Who’s the Dude? A Historical Profile of the Critical Reception of Johannes De Hauvilla’s Architrenius

Abstract

Medieval and modern readers of Johannes de Hauvilla’s late XII-century Latin poem Architrenius have proposed an array of discordant interpretations of the eponymous protagonist. This paper offers a historical profile of the critical reception of this peculiar fictional character, tracing responses from the Middle Ages to the present day. Given the poem’s limited dissemination and the modest critical attention it has received in modern times, it is possible to provide a nearly comprehensive overview of the reception history of the Architrenius. We analyze and classify the terminology and the argumentative strategies used by critics in constructing their portrait of the hero of Johannes’ poem and observe how these choices interact with the overall critical assessment of the Architrenius. Our analysis identifies two principal families of readers—both philologically and thematically—suggesting a dual trajectory in the reception of the poem throughout the centuries.

1. Introduction

“Later, no doubt, the poet may lose himself in garrulity; but in his picture of Architrenius at his setting out he far excels any of his fellow workers in this kind. Suddenly, mid all the gradus work of his hexameters, a living voice begins to speak. Our historical interests are forgotten. Dates no longer concern us. A universal human longing is expressed, and, but for the language, the lines might have been written in any age:

This must I do—go exil’d through the world

And seek for Nature till far hence I find

Her secret dwelling-place; there drag to light

The hidden cause of quarrel, and reknit,

Haply reknit, the long-divided Love.”

Thus, C.S. Lewis, in his influential work The Allegory of Love, wrote about the eponymous hero of Johannes de Hauvilla’s late XII-century Latin poem Architrenius (Lewis 1936, p. 110). Who is this man determined to “go exil’d through the world and seek for Nature”? His “affected Greek title” (Warton 1840, p. cxxi) declares him as the “Arch-Weeper”, or “Arch-Mourner”, or the “Prince of Lamentations”. What are the reasons for his discontent? What is the goal of his search for Nature? Despite the modest amount of critical attention the poem has received, contemporary readers have proposed an array of conflicting interpretations of its protagonist, ranging from “the first of the interior pilgrims, wandering over the world in search of his soul” (Piehler 1971) to “the perfect idiot, incapable of profiting from” the “gifts of learning” (Godman 2000). Other scholars construe the hero as a figure of Aeneas (Haynes 2021), “a dissipated young man” (Wetherbee 1994), and as a medieval “Manichee” (Carlucci and Marino 2019).1

Such a variety of interpretations is readily explained by the richness of Johannes’ poem. Gervase of Melkley considered the poem sufficient by itself to educate an uneducated mind (“sola sufficit inspectio studiosa rudem animum informare”). Hugh Legat, a XIV-century monk of St. Alban’s who, according to Pits, devoted his entire life to the Architrenius after finding a manuscript of Johannes’ poem in the library of his monastery, considered the poem extremely complicated and in need of an accessus (Pits 1619, pp. 568–69). According to Godman, the Architrenius escapes all categorizations and is better viewed as a Gesamtkunstwerk, an opus consummatum … omnis artium imago to use John of Salisbury’s word for describing Bernard of Chartres’ and Bernardus Silvestris’ ideal of a total work of art (Godman 2000, p. 323). As Smolak concisely states, “the Architrenius is nowhere one-dimensional” (Smolak 2021, p. 54). Carlucci and Marino (2019) hypothesize that an intentional ‘rhetoric of ambiguity’ is at work in Johannes’ poem.

We offer a historical profile of the critical reception of the poem’s protagonist, from the Middle Ages to the present time. The Architrenius lends itself as an ideal case study in the interpretative dynamics of literary fictional characters and, more generally, in the process of canon formation, for at least two reasons. On the one hand, the poem is a highly refined literary work both in terms of thematic depth and of formal sophistication, as demonstrated by its rapid inclusion in the school canon (Schmidt 1974). On the other hand, “ce qui est intéressant au fond,” to quote Jean-Yves Tilliette, “c’est l’histoire des textes qui ont connu une circulation pas trop raréfiée ni trop massive” (Tilliette 2018, p. 200): such a moderate level of dissemination makes it possible to gain a virtually complete picture of the reception history of Johannes’ poem. Finally, the current ‘semi-canonical’ status of the Architrenius makes it a unique playground for observing some of the intricate interplays between the various aspects of the hermeneutical process. The limited scope of the critical literature makes it possible to map the textual borrowings and dependencies among the various critics with a high degree of certainty and completeness so as to observe how the use of a word, stemming from a particular cultural milieu, is able to shape the reception of the work in temporally, spatially and ideologically distant cultural milieu. By contrast, despite the moderate proportions of the corpus we examine and the scant critical attention so far devoted to the Architrenius, the questions raised are so numerous and so complex that in most cases they deserve to be addressed in further work. This paper is intended as a first step towards gaining a deeper perspective on the many facets of the poem’s reception history. It can serve as a foundation for further investigations, including those employing automated tools for textual analysis.

We analyze a fairly comprehensive sample of the reception history of the poem’s main character. Building on references in Schmidt (1974), Wetherbee (1994, 2019), Roling (2003), and Altavilla (2019), we identified additional responses to Johannes’ poem using traditional methods of bibliographic research in both physical and digital repositories. Since the poem appears to be primarily character-driven, as its title itself suggests, our sample contains the vast majority of the poem’s readers from the XII century to the present day. Any account of the poem’s plot cannot dispense with narrating the protagonist’s intention to undertake the journey that is the subject of the nine books of the Architrenius. We have excluded works that approach the poem from thematic perspectives in which the protagonist plays no critical role (e.g., Ratkowitsch 1991; Korte 2012; Scheidel 2022).2 We have also excluded brief mentions of the poem in ‘poetriae’ or descriptive works of stylistic character which do not mention the plot of the poem. To avoid any potential for bias, we have refrained from analyzing our own earlier work on the topic (particularly, Altavilla 2019; Carlucci and Marino 2019; L. Carlucci 2021; Carlucci et al. 2023).

We have subdivided the critical corpus as follows:

• Short synopses, which briefly mention the protagonist and his actions/intentions;
• Long synopses, which offer a more detailed account of the protagonist’s actions/character;
• Substantive critical works explicitly addressing the interpretation of the protagonist.

The order imposed by points 1, 2, 3 above happens to roughly correspond to the chronological order. We examine textual similarities and differences, identifying patterns in word choice and descriptive strategy that help categorize and explain the varying interpretations of the protagonist.

In Section 2.2 and Section 2.3, we focus on the short and long synopses, analyzing the semantic fields that are active in the descriptions of the protagonist and of his thoughts and actions. We then deduce some philological filiations in the corpus and outline key families of readers.

In Section 3, we consider those few scholars (from the XX to the XXI century) who articulated an in-depth critical discourse on the poem’s central figure. We summarize and group the various readings, starting from the variables isolated in the previous sections and adding more observable variables to complete the picture.

In Section 4, we offer our concluding remarks and outline potential directions for future research.

2. Readers, Critics, and Johannes’ Hero: An Overview

2.1. What Are You Weeping for? Short Synopses of the Architrenius

Since its appearance around 1184 until the early XIX century the critical reception of the Architrenius is primarily evidenced by the mentions of the poem in works or erudition. We start by looking at the very short—typically single-phrase—descriptions of the poem contained in works of this type, which usually offer, besides a short synopsis, some contextual information about the poem. Longer and more detailed accounts of the poem’s content appear with the consolidation of national literatures in Europe (HLF 1817; Warton 1840; Wright 1846) and will be analyzed infra. An inspection of the short synopses of the poem is nevertheless instructive, in that it highlights an early hermeneutical divide.3 The following list brings together the relevant excerpts from the chosen corpus in order to provide an overview:

• Gervase of Melkley = libello vero suo de peregrino philosopho quem Architrenium vocat.
• Everardus Alemannus = Circuit et totum fricat Architrenius orbem, / qualis sit vitii regio quaeque docet.
• MS Cotton Vespas. = librum de peregrino Johannis, et eundem librum nominavit Architrenium
• Richard de Fournival = liber de itineratione et questu Architrenii.
• Ex Hugone Legat (in Baleus) = Ubi quendam introducit nomine Architrenium, totum orbem circuisse, et singula eius vitia necnon et miserias gemitibus dolorosis intimius deplorasse etc.
• Ex Ioanne Pullano (in Baleus) = librum composuit carmine, in quo se peregrinum fingens, nomen sibi assumit Architrenium ab apxos id est princeps, et trenos, luctus, quasi primus et summus lamentator existeret vitiorum, que orbem terrarum lustrans passim regnare viderat.
• Du Boulay = libros metrice composuit de corruptione morum sui temporis.
• Baillet = il commence par déplorer la misère de l’homme
• La Monnoye = il déplore en toute occasion les défauts du genre humain
• Boni & Gamba = Architrenius, come chi dicesse Archi-Geremia, poiché lo scopo dell’Opera è di deplorare le sregolatezze degli uomini.
• Nodier = longue lamentation […] sur les misères de l’homme […]. Architrenius est un poète qui s’est proposé d’enchérir sur les Threni de Jérémie.

The above references can be divided into two main groups based on the semantic areas of the terms used to describe the reason for the hero’s discontent, which essentially coincides with the poem’s theme. On the one hand, are the authors using terms from the semantic field of vice: vitii regio (Everardus Alemannus); singula eius vitia (Hugh Legat), vitiorum (Pullanus), corruptione morum (Du Boulay), les défauts du genre humain (La Monnoye), le sregolatezze degli uomini (Boni & Gamba). On the other hand, are the authors indicating human misery as the main intentional object of the protagonist: miserias (Hugh Legat), la misère de l’homme (Baillet), les misères de l’homme (Nodier). Notably only Hugh Legat mentions both dimensions.

The vast majority of authors prefer a sentimental and psychological terminology to describe the protagonist’s mental actions, emphasizing his weeping and lamentations.4 The sentimental/psychological semantic field here significantly overlaps with the religious/devotional semantic area. In this respect, the emphasis on lamentation is important, in that it prompts a reference to the biblical Lamentations of Jeremiah. This is implicit in the exposition of the Greek etymology of the name ‘Architrenius’ by Pullanus, and explicit in a footnote of La Monnoye’s to Baillet’s Jugemens des Savans, where he glosses the name ‘Architrenius’ as “Archi-Jérémie”, influencing Boni & Gamba and Nodier. This adds an interesting prophetic dimension to the protagonist. The terms peregrinus (Gervase, Legat) and itineratio (Fournival) likewise engage religious/devotional connotations. Unique among our authors, Gervase describes the hero as a philosophus peregrinus, interestingly locating the hero at the intersection of the semantic field of religion/devotion and of philosophy and speculation. With the use of the verb docere Everardus implicitly presents Architrenius as a master whose goal is to teach (docet) qualis sit vitii regio. A further confirmation of a philosophical reading of the poem in the Middle Ages comes from Richard de Fournival’s Biblionomia. In this influential ideal library, the Architrenius appears in the Tabula nona areole phylosopyce libros vagos phylosophorum alongside Martianus Capella, Boethius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Nicholas of Amiens, Gilbert de la Porré, Alan of Lille and Bernard Silvestris. This intellectual/philosophical connotation explicitly resurfaces in Nodier, who describes our hero as an “Héraclite chrétien”. This descriptor, through the mediation of the Heraclitus lugens figure, couples the philosophical connotation with the semantic field of weeping.

A genealogical pattern seems to emerge, starting with the proto-reader Hugh Legat, who mentions both vice and misery and uses the verb deplorare. Two branches seem to split from there: Baillet (followed by Nodier) only retains misery, while La Monnoye (followed by Boni & Gamba) only retains vices (défauts); both retain deplorare for denoting the main character’s mental action.5 The definition of the protagonist as a ‘philosopher’ disappears after Gervase in favor of a reading that emphasizes the hero’s sentimental or religious character. As we shall later see, this early philosophical interpretation re-emerges sporadically in later centuries.

The first two semantic macro-areas of vice and misery identified above arguably correspond to two distinct philosophical and theological perspectives and determine a significant divide in the hermeneutics of the main character:

• If the hero’s concern is with man’s sinfulness and moral abjection then the protagonist is a moral hero grappling with the problem of vice, a theme rooted in moral philosophy;
• If the hero’s concern is with man’s misery and his state of abandonment to evil, then the protagonist is a philosopher pondering the problem of evil, which pertains to metaphysics.

While the metaphysical and the moral dimensions cohabit in the description of the protagonist’s cause of weeping by an early (and pivotal) reader such as Hugh Legat, they seem to be perceived as mutually exclusive by the majority of later readers, despite the obvious fact that the problem of evil and the problem of vice are conceptually intertwined so that both could be among the principal concerns of the protagonist. Such a divide in the poem’s reception is clearly determined by a doctrinal reading of the poem in the contrast between Baillet and La Monnoye. While Baillet uses misère in the original version of his Jugemens des savans, La Monnoye explicitly corrects it by using défauts in his revised version of Baillet’s encyclopedic work. Baillet, as is worth recalling, was a Jansenist who attracted significant hostility from religious adversaries for doctrinal reasons. In this particular case, it is obvious that La Monnoye’s correction of Baillet’s synopsis of the Architrenius (the poem is about the flaws of humanity rather than about the misery of man) touches upon one of the central doctrinal issues opposing Jansenism to Catholic orthodoxy, i.e., the idea that man is born corrupted and inevitably bound to evil-doing. The terminological alternative between misère and défauts epitomizes the key doctrinal alternative concerning the imputability of vice and evil. This hermeneutical divide occurring at a relatively early stage has a long-lasting effect on the history of interpretations of Architrenius and of the overall meaning of the poem. We will observe the long-term effects of the doctrinal dispute encoded in the dichotomy opposing the flaws of humanity to the misery of man even in completely different cultural and ideological contexts.

The dichotomies observed so far prompt at least the following questions: Is the protagonist a sentimental or an intellectual figure? Is he a philosopher or a pilgrim? Is he concerned with the moral problem of vice or with the metaphysical problem of evil? We will observe how these questions continue to emerge in later readings of the poem.

2.2. Portraits of the Artist (?) as “A Young Man, Just Arrived at the Years of Maturity…”

We proceed to collect and analyze the texts of scholars who, from the XIX century on, offer a synopsis of the poem’s plot. In most cases the synopsis is contained within a short paragraph. Occasionally, it is followed by a more detailed account of the poem’s content. We focus on the descriptions of the main character’s thoughts, intentions and actions contained in the short synopses under scrutiny. Most synopses are character-driven, while the few that are plot-driven (Schmidt, Klaus, Roling, Godman) identify the poem’s central narrative with the journey of the protagonist. Almost all the authors considered follow the same syntactic and logical structure in writing their synopses. Wright’s summary is paradigmatic in this respect:

… as a youth just arrived at years of maturity; | he passes in review | the various circumstances of his life, | laments that | that so little of it has been devoted to virtue. || He breaks into loud complaints | against Nature, | who has made him weak and liable to temptations, | and he determines | to set out on foot in search of her, | and beg her assistance to enable him to contend with them.

(Wright 1846, p. 252)

We can parse Wright’s description, and the descriptions considered below, as follows: a human subject (the protagonist) performs, three times in succession, a mental act concerning an intentional object (verb + complement) and eventually deliberates an intentional action (verb + complement). We present the textual excerpts in

Table A1. Synopses, first part.

Author	Subject	Complement 1	Complement 1	Complement 1	Verb 2
(HLF 1817)	Arch., […] parvenu à l’âge viril	passe en revue	toutes les actions de sa vie	et trouve	qu’il n’a rien fait pour la vertue
(Wright 1846)	Architrenius […] a youth just arrived at years of maturity;	passes in review	the various circumstances of his life	and laments	that so little of it has been devoted to virtue
(Wright 1875)	Architrenius is represented as a youth, arrived at years of maturity			who sorrows over	the spectacle of human vices and weaknesses
(Francke 1880)	Architrenius or Archweeper, […] having just reached his full manhood	sets himself to thinking	how he has employed his life so far and what he has accomplished.	to his grief he finds that	he has not been one day without guilt
(Faral 1926)	Il raconte les tribulations d’un jeune homme zélé, qui,			fatigué	du spectacle de la dépravation universelle
(Manitius 1931)	Architrenius ist zum Manne gereift
(Lewis 1936)	the ‘Arch-mourner’, the youthful Architrenius, who,			in mere despair	at the wickedness within him and about him
(Jung 1971)	Le héros du poème, Architrenius,			se plaint	des mœurs dépravées de son temps.
(Piehler 1971)	Architrenius, the “arch-weeper”, is (like the poet) a young man who	scrutinizing	his soul	finds	nothing virtuous there
(Wetherbee 1972)	a young man on the threshold of maturity	is horrified	what seems to him the corruption of all life.	Shocked to discover	that all his thoughts and impulses tend to vice
(Schmidt 1974)	Die Dichtung erzählt die Geschichte eines jungen Mannes, des Architrenius			der voll Kummer	über die eigene Sündhaftigkeit und die menschliche Unvollkommenheit
(Payen 1984)	Architrenius			est déchiré	par le mal universel
(Wetherbee 1994)	Architrenius (the “Arch-Weeper”) is a young man on the threshold of maturity			who is shocked to find	that all his thoughts and impulses, and those of the world around him, tend to vice.
(White 2000)	Architrenius,			finding	his life without virtue
(Godman 2000)	The work describes the wanderings of Architrenius,			his sorrow	at his sinfulness and at the imperfection of humanity
(Wetherbee 2019)	Architrenius (the “arch-weeper”) is a young man approaching maturity			but shocked to realize	that all his thoughts and impulses, and those of the world around him, tend to vice.
(Haynes 2021)	Architrenius is introduced as a young man approaching maturity	reflecting	on his past	and regretting	never spending a day living virtuously.
(Tilliette 2021)	l’«Archigeignard», un jeune homme			en proie au	mal de vivre et à un sens de culpabilité diffuse
(Wick 2024)	One day, when he reaches manhood, Architrenius	reflects	on his past behaviour	and concludes	that “he has never devoted a single day to virtue”

and

Table A2. Synopses, second part.

Author	V1 + C1	C 2	V2	C3	C4
(HLF 1817)	Il se plaint de la Nature	qui a fait l’homme faible, et ne lui a pas donné la force de résister aux attraits du vice et aux mouvemens dèsordonnés du crime.	J’irai, dit-il,	chercher la Nature	qu’oubliant tout ressentiment et toute haine, elle accorde […] le secours et l’appui qu’il désire.
(Wright 1846)	He breaks into loud complaints against Nature	who has made him weak and liable to temptations,	and he determines	to set out on foot in search of her	and beg her assistance to enable him to contend with them.
(Wright 1875)			until he resolves to go	on a pilgrimage to Dame Nature	in order to expostulate with her for having made him feeble to resist the temptations of the world, and to entreat her assistance
(Francke 1880)	Architrenius or Archweeper, […] having just reached his full manhood	has condemned man from the outset to a sinful existence, whether there is no rescue from the curse of evil.	He resolves	to go in search of Nature herself	To put an end to his doubts, […] to inquire for the reason of her wrath, and as a loving son to appeal to her motherly heart.
(Faral 1926)			se met	à quêter la sagesse à travers le monde
(Manitius 1931)	und verfällt in Zweifel darüber, ob die Natur	den Menschen sündig geschaffen habe und ob er sich nicht von der Sünde befreien könne.	Er will	sich daher der Natur selbst nähern
(Lewis 1936)				sets out to seek his mother Nature	and be healed
(Jung 1971)	Architrenius […] se demande:	C’est donc à cela que Nature m’a fait naître?» La puissance des vices sera-t-elle éternelle? N’y a-t-il point de remède à ces maux?	Architrenius estime que	la meilleure des choses est d’aller trouver Nature en personne	pour avoir une réponse à ses questions
(Piehler 1971)	comes to the conclusion that Nature	should have protected him better against the assaults of vice.	He therefore decides	to go out and search the world	for Nature’s answer to his difficulties
(Wetherbee 1972)	he accuses Nature	of having brought him into the world defenseless.	Architrenius resolves	to go forth into the world and seek out Nature “wheresoever she may have hidden her Lares,”	in the hope that this hapless situation may arouse her motherly compassion.
(Schmidt 1974)			beschließt	Mutter Natur aufzusuchen	und ihre Hilfe zu erbitten.
(Payen 1984)	Il met d’abord Nature en accusation		s’engage	dans une quête	qui tend à découvrir les ressorts secrets de l’univers
(Wetherbee 1994)	Convinced that Nature must be at fault,		he resolves	to seek out the goddess	and confront her with the spectacle of his hapless state.
(White 2000)	accuses Nature	of having brought him into the world only to abandon him to vice	accordingly decides	that he must go through the world in search of Nature	in the hope of regaining her favour.
(Godman 2000)				his search for Natura,	wisdom and consolation
(Wetherbee 2019)	Convinced that Nature	is to blame	he resolves	to seek out the goddess	and confront her with his hapless state.
(Haynes 2021)			he determines	to set out in search of Nature’s secret abode	so that he can ask her why she allowed him to be ensnared by vice
(Tilliette 2021)				de se rendre auprès de Dame Nature	pour la consulter sur la possibilité, et la manière, de se comporter moralement dans un monde rongé par la corruption
(Wick 2024)	According to him, the blame for this lies with Nature	who had abandoned him like the rest of mankind and did not take sufficient care of them,		set out to find Nature	on the optimistic assumption that she will surely comfort him with her motherly compassion; he may even be able to “repair the broken bonds of love”

in Appendix A, displaying the original text of each author parsed into segments according to the above-described structure. The split between Table A1 and Table A2 occurs at the position indicated by the double bar || in Wright’s quotation. When matched against Johannes’ text, the first table contains the descriptions of how the protagonist is presented in Liber I Capitulum 8 De recordacione Architrenii circa opera retroacta, et ibi incipit narracio operis (“Architrenius reflects on his past conduct. Here the story properly begins” in Wetherbee’s translation); the second table contains the descriptions of Liber I Capitulum 11 De proposito Architrenii (“Architrenius proposes to act”). Some authors mention segments of Liber I Capitulum 9 De Nature potencia (“The power of Nature”) and Capitulum 10 De monstruosis (“Strange creatures”).

