451-62. Compare these lines with verses 3 and 5 of the hymn 'Lustra sex qui
iam peregit' in the office of Lauds from Passion Sunday to Wednesday in
Holy Week inclusive, in the Roman breviary.
This hymn was written by Venantius Fortunatus; see Leyser's collection, p.
168.
'Crux fidelis, inter omnes
Arbor una nobilis:
Silua talem nulla profert
Fronde, flore, germine:
Dulce ferrum, dulce lignum,
Dulce pondus sustinent....
Sola digna tu fuisti
Ferre mundi uictimam;
Atque portum praeparare,
Arca mundo naufrago,
Quam sacer cruor perunxit,
Fusus Agni corpore.'
See the translation in Hymns Ancient and Modern, No. 97, part 2 (new
edition), beginning--'Now the thirty years accomplished.'
We come still nearer to the original of Chaucer's lines when we consider
the form of prayer quoted in the Ancren Riwle, p. 34, which is there given
as follows:--'Salue crux sancta, arbor digna, quae sola fuisti digna
portare Regem celorum et Dominum.... O crux gloriosa! o crux adoranda! o
lignum preciosum, et admirabile signum, per quod et diabolus est victus, et
mundus Christi sanguine redemptus.'
460. _him and here_, him and her, i. e. man and woman; as in Piers the
Plowman, A. Pass. i. l. 100. The allusion is to the supposed power of the
cross over evil spirits. See The Legends of the Holy Rood, ed. Morris;
especially the story of the Invention of the Cross by St. Helen, p.
160--'And anone, as he had made the [sign of the] crosse, þe grete
multitude of deuylles vanyshed awaye'; or, in the Latin original,
'statimque ut edidit signum crucis, omnis illa daemonum multitudo euanuit';
Aurea Legenda, ed. Grässe, 2nd ed. p. 311. Cf. Piers Plowman, B. xviii.
429-431.
461. The reading of this line is certain, and must not be altered. But it
is impossible to _parse_ the line without at once noticing that there is
some difficulty in the construction. The best solution is obtained by
taking _which_ in the sense of _whom_. A familiar example of this use of
_which_ for _who_ occurs in the Lord's Prayer. See also Abbott's
Shakespearian Grammar, Sect. 265. The construction is as follows--'O
victorious tree, protection of true people, that alone wast worthy to bear
the King of Heaven with His new wounds--the White Lamb that was hurt with
the spear--O expeller of fiends out of both man and woman, on whom (i. e.
the men and women on whom) thine arms faithfully spread out,' &c. _Limes_
means the arms of the cross, spread before a person to protect him. [156]