SOURCE: “The Lamp of the Commandment in Aucassin et Nicolette,” in Hebrew University Studies in Literature, Vol. 2, Spring, 1974, pp. 30-72.

[In the following essay, Dorfman traces the way in which Aucassin is presented, with his temptations outlined in the Ten Commandments, and argues that Aucassin's adventures in the fantastic land of Torelore constitute his education as a hero—an education necessary for Aucassin to become the “ruler in Israel,” who restores his people to their homeland.]

Aucassin, one of the unlikeliest of heroes in the annals of medieval romance, whose stated objection to having his head cut off by his enemies is that he would thereby be prevented from speaking¹ to his beloved, and whose expertise in the art of knightsmanship is exemplified by his toppling from the saddle because he was seated on such a ‘high horse,’² boldly challenges the established religious order by declaring his unequivocal preference for the luxurious pleasures of Hell over the joyless aridities of Heaven.

‘En paradis qu’ai je a faire? […] Mais en infer voil jou aler […]’

(VI, 24-39).

This defiance of his Father in Heaven, as well as of his earthly parents whose opposition to his desired marriage to Nicolette he refuses to honor, highlights the fact that, like his beloved, he is still a child,³ as the romance begins. Before it ends, he must climb down from his ‘high horse’ with due regard always to the consequences of his actions, and learn to use his head as it was intended he should, devoting himself to the acquisition of the basic education which will make a man of him, capable and worthy of fulfilling the strange and glorious role for which he is secretly⁴ destined. Aucassin, the rebellious son and apathetic lover, who refuses to defend his people and has to be prodded to start off in pursuit of his beloved in exile, is to be nothing less than the long-awaited ‘ruler in Israel,’⁵ who will restors his people to their ancient Homeland.⁶

The nature of the education designed to prepare Aucassin for his awesome task is summed up in the name Torelore, the fabulous land whose king lies in childbed and whose queen leads its army fighting with baked apples, fresh cheeses, eggs and mushrooms as weapons; Torelore, read as Tora […] le’ra,⁷ capsulates the basic theme of the romance and the fundamental lesson that Aucassin must learn, based on a passage in Proverbs: Ki ner mitzva ve’Tora or ve’derech chayim toch’chos musar: Li’shmarcha me’eshes ra me’chelkas lashon nachriyya: …

For the commandment is a lamp, and the teaching is light, And the reproofs of instruction are the way of life; To keep thee from the evil woman; From the smoothness of the alien tongue

(6:23-24) (emphasis added).

The lesson is thematically relevant on both the overt and the covert levels. In the surface story, this is the basis for the opposition of Aucassin's parents to Nicolette; she is an alien slave girl whose smooth tongue—evil influence—prevents him from assuming his responsibilities in defence of his community. Interpreted parastructurally, the term ‘evil woman’ refers not to Nicolette herself but to the pagan seductress Ashtoreth, the goddess of Love of her native Carthage, the real culprit⁸ diverting Aucassin into idolatrous neglect of ‘the teaching’ (Tora), closing his ears to the ‘reproofs of instruction,’ and keeping him from the ‘way of life’ which is his inheritance. Our hero will encounter⁹ severe trials and perform prodigious feats in mastering the course of instruction necessary to furnish the ‘light’ which will guide his people back to the Promised Land.

Aucassin does not have far to go, does he but wish it, to find the ‘light’ he needs for his course of study. It is there in the three Hebrew words, ki ner mitzva (‘for the commandment is a lamp,’) which just precede the thematic Tora […] le’ra capsulation. Similar in connotation to mitzva are the associated words davar, … pl. d’varim … ‘word, saying; thing,’ and diber, … pl. dibros … ‘speech; commandment,’ occurring in aseres ha’d’varim … and aseres ha’dibros … ‘the Ten Commandments.’ In the phrase ‘for the commandment is a lamp,’ mitzva is in the singular, implying that the ‘lamp’ of revelation lights up the Tora as a whole (Tora or). This may be interpreted to mean, as Leo Baeck informs us, that all the commandments are to be considered as one.

The revelation was first documented in the Ten Commandments written on the two tablets, ‘the tables of the testimony’ (Ex. 32:15), the ‘tables of the covenant’ (Deut. 9:19). They are words of law and freedom, the constitution of this people and manifesto to all humanity in one. The introduction points to the foundation which alone can carry all of this. It says: (Ex. 20:1) ‘God spoke all these words’ (‘these whole words’). These words have meaning only in their oneness, in their totality. They have not been brought together and counted, but each one is an essential part of the whole, and this whole proves itself in each of them. The whole comes before the parts, it is the life which lives in all.¹⁰

The future ‘ruler in Israel’ must know at first hand the pragmatic meaning of the commandments, ‘the constitution of this people,’ and understand the manner in which they are inseparably intertwined with each other and with the lives of the people in their daily acts. His education, to be complete in the sense of ‘all these words,’ the Ten Commandments of the Tora, depends on his coming into collision with each of them in one form or other in the various incidents of the romance which, in their oblique way, exemplify and illustrate them. In direct—if undercover—confrontation with them, he will come to understand their essence and their application, demonstrating in practice through painful efforts and acts of prowess that he has learned to benefit from the ‘reproofs of instruction’ that are the ‘way of life.’

The parastructural lesson that Aucassin is required to derive from his experiences is based on the meaning of mitzva ‘command, commandment; act of charity, pious action.’ The keynote is action: ‘command’ implies One who commands; all His commandments are manifestations of a single, universal ‘commandment’; every act of charity fulfills this commandment; the good life is realized not just in knowledge of the commandments—though study of them is essential—but in ‘pious action,’ the performance of mitzvas. Small wonder then that fortune fails to smile on Aucassin, who refuses to ‘do what he should,’ until he himself begins to invite success by performing his first mitzva, alleviating the distress of the poor oxherd whom he saves from debtor's prison by enabling him to replace his lost ox. This ‘pious action,’ which he accompanies with a blessing in response to the oxherd's curse, is a sign that the ‘child’ has come of age, ready at last to assume the duties and responsibilities of a man; he is now truly a bar mitzva,¹¹ a ‘son of the commandment,’ who has earned the right of his reunion with his beloved at the bower in the forest. One good deed, however, does not preclude recidivism; victory is not won at a single stroke but demands constant and repeated efforts. The challenge of idolatry in the form of Ashtoreth, goddess of Love, preying on the weakness of suffering humanity, as Aucassin, with his dislocated shoulder, prays to the evening star and the moon to reunite him with his beloved, does not relax its illusory attraction without a struggle.

The sweet fleshpots of Hell entice with greater force than the less visible and more austere delights of Heaven, particularly in youth, when the blood flows more vigorously and the appetites are stronger. As the romance begins, Aucassin is a self-centered child, blind to everything but the powerful drive of his love, stubbornly rejecting tthe wisdom and the teaching of his parents; alienated by the strains of the generation gap, he does not shrink from outright betrayal of his land and people. This cold anger,¹² responsible for the incredible oath he demands of Bougars, the enemy war-chief—that the latter harass his father in body and possessions for the rest of his life—must be curbed and channelled properly. In the process of fitting himself for his appointed task as the coming ‘ruler in Israel,’ Aucassin must learn to look beyond himself, to deal firmly and justly with all, rich and poor alike, and, not least, to create the conditions which will restore his people to their ancient homeland in peace. Presented on the surface as an amusing romance for the entertainment of a general public, Aucassin et Nicolette addresses itself in secret to a special audience in distress;¹³ the promise to the latter is explicit: no matter how ‘perplexed, sorrowful, dejected, or sickened by a great evil’ they may be, if they but ‘listen’ they will be ‘cured and comforted with joy.’ The therapeutic lesson is a parable in which their destined leader confronts the forces of light and darkness, religion and idolatry, pointing out the ‘way of life’ as the road out of Exile, while he painfully struggles with the temptations involved in each of the Ten Commandments.

THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

And God spoke all these words, saying:

I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage

(Exodus 20:1-2).

This declarative statement, considered by some a prologue¹⁴ to the Ten Commandments, expresses an imperative force, whose implied command is commented on by Baeck.

This sentence is the first of the commandments, not just the first of the words. For when the eternal ‘I’ directs its world to men, there speaks at the same time the enduring commandment, this foundation and meaning of all freedom. Essentially and primarily, revelation is the revelation of the commandment, of man's freedom. Only when man has heard the ‘I am He-Who-Is’ is he aware of the commandment of his self; is he conscious of the origin of his freedom

(p. 74.)

The call to freedom, symbolized by the release from Egyptian bondage, is a command to choose, and to take a permanent stand with the Lord. It is a call to action, with a condition, noted by Anderson.

[…] Yahweh's initiative demanded that the people respond. It placed them in a situation of decision, summoned them to a task within the divine purpose. What Moses had experienced earlier at Sinai—the call to take his part in Yahweh's historical plan—was experienced by all the people […] and with far-reaching implications for the future. Whether in fact these people would be the people of Yahweh depended upon a condition: ‘If you will obey my voice and keep my covenant’

(p. 53).

Aucassin comes into conflict¹⁵ with both parts of the First Commandment, which constitute a single entity; he is required to recognize the Lord and, like all Jews born at whatever period, consider that it was he who was ‘brought out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’ This symbolic tie unites all Israel in brotherhood¹⁶ and binds them in mutual responsibility to each other and to God. “His people,” as Anderson observes, “were not intended to be a crowd but a community, bound to Him and to one another by a covenant bond” (loc. cit.). A failure to assume this responsibility toward his fellows is thus nothing less than a denial of God.

