Читать книгу The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 4 - Traugott Lawler - Страница 10

Webb 1854:148–49, glossing a payment-entry to “wafferariis et menestrallis,” falsely associating the Germanic term with Latin vafer (artful, cunning), asserts that waferarii are “cunning artists who practiced tricks by sleight of hand,” but offers no evidence; everywhere else, wafrarius just means “waferer”: see the DML. There would be nothing unusual, however, about combining the functions of waferer and entertainer—waferers made and served their delicious specialty at the end of a feast, and served up entertainment along with the wafers—or about farting as part of the show (205; B.13.231); see Southworth 1989, pp. 47, 64, 80–81. Stock 1988:468, Kirk and Anderson (Donaldson, 1990:139) and Staley 2002:35 suggest a pun on “wayfarer,” i.e., homo viator. The second part of Patience’s question in B.13.223, “to what contree he wolde,” never being answered, is dropped in C.

As in the opening scene of Julius Caesar, and as in two places in the Canterbury Tales, the question, “What work do you do?,” brings a coy or riddling response. The Canon’s Yeoman, when the Host asks, “Is he a clerk, or noon? Telle what he is,” fumbles evasively, then blurts out that he could turn the whole road to Canterbury into silver and gold (G617–26); in the Friar’s tale, the Summoner, when the devil asks, “Are you a bailiff?,” replies “Yes” out of shame, and the devil declares wryly that he is another (cf. D1392–96). (Staley, partly on the basis of this similar question, though mostly on the basis of “foul clothes,” elaborates a whole theory of CYT as “in conversation” with the Actyf episode.) Will has also been evasive in his reply to Reason’s questions about his work in C.5. Similarly here, Actyf is a waferer but says he is a minstrel—his notion being that he “comforts” people, brings them pleasure, with his bread as minstrels do with their entertainment. (This explanation is made much clearer in C, where the bald statement in B, “I am a Mynstrall … a wafrer” 224–26 is expanded into eight lines, 193–200, including an exchange with Conscience.) In his response to Conscience Actyf readily explains the riddle: the only kind of minstrelsy I know is to make men merry with wafers: it’s a job that makes people happy. Why he gives this oblique answer is not quite certain, though L in fact capitalizes on this convention in several ways: it aligns Actyf with other vagabond-minstrel figures more clearly than wafering would; it suggests an analogy with Will the maker; it extends the subject of feasts; it prepares for Patience’s alternative substitution: Actyf likens wafering to minstrelsy, Patience likens it to the provision of spiritual food. It also reveals Actyf’s discontent with his lot, for he moves quickly enough to the complaint that lords’ minstrels are rewarded much more generously than he is though he provides a more essential service.

The analogy with Will is perhaps especially potent. B.13.284–90 sound uncannily like him. Actyf appears on the surface to be the very opposite of Will: though not an actual laborer, he is definitely in the food business, whereas Reason berates Will precisely for contributing nothing to the harvest. But Actyf seems to wish he were a minstrel, just as Will meddles with makings, or sings for his supper, i.e., sings placebo and so on and is welcome “oþerwhile in a monthe” (5.50) in people’s houses. Thus he functions as something of a stand-in for Will in this scene; what he learns in C, and even what he confesses in B, is surely relevant to Will. Further, the removal of the sin-and-confession material from this scene in C may be due, not merely to its re-placement in the Seven Deadly Sins portion, but also to the presence of Will’s “confession” to Reason and Conscience in C.5. In structure the Actyf episode in the B version recalls that second vision, though the order here is confession-sermon-contrition, not sermon-confession-contrition, and we are shown no satisfaction by Actyf (though we may rightly feel that it will follow).

Many critics have discussed the analogy between Actyf and Will. Alford, “Design” in Alford 1988:50 calls him “in many ways the alter ego of the dreamer himself,” and cites others who write similarly: Robertson and Huppé 1951:168, Bloomfield 1962:27, Carruthers 1973:122. Actually, Carruthers discusses the subject on pp. 115–17, 121–23; on 122 she says that Haukyn is “the most complete and evident mirror image of Will in the poem,” i.e., like Thought, etc., but better. On p. 115 she details the likenesses. To this list can be added Huppé 1947:619, Gillespie 1994:107, 110, and surely others.

194 Peres prentys þe plouhman, alle peple to conforte: It is hard to see how this line, which is not in B, adds anything to our sense of Piers; it is probably only a coy way for Actyf to say that he works to provide bread, which strengthens people—though it goes over Conscience’s head, apparently. Piers does the main job of plowing, sowing, harrowing, and supervising the harvest and the storing of the wheat (as at 21 [19].258–334); millers, bakers, and Actyf the waferer—“eny manere mester þat myhte Peres auayle” 9.7, B.7.7—can all be thought of as his apprentices in the general sense of less skilled fellow toilers. Watson nicely says that Actyf’s work “updates and urbanizes the conservative social model represented by Piers” (2007:109). At 212 Actyf says that he himself sows, probably stretching the truth; see 208–13n below. See also lines 212–13, and B.13.236–38.

Skeat and Pearsall take the line to mean that Actyf is, in Skeat’s phrase, “a true servant of Christ,” though both admit that the only basis for that is his providing communion wafers, as I do not think Actyf does; see 198n below. We might see him rather as straining to appear productive, a useful member of the agrarian economy, rather than the market economy to which he actually belongs; see John Baldwin 1970:1.57–59, Page 1989:16–17.

The line is the first hint that Actyf is a boaster: he will continue to speak in a way that inflates his own importance.

197–99 Munstracye … þe more: The statement makes better sense in Schmidt and Pearsall, who do not put a comma at the end of 197. “I don’t know much minstrelsy except how to make men happy, and welcome God’s guests, with wafers, as a waferer; because of my work all, both the less and the great, laugh and are happy.” Actyf’s account is calculated to emphasize the superiority of his minstrelsy to the ordinary sort: it appeals to a deeper need and brings a deeper pleasure; it abets God’s work of hospitality; it reaches a wider audience, the less as well as the great, the poor as well as the rich. But the recompense is worse.

198 godes gestes: Everyday people, alluding to Luke’s parable of the Great Supper or Matthew’s of the Son’s Wedding. In both the host stands for God; in the first (Luke 14:16–24), once the original guests bail, the invitation goes out to “the poor and the feeble and the blind and the lame”; in the second (Matt 22:1–14, which L draws on in the excuses made to Piers, 7.292–304 and quotes at 12.47–49 [B.11.112–14] and B.15.464), the king finally tells his servants to go into the highways and invite “as many as you shall find,” and they gather “all that they found, both bad and good.” As Gregory says, commenting on the Luke, “hos itaque elegit Deus quos despicit mundus” (PL 76.169; and so God chose those whom the world despised). The phrases þe lasse and þe more and the pore and the ryche in the next two lines may echo Matthew’s “both bad and good”; cf. 214 and B.13.239–42. Welcome godes gestes thus means the same thing (in Actyf’s bloated way of talking) as make men merye in the previous line.

The phrase has universally been taken, however—e.g., by Skeat, Pearsall, Schmidt—to mean “welcome God’s guests to the Communion table,” since (they all say) waferers provided communion wafers—though OED does not give this meaning of “wafer” until 1559; MED gives it, but none of its many citations support it (unless the present line is thought to do so). In L’s time wafers were worldly delicacies such as Absolon sent Alison “pipyng hoot out of the gleede,” MillT A3379. They were thin sweet crisp pastries, probably with a honeycomb pattern imparted by the wafering irons, modern French gaufres, like our waffles, ultimately the same word, which meant honeycomb. (Cf. DML, s.v. wafrarius: “1313 Willelmo P. wafrario regis et E. consorti suae, menestrallis servientibus de waffr’ suis ad mensas dominorum” [To William P., the king’s waferer, and to E. his wife, servers who serve their wafers at the tables of lords]). And even if waferers did supply churches, how would doing that elevate Actyf to the function of welcoming communicants? (“Welcome” may not be a verb at all but an adjective, depending on “make” in the preceding line: “As a waferer, I make men merry, and God’s guests welcome, with wafers”; but in either case the meaning is the same.)

A check of “hospites Dei” and similar Latin phrases in the PL online yields sporadic appearances in varying contexts, but nothing at all associated with Communion except this one: Honorius Augustodensis says that at Mass the celebrant and the people together are “hospites unius Domini,” guests of one Lord (Sacramentarium, PL 172.767); this may be a bit of evidence for the traditional interpretation of Actyf’s phrase. Meantime, MED, s,v, gest 1 (b) glosses “goddes gest” as “stranger,” citing this line, perhaps also with reference to Jesus’s two parables. In sum, Actyf’s wafers make people feel good, and there is probably nothing here about Communion at all.

201 (B.13.227) robes … forrede gounes, 203 (B.13.229) mantel: On the common aristocratic practice of making gifts of clothing (from which L himself may occasionally have benefited, or for which he may have wished), see B.14.25, 16.358 (B.15.233); also 7.84 and the end of the Summoner’s Tale, D2293; Cutts 1922:297; John Baldwin 1997:636n5, 640; Southworth 1989:58–59, and Crawford 2004. Chaucer’s Clerk’s preference of books over “robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrie” (A296) may suggest that he might have chosen to become a minstrel instead.

202 (B.13.228) lye: Tell stories; see telle … gestes two lines later; Prol. 50 (B.Prol.49, A.Prol.49), B.Prol.51; 7.82 (B.13.422). John Baldwin 1997:639 cites the canonist Rufinus, who “defined ystriones (actors) as ystoriones (storytellers) who by transforming their faces and clothing created images that provided laughter, thus telling a ystoria (story) corporally.” Actually Actyf’s consistent hyperbolic mode makes clear that he does indeed know how to lie.

204–7 (B.13.230–33) tabre … syngen with þe geterne: Skeat provides a wealth of information about these skills. He primly passes over farting, but Pearsall fills in for him; see both. (Pearsall and Larry Benson have both delivered funny lectures on farting in Middle English literature, but I regret that I was not present for either. For attestation by those who were, see Shanzer 2009 [Pearsall] and Barney 2001:112 [Benson]). Tabre: play drums; trompy: play a horn; genteliche pipe: Kane, Glossary, says “sweetly” pipe, but perhaps “pipe like gentlefolk” such as Chaucer’s Squire, “syngynge … or floytynge al the day,” A91; sayle: dance or leap, AF sailler, Latin saltare. L may well have seen all these skills at the great houses he visited, though they could come from books, too, since lists of various kinds of performance were frequent in moral writers as far back as Ambrose and Augustine through Peter the Chanter, Thomas of Chobham, and John of Salisbury. Interestingly, the moralists have little use for dancers but go easy on instrumentalists, and especially string players (Page 1989:24–33), so that Actyf might have gained most credit had he learned fiddle, harp, psaltery, or guitar.

208–13 Y haue … hate (B.13.234–37 I haue … waiten): 210–11: “My only satisfaction is that the parish priest prays for me on Sundays; otherwise, I regret that I bother to sow or plant for anyone but myself.” This is the so-called “bidding prayer,” more properly “the bidding of the bedes,” i.e., the praying of the prayers. It is fully described in Duffy 1992:124–25; The Lay Folks Mass Book gives five examples from York on pp. 61–80; many more are in Coxe 1840. On Sunday only, before the offertory the priest would turn to the people and call, in English, for prayers for a whole series of people—the king, the bishop, benefactors of the parish, and so on, including, regularly, “al land tilland” (The Lay Folks Mass Book, ed. Simmons 1879: 65, 70, 78). The prayer requested was the Paternoster (and sometimes also a Hail Mary); thus B.13.236. Of course the Paternoster itself includes the petition, “give us this day our daily bread,” so that to say that prayer for land-tillers is particularly apt. Thus his point is not finally to complain that his only reward is that he gets prayed for, but to acknowledge that people need him and recognize that they need him. (Sowe or sette 211, like mete [food] and drynke 215, is yet another instance of Actyf’s habit of stretching the truth: here he extends his activity beyond just selling wafers to the whole business of food production.) þat ydelnesse hate: Cf. Ymaginatyf’s similar self-introduction, “ydel was y neuere” 14.1 (B.12.1), but in Actyf’s case a pleonasm, already stated in B at line 225 above: if your name is Actyf, you hate idleness. B.13.237 and þat hym profit waiten: and those who look for profit from him (i.e., me).

