IT is of primary interest that the Middle English romance, Le Bone Florence iof Rome, like other closely allied western versions of the so-called “chaste wife tale,” is related to analogous oriental tales about heroic women who remain steadfast in virtue against persecution and adversity. Of secondary interest within the context of the romance's relationship to the East is the presence of Constantinople; it is from that eastern city that Florence's unwelcome suitor, “Syr Garcy,” comes early in the story. Finally, it is notable in comparing Le Bone Florence of Rome to its oriental analogues that there is a motif shared by the eastern and western treatments of the story, namely that of justice and the specific form of justice that would have been known to medieval thinkers as piety.

Constantinople

In the first half of the romance, a war is fought by Roman “knyƷtys” on behalf of an “emperowre” of Rome whose daughter, Florence, a Christian, refused the marriage proposal of “Syr Garcy” of Constantinople – not for reasons of orthodoxy because he was a heathen like the Sultan who is the suitor of Chaucer's Custance, but quite simply because he was old and unattractive. Dieter Mehl is correct in his observation that “we are not even told in so many words whether the old Garcy is a Christian or not and there is certainly no crusading spirit” in the tale (Mehl, 140–41).