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Chaucer and the Seven Deadly Sins
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Among men of the Middle Ages no theme, religious or secular, was more widely popular than the motif of the Seven Deadly Sins. From summae and sermons, from “mirrors” and manuals, from hymns, “moralities,” and books of exempla, from rules of muns and instructions of parish priests, form catechisms of lay folk and popular penitentials, and finally from such famous allegories as De Guileville's Pèlerinage every medieval reader gleaned as intimate a knowledge of the Sins as of his Paternoster and his Creed, and hence was able to respond to every reference to these, explicit or implicit. Moreover this theme, which had absorbed the attention of Dante through many cantos of his Purgatorio, so familiar to Chaucer, had, in our poet's own day, won vivid portrayal from Langland in Piers Plowman and had claimed eighteen thousand lines of prolix analysis in the Mirour de l'Omme of the moral Gower. And even now, while Chaucer's own Tales were in the making, Gower's Confessio was reared high upon the foundation of general interest in this motif. No wonder that it made an irresistible appeal to Chaucer too!
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References
1 See Triggs, Introduction to Assembly of the Gods (E. E. T. Soc., Extra Series, 69), pp. xix f.
2 In the Parable of the Castle of Love in the Cursor Mundi ll. 10040 F (cited by Triggs, p. lxx), the order of the Sins is Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lechery, Avarice, Wrath, and Sloth (though in the Book of Penance in the same work the normal order is followed); in the sequence of Tales in the Handlyng Synne, Pride, Wrath, Envy, Sloth, Avarice, Gluttony, Lechery (though the lines against Tournaments, 4570 f. respect the normal order); in Piers Plowman, B. V., Pride, Lechery, Envy, Wrath, Avarice, Gluttony, and Sloth, but in the feofment of Passus n, 79 f., Pride, Envy, Wrath, Lechery, Avarice, Gluttony, Sloth. The order in the Mireour du Monde and the Ayenbite is Pride, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, Avarice, Lechery, Gluttony, and the Sins of the Tongue. Jean de Meung's Testament (iv, 87) ll. 1692 f. offers two widely divergent orders. Even in ecclesiastical documents appear variations from the norm. In “Peckham's Constitutions” Gluttony is the fourth Sin and Sloth the sixth, while in the “York Convocations” the order is reversed (see Lay Folk's Catechism, E. E. T. Soc., 118, p. xvii). In all lists, however, Pride is the first of the Sins. Deference to the alphabet in the example-books, which invariably illustrate the Vices, shatters completely any conventional sequence.
3 Modern Language Review, Jan., 1910.
4 Chambers, l. o.
4a Contemporary interest in Chaucer's treatment of the Sins is illustrated by the drawings that accompany the Parson's text in ms. Gg. 4. 27, Univ. Cambr. fols. 416, 432, 433: Envy on his wolf, and his antitype Charity; Gluttony on a bear, offset by Abstinence; and Lechery with goat and sparrow opposed to Chastity. These figures of Vices and Virtues—“being all that were not cut out of the ms. by some scoundrel” (Furnivall)—correspond accurately to the symbolism of the Sins in The Assembly of the Gods.
5 The conclusion expressed in my Nation article, that, “as ‘Group C’ the narratives of Physician and Pardoner interrupt the progress of the spirited discussion of women's counsels and the wifely relation begun in the Melibeus, etc.,' was reached simultaneously by Professor W. W. Lawrence in the pages of Modem Philology (October, 1913). This coincidence constitutes an interesting confirmation of the view just presented.
6 It seems to me a potent additional argument for the order here-adopted, that the Physician's story of oppressed virginity courting death rather than disgrace follows so naturally upon the Franklin's many illustrations of this pathetic theme (F. 1364 f.).
7 Gower's use of the story of Appius and Virginia (Confessio Amantis, vii, 5131 f.), for which Chaucer was indebted to the Roman de la Rose, 5613 f., is ample proof of the fitness of the tale as an exemplum of Lechery and its antitype, Chastity. Here is that phase of Lechery, discussed by Chaucer in the Parson's Tale, § 76, ll. 867 f., “Another sinne of Lecherie is to bireve a mayden of hir maydenhede; for he that so dooth, certes, he casteth a mayden out of the hyeste degree that is in this present lyf,” and already illustrated by the Franklin's exampla from Jerome (supra). Virginia's close resemblance to the “consecrated virgin” ideal of patristic treatises, which I shall discuss later, emphasizes the signal fitness of the old tale as an exemplum of Lechery.
