The Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

  1755 hir hostes man: That is, servant of the innkeeper at the inn where the friars are lodging.

  1770 Deus hic!: ‘May God be in this place!’ The more usual greeting of a friar would be ‘Pax huic domui’ (‘Peace be to this house’); see n. to Sum 1737.

  1794 lettre sleeth: The friar is quoting 2 Corinthians 3:6: ‘the letter kills, but the spirit gives life’ (the Latin original of the first half of this quotation is given as a marginal gloss in El). This text was often invoked to justify the practice of interpreting the Bible metaphorically rather than literally, if its literal sense was at odds with Christian doctrine, or simply if it could thus be made to fit an argument one wanted to make.

  1803–4 It would be normal for the friar to give the wife the ‘kiss of peace’, but he clearly enjoys the experience rather more than he should. For contemporary comments on the abuse of the clerical kiss, see Kellogg, Chaucer, Langland, pp. 273–5.

  1816–18 Riverside places the syntactic break after ‘shrift’ rather than at the end of 1817, but it makes little sense for the friar to boast of his expertise in preaching as proof that he is better than the priests who are incompetent to hear confessions. On the friars’ eagerness that confessions should be made to them, rather than to the parish priest, see n. to GP 218.

  1820 The friar is echoing the words used by Christ when he called the fishermen Peter and Andrew to be his disciples: ‘Follow me, and I shall make you fishers of men’ (Matthew 4:19; cf. Luke 5:10).

  1825 pissemire: The name derives from the urinous smell of an anthill. I can find no parallels to this conception of an ant as characteristically angry (prompted by the seething appearance of an ant-hill?). The ant is more usually an emblem of industry (Proverbs 6:6; cf. John Lydgate, Pilgrimage of the Life of Man, ed. F. J. Furnivall, EETS e.s. 77–8, 92, lines 10101–98).

  1827–31 The wife is making sure that the friar knows that she is getting no sexual satisfaction from her husband; the implication is that the friar might be able to supply what is lacking. Cf. the wife of ShT, who similarly claims an inactive sexual life (114–23), although we see later that this is far from true (375–81).

  1832 The friar’s use of French betokens a certain pretentiousness; see n. to GP 124–6.

  1862 Friars were obliged to travel about in pairs, so that each could act as chaperone to the other (see n. to Sum 1740), but after fifty years’ service they earned the right to travel alone.

  1866 Te deum: The first words of a Latin song of praise which formed part of the service of Matins (‘We praise thee, O God, we acknowledge thee to be the lord’); it was also used as a song of thanksgiving (J. S. P. Tatlock, MLN, 29 (1914), 144).

  1877 Lazar … Dives: See Luke 16:19–31 for the story of the rich man Dives (Latin dives, ‘rich’), who feasted daily, but after his death was tormented in Hell, and the beggar Lazarus, who lay starving at his gate, but after his death was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom (i.e., Heaven). This story, and the following instances involving Moses, Elijah and Aaron, are similarly cited in support of fasting in Jerome, Against Jov. II.15, 17 (see Headnote to WBPr).

  1880 A marginal Latin gloss in El quotes Jerome, Against Jov. II.6: ‘It is better to fatten the soul than the body.’

  1881–2 as seyth th’Apostle: The reference is to 1 Timothy 6:8: ‘having food and clothing, let us be content with these’, which in the Vulgate reads ‘Habentes autem alimenta, et quibus tegamur, his contenti simus’. A marginal gloss in El (‘Victum et vestitum hiis contenti sumus’) reproduces a form of this verse which is closer to that in Jerome, Against Jov. II.11: ‘Habentes victum, et vestitum, his contenti simus’, indicating that Jerome is again Chaucer’s source here. This biblical text is quoted in the first Rule of the Franciscan order (Die Opuscula des hl. Franziskus von Assisi, ed. K. Esser (Rome, 1976), p. 385).

  1885–90 Moises: Moses received two sets of commandments for the people of Israel from God on the top of Mount Sinai. The first set were written by ‘the finger of God’ on two tablets of stone (Exodus 31:18; 32:15–16), which Moses later broke in anger at the Israelites’ idolatry (32:19); the second, received after Moses had fasted forty days and nights, were written down by Moses himself (34:28, but cf. 34:1). Chaucer seems to be paraphrasing St Jerome (Against Jov. II.15): ‘Moses with empty stomach received the law written with the finger of God.’

