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Chaucer, the “corones tweyne,” and the Eve of Saint Agnes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 February 2016

James H. Morey
James H. Morey*
Affiliation:
Emory University
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Extract

John Keats was one of the last English poets to lyricize a venerable tradition when, in his “The Eve of Saint Agnes,” the narrator describes

… one Lady there,

Whose heart had brooded, all that wintry day,

On love, and winged St. Agnes' saintly care,

As she had heard old dames full many times declare.

They told her how, upon St. Agnes' Eve,

Young virgins might have visions of delight,

And soft adorings from their loves receive

Upon the honey'd middle of the night,

If ceremonies due they did aright.

(42–50)

Type
Research Article
Information
Traditio , Volume 62 , 2007 , pp. 119 - 133
Copyright
Copyright © Fordham University 

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References

1 Quoted from The Complete Poems , ed. Barnard, John, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1988), 312–23, at 313. For much of his short life, Keats was an avid reader of Chaucer. See Priestly, F. E. L., “Keats and Chaucer,” Modern Language Quarterly 5 (1944): 439–47, where he notes several verbal echoes between “The Eve of St. Agnes” and Troilus and Criseyde, though none relate directly to the subject matter of this paper. On 17 November 1819, Keats wrote to his publisher John Taylor of his desire to read Chaucer instead of Ariosto, and to “diffuse the colouring of St. Agnes eve throughout a Poem in which Character and Sentiment would be figures to such drapery” (The Letters of John Keats: 1814–1821 , ed. Rollins, Hyder Edward, 2 vols. [Cambridge, 1958] 2:234).Google Scholar

2 See, among many sources which document the various rituals associated with the occasion, Brand, John, Observations on Popular Antiquities, Including the Whole of Mr. Bournes Antiquitates vulgares, With Addenda to Every Chapter of That Work: As Also an Appendix Containing Such Articles on the Subject as Have Been Omitted by That Author (Newcastle upon Tyne, 1777), 386–87; see alternatively Brand, John, Observations on Popular Antiquities, 3 vols. (London, 1849; repr., Detroit, 1969), 1:34–38; Chambers, Robert, The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1863)1:140–41; Wright, Arthur Robinson, British Calendar Customs , ed. Lones, T. E., 3 vols. (London, 1936–40), 2:106–110; Merceron, Jacques E., Dictionnaire thématique et géographique des saints imaginaires, facétieux et substitués (Paris, 2002), 962–63; von Hoffman-Krayer, Eduard and Bächtold-Stäubli, Hanns, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, 10 vols. (Berlin, 1927–42), 1:214. Josiah Relph wrote a poem on “Saint Agnes Fast” in his Miscellany of Poems: Consisting of Original Poems, Translations, Pastorals in the Cumberland Dialect, Familiar Epistles, Fables, Songs, and Epigrams (Glasgow, 1747), 144–47; and J. Robertson collects another version in Poems: Consisting of Tales, Fables, Epigrams, &c. &cc. By Nobody (London, 1770), 100–101. Gay, John, in an imitation of Virgil's eighth eclogue, gathered several traditions of love-divination and conjuration in “Thursday” of The Shepherd's Week (1714), though none deals specifically with Agnes (John Gay: Poetry and Prose , ed. Dearing, Vinton A., 2 vols. [Oxford, 1974], 1:109–13). For the practices themselves, see Drury, Susan M., “English Love-Divinations Using Plants: An Aspect,” Folklore 97 (1986): 210–14; Menefee, Samuel P., “‘Master and Servant’: A Divinatory Class Dream,” Folklore 99 (1988): 88–97; and La Plante, Alice and La Plante, Clare, Dear Saint Anne, Send Me a Man (And Other Time-honored Prayers for Love) (New York, 2001), 12–18.Google Scholar

