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Kip Wheeler:

Chaucer and the Vulgate Parables:Presentation at WTAMU:

May 2008

One dispute in Chaucer studies through the late 1990s concerned whether

Chaucer used an actual Latin Bible for his literary allusions or whether his

doctrinal knowledge came from other sources. In the medieval period, most

bourgeois and lower-class individuals never read the Gospels as a narrative whole,

hearing only snippets quoted in sermons. Even the literate might encounter them

primarily in florilegia without the surrounding Gospel context, since Bibles as

literary artifacts were prohibitively expensive.1 By 1998, Lawrence Besserman

amassed convincing evidence that Chaucer knew some Biblical texts sufficiently

well to use deliberate misquotations for comic or rhetorical effect. That familiarity

would suggest Chaucer encountered the parables in written narrative, rather than

only hearing them excised and grafted into the body of a sermon. What was left

indeterminate was whether this text was an actual Latin Vulgate bible or a Middle

English translation.

One undiscussed point in this debate concerns Chaucer’s marked tendency

to quote or paraphrase Luke's parables in a manner consistent with direct, reading

knowledge of the Latin text, a tendency that does not appear when he quotes Mark

or Matthew. I would suggest Chaucer had access to a version of the Lukan Gospel,

which he used to make direct quotations and close paraphrases, but he may have

relied upon memory and intermediary sources for his use of the parables in

Matthew and Mark. His direct quotations, allusions, and lengthier paraphrases

from the Gospels rely most frequently on parables found exclusively in Luke or

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found in all three synoptic Gospels. This tendency diverges from the medieval

tendency to favor Matthew as a primary Gospel text for quotation.

In the case of many scriptural allusions aside from the Lukan parables, it

remains possible Chaucer may have encountered these Biblical passages second-

hand in florilegia or as quoted material in a sermon or treatise, rather than taking

them directly from the Vulgate Bible. For instance, if the reader checks the index

in the back of Besserman's Chaucer and The Bible in comparison with the indexes

in the back of Procter and Wordsworth's edition of the Breviarium ad Usum

Insignis Ecclesiae Sarum2 and the Legg and Dickinson edition of The Sarum

Missal,3 it becomes clear that many of Chaucer's Biblical allusions derive from or

are paralleled in the liturgy of the medieval church (Besserman Chaucer and the

Bible 40). However, the sheer number and scope of such quotations in Chaucer

suggests strongly Chaucer's familiarity with the Bible as an actual Latin text. He

also read the Bible closely enough to note the small differences in the various

Gospel accounts of the Passion. In The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey the pilgrim

states:

As thus, ye woot that every EvaungelistThat telleth us the peyne of Jhesu CristNe seith nat alle thyng as his felawe dooth;But nathelees hir sentence is al sooth,And all acorden as in hire sentence,Al be ther in hir telling difference.For somme of hem seyn moore, and somme seyn lesse,Whan they his pitous passioun expresse--I meene of Mark, Mathew, Luc, and John--But doutelees hir sentence is al oon. [VII 943-52 B2 *2133-42]

Given Chaucer's heavy reliance on secondary materials for Matthew and Mark, the

statement does not necessarily indicate a complete familiarity with all four texts

but it does prove Chaucer was a close reader of at least one section in the various

Gospel accounts, or at least he heard these discrepancies discussed by others.

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However, Chaucer frequently went beyond his proximate or intermediate

sources to fill in their partial Biblical quotations with more complete renditions; he

often turned brief scriptural allusions into substantial passages of paraphrase,

translation, or (occasionally) even miniature Biblical narratives.4

On the other hand, Chaucer's use of the parables is atypical of the general

medieval trend. The Gospel of Matthew dominates the medieval period in terms of

citation frequency in most medieval writings. Besserman notes the book of

Matthew is more often quoted, and his name more often cited, than any of the

other Gospels in medieval literature generally. Chaucer's use of the parables is a

strange exception to this Matthean primacy. In the case of the parables, Chaucer

most frequently uses Luke. If we look at Chaucer's use of the parables, nearly

every direct quotation and many of the more general allusions to a parable refer

either to one found exclusively in Luke or one that appears in Luke as well as the

synoptic Gospels. When quotations appear as attributions to Matthew, often they

are incorrectly attributed. When Chaucer correctly attributes them, his

intermediary source frequently contains the correct attribution as well, leading one

to suspect that Chaucer may have had access to the Lukan Gospel as a primary

source, but he more frequently relied upon secondary sources or his own memory

for materials in Matthew.

