Ecloga Theoduli: Subtle Social Protest To Popular Medieval Schoolbook

By Author Douglas Galbi: Arising within roughly the same eleventh-century Germanic literary context as the gynocentric Latin romance Ruodlieb, Ecloga Theoduli {Eclogue of Theodulus} provides a subtle, sophisticated protest against socially devaluing men relative to women. Medieval and modern scholars with the skills, interest, and courage to discuss such a work have numbered few. Hence Ecloga Theoduli became merely a popular medieval schoolbook teaching pagan myths and Christian history. It was one of the most widely read books in medieval Europe.[1] With public reason disintegrating and ideals of gender equality being a farce in practice, reading Ecloga Theoduli well is now more important than ever.
Ecloga Theoduli starkly contrasts female and male shepherds. A female shepherd introduced in its prologue guides a flock of sheep; a male shepherd, a flock of goats. In the gospel of Matthew, the judgment of God upon the world is figured as separating the sheep from the goats. The sheep will inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the time of the world’s creation. The goats will be sent into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his helpers. In modern terms, the prologue of Ecloga Theoduli figures females as wonderful and males as demonic.[2]
The appearance and behavior of the shepherds encourages sympathy for the female and contempt for the male. The female shepherd is a lovely young woman descended from the line of King David. Sitting near a fountain and a river, she plays a harp. The music she makes is so sweet that, entranced in listening, the river stops flowing and her sheep stop eating their fodder. The male shepherd, in contrast, isn’t described as young and beautiful, nor is royal descendant attributed to him. He’s dressed in a motley panther skin. With inflated, rigid cheeks from blowing on his pipe, he forcefully scatters a thousand notes. Moreover, he’s agitated with envy’s bile and apparently fears the river. From a safe point on a mound on the opposite side of the river, the male shepherd calls out crudely to the female: “Why, Alithia, do you sing these stupid songs to mute beasts {Cur, Alithia, canis rebus stultissima mutis}?”[3] The male shepherd thus appears as just another despicable man harassing a wonderful female coworker. Not surprisingly, the male shepherd’s name is Pseustis, a Greek transliteration meaning falsehood. The female shepherd’s name is Alithia. That’s a Greek transliteration for truth.
Beneath men-devaluing caricatures of female and male, Ecloga Theoduli subtly questions gynocentric values. In proposing a contest, the male shepherd describes the female shepherd as seeking to dominate him:

If conquest’s what you seek, the chance to strive is here.
If you should win, my flute will then be yours, but if
You lose, I’ll win your harp: let’s settle on this deal.
{ Si iuvat, ut vincas, mecum certare potestas:
Fistula nostra tuum cedet, si vincis, in usum;
Victa dabis citharam; legem cœamus in æquam. } [4]

Under this deal, one shepherd would have a flute and harp, and another shepherd would have neither. The male shepherd thus sets up abolishing gender (figured as persons possessing different instruments) as the necessary outcome of the contest. Under gynocentrism, truly abolishing gender is overwhelmingly in men’s interest.
In response to the male shepherd’s proposed contest, the female shepherd invokes deeply rooted social suspicion of men:

She replied: “Your words don’t move me, nor do the rewards
Appeal to me, since I am gnawed by just one doubt:
However things turn out, without a careful witness here,
If you should lose, you won’t admit that I have won.”
{ Illa refert: “Nec dicta movent nec præmia mulcent
Me tua nunc adeo, quia vulnere mordeor uno:
Quo res cumque cadit, testis nisi sedulus assit,
Si victus fueris, non me vicisse fateris.” }

Under gynocentrism, everyone is strongly encouraged to believe women and disbelieve men. That’s part of the structural gender oppression that results in about fifteen times more men than women held behind bars in prisons and jails around the world. Does wisdom offer hope for dispelling this acute gender injustice?

