FORUM

FOR
MODERN LANGUAGE
STUDIES
Vol. XXV No. 1 JANUARY 1989

INCEST IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE AND SOCIETY

The author of the Chronicon Novaliciense, writing in north Italy about 1027,
recounted with horror the wicked deeds of a certain king Ugo who seduced
his new daughter-in-law on her wedding night:
Ipse autem rex [Ugo] genuit filium [Lotharium] . . . iste namque
ODtemperans monitis patris, coniugem accepit. pater vero post dotem,
succensus face luxunae, nurum viciat, antequam ad fihi perveniat
thalamum. o nefas! libido sodomita inrepit patres ut stuprum
exerceant in nurus et etiam in filias, ut in Acta legitur Apollonii.'
In the case of Ugo, as in the story of Apollonius of Tyre, the incestuous father
was punished by a thunderbolt from heaven. This account shows that at least
one eleventh-century writer was drawing parallels between life and literature
(though the literature in question was not taken to refer to contemporary
society). Are we justified in drawing similar parallels?
Shelley, who was very interested in incest, and based his play The Cenci on
a notorious historical case of incest and parricide, wrote to Maria Gisborne:
"Incest is like many other incorrect things a very poedcal circumstance."2 A
glance at classical myth and literature, followed by a glance at Stith
Thompson's Motif Index of Folklore, shows that incest has a very long history
as a literary theme, and that stories of incest are found in myth and folklore
from all parts of the world.3 Can it then be valid or useful to look for special
links between incest in medieval literature and medieval society? I shall argue
that the twelfth century witnessed a new approach to the literary theme of
incest, and a new interest in it, and that reasons for this can be found in
eleventh- and twelfth-century social history and theology.
Of course the Middle Ages inherited and retold a number of incest stories
from the classical world. Through Statius they knew Oedipus, through Ovid
4 Gregorius and Albanus be the first male saints to be guilty of incest (as far as
they knew the stories of Canace, Byblis, Myrrha and Phaedra. All these
stories end more or less tragically: the main characters either die or suffer
metamorphosis. Medieval readers also knew the classical tradition of incest as
a polemical accusation, for instance the charges against Caligula and Nero.5
And as the Chronicon Novalmense shows, they knew Apolloniits of Tyre, which
begins with father-daughter incest.
It is dangerous to claim that any literary trend or innovation "began" in the
twelfth century, since we have so little knowledge of written or oral traditions
before that time. But it does seem to me that between the eleventh and
thirteenth centuries incest appears in a remarkable number of apparently
new stories, and that there are some distinctly new aspects in its treatment.
The texts I am thinking of include the legend of Judas, which makes him
commit parricide and then incest before betraying Christ;6 the legend of
Gregorius, product of sibling incest who marries his own mother, but after
years of rigorous penance finally becomes a much respected pope;' the
legend of St Albanus, product of father-daughter incest, who marries his
mother, does penance with both his parents but kills them when they relapse
into sin, and after further penance dies a holy man;8 the exemplary stories
about women who sleep with their sons, and bear children (whom they
sometimes kill), but refuse to confess until the Virgin intervenes to save
them;9 the legends of the incestuous begetting of Roland by Charlemagne
and of Mordred by Arthur;10 and finally the Incestuous Father romances
about calumniated wives, which resemble Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale except
that the heroine's adventures begin when she runs away from home to
escape her father's unwelcome advances."
This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but rather to suggest the wide range
of twelfth- and thirteenth-century narratives in which incest plays an
important part. An obvious source is the Oedipus story, especially for the
legends of Judas and Gregorius.12 But the difference between these two
medieval legends demonstrates a crucial difference between classical and
medieval incest stories: classical stories of consummated incest end in tragedy
and death (or metamorphosis), whereas medieval incest stories almost always
end happily (though sometimes in a religious rather than a secular sense).
Christianity, as a religion which is profoundly concerned with moral and
sexual behaviour, was bound to find incest stories particularly repugnant,
and so villains in conflict with Christianity could easily be accused of incest.
But it is also a religion profoundly concerned with grace and with the
forgiveness of sins: I shall argue that incest, as a particularly heinous form of
lust, offered a splendid opportunity for propaganda about contrition and
'penance as the roads to salvation.
But if incest is such a poetical circumstance, and furthermore offers such
a splendid opportunity for Christian propaganda, why are there not more
improving stories about incest from the early Middle Ages? Why should
I know) - and why are they made not only to commit incest themselves, but
also to be the children of incest? (The double incest theme seems to have
been introduced for the first time in the Gregorius legend, compounding the
complexity of the relationships and also, of course, the gravity of the sin.)
Why should stories of incestuous mothers suddenly be used as propaganda
for the value of confession? Why should the adventures of calumniated wives
so often begin with the flight from incestuous fathers, when other means of
getting them away from home were perfectly easy to devise, as is shown by
the Constance story in the versions of Trivet, Gower and Chaucer? And why
should two established national heroes, Charlemagne and Arthur, be
credited - or rather debited — with an incestuous relationship which led to
later disaster?
