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Middle English Seint, SeinteE. Talbot Donaldson aa Yale University ,Published online: 21 Jul 2008.

To cite this article: E. Talbot Donaldson (1948) Middle English Seint, Seinte , StudiaNeophilologica, 21:2, 222-230, DOI: 10.1080/00393274808587032

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Middle English Seint, Seinte.

The alternation of the forms seint and seinte before propernames has long been a sort of minor crux in Chaucerian scholar-ship. According to the older opinion, ME usage was the sameas the French, seinte appearing before feminines, seint beforemasculines.1 But this fails to account for the fact that sometimesf-forms are either written or seem to be required by the meterbefore masculines, even in the nominative, while occasionallyforms without -e occur before feminines.' As a result, recentscholars have tended to reject the theory of French grammaticalinfluence and, apparently assuming that the nominative for bothmasculine and feminine should be seint, have tried to explain allforms with -e either as genuine or petrified datives or vocatives3

or as inorganic inventions called into use for the sole purposeof fulfilling metrical requirements.4 That none of these explana-tions is altogether satisfactory — a fact suggested by their verymultiplicity — seems to result from a failure on the part of theiroriginators fully to investigate the long and tangled history ofthe word saint in English.

The Modern English word is, as dictionaries agree, a descend-ant of the French word which was introduced into very earlyME as saint or seint.5 Probably it is this entirely correct etymologythat has made it difficult to produce a satisfactory explanationfor the ME alternation, which has its cause in a speech habitdeveloped in England before the introduction of the French word.For whereas seint is undoubtedly a post-Conquest importation,6

another and quite similar derivative of Latin sanctus existed inOE, side by side with native hälig, which it frequently replaced.This derivative appears in two forms: as an independent nounof the a-declension, sand,1 and as an only partly anglicizedadjective used before proper names, sancte or sanctus for themasculine, sancta for the feminine.8 The noun is not widely

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MIDDLE ENGLISH SEINT, SEINTE 223

exemplified, but the adjective appears commonly in such textsas the English translation of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, theBückling Homilies, the OE Chronicle, the Charters, and theMartyrology.9 Both of these forms descended regularly into ME.The first is found in the plural santis in the Fairfax and CottonCursor Mundi, the Towneley Plays, and, with characteristic WestMidland modification of a before a nasal, as sontes in Harley2253.Io The second appears regularly in the Ormuium as sannt{Johan, Symon) or sannte (Peterr, Pawell), and at least once inCotton Vespasian A XXII as sante {Marie).™ For the assimila-tion of c in similar positions one may compare ME lenten, drente,OE leiteten, drencte.™ As may be seen from the second examplegiven from Orm and from the example in the Cotton MS, theOE vowel termination of the adjectival form also persisted intoME: in the masculine nominative — at least before certain propernames — with ME -e from OE -e, and in the feminine withME -e from OE -a.

But while this native form persisted in some areas of speech,it was very widely displaced or influenced by the French loan-word containing the diphthong. Where displacement occurred,as in the MSS of Layamon's Brut, the Laud 108 version of theSouth-English Legendary, and the lyrics of Harley 2253 (withproper names), the French grammatical usage also obtained, andone finds a strict separation on the basis of gender betweenseint and seinte.13 Where influence alone occurred, the Frenchand OE forms entered into combination with one another toproduce a form that was used without regard to the Frenchgrammatical rule, so that in many of the earlier ME texts suchas the Lambeth and Trinity College Homilies, MS Jesus CollegeOxford 29, the Bodley Halt Meidenhad, Vices and Virtues, andthe Cotton Nero Ancren Rhvle one finds what to all appearancesis the French word with native terminal -e added before certainmasculine nominatives as well as before all feminines.14 Thus theFrench-influenced forms with native -e [seinte Peter) in thesetexts balance Orm's uninfluenced forms with -e (sannte Peterr).The influenced form with -e, moreover, survived for several centu-ries and may be seen in the fourteenth century (aside from theworks of Chaucer) in the Ayenbite of Inwyt: zaynte Peter.IS