3 Ben Jonson , ed. Donaldson, Ian (Oxford, 1985), 485 and his note on page 729. For the full text of the masque, see Ben Jonson , ed. Herford, C. H., Simpson, Percy, and Simpson, Evelyn, 11 vols. (Oxford, 1941), 7:119–31. The relevant lines are 72–77 on page 123. For the circumstances of the 1603 masque, see Keightley, Thomas, The Fairy Mythology, 2 vols. (London, 1833), 2:141–43. “Anne,” “Annes,” “Anneis,” and “Anneys” were variant spellings of “Agnes” as for example in the South English Legendary , ed. Horstmann, Carl, EETS o. s. 87 (London, 1887), 181–84; also ed. D'Evelyn, Charlotte and Mill, Anna J., EETS o. s. 235 (London, 1956), 19; and Bokenham's, Osbern Legendys of Hooly Wummen , ed. Serjeantson, Mary S., EETS o. s. 206 (London, 1938), 111–29. The spelling “Annes” is also common on pieces of early Christian glass that represent Agnes (see n. 16 below).Google Scholar

4 Burton, Robert, The Anatomy of Melancholy , ed. Shilleto, A. R., 3 vols. (London, 1893; repr., New York, 1973), 3:207. Saltonstall, Wye, Picturae Loquentes, reprinted from the editions of 1631 and 1635 (Oxford, 1946). He recounts (ibid., 46, emphasis in original) the following concerning his nineteenth character, a maid: “If she keepe a Chambermaide, she lyes at her bedds feete, and they two say no Paternosters, but in the morning tell one another all their wanton dreames, talke all night long of young men, and will be both sure to faste on St. Agnes night to know who shall bee their first husbands.” Google Scholar

5 Ed. Skeat, Walter W., EETS o. s. 76, 82, 94, 114 (London, 1881–90). Agnes's life is in vol. 76, no. 7.Google Scholar

6 “Haec [feast days] sunt ferianda ab operibus mulierum tantum” ( Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, A Synado Verolamiensi A.D. CCCXLVI ad Londinensem A.D. [MDCCXVII]. Accedunt constitutiones et alia ad historiam Ecclesiae Anglicanae spectantia , ed. Wilkins, David, 4 vols. [London, 1737] 1:678).Google Scholar

7 See Bond, Francis, Dedications and Patron Saints of English Churches (London, 1914), 19; Duffy, Eamon, “Holy Maydens, Holy Wyfes: The Cult of Women Saints in Fifteenth-and Sixteenth-Century England,” Women in the Church , ed. Shields, W. J. and Wood, Diana, Studies in Church History 27 (Oxford, 1990), 175–96. For the Sarum Breviary, see Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesiae Sarum , ed. Procter, Francis and Wordsworth, Christopher, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1879–86; repr., Farnborough, 1970), 3:86–95. For the York Breviary see Breviarium ad usum insignis ecclesie Eboracencis , ed. Lawley, Stephen W., Surtees Society vols. 71 and 75 (Durham, 1880–83); and for Hereford see The Hereford Breviary , ed. Frere, Walter Howard and Brown, Langton E. G., Bradshaw Society vols. 26, 40, 46 (London, 1904–15). These lives were read in church: “Who can amend the life of Saynt Kateryne / Or be bolde to make a newe descripcyon / Of Holy Agnes, martyre and virgyne, / After the noble doctours tradicyon, / Saynt Ambrose, which with gode eloquucyon / Wryten hath her life sufficiently, / That in the chirche is redd openly?” (Die mittelenglische Umdichtung von Boccaccios De claris mulieribus , ed. Schleich, Gustav, Palaestra 144 [Leipzig, 1924], lines 197–203).Google Scholar

8 All Chaucerian quotations are from The Riverside Chaucer , gen. ed. Benson, Larry D., 3rd ed. (Boston, 1987).Google Scholar

9 Malarkey, Stoddard, “The ‘Corones Tweyne’: An Interpretation,” Speculum 38 (1963): 473–78; Doob, Penelope B. R., “Chaucer's ‘Corones Tweyne’ and the Lapidaries,” Chaucer Review 7 (1972–73): 85–96; Wetherbee, Winthrop, Chaucer and the Poets (Ithaca, 1984), 94 n. 6; Thundy, Zacharias P., “Chaucer's Corones Tweyne and Mattheolus,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 86 (1985): 343–47; Root, Robert Kilburn, note to line 2.1735 in The Book of Troilus and Criseyde (Princeton, 1926). See also Barry Windeatt's note to the same line in his edition (London, 1984; 2nd ed., 1990). The relevant lines in the Second Nuns Tale are 218–80. In ælfric's life of Saint Cecilia an angel presents her with “twam cyne-helmas” (see n. 5 above, vol. 114, life no. 34, line 75). Other interpretations cited by the note to line 1735 in the Riverside edition suggest allusions to “la corona dell'honesta mia” in Boccaccio's Filostrato (2.134, proposed by Howard Patch in Modern Language Notes 70 [1955]: 8–12), to the “diadem” of Canticles 3:11 (R. E. Kaske in a talk to the New Chaucer Society, 16 April 1982), to the practice of swearing by one's “crown” (head), to the crowns of Priam and Hecuba, to the “crounes tweyne” of Henry VI mentioned by John Lydgate in 1432, and to the “stevening” ceremony in the nuptial rites of the Greek Orthodox Church.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 De virginibus 1.2 (PL 16:191B). See also the hymns by Pope Damasus to Agnes and Agatha, where Agatha wears a “diadema duplex” (ca. 380; PL 13:404A).Google Scholar

