Z
SUZSANNAS
IMONKAYSworn brotherhood is a cliché that appears in several of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Besides The Knight’s Tale, it appears in The Shipman’s Tale (the merchant and the monk), The Friar’s Tale (court officials) and The Pardoner’s Tale (the three debauched comrades). This paper explores how Chaucer may have met the traditions of this bond, and what his influences were when writing the Knight’s Tale. In the story, Chaucer sets the doctrines of idealized male friendship, i.e. sworn brotherhood, against the concept of “courtly love,” the similarly idealized male–female love. This romantic passion turns out to be more compelling than any other rules or principles (similarly to sworn brotherhood depicted in traditional romances addressing the issue of friendship), even than the knights’ code of conduct, and therefore, it results not only in the withdrawal of friendship vows but even in the changing of former bosom friends into mortal enemies: for their love of the same woman, Emelye, Palamon and Arcite, the two knights bound not only by their oath of brotherhood but also by kinship, commit several unvirtuous deeds and turn on each other, which eventually results in the death of Arcite.
Friendship is a subject widely dealt with throughout the Middle Ages, and its form commonly known as sworn brotherhood was especially prevalent in the period between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries, represented in all literary genres. As Robert Stretter puts it, “[w]riters mention brotherhood with the sort of casualness that bespeaks easy familiarity on the part of both author and audience, with a well-established cultural tradition” (“Engendering Obligation” 503).2 Several Medieval English romances have sworn brothers as their protagonists (the most illustrious example is probably Amis and Amiloun but we might also mention King Horn, Guy of Warwick, Eger and Grime and Athelston, to name but a few), and historical records,
1 The second part of this paper is going to be published as “False Brotherhood in Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale / Part 2: Palamon and Arcite—False Friends will be Friends” in Heroes and Saints:
Studies in Honour of Katalin Halácsy (ed. by Zsuzsanna Simonkay and Andrea Nagy), forthcoming.
2 This statement is in accord with what Alan Bray formulated in his all-embracing book on friendship:
“the references to ‘fratres iurati,’ to ‘wedded brothers,’ or to ‘sworn brothers,’ from the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries invariably assume that the terms will be readily intelligible to the reader; I know of no occasion before the seventeenth century when any need is shown to explain what these terms mean”
(32). See also Elizabeth A. R. Brown’s fundamental essay on ritual brotherhood, in which she proves that this phenomenon was more common in Western Europe than John Boswell thought. Note that Brown (357) and Stretter (“Engendering Obligation” 503) investigate sworn brotherhood within the period between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries (although Brown writes that it “survived in the West into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in the East far longer” (381)), while Bray (32) extends this period up until the sixteenth century.
too, report that prominent figures pledged friendship to each other.3 Such a famous pair, for instance, was Robert d’Oilly and Roger d’Ivry, who arrived in England at the time of the Norman Conquest, and who were still remembered two centuries later—as testified by the cartulary of Oseney Abbey in Oxfordshire (Bray 26, Brown 359, and Green 331).
The practice of sworn brotherhood seems to have flourished in fourteenth-century England, around Chaucer’s time: even King Edward II (1284–1327) is said to have been bound by an oath of brotherhood to Piers Gaveston (see Bray 27–8, 37–8),4 but one can find sworn brothers also in Chaucer’s circle: Sir William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe (both c. 1341–1391). These two friends of the poet were figures who, as Bray formulates, “might have been taken out of the pages of a medieval romance
…: two knights who had died together on the military pilgrimage to liberate the holy city of Jerusalem from Moslem rule” (77). Neville had distinguished kin: his father was Lord Ralph Neville of Raby and among his brothers were the fifth Baron Neville (John) and the archbishop of York (Alexander). Clanvowe, on the other hand, was born to a minor land-owner family in the Welsh borders.5 Both men saw active military service abroad and they were mentioned among the group of ten people referred to as “the Lollard knights” by the chronicler, Thomas Walsingham.6 With four of their associates they appeared together in documents as witnesses, trustees, mainpernors and executors in many cases, on the basis of which Derek Brewer states that “it is clear that they [i.e. the six comrades] were friends with many financial and other interests in common” (The World of Chaucer 169). Clanvowe and Neville (alongside with Sir Richard Starry and Sir Lewis Clifford from their circle) were also knights of the King’s Chamber. Their association with Chaucer is evinced for example by the document from which we know that they were witnesses to Chaucer’s release from the charge of “raptus” brought by Cecilia Chaumpaigne (1380).7 Furthermore, in another case commonly known as the Scrope-Grosvenor trial (1385–
1390) both Chaucer and Clanvowe were deponents on behalf of their friend Richard Scrope, asserting that the Scrope family had the right to bear the coat of arms the Grosvenors also claimed as theirs.8 Clanvowe is also connected to Chaucer by another thread: being a poet himself, he composed The Boke of Cupide, which was influenced by Chaucer’s works, especially by The Parliament of Fowls, The Knight’s Tale (or an
3 Bray and Brown give account of numerous chronicles in which the phenomenon of sworn brotherhood occurs (and is treated in a notably respectful way, according to Bray), and they name many persons who engaged in such relationships: see Bray (especially 29, passim) and Brown (passim).
