[The Young Man beating his Wife]
TALE XLVI.(B).
Concerning a Grey Friar who made it a great crime on the
part of husbands to beat their wives. (1)
In the town of Angoulême, where Count Charles, father of King Francis, often abode, there dwelt a Grey Friar named De Vallès, (2) the same being a learned man and a very great preacher. At Advent time this Friar preached in the town in presence of the Count, whereby his reputation was still further increased.
1 This is the tale inserted in Gruget’s edition in lieu of
the previous one.—Ed.
2 We had thought that Friar Vallès might possibly be Robert
de Valle, who at the close of the fifteenth century wrote a
work entitled Explanatio in Plinium, but find that this
divine was a Bishop of Rouen, and never belonged to the Grey
Friars. In Gessner’s Biographia Universalis, continued by
Frisius, mention is made of three learned ecclesiastics of
the name of Valle living in or about Queen Margaret’s time:
Baptiste de Valle, who wrote on war and duelling; William de
Valle, who penned a volume entitled De Anima Sorbono; and
Amant de Valle, a Franciscan minorité born at Toulouse, who
was the author of numerous philosophical works, the most
important being Elucidationes Scoti.—B. J.
It happened also that during Advent a hare-brained young fellow, who had married a passably handsome young woman, continued none the less to run at the least as dissolute a course as did those that were still bachelors. The young wife, being advised of this, could not keep silence upon it, so that she very often received payment after a different and a prompter fashion than she could have wished. For all that, she ceased not to persist in lamentation, and sometimes in railing as well; which so provoked the young man that he beat her even to bruises and blood. Thereupon she cried out yet more loudly than before; and in a like fashion all the women of the neighbourhood, knowing the reason of this, could not keep silence, but cried out publicly in the streets, saying—
“Shame, shame on such husbands! To the devil with them!”