1 (PL 9.942-43; CSEL 17.383?). See also Jer. Contra Helv. 17 (PL 23.211-12); Adv. Ruf. 3.12 (PL 23.486-88); Aug. Haer. 86 (CCL 46.336-37). Jerome caused a scandal in Rome with his radical anti-marriage polemic against Jovinian; he was only able to escape prosecution for Manichaeanism by Pope Siricius by hurriedly leaving Rome.
47. Despite his denigration of marriage, Tertullian (Monog. 1) emphasizes, in order to defend himself against ascetic heretics, the toleration of one marriage among the Montanists. Jerome also believed in the fundamental bonum of marriage: see Adv. lov. 1.3, 8, 23 (PL 23.222-24, 231-32, 252-54); Ep. 22.2, 49.4 (CSEL 54.145-46, 355-56).
48. Positions more favorable to marriage, like those formulated in the anti-Gnostic struggle of Clement of Alexandria, paved the way for the recognition of marriage as a fully valid Christian form of life, yet in the Catholic Church, celibacy, as represented by the clergy, remains even now the ideal, the superior form of imitation Christi. For the continuing influence of Tertullian, see Schanz and Hosius 1959, 3:330-33. For Jerome, see Albrecht 1994, 1314-15; J. Morgan 1928; Benoit 1961. The methods used in addressing men and women would seem to be analogous. In Ad uxorem (1.4.3 [CCL 1.1.377]), Tertullian aims to counter arguments for the necessity of a husband; in De exhortatione castitatis (12.1 [CCL 2.1031f.]), he presents a similar refutation of the (seeming) necessity of a wife. De monogamia is addressed both to men and women. In Advenus lovinianum, Jerome speaks out against marriage from a basically male perspective (1.28, 47-49 [PL 23.260-62, 288-94]). In his letters, he focuses to a greater extent on the position of women, even though he emphasizes that his comments are applicable to both sexes.
49. The inherent and central function of these distinctions of status are examined by Clark in chap. 8 in this book.
50. There were over 150 relatively complete copies of Advenus lovinianum extant in the Middle Ages; see Hanna and Lawler 1997, 19; Laistner 1952; Wilson and Makowski 1990. For the high regard in which Jerome was generally held in the Middle Ages and on the influence of his works, see Delhaye 1951, 70-71.
51. As had been the case in late antiquity, social discourse for and against marriage in the eleventh and twelfth centuries focused on questions of orthodoxy and heresy; see Wilson and Makowski 1990, 65-68.
52. Wilson and Makowski 1990, 63. Also see ibid. for further literature on the historical background.
53. See Bugge 1975; Lucas 1983.
54. See Lea 1966; Gilchrist 1967.
55. PL 176.1202-18.
56. See Delhaye 1951, 83.
57. Bock's (1899) theory that Hugh used a now lost intermediary—not Jerome's Adversus lovinianum—for his quotations from Theophrastus's Liber aureolas, which would make Hugh's treatise extremely important, has been refuted by Bickel (1915).
58. Peter of Blois (Ep. 79 [PL 207.244]) makes a clear distinction between the problems of marriage in general and the marriage of a philosopher.
59. Wilson and Makowski 1990, 106.
60. Only during the Renaissance is the ideal of philosophical celibacy also applied to women; the consequences for such women were highly ambivalent. See Feichtinger 1997a.
61. Extramarital affairs were presented as being far more desirable than marriage. Models for this can be found as early as Juvenal Sat. 6.42, in which Ursidius, as a moechorum notissimus olira [once the most notorious of the gigolos], is encouraged to preserve his unmarried and amorous state.
62. PL 178.1165-202.
63. The text is quoted from Monfrin 1967. A good summary of the controversial question of the authenticity of the correspondence between Abelard and Heloise can be found in Wilson and Makowski 1990, 76.
64. Hist. calara. 7 (Monfrin 1967, 76); translation by Muckle (1964).
65. Hist. calara. 8 (Monfrin 1967, 78): Addebat denique ipsa et quara periculosum raihi esset earn reducere, et quara sibi carius existeret raihique honestius amicara did quara uxorera ut me ei sola gratia conservaret, non vis aliqua vinculi nupûalis constringeret.
66. The text has been edited by Webb (1909).
67. Policrat. 8.11 (Webb 1909, 294): De raolestiis et oneribus coniugiorura secundura leroniraura et olios philosophas. All translations from Policraticus are taken from Pike 1938.
