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Ten Walter as Valerius classical and christian in the Dissuasio Ralph Hanna III and Warren S. Smith c Walter Map’s Dissuasio Valerii ad Ruffinum partakes of a twelfth-century craze. Antimatrimonial dissuading was a minor, if widespread, topic of contemporary Latin letters. The foundational example, of course, is Heloise’s apparently conversational demonstration to Abelard of the inappropriateness of marriage to the philosophical life (see Blamires, Pratt, and Marx 1992, 88–89). And at the middle and during the third quarter of the century, examples of the genre proliferated.1 Map was a scholar and civil servant who secured for himself a comfortable life under Henry II of England. He lived under the income of a number of parishes given to support him as a royal clerk, and he held various offices in the diocese of Lincoln. He lived into the first decade of the thirteenth century. Not a prolific writer, in the 1170s he wrote his Dissuasio, a work that enjoyed a large circulation in the Middle Ages. Map himself included it in a much larger work, the De nugis curialium, boasting that the Dissuasio “pleased many, is greedily snatched up, eagerly copied, read with greatest delight” (De nugis 4.5). The larger anecdotal collection survives only in one manuscript and was not widely known until the nineteenth century. The Dissuasio, in contrast, survives in some 131 manuscripts often combined with Jerome’s so-called Liber aureolus of Theophrastus or 210 with other selections from Jerome’s Against Jovinian, thereby forming a version of a book of “wykked wyves” such as so irritated the Wife of Bath (of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales), who claimed it was eagerly read by her fifth husband, Jankyn (prologue 669–85). Map wrote his Dissuasio, probably in the 1170s, in a context already rich with antimatrimonial argument—and he inspired more of it. To take the most readily at hand examples, he certainly know both John of Salisbury’s and Hugh of Fouilly’s essays. Within a decade of his having written the Dissuasio, Peter of Blois would pillage it for his own purposes. Yet Map’s effort is distinctly different from all these surrounding texts. One can immediately focus these differences by a glance at an ignored yet revelatory instance of dissuading , in this case one in fact directed at Map himself. Epistle 24 by Gerald of Wales, Map’s friend, younger contemporary, and fellow Welshman, is addressed to Map. This epistle is very easy to overlook .2 I suspect Gerald, like Peter of Blois, responds to Map’s work, rather than the other way round. But in certain respects, that is helpful: it makes the text a more pointed foil to Map’s greater, if less substantial, effort. Gerald’s letter does not belong fully in the antimatrimonial arena. He certainly urges Map to forget about marriage (Brewer [1861] 1964–66, 277ff.), and he takes his ammunition in part from the Bible: for example, he follows St. Jerome, Heloise in her advice to Abelard (Blamires, Pratt, and Marx 1992, 88), and others in reading 1 Corinthians 7 selectively, turning it into an anti-marriage tract—so that, for example, “abstain from one another” (1 Cor. 7:5) is taken out of context to mean “abstain from marriage.” Gerald’s primary target, however, is a good deal broader, although well within the parameters of Map’s work. Gerald’s effort is thoroughly protreptic: he wants Map to be sine macula (Brewer [1861] 1964–66, 278), “without stain.” Thus, along with marriage, he wants Map to give up his frivolities, his literary interests, altogether. By doing so, Gerald argues, Map will fulfill his promise and become the man he had been trained to be (he had a Paris M.A. after all)—a Christian philosopher. Map should by now, Gerald says, have sown his wild oats; consequently, he should grow up, act his age, and follow the sober life appropriate to his lofty training, Juvenilis enim excusabilis est levitas, cum laudabilis fuerit ipsa maturitas [for frivolity is excusable in a young man, while maturity itself would be praiseworthy] (Brewer [1861] 1964–66, 288).3 Reading Gerald’s letter tells one a great deal more about him than it does about Map. Thus, the text highlights the achievement of the Dissuasio by contrast . At many moments, one can see Gerald striving, perhaps a bit leadenly , for a wit one might recognize as an imitation of Map. WALTER AS VALERIUS 211 [13.58.39.23...

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