4 The brotherhood of the king and Gaveston is also analysed in detail by Pierre Chaplais, who argues against the generally assumed homoerotic nature of their bond. See also Brown (passim, especially 378–80).
5 For the biographies of Neville and Clanvowe (also spelt Clanvow) see Thomson and Saul respectively.
6 On their association with Lollardy see McFarlane (197–206).
7 On their association with Chaucer see Brewer (The World of Chaucer 169). For a short description of the Chaumpaigne case, see Crow and Leland (xviii). For a detailed discussion of the issue, go to Brewer (The World of Chaucer 149–50) and Harley.
8 For a discussion of the case, see Brewer (The World of Chaucer 26–8, passim). The trial is recorded in Nichols.
earlier version of it) and possibly The Legend of Good Women.9 The most eloquent memorial of Clanvowe and Neville’s friendship is their shared tomb found in an Istanbul Mosque, once a Dominican church in a village called Galata. The story of their death is told in the Westminster Chronicle: in October 1391 John Clanvowe died in a village near Constantinople, which caused his friend William Neville such sorrow that he refused food and eventually died of grief.10
The friendship of John Whytton and John Bloxham (both priests and scholars, Bloxham the seventh warden of Merton College, Oxford, while Whytton rector of Wootton and benefactor to the College11) is another example Chaucer may have known. Similarly to the above-mentioned knights, they were buried together—in the chapel of Merton College, where a brass commemorates their friendship.12 I cannot prove that Chaucer knew them personally. Bray (77, 80) hints, however, that Clanvowe and Neville very probably knew of Whytton and Bloxham (and vice versa), which assumption I would extend to Chaucer, too: the poet might also have at least heard of their association. A fact that may support this theory is that there is at least one person connecting Chaucer and Bloxham: in 1377, Chaucer’s friend and neighbour at Aldersgate, Ralph Strode (to whom, incidentally, he dedicated Troilus and Criseyde—alongside with Gower), acted as surety on behalf of Bloxham.13 If the relationship of Strode and Bloxham was of a nature compelling Strode to stand by the warden in such a case, it is more than possible that they were friends and Strode might as well have talked about his friend, Bloxham, to his other friend, Chaucer. In addition, Bloxham’s post in Merton College might also have made him a figure commonly known in the circles where Chaucer generally moved.
Besides the experience Chaucer could gain from real-life examples of friends, he could also draw on his readings and on the common knowledge among the lettered at that time—even without everybody necessarily having to read those specific works themselves. One of these were the romances of the time, concerning what scholars often debate as to which of them Chaucer did in fact read or hear or hear about. In order to support their claims, scholars turned to the actual texts of Chaucer’s poems and collected analogies that can provide a link to romances. As a first point, for example, Carol Falvo Heffernan examined the occurrences of the very word
9 Clanvowe also wrote The Two Ways, a religious treatise. For a concise description of his writings, see Brewer (The World of Chaucer 171–3). On the connection between The Boke of Cupide and Chaucer’s poetry, see Laird (“Chaucer, Clanvowe, and Cupid”).
10 On the friendship of Clanvowe and Neville, see Bray (passim, especially 17–9). Bray provides a photo of the tombstone and the image of the knights – who are depicted as if they were kissing – carved in it (18). Note the confusion concerning the day of their death. Although all sources agree upon the year and the month, the tombstone script dates Clanvowe’s death to the 6th and Neville’s to the 10th, while according to the chronicle it was on the 17th when Clanvowe died and his friend followed him two days later. These contradictory data, however, should not influence our confidence in the veracity of the story of the two knights’ death (Bray arrives at the same conclusion: Bray 19).
11 It is difficult to find bibliographic data on Whytton. In his history of Merton College, Henry Julian White mentions he was rector of Wootton (52).
