PFSCL XLIV, 87 (2017) The Feminizing Jew: Impotence and the Fallibility of Statehood in “Marie de Padille, sous Pierre le Cruel, roi de Castille” and Mémoires de la vie de Henriette-Sylvie de Molière J ENNIFER R. P ERLMUTTER (P ORTLAND S TATE U NIVERSITY ) Jews have long figured in the French imaginary. Indeed, non-Jewish writers in France penned historical, social, and literary works that feature Jews even after Charles VI definitively expelled them from the country in 1394. Although some Jewish communities remained throughout the late medieval and early modern periods, 1 contact between Christians and Jews was limited. It is remarkable that without knowing an actual Jew, authors nevertheless constructed images of them based on their imagination and hearsay. As Charles Lehrmann explains, “[T]he mere presence of Jewish communities in France creates problems that find an echo in literary works, problems that change with the evolution of history. In the Middle Ages, they assume a religious aspect; in modern times, they take on a social, financial, political and racial character” (11). In other words, these writers’ literary constructions reflect the Jews’ perceived interactions with and potential influence on Christians. Frequently - and perhaps unsurprisingly - depictions unflatteringly portray the Jew and suggest undesirable consequences of his behaviors. One image of the Jew that persisted was that of the feminized male. Daniel Boyarin, Sander Gilman, David S. Katz, and Irven M. Resnick, among others, have argued that the perceived sexual distinctiveness of the Jewish male, whether imagined or culturally-grounded, lies at the root of Western 1 Ronald Schechter identifies several Jewish communities in France that totaled 40,000 inhabitants on the eve of the Revolution (Obstinate Hebrews 7). Jennifer R. Perlmutter 310 anti-Semitic sentiment. 2 Writers often associated him with two acts that contributed to this image: menstruation and circumcision. Katz observes that “[t]he notion of Jewish male menstruation was […] somewhat of a commonplace in medieval and early modern Europe” (454). It was thought that as punishment for rejecting Christ, all Jewish men bleed from their nose and hemorrhoids in a male form of menstruation. 3 Blood libel accusations originated in part from this notion with the acquisition of Christian blood a way for Jews to compensate for the blood they lose through nasal or anal menstruation. No matter its origin, the blood itself was seen as a powerful magical tool that Jews were able to harness for their own supernatural uses (Katz 457). Along with imagined menstruation, the cultural practice of circumcision was seen to feminize the Jewish male. Stripped of its foreskin, the Jewish penis was considered “a version of the female genitalia” and the Jewish man “no longer fully a male” (Gilman 127, 156). His penis is deformed and as such is a sign of perversion and a transmitter of disease. 4 Whether his penis functions sexually is irrelevant; the Jewish man is already not wholly male because his body is not. In short, the idea of the Jewish male was intrinsically linked to ambiguities of sex 5 and his basic humanness called into question as a result (Katz 440). Two late seventeenth-century literary works by female authors problematize the construction of the feminized male by transferring this imagery from a Jewish man to a Christian one over whom he exercises supernatural powers at another’s behest. The maleness of the Jewish magicians who appear in these stories is not subject to any sort of scrutiny but that of the objects of their supernatural powers is. As a result, there is a transference from the Jew to the Christian of the resultant anxiety about the feminized male as well as concern about the implications of this feminization for the patriarchal Christian state. The present article will focus on two works in 2 See Boyarin, Daniel. Unheroic Conduct. The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Male, Gilman, Sander. The Jew’s Body, Katz, David S. “Shylock’s Gender: Jewish Male Menstruation in Early Modern England,” and Resnick, Irven M. Marks of Distinction. Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages and his “Medieval Roots of the Myth of Jewish Male Menses.” 3 “[M]ale menstruation is a supernatural punishment that presumably affects all Jewish males” (Resnick “The Myth” 258). 4 “Circumcision became the key to marking the Jewish body as different within the perimeters of “healthy” or “diseased” (Gilman 155). 