The Miller makes fun of a jealous husband in his tale, but he himself, he drunkenly implies, is not the jealous type:

"An housbonde shal nat been inquisityf
Of Goddes pryvetee, nor of his wyf.
So he may fynde Goddes foyson there,
Of the remenant nedeth nat enquere."

    (I 3163-66)(FN1)
    The medieval concept of jealousy, however, is richer than the drunken Miller knows. Envious and selfish jealousy, of course, is the variety the Miller understands and justly ridicules, but the tradition of charitable jealousy, of zealous regard for the moral and spiritual good of one's wife, the Miller understands not at all. In one of his marriage sermons, albeit nearly 250 years after Chaucer, John Donne still understood and nicely encapsulates this fuller and richer understanding of jealousy:

Where there is... a spirit of uncleannesse, there will necessarily be... a spirit of jealousie.... [but when] jealousie is a care and not a suspition, God is not ashamed to protest of himself that he is a jealous God.... And God presents it as a curse, when he says, My jealousie shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, and no more angry; that is, I will leave thee to thy self, and take no more care of thee. Jealousie that implies care, and honour, and counsell, and tendernesse, is rooted in God, for God is a jealous God, and his servants are jealous servants, as S. Paul professes of himself, I am jealous over you with a godly jealousie. But jealousie that implies diffidence and suspition, and accusation, is rooted in the Devil.(FN2)

    Chaucer's Miller understands the folly of what Donne calls suspicious jealousy, but concerned only for that plenty he finds in his wife's privates, he has no conception of godly jealousy, of, as Donne puts it, the "care, and honour, and counsell, and tendernesse... rooted in God" that is also his responsibility as a medieval husband. No "jealous servant," certainly, the Miller thinks his joke is on the uptight Reeve and on Carpenter John, the jealous old husband of his tale,(FN3) but his heedless disregard for his wife's private affairs opens another possibility: the joke is also on him.(FN4)

GODLY JEALOUSY: BIBLICAL AND LINGUISTIC ORIGINS
    As Donne's sermon suggests, the tradition of godly jealousy is an old one, beginning in the Old Testament, continuing in the New, and extending -- in both ecclesiastical and popular texts -- well into the Early Modern period. The Old Testament, to be sure, frequently reminds its hearers that Yahweh is a jealous God. In Exodus, for example, Yahweh reminds Moses: "Adore not any strange god. The Lord his name is Jealous, he is a Jealous God."(FN5) In the New Testament, God's jealousy is a familiar concept as well. Saint Paul, concerned that the Corinthians have abandoned his message for someone else's, possessively and devotedly writes, "For I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God. For I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ" (2 Cor. 11.2). With its careful identification of a godly jealousy using the imagery of marital love and chastity, this verse along with many others contributed to the transmission and survival of a tradition of zealous and jealous love for good. The original Hebrew, Greek, and Latin words for jealousy, likewise, permit, even encourage, uses in senses both good and bad. Word forms based on Hebrew abq [qna] can mean 'zealous' or 'jealous'; 'zeal' or 'fanaticism'; 'zealot' or 'fanatic'; 'jealousy' or 'envy,' 'ardor,' 'love,' or 'passion,' even 'anger'; verbal meanings include 'be jealous,' 'be zealous,' or 'be envious.'(FN6) Nor are forms of the word abq used infrequently in the Hebrew canon: various forms appear over eighty times in good and bad senses. Forms of Greek zeta´{Begin Greek}hlo$ {End Greek}[dze'los] and related words, such as {Begin Greek}zhl{End Greek}´{Begin Greek}oq {End Greek}[dzel'oo] and {Begin Greek}zhlqt{End Greek}´{Begin Greek}h$ {End Greek}[dzelotes], have virtually the same oppositions as forms of abq except that the potential meaning of the Greek forms complement negative 'envy' with the positive 'emulate' and 'emulation.' Like forms of abq, these Greek forms are common, appearing about twenty times in the Old Testament Apocrypha and about forty times in the New Testament in both good and bad senses.(FN7) Late Latin, similarly, permitted retention of the same positive and negative senses in two of its words for jealousy -- Greek loan words based on zel- [zelus, zelare, zelotyp-, zelotes] and the Latin aemul- [aemulatio, aemulor, aemulator].(FN8) The meanings of both words closely map the Greek and Hebrew(FN9) words, except that Jerome uses the Latin aemul-for all uses where Modern English now offers the words emulate or emulation. That Jerome was fully aware of the many possible meanings of these two Latin words is evident from his Commentariorum on Galatians 4.17-18, verses in which forms of the word aemulatio appear three times. After a long disquisition on the various appearances and contextual meanings of aemulatio, he concludes by turning to zelus, soon noting, "Longum est si velim omnia zeli genera, boni seu mali de Scripturarum proferre thesauro"(FN10) (It would be tedious were I to put together in a treasury from the Scriptures all kinds of jealousy, good or evil), and so concludes by giving a few more examples of persons exemplifying the good and the bad jealousy.

GODLY JEALOUSY: LATIN RELIGIOUS TRADITION
    That the Scriptures attributed powerful and potentially destructive human emotions to God also contributed to the rich multivalence of the word jealousy and, in particular, to the preservation of its good sense. In his commentary on God's destructive jealousy in Ezekiel 5.13, for example, Jerome writes,

quomodo sentiendus sit furor, et indignatio et zelus Dei, saepe exposuimus, quod humanis Deus loquatur affectibus: non quo ipse irascatur, sed quo nos per poenas atque cruciatus Deum sen-tiamus iratum. Zelus autem sub metaphora viri et uxoris accipien-dus, qui quamdiu uxorem diligit, zelotypus est; si neglexerit, dicit illud quod in consequentibus dicturi sumus: Zelus meus recedet a te: et ultra non irascar tibi (Infra, LXI [sic for XVI], 42).(FN11)

(Regarding the question of) how the fury, indignation, and jealousy of God are to be understood, we have often explained that God is spoken of by means of human affections; not by this that God is angry but by this that we can understand an angry God through his punishments and torments. Similarly, we understand jealousy by means of the metaphor of a wife and a husband, a husband who, so long as he loves his wife, is a jealous man. Were he to neglect her, a husband says by his actions what Ezekiel soon tells us: "My jealousy will depart from you and I will no longer be angry with you" (Ezek. 16.42).

    Here, of course, Jerome wants to make clear that readers must not confuse God's essence with the human metaphors required to express it, but of particular importance is the connection he makes between God's jealousy and his love, namely that jealousy is inseparable from love, that, like the husband Jerome here projects, God is jealous so long as he loves, that, to quote the eloquent Donne as above, "God presents [a lack of jealousy] as a curse, when he says, My jealousie shall depart from thee, and I will be quiet, and no more angry." Augustine, too, is eager to defend the use of the word jealous as an attribute of God, and he too links God's jealousy with his love as he does so:

Tolle de zelo errorem et dolorem.... Quo igitur verbo, nisi zelo Dei melius posset insinuari, quod vocamur ad conjugium Dei, et non vult nos turpi amore corrupmi, et punit impudicitiam nos-tram, et diligit castitatem? Non enim frustra vulgo dici solet: Qui non zelat, non amat.(FN12)

Take away all error and sorrow (implicit in human jealousy).... What word other than jealousy better implies that we are called for marriage to God, that he does not wish us to be seduced by disgraceful love, that he punishes our immodesty, that he loves chastity. For it is not in vain what the common people say, 'Whoever is not jealous does not love.'

    While Augustine's formulation makes absolute the connection between love and jealousy, Jerome's formulation, except for being more explicitly sexist, is little different in concluding that a husband, "quamdiu uxorem diligit, zelotypus est" (so long as he loves his wife, is a jealous man). More important for its potential implications for Chaucer's Miller, however, the connection Jerome and Augustine see between love and jealousy becomes commonplace in later scriptural tradition, especially by way of Jerome's formulation, since his comment on Ezekiel 5.13 reappears in Rabanus Maurus's commentary on Ezekiel(FN13) and again in the Glossa Ordinaria.(FN14) Much the same idea also appears in the Glossa commentary on Zephaniah 1.18:

Dum ex zelo punit deus. ostendit se amare humanam animam. nisi enim amaret non eam zelaret. sed nec in similitudine mariti: peccatum vxoris vlcisceretur. (3:426)

When God punishes because of his jealousy, he shows his love for the human soul; for unless he loved, he would not be jealous. But (God is) not (jealous) in the likeness of a husband avenging himself on the sin of his wife.

    To early Christian exegetes, of course, God's jealousy is always just, and scriptural uses of jealousy/zeal often make clear that human jealousy/zeal for God -- as in "the zeal [zelus] of thy house hath eaten me up" (Ps. 68.10) -- and jealousy/zeal for the good -- as in "be zealous [aemulamini] for that which is good in a good thing always" (Gal. 4.18) -- reflect the godly jealousy. Such verses as Psalms 36.1, "Be not emulous [noli aemulari] of evildoers; nor envy [neque zelaveris] them that work iniquity," and Proverbs 3.31, "Envy not [ne aemularis] the unjust man," of course, suggest the care to be taken. Because the same words permit such different uses, however, Jerome was not alone in feeling the need to illustrate differences. Indeed, Jerome's contrast of good and evil, his care to distinguish one jealousy from another (a feature already seen in Donne) appears again and again for purposes of complement and contrast in later exegetes and writers. The Rule of Saint Benedict, for example, separates the bad from the good jealousy/zeal a monk should possess as follows:

Sicut est zelus amaritudinis malus qui separat a Deo et ducit ad infernum, ita est zelus bonus qui separat a vitio, et ducit ad Deum et ad vitam aeternam. Hunc ergo zelum ferventissimo amore exerceant monachi, id est, ut honore se invicem praeveni-ant. Infirmitates suas sive corporum sive morum patientissime tolerent; obedientiam sibi certatim impendant; nullus quod sibi utile judicat sequatur, sed quod magis alio; caritatem fraternitatis casto impendant amore; Deum timeant; abbatem suum sincera et humili caritate diligant; Christo omnino nihil praeponant, qui nos pariter ad vitam aeternam perducat.(FN15)

Just as there is an evil zeal of bitterness(FN16) which separates from God and leads to hell, so is there a good zeal which separates from evil and leads to God and life everlasting. Let monks, therefore, exercise this zeal with the most fervent love. Let them, that is, give one another precedence [Rom. 12.10]. Let them bear with the greatest patience one another's infirmities, whether of body or character. Let them vie in paying obedience one to another. Let none follow what seems good for himself, but rather what is good for another. Let them practise fraternal charity with a pure love. Let them fear God. Let them love their abbot with a sincere and humble affection. Let them prefer nothing whatever to Christ. And may he bring us all alike to life everlasting.

