One of the best thing about medieval romances is the liberal interpretations of Holy Writ found therein. What did Jesus love? Battle and don’t worry about it. What does the Bible say about Solomon the Wise? Mostly how one of his wives hated him so much that she faked her own death, which is why all present empresses of Constantinople are kept in cages.
Would you like to hear Chrétien de Troyes’ exegesis of 1 Corinthians 7:8-9, wherein St. Paul famously counsels widowed and unmarried women to prefer chastity to marriage, but advises them to marry if the alternative is adultery?
Here, for comparison, is the original text:
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.
But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
And here is what medieval readers took away from Paul’s words:
Cliges speaks first and says what he had thought of in the night: “My lady,” says he, “I think, and am of the opinion, that we could not do better than go to Britain; I thought I might take you there; now do not refuse, for never was Helen so joyfully received at Troy when Paris took her thither but that still greater joy would be felt over you and me in the land of the King, my uncle. And if this plan does not meet with your favour, tell me what you think, for I am ready, whatever may happen, to abide by your decision.”
And she replies: “This is my answer: I will never go off with you thus; for after we had gone away, every one would speak of us as they do of Iseult the Blond and of Tristan. And everywhere all men and women would speak evil of our love. No one would believe, nor is it natural that they should do so, the truth of the matter. Who would believe that I have thus, all to no purpose, evaded and escaped from your uncle still a maid? I should be regarded simply as wanton and dissolute, and you would be thought mad. It is well to remember and observe the injunction of St. Paul: if any one is unwilling to live chastely, St. Paul counsels him to act so that he shall receive no criticism, or blame, or reproach. It is well to stop evil mouths, and therefore, if you agree, I have a proposal to make: it seems best to me to consent to feign that I am dead. I shall fall sick in a little while. And you in the meantime may plan some preparations for a place of burial. Put all your wits to work to the end that a sepulchre and bier be so constructed that I shall not die in it, or be stifled, and that no one shall mount guard over it at night when you come to take me out.
Oh, I love this so much. “What was it Paul said about abstinence again?”
“If you can’t keep yourself from having sex, make sure no one finds out who you’re having sex with. Fake your own death if you have to. Just keep things quiet, and that counts as chastity, pretty much.”
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure that’s the gist, yes.” And that’s how folk Christianity got started in medieval France, and I love it more than anything.
[Image via]
man they did not teach me that at chastity camp….
Probably still better than “touch yourself go to hell”
Paul is such a circumcision-obsessed douchewad.
Thomas Jefferson sucked for a lot of reasons, but one way in which he did NOT suck was excising Paul completely from Scripture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Bible
…was a book constructed by Thomas Jefferson in the later years of his life by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus.
JESUS SCRAPBOOK
In Paul’s defense (not a sentence I expected to write today!) he was not alone in his fixation on circumcision, in his day.
Also in Paul’s defense, much of the really egregious stuff is pseudo Paul, not actually written by Paul.
No, he wasn’t. His opponents were. He says that whether or not someone is circumcised is meaningless, but people like James and Peter kept showing up at Paul’s churches and demanding everybody get circumcised or they couldn’t be saved. It’s not Paul’s fault that his letters to specific groups of people that he wrote for specific reasons got turned into scripture.
And his writings on chastity make more sense when you realize that Corinth was getting way too into their Love Feasts and having actual orgies. Damnit, Cornith, this is why we can’t have nice things.
Also, dude was sleeping with his stepmom. Seriously, Corinth.
Rich people, man. Rich people.
I remember that verse being used in very suggestive permutations in my youth group drama team. We were a bit surrealist, which is probably how we managed to get away with it.
Let us not forget everyone who read Paul as “it’s better to marry than to be literally lit on fire. In hell. Because that’s where you fornicators are headed.”
Sounds legit to me. Folk Christianity is all my family does, all night, all day.
Oh yes. Most people can’t articulate the Trinity for shit or why Jesus might not want them to be open carry activists, but damn if they don’t have a “personal relationship” with him, whatever THAT means.
I don’t know about that, but for my people folk Catholicism mostly just means ghosts? Lots and lots of ghosts and something pretty darn close to ancestor worship.
Yeah, my Catholic relatives tend in that direction too. I’m just more acquainted with the Jesus/America/guns folk religion of lower middle class white people.
Nope. In my case it’s some mostly middle to upper class white people with ancestor shrines next to their flat screens, funny ideas about bread (and dead people) and candles (and dead people) and table settings (and dead people) and babies (and dead people) and… Well, you get the picture. When I was younger I think I called it the Addams Family meets Catholicism.
I read the title and got VERY riled up in pre-emptive defense of the capital of Minnesota from whoever (Fitzgerald, maybe?) was about to malign it. Gonna have a nice cup of tea to come down from this internet-outrage high.
But yes, “act so that he shall receive no criticism” is a DELIGHTFUL bit of weasel-wording.
