Alimentary Theology: Religious Experience and the Language of Food in Late-Medieval English Vernacular Literature A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Caleb D. Molstad IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Supervised by Dr. Andrew Scheil April 2023 © Caleb D. Molstad, 2023 iACKNOWLEDGMENTS There are many people to thank for their support, advice, encouragement, feedback, and counsel through the years of writing this dissertation. I will not be able to name all of you, yet know that I appreciate your contributions in big and small ways. Thanks first goes to my dissertation supervisor Dr. Andrew Scheil. Even before I was accepted to the University of Minnesota, he reached out to me and has continued to support my academic career. Dr. Scheil proposed the topic of “alimentary theology” which, although I was uncertain about it at first, has proved to be an inspired suggestion. My gratitude also goes to committee members Dr. Katherine Scheil, Dr. George Shuffleton, and Dr. Lianna Farber for their encouragement and feedback through the dissertation writing process. Special thanks goes to Dr. Jana Schulman at Western Michigan University where I completed my master’s degree in Medieval Studies. She was a supportive advisor who invested in me and other students while leading the Medieval Institute for many of the years that I was at WMU. I am also grateful for my fellow English medievalists: Karen Soto, Jesse Stratton, Maggie Heeschen, Luke Chambers, and Andrea Waldrep. I am thankful for the way they put up with this elvish rouge of a character, providing friendship on our quest through PhD-dom. Their company and conversation have made my time in school a much lighter burden. I am thankful to the community at Anselm House for a homely space and community in which to connect faith with all of life. Anselm House has provided ii intellectual, emotional, and spiritual nourishment throughout my time at the U of M. In particular, I want to thank Dr. Andrew Hansen for his role in fostering that community and introducing me to Charles Taylor’s work in our Common Good cohort. Thanks also goes to the congregation at Church of the Redeemer. My survival and flourishing through the doctoral program owes so much to being a member of you. You provided me with a life outside the university, while being so nourishing to my life inside it. Your expressions of interest in my dissertation topic helped fuel my progress, as well as your support in so many other ways. I am grateful too for my father and mother, David and Cheryl Molstad, for providing me with a home full of books in which to grow up. You likely never expected your son, who consistently failed spelling tests and wrote papers laden with grammar errors, to study English and write a (nearly) error-free dissertation. My gratitude goes lastly to Sarah Olsen for filling this last year of dissertation writing with so much joy. You were the first non-committee member to dare to read part of my dissertation and have provided so much nourishment along the way, alimentary and otherwise. Looking forward to our adventures together! Soli Deo gloria + iii DEDICATION Dedicated with joy and gratitude to Sarah Olsen There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth. — Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton iv ABSTRACT Vernacular writing about religious experience and theology in late-fourteenth and early fifteenth century England represents an innovative and creative source of poetry and prose. In the move from Latin to Middle English, authors gave vibrant expression to old and new religious ideas through the emerging literary language, a phenomenon Nicholas Watson has termed “vernacular theology.” This dissertation examines vernacular authors’ use of metaphors of food and consumption to explore theology and religious experience in late-medieval England, a literary technique I am calling “alimentary theology.” Middle English authors’ use of alimentary metaphors join abstract ideas and spiritual concerns with physical bodies and basic biological drives, transgressing modern conceptual divisions between matter and spirit. Whether authors are adapting familiar biblical metaphors like Psalm 33:9(34:8), “taste, and see that the Lord is sweet,” or inventing new ones, alimentary metaphors not only make religious concepts more accessible to a non- educated, lay audience, the language alters and shapes the theological content communicated through it. Vernacular theology in the language of food and drink shows religion in late-medieval England to be embodied, experiential, and social—much like food in daily life. The dissertation close reads alimentary metaphors in well-known poetic and prose works including William Langland’s Piers Plowman, Nicholas Love’s A Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection and lesser studied texts like the Pearl-Poet’s Cleanness and the contemplative guide A Ladder of Foure Ronges. The method of analyzing metaphors utilizes the insights of cognitive linguists vGeorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson on the experiential and metaphorical basis of language. The dissertation also employs the interdisciplinary field of food studies to explore the transcultural, sociological, anthropological, and historical significance of the food and foodways behind the metaphors. Chapter one examines a dialogue in Piers Plowman between the character Hunger and the representative of agricultural labor, Piers, about just ways to distribute food in a society that is shifting from land-centered agricultural subsistence to a landless mobile and urban population. Chapter two continues the focus on appetite in Piers Plowman, exploring the threat to society the poem sees being posed by the religious orders’ twin overconsumption of food and of knowledge—and how Piers Plowman presents moderation as the solution to both types of gluttony. Chapter three delves into alimentary descriptions of religious reading practice that portray reading as a subjective, embodied, thick, and transformative experience that raised contemporary anxiety about heterodox interpretation when applied to vernacular texts. The final chapter examines the merging of courtly table manners with religious virtue in Cleanness as the poem uses upper class practices of feasting and hospitality to authorize a worldly, aristocratic moral order. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments................................................................................................................i Dedication...........................................................................................................................iii Abstract...............................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents................................................................................................................vi List of Abbreviations.........................................................................................................vii Introduction — Transformations: Late-Medieval Vernacular Religious Literature and the Language of Food................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1 — Hunger and the Hungry: Just Distribution of Food in Piers’s England........24 Chapter 2 — Hungering for Knowledge: The Dangers of Uncontrollable Appetite.........71 Chapter 3 — Transformative Reading: Consuming Texts in Late-Medieval England....122 Chapter 4 — Cleanness, Courtesy, and the Making of an Aristocratic Moral Identity at Table.................................................................................................................................185 Conclusion.......................................................................................................................241 Bibliography....................................................................................................................249 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Douay-Rheims Version The Holy Bible: Translated from the Latin Vulgate MED Middle English Dictionary OED Oxford English Dictionary Vulgate Biblia Sacra: Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem 1INTRODUCTION — TRANSFORMATIONS: LATE-MEDIEVAL VERNACULAR RELIGIOUS LITERATURE AND THE LANGUAGE OF FOOD cibus sum grandium: cresce et manducabis me. nec tu me in te mutabis sicut cibum carnis tuae, sed tu mutaberis in me I am the food of the full grown: grow and you will eat of me. You will not transform me into you as your fleshly food, but you will be transformed into me. — Augustine, Confessions, Bk. VII.10(16)1 gustate et videte quoniam suavis est Dominus O taste, and see that the Lord is sweet — Psalm 33:9 (34:8)2 Saint Augustine’s Confessions includes a curious episode in which Augustine hears, while rapt in a mystical experience, a voice telling him to eat of God. The voice speaks in terms of the normal process of human digestion where food is converted into nourishment that becomes part of the body. God as food, however, functions in the inverse of the natural process of digestion. Augustine’s divine food transforms the eater into the thing that is consumed; the consumer becomes part of the body of their food, turning categories of food and eater upside down. The early nineteenth century gastronome Jean Brillat-Savarin makes a similar observation about food, suggesting that a gourmand delighting in bodily pleasure is not far from a saint in a mystical experience. Brillat-Savarin declares as one of the principles of his gastronomic science that, “Tell me what you eat, and I shall tell you what you are,” demonstrating the same awareness that eating transforms the consumer at the same time as they transform their food.3 Change is 1. Confessions, Books 1–8, trans. Carolyn J.-B. Hammond (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 328 (translation mine). 2. Unless otherwise noted, I use the Vulgate for Latin quotations of scripture. The Douay-Rheims Version is used for English quotations since it closely follows the Vulgate. 3. Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, trans. M. F. K. Fisher (New York: The Heritage Press, 1949), 1. 2the risk we take whenever we eat and, as I hope to show, the risk we take whenever we embody the abstract in human language. ALIMENTARY THEOLOGY This dissertation examines vernacular authors’ use of metaphors of food and consumption to discuss theology and religious experience in late-medieval England. Like Augustine, these authors render abstract ideas and spiritual experiences in concrete embodied terms. My work draws on Cristina Maria Cervone’s argument, in her exploration of poetics in Middle English literature, that figurative language, like metaphors, can “verge on saying what otherwise can neither be articulated fully in language nor, perhaps, comprehended in thought.”4 In making the previously ineffable sayable, metaphors also make it thinkable. There is a risk, however, in the use of metaphors. Like the digestion of food, metaphors transform the content they carry and their users. Cognitive linguists George Lakoff and Mark Johnson contend that the metaphors we use shape our perception of the abstract concepts expressed through them.5 The metaphors we use matter. The late-medieval English authors that I examine, including William Langland, Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love, and other anonymous writers, are engaged in an act of transformation when they use alimentary metaphors to write about theology and religious experience. It is actually a double act of transformation, for they use metaphors in the relatively young literary language of Middle English. The vernacular itself shapes that which is communicated through it. Nicholas Watson inaugurated a study of the social and political effects of the linguistic shift from the 4. Poetics of the Incarnation: Middle English Writing and the Leap of Love (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 21. 5. Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, [1980] 2003). 3official church language of Latin to the vernacular with his identification of these authors as producing a category of writing he calls “vernacular theology.”6 Because my dissertation looks at metaphors of food in vernacular theology, I have chosen the term “alimentary theology” to describe the literary phenomena I am examining.7 Alimentary theology draws on a long tradition in Christian religious literature of embodying the spiritual in the language of food and eating.8 Ernst Curtius points to the Bible as “the principal source of alimentary metaphors” in medieval Latin literature.9 Patristic writers, including Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, develop these metaphors and in turn influence medieval authors like Hugh of St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux. Middle English authors creatively adapt this tradition of alimentary metaphors to their own historical context, dishes, and foodways.10 Alimentary metaphors in the vernacular, with their down-to-earth immediacy, make religious concepts accessible to a non-educated, lay audience. They join abstract ideas and spiritual concerns with physical bodies and basic biological drives, complicating modern conceptual divisions between 6. “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum 70, 4 (1995): 822–64. 7. The original coining of the term “alimentary theology” belongs to my dissertation supervisor, Dr. Andrew Scheil. It fuses my interest in Watson’s vernacular theology with a description of “alimentary metaphors” in Ernst Curtius’s European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2013), 134–36. Only after I began to research the topic did I discover Ángel F. Méndez Montoya’s Theology of Food: Eating and the Eucharist (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Méndez Montoya proposes alimentary theology as a contemporary method of practicing theology and viewing theology as nourishing. The book does not discuss medieval texts, focusing instead on modern literature and film. 8. The focus of the dissertation is on European Christianity and thus leaves out a consideration of Eastern Christianity where the metaphors are also present. 9. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 134. Curtius notes that alimentary metaphors are almost absent in classical Latin literature, 10. “Foodways” is a commonly used term in anthropology and food studies. Carole Counihan defines foodways as, “[T]he beliefs and behaviors surrounding food production, distribution, and consumption,” in “Gendering Food,” in The Oxford Handbook of Food History, ed. Jeffrey M. Pilcher (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 100. 4matter and spirit, body and mind. I argue that alimentary metaphors alter and shape the theological content communicated through them in fascinating ways. Vernacular theology in the language of food and drink gives us a picture of religion in late-medieval England that is experiential, social, and embodied—much like food in daily life. Experiential One of the major functions of language is to put the varieties of human experience into a form that can be communicated. Metaphors are a primary way that humans do this, as Lakoff and Johnson argue in Metaphors We Live By. I understand metaphors in much the same way they do when they assert that, “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”11 When the voice in Augustine’s vision describes the theological concept of theosis in the language of digestion and nourishment, an abstract and nebulous experience is expressed in familiar and easy to understand terms. Cognition and language are naturally related and so metaphors like this shape the way we understand concepts and experiences.12 Conceptualizing an idea through a particular alimentary metaphor, e.g., digestion, lends to thinking about the idea in a particular way, e.g., through the attendant processes of chewing, savoring, swallowing, absorption, and excretion. Food therefore is not only good to eat but good to think with.13 Alimentary theology is not merely a study of religion but also of language and embodied modes of human understanding. 11. Metaphors We Live By, 5 (emphasis original). 12. Cf. Metaphors We Live By, 3, 6. 13. Compare to Claude Levi-Strauss’s statement about totemism “that natural species are chosen not because they are ‘good to eat’ but because they are ‘good to think,” Totemism, trans. Rodney Needham (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963), 89. 5Lakoff and Johnson make the case that most metaphors are based in experience: “[N]o metaphor can ever be comprehended or even adequately represented independently of its experiential basis.”14 Eating is uniquely direct among other human experiences. Besides touch, no faculty puts us more in contact with the world outside our bodies than eating. Sight, hearing, and smell allow observation at a reasonably safe distance.15 Thinking occurs in the mind at a physical remove from the objects we are contemplating. Even empirical investigation, upon which the scientific method builds objective fact, is often mediated through instruments. To taste an object, however, is to have unmediated contact. Taste is a direct and intimate way to know something. Perhaps that is why we are so careful about what we let pass the boundary of our mouths. In eating, that which is external to us becomes internal.16 We willingly contemplate, look at, smell, and even touch that which we would never put into our mouths, whether broccoli or insects. Rachel Fulton observes that the call to taste something, “is an invitation to more than simply a new experience or even a familiar one. This is an invitation to risk being changed; it is an invitation to risk incorporating into ourselves a substance that might kill us or heal us, nourish us or make us sick. How will we know until we try?”17 14. Metaphors We Live By, 19 (emphasis original). 15. Modern western metaphors for understanding are often based on sight, for example, “I see what you mean,” Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By, 48, 103–104. Cf. also Rachel Fulton, “‘Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9): The Flavor of God in the Monastic West,” The Journal of Religion 86, 2 (2006): 200. 16. This is the core thesis in Maggie Kilgour’s From Communion to Cannibalism: An Anatomy of Metaphors of Incorporation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 3–19. Eating problematizes the distinction we attempt to make between insides and outsides. 17. “‘Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9),” 200. 6The immediacy of eating as an experience means that few metaphors, perhaps besides sexual metaphors, are so resonant as those based in food and eating.18 The immediacy of taste—and the danger implicit in knowing something via the mouth—are visible in Psalm 33:9 and the passage from Augustine’s Confessions in the epigraph. Psalm 33:9 is an important source for medieval alimentary metaphors. The command to “taste” is at once an invitation to discern the nature of God and to experience immeasurable pleasure. And yet, from a religious perspective, it is an invitation to put the most powerful and substantial of foods into one’s body. How can one do so without being transformed as Augustine describes and even losing control? The devotional guides that chapter three explores reflect this dynamic in their description of the experience of religious reading in the language of eating. A Ladder of Foure Ronges promises the taste of great sweetness and joy from reading in the way it instructs. The final state, in which one experiences mystical union with God, is described as drunkenness. Readers are encouraged to behave like addicts who abandon all sense of moderation and sell their clothing just to have one more taste of a delicious wine, which metaphorically represents Christ. Alimentary metaphors describe religious experiences that are powerful, overwhelming the senses and self-control. Moreover, there are bodily, experiential similarities between eating and the production of language. Mouths, teeth, and tongues are involved in both speaking and eating. Christopher Woolgar has shown that people in medieval England often perceived 18. There is a transcultural association between sex and eating. See John Newman, “A cross-linguistic overview of ‘eat’ and ‘drink,’” in The Linguistics of Eating and Drinking, ed. John Newman (Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2009), 19–20 and Kilgour, From Communion to Cannibalism, 7. Also Méndez Montoya’s discussion of “erotic cognition” in the second chapter of the Theology of Food, 45–76 7taste and speech as twin senses of the mouth.19 Ideally, food enters the mouth and words exit it; the reverse, where one eats words and throws up food, is generally viewed as a problem. Mikhail Bakhtin has discussed the liberating effect of food, usually in a communal setting, for the production of words.20 Eating and talking go together. Accordingly, Piers Plowman shows the potential for discursive and digestive discomfort to occur at the same time, while Cleanness puts the utmost importance on fair words and courteous conversation at meals. Furthermore, many communities in the late Middle Ages, such as monasteries and wealthy households, would have listened to texts being read at meals, combining literary and physical consumption. Thus the experience of eating and the experience of words and texts would have many parallels for late-medieval readers. The experimental nature of food also makes the focus of this dissertation accessible to us as modern readers.21 Food and eating is one of the few human universals across time and culture. Although it is impossible to perfectly recreate the food and foodways of those in late-medieval England, everyone knows what it feels like on a bodily level to be hungry, to experience indigestion, and to taste something good. Although the type of religious reading I explore in chapter three is in many ways foreign to us, we are probably all familiar with the sensation of breaking through the hard crust of a yeasty smelling loaf of bread with our teeth and reaching the warm, soft white crumb 19. The Senses in Late Medieval England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 10–11, 104. 20. Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 283– 297. 21. My experience sharing about this dissertation with people who have almost no familiarity with the Middle Ages is that they readily connect with the food and eating aspect of it. Food serves as a helpful bridge between those outside of and inside of the university. 8inside. This experience is how Walter Hilton metaphorically describes reading scripture. Food-based metaphors, for this reason, are useful bridges for us as modern readers to understand the process of religious reading in a similar way to Hilton’s original audience. Social Food is also deeply embedded in social relationships. Theologian Nicholas Wirzba writes that, “Eating is the daily confirmation that you are never alone. That means you need to attend to the creatures that nurture you, and that join you to forests, fields, waterways, barns, gardens, butterflies, bees, chickens, gardeners, farmers, [and] cooks.”22 Wirzba is one critic of our contemporary mechanized and highly industrialized food systems.23 Our alimentary situation, where food for most seems to appear magically at the supermarket, often causes us to forget our dependence on a complex network of human and non-human participants. Wirzba’s perspective on the embeddedness of food in social relationships would have been familiar to a late-medieval author like William Langland. Langland views society as having a common physical and spiritual life to which all contribute according to their social role. In Piers Plowman Langland is especially concerned that physical nourishment, provided by agricultural laborers, is rightly and justly distributed in the face of increasing numbers of landless people and urban dwellers. Wirzba, as a theologian, is naturally intent on more than mere physical nourishment in his criticism of our food systems. Langland similarly identifies joined bodily and intellectual gluttony by the mendicant orders as a threat to the common life of society because of the 22. Norman Wirzba, Food and Faith: A Theology of Eating, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 2. 