Chaucer's Prioress: Et Nos Cedamus Amori

Abstract

It is with some trepidation that one would venture to say anything about the Prioress's brooch, its "crowned A," and the hemistich taken as motto, "Amor vincit omnia." 1 The ultimate source of the hemistich is fairly often noted (Virgil, Eclogues X.69), 2 though often the diversionary argument is made that Chaucer had the half-line via an intermediary source, namely Le Roman de la Rose (line 21,332). 3 This is hardly necessary, for even in the Anglo-Saxon period the line from Virgil was known whole, not just by hemistich or from glossary lemmata. For example, in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Junius 85, a collection of Old English homilies from the mid-eleventh century (with additions in hands of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries), one finds the line "omnia uincit Amor: et nos cedamus Amori" quoted twice. 4 Knowledge of Virgil by early Anglo-Latin poets such as Aldhelm and Alcuin was fairly extensive, and knowledge of Virgil firsthand only improved in the later English medieval period. 5 Thus have critics recorded the source and often noted its secular nature, and then they leave Virgil behind to pursue just what sort of amor is meant and just what the brooch's inscription betokens. In examining the portrait of the Prioress in conjunction with her tale of the "litel clergeon" (VII 503), Alan Gaylord noted in passing: "Could one ever seriously wonder if the Prioress 'thought' that Amor contained even a trace of earthly love?" 6 Gaylord's remark is in part a rebuttal of John Livingston Lowe's musings:

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