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c h a p t e r 3 The Abbot’s Concubine Renaissance Lies, Literature, and Power In 1573 the abbot of Sumaga, Alessandro Ruis, was going around the little village where he lived—and to some extent ruled as the leading ecclesiastical figure—regaling his neighbors with a tale about his problems with his former concubine, Cecilia Padovana. Cecilia, he was complaining, had used some very troubling magic to bind to her the love of the men she desired including himself . His story may have seemed particularly credible to many, for the abbot was merely the shadow of his former self. Broken and bitter, he appeared to have been devastated by his separation from Cecilia, and, as much love magic was designed to “hammer” and punish its victims if they did not yield to love, his demise and literal unmanning must have seemed to many an impressive testimony to the power of the woman who had once been the abbot’s concubine. At much the same time in much the same area another man was in a way regaling a similar audience with virtually the reverse of the abbot’s story. That practically no one remembers him today detracts little from his notoriety at the time, for he was the widely known warrior-hero Captain Fear, and he was traveling around regaling the locals with, among other tales, a revealing account of his unhappy unmanning as the male concubine of the Amazons. It seemed, he explained to his listeners, that the peace and prosperity of the once warlike Amazons had changed them and that lately “there had been born many, many Amazons who were not inclined towards . . . war, but instead preferred the needle, the distaff, and the spindle. . . . The wise and valorous Queens of the Amazons, seeing that, concluded that their subjects were no longer worth a damn either in making love or war.”1 One can well imagine the plight of the Amazon queens from the sixteenthcentury male perspective of Captain Fear and his listeners. With peace those once fearsome and powerful warriors had slowly fallen back to their “true na- tures,” their true gendered identities, finding spinning and weaving more satisfying than war. Fortunately, the Amazon queens had long ago forsaken nature for nurture and had, according to the modest captain, an ingenious plan for reinvigorating their troops. “Realizing that something must be done they decided to send for me, having heard already about my reputation which convinced them that I alone was capable of impregnating them all.”2 Captain Fear’s listeners were certainly aware of that reputation, that consensus reality about his sexual identity. In a no longer famous contest with Hercules over who could impregnate more virgins in one night, had he not managed to impregnate two hundred by midnight while poor old Hercules had taken the whole night to impregnate only fifty?3 And when Zeus had flooded the earth killing off everyone except Deucalion and Pyrrha, had not he, Captain Fear, stepped in for the former, fearlessly cuckolding him to repopulate the earth single-handedly with Pyrrha? Why, he had even slept with Death and impregnated her—their children were the Guelf and Ghibelline parties.4 No, Captain Fear was not merely a great male warrior—the quintessential miles gloriosus—with his violent and indiscriminate slaughter of men and gods, his close friendship with the Devil, and his literal love of Death (a particularly good mistress because she was always quick to finish); he was also the consummate and consummating male sexual actor, as most of his listeners were well aware. But one must not overlook the fact that this great warrior and gallant, who had defeated most of the gods in battle and cuckolded them as well, as concubine to the Amazons had played a decidedly different role. His world of male fantasy had been literally turned upside down, for the Amazons, of course, were ultimately the warriors in his story (even if he provided the warrior seed), and he was their sexual servant, their male concubine. Tellingly, this reversal of identities ultimately reversed the very nature of the captain himself, changing him from the one feared to the one who feared, and that necessitated a shameful admission. Things certainly had started well with the Amazons. Given as great a triumphal welcome as any conquering hero, even if he was to be a sexual object, he quickly impregnated the two queens, who as quickly gave birth “to 365 Amazonettes who...

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