The Anglo Saxon Reeve and Chaucer's Pilgrim

     I have been doing a close reading of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales with a few friends and we are at the Reeve's description in the General Prologue. This seems like a good time to discuss the term 'reeve' and where it comes from.
    The reeve or 'rife' or 'gerifa' is a royal representative or local official of some sort. As an office, it is a leftover from the Anglo Saxon period. Some chroniclers glossed it as 'praefectus' or prefect. When William the Bastard conquered England in 1066 a.d., he found a very orderly system of administration in place and did not change the system, although he put a few of his own people in the top spots, because it was functioning and he did not want to bother with details. He just wanted the country and its wealth; he was not very concerned about its citizens. So the reeve survived and was not supplanted by an Anglo-Norman term. We know him as a 'sheriff' which is a syncopation of 'shire-reeve'. He had tax-collecting and judicial duties. He also could be a overseer of some estate, the duties were not fixed to the title.
     The 'shire' is a term that is derived from 'schir' which simply means 'share, portion, division'. It is a subsection of a country and is not identical to the term 'hide' or 'hid' (a unit of measure equal to about 120 acres but not necessarily). It probably replaced 'hide'.
     We tend to think of the modern reeve as a type of mayor for smaller communities. Mayor is a term brought over by the Norman Conquest. It is simply an 'anglicization' of a latin term: the comparative of bonus (good) which is maior (better). The superlative is optimus (best). It seems similar to ealdorman, which survives today as alderman or 'old man', 'elder'. Small wonder that term has been changed to councillor in some municipalities. The ealdorman seems to belong to the earlier Anglo-Saxon period in England to have been replaced in some ways by eorls but it seems to me to be similar to the term 'wita' or 'wise man/councillor' since the earls clearly had military duties which the wita may or may not have. The Witangemot was a meeting(gemot) of the wita (wisemen).  Some of the terms seem to be used interchangeably. Unfortunately there is no book written pre-Conquest explaining all these terms and the duties attached to them. We must infer them from what texts exist.
     Chaucer's reeve is the overseer of an estate or manor. As such, part of his duties would be to supervise the Miller and draw part of his salary from the Miller's earnings, so it is not surprising that the Miller and the Reeve get into a big quarrel.

The Death of Geoffrey Chaucer

       Having criticized one theory about Chaucer's death, I feel I should offer some other theory as to how he died and it should be more plausible than the one I criticized.

