I. Innocent III, De Miseria Condicionis Humane 295 (ed. Robert E. Lewis)

II. Nicholas Trevet, “De la noble femme Constance” 297 (from Les Cronicles: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS français 9687)

III. John Gower, “Tale of Constance” 330 (from Confessio Amantis, ed. G. C. Macaulay)

The Man of Law’s contribution to the storytelling contest in The Canterbury Tales consists of three parts commonly referred to as the Introduction, Prologue and Tale. Their relationships to each other and to the Tales as a whole are in many respects uncertain, resulting in a number of still unsolved problems, including the Man of Law’s puzzling announcement that he will “speke in prose,” (II, 96) just before giving his brief homily on poverty (II, 99–121) and telling his tale in verse. The relationship between his Prologue and Tale has always been problematic. Many scholars have found little or no reason for any connection between them. It had long been known, however, that the Lawyer’s remarks on poverty in the Prologue and some of the passages in his Tale are derived from Pope Innocent III’s De Miseria Condicionis Humane, which Chaucer claimed to have translated under the title “Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde” in the Legend of Good Women (Prologue G 414–15). In his study of the De Miseria, Robert E. Lewis defended Chaucer’s claim and proved that he was working on this lost translation during the same period (1390–5) when he was writing the Man of Law’s sequence. But Lewis’s study of the De Miseria was even more important for its argument in support of a connection between the Prologue and Tale based on Chaucer’s use of the Pope’s treatise as a source in both. For the Lawyer’s comments on poverty, Chaucer used a condensed version of a passage at the beginning of the De Miseria (I.14.1–14), in which Innocent condemns the evils of poverty and the poor. But in place of the denunciation of riches which concludes the Pope’s remarks, Chaucer substitutes an apostrophe in praise of riches and wealthy merchants (II, 122–33).