The terrible twenty-year war which Bougars¹⁷ of Valence wages against Garin (‘the strangers’) of Beaucaire (Canaan) confronts Aucassin with a choice: to stand aside, or support his people. His stubborn refusal to fight in their defence, except at a price—a kiss and a few words with Nicolette—wears thin the bond which links him with his community. He breaks this covenant bond—fortunately the rupture is neither permanent nor irreparable—when he angrily betrays his people in the oath he forces upon Bougars, to perpetuate the war against them. He thus cuts himself off from the brotherhood of the community. The prison into which he is cast for his deed symbolizes his loss of freedom of action as a ‘son of the commandment.’ Locked in a self-imposed darkness which finds Hell preferable over Heaven, he has in prison a prophetic vision of himself as the messianic pilgrim of Limosin,¹⁸ ‘born of the people,’ who is cured of his follies¹⁹(esvertin) and his many ills by the mere sight of a limb of Nicolette (the land of Israel, ‘beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem’), returning to ‘his own land’²⁰ in perfect health.

The journey that Aucassin undertakes in pursuit of his beloved, after his release from prison, will present him with opportunities to prove his acceptance of responsibility for the unity of Israel. Before he is truly and permanently reunited with her, he will have to show that he is ‘ready to obey His voice and keep His covenant.’ Educated through trial and effort in the network of commandments which are all based on the First, he will have to demonstrate, as at Torelore, that he has finally seen the ‘light’ (Tora ora) and heard the ‘I am He-Who-Is’ in awareness of the ‘commandment of his self.’

THE SECOND COMMANDMENT

Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any manner of likeness, of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; thou shalt not bow down onto them, nor serve them […]

(20:3-5).

Aucassin recognizes the existence of God, sufficiently at least to render Him a certain amount of lip-service²¹ under stress; even so, he prefers Hell with Nicolette to Heaven without her. Overwhelmed by Amor, the Carthaginian Astarte (Ashtoreth) of his beloved Nicolette, he takes her pagan deity for his own, making a ‘graven image’ of her in his heart, ‘bowing down and serving her.’ In glorifying love beyond its due, as Love, Aucassin is guilty of a grave fault, sinning in the manner described by Goldman:

The sin against this commandment of which we are most in danger is giving to any creature the glory and honor which are due to God only. Pride makes a god of self, covetousness makes a god of money, sensuality makes a god of the belly; whatever is esteemed or loved, feared or served, delighted in or depended on, more than God, of that (whatever it is) we do in effect make a god. This prohibition contains a precept which is the foundation of the whole law, that we take the Lord for our God […]

(pp. 135-136).

The fall from his ‘high horse,’ which dislocates his shoulder, after he has seen a first glimmer of ‘light’ in his mitzva toward the oxherd, jars Aucassin back temporarily into the path of idolatry. Crawling painfully into the bower in prostrate position, he ‘bows down’ unto the evening star and the moon, invoking²² them to restore his beloved to him.

                                                                                ‘Estoilete, je te voi,
que la lune trait a soi;
Nicolete est aveuc toi […]’

(XXV, 1-3).

This appeal to Astarte-Ashtoreth and Tanit, the favorite deities of Carthage, reveals that Nicolette—before the revelation at Torelore which will affect them both—is still exerting the pagan influence of her ‘alien tongue’ on Aucassin, inducing this future moshel be’Yisrael to follow in the misguided footsteps of his prototype, Solomon, and for the same reason, as recounted in First Kings:

For it came to pass, when Solomon was old, that his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not whole with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father. For Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Zidonians […]

(11:4-5).

Aucassin, however, is still young enough—though it is never too late—to learn from his errors and rejoin the fold in the course of his voyage of discovery in the ‘way of life’ and the way of truth.

THE THIRD COMMANDMENT

Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain

(20:7)

The meaning of this injunction, of capital importance in the education of Aucassin, who violates it flagrantly on more than one occasion, is examined by Goldman.

The third commandment has been variously interpreted as prohibiting perjury, vow-making, certain magical practices, or applying the name of God to anything false or any idle purpose. Beer spoke for many sober-minded scholars when he asserted that this was the dawn of the awareness that the holy and lying and cheating must not be brought together, which signifies a great advance in religious thought. Homiletically, the commandment has been a veritable fountain, bubbling with ever fresh ideas. Taking, as all ancients did, a serious view of an oath, the rabbis fancied that the wohle earth trembled when there blazed forth from Sinai: ‘You shall not take the name of the lord your God […] the lord will not hold him guiltless who takes His name.’ The ‘will not hold him guiltless’ terrified them. It suggested that penitence would procure no atonement, even though it did in the case of the violation of all other negative commandments. It suggested further that […] punishment would be immediate and not after three generations; that a deceiver deserves no mercy at the hands of his fellow-men; that a false oath can destroy things which neither fire nor water can; and that this commandment was placed next to the one against idolatry because the habitual perjurer was to be viewed as an idolator

(pp. 152-153).

The lip-service Aucassin offers to God in a vow demanding a bribe for services he is obliged to render (above, n. 21), thus ‘cheating’ those who have a natural right to his strength, brings together the holy with the profane, and takes the name of the Lord in vain, implying the lie that He supports this unworthy rejection of duty. Aucassin compounds the sin, bringing himself close to becoming an ‘habitual perjurer’ and an ‘idolator’ in violation of this commandment, when he repeats the vow in almost the exact words (VIII, 20-24). He descends even lower, plumbing the nadir in this sphere, when he extorts the impious oath from Bougars, threatening to cut off his head unless he swears to a permanent vendetta against his own people; this ungodly demand is introduced by the ‘pious’ phrase: “Ja Dix ne m’aït […]” (X, 73-74), using the name of God in connection with the basest kind of treachery.

Before the end of his journey, Aucassin will again press an oath upon an adversary, the king of Torelore, compelling him to swear to outlaw ‘male child-bearing’ in his country. Few vows could appear, on the surface, to be addressed to a more ‘idle purpose,’ and thus also in violation of the commandment; yet it is here, as we shall see, that he finally demonstrates that he has mastered the lesson of Tora […] le’ra, in full recognition of its import, and it is here that he will learn the full power of penitence, whatever his misdeeds. Until that happy time, and until he has come to terms with the meaning of his name in the capsulation al-[…] kaas […]-im (above, n. 12), his feet will stumble more than once, as he learns to distinguish between that which is profane and that which is holy.

THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto the Lord thy God, in it thou shalt not do any manner of work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy man-servant, nor thy maid-servant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested on the seventh day; wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it

(20:8-11).

The Sabbath differs from the ordinary days of the week, enjoining ‘rest’ as a matter of religion. The commandment which sets it forth differs from the others in the same manner; concerning its uniqueness, Goldman writes:

The fourth commandment is the longest and most elaborate, the first that is explicitly positive, and the only one that is concerned with a positive religious institution. Respecting circumcision, for example, the festivals, prayer, or a house of worship, the Decalogue says nothing. Instead, it devotes nearly a third of its space to order the observance of a day of rest. Little further is required to indicate that something unique is proposed and contemplated here

(p. 160).

Not surprisingly, Aucassin's confrontation with this commandment will differ from the others in the difficulty it presents for documentation, since he, a Christian by implication²³ in the surface story, can hardly engage, negatively or positively, in any activity likely to hint at so visibly²⁴ Jewish a practice as Sabbath observance.

The poet neatly resolves this almost insuperable dilemma, which calls for the hero to ‘rest’ as a sign that he ‘takes his membership in the community seriously,’ without divulging that this is a religious test, by disguising it—except to the special audience with the key—as a secular ‘love test’²⁵ to determine whether or not Aucassin truly loves Nicolette and will do everything necessary to be reunited with her:

Jure Diu qui ne menti,
se par la vient Aucasins
et il por l’amor de li
ne s’i repose un petit,
ja ne sera ses amis,
n’ele s’amie

(XIX, 17-22).

The key word is repose ‘rest,’ that is, observe the Sabbath. If he fails to do this, she—the land of Israel (Tirzah and Jerusalem)—will never be his. The uniqueness and importance of the commandment could hardly be more awesomely illustrated.

Aucassin's problem in connection with the Fourth Commandment is that he has not yet properly mastered the lessons of the first three, demanding respectively that he understand the meaning of ‘I am the Lord’; that he shall not bow down unto other gods; that he shall not take the name of the Lord in vain through magical practices. This is why, though as a Jew he rises magnificently to the test and ‘rests’ at the bower, as one who is confused (esbahis) and attracted to non-Jewish practices, he falls off his ‘high horse.’ His appeal to the evening star and the moon to restore Nicolette to him on this Sabbath day violates all four at one time; its relevance to the Sabbath is seen in this negative description by Goldman:

No stratum of the Bible knows of the Sabbath as a day of evil or misfortune, as in any way allied to the phases of the moon²⁶ or connected with its worship or implicated, be it astrologically or astronomically, with any planet or a planetary week

(p. 165).

The rabbis were concerned with apparent vestiges of primitive religious practices; in the Bible, as Goldman himself observes, “there are several passages […] where hodesh and shabbat are coupled together and hodesh means ‘new moon’” (pp. 160-61). Aucassin will have another opportunity to confront the Sabbath, linked by the poet to hodesh, which also means ‘month,’ when the king of Torelore explains to him why he is lying in bed:

Dist li rois: ‘Je gis d’un fil;
quant mes mois sera conplis
et je serai bien garis […]’

(XXIX, 8-10).

