Epileptic and Anorexic

Julius Cesar was an epileptic. There are many evidences about it and there is not any author I know who actually denies it. Of course the Romans did not say that he was epileptic, but said he had a sacred illness that put him in contact with the gods. Julius Cesar probably believed this himself, and it is very probably that epilepsy was one of the reasons to actually increase his self esteem. Nowadays, however, there is not any author who argues that he was actually touched by the gods and that epilepsy is just a modern interpretation of the phenomenon. Of course none of us actually believes in the Roman gods, they are just poetic figures used time to time as metaphors…

In the case of Margerie Kempe, however, her evident anorexia is read as some spiritual other thing. Of course she and her contemporaries read it as some religious fast and put much of spiritual content in it, but, even with its spiritual content, that was anorexia. Nowadays, anorexia is socially encouraged with the name of “diet” and actual diets really become alimentary disorders with enough similarities with Margerie’s disorders. Fasts were also socially encouraged during the Middle Ages, and the line that separated the pious fast from the alimentary disorder was equally thin.

Why we cannot say that Margerie had anorexia in a pious version, just as we say that Cesar had epilepsy in his own Roman version, but epilepsy on the bottom line?

What about the elephant in the room?

Our last set of readings arrived to one conclusion: there were homosexuals or gay people in the Middle Ages. Any other metaphor, poetic image or even any convention about using male pronouns to talk about women cannot keep our attention away from this fact: the elephant in the room. The idea of sex in the Middle Ages was strongly identified to intercourse, a possibility given by nature only to men, therefore, the absence of lesbianism in the discourse about (against) homosexuality should not surprise us.

The Catholic clergy has been always a common place of sexual tension: sex of any class was forbidden. One can think that many of men enclosed together and talking about love could find a lot of temptation, even though if they were not originally gay, as happens in our prisons nowadays. Young boys without secondary sexual characteristics were appealing to the old priests and the boiling activity of their adolescence was also an open door for temptation and consummation.

Women dressed as males are also a common place in the Middle Ages, beginning with Jean D'Arc herself. However, the male clothes on a woman often were justified by some higher purpose, but the question about the sexuality of those virgins in male garments is at least intriguing... or may be not, and the answer is more obvious than what The Romance of Silence wants to admit.

In both cases, male and female, friendship was in fuzzy place, and the terms to refer to it were quite ambiguous. Except in some poems, as in the Jewish poets studied in our last sessions, the terms to describe men are quite feminine, as Perceval's red lips. 

Personally, I think that sexuality of any kind is impossible to repress and that it finds always the ways for its consummation. The Middle Ages seems to be not an exception. However, was it not a veiled subject? The Roman of Silence did not talk about sex, except for Eufeme who was under a wrong impression. There were rules of alleged grammar that allowed the poet to use male pronouns to talk about women. Were not those a strategy to actually talk about men and make the poems pass as an stylistic innovation, even though if they were used to actually talk about women many times?

Probably sexual indiscretions were not weird, and only characters as this Allan of Lille were actually concerned about the offenses against Nature and not only about only keeping the face. Anyway, sex of any kind was illicit outside of marriage, and, if we believe our texts, Middle Ages were plenty of it!

Cross Dressing

The motives of Silence seem to be almost as pure as Joan of Arc’s. The debate between nature and nurture is at least weird: it is about Merlin and his veganism and not plainly about Silence. In the case of Silence, nurture has some altruist reason, as preserving her inheritance –it does not seem that altruist now, but it is some family duty at the time. The story is far from sexual motivations and, as always in feminine transvestites, the clothes are for some other purpose different of a sex or gender matter. The Eufeme affair is just collateral damage and a tool to put a little of drama in the story.

The male transvestite in the “Silence” impersonates a nun and his disguise is a trick to get to Eufeme, the queen, who is not precisely a trustable woman. For a male dressing as woman could be only a trick or joke; women transvestism obeys to higher purposes, extreme circumstances and it ends to be a proof of virtue, just as in the case of Jeanne d’Arc.The end of the book is interesting: Silence, back in her feminine form, marries the king who was her former boss and friend and becomes the queen. Is this a sign that virtues are always proper of males? 

The word ‘virtue’ comes from the Latin word ‘virtus’ that also derivates from ‘vir’, the Latin word for man.

Are virtues conceived as a primary masculine quality and only accidental and scarce among women? Silence male actions are praised and she is considered a virtuous woman…

Talking about the sarracen woman...

