If you have ever wondered how Chaucer’s Wife of Bath learned her “dames lore,” The Distaff Gospels provides one man’s answer. The author of this text imagines himself invited to spend six evenings, Monday through Saturday, with a group of female weavers. On each evening a different woman presides and shares her knowledge of “dames lore” while the author acts as scribe. The result is both an anti-feminine literary satire and a rich source of folk beliefs.
The Distaff Gospels presents a facing-page edition and translation of the two extant versions of this late fifteenth-century work, Les Évangiles des Quenouilles (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 2151; and Chantilly, Musée Condé 654). Both manuscripts originate from the region of Flanders, or what was then the Duchy of Burgundy. The Chantilly MS is earlier and shorter, probably written prior to 1474; the Paris MS, an expanded version of the earlier text, dates from the late 1480s, as suggested by the signature of its first owner, Mary of Luxembourg, daughter of the Count of Saint-Pol. By placing the Paris version first, the editors have clearly privileged the later expanded work while also inviting students and scholars to compare the two versions. The French texts were originally published in a critical edition in 1985 by Madeleine Jeay as Les Évangiles des Quenouilles: Édition Critique, Introduction, et Notes .
The work was popular at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, as indicated by the sheer number of incunabula, printed editions, and translations (into English, Dutch, German, and an adaptation in Occitan). The only English translation published previous to The Distaff Gospels was printed by Wynkyn de Worde (London, ca. 1510). It contains six woodcuts, four of which are reproduced here.
The texts are accompanied by a useful scholarly apparatus that never becomes too heavy-handed to remain accessible to students. This includes a lengthy and highly informative introduction, detailed notes on the texts, six appendices providing excerpts from related contemporary works, a select bibliography and index, and translations of the spinsters’ names.
In the introduction, the authors consider the work from the standpoints of literature and textual history (Part I) and of culture (Part II). In Part I, they point to the work’s relationship to other medieval framed narrative collections (such as Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Boccaccio’s Decameron ), to other works with precursors for the Duenna or Old Woman (such as The Romance of the Rose or Chaucer’s "Wife of Bath"), and to stereotypes of the village sorceress (as found in Malleus Maleficarum ). In Part II, the authors show the relevance of the work to such themes as the relationship of husbands and wives; the nature of peasant life; sexuality; beliefs about incubi, goblins, and nocturnal demons; and medical treatments of humans and animals. The cultural context is domestic, rural, intimate, and infused with magical practices.
The introduction contains only a brief explicit argument for the folkloric value of the text (10-11), but further evidence for the “dames lore” as legitimate expressions of actual beliefs and practices lies in the extensive footnotes to the texts (those accompanying the Paris text are more extensive than those accompanying the Chantilly text). The discussion of the cultural context of the work in Part II of the introduction also contributes implicitly to our understanding of its folkloric value.
I have one minor criticism about the organization of the textual and illustrative material in the apparatus. It seems unwieldy to have “A Note on the Text” (61-62) and “Illustrations” (62) separated out from the rest of the introduction. This material could have been integrated more smoothly into the introduction. As currently organized, in order to locate information on illustrations, the reader must look not only to the separate section on “Illustrations” but also to pages 13 (n. 1), 23 (n. 1), and 27 of the introduction. Information on the manuscripts is also scattered between the information presented in “A Note on the Text” and that found in the introduction (26-27). A better arrangement of the introductory material might also have included a list of illustrations at the start of the book with the page numbers of each illustration indicated.
The reasonable price of this paperback makes it possible to use it in history, women’s studies, folklore, and literature classes, but folklorists as well as medieval and early modern scholars will also want to add it to their private book collections and recommend that their college or university libraries purchase it.
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[Review length: 743 words • Review posted on February 1, 2007]