The dichotomy between a ‘moral’ and a ‘metaphysical’ concern, identified in the previous section, remains significant in the new corpus, with an overwhelming predominance of the moral reading. The term deplorare, used by earlier authors to describe the protagonist’s distinctive action, disappears in favor of verbs such as se plaindre, to lament and similar. The term misery used to describe the object of the protagonist’s concerns disappears in favor of terms such as evil, mal, maux. The latter appear only three times (Francke, Jung, Payen), while the overwhelming majority of authors use vice, sin, sinfulness and related terms, which were also predominant in the short descriptions analyzed in the previous section. The double reading of the main character as either a ‘rational thinker’ or else a ‘sentimental devotee’ and of his concerns as moral or metaphysical can be clearly observed also in this larger corpus, in which the two opposite portraits of Architrenius emerge in a more nuanced form. When considering this new textual corpus, the following semantic distinctions help label the textual excerpts under scrutiny in a reasonably textually grounded manner.

• The verbs used for denoting the protagonist’s mental acts fall into two main categories:6 psychological versus cognitive. We range from the description of an anodyne hero who “passes in review” his past to “find” or even to rationally “conclude” “that so little of it has been devoted to virtue”, to a hero in a state of “mere despair”, “shocked”, “en proie au mal de vivre”, or even “déchiré” by his reflections.7
• What is the object of Architrenius’ concern? Is it vice or evil? Is it human weakness or human wickedness? The terms used to denote the protagonist’s intentional object fall into two categories: moral, in case terms such as vice are used, versus metaphysical, in case terms such as evil or imperfection (which is traditionally used to refer to moral evil) are used. A few authors use terms from both fields. This is most notably the case of Schmidt, who describes Architrenius as worried by his own individual sinfulness and with human imperfection (“die eigene Sündhaftigkeit und die menschliche Unvollkommenheit”).8
• Does Architrenius care about his own actions/condition or about the actions/condition of all men? The complements used to describe the protagonist’s intentional object in the segments from

  Table A3. Overview of contemporary critics’ positions. An ‘X’ indicates that no answer is given, a ‘?’ indicates a doubtful answer.

  	Arc. Learns from Philosophers/Nature	Arch. Is Confrontational	The Ending Is Satirical	The Hero’s Problem Is Solved
  Jung	YES/NO	NO	NO	YES
  Piehler	NO/NO	YES	NO	YES
  Schmidt	YES/NO	YES	NO	YES
  Payen	X/X	YES	NO	YES
  Klaus	X/X	YES	NO	YES
  Godman	NO/NO	NO	YES	X
  White	X/NO	YES	NO	NO
  Roling	YES/YES	NO	NO	YES
  Wetherbee	X/NO	YES	?	?
  Haynes	YES/YES	NO	NO	YES
  Wick	X/NO	NO	YES	NO

  can be labelled as individual or universal, according to whether the reference is made to the individual protagonist or to mankind.9 Is Architrenius exclusively worried about “the various circumstances of his life” or is he (also) troubled by “la dépravation universelle” or even “le mal universel”?10
• What does the hero expect from Nature? Again, the terms used in the final segment of the descriptions fall into two main categories, according to whether psychological or cognitive verbs/terms are used. The accounts range from a hero who longs for Nature’s “assistance”,11 to a hero whose only goal is to “confront” Nature and to “expostulate” with her about her “faults”.12 Is the hero striving for psychological assistance, comfort and consolation, is he looking for “answers” to his philosophical “doubts”? Or else, is he only determined to “confront her with his hapless state”?13 The intellectual reading of Architrenius’ search is brought to an extreme by that group of readers (Faral, Payen, Klaus, Godman) who portray Architrenius’ goal as a search for wisdom or knowledge. According to Lewis the hero’s goal is to “be healed”—this can be seen as an extreme form of psychological reading.

The synopses by Klaus (1985), Roling (2003) and Wick (2021) are plot-driven and for this reason they do not fit syntactically in the above tables. They nevertheless exhibit the same structural components in a different syntactical order and can be classified according to the above proposed dichotomies. Catherine Klaus introduces the poem and its hero as follows:

Cette épopée didactique raconte les aventures mi-réelles mi-allégoriques d’un jeune homme qui, voulant comprendre le monde qu’il découvre, décide de partir à la recherche de la “déesse Nature”. Convaincu de la bonté et des pouvoirs de cette dernière, le jeune Architrenius ne peut ni expliquer l’existence du mal, ni s’y résigner.

(Klaus 1985, p. 185)

The goal of the hero is cast in purely cognitive/philosophical terms (voulant comprendre le monde qu’il découvre) and the hero’s intentional object is consistently cast in metaphysical terms as the problem of evil (l’existence du mal). A cognitive dissonance is attributed to the hero: on the one hand, he has a firm belief (convaincu) in the goodness of Nature, on the other hand, he is unable to reconcile with the existence of evil either on a cognitive (expliquer) as on a psychological (s’y résigner) level.

Bernd Roling gives the following synopsis of the Architrenius:

[…] schildert der <Architrenius> in neun gleich umfangreichen Büchern die Reise seines Titelhelden, des <Erzweiners>, zu seiner Mutter, der Natura. Der Protagonist ersehnt ihren Beistand, um dem Dilemma seiner Sündhaftigkeit zu entfliehen.

(Roling 2003, p. 167)

The protagonist’s epistemic attitude is described in cognitive terms as a Dilemma. The dilemma concerns the protagonist’s sinfulness (seiner Sündhaftigkeit) and thus seems to be exclusively about the problem of vice.14 However, in his final assessment of the Architrenius Roling twice uses the advective unvollkommen (imperfect), a term traditionally associated with metaphysical evil.15 This terminological oscillation either means that Roling sees Architrenius as concerned by both moral and metaphysical evil, as implied by Schmidt’s description, or that Roling uses the two terms inherited from Schmidt (Sündhaftigkeit and Unvollkommenheit) as interchangeable. Roling describes the hero’s goal in seeking Nature in both psychological (ersehnt) and cognitive terms (dem Dilemma […] zu entfliehen).

Maximilian Wick summarizes the poem as follows:

[…] Architrenius, ein allegorisches Gedicht von 4361 Hexametern, das in neun Büchern von der Reise des gleichnamigen ‚Erzweiners‘ zu Natura berichtet. Bei ihr will er über die unvollendet gebliebene Schöpfung und die für Sünde nur allzu anfällige conditio humana Klage erheben und sie um mütterlichen Beistand für ihre Kreaturen bitten, um so die “gerissenen Bänder der Liebe” (rupti amoris nodi) zwischen beiden zu reparieren.

(Wick 2021, p. 119)

Wick’s description is rather rich, featuring both sides of some of the dichotomies identified above. The hero’s mental action is described as a deliberate intention, as implied by the use of the modal verb “will”: the hero is determined to raise his complaint (“Klage erheben”) about the human condition. The term Klage carries both emotional and cognitive connotations, and also evokes the medieval tradition that Smolak calls ‘Klage-Literatur’ (Smolak 2021, pp. 50–54). The object of the hero’s concern is described in both metaphysical (“die unvollendet gebliebene Schöpfung”, “conditio humana”) and moral (“Sünde”) terminology. The goal of the protagonist’s search for Nature is expressed in psychological and emotive vocabulary (“Beistand”, “bitten”).

The above-proposed scheme of dichotomies can be extended by further perspectives. Most authors explicitly mention the theme of Nature’s imputability (culpa Naturae) as part of the main character’s concerns,16 regardless of whether those concerns are framed as moral or metaphysical. By culpa Naturae we refer to the fact that Architrenius explicitly ascribes an error to Nature rather than to himself or more generally to man’s free will, see Arch. I, 225–233; Arch. I, 312–319. Faral, Lewis, Schmidt, Wetherbee and Tilliette do not mention this theme in their synopses, while other authors emphasize it. A few authors also explicitly mention the hero’s acknowledgment of Nature’s (unlimited) power, used as part of an a fortiori argument concluding to Nature’s imputability for the helplessness of Architrenius/man towards vice/evil (the textual reference is again Arch. 1, 312–319). Wick, for example, attributes to the hero the belief that Nature has “abandoned him like the rest of mankind and did not take sufficient care of them, even though she was downright omnipotent”.17 The idea of Nature’s imputability is articulated along two dimensions. The first concerns the epistemic status of the main character’s beliefs about Nature, which range from the dubitative form to the affirmative form;18 the second goes from the imputation of an error of omission to an error of commission to Nature.19 The distinction between errors of omission and errors of commission is also relevant when the object of Architrenius’ initial dissatisfaction is described.20 Finally, the hero’s emotional stance towards Nature goes from serene to decidedly confrontational. We range from the image of a hero who calmly formulates “questions” and “doubts” to a portrait of Architrenius “accusing”, “expostulating” and “complaining” against Nature.

These observations highlight a significant number of dichotomies against which the various readings of the poem’s hero can be described, compared and classified. According to these dichotomies, two opposite readings of the main character are theoretically possible. At one extreme, the hero can be construed as a sentimental character troubled by the moral problem of human vice and longing for emotional support and assistance. At the opposite extreme, Architrenius can be described as an intellectual character concerned with the metaphysical problem of evil and determined to obtain from Nature a solution to his intellectual problems. The two extreme portraits can further be shaded by emotional nuance, according to whether Architrenius is construed as calling on Nature as a “loving son” (Francke) or else as a victim accusing his assailant (Wick). None of the authors considered offers such a polarized depiction; instead, their readings present intermediate gradations, connected by family resemblance. The proposed analytic scheme can be extended to further (past or future) items and can be useful in analyzing and clustering the various hermeneutical perspectives on Johannes’ poem and its protagonist, even adopting automated textual analysis, for example, hierarchical clustering.

2.3. Architrenius Quidam

All dichotomies observed in the previous section can be justified on textual grounds. Indeed, in the relevant segments of the poem to which the synopses correspond (i.e., chapters 8–11 of Book 1), the hero’s actions are described using both psychological and cognitive verbs. In the hero’s recordatio in chapter 9 of the first book his mental actions are described by verbs such as respicit, recolit, evolvit, profunda explorat sub mente, invenit. The object of his worries is mostly described in moral terms (moribus, virtutibus, viciorum idris), with a few cases pointing to the problem of evil/wickedness rather than vice/sinfulness (arma dampnata, odium, reatus, facinus). The hero poses a number of questions to express his thoughts and feelings concerning the human condition, which fully justifies the recourse to dialectical terms such as question, dilemma, answer, etc. His declared goal in setting out to search for Nature in Book I, chapter 11 ostensibly combines emotive and psychological terms from the field of assistance along with cognitive ones. Indeed, the hero’s stated intention is to educe the hidden causes of hate (odiique latentes/eliciam causas) as well as to perhaps (forsan) repair the broken bonds of love (rupti forsan amoris/restituam nodos).

While the very text of the Architrenius provides solid ground for justifying, individually, each of the word choices and each of the possible alternative readings, it cannot justify the distribution or evolution of the various critical readings or their family resemblances. Do they depend on identifiable families of readers?

Three works seem responsible for shaping the interpretations of later readers of Architrenius in Table A1 and Table A2: HLF (1817), Faral (1926) and Francke (1880).

