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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Having sketched, in the opening lines of the Hous of Fame, the medieval system of dream lore, Chaucer announces that he will relate a dream more wonderful than ever came to man before. The importance of this remarkable dream is emphasized. It can be told only after an invocation of Morpheus, and the lives of the listeners will be affected by having merely heard it. May the mover of all bless the dreaming of them who “take hit wel;” may they have success in love or in whatever they most desire; may they be shielded from poverty, harm, mishap, and disease. But woe betide the scoffer! If any man “misdeme” it, through scorn, or jape, or villainy,
1 Hous of Fame, i, 97–102; the full passage includes lines 94–108. The only significant annotation of this passage known to me is Skeat's explanation of “dreme he barfoot, dreme he shod” as “whether in bed by night or in a chair by day; i.e. in every case.” W. W. Skeat, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1890), iii, 248.
2 Cf. F. Cabrol, Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Chrétienne et de Liturgie (Paris, 1907), “Anathème,” i2, 1927, ff.; Catholic Encyclopedia (New York, 1907), “Anathema,” i, 455, ff. “A formula for this ceremony [of anathema] was drawn up by Pope Zachary (741–752) in the chapter Debent Duodecim Sacerdotes, Cause xi, quest. iii. The Roman Pontifical reproduces it in the chapter Ordo Excommunicandi et Absolvendi.”—Id., i, 456. Another form of the curse is found in the chapter De Benedictione et Consecratione Virginum.
But as Migne observes: “Il n'y a jamais eu un Rit [of excommunication] uniforme pour toute l'Eglise, en ce sens qu'il n'existe aucune prescription positive de se conformer à celui que présente le Pontifical romain.”—J. P. Migne, Encyclopédie Théologique (Paris, 1844), viii, La Liturgie Catholique, 587. “Quant aux maledictions,” writes Eveillon, “c'est une circonstance que les anciens ont toûjours observée aux sentences d'Anatheme, comme les exemples en sont assez frequens dans les histoires.”—Jacques Eveillon, Traite des Excommunications, et Monitoires, second edition (Paris, 1672), p. 380. On the general history of the use of the excommunication and the anathema by the Church of Rome, cf. Henry C. Lea, Studies in Church History (Philadelphia, 1883), pp. 235–523.
3 Benedicti VIII Papae Epistola ad Guillelmum Comitem. (Circa an. 1014.) In J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus … Series Secunda, (Paris, 1853), cxxxix, 1630, ff.
4 Italics mine.
5 The formula set down by Ernulphus, Bishop of Rochester (1115–24) and enshrined by Sterne in Tristram Shandy, Bk. iii, Cap. xi, is one of the most elaborate, as it is probably the best known today. Cf. Textus Roffensis, ed. Thomas Hearnius (Oxford 1720), p. 55.
Older forms may be found in Migne, Pat. Cursus, lxxxvii, 930 ff., et passim; Cabrol, op. cit., i2, 1930, ff.; Migne, Encyclopédie Théologique, viii, 588; Edmund Martene, Veterum Scriptorum (Paris, 1724), ii, 80, et passim; David Wilkins, Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae (London, 1737), i, 618, et passim; William Maskell, Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiae Anglicanae, 2nd. ed., (Oxford, 1882), ii, clxxv, n. 67, et passim; Edmund Martene, De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus (Bassani, 1788), ii, 313, ff.; Lea, op. cit., p. 302, f., p. 343, ff.
Brief portions of a very elaborate form collected by Martene may be quoted: “… Erubescant, & confundantur, & pereant. … Sintque maledictiones illae quas Dominus super filios Israel per Moysen promulgavit super illos … sintque maledirti in civitate, maledirti in agro, & in omni loco. … Maledicta omnia quae illorum sunt, & maledirti egredientes & regredientes … Disperdat eos Dominus de terra sua velociter … Percutiat eos Dominus fame & siti, egestate, frigore, febri, donec deficiant … Percutiat eos Dominus ulcere pessimo, scabie quoque, prurigine, amentia & caecitate …”—“Formula IV. Excommunicationis. Ex quatuor mss. codicibus Noviomensi, Regio, Vindocinensi annorum 600. & Vallis-cellae. Excommunicatio Leonis Papae,”—De Rit., ii, 323, f.
6 Cf. G. R. Owst, Preaching in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1926), p. 296; Christopher Wordsworth, and Henry Littlehales, The Old Service-books of the English Church (London, 1904), p. 270, ff.; Henry Littlehales, English Fragments from Latin Medieval Service-books, E.E.T.S., Ex. Ser., 90, 9.