    Implicit in Saint Benedict's urging that a monk should put fellow brother, abbot, and God before himself, of course, is Augustine's distinction between charitable and selfish loves, between loves focusing on love of God and neighbor and those focusing on self before neighbor and God.(FN17)
    In the Summa, Aquinas makes much the same distinction. He opens his discussion of this emotion by outlining positions that jealousy (zelus) is and is not an effect of love, finally concluding, like Augustine and Jerome, that jealousy is an effect of love: "Dicendum quod zelus, quocumque modo sumatur, ex intensione amoris provenit" (Jealousy, in whatever sense one takes the term, arises from the intensity of love).(FN18) Aquinas then distinguishes between two kinds of jealousy by opposing two loves:

Nam in amore concupiscentiae, qui intense aliquid concupiscit movetur contra omne illud quod repugnat consecutioni vel frui-tioni quietae ejus quot amatur. Et hoc modo viri dicuntur zelare uxores, ne per consortium aliorum impediatur singularitas quam in uxore habere quaerunt. Similiter etiam qui quaerunt excellen-tiam, moventur contra eos qui excellere videntur, quasi impedi-entes eorum excellentiam. Et iste est zelus invidiae....

Amor autem amicitiae quaerit bonum amici: unde quando est intensus facit hominem moveri contra omne illud quod repugnat bonis amici. Et secundum hoc, aliquis dicitur zelare pro amico, quando, si qua dicuntur vel fiunt contra bonum amici, homo repellere studet. Et per hunc etiam modum aliquis dicitur zelare pro Deo, quando ea quae sunt contra honorem vel voluntatem Dei, repellere secundum posse conatur.... dicit Glossa quod bono zelo comeditur, qui quaelibet prava quae viderit, corrigere satagit; si nequit, tolerat et gemit.(FN19)

In the case of love-of-desire, a person who desires a thing intensely feels an antipathy to anything which stands in the way of his obtaining or peacefully enjoying it. It is in this way that a man is said to be jealous about his wife: he fears that her associating with others may jeopardize the uniqueness of his own relationship with her; and an ambitious man feels antipathy to successful men as standing in the way of his own advancement. This sort of jealousy is called envy...

In the case of love-of-friendship, however, the object is the good of one's friend; when it is intense, therefore, it rouses in one an antipathy to anything prejudicial to that good. In this way a person is said to be jealous for his friend's interests when he makes a point of repulsing anything said or done against them. In this way too a person is said to be jealous for God's interests when he strives to the best of his power to prevent anything that goes against the honour or the will of God.... [T]he Gloss says that it is perfectly proper jealousy which consumes a man who strives to correct evil wherever he sees it, and if he cannot correct it, bears it with grief.

    Aquinas's use of "amor amicitia" may have roots in Augustine's view that friendship is at the base of all social relations including marriage(FN20) and may follow in the friendship tradition typified by Aelred of Rievaulx (d. 1167) who celebrates love between friends and inquires into curing shortcomings humanely and enduring patiently what cannot be changed.(FN21)
    What to correct and what to tolerate, of course, is not a given, and it may be asked whether a spouse, discovering unfaithfulness, is justified -- as God commonly to Israel or as the much-praised Phinehas to the brazen couple in Numbers 25.6-8 -- in bringing down punishments and torments. In the Hebrew Scriptures, where this life counted for much and the next for very little, the answer is generally clear: adultery, especially (though not exclusively) in a woman, is punishable by death (e.g., Lev. 20.10). In Numbers 5.11-31, similarly, if a wife spurns her husband and if he suspects her of adultery, he can, without blame (5.31), subject her to an elaborate ordeal in the temple designed to determine her innocence or guilt. In the Christian Scriptures, on the other hand, where ultimate justice belongs at the end of time in the afterlife, where only a person without guilt can first cast the stone at the woman taken in adultery (John 8.3-7),(FN22) where such a one so taken must go and sin no more (John 8.11), where lusting in thought is adultery nonetheless (Matt. 5.28), where forgiveness comes with forgiveness (Matt. 6.12, 14-15), where one must, if angry, sin not (Eph. 4.26),(FN23) perspectives shifted. Augustine reflects this difference when he argues that exercising the jealous justice of God is simply not possible for individual fallen humans:

Sicut enim ea quae dicitur ira Dei non perturbatio mentis est, sed potentia vindicandi: sic zelum Dei non cruciatum animi, quo maritus adversus uxorem, vel uxor adversus maritum torqueri solent, sed tranquillissimam sincerissimamque justitiam, qua nulla anima beata esse sinitur, falsis opinionibus pravisque cupid-itatibus corrupta, et quodam modo gravidata.(FN24)

Just as God's anger comes with no perturbation of mind but only with the power to punish, so the jealousy of God comes not from a tortured soul, as of a husband against his wife or a wife against her husband, but from the most tranquil and pure justice, such justice as no human soul can ever be blessed, deformed as it is with false opinion, corrupted, even impregnated, with cupidity.

    Augustine's Confessions similarly and emphatically underscores the gulf between human emotions, including jealousy, and the divine tranquility: "Amas, nec aestuas, zelas, et securus es; poenitet te, et non doles, irasceris et tranquillus es"(FN25) (You love, but do not burn; you are jealous and are untroubled; you repent, and suffer not; you are angry and yet tranquil). In De conjugiis adulterinis ad Pollentium, thus, Augustine leaves no doubt about marital responsibility in adultery: "post adulterium reconcilietur [poenitenti] conjugi conjux... quis non intelligat debere ignoscere maritum, quod videt ignovisse Dominum amborum"(FN26) (after adultery, spouse should be reconciled to [penitent] spouse... [for] who does not understand that a husband must forgive what he knows the God of both has forgiven). Jerome, too, suggests this difference between the Hebrew and Christian testaments when, in his Commentariorum on Galatians 4.17-18, he includes the jealous husband of Numbers 5.11-31 as his last example of the evil jealousy: "Et zelum [malum legimus] viri, de quo scriptum est: Et venerit ei spiritus zeli (Num. v [.14])" (And [we choose the evil] jealousy of the man, about whom it is written, "And if the spirit of jealousy shall come upon him" [Num. 5.14]). Although the text in Numbers makes clear that, regardless of outcome, the husband is to remain blameless (5.31), Jerome, nevertheless, blames him, though, to be sure, he adds this: "Nisi forte medius hic zelus est, et nec in bonam, nec in malam partem accipi potest; sed inter utrumque zelotypia potius appellatur" (Unless, to be sure, this jealousy is in the middle and can be understood neither for good nor for evil, but whether the one or the other, it is preferably called zelotypia). Even with this addition, however, Jerome clearly does not see the husband of this passage as an example of the good. Rabanus Maurus's commentary on Numbers 5.11-31 also makes clear these same differences in perspective. In his commentary, largely repeated later in the Glossa Ordinaria (1:289), Rabanus understands the jealous husband not as a literal husband seized by a spirit of jealousy, but as the husband of a congregation seized by a spirit of zeal, that is, a "priest or teacher of the church zealous/jealous for the good" (pastorem atque doctorem significat Ecclesiae.... zelo justitiae accenso). The suspected wife, thus, is "anyone... owing obedience... but erring in some way" (quisque, qui... obedire debuit.... hujuscemodi errans), and the priest in the original text who oversees and administers the ordeal determining innocence or guilt is Christ who "does not judge uncertain matters before the time" (ne... incertam ante tempus... judicet).(FN27) Rabanus's complete neglect of the letter unmistakably reflects differences in attitudes between Hebrew and medieval cultures regarding what God's jealous justice condones.(FN28)
    At the same time, however, scriptural tradition makes clear that husbands, and occasionally wives, have responsibilities for protecting the chastity of their marriages. In his De nuptiis et concupiscientia, in speaking of the goods in marriage -- children, faith, and sacred oath (sacramentum) -- Augustine makes clear that these goods bring spiritual obligations:

Sed proles, non ut nascatur tantum, verum etiam ut renascatur: nascitur namque ad poenam, nisi renascatur ad vitam. Fides autem, non qualem habent inter se etiam infideles zelantes carnem. Quis enim vir, quamlibet impius, vult adulteram uxorem? aut quae mulier, quamlibet impia, vult adulterum virum? Hoc in connubio bonum naturale est quidem, carnale tamen. Sed mem-brum Christi conjugis adulterium conjugi debet timere, non sibi; et a Christo sperare fidei praemium, quam exhibet conjugi. Sacramentum vero, quod nec separati nec adulterati amittunt, conjuges concorditer casteque custodiant. Solum est enim quod etiam sterile conjugium tenet jure pietatis, jam spe fecunditatis amissa propter quam fuerat copulatum.(FN29)

[Children are loved] not that they are born merely, but that they truly also are reborn to life [in Christ]. And faith, likewise, is loved but not such faith as even infidels, ardently loving the flesh, have among themselves, for what man, however impious, wishes an adulterous wife, or what woman, however impious, wants an adulterous husband? Such faith, indeed, is a natural good in marriage, however carnal, but a member [of the body] of Christ ought to fear the adultery of a spouse for (the sake of) the spouse, not for himself [or herself], and he [or she] ought to hope from Christ for the reward of faith that he [or she] shows to a spouse. The sacred oath of marriage is loved certainly because spouses break it neither by separation nor by committing adultery, and they harmoniously guard it with chastity, for the sacred oath alone is that each holds fast to the law of purity even in a childless union and even when the hope of fecundity is lost because of how they have been joined together.

    Having children is good, but raising them as Christians is paramount; faithfulness in marriage is good, but faithfulness to God as symbolized by faith to one's marriage is more important still; concern about the faithfulness of a spouse is human, but concern about the spiritual consequences of unfaithfulness for the soul of the spouse is true godliness. The saintly Augustine goes so far here as to discount mere faithfulness, something even the Miller might understand since he too, while denigrating the value of his wife's faithfulness, values it just enough to suppose that the "oxen in [his] plough" (I 3159) are sufficient to insure that he is not a cuckold. Other medieval exegetes are not so quick to denigrate mere faithfulness, however natural, and they typically grant husbands rights and give obligations in protecting the chastity of their marriages, or more accurately, to be sure, the chastity of their wives. The Glossa commentary on Exodus 20.5, for example, compares God's jealousy to that of a husband as follows: "Qui legittimo vtitur matrimonio non patitur vxorem peccare:sed accenditur zelo ad servandam castitatem matrimonij.vt possit legitimus fieri pater"(FN30) (Whoever engages in legitimate matrimony does not suffer his wife to sin but burns with jealousy to preserve the chastity of marriage so that he can become a legitimate father). The Glossa commentary continues that God's love for the soul is much the same:

Si vero coniuncta fuerit viro legittimo id est Christo.etiamsi aliquando fuerit peccatrix.vltra eam peccare non patitur:nec ferre potest vt alludat adulteris; excitatur super eam zelus ejus. et defendit conjugij castitatem.Si autem viderit eam temerantem conjugij iura.et occasionem quaerere peccandi, dat ei libellum repudij.... hic ergo deus zelans si requirit et desiderat animam tuam sibi adhaerere.si seruat, corripit et indignatur velut zeloty-pia quadam erga te vsus.spem tibi esse salutis agnosce.(FN31)

If, in truth, the soul is joined to a lawful husband, that is to Christ, he does not suffer it to sin further nor can he bear it if it makes sport with adulteries; his jealousy is roused over her and he defends the chastity of marriage; if he sees her desecrating the laws of marriage and sees her seeking occasion for sinning, he gives her a bill of divorce.... If this God, loving jealously, seeks after and longs for your soul to adhere to him, if he guards, if he reproaches and is angry, as if possessed by a certain jealousy toward you, understand this to be his hope of salvation for you.

