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C Passus 16; B Passūs 14–15

Headnote (see also the general note to Passus B.14, pp. 78–79 above)

Passus 16 is unique in that much of it is manufactured in plain view from Latin sources. I say “plain view” because three of these are quoted at length, and explicated at great length: the definition of poverty, quoted en bloc at line 116, and extending through line 157; the names of Liberum arbitrium, quoted en bloc at line 201, and occupying lines 173–208; and Pseudo-Chrysostom on priests, quoted en bloc at line 272, and occupying lines 243–285. In addition, lines 43–101, on the deadly sins, original though the argument is that the poor don’t commit them, have an ultimate source in a Latin idea, and the account of charity with which the passage ends opens with a fourteen-line riff on 1 Corinthians 13. That is 194 lines out of 374, or 52 percent of the passus. I have entitled them “Four Passages of Rhetorical Amplification.” As might be expected from such a structure, nothing happens in the passus except that Liberum arbitrium appears (and Patience disappears): other than that, it’s all talk.

Nevertheless, there is a seismic shift, for with the coming of Liberum arbitrium, Will’s quest has begun its denouement. I have been insisting that Patience is an important character, is no less than Christ—and yet by passus 16 his best moments are behind him. Here his praise of patient poverty comes to border on the outré: the argument that the poor do not commit the deadly sins is a brilliant tour de force, and so are the little vignettes featured in the paradoxical definitions of poverty—and yet their instructive power for Will seems slight. Liberum arbitrium is closer to Will: he may be called “Active’s leader” but he is clearly Will’s, too, his own free will, and he will lead him to see his own heart, cor hominis, at the start of passus 18. He starts off a little like Patience, riffing on his names, but moves then to sharp criticism of Will’s excessive commitment to knowledge, then to criticism of the clergy of which Will is a part, and finally into his passionate description of Charity. The poem dallies in the first half of this passus, as if gathering strength for its final movement, and by the time it reaches the description of Charity it is in high gear.

The same movement is present in the B version, though Actyf’s repentance at the end of passus 14, and Will’s waking, mute the contrast between Patience and Anima.

Patience continues his reply to Actyf (1–157, B.14.132–322)

1–157 (B.14.132–322) Allas þat rychesse … what pouerte was to mene): Patience continues to instruct Actyf about poverty. In lines 1–113 (B.14.132–273), he continues his speech in praise of poverty as the sure way to heaven. (To repeat Pearsall’s dictum, here in the words of his note to line 1, “Poverty, which was the worst of the world’s problems in the Visio, is now, so to speak, the solution to them.”) This portion of the speech has four parts. The first (1–21, B.14.132–67) continues the argument that the poor deserve “allowance” when they die. The second (22–42, B.14.168–201) is a prayer for contrition, very different in the two versions. The third (43–101, B.14.202–61) makes a new case that the poor deserve heaven over the rich by arguing that the seven deadly sins assail the rich and not the poor (an implicit admonition to the rich; cf. 20.350–58n). The fourth (102–13, B.14.262–73) asserts the special claim on heaven of those who freely give up their possessions and embrace poverty. Actyf then interrupts to ask for a definition of poverty (114–15, B.14.274–75), and Patience gives a nine-part answer (116–57, B.14.276–322).

The poor deserve “allowance” when they die (16.3–21, B.14.134–67)