23. See also the popular critique offered by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York: Penguin Books, 2007). 9way it deprives the truly needy of nourishment. Cleanness, similarly, understands eating as a deeply social act. Meals occur in a network of social and political relationships and successful eating requires the active participation of host and guest.24 One never truly eats alone and without significance to others. While religion, like eating, grew more individualized as Europe entered early modernity, its association with social and corporate practice was strong in late-medieval England. In contrast to earlier scholarship, Eamon Duffy argues that religion in late- medieval England was “resolutely and enthusiastically orientated towards the public and corporate, and of a continuing sense of the value of cooperation and mutuality in seeking salvation.”25 Duffy works primarily with material culture, relying on documents and church architecture. The alimentary metaphors I analyze give much the same picture. The vital importance of “cooperation and mutuality in seeking salvation” are central to Langland’s critique of disordered appetites and Cleanness’s emphasis on courtly conviviality at meals. Even the seemingly solitary experience of religious reading that I describe in chapter three does not take place in a social vacuum. A reader’s interpersonal ethical status and relationship with the church is key to producing a valid reading of scripture and experiencing the delights of contemplation. Alimentary metaphors affirm a social and corporate understanding of religious experience and practice in late-medieval England. Religion is not the privatized or individualized experience it comes to be in 24. Thanks go to Father Paul Calvin for pointing out to me in a conversation about the poem the necessity of mutual participation of host and guest for a successful meal. 25. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England: c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 131. 10 modernity, but one that is public and social, ideally contributing to the holistic health of society.26 Embodied Food, like the vernacular, brings abstract concepts down to earth and makes them concrete. Eating is a bodily experience, involving lip-smacking, nose-sniffing, teeth- chomping, tongue-tasting, contented bellies, and waste excretion. Such embodied activities seem to be at an ontological and conceptual distance from a spiritual realm of ineffable holiness, glory, and light. Yet the voice Augustine hears demonstrates a profoundly integrative conception of the relationship between the spiritual and the material, two categories that have come to be seen as firmly divided in modern western thought.27 Intangible and spiritual processes are expressed in corporeal and material language, blurring the separation between them. The language of food bridges two categories and in the process elevates the most bodily of functions—digesting food—to spiritual significance. Just as eating and tasting offer a bridge between insides and outsides, so too they bridge the material and non-material. Alimentary metaphors represent an incarnational perspective on theology and religious life. The putting of the spiritual in bodily terms recalls the central belief in Christian theology from the gospel of John that, “[T]he Word was made flesh.”28 This embodied and incarnational approach to theology is quite different from popular clichés of medieval theology and religious theorizing as the abstract speculations of the 26. Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 540–542. 27. This is a distinction that non-western cultures do not make, for example, in medicine. 28. John 1:14. 11 scholastics or inane debates about the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin. Charles Taylor argues that it was the Reformation and the Enlightenment which brought about a shift toward what he calls “excarnation.”29 He describes the move from “an era in which religious life was more ‘embodied’, where the presence of the sacred could be enacted in ritual, or seen, felt, touched, walked towards (in pilgrimage); into one which is more ‘in the mind’, where the link with God passes more through our endorsing contested interpretations.”30 This shift in religious experience follows the Cartesian shift toward mind-body dualism and disembodied thinking in Western thought.31 In exploring a more embodied way of discussing religion, the dissertation reveals a more embodied way of thinking. For that reason, the texts that the chapter talks about are valuable for modern thought. They present an integrative and holistic understanding of human beings and how humans can think about the world. It is a valuable perspective in a society that is increasingly turning toward the virtual, and even in some technological circles looking forward to a future “metaverse.” My dissertation calls attention to what humans might lose in the move toward excarnation and disembodiment. Alimentary metaphors present a positive view of the body, which is counter- intuitive to many popular clichés about the Middle Ages. Warnings in medieval ethical teaching against gluttony and lechery, as well as the emphasis religious orders put on fasting and asceticism, would seem to suggest a negative valuation of the body. Caroline Walker Bynum forcefully argues against any such dualistic understanding of the body in 29. Taylor, A Secular Age, 613–15. 30. Taylor, A Secular Age, 554. 31. Taylor, A Secular Age, 614. 12 the late Middle Ages. She asserts that “Fasting was flight not from but into physicality” and later that, “[L]ate medieval asceticism was an effort to plumb and to realize the possibilities of the flesh.”32 Alimentary metaphors reinforce a positive view of the body by their use of the language of eating, savoring, and drinking. It is probably not a coincidence that Cleanness’s interest in convivial and cheerful meals is accompanied by a positive view of the pleasures of (heterosexual) intercourse. The problem identified by the texts covered in this dissertation is not appetite itself, bodily or otherwise, but the way appetite is satisfied: what is eaten, by whom, in what manner, and how much. The use of alimentary metaphors to describe positive spiritual processes and states support eating as a moral and religious good when practiced in the right way. That non-dualist perspective should prompt us to think about our own problems with food and bodies. Bynum, for example, argues that late-medieval understandings of the body should cause us to reconsider, “Twentieth-century discussions of anorexia nervosa…[that] seem to have assumed, when Freudian, that the body means sexuality, and, when non-Freudian, that eating means control.”33 Perhaps it is we moderns who need to come to a better understanding of embodiment. The Middle Ages provide one alternative model.34 FOOD STUDIES This dissertation also belongs to the emerging field of food studies. Food studies is a comparatively recent interdisciplinary field that looks at the intersection of food with 32. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 250, 294 (emphasis original). 33. Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 300–301. 34. Other alternatives include non-western and indigenous conceptions of embodiment and the relationship between mind/spirit and matter. 13 other disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, and history.35 Bynum’s aforementioned classic work, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (1987), represents one of the earliest examples of what would now be considered food studies to deal with the Middle Ages. Holy Feast and Holy Fast explores medieval associations of women with food and physicality through the experiences of religious women in the later Middle Ages, especially their devotion to the humanity of Jesus. Other significant authors/works in the realm of medieval food studies include Paul Freedman’s Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (2006) and beginning in the 2010’s Christopher Woolgar’s many articles and books on medieval food culture. The above texts primarily approach food studies from a historical perspective. Recently, there has been a spate of writing from literary scholars on food studies, including on the topic of late-medieval English literature. These include Challenging Communion by Jennifer Garrison (2017), Political Appetites by Aaron Hostetter (2017), and Middle English Mouths by Katie Walter (2018). This project continues the application of food studies to Middle English literature by looking at the interrelationship of metaphorical language, embodiment, and religious knowledge and experience in late-medieval England. Any discussion of food in the Middle Ages inescapably brings up the Eucharist. Miri Rubin has argued for the central cultural and social importance of the Eucharist in late-medieval Europe through her study of the rise of the Corpus Christi feast.36 More narrowly on late-medieval England, Eamon Duffy’s Stripping the Altars shows the way 35. For a brief summary of food studies and its origin see the introduction by Amy L. Tigner and Allison Carruth, Literature and Food Studies (London: Routledge, 2017), 1–12. 36. Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 14 that the mass was an inextricable part of daily life and the consecrated host an object of intense collective devotion. The authors I study in this dissertation would have had their imaginations saturated with the rituals, symbolism, and significance of the Eucharist as they employ alimentary metaphors. My dissertation avoids any sustained examination of the Eucharist, however, for the simple reason that Jennifer Garrison has already written a thoughtful book on communion in Middle English literature.37 The pervasiveness of the Eucharist in late-medieval practice and imagination does mean that I will touch on the subject at relevant points. Chapter three’s study of alimentary reading, a method of reading that seeks to discover the spiritual sense behind the literal exterior of scripture and encounter God, has clear parallels to beliefs about Jesus’s substance hidden in the species of the host. Cleanness, the focus of the fourth chapter, encourages the reader to make comparisons between priestly rituals at the altar and the rituals of service at a lord’s table. The dissertation, similarly, does not say much about the culinary side of late- medieval food. Anyone who reads in hopes of finding creative and mouth-watering medieval dishes, of which there are many, will be sadly disappointed. My focus is on food as a metaphor; metaphors, as are the things they communicate, are seldom physically edible. I do include occasional recipes to aid understanding of historical foods that occur in the texts, but those who are looking for more information about medieval cookery should turn to The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages and Pleyn Delit: Medieval 37. Challenging Communion: The Eucharist and Middle English Literature (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2017). 15 Cookery for Modern Cooks.38 The former is a scholarly work on medieval cookery and theory, while the latter provides adapted recipes for use by modern cooks. There are also a variety of websites for those looking to make medieval dishes such as medievalcookery.com.39 Although the dissertation does not deal directly with medieval cookery, metaphors cannot be divorced from the real sweetness of honey or the warmth of spiced wine. I hope that readers will keep the tastes, textures, and smells of physical food in mind as they read about metaphors of food and eating. METHOD Food studies is eclectic and cross-disciplinary and so my method is similarly eclectic, drawing on linguistics, literary close reading, anthropology, sociology, history, theology, and historical criticism. Of these, the cognitive linguistic theory proposed by Lakoff and Johnson is fundamental. They argue that metaphors help humans conceptualize abstract ideas and that metaphors are frequently grounded in our physical experience of the world. Their classic example is the conceptual metaphor ARGUMENT IS WAR, which shapes the way we think about and engage in discourse.40 As they explain, argumentation becomes a metaphoric “battle” concerned with “taking ground” and not “conceding positions.” Such militaristic behaviors would disappear if we conceptualized discourse as a “dance.”41 Alimentary metaphors of eating, digestion, mastication, and purging are chosen for the way they help writers understand religious 38. Terence Scully, The Art of Cookery in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1995); Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler, Pleyn Delit: Medieval Cookery for Modern Cooks, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996). 39. Daniel Myers et al., “Medieval Cookery,” 2022, medievalcookery.com. 40. Metaphors We Live By, 4–6. The book prints conceptual metaphors in all capitals. 41. Metaphors We Live By, 5. 16 experience. The choice in turn shapes understanding as authors explore the figurative potential of the metaphor. Although Langland surely did not invent the metaphor of the acquisition of acknowledging being consumption, consumption raises the connected experience of digestion, including indigestion. He takes this metaphorical potential to its grotesque conclusion. The metaphorical nature of language can be seen in a very common word that would have been familiar to late-medieval authors, the Latin verb sapio. Sapere means both “to taste and savor” and “to know and understand.”42 The act of knowing is conceptualized through its similarity to discerning taste. Langland recognized the dual meaning, as we will see, and uses it for puns in his comparison of the dangers of acquiring too much knowledge to the perils of overeating. The metaphorical nature of sapio also influences descriptions of reading as eating that invite the reader to savor texts. Reading is not so much the impersonal and objective study of a text as it is in most modern academic interpretation, but a personal and intimate encounter. The metaphorical potential of sapio encourages medieval authors to conceptualize the process of knowing in experiential, bodily, and personal ways that the Modern English verb “to know” does not. Religion is a central focus of this dissertation, so it is well to explain my approach to studying religion, especially at a secular institution where the subject may feel out of place.43 I agree with Barbara Newman’s assessment that, “[F]or us, the secular is the normative, unmarked default category, while the sacred is the marked, asymmetrical 42. Cf. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879). 43. For an excellent meditation on the place and function of religion in modern academia, see Nicholas Wolterstorff’s short Religion in the University (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019). 17 Other. In the Middle Ages it was the reverse.”44 Secular society, especially secular academic culture, may feel that the secular perspective is value neutral and objective. Scholars of secularization have pointed toward the premodern world to argue that modern secular “conditions of belief” are actually not so neutral.45 The effect that this difference in conditions of belief has on scholarship is something that medieval scholars have discussed heatedly.46 My perspective is that the difference does matter and that unrecognized secular presuppositions can present obstacles to a sensitive and full interpretation of medieval literature. Like Bynum, My purpose…[is] to put the behavior, the symbols, and the convictions of women and men in the distant past into their full context. Only by considering all the meanings and functions of medieval practice and belief can we explain medieval experience without removing its creativity and dignity.47 I recognize that there are limits to such attempts. One can never read medieval literature as a “native,” especially since medieval readers were by no means homogeneous.48 Nevertheless, religion is inseparable from every area of life in the Middle Ages and so an 44. Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular Against the Sacred (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), viii. 45. Taylor, A Secular Age, 4. Cf. also the discussion in chapter three of the dissertation on positionality and the contemporary theoretical rejection of a generic human perspective. 46. In the study of Chaucer see for example Jill Mann, “Chaucer and Atheism,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995): 5–19 and V. A. Kolve, “God-Denying Fools and the Medieval ‘Religion of Love,’” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (2017): 3–59. 47. Holy Feast and Holy Fast, 298–99 (emphasis original). 48. My analysis focuses on the most obvious allusions to scripture and patristic writers, those that would be recognizable to the widest audience of late-medieval readers. My hope is that this avoids the extremes of Robertsonianism, while being alert to the pervasive presence of these texts in medieval culture and imagination. 18 examination of it is often the fastest route to what a secular era considers separate facets of life.49 For that reason, religion is one of the central focuses of my study. Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age provides a theoretical framework for understanding the contrast between religious belief in medieval society and the modern “secular age,” even where I do not reference him directly. His perspicacious work charts the shift in conditions of beliefs in the North Atlantic world from an enchanted universe in which the spiritual imbricated the natural, to the modern secular age of disenchantment in which humans and their affairs are “buffered” from supernatural influence. Modernity, as opposed to the premodern, is characterized by the “immanent frame” in which “the buffered identity of the disciplined individual moves in a constructed social space, where instrumental rationality is a key value, and time is pervasively secular…this frame constitutes a ‘natural’ order, to be contrasted to a ‘supernatural’ one, an ‘immanent’ world over against a possible ‘transcendent’ one.”50 His ideas are helpful for understanding the alterity of medieval religious belief and approaching texts on their own terms. I also firmly believe that the past should be in conversation with the present. Being clear about the similarities and differences, especially in terms of belief, are critical for doing so in a rigorous manner. Historical background, both sources from the late Middle Ages and contemporary, are a significant part of my analysis. I make frequent reference to late-medieval works on physiology and cultural customs that provide context for alimentary metaphors. On the 49. Miri Rubin provides a statement of her approach to studying religion which may be helpful here: “[R]eligion can be best understood if it is not set apart from the social, not seen as an entity sui generis but rather as a culture, a system of meaning which represents and constructs experience and imagination,” Corpus Christi, 7. 50. Taylor, Secular Age, 542. 19 Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum offers an understanding of digestion, humoral theory, and taste that are contemporary to the medieval texts in the dissertation. Chapter four makes extensive use of courtesy guides written around the same time as Cleanness. Besides these medieval sources, I rely on modern works that look at food and foodways from a historical, transcultural, and/or anthropological perspective. TEXTS The primary late-medieval texts that I explore fit within Watson’s category of vernacular theology. Chapters one, two, and four focus on long poems: William Langland’s Piers Plowman and the Pearl-Poet’s Cleanness. Alimentary metaphors in discussions of theology and religion are not restricted to Middle English poetry and so chapter three considers three prose devotional guides: the anonymous Ladder of Foure Ronges, Nicholas Love’s A Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection. Poetic texts, however, make up the bulk of the chapters because their metaphors typically recur throughout the whole work, as part of their literary design and effects. Piers Plowman maintains appetite and hunger as a metaphorical lens to understand social and religious crises in England. Cleanness’s core metaphor of the hospitable reception by hosts and courteous behavior by guests at a meal is critical to understanding the biblical adaptations that make up the poem. The usage of alimentary metaphors in the prose texts, in contrast, tend to characterize sections rather than the work as a whole. 20 The time frame for the primary texts in the dissertation is a little over hundred years, from circa 1365 when the first version of Piers Plowman was first composed to the earliest surviving manuscript of A Ladder of Foure Ronges in the second half of the fifteenth century.51 My analysis is thus primarily synchronic rather than diachronic. Although the time period is short, it was one of remarkable linguistic change. Within this time span, Middle English overtakes Anglo-Norman French and Latin as an acceptable literary language in England.52 In 1362 the English parliament was first opened with a speech in the vernacular, demonstrating the growing political and cultural acceptance of Middle English. The shift to the vernacular brought with it intense debates at Oxford and other locations as to whether religious texts, especially scripture, should be available in Middle English.53 Like food metaphors, vernacularization makes ideas more accessible while threatening transformation and change. Chapter three will delve more into these concerns. By 1410, Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions outlawed possession of texts with translated scripture, curtailing and reshaping the religious writing that followed. The late- medieval vernacular texts in the dissertation represent creative and innovative explorations of the vernacular’s potential to discuss theology, and the bitter debates about its ability to do so. 51. The Middle English version of A Ladder of Foure Ronges was likely composed in the late fourteenth century although no early copies are extant. See Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks: A Letter on the Contemplative Life and Twelve Meditations, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 30. 52. Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England,” 838. See also Nicholas Watson, “The Politics of Middle English Writing,” in The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 331–52. 53. Watson presents an excellent summary of the debate in, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late- Medieval England.” See also Vincent Gillespie, “Vernacular Theology,” in Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 401–20. 