12 Their friendship is discussed in depth by Bray (78–82, passim). On pp. 78–80, the reader can find a detailed description of their tomb, which is later on compared to other tombs of the like.
13 The issue concerned the dispute between the king and the college over the ownership of land in Oxford (North).
“romance” (4). She found that Chaucer used it in his earliest narrative poem, The Book of the Duchess, and also in Troilus and Criseyde. The only instance in The Canterbury Tales the genre of romance is mentioned is in Sir Thopas, a mock romance itself, which “specifically links itself with ‘romances’” (Heffernan 4). The narrator mentions six romances in the tale: “Horn Child,” “Ypotys,” “Beves,” “Sir Gy,” “Sir Lybeux,” and “Pleyndamour” (887–90) and he also refers to “Sire Percyvell” (916), which, according to some scholars, might be an allusion to a seventh one, Sir Percival of Galles (Eckert 574, 18n).
While analysing Chaucer’s poems, besides parallels in content, several critics came upon textual correspondences to some romances, and especially Guy of Warwick.14 These findings made them conclude that the poet must have known these romances, and most probably he had read them.15 Besides Guy, among the romances considered appear also Horn and Floris and Blaunchefleur (Loomis, Heffernan, Eckert), which I think important to mention because all the three of them feature sworn brothers. There has been considerable debate with regard to the form Chaucer could meet these and other romances. The most important manuscript that frequently comes up in such debates is the Auchinleck MS, of which some state that he not only knew it but also owned a copy of it (Loomis “Chaucer and the Auchinleck MS” and also her “The Auchinleck Manuscript”).16 If we accept the supposition that Chaucer at least read—if not owned—the MS, the list of the romances he knew and in which sworn brotherhood occurs can be extended by one of the most important (if not the most important) romances of friendship: Amis and Amiloun, a romance featuring the prototype of sworn brothers.17 Whatever the truth is about the Auchinleck MS and its connection to Chaucer, scholars generally agree that the poet in his works made good use of some romances he had evidently met in one form or another. Similarly, not only he but also his audience is thought to have been generally familiar with romance.
In Ken Eckert’s words: “whether his circle of literary friends and associates greeted romances with fondness or eye-rolling, they likely recognized and knew them firsthand as members of the first English-speaking court since Harold Godwineson”
(17).18 Without doubt, the same can be said of the friendship presented in romances.
14 On the textual comparison of Sir Thopas and Guy of Warwick see Loomis (“Chaucer and the Auchinleck MS” and Strong (“Sir Thopas and Sir Guy I” and “Sir Thopas and Sir Guy II”).
15 See, for example, Brewer (“The Relationship of Chaucer to the English and European Traditions”) and Haymes. Edward R. Haymes concludes that “Chaucer derived a considerable amount of his poetic diction from the English romance tradition surrounding him” (42). Note also Ralph Hanna’s statement concerning Sir Thopas: “Chaucerian parody, like all parody, depends upon the accepted status of its target and, equally, upon a readers detailed knowledge of that product. The joke does not work without both knowledge and (perhaps undue) respect” (108). Evidently, Chaucer could not have written a romance parody like Thopas if he had not known romances well.
16 Cf. Brewer, who says that “Chaucer certainly knew a manuscript like it [i.e. the Auchinleck MS]”
and “it is entirely possible that his father, with his East Anglian origins, had a book like the Auchinleck Manuscript” (The World of Chaucer 47, my emphasis).
17 On sworn brotherhood in Amis, see Simonkay. In this article I also wrote about the popularity of the romance throughout Europe (Simonkay 4, 7n), which also suggests such well-knownness that regardless whether Chaucer read the romance or not, it is almost certain that he was at least familiar with the story.
18 See also Hanna (104–47).
Probably the most obvious example of sworn brotherhood in romances is the friendship of the two knights, Amis and Amiloun, depicted in the above-mentioned fourteenth-century poem, but as I implied before, one can find others without great effort. In another paper I examined the characteristics and the philosophical background of this special bond depicted in four romances: Sadius and Galo, Amis and Amiloun, Eger and Grime and Athelston (Simonkay). What I established is that it shares notable similarities with the perfect friendship defined by Aristotle and Cicero in the Nicomachean Ethics and in De Amicitia. These two philosophical dialogues were not only popular with the medieval readership but also served as cornerstones for medieval treatises on the issue, such as, for example, De Spirituali Amicitia by Aelred of Rievaulx (1110–1167), who based his work admittedly on Cicero (Prologue 2–5, pp. 53–4). Apart from drawing on the sworn brotherhood of romances, it is not at all impossible that Chaucer was familiar with these ancient theories that lie behind them.