The life-literature parallel made by the author of the Chronicon Novahciense
is suggestive: but can it really be that nuclear family incest was particularly
rife in this period? Reliable information about the frequency of incest and
about popular attitudes to it is notoriously hard to come by for most historical
periods. When Ivo of Chartres (d. 1116) quoted St Augustine as saying that
it is worse for a man to sleep with his own mother than with an unrelated
married woman, or when Robert of Flamborough (d. 1219) wrote that it is
worse for a man to sleep with his own sister than with two sisters who are
unrelated to him, were the examples intended to be recognisable from
everyday life?13 There is very little documentary evidence of cases of incest,
even in the later Middle Ages. Of the few charges recorded, some were
probably polemical: in the ninth centurv, for instance, King Lothair II of
Lotharingia accused his wife Teuthberga of incest with her own brother -
but she was barren and he wanted to get rid of her and marry his mistress
(Henry VIII used the same charge against Anne Boleyn).14 The Montaillou
records reveal plenty of incest in the broad sense, between cousins, but none
within the nuclear family (the Cathar "parfait" Belibaste advised against
relationships where the woman was related to the man by blood or marriage,
though the promiscuous priest Pierre Clergue is quoted as arguing that there
was nothing wrong with incest, and that it would help to preserve family
property intact).13 Several antiquarians in the early modern period claimed
to have seen riddling epitaphs recording the burials of incestuous couples, of
the following type:
Cy-gist la fille, cy-gist le pere,
Cy-gist la sceur, cy-gist le frere,
Cy-gist la femme et le mary,
Et si n'y a que deux corps ici.16
This sort of kinship riddle appears to be very widespread, but it is hard to
know if it refers to real situations, or is just ingenious. There are apparently
very few records of English court cases about nuclear family incest: does this
extreme scarcity of records simply indicate that few cases came to court,
whatever the frequency of occurrence, or was there really very little incest (in
the modern sense) in England m the Middle Ages?17 The recent revelations
about child abuse in our own society should remind us (if we need
reminding) that official documents do not always give an accurate picture.
And there are some indications that incest between close relations was far
from unknown in western Europe in the later Middle Ages. Thomas
Aquinas, for instance, argued that incest was repellent, and that natural and
instinctive feelings of honour towards parents and kindred should prevent it;
but then rather spoiled his argument by adding that living at close quarters
is bound to inflame lust, and so family life would make incest all too easy, if
it were not forbidden.18 As one of lan Fleming's dry-witted American
characters remarks in Diamonds Are Forever, "Nothing propinks like
propinquity." Propinquity was certainly the norm in medieval households,
and no doubt conscious incest did indeed occur. This impression is
reinforced by Gower in the introduction to Book 8 of his Confessw Amantis:
this book focuses on Lechery, which is illustrated by various stories of incest.
The Confessor gives a brief history of marriage, starting with Adam and Eve,
and makes it quite clear that some biblical patriarchs did marry close
relations, and that the incest taboo was imposed much later by the Church.
He notes that the law is often broken, however:
Bot thogh that holy cherche it bidde,
So to restreigne Mariage,
Ther ben yit upon loves Rage
Full manye of suche nou aday
That taken wher thei take may. (8.148-52)
He then invites Amans to confess any such sins that he has committed.
Amans is very shocked, and insists that he has never been "so wylde a man"
(1. 171). But we are left with the distinct impression that conscious incest was
by no means rare in late fourteenth-century England.
Even unwitting incest seems to have been accepted as a perfectly plausible
situation. Peter Abelard in his Ethics used incest with an unrecognized sister
as an example of the importance of intention of defining sinful actions:
Aut cum lex prohibet ne sorores nostras ducamus, vel eis
permisceamur, nemo est qui hoc preceptum servare possit, cum sepe
quis sorores suas recognoscere nequeat, nemo inquam, si de actu
potius quam de consensu prohibitio hat. Cum itaque accidit ut quis per
ignoranciam ducat sororem suam, numquid transgressor precepti est
quia facit quod facere lex prohibuit? Non est, inquies, transgressor quia
transgression] non consensit in eo quod ignoranter egit.19
Abelard's choice of example may have been influenced by traditional literary
themes such as the Oedipus story (although there the unrecognised wife is
the mother, not the sister): but it must have seemed a plausible real-life
problem in order to be used in this argument.
One can piece together fragments of this sort which indicate that incest
was not a rare occurrence in the later Middle Ages, but there is no evidence
of a sudden rise in the frequency of incest cases which could account for the
new literary fashion for incest stories about the twelfth century. There are
other aspects of medieval society in the eleventh and twelfth centuries which
could help to account for it, however: one is the development of the
theological doctrine of contritionism, and the other is the church's campaign
to enforce the consanguinity laws.
It will not have gone unnoticed that in most of the incest stories which I
mentioned as popular in the twelfth and thirteendi centuries,
acknowledgement of incest is used as the catalyst for self-scrutiny, contrition,
penance and absolution. At the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 Pope
Innocent III instituted the practice of annual confession for all Christians.
Even before this time, theologians such as Anselm, Abelard and the
Victorines had been increasingly preoccupied with the doctrine of
contritionism, the development of a sense of personal responsibility and
interior guilt. Of course penitence features in a number of saints' lives from
the earliest days of Christianity: Mary Magdalene and Thais are well known
examples of reformed sinners, and Erhard Dorn cites many others in his
invaluable study of the Holy Sinner tradition.20 But Jean-Charles Payen
argues that contritionism bore considerable responsibility for the popularity
of the literary theme of repentance from the twelfth century on, and for the
literary motif of the "peche monstrueux".21 His first two examples of the
monstrous sin both concern incest. The first tells of an orphan who has three
children by her uncle, all of whom she kills at birth; in an agony of remorse
she tries to kill herself, but is saved by a vision of the Virgin and becomes a
nun. The second is the story of the "Bourgeoise of Rome" who sleeps with
her son for years and kills their baby, but eventually repents and is saved by
the Virgin.22 Payen compares the story of the orphan with the legend of
Gregorius, which he describes as the first saint's life in which contrition and
penitence form the central theme; he sees it as inaugurating a new type of
hagiography (pp. 104-7).