21 CHAPTERS Chapters one and two explore the theme of appetite in the late fourteenth century poem Piers Plowman. The poem, as is well known, broadly critiques the religious, social, and political state of contemporary English society. Chapter one examines a dialogue between a personified Hunger, representing bodily appetite, and Piers Plowman, who represents the agricultural class that supplies food to maintain society’s common life. Piers seeks to justly allocate food in the face of new types of poverty: landless beggars and the urban poor. A changing economy and greater geographic mobility mean that strategies of poverty relief developed for stable, agriculturally-based local communities are no longer effective. Piers and Hunger adapt church canon law about poverty relief to the new social conditions. Balancing bodily need with religious teaching, they identify food as a basic human right, while arguing that those who contribute more to society deserve to eat better. There is a limit to eating better, however; Hunger follows medieval medical theory in recommending a moderate diet. Hunger also commends giving food to the deserving poor as part of a healthy diet, presenting a socially and morally embedded conception of eating. The second chapter explores conceptual parallels in Piers Plowman between appetite for food and appetite for knowledge. The poem excoriates religious orders like the Franciscans and Dominicans for over-consuming religious knowledge and bodily food, depriving the truly needy of spiritual and bodily nourishment. They maintain their luxurious consumption by exchanging money for spiritual services, leading these orders to prefer serving the rich to the poor. In a comically grotesque scene, the mendicants’ 22 gluttony produces intellectual and bodily indigestion. The poem depicts an apocalyptic end for society unless these groups return to a moderate intellectual and bodily diet. Piers Plowman’s alimentary metaphors reveal a conceptual similarity for medieval authors between the spiritual and the material. A society’s health is viewed holistically, requiring for its continued functioning religious and physical nourishment for all its members. Chapter three examines alimentary descriptions of religious reading practice in devotional texts. The metaphorical language presents reading as a sensual, embodied, and transformative experience. Texts enter the mouth, are chewed, tasted, and then savored. This subjective experience of reading texts raised fears of heresy and political and religious schism as vernacular religious writing reached audiences outside the Latin educated ecclesiastical hierarchy. I explore how vernacular devotional writers address these concerns by emphasizing the importance of the moral, doctrinal, and religious state of the reader, often through alimentary metaphors. Because of the transformational nature of alimentary reading, the positionality of the consumer matters for arriving at a correct interpretation. Amid the discussion of late-medieval religious reading, the chapter reflects on parallels to discussions in modern literary interpretation. The fourth and final chapter looks at Cleanness, a poem that blurs the distinction between morals and manners through its adaptation of biblical narratives of hospitality to conform to late-medieval courtly behavior. The anonymous Pearl-Poet combines the classical and ecclesiastical meanings of Latin mundus in his presentation of Middle English clene as meaning both courtly, noble, and refined and morally pure and pious. Courtly behavior, which centered around the rituals of eating together in a hall, was a 23 pressing concern in the later Middle Ages and produced many Middle English courtesy guides. The observance of the rules of courteous hospitality and of social hierarchy at meals by characters like Abraham, Lot, and most of all Jesus demonstrates their cleanness, while the moral filth of figures like the men of Sodom and Belshazzar is revealed by their base and low-class behavior and disregard of class distinctions. Cleanness gives courtly rituals of hospitality, order, and hierarchy at feasts a religious significance that affirms the upper class’s exalted status against the rising urban class and peasants. Together these chapters explore the use of metaphors of food and drink to think about religious experience and ideas. They reveal the breadth and creativity of religious writing in the vernacular in late-medieval England. They also show the way that metaphors give shape to the ideas which they communicate, transforming their content in the process. Religion in fourteenth and fifteenth century England appears through the metaphors as social, embedded in communities and relationships. It is not just an intellectual or abstract exercise but experiential, as authors turned to alimentary metaphor to understand their experiences and communicate those experiences to others. Religious practice and theology were conceptualized and thought about in an embodied manner, transforming them in the process. These chapters are an invitation to taste, think about, and delight in what is at once familiar and foreign in the literature of late-medieval England. 24 Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill. — Matthew 5:6 CHAPTER 1 — HUNGER AND THE HUNGRY: JUST DISTRIBUTION OF FOOD IN PIERS’S ENGLAND Food and drink have a special place in Piers Plowman, which makes Langland’s expansive poem a good place to begin to explore the intersection of food and religion in late-medieval English literature. Early in Piers Plowman, Holy Church, the first character that Will meets after he describes the “fair feeld ful of folk” in the prologue, tells him that Truth, …hi te þe erþe to helpe yow echoneʒ Of wollene, of lynnen, of liflode at nede In mesurable manere to make yow at ese; And comaunded of his curteisie in commune þree þynges: Are none nedfulle but þo, and nempne hem I þynke, And rekene hem by reson — reherce þow hem after. ‘That oon is vesture from chele þee to saue And mete at meel for mysese of þiselue, And drynke whan þow driest — ac do no t out of reson,ʒ (B.I.17–25)1 […ordered the earth to help each one of you 1. Quotations from Piers Plowman will be from Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions in Two Volumes, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, 2nd ed. (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2011). All translations of Piers Plowman are my own unless otherwise noted. I have chosen the B-text as the primary version I will reference since its use of food metaphors is greater. However, I will interweave the C-text into my analysis at specific points. Rather than trying to arrive at Langland’s final or official view on a subject, I want to give the range of his thought, which is complex and constantly developing. 25 With wool, linen, of sustenance at need2 In a moderate manner to give you comfort; And commanded of his courtesy three things in common: No others are necessary but these, and I deem it fitting to name them, And enumerate them by reason — rehearse them afterward. ‘The first is clothing to save you from chill And food at meal to save yourself from hardship, And drink when you are dry — but do not consume unreasonably,] Holy Church informs Will that Truth, a character associated with God and conformity with reality, has provided three things that are in common to all people and necessary for life: clothes, food, and drink.3 Although they are necessary and common, these three are to be used in a “mesurable” or moderate manner. As Holy Church reiterates to Will a few lines later, “Mesure is medicine…It is nou t al good to þe goost þat þe gut askeþ” ʒ [Moderation is medicine…What the stomach asks for is not entirely good for the spirit] (B.I.35–36). It may seem odd that the first subject Holy Church discusses with Will is material necessities like food, clothes, and drink, yet this decision reflects the way the poet’s own religious and spiritual concerns are inseparable from the physical realities of daily life. Food and food related issues are seldom absent as Will ranges far and wide over the religious, political, and social landscape of late-medieval England. 2. While I have chosen to translate liflode as sustenance in chapters 1 and 2, the word has broader connotations in Piers Plowman. Liflode is that which sustains biological, social, and spiritual life. Cf. lif-lode n., MED. 3. This list has its origin in Matthew 6:31, “Be not solicitous therefore, saying, What shall we eat: or what shall we drink, or wherewith shall we be clothed?” See Jill Mann, “The Nature of Need Revisited,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 18 (2004): 16. The C-text places food in the first place and clothing second, suggesting a shift in importance (C.I.23). 26 The prominence of food and drink is reflected in the way appetite, especially appetite that goes beyond measure, is a driving force in the poem. Hunger and thirst are fundamental human drives in Piers Plowman, more so than sex or procreation. They initiate action and motivate characters. Yet food and hunger in the poem are seldom to be understood in a strictly material sense. More so than modern English usage of appetite, Latin appetitus denotes both a desire for material food and goods and a desire for abstract objects like knowledge, power, and love.4 The poem resists the tendency to separate hunger for bodily food from hunger for intangible or spiritual nourishment. I am not the first to point out the problem with dichotomies in the poem. David Aers, responding to scholarship that divides the sacramental meaning of the Eucharist from its social significance, argues that such attempts are, “[P]remised on a range of splittings strenuously opposed in Piers Plowman: namely, splitting off the spiritual from the social and material practices, sacramental theology from ethics, and individual spirituality from the community’s forms of life.”5 In one of the few scholarly works to focus on food in Piers Plowman, Jill Mann writes that “If on the one hand the material world is interpenetrated by a spiritual reality which transcends material laws, on the other hand the laws of the material world interpenetrate spiritual reality and resolve some of the [poem’s] most fundamental problems.”6 This chapter and the next spring from a similar 4. See appeto in Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary. 5. Sanctifying Signs: Making Christian Tradition in Late Medieval England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 34 (my emphasis). 6. Jill Mann, “Eating and Drinking in ‘Piers Plowman,’” in Essays and Studies, 32 (London: John Murray, 1979), 27. Mann implicitly responds to interpretations that discard the material in favor of spiritual interpretation. This is best represented by D. W. Robertson’s exegetical interpretive method, present in books like Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition (1951). It is perhaps a slight difference, but I see the material and spiritual in the poem existing in a hypostatic union, to borrow language from Christian theology. My hope is that this incarnational approach balances the excesses of Robertson’s exegetical criticism with a due recognition of the spiritual and religious depths of Piers Plowman. 27 interest in the interweaving of the spiritual and material in the poem. Since I will spend most of my time exploring metaphors and synecdoche, it is important to keep in mind the idea stemming from cognitive linguistics that I discussed in the introduction, that metaphors are conceptual, revealing and constructing perceptions of reality. It is sometimes difficult to determine in Piers Plowman whether a metaphor is using a material reality to explain a spiritual idea or whether a spiritual or intellectual concept is shaping the understanding of a material reality through a chosen metaphor. Although the themes of food, appetite, and moderation occur throughout Piers Plowman, I want to focus on the subject of hunger in this and the next chapter, both how it can be dangerous and what the poem offers as a solution to that danger. The natural starting point is the character of Hunger who appears in the episode of the half-acre in passus VI of the B-text. Piers Plowman is deeply concerned with the just distribution of food and drink, two of the three necessities of life. Hunger and the character of Piers Plowman discuss how best to allocate food and drink and how to discern when someone is truly in need. It is a conversation that is as inseparable from the economic realities of late fourteenth century England as it is from canon law and Christian scripture. Hunger argues for the distribution of food to all that are hungry including, controversially, able- bodied beggars. He bases his position on the Great Commandment from Matthew 22:36– 40. In an innovation that harmonizes differing positions in canon law, Hunger asserts that everyone should be given food according to their level of need. Able-bodied men who refuse to work should be given the cheapest and lowest quality food, while the truly needy, the new urban poor who struggle to provide for themselves, and one’s nearest 28 physical neighbors should receive greater support. The upper classes, because of their higher place in the social hierarchy, deserve better quality food, but their diet should be governed by moderation and a continual awareness of the hunger of the truly needy. Although this approach to the distribution of food and the maintenance of the common life of Langland’s society is far from perfect, it seeks a just response to pressing bodily needs while Piers Plowman was composed. The second chapter continues the focus on hunger in Piers Plowman, while narrowing its attention to a particular group in fourteenth century English society that made its living through begging: the mendicant orders. Through vicious satire during the banquet at Conscience’s house, the poem calls attention to the way the mendicant orders have neglected their function as spiritual curators to the poor, particularly in the sacrament of penance, in order to feed their own bodily and intellectual appetites. Consuming in this manner, they imitate Adam and Eve’s joined desire for more food and knowledge that led to the fall of humankind. The result is intellectual/exegetical indigestion for the friars and harm to the materially poor and poorly educated. In the end of the poem, the insatiable hunger of “[F]reres, [of] alle þe foure orders” [Friars of all the four orders] who go about “Prechynge þe peple for profit of þe wombe” [Preaching to the people for the benefit of the belly] (B.Pro.58–59) leads to the fall of the Church. If “mesurable” hunger leads to life, uncontrolled hunger leads to spiritual and bodily disease, both for the individual and for Langland’s society. 29 THE EXPERIENCE OF HUNGER Even behind a simple word like “hunger,” there is a surprising range of meanings. In a developed country like the United States, a little over ten percent of the population faced food insecurity in 2021.7 Worldwide in 2020, around ten percent of the population experienced undernourishment.8 The experience of hunger in this case indicates a struggle to satisfy basic dietary needs. Humans, however, can hunger when basic dietary requirements have been met, hungering and eating in ways that are dysfunctional and unhealthy.9 This diverse experience of bodily hunger in part explains how food scarcity can coexist with a 42.2% rate of obesity in the United States.10 Multiple types of hunger can coexist, with different segments of a society experiencing hunger in markedly different ways. Langland’s own depiction of a personified Hunger reflects this complexity, and a deep concern that food is distributed justly to those who need it most. Studies of the figure of Hunger in Piers Plowman have struggled with this complexity, leading either to over-simplification or a surrender to Hunger as “contradictory” and “chaotic.”11 On a literal level, many scholars have identified Hunger 7. United States Department of Agriculture, “USDA ERS - Food Security and Nutrition Assistance,” accessed December 15, 2022, https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting- the-essentials/food-security-and-nutrition-assistance/. 8. Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, “The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021,” accessed December 15, 2022, https://www.fao.org/state-of-food-security- nutrition/2021/en/. 9. For a modern exploration of this from a religious perspective see Wirzba’s Food and Faith, especially 149–51. As will be seen, Wirzba’s impulse to critique modern industrial food production from a theological perspective resonates with Langland’s application of theological ideas to critique issues surrounding food distribution in his historical context. 10. Craig M Hales et al., “Prevalence of Obesity and Severe Obesity Among Adults: United States, 2017– 2018,” NCHS Data Brief, 360 (2020), 1. 11. C. David Benson and S. Elizabeth Passmore, “The Discourses of Hunger in Piers Plowman,” in Satura: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo, ed. Nancy M. Reale and Ruth E. Sternglantz (Donington, UK: Shaun Tyas, 2001), 151. They write that “He is a name under which a 30 with famine or another type of food scarcity such as the “hunger-gap,” that portion of the medieval year prior to harvest in late summer when stores of food ran low.12 This perspective on Hunger as primarily food scarcity seems to be driven by a popular association of the Middle Ages with famine and starvation.13 On the other hand, D. W. Robertson and Bernard F. Huppé, using exegetical criticism, interpret Hunger tropologically as representing “the lack of spiritual food in forgetfulness of the Creator.”14 They thus discard any real bodily association with the character. Part of the difficulty in fixing Hunger’s significance is the character’s moral ambiguity. In times of food scarcity, Hunger can be violent: he beats one man who refuses to work until “he loked lik a lanterne al his lif after” [he looked like a lantern for the rest of his life] (B.VI.177). Yet Hunger also recommends feeding the hungry poor and dispenses standard medieval medical advice about eating in moderation. This puts Hunger in a similar position to morally ambiguous characters like Meed and Need, about which more will be said in the next chapter, who can shift meaning and moral character depending on context. Hunger kaleidoscopic range of competing discourses emerge and disappear. There is no centre to hold, and thus no single interpretive approach can define him, for he speaks with too many voices and acts in too many inconsistent ways. More chaotic than the variety of styles that are said to exist within the unity of a Gothic cathedral, Hunger is perhaps more like the Tower of Babel,” 151. 12. Robert Worth Frank Jr. finds the most evidence for the “hunger gap” directly in the text, but also spends significant space discussing famine: “The ‘Hungry Gap,’ Crop Failure, and Famine: The Fourteenth-Century Agricultural Crisis and Piers Plowman,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 4 (1990): 89–90; Katherine B. Trower, though open to wider meanings of Hunger, also sees famine as a significant aspect of the figure, “The Figure of Hunger in Piers Plowman,” The American Benedictine Review 24, 2 (1973): 242; See also R. E. Kaske, “The Character Hunger in Piers Plowman,” in Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig (Bury St. Edmunds: D. S. Brewer, 1988), 190. 13. This is the mindset that prompted Christopher Dyer’s essay “Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?,” in Food and Eating in Medieval Europe, ed. Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal (London: Hambledon Press, 1998), 53–71. More will be said about Dyer’s essay below. 14. D. W. Robertson Jr. and Bernard Felix Huppé, Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), 84. 31 operates like the word “hunger,” assuming different connotations depending on who is hungry and the conditions of their hunger. I agree with Jill Mann’s observation that, “Langland’s allegory is…rooted in ordinary language use. He does not rely on a fixed cast of personified characters; instead, most of his personifications emerge in a quasi- spontaneous manner out of ordinary abstract nouns, and can revert to this linguistic status once their time in the allegorical limelight is over.”15 The character of Hunger is less a fully developed allegorical figure, such as Hunger in The Romance of the Rose, and more a personified noun, a noun that contains the full semantic and cultural range of the word “hunger.”16 If Hunger in Piers Plowman contains multitudes, that is the linguistic and experiential nature of hunger itself. The identification of Hunger with bodily experience raises an important question. Was widespread starvation actually common when Langland was writing? Hunger is present in the earliest version of Piers Plowman, the Z-text, written around 1365, and remains in the final C-text, written around 1387.17 Access to food underwent a significant change in the years prior to and during the composition of the poem. Death by starvation was a serious threat for peasants between 1290 and 1325, with the years of the Great 15. Mann, “The Nature of Need Revisited,” 13–14. 16. Cf. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose, trans. Frances Horgan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 156. Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith points to Faim in Le Roman de La Rose as a literary predecessor to Hunger. “Allegory on the Half-Acre: The Demands of History,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 10 (1996): 9. The comparison actually calls attention to how different Hunger is in Piers Plowman. While Faim, with her detailed and gruesome physical appearance, is clearly famine, we are hard pressed to find a physical description of Hunger. Hunger’s words and actions, which are all that we have to understand the character, are far more ambiguous. 17. Langland, Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions in Two Volumes, 2:281. Anne Middleton links an autobiographical passage in the C-text with the 1388 Statute of Laborers, extending the composition of the C-text to a year or so afterwards: “Acts of Vagrancy: The C Version ‘Autobiography’ and the Statute of 1388,” in Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 208–318. 32 Famine (1315–18) being the most deadly.18 Christopher Dyer estimates that 10–15 percent of the English population living on manors died in the Great Famine.19 The Black Death also increased mortality, but those who survived in the years that followed benefited from significantly less competition for arable land and food. The years between the Black Death and 1375 did see a number of poor harvests which, if not as deadly as a famine, likely caused food scarcity for the poorest people in society.20 Piers Plowman recounts one of these with unexpected specificity in the B-text, saying that it occurred in April 1370 in London.21 … it is no t longe ypassedʒ There was a careful commune whan no cart com to towne Wiþ bake breed from Stratford; þo gonnen beggeris wepe, And werkmen were agast a litel — þis wole be þou t longe;ʒ In þe date of Oure Dri te, in a drye Aprill,ʒ A þousand and þre hundred, twies þritty and tene, My wafres þere were gesene, whan Chichestre was maire.’ (B.XIII.265b– 271) [ …it is not long since There was a sorrowful commons when no cart came to town With baked bread from Stratford; then beggars began to weep, 18. Dyer, “Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?,” 61, 66. 19. “Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?,” 61. 20. “Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?,” 70; Frank, “The ‘Hungry Gap,’ Crop Failure, and Famine,” 91–92. 21. The passage is absent in the C-text. 33 And workers were a little afraid — this will be remembered for a long time; In the year of our Lord, in a dry April, A thousands and three hundred, twice thirty and ten, My suppliers of wafers were seen there, when Chichester was mayor.’] Beggars weep over it, but workmen must have fared slightly better for they “were [only] agast a litel” (267–68). Harvests improved enough following 1370 that Dyer identifies 1375 as the date when the availability of “cheap and plentiful food” meant that English peasants no longer starved.22 The quality of food and the number of people, even among the lower classes, to which it was available also increased in the last quarter of the fourteenth century, with wheat bread and malted barley ale becoming widely accessible.23 Therefore, attitudes toward food availability underwent a significant shift during the period of the poem’s composition. The Great Famine would have been in recent cultural memory, if not in the actual memory of some of the poem’s readers.24 This memory would stand in stark contrast to greater access to food after the Black Death, especially in the years after 1370. The analysis of Dyer and others on the availability of food matches what is seen in the poem. Peasants are shown experiencing food scarcity, but only one person is 22. Dyer, 70; See also C. M. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 1200–1500 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 214. This was not the case for peasants on the continent where food scarcity continued to be a threat, Dyer 71. 23. Even malted wheat ale, which had been somewhat rare, became more common at this point. See D. J. Stone, “The Consumption of Field Crops in Late Medieval England,” in Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition, ed. C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 23. 24. Food is especially powerful for forming memories. See esp. David E. Sutton, Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory (Oxford: Berg, 2001). 34 explicitly said to die from lack of food, the pauper Lazarus from the parable of Dives and Pauper (C.VIII.280). The Middle English word famyn also only appears a single time in the B-text (B.VI.322).25 The poem’s perspective on hunger is multi-faceted rather than a simple binary between ready access to food and famine. Within Piers Plowman, who is eating, what they are eating, how they eat, and the source of their food are all significant. Lack of food is a problem, but so is overeating or a person eating food that is incongruous with their status and function within ideal medieval society. Food, hunger, and appetite are embedded in a network of cultural, religious, economic, and political expectations. Although food is necessary to the life of the commons, some people in the poem either refuse or are unable to contribute to this common life. How to tell the difference between the two states and how to justly produce and distribute food accordingly are the questions that Hunger and the eponymous Piers Plowman discuss in Passus VI and the episode of the half-acre. THE EPISODE OF THE HALF-ACRE In the B-text, the episode of the half-acre occupies all of Passus VI. It occurs at the end of a series of episodes that follow the order of the sacrament of confession. In Passus V Repentance leads each of the seven deadly sins to confess their guilt. The newly confessed sins and their followers then set off on a pilgrimage, a typical form of penance, in order to receive absolution. Their destination is the dwelling place of Truth, but in an ironic turn of events, the professional pilgrim whom they ask for directions says he has 25. Intriguingly, the word shows up four times in the C-text, which was composed at a time of wider access to food (VII.305, VIII.215, 345 XII.199) The B-text is more likely to talk about “defaute,” i.e., lack or absence of food. For example, Piers Plowman says that “[F]or defaute of hire foode þis folk is at my wille” (B.VI.206). Defaute is a more ambiguous term than a sustained period of food scarcity indicated by the word famine. 35 never heard of Truth (B.V.534–536). The party is rescued by Piers Plowman, who announces that he knows the way to Truth since he has been a servant and tenant of Truth for many years (B.V.537–550). However, he must plow his half-acre before starting on the pilgrimage and invites the pilgrims to join him.26 It soon becomes clear that plowing the field is the pilgrimage to Truth for Truth gives Piers a pardon “a pena et a culpa” [from punishment and guilt] at the completion of his work (B.VII.3).27 Piers Plowman’s sobriquet has tended to focus attention on his economic and political role as a laborer in late-medieval English society, especially following the early scholarship of David Aers and its focus on class conflict.28 While these are valuable readings of the episode, they fail to explain Hunger’s appearance at this particular point. Instead, they reduced Hunger to a brutal form of wish-fulfillment in Piers’s quest to force idle workers back to their labor.29 If we see that Piers is not just any laborer, however, but a character who is intimately connected with growing and providing food for society, 26. The poem refers to the half-acre as a “croft” (B.VI.32, 289). Crofts were small spaces, often enclosed and found in the back of houses, croft n., MED. It might be more accurate to call it a garden rather than a field, but such spaces were significant sources of food for peasants. For more information on medieval gardens see C. C. Dyer, “Gardens and Garden Produce in the Later Middle Ages,” in Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition, ed. C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 27–40. 27. There is significant scholarly debate about whether plowing the half-acre delays the pilgrimage or the plowing is the pilgrimage itself. For scholarship that considers the work to be the pilgrimage see James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2007), 64. For examples of the those who see it as a delay see Hewett-Smith, “Allegory on the Half-Acre”; Denise N. Baker, “From Plowing to Penitence: Piers Plowman and Fourteenth-Century Theology,” Speculum 55, 4 (1980): 715–25. The central difficulty is the meaning of the pardon that follows the plowing and Piers’s motivation for tearing it. Langland has left enough ambiguity for there to be a wide range of interpretations. Steven Justice offers the unique interpretation of two pilgrimages: “a pilgrimage in the half-acre before undertaking the pilgrimage to truth,” Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 123 (emphasis original). 28. See the first chapter of Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing, 1360–1430 (London: Routledge, 1988): 20–72. For a later example see Hewett-Smith, “Allegory on the Half- Acre.” 29. E.g., Margaret Kim, “Hunger, Need, and the Politics of Poverty in Piers Plowman,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 16 (2002): 155–57. 36 Hunger’s appearance is easier to understand.30 Hunger is the fitting counterpart to a character who represents those that provide food to satisfy human appetite.31 Piers often describes himself as providing food. For example, early in Passus VI he declares, For I shal lenen hem liflode, but if þe lond faille, As longe as I lyue, for þe Lordes loue of heuene. (B.VI.17–18) [For I will give them sustenance unless the land fails, As long as I live, for the love of the Lord of heaven.] I have already noted that clothing, food, and drink are presented in the poem as the three things that are needful to the life of all people. Piers expressly provides two of those three.32 As in the first line of the quote, this provision of food is frequently expressed in terms of providing “liflode” (e.g., B.I.17, XI.280, XIV.32). Likewise, a 1388 sermon by Thomas of Whimbledon describes laborers as those who, “geten out of þe erþe bodily liflode for hem and for oþer parties” [get out of the earth bodily sustenance for themselves and other groups], those other parties being the members of the other two orders of medieval society: knights and the clergy.33 A similar function of providing for 30. Mikhail Bakhtin elegantly expresses the association between labor and food that is often lost in the modern era, “In the oldest system of images food was related to work…As the last victorious stage of work, the image of food often symbolized the entire labor process. There were no sharp dividing lines; labor and food represented the two sides of a unique phenomenon,” Rabelais and His World, 281. The mindset that leads modern interpreters to separate food and labor is a common object of critique in contemporary writing on food. See for example the chapter “Eating in Exile: Dysfunction in the World of Food” in Wirzba’s Food and Faith, 113–155. Also Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma. 31. Robert Costomiris sees in Piers “a strong resemblance to Ceres, the goddess of corn and the harvest,” “Langland Reads Ovid: The Myth of Erysichthon and the Figure of Hunger in Piers Plowman,” The Mediaeval Journal 4, 1 (2014): 77. 32. It may be less obvious how Piers provides drink unless we remember that after water, grain based ale was the most common English drink: Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 45. Piers also appears to be involved in making clothing in the B-text (B.V.547), though most of the actual work is assigned to his female followers (B.VI.9–15). 33. Qtd. in Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 7, 180n13. Conversely, failure to supply food would result in the death of the other two orders: “[T]o laboreris it falleþ to trauayle bodily and 37 all three orders is given to “plowmen” in the Prologue at the direction of “trewe lif” [true life] (B.Pro.119–20). Food, quite simply, is life within the world of the poem. Piers Plowman, at this point, is the primary representative of the group in society that grows and harvests food to sustain the bodily life of the commons.34 Because Piers Plowman’s role is to provide “liflode” for English society, he has a special concern that his food is justly distributed and used. Piers commits to supplying nourishment to all who live rightly: And alle kynne crafty men þat konne lyuen in truþe, I shal fynden hem fode þat feiþfulliche libbeþ (B.VI.68–69) [And all kinds of skilled men that can live in truth, I will find those food that live faithfully] Truth and Holy Church exclude all those who do not live faithfully, including dice- players, jongleurs, prostitutes, pimps, false friars, liars, and performers (B.VI.70–76). In the prologue, a similar list of occupations (B.Pro.31–39) is contrasted with those like Piers who provide food: Somme putten hem to þe plou , pleiden ful selde, ʒ In settyng and sowynge swonken ful harde, wiþ here sore swet geten out of þe erþe bodily liflode for hem and for oþer parties….And if laboreris ȝ weren not, boþe prestis and kny tis mosten bicome acremen and heerdis, and ellis þey sholde fo ȝ defaute of bodily sustenaunce deie,” 7–8. [To laborers it falls to work bodily and get, with their painful sweat, out of the earth bodily sustenance for themselves and other groups…And if laborers were not, both priests and knights must become plowman and herdsman, or they would die for lack of bodily sustenance]. This sermon, as Aers points out, was preached by a member of the clergy very much interested in continuing to be fed. For a classic study of the three orders see Georges Duby’s The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 34. Communes is a word with broad connotations in Piers Plowman. We have already seen it appear in the opening quote as an adjective. As a noun, it can refer to the people of a society as a whole or a group within the whole. It can also refer to the sustenance of the communes. See communes n., MED. 38 And wonnen þat þise wastours wiþ glotonye destruyeþ. (B.Pr.20–22) [ Some set themselves to the plow, relaxed seldom, Worked diligently in planting and sowing, And won what these wasters destroy through gluttony.] Agricultural laborers win food for the commons, while others use it recklessly, returning nothing to society’s common life. Because they contribute nothing, they are placed outside the circle of those who receive the food/life provided by Piers.35 Determining when to supply food to “Bidderes and beggeres,” who come after the above occupations in the prologue (B.Pro.40) and appear throughout Passus VI, presents a more complex and fraught question. The episode of the half-acre attempts to harmonize, not always successfully, the tensions inherent in medieval Christianity’s own understanding of the just provision of food for beggars and the poor. WHAT TO DO ABOUT BEGGARS The passus expresses a harsh view of those who claim to be unable to work on the half-acre. When Piers threatens that those who fail to work will die of hunger, Tho were faitours afered, and feyned hem blynde; Somme leide hir legges aliry, as swiche losels konneþ, And made hir pleynt to Piers and preide hym of grace: ‘For we haue no lymes to laboure with, Lord, ygraced be ye! 35. Langland may be taking as his point of departure an Augustinian idea transmitted through canon law that prohibited giving alms to “sinful” occupations. A quote from Augustine in Gratian’s Decretum states that, “It is more useful to take bread away from a hungry man than to break bread for him if, being sure of his food, he neglected righteousness” qtd. in Brian Tierney, “The Decretists and the ‘Deserving Poor,’” Comparative Studies in Society and History 1, 4 (1959): 363. The presentation of food as sustaining life for the commons, however, suggests that Langland was integrating Augustine’s instructions into a more complex social theory. 39 Ac we preie for yow, Piers, and for youre plowʒ boþe, That God of his grace youre greyn multiplie, And yelde yow of youre almesse þat ye yueʒ vs here; For we may neiþer swynke ne swete, swich siknesse vs eyleþ.’ (B.VI.121– 128) [ Then were the deceivers afraid, and pretended to be blind; Some laid their legs as if paralyzed, as such rouges can, And made their complaint to Piers and asked him for grace: ‘For we do not have limbs to labor with, Lord, grace be to you! But we pray for you, Piers, and for your plow, That God by his grace may multiply your grain, And you bestow your alms that you gave us here; For we can neither work or sweat, because of the sickness that afflicts us.’] The speakers claim physical disabilities which prevent them from working and instead offer to pray for a good harvest in exchange for food. Their contribution to the life of society will be spiritual rather than bodily labor, for which they expect to share in its “liflode.” However, the narrator has already declared that they are “faitours” who are faking their disabilities, preparing the reader to interpret their speech as a lie. Piers responds accordingly, using language similar to that of the prologue: “Ye ben wastours… and Truþe woot þe soþe” who “wasten þat men wynnen wiþ trauaille and wiþ tene” [You 40 are wasters…and Truth knows it truly] who [waste what men win with labor and with hardship] (B.VI.130, 133).36 This wasting manifests in two ways. First, the wasters consume what others contribute to the life of the commons while returning nothing to it.37 Spiritual contributions are valid within the poem’s framework. As chapter two will show, spiritual and physical nourishment are difficult to separate in Piers Plowman and are equally important to the life of Langland’s society. Prayers for a better harvest from this group contribute nothing to society because they are offered by “faitours” and liars, making the prayers ineffectual. Second, the wasters waste in the sense of prodigious living. Beggars are frequently depicted as gluttonous in the poem. For example, “In glotonye, God woot, go þei to bedde / And risen wiþ ribaudie” [In gluttony, God knows, they go to bed / And rise with debauchery] (B.Pro.43–44). Likewise, they waste themselves in sexual excess: “Thei ne wedde no wommen…But as wilde bestes with ‘wehee’ worþen vppe and werchen, / And bryngen forþ barnes þat bastardes men calleþ” [They do not wed women…But as wild beasts with ‘whoopee’ mount and work, / And bring forth children that men call bastards] (B.VII.89–91). Wasters, not Hunger, are the antithesis to Piers who wins food from the earth. Piers’s harsh response, his calling of the knight and then 36. “Win” reflects the ME verb winnen, which often carries the idea of gaining or acquiring something through effort. Hence, the MED defines winnere as “One who earns his keep or produces wealth, goods, etc. through labor.” Winner and Waster appear as characters in the allegorical poem “Wynnere and Wastoure,” which was likely produced just after the middle of the fourteenth century. Warren Ginsberg, ed., Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages, (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992). 37. For a perspective on beggars as outside the medieval social structure see Lawrence M. Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse”: Langland and the Franciscans (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 145. 41 Hunger to force them to work, can in part be explained by the direct affront they represent; they misuse the very thing that he works to provide. Piers’s first attempt to force the wasters to work is through the use of the “lawe, and lasse of þe knyʒte” [law, and the leash of the knight] (B.VI.168). Following the Black Death, labor was in great demand, which allowed peasants to bargain for greater payment in food or money, and even for those who had traditionally been bound to a particular lord and his land to leave in search of a more generous employer.38 Scholars like David Aers have identified the beggars in the poem with these landless peasants seeking better wages.39 A series of laws, such as the 1351 Statute of Laborers, attempted to prevent wage inflation caused by wandering peasants. These were accompanied by sumptuary laws that attempted to fix the types of goods consumed by different classes. One 1363 sumptuary law aimed to limit the diet of those below the rank of grooms “to one meal a day of meat or fish, with other items, such as milk, cheese, and butter, according to their estate.”40 The rising standard of living and the ability of some to eat above what they had before the plague was viewed as a threat by those of higher status. Yet the number of laws that were passed to control wages suggests that they were frequently ignored. Labor was in too great a demand and many in the knightly class were willing to pay according to the law of supply and demand. The failure of these laws is reflected by the wasters ignoring 38. Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 26–27. 39. Aers argues that framing landless peasants as lazy beggars was in line with the economic interests of the gentry class following the Black Death, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 40–41. Though I agree with Aers’s critique of the economic inequality that the poem appears to support, I think Langland is trying to arrive at a state that is just within the theological and social assumptions of his era, however different those assumptions are from our own. 40. C. M. Woolgar, “Group Diets in Late-Medieval England,” in Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition, ed. C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 196 (emphasis mine). Laws such as this also argue against widespread famine and food scarcity. 42 the knight’s threats. Piers must turn to a force more powerful and fundamental than human laws and violence: Hunger. As has been argued, Hunger in the episode of the half acre is not Pier’s archetypal opposite. Unlike the wasters, who consume without returning anything to the common life, Hunger motivates people to return to agricultural labor. Hunger is better understood as complementing Piers: Piers provides food to satisfy human appetite, an appetite represented by Hunger. They work in tandem, sharing similar opinions and attitudes. When Hunger arrives, he strikes one of the wasters “aboute þe chekes / That he loked lik a lanterne al his lif after. / He bette hem so…he brast ner hire guttes” [about the cheeks / So that he looked like a lantern the rest of his life. He beat him so…he nearly ruptured his guts] (B.VI.176–78). The beggar only survives because Piers, seeing his suffering, has pity on the man and gives him a “pese loof,” the cheapest type of bread made from dried peas and beans (B.VI.179).41 Through the provision of basic nourishment, Piers, in his role as supplier of food for society, rescues the waster from the worst violence of Hunger. The episode shows that Hunger and appetite, as internal human drives, are more powerful to direct human behavior than the external legal and political authority represented by the knight. Hunger can harm humans more deeply than human violence, and provoke natural human pity more easily. Hunger’s violence does have the desired effect, motivating where the knight cannot, though as we will see at the end of the chapter, Hunger’s power is not as enduring as Piers would like. Deceitful “faitours” fly to barns and hermits grab spades and cut their cloaks short (B.VI.183-190). In a mock 41. Wheat bread was the highest quality bread followed by maslin, a mixture of rye and wheat. Dredge, a mixture of barley and oats, was used for the next cheaper grade of bread. Bread made from peas and beans was the cheapest and the lowest quality. It was often associated with food for livestock (e.g., B.VI.193, 214). See Stone, “The Consumption of Field Crops in Late Medieval England,” 13. 43 miracle, the blind and lame that told Piers they could not work are suddenly “healed” (B.VI.191–192). The C-text shows priests and friars—the latter are the poem’s special target in later passus—joining in the race to work (VII.190–191). We can see here that the problem is not a lack of food, as there would be in a famine. There is food for those that are willing to work for it, even if they receive the bare minimum. As Piers says, “I shal fynden hem fode þat feiþfulliche libbeþ [I will find those food that live faithfully] (B.VI.69). Piers’s assessment of the availability of food matches the historical availability of food that we examined earlier. Hunger’s “miracle,” however, leaves some questions unanswered. What do medieval church teachings and ethics say about the obligation to distribute food to those who either are unable to work or will not work?42 The success of Hunger in motivating the wasters leads Piers to a dialogue with Hunger about how to justly distribute food to those who are poor.43 For canon lawyers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, identifying the “deserving poor” and the types of aid Christians were obligated to give to them was an area of significant thought.44 In contemporary society with government welfare systems, individual and religious charity seems less important. These were vital questions, however, for the functioning of medieval society. Brian Tierney writes that, “When a bishop helped the poor from 42. Modern food supply is far beyond what it was in late fourteenth century England, yet similar questions are still asked in today’s secular societies. It is a reminder that food inequality, even in the presence of plenty, is a problem that has yet to be solved. 43. Though the virtue of justice is not mentioned in this section of the poem, it underlies the urge to rightly distribute food. Kaske makes a strong case in “The Character of Hunger in Piers Plowman” for connecting the figure of Hunger to Matthew 5:6, which praises a hunger and thirst for justice, 190. See the chapter’s epigraph. 44. See Brian Tierney, Medieval Poor Law: A Sketch of Canonical Theory and Its Application in England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959) and Tierney, “The Decretists and the ‘Deserving Poor.’” Also Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). 44 ecclesiastical revenues, it was precisely public assistance that he was administering.”45 Alms distributed by churches, as well as by private individuals, were the primary social mechanism for dealing with poverty. In other words, private alms were public welfare. A modern mindset, which would see religion, politics, social welfare, and food as separate spheres, is quite different from the conceptual unity that is present in Piers Plowman.46 Piers and Hunger are the figures who discuss the distribution of alms to those in need because food in general, and bread in particular, were the primary form of alms alongside clothing.47 It is worth briefly considering why bread is mentioned so often as the appropriate food to give to those in need. As will be seen later, vegetables were a cheap food associated with peasants. The giving of alms in the form of money is also nearly absent in the poem. This medieval preference for giving bread instead of money had nothing to do with the modern concern that beggars will misue gifts of cash. Instead, cultural practice and religious tradition drove the choice to give alms in the form of bread.48 On a purely dietary level, bread was a basic food stuff in medieval England, as it was for many medieval people. This is reflected in the narrator’s statement in the next passus that, “He haþ ynou that haþ bred ynou , þou he haue no t ellis” [He has enough ʒ ʒ ʒ ʒ 45. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 44. 46. The idea of modernity as marked by a series of separate ideological spheres derives from sociologist Max Weber. See for example, “Science as Vocation,” in From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology., trans. C. Wright Mills and H. H. Gerth, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), 129–56. Kim similarly observes how difficult it is to maintain the modern separation of religion and politics in the poem’s conception of poverty, “Hunger, Need, and the Politics of Poverty in Piers Plowman,” 132. 47. Cf. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 52. 48. For an example of just how important bread can be to a culture, see Carole M. Counihan, “Bread as World: Food Habits and Social Relations in Modernizing Sardinia,” Anthropological Quarterly 57, 2 (1984): 47–59. Counichan’s analysis shows the fundamental role bread played in shaping social relations within a Sardinian village and the way the arrival of industrially produced bread permanently altered the community. 45 that has bread enough, though he has nothing else] (B.VII.84). The identity of bread as a basic food, however, cannot be separated from its religious significance. Anyone who said or heard the Pater Noster, from peasants to the king, would be familiar with the way that the request for daily bread functioned as a synecdoche for the fulfillment of all basic bodily needs. When the narrator says that bread alone is sufficient, his evidence was likely not medical authority but scripture, variously traced to 1 Timothy 6:8, the Pater Noster, and a quote from Jerome.49 In the ritualized giving of alms by the upper classes, bread was favored for its imitation of Jesus’ miracle of feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes.50 Thus, even when bread was used in a primarily material sense, i.e., to feed bodily hunger, it was inevitably part of a powerful system of cultural and religious meaning. Hunger’s advice, which frequently matches Piers’s earlier actions, generally aligns with the mainstream of canon law from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.51 He offers common-sense advice with support from sacred texts and church authorities, reflecting his role as human appetite guided by natural reason and scripture. For example, Hunger makes a distinction between those that are able to work and those that are truly needy: Bolde beggeris and bigge þat mowe hir breed biswynke, 49. Ralph Hanna, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman: C Passūs 5–9; B Passūs 5–7; A Passūs 5–8 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 2:297. 50. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 228–29. Barley loaves were preferred in order to better match the scriptural account. Herrings were the traditional English choice for the fish. 51. See Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, especially chapters 2 and 3. It is important to note that economic conditions in the second half of the fourteenth century in England were different in important ways from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is an important source of tensions in the episode of the half-acre as the poem struggles to adapt older ideas about poverty relief to new economic conditions. More will be said about this later in the chapter. 46 Wiþ houndes breed and horse breed hoold vp hir hertes — Abaue hem wiþ benes, for bollynge of hir wombe; And if þe gromes grucche, bidde hem go swynke, And he shal soupe swetter whan he it hath deserued. (B.VI.213–17) [Big and strong beggars that might produce bread by their labor, Hold up their hearts with dog’s bread and horses bread — Supply them with beans for the growling of their bellies; And if the men complain, bid them go and work, And they will sup on more pleasing food when they have earned it.] Hunger’s advice is to give beggars who appear able to work, i.e., “Bolde beggeris and bigge,” the cheapest and coarsest food available. Those that desire “swettere” food will be motivated by their own appetite to work for it. In contrast, the deserving poor are to be fed generously. Hunger says that, Ac if þow fynde any freke þat Fortune haþ apeired Oþer any manere false men, fonde þow swiche to knowe: Conforte hem wiþ þi catel for Cristes loue of heuene; Loue hem and lene hem — so law of kynde wolde: Alter alterius onera portate (B.VI.218–221)52 [But if you find any one that Fortune has harmed Or any kind of false man, search to know such ones: Comfort them with your possessions for Christ’s love of heaven; 52. As with “loue,” the usage of the tag from Galatians 6:2 suggests that the onera are not to be spiritualized. They include physical burdens and suffering. 47 Love them and give to them — so the law of nature requires: Bear one another’s burdens] “Ac” here emphases the difference with the group in the previous lines. Unlike the bold beggars who choose not to work, these people experience involuntary poverty. Misfortune or the deceitfulness of others has caused their state of need. Hunger says that these poor should be given food generously according to the demands of love. Modern associations of love with an abstract and subjective emotional state can lead us to misunderstand the argument at this point. Here love obligates a person to give tangible aid, “þi catel,” to those in need.53 Both religious and natural understandings of love support this action, i.e., “Cristes loue,” and the “law of kynde.” Hunger’s grounding of the obligation to feed the poor in love reflects canon law. According to canon theologians, the obligation of all Christians to feed the poor rested first of all on the Great Commandment from Matthew 22:37–39, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and…Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.”54 It is a critical passage of scripture not only for the poem overall but for discussions of food in Piers Plowman.55 We will see allusions to the Great Commandant elsewhere in the poem. There was little that was controversial about Hunger’s use of the Great Command to support feeding those who were poor and hungry through no fault of their own. Giving to the truly needy would raise few objections for the poem’s original audience. Hunger, 53. We can see an example here of how Modern English charity had its origin in the medieval Latin term for religious love caritas, OED. 54. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 45; Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge, 58. 55. The Great Commandment is a significant passage of scripture for Augustine. In De Doctrina Christiana, he uses it both as the central principle for interpreting scripture and to determine priority in the distribution of alms, On Christian Teaching, trans. R. P. H. Green (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), e.g., 21, 27. Langland’s use of the commandment has a distinctly Augustinian stamp. 48 though, is working up to something more controversial: the feeding of all who are hungry, regardless of whether they are considered truly needy. It is a position that Hunger reinforces, to the shock of Piers. After telling Piers Plowman to give to the truly needy because of natural love and the love of Christ, Hunger instructs him that: And alle manere men þat þow my t aspieʒ That nedy ben and nouʒty, norisse hem wiþ þi goodes.56 Loue hem and lakke hem no t — lat God take þe vengeaunes; (B.VI.222ʒ – 224) [All kinds of people that you might see That are needy and in want, nourish them with your goods. Love them and do not deprive them — let God take vengeance;] Earlier in the passus, Piers said that Truth told him not to give his harvest to people of morally questionable employment (B.VI.70–75), so Piers responds with shock and surprise, saying “Mi te I synnelees do as þow seist?” [Might I do as you say and be ʒ sinless] (B.VI.229). Yet the surprise is somewhat factious since Piers, notwithstanding Truth’s instructions, already gave food to the waster that was beaten by Hunger and told the group of able-bodied beggars, “ye shul eten barly breed and of þe broke drynke” [you will eat barley bread and drink from the brook] (B.VI.135). This action is identical to the instructions that Hunger gives him a few lines earlier to feed beggars simple food 56. Derek Pearsall, drawing on the A-text, makes the case that “nouʒty” means having nothing to spend, rather than meaning noughti, i.e., wicked, “Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman,” in Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1988), 177–78. I would agree with Pearsall on the basis of the word’s syntactic parallelism with “nedy.” 49 (B.VI.212–17), which elicit no response from Piers. David Aers identifies Hunger’s recommendation of indiscriminate giving as a “wobble” in the poem’s typically harsh attitude toward the peasant class and points to the fact that the C-text changes the statement that elicits Piers’s surprise to the less controversial view that one can give unjustly earned income as alms.57 If Langland and the text seem to wobble, however, it reflects a tension at the heart of medieval Christian understandings about poverty relief— a tension that Langland is working to reconcile through the dialogue between Piers and Hunger. In Gratian’s Decretum, the standard medieval text of canon law, canon theologians encountered two differing views about discerning need in the distribution of alms.58 Quotations from John Chrysostom advocated giving to all who asked, reflecting Jesus’ instructions found in places such as Luke 6:30 and Matthew 5:42.59 Augustine and Ambrose, on the other hand, established criteria for prioritizing who should receive aid.60 For example, a quotation from Augustine in works of canon law prohibited giving alms to “strong men” who are able to work.61 Augustine’s stance made its way into the 1349 57. Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 45–46. As for the question of whether one could give illicitly obtained goods, such as through prostitution, usury, or graft, as alms, the consensus in canon law was that it was acceptable. However, the giver was unlikely to receive any spiritual benefit for their gift, Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 49–50; Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge, 66– 68. 58. One can trace this to tension inherent in the New Testament. For example, “Give to every one that asketh thee, and of him that taketh away thy goods, ask them not again” (Luke 6:30) and “[I]f any man will not work, neither let him eat” (2 Thess. 3:10). For a discussion of more contrasting passages of scripture on poverty see Derek Pearsall, “‘Lunatyk Lollares’ in Piers Plowman,” in Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England: The J. A. W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1988, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), 164–65. 59. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 55. 60. Tierney, 55–57. 61. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 58. “Gl. Ord. Ad Dist.82 ante C.1: “Ei qui potest laborare, non debet ecclesias providere. Integritas enim et robur membrorum in conferenda eleemosyna est attendenda… 50 Statute of Labourers, which prohibits giving alms to “validi mendicantes” who refuse to work.62 Hunger’s advice to give to all in the B-text voices Chrysostom’s view, while Piers’s shocked response expresses Augustine’s position and that of the 1349 statute. The disagreement is part of the dialectical method that occurs throughout the poem. It allows Hunger to offer a defense of his position, one that seeks to harmonize the two positions in canon law, even if it defies civil law. In his description of how canon theologians harmonized the competing perspectives on almsgiving, Brian Tierney writes that, If there was not enough for all, St. Ambrose’s system of preferences was to be carefully applied. If there was enough for all, St. John Chrysostom’s principle of indiscriminate aid could be adopted, but with one exception, that alms should not be given to the willfully idle and vicious who would be harmed more than helped by readily available charity; but even they were to be feed if need was desperate.63 quia robusti de cibo securi sine labore frequenter iustitatiam negligunt” qtd. In Tierney,150n39. [The church should not provide to the one who is able to work. For the unimpaired and strong of their limbs ought to direct attention to gathering alms…because the strong ones, careless of their food without labor, frequently neglect justice] (translation mine). It is impossible to know if Langland came into contact with the Glossia Ordina. More likely he drew his opinions about poverty from a pool of ideas informed by the Glossia Ordina and Gratian’s Decretum, including the 1349 Statute of Labourers. 62. The relevant passage from the 1349 Statute of Labourers says that, “Because there are many strong/able beggars [validi mendicantes]—as long as they are able to live by begging alms, they refuse to work, devoting themselves to idleness and sin and often theft and other shameful acts—no one under the pain of imprisonment should presume under the appearance of pity or alms to give anything to such who are fitly able to work or care for them in their idleness, so that thus they may compel them to work for their necessary sustenance/livelihood [vite],” The Statutes of the Realm: Printed by Command of His Majesty King George the Third, in Pursuance of an Address of the House of Commons of Great Britain, (London: Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1810), 1:308 (translation mine). 63. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 60. 51 Piers seems to be following this approach to harmonizing the two positions. We saw him give food to the “idle and vicious” waster in a moment of desperate need, represented by Hunger’s brutal beating. Hunger’s own method for harmonizing these views is actually more generous than that described by Tierney.64 Hunger asserts that everyone should be given food, regardless of whether they are deserving or at the point of absolute need. He defends this incredibly broad stance as the appropriate reaction of both Christ’s love and natural love to the presence of human hunger and need (B.VI.220–21).65 In other words, theological and natural love necessitate the giving of food to all that are hungry. Yet there is discernment in the distribution of food, for the able-bodied laborers who can work but choose not to are to be given the lowest quality of food: bean bread and water (B.VI.212– 15). In this way, Hunger’s position is faithful to Chrysostom while still providing motivation for an able-bodied person to work and amend his behavior, for he will “soupe swetter whan he it hath deserued” [And they will sup on more pleasing food when they have earned it] (B.VI.217). He that wants to eat better food needs to work for it. Hunger’s position is at variance with the aforementioned 1349 Statute of Labourers that forbids giving alms to able-bodied beggars, though, as the failure of the knight represents, Langland was well aware of the ineffectiveness of such legislation. Hunger’s statement that, “lat God take þe vengeaunes” [let God take vengeance] (B.VI.224), encourages almsgivers to err on the side of generosity, leaving the 64. This is in contrast to more negative appraisals of Hunger. For example, Kim writes that ‘[A]s a deadly instrument of Pier’s policy, Hunger’s actions have darker undercurrents of material and physical insecurity that always threaten to get out of control. Piers may believe that his ethic of hard work imposed on all is justified, but with Hunger he is really flirting with death—though not his own,” “Hunger, Need, and the Politics of Poverty in Piers Plowman,” 156. 65. Hunger’s position would seem to be not far from modern Roman Catholic social teaching which declares food a basic human right. Cf. Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Cittá del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2004), 73. 52 responsibility for redressing deceitfully gained alms to God’s justice. Placing ultimate justice in God’s hands offers an implicit challenge to earthly attempts, represented by laws and the knight in the poem, to coerce able-bodied men to work by denying them alms. Hunger’s stance becomes more controversial as the second half of the century proceeded, with the issue of wandering beggars and vagrants attracting the attention of parliament. The Cambridge Statute of 1388 aggressively tried to control vagrancy, legislation which Anne Middleton argues had a significant impact on the C-text’s presentations of beggars.66 The C-text, as noted earlier, substitutes a less controversial statement that shocks Piers. It also excludes Hunger’s reference to God’s justice when discerning to whom to supply food. Hunger’s position in the B-text, far from supporting the status quo, is daring within the political and social context in which Piers Plowman was written. Hunger’s approach to harmonizing the differing positions in canon law shifts the focus of discernment in giving poverty relief. Instead of deciding whether to give someone food, one must determine what is the appropriate kind of food to give, which aligns with the poem’s repeated refrain of redde quod debes [give what you owe].67 This explains Hunger’s emphasis in the sermon that follows about giving a person the just payment for their work. While I agree with Aers that the sermon reflects a kind of market orientation and semi-Pelagianism, it springs from a defense of giving to all rather than an 66. “Acts of Vagrancy.” 67. The Latin phrase comes from Matthew 18:28 but has similarities to Romans 13:7 and Matthew 22:21. Canon law argued that what the wealthy held that was in excess of their needs belonged to the poor, though what was considered necessary for a person of the upper classes differed significantly from that of a peasant, Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 37. 53 attempt to cover up Hunger’s ‘wobble.’68 Everyone is to receive food to satisfy hunger, such is the demand of Christ’s and natural human love. It is just, however, to give more and better-quality food to those who work for it and the involuntarily poor. DIETARY ADVICE Answers in Piers Plowman are almost always followed by more questions. Following Hunger’s sermon about the importance of work, Piers complains about a stomach ache and asks Hunger for a remedy. His answer suggests that there are limits to what those who work for their food should consume. Hunger’s recommendation of restraint is another passage that is difficult to explain if the character is nothing more than a manifestation of famine or food scarcity. As the embodiment of human appetite guided by natural reason and scripture, however, Hunger is the appropriate figure to give advice on healthy eating. He diagnoses the cause of Piers’s digestive discomfort as too much food. Most of the advice, expressed in a homey manner, revolves around not eating to the point of satiety: ‘I woot wel,’ quod Hunger, ‘what siknesse yow eyleþ; Ye han manged ouer muche — þat makeþ yow grone. Ac I hote þee,’ quod Hunger, ‘as þow þyn hele wilnest, That þow drynk no day er þow dyne somwhat. Ete no t, I hote þee, er Hunger þee takeʒ And sende þee of his sauce to sauore wiþ þi lippes;69 And keep som til soper tyme and sitte no t to longe;ʒ 68. Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 46–48. 69. Sauce was an important part of medieval cuisine. See the next chapter for a fuller discussion of medieval sauces. 54 Arys vp er appetit haue eten his fille. Lat no t Sire Surfet sitten at þi borde; (B.VI.256ʒ –64) [ ‘I know well,’ said Hunger, ‘what sickness ails you; You have eaten too much — that makes you groan. But I bid you,’ said Hunger, ‘as you desire your health, That you do not drink any day before you eat a little. Do not eat, I bid you, before Hunger takes you And sends you his sauce to taste with your lips; And keep some sauce until supper time and do not sit long; Rise up before appetite has eaten his fill. Do not let Sir Surfeit sit at your table;] Eating some food before indulging in alcohol is common sense advice then as now. Hunger’s instructions to avoid eating to the point of fullness accord with Galenic medical advice.70 Diet and medicine were inseparable in the Middle Ages, something the poem parodies in Hunger’s “curing” of the beggars who claim to be disabled.71 Lydgate gives nearly identical advice to his prosperous, upwardly mobile audience in his “Dietary.”72 He 70. Rosanne Gasse, “The Practice of Medicine in Piers Plowman,” The Chaucer Review 39, 2 (2004): 185. 71. One further example: The Forme of Cury, a cookbook compiled for Richard II, was done so “by assent and avysement of Maisters and phisik and of philosophie þat dwellid in his court,” Arthur William Devis, James Basire, and Samuel Pegge, eds., The Forme of Cury: A Roll of Ancient English Cookery, Compiled, about A.D. 1390, by the Master-Cooks of King Richard II, Presented Afterwards to Queen Elizabeth, by Edward Lord Stafford, and Now in the Possession of Gustavus Brander, Esq. (London: Printed by J. Nichols, printer to the Society of Antiquaries, 1780), 1–2 (emphasis mine). 72. Claire Sponsler, “Eating Lessons: Lydgate’s ‘Dietary’ and Consumer Conduct,” in Medieval Conduct, ed. Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 8–11. Cf. also George Shuffleton, ed., Codex Ashmole 61: A Compilation of Popular Middle English Verse (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2008), 529. The fact that Lydgate gives similar advice to a wealthy audience argues against an interpretation that see Hunger’s medical advice as a means of class control, intended to justify keeping the poor in a continual state of hunger. See Kim, “Hunger, Need, and the Politics of Poverty in Piers Plowman,” 155–56. 55 too blames stomach aches and trouble sleeping on overeating and recommends that one should, “With an appetite ryse from thi mete” (line 28).73 Hunger goes on to suggest that a moderate diet will lead most doctors—many of whom are frauds preying on the wealth of others—to give up their practice and return to earning their sustenance from the land (B.VI.267–72). Honest labor and moderate eating turn out to be good medicine. We can see further that the market economy and semi-Pelagian perspective that Hunger described in the sermon is to be tempered by self-limitation and moderation in eating. Though one is entitled to eat what they earn from work, doing so to excess is not good for personal “hele” (B.VI.259). In this way, moderation serves as a governor to keep the work ethic Hunger recommends from spinning out of control. Though one deserves to eat more, the greater his or her contribution is to the common life of society, consuming to excess is not physically healthy. Bodily eating is never simple bodily in Piers Plowman and so there is an ethical and religious aspect to this advice. Moral instruction was an essential part of instruction in healthy eating in the medical tradition that Hunger is following.74 This concern with holistic health appears most strongly in the C-text. The C-text interpolates a passage in which Hunger tells Piers to think over the parable of Dives and Pauper as he eats, a kind of spiritual food to ruminate on as he consumes material food. Dives went to hell after his life of fine dining, while Lazarus the Pauper died of Hunger and went to Abraham’s side—the only person mentioned as dying of hunger in the poem. For many of the upper class, this act of memory was enacted by 73. “A Dietary, and a Doctrine for Pestilence,” in The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, ed. Merriam Sherwood and Henry Noble MacCracken, (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 703. See also lines 57–59. 