How manye myghte she have in mariage?
Yet herde I nevere tellen in myn age
Upon this nombre diffinicioun.
– Geoffrey Chaucer
The Canterbury Tales, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue. A firm advocate of marriage, the Wife of Bath has had five husbands. So she cannot understand how Jesus can reprove the Samaritan woman at the well for having married five times, telling her the fifth man was not her husband. How many might she have in marriage, asks the Wife of Bath, insisting she has never heard a definition of this number.