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The Discourse on Marriage in the Middle Ages

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SOURCE: “The Discourse on Marriage in the Middle Ages,” in Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies, Vol. 73, No. 3, July 1998, pp. 771-86.

[In the essay below, Schnell explores how marriage sermons shaped standards of conduct for men and women.]

Even when they address the same issues, different situations do not elicit the same kind of language use. Just as theological summas are not like sermons, and commentaries on the Books of Sentences are not like summas for confessors, medieval texts about marriage vary greatly according to the situations for which they were written. The function of each text and the purpose of its speaker or writer affect the perspective taken on marriage as a social, religious, and sexual phenomenon. This essay will focus on marriage sermons: because of their use in pastoral settings and their lay audience, these sermons address the theme of marriage in a pragmatic way, which at times contrasts with the perspective found in dogmatic, academic texts.

At the end of the thirteenth century, the Dominican friar Peregrinus, professor of theology and provincial of the order in the province of Poland, compiled a collection of Latin sermons. The collection survives in approximately 350 manuscripts and thus was one of the most popular and influential examples of its genre. Since a critical edition of the text has not yet been produced, I will base my remarks on the edition printed in 1495.

Peregrinus does not offer fully developed sermons but rather “structured outlines of sermons, mostly about a verse from the Gospel pericope.”1 The marriage sermon written for the second Sunday after Epiphany, on the wedding feast at Cana (John 2.1-11), is one example of such an outline. The sermon's first main part is a detailed analysis of the difficulties of everyday married life,2 treating, to varying degrees of depth, five characteristics of a just and legitimate marriage: love (dilectio), fidelity (fidelitas), temperance and honesty (temperantia et honestas), mutual help (adiutorium), and education of children (educatio filiorum). The second, much shorter part explicates another kind of wedding, the one between God and the soul. An explanation of “eternal marriage” is given in the third and shortest part of the sermon.

The marriage sermon ends with these words: “So let us be ready to come to this wedding, for our groom awaits us, and if we are negligent, Heaven's gate will be closed to us, just as it was closed to those foolish virgins. But may almighty God help us to be worthy of entering there.” These lines at the end of the written text are marked by the context in which the sermon is to be given, a context in which the priest forms a community with the lay congregation. Such texts have quite a different setting from that of theological summas or commentaries on the Sentences, whose authors engage in written discourse as scholars and not as believers and sinners.3

Above all, the sermon's context shaped the first part of Peregrinus's text, whose theme is “corporeal marriage.” This section discusses the five conditions of a just and legitimate marriage or, more accurately, the conditions under which married couples can live justly and legitimately together: Peregrinus speaks less of the institution of marriage than of the people who have to get along with each other inside the institution (“Qui ergo iuste et legitime stant in matrimonio, debent quinque habere”). In contrast to the second and third parts of his sermon, the first part does not give scholarly interpretations of typological figures but instead offers practical, everyday advice for married couples. This approach explains the many moments of direct address to the audience. Again and again, husbands or wives—or both—are spoken to directly: “You must love your wife …”; “you must remember that …”; “but I say to you …”; “you should not act like …”

The marriage sermon's discourse is especially clear in the discussion of the first of the five required qualities, married love (dilectio). Addressing what form married love should take, the sermon says that a husband should love only his wife, and no other woman, no matter how beautiful, refined, or rich she may be. A husband should also love his wife without speaking any evil words to her or striking her. While that statement sets an unambiguous norm, the sermon is also concerned with deviations from norms; that is, it is not content merely to propagate what should be but also considers what is. The text marks the discrepancy between norm and deviation by using the limiting conjunction sed in connection with multi:

Yet (Sed) I fear that there are many (multi) husbands who are so angry after a visit to an inn that they enjoy beating their wives. They do not dare to strike those who insulted them because they know that, if they do, they will be beaten in return. But after they return home, in their rage, they take all the wrong they have suffered in the inn out on their wives: they grab them by the hair and shove them around the room. Because of this, your love must be such that you do not treat her poorly either in word or deed.

In the end the preacher finds his way back to a norm: “You must love her in such a way that everything is as good for her as it is for you, in clothing, food, drink, and comforts.”4 Again, the text does not stop with the announcement of a norm; here, too, it addresses possible deviations, in recognition of the fact that reality rarely lives up to an ideal:

But I fear (Sed timeo) that there are many (multi) who give their wives absolutely no freedom, instead excluding them from everything so that they cannot give their children even the basic necessities, and often they do not even have enough to be able to pay for a bath.

As the preacher clearly wants to deal with life, not theory, he has to discuss departures from abstract standards. Again, “but” and “many” mark this type of discourse. Clearly the marriage sermon is concerned precisely with situations that oppose the ideal. The preacher does not close his eyes to the reality of deviation but pays extra attention to it. He does so not in a spirit of criticism but in a desire to help. The preacher know full well that the majority of people do not or cannot act according to the norms the church establishes, and he sees it as his task to help such people and those associated with them. The preacher is also a pastor, one who cares for souls: in both roles he acts as a “doctor of souls.” The preacher's function thus approaches that of the confessor.

Peregrinus's text does not stop with denouncing masculine vices; it also addresses their effects on other people and tries to give practical aid. How should oppressed wives behave? The marriage sermon looks for a compromise that would make life bearable for such wives. Although not allowed to rebel openly, they may do what is necessary for them to live. At first the preacher, faced with explosive circumstances, seems to want to avoid giving any advice: “I do not know what advice I should give these wives.” But then he chooses an example from nature that is intended to act as a guide for everyday married life:

I want to tell you about the special nature of a certain animal, called “squirrel” in the vernacular. When autumn approaches, this animal can already feel the winter—that is what nature teaches it. Then it looks for a hollow tree and, after it has found one, gets its mate to help it carry nuts into the hollow, filling it with reserves for the winter. Then, when snow has fallen and they cannot find anything more to eat because of the snow, the male runs to the hollow where it stored the nuts and eats and gnaws them. Then the female comes and wants to go in and eat, too. But under no circumstances will the male let her in. Then the poor little animal hurries to the tree's roots and digs from below with its claws and teeth, gnawing until it has dug a hole to the nuts. Then it begins to listen, and when the male above eats, it eats below.