    Patriarchy thus rules.(FN32) At the same time, however, Ecclesiasticus 9.1 warns husbands, "Be not jealous (Non zeles) over the wife of thy bosom, lest she shew in thy regard the malice of a wicked lesson."(FN33) And Ambrose, commenting on this verse, warns that there must "be measure and discipline in jealousy just as discipline in virtue" (mensura quaedam et disciplina sit zeli, sicut disciplina virtutis).(FN34) Calling jealousy (zelus) the sister of charity and piety, William of Auvergne (d. 1249), who writes extensively about jealousy in his De moribus, insists that the good jealousy must include "any chaste love of a husband unable to endure his wife's adultery" (quilibet castus amor mariti in uxorem, impatiens est adulterij ipsius). At the same time, however, the good Bishop of Paris is adamant that jealousy/zeal (zelus) for chastity has nothing whatsoever to do with zelotypia nor, alluding to the notorious ordeal in the letter of Numbers 5.5-31, with the spiritus zelotypiae(FN35) (spirit of jealousy). He then continues with deft touches of irony and satire:

certum est autem, quòd zelotipia vitium est, & habet duo vitia comitantia, videlicet suspiciositatem, & furorem concitatissimum: & suspiciositate omnem nutum, omnem aspectum, omnem gres-sum uxoris suspectú habet, quòd militet, vel serviat adulterio uxoris: similiter & omne alloquium alterius ad ipsam, omnem attractum, omnem frequentationem domus suae; unde etiam frequenter accidit, ut vir zelotipus de domo propria exire non audeat, ac si captus ibi detineretur, timens uxorem, vel ad momentum dimittere, ne eo absente pateat adulterio. Furor vero adeò praeceps est zelotipiae, ut nunc in uxores quamquàm innocentes, nunc in sic suspectas, si tamen audeant, saeviant. Quàm longè autem sit hujusmodi zelus, vel zelotipia à zelo rectitudinis cuilibet intelligenti manifestum est; nemo enim sic Deum diligit, ut non patiatur alios diligere illum, & etiam obtinere, immò qui-cunque verè diligit (quantùm in eo est) alios ejusdem participes efficere conatur, & ipsum Deum similiter (quantùm in ipso est) ad hoc ipsum inducere nititur, ut alios diligat.(FN36)

it is certain that zelotypia is a vice with two concomitant vices, namely suspicion and sudden fury. The zelotypus has suspicion with mistrust for every wave, every glance, every walk of a wife that might serve or be of use to her adultery. Likewise, all speaking of another to her, all attention, all visits to her house. Then it frequently happens even that the vir zelotypus does not risk going out of his own house, but is held there as if a prisoner, fearing his wife, or rather fearing to embark for a moment lest he suffer adultery in his absence. Precipitous raging truly is thus characteristic of the jealous man, and now they rage even against innocent wives, even against anything suspicious, if they dare. It is clear, however, how distant such jealousy and such a jealous man is from the upright man with intelligence, for no one loves God in this way, no one loves God to prevent others from loving, even possessing, him.(FN37) Rather, whoever truly loves tries as much as is in him to make others partners and likewise he strives as much as is in him to move God himself to do the same.

    In medieval scriptural tradition and in medieval life, a husband and occasionally a wife might thus be righteously indignant about a spouse's adultery (or violence) and, unable to reconcile, procure from later church courts a "bill of divorcement" (Matt. 5.32, 19.9), that is, a legal separation,(FN38) but a consistent theme of the tradition is that no one can love truly without godly jealousy, that is, without a concern for the well-being, spiritual and otherwise, of the loved one.(FN39) From Jerome to Aquinas, Augustine to William of Auvergne, it is clear how far indeed the suspiciously jealous husband of medieval literature falls from this charitable ideal, and how just, from the perspective of the scriptural tradition, the comedy and satire at his expense. Robin the Miller himself certainly knows the fun and folly of such jealousy even though he lacks understanding of its equally important and more deeply edifying counterpart.
    This scriptural tradition was still alive in the fourteenth century as we know from Petrus Berchorius (d. 1362) and his Dictionarium with its full, lively, and completely traditional discussions of the negative and positive meanings of aemulari/aemulatio and zelus. Of aemulari/aemulatio, Berchorius notes:

Nota, quod aemulari quandoque sumitur pro invidiae malignitate, & quandoque pro amoris immensitate, quandoque pro zelotypiae acerbitate.(FN40)

Observe that aemulari is sometimes used for the malignity of envy, sometimes for the immensity of love, and sometimes for the bitterness of jealousy.

    Berchorius continues as follows regarding the meaning of aemulari in its second sense, amoris immensitate [immensity of love]:

"Sumitur etiam pro bona amoris integritate; & sic dicitur 2. Corinth. 14. Aemulamini charismata meliora, & 2. Corinth. 14. Aemulamini spiritualia, & Apostolus dicebat 2. Corinth. 11. Aemulor enim vos Dei aemulatione..."(FN41)

[Aemulari] is also used for the good wholeness of love, and thus it is said in 2 Corinthians 14 [sic for 1 Cor. 12.31], "Be jealous of the better gifts" and in 2 Corinthians 14 [sic for 1 Cor. 14.1], "Be jealous of spiritual things," and the apostle said in 2 Corinthians 11[.2], "For I am jealous of you with the jealousy of God, & c."

    Berchorius treats zelus in much the same way: "Et sic nota, quòd invenitur in Scriptura Zelus Dei, Justi, Impii"(FN42) (And so observe in Scripture that zelus is found for the jealousy of God, for the jealousy of the just, and for the jealousy of the impious).
    Of particular interest for Robin the Miller's simplistic solution to the problem of jealousy are Berchorius' discussions of the two positive meanings of zelus. First, of the jealousy of God (Zelus Dei), Berchorius relies, like others before him, including Ezekiel, on metaphors and imagery drawn from the relationship of an angry and jealous husband with an erring wife to model God's jealousy for the soul:

Dico igitur primò, quòd invenitur zelus rigoris, & iste est zelus justitiae divinae. Deus enim tanto zelo diligit animam sponsam suam, quod si delinquat, & fidem ei frangat, & adultero diabolo per peccatum sese jungat, ipsam solet ut zelotypus punire, & contra eam per justitiam desaevire, nullo enim modo vult ut aliquis isti uxori praeter eum copuletur, vel quòd aliquis ab ipsa praeter eum excolatur.... Et ideo sicut homo zelotypus, istam uxorem suam, scil. animam vel hominem... ispe solet punire, & libellum repudii sibi dare.... Exemplo leonis, qui leaenam, sentiens adulteratam cum pardo, solet punire, & propter quendam zelum excessivi amoris solet contra eam desaevire. Sic verè facit Deus de anima, quae cum diabolo per vitia fornicatur, quod potissimè fiet in judicio, quando complebitur illud.... adverte, quòd zelus est signum amoris. Homo enim nunquam est zelotypus de muliere, quam non amat.(FN43)

I say therefore first that the jealousy of strictness is found [in Scripture] and that this jealousy is the jealousy of divine justice. For God loves the soul, his spouse, with such great jealousy that if she does wrong and breaks her faith to him and joins herself through sin in adultery with the devil, he is, like a jealous man, accustomed to punish her and to rage against her in justice, for by no means does he desire that anyone should couple with his wife except himself or that anyone should take care of her except himself.... And God, like a jealous man for his own wife, namely the soul or mankind, ... is accustomed to punish her & to give her a bill of divorcement.... Consider the example of the lion who, sensing that the lioness has committed adultery with the leopard, punishes and rages against her because of the jealousy of exceeding love. So truly God does the same to the soul that through vice fornicates with the devil.... notice that jealousy is a sign of love, for a man is never jealous of a woman/wife he does not love.

    The Miller, of course, displays no interest in his wife's soul, and especially worth noting in the above quotation is the important idea -- indeed, that old chestnut appearing frequently in the scriptural tradition and elsewhere -- that "zelus est signum amoris. Homo enim nunquam est zelotypus de muliere, quam non amat" (jealousy is a sign of love, for a man is never jealous of a woman/wife he does not love). If these ideas were in the mind of Chaucer or of any member of his audience, thus, the Miller's joke cuts more deeply than he knows. As Berchorius turns to his second sense of zelus, "zelus justi" (jealousy of the just), his words again underscore the comic potential of Robin's limited understanding of jealousy and his view of husbandly virtue:

Secundò dico, quòd invenitur zelus fortis amoris, & iste est zelus, quo justi zelant honorem Dei, & Ecclesiae, & fidei, & etiam cujuslibet alterius viri justi, ita quòd pro ipso fiunt zelotypi, in tantum quòd sustinere nequeunt ubi inferri aliquid dedecoris vel delicti. Exemplo apum, quae ita alvearia sua videntur zelare, quòd quisquis ea tetigerit, statim solent contra eum dimicare, & ad vindicandum propriis spiculis se armare. Exemplo etiam aspidum, quae secundum Pl. ita zelant pro conjugibus, & occisorem solent persequi & invadere, & cum maximo furore vindictae ipsum impetere & punire. Cum igitur Ecclesia, patria, fides & reverentia Divini Nominis sint conjuges & alvearia nostra, quibus per amorem & ipsis factas injurias pro viribus vindicare, & eos injuriantes impetere & mulctare, dicendo illus Psalm. Zelus domus tuae comedit me.(FN44)

Second, I say that jealousy is found [in Scripture] for the jealousy of great love, and this is the jealousy by which the just are jealous for the honor of God and the Church and for faith and also for anything of another just person, and so [it is] that for this the just become jealous men [zelotypi], so much so that they cannot suffer anything dishonorable or offensive to be brought forth. Consider the wild bees that so jealously protect their hives that should anyone strike them they immediately fight against him and rouse themselves to arms with their stingers to vanquish the enemy. Consider also the asps that, according to Pliny, are so greatly jealous for their spouses that they pursue and fall upon a killer and with great fury of vengeance punish and attack the same. Since therefore the Church, the city, our faith, and our reverence for the name of God are our spouses and beehives, [we ought], by our love for them and because of the injuries done to them, vindicate them before men and attack and defeat those injuring them -- thus the Psalmist when he says, "Jealousy for thy house consumes me."

