Matter is a Slut

A while back I posted the following excerpt from Chaucer, with comment:

To Colcos comen is this duc Jasoun,
That is of love devourer and dragoun.
As mater apetiteth form alwey
And from forme into forme it passen may,
Or as a welle that were botomles,
Right so can false Jason have no pes.
For to desyren thourgh his apetit
To don with gentil women his delyt,
This is his lust and his felicite.

--Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women, "The Legend of Medea"

It turns out that Chaucer was being less imaginative and more learned than I suspected. Today I came across much the same metaphor in none other than John Quidort:

Unde nullus antiquorum ponentium materiam in omnibus creaturis, posuit materiam diversarum specierum vel rationum, sed diversimode se habentem in istis inferioribus et in spiritibus. Quae diversitas non provenit ex diversitate materiae absolutae, sed ex diversitate formae inferiorum et superiorum, quia forma non terminat vel capit totum ambitum materiae, quae est ad formas naturales. Ideo materia informata actu inferioris formae, quasi meretrix viro suo non satiatur actu formae quam habet, sed appetit supponi alii formae. Forma vero corporis caelestis vel intelligentiae, qua movet universum, virtute continet omnem formam, ad quam materia prima est in potentia. Ideo terminat totum appetitum materiae et ideo materia actu informata forma superiorum, non est in potentia ad aliud extra. Ideo non machinatur in maleficium corruptionis per appetitum alterius formae et corruptionem formae habitae. Ideo mulieri castae comparatur.

--John of Paris (Quidort). Le Correctorium corruptorii “Circa”, ed. J.P. Muller (Studio Anselma, 12-13), Rome, 1941. p.56

Rather than translate verbatim, I'll just include the note I wrote on this passage for my dissertation this afternoon:

"None of the ancients positing matter in all creatures went so far as to posit matters of different kinds or characters [specierum vel rationum]. The diversity of things comes not from a diversity of matters but from a diversity of superior and inferior forms, since no one form exhausts or expresses [terminat vel capit] the whole extent of matter’s potency to natural forms. Like a slut who is never satisfied with her husband, matter informed with with an inferior form is never satisfied with it, but always desires to replace it with another. On the other hand, John claims, the form of a heavenly body or of one of the Intelligences which moves the universe virtually contains every form to which prime matter is in potency (he does not explain in what sense this is true). Therefore such a form exhausts the whole desire of matter for form, and so matter informed with a superior form in not in potency to something else. These sorts of substances, then, are not entangled in the offense of corruption through the desire of some other form and the corruption of the form possessed, and so the matter of these higher substances is like a chaste woman."