      The facts as we know them:
     The only date we have - October 25, 1400 - appeared on his tomb in Westminster Abbey in 1556 when his bones were possibly moved to the current position by a Nicholas Brigham who was moved to honour the poet.The Dean of Westminster, Arthur Stanley, made conflicting reports about Chaucer's body, finally placing a note on Abraham Cowley's tomb that Chaucer was buried near this stone.
     William Camden wrote that the poet's bones had been moved to this new tomb in 1600.
     Chaucer had been born about 1340 (alternate date had been 1328) in London. His father was a vintner, who had attended on Edward III.
    Chaucer had been a trusted civil servant to Richard II (last position was Forester) when Richard was deposed in 1399.
    Chaucer began his career in the household of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, before attracting Edward III's notice. He was ransomed by the king when he had been captured by the French in the Hundred Years War. John of Gaunt became his patron and Gaunt's third wife was sister to Chaucer's wife, so Chaucer was step-uncle by marriage to Henry IV and Richard II.
      Thomas Chaucer, Butler and trusted inner circle of Henry IV, is believed to be Geoffrey Chaucer's son on the evidence of Thomas Gascoigne, Chancellor of Oxford in the early 15th century. Thomas Chaucer's coat of arms has elements both from his mother 's (Roet) arms and his father's arms.
     In 1399 Henry of Bolingbroke marched into England while Richard was fighting in Ireland. He took over the country and captured Richard II, holding him prisoner until Richard's death a few months later.
     September 30, 1399 Henry of Bolingbroke becomes Henry IV. Chaucer has lost all his previous royal appointments but Henry confirmed his annuities. These appear not to have been paid and Chaucer, feeling the sting of poverty, writes a poem in complaint to Henry.
     Christmas Eve 1399, Chaucer took out a 53 year lease on a house at Westminster Abbey where he is believed to have moved to. He was approximately 59 years old and in apparently good health.
     February 17, 1400, Richard II's body was displayed at the old St. Paul's cathedral.
    If Chaucer died in October of that year, as a resident of Westminster Abbey, he was entitled to burial at the abbey cathedral. As a member of Richard's inner circle, a famous writer, and related by marriage to the royal family, he was probably entitled to burial inside the cathedral.
    He did not leave a will (that we know of) but this was not unusual.
    By September 28, 1401 his apartment had a new tenant: Master Paul, most likely a former royal physician.
    William Caxton, who published his first edition of The Canterbury Tales on a printing press circa 1476, wrote in his epilogue to Chaucer's translation of Boethius that he placed a plaque at the site of the poet's burial at his own expense.
    The stone over Chaucer's burial place is reputedly sawn up to place John Dryden next to him in 1720.
      According to an article written by Henry Troutbeck, in 1889 the original burial site was disturbed for Browning's burial. At that time Troutbeck thought he examined the bones of Chaucer and calculated his height at 5'6" but they could have been Dryden's or any other person buried in the south transept. There are no Abbey records of Chaucer's body being exhumed after 1556.
    No one is certain who is in the current memorial to Chaucer, whether it is Chaucer, Dryden or perhaps even no one.
    No one is certain who was in the old burial place.
    1400 was a plague year. Adam of Usk reported that it was hard on the young as usual.
    Chaucer survived the Black Death of 1348 and all subsequent waves of plague which were always harder on the young, as reported by chronicles of the time. Most smaller waves arose in the spring and subsided in the fall. As Chaucer is reported to have died October 25 (no one knows where Brigham got this date from) this would be late for the plague season. As such, burial at Westminster Abbey might not have been possible and burial would have then been a plague pit. The last written record of him is him signing a receipt for wine on September 29, 1400.
     There is no report from contemporaries or writers in the following years who report any rumour of anything sinister in Chaucer's passing except to say he had died.

      I do not think it is likely that Chaucer died of the plague because it tended to kill young people who had not been exposed to it before. If the date of October 25 is correct, it is past the plague season.
At approximately 60 years of age, he could have died from so many things. Upper crust people seldom ate vegetables, which is why so many had gout. Drinking water was not safe so people, including children, drank 'weak beer' or wine. What would a lifetime of drinking alcohol and eating meat do especially to an old man?
     Chaucer had four children, it is not known what happened to any of them except Thomas. None of them erected a memorial on his tomb but, as a resident of the abbey, his body belonged to the abbey which should have wanted to keep it since it would likely attract visitors and money to the cathedral. And it is likely it was Chaucer's intention to be buried there. When Peter the Venerable gave Abelard's body to Heloise, he was under no obligation to do so and Abelard's fame as a philosopher and a teacher would have meant donations to Cluny Abbey. Peter's gift of Abelard's body to Heloise was very, very generous.

    So what do I think he died of? Old age. Heart attack, aneurism, stroke. All three are sudden enough and can be not preceded by any feelings of unwellness. Maybe he died in his sleep. There does not appear to have been anything traumatic or violent in his passing. One would hope some rumour would have sprung up immediately but there are none.