5 Boyarin makes a fascinating claim about the origin of such a perception that merits further inquiry: “[T]here is something correct […] in the persistent European representation of the Jewish man as a sort of woman. More than just an anti- Semitic stereotype, the Jewish ideal male as countertype to “manliness” is an assertive historical product of Jewish culture” (3-4). The Feminizing Jew 311 which members of the Christian nobility harness Jewish magic for their own benefit. In Anne de La Roche-Guilhen’s historical novella “Marie de Padille, sous Pierre le Cruel, roi de Castille” published in 1697, a jealous mistress engages a Jewish magician to render her royal lover selectively impotent; each time he tries to have intercourse with his wife and only his wife - , a cursed belt stings his groin and renders him unable to do so. 6 Similarly, Mme de Villedieu’s picaresque novel Mémoires de la vie de Henriette-Sylvie de Molière was published serially from 1671 to 1674 and briefly features a Jewish magician who cures the heroine’s new husband of his impotence in order for the couple to produce an heir. While these two works were popular at the time of their publication, little has been written subsequently about them. In particular, no one to my knowledge has read these two works in light of discussions of impotence, the supernatural, and statehood as they relate to literary constructions of the Jew. In both “Marie de Padille” and Mémoires, the impotent - or feminized 7 - male is not Jewish but Christian. In both, a Jewish man is held responsible in some manner for the impotency of the Christian one whether it be to inflict it on him or to cure him of it. It is as though male feminization were a disease, transmitted from the Jew to the Christian or cured by the former through supernatural means. While the Jewish magicians ostensibly play bit parts in each of these stories, serving the causes for which they have been engaged, their inclusion in them is in fact significant. It not only brings to light the fallibility of the male body, but, because masculinity was inextricably linked to questions of statehood, it also underscores the state’s vulnerability as a patriarchal stronghold. Many scholars agree that early modern anxieties about impotence did not stem from concerns about procreation and lineage but instead from concerns about virility and statehood. 8 This might well be true for most, 6 This is an example of accidental impotence which Catherine Rider explains “results from a physical condition such as castration or can be caused by maleficium”, or “the causing of harm by deliberate but mysterious means” (7). It is also an example of relative impotence since it depends on the man’s partner (Margolin and Witztum 336). Oddly Margolin and Witztum do not subsume supernatural impotence under “relative” impotence but makes it its own category. Impotence in the present story has characteristics of both, however. 7 Interestingly, the impotent male would have been considered even more feminized than the Jewish male since “the lack of masculine seed identified the female more readily than the presence of menstrual bleeding” (McClive 57). 8 See Patricia Simons’s The Sex of Men in Premodern Europe: A Cultural History, esp. 16, 21, and 76 and Molly Bourne’s “Vincenzo Gonzaga and the Body Politic: Impotence and Virility at Court,” esp. 36. Jennifer R. Perlmutter 312 but, in the case of kings and nobles, these concerns are inextricably linked. Anne de La Roche-Guilhen bases her novella “Marie de Padille, sous Pierre le Cruel, roi de Castille” on the well-known historic personages and events surrounding the monarchy of fourteenth-century Castile, but she focuses on the interpersonal stories that underlie them rather than on the more widely told political ones. 9 In this author’s telling, Don Pedro is the antagonist of the story, a fallible king who finds himself victimized by both his mistress and his wife. He had unhappily married Blanche of Bourbon for political reasons but continues his relationship with his mistress, Marie of Padille, with whom, in some tellings, he had already become involved and possibly even secretly married prior to his wedding. Blanche, herself miserable in marriage and pursued by Don Pedro’s half-brother, Frédéric, succumbs to his advances thereby cuckolding her husband. Don Pedro subsequently abandons Marie for a third, unnamed, undescribed woman. Blanche and Marie then die, and, because Blanche remained childless, the king is left with no legitimate heir. Toward the end of the story, we find Don Pedro desperately trying to ensure his family’s continued occupation of the throne. To this end, he claims after her death to have been married to Marie in order to legitimate his four children with her. This gesture comes too late, however; Don Pedro’s only son dies in early childhood and another halfbrother, Henry II, assassinates him and ascends to the throne. His family line has come to an end. Underlying the advent of this new patriarchy is the impotence spell cast by a Jewish magician whose services Marie solicits. Lesser clergy often promoted lay images and local accusations of Jews that reflected anxieties of infection and contagion. 10 These anxieties were linked to perceptions of the origins of witchcraft and its ability to facilitate the transmission of disease (Perlmutter 46). Scholars tend to cite the fifteenth century as the turning point in the overall European attitude toward witchcraft and magic. 