7 Ed. Andrew Clark, E.E.T.S., Or. Ser., 129, 3. From its citation of the Constitutions of John de Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury, this curse must be dated post 1343.
8 Published with Manuale et Processionale ad Usum Insignis Ecclesiae Eboracensis, ed. by W. G. Henderson, Surtees Society (Edinburgh, 1875), p. 93∗. The articles of excommunication are taken from an edition of the Manuale printed at Rouen in 1510; the use of this formula, of course, antedates the printed work. Cf. also Maskell, op. cit., iii, 309, ff.
9 Op. cit., p. 359.
10 In Jacob's Well, an elaborate allegorical sermon, is found a slightly different rendering of the familiar curse:
“… Alle þat ben gylty in þe artycles of þe sentence, tyl þei come to amendement, þei be cursyd in slepyng, in wakyng, in stondyng, in syttyng, in going, in lyggyng, in spekyng, in silence, in etyng, in drynkyng, & in all here werkyng. In þis cursyng, who-so deye vnrepentaunt, schal haue a dredeful ende.”
E.E.T.S., Or. Ser., 115, 9; ed. Arthur Brandeis, according to whom, “in all probability the work was composed in the first quarter of the fifteenth century.”—p. xiii. Cf. id., 63, for another form of the curse.
In The Points and Articles of Cursing is the following variation:
“… We acurson hem be þe auctorite off þe courete off Rome, wit-inne and wit-oute forзþe, sclepynge & wakynge, goynge, syttynge, and standinge, lyggynge of-bowne þe erthe & vndur þe erthe, spekynge, rydynge, goynge, syttynge, stondynge, etynge, drynkynge, in wode, in watur, in felde & in towne …”
Ed. Edward Peacock, E.E.T.S., Or. Ser., 31, 67. The Points and Articles of Cursing is printed with Myrc's Instructions for Parish Priests, the composition of which Mr. Peacock opines to have been somewhat earlier than the MS., which he dates not later than 1450 (p. v). The Cursing is presumably of similar date, though the same or a similar formula may have been in use long before this was written down. The repetitions in the above passage are found in the MS., according to the editor.
11 Collected by Martene, De Rit., ii, 325, “Formula vi. Excommunicationis. Ex ms. codice S. Audoeni Rotomagensis ante annos 600. exarato.”
Of course the Latin formulae after being recited in the original, were translated into the vernacular for the edification of the congregation. Migne reproduces a form which is followed by the directions, “Post haec episcopus plebi excommunicationem communibus verbis debet explanare, ut omnes intelligant, quam terribiliter dampnatus sit.”—“Ex cod. 277 theol. Vindobon. saec. xii vel xiii,” in Pat. Cursus cxxxviii, 1125.
12 Hous of Fame i, 94–97.
13 Cf. “Ordo vi. Ex ms. Pontificali Bisuntino” in Martene, De Rit., ii, 314; “Item Alia Terribilior excommunicatio” in Migne, Pat. Cursus, lxxxvii, 947; “Excommunicatio Hominum Balduini, Comitis Flandriae, Propter Occisionem Fulconis, Archiepiscopi Rhemensis, ab Illis Perpetratam: Anno nongentésimo Dominicae Incarnationis,” ib.; in Martene, Vet. Scrip., ii, 80, is the phrase, “& aeterno damnavi anathemate.”
14 Cf. “Formula i. Excommunicationis Ex Pontificale Anglicano monasterii Gemmeticensis, ante annos 900. exarato,” in Martene, De Rit., ii, 323.
15 Cf. “Formula vii. Excommunicationis. Ex. mss. Monast. Fiscannensis,” id., ii, 325.
16 In the chapter De Benedictione et Consecratione Virginum.
17 Cf. “Item Alia Terribilior excommunicatio,” in Migne, Pat. Cursus, lxxxvii, 947; “Excommunicatio Hominum Balduini, Comitis Flandriae, Propter Occisionem Fulconis, Archiepiscopi Rhemensis, ab Illis Perpetratala: Anno nongentésimo Dominicae Incarnationis,” ib.; “Ordo vi. Ex ms. Pontificale Bisuntino,” in Martene, De Rit., ii, 314; “Formula iv. Excommunicationis. Ex quatuor mss. codicibus Noviomensi, Regio, Vindocinensi annorum 600 & Vallis-cellae. Excommunicatio Leonis Papae,” id., ii, 324, et sup.
18 Cf. “Ordo iii. Ex ms. Fontanellensi. Tenor Maledictionis Ferendae in Pervasores Latrones et Praedones Rerum Fontanellae,” id., ii, 322.