8 Nobody can doubt that the Pardoner's Tale is primarily an exemplum of Avarice. In variants so far afield as those of Italy and India, the same moral is pointed. In the Italian version Le Ciento Novelle Antike, No. 83, Christ warns his disciples against the fatal effects of Avarice. The Buddhist analogue, the 48th Játaka shows, like the English story, that “the passion of Avarice is the root of destruction” (Skeat, Chaucer, iii, pp. 439-443). So the German variant, Hans Sachs' Fastnachtsspiel, Der Dot im Stock, is an “erschröcklich peyspiel” of Covetousness. (Modern Philology, ix, p. 19.). The Gluttony element in the Pardoner's narrative (drunkenness with its concomitants of tavern revel, dicing and great oaths) though secondary, is not less obvious, as the rascal himself immediately supplies the application at great length (C. 480 f.). The value of this Gluttony background as exemplum material is attested by the striking parallels from the example books cited by Miss Petersen as illustrating the inevitable accessories of the Sin, Gaming and Swearing (The Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale, pp. 98-100). The Pardoner himself notes in his Prologue (C. 435), “Than telle I hem ensamples many oon,” etc.
9 It is noteworthy that in the Flores Exemplorum, vii, xlvii, l, Cecilia exemplifies Fortitude, which, as the Parson tells us (I, 727 f.), is the “remedy” against the Sin of Sloth:—“ Agayns this horrible sinne of Accidie (Sloth), and the branches of the same, ther is a vertu that is called Fortitudo or Strengthe; that is, an affeccioun thurgh which a man despyseth anoyous thinges. This vertu is so mighty and so vigorous, that it dar withstonde mightily and wysely kepen himself fro perils that been wicked, and wrastle agayn the assautes of the devel. For it enhauneeth and enforceth the soule, right as Accidie abateth it and maketh it feble.”
10 In the Sermones Aurei of Jacobus a Voragine (1760, pp. 361-362), to which Professor Lowes draws my attention, Saint Cecilia is likened to a bee on account of her five-fold busyness; her spiritual devotion, humility, contemplation, teaching and exhortation, sagacity. All of these traits are abundantly illustrated in Chaucer's story of the Saint (former material converted to the purposes of the motif); and, as we shall see later, the first form of “businesse,” spiritual devotion, is in complete accord with the tone and function of the “Invocatio ad Mariam,” that antidote to Sloth which follows the Idleness Prologue. This introductory matter has been wisely retained from an earlier time.
11 Gower's Tale of Florent (Confessio, i, 1407-1861), the close analogue of the Wife's story, is directed “against those inobedient to love,” and is moreover designed, through the pattern of the obedient knight, to teach the Lover to obey his love, “and folwe hir will be alle weie.” It is significant that Chaucer places Inobedience foremost among the divisions of Pride (Parson's Tale, 390). Grower makes it the second branch of the Sin. “A few touches of minute resemblance,” says Macaulay (Confessio, Vol. i, p. 472), “may suggest that one poet was acquainted with the other's rendering of the story.”
12 Gower tells very briefly (Confessio, iii, 783-817), the story of Phoebus and Cornis, to illustrate Chiding or Cheste, the second of his divisions of Wrath. We shall see that his moral is exactly the same as Chaucer's, who derives his story directly from Ovid.
13 Gower's story of Constance, told to exemplify Detraction, an important phase of Envy, has in its phraseology so much in common with Chaucer's version (Skeat, iii, 413-17) as to suggest that in several places one poet copied the other. If we believe with Lücke (Anglia xiv, p. 183) and Tatlock (Devel. and Chronol., chap, v, § 6), that Chaucer was the copyist, we must perforce admit his knowledge of the value of the tale as an exemplum of Envy. More of this later.
14 Indeed in the prose of Mackaye and Tatlock's version of the Tales, it is hard to distinguish throughout many lines the Wife's words from those of the Parson's discourse on Pride. They might well be interchanged.
15 Arnold, Select Works of John Wyclif, iii, pp. 125-127. Compare with Chaucer's “Christ wol, we clayme of him our gentilesse, etc.', Wyclif's ”Have we nobley of oure fader and moder, that ben Jesus Crist and his spouse, holy Chirche, for by this noble kin we schal be gentil in heven“ etc. Strangely enough ”Gentilesse“ is introduced under Sloth by Gower, Confessio, iv, 2200 f.
