Along with age and estate, the “Great Theory” can also be applied to interpret the proportion of religion(s) between a couple. Similar to the proportion suggested in the estate between a couple, the proportion embedded in the religion(s) between a couple is a relational concept, instead of a numerical one. The relation between a Christian and a heathen or an unbeliever is theologically as well as aesthetically unproportional and unsatisfactory, while the relation between Christian couples20 theologically and aesthetically fulfills the notion of harmonious proportion. If the proportion of a husband’s religion to that of a wife’s shows a satisfying relation, there reveals an aesthetics of proportion. Beauty consists in the proportions of parts and by analogy, part of the beauty of marriage consists in the proportional match between religions. The Church and canonists suggest that the medieval men should marry women of the same religion based on the principle of appropriateness. The thought that a couple are comparable in religion is beautiful because the arrangement fulfills the requirement of an implicit proportion and hence harmony, though the proportion may not be quantified. In the medieval mentality, Christians have a higher hierarchy than pagans or unbelievers, hence marriage of Christians with pagans or unbelievers is theoretically not encouraged.
As for the polemic of whether Christians can marry pagans or unbelievers, St.
Thomas responds,
In the Old Law, it was allowable to marry with certain unbelievers, and forbidden with others [due to the fear of being drawn into idolatry]…. But under the New Law which is spread throughout the whole world the prohibition extends with equal reason to all unbelievers. Hence disparity of worship previous to marriage is an impediment to its being contracted and voids the contract. (ST, Suppl., Q. 59, Art. 1 ad 1)
In a mixed marriage, the couple do not serve the same creator and often than not
20 The proportion in religion between pagan couples is also a relational one and determines part of the formal beauty of marriage. Yet, since this thesis is based on the perspective of Christian marriage, I only discuss the proportion in religion between Christian couples.
religious conflicts take place. Among many spokesmen of the Church, Tertullian21 expresses sharp disapproval of the marriage of Christians with unbelievers and even called such union fornication.22 Yet, other Fathers do not express a totally negative and pessimistic view of mixed marriages. Edward Westermarck states that some of the Fathers encourage the marriage of Christians with heathens for the sake of propagating the faith (57). Hence we see two opposed views concerning the role of faith in medieval marriage. If medieval Christians obey the Fathers’ exhortation, they ought to marry Christians, which conceptually correspond to the notion of proportion. Despite the objection to marriage of Christians with unconverted pagans, such unions do occur, and some of Chaucer’s tales reflect such a social reality. At least two tales deal with the relationship between a couple’s religious belief and their marital life as portrayed in “The Man of Law’s Tale” and “The Second Nun’s Tale.”
Rather than rendering the issue of the marriage of Christian with unbelievers, Chaucer is more interested in presenting the marriage of Christian couples, with one spouse, particularly the husband, just being Christianized. For instance, in “The Man of Law’s Tale,” the Sultan of Syria is Christianized because he desires to marry Constance, and King Alla is converted because he witnesses a miracle and is touched by Constance’s fortitude. In addition, in “The Second Nun’s Tale,” Valerian is baptized because he is pure enough to see an angel. The Man of Law relates that Constance is married off and sent away to live with the Sultan. Due to their different beliefs, the Sultan, a pagan, cannot marry Constance, a Christian unless he is Christianized, yet he suffers so much pang of love that he exclaims:
“Rather than I lese
Custance, I wol be cristned, doutelees.
I moot been hires, I may noon oother chese.
I prey yow hoold youre argumentz in pees;
Saveth my lyf, and beth noght recchelees
21 Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullian (c. AD155-c. 222) is a Carthaginian theologian, Father of the Church and the first major Christian to write in Latin (New Catholic Encyclopedia, v. 13, 246-50).