Richard II and His Throne Usurping Cousin Henry IV

    The later Middle Ages have not been the era that interests me the most. I am more interested in the Age of Heroes, the time of the Great Migration, i.e. early Middle Ages, when King Arthur and Beowulf lived. I understand people's greater interest in the later period because there is more to know, more chronicles that survived, there was more written literature.
     I was interested in what Terry Jones wrote about Richard II and Henry of Bolingbroke and looked a little further afield for information about their conflict. Was Richard such a terrible unpopular king? Did Henry IV and his sidekick Arundel truly wipe any positive accounts of Richard from the record?  One issue with that is 'he who laughs last laughs loudest' and Henry IV did not have the last word on Richard. His son, Henry V, who had been fostered by Richard II and felt a great affection for him, little for his father and none for Arundel had the last word. Therefore, it could be that Henry V, who had quarreled with Arundel over power when his father became increasingly incapacitated by illness, who left a portrait of Arundel in the historical record that was more cruel and despotic than he was in actual fact and he could have easily corrected any and all accounts that were unkind to Richard II. As well, since he was friends with and second cousin to Thomas Chaucer (who scholars agree was Chaucer's son) if Chaucer had been murdered for being part of Richard's regime by Henry IV or killed as a heretic by Arundel, this would be an opportunity to rehabilitate him as well.
     In her book A Distant Mirror, a book on the 14th Century and the Hundred Years War, Barbara Tuchman wrote that Richard wanted to marry the daughter of the King of France in an effort to end the war which he had no use for and called 'intolerable'. She added that he did not share his countrymen's animosity towards the French. If he was not always a great king, she wrote that "Kingship, which can corrupt or improve, seems to have had a generally one-sided effect in the 14th century: only Charles V gained wisdom from responsibility." (pg. 533) She concluded by saying that historians debate if Richard was mentally ill but that this is a modern view of a "malfunction common to 14th century rulers: the inability to inhibit impulse."
      Terry Jones also wrote that Richard tacitly allowed Lollardy to flourish during his reign but Tuchman wrote that, following the Twelve Conclusions nailed by Lollards to the doors of St. Pauls and Westminster Abbey, Richard II came home from Ireland where he was campaigning 'to enforce new measures of suppression'. In a fury he threatened to kill Sir Richard Stury, who supported the Wycliffian proposal for reforms in the House of Commons, by the 'foulest death that may be'. So far be it from looking the other way, Richard defended traditional Catholicism although Tuchman adds that the Conclusions did make their way into his wife's entourage where they found some sort of welcome.
Although Jones was correct, Richard's efforts to end the Hundred Years War and make peace with France was very unwelcome by his barons and this formed a part of the movement to usurp him.
      One thing that was left out of Jones' book (and I wish it had not been) was the account in Holinshed's chronicle that Richard II had not starved to death (as most scholars now believe) but had been murdered according to Henry IV's wish by a Sir Piers Exton. This fact showed itself in Shakespeare's play Henry IV. Shakespeare showed Richard as an intellectual king, which perhaps influenced Jones' perception of Richard.  It is William Caxton who wrote that Richard II had starved to death at Pontrefact Castle because the Percys accused Henry IV of having starved him intentionally. Holished may have gotten his alternate history from chronicler, contemporary to Richard, called Jean Creton or the  anonymous writer of Chronicque de la Traison et Mort de Richart Deux, Roy Dengleterre. His body had been exhumed in 1871 by Dean Stanley of Westminster, and it was noted that there were no marks of violence on his body or head. The director of the National Portrait Gallery, Sir George Scharf, was present and made sketch's of the king's skull, which you can see here.

an account of the recent discovery of this sketch can be found here at the National Portrait Gallery site.

     What may have lead to the story of Richard's murder may have been that Henry, who was plagued with some disfiguring disease that may or may not have been leprosy, had been buried at Canterbury Cathedral near the tomb of Thomas Beckett, in hopes that the saint could intercede for him with God so that Henry could go to heaven, in spite of usurping the throne and having caused his cousin's death.
     Thomas Beckett, as you well know, had been murdered by knights who were acting on Henry II's exasperated cry of "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest." Henry IV is said to have uttered similar words which cause Exton to depart with eight other men and chop Richard's head off while Richard defended himself manfully with a knife. Similar tales.
    I wonder why Jones did not include more of this in his book since he was discussing the death of Richard II and how the new regime pursued his supporters. This would have been better than all those flights of fancy. I suppose I should offer up some theory as to how Chaucer died. That will be my next post. 

Archbishop Arundel: As Black As He Was Painted?