The king appears to be saying: “I am giving birth to a child; when my month is completed and I am cured […]”; to his Jewish²⁷ audience, however, his words mean: “I am a sinner in pain as a woman in travail; when my new moon is proclaimed and I am itchy with excitement […].” The oblique reference is to orgiastic rites in worship of Ashtoreth, goddess of fertility, and in profanation of the Sabbath. Seeing himself²⁸ in the king lying prostrate before him, Aucassin finally learns the true meaning of Tora […] le’ra and the identity of the ‘evil woman’ who stands between him and the Lord. But if he understands at last his duty to God, he still has to come to terms with his responsibilities and obligations to the family of man, beginning with his community and, first of all, with his parents.

THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee

(20:12).

The family quarrel between Aucassin and his parents, in which both sides fail lamentably to show the respect due each other, is the point of departure which launches²⁹ all the successive events in the narrative as a whole, providing the initial impetus both for the narremic core of the substructure in the surface story and for the linked chain of ethical concepts in the core instruction of the parastructure. The Fifth Commandment, first in the series specifying the conduct expected of man in relation to his fellow men, underscores the priority, established in the natural³⁰ order of things through birth, of the social obligation to parents. The duty to ‘honor thy father and thy mother’ in order to assure and prolong possession of the Promised Land thus holds a commanding and central position in the organic structure of the romance; it is instructive to compare this with its place in the Decalogue, as described by Goldman:

At times the rabbis went so far as to regard this commandment as the most important of all, having, in fact, attributed its position in the Decalogue to the role and mission of parents in life. Parents, they said—and many commentators repeated and enlarged upon their views—were the bearers of the tradition that attested both the existence of God and Revelation; they were the link between Heaven and human society; they were comprehended in the Deity and embraced in re’acha, … ‘your neighbor.’ And what was the present commandment? It was the link between the laws directing men how to live with their Maker and the laws instructing them how to live among themselves. It marked the transition from the first tablet—the Godward tablet—to the second—the manward tablet. Thus the rabbis esteemed and revered parents, and thus they understood the commandment to enjoin. Beyond this their sober judgment would not let them go. They would brook neither ancestor worship nor ancestor tyranny

(p. 177).

The conflict between Aucassin and his parents is complex. On the surface, he wishes to marry a Carthaginian slave girl, whom they consider unsuitable; they deem it proper to teach him that there are other considerations in marriage beyond physical attraction. So determined is he to have his way that he absolutely refuses to defend them or his land against their enemies, except for a reward involving Nicolette. Garin accepts the condition, but then refuses to keep the agreement with his son, charging him, as does his mother, with being a fool. Aucassin, with complete disrespect, calls his father a liar:

‘Certes,’ fait Aucassins, ‘je sui molt dolans quant hom de vostre eage ment’

(X, 57-58).

In retaliation for his father's broken promise, he betrays his parents and his land, in the oath of perpetual harassment he extorts from Bougars. The consequences for not understanding the implications of the commandment, and for not acting in accordance with them, may be terrible indeed for all concerned.

It is first of all incumbent upon Aucassin to honor and respect his parents, to defend them in their need, and—above all—to pay heed to their teaching. The latter requirement receives the strongest possible stress by appearing (parastructurally) in the verses immediately preceding the Tora […] le’ra capsulation, in Proverbs:

My son, keep the commandment of thy father,
And forsake not the teaching of thy mother;
Bind them continually upon thy heart,
Tie them about thy neck.
When thou walkest, it shall lead thee,
When thou liest down, it shall watch over thee;
And when thou awakest, it shall talk with thee

(6:20-22).

The Fifth Commandment, however, according to rabbinical interpretation,³¹ implies a reciprocal obligation between parents and children. Garin, for all his good intentions, misused his parental prerogatives by lying, and delayed rather than hastened his son's understanding of the ‘way of life.’

The parastructural interpretation of events involves similar considerations. The opposition of Aucassin's parents to his union with Nicolette is based on excellent intentions; the lesson they wish to impart to him is precisely the one embodied in the Tora […] le’ra capsulation:

[…] the teaching is light,
And the reproofs of instruction are the way of life;
To keep thee from the evil woman […]

(6: 23-24).

Their desire is to safeguard him from the clutches of Amor and idolatry, from the Canaan devoted to the pagan rites of Ashtoreth. So determined is Garin to have his way that he descends to lying and breaking his solemn word. Parents, however, are not necessarily infallible, and may themselves sometimes need a lesson in behavior toward their grown children, their ‘copartners’ with God; the story of Samson, another prototype³² of Aucassin, is instructive in this regard:

And Samson went down to Timnah, and saw a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines.³³ And he came up, and told his father and his mother, and said: ‘I have seen a woman in Timnah of the daughters of the Philistines; now therefore get her for me to wife.’ Then his father and his mother said unto him: ‘Is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all thy people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?’ And Samson said unto his father: ‘Get her for me; for she pleaseth me well.’ But his father and his mother knew not that it was of the Lord […]

(Judges 14:1-4).

Aucassin's story directly parallels that of Samson; he has a first quarrel with both father and mother, and a second quarrel with his father, stubbornly insisting on his desire for an alien bride. Both sets of parents ‘knew not that it was of the Lord.’ Aucassin has good reason to resist the ‘tyranny’ of his parents, who are unaware of the deeper purpose he is intended to serve. Once he learns the real meaning of the lesson they are trying to teach him, and identifies the ‘evil woman’ at Torelore as Ashtoreth, he can truly honor his parents by exorcising the pagan goddess, which he accomplishes³⁴ through the heroic beating he administers to the king, forcing him to eliminate male child-bearing from the country, and through the ‘slaughter’ of the strange warriors whose weapons are such tempting tid-bits as baked apples, fresh cheeses, eggs, and mushrooms. Little wonder that Nicolette undergoes a complete change of character at Torelore, allowing Aucassin to dominate the scene in a wild melee which cleanses her—the land of Israel—of paganism. A battlefield can be murder, figuratively.

THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shalt not murder

(20:13).

Aucassin tilts squarely with the starkly simple commandment against murder, and its various aspects, on at least three separate occasions. His first brush with it occurs early in the story; when he declines to fight for his people unless he is given Nicolette—or even just a kiss—in recompense, he is admitting his readiness to shed the blood of others not in the reluctantly permitted³⁵ act of self-defense but for a price. True, he is not motivated by a crude appetite for booty³⁶ and material gain, but he is still willing, out of self-interest unrelated to the necessity, to kill ten fellow men and wound seven others without a second thought.

[…] il comence a ferir a destre et a senestre et caupe hiaumes et naseus et puins et bras et fait un caple entor lui, autresi con li senglers quant li cien l’asalent […]

(X, 24-27).

Not for nothing does the poet designate his deed a caple ‘massacre,’ and compare the killer with the senglers ‘wild boar.’ Even when most nobly motivated, killing infringes the sanctity of life and entails awesome consequences, as Cohon observes:

Human life, like personality, forms an end in itself and is sacred. Life is an attribute of God, who is visioned as ‘the source of life’ and as ‘delighting in life.’ Coming from God, it is man's highest good, which he must cherish as a trust. Life is identified with the good, and death with evil (Deut. 30:15, 19). Shedding of blood, say the rabbis, defiles the land and causes the Shechinah³⁷ to depart from Israel. Preservation of life has recommended itself to the Jew as the supreme duty of man. The laws of Sabbath observance, of fasting on Yom Kippur, of kashrut, etc., are set aside when life is at stake. Even where it is not certain that life can be saved, these laws may be set aside. ‘There is naught that stands in the way of saving life, except apostasy, incest and murder,’ i.e., life obtained at the cost of the desecration of its supreme values is not warth having

(pp. 157-158).

It is neither for the purpose of avoiding apostasy,³⁸ nor incest, nor murder, the only three causes superior to the preservation of life, that Aucassin comes into conflict with a second aspect of the commandment, relating to self-murder.³⁹ During the comic debate of the lovers' quarrel,⁴⁰ when Nicolette insults him by declaring that he does not love her as much as he says he does, and he insults her even more by contrasting the fickleness and carnality of woman's love against the stead-fastness and purity of man's, she announces her intention of crossing the sea to escape Garin's wrath and at the same time protect Aucassin from it. He angrily conjures up an imaginary scene in which she is raped and he in consequence dashes out his brains in hopeless fury:

[…] li premiers qui vos verroit ne qui vous porroit, il vos prenderoit lués et vos meteroit a son lit, si vos asoignenteroit. Et puis que vos ariiés jut en lit a home, s’el mien non, or ne quidiés mie que j’atendisse tant que je trovasse coutel dont je me peusce ferir el cuer et ocirre. Naie voir, tant n’atenderoie je mie; ains m’esquelderoie de si lonc que je verroie une maisiere u une bisse pierre, s’i hurteroie si durement me teste que j’en feroie les ex voler et que je m’escerveleroie tos […]

(XIV, 4-12).

Rape in real life is not inherently funny, but the ability to laugh at trouble is a gift, and sign, of life. The hero who is ready to kill himself if his beloved lies in the arms of another is the same lad who said he prefers Hell because:

[…] s’i vont les beles dames cortoises que eles ont deus amis ou trois avoc leur barons […]

(VI, 35-36).