But why should incest be so popular as a monstrous sin? It is only one
branch of Lechery, and six other Deadly Sins were available. One reason is
that incest was sometimes taken in the Middle Ages as the epitome of lust,
and even of original sin. Thomas Aquinas gives an argument in favour of
incest as "luxuria" (though he goes on to refute it):
articulus 9. utrum incestus sit determinata species luxuriae. Ad nonum
sic proceditur: 1. Videtur quod incestus non sit species determinata
luxuriae. Incestus enim dicitur per privationem castitatis. Sed castitati
universaliter opponitur luxuria. Ergo videtur quod incestus non sit
species luxuriae, sed sit universaliter ipsa luxuria.23
 Incest is presented as original sin in one of the two moralizations of the story
"De amore inordinate" in the Gesta Romanonim. The incestuous mother is
said to represent human nature as it was instilled in our first parent, Adam;
just as Adam ate the apple, she succumbed to incestuous desire (that is, carnal
pleasure), and bore a child (to be interpreted as the human race) whom she
killed through her sin.24 Indeed the double incest theme seems to be a literal
example of the inescapability of original sin, in that the sin of the parents is
visited in almost exactly the same form on the innocent children. Those who
commit incest but do not sincerely repent, like Judas and Charlemagne,
court disaster.
But not all the incest stories I have mentioned involve contrition and
penance. In the stoi ies of calumniated wives, the incestuous father fades into
the background after serving his purpose as catalyst for the flight of the
heroine, and the plot focuses on the adventures of his daughter. In the case
of King Arthur, confession and penance never seem to be options, and the
story moves inexorably to its predestined and tragic conclusion. My second
argument for the popularity of the incest theme will, I hope, help to account
for these non-penitential texts, as well as reinforcing the explanation for the
choice of incest as the monstrous sin in hagiographies and exempla. This
argument concerns the church's campaign to enforce its very complex rules
against marrying relations, a campaign which was at its peak in the eleventh
and twelfth centuries.
Tony Tanner argues in his book Adultery and tlie Novel that although
adultery is of course a very ancient literary theme, it was particularly relevant
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when for bourgeios society
"marriage was the all-subsuming, all-organizing, all-containing contract".25
Contracts create transgressions, he says; and he points out that adulterv
"introduces an agonising and irresolvable category confusion into the
individual and thence into society itself, in that the description "adulteress"
points to an activity rather than an identity, and to "an unassimilable
conflation of what society insists should be separate categories and functions"
(p. 12). The idea of "introducing an agonizing and irresolvable category
confusion into the individual and thence into society" seems equally
applicable to nuclear family incest, where the wife is also daughter or mother,
the husband is also father or brother, a confusion of roles emphasised by the
kinship riddle quoted above. I find Tanner's remarks helpful in thinking
about incest in the literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a time
when theologians and canon lawyers were much occupied with the definition
and status of marriage, a central issue of ecclesiastical-lay relations. After
much debate it was agreed that consent was crucial to the \alidity of
marriage, which was also accepted as one of the sacraments. The arguments
about the definition of marriage led to scrutiny of the definition of incest and
the prohibited degrees of relationship.-ti
Of course incest had always been forbidden in Christian moral teaching,
but it was not until the eleventh century that the church's rules were
developed to the impossibly broad system under which Christians were
forbidden to marry within seven degrees of kinship by blood or by marriage,
and were also restricted by spiritual kinship derived from godparenthood.
Duby maintains that the church tried to control the aristocracy by controlling
their marriages. Goody argues that the church wanted to restrict marriage
and thus channel much of the available wealth into its own coffers. Whatever
the truth of this matter, both scholars agree that incest (in the broader sense)
was a highly controversial topic in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
Although penitentials are not thought to be entirely reliable as guides to
social practice, it is worth noting that incest is mentioned only sporadically in
them before the tenth and eleventh centuries, whereas special sections were
devoted to the systematic discussion of incest and the niceties of
consanguinity and affinity in the Decreta of such influential canon lawyers as
Burchard of Worms, Ivo of Chartres and Gratian.27 Yet however clearly the
rules and prohibitions were set out and repeated, the church was engaged in
a continuous (and losing) battle to implement them.
Duby recounts many struggles between the church and recalcitrant
French kings and nobles who were determined to marry within the
prohibited degrees. The nobility were notoriously casual about the incest
rules, and indeed exploited them as a way out of unsatisfactory marriages.
Eleanor of Aquitaine separated from Louis of France after fifteen years of
marriage and several children on the grounds of their close relationship, but
was related in the same degree to her second husband, Henry II of England.
Andreas Capellanus attributes to Eleanor a harsh judgment on a case of
incest:
Quidam quum ignoranter se agnatae copulasset amori, ab ea discedere
comperto crimine quaerit. Mulier vero amoris vinculo colligata in
amoris observantia ipsum retinere contendit, asserens, crimen penitus
excusari, quasi ab initio coepissent amori sine culpa vacare. Cui negotio
talker regma respondit: Satis ilia mulier contra fas et licitum certare
videtur, quae sub erroris cuiuscunque velamine incestuosum studet
tueri amorem. Omni enim tempore incestuosis et damnabilibus
tenemur actibus invidere, quibus etiam ipsa iura humana poenis
novimus gravissimis obviare.-8
This implacable ruling is presumably a joke at Eleanor's expense. Peter the
Chanter, who lobbied for a reform of the consanguinity laws because of their
constant abuse, indignantly quotes a noble whom he overheard discussing
his imminent marriage:
Bene est michi quia magna est dos. In tercio genere affinitatis forsitan
est ilia mihi, et ideo non ita mihi proxima, quod ab ea separer. Sed si
voluero et' non placebit michi, per affinitatem illam discidium
procurare potero.