16 Cf. Mirour de l'Omme, 12073 f., 23380 f. It is a chief phase of Pride to scorn the poor, or as Langland says, B. ii, 79, “to be princes in pryde and poverte to despise” (Cf. B. xiv, 215, “Pryde in richesse regneth rather than in poverte, etc.”). The contrast between the Dame's praise of Poverty here and the “grucching” against Poverty in the Envy Prologue (cf. also Melibeus, § 50, B. 2748 f.) is paralleled by the juxtaposition of willing and impatient Poverty in DeGuileville's Pèlerinage, (Lydgate), pp. 605 f., 22685-22772. Wyclif, like Chaucer, emphasizes in his Pride chapter (iii, p. 126), the dangers of wealth, from which the poor man is free, and points to the Poverty of Christ and his Apostles.
17 Cf. Mirour, 2220 f.
18 Cf. Macaulay, Confessio Amantis, Vol. i, p. 472.
19 It is interesting to compare the Manciple's lines (H. 343 f.), “A Jangler is to God abominable; | Reed Salomon so wys and honurable,” etc., with the Parson's words on the same theme (I, 648), “Now comth Janglinge, that may not been without sinne. And as'seith Salamon, ‘it is a sinne of apert f olye.‘”
20 So also does Langland, B. ii, 74 (Chambers, Modern Language Review, Jan. 1910).
21 Migne, Patrologia Latina, 217, pp. 701 f. Innocent's tract is cited by Chaucer in the discussion of Poverty in the Tale of Melibeus, B. 2758. But Dame Prudence's dispraise of Poverty has in it nought of Envy, since it is characterized by a contempt for ill-gotten wealth (B. 2771-2793), “It is a greet shame to a man to have a povere herte and a riche purs,” and by a preference for Poverty with a good name and conscience, “than to been holden a shrewe and have grete richesses” (B. 2820).
22 Every medieval account of Envy, records these traits, traceable, of course, to Wisdom ii, 24, “Through the envy of the devil came death into the roundness of earth.” In DeGuileville's Pèlerinage 14768, Envy is a serpent as in Ancren Riwle—and is moreover the daughter of Pride and Satan. The adder nature of Detraction is illustrated both in the Pèlerinage, 23116 and in Handlyng Synne, 4168. Chaucer's Envious Serpent passage is closely paralleled in Occleve's “Letter of Cupid,” (1. 358), borrowed from Christine de Pisan. Compare also Mireour du Monde, pp. 103, 106.
23 See Crane, Introduction to Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, p. xlvi. Compare also Bromyard, Summa Predicantium, s. v. “Infantia.”
24 This likeness, which extends even to verbal parallels, must be discussed elsewhere. Chaucer here seems far closer to Ambrose than to those other homilists upon Virginity, Jerome and Augustine.
25 “What say you, holy women? Do you see what you ought to teach and what also to unteach your daughters?” etc., etc. Ambrose's application was popular in medieval exemplum-books; compare Flores Exemplorum, s. v. “Castitas.”
26 See Koeppel, Herrigs Archiv, lxxxiv, p. 405, lxxvii, p. 33-54, and the Notes in Skeat's edition. It is true that, in the Parson's Tale, Hasardry is included under Avarice (I, 792) and Great Oaths under Wrath (I, 587); but both the Ayenbite, p. 52 and Piers Plowman, B. v, link Gluttony and games of chance, and Piers Plowman twice associates Gluttony with Swearing : B. ii, 92 f. “Glotonye he gaf hem eke and gret othes togydere And alday to drynke at dyverse tavernes” and B. v, 314, “Thanne goth glotoun in and grete othes after” (cf. Chambers, Modern Language Review, Jan. 1910). Compare with the Pardoner's discussion of Gluttony and its accessories that of Bromyard in his Summa Predicantium s. v. “Ebrietas” and “Gula”:—“Alii potus excessu. Alii turpibus verbis et cantilenis … et illicitis juramentis … et vanis narrationibus. Alii luxuria et incestu, quia ubi ebrietas ibi libido … dominatur. Et sicut patet Gen. 19, ubi dixerunt filiae Loth, ‘Inebriemus eum vino, etc’” “Ludi inordinati et prohibiti, sicut taxillorum et hujusmodi, in talibus communiter plus delectantur pleni quam famelici, juxta proverbium quod dicitur, ‘Non possum ludere, neque ridere, nisi venter plenus sit.’ Exemplum de Samsone, Judi. 16; et de Judaeis, de quibus dicitur, Exod. 32, ‘Sedit populus manducare et bibere et surrexerunt ludere.’” In the margins of mss. E., Hn., Cp., Pt., and Hl. (Pardoner's Tale, C. 483), is the note, “Nolite inebriari vino in quo est luxuria,” quoted from the Vulgate version of Ephesians, v, 18. This is cited by Innocent in his tract, De Contemptu Mundi, ii, 19, and becomes a commonplace of all medieval descriptions of Gluttony. Compare Holkot in his Lectiones, 21, “scillicet effective exemplum de Loth, Gen. 19”; Le Testament de Jean de Meun, ll. 1748 f.; DeGuileville, ll. 13060 f.; Hoccleve, Regement of Princes, 3802 f.
