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‘Verray goddes apes’: Troilus, Seynt Idiot and Festive Culture

Abstract

This paper examines the reference to ‘Seynt Idiot’ in Chaucer’s Troilus and

Criseyde, a blasphemous caricature of the God of Love which occurs in the first

book. It identifies parallels between this epithet and the mock saints found in

medieval inversion rituals, especially the continental sermons joyeux and other

liturgical parodies. On the basis of these echoes, the paper argues that Seynt

Idiot is being used to draw sarcastic parallels between love and the practices of

medieval festive culture. The implications of this are discussed in detail, paying

particular attention to the attitudes it implies towards the discourse of revelry.

Chaucer’s debt to festive culture is by now well documented. The efforts of a number

of critics, including Alfred David, Carl Lindahl, John Ganim and Jon Cook, have done

much to reveal the echoes of festive practice and modes of thought found in his

work.1 Most of this scholarship is of course directed at the Canterbury Tales. For

example, Laura Kendrick has connected the Tales to ‘occasions associated with

seasonal change’, and Arthur Lindley has described the frame narrative itself as a

‘holiday tale-telling game, a festive activity presided over by a mock-king and leading

to a promised feast’.2 However, an interesting and unrecognised allusion to inversion

ritual also occurs in one of Chaucer’s earlier and ostensibly more formal works,

Troilus and Criseyde.3

Although this reference may seem slight, it carries important

repercussions. Not only does it colour the conception of love offered by the romance,

it also gives an insight into Chaucer’s general view of popular culture at this stage in

his career. This paper will address these issues in turn. It will first seek to unravel

Chaucer’s allusion to festivity, pinning down the rituals he evokes, before gauging

how such material contributes towards wider patterns of meaning in the poem.

The reference in question occurs in the first book of Troilus, shortly after the

protagonist first confesses his attraction to the ‘swete fo called Criseyde’ (I, 874). His

confidant Pandarus expresses surprise at this admission, since his friend has always

shown utter contempt for love. Pandarus reminds Troilus at length of his former

mockery and ‘scorn’ of romantic attachment:

But wel is me that ever that I was born,

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That thou biset art in so good a place;

For by my trouthe, in love I dorste have sworn,

Thee sholde never han tid thus fayr a grace;

And wostow why? For thou were wont to chace

At Love in scorn, and for despyt him calle

‘Seynt Idiot, lord of thise foles alle’. (I, 904-10)

The reference to ‘Seynt Idiot’ in this passage is curious. Like much else in this

exchange, it has no parallel in Chaucer’s immediate sources, as it does not occur in

either Boccaccio’s Il Filostrato or Beauvau’s French redaction Le Roman de Troyle.

The promotion of love to an ironic sainthood has in fact proven sufficiently

remarkable to attract a small amount of critical commentary. Much of this concerns its

anachronistic reference to saint-worship, its opposition to the cult of fin ‘amor, or its

presentation of love as a religion with its own set of martyrs, a commonplace also

found in the Legend of Good Women (F 338) and in the Introduction to the Man of

Law’s Tale (II 61).4

While these are certainly important concerns, this focus does tend

to obscure the probable roots of Seynt Idiot. In particular, it overlooks the important

allusion to revelry that occurs in this phrase.

What connects Pandarus’ statement to festive culture is the fact that he uses the title of

a burlesque saint, an anointed ‘idiot’, to disparage love. The name Seynt Idiot recalls

the various parodies of the vitae, miracles and cults of saints which were generated

during the Middle Ages.5 In particular, it is reminiscent of the figures at the centre of

these travesties. Continental literature contains an entire pantheon of such burlesque

holymen or saints facétieux: for instance, medieval French refers to Saint Fausset

(Saint Falsehood), Sainct Oignon (Saint Onion), Sainte Raisin (Saint Grapes), Saint

Velu (Saint Hairy), and Saincte Caquette (Saint Chatterer), while Middle Dutch pays

tribute to Sinte Haryngus (Saint Herring), Sint Snottolf (Saint Snot-Nose), Sint

Aelwaere (Saint Punch-Up), and Sint Raspinus (Saint Prison).6 The styling ‘Seynt

Idiot’ follows the form of these figures, marking the canonization of a humdrum,

profane or otherwise inappropriate object or being. Some are in fact very close in

form to Chaucer’s parody, as the names ‘Sainte Follie’ and ‘Saint Sot’ occur in

French texts.7 Troilus’ pejorative description of love, in other words, seems to hint at

an expansive tradition of grotesque holymen.

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This in turn provides an important connection between Troilus and Criseyde and

medieval festive culture. Despite their apparent provenance in Latin texts such as the

Historia de Nemine (c.1250) and the Tractatus Garsiae (c.1100), which feature Saint

Nobody, Saint Cupidity and ‘the blessed martyrs Silver and Gold’, by the late Middle

Ages parodic saints had been firmly absorbed into popular culture.8 They had a

particularly strong foothold in festive practice. The presence of mock saints in revelry

is clear from a range of continental sources, which provide extensive documentation

of the role they played in games and rituals. One form which highlights their

prominence with particular clarity is the sermon joyeux. Broadly defined, this was a

form of liturgical parody in which a speaker recited a bawdy, scatological or merely

nonsensical text, closely following conventional ars praedecandi.9 It was often

performed on festival occasions, since its point was to verbalise the relaxation of

usual standards and restraints: as Jean-Claude Aubailly states, the sermon generally

presents ‘an apology for good cheer, for wine and for sex, celebrating in dramatic

form the lifting of the forbidden and the taboo, and illustrating the outburst of joy

which results’.10 The mock sermon drew mock saints firmly into its framework from

an early point, to the extent that the two became virtually inseparable. According to

Jacques Merceron, around a third of the surviving French sermons joyeux incorporate

some form of parodic hagiography.11 The titles of the surviving texts make this link

clear: many boast such headings as Sermon joyeux de Saint Jambon et Sainte

Andouille (Saint Ham and Saint Sausage), Sermon de Saint Belin (Saint Ram),

Sermoen van Sencte Reinhuut (Saint Empty), or Sermo pauperis Henrici de Sancto

Nemine (‘Sermon of Poor Henry on Saint Nobody’).12 As Jelle Koopmans and Paul

Verhuyck observe, the burlesque saint is a ‘principal theme’ of the mock sermon,

‘without doubt most important since it is most typical’.13

The strong presence of mock

saints in such customs demonstrates their affinity with the practices of misrule.

The important position allocated to mock saints is further illustrated by the function

they perform in many games and rituals. The saints do not play merely a marginal or

cosmetic role in medieval festivity, but are often evoked as patrons or mascots of

celebration itself. They are either treated as exemplars for revellers to follow, or else

as protectors of the celebrants. One Middle Dutch lyric of the late fifteenth century,

for instance, specifically names ‘Sinte Reynuut’ as ‘patroon van drinkebroers’, or

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patron of drinkers.14 Elsewhere there are proverbial references to ‘la confrérie saint

Fausset’ or ‘the brotherhood of Saint Falsehood’, while Shrovetide is described as the

Feast of Saint Crevard (Saint Famished).15 Mock saints therefore seem to have played

a quasi-protective role on feast occasions, acting as figureheads for the revels. In line

with this, the saints also seem to have been treated as objects of ironic reverence,

subject to prayers and oaths during festivals. This is evident from the ceremony used

to swear in a new king of fools at Brussels, which contains a pledge to Sinte Reynuut

and ends with the direction ‘now shove all your fingers into your hole and kiss

them’.16 The Sermon tresjoyeulx de monseigneur Sainct Frappecul contains much the

same idea, ending with the directive ‘make your supplication to Saint Smack-arse our

lord, who enables us always to spank, and to slap arses without respite’.17 Other texts

even claim the saints as emblems of inversion itself. A French mock sermon on Saint

Pou (Saint Louse), for example, turns Pou into a fully fledged embodiment of

carnival, emphasising how he bites all equally, with no regard for rank: as Koopmans

and Verhuyck write, the saint is ‘almost invisible and completely anarchistic…the

Louse represents chaos in the order, the grain of sand in the cog-wheels: a possible

idol for all those who do not profit from the established order, for the marginalised’.18

In other sources this identification is developed even further. In a fifteenth-century

mardi gras play from northern France, Saint Pensard (Saint Potbelly) is used as an

alternative name for the figure of Carnival.19 Similarly, in one of the eclogues of the

Castilian poet Juan del Encina, carnival is revered under the name of San Antruejo

(Saint Carnival): according to Françoise Maurizi, this idea was widespread in

medieval Spain.20

The mock saint, in other words, not only functions as the symbolic

protector of revellers, but may also be the essence of revelry incarnate. Accordingly,

feasting and drinking become acts of veneration to him or her.