As Helmholz writes, the aristocracy married "sub spe dispensationis".30
A cynical reference to the corruption of the clergy and the frequent flouting
of the incest laws seems to be included in the thirteenth-century Incestuous
Father romances La Manekine and La Belle Helene de Constantinople, in which
a widowed king is encouraged by his nobles to marry his daughter, with
whom he is infatuated: in both cases clerical sanction is obtained, in La Belle
Helene from the pope himself.31
Modern scholars seem to have paid remarkably little attention to the
possible links between fictional incest and social history, although Alessandro
d'Ancona suggested long ago that the incest scandals of the twelfth century
might have been responsible for the revival in a highly moral form of Greek
myths about incest.32 The work of social historians such as Duby has
produced a great deal of evidence about incest scandals concerning
consanguinity and affinity in the twelfth century, but until recently I believed
that the church's campaign to enforce the wide ranging incest prohibitions
was reflected in contemporary literature only in stories about nuclear family
incest. I did not think that there were also narratives dealing with more
distant relations (and more typical scandals), with kinship by affinity and with
spiritual kinship ("compaternitas"). But I was wrong, as I have learned from
an unpublished French thesis which cites a surprising number of medieval
French texts which include potential or actual incest outside the nuclear
family.33
Let me give some examples, all taken from twelfth- and thirteenth-century
narratives. In the Roman de Renart it is several times mentioned that Hersent
the wolf, who is willingly seduced by Renart, is his "commere," the mother of
his godchildren.34 In the chanson de geste Orson de Beaiwais the king attempts
unsuccessfully to prevent the villain from marrying the heroine by arguing
that he is godfather to her son, and therefore within the prohibited degrees.35
In another chanson de geste, Awl, the hero narrowly misses committing
incest with his unrecognized cousin: when he discovers who she is, he
declares himself greatly relieved.36 In a third chanson de geste, Tristan de
Nanteuil, the hero is distressed to discover that he has unwittingly slept with
his cousin. Many years later St Gilles persuades Tristan to confess his sin; the
saint prophesies that the child born of this incest will be a terror to all, and in
the end Tristan is indeed killed by his son.87
So the church's complicated rules about marriage between relations by
blood, by affinity and by spiritual kinship were taken seriously enough to be
worked into courtly narratives (though the impediment of spiritual kinship
is mocked in the Roman de Renart. The prohibited unions of cousins and
"godcousins" in these poems may well be more representative of real-life
problems than the nuclear family incest in the stories of Gregorius and
Arthur. But incest between siblings and between parents and children,
already an established theme in literature and folklore, makes a more
exciting story than incest between third cousins, and a much more awful
warning. The incest theme seems to have come into fashion just at the time
when the church was insisting on the scrutiny of relationships before
marriage, on the awful sin incurred by those who married within the
prohibited degrees, and on the separation of couples found to have broken
the rules. In some cases the church may have deliberately produced stories
with a central theme of incest as cautionary tales - for instance the legends of
Gregorius and Albanus, in both of which the incestuous parents continue
their sinful liaison for some time, but the incestuous mother and son set a
good example by separating in horror as soon as they discover their true
relationship. L. K. Born quotes a comment on the moralisation of the
Heroides which shows how the church exploited traditional stories as part of
a moral campaign. The writer explains that there are three kinds of love,
"castus", "illicitus" and "incestus", and indicates the correct attitude to each
kind which fiction should engender:
intentio est castum amorem commendare, illicitum refrenare et
incestum condemnare. utilitas est magna. narn per hoc scimus castum
3
amorem eligere, illicitum refutare, et incestum penitus exstirpare. "
Although Born does not cite the source of this comment, it seems to be
fifteenth-century: but it represents an attitude prevalent in earlier centuries
too. In other cases the ecclesiastical campaign against incestuous marriages
may have incidentally brought the traditional theme into vogue as a narrative
element, albeit not always the main plot, as for instance in Apollonius of Tyre
and the Incestuous Father romances. In a late twelfth-century chronicle
Geoffrey de Vigeois commented on the value of the incest episode in the
Histona Apollonii:
Quid enim execrabilius quibusdam videtur quam historiam Apollonii
Tyrii legere? Verum tamen sicut in sterquihnio aurum ita in eisdem
gestis invenies utilia quaedam ad correctionem christianae religionis. *9
Perhaps the Incestuous Father romances also reflect the decision of the
twelfth-century church that consent of both partners was necessary for a
valid marriage, a view not always shared by the laity - the incestuous father
is infringing his daughter's rights by his tyrannical proposition.40
The two aspects of ecclesiastical attitudes to incest which I have discussed
- an immovable impediment to marriage, and an apalling sin absolvable only
through contrition, penance and grace - seem to me to offer a possible
explanation for the three new motifs I have detected in twelfth- and
thirteenth-century incest stories: the double incest motif, which
demonstrates by its tangled relationships the error and the horror of
marriage to a close relation; incest as the catalyst for the heroine's flight in the
Incestuous Father romances; and incest as the monstrous crime to be
expiated in saints' lives and exempla. Death is no longer the inevitable
outcome of incest, unless the protagonist is an unregenerate villain like Judas
or King Antiochus in the Histona Apollonii. For everyone who is prepared to
weep, confess and do penance, there is hope of grace.
I do not want to exaggerate the influence of the church on literature,
 10
however. Some potential incest stories seem to have resisted the literary
fashion for incest, as the Mesliers point out.41 For instance, Tristan is Isolde's
nephew by marriage, a relationship well within the forbidden degrees, and
Cliges is similarly related to F£nice in the romance of Chretien de Troyes; but
neither pair of lovers is ever accused of incest. The key issues here are
adultery and treachery. The same is true of Mordred and Guinevere: neither
in versions of the Arthurian legend where Mordred is Arthur's nephew nor
in versions where he is Arthur's son is much emphasis placed on the
incestuous nature of his advances to the queen.42 In fact the church's
campaign against incest soon began to lose momentum: at the Fourth
Lateran Council in 1215 Pope Innocent III had to climb down and reduce
the number of prohibited degrees from seven to four, because of the
hardship and difficulty that the wider ban had caused. The incest motif still
appears in later medieval literature, of course, but it usually seems to be
treated much less seriously. In the fourteenth-century English romances Sir
Eglamour and Sir Began the near-miss incest is merely a titillating possibility.
