The Sentencing of Virginia in the Physician’s Tale

When the Host is elected “juge and reportour” at the end of the General Prologue, he assumes responsibility for determining which pieces are “of best sentence and moost solaas” (A 814; 798). ¹ In one sense, of course, this responsibility is shared by every member of the audience. The Knight is not exercising any unique privilege when he interrupts the Monk’s tale because it is lacking in “solas,” nor is the Wife of Bath specially empowered when she shreds Jankyn’s book, for it is the prerogative of all readers to judge text (B ² 3964). Such informal modes of reading are, however, somewhat at odds with the Host’s appointment, which is suggestive instead of a restricted critical approach that maintains the authority of certain readers to better determine the sententia of text. ² The tension between the fixed frameworks of such an approach and the variable interpretations of individual readers pervades much of the Canterbury Tales, but nowhere is it more evident than in the Physician’s Tale, where the Physician’s notions of sententia, auctoritas, and genus are juxtaposed with a maiden who cannot be understood in terms of these critical concepts. As this paper will seek to demonstrate, an appreciation of different medieval attitudes toward text can produce new readings of Virginia and her fate, helping to explain certain aspects of the Physician’s Tale that have proved puzzling to modern readers.

The Physician begins his tale with an appeal to a historical authority: “Titus Livius” (C 1). ³ This is the only moment in the Canterbury Tales that a specific historian is cited as the source for a tale, and the significance of this gesture towards Livy is later underlined when the Physician interrupts himself to announce: “this is no fable, / But knowen for historial thyng notable” (C 155–56). This distinction between historical truths and poetic fables was a common feature of medieval literary theory. Strictly speaking, fabulae were works of poetry that contained talking beasts and similar impossibilities, ⁴ but in practice, the term enjoyed a far broader usage. Augustine refers to all the works of the pagan poets as fabula, ⁵ and Isidore closes his discussion of grammatica by noting: “historiae sunt res verae quae factae sunt, . . . fabulae vero sunt quae nec factae sunt nec fieri possunt.” ⁶ Isidore’s pointed contrast between fable and history was adopted by a number of medieval authors, who frequently criticized Homer for introducing fictitious gods into his account of the Trojan war. Joseph of Exeter chose to base his Ylados on Dares, “cui certior index / Explicuit presens oculus, quem fabula nescit,” ⁷ and Guido of Colonne similarly began his Historia Destructionis Troiae by declaring that the poets’ accounts of Troy were “non vera . . . sed fabulosa.” ⁸ Boccaccio responded to these assertions by arguing that Homerian epic was “species fabularum una . . . potius hystoriam quam fabulam,” a response that would seem to admit the theoretical principles of Joseph and Guido, even if it denied their conclusions. ⁹ Chaucer was less acquiescent, suggesting in the House of Fame that it “was a litil envye” that prompted writers to call the bard’s works “lyes” and “but fable” (1476–80).

Whatever Chaucer’s position on the matter may have been, the Physician’s remarks indicate that his own perspective is similar to those of Joseph and Guido. He is announcing that he will relate a history, a res vera free of poetic fiction. That he intends to do so in verse, the medium of poetry, may seem somewhat peculiar, but there was certainly precedent for writing metered history. The prime example was Lucan’s De Bello Civile, an epic poem widely regarded by medieval critics as bearing the markings of historia. ¹⁰ Isidore noted “Lucanus ideo numero poetarum non ponitur, quia videtur historias composuisse, non poema,” ¹¹ and similar assessments may be found in the Commentum Bernensia and other medieval commentaries. ¹² Even when it was not conceded that Lucan was a pure historian, it was usually admitted that De Bello Civile was both a poem and a history. Arnulf of Orleans refers to Lucan as “poeta et historiographus,” because though at times “historiam suam prosequitur et nichil fingit,” at others “aliquid ficticii inducit.” ¹³ The issue was thus not whether the account was in verse or prose, but whether it contained witnessed truths or poetic inventions. So it was that Joseph of Exeter could rail against poetic fictions while penning a history in dactylic hexameter.

