A War of Words Among Women: An Anonymous Bolognese Poem from 1282 - Ingenta Connect
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Mediaevistik 34 . 2021 129
Fabian Alfie
University of Arizona
A War of Words Among Women:
An Anonymous Bolognese Poem from 1282
Abstract: Not only do the city registers of medieval Bologna, the Memoriali Bolognesi,
contain legal and economic transactions, but they also transmit poetry of the age. Across the
decades, the scribes introduced poems between the transactions; over some one hundred such
poems have been preserved, many of them unica. Thus, the registers offer a glimpse into the
popular entertainments of the times, providing valuable information about the culture of thir-
teenth-century Italy. One such poem is the ballata “Oi bona gente, oditi et endenditi” (“Oh,
good people, hear and understand”), an insulting dialogue between two women. Intended to
provoke laughter, the poem traffics in traditional misogynistic stereotypes. Its two antagonists
accuse one another of drunkenness, gluttony, but mostly sexual impropriety such as cuckolding
their husbands and attempting to pimp one another out to the parish priest. Through analysis of
the poem, the anxieties provoked by the socio-economic changes of the Italian communes come
into focus. The society was in flux, and the ballata employs the traditional insults of women to
address the concerns that it raised.
Keywords: Memoriali Bolognesi; tenzone; misogyny; satire; ballata
The thirteenth-century Italian communes underwent numerous social changes. Amid
a long-term economic boom, the urban centers experienced rapid population growth,
resulting in a stratified society composed of laborers, artisans, merchants, lawyers,
and landed aristocrats who relocated to the cities in pursuit of greater wealth and pres-
tige.1 The pressures of urbanization resulted in a lay culture with advancements in law,
civics, and rhetoric.2 In this socio-economic context, women also took on new roles.
They were heavily involved in the silk and woolen industries, and evidence exists of
tradeswomen such as barbers, fruit vendors, chicken vendors, innkeepers, and cooks.3
Social changes such as these can result in discomfort, and critiques of the cultural
developments can be seen throughout the literature of the age, from great works of art
like Dante’s Commedia to seemingly insignificant poems by forgotten authors.
The focus of this study is an example of the latter, a lyric transcribed in the 1280s
(the full text of the work, along with an English translation, appears in the appendix
to this study). The poem under analysis, which undoubtedly was intended to provoke
laughter, consists entirely of a dialogue between two sisters-in-law who mutually de-
nigrate one another. Their accusations are primarily composed as the insults of mis-
behaving women seen across numerous texts of the age: drunkenness and gluttony;
lies and rude speech; unruly sexuality, prostitution, and adultery. As such, it can be
read as a repository of misogynistic stereotypes prevalent throughout the Middle Ages
The online edition of this publication is available open access and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution
CC-BY 4.0 license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
© 2021 Fabian Alfie https://doi.org/10.3726/med.2021.01.08130 Mediaevistik 34 . 2021
and which everyday people would have known. As a collection of insults, the poem
adheres to the aesthetics that Mikhail Bakhtin characterized as carnivalesque in that
it presents the human body through food, drink, and sexuality.4 Yet it would be mista-
ken to read the poem as merely an exercise in carnivalesque poetics because its social
satire can be contextualized to the Bolognese commune in the late thirteenth century,
employing stereotypes of disobedient women in order to reinforce traditional morality
in the face of socio-economic developments. This assertion is not shocking as it finds
confirmation in much other contemporary research.
The poem survives in a single manuscript witness (unicus), and before entering
into analysis of it, some discussion of its codicology is necessary. Starting in 1265, in
an effort to reduce internal strife, the commune of Bologna required that all private
transactions be recorded in the city archives, known as the Memoriali Bolognesi.5 By
law, the scribes had to be Bolognese citizens, and additional copies of the Memoriali
were deposited both in the archives of the Franciscans and of the Dominicans in the
event that the city records were disputed.6 At certain points in the registers, the scribes
of the Memoriali inserted poetry between transactions. Between 1279 and 1325, some
115 poems appear in the Memoriali Bolognesi, all unattributed therein, and roughly
two-thirds of them are unattested from other manuscript sources.7 Given the archival
nature of the Memoriali, the transcriptions of the poems are dated with precision, and
often the scribes themselves can be identified. Across the decades, thirty-five scribes
in total engaged in such poetic transcriptions, although five individuals in particular
are responsible for up to 75% of them.8 Yet it is not clear why they transcribed the poe-
try into the archives. In the nineteenth century Giosuè Carducci proposed that they did
so simply to kill time between fulfilling their other responsibilities,9 but recent studies
have challenged his hypothesis.10 In approximately 20% of the cases, the scribes appe-
ared to use the poems to fill up space on the page thereby ensuring that no unofficial
materials were added.11 In some instances, the copyists seem to have written down oral
performances,12 although judging from the poems located also in other manuscripts
such an impression is not universal; in other cases the scribes copied literary works
with great diligence.13 To return to the poem at hand, its source is unknown, but its
presence in the register suggests its popularity in Bologna in the early 1280s.
