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British Poetry

Notes 17.3.2 The Second Nun’s Tale Text

Saint Cecilia was by birth a Roman and tutored in the ways of Christ. She dreaded the day that she
must marry and give up her virginity. However, she came to be engaged to Valerian. On the day of
their wedding, underneath her golden robes, she wore a hairshirt, praying to God that she might
remain undefiled.
On their wedding night she told a secret to Valerian: she had an angel lover who, if he believed that
Valerian touched her vulgarly, would slay him. Valerian said he would believe her if he could see
this angel, and she told him to go to the Via Appia and find Pope Urban among the poor people.
Once Urban purged him of his sins, Valerian would be able to see the angel. When he reached Via
Appia, Urban suddenly appeared to Valerian and read from the Bible. Another old man, clad in
bright white clothes, with a gold-lettered book appeared before Valerian, asking him whether he
believed what Cecilia had told him. When he said he did, Pope Urban baptized Valerian and sent
him back home.
Returning home, he found the angel with Cecilia. This angel had brought two crowns of flowers
from Paradise that will never wilt, and gave one to Cecilia and one to Valerian. The angel claimed
that only the pure and chaste would be able to see this crown. Valerian then asked for the angel to
bless his brother and make him pure.
This brother, Tibertius, came and can smell, but not see the flowers. Valerian explained his new
faith, and eventually tried to persuade his brother to be baptized. Tibertius, however, did not like
the idea of being baptized by Urban, whom, he said, would be burnt if people ever found him.
Valerian told his brother not to fear death, because there was a better life elsewhere. Cecilia explains
the Holy Trinity and other key tenets of Christianity to him, and afterwards, Tibertius agrees to
accompany the couple to Pope Urban.

From what cause does St. Cecilia finally die?
Tibertius was baptized and became a perfect Christian–and for some time the three lived happily,
God granting their every request. However, the sergeants of the town of Rome sought them, and
brought them before Almachius the prefect, who ordered their death. During their execution, one
of the sergeants, Maximus, claimed that he saw the spirits of Valerian and Tibertius ascend to heaven.
Upon hearing this, many of the witnesses converted to Christianity. For this Almachius had him
beaten to death, so Cecilia had him buried alongside Valerian and Tibertius.
Almachius summoned Cecilia, but she refused to appear frightened of him, or bow to his power;
and when she was given the choice of forego Christianity or perform a sacrifice, she refused both of
her options. She refused to admit any guilt and condemned Almachius for praising false idols. He
ordered that she be boiled to death, but she, despite being left all day and night in a bath with fire
underneath it, stayed cold – she did not even break a sweat.
Almachius then commanded his servant to slay her in the bath, and, though he struck her three
strokes in the neck, he could not decapitate her, and she lay there half-dead. Christians stopped the
blood with sheets, and, although she lay there for three days in agony, she never stopped teaching
them the Christian faith. She even preached to them, giving them her property and her things, and–
after three days–she died, and her body was taken to Pope Urban. He buried her by night among
the other saints, and consecrated her church, still worshipped to this day as the church of St. Cecilia.

Analysis
The Second Nun’s Tale is a conventional religious biography, a “saint’s life”, as the medieval genre it
belongs to is often called. Written in rime royal, it is very likely that Chaucer composed the tale

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