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: