Saints' Names

Reflecting the potency of the medieval church, the names of saints were invoked in all manner of contexts, such as asseveration, exasperation, and even cursing. The saints vary from the most familiar and expected to some virtually unknown now, like St. Thomas of India. Today these names generally no longer carry such power, being represented by plain names as in “by George!” or “by Godfrey!,” which are really euphemistic forms of the name of God. In the same way “by Saint Mary!” was first abbreviated to plain “Mary!,” then eroded to marry! before becoming obsolete. The practice of abbreviation was found even in medieval literature: the central figure of William Langland’s great spiritual poem, Piers Plowman (ca. 1360 >) erupts into the action with an irritated oath: “‘Peter!’ quod [said] a plowman, and put forth his hede” (C Text, passus VIII, l. 182).

In Chaucer’s narrative magnum opus , the Canterbury Tales (1386–1400), as well as in his minor poems, saints’ names invoked vary greatly, but are often chosen with insight and discrimination. Thus the “greatest oath” of the prim but expensively and improperly adorned Prioress was “only by St. Loy” ( General Prologue , l. 120), appropriately the patron saint of jewelers. Similarly, when the Host of the Tabard Inn swears by “St. Ronyan!” in the Introduction to the Pardoner’s Tale (l. 310), Ralph Elliott has suggested that this unfamiliar name might be a mischievous pun on ronyon , “kidney,” from French rognon and English runnion , “the male organ” (1974, 258). This could be a sly allusion to the Pardoner’s charlatanism and evident effeminacy. Geographical appropriateness is also a feature: the clerk John in the Reeve’s Tale (l. 4127) swears by St. Cuthbert, who has northern associations; the carpenter in the Miller’s Tale invokes St. Frideswide (l. 3449), a local Oxford saint; while Dan John in the Shipman’s Tale , set in France, invokes “Seint Denys of Fraunce” (l. 151). Yet some of the “saints” invoked are pointedly outrageous. The sexually adventurous Wife of Bath claims to have the sign of a pagan “seinte Venus” ( Prologue , l. 604), and the sexual vengeance she takes upon her fourth husband is accompanied by the exclamation “by God and Seint Joce” ( Tale , l. 483), which could also be a phallic allusion (Elliott 1974, 280).

Other names seem to be indiscriminate, such as the Host and the Pardoner appealing “For the love of God and seinte John” ( Wife of Bath’s Tale , l. 164). But these couplings were actually quite common, shown in “by God and seinte Martyn” ( Shipman’s Tale , l. 164). St. John and St. James are the saints most frequently invoked in the Canterbury Tales . There are only four refer- ences to “Seint Thomas of Kente,” that is, Thomas à Becket, the “hooly blissful martyr” of the Prologue (l. 17), whose shrine at Canterbury is the focal point and destination of the pilgrimage.

The sanctions against swearing formulated in 1551, 1606, and 1623 specified the names of God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Devil, but not the names of saints, effectively reflecting a demotion of status, which has continued. Thus, the variety of saints appealed to in Shakespeare is greatly reduced in comparison with Chaucer. (In the lifetime of Shakespeare, Catholicism, which was already unpopular, came to be regarded as unpatriotic.) Consequently, the names of saints are more numerous in the early plays, such as Richard III (1592), with three references to St. Paul and one to St. John. Hamlet (1601) is the only late play with such references, one to St. Patrick and the other to “Saint Charity,” not truly a saint. Similarly, the Virgin Mary has some dozen references, all in early plays, and mainly through indirect allusions, such by our Lady and by my holidame . The two most explicit are by holy Mary (Henry VI, Part III , III ii 103) and by the holy Mother of our Lord (Richard III , III, vii, 2). As Catholicism lost power and influence in England, so logically did the potency and currency of saints’ names, leaving only a few survivals like the exclamation “My sainted aunt!” and trivialized uses dating from the mid-nineteenth century.