The poem under examination fills the very first page (fol. 1r) of Memoriale 47, a
register that records the first six months of 1282. It is immediately followed by a se-
cond poem of a similar aesthetic (fol. 1v).14 Both were copied by the scribe Anthonius
Guidonis de Argele. Since they take up the entire first page of the archive, the two
poems do not give the impression of being employed to fill space; on the contrary,
the motive for Anthonius Guidonis de Argele to have copied them at the start of the
manuscript is not at all clear. The poem under examination is composed as a ballata,
a poetic form often set to music. Hence, it is possible that it was derived either from a
literary source, or from a musical performance, or even from an oral recitation.
The opening line of the ballata, “Oi bona gente, oditi et endenditi” (“Oh, good
people, hear and understand”), with its exhortation for audience members to stop and
listen, gives the impression that it was publicly performed. However, the opening
statement might be merely a rhetorical device on the part of the author. The distinction
between orality and literacy in medieval Europe was not as clear as it would becomeMediaevistik 34 . 2021 131
in later centuries.15 For the Middle Ages, literacy was restricted to the upper portions
of society, while orality could not be limited to any specific sociological group; rather,
it pertained to all.16 In fact, the literate and oral cultures coexisted and had some form
of interdependence between them.17 All of this is to say that we cannot know the nature
of the scribe’s source for this poem, whether literary or oral, nor why he chose to start
the archive with it and its companion poem. All that can be said with certainty is that
the poem is derived from the cultural context of a bustling commune, and not the more
traditional literary context of a noble court.
At this time the only studies of the ballata “Oi bona gente, oditi et endenditi” are
critical editions made from the Memoriali themselves. The ballata is composed of six
stanzas, each comprised of eight hendecasyllables (i.e., eleven-syllable verses) in the
rhyme scheme AB AB AB AB X. It also contains a ritornello, which corresponds to
the chorus in a modern-day song, consisting of two hendecasyllables in the rhyme
scheme YX; the X-rhyme indicates that the ritornello should be repeated after each
stanza, as well as at the start of the poem. The language of the ballata shows strong
traces of Bolognese dialect (e.g., “vòilave,” v. 4; “çoncare,” v. 6; “saçiare,” v. 8).18 The
dialect cannot be used to determine authorship in Bologna, however, as many of the
non-Bolognese texts in the Memoriali display similar traits.19 It may simply have been
transcribed into Bolognese from another dialect. Structurally, the entire ballata is
composed as the dialogue between two interlocutors, with each stanza communica-
ting the statement of a woman who exposes the various failings of her sister-in-law.
The ritornello is phrased so that it serves as a summary of each stanza. It is plausible,
therefore, that two performers appeared on stage and they alternately recited or sang
the two parts.
Structured as it is like a dialogue, the ballata can be categorized as similar to a
tenzone. The tenzone constituted the reception of the Provençal genre of the tenso (or
tenson) ‒ a dialogue between two poets in alternating stanzas ‒ in the Italian literary
tradition. The Provençal tenso depended upon the collaboration of two poets to com-
pose one poem, both of whom adopted the same metric scheme throughout the work.20
A central rule of tensos, imported into the Italian tenzoni, was that of equal space: for
every stanza written by the first poet there will be a stanza for the second.21 There is
no way to know if the poem under analysis was composed by more than one poet, but
its dialogic nature conforms to the aesthetics of the Provençal tenso. Each speaker has
the same number of lines in the ballata, for example. An important difference between
the Provençal and Italian traditions was that, by the fourteenth century, in Italy the
preference was to use the sonnet form as a stanza.22 The stanzas of the poem under
discussion are not sonnets, but this is not unusual as it was transcribed in 1282, that is
it preceded the time when Italian tenzoni were almost exclusively written in the sonnet
form. To be clear, the ballata is not a tenzone, but it shares many of its characteristics
with the genre, and its audience probably imposed the expectations of a tenzone upon
it. Therefore, it can be said to constitute a fictive Italian tenzone.
