The Vatican Mythographers

Introduction

Introduction Since their first appearance together over one hundred and seventy years ago, the Three Vatican Mythographers have been viewed as a single entity . They have been treated collectively in histories and studies of medieval literature, although their individual substance and style have invited closer scrutiny in recent years. Before characterizing each Mythographer separately, it might be well to discuss their common purposes, audience and influence. purpose and influence Mythology is universal and everlasting. Throughout human history, myths, in both oral and written form, have been preserved, transmitted, analyzed, assimilated, and interpreted. They have survived, even in hostile cultures, for a host of reasons, including their ability to entertain, inspire, instruct, and sometimes horrify us. Their transmission has often met with resistance from established faiths and philosophical schools opposed to fiction and fable on religious and intellectual grounds. This has surely been true for classical mythology and, indeed, all ‘‘pagan’’ literature . Yet the surpassing charms and insights associated with these ancient stories compelled their defenders to justify them and their perpetuators. Scholars have amply defined and documented the clever use of biblical topoi such as Spoliatio Aegyptiorum (despoiling the Egyptians) and Captiva Gentilis (gentile captive) by Church Fathers for this purpose.1 They have traced the euhemeristic tradition and its place in the comprehension of myths in the ancient world and the Middle Ages.2 Another integral part of the rationalization for the study of pagan works was the allegorical method used to develop spiritual, physical, and moral interpretations. The medieval reliance on allegory has been widely researched and insightfully described by modern specialists in various disciplines. C. S. 1 2 introduction Lewis, Jean Pepin, Adolph Katzenellenbogen, Winthrop Wetherbee, and many others have illuminated our understanding of a technique that was ubiquitous in schools of grammar, philosophy, and theology. Indeed, by the twelfth century ‘‘allegory became the universal vehicle of all pious expression; mythological exegesis . . . grew to astonishing proportions.’’3 I have introduced the preceding generalizations as a basis for analyzing the purposes of the Vatican Mythographers who also employ these rationales . In fact, all three of these medieval grammarians were engaged in transmission of classical myths and in teaching the truths embedded in them. Euhemerism and allegorization are abundantly evident in their works, especially that of the Third Mythographer. Thus, their approaches were traditional. The question is, why did they compose their works, and for whom? Literary historians of recent decades have discussed the audiences and purposes of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance mythography at length. Though the field remains open to research into texts and sources, important new studies have clarified our perception of particular eras and authors . For example, Alan Cameron’s book on mythographers in early imperial Rome traces the role of mythology, ‘‘the cultural currency of even the remotest corners of the Roman world,’’ in popular culture.4 Cameron proves that the influence of mythographers extended far beyond the poets and their accepted audience, infusing such areas as oratory , tourism, drama, dance, and other entertainments. Even gladiators’ names were commonly drawn from myth. The audiences and purposes of mythographers in the Middle Ages were certainly more confined. Of course, we are dealing with a vast period characterized by widespread illiteracy and a religious culture still hostile in many ways to all things ‘‘pagan.’’ It is sometimes suggested that pagan mythology was powerfully subversive to medieval Christian culture, and thus controlling and confining it offered an opportunity for Christian thinkers to present the greater authority of their own worldview. Jane Chance takes this position to its fullest and most complex expression: Within and during these different periods when interest in classical texts resulted in reinterpretations of the antique, the common purpose of medieval mythography involved the repressed transmission introduction 3 of human sexuality, essentialized as female and textualized, embodied as text. Because of this scholastic context and because of its allegorical methodology, mythography served the purposes of patriarchy within the Church.5 This view leads Chance to suggest a more fully subversive reading of such materials in our own time: Yet even in these terms mythography, if not allegory, as translatio studii would have occupied a role as institutionally subversive, empowering authority regarded as marginal, whether pagan or feminine , and therefore in the context of postmodern discourse to be designated as female in its difference, its ‘otherness.’6 It is clear that pagan myth presented a potential threat to...