In these three lines from Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women the four Anglo-French words Danger, Pity, Gentle, and Mercy are all Latin terms whose forms had altered, and whose meanings had received the Christian stamp during the Dark Ages. Pity comes from ‘pietas’ (compare piety); gentle from ‘gentilis’ meaning ‘of the same family’ and later ‘of noble birth’; and mercy from ‘merces’, ‘a reward’, then ‘a reward in heaven for kindness displayed on earth’. None of them—with the exception of mercy in its theological sense—are known to have been used in English before the thirteenth century. Anguish, beauty, bounty, charity, comfort, compassion, courtesy, delicate, devotion, grace, honour, humble, passion, patience, peace, purity, tender are further examples of this new vocabulary of tenderness which came to us from Latin through Early French. Some of them, such as charity, delicate, and passion, were probably brought to England by the preaching friars before the Conquest; others came with the devout Normans, and did not develop a secular meaning until after they had reached our shores (devotion remaining purely theological until as late as the sixteenth century); while yet a third class had already been secularized by nimble spirits like Petrarch and Ronsard a century or two before they reached us by the Norman route along with more frivolous terms, amorous, dainty, dalliance, debonair, delight, pleasure, pleasance, and the like, in which there is no particular reason to perceive a strong ecclesiastical influence. All of them, apart from the last group, are alike in that they started with a theological meaning and subsequently developed an affectionate one alongside of it. We may think of them as gifts presented to the lyric lover by the Bride of Christ—well-chosen gifts; for were they not the ardent creations of her own early passion?
Thus, side by side with such lyrics as the carol quoted above, we find in the Middle Ages charming little secular poems almost indistinguishable from them in tone and manner:
Sweet rose of vertew and of gentilness,
Delightsome lily of everie lustyness,
Richest in bountie and in bewtie clear,
And everie vertew that is wened dear,
Except onlie that ye are mercyless.
Into your garth this day I did pursew;
There saw I flowris that fresh were of hew;
Both white and red most lusty were to seene