Chaucer and Religious Women in the Middle Ages, Cont.

The second model of the ideal wife in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales is Custance in the Man of Law's Tale. Custance is the daughter of the Roman emperor and is a devout and pious young woman. The sultan of Syria hears of her beauty and grace and wishes to take her as his wife. He agrees to convert to Christianity, and to have his subjects convert. Unfortunately, many of his subjects object, and set out to be rid of Custance. She is set out to sea in a ship with no captain and crew, but her piety and devotion save her. Custance sails to England, where she converted the pagans through her devotion and piety. Custance finally found happiness with Alla, the king of England. Her devotion and piety to God and to Alla, her husband, provided an effective illustration of the ideal role of wives in the medieval world. Custance provides an example of the spiritual ideal for a wife. She is not a spiritual leader, but does provide a strong and moving example of devotion and piety for others to follow. How did Chaucer's view of religious or holy women relate to the real lives and roles of religious or holy women in late medieval England? History has left us a number of very good records of the lives of English holy women in the late Middle Ages. These records include the Ancrene Riwle, a guide for the lives and behavior of women who had taken religious vows, Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, a mystical treatise that includes a considerable amount of information regarding the mystic, and The Book of Margery Kempe, an autobiography of a late fourteenth century English mystic, as well as various martyrologies and saints' lives. Women who chose to live as nuns or anchoresses could live under one of any number of rules. In England, religious women were usually guided by either the Benedictine rule or by a widespread English text, the Ancrene Riwle (or Ancrene Wisse). There were certain similarities between the two. Both prescribed cloistering, or isolation, for religious women, and both laid down guidelines for a modest and chaste life. The lives of religious women who had taken vows were, ideally, quite simple. They should not own possessions, and should dress modestly, according to both the Benedictine Rule and the Ancrene Riwle. The majority of rules for nuns prescribed that all should share in physical labor, and that life should be fully communal. The rules dictate times for work, study and prayer. While the Benedictine rule was, of course, originally composed for monks rather than nuns, its regulations are not particularly gender specific, and it was often followed in a form very close to that originally composed in the sixth century.

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