27 In DeGuileville's Pèlerinage (Lydgate), ll. 18104 f., Avarice, like the Pardoner, cheats by sham pardon and relics.
28 How large a part Undevotion played in medieval illustrations of Sloth is seen by reference to the example-books. The Liber Exemplorum ad Usum Predicantium, ed. by Little, Aberdeen, 1908, thus introduces the theme (p. 38) : “Quoniam autem orationis devotio et officii ecclesiastici devota audicio accidie repugnant et torpori probabile sumitur argumentum quod unusquisque quanto se ab orationis devotione et officio ecclesiastico tempore debito subtrahit tanto accidie et torpori cor suum paratum vasculum reddit. Et certe qui se divino officio tempore debito subtrahunt impune transire non possunt.” And three out of the four Sloth exempta that follow relate to zeal in prayer. So in the fifteenth century Alphabet of Tales (E. E. T. Soc., 126, 20), the first exemplum under Sloth is that of the monk who would not attend Matins; compare Herbert, Catalogue of Romances, iii, p. 431.
29 It is significant that Sloth in Piers Plowman is identified with Undevotion through his portrayal (B. v, 403 f.) as a lazy priest and parson who knows hymns “neither of oure Lorde ne of oure Lady,” who neglects the service “till matynes and masse be done” and who “can neither solfe ne synge ne seyntes lyues rede.”
30 Cf. Handlyng Synne, 4241 f.; Gower, Mirour, 5552 f., 5620.
31 Carleton Brown has remarked (Modern Philology, July, 1911) the liturgical elements in the “Invocation,” but he has overlooked its direct indebtedness to the “Hours” in the Prymer, with the external history of which book he has elsewhere made us so familiar. All this I shall discuss in another place.
32 Notes to Chaucer, pp. 158-159.
33 Contrast with his approving comment upon the Second Commandment, “Take not my name in ydel or amis,” his frequent oaths, D. 164, “by God and by seint John,” C. 320, “by seint Ronyon,” C. 457 “by God.”
34 Pride is the only sin personified by Langland (Piers Plowman, B. v, 63) as a woman—Peronel Proudheart.
35 The Man of Law's contrary qualifications for telling an Envy story are illustrated by many writers: by Gower who uses to describe the Lawyer (Vox, vi, 293) the same image of the Basilisk that he employs to picture Envy (Mirour, 3748 f.); by Hoccleve, who compares (Regement of Princes, 2815 f.) the Law to the venomous spider, which catches little flies and lets big ones go; by Langland, who makes Envy instruct friars “to lerne logik and lawe ” (C. xxiii, 273); and by Bromyard of Hereford, who properly discusses the Avarice and Envy of lawyers under the heads of “Advocatus” and “Causidicus” in his Summa Predicantium. Many passages in Gower's Vox and Mirour and in Wyclif's Sermons (cited by Flügel, Anglia, xxiv, pp. 484-496) and the sorry part played by “Civile” or Civil Law in Piers Plowman prove that the legal profession was then infected by covetousness of wealth and contempt for poverty— by Avarice intermingled with Envy. The Advocate is the butt of many exempla in such example-books as Jacques de Vitry's and the Liber Exemplorum.
36 Cf. Merchant's Tale E. 1810. January's use of “letuaries” as aids to love is paralleled in the exemplum of the old man who seeks of a physician that prescription called by the doctors, “electuarium diasatyrionis, quod provocat libidinem.” (Tomus Primus Convivialium Sermonum by Jean Gast, Basel, 1561, g. v. “Medici.”)
37 Cf. Confessio Amantis, vi, 1292-1358.
38 Mark DeGuileville's reprobation (Pèlerinage, ll. 23538 f.) of “the nuns who have liberty to sleep and wake at their pleasure, and who take no heed to keep their observance.” Four of the six illustrations of Sloth in Herolt's Promptuarium Eoeemplorum are lazy monks. In Piers Plowman Sloth is, as we have seen, a lazy priest; and to the attack upon the Castle of Unity Sloth leads more than a thousand prelates (B. xx, 216-217).