    In medieval religious tradition, then, it is simply axiomatic that no one can love truly without godly jealousy, that is, without a concern for the well-being, spiritual and otherwise, of the loved one. As the Miller so outrageously proves by his unconcern for "the remenant,"(FN45) he appears, unwittingly, to demonstrate that he has no charitable jealousy and that he does not and cannot love his wife -- ironically and comically, the first and most important obligation of the medieval "housbonde" his maxim seeks to instruct.(FN46)

GODLY JEALOUSY: MIDDLE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND POPULAR LITERATURE
    This supremely obvious result -- that the Miller is not jealous because he does not love -- could, of course, tell us more about medieval religious tradition than about Chaucer's splendidly comic Miller. Did these concepts from the text of the Vulgate and the commentaries of exegetes move into Middle English and into the popular literature of the fourteenth century? Is there evidence that Chaucer and his audience might have been aware of the meanings of jealousy as outlined here?
    The MED makes it abundantly clear that the word jealous in its variety of forms can refer, not to the suspicious jealousy only, but to the charitable jealousy before and after Chaucer's period. Indeed, the MED's earliest citation for jealous occurs in a positive context from Ancrene Riwle:

Zelatus sum syon zelo magno. vnderstond ancre he seio hwas spuse ou ert. 7 hu he is gelus of alle þi-ne lates. Ego sum deus zelotes. In exodo. ich am <he seio> bi him suluen; þe geluse god. latus sum 7 cetera. ich am gelus of oe syon. mi leofmon mid uche gelusie. auris zeli audit omnia. seio salomon þe wise. vbi amor. ibi oculus. wite ou fulewel. his earen beoo euer touward te. 7 he ihereo and i shio al oet tu dest. his eie euer bihalt te. 3if þu makest ei semblaunt ooer eni luue lates touward unþeauwes. zelatus sum sion.(FN47)

Jealous I am for Zion with great jealousy. Understand anchoress, he says, whose spouse thou art and how he is jealous of all your failings. I am a jealous God. In Exodus, I am, he says of himself, the jealous God. I am jealous etc. I am jealous of thee Zion, my beloved, with much jealousy. The ears of jealousy hear all things, says Solomon, the wise. Where there is love there are eyes. You know full well his ears are ever toward you, and he hears and sees all that you do. His eyes ever behold you if you make any appearance or any lewd failings toward uncleanness. I am jealous for Zion.

    Even here the old chestnut: "Where there is love there are [watchful, jealous] eyes." The strict demands of God's jealous love continue into the fifteenth century as shown by Cambridge University Library MS Nn.4.12, fols. 46v-47r: "þerfor ofte chastisenge of god vpon vs is verrey tokene of his jelouste, þat he so entierly loueþ vs and wiþ owte comparisoun more þan eny ielous man loueþ his wif. And þerfor from him þat no tribulacions wiln han schal be drawen awey þe loue of god and his ielowste as seiþ þe prophete ezechiel"(FN48) (That God therefore often brings chastisement upon us is the true sign of his jealousy, namely that he so entirely loves us and without comparison more than any jealous man loves his wife. And therefore the love of God and His jealousy will be withdrawn, as the prophet Ezekiel says, from him who will not accept tribulations). Chaucer's works, similarly, show that he and his audience understood this tradition as well. In Chaucer, the various forms of jealous usually mean suspicious jealousy, a clear evil, but this word also can mean 'fervent, vigorous' (Riverside) or 'fierce, cruel, spirited' (MED) in the Knight's Tale, I 2634, and 'fond, amorous, ardent' (MED) in the Miller's Tale, I 3355. Further, Chaucer twice unambiguously uses jealous in the sense of 'zealous devotion to the good.' Chaucer's Parson notes that "The goode Ire is by jalousie of goodnesse, thurgh which a man is wrooth with wikkednesse" (X 539), and in the Legend of Good Women, the narrator notes approvingly of Thisbe's parents: "in that contre yit, withouten doute,/Maydenes been ykept, for jelosye,/Ful streyte, lest they diden som folye" (F 721-23). In the anonymous Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost (ca. 1390), similarly, the Abbess Charity is surrounded by twenty-eight sister virtues, including jealousy:

On a day afturward as Crist wente by þe way by hym-self & as he þou3te of mannus soule & on þe abbeye of þe holy gost, he founde a noþer suster þat is clepid Gelesye: and þenne tok he priueliche his twelue apostles and went touward Ierusalem & seide to him þus: "... and now wol I go to Ierusalem and ben I-bounden and I-bete, and ben honged and drawen, and dye for loue of monnes soule."... is was a grete gelesye and a gret loue!(FN49)

On a day afterward as Christ went alone by himself and as he thought of man's soul and on the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, he found another sister called Jealousy: and then he secretly took his twelve apostles and went toward Jerusalem and said thus to them: "... and now I will go to Jerusalem and be bound and beaten, hanged and drawn, and die for the love of man's soul."... This was a great jealousy and a great love!

    The Wycliffite versions of the Bible, likewise, show a variety of translations for in bono uses of forms of aemulatio and zelus including, in the earlier version, "zele," "(huge, inward) loue," "loued," "(a strong) louer" (for "jealous God"), "(gret) feruor," "gelous god," "jelouste," "jelousnesse."(FN50) No one can mistake here the close connection in the mind of the translator between jealousy and love. In the revised, somewhat later version of the Wycliffite Bible, the translator emphasizes the strength of this love with marked use of "fervent" before or after most of the same words: "(fer-uent) loue," "(feruent, strong, gelous) louer" (for "jealous God"), "louyde (feruently)," "gret feruentnesse," "take feruour," "feruent worching," "gelous god."(FN51) Late in the fourteenth century, as a very few appearances in the Wycliffite Bible suggest, the modern English word zeal makes its first appearances, one of them in Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde:

O moral Gower, this book I directe
To the and to the, philosophical Strode,
To vouchen sauf, ther nede is, to correcte,
Of youre benignites and zeles goode.

    (V, 1856-59)
    That Chaucer here qualifies "zeles" with "goode" is not at all redundant as we know from a Middle English text in the first half of the fifteenth century: "Zele is double: þat is to sey gode & yuel. Gode zele is somtyme ytake for spousale luffyng.... And so God, þat is þe spouse of holy chirche, is a stronge zeler... vengyng into þe 3. & þe 4. generacion.... Somtyme þer is vndiscrete zele.... Also somtyme zele is putte for enuy... also somtype it is putte for ire."(FN52)
    Clear understandings of jealousy appear in a variety of popular works as well. The garrulous but fully conventional Jehan le Bel (d. 1370), writing in French, deals at some length with how "jealousy comes into love and what jealousy is good and what bad" (comment jalousie vient en amour et quele jalousie est malvaise et quele non):

Li amant aussi de ceste amour se criement et ont paour li uns des autres, et c'est pour ce k'il ne se croient mie parfaitement, pour ce ke l'amours n'est mie parfaite ne viertueuse.... Et pour ce ke ces amours sont pour les délis ke le amant quièrent por eausmeismes, ne sont-il mie si un, ne lor voloir ausi dont tant ne se croient comme en la vraie, là ù li amans ayment le bien ki est en l'amet.... Et de ceste cremor vient la jalousie.... Et pour çou k'en tele jalousie on tient u croit défaute en la chose c'on aime, si est malvaise tele jalousie. En l'amour honeste est une autre manière de jalousie ki est bonne; en tel amor le amis quiert le bien del ami; et quant ce quiert durement et aigrement, si se muet li amans contre tot çou ki est contraire au bien del amet, et ensi dist-on: "Je suis tous jalous de vous aidier contre celui, et de vous servir et valoir." Et tele jalousie si est bonne et si fait à loer.(FN53)

Because of this [unwise] love, these lovers likewise shed tears and fear each other, and this is because they do not trust each other at all fully and because their love is neither complete nor virtuous.... And because these loves are for the delights that the lovers seek for themselves, these loves are thus neither one at all nor is the desire for oneness great enough that they trust each other as in true love where the lovers love the good that is in the beloved.... And from this fear comes jealousy.... And therefore in such jealousy one seizes on or believes fault in the person he loves, and thus such jealousy is evil. In virtuous love is another kind of jealousy that is good. In such love the lover holds dear the good of the beloved and he holds dear fiercely and ardently, so he vigorously protects the beloved against everything that is contrary to the good of the beloved. And thus one says, "I am completely jealous of aiding you against anything contrary to your good, and I am jealous of serving and honoring you." Such jealousy is indeed good and so causes rejoicing.

    Like others before him, Jehan le Bel bases the two jealousies on two kinds of love, and he makes clear that true lovers, in loving the good of their beloveds, jealously defend them against anything contrary to that good. The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, a popular French work written by Geoffrey de La Tour-Landry in the early 1370s for his daughters, addresses at some length the question of jealousy in marriage. This work also appears in a mid-fifteenth-century English translation later published by Caxton. The important section reads in part as follows:

Pour tant, à droit resgarder, ne doit pas savoir le mary trop mal gré à sa femme se elle est jalouse de luy. Car li saige dit que la jalousie est grant aspresse d'amour, et je pense que il die voir; car il ne me chauldroit se aucun, qui riens ne me seroit ne que jà cause n'auroye d'amer, se il faisoit bien ou mal; maiz de mon prouchain, ou de mon amy, je en auroye doulour et dueil au cuer se il avoit fait aucun grant mal; et pour ce jalousie n'e est point sans grant amour.(FN54)

    The Middle English translator nicely captures the sense of the original:

notwithstondinge the husbond aught [not] to loue his wiff the wors thou she be ielous ouer hym. For the wise man saithe that ielosye is a great ensaumple of loue, for he that louithe me not, rechithe neuer whedir y do welle or euelle; but my frende is sori whanne y do euelle, and therfor ielosie is neuer withoute grete loue.(FN55)

    Here again appears the link between love and jealousy. Geoffrey goes on to distinguish between two types of jealousy in marriage: suspicion without reason that shames a man and his wife, and concern that a husband or wife remain faithful according to the law of God and Holy Church. Geoffrey is careful indeed to make clear that any expressions of jealousy in marriage should be carefully restrained and offers his daughters advice about how to deal with husbandly jealousy, concluding that "la plus saige en fait le mains de semblant" ("But the wisest aught to be leste ielous"). Nevertheless, he grants husbands latitude in correcting wives ("le doit desmouvoir et oster de sa folle merencolie"), a point rendered by the fifteenth-century English translator as follows: "yef the husbonde perceiuithe of the wiff sum leude taches [blemishes] in her gouernaunce or behauing, that he aught to be ielous."(FN56)
    Thomas Usk's Testament of Love (ca. 1388), similarly, carefully distinguishes between a selfish and a charitable jealousy. Lady Love opens the matter when she links jealousy with envy, evil speech, and mistrust. Lover Usk takes exception, echoing courtly tradition,

"ye maken jelousy envy and distourbour to hem that ben your servauntes. I have lerned ofte toforne this tyme that in every lovers hert great plentie of jelousies greves ben sowe, wherfore me thynketh ye ne ought in no maner accompte thilke thynge among these other welked wyners and venomous serpentes, as envy, mystrust, and yvel speche." (3.710-14)(FN57)

"You make jealousy an envy and a disturber to those that are your servants. I have often learned before now that every lover's heart is sown with a great plenty of jealousy's griefs, so I don't think you should include jealousy with these other swollen vipers and venomous serpents, such as envy, mistrust, and evil speech."