With this parable wives who have been badly treated by their husbands are shown a way out. The preacher is aware, however, that the parable encourages wives to resist patriarchal authority, and so, even though such resistance is necessary, he softens the moral of the story: “I am not instructing you to do anything in particular. But I forbid you to make large holes.” The preacher implicitly has nothing against small holes, it seems. Thus the line that Peregrinus draws in his marriage sermon can be found somewhere between the two extremes of “make no holes (submit completely to your husband)” and “make big holes (openly resist your husband's authority).” The tolerance of “small holes” makes the sermon's character clear: its perspective is oriented toward the relative, not the absolute, toward the compromise, not the ideal. If in reality husbands are less than perfect, wives, too, must be allowed to deviate from perfection. They are even permitted to resort to cunning and trickery if that is the only way in which conflicts can be overcome and married life made tolerable.

Shortly after the parable of the squirrel, the preacher, in order to avoid being accused of partisanship, turns to address wives and considers another marital norm, wifely obedience, and deviations from it:

“Ah!” the wives will now say. “God bless this man for speaking so well for us against our husbands.” In response I want to say something new to you: why does a wife deserve to be slapped by her husband once in a while? I do not want to say a word about anything worse. But I hope that there are no wives here who are unwilling to be silent about whatever their husbands say, but only those who always do what pleases their husbands.

First the sermon attacked husbands who failed to live up to expected norms and gave advice to their tormented wives. Now it rejects exaggerated claims from wives and criticizes those who do not act according to the standard expected of them. In such cases husbands are allowed to deviate from the norm of not striking their wives: in order to reach an equilibrium, deviation from one norm is answered with deviation from another norm. The marriage sermon is thus delivered from a perspective that always keeps both sexes in mind and, when necessary, criticizes both. Improper behavior by husbands is denounced (and loopholes are sought for wives); at the same time unjust claims by wives are rejected and their failings censured (and husbands are allowed countermeasures that depart from the usual norm).

The textual, conceptual, and discursive characteristics of Peregrinus's marriage sermon can be outlined as follows: As a genre, sermons are characterized by direct address to an audience and by the establishment of a community of preacher and congregation. Peregrinus's sermon on marriage retains, even in its written form, the essential elements of oral communication: the listeners are addressed directly (first the men, then the women); dialogue is included (as in the fictional conversation between women and the preacher); the text repeatedly shifts into the first person; the preacher forms a “we” with his listeners; memorable parables and examples are included for easier understanding of the preacher's message; and hardly a single biblical quotation is found in the text, with scholarly citations entirely absent.

The close contact evident in the text between preacher (or author) and public is related to the sermon's concern with everyday problems (however stylized the sermon's version of those everyday problems may be). Marriage is presented as an institution that repeatedly leads to conflict in daily life. The text thus addresses the sources of such conflicts: husbands' anger, moodiness, violence, tyrannical behavior, and ingratitude; wives' recalcitrance, shrewishness, and striving for power.5 Even if those descriptions do not mirror reality but are merely constructions of reality, it should be clear that the sermon's perspective on marriage differs from that of other medieval genres that treat the subject.

Unlike those other genres, the marriage sermon seeks to help people in a direct and practical manner. It is not content to treat its topic in purely abstract fashion; instead it also takes an interest in behavior that deviates from ideal standards. Why? Clearly the genre of the sermon, with its focus on the experiences of people in everyday life, treats a distinctive domain of objects and problems, a domain different from that of theological summas, speculative tracts, and commentaries on the Sentences.

The marriage sermon's special perspective is marked in the text by two distinctions: between norms and deviations (“but,” “yet”); and between theory (what everybody should do) and practice (what many do). Beyond the statement of norms, the marriage sermon gives advice and pointers to help couples live together in a life that may fall short of the realization of absolute prescriptions. We are in a space that lies between absolute good and absolute evil. Here it is a matter, not of realizing an ideal, but of adapting to actual events. A marriage can succeed even when both spouses do not fulfill all the required norms and ideals. Relativity and pragmatism are the focus, not absolute standards and theoretical ideals. Hence this discourse works with images of the sexes different from those found in discourses concerned solely with abstract and absolute norms.

The sermon on marriage addresses both sexes equally and in turn.6 It reveals the errors and burdens of both and gives advice about what to do when a spouse violates expected norms.7 Thus neither of the sexes has reason or occasion to look down on the other or to blame only the other for the failure of a marriage. By rebuking wives who want to capitalize on his critique of husbands (“‘Ah!’ the wives will now say”), Peregrinus resists the attempt to play one sex off against the other. His sermon tries to make it clear that marriage succeeds only when husband and wife are ready and able to live with each other's weaknesses. Positions of inferiority and superiority are not assigned to either party; only both parties together can keep their marriage from failing.8 Thus it is not enough for this marriage sermon to remind individuals of the high moral standards of the married life. Practical advice for the cooperation of the two partners is the key to success, as in the advice to wives: they may dig holes, as the squirrel does, but not very large ones. Pragmatism, the situating of norms within a context, and the interdependence of the couple: these features characterize the treatment of marriage in Peregrinus's marriage sermon.9