To illustrate this, we can turn two sample parables, that of Dives and Lazar

and that of the Publican and the Pharisee. In particular, Chaucer has an inordinate

interest in the parable of Dives and Lazar, which he alludes to four times, including

instances in the Summoner's Tale, the Parson's Tale, the General Prologue, and the

Man of Law's Tale.

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Quotation #1 Dives and Lazar

In the Doaui-Rheims translation from the Latin, the account appears as

"passage one" as listed in your handout:

[Handout Part 1]: There was a certain rich man, who was clothed in purple and fine linen; and feasted sumptuously every day. And there was a certain beggar, named Lazarus, who lay at his gate, full of sores, Desiring to be filled with crumbs that fell from the rich man's table, and no one did give him; moreover the dogs came, and licked his sores. And it came to pass, that the beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham's bosom. And the rich man also died: and he was buried in hell. And lifting up his eyes when he was in torments, he saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom: And he cried, and said: Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue: for I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said to him: Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted; and thou art tormented. And besides all this, between us and you, there is fixed a great chaos: so that they who would pass from hence to you, cannot, nor from thence come hither. And he said: Then, father, I beseech thee, that thou wouldst send him to my father's house, for I have five brethren, That he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torments. And Abraham said to him: They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. But he said: No, father Abraham: but if one went to them from the dead, they will do penance. And he said to him: If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe, if one rise again from the dead. (Luke 16:19-31)

Chaucer's use of the parable is at once similar to and different from the dominant

tradition. In this allusion, Chaucer prefers to use a brief paraphrase rather than

continue the text at length. The Summoner's Yorkshire friar creates a succinct

summary and interpretation of the passage. The summary takes only two lines, and

the interpretation fills only another four in your handout as passage two:

[Handout Part 2]: Lazar and Dives lyveden diversly, And divers gerdon hadden they therby.Whoso wol preye, he moot faste and be clene,And fatte his soule, and make his body lene. We fare as seith th'apostle; clooth and foode Suffyssen us, though they be nat ful gode. [III (D) 1877-82]

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Chaucer also refers to Dives ("thilke riche man in the gospel") in the Parson's Tale:

"For certes, if ther ne hadde be no synne in clothing, Crist wolde nat so soone have

noted and spoken of the clothing of thilke riche man in the gospel" [X (I) 413,

emphasis mine]. Here, Chaucer taps into an exegetical tradition following

Gregory's Homilies, as reproduced in Peraldus, who repackages these ideas in his

own treatise.5 Chaucer’s phrasing here is interesting in terms of grammatical

construction, and what that suggests about Chaucer's source. Chaucer's phrasing

("thilke riche man in the gospel") strongly suggests a familiarity with the Vulgate

translation, rather than simply knowledge of the story generally through

intermediary sources. Many medieval readers traditionally thought of the name

"Dives" as a proper name--though in fact it is simply the Latin word for a rich man.6

The two appellations "Lazar" and "Dives" followed opposite etymological

trajectories in English usage. In the original parable, only Lazarus has a proper

name: an abbreviated version of a longer, common Hebrew appellation (Smith

135). It is one of the rare cases in which a character in the parables actually is

given a name, and Smith suggests the Gospel writer needed to clarify the dialogue,

which lacked modern conveniences like quotation marks to delineate speech and

description. By inserting phrases like "Lazarus said . . ." at the beginning of

dialogue transitions, the writer can mark changes in speakers (Smith 135).

In any case, Lazarus' counter-part, "a certain man who was rich," is in the

Vulgate translation "homo quidam erat dives." In common Middle English

vernacular usage, Dives was erroneously thought to be a proper Jewish name. On

the other hand, in Middle English usage of the fourteenth century, the name

"Lazarus" or "Lazar" became a generic term to refer to any leper, diseased person,

or beggar (see MED "laser" and variant spellings; OED "lazar"). The general

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tendency, especially among uneducated speakers, was to remove the name

semantically from its connection to a historical figure and turn it into a synonym

for the diseased and impoverished wretches of fourteenth-century England. The

common appellation for the leprosarium was, in fact, the "lazar-house."

