63 Colloquial and Li.. - Ganino.com

The tale of Frodebert’s tail 395
These contradictory observations lead me to raise a fourth possibility
about the texts’ authorship and nature, namely that they were written by
Frodebert and Importunus, but as a parodic and a consensual correspondence
in which each improvises on and caps the other in a series of spiralling
cadenzas. They would thus be consensual literary jeux d’esprit. There seem
to be earlier analogies for learned contrived Gallic mock-abusive correspondence
in the letters of Avitus of Vienne and Ruricius of Limoges. 66 While
this may seem like an attempt to have one’s cake and eat it, it is a theory
that takes account of the strong subjective reactions of two reputable sets
of scholars and reconciles them. Yes, the realia are accurate, yes, the correspondence
is funny, but it is the context that is unreal and the external
audience that may not be as imagined. The letters thus fit in with other
ludic texts from the seventh century, including Fredegar and Aethicus Ister.
One might also adduce the courtly fable of the lion, the deer and the fox
in the Gesta Theoderici regis (Krusch 1888: 213). There a treacherous fox
‘sings’ when put to torture: ‘vae’, inquit, ‘mihi miserae, quae tantas poenas
patior indigne; ut quid enim a me exquiritur, quod eum minime habuisse
certa ratione cognoscitur? etenim si cor habuisset, profecto huc non redisset’,
‘Alas, miserable me, who wrongly suffer such punishments. Why are they
seeking back from me what it is definitely known he did not have? For
if he had had a heart, he certainly would not have come back here.’ Far
from being Romance fight songs intended to polarise the plebs at Tours,
these learned and playful texts are the products of ecclesiastics who may
have exchanged them for fun, or, if one dares to imagine Merovingian
urbanitas and a courtly environment, possibly even performed them to an
appreciative audience on some seventh-century Feast of Fools.
16 appendix i: the voice of the fifth text (imp. 5)
Pirson (1910: 487) concluded that there was no longer any question of
Frodebert or Importunus in the fourth and fifth pieces, but general satiric
attacks. But Frod. 4 (though lacking epistolary headers) speaks in Frodebert’s
voice. Walstra (1962: 81, 212–13)readsImp. 5 as a ‘lettre justificative’ of
Frodebert, addressed to the nuns of Tours. He is right about the addressees.
But the content and the rhetoric of this text make far better sense as a
response of Importunus to Frod. 4. It echoes his forms of address, nolite,
66 See Avitus, Epistles 74 and 86, and also (for a genuinely angry satirical exchange) 96–7 (with
Heraclius): Shanzer and Wood 2002: 277–84 and 320–3. Likewise to be considered would be
Ruricius, Epistle 2.35 on the fat Sedatus and the horse needed to convey him. See Mathisen 1999:
201–2 with an English translation of Sedatus’ humorous reply.