68. Jer. Adv. lov. 1.47 (PL 23.289): Ut quae Christianae pudicitiae despiciunt fidera, discant saltera ab ethnicis casûtatera.
69. Policrat. 8.11 (Webb 1909, 296): Concinit in hunc raodura totus recte philosophan-úura chorus, ut, si qui Christianae religionis abhorrent rigorera, discant vel ab ethnicis castitatera. The differences from Jerome's wordings are subtle but significant.
70. Cf. Policrat. 8.11 (Webb 1909, 305): leroniraus testis est …
71. Policrat. 8.11 (Webb 1909, 289-99): “Similar and such were the remarks of Theophrastus. They in themselves are sufficient to explain the perplexities of the married state and the calamities that overtake its cherished joys.”
72. Policrat. 8.11 (Webb 1909, 298-99): “Who could pity the man who, once freed from the fetters, fled back to chains?”
73. See Delhaye 1951, 77.
74. Policrat. 8.11 (Webb 1909, 300): “But those who philosophize, or rather clerics, are fortunate in that not one of them proves impotent or has in court been branded with infamy of this sort.”
75. Cf. the anecdotes concerning unconsummated marriages at Policrat. 8.11 (Webb 1909, 300); see Wilson and Makowski 1990, 84-85.
76. Policrat. 8.11 (Webb 1909, 301-4).
77. Citations of Map are from the edition by James ([1983] 1994).
78. See Pratt 1962, 13-15.
79. See Wilson and Makowski 1990, 84-88.
80. It is nevertheless remarkable that there is no direct quotation from Juvenal's sixth satire; see Wilson and Makowski 1990, 95.
81. For a structural analysis of the lists of examples and for a convincing interpretation of the ambivalences evoked, see Wilson and Makowski 1990, 90-91.
82. Val. dist. 4, cap. 3 (James [1983] 1994, 155): <Perictione>, virgo vergens in senium et fama castitatis privilegiata, tandem Apollinis oppressa fantasmate concepit peperitque Platonem. All translations of Valerius are taken from Tupper and Ogle 1924.
83. Ibid.: Amice, miraris an indignaris magis quod in parabolis tibi significem gentiles imitandos, Christiano ydolatras, agno lupos, bono malos? … Gentilium novi superstitionem, sed… . Plurima perverse agunt increduli; aliqua tarnen agunt que, licet in ipsis intereant, in nobis habunde fructum facerent.
84. Ibid. (James [1983] 1994, 156): Veneris te nolo fieri sponsum, sed Palladis.
85. Ibid.: “Or if they drove themselves with eagerness for their own arts, not with a view to future happiness, but merely in order not to have ignorant souls, what will we have if we neglect the divine page … ?”
86. See Wilson and Makowski 1990, 94-95.
87. See ibid., 96-97.
88. See ibid., 97-98.
89. PL 207.243-47.
90. See Wilson and Makowski 1990, 101-4.
91. Cf. Diss. uxor. 8 (Rajna 1891, 270): Nubat tibi Pallas, amice, scilicet virtus; quia numquam solus esse poteris, si solus cum virgine virginabis. For the full text, see Rajna 1891, 266-72. Wilson and Makowski (1990) have rightly drawn attention to the emphasis in philosophical marriage treatises on pseudo-family ties (on a metaphorical level).
92. See Wulff 1914; Neff 1900; Moore 1943; Utley 1944; Rogers 1966.
93. The credit for disseminating the Aristotelian view of woman as an imperfect male—and thus, by extension, a creature lacking in reason and morality—must to a large extent be given to Thomas Aquinas.
94. See Wilson and Makowski 1990, 119-20.
95. Examples are Les quinze joyes de mariage (see the edition of Crow [1969]) or Eustache Deschamps's Le miroir de manage (see the edition of Rynaud [1894]). De conjuge non ducenda has on several occasions been translated into English and French; see Wright [1841] 1968.
96. For medieval misogyny, see Wulff 1914.
97. A short summary of research and literature on this subject can be found in Wilson and Makowski 1990, 68-69.
98. Andreas Capellanus's De arte honeste amandi, one of the best sources for amour courtois, supports the theory that an exaggerated idealization of women is often very closely connected with aggressive defamation in the code of courtly love. The palinode of the last book, De reprobatione amoris, includes a comprehensive battery of misogynistic topoi and scathing attacks on women.