So, a priest walks into a brothel. He says to the prostitute ‘Hey I’d like to sin with you’, and she takes his money and takes him inside. But the priest is uncomfortable in the front room, and says ‘isn’t there anywhere else we can go? This isn’t private enough.’ So the prostitute, who’s probably used to priests by now, takes him downstairs and says to him ‘okay, this is private: no one but God knows we’re here.’

And the priest says ‘You really think God can see us?’

And the prostitute says ‘Yeah, he can see everything, he’s God!’

And the priest says ‘Then what are you doing committing all this sin??? You’re totally going to Hell, young lady.’

For some reason, instead of telling him to mind his own sodding business, the prostitute is overcome with repentance, and promises the priest she will give up her wicked ways and do whatever he says. And they go off together into the wilderness to do penance, forever and ever amen.

The text above is paraphrased from the Life of St Thais in the Northern Homily Cycle, and it’s Really Cool. I found it while looking for weird texts to include in my thesis on opposite-sex friendship – I’m not sure this will make it in, but it’s interesting from that angle because it doesn’t seem to think it’s at all weird, tempting or dangerous for a priest to go off and live in the desert with a reformed prostitute. (Compare to St Mary of Egypt, another reformed prostitute, who tells her story to Zozimos the priest, and in most accounts is still suffering from sexual temptation despite years in the desert living on beans and water.)

Also, it’s a “priest walks into a brothel” joke. The only difference between this and any number of x walks into a bar joke is that the prostitute is the butt of the joke, not the priest (although surely we’re expected to snicker at the priest as he seeks privacy in which to sin, too).

This particular version is Extra Cool because it’s only part of the standard saints life. There aren’t English translations of any of the Latin versions available online, that I can find, but TEAMS online have a parallel text of the Anglo-Norman life of St Thais, and there’s a version in the Caxton Golden Legend. Those narratives have as their climax the scene where Thais sells her goods, delivers a mini-sermon, and reproaches the men who she has sinned with before. The standard saints life also takes care to put more distance between Thais and the priest Pannutius – has her walled up in a cell, has Pannutius deliver some scathing words about how she deserves to piss in her chamber, and doesn’t let her out again until her death.

The version in the Northern Homily Cycle is designed to complement John 3:16-21, especially the bits on evildoers withdrawing from the light. That, to some extent, explains the joke-like format: it’s a humorous anecdote to be built into vernacular preaching. If you needed a reminder that homilies and sermons can be Really Cool, this is it.

(Image above: St Thais or Mary Magdalen, because all prostitutes are interchangable, right? 17th c, Jusepe de Ribera)

Amy Brown is Assistant in Medieval English Literature at the University of Geneva. She works on opposite-sex friendship, and maintains the belief, despite all evidence to the contrary, that obsessively tracking minute differences between adaptations and translations might lead her to something Really Cool.

You can find her blogging occasionally at Australian Medievalists, or nattering on twitter as @amisamileandme.