In the Middle Ages, prevalent theological thought asserted that women were the weaker spiritual being as evidenced by Eve's submission to temptation. Because of Eve's disobedience, God deemed her unworthy to decide her fate. Therefore, women's spiritual agency was revoked, and all of Eve's daughters had to experience God through men.
Bramimond, however, does not experience her religion through her husband nor does her husband, Marsilion, act as a guide to her spirituality. In Laisses 188-189, no one prompts Bramimond to condemn her gods. She sees her wounded and defeated husband and reacts without anyone else’s input. As Kinoshita notes, “Stepping into the place of her maimed husband, Bramimonde leads the type of revolt usually attributed to male Saracens who wreak punishment upon their gods…” (Kinoshita 93) However, Bramimond, according to Kinoshita loses her independent thought and agency by submitting to Christianity.
I’m not sure I agree. There is no doubt that Bramimond is defeated politically. "All her towers Queen Bramimond surrenders." (Roland 265) However, we cannot assume that her conversion is involuntary or that she is simply submitting to a male dominated world in which she must keep her silence. The conversion, while sanctioned by Charlemagne, is not under his direct guidance. As far as the reader is concerned, there is no evidence that Bramimond suddenly loses her ability to form her own opinion. Bramimond listens to the sermons and parables and converts of her own free will, just as she condemns her pagan gods without instruction from anyone else. To say that Bramimond's conversion is involuntary is to revoke the agency that she has when she condemns her pagan religion as useless.
Bramimond does not convert simply to marry a Christian man and have him dictate her spiritual understanding. Kinoshita states that the stock Saracen princess character converts to Christianity for the love of a Frankish knight. However, Kinoshita ups the stakes and says "Bramimonde demystifies the function of the Saracen princess: to abandon religion, family, and culture to embrace Frankish Christianity." (Kinoshita 92) According to the poet, though, Bramimond's country is conquered by Charlemagne. Her husband, who is her only mentioned family, is dead, and on her own, she rejects her religion. Everything that isn't forcefully taken from Bramimond, she rejects of her own free will, which leaves her without a husband or a lover to dictate her religious leanings.
More significantly, she is baptized and renamed by women. Technically, she isn’t submitting to Charlemagne and his imposing Christian empire but to women of the Christian faith. While I’m not arguing that Bramimond is swept away into a feminist religious utopia, her submission is not to the male/military power structure present throughout the rest of the poem. Women legitimize her conversion. The fact that she is renamed by women doesn’t prove her continued agency, but the involvement of women in her conversion show that she continues to experience religion without the contribution of men.
1 comment:
I think you make a very good case for Bramimond's voluntary conversion, but I'm still inclined to agree with Kinoshita about male dominated conversion. In my opinion, even if she is cursing her own gods and bemoaning their uselessness, these men killed her husband and removed her from power. She has lost agency and speech following this.
For me though, the moment that I stopped reading looked up and shivered was the moment Charlemagne declared that he was going to convert her. It read "She's to go captive to fair France by and by,/Her would the King convert by love to Christ" (266). Now when I hear that I see the guards looking at each other and nudging. They know the score. Charlemagne is taking her to bed, whether she likes it or not. Why? Because the Christian is always right.
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