MIRROR

Love, as we understand it today, if we understand it at all, evolved in the age of chivalry. This was partly due to the German influence, for women enjoyed greater freedom in the north, and partly to the cult of the Virgin, which opened the eyes of men to the potentialities of women beyond the brood mare or the harlot.
The Natural Science of Stupidity, Pál Tábori.²

Der Ritter erkor sich eine Dame .. the knight chose a lady (frouwe) and offered his services to her. It was almost a basic necessity for him to find such a lady and to become her knight (frouwenritter, or champion). If the lady accepted his dedication, the knight carried out all his exploits in her name.
Die Deutschen Frauen im Mittelalter, Karl Weinhold. ³

     It is fairly usual to ask a young ethics class to write a homework about friendship. I did not expect anything new. One little girl surprised me. She may be a beauty now; no-one could have called her pretty then. She was very black, far too tall and skinny. The good fairy had not called on her yet. She had written many of the usual things about friends and friendship, but finished: "I wish parents would remember more often to tell their children that they love them." She was eleven.
     I made no comment about it in her ethics class, but later in the week I had a maths lesson with the same group. When everyone was busy, I invited her to come to my desk. She brought her mathematics book: which I did not want, instead I slid her essay across my desk and pointed to this line. "That's a very interesting idea," I told her. "Not many people would think about that - at any age." She nodded, she was clutching her maths book to her chest. "On the other hand," I continued quietly, "I wonder how many children remember to tell their parents very often that they love them?" She made that gesture of resigned agreement: an unhappy grimace with a simultaneous quick upward jerk of the chin. We sat there too long without speaking. Some of the class began to notice our two heads bent close together, saying nothing.
     "I suppose," I went on, "the problem may be that possibly lots of parents do not really know what love is. If they were never shown very much of it when they were children - or perhaps it was the wrong kind - now they cannot show very much to their own children: and so on it goes on." She nodded, unhappily.
     "But thank you for your essay," I finished. Taking her book I slipped her essay into it so that the others would not notice. "Maybe it's something we can both go on thinking about: and also thinking about what we might do to change it."

It is now many years since I read that essay, but I have thought about it often. It seems to me that complete, unhesitating love, love that is careless of fault and incapable of hurt, is the paradise of a child. It does not take much to damage this paradise. It does not take much more to destroy belief in it entirely.
Children do not quantify unhappiness. Chicken Licken had it right. The sky is either where it should be - or it is falling down. Sooner or later, probably for all of us and for however long or briefly it has lasted the Fall occurs. We discover that this paradise of ours, so precious and so normal, is just a little garden in a great vast sterile desert of violence and want, carelessness and deceit, envy, jealousy, meanness and cruelty; that very many people of all ages find it easier, and far more exciting, to hate than to love; that they will attach themselves more deeply and emotionally to things and to titles and to places - just things and titles and places - whilst forgetting simple human courtesy and kindness and ignoring misery as other people's 'fault'.
And we do not know how to change this. Over fifty years ago Albert Einstein once told a conference:

"The war has been won: not yet the peace."

     I had only intended this chapter to be just another step from past to future in my not very remarkable history. It had only to explain how I found love of my life and almost immediately - or so it seemed - lost her.
     This would not be difficult to write: I thought. But I had not reckoned on the fact that I would no longer want to write how it happened - that is very easy. Now I would want to know why. I began to write it very simply. This is how it began:
     'I was to get to know that little station well. She was waiting for me on the platform. She seemed smaller and slighter than she had up there among the snowfields, below the star-filled night, with Orion stamping on the mountains... but she was still the Schneewitch that I remembered.'
     Yet I had no sooner picked up the string of memories, it was where I had left it, tied to a bush at the edge of the woods, than what always seems to happen in stories of this type began to happen to me. I found myself being drawn ever further from the path that I had intended to take. The string led me on: but now it seemed to be tugging me on as if alive. And at every step I took the trees grew closer, the bushes were more dense, the shadows deeper. Then I found myself being snagged and tangled by the branches of other memories. Some were thorny and sharp; others winding and clinging. All were pulling me this way then that, and underfoot the roots of deeper history swarmed and coiled, so that I tripped continually. Soon the path was lost - and the forest seemed endless.
