Meaning of 'Amor vincit omnia' in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

The phrase 'Amor vincit omnia' appears in Geoffrey Chaucer's most famous work The Canterbury Tales and concerns the Prioress whose tale you can read here.

She is named as Madame Eglantine and wears a golden brooch inscribed with the letter 'A' and the phrase itself as appears in line 162 of The General Prologue of The Canterbury Tales:

Of smal coral aboute hir arm she bar

A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene,

An theron heng a brooch of gold ful sheene,

On which ther was first write a crowned A,

And after Amor vincit omnia.

The Prioress's Tale from a painting
by Edward Coley Burne-Jones

It is of course from the Latin and best translates as 'Love conquers all'.

Love = amor (noun)
Vincit = conquers (verb)
Omnia = all (adverb)

The full phrase comes from Virgil's Eclogues: 'Omnia vincit amor: et nos cedamus amori' and translates as 'Love conquers all: let us too surrender to love'.

It's significance is an insight into the character of the Prioress who is portrayed as a social climber with outward signs that are at odds with the simple piety of her tale and position, such as her (incorrect) French accent, jewellery and the ambiguity of meaning of this phrase which more commonly relates to courtly than God's love.

Meaning of 'If gold rusts, what then can iron do?'

Geoffrey Chaucer's famous quote appears in The General Prologue to his best known work, The Canterbury Tales.

The modern and most commonly quoted version is: 'If gold rusts, what then can iron do?'

However, in the original Middle English the text is: 'That if gold ruste, what shal iren do?'

In terms of its context, Chaucer tells of a poor Parson, a local priest, who lived a humble life doing good deeds in the community. The motto he lived by was this quote and Chaucer goes onto explain its meaning in the next line:

'For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste,
No wonder is a lewed man to ruste'

So, if a priest is corrupt what hope is there for the rest of us, or to use the metaphor if the most precious of metals rusts, then what hope is there for a baser metal in iron?

As such a priest should set an example of how to live to his parish as if he does not then how can he expect others to be good.