215 (B.13.240) Mihelmasse to Mihelmasse: “Michaelmas (September 29), the feast of St Michael and all Angels, marked the beginning and ending of the husbandman’s year. At that time harvest was over, and the bailiff or reeve of the manor would be making out the accounts for the year…. At once after Michaelmas, if not before, the planting of the new field of rye and wheat would begin, the field which had lain fallow during the year past” (Homans 1941:354). Homans was writing of the thirteenth century, but clearly the custom continued.

215 drynke: I.e., beer and ale, made from grain.

B.13.242 folk wiþ brode crounes: Parish priests with their tonsure (see Lawler 2002:111 n30).

216–31 Y fynde payn for þe pope … made (B.13.243–259 I fynde payn for þe pope … payn defaute): The passage is much clearer in B than in C. There, Actyf has been listing his various customers in order to emphasize the universal need for bread. That brings him to the pope (not, as Skeat supposes, because Actyf contributes to the annual papal collection called Peter’s Pence, but merely because he has gotten on to clerics in the previous line, and the pope, too, needs his daily bread), and ends the list, because mention of the pope brings him back to his complaint that the powerful reward him poorly for his service. What it would be nice for the pope to throw his way, instead of a useless pardon, would be a salve that would cure pestilence: then Actyf would be busy indeed (B.13.251), that is, business would be excellent. In the process of developing this happy fantasy, Actyf imagines yet another phony job for himself, this time not minstrel but minister, not pastryman but pastor (prest B.13 250: “eager, active,” but punning on “priest”), a kind of quack cleric like Chaucer’s Pardoner, armed with not only the magic salve but with bulls and the papal seal. This move depends first (as Skeat notes) on a pun on prouendre: I give the pope provender for his palfrey, why can’t he give me provender, that is, a prebend (stipend), a personage (benefice) in return? The pun is extended in the word paast B.13.250, which is at once “paste,” the miraculous salve he will hawk, “pastry,” for he will continue to sell bread as well, and “what a pastor has to give.” The disrespectful attitude toward the papacy that drives the passage appears first in the derisive phrase for the papal seal (which featured the heads of Saints Peter and Paul), a peis of leed and two polles amyddes (B.13.246), continues in the fiction of the pope’s sending off to Actyf, in response to his letter (dictated to his secretary) requesting it, the pot of salve that would transform his business, and ends, as Skeat (citing Whitaker) points out, in what, given the actual wealth of the papacy, can only be an ironic reference to St Peter’s “Silver and gold I have none” (Acts 3:6). The implication of B.13.254a is that the current pope would have to say just the opposite: “Might of miracle (cf. B.13.255) I have none, and I do not give you what I do have, silver and gold.”

Finally, however, the anti-papal satire is supererogatory. The basic point of the B passage is to present Actyf as dissatisfied with his lot, a businessman on the make for better profits; for in B.13.256 he acknowledges sadly that, however the papacy has fallen in spiritual power since Peter, the real source of the pestilence is general human pride (cf. 11.52–65; 5.114–17), and the only cure for that is famine, which is, of course, bad for the bread business.

In the C version, L seems to have realized that the anti-papal satire was a distraction, and has muted it, in the process obscuring somewhat Actyf’s reasons for mentioning either the pope or the pestilence at all. Nevertheless the essential point remains: Actyf longs for more business (222) and still imagines getting it through winning the franchise for the pope’s salve: for though the salve is no longer spoken of explicitly as being sent to him, the only way lines 222–23 can make sense is if they envision Actyf displaying the bull and selling the salve. Still he seems less roguish in C, more merely solicitous, and by 230 virtually in despair for his livelihood over the realization that it is precisely plente of payn that is responsible for the pestilence. The difference of emphasis in the two versions is brought about by what follows each: since in B Actyf will become an emblem of sinful man, his cynicism is featured here. In C, however, the interest is, as Pearsall says, “in preparing Active as an erring pupil for instruction by Patience,” and so he is made to appear merely too solicitous for his livelihood rather than inclined to sharp practice.

217 pestilence (B.13.248 þe pestilence); 218 (B.13.249) bocches; 219 luythere eir: All apparently references to the recurrence of bubonic plague in 1368; cf. B.13.268–69. Bocches were its characteristic glandular swellings (“bubos”).

221a Super egros manus inponent & bene habebunt &c (B.13.249a In nomine meo demonia ejicient & super … habebunt): Both versions cite Mark 16:17–18, at the very end of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus’s words when he appears after the Resurrection “to the eleven as they were at table” (16:14): “In nomine meo dæmonia ejicient; [linguis loquentur novis; serpentes tollent, et si mortiferum quid biberint, non eis nocebit;] super ægrotos manus imponent, et bene habebunt” (In my name they shall cast out devils; [they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and if they shall drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt them;] they shall lay their hands upon the sick, and they shall recover). The phrase myhte of myracle 225 (B.17.255) probably implies all the super-powers Mark lists, not just healing. And the reference to Peter’s power, to pardoun (B.13.252) and mercy (221) and þe pott with þe salue, i.e., the power both to forgive sins and heal disease, suggests that L is thinking of the last two chapters of John’s Gospel as well, in which (21:23) the eleven are given the power to forgive sins, and (22:15–17) Peter is given special responsibility to feed the flock.

We are not to suppose that the verses from the Vulgate that creep into Actyf’s monologue starting here—there are three all told in C, seven in B—are uttered by him. Schmidt (226a note) distinguishes subtly between the thought (Actyf’s) and the form (L’s), but I’m not so ready even to give the thought to Actyf: rather we simply have L reverting to his default mode of writing, what I have called elsewhere “a kind of teacherly citation of authority, as if in the margin” (Lawler 1996:171); see further pp. 169–78 of that essay; Mann 1994:34, 41–46; and Lawler 2008:150–51. It was careless of him to use the style for Actyf.

224 (B.13.254) þe pott with þe salue: A brash phrase for the powers of forgiving and healing, pardoun [that]/Miʒte lechen a man (B.13.252–53), granted the apostles. The phrase is perhaps a translation of alabastrum unguenti, the “alabaster box of ointment” applied to Jesus’s feet in Luke 7:37, called a “box of salue” at B.13.194 (the phrase also occurs in the slightly different anointing story in Matt 26:7 and Mark 14:3). Unlike in passus 22 (B.20).306,336,372, where “salue” is simply the sacrament of Penance, and “to salue” is to administer the sacrament (305, 347), illness here is real illness, not just spiritual. At B.17.122, where the Samaritan says, “I haue salue for alle sike,” it means healing on one level (for the man left half-alive), and forgiveness on another (for all of us, in need of redemption).

224a Argentum … tibi do &c; B.13.254a Argentum … ambula: Silver and gold I have none, but what I have, I give thee. In the name of the Lord arise and walk (Acts 3:6, Peter to a lame man who asked alms of him; Alford, Quot. points out that the reading domini for Vulgate Iesu Christi Nazareni is attested in ancient manuscripts). Many patristic writers—e.g., Ambrose, Jerome, Rabanus, Bede—also have Domini Iesu, however, so we need not imagine L going back to the Vetus latina.

227 (B.13.257) may no blessynge doen vs bote: I.e., heal our pestilence: see 217–18 (B.13.248–49) above. Cf. 5.115–17 (B.5.13–15, A.5.13–15), in which Reason in his sermon blames pestilence on pride, and 11.52–65a (B.10.72–85a), in which Dame Study rails about pride, pestilence, and the failure to share bread with the hungry. Actyf has taken on a preacher’s voice, which he has no business doing.

228 (B.13.258) Ne mannes prayere (B masse) maky pees amonges cristene peple: B’s mannes masse is a cynical phrase, softened in C. War is a new issue; Actyf has said nothing about it, nor has either of the other pride passages mentioned in the previous note. The doctor has raised the question at the dinner, however, speaking at lines 171–73 (B.13.173–76) of a peace between the pope and his enemies; and there were two popes, maybe, at the time of the poem; see 171–73 (B.13.173–76) note above.

229a-31 Habundancia … made: The Latin sentence means, “The vilest sin comes from an abundance of bread and wine.” It is probably by L; see B.14.77a and note. It is built, along with lines 230–31 (which translate both L’s Latin and Ezechiel’s in L’s free way), on Ezechiel 16:49, “Behold, this was the iniquity of Sodom thy sister: pride, fullness of bread, and abundance, and the idleness of her and of her daughters; and they did not put forth their hand to the needy and to the poor,” as Alford and Pearsall point out. Maillet 2014:70 adds Luke 17:28–29. A closer parallel to L’s Latin line than anything in Alford, because it mentions both bread and wine, is the Gloss on Isa 5:22, PL 113.1242: “Ex abundantia panis et vini peccatum Sodomorum crevit” (The sin of the men of Sodom came from abundance of bread and wine). See also Peter the Chanter, ed. Boutry 2004:107: he glosses “habundancia panis” as “quarumlibet copia deliciarum” (plenty of whatever delicacies). The line ends Actyf’s monologue eleven lines sooner than in B, moving immediately, and much more effectively, into Patience’s response, which in B has to wait for the whole long sin passage, and for Conscience’s exchange with Actyf (at the beginning of passus 14) as well.

B.13.260–61 For … morwenyng: I.e., For I have to work hard in the cold early mornings to make enough bread from grain to provide for the people. “For” implies that Actyf realizes that pride is not fordone in his own case: he is still subject to Adam’s curse, earning his bread through the sweat of his brow (Gen 3:19, a favorite verse of those who argued against mendicancy).

B.13.264–70 it is noʒt … Maire: Skeat quotes Stow p. 159 (presumably he used the original edition, 1698; I saw the second edition, “enlarged” by John Strype, 1720: 2, 85), who reports that it was once the practice for several carts of bread from Stratford-atte-Bowe, the penny-loaf weighing two ounces more than a London penny-loaf, to arrive in London daily, but that the practice disappeared about 1568. Stow illustrates the practice by citing ll. 265–69 (from manuscript, perhaps ms. R, as his readings show). Skeat also cites several sources that indicate that a dearth drove the price of wheat very high in 1370. John Chichester, goldsmith, was mayor from October 28, 1369 to October 27, 1370. This is the only reference in PP to a contemporary person, and suggests that B cannot be very far from 1370. 265 whan no cart com to towne: presumably for an extended period, perhaps all of April, not just one morning. 267 agast a lite: ironic understatement, presumably—surely they were shocked and dismayed. þouʒt: i.e., remembered (though in fact these lines are the only record).

Actyf’s sin-stained coat (B.13.271–14.28; not in C, though much of the sin material appears in C.6 and 7; see B.13.274–456n below)

B.13.271–14.28 Actyf’s sin-stained coat: Actyf in B now becomes the representative of sinful humanity, and the stains on his cote of cristendom are described, namely, the seven deadly sins (or six of them: wrath and envy are treated together). The coat, which disappears completely in the C version, is called my cristendom again at B.14.11. It is his coat of baptism (MED s.v. cristendom 2 [b]), vestimentum or vestis or tunica baptismi—a classic image, also called the coat of salvation (vestimento salutis, Theodulf, De ordine baptismi, PL 105.234) or coat of faith (vestimentum fidei, Tertullian, De baptismo, PL 1.1215, and everywhere)—conferred on him by baptism and symbolized by the white baptismal robe. It comes up especially in commentary on Apoc 3:4, “Sed habes pauca nomina in Sardis qui non inquinaverunt vestimenta sua, et ambulabunt mecum in albis, quia digni sunt” (But thou hast a few names in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white, because they are worthy); Apoc 16:15, “Beatus qui vigilat et custodit vestimenta sua, ne nudus ambulet et videant turpitudinem suam” (Blessed is he that watcheth and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked and they see his shame); Gal 3:27, “Quicumque enim in Christo baptizati estis Christum induistis” (For as many of you as have been baptized in Christ have put on Christ); and sometimes Eph 4:22–24 and Col 3:9–10, on putting off the old man and putting on the new (see also 1 Cor 15:53, cited by Alford 1974:137). Frank (1957:71n) and Schmidt 1995 cite the “spotted garment which is carnal” of Jude 1.23, but there is in fact little use made of that in the commentary tradition.