     Fairy stories today are important literature. Some are certainly of interest to historians. Distinguished scholars, some of them full university professors, argue about their origins. They deconstruct the Goose Girl or even put to the question poor old Puss in Boots. More interesting to me, however, are the distinctions that they make between the form of the stories. ⁴

     Typically, stories of the first kind begin with the heroine or hero losing their birthright - and this is nearly always happy, very often royal - and being imprisoned, reduced to poverty, imprisonment and servility. Then, either by guile or by magic, and sometimes by both, they rise again to the triumphant restoration of the status, wealth, and happiness. And then you know the rest: 'they have many children - and live happily ever after!'
     In the second kind of story there is a continuous rise from original poverty or degradation - usually by very similar means and involving mysterious helpers, spells, gadgets, or other miraculous interventions - and often achieving wealth and power that is even greater than in the first. This might be called the Wall Street Ending.
     But I am struck by a fact that scholarly historians all seem to miss. They, quite naturally, are all adult. So too, just as undoubtedly, were their authors. Despite the repeated emphasis in the stories, however, of the restoration of wealth and power, I am convinced that the only wealth and power that means anything to any child - the only wealth and power that they will see encoded in these stories - is that complete and all-providing love that they once knew, and that possibly they already feel is less, or lost. This is certainly what my pupil meant.
     I have personally never felt a very strong identification with the Frog Prince, or with the Ugly Duckling, or with the little boy who taken away to the woods by Iron Hans: although now I recall that Iron Hans was my favourite story; and now I also notice that the little boy positively begged to be taken into the forest in order to escape the punishment of his real father. That is a twist in the story I had forgotten.
     I do know, however, that when first I learnt of the ancient laws of Frauendienst - which might all be part of another fairy-story, but certainly are not - I fell upon them as hungrily as old Ben Gunn unwrapping with trembling hands his miserable morsel of cheese.
     Do you recall his speech? 'Many's the long night I've dreamed of cheese - toasted, mostly.' Many are the long damn nights in which I have wondered why I did what I have done. And here, suddenly, was a plan. A plan! Everything laid out as clear as clear!
     I never knew a reason before. Certainly I never knew it then. It only seemed to me to be deeply necessary never to admit to have abandoned faith; never to surrender; never to give up; never to lower my aim. Mulish, pigheaded, obstinate, selfish, wilful, stubborn. Such nobility of purpose, unswerving loyalty, tireless diligence - can all be given different names. Booby, is another of good value, and even this does not exhaust my thesaurus. Ari herself warned me against this trait. But what would a mere girl know, however angry and however - as I happened to notice as I had not had the opportunity to notice before - even more beautiful because angry: but when wearing a white plastic raincoat and matching plastic boots? I ignored her: naturally.
     There was pain too, of course: boobies feel pain. But when I first learnt of this wonderful period of truly distinctive and actual historical idiocy I thought at first that this was me: that I must just be reliving an earlier life; that all this had happened before; that all of this had happened before to me. Which of course is very silly. But it is not as silly as it may at first appear. Nor, if I am right their meaning, are many of our fairy stories as silly as they may at first appear. For here is yet another root to tangle our feet.
     Waking up gently one morning some years ago I found to my intense surprise in just that moment between deep sleep and waking that my mind was furiously busy.
     What it was doing apparently - but wait until I tell you the details - was running through a whole series of vignettes of other lives. And they were all much older lives. It was happening very quickly, rather as today we can flick through a video from frame to frame. But this process also appeared to have been going on for some time - as if I had just interrupted it - and these were not dreams of any ordinary kind; these were much more like memories; and memories which belonged to me. I do not mean - I should make this clear - that I was sure that the lives were mine. I mean only that the memories were. They were uniquely mine.
     In the first, and therefore the most vivid, I was a small boy, about eight or nine. I was below decks in a sailing ship, in a kind of corridor, and my back was against the planks of an inner wall. I could just about see in the light filtering through from above; I could hear no human voices but the scuttling of rats quite close was very clear, and also the creak of the ship's timbers working and the surge of the sea along the side. I could feel the heave of the waves. I could smell the tar and ropes and the stench from the bilge. I was frightened. Then, abruptly, I was a women: a young woman in the store of a shop; and I knew, quite certainly, that I was now in America, and that this was considerably later. I was dressed in grey like a Puritan: a grey skirt, white cuffs - and I was counting the goods in sacks and chests in the store. I could smell the sourness of flour - some of it had spilt on the floor - and I was worried because this counting was important; and it didn't seem ..
     Then it all stopped: with an almost painful jerk. I had become too attentive, and I had fully woken up. All that remained was the definite sensation that I had interrupted a surreptitious stock-take, one that I was not supposed to know is routine, but which could mean that somewhere there is a store in my mind with many more histories like these. Is the unconscious of Freud, and the archetypes of Jung simply constructed out of memories of this kind? Are we, in other words, considerably more than we seem: both to others and ourselves? ⁵
     Until about the 1300s, most women in Europe were property. They were the property of their fathers and brothers, husbands, masters. Within the relatively feeble restraints of custom and law they might be traded, stored, beaten, and sold. They could expect to be raped and slaughtered in war, enslaved as lawful booty. Children and women who were servants had very little protection from their mistresses and masters. If tempers grew too nasty, they might be killed.
     The nobility were now nominally all Christian. Most of the people were deeply pagan. The Church's power depended on people's belief in the miracles of Jesus and his saints, on relics and images. Employing thousands on the great cathedrals and churches, the abbeys and monasteries - as well as taking the taxes and tithes to pay for them - was also a most useful means of control.
     But it was not enough. Good magic was what the Church could define and regulate. That which it could not, was not necessarily good at all. At first the simplest solution had been to combine pagan and Christian. Jesus was certainly not born on any Christmas Day. But the people were still too easily distracted by the ancient gods and they were still too loyal to their own old soothsayers and healers.
     This loyalty had to be destroyed: and not through love. Terror and hatred were far more easily employed and they offered near instant returns. Obedience was the first to be welcomed, but soon there was also property and cash. All the property of witches became at once the property of the Church. There were shares - properly calculated shares - for every body hanged, drowned, or burnt
     But whilst the shrieks and oily smoke rose above the watching crowds in almost every marketplace in Europe, a very remarkable change was taking place in the palaces and castles above them.
     Spiritual allegiance to the mystery of the Trinity (in which the Holy Spirit was occasionally worshipped as if female) was gradually shifting to the much more earthly and imaginable form of Jesus' mother. Not, it must be noted, to his beloved consort, Mary, who he so often and tenderly 'kissed upon the lips'. With no little the help from Paul's malignancy, that Mary was being transformed into a rescued whore, for it was important that no-one be allowed to claim a link between honest spiritual joy and honest physical sensuality. This wretched woman therefore, certainly no virgin, was only being saved from her lust and sin.⁶
     But it is unfair to be unfair. These were terrible times. Plague brought regular devastation. Famine was common. Disease was everywhere. Wars laid waste to crops, cleared the farms of cattle, and destroyed whole towns. City squares and streets had frequently to be swept clear of beggars, hordes of cripples, bands of destitutes and vagabonds. In the midst of all this unending calamity, the absurdly impossible aim of the Church was to achieve universal acknowledgement of the complete and unchanging love of humankind by God.
