Eileen Power

THE NUN IN MEDIEVAL LITERATURE

“Or dient et content et fablent.” Aucassin et Nicolette.

“La science,” said a wise Frenchman, “atteint l’exactitude; il appartient À l’art seul de saisir la vÉritÉ.” And another, “L’histoire vit de documents, mais les documents sont pareils aux lettres Écrites avec les encres chimiques; ils veulent, pour livrer leur secret, qu’on les rÉchauffe, et les Éclaire par transparence, À la flamme de la vie.” The quotations are complementary, for what, after all, is literature but a form of life; the quintessence of many moods and experiences, the diffused flame concentrated and burning clearly in a polished lamp. The historian who wishes to reach beyond accuracy to truth must warm those invisible writings of his at the flame of literature, as well as at his own life. He must vitalise the visitation reports for himself (it is not difficult, they move and live almost without him); but he must make use also of the life of writers long since dead. There is hardly a branch of literature which has not its contribution for him. The story-teller has his tale, which holdeth children from play and old men from the chimney corner. The ballad-man has his own pithy judgment in the guise of an artless rhyme. The teacher has his admonitions, whence may be learnt what men conceived to be the nun’s ideal and purpose in this cloistered life. The moralist has his satire, to show wherein she fell short of such lofty heights. And the poet himself will hold his mirror up to nature, that we may see after five hundred years what he saw with his searching eyes, when Madame Eglentyne rode to Canterbury, or when the nuns of Poissy feasted a cavalcade from court. The world was subject matter for all these, whether they wrote with a purpose or without one; there is life even in the crabbed elegiacs of Gower, grumbling his way through the Vox Clamantis; there is much life in the kindly counsels of the Ancren Riwle; there is God’s plenty indeed in the stories and songs which the people told. It is the historian’s business to call in these literary witnesses to supplement his documents. To the account-roll and the bishop’s register must be added the song, the satire and the sermon. Alnwick’s visitations, with the story of “Beatrix the Sacristan” behind them, have twice as much significance; Madame Eglentyne and Margaret Fairfax lend to each other a mutual illumination; little captured Clarice Stil needs Deschamps’ Novice of Avernay by her side before her case can be well understood. It is of these composite portraits that truth is put together and history made.

An analysis of the classes of medieval literature in which there is mention of nuns shows from how wide a field the historian can draw. The most obvious of these classes is that which contains biographies and autobiographies of saints and famous women who were nuns. Such are the writings of the great trio who made famous the nunnery of Helfta in the thirteenth century, the bÉguine Mechthild of Magdeburg and the nuns Mechthild of Hackeborn and Gertrud the Great[1539]; the lives and writings of Luitgard of Tongres[1540], of St Clare[1541] and of St Agnes of Bohemia[1542]; the memoir and letters of Charitas Pirckheimer, Abbess of a Franciscan convent at Nuremberg, who was a sister of the humanist Wilibald Pirckheimer and herself a scholar of repute[1543]. The autobiographies of one or two nuns in the later sixteenth century (for instance St Theresa[1544] and Felice Rasponi[1545]) have a certain retrospective value; and the lives of the three bÉguine mystics, St Douceline[1546], St Lydwine of Schiedam[1547] and St Christina of Stommeln[1548] afford supplementary evidence, which is interesting as showing the similarities and dissimilarities between regular and secular orders. For present purposes, however, these works may be neglected. Their interest is always rather particular than general, since they deal with great individuals, and the information which they give as to the life of the average nun is conditioned always by the fact that a woman of genius will mould her surroundings to her own form, even in a convent. This is true of the medieval saints; while the careers of women such as Charitas Pirckheimer, Felice Rasponi and St Theresa owe much of their significance to the special circumstances of the time. An additional reason for neglecting biographies and autobiographies lies in the fact that the class is unrepresented in English literature belonging to this period. The short panegyric of Euphemia of Wherwell is the sole approach to a biography of an English nun which has survived, unless we are to count the description of Joan Wiggenhall’s building activities. For some reason which it is impossible to explain, monasticism did not produce in England during the later middle ages any women of sanctity or genius who can compare with the great Anglo-Saxon abbesses[1549].

Outside the personal records of great individuals, our informants fall (as has already been suggested) into four classes: the people, with their songs and stories, the teachers, with their didactic works, the moralists, with their satires and complaints, and finally the men of letters, poets and “makers,” for whom the nun is sometimes subject-matter. First, and perhaps most interesting of all, must come the people and the people’s songs, for in the literature of the continent there exists a class of lyrics (“Klosterlieder,” “Nonnenklagen,” “Chansons de Nonnes”) which is specially concerned with nuns[1550]. There is much to be learned about all manner of things from such popular poetry. So the people feel about life, and so (reacting upon them) it makes them feel. Songs crooned over the housework or shouted at the plough steal back into the singer’s brain and subtly direct his conscious outlook; this was the wise man’s meaning, who said that he cared not who made the laws of a nation if he might make its ballads. Now it is extremely significant that almost all the popular songs about nuns, the songs which

The spinsters and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their thread with bones
Do use to chant,

are upon one theme. They deal always with the nun unwillingly professed. It was the complaint of the cloistered love-birds which these knitters sang.

How can a bird that is born for joy
Sit in a cage and sing?What, one may ask, is the reason for this unanimity of outlook? Why do the people see a nun only as a love-bird shut within a cage and beating its wings against the bars? Partly, no doubt, because such songs always “dally with the innocence of love”; the folk are capable of a deep melancholy, as of a gaiety which is light as thistledown; but Love is and was their lord and king, and so even the nun must be in love when they sing her. It may be, however, that there is a deeper meaning in the chansons de nonnes. The nunneries were aristocratic; the ideal of the religious life was out of the reach of women who lived among fields and beasts of the field. These spinsters and these knitters in the sun, who seem so gay and peaceful, we know what their lives were like:

Poure folke in cotes,
Charged with children, and chef lordes rente,
That thei with spynnynge may spare spenen hit in hous-hyre,
Bothe in mylk and in mele to make with papelotes[1551];

carding and combing, clouting and washing, suffering much hunger and woe in winter time; no time to think, and hardly time to pray; but always time to sing. “The wo of those women that wonyeth in cotes” solaced itself in song; but when the echo of the convent bell came to the singer at her clouting, or to her husband, as he drove his plough over the convent acres, they recognised a peace which was founded upon their labours and which, though it could not exist without them, they could never share[1552]. If the songs which the slaves of Athens sang among themselves in the slave quarter at night had come down to us, they would surely have thrown a new light upon those grave philosophers, artists and statesmen, to whom the world owes almost all that it cherishes of wisdom and of beauty. Nor would the Athenians be less great because we knew the slaves. Even so it is no derogation to the monastic ideal to say that the common people, shut out of it, looked at it differently from the great churchmen, who praised it; and, unlike those of the Athenian slaves, their songs still live. The popular mind (these songs would seem to say) had little sympathy for that career in which the daughters of the people had no share. It is immaterial whether they looked upon it with the eye of the fox in the fable, declaring that the grapes were sour, or whether the lusty common sense of those living close to nature gave them a contempt for the bloodless ecstasies they could not understand. At all events the cloister mirrored in their songs is a prison and a grave:

Mariez-vous, les filles,
Avec ces bons drilles,
Et n’allez jÀ, les filles,
Pourrir derriÈr’ les grilles[1553].

That was how the people and the nightingale envisaged it; and no mystic will be the less wise for pondering that brutal last line, the eternal revolt of common sense against asceticism.

All over western and southern Europe this theme was set to music, now with gaiety and insouciance, now with bitterness. The wandering clerk goes singing on his way:

Plangit nonna fletibus Inenarrabilibus, Condolens gemitibus Dicens consocialibus: Heu misella! Nichil est deterius Tali vita, Cum enim sim petulans Et lasciva.

The nun is complaining, Her tears are down raining, She sobbeth and sigheth, To her sisters she crieth: Misery me! O what can be worse than this life that I dree, When naughty and lovelorn, and wanton I be.

And he can tell the nun’s desire

Pernoctando vigilo Cum non vellem Iuvenem amplecterer Quam libenter![1554]

All the night long I unwillingly wake, How gladly a lad in mine arms would I take.

For those who know no Latin it is the same. “In this year,” [1359] says a Limburg chronicle, “Men sang and piped this song”:

Gott geb im ein verdorben jar der mich macht zu einer nunnen und mir den schwarzen mantel gab der weissen rock darunten! Soll ich ein nunn gewerden dann wider meinen willen so will ich auch einem knaben jung seinen kummer stillen, Und stillt he mir den meinen nit daran mag he verliesen[1555].

God send to him a lean twelve months Who in mine own despite, A sooty mantle put on me, All and a cassock white! And if I must become a nun, Let me but find a page, And if he is fain to cure my pain His pain I will assuage. His be the loss, then, if he fail To still my amorous rage.

In Italy at Carnival time in the fifteenth century the favourite songs tell of nuns who leave their convents for a lover[1556]. But above all the theme is found over and over again in French folk songs: “the note, I trowe, y maked was in Fraunce.” Two little thirteenth century poems have survived to show how piquant an expression the French singers gave to it. In one of these the singer wanders out in the merry month of May, that time in which the “chanson populaire” is always set, in deep and unconscious memory of the old spring festivals, celebrated by women in the dawn of European civilisation. He goes plucking flowers, and out of a garden he hears a nun singing to herself:

ki nonne me fist je di trop envie j’amaisce trop muels ke fust deduissans Je sant les douls mals malois soit de deu Elle s’escriait e deus, ki m’ait mis maix ieu en istrai ke ne vestirai Je sant les douls mals malois soit de deu Celui manderai k’il me vaigne querre s’irons a Parix car it est jolis Je sant les douls mals malois soit de deu quant ces amis ot de joie tressaut, et vint a la porte si en gatait fors Je sant les douls mals malois soit de deu

Jesus lou maldie. vespres ne complies: moneir bone vie et amerousete. leis ma senturete. ki me fist nonnete. comceux esbaihie! en cest abaie! per sainte Marie; cotte ne gonnette. leis ma senturete. ki me fist nonnete. a cui seux amie. en ceste abaie; moneir bone vie, et je seux jonete. leis ma senturete. ki me fist nonnete. la parolle oie, li cuers li fremie, do celle abaie: sa douce amiete. leis ma senturete. ki me fist nonnete[1557].

“The curse of Jesus on him who made me a nun! All unwillingly say I vespers and compline; more fain were I to lead a happy life of gaiety and love. I feel the delicious pangs beneath my bosom. The curse of God on him who made me be a nun! She cried, God’s curse on him who put me in this abbey. But by our Lady I will flee away from it and never will I wear this gown and habit. I feel, etc. I will send for him whose love I am and bid him come seek me in this abbey. We will go to Paris and lead a gay life, for he is fair and I am young. I feel, etc. When her lover heard her words, he leapt for joy and his heart beat fast. He came to the gate of that abbey, and stole away his darling love. I feel, etc.”

In the other song the setting is the same;

L’autrier un lundi matin
m’an aloie ambaniant;
s’antrai an un biau jardin,
trovai nonette seant.
ceste chansonette
dixoit la nonette
“longue demoree
faites, frans moinnes loialz
Se plus suis nonette,
ains ke soit li vespres,
je morai des jolis malz”[1558].

“Lately on a Monday morn as I went wandering, I entered into a fair garden and there I found a nun sitting. This was the song that the nun sang: ‘Long dost thou tarry, frank, faithful monk. If I have to be a nun longer I shall die of the pains of love before vespers.’”

The end hardly ever varies. The nun is either taken away by a lover (as in the first of these songs), or finds occasion to meet one without leaving her house (as in the second); or else she runs away in the hope of finding one like the novice of Avernay in Deschamps’ poem, who had learned nothing during her sojourn “fors un mot d’amourette,” and who wanted to have a husband “si comme a Sebilette.”

Adieu le moniage:
Jamaiz n’y entreray.
Adieu tout le mainage
Et adieu Avernay!
Bien voy l’aumosne est faitte:
Trop tart me suy retraitte,
Certes, ce poise my,
Plus ne seray nonnette
(Oez de la nonnette
Comme a le cuer joly:
S’ordre ne ly puet plere)[1559].

“Farewell nunhood, never shall I enter thy state. Farewell all the household and farewell Avernay! The alms are given, too late have I left the world. Of a truth this wearies me; I will be a nun no more. (Hear this tale of the nun, whose heart was gay and whose order could not please her).”

It is but rarely that the singer’s sympathy is against the prisoned nun; and although one or two charming songs may be found which convey a warning, the moral sits all awry. A Gascon air (intended, like so many, to accompany a dance and having the favourite refrain “Va lÉger, lÉgÈre, va lÉgÈrement”) threatens an altogether inadequate punishment for a nun who enjoys the sweets of this world.

“Down in the meadow, there is a convent. In it a nun lies ill.” “Tell me, little nun, for what do you hunger?” “For white apples and for a young lad.” “Do not eat, little nun, they will bury you not in the church, nor even in the convent, but out in the graveyard with the poor people”[1560].

A ProvenÇal song with a haunting air tells how the Devil carried off a nun who rebelled against her imprisonment:

Dedins Aix l’y a’no moungeto,
Tant pourideto,
Di que s’avie soun bel amic
Sera la reino dou pays....

“In Aix there is a little nun, a wicked little nun; she says that with her handsome lover she will be queen of all the land. She weeps and weeps, that wicked little nun, and every day she grows thinner and thinner, because she may not put off her habit. But her father has sent her a message, a solemn message, that she cannot do as she would, that in the convent she must stay. The little nun has cursed her father, who made her leave her handsome lover and take the veil and habit. The little nun has cursed the trowel that made the church and the mason who built it and the men who worked for him. The little nun has cursed the priest who said mass and the acolytes who served him and the congregation who listened to him. The little nun has cursed the cloth which made the veil and the cord of St Francis and the vow of poverty. One day when she was all alone in her room, the devil appeared to her. ‘Welcome, my love!’ ‘I am not your love whom you desire, my pretty. I am the devil, don’t you see? I am come to rescue you from the convent.’ ‘You must first ask my father and also my mother and my friends and my kinsmen, to see if they will consent.’ ‘No, I will not ask your father, nor yet your mother, nor your friends nor your kinsmen. Now and at once we will go.’ ‘Farewell, my sister nuns, so little and young, do not do as I did, but praise God well in the convent.’ The devil has taken the little nun, the wicked little nun; he has carried her high up into the sky and then he has hurled her down into hell, down, down into hell”[1561].

There is a moral here to be sure, but it is the moral of a fairy tale, not of a sermon. As to the many variants of the “Clericus et Nonna” theme in which sometimes the nun makes love to a clerk and is repulsed and sometimes the clerk makes love to a nun and is repulsed[1562] it is possible that the Church had a hand in them all. Wandering clerks and cloistered monks were capable of the most unabashed love-poetry; but sometimes they chose to set themselves right with heaven.In England the theme of the nun unwillingly professed is not found in popular songs, such as abound in France, Italy and Germany. It received, however, a literary expression towards the close of the fourteenth century. In the pseudo-Chaucerian Court of Love the lover sees among those who do sacrifice to the King and Queen of Love a wailing group of priests and hermits, friars and nuns:

This is the courte of lusty folke and gladde,
And wel becometh hire abite and arraye;
O why be som so sory and so sadde,
Complaynyng thus in blak and white and graye?
Freres they ben, and monkes, in gode faye:
Alas for rewth! grete dole it is to sene,
To se hem thus bewaile and sory bene.
Se howe thei crye and wryng here handes white,
For thei so sone wente to religion!
And eke the nonnes with vaile and wymple plight,
Here thought is, thei ben in confusion.
“Alas,” thay sayn, “we fayne perfeccion,
In clothes wide and lake oure libertie
But all the synne mote on oure frendes be.
For, Venus wote, we wold as fayne do ye,
That ben attired here and wel besene,
Desiren man and love in oure degree
Ferme and feithfull right as wolde the quene:
Oure frendes wikke in tender youth and grene,
Ayenst oure wille made us religious;
That is the cause we morne and waylen thus.”
········
And yet agaynewarde shryked every nonne,
The pange of love so strayneth hem to cry:
“Now woo the tyme” quod thay “that we be boune!
This hatefull order nyse will done us dye!
We sigh and sobbe and bleden inwardly
Fretyng oure self with thought and hard complaynt,
That ney for love we waxen wode and faynt”[1563].

A kindred poem, The Temple of Glas, by Lydgate (who seems himself to have become a monk of Bury at the age of fifteen) contains the same idea. Among the lovers in the Temple are some who make bitter complaint, youth wedded to age, or wedded without free choice, or shut in a convent:

And ri?t anon I herd oÞer crie
With sobbing teris and with ful pitous soune,
To fore Þe goddes, bi lamentacioun,
That were constrayned in hir tender youÞe
And in childhode, as it is ofte couÞe,
Y-entred were into religioun,
Or Þei hade yeris of discresioun,
That al her life cannot but complein,
In wide copis perfeccion to feine,
Ful couertli to curen al hir smert,
And shew Þe contrarie outward of her hert.
Thus saugh I wepen many a faire maide,
That on hir freendis al Þi wite Þei liede[1564].

