With such magisterial studies as From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe, Common Women: Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England, and Unmarriages: Women, Men, and Sexual Unions in the Middle Ages to her credit, few historians have so immeasurably deepened our understanding of medieval gender and sexuality as has Professor Ruth Mazo Karras throughout her distinguished career. Whereas her other works offered breathtakingly sweeping accounts of vast subject matters--masculinity, prostitution, sexual unions--Thou Art the Man proves her equally adept in delivering erudite insights about the sole and singular figure of David. A man of contradictions--the puniest of warriors, the most virtuous of adulterers, the most homosocially minded of husbands--David demonstrates the malleability yet intransigence of masculinity in constructing cultural ideals as he (or more specifically, his re-creators) sutures over the impossible contradictions of gender. Moreover, David appears in biblical texts both as a character and as the credited author of the Psalms, further widening his adaptability as a touchstone of medieval masculinity. “This book investigates a cross-cultural selection of medieval texts and images involving King David in order to better understand the medieval construction of manhood” (3), Karras modestly writes in her Introduction--a goal that she pursues with relentless attention to detail and inspired, illuminating interpretations across a range of medieval Jewish and Christian artifacts.

Following a brief Introduction, chapter 1, “David His Tens of Thousands: Prowess and Piety,” addresses David’s most famous narrative moment: the battle to the death with Goliath. Throughout this chapter Karras teases out the implications of this encounter, in the ways in which medieval authors sought to explain David’s status as an underdog (owing to such factors as his youth and his inexperience in battle) as contrasted to Goliath’s overwhelming size, even his potential monstrosity. As she observes, “David’s masculinity is paradoxical. He was a renowned hero who was physically weak until a miracle assisted him” (25). Moving from this foundational account of David’s heroic figuration, Karras addresses his military service under Saul and his consolidation of a unified kingdom through dynastic succession. Karras takes her chapter title from the biblical quotation “Saul has slain his thousands; David, his tens of thousands” (1 Samuel 18.7); she builds from this foundational passage a detailed model of medieval martial masculinity, identifying David’s power in the ways in which he combines military success with faith (59), thereby modeling a masculinity that “balance[s] between prowess and piety” (63).

In chapter 2, “Surpassing the Love of Women: Love, Friendship, Loyalty between Men,” Karras examines David’s homosocial friendships, notably with Jonathan; again, she takes her chapter title from an evocative biblical passage, this time when David elegizes Jonathan, “Your love was wonderful to me, more than the love of women” (2 Samuel 1.26). Karras pays careful attention to the complexity of homosocial friendships, particularly through her refusal to disavow their potential eroticism. Male homosocial relationships, and the at times tenuous border between normative friendships and homoerotic desires, sparked numerous controversies throughout the Middle Ages, and Karras navigates these tensions with notable dexterity and care, neither unduly stressing nor erasing the erotic potential of the Davidic model: “Clearly the greatness of David and Jonathan’s love was a culturally available symbol that could be used to express other male love, sexual or not” (100). Karras’s third chapter, “I Have Sinned against the Lord: Sex and Penitence,” traces the way in which men’s sexual activities establish their masculinity. Here she evaluates the conflicting legacy of David’s heteroerotic relationships, particularly with Abigail, Michal, and Bathsheba. Karras notes the inherent contradiction of a polygamous king serving as a role model during an era when monogamous marriage was upheld as a virtually unquestionable cultural model and concludes of this paradox, “Masculinity resided both in being subject to temptation--that is, having an appetite for women--and in being powerful enough to act” (134).

In the fourth chapter, “With Sacred Music upon the Harp: Creativity and Ecstasy,” Karras explores David’s reputation as a musician. From his harp playing for Saul to his presumed authorship of the Psalms, music individuates David by tempering his overarching masculinity with feminine attributes. Karras also examines David’s ecstatic dancing, of which his wife Michal expressed her frank disapproval, and explicates the ways in which, in subsequent interpretations and re-creations of this scene, a man’s performance overcomes a woman’s scorn. As Karras explains, David’s musical and dance performances are connected to prophetic traditions and, as such, exculpate him from Michal’s censure. In her fifth and final chapter, “O My Son Absolon: Establishing a Dynasty,” Karras notes the paradox of David’s role as a patriarch: “David himself was in a somewhat peculiar position for a king... [He] was not chosen because of any relationship to Saul; he was a new king from a new bloodline” (167). Explicating images of dynastic trees, Karras discusses the contradictions inherent in dynastic successions subsequently emerging from a new bloodline, which highlights the ambiguity of purportedly direct lines of ancestral and cultural identity. In addition to the complex issues of masculinity inherent in the establishment of the Davidic line, Karras also addresses the repercussions of David’s, and thus of Judaism’s, geographic relationship to Jerusalem.

In her conclusion, Karras condenses her expansive and ecumenical analysis into a thumbnail sketch of a vividly evocative figure: “the Middle Ages contained many Davids, not only the separate ones within the Jewish and Christian interpretations of a textual heritage that was in many ways shared but in many other ways divergent, but also distinct ways of understanding the figure within each tradition over time” (208). A detractor might posit that such a conclusion is virtually preordained, that such a strikingly contradictory man as David could hardly help but to inspire an astounding array of interlocking and clashing interpretations. Even if such hypothetical detractors could be found, however, surely they would praise the astoundingly detailed readings that Karras offers to illuminate her interpretations, the nuanced cross-cultural analysis that brings Jewish and Christian traditions into new dialogue, all of which sparkle with that gemlike flame that continually bring history and the humanities to life for new generations. This is a masterwork.