39 See Skeat's note to the Piers Plowman passage. Compare the parallels of Flügel, Anglia, xxiii, pp. 225-239, xxiv, p. 460.
40 Originals and Analogues, pp. 105-106.
41 Mark in both stories the love of drinking, wenching, dancing, dicing, gay music, and riot.
42 It seems more natural to suppose that this shred of a tale was moved back to the congenial neighborhood of the Miller's and Reeve's Tales than to follow Skeat (iii, 399) in thinking that the line in the Manciple's Prologue marks Chaucer's intention to suppress this fragment and to give the Cook another tale.
43 That this tract on the Sins is ultimately traceable to a different source from the rest of the sermon on Penitence has been clearly established by Miss Petersen (The Sources of the Parson's Tale, 1901); yet the Parson's combination of the themes is in strict accord with the medieval division of Penance into Contrition, Confession (of the Capital Sins), and Satisfaction, and is justified by the large space given to the Deadly Sins in numerous summae and penitentials. But in the linking of the Sins with the rest, a certain awkwardness suggests original separation.
44 Herrig's Archiv, 87, pp. 33-54; cf. Miss Petersen, l. c.
45 Between these stanzas and the Parson's sermon, there is a slight verbal connection. In both appear the conventional epithets of Sloth, “Norice into vyces (harm)” and “gate of délices (alle harmes)”; and they share other ideas (Skeat, v, 402), which indicate a common purpose. But there is here no proof of direct borrowing.
46 That the Physician probably knows the Parson's Tale is suggested, however, by his casual citation of Augustine's definition of Envy, presented in practically the same words in the Sermon. The association of wine and Venus (Physician's Tale, 58-59), is a commonplace, as old as Ephesians, v, 18, (supra) and is used not only by the Parson but by the Wife and the Pardoner. Of course the leitmotif of the Doctor's story receives from the Parson due stress (I, 867-872).
47 This second argument for the late date of the Poverty prologue is somewhat weakened by the citation of Innocent's comment upon Poverty, in the Tale of Melibeus, B. 2758, but such a second-hand allusion has small significance. Very striking, however, is the similar use of Innocent's Drunkenness passage (ii, chap. 18) in The Man's of Law's Tale (B. 771-7) and in that of the Pardoner (C. 551-560); cf. Skeat, iii, 408, 444, 445.
48 As we have seen, prologues and moralities attest the likeness of Chaucer's design in these four stories to that of Grower.
49 The conversion of the seven nymphs of Boccaccio's Ameto into Seven Cardinal Virtues at the close of that pastoral, has no effect upon their stories of love, to which Professor Tatlock has recently drawn the attention of students of Chaucer (Anglia, xxxvii, pp. 80 f.).
50 Chaucer, p. 262.
51 As we have seen, divergence from the normal order of Sins is not uncommon in medieval collections. Pride is always first, however, and Avarice and Gluttony are almost always in succession. In Handlyng Synne and in Dunbar's Dance of the Sins, Wrath follows Pride in the list of Vices, as here in Chaucer.
52 Clouston, Originals and Analogues, p. 439.
53 Such stories as the Trump of Death (Confessio i, 2010-2253), Nabugodonosor (i, 2785-3043), the Travelers and the Angel (ii, 291-364), Demetrius and Persius (ii, 1631-1861), Pope Boniface (ii, 2803-3084), etc., despite their place in an amorous cycle, are as remote from the leitmotif of Love and as full of the theme of the Sins as the contributions of Friar, Summoner, and Pardoner.
54 Cf. Parson's Prologue, i, 16, 25, “Now lakketh us no tales mo than oon” and “For every man save thou hath told his tale.”
55 Chaucer Primer, p. 112.
56 All the Sins are presented by precept and example. Chaucer's phase of Wrath (Chiding) in the last tale of the collection might seem to some superfluous after the elaborate exemplification of Wrath in the Friar-Summoner quarrel and tales. But as we have seen, the Sins of the Tongue well deserve specific exposition. Compare their place in Le Mireour du Monde and the Ayenbite.
57 Pollard guesses (Primer, p. 112) that the Yeoman and the five Burgesses were the narrators during the afternoon of the First Day, as no tales are provided for that time.
58 Mosher, Columbia University Press, 1911, pp. 125-126.
59 Professor Crane's description of the Liber de Apibus of Thomas Cantipratensis (Exempla of Jacques de Vitry, p. xciii) is applicable to Chaucer's tales of the Sins : “The moralisation does not at all affect the story, but serves simply as a framework in which to enclose it.”
60 Cited by Macaulay, Introduction to Confessio Amantis, p. ix.