[1800] Used in the common medieval sense of entering a religious order.
[1801] Ib. I, pp. 328-30. At the end of this story the novice asks: “Why is it that the good Lord allows maidens so tender and so pure to be thus cruelly tormented by rough and foul spirits?” And the monk replies: “Thou hast experienced how if a bitter drink be first swallowed a sweet one tastes the sweeter, and how if black be placed beneath it, white is all the more dazzling. Read the Visions of Witinus, Godescalcus and others, to whom it was permitted to see the pains of the damned and the glory of the elect, and almost always it was the vision of punishment which came first. The Lord, wishing to show his bride his secret joys, permitteth well that she should first be tempted by some dreadful visions, that afterwards she may the better deserve to be made glad, and may know the distance between sweet and bitter, light and darkness.”
[1802] Ib. I, pp. 330-31.
[1803] Ib. II, pp. 68-9. “As I infer from this vision,” says the Novice, “an indiscreet fervour in prayers is not pleasing to the blessed Virgin, neither an undisciplined movement in genuflections.” On the other hand she did not like her devotees to hurry over their prayers, for Gautier de Coincy has a tale of a nun, Eulalie, who was accustomed to say at each office of the Virgin the full rosary of a hundred and fifty Aves; but she had much work to do and often hurried over her prayers, till one night she saw a vision of the mother of God, who promised her salvation and told her that the Ave Maria was a prayer which gave herself much joy; therefore she bade Eulalie not to hurry over it, but of her bounty permitted her to say a chaplet of fifty Aves, instead of the long rosary. See Gautier de Coincy, Les Miracles de la Sainte Vierge, ed. Poquet (Paris, 1857).
[1804] Ib. II, p. 100.
[1805] Ib. II, pp. 121-2.
[1806] Ib. II, pp. 122-3. For a variant in which the place of the two nuns is taken by two doctors of divinity, see An Alphabet of Tales (E.E.T.S.), pp. 274-5.
[1807] Ib. II, pp. 343-4. With these holy rivalries should be compared Caesarius’ tales of the drawing of apostles by lot. “It is a very common custom among the matrons of our province to choose an Apostle for their very own by the following lottery: the names of the twelve Apostles are written each on twelve tapers, which are blessed by the priest and laid on the altar at the same moment. Then the woman comes and draws a taper and whatsoever name that taper shall chance to bear, to that Apostle she renders special honour and service. A certain matron, having thus drawn St Andrew, and being displeased to have drawn him, laid the taper back on the altar and would have drawn another; but the same came to her hand again. Why should I make a long story? At length she drew one that pleased her, to whom she paid faithful devotion all the days of her life; nevertheless when she came to her last end and was at the point of death, she saw not him but the Blessed Andrew standing at her bedside. ‘Lo,’ he said, ‘I am that despised Andrew!’ from which we can gather that sometimes saints thrust themselves even of their own accord into men’s devotions.” Another matron was so much annoyed at drawing St Jude the Obscure instead of a more famous Apostle that she threw him behind the altar chest; whereupon the outraged Apostle visited her in a dream and not only rated her soundly but afflicted her with a palsy. See ib. II, pp. 129, 133, translated in Coulton, A Medieval Garner, pp. 259-60.
[1808] Several of the stories have, however, been translated by Mr Coulton, op. cit. Nos. 102-32.
[1809] Translated in Coulton, From St Francis to Dante (1907), p. 290; see ib. pp. 289-91, for a short account of Eudes Rigaud, also references on p. 395 (n. 17).