The sermon genre, then, features a perspective that departs significantly from the androcentric viewpoint, that is, from discourse that places man in a superior position vis-à-vis woman. Thus, at least two types of gender discourse can be distinguished within Western Christian literature: a discourse in which man appears as the absolute, unquestionable authority on woman's acts and thoughts; and a discourse in which man, with his weaknesses, becomes an object of discussion and in which behavioral rules are given for both sexes. From the need to formulate workable rules for living together harmoniously in marriage—and in the process to take both sexes' actual or suspected weaknesses and vices into account in a fair way—medieval marriage sermons (and, later, many of the marriage tracts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries) developed a mode of analysis that no longer took man as the absolute measure or focus. The perspective of such sermons is quite far from androcentrism, since both partners are viewed as contributing to the success or failure of their marriage. The discourse on marriage found in these sermons works with a model of the sexes that, though it may only rarely encroach on the husband's authority, still strongly asserts the wife's functional equality. Husbands and wives bear the same responsibility and thus have to meet identical demands: consideration, forbearance, and patience with the partner's weaknesses. Since at least late antiquity, these two discourses on the sexes have coexisted: a discourse on woman (which is androcentric) and a discourse on marriage (which discusses both sexes equally).

The most important boundary in medieval discourse on the sexes does not run between positive and negative images of women, between praise of women in courtly love lyric and criticism of women in jokes and proverbs.10 Such projections of women are the result of the same androcentric perspective.11 Androcentric speech controls the object, “woman,” whether it damns or glorifies her.

Another boundary seems more important to me: the distinction between the discourse on woman and the discourse on marriage. This distinction has remained unnoticed until now because statements about women in marriage were for the most part considered identical with statements about women in general: even the contrast between good and evil women was supposedly to be found in the contrast between good and bad wives. It was as if there were only a single discourse about women and men. But such an assessment leads to grave misinterpretations about how gender constructs developed through history.

The (relatively) pragmatic genres, such as summas for confessors, explanations of the Ten Commandments, and sermons, need to be examined for their treatment of aspects of marriage that were not encompassed in the genres of dogmatic theology and ecclesiastical law.12 Moreover, the communicative and functional circumstances of those more pragmatic genres need to be considered.

The discourse on woman can be found wherever talk about women appears without any critical reflection about men. The view of man as absolute measure, as the embodiment of perfection and the representative of the ideal standard, produces images and concepts of woman without calling man himself into question. Precisely because he is regarded as representing an unquestionable norm, he is not himself an object of discussion; further, he is free to construct images of women (whether with positive or negative connotations). An expression of man's sovereignty is that he alone makes demands. Only the role of recipient of orders remains for the female sex. Here women are relegated to the status of objects.

I include the following texts in the discourse on woman: texts with criticism of women; texts with praise of women; educational writings for girls to prepare them for marriage (here men formulate guidelines for women: she is the object; he is the subject); texts with lessons on marriage for married women (here, too, men are seen as having nothing to do with the success of a marriage, and the wife's role is to do whatever her husband desires); and texts that ask the question whether one (that is, a man, a wise man) should marry. In the last category we can differentiate between texts that argue against marriage and those that discuss the pros and cons of marrying and, in the end, advocate marriage.

The discourse on marriage, on the other hand, is made up of all texts and parts of texts that do more than use the wishful perspective of one sex to describe how husbands and wives should live together. Such texts address the difficulties of married life from the perspectives of both sexes and offer solutions to those difficulties.

In the discourse on marriage the advantages and disadvantages of married life (the weaknesses of both sexes and the possible negative effects of such weaknesses on the spouses) are outlined with neither blind partisanship nor exaggerated pessimism. If a young wife leads an emotionally and sexually unsatisfied life with her old husband, conflict between the partners—say the authors of the discourse on marriage—can hardly be avoided, and she will likely become involved with another, younger man. In that case the blame falls not so much on the wife as on the husband, who entered into such an unequal marriage for egotistical reasons. In the discourse on marriage, the two sexes are not seen as far apart; to some degree their rights, duties, responsibilities, and moral value in the various parts of their life together are even equal.13 One formulation about behavior is characteristic of this discourse: “What is true for the husband is true for the wife, and what is true for the wife is true for the husband”—or, in the short form, “and vice versa” (et econverso).

The discourse on marriage thus presents a more differentiated image of women than the discourse on woman. In contrast to the black-and-white world of the latter (Eve/Mary; evil women/good women; women create hell/heaven on earth) the perspective of the discourse on marriage is pragmatic and realistic: women, like men, possess good and bad qualities. Therefore both sexes have to be understanding and forgiving.

The discourse on marriage also offers a different image of men from that found in the discourse on woman. Man no longer constitutes the absolute from which women are judged. Instead, man is placed in a relational position to woman. Since he himself has weaknesses that must be recognized, absolute control of woman is no longer possible.

The discourse on marriage, then, develops a critique of man and woman that aims to help both sexes lead a peaceful life together in marriages. A motif from the marriage sermon delivered by Caspar Lutz in 1586 could be a motto of the discourse on marriage: the two spouses should, like two oxen, “pull their marriage carts together in the same direction.”14 The shared effort of husband and wife is important in creating a marriage that is bearable for both.

A steady exchange of perspectives is a feature of the discourse on marriage, from the man to the woman, from the woman to the man, and in doing so it reformulates biblical patterns of ideas. One example may suffice here. After the creation of Eve from Adam's rib, the text of Genesis continues: “And the man said, ‘Now this, at last—bone from my bones, flesh from my flesh! …’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and the two become one flesh” (Gen. 2.23-24). The discourse on marriage counters that image of a man leaving his parental home for the sake of his love of his wife with the husband's consideration of the privations that the wife accepts for his sake: the husband should be polite to his wife, mindful that she left father and mother, brother and sister, for his sake.15 The husband should think his way into the wife's situation and look at himself from her perspective. Thus, the husband's and wife's separate perspectives can come together.

