Question. A lady attached to a gentleman in an honorable love marries another. Has she the right to repel her former lover and refuse him his accustomed favours?
Judgment, by Ermengarde, Viscountess of Narbonne: “The supervenience of the marriage bond does not bar the right of the prior attachment, unless the lady utterly renounces love, and declares that she does so for ever.”
The Gesta Romanorum, one of the most important collections of moral tales, was put together during the thirteenth century by a learned Frenchman named Pierre Bercheure, who was a Benedictine Prior. He chose to lay the scenes of the stories in Rome, though this was not historically true. Gesta means merely acts or exploits, and many of the tales are descended from Oriental Folk Lore.
Not all students of ancient literature agree as to the authorship of the Gesta as it appears in its present form, but the consensus of opinion seems to point to the aforesaid Frenchman.
However, the collector’s name matters little; the work itself, while it harks back to the Fables of Æsop and Pilpay and to the Talmud, is of interest as a veritable storehouse of Mediæval stories.
Each of these has its religious application, but it is easy to think that the readers were oftener intrigued by the story than by the appended moral.
OF SLOTH
The emperor Pliny had three sons, to whom he was extremely indulgent. He wished to dispose of his kingdom, and calling the three into his presence, spoke thus—“The most slothful of you shall reign after my decease.” “Then,” answered the elder, “the kingdom must be mine; for I am so lazy, that sitting once by the fire, I burnt my legs, because I was too indolent to withdraw them.” The second son observed, “The kingdom should properly be mine, for if I had a rope round my neck, and held a sword in my hand, my idleness is such, that I should not put forth my hand to cut the rope.” “But I,” said the third son, “ought to be preferred to you both; for I outdo both in indolence. While I lay upon my bed, water dropped from above upon my eyes; and though, from the nature of the water, I was in danger of becoming blind, I neither could nor would turn my head ever so little to the right hand or to the left.” The emperor, hearing this, bequeathed the kingdom to him, thinking him the laziest of the three.
Application
My beloved, the king is the devil; and the three sons, different classes of corrupt men.