This liberality presumably extends to all other wives but his own. There is additional humor in the inversion of roles; it is not the angry lover who has the justification for suicide, but the threatened heroine, and Aucassin would do well not to be too hasty, as his name advises in al-[…] kaas […]-im. The same advice against haste to be angry appears on the serious, or parastructural level. Aucassin, as the people of Israel, threatens to kill himself if Nicolette, as the land of Israel, comes into the possession of others rather than himself; in doing so, he shows his readiness to violate the commandment against murder because he places his love for the land above his love of God. The land has been promised to him; the promise will be kept when he demonstrates that he has learned to place first things first.⁴¹

Aucassin's third involvement with the complexities of murder hinges on self-defense, and furnishes an excellent example of the author's subtle homiletic technique in the contrast between the slaughter of the forces of Valence and those engaged on the battlefied of Torelore. In the former case, as we have seen, Aucassin seems to be killing in defense of his land and people whereas he is actually committing murder out of self-interest; at Torelore, he seems to be commtting murder⁴² without cause, whereas he is actually acting in self-defense, pitting himself against the overwhelming forces of Amor (Ashtoreth), who stir up love before the young, untutored mind is capable of coping with them. Our hero, firmly seated in the saddle this time,⁴³ studies the estor canpel, the ‘battle in the field,’ and takes the measure of his opponents.

Aucassins est arestés,
sor son arçon acoutés,
si coumence a regarder
ce plenier estor canpel […]

(XXXI, 1-4).

The parastructural singal is estor, a pun compounded of Heb. es-, the untranslatable morpheme introducing a common noun as a specific direct object, and tor ‘turtle,’ that is, a capsulation, es-[…] tor, is indicated, pointing to a relevant passage, enclosed between these forms, in the Song of Songs.

‘I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
By the gazelles, and by the hinds of the field,
That ye awaken not, nor stir up love
[es-ha’ahava, …]
Until it please.’
Hark! my beloved! behold, he cometh,
Leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills.
My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart;
Behold, he standeth behind our wall,
He looketh in through the windows,
He peereth through the lattice.(44)
My beloved spoke, and said unto me:
‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.
For, 1o, the winter is past,
The rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear on the earth;
The time of singing is come,
And the voice of the turtle [ha’tor; …] is heard in our land […]’

(2:7-12).

The passage signifies Aucassin's awareness that the ‘daughters of Jerusalem’ are ‘awakening and stirring up love’ for which he and Nicolette are not yet ready; that they both have much to learn and to live through before ‘it please,’ and is sanctified. The immediate task is to eliminate forever Nicolette's goddess, Ashtoreth, and her minions, who are fighting their ‘battle in the field’ in pagan feasting on baked apples, fresh cheeses, and oversized mushrooms, ending in a drunken orgy whose champion is well described in an ingenious pun:

cil qui mix torble les gués
est li plus sire clamés

(XXXI, 9-10).

Fr. gués is a pun on Heb. gas (…) ‘wine-press, wine vat’; no wonder that Aucassin breaks into laughter (“s’en prist a rire,” XXXI, 13) at the Rabelaisian scene, while proceeding in all seriousness to dispatch the gluttons and guzzlers unceremoniously (see “The Ashkenazic sof”).

Whatever else Aucassin's cavalier treatment of the intrepid warriors may be called, with regard to his own and to Nicolette's moral regeneration through education⁴⁵ it can hardly be associated with murder; parastructurally, the people of Israel have the right and the duty to cleanse the land of defilement⁴⁶ in self-defense. Now that Aucassin has learned to distinguish among murder in self-interest, suicide, and killing in self-defense—with stress on the terrible consequences of any actual shedding of blood—he is prepared to examine another infraction traditionally associated with death, the sin of adultery.

THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shalt not commit adultery

(20:13).

The poet draws a modest curtain over any conceivable sexual activities which might have occured during the joyful night of reunion shared by Aucassin and Nicolette at the bower, during their three halcyon years at Torelore, and during their last night together preceding their wedding. The question arises whether, even if they had been so engaged, the act would involve adultery, since Nicolette is not ‘another man's wife,’ the condition specified in Leviticus 20:10. Goldman's commentary, exploring the ramifications of the commandment, suggests this might be a possibility:

‘My people of the house of Israel, do not be adulterers, nor companions nor accomplices of adulterers; nor shall there be seen in the congregation of Israel an adulterous people, so that your sons may not arise after you to teach one another to be the accomplices of adulterers; for because of the sin of adultery, death comes upon the world’ (Targum Jonathan). A warning against adultery, the penalty being stipulated in Leviticus, XX, 10. Technically, adultery is sexual intercourse of a married woman with any other man than her husband (Leviticus, XX, 10, et al.). Forbids intercourse also with unmarried women; so ibn Ezra, who quotes Saadia to the effect that there are grades in adultery, the gravity of the sin depending on whether the one with whom it is committed is unmarried, in her menstrual period, married, a heathen, male, or beast. The rabbis applied the commandment also to masturbation. The references to adultery are limited in the Pentateuch to the two Decalogues and Leviticus, XX, 10; there are frequent references throughout the remainder of the Bible

(pp. 182-183).

The commandment thus extends to the Nicolette portrayed in the surface story, even though she is unmarried. Since the poet gives Aucassin the opportunity to express himself on the subject, without involving him in the act itself, it may be assumed that he is directing the attention of his hero to a more abstract conception of adultery, in which the issue is his general attitude. Nicolette's godfather, the viscount, upholds the traditional view balancing momentary pleasure against eternal torment, when he demands to know what Aucassin expects to gain from making Nicolette his mistress:

‘Enseurquetot, que cuideriés vous avoir gaegnié, se vous l’aviés asognentee ne mise a vo lit? Mout i ariés peu conquis, car tos les jors du siecle en seroit vo arme en infer […]’

(VI, 19-22).

The same Aucassin who admires the beles dames cortoises with their several lovers besides their husbands—but would dash his brains out if Nicolette joined their company—would gladly accompany them on the road to Hell, provided only that he can have his sweet beloved with him:

‘[…] avoc ciax voil jou aler, mais que j’aie Nicolete ma tresdouce amie aveuc mi’

(VI, 38-39).

Aucassin must learn to guard himself against the treacherous onset of evil-doing, which may begin long before it is visible to the beholder. Adultery can take place in the eye and in the mind, as well as in the deed, according to Solomon Schechter.

“[…] we have heard that it is written, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ […]. But the phrase in Job (24:15), ‘The eye also of the adulterer waiteth for twilight,’ teaches us that an unchaste look is also to be considered as adultery; and the verse, ‘And that ye seek not after your own heart and your own eyes, after which ye used to go awhoring’ (Num. 15:19), teaches us that an unchaste look or even an unchaste thought are also to be regarded as adultery.”⁴⁷

For expository purposes, Schechter has cast the reflexions expressed in the old rabbinic style; his design is to show how in Jewish lore a corrective is applied to the Law. This is effected, as he declares, “not by something antagonistic or outside of it, but by its own proper interpretation and expansion” (p. 213).

It is not with the physical act of adultery that Aucassin faces his challenge but with an expanded interpretation of it, relating to his attraction to the idolatrous ‘evil woman’ of Tora […] le’ra. In his celebrated commentary⁴⁸ on Proverbs 7:6-26, Maimonides teaches:

The general principle expounded in all these verses is to abstain from excessive indulgence in bodily pleasures. The author compares the body, which is the source of all sensual pleasures, to a married woman who is at the same time a harlot.⁴⁹

The passage which Maimonides is expounding is directly relevant to the situation of Aucassin, ‘a young man void of understanding,’ as he ‘looks forth through the lattice’ at the bower, and as he nonchalantly prefers the ‘nether-world’ in his conversation on adultery with the viscount.

For at the window of my house
I looked forth through my lattice;
And I beheld among the thoughtless ones,
I discerned among the youths,
A young man void of understanding,
Passing through the street near her corner,
And he went the way to her house […].
.....Her house is the way to the nether-world,
Going down to the chambers of death

(7:6-26)

The strictures of Maimonides are not directed against bodily pleasures but against ‘excessive indulgence’ in them. The fundamental lesson Aucassin and the perplexed people of Israel are expected to draw from the key message exemplified by adultery is neatly summed up by Milton Steinberg: “All depends, with the passions, on the controls to which they are subjected and the ends to which they are turned.”⁵⁰ The love of Aucassin for Nicolette as a woman, or in symbolic expansion as the land of Israel, is good in itself when under control; it becomes ‘adultery’ when it leads to idolatrous worship of person, place, or thing. Concomitantly, ‘excessive indulgence’ may increase the appetite beyond the capacity to feed it, and unwittingly give rise rise to stealing.

THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shalt not steal

(20:13).

Aucassin demands Nicolette as the price of his services to defend his people and his homeland; in refusing him, Garin indicates that she belongs to the viscount, who has purchased her from the Saracens:

‘si l’acata li visquens de ceste vile as Serasins […]’

(II, 30).

When Garin insists that the viscount exile Nicolette to remove her influence over Aucassin, he agrees, but reminds the former, who has treatened to burn her, that she is his property, bought with cash:

‘Je l’avoie acatee de mes deniers […]’

(IV, 11).

The poet stresses Nicolette's status as property a third time; when Aucassin asks the viscount what he has done with her, the latter bluntly bids him drop the matter:

‘car laisciés ester. […] si l’acatai de mon avoir […]’

(VI, 14-16).

His determination to have her, against the will of the parents who literally ‘own’ her, means that he must ‘steal’ her from them; the stealing of a human being,⁵¹ like anything else that belongs to another, is forbidden by the commandment.