All commentators say that the vestimenta of Apoc 3:4 are those put on at baptism; the Glossa says they are “vestes immortalitatis et innocentiae, quas acceperunt in baptismo, vel, sua bona opera” (the clothes of immortality and innocence that they received at baptism, or, their good works); both these meanings apply to Actyf. Most commentators acknowledge readily that the coat will need frequent washing, and that that is accomplished by means of the tears of penitence. Peter of Cluny is typical (PL 189.961): “Haec vestis sic mundata, si postmodum inquinetur, non aqua baptismatis, quae non novit nisi semel mundare, sed secundo lacrymarum fonte purganda est, qua et Petrus negationis maculas abluit, et Maria Domini pedes rigando, vitiorum flammas exstinxit” (If this clean coat is later dirtied, it has to be washed not in the water of baptism, which can only clean once, but in a second fountain, that of tears, the fountain in which Peter washed out the stains of his denial and Mary put out the flames of her vices by washing the Lord’s feet).

As I have mentioned, Staley 2002 argues for the relevance of Matthew’s parable of the wedding feast from which one man is cast out for not wearing a wedding garment (Matt 22:1–14, which L does treat at B.15.462–85 without mentioning the man improperly dressed). She shows that commentators regularly spoke of dirty clothes rather than the wrong clothes, but this tradition seems tangential in comparison to the commentary on Apoc 3:4 and the other passages cited above.

So the coat is Actyf’s Christianity, his identity as a Christian, or a little more palpably, his baptized soul. It is clean when he is in the state of grace, his condition at baptism; when he sins he soils it (B.14.276–408, 457–59; B.14.4, 12–15); but contrition, confession, and satisfaction, by restoring him to the state of grace, make it clean again (B.14.5–11, 16–28). Breen 2010:209–16 sees the coat in terms of the Latin word habitus, which means both “condition” and “dress” (as English “habit” still does), but surely L was thinking rather of the traditional Christian metaphor.

The details in the long account of the sins that foul the coat, B.13.274–456, which Langland removed completely from this scene in the C version (see next note), have no value as further characterizations of Actyf. As Robertson and Huppé say, “The result is a kind of general confession of sins of all types not necessarily consistent with a single personality, as though the poet had described all of the sins applicable to the active life which he found either in a confessional inquiry or in a manual for penitents” (1951:168–69). The many critics who draw on them in their account of Haukyn (Breen, for instance, who makes too much of the phrase “yhabited as an heremyte” 284) go astray, it seems to me.

Actyf commits the seven deadly sins (B.13.274–456)

B.13.274–456 Ac it was moled … luciferis fiþele: In the course of the C revision L apparently concluded that this passage not only confused the presentation of Actyf but was redundant with the earlier treatment of the sins in B passus 5, and decided to integrate it with that passage (with numerous small changes) as follows:

B.13.275"83 (Pride)	became	C.6.30–37
B.13.291–312a (Pride)	"	C.6.41–60a
B.13.324–41 (Envy)	"	C.6.69–85
B.13.344–51 (Lechery)	"	C.6.178–94
B.13.354–98a (Greed)	"	C.6.260–85a
B.13.399–406 (Gluttony)	"	C.6.425–32 (much changed)
B.13.407–56 (Sloth)	"	C.7.69–116

Commentary on these passages, including phrases and lines unique to the B.13 version, appears above, at C passus 6 and 7. Lines 271–74, 313–19, 342, 354–55, 399–400, and 457–59 maintain the framework of attention to the coat (and to Will, who keeps examining it ever more closely), culminating in Conscience’s courteously asking Haukyn why he doesn’t wash; naturally, these lines disappear in the C version.

B.13.275–312a Of pride here a plot … Nemo potest duobus dominis seruire: (Pride) = C.6.30–60a. 275 pride … vnbuxom speche: Cf. C.6.14 (I, pruyde) and 16 (Haue be vnbuxum. 276: Cf. C.6.22, 25. 277–79: C.6.30–32. 280: C.6.34. 281: = C.6.35. 282–83: C.6.36–37.

B.13.284 Yhabited as an heremyte … 290 þer he haþ noʒt to doone: Replaced by C.6.38–40. Both passages expand on non so popholy C.6.37 (B.13.283). In the B lines, Will, interpreting the dirty coat, asserts that Actyf in his pope-holiness has dressed up as a religious hermit, attached to no order and so obeying no rule, pretending to the lele lif of a true hermit, but in fact spending his time scolding others (preaching at them as sinners, presumably), then getting a name for holiness and attracting contributions (best for his body), in short butting into matters that are the proper business of those in orders. (Schmidt takes line 289 to mean “How best to get a reputation for sexual prowess,” but you don’t need Inwit and outwit to do that. I see the entire passage as about pope-holiness. How a hermit uses his wits for the good of his body is made clear in C.9.188–251.) This account of the man Actyf as pope-holy is changed in C to a focus on pope-holiness itself, which crops up in one order (sekt) or another, and in many a convent. The change was probably prompted by the insertion in C of the passage just mentioned, 9.188–251.

B.13.291–94: C.6.41–44. 293 Or strengest on stede, or styuest vnder girdel: Parodies the diction of alliterative romances; see 15.155n above. 295: Not in C, perhaps because the point about pope-holiness has been made fully above. 296–97: = C.6.46. 298–99: = C.6.47–48. 300–1 Pouere … speche: Not in C. These two lines are probably explained by Boldest of beggeris 302: Actyf begs effectively by appearing poor and browbeating passersby into giving. The lines are therefore unnecessary (and a little cryptic), and so are dropped. See also C.6.60 thow y pore seme. 302–4: = C.6.49–51. 305: Put in new words in C.6.52. 306: = C.6.53–54. 307–10: C.6.55–58. 311–12: = C.6.59–60. 312a: C.6.60a.

B.13.313–19 “By crist!” quod Conscience þan it first semed: This transition to the next deadly sin gives Conscience a chance to introduce the idea of washing the coat, which he will return to at the end of this passus and the beginning of the next. On body half: on the front. Frounces: wrinkles. Ever proud, Actyf seems to boast even of his slovenliness.

B.13.320–41 It was bidropped wiþ wraþe … my chief heele: (Wrath and Envy) = C.6.324–41, under Envy only. For L’s habit of treating Wrath and Envy as the same sin, see Lawler 1996:178–79 and 6.6–59n above. B.13.320–23: Not in C. B.13.324–30a: C.6.69–75a. B.13.331–32: Not in C. B.13.333–41: C.6.77–85.

B.13.342–53 I waitede wisloker … tellen: (Lechery) = C.6.178–85, perhaps 186, 193–94. B.13.343 as by lokynge of his eiʒe: Cf. C.6.177 in waytynge of eyes. B.13.344–51: C.6.178–85. B.13.352–53: Not in C, but cf. C.6.186, 193–94.

B.13.354–398a Thanne Pacience parceyued … cor tuum: (Greed) = C.6.260–85a; also perhaps 243, 247. B.13.354–60: Not in C, but line 359 is partially used at C.6.243. Vnkynde desiryng: acquisitiveness beyond what is natural; good: things; met: quantity, what is measured out.; wed: the security for the loan. B.13.361–67: C.6.260–66. B.13.368–69: Not in C. B.13.370–74: C.6.267–71. B.13.375–82: Not in C, except that 375 is partially used at C.6.247. B.13.375–76 And what body … som certeyn: And anybody who borrowed from me paid for the time (I gave him to repay) with presents given in secret, or paid me a certain amount (extra); cheped: offered to buy, OED, s.v.cheap, v., 3a. B.13.383–88: C.6.272–77. B.13.389–90 So if I kidde … conscience gan hange: Not in C. This murky couplet is best explained by the sentences before and after it. Both of those say that at Mass he cannot pray because he is always mourning his losses or worrying about the money at risk in his current ventures. This sentence may be paraphrased, “Likewise (So) if I was kind to others, it did not give me a good conscience (cf. me conforte 394), because my conscience, instead of telling me ‘This is the right thing to do,’ was instead saying, ‘This is a good investment.’” He has a conscience that focuses not on good or God but on goods, vpon a cruwel coueitise: “Moore to good þan to god þe gome his loue caste” (356). It is where his heart is (398a). L plays on the two meanings of “conscience,” with and without a moral dimension (see the OED entry). He toys also with Latin dicta about what conscience depends on, such as Aquinas’s “Iudicium conscientiae maxime dependet ex divinis mandatis” (ST, 1a 2ae 96.4.2.1), the conscience’s judgment depends mostly on God’s commandments. See also B.5.594, in Piers’s allegory of heaven, “Of almesdedes are þe hokes þat þe gates hangen on.” The previous two lines have spoken of prayers and penance. Neither prayers, penance, nor almsdeeds have any spiritual value for Actyf: what hooks him, what he is hung up on, is profit.

B.13.391–98a: C.6.278–85a.

B.13.399–406 Yet glotoun … wende nauʒt to be saued: Glotoun: As in the seven-sins passage earlier, uniquely with gluttony L names the sinner rather than the sin. The phrase grete oþes alliterates with “gloton” or “glotonye” three other times: A.2.64 (B.2.93, C.2.100), A.5.157 (B.5.306, C.6.361), A.11.37 (B.10.51), and the adjective grete with some other noun five times: B.5.353 (C.6.411), B.5.379, B.13.78 (C.15.85), B.14.235, C.16.76. Cf. the similar linkage of gluttony and swearing at PardT C471–72. The only phrases in this short account of Actyf’s gluttony that appear in C.6 are 399 grete oþes (C.6.361), 401 þere no nede was (C.6.428), and 403 moore … þan kynde myʒte defie (C.6.430). Line 401 illustrates fals speche 400. 402 þerby: i.e., by God’s name. 406 wanhope: despair; this starts the transition to Sloth. Actyf disappears during the treatment of Sloth, to re-emerge suddenly at line 457; however, he will experience something close to despair at the end of passus B.14.

B.13.407–56 The whiche is sleuþe … luciferis fiþele: (Sloth) = C.7.69–116. B.13.407–8: Not in C. Sleiʒtes: arts; strategies, special knacks. B.13.409–13: C.6.69–73. B.13.414: Not in C. heiʒ ferye: A synonym for halyday: a church festival falling on a weekday (ferye), later just called a “high day.” Cf. C.4.113. B.13.415: Expanded to C.7.74–75. B.13.416–56: C.7.76–116.

An address to lords, ladies, and churchmen about dinner parties (B.13.421–56)

B.13.421–56 Ye lordes … luciferis fiþele: In the C version, this passage is moved to C.7.81–118, with very little change. See Ralph Hanna’s notes. In their original place, these lines bear an interesting relation to Conscience’s dinner; Conscience has invited the poor, Will and Patience, and not fool sages, liars, and flatterers (though the doctor of divinity may be all three), and consequently has heard some quite salutary after-dinner conversation, has in effect heard the minstrel Patience fiddle the story of Good Friday. See Simpson 2007:138; Walling 2007:73–74. Gruenler 2017:162–63 associates the passage with riddling, and considers Patience one of the good minstrels. Compare the story of St Francis going outside before Easter dinner and knocking to be invited to his own table, then criticizing the brothers for not inviting the poor (Golden Legend, trans. Ryan 2.222). It is hard not to sense a desire on L’s part to be invited somewhere to dinner, and to read from his poem after dinner. Lines B.13.436–53 appear only in mss. RF, and so may represent revision; see Hanna 1996:215–29, esp. 222; Donaldson 1949:142–43.

Original though the passage clearly is, it has biblical antecedents: particularly Luke 14.12–14 (when you have a dinner, don’t invite your rich friends; invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind; quoted loosely at 12.103a [B.11.191a] and probably alluded to at B.9.92–94a); also Deut 14:29, 26:12, Isa 58:7 (all say, “Invite poor strangers”; the Isaiah is quoted at 9.125 and 11.65 [B.10.85]), and the whole of Ps 100, whose third verse is quoted at 432a; behind the decretal maxim Consentientes quoted at 427a is Rom 1:32. And L’s favorite moralists are relevant as well. See Peter the Chanter, Verbum abbreviatum 1.47 (ed. Boutry 2004:313–20), urging prelates to get the entertainers out of their houses, and citing the Gloss on Tob 4:18: “Cum hystrionibus … noli communicare, sicut hii qui nutriunt hystriones et desides, cum esuriant Christi pauperes” (316) (Have nothing to do with actors, like those who feed actors and idlers while Christ’s poor go hungry), and again in 1.63 (textus prior, ed. Boutry 2012a:385–90), on shunning bad society. Peter quotes the same verse (7) of Psalm 100 (Boutry 2012a:386) as L does at B.13.432a; it is also quoted by Peter of Blois, Letter 18 (PL 207:65–69), in which he explains why he refuses to come to dinner in the house of a lax bishop. Finally, in its large outlines, which set lavish entertaining against “philosophical banquets,” John of Salisbury’s Policraticus 8.6–10 provides an analogue.

