This study examines late Roman and early medieval sources for evidence concerning changes in the legal restrictions on marriage choice and choice of sexual partners. The data so derived serve as a base for examining theories in the social sciences concerning the etiology and function of the incest ban in human societies. A thorough examination of such theories, along with historical data, provides a possible synthesis of various social science views. A causal connection between the level of incest awareness in a society or in individuals and the levels of intrasocietal or individual aggression is shown. The synthesis so developed is dependent on a careful examination of nurturant relationships between fathers and daughters and between mothers and sons. The ramifications of the nurturant and oedipal elements in social behavior are therefore examined closely. Societies obsessed with maternal goddesses and female saints, for example, will be societies characterized both by lowered ranges of incest bans and by individual aggression towards dominance. An evolutionary rationale is provided, which the author finds reflected in a historical dynamic. Cognitive and functional uses of the incest ban are also explored. The ban against incestuous relations with affines is seen as a conscious tool to mute intrafamilial rivalries and thus to ensure a familial stability which would function to add some stability to the patterns of early medieval kingship. Godparentage networks and the incest bans between members of those networks are also explored, it being concluded that the incest ban was essential to maintaining the integrity of spiritual kinship networks. Early Germanic marriage patterns are also examined. It is shown that there was a persistent pattern among the Germanic peoples of patrilateral cross cousin marriage. This pattern fits well with the level of aggressive competition in the society, and the church was never able to break it completely. The whole study has implications about the nature of the church's growing antifeminity and antisexuality during the period of the early middle ages. And the evolutionary and historical dynamic proposed can possibly be applied to a wide variety of societies, including our own.

The didacticism of thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century vernacular poetry and vernacular, Latin and macaronic pastoral manuals and exempla books, and the obvious inclusion of hagiographical and homiletic material in verse romance itself invite the study of early Middle English verse romance--namely, King Horn, Floris and Blancheflour, Havelok the Dane and Amis and Amiloun--as another literary means by which moral theological instruction was disseminated to the ecclesiastical community and laity. Like contemporary didactic literature, short verse romance treats the subjects of sin, virtue and penance; like the structure of contemporary philosophico-theological studies, the thematic relationships between the romances suggest a vernacular mirror of morality. Floris and Blancheflour and Amis and Amiloun develop allegories of the concept of sin, which involve a presentation of condition and process. The former is represented in demonstrations of disobedience, inverted proper hierarchal moral order, the desire for perverse self-exultation, the motif of the trial, the motif of exile and the motif of both mental and physical disease. Recalling familiar allegorizations of the Fall, the process of sin that these two romances develop introduces the stages of suggestion, delight and consent as well as analysis of the moral struggle involved in the act of volition which leads to the debasement of reason and the loss of the "true being" of the will. While Floris and Blancheflour delineates the tripartite process, Amis and Amiloun examines the entire process, emphasizing the significance of the concept of the defects which predispose one to the commission of sin. King Horn and Havelok the Dane develop allegories of the concept of moral excellence. Included in these allegories are actual and symbolic representations of cardinal and theological virtue. Included also is the study of the process by which one attains release from the condition of sin. In both poems the first stage of this process appears in the attainment of knowledge and experience of sorrow. The second stage involves the strengthening of the soul through the practice of cardinal virtue. The final stage appears in the attainment of the principal characters' disposition for good. While King Horn examines the entire process, Havelok the Dane focuses on the attainment of the specific theological virtue of hope. In addition to presenting examinations of virtue and sin, verse romance also develops an account of the sacrament of penance. The acts of the proximate matter of this sacrament, which appear most often, are contrition or "interior penance" and confession. The act of satisfaction is also an integral part of some works, appearing in their conclusions. The form of the sacrament receives minimal treatment. No significant character plays the role of ecclesiastical confessor. Thus, thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century English short verse romance is a literary form which treats the propaedeutics of moral theology. Its thematic relationship to contemporary philosophico-theological treatises and vernacular, Latin and macaronic didactic literature thus provides yet another instance of the effect that encyclopaedism had on the literary art of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries.