Chaucer does not follow the common medieval practice of referring to the

character of the rich man as if his proper name were Dives. Instead, the Parson

uses the demonstrative adjective thilke [that] in conjunction with man, a

grammatical construction reflective of (and common to) Latinate phraseology in

Middle English translation. Both quidam in Latin and thilke in Middle English can

be used to point to a single, specific-but-indeterminate figure--one known but not

necessarily named. If the passage appeared in another rhymed and metered tale, it

would be tempting to explain it as Chaucer's attempt to make a metrically

complete line or create a rhyme, but the Parson's Tale is a prose work, so this

explanation does not work. Chaucer's wording here shows direct familiarity with

the Vulgate version of the parable in the Gospel of Luke. Clearly, Chaucer may

have had the Latin passage in mind as he consulted his sources.7

Quotation Three: The Pharisee and the Publican

Like Dives and Lazar, the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is

another parable in which Chaucer ignores Matthew and follows Luke:

[Handout Part 3]: dixit autem et ad quosdam qui in se confidebant tamquam iusti et aspernabantur ceteros parabolam istam / duo homines ascenderunt in templum ut orarent unus Pharisaeus et alter publicanus / Pharisaeus stans haec apud se orabat Deus gratias ago tibi quia non sum sicut ceteri hominum raptores iniusti adulteri vel ut etiamhic publicanus / ieiuno bis in sabbato decimas do omnium quae possideo / et publicanus a longe stans nolebat nec oculos ad caelum levare sed percutiebat pectus suum dicens Deus propitius esto mihi peccatori / dico vobis descendit hic iustificatus in domum suam ab illo Quia omnis qui se exaltat humiliabitur et qui se humiliat exaltabitur

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[And to some who trusted in themselves as just, and despised others, he spoke also this parable: Two men went up into the temple to pray: the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The Pharisee standing, prayed thus with himself: O God, I give thee thanks that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, as also is this publican. I fast twice in a week: I give tithes of all that I possess. And the publican, standing afar off, would not so much as lift up his eyes towards heaven; but struck his breast, saying: O God, be merciful to me a sinner. I say to you, this man went down into his house justified rather than the other: because every one that exalteth himself, shall be humbled: and he that humbleth himself, shall be exalted.] (Luke 18:9-14)

This Lukan parable of the Pharisee and the Publican follows four earlier parables

focuses on characters who have a change of heart.8 However, when medieval

interpreters encountered the parable outside of the larger gospel narrative, they

generally would ignore this context of changes of heart and read the parable

allegorically. Saint Augustine, while discussing the Psalms, pauses to mention this

passage. He sees the Pharisee as the Jewish people and the publican as a symbol of

the gentiles (see On the Psalms, PL 36, 37, especially col. 954), an interpretation

that became the medieval standard reading.

In sharp contrast, when Chaucer's Parson alludes to this parable, he ignores

the exegetical tradition regarding the Jews and the Pharisee and focuses on the

appropriateness of the Publican's response: "Swich was the confessioun of the

publican that wolde nat heven up his eyen to hevene, for he hadde offended God of

hevene; for which shamefastnesse he hadde anon the mercy of God" [X (I) 986].

The same allusion appears in Pennaforte in the Summa Causa Poenitentiae (Ch and

the Bible 234-35). In both Chaucer's version and Pennaforte's, unlike in most

medieval sermons, the allusion functions as a fairly straightforward model of what

penitents should feel (sorrow) and the need for a change of heart in order to

achieve full pardon for their sins.9 This suggests he was not relying on other

florilegia or common sermons.

