A particularly worrying implication of the abovementioned doctrines, as interpreted by at least some of Wyclif’s followers, was that personal righteousness transcended the boundaries and barriers of gender. If a woman is in a state of grace that is what empowers her rather than an official dispensation of the Church hierarchy; in such a state she has as much right to preach and to administer the sacraments as has a similarly disposed man. “Donatist (or near-Donatist) denials of the validity of the sacraments administered by unworthy priests led to claims for a lay ministry,” Margaret Aston has written, “and these in turn opened the way to further claims,” including the argument in favor of women priests.108 The Dominican inquisitor Bernard Gui (c. 1261–1331) complained of the Waldensians’ belief that “the consecration of the body and blood of Christ may be made by any just person, although he be a layman” (providing of course he was a member of the sect), adding that “they even believe the same thing concerning women.”109 Here, as in many other respects, the doctrinal trajectory of Lollardy may be said to parallel that of Waldensianism. But did Lollard women priests actually exist? This is a matter of modern scholarly debate, though the balance of opinion would seem to be against the hypothesis. Of course, a lot depends on what is meant by “priesthood” within a theology which devalues the sacraments (as traditionally understood) in general. It would seem that the theory had great potency and challenge even if the practice was minimal, particularly in view of the strength of the establishment’s response to the views of Walter Brut, a Welsh Lollard who dared to argue that women could preach and (at least in certain circumstances) administer the sacraments, including the sacrament of the altar. But there is a twist to this particular tale. As I demonstrate in Chapter 3, much of its theory was generated by the team of expert theologians recruited by John Trefnant, Bishop of Hereford, to refute Brut’s views; in the process of building up the Lollard’s views in order to knock them down, they canvassed opinions which were far more radical than anything that Brut himself had held, inasmuch as we can judge from the records of his trial.
At any rate, the orthodox view persisted that a woman could not be a doctrix, auditrix, or praedicatrix (“teacheress, studentess, preacheress”) except in the most exceptional of circumstances; those bizarre Latin forms, coinages redolent of a tiresome academic humor, point to the monstrous nature of any such creature. Because of her natural and legal inferiority, and possession of the wrong type of body, woman could scarcely ever be an auctrix (“authoress”). The Wife of Bath’s Tale may be read as offering a tacit comment on this status quo. Therein a physically repellent old woman, her body disfigured by old age and the ravages of poverty, teaches quite irreproachable doctrine. If the female form is incapable of authoritative character-ization then it must be de-formed in order that its possessor may become an acceptable medium for the transmission of a high message.
There is, of course, much more to Chaucer’s creation of the Wife of Bath, including a bold eroticism which owes much to Ovidian realizations of gender and sexuality. But Dame Alisoun cannot be contained within discourses which would serve to limit her potency, write her off as yet another Dipsas or duenna-figure whose expertise is confined to stereotypically female skills. So blatantly does she confound such expectations that another of Chaucer’s fictions, the Friar, is moved to advise her to leave authorities to preaching and to the schools of the clergy. In his view, her discourses of authority are unfitting in the mouth of a woman.
Ye han heer touched, also moot I thee,
In scole-matere greet difficultee.
Ye han seyn muche thyng right wel, I seye;
But, dame, here as we ryde by the weye,
Us nedeth nat to speken but of game,
And lete auctoritees, on Goddes name,
To prechyng and to scoles of clergye. (Friar’s Prologue, III(D) 1271–77)
The sources and significance of the Friar’s unease will be sought in Chapters 3 and 4. Suffice it to note here that, in the tale which the Wife tells, a romance text is turned inside out to present an ugly old woman as the intellectual and moral superior of a rapist-knight. Thus the conventional dictum that “gentle is as gentle does” is given new life, the claim that nobility of soul is to be valued over nobility of birth becomes more than a pious cliché. Moreover, women may be valued for their wisdom rather than their beauty; the repulsive (to the male gaze which, predictably, is the dominant viewpoint of the text) body of the old woman fades into insignificance as her voice utters the most authoritative and compelling of statements, Dante, both poet and sage, being ostentatiously cited as a major source. One of the most repulsive bodies in the Canterbury Tales houses a mind and soul which are in possession of an impressive body of doctrine. And she is the creation of an aging woman who, in her own self-portrayal, professes corporeal appetites of a kind which had been zealously condemned by generations of clerics. On the same argument, the possibility that the Pardoner’s body—whether physically imperfect, effeminate/feminized and/or sullied by lust (heterosexual or homosexual?)—may be militating against his presumption of authority serves to problematize even further an already fraught depiction, offering the prospect of even deeper deviancy.
Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions of 1407/9 sought to eradicate all the dangerous Wycliffite opinions which had been circulating at the time when Chaucer was creating those perplexing “fallible authors,” the Pardoner and Wife of Bath. The Constitutions denounced unlicensed preaching, banned mention of the sins of the clergy or anything which might undermine orthodox instruction on the sacraments in sermons aimed at the general public, and forbade all other teachers from concerning themselves with disputatious matters of theology. Unlicensed translation of Biblical passages into English was also forbidden—and this applied not only to the “Lollard Bible” in whatever version, in part or entire, but also to extracts from the holy Scriptures as included in vernacular books and treatises, and indeed those vernacular books and treatises themselves. Moreover, the ownership of an English Bible translation made in the time of Wyclif or later was prohibited, except in the case in which special diocesan permission had been given.110
In the Oxford translation debate of circa 1401 scholars had clinically debated if knowledge of God should hierarchically proceed from the Latinate clergy to the laity, if layfolk could cope with a text so stylistically difficult as the Bible, and if the barbarous English language was capable of serving as a vehicle for the communication of divine truth.111 When issues of social control impinged on the consciousness of the Church authorities, however, the situation acquired a new urgency. They “came to see that the vernacular lay at the root of the trouble,” “that the substitution [of English for Latin] threw open to all the possibility of discussing the subtleties of the Eucharist, of clerical claims, of civil dominion, and so on.”112 In such a climate, all English writings, no matter how much or how little theology they contained, no matter how unimpeachable their orthodoxy may have been, could fall under suspicion. In the later fifteenth century a copy of the Canterbury Tales was produced for the prosecution during a heresy trial. As Anne Hudson says, if this manuscript “had included, for instance, the Pardoner’s Tale, or, even more, the Parson’s Tale, it could on a rigorous interpretation” of the relevant Constitution have been “regarded as indicative of heresy.”113 One might also mention The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale, which features a woman who is highly competent in the academic discipline of disputation and adept at deploying authorities from the Bible and the writings of the Church Fathers. Writing in 1415 in the wake of the Oldcastle rebellion, which was seen as a consequence of Lollardy, Thomas Hoccleve warned women to keep to their station in life. Given that they are weak-minded and uneducated, “lewed calates” [i.e., strumpets] should confine themselves to spinning and traditional sources of gossip rather than vainly attempting to construct arguments based on the Bible and to engage in disputation on topics from which God has barred them.
Some wommen eeke, thogh hir wit be thynne,
Wold