In fact, some saints played a role in festivity that was more than purely symbolic. In a

performance staged in Saxony in 1524, a saint appeared in material form to act as a

centrepiece for the festivities. On this occasion, ‘a mock bishop dressed in a straw

cloak, with a fish basket for a mitre’ led the town of Buchholz in a series of games

and parodies, most of which revolved around the ‘sanctification’ of a collection of

‘relics’: these consisted of ‘a horse’s head, the jawbone of a cow and two horselegs’.21

A less elaborate but comparable practice is evident in Spain. Charlotte Stern notes that

‘a straw man representing San Gorgomellaz (Saint Bigthroat) or San Antruejo’ could

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serve as ‘an actual stage prop’ during the ‘games associated with folk Carnival

celebrations...just as the English puppet Jack-of-Lent personified the Lenten

season’.22 In these instances, therefore, the parodic saint was made physically

manifest, and used as the direct focus of play. As a variation of this practice, other

sources suggest that the saint could function as a persona to be adopted, perhaps by

the leader of the celebrants. This possibility is hinted at in the sixteenth-century

German text ‘Gedidhte vom Niemand’, a dramatic monologue narrated by Saint

Nobody himself.23 A similar case is a Dutch spotsermoen in which the narrator speaks

intermittently as ‘Sanctus Drincatibus’ and ‘St Bacchus’, and attributes texts to

each.24 This performative possibility could well underpin such figures as Sainte Follie

and other canonised entertainers, especially since Follie is described as the ‘père’ of

numerous other saints, effectively their author and controller.25

It appears as though

mock saints were a role to be played in celebration as well as a symbol to be evoked.

In sum, continental sources reveal that the mock saint had a vital function to perform

in medieval festive culture. They could on various occasions serve as the figurehead,

the director, or even the centre of celebratory activity. Revellers often seem to

conceive their gatherings as cults dedicated to these profane figures, and at times

make them appear in material form, either as actors or objects to be ironically

venerated. In other words, much like Chaucer’s Seynt Idiot, the mock saint was ‘lorde

of these fooles alle’, leading others into foolery by overseeing misrule, as its symbolic

patron or its actual conductor.

Before considering why Chaucer might include a mock saint in Troilus, and what are

the effects and ramifications of this, it is necessary to examine the roles played by

mock saints in English festivity. After all, while European accounts of the saintes

facétieux are illuminating, there is no automatic reason to suppose that they reflect

practices on the other side of the North Sea, especially given the absence of Carnival

in the British ritual year.26 At first glance, the evidence of similar customs in medieval

England does seem disappointingly patchy. The references themselves are more

disparate than the Dutch, French, and German sources, and do not award saints as

consistent and formalised a place in festivity. Moreover, some allusions clearly belong

more to religious polemic than traditional play, such as Lollard derision of ‘Mariam

de Falsyngham’ and ‘the Lefdy of Foulpette’, or John Bale’s jeering at ‘imagys’ of

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‘seynt Spryte’, ‘saynt Cutlake’ (Saint Cutlass), and ‘saynt Legearde’ (Saint

Carthorse).27 Other records are frustratingly vague, such as the complaints by various

bishops, including Walter Cantilupe in 1240 and John Grandisson in 1360, that some

‘unsuitable pastimes’ aim to show ‘irreverence and contempt for the saints’, or ‘bring

shame to the saints’.28

Nevertheless, there are several pieces of evidence that do

suggest that mock saints had a key presence in English revelry. Throughout the

English references to these figures, even though most are post-medieval, insistent

connections arise between mock saints and folk customs, locating mock saints firmly

within traditional festive culture.

The firmest connection between these names and the English ritual year is provided

by the figure of St Distaff. Distaff is the only English saint to have an appointed ‘feast

day’, as sources occasionally describe 7 January, or the morning following Twelfth

Night, as St Distaff’s Day. The connection between this date and the figure seems to

be based on the traditional duties carried out on the day. As the first day of Yuletide

not consecrated by an official feast, 7 January was a time in which domestic work

could supposedly be resumed, such as the weaving which Distaff personifies.

Nonetheless, despite its theoretical position at the end of Yuletide, the day did not

represent the cessation of celebration. It gave rise to a number of peculiar customs,

many of which dramatised its vexed position between labour and leisure. As

Chambers summarises in his Book of Days, mock battles were often staged between

men and women over the materials used in weaving: to mark Distaff’s Day, men

would ritually gather up ‘flax and tow’ to make bonfires, while women would

retaliate by ‘sousing’ their attackers ‘from the water-pails’.29 What makes this all the

more interesting is that there is some suggestion that either the rituals or the figure are

medieval in origin. Although the earliest full account of the revels of ‘S. Distaffs day’

is Robert Herrick’s Hesperides (1648), which describes this occasion as one of ‘partly

worke and partly play’, earlier allusions imply that it may have existed in the Middle

Ages.30 According Derek Forbes, Lydgate’s Disguising at Hertford (c.1430) contains

a number of oblique references to the occasion, developing it into an allegory for

Henry VI’s passage out of ‘nursing care’ into ‘impending male training for the

realities of life’.31 Gail McMurray Gibson makes similar claims of the Digby plays

(fifteenth century), noting that ‘the St. Distaff play and game must have performed an

especially significant kind of ritual definition, as society turned from Christmas sport

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and Christmas worship to its “owne vocation”’.32

Saint Distaff might therefore

provide some evidence that burlesque saints were part of medieval English popular

culture: here a particular point in the ritual calendar, around which an informal set of

practices has gathered, is conceived as a festival in honour of a parodic martyr.

Although Saint Distaff is the only example of a festive occasion taking the name of a

mock saint, a number of texts refer to specific customs and games in which mock

saints were apparently involved. One example is the group of rituals associated with

Saint Agnes’ Eve. This occasion gave rise to various rites which supposedly allowed

an unmarried girl to ‘see her future partner in her dreams’, such as the preparation of

‘dumb cake’, or standing ‘over the spars of a gate or stile, looking on the moon’.33 In

his Fruitful Treatise of Fasting (1552), the Protestant theologian Thomas Becon

suggests that an imaginary saint was associated with these traditions. During his

attack on the ‘fond foolishness’ of folk observance, Becon derides ceremonies

performed on this ‘blessed saints even’, describing how ‘maids’ will habitually

beseech ‘St Sweetlad’ to ‘send us...good husbands’.34 Since the term ‘sweet lad’ is a

common endearment for a male lover, this appears to be a saint created for the

customs, somewhat like the ‘phallic’ saints that were worshipped for similar ends in

France and the Netherlands.35 A second saint with clear festive roots is ‘Saint Fool’,

who is preserved in the sayings ‘the vicar of sainct fooles’ and ‘the Vicarege of S.

Fooles’.36 These phrases were proverbial by the sixteenth century, as they occur in a

large number of early modern texts, ranging from the satires of Thomas Nashe, Joseph

Hall and John Weever, to devotional treatises by Richard Montagu, Arthur Dent and

Richard Charnock.37 Although the earliest known reference to ‘Saint Fooles’ is

Heywood’s Epigrams (c.1520), the name evidently stems from earlier festive

pastimes.38 The interlude Misogonus (c.1564-77) makes this clear: in the play, the

‘morio’ or ‘fool’ Cacurgus states that another character ‘would crave...the vicar of

Saint Fools’, only to be told he would ‘rather have shaking o’th’ sheets’.39 As Sally

Harper points out, it is apparent that ‘the Vicar of Saint Fools’ refers here to a form of

‘country dance’.40 The fact that Cacurgus is affecting a deliberately ‘rustic’ timbre

attests to this, as does the pairing of ‘the Vicar’ with a well-known reel ‘the Shaking

of the Sheets’, which is used as a setting for several later ballads.41 Other texts also

signal the same origin for Saint Fool: James Calfhill, in his Answer to Martiall (1566),

refers to his Vicar as ‘both minstrel and minister’, while Robert Greene links him with

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a type of costume, comparing a man’s ‘fine cloathes’ to a ‘footcloth for the vickar of

Saint Fooles’.42

It seems that Saint Fool belongs to the world of popular performance,

and celebratory music and dance in particular. Like Becon’s St Sweetlad, these

references indicate that mock saints had some currency in English festive culture at

the end of the Middle Ages.