3–21 Hewen þat haen here huyre byfore … som pore and ryche (B.14.134–67 Hewen þat han hir hire afore … if þee wel hadde liked): Cf. 3.293–308, where Conscience denounces advance payment in the course of distinguishing proper meed from improper. He does not, however, apply the idea to the salvation of the rich. The application here is subtle. Once again the basic point seems to be that those who have been paid in advance should not be paid again (and thus the rich do not deserve heaven, since they had it on earth). But in fact the discussion here in C does not center on double payment; rather, for drede of dessallouwynge (7, B.14.139) is the key phrase. The objection to the practice is not so much to double payment (which is after all easily avoided by good accounting) but rather to the likelihood that advance payment will mean overpayment: the worker will end the day in debt to his employer, since he is likely to produce less than he was expected to produce. The passage somewhat illogically mingles two different objections to advance payment. The first is double payment: those who have been paid in advance should not be paid again, obviously, and the rich should not have two heuenes 9. But lines 3–7 express the different objection that, even if double payment is avoided, advance payment is in all likelihood overpayment (cf. 3.291–332 and n. and 3.300n). According to this second idea, a rich man not only does not deserve heaven, he doesn’t even deserve the heaven he had here on earth, and is thus not just all square with God but actually in debt to him, that is, he deserves not only the loss of heaven but the punishment of hell. Thus the satire on the rich is intensified: it isn’t just that they have had their reward (Matt 6:5), but that they have had it and didn’t earn it. Theoretically the rich can avoid such debt by living well and following the financial guidelines of Psalm 14 in the manner outlined by Conscience in an earlier part of the same speech in the B version, excised in C: B.3.232–254. At the end of that speech Conscience has turned his attention to those who take improper meed, quoting Matt 6:5, Amen, amen, receperunt mercedem suam; that passage is the germ of the idea here; see also Luke 6:24, “Vae vobis divitibus, quia habetis consolationem vestram” (Woe to you that are rich, for you have your consolation). See also B.3.72, where lords are urged to stop advertising their good deeds, “On auenture ye haue youre hire here and youre heuene als.” And see 15.279–16.21 (B.14.104–65)n, 15.301n, and, for yet another treatment of how the rich can earn credit with Christ, 13.65–78; finally, see the quotation from Hildegard of Bingen cited in the note to B.14.212a, on how the rich try to have heaven and earth at once.

In the B version of the passage, L is ambivalent: at B.14.145 he makes a major qualification: it is, after all, possible to get paid twice, both for rich and poor, as a servant who does his duty well is given a cote aboue his couenaunt (151). But then that qualification is itself qualified in B.14.155–56: it’s not often seen with the rich, and this leads into the muche murþe passage that at C.16.10 follows right on the initial statement opposing advance payment. The two consecutive Acs in B, at 14.145 and 155, get L back to where he was at 144: the rich are unlikely to go to heaven. It was thus easy to drop the whole twelve-line passage in C, yielding a clearer if less nuanced treatment of the issue.

The idea that the rich will be punished later relies not only on Matt 6:5 but on various psalms (see 15.306n) and on Luke 16:22, where Dives and Lazarus each die and get the opposite of their lot on earth. Though Luke never says explicitly that Dives is in hell for not sharing his wealth with the poor, Langland has implied that at the beginning of the present discussion of the rich and at 15.299–300 (less clearly at B.14.123), and will assert it unambiguously at 19.234–35, 241–43 (B.17.268–69). The allegory of the peacock and the lark in B.12.236–69, which is a kind of beast-fable version of Dives and Lazarus, also says clearly that the rich are punished in hell for not giving to the poor (B.12.247–51). L has first mentioned Dives and Lazarus at 8.277–81; in effect the prayer at 16.17 (B.14.164), “lord, sende hem somur,” was answered for Lazarus, who sits “as he a syre were/In al manere ese” (8.280–81). See B.14.144a and its note below: the sentence of Jerome’s that L quotes follows a sentence in which Jerome contrasts the fates of Dives and Lazarus.

Chaucer plays wickedly with the same topos (“Ther may no man han parfite blisses two”) in the Merchant’s Tale, where January fears that the “parfit felicitee” of marriage will cause “that I shal have myn hevene in erthe heere” and so lose the chance to “Come to the blisse ther Crist eterne on lyve ys” (E1634–54). Though Justinus reassures him by promising that his wife may in fact be his purgatory, the paradisal garden January creates maintains the reference, and indeed the whole poem is built on playing the idea of marriage as heaven against the idea of marriage as hell (see also the Wife’s Prologue, D495–96).

7 (B.14.139) for drede of dessallouwynge: Lest he be discredited, i.e., judged after all not to have earned what he was paid in advance, and so to be not only owed nothing but actually in debt (3–4, B. 14.134–35). In B the term repeats and spells out the metaphorical disalowed 131. See Alford, Gloss., s.v. allowen, disallowen. At 12.195, Recklessness has uttered the counterpart statement, that the poor are “allowed of oure lord at here laste ende.”

8 (B.14.140) hit semeth nat þat ʒe sholle: “It isn’t fitting that you should” (Economou; similarly Pearsall); not “It doesn’t seem you ought to” (Donaldson).