The fact that Aucassin reduces his price to a kiss and a few words with Nicolette in no way lessens his guilt. Anything that he extorts in payment for carrying out obligations that he owes by right is a theft, whose actual value has nothing to do with the case; in the view of the rabbis, according to Schechter:

[…] he who robs his neighbor, even if the goods robbed do not amount to more than the value of a Perutah, is as much as if he murdered him

(p. 227).

The hero himself sees the kiss as worth a good deal more than a ‘Perutah’; he would not take a hundred thousand marks of pure gold in place of it (IX, 1-4).

Aucassin, son of a ruler, is himself destined to rule; his rank, however, does not give him the right to infringe the rights of others, subverting public order. The commandment, Goldman states:

Establishes the right to property, thus excluding aggressions, reprisals, and consequent chaos and disorganization […]. He who gapes after what belongs to others is the common enemy of the state, willing to rob all […]. So all thieves who have acquired the strength rob whole cities, careless of punishment because their high distinction seems to set them above the laws. These are allegorically minded persons, ambitious for despotism or domination, who perpetrate thefts on a great scale, disguising the real fact of robbery under the grandsounding names of ‘government’ and ‘leadership.’ Let a man, then, learn from his earliest years to filch nothing by stealth that belongs to another, however small it may be, because habit in the course of time is stronger than nature and little things, if not checked, grow and thrive until they attain to great dimensions […]

(pp. 183-184).

The future moshel be’Yisrael is required to take notice; the Promised Land will be his—the romance ends with a wedding and a permanent reunion of the lovers—but he must employ none but honorable methods, with due regard for the rights of his neighbor.

THE NINTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour

(20:13).

The intent of this commandment is to regulate the daily acts of the individual in relation to his fellows, going far beyond the obvious prohibitions against perjury, scandal-mongering, tale-bearing, verbal injuries which announce themselves. The command, ‘thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ (Leviticus 19:18), entails specific obligations, as described by Steinberg:

[…] when I inquire as to my duties to my fellow, I can accept only one answer: I may not withold from him […] any of the reverence, solicitude, and freedom I claim for myself.

To this obligation there are no exceptions. Since all men partake of God with me, I may exclude none from my deference, not by reason of race, creed, color, social position, economic class, or any other consideration […].

[…] this means that I may not use him as a mere tool for my purposes […]. I may not injure him in any fashion, oppress, exploit, humiliate him, or deprive him of anything to which he is entitled. Nor may I deceive him or withhold the truth from him, since, as the rabbis pointed out long ago, oppression may be through words as well as deeds

(pp. 75-76).

The first infraction of the commandment is committed against, not by, Aucassin; Garin, whose word should be his bond, deliberately deceives him with a false promise to allow him a kiss from Nicolette in reward for his services:

‘Je l’otroi,’ fait li peres

(VIII, 37).

The blame, however, still rests on Aucassin, since it is he who provokes his aged father to ‘bear false witness’ by exploiting his need and ‘stealing’ a promise to which he is not entitled. The vicious chain is forged link by progressive link: a ‘small’ theft promotes a lie in a ‘good’⁵² cause; the lie diminishes the ‘deference’ a son owes his father and makes it more difficult to honor him; the withholding of deference to the father ends in betrayal of his people and in the darkness of a prison cell. The lesson for Aucassin is salutary, if not immediately absorbed; a ruler must respond to provocation in ways designed to increase, not decrease, the public order; as the ‘first among equals,’ he must accord his subjects the respect that their equality⁵³ entitles them to expect.

Aucassin fails to apply this lesson in his encounter with the shepherds. In his pursuit of Nicolette, he overhears the shepherds singing a song about her. When they refuse to repeat it at his request, he attempts to overawe them through superior⁵⁴ rank, demanding haughtily:

‘Bel enfant,’ fait Aucassin, ‘enne me conissiés vos?’

(XXII, 10).

They do indeed know who he is, and properly rebuke him; no one but the reigning count is privileged to give them orders. This use of social status as a tool to force those more humble into unwilling obedience is a flagrant violation of their human rights, implying their inferiority, and thus ‘bearing false witness’ against them. Little acts verge into greater ones, and a ruler may easily become a tyrant.

The shepherds, on their part, are not guiltless either. One sin begets another; if Aucassin tries to exert undue pressure, it is they who provoke him by their gratuitous refusal to help a fellow being in distress, at no trouble to themselves. Their complete lack of ‘solicitude’ for the plight of their neighbor is perfectly expressed in their casual reply⁵⁵ to Nicolette, after accepting her money to pass on a message to Aucassin. Technically, they now ‘owe’ him the information in a double sense, as a natural obligation and as a purchased item. Their failure to hand it over, except after badgering and a second payment from him, exploits his need just as much as his bargaining with his father exploited the latter. The command to ‘love thy neighbor as thyself,’ which means help him when he needs it, does not include the proviso, ‘if the price is right.’

Aucassin's grasp of the nuances of the commandment is soon put to the test. Given Nicolette's message finally, that he should hunt in the forest for a ‘beast’ possessing a limb⁵⁶ for which he would not take five hundred gold marks or any wealth in exchange and which has the medicine to ‘cure’ his illness, he continues his pursuit, tearfuly. His path is suddently obstructed by a formidable oxherd with a massive club, whose appearance frightens him. Asked why he is weeping, he replies with a lie:

‘je vig hui matin cacier en ceste forest, s’avoie un blanc levrer, le plus bel del siecle, si l’ai perdu: por ce pleur jou’

(XXIV, 39-41).

Perhaps he fears that if the ugly giant knew the truth, he might find Nicolette first and rape her, with the dire consequences to himself that he has already predicted. In any event, he trusts in a lie more than he does in God, and affronts his neighbor without sufficient cause.

There is a positive side to Aucassin's encounter with the oxherd. When the latter informs him of his own problem—he has somehow misplaced an ox, cannot replace it, and faces debtor's prison—our hero immediately gives him the money to relieve his distress. This is a mitzva, in compliance with an important obligation, commanded in Proverbs:

Withhold not good from him to whom it is due,
When it is in the power of thy hand to do it.
Say not unto thy neighbour: ‘Go, and come again,
And to-morrow I will give’; when thou hast it by thee

(3:27-28).

Before Aucassin asks the value of the ox and hands over the cash to pay for it, he listens attentively to the oxherd's fulminations, damning him for weeping over a ‘stinking hound’ when others have real problems. The lesson is not lost upon him, and he replies:

‘Certes, tu es de bon confort, biax frere […]’

(XXIV, 63).

He has it in his power now to do a good deed; will this wash out his evil one? Schechter gives the answer to this typical rabbinical question.

Here is a man who committed an immoral action […] but he hardly left the place when a poor man met him and addressed him for alms. This man thinks that God put this poor man in his way with the purpose of making him find pardon through the alms he gave, but the Holy One, blessed be He, says: Wicked man, think not so. The hand which gives alms will not cleanse the other from the evil which it did by paying the wages of sin.⁵⁷

The oxherd is grateful for the help and prays that Aucassin will find what he seeks; in the next incident, Aucassin is reunited with Nicolette at the bower, but only temporarily. Before the reunion can become permanent, he still has to learn of his subjection to covetousness.

THE TENTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor's

(20:14).

‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ includes a sacred obligation to respect the sanctity of his household and the inviolability of everything that belongs to him. Wanting what is his, and determining to get it, no matter how despicable the means necessary, is not only to break the commandment but to smash it to fragments. The love of Aucassin for Nicolette, established right from the beginning, is so overwhelming that it leaves no room in his heart or mind for the rights of others. Love is good and desire, its handmaiden, is productive of life; but inordinate desire, covetousness, ‘Amor, qui tout vaint’ (II, 15-16) which sweeps away all in its path, leads to the ‘chambers of death.’ The poet lays great stress on the fact, three times repeated, that the object of Aucassin's love was ‘purchased’ by the viscount from the Saracens, baptized and raised by him with love, and destined by him for someone else. She thus ‘belongs’ to the viscount, and in wanting her against all remonstrance:

nuis hom ne l’en puet retraire […]

(III, 4)

he covets that which is his neighbor's, in violation of the commandment.

The silken web, which holds him ensnared and paralyzes his ability to aid his people against the warring forces arrayed against them, begins here, in the tender embrace of Ashtoreth and in the ‘smoothness of her alien tongue.’ Woven as with a single thread, it bounds the limits of his dark odyssey, in a linked chain of broken commandments. Mesmerized by covetous desire, he rejects the Lord in favor of Hell, bows down to the graven image of Ashtoreth, takes the name of the Lord in vain in a despicable oath of treachery against his people, violates the hallowed Sabbath with a magical appeal to the heavenly bodies for help, dishonors his father and mother, murders for a price, commits adultery in his eye and heart through uncontrolled passion, steals that which belongs to his neighbors by natural right, bears false witness against them through deception and assumed airs of superiority, and finally, closes his ears to the ‘reproofs of instruction’ designed to eliminate the poison of covetousness at its source.

The way out of the web, the ‘way of life’ and true love, is revealed to Aucassin at Torelore. Seeing himself as the sinner he is, in the guise of the wretched king, he picks up a handy club to beat his worst foe—himself into correction. His strongets weapon, however, in his language. Bluntly, he opens his instructive tirade to the sinner with the arresting words:

‘Par le cuer Diu!’ fait Aucassins, ‘malvais fix a putain […]’

(XXX, 7).

The message, delivered overtly in profanity, carries a parastructural hope of redemption. The par […] le […] cuer capsulation,⁵⁸al- […] to […] lev, is found in First Samuel:

‘Fear not [al-tira”u; …] ye have indeed done all this evil; yet turn not aside from following the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart [be’chol-levavechem; …] […]’

(12:20).