     Of men and women: equally! This was an extraordinary innovation. It still is. It is unique to Christianity. But now to demonstrate their complete and unchanging love of God in return, worship must be made perfectly uniform: a rigorously defined credo, mechanically recited prayers, an unvarying language and inflexible ritual. Spontaneity must be suppressed. Services were conducted quite literally out of the book. The Church allowed everyone a soul: but everyone must know the duty of the Church was to protect that soul, on God's behalf: whatever the cost.
     But spontaneity was not regarded everywhere with suspicion. Initiative, courage and action in war were as much valued as ever, and now there was a code of knightly courtesies also to be observed. Reports of the mutual regard of Saladin and Richard Coeur-de-Lion, England's King, during their long contest for Jerusalem, which remained with Saladin, made a deep impression in the courts of Europe. Not only did they finally conclude a three year treaty of peace with each other, but it was reported that when Richard was wounded earlier Saladin sent his own physician to tend his hurt. This doctor, incidentally, was a Jew - but this is less often reported.
     Together with this new sense of proper moral conduct, a new expression of the adoration of love itself was also beginning to appear: in the form both of chastity and pure and virtuous womanhood. ⁷ Neither sex, of course, was always virtuous in practice. The ideal always was. The oaths of chastity of the Knights Templars, for example, seem to have been diligently observed rather than enforced . ⁸

     Women generally, in the next hundred years, from about 1350 until about 1500 - the interval varies with different countries - enjoyed more respect and freedom, with a greater degree of independence, than they had known for millennia.
     Women had always been able to own their own property, but now highborn ladies even began to control their own estates, to direct their own courts and to recruit their own followers. They were expected to have private lives. And since almost all heiresses of any value had their marriages arranged for them - not all with wealthy oafs or greedy geriatrics, but rarely of their own choice - if they were at all able this meant that they should have lovers too! Although there were obvious risks - and not least of children who might look nothing like their husbands - there was plenty of encouragement to enjoy this advantage too. ⁹
     Only a few could write about such changes with sufficient wit to be remembered today, but they were far more than just plain mirrors in their own time. True it is that they reflected: true it I also that they embellished and perfected what the noble and wealthy wished to see of themselves. And yet they still tell sufficient truth to be useful in understanding the cruel turbulent spirit and often fantastical nature of their lives.
     Amongst the men, for example, who wished to be regarded as the true champions of Christ and his Mother - and, of course, amongst those men who could afford it - a new cult of adoration of the female appeared. It was still suffused with religious belief and fervour, but it was most ardently directed at real women, especially at real highborn women, and, still more remarkably, particularly at real highborn married women.
     The many acts of valour - and some were virtually suicidal - that this curious conceit it inspired were not supposed to be rewarded by anything from the lady to whose honour they were dedicated except a discreet nod or a smile: possibly the gift of her handkerchief, a ring, a piece of her clothing which could be relied upon to protect her accepted champion from his enemies. But here surely are grounds for thinking that these must have been just one more example of men's aggression and perversity: for all this piercing, slicing, hacking, or beating of another poor booby to death in a mock battle or contest of honour; or, even better, splashing through the blood of heretics in wrecked and burning towns - any of this or all of it was understood to prove the tenderness and constancy of their love of their mistress, whether or not it was ever rewarded in any other way.
     And although Frauendienst is so very obviously German in name, this peculiar lunacy was not confined to Germany. The Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory (he died in 1471), the accounts of the glorious adventure of Camelot and its knights, was almost certainly pieced together from earlier French tales. But the basis of the stories is real, and although not every Guinevere could keep her hero's lance from her bed, the best of the boobies really want to believe they were capable of that same complete and perfect love that their writers and poets told them was possible. Love itself was to be its own reward.
     The huge expense of the seven Crusades - in 1271 the seventh and last collapsed midway with the death of its leader, Louis IX of France on his way to the east - is easily comparable with that of the 20th century European wars and invasions. They were just one result of this idea. Every knight who set out to save Jerusalem expected that this would win honour for his lady. A bit of loot and rape or two on the way would not come amiss: the real aim was the proof of love and honour.