Clearly, the Physician has solid precedent for his insistence on a firm division between histories and fables, and for his belief in the possibility of verse history. Once his tale gets underway, however, any distinction between fable and history quickly disappears. The Physician breaks off his narrative almost immediately to indulge in a personification of Nature, precisely the sort of invention that characterizes fabulae, not historiae. Nature’s speech then begins with the boast that Pygmalion, Apelles, and Zeuxis should “work in veyn” if they presumed to “countrefete” her (C 14–18). While Pygmalion is a character in Ovid’s epic poem Metamorphoses, Apelles and Zeuxis are, on the contrary, historical figures recorded by Pliny in his Natural History. ¹⁴ Nature is mingling a historical account with a pagan fable, collapsing the difference between the two. Moreover, at the close of this speech, the Physician suddenly admits, “Thus semeth me that Nature wolde seye,” revealing that he has dared to do the very thing that Nature claims to be impossible: counterfeit her (29). This is a fairly aggressive statement about the Physician’s power of invention—while others “grave, or peynte, or forge, or bete” in vain to imitate Nature, he has produced her through his verse. This moment of triumph is uneasy, however, for it undermines the authority of his tale. No longer is it grounded solely in Livy’s historical account of res visae; it has become infused with a fictum poeticum, the creation of Nature.

Even as the Physician’s description of Nature undermines the authority of his specific tale, Nature’s speech threatens to undermine the very idea of auctoritas. John McCall has suggested that Nature is part of an ideal chain of command, ¹⁵ but in fact Nature’s description of her relations with her lord and her works seems to reveal the uncertain extent of authors’ control over their creations. After scoffing at mortal attempts to duplicate her works, she announces “He that is the formere principal / Hath maked me his vicaire general” (19–20). Her use of the term “vicaire general” would seem an acknowledgement of her place within a divine hierarchy, but the description of God as “formere principle” is syntactically loaded. If “formere” is taken as the noun and “principle” as the adjective, then God is understood to be the principal maker of the universe, and thus Nature’s superior. Such a reading requires the adjective to be placed after the noun, and given that adjectives are generally placed before nouns in this passage, it would seem equally reasonable to make “formere” the adjective and “principle” the noun. If this is done, the phrase appears suddenly subversive—it implies that God was once the principal of the universe, but after making Nature, he abdicated. This ties in with a sense of Nature as “sovereyn,” and also with her following assertions that she makes earthly creatures as she “list[s],” and that “ech thyng in [her] cure is” (9–22). Although she claims, “My lord and I been ful of oon accord,” her speech is a statement of artistic independence and individuality (25). She was made by God, but now she makes and governs others as she sees fit. A tension has been established between authors and their works. Nature argues for sovereignty over her creations even as she undercuts her creator’s sovereignty over her; she declares that she is in full accord with her creator even as she accuses her creations of trying to counterfeit her. As the Physician is trying to assert his own poetic voice while claiming Livy’s authority, so too is Nature claiming both autonomy and divine sanction.

Following this personification of Nature, the Physician suddenly asserts “Phebus dyed hath hire [Virginia’s] tresses grete,” introducing another device of the fabulae into his “historial thyng” (C 37). ¹⁶ This mention of a pagan god does more than further obscure the genre of the tale, however; it also challenges Nature’s status as Virginia’s sovereign author. The Physician then further complicates the issue of Virginia’s authorship by delivering a long lecture on the need for parents and “maistresses” to govern young maidens (72–104). This massive digression would seem to indicate that proper governance allows for Virginia’s great virtue, but in the lines immediately following this lecture, the Physician asserts that Virginia “neded no maistresse,” suggesting that, like Nature, she has become autonomous (106).

The Physician’s assertion has prompted a number of modern critics to question the purpose of his whole discussion of governance. Why does something with so little relevance to Virginia’s portrait occupy over a tenth of the tale? Answers to this question have generally been sought in factors external to the tale, such as Chaucer’s ties to Katherine and Elizabeth Swynford, ¹⁷ but this digression is also of crucial importance to the inner workings of the tale. The more the lecture on governance continues, the more it feels as if the tale is getting away from the Physician, and indeed the Physician’s sudden recognition of this fact is signaled by the phrase he uses to return to his narrative: “I moot turne agayn to my matere” (104). The suggestion is that the lecture on governance was not part of his “matere,” that the tale has somehow asserted its independence and developed of its own accord. In his effort to correct this impression, however, the Physician creates a new difficulty, for when he insists that the tale is his, he again distances it from its historical source. As it cannot be determined whether Virginia’s true author is Nature, her parents, or herself, so too is it no longer certain whether the tale’s author is Livy, the Physician, or itself.

