18 See the first tale he tells, No. 5, vol. i.—­Ed.

     19 Psalms cxvi. 11 and xiv. 3.

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[Illustration:  073a.jpg Sister Marie and the Prior]

[Sister Marie and the Prior]

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TALE XXII.

Sister Marie Heroet, being unchastely solicited by a Prior of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields, was by the grace of God enabled to overcome his great temptations, to the Prior’s exceeding confusion and her own glory. (1)

1 This story is historical, and though M. Frank indicates points of similarity between it and No. xxvii. of St. Denis’ Comptes du Monde Adventureux, and No. vi. of Masuccio de Solerac’s Novellino, these are of little account when one remembers that the works in question were written posterior to the Heptameron.  The incidents related in the tale must have occurred between 1530 and 1535.  The Abbey of Saint- Martin-in-the-Fields stood on the site of the present Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, Paris.—­Ed.

In the city of Paris there was a Prior of Saint-Martin-in-the-Fields, whose name I will keep secret for the sake of the friendship I bore him.  Until he reached the age of fifty years, his life was so austere that the fame of his holiness was spread throughout the entire kingdom, and there was not a prince or princess but showed him high honour when he came to visit them.  There was further no monkish reform that was not wrought by his hand, so that people called him the “father of true monasticism.” (2)

He was chosen visitor to the illustrious order of the “Ladies of Fontevrault,” (3) by whom he was held in such awe that, when he visited any of their convents, the nuns shook with very fear, and to soften his harshness towards them would treat him as though he had been the King himself in person.  At first he would not have them do this, but at last, when he was nearly fifty-five years old, he began to find the treatment he had formerly contemned very pleasant; and reckoning himself the mainstay of all monasticism, he gave more care to the preservation of his health than had heretofore been his wont.  Although the rules of his order forbade him ever to partake of flesh, he granted himself a dispensation (which was more than he ever did for another), declaring that the whole burden of conventual affairs rested upon him; for which reason he feasted himself so well that, from being a very lean monk he became a very fat one.

2 This prior was Stephen Gentil, who succeeded Philip Bourgoin on December 15, 1508, and died November 6, 1536.  The Gallia Christiana states that in 1524 he reformed an abbey of the diocese of Soissons, but makes no mention of his appointment as visitor to the abbey of Fontevrault.  Various particulars concerning him will be found in Manor’s Monasterii