Justified Matricide in Mai und Beaflor?

Horrible and destructive as all wars have been throughout history, and negatively as they have mostly been portrayed in literary texts, the kind of violence perpetrated by some of the characters in Marie de France’s lais and in the Nibelungenlied represents a different category since it is committed with a vicious intent for selfish reasons and against the norms of society, even if Gunther, for instance, indirectly condones Hagen's action.

The Roman emperor commits incest with his daughter Beaflor, who is so distraught about it that she is even considering suicide. Then, however, she manages to escape from Italy and to reach Greece, where the Prince Mai falls in love with her and marries her. His mother, Eliacha, however, not knowing anything about her background, develops great hatred against this foreign woman and at one point tries to get Beaflor killed. The narrator is not very specific about the actual motivation for this vicious dislike and radical rejec­tion; instead he focuses on her strategy, which proves to be nefarious. While her son is on a crusade in Spain, Beaflor delivers their first child and sends a messenger to her husband. This messenger makes a stop at Eliacha's castle, where the old queen makes him totally drunk. During his stupor, she replaces the letter with her own, which now tells Mai that his wife has delivered a wolf s child after she had allegedly committed adultery with two priests.

The poor king is desperate when he receives this terrible but falsified news, and even tries to commit suicide, which his friends prevent him from doing. Then Mai responds in a letter informing his council to take no action until his return home. Tragically, however, that letter is falsified by Eliacha as well, who thereby instructs the counts in Greece immediately to kill mother and child by quartering (5,531-2).

Sorrowful as the narrative development may be, the poet proceeds and ultimately has Mai take a journey to Rome where he wants to secure the pope's absolution for his sins. Through fortunate circumstance, there he finds his wife again; her father then admits his guilt and abdicates from the throne, which makes it possible for Mai to be crowned as the new emperor, while his son will later assume the throne of Greece. Even though we face a highly dramatic, deeply sentimentalised and emotional account, the poet also included numerous narrative elements addressing the very nature of violence and how to deal with it. Beginning with the emperor's incest, Beaflor has to submit to a life of suffering, though at the end she enjoys happiness again when she is finally united with her husband.

Not only Mai and all of his friends but also the narrator himself harbour nothing but contempt and outright hatred for the old Queen Eliacha. He calls her ‘vngetriwe' (5,476; disloyal) and identifies her actions as a ‘mort' (5,652; murder). Moreover, in an earlier passage he characterises her as the worst possible woman on earth and condemns her in the strongest terms (5,263). Mai's execution of his own mother constitutes matricide, but there is no one at court who would dare to raise any criticism against him, since she is clearly marked as a she-devil who deserves the death penalty for her terrible wrong­doing, certainly criminal in nature, as we would call it today.

Intriguingly, the poet clearly differentiated between military violence and private violence, signalling to us that killing of opponents in a war situation (crusade in Spain) must be viewed in an entirely different light from killing a criminal person (Mai). Moreover, Eliacha pursued the entire process of falsifying those letters not just to malign her daughter-in-law, but in order to make the counts at her son's court execute her in a most gruesome fashion. This old woman proves to be vicious, mean-spirited and criminal at the same time, and the two counts, who would have been responsible for carrying out the faked command from Mai, voice great surprise that such a high-ranking and worthy lady would be prepared to carry out such a ‘mort vnd vnstete' (6,790; murder and evil deed). Moreover, they cannot believe that a woman could be driven by so much hatred as to pursue the death of her own completely innocent grandchild (6,800-1). The narrative account hence serves as a warning to all women not to fall into the trap of such violent and criminal behaviour (6,802-5).

Even though Mai's revenge finds full approval amongst the courtiers, he himself immediately feels great remorse (6,927) and would have almost tried to commit suicide once again, which signals that even under the present circumstances matricide is viewed here as sinful and to be condemned. In fact, the bishop of Anderville has her buried in a worthy fashion and then orders an impressive epitaph to be erected above her grave, whereas no one in the city feels any pity for her or grief over her death; instead they all sympathise with Mai, and the narrator even comments that Eliacha did not really deserve such a dignified interment (6,966-7). Altogether, as this verse romance indicates once again, medieval poets had a clear sense of what they regarded as evil, sinful and particularly criminal. Mai's violent action against his mother needs to be atoned, hence his voyage to Rome, but there he is actually redeemed even by God since he is allowed to find his wife and son again and then receives the imperial crown.