    Shocked by his defense of a passionate lover's jealousy, Lady Love rebukes him and comically deconstructs his assertion: "O fole.... mystrust with foly, with yvel wil medled, engendreth that welked padde" (3.714-15) ("O fool, ... mistrust with folly -- mixed with an evil will -- produced that swollen toad!"). She then patiently explains that jealousy commingled with envy, mistrust, and evil speech is evil indeed, but unmixed with these things, she continues,

"some maner of jelousy I wot wel is ever redy in al the hertes of my trewe servauntes as thus: to be jelous over him selfe lest he be cause of his own disease. This jelousy in ful thought ever shulde be kept for ferdnesse to lese his love by miskepyng thorowe his owne doyng in leudnesse.... These jelousies in herte for acceptable qualytees ben demed. These oughten every trewe lover by kynde evermore haven in his mynde." (3.716-23)

"Some manner of jealousy I know is ever ready in all the hearts of my true servants as thus: to be jealous over himself lest he be the cause of his own disease. This jealousy should ever be kept fully in mind for fear of losing his love by his own evil doing.... These jealousies in heart for acceptable qualities have been judged to be just. These jealousies ought by nature every true lover to have always in his mind."

    Lady Love goes on to caution that no wise person jealously mistrusts without real evidence (3.728-29).
    Chaucer's Criseyde, too, at times, very well understands suspicious jealousy and has some dim understanding of its other complexions, but like Lady Love's acolyte in Usk's Testament, she produces a series of swollen toads. When Pandarus fabricates a story about Troilus's jealousy in Book 3, she laments that some people (in certain contexts, Geoffrey de la Tour-Landry, Aquinas, Berchorius, Saint Paul, Lady Love, and Yahweh might be numbered among them!) now are accustomed to saying, "Ye, jalousie is love!" (III, 1024), and so are guilty of excusing a "busshel venym" (III, 1025) with "o greyn of love" (III, 1026). Like Lady Love and William of Auvergne, Criseyde wants love, hate, and anger called by their proper names, but unlike Lady Love and William, she does not understand what makes jealousy just and unjust. She grants, however, that some kinds of jealousy are more excusable than others "whan cause is" (III, 1032), but even with cause, she praises such jealousy only when the lover suffers in silence, piously doing and saying nothing for "gentilesse" (III, 1036). Aquinas, as we have seen, recommends Criseyde's position as a last resort. Of Troilus's jealousy, clearly the suspicious and envious kind as Pandarus presents it, Criseyde concludes finally that it is a sign of "habundaunce of love and besy cure" (III, 1042), the charitable jealousy!(FN58) That Criseyde so clearly knows just enough to fall victim to her own mental muddle shows that Chaucer understands and expects his audience to understand the two jealousies and their value for disruptive and comic uses.
    Arveragus's oath in the Franklin's Tale suggests that he knows the tradition even less well than Criseyde when, we are told, he promises Dorigen that he would "take no maistrie/Agayn hir wyl, ne kithe hire jalousie" (V 747-48). However one may understand this tale,(FN59) it is difficult to escape the conclusion that Arveragus keeps his oath not to love jealously where exercising a protective jealousy would have been most just -- that is, when the machinations of Aurelius would seem clearly to demand that Arveragus assert his "maistrie" in zealously and jealously defending his wife's honor and chastity -- and that he breaks his oath where exercising a vindictive jealousy is most unjust -- that is, when he jealously asserts his "maistrie" over even Dorigen's life and death, warning her that, so long as she lives, if she tells anyone she made love to Aurelius he will kill her (V 1481-83).(FN60) Tangled in contradiction and thus imposing yet another, still more self-serving "trouthe" that poor Dorigan, now even more ironically, must "kepe" (V 1479),(FN61) Arveragus sanctimoniously wimps out in a version of Criseyde's, Aquinas's, and the Glossa's advice to bear with grief the reality he thinks cannot be corrected: "As I may best, I wol my wo endure" (V 1484). So Dorigen, obliviously obedient, departs to keep her "trouthe" to the even more sanctimonious and hypocritical Aurelius who, comic fool that he is, has asserted a right he not only has no right whatsoever to assert but even claims not to claim (V 1324-25)! If this is so, the Franklin was more accurate than he knew when he says of Arveragus at this juncture:

Paraventure an heep of yow, ywis,
Wol holden hym a lewed man in this
That he wol putte his wyf in jupartie.

    (V 1493-95)
    Nor does waiting, as the Franklin asks, until "ye han herd the tale" (V 1498) make Arveragus's jealous threat against Dorigen or his failure to rush zealously to her defense any less unsupportable.(FN62) Robin the Miller may have no understanding of the concept of charitable jealousy, but were he Arveragus, he would instinctively understand the insult to his honor here and probably even to that of his wife and marriage.(FN63)

GODLY JEALOUSY: SOME FURTHER IMPLICATIONS
    If envious and suspicious jealousy and its counterpart -- just and charitable jealousy -- are often two components of the same concept, as I have argued here, and if Chaucer and his audience had reason to know this tradition as his words and works suggest, students of medieval literature must take particular care to be suspicious in the presence of jealousy lest we slip into the same trap as Chaucer's Miller.
    In Le Roman de la rose (ca. 1235 and 1275), for example, jealousy plays a central role in the dramatic and intellectual action of the poem, appearing in the allegorized character Jalousie(FN64) herself, in Ami's mariz jalous (lines 8437-9412), and finally in the conspiratorial counsel of La Vieille (lines 14157-364). Ami's extended tale about the angry and violent regrets of a jealous husband and La Vielle's advice about how a wise woman can use jealousy to her advantage clearly lie within the Miller's grasp as representations of human folly fit for ridicule, but precisely what the allegorical character Jealousy represents has remained unclear despite her central significance in the poem.(FN65) Jealousy enters near the end of Guillaume de Lorris's section of the Roman when Amant's progress with Bel Acueil awakens her (line 3510). Fearing that she herself and Chasteez (lines 3531-34) will be dishonored, Jalousie oversees construction of a castle (lines 3779-848) both for her own protection and as a secure garrison in which to keep Bel Acueil, the rosebuds, and the roses (lines 3909-19). With the help of her four gatekeepers -- Dangier, Honte,(FN66) Peor, and Mal Buche -- Jalousie and her castle stand between Amant and the fulfillment of his rose-plucking quest for the next eighteen thousand lines. In her concern for Chasteez and in her zealous sequestration of the rose, Jalousie and her protective castle undoubtedly grow directly out of the tradition of idealized jealousy zealous for the good. If so, the various jealousies represented by Jalousie, by Ami's mariz jalous, and by La Vieille in Jean's continuation all have roots in the word jealousy's various meanings in bono and in malo.(FN67)
    The early fifteenth-century exchanges between Christine de Pisan and Pierre Col support exactly this understanding. Despite the interpretive gulf between them, neither Pierre nor Christine has any difficulty whatsoever distinguishing between the jealousy expressed by Ami and La Vieille, a jealousy Pierre Col terms the "mal felon" (treacherous evil),(FN68) and the jealousy zealous for chastity as represented by Jalousie and her castle. Both explicitly understand Jalousie's castle as a citadel for chastity, and when speaking of the Romans who exiled Ovid to protect the Roman youth, both use the word jalousie -- without reflection or need for explanation -- in the sense of concern for chaste behavior. That Pierre considers the concern excessive while Christine does not changes nothing in their use or understanding of the word.(FN69) Jalousie's noble lineage has been obscured, however, because Amant understands only suspicious and possessive jealousy, and so can offer only a distorted and partial view of a godly Jalousie zealous for chastity(FN70) -- this, no doubt, because, like Chaucer's Miller, Amant's interest in roses is largely in private parts and the plenty he hopes to find there. Similarly, Ami and La Vielle both understand the violent, suspicious, and possessive jealousy that destroys love, but like Ami, they lack any conception of zeal for chastity, whether virginal or marital. As a result, Jalousie, like Reson, represents an order of values outside the ken of the poem's narrator-protagonist, and so Amant joins Ami and La Vieille as highly partisan guides to the range of potential responses to the poem, whether in our time or theirs.(FN71) But whatever interpretations the poem may ultimately admit, the Roman's oppositions are so much more precise when Jalousie and her castle are recognized for what they are: an allegorical representation of that protective jealousy -- whether exercised from outside by the conviction of devoted friends, parents, or relatives, or from the inside by personal conviction -- zealously dedicated to the good, which here, of course, means devoted to chastity.
    In Andreas Capellanus's De Amore (ca. 1180), similarly, jealousy plays a central role in the splendid seventh dialogue and provides the source for one of Love's later rules. Recent work on De Amore, moreover, has focused new attention on the seventh dialogue, even elevating it to critical importance in our understanding of the entire work.(FN72) Here, the courtly lover makes a chop-logic case that love is impossible between husband and wife because marital love cannot be furtive. He then continues,

"Sed alia iterum ratio coniugatis mutuum contradicit amorem, quia ipsius amoris substantia, sine qua verus amor esse not potest, scilicet zelotypia inter eos scilicet coniugatos per omnia reprobatur et ab eis tanquam pestis debet semper nociva fugari; amantes vero illam oportet semper tanquam matrem et amoris amplexari nutricem."

"Then there is a further argument opposing mutual love between husband and wife. Jealousy, which is of the nature of love itself and without which true love cannot exist, is wholly rejected between husband and wife, and must be always expelled by them as a harmful bane. But lovers must embrace it always as the mother, so to say, and nurse of love."(FN73)

    The illogic mounts as the lover comically confuses the two kinds of jealousy, on the one hand understanding that husbands and wives must never be guilty of suspicious jealousy, while on the other identifying, like Criseyde, the mother and nurse of love with the suspicious rather than the zealous love. The lady, of course, shows herself only a little wiser than her would-be lover when she replies,

"Vestra quidem nitimini protectione tueri quod inter omnes constat etiam ab antiquo reprehensibile plurimum iudicari et tanq-uam odibile reprobari. Quis enim recte possit invidam zelotypiam commendare vel suo ipsam sermone tueri, quum zelotypia nil sit aliud quam turpis et sinistra de muliere suspicio? Absit ergo probum aliquem cuiuscunque zelotypia detineri, quia cunctis invenitur pru-dentibus inimica et universis bonis odiosa per orbem."