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Quotation 4: The Wedding Guests

More dramatically, another parable Chaucer alludes to is the parable of the

Wedding Guests or Wedding Garment, an account found in Matthew and Luke. The

description of hell in this parable had become a medieval commonplace by the

fourteenth century. In the Parson's Tale, Chaucer's immediate source uses

Matthew. But Chaucer conflated the account by adding material from Luke,

keeping the grim aspects of Matthew's description, but adding the theme of lost

delight from Luke. In Matthew, the story ends with a disturbing shift in tone when

the King spies an inappropriately attired party-crasher. He orders his waiters at

the dinner party to inflict a surrealistic punishment upon him. In your handout,

Matthew's version appears at the top, Luke's version in the middle, and Chaucer's

version at the bottom.

[See Passage 4].

Luke's version lacks the surrealistic punishment in which the offending

guest is bound and cast into outer darkness, a place where the banished people

weep continually and gnash their teeth. Instead, Luke emphasizes lost opportunity.

The disloyal and ungrateful guests who refuse the master's invitation never get to

taste the delicious feast awaiting them, so that pleasure falls to the cast-offs of

society who eagerly claim their seats at the table.

The Parson's Tale, following Chaucer’s source (Pennaforte), uses Matthew

for the basic narrative, as we would expect in a typical medieval text: " . . . And

forther over, they shul have defaute of alle manere delices. / For certes, delices

been after the appetites of the fyve wittes, as sighte, herynge, smellynge,

savorynge, and touchynge. / But in helle hir sighte shal be ful of derknesse and of

smoke, and therefore ful of teeres; and hir herynge ful of waymentynge and of

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gryntinge of teeth, as seith Jhesu Crist" [X (I) 206-08]. What is striking is the how

Chaucer deliberately alters his source to add Lukan material. He turns the text

into a complex, five-part discussion of how each of the five senses will be

tormented in hell. Not only do we have Matthew's unsettling "wailing and grinding

of teeth," ("waymentynge and of gryntinge of teeth"), but we have the Lukan

emphasis on how the banished guests are deprived of pleasure ("they shul have

defaute of alle manere delices"). The Pennaforte treatise only briefly mentions the

loss of heaven as one of the six causes of contrition, but Chaucer's version expands

and elaborates upon it.10 Pennaforte writes simply, "De quinto, scilicet de

amissione caelestis gloriae" [Fifth, one knows about the loss of heavenly glory]

(quoted in Dempster and Bryan, 734). Chaucer transforms Pennaforte's idea from

one of generalized deprivation to the specificity of the senses. The sinner in hell

knows he misses out on the smelling, savoring, and the "appetites" that are

"delices." Rather than following his source's use of Matthew blindly, Chaucer has

as in the Lukan account, linked the pleasures of the spiritual body to the pleasures

of the fleshly body in a matter reminiscent of the parable, in which heaven is a

banquet comes to the parables, he tends to rely upon and acknowledge Luke as his

direct source. Furthermore, the surrounding text makes his omission of Matthew

explicit when Chaucer names his Biblical and patristic sources for the section

(Saint John in line 687; Saint Bernard in 689; Saint Gregory in 691; Saint

Augustine in 693; and "Saint Luc, Chapter 15" in line 694). He never mentions

Matthew, even though his intermediary source relied upon Matthew. Omissions

such as this one strongly suggest that, when Chaucer alludes to some parts of

Matthew in his writings, he only relies on intermediary sources who quote

Matthew; accordingly, he does not acknowledge Matthew as an actual source.

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Lamp and Basket

The only exception to this rule is the Parable of the Lamp and Basket. A

version appears in all three synoptic Gospels, and it is the only one in which

Chaucer credits Matthew as a source. If you look at passage five, you can see all

three biblical versions along with Chaucer's account at the bottom. Chaucer's

retelling is quite close to Matthew's in the Vulgate. He translates the entire

passage except for the opening metaphor, "You are the light of the world." The

Parson's Tale has it thus:

[Handout Part 5d]: For, as witnesseth Seint Mathew, capitulo quinto, "A citee may nat been hyd that is set on a montayne, ne men lighte nat a lanterne and put it under a bushel, but men sette it on a candel-stikke to yeve light to the men in the hous. Right so shal youre light lighten before men, that they may seen youre goode werkes, and glorifie youre fader that is in hevene." [X (I) 1035-36]