The same idea is also repeated in King James I of Scotland’s poem, The King’s Quair[1565], and later (with more resemblance to the continental songs) in the complaint of the wicked Prioress in Sir David Lyndesay’s morality play, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits [c. 1535]:

I gif my freinds my malisoun
That me compellit to be ane Nun,
And wald nocht let me marie.
It was my freinds greadines
That gart me be ane Priores:
Now hartlie them I warie.
Howbeit that Nunnis sing nichts and dayis
Thair hart waitis nocht quhat thair mouth sayis;
The suith I ?ow declair.
Makand ?ow intimatioun,
To Christis Congregatioun
Nunnis ar nocht necessair.
Bot I sall do the best I can,
And marie sum gude honest man,
And brew gude aill and tun.
Mariage, be my opinioun,
It is better Religioun
As to be freir or Nun[1566].The concentrated bitterness of The Court of Love and the social satire of Lindesay are only a literary expression of the theme treated more lightheartedly in the popular chansons de nonnes. The songs are one side of the popular view of asceticism, the gay side. The serious side may be found in the famous story of The Nun who Loved the World:

Some time there was a nun that hight Beatrice, a passing fair woman, and she was sacristan of the kirk, and she had great devotion unto our Lady; and ofttimes men desired her to sin. So at last she consented unto a clerk to go away with him when compline was done, and ere she departed she went unto an altar of our Lady and said unto her; “Lady, as I have been devout unto thee, now I resign unto thee these keys, for I may no longer sustain the temptation of my flesh.” And she laid the keys on the altar and went her ways unto the clerk. And when he had defouled her, within a few days he left her and went away; and she had nothing to live on and thought shame to gang home again unto her cloister and she fell to be a common woman. And when she had lived in that vice fifteen years, on a day she came unto the nunnery gate, and asked the porter if he knew ever a nun in that place that hight Beatrice, that was sacristan and keeper of the kirk. And he said he knew her on the best wise and said she was a worthy woman and a holy from when she was a little bairn, “and ever has kept her clean and in good name.” And she understood not the words of this man and went her ways. And our Lady appeared unto her and said: “Behold, I have fulfilled thine office these fifteen years and therefore turn again now into thy place and be again in thine office as thou wast, and shrive thee and do thy penance, for there is no creature here that knows thy trespass, for I have ever been for thee in thy clothing and in thine habit.” And anon she was in her habit and went in and shrove her and did her penance and told all that was happened unto her[1567].

This tale is interesting, because it is much more than a piece of naÏve piety. The story of Beatrice is intimately connected with the chansons de nonnes; it is the serious, as they are the gay, expression of a whole philosophy of life. The songs are, indeed, purely materialistic and do not attempt (how should the spinsters and the knitters in the sun attempt it?) to give a philosophical justification for their attitude. The miracle is simple and seems on the surface to draw no moral, save that devotion to the Virgin will be rewarded. Nevertheless the philosophy and the moral are there; they are those of the most famous of all medieval songs, Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus. The theme of the miracle and of the songs alike is the revolt against asceticism, the revolt of the body, which knows how short its beauty and its life, against the spirit which lives forever, and yet will not allow its poor yokefellow one little hour. The fact that the story of Beatrice takes the form of a Mary-miracle is itself significant. For the “Nos habebit humus” argument can be interpreted in two ways. On the one hand stands the human multitude, gathering rosebuds while it may, crying up and down the roads of the world to all who pass to rejoice today, for “ubi sunt qui ante nos in mundo fuere?” On the other hand stands the moralist, singing the same song:

Were beth they biforen us weren,
Houndes ladden and hauekes beren,
And hadden feld and wode,
That riche levedies in hoere bour,		[ladies, their
That wereden gold in hoere tressour,
With hoere brightle rode?—		[complexion

—but drawing how different a moral,

Dreghy here man, thenne, if thou wilt		[endure
A luitel pine, that me the bit		[pain, bid
Withdrau thine eyses ofte[1568].		[ease

Often for long stretches at a time the wandering clerks and the singers were willing to leave to the moralist this heaven which was to be won by despising earthly beauty; they were content to go to hell singing with Aucassin and Nicolete and all the kings of the world. But at other times they ached for heaven too and would not believe that they might win there only by the narrow path of righteousness. So they invented a philosophical justification for their way of life. The Church had forgotten the love which sat with publicans and sinners; the people rediscovered it, and attributed it not to the Son but to the Mother. At one blow they outwitted the moralist by inventing the cult of the Virgin Mary[1569]. In their hands this Mary worship became more than the worship of Christ’s mother; it became almost a separate religion, a religion under which jongleurs and thieves, fighters and tournament-haunters and the great host of those who loved unwisely found a mercy often denied to them by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The people created a Virgin to whom justice was nothing and law less than nothing, but to whom love of herself was all. “Imperatrix supernorum, supernatrix infernorum,” hell was emptied under her rule and heaven became a new place, filled with her disreputable, faulty, human lovers. She was not only the familiar friend of the poor and humble, she was also the confidante of the lover, of all the Aucassins and Nicoletes of the world. It is not without significance that so great a stress was always laid upon her personal loveliness. Her cult became the expression of mankind’s deep unconscious revolt against asceticism, their love of life, their passionate sense of “beauty that must die.” The story of Beatrice has kept its undiminished attraction for the modern world largely because in it, more than in all the other Mary-miracles, life has triumphed and has been justified of heaven[1570]. Even the cold garb given to it by ecclesiastics such as Caesarius of Heisterbach cannot conceal its underlying idea that all love is akin, the most earthy to the most divine; the idea which Malory expressed many years later, when he wrote of Queen Guinevere “that while she lived she was a true lover and therefore she had a good end.” The theme most familiar to us in the didactic literature of the middle ages is the theme of the soul “here in the body pent”; for the moralist has his deliberate purpose and sets down his idea more directly and with more point than do the story-teller and the singer, who have no aim but to say and speak and tell the tale. But when we have been moved by the theme of the soul, let us not fail also to recognise when we meet it—whether in the wandering scholar’s Gaudeamus or in the miracle of the nun who loved the world—the theme of the body, despised and maimed and always beautiful, crying out for its birthright. Even in the middle ages the Greeks had not lived in vain.

The miracle of Sister Beatrice leads to the consideration of another type of popular literature, which throws much light on convent life. Sometimes the people grow tired of singing to themselves; they want to be told stories, which they can repeat in the long evenings, when the sun goes down and the rushlight sends its wan uneven flicker over the floor. Even in the households of rich men story-telling round the fire is the favourite after-dinner occupation[1571]. These stories come from every conceivable source, from the East, from the Classics, from the Lives of the Fathers, from the Legends of the Saints, from the Miracles of the Virgin, from the accumulated experience of generations of story-tellers. At first their purpose is simply to amuse, and the jongleur can always get a hearing for his fabliau; from village green to town market, from the ale house to the manor and the castle hall he passes with his repertoire of grave, gay, edifying, ribald, coarse or delightful tales and when he has gone his enchanted audience repeats and passes on all that he has said[1572]. Then another professional story-teller begins to compete with the jongleur, a story-teller whose object is to point a moral rather than to adorn a tale. The Church, observing that attentive audience, adopts the practice. Preachers vie with jongleurs in illustrating their sermons by stories, “examples” they call them. Often they use the same tales; anything so that the congregation keep awake; and though the examples are sometimes very edifying, they are sometimes but ill-disguised buffoonery, and moralists cry out against the preacher, who instead of the Gospel passes off his own inventions, jests and gibes, so that the poor sheep return from pasture wind-fed[1573]. But the greatest preachers win many souls by a judicious use of stories[1574], and diligent clerks make huge collections of such exempla, wherein the least skilled sermon-maker may find an illustration apt to any text[1575]. Didactic writers and theologians also adopt the practice; they trust to example rather than to precept; their ponderous tomes are alive with anecdotes, but one half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack[1576]. Then the literary men begin to seize upon the fabliaux and exempla for the purpose of their art; they borrow plots from this bottomless treasure-house; and so come the days of Boccaccio and Les Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles and the short story is made at last[1577]. They all, jongleurs, preachers, theologians and men of letters repeat each other, for a tale once told is everyone’s property; the people repeat them; and so the stories circulate from lip to lip through the wide lands of Europe and down the echoing centuries. And since these tales deal with every subject under the sun (and with many marvels which the sun never looked upon), it is not surprising that several of them deal with nuns.

