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  FORBIDDEN TO SING

  In the year 1234, the Catholic religion prohibited women from singing in churches.

  Women, impure thanks to Eve, befouled sacred music, which only boys or castrated men could intone.

  The pain of silence lasted seven centuries, until the beginning of the twentieth.

  A few years before their mouths were shut, back in the twelfth century, the nuns of Bingen convent on the banks of the Rhine still sang freely to the glory of paradise. Luckily for our ears, the liturgical music Abbess Hildegard created to rise on the wings of female voices has survived intact, unblemished by time.

  In her convent at Bingen and in others where she preached, Hildegard did more than make music. She was a mystic, a visionary, a poet, and a physician who studied the personality of plants and the curative powers of waters. She also worked miracles to carve out space where her nuns could be free, despite the masculine monopoly of the faith.

  FORBIDDEN TO FEEL

  “Oh feminine figure! How glorious you are!”

  Hildegard of Bingen believed that “blood that stains is the blood of war, not the blood of menstruation,” and she openly invited all to celebrate the joy of being born a woman.

  In her writings on medicine and natural sciences, she dared to stand up for female pleasure in terms that were remarkable for her church and unique in the Europe of her day. Surprisingly sagacious for a puritan abbess who lived in and by strict habits, a virgin among virgins, Hildegard declared that the pleasure of love that smolders in the blood is more subtle and profound in a woman than in a man:

  “In women, it is comparable to the sun and its sweetness, which delicately warms the earth and makes it fertile.”

  A century before Hildegard, the celebrated Persian physician Avicenna included in his Canon of Medicine a more detailed description of the female orgasm, “from the moment when the flesh around her eyes begins to redden, her breath quickens, and she begins to stammer.”

  Since pleasure was man’s business, European translations of Avicenna’s works omitted that page.

  AVICENNA

  “Life is measured by its intensity, not by its duration,” he said, but he lived nearly seventy years, not bad for the eleventh century.

  He was taken care of by the best doctor in Persia: himself.

  For centuries his Canon of Medicine was the work to consult in the Arab world, in Europe, and in India.

  This treatise on diseases and remedies not only collected the legacies of Hippocrates and Galen, it also drank from the springs of Greek philosophy and oriental knowledge.

  At the age of seventeen, Avicenna had already set up a clinic.

  Long after his death, he was still taking care of patients.

  A FEUDAL LADY EXPLAINS HOW TO CARE FOR EARTHLY GOODS

  When it comes to sex, every churchman, from the pope in Rome to the most humble parish priest, dictates lessons on good behavior. How can they know so much about an activity they are not allowed to pursue?

  As early as 1074, Pope Gregory VII warned that only those married to the Church were worthy of practicing divine service:

  “Priests ought to escape the clutches of their wives,” he decreed.

  Soon thereafter, in 1123, the Letran Council imposed obligatory celibacy. The Catholic Church has warded off carnal temptation with a vow of chastity ever since, and it is the only enterprise run by single men in the entire religious world. The Church demands of its priests exclusive dedication, a 24/7 routine that protects the peace of their souls from conjugal strife and babies’ shrieks.

  Perhaps, who knows, the Church also wished to preserve its earthly goods, and thus placed them safely beyond the reach of women’s and children’s claims to inheritance. A trifling detail, but nevertheless it is worth recalling that at the beginning of the twelfth century the Church owned one-third of all the lands of Europe.

  A FEUDAL LORD EXPLAINS HOW TO CARE FOR THE PEASANTS

  At the end of the twelfth century, Bertrand de Born, lord of Périgord, warrior and troubadour of violent verse and valiant curse, defined his peasants thus:

  By reason of his species and his manners, the peasant comes below the pig. He finds moral life profoundly repugnant. If by chance he achieves great wealth, he loses all sense. So you see, his pockets must be kept empty. He who fails to dominate his peasants only augments their vileness.

  FOUNT OF THE FOUNTAIN

  Peasants did not tire of displeasing their lords.

  The fountain of the city of Mainz offers artistic testimony to that fact.

  “Don’t miss it,” the tourist guides insist. This German renaissance treasure, displayed in all its golden splendor in the market square, is the symbol of the city and the hub of its celebrations.

  It was born of a celebration: the fountain, crowned by the Virgin and child, was a gift from the archbishop of Brandenburg to give thanks to heaven for the victory of the princes.

  Desperate peasants had stormed the castles whose opulence they had paid for with their sweat, a multitude of pitchforks and hoes defying the power of cannon, spears, and swords.

  Thousands of men hanged or beheaded gave mute testimony to the reestablishment of order. The fountain as well.

  PLAGUES

  In the medieval division of labor, priests prayed, knights killed, and peasants fed all and sundry. In times of famine, peasants abandoned ruined crops and fruitless harvests, too much rain or none at all, and took to the road, fighting over carcasses and roots. And when their skin turned yellow and their eyes bugged out, they took to assaulting castles or convents.

  In normal times, the peasants worked and, moreover, they sinned. When plagues occurred, the peasants caught the blame. Misfortune did not strike because the priests prayed poorly, but because their faithful were unfaithful.