At the end of the thirteenth century, in a sermon on marriage based on John 2, the wedding feast of Cana in Galilee, a Bavarian preacher briefly summarized what he considered the decisive condition for a successful marriage: the word “Galilee,” he said, means “separation, parting,” for the term

… characterizes those who decide to marry. Each parts with his free will and surrenders himself to the power of the other: the husband must do what the wife wants, so the wife must also do what the husband wants. Therefore, for the sake of the marriage, they have to give up the will of their own which they once possessed, whether they occupied themselves with dancing or gambling or other loose activities. They must now give all that up.16

Here the roles of ruling and obeying are not distributed in a gender-specific way. Husbands and wives are reciprocally dependent: “She must do what he wants; he must do what she wants.” The main characteristics of the discourse on marriage can be explained under the following categories: pragmatism and experience; the relationship and correlation of norms and claims; and reciprocity and mutuality.

PRAGMATISM AND EXPERIENCE

The practical and realistic perspective of the discourse on marriage requires a different perspective on women from that of the discourse on woman, since it focuses on the everyday cooperation of husbands and wives. But this focus also means that the discourse on marriage contradicts the idealistic image of women found in many writings on the education of women and in collections of exempla. A certain pragmatism is articulated, one that discounts ideal figures like Aurora and Griselda even as it discounts the idea of women's innate inferiority.17 Thus Andreas Tiraquelli (1513) argued that Propertius's statement that Aurora made love with old Titho is a lie—but even if it did happen, he says, it happened only once, and one time is like none at all.18 Similarly, the author of the Ménagier de Paris (ca. 1393), after an extended discussion of the Griselda story, calls the exemplarity of its image of the total obedience of one's wife into question: he does not demand such obedience from his wife, for he himself is not at all worthy of such submission (“car je n'en suis mie digne”). Further, hardly any woman will tolerate such arbitrariness from her husband. Finally, he casts doubt on the validity of the moral of the Griselda story by calling its factuality into questions (“Et croy que ce ne fust oncques vray”).19 Thus, when man can no longer be an absolute (because he is conscious of his own faults), he can no longer require the fulfillment of absolute norms from woman. The interdependence of the images of men and women is clear. That is, the pragmatic, realistic perspective of the discourse on marriage is skeptical about both the supposed absolute perfection of man and the ideal of the perfect woman (i.e., the woman who completely forgets herself and is totally obedient). In the discourse on marriage, images of men and women lie midway between idealization and blanket criticism.

When man himself seems rife with flaws, the justification for denigrating woman in terms of “lacks” disappears. Hence the message of João de Barros's marriage tract from around 1540 is that nobody is free of flaws:

For no one never errs or sins. The just fall seven times every day, and hence we cannot be horrified by women. Horace says that no one is born without some flaw and that whoever has only one small flaw is to be considered happy. And Solomon says that he finds only one good person in every thousand. Aegidius thinks that almost all humans are inclined to evil and that the flesh easily leads them astray.20

Barros here turns Solomon's saying that he found one good man, but not a single good woman, in a group of one thousand (Eccl. 7.29) into a proverb that applies to both sexes. While the discourse on woman suggests that men are an ideal species, absolutely without flaws, whom women must measure themselves against and who can criticize women as a deficient species, the discourse on marriage discredits any attempt to make the male sex an ideal and an absolute.

THE RELATIONSHIP AND CORRELATION OF NORMS AND CLAIMS

With the practical orientation of the marriage sermon, claims and measures of value are made relative. To compromise, to be tolerant, to adapt oneself, to practice forbearance, to be patient, to learn to overlook the other's errors, not to cling to overarching norms: all these traits, directed toward both husband and wife, form the core of the behavioral requirements of the discourse on marriage from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries.

Robert de Sorbon in the thirteenth century illustrates this viewpoint perfectly. In his sermon on marriage he formulates seven points married couples should observe.21 The seventh treats the duty to remain faithful to one's spouse in every respect. The example is given of a partner who want to lead a God-fearing, humble life and who hence wears shabby clothes. Many men would mock their wives for this, Robert says, but a wife should not therefore remove this sign of humility, any more than a husband should (note the marker of the discourse on marriage: “and vice versa”). Then Robert asks how married people are supposed to live with each other when one, leading a life of luxury, wants the other to choose the same way of living, while the other would like to continue with a modest life. How is one to interpret the Apostle's urging that a wife must do what pleases her husband, and the husband, in return, what pleases the wife (et e converso, p. 197)? The very specific problem of interpreting religious norms in everyday life is at issue. For my purposes it is important to note that men and women are treated here completely equally. As a solution, Robert tells the story of a French nobleman who chose humilitas, a life of humility, which his wife did not like. Confronted by his wife, he asked her whether she would like it if he were to dress as expensively as she did. When she said yes, he said he was ready to submit to her desire because of the law of marriage (lex conjugalis): the man must please his wife and vice versa (et e converso, p. 198). But, since he was going to follow this marital law, she should follow his wishes—in this case, adopt a habitus humilis; that is, wear inexpensive clothes. Thus they would exchange their modest and lavish roles. At this point the wife renounced having her way with her husband and let him wear his customary clothing.

In this story Robert describes a conflict between a husband and a wife and gives neither partner an exclusive power in decision making. Both partners have to adapt and accept that what is demanded of the other can also be demanded of oneself. Interdependence and equality replace (the man's) tyranny and perfection. Conformity, adaptation, acceptance of the other and of the other's qualities, tolerance: these are the keywords of the discourse on marriage.

RECIPROCITY AND MUTUALITY

Since the wife is no longer the sole cause of what is good or bad in a marital relationship, both sexes are responsible for the success or failure of their marriage. Consequently advice about behavior is formulated for both women and men. This double perspective is an important market of the discourse on marriage.