Mother and son marry, but recognize each other just in time to a\oid the fatal
consummation; the hero's parents are reunited, and a suitable bride is hastily
found for their son.44 In a sixteenth-century Spanish version of Gregomts this
near-miss pattern replaces the original double incest story, so that Gregorius
ceases to be a holy sinner, and the story has a secular happy ending.43 The
Roman de Renart shows that even in the twelfth century the concept of
spiritual kinship was not always taken seriously. The Mesliers cite two later
examples of such mockery from Boccaccio's Decameron: in the first a young
man deliberately becomes godfather to the child of a woman he fancies so
that he can have an excuse to approach her unsuspected.46 The church gave
up the attempt to enforce its impossibly restrictive rules in the thirteenth
century; respect for them must have been greatly diminished by the constant
abuse of indulgences and dispensations, as well as by the impossibility of
enforcing them in small communities.
I have been arguing that the high profile of incest as the theme of a major
ecclesiatical campaign in the eleventh and twelfth centuries may have
influenced the fashion for incest as a literary theme in both romance and
exemplary literature. It will be interesting to see what effect the current
revelations about incest in our society have on the use of incest as a theme in
contemporary literature. There are of course twentieth-century novels and
films about incest, but not a great number; and it seems to me that the subject
is much less explicitly handled than in medieval literature. All this may
change - indeed I think it is already changing. I doubt whether Alice
Walker's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel The Colour Purple (1982), a modern
example of the Incestuous Father and Calumniated Wife themes, would
have begun with apparent father-daughter incest had it been written fifteen
years earlier - nor would it have had the same success. Incest is indeed a very
poetical circumstance, but more at some times than at others. It was a more
11
frequent topic in medieval literature from the twelfth century on because it
was more frequently discussed in medieval society, especially by the church,
which constantly reiterated the rules about kinship as an impediment to
marriage, and used cautionary tales about the monstrous sin of incest to
illustrate sermons on contrition. It was a topic which could be discussed
openly and explicidy: indeed, every parish priest was instructed to
interrogate confessants on the subject, just as Gower's Confessor did Amans.
John Mirk, a cleric writing in the late fourteenth century, advised priests to
use the following formula, which does not beg any questions:
Hast thou synged in lechery,
Telle me, sone, baldely;
And how ofte thou dydest that dede,
Telle me thou moste neede;
And whether hyt were wyf or may,
Sybbe or fremde that thow by lay;
And yef ho were syb to the,
How syb thow moste telle me.47
If every churchgoer was liable to be asked such questions, we should not find
it surprising that incest, consummated or narrowly averted, deliberate or
unconscious, was such a frequent literary theme in the later Middle Ages.
ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD
King's College
Cambridge
NOTES
This essav is based on a paper read at the Twentv -Second International Congress on Medie\al
Studies at Kalamazoo m M a v 1987 l a m grateful to Ruth Mazo Karras of the L nu ersitv of
Pennsvh ania for im itmg me to participate in her sessions on Literature and Social History, and
to those who heard the paper for their helpful comments
1
Cliiomcon \avaluiense 5 3, ed Carlo Cipolla in Monumtnta navuhaemui vetmtiora, 2 \ols
(Rome, 1898-1901), II, pp 5-305, cf p 246 (mv translation) "But this king [Lgo| begot a son
[Lothar] For he, obedient to his father's commands, took a wife But after the giung of the
marriage portion his father, inflamed b\ the torch of lust, uolated his daughter-in-law, before
she had come to the mamage-bed of his son O horror' penened lust o\erw helms fathers so
that the\ debauch their daughters-in-law and e\en their daughters, as one reads in the story of
Apollonius " The chronicle w as also edited bv L C Bethmann in MGH Scnptom V 11 (Hano\ er,
1846) pp 73-133, cf p i l l Foi the "Acta Apollonn' <,eeHut(iriaApollonuReguTyri,ed G A A
Kouekaas, \Iedie\alia Groningana 3 (Gromngen, 1984)
-'This letter, in which Shellev discusses the work of Calderon, was written on \o\ember 16,
1819 see The Letteis of PeinBMshe Shells, ed F L Jones, 2\ols (Oxford, 1964), II, p 154.
1
Stith Thompson, Motif Index of Folklore, 6 \ols (Bloommgton Ind , 1966) s \ "incest".
4
The stoi % of Oedipus occupies the first 536 lines of the Roman de Thebes, w hich w as w ntten
in the middle of the twelfth centurv see the edition of G Rasnaud de Lage, 2 \ols. CFMA
(Pans, 1966-8) Ralph Hexter's Ovid and Medieval Schooling Studies in Medieval School
Commen/aiits on Omul's Ais \matotia, Episttilae ra Ponlo and Epistuttie Heroulum, Munchener
Beitiage zui Mediaustik und Renaissance-Forschung 38 (Munich, 1986) pro\ides a useful
bibliogiaph\ as well as plentiful eudence foi the studv of O\id in the Middle Ages The stones
of Bvbhs and Mvrrha aie retold - and imagmameh allegorized - in the Ovide Moralize 9, 11
 12
1997-2530, and 10 11 3678-3953; see the edition of C. de Boer in Verhandelingen der Koninkhjke
Akademu: van Wetemchappen le Amsterdam, NR 30 (1931-2). 269-82, and NR 37 (1935), 98-105.
' On Nero's incest with both his mother and his sister, see for instance Le Roman de la Rose,
11.6164-6180, ed. F. Lecoy, 3 vols., CFMA (Paris, 1975-9); and Chaucer, The Monk's Tale, 1.2482,
ed. L. D. Benson et al. in The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. (Boston, 1987). On Caligula's incest with
his sisters, see Gower, Confessio Amantis, 8. 199-222, ed. G. C. Macaulay in vols. II and III of The
Works of John Gower, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1899-1902).