I’ve spent the majority of my life in Minnesota, and it wasn’t until I went to look at the Saint Paul Cathedral in my early twenties that I thought, “Oh! This city is named after the apostle Paul!” I had literally never thought about the name “Saint Paul” as meaning anything before that.
“So… weren’t you dead?”
“For a while, yes.”
“And now… you’re alive again.”
“Mm, it would appear so.”
“Because we built a sepulchre and everything.”
“Yes, I saw it, it’s very nice. Thank you.”
“So, how did that happen?”
“Ooh… miracle, I suppose? One for the history books.”
“You didn’t just fake your own death and go tarting around overseas, as St. Paul advises.”
“Ha ha, mericful Heavens, no! Although I would never speak against St. Paul. Wonderful guide, spiritually. Full of useful advice.”
“I only ask because I also have been considering a spiritual journey, in the Biblical mold, and I’d appreciate any suggestions you might have.”
“Of course, of course.. You know, you don’t look at all well lately.”
Two Monks Interpret Paul
we need this
Yes.
100% would read
medieval folk christianity was so fucking weird & great
all about that rabelais
“Come on, Fenice, we’re star-crossed lovers. Like Paris and Helen, Tristan and Iseult! What could possibly go wrong?”
” Fake your own death if you have to. Just keep things quiet, and that counts as chastity, pretty much.” I believe this was more commonly known as the Héloïse hustle back in the day.
It’s not really that huge of a leap. It just requires the interpretation that Paul advises marriage solely for the sake of propriety, in which case other strategies for preserving propriety would satisfy his advice equally.
I’ve certainly seen far more strained interpretations of scripture than that.
Eh. He does mention “burning with passion”, which to me suggests a more inward, absolute-morality-ish interpretation. But about strained interpretations: oh lawdy yes. Did you know that the feet of the statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream represent the European Union? WELL THEY DO BECAUSE PROPHECY. We’re right this time! We just didn’t read literally enough all of the other times! See also: The Pope is the Antichrist because Roman numerals; Jesus turned water into delicious, healthy grape juice; Adam and Eve had a marriage ceremony performed by Christ because I guess otherwise they’d be living in sin and all the animals would think Eve was a total slut? I could go on? But I don’t wanna? Ah, memories.
Please tell us more about the European Union in scripture!
Not sure what passage you’re referencing, but I’ve been reading a LOT of 1 Corinthians lately, in Greek (woooo Greek exam the madness ends tomorrow), and it really does just say “burn.” Not that one couldn’t interpret it “with passion,” but for the record…
I’m referencing the passage you’re thinking of and didn’t know it just says “burn” in Greek. So I guess I learned something today? Also, good luck with the exam!
and then……. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/246416
See, to me this feels like a garbled hybrid of 1 Corinthians 7 and Romans 14, the “do not cause your brother to stumble” passage, which was about food restrictions rather than sexytimes (Paul’s argument was roughly “we’re not bound by Jewish kosher law, but if eating non-kosher food causes your friends to be less holy, eat like they do when you’re around them”).
The awesome thing about medieval exegesis is that the entire Biblical canon was sort of considered one single source and it was totally OK to just grab what you needed from, like, wherever, for whatever you were talking about at the time.
(EDIT, having some trouble with html and can’t get the link to post properly for the life of me, sorry, anyway I mean Romans 14:20-23)
As a Professional Bible Scholar (TM), I feel like I need to defend poor Paul from the commentariat. Not saying you would like him if you met him, or that even everybody who met him when he was alive liked him (spoiler: James seems to have not, and maybe not Peter, either), but for what he was doing he was a pretty good guy. Hyperactive, yes, but it’s important to see behind his angry (so angry) letters to the situations that prompted them. Dude was embattled. He was trying to do a very specific thing–spread Christianity to non-Jews, and people like James kept showing up and demanding that the non-Jews become Jews before they become Christians.
Also, Mallory, the word “unmarried” doesn’t appear in the Greek of that passage. Paul was totes married, just celibate, and everybody who read him for the first two or three centuries thought so, too.
Take it up with Bible Gateway, not me, man.
Totally. I just like to spread around the little-known fact occasionally. It’s really too bad that the Catholic Church decided that marriage=mediocre.
Kind of sympathize with Paul. If all that remained of me after two thousand years were a handful of emails written with gritted teeth while trying to tick people off, I’d probably come off as a bit of a killjoy too.
I appreciate the Medieval approach to etymology, medicine, Scriptural studies, and truth itself, which is “yeah but, like, what are facts, man? You can’t just believe something because every single observable detail leads you to think it’s true. Empirical observation is a trick of the Devil.”
And by appreciate, I mean am deeply terrified by, but can be amused when it happened hundreds of years in the past.
…was a book constructed by Thomas Jefferson in the later years of his life by cutting and pasting with a razor and glue numerous sections from the New Testament as extractions of the doctrine of Jesus.
JESUS SCRAPBOOK
Maybe they actually take the "judge not lest ye be judged" line seriously?
Is this where we can talk about the Cathars, who chose Option 3: Be celibate AND be burned for your faith? Because I am super obsessed with them at the moment.