      Margery Kempe lived from around 1373 until some time after 1436 when her autobiography ends. She was alive when Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400) was and so her story is great for its first hand account of life around the turn of the 15th century. She lived through the regime change but did not remark upon it, possibly the turmoil did not reach her in the north or did not affect her much beyond the risk of being burned as a heretic for being a Lollard. Being accused of heresy is no small thing but she survived in spite of the many times she had to defend herself.
       Margery is a middle class woman, the religious counterpart to the Wife of Bath. She tried her hand at several businesses which failed and then she tried to make her mark on the world as a holy woman. She did live rather close to the edge and frequently strayed over it so it is no wonder that she was accused before the Archbishop Arundel and dragged before the Archbishop of York and for being a Lollard. She was guilty but she answered questions well enough to escape being burned at the stake.
     In her autobiography, she described meeting Arundel. She was sent to him because she wanted to wear the white of purity and needed permission but the Bishop of Lincoln, to whom she applied, sent her to Arundel.  So she went to London, to Lambeth Palace, and many of the Archbishop's clerks were swearing and 'spoke many reckless words' for which she rebuked them. She was told she should have been burned at Smithfield with Sawtre. Margery was also there to ask for permission to receive communion every Sunday when most people received it once a year. She reported that "he granted it full benignly, all her desire without any silver or gold, nor would he let his clerks take anything for writing or for sealing the letter." When he showed himself so kind to her, she grew a little bolder and told him about her manner of living (she was going around, praying with people) and about her tears (after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, she began weeping loudly and copiously at every church service her 'gift' for which many a priest tried to banish her from his church.).  She wrote that Arundel "found no fault therein but approved of her manner of living and was right glad that our Merciful Lord Jesus Christ showed such grace in our days, blessed may he be."
      With all this kindness, she grew even bolder and mentioned to him how rude his staff was and rebuked him as well as told him that if he did not put those rude clerics out of his service that he would have to answer to the 'higher up'. She said that he heard her out 'full benignly and meekly' and gave her a fair answer then allowed her to go. This contrasts rather sharply with the picture of Arundel that Terry  Jones painted in his book on Chaucer.
     Jones also wrote that Arundel declared war on vernacular writing and yet in the introduction to the Book of Margery Kempe, Lynn Stanley wrote that Arundel sponsored Nicholas Love's translation of Meditations on the Life of Christ showing his awareness of the need for devotional texts particularly for female readers. I have never found a hostility to vernacular writing that Jones describes: where Church authorities clamp down on secular writing in the vernacular. Some do not approve of such frivolity however there was never a determined effort to stamp it out.
     So, was Arundel the imperious, harsh, war monger as he was portrayed in Jones' book? People are far too complicated for such a simple assessment and I do not think he ever felt threatened enough by Chaucer's writing to execute him for that.

Terry Jones on Chaucer's Death, part two

     I have almost finished the book and I want to make a few more points before I review it.

pg. 171 "It is possible to argue that Gower was not exactly a 'court poet'" No, he was not. He had independent means and owned his books. He commissioned his own copies and gave them as gifts. No need to argue. Jones uses this as a point to say that Gower changed allegiance to Henry IV because he was trying to keep his position. He does say that Gower's approval of Henry does not prove that he disapproved of Richard. There was turbulence during Richard II's reign but it did not go away with Henry's rule. He was plagued with rebellion and war too. The crown did not sit easily on his head, plus he had to live with the guilt of having disposed of the anointed king and being responsible for the death of his own kin and his later 'leprosy' was seen as a punishment of his sin in this world.

On page 230, he makes much that Richard's library has disappeared and that many books are lost from this time. Since things were copied by hand, there were few of them and fires destroyed many without censorship. Even some of Gower's books were lost for a time and he had 'official approval' according to Jones.

On page 256, Jones wrote about how Arundel's Constitutions stifled criticism of the Church and set a maximum lay people were permitted to know about scripture as well as setting out penalties. However the Constitutions in its entirety is available in English in The Book of Margery Kempe. Margery was dragged before Arundel several times and examined for orthodoxy. She lived during this time that is described and she had contact with Julian of Norwich. As well, her priest had been William Sawtre, who was burned at Smithfield in 1401 for being a relapsed heretic. You were generally not burned for being a heretic. It was being a relapsed heretic that would give you the death penalty. Margery often pushed the envelope in what she was permitted to do as a lay person and a woman but she survived. Jones did not even mention her in his book although she is a witness to the times and met Arundel. Nicholas Watson, in one of of the essays at the end of her autobiography, wrote "there is no mention of vernacular writing (as distinct from oral instruction)". The entire thrust of the article is to repress translations of the Bible and to guard the Church's monopoly on the purses of their parishioners. Arundel did not declare war on secular works with this article.