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Dan Michael's form, incidentally, confirms unequivocally the theorythat the French and native words entered into combination, sinceKentish voicing of initial s took place only in native words,and would presumably not have occurred in the post-Conquestborrowing seint: therefore what we have in Michael's zaynte isactually OK *zancte, later *zante, which became combined withOF seint to produce the form with diphthong.16

So far as the feminine is concerned, the native speech habitand French usage both produce a form with -e, so that in earlyME and in late southern ME seinte is virtually invariable for allcases. In the north, of course, where final unstressed -e beganto disappear earlier than in the south, feminine forms without-e would be common after 1300. But Chaucer, I believe, normallywrote -e before feminines, although it is impossible to determinewhether he did so because of French grammar or because of thenative practice.17 Either reason makes it unnecessary to resortto explanations based on actual or petrified inflectional endings.On the other hand, when Chaucer writes metrical seint withfeminines he does so in accordance with his usual custom ofsuppressing final unstressed -e where it is metrically inconvenient:18

the number of unequivocal suppressions of feminine -e in Chauceris small.19

The development of masculine -e is more difficult to interpret.According to the theory presented here, we should expect inChaucer, as in other texts which show any masculine f-forrns, tofind only ^-forms, since influenced OE sancte would give withall names ME seinte. Actually, however, even in the earliest textsmentioned above (the Lambeth Homilies, etc.) seinte is employedconsistently only with Peter and Paul; with the other saints itis used only sporadically or, with certain names, not at all.20

The reason for this is probably to be found in the extension ofthe French grammatical usage to cover all such masculine namesas were not hardened, through common currency in popular speech,into combination with the old form seinte. The texts cited aboveas illustrating displacement of the native word (the MSS ofLayamon, etc.) show how all-pervasive the French distinctionin gender could be, and it may be assumed that this distinctionmade itself felt in all cases except where a well-entrenched speech

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MIDDLE ENGLISH SEINT, SEINTE 225

habit protected the older form. As a glance at early ME textswill show, of the masculine saints in the calendar Peter and Paulwere by all odds the most popular with homilists, and thereforeprobably equally popular with the common people in theireveryday oaths. This popularity is strongly suggested by theusage in Vices and Virtues. Here whenever St. Augustine, St.Gregory, St. Jerome, or St. John are spoken of their names areprefixed with Latin sanctus; but on four out of five of the occasionswhen reference is made to St. Peter, his name is prefixed withthe form seinte, just as St. Mary is called, nine out often times,sainte Marie." Apparently Peter and Mary were old friends tothe author or his scribe, while the other saints were comparativestrangers. On the other hand, the sporadic appearance of ^-formswith other saints in early texts suggests the possibility of anold system of dialectal alternates: whereas the gallicized educatedclasses — scribes in particular — may have generally preferredFrench sein/ to English seinte for the masculine, the illiteratepopulace may well have adhered to the English form. Thus itwould be entirely natural for Chaucer to write not only seintePeter and seinte Poules, but also seinte Note and seinte Benedight.

Few of Chaucer's masculine -<?'s are in the nominative, andit remains to consider the possibility of their being actual orpetrified endings. Masculine seinte is, like feminine seinte, invar-iable in earlier texts, and nothing can be deduced about itsdeclension. Masculine sein/, however, if it really was, as has beenheld until recently, an adjective, we might expect to find inflectedin oblique cases in those texts which still preserve some adjectivalinflection. But such inflection is almost impossible to prove. Ormaltogether lacks it, consistently writing sannt Johan, etc., forthe oblique as well as for the nominative (the vocative, however,is not instanced)." Similarly the Cotton Nero Ancren Rhvle showsno clear example of inflection, and the Ayenbite only two doubtfulinstances.23 On the basis of these last it is perhaps necessaryto allow for sporadic declension, but there is not enough evidenceto account for any system of petrifactions or of actual inflectionsin Chaucer. There are probably two reasons for this lack ofdeclension. In the first place, among scribes and writers whoknew French the form seint would naturally be considered an

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226 E. TALBOT DONALDSON

invariable. In the second place, among even the educated populaceseint seems very early to have lost its adjectival character andto have become a mere inseparable prefix upon the proper nameswhich it originally modified. This development is seen in theoldest ME texts, which show numerous reduced forms such assein with certain proper names, particularly those beginning witha voiced palatal spirant.24 In the older speech, these procliticsseem to have been restricted to masculines and to have appearedonly rarely with names like Peter and Paul.25 Thus in the AncrenRiwle we have on the one hand seihte Peter and seinte Marieand on the other sein Johan — plus, of course, seint Johan,a form whose survival would be insured because of continuingFrench influence. This controlled alternation in the forms ofattributive saint suggests that the English tended to regardthem all as indeclinable variants whose shape was deter-mined not by grammatical usage but by the individual namesfollowing them. OED notes that prefixed saint is now generallyconsidered to be a substantive used appositively rather thanan adjective, and the evidence of the reduced forms (themselvesnecessarily indeclinable) is that this change took place very earlyin ME: for this reason the French adjective did not, as did otherFrench adjectives adopted into English, take on English declension.

The alternation of seint with seinte in Chaucer may thereforebe accounted for on historical grounds without recourse tohypotheses involving inflectional forms, actual or petrified, whichcannot be proved to have existed in any number. It is true thatI have found only one instance of the vocative with a masculinewhose nominative ordinarily took the prefix seint,'6 and this singleuninflected instance is not of sufficient weight to prove that anauthor who normally wrote nominative seint Martin could notalso have written 0 seinte Martin! Therefore it is possible thatthe carpenter's seinte Benedight represents a true Chaucerianvocative; nevertheless, Chaucer also writes the vocatives seintJulian and seint Valentyne,*7 and since he is ordinarily rathercareful to preserve adjectival vocative -e I am disposed to thinkthat seinte Benedight, like seinte Marie in all cases, representsan archaic indeclinable in the carpenter's speech as historicallywell-grounded in the form of the prefix as it is in the termination

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MIDDLE ENGLISH SEINT, SEINTE 22"J

-ight of the proper name itself. The same I suppose to be trueof seinte Peter, seinte Poules, and s ante Note.*s Whether or notan editor should print the -e in any given line depends on thethree factors of meter, grammar, and MS-readings, but it isreasonable that when the first and second, as herein established,combine against the third to produce -e, the -e should be written.29

Notes.

1. The statement was made first, I believe, by Child, Memoirs of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences, NS 8, I (1861), 467. It was acceptedby Skeat, who invented a dissyllabic masculine sëynt to reconcile metricswith French grammar where necessary: see his Oxford Chaucer, V, 13.Tatlock, MLN, XXXI (1916), 139, n. 1, also accepted it, though he rejectedSkeat's "impossible" dissyllable, suggesting that masculine -e was an exten-sion of the feminine.

2. Masculine -e occurs metrically if not scribally in the following lines:A 120 (Loi, dat.); 509 (Poules, gen.); 697 (Peter, nom.); 3483 (Denedight, voc.);3771 (Note, dat.); D 1564 (Loi, dat.). In A 697 a headless line is possible.-e may also occur in A 3486 (Petres, gen.: wentestow seint or went'stow seinte)and B 3970 (Poules, gen.: Hooste by seint or Hoost by seinte). Feminine -eoccurs metrically as follows: nom., G 275; nom. or voc., C 308, D 1604,E 2418; gen., D 604; dat., C 685, G 550, LGW 338 (F), HF 1066; voc.,A 3449, B 1974, E 1337, HF 573, TC 3.70s (some MSS). In G 275 and 550either seinte Cecile or seint Cecilie is possible. Feminine -e is suppressedmetrically in G 28 (acc.), 85, 554, LGW 426 (F) [416 G] and 313 (G). In E 1899either seinte Marie or seint Marte presents difficulties. Instances in elisionare not listed.