It is well known that jokes and comic literature often provoke laughter at women's expense. At the same time, these comic stories often suspend official norms and conventions and thus help victimized parties claim their rights. Such turnabouts offered opportunities to women, too. A story in Johannes Pauli's comic collection (“Schimpf und Ernst,” Strasbourg, 1522) makes an exaggeratedly patriarchal and androcentric position laughable and replaces it with the insight that a marriage can succeed only when the husband submits to flexible, practical rules, renouncing one-sided authority.22 In this comic story the theoretical discourse on woman is taken to an extreme and transformed into the pragmatic discourse on marriage: A husband has a wife who does everything to live in peace with him. But as far as he is concerned, she cannot do anything right: “He finds nothing good.” Then the wife has an idea: her husband should write down all his desires and demands, which he does. Soon after, upon his return from a village festival, the drunken husband falls into a stream and demands that his wife help him to climb out. When she answers that she first has to go home to see if this demand is on the list, he has to save himself. Arriving at home, he tears the list to pieces and tells his wife: “Do what you think is right.” After that, they live together in harmony.23

In this story, which adapts basic ideas from the discourse on marriage, the limits of the discourse on woman are mercilessly exposed: even a perfectly disciplined, obedient, and peaceful wife cannot guarantee the success of a marriage if the husband is not able or willing to recognize her efforts. The story also warns that a marriage controlled by the husband's demands should be replaced by a marital relationship formed equally by husband and wife. Thirdly, the story shows the need to adapt absolute norms. Everyday marital experience is not to be handled by absolute prescriptions but by the readiness and ability of both parties to help and support the other. That general rule must suffice since life is too complex to be reduced to laws and lists. Everyday marital life requires practical adaptability, and the discourse on marriage is governed by such pragmatism—quite in contrast to the efforts seen in commentaries on the Sentences and theological summas to produce definitive elaborations of every theoretical possibility. Lastly, the story shows that, precisely because of masculine inadequacy, women must be granted a space for their own actions.

While the discourse on woman gives the impression that wives are never satisfied, no matter how much effort husbands make, the roles are precisely reversed in the example just cited of the discourse on marriage: a wife may make as much effort as possible and try to fulfill all her husband's demands, but the (obstinate, sullen, grouchy) husband is still not satisfied. The thrust of the critique is here directed at the man. When it is recognized that the wife alone cannot guarantee marital peace—that is, when the discourse on woman, with its one-sided demands, meets its limits—the way is open for the discourse on marriage: husbands are now also challenged when the success of a marriage is at issue.

In the discourse on woman, the success or happiness of a marriage (for both partners) is assumed if the wife is good, as shown in this excerpt from the misogamic “Le miroir de mariage” by Eustache Deschamps (ca. 1400):

But I want to have a saintly wife who is humble, simple, not very eloquent, considerate, not very educated, young and chaste with pretty mouth and eyes, wise, graceful, and younger than fifteen, sixteen, or twenty, a wife who is rich and of good parents, who has a beautiful body and is as pretty and gentle as a dove, who obeys me in everything, who does not let her eyes wander, who does not look to the side but is always at my side … [etc.]. If I can find such a woman, I will love her more than all that is mortal; I will end my days in joy; I will neither quarrel nor bicker; I will be happy and pleased; I will always feel good.24

Unfortunately, he continues, no such woman exists, so marriage is not advisable.25

The perspective typical of the discourse on woman can easily be perceived through Deschamps's ironic, parodic play here on misogamic and misogynistic thinking.26 In such thinking, demands are directed solely at the woman, and it is taken for granted that married life will bring the greatest happiness if only the wife will fulfill every conceivable wish of her husband.

Examples of blame for marital conflicts can be found in a wide variety of texts. I will confine myself to a single motif, violent anger. References to women's tendency to violent anger are commonly found in the discourse on woman.27 For example, in Boccaccio's misogynistic Corbaccio the narrator vehemently attacks this trait:28

This despicable female sex is excessively suspicious and angry. … And they become angry like wild animals. … In their violent anger they have perpetrated much evil and cruelty. …

Another example, from the misogynistic and misogamic “Lamentationes Matheoli” (thirteenth century), treats the same topic of wifely anger. Not surprisingly, its discussion of marriage is treated from the perspective of the husband, who, it goes without saying, attributes all the problems of married life to the wife:29

… Ego nescio, quare
Illius timeo rixas et prelia plus quam
Fulgur. Teste Deo non est fera sevior usquam
Litis in ardore quam femina, gracia rara.
Coniugii more cum sponsa sit omnis amara
Sponso, non sponse sponsus, sic ordine
non se,
Proch dolor, ista gerunt, varios fines quia querunt;
Hic amat, hec odit, hic fidus et ista dolosa,(30)
Ossa viri rodit sua coniunx demoniosa.(31)

(1.33b-41)

No wild animal, the husband says, is as angry as a woman in the heat of argument. A wife is usually difficult, a husband never. The husband loves; his wife hates. He is honest; she is not. She even eats her husband's bones. This is the discourse on woman par excellence.

The themes of anger and violence are handled quite differently in the discourse on marriage.32 Here it is assumed that both sexes tend to violent anger, and so each sex is called upon to respond to the anger of the other with care and friendship. A sermon on marriage by Berthold of Regensburg (thirteenth century) includes three demands that God has made on husbands and wives.33 The section on the first demand is introduced programmatically: “The first task is for spouses to live together peacefully, patiently, and considerately and to treat each other well” (“pacifice, patienter, caritative vivant et se bene invicem tractent”). Both spouses should take responsibility for peace in the house. This shared responsibility appears in a gender-neutral demand:

If one of the two spouses is nasty, angry, impatient, poisonous like a snake, burned up with anger like a dragon, and bitter like the devil, then the other must bear it patiently.