  From the pulpits, God’s functionaries cursed them:

  “Slaves to the flesh! You deserve divine punishment!”

  Between 1348 and 1351, divine punishment liquidated one out of every four Europeans. The plague razed fields and cities, did in sinners and virtuous alike.

  According to Boccaccio, the Florentines had breakfast with their relatives and supper with their ancestors.

  WOMEN AGAINST THE PLAGUE

  Because the land was offended, the plague spread across Russia, annihilating animals and humans. Men had forgotten to bring offerings in gratitude for the last harvest, or they had wounded the pregnant land by driving shovels or posts into it while it slept under the snow.

  Then women enacted a ritual passed down from the dark night of time. The earth, origin and destiny of all who live upon it, received her daughters, fecund like her, and not a single man dared show his face.

  A woman yoked herself to the plow, oxlike, and set off to make the furrow. Others followed, sowing seeds. All walked naked, barefoot, their hair down. They banged pots and pans and laughed great big belly laughs, scaring off fear and cold and the plague.

  CURSED WATER

  We know Nostradamus from his predictions, which are still hot tickets all over the world.

  We may not know that Nostradamus was also a physician, an extraordinary one who did not believe in leeches. For the plague he prescribed air and water: ventilating air, cleansing water.

  Though filth incubated disease, water had a bad reputation in Christian Europe. Except in baptism, bathing was avoided because it felt good and invited sin. In the tribunals of the Holy Inquisition, frequent bathing was proof of Mohammedan heresy. When Christianity was imposed on Spain as the only truth, the crown ordered the many public baths left by the Muslims razed, because they were sources of perdition.

  Not a single saint, male or female, ever set foot in a bath, and kings rarely bathed since that’s what perfume was for. Queen Isabella of Castile had a soul that was sparkling clean, but historians debate whether she bathed two or three times in her entire life. The elegant Sun King of France, the first man to wear high heels, bathed only once between 1647 and 1711. And that time it wa
s on doctor’s orders.

  SAINTS OF THE MIDDLE AGES PRACTICED MEDICINE ON AN INDUSTRIAL SCALE

  According to contemporary testimony, Saint Dominic of Silos “opened the closed eyes of the blind, cleansed the filthy bodies of lepers, afforded the sick the longed for gift of health, granted the deaf their lost hearing, straightened hunchbacks, made the lame leap with glee, made the crippled jump for joy, made the mute shout . . . ”

  Father Bernard of Toulouse “cured twelve blind men, three deaf men, seven cripples, four hunchbacks, and healed other sick people numbering more than thirty.”

  Saint Louis “brought back to health an innumerable quantity of people suffering from tumefactions, gout, paralysis, blindness, fistulas, tumors and lameness.”

  Death did not reduce the saints’ therapeutic powers. In France, cemeteries kept strict account of the miracles that healed visitors to sacred sepulchres: “41% hemiplegics and paraplegics, 19% blind, 12% demented, 8% deaf, mutes, and deaf-mutes, and 17% suffering from fevers and other maladies.”

  ORIGIN OF CHILDHOOD

  If the plague didn’t get them, cold or hunger did. Execution by hunger could occur early in a poor child’s life, if not enough milk was left over in Mother’s breasts after nursing the infants of the rich.

  But not even babes of a comfortable cradle looked out on an easy life. All over Europe, adults helped boost the infant mortality rate by subjecting their children to an education that tended toward the severe side.

  The educational process started with turning babies into mummies. Every day servants wrapped them from head to foot in cloths tightly secured by straps and ties.

  That way their pores were closed to plagues and to the satanic vapors that permeated the air, and what’s more the infants would not be a bother. Held prisoner, they could barely breathe, never mind cry, and with arms and legs pinioned they could not kick or fuss.

  If bedsores or gangrene did not finish them off, these human packages moved on to the next stage. With belts holding them upright, they learned how to stand and walk as God commands, thus avoiding the animal habit of crawling on all fours. Once they were a bit bigger, they began an intensive course in the many uses of the cat-o-nine-tails, the cane, the paddle, the wooden or iron rod, and other pedagogical tools.

  Not even kings were safe. Louis XIII of France was crowned king on his eighth birthday, and he began the day by receiving his quota of lashes.

  The king survived childhood.

  Other children also survived, who knows how, and became adults well schooled to educate their own children.

  GOD’S LITTLE ANGELS

  When Flora Tristán traveled to London, she was astounded to find that English mothers never caressed their children. Children occupied the lowest rung on the social ladder, below that of women. They were as deserving of trust as a broken sword.

  Nevertheless, three centuries earlier it was an Englishman who became the first high-ranking European to champion children as persons worthy of respect and enjoyment. Thomas More loved them and defended them, spent time with them every chance he got, and shared with them the desire for a life of never-ending play.

  His example did not last long.