Beyond these literary sources, there are also a handful of interesting citations in parish

records and account books. Three of these are worth noting in particular: the borough

court books of Grimsby, which refer to ‘the play of holy John of bowre’ in 1527; local

records at Shrewsbury, which mention a ‘playe of St Iulian the Apostate’ in 1556; and

the churchwarden’s accounts of Ashburton, Devon, which record a payment of ‘wyne’

for ‘hym that played Saynt Rosmont’, also in 1556.43 Lawrence Clopper has analysed

these records closely, and suggests that they describe Midsummer or May games

presided over by fictitious saints. He connects ‘Rosemont’ and ‘holy John’ with the

election of ‘Somer lords’, who would customarily ‘govern’ from decorated arbours:

the first is possibly ‘king of a bower known as “Rose Mont”’, the second ‘a local

“saint”, a May king who is enthroned in a bower’.44 In other words, these ‘saints’ may

be titles adopted by the traditional leaders of parish revels.45 In like manner, St Julian

might have some link to the practice of setting bonfires on Midsummer Eve, a custom

recorded from the thirteenth century onward: as Clopper stresses, this custom was

popularly thought to stem from ‘Iulianus apostata, whych tyrannously brent the bones

of Saint Iohan Baptyst’.46

Again, the mock saint appears in the context of seasonal

play, as a festival is apparently envisioned as a feast in his honour. Clopper’s remarks

therefore imply that mock saints had a function in these games, acting as personae for

revellers or patrons of celebration. It seems that English mock saints could on

occasion possess a function equivalent to their continental counterparts.

Alongside these more or less specific references, many texts also reveal a generalised

association between the saints and seasonal release. For instance, in numerous sources

there are clear connections between the saints and food, especially the overeating of

festival occasions. Such a link is apparent in Sir David Lindsay’s Satyre of the Thrie

Estaitis (1552), which twice evokes ‘Sanct Clone’ in the context of celebratory

feasting, once by a character demanding ‘gude wine’, and once by Foly, a fool figure

who distributes food or ‘disjune’.47 A similar connection occurs in John Palsgrave’s

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translation of Willem de Volder’s Acolastus (1540), which extends a passing

reference to ‘sancta saturitas’ in the original text into a discussion of ‘holy

belyfulnesse’, ‘saynte fylgutte’, and ‘saynte panchart’. Each of these figures is also

linked with feasting, having the stated power to ‘make thee happy with sendyng thee

good meate and drynke’.48 Alongside these alimentary connotations, there are also a

number of texts which grant mock saints an ironic authority over practices associated

with misrule. At the end of the fifteenth century, William Dunbar awards two mock

saints precisely this status: in ‘To the Merchants of Edinburgh’ he derides ‘commone

menstrallis’ as men who ‘serve Sanct Cloun’, while ‘The Dance of the Seven Deadly

Sins’ describes a burlesque tournament in which one competitor carries a ‘baner’ that

depicts ‘Sanct Girnega’, apparently a folkloric devil.49 In either case, the mock saint

comes to preside over celebration, as popular music becomes a devotion to

clownishness, and a canonised demon becomes an emblem of inversion. Much the

same logic appears in the morality play Hick Scorner (c.1513). Here mock saints also

represent an inverted morality, as the Vices name ‘Saint Pintle’ (Saint Penis) and

‘Saint Tyburn of Kent’ as the ruling influences of their riotous ‘folly’: at one stage

they even define their ‘lechery and misusing’ as a ‘pilgrimage...to Tyburn’.50 A

similar idea might underlie Middle English romances such as Sir Ferumbras (c.1380)

and Beves of Hamptoun (c.1324), in which swearing by ‘seynt Mahoun’ also signifies

wilful sacrilege.51

At any rate, in these late-medieval texts, there seems to be a

powerful link between mock saints and the moral inversion associated with of revelry,

as well as with feasting on ‘good meate and drynke’.

But perhaps the area of English revelry most strongly tied to mock saints is the

parodic sermon. The performance of sermons joyeux in medieval and early modern

England is reasonably well documented. The earliest surviving example dates from

the first quarter of the fourteenth century, in the form of an Anglo-Norman text

beginning ‘Seignours e dames, ore escotez’ which specifically identifies itself as a

‘sermoun’.52 From this point onwards, there are intermittent accounts of sermon

performance well into the modern period. Mock sermons are known to have been

staged in the 1380s, when the friar Peter Pateshull delivered a ‘sermonem lusorium’

on the text ‘De nihilo nihil est, et nihil semper erit’ (‘Of nothing nothing is, and

nothing will always be’); in 1520 at Oxford, when the ledger of the bookseller John

Dorne records the sale of a ‘sermon of messrulle’; in 1600 at Cambridge, when a

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group of students were accused of making ‘publique sermons...in Tavernes’ which did

‘verye disorderlye misvse in generall all free burgesses’; and in 1626 at Chester, when

‘a ballett munger’ was tried for entering a church pulpit and making a ‘ridiculous or

prophaned sermon therein to the greate Dishonor of Almightie god’.53 The sermon

was also enacted on several occasions throughout the calendar. While Thomas More

links it with Yuletide, describing ‘a mowynge sermon’ delivered by a figure ‘prykked

in blankettes...in a christemas game’, Bale complains that May games often included

mimicry and ridicule of preachers.54 There are also records of sermon performances

on Plough Monday and at Shrovetide.55

Much like the European sermons joyeux and spotsermoens, English mock sermons

apparently made extensive use of burlesque saints. Mock holymen appear in the two

earliest English sermons to survive, a piece of c.1478 on the text ‘Mollificant olera

durissima crusta’ (‘hoote wortes makeyn sofft hard crusstes’), and the Gospells of the

Distaffs (c.1510). The former gives a list of the holy ‘doctors’ ‘Vertas (Fart-arse),

Gadatryme, Trumpas (Trump-arse), and Dadyltrymsert’, while the latter incorporates

a series of ‘gloses’ by housewives with such quasi-hagiographic names as ‘Abunde of

the Ouen’ and ‘Margaret of the Whete’.56 In fact, the connection between English

sermons and travestic saints proves sufficiently robust to survive the Reformation. A

burlesque sermon dating from c.1600 takes the name ‘Malt’ as its central authority,

obviously parodying ‘Matt.’ or St Matthew.57 A contemporary piece from

Lincolnshire outlined in a bill of complaint also makes use of the convention, citing

‘the booke of Mabb’ and ‘the blessing of Bullbeefe’.58 A further suggestive case is

Langland’s depiction of the gluttonous Doctour of Divinity in the B- and C-texts of

Piers Plowman.59 The name ‘Seint Avereys’ (Saint Avarice, or Saint Averroes)

appears here as one of the authorities the Doctour uses to corroborate his arguments:

‘he hath dronken so depe he wole devyne soone/ and preven it by hir Pocalips and

passion of Seint Avereys’.60 The context in which this name appears has clear

overtones of mock preaching: like a burlesque preacher, the Doctour is voicing hollow

arguments which the hearer is meant to reject, is conspicuously drunk, and is

attempting to turn gluttony into a form of devotion, asserting that ‘bacoun’ and

‘blancmanger’ might be ‘fode for a penaunt’.61 Langland seems to be undermining

the Doctour’s rhetoric by tacitly comparing him to a mock preacher, and includes a

burlesque saint as a necessary part of this analogy. Overall, the widespread

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performance of parodic sermons in England, and the occurrence of mock saints in

many of those that do survive, once again locates the mock saint among the patterns

of English revelry.

The mock sermon is in fact doubly important when referring to Chaucer specifically,

since it allows a reasonably firm connection to be drawn between his work and

parodic saints. A number of critics have seen distinct echoes of parodic sermons

throughout Chaucer’s output. Lee Patterson, for instance, has argued that the

Prologue of the Wife of Bath derives many of its signature strategies from the genre.

Comparing the Prologue to such examples as Roger de Collerye’s Sermon pour une

nopce, Patterson finds that its first 160 lines can be categorised as ‘a brief version of

sermon joyeux’, since ‘the Wife twists a biblical thema’ to ‘discover an irreducible

carnality’.62 This idea has been revisited by Lisa Perfetti, who agrees that the Wife’s

discourse is ‘framed’ as a ‘mock sermon in which she uses her life as a kind of

exemplum...appropriating and implicitly deflating the authority of preachers’.63 Other

pieces by Chaucer have attracted similar remarks. Several decades ago G.H. Gerould

held that the Pardoner’s Prologue could also be approached as a mock sermon, a

conclusion recently echoed by Roberta Mullini.64 The Pardoner’s discourse certainly

resembles at least one surviving example of the form, the Sermon joyeux d'un

dépuceleur de nourrices: here a self-confessed ‘deflowerer or nursemaids’ also

‘preaches’ of own lecherous pursuits, recalling the Pardoner’s vow to ‘have a joly

wenche in every toun’ (VI 452-53).65

If these texts are accepted as parodic sermons, then it allows some elements within

them to be linked with the mock saint tradition. Two points of particular interest are

Alisoun’s claim that she bears ‘seint Venus seel’ (III 604) and the Pardoner’s oath ‘by

Seint Ronyon’ (VI 309-10). Even if Venus and Ronyon are not fully-fledged parodic

saints, both are at least reminiscent of the other burlesques. As Arthur Hoffman has

suggested, Saint Venus provides a carnivalesque counterpoint to the saint who should

be revered on the pilgrimage, embodying a debased morality much like Saint Tyburn

or the ‘patroon van drinkebroers’.66 Along the same lines, Ronyon seems to have

overtones of obscenity. Although Walter Skeat and James Sledd have argued that a

genuine saint is intended here, respectively reading ‘Ronyon’ as Ronan or Ninnian,

other possibilities have been advanced: these include ‘Rognan’ (Kidney), ‘Runnion’

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(Penis), ‘Rogne’ (Scab), and ‘Rogneux’ (‘a scurvy fellow’).67 The editors of Nashe’s

‘wanton Elegie’ The choise of valentines (c.1593), in which ‘Saint Runnion’ also

features, add a further possibility: ‘a mangy or fat woman’.68 Ann Haskell concludes

that all these elements are probably implied at once, as ‘the possibility of

punning...must not be ruled out’.69

It would appear that for Chaucer deploying this

type of festive parody necessarily leads to the production of caricatured or distorted

saint-names. Chaucer himself, in other words, might spell out some link between

English festivity and the mock saint.

To summarise all that has been said so far, it seems clear that mock saints were a firm

part of various customs and rituals, from the games of ‘S. Distaffs day’ to traditional

music and dance. The literary register signals a strong association between parodic

holymen, feasting and seasonal disorder, and often appoints them as symbols of the

inverted morality of misrule. Nevertheless, the evidence gathered here is not without

its problems. When it is considered in relation to Chaucer specifically, it gains

particular complexities. The fact that most records of mock saints are either from

mainland Europe or from the centuries following Chaucer’s death should caution

against drawing straightforward links between Troilus and the tradition. Such factors

necessitate some consideration of how the gap might be bridged, or how Seynt Idiot

can be linked to the other sources cited here.

To resolve this question, four possible explanations present themselves. The first of

these is simply to view Idiot as an isolated case, a self-contained innovation on the

part of Chaucer, which has no relationship to any later texts or customs. The figure

might instead be linked to the commonplace idea of love as a religion, following

William Dodd’s reading.70 This theory can be quickly discounted, however, given the

use that Chaucer makes of the figure. The emphatically festive connotations that

surround Seynt Idiot, and especially his direct relationship with foolery, seem too

close to the other usages to be purely coincidental; likewise, his name clearly overlaps

with the other examples, being almost identical in meaning to the French Saint Sot,

the English Saint Fool, and the Scottish Saint Cloun. Consequently, Chaucer’s

deployment of Idiot makes it difficult to assume that he has no connection with the

other burlesques. A second position might be to regard Chaucer as the inventor of the

conceit, which was in turn taken up by readers of his work – in other words, he is not

13

responding to a prior tradition in which later writers are also situated, but managed to

initiate the convention himself. This has more merit than the previous possibility, at

least at first glance, since there are some grounds for regarding Chaucer as the

originator of the tradition. A number of later sources do appear to be echoing Chaucer

directly in their deployment of parodic saint-names. For instance, the mention of

‘Saint Runnion’ in Nashe’s Choise of valentines is one of a number of allusions to

Chaucer in the text: Nashe mentions ‘poor patient Grisel’, echoes the Wife of Bath in

the line ‘alass, alass, that love should be a sinne’, and even opens the piece with a

Chaucerian caveat, urging his reader to turn to ‘better lynes’ should they ‘blame my

verse of loose unchastitie’.71 In fact, Seynt Idiot himself makes a later appearance in a

similar context: the phrase ‘Saint Idiot is his lord, iwis’ is among the self-conscious

archaisms spoken by the pedantic scholar Moth in William Cartwright’s play The

Ordinary (c.1635).72

Nevertheless, when considered closely, this explanation is no

more satisfactory than the previous one. It cannot account for the sheer volume of

later burlesque saints, or the fact that many occur in emphatically non-literary sources,

such as the rites of Saint Sweetlad and Saint Distaff, or the names of the ‘playes’ at

Shrewsbury, Ashburton and Grimsby. It is difficult to see why these demotic usages

would incorporate learned allusions to medieval poetry, given their basis in popular

and communal culture. Therefore not every instance of a mock saint can be

comfortably traced back to Chaucer: his work cannot justifiably be seen as the source

of all later references.

A third possible explanation is that Chaucer is simply alluding to continental

practices, and that his reference here is to the traditions of revelry native to France and

other countries in mainland Europe. Again, the evidence does support this idea at least

to a degree. One of the other mock saints named in Chaucer’s canon does seem to

stem directly from French culture: the Wife of Bath’s ‘Seint Venus’ is probably drawn

from the Roman de la Rose, in which Cupid swears ‘par sainte Venus, ma mere’, or

‘by my modir seint Venus’ as it is rendered in the Middle English translation (C

5953).73 There are also suggestions that Chaucer had more general contact with

French festivity, such as the similarities between the frame narrative of the

Canterbury Tales and the poetry competitions of the puys: these fraternities were in

turn probably responsible for many of the esbattements and sermons joyeux in which

saints facétieux appear.74 Furthermore, given the etymology of the word ‘idiot’ it is

14

not too difficult to imagine that Chaucer might have the French tradition in mind in

Troilus’ speech, or even a particular French precedent. In other words, he may be

referring strictly and specifically to continental traditions. This in turn would make

Seynt Idiot a rather esoteric reference, which indicates parodies carried out abroad and

in other languages, instead of evoking the immediate festive culture in England itself.

But this still does not explain why Chaucer would include such a reference in an

English text, and without expanding on it further. The oblique nature of the reference,

as Chaucer does not feel it necessary to spell out precisely why Idiot acts as a ‘lord

of…fooles’, suggests that his audience will have some pre-existing familiarity with

these traditions or the ideas which underpin them. While this solution cannot be ruled

out altogether, it is therefore at least slightly problematic.

The fourth possibility, then, is that Chaucer has some tacit awareness of oral tradition

of mock saints in England, one which is not widely represented in written form until

the sixteenth century. While this is of course difficult to prove beyond all doubt, it

remains the best hypothesis. Many of the English sources which name mock saints do

gesture back to customs and rituals that are demonstrably medieval in character, such

as May games, mock preaching, and the revels of Midsummer’s Eve. Likewise, the

fact that the saints are most amply documented in the post-medieval period can be

attributed to the new scrutiny popular culture received following the Reformation,

which Peter Burke has analysed at length.75 Many of the texts which preserve the

names of parodic saints are written in this vein, as their authors interrogate popular

observance for signs of ‘superstition and idolatry’: thus Becon alludes to Sweetlad in

a disquisition on fasting and feast-days, Dent refers to St Fool while attacking ballads

and songs, and Bale’s ‘Cutlake’ and ‘Legearde’ are linked with suspicious folk

customs, being figures venerated by the ‘old…witche’ Idololatria.76

In sum, although

the majority of sources are modern, they do seem to regard mock saints as part of an

older culture, pushing them back to Chaucer’s own period. Despite the difficulty of

asserting this point with total confidence, it seems likely that Seynt Idiot is a

conscious allusion to the celebratory practices of Chaucer’s own culture, and that the

same traditions of merrymaking underlie the modern references and Troilus alike. It

therefore seems most probable that Idiot is a means by which Chaucer seeks to evoke

the wider culture of popular revelry.

15

The question remains, however, exactly why Chaucer should choose to introduce a

reference to festive discourse into this particular poem. After all, such a move is at

odds with the apparent formality of the text, which since C.S. Lewis has been

regarded as Chaucer’s most forceful vindication of elite ‘courtly tradition’.77

One

explanation is provided by the immediate context in which the citation appears. The

label Seynt Idiot neatly reinforces many of Troilus’ charges against love. In fact, once

the festive status of Seynt Idiot is acknowledged, other elements in Troilus’ caricature

begin to make more sense, as revelry gives them a common thematic core. In the first

place, if Seynt Idiot is regarded as a festival saint, it explains why Chaucer appoints

Love ‘lord of thise foles alle’ when he gives him this name. The notion of an ‘idiot’

being ‘lord’ of fools echoes the patronage mock saints conventionally held over feast

occasions. In their role as the directors or protectors of revelry, they were also foolish

beings who licensed others to immerse themselves in folly. These implications are

further extended in Troilus’ claim that ‘loves servauntz’ are ‘verray goddes apes’ (I,

912-13). According to the MED, notions of performance and profanation are

embedded in the word ‘ape’: amongst its possible range of meanings is ‘a fool’, in the

sense of a professional entertainer, and ‘one who does tricks, a trickster’. The fact that

these ‘tricks’ are apparently directed at ‘god’ might even suggest the blasphemies of

liturgical parody, of which mock saints are a key example.

Alongside these echoes, the name Seynt Idiot also draws out further festive

resonances in Troilus’ mockery. Another point of connection is Troilus’ insistence

that Seynt Idiot promotes sickness, the ‘blaunche fevere’ of amor hereos. Troilus

ridicules the various symptoms of melancholy displayed by lovers, as they ‘make hem

for to grone’, wear ‘more than ynough ...for the cold’ and ‘monche hir mete alone’ (I,

914-15, 918-19). The point here seems to be that Seynt Idiot, far from having the

curative powers of a real martyr, actively propagates disease: those who fall under his

influence are made ill, rather than receiving relief from illness. This is further implied

by the fact that ‘idiot’ could also describe a quack-doctor in Middle English, another

charlatan whose patients ‘sholde never kevere’ (I, 917).78 What makes all this

particularly interesting is that it resembles a common joke in the sermons joyeux.

Several of the sermons claim that mock saints spread sickness among their devotees,

assuming that these inverted holymen must have the opposite powers of true saints.

For instance, the bawdy Sermon joyeux de Saint Velu names ‘Sainct Trottet’ as

16

‘patron des prostituées’, and claims that each of his followers ‘carries his medicine

with him, you can be sure’.79 The same idea reaches grotesque proportions in a Dutch

text, which promises that ‘whoever drinks so much that he dishonours his trousers’

will be absolved by Saint Drincatibus, and vividly details the effects of such devotion:

‘a certain water you must drink...even if it starts to run out through your

arsehole...even if in the morning you have cellar fever’.80

Seynt Idiot allows Chaucer

to make much the same joke in English, drawing parallels between lovesickness and

the maladies mock saints traditionally cause.

A further link is provided by the discourse that Troilus attributes to lovers. According

to Pandarus, Troilus claims that ‘thise loveres wolden speke in general’, believing ‘it

was a siker art...to assayen over-al’ (I, 926-28). Again, this is reminiscent of festive

conduct, and the types of language in which it is phrased. Troilus’ basic accusation is

that the followers of Love refuse to speak in specific terms. Rather than producing

meaning that identifies a clear object, their speech is broad and ambiguous, as it

attempts to ‘assayen over-al’. As Anthony Gash in particular has noted, the peculiar

idiom of medieval celebration was also characterised by breadth and ambiguity: it

used ‘reversal and parody’ to ‘open up every form of equivocation which closed

formal discourse...seeks to seal off’.81

The language of festivity, in other words, has

an analogous scope in its meaning. It also refuses to be pinned down to one sense or

object alone, as its parodies, puns and ironies play with multiple implications.

Chaucer’s depiction of a language that tends to range ‘over-al’ provides another

overlap between the speech of lovers and celebrants, and another level to Troilus’

attack.

In the same vein, Seynt Idiot also debases romantic love by tacitly sexualising it.

Throughout popular ritual, many of the mock saints possess strong sexual

connotations. In French this link is often explicit: the French saints not only include

openly ‘phallic’ figures such as Saint Foutin (Saint Screw) and Saint Guerluchon

(Saint Lover), but also more suggestively named characters, such as Sainct Billouart

(Saint Rod) and Saint Frappart (Saint Spanker).82 Much the same association is

evident in England. The customs attached to Saint Sweetlad and Saint Julian

Apostate, for instance, have a clear sexual element: according to John Aubrey the

‘magic secrets’ of ‘St Agnes’ night’ include such blatantly phallic rituals as ‘sticking a

17

pin in your sleeve’ and straddling ‘the spars of a gate’, while the Midsummer bonfires

were notorious for the ‘lustful acts’ and ‘sexual debauchery’ that accompanied

them.83 In literature as well the English saints are frequently sexualised. The most

obvious example is Saint Pintle of Hicks Corner, but there are a number of others:

Nicholas Breton’s Strange Newes (1620) mentions one Saint Grincums (Saint Pox),

while Gabriel Harvey’s burlesque love-letter ‘To my good Mistresse Anne’ (1580)

assures its addressee that ‘my S. Penny may performe thy wishe’.84

This sexual

dimension adds a further charge, as Seynt Idiot becomes a scornful allusion to the real

motivations underlying the ‘siker art’ of lovers.

Seynt Idiot is therefore more than a casual or incidental remark. Regarding Love in

such terms triggers an extended joke in the text, as the cult of Love is derisively

likened to several aspects of festive behaviour. The reverence of ‘thise loveres’

merges with the foolishness of carnival, as both share the same underlying sexuality,

imprecision of language, and association with illness. It raises much the same point as

the later Lover’s Mass (c.1450), which similarly identifies the ‘word…of lovers old

and newe’ with profane parody.85

The figure of Seynt Idiot thus becomes a way of

ridiculing the pretensions of fin’ amour, as he provides a core around which other

disparaging allusions to festivity are gathered.

However, this is by no means the only significance the figure carries. When the

styling Seynt Idiot is explored more fully, further levels of complexity emerge. It is

particularly worth noting that the meaning of festivity in Troilus is unstable. When

merrymaking is first evoked through Seynt Idiot, it has an obviously negative value.

Troilus connects love with festivity in order to discredit or ‘despit’ it: it is part of his

‘relentless scoffing at love and all love’s servants’, a way of dismissing the ‘feyning’

and ‘faylyng’ of lovers.86 Festivity is therefore aligned with deception, frivolity and

lechery, much as it is in the work of medieval moralists, who routinely classify

celebration as ‘lesyngis’, ‘vnresonable speche’, and ‘alle manere harlotrie’.87

However, Chaucer’s narrative permits festivity to transcend this valuation. During the

following stanzas, Troilus’ jest at the expense of Love is played out in earnest.

Immediately after Pandarus has described Troilus’ ‘japes’, he leads his friend through

a ritual designed to ‘apese’ the ‘wrathe’ of Love: ‘Now bete thi brest, and sey to God

of Love,/ Thy grace, lord, for now I me repente,/ If I mysspake’ (I, 932-34). As

18

Chauncey Wood notes, this section of the poem maintains the notion that love is a

‘parodic religion’ akin to inversion ritual. Troilus and Pandarus are effectively

performing a parodic ‘confessional scene’ in these lines, ‘complete with breast-

beating, prayers for the forgiveness of “japes”, and advice’.88

Chaucer even imitates

the formulae of confessors in this section, as Pandarus encourages Troilus to ‘sey with

al thyn herte in god entente’ (I, 935). The idea that love is a festive travesty of

worship is therefore retained, even as Troilus repents his attack. Troilus now secures

Love’s favour by performing the very rituals he has used to condemn it.

The meaning of festivity has therefore altered. Love’s semblance to festivity is no

longer something that disgraces it, but merely part of its overall nature. Troilus now

participates in love’s carnivalesque parodies simply as a necessary part of being a

lover. Chaucer reclaims festivity, in other words, allowing it to gain a more positive

value and transcend Troilus’ disparagement. In fact, this revaluation goes even

further. The reference to Seynt Idiot gains greater significance when it is compared to

the final stanzas of the text. The implication of festivity that Idiot brings into Troilus

serves to foreshadow the closing scenes of the romance. In particular, it anticipates the

final truth that Troilus obtains on death, when ‘with ful avysement’ he looks down

upon ‘this wrecched world’ and ‘lough right at the wo/ Of hem that wepten’ (V, 1811-

16, 1821-22). Yasunari Takada has spelled out the festive content of these lines.

Takada argues that the final stanzas of Troilus echo the Dantean ‘festa di Paradiso’,

although notes a crucial difference between the ways in which the Italian and English

poets approach this concept. According to Takada, Chaucer permits his ‘feast’ to

retain its carnivalesque implications, allowing it to mean both ‘earthly joy and

heavenly felicity’: ‘the “feste” in the Troilus...is characteristically dual in its semantic

figuration...from festivity to convivium, from carnal pleasure to spiritual bliss, the

word “feste” is used, importantly, in its full duality’.89 In effect, Troilus’ final burst of

laughter, as he sees every worldly thing dissolve into a ‘litel spot of erthe’, manages to

preserve a clear festive inflection (V, 1815). It becomes carnivalesque laughter,

‘directed not at one part only, but at the whole’, collapsing all distinctions.90

If Takada is correct here, then Seynt Idiot can be regarded as a prefiguration of this

final transcendence. There is after all a direct line of continuation between Troilus’

confession of love in the first book and his transportation ‘to the holughnesse of the

19

eighthe spere’ in the fifth: both in terms of his own actions and in terms of the

narrative as a whole, Troilus’ love for Criseyde brings him to this point (V, 1809).

Likewise, Troilus’ behaviour after death recalls the liturgical parodies Seynt Love

evokes. He is apparently laughing at the rituals of mourning, ‘the wo/ Of hem that

wepten for his deth’: from his new vantage point these obsequies in effect become

festive parodies, generating amusement rather than solemnity. Love’s identification

with a mock saint at the start of this process therefore looks forward to the ‘pleyn

felicite’ Troilus goes on to experience. What is most striking here, however, is the

implicit meaning that this imposes on festivity. Merrymaking now gains a

philosophical value, as it is implicated in the triumphant vision Troilus attains after

‘his lighte goost ful blisfully is went’ (V, 1808). The ‘bliss’ he feels is made to

resemble a ‘feste’, not only in terms of the pleasure it brings, but also in the new

perspective that it fosters. This completes the process of redefining revelry that begins

earlier in the text. Festivity now gains an even more positive value, being linked with

the wisdom Troilus obtains as he enters Heaven. The pejorative meaning misrule

initially holds in the poem is decisively overturned.

In conclusion, the appearance of a mock saint in Troilus and Criseyde carries some

important implications. At the very least, it reconfirms the presence of popular and

comic forms in Troilus, noted elsewhere by Karla Taylor in her work on proverbs in

the poem, and by Richard Firth Green in his remarks on its use of fabliau.91

This in

turn works against the mode of reading which defines the piece as little more than a

defence of ‘courtly tradition’. But more than this, Seynt Idiot helps to pin down

Chaucer’s attitude towards revelry at this point in his development as a poet. His first

disdainful reference to festive inversion seems to be a sort of joke, since these ideas

are swiftly discarded. Seynt Idiot may begin as an elaborate satire on the pretensions

of lovers, but he is rapidly turned into a fitting embodiment of love, before merging

with Troilus’ transcendent insights at the close of the poem. This gradual reappraisal

of festivity suggests that, even at this stage, Chaucer is prepared to see the forms of

popular culture as more than simply corruptive or gratuitous exercises. Although his

use of festive culture here is certainly more tentative than the games and inversions of

the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer already seems to see misrule as something of interest,

with a valuable philosophical dimension.

20

1 Carl Lindahl, Earnest Games: folkloric patterns in the Canterbury Tales

(Bloomington, Ind., 1987); Alfred David, The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in

Chaucer’s Poetry (Bloomington, Ind., 1976), 96-99; John M. Ganim, Chaucerian

Theatricality (Princeton, NJ, 1990); Jon Cook, ‘Carnival and The Canterbury Tales:

“Only Equals May Laugh”’, in David Aers, ed., Medieval Literature: Criticism,

Ideology, History (New York, 1986), 169-91. 2 Laura Kendrick, Chaucerian Play: Comedy and Control in the Canterbury Tales

(Berkeley, 1988), 20; Arthur Lindley, Hyperion and the Hobbyhorse: Studies in

Carnivalesque Subversions (Newark, Del., 1996), 44. 3 Troilus and Criseyde, ed. Stephen A. Barney, in Larry D. Benson, gen. ed., The

Riverside Chaucer (Oxford, 1990), 471-586. Subsequent references appear in

parentheses in the text. 4 C. David Benson, Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (Boston, 1990), 182; T.E. Hill,

‘She, This in Blak’: Vision, Truth, and Will in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and

Criseyde (Oxon, 2006), 27; Ellen Shaw Bakalian, Aspects of Love in John Gower's

Confessio Amantis (London, 2004), 131-32. 5 The fullest treatment of these figures is currently Jacques E. Merceron, Dictionnaire

thématique et géographique des saints imaginaires, facetieux et substitutes en France

et en Belgique francophone (Paris, 2002). Also useful is Tania Van Hemelryck,

‘Classé X en moyen français... Des saints facétieux’, Le Moyen français 50 (2003):

93-114, and Malcolm Jones, The Secret Middle Ages (Stroud, 2004). 6 Jelle Koopmans, Recueil de sermons joyeux: édition critique avec introduction,

notes et glossaire (Geneva, 1988), 215-18, 443-55, 529-31; Jelle Koopmans, Quatre

sermons joyeux (Geneva, 1984), 79-87; Eugénie Droz and H. Lewicka, Le Recueil

Trepperel, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1961), 2.81-96; Willem De Vreese, ‘De legende van Sint-

Haringus’, Het Boek 11 (1922): 299–304; Jos Biemans, Hans Kienhorst, Willem

Kuiper and Rob Resoort, Het Handschrift-Borgloon (Hilversum, 2000), 162-64;

Marius Meeus, Wat betekent arbeid?: over het ontstaan van de westerse

arbeidsmoraal (Assen, 1989), 91. 7 Koopmans, Quatre Sermons Joyeux, 90-91, 58.

21

8 Martha Bayless, Parody in the Middle Ages: The Latin Tradition (Anne Arbor,

1996), pp.57-92, 288-320; Rodney M. Thomson, Tractatus Garsiae: or The

translation of the relics of SS. Gold and Silver (Leiden, 1973), 30. 9 The authoritative work on the sermon remains Sander Gilman, Parodic Sermon in

European Perspective: Aspects of Liturgical Parody from the Middle Ages to the

Twentieth Century (Philadelphia, 1974). Gilman’s survey makes no mention of the

line from Troilus which concerns the present essay. In fact, he states that such forms

are ‘purposefully excluded’ from Chaucer’s compositions: ‘while Chaucer offers the

reader literary parodies…there are no liturgical parodies in his work’ (149-50). 10 Jean-Claude Aubailly, ‘Théâtre Médiéval et Fêtes Calendaires ou l’Histoire d’une

Subversion’, in Alan J. Fletcher and Wim N. M. Hüsken, eds., Between Folk and

Liturgy (Amsterdam, 1997), 31-64, at 39 (my translation). 11 Jacques E. Merceron, ‘Obscenity and Hagiography in Three Anonymous Sermons

Joyeux and in Jean Molinet’s Saint Billouart’, in Jan M. Ziolkowski, ed., Obscenity:

Social Control and Artistic Creation in the European Middle Ages (Leiden, 1998),

332-44, at 335-36. 12 Jelle Koopmans and Paul Verhuyck, Sermon joyeux et Truanderie (Amsterdam,

1987), 83-85; Matthijs de Castelein, De const van rhetoriken (facsimile van de eerste

uitgave, Gent 1555) (Oudenaarde, 1986), 234-46; H. Denifle, ‘Ursprung der Hisoria

des Nemo’, Archiv für Literatur- und Kirchen- Geschichte des Mittelalters 4 (1988):

340-48; Johannes Bolte, ‘Niemand und Jemand’, Jahrbuch der dutschen Shakespeare

Gesellschaft 29 (1893): 4-91, at 8. 13 Koopmans and Verhuyck, Sermon joyeux, p.14 (my translation). 14 Gerard Brom, Schilderkunst en litteratuur in de 16e en 17e eeuw (Utrecht, 1957),

122. 15 Kristoffer Nyrop, Grammaire historique de la langue française, (Copenhagen,

1903-30), IV (1913), 315; Henri Estienne, L’Apologie pour Hérodote, ed. Bernard

Broue, Textes littéraires français, 2 vols. (Paris, 2007), 1.182. 16 ‘Eedt van Meester Oom’, in Herman Pleij, ed., Het gilde van de Blauwe Schuit

(Amsterdam, 1979), 256-9 (my translation). The Middle Dutch reads: ‘Steckt nu al u

vingeren int gat en custse dan’.

22

17 Koopmans, Quartre Sermons Joyeux, 66 (my translation). In the original French,

‘En faisant supplication/ A Sainct Frappecul le baron:/ Que puissons tosjours baculer/

Et frapper culs sans reculer’. 18 Koopmans and Verhuyck, Sermons joyeux et Truanderie, 133 (my translation). 19 David Wiles, ‘Theatre in Roman and Christian Europe’, in John Russell Brown, ed.,

The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre (Oxford, 2001), 49-92, at 89. 20 Alberto de Rio, ‘The villancico in the works of early Castilian playwrights (with a

note on the function and performance of the musical parts)’, in Tess Knighton and

Alvaro Torrente, eds., Devotional music in the Iberian world, 1450-1800: the

villancico and related genres (Aldershot, U.K., 2007), 77-98; Françoise Maurizi,

Théâtre et tradition populaires: Juan del Encina et Lucas Fernandez (Aix en

Provence, 1994), 39. 21 Robert W. Scribner, Popular Culture and Popular Movements in Reformation

Germany (London, 1987), 74. 22 Charlotte Stern, ‘Juan del Encina’s Carnival Eclogues and the Spanish Drama of the

Renaissance', Renaissance Drama 8 (1965): 181-95, at 85. 23 Johannes Bolte, ‘Georg Schans Gedidhte vom Niemand’, Jahrbuch der Deutschen

Shakespeare-Gesellschaft 30 (1894): 73-88; Gerta Calmann, ‘The Picture of Nobody:

An Iconographical Study’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 23

(1960): 60-104. 24 Pleij, Het gilde van de Blauwe Schuit, 256-9. 25 Koopmans, Quatre Sermons Joyeux, 90-91, at 58. 26 Chris Humphrey, The Politics of Carnival: festive misrule in medieval England

(Manchester, 2001), 3-5. 27 John Bale, King Johan, ed. Barry B. Adams (San Marino, Calif., 1969), 90; John

Bale, Comedy concernynge thre lawes, of nature Moses, & Christ, ed. M.M. Arnold

Schroeer (Halle, 1882), 175; Norman P. Tanner, ed., Heresy Trials in the Diocese of

Norwich, 1428-31, Camden Fourth Series 20 (London, 1977), 47, 74, 148. 28 David N. Klausner, ed., Records of Early English Drama: Herefordshire and

Worcestershire (Toronto, 1990), 551; John M. Wasson, ed., Records of Early English

Drama: Devon (Toronto, 1986), 325-26 (editors’ translation). The original records

read: ‘nec ludi fiant inhonesti. Maxime in sanctorum vigilijs & festis ecclesiarum

23

quod sanctis pocius in dedecus cedere nouimus: quam honorem presumptoribus

etiam’ (Klausner, Records: Herefordshire and Worcestershire, 347); ‘Sicque quod ad

excitandum & augendum fidelium deuocionem fuerat primitus adinuentum, ex talium

insollencijs in dei & sanctorum irreuerenciam’ (Wasson, Records: Devon, 13). See

also Rosalind Conklin Hays, C.E. McGee, Sally L. Joyce and Evelyn S. Newlyn, eds.,

Records of Early English Drama: Dorset and Cornwall (Toronto, 1999), 587, and the

discussion of these complaints in Lawrence M. Clopper, ‘English Drama: From

Ungodly Ludi to Sacred Play’, in David Wallace, ed., The Cambridge History of

Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, U.K., 1998), 739-66. 29 Robert Chambers, The Book of Days: A Miscellany of Popular Antiquities in

Connection with the Calendar, 2 vols. (London, 1864), 1.68. 30 Robert Herrick, Poems, ed. Leonard C. Martin (Oxford, 1965), 315. 31 Derek Forbes, ed., Lydgate’s Disguising at Hertford Castle: The First Secular

Comedy in the English Language (Pulborough, U.K., 1998), 70. 32 Gail McMurray Gibson, The Theater of Devotion: East Anglian Drama and Society

in the Late Middle Ages (Chicago, 1989), 43-44. The same conclusion is reached in

Heather Hill-Vásquez, Sacred Players: the Politics of Response in the Middle English

Religious Drama (Washington D.C., 2007), 146-47. 33 William Henderson, Notes On The Folk-Lore Of The Northern Counties Of

England And The Borders (London, 1866), 70; Wayland D. Hand, ‘Folk Belief and

Customs: The Old World’s Legacy to the New’, Journal of the Folklore Institure 7

(1970): 136-55; John Aubrey, Miscellanies upon Various Subjects (London, 1857),

132. 34 Thomas Becon, A Fruitful Treatise of Fasting, in The Catechism with other pieces,

ed. John Ayre (Cambridge, 1844), 536. 35 Compare Coissac’s account of the rituals associated with Saint Guénolé (Saint

Give-Birth) in Britanny, which involves ‘jeunes filles qui désirent se marier vont

piquer des épingles dans les pieds de certains saints’, or ‘young girls who wish to

marry pricking with needles the feet of certain saints’ (Guillaume-Michel Coissac,

Mon Limousin, Moeurs, Coutumes, Legendes [Paris, 1913], 331). On phallic saints

generally, see Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, Forgetful of their sex: female sanctity and

society, ca. 500-1100 (Chicago, 1998), 224-26; Richard Payne Knight and Thomas

24

Wright, Discourse on Priapus and Worship of the Generative Powers During the

Middle Ages of Western Europe (London, 1866), 139-41. 36 Martin’s Months Mind, in R.B. McKerrow, ed., The Works of Thomas Nashe, rev.

F.P. Wilson, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1958), 1.170; William Bullein, A dialogue bothe

pleasaunte and pietifull wherein is a goodly regimente against the feuer pestilence

with a consolacion and comfort against death (London, 1564), Short Title Catalogue

(hereafter STC) 4036.5, 24v. 37 Thomas Nashe, Anatomie of Absurditie, in Works of Nashe, I.10; Joseph Hall,

Virgidemiarum, in Peter Hall, ed., Satires and Other Poems (London, 1838), 34; John

Weever, Epigrammes, in E.A.J. Honnigman, ed., John Weever: a biography of a

literary associate of Shakespeare and Jonson (Manchester, 1987), 119; Arthur Dent,

The Plaine Mans Path-way to Heauen (Ligonier, Penns., 1997), 171; Richard

Montagu, A gagg for the new Gospell? No: a nevv gagg for an old goose (London,

1624), STC 18038, 200-1; Andreas Philalethes, An ansvvere made by one of our

brethren, a secular priest, now in prison, to a fraudulent letter of M. George

Blackwels (London, 1602), STC 19830, 15. See also Stephen Batman, The trauayled

pylgrime bringing newes from all partes of the worlde (London, 1569), STC 1585, 29;

Edward Hake, Newes out of Powles Churchyarde (London, 1579), STC 12606, 23;

Samuel Rowlands, Doctor Merrie-Man, in Sidney J. Herrtage, ed., The complete

works of Samuel Rowlands, 1598-1628: now first collected, 2 vols. (London, 1880),

2.26; Gabriel Harvey, Pierce's supererogation, in Alexander Balloch Grosart, ed., The

Works of Gabriel Harvey, 3 vols. (London, 1884-85), 2.235; Alexander Cooke, Pope

Ioane A dialogue betvveene a protestant and a papist (London, 1610), STC 5659, 25. 38 John Heywood, Proverbs, epigrams, and miscellanies, ed. John S. Farmer, 2 vols.

(London, 1906), 2.244. 39 Lester E. Barber, ed., Misogonus (New York, 1979), 172. 40 Sally Harper, Music in Welsh culture before 1650: a study of the principal sources

(Aldershot, 2007), 322. 41 See Darryll Grantley, English dramatic interludes, 1300-1580 (Cambridge, U.K.,

2004), 246; Michael Neill, Issues of Death: mortality and identity in English

Renaissance Tragedy (Oxford, 1997), 75-76; Joel Kramme, ‘William Cobbold’s

“New Fashions”: Notes Concerning the Reconstruction of the Missing Alto Part’,

25

Andrew Ashbee and Peter Holman, eds., John Jenkins and His Time (Oxford, 1996),

137-60. 42 James Calfhill, An Answer to John Martiall’s Treatise of the Cross, ed. Richard

Gibbings, Parker Society 22 (Cambridge, U.K., 1846), 237; Robert Greene, A Quip

For An Upstart Courtier, in Alexander B. Grosart, ed., The Life and Complete Works

in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, 15 vols. (New York, 1964), 11.230. 43 Ian Lancashire, Dramatic Texts And Records Of Britain: A Chronological

Topography To 1558 (Toronto, 1984), 147; J. Allen B. Somerset, Records of Early

English Drama: Shropshire, 2 vols (Toronto, 1994), I: The Records, 205; Wasson,

Records of Early English Drama: Devon, 28. 44 Lawrence M. Clopper, Drama, Play and Game: English Festive Culture in the

Medieval and Early Modern Period (Chicago, 2001), 129, 300-2. 45 Philip Stubbes, Anatomy of Abuses, ed. Frederick J. Furnivall, 2 vols. (London,

1882), 1.147. 46 Clopper, Drama, Play and Game, 304. Clopper is quoting an anonymous ‘attack on

superstition’ originating from Canterbury, 1561. 47 David Lindsay, Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis, ed. Roderick Lyall (Edinburgh,

1989), 49, 155. 48 John Palsgrave, The Comedye of Acolastus, ed. P.L. Carver, EETS o.s. 202

(London, 1937), 68. 49 William Dunbar, The Complete Works, ed. John Conlee (Kalamazoo, 2004), 159,

167; Janet Hadley Williams, ‘Dunbar and His Immediate Heirs’, in Sally Mapstone,

ed., William Dunbar ‘The Nobill Poyet’: Essays in Honour of Priscilla Bawcutt (East

Linton, U.K., 2001), 85-107, at 99. 50 Hick Scorner, in Ian Lancashire, ed., Two Tudor Interludes: The Interlude of Youth,

Hick Scorner, The Revels Plays (Baltimore, 1980), 181-236. 51 Sidney J. Herrtage, ed., Sir Ferumbras, EETS o.s. 34-5 (London, 1879), 115; Eugen

Kölbing and Karl Schmirgel, eds., The romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun, EETS o.s.