Our hero now understands the lesson of Tora […] le’ra (p. 7), that he cannot yield to the blandishments of the ‘evil woman’ and at the same time ‘serve the Lord with all his heart.’ The light of Tora, and not the darkness of Ashtoreth, is the way to genuine and permanent union with his beloved Nicolette.

The desire of Aucassin, representing the people of Israel, to be reunited with Nicolette, as the Promised Land, no less than in his relationship to her as man to woman, is equally engaged in the violation of the commandments. Nicolette, first described as a Carthaginian, or Saracen, has been baptized as a Christian by the viscount; she reverts to the Saracens when they capture her at Torelore. The analogy is with Canaan, or Palestine. A possession of the Saracens, it is ‘purchased’ by the Crusaders at great expenditure of blood and treasure; the Saracens, under Saladin, capture Jerusalem and reclaim ownership. It is not for the putative owners to determine possession, however, but for Nicolette herself, guided by the lesson of Tora […] le’ra, meant equally for her as well as Aucassin. When the latter returns to Beaucaire (Canaan) after his capture by the Saracens at Torelore, it is as king in his own land. Nicolette, for her part, breaks away—against their will—from her own people and returns voluntarily to her lover, free of the ‘evil’ influence. Together again, Aucassin and Nicolette can share their joy with all troubled readers in the happy vision—since realized—of an exiled people reunited with their Promised Land; a land whose schools facilitate the study of Tora to all who yearn for light, ‘for the commandment is a lamp […].’

Notes

1. “Et puis que j’arai la teste caupee, ja mais ne parlerai a Nicolete me douce amie que je tant aim” (X, 18-20). Text citations are from: Aucassin et Nicolette: Chantefable du XIIIe siècle, ed. Mario Roques, 2nd rev. ed. Paris: H. Champion, 1969.

2. “Il mist le pié fors de l’estrier por descendre, et li cevaus fu grans et haus […]” (XXIV, 82-85).

3.                     “Qui vauroit bons vers oïr
   del deport du viel antif
   de deus biax enfans petis […]”

   (I, 1-3).

4. The romance is secretly coded with signals of various kinds, referring to passages in the Hebrew Bible, which add a covert—or parastructural—dimension to the tale; this aspect was restricted—around the time of the Albigensian Crusade when unauthorized study of the Bible was dangerous—to readers familiar with the Bible and its commentaries in Hebrew. See Dorfman, “Tora Lore in Torelore: A Parastructural Analysis,” Memorial Volume for Ruth Hirsch Weir (Mouton, in press); “The Flower in the Bower: Garris in Aucassin et Nicolette,” pp. 77-87 in Studies in Honor of Mario A. Pei, Chapel Hill (University of North Carolina Press, 1972); “Aucassin and the Pilgrim of ‘Limosin’: A Bilingual Pun,” Festschrift for Archibald A. Hill (in press); “The Sacred and the Profane in Aucassin et Nicolette,” Festschrift for Robert A. Hall, Jr. (in press); “The Ashkenazic Sof in Aucassin et Nicolette: Torble les gués,” Far-Western Forum (in press); Parody and Parable in Aucassin et Nicolette: A Narremic and Parastructural Analysis (in preparation).

5. The poet specifies in his exordium that his subject matter is “del deport du viel antif” (above, n. 3). The form du viel antif, which has been criticized for redundancy because of the reduplication, is in fact a loan translation of the Hebrew mi’kedem mi’ymey olam … ‘from of old, from ancient days,’ and thus serves to signal the celebrated prophecy of Micah, in which the reduplication is associated with the Messiah:

   But thou, Beth-lehem Ephrathah,
   Which art little to be among the thousands of Judah,
   Out of thee shall one come forth unto Me that is to be ruler in
                                           Israel;
   Whose goings forth are from of old, from ancient days

   (5:1).

   Biblical citations are from: The Holy Scriptures, according to the Masoretic Text (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1965), and Sefer Tora Neviyim ve’Ktuvim, ed. Norman Henry Snaith (London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1965).

   Deport in Judeo-French signifies ‘action d’élever’ (Raphael Levy, Trésor de la langue des Juifs français au moyen âge, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964); in a thirteenth century Jewish community the ‘raising’ of children would involve instruction in the Tora, or the teaching of the Law. The verse as a whole therefore indicates the poet's intention of describing the education of a Jewish prince, the long-promised ‘ruler in Israel,’ whose coming will deliver his people from their miseries in Exile; see “Tora Lore in Torelore,” and Parody and Parable. Significantly, the coming Deliverer will not be of supernatural origin, but a man ‘born of the people’—nes estoit de Limosin; the bilingual pun Limosin combines O.Fr. li ‘the’ and Hebrew mas … ‘person,’ pl. mosim … ‘people’; see Aucassin and the Pilgrim of ‘Limosin.’” See also below, no. 18.

6. When Aucassin returns to Beaucaire, after his adventures in Torelore and his deliverance from the Saracen pirates, he finds that his parents have died and he has inherited the ‘kingdom,’ which he manages to hold in peace, against all claimants (XXXIV, 10-16, XXXV, 1-4). His Beaucaire is not the well-known French city but a land to be identified through a pun based on a passage in which Hosea adjures Ephraim and Judah, the Northern and the Southern kingdoms, that is, the whole Land of Israel:

   O Ephraim, what shall I do unto thee?
   O Judah, what shall I do unto thee?
   For your goodness is a morning could [ka’anan-boker …]
   And as the dew that early passeth away

   (6:4).

   Heb. ka- ‘like’ plus anan ‘cloud’ yields Ka’anan … a readily visible pun on kena’an ‘Canaan’ … in combination with boker ‘morning,’ as kena’an-boker … forming Canaan-Beaucaire, the identification of Beaucaire is established as the Promised Land.

7. The poet employs the Hebrew preposition le- ‘to’ as a device to signal a capsulated Biblical message standing between the word which precedes and the one which follows; thus, Tora […] le […] ra signifies: read from Tora […] to […] ra, that is, Tora or ve’derech chayim toch’chos musar: li’shmarcha me’eshes ra (the letter sof … is transliterated as Ashkenazic s rather than Sephardic t, in view of Franco-Hebrew puns in the text which require the sibilant). The French word le ‘the, it, him’ (and in this text also ‘her’) serves this same purpose in the romance; the French words which precede and follow it—wherever it occurs in the text—yield similar capsulations when translated into Hebrew. For the discovery of this key and the variety of devices used, see Parody and Parable, and “Tora Lore in Torelore.”

8. […] mais si estoit soupris d’Amor, qui tout vaint, qu’il ne voloit […] fare point de quanque il deust” (II, 15-18).

9. The poet explicitly declares in the exordium his intention to relate the great pains Aucassin will endure and the prowesses he will perform for the sake of his beloved:

   des grans paines qu’il soufri
   et des proueces qu’il fist
   por s’amie o le cler vis […]

   (I, 5-7).

   This is amusing in the surface story, since Nicolette, in contrast to the passive Aucassin, appears to be the active hero everywhere, except in Torelore. On the parastructural level, the verses mean what they say.

   It may be remarked that the amie, the ‘beloved,’ for whose sake the hero suffers and strives, is characterized by the apparently formulaic description o le cler vis ‘with the bright face.’ The le signals a capsulation o […] le […] cler, reading from o, Heb. be-, ba- ‘in, with, among’ to cler, Heb. bar, f. bara ‘clean,, clear, pure’; the relevant passage, found in the Song of Songs, is a beautiful description of Solomon's beloved, the Shulamite:

   ‘[…] among the lilies [ba’shoshanim …],
   Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah,
   Comely as Jerusalem […].
   .....Who is she that looketh forth as the dawn,
   Fair as the moon,
   Clear as the sun [bara ka’chama; …]
   […]?

   (6:3-10)

   Nicolette is thus identified with the Shulamite, as Aucassin, the ‘ruler in Israel’ [Moshel be-Yisrael …], is associated with the author of the Mishley Shlomo (The Proverbs of Solomon), in which the Tora […] le’ra capsulation occurs. Aucassin and Nicolette each play several roles in the parastructural part of the romance; among these, Aucassin represents the Jewish people and Nicolette the Promised Land, first as a pagan Canaan and later as the Land of Israel (‘beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem’). The essential purpose of the romance is to bring the two lovers together, after being twice separated involuntarily, into a third and—hopefully—permanent reunion. For additional details on the various roles of the protagonists, see Parody and Parable, and “Tora Lore in Torelore”; on Nicolette as the Land of Israel, see “Aucassin and the Pilgrim”; on the lilies as identification tag for Nicolette, see “The Flower in the Bower.”

10. Leo Baeck, This People Israel: The Meaning of Jewish Existence (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1965), pp. 73-74; see also Solomon Goldman, The Ten Commandments (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1956), pp. 79, 124-189.

11. In recent times, the ceremony of bar mitzva often includes a speech by the thirteen-year old celebrant, proclaiming: “Today I am a man!” Realization of its meaning, as with Aucassin, is usually deferred until the youth, in collision with the concrete problems of life, demonstrates his capacity to balance against his egocentric needs and desires a voluntary acceptance of responsibility toward others.