  1890–93 Elie … Mount Oreb: The prophet Elijah fasted forty days and nights before God spoke to him in ‘a whistling of a gentle air’ on Mount Horeb (1 Kings 19:8–12).

  1894–1901 ‘Aaron and the other priests when about to enter the temple, refrained from all intoxicating drink for fear they should die’ (Jerome, Against Jov. II.15). Aaron, brother of Moses, and his sons were the priests of the people of Israel; God’s prohibition against their drinking before entering the tabernacle is to be found at Leviticus 10:9.

  1915–17 This connection between fasting and chastity derives from Jerome, Against Jov. II.15:

  Adam received a command in paradise to abstain from one tree though he might eat the other fruit. The blessedness of paradise could not be consecrated without abstinence from food. So long as he fasted, he remained in paradise; he ate, and was cast out; he was no sooner cast out than he married a wife. While he fasted in paradise he continued a virgin: when he filled himself with food in the earth, he bound himself with the tie of marriage.

  Part of this passage is quoted as a marginal gloss in El at Pard 508–11 (see n.). Cf. also Pars 819.

  1919–23 ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ is a quotation from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:3); ‘glosing’ has to be stretched to the limit to make it apply to friars, since they were first founded some 1200 years later.

  1929 Jovinian: The opponent attacked by Jerome in his Against Jovinian (see Headnote to WBPr) for his view that marriage was no less meritorious than celibacy, and eating and drinking no less meritorious than fasting. Jerome vividly pictures Jovinian’s well-fed appearance:

  … Jovinianus speaking with swelling cheeks and nicely balancing his inflated utterances … For although he boasts of being a monk, he has exchanged his dirty tunic, bare feet, common bread, and drink of water, for a snowy dress, sleek skin, honey-wine and dainty dishes … Is it not clear that he prefers his belly to Christ, and thinks his ruddy complexion worth the kingdom of heaven? … that handsome monk so fat and sleek, and of bright appearance …

  (Against Jov. I.40)

  A similar description appears in II.21.

  1933–4 The Latin quotation is the opening of Psalm 44 (AV 45): ‘My heart has brought forth [a good utterance]’. Since the literal meaning of eructavit is ‘has belched’, the recitation of the Psalm is here represented as an apt comment on the digestive processes of these gluttonous clerics.

  1937 The reference is to James 1:22: ‘But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only.’

  1938–9 The friars’ prayers are supposed to rise as high in the air as a hovering bird of prey.

  1943 Seint Ive: It is not clear whether this is a reference to St Ivo of Chartres or St Ives of Huntingdonshire.

  1944 oure brother: That is, a member of a lay confraternity associated with the friar’s convent. In return for charitable donations, the members of the confraternity would enjoy the convent’s prayers, both when alive and after death. Such confraternities flourished in late medieval England (see Fleming, ChauR, 2 (1967), 101–2).

  1967 The similarity between ‘ferthing’ and ‘farting’ makes it possible that the friar’s words here suggest to the sick man the manner in which he later takes his revenge.

  1968 A marginal gloss in El gives this dictum in Latin form: ‘Omnis virtus unita forcior est seipsa dispersa’; previously unidentified, this is a variant version of proposition XVI in the Liber de causis: ‘Omnis virtus unita plus est infinita quam virtus multiplicata’ (Le Liber de Causis, ed. A. Pattin, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, 28 (1966), 90–203, at p. 171; tr. D. J. Brand, The Book of Causes, 2nd edn (Milwaukee, 1984), p
. 33). The Liber was well known in the Middle Ages, and this axiom also appears, for example, in a collection of philosophical quotations falsely attributed to Bede (PL 90, col. 1032C).

  1973 The friar is quoting Luke 10:7 (copied as a marginal gloss in El), from Christ’s words to the disciples whom he sent out to preach his gospel; see n. to Sum 1737.

  1980 Thomas lif of Inde: According to legend, St Thomas, the disciple who at first doubted Christ’s resurrection (John 20:24–30), spent the latter part of his life in India, where he converted many to Christianity (see the Acts of Thomas, Apocryphal NT, pp. 364–438, and Jacobus de Voragine, Golden Legend, I, 29–35). Commanded by the king to build him a palace, Thomas spent the money given him for the purpose on the needy, thus constructing ‘mansions in Heaven’ rather than on earth. The information about church building seems to come from the life of Thomas in the South English Legendary (II, 571–86), which mentions that ‘Churchen he rerde menyon. & preostes he sette there’ (line 175; cf. 149, 233–4).

