1. The genuineness and real significance of this “Prayer of
Chaucer,” usually called his “Retractation,” have been warmly
disputed. On the one hand, it has been declared that the monks
forged the retractation. and procured its insertion among the
works of the man who had done so much to expose their abuses
and ignorance, and to weaken their hold on popular credulity:
on the other hand, Chaucer himself at the close of his life, is
said to have greatly lamented the ribaldry and the attacks on the
clergy which marked especially “The Canterbury Tales,” and to
have drawn up a formal retractation of which the “Prayer” is
either a copy or an abridgment. The beginning and end of the
“Prayer,” as Tyrwhitt points out, are in tone and terms quite
appropriate in the mouth of the Parson, while they carry on the
subject of which he has been treating; and, despite the fact that
Mr Wright holds the contrary opinion, Tyrwhitt seems to be
justified in setting down the “Retractation” as interpolated into
the close of the Parson’s Tale. Of the circumstances under
which the interpolation was made, or the causes by which it was
dictated, little or nothing can now be confidently affirmed; but
the agreement of the manuscripts and the early editions in
giving it, render it impossible to discard it peremptorily as a
declaration of prudish or of interested regret, with which
Chaucer himself had nothing whatever to do.
2. “[You] Who with the Father and the Holy Spirit livest and
reignest God for ever and ever. Amen.”