Across six centuries we can, with the aid of a sympathetic imagination, slip into the skins of these inquisitive and child-like folk, and hear some of the stories to which they lent such an absorbed attention. Let us

Forget six counties overhung with smoke,
Forget the snorting steam and piston stroke,
Forget the spreading of the hideous town;
Think rather of the pack-horse on the down,
And dream of London, small and white and clean,
The clear Thames bordered by its gardens green.

Or rather, let us imagine not London but some other little English town, on just such an April morning as moved Chaucer and his fellow-voyagers to seek the holy blissful martyr by way of the Tabard Inn. Having sloughed the film of those six hundred years from off our eyes, we can see more clearly the shadowy forms of our fathers that begat us. We can see a motley crowd gathered in the market place, chiefly made up of women. There are girls, demure or wistful or laughing, fresh from their spinning wheels or from church; there are also bustling wives, in fine well-woven wimples and moist new shoes, arm in arm with their gossips. By craning a neck we may see that flighty minx Alison, the carpenter’s wife, “long as a mast and upright as a bolt,” casting about her with her bold black eyes and looking jealously at the miller’s wife from across the brook, who is as pert as a pye and considers herself a lady. There is a good wife of beside Bath, with a red face and ten pounds’ weight of kerchiefs on her head; a great traveller and a great talker she is—we can hear her chattering right across the square; it is a pity she is so deaf. There, under her own sign-board, is the inn-keeper’s ill-tempered dame, who bullies her husband and ramps in his face if her neighbours do not bow low to her in church; and there is the new-made bride of yonder merchant with the forked beard—they say she is a shrew too. There is Rose the Regrater, who also weaves woollen cloth and cheats her spinsters. There is Dame Emma, who keeps the tavern by the river—our neighbour Glutton’s wife would like to scratch out her eyes, for Glutton always has to be carried home from that inn. There also are Elinor, Joan and Margery, Margaret, Alice and Cecily, merry gossips, their hearts well cherished with muscadel. Mingled with these good wives of the town we see, as we look about us, other folk; portly burgesses, returning from a meeting of the borough court, full of wine and merchant law; a couple of friars, their tippets stuffed with knives and pins, and a fat monk, with a greyhound slinking at his heel; an ale-taster, reeling home from duties performed too well; a Fleming or two, ever on the lookout for snarls and sharp elbows from the true-born native craftsmen; several pretty supercilious ladies “with browen blissful under hood,” squired by a gay young gentleman, embroidered all over with flowers; two giggling curly-haired clerks (Absolon and Nicholas must be their names) ogling the carpenter’s wife and sniggering at their solemn faced companion—that youth there, with the threadbare courtepy and a book of Aristotle under his arm; a bailiff buying tar and salt for the home farm and selling his butter and eggs to the townsmen; numbers of beggars and idlers and children; and on the outskirts of the crowd little sister Joan from St Mary’s Convent, who ought not to be out alone, but who cannot resist stopping to hear the sermon.

For we have all come running together in this year of our Lord 1380 to hear a sermon[1578]. We look upon sermons as an excellent opportunity “for to see and eek for to be seen”; in the same spirit, compact one-third of sociability, one-third of curiosity and one-third of piety, we always crowd

To vigilies and to processiouns,
To preaching eek and to thise pilgrimages,
To pleyes of miracles and mariages[1579].There is the preacher under the stone market cross. He is bidding us shun the snares of the world; if we cannot shut ourselves up in a cloister (which is best), he says, we must make our hearts a cloister, where no wickedness will come. He will have to tell us a story soon, for we are restless folk and do not love to sit still on the cobbles at his feet, but with a story he can always hold us. Sure enough he has left his theme now and is giving us an example:

Jacobus de Vetriaco tells how some time there was a mighty prince that was founder of a nunnery that stood near hand him; and he coveted greatly a fair nun of the place to have her unto his leman. And not withstanding neither by prayer nor by gift he could overcome her; and at the last he took her away by strong force. And when men came to take her away, she was passing feared and asked them why they took her out of her abbey, more than her other sisters. And they answered her again and said, because she had so fair een. And anon as she heard this she was fain and she gart put out her een anon and laid them in a dish and brought them unto them and said: “Lo, here is the een that your master desires and bid him let me alone and lose neither his soul nor mine.” And they went unto him therewith and told him and he let her alone; and by this mean she kept her chastity. And within three years after she had her een again, as well as ever had she, through grace of God[1580].

A shudder of horror and admiration runs through us, but the preacher continues with a second example:

“How different,” he says, “Was this most chaste and wise virgin from that wretched nun who was sought by a noble knight, that he might seduce her, and her abbess hid her in a certain very secret place in the monastery. And when that knight had sought her in all the offices and corners of the monastery and could in no wise find her he grew at length weary and tired of the quest and turned to depart. But she, seeing that he had stopped looking for her, because he had been unable to find her, began to call ‘Cuckoo!’, as children are wont to cry when they are hidden and do not wish to be found. Whereupon the knight, hearing her, ran to the place, and having accomplished his will departed therefrom, deriding the miserable girl”[1581].

“See how evil are the ways of the world,” says our preacher; “how much better to be simple and unworldly, like that nun of whom you may read in the book of the wise Caesarius which he wrote to instruct novices. I will tell you of her,”

In the diocese of TrÈves is a certain convent of nuns named Lutzerath, wherein by ancient custom no girl is received, but at the age of seven years or less; which constitution hath grown up for the preservation of that simplicity of mind, which maketh the whole body to shine. There was lately in that monastery a maiden full-grown in body, but such a child in worldly matters that she scarce knew the difference twixt a secular person and a brute beast, since she had had no knowledge of secular folk before her conversion. One day a goat climbed upon the orchard wall, which when she saw, knowing not what it might be, she said to a sister that stood by her: “What is that?” The other, knowing her simplicity, answered in jest to her wondering question, “That is a woman of the world,” adding, “when secular women grow old they sprout to horns and beards.” She, believing it to be the truth, was glad to have learned something new[1582].

All this time the preacher has been illustrating his sermon with any story that came into his head. But he has been doing more; he has been describing for the information of posterity the raw material (so utterly different in different individuals), out of which the unchanging pattern of the nun had to be moulded. However we are not (for the moment) posterity; and we grow weary of this praise of austerity and simplicity. But, brother John, we say (interrupting) here are we, living in the world; you would not have us tear out our eyes when our husbands would be fondling us? You would not have us take our good Dame Alison for a goat, which is (heaven save us) but a brute beast and no Christian? and what if we cry cuckoo sometimes, we girls, for a lover? there are some we know that have married five husbands at the church door, and still think themselves right holy women, and make pilgrimages to St James beyond the sea, and will ever go first to the offering on Sunday. What have your nuns to do with us? Tell us rather what we young fresh folk may do to be saved; or how we good housewives should bear ourselves day by day. And that I will (says the preacher with some acerbity). Shame upon you, with your chattering tongues. You cannot even keep quiet at mass; and at home it is well known to me how ye pester your husbands, with your screeching and scolding, and how ye chatter all day to your gossips, not minding what lewd words ye speak. Remember therefore holy St Gregory’s example of the nun who spake naughty words, which brother Robert of Brunne of the order of Sempringham found in the French book and set into fair English rhymes:

Seynt Gregori of a nunne tellys
Þat ?ede to helle for no Þyng ellys
But for she spake ever vyleyny
Among her felaws al ahy.
Þys nunnË was of dedys chaste,
But Þat she spake wurdys waste
She madË many of here felawys
Þenke on synnË for here sawys.

And then she died, and she was buried at the steps of the altar; and in the night the sacristan of the place was awakened by a great crying and weeping, and beheld fiends around that wretched nun, who burnt half her body and left the other half unscathed:

Seynt Gregorye seyÞ Þat hyt was synge
Þat half here lyfË was nat dygne;
for Þoghe here dedys werË chaste,
Here wurdys were al vyle and waste.
······
See how her tungge madË here slayn
and foulË wurdys broghte here to payn[1583].