Wright’s synopsis in the Biographia Britannica Literaria, Anglo-Norman Period (Wright 1846) is essentially an undeclared translation of the Histoire Littéraire de la France (HLF 1817). Wright’s further detailed account of the plot of the Architrenius in the BBL also strongly depends on the similar account in the HLF. At the time of editing the BBL Wright was a correspondent member of the Institute of France (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres), a circumstance that makes his undeclared borrowing unsurprising. He would later give the first modern edition of the Architrenius in (Wright 1872). Piehler and White have the same combination of verb 2 (“trouve”/”finds”) + complement 2 (respectively: “nothing virtuous there”; “his life without virtue”) as in HLF (“trouve qu’il n’a rien fait pour la vertu”), suggesting a filiation from HLF. Godman’s phrase “his sorrow at his sinfulness and at the imperfection of humanity” is an undeclared translation of Schmidt’s “der voll Kummer über die eigene Sündhaftigkeit und die menschliche Unvollkommenheit”. The latter is in turn significantly close to Wright (1875): “who sorrows over the spectacle of human vices and weaknesses”, suggesting a reasonable filiation. Schmidt seems responsible for the distinction between an individual (eigene) and a general (menschliche) dimension. Also, Schmidt’s word choice strengthens the conceptual divide between moral evil (Sündhaftigkeit) and metaphysical evil (Unvollkommenheit) with respect to Wright’s “vices and weaknesses”, which arguably refer only to moral evil. The filiation Wright → Schmidt → Godman delineates an interesting terminological cycle from English to German and back to English: weaknesses → Unvollkommenheit → imperfection, and analogously: vices → Sündhaftigkeit → sinfulness, with an increasingly abstract word choice possibly influenced by the transition through German.

The short description of the poem in Faral (1926) appears to have significant influence on later readers, consistent with the French scholar’s authority. On a textual level, we might conjecture that Faral’s phrase “fatigué du spectacle de la dépravation universelle” is the prototype for Lewis’ expression “in mere despair at the wickedness within him and about him”, although Faral’s paper is not quoted in Lewis (1936). The word choice in Jung’s “moeurs dépravés” might also derive from Faral’s use of dépravation in the corresponding locus. Payen’s phrase “dechiré par le mal universel” is structurally homologous to Faral’s “fatigué du spectacle de la dépravation universelle” and ends with the same adjective. The shift in word choice (fatigué → déchiré; dépravation universelle → mal universel) recalls the opposition between Baillet’s and La Monnoye’s descriptions of the poem’s theme, yet in a completely different cultural context. It would be interesting to investigate the contextual cultural circumstances and ideological positions that lead the two francophone scholars to their word choice. Faral also seems to be the origin of a thread of readers who identify Architrenius’ journey as an intellectual or philosophical quest. Indeed, according to Faral, Architrenius “se met à quêter la sagesse à travers le monde”. In the paper from which the quotation is taken (Faral 1926), the scholar pinpoints the importance given to (ancient) Philosophy in the economy of the Architrenius as one of the poem’s distinctive features, clarifying that sagesse here means philosophical (moral) knowledge. According to (Payen 1984) the hero “s’engage dans une quête qui tend à découvrir les ressorts secrets de l’univers”. Similarly, Klaus (1985) identifies Architrenius’ goal with the desire to understand the world he discovers (“voulant comprendre le monde qu’il découvre”), while Godman refers to the main character’s “search for Natura, wisdom and consolation” (Godman 2000, p. 318).

Kuno Francke (Francke 1880) appears to be the first to construe Architrenius’ mental action as a doubt (Zweifel) and a question (Frage), introducing both a cognitive vocabulary and a dubitative connotation where previous authors used a psychological verb in the affirmative. This word choice clearly echoes in later German readers: it reoccurs in Manitius (1931)—who is derivative of Francke also in other respects; see infra—and in Schmidt (1974).21 In Roling (2003), the protagonist’s question/doubt becomes the “Dilemma seiner Sündhaftigkeit” (possibly with the intermediary of Francke’s “tormenting question”). Roling also repeatedly uses the term “Frage” (question). The term dilemma, with its connotation of ‘hard to solve’ (if not utterly ‘unsolvable’), reappears in the same context in Wetherbee (1972, pp. 252–53). In some non-German writers we find a similar dubitative—yet less aporetical—connotation: Jung (1971) has Architrenius travelling “pour avoir une réponse à ses questions”, while, according to Piehler, the hero “decides to go out and search the world for Nature’s answer to his difficulties” (Piehler 1971). Note how the terminology of the latter two scholars is rather neutral and lacks any strong philosophical or dialectical connotation. Francke introduces the Architrenius as follows:

So tauchen Dantesche Gedanken lange vor Dante selbst auf; so ist auch in unserem Gedichte die Grundidee eine ähnliche wie in der göttlichen Komödie: die innere Entwicklung eines Menschen aus Zweifeln zum Seelenfrieden.

(Francke 1880, p. 477)

The above paragraph is repeated, with slight changes and inversions, by Manitius in the third volume of the Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, published some fifty years later:

Als Thema hatte sich der Dichter ein unerschöpfliches gesetzt, nämlich die Betrachtungen eines denkenden Menschen über die der Welt anhaftenden Mängel und seine Entwicklung aus Zweifeln zum Seelenfrieden. Dies Thema erinnert etwas an Dante und entbehrt auch nicht der Durchführung in der Allegorie.

(Manitius 1931, p. 806)

Such an undeclared quotation is not surprising in the context of a monumental work such as the Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters. Francke’s construction of Architrenius’ voyage as a progress from doubt to peace of mind undoubtedly found in Manitius an authoritative and influential amplifier.22 These descriptions convey the image of the protagonist as a thinker and at the same time codify the reading of the poem as a Bildungsroman whose hero progresses from a state of cognitive dissonance to a state of inner peace.

Some of the observed similarities above can be explained by the hitherto unnoticed dependence of many of our authors on the following medieval Prologus:

Architrenius quidam, cum ad annos virilis roboris devenisset, recordationis stilo retroacti temporis actus colligit universos; secum quicquid egerit scrutabundus inquirit nec moribus usquam invenit esse locum. conqueritur igitur in Naturam. nam, que maiora poterat, et illud utique potuisset, quod adversus scelerum motus et impetus inconsultos homo inquassabilis perduraret. post querelarum ergo lacrimas profusissimas «Queram» inquid «Naturam, ut odiis expurgatis indignacionis huius extergatur fermentum et amoris azimi vinculo solidato optatum Architrenio subsidium conferatur». mundum igitur pede circummeans vagabundo Venerem, Ambicionem, Avariciam, Gulam et mundi ceteras invenit meretrices, que fune multiplici ad rerum temporalium amplexus illicitos attrectant hominem et inclinant. Nature tandem invente genibus obvolutus, vie causam evolvit et porro quicquid postulat impetrato pro subsidii summa de Nature consilio uxor Architrenio, Moderancia nomine, desponsatur. quos Deus coniunxit, homo non separet.

Architrenius iste ab eventu sic dictus est, nam loci fere singulis peregrinationis suae mundo compatitur sub vitiorum fluctibus naufraganti, et lamentis animum et lacrimis oculum impluit et immergit. Liber autem iste Architrenius nuncupatur; unde hic est titulus: “Ad Walterum Rothomagensem Archiepiscopum Architrenius incipit.” Ex titulo collige ad quem scribitur hoc opus. De quo autem aut quibus in libris singulis texatur oratio, posita in principio capitula te docebunt. Lege igitur. De actore si quaeras, dixisse sufficiat: Johannes est nomen eius.23

The Prologus appears in roughly half of the manuscripts and is included in Ascensus’ printed edition from 1517. Schmidt (1974) and Wetherbee (1994, 2019) include the Prologus in their editions of the Architrenius, though both believe it is not by the author (Schmidt 1974, p. 117; Wetherbee 2019, p. 473). Smolak (2021) quotes the entire Prologus in place of offering an original synopsis of the poem.

Some clear dependencies on the Prologus can be found in the synopses offered by modern readers.24 For example, the influential summary in HLF is a fairly faithful, though undeclared, translation of the Prologus up to the first paragraph quoted above.25 This does not necessarily mean that the authors of HLF did not read the poem, since they also offer a long and detailed description of its contents, which appears to be autoptical. Yet, for their initial summary of the work they rely—for some reason—on the wording of the medieval Prologus. The derivation of HLF from the Prologus explains the terminological shift noted above between short synopses (XII-early XIX centuries) and the long synopses (early XIX-XXI centuries), in particular the disappearance of the term déplorer, which is absent from the Prologus. It would be interesting to evaluate whether the quite obvious influence of the Prologus on other later authors is immediate or mediated by HLF (1817) and Wright (1846). That Wright (1846) is not influenced directly by the Prologus, but indirectly through HLF, can be confirmed by observing a number of similarities with HLF but not with the Prologus; e.g., Wright’s “passes in review” translates HLF’s “passe en revue” which in turn translates the Prologus’ “colligit”.

Going beyond mere philological interest, we might draw some general observations from the analysis of the philological genealogies underlying the textual corpus under scrutiny. The medieval Prologus acts as a proto-reader that heavily shapes scholarly reconstructions of the poem from the XIX century onward, mainly through the mediation of the HLF for the francophone area and of the BBL for the anglophone area. What idea of the protagonist is conveyed by the Prologus?

Like most medieval readers of Johannes’ poem, the author of the Prologus offers a ‘rich reading’ of the protagonist: the hero is construed as both a sentimental and an intellectual character, capable of articulating a logical arguments and actively seeking solutions to his affective and cognitive problems. The hero’s voyage is described as a peregrinatio, probably influencing later readers’ lexical choices and conceptualizations of Architrenius as a pilgrim and of his voyage as a pilgrimage. The Prologus makes the culpa Naturae theme explicit and mentions the ‘argument ex omnipotentia’, thus encouraging a philosophical reading, even though the protagonist’s lamentation concerns explicitly moral matters (moribus, scelerum motus, impetus inconsultos). Based on these observations, it seems fair to say that the Prologus accounts for the presence of both the problem of evil and the problem of vice in the Architrenius. The intentional vocabulary is neutral or ambiguous between the psychological and the cognitive (scrutabundus, inquirit, conqueritur, invenit, querelarum). The weeping of the protagonist is mentioned and emphasized by a superlative (lacrimas profusissimas). The protagonist’s goals in seeking out Nature are represented as being of a sentimental and psychological nature only, yet the presence of terms prompting an evangelical reference (I Corinthians 5.7) add a significant doctrinal dimension. The final solution offered to the hero is cast entirely in psychological terms (subsidii, consilio).

The French translators of the Prologus omit the evangelical references entirely, downplay the issue of the hero’s imputability, and leave out the argument involving Nature’s omnipotence. In so doing, they consolidate the depiction of the protagonist as a “sentimental character” (Francke 1890a, p. 80) preoccupied with a mainly moral problem whose solution is ultimately ethical if not psychological and pragmatic.26 While the HLF, stemming from the Prologus, inaugurates a thread of readers proposing a somewhat ‘impoverished reading’ of Architrenius, Francke appears as a fresh, first-hand reader of the poem (which he partially edited), bringing renewed energy to a line of ‘rich readings’ of the poem and its hero. He recovers a number of elements that were progressively discarded by previous readers, notably the metaphysical dimension and the presence of the problem of evil alongside the problem of vice as the object of the concerns of the protagonist,27 as well as the presence of both a psychological and an intellectual dimension to the mental acts of Architrenius.28 In addition to emphasizing the ‘confrontational’ aspects of the protagonist, depicting him, to some extent, as a Romantic hero, Francke also appears to be the first to use the word “doubt” (Zweifel) to describe Architrenius’ epistemic initial state. In this respect, Francke qualifies as the progenitor of a family of readers (in particular Schmidt, Piehler, Roling, Wetherbee, Haynes) who re-construct the main character as endowed with both a psychological and a cognitive dimension, as a man preoccupied by the moral problem of vice (often with the peculiar emphasis on the ‘control of passions’ theme). Most of these readers, as we will see infra, recognize that the hero develops over the course of the narrative and ultimately accept that the final solution offered by Nature effectively addresses his concerns, in line with Francke’s use of the term Entwicklung. The undeclared quotation of Francke in Manitius’ influential work probably played a significant role in the dissemination of Francke’s terminology among scholars.

