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Mass Communication 63
topos. G‹erard says that Christ has all the qualities of an ideal
bridegroom: he is eloquent, wealthy, wise, attractive in appearance,
powerful, noble—and immortal. This last quality is clearly
not for the human bridegroom, however idealized, but in general
the list converges—perhaps more closely than coincidence can account
for—with the image of the attractive knight found in the
romances of Chr‹etien de Troyes. That is not to say that Chr‹etien
influenced the preacher. More probably, they both reflect generally
current social assumptions. However, this means that G‹erard’s list
would have struck cords in the imaginative and fantasy life of many
listeners.
The image of the soul’s marriage to God is turned by the Florentine
Aldobrandino da Toscanella into a reflection on the nobility of
man: it could be designated ‘other-worldly humanism’. Explaining
why the marriage of God and the soul really belongs to the next life,
he gives a fascinating glimpse of his structured universe. Creatures
are ranked in order of nobility, as are their settings in the elements.
Thus plants go with earth; above them, fish with the nobler element
of water; above them, the birds of the air, a still higher element. So
‘those things which are fittingly grouped together in nature are fittingly
grouped together in a place, as all plants are on earth’ (and
so on). But man has a likeness to God, so the marriage takes place
in heaven. ‘For . . . a noble pilgrim does not willingly contract a
marriageinthelandofhispilgrimage...butreturnstotheplace
of his birth.’
This leads on to the general unsatisfactoriness of life in this world,
where ‘we are made sad, we grow heated, we get thirsty, we grieve,
wegetsick...Forinthisworldthereisnoonewhocouldhaveall
good things without some evil. For some are good-looking, and yet
poor; some are noble, but reduced to beggary; some are rich and
noble, but su·er from ill health; some are rich and noble and healthy,
but childless; but some, though they have children, nevertheless
It is analysed in N. B‹eriou and D. L. d’Avray, ‘The Image of the Ideal Husband
in Thirteenth Century France’ (1990), in B‹eriou and d’Avray, Modern Questions
about Medieval Sermons, 31–61.
For the explanation of the analogy see d’Avray, Medieval Marriage Sermons:
G‹erard de Mailly, paras. 21–9.
See B‹eriou and d’Avray, ‘The Image of the Ideal Husband in Thirteenth
Century France’, 42–6, for a fuller analysis of the parallels.
See Aldobrandino da Toscanella, Document 1. 12. 5.