3. Ten Brink, Chaucers Sprache und Verskunst (Leipzig, 1884) § 242,while allowing for the possibility of the French distinction in gender, preferredto consider seinte as either an actual or a petrified vocative. Emerson, Ro-manic Review, VIII (1917), 71 -2 , equated the alternation (except in thevocative, where he regarded -e as inflectional) with that of fair-faire, fresh-fresshe, etc., suggesting that the e-forms had been caused by analogy withthe "large class of adjectives which have that ending for historical reasons."But he believed also (pp. 72-3) that -e might "in some cases . . . be dueto [the] retention of final -e in dative phrases." Both ten Brink and Emersonseem to have assumed that the normal English nominative form for bothgenders was seint, an assumption that this paper will show to be incorrect.

4. This theory was first set forth by Josef Bihl, Die Wirkungen desRhythmus in der Sprache von Chaucer und Gower (Heidelberg, 1916), pp.27-8 , and was restated with specious formalism by Eckhardt, § 239 of thethird edition (Leipzig, 1920) of ten Brink, op. cit. See also J. G. Southworth,PMLA, LXII (1947), 926. The theory relies not only on the erroneous assump-tion concerning seint mentioned in the note above, but also on the dubiousassumption that Chaucer was capable of adding inorganic -e's to fill out themeter. Actually there is no proper name with which seinte must be usedin iambic measure, and Chaucer uses seint with names of every metricalpattern with which he elsewhere uses seinte. Even a hack could avoid usingseinte if it did not exist. Bihl cites as corroboration the similar alternationin Orm and Richard Sachse, Das Unorganische E im Orrmulunt (Halle,

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1881), p. 34, n., where the rhythmical theory is stated for Orm and his sannteis termed an inorganic form used before names accented on the first syllablein order to maintain the iambic meter. But even Orm could fit sannt Peterras readily into the line as he did his invariable sannte Peterr.

5. See OED, saint, a. and sb.6. OED gives the earliest use of seint as 1175, in the Lambeth Homilies.

See also the discussion of M. S. Serjeantson, A History of Foreign Wordsin English (London, 1935), p. 110, etc.

7. See Bosworth-Toller, sanct, for illustrative uses.8. OED, saint, suggests that the masculine sancte was originally the

Latin vocative. Inflection according to Latin is common in OE. But thereis also a tendency toward an arbitrary non-Latin declension of the masculine:thus in the Blickling Homilies -us appears generally with the nominativeand accusative, -e with the genitive and dative, though -e is also extendedto the other cases. See ed. Morris (EETS 58, etc.: 1874-86), pp. 43, 95,117, 163, for nom. -us; 209, 217, for acc. -us; 211, 215, 217, for gen. anddat. -e; 163, for nom. -e. The feminine -a began early to weaken to -e: idem,p. 159, sancte Marie (nom.). Sanct- forms carried into ME were generallywritten with -e for both genders: see the Lambeth Homilies, ed. Morris,Old English Homilies, I (EETS 29, 34: 1867-68), 23, 37, 41, etc.

9. See the Old English Version of Bede's Ecclesiastical History, ed.Miller (EETS 95, etc.: 1890-98), passim; Blickling Homilies as above, n. 8;Two Saxon Chronicles, ed. Earle and Plummer (Oxford, 1892-99), I, 115,117, 209, 213, etc. (Laud MS); Cartularium Saxonicum, ed. Birch (London,1885-93), II, 79, 80, 87, 96, etc.; Old English Martyrology, ed. Herzfeld(EETS 116: 1900), passim (Cotton MS). The last shows general weakeningtoward -e for both genders.

10. This form is not discussed separately in OED. See Cursor Mundi,ed. Morris (EETS 57, etc.: 1874-93), 1. 11729; Towneley Plays, ed. Englandand Pollard (EETS ES 71: 1897), p. 40; Böddeker, Altenglische Dichtungendes MS. Harl. 2253 (Berlin, 1878), pp. 190, 219. The form was still currentin a petrified oath in the sixteenth century: see Old Gobbo's Be Gods sonties,Merchant of Venice, II, ii, 42. OED, santy, conjectures that this is a corrup-tion of saintitie, which is unlikely in Gobbo's plural. Quiller-Couch andWilson in their edition of the play (Cambridge, 1926), p. 193, more correctlyexplain as a "diminutive of 'sont,' an old form of 'saint'," though the diminu-tive seems no more than an orthographical indication of pronounced -es, asound occasionally preserved in Shakespeare: see Jespersen, Modern EnglishGrammar, I (5th ed.: London, 1933), § 6.16. Miss Serjeantson, op. cit., p. 4,is surely in error when she places OE sanct among words that probably"never reach full currency with the average speaker, if indeed they reachthe spoken language at all."