12. The name Aucassin is itself an ingenious warning against unrestrained anger. As Al-Kâsim, which takes on its French form by normal phonetic change (see Robert Griffin, “Aucassin et Nicolette and the Albigensian Crusade,” Modern Language Quarterly, 26 (1965), 243-256, p. 247), the general public may accept it as part of an amusing inversion in which the “Christian” hero bears a “Saracen” name while the “Saracen” heroine has a “Christian” name (see Omer Jodogne, “La Parodie et le pastiche dans Aucassin et Nicolette,” Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des Etudes Françaises, 12 (1960), 53-65, p. 56). A je […] le […] puis capsulation, however, reveals it ass an acronym, based on a relevant passage in Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), in the form of al […] kaas […] im:

    al-t’vahel b’ruchacha
    li’chos ki kaas be’acheik k’silim yanuach …
    Be not hasty in thy spirit to be
    angry;
    For anger resteth in the bosom of
    fools

    (7:9).

    For supplementary details, including the Hebrew meanings of the names Nicolette, given in the text also as Nicole (nikele: ‘of low esteem’), and Garin (gerim: ‘strangers’—traditional sobriquet of the Jews), and of the manner in which these names link together Garin, Aucassin and Nicolette in a family relationship tied to that of King David, Solomon and the Shulamite, see Parody and Parable.

13. Nus hom n’est si esbahis,

    tant dolans ni entrepris,
    de grant mal amaladis,
    se il l’oit, ne soit garis,
    et de joie resbaudis,
                        tant par est douce

    (I, 10-15).

    The Book of Esther records an earlier occasion when the Jewish community in distress was saved from extermination; as a result la’Yehudim hayesa ora ve’simcha ve’sason v’ikar …

    The Jews had light and gladness, and joy and honour

    (8:16).

    Addressing himself to those whom it concerns, the poet promises light for the ‘perplexed,’ gladness for the ‘sorrowful,’ joy for the ‘dejected,’ and honor for the degraded, ‘sickened by the great evil’ which pursues them, threatening them with conversion, expulsion, or death. The order of the nouns, ora, simcha, sason, and ikar, is matched precisely by that of the adjectives, esbahis, dolans, entrepris, and amaladis. Equally significant is the rabbinical interpretation of ora as Tora ora ‘teaching is light’; the synonomous expression, Tora or, is the lead phrase in the Tora […] le’ra capsulation, cited above, serving as the thematic foundation for the education of Aucassin.

14. See Bernhard W. Anderson, Understanding the Old Testament (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.; Prentice-Hall 1957), p. 56. Baeck defends the traditional view, p. 74: “It would be misunderstood, and its loftiness and power would be impaired, were one to assume […] that it became a commandment through the connection with the following sentence […].” See also Goldman, op. cit., p. 133.

15. The poet must be congratulated for his extraordinary ability to treat such obviously Jewish matter in extenso without once arousing the suspicion of anyone not provided with the key. The multitude of capsulations leading to relevant Biblical passages, however, leaves no doubt concerning the parastructural import of Aucassin's adventures.

16. The popular expression of this, heard whenever anyone is in need, is: kol Yisrael chaverim … ‘all Israel are brothers.’ Aucassin respects this requirement for the first time in the romance when he replaces the lost ox of the oxherd; he is immediately rewarded by finding Nicolette's bower in the forest.

17. The name Bougars, unlike those of Aucassin, Nicolette, and Garin, is not Hebrew but French; as a twelfth-century development of Lat. Bulgarus ‘heretic’ (see Bloch and Wartburg, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, 3rd ed., Paris: P.U.F., 1960), it typifies Aucassin's youthful pull toward assimilation, underscoring the real meaning of his betrayal in demanding that the ‘heretic’ wage everlasting war against his people. For the explanation of Bougars' alternate name in the text, Borgars ‘the bud,’ and of Valence (Judeo-French balenç) as the land of the idolatrous ‘balances of deceit,’ see Parody and Parable.

18. See above, n. 5. Aucassin is dolans as he conjures up the vision of the pilgrim, malades de l’esvertin, entrepris, and de grant mal amaladis (XI, 8-21); together, that is, as one, they share all the ills which the poet, in the exordium, promises to cure (above, n. 13).

19. ‘Folly’ is precisely the accusation Garin levels against Aucassin, in denying him the reward for which he has finally agreed to defend his land:

    ‘Biax fix,’ fait li pere, ‘tes enfances devés vos faire, nient baer a folie’

    (X, 40-41).

20. si rala en son païs
    sains et saus et tos garis

    (XI, 29-30).

21. Our hero, for example, exclaims: “Ja Dix ne me doinst riens que je li demand […]” (II, p3-24). The words call upon the Lord, but their content denies Him, since their intent is to obtain a reward—union with Nicolette—as the price of doing ‘what he should.’

22. See William Foxwell Albright, Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), p. 73: “Astarte was goddess of the evening star […]”; Salomon Reinach, Orpheus: A History of Religions, rev. ed. (New York: Horacle Liveright, 1930), p. 42: “The Aphrodite Urania (celestial) of the Greeks was no other than the Phoenician celestial goddess, or Astarte, held in special reverence at Carthage […]. The lunar Tanit of Carthage […] was assimilated to to the Greek Artemis […].”

23. It is to be noted, however, that unlike Nicolette, specifically declared to be baptized, Aucassin never mentions the name of Jesus, or Mary, or makes the sign of the cross.

24. See Max Weber, Ancient Judaism (New York: Free Press and London: Collier-MacMillan, 1967), p. 354: “In Exile times the strict observance of the Sabbath came to the fore as one of the most important ‘differentiating commandments,’ for, in contrast to mere circumcision, it furnished a sure and generally visible sign that the respective person actually took his membership in the community seriously […].”

25. The key to the love test, with its identification of Nicolette as the land of Israel, is found in the verses:

    je ne sera ses amis,
                                                      n’ele s’amie

    (XIX, 21-22).

    Transformed into the negative and future, the lines are taken directly from the Song of Songs:

    ani le’dodi ve’dodi li
    ha’ro’e ba’shashonim
    ‘I am my beloved's and my beloved
    is mine,
    That feedeth among the lilies”

    (6:3).

    This sentence introduces the o […] le […] cler capsulation, describing the Shulamite, beloved of Solomon, ‘beautiful as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem’; see above, n. 9, and “The Flower in the Bower.”

26. See Weber, op. cit., pp. 149-50: “The Yahweh cult had to accommodate to the fact that in the agricultural territory of Palestine the usual sidereal and vegetation deities continued to exist […]. However, these strange gods did not have decisive significance for the formation of Yahweh religion […]. There is one exception to this. Clearly, the highly important institution of the Sabbath is related to the shabattu of the moon cult […].” See also W.F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan: Historical Analysis of the Contrasting Faiths (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), passim.

27. For the Judeo-French connection between conplir ‘achever, remplir’ (‘to complete’) and Heb. milel ‘to speak, utter, proclaim,’ see Levy, Trésor. For the interpretation of ‘male child-bearing’ through Isaiah's simile of the ‘sinner in pain as a woman in travail,’ the meaning of Heb. gari ‘itchy with excitement,’ and the rest of the king's explanation, see “Tora Lore in Torelore,” and Parody and Parable.

28. When Aucassin's mother expostulates with him on the impropriety of his unworthy love for Nicolette (in the pagan state), she demands:

    ‘Di va! faus, que vex tu faire?’

    (III, 7)

    He finally understands why she called him a fool when he sees the king lying in “childbed,’ a sinner ‘itchy’ and avoid for the kind of excitement Ashtoreth has to offer, allowing himself to be soupris d’Amor instead of placing God above all; it is to himself he is speaking, as he berates the king with almost the identical words:

    ‘Di va! fau, que fais tu ci?’

    (XXIX, 7)

29. For the methodology of narremic (functional and structural) analysis, and the role of the family quarrel and other narremes in medieval narratives, see Dorfman, The Narreme in the Medieval Romance Epic (Toronto: University Press), 1969.

30. See Goldman, op. cit., p. 175: “The fifth commandment requires no preliminary statement. It is self-evident. The ancients knew enough of animal life to recognize that men could learn from the lowest creature in the animal kingdom to be grateful to parents. The Greeks knew it, so did the rabbis, so did many others. Having learned from both Greeks and Jews, Philo wrote: ‘Among the storks the old birds stay in the nests when they are unable to fly, while their children fly […] gathering from every quarter provision for the needs of their parents; […] thus without any teacher but their natural instinct they gladly give to age the nurture which fostered their youth’ (Decalogue xxiii, 116-17).”

    Aucassin's father, under prolonged attack by Bougars, is ‘vix et frales, si avoit son tans trespassé’ (II, 7-8). Unlike the young storks, Aucassin needs a teacher before rendering his parents their due.

31. See Goldman op. cit., p. 176: “It is the merit of the rabbis to have maintained the golden mean here, as they did with respect to other phases of human behavior, and to have read into this verse the parent's obligation to respect their grown children. Their sober judgment is the more remarkable when we recall that they said of parents that they were copartners in their children with God and that honoring the parents was tantamount to honoring God. Philo was only echoing these teachings when he taught that ‘parents [were] the servants of God for the task of begetting children and he who dishonored the servant dishonored the Lord.’”

32. The description of Aucassin could well be that of Samson: “Biax estoit et gens et grans et bien tailliés de ganbes et de piés et de cors et de bras” (II, 10-12). Our hero relives many of the major events in Jewish history, as he represents the Jewish people; see above, n. 9.

33. Nicolette may be linked to the story of Samson through the fact that the triliteral root of Carthage, her birth place, is Heb. k-r-t; in Hebrew, the name Kreti … may apply to Philistines (Marchand-Ennery, Lexique Hébreu-Français, 6th ed., Paris: Durlacher, 1947).