Christine de Pisan fit son entree dans la litterature par la porte de la necessite, mais cette orientation fut en meme temps le fruit d'un choix, celui d'un poete sentant venir en lui le flot poetique et le desir de communiquer a ses contemporains ses idees les plus cheres. Aussi cette oeuvre est-elle marquee au sceau de l'individualite; avant une technique, nous trouvons une sensibilite qui oscille entre deux poles, la joie et la souffrance. Ces deux reseaux sont remarquablement bien mis en valeur par l'utilisation d'un vocabulaire etendu, varie qui renouvelle la langue psychologique de l'epoque et constitue une etape non negligeable dans l'expression litteraire des sentiments. Les mots ne sont pas les seuls elements constitutifs et les seuls moyens d'expression; il faut leur ajouter les images et les allegories que Christine a su developper avec une finesse exceptionnelle: les plus traditionnelles se transforment et se parent d'une originalite qui trouve sa source dans la sincerite de leur auteur. L'etude comparee de la souffrance et de la joie au niveau du reseau verbal permet d'apprecier la richesse foisonnante du registre de la douleur par rapport a celui de l'allegresse. Ce phenomene peut s'expliquer par plusiers faits: la vie tourmentee de l'auteur d'une part; d'autre part des faits plus litteraires tels que la tradition courtoise qui subsiste encore a l'epoque de Christine (l'alternance bonheur/malheur y est une constante), an meme temps qu'une tradition plus moyenageuse ou planent toujours le fantome de la mort et celui de la fortune. Christine reprend ces elements mais les renouvelle, marquant ainsi une evolution dans l'histoire de la poesie lyrique francaise. Toutefois, ele se detache de ses predecesseurs tels que Guillaume de Machaut, Eustache Deschamps dont elle suit, dans l'ensemble, au niveau de la technique, les regles et les conseils. Elle annonce surtout des poetes comme Charles D'Orleans et Francois Villon aupres de qui, dans les histoires litteraires, elle merite d'avoir sa place.

Its contemporary sources indicate that early Frankish society of the sixth and seventh centuries was a living and developing new culture--West-European civilization--founded on the customary law principles of the Germanic Frankish peoples, the Gallo-Roman traditions, and the Christian Church. The contemporary sources (the law codes of the Salic and Ripuarian Franks, records of the Concilia Galliae, the Formulae of Marculfus, and Gregory of Tours' The History of the Franks) are few in quantity and not very varied in character, but their quality is such that they provide great insight into the society they represent. Evidence provided by the law codes indicates a need for order in society and for non-violent remedies for proven criminal acts. The insistence on correct court procedures and on the integrity of court officials that the laws imply is indicative of a society that desires respect for its judicial system. The codes also indicate that individuals were encouraged to settle permanently within a community, so that they could receive the support of that community in case of necessity. Furthermore, the amount of the fines assessed for crimes that threatened the very existence of an individual indicates that society tried to realize an atmosphere conducive to a safe environment for its members through its judicial system. The contents of the synodal decrees of the sixth and seventh centuries indicate that the church set regulations for many aspects of community life and thus played an important role in early Frankish society. The church as a property owner and its administrator, the bishop, were part of the secular community, which benefited the community because the church provided many of its social services and benefited the church as an institution because the secular authorities counted on its discipline and thus protected it. It appears probable that the communities enforced their judicial decisions. The increasing importance placed on documentation and on the legality of actions, of which Marculfus' Formulae are indicative, provides further evidence that early Frankish society of the sixth and seventh centuries was a new culture, a living synthesis of Frankish and Gallo-Roman components.

The Byrthe and Lyfe of the Moost False and Deceytfull Antechryste, a unique copy of a late medieval English version of the life of Antichrist, resides at the University Library of Cambridge University. The life of Antichrist, or Antichrist vita, as developed by scriptural exegetes, preachers, historians, and devotional writers (discussed in Chapter One), became, in the fifteenth century, a popular subject for early printed illustrated vernacular texts. The German blockbook Antichrist vitae (appearing as early as 1460) told the life of the "Man of Sin" in a series of 45 woodcut illustrations, with a brief textual explanation provided for each woodcut. These blockbooks in turn influenced other late medieval European printers to produce typographic illustrated Antichrist vitae, oftentimes closely copying the original illustrations. These early books include the German Der Antichrist (Strassburg, 1480); the Spanish Libro del Anticristo (Burgos, 1495), the French L'Advenement de Antechrist (Paris, 1492) and Vie du Mauvais Antechrist (Lyons, 1495); and the English "Coming of Antichrist," a section of The Art to Live Well and Die Well (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1505), and The Byrthe and Lyfe of the Moost False and Deceytfull Antechryste (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1520 ?). Chapter Two analyzes and compares these European illustrated vitae. The two English vitae, although printed by the same shop, and sharing many woodcut illustration, are strikingly different. "The Coming of Antichrist" continually links the life of Antichrist with the moral and spiritual state of its audience. The Byrthe and Lyfe of Antechryste, on the other hand, has more illustrations, less moral commentary, and a more story-like tone. Chapter Three gives a detailed analysis of the sources, the content, and the printing history of these two works. Its treatment of The Byrthe and Lyfe of Antechryste, especially, relates that work to late medieval apocalyptic beliefs, the use of scripture in pre-Reformation vernacular literature, the characteristics of Wynkyn de Worde's printing, and the popularity of the orthodox Catholic interpretation of Antichrist at a time when newer Reformist and anti-Catholic apocalyptic views were growing increasingly popular. The edited text of The Byrthe and Lyfe of Antechryste, presented in Chapter Four, hopefully will prove useful to students of medieval and late medieval apocalypticism.