11. See Ormulum, ed. White and Holt (Oxford, 1878), II, 570 -1 ; OldEnglish Homilies, I, 237. The common ME northern and Scottish attributiveform sant, still preserved in some northern dialects (see W. E. Haigh, ANew Glossary of the Huddersfield District [Oxford, 1928], sœnt), may alsodescend from OE sancte, but it is possible that this is an unstressed reduc-tion of seint: cf. n. 15 below.

12. Jordan, Handbuch der mittelenglischen Grammatik, 2d ed. (Heidel-berg, 1934), § 193; Emerson, Middle English Reader, 2d ed. (London, 1938),p. Ixxv.

13. See Lazamon's Brut, ed. Madden (London, 1847), III, 38, seînteMarie but Seint Myhhel: so throughout; Early South-English Legendary,ed. Hortsmann (EETS 87: 1887), passim; Böddeker, op. cit., pp. 117, 120,216, 241, 256, and Glossary, p. 399. In elision feminine -e is sometimes notwritten.

14. See Morris, Old English Homilies, I, 131, seinte paul (Lambeth);

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MIDDLE ENGLISH SEINT, SEINTE 229

idem, II (EETS 53: 1873), 7, 9, 15, 63, 65, etc., seinte powel (foul); 17, 35,111, 193, 201, etc., seinte peter; 21, 31, 125, seinte marie (Trinity); Old EnglishMiscellany (EETS 49: 1872), pp. 41, 89, 91, seynte peter (Jesus MS); 29,seinte Marie (Laud 471); Hali Meidenhad, ed. Cockayne and Furnivall (EETS18: 1922), pp. 8, 26, 48, 50, 66, seinte pawel; Vices and Virtues, ed. Holthausen(EETS 89, 159: 1888-1920), p. 145, seinte Peter; 55, sainte Marie; AncrenRiwle, ed. Morton (London, 1853), pp. 168, 348, 262, etc., Seinte Peter; 30,70, 228, 234, 238, etc., Seinte Powel; 66, 76, Seinte Marie; 10, 234, SeinteSare. All examples are nominative.

15. Ed. Morris (EETS 23: 1866), pp. 12, 128, 147, 149, zaynte (saynte)peter; 53, 66, 72, 8o, 88, etc., zaynte (saynte) paul (pawel); 230, sainte lucie.These examples are nominative. Dan Michael's attributive form sant (idem,p. 99, etc.) is probably not descended from OE sancte, since it does notvoice initial s. It is probably a reduced form, resulting from lack of stress:see Luick, Historische Grammatik der Englischen Sprache (Leipzig, 1921ff.), § 468.

16. Jordan, § 208; Luick, § 703, n. 7. Luick or his editors correctlygive the OE form with -e.

17. Chaucer's apparently French feminines seinte charitee (A 1721, B 4510,D 2119) and seinte Trinitee (D 1824) suggest that he was following Frenchusage. Still, these are common ME and probably represent early petrifac-tions of the French feminine. The earliest example of either that I havenoted is in Layamon, ed. cit., III, 184. Emerson's denial, Romanic Review,VIII, 73 that the -e originates in OF seems curiously perverse.

18. See my article in PMLA, LXIII (1948), 1101 ff.19. Aside from LGW 313 (G), recorded in only one MS, there are

only four instances of suppression, all with the name Cecil(i)e in rhyme, wherethe accent must fall upon the second syllable, making prefix seinte an im-possibility. Twice the rhyme is required by the poetic association with lilie.

