Book of the Civilized Man
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Book of the Civilized Man (
The poem
Civilized Man is a 3000-line Latin verse poem that gives proper advice on a wide range of social situations that the typical medieval person might have encountered in day-to-day life.
Examples include:
- If you wish to belch, remember to look up to the ceiling.
- Do not attack your enemy while he is squatting to defecate.
- If there is something you do not want people to know, do not tell it to your wife.
- Say thank you to your host.
- Don't mount your horse in the hall.
- If visitors had already eaten, give them drink anyway.
- Loosen your reins when riding over a bridge.
- Receive gifts from great men with gratitude.
- If you are a judge, be just.
- Eating at the table of the rich, speak little.
- The book ends with "Old King Henry first gave to the uncourtly the teaching written in this book."
The poet
Historians believe that Daniel of Beccles may have been a member of Henry II's court. John Bale (16th century) wrote that he had seen a document showing Daniel in Henry's court for over 30 years. This, the fact that a Henry is mentioned in the text, and some of the manuscripts can be dated to the early 13th century, make it very probable the poem dates from that period. There a reference to a Daniel of Beccles in the "Seventh Regnal Year of King John" (circa 1206) secretly being given the patronage (advowson) of the church of Endgate in Beccles by the Abbot of Bury St Edmund's.
Three themes
There are three major recurrent themes in the poem: social hierarchy, self-control and sexual morality.
The first theme is the emphasis on
The second recurrent theme is self-control, in general holding oneself inward when it comes to speaking, eating and
The third recurrent theme is
Daniel's advice comes to a climax in what is perhaps the most difficult situation of all: the wife of one's lord makes a sexual proposition. It is a combination of the three problems: hierarchical relationships, control of bodily emissions, and sexual morality. Daniel's solution is to pretend to be ill.
See also
References
- Urbanus Magnus Danielis Becclesiensis, ed. J. Gilbart Smyly (Dublin, 1939).
- Whelan, Fiona, The Making of Manners and Morals in Twelfth-Century England: The Book of the Civilised Man (Routledge, 2017).
- Whelan, Fiona, 'Administering the Medieval Household 1180–1250: From Daniel of Beccles to Robert Grosseteste', in The Great Household, 1000-1500: Proceedings of the 2016 Harlaxton Symposium (Harlaxton, 2018)
- Danziger, Danny & Gillingham, John, 1215 - The Year of Magna Carta (Coronet Books: Hodder and Stoughton, c2003), sub verbum Daniel of Beccles, p. 313.
- Gillingham, John, "From Civilitas to Civility: Codes of Manners in Medieval and Early Modern England", Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (2002), 6:267-289 Cambridge University Press.
- Kerr, Julie "The Open Door: Hospitality and Honour in Twelfth/Early Thirteenth-Century England.", History 87 (287), 322-335. (2002)
- Robert Bartlett. England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075-1225. Chapter 11.4: "Manners." Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
- Daniel of Beccles, pub A D Frith ISBN 978-0-9515985-5-9