65 (London, 1894), 71. See also Judith Perryman, ed., The King of Tars: ed. from the

Auchinleck MS, Advocates 19.2.1, Middle English Texts, no. 12 (Heidelberg, 1980),

107; Richard Morris, ed., Cursor Mundi, EETS o.s. 59 (Oxford, 1966), 430.

26

52 ‘On Woman’, in Thomas Wright and James Halliwell, eds., Reliquae Antiquae

(London, 1841-43), 2.218-23; Paul Meyer, ‘Melanges de poesie francaise, iv:

Plaidoyer en faveur des femmes’, Romania 6 (1877): 499-503. 53 John Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. Reginald Lane Poole (Hildesheim,

2006), 322; C.R.L. Fletcher, Collecteana (Oxford, 1885), 135-36; Alan H. Nelson,

Records of Early English Drama: Cambridge, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1989), 1.382; David

George, Records of Early English Drama: Lancashire (Toronto, 1991), 26-27, 318-

19. A fuller review can be found in Malcolm Jones, ‘The Parodic Sermon in Medieval

and Early Modern England’, Medium Aevum 66 (1997): 95-114. 54 Thomas More, The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer, in Clarence Miller, gen. ed.,

The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, 15 vols. (New Haven, 1963-90): 8.919;

Lancashire, Dramatic Texts And Records, 105. 55 Hilda Ellis Davidson, Roles of the Northern Goddess (London, 1998), 67; Gilman,

Parodic Sermon, 24-27. 56 Jones, ‘The Parodic Sermon’, 101; H.W., The gospelles of dystaues (London,

1510), STC 12091. Extracts from the Gospell are given in Douglas Gray, ed., The

Oxford Book of Late Medieval Verse and Prose (Oxford, 1981), 379-80. 57 See John Chandos, In God's Name: Examples of Preaching in England from the Act

of Supremacy to the Act of Uniformity, 1534-1662 (London, 1971), 109-10. The

authorship is discussed in G. Williamson, ‘An Attribution to Suckling: A Sermon on

Malt: variant version’, Modern Language Notes 50 (1935): 463-64. 58 Quoted in N.J. O’ Conor, Godes Peace and the Queenes: Vicissitudes of a House

1539-1615 (London, 1934), 119-20. 59 William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman: a critical edition of the B-text, ed.

A.V.C. Schmidt, 2nd ed. (London, 1997), B, xiii.90-91. 60 See the discussion in Bernard F. Huppé, ‘Petrus id est Christus: Word Play in Piers

Plowman, the B-text’, English Literary History 17 (1950): 163-90, at 171; Anne

Middleton, ‘The Passion of Seint Averoys [B. 13.91]: “Deuynyng” and Divinity in the

Banquet Scene’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 1 (1987): 31-40. 61 On carnival in this Passus generally, see Julia Bolton Holloway, The Pilgrim and

the Book (Bern, 1987), p.102. 62 Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison, Wisc., 1991), 307-8.

27

63 Lisa Renée Perfetti, Women and laughter in medieval comic literature (Chicago,

2003), 112. 64 G.H. Gerould, Old English and Medieval Literature (New York, 1929), 154;

Roberta Mullini, ‘“Better be sott Somer than Sage Salamon”: carnivalesque features

in John Heywood’s plays’, in Konrad Eisenbichler and Wim Husken, eds., Carnival

and Carnivalesque: the fool, the reformer, the wildman, and others in Early Modern

Theatre, Ludus 4 (Amsterdam, 1999), 29-42. 65 M. Anatole De Montaiglon, Recueil Poésies Françoises des XVe Et XVIe Siècles:

Morales, Facétieuses, Historiques, 8 vols. (Paris, 1875-78), 6.199-208. 66 Arthur W. Hoffman, ‘Chaucer’s Prologue to Pilgrimage: The Two Voices’, in C.A.

Owen, ed., Discussions of the Canterbury Tales (Boston, 1961), 1-16, at 11-13. 67 James Sledd, ‘Canterbury Tales, C 310, 320: “by Seint Ronyan”’, Medieval Studies

13 (1951): 226-33; Frederick Tupper, ‘The Pardoner’s Tavern’, Journal of English

and Germanic Philology 14 (1915): 553-65; Malcolm Jones, ‘Folklore Motifs in Late

Medieval Art III: Erotic Animal Imagery’, Folklore 102 (1991): 192-219, at 212;

C.M. Drennan and A.J. Wyatt, Chaucer: The Pardoner’s Tale (London, 1911), 64. 68 Thomas Nashe, The choise of valentines, in H.R. Woudhuysen, ed., The Penguin

Book of Renaissance Verse, 1509-1659 (Harmondsworth, 1993), 253-63. The allusion

to Runnion occurs at line 245. 69Ann Sullivan Haskell, Essays on Chaucer’s Saints (The Hague, 1976), 64. 70 William George Dodd, Courtly Love in Chaucer and Gower (Cambridge, Mass.,

1913), 202.

71 Nashe, Choise of Valentines, 259, 253.

72 William Cartwright, The Ordinary, in G. Blakemore Evans, ed., Plays and Poems

of William Cartwright (Madison, Wisc., 1951), 294.

73 Jean de Meun and Guillaume de Lorris, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Ernest Langlois,

5 vols. (Paris, 1914-24), 3.176.

74 Helen Cooper, ‘London and Southwark Poetic Companies: “Si tost c’amis” and the

Canterbury Tales’, in Ardis Butterfield, ed., Chaucer and the City (Cambridge, U.K.,

2006), 109-26; Helen Cooper, ‘The Frame’, in Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel,

28

Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales, 2 vols. (Cambridge, U.K., 2005),

1.1-22; Ardis Butterfield, ‘Puys’, in William Kibler and Grover A. Zinn, eds.,

Medieval France: An Encyclopedia (London, 1995), 771-72.

75 Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, rev. ed. (Aldershot, U.K.,

1994), 289-334.

76 Becon, A Fruitful Treatise, 536; Bale, Comedy concernynge thre laws, 176.

77 C.S. Lewis, ‘What Chaucer Really Did To Il Filostrato’, Essays and Studies 17

(1932): 56-75, at 58-59. 78 See MED entry for ‘idiote’, sense (c), where the earliest instance is c.1400. 79 Koopmans, Quatre Sermons Joyeux, 81 (my translation). The French reads: ‘C’est

chose certaine/ Qu’il porte sur luy medecine’. 80 Pleij, Het gilde, 257 (my translation). In the Middle Dutch, ‘Zo wie drijnct, dat hij

zijn brouc onnheert,/ Die zoude hebben voor zijn beghin’; ‘Van dien waterken te

drijnckene...Al sauden zij ulieden onder ten eersgate uutloopen...Al saudi er 's

morghen den keldercurts of alle hebben’. 81 Anthony Gash, ‘Carnival against Lent: The Ambivalence of Medieval Drama’, in

David Aers, ed., Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History (New York,

1986), 74-98, at 94. 82 Merceron, Dictionnaire thématique et géographique des saints imaginaires, 190,

226. 83 Aubrey, Miscellanies, 131-32; Bruce Moore, ‘The Dominicans’ Banner in Wynnere

and Wastoure’, Eniglish Language Notes 26 (1988): 7-12 84 Nicholas Breton, Strange nevves out of diuers countries neuer discouered till of

late, by a strange pilgrime in those parts (London, 1622) STC 3702.5, C; Edmund

Spenser and Gabriel Harvey, Three Proper, and wittie, familiar Letters, in J.C. Smith

and E. de Selincourt, eds., Spenser: Poetical Works (Oxford, 1970), 269. The

penny/penis pun occurs earlier in the work of Dunbar: ‘And thoght his pené purly me

payis in bed,/ His purse pays richely in recompense efter’: The Tretis of the Twa

Mariit Wemen and the Wedo, in Complete Works, 202. 85 Eleanor Hammond, English Poetry Between Chaucer and Surrey (New York,

1965), 207-13.

29

86 Percy Van Dyke Shelly, The Living Chaucer (Philadelphia, 1940), 129. 87 ‘The Ave Maria’, F.D. Matthew, ed., English Works of Wyclif, EETS o.s. 74

(London, 1902), 206-7. 88 Chauncey Wood, The Elements of Chaucer’s Troilus (Chicago, 1984), 187, 96. 89 Yasunari Takada, Transcendental Descent: Essays in Literature and Philosophy

(Tokyo, 2007), 131-32. 90 Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Bloomington,

Ind., 1984), 88. 91 Karla Talyor, ‘Proverbs and the Authentification of Convention in Troilus and

Criseyde’, in Stephen A. Barney, ed., Chaucer’s Troilus: Essays in Criticism

(Hamden, 1980), 277-96; Richard F. Green, ‘Troilus and the Game of Love’, Chaucer

Review 13 (1997): 201-20, at 217.