Further discussion of the genre of the tenzone sheds light on the ballata. Because
it was a competition between two poets, the tenzone reflected the agonistic ethos of
the Middle Ages transferred to the intellectual sphere.23 Dante’s teacher in Florence,
Brunetto Latini, highlighted the adversarial nature of tenzoni when he derived the132 Mediaevistik 34 . 2021 etymology of the Provençal term from the Latin contentio, indicating an antithesis.24 In his rhetorical writing he discusses tenzoni, defining a subgenre of it as “discordium”: Discordium est contentio inter duos, similibus vel diversis concursibus rimarum, tamen serie trattis et utraque parte per unum.25 [“Discordium” is a tenzone between two people, with either a similar or a different rhyme scheme, nonetheless flowing in a series, and each with one on opposite sides.] In short, a “discordium” was a poetic disagreement. Although there was no requi- rement for tensons or tenzoni to be satiric, they often became so, to the point where insulting exchanges were not uncommon in literary circles.26 Hence the title of this article characterizes the ballata as a war of words precisely because that was how people at the time theorized tenzoni. The ballata is itself structured as a disagreement with each stanza employed to attack the other woman. The second line of the ritornello exemplifies the characters’ verbal combat most clearly since each interlocutor uses it to expose the other woman’s degenerate life: “la vita che fa questa mia cognata” (“the life that my sister-in-law leads,” v. 2). Thus, the two sisters-in-law are engaged in a verbal duel, the scope of which is to expose each other’s true nature. They are sparring, as it were, about who is worse. Patricia Hagen defines the genre of tenson as acommatic, that is as a genre that treats human beings in society,27 and the satiric quality of many tenzoni certainly deal with social questions. During the Middle Ages, the definitions of the genres of satire and comedy blended into one another and at times can be distinguished only with some difficulty.28 It was said that tragedy was the art of praise, while comedy was the art of blame.29 Because it blamed the wicked, comedy occupied the same conceptual space as satire, the traditional literary medium for the outspoken censure of vices,30 and in service of their ethical scope, comedy and satire both employed a low style.31 No lexicon, expression, or linguistic register was off limits, but rather they were neces- sary to denote the flaws of their targets.32 The language of the ballata adheres to the definition of comic satire in so far as each woman directly names the other’s vices in blunt language. Insult, such as that found in the ballata, therefore, was an integral component of social satires. Linguistically speaking, insults also provide a view of the values of a community,33 and the community values are on display in the poem when the second interlocutor appeals to her neighbors: “Per Deo, vicine mie, or non credite / a quel che dice ques- ta falsa rea” (“By God, my neighbors, now don’t believe / what you hear this false, evil woman say,” vv. 11‒12). Ostensibly, the ballata is a public performance of insult, involving the community members and asking them to pass judgment on the other woman. As in the expression “false, evil woman” (“falsa rea, “v. 12), insults often co-opt fragments of legal language from the courts and other institutions.34 Insults, in short, were not merely expressions of interpersonal animus, but also functioned to reinforce community mores. This is why analysis of the satiric ballata is important, as it provides a glimpse into the standards of female behavior that were expected in the 1280s. In the economy of the poem the two women are not intended to be seen as indivi- duals but as exemplars of ill-behaved women. All we know about them is that they are
Mediaevistik 34 . 2021 133
female, and to some degree their insults could be generalized to all women. Despite
the social and cultural changes taking place in the Italian communes, the traditional
negative notions about women persisted, and were familiar to medieval audiences. For
centuries, many misogynistic notions were conveyed via the genre of satire.
In his Ars versificatoria (ca. 1175), Matthew of Vendôme explained that the very
description of characters should guide the readers to the requisite praise or blame of
them; as an example of blaming literature, he offered a description of the horrible old
hag Beroë, whose decrepit physical state and revolting smell allegorized her moral
failings (I, 59).35 The misogynistic literature of the Middle Ages was vast, but spea-
king in the broadest terms, it evolved out of the Patristic writings about women.36 The
vices were frequently represented as female,37 because women were considered closer
to the body38; woman was to man, it was said, as body was to soul.39 Men’s rejection of
women was tied to the rejection of the body and its urges. Women were therefore more
inclined to gluttony and drunkenness, preferring to spend their time with friends in
the local tavern swilling wine.40 In short, women were typically viewed as more sinful
than men, possessed of insatiable appetites.41
The stereotypes about women are at play throughout the poem under examination.
The first stanza describes one woman’s ability to guzzle down seven goblets of wine,
but not even that satisfies her (vv. 4‒7); indeed, like an animal she needs a trough to
fill her needs (v. 10). Thus, the author of the poem follows the commonplace of miso-
gynistic literature of dehumanizing the woman by equating her with an animal.42 In
the second stanza, the second woman responds to the first by charging her accuser
with another commonplace of medieval misogyny. Writers often slandered women
as loquacious, as irritating the men around them with their constant speech. R. Ho-
ward Bloch bluntly describes the notion with the pithy phrase “woman is a riot.”43 The
second speaker exhorts her listeners not to believe the other woman (vv. 11‒12). As
evidence she explains that she had greeted her courteously, and the other responded
with villainy (vv. 13‒16).