19 Cf. id., ii, 322, 324.
20 Hous of Fame, i, 103–106.
21 Cf. Maskell, op. cit., ii, clxxv, f., et passim; William Lynwood, Provinciale (seu Constitutiones Angliae) (Oxford, 1679), passim; Wordsworth and Littlehales, op. cit., p. 270; Owst, op. cit., p. 359; Edward Peacock, op. cit., p. 60; Henry Littlehales, op. cit., p. 9; A. T. Bannister, ed., Registrum Thome Spofford, Episcopi Herefordensis (London, 1919), passim; Arthur Brandeis, op. cit., p. 13; Edward L. Cutts, Parish Priests and Their People in the Middle Ages in England (London, 1898), p. 545.
22 Edward Peacock, op. cit., p. 60.
23 Cf. Cutts, op. cit., p. 545.
24 Cf. G. M. Trevelyan, England in the Age of Wycliffe (London, 1925), p. 48.
25 Robert of Brunne's ‘Handlyng Synne,‘ A.D. 1303, ed. F. J. Furnivall, E.E.T.S., Or. Ser., 123, 337.
26 Canterbury and York Series, viii, xiv, xv, xviii, xx.
In Wyclif's Of Clerks Possessioners, chap. 25, is the satirical observation: “Þes possessionem þat bynden hem to perfit conseilis of crist & to forsake þe world ben moste bisy to stryne and piede for worldly possessions bi londis lawe, & curse also for dymes, зe, for foure penyworþ good curse many þousand soules to helle.”—F. D. Mathew, The English Works of Wyclif, E.E.T.S., Or. Ser. 74, 132. Mathew's note on this passage is worth quoting: “So Nicolas de Clamengis: ‘Sed hodiernis diebus adeo invaluerunt, ut passim pro levissimo quasi delicto, saepe etiam pro nullo inferantur. Sique in nullum timorem sed in extremum pervenerunt contemptum.’—De Corrupto Ecclesiae Statu (Brown's Fascic. ii. 558). The evil was of old standing. In the eleventh century Peter Damiani pleaded for a less liberal use of excommunication.—Letters to Nicholas II. (i. 7) and Alexander II. (i. 14). It is worth while, however, to note one marked contrast. Damiani's plea is: ‘Indignum quippe est, ut propter unius homuncionis offensam tam innumerabilis multitudo hominum depreat.’—Opera, vol. i. col. 22. The souls perishing from the curse excite his pity. With Clamengis the complaint is, that too-frequent use of the excommunication has destroyed its terrors.”—id., p. 509.
Remonstrances against the frequent use of the censure are found as early as the time of St. Chrysostom, whose De non Anathematizandis Vivis vel Defunctis is an eloquent appeal for the exercise of Christian charity in matters of discipline.
The abuses of excommunication eventually led to its use as a mere ban or curse, and it came to be applied, as such, to the anathematizing of birds, animals, rodents, and insects, even of plants and inanimate objects. It was used as a persuasive supplement to the secular law in the settlement of minor disputes of all kinds, the recovery of stolen property, and the collection of debts. In one case, a hundred trivial offenses were enumerated, any one of which made the unhappy offender subject to ipso facto excommunication.
Cf., in this connection, Lea, op. cit., pp. 416–458; J. S. P. Tatlock, “Chaucer and Wyclif,” in Mod. Phil. xiv (1916–17), 72 n. 2; Herbert B. Workman, John Wyclif (Oxford, 1926), ii, 25 ff.
27 Op. cit., p. 11, f.
28 Theodor Erbe, ed., E.E.T.S., Ex. Ser., 96, 281.
29 Op. cit., p. 296, n. 5. Cf. John Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials (Oxford, 1822), i, 253.
30 In W. W. Skeat, Chaucerian and Other Pieces (Oxford, 1897), pp. 147–190. Although this poem is said to contain lengthy interpolations of the sixteenth century, “Their tone is that of the beginnings of the Reformation movement; it is not far from the tone of the Lollard writings of the fourteenth and the early fifteenth century.” Cf. Henry Bradley, “‘The Plowman's Tale’,” in The Athenaeum (1902), ii, 62. When the Griffon, in his rage, thundered at the Pellican:
Cf. also ll. 163–176, 224, 239, 264, 291, 567, 634.
31 Thomas Arnold, ed., Select English Works of John Wyclif (Oxford, 1871), iii, 271–337.
32 Publications of the Wyclif Society, London, 1883—, De Dom., i, 277–278; Fasc. Z., pp. 251–252; De Ecc., p. 156; Off. Reg., pp. 169–176. p. 231, ff. For a discussion of Wyclif's views on the matter, cf. Tatlock, op. cit., p. 70, ff.; Workman, op. cit., ii, 25, ff.