Back to Actyf’s coat (B.13.457–59, 14.1–28; not in C)

B.13.457–59 Thus haukyn … brusshe: Actyf abruptly returns after the discourse on dinner guests. His full title haukyn þe Actif man, not used since line 272, by its formality signals the close of the passus. Acouped hym þerof: accused him about it.

Passus B.14: As Alford 1977 argues, the parable of the great supper, Luke 14:15–24, from which Actyf’s Latin remark in line 3a, Vxorem duxi & ideo non possum venire, is taken, provides the theme of the passus: the rich will turn away the invitation to heaven; the invitation will then go to the poor, who will “eat bread in the kingdom of God” (Luke 14:15). The parable accounts for all the emphasis on rich and poor. The poor eat the bread “fiat voluntas tua” here and so will feast there: a new version of the pardon is implied, “Qui paupertatem passi sunt ibunt in vitam eternam.” The rich do their own will, rejecting God’s, and thus sinning and losing heaven: “Qui vero divites erant ibunt in ignem eternum.” Of course the poor often sin too; thus the emphasis on contrition and confession. Sin is overcome by redemption, but the rich are excluded from the parchment of acquittance because they won’t become poor of heart. The whole passus is a good example of semi-Pelagianism. The redemption is essential, but one must also be poor of heart, and treat others with ruth. The passus only makes full sense if Actyf is taken to be a rich man (even if he only owns one coat), as he is clearly a man driven by the profit motive; we have to take his question about wealth well earned and well spent (103; C.15.277–78) as implying his view of himself.

Alford argues further that the passus is structured by the Latin quotations, which fall into two groups, “according to the structure of the parable itself”: the first, based on Luke’s verses 18–20, treat the matter of “solicitude” (as displayed in the excuses the invitees offer for not coming to the supper), concording on the words “bread” and “will.” The second treats the consequences for the supper, concording on the words “rich” and “poor.” His argument has not won unqualified assent, but at the very least he has demonstrated clearly that the quotations fall into groups of biblical verses frequently “concorded” by commentators.

See also Staley 2002, whose focus on Matthew’s parable of the Wedding Feast (22:1–14), treating Haukyn with his coat as the man without a wedding garment, is to my mind not as apt as Alford’s sticking to Luke; Carruthers 1973:121–23 draws effectively on both parables.

B.14.1–35 Actif’s confession that his coat is dirty; the replies of Conscience and Patience: In lines 1–4, the coat is momentarily a literal coat or hater (1): Actyf says he cannot wash it because it is the only one he has, and so on him all the time, even at night (this may remind us of his earlier complaint that he has no robes from patrons—unless he sleeps naked, and his coat is here “literally his flesh,” as Alford 1974:133 takes it); and it is spattered and soiled by his family and servants in the close encounters that characterize the active life of the household. Those lines have their moral level, of course: as his body is his only body, his soul is his only soul, and wife, children, and servants soil it because they incite him to lust, anger, and unkindness, or more generally because they represent the dust and heat of everyday life in which sin is inevitable (and the call to the great supper of heaven refused, as the allusion in line 3a to Luke’s parable of the Great Supper emphasizes). Starting in line 5, however, the discourse presents the moral level directly: the coat is Actyf’s cristendom (11) (as it was originally called at B.13.273, He hadde a cote of cristendom), his baptized soul, washed by penitence, resoiled again and again by sin. What seems the trouble with this unhopeful process is that Actyf’s contrition is shallow, driven by bodily sickness, a soap that probably seeks less wonder depe (6) than he likes to think, or material setbacks (which, he has admitted at B.13.383–98, prompt him to very imperfect penitence) and his motivation inadequate, as his attempt to use the word coueitise neutrally in line 11 suggests: the desire merely to keep his coat clean is indeed a kind of coveitise in the bad sense, self-centered, hardly caritas. (For a better neutral use, see B.5.52, “lat truþe be youre coueitise.”) Furthermore, the admissions of insincerity at B.13.383–98 raise the question whether this apparent process of contrition, confession, and satisfaction has produced any cleansing at all. Nor does Actyf say that he did the penances, only that the priest gave them (9–10); see B.13.411. Conscience offers a far more searching contrition that will “claw” the coat clean, a better will to amend, and a new level of good works (Dobest) to maintain it. (Patience will celebrate the same process of contrition, confession, and satisfaction, but without the allegory of washing, in B.14.83–97.)

Nevertheless it is hard to see what Conscience offers that Actyf has not already tried; one is made to feel that the happy prospect Conscience holds out is a function of his characteristic optimism, and there seems little likelihood of a major transformation in Actyf. Patience then takes the optimism still further, offering him an endless supply of dough for his wafers without benefit of plowing or sowing; Actyf laughs at him. But Patience, who seems very close to being Christ here, is speaking of food for the soul. Actyf has seemed capable of understanding that his coat is his Christendom, but does not seem capable of thinking of food in any but material terms. Nevertheless, the laugh is brief, and starting at line 36 Patience seems finally to rouse Actyf from his self-absorbed despair by transforming the discourse from cleansing to nourishment. But the opening passage through line 35, for all its accurate sacramental theology, leaves one, not for the first time in the poem, more convinced of the intractability of ordinary human drives than of the possibility of transcending them.

The three parts of penance—contrition, confession, and satisfaction—are a commonplace of late medieval writing, and the comparison to washing is equally commonplace, inscribed in the very word “contrition,” rubbing away. A classic place is Psalm 50, one of the penitential psalms that L prayed daily, quoted six times in the B text, verses 3–4, “Dele iniquitatem meam. Amplius lava me ab iniquitate mea, et a peccato meo munda me” (Blot out my iniquity. Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin). Peter the Chanter in Verbum abbreviatum associates the psalm’s phrases with Conscience’s three steps: “‘Dele iniquitatem meam,’ per cordis contritionem; ‘Amplius lava me,’ per peccati confessionem …. ‘Munda me,’ per operis satisfactionem” (Ed. Boutry 2012a:648) (“Blot out my iniquity,” by contrition of heart; “Wash me yet more,” by confession of sin…. “Cleanse me,” by satisfaction of deed). Raymond of Pennaforte says that contrition “mundat animam a reatu,” washes the soul of guilt (1976:809). (Satisfaction, or performance of the penance imposed by the priest in confession, is understood to include absolution or “shriving,” which Actif mentions here in line 9, since the priest utters the words of absolution and gives the penance in the same breath, as it were; see OED, s.v. shrift, n. 2. Or perhaps it is understood rather to be included in confession: L in fact seems to treat “confess” and “be shriven,” and “confession” and “shrift,” as virtually synonymous. Compare, for example C.6.338, “Confessen hem and cryen hym mercy” to C.6.356, “sitte and be shryue and synege no more.” Theologians in fact disagreed over whether contrition or absolution was the essence of the sacrament; see the discussion in Tentler 1977:18–27.)

Psalm 14, “Domine, quis habitabit in tabernaculo tuo,” of immense importance to L’s whole conception of Dowel, is also relevant because of the phrase from verse 2, “Qui ingreditur sine macula” (He that walketh without blemish); see above, 190–16.157 (B.13.221–14.335)n.

As for the tradition of treating this washing via the further metaphor of washing clothing, see this typical remark by Peter of Celle (PL 202.1093), “Quis ascendet ad Deum, ut facies eius illuminetur? Nimirum qui non inquinavit vestimenta sua, vel qui saltem lavit ea in sanguine Agni, vera confessione et integra cordis contritione?” (Who will ascend to God, that his face may be made to shine? Surely he who has not stained his clothing, or at least he who has washed it in the blood of the Lamb by true confession and pure contrition of heart?), and see B.13.271–14.28n.

B.14.3a Vxorem duxi & ideo non possum venire: Luke 14:20, from the parable of the great supper. Quoted by Actyf again when he reappears in the C text to beg to be excused from Piers’s pilgrimage, C.7.299–304a. See 190–16.157 (B.13.221–14.335) note above.

B.14.5 in lente and out of lente boþe: Though repentance is the subject, lente here, in view of the reference to sickness in the next line, probably means not the Church season but late winter and spring, when the days are lengthening and colds and flu abound. Cf. the opening sentence of the Canterbury Tales.

B.14.7–8 forto me looþ were/To agulte: To the point that I was loath to offend.

B.14.11 Al for coueitise of my cristendom in clennesse to kepen it: All out of the desire to keep my (coat of) baptism clean. For the neutral sense “strong desire or craving” of coueitise, see MED, s.v. coveitise, n., 3. and cf. 4.114, 16.224 (B.15.62).

B.14.13 siʒte: either by lechery (see B.13.343 and Fasciculus morum, ed. Wenzel 1989:648–55) or by avarice (see Couetyse-of-yes, 12.3–12, B.11.46–60); see also the relation of sight to pride, B.13.278.

B.14.14 werk … word … wille: Cf. the Confiteor, said at Mass: “Quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opere” (because I have sinned exceedingly in thought, word, and deed). This is the form of the Roman rite; see PL 217.768; Sarum has locutione for verbo (ed. Dickinson, 1861–83:580). But the division is commonplace in discussions of both sin and virtue; see above, B.13.140n.

B.14.16–22 And I shal kenne þee … vnkynde werkes: See 16.25–35n below and B.14.1–35n above.

B.14.21a Satisfaccio: The usual phrase is operis satisfaccio (as at C.16.31), “satisfaction of deed,” i.e., the performance of good works (the opposite of vnkynde werkes B.14.22; Chaucer’s Parson says that satisfaction is penitence for angering Christ by “wikked synful werkynge” [I111]). Dobest has been defined similarly at B.9.205–6. The suppression of the word “operis” in this Three-Do’s passage is odd, since “do” is a kind of translation of it.

B.14.23–28 Shal neuere myx … Actiua vita: The KD-B emendations myx (filth) for “myst” 23 and Haukyn wil for “Haukyns wif” offer a deft solution to the main difficulties addressed in Alford 1974.

Patience offers Actyf the food Fiat voluntas tua, and explains its value (C.15.232–71, B.14.29–97)

232–71a “Pees!” quod pacience … peticionem tuam (B.14.29–72 “And I shal purueie þee paast,” quod Pacience … if cristes wordes ben trewe): In C Patience responds to Actyf’s somewhat confused and self-regarding monologue, in B he seconds Conscience’s promise of the reforms that the three Do’s will bring him, by offering him the food fiat voluntas tua. The scriptural basis of this passage is John 4:31–34, the exchange between Jesus and his disciples after the Samaritan woman he has spoken with at the well, promising “a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life” (4:14), has gone to summon her townsmen: “In the mean time the disciples prayed him, saying, ‘Rabbi, eat.’ But he said to them, ‘I have meat to eat which you know not of.’ The disciples therefore said one to another, ‘Hath any man brought him to eat?’ Jesus saith to them, ‘My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, that I may perfect his work.’” Patience plays the role of Jesus, Actyf the role of the baffled disciples. The only difference is that instead of saying, “My food is to do the will of God,” Patience says, “Your food is to do the will of God.” See further below, 247–49n.

235 Hit am y … fram hunger saue; B.14.29–30 And I shal purueie þee paast … best be for þe soule: In both versions, Patience speaks with pointed reference to Actyf’s function as a waferer, and appropriates his language (in B, “paast” 13.250, in C, “y fynde … y fynde,” 215–16), though the point is a little sharper in B. C: I am the one who gives everyone their food; B: And I shall give you dough and flour that does not need a plow. As Gillespie says (1994:107), Actyf and Patience “are mirror images of each other,” Actyf with his wafers and Patience with his bag of victuals. As patience is the obverse of action, I would add.

237–44a (B.14.38–46a) lo! here lyflode ynow … Non in solo pane viuit homo &c: A somewhat sloppy utterance by Patience. The general statement at the start, that all species have something to live on, is undermined immediately by the next line, since wherefore is not synonymous with the other two words in the line in either version. He then proceeds to examples, element by element, but the next line (the next two in B), tells us only where the creatures listed live, not what they live on. That is corrected in C for the cricket, and the last few creatures mentioned in both versions are at last given the proper preposition, just in time to get the point across, and surprise us with what men get to live on. But a witty aspect of the speech lies in the appearance of beléue (belief, OE geleafa) at the beginning and end of both versions, punning silently on “býleue” (sustenance, OE beleofa), the expected word that never comes.

237 (B.14.38) yf oure beleue be trewe: Explained by the Latin cited at the end of the sentence.

