A Medieval Storybook: The Urban(e) Tales of Petrus Alfonsi

Abstract

A Medieval Storybook:The Urban(e) Tales of Petrus Alfonsi Gillian Adams (bio) According to recent historical research into the history of childhood, the three pervasive myths about medieval children generated by theso-called Ariès thesis, namely that parents did not love their children, that they were considered "miniature adults," and that childhood was not "discovered" until the eighteenth century, are based on faulty evidence.1 Nevertheless, these myths have prevented children's literature scholars from addressing the earlier children's literature that actually exists. In fact, the different constructions of childhood to be found in earlier periods do not logically preclude the existence of literature designed at least in part for and accessible to children, and to claim that they do is a type of cultural colonialism that children's literature scholars now profess to be anxious to avoid. Elsewhere I have discussed such claims and suggested several genres such as drama, poetry, and frame tales, worth examining as a site for probable children's literature. This paper examines more closely an example of the didactic or wisdom literature genre, the popular Disciplina Clericalis or "Student's Guide" from the first half of the twelfth century, demonstrates why it is children's literature, and discusses the ways in which the work reflects a differently constructed child audience from our own. Petrus Alfonsi, the author of the Disciplina Clericalis, was an important Spanish Jew, Rabbi Moses Sefardi, who converted to Christianity on 29 June 1106, at the age of fortyfour. The king of Aragon, Alfonso the Battler, acted as his sponsor and godfather, and Petrus Alfonsi took his post-conversion name from him and from the saint's day on which he was converted. At some point between 1106 and 1116, Alfonsi went to England to become the personal physician to King Henry I (Tolan 10, Jones 13). He then continued on to northern France to teach, but we are ignorant about his further career, the date of the Disciplina Clericalis, or the date of his death. He wrote two works clearly directed at adults: the Dialogi contra Iudaeos, an attack on Judaism (circa 1108-10), "the single most important anti-Jewish text of the Latin Middle Ages" (Tolan 11), which exists in seventy-nine manuscripts, and the undated Epistola ad peripateticos, from his French period, a defense of astrology. While in England he also translated from Arabic and adapted astronomical tables attributed to al-Khwârizmî. Medievalists will be familiar with the importance of Spain to northern European education and higher learning. Under Moslem domination since the beginning of the eighth century, its major cities were centers of scholarship in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and, in addition to Arabic material, Spanish libraries contained most of what Greek, Hellenistic, and Byzantine literature, philosophy, and science has come down to us; for example, the library at Cordoba contained about 600,000 volumes (Bowen 87). Moreover, urban centers, commerce, and merchant associations had not declined in Spain to the extent that they had in the Europe north of the Pyrenees of the earlier Middle Ages. Education, free of the Catholic church, was more flexible and, probably, universal—all Jewish males had to be able, at least, to read the Torah, and Islam is also a religion of the book. Christian rulers began to gain control of the north of Spain beginning in the eleventh century, and as commerce with the south increased throughout Europe, the demand for at least enough literacy to enable one to engage in business correspondence became overwhelming (see Eby ch. 19). By the early twelfth century, at the time that Alfonsi flourished, the wisdom of the ancient, Islamic, and Judaic traditions was gradually becoming known to the west in translation. Indeed, the writings and career of Alfonsi could serve as an exemplar of the process. No one will argue that Alfonsi's attack on the Jews and his defense of astrology are not directed at adults and probably, given their popularity, were written in response to adult demand. But the greater the distance in the past and the more alien the culture, the more difficult it is for us to recognize children's literature. Some indicators...

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