74. Gasse, “The Practice of Medicine in Piers Plowman,” 185. 56 paintings in the halls where they ate. Henry III, for example, had Dives and Lazarus depicted in several of his great halls.75 Hunger’s diet is a holistic one that sets moral reflection on the same level as the physical consumption of food. The moral that he advances is of a particularly strong flavor: And if thow be of pouer, Peres, Y þe rede,ʒ Alle þat grat in thy gate for Godes loue aftur food, Part with hem of thy payne, of potage or of sowl, Lene hem som of thy loef, thouh thow þe lasse chewe. (C.VIII.283-86) [And if you have power, Piers, I counsel you, All that call at your gate for food for the sake of God’s love, Share with them your bread, potage, or sauce, Give them some of your loaf, although it leaves you less to chew.] Hunger makes another allusion to the Great Commandment and recommends Chrysostom’s principle of indiscriminate giving, even to the point of self-sacrifice where Piers “þe lasse chewe.” Piers is further told to give to “lyares and lach-draweres and lollares” [liars and lazy beggars and idlers] (VIII.287), in opposition to Augustine and the 1349 Statute of Laborers. Such advice in the C-text suggests that Hunger’s instructions to give to everyone in the B-text was not a “wobble.” There is still some discernment involved in the distribution of alms, for this group is not to receive “croumes / Til alle thyne nedy neyhbores haue noen ymaked” [crumbs / until all your needy neighbors have eaten lunch] (VIII.288-89).76 In making this 75. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 220. 76. The giving of crumbs from one’s table is probably not a metaphor here. It was the custom of the pious wealthy to give leftover food as alms to the poor and even eat with a select group of them. Woolgar, 57 distinction, the poem draws on canon theology that saw “concentric circles” of obligation, with one’s family and household taking priority over strangers.77 The poem, however, places the distinction between “neyhbores” and “lyares and lach-draweres and lollares” into the fourteenth century struggle with vagrancy.78 Reinterpreting the meaning of “neighbor” is one way the poem adapts older canon law to contemporary social issues like vagrancy and the rise of the new urban poor. “ÞE NEDIESTE SHOLDE BE HOLPE”: VAGRANTS AND THE NEW URBAN POOR The canon law that I have been referencing is primarily from the twelve and thirteenth centuries. It struggled to adapt to the social and economic changes that followed the Black Death, especially the rise in vagrancy.79 Canon law of the previous centuries, with which Langland is working, was developed within a traditional three orders perspective of medieval society. Peasants were bound to a particular geographical location through service to a lord and made their living through agricultural labor. Agriculture in turn supported the common life of the other two orders, who were frequently the lay and ecclesiastical lords of the peasants. If the three orders model was ever truly reflective of actual conditions, it was becoming less so in the second half of the The Culture of Food in England, 220–222. More will be said about this practice in the discussion of Conscience’s banquet. This highly personal and relational method of giving alms should be held in mind when comparing medieval poor relief to modern welfare systems. 77. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 57. 78. For a fuller discussion of vagrancy, see the aforementioned work by Middleton, “Acts of Vagrancy.” Aers offers a shorter summary of the construction of the concept of vagrancy by the dominant classes, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 27–30. 79. Tierney, 110, 119. 58 fourteenth century.80 Aers has aptly described the “market-oriented” mindset in the poem and the manner in which the social and economic bonds between lords, land, and peasants broke down following the Black Death.81 Peasants, in search of better wages, wandered far outside the social structures and agricultural context that traditionally provided a social safety net. Accompanying this societal dislocation was the rise of a mercantile class and guilds of craftsmen who did not fit neatly into any part of the three orders.82 The growing wealth in cities and towns was accompanied by increasing urban poverty as landless peasants moved to towns and cities in search of work.83 The poem struggles with how to apply theories of poverty relief that originated in primarily agricultural societies to the new urban and landless poor. To put this problem in the language of the episode of the half-acre, can Piers reasonably satisfy the hunger of the poor when a growing number of people no longer win their bread directly from plowing? While the B-text shows an awareness of this new economic reality, major additions to the C-text confront it directly. One of these additions is worth quoting at length because of its vivid and empathetic portrayal of poverty in late-medieval England.84 It develops in realistic detail the statement at the same point in the B-text that “þe nedieste sholde be holpe” [the neediest should be helped] (B.VII.70). The addition is 80. Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse”, 170. Even in the twelfth century, the model was struggling to adapt to changing economic realities, Duby, The Three Orders, 211–217. 81. Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 48. 82. Duby, The Three Orders, 213–14. 83. Pearsall, “Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman,” 171. 84. Geoffrey Shepherd calls it, “[P]robably the earliest passage in English which conveys the felt and inner bitterness of poverty,” “Poverty in Piers Plowman,” in Social Relations and Ideas: Essays in Honour of R. H. Hilton, ed. R. H. Hilton and T. H. Aston, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 172. See also Aers for a discussion of the unusual nature of the addition, Sanctifying Signs, 108–110. 59 also significant for how it applies scripture and canon law to a new type of poverty, prioritizing giving alms to one’s geographical neighbors over wandering strangers: Woet no man, as Y wene, who is worthy to haue; Ac þat most neden aren oure neyhebores, and we nyme gode hede, As prisones in puttes and pore folk in cotes, Charged with childrene and chief lordes rente; Þat they with spynnyng may spare, spenen hit on hous-huyre, Bothe in mylke and in mele, to make with papelotes To aglotye with here gurles that greden aftur fode. And hemsulue also soffre muche hunger, And wo in wynter-tymes, and wakynge on nyhtes To rise to þe reule to rokke þe cradel, Bothe to carde and to kembe, to cloute and to wasche, To rybbe and to rele, rusches to pylie, That reuthe is to rede or in ryme shewe The wo of this wommen þat wonyeth in cotes; And of monye oþer men þat moche wo soffren, Bothe afyngred and afurste, to turne þe fayre outward, And ben abasched for to begge and wollen nat be aknowe What hym nedede at here neyebores at noon and at eue. (C.IX.70–87) [No one knows, as I suppose, who is worthy to receive help; 60 But the most needy are our neighbors, and we should give them good attention, To prisoners in dungeons and poor people in huts, Burdened with children and chief lord’s rent; That they with spinning may save, spend it on household expenses, Both in milk and meal, to make porridge To feed their children that cry for food. And they themselves also suffer much hunger, And woe in winter-times, and waking during the night To rise at the foot of the bed to rock the cradle, Both to card and comb, to mend and to wash, To clean flax and to spin yarn, to peel rushes, That pity it is to read or show in rhyme The woe of these women that dwell in huts; And of many other people that suffer much woe, Both very hungry and thirsty, who turn a fair face outwards, And are ashamed to beg and wish it not to be known By their neighbors what they need at noon and in the evening.] In contrast to the aggressive male beggars encountered by Piers, the “neyhebores” here are primarily women. They labor at activities typically associated with medieval women: spinning, textile work, and the care of children, all in the midst of extreme poverty. When the poem mentions “The wo of this wommen þat wonyeth in cotes,” it draws the reader’s 61 attention to the way the suffering is occurring inside a house, not out in the streets and byways; this poverty is hidden behind the walls of “cotes.” What these lines indicate is that those who are most in need in society are often those who are not seen and heard. We are even led to surmise by the way the woman in this passage is “Charged with childrene and chief lordes rente” that her husband is absent, perhaps one of the vagrants or beggars wandering far from home. Margaret Kim notes that these suffering poor are not allowed to speak for themselves and there is moral affirmation for those who “ben abasched for to begge and wollen nat be aknowe.”85 While I agree that the poem reinforces the view of bagging as shameful, it is notable that the passage is giving voice to the needs of those who are typically voiceless, impoverished women and children. Though they are less visible, their need is greater than the omnipresent and vocal male beggars. This greater unseen need may in part explain Piers’s harsh attitude toward the beggars and wasters in previous passages. It is those who are invisible to society who most need alms rather than “beggares with bagges, þe which brewhous ben here churches” [beggars with bags, which make pubs their churches] (C.IX.98).86 Able-bodied beggars beg to the hurt of the truly needy. The poem makes just that point prior to the addition in the C-text, saying that those who beg when they do not have true need “defraudeþ the nedy” [defraud the needy] 85. “Hunger, Need, and the Politics of Poverty in Piers Plowman,” 148. Preference in alms for those who are ashamed to beg over “aggressive beggars” has its origin in canon law. See Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge, 70. 86. Bags are a mark of sinful beggars (C.IX.98, 120, 154). More than a pun, “beggares with bagges” indicates that the beggars are taking more than will satisfy their immediate needs. This solicitousness violates the command in Matthew 6:25 “ne solliciti sitis animae vestrae quid manducetis” [be not solicitous for your life], indicating a lack of trust in God’s provision for one’s daily needs, Penn R. Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 262–63. Judas is also described as carrying a bag, supplying a further intertext through which a medieval audience viewed these beggars, Pearsall, “‘Lunatyk Lollares’ in Piers Plowman,” 167. 62 (B.VII.67, C.IX.64).87 Accepting alms when someone else has greater need becomes a theft from the truly poor.88 The passage not only takes seriously the suffering of the silent poor, it highlights the poverty of the urban and landless poor. I have already noted the textile work that the women perform. In this case, the description likely alludes to work done at home for the emerging textile industry, an industry that heavily employed women, rather labor done for a household’s immediate needs.89 It is wage labor rather than agricultural labor, adding a new layer of separation between food and work. The addition in the C-text further draws attention to this new kind of poverty: This Y woet witterly, as þe world techeth, What other byhoueth þat hath many childrene And hath no catel but his craft to clothe hem and to fede, And fele to fonge þerto, and fewe panes taketh. There is payne and peny ale as for a pytaunce ytake, And colde flesche and fische, as venisoun were bake. Fridays and fastyng days a ferthing-worth of moskeles Were a fest with such folk, or so fele cockes. They were almusse, to helpe þat han suche charges And to conforte such coterelles and crokede men and blynde. (C.IX.88– 97) 87. Cf. Pearsall, “‘Lunatyk Lollares’ in Piers Plowman,” 167. 88. The B-text expresses this in a different manner, explaining that those who take alms undeservedly put themselves in debt to God (VII.79–80). 89. Pearsall, “Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman,” 171–72. 63 [I know this plainly, as the world teaches, What is also necessary for one that has many children And has no possessions except his craft to cloth and to feed them, And many steal therefore, and take a few loaves of bread. There is bread and penny ale to give as a donation, And cold meat and fish, like venison baked in dough. Fridays and fasting days a farthings-worth of mussels Where a feast for such people, and so many shellfish. They would be alms to help ones that have such burdens And to comfort cotters and the lame and blind.] Here the focus shifts to a man who does not have land; he only has a trade with which he can feed his family. His family’s need is so great that he is forced to steal bread (C.IX.91).90 Hunger is no longer a personification; it is an experiential reality (see esp. C.IX.77). Also significant is how this section describes cheap food that can be purchased for the poor. We have shifted from the giving of bread produced through agricultural labor to the giving of alms within a market economy. The new urban poor cannot simply work on the land to supply their bread. Alms now must take the form of money or food bought with money. The emergence of this kind of poverty results in a reinterpretation of the scriptures undergirding medieval poverty relief to meet contemporary political and social conditions. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is traditionally understood to establish the 90. According to canon law, theft in great need was not considered sinful, Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 32–36; Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge, 61–62. See also Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 2a2ae, 66, 7. 64 definition of one’s neighbor in the Great Commandment. It does so in an expansive manner, identifying one’s neighbor as anyone, even cultural outcasts, that are in need. Piers Plowman contracts the definition of neighbor to those that are geographically close and thus dwelling in fixed locations. The contrastive conjunction “Ac” that begins the line “Ac þat most neden aren oure neyhebores” places vagrants and male beggars outside the category of neighbor (C.IX.71).91 This reinterpretation of “neighbor” emphasizes the needs of women and children and men who remain with their children. It also elevates community and personal relationships since geographical stable neighbors are likely to be the ones that people saw day in and day out. Those people that one lives near are to have priority in the distribution of food, not the transient beggars. While there are several positive aspects of this change, the poem’s redefinition of neighbor does have the potential to reinforce an economic structure where peasants are bound to a particular plot of land and thus a lord. This new understanding of one’s neighbor promotes stable and fixed dwelling places. Such an interpretation was likely appealing to the dominant classes who sought to discourage freedom of movement in search of better wages.92 A desire to limit this movement of workers was one of the primary motivations for the prohibition against giving alms to able-bodied beggars in the 1349 Statute of Laborers and the harsh controls on geographical mobility in the 1388 91. This is actually not far from Augustine’s interpretation of the Great Commandment. In De Doctrina Christiana writes that “All people should be loved equally. But you cannot do good to all people equally, so you should take particular thought for those who, as if by lot, happen to be particularly close to you in terms of place, time, or any other circumstances. Suppose that you had plenty of something which had to be given to someone in need of it but could not be given to two people, and you meet two people, neither of whom had a greater need or a closer relationship to you than the other….since you cannot take thought for all men, you must settle (rather than by lot) in favor of the one who happens to be more closely associated with you in temporal matters” (I.29), On Christian Teaching, 21. 92. Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 28–30. 65 Statute of Cambridge. Langland’s ideas about poverty relief do seem to favor the upper classes since the focus is on increasing alms to the poor rather than criticizing the status quo, e.g., the “chief lordes” who charge excessive rent (C.IX.73). When the poem’s critique is directed at the upper classes, it details the greater spiritual rewards the wealthy will receive by giving alms to the truly deserving instead of the false beggars (C.IX.134– 140). The focus remains on how the poor can benefit the rich and never on the upper class’s exploitation of the lower classes. Nevertheless, while the poem does not seek to alleviate poverty through deconstructing class division as some modern readers might wish, it does seek new approaches within its religious, intellectual, and social context that are compassionate and just. ONE FINAL MEAL Returning from the excursion into the addition in the C-text, we find that Hunger will not leave without a large meal. Piers replies that “I have no peny…pulettes for to bugge, / Ne neiþer gees ne grys” [I have no penny to purchase a pullet, / Nor geese or pig] (B.VI.279–80a). He follows with a list of the foods that he does have. The absence of meat and the predominance of lesser grains and vegetables and fruits marks Piers as a member of the peasant class. Ironically, the food peasants ate was likely healthier by modern standards than the excessive “refined bread, fatty meat and alcohol” consumed by the upper classes.93 Still, the food that Piers and the poor offer Hunger would have been viewed as meager and undesirable by the original audience: …two grene cheses, A fewe cruddes and creme ek an hauer cake, 93. Dyer, “Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?,” 69. 66 And two loues of benes and bran ybake for my fauntes. And yet I seye, by my soule, I have no salt bacon Ne no cokeney, bi Cryst, coloppes to maken! Ac I have percile, and porett and manye plaunte coles, …………………………………………………. Al þe pouere peple pescoddes fetten; Benes and baken apples þei bro te in hir lappe,ʒ Chibolles and cheruelles and ripe chiries manye, And profrede Piers this present to plese wiþ Hunger. (B.VI.280b–85, 291– 94) [ …two green cheeses, A few curds and cream and also an oat cake, And two loaves of beans and bran I bake for my infants. And yet I say, by my soul, I do not have salted bacon Nor any eggs, by Christ, to make bacon and eggs! But I have parsley, and leeks and many garden greens, …………………………………………………. All the poor people gathered pea pods; They brought beans and baked apples in their laps, Spring onions and chervil and many ripe cherries, And offered Piers this present to appease Hunger.] 67 It is tempting to view this as a picture of famine, but that is unlikely since Piers describes these foods as all he has to live on until Lammass, a harvest festival on August 1 (B.VI.288).94 Instead it is a picture of peasants living in the time leading up to harvest, sometimes called the “hungry time” or “hungry gap.”95 Later in the poem Langland describes how “beggeris aboute midsomer bredlees þei soupe” [beggars about midsummer eat without bread] and how poor people “in somer tyme selde soupen to þe fulle” [in summer time seldom eat their fill] (B.XIV.160, 178). While food may have been more plentiful in the years that Langland was writing, the months leading up to the summer harvest were certainly a time of scarcity for the poor when they were forced to fall back on simpler foods.96 The months of precarious living finally give way to more food. In a line that recalls Dyer’s mention of “cheap and plentiful food,” the poem says that “it ne ed neer ʒ heruest and newe corn came to chepyng” [it approached near harvest and new grain came to market] (B.VI.298).97 Soon the market is flooded with so much cheap food that Hunger is put to sleep through the advice of Gluttony. Hunger thus finishes out his representation of human appetite by modeling its potential for excess. We would assume that Piers 94. On Lammas Day, the liturgical calendar intersects with the agricultural calendar. On that day a loaf made from the first grain of the harvest would be brought to mass. 95. Frank, “The ‘Hungry Gap,’ Crop Failure, and Famine,” 89; See also C. C. Dyer, “Seasonal Patterns in Food Consumption in the Later Middle Ages,” in Food in Medieval England: Diet and Nutrition, ed. C. M. Woolgar, D. Serjeantson, and T. Waldron, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 214. 96. Modern techniques of food storage as well as global food networks have largely eliminated seasonality in food consumption in the United States. Cf. Jennie I. Macdiarmid, “Seasonality and Dietary Requirements: Will Eating Seasonal Food Contribute to Health and Environmental Sustainability?,” Proceedings of the Nutrition Society 73, 3 (2014): 368–75. 97. Dyer, “Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?,” 70. For this reason, it is tempting to read the change the poem mentions here as not only a seasonal one but also the shift to food stability around 1375. 68 would be relieved by the sleep of Hunger after his demand for food. The change, however, undoes all that Piers has worked for. Wasters and beggars are no longer satisfied with bread that is fit for horses and instead hold out for “coket or clermatyn or ellis clene whete,” all high quality breads or grain (B.VI.303). Water from the brook has been replaced with a demand for ale “of þe beste and of þe brunneste þat brewesteres selle” [of the best and of the brownest that brewers sell] (B.VI.305). For hired agricultural laborers, night old vegetables are no longer sufficient and they even pass over preserved meats like bacon for the taste of “fressh flessh ouþer fissh fryed ouþer ybake” [fresh meat or fish fried or baked] (B.VI.309). From the perspective of Piers, a world where beggars can eat like the rich and hired hands have their choice of fresh meat is a world turned upside down. The episode of the half-acre had shown how a moderate appetite guided by scripture and natural reason is good for individual health and the healthy functioning of society. The degree to which the disappearance of Hunger undoes this state of affairs and all that Piers hoped to achieve shows how essential Hunger is to Piers Plowman’s character in the episode. The narrator’s only recourse is to utter a cryptic prophecy about the return of Hunger and an apocalyptic famine (B.VI.319-28). Then “Dawe þe Dykere [shall] deye for hunger” [Jack the Ditch Digger will die of hunger] (B.VI.328). Famines occurred often enough in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries—though probably not of the severity of those in the first half of the fourteenth—that the prophecy could be right by mere chance.98 Still, Hunger, like the knight and law, has failed to provide a permanent solution 98. Dyer, “Did the Peasants Really Starve in Medieval England?,” 54. 