The literary figure of Dona Garoza, the ambiguous nun of the Archpriest of Hita's Libro de Buen Amor and that of Madame Eglentyne, the controversial prioress of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, have been the object of scholarly scrutiny for a long time, especially in this century. The problem concerns the tone with which each woman is described; is the author mildly chastising the nun or is he damning her? In the case of Dona Garoza, critics have interpreted her in three ways: as a gentle, mildly sinning creature, as a religious failure, and as an intentionally ambiguously drawn character with both characteristics, painted thus to entertain the reader. Interestingly enough, the same three ways of interpreting Chaucer's Prioress also exist. In order to determine how Chaucer and the Archpriest of Hita regarded their nuns, it is necessary to understand how the fourteenth century would have regarded them, and whether these nuns were exceptional or typical in their faults. Such apparently ambiguous literary portraits of the two nuns are in reality satirical. The present study is an attempt to place the portraits in the proper perspective, as heirs to a long and distinguished tradition of literary wayward nuns whose real-life counterparts date back to the beginnings of monasticism. In an effort to prove our contention that, far from being an isolated literary occurrence, the wayward nun in medieval literature is the reflection of the one in the nunnery, special attention will be given in this study to those works where profligate nuns seem to have been drawn almost directly from the pages of the visitation reports by the bishops of the convents in their dioceses. Different from the studies offering a general picture of the life of the professed woman in the Middle Ages, the emphasis here will be on the evidence of immodest or dishonorable behavior in the nunnery observed through the centuries by those who felt it their duty to record it, reprove it, or mock it.

In the Middle Ages, when men were urged both to know and to love truth, pathos frequently participated in a narrative strategy and a larger philosophical vision which attribute to motive and will as much importance as to specific acts. In particular, the emotions aroused by the details of innocent suffering had become part of the communal understanding of the relationship between the physical and the spiritual realms. This study examines how the pathos of three Canterbury Tales functions in the reader's apprehension of these tales' fictional worlds. The Clerk's Tale juxtaposes the narrator's insistence on the unreasonable cruelty of Walter's tests to his absolute approval of Griselda's response. In addition, the narrator, by invoking the human responses of his audience, juxtaposes that response to Griselda's, thus encouraging the audience to question her motivation and the source of her strength. The humanizing of Griselda's suffering, far from detracting from the religious significance of the tale, enables the audience to recognize its true significance. For it highlights the nature of the Christian moral virtues which shape her responses. The emotionalism of the Prioress's Tale is both a controlled and functional part of a sincere devotional response that seeks to fuse feeling and understanding into a moment of joyous understanding. The Prioress's intrusions into the tale are not those of a "thwarted mother," weeping over pathetic suffering, but those of an instructress intent on revealing the true spiritual significance of all that transpires. The narrative strategy of Physician's Tale, on the other hand, suggests that it is intended primarily not as a moral exemplum but as a troubling vision of the world which moves its audience to self-awareness and scrutiny. The Physician--through a tale which dramatizes the dangers of the world, the ideal human nature against which each is judged, the uncertainty of mortal life, and the certainty of death for just and unjust alike--stimulates each of his listeners to get his spiritual house in order. Act and motive, thought and feeling, the temporal and the timeless--all become part of the narrative event.

