(from TMR 99

(from TMR 99.04.19)

Georges Duby. Women of the Twelfth Century, Vol 3:
Eve and the Church. Translated by Jean Birrell.
Originally published as Dames du XIIe Siecle, III:
Eve et les pretres (Editions Gallimard, 1996). Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. vi, 122. $14.00 (pb),
30.00 (hb). ISBN 0-226-16786-0 (pb), 0-226-16785-2 (hb).

 Reviewed by Leslie A. Sconduto
 Armstrong Atlantic State University
 scondule@mail.armstrong.edu

The third and last volume of Women of the Twelfth
Century, "Eve and the Church," presents a disappointing
conclusion to the career of Georges Duby. Like the earlier
installments, it is based on the false and rather surprising
premise that no writings by women of the twelfth century
survive (pp. 1-2, 121). Ignoring the writings of Marie de
France, Heloise, and Hildegard of Bingen, Duby instead looks to
the words of twelfth-century men for textual evidence regarding
the women of that period. Moreover, Duby himself seems
confused as to what he is trying to accomplish in the book. In
the Introduction to Volume 3, he tells us that he is "seeking
to discover . . . how women were treated at this period" (p. 1)
but that he is unable to determine "the actual reality of
women's daily lives" (p. 1) and can "capture only images,
flickering and imperfect reflections, of the women of the
twelfth century" (p. 2). In the last chapter, he writes "I am
seeking in this book to see more clearly how men of the Church
regarded women" (p. 86). In the Conclusion, however, Duby
presents a different goal, stating that for the past fifteen
years he "had been searching among all the traces left by the
women of the twelfth century" and that he had "hoped to catch
sight of some aspects of the way they behaved, and of how they
saw themselves, the world and men" (p. 121). It is left to the
frustrated reader to attempt to determine the purpose of Duby's
book.

In Chapter 1, "The Sins of Women," Duby discusses Stephen of
Fougeres' misogynous text, the Book of Manners (c. 1174-
1178), according to which women's nature included three vices
or defects: their propensity for using sorcery to change the
course of events, their rebelliousness and treachery, and their
lust or sensuality (pp. 3-8, 24-28). The majority of the
chapter (pp. 8-24), however, focuses on an earlier work, the
Decretum, which was written by Burchard of Worms between
1007 and 1012 (p. 8). Serving as a penitential and
interrogation manual for confessors, the Decretum was in
turn based on a tenth-century text, Regino's De
Ecclesiasticis Disciplinis. Throughout the chapter, Duby
attempts to describe and explain the evolving attitudes of men,
particularly men of the church, regarding women. For example,
he states that by the end of the twelfth century, women were
seen as active agents in affairs of the heart. Because the
texts are discussed primarily in reverse chronological order,
however, with very few dates and very little expository
framework and because the chapter deals very little with the
twelfth century, the reader is left confused, with only a
muddled impression that in the twelfth century women were still
considered untrustworthy and the source of all evil. It was up
to men to subdue and control them. But it is not clear whether
the attitudes depicted reflect societal opinions or merely
those of one individual, Stephen of Fougeres.

Chapter 2, "The Fall," focuses on the Genesis account of Adam
and Eve and its ramifications in the Middle Ages. Duby
discusses twelfth-century commentaries by Robert of Liege,
Abelard, Peter Comestor, and Hugh and Andrew of Saint-Victor.
He also discusses their precursors: the Venerable Bede, Alcuin,
Rabanus Maurus, and Saint Augustine. Although Duby provides a
partial chronological framework for this chapter, his
discussion is not straight-forward but jumps back and forth
between the various commentators and their precursors. The
overriding concern here is neither twelfth-century attitudes
toward women nor the reality of their daily existence, but
rather medieval interpretations of the story of Adam and Eve.
Duby discusses one noteworthy change: by the twelfth century,
theologians no longer adhered to Augustine's interpretation of
sexuality as the consequence of sin but believed instead that
sexuality caused sin. Since Eve violated the natural order
when she tempted Adam, she was punished by God, who made her
subject to Adam. The last few pages of the chapter address the
question of the concern of twelfth-century churchmen for
protecting men from women like Eve.

Chapter 3, "Speaking to Women," presents letters written by
churchmen (St. Bernard, St. Anselm, Hildebert of Lavardin,
Arnulf, bishop of Lisieux, Adam of Perseigne) to women. Most
of them take the form of model sermons that were meant to be
read to households in order to instruct them in issues of
morality. Duby examines the differences between letters
written to nuns and those written to princesses and other
noblewomen. He also discusses collections of model sermons in
Latin, most of which are from the thirteenth century. In the
majority of the letters and sermons, women are advised to fear
God, resist all temptations of the flesh, and renounce the
world. Since married women are obligated to surrender their
virginity to their husband, they are told they must dissociate
themselves during the act, to separate their soul from their
body. They must be obedient to their husband but they must
never take pleasure in sharing his bed. Instead, using
language deliberately chosen to arouse ardor, these churchmen
propose Jesus as the "celestial lover" for virgins, nuns, and
married women (pp. 55, 58, 60, 67).

"Love," the last and longest chapter, discusses the various
types of love (fornication, friendship, pure love, married
love) posited by twelfth-century theologians and distinguishes
between caritas 'divine love' and cupiditas
'carnal love.' It primarily examines, however, the rituals of
courtly love and how it was used in the twelfth-century to
control the acting out of sexual impulses, primarily those of
the jeunes, the unmarried but frequently not-so-young
knights. Duby argues that he has not strayed from his "theme"
and justifies the inclusion of this material by stating that
the "authors of chivalric literature were men of the Church"
(p. 86) and that he could learn about their attitudes toward
women by examining the literature that they wrote, but he
spends very little time looking at this chivalric literature
(pp. 96-99). He offers instead a lengthy analysis of Andrew
the Chapelain's De amore (pp. 99-117) and then concludes
the chapter with a rapid review of Jean Renart's
L'Escoufle and Guillaume de Dole and Gautier de
Coincy's thirteenth-century Miracles de Notre-Dame (pp.
117-120).

The entire text is flawed by its lack of scholarly apparatus:
there are no notes, no bibliography, no index. Duby provides
few dates and frequently ignores chronology, both in his
selection of which texts to include in this study of twelfth-
century women as well as in the logical organization of that
study. Throughout the book, it is often difficult to determine
whose opinion is being expressed, Duby's or that of one of the
twelfth-century men he is discussing. Duby presents
contradictory images of women as evil temptresses and as weak
victims, but fails to acknowledge these discrepancies, much
less explain them. Awkward syntax further weakens the text.
For example, one particularly long sentence is so convoluted
that it is almost totally incomprehensible ("In his History
of the Lords of Amboise . . . in particular Cicero," p.
91). Another has so many bracketed explanations that it too
becomes unreadable ("It is, he says . . . it has discovered],"
pp. 100-101). Ambiguities ("those" in "Those who were worried
. . . .", p. 118) that would not have existed in the French
(ceux versus celles) are left unclarified. All
of these problems, in addition to the text's faulty premise,
diminish its use for medieval scholars.

Although Duby professes a sympathetic and respectful attitude
toward women and seems shocked at times by the texts that he
discusses, some of which he labels "misogynous," all that we
find in his book is a display of misogynism. The fact that
Duby relies on these texts rather than those surviving texts
attributed to women of the twelfth century betrays his own
prejudices and condescending attitude. Duby ends his book with
the following criticism: "It was men, ultimately, who failed
women" (p. 122). And, I'm sad to say, so has Georges Duby.