Chaucer includes the imagery common to all three Vulgate versions, including

Luke: concealed light. However, in this case, it is absolutely clear, both from

wording and from the attribution to Matthew, that the citation owes its ultimate

origins to Matthew. Normally, I would be sweating here and wondering if this

disproved my theory. However, in this passage, Chaucer follows his intermediary

source (Raymond of Pennaforte's Summa de poenitentia) in preferring Matthew

rather than Luke. This is the one time Chaucer uses Matthew's version, but it also

an example where Chaucer is following his source nearly word for word. Sigmund

Wenzel has very clearly established Chaucer’s debt to Raymond of Pennaforte

here. The remaining examples in this discussion are all found exclusively in Luke.

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The Prodigal Son

The parables by the nature of their genre-conventions require familiar,

“homey” imagery and settings, and nothing is more familiar than familial

relationships. While the Gospels might figure God as a heavenly father in the

concluding lines of the parable of the Lamp, in other parables they figure human

beings as God's children, either loyal or wayward. The Prodigal Son makes full use

of such allegory in the medieval tradition. It is probably the most familiar of the

parables to modern readers, and the name "prodigal son" has become verbal

shorthand for any wayward child. The passage is one of the longest parables in the

Gospels, covering twenty-one verses. I will not read it to you here because you

want to escape without a full sermon, but you can see the text reproduced in your

handout as passage #6.

[Handout Part 6]:

It's less relevant to do a close reading of passage six than the other quotations we

have examined, because the connection in Chaucer has more to do with

interpretative context in Luke rather than the actual words of the text. Stephen

Wailes notes how two interpretative traditions dominated the exegesis of this

parable. They appear first in three nearly contemporary discussions in the fourth

century: Augustine's Questions on the Gospels, Ambrose's Commentary on Luke,

and Jerome's twenty-first letter (Wailes 238). The first allegorical tradition, found

in all three of these patristic writers, sees the elder son as the Jewish people and

the younger son as the Gentiles. This reading was still common in the fourteenth

century. Surviving Wycliffite sermons from the 1380s retain it; one preacher

contemporary with Chaucer writes, "†e eldere sone is †e folc of Iewis and †e

3oungere he†ene folc" (158/ 36-37, quoted in Hudson 102).

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Ambrose and Jerome suggested an alternative interpretation. The second

allegorical tradition treats the elder son is the nominally virtuous individual and

the younger son is the penitent sinner who returns to God after serving the Devil

(the foreign employer who hires the prodigal son as a swineherd). This reading is

found in the exegetical traditions descending from both Jerome and Ambrose, and

it also is found in sermons of the fourteenth-century in England, and incidentally is

the most common interpretation today among American protestants.11

When Chaucer makes alludes to this parable, he uses it in the second

exegetical context of sin, emphasizing penitence rather than the earlier

interpretation that sees the parable as a model of divinely planned history, in

which Christians would ultimately surpass the Jews in heavenly favor. The prodigal

son becomes an exemplum for other sinners to use as a model for penitent

behavior. Allusions to the prodigal son were a common part of penitential

literature, as Wenzel notes in The Riverside Chaucer (962, n. 700-03), and Chaucer

follows this tradition closely, writing, "Looke forther, in the same gospel [Luke],

the joye and the feeste of the goode man that hadde lost his sone, whan his sone

with repentaunce was returned to his fader" (700). In the Parson's Tale, the Parson

holds forth this exemplum to provide hope to his listeners, and his commentary is

overwhelmingly positive in tone; "Certes, the mercy of God is evere redy to the

penitent, and is aboven alle his werkes" (698), and ties the parable together with

the one that immediately precedes it in Luke, the parable of the lost sheep,

following Peraldus. Again, the reference clearly shows Chaucer is not merely using

Luke as his source, he is discussing it in the context of how the parable appears in

Luke following other Lukan parables, which shows he knows the sequence in the

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original Gospels rather than merely knows the parables as independent accounts

devoid of their original Vulgate context.

The Lost Sheep

Just as a lost child like the prodigal son would be a source of distress, so too

is a lost sheep. The parable of the Lost Sheep immediately precedes the parable of

the Prodigal Son in the Gospel of Luke. I have reproduced it for you in full in your

handout as quotation #7.