In Ecloga Theoduli, “mother wisdom” by chance strolls into the scene. Men and women of good will might hope that she would understand the fundamental gender trouble. Instead, mother wisdom frivolously agrees to judge the contest:

Then Mother Wisdom spoke: “Although my parents said
That when my flock was watered, I should hurry home
And not forget the punishment if I were late,
I’ll gladly bear it, sensing fun in such a fight!
Now, you go first, Falsehood, since you’re a man. She’ll
Then match you in zeal. You’ll speak in fours: Pythagoras
Decreed this number’s role. May Sun increase our time!”
{ Tunc mater Fronesis: “Adaquato me grege quamvis
Accelerare domum iussisset uterque parentum
Nec dubitem pœnas, si quicquam tardo, paratas,
Læta feram talis præsumens gaudia litis.
Perge prior, Pseusti, quia masculus; illa sequaci
Aequabit studio. Sit tetras in ordine vestro.
Pitagoræ numerus. Sol augeat, obsecro, tempus.” } [5]

Pythagoras described ten as the essence of number, because it’s the sum of the first four numbers.[6] Compare that arcana to widely experienced reality: women and men fighting with each is hugely destructive and far from fun. “Women first” has been a social principle since the Sabine women of ancient Rome. Ecloga Theoduli ironically reverses that principle of women’s privilege with disparaging men as false: “You go first, Falsehood, since you’re a man {Perge prior, Pseusti, quia masculus}.”
In their literary contest, the female shepherd Truth doesn’t overwhelmingly defeat the male shepherd Falsehood even though she draws upon the dominant narratives of medieval Christian society and he draws upon marginal non-Christian narratives. Consider the first round in their contest. The male shepherd states:

From Cretan shores came Saturn; he was first of all
And then he spread the age of gold throughout the earth.
He had no sire: no one preceded him in time;
The noble race of gods enjoys descent from him.
{ Primus Cretæis venit Saturnus ab oris
Aurea per cunctas disponens sæcula terras;
Nullus ei genitor nec quisquam tempore maior;
Ipso gaudet avo superum generosa propago. }

The male shepherd thus obliterates the act of castration associated with Saturn (Chronos) in Hesiod’s Theogony and establishes instead a beneficent father god. In response to that fabulous, realistic depiction of masculine goodness, the female shepherd Truth declares:

The first man dwelt and lived in verdant paradise
Until, persuaded by his spouse, the viper’s poison
He drank and mixed the cup of death for all of us.
We children feel today what once our parents did.
{ Incola primus homo fuit in viridi paradiso.
Coniuge vipereum donec suadente venenum
Hausit eo cunctis miscendo pocula mortis:
Sentit adhuc proles, quod commisere parentes. }

Unlike today’s dominant culture, Truth recognizes women’s culpability and women’s death-dealing. By the first round of the shepherds’ contest, the prologue’s stark caricature of women’s superiority has already been undermined.
Ecloga Theoduli forthrightly recognizes men’s vulnerability to women. While skipping over Omphale’s domestic violence against Hercules, the male shepherd Falsehood narrates Hercules’s heroic acts and then tells that Hercules’s mistress Deaneira jealously and stupidly killed him:

The club of Hercules despoiled the dragon’s watch;
He stole Geryon’s pride and killed the Hydra dead;
To him fell Cacus and the janitor of Hell.
His mistress Deianeira burned him in the end.
{ Alcidæ vigilem spoliavit clava draconem;
Gerionis pompam rapit et consumpserat ydram;
Cacus cessit ei, succumbit ianitor Orci:
Incendit demum pælex Deianira superbum. }

The female shepherd Truth describes the similar life and death of Samson:

His limbs enclosed in lion’s skins, great Samson slew
A thousand men; with foxes he burned up the fields.
He took the city’s locks and broke the sinew bonds.
Delilah cut his hair, her final treachery.
{ Samson exuviis indutus niembra leonis
Sternit mille viros, devastat vulpibus agros,
Urbis claustra tulit, nervorum vincula rupit:
Fraude sua tandem præcidit Dalida crinem. }

Falsehood and Truth all but kiss and agree that woman can lead even great heroes to their deaths.
Ecloga Theoduli also recognizes the serious problem of women falsely accusing men of rape. Phaedra, Hippolytus’s step-mother, accused him of raping her after he refused her sexual advances. The male shepherd Falsehood instructively adds that the goddess Diana, outraged about the persecution of Hippolytus, called him back to life:

Hippolytus, accused by cruel Phaedra, died
Torn by his chariot, when waves brought seals ashore.
Diana’s wrath abhorred the loss to chastity
And called him back to life. He’s now named Virbius.
{ Ipolitus sæva perit accusante noverca
Discerptus bigis focas agitantibus undis.
Dampna pudicitiæ non pertulit ira Dianæ:
Ipolitum revocat; modo nomine Virbius extat. }