11 Until that time, no one looked into the origin of spells either 9 Although the novella does not take place in seventeenth-century France, it is informed by the political and social codes of the society in which the author lives. The story therefore should be understood as a reflection of these mores and not of those of fourteenth-century Castile. 10 Locals considered Jews to be ridden with (sexually-)transmissible diseases and, as such, threats to the country’s national fiber. See Gilman 124-25 and 97. 11 In French writings of the time, no fundamental distinction seems to have be made between a witch and a sorcerer or magician, and I have used these terms interchangeably elsewhere. See Perlmutter 48n2. Margolin and Witzum, however, write “The witch is seen as an aberration, as an evil object who works under the influence of supernatural forces. The sorcerer, on the other hand, is described as The Feminizing Jew 313 beneficial or malefic (Closson 63). What eventually changed was the perception of witchcraft not simply as a sign against one’s neighbor but as a sign of devil worship and thus as a sin against God (Briggs 101). This change presaged a broader preoccupation of the early modern period. As Julio Baroja notes, “there is no doubt that at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century there was a positive obsession with the devil’s physical presence in the world” (38). 12 Witches and magicians were seen as mediums through which the devil operated, and one of the ways in which he did so was by attacking an individual’s sexual potency and ability to procreate. In the medieval and early-modern periods, as Catherine Rider notes, “the notion that witches attacked fertility seems to have been widespread” (183). The French tended to blame male impotence in particular on a magic spell effective by the tying or binding of a piece of cloth, a practice they referred to as nouer l’aiguillette. 13 Indeed, “through the seventeenth century, there were those who still regarded [impotence] as caused by witchcraft” (McLaren 50). 14 Since the association between Jews and sexual dysfunction persisted in the minds of lay people, it is not surprising that the transmission of sexual inadequacy or disease through magic was also associated with Jews and that authors such as La Roche- Guilhen and Villedieu, as we will see later, drew on this association to advance their stories. In “Marie de Padille,” the Jewish magician serves as the medium through which Marie hopes to tip the balance of power in her family’s favor. While his malefic spell prevents Don Pedro from engaging in sexual intercourse with his wife, Blanche, it does not affect his intimacy with an everyday person who is driven by understandable although disapproved motives…” (337). 12 Widespread Church-sanctioned witch-hunts meant to dissuade the laity from meting out justice and exacting vengeance privately outside the official system resulted (Muchembled 153). Between 1450 and 1750, there were approximately 100,000 witch trials in Europe and between 40,000 and 50,000 executions (Briggs 8). 13 See Jacob Margolin and Eliezer Witztum, “Supernatural impotence,” 334, Catherine Rider, Magic and Impotence in the Middle Ages, 198-99, and Patricia Simons, The Sex of Men, 103. 14 As one would expect, the eighteenth century Encylopédistes dismissed knot-tying and the supernatural forces that supposedly invested it with power as the cause of impotence. The Encyclopédie defines “sorcellerie” in the following way: “S. f. (Magie) opération magique, honteuse ou ridicule, attribuée stupidement par la superstition, à l'invocation & au pouvoir des démons. On n'entendit jamais parler de sortilèges & de maléfices que dans les pays & les tems d'ignorance. C'est pour cela que la sorcellerie régnoit si fort parmi nous dans le xiij. & xiv. siècles.” Jennifer R. Perlmutter 314 Marie. 15 Given the blatant distaste for her husband Blanche was already experiencing - not only did she miss France and know of Don Pedro’s reputation for cruelty prior to their marriage but she also found the king hideous to behold - such measures were excessive and unnecessary. The narrator comments, “Il ne fallait pas des artifices si malins pour perdre une reine déjà si malheureuse” (La Roche-Guilhen 52). It appears then that Don Pedro’s impotence was motivated more by Marie’s desire to emasculate and weaken Don Pedro than to dissuade Blanche from becoming intimate with him. By engaging the Jewish magician to inflict relative impotence on the king, Marie exploits the fact that “the early modern male body was replete with uncertainties that were deeply connected to anxieties about paternity, marriage and legitimacy. The male body was strongly identified with, if not reduced to, the functionality of its penis and testicles” (McClive 64). In compromising Don Pedro’s maleness, his mistress also compromises his “[f]ulfilment of patriarchal and reproductive