Shortly after this passage, the wife is given the duty of tolerating her husband's moods (sustine patienter, tace silenter)—after all, God gave women softer voices and smaller figures—but this apparent grant of unchallenged authority to the husband is immediately retracted: when husbands act like tyrants, they will pay for it with an eternity in hell. Berthold goes on to describe husbands who mistreated their wives. Some husbands spoiled their wives when they were sober and beat them when they were in a bad mood. Outside the house some husbands cut a pathetic figure; inside the house, they acted like lions.34 The central formula of Berthold's work, as in the later work of Johannes Herolt (1418) and Pelbartus de Themesvar (end of the fifteenth century), is “alter … alter …” (if the one is angry, the other must be patient, and vice versa). The gender roles thus converge toward each other.35 In the discourse on marriage, the husband is given the role the wife plays in the discourse on woman: for example, to bear the spouse's anger and to offer criticism carefully and only at a quiet moment.36

With its insight into human weaknesses and its renunciation of the ideal of human perfection, the discourse on marriage uses a mode of speaking not found in the discourse on woman, whose hard antitheses and ruthless, one-sided demands for the realization of absolute norms are based on dogmatic, speculative concepts. Texts from the discourse on marriage, in contrast, aim to talk to people, engaging their practical cares. In the process the perspective always shifts back and forth from one spouse to the other. The focus on their everyday life together largely excludes the level of absolute norms. Consequently people are considered, not in relation to norms, but in relation to one other.

My discussion of the distinctions to be drawn between the two types of discourse is intended to counter four tendencies in traditional women's studies. First, I wish to challenge the tendency to focus on statements about women per se. This limited and distorted approach results from a belief in a pervasive and all-powerful misogyny in the Middle Ages. On the basis of the questions asked, the texts chosen, and the interpretation of those texts, few modern works in women's studies can be absolved from the reproach that their authors highlighted the misogynistic features of medieval literature and have thereby presented a very partial image of the discussion of the sexes in the Middle Ages. Numerous monographs about the image of women in the Middle Ages give the impression that no other image of women existed alongside hatred of and contempt for women. Fortunately, in recent years both deconstructive feminism, with its insistence on the principle of difference, and gender studies have strongly criticized women-centered feminism.37 Even advocates of traditional women's studies have now recognized its limitations and have begun to plead for a transition from women's history to gender history, a history that also takes men into account and that recognizes that texts written by men about women “say more about their authors than about the object of observation.”38 As long ago as 1976 Natalie Zemon Davis perceptively called on women to study the history of the sexes, and hence the history of men, too.39 Yet even as a history of gender has increasingly established itself alongside the history of women in the 1990s, the issues of “woman” and of constructions of “the feminine” often continue to dominate inside this new direction.

Secondly, my discussion here is intended to challenge the tendency of traditional women's studies to take oppositions like Eve/Mary (whore/saint) or misogyny/praise of women as the most important markers of the discourse on gender.

Thirdly, I would like to counter the tendency to address the oppositions of the images of women exclusively on the conceptual level. Textual issues (e.g., genre and style of writing) must also be addressed, for they play a part in defining gender concepts. Different projections of women are determined not only by factors specific to authors or periods but also by a text's intended use. In dogmatic, speculative discourse the relationship between the sexes is described in a different way from that found in pragmatic discourse.

Fourthly, the tendency to take the image of women and marriage presented in dogmatic, speculative discourse as the single or dominant image of women and marriage in the Middle Ages needs to be countered. Different images of the sexes and different conceptions of marriage appear in different discourses and types of texts. Moreover, it is certainly true that statements in marriage sermons, penitential and pastoral treatises, explanations of the Ten Commandments, and pamphlets were of greater relevance to the everyday life of women than the speculations found in theological summas and commentaries.

Thus I want to contrast the androcentrically determined discourse on woman with the discourse on marriage, which has specific generic features and is characterized by a perspective that views both sexes in similar ways in order to help them live together peacefully on an everyday basis. This perspective has consequences for the image of men and for men's view of women (and not only of wives). In the discourse on marriage the images of women developed by men—whether the unmarried medieval cleric or the married Reformation preacher of the sixteenth century—are coupled with men's images of husbands (and also of unmarried exemplars of the male sex).40 Thus there is a complex interdependence between images of women and images of men, and their effects vary according to the context in which they appear and the use to which they are put.

The discourse on marriage is important for the history of the sexes precisely because it is so different. But it is also important for the histoire des mentalités, and perhaps for social history as well, because in the discourse on marriage models of living together are developed that are found nowhere else.

Notes

  1. F. J. Worstbrock, “Peregrinus von Oppeln,” in Kurt Ruh, ed., Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon, 2nd ed., vol. 7 (Berlin and New York, 1989), cols. 402-4.

  2. Peregrinus, Sermones de tempore et de sanctis ([Strasbourg], 1495), Hain 12586, cited from Tübingen University Library, Gb 243, 4°, “Dominica prima post octavam epiphanie” (Alph. II [sic] T-Y: the numbers are sometimes out of sequence in this edition), incipit “Nuptie facte sunt in chana galilee. Joh. ii.” (a total of six and a half columns).

  3. I discuss such summas and commentaries on the Sentences in Frauendiskurs, Männerdiskurs und Ehediskurs: Textsorten und Geschlechterkonzepte in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Frankfurt am Main and New York, 1998). Recently John Baldwin has discussed the variety of types of discourse in the Middle Ages in “Consent and the Marital Debt: Five Discourses in Northern France around 1200,” in Angeliki E. Laiou, ed., Consent and Coercion to Sex and Marriage in Ancient and Medieval Societies (Washington, D.C., 1993), pp. 257-70, and in The Language of Sex: Five Voices from Northern France around 1200 (Chicago and London, 1994). While I focus here on differentiations within theological discourse on gender and sexuality, Baldwin distinguishes theological discourse from four other discourses (medicine, the vernacular fabliaux, the vernacular courtly romances, and the Ovidian Latin tradition with its commentaries).