22 Tertullian, “Ad Uxorem,” Bk., II, Ch. 3, Migne, I, 1405-6, qtd. in Gist 56.
To geten hire that hath my lyf in cure,
For in this wo I may nat longe endure.” (II 225-31, emphasis mine)
In order to have Constance as his wife, the Sultan makes all his liegemen be
“cristned,” at the expense of their own religion. That Nevill Coghill translates cristned (II 226) as “baptized” (145) is reasonable since to be converted as a Christian in the Middle Ages, one has to be baptized. For a pagan such as the Sultan, who seems to be converted for the sake of conversion, we have legitimate doubt on his knowledge of Christianity. Even though the Sultan is formally converted, he has probably not yet been familiar with Christian doctrines and spirit. As for Constance’s second marriage, her husband King Alla, ruler of Northumberland, is a pagan before being converted under the influence of her nobleness and fortitude as well as God’s power. When she first lands on the shore of Northumberland, she is pitiful because of her miserable physical condition. The constable of Northumberland and his wife are kind enough to keep her in their house and treat her just as their own daughter. Later on, Constance refuses a knight who fiercely woos her. For revenging himself, he falsely accuses Constance of murdering the constable’s wife, who is actually murdered by this very knight. Brought to the king, the knight swears on the Bible that Constance is the evildoer. While the devilish intention of the knight almost triumphs,
[a] voys was herd in general audience,
And seyde, “Thou hast desclaundred, giltelees, The doghter of hooly chirche in heigh presence;
Thus hastou doon, and yet holde I my pees!”
………
And for this miracle, in conclusioun, And by Custances mediacioun,
The kyng—and many another in that place—
Converted was, thanked be Cristes grace!
(II 673-76, 683-86, emphasis mine) After the occurrence of the timely miracle, the king and his liegemen are converted.
They are willing to do it out of their own wills and their natural affection for
Constance because she embodies the enduring spirit of Christ. This is very different from the kind of conversion of the Sultan, who does it out of purpose and affectation.
Both King Alla and the Sultan are already Christians before their respective marriage, yet the kind of maturity and profoundness of their understanding of Christianity is enormously different.
Similar to Constance’s first marriage, St. Cecile’s marriage with Valerian initially faces the same religious problem. Just right on the wedding night, Cecilia reveals a mysterious message that panics her groom. She says that an angel guards her virginity against anyone who touches her. He responds with menace:
“If I shal trusten thee,
Lat me that aungel se and hym biholde;
And if that it a verray angel bee,
Thanne wol I doon as thou hast prayed me;
And if thou love another man, for sothe
Right with this swerd thanne wol I sle yow bothe.” (VIII 163-68)
It seems that Valerian has already acknowledged the existence of angels before his marriage, so that he does not ridicule an unexpected request as such. Instead, he would like to have a look at the named angel. In response to Valerian’s rage,
Cecile answerde anon-right in this wise:
“If that yow list, the angel shul ye see,
So that ye trowe on Crist and yow baptize.” (VIII 169-71, emphasis mine) By now we know that Valerian has not been baptized by the time he marries Cecile.
Having heard Cecile’s words, Valerian immediately goes to the place she mentions and is greeted by St. Urban. Afterwards, Valerian indeed sees the angel Cecile referred to and “Pope Urban hym cristned right there” (VIII 217). “Cristned” here means baptized, instead of Christianized in a general sense. According to Benson’s edition, Chaucer altogether uses three different verbs, to be “cristned,” “converted”
and “baptized” with reference to conversion. The distinct usage seems to imply that Chaucer wants to differentiate one from the others in that people are converted but there are differences in the level of how they understand the true Christian doctrines.
Based on St. Thomas’s interpretation, if a husband is not baptized, his marriage with a baptized woman is regarded as invalid. For the difference between being Christianized and baptized and their relation with marriage, St. Thomas offers a satisfactory explanation. He writes:
If a believer marry [sic] a baptized heretic, the marriage is valid, although he sins by marrying her if he knows her to be a heretic…. [W]hereas on the other hand, if a catechumen having right faith but not having been baptized were to marry a baptized believer, the marriage would not be valid.
(ST, Suppl., Q. 59, Art. 1 ad 5, emphasis mine) St. Thomas seems to regard baptism, as a formal ritual, more highly than inner faith.
Religion, an internalization of an individual’s moral and transcendental cultivation, should belong to the category of intrinsic worth. However, religion can also be taken as an external label that reveals people’s religious belief and explicates their worship. In discussing whether a believer can marry an unbeliever, St. Thomas points out that matrimony as a sacrament has more to do with baptism than with interior faith:
Matrimony is a sacrament: and therefore so far as the sacramental essentials are concerned, it requires purity with regard to the sacrament of faith, namely Baptism, rather than with regard to interior faith. For which reason also this impediment is not called disparity of faith, but disparity of worship which concerns outward service.