The female shepherd Truth invokes the life of Joseph. Potiphar’s wife sexually assaulted Joseph and then falsely accused him of rape. Joseph overcame the false accusation of rape and became the Pharoah’s vizier:

Sold as a slave by brothers’ malice, Joseph spurned
His mistress’s desire and threats. Confined
In chains he analyzed the Pharoah’s dreams, and so
The kingdoms of all Egypt were assigned to him.
{ Venditus in servum Ioseph livore suorum
Ardentits dominæ dum spernit vota minasque,
Addictus vinclis discussit somnia regis
Et subduntur ei totius regna Canopi. }

Both male and female shepherds recognized the serious problem of women falsely accusing men of rape. Both offered stories of hope for wronged men. In Ecloga Theoduli, men’s lives matter.
Ecloga Theoduli recognizes that women are no less vicious than men and that the greatness of women is like that of men. The male shepherd sings of the bitter rivalry between Niobe, who had fourteen children, and Latona, the goddess of childbirth, who had only two children:

“Burn incense on your hearths, if you would keep alive
Your children” — so Diana, Latona’s child, bade.
A thousand darts, a thousand strings, hung from her arm
To take revenge on Niobe for boastful words.
{ Thura cremate focis, si quos servare velitis
Fetus incolumes: iubet hoc Latonia proles.
Ex humero Triviæ dependent spicula mille
Cum totidem nervis, Niobæ vindicta loquacis. }

Taking revenge, Latona’s daughter Diana viciously killed all of Niobe’s daughters. The female shepherd in response sings about the beautiful maiden Susannah:

The elders’ passion could not be restrained by their
Old age nor by the virtue of so great a sex.
Although she saw that deadly fates were aimed at her,
Susannah overcame the law that nature gave.
{ Presbiteris flammas nec longi temporis ætas
Nec tanti sexus potuit restringere virtus;
Sed districta licet mortis sibi fata videret,
Quam natura dedit legem, Susanna subegit. }

Even old men are sexually attracted to young, beautiful women. Young women tend to be sexually attracted to powerful, high-status men who are often considerably older than them. Yet women aren’t necessarily passive victims to these natural laws. Susannah, a strong, independent woman, but with a rather different character than Empress Theodora, resolutely rejected the elders’ coercive proposition for sex. At the same time, this account complements the male shepherd’s story of Diana and Niobe with further reason to dismiss gynocentric claims of women’s moral superiority relative to men. The phrase “virtue of so great a sex” equates women to men through the Latin root vir (adult male human being) of “virtue.” The greatness of the female sex is like the greatness of the male sex.
The most telling round of the shepherds’ contest is the most antagonistic one. The male shepherd Falsehood boldly tells uncomfortable truth:

A man’s firm mind is felled by women’s waywardness:
They handle potions, bloodying their limbs by taste.
A woman’s strength is known to Tereus’ bitter house;
Medea knows: she killed her young in hateful death.
{ Mens robusta viri levitate cadit muliebri:
Ypomanes tractant, gustu sua membra cruentant.
Femina quid possit, Terei domus aspera novit,
Scit Medea suis infesta clade peremptis. }

The female shepherd Truth recoils in protest, but then affirms with the example of Judith and Holofernes the truth of what Falsehood sang:

Lest these loud insults taint the air, let them now cease!
Duke Holofernes feared a woman’s might:
That splendid widow snared him in a crazy love.
Assyrians lament his trust in woman’s word.
{ Aëra ne fedent, isthæc convicia, cessent.
Femineas vires expavit dux Olofernes
Insignis viduæ vesano captus amore:
Deflent Assiri, quod crediderit mulieri. } [7]

Women in truth aren’t necessarily wonderful or truthful. Belief otherwise is a social construction of gynocentrism. So too is the pervasive social endeavor to silence voices of men’s sexed protest.
Ecloga Theoduli’s poetic contest of course ends with female victory. With a pretense of defiance, the male shepherd Falsehood sings:

 If she surpasses me today with all her tricks,
I’ll mourn like Calchas after Mopsus won the prize.
But I won’t let myself be crushed by girlish fraud:
A thousand fights I’ll fight, unless the evening comes!
{ Ista suis hodie si prevalet artibus in me,
Dum cessit Mopso, Calcantis more dolebo,
Fraude puellari sed non patiar superari:
Millesies repetam, nisi subtrahat Hesperus horam. }

Invoking pregnancy while depreciating erection labor is the ultimate trump card of gynocentrism. Add to that ploy fraudulently obscuring that Jesus was a male human being and you have the response song of the female shepherd Truth:

0 Thales, falsehood’s feigner, would that you were here!
I’ll trust the four evangelists and their great books,
Which tell how God took on our human body from
A maid: the effort will not burden me at all!
{ Nunc utinam Tales, falsorum fictor, adesses!
Quatuor imprimis evangelicæ rationis
Nitar codicibus, nostrum de virgine corpus
Ut Deus accepit, nec me labor iste gravabit. }

The male shepherd immediately concedes defeat to the female shepherd. Darkness overcomes all. Mother wisdom ironically concludes the poem by urging silence as the only alternative to despair:

Now don’t say any more, lest desperation hurt.
{ Desine quod restat, ne desperatio lædat. }

Over the past millennium, far too many men have obeyed that wisdom while enchained under gynocentrism.
Ecloga Theoduli is sophisticated literature. Its author was a well-read scholar who drew upon a wide range of Christian and non-Christian sources from across the previous millennium. It presumes extensive knowledge of pre-Christian Greco-Roman myth.[8] It includes unusual words, including words that suggest knowledge of Greek. Ecloga Theoduli isn’t merely a schoolbook for teaching dominant culture. Underneath the form of a schoolbook affirming female superiority, Ecloga Theoduli voices men’s sexed protest against gynocentric domination and exploitation.[9]
Ecloga Theoduli addresses a major literary challenge that still looms today. While about four times more men than women suffer death from violence, public discourse and billions of public dollars are focused on violence against women. Men have no reproductive rights and are imprisoned without the benefit of counsel for being too poor to make sex payments that the state imposes on them solely because they had sex of reproductive type. Decades of high-profile, bitter public debate about abortion and choice has irrationally ignored choice for men. Firm belief in a deliberately misrepresented “gender wage gap” is public orthodoxy, while grotesque anti-men discrimination in the criminal justice system attracts little public concern. To make matters worse, leading news sources now peddle outrageously mendacious claims about men raping women. How can this colossal failure in reason and imagination be addressed?
Ecloga Theoduli and Solomon and Marcolf are sharply contrasting examples of medieval literature of men’s sex protest. Both feature extensive, highly structured dialog. Ecloga Theoduli works within elite culture. Solomon and Marcolf, in contrast, confronts elite culture with the barnyard and lower bodily function such as farting and mooning authorities. Ecloga Theoduli was neutered into a popular schoolbook within medieval gynocentric society.[10] Solomon and Marcolf, on the other hand, had relatively little circulation before the fifteenth century. Both works are vital for understanding approaches to challenging gynocentrism, but neither offers an example of success.

*  *  *  *  *

Notes:
[1] The influential clerical leader Jacques de Vitry recommended the Ecloga Theoduli as the second work in a list that included the Distiches of Cato, the fables of Avianus, works of Prudentius, Prosper, and Sedulius, and the versified Bible. Hamilton (2009) pp. 7-10. In the thirteenth century, Ecloga Theoduli was the only medieval text among the Sex auctores (six authors) recommended for schools. By the fifteenth century, Ecloga Theoduli was part of the Auctores octo morales (eight moral authors) that comprised the canon of school texts. Ecloga Theoduli became highly popular:

The Eclogue of Theodulus enjoyed a remarkable popularity for several centuries and an influence which was, for a work written in the early Middle Ages, unsurpassed, perhaps unequaled. From its origins in the tenth century to the early seventeenth it was one of the most widely read books in Europe, as manuscripts, commentaries, catalogs, citations and educational treatises testify.