[Handout Part 7]:

Likewise in the Parson's Tale, an allusion to the Lost Sheep in line 700 also

precedes his exemplum of the Prodigal Son. Both parables were a commonplace in

medieval penitential literature. Following Peraldus, Chaucer writes: "Allas, kan a

man nat bithynke hym on the gospel of Seint Luc, 15, where as Crist seith that 'as

wel shal ther be joye in hevene upon a sinful man that dooth penitence, as upon

nynty and nyne rightful men that neden no penitence'" [700].

Again, Chaucer holds to the more positive aspects of the exemplum, using it

as an example of how even the most wayward of sinners need not despair, that God

will set aside his faithful flock long enough to deliberately seek out the one errant

sheep. He also quotes accurately the concluding line to the parable. The trend

again is that, when Chaucer uses a direct quotation or close paraphrase of the

Gospels, he uses a parable found in Luke. An analogue to the parable of the Lost

Sheep appears in Matthew 18:12-14, but it seems to be less influential on Chaucer

as a direct source of quotation for two reasons. First and most obviously, Chaucer

explicitly states his source is "the gospel of Seint Luc, 15" [700]. Secondly,

Chaucer does not make use of any of the distinctive language in Matthew, such as

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the hypothetical question "Quid vobis videtur . . . ?" [How would it seem to

you . . . ?], which sets up the parable in Matthew 18:12. If we contrast Chaucer's

use of this parable with his use of the Wedding Feast parable, it seems that

Chaucer is perfectly willing to add Lukan material to an intermediary account in

Matthew, but he does not typically add Matthean material to Lukan parables. This

is again, a general trend throughout Chaucer’s parable-imagery and parable-

allusions. Chaucer makes other, loose references to imagery found in Matthean

parables, but he neverly directly quotes a Matthean text or provides a close

paraphrase of one. What does this trend suggest in Chaucer's writing?

I would suggest Chaucer probably had ready access to a copy of Luke,

probably one in the Vulgate, (but possibly supplemented by a Middle English

version), which he could refer to in conjunction with his secondary sources. On the

other hand, he may have had no such comparable copy of Matthew, and he may

have relied upon memory when he made use of Matthean parabolic imagery. The

question then becomes, is this conclusion feasible when we look at surviving

Gospel texts?

More than 8,000 medieval manuscripts of the Vulgate Bible survive today,

most of which date from the twelfth century or later. Normally, surviving texts of

the Gospels contain all four books: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Some surviving

manuscripts, however, do contain only a single Gospel. For instance Codex

Stonyhurstensis--a seventh-century manuscript at Stonyhurst College, England,

probably written near Durham--contains John alone. An older, pre-Vulgate Latin

Bible in the "h" family known the "Palimpsest de Fleury" (fourth or fifth century; at

Turin), contains only Mark 8: 7-16 and Matthew. In the "Z" family of Greek Bibles,

the Codex Dublinensis (sixth century; in Trinity College, Dublin) still survives,

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which has a palimpsest containing 295 verses of Matthew in isolation. Today, the

only known textual families of the Bible that contain Luke alone, without the other

synoptic Gospels, are Greek rather than Latin. They include manuscripts in the

"R," family, such as the Codex Nitriensis (sixth century; in British Museum,

London) which contains a palimpsest copy of Luke, and manuscripts in the "T"

family, such as the Codex Borgianus (fifth century, in the Vatican) which contains

Mark and seventeen leaves of Luke and John.12

These surviving Gospels do not provide us with a British manuscript

containing only Luke that Chaucer could have known, and that lack presents a

weakness in this argument. We cannot hold up a specific manuscript and proclaim,

“This is the one Chaucer used.” However, the manuscript tradition does clearly

contain a few rare texts of single Gospels and fragments of the Gospels. Such

Gospels could and did exist in isolation from the other three Gospels, though these

loan waifs receive less scholarly attention. Such solitary Gospels, often in poorer

condition and receiving less care than complete Gospel sets, are less likely to

survive intact to the modern day, leaving little physical evidence to verify the

existence of lost texts.

The only possible alternative I can see would be an authorial idiosyncrasy.

