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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The reference to Saint Ambrose in Chaucer's Life of St. Cecilia (C. T. G. vv. 271 ff.) has never been explained. Although Chaucer in this reference was clearly following his Latin source, Tyrwhitt regarded these lines as an awkward interruption of the narrative and wished that he could find reason for omitting them. Skeat gave up the problem with the words: “I cannot find anything of the kind in the works of St. Ambrose.” Professor Lowes, in his admirable article upon the interpretation of the two crowns, does not mention this Ambrose passage, or attempt to explain the expression the “palm of martirdom.” His only reference to Ambrose is incidental to his relation of the story of the bee lighting on the infant's lips, from the sermon on St. Ambrose by Jacobus de Voragine.
1 Skeat's Works of Chaucer V, 409. Skeat does refer to the story of the basket of roses, typifying martyrdom, in a sermon of Jacques de Vitry on St. Dorothea, a story which begins with “Beatus Ambrosius narrat” and in this respect is similar to the lines in the Life of St. Cecilia.
2 “The ‘Corones Two’ of the Second Nun's Tale,” P.M.L.A., XXVI, 115 ff., XXIX, 129 ff.
3 The only other reference to Saint Ambrose by Chaucer, that in the Parson's Tale of Vices and Virtues, was easily discovered by Skeat, as he shows in his note to Cant. Tales, Group I, v. 84.
4 Migne, Patr. Lat. 15, Opera Sancti Ambrosii I, col. 1559. I use the column number of the Benedictine edition inset in the Migne edition, here col. 1967 of the latter. The full title of the work is Commentarius in Cantica Canticorum e Scriptis Sancti Ambrosii a Guillelmo, quondam Abbate Sancti Theoderici, postea Monacho Signiacensi, Collectus.
5 “Hortus conclusis, soror mea sponsa, hortus conclusus, fons signatus.”
6 Ambrose goes on, referring to the sicut lilium inter spinas of the Vulgate (Verse 2), with something more of symbolism for the rose: “Sicut enim spina rosarum, quae sunt tormenta martyrum: non habet spinas inoffehsa divinitas, quae tormenta non sensit.”
7 Migne, Patr. Lat. 15, 1568.
8 Migne, Patr. Lat. 15, 1572.
9 Migne, Pair. Lat. 15, 1585, 1589-90, 1612, 1617, for the last four quotations respectively.
10 Migne, Patr. Lat. 15, 1040. I quote only that part of the commentary which refers to the symbolism of the flowers.
11 Migne, Patr. Lat. 15, 1440-41. The only difference is in the use of illic for ibi in the second sentence.
12 Migne, Patr. Lat. 16, 269.
13 Migne, Patr. Lat. 50, 727 ff. for the whole work of Eucherius, col. 744, not 742 as in the Index, for the specific reference.
14 Migne, Patr. Lat. 111, 528. The subject of Chap. VIII, from which these quotations are taken, is De Berbis aromaticis she communibus. Still further evidence that Rabanus had the Ambrosian symbolism in mind is found in his reference to Confessors:
Viola propter vim odoris nomen accepit….. Violae quoque significant confessores ob similitudinem lividorum corporum.
He goes on to quote Cant. 2, 11, and comment further upon it, as Ambrose had done. The last clause of the comment on Confessors will be seen to be from that of Bishop Eucherius.
15 Migne, Patr. Lat. 112, 1040.
16 Migne, Patr. Lat. 183, 1429-30. Chaucer's reference to Bernard in the Invocation, as noted above, is pretty certain evidence that he had in mind other parts of Dante's Paradiso, as canto xxxi in which Bernard is twice mentioned by name, and whom Dante made the author of the prayer to Mary at the beginning of canto xxxiii; see Professor Carleton Brown's admirable article on the subject in Mod. Phil. IX, 1 ff.
17 Migne, Patr. Lat. 184, 279.
18 Migne, Patr. Lat. 184, 452.
19 Migne, Patr. Lat. 184, 138.
20 Riddles of the Exeter Book, ed. F. Tupper, 1910 (Preface 1909), p. 166. Still earlier, Skeat had called attention to the “earliest English life of St. Cecilia” in Cockayne's Shrine—now more accessible in EETS. 116—and that of Ælfric in his Lives of the Saints, not then in print, but now in EETS. 94, 357 ff. Both these mention the crowns of roses and lilies.
21 Homilies I, 444. Lowes in his second paper (footnote 6) makes acknowledgment to Tupper for this second reference.
22 Ælfric later explains that Mary did not actually suffer “bodily martyrdom,” but her mental anguish was equivalent to it, and she thus deserved the roses of the martyr's crown. Along with the adoption of these two symbolic interpretations of Ambrose, it is worth noting that Ælfric, in his Homily In Natale unius Confessons (II, 548), makes no mention of the Ambrosian symbolism of the violet.
23 Kemble's edition in the Ælfric Society Publications, p. 186.
24 Rev. A. J. Grieve, Encyc. Brit. article.
25 Cath. Encyc, Ambrose.
26 See the NED. under “to, VII b.” I do not see that to “is used after words denoting opposition or hostility” as the NED. says, and the Toller-Bosworth. The “opposition” is wholly in the to itself, as shown by the examples. It seems to be merely a retention of an older meaning; compare its cognate Greek δé 'but,' “usually having an opposing or adversative force” (Liddell and Scott). The Cent. Dict. does this better in recognizing under “to, 8” the meanings 'against, over against' and giving, besides three Elizabethan examples, one from Addison and one from Irving. Under the same heading it places the present-day examples like hand to hand, two to one. The latter is explained in the NED. definition of “to, III, 19” as “connecting the names of two things (usu. numbers or quantities) compared or opposed to each other.” Unfortunately, it seems to me, the Cent. Dict. does not connect its Middle English examples of to ‘against’ with those of later times, but places them under “to, 17. In various obsolete, provincial or colloquial uses.” Under this heading it gives the Piers Plow. example of Skeat, and one from Polit. Poems (Furnivall):
To thee only trespassed have I.
At any rate enough has been said to justify giving Chaucer's to in the Second Nun's Tale, l. 283, the special sense of ‘against.‘
27 Migne, Patr. Lat. 15, 1610.
28 Migne, Pair. Lat. 17, 416-7.
29 See also Rev. 7, 9, though without clear reference to martyrs.