Mind therefore your tongues, and do not whisper so lightly among yourselves when you sit in the tavern (unknown to your husbands, fie upon you!), and stuff yourselves with capons and Spanish wine. Nay more, have a care that greed does not destroy you. Gula, he is one of the seven sins that be most deadly. Look to it lest you one day receive the devil into your bodies, with a mouthful of hot spices:

For the same blessed Gregory “telleth of a certain nun who omitted to make the sign of the cross when she was eating a lettuce, and the devil entered into her; and when he was ordered by a holy man to come forth he replied: ‘What fault is it of mine and why do you rebuke me? I was sitting upon the lettuce and she did not cross herself and so ate me with it’”[1584]. How different, now, was the reward of that saintly nun of whom Caesarius telleth. For when “a pittance, to wit fried eggs, was being distributed by the cellaress to the whole convent, she was by some chance neglected. But indeed I deem not that it befel by chance, but rather by divine ordering, that the glory of God might be manifest in her. For she bore the deprivation most patiently, rejoicing in the neglect, and therefore, when she was returning thanks to God, that great Father-Abbot set before her an invisible pittance; whereof the unspeakable sweetness so filled her mouth, her throat and all her body, that never in her life had she felt aught like to it. This was bodily sweetness, but next God visited her mind and soul so copiously with spiritual sweetness ... that she desired to go without pittances for all the days of her life”[1585].

Thus our preacher might be supposed to speak, but all nun tales are not so edifying; the ribald jongleur was fond of them too. A good example of the nun theme used as a conte gras is Boccaccio’s famous tale of the abbess, who went in the dark to surprise one of her nuns with a lover; but having, when aroused, had with her in her own cell a priest (brought thither in a chest) she inadvertently put upon her head instead of her veil the priest’s breeches. She called all her nuns, seized the guilty girl and came to the chapter house to reprimand her; and

“the girl happened to raise her eyes, when she saw what the abbess bore upon her head, and the laces of the breeches hanging down on each side of her neck, and being a little comforted with that, as she conjectured the fact, she said: “Please, madam, to button your coif, and then tell me what you would have.” “What coif is it that you mean,” replied she, “you wicked woman, you? Have you the assurance to laugh at me? Do you think jests will serve your turn in such an affair as this?” The lady said once more, “I beg, madam, that you would first button your coif and then speak as you please.” Whereupon most of the sisterhood raised up their eyes to look at the abbess, and she herself put up her hand. The truth being thus made evident, the accused nun said, “The abbess is in fault likewise,” which obliged the mother to change her manner of speech from that which she had begun, saying that it was impossible to resist the temptations that assail the flesh. Therefore she bade them, as heretofore, secretly to make the best possible use of their time”[1586].

Another famous tale of Boccaccio’s concerns the young man who pretended to be dumb and was made gardener at a nunnery[1587].

In a different category from these stories sacred and profane are the didactic works, wherein churchmen set down the reasons for which a conventual life was to be preferred to all others, or the spirit in which such a life was to be lived. In this class fall poems and treatises in praise of virginity and books of devotion or admonition addressed to nuns. The former are fairly common in the middle ages[1588] and, since they throw little light on the actual life of a professed nun, need not be considered at great length. Among the most graceful are a series of little German songs, probably composed by clerks and generally classed with folk-songs, though they are as different as possible from the popular Nonnenklagen. The longest of these poems tells of a fair and noble lady who walked in a garden and cried out at the beauty of the flowers, vowing that could she but see the artist who created so much loveliness, she would thank him as he deserved. At that moment a youth entered the garden and greeted her courteously, answering her cry of surprise by saying that neither stone walls nor doors could withstand him, and that all the lovely flowers in the garden were his and he made them, for “I am called Jesus the flower-maker.” Then the lady was stirred to the heart and cried: “O my dearest lord, with all my faith I love thee and I will ever be true to thee till my life ends.” But “the youth withdrew himself and went his way to a convent which lay close by, and by reason of his great power he entered speedily into it.” The lady did not linger, but fled after him to the convent and in great woe knocked upon the gates, crying, “Ye have shut him in who is mine only joy.” Then the nuns in the convent bespake her wrathfully saying:

“Why dost thou lament so loudly? thou speakest foolishness. Our convent is locked and no man entered therein. If thou hast lost him, the loss is thine and thou must bear it.” “Ye have let in the man to whom I am vowed. With mine own eyes I saw him pass through the gate. Ye have let in mine own dear lord. Were the whole world mine I would give it up ere I gave up him. Ye have let in the man to whom I am vowed and truly I say to you that I will have him again. I will keep the vow which I sware to him and never shall my deathless loyalty fail.”

Then the maidens in the convent became wroth and they said:

“Thou spakest foolish things and against our honour. Our convent is shut and no man is allowed therein and the dear Lord Jesus knoweth well that this is true.” “How little ye know him,” said the lovely lady, “Ye have spoken the name of mine own dear lord. Ye have named him and well is he known to me; he is also called Jesus the flower-maker.”

The maidens in the convent deemed then that her words were of God and marvelled thereat:

“Let Jesus our beloved lord stay with us for ever, for all who are in this convent have vowed themselves to him.” “If all ye who are in the convent have vowed yourselves to him, then will I stay with you all my days and I will keep the troth I plighted with him and never will I waver in my firm faith in him”[1589].

Another song contrasts the love of the lord of many lands with that of the lord of life, to the disparagement of the former[1590]. A similar contrast between earthly and heavenly love is the motif of the beautiful English poem called A Luue Ron, made by the Franciscan Thomas of Hales at the request of a nun[1591]; of a somewhat similar (though poetically inferior) poem entitled Clene Maydenhod[1592]; and of a coarse and brutal treatise in praise of virginity known as Hali Meidenhad[1593]. This alliterative homily of the thirteenth century is startlingly different from the two other contemporary works in middle English, with which its subject would cause it to be compared. It has none of the delicate purity of the Luue Ron, nor even of the mystical, ascetic visions of Mary of Oignies, Luitgard of Tongres, Mechthild of Magdeburg, and the many saints and song writers who realised the marriage of the soul with Christ in the concrete terms of human passion[1594]. Neither, on the other hand, has it the moderation and urbanity of the Ancren Riwle, though the same hand was once supposed to have written both treatises. The author of Hali Meidenhad persuades his spiritual daughter to vow her virginity to God by no better means than a savage and entirely materialistic attack upon the estate of matrimony. He admits that wedlock is lawful for the weak, for

this the wedded sing, that through God’s goodness and mercy of his grace, though they have driven downwards, they halt in wedlock and softly alight in the bed of its law, for whosoever falleth out of the grace of maidenhood, so that the curtained bed of wedlock hold them not, drive down to the earth so terribly that they are dashed limb from limb, both joint and muscle[1595].

And again:

of the three sorts, maidenhood and widowhood and thirdly wedlockhood, thou mayst know by the degrees of their bliss, which and by how much it [maidenhood] surpasses the others. For wedlock has its fruit thirtyfold in heaven, widowhood sixtyfold; maidenhood with a hundredfold overpasses both. Consider then, hereby, whosoever from her maidenhood descended into wedlock, by how many degrees she falleth downward[1596].

This comparative moderation of tone does not, however, last long and the author proceeds to draw a picture of the discomforts of wifehood and of motherhood so gross and so entirely one-sided that it is difficult to imagine any sensible girl being converted by it:

Ask these queens, these rich countesses, these saucy ladies, about their mode of life. Truly, truly, if they rightly bethink themselves and acknowledge the truth, I shall have them for witnesses that they are licking honey off thorns. They buy all the sweetness with two proportions of bitter.... And what if it happen, as the wont is, that thou have neither thy will with him [thy husband] nor weal either and must groan without goods within waste walls and in want of bread must breed thy row of bairns?... or suppose now that power and plenty were rife with thee and thy wide walls were proud and well supplied and suppose that thou hadst many under thee, herdsmen in hall, and thy husband were wroth with thee, and should become hateful, so that each of you two shall be exasperated against the other, what worldly good can be acceptable to thee? When he is out thou shalt have against his return sorrow, care and dread. While he is at home, thy wide walls seem too narrow for thee; his looking on thee makes thee aghast; his loathsome voice and his rude grumbling fill thee with horror. He chideth and revileth thee and he insults thee shamefully; he beateth thee and mawleth thee as his bought thrall and patrimonial slave. Thy bones ache and thy flesh smarteth, thy heart within thee swelleth of sore rage, and thy face outwardly burneth with vexation[1597].

Then, after an unquotable passage, the author considers the supposed joys of maternity and gives a brutal and painfully vivid account of the troubles of gestation and childbirth and of the anxieties of the mother, who has a young child to rear. He seems to feel that some apology is needed for his brutality, for he adds:

Let it not seem amiss to thee that we so speak for we reproach not women with their sufferings, which the mothers of us all endured at our own births; but we exhibit them to warn maidens, that they be the less inclined to such things and guard themselves by a better consideration of what is to be done[1598].