In Chaucer's General Prologue there is a complex cultural code embodied in costume signs which, when decoded, enriches our perception of his portraits. Critics have never discussed the costume signs in Chaucer's portrait of the Prioress with consideration given, simultaneously, to contemporary historical records, literature, and visual arts that inform these signs. It is the purpose of this dissertation to begin a study of the Prioress with an examination of her costume and Chaucer's costume rhetoric, an approach opposite to the traditional approach that first assesses the Prioress' character as deserving mild satire and refers to her garments and accessories as supporting evidence. In contrast, this study demonstrates that Chaucer's costume rhetoric portrays the Prioress in appropriate costume according to late fourteenth-century standards. To this end, Chapter I refutes the criticism of impropriety in the Prioress' headdress, providing the background for appraisal by examining convent rules, visitation records, wills, and Sumptuary Laws. In addition, an analysis of literary treatment of nuns' headdresses, with special attention to rhetorical traditions of the description of womanly beauty, traditions that parallel those of the visual arts in presenting depictions of beautiful ideals as lovely women, reveals that Chaucer's description of the Prioress' headdress conforms to these ideals. Chapter II establishes the propriety of the Prioress' cloak with evidence from historical records, literature, and the visual arts. This cloak is bien fait, according to historical data; further analysis of the literary treatment of nuns' habits demonstrates that Chaucer follows the pattern of Le Roman de la Rose in its presentation of hypocrits whose actions belie their proper costumes. Evidence from medieval visual arts further supports the thesis of the Prioress' proper cloak. The Prioress' rosary and brooch are analysed, in Chapter III, and found appropriate for a prioress and pilgrim, according to historical, scientific, literary, and religious data. Contemporary iconographic traditions support this interpretation of Chaucer's costume rhetoric. Chaucer's eclectic costume rhetoric places the Prioress within religious, artistic, literary, scientific, and historical traditions; analysis of this rhetoric enables us to separate her proper exterior from her actions, thus providing kaleidoscopic views of the Prioress.

This work traces the issue of salvation for "virtuous pagans" (those who lived as virtuously as possible without the benefit of Christian revelation) as a theological and literary concern of the fourteenth century. Theologically, the issue is related to Christ's Harrowing of Hell, an act which initiated a new era of mercy and made possible the notion of pagan salvation. From the first through the fourteenth centuries, the Church evolved a succession of theories to explain these matters: that Christ descended to convert (and possibly baptize) the pagan souls He found in Hell; that Limbo existed as an intermediate state between bliss and punishment for virtuous pagans; that salvation was possible for pagans who had done their best during their lifetimes. Related folklore and legends arose (notably, the legend of Trajan's rescue from Hell through the intervention of St. Gregory), and the three books of the Divine Comedy illustrate Dante the pilgrim's growing enlightenment on pagan salvation. Three Middle English works from the latter fourteenth century also address this concern. St. Erkenwald demonstrates the absolute necessity of grace for salvation and the limitations of natural virtue. Erkenwald's "harrowing" of a pagan soul celebrates the continuing power of Christ's mercy and His continuing reign over Hell. On the other hand, Piers Plowman clarifies the role of works, for the Dreamer cannot rely on baptism or intellectual inquiry for salvation. Also, whereas St. Erkenwald emphasized the positive aspects of the Harrowing, Piers Plowman closes with emphasis on the negative. As the turning point of divine history, the Harrowing ushered in a period of grace which is now drawing to a close. The final Harrowing, or Doomsday, is imminent, and the Church will be found wanting. The epilogue of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde raises the question of Troilus as a virtuous pagan. Several elements of the poem, though, suggest that Troilus is a parody of the virtuous pagan figure: he sidesteps Boethius' reasoning on free will, and he is liberated from the "hell" of his desires to reach the false heaven of Criseyde's arms. Troilus also fares poorly when compared to the virtuous pagans of legend. However, Chaucer leaves Troilus' fate shrouded in the mysteries of Christ's mercy. Indeed, ultimately all three poems conclude that, whatever the role of man's efforts in salvation, the workings of grace are indisputable and yet unknowable--the only answer the medieval mind could devise for the paradox of the virtuous pagan.

The Chronicon Monasteril de Abingdon, edited by the Reverend Joseph Stevenson, was first published in 1858 as part of the Rolls Series. The chronicle narrates the history of one of England's most distinguished monastic foundations, the Benedictine house of Abingdon in Berkshire, from the late seventh century until the accession of Richard the Lion-Hearted in 1189. Though the history of its early years remains obscure, Abingdon from the late tenth century onwards became one of the most influential abbeys in England, due to its prominence in the tenth-century reformation of English monastic life. The chronicle consists mainly of legal documents, such as writs and charters, many of which have been translated, interspersed with narrative sections about the accession of monarchs, the deeds of abbots, or the various legal disputes in which the abbey was engaged throughout its history. The chronicle reveals that many and varied concerns of a wealthy and influential monastic foundation in a period of great social, economic and political changes--the late Anglo-Saxon period and the first century after the Norman Conquest. Among the mass of data which the chronicle yields is much information about the position of women in English society in this important period. This information contradicts the prevailing theory, propounded by Frank and Doris Stenton, that the status of English women, relatively high during the Anglo-Saxon period, underwent an immediate decline upon the Norman Conquest. An analysis of the evidence from the Abingdon chronicle concerning women is offered in Chapter Three, "The Stentons and Medieval English Women: A Reconsideration."