  1989–91 The wise man is Solomon, putative author of the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, from which the quotation is taken: ‘Be not as a lion in your house, causing your servants to scatter and oppressing those who are under you’ (4:35). The Latin original is quoted as a marginal gloss in El.

  1993 hire: Many manuscripts read ‘ire’ for ‘hire’ (her) in this line, a reading which is adopted by Riverside and assumed to be correct by Manly and Rickert (III, 467) and by Kane (p. 216), though for different reasons (he points out that the two words were ‘as good as identical phonetically’, and suspects a pun). Manly and Rickert observe that it is unlikely that the friar intends to call the wife a serpent. But that is just what he does at lines 2001–3, and it is difficult to read lines 1993–4 as a description of anger. That ‘hire’ is the correct reading, and ‘ire’ an easier variation, influenced by the frequency of the word’s occurrence in this section of the tale, is strongly suggested by the continuity of these lines with the serpent image in 2001–3, the parallelism between lines 1993 and 1996, and the application of the ‘snake in the grass’ warning to women in RR (see next n.). Nature’s priest Genius’s quotation of the biblical warning (Micah 7:5), ‘Guard the gates of your mouth against her who sleeps in your bosom’ (RR 16664–5, tr. Horgan, p. 257), only a little later on in the same speech, may also have influenced the wording of this line.

  1994–5 Vergil’s warning against ‘the snake in the grass’ (Eclogues III.93) had achieved proverbial status (Whiting S153; cf. Sq 512). It is applied to women at RR 16556–86 (tr. Horgan, p. 256).

  2001–3 No serpent is ‘so venomous when his tail is trampled underfoot … as is a woman when she finds her lover with his new sweetheart. She breathes fire and flames in all directions and is prepared to lose both her body and her soul’ (RR 9770–76, tr. Horgan, p. 150). These lines are modelled on Ovid, Art of Love II.376–8. Cf. Ecclesiasticus 25:22–3: ‘There is no head worse than the head of a serpent: And there is no anger above the anger of a woman’ (quoted at RR 16300–303, tr. Horgan, p. 252).

  2005 The Seven Deadly Sins were Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony and Lechery. For the history of the formulation and development of this concept, see M. W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly Sins (State College, MI, 1952). Pars 387–957 offers an example of a highly elaborate analysis of the vices and virtues based on this structure.

  2008 viker or persoun: For the difference between a vicar and a parson, see n. to Pars 22.

  2010 That is, Ire carries out the actions which are prompted by Pride. Cf. Pars 534: ‘And as wel comth ire of pride as of envye, for soothly, he that is proud or envious is lightly wrooth.’

  2017–42 As seyth Senek: The story comes from Seneca’s On Anger I.18. This and the following two stories of Cambises and Cyrus are also included in John of Wales’s Communiloquium (I.iv.4, I.iii.11; see n. to WB 460–62), which may have been Chaucer’s immediate source (R. A. Pratt, Speculum, 41 (1966), 619–42, at pp. 627–31). The Senecan versions of the three anecdotes are given in SA, pp. 286–7.

  2043–73 This story is told in Seneca’s On Anger III.14; see also preceding n.

  2075 Placebo: A Latin word meaning ‘I shall please’, ‘sung’ because it is the first word in a verse of the Psalms (114:9; AV 116:9 follows a different Latin wording), used as an antiphon in the Office for the Dead. Cf. Pars 617: ‘Flatereres ben the develes chapelleins, that singen evere “Placebo”.’ Placebo is also the name of the flatterer in MchT (1476). Friars were notorious as flatterers in the Middle Ages; see Mann, Estates Satire, pp. 37–8.

  2079–84 The story of how Cyrus the Great, emperor of Persia (see n. to Mk 2728), dispersed the river Gindes into a multitude of channels so that it dried up, is told in Seneca’s On Anger III.21. See also n. to Sum 2017–42. Gisen: The river Gindes, a tributary of the Tigris.

  2085–8 he that … teche kan: Solomon; the lines quoted are Proverbs 22:24–5.