Of course, women’s verbal sins were not distinct from their overindulgence in food
and drink, as both were categorized as the so-called “sins of the tongue.” Around the
middle of the thirteenth century, Guillaume de Peyrault composed the compendium
of the sins of the tongue, numbering them at twenty-four,44 and associating them with
gluttony.45 Startlingly, in the ballata the speaker concludes the second stanza by refu-
sing to detail the other’s actions, as to speak of it would bring dishonor upon herself
(vv. 17‒18). The character in the poem seems to step back from the satiric work itself
and reflect upon the nature of public insult, suggesting that it dishonors the speaker.
The hiatus from blatant slander, however, is only momentary.
Throughout the Middle Ages, men were insulted in various ways, while women
were typically insulted through their sexuality and the failures of their sexual res-
traint.46 Insults against women frequently took the form of identifying and seeking to
punish alleged prostitutes.47 This is true in the ballata from the Memoriali Bolognesi.
In the third stanza, the first interlocutor calls the second woman a dirty whore (v. 19)
who had tried to pimp her out to the local priest (vv. 21‒22). The brief anticlericalism
of the third stanza highlights the hypocrisy of the clergy that does not behave accor-
ding to Christian morality.48 It also situates this poem in the growing lay culture of134 Mediaevistik 34 . 2021 thirteenth-century Italy. The woman then states that her sister-in-law is also a procu- ress at the head of a band of prostitutes (vv. 25‒26). It might be possible to associate her misogynistic accusations to the flourishing economy of the Bolognese commune, as there was frequently a connection between the slander of women’s sexuality and their increased economic power, equating their economic aggressiveness with sexual aggressiveness.49 Nor should we forget Dante’s condemnation of the Bolognese people as pimps in Inferno 18: “E non pur io qui piango bolognese” (“And not only I weep here from Bologna,” v. 58).50 As evidenced from Dante, there existed the prejudice that people from Bologna had inclinations towards prostitution and pimping during the thirteenth century. In the fourth strophe, the speaker then comes to another misogynistic stereotype: her sister-in-law is a whore who cuckolds her husband, and everyone in the community knows it (vv. 27‒34). The number of cuckold’s horns the other woman has put on her hus- band’s head, she asserts, are enough to arm a galley ship (vv. 33‒34). In this ballata, the woman’s sexual desire is boundless, presumably engaging with scores of men. Yet her actions do not merely debase herself, but also bring opprobrium down upon her husband. Again, the poem emphasizes the public nature of the debate. Her husband is pointed out with a finger as he walks down the street (v. 34). The expression “to point out with a finger” (“mostrare col dito”) holds a prominent place in the medieval literature of vitu- peration, beginning with the Latin goliards,51 and subsequently translated into the verna- cular.52 In the culture of the age, pointing someone out constituted a non-verbal form of public humiliation. The public shame that the other woman has brought down upon her husband has especial resonance in the culture of the Italian communes. In his study on vituperative literature, Franco Suitner stresses that the ideological foundation was based upon the need to maintain a good reputation.53 Fame or notoriety among one’s fellow citi- zens influenced what was socially accepted to be true.54 That she has caused harm to her husband is the point here; that she is an adulterous prostitute, however, is not surprising. Throughout the Middle Ages, women were frequently cast as boundless in their sexual appetite.55 Worse still, women’s sexual insatiability was joined to willfulness, deviating from the natural order,56 and their willfulness justified their social domination by men. Her sexual misdeeds, therefore, are the direct result of her husband’s failure as a man. In the last two stanzas, the two speakers change their tune. In the fifth stanza, the first interlocutor sues for peace, offering her opponent a roasted capon (vv. 37‒38) because their husbands will beat them if they learn the truth about them (vv. 39‒42). At this point, the interlocutors evoke the re-establishment of control by the men in their lives, and the very real threat it might pose. In the final stanza the second inter- locutor agrees, offering to bring her servant-boy home with her, whom they can stuff with food and drink; but when they are all sated, she says, the two women can have sex with him (vv. 43‒50). As the poem ends, they still have no intention of behaving like the humble, submissive wives prescribed by the religious, social, and cultural au- thorities. They will remain obstinate in their willfulness. Thus, the last two stanzas tie together the themes that have run through the entire dialogue, themes that are based in misogynistic stereotypes of the Middle Ages: gluttony, drunkenness, sex, and disobe- dience. The ballata ends with the women ending their enmity, deciding instead to join forces and deceive their cruel husbands.