It is definitely not new to Chaucer scholarship to connect the poet to the two classical authors and especially to these works. When speculating on who the philosopher mentioned in A Treatise on the Astrolabe (“a philosofre saith, ‘he wrappith him in his frend, that condescendith to the rightfulle praiers of his frend’,”
5–8) might be, scholars brought up the names of both Aristotle and Cicero, whose views on friendship are quoted in support of these theories.19
With regard to Chaucer’s possible knowledge of Aristotle and the Ethics, Jacqueline de Weever points out that
John Norton-Smith shows that Chaucer could have known Aristotle’s Ethics in at least five versions in Latin, several Latin and vernacular adaptations, and one good complete translation in Old French. Robert Grosseteste did the first Latin translation of all ten books of the Vetus Translatio of the Ethics c. 1245, and Walter Burley wrote a commentary between 1340 and 1345, which Chaucer could have known. The Ethics could also be found in summary and verbatim quotations in Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Doctrinale IV.x.xvi.20
Cicero, who is commonly thought as having been greatly dependent on Aristotle while setting up his ideas in his De Amicitia, even more evidently comes up in literary criticism analysing the medieval representations of friendship, including the warped friendships depicted by Chaucer. Scholars such as Alan T. Gaylord, John Hill, Robert Stretter (“Rewriting Perfect Friendship”), Alcuin Blamires (esp. 20–45) and Tison Pugh, too, analysed different specimens of this bond in the Chaucerian corpus in the light of Cicero’s theories.
19 It was common among authors of astrolabe treatises to claim that they were writing at the request of a friend. Chaucer does the same. See, for example, Laird (“Chaucer and Friends”).
20 De Weever refers to Smith (253–4, 18n). In the same entry, she gives a detailed account of the works of Aristotle known in the Middle Ages.
It is all the more justifiable to include Cicero’s views on friendship in an analysis like this since Le Roman de la Rose, generally regarded as one of Chaucer’s major influences,21 contains a passage in which Reason gives a summary of the theories included in De Amicitia. It is a well-known fact that Chaucer knew the Roman. He even refers to it several times: in The Book of the Duchess, The Legend of Good Women and in The Merchant’s Tale, to name only a few instances.22 Moreover, some parts of the Middle English translation (The Romaunt of the Rose) are attributed to him. Nevertheless, scholars have not come to a complete agreement on the issue of the authorship of the entire translation. Charles Dahlberg presents the theories in detail and concludes that most scholars agree that Fragment A (the part written by Guillaume de Lorris) is of Chaucer, and they found it likely that he wrote Fragment C (second part of Jean de Meun’s work), too (3–24). Although it is obsolete to attribute to him Fragment B (first part of Jean de Meun’s), in which the prominent passage on friendship appears, still, as Stretter writes, “he almost certainly would have been familiar with the ideas contained in it” (“Rewriting Perfect Friendship” 250, 7n).
Apparently, Alan T. Gaylord, too, shared the same idea when he compared the role of Pandarus in Troilus to that of Ami in the second section of the Romance (243–4, passim).
In order to fully appreciate how all these works mentioned so far are interrelated, one must be reminded that this second part of the Romaunt was written by the same Jean de Meun, who translated into French the above-mentioned De Spirituali Amicitia by the Cistercian Aelred of Rievaulx,23 who, as previously stated, relied on Cicero’s De Amicitia. Thus, we have come full circle with Aelred, Jean de Meun and Chaucer, and it seems that all roads lead to Rome – or, in Chaucer’s words,
“Right as diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome” (Treatise on the Astrolabe, Prologue, 39–40).
We have arrived back to Cicero and to the ideal usually referred to as the Aristotelian-Ciceronian friendship. In my paper referred to above, I discussed their theories in detail, so here I present only a list of the main principles and characteristics of amicitia perfecta:
1. it is based on virtue
2. the parties are motivated not by usefulness or advantage but by mutual love and goodwill
21 See the plethora of books and papers comparing Chaucer’s work to the Roman, for example, Fansler, Tatlock and A. G. Kennedy (eds), Wimsatt, Diekstra, Finlayson, and Correale and Mary Hamel (eds).
22 The Book of the Duchess 332–4, Merchant’s Tale 2031–3, Legend of Good Women F 329–33, Legend of Good Women G 255–7.
23 In the prologue to his translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, Jean de Meun
23 In the prologue to his translation of Boethius’s De consolatione philosophiae, Jean de Meun