"You are striving to lend your support to what all men even from ancient times are agreed is generally reckoned blameworthy and condemned as loathsome. Who could with justice praise grudging jealousy, or defend it with his words? It is nothing other than a base and malevolent suspicion about a woman. So God forbid that any honest man should be possessed with jealousy for someone, for it is recognised to be every wise man's enemy and loathsome to all good men throughout the world."(FN74)

    With no understanding of charitable jealousy, the lady, like Chaucer's Miller, understands only the jealousy of shameful and evil suspicion. Unable to agree, lover and lady submit the matter to the Countess of Champagne, who resolves the matter by echoing Jerome, Augustine, Rabanus, and others, "qui non zelat amare non potest" (He who is not jealous cannot love).(FN75)
    If the De Amore relies on the reader to know the resonances of jealousy's rich implications in bono and in malo,(FN76) if Andreas thus exposes the would-be lovers' confusion of honor with dishonor, of charitable with passionate love, of godly with selfish jealousy, the De Amore stands at or near the head of a long tradition of comic and disruptive literary humor that reaches to Chaucer's Miller and beyond,(FN77) a tradition built upon an even older tradition begun in the Bible, inscribed and codified by Jerome, and continued until at least the time of Donne.(FN78)
ADDED MATERIAL
    Charles R. Smith Colorado State University (Emeritus) Fort Collins, Colorado ([email protected])