Mediaevistik 34 . 2021 135
In conclusion, the ballata offers a glimpse into the misogynistic commonplaces preva-
lent in the literary culture of thirteenth-century Italy. As a social satire, it reinforced
beliefs about women that stretched back to the writings of the Church Fathers. While
the ideas therein can be traced back to the writings of highly learned figures in the
early centuries of the Church, their presence here does not necessarily indicate that
the poet consciously recollected their origins. Rather, it is more likely that over the
centuries they had penetrated into the popular culture of Europe. Most likely, the poet
echoed them in the belief that they were actual truisms about unruly women, thereby
reminding the women in his audience of the norms expected of them.
The poem exemplified the belief that women were overly interested in the pleasures
of life, thus necessitating their social restrictions. Through the derisive laughter it
evoked, the satiric poem instructed its audience, male and female alike. For women,
it illustrated the behaviors to avoid, such as quarrelling, disobedience, gluttony, and
the lack of sexual restraint. For men, it acted as a reminder to remain vigilant, and to
enforce the patriarchal order when appropriate; failure to do so would result in their
humiliation. This is not to say, however, that the poem was intended as anything but
humorous. On the contrary, laughter at the misbehaviors of the women in the ballata
served the social function of reinforcing traditional attitudes in the face of the so-
cio-economic changes afoot.
Appendix: Poem and Translation:
Found in Memoriale 47 (1282, semester 1), folio 1r. Notary: Anthonius Guidonis de
Argele.
“Oi bona gente, oditi et endenditi57
2 la vita che fa questa mia cognata.
La vita ch’ela fa voi l’odirete
e, se ve place, vòilave contare.
A lato se ne ten sette gallete
pur del meglor per poter ben çoncare,
e tutora dice che mor de séte
ensinch’a lato non se.l pò acostare:
nè vin nè aqua non la pò saçiare,
10 s’ella non pon la boch’ala stagnata.”
“Per Deo, vicine mie, or non credite
a quel che dice questa falsa rea.
L’altrier ch’eo la trovai fra le pariti,
et eo la salutai en cortexia.
‘Assai’ li dixi ‘donna, che faciti?’
et ella me respose villania.
Ma saço be l’opera che facia:
18 no.l ve direi, ch’eo ne seria blasmata.”136 Mediaevistik 34 . 2021
“Oi soça puta, chi te conoscesse
e sapesse, com’eo so, lo to affare!
L’altrieri, per caxon de far dir messe
Al priete me volisti ruffianare:
ma ‘nanti- fus tu arsa -ché.l facesse
o -ch’ eo cunteco mai volesse usare.
Da me ti parti e non me favellare,
26 ch’eo non voglo esser mai de toa brigata.”
“Or Deo ne lodo ch’eo son conuscuta,
né non fo con’ tu, putta, al to marito,
ch’alotta- te par aver çoi compluta
-ché tu ài preço d’averl’enboçito.
Et oimè lassa, trista, deceduta!,
ch’a tutta gente lo fai mostrar a dito
e dele corne l’ài sì ben fornito
34 ch’una gallëa ne sereb’ armata.”
“Cognata, eo te dirò bona raxone,
se la credença tu me vòi tenire.
Eo agio cotto un sì grosso capone
che lo buglone sereb bon da bere.
Al to marito e ‘l meo vegna passione,
che ‘nseme no ne laxon ben avere:
igl’ ànno dogla e faremci morire
42 a pena et a dolore onne fiata.”
“Cognata mïa, çò ched eo t’ò ditto,
eo saço ben ched ell’ è mal a dire.
Ma menaròt’a casa un fantelleto,
e lui daremo ben mançar e bere,
e tu recharai del to vin bruschetta,
e’ recharo del meo plen un barile.
Quando gl’avren dà ben mançar e bere,
50 Çaschuna faça la soa cavalcata.”
English Translation:
“Oh, good people, hear and understand
2 the life that my sister-in-law58 leads.
You will hear of the life she leads
and, if it pleases you, I want to tell it to you.
She keeps seven goblets beside her
to be better able to guzzle it down,
and yet she still says that she’s dying of thirst
since she can’t bring it closer beside her;
neither wine nor water can satisfy herMediaevistik 34 . 2021 137
10 if she doesn’t put her mouth in the trough.”
“By God, my neighbors, now don’t believe
what you hear this false, evil woman say.
The other day I found her by the walls
and I greeted her with courtesy.
‘Great lady,’ I said, ‘what are you doing?’,
and she answered me with villainy.
