“All women are naturally noble, pure, gentle and courteous as well as endowed with a subtle and creative minds, so subtle that they know instinctively how to foretell what will happen in the future. By their very nature, women of today, like those of the past, know how to prophesy according to the appearance and the dispositions of the weather and of people, and the omens from birds and other animals or other creatures, as will be discovered in the course of this book.”

What are the Distaff Gospels?

In the days between Christmas (December 25) and Candlemas (February 2), a cleric agreed to act as scribe for the local women who gathered for a spinning circle in his neighbor’s house.  The Distaff Gospels record the findings of those nights.  Although the format between the 3 primary versions varies, in the end, almost 250 gospels are recorded, each purported to be popular knowledge from the women of Flanders and Picardy.  

It follows the same literary structure as the Decameron (1351) and the Canterbury Tale (1478) it is a collection of tales that from their inception are collected to mock the people they are theoretically praising for their wisdom and good sense.

Structure and History 

• The earliest reference to the Gospels is in a Mystery Play performed in Rouen in 1474. 
• Chantilly Manuscript
  1. Structure
     1. 3 nights, all hosted by an elderly villager named Transeline Paris: 
  2. Manuscript History
     1. Earliest Manuscript (undated that I am aware of, but falls between the Rouen reference and the Paris Manuscript) 
• Paris Manuscript – owned by Mary of Luxembourg – late 1480s
  1. Structure
     1. 6 Nights of “gospels” shared, each night “chaired” by one of the women, and most of the comments glossed by one (or more) of the others. The text is recorded by a scribe/monk.
        1. “We should make a small treatise with the chapters that we want to develop and put in order – matters which have been discovered long ago by our grandmothers and our ancestors – so that they will not be forgotten and that this treatise can be passed on to the women to come after us”
     2. The author attempted to organize the information according to the personality of the chairs each night, though the “diversity and abundance of the topics give an impression of happy disorder.”
        1. These six ladies were so wise in their time that they would have been quite expert and skilled in exorcising a blue devil or tying him to a cushion”
           1. “He does not approve of their authorial practice, nor does he feel that their material has much merit”
  2. Manuscript History
     1. A carefully constructed manuscript, of good quality.
     2. Marie of Luxembourg (born ?1472? – died 1 April 1547) was the elder daughter and principal heiress of Pierre II de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol, by Margaret, a daughter of Louis, Duke of Savoy.
     3. Mary, Queen of Scot’s Grandmother
• An English translation by Wynkyn de Worde was published in 1510
  1. Structure
     1. 6 Nights of “gospels” shared, each night “chaired” by one of the women, and most of the comments glossed by one (or more) of the others. 
     2. The gospels date to the “seconde aege of the worlde”, where they were taught to the Queen, and then spread amongst the women.
     3. “that they wolde make me be rewarded by some of them the whiche were the youngest at my chesynge…”
  2. Manuscript History 
  3. “small, modest copies, illustrated with woodcuts used many times by the printers for different books.”  
  4. Largely follows the Paris Manuscript.
• An Occitan translation was published in 1555.

Responses to the gospels were initially mixed.

• Early on they were dismissed as “objects of derision, the very prototype of idiotic or even dangerous books” 
• “Mentioned in comic works by characters who themselves are presented as fools, idiots, peasants, or by the bad-tempered and lascivious women”
• Two texts that seem to take their cue from the Distaff Gospels, but otherwise, they are not referenced in a positive light.
  1. Escreignes dijonnoises (The Evening Gatherings in Dijon) – Tabourot des Accords –
     1. Follows almost directly in the footsteps of the Distaff Gospels
  2. Caquets de l’accouchée (The Gossip of the Maternity Room) – 17^th c. 
• It was seen into the 19th century as largely a collection of very little literary merit.

Responses to the Gospels are STILL Mixed 

• Is it useful as to consider it a reliable reflection of Anthropological truth?
  1. No more so than any other collection of folk wisdom.
  2. 17th century collections of folk tales, as well as later, modern, collections overlap the Distaff Gospels shows “the data gathered by the author of The Distaff Gospels is reliable, and that his work can be compared to that compiled by an ethnographic inquiry.”
  3. Taking the time to record the myths of women gives it a certain validity, even as the scribe of the Paris Manuscript mocks the women.
  4. “given the probable male authorship of both manuscripts and the prominent role of the scribe in the Paris version, we cannot claim that the work provides an unmediated representation of women’s beliefs and practices… the writings of the ancient authorities, such as Galen and Hippocrates, augmented by Arab learning, were clearly of significant influence on the works of such female authorities as Trota of Salerno and Hildegard of Bingen.”
• “In all such recipes, attempting to determine what stems from ancient or medieval authorities, what springs from popular superstition and what relates to empirical observation is a vain quest, especially since learned medicine had itself been influenced by popular practices and beliefs.”
• Are they just sexist texts with no value?
  1. “Mentioned in comic works by characters who themselves are presented as fools, idiots, peasants, or by the bad-tempered and lascivious women”
  2. Despite the text’s overt misogyny, its lively portrayal of the interaction of pen and distaff, of masculine and feminine modes of writing, ensures that competing voices are heard”
  3. “But he is unable to subvert the women’s text completely to his own purposes, for throughout the prologue and epilogue, none of his allusions to the primacy of men or to the weak intellects, derivative authority and ridiculous knowledge of women can really restore his compromised masculinity and re-establish connection to dominant culture. He (as much as the women) is responsible for the text and he (as much as they) functions as a source of humor.”
  4. The women themselves are often depicted as malevolent caricatures who had achieved massive amounts of information over the course of very colorful lives.
  5. “How is this perception of woman’s power created in a text that denigrates women as hapless cacklers, confused and disordered babblers incapable of achieving any compositional order? Her power is created and enabled by virtue of the composition scenario. While women are, indeed, the actual authors, the male scribe nonetheless inserts his perspective occasionally. However, the strong female voice prevails, because it is responsible for content, structure and development, while the scribe is increasingly limited.”
  6. “Mentioned in comic works by characters who themselves are presented as fools, idiots, peasants, or by the bad-tempered and lascivious women”
  7. Despite the text’s overt misogyny, its lively portrayal of the interaction of pen and distaff, of masculine and feminine modes of writing, ensures that competing voices are heard”
     1. “But he is unable to subvert the women’s text completely to his own purposes, for throughout the prologue and epilogue, none of his allusions to the primacy of men or to the weak intellects, derivative authority and ridiculous knowledge of women can really restore his compromised masculinity and re-establish connection to dominant culture. He (as much as the women) is responsible for the text and he (as much as they) functions as a source of humor.”
  8. The women themselves are often depicted as malevolent caricatures who had achieved massive amounts of information over the course of very colorful lives.
  9. “How is this perception of woman’s power created in a text that denigrates women as hapless cacklers, confused and disordered babblers incapable of achieving any compositional order? Her power is created and enabled by virtue of the composition scenario. While women are, indeed, the actual authors, the male scribe nonetheless inserts his perspective occasionally. However, the strong female voice prevails, because it is responsible for content, structure and development, while the scribe is increasingly limited.”

• Are they reflections of the perfect truth?
  1. Uh, no.  
  2.  “The Distaff Gospels makes it clear that love is considered indispensable for a good marriage, as is a husband’s good sexual performance, along with the qualities that make him a good partner: being faithful, not being abusive, and listening to his wife, especially when it comes to spending money.”
  3. Financial mismanagement is something over which women have absolutely no control at the time, and as such is worse than those areas where society gives women some kind of “out”.
     1. This is extra awful if he is spending her money on other women.
  4. “The minutiae of quotidian existence lie revealed.”

The Ladies and their Gospels – Paris Manuscript (Jeay & Garay – 2006, 65-193)

• Dame Ysengrine du Glay – Monday’s Chair
  1. Midwife, 5 times married, 4 times widowed, now with a young husband named Josselin who spends the money her former husbands earned her.  
  2. 65 years old, had been handsome but is now old.
  3. Gospels focus on marriage, husbands, pregnancy and children
• Dame Transeline du Croq – Tuesday’s Chair
  1. Well born and around 60 yr old.
  2. She is now the concubine of a priest, “who heard her confession night and day, which is why all her neighbors treated her with great reverence.”
  3. Expert in geomancy, divination & magic.
• Dame Abonde du Four – Wednesday’s Chair
  1. “Used to sell pleasure as a retailer, and afterwards she kept a wholesale shop in her trade in Bruges among the merchants”
  2. Had been handsome, but wine and good food had left her fat. 
  3. Gospels talked about ways of negotiating with the stars and elements, auguries based on animal conduct, and magical practices to ensure welfare of farm animals
• Dame Sebile des Mares – Thursday’s Chair
  1. Originally from Vaud, the center of the Waldensian heresy
  2. Gospels focus on children, animals, enchantments and omens about pregnancy.  Also look at sexual prohibitions around clerics and spiritual kinship between the individuals involved in a child’s baptism.
• Dame Gomberde la Faee – Friday’s Chair
  1. Welcoming and gentle manners, and always ready to help.
  2. Has been married 7 times, and would happily accept an 8th if she were in love.
  3. “If a man wanted to meet a woman secretly, she provided one in exchange for good wine.”
  4. Gospels cover marriage, livestock and children.
• Dame Berthe de Corne – Saturday’s Chair
  1. 80 years old, and the daughter of a doctor, and “very wise man”
  2. She has lived as a healer & herbalist due to the training of her father
  3. Gospels focus on medicine for humans and animals.

Bibliography

19. Gates, Laura D. Distaff and Pen: Producing the Evangiles des Quenouilles in Neophilologus 81: 13­20, 1997.
20. Jeay, Madeline and Kathleen Garay, Eds. & Trans. The Distaff Gospels: A First Modern English Edition of Les Évangiles des Quenouilles. Broadview Press, 2006.
21. Jeay, Madeline and Kathleen Garay. Advice Concerning Pregnancy and Health in Late Medieval Europe: Peasant Women’s Wisdom in Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 24:2, 2007.
22. Randall, Catharine. Gossiping Gospels: The Secret Strength of Female Speech in Ancien Regime France in Women in French Studies Volume 8, 2000.

“Oh Those Wacky Spinsters!” on Academia.edu