Chaucer And Goes Against The Church?

[Starets]

Chaucer is Early Modern English not Middle English

Edited April 9, 2007 by Staretz

[desertwoman]

Its middle. Plus this is verbatum to the Riverside Chaucer that is "the" Chaucer for Medievalists (so my teacher tells me... and countless others).[url="http://www.librarius.com/canttran/frantrfs.htm"]Chaucer online[/url]

[desertwoman]

So how is Mary present in the Eucharist?

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='desertwoman' post='1238595' date='Apr 11 2007, 09:35 AM']So how is Mary present in the Eucharist?[/quote]

She is not.

[desertwoman]

Opps. sorry. I meant the liturgy.

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='desertwoman' post='1238706' date='Apr 11 2007, 12:40 PM']Opps. sorry. I meant the liturgy.[/quote]

At the Liturgy we are ALL the foot of the Cross, because the Sacrifice is eternal. If you look at older pics of Mass you will see all the Saints and Angels pictured as present as well.

[desertwoman]

Here is what I did.


In the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer is doing more than just composing a story for all to enjoy. He is creating a work not just to entertain, but to instruct and bring awareness of the climate that is around them historically, religiously, and politically. Each tale in CT is intricately designed as a manifesto on the lives of people during that era and as commentary on the Catholic Church. Since there were no other denominations during this time period, the only commentary that Chaucer could make is on the Catholic Church and he does so through out the Tales. The allusions to the Church is seen through out, but The Prioress’s Tale is going to be the focal point of this paper. Now this paper will not discuss all of the “ins” and “outs” of Catholicism, but it will focus on how the Divine Office liturgy is present and how it relates to The Prioress’s Tale and that it reveals the Prioress to be an overtly emotional being.


In The Prioress’s Tale, the reader is introduced to a young school boy in Asia who is completely devoted to the Virgin Mary. He learns of a song in Latin that venerates Mary and he vows to “do my diligenceTo konne it al” (lines 1729-30). The young lad sings the song in front of a Jewish school, much to his folly, and is killed because of his “piety” to Christ’s mother. His body is found in a cesspool, yet he is able to continue to sing the Alma. The Jews who conspired to kill him are killed as well, and the young lad is made into a martyr after he tells the abbot of how he is able to sing with his throat.
According to the Catholic Encyclopedia Online, the word liturgy has two senses which can become confusing. First of all, the word comes from the Greek word leitourgia which originally means public duty, but it is reserved to the people of better means who do a particular service for the state on their own expense (www.newadvent.org). Later on, it starts to manifest to any public service. There is a second sense of the word that is recognized in the Catholic Church, and it “often means the whole complex of official services, all the rites, ceremonies, prayers, and sacraments of the Church” (www.newadvent.org). This paper will focus on the second sense of the word liturgy and how it relates to the Prioress’s Tale.



The liturgy is in Chaucer’s work because it was a part of his life during the middle Ages (1). In order to set up the structure of the Prioress’s Tale the way that it is, Chaucer completed some background work and it seems that he is interested in the stories of the saints, hagiography (Boyd 26). According to Boyd, if Chaucer was not interested in this type of “literature, there would not have been so many traces of it in his works” [like the Second Nun’s Tale and of course the Prioress’s Tale ](26). Plus, hagiography is related to the liturgy (26). How so? The Ecclesiastical Calendar is the magic word here and it is dire because it is the “principle by which the liturgy, its books, and its way of life were organized” (9) during the Medieval Period. Today many people just see these calendars as artwork, but they of course have a deeper meaning and it even deals with numerology. But just like the story in the Prioress’s Tale, the death, miracles, and lives of the people who died for their belief is prevalent in



Catholicism for it brings more people to the fold, plus it helps strengthens the faith of those who already believe. These stories are composed and the Church commemorates feasts in the honor of the martyred saints. According to Boyd, there is an allusion to a feast day called Mass of Holy Innocent’s Day, which falls on to December 28 (5). This day is called Childermas and of course it is a day marked with ceremonies “involving schoolboys and choirboys” (5). This coincides with the story of the Prioress’s Tale since the story revolves around the little school boy who is murdered because he is singing the O Alma Redemptoris (Chaucer 210).


Boyd also suggests that the evidence for liturgy in the Prioress’s Tale is in her Prologue. In Boyd’s other work, The Canterbury Tales: the Prioress’s Tale, she talks about Psalm 8 and how it is further proof that there is liturgical allusions in the Prioress’s Tale. This is so because Boyd states that Psalm 8 is paraphrased in the beginning stanza of the Prologue (4). Here is an excerpt from Psalm 8 that coincides with the story of the Prioress:
From the lips of children and infants
You have ordained praise
Because of your enemies
To silence the foe and the avenger (Holy Bible NIV Version)

This scripture is famous in the Vulgate, and “scholars have tried to identify Chaucer’s precise source of the Psalm, a source presume to be liturgical rather than directly biblical since that is the context in which the Prioress presents her narrative” (Boyd 4).
Now here is where the water gets a little tense because scholars think differently on what office Chaucer is basing the tale upon. According to Sister M. Madeleva, she claims that the “Psalm and the Marian liturgical allusions which follow it in PrP occur in the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary” (4). She proves her point by quoting and listing the similarities between the tale and the office, but Boyd states this can not be because the Prologue and the Tale are connected with allusions to the liturgy from the Divine Office of the canonical hours (Liturgy of Hours), and “the principal liturgy of the canonical hours is the divine office” (65). Chaucer uses that point to connect the portrait with that follows. “ He introduces her miracle of the Virgin with a prologue beginning with a paraphrase of the opening psalm of matins of the little office, which, as a familiar Marian devotion, was an ideal note on which to open such a tale” (67).