B.14.148 rewful, 152 rewfulliche: Both words refer to compassion rather than repentance; they hark back to 145, “if ye riche haue ruþe and rewarde wel þe poore,” which itself echoes the major line spoken by Holy Church in the first passus, “Forthy I rede yow riche, haue reuthe on the pore” (B.1.175, A.1.149). L’s semi-Pelagianism comes to the fore here, as in the taper passage, 19.187–213, which also moves on to excoriate the unkind rich: Christ has mercy on those who are themselves merciful; ruth in us prompts an answering ruth in him. From start to finish, the call to the rich to take pity on the poor is on the tip of L’s tongue.

B.14.144a De delicijs ad delicias difficile est transire: Alford cites Jerome, Epistle 118 (to Julian), PL 22.965; the full statement (which Alford shortens) is as follows: “Difficile, imo impossibile est ut et praesentibus quis et futuris fruatur bonis: ut et hic ventrem, et ibi mentem impleat; ut de deliciis transeat ad delicias; ut in utroque saeculo primus sit; ut et in coelo et in terra appareat gloriosus” (It is hard, indeed impossible, that anyone should enjoy both present and future goods; that he should fill his belly here, and his mind there; that he should pass from delights to delights; that he should be first in both worlds; that he should appear in glory both in heaven and on earth). Alford says that the part L quotes is “quoted frequently,” a statement that searching in the online PL supports, modestly, only if the search is reduced to “‘de deliciis’ near ‘ad delicias.’” The sentence in its entirety seems to lie behind L’s whole passage. To the references Alford gives, add Peter of Blois, Letter 102 (PL 207.316): “Quem enim legimus a saecularibus deliciis ad deliciis aeternas demigrasse?” (Where do we read that anyone has made the transition from delights in this world to eternal delights?) This wording (“Where do we read?”) seems echoed in 155–56 below, “it is but selde yseien, as by holy seintes bookes,/That god rewarded double reste to any riche wye.” For L’s knowledge of this letter, see B.15.332–43a n. Cf. B.14.212n.

B.14.149–51 as an hyne … aboue his couenaunt: A companion to the simile at 142–43: there the servant makes a brazen false claim that he wasn’t paid in advance; here the lord offers a bonus freely for a job well done. But the simile seems not quite to fit, since both rewards that Christ gives, forgiveness now and bliss later, seem to come in response to a life of ruth; neither gift of his quite corresponds to the servant’s having his hire er he bigonne.

B.14.155–56 as by holy seintes bokes … riche wye: Numerous saints whose lives appear in The Golden Legend are said to have been born rich, noble, or even royal, but virtually all give all they have to the poor and live an ascetic life. The pre-eminent examples are St Francis and St Elizabeth of Hungary; I count nearly forty more. The few born rich who do not give up their wealth are either martyred or become prelates of notable sanctity; none use their wealth for their own pleasure. Thus there are in fact no examples at all of double reste. See also 15.277–86 (B.14.102–8). In his entry on All Saints’ Day, Jacobus says we celebrate the saints in order to imitate them, that is, “to follow their example by making little of earthly goods and setting our hearts on the things of heaven” (trans. Ryan 2.273–74). See the previous note.

10–16 (B.14.158–63) Muche murthe is in may … reuthe is to here: For a different treatment of rich and poor in terms of summer and winter, see Recklessness’s praise of patient poverty, in which the rich are summer seeds that rot easily, the poor are tough winter seeds (12.187–201).

10–11 (B.14.158–59) murthe, solace: i.e., sexual heat; for the terms, cf. Alison and Nicholas “in bisynesse of myrthe and of solas,” Miller’s Tale A3654; for the idea, cf. the smale foules pricked by nature in Chaucer’s opening sentence, and my discussion of them in Lawler 2017:177–78. See MED, s.v. mirthe, 3c; solas 1d. In the application of the simile to men in lines 12 (B.14.157) (murthe) and 17 (solace) the meaning is broader; still the gist of the prayer in line 17 is that beggars might feel some of the zest that animals feel in May.

13 (B.14.160) myssomur: June 24 and the time around it. Wheat bread is at its highest price in the last weeks before harvest at the end of July, the so-called “hungry gap” (cf. Frank, Jr. 1995:229–30); see 8.305, 312, 321 (B.6.283, 289, 299, A.7.267, 273, 283), where the people (though they don’t starve) must eat “bean bread” and “pea bread” (“pese loof” 8.176; B.6.179, A.7.164) “til lamasse tyme” 312 (B.6.289, A.7.273) (August 1). See also B.14.178 below.