  2090 The comparison was proverbial; see Whiting S645.

  2093–5 See nn. to GP 218 and Sum 2195.

  2094 Seint Simoun:StSimon was one of Christ’s disciples (Mark3:18).

  2097–8 Riverside takes ‘seyth he’ to be outside of Thomas’s speech, but the shift to the present tense jars, and it makes more sense to take it as a reference to what the curate has told Thomas. Cf. Pars 1008, where the Christian is given leave to repeat confession ‘if it like to thee of thin humilitee’.

  2099–2105 Friars’ convents were often very large and splendid buildings, and friars were much criticized for this (see Mann, Estates Satire, p. 232, n. 139).

  fundement: The word here means ‘foundation’, but its secondary meaning ‘anus’ (cf. Pard 950) again strikes a chord with the sick man’s intentions (cf. n. to Sum 1967).

  2108 St Francis refused to allow friars of his order to have books, but the Dominicans, who were devoted to study and learning, were ‘assiduous bibliophiles’ (J. V. Fleming, JEGP, 65 (1966), 688–700, at p. 697). To Chaucer, the friar’s willingness to sell books is evidently a bad sign.

  2113 The simile is borrowed from Cicero, On Friendship XIII.47: ‘Those who deprive life of friendship seem to take away from the world the sun, since the immortal gods have given us nothing better or more delightful.’ The axiom is quoted in John of Wales’s Communiloquium (see n. to WB 460–62) II.vii.3 (Pratt, Speculum, 41 (1966), 631).

  2116–17 This may be a reference to the Carmelite Friars, who, although not founded until the early thirteenth century, traced their origins back to Elijah, who destroyed the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18:19–40), and his disciple Elisha. See R. A. Koch, Speculum, 34 (1959), 547–60, and A. Williams, MP, 54 (1956), 117–20, and cf. Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede (?late 14th c.), lines 382–3, ed. H. Barr, The Piers Plowman Tradition (London, 1993). Or it may refer to the medieval controversy over mendicant poverty, since the friars justified their commitment to poverty and mendicancy by references to Elijah and Elisha. St Bonaventure cited the story of Elijah being fed by ravens, and asking for bread and water from the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17:6–16); see his Apologia pauperum XII.24, Opera Omnia, vol. VIII (Quaracchi, 1898), p. 324. The Carmelite friar Richard of Maidstone also appealed to the story of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath to justify begging, and used the story of Elisha leaving his ploughing to follow Elijah (1 Kings 19:19–21) to justify mendicant poverty; (Protectorium pauperis, ed. A. Williams, Carmelus, 5 (1958), 132–80, at pp. 174–5). Such claims are contemptuously dismissed in a Lollard sermon (Hudson, Wycliffite Writings, pp. 93–4).

  2126–8 youre brother: See n. to Sum 1944.

  2149 The fart corresponds to the grammarians’ definition of the word as ‘broken air’ (see n. to Mil 3806), and is thus an apposite riposte to the friar’s sermon on anger, which to Thomas is just so much ‘hot air’, devoid of signification. This view of the sermon on anger is reinforced by the fact that it makes the person to whom it is addressed furiously angry (2121–3), and what is more, the preacher himself becomes
frenzied with rage after receiving the fart (2152, 2158–61, 2166–9). See further Mann, PBA, 76 (1990), 203–23.

  2152 as dooth a wood leoun: A proverbial expression; see WB 794 and Whiting L326–7.

  2158–69 The first Franciscan Rule explicitly forbade friars to give way to anger (‘Et non irascantur, quia omnis, qui irascitur fratri suo, reus erit iudicio [Luke 5:22]’; cap. XI, ed. Esser (see n. to Sum 1881–2), p. 387).

  2184–8 On the friars’ liking for the title ‘master’ (which this particular friar has accepted without protest on several occasions; see lines 1781, 1800, 1836), see n. to GP 261. St Francis had urged humility on his followers by quoting Christ’s denunciation of the Scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23:6–12):

  And they love the highest places at feasts, and the best seats in synagogues, and greetings in the market place [cf. Sum 2188], and to be called ‘Rabbi’ by men. But you [Christ’s disciples] are not to be called ‘Rabbi’ … nor be called ‘master’, for you have one Master, Christ. Whoever is greater among you, shall be your servant, for he who exalts himself, will be humbled, and he who humbles himself, will be exalted.