238–39 (B.14.39–40) lente neuere was lyf … wherwith to lyuene: Cf. Gen 1:29–30: “And God said, ‘Behold! I have given you every herb bearing seed upon the earth and all trees that have in themselves seed of their own kind to be your meat and to all beasts of the earth and to every fowl of the air and to all that move upon the earth and wherein there is life that they may have to feed upon.’” Patience keeps verse 30 but has a new food for Adam. Or see Ps 103:27, “Omnia a te expectant ut des illis escam in tempore” (All [creatures] expect of thee that thou give them food in season), and Ambrose’s comment, “Agnoscis quae sit esca quam Deus hominibus subministrat? Ipse est cibus quem secundum voluntatem Patris unigenitus Filius ejus Dominus noster epulatur, sicut ipse ait, ‘Meus cibus est, ut faciam voluntatem Patris mei qui in caelis est.’ Hic cibus nobis est salutaris” (Enarrationes in XII Psalmos, PL 14.1131) (Do you know what food God provides for men? The food that according to the will of the Father his only-begotten Son our Lord eats himself, as he says, “My meat is to do the will of my Father who is in heaven.” This food is salutary for us.) Ambrose quotes John 4:34 over and over, and once says, sounding like Patience, “Qui autem jucundior cibus quam facere voluntatem Dei?,” What more delightful food than to do the will of God? (De officiis ministrorum, PL 16.70).

240 wonte: mole. Hanna 2010a:6–7, n. 12, has suggested that B.14.41 worme should have been emended to this word.

241 The Cryket by kynde of þe fuyr (B.14.42 in þe fir þe Criket): Skeat says that “Usually this fabulous story is spoken of the salamander,” and gives evidence from the Promptorium parvulorum that salamanders were called crickets in English, but finally settles for the domestic cricket with its well-known fondness for warm places. But the cricket lives in the hearth, not the fire; the salamander’s ability to survive in fire is declared in full by Isidore (Etymologiae 12.4.36), copied by all who followed him (as searching salamandra in the PL online shows), and still enshrined in our culture (as the full entry in the OED shows—Rape of the Lock 1.59–60 is but one example of many); John Trevisa translated Bartholomaeus’s salamandra as “cryket” (1127/28). For all these reasons, it seems evident that L meant the salamander.

241 (B.14.43) corleu: According to Spearman 1993, probably not our curlew (numenius) but the quail (coturnix), regularly also called “curlew” in ME, and to be associated with the quails of Exodus 16.13 and Numbers 11.31–32. Spearman does not cite Peter Comestor, PL 198.1159–60 (on Exodus 16), “Est autem coturnix avis regia, quam … nos vulgo curlegium dicimus a currendo” (The coturnix is the royal bird that we call the curlew because it runs), and 1226 (on Numbers 11), “Fuerunt hae coturnices, ut tradunt, non modicae quae apud nos sunt; sed illae majores, quae regiae aves dicuntur, quas curleios, a currendo, vocamus” (These coturnices were, they say, not the little ones we have, but the bigger ones, called regal birds, that we call curlews because they run). These remarks suggest that Comestor thought that numenius and coturnix were related, and that the bigger one, the regal one, is indeed our curlew, a far more majestic bird than the quail—though quail run much more often than curlews. L probably never saw a curlew. In any case, Spearman is surely right in regarding the God-sent birds of Exodus and Numbers as what is meant here; it is not too much of a stretch, in fact, to take clennest flessh of briddes as deriving from Comestor’s regia; see OED, s.v. clean, adj., III.9 and its citations, and MED, s.v. clene, adj., 5, and its citations (some the same as in OED). Or it means ritually cleanest: would God have sent anything else? Neither bird is in the lists of birds to be avoided in Lev 11:13–19 and Deut 14:12–18.

As for living off the air: the chameleon (proverbially—see Whiting C135—and in at least some Latin sources, e.g., Bartholomaeus Anglicus, trans. Trevisa, 1161.2–8) and the spider (Etymologiae 12.5.2) do that, not the quail or the curlew. But the idea was common enough, especially as a way of praising God’s providence, as L does. Eustathius, misrepresenting or mistranslating St Basil, says that bees and wasps semper ex aere nutriuntur, are always nourished by the air (In Hexaemeron sancti Basilii, PL 53.954). Hildegard of Bingen says that “certain birds of great strength” are strengthened further by the air, “and the air itself sometimes descends into rivers and further strengthens large fish so that they can exist for some time without any food,” Liber divinorum operum 1.4.58 (PL 197.847). Aquinas in Catena aurea (ed. Guarienti, 1953: 2.182) on Luke 12:24 (“Consider the ravens … God feedeth them”) cites Theodoretus on Psalm 146.9 (“Who giveth to beasts their food, and to the young ravens that call upon him”): “He (the Psalmist) doesn’t mention any birds except ravens because God nourishes their young by a special providence, for ravens bear young but neglect them, don’t feed them; in a wonderful way food carried on the breeze reaches their mouths, which they open to take it, and that is how they are nourished.” The anonymous continuator of Aquinas’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorologies, however, says, “Licet autem aliqua animalia dicantur nutriri in alio elemento, ut aves in aere et salamandra in igne, tamen haec omnia nutriuntur ex terra et aqua, vel ex his quae nascuntur in eis, ut manifestum est in avibus” (Though some animals are reputed to be nourished in another element, as birds in air and the salamander in fire, in fact all are nourished by earth and water or by things that are produced in them, as is obvious for birds) (Editio Leonina, t. III (1886), p. CXXIV). He goes on to grant that the salamander does exist for a long time “in igne ex sicco terreo adusto et fumoso … non autem nutriretur in igne puro” (in fire from dry earthy matter burnt and smoky … it would not be nourished in pure fire).

244a (B.14.46a) Quodcumque pecieritis a patre in nomine meo dabitur enim vobis: Whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name shall be given you. (B ends in nomine meo &c.) The B line is verbatim (or nearly so; see Alford, Quot.) from John 14:13; C’s dabitur enim vobis replaces John’s hoc faciam (That will I do) with a phrase from Matt 7:7 (adding enim).

244a Et alibi: Non in solo pane viuit homo &c (B.14.46a Et alibi, Non in solo pane viuit homo set in omni verbo quod procedit de ore dei): Not by bread alone doth man live, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Matt 4:4, Jesus quoting Deut 8:3. In Deuteronomy, though, as Maillet 2014:78–79 insists, there is ambiguity: God sent both deprivation and manna to show the Israelites that man lives not on bread alone but on the word of God; she argues that the manna is a symbol of God’s word (Paul calls it spiritual food, 1 Cor 10:3, as she also points out, pp. 81–82): the passage in Deuteronomy must be one warrant to L for insisting that fiat voluntas tua is food. But see John 6:31ff, where Jesus contrasts the manna to himself, the true bread from heaven (Maillet 82).

Of the two quotations, this second is the more apt: see the next note.

247–49 (B.14.49–50) A pece of þe paternoster … fiat voluntas tua: For a list of the places where L mentions the Paternoster, see the entry in Alford, Quot. for B.10.468; for an illuminating discussion of the whole use of the Paternoster in the poem, and for the tradition of commentary on this petition, “thy will be done,” see Gillespie 1994. Note that Francis had the brothers who were lay, not clerics, say the Paternoster whereas the clerics said the divine office (which includes the Paternoster) (Testament, ed. Habig 1983:68). Alford 1977:93 argues that the three Latin quotations (in 244a and 249, B.13.46a and 50) go together in the commentary tradition, but he doesn’t say clearly what seems the essential thing: that, being a phrase of the Paternoster, the Lord’s prayer (Matt 6:9–13, Luke 11:2–4)—and also a phrase of Christ’s prayer to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane, Matt 26:42, as Kirk 1972:157, 1978:95 and Anna Baldwin 1990:82 point out—fiat voluntas tua is a verbum quod procedit de ore Dei; it’s also something asked a patre. Thus I think L is being very much himself here, not being conventional. He is also thinking of “give us this day our daily bread” (Actyf’s favorite phrase; see 208–13n above), and wittily implying both that to have just said fiat voluntas tua sincerely is to have had your daily bread and, since one of the things God wants is to feed us, fiat voluntas tua and panem nostrum cotidianum da nobis hodie are two ways of asking the same thing. And anyway, Inquirentes dominum non minuentur omni bono, as Wit said (10.202a, B.9.109a) and, in B, the narrator repeated (B.11.282a). It surely isn’t conventional to call the phrase a meal. However, see John 4:34, cited above, which has to be the scriptural basis of the idea that fiat voluntas tua is food; see Mann 1979:30–32, Barney 1988:121, and 5.86–88n above. So perhaps it is conventional, but Patience revitalizes it with his wit.

Actually, the idea is not original in the poem with Patience. Will himself has said at 5.87–88 that “the paternoster wittenesseth” that man lives “Nec in pane nec in pabulo,” and that “Fiat voluntas dei fynt vs alle thynges,” which is tantamount to saying that it is food. As Gillespie 1994:96 reminds us, Matthew has not “daily bread” but “supersubstantial bread.” (Both versions have the same word in Greek, the hapax legomenon “epiousios,” probably meaning “sufficient for the day,” but Jerome in his commentary on Matthew says it means “praecipuum” or “egregium,” that is, special or surpassing, and when we ask for it we are asking for him who said, “I am the bread of life” [PL 26.43].) That doesn’t really matter, though, since in the first place many, even most, patristic writers treat “quotidianum” as Matthew’s word as well as Luke’s, and virtually all say anyhow that “panem quotidianum” has to be taken spiritually, as Christ, who said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) and “I am the living bread which came down from heaven” (John 6:51). (Thus there are Eucharistic overtones, particularly since the Eucharist has the nickname viaticum, “food for the road”: Actyf is on the road.) Clearly L regarded the Paternoster as bread for the soul. (Stock 1988 argues that “Langland deliberately inserted the pair of quotations ‘Fiat voluntas tua’ and ‘Non de solo pane vivit homo’ at three critical junctures in his revision of PP “[474], namely in C passus 5 [“non de solo vivit homo,” man does not live from the soil], 15, and 16, to create a deep thematic interplay—but not convincingly at all, especially since “non de solo [pane] vivit homo” does not in fact occur in passus 16.)

We have, of course, as Mann insists (1979:38), seen a similar replacement of real food with spiritual food in the AB Visio, where Piers starts out getting people to work cultivating real food but ends up renouncing “bely-ioye” (B.7.130, A.8.112), claiming with the Psalmist that tears have been his bread day and night (B.7.128, A.8.110a), and quoting, as Patience does here in B.14.33, both Ne soliciti sitis (B.7.131, A.8.113) and Volucres celi deus pascit (in English, B.7.129–30, A.8.111–12).

Gillespie, who treats B almost exclusively, shows that in the commentary tradition praying “thy will be done” is an antidote to wrath and envy, which he argues are “Haukyn’s ‘head sins,’” and since “Commentaries on fiat voluntas tua consistently see Patience as the virtue which counteracts the wrathfulness addressed by the petition,” Patience “in offering it … is effectively offering himself” (1994:111). His argument has less force in C, and in both versions it seems to me that choosing God’s will over one’s own has a far broader application than just to wrath and envy. In fact Gillespie goes on to argue (113–14) that larger case, concluding that what Patience offers Haukyn is the chance to wed himself to patient poverty and achieve the joye and pure spiritual helþe (B.14.285) it promises.

It is possible to translate the phrase as “Let Will be yours,” a further piece of wit. Note that it emphatically does not mean what Recklessness said at 11:304 (B.11:38), “lat god do his wille.”

250 (B.14.51) Haue … and eet: Cf. Matt 26:26, “Accipite et comedite, hoc est corpus meum” (Take ye and eat, this is my body), repeated daily in the words of consecration at Mass.

251 (B.14.52) when thow clomsest for colde: Fiat voluntas tua is spiritual clothing as well as food, a real “coat of Cristendom” and much better than the robes Actyf craves from his patrons. The idea of spiritual clothing is Pauline, as Maillet shows, 2014:84–85. But Patience basically means real clothing, his warrant being Matthew’s and Luke’s Ne solliciti sitis passages, which are as much about clothing as about food (Matt 6:25–34, Luke 12:22–31).

