Prologue

“The man of law”‘s tale begins with the man of law which is asked by the host to tell a story, and he thinks to one that a merchant told him before and that talks about poor people and their unluckyness and the rich people like merchants.

                   The story

The story begins with a group of Syrian merchants that decide to go to Rome for pleasure; there they meet the Emperor of Rome and his daughter, Dame Constance, which was beautiful, kind and pleasant.

They stay there for a while and when they return at home; there they meet as always the Sultan of Syria, which wanted to know what the merchants did and saw in their journey.

The merchants tell the Sultan about Dame Constance, and he fells in love with her, so he decides to ask the Emperor, her father, about their marriage. There’s only a problem, to marry Constance the husband must be Christian.

Because of his love for Constance, the Sultan decides to convert himself and the whole sultanate to Christian religion, so he can marry Constance, and then the wedding is set.

After that, Constance is sent in Syria to marry his future husband, but the Sultan’s mother and some people are unhappy of the unespected change, and so during the wedding day’s fest following her plan she kills all the christians, including the Sultan, except for Constance.

Dame Constance is set on a boat and is sent away, and there she prays asking for help. After three years of sailing she’s saved by a constable and his wife Hermengild, in the kingdom of Northumberland. She has her memory lost but still has her faith, so she succeeds in converting the couple to Christianity.

When the false knight was witnessing about that, a lightining came from the sky and hit him, so king Alla found out that he was lying. Then the knight was killed and the kingdom of Northumberland converted to Chiristianity, so king Alla and Constance got married.

While Alla was in Scotland, Constance had a baby, Maurice, and she wrote a letter to the husband to tell him abouth his son.

But Alla’s mother, Donegild, got that letter and switched it with another where the baby was described as deformed and cursed.

King Alla, due to the murder of his mother, came in piligrimage to Rome, and when the Senator knew it he invited him to a feast. There, for the will of Constance, he brought with him Maurice, and once Alla saw him he found out that he was his son, and so thanks to the Senator he meets Constance. Then she meets her father again, and with Alla goes to England: a year later her son Maurice was crowned Emperor by the Pope after the death of his grandfather.

                    Epilogue

The Man of law concludes his story and the host asks to the next piligrim to tell the next one.