The idea of an autonomous text is immediately reinforced by the comparison of Virginia to a book:

This mayde, of which I wol this tale expresse, So kepte hirself hir neded no maistresse, For in hir lyvyng maydens myghten rede, As in a book.

(105–08)

This is the only point in the Canterbury Tales that a character is likened to a book, and it establishes a link between Virginia’s production and the production of text. Connecting Virginia’s independence from a “maistresse” to the tale’s independence from an author, the simile suggests that the maiden’s self-governance has made her like a book. Even so, the nature of this book is uncertain. If the third line of this passage is punctuated with a comma after “lyvyng,” then Virginia is a work of history, life translated into word. If the comma is instead placed after “hir,” then Virginia becomes a poetic fiction, distinguished from living maidens by the mode of her existence.

Appropriately, the Physician’s portrait of Virginia closes with a discussion of envy and the phrase “The Doctour maketh this descripcioun” (117). The Physician is perhaps appealing here to an authority, possibly Augustine, to support the description of envy. ¹⁸ Alternatively, “[t]he Doctour” could just be the Physician himself, and “the descripcioun” the entire portrait of Virginia. A similar tension is produced by the use of “maketh,” which suggests a fictum poeticum, in conjunction with “descripcioun,” which suggests a res visa. The portrait of Virginia has completely destabilized the theories of genus and auctoritas that the Physician uses to frame his tale. Both the tale’s relation to Livy and its status as a history have become increasingly uncertain, while Virginia herself has come to flourish in an environment where her relationships to genre and authority remain ambiguous.

At this point, the tale turns from Virginia’s production to the events leading to her death. The predominant action in this part of the narrative is sentencing. The word “sentence” appears at a far greater rate in the second half of this tale than at any other point in the Canterbury Tales—five times in the final 130 lines. ¹⁹ It is introduced into the tale in the context of medieval literary theory:

This false juge, that highte Apius (So was his name, for this is no fable, But knowen for historial thyng notable; The sentence of it sooth is, out of doute.)

(C 154–57).

However, while the Physician is apparently claiming that the auctoritas of his tale substantiates its sententia, the deep meaning of the above passage is itself uncertain. For a start, “sentence” could function less as a formal critical term than as a reference to the ten-line maxim that concludes the tale. Such moral sentences are typical of fabula, not histories, and so this interpretation of “sentence” once again complicates the Physician’s attempt to separate fictum from visum. Moreover, given that the tale is described as a “thyng”—which has various legal connotations, including “court”—it is also possible to take the tale’s sentence as the formal judgement of a legal body. ²⁰ This links the literary understanding of “sentence” to the legal one, preparing for a similar association when Virginia, the maiden whom others “myghten rede” (107), enters Apius’ court for sentencing. Finally, while the phrase “out of doubte” can be taken to mean “indubitably,” its strained syntax seems to suggest the reverse, that the tale’s sentence is the product of doubt.

Following this loaded assessment of its own sentence, the tale relates the three sentences passed upon Virginia. The first is the “sentence” of Claudius’s “cursed bill,” which renders her his “thral” (C 174–75, 183). Not only is this false in a legal sense, but it completely misrepresents the autonomous Virginia introduced in the first half of the tale. Apius’s “sentence,” which falls immediately afterwards, does exactly the same thing: it transforms Virginia a “servant” (C 204, 202) Curiously, however, Apius refuses to pass this “diffynytyf sentence” until Virginia’s father, the knight Virginius, is present (171–73). It would be logical to assume that Apius’ appropriation of Virginia would be easier in the absence of her father, and indeed, in the analogues of the tale, Apius makes a concerted effort to deny Virginius access to the trial. ²¹ Apius’s refusal to proceed without Virginius is even more curious in light of the fact that the knight is not permitted to speak once he arrives in court. For some reason, Apius requires Virginius’s presence, but suppresses his speech.

The reason for this unusual dynamic can be located in Virginia’s own relationship to governance. Virginia’s virtuous behavior places her outside of traditional power structures—she does not need her parents’ governance, while Apius himself realizes that, though he is the “governour” of the region, he cannot convince someone who is so confirmed in “soverayn bountee” to sin with him (133–38). By arriving in court, however, Virginius admits both Apius’s governance over his daughter and the court’s right to govern him. In effect, his action relegitimizes the very hierarchies that Virginia’s portrait has dispelled. This is why Apius is not interested in what Virginius has to say once he arrives; the judge simply sees him as a means to substantiate his own authority. Virginius’ appearance in court is thus charged with a terrible irony, for by being a watchful “shepherde,” he has committed the treason—the “sovereyn pestilence” —and betrayed his daughter’s innocence (101, 91–92).