11 Peristephanon , trans. Thomson, H. J., 2 vols., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, 1979), 2:339, Hymn 14, lines 1–7. For the sources of the Agnes legend, see Palmer, Anne-Marie, Prudentius on the Martyrs (Oxford, 1989), 240, 250–53, 261.Google Scholar

12 The Letters of Abelard and Eloise , trans. Scott-Moncrieff, C. K. (New York, 1926), 166–67.Google Scholar

13 Hali Meidhad , ed. Millett, Bella, EETS o. s. 284 (London, 1982), 11, lines 17–21. Translations are my own.Google Scholar

14 Denomy, Alexander Joseph, The Old French Lives of St. Agnes and Other Vernacular Versions of the Middle Ages , Harvard Studies in Romance Languages (Cambridge, MA, 1938), 199. These are lines 249–50 from version B of the Old French life. Neither version A nor the Latin Gesta (printed in parallel by Denomy) contains this reference. Version A does note how the crowning of Jerusalem in Ezek. 16:8–13 is like the preparation of Agnes for her espousal with Christ (lines 97–120).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Ortolan, Th., “auréole” in DThC 1:2571–75.Google Scholar

16 From Raffaele Garrucci, P., Storia della Arte Cristiana , 6 vols. (Prato, 1872–81), 3, tav. 191.1. This type of glass is quite common, though the two doves do not always hold crowns. See Bovini, Giuseppe, Monumenti Figurati Paleocristiani Conservati a Firenze, series 2 (Rome, 1950), 6:33–35; and Morey, Charles Rufus, The Gold-Glass Collection of the Vatican Library , ed. Ferrari, Guy (Vatican City, 1959), references on p. 77.Google Scholar

17 At the request of his daughter, the Emperor Constantine built the first, ambulatory basilica (fourth century; now in ruins) as Bede notes in the Greater Chronicle, part of his De temporum ratione. See the translation included in The Ecclesiastical History , ed. McClure, Judith and Collins, Roger (Oxford, 1994), 320. Margaret Visser provides a detailed examination of the later gallery basilica (seventh century) and of ceremonies involving the crowning of two lambs still performed today in The Geometry of Love: Space, Time, Mystery, and Meaning in an Ordinary Church (New York, 2000), 119–20. Excellent photographs of both structures can be found in Hugo Brandenburg, Ancient Churches of Rome from the Fourth to the Seventh Century (Turnhout, 2004), 69–73, 240–47, 320–22.Google Scholar

18 Karen Winstead reproduces this drawing in her Chaste Passions: Medieval English Virgin Martyr Legends (Ithaca, 2000), 101, and she also includes Osbern Bokenham's account of the “bright light” and “glorious brightness” surrounding Agnes (ibid., 106). See also Winstead's discussion of the drawings of Saints Agatha and Juliana from Tanner 17 in Virgin Martyrs: Legends of Sainthood in Medieval England (Ithaca, 1997), 112–17. Neither is surrounded by any such aureole. I wish to thank Professor Winstead for her help with Agnes lore and legend.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 See OED “diadem,” 1.b. For the altar, see von der Osten, Gert, Hans Baldung Grein: Gemälde und Dokumente (Berlin, 1983), plate 5.Google Scholar

20 Ott, Joachim, Krone und Krönung: Die Verheissung und Verleihung von Kronen in der Kunst von der Spätantike bis um 1200 und die geistige Auslegung der Krone (Mainz, 1998).Google Scholar

