known as Little John, and a lapsed Catholic
named Friar Tuck. Almost certainly they were creatures of an ingenious folk imagination, and their contemporary, the sheriff
of Nottingham, is probably the most libeled law enforcement officer in this millennium.
The more we study those remote centuries, the unlikelier such legends become. Later mythmakers invested the Middle Ages with
a bogus aura of romance. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is an example. He was a real man, but there was nothing enchanting about
him. Quite the opposite; he was horrible, a pyschopath and pederast who, on June 20, 1484, spirited away 130 children in the
Saxon village of Hammel and used them in unspeakable ways. Accounts of the aftermath vary. According to some, his victims
were never seen again; others told of dismembered little bodies found scattered in the forest underbrush or festooning the
branches of trees.
The most imaginative cluster of fables appeared in print the year after the Piper’s mass murders, when William Caxton published
Sir Thomas Malory’s
Le morte d’Arthur
. Later, bowdlerized versions of this great work have obscured the fact that Malory, contemplating medieval morality, seldom
wore blinders. He had no illusions about his heroine when he wrote: “There syr Launcelot toke the Fayrest Ladie by the hand,
and she was naked as a nedel.” Some of his characters may actually have existed. For over a thousand years villagers in remote
parts of Wales have called an adulteress “a regular Guinevere.” But Launcelot du Lac is entirely fictitious, and given the
colossal time sprawl of the Middle Ages, it is highly unlikely that Guinevere, if indeed she lived, even shared the same century
with Arthur.
W E KNOW LITTLE of the circumstances under which Magellan and his Beatriz were married in 1517, but if they were united by transcendental
love, they were an odd couple. It is true that a young archduke in Vienna’s imperial court had introduced the diamond ring
as a sign of engagement forty years earlier, but its vogue had been confined to the patriciate, and even there it had found
little favor. Typically, news of an imminent marriage spread when the pregnancy of the bride-elect began to show. If she had
been particularly user-friendly, raising genuine doubts about the child’s paternity, those who had enjoyed her favors drew
straws. “Virginity,” one historian of the period writes, “had to be protected by every device of custom, morals, law, religion,
paternal authority, pedagogy, and ‘point of honor’; yet somehow it managed to get lost.”
No one was actually scandalized; the normal, eternal reproductive instincts were merely asserting themselves. But such random
matrimony disappointed parents; a girl’s wedding was the pivotal event in her life, and its economic implications—the ceremony
was among other things a merging of belongings—concerned both families. The tradition of arranged marriages, sensibly conceived,
was obviously crumbling. Commentators of the time, believing that the old way was best, were troubled. In his
Colloquia familiaria
(
Colloquies
) Erasmus recommended that youths let fathers choose their brides and trust that love would grow as acquaintance ripened.
Even Rabelais agreed in
Le cinquiesme et dernier livre
. Couples who kicked over the traces were reproached in
The Schole-master
by Roger Ascham, tutor to England’s royal family. Ascham bitterly regretted that “our time is so far gone from the old discipline
and obedience as now not only young gentlemen but even very young girls dare … marry themselves in spite of father, mother,
God, good order, and all.” At the University of Wittenberg, Martin Luther, dismayed that the son of a faculty colleague had
plighted his troth without consulting his father—and that a young judge had found the vow legal—thought the reputation
of the institution was being tarnished. He wrote: “Many parents have ordered their sons
named Friar Tuck. Almost certainly they were creatures of an ingenious folk imagination, and their contemporary, the sheriff
of Nottingham, is probably the most libeled law enforcement officer in this millennium.
The more we study those remote centuries, the unlikelier such legends become. Later mythmakers invested the Middle Ages with
a bogus aura of romance. The Pied Piper of Hamelin is an example. He was a real man, but there was nothing enchanting about
him. Quite the opposite; he was horrible, a pyschopath and pederast who, on June 20, 1484, spirited away 130 children in the
Saxon village of Hammel and used them in unspeakable ways. Accounts of the aftermath vary. According to some, his victims
were never seen again; others told of dismembered little bodies found scattered in the forest underbrush or festooning the
branches of trees.
The most imaginative cluster of fables appeared in print the year after the Piper’s mass murders, when William Caxton published
Sir Thomas Malory’s
Le morte d’Arthur
. Later, bowdlerized versions of this great work have obscured the fact that Malory, contemplating medieval morality, seldom
wore blinders. He had no illusions about his heroine when he wrote: “There syr Launcelot toke the Fayrest Ladie by the hand,
and she was naked as a nedel.” Some of his characters may actually have existed. For over a thousand years villagers in remote
parts of Wales have called an adulteress “a regular Guinevere.” But Launcelot du Lac is entirely fictitious, and given the
colossal time sprawl of the Middle Ages, it is highly unlikely that Guinevere, if indeed she lived, even shared the same century
with Arthur.
W E KNOW LITTLE of the circumstances under which Magellan and his Beatriz were married in 1517, but if they were united by transcendental
love, they were an odd couple. It is true that a young archduke in Vienna’s imperial court had introduced the diamond ring
as a sign of engagement forty years earlier, but its vogue had been confined to the patriciate, and even there it had found
little favor. Typically, news of an imminent marriage spread when the pregnancy of the bride-elect began to show. If she had
been particularly user-friendly, raising genuine doubts about the child’s paternity, those who had enjoyed her favors drew
straws. “Virginity,” one historian of the period writes, “had to be protected by every device of custom, morals, law, religion,
paternal authority, pedagogy, and ‘point of honor’; yet somehow it managed to get lost.”
No one was actually scandalized; the normal, eternal reproductive instincts were merely asserting themselves. But such random
matrimony disappointed parents; a girl’s wedding was the pivotal event in her life, and its economic implications—the ceremony
was among other things a merging of belongings—concerned both families. The tradition of arranged marriages, sensibly conceived,
was obviously crumbling. Commentators of the time, believing that the old way was best, were troubled. In his
Colloquia familiaria
(
Colloquies
) Erasmus recommended that youths let fathers choose their brides and trust that love would grow as acquaintance ripened.
Even Rabelais agreed in
Le cinquiesme et dernier livre
. Couples who kicked over the traces were reproached in
The Schole-master
by Roger Ascham, tutor to England’s royal family. Ascham bitterly regretted that “our time is so far gone from the old discipline
and obedience as now not only young gentlemen but even very young girls dare … marry themselves in spite of father, mother,
God, good order, and all.” At the University of Wittenberg, Martin Luther, dismayed that the son of a faculty colleague had
plighted his troth without consulting his father—and that a young judge had found the vow legal—thought the reputation
of the institution was being tarnished. He wrote: “Many parents have ordered their sons
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