Here is a table of contents for this final reading of our group:
THE PROLOGUE OF THE NONNE PRESTES TALE.
EPILOGUE TO THE NONNE PREESTES TALE.
The angel seyde, ‘god lyketh thy requeste,
And bothe, with the palm of martirdom,
Ye shullen come unto his blisful feste.’The palm of martirdom for to receyve,
Seinte Cecile, fulfild of goddes yifte,
The world and eek hir chambre gan she weyve.
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is of Chanticleer the cock and Pertelote the hen, also Russell the Fox. Chanticleer dreams of a beast in the yard. Pertelote says it’s nothing but ill humor, which she can cure with herbs. It’s Russell though, who, recalling the ability of the cock’s father, charms Chanticleer into singing. Caught by the throat, Chanticleer escapes by goading Russell into addressing his pursuers. “Take the morality, good men,” the Priest tells us. Beware of women and your own vanity, apparently; but the moral is not actually spelled out, though there is an obscure (to me) reference to St Paul and an additional command, “Take the fruit and let the chaff be still.”
The Second Nun’s Tale is a hagiography of St Cecilia, “Heaven’s Lily,” martyred in ancient Rome. She is an example against the sin of idleness. The Nun (or whoever it may be), invoking the Virgin, observes that faith without works is dead. Cecilia converts her husband Valerian by leading him to see an angel, if not God the Father himself; Valerian’s brother Tiberuce is converted by the divine smell of two unseen crowns of roses and lilies. Cecilia preaches that there is a better and an eternal life after this one. She explains the Trinity by noting how a single man has memory, “engine,” and intellect. She tells her persecutor Almachius that his own god is only a stone; the real God is in heaven, and images are of no profit. Three strokes cannot sever her head, and she gets three more days to preach.