     And although it was apparently usually made with just a few companions, and even alone, the search for the Grail was an even more curious result. Precisely what it was imagined to be is still a mystery. Some say it was the cup with which Christ shared his wine with his disciples. Others, that it was another filled with his blood his crucifixion. Some believed it was the cloth his mother used to wipe away his blood and tears as he stumbled towards Gethsemane.
     Whatever it would prove to be, it seems generally agreed that the finder of the Grail would be able to bring love back to the world: to undo the Fall. But theirs was also a very materialistic age. All things were things. It was almost inevitable that the Grail should be imagined to be something with the power to do this. It was almost impossible for them to imagine it to be an idea.
     For women generally, this idyll soon collapsed. England was still to enjoy the reign of its Virgin Queen, although her belief in the power of her own immaculacy was kept alive as much by her own insistence of being never less than a man - "I know that I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king - and a king of England too!"¹⁰ - as by the diligence of her courtiers, the devotion of her knight-adventurers, admirals and captains, the genius of her poets, and, but by no means least, by a discreetly efficient and occasionally efficiently murderous intelligence service.
     In Europe, however, the era was definitely ending. Few ordinary women would soon dare to appear the equal of men, far less to rebuke them, or complain or scold, far, far less to demand an education. The dangers of independence became too great. The Black Death reached England in 1348 and within months, a third to half of the population was dead.
     The same plague, or variants of it, swept back and forth across Europe for several centuries. It added extra energy to the hatred of women that was developed by monkish asceticism and in priests who now began to accuse them of witchcraft: and witchcraft - as practised as by girls and men as well, but for the most part by already used and older women - as the cause of all these ills and disasters. ¹¹
     By the early 15th century "a tidal wave of misogyny was beginning to sweep across Europe".¹² In 1486 Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Krämer, two totally psychotic and eager-beaver Dominican friars who had been appointed inquisitors in Germany by Innocent VIII, published the first edition of their famous Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches. This set out in detail that all could admire all the procedures to be followed for detecting, proving, punishing and removing witches from the realms of Christendom. It was published in many countries in many translations, and it remains the standard with which all later works are to be compared.
     Belief in that perfect, complete, imperishable love, the belief, far more, that it could be shared with a woman, died beneath that tidal wave. In place of the superbly confident, clever, gracious, witty, sometimes bawdy but always proud and often fiercely independent ladies of the charming contes of Boccaccio and Petrarch and Chaucer, a creature crept from the wreckage to shame them all: of course female still but humble, timid, and fearful: well able now to remember her place; to mind her tongue; to keep to her house and mind children; and never to dare to answer back. Centuries would pass before women could claim again the dignity that they had lost.
     Several months passed before I was able to see Ari again. Germany was still divided roughly down the middle by the Wall. To the east was the 'Socialist Workers' State', wholly dependent on the Soviet Union. The rest of Germany to the west was wholly dependent on America and was still occupied by the other Allied Powers. A new German army just beginning to reform. Most of its senior officers and virtually all its older NCO's were ex-Wehrmacht. We Brits were supposed to develop the closest friendly relations with our old enemies. Within a very few months I was to come close to damaging these relations very severely by running over a battalion commander in one of his own tanks. Fortunately I could not see this far into the future.
     Fortunate, perhaps, for then I might never have written to my new friends again. I was about to join my university back in England, but there was still time for a brief visit. I did write - and this time I was delighted that the response was from Ari.
     She told me that her sister was now in Berlin finishing her law degree so that she joining their father's profession, but that if I came down from the north by a fast intercity express, and then took a slow train north-east which would stop at all the smaller towns, she would meet me at the station nearest to her own.
     I was to get to know that little station well. Ari was waiting for me on the platform. She seemed a little smaller and slighter than up there amid the snowfields and the star-filled night as Orion stamped across the mountains, but she was still the Schneewitch I remembered. There was the same pale but perfect complexion, the same smooth black cap of hair, the surprisingly square shoulders and wonderfully upright carriage that would have made my old Sergeant-Major very happy indeed. ¹³
     To my own surprise - for I prided myself even then on my stoicism, and had not wept in public since Bambi lost his mother in the forest fire - but now I found that my chest had become very tight, that my pulse was racing absurdly, and that there was apparently extra oxygen in the air outside the train. I was soon to learn that I would feel like this all the time whenever I was within sight of this girl.
     I carried down my new suitcase, it had been bought specially for this occasion, and we exchanged a rather official handshake, Ari led me through the big echoing old building, with its curious steepled roof it always looked more like a big church than a station, and then immediately to her own car.
     This was a surprise. It was a new and shiny VW Beetle, blue, and it had a small spray of real flowers - of lilies-of-the-valley - in the little glass pot on the dashboard. Ari was wearing another scent: very light and kindly. Although she would choose another as she grew older as women do, this is the one I would always afterwards identify with her. I even learnt its name: Sortilége.
     Since she was still merely a young female, I had expected her to lead me to a bus. I was not inclined to reveal that no other girl I knew could drive a car, let alone owned one, and so I tried to pass this off as normal. I was also still somewhat breathless. She looked at me with some concern as she explained that her Papa, her still mysterious Papa, had given it to her when she passed her final exams. She planned to be a teacher, and whilst I was staying with her family she wanted to visit the town where she had been offered her first teaching post.
     This area of Germany was now in the American zone, but originally it had been occupied by the French. As a consequence of this her entire generation had all been taught French as their only foreign language, not English. My schoolboy French was long forgotten. Her English consisted of perhaps ten words. My German was just as limited. And yet it never seemed - rather, it never seemed to me - an obstacle to our complete understanding that we could hardly exchange a single sentence. We could communicate perfectly well by telepathy: for this is what telepathy is for.
     She drove, I found, with confidence, and verve. This was even more impressive: although it must be said that the majority of Germans, especially male, actually all drive like this - as if there is nothing in front for miles and miles; nothing over this hill; nothing round this bend, nothing coming towards them at a closing speed usually well in excess of 150 miles per hours. And this is why Germans make the best cars in the world. If they didn't, they would pretty soon be extinct.
     We were driving now to the small pretty mediaeval town, a large village really, surprising untouched by the battles that I knew had still been raging all round in the last months of the war, and on the way she also explained that she had promised her sister to continue their joint attempts to improve my language. I would point - and she would provide the word. This is why it is that the twenty-first word I learnt in German is Versicherung. This was a vast blue neon sign on a big office building. German is very easy when you know a few monosyllables and some of the rules for sticking them together. Sicher, for example, means safe; -ung usually means doing something, here it is making something safe; ver- at the beginning of almost anything means doing it really thoroughly, and there are a great number of ver- words in German, because Germans believe in doing lots of things very (see) thoroughly. Anyway, there you have it: Versicherung makes very safe: insurance. Simple.
     If I had thought of love before as only tentative, within the week I was entirely enchanted. Whatever we could not say, need not to be said. I watched her everywhere, and everywhere I saw that she was loved. She was witty too, and brought gaiety and good humour where ever we went. People smiled to see her; they laughed when she spoke; and they laughed again as we left them. The family was interesting too. Mama was another Ari: grey-haired, at least thirty years older and a hundred pounds heavier, but a cheerful tyrant to her family,; almost always in her apron, for their house was mediaeval too, with many stairs and corridors; a big square courtyard in the middle that was open to the sky, and another even larger behind the house where once the stables would have been. Papa was tall, taller than me by several inches, broad-shouldered, keen-eyed and handsome. He seemed to like me: there was at least no sense of rejection, and I liked him. We soon fell into a routine that I would accompany him - often alone - when he took his walk after closing his office in the afternoon.
     We sometimes spent the evening with her parents; sometimes with her brother, as tall as his father but slimmer and training to be a doctor. At first he looked at me more critically and severely than his parents, but he also played the guitar and had a desperate need to know the words to go with his music. I would therefore spend my time in his room lying on the floor with my ear against his speakers, trying to disentangle words from noise whilst Ari's fingers crept up and down my spine.
