Introduction

Abstract

Abstract A preliminary insight into the phenomenon of medieval antifeminism can be gained from a book called ‘The Love of Books’ (Philobiblon) written by Richard de Bury, who was an avid reader as well as a powerful figure in Church and State in early fourteenthcentury England. He imagines books uttering a protest against clerics, who, instead of being their allies, now neglect them and allow them to be thrown out of their homes: This passage introduces us to three of the four areas of discussion to be explored below. First-all in a spirit of fun, of course-it indicts women on traditional counts. She is ‘animal’ (bestia), ‘snake’, or other venomous creature; she is inveterately jealous of rivals; she nags in abrasive language (virulentis sermonibus); she presumes to offer her ‘counsel’, but her counsel is one long shopping list of consumables, notably for her wardrobe, which she would substitute for un-utilitarian writings; and the Word is beyond the scope of her limited understanding in any case. Second, Richard picks unerringly on a trio of texts central to misogyny: Jerome’s ‘Theophrastus’, Walter Map’s ‘Valerius’, and the gloomiest of the wisdom books of the medieval Bible.