(ST, Suppl., Q. 59, Art. 1 ad 5, emphasis mine) This is not to decrease the significance of interior faith. Baptism is a sacrament, and sacrament is the visible form of an invisible grace. Interior faith needs to be proved first by exterior ritual, that is, baptism. Hence, it is argued that religion connotes a significance of an “outward” feature. The outward service, baptism, thus has an important role in medieval marriage because of its symbolic meaning. When a Christian is baptized, his faith and worship are united as one, hence a true Christian.
Strictly speaking, in terms of Christian doctrines, a marriage with disparity of worship, such as Cecile and Valerian’s marriage, is invalid. Yet, since some of the Fathers sanction the marriage of Christians with heathens for the sake of propagating the faith,
the union of converted and unconverted Christians is also practiced.
In “The Man of Law’s Tale” and “The Second Nun’s Tale,” the storytellers relate the plot of converting pagans, but after the conversion takes place, there are religious collisions injuring the two sides of the alliances. The two mother-in-laws of Constance, the sultana and Donegild, in order to protect their respective beliefs, devise various ways to obstruct the conversion of their mother countries. The sultana even kills her own son in order to vent her rage on him, while Donegild forges a letter to set Constance up so that she would fall into disfavor of King Alla. One common strategy the two mother-in-laws employ is to send Constance adrift on sea.
All these misfortunes and unhappiness are caused by the disharmony of religion between the husband and the wife. Furthermore, St. Thomas is also concerned with the education of the descendents of mixed marriages. Being a theologian, he does not merely approach this problem from a conventional religious viewpoint but also from the angle of educating the offspring, a farsighted vision that solicits more profound discussion on the topic of marriage of Christians and pagans in the Middle Ages. Gist also notes that for St. Thomas, a mixed marriage goes against “the good of the offspring” (56). Yet, the “good” can be of various kinds, and it is necessary to pinpoint St. Thomas’s thought here. He remarks that
since education is the work of father and mother in common, each of them intends to bring up the child to the worship of God according to their own faith. Consequently if they be of different faith, the intention of the one will be contrary to the intention of the other, and therefore there cannot be a fitting marriage between them. (ST, Suppl., Q. 59, Art. 1c)
It is clear that Constance’s and St. Cecile’s marriages are in a general sense not mixed marriages, but these wives’ relatives from their grooms’ sides are presumed to influence the education of their offspring. Unless the heathen lands are completely converted during the time the offspring grow up, the impact on the education of offspring from religious conflicts would not be reduced to the least. Yet, as the two tales end, the storytellers do not bring up the problem of education.
For St. Thomas, his theory of proportion and his assertion of the marriage of
equal faith are in tune with one another. As we have reiterated, beauty has objective characteristics, which altogether constitute the proportion of parts. Religion is one of the outward characteristics of medieval marriage for people to judge whether a marital union is theologically as well as aesthetically harmonious. In “The Man of Law’s Tale” and “The Second Nun’s Tale,” the aesthetically-correct framework is challenged based on a strict criterion. Yet, what has been foregrounded in these two tales is the power of conversion from paganism to Christianity, instead of the unsatisfactory proportion of religion between the couples.