     We were only alone for brief periods of time, and at the end of every evening I was sent to me hotel along the street. I never knew why this was, although I have the suspicion that it was to silence any gossip that I stayed in their house overnight.
     It happened one evening when we had returned from yet another long walk in the woods and we had to take off our outer coats in the small vestibule behind the front door. I was wearing a hugely heavy officer's overcoat that the British rather weirdly call a British Warm, for after who - or possibly whom - else, in God's name, it might otherwise be called I have never understood. Anyway, in the struggle to do this together in too small a space I also managed somehow to bang her sharply on the nose.
     "Ow" she said, as was entirely natural, and there were tears at once in her eyes. But what was far more remarkable for me - and shocking - was the pain that in this same moment shot through me. This was a sensation I had never felt before. I was feeling her pain as if it were mine.
     It was not a very severe blow. She soon recovered from it and laughed at my own discomfiture; but as she turned away from me I put my arms around her from behind and then I realized that we were both reflected in the darkened mirror in front of us. We looked in that moment remarkably alike, and I realized with more surprise that we might be twins. I could offer her all the love that I missed - and it would be complete. 'For you,' I told her silently, 'are the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with.'
     But really I only told the mirror. I did not tell her. I thought it was too soon. And:

'A naked thinking heart, that makes no show,
Is to a women, but a kind of ghost.'
John Donne, The Blossom

1 Die Deutschen Frauen im Mittelater,Vol.I, Karl Weinhold, Vienna, 1897, p.195
2 The Natural Science of Stupidity, chapter IX, Folie Erotique, Paul Tabori;.
3 Deutschen Frauen etc, p230, Tabori’s translation.
4 Professor Ruth H. Bottigheimer of the University of New York at Stoneybrook used these terms in a series of talks on The Archeology of Fairy Stories, at Magdalen College, Oxford, in June, 2005.
5 See, for example, The Adventure in Self-discovery, 1988, Professor Stanislav Grof, State University of New York Press; also Beyond Death, Grof, S.and C.
6 “Women” declared St John Chrysostom, made Archbishop of Constantinople in 398, “are a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill.” By the sixth century ‘at least one provincial council of the Church forbade women to receive the Eucharist in their naked hands on account of their impurity’; whilst brave Luther cried out in the 16th century that he would “have no compassion upon these witches, he would burn them all.” From the History of Rationalism, W.E.H Lecky.
7 Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi (1137-93), Sultan of Egypt and Syria, famed for his martial skills, courtesy and wisdom,; he defeated by Richard in 1191. Richard was killed fighting for England’s lands in France and was buried at Fontevrault.
8 The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, founded in 1118, suppressed in 1312. Many of its possession were then given to the order of the Knights Hospitallers whose own power ended in 1798with the surrender of Malta to Napoleon.
9 See, inter alia, Petrarch (1304-74), whose his passionate unrequited love for his married Laura became ‘proverbial for its constancy and purity’; read Boccaccio (1317-75) and of his love, possibly not so unrequited, for the noble Fiammetta; and of course Chaucer (c.1345-1400) for his Troilus and Cressida, mainly taken from Boccaccio, and his Legend of Good Women.
10 Elizabeth the First, 1533 -1603, to her troops at Tilbury in 1588, on the approach of the Armada.
11 ‘Charles Darwin explained why sex forces men to be predators. To males, females are private goods. Once a make has consumed a female by making her pregnant, she is useless genetically to other males. She is spent.’ from an article by Dr Terence Kealey, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham, The Times, June 2005.
12 Professor R.B. Bottigheimer, qv.
13 Sergeant-Major Fitzgerald, Scots Guards: “Heeryuyunchenlmun! Thiseer iswotyooorall sup-POS-ter lukLIKE. Izzat cleer!

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