33 Cf. especially Canterbury Tales, A. 486, 653–657; D. 1312–18, 1346–49, 1573–89. A. 659–662 would seem to reflect Chaucer's sober censure of the light employment of the solemn curse; Tatlock's interpretation of the passage, however, accords with the findings of the present article. (Op. cit., p. 69, f.)
34 Cf. Thomas Wright, Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets … of the Twelfth Century (London, 1872), ii, 520, f.; cf. also Migne, Pat. Cursus, ccx, 482.
35 Troilus, v, 1849.
36 Canterbury Tales, B. 3419.
37 Id., D. 1261–64.
38 Cf. Hearnius, op. cit., 56; Henderson, op. cit., 122; Martene, Vet. Scrip., ii, 80; Migne, Encyclopédie Théologique viii, 588; Pontificale Romanum, chapters De Benedictione et Consecratione Virginum, Ordo Excommunicandi et Absolvendi; Migne, Pat. Cursus cxxxviii, 1125.
39 Op. cit., 9. Cf. “And but yf they have grace of God, for to amende them here by theyr lyve, [they are accursed] for to dwelle in the peynes of hell for ever withouten ende,” Maskell, op. cit., iii, 325, f., quoted from the Sarum Manual; cf. also Clark, cit. sup., Henderson, cit. sup., and Owst, cit. sup.
40 Canterbury Tales, D. 1628–30; the entire passage includes D. 1618–35.
41 Legend of Good Women, “A-prologue,” 390–392.
42 Oxford Chaucer, iii, 305–306.
43 Rituale Romanum Pauli V (Antwerpiae, 1669), p. 68. Cf. also Migne, Encyclopédie Théologique, viii, 33.
44 Cf. Pontificale Romanum, chapter Ordo Excommunicandi et Absolvendi; Martene, De Rit., ii, 327; Henderson, op. cit., p. 95∗; Christopher Wordsworth, Salisbury Processions and Ceremonies (Cambridge, 1901), p. 257. In Rituel Romain … de nostre S. Pere le Pape Paul V (Lyon, 1652), p. 52, the rubric is translated, “il aura despoüillées iusques à la chemise.”
45 Cf. Cabrol, op. cit., i2, 1936. In De Viris Illustribus, cap. xxxv, Saint Jerome cites the following adjuration from Irenaeus:
“Adjuro te, qui transcribis librum istum, per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum et per gloriosum eius adventum quo iudicaturus est et vivos et mortuos, ut conferas, postquam scripseris, et emendes ilium ad exemplar, unde transcripsisti, diligentissime; hanc quoque obtestationem similiter transferas, ut invenisti in exemplari.”
46 Cf. John Willis Clark, The Care of Books (Cambridge, 1901), p. 77, ff.; George H. Putnam, Books and Their Makers during the Middle-Ages (New York, 1896), i, 73.
47 In Cabrol, op. cit., i2, 1936.
48 Michel's sole reference is to “M. G. H. Pipping, Imprecationes libris adscriptae, Leipzig, 1721,” a work I have been unable to locate in this country.
49 The lines read:
50 With Chaucer's curse may be compared the well-known lines from Apocalypsis 22.18, 19: “Contestar enim omni audienti verba prophetiae libri hujus: Si quis apposuerit ad haec, apponet Deus super ilium plagas scriptas in libro isto; et si quis diminuerit de verbis libri prophetiae hujus, auferet Deus partem ejus de libro vitae et de civitate sancta et de his quae scripta sunt in libro isto.”
The nearest approach I have found to a medieval imprecation against careless scribes is in Maskell, op. cit., i, cxcviii:
“As a proof of how great the care was which was taken anciently of the church service books, we may refer to … statutes drawn up by the founder of the college of St. Mary Ottery: ‘… Inhibemus etiam districte sub poena excommunicationis, ne quis praesumat aut, ut quandoque vidimus in ecclesiis ruralibus, de foliis librorum ex quacunque eorum parte aliquid abscindere vel superscribere ad librorum deformitatem aut mutilationem, nec etiam sub colore correctionis aliquid in litera vel nomine immutare …‘”
According to R. N. Worth, A History of Devonshire (London, 1886), p. 84, the college at Ottery was founded by Bishop Grandisson in 1337.
51 Martene, De Rit., ii, 324, cit. sup.
52 Canterbury Tales, A. 486.