14 (B.14.161) weetshoed: as the dreamer will later go, apparently in the time before Lent: 20.1 (B.18.1). Winter hunger has been dramatized in passus 8 when Hunger first appears at the plowing of the winter corn field, 8.171–203 (B.6.174–98, A.7.159–85; for the medieval farming year, cf. Burrow 1965:256, citing Homans 1941:356); then “þat was bake for bayard was bote for many hungry,/Drosenes and dregges drynke for many beggares” (8.192–93, B.6.193).

15–16 (B.14.162–63) rebuked/And arated: presumably a year-round fact of life; the meaning is that in winter beggars are wet, thirsty, and hungry in addition to being abused as usual—or worse than usual, if winter makes the rich yet more ill-tempered, and stingier with food.

Patience prays for the poor, then for all; then he lectures (16.17–42, B.14.164–201)

17–35 Now, lord, sende hem somur … a chartre made (B.14.164–95 Now, lord, sende hem somer … but þei be poore of herte): The prayer that starts here in both versions with the touching lord, sende hem somur—as you already do for beasts, 15.291 (B.14.116)—lasts in C through line 28, where the mood of the verbs shifts from imperative to indicative. The prayer is at first for beggars, but extended at line 22 to thy renkes alle. Conceivably “thy renkes” means the poor, God’s favorites, as “goddes men” seems to at 17.67 (the only appearance of that phrase); see also 19.252–53 (B.17.271–72) and note; but more likely the thought here moves from the reflection that diversity of fortune is for the best to extending the prayer for that reason (Riht so 22) to all humankind, as the move from the third-person references to the poor to vs 23 implies: make us all, the prayer says, whether actually poor or not, meek, low, and of herte pore (24). There is a certain reminiscence of Repentance’s great prayer in passus 6 (B.5, A.5). The prayer thus replaces the harsh prediction in 8–9 that the rich will not be saved, and is close to the spirit of B.14.145–56, excised in C (see note to 3–21 above).

In B the prayer expands (at 14.168) at first only to asking God to have mercy on the rich and give them the grace to amend, and then it returns to the poor at 14.174, though at 180 it expands once more, reminding Christ that he comforts “all creatures,” and finally asserting with full explicitness in 182 that Christ’s invitation to turn to him and be saved (181a) was made to riche and to poore. It lasts at least through line 188, as the second-person pronouns show, although Patience’s rhetoric is already moving from prayer-mode to lecture-mode. Thus the revision makes the prayer move in C to a broad sympathy for rich and poor alike much more swiftly and decisively than in B, taking back the greater harshness towards the rich achieved in the revision at C.16.8–9. Both versions end the prayer in a clarification of the pardon (chartre 35, Acquitaunce B.14.190), insisting that in view of the redemption to repent is to do well (as I have argued in Lawler 2000). C does so more explicitly, taking B’s general terms (Confession and knowlichynge and crauynge þi mercy/Shulde amenden vs 187–88) and converting them (16.25–34) into the triads both of the three Dos and of contrition, confession, and satisfaction (which in B Patience had brought up to Actyf in the course of his confession, 14.83–97; see note there). The assertion in both versions that the redemption is offered to all echoes Will’s meditation at 12.54–71 (B.11.119–36), a passage that also speaks of contrition and confession, and uses charter imagery (see below).

See 6.1–2 (B.5.60–61, A.5.43–44)n.

17 (B.14.164) sende hem somur: For a different use of the idea of heaven as summertime, see 1.112–25.

19–21 For al myhtest þou … som pore and ryche (B.14.166–67 For alle myʒtestow … if þee wel hadde liked): The idea (which also occurs at B.11.197–98) that God might have made all equally rich, but it is better that he didn’t, is something of a commonplace, and L’s lines here are virtually a translation. See, e.g., PL 39.2330 (a sermon attributed to Augustine): “Potuit enim omnes homines divites facere; sed nobis per pauperum miseriam voluit subvenire ut et pauper per patientiam et dives per eleemosynam possint Dei gratiam promoveri” (God could have made everybody rich, but he wanted to help us by means of the plight of the poor, since the poor man could be advanced in the grace of God through patience, and the rich man through almsgiving). The PL has plenty more examples. Job 34:19 and Prov 29:13 both say that God made both rich and poor. “Alike witty and wise” is apparently Langland’s extension of the basic idea, and a sly one, since it may imply that as the poor lack money, the rich lack brains—an idea voiced more boldly at 16.49–50 (B.14.208–9) below.