It is very simple: the Christian, white, Franc and European people are the good ones. The black and pagans are the bad ones. There is nothing relative about this values; loyalty is not a value unless someone is loyal to the Christian, white, Franc and Euorpean people. Women who are loyal to their own blood are simply bad women, even though, or especially if they show the same virtues that Christians show to their own people. Values are not some abstract premises that claim to be universal standards as Kant´s ethics. The true values are the values that we believe and we believe them because they are ours; the beautiful women are our white blond women. If someone can marvel about this phenomenon, is because he or she did not watch cowboys movies in where the pale faces were always the good ones and the red skins were the bad guys. A nationalist narrative is not the search of the Universal Good or a treatise of ethics: is simply the affirmation of a nation –or an ethnicity in this case –as the holders of the truth. If there is a desirable princess for one of “our” princes, it is because she is in some way similar to us. This truth is not a metaphysic one. These texts are so far from that! This truth is the kind of truth that Nietzsche used to declare: “Truth is what is convenient to life.” Not what is convenient to every life, but to “our” life specifically, and that is the life of Christian, white, and European people. This idea is still strong. We just have to look to any TV commercial to acknowledge that “we” still believe that our women are the most beautiful, our religion the only true and our culture the only valuable. This voice spoke through Angela Merkel a few days ago: “We feel tied to Christian values. Those who don’t accept them don’t have a place here…” Middle Ages are finished, are they?

Courtesy

What was that courtesy code of the knights? Strong guys, strongly armed going here and there wearing armors… they are supposed to be good makers, but why doing the right thing required swords? A bunch of armed guys with volatile tempers are controlled by this alleged code. They were not like the modern police, they did not answer to a superior except for a lord or a king who was too busy doing his own violence against the villain of the moment.

The code looks abstract and vague from this point of history. It is almost a good manner manual, but did it have actual ethic content? Being brave and doing the good thing seems not to be enough specific rules, and the respect of the honor sometimes seems more like an infantile excuse for bullying… except that we are talking about big guys with swords.

May be is because of my Hispanic heritage that when I think about a knight I cannot avoid thinking about “Don Quijote de la Mancha”, trying to force someone to confess that his “Dulcinea” was the most beautiful girl ever… “Don Quijote” was a lousy warrior and most of the times he got beaten, but he could take the “Helmet of Mambrino” –which was actually a barber’s bowl –using violence. His courtesy code was absurd even in the sixteen century.

Was the Chivalry Code more logical during the middle ages and its application restricted toe when it was possible, as the modern Humanitarian Law? Were these knights actually models of virtue or just a bunch of belligerent guys doing almost what they wanted?

Super Beowulf?

Beowulf is a man, just a simple mortal who can be under water by a day and sometimes exhibits some superhuman strength… but he is just a man. Was he the whole day inside the water or was he just the most part of it? How could he survive the lake were Grendel’s mom seemed to live? Of course this is just an overheard story, a legend and it is impossible to know what really happened or if something actually really happened. However, assuming the poet wanted to establish that Beowulf was just a simple mortal, did they knew at the time the real capacities of human body?

Time is a subjective impression, especially if somebody is not wearing a precise watch and it is very probably that somebody could really think he or she is really a long time under the water and, without counting the times a person goes out to breathe it could seem that someone is under the water the whole day! However, this attempt of explanation is just speculation. What can we say about a world with trolls! What is a troll, actually! Beowulf takes place in a non historic world or at least in a world where its historic aspects are totally hid for us.

What we can know by reading Beowulf is about the character of the people who conceived it and enjoyed it, about their beliefs and hopes. We can also know how their ways passed to us as parts of the Western Culture, but we cannot know what really happened there, if something happened, and some of their perspectives are lost for us forever. That is the problem when time goes by without proper records.

Who the monster was, anyway?

For a society based in oaths and rites, Marie appears extremely liberal when it is time to talk about love. Nothing can stop it. Bisclavert appears as an exception: Bisclavert’s wife simply stops loving him when she is aware that he is a werewolf… but she is not a Noble woman, or at least not noble enough. She is practical and cares about small details, like where her husband hides his clothes during his werewolf phase… small things; an occupation for small persons? Other characters are noble, tragic. Love in aristocratic hearts is always pure, their strategies and subterfuges appear always justified. Bisclavert´s wife is just a cheater who brings condemnation not only to her, but to her children and for several generations. Meanwhile, Yonec’s mother remains without sin, even thou she carries the baby of her affair to her marriage, and the adult son becomes the killer of his stepfather; the legitimate husband of her mother. They have different rights because they are different people, and their passions are made of a different matter. The mysterious knight who is the father of Yorec has the even the right to become a hawk using of course some kind of (always heretic) magic, and Bisclavert is the victim of a “condition”. This “condition” does not change or even touch the nobility of his inner nature. Ultimately he is beyond of this kind of “small things” and becomes the poodle version of the werewolf: the king’s personal “poodle”.

Marie de France is liberal with love, but only if the lovers are aristocratic, pretty and young. Is this only an ornament to please the listeners of the lais? It reveals some exclusive and excluding point of view of a group that nowadays we should call a class? Who is really the other? The guy affected by his werewolf “condition”? Or is the woman that cannot sustain her love because her lack of sensibility to the noble qualities of her husband? Is the monster the knight who is capable of taking the hawk’s shape? Or is the old and jealous old husband?

Personally, I think the monster is always the other; in this case, the most opposite character to the one that the reader or the listener can identify him or herself with...