Green (1982) p. 49. Ecloga Theoduli has survived in more than 200 manuscripts and was printed at least 24 times before 1500. Five distinctly authored commentaries on it have survived. Continuous commentaries on the text are included in 92 of the surviving manuscripts. Thomson & Perraud (1990) p. 114, based on the compilation of Quinn (1971); Hamilton (1909) pp. 11-2.
[2] The gospel reference is Matthew 25:31-46. Chance suggested that Hrotsvit authored Ecloga Theoduli. Chance (1994) pp. 355-60. Hrotsvit, along with other medieval women writers, showed courageous  and transgressive concern for men. Sophisticated understanding of Ecloga Theoduli is consistent with Hrotsvit’s concern for men, but that doesn’t necessarily imply her authorship.
In considering the question of authorship, Heren essentially belittled medieval women writers’ scope of thinking and sympathetic understanding. He declared:

There were women writers in the early and central Middle Ages — Duodha, Hrotswitha, Hildegard, Heloisa — and some parts of the poem are surely consistent with female authorship: the words “of so great a sex” in reference to Susanna, the rebuke to Pseustis, “let these insults stop lest they pollute the air,” and I would add Alithia’s words in round 34: “a woman is a sweet thing to a man.” But we shall probably never know the author’s sex or identity.

Heren (2007) p. 215. Medieval women writers weren’t narrow-minded female supremacists, as many scholars are today.
[3] Ecloga Theoduli 16, from Latin trans. Heren (2007) p. 218. Thomson & Perraud (1990) and Rigg (2008) provide alternate English translations. The translations of Heren, Thomson & Perraud, and Rigg are based on the Latin texts of Green (1982), Huygens (1954 / 1977), and Osternacher (1902), respectively. Rigg’s translation is in verse; the others are in prose. I note any substantial differences among the translations. The Latin text above is that conveniently available via the Latin Library (which wrongly attributes the text to the fifth century). I have made a few minor corrections of obvious textual corruption.
[4] Ecloga Theoduli 17-19, trans. Rigg (2008). Subsequent quotations are Ecloga Theoduli 20-3 (She said…); 30-6 (Then mother wisdom…); 37-40 (From Cretan shores…); 41-4 (The first man…); 173-6 (The club of Hercules…); 177-80 (His limbs enclosed…); 135-8 (Hippolytus, accused…); 139-42 (Sold as a slave…); 261-4 (“Burn incense…); 265-8 (The elders’ passion…); 269-72 (A man’s firm mind…); 273-6 (Lest these loud insults…); 325-8 (If she surpasses me…); 329-42 (O Thales…); 344 (Now don’t say any more…). I’ve made a few non-substantial changes to these translations.
[5] For l. 30, Herren’s translation doesn’t include the reference to “mother”. It has just “Then Phronesis replied.” Herren (2007) p. 219. A collation of manuscripts of Ecloga Theoduli includes mater. If that word is excluded from Green’s Latin text, that may reflect a medieval editor’s concern that Martianus Capella’s On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury has Alithia as the sister of Phronesis. Thomson & Perraud (1990) p. 157, n. 156, observes that latter point.
[6] Aetius (Pseudo-Plutarch), Opinions of the Philosophers 1.3.8 states:

Ten is the very nature of number. All Greeks and all barbarians alike count up to ten, and having reached ten revert again to the unity. And again, Pythagoras maintains, the power of the number 10 lies in the number 4, the tetrad. This is the reason: If one starts at the unit (1) and adds the successive number up to 4, one will make up the number 10 (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10). And if one exceeds the tetrad, one will exceed 10 too…. So that the number by the unit resides in the number 10, but potentially in the number 4.

via Kate Hobgood.
[7] In his late-eleventh-century commentary on Ecloga Theoduli, Bernard of Utrecht rightly condemns Alithia’s attempt to silence the male shepherd:

This leads to the impropriety of Alithia and proves by her deceptions
{ Hoc ad improprium Alithiae inducit probatque per maleficia }

Latin text quoted by Chance (1994) p. 389.
[8] In setting, characters, and contest, Ecloga Theoduli draws upon Virgil’s ecologues, particularly his Eclogue 3 and 7. Competing shepherds in Virgil are not, however, of differing sexes. The language and content of Ecloga Theoduli also indicates knowledge of Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Its author probably also knew Statius, Lucan, Calpurnius, Claudian, and the Latin Iliad. Green (1982) pp. 97-99, 105.
[9] Herren (2007) recognized that, beneath its surface, Ecloga Theoduli doesn’t clearly represent biblical examples of truth triumphing over pagan myth. That isn’t a daring observation today. Moreover, such cultural ecumenism wouldn’t be shocking to many learned persons in medieval Europe.
The truly subversive theme of Ecloga Theoduli is gender. Its prologue of female supremacism reflects dominant ideology under gynocentrism. But Ecloga Theoduli then dramatizes the complete lack of connection between female supremacism and well-known myth, history, and inter-personal reality:

Adjective that qualify females are almost always unflattering: for example, prefida uxor (115), saeva noverca (124), ardentis dominae (130), Juno ferox (158). Females are portrayed as treacherous, like Jezebel, Dalilah, Judith, Proserpina, and Lot’s wife; lustful, like Phaedra, Scylla, Phyllis, Potiphar’s wife, and the wives and concubines who ruined Solomon; venal and greedy, like Eriphyle, who demanded the fateful necklace of Harmonia, and Danae, whom Theodulus says gold corrupted; jealous and vengeful, like Juno and Deianira; boastful chatterboxes, like Niobe; haughty and disobedient to their husbands, like Queen Vashti; cruel viragos like Procne and Medea; venal, like Danae and Eriphyle, baneful and threatening, like Diana and Helen; or man-killers, like Judith and Medusa. No fewer than sixteen quatrains contain derogatory implications about the nature of women.

Thomson & Perraud (1990) pp. 124-5. Dismissing these examples as merely medieval “anti-feminism” is anachronistic and facile. Ecloga Theoduli presents highly sophisticated, deeply critical dialectical representations of gender.
[10] The transformation of Ecloga Theoduli into a popular schoolbook didn’t happen quickly. It was probably written in the tenth century. The first surviving reference to Ecloga Theoduli as a schoolbook is in Bernard of Utrecht’s dedicatory letter to Bishop Conrad of Utrecht. That letter was written between 1075 and 1099. Ecloga Theoduli isn’t named in lists of recommended school texts until the list of Conrad of Hirsau early in the twelfth century. Thomson & Perraud (1990) pp. 112-3.
[image] Prefatory woodcut in an edition of Ecloga Theoduli printed by Konrad Kachelofen in Leipzig in 1492. Ex Bibliotheca Gymnasii Altonani (Hamburg). Via Wikimedia Commons.
References:
Chance, Jane. 1994. Medieval mythography. Vol. 1. From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433-1177. Gainesville, Florida: Univ. Press of Florida. (Wetherbee’s review)
Green, R. P. H. 1980. Seven versions of Carolingian pastoral. Reading: Department of Classics, University of Reading.
Green, R. P. H. 1982. “The Genesis of a Medieval Textbook: The Models and Sources of the Ecloga Theoduli.” Viator. 13: 49-106.
Hamilton, George L. 1909. “Theodulus: A Mediaeval Textbook.” Modern Philology. 7 (2): 169-185.
Herren, Michael. 2007. “Reflections on the meaning of the Ecloga Theoduli: Where is the authorial voice?” Pp. 199-230 in Otten, Willemien, and Karla Pollmann, eds. Poetry and exegesis in premodern Latin Christianity: the encounter between classical and Christian strategies of interpretation. Boston: Brill.
Huygens, R. B. C., 1954 / 1970. Bernard d’Utrecht. Accessus ad auctores: Commentum in Theodolum. Leiden: Brill.
Osternacher, Johann E., ed. 1902. Theoduli eclogam recensuit et prolegomenis instruxit Joannes Osternacher: liber separatim typis expressus ex “programmate” Collegii Petrini. Ripariae prope Lentiam.
Quinn, Betty N. 1971. “Theodulus.” Pp. 383-408 in Cranz, F. Edward, and Paul Oskar Kristeller. 1971. Catalogus translationum et commentariorum; Medieval and Renaissance Latin translations and commentaries: annotated lists and guides. Vol. 2. Washington. DC: Catholic University of America Press.
Rigg, George, trans. 2008. “Eclogue of Theodulus.” Available at http://medieval.utoronto.ca/ylias/web-content/theoduli.html
Thomson, Ian, and Louis A. Perraud. 1990. Ten Latin schooltexts of the later Middle Ages translated selections. Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press.

 

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