This perversion of parental authority finds its gruesome end in the judgement that Virginius then passes upon his daughter: “‘Doghter,’ quod he, ‘Virginia by thy name . . . take thou thy deeth, for this is my sentence’” (213–24). Virginius’ sentence, which confirms Virginia’s place in the hierarchies of the tale at the same time as it confirms her inevitable destruction, is also the first moment in the tale where she is named. Prior to this, there have been two other moments of naming. The first comes at the beginning of the tale, when Virginius is named on the authority of Livy. The second, the naming of Apius and Claudius, prompts the Physician’s claim that his tale is a history and not a fable. Both these moments are thus closely connected to the historical authority of the tale; Virginius, Apius, and Claudius have names because they are historical figures, and these names are to be believed because of the tale’s auctoritas. In her opening portrait, Virginia is not named precisely because she is not simply a historical figure—she exists somewhere between history and fable, between visum and fictum. When she is named, however, she passes into history—like her father, or Apius, or Claudius, she becomes a res facta.

Virginius’ sentence therefore not only fixes his daughter’s relation to the authoritative structures contained within the tale, but it establishes her relationship to the auctoritas of the tale. As a result of these determinations, Virginia loses her agency. She submits to her father to avoid the judgement of Apius, but clearly this is not a real choice. Whether she chooses death or shame, she has lost the right to pen her own sentence. Her final words are chilling: “‘Dooth with youre child youre wyl, a Goddes name’” (250). They echo Claudius’ last words to Apius—“‘Yeld me my thral, if that it be youre wille’”—and they reveal Virginia’s utter loss of self (189). She has become Virginius’ churl, to do with as he wills.

Virginia’s destruction does more than comment on the abuse of authority; it also functions as a piece of literary theory. While her relationships to hierarchy and governance, to history and fable, remain fluid and ambiguous, Virginia flourishes, becoming as a book. When she is sentenced, however, her relationships to genre, authority, and auctoritas become fixed, and she is extinguished. The tale has already aligned the sentence of a court with the sententia that medieval literary critics assigned to a text, and now the suggestion is that text suffers Virginia’s fate when it is similarly judged. To place a text within a hierarchy of auctoritas, to force it into a particular genre, to fix its sentence, is to cast it out of existence.

This point is reinforced by the actual sentence of the tale, where the Physician warns “men” that sin, no matter how well hidden, may be punished at any time (277–79). Though the first third of the tale is dedicated exclusively to describing Virginia and her emerging independence, she has been forgotten in the sentence. This passage, the final ten lines of the tale, has proved a source of confusion to modern readers. The fact that it makes no mention of either Virginia or her virtue has led several critics to conclude that it is inappropriate, while even its defenders admit that it seems only to offer a comment on the fate of Apius. ²² Still, such a sentence, one that disregards Virginia absolutely, is fully appropriate to the tale. As the sentences of Claudius, Apius, and Virginius put an end to her fleshly substance, so too does the tale’s sentence put an end to her textual existence. It is a final injunction to critics, warning them that when they force text into simple divisions and didactic formulations, they abolish the dimensions of meaning and character that compose text, that compose Virginia.

Virginia is not lost for long, however. At the close of the tale, the Host calls the Physician “prelat,” but goes on to author his own sentence, concluding that “this sely mayde . . . to deere boughte she beautee” (310, 292–93). With its blatant disregard for the Physician’s description of Nature’s artistic efforts, this interpretation restores Virginia’s agency, returning her to the center of the tale’s action. Indeed, even as he reinvokes Virginia, the Host also calls the tale back into existence, demonstrating that no sentence, whether Livy’s, or the Physician’s, or his own, is ever final. It is fitting that he, the one invested by the company with the authority of “juge,” should help reveal the futile assumptions undergirding the concepts of auctoritas, sententia, and genus. His commentary is a manifestation of the continual reinterpretation and reproduction of text, a reminder that there can be no fixed understandings, no absolute evaluations, no final reading of Virginia. It attests that Virginia’s legacy is to be found not in her death, but in this sense of the fluidity of text, this sense that it, like her, is made autonomous through the work of endless hands. ²³