Sacraments, Gender, and Authority in the Prioress’s Prologue and Tale and Pearl

Abstract

Both Pearl and the Prioress’s Prologue and Tale attend to sacraments: the Eucharist (in both texts) and baptism (in Pearl). What the texts say about sacraments is quite orthodox; indeed, one might argue that these texts are orthodox in ways that mark them as distinctly anti-heretical, particularly given the harsh treatment of Jews in the Prioress’s Tale. However, what the texts do in presenting this orthodoxy is more daring, recalling significant religious debates of the period and resonating with overlapping aspects of the emergent Lollard movement and contemporary Continental female mysticism, especially that of St. Birgitta of Sweden.