duties [which] depended on the performativity of the male body” (McClive 64). She eliminates any chance that the king will produce an heir with Blanche and creates the albeit unrealized potential for any son born of her relationship with him to ascend to the throne. Supernaturally-induced impotence is also a determining factor in the outcome of Villedieu’s pseudo-autobiographical novel (Kuizenga 8), Mémoires de la vie de Henriette-Sylvie de Molière. Here the afflicted count of Englesac is not a king but a nobleman whose impotence appears to be of more immediate concern to his family than it is to his country. Nevertheless, the count’s compromised masculinity also raises questions regarding statehood as it relates to virility. As McClive writes, Concerns about the embodiment of masculinity were not restricted to the figure of the sterile, impotent sodomitical monarch, but extended to wider issues about inheritance and the role of marriage and the family in Catholic Europe. Linked to this were concerns about population growth, healthy generation and economic development. Marriage as the marker of ultimate 15 The narrator describes this transaction and its aftermath in the following way: “Comme elle avait l’esprit prévoyant et qu’elle savait parfaitement que les cœurs des hommes, et surtout des rois, sont fort sujets à l’inconstance, elle avait pratiqué, pour se faire des remparts contre ce malheur, un juif magicien déclaré, qui par sa noire et abominable science faisait des crimes aussi horribles que son âme. Ce fut à ce disciple des démons qu’elle confia la ceinture de don Pedre, et le charme qu’il mit dessus fut tel, que lorsqu’il s’en voulut servir il crut être ceint et piqué d’un serpent et fit des cris épouvantables” (La Roche-Guilhen 52). The belt was a gift from Blanche to her husband that Marie borrows in order to have the Jewish magician put a curse on it. The Feminizing Jew 315 social acceptance was necessary for access to mastership status in guilds and fatherhood was the embodiment of manliness. (46) When Henriette-Sylvie finally weds the count of Englesac after more than one hundred and forty pages of fortunes and misfortunes that bring them together and drive them apart in dizzying succession, it is normal to expect them to successfully consummate their marriage. Unfortunately, Henriette- Sylvie and her husband had hidden their nuptials from her mother-in-law because she disapproved of their union, and they are now paying the price. The count’s mother belatedly learns of the wedding and is thought to have caused her son’s impotence as revenge. 16 As the narrator recalls, “quand [le comte] crut avoir enfin trompé cette fortune, dont il avait lui-même été trompé tant de fois; il trouva qu’il venait de tomber dans la plus épouvantable disgrâce, à son gré, qui pouvait lui arriver. […] [I]l se trouva marié inutilement” (145). 17 As a microcosm of the state, a marriage needed to be well functioning, and an unconsummated one undermined its foundation and the role of the man within both his home and society. As Bourne explains, “[impotence] was considered not only a threat to family lineage, but also an integral, intangible component of how the body was implicated in the construction of a man’s social identity” (36). The count’s masculinity and his social status depend on a successful resolution to his problem. Although annulment was an option for unconsummated marriages and the count of Englesac first proposes this solution, 18 Henriette-Sylvie and the 16 Henriette-Sylvie states regretfully, “un cruel charme avait été jeté sur nous, par quelqu’un de nos ennemis” (Villedieu 145). From the twelfth century onward, maleficium was widely thought to cause accidental impotence. As Myerson remarks, “impotence in particular was often deemed to be a result of bewitchment” (166-67). However, “belief in witchcraft, magic, possession, and the supernatural had all begun to wane by the end of the 1600s, and medical practitioners increasingly privileged natural remedies and explanations of illness over religious ones” (Weisser 182). By the eighteenth century, demonic intervention was no longer commonly suspected (Merrick 189). Nevertheless, “it was not until towards the close of the nineteenth century that any real insight into the medico-psychological nature of sexual difficulties and deviations became apparent” (Trethowan 341). 17 Early modern courts regarded erection, penetration, and ejaculation as the three signs of male potency (Simons 8 and Merrick 188). The narrator does not specify which of these three functions the count of Englesac lacks, but that omission is inconsequential to the present analysis. 