34. For the capsulations and other linguistic signals which clarify the nature of the idolatrous practices on the ‘battlefield’ of Torelore, see Parody and Parable.

35. See Samuel S. Cohon, Judaism: A Way of Life (New York: Schocken Books, 1962), p. 158: “An exception was made in the case of self-defense. Philo writes: ‘Though the slaughter of enemies is lawful, yet one who kills a man, even if he does so in self-defense and under compulsion, has something to answer for, in view of the primal common kinship of mankind’.”

36. “Or ne quidiés vous qu’il pensast n’a bués n’a vaces n’a civres prendre, ne qu’il ferist cevalier ne autres lui. Nenil nient! onques ne l’en sovint; ains pensa […] a Nicolete sa douce amie […]” (X, 7-10). (emphasis added).

    Love is indeed a better motive for action than greed, but does not excuse killing; it is even worse when the deed is done in forgetfulness of the human toll, the cevalier who must strike and be struck.

37. See Isidore Epstein, Judaism: A Historical Presentation (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books 1966), p. 137: “Judaism […] emphasizes God's omnipresence, and the Talmud has coined a special term to describe this divine attribute. God is Shechinah (‘The Indwelling’), immanent and omnipresent, not necessarily in the sense that God is co-extensive with creation, but that His providence extends over all creation.”

    As a future ‘ruler in Israel,’ Aucassin's responsibility is to keep the Shechinah in Israel, not cause it to depart through thoughtless and irresponsible behavior.

38. In joining forces with Bougars, the ‘heretic,’ through the oath he forces upon him, Aucassin comes perilously close to apostasy; only the fact that, after escorting the enemy to safety, he returns—even if unrepentant—to face his punishment prevents his being completely cut off from his community.

39. See Cohon, op. cit., p. 158: “In the history of Jewish martyrdom, pious women preferred death to defilement. Suicide under any other circumstances is condemned as a form of murder.”

40. See above, n. 29.

41. On his return to Beaucaire, after his capture by the Saracen pirates, Aucassin discovers that his parents are dead and he is king. Instead of dashing off in pursuit of Nicolette, who had been captured with and then separated from him, he finally renders God his due and accepts as a ruler's first responsibility the need to serve his people and bring them peace. Nicolette comes to him, and his reward is final and permanent reunion with his beloved.

42. Aucassin appears to have no personal stake in the war at Torelore, except an interloper's concern for other people's affairs, as he asks:

    ‘Et vouriiés vos que je vos venjasse?’

    (XXXII, 5).

    When the king consents, he launches into a furious slaughter of the enemy.

    […] si se lance en mi ax, si conmence a ferir a destre et a senestre, et s’en ocit molt

    (XXXII, 7-8).

    The king hastens to stop him on the plea that this is the kind of war in which it is not the custom for the participants to kill each other.

    ‘Sire,’ dist li rois, ‘trop en avés vos fait: il n’est mie costume que nos entrocions li uns l’autre’

    (XXXII, 14-15).

    In turning a Utopian war of banquet edibles into a butchery, Aucassin seems to be taking a cowardly and undue advantage of defenseless foes; see Robert Harden, “Aucassin et Nicolette as Parody,” Studies in Philology, 63 (1966), 1-9, pp. 6-7.

43. This is in stark contrast with his ridiculous fall from his ‘high horse’ the last time at the bower.

44. The reference is again to the bower but, in inverted fashion, the hero does the opposite of his prototype, peering out rather than in (XXIV, 87-89).

45. The double exposure, which superposes a parastructure on the surface story, showing Nicolette as the overt and Aucassin, the future ‘ruler in Israel’ as the covert hero, provides an ‘education’ for both handsome young children, in accordance with the deport promised in the exordium; see above, ns. 3, 5, 9.

46. The pagan rites demanding eradication, signalled by other capsulations in the text (see Parody and Parable), include that ultimate horror in the form of murder, child sacrifice; see Albright, op. cit. pp. 236-242, and Adolphe Lods, Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Middle of the Eighth Century (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962), pp. 89, 99.

47. Solomon Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology (New York: Schocken Books, 1961), p. 214.

48. The verses immediately preceding the relevant passage of the commentary paraphrase the Tora […] le’ra capsulation:

    “My son, keep my words,
    And lay up my commandments with thee.
    Keep my commandments and live,
    And my teaching as the apple of thine eye.
    .....Say unto wisdom: ‘Thou art my sister’,
    And call understanding thy kinswoman;
    That they may keep thee from the strange woman,
    From the alien woman that maketh smooth her words”

    (7:1-5).

    There is reason to suspect that, though the romance uses the thematic verses of Proverbs 6:23-24—with the convenient Tora … (le) … ra key to the author's unique method of homiletical interpretation—one of the original sources of inspiration may be precisely the verses of 7:1-5 and the commentary by Maimonides; see following note.

49. Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed, transl. Mr. Friedländer, rev. ed., New York: Dover Publications, 1956, p. 7.

    The deport ‘education’ promised in the exordium is directed toward the esbahis ‘perplexed,’ and will presumably funnel through the actors and actions—properly interpreted—in the romance. The first name, after the exordium, to appear in the story, and thus the initial teacher, is Bougars, the ‘heretic’ (II, 1), who ‘wages war’ against the people of Beaucaire (Canaan). Maimonides' work was burned as ‘heretical’ in the public square of Monpellier in 1234, in all probability just before the writing of Aucassin et Nicolette. Aucassin, the moshel be’Yisrael from Bethlehem-Ephrathah (above, n. 5), is thus, like Maimonides, a ‘descendant of David’; see Henri Sérouya, Maïmonide: Sa vie, son oeuvre (Paris: P.U.F., 1964), p. 9, n. 1. Since Bougars represents the rebellious, ‘heretical’ aspect of Aucassin's character (above, p. 7 and n. 17), the ‘war’ is an internal one; it is as Maimonides, the teacher, that Aucassin ‘at the window of his house looks forth through his lattice’ and beholds himself as Maimonides, ‘a young man devoid of understanding.’ Given the author's mischievous sense of humor, in which everything is inverted to its opposite, it appears that he calls Maimonides a ‘heretic” in the very act of employing his mentor's technique of theological instruction ‘by means of metaphors and allegories’ (The Guide, p. 4), with particular regard to the latter's famous illustration of Proverbs 7:5; see Louis Ginzberg, On Jewish Law and Lore (Cleveland and New York: World Publishing; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1962), p. 140. Perhaps our author was trying in his kindly way to moderate the terrible scandal which was turning the Jewish community into a ‘battlefield’ of controversy over ‘assimilationist’ tendencies toward Greek categories of thought; see Daniel Jeremy Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy, 1180-1240, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965), pp. 1, 4-5, 11, 16-17, 48. For other early attempts to moderate the struggle among French Jews, see Fred Gladstone Bratton, Maimonides: Medieval Modernist, Boston: Beacon Press), 1967, pp. 100-105, 127-232. For a summary of contemporary scholarship, see Marvin Fox, “Prolegomenon,” pp. xv-xliv, in Abraham Cohen, The Teachings of Maimonides, (New York: Ktav Publishing House, 1968); for Maimonides' ‘secret doctrine,’ see especially p. xvii.

50. Milton Steinberg, Basic Judaism, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1947), p. 74.

51. See Goldman, op. cit., p. 184; also Rashi, Commentaries on the Pentateuch, New York: W.W. Norton, 1970, pp. 93-94.

52. See above, pp. 64-65.

53. The living force of this concept over the centuries is described by Robert St. John, Jews, Justice and Judaism: A Narrative of the Role Played by the Bible People in Shaping American History, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), p. 194. For the practice of equality in the armed forces under conditions of modern warfare, see S. L. A. Marshall, Sinai Victory, (New York: William Morrow 1967), pp. 19-21. The most firmly entrenched tradition needs guarding against encroachment.

54. The most outspoken of the shepherds firmly rejects any notion of Aucassin's superiority with a simple question, twice repeated:

    ‘Et por quoi canteroie je por vos, s’il ne me seoit?’

    (XXII, 15-16, 19-20).

55. The shepherds do not understand how important it is that Aucassin And Nicolette be reunited, could not care less whether or not they ever are, and will not lift a finger to help:

    “Par foi,” fait il, “les deniers prenderons nos, et s’il vient ci, nos li dirons mais nos ne l’irons ja quere”

    (XVIII, 35-36).

    They appear to be the same ones to whom Isaiah refers:

    “And these are shepherds
    That cannot understand;
    They all turn to their own way,
    Each one to his gain, one and all”

    (56:11).

    The shepherds, numbering six, are personalized as: Esmerés, Martinés, Früelins, Jehanés, Robeçons, and Aubriés. It is possible that, with Aucassin, they represent the ‘Seven Shepherds of Israel,’ but the names, unlike every other in the text, do not seem to have a Jewish significance.

56. Nicolette (XI, 26) which restores the ‘pilgrim of Limosin’ to health and homeland and the ‘white hound’ Aucassin tells the oxherd he has lost is also the same ‘beast.’ The parastructural reason for his lie appears to be his fear that the stranger, knowing his goal, may try to prevent his attaining it.

57. Schechter, op. cit., p. 228.

58. Fr. par is Heb. al … ‘on, by, with’; this preposition, spelled with ayin, is a homonym of al— …, the morpheme introducing a negative command (see also above, n. 12), spelled with alef. The pun is part of the fun.