MARGARET SINEX

 

ECHOIC IRONY IN WALTER MAP'S SATIRE AGAINST THE CISTERCIANS

WALTER MAP’S TREATMENT of the Cistercian order of monks has long been recognized as a first-rate satire and a memorably acrid contribution to the many criticisms aimed at the Cistercians in the late twelfth century.  Map’s satire appears in his De Nugis Curialium (The Courtiers’ Trifles), which he composed largely in the 1180s and continued to revise during the following decade, perhaps, as some speculate, taking it with him to Oxford when he became archdeacon in 1197.  During his long lifetime (c. 1135-1210) Map served his King, Henry II, as a "king’s justice."  His book appears to have been a private manuscript, what has been aptly termed "the commonplace book of a great after-dinner speaker."

The Cistercian order targeted in Distinctio 1:25 of De Nugis is one in a series of religious orders that Map scrutinizes.  He was not alone in criticizing the monks of several different orders; we find parallels in the Latin works of better known contemporaries: Gerald of Wales, John of Salisbury, and Nigel de Longchamps.  The Cistercians, or White Monks (so-called for their habits made from undyed wool), founded their order motivated by reformist zeal. Yet, as Giles Constable notes, by the middle of the century "it was more or less open season for all religious orders."  Accusations against the Cistercians gained momentum in the 1130s; before 1150 critics targeted the White Monks’ "self-righteousness," and after that date, their "avarice."  The narrator Map creates for his chapter on the Cistercians implacably condemns their attitudes and actions, saving his juiciest (and funniest) assaults for their ferocious rapacity and spiritual pride.

In addition to its humor, one of the keenest pleasures Map’s satire offers the modern reader is its beguiling illusion of immediacy. With a deftness of touch reminiscent of Chaucer, Map achieves a high degree of realism through the pretense of reporting direct speech. Like Chaucer’s pilgrim narrator, Map’s narrator presents himself as a witness to the rush of events around him—in his case, the tumult engulfing him at the court of Henry II. And like his pilgrim successor, he offers himself as a faithful recorder of words spoken by a wide range of personages and displays a comfortable familiarity with all the principals involved in this sorry exposé of monastic turpitude: Dom Reric, who curses the monks for their lack of modesty; the Lord Abbot of Pontigny, who defends his monks against the charge of tampering with an order of bacon they had sold; and Henry II’s troops, who defend their brutality against civilians while campaigning in Limousin.

The narrator’s apparent chumminess with such a startling (if unlikely) array of people derives in large part from the richness and energy of the speeches he reports. In addition to evoking such detailed, textured realism, these speeches, which take the form of pairs of contrasting assertions, voice many of the most blistering charges against the Cistercian monks. And since we find a number of similar pairs throughout the satire, they constitute one of Map’s key narrative strategies. Further, we find that their very forcefulness arises from a type of pungent verbal irony best analyzed according to a new model developed recently by two pragmatics theorists, Deidre Wilson and Dan Sperber.