The point of view is a strange one. No girl of moderate strength of character, good sense and idealism would shirk marriage solely for the purely material reasons set down by the author. One cannot but wonder at the lack of spiritual imagination which can display convent life as the easy, comfortable, leisured existence, the primrose path which a harassed wife and mother cannot hope to follow[1599], thus inevitably securing for the brides of Christ all who are too lazy and too cowardly to undertake an earthly marriage. Self-sacrifice and high endeavour alike are outside the range of the narrow materialist who wrote Hali Meidenhad. His treatment represents the ugly, just as A Luue Ron represents the beautiful side of medieval praise of virginity and of monastic life.

Of all treatises for the use of nuns the most personal and the most interesting is the thirteenth century Ancren Riwle (Anchoresses’ Rule). The book was originally written for the use of three anchoresses, but the language of the original version (the English version is by most scholars considered to be a translation from a French original), the author and the anchoresses for whom it was written are alike uncertain[1600]. The conjecture that it was written by Richard Poore, Bishop of Salisbury from 1217 to 1229, is discredited by recent research. It is usually said that the book was compiled for the anchoresses of Tarrant Keynes in Dorsetshire; but this view rests upon the evidence of a rubric attached to a Latin version of the rule, which states that it was written by Simon of Ghent Bishop of Salisbury (who died in 1313) for his sisters, anchoresses at Tarrant; but though the Latin translation was doubtless due to Simon of Ghent, there is no evidence that the original anchoresses lived at Tarrant; and the most recent research seeks to identify them with Emma, Gunilda and Cristina, who were anchoresses at Kilburn about 1130 and whose settlement developed into Kilburn Priory. The book is certainly of English origin, though the original seems to have been written in French. It must be noticed that the women for whom the Ancren Riwle was intended were anchoresses and not professed nuns; the essence of their life was solitude, whereas nuns were essentially members of a community. But the moment an anchoress ceased to live alone and took to herself companions the distinction between anchorage and convent tended to disappear; several English nunneries originated in voluntary settlements of two or three women, who desired to lead a solitary life withdrawn from the world. Nine-tenths of the Ancren Riwle is equally applicable to a community of recluses and to a community of nuns and may therefore with advantage be used to illustrate convent life. The treatise has a dual character. It is partly a theological work, telling the three sisters how to think and feel and believe. It is partly a practical guide to the ordering of their external lives. The author cares for the stalling and feeding of Brother Ass the Body, as well as of his rider the Soul. His book is divided into eight parts, of which the first seven are concerned with the religious and spiritual welfare of the anchoress and the eighth part is (in his own words) “entirely of the external rule; first of meat and drink and of other things relating thereto; thereafter of the things that ye may receive and what things ye may keep and possess; then of your clothes and of such things as relate thereto; next of your tonsure and of your works and of your bloodlettings; lastly the rule concerning your maids, and how you ought kindly to instruct them”[1601]. This mixture of soul and body, of spiritual and practical, is amusingly illustrated in the chapter on confession, when he gives the following summary of all mentioned and known sins,

The author of the Ancren Riwle shows throughout true religious feeling, compact of imagination and passion, but (as the above passage shows) he never loses hold on reality. He is sober and full of common sense, almost one had said a man of the world. He brings to his assistance (what writers on holy maidenhood so often lack) a sound knowledge of human nature, a sense of humour and a most observant eye. His psychological power appears in his account of some of the sins to which the nun is exposed, in his picture of the backbiter, for instance, or in the passage in which he explains that the worst temptations of the nun come not (as she expects) during the first two years of her profession, when “it is nothing but ball-play,” but after she has followed the life for several years; for Jesus Christ is like the mortal lover, gentle when he is wooing his bride, who begins to correct her faults as soon as he is sure of her love, till in the end she is as he would have her be and there is peace and great joy.[1603] Not only is the Ancren Riwle full of flashes of wisdom such as these. It is illustrated throughout by a profusion of metaphors and homely illustrations drawn from the author’s own observation of the busy world outside the anchorage. Moreover it contains passages of a high and sustained eloquence almost unmatched in contemporary literature, such as the famous allegory of the wooing of the soul by Christ, under the guise of a king relieving a lady who loved and scorned him from the castle where she was besieged[1604].

Even more interesting than the spiritual counsels of the Ancren Riwle are its practical counsels. The moderation and humanity of this most unfanatical author are never more striking than when he is dealing with the domestic life of the anchoresses. When laying down the general rule that no flesh nor lard should be eaten, except in great sickness, and that they should accustom themselves to little drink, he adds: “nevertheless, dear sisters, your meat and drink have seemed to me less than I would have it. Fast no day upon bread and water, except ye have leave”[1605], and again:

When he describes the sin of idle gossip, he breaks off with “Would to God, dear sisters, that all the others were as free as ye are of such folly”[1607]. Nothing could be more sensible than his regulations for their behaviour after the quarterly blood-letting:

He clearly has no belief in the theory of the medieval ascetic that filthiness is next to godliness, for he bids his dear sisters “wash yourselves wheresoever it is necessary, as often as ye please”[1608]. Some of the precepts in this section of the Riwle are obviously more closely applicable to anchoresses than to nuns; for instance the instructions against hospitality and almsgiving. Others are equally suitable for both:

There follows a short account of the kind of servants who should attend upon the anchoresses and the way in which these must behave and be ruled; and then the author ends characteristically:

And six centuries later, as we lay down this delightful little book, we cannot but agree that the claim is “moderate enough.”

Other didactic works addressed to nuns may be considered more briefly, for the majority are purely devotional and throw little light upon the daily life of the nun. The largest and most important book in English is the Myroure of Oure Ladye, written for the Brigittine sisters of Syon Monastery at Isleworth by the famous theologian and chancellor of Oxford, Thomas Gascoigne (1403-58)[1611]. It consists of a devotional treatise on the divine service, followed by a translation and explanation of the Hours and Masses of Our Lady as used by the sisters. The first treatise is profusely illustrated throughout by exempla taken from Caesarius of Heisterbach and similar sources and makes lively reading. Speaking of attendance at divine service Gascoigne remarks:

The prevalence of such stories shows how common was the misdemeanour against which they are directed. It may be noted that as preface to the second part of the Myroure there stands an excellent little dissertation on the value and method of reading[1612]. It is unnecessary to deal further with the other didactic works in English intended for the use of nuns, since their interest is purely religious[1613].

Before leaving the subject of didactic treatises it is however necessary to mention one little English prose work, for though not addressed to nuns, it throws some light upon the organisation of a convent and in particular provides a very complete list of obedientiaries. This is the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, which was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1500 and has been erroneously attributed to various authors, including Richard Rolle of Hampole and John Alcock, Bishop of Ely († 1480)[1614]. The allegory of a ghostly abbey seems to have been popular in the middle ages. It had already been used by the bÉguine Mechthild in the thirteenth century and it would be interesting to determine whether there is any direct connection between her treatise Von einem geistlichen closter and the Abbey of the Holy Ghost. In her convent Charity is abbess, Meekness her chaplain, Peace prioress, Kindliness subprioress, Hope chantress, Wisdom schoolmistress, Bounty cellaress, Mercy chambress, Pity infirmaress, Dread portress and Obedience provost or priest[1615]. The English book is addressed to men and women who are unable to take regular vows in some monastic order, and the allegory is carried out in great detail.

The study of didactic literature addressed to nuns, in order to assist them in a godly way of life, leads to the consideration of another type of didactic literature, didactic however with an arriÈre-pensÉe, being concerned to point out and to condemn evils which had crept into monasteries. This is the work of the satirists and moralists, who castigated by scorn or by condemnation the irregularities of the different orders. Like didactic writers they describe an ideal, but an ideal which emerges only from their attack on the dark reality, like sparks of light which the blacksmith’s hammer beats from iron. Occasionally they use the gay satire of the writer of fabliaux; their condemnation is an undercurrent beneath a lightly flowing stream, their moral is implicit, they poke fun at the erring monk or nun, rather than chastise them. It is so in that delicious poem, The Land of Cokaygne[1616], which French wit begat in the thirteenth century upon English seriousness[1617]. The Land of Cokaygne is partly an attack on the luxury of monastic houses, and partly an ebullition of irresponsible gaiety and humour, which might just as well (one feels) have taken another form. The author has perhaps in his mind the idea of the imaginary abbey of the Virtues, which was so popular among serious writers, but he puts it to a very different use. Far in the sea by West Spain, he says, there is a land which is called Cokaygne [coquina, kitchen]. No land under heaven is like it for goodness. Paradise may be merry and bright, but Cokaygne is fairer; for what is there in Paradise but grass and flower and green branches? though there be joy and great delight there, there is no meat but fruit, no hall or bower or bench, nothing but water to drink. But in Cokaygne there is plenty of meat and drink of the best, with no need to labour for it; in Cokaygne there is muckle joy and bliss and many a sweet sight, for it is always day there and always life; there is no anger, no animals, no insects

(N’is there fly, flea no louse,
In cloth in town, bed, no house),no vile worm or snail, no thunder, sleet, hail, rain or wind, no blindness. All is game and joy and glee there. There are great rivers of oil and milk and honey and wine—but as for water, it is used only for washing.