20. See n. 14 above. Aside from Peter and Paul I have noted thefollowing: Ancren Riwle, p. 236, Seinte Antonie and Seinte Beneit; p. 362,Seinte Andreu; Ayenbite, p. 228, sainte gregorie; Jesus MS (Old EnglishMiscellany, p. 91), seynte laurence; Royal College of Physicians MS, Edin-burgh (ed. Small, English Metrical Homilies [Edinburg, 1862], p. 73), sainteMakary. All examples are nominative. On the other hand, I have not seenseinte with John, James, Luke, etc.: apparent examples in the TrinityHomilies result from what I take to be incorrect expansion.

21. See ed. cit., pp. 25, 85, 111, 145, for Peter; 9, 21, 25, 53, 55, 57,59, for Mary; 35, 37, 39, 41, 121, 123, 131, 141, for the other saints mentioned.It is possible that an additional reason for the continued favoring in popularspeech of English seinte Peter, etc., over French seint Peter may have beenthe difficult consonant cluster (nt-p) which occurs in the latter.

22. See Ormulum, I, 6, 22, 357; II, 94, for Sannt Johan in variouscases; II, 563 ff., "Proper Names," for other saints. The theory that sucha pattern as Sannte Johan is impossible in iambic meter shows over-confidencein the accentual stability of ME names.

23. Ancren Riwle, p. 244, has dative Seinte Bartholomeu and, pp. 386,412, genitive Seinte Miheles, but I have found no nominatives with thesenames for comparison; genitive seinte Andrewes, p. 412, is offset by a nomina-tive with -e, p. 362, as well as one without, p. 122; Anselm, p. 336, Bernard,p. 348, James, pp. 8, 10, and Gregory, p. 232, are uninflected in obliquecases just as they are in the nominative. Oblique Anthony without -e, p. 278,is written with -e in the nominative, p. 236: the former may result fromelision. The best case for inflectional -e is in Ayenbite, p. 13, genitive saynteSimones, saynte Iudes. These are, however, both balanced only by nominativeforms with sayn, p. 14, in which -e would necessarily be lost. ElsewhereMichael has uninflected oblique forms for Thomas, p. 244, Luke, p. 226,

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and Gabriel, p. I, the last a vocative. It should be remarked that weakdeclension has almost no opportunity to occur with seint except in the vocative.

24. See, for examples, Ancren Riwle, pp. 74, 192, 350, sein Lame(s);80, sein Jerome; 78, 94, 164, sein Johan.

25. Sein Powel does occur once, idem, p. 192, and Sain Peter occursin the Royal College MS, English Metrical Homilies, p. 55, but these areprobably analogical forms. The earliest instance I have noted of reducedforms with the feminine is in Ashmole 43 (c. 1300), Seyn Julian 0uliana):Liflade of St. Juliana, ed. Cockayne and Brock (EETS 51: 1872), p. 81.

26. The instance in the Ayenbite, mentioned in n. 23 above.27. HF 1022, PF 683, Mars 13. So far as meter is concerned, seinte

Julian or Valentyne is as easily fitted into iambics as the form without -e.28. Latin Benedictus was early anglicized: see Layamon's Benedikt,

ed. cit., II, 125. Note (Neot) is an English saint, and his name may inpopular speech have become hardened with seinte. Whether Loi came intoEnglish early enough to account for Chaucer's seinte Loi is uncertain. Per-haps it is necessary to accept the suggestion of Hans Remus, Die Kirch-lichen ... Lehnworte Chaucers (Halle, 1906), p. 56, and Emerson, RomanicReview, VIII, 70, n. 3, that seinte Loi represents seint Eloi. This would beparticularly appropriate in the mouth of the French-speaking Prioress. Onthe other hand Skeat, Chaucer, V, 13-14, observes that the name was givento English places, and perhaps it was introduced early.

29. My method would be to write -e wherever it fits metrically. Whileone must occasionally allow for nine-syllable and headless lines, the ratherlarge proportion of them with seint is suspicious. There is no reason tosuppose that MSS accurately reproduce all Chaucer's final -e's: see Manlyand Rickert, Text of the Canterbury Tales (Chicago, 1940), III, 421.

Yale University.E. TALBOT DONALDSON.

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