" For the Latin texts and a survey of both Latin and vernacular accounts of the Judas legend,
see Paull F. Baum, "The Medieval Legend of Judas Iscariot", PMLA 31 (1916), 481-632; Lowell
Edmonds provides translations of several in Oedipus: The Ancient Legend and its Later Analogues
(Baltimore, 1985) pp.61-7. Jacobus de Voragine included the story of Judas in his Legenda Aurea,
ed. J. G. Th. Graesse, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1850). pp. 183-8, tr. G. Ryan and H. Ripperger, The
Golden Legend (London, 1941; rp. New York, 1969), pp. 171-7. Derek Brewer discusses the
legend of Judas in Symbolic Stones: Traditional Narratives of the Family Drama in English Literature
(Cambridge, 1980), pp.60-2. He sums it up as "an important datum and an artistic failure".
7
The best known version of the story of Gregorius is the twelfth-century Middle High
German poem by Hartmann von Aue, though there is an earlier French version; the most
recent edition is by Hermann Paul, 13th ed., rev. Burghart Wachinger, Altdeutsche
Textbibliothek 2 (Tubingen, 1984). For an English translation see R. W. Fisher, The Narrative
Works of Hartmann von Aue, Goppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 370 (Goppingen, 1983), pp.
111 -155. C. Cormeau and W. StOrmer provide bibliography and a survey of recent criticism in
Hartmann von Am: Epoche - Werke - Wirkung (Munich, 1985), pp. 110-41. The story of Gregorius
is told as chapter 81 of the Gesta Romanorum, ed. H. Oesterley (Berlin, 1872), pp.399-409.
8
See Karin Morvay, Die Albanuslegende: Deutsche Fassungen und ihre Beziehungen zur lateinischen
Oberliefenmg, Medium Aevum: Philologische Studien 32 (Munich, 1977). The story appears in
the Gesta Romanorum as c. 244, though the protagonist is not named; see Oesterley, pp.641-6.
9
Tubach lists a number of these stories in his Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval
Religious Tales (Helsinki, 1969), for instance Gesta Romanorum c. 13, "De amore inordinate"
(Oesterley, pp. 291-4). There are also two vernacular poems about incestuous mothers which
deserve more attention, Le Dit du Buefand Le Dit de la Borjosse de Romme, both edited by A. Jubinal
in Nouveau Recueil de contes, dits, fabliaux et autres pieces, 2 vols. (Paris, 1839), 1.42-72 and 79-87.
"' The first explicit reference to Charlemagne's incestuous begetting of Roland seems to be
in the thirteenth-century Old Norse Karlamagnus Saga cc. 36-7; see the translation by Constance
B. Hieatt, 3 vols. (Toronto, 1975-80), I, pp. 117-8. See also Rita Lejeune, "Le Peche de
Charlemagne et la Chanson de Roland" in Studia Phtlologica: Homenaje ofrecido a Ddmaso Alonso, 3
vols. (Madrid, 1961), II, pp.339-71; and Suzanne Martinet, "Le Pech^de Charlemange, Giselle,
Roland et Ganelon" in Amour, manage et transgressions au moyen age, ed. Danielle Buschinger and
Andr£ Crepin, Gdppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik 420 (Goppingen, 1984), 9-16. The earliest
references to Arthur's incestuous begetting of Mordred seem to be in the Agravain and the Mart
Artu, two sections of the thirteenth-century French prose Vulgate Cycle. See J. D. Bruce,
"Mordred's Incestuous Birth" in Medieval Studies in Honour of Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis (New
York, 1927 rp. Geneva, 1974), pp.197-205; A. Micha, "Deux sources de la Mart Artu: II. La
Naissance incestueuse de Mordred", Zeitschrift fur romanische Phdologie 66 (1956), 371-2; J.
Frappier, Etude sur La Mart le Roi Artu (Paris, 1961) pp.31 ff.; J. Frappier, ed., La Mart le Roi Artu,
3rd ed., CFMA (Paris, 1964), pp.xvi-xvii; and Elizabeth Archibald, "Arthur and Mordred:
Variations on an Incest Theme" (forthcoming in Arthurian Literature VIII).
11
See Margaret Schlauch, Chaucer's Constance and Accused Queens (New York, 1927); Claude
Roussel, "Aspects de pere incestueux dans la litterature medievale," in Buschinger and Crepin
(n. 10 above), 47-62; and Elizabeth Archibald, "The Flight from Incest: Two Late Classical
Precursors of the Constance Theme", Chaucer Review 20 (1986), 260-72. In this article I suggest
that there were possible models for the Incestuous Father stories in late classical literature; but
there still seems to have been a long gap before this motif was taken up again, apparently in the
twelfth
12
century.
On the influence of the Oedipus story see L. Constans, La Le'gende d'CEdipe (Paris, 1881) pp.
93 ff.; Lowell Edmonds, "Oedipus in the Middle Ages", Antike undAbendland 22 (1976) 147-155;
and V. Propp, Edipo alia luce delfoklore, 2nd ed., (Turin, 1978), pp.83-137.
13
Ivo of Chartres, Decretum 9.10, PL 161:686, quoting Augustine, De bono coniugali, c. 8:
"Peius est cum matre quam cum aliena uxore concumbere." Robert of Flamborough, Liber
PoenitentiaUs 2.39-42, ed. J. J. F. Firth, C. S. B., Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies
and Texts 18 (Toronto, 1971), p.79.
14
Lothair's charge is discussed by Pauline Stafford in "Mothers and Sons: Family Politics in
13
the Early Middle Ages" in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker (Oxford, 1978) pp 79-100, cf. p.
90. A conwrnporary view is given by Hincmar of Rheims, De Divortio Lothani Regu et Tetbergae
Regmae, PL 125:623-72.1 am grateful to Patrick Geary for pointing out to me that Lothair was
the grandfather of the incestuous Ugo of the Chramcon Novaliciense.
•> See Le Registre d'inquisition de Jacques Fournier, ed. Jean Duvernoy, 3 vols. (Toulouse, 1965),
I?
