"The Prioress's Tale" is one of ''
The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' () is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The book presents the tales, which are mostly written in verse, as part of a fictional storytelling contest held ...
'' by
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...
.
It follows "
The Shipman's Tale" in ''
The Canterbury Tales
''The Canterbury Tales'' () is a collection of 24 stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. The book presents the tales, which are mostly written in verse, as part of a fictional storytelling contest held ...
''. It is followed by
Chaucer's "Tale of Sir Topas". The General Prologue names the
prioress as Madame Eglantine, and describes her impeccable table manners and soft-hearted ways. Her portrait suggests she is likely in
religious life as a means of social advancement, given her aristocratic manners and mispronounced French. She maintains a secular lifestyle, including keeping
lap dog
A lap dog or lapdog is a dog that is both small enough to be held in the arms or lie comfortably on a person's lap and temperamentally predisposed to doing so. ''Lapdog'' is not a specific breed, but a generic term for a type of dog that is sm ...
s that she privileges over people, a fancy
rosary
The Rosary (; , in the sense of "crown of roses" or "garland of roses"), formally known as the Psalter of Jesus and Mary (Latin: Psalterium Jesu et Mariae), also known as the Dominican Rosary (as distinct from other forms of rosary such as the ...
and a brooch inscribed with ('Love Conquers All').
Her story is of a child
martyr
A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' Word stem, stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In ...
killed by
Jew
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...
s, a common theme in
Medieval Christianity, and much later criticism focuses on the tale's
antisemitism
Antisemitism or Jew-hatred is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who harbours it is called an antisemite. Whether antisemitism is considered a form of racism depends on the school of thought. Antisemi ...
.
Plot
The story is introduced with an invocation to the
Virgin Mary
Mary was a first-century Jewish woman of Nazareth, the wife of Saint Joseph, Joseph and the mother of Jesus. She is an important figure of Christianity, venerated under titles of Mary, mother of Jesus, various titles such as Perpetual virginity ...
, then sets the scene in Asia, where a community of
Jew
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, religion, and community are highly inte ...
s live in a Christian city. A seven-year-old school-boy, son of a widow, is brought up to revere Mary. He teaches himself to sing the first verse of the popular
medieval
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...
hymn ("Nurturing Mother of the Redeemer"); although he does not understand the words, an older classmate tells him it is about Mary, the mother of
Jesus
Jesus (AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, and many Names and titles of Jesus in the New Testament, other names and titles, was a 1st-century Jewish preacher and religious leader. He is the Jesus in Chris ...
. He begins to sing it every day as he walks through the local
Jewish ghetto to school.
Satan
Satan, also known as the Devil, is a devilish entity in Abrahamic religions who seduces humans into sin (or falsehood). In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God, typically regarded as a metaphor for the '' yetzer hara'', or ' ...
, "That hath (built) in Jewes' heart his waspe's nest", incites some Jews to murder the child and throw his body into a public cesspit. His mother searches for him and eventually finds his body, which
miraculously begins to sing the . The Christians call in the city magistrate, who has the Jews drawn by wild horses and then hanged. The boy continues to sing throughout his own
Requiem Mass
A Requiem (Latin: ''rest'') or Requiem Mass, also known as Mass for the dead () or Mass of the dead (), is a Mass of the Catholic Church offered for the repose of the souls of the deceased, using a particular form of the Roman Missal. It is u ...
until the local
abbot
Abbot is an ecclesiastical title given to the head of an independent monastery for men in various Western Christian traditions. The name is derived from ''abba'', the Aramaic form of the Hebrew ''ab'', and means "father". The female equivale ...
asks him how he is able to do so. He replies that although his throat is cut, Mary
appeared to him and laid a grain on his tongue, saying he could keep singing until it was removed and she would come for him. The abbot removes the grain and the boy finally becomes silent and dies. The story ends with a reference to
Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln
Hugh of Lincoln (1246 – 27 August 1255) was an English boy whose death in Lincoln, England, Lincoln was blood libel, falsely attributed to Jews. He is sometimes known as Little Saint Hugh or Little Sir Hugh to distinguish him from the adu ...
, another child martyr whose death was blamed on Jews.
Genre
The story is an example of a class of stories, popular at the time, known as the "miracles of the Virgin" such as those by
Gautier de Coincy. It also blends elements of common story of a pious child killed by the enemies of the faith; the first example of which in English was written about
William of Norwich
William of Norwich (died 22 March 1144) was an apprentice who lived in the English city of Norwich. He suffered a violent death during Easter 1144. The city's French-speaking Jewish community was blamed for his death, but the crime was never so ...
.
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold (24 December 1822 – 15 April 1888) was an English poet and cultural critic. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold (academic), Tom Arnold, literary professor, and Willi ...
cited a stanza from the tale as the best of Chaucer's poetry.