252–59a (B.14.53–60a) Shal neuere gyues … istum: as an effacer of fear, fiat voluntas tua is the equivalent of patientes vincunt or caritas nichil timet; what Patience says here essentially repeats the kinds of things he and Piers said in the banquet scene: see above, ll. 152–69 (B.13.136–71a)n and B.13.151–71n. 254 (B.14.55) Be so þat þou be sobre: Esto sobrius (Be sober) 2 Tim 4:5; see also Tit 2:12 and Maillet 2014:74–77. She argues convincingly that Paul’s sobrietas is the basis of the insistence throughout the poem on “mesure.” 256 Dar þe nat care (B.14.57 Darstow neuere care): you need not care; dar is a form of thar, need, from OE þurfan; see OED, s.v. tharf/thar v. The statement is in effect a translation of Ne sollicitus sis (Be not solicitous; cf. Matt 6:25, Luke 12:22, Phil 4:6; Maillet 2014:68–69). The thought here, extreme though it seems, is very close to Seneca’s at the end of his Letter 110, as quoted by Peter the Chanter in his chapter on poverty, ed. Boutry 2004:120: “Quid sit remedium inopie? Famem fames finit…. Liber est autem non in quem parum licet fortune, sed in quem nichil. Ita est si nil horum desideres” (What is the remedy for want? Hunger stops hunger…. The free man is not the one over whom fortune has little power, but the one over whom she has no power at all. That is how it is if you crave nothing).

258 (B.14.59) hete: drought: cf. ME, s.v. hete n. 1, 1 (d). Later in the line, note that his is stressed.

259 (B.14.60) If thow lyue aftur his lore the shortere lyf þe betere: On the surface, the least humane line L ever wrote (and anything but patient). But Patience lives on the edge, and there is indeed some of his lore, i.e., the teachings of Jesus, that is relevant: “He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal” (John 12:25; see also Matt 10:39, 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24, 17:33); and St Paul, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21–24). See also Origen’s Homily 14 (17) on Jeremiah in Jerome’s Latin translation: “Quapropter, longae vitae amore deposito, et desiderio humanae diei, quaeramus illam diem videre, in qua participes ejus beatitudinis, quae in Christo est, efficiamur” (PL 25.625) (And so, let us put aside our love of a long life, and our desire for a “day of man” [Amos 5.18], and seek to see the day in which we will be made partakers of the blessedness that is in Christ.) For relevant material from the Old Testament, and some literary parallels, see B.14.323–25n.

However, Contemptus mundi is one thing; to turn that into a desire to die young is a perversion of Christian thought, and not what Patience stands for. The classic, sensible view is embodied in Augustine’s regular praise of perseverance, e.g., De dono perseverantiae liber, 1: “Asserimus ergo donum Dei esse perseverantiam qua usque in finem perseveratur in Christo” (We hold that perseverance is a gift of God whereby we persevere to the end in Christ,” PL 45.994; see Matt 10:22). The heart of the matter appears in Albert King’s great blues line, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” Still, Patience apparently gets to Actyf: see B.14.323–25 and n. Actually, of course, Patience has just been advocating submission to God’s will in this matter: deye as god liketh … at his wille be hit. Thus the full thought here is, “Don’t fear death, but leave the time and the means up to God’s will, (and if your life ends up being short) you’re better off, since you love God better than the world.” He is not encouraging Actyf to shorten his life, or even hope for a short life, only pointing out that a short life has its advantages. See Clopper 1997:232–33.

259a (B.14.60a) Si quis Amat christum mundum non diligit istum: Anyone who loves Christ does not love the world. Identified by Alford as from the anonymous poem Carmen paraeneticum ad Rainaldum, A Poem of Advice to Rainald, PL 184.1307 (which has Quisquis instead of Si quis). Rainald is a boy; see Lawler 2011:68. As Schmidt, and Pepin 1999:57, point out, though, that poem is actually the Cartula, a twelfth-century poem on contempt of the world that is one of the works in the school-text Auctores octo, where L undoubtedly read it as a boy. The line occurs near the beginning of the poem; see Pepin’s translation, 1999:58. Alford points out that the basis of the line is 1 John 2:15, Si quis diligit mundum, non est caritas Patris in eo. The poet, being a poet, realized that there was a Leonine hexameter lurking in John’s sentence.

The line also occurs in Jean-Baptiste-François Pitra’s collection Spicilegium Solesmense (1854), in connection with his edition of the Clavis of Pseudo-Melito, the eighth-century key to allegorical meanings of terms from the bible once attributed to Melito of Sardis. Pitra follows each entry from the Clavis with illustrative citations from other works, of which one of his favorites is an alphabetical book of Distinctiones, probably c. 1225, by an anonymous English Cistercian, Distinctionum monasticarum et moralium libri V. Speaking of silver, the author says it can stand for the glory of this world, lovely to see but sordid to the touch, and then cites: “Si quis amat Christum, mundum non diligit istum;/Hujus amor mundi putei parat ima profundi” (Love of this world paves the way to the depths of the bottomless pit) (1.27; Pitra 1854:2.285; for Pitra’s discussion of the book, see 2.xxv–xxviii; he edits selections from it from Ms. Mazarine 3475 at 4.452–87). A smaller number of selections appears in Wilmart 1940, also from Mazarine 3475. There are appreciative accounts of this interesting book, with its many quotations of twelfth-century poetry, in Hunt 1950, Lehmann 1962, and Rigg 1992.

Walther, Proverbia 28959 treats the line as a proverb, citing a number of Renaissance proverb collections in which it appears. It is occasionally followed by one or two more lines, which vary; Ms E of the C version of PP has the next line in Cartula, Sed quasi fetorem sperne[n]s illius amorem (But spurning the love of it like a stench); see RK-C p. 183. See also Walther, Proverbia 25525, which has the Quisquis beginning. Walther indicates that mundum often appears as mundus, which makes the line mean “If anyone loves Christ, the world does not love him.”

260a (B.14.61a) Dixit & facta sunt: He spoke and they were made, Ps 32:9, Ps 148:5; cf. Gen 1:24.

262a Aperis tu manum tuam &c (B.14.63a Aperis tu manum tuam & imples omne animal benediccione): Thou openest thy hand and fillest with blessing every living creature, Ps 144:16; the first three words appear as a personification, in another passage on spiritual sustenance, at 16.320. Graces: thanks, Latin gratias, and so a prayer offering thanks before or after meals. OED s.v. grace, n. II.11. Alford, Quot. has found the grace that uses Ps 144:16 in Furnivall 1868:382. He lists all the graces quoted in the poem in his entry for C.3.340a, Quot. 39.

263–69 (B.14.64–70) Hit is founde … awakede: Three examples to illustrate 256 (B.14.57) dar þe nat care for no corn and 260–61 (cf. B.14.61–62) thorw his breth bestes wexe … thorw his breth bestes lyueth. The first is the forty-year sojourn of the Israelites in the desert: they “ate manna forty years,” Ex 16:35, and “When Moses had lifted up his hand, and struck the rock twice with the rod, there came forth water in great abundance, so that the people and their cattle drank,” Num 20:11. The second is the three-year (three-and-a-half-year James 5:17, still not quite manye wynter) drought brought on by Elijah to punish Ahab, 3 Kings 17–18, during which Elijah was fed first by ravens, then by the widow whose “pot of meal wasted not” and whose “cruse of oil was not diminished” 17:16. The last is the famous legend of the Seven Sleepers, Legenda aurea, 101 (trans. Ryan, 1993:2.15–18); the legend says they slept 372 years, which Jacobus reduces to 195; both are more then syxty wynter (268).

270 (B.14.71) mesure: “A reminiscence and an expansion of the words spoken by Holy Church to the Dreamer in the Visio, ‘Mesure is medicine bouʒ bow muchel ʒerne’ (B.1.35) [C.1.33],” Maguire 1949:107. Watson 2007:103 says that Patience “divagates extravagantly on the advantages of starvation and an early death,” but he forgets that St Francis put Patience’s ideas into actual practice, and also that this line tempers the extravagant idealism significantly. Like Holy Church, Patience insists that God provides us what we need, and endows us with natural kindness. It is when we replace kindness with greed that defaute arises. See Peter the Chanter’s chapter De mediocritate (ed. Boutry 2004:113–15).

271–71a cristes wordes … Dabo tibi secundum peticionem tuam: Cf Matt 7:7, Luke 11:9: “Petite, et dabitur vobis,” Ask, and it shall be given you; also John 14:14 with somewhat different wording. Alford, Quot. cites Ps 36:4, “Delectare in Domino, et dabit tibi petitiones cordis tui” (Delight in the Lord, and he will give thee the requests of thy heart). But cristes wordes suggests that one of the Gospel verses is what is meant. Some psalms are treated as spoken by Jesus (Lawler 2017:184), but not Psalm 36.

B.14.73 caristiam: “Dearth.” See DML, s.v. caristia, 2.

B.14.77a Ociositas & habundancia panis peccatum turpissimum nutriuit: Idleness and too much bread fed the vilest sin. See the slightly different version at C.15.229a, and the note to 229a–32, where the ultimate source, Ezech 16:49, is quoted. L is apparently translating the two previous lines into Latin, though þe meschief and þe meschaunce is a lot milder than peccatum turpissimum—which is probably precisely the point: that L regarded Latin as a safer vehicle for sharp statement is clear in B.13.70–75. But then the Latin in turn seems to encourage him, and he translates it back into English in lines 78–81, this time translating peccatum turpissimum, first as synne þat þe deuel liked (the same phrase is used of Lot’s incest with his daughters, B.1.28, A.1.28), and then as vile synnes. (On B.13.70–75, see Lawler 2008:53, and in general on L translating into Latin, p. 52 of the same essay; also Cannon 2008:24.) The phrase turpissimum peccatum (or peccatum turpissimum) does not turn up in the standard databases. It means homosexual acts. Of the many writers who quote Ezechiel on Sodom, only Rupert of Deutz speaks openly: “Notatum et infame est toti mundo peccatum eorum scilicet saturitas panis et otium in quo male nimis semetipsis abusi sunt … masculi in masculos turpitudinem operantes” (Their sin [i.e., the men of Sodom] is known to the whole world, and known as infamy: namely, too much bread and leisure in which they abused each other very wickedly … men performing vileness on men).

B.14.83–97 And þoruʒ feiþ comeþ … yheeled: Patience repeats the process described already by Conscience in B.14.16–28 above, replacing Conscience’s allegory of cleaning with imagery of healing a diseased growth in the body by carving it out at the root. He mentions conscience in line 83 (the editors might have capitalized the word), and in the metaphor of surgery in line 89 perhaps echoes the scraping image in line 16. Shrift of mouþ 90, 91 then translates 18a Oris confessio, and satisfaccion 95 Satisfaccio 21a. Nevertheless one is not quite convinced that Patience is to be thought of as consciously alluding to what Conscience said; the feeling rather is of a wholly new treatment of the same issue. Cf. C.16.25–34, where Patience skims briefly over the same material.

B.14.82 mesure we vs wel: Recalling the advice of Holy Church, 1.24 (B.1.25, A.1.25), though Patience is surely thinking of a broader mesure than just of food and drink, as the rest of the line suggests. Sheltrom: A phalanx or shieldwall (OE scildtruma), i.e., our defense. The source is an array of more or less military Pauline metaphors: of standing in faith (1 Cor 16:13, 2 Cor 1:24), holding to faith (2 Cor 13:5, 1 Tim 1:19), the breastplate of justice, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:14–17), the firmness of faith (Col 2:5), the breastplate of faith (1 Thess 5:8), fighting the good fight of the faith (1 Tim 6:12).

B.14.83–94 And þoruʒ … peccata: Patience waffles between the traditional idea that contrition sufficed (Sola contricio delet peccatum, B.11.81a) and the obligation of oral confession imposed by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (which Wyclif opposed). See the clear discussion by Frank, 1957:98–99: he concludes, “The poet believed in all three stages of penance, but he was especially interested in contrition, as Dobest shows.” See also Hort 1938:130–55 and Watkins 1961:2.744–49. The position of B.11.81–81a was absolute, but here Patience adopts the deft, somewhat legalistic compromise that sola contritio only downgrades the sin from mortal to venial. That asserts the value of contrition without dismissing the importance of confession. Putting it in these terms, mortal sin becoming venial sin, seems to be L’s own idea, though he could have found ample support for it in Peter Lombard’s well-known discussion of the issue in the Sentences; for example, in this quotation he ascribes to St Ambrose, “Venialis est culpa quam sequitur confessio delictorum” (The fault is venial when confession of sins follows), PL 192.880. For the Ambrose, see De paradiso, PL 14.310, “Veniabilis culpa quam sequitur professio delictorum.” Lombard himself says that if sinners who cannot confess to a priest are contrite, confess to God, and do penance, “temporalibus poenis mutabunt aeterna supplicia, et lacrymis ex vera cordis contritione fluentibus extinguent aeterni ignis incendia” (they will change eternal punishment into temporal punishment, and if their tears flow from true contrition of heart they will extinguish the flames of eternal fire) PL 192.882. And in Aquinas’s commentary on the Sentences, “Post contritionem de mortali potest remanere veniale” (After contrition for a mortal sin it can remain as a venial sin), In IV Sententiarum, 17.2.2.3, resp. ad argum. 4.1. Lombard himself, though, ascribes such downgrading not to contrition but to confession: “Fit enim veniale per confessionem quod criminale erat in operatione” (What was a mortal sin when it was committed becomes venial through confession), PL 192.883, quoted by Hort, 1938:143.

