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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.i 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
found in all three synoptic Gospels. This tendency diverges from the medieval tendency to
favor Matthew as a primary Gospel text for quotation.
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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 Sarumii and the Legg and Dickinson edition of The Sarum Missal,iii
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 Evaungelist
That telleth us the peyne of Jhesu Crist
Ne 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.
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
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scriptural allusions into substantial passages of paraphrase, translation, or (occasionally) even
miniature Biblical narratives.iv
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.
Quotation #1 Dives and Lazar
In the Doaui-Rheims translation from the Latin, the account appears as "passage one" as
listed in your handout:
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[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]
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
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exegetical tradition following Gregory's Homilies, as reproduced in Peraldus, who repackages
these ideas in his own treatise.v 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.vi 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 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
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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.vii
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
[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)
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This Lukan parable of the Pharisee and the Publican follows four earlier parables focuses on
characters who have a change of heart.viii 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.ix This suggests he was not relying on other florilegia or common sermons.
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
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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
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.x 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
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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.
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]
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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.
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
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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).
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.xi
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
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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 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,
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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 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.xii
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:
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.
i
ii 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.
iii
Francis H. Dickson, ed. The Sarum Missal. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1916.
iv 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).
v 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.
vi 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.
vii 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 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.
viii (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.
Wheeler IMC Paper 16
ix 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 fourteenthcentury, 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.
x 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).
xi 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).
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).
xii
Wheeler IMC Paper 17
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