Following the scholarly style of their times and under the constraint of the venues in which their accounts of the Architrenius are contained (mostly histories of national literatures), critics up to Francke generally offer only plot summaries and brief, scattered comments on style, aesthetics or philology. When re-introducing Johannes’ poem in a more thematic work of literary history (Wright 1875), Wright presents the main character in a way quite consistent with his 1846 synopsis, offering only a brief conceptual summary and evaluation:

The general moral intended to be inculcated appears to be that the retirement of domestic happiness is to be preferred to the vain and heartless turmoils of active life in all its phases.

(Wright 1875, p. 161)

Francke, who undoubtedly made considerable efforts to bring Architrenius to a broader scholarly audience, embeds his interpretation in rhetorical emphases within the long synopsis in his Modern Ideas in the Middle Ages (Francke 1890b) and to his striking—though largely unsubstantiated—claim that the Architrenius, along with the few other works considered in his paper, “bear important witness to the growth, in the XII and XIII centuries, of that spirit of individualism which is the soul of all modern life” (Francke 1890b, p. 184). Similarly, Lewis confines his appreciation of the poem to a few memorable lines in his influential The Allegory of Love, focused on the protagonist’s declaration of intent (I, 8), which we quoted at the outset of this paper. Faral, whose influence on later critics emerged from the analysis of the synopses, points to the Architrenius, along with Alan’s Anticlaudianus, as a source of inspiration and a forerunner of Jean de Meung’s “naturalisme” (Faral 1926, p. 452). Moreover, he attributes to Architrenius alone Jean de Meung’s “habitude d’invoquer à chaque instant les propos ou l’exemple des anciens” (Faral 1926, p. 452). This trait of “humanisme naissant” finds its most distinctive expression, according to Faral, from the encounter of Architrenius with the ancient philosophers in Johannes’ poem.

These brief but influential observations by a handful of authoritative figures might have contributed to the renewed interest in the poem in the second half of the XX century, starting in the 1970s with the works of Marc-Réné Jung and Paul Piehler (both from 1971), followed by the critical edition by Paul Gerhard Schmidt in 1974.

3. One, None, and a Hundred Thousand Architreniuses?

Those critics who, since the 1970s, have attempted a more thorough interpretation of the Architrenius and its main character can still be grouped into the two main families we identified through the textual analysis of the short synopses in the previous section. An overview of their contributions allows us to considerably enrich the portrait of the main character along new dimensions.

In discussing these contributions, some episodes of the Architrenius that were not addressed in the earlier synopses become relevant. The final stage of the hero’s journey is the island of Tylos, where he meets a group of ancient philosophers who give speeches about virtue. Architrenius then meets Nature, personified as a majestic woman, and falls at her feet. Nature gives a long lecture on cosmology. The hero’s reactions to both the philosophers’ speeches and Nature’s lecture on Astronomy (which occur, respectively, in Book 7, Chapters 1 and 7, and Book 9, Chapters 1 and 8) have received widely divergent interpretations from contemporary critics. A further pivotal variable is the interpretation of the hero’s final marriage to a girl named Moderantia. Here too, the readings range from literal to entirely satirical.

The following questions are relevant in classifying the contemporary readers of Architrenius: Does the hero evolve over the course of the poem? Does he learn from what he sees and hears? Does the hero have a confrontational attitude towards Nature? Is the final marriage with Moderantia a genuine happy ending, or is it satirical? Is the poem coherent, or does it suffer from major design flaws? Table A3 gathers the answers of contemporary critics to some of these questions. Below, we examine how each critic’s stance on these aspects of the poem interacts with their earlier descriptions of the hero and with their overall portrait of the main character of the Architrenius.

We divided the scholars into two families, the ‘moralists’ and the ‘metaphysicians’ according to whether they put a greater emphasis on the problem of vice or on the problem of evil.

3.1. The Moralists

As was already evident from the analysis of their synopses, the vast majority of contemporary critics construe Architrenius’ preoccupation as primarily moral, portraying the hero as concerned chiefly, or exclusively, with the problem of vice. Within this large family of critics, we distinguish three subgroups: the first comprises Jung, Piehler and Roling, who focus on the moral and psychological development of the protagonist throughout the poem. A second group, consisting of Godman, White and Haynes, brings together scholars whose interpretations of the hero are shaped by strong literary (or meta-literary) theses. The third group consists of the first two modern editors of the poem, Paul-Gerhard Schmidt and Winthrop Wetherbee who, while agreeing on the moral nature of the hero’s concerns, offer a more multi-faceted and somehow problematic reading of the poem and of its protagonist. The recent contribution by Kurt Smolak (Smolak 2021) is sui generis and we consider it separately.

Jung, Piehler and Roling put great emphasis on the moral macro-argument. These readers are not interested in the universality of the poem’s message because most of their analysis is focused on the psychological interpretation of the main character and his individual progress. In so doing, they probably depend on Francke’s description of the Architrenius as an Entwicklung from doubts to peace of mind (Francke 1880), possibly mediated by Manitius (1931). According to Jung, Piehler and Roling, Nature’s intervention at the end of the poem is crucial in that it effectively cures the protagonist’s excessive passions. His journey is a successful one towards “un modus vivendi dans le monde corrompu” (Jung 1971, p. 120), or towards “psychic healing” (Piehler 1971, p. 93) or the achievement of full “control of passions” (“Affektkontrolle”, Roling 2003, p. 184).

By describing the poem’s hero as lamenting the “moeurs dépravés de son temps” (Jung 1971, p. 114) Jung—apparently unique among contemporary readers—echoes Du Boulay’s early characterization of the poem’s argument as “de corruptione morum sui temporis” (Du Boulay 1665, p. 458). According to Jung, Johannes de Hauvilla is “un moraliste” (Jung 1971, p. 120). The Swiss critic provides at least two arguments in support of this claim. First, he notes how Johannes is “more interested” in the moral teachings of the philosophers on the island of Tylos than in the cosmological teaching of Nature.29 Jung infers this from the hero’s reactions, though these are not unambiguous: while other critics detect an embarrassing satirical tone in the hero’s reaction to the philosophers’ speeches, Jung seems to read it as unproblematic. Conversely, he seems to judge that Nature’s cosmological discourse has no positive effect on the protagonist.30 The second argument proposed by Jung is based on the fact that Architrenius’ journey is an earthly one, as opposed to a heavenly one or a journey to the underworld. He takes this to indicate that the author’s concern is moral rather than cosmological or theological.31 Jung summarizes his reading of the poem as follows: “L’Architrenius n’est pas utopique. Il est une consolatio” (Jung 1971, p. 120). Jung also articulates some severe criticism of the poem’s design. In his view, the journey of the protagonist is allegorical but “static” (Jung 1971, pp. 118–19), and the allegory is overall “obscure” (Jung 1971, p. 120). This argument relies on an unwarranted assumption about what the poem should or might have been, shaped by expectations grounded in contextual and extra-textual data. Jung further criticizes the poem’s style: if the final message of the poem is that man should embrace moderation, then why is the style so excessive? He concludes by reproaching Johannes for incoherence: “la pensée de l’auteur est à l’opposé de la forme qu’elle revêt” (Jung 1971, p. 119).

Piehler’s analysis of the Architrenius is framed within his study on medieval allegory titled The Visionary Landscape (Piehler 1971, pp. 85–94), in which the scholar proposes a systematic psychoanalytic reading of some major works of medieval visionary and allegorical literature. Consistent with the overarching thesis of his work, Piehler stresses the importance of Architrenius’ psychological progress and of the mental/psychic nature of his journey. Piehler’s portrait of our hero is compelling and seeks to place Architrenius in a noble genealogy of universal literature:

Architrenius, distantly descended, one might say, from Gilgamesh and Aeneas, becomes the first of the interior pilgrims, wandering over the world in search of his soul, and—like Dante, Bunyan’s Christian, and Kafka’s Land-surveyor—profugus, an exile, searching out the lares, numinous abodes of mental divinities, in a landscape at one internal and external.

(Piehler 1971, p. 89)

Architrenius, according to Piehler, “is finally successful” in reconciling with Mother Nature and achieves, at the end of his journey, an effective “psychic healing” (Piehler 1971, p. 93). The insistence on healing as the ultimate horizon of the hero’s quest might have been suggested to Piehler by the short synopsis of the poem given by C. S. Lewis, a former teacher of Piehler in Cambridge, in his Allegory of Love where Architrenius is depicted as seeking Nature in order to be “healed”. The hero’s progress, however, is not linear. The philosophers on Tylos leave the hero “unmoved” and Nature’s cosmological teachings leave him “unconsoled” (Piehler 1971, p. 93). Piehler contrasts this with earlier authors such as Boethius and Alan of Lille, noting the protagonist’s unusually confrontational stance: his “challenge to Nature”, “his full confrontation with her”, represents “a vigorous and refreshing return to the greater intellectual discordances of the Boethian, if not the Platonic, dialogue” (Piehler 1971, p. 92). When qualifying the aspects according to which “the Architrenius stands out even among twelfth-century allegories”, Piehler emphasizes the “the humanistic breadth and boldness of its challenge to contemporary world views and the search for answer to man’s spiritual problems in the natural rather than the supernatural universe” (Piehler 1971, p. 93). The reference to a “humanistic” quality echoes Faral (1926) and the observation about the natural dimension in which the hero searches for a solution to his problems aligns with Jung’s reading—though their conclusions differ. While Jung reads the earthly journey as proof of the poem’s moral focus, Piehler highlights the novelty of the protagonist’s choice to seek an answer to his problems (be they moral or metaphysical or generically spiritual) in the natural realm. Piehler’s reading of the end is literal, i.e., that Nature is successful in healing Architrenius, but, differently from Jung, Piehler identifies two further steps beyond the (ineffective) philosophical and cosmological solutions offered by Nature. First, he speaks of “Nature’s solution in terms of man’s free will”, to which the hero “does not protest” (Piehler 1971, p. 93, referring to Nature’s oration in Arch. 9 cap. 10). However, the “healing of the hero” does not occur at this level of “rational defence”; it is only achieved through his marriage to Moderantia, which Piehler reads as meaning that “the impulses of natural sexual love are given much greater emphasis as a principle of psychic healing” than is found in later authors (Piehler 1971, p. 93). Interestingly, Piehler acknowledges how this “healing of the hero through marriage with Moderantia” remains “psychologically mysterious” and is more plausibly regarded as “symbolic of the total process of self-analysis rather than of independent validity”, an “assurance of the inner peace that acceptance of the natural universe will bring” (Piehler 1971, p. 93). The expression “inner peace” likely derives from Francke’s or Manitius’ Seelenfrieden.

In his work dedicated to the concept of Moderantia in the Architrenius (Roling 2003), Bernd Roling presents the most linear portrait of our hero, supporting, with a broad comparative framework, the Francke/Manitius description of Architrenius’ journey as the progression (Entwicklung) of a man from doubts to peace of mind. The hero’s weeping is, according to Roling, a symptom of his emotional confusion, rather than being justified by the actual gravity of the problem he ponders: “Exzessives Weinen dokumentiert […] die Affektverlorenheit des Protagonisten” (Roling 2003, p. 212). Note how this implies construing the protagonist as lacking cognitive and emotional self-awareness, since in his final lamentation to Nature the hero explicitly claims that his sorrow has solid and objective causes: “certissima flendi/causa subest et vera movent adversa querelas” (Arch. 9.163–164). Reflecting his plot-driven synopsis, Roling emphasizes the protagonist’s evolution from emotional and cognitive immaturity to full mastery of his passions. He draws an interesting comparison with the figure of Aeneas in medieval commentaries: “Gleich dem Aeneas Bernhards bricht der Titelheld auf, um seine geistige Adoleszenz und seine Seelenruhe zu gewinnen” (Roling 2003, p. 196). According to Roling, the hero benefits equally from the philosophers’ moral teachings and Nature’s cosmological discourse. In stark contrast to Piehler’s reading of these episodes, Roling sees both as successful steps in the protagonist’s linear evolution that culminates in him embracing moderation as an effective principle of “Harmonisierung der Affekte” (Roling 2003, p. 214). His reading is based not so much on textual evidence as on a compelling philosophical and literary framework that enables, justifies and determines his interpretation of the poem (Roling 2003, pp. 170–94). Thus, Roling’s portrait of the main character can be criticized for its omissions or deliberate de-emphasizing of aspects that have emerged as characteristic of the poem since the Middle Ages. The hero’s confrontational stance, the presence of the culpa Naturae theme, the articulation of the argument ex omnipotentia, the questionable effectiveness of both the philosophers’ and Nature’s teachings are completely denied by the fact that they are overlooked: as Wetherbee writes, “Nature’s discussion of the ordered universe is hardly Roling’s “conclusive answer” to Architrenius’ doubts” (Wetherbee 2019, p. xvi). Moreover, the literary and philosophical tradition in which Roling situates the Architrenius is complex and varied and therefore cannot support a single, definitive reading of the poem.

The three critics discussed above agree in interpreting the hero’s concerns in primarily moral terms. Jung and Roling downplay or overlook the presence of a metaphysical dimension and the hero’s confrontational posture, elements that Piehler fully acknowledges, but which he absorbs within his broader psychoanalytic framework.

A second group of ‘moral’ readers, comprising Godman, White and Haynes, consists of literary or meta-literary critics who discuss the Architrenius in the context of monographs with a strong (meta)literary thesis (Godman 2000; White 2000; Haynes 2021). Their interpretations of the main character serve to locate the poem in the history of literature, rather than in the history of ideas or philosophy. Overall, these critics give little weight to the seriousness of the culpa Naturae theme and of the theodicy problem in the poem and tend, with the exception of White, to minimize the confrontational aspects of the protagonist.

Peter Godman offers a strong interpretation of Johannes’ poem in his monograph The Silent Masters (Godman 2000, pp. 318–24, essentially a reworking of Godman 1995). Godman’s reading of the Architrenius is based on an original and provocative construction of the poem’s main character. Johannes’ hero, according to Godman, is a parodic reversal of Alan of Lille’s vir perfectus in the Anticlaudianus. “The opposite of Alan’s ideal man formed by the seven liberal arts, courtly virtue, and revelation, he is not a hero of renascent culture but an antihero of Unbildung. What Architrenius learns is nothing.” (Godman 2000, p. 323). The Architrenius is thus an ‘Anti-Anticlaudianus’, a satirical rewriting of Alan of Lille’s celestial poem. Its hero is nothing but “the perfect idiot” (Godman 2000, p. 320). No attention is paid to his complaints against Nature, or to his numerous speeches against vice. His weeping is interpreted as caricature: its excess is an indication of the hero’s inability to learn.32 This latter argument is based on stylistic aspects and can be seen as Godman’s answer to Jung’s criticism concerning the contrast between form and content of the Architrenius (see supra for a summary of the latter). Godman is proposing a new explanation of the use of excess as functional to the author’s intention, i.e., caricature. Godman’s Architrenius learns nothing from the philosophers or from Nature. No progress is possible for him. Godman criticizes the “literal-minded” readers of the final marriage with Moderantia, among which, as we have seen, we can count Jung, Piehler and Roling. According to Godman the marriage is a “master-stroke of parody” (Godman 2000, p. 319), a sharp critique of Alan of Lille’s lofty and conciliatory Anticlaudianus. Godman’s portrait of Architrenius arguably omits several verifiable aspects of the character. Moreover, it relies heavily on the debated assumption that the Architrenius postdates the Anticlaudianus (Haynes 2021, pp. 8–21).

Hugh White devotes a chapter of his monograph Nature, Sex, and Goodness (White 2000) to the Architrenius, situating it within a literary tradition that questions the benignity of Nature. It is not surprising, then, that he highlights the presence of the problem of evil, the culpa Naturae theme, the argument based on Nature’s omnipotence, and the chapter on “monsters” (Arch. 1.10).33 While ultimately endorsing a literal reading of the poem’s conclusion,34 and allowing for the possibility that the hero’s problem, which remains unresolved at the logical level, is resolved through psychological or intellectual progress,35 White stresses the aporetic quality of Nature’s final solution to Architrenius’ difficulties:

Thus Nature vindicates herself. This does not, however, altogether meet the case, for it does not deny what is the ground of Architrenius’ complaint, that he is left naturally the prey of vice.

(White 2000, p. 105)

White does not further comment on this remark, which is based on a logical reading of the poem under the assumption that the object of the hero’s initial complaint is Nature’s imputability for the defects of the human constitution. White implicitly presents this extravagant idea as an episode in his proposed narrative of the unsystematic development of a literary tradition in which the idea of Nature’s goodness is progressively eroded. In view of the literary perspective of his study, no attempt at considering the argument from a philosophical point of view is presented. Yet, in acknowledging the presence of such a logical dissonance in the poem’s narrative, White distinguishes himself from the other ‘moral’ readers.

Haynes’ analysis of the Architrenius is also cast in the framework of a monograph with a strong literary thesis (Haynes 2021). The main thesis of the book is that the key to understanding three XII century poems (Anticlaudianus, Architrenius, Alexandreis) is to be found in the tradition of Late Antiquity and medieval allegorical commentaries on Virgil’s Aeneid. A comparison of Architrenius with Aeneas was drawn, as we have noted, by both Piehler and Roling—in the latter case with explicit reference to the figure of Aeneas as it emerges in Bernard of Chartres’ commentary. Haynes follows this lead; therefore, his analysis of the protagonist is focused on tracing and emphasizing the similarities to the character of Aeneas in medieval and late antique commentators. Architrenius’ journey is described as a “metaphysical” or “philosophical descensus” through vices, similar to how medieval readers deciphered Aeneas’ catabasis in Book VI of the Aeneid.36 Accordingly, the hero is seen as progressing linearly throughout the narrative. Both the philosophers’ teachings and Nature’s instruction are considered effective and unproblematic by Haynes, as was the case in Roling’s analysis. Despite the use of the expression “metaphysical descensus” to describe Architrenius’ journey, the metaphysical problem of evil plays no role in Haynes’ account, the culpa Naturae theme is not even mentioned. The hero’s confrontational stance is acknowledged only during the early part of his journey:

He begins fiercely angry at Nature, but by midway through book 7 he is merely sad, interrupting the philosophers with his sobbing and lamentation. The philosophers further calm him down and are convincing enough that Architrenius cries tears of happiness rather than anger when he finally sees Nature.

(Haynes 2021, p. 88)

It is difficult to support textually the claim that the hero’s tears before his last lamentation are “tears of happiness”. The fact that the hero will again be prey to “the Fury of wrath” in his final speech to Nature in Book 9 after Nature’s cosmological lecture goes completely unnoticed. Haynes, like Roling, eventually aligns with Jung’s overall reading of the poem as a consolation, but restricts its adequacy to three of the nine books of the Architrenius: “Thus, books 6, 7, and 8 take the form of a consolation”. Haynes’ Architrenius inherits from his superimposition to Fulgentius’ and Bernard of Chartres’ Aeneas a further important aspect, that of being an “Everyman” (Haynes 2021, pp. 43–44, 72–76). This suggests an obvious, yet undeveloped, link to Dante. The connection of Architrenius with the Aeneas of late antique commentators is also the base for Haynes’ thesis concerning the epic rather than satirical dominant tone of the Architrenius, contra Godman (Haynes 2021, p. 91): a satirical tone would be dictated, according to Haynes, by the very theme of philosophical descensus. A further suggestion by Haynes is that the hero and the author of the Architrenius are indeed the same person. In so doing, the critic revives a peculiar ‘autobiographical bias’ that has colored readings of the Architrenius since the Middle Ages. The name ‘Architrenius’ was often used by early readers to refer both to the poem and its author, or used as a cognomen for Johannes, which might be justified by the fact that the Architrenius is the only known work of the otherwise mysterious Johannes de Hauvilla, “dont le nome réel n’étoit dejà que trop embarrassé de variantes difficiles” (Nodier 1826): the inclination to read the poem as autobiographical can be dated back to pre-modern times (recall, for example, Pullanus’ description of Johannes’ poem as a book in which the author “poses as a pilgrim”). Klaus quite explicitly conflates author and fictional character in her analysis of the “monsters” chapter (Klaus 1985). More explicitly Piehler observes that the wanderings of the protagonist give “The general effect […] of an autobiography in which various types of experience are expressed in differing modes of presentation, with no particular regard for logical consistency of form.” (Piehler 1971, p. 90). Haynes goes much further and claims that “there is strong evidence within the poem” for identifying author and protagonist. The loci involved are Arch. 6.191 and 7.219, “two points during the Architrenius, characters mention a “Johannes” who seems to be identical to the protagonist, Architrenius” (Haynes 2021, p. 75). Moreover, the fact that Johannes “signs the works with his own name” through the acrostic composed by the initial letters of the last line of each book is seen by Haynes as an admission by Johannes: Architrenius, c’est moi! Haynes’ arguments in favor of the identification of author and character and in favor of an autobiographical reading of the Architrenius are certainly open to dispute. They are made more suspicious by observing that, admittedly, the autobiographical thesis is a key part of Haynes’ more general thesis concerning the correspondences between Architrenius and Aeneas. Yet the persistence of the tendency to identify author and character throughout the centuries is a fact that needs to be properly explained. To some extent it is a bias that can be traced back to the impression conveyed by medieval readers and their antiquarian collectors. It is indeed surprising that such an identification, for which no argument is offered by medieval and Renaissance readers, should have a lasting effect on the hermeneutical choices of modern and contemporary scholars.

Next in our overview of ‘moralist’ readers of the Architrenius are its first modern editor, Paul Gerhard Schmidt, and its first modern translator, Winthrop Wetherbee.

Schmidt does not properly engage in a critical analysis of the hero in the introduction to his critical edition of the Architrenius (Schmidt 1974, pp. 30–51). He prefers to offer a detailed account of the poem’s contents, with the explicit aim of correcting the flaws he detects in the synopses of Wright (1846) and Francke (1880) (Schmidt 1974, pp. 31–32, n. 2). Schmidt’s views on the protagonist and his overall assessment of the work are conveyed by brief comments in his long description of the poem’s contents. The hero’s actions and speeches are carefully recorded, including his dissatisfaction with Nature’s cosmological teachings. Due to the few descriptive elements given by the poet, Schmidt argues that the hero embodies more of an idea than a distinct individual (Schmidt 1974, p. 34). Schmidt also highlights the problematic character of Nature in the poem. According to the critic, Johannes fails to clearly distinguish Nature from God (Schmidt 1974, p. 50). The scholar, as Jung did, blames a design defect in the poem: arguing that the many themes Johannes engages with are held together only by the voyage motif rather than by any coherent or systematic intention (Schmidt 1974, p. 31). Overall, however, Schmidt sees Johannes’ poem as a “further development” (“Weiterentwicklung”) of Alan of Lille’s De planctu Nature (Schmidt 1974, pp. 80–88). The above-observed deviations from the supposed model are seen as flaws in the poem’s design.

This view is contested by Winthrop Wetherbee as early as in his 1978 review of Schmidt’s edition (Wetherbee 1978, p. 78). According to Wetherbee, the relationship between the De Planctu and the Architrenius is one of “contradiction” rather than “development”. In the De Planctu, Wetherbee claims, the problem is theological, not moral.

L’Architrenius, par contraste, marque un profond désintérêt pour ce qui concerne les implications théologiques de la culpabilité humaine. Il ne pourrait pas y avoir une confirmation plus nette de l’importance que Johannes attachait à une vision éthique de la vie.

(Wetherbee 1978, p. 78)

Wetherbee’s interpretation of the Architrenius is first articulated in a chapter of his 1972 monograph Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth Century (Wetherbee 1972), essentially based on his doctoral dissertation dedicated to the literary influence of the School of Chartres. Notably, this work pre-dates Schmidt’s edition and is independent of Jung (1971) and Piehler (1971), which are not cited in the bibliography. The image of the poem that Wetherbee draws is very rich, subtle, and multifaceted. He treats the hero as a fully developed, psychologically articulate character who displays complex reactions to his experiences (Wetherbee 1972, pp. 245–47). He is often described as experiencing “conflicting emotions” (Wetherbee 1972, pp. 249, 251). Wetherbee clearly records the relevance of the culpa Nature theme in the hero’s charges against Nature at both the beginning and the end of the narrative (Wetherbee 1972, pp. 243, 244, 251). According to Wetherbee, this accusation is to some extent supported by the narrative itself:

Nature herself seems to feed the dissipation of Architrenius and his fellow sinners. This is the burden of Architrenius’ complaint against her, and the ironic moral of one scene after another in the poem.

(Wetherbee 1972, p. 249)

However, Wetherbee leans toward attributing the idea of Nature’s imputability to “the distortion of the hero’s vision” (Wetherbee 1972, p. 249), aligning with Nature’s own defense in her final speech. Thus, Wetherbee views the final marriage as the culmination of a successful Bildung process:

The “consolatio Naturae” involves no complex intellectual Exchange, only a reimpression on Architrenius’ mind of the face of Nature as she is in reality. There is, Jean suggests, something intrinsically beneficial in the very act of contemplating the order of the universe, in an awareness of the unceasing labor of Nature and in the conscious acceptance of her gifts. The recognition of these truths is enough to restore Architrenius to health—though only after he has purged himself emotionally by an excess of wrath and grief.

(Wetherbee 1972, p. 254)

Note how, in this final assessment, Wetherbee echoes the Francke/Manitius image of the Architrenius as an Entwicklung from doubt to peace of mind and the “healing” terminology introduced by Lewis. However, Wetherbee offers an image of the poem and of its hero that is much less linear than that offered by Jung, Piehler, Roling and Schmidt. While acknowledging the many “fundamental defects” of the poem (Wetherbee 1972, p. 242), and that “Jean de Hanville has made no serious attempt to resolve the situation he depicts” (Wetherbee 1972, p. 254), Wetherbee argues that the Architrenius is the fullest expression of “the tendency to justify worldly existence wholly in worldly terms” (Wetherbee 1972, p. 242):

[…] the material thus ordered is the substance of actual human experience, and much of the awkwardness in its disposition is a consequence of the great innovation which is Jean’s chief contribution to the Chartrian tradition: in the Architrenius, for the first time, the Nature of the Chartrians is given a local habitation, and the challenge of seeking her out is presented in terms of life as lived.

(Wetherbee 1972, p. 255)

Yet in Wetherbee’s later work, the impression of disorder becomes more prominent. After “wrestling with the poem for fifty years” (Wetherbee 2019, p. xxiii) and publishing two prose translations of Johannes’ poem with commentary (Wetherbee 1994, 2019), the scholar concludes: “In the end I abandon the search for a coherent reading of the Architrenius” (Wetherbee 2019, p. xvi). This hermeneutic impasse is, interestingly, based on the critic’s lucid sensitivity in recording the variety of aspects of the poem and of its hero. While clearly aligned with the previous scholars who read the poem in moral and ethical, rather than philosophical or religious terms (Wetherbee 1994, pp. xi, xx), Wetherbee stresses the presence of a number of problematic aspects of the poem, many of which revolve around the ambiguity of the hero: “The tidiness of the poem’s conclusion is misleading, for it suggests that Architrenius’s journey has been successful […]. But evaluating the hero’s experience is difficult” (Wetherbee 2019, p. xiv). Wetherbee’s Architrenius is polytropos; he is endowed with both a cognitive and a psychological dimension and his preoccupations are both individual and universal (as was already clear from Wetherbee 1972); Architrenius is also a “quasi-prophet”, blowing the trumpet of apocalypse in his lamentations on human vice (Wetherbee 2019, p. xv); though “hapless in his own account”, Wetherbee observes, our hero “is not often foolish” and “his attacks on the vices of court and cloister […] are as astutely probing as those of the philosophers of Tylos” (Wetherbee 2019, p. xv). Such a ‘rich reading’ of the protagonist form the basis for Wetherbee’s criticisms of Godman’s rendering of Architrenius as the “perfect idiot”. Yet, Wetherbee acknowledges, the protagonist later “seems diminished, reduced to his own self-assessment” (Wetherbee 2019, p. xv). While Wetherbee does not provide a model to explain the hero’s conflicting psychological and intellectual dimensions, his argument that their mere presence in the poem speaks against Godman’s portrait ‘a tutto tondo’ is text-based and hardly disputable. Wetherbee is also sensitive to the ambiguity of the character of Nature in the poem and of the hero’s final marriage: he observes that the poem’s climax is indeed “anti-climatic” and that Architrenius’ marriage “apparently confirms his reconciliation with Nature” (Wetherbee 1994, p. xxvi). Wetherbee notes the ineffectiveness of the cosmological argument for the protagonist and, like Jung, takes this as an indication of the author’s “unconcern” for cosmology and theology, again in contrast with Bernardus Silvestris and Alan of Lille (Wetherbee 1994, p. xxvi). These ambiguities make it difficult to endorse, according to Wetherbee, the unaporetic reading of the Architrenius proposed by Roling (2003). Wetherbee expresses deep reservations concerning the overall quality of the poem’s design: “Though the hero’s reunion with the goddess provides an obvious climax to the narrative, the episodes that lead up to it are disposed in no coherent order” (Wetherbee 1994, p. xxvi). Echoing to some extent one of Jung’s criticisms, Wetherbee articulates a hypothetical argument based on a reader’s unfulfilled expectation about the poem:

It would seem reasonable to suppose that Architrenius’ wanderings were in some sense intended to prepare him for the marriage which concludes his quest, and which apparently confirms his reconciliation with Nature, but I have been unable to discover evidence of any such systematic intention.

(Wetherbee 1994, p. xxvi)

Blaming the poem’s incoherence and lack of structure also casts doubt on the meaning of the final marriage:

Indeed it is difficult to know whether marriage with Moderantia is Architrenius’ reward for having learned the lesson of his experiences or a last recourse on Nature’s part, a final attempt to improve his otherwise desperate and incorrigible state.

(Wetherbee 1994, p. xxvi)

Still, it remains possible that this sense of incoherence arises from a hermeneutical impasse.

Kurt Smolak (Smolak 2021) engages little to previous interpretations of the poem and devotes no attention to whether the hero’s problem is moral or metaphysical. He doesn’t provide his own synopsis but quotes and translates the entire medieval Prologus (Smolak 2021, p. 51). In so doing, he implicitly propends for a moral reading but the issue is largely irrelevant for his purposes. The scholar acknowledges the singularity of the poem (Smolak 2021, p. 47) and its semantic and conceptual richness (Smolak 2021, p. 54). His insightful essay focuses on a specific aspect of the protagonist: his compassion or “empathy” towards the vicious and the miserable (Smolak 2021, pp. 52, 75–77, 79). Coupled with the observation that, in contrast with Bernardus and Alanus, Architrenius’ journey is a worldly one (Smolak 2021, pp. 55, 78), Smolak’s emphasis on the hero’s empathy becomes the foundation for a broader assessment of the poem’s nature, intent and expected audience. His striking conclusion is that the Architrenius does not belong to any classical genre, nor to the late antique “mélange des genres”—rather, it is a “genuine medieval product” which makes free and violent (“gewaltsam”) use of the previous tradition, blending satire and didactic intent, “Klage-Literatur” and “chevaliers errants” narrative in an original way (Smolak 2021, pp. 50–56, 61). This complexity is mirrored in the figure of the hero, whose emotional responses to the vicious characters he encounters and observes during his journey are multifaceted and blend complaint and compassion.37

3.2. The Metaphysicians

Payen, Klaus, and Wick see the problem of evil as the protagonist’s main concern. Already in their synopses, they stress the universal valence of Architrenius’ question and describe his actions with neutral or cognitive, rather than sentimental, verbs. Their dark, Romantic—if not existentialist—interpretations likely derive from Francke. What image of the protagonist do these critics offer in their longer analyses of the poem?

Consistent with his short synopsis, Payen identifies Architrenius’ problem with the metaphysical problem of evil in the most clear-cut way: “L’Architrenius pose le problème du mal et non celui du péché” (Payen 1984, p. 393). While this aligns him with with Baillet, Payen does not construe the protagonist as a Jansenist: although Nature appears to the hero as “assez maléfique”, it is because the life she creates contains inherent dangers of excess and monstrosity, which man must resist through the exercise of free will (Payen 1984, p. 393). Payen acknowledges the extravagant and potentially heterodox elements of the Architrenius, which he describes as a “roman très profane” (Payen 1984, p. 392), but offers two arguments to attenuate this impression. First, he claims that the use of a romanesque genre naturally entails a “profanisation” of tone, accounting for the absence of biblical references (Payen 1984, p. 392). Second, he posits that the Chartrian idea of Nature as vicaria Dei must be at work as a hidden postulate (Payen 1984, p. 393): thereby excluding any perceived inconsistency between Nature and God’s works and neutralizing the impact of the culpa Naturae theme in Johannes’ poem. According to Payen, this hidden postulate restores Architrenius to a “relative orthodoxie” (Payen 1984, p. 393). Payen’s reading of the poem and of its main character is thus clearly determined by a previous reading of its cultural milieu. Moreover, by invoking this philosophical “postulat sous-jacent” to soften the hero’s more challenging aspects, he opts for a conciliatory interpretation rather than one that accepts the possibility of Johannes as a divergent thinker. Architrenius, Payen argues, seeks to become a model of the “juste” through an internal “réformation” based on knowledge and measure. In this sense, he is presented as a precursor of Renaissance humanists, echoing a thesis expressed by Faral and presupposing a literal reading of the poem’s ending. To this extent, some degree of originality of Johannes’ main character is acknowledged, although it is immediately downplayed by noting how the “bonheur individuel” that Architrenius finally enjoys lacks a “dimension collective” (Payen 1984, p. 393). It is interesting to observe how Payen completely omits Nature’s long cosmological discourse in Book 8. According to his account, Nature only prescribes the hero the duty to procreate (Payen 1984, p. 391).

Klaus, writing in the same era and cultural context as Payen, shares many of his views. She presents the Architrenius as a “poème philosophique” (Klaus 1985, p. 185), articulating the logical structure of Architrenius’ argument based on the omnipotence of Nature: Architrenius is a philosopher, pondering the premise of a syllogism that forces him to the conclusion of Nature’s imputability (Klaus 1985, p. 209)—a conclusion that the hero cannot accept, neither cognitively nor psychologically: “le jeune Architrenius ne peut ni s’expliquer l’existence du mal, ni s’y résigner” (Klaus 1985, p. 185). Klaus inherits from Schmidt the impression that the character of Nature in the poem is ambiguous and that Johannes doesn’t clearly distinguish Nature from God but interprets this ambiguity as intentional and as an expression of the author’s “volonté d’unir la culture antique et la pensée chrétienne”. While stressing that the philosophical dilemma of the hero remains unsolved, at least on a logical/philosophical level, and recording the desperate and confrontational posture of the hero in his final address to Nature, her conclusion ultimately aligns with Payen’s, though perhaps in a less reconciled tone. She emphasizes the hero’s final “solitude”: as a figure of the morally upright individual, he cannot rely on Nature’s prodigious powers but only on his own will to embrace the virtue of moderation (Klaus 1985, p. 210). Klaus (1988), which focuses on the use of myth in the poem, does not elaborate on the figure of the protagonist, except to offer a more moral interpretation of his quest: “Architrenius cherche à connaitre le monde afin de comprendre la place qu’il y occupe et la conduite qu’il doit y tenir”. Moreover, Klaus further describes the hero’s reflection as based on a mythical rather than an abstract reasoning (Klaus 1988, p. 27), but retains the cognitively-oriented reading from her earlier work (Klaus 1985).

Wick dedicates to the Architrenius a chapter of his monograph (Wick 2021) on the theme of the microcosm in Latin and German medieval epic works, and a paper focusing on the hero’s reaction to Nature’s cosmological lecture (Wick 2024). For reasons of space, we mostly focus on the latter paper. Wick’s description of the protagonist’s idea of Nature emphasizes the malignant aspects of the goddess. The hero “sees Nature as the one responsible” for having “abandoned him like the rest of mankind” (Wick 2024, p. 23). Following the lead of previous critics,38 Wick writes that Nature “consequently appears” to Architrenius “as somewhat malevolent, maybe even in the Manichaeist sense simply as an evil counter-principle to the good Creator, or at least as a malignant stepmother, a tristis noverca, as Pliny pessimistically describes her in his Natural History” (Wick 2024, p. 23). Wick’s comment on the hero’s reaction to Nature’s cosmological lecture emphasizes the singularity of Architrenius’ admission of not understanding the intricate explanation of the universe offered by Nature. Nature’s indifferent reaction to the hero’s admission is itself, according to Wick, “startling”: “instead of explaining the content once more in a simpler manner, she just continues with her explanations and now addresses even more complicated matters” (Wick 2024, p. 25). Despite his acknowledgment of the prominence of the culpa Naturae theme for the hero’s epistemic attitude, Wick eventually shifts to a moral focus and disregards the hero’s confrontational stance, contrary to that which he suggests in his synopsis. This is how Architrenius’ final lamentation is eventually described (our emphasis): “he complains that humanity is morally depraved and calls for Nature’s assistance” (Wick 2024, p. 26). The word choice prompts a reference to Faral’s synopsis, where “la dépravation universelle” is indicated as the object of the hero’s concerns. Wick reads Architrenius’ admission of not understanding Nature’s teachings as a criticism that Johannes addresses to his predecessors, Bernardus Silvestris and Alan of Lille, who indicated in the contemplatio caeli a possible solution to “the problem of the imperfect human” (Wick 2024, p. 27). Notably in the expression “the imperfect human” Wick echoes the terminology introduced by Schmidt’s Unvollkommenheit, which was later adopted by Godman and Roling to describe the hero’s concerns. Consistent with this terminological convergence, Wick invokes Godman’s reading of the protagonist to conclude that “the Architrenius provides a vivid example of how the contemplatio caeli and in turn Bernardus Silvestris’ optimistic conception of a self-perfecting homo silvestris does not work for everyone; moreover, it offers a satire on Alanus’ messianism” (Wick 2024, p. 27). Interestingly, Wick extends this reading to the final solution offered by Nature and has a sceptical opinion of the poem’s ending, echoing the views of White and Wetherbee. According to Wick, with the marriage proposal, Nature intentionally hides the fact that the metaphysical problem has not been solved: “The problem of the imperfect human […] shifts back to Nature, but she hides it by at least providing individual help to the Arch-Mourner. However, this does not really work either” (Wick 2024, p. 28, in which we note the verbal echo of White’s phrase “This does not, however, altogether meet the case”). Wick thus reads the conclusion in a satirical key, as Godman does, and combines this reading with the suggestion of previous critics that the reaction of Johannes’ hero to Nature’s cosmological teachings signals Johannes’ distance from the views of his predecessors. It is striking that a reader like Wick, who in his synopsis emphasized both the relevance of the culpa Naturae theme and the argument ex omnipotentia, and who described Nature as a largely malign being, eventually shifts to a moral and satirical reading of the ending in the conclusion of his analysis and returns both terminologically and conceptually to the perspective of authors like Schmidt, Roling and Godman, who gave to the above aspects of the hero very little importance. Wick adds the further emphasis that Johannes is not merely distancing himself from or parodying Bernard and Alan, but he is articulating a “severe criticism of the conception of his predecessors” (Wick 2024, p. 28).

4. Conclusions: Relative Orthodoxy or Hermeneutical Impasse?

The above overview of contemporary readings of the Architrenius and its hero shows that most critics interpret the hero’s preoccupations and Nature’s final solution in a moral, rather than metaphysical, key. Nevertheless, a number of debated core issues emerge within and across the two groups of readers that we identified. A significant number of scholars acknowledge the presence of discordant aspects in the hero’s idea of Nature and in his posture towards the teaching he receives from the philosophers and from Nature herself. Some authors even cast doubt on the ultimate success of the hero’s quest.

We might speculate that the reading of Johannes’ hero as concerned with the problem of evil is proposed by a minority of readers because of a common perception that the moral, rather than the metaphysical question, is more ‘medieval’ and more consistent with other works contemporary to the Architrenius (most notably Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus). It is significant in this respect that those critics who acknowledge the disruptive potential of the hero questioning Nature’s goodness (Payen, Klaus and Wick) eventually fall back on a moral reading of the poem’s conclusion, either embracing a literal reading or else a satirical interpretation of Architrenius’ marriage to Moderantia. Interestingly, the hero’s singularity is often lifted from a contentual dimension (i.e., the hero/author endorses unorthodox views) to a matter of intellectual posture: Architrenius’ attitude, according to some critics, is ahead of its time; it anticipates Humanism, the Renaissance, if not “that spirit of individualism which is the soul of all modern life” (Francke 1890b, p. 184). It would be worth further exploring to what extent these judgements reflect a quality of Johannes’ poem, or rather a tendency among scholars to construe phenomena that diverge from general expectations regarding a historical period (in this case the Middle Ages) as ‘precursors’ or ‘anticipators’ rather than indicators that the general view of the epoch in question might need revision.39

Those aspects of the poem’s hero that appear unorthodox, original or non-traditional based on the reader’s expectations are dealt with by contemporary readers of the Architrenius by being either (1) disregarded; (2) led back to a ‘relative orthodoxy’ by more or less convincing arguments; (3) explained in satirical or parodic terms; or (4) explained by blaming a design defect in the poem.40

While points (1–3) exemplify quite typical argumentative strategies in literary criticism, the recurring accusation of a design defect in the poem is somehow peculiar. This violation of the principle of charitable interpretation reflects, to some extent, the non canonical status of the Architrenius, and is not so uncommon in medieval literary studies. In our case, it may have its roots in the virulent stricture delivered by a very influential early reader: Petrarch. “O que monstra sermonis, que verborum inculcatio, non tantum lectori nauseam incutiens ac dolorem capitis, sed risum eliciens ac sudorem, usqueadeo, dum vult omnia dicere, nichil dicit!” Petrarch writes in his invective Contra eum qui maledixit Italie (Petrarca 2005, pp. 84–86). This critique is uttered in the context of a querelle with the French theologist Jean De Hesdin concerning the destination of the papal seat (see Berté 2004). De Hesdin quoted Johannes’ description of the beauties of Paris (Arch. 2, 17); Petrarch answered by delegitimizing the authority, swearing that nothing is more boring than the Architrenius. Despite the obvious ideological and political context (i.e., the Italian-French dispute concerning the proper location of the papal seat; see Fenzi 2008), Petrarch’s judgement undoubtedly had a significant impact on the readers’ attitude towards Johannes’ poem in later centuries. “I read about a thousand lines (I’m afraid I couldn’t face the other three thousand)”, writes the authoritative A.G. Rigg in his review of Wetherbee (1994). To excuse his falling short of his reviewer’s duties, the scholar invokes Petrarch’s authority: “I have not read as much Petrarch as I should have done, but I felt a kinship with him when I learned that he had written, ‘ex omnibus quos legerim, nullus umquam taediosior Architrivio [Petrarch’s joke?] illo est…’” (Rigg 1997, pp. 497–98).

The variety of readings of the main character can be explained by the still modest critical effort dedicated to the Architrenius, and by the readers’ prejudices/expectations concerning the Middle Ages in general or, more specifically, XII-century allegorical literature. It also quite obviously reflects the intrinsic complexity of the poem. As Smolak observes, “the Architrenius is never one-dimensional” (Smolak 2021, p. 54).41 Johannes’ poem contains elements of a philosophical poem on the theme of theodicy, of a narrative poem recounting the journey of a soul, of a metaphysical descent into vices structured on the allegorical commentaries on the Aeneid, of a satirical poem parodying the metaphysical and moral seriousness of the Anticlaudianus, and of a chaotic and erratic poem, that, in Petrarch’s words, “dum omnia vult dicere, nichil dicit!”. The emphasis that readers place on the various aspects does not erase the fact that all these aspects are actually in the poem to start with. Partial readings have been offered more often than outright misreadings.

Poems like the Architrenius were most probably still read in XIV-century Florence and provide the ‘scholastic’ context within which Dante’s Commedia would appear, possibly owing to these major products of the XII century its own plurality and capacity of embracing all existing disciplines (see Marino 2021). It is perhaps not by accident, and not merely because of readers’ biases, that the protagonist of the Architrenius has been construed by scholars in ways that are superimposable to major readings of ‘Dante agens’ in the Commedia: Architrenius the pilgrim, the philosopher, the sinner, the traveler, a medieval Aeneas descending through vices, a quasi-prophet, a fictional character who most readers seem compelled to identify with the author of the poem. This despite the fact that the intertextuality between the two works remains largely unexplored.42

The present overview and the findings from our survey will hopefully assist future hermeneutical efforts to understand this enigmatic, polymorphic character whose “living voice” still interrogates us from behind the veil of our expectations towards medieval poetry and medieval ideas.