Perhaps Luke was simply Chaucer’s favorite when it came to Gospel narratives,

which is a possibility I cannot dismiss at this stage. However, even if Chaucer

merely preferred Luke to the other Gospels, and had access to all four versions, it

is clear he had access to Luke in a Latin translation, and that brings up one step

closer to resolving debates about Chaucer’s use of the Bible.

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Notes:

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WORKS CITED:

Alford, John A. “Scriptural Testament in The Canterbury Tales: The Letter Takes its

Revenge.” Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition. Ed. David Lyle Jeffrey. Ottawa: U of

Ottawa P, 1984. 197-203.

Allen, Judson Boyce and Theresa Anne Moritz. A Distinction of Stories: The Medieval Unity

of Chaucer's Fair Chain of Narratives for Canterbury. Columbus: Ohio State UP,

1981.

Augustine. De Doctrina Christiana. Trans. D. W. Robertson, Jr. in On Christian Doctrine.

Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1958.

Benson, Larry D., gen. ed. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Besserman, Lawrence. Chaucer And the Bible: A Critical Review of Research, Indexes, and

Bibliography. NY: Garland Pub., Inc., 1988.

---. Chaucer's Biblical Poetics. Norman, Okla.: U of Oklahoma P, 1998.

Biblia Sacra Vulgata: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem. Ed. Robert Weber, et al. 2nd rev. ed.

1975. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. 1983.

Bryan, W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster. Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's

Canterbury Tales. Chicago, Chicago UP, 1941. NY: Humanities P, 1958.

Dickson, Francis H. ed. The Sarum Missal. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1916.

Dodd, Charles Harold. The Parables of the Kingdom. 1935. Rev. ed. NY: Scriber's, 1961.

Drum, Walter. "The Manuscripts of the Bible." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. IX. Robert

Appleton Co, 1910. Transcribed by Bryan R. Johnson in Online Edition. Kevin

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1 Robert Pratt, for instance, points to John of Wales' Communiloquium--a late thirteenth-century compilation of several thousand quotations, mostly from the Bible, but also including patristic writings and classical sources--as a likely intermediary for many of Chaucer's allusions. See Pratt, "Chaucer," 619-20.

2 Francis Proctor and Christopher Wordsworth, eds. Breviarium ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Sarum (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1879-86; rpt. Farnborough, Hants., England: Gregg International, 1970). See vol. 3, pp. xxvii-cxvi.

3 Francis H. Dickson, ed. The Sarum Missal. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1916.

4 ? In particular, see Chapter Three, "Biblical Translation, Quotation, and Paraphrase" in Besserman's Chaucer's Biblical Poetics, pp. 60-100, for examples of this tendency. Even in those passages where a Chaucerian character misquotes or partially quotes a longer verse, the nature of the omission often suggests a deliberate alteration rather than an authorial error. The absence of surrounding text does not appear to be the sort of omission we would expect as a result of the author consulting florilegia or sermon-texts rather than the Bible itself. Besserman notes in Chaucer's Biblical Poetics and in Chaucer and the Bible that Chaucer's choice of quotations suggests that he keeps one eye on the surrounding scriptural material when he cuts and pastes it into his own narrative. He points to examples in the Yorkshire friar's dialogue (from the Summoner's Tale), in the Pardoner's Tale, and in the Wife of Bath's Prologue in which one or more characters deliberately leave out surrounding scriptural material to change outrageously the meaning of the quotation in a manner favorable to that character's argument, such as the Wife of Bath's tendency to quote only the convenient half of verses from Saint Paul (see Besserman Ch Poetics 110-113).

5 Siegfried Wenzel has done extensive work identifying Chaucer's sources for the Parson's Tale. Near the turn of the nineteenth century, Peterson first pointed out that the Parson's Tale uses material from two Latin treatises: The Summa de poenitentia or Summa casuum poenitentiae by Saint Raymond of Pennaforte (about 430 lines of material) and the Summa Vitiorum by friar William Peraldus (about 860 lines of material). These two works were immensely popular in the Middle Ages as a source for Latin and vernacular handbooks on penance. Wenzel demonstrates that a manuscript known as the Postquam served as Chaucer's source for the "remedies" of the seven deadly sins (see Traditio 27 (1971) 433-53, along with the Summa virtutum de remedies anime (Chaucer Library, 1984). He also identified two redactions of Peraldus' Summa vitiorum that are close to Chaucer, commonly referred to as the Quoniam and Primo, based on the opening passages to each version. See Traditio 30 (1974) 351-78.