B.14.92 Per confessionem to a preest peccata occiduntur: Sins are killed by confession to a priest. A somewhat common metaphor, as a proximity search of the three terms makes clear. Cf. especially Peter of Cava (twelfth century), whose moralizing Commentary on 1 Kings was formerly ascribed to Gregory the Great. He is commenting on 1 Kings 15.15, where Saul admits to Samuel that he has not slain all the beasts of Amalech, as he was told to; he has kept the best alive for sacrifices, “reliqua vero occidimus” (but the rest we have slain). Peter comments, “Quid est ergo, quod dicit, reliqua occidimus, nisi quia sunt parvissima peccata maioribus, quae sola confessione lavantur?” (What does ‘The rest we have slain” mean except that they are the smallest sins, (much smaller than) the greater, which are only washed in confession?) (Ed. Verbraken 1963:561). The sentence manages to mix together L’s two metaphors, washing sin and killing sin.

B.14.94 et quorum tecta sunt peccata: Psalm 31:1, “Beati quorum remissae sunt iniquitates et quorum tecta sunt peccata,” Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. The second penitential psalm, quoted at 7.152, B.12.177 (also to support “how contricion wiþoute confession conforteþ þe soule” B.12.175), B.13.54. L is taking tecta, covered, very literally as “not confessed openly but covered, blotted out, by contrition.” The anonymous Breviarium in Psalmos, once attributed to Jerome, says (in a statement copied by various others, including Alcuin and Peter Lombard) that the sins are covered “ut hic velentur per poenitentiam, ne in judicio revelentur,” so that they may be veiled by penitence, lest they be revealed in judgment (PL 26.912).

B.14.95 satisfaccion sekeþ out þe roote: Possibly the reference is to pride, the root of the tree of sin in the Parson’s Tale (“the general roote of alle harmes” I388). But that would be to take “root” in the sense of “origin”; surely rather it is used here in the sense of something deep and involved and hard to take out—whether the root of an infection (an abcessed tooth, especially) or the root of a tree. Cf., e.g., John Cassian on wrath: “Non solum e nostris actibus haec amputanda est, sed etiam de internis animae radicitus exstirpanda,” It has to be not just cut off from our actions but ripped out by the roots from inside our souls (Institutes 8.19, PL 49.348). A proximity search of radicitus and exstirp* reveals how popular this metaphor was (as it still is). But I find no tradition of associating such uprooting of sin with satisfaction in particular.

Patience replies to questions from Actyf about patient poverty (and in B about charity) (272–306, B.14.98–132)

272 What is properly parfit pacience? (B.14.98 Where wonyeþ Charite?): I will treat B first, where we have a moment of humor. Critics have striven to understand what motivates this question of Actyf’s—Maguire (1969:206) finds analogies to moments in passūs 1 and 5; Alford (1977:98) sees L laboring to make the transition from the first group of quotations that “structure” the passus to the second; Gillespie 1994:115 asserts that “Fiat voluntas tua is often linked to charity.” Basically, it’s just funny: Patience has been getting preachy, and Actyf stops him with a question seemingly out of the blue. It isn’t really out of the blue, though, as these several critics have shown, each in their way. My own understanding is that it arises straight from the line before it, because satisfaction is Operis satisfaccio (C.16.31), doing good works; see B.14.21a note above. Chaucer’s Parson says that satisfaction “stant moost generally in almesse” (I1029), which is “werkes of charitee” (I1033). Furthermore, a soul freed of sin, as described in lines 94–96, is now “in charity.” Sin being uprooted, the soul is now “rooted and founded in charity” (Eph 3:17). All the same, Actyf can hardly be expected to know these correspondences, and L has bought his humor at the expense of verisimilitude.

Another way to look at it is in reference to Sodom, home of vnkyndenesse (B.14.73), where, as Ezechiel says, “they did not put forth their hand to the needy and the poor.” Actyf says in effect, “All right, I know where unkindness lives; now show me where charity lives.” Or Actyf’s own country may be coueytise or vnkyndenesse; see 188–90 (B.13.219–21) above and the note to 188 (B.13.219). A third possibility, very unlikely, is that L forgets that Actyf was not at the banquet, and did not hear Patience’s praise of Charity at 13.163a.

The question “Where does Charity live?” of course reminds us of Will’s earlier question, “Where does Dowel dwell?” (10.4 [B.8.4, A.9.4], etc.). It seems a little mannered, since we would ask rather, “Where can Charity be found?,” as Will does at 16.287 (and at B.15.151, “Where sholde men fynde swich a frend?”). But the phrasing reminds us that the idea of home is central to this poem of pilgrimage. Though every pilgrim has left home with a purpose, they all must want to return, and this implicit ache can account for Will’s preference for speaking in terms of home—and Actyf’s too. And in passus 18 Will learns that Charity is at home in him, in cor hominis—as he should have learned from Piers at 7.255–60 (B.5.606–7, A.6.93–94).

In C the question is moved to the later scene with Liberum arbitrium: “Charite … Where may hit be yfounde?” C.16.286–87, where it comes up naturally. What is said here in lines 273–76, and in B.14.100–1, about charity in answer to Actyf is not inconsistent with the major later material on charity at 15.298–374a (B.15.149–268), but L was wise in both versions to hold back any discussion of charity until Anima/Liberum arbitrium brings it to the fore in instructing Will, a better pupil for it than Actyf.

Here in C the question is replaced by another that is still a bit offbeat, but follows well enough, though no form of the word “patience” has occurred since pacientes vincunt 253. Patience has ranged among various modes of patience—accepting God’s will, suffering hardships such as bad weather and imprisonment, penance, sobriety, dying as God wills, not being solicitous about liflode, living moderately—and it is reasonable then to ask what is perfect patience.

Donaldson 1949:180–81 argues that the question is changed because whereas in B L treated charity and patience together, he separated them in C. That is generally true, but here Donaldson ignores 273–76; see the next note.

273–76 Meeknesse … alle perelles to soffre (B.14.100–1 Ther parfit truþe … god hymselue): These answers are different but have to be treated together, since they share the idea that charity is chief, and they both mingle patience and charity. The implication is perhaps that the two questions—What is perfect patience? (C), Where does charity live? (B)—are not as different as they seem. The key to both is the Sermon on the Mount, Matt 5–7, with some assist from 1 Cor 13 and Rom 12:9–21.

C first: meeknesse: “Blessed are the meek” 5:4. mylde speche: “But I say to you not to swear at all …. let your speech be ‘Yea, yea,’ ‘No, no,’” 5:34–37, see also 5:22–25, 47; 6:3–7; 7:1, and Rom 12:14. And see 18.11 “benigne speche” and the note there. men of o will: “Thy will be done,” 6:10, and “of one mind one towards another” Rom 12:16; cf. 17.128, “Alle kyne cristene cleuynge on o will.” The whiche wil loue lat [And love leads that will] to oure lordes place: “Love your enemies … that you may be the children of your Father, who is in heaven” (5:44–45). In B: parfit truþe: “Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect” (5:48); see also “charity … rejoices with the truth,” 1 Cor 13:6. poore herte: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” 5:3, “Blessed are the clean of heart,” 5:7; pacience of tonge: see mylde speche above, and “Charity is patient,” 1 Cor 13:4. Not that L had his bible open; rather the Sermon on the Mount distills the essence of Christ’s message of patience and love, as Patience here is trying to do also.

Of course all the phrases, especially parfit truþe, can describe Christ himself (“Est Christus perfecta veritas,” Hildegard, Scivias, Ed. Führkötter and Carlevaris 1978:470), as, in B’s next line, can Charite þe chief, (“caput Christus” Eph 4:15), and chaumbrere for god hymselue, a good metaphor for the Son. In short, the answer to Actyf’s question in B, “Where does Charity live?,” is Christ. As with Charity in passus 16, and as also with the Samaritan in passus 17, and since God is love (“Deus caritas est,” 1 John 4:8, 16), L’s representations of Charity always end up as virtual representations of Christ. See the notes to 16.285–374a (B.15.149–268), 16.286–87 (B.15.148–51), 16.286–97 (B.15.149–64). Even C’s new version of B.14.101, charite, chaumpion chief of all vertues, though it seems not to refer to Christ since he is not a virtue, may summon up in our minds Conscience’s phrase to Will when the crucifixion is over, “Crist with his croes, conquerour of Cristene” (21.14, B 19.14). And cf. Prudentius, Hamartigenia 31, where God is called “virtutum sublime caput” the sublime chief of the virtues (PL 59.1014).

Clopper 1997:243 sees a progression in 15.273: “meekness (Dowel), mildness of speech (Dobet), and men of one will (Dobest), and it is this latter status that constitutes the highest form of Charity, that is, ‘perfect patience’ that is patience in poverty.” I don’t see it.

276 pore pacient, 277 pouerte and pacience (B.14.102 paciente pouerte): Patience makes explicit here what he has been implying, e.g., at 256 (“care for no corn ne for cloth ne for drynke”), that the full meaning of patience is patience in the face of poverty. See Cato’s dictum, Paupertatis onus pacienter ferre memento, cited at C.8.336a (B.6.315), in C not long after the moving account of “oure neyhebores … pore folk in cotes,” whose patience is evident though the word is not used. The two terms are then first joined in English by Scripture at B.10.346, and appear together repeatedly in B.11–14 and C.12–16, very often, as in the long encomium of patient poverty in passus 12 (B.11), offering Christ as the model. Though there is some fluctuation, some willingness to regard poverty as itself enough for salvation (see Lawler 2000: 144), the deep subject is not poverty alone or patience alone, but patient poverty.

277–78 (B.14.102–3) Where … resonablelyche to spene: Though B.14.102 quod Haukyn disappears in C, the speaker of this question is still clearly Actyf. Presumably he asks it not out of neutral curiosity but out of self-interest: he regards himself as having earned his wealth rightfully and as spending it reasonably, and so thinks he can be saved without becoming poor and patient. That would at least partly explain his tears at the end of the B passus—he is like the rich young man in Matt 19:22 who “went away sad” after Jesus told him to sell all and give it to the poor. He has moved by the end from the complacency, or at least hopefulness, implicit in this question to a conviction of guilt. Line 278 (B.14.103) seems to translate Ecclus 31.8, “Beatus dives qui inventus est sine macula”: see 16.358–59a (B.15.233–34a)n below.

279–16.157 (B.14.104–322) ʒe? quis est ille? … what pouerte was to mene: Patience preaches to Actyf and Will on patient poverty, in answer to Actyf’s question whether patient poverty pleases God more than wealth justly and reasonably spent. In general the ideas on poverty are similar to those expressed in passūs 12 and 13 (B.11). His sermon has three large parts. The first (279–16.42, B.14.104–201), the most direct answer to Actyf’s question, argues, roughly along the lines of Luke’s version of the Sermon on the Mount, that the rich are likely to go to hell when they die because they have had their heaven here, the poor to heaven because their life has been hell—though near the end of the part it becomes a prayer to God to save the poor rather than an assertion that he will, and a prayer as well that God will haue ruþe on þise riche men (B.14.168), or that he will make vs alle meke (C.16.23). In the second part (16.43–113, B.14.202–273) Patience extends this point by arguing that the poor do not commit the deadly sins, moving toward the end to a reassertion of their claim to heaven, and then to special praise for voluntary poverty; in the third (114–57, B.14.274–322) he replies to Actyf’s request for a definition of poverty with a series of oxymoronic Latin phrases. Aers 2004 and Clopper 1990 have called Patience’s ideas Franciscan, but it seems to me that in expression and detail the sermon is sui generis, in its sympathy for the poor it is in tune with the psalms and the Gospels, and in its preference for poverty over wealth it is aligned very well with Seneca and Jerome as cited by Peter the Chanter in his chapter on poverty—except that it reports achingly on how painful it is to be poor in a way that Seneca never gets down to.