21 Images of the martyrs in San Apollinare Nuovo can be found in von Simson, Otto G., Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna (Chicago, 1948), plates 38, 39, 42, 43, and 44.Google Scholar

22 See Stratford, Jenny, The Bedford Inventories: The Worldly Goods of John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France (1389–1435). Report of the Research Committee of the Society of Antiquaries of London No. 49 (London, 1993), 319–25, plates 6, 7, 30–35. Stratford prints all of the documentation relevant to the cup's known history.Google Scholar

23 An image of the calendar illustration for January in the Tres Riches Heures can be found in Longnon, Jean et al., The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry (New York, 1969), plate of folio 2 recto.Google Scholar

24 See Pearsall, Derek, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer (Oxford, 1992), 67. “Jean, Duc de Berry, was at the English court for long spells between 1360 and 1367, and no doubt Chaucer got to know him too” (ibid., 70). Born in 1340, Jean was either the same age as Chaucer or two or three years older.Google Scholar

25 Stratford, , Bedford Inventories , 321. Translation is my own.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., 324.Google Scholar

27 Pearsall, , Life of Geoffrey Chaucer , 105–6.Google Scholar

28 See Windeatt, Barry, The Oxford Guides to Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde (Oxford, 1992), 198–204 for an analysis of the time-sequence of the poem. Windeatt presumes that the May referred to at the beginning of bk. 2 is the same May as in bk. 3 at lines 624–26, and that “Chaucer has not defined the duration of the unnarrated intervals in Books 2 and 3 so as to suggest a period of years before the lovers' union” (ibid., 200). But if the dinner at the house of Deiphebus takes place on the Eve of Saint Agnes, Chaucer has in fact defined a time period in excess of one year.Google Scholar

29 See the Riverside note to lines 624–26, where the reference to a planetary conjunction in Cancer has been used to date the composition of the poem to May or June of 1385.Google Scholar

30 Wogan-Browne, , Saints' Lives and Women's Literary Culture c. 1150–1300: Virginity and Its Authorizations (Oxford, 2001). “The gradations between all the estates of the flesh, then, are more nuanced and more unstable than at first appears…. Virginity does indeed seem to have been too powerful and prestigious a cultural ideal to be ignored or discarded: rather, women negotiated with and redefined it so as to allow wives and mothers status as honorary virgins. But this is not of itself new: virginity is always recouped, always extended so as not to exclude wives and widows” (ibid., 48, emphases in original).Google Scholar

31 Ambrose of Milan, Verginità e vendovanza , ed. Gori, Franco, 2 vols., Biblioteca Ambrosiana 14 (Rome, 1989), 100–240; and Augustine of Hippo, De sancta uirginilate , ed. Zycha, J., CSEL 41 (Vienna, 1900), 235–302.Google Scholar

32 See Crow, Martin M. and Olson, Clair C., Chaucer Life-Records (Oxford, 1966), 546 n. 4, citing Manly's suggestion that “the Agnes Chaucer who with Joan Swynford was one of the ‘damsels’ in waiting at the coronation of Henry IV” may have been a daughter of the poet. Pearsall, Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, doubts the claim, saying that the connection of Elizabeth and Agnes Chaucer to the poet “rests on no more than the coincidence of a common surname” (ibid., n. on 204). Chaucer's great aunt on his father's side was another memorable Agnes, Agnes de Westhale, who abducted Chaucer's father John in 1324 to marry her daughter, Joan, to secure an inheritance. See Pearsall, Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, 12–14, and Crow and Olson, Life-Records, 3. Fortunately for the unborn Chaucer, the scheme failed.Google Scholar

33 See Pearsall, , Life of Geoffrey Chaucer , 11–14. “Agnes survived John, marrying Bar tholomew Chappel within weeks of her husband's death in 1366” (ibid., 14). The first mar riage to Northwell can be inferred by a bequest made by William de Northwell to his mother and to “Johanni de Northwell filio Agnetis Chaucer de Londinia” (Crow and Olsen, Life-Records, 8 n. 4). If this is the same Agnes, presumably John is her son from a previous marriage. Chaucer's grandmother Mary Heyron was also married three times, her second marriage being to Robert Malyn, alias Robert le Chaucer, grandfather of the poet. See Matheson, Lister, “Chaucer's Ancestry: Historical and Philological Reassessments,” Chaucer Review 25 (1991): 171–89, at 175.Google Scholar