™? ' PP-225'6; E- Le R°V Ladurie, Afontat/fou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village
1294-1324, tr. Barbara Bray (Harmondsworth, 1980), pp.179 and 155.
"> "Here lies the daughter, here lies the father, / Here lies the sister, here lies the brother, /
Here lies the wife and the husband, / And there are only two bodies here." This is quoted with
other similar kinship riddles by Otto Rank in Das Inzest-Motif in Dichtung und Sage (Leipzig &
Vienna, 1912, rp. Darmstadt 1974), pp.334-5.See also the examples discussed by Archer Taylor
in "Riddles dealing with Family Relationships",y(nmw/ of American Folklore 51 (1938), 25-37, cf.
pp.26-7.
17
See Michael M. Sheehan, C. S. B., "The Formation and Stability of Marriage in England:
Evidence of an Ely Register", Medieval Studies 33 (1971), 228-63. He notes that the cases he
studied were usually in defence of the marriage bond, rather than aimed at annulment, and
concludes: "It becomes evident that marriages were not especially threatened by impediments
of consanguinity or affinity." R. Helmholz comes to similar conclusions in Marriage Litigation in
Medieval England (Cambridge, 1974), p.72. Professor Helmholz has told me (in conversation)
that he has only once come across a record of a case of nuclear family incest which was brought
to court. I am grateful to him for his helpful comments on this topic.
18
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae 2a2ae.154,9, ed. and tr. Thomas Gilby, O.P., 60 vols.,
Blackfriars edition (London, 1968), XLIII, pp.236ff.
" Peter Abelard, Ethics, ed. and tr. D. E. Luscombe (Oxford, 1971), pp.26-7: "The Law
forbids us to take our sisters or to commingle with them, but there is no one who can keep this
ordinance, since one is often unable to recognize one's sisters—no one, I mean, if the prohibition
refers to the act rather than to consent. And so, when it happens that someone through
ignorance takes his sister, he is not surely the transgressor of an ordinance because he does what
the Law has forbidden him to do? He is not a transgressor, you will say, because in acting
ignorantly he did not consent to this transgression."
-" Erhard Dorn, Der Simdige Heilige in der Legende des Mittelalters, Medium Aevum:
Philologische Studien 10 (Munich, 1967).
21
Jean-Charles Payen, Le Motif du repentir dans la litterature francaise medievale (des engines a
1230) (Geneva, 1967), pp.54 ff.
-- Payen, pp. 519ff.; he does not mention the Dit du Buef, which is an expanded version of La
Borjosse de Romme (n. 9 above).
23
Summa Theologiae, 2a2ae. 154,9, tr. Gilby (n. 18 above): "article 9. Is incest a determinate
species of lust? The ninth point: I . I t would seem not. For incest takes its name from defiling
chastity. And in general chastity is opposed to all kinds of lust. Therefore incest would seem to
be lustfulness in general, not one special kind."
'" See c. 13 in Oesterley (n. 7 above) 293: "Ista regina est natura humana, que in primo
parente scilicet Adam erat plantata, que concepit ex filio hoc est ex delectacione carnali, quando
de porno comedit. Tune genuit filium i.e. totum genus humanum, quod ipsum per peccatum
occidit." See also Helen Adolf, "The Concept of Original Sin as Reflected in Arthurian
Romance" in Studies in Language and Literature in Honour of Margaret Schlauch (Warsaw, 1966),
pp.21-9; and Frank J. Tobin, "Fallen Man and Hartmann's Gregorius," Germanic Review 50
2i
Tony Tanner, Adultery and the Novel: Contract and Transgression (Baltimore, 1979), 11-18, cf.
- Important recent studies of medieval marriage include "Marriage in the Middle Ages," six
svmposium papers published in Viator 4 (1973), 413-501; Georges Duby, Medieval Marriage: Two
Models from Twelfth-Centun France, tr. Elborg Forster (Baltimore, 1978), and The Knight, the Pnest
andtheLadi, tr. Barbara Bray (London, 1984); J. - L. Flandrin, Family in Former limes: Kinship,
households'and sexuahtv, tr. R. Southern (Cambridge, 1979); Constance B. Bouchard
"Consanguinity and Noble Marriages in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries, Speculum 06
(1981), 268-87; and Jack Goody, The Development of the Family and Marnage in Europe
1987)
27
See F T McNeill and H. M. Gamer, Medieval Handbooks of Penance: A Translation of the
Principal "Libn Poemtentuiles" and Selections from Related Documents, Records of Civilisation:
 14
Sources and Studies 29 (New York, 1938); and Pierre Paver, Sex and tlie Penitent,^: The
ignorance joined in love wun a m>man »i«~ ••— • •—-— — —.., —- 0 — -
discovered his fault. But the woman was bound by the chain of love and tried to keep him in
love's observances, saving that the crime was fully excused by the fact that when they began to
enjov the love it was without sin. In this affair the Queen answered as follows: "A woman who
under the excuse of a mistake of any kind seeks to preserve an incestuous love is clearly going
contrary to what is right and proper. We are always bound to oppose any of those incestuous and
damnable actions which we know even human laws punish by very heavy penalties."'
'-' Peter the Chanter, Verbum Abbreviatum, quoted from manuscripts by John Baldwin,
Marten. Princes and Mercliants: The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, 2 \ ols. (Princeton,
1970), I, p.335, and II, p.225, n. 179 (my translation): "It suits me because there is a big dowry.
She may be related to me in the third kind of affinity, but she is not so close that I would be
separated from her. But if I choose, and she does not please me, I shall be able to arrange a
divorce because of this relationship." Peter goes on to argue that this sort of behaviour gives the
church a bad name, and that the complexity of the rules about impediments results in
innumerable transgressions.
