Praying Before the Image of Mary: Chaucer's Prioress's Tale, VII 502-12

Abstract

The focus of this essay is praying before images, specifically those of Mary before which the little clergeon is said to pray in the Prioress's Tale (VII 502-12).* By contextualizing the clergeon's devotion to Mary's image among historical medieval religious images, it becomes possible to add the perspective of religious art to the scholarship addressing Marian allu sions that have been incorporated into the narrative.2 The visual per spective enlarges our sense of this miracle of the Virgin as popular literature; images, not Latin Scripture, were intended as an aid to the piety of the lewd. Consideration of the use of religious images by the laity and of ecclesiastical thinking about their veneration sheds light, more over, on the question of how appropriate is this telling by prioress of tale about childhood piety.3 C. David Benson has called the Prioress's Tale a work of celebration and