On page 264, Jones wrote about one of the first mentions of Chaucer in print which he states was a poem by Henry Scogan, supposedly read at the home of a Welshman and possibly attended by Chaucer's son Thomas, a subversive act. Too many maybes and might haves here. Plus there is the problem that Henry IV liked Chaucer's son Thomas and made him his butler and Thomas Chaucer was the Speaker of the Common's House, as well as being his cousin. Henry supported Thomas and Jones admits that this is often cited as a reason why Chaucer could not have fallen victim to the new regime. It is a very good point. When people are killed as heretics or bear the disapproval of the government, the stain usually tars their families who then also become pariahs and usually lose their rights to inherit property from the deceased. Thomas never made a move against Henry or Arundel and he even married into the royal family, his great grandson was John de la Pole, who was the designated heir to another star crossed Richard (III). The De La Poles fell afoul of Henry VIII in an ironic twist since they supported the papacy against Henry.

On page 303, he wrote about accounts of Chaucer's death especiallyJohn Bale and John Pits but, since so many histories are rife with inaccuracies, is the lack of agreement about the facts any argument? I think the fact that Thomas Chaucer co-operated with and prospered under the new government speaks louder.

Jones also made much of the fact that Chaucer took up residence at Westminster Abbey, citing its role as a legal sanctuary as part of the attraction of the place but then on page 309 he cites one Robert Tresilian, a former associate of Chaucer, who was dragged out of sanctuary to be tried and executed. I think Chaucer knew the futility of seeking sanctuary and did not take up residence there for that reason. More likely it was because he was old and would be cared for by the monks if he took ill. His wife seems to have passed away long before this.

Chapter 17 is about the Retraction and if Chaucer wrote it and really repented. It is a commonplace thing. Many writers wrote them, even Boccaccio who influenced Chaucer, wrote one that was sincere. It often happens to people when they are old or face a catastrophic illness that they become worried about the afterlife. On page 354, Jones admits that literary recantations "can be seen as following a tradition of medieval Latin, French and German writing in which and author, embarking on a religious topic, regret the follies of his youth and his writing of worldly vanity. As such the Retractions can be read as entirely conventional" But of course, Jones goes on to say that this Retraction was evidence of something else.

I have but a few pages left to go and then I will give a final review of the book. 

Some Thoughts on Terry Jones' Book About Chaucer

I set The Name of the Rose aside for a bit while I read Terry Jones' (of Monty Python fame) book Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery.

     This is not my full review but I had a few thoughts while I was reading this and some 'facts' seemed incorrect to me.

The first issue I had was on page 23, when Jones wrote that the Latin verb legere meant 'to read' but also could be taken as a synonym to dicere 'to say'. No it cannot. Legere means to read but its only other meanings are 'to chose or select'. The past participle is lectus and when you add an 'e' for 'ex' meaning 'out of', you get 'elect'. He was trying to make a point about court poets and public readings but if the Latin is wrong, then your point is too. I checked with the Oxford Latin Dictionary to make sure there was no obscure implication that 'to read' was also identical to 'reading aloud' and there is not.

On page 26, he makes a point that Chaucer and John Gower (Chaucer's friend and equally famous as a writer at the time) did not appear to receive money in patronage for their writing. He writes quite a bit about Gower since Gower wrote about the politics and history of the time, living at St. Mary Overie in Southwark, right next to London Bridge and almost right across the river from the White Tower, as well as being down the road from the Tabard Inn. This places him near the beating pulse of the goings on, as it were. Gower seemed to have independent means as he owned his literary works and commissioned his own copies for admirers so of course he received no dollars from the crown. We do not know quite how Gower got his money because his name was too common and there were many John Gowers at the time. So this is another flawed premise which Jones is using to discuss the court of King Richard II and how much the arts flourished under his rule.

He also wrote on page 65 that there had always been critics of the church and 'the church could be cheerfully tolerant of them - indeed it may well have welcomed them".  To that I have to say  "Really? In what universe?" The church never welcomed criticism although it was not until the 19th century that the Pope finally had himself formally declared infallible.

On page 84, he wrote that the church took issue with literature in the vernacular languages. I don't believe this is the case. "As long as the scripture remained in Latin, the church remained the interpreter and controller of Holy Writ" he writes but, in those days, anyone who was educated could read Latin. Keeping the scriptures in Latin was no barrier to a layman reading and interpreting the Bible. Non-clerics owning the Bible was a problem because people were not allowed to interpret scripture for themselves. The position of the Church was that it had the right to tell people what they may think. People had prayer books but no layman, except perhaps the King, was allowed to own a Bible so this argument that the Church was hostile people to using English to write with is flawed.

On page 110, he makes the argument that, because there were counter strikes to Henry Bolingbroke usurping the throne, this proves Richard II had been a popular king. However there are always those who will see an opportunity in keeping or putting a grateful tyrant on the throne. It proves nothing. Also, Richard was the anointed king and the eldest son of the very popular Black Prince. If his rule was sanctioned by the Pope, it was sanctioned by God and it was a sin to usurp his throne so some people would have rallied to his cause anyway. So long as Richard lived, there was always a threat that he could recover his throne so murdering him was a necessary precaution. However Henry IV could not openly execute him because he was his cousin and rightful king and therefore there is a mystery about how Richard died in his custody. 

I am not saying that Jones' idea that Chaucer was murdered by someone in Henry I's regime is wrong. After all, Christopher Marlowe was assassinated by Elizabeth I's Robert Cecil due to his work for spymaster Walsingham and his celebrity as a playwright did not protect him. Like Chaucer, he was up to his eyeballs in royal diplomacy and espionage and playing a dangerous game. The political turmoil that ended Marlowe's life became a threat to Shakespeare's life as well.

This is not my review of the work because I haven't finished it yet. I just took issue with some of the 'facts' and I think he is taking huge liberties with Gower's work.

John Gower

John Gower is an author from the 14th century who has been largely forgotten by modern readers. I doubt there are any books, that he wrote currently in print, but Google Books carries a few of them to read online. He was a friend to Geoffrey Chaucer. The Man of Law is thought to be modeled on him since he refers to Gower's story of Apollonius of Tyre in the prologue and the Man of Law's tale is based on one of Gower's stories from Confessio Amantis, Book III. Gower is thought to have been a lawyer.

Gower lived through the arrival of bubonic plague to England in 1348 and the Hundred Years War. He witnessed the Peasants' Revolt, the turmoil of Richard II's reign and his subsequent deposal by Henry IV. Gower wrote Cronica Tripertita about the turbulence of Richard's reign and justifying Henry's usurption of the throne.

If it sounds a little like Milton's Eikonoklastes, you would not wrong to compare the two. Gower has quite a bit in common with Milton: he went blind, he wrote about Biblical themes in English and in Latin (although Gower also wrote in French), they both are unique in writing about Sin being the daughter of Lucifer and Death being the child they created together. Gower precedes Milton by 300 years.

His works include, Speculum Hominis or Mirour de 'omme, Vox Clamantis, Confessio Amantis, Traitie, Cikante Balades, Cronica Tripertita, In Praise of Peace. When I get a chance to do some recreational reading, I will try to post more about him since he truly is an interesting fellow.

Antiochus

    It is with a heavy heart that I review one of my original hypotheses about the name Antiochus being bestowed on the first bearer of the Elder Wand in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows that I put forth in this article.  I was not looking for more background to Harry Potter, I was looking for a story I had read recently about a monk who, having had his relics stolen and replaced with a lump of coal by some rascals, held up the coal and said that it was one of the coals that St. Lawrence had been roasted with.  Stories about St. Lawrence pop up in the unlikeliest places. I thought it might have been in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales but it is more likely that I read the story in Boccaccio's Decameron.