18 Curiously, “[s]terility (the inability to reproduce, which often remained inexplicable) did not constitute grounds for annulment, but impotence (the inability to copulate, which seemed less difficult to verify) did, as long as the condition, whether it resulted from natural or accidental causes, was permanent rather than Jennifer R. Perlmutter 316 count instead decide to pursue a cure in order to have children. As in “Marie de Padille,” the services of an unnamed Jewish magician whom the count encounters by chance are engaged. Upon learning of his affliction, the Jew offers to use his supernatural powers to restore his sexual function and thus his virility. As Trethowan reports, remedies for impotence listed in the well-known 1486 treatise on witchcraft, Malleus Maleficarium, are conventional and include pilgrimages, confessions, and prayer; magic was considered a last resort (347). In fact, “[a] common question was whether it was legitimate to treat magically-caused impotence with ‘magical’ cures” (Rider 211). 19 In the present story, however, the count does not attempt any other cure and immediately accepts the Jewish magician’s offer; he readily harnesses his powers to counteract the bewitchment thought to have been inflicted on him by his mother. 20 It is unclear whether the magician’s faith influences the count’s hasty acceptance, but the exercise of magic by a non- Catholic was not considered heretical and therefore harnessing it for one’s own use would have been more socially acceptable (Perlmutter 46). Unlike the magician of “Marie de Padille” who causes social and political disorder through his actions, this one engages in what Myerson among others refers to as “sympathetic magic” (166), curing the count’s impotence and thereby relegitimizing his marriage. Once a spell had been cast and a victim rendered sexually powerless, it was up to him to seek an antidote to the curse in order to ensure his social standing. The Jewish magician of Mémoires was engaged to make the male body whole and to strengthen the marriage between Henriette-Sylvie and the count of Englesac by making it physically possible for them to produce an heir. The Jewish magician’s efforts are initially rewarded and the couple’s marriage solidified, although, as in “Marie de Padille,” the relationship ends temporary and antedated the marriage” (Merrick 188). Perhaps this distinction stems from the fact that it was difficult to determine whether the man or the woman was responsible for the sterility of the couple whereas it was clear who the impotent one was. The count does suggest annulment (which is presented as a legitimate option despite the fact that the narrator suggests that his impotence did not antedate the marriage) and encourages his wife to instead marry his trusted friend, Signac, who had been one of her suitors. 19 The narrator does not indicate whether the count of Englesac’s mother herself engaged the services of a Jewish magician in order to cast an impotence spell on her son. 20 Henriette-Sylvie’s narration underscores the haste with which the count makes his decision, “Il avait pris la résolution de se retirer auprès de Votre Altesse, et en y allant il avait trouvé un Juif qui lui avait promis de le guérir, et qui en effet ne lui avait pas menti” (Villedieu 154). The Feminizing Jew 317 in disorder. Henriette-Sylvie becomes pregnant soon after her husband is cured, and we would expect to arrive at a happy conclusion to the couple’s story were it not for the hundred pages that remain to be read. Indeed, our heroine miscarries and the count dies shortly thereafter, never to produce an heir. As was the case with most males in early modern France, the count’s status in society depended in great part on this proof of his manliness. As McClive explains, “the ‘dividends of masculinity’ - control of family, property and participation in the civic community - were directly linked to proof of physical potency through the engendering of progeny in marriage emphasizing the link between patriarchy and the male body” (45). The novel carries only Henriette-Sylvie’s name in the title, and the untimely death of her husband only reinforces the centrality of the female protagonist and, by default, the insignificance of the male one. Henriette-Sylvie does not remarry and, much like Villedieu herself who enjoyed a great deal of financial and therefore social independence, lives her life as a widow to the fullest. As Barbara Woshinsky asserts, “the lame ending to [the count and Henriette-Sylvie’s] drawn-out relationship has the effect of minimizing the importance of marriage in Sylvie’s life, and, by extension, in women’s lives in general” (179). Indeed, following her husband’s death, the eponymous protagonist continues on her adventures for a time before retiring to a convent to live a quiet, comfortable life. She then chooses to re-enter society but dies a childless widow. As in “Marie de Padille,” the Jewish magician of Mémoires is meant to create a new order by casting a spell on the central male figure, but in each work, the magician’s efforts do not suffice and the masculinity of the male protagonist remains compromised. The impotence - or feminization - of the main male figure in both “Marie de Padille” and Mémoires reveals itself to be