  4. Peregrinus, Sermones, Alph. II [sic] X.

  5. These stereotypical traits correspond to traditional roles of the sexes. It is noteworthy, however, that husbands are accused of failing to fulfill their roles as much as wives are.

  6. The discourse on marriage thus follows the lessons on marriage and the so-called Haustafeln of the New Testament (1 Cor. 7; Eph. 5.22-23; Col. 3.18-19). As a whole, medieval marriage discourse is based on Pauline behavioral norms. However, the narrower discourse on marriage that I focus on here goes beyond those guidelines insofar as it considers deviations from norms and offers solutions to the conflicts thereby created. While Paul was concerned with teaching norms, the marriage sermons also address the practical side of marriage.

  7. Those who read only the parts critical of women fail to do justice to the age's discourse on marriage.

  8. Of course, the man has “better cards.” His position of authority is assumed.

  9. In “Gendered Sin and Misogyny in John of Bromyard's ‘Summa predicantium,’” Traditio 47 (1992), 233-57, Ruth Mazo Karras undertook an interesting gender-specific analysis of a sermon handbook's exempla. In Bromyard's thematically organized collection of sententiae and exempla, a misogynistic attitude tends to dominate insofar as women are held responsible for male sexual misbehavior: woman is seen as a creature threatening to man. But Karras's results cannot be simply transferred to sermons that were actually delivered, for the medieval exempla change their meaning according to the context and function of their use. In marriage sermons misogynistic exempla are again and again balanced by exempla critical of men.

  10. Elisabeth Lienert gives a good overview of medieval criticism and praise of women in Frau Tugendriech: Eine Prosaerzählung aus der Zeit Kaiser Maximilians, 1: Edition und Untersuchungen (Munich, 1988), pp. 97-115. See also Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana, Ill., 1956), pp. 5-37.

  11. Feminist research has uncovered the mechanisms that led to the idealization or demonization of women, both of which aimed at the domestication and repression of women, but such research has reduced those mechanisms to patriarchal discourse's sole perspective.

  12. On marriage sermons see David L. d'Avray and M. Tausche, “Marriage Sermons in Ad status Collections of the Central Middle Ages,” Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen âge 55 (1980), 71-119, repr. in Nicole Bériou and David L. d'Avray, eds., Modern Questions about Medieval Sermons: Essays on Marriage, Death, History, and Sanctity (Spoleto, 1994), pp. 77-134. In “Marriage Sermons, Polemical Sermons, and The Wife of Bath's Prologue: A Generic Excursus,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 14 (1992), 3-30, Andrew Galloway finds an “encouragement for the voices of women” (pp. 12 ff.) and argues against the thesis of “antifeminist sermons” (p. 8). However, because he is concerned solely with parallels to the Wife of Bath's Prologue, Galloway's ideas remain within the traditional opposition of feminism/antifeminism. (Contrary to Galloway's claim [p. 18, n. 27], the passage about the threefold castigation of the wife by the husband can be found in Pseudo-Chrysostom's Opus imperfectum in Matthaeum, PG 56:802, homily 32.) In “Persuasive Voices: Clerical Images of Medieval Wives,” Speculum 61 (1986), 517-43, Sharon Farmer shows that the marriage relationship received special treatment in summas for confessors, in which the wife is regarded as the husband's educator.

  13. This is also true of the ancient discourse on marriage, as in Plutarch's Praecepta coniugalia, where much of the advice is directed at both spouses. For example, a warning to a husband about patience and consideration for his young wife is promptly followed by the corresponding warning to the wife (chap. 2). See Lisette Goessler, Plutarchs Gedanken über die Ehe (Zurich, 1962), pp. 46-52.

  14. Caspar Lutz, Hochzeits-Predigt bey der Hochzeit Hieronymi Luczen … (Tübingen, 1587), pp. 12 f.

  15. Guilielmus Peraldus, “Sermo 26,” in Wilhelmus Alvernus, Sermones in Epistolas et Evangelia dominicarum et festorum totius anni (Munich, 1541), part 2, pp. 80-83, here p. 82b; Berthold of Regensburg, Rusticanus de communi sanctorum, no. 58, “Qui habent uxores,” on 1 Cor. 7.29 (Fribourg, Couvent de Cordeliers, cod. 117, vol. 2, fols. 65va-67vb); and “Ein püechel von der regel der heyligen ee,” ed. Michael Dallapiazza, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 112 (1983), 266-92, here lines 357-62.

  16. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, cod. 14553, fol. 17ra-rb.

  17. See Andreas Tiraquelli, De legibus connubialibus et iure maritali (Paris, 1546), 6.21.

  18. Elsewhere (13.14) Tiraquelli warns husbands against committing adultery and then counting on the forbearance of their tolerant wives: women like Tertia Aemilia, who tolerated Scipio Africanus's adultery, are rare.

  19. Le Ménagier de Paris, ed. J. Pichon (Paris, 1846), 1.1.6 (the Griselda story is on pp. 99-124; the discussion is cited from pp. 125-26).

  20. João de Barros, Espelho de casados, ed. Tito de Noronha and Antonio Cabral (Porto, 1874), 3.9.

  21. Ed. B. Hauréau in Notices et extraits de quelques manuscrits latins de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1890-93), 1:188-202, here p. 197. Further page references will be included in the text.

  22. Der Stricker (thirteenth century) had similar aims in his comic story “Das erzwungene Gelübde,” ed. Hanns Fischer, Der Stricker, Verserzählungen, 2nd ed. (Tübingen, 1967), pp. 11-21.