69 to the problem of wasters and beggars, echoing the way the entire poem ends without a clear solution to the ills facing Langland’s society.99 Although the modern era frequently views begging and poverty as a failure of society to provide for the needs of all, there was a large group in late-medieval England whose vocation required begging: the fraternal orders.100 There were four such orders in England at the time including the Franciscans, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Carmelites.101 Following Passus VI, the poem increasingly takes on an antifraternal tone, but the critique is latent in Piers’s condemnation of those beggars who offer prayers as their contribution to the common life instead of agricultural labor. Lawrence Clopper observes that, “One of the arguments of the antifraternal camp was that able-bodied religious ought to perform manual labor for their needs if they were not called to pastoral functions or did not have endowments…they ought not be allowed to beg for them [their needs] if they were able-bodied.”102 It is these religious beggars, the friars whom the poem accuses of “Prechynge þe peple for profit of þe wombe” [Preaching for the benefit 99. The next passus offers a partial solution by turning false begging into an offense against God. Passus VI begins with a much debated pardon “a pena et a culpa” from sin (B.VII.3). Whatever the pardon is, Piers is given leave to extend it only to those that “beggeþ” from real need (B.VII.66). As mentioned in a previous note, the B-text explains that those who take alms undeservedly are actually taking from God, putting themselves in debt to him (76–80). While locating ultimate justice with God is good theology, it does not offer the kind of immediate bodily motivation for beggars to work that Piers seeks from Hunger. 100. These orders are also referred to in scholarship and literature of the period as the mendicant orders. Szittya has argued that “fraternal” is more reflective of how they identified themselves, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature, 3n1. Mendicant, deriving from a Latin word for begging, calls attention to the activity for which the fraternal orders were frequently criticized. 101. The C-text occasionally refers to five orders, e.g., C.XV.82. There has been much scholarly speculation as to the identity of the fifth order. See Traugott Lawler, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman: C Passūs 15–19; B Passūs 13–17 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), 4:25–26. 102. Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse”, 29. Such criticisms were raised by Richard FritzRalph in his writing and sermons in 1356–57 and by John Wycliffe in his later writings, 59–60, 65. It was also a matter of debate among Franciscans, 29–31. 70 of their bellies] (B.Pro.59), that Piers Plowman sees as the greatest threat to the unity and life of the Church and English society. The uncontrollable appetite of friars and the nature of the threat it presents is the focus of the next chapter. 71 Whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things. — Philippians 3:19 CHAPTER 2 — HUNGERING FOR KNOWLEDGE: THE DANGERS OF UNCONTROLLABLE APPETITE The passages that I examined in the first chapter, the episode of the half-acre and the addition in the C-text, dealt primarily with the just distribution of bodily food. As the poem continues, however, discussions about physical food increasingly blur with discussions of spiritual and intellectual need. This chapter will focus on the way that the poem talks about and conceives of bodily and religious nourishment in identical terms. Provision for the material hunger of the poor and provision for the spiritual and religious needs of the poor and uneducated are equal concerns in Piers Plowman. In the first chapter, the greatest threat to the fair distribution of food was aggressive able-bodied beggars. The focus shifts in this chapter to the greedy appetites of the fraternal orders who, not coincidentally, acquire their “liflode” through begging. Piers Plowman considers the threat presented by the uncontrollable hunger of friars as a far greater danger to the stability of the Church and society than the able-bodied beggars. The fraternal orders’ voracious appetite for bodily food and knowledge harm the poor and uneducated. The poem’s cure for this malady is moderation in the consumption of knowledge, paralleling Hunger’s recommendation of moderation as the cure for bodily indigestion. Piers Plowman’s use of the language of food and eating to discuss both the consumption of material goods and the acquisition of intangible religious and intellectual goods reflects a fundamental unity between the two needs. The chapter will end by 72 arguing that conceptual distinctions between the religious and the secular, the spiritual and the bodily, are anachronistic, pointing toward a “both/and” interpretation of medieval texts like Piers Plowman.1 EXEGETICAL INDIGESTION Passus XIII of the B-text commences with Will reflecting on the events of his third vision. He is especially troubled by an encounter with a group of friars that include his confessor. The formerly close relationship is fractured when Will declares that he will be buried at his parish church instead of the house of the friars’ order.2 They suddenly distance themselves from him and treat him as a “fool” (B.XI.68). Their rejection demonstrates that the friars’ eagerness to confess him and others is driven primarily by the expectation of financial bequests upon burial at their house (B.XI.63–77).3 Will identifies this tendency to perform the sacraments and other significant pastoral functions, like burial, purely for the sake of money as corrupting all levels of society. He thinks, …how þat freres folwede folk þat was riche, And peple þat was pouere at litel pris þei sette, And no corps in hir kirk erde ne in hir kirk was buryedʒ But quik he biqueþe hem au t or sholde helpe quyte hir dettes;ʒ 1. My inspiration for a “both/and” hermeneutic when reading medieval texts comes from Barbara Newman’s, Medieval Crossover, 7–13. 2. Pope Gregory IX granted the Franciscan order the right to hear confessions and the right of sepulcher. In addition to the right to preach, these constituted the three privileges given to the Franciscans by the papacy. See Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse”, 10, 39–40. 3. The association between confession, burial, and money is expressed in a complicated manner in the B- text. This is revised in the C-text to a direct refusal of the friar to shrive Will because he cannot give them enough money (C.XII.15–22). 73 And how þis coueitise ouercom clerkes and preestes; And how þat lewed men ben lad, but Oure Lord hem helpe, Thoru vnkonngye curatours to incurable peynes; (B.XIII.7–13)ʒ [...how friars sought people that were wealthy, And considered poor people of little value, And buried no body in their churchyard or their church Unless while living he bequeaths them something or helped pay their debts; And how this covetous overcame clergy and priests; And how uneducated men are lead, unless Our Lord helps them, By unwise curates to incurable suffering;] Friars have come to evaluate all people in terms of their financial worth, paying more attention to the spiritual care of the rich and valuing the poor “at litel pris.” The fraternal orders have gone as far as refusing to bury people in their churchyard unless they make a bequest to the order’s house. For Will, who is now old and living in poverty, this state of affairs is far from an abstract worry (B.XIII.1–6). The greediness is a surprising change for orders founded on the ideal of voluntary poverty and the imitation of Christ.4 The passage further asserts that this greed has infected clergy and priests outside the fraternal orders. This failure of spiritual leadership is summarized in the biting pun about the lack of wisdom among those whose job it is to be curates for the poor leading to incurable spiritual suffering (B.XIII.13). Just as Passus VI and VII demonstrate a concern that the 4. Clopper’s“Songes of Rechelesnesse” argues that Piers Plowman is written from the perspective of a member of the Franciscan order, calling the order back to faithfulness to their founding ideals. Will’s criticism is similar to Bonaventure’s earlier criticism of the Franciscans for how covetous his order’s members had become for the right of sepulcher, 47–48. 74 poor receive bodily nourishment, so this passage reflects Will’s concern about the spiritual well-being of the poor and uneducated, i.e., “lewed men.” Will’s assessment becomes the substance for the next vision where a friar is seen neglecting his care for the spiritual and material needs of others in order to satisfy his gluttonous appetite. In the episode of the banquet at Conscience’s house, the poem demonstrates that the never- satisfied belly of the fraternal orders threatens the poor to an extreme of which Hunger was never capable.5 In attendance at the banquet are a variety of figures from earlier in the poem including Will, Conscience, and Clergy. Appearing for the first time are an unnamed master of divinity and Patience in the guise of a beggar, dressed “in pilgrymes cloþes” (B.XIII.29).6 Will and Patience are clearly poorer and of lower status than the other guests. Conscience’s inclusion of them at the meal was a common way that the wealthy distributed alms.7 It is a practice that the poem recommends extensively in the C-text (IX.105–158). Eating with the poor need not denote physical proximity, however, and we can see Will and Patience being seated at a side table (B.XIII.36). Wealthy individuals and institutions, such as kings and monasteries, attached porches and almonries to their 5. This episode is frequently called “Patience’s Banquet” in scholarship, even though it takes place at Conscience’s house in the B-text and Reason’s in the C-text. 6. The poem alternates between calling the master of divinity a master and a doctor, without explanation. For the sake of consistency, I will refer to him as the master. The title “master” is a significant aspect of the satire in this episode since one of the common charges in antifraternal literature was how much friars desired the title magister at universities, an accusation that helped critics liken them to Jesus’ description of the Pharisees in Matthew 23:6–8, Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature, 32, 34–36, 71. The original audience may also have been aware that St. Francis forbade the brothers to be called “master,” adding to the satire of the scene, Clopper “Songes of Rechelesnesse,” 57, 239. See also the 1220–21 Rule for Friars Minor: Constance Countess de la Warr, trans., The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi, (London: Burns & Oates, 1907), 22. 7. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 1200–1500, 219–22. 75 main halls to accommodate those receiving alms.8 Arrangements like this increased the number of poor that could be said to eat under the same roof as the rich—conferring on them greater spiritual benefits—while keeping the poor at a comfortable distance. The custom also shows how Hunger’s advice to eat with the parable of Dives and Pauper in mind could be enacted not only through art but through living representations of poverty at the dinner table. Will and Patience’s poverty stands in stark contrast to the wealth and importance of Conscience, Clergy, and the master of divinity. The master is a friar, probably of the Dominican order, though the poem is reluctant to identify him at first (B.XIII.25, C.XV.30).9 His seating location identifies the master as the most important person in the room while satirizing his pride: “This maister was maad sitte as for þe mooste worþi” [this master was made to sit in the most honored position] (B.XIII.33). Within traditional seating at medieval feasts, this likely means that the master is placed at the center of a table on a dais at the head of the hall, while Patience and Will are seated at one of a series of tables on the ground level that are set perpendicular to the head table.10 Physical 8. Woolgar, 220–21. 9. Lawler, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, 4:10, 27. At first Will says that, “[W]hat man he was I nyste” [I did not know what kind of man he was] (B.XIII.25). Later he is directly identified as a friar while Will discusses his preaching at St. Paul’s cathedral (B.XIII.65–66). Scholarly consensus is generally against Clopper’s identification of the master as a Franciscan, “Songes of Rechelesnesse,” 238–240. I see the master as a composite of members of the fraternal orders. Confer, for example, Will’s statement in the C-text that, “For alle be we brethrene, thogh we be diuerse clothed” [For we are all brothers, though we are clothed differently] (XV.81). Nicholas Watson takes a similarly inclusive view. He calls the master a “sad parody of the insatiable appetites of Thomas or Bonaventure,” i.e., prominent representatives of the Dominicans and Franciscans, respectively, “Piers Plowman, Pastoral Theology, and Spiritual Perfectionism: Hawkyn’s Cloak and Patience’s Pater Noster,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 21 (2007): 93. 10. Derek Brewer, “Feasts,” in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, Arthurian Studies (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 137. A similar arrangement is found at the feast at the beginning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Descendants survive in the structure of dining halls at Oxford colleges. These in turn were the inspiration for the dining hall at Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series. 76 seating represents social hierarchy and the relative importance of the guests.11 While this arrangement had important cultural resonance for the poem’s audience, it is also a pointed scriptural allusion. Jesus tells a parable in Luke 14:7–11 about people who choose the “primos accubitus,” the first seats, at feasts.12 Langland makes the allusion more direct in the C-text by adding the words “sitte furste” to the line quoted above, a near translation of “primos accubitus” (C.XV.39). This intertextual use of Luke 14:7–11 allows the poem to frame the master as prideful and greedy for honor. The allusion also fits the method within antifraternal literature of likening friars to the New Testament Pharisees, one of the ostensible targets of Jesus’s parable in Luke.13 Scripture is especially important in this passage since it is the literal food served at the feast. Conscience called after mete, and þanne cam Scripture14 And serued hem þus soone of sondry metes many — Of Ausytn, of Ambrose, of alle þe foure Euaungelistes. Edentes et bibentes que apud eos sunt. (B.XIII.37–39) [Conscience called for food, and then came Scripture And served them quickly many different types of food — Of Augustine, of Ambrose, and all the four Evangelists, 11. Chapter four contains an extended discussion of the social importance of seating at feasts. 12. “Dicebat autem et ad invitatos parabolam intendens quomodo primos accubitus eligerent dicens ad illos,” Luke 14:7. 13. Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature, 5. 14. Two notes on word usage: mete in Middle English is not a cognate for Modern English “meat. It can refer to a wide range of foods in addition to animal flesh, though in some contexts it does match the modern English usage, MED. scripture in Middle English often refers to patristic writings in addition to the canonical books of the Old and New Testament, MED. The inclusion of Augustine and Ambrose in this passage is a good example of the word’s semantic range. 77 Eating and drinking what is set before you.] Their food, served by Scripture, is in fact texts of scripture. The Latin quotation above is from Luke 10:7 in which Jesus directs his disciples to eat and drink what is given to them as the wages for their work.15 Its inclusion implies that eating these texts, which are the proper objects of study for a master of divinity, are the proper payment for his work.16 The master, ignoring Jesus’ command, chooses to “eten mete of moore cost, mortrews and potages” [eat food of greater costs, mortrews and soups] and then later “manye sondry metes, mortrews and puddynges, / Wombe cloutes and wilde brawen and egges wiþ grece yfryed” [many different foods, mortrews, tripe and wild boar and eggs fried with grease] (B.XIII.41, 62–63).17 There are several shocking aspects of the master’s choice of food beyond his rejection of Luke 10:7. From a poetic perspective, there is the metaphorical asymmetry of the objects of consumption. Instead of metaphorical texts, the master eats literal food. We also see someone whose function in society is spiritual leadership abandoning intangible, spiritual food for rich, bodily food. Such a choice casts doubt on his competence as a curator of souls (cf. B.XIII.13). Furthermore, his choice of food is incongruous for a member of an order devoted to a life of poverty. The rich, fatty foods and meat that the friar devours are quite different from the bread and vegetables 15. “And in the same house, remain, eating and drinking such things as they have: for the labourer is worthy of his hire (Lat. mercede).” 16. Reading of texts while eating was a common practice in monastic and secular houses: Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 160. 17. Mortrews were a thick stew dish made of pounded or ground meat. The Forme of Cury, a book of recipes compiled for Richard II, lists three different recipes for mortrews. Though the type of mortrew is not specified, I will give the most penitential form of the dish, which uses fish: “Take codlyng, haddok, oþer hake, and lyuour with the rawnes, and seeþ it wel in water. Pyke out þe bones. Grynd smale the fysshe; drawe a lyour of almaudes & brede with the self broth, & do þe fysshe grounden þerto, and seeþ it and do þerto powdour fort, safron and salt; and make is stondyng,” Constance B. Hieatt and Sharon Butler, eds., Curye on Inglysch: English Culinary Manuscripts of the Fifteenth Century (Including the Forme of Cury), (London: Oxford University Press, 1985), 127. 78 that the poor must eat in Passus VI. As a member of a fraternal order, the master was expected to live in imitation of Jesus and his disciples, including in his eating. St. Francis’s 1223 Rule of Friars Minor, for example, instructs members of the order to obey Jesus’s command in Luke 10:7 to eat all that is set before them.18 The friar’s rejection of the first food that is served to him is likely a direct rejection of the expectations for his religious order. The master is eating all the wrong food for his function in the common life of English society. Bitter Sauces, Sin-Eating, and Patient Consumption Although the master chooses to avoid metaphorical food, the narrator asserts that the decision will come back to harm him. The narrator says that, Of þat men myswonne þei made hem wel at ese. Ac here sauce was ouer sour and vnsauourly grounde In a morter, Post mortem, of many bitter peyne — But if þei synge for þo soules and wepe salte teris: (B.XIII.42–45) [They made themselves at ease with that which men had gained dishonestly. But their sauce was too sour and insipidly prepared In a mortar, After death, of much bitter pains — Unless they sing for souls and weep salty tears:] 18. de la Warr, The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi, 31. Clopper makes the case that Dominicans were not commanded in their rule to obey Luke 10:7 and were permitted to eat meat outside the friary, “Songes of Rechelesnesse,” 239. While Clopper’s observations about the expected diet of Franciscans are invaluable here, he misses the focus on penitential food in the episode. Later, the master argues that the food he eats is penitential, something that would be problematic whether he were a Franciscan or a Dominican (B.XIII.93). 79 The narrator’s warning is best understood in the context of medieval culinary practice and gustatory preference. Foods without salt, spices, or sauce—the three are closely related in medieval cookery—were thought to lack flavor.19 The Boke of Nurture, an early fifteenth century poem by John Russell that advises one on how to serve food to a lord, notes that, “[H]it provokithe a fyne apetide if sawce youre mete be bie” [it encourages a good appetite if the sauce is by the meat].20 Sauce was thus the expected accompaniment for most upper-class dishes. Drawing on the fact that many late-medieval sauces were acidic, the narrator describes the metaphorical sauce as overly sour and composed of poorly ground spices.21 This poorly prepared sauce is the bitter pains, whether of purgatory or hell, that will come upon the master and other friars post mortem as the expected accompaniment for the type of food they have chosen to eat. In this sense, the literal food the master consumes functions as a synecdoche. Line 42 suggests that all the misdeeds and injustices that were committed to acquire this food are represented in the food he eats. The socially embedded nature of medieval food means that eating the literal food is an affirmation of his participation in those wrongs. 19. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 83–84. The word “sauce” has its origin in the Latin word salsa, which is in turn derived from sal for salt. Grinding spices was an important step in preparing sauces as shown in line 43. It was once common to claim that medieval food was heavily seasoned to cover up the taste of spoiled and rotten meat in a period without refrigeration. Paul Freedman has persuasively discredited that idea, arguing that medieval tastes genuinely preferred a degree of spice that would be off-putting to the palette of many contemporary Europeans and Americans: Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 3–5, 28, 216–217. 20. Frederick James Furnivall, ed., Early English Meals and Manners: John Russell’s Boke of Nurture, Wynkyn de Worde’s Boke of Keruynge, The Boke of Curtasye, R. Weste’s Booke of Demeanor, Seager’s Schoole of Vertue, The Babees Book, Aristotle’s A B C, Urbanitatis, Stans Puer Ad Mensam, The Lytylle Childrenes Lytil Boke, For to Serve a Lord, Old Symon, The Birched School-Boy, &c. (London: N. Trübner & Co., 1868; repr., Detroit: Singing Tree Press, 1969), 35. John Russell claims to have served the Duke Humphrey of Gloucester, placing his writing in the first half of the fifteenth century. 21. Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 84. This sauce would seem to be more sour than usual. 80 The only way to escape suffering in purgatory or hell is to accompany the food with a different seasoning: the salt of tears. This is followed by richly alimentary Latin lines that develop the imagery: Vos qui peccata hominum comeditis, nisi pro eis lacrimas et oraciones effuderitis, ea que in delicijs comeditis, in tormentis euometis (B.XIII.45)22 [You who eat the sins of men, unless you pour forth tears and prayers, what you eat in delight, you will vomit in torment] Hearing confession is imagined as eating sin. Salty tears poured out in weeping and prayer for those sins are the appropriate seasoning to accompany this type of food. The friar, however, wants the benefits of confession—bequests from rich confessors and high social status—and none of the spiritual responsibilities that accompany hearing sins. He attempts to mix sensual pleasure, often involving the eating of literal food, with his metaphorical consumption of sins. Mixing these two foods produces the same result as when incompatible foods meet in the stomach: they exit the body as vomit. Their very opposition is highlighted by the violent bodily reaction they produce. The master will experience the penance he has avoided on earth in purgatory, with his spiritual purging being imagined in the language of bodily purging. The fact that Christian doctrine is expressed in these graphic bodily terms calls attention to the master’s inability to raise his concerns higher than his own physical appetites and desires. He prefers physical food to the spiritual nourishment of sacred texts and temporary bodily satisfaction to spiritual 22. Although it has no clear source, the Latin draws on the language of Hosea 4:8–11. See Langland, Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions in Two Volumes, 2:626. For other possible sources see Lawler, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, 4:17–18. 