      While I was thumbing through the Canterbury Tales, I came across the Monk's Tale about Antiochus a pre-C.E. king who attacked Jerusalem with the intent of razing it to the ground as related in the Biblical text, Maccabees.  God struck him down before he could ever strike a blow.  J.K. Rowling plundered the Pardoner's Tale for her fable about the three brothers who 'defeated' death in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows so it seems more likely that she got the name Antiochus from the same source.  Especially when the "Spear of Destiny" that her characters were fighting over would be the one that Hitler had taken from the Habsburgs in Vienna.  It was held by Grindelwald and the re-taking of the wand by Dumbledore ended WWII much like the spear was recovered by Patton just before Hitler's suicide.

     Like so many things in Harry Potter, the fan theories are better than the novels themselves.  Bohemond would have been much more suitable as a character to have owned the first wand to make the bearer invincible in battle.  But then he does not appear to have valued the spear and trusted to his own 'genius' rather than a gimmick so perhaps not.

The Patient Griselda

    One thing that is lovely about writing your own blog, instead of an academic paper, is you do not have to be detached from your subject if you do not wish to be.  As a 21st century woman, it is hard to read stories like the patient Griselda and not have anyone to bitchslap afterwards.  The people who need slapping are long dead and some of them may never have lived. Ah, well!

        The Decameron is a collection of one hundred stories told by seven women and three men who flee Florence to escape the plague.  They stay at a villa in the country and, to amuse each other, tell stories.  Each of them has to tell one story per day for ten days and thus the name Decameron comes from the Greek for 'ten days'.  The subject of the stories is love.  One of my favorites and most giggle worthy is about the hermit Rustico who persuades a young woman to play a pious game with him called 'putting the devil into hell'. You can imagine what that game was about. 

      Griselda is the subject of the last story in Boccaccio's Decameron and is a story about a beautiful peasant woman, Griselda, who is married by the Marquis of Saluzzo because his subjects beg him to take a wife.  He believes women are evil things but he is convinced by Griselda's mild manner and beauty that she might make a good wife.  It turns out she is mild,  good and decent but he decides to test her meekness by abusing her and calling her names.  This does not change her nature so he tests her further by taking their daughter, soon after she is born, and telling his wife he does not like the girl and is going to have her killed. Griselda tells him that she will bow in his judgement. Ack!!! And then, and then, he proceeds a few years later to have their son killed soon after being born and again she does not complain!!   The children were not really killed; the marquis sends them away to a kinswoman of his to be secretly raised.  

      Griselda, still loving her husband and obeying him in all things, is tested one more time by the heartless bastard. He tells her that he does not love her anymore and is going to marry someone else - a 12 year old girl at that - and would she please help his new bride get dressed for the wedding.  Griselda does his bidding in that too, uncomplaining.

      The 'bride' is her daughter and, since she passed the test, the idiot husband reunites her with her children and restores her to her position but his subjects think rather less of him for being such an ass.  I am not sure what Boccaccio's point was with this story - was she an example for women to live up to or an example of how foolish men can be?  

      Griselda was a popular story.  Petrarch translated it in to latin and, from him, it made it in to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales as the Clerk's Tale.  Charles Perrault, otherwise known as Mother Goose, includes her story in his Fairy Tales in Verse.  It is appropriate that he places her story in a book on fairy tales since this is clearly what it is.  What woman could still love a man whom she believes has murdered both of their infant children?  Even after he has beaten her down with emotional and verbal abuse?  Only a man could invent a story like that.

BEATLES SONG OF THE WEEK

......Christus! Scis non facilis est,

Scis quo modo durum erit,

Quo modo res agunt,

Me crucifigere agunt.

Habui denique fugam in Lutetia,

Ferias iuxta Sequanam.

Petrus Spadicus me vocavit dicere,

Permissit,

Te in matrimonium ducere in Mons Calpe iuxta Iberiam.

Christus! Scis non facilis est....