279–16.21 ʒe? quis est ille? … some pore and ryche (B 14.104–65 Ye? quis est ille? … defaute): At the base of the passage, beside the Beatitudes and Matthew’s story of the rich young man, is Matthew’s parable of the talents (25:14–30; cf. B.6.238–46, A.7.222–30), with its reckoning; see Maillet’s deep discussion of all the threads in the poem and in the bible that relate to what she calls “gestion des biens confiées,” management of the goods we are trusted with, 2014:117–30.

The first place in the poem where the idea comes up that the poor deserve heaven because they are so miserable here, though not with the financial term “allowance,” is in the C version of the pardon scene, in the long sentence C.9.176–87: as for the poor who take their mischiefs meekly, “For loue of here lowe hertes oure lord hath hem ygraunted/Here penaunce and here purgatorie vppon this puyre erthe/And pardon with the plouhman A pena & a culpa.” The basis is Luke 6:20–21, “Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for you shall laugh,” along with verse 24, “But woe to you that are rich, for you have your consolation.” This saying is not in any other Gospel. Dives and Lazarus, Luke 16:19–31, that favorite story of L’s, alluded to here at 299 (B.14.123), is another major source, and especially verse 25, “And Abraham said to him, ‘Son, remember that thou didst receive good things in thy lifetime, and likewise Lazarus evil things; but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented.’” See too the long sermon against riches in Luke 12:13–34, and Ps 71:13, “He shall save the souls of the poor.”

The financial contrast here between the arrerage of the rich and the allouaunce that the poor can expect recalls Recklessness’s similar contrast of reeves and controllers to servants at 11.296–98 (reeves and clerks B 10.476–77). Cf. also Scripture at B.10.344–48 (A.11.229–31; not in C), 12.62–71 (on a churl who makes a charter), 12.194–209 (mourning into mirth, sorrow into solace), 9.270–77 (on shepherds/pastors), and 16.3–21 (B.14.134–67) and n. Cf. Alford, Gloss., s.v. allowaunce, allowen, arrerage, disallowen. The issue in all these places is also entrance into heaven, the financial terms being clearly figurative. In the present passage, their figurative nature is clear in the B version but initially obscured in C because line 284 seems literal on first reading; but the lines that follow show that in fact it is figurative.

In all the earlier places L assumes that responsible underlings will cheat their masters and so come up short when rendering accounts; here he seems to assume similarly that the rich will inevitably incur debts. But since the “allowance” or credit toward eternal joy that the poor claim (286) is based simply on their lack of joy here, clearly the arrears the rich will find themselves in as they reckon their accounts before death is also an arrears of joy, not of money: they will owe God joy since they had so much here, and will have to pay it back either in purgatory (if they’re lucky) or hell (where they will keep on paying forever) (305). However, Patience is not quite saying that the rich will not go to heaven merely because they have it so good here (though he comes close at B.14.122–31), but rather that they will inevitably sin and not repent—and so lose heaven—because all wealth exploits the poor. Patience’s ironic opening query implies that all wealth is both ill-gotten and ill-spent, and 16.15–16 finally makes explicit that the douce vie (299; B.14.123) is utterly insensitive to the needs of others. 16.1–2 (B.14.132–33) assert that riches also rob the soul of the love of God—and the soul that turns away from loving God deserves its disallowance. And Patience waffles in both versions: egregiously in B, where the generous picture of double richesse for the dutiful rich, B.14.145–54, is retracted almost completely in 155–63—and then they get a prayer at 170–73, though a much less heartfelt one than the prayer the poor get right afterwards. The C version drops all of this bobbing and weaving and ends simply, first with the pious hope that it is for the best that some are rich and some poor, and then the gracious single prayer, haue reuthe on thy renkes alle/And amende vs of thy mercy and make vs alle meke (16.22–23).

Pearsall 1988 makes it very clear that by this point in the poem—starting, really, with Recklessness—L is no longer thinking of actual poor people the way he was in C.9: “it is now always patient poverty that he writes about—not poverty as a social evil and human indignity, but poverty as a means to the strengthening and purifying of the moral and spiritual life…. The pattern of spiritualised interpretation is now set, and it is recurrently exemplified…. There is no loss of honesty and integrity in the vision, but it is clear that there has been a shift of focus: poverty, from being a great evil, has become a great good; from being a problem to be solved, it has become the solution to the problem.” In Patience’s “great discourse on patient poverty,” “the demonstration is dry, witty, comic, and full of that vitality and specificity that was equally the mark of Langland’s deeply compassionate account of the sufferings of the poor: those sufferings are now the styptic to sin” (1988:182–83). In Lawler 2000:142–46, I relate this matter to the pardon, and argue that the poem moves to the position that to be poor is to do well, and so to be saved.

The passage sets Patience against Actyf. Actyf’s name associates him with the pardon, “Qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam eternam” (Those who did good deeds will enter into eternal life). Patience has offered a new formula: “patientes vincunt” (the patient [those acted upon, those who suffer] conquer, C.15.137, 156a, B.15.135a, 171a, etc.), where “vincunt” (they conquer) means “ibunt in vitam eternam” (they will enter into eternal life). The present passage perhaps implies a punning version of the original formula: “qui bonis eguerunt ibunt in vitam eternam” (Those who lacked worldly goods will enter into eternal life). However expressed, the idea is the equivalent of the beatitudes about the poor and meek, Matt 5:3,4: the poor own the kingdom of heaven, the meek shall inherit the earth. The winners are not those who do but those who suffer; suffering is an alternative way to heaven; this is a generalizing of Matt 5:10, “Beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter iustitiam, quoniam ipsorum est regnum caelorum.” The idea seems expressed in B.14.108–20: everybody gets joy sometime, and those who suffer now will get it later. This new version of the pardon seems based on God’s sense of fairness, so clear in the beatitudes, and again not on what we do but what we have done to us. Alternatively, one could think of the pardon as implicitly saying “qui bona egerunt aut patienter passi sunt ibunt in vitam eternam.”

See Alford, Gloss., s.v. Allow.

279 (B.14.104) “ʒe? quis est ille?” quod pacience; “quik, laudabimus eum!: Cf. Ecclus 31:8–9, “Beatus dives qui inventus est sine macula et qui post aurum non abiit nec speravit in pecunia et thesauris. Quis est hic? Et laudabimus eum, fecit enim mirabilia in vita sua” (Blessed is the rich man that is found without blemish and that hath not gone after gold nor put his trust in money nor in treasures. Who is he? And we will praise him, for he hath done wonderful things in his life). The phrase rihtful rychesse and resonablelyche to spene in line 278 (richesse riʒtfulliche wonne and resonably despended B.14.103) is a free translation of verse 8. The phrase Beatus est diues sine macula, a loose memory of the start of verse 8, appears as line 16.359a.

The line in Ecclesiasticus implies that a good rich man is hard to find, but not impossible. Jesus’ words about how hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven (Matt 19:23–24, Mark 10:23–25, Luke 18:24–25) are to the same effect. Patience’s “quik,” however, ironizes the line—“Quick, let’s find him (before he goes bad)”; like the remarks that follow, it stands with Luke 16:13, where this time Jesus is absolute: “You cannot serve God and mammon.”

285–87 (B.14.109–11) by puyr resoun … by þe lawe … of rihtfull iuge: I.e., from the principle (lawe) that God is just, one can reason that everyone eventually deserves a share of joy. But lawe can also mean scripture, for example Psalm 36, which throughout predicts that the rich and powerful will perish, “but the meek shall inherit the land” (verse 11); Psalm 71:4, “He shall save the children of the poor,” 13–14, “He shall save the souls of the poor. He shall redeem their souls from usuries and iniquity, and their name shall be honourable in his sight,” and, again, Luke 6:20–21, “Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are ye that hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are ye that weep now, for you shall laugh.” This biblical view is the direct opposite of Palamon’s in the Knight’s Tale: “But man after his deeth moot wepe and pleyne,/Though in this world he have care and wo,” CT A1320–21. Aers 2004:128 argues that Patience here forgets “a fallen condition that never was restricted to the wealthy” and that such an “entitlement to salvation is not warranted within orthodox Christian traditions.” No doubt—and yet these biblical texts give Patience all the warrant he needs. Furthermore, at 9.185–87 (B.7.104–6) we are told that patient sufferers have their purgatory on earth, and are pardoned: that’s why they have a right to heaven—Patience is not forgetting anything. Geoffrey Shepherd’s assessment seems wiser: Langland’s “interest in and sympathy for the honourable poor shines constantly and repeatedly through the poem. On this theme his verse often acquires a surge and tender rapture, that sharply articulated concentrated utterance once counted the signal of sincerity in a writer” (1983:174–75).

287–97 (B.14.111–21) Ioye … neuere was ioye yschape: On the idea that heaven is summer, see Tavormina 1994:58–60: she shows that when Jesus says, in Matt 24:32–33 (I paraphrase), “When the fig takes on leaves, you know that summer is nigh, and when you see these signs, you will know that the end of the world is nigh,” this establishes an equivalence between heaven and summer. And Luke’s version, at 21:30–31, is an even clearer basis, she says, because it says, “you know that the kingdom of God is at hand.” She quotes Ambrose on “the coming of the Lord, in which the fruits of the resurrection will be reaped as if in summertime” (58); Gregory: “The Kingdom of God is well compared to summer” (59), and Hugh of Saint-Cher (59–60), who specifically says that those who have summer here will pass into perpetual winter. Cf. the image of the sunny side of heaven—not necessarily summer, but definitely enticing—at 1.114, and see also 1.124–25 and note.

A look at the PL online shows that Gregory’s “Bene autem regnum Dei aestati comparatur” is repeated again and again. To Tavormina’s list can be added the extensive meditation of the Pseudo-Bede on the second line of Psalm 36, “For [the wicked] shall shortly wither away as grass, and as the green herbs shall quickly fall,” PL 93.672. This commentary comes not from Bede’s time but the eleventh or twelfth century; see Gross-Diaz 1996:113–14. See also the Homily for Second Sunday of Advent of Haymo of Halberstadt, PL 118.23. It is based on the passage from Gregory that Tavormina quotes, but fuller. And see Cassiodorus on Psalm 36:2; he says succinctly, “Saeculum enim istud similitudo est hiemis” (This world is like winter) (PL 70.258).

298–300 Angeles … dyues … beggare of helle (B.14.122–23 Aungeles … diues … douce vie: For the bad angels, see 1.104–29 (B.1.105–27, A.1.103–16). They are not a good example of the point, since they could have remained in joy forever. Diues (Luke 16:19–31; see 19.233–54 [B.17.267–73] and note) is a better example, and gets Patience back to the subject of rich and poor. C.15.300 is a good example of labored clarity in the C revision; the reader of B is expected to know that Dives is a beggar in hell.

301 for alle here wel dedes: In this line Patience acknowledges that the rich perform works of charity, but earn no credit toward heaven thereby since they are amply rewarded for them here, as for example by having their donations inscribed in church windows: see 3.68–70, and the fuller versions of the same passage in B.3.64–72, where the phrase wel dedes occurs twice, and A.3.60–64, where the source of the idea, Matt 6:5 (“They have received their reward”) is quoted.

302 for ledes þat they haue: Possibly “by their attendants and servants,” but probably “because of all the attendants and servants they have.”

306 (B.14.131) Dauid in þe sauter: In addition to the two psalms quoted (which support slepeth 303), see Ps 48, quoted at C.11.23; like them it is a major source for the idea that the rich, having so much here, will have nothing later, whereas the just poor will be vindicated.

306 (B.14.131a) dormierunt & nichil inuenerunt &c: Cf. Ps 75:6, “Dormierunt somnum suum, et nihil invenerunt omnes viri divitiarum manibus suis.” They have slept their sleep, and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands. Meantime verse 10 says that God “arose in judgment to save all the meek of the earth.”

306a velud sompnium surgencium &c (B.14.131a velud sompnium surgencium domine in Ciuitate tua, et ad nichilum rediges &c): Ps 72:20, As the dream of them that awake, O Lord, so in thy city thou shalt bring [their image] to nothing.

The passus break here in C was probably made just to make passūs 15 and 16 approximately the same length. But the line Allas þat richesse shal reue and robbe mannes soule, somewhat buried as B.14.132, makes for a brilliant opening.