FOOTNOTES
    In addition to others specifically cited in the notes below, I am indebted to the readers and editors of The Chaucer Review as well as to friends and colleagues, especially Nancy Hanck, Susan Stakel, and Richard Henze.
1. Quotations from Chaucer's works are from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd edn. (Boston, 1987). Ever since Paula Neuss's "Double-Entendre in The Miller's Tale," Essays in Criticism 24 (1974): 325-39, the rich possibilities emanating from the parallels in these lines have launched many a scholarly inquiry, including this one. A recent development in studies of this sort is David Lorenzo Boyd's suggestion that the Miller does not recommend inquiry into a wife's affairs "for fear of discovering her guilt" ("Seeking 'Goddes Pryvetee': Sodomy, Quitting, and Desire in The Miller's Tale," in Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe, eds., Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honor of Fred C. Robinson [Toronto, 1998], 243-60, at 245). Frederick M. Biggs and Laura L. Howes, "Theopany in the Miller's Tale," Medium AEvum 65 (1996): 269-79, report a verbal communication from Robert W. Hanning to the same effect (271). In this paper I offer evidence for another, demonstrably medieval and, I will argue, demonstrably Chaucerian explanation for what I take to be the Miller's outrageously comic position.
2. John Donne, The Sermons of John Donne, ed. George R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, 10 vols. (Berkeley, 1962), 3:248.
3. Biggs and Howes suggest that Carpenter John "really" is not guilty of jealousy ("Theopany," 275), that the Miller's imputation of this sin to John is another of the Miller's many misjudgments. If so, Alisoun is guilty of the same misjudgment when she warns Nicholas, "Myn housbonde is so ful of jalousie/That but ye wayte wel and been privee,/I woot right wel I nam but deed" (I 3294-96). To be sure, Alisoun has every reason to overstate the case, as she surely does when she implies that John would, in a jealous rage, kill her, and in the context of my essay, it would be possible to conclude that John expresses a proper jealousy for the good of his wife, first, when he hears about the impending flood -- "Allas, my wyf!/And shal she drenche?" (I 3522-23) -- and, second, when he dutifully follows Nicholas's command to build tubs. But Alisoun's youth, her sensual beauty, and her eager sexuality coupled with John's advanced age and need for a good night's rest all suggest that John's zeal for Alisoun has, from the beginning of their clearly short association, been primarily with an eye to his own interest, not hers or their marriage, that, in short, the Miller is right about John's "kepyng" and "jalousye" (I 3851). In any case, that the Miller himself thinks John is foolish for both his "kepying" (whether to his credit or discredit) and his "jalousye" (whether present or absent) is "Goddes foyson" for this essay.
4. Jealousy in literature has a long critical and scholarly history, but godly or charitable jealousy as a comic and disruptive device in medieval literature has not been addressed. Indeed, the medieval tradition of charitable jealousy, to my knowledge, has been examined only by Paul A. Olson in his "Le Jaloux and History: A Study in Mediaeval Comic Convention," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1957, and my debt to Olson and to this pioneering work is everywhere considerable. In laying the foundations for his study of the jealous husband, Olson shows, in six richly documented introductory pages (29-34), that the exegetical "alliance" of "jealousy and charity... in the mind of God" (30) meant that -- for exegetes and many other medieval writers -- jealousy could and often did imply an aspect of charitable love. My study builds on Olson's work as I seek both to understand elements of positive jealousy in medieval views of love and marriage and to demonstrate that charitable jealousy, like its better-known opposite, also provided Chaucer and other medieval writers with a useful tool of, typically, comic deconstruction. Although my study was developed independently from Hildegard Baumgart's Jealousy: Experiences and Solutions, trans. Manfred Jacobson and Evelyn Jacobson (Chicago, 1990), we touch on some of the same linguistic and historical ground in similar ways. Writing as a German ecumenical marriage counselor, but having a doctorate in Romance languages and literatures, Baumgart includes in her manual for couples and counselors an effort to trace the origins of modern concepts of jealousy; in so doing, she touches usefully on some of the difficulties of understanding and translating the concept from Hebrew through Latin into German and other languages, and she reflects thoughtfully and psychologically on various ancient, medieval, and modern literary works (see her history of jealousy, 82-141). Alison Sinclair, "The Need for Zeal and the Dangers of Jealousy: Identity and Legitimacy in La Regenta" in Nicholas White and Naomi Segal, eds., Scarlet Letters: Fictions of Adultery from Antiquity to the 1990s (Houndmills, U.K., 1997), 174-85, cites Hebrew precedent and argues for the applicability of both jealousy and godly zeal for understanding Leopoldo Alas's 1884-85 novel. Although Julie Manzelmann's brief note, "Johnson's Volpone," Explicator 47.4 (1989): 8-9, does not make a case for a positive jealousy, my study would offer historical support and precedent for certain of her conclusions.
5. Exod. 34.14. Quotations from the Bible are from The Holy Bible: Douay Rheims Version (Baltimore, 1899; repr. 1989).
6. See Mayer Schachter-Haham, Compound of Hebrew in Thousand Stem Words: Etymological Dictionary Hebrew-English (Jerusalem, 1982); and Francis Brown, Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford, 1974).
7. See, for example, John R. Kohlenberger III and James A. Swanson, The Hebrew English Concordance to the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, 1998); Ethelbert W. Bullinger, A Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New Testament (London, 1971); and Edwin Hatch and Henry A. Redpath, A Concordance to the Septuagint, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1897).
8. In about fifteen instances the Vulgate translates forms of Hebrew abq using other words, usually forms of invidia. Along with occasionally choosing not to translate forms of abq at all (e.g., Num. 5.14, 5.30, and 25.11), it also occasionally introduces zelus (e.g., 3 Kings 19.10, 19.14) and aemulor (e.g., Pss. 36.7, 36.8, and 37.1) without Hebrew forms of abq in the original. Translations from the Greek are more predictable with only a few instances when other words are used (e.g., Col. 4.13 and Titus 2.14).
9. Notice, for example, that Hebrew uses only qanna (a form of abq when God speaks of his own jealousy (see Exod. 20.5, 34.14, Deut. 4.24, 5.9, 6.15), but the Vulgate uses both zelotes and aemulator in translating these nearly identical passages.
10. Jerome, Commentariorum in Epistolam ad Galatas, 2.4 (PL 26:384). Subsequent references to this commentary on Gal. 4.17-18 are from the same source. Except as noted, this and all subsequent translations are my own.
11. Jerome, Commentariorum in Ezechielem, 2.5.12-13 (PL 25:56).
12. Augustine, Contra Adimantum, 1.13.2 (PL 42:147).
13. Rabanus Maurus, Commentariorum in Ezechielem, 4.5 (PL 110:602).
14. The interlinear gloss on Ezek. 5.13 excerpts from Jerome as follows: "sub meta-phora viri et vxoris.dum enim vxorem diligit zelotypus estsi negligit dicit.zelus meus reces-sit a te vltra non irascar tibi" (Biblia Latina Cum Glossa Ordinaria: Facsimile Reprint of the Editio Princeps, Adolf Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81, 4 vols. [Turnhout, 1992], 3:234). Subsequent references to the Glossa are to this edition. I do not find Augustine's neatly balanced and rhyming formulation reappearing in any of the texts I consulted until the Renaissance, for which see note 77 below.
15. Both the text and the translation are from Saint Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict: In Latin and English, ed. and trans. Justin McCann (Westminster, Md., 1952), 72.158-60.
16. Anthony C. Meisel and M. L. del Mastro translate the phrase zelus amaritudinis malus as 'evil and bitter rivalry' a phrase capturing more of the literal in malo sense of jealousy/zeal (Saint Benedict, The Rule of St. Benedict [Garden City N.Y., 1975], 72.105).
17. Augustine, De doctrina christiana, 3.10.15 (PL 34:71).
18. Both the text and the translation are from Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae: Latin Text and English Translation, 60 vols. (Cambridge, U.K., 1964-), Vol. 19: The Emotions, ed. and trans. Eric D'Arcy (London, 1967), 100-101 (Ia.2ae.28.4). Aware of the complexity of potential meanings here, D'Arcy notes that "'jealousy' is probably better than 'zeal' or 'emulation' as the translation of zelus" (99).
19. See the Glossa comment on John 2.10: "Bonus zelus est feruor animi.quo mens abiecto humano timore.pro defensione veritatis accenditur.ab eo comeditur qui quae-libet prava quae viderit, corrigere satagit.si nequit tolerare gemit" 4:229 (The good zeal/jealousy is a boiling of the spirit by which the mind, throwing off all human fear, is set on fire for the defense of truth; he is consumed by this [good zeal/jealousy] who busily sets about correcting the wrongs he sees; if he cannot, he endures them with sadness).
20. Augustine, De bono conjugali, 1.1 (PL 40:374).
21. "[Q]uidquid in eo vitiosum viderit, pro viribus curet et toleret" (Aelred of Rievaulx, De spiritali amicitia, in Opera Omnia, ed. A. Hoste and C. H. Talbot, vols. 1, 2A, 2B, 2D, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis [Turnhout, 1971-], 1:1.20.292; see also 1:3.61.329, 1:3.72.331, and 1:3.104-109.341-342).
22. Baumgart points to the importance of Hosea in the transition from stoning to reconciliation (Jealousy, 88-89).
23. The Glossa commentary parses the meaning of this idea in part thus: "id est, indignamini vobis ipsis tanta vehementia ut peccare desistatis.... Quod est naturalis motus animi contra peccantes.sed ne modum excedendo peccetis asperius arguendo.vnde salomon. Noli esse nimis iustus.quia est iustus qui perit in iusticia sua.Temporanda est ergo iusticia.vt et deus suffert iniquos:vt aliqui ex eis corrigantur" (4:376) (that is, be angry with yourselves with vehemence so that you cease to sin.... Anger is a natural motion of the soul against sinners, but do not offend the mean with harsh denunciation. Whence Solomon: "Do not be the excessively just man because he is the one who perishes in his own justice." Justice therefore is being moderate: God too suffers the unjust so that some among them may be corrected).
24. Augustine, Contra Adimantum, 1.11 (PL 42:142).
25. Augustine, Confessions, 1.4 (PL 32:662-63).
26. Augustine, De conjugiis adulterinus ad Pollentium, 2.6 (PL 40:474).
27. Rabanus Maurus, Enarrationes in Librum Numerorum, 1.9 (PL 108:620). Rabanus expands upon Bede's In Pentateuchum commentarii -- Numeri, 5 (PL 91:361).
28. In medieval life, especially early in the Middle Ages, death for wives and their seducers taken in adultery still occurred, and we know too that legal custom in the West varied widely by time (early or late), place (north or south), and status (noble or peasant). The church increasingly moved society away from capital to corporeal and other forms of penance, see John F. Benton, "Clio and Venus: An Historical View of Medieval Love," in F. X. Newman, ed., The Meaning of Courtly Love (Albany, N.Y., 1968), 19-42, esp. 24-27; Conor McCarthy, Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle Ages: A Sourcebook (London, 2004), esp. 83-92; Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England (New York, 1986), esp. 210-14; and Frederik Pedersen, Marriage Disputes in Medieval England (London, 2000), esp. 25-58.
29. Augustine, De nuptiis et concupiscentia, 1.17 (PL 44:424-25).
30. Glossa, 1:152.
31. Glossa, 1:152.
32. Anne Laskaya reflects thoughtfully on reading domestic violence into the biblical language of God as father or husband in the opening pages of her essay "The Feminized World and Divine Violence: Texts and Images of the Apocalypse," in Eve Salisbury, Georgiana Donavin, and Merrell Llewelyn Price, eds., Domestic Violence in Medieval Texts (Gainesville, Fla., 2002), 299-341. See also Baumgart, Jealousy, 82-88.
33. This verse was important enough to become the subject and substance of a Middle English poem, qtd. and trans. Neil Cartlidge, Medieval Marriage: Literary Approaches, 1100-1300 (Cambridge, U.K., 1997), 194.
34. Ambrose, In Psalmum cxviii expositio, 39.17 (PL 15:1458).
35. Petrus Berchorius (fourteenth century) takes a similarly negative view of the "spiritus zelotypiae" of Num. 5.14 when he links it with "irascibility" (iracundia) and includes it in a list of other "disfigurers of hearts" (cordium deturpatores) (Dictionarium, Vulgo Repertorium Morale, 4 vols. [Coloniae Agrippinae, 1731], 4:119). Subsequent references to Berchorius's Dictionarium are to this edition. Notice, too, that the quotation from Donne opening this paper also echoes Num. 5.14 and considers the "spirit of jealousie" evil.
36. William of Auvergne, Opera Omnia, 2 vols. (Paris, 1674; repr. Frankfurt, 1963), 1:7.218.
37. This medieval commonplace appears also in Aquinas's discussion of jealousy (The Emotions, ed. and trans. D'Arcy, Ia.2ae.28.4.2.100 and 101); see also note 45 below for Chaucer's Wife of Bath's subversion of this ideal in the context of husbandly jealousy, or, in her view, niggardliness.
38. By the thirteenth century valid marriages could be ended only by death, but the Church permitted separation from "bed and board" in particular instances, and women could initiate such proceedings (David d'Avray, Medieval Marriage: Symbolism and Society [Oxford, 2005], 78, 121-24). See also Hanawalt, Ties that Bound, 211-14; Conor McCarthy, Marriage in Medieval England: Law, Literature and Practice (Woodbridge, 2004) 140-41; and Monique Vleeschouwers-Van Melkebeek, "Classical Canon Law on Marriage, The Making and Breaking of Households" in Myriam Carlier and Tim Soens, eds., The Household in Late Medieval Cities, Italy and Northwestern Europe Compared (Louvain, 2001), 15-23, at 20-21. For a study of marriage litigation in late medieval England as reflected by the fourteenth-century ecclesiastical court of York, see Pedersen, Marriage Disputes.
39. The ubiquity of this idea in scriptural commentary is suggested by the list of writers Olson compiles ("Le Jaloux and History," 30-31).
40. Berchorius, Dictionarium, 1:103.
41. Berchorius, Dictionarium, 1:103.
42. Berchorius, Dictionarium, 4:255.
43. Berchorius, Dictionarium, 4:255.
44. Berchorius, Dictionarium, 4:255-56.
45. Chaucer's Wife of Bath belongs to the same sect as the Miller respecting remainders, and so is subject to the same irony and comedy when she retorts to her jealous old husbands, "For, certeyn, olde dotard, by youre leve,/Ye shul have queynte right ynogh at eve./He is to greet a nygard that wolde werne/A man to lighte a candle at his lanterne;/He shal have never the lasse light, pardee./Have thou ynogh, thee thar nat pleyne thee" (III 331-36). In BD, by contrast, the virtues of "goode faire White" (948) are such that she "was lyk to torche bryght/That every man may take of lyght/Ynogh, and hyt hath never the lesse./Of maner and of comlynesse/Ryght so ferde my lady dere,/For every wight of hir manere/Myght cacche ynogh, yif that he wolde" (963-69).
46. Guillaume Peyraut (thirteenth century) says that a husband may, in two ways, carry out the command in Ephesians 5.25 to love his wife as Christ does the church: First, in being jealous/zealous for her good/salvation and, second, in forgiving her if she strays and is penitent ("Primo in hoc ut zelet pro salute uxoris.... Secundo in hoc quod si adulterat et post peniteat a viro misericorditer recipiatur"), as quoted in David d'Avray, "The Gospel of the Marriage Feast of Cana and Marriage Preaching in France," in Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood, eds., The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory of Beryl Smalley (Oxford, 1985), 207-24, at 215. The importance of zealous care/husbandly jealousy appears also in Bartholomaeus Anglicus's discussion of marriage in his popular De proprietatibus rerum (Bartolomaeus Angelicus [sic], De rerum proprietatibus [Frankfurt a. M., 1964]; repr. of Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De genuinis rerum coelestium, terrestrium et inferarum proprietatibus, libri xviii [Wolfgang Richter, Frankfurt, 1601], 6.13.246).
47. Mabel Day, ed., The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle: Edited from Cotton MS. Nero A. XIV (London, 1952), 39.
48. I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for The Chaucer Review for this lead.
49. C. Horstmann, ed., Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole, An English Father of the Church and His Followers, 2 vols. (London, 1895-96), 1:356.
50. Conrad Lindberg, ed., The Earlier Version of the Wycliffite Bible, 6 vols. (Stockholm, 1959-73).
51. Conrad Lindberg, ed., King Henry's Bible MS Bodley 277: The Revised Version of the Wyclif Bible, 4 vols. (Stockholm, 1999).
52. Christina von Nolcken, ed., The Middle English Translation of the Rosarium Theologie: A Selection Ed. from Cbr., Gonville, and Caius Coll. MS 354/581 (Heidelberg, 1979), 103-4.