  23. Johannes Pauli, Schimpf und Ernst, ed. Hermann Österley (Stuttgart, 1866; repr. Amsterdam, 1967), no. 139, pp. 100 ff.

  24. Eustache Deschamps, Œuvres complètes, ed. Gaston Raynaud (Paris, 1894), 9.11, lines 722-34 and 751-56, pp. 27-30.

  25. Ibid., lines 776-822.

  26. On misogyny as a purely literary “register” see R. Howard Bloch, “Medieval Misogyny,” in R. Howard Bloch and Frances Ferguson, eds., Misogyny, Misandry, and Misanthropy (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), pp. 1-24; and R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (Chicago and London, 1991), pp. 37-63.

  27. See, for example, Boccaccio, De casibus virorum illustrium 1.18.18, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci and Vittorio Zaccaria (Milan, 1983), vol. 9 of Vittore Branca's edition of Boccaccio's works, Tutte le opere: “Avarissimum quippe animal est femina, iracundum, instabile, infidele, libidinosum, truculentum. …”

  28. Boccaccio, Corbaccio, in Opere in versi, Corbaccio, Trattatello in laude di Dante, Prose latine, Epistole, ed. Pier Giorgio Ricci (Milan and Naples, 1965), p. 501.

  29. Alfred Schmitt, ed., Matheus von Boulogne, “Lamentationes Matheoluli”: Kommentierte und kritische Edition der beiden ersten Bücher (Bonn, 1974), pp. 44 ff., my emphasis.

  30. Schmitt (p. 45) includes parallels from Pseudo-Hildebert von Lavardin (PL 171:1309C and 1290B); these texts are not included in the 1969 edition by A. Brian Scott.

  31. In the Utrecht edition this line reads, “naturaque sua coniunx est demoniosa … pro coniuge.”

  32. The idea that violent anger is a typically female vice is not unknown in the marriage discourse. However, the marriage discourse goes on to juxtapose women's violent anger with a vice typical of men: their proud, tyrannical nature (superbia). Jacobus de Voragine, Sermones dominicales (n.p., 1484), links the vices of the two sexes in a marriage sermon (sermon 21, “Dominica prima post octavam epiphanie: Sermo secundus”), “proprium enim hominis vicium est superbia, mulieris iracundia,” with reference to Eccl. 10.22 (“Non est creata hominibus superbia neque iracundia nationi mulierum”). Thus both partners are responsible for the failure of a marriage: “Quando igitur vir est superbus et uxor iracunda, pacificari non possunt et ideo sepe ab invicem separantur” (19va: “When the husband is tyrannical and the wife is angry, they cannot find peace and are thus often separated from each other”).

  33. Berthold of Regensburg, Rusticanus de communi sanctorum (see above, n. 15), no. 58.

  34. Ibid., fol. 66ra: “Si vero alter illorum est malitiosus, iracundus, impatiens, venenosus ut serpens, ignitus ira ut draco, amarus ut dyabolus, alter ipsum patienter sustineat. …”

  35. Johannes Herolt agrees with Berthold almost word for word in Sermones discipuli de tempore et sanctis (Mainz, 1612), sermon 25D, p. 142b. See also Pelbartus de Themesvar, Sermones (Hagenau, 1498), sermon 25S; Gottschalk Hollen (1470), Sermones dominicales super Epistolas Pauli, pars hiemalis (Hagenau, 1517), sermon 46A (“Tali exemplo discantur viri patienter sufferre litigiosas mulieres. … Sic etiam est econtra de muliere: si habet virum iracundum et perversum, debet illi dulciter respondere”); and Veit Dietrich (1548), “Ein kurtze vermanung an die Eheleut,” in Oskar Reichmann, ed., Etliche Schrifften für den gemeine man (Assen, 1972), pp. 127-33, at pp. 129-31. These are all marriage sermons.

  36. Antonius de Guevara, “Sendbrief,” trans. Johann Beatgras, in Johann Fischart, Das philosophisch Ehezuchtbüchlin (Strasbourg, 1591), fol. T 4v-Y 4v, and fol. X 2 (chap. 5); and Gottschalk Hollen, sermon 46A.

  37. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York and London, 1990); and Adrienne Munich, “Notorious Signs, Feminist Criticism and Literary Tradition,” in Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn, eds., Making a Difference: Feminist Literary Criticism (New York, 1985), pp. 238-59.

  38. Rebekka Habermas, “Geschlechtergeschichte und ‘Anthropology of Gender’: Geschichte einer Begegnung,” Historische Anthropologie 1 (1993), 485-509, at p. 490. See also Gisela Bock, “Women's History and Gender History: Aspects of an International Debate,” Gender and History 1 (1989), 7-30; A. Corbin, A. Farge, M. Perrot, et al., Une histoire des femmes est-il possible? (Marseilles and Paris, 1984); Joan W. Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), pp. 15-27 and 200-206; Karin Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Jane Rendall, eds., Writing Women's History: International Perspectives (Bloomington, Ind., 1991); and Renate Hof, “Die Entwicklung der Gender Studies,” in Hadumod Bussmann and Renate Hof, eds., Genus: Zur Geschlechterdifferenz in den Kulturwissenschaften (Stuttgart, 1995), pp. 3-33.

  39. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women's History: The European Case,” Feminist Studies 3 (1976), 83-103.

  40. One could object that the authors of marriage sermons did not speak as men but as pastors in their dealings with husbands and wives. It is nevertheless the fact that men are here criticizing other men. The reason for the preachers' critical treatment of the male sex clearly lies in the setting of their sermons: they wanted to discuss the conditions of a harmonious marriage, and so they addressed their recommendations to both husband and wife.

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Medieval Courtesy Literature and Dramatic Mirrors of Female Conduct