Then the satire becomes slightly more pointed:

All may have as much as they will of the food. There is also in the abbey a fair cloister, with crystal pillars, adorned with green jasper and red coral. In the meadow near by is a tree, most “likeful for to see.”

There are also red roses and lilies that never fade. There are in the abbey four springs of treacle (i.e. any rich electuary), halwei (healing water), balsam and spiced wine, ever running in full stream, and the bed of the stream is all made of precious stones, sapphire, pearl, carbuncle, emerald, beryl, onyx, topaz, amethyst, chrysolite, chalcedony and others. There also are many birds, throstle, thrush and nightingale, goldfinch and woodlark, which sing merrily day and night. Better still

The writer, having set his monks in the midst of this abundance of good things, proceeds to describe their daily life. When they go to mass, he says, the glass windows turn into bright crystal to give them more light, and when the mass is ended and the books are laid away again, the crystal turns back again into glass:

The young monkes each day
After meat goeth to play;
N’is there hawk, no fowl so swift,
Better fleeing by the lift,
Than the monkes, high of mood,
With their sleeves and their hood.
When the abbot seeth them flee,
That he holds for much glee,
Ac natheless, all there among,
He biddeth them light to evesong.

And if the monks pursue for too long their airy gambols, he recalls them by means of an improvised drum, the nature of which is best not indicated to a more squeamish generation. Then the monks alight in a flock and so “wend meekly home to drink,” in a fair procession.

So far the Paradise has been without an Eve. But the author will provide these jolly monks with companions worthy of their humour:

The monk that acquits him best among the ladies may have twelve wives in a year, if he will, and if he can outdo all his companions

Of him is hope, God is wot,
To be soon father abbot!

But whoever will come to this delectable country must first serve a hard penance; seven years must he wade in swines’ muck up to the chin ere he win there. Fair and courteous lordings, good luck to you in the test!

More of a fairy tale than a satire, this jovial and good humoured poem was immensely popular in the middle ages. Another thirteenth century lampoon on the monastic orders, written in French in the reign of Edward I, is less well known, possibly because its satire, while still essentially gay, is more obvious than that of The Land of Cokaygne. The poem is known as L’Ordre de Bel-Eyse[1618]. The author has had the happy idea (not however a new one)[1619] of combining all the characteristic vices of the different orders into one glorious Order of Fair Ease, to which belong many a gentleman and many a fair lady, but no ribald nor peasant. From the Order of Sempringham it borrows one custom, that of having brothers and sisters together, but while at Sempringham there must be between them (“a thing which displeases many”) ditches and high walls, in the Order of Fair Ease there must be no wall and no watchword to prevent the brethren from visiting the sisters at their pleasure; their intimacy must be separated by nothing, says this precursor of Rabelais, not by linen nor wool, nor even by their skins! And all who enter the order must feast well and in company, thrice a day and oftener. From the canons of Beverley they have taken the custom of drinking well at their meat and long afterwards (the pun is on bever, to drink), from the Hospitallers that of going clad in long robes and elegant shoes, riding upon great palfreys that amble well. From the Canons they borrow the habit of eating meat, but whereas the canons eat it thrice a week these brethren are bound to eat it daily. From the Black Monks (as from the canons of Beverley) they take their heavy drinking, and if a brother be visited by a friend who shall know how to carouse in the evening, he shall sleep late in the morning (for the sake of his eyesight), till the evil fumes have issued from his head. From the secular Canons (“who willingly serve the ladies”) they have taken a rule which is more needful than any other to solace the brethren—that each brother must make love to a sister before and after matins; a point which is elaborated with cheerful indecency, under the guise of borrowing from the Grey Monks their manner of saying prayers. From the Carthusians they take the custom of shutting each monk up in his cell to repose himself, with fair plants on his window-ledge for his solace, and his sister between his arms. The Friars Minor are founded in poverty, which they seek by lodging ever with the chief baron, or knight, or churchman of the countryside, where they can have their full; and so must the brethren of Fair Ease do likewise. The Preachers go preaching in shoes and if they are footsore they ride at ease on horseback; but the brethren of Fair Ease are vowed always to ride, and always they must preach within doors and after they have dined. This is our Order of Fair Ease; he who breaks it shall be chastised and he who makes good use of it shall be raised to the dignity of abbot or prior to hold it in honour, for thus do the Augustine canons, who know so many devices. Now ends our Order, which agrees with all good orders, and may it please many all too well![1620]The inventors of these two imaginary orders were not serious or embittered moralists. Cokaygne lies upon the bonny road to Elfland; and Bel Eyse is a coarser, stupider Abbey of Theleme[1621], whose inmates lack that instinct for honour and noble liberty which makes Gargantua’s “Fais ce que vouldras” an ideal as well as a satire. As a rule the medieval satirists of monasticism deal in grave admonitions, or in violent reproaches. But one contemporary poem, hailing this time from France, may be added to the two English works in which the frailties of nuns are treated in a jesting spirit. This is a piece by the famous trouvÈre Jean de CondÉ entitled La messe des oisiaus et li plais des chanonesses et des grises nonains[1622]. The poem begins with an account of a mass sung in due form by all the birds and followed by a feast presided over by the goddess Venus. After this unwieldy introduction comes the main theme, which consists of a lawsuit brought by the nobly born canonesses against the grey Cistercian nuns, for the judgment of Venus. A canoness speaks first on behalf of her order, attended by several gentlemen and knights, who are proud to claim her acquaintance:

Venus then bids a grey nun speak and the grey nun’s words are dry and to the point:

This last charge pricks the canonesses and their faces grow scarlet with rage:

The grey nun replies quietly that her cause is too good to be weakened by insults, which can only offend the assembly and the respect due to the goddess, and that love considers neither birth nor wealth:

There follows a hum of discussion in the assembly, some taking one side and some the other, but most favouring the grey nuns. Then Venus rises to give judgment and makes a long speech on the theme that all are equal in her eyes:

Obviously hitherto the poem has had none of the characteristics of a moral piece. The dÉbat was a common literary device, the law court presided over by Venus a favourite literary theme. Jean de CondÉ is merely concerned to amuse the court of Hainault with a polished poem cast in this familiar mould, just as at other times he might regale it with the fabliau of Les Braies au Prestre or the dit of La Nonnette. Any satirical value which the poem has is due simply to the implication in his choice of parties to the suit; that is to say it is no more a satire than are the numerous fabliaux, which have for their subject the peccadillos of the Church. But the trouvÈre, even an aristocrat of the confraternity, such as Jean, who would have held in utter scorn the mere buffoon at the street corner, was never able to forget that he plied a dangerous trade, a “trop perilous mester.” He was continually aware of the necessity to put himself right with Heaven, lest haply Aucassin spoke truth and to hell went the harpers and singers; for the Church’s condemnation of his tribe was unequivocal. Therefore at the end of Venus’ speech Jean de CondÉ abruptly tacks on a most untimely moral, which gives a sudden seriousness to his poem. He will sit in the seat of the moralists. So he interprets the whole debate according to a theological and moral allegory, even going so far as to compare the strife between the canonesses and the grey nuns with the resentment of the first workers against those who came last, in the parable of the Vineyard! He concludes with a bitter reproach against moral disorders among the nuns, accusing them of paying service to Venus to their damnation, and bidding “canonesses, canons, priests, monks, nuns and all folk of their sort” to give up the evil love of the world, which passes away like a dream, and to cling to the love of God which endureth for ever. A strange point of view; but one which would strike no sense of incongruity in an audience accustomed to the moralisation of the Gesta Romanorum and of many another profane story, forced to do pious service as an exemplum. It is the spirit which built cathedrals and filled them with grotesques.

Jean de CondÉ was not really a moralist, even in the sense in which the authors of The Land of Cokaygne and The Order of Fair Ease deserve the name. But there were a number of genuine moralists in the last three centuries of the middle ages, who shook sober heads over the misdeeds of nuns[1623]. In two thirteenth century French “Bibles,” by Guiot de Provins and the Seigneur de BerzÉ respectively[1624], their chastity is impugned and the author of Les Lamentations de Matheolus (c. 1290) goes to the root of the matter and attributes their immorality to the ease with which they are able to wander about outside their convents. They are continually inventing stories, he says, in order to escape for a moment from the cloister; their father, mother, cousin, sister, brother is ill; so they receive congÉ to wander about where they will—“par le pais s’en vont esbattre.” Moreover he has hard words for the rapacity of nuns in love; distrust them, he warns, for they pluck and shear their lovers worse than thieves or than Breton pirates; you must be always giving, giving, giving with those ladies—it is the usage of their convent; you have to reward the messenger and the mistress, the chambermaid, the matron and the companion[1625]. The mention of the companion shows that the precaution of sending the nuns out in twos was not always successful, and Gui de Mori (writing about the same time) has the same tale to tell; the nun’s lover has to give to two at least, to her and to her companion; and since nuns have plenty of spare time, they are fond of feeding love by the exchange of messages, which mean more douceurs from the purse of the luckless gallant[1626].

The most interesting of all French moralists who deal with nuns is, however, Gilles li Muisis, Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St Martin of Tournai, who began about 1350 to write a “Register” of his thoughts upon contemporary life and morality, one section of which concerns “Les maintiens des nonnains”[1627]. Like Matheolus, Gilles li Muisis considers that the root of all evils is the ease with which nuns are able to leave their convents:

He represents the “trÈs doulces nonnains” as behaving “like ladies”; they keep open house for visitors; and the young men go in more easily than the old and guilty love is born. They exchange messages and letters with their lovers; moreover they very often take congÉ without any other reason than the desire to meet these young men, and the sight of nuns upon every road sets men’s tongues chattering. They ought to sit at home, spinning and sewing and mending their wimples: instead they hurry from stall to stall, spending their money on fine cloths and collars. The Pope would do well if he enclosed them. The young nuns are the worst of all; they are forever pestering their abbesses for leave to go out; they will have all their elders at their will, cellaress, treasuress, subprioress. Everything is topsy-turvy now and all are in the same rank, those who are lettered and those who are not; the young desire to have a finger in every pie. Even their vow of poverty these nuns will not keep. They will have incomes of their own and if they have none they grumble until they obtain one somehow: “It is for this reason,” they say, “that we desire the money—our houses are growing poor and everywhere we grow weak.” But it is not so, for they want it in order to be able to go out more often. “I recognise,” says Gilles, “and it is true, that nuns have many duties to fulfil, for there is great resort of guests to their houses, and if it were possible without harm to diminish these expenses, one might do something to help them.” But it is necessary to remember that the ownership of private property is a sin; canon law condemns it, and if there is a rule permitting these private incomes I have never met it. Moreover one sees every day the evil results of such possessions.What is the result of this laxity of morals, of this continual wandering of nuns in the world? Secular folk everywhere talk about them and miscall them:

Even those who keep company with these nuns are at the same time disturbed and a little dismayed by their behaviour. “Such men go about with them and have their will of them; but pay them behind their backs with fierce slanders....” So the worthy abbot continues, and every word that he says is borne out by the unimpeachable evidence of the visitation reports. His long lament is the most interesting of all moral works which have the behaviour of nuns as their subject and it would be possible to annotate almost every verse with a visitation compertum or injunction.

Serious writers in condemnation of nuns were not lacking in England as well as in France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when, as Gilles li Muisis complained, “les gens de Saint-Eglise petits sont deportÉes.” Langland’s pungent satire on the convent where Wrath was Potager has already been quoted[1628]. Gower, for whom the world was still more out of joint, has a long passage concerning nuns in that portentous monument of dulness, the Vox Clamantis, and draws a pessimistic picture of their weakness and the readiness with which they yield to temptation[1629]. Like monks, he says, the nuns are bound to chastity, but since they are by nature more frail than man, they must not be punished as severely as men if they break their vows; for the foot of woman cannot stand or step firmly like the foot of man and she has none of those virtues of learning, understanding, constancy and moral excellence, with which the more admirable sex is endowed:

Nec scola, nec sensus, constancia nullaque virtus
Sicut habent homines, in muliere vigent!

He proceeds to illustrate the moral superiority of the male by the statement that nuns are often led astray by priests, who enter their convents as confessors or visitors, and under guise of a reforming visitation make the frail women worse than they were before. “I should hold this a most damnable crime,” says Gower, “were it not that—really, woman falls so easily!”

Hoc genus incesti dampnabile grande putarem
Sit nisi quod mulier de leuitate cadit[1630].

After further reflections in this strain, he bursts into a long panegyric of virginity and then passes on to attack the manners of the friars.

Far more interesting than Gower’s conventional moralising is a poem entitled Why I can’t be a Nun, and written early in the fifteenth century[1631]. The favourite device of a ghostly abbey, peopled by personified qualities, is here employed, but the inmates of the convent are chiefly vices and such virtues as have a place among the nuns are treated with scant respect by their companions. The poem is unfortunately incomplete and begins abruptly in the middle of a sentence, but the gist of the missing introduction is clear enough. The author represents herself as a young girl named Katherine, whose desire to become a professed nun has been opposed by her father. The father charges a number of messengers to visit all the nunneries of England and the poem opens with the departure of these messengers, full of zeal to accomplish their task, and their return with the news that the nuns were ready to do his will. Whereupon her father told Katherine that she could not be a nun, and merely laughing at her protests, went his way. Then she mourned and was sad and thought that fortune was against her; and one May morning, when her sorrow was more than she could bear, she walked in a fair garden, where she was wont to go daily to watch the flowers and the birds with their bright feathers, singing and making merry on the green bough; and going into an arbour, she set herself upon her knees and prayed to God to help her in her distress.

At last she fell asleep in the garden and in her sleep a fair lady came to her and called her by her name and bade her awake and be comforted. This lady was called Experience and told Katherine that she had come to take pity on her and teach her, saying:

Kateryne, thys day schalt thow see
An howse of wommen reguler,
And diligent loke that thow be,
And note ry?t welle what Þou seest there.

Then they went through a green meadow till they came to a beautiful building and entered boldly by the gates; and it was a house of nuns, “of dyuers orderys bothe old and yong,” but not well governed, after the rule of sober living, for self-will reigned there and caused discord and debate:

And what in that place I saw
That to religion schulde not long,
Peradventure ?e wolde desyre to know,
And who was dwellyng hem among.
Sum what counseyle kepe I schalle,
And so I was taw?t whan I was yong,
To here and se, and sey not all.

Then follows an enumeration of the inmates of the convent:

But there was a lady, that hy?t dame pride;
In grete reputacion they her toke
And pore dame mekenes sate be syde
To her vnnethys ony wolde loke,
But alle as who sethe I her forsoke,
And set not by her nether most ne lest;
Dame ypocryte loke vpon a boke
And bete her selfe vpon the brest.
On every syde than lokede vp I
And fast I cast myne ye abowte;
Yf I cowde se, beholde or aspy,
I wolde have sene dame deuowte.
And sche was but wyth few of that row?t;
For dame slowthe and dame veyne glory
By vyolens had put her owte;
And than in my hert I was fulle sory.
But dame envy was there dwellyng
The whyche can sethe stryfe in every state.
And a nother lady was there wonnyng
That hy?t dame love vnordynate,
In that place bothe erly and late
Dame lust, dame wantowne, and dame nyce,
They ware so there enhabyted, I wate,
That few token hede to goddys servyse.
Dame chastyte, I dare welle say,
In that couent had lytylle chere,
But oft in poynt to go her way,
Sche was so lytelle beloved there;
But sum her loved in hert fulle dere,
And there weren that dyd not so,
And sum set no thyng by her,
But ?afe her gode leue for to go....
And in that place fulle besyly
I walked whyle I my?t enduer,
And saw how dame enevy
In every corner had grete cure;
Sche bare the keyes of many a dore.
And than experience to me came,
And seyde, kateryne, I the ensuer,
Thys lady ys but seldom fro home.
Than dame pacience and dame charyte
In that nunry fulle sore I sow?t;
I wolde fayne have wyst where they had be,
For in that couent were they now?t;
But an owte chamber for hem was wrow?t,
And there they dweldyn wyth-owtyn stryfe,
And many gode women to them sow?t
And were fulle wylfulle of her lyfe.

There was also another lady, Dame Disobedience, and says Katherine:

Of all the faults that Experience showed me, this lack of obedience grieved me most, so that I might no longer abide for shame, for I saw that they had obedience in no reverence and that few or none took heed of her; and I sped at great speed out of the gates, to escape from that convent so full of sin.