Boyd goes on further to state that the liturgy is present in the tale because the prologue contains allusions that goes back to the little office as well (67). The little office is a liturgical devotion to the Virgin Mary. This is done in imitation and in addition to the Divine Office, and it is mostly done in England (www.newadvent.org), and the little office was sung in the monastic orders during this time. This is why the Prioress’s devotion to Mary is seen through out the tale since the story of the little boy who is murdered yearns to devote himself to the Theotokos and learns the Alma. Mary is ever presence in this tale, and the fact that the little office is done in addition with the Divine Office, makes it seem that the Prioress is worshiping Mary and not Christ who is the focal point of the Liturgy. According to St. Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, a work that Chaucer is highly likely to have known, states that latria is a form of worship that is only reserved to God alone, and since Mary is a mere creature this form of worship is not due to her (Aquinas Summa Theologica). Even though Mary is a mere creature, she is still the Mother of God. This is why the term Hyperdulia is created in reference of her as opposed to dulia which is a form of respect given to saints (Heffernan 110). This is why the young boy bows down to the image of Mary in the Tale:
Among thise children was a wydwes sone,
A litel clergeon, seven yeer of age,
That day by day to scole was his wone,
And eek also, whre as he saugh th’ymage
Of Cristes mooder, hadde he in usage,
As hym was taught, to knele adoun and seye
His Ave Marie, as he goth by the weye (lines 502-508)


Latria, dulia, and hyperdulia are present in the Liturgy, and it is present in the Prioress’s Tale for the Prioress tells the story of the young boy who is now a saint, Mary who comforts him because of his piety, and of Christ.
The Prioress exposes herself, and she proves to be too emotional. How so? One example of her showing a huge amount of emotion is in the General Prologue. In the GP, she is described as being so pious and charitable, that she cries when she sees a mouse killed in a trap, or if one of her well fed dogs died:
She was so charitable and so pitous
She wolde wepe, if that she saugh a mous
Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde.
If snake giybdes gadde sge tgat tsge fedde
With rosted flesh, or milk and wastel-breed.
But soore wepte she if oon of hem were deed,
Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte;
And al was conscience and tender herte. (Chaucer lines143-149)



This type of behavior does seem extreme to say the least. To be sad that one’s dog dies is one thing, but to weep at the sight of a mouse that is deed or dying in a mouse trap is a completely different story. What person will feel pity for a pest? This is where Boyd states that her description is overtly emotional because the “allusions to the children saints and at her liturgical paraphrases shows that they are highly emotional materials in their original contexts” (Boyd 72). In other words, the stories of the children who have died because of their faith is very emotional, the story of the young boy who is killed because of his devotion to Mary is highly emotional, the liturgy itself is very emotional, and by “presenting the Prioress’s Tale in liturgical language, he adds to its emotional impact and expresses it in a manner which could well be characteristic of someone of that day whose life was surrounded by the literature of religion” (72). In other words, Boyd states that this fixation upon the liturgy stresses sentimentally (73).



According to Lee Paterson, this is important for it showcases a link between the General Prologue and the tale itself. In fact, “[b]oth General Prologue and Prioress’s Tale display a dialectic between emotion and expression, between desire and its forms of enactment” (519). This duality is common place for Chaucer who is a great manipulator of language. Since the word liturgy has two senses, the tale deals with emotion and expression. It deals with allusion of the liturgy and with the Prioress’s emotions for the liturgy is something that is emotional as well. The sacrifice of the Christ and Mary is present in the liturgy and the Prioress displays it in the tale. The little boy is the Christ like figure that is crucified by the Jews in the tale. Because of the Jews’ love and bondage of the Old Testament law, they are killed by it as well. This tale displays Chaucer’s ability to incorporate the liturgy, and by doing so allows the readers to catch a glimpse of how the medieval liturgy and beliefs were conducted. The emotionalism that the Prioress displays shows the sentimentally of the liturgy itself and Chaucer connects it well through out the General Prologue and the Tale of the Prioress itself.



















Works Cited
Boyd, Beverly. Chaucer and the Liturgy. Dorrance & Company;Philadelphia 1967.
Boyd, Beverly. The Canterbury Tales: The Prioress’s Tale.
Catholic Encyclopedia Online. www.newadvent.org
Heffernan, Carol F. “Praying Before the Image of Mary: Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale, VII
502-12. The Chaucer Review 39.1 2004
Patterson, Lee. “The Living Witnesses of Our Redemption: Martyrdom and Imitation in
Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31.3
2001.
Benson, Larry ed. The Riverside Chaucer Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company 1987