The devil in a nunnery, and other mediaeval tales

"The devil in a nunnery, and other mediaeval tales" by Francis Oscar Mann is a collection of short stories written in the early 20th century. Set in a stylized medieval world, the pieces blend piety, temptation, satire, and folklore, following nuns, lepers, priests, peasants, and crusaders as they collide with desire, hypocrisy, and fate.

The opening of the book presents four vivid tales. In The Devil in a Nunnery, a beguiling “pilgrim” musician charms a convent with ecstatic music before revealing himself as the Devil, sending the Abbess and sisters into terror and penance. Love and the Leper Woman follows Alice, promised against her will to a lecherous knight, whose planned elopement with a young squire fails; diagnosed a leper and cast out, she later begs alms on Christmas Eve as the squire rides past with a new mistress, unknowing. How the Devil stole the Pyx from Saint Osbert’s Church satirizes clerical credulity: a flamboyant doctor who claims to have sold his soul tricks the priest and bailiff with a straw-man decoy, the “Devil” beats them soundly, and by morning the doctor and the church treasures are gone. The Crusader begins with Thomas the Freeman, a gentle, massive farmer moved by a preacher to take the cross; he leaves his wife and children, only to return to find them murdered, whereupon he seeks refuge in an abbey and, gravely ill yet serene, prepares to die as Christmas approaches. (This is an automatically generated summary.)