But I know well what she was doing;
18 I won’t tell you because it will shame me.”
“Oh, dirty whore, whoever knew you
and knew your business, as I do!
The other day, in order to have mass told
you wanted to pimp me to the priest;
but may you be burned before I’d do so
or that I’d willingly be in your company.
Go away from me and don’t talk to me,
26 for I don’t want to be part of your group.”
“Now I praise God, I’ve been found out,
but I don’t do as you do, whore, to your husband,
for then you’ll seem to have complete joy:
because you are proud to have cuckolded him.
And, alas, poor me, you decadent woman,
you make him be pointed out by everyone
and you’ve given him such goat horns
34 that a galley would be armed with them.”
“Sister-in-law, I will now speak honestly to you
if you want to keep faith with me:
I’ve cooked such a fattened capon
that its broth would be good to eat.
Your husband and mine will become angry,
and, together, they give us no good:
they’ll be upset and would kill us59
42 with pain and suffering all the while.”
“Sister-in-law, what I said to you
I know to be a wrong thing to say.
But I’ll lead a young man to your house
and we’ll give him good food and drink,
and you’ll bring your good bruschetto wine
and I’ll bring mine—a full barrel.
And when we’ve given him good food and drink
50 we’ll each have our own trot with him.”
Fabian Alfie, alfie@arizona.edu138 Mediaevistik 34 . 2021
Endnotes
1 There is an ample bibliography on this topic. For representative studies, see the following:
Philip Jones, The Italian City-State: From Commune to Signoria. Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1997, 153‒57; Carol Lansing, The Florentine Magnates: Lineage and Faction in a
Medieval Commune. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, 5; Brian Pullan, A
History of Early Renaissance Italy: From the Mid-Thirteenth to the Mid-Fifteenth Century.
New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1973, 86; Daniel Waley, The Italian City-Republics. New
York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1969, 165.
2 Franco Cardini, “Intellectuals and Culture in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Italy,”
City and Countryside in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Essays Presented to Philip
Jones, ed. Trevor Dean and Chris Wickham. London and Ronceverte: The Hambledon
Press, 1990, 13‒30; here 15‒19.
3 David Herlihy, “Women’s Work in the Towns of Traditional Europe,” Women, Family and
Society in Medieval Europe: Historical Essays, 1978‒1991. Providence, RI: Berghahn
Books, 1995, 69‒95; here 77‒79. There is an ample bibliography on the topic of women’s
lives in thirteenth-century Italy. For representative studies, see A History of Women in the
West, vol. 2: Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Cambridge, MA,
and London: The Harvard University Press, 1992, and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women,
Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Chicago and London: University of Chicago
Press, 1985.
4 Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolski. (orig. 1965) Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 1984, 18‒19.
5 Sandro Orlando, Rime due e trecentesche tratte dall’Archivio di Stato di Bologna. Bologna:
Commissione per i testi di lingua, 2005, vii.
6 H. Wayne Storey, Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. New York:
Garland, 1993, 133.
7 Santorre Debenedetti, “Osservazioni sulle poesie dei Memoriali Bolognesi,” Giornale
storico della letteratura italiana 120: 371 (1948): 1‒41; here 4‒7.
8 Sandro Orlando, Rime due e trecentesche (see note 5), xi.
9 Giosuè Carducci, “Intorno ad alcune rime dei secoli XIII e XIV ritrovate nei memoriali di
Bologna,” id., Archeologia poetica. Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli editore, 1908, 107‒282.
10 Sandro Orlando, “Best Sellers e notai: la tradizione estravagante delle rime fra Due e
Trecento in Italia,” Da Guido Guinizelli a Dante: Nuove prospettive sulla lirica del
Duecento. Atti del Convegno di Studi Padova-Monselice 10‒12 maggio 2002, ed. Furio
Brugnolo and Gianfelice Peron. Monselice: Il Poligrafo, 2004, 257‒70; here 263.
11 Sandro Orlando, Rime due e trecentesche (see note 5), xxxviii.
12 Sandro Orlando, Rime due e trecentesche (see note 5), xlii‒xliii.
13 Santorre Debenedetti, “Osservazioni” (see note 7), 27.
14 The second poem is another ballata, “Pur bii del vin, comadre,” which deals with two
drunken women in the tavern. For an in-depth study of the poem, see Fabian Alfie, “La
‘Donna Taverna’: La ballata delle due comari ubriache,” in La poesia in Italia prima di
Dante: Atti del Colloquio Internazionale di Italianistica, Università degli Studi Roma Tre
10‒12 giugno 2015, ed. Franco Suitner. Ravenna: Longo Editore, 2017, 41‒48.
15 Evelyn Birge Vitz, Nancy Freeman Regalado, and Marilyn Lawrence, “Introduction,”
Performing Medieval Narrative. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005, 1‒3. See also D. H.
Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature,
800‒1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994; and Lesen und Schreiben: Li-
teratur, Kritik, Germanistik: Festschrift für Manfred Jurgensen zum 55. Geburtstag, ed.
Volker Wolf. Tübingen: Francke, 1995.Mediaevistik 34 . 2021 139 16 Evelyn Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early French Romance. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1999, ix‒x. 17 Carl Lindahl, Earnest Games: Folkloric Patterns in the Canterbury Tales. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989, 6. 18 For the tendency in Northern dialects to render “z” as “ç” (i.e., “saçiare”), see Gerhard Rohlfs, Grammatica storica della lingua italiana. Turin: Einaudi, 1966, vol. 1, p. 201; par. 153. For the tendency in Northern dialects to render “g” as “ç” (i.e., “çoncare”), see Rohlfs, Grammatica storica vol. 1, p. 211, par. 156. 19 Sandro Orlando, “Best Sellers e notai” (see note 10), 264‒67. 20 Patricia Hagen, “The Medieval Provencal Tenson: Contribution to the Study of the Dia- logue Genre,” Ph.D. thesis, Yale University, 1975, 221. See also the following: David J. Jones, La tenson provençale. Etude d’un genre poétique, suivie d’une édition critique de quatre tensons et d’une liste complète des tensons provençales. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1974, 50; Pierre Bec, La joute poetique. De la tenson médiévale aux débats chantés tradi- tionnels. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2000, 9; and Salvatore Santangelo, Le tenzoni poetiche nella letteratura italiana delle origini. Geneva: Olschki, 1928, 1. 21 Claudio Giunta, Due saggi sulla tenzone. Miscellanea erudita, 63. Rome and Padua: Antenore, 2002, 124‒25. 22 Claudio Giunta, “Metro, forma e stile della tenzone,” id., Due saggi sulla tenzone (see note 21), 122‒208. 23 John Ahern, “The Reader on the Piazza: Verbal Duels in Dante’s Vita Nuova,” Texas Stu- dies in Literature and Language 32.1 (Spring, 1990): 18‒39; here 20. 24 Patricia Hagen, “The Medieval Provençal Tenson” (see note 20), 22. 25 Cited from Francesco da Barberino, I documenti d’amore. Milan: Archè, 1982, vol. 2, p. 263; the translation is from Fabian Alfie, Dante’s Tenzone with Forese Donati: The Reprehension of Vice. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011, 21. 26 Pierre Bec, La joute poetique (see note 20), 9; Franco Suitner, “Sul sonetto dialogato nella poesia italiana delle origini,” Dal medioevo al Petrarca, ed. Armando Balduino. Miscella- nea di studi in onore di Vittore Branca, 1. Florence: Olschki, 1983, 93‒109; here 109. 27 Patricia Hagen, “The Medieval Provençal Tenson” (see note 20), 27. 28 Simone Marchesi, “‘Sic me formabat puerum’: Horace’s Satire I, 4 and Boccaccio’s Defen- se of the Decameron,” MLN 116.1 (January 2001): 1‒29; here 4. 29 Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A decorum of convenient distinction. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982, 19‒20. 30 Paul Miller, “John Gower, Satiric Poet,” in Gower’s Confessio Amantis: Responses and Reassessments. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983, 79‒105; here 80. 31 Suzanne Reynolds, “Orazio satiro (Inferno IV, 89): Dante, the Roman satirists, and the medieval theory of satire,” The Italianist 15: Supplement 2 (1995): 128‒144; here 132. 32 Pier Vincenzo Mengaldo, “L’elegia ‘umile’ (De vulgari eloquentia II iv 5‒6)” in Linguistica e retorica di Dante. Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, 1978, 200‒22; here 206‒07. 33 Daniel R. Lesnick, “Insults and Threats in Medieval Todi,” Journal of Medieval History 17 (1991): 71‒89; here 72. 34 Peter Burke, “Insult and Blasphemy in Early Modern Italy,” id., The Historical Anthro- pology of Early Modern Italy: Essays on Perception and Communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 95‒110; here 109. 35 Matthew of Vendôme, The Art of Versification, ed. and trans. Aubrey E. Galyon. Ames, IA: Iowa State Press, 1980. 36 P. G. Walsh, “Antifeminism in the High Middle Ages,” Satiric Advice on Women and Mar- riage: From Plautus to Chaucer. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2005, 222‒42; here 224‒25. For a study on the counterpoised tradition, that of defending women,
140 Mediaevistik 34 . 2021
see Alcuin Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1997.
37 Chiara Frugoni, “The Imagined Woman,” Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. Christiane
Klapisch-Zuber. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1992, 336‒422; here 370.
38 R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love.
Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991, 30.
39 Marie-Thérèse D’Alverny, “Comment les théologiens et les philosophes voient la femme,”
Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 20 (1977): 105‒209; here 109‒14.
40 Katharine M. Rogers, The Troublesome Helpmate: A History of Misogyny in Literature.
Seattle, WA: Washington University Press, 1966, 94.
41 James A. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1987, 427.
42 Fabian Alfie, “Like She-Cats in January: An Anonymous Fifteenth-Century Misogynistic
Sonnet,” Mediaevistik 26 (2013): 207‒15; here 210.
43 R. Howard Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (see
note 38), 14‒15.
44 Edwin D. Craun, Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature: Pastoral
Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 16‒18.
45 Carla Casagrande and Silvia Vecchio, I peccati della lingua. Disciplina ed etica della
parola nella cultura medievale. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1987, 132‒33.
46 Trevor Dean, “Gender and Insult in an Italian City: Bologna in the Later Middle Ages,”
Social History 29: 2 (2004): 217‒31; here 219.
47 Trevor Dean, “Gender and Insult” (see note 46), 220.
48 Martha Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan
University Press, 1996, 212.
49 Martha C. Howell, Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986, 183.
50 Dante’s Inferno and its translation are cited from The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri,
vol. 1, Inferno, ed. and trans., Robert M. Durling. New York and Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996.
51 Henry writes: “Gentibus obprobrium sum crebraque fabula vulgi; / Dedecus agnoscit tuta
platea meum / Me digito monstrant, subsannant dentibus omnes, / Ut monstrum monstror
dedecorosus ego. / Mordeor obprobriis: de me mala cantica cantat / Vulgus, et horrendus
sum sibi psalmus ego.” (Book I, vv. 5‒10; emphases added. I am the opprobrium of the
people, and I am the continual talk of the crowd, / The whole piazza knows of my shame, /
They point me out with a finger, and with their teeth they deride me; / I, shameful me, am
pointed out like a marvel; / I am bitten by shame: the people sing evil songs about me /
And I am to them a horrendous psalm). Henry of Settimello is cited from “Arrigo da
Settimello,” La letteratura italiana: storia e testi, vol. 1, Le origini. Milan and Naples:
Ricciardi, 1965, 708. The translation of Henry is mine.
52 In Lippo Pasci de’ Bardi’s “Io vorrei k’un segno avvenenato,” he wishes that those who go
off to drink would be pointed out: “e mostr’ a dito que’ ke vanno a bere” (v. 4). In his sonnet
“Un danaio, non che far cottardita,” Cecco Angiolieri enumerates the torments of destitu-
tion, including: “ch’andando per la via ogn’uom m’addita” (“for walking down the street,
every man points at me,” v. 8). In another sonnet, “Se l’omo avesse ‘n sé conoscimento,”
Cecco envisions the benefits of regaining his wealth: “e non sia per alcun mostrato a dito”
(“and I will not be pointed out with a finger,” v. 10). Lippo Pasci de’ Bardi is cited from
Gianfranco Contini, ed., Poeti del Duecento, vol. 2. Milan and Naples: Ricciardi, 1960,
781‒86. Cecco Angiolieri is cited from Cecco Angiolieri, Le Rime, ed., Antonio Lanza.
Rome: Guido Izzi, 1990.Mediaevistik 34 . 2021 141 53 Franco Suitner, La poesia satirica e giocosa nell’età dei comuni. Padua: Antenore, 1983, 11. 54 Chris Wickham, “Fama and the Law in Twelfth-Century Tuscany,” Fama: The Politics of Talk and Reputation in Medieval Europe, ed. Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail. Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2003, 15‒26; here 19. 55 Eleanor Commo McLaughlin, “Equality of Souls, Inequality of Sexes: Woman in Medieval Theology,” Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, ed. Rosemary R. Ruether. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974, 213‒66; here 253. 56 Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 149‒50. 57 Cited from Sandro Orlando, ed. Rime due e trecentesche tratte dall’Archivio di Stato di Bologna (see note 5). The translation is mine. 58 Sister-in-law: Orlando posits that the author is punning on the word cognata, which recalls the word cogno (vat). Given the subject matter of this ballata, Orlando’s interpretation seems reasonable. 59 Would kill us: Orlando interprets faremci as the Bolognese dialect of the conditional tense ( farean-ci: they would do to us). Given the context, such an interpretation seems reason- able.
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