81 rewards in eternity. The language of impermanent food and drink is all that he is capable of comprehending. The foil for the greedy master is Patience, who represents an ideal friar in his eating habits. Patience rejoices in his place of lower honor in the hall and joyfully accepts all the texts that Scripture serves him: He [Scripture] sette a sour loof toforn vs and seide, ‘Agite penitenciam,’ And siþþe he drou us drynke: ‘ʒ Dia perseuerans — …………………………………………………… And he brou te vs of ʒ Beati quorum and Beatus virres makyng, And þanne he brou te vs froþ a mees of ooþer mete, of ʒ Miserere mei, Deus Et quorum tecta sunt peccata In dissh of derne shrifte, Dixi and Confitebor tibi ‘Bryng Pacience som pitaunce,’ pryueliche quod Conscience; And þanne hadde Pacience a pitaunce, Pro hac orabit Omnis sanctus in tempore oportuno. And Conscience conforted us, and carped us murye tales: Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus non despicies. (B.XIII.48–49, 52–58) [Scripture set a sour loaves before us and said, ‘Agite penitenciam,’ And then he poured us drink: ‘Dia perseuerans — …………………………………………………… And he brought us of Beati quorum of Beatus vir’s making, 82 And then he brought forth for us dishes of other food, of Miserere mei, Deus Et quorum tecta sunt peccata In a dish of private confession, Dixi and Confitebor tibi ‘Bring Patience some charitable gift,’ said Conscience privately; And then Patience had a gift, Pro hac orabit Omnis sanctus in tempore oportuno. And Conscience comforted us, and told us cheerful tales: Cor contritum et humiliatum, Deus non despicies.] The majority of these textual foods—tags from passages of scripture in Latin—are penitential in nature, reflecting the behavior that is commended in the Latin text about eating sin.23 This penitential eating is curiously paired with a convivial attitude. Patience exclaims “Here is propre seruice…þer fareþ no prince bettre!” [Here is fitting service… no prince fares better] (B.XIII.51) and the final penitential Latin tag above is described as a merry tale. Paradoxically, Patience finds more joy in seasoning his food with “salt teris” than the master does in his greedy eating.24 Through providing a better example of the behavior of a thankful guest than the master, Patience models the willing acceptance of penance that is expected of a friar’s role in society.25 23. The C-text reinforces the association with penance by adding the character of Contrition as cook (XV.60). 24. Chapter three will discuss how the process of reading and meditating on scripture was often depicted as tasting sweet food. 25. While Patience is a laudable character in his first appearance, both Nicholas Watson and David Aers make the case that Patience is later rejected for the extreme form of voluntary poverty that he comes to represent. Watson, “Piers Plowman, Pastoral Theology, and Spiritual Perfectionism”; Aers, Sanctifying Signs, 99–156. 83 Grotesque Speech and Exegetical Eructation Will, who as Patience’s table mate has had to eat the same food as Patience, does not share his companion’s joy at the penitential food. Instead, he watches with anger and jealousy as the master bolts down food and glass after glass of wine (B.XIII.61). Key to Will’s anger is the master’s failure to practice what he preaches. The master’s eating habits demonstrate that he “Haþ no pite on vs pouere: he parfourneþ yuele / That he precheþ and preueþ no t” [Has no pity on us poor: he does evil / Since he does not ʒ practice what he preaches] (B.XIII.79–80). Recalling the earlier Latin verse, Will uses the language of digestion to describe the penance he hopes the master will experience for his failure to turn his preaching into action. He calls the master “Goddes gloton…wiþ hise grete chekes” [God’s glutton…with his huge cheeks] (B.XIII.78). He hopes that the master’s food turns to “molten leed in his mawe, and Mahoun amyddes!” [molten lead in his throat, and the devil in his middle parts] and calls him a “iurdan wiþ his iuste wombe” [a chamber pot with a pot belly] (B.XIII.83–84).26 The C-text adds a cutting religious and scatological pun when Will declares his intent to “apose hym [the friar] what penaunce is and purgatorie on erthe / And why a lyueth nat as a lereth!” [inquire what penance is and purgatory on earth / And why he lives not as he lectures!] (XV. 94–95).27 We have moved from penance imagined as vomiting to penance imagined as an earthly purgatory experienced through the painful purging of the master’s bowels. On one hand, this is the 26. A jordan was a bulb shaped vessel, often a chamber pot, while a juste vessel was long necked with a wide base, MED. The description is loaded with a critique of the master’s bodily shape and what it implies about his dietary habits. Some scholars have identified the master as Friar William Jordan, a Dominican Doctor of Theology. See Mildred Elizabeth Marcett, “Uhtred De Boldon, Friar William Jordan, And ‘Piers Plowman,’” ProQuest Dissertations and Theses (PhD diss., Ann Arbor, New York University, 1938), 67–74; Lawler, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, 4:27. 27. The line about penance and purgatory on earth comes from earlier in the B-text (VII.104) but is given a whole new meaning in this context. 84 natural bodily response that a medieval audience would have expected from the master’s gluttonous eating. On the other, Will’s gastrointestinal imprecations spring from the master’s failure to convert his preaching into action, the failure to properly digest his words. This implicit association between healthy digestion and converting words into deeds will become more explicit as the poem moves forward. The way this episode mixes theology and religious discussion with grotesque bodily descriptions recalls Bakhtin’s observation that, “The themes of table talk are always ‘sublime,’ filled with ‘profound wisdom,’ but these themes are uncrowned and renewed on the material bodily level. The grotesque symposium does not have to respect hierarchical distinctions; it freely blends the profane and the sacred, the lower and the higher, the spiritual and the material.”28 Banquets liberate intellectual discussion but also draw bodily and grotesque language into prandial conversation.29 True to his name, Patience reacts to Will’s anger by urging restraint. Nevertheless, he picks up Will’s language of grotesque digestion.30 About the master, he says that, He shal haue a penaunce in his paunche and puffe at ech a worde, And þanne shullen his guttes goþele, and he shal galpen after; For now he hath dronken so depe he wol deuyne soone And preuen hit by hir Pocalips and passioun of Seint Auereys That neiþer bacon ne braun ne blancmanger ne mortrews Is neiþer fissh ne flessh but fode for penaunt .ʒ 28. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 285–86. 29. Cf. Bakhtin, 296. 30. Watson sees this as the start of Patience’s divisive role, stating that “When he quiets Will, it is only to give the doctor more rope to hang himself,” “Piers Plowman, Pastoral Theology,” 101. 85 And þanne shal he testifie of a trinite, and take his felawe to witnesse What he fond in a forel after frere lyuyng; And but þe first leef be lesyng, leue me neuere after! (B.XIII.88–96) [He will have penance in his paunch and puff at each word, And then his guts will grumble, and he will gape afterwards; For he now has drunk so deeply that he will soon engage in theological speculation And prove by their Apocalypse and passion of Saint Aurea That neither bacon or boars meat or blancmange or mortrews Are either fish or meat but penitential food. And then he will speak of a trinity, and look to his fellows as support What he found in a bound volume about how friars are to live; And unless the first leaf is a lie, believe me never afterwards!] Instead of the downward motion of diarrhea, Patience predicts that his penance will be the upwards movement of belching and burping, imagery made more vivid by the alliterative plosives of line 88.31 Hunger’s diagnosis of overeating as the cause of Pier’s stomachaches in Passus VI is relevant here (B.VI.252–66). The master has overeaten and will suffer the natural bodily consequences. Healthy digestion was a particular concern of medieval eating. The Boke of Nurture shows that a server must pay careful attention to 31. Rosanne Gasse calls this scene a form of “intellectual indigestion” in “The Practice of Medicine in Piers Plowman,” 185. 86 which foods cause indigestion or other problems. Russell singles out salads and raw fruits, foods associated with peasants, as particularly dangerous for a lord.32 Yet these lines show that the indigestion is not merely physical. The description of the master’s divining of the texts is made parallel to his “paunche and puffe at ech a worde,” suggesting that his exegesis is a form of eructation. It recalls a scene of fraternal satire in Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale where well-fed friars, “Fat as a whale, and walkynge as a swan,” (III.D.1930) offer eructative prayers as they read through the psalm: “Whan they for soules syee the psalm of Davit: / Lo, ‘buf!’ they seye, ‘cor meum eructavit!’ [When they say the psalm of David for souls: / Lo, ‘burp!’ they say, ‘my heart utters/belches!’] (III.D.1933–34).33 Texts are belched forth as prayers. Piers Plowman, a poem in which texts are eaten as food, imagines indigestion as problematic reading and interpretation. Misinterpretation is a key theme in Piers Plowman’s criticism of the fraternal orders. The poem’s earliest description of those orders begins with the charge that: I fond þere frerers, alle þe foure orders, Prechynge þe peple for profit of þe wombe: Glosed þe gospel as hem good liked; (B.Pro.58–60) [I found the friars, all the four orders, 32. Early English Meals and Manners, 8. Specific medieval explanations for this are found in humoral theory. See for example the discussion of digestion in John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum. M. C. Seymour, ed., On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum: A Critical Text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 145–46. 33. The Latin is from Psalm 44:2, “My heart hath uttered a good word.” The verb eructare means both to utter and to belch, Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary. All quotations from The Canterbury Tales come from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987). 87 Preaching to the people for the benefit of their bellies: They glossed the gospel as pleased them well;] This language associates the fraternal orders with St. Paul’s warning in Philippians 3:19 about those “Whose end is destruction; whose God is their belly; and whose glory is in their shame; who mind earthly things.” Their appetite leads them to interpret scripture in self-beneficial ways. Gustatory sin is linked to exegetical failure. Glossing of unfavorable texts is a charge that Will repeats just prior to his scathing attack on the master’s gluttony. (B.XIII.74–75).34 Food, and an appetite for material pleasures more broadly, are joined to misreading of texts from the start of the poem. The master of divinity is a vivid example of how Piers Plowman conceives of a unity between sinful hunger and sinful interpretation. The exegetical indigestion is also due in part to the friar’s choice of textual food. There is no scholarly consensus on the identity of the “Pocalips” or the “passion of Seynt Auereys,” though Anne Middleton makes a strong case that the latter is a reference to Averroes.35 Whether or not the titles are Langland’s parodic inventions, the important point is that they are far outside the categories of textual food that Scripture serves to the guests. The master has chosen the wrong texts for his intellectual diet. He fails to practice the kind of discernment of textual food that John Russell recommends when selecting bodily food, picking foods that are easily digested and excluding those that result in 34. Glossing of Francis’s Rule and Testament were common charges in antifraternal literature, including the writing of FritzRalph and Wycliffe: Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse,” 61, 64. 35. “The Passion of Seint Averoys [B. 13.91]: ‘Deuynyng’ and Divinity in the Banquet Scene,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 1 (1987): 31–40; See also Lawler, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, 4:29–31 88 painful digestion. Because of this failure, the master’s exegetical indigestion is all but assured. While Patience does not detail the argument he expects the master to deliver, we can make some assumptions based on contemporary debates about the diet of those in religious orders. St. Francis’s instructions for his order notoriously lack the details found in the Rule of St. Benedict, while in general the Dominican order recommended avoiding meat.36 Both orders, however, likely shared similar methods of classifying food to the monastic orders. Thus we can turn to Benedict’s Rule for an explanation of how medieval religious thought approached distinctions between foods. The Rule of Saint Benedict explicitly warns again indigestion from overeating and prohibits the flesh of four footed animals (Lat. carnium quadrupedum) to all except the sick.37 Sophisticated Aristotelian reasoning, however, was brought to bear on just what constituted the carnium quadrupedum.38 Barbara Harvey writes that some monks “distinguished between the muscle tissue of animals—‘butcher’s meat’, as we should say—and the offal and entrails, which were not to be regarded as ‘meat’; and between fresh meat cut from the joint, on the one hand, and salted, precooked, or chopped meat, on the other.”39 These distinctions explain how the master might have rationalized as penitential foods bacon (C.XV.68), 36. Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse,” 28–29; Lawler, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, 4:17. Although Lawler notes that the mortrews are a meat dish, it is possible that they would not have been categorized as a meat dish within religious communities. 37. Bruce L. Venarde, ed., The Rule of Saint Benedict, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 138–139; Barbara Harvey, Living and Dying in England, 1100– 1540: The Monastic Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 39. 38. David Moses, “Soul Food and Eating Habits: What’s at Steak in a Medieval Monk’s Diet?,” The Downside Review 124, 436 (2006): 219–20. Averroes was a transmitter of Aristotelian thought, so this would provide support for Middleton’s identification of “þe passioun of Seynt Auerey.” Piers Plowman laments the adoption of the study of logic by the fraternal orders (B.XX.273–276). 39. Harvey, Living and Dying in England, 40. 89 “wombe cloutes” [tripe] (B.XIII.63), and even “wilde brawen” [wild boar] (B.XIII.63).40 Elaborate preparations of the flesh of birds and fish, such as a fish mortreux, would also be acceptable since they did not come from a four footed animal.41 Likewise, Benedictine monasteries might add a special hall called a misericord where the normal dietary restrictions did not apply.42 Since the Rule only mentioned eating in the refectory, misericords offered a technical loophole for consuming foods that were otherwise prohibited. The use of these and other fine logic distinctions was so pervasive that in 1336 Pope Benedict XIII issued the papal bull Summa Magistri limiting the eating of meat to those who sat at the abbot’s table and permitting only half of the monastery to eat in the misericord at a time and then only on particular days of the week.43 As much as the bull tried to limit excess, it also helped to recognize the eating of meat as a legitimate practice for those in religious orders.44 Thus, careful logical distinctions and creative interpretation could justify the eating of a range of foods prohibited to the original members of a religious order. The master of divinity, it would seem, took great pride in being able to show off his use of such reasoning to justify his choice of food. Until more research is completed on the diets of the fraternal orders, a comparison to monastic diets 40. Gerald of Wales (12–13th century), for example, complained of religious orders who argued that they could eat bacon while still avoiding “flesh meat,” Harvey, 40n15. 41. Chaucer employs the image of a monk enjoying swan meat to emphasize his worldliness and upper class tastes in the prologue to The Canterbury Tales (I.A.206). Such eating fitted the letter of the Rule of St. Benedict but not the spirit. 42. Peter McDonald, “The Papacy and Monastic Observance in the Later Middle Ages: The Benedictina in England,” Journal of Religious History 14, 2 (1986): 119. 43. McDonald, “The Papacy and Monastic Observance in the Later Middle Ages,” 122. 44. McDonald, 122. 90 can give us a sense of the arguments that the poem’s original audience would have associated with Patience’s prediction. Distributing Food According to the Great Commandment Within the banquet scene, Will confronts two interrelated problems in his society. The first is that those whose function it is to care for the spiritual needs of the communes have abandoned this responsibility to pursue bodily pleasures (B.XIII.13). The eating of rich food at the banquet functions as a synecdoche for enjoying sensual and material pleasures, many of which were “myswonne” from others in greater need (B.XIII.42). Second, we can see that the redirection and hoarding of material, intellectual, and spiritual resources for the benefit of the mendicant orders deprives the poor and “lewede” of material and religious nourishment (B.XIII.8–13). One half of this second charge should be familiar to us from the analysis of the episode of half-acre. In it able-bodied beggars harm the poor by stealing bodily food from those who live in poverty. Piers Plowman often proceeds in a ruminative and cyclical manner, returning to develop a theme more fully.45 The episode of the banquet develops the episode of the half-acre by enlarging the character of the false beggar into a learned representative of the mendicant orders. Alongside the earlier concern about the withholding of material goods from the truly poor, the later episode adds the concern about withholding intangible, spiritual goods, like confession and religious education, from the poor and the laity. 45. Derek Pearsall writes that, “One impulse is the ruminative rather than the dialectic habit of mind which leads him [Langland] constantly to chew over things, to return to matters that he might be thought to have treated already…There is also the way in which, in this process of rumination, questions that seemed to be related to the practical and economic life of society turn out to be questions to do with the spiritual life of the individual,” “‘Lunatyk Lollares’ in Piers Plowman,” 167–68. This ruminative process of composition would also seem to mirror the meditative process of the typical earlier reader of Piers Plowman, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, “Piers Plowman,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace, (Cambridge University Press, 1999), 527. 91 These twin problems crystallize in an exchange that Will has with the master when he asks the friar about Dowell: ‘Dowel?’ quod þis doctour — and dronke after — ‘Do noon yuel to þyn euencristen, nou t by þi power.’ʒ ‘By þis day, sire doctour,’ quod I, ‘þanne be ye no t in Dowel!ʒ For ye han harmed vs two in þat ye eten þe puddyng, Mortrews and ooþer mete — and we no morsel hadde. And if ye fare so in youre fermerye, ferly me þynkeþ46 But cheeste be þe charite sholde be, and yonge children dorste pleyne! I wolde permute my penaunce with youre — for I am in point to dowel. (B.XIII.104–111) [ ‘Dowell?’ said this doctor — and took a drink — ‘Do no evil to your fellow Christian, not by your ability.’ ‘During this day, sir doctor,’ I said ‘you are not then in Dowell! For you have harmed us two in that you eat pudding, Mortrews and other food — and we do not have a morsel. And if you do so in your infirmary, I think it a wonder Unless there should be quarreling about the charity, and young child must complain! I wish I could exchange my penance with yours— for I am ready to dowell.] 46. This is a particularly opaque line since it implies that they are eating in the infirmary. One possibility is that the infirmary is serving the same purpose for the master’s fraternal order as the misericord did for the monastic orders, a location where the normal rules about food consumption are relaxed. 92 The master’s explanation of Dowel, which is interrupted by a conspicuous pause to drink more wine, takes the form of a negative version of the Great Commandment.47 Will’s response makes the same association as Hunger does earlier between the command to love one’s neighbor and giving tangible aid in the form of food alms. The master’s gluttonous eating has left not a morsel for the poor, in this case: Patience, Will, and “yonge children,” demonstrating his failure to abide by his own definition of Dowel.48 The master’s drinking literally hinders his practice of the Great Commandment. Will’s retort in the final line of the passage above reminds us that the problem is not only the hoarding of bodily food. Penance, as the Latin verse about eating sin demonstrates, is the proper activity for friars since it should accompany the hearing of confessions. The master’s failure to practice penance in order to satisfy his bodily appetite and show off his intellectual ingenuity harms not only himself but others. Later the poem notes that no one should become a bishop unless he has both, “Bodily foode and goostly fode to gyue þere it nedede” [Bodily and spiritual food to give where it is needed] (B.XV.575). It is true that the master is not a bishop, yet bishops are models of pastoral care.49 The behavior of the mendicant orders cause the “[b]odily” and “goostly” malnourishment of those who live in the greatest need of both these forms of food. Langland has already put forward a solution for the problem of bodily hunger in the 47. The C-text substitutes “neyhebore” for “euencristen,” making the allusion more explicit (C.XV.114). 48. Lawler mentions that this could refer to people inside the friar’s community since one charge against the fraternal orders was inciting young children to join them, The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, 4:34–35. 49. One of the functions of a bishop is to teach about the Trinity (B.XV.571), something the master parodies when defending his choice of food (B.XIII.94) 93 episode of the half-acre. In what follows, I would like to show that the poem similarly recommends moderation as a cure for the spiritual and intellectual hunger of the needy. CONSUMING KNOWLEDGE IN MODERATION Knowledge as food and the process of coming to know as eating is a metaphor with a long lineage. For Langland’s original audience, the association stretches back to the book of Genesis where Adam and Eve eat from the “lignumque scientiae boni et mali” [tree of the knowledge of good and evil].50 Their eating of the fruit from the tree results in the Christian fall and the entrance of sin into the world. Though knowledge generally carries positive connotations in the Middle Ages, the story of the fall bore with it the idea that certain kinds of knowing could be dangerous. This is a danger that runs throughout Piers Plowman as Will finds that some of the most religiously educated people in society, like the master of divinity, are sources of the most harm to the common good of society. Will also encounters characters who critique his own inquisitiveness (B.X.118–26, B.XI.229–30), with the poem using alimentary language to issue the strongest censures of Will’s excessive desire for knowledge. The warnings frequently allude to Adam and Eve’s seeking after forbidden knowledge and its association with an unrestrained bodily appetite. In this way, the poem’s dietary instructions about eating in moderation and contentment with food that accords with one’s social status parallel its recommendation of a moderate desire for knowledge and contentment with religious knowledge that accords with one’s educational status. 50. Genesis 2:9. “And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” Far more scholarship has focused on this metaphor in Milton’s Paradise Lost. See for example, Kilgour, From Communion to Cannibalism, 119–139. 94 The first warning about a gluttonous desire for knowledge occurs in Passus XI in the B-text. There Will