6 See J. C. J. Metford, A Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983). Traditionally, the character Dives was also depicted as pot-bellied, a character-trait that also helped make the anonymous figure more memorable and realistic to a medieval audience, and he was often seen as a personification of gluttony.

7 The Riverside edition notes in line 75 of the tale a similarly awkward construction that apparently resulted from Chaucer making a direct translation of the Latin. The phrase "that no man wole perisse" apparently originates in Chaucer's rendering of "nolens aliquos perire" (wishing no one to perish) of 2 Peter 3:9. See page 957, note 75. The diction of the tales in general has lead many

Wheeler IMC Paper 21

Wood, Chauncey. “Artistic Intention and Chaucer’s Uses of Scriptural Allusion.” Chaucer

and Scriptural Tradition. Ed. David Lyle Jeffrey. Ottawa: U of Ottawa P, 1984. 35-46.

Wurtele, Douglas. "Some Uses of Physiognomical Lore in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales" in

Chaucer

Review 17 (1982): 130-41.

scholars to propose an immediate source in French, rather than Latin. See Mersand, Chaucer's Romance Vocabulary; Fisher, 345 and 362n; Pratt, Tales 490; Norton-Smith, Geoffrey Chaucer, 155; Robinson, 766; and Pfander, JEGP 35: 257. Siegfried Wenzel, however, argues that no such French source has been found for the Parson's Tale in particular. (Earlier suggestions appearing in the Bryan and Dempster's Sources and Analogues, such as the Ango-Norman Comileison and Frère Laurent's Somme le Roy, have now been dismissed as possible sources, given Wenzel's scholarship (see above, note 8). Moreover, Wenzel points out that French usage has a general influence on English prose in the fourteenth century that renders any such argument moot when it comes to a specific text; rather than being a sign of translation from a French source per se, similarities to French grammatical structure may only indicate a pattern in general English usage of the time. See Riverside, 956.

8 (1) the Wicked Judge softens his heart toward the Widow’s pleas, (2) the Publican repents, (3) Christ commands the adults to change their policy and allow the children to come to him, (4) the rich man changes from greed to salvation.

9 Chaucer's orthodoxy here contrasts sharply with Wycliffite interpretations of this passage. Sermon 11, listed in Hudson, interprets the Publican as a common laborer or peasant, and it compares the Pharisees, Saducees, and Essenes of Christ's day to the fourteenth-century religious orders of monks, canons, and friars--all three "mute need smacchen errour, si† †ei grownden a perpetual rewle to alle men of †ese orders †at †e gospel lefte by wisdam of Crist" (11/78-79). Such sermons, bordering on the subversive and heterodox, were common in the fourteenth-century, yet Chaucer's criticism of the church primarily appears in unflattering character portraits, rather than such sweeping heretical statements. Chaucer does not appear to adapt unorthodox commentary on the parables for any of his writings in any visible manner.

10 Pennaforte writes simply, "De quinto, scilicet de amissione caelestis gloriae" [Fifth, one knows about the loss of heavenly glory] (quoted in Dempster and Bryan, 734).

11 ? After 1100 years of commentary, the allegoresis had become elaborate: the son's hunger equals a hunger for missing spiritual truth; the far country he travels to is the life of sin; the knowledge of God equates with being fed well, while other branches of knowledge are the pig-slop composed of peas' hulls; and the house of the father is holy church (158/35 et passim, quoted in Hudson 102). The feast for the returning son becomes the Eucharist, and by extension, a symbol of Christ as the paschal lamb, represented by the fatted calf who is unendingly sacrificed for believers as Saint Jerome writes in "Letter 21" ("semper Christus credentibus immolatu" PL 22, col. 388).

12 The manuscript families and the textual identification keys used here come from Walter Drum's article, "Manuscripts of the Bible" in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. IX (1910).