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Extract
- “For thogh a widwe hadde noght a sho,
- So plesaunt was his In principio,
- Yet wolde he have a ferthing er he wente.“
- Prologue to Cant. Tales, ll. 253-5.
Exactly what was the Friar's “In principio,” and why did he use it when he went to call on barefoot widows?
These questions evidently suggested themselves to Tyrwhitt, who in his epoch-making edition of the Canterbury Tales (1775), observes: “This phrase is commonly explained to refer to the Beginning of St. John's Gospel. It may also refer to the Beginning of Genesis. In an old French Romance, l'histoire des trois Maries, it seems to signify some passage in the conclusion of the Mass.”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1922
References
1 Opus cit., vol. iv, pp. 200-1. Tyrwhitt then quotes these lines:
“Moult aise sui quant audio
Le Prestre dire In principio,
Car la Messe si est finee.“
It is somewhat surprising that neither Tyrwhitt in making this last suggestion nor Furnivall in answering it seems to have consulted the Roman Missal, where they would have found near the end of the Mass “the Beginning of St. John's Gospel,” with a rubric directing the Priest to read it. See further discussion of the Mass, below.
2 “3 Tyndale, pp. 61, 62, in his ‘Answer to Sir T. More's Dialogue,‘ 1530, edited for the Parker Society, by the Rev. H. Walter, B. D.” Furnivall, “Temporary Preface” to the Six-Text Edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Part I, page 93. The Genesis, it will be remembered, begins, “In principio creavit Deus coelum et terram.”
3 Liddell, M. H., ed., Prologue to Canterbury Tales, Knightes Tale, and Nonnes Prestes Tale, p. 146.
4 Horstman, ed., Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and Bis Followers (1896), vol. ii, p. 296, n.
5 See Horstman, op. cit., II, 274.
6 Horstman, op. cit., II, 296.
7 See Greg's introduction to the play in the Malone Society edition (1907).
8 Op. cit., ll. 538-9.
9 The Man of Law's Tale, Nun's Priest's Tale, and Squire's Tale Done into Modern English (1904), p. 119.
10 Op. cit., p. 146.
11 Selections from Chaucer (1907), p. 244.
12 Globe Chaucer (1898), p. 4, n. The note as slightly revised in later editions alludes to the “first few verses,” and their supposed “magical value.”
13 Prologue, Knight's Tale, and Nun's Priest's Tale (1899, Riverside Literature Series), p. 12, n.
14 Geoffroy Chaucer (1910), p. 223.
15 English Prose and Poetry (1917), p. 62.
16 Poems of Chaucer (1911), p. 173.
17 Together with the other gospels, viz., Luke i. 26-33; Matthew ii. 1-12, and Mark xvi. 14-20, it forms the introduction to a beautifully illuminated French or Flemish Prymer of the fifteenth century in the Wrenn Library of the University of Texas. Though I have found only one such gospel mentioned (Part II, p. lxxvi) in the Prymers listed by Littlehales in his edition of The Prymer or Lay Folks' Prayer-Book (E. E. T. S., Orig. Series, Nos. 105 and 109, 1895-7), I have counted twelve Prymers in the “Hand-List” of Hoskins' Primers: Sarum, York, and Roman (1901), which contain the “initium sancti evangelii secundum Johannem” either in the beginning or later in the volume, and almost invariably the other “evangelia” named immediately follow. In fact, Littlehales and Hoskins are chiefly concerned with English Prymers; but Pollard, in Bibliographica, vol. iii, pp. 430-473 (1897), points out that the typical French Book of Hours from 1486 to 1500 included precisely the “evangelia” that I have mentioned.
18 De Civitate Dei, lib. x, cap. 29, Migne, Patrol. Lai. XLI, 309.
19 Arrowsmith. See Ryle, J. C., Expository Thoughts on the Gospels (1879), vol. i, p. 6.
20 Fortescue, A., in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1909), vol. v, p. 150.
21 The Mass (1912), pp. 393-4. For this reference I am indebted to my friend, Dr. F. A. Litz, now of Johns Hopkins University. Professor F. N. Robinson has recently called my attention to two other references to the “god-spelle” in question: an article by John Jenkins in the Transactions of the Cymmrodorion Society, 1919-20, pp. 109 ff., which I have not yet seen; and The Lay Folk's Mass Book, ed. Simmons, E. E. T. S., No. 71, p. 146. The latter passage Simmons annotates, op. cit., p. 383: “In principio are the two first words of the Gospel according to St. John, here used for the gospel written in the first fourteen verses of the first chapter, which from the earliest times has been the gospel for Christmas-day throughout the West.”
22 Opus cit., p. 136, n.
23 Page 273.
24 Opus cit. (1910), p. 57, n.
25 Ll. 417-8; ed. Christie (1893), p. 573.
26 Scott-Saintslury Dryden (1885), vol. xi, p. 353, n.
27 The Poetry of Chaucer (1906), p. 216, n.
28 The Man of Law's Tale, etc., Done into Modern English (1904), p. 119. Cf. idem, Complete Works of Chaucer (1900), vol. v, p. 255.
29 The Modern Reader's Chaucer (1906), p. 135.
30 Tyrwhitt, Cant. Tales, III. 290-1.
31 Professor Lowes, who kindly examined for me in February, 1920, both the 1494 and 1624 editions of the Spec. Hist., confirmed the quotation as given by Tyrwhitt.
32 Kate O. Petersen, On the Sources of the Nonne Prestes Tale, 1898, p. 96, n. Recently Professor Carleton Brown (Mod. Lang. Notes, XXXV. 479 ff.) has traced the history of this definition of Mulier from the Philosopher Secundus, and has shown that it circulated widely as a floating bit of monastic wisdom.
33 The College Chaucer, 1913, p. 653. This is taken from the Glossary, which was done “in collaboration with Thomas Goddard Wright.”
34 I have cited MacCracken as a shining mark, yet he is not alone in making this slip. For Lillian Winstanley's edition of The Nonnë Prestes Tale (Cambridge, Eng., 1914) reads, p. 36: “In principio Mulier est hominis confusio. This is a sentence from Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale (X, 71).”