more than a private matter as each narrative unfolds. Given his royal status, it is no surprise that Don Pedro’s inability to have children with his wife, Blanche, threatens the stability of his kingdom in addition to that of his marriage. Marie’s plan has backfired, and even her own son does not live long enough to ensure the king’s patrimony. By harnessing a Jewish magician’s supernatural powers in order to render her lover selectively impotent, Marie has caused an unintended shift of power within Castile: a rival family member has ascended to the throne. In literary texts, impotence can serve as “a metaphor for, and an actual cause of, failures of the body politic” (McLaren xii), and this is the case in La Roche-Guilhen’s novella. Don Pedro’s bodily disorder serves as a harbinger for the overthrow of his reign. Similarly, the count of Englesac’s impotence uncovers the vulnerability of marriage in general. In spite of the Jewish magician’s efforts to make him whole, the count’s ultimate inability to father a child and his untimely death followed by Henriette-Sylvie’s Jennifer R. Perlmutter 318 adventurous widowhood expose the fallibility and relative insignificance of this patriarchal institution. In reference to early modern France in particular, Merrick explains, “impotence constituted something more than an emotional and demographic misfortune, because it threatened the sacramental and patriarchal principles of the Ancien Régime” (187). Don Pedro and the count of Englesac’s compromised maleness reflects the vulnerabilities of patriarchal strongholds such as family lines and marriage. Likewise, the feminization of the male body serves as a metaphor for the feminization of public ones and gives rise to concerns about a potential shift of power toward the woman. As Merrick explains, “[i]mpotence cases endangered “public order,” as another lawyer put it, in more explicitly political terms, on the eve of the Revolution, because they threatened not only the masculinity but also the status/ estate of “citizens,” i.e. male citizens, as a whole” (191). Because her son with Don Pedro was a minor, Marie most likely would have exercised a significant amount of power in his name had he inherited the throne after his father’s death. For her part, Henriette-Sylvie, like the author herself, does not need a husband - or a child for that matter - in order to fully enjoy life. She determines her own destiny outside the bonds of marriage as a woman independent of male authority within her home. In the early modern period, “[i]mpotence cases took place…against the background of the gendered structures of authority and subordination […] that regulated the household and the state” (Merrick 192-93). Concerns about the social disorder entailed by failures of these structures were closely linked to fears about women’s potential to feminize them by redefining the power dynamic in their favor. Through their depiction of compromised male bodies, La Roche-Guilhen and Villedieu encourage their contemporary readers to reconsider the vulnerability of patriarchal strongholds such as the Christian state and of marriage as a microcosm of it. In this way, these works interrogate the validity of impedements to the feminization of the state such as Salic Law. In both “Marie de Padille” and Mémoires, a male Jewish magician is the key figure held responsible for the masculinity of the main male character and therefore the catalyst for concerns about the feminization of public bodies. Because the image of the male Jew as feminized was widespread in medieval and early modern Europe, literary constructions of Jewish men made convenient mediums through which authors such as La Roche-Guilhen and Villedieu could explore the implications of the feminization of the patriarchal Christian state. In addition, the Jewish people, like women, were both of the state and subordinate to it. The Jews’ official protected status in the eyes of the Church did not prevent their loyalties from being questioned. According to Lehrmann, “the French Jews were haunted by a The Feminizing Jew 319 real complex, by the fear of not seeming sufficiently patriotic” (22), and I hold that this perception was linked to their perceived femaleness and associated weakness. Providing services to Christians whether they be moneylending, trade, or even magic spells was a means for them to be useful and therefore demonstrate their loyalty and belonging. It might appear that the Jewish magicians’ usefulness in “Marie de Padille” and Mémoires was limited to a particular person and situation, a view that Glassman corroborates when he writes, “[w]hile Jews had long been considered to be sorcerers, their powers were limited to effecting good or evil upon single individuals and not to influencing the stability of an entire community or nation” (58). However, the causing or curing of impotence was inextricably linked to questions of statehood. 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