  For centuries, and until very recently, corporal punishment was legal in British schools. Democratically, without regard to social class, adult civilization had the right to correct childhood barbarity by beating girls with straps and striking boys with rods or canes. In the name of morals, for many generations these disciplinary instruments corrected the vices and deviations of those who had gone astray.

  Not until 1986 were straps, rods, and canes outlawed in British state schools. Later on, the private schools followed suit.

  To keep children from being children, parents may still punish them as long as the blows are applied “in reasonable measure and without leaving a mark.”

  FATHER OF THE OGRE

  The best-known children’s stories, terrorist creations that they are, also merit inclusion in the arsenal of adult weaponry against little people.

  Hansel and Gretel tips you off that your parents are likely to abandon you. Little Red Riding Hood teaches you that every stranger could be the wolf who will eat you up. Cinderella compels you to distrust stepmothers and stepsisters. But the character who most effectively teaches obedience and spreads fear is the Ogre.

  The child-eating Ogre in Perrault’s stories was based on an illustrious gentleman, Gilles de Retz, who fought alongside Joan of Arc at Orléans and in other battles.

  This lord of several castles, the youngest marshal in France, was accused of torturing, raping, and killing wayward children caught wandering about his estates in search of bread or perhaps a job in one of the choruses that sang to the glory of his accomplishments.

  Under torture, Gilles confessed to hundreds of infanticides, and gave detailed accounts of his carnal delights.

  He ended up on the gallows.

  Five and a half centuries later, he was absolved. A tribunal in the French Senate reviewed the trial, decreed it was a travesty, and revoked the sentence.

  He was unable to celebrate the good news.

  THE TATAR OGRE

  Genghis Khan, the Antichrist who led the Mongolian hordes sent by Satan, was the Ogre of the stories that for many years terrorized Europe’s adults.

  “They aren’t men! They are demons!” shrieked Frederick II, king of Sicily and of Prussia.

  In reality, Europe was offended because Genghis Khan thought the continent not worth invading. He scorned it as backward, and stuck to Asia. Using rather indelicate methods, he conquered an enormous empire that stretched from the Mongolian plateau to the Russian steppes, encompassing China, Afghanistan, and Persia.

  His reputation rubbed off on the entire Khan clan.

  Yet Genghis’s grandson Kublai Khan did not devour raw the Europeans who turned up from time to time before his throne in Beijing. He feted them, listened to them, hired them.

  Marco Polo worked for him.

  MARCO POLO

  He was in prison in Genoa when he dictated the book of his travels. His fellow inmates believed every word. While they listened to the adventures of Marco Polo, twenty-seven years wandering on the roads of the Orient, each and every prisoner escaped and traveled with him.

  Three years later, the former prisoner from Venice published his book. “Published” is a manner of speaking, because the printing press had yet to appear in Europe. Several handmade copies circulated. The few readers Marco Polo found did not believe a thing.

  He must have been hallucinating: how could glasses of wine float up untouched to the lips of the great Khan? How could a melon from Afghanistan cost as much as a woman? The most generous among them said the merchant writer was not well in the head.

  By the Caspian Sea, on the road from Mount Ararat, this delirious raver had seen burning oils, then in the mountains of China he’d seen flaming rocks. Ridiculous at best were his claims about the Chinese having paper money bearing the seal of the Mongolian emperor, and ships that carried over a thousand people. The unicorn from Sumatra and the singing sands of the Gobi Desert evoked guffaws, and those textiles that laughed at fire, which Marco Polo found beyond Taklamakan, were simply unbelievable.

  Centuries later it all came out:

  the oils that burned were petroleum,

  the stone that burned was coal,

  the Chinese had been using paper money for five hundred years,

  and their ships, ten times the size of European ones, had gardens that

  provided sailors with fresh vegetables to prevent scurvy,

  the unicorn was a rhinoceros,

  the wind made the tops of the dunes in the desert whine,

  and the fire-resistant fabric was made of asbestos.

  At the time of Marco Polo, Europe knew nothing of petroleum, coal, paper money, large ships, rhinoceroses, high dunes, or asbestos.

  WHAT DID THE CHINESE NOT INVENT?

  When I was a child, I knew China as the coun
try on the other side of the world from Uruguay. You could get there if you had the patience to dig a hole deep enough.

  Later on, I learned something about world history, but world history was the history of Europe and it remains so today. The rest of the world lay, and still lies, in darkness. China too. We know little or nothing of the past of the country that invented practically everything.

  Silk began there, five thousand years ago.

  Before anyone else the Chinese discovered, named, and cultivated tea.

  They were the first to mine salt from below ground and the first to use gas and oil in their stoves and lamps.

  They made lightweight iron plows and machines for planting, threshing, and harvesting two thousand years before the English mechanized their agriculture.

  They invented the compass eleven hundred years before Europe’s ships began to use them.

  A thousand years before the Germans, they discovered that water-driven mills could power their iron and steel foundries.

  Nineteen hundred years ago, they invented paper.

  They printed books six centuries before Gutenberg, and two centuries before him they used mobile type in their printing presses.

  Twelve hundred years ago, they invented gunpowder, and a century later the cannon.