Chaucer's Works, Volume 5 — Notes to the Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

2744. 'Homo sine pecunia est quasi corpus sine anima' is written on a fly-leaf of a MS.; see my Pref. to P. Plowman, C-text, p. xx.

2746. All the MSS. have Pamphilles instead of Pamphilus. The allusion is to Pamphilus Maurilianus, who wrote a poem, well-known in the fourteenth century, entitled Liber de Amore, which is extant in MSS. (e.g. in MS. Bodley 3703) and has been frequently printed. Tyrwhitt cites the lines here alluded to from the Bodley MS.

'Dummodo sit diues cuiusdam nata bubulci,

Eligit e mille, quem libet, illa uirum.'

Sundby quotes the same (with ipsa for illa) from the Paris edition of 1510, fol. a iiii, recto. Chaucer again refers to Pamphilus in F. 1110, on which see the note.

2748. This quotation is not in the Latin text, and is certainly not from Pamphilus; but closely follows Ovid's lines in his Tristia, i. 9. 5:—

'Donec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos;

Tempora si fuerint nubila, solus eris.'

See notes to B. 120 and B. 3436.

2751. Neither is this from Pamphilus, but from some author quoted by Petrus Alfonsi, Discip. Cler. vi. 4, who says:—'ait quidam uersificator, Clarificant [al. Glorificant] gazae priuatos nobilitate.'