The above discussion has been aimed to analyze the form of marriage in terms of St. Thomas’s theory of proportion. The concept of marriage of people with equal age, estate and religion suggests a social product and an extension of an aesthetic entity. From the above analysis, the process from the choice of a partner to the accomplishment of matrimonial ceremony is seen to be under the sway of the “Great Theory.” The various forms of marriage of the nobility, the knights and the commoners portrayed in Chaucer’s tales reflect or contradict St. Thomas’s theory of proportion. Moreover, each pilgrim-teller stresses different conflicts entailed by the disparity of age, estate or religion, as shown in the table at the end of this chapter. In
“The Merchant’s Tale,” “The Miller’s Tale” and “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” the disparity of age and estate as well as related problems take the majority of the storytellers’ concern. Neither the pilgrim-tellers nor Chaucer approves marriage of youthful wives with aged husbands or aged wives with youthful husbands. When Macfarlane argues that January’s decision to wed in his old age to a young woman is
“welcomed by Chaucer, who proceeds to write in praise of marriage” (186), Macfarlane has not taken Chaucer’s intended ironic undertone into consideration:
Chaucer is satirizing the old knight’s vision of marriage and the discrepancy between his vision and the reality. While these “spring and autumn” couples, such as the carpenter John and Alison, the knight January and May as well as the Wife of Bath and her five husbands, gravely suffer from the problem of age, they seem to display a satisfactory proportion of religion between husband and wife. On the other hand, in
“The Man of Law’s Tale,” “The Clerk’s Tale,” “The Second Nun’s Tale” and “The
Wife of Bath’s Tale,” the marriages respectively encounter the problem of age, estate or religion, yet these couples are able to cope with the difficulties. It is hard to categorize these marriages because there are distinct patterns for each. However, the various disparities and polemics encountered by the couples are not amplified as the disparity and problem of age in the “spring and autumn” couples. In fact, L’Hermite-Leclercq notes that there is also disparity of age among the nobility in the medieval society:
In aristocratic marriages the age difference between husband and wife was often ten or twenty years or more, and the younger partner was always the wife. Among commoners we observe a similar, though less marked, disparity in age. (in Klapisch-Zuber ed., 218)
Compared against the historical records L’Hermite-Leclercq offers, Chaucer’s picture of the nobility’s marriage apparently is an ideal one partly because via this he can entertain his court audience,23 and thus the proportion of age between an aristocratic couple is presented as aesthetically satisfied. It can be concluded that nearly every marriage in the selected Tales is aesthetically unsatisfactory in one way or another.
Concerning the form of marriage, Chaucer seems to be nostalgic of a more ideal pattern in the early Christian period while expressing little hope in a more unsatisfactorily form such as the commoners’ in the contemporary England.
Coincidentally, some aristocrats in the various tales come from highly cultivated places. For instance, Constance and Cecile come from Rome, Griselda and Walter from Italy. Or in other cases, the nobility come from historically famous places: the
“old” lady in “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” comes from certain place under Arthur’s reign, and Dorigen, Arveragus and Aurelius from Breton in France. In contrast, most commoners in these tales we discuss are inhabitants of England, being either people of the middle class or of humble birth. To some extent, Chaucer seems to
23 Concerning the nature of Chaucer’s relationship with the royal court, Derek Pearsall holds a different opinion. He rejects the view that Chaucer has intimacy of association with the king and with the highest levels of court patronage because of his increasing isolation in the 1390s from the court (185).
suggest that the ancient nobility possess more marital happiness than the contemporary commoners. Such an ideology is perhaps based on the aesthetic distance between the ancient Rome and the contemporary England. Some things are beautiful when seen from a distance, while some are beautiful when seen in close range. Marriage is usually such an entity that is beautiful when seen from a distance.
If most marriages of the nobility, the knights and the commoners divert from the aesthetic principle of proportion, then why does the marriage of the aristocrats have a better claim in terms of marriage happiness? If these couples do not exactly follow satisfactory proportions of the three criteria, then one perhaps needs to ask why the incongruity between unequal age, estate and religion in the aristocratic marriage can be solved, whereas the incongruity between unequal age and status in the commoners’
marriage cannot be solved. Gist points out the abhorrence of the marriage between people of unequal estate, of age with youth and of Christians with pagans: “Medieval society condemned unreservedly … marriage with one of another faith … [and]
frowned upon unions of those of unequal rank as shameful, and considered the marriage of age with youth as unwise and conducive to unhappiness” (73). Her observation reinforces the fact that all the tales we have discussed, except “The Franklin’s Tale,” lack the beauty of proportion in terms of the form of marriage in one
frowned upon unions of those of unequal rank as shameful, and considered the marriage of age with youth as unwise and conducive to unhappiness” (73). Her observation reinforces the fact that all the tales we have discussed, except “The Franklin’s Tale,” lack the beauty of proportion in terms of the form of marriage in one