•"'
31 Helmholz (n. 18 above) p.87.
La Manekine 11. 313-40, ed. Hermann Suchier in CEuvres Poe'tiques de Phtlippe de Remi, Sieur
de Beaumanmr, 2 vols., SATF (Paris, 1884), I, p. 13. There is no edition of La Belle Helene de
Constantinople, but A. H. Krappe gives a detailed synopsis in his article on the romance in
Romania 63 (1937), 324-53, cf. pp.325-9. See also Thelma Fenster, "Beaumanoir's La Manekine:
Kin D(r)ead: Incest, Doubling, and Death" in American Imago 39 (1982), 41-58; and Claude
Roussel (n. 11 above), 54-7. Papal permission for an incestuous father-daughter marriage is also
obtained in an English Incestuous Father romance written about 1400: see Emare 11.217-40, ed.
Maldwyn
12
Mills in Six Middle English Romances (London, 1973), p.52.
See A. d'Ancona, La Leggenda di Vergogna e la Leggenda di Gmda (Bologna, 1869), p. 19, n. 1.
•!1 Bernard and Mireille Meslier, "Le Theme de I'in'ceste dans la litte'rature du moven age"
(these de troisieme cvcle, Tours, 1981), pp. 118 ff.
•14 Roman de Renart, ed. and tr. I. Dufournet and A. Meline, 2 vols. (Paris, 1985). When Renart
- -- • • • <• . --i--.:__u:-J,...._.——JC,.K»,,«V, OT ^V,;M~n
15
guilty about her adultery and her relationship to Mordred; in the Slanmif Morte Art/iur the
Archbishop of Canterbury reproaches Mordred for trying to marry his father's wife, and in
Malory the Archbishop threatens Mordred with bell, book and candle. But the word incest is
never mentioned, and Mordred's relationship to Guinevere is taken much less seriously than his
treachery to Arthur. For full references and discussion, see my article "Arthur and Mordred:
Variations on an Incest Theme" (n. 10 above).
41
Canon 50: see Rev. H. J. Schroeder, O. P., Disciplinary Decrees of the General Councils: Text,
Translation and Commentary (St. Louis, 1937), pp. 279-80 and 578.
44
Sir Eglamour ofArtois, ed. F. Richardson, EETS (London, 1965); Sir Degari, ed. G. Schleich
(Heidelberg, 1929). Both romances are summarized and discussed by Laura Hibbard in
Medieval Romance in England (London, 1924; rp. New York, I960), 274-8 and 301-5. Brewer
discusses Sir Degare in Symbolic Stones (n. 6 above), pp. 66-71, and comments: "This charmingly
ridiculous story is told strongly and simply with agreeably realistic touches." It is not clear
whether he thinks the near-miss incest "agreeably realistic" or not.
45
JuandeTimoneda,Patranuelo, Patrana ll,ed. R. Ferreres(Madrid, 1971), pp.78-83. The
prefatory verse makes it clear that this is the story of a hero who becomes a king rather than a
saint: "Un nino en la mar hallado, / un abad lo dotrino, / y Gregorio le Ham6, / y despues fue Rey
llamado" (A child was found in the sea, an abbot educated him, and called him Gregorio, and
later he was named king).
46
Decameron Day 7, nos. 3 and 10; see Meslier (n. 32 above) pp. 131-3.
4r
John Mirk, Instructions for Parish Priests, 11.1235-42, ed. Gillis Kristensson, Lund Studies in
English 49 (Lund, 1974), pp. 138-9. MS Bodleian Greaves 57 reads "suster or doughter" at 1.
1240 instead of "sybbe or fremde".

\ciiuu.£la ouj'ere: /Je ..-__. .„„ _ ,_. ....r. _

tried to please me, you have never come to see me; I don't know of a godfather who does not
visit the mother of his godchildren"). Her aggrieved husband complains to the king that the fox
flouts all the laws of marriage, (Branch 5a, 11. 327-9, emphasis mine): "Renars ne dote manage,
/ Ne parente, ne cosinnage [\ ar. conparage]; /11 est pire que ne puis dire" ("Renart does not
respect marriage or the ties of kinship or cousinhood [spiritual kinship]; he is worse than I can
say").
r
' 'Orson de Beauvais, 11. 291ff., ed. Gaston Paris, SATF (Paris, 1899). The marriage takes
place, but a magic drug prevents consummation.
s
*Aiol, 11. 2143 ff.,ed. Jacques Normand and Gaston Paris (Paris, 1877).
~ Tristan de Nanteud, 11. 9482-10353 and 22869 ff., ed. K. V. Sinclair (Assen, 1971). The
prophecy and eventual parricide are obviously reminiscent of the stories of Oedipus and
Mordred,
J8
and there is an explicit reference to the legend of Charlemagne's incest.
L. K. Born, "Ovid and Allegory", Speculum 9 (1934), 362-79, cf. p. 377 (my translation):
"The intention is to commend chaste love, to restrain unlawful love, and to condemn incest. It
is extremely useful. For thus we know that we should choose chaste love, resist unlawful love,
and root out incest altogether."
'" Chromcon Lemovicense (c. 1170), quoted by M. Delbouille in "Apollonius de Tvr et les debuts
du roman francais" in Melanges offerts a Rita Lejeune, 2 vols. (Gembloux, 1969), II, pp. 1171-1204,
cf. p. 1183 (my translation): "What could seem more horrible to read than the story of
Apollonius of Tyre? But just as you will find gold in a dungheap, so in these stories you will find
useful40
material for the betterment of the Christian religion."
On the issue of consent to marriage, see John T. Noonan, "Power to Choose", Viator 4
--- . . „ „ . „ , , , , . . . i ,,_...... ,,-,„ , ,- j —— i x c i ^ a c—„!„ v,—— *.,[,

41
Meslier (n. 33 above), pp.303-4.
42
Geoffrey of Monmouth simply calls it adultery; Wace briefly describes Guinevere as doubly