I am the leader, I am the victor, a gift I seek: grant it.
Yet, because he performs honorable services that you bestowed on him, your king ceases to be king over himself.
Swiftly I lay aside the royal robes, swiftly your king divests himself —
Free, I am my own man again, unimpeded in fulfilling my own desires.
{Dux ego, victor ego, munera quaero: date.
Sed quia muneribus vestri fundatur honoris,
rex ideo vester desinit esse suus.
Pono citus trabeam, vestrum citus exuo regem
liber et explicitus ad mea vota, meus.} [1]
Mathematicus of Bernardus Silvestris isn’t widely recognized as a major medieval work of men’s sexed protest. It has none of the :anguished impotence of Matheolus’s outcry. It lacks the daring intertextual reversal of Hildebert of Lavardin’s De querimonia et conflictu spiritus et carnis. Yet with intricate antitheses, Mathematicus eloquently depicts man’s inner struggle against Patricida. Men must shed the deceptive integument of their dominance in serving women and in administering father-killing. Men must assert their value in doing nothing more than being.