53. Jehan Le Bel, Li Ars D'Amour, de Vertu et de Boneurté, ed. Jules Petit, 2 vols. (Brussels, 1867-69), 1:11.170-72.
54. Geoffrey de La Tour-Landry, Le Livre du Chevalier De La Tour Landry Pour l'enseignement de ses filles, ed. Anatole de Montaiglon (Paris, 1854, repr. 1972), 38.
55. Geoffrey de La Tour-Landry, The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, Compiled for the Instruction of His Daughters, ed. Thomas Wright, EETS o.s. 33 (1906; repr. New York, 1969), 24.
56. Geoffrey de La Tour-Landry, Le Livre, ed. Montaiglon, 39; The Book, ed. Wright, 24.
57. Thomas Usk, The Testament of Love, ed. R. Allen Shoaf (Kalamazoo, 1998), 276-77.
58. Anelida is apparently similarly taken in when the false Arcite in Chaucer's Anel disguises his lack of love for her by feigning suspicious "jelousye" (126).
59. FranT has attracted a great deal of scholarly and critical interest, the majority of which supports some combination of the Franklin, his tale, his characters, or certain of his characters as achieving a noble expression of some combination of freedom, generosity, love, or marriage. A few voices, especially women's, have begged, often strongly, to differ. The locus classicus of these typically deconstructive readings, readings most compatible with my argument here, is Alan T. Gaylord, "The Promises in The Franklin's Tale," ELH 31 (1964): 331-65. Several recent studies not inconsistent with my conclusions have attempted to bridge the considerable differences between constructive and deconstructive readings: see Britton J. Harwood, "Chaucer and the Gift (If There Is Any)," Studies in Philology 103 (2006): 26-46; and Steele Nowlin, "Between Precedent and Possibility: Liminality, Historicity, and Narrative in Chaucer's The Franklin's Tale," Studies in Philology 103 (2006): 47-67.
60. Chaucer's MancT and a tale by John Gower are also relevant here. The jealous Apollo in MancT carries out what remains only a threat in FranT: he kills his wife for infidelity, but regretting his hasty decision and taking no responsibility for it, he blames and punishes the messenger, the crow. Apollo had been wiser following the advice of Usk's Lady Love: "This jealousy in ful thought ever shulde be kept for ferdnesse to lese his love by miskepying thorowe his owne doyng in leudnesse" (The Testament of Love, ed. Shoaf, 277 [3.718-19]). That the Manciple focuses on the folly of the crow rather than of Apollo is consistent with the morality of a man who tries to serve not merely two masters (Matt. 6.24, 23.8), but "maistres... mo than thries ten" (I 576). This view of Apollo and the Manciple is particularly compatible with those interpretations deconstructing the tale and the teller, e.g., the recent studies by Ann W. Astell, "Nietzsche, Chaucer, and the Sacrifice of Art," Chaucer Review 39 (2005): 323-40; and Jean E. Jost, "Chaucer's Vows and How They Break: Transgression in The Manciple's Tale," in Albrecht Classen, ed., Discourses on Love, Marriage, and Transgression in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (Tempe, Ariz., 2004), 267-87. John Gower makes much the same point in his story of the covetous steward and unwise lover-husband who, for money, forces his devoted wife to sleep with the king for a night and, belatedly jealous, loses both his wife and himself (Confessio Amantis, ed. Russell A. Peck, 3 vols. [Kalamazoo, Mich., 2003-2006], 3:93-97 [5.2643-825]). For discussion of Gower's view of love and marriage, see Kurt Olsson, "Love, Intimacy, and Gower," Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 71-100, esp. 81, where Olsson argues that Gower's implicit message about marriage is that failure comes either because wives refuse to be subject to their husbands or, as he briefly illustrates with this tale, husbands are unjust in their dominion.
61. Margaret Coel detected this splendid irony in an April 2007 conversation.
62. Gerald Morgan's recent "Experience and the Judgment of Poetry: A Reconsideration of the Franklin's Tale," Medium AEvum 70 (2001): 204-25, defends a traditional view diametrically opposed to the one here (see esp. 212-20).
63. Simplistic understanding of jealousy as a disruptive device appears also in Chaucer's deconstruction of the Pardoner's self-construction. In the tale's prologue the Pardoner hawks water that promises to dissolve all jealousy, the good with the evil: "And, sires, also it heeleth jalousie;/For though a man be falle in jalous rage,/Lat maken with this water his potage,/And nevere shal he moore his wyf mystriste,/Though he the soothe of hir defaute wiste,/Al had she taken prestes two or thre" (VI 366-71). On the connection between the Pardoner's cure for jealousy and the bitter waters of Num. 5.11-31, see Lawrence Besserman, Chaucer's Biblical Poetics (Norman, Okla., 1998), 102-4; Catherine S. Cox, "Water of Bitterness: The Pardoner and/as the Sotah," Exemplaria 16 (2004): 131-64; and Catherine S. Cox, The Judaic Other in Dante, the Gawain Poet, and Chaucer (Gainesville, Fla., 2005), 111-44. Both Besserman and Cox treat this link without examining the Latin scriptural tradition regarding Num. 5.11-31, a tradition still alive in the seventeenth century as shown by the quotation from Donne at the beginning of this study, where Donne understands the "spirit of jealousie" (Num. 5.14) as a "spirit of uncleannesse."
64. All references are to Le Roman de la rose, ed. Félix Lecoy, 3 vols. (Paris, 1965-70). The arguments advanced here apply also to the Middle English Rom, part of which may be by Chaucer and all of which was once attributed to him.
65. See Leslie C. Brook's brief history of various suggestions about what Jalousie represents in "Jalousie and Jealousy in Jean De Meun's Rose," Romance Quarterly 41(1994): 59-69. After lengthy examination of Jalousie's every appearance throughout the Roman, Brook remains imprecise, granting only that Jalousie is "part interior impulse and part exterior guardian," and that the conquest of Jalousie's castle, like the foolish jealousy of the violent and possessive mariz jalous, demonstrates that nothing can act as guardian over a woman's chastity unless she guards herself (69). Unease persists in Alcuin Blamires and Gail C. Holian's recent discussion when, citing Brook, they speak of the Romans "two sorts of 'jealousy': the violent, domineering possessiveness of the Jalous, and the more ambiguous watchfulness over chastity which Jalousie seems to project" (The Romance of the Rose Illuminated: Manuscripts at the National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth (Tempe, Ariz., 2002), 86.
66. The closest Amant comes to revealing the precise meaning of Jalousie's doorkeepers is when he explains that Hont [Shame] is the most worthy (line 2821) of the four, being the foster child of Chasteez (lines 2837-42) and the daughter of "Resson la sage" (line 2824) conceived on mere sight of Maufez [Bad Deeds] (lines 2825-28).
67. For Old French words derived from Greek zeta´{Begin Greek}hlo${End Greek}/Latin zelus, Alan Hindley, Frederick W. Langley, and Brian J. Levy, Old French-English Dictionary (Cambridge, U.K., 2000), offers the following instructive glosses: "jalos a [djective] keen, zealous; avaricious, covetous; jealous"; "jalos s[ubstantive]m [asculine] jealous husband, lover"; "jalosie s[ubstantive]f [eminine] enthusiasm (for), love (of), yearning, longing; jealousy."
68. Eric Hicks, ed., Le Debat sur le Roman de la Rose (Geneva, 1996), 101; and Joseph L. Baird and John R. Kane, trans., La Querelle de la Rose: Letters and Documents (Chapel Hill, 1978), 104.
69. For Pierre's argument, see Hicks, ed., Le Debat, 104-6; Baird and Kane, eds., La Querelle, 108-9. For Christine's argument, see Hicks, ed., Le Debat, 136-38; Baird and Kane, eds., La Querelle, 134-35.
70. Among Amant's many violent and pejorative characterizations of Jalousie is one that may have particular significance: "Jalousie... la sauvage" (lines 7371-73). The word sauvage appears also in Amant's phrase "amour sauvage" (line 5347), his characterization of Aelred of Rievaulx's spiritual friendship; see John V. Fleming, Reason and the Lover (Princeton, 1984), 93-94. If there is irony in Amant's "amour sauvage," the same irony may return in "Jalousie... la sauvage." Compare Maxwell Luria, A Reader's Guide to the Roman de la Rose (Hamden, Conn., 1982), 43: "the 'opposition party' is presented here from the perspective of the Lover and of those who support Love. The very shabbiness of these figures and their peevish, querulous talk are expressions of Love's disdain for them.... They are... an expression of the world as the Lover and his kind see it."
71. Painterly responses, even of jobber illuminators, may vary as well. Blamires and Holian point out that an illumination for the Roman, line 3797, in the NLW 5016D shows a figure beating (or threatening) another into submission where illuminators normally would show Jalousie overseeing the construction of her castle. As a result, they label Plate 40 "The Jalous beats his wife (misplaced)" and note in their text that "the miniaturist... has instead painted the possessive husband abusing his wife -- an image which precedent locates nearly six thousand lines further on, in Jean's part of the poem. It would take an act of faith to hypothesize a 'deliberate' mistake here, an interpretative choice creatively collapsing one 'jealousy' within the other. A much more credible explanation is either that the miniaturist was too cursory in checking through an exemplar, and adopted the second version because he or she missed the first; or that there simply was no picture in the exemplar at line 3797, so he or she substituted the later format of the Jalous as the best of a bad job" (The Romance of the Rose Illuminated, xxxiii). While the placement of this illumination could well be the result of "muddle" (xxxiii), Amant himself is so entirely guilty of "collapsing one 'jealousy' within the other" that no act of faith may be required to suggest -- given the compelling evidence that the two jealousies are in bono and in malo components of the same concept -- that the figure with the pestle depicts an idealized Jalousie's righteous zeal in protecting chastity, a figure with the same iconographical meaning as Jalousie overseeing the construction of her castle. Later in the Roman, indeed, Nature speaks of a lover's deceptive dream in which the lover sees Jalousie coming between him and his sweetheart, holding a pestle at his sweetheart's neck (lines 18359-60).
72. The most extensive and most recent treatment of jealousy in Andreas, like most everything else related to Andreas's De Amore, is Don A. Monson, Andreas Capellanus, Scholasticism, and the Courtly Tradition (Washington, D.C., 2005), 73-75, 234-37, 317-20, 325. Dialogue Seven is critical for Monson because it contains "A key to understanding the Chaplain's position" (324), namely that love and marriage are incompatible and that Andreas's ultimate purpose is "protecting the sacrament of holy matrimony from the moral contamination of love" (325). "This conclusion," Monson continues, "is reinforced by a close examination of the argument from jealousy, the principle argument advanced by the man in the Seventh Dialogue and the only one of his arguments retained by the Countess of Champagne" (325). Toril Moi, "Desire in Language: Andreas Capellanus and the Controversy of Courtly Love," in David Aers, ed., Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology, and History (New York, 1986), 11-33, similarly, makes jealousy and Dialogue Seven critical for her understanding (25-33). Moi's essay is also reprinted in her book What is a Woman? and Other Essays (Oxford, 1999), 400-21. See also Baumgart, Jealousy, 115-17.
73. Andreas Capellanus, On Love, ed. and trans. P. G. Walsh (London, 1982), 146-49 (1.G.371).
74. Andreas Capellanus, On Love, ed. Walsh, 148-49 (1.G.373).
75. Andreas Capellanus, On Love, ed. Walsh, 156-57 (1.G.399). Monson suggests that the "probable source" for the close connection between love and jealousy in Andreas is Ovid (Andreas Capellanus, 234); Ovid may well be an influence, but as shown above, the scriptural tradition is far more probably "the source." First to identify the tradition of godly jealousy and viewing its significance for Andreas as supremely obvious, Olson pauses just long enough to touch on the De Amore in a single sentence: "Andreas' rule and the similar sentiments expressed in his seventh dialogue... [were not included] as a recipe for keeping infatuation warm without ironic intention" ("Le Jaloux and History," 46).
76. Margot Grzywacz's demonstration that the word jealousy in modern European languages comes from medieval biblical and learned tradition, not from the native resources of Vulgar Latin, is evidence that Andreas's first readers may have had exactly this understanding ("Eifersuche" in den romanischen Sprachen: Ein Beitrag zur Kulturgeschichte des Mittelalters [Bochum, 1937]).
77. Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (IV.iv.80) offers indisputable evidence that Shakespeare could rely on his audience's knowledge of godly jealousy for comic irony (see note 78 below). Old ideas persist also in Richard Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy when he opens his section on jealousy by quoting Varchi (d. 1565), who, in Burton's Latin quotation, repeats Augustine exactly: "No love without a mixture of Jealousie, qui non zelat, non amat"; see Richard Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Thomas C. Faulkner, Nicholas K. Kiessling, and Rhonda L. Blair, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1989-2000), 3:273. For purposes of his discussion, Burton prefers to restrict jealousy to "a certaine suspition which the Lover hath of the party he chiefly loveth... or a feare of loosing her favour," but he recognizes "other Jealousies," as "that of Parents, Tutors, Guardians over their children, friends whom they love... wives in their husbands absence, fond mothers in their childrens [absence]... [concerned] how they do fare... Paul... over the Church of Corinth, as he confesseth, 2. Cor. 11.2... GOD himselfe... a jealous God" (3:274). Jacques Du Bosc, The Compleat Woman, trans. N. N. (London, 1639), notes in "Of Jealousy," that "jealousy is not so unjust as many imagine," and echoes the old idea that "jealousy never is where hatred and indifferency are" (pt. 2 [i.e., text consists of two separately numbered but otherwise unmarked sections].62).
78. Glossaries of Shakespeare's language, like the OED, consistently and rightly include definitions like 'careful,' 'watchful,' 'concerned about,' even 'zealous,' for jealous, but three recent standard texts of Shakespeare (Riverside 1997, Bevington 1997, Norton 1997) typically gloss jealous with an eye to the dark associations more congenial to modern readers. For "jealous in honor" (As You Like It, II.vii.150), Bevington suggests 'quick to anger' and Norton 'vigilant'; Riverside (II.vii.151) is perhaps closest to the sense of "zealously protective" of honor with 'jealousy protective of his honor.' For "jealous of your absence" (Henry V, IV.i), Bevington (line 283) suggests 'apprehensive because of' as opposed to the warmer and more personal 'concerned about' of the Norton (line 267) and Riverside editions (line 285). For "jealousy what might befall your travel" (Twelfth Night, III. iii.8), Bevington suggests 'anxiety,' Norton 'apprehension,' and Riverside 'suspicion, anxiety,' but none offers the warmer and surely more accurate 'concerned about.' For "from her jealous arms pluck him perforce" (Richard III, III.i.36), Riverside permits this use to stand without explanation, while Bevington offers 'suspicious' and Norton 'mistrustful'; to be sure, the Queen's arms are rightfully "suspicious" and "mistrustful," but they are also protectively jealous and loving. For "thy jealousy" (Sonnets 61.8), Bevington and Riverside offer 'suspicion' and Norton 'distrust,' but taking jealousy as an echo of Exod. 20.5/Deut. 5.9 "ielous God" (Geneva), the interpretive difficulties disappear and we find a speaker absorbed in feelings of inadequacy and imperfection who fearfully imagines, who finally wishes in vain, that his beloved's Yahweh-like jealous/zealous love with its moral scrutiny is visiting his sins. For "kind of godly jealousy" (Troilus and Cressida) both Bevington (IV.iv.80) and Norton (IV.v.80) capture the positive sense in 'divinely sanctioned,' and Bevington adds the explanation 'as in a marriage' (IV.iv.80), an explanation, if my argument in this paper is valid, only a medieval or Renaissance reader could properly appreciate. Riverside (IV.iv.80) alone is, I think, exactly right: "A biblical echo; see 2 Cor. 11.2: 'For I am jealous over you, with godly jealousy' (Geneva)"; the full comedy and irony of Troilus's claim might be clearer still by referencing the 1602 annotated Geneva Bible, which explains: "He [Saint Paul] speaketh as a woer, but yet as one that seeketh them [the Corinthian believers] not for himselfe, but for God" (Gerald T. Sheppard, ed., The Geneva Bible (The Annotated New Testament, 1602 Edition) [New York, 1989], 2 Cor. 11.2). The citations to Shakespeare are from The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, 2nd edn. (Boston, 1997); The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt (New York, 1997); and The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, 4th edn. (New York, 1997).