The Prioress and the Pardoner
In "Chaucer's Prioress and the Sacrifice of Praise", Sherman Hawkins juxtaposes the
Pardoner and the Prioress as the representatives of two radically different forms of religious expression. The Pardoner's materialistic orientation, his suspicious relics and accusations of sinfulness (evident in his conflict with the Host) align him with Paul's account of the "outward Jew,
circumcised only in the flesh", rather than the "inward" Jew of
Romans 2.29 who is spiritually rather than literally circumcised: "the Pardoner, outwardly 'a noble ecclesiaste', actually reduces Christianity to a code as rigorous and external as the Old Law itself." In his tale, "the Pardoner presents death as the wages of sin, an effect of justice" while the "Prioress, through the paradox of
martyrdom
A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In colloqui ...
, shows it as mercy, an effect of grace."
In "Criticism, Anti-Semitism and the Prioress' Tale", L. O. Fradenburg argues for a radical rereading of the binary oppositions between Christian and Jew, Old Law and New Law, literal and spiritual in the tale in part to critique the "patristic exegesis" of Sherman Hawkins' earlier interpretation. Fradenburg challenges Hawkins' "elision of the 'literal' or 'carnal' level of meaning in favour of the spiritual" by lingering on those moments in the tale, such as the "litel clergeon's" transgressive rote memorisation of the , in which this elision fails, or succeeds only ambiguously. She traces the impossibility of ultimately separating and opposing Old and New Laws in the "Prioress' Tale" back to a tension between letter and spirit internal to Paul's discourse itself. Fradenburg gestures at a larger project of turning "patristic exegesis" against itself to read the contradictions revealed by the theological subtext of the tale.
Fradenburg notes that the substance of the "Prioress' Tale" can be linked to the child-host' miracle of the later
Middle Ages
In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...
" which involved the substitution of the "actual body of the Christ Child" for the
Eucharist
The Eucharist ( ; from , ), also called Holy Communion, the Blessed Sacrament or the Lord's Supper, is a Christianity, Christian Rite (Christianity), rite, considered a sacrament in most churches and an Ordinance (Christianity), ordinance in ...
.
[Fradenburg 206] Such miraculous tales appear designed to reaffirm faith in the miraculous efficacy of
transubstantiation
Transubstantiation (; Greek language, Greek: μετουσίωσις ''metousiosis'') is, according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, "the change of the whole substance of sacramental bread, bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and ...
in the face of the pressure of
Lollard
Lollardy was a proto-Protestantism, proto-Protestant Christianity, Christian religious movement that was active in England from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic C ...
dissent, which broadly questioned the spiritual status of the Eucharist and other Church traditions: relics, clerical celibacy, even pilgrimages. According to Fradenburg, these miraculous tales operate according to a paradoxical logic in which "visuality and carnality are used to insist upon the superior virtue of that which is beyond sight and flesh".
Yet such sacramental materialism remains vulnerable to the kinds of abuse more obviously associated with the Pardoner; Fradenburg cites the case of
Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln
Hugh of Lincoln (1246 – 27 August 1255) was an English boy whose death in Lincoln, England, Lincoln was blood libel, falsely attributed to Jews. He is sometimes known as Little Saint Hugh or Little Sir Hugh to distinguish him from the adu ...
, the historical episode of the young English Christian supposedly martyred by Jews, "slayn also / With cursed Jewes, as it is notable / For it is but a litel while ago" (VII 684–686), tacked onto the end of the "Prioress' Tale". The tale was intimately bound up with attempts to "aggrandise the spiritual prestige and temporal revenues" of the local cathedral.
[Fradenburg 207.] Thus the vivid "carnality" of the miraculous tale of martyrdom could be deployed as easily to enhance the worldly prominence of the Church as to refute heretical doctrine by reaffirming the spiritual legitimacy of Church rituals. The "Prioress' Tale" may approximate the greedy exploitation of spirituality embodied by "
The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale" insofar as it is indebted to tales of martyrdom circulated for worldly profit.
See also
*
Blood libel
Blood libel or ritual murder libel (also blood accusation) is an antisemitic canardTurvey, Brent E. ''Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis'', Academic Press, 2008, p. 3. "Blood libel: An accusation of ritual mu ...
References
Further reading
*
Rose, E. M. (2022) “Prior to the Prioress: Chaucer’s Chorister in its Original Context.” ''Studies in the Age of Chaucer'' 44, 63-91.
External links
"The Prioress's Prologue and Tale", middle-english hypertext with glossary and side-by-side middle-english and modern englishModern Translation of the ''Prioress' Tale'' and Other Resources at eChaucer
{{DEFAULTSORT:Prioress' Prologue and Tale
The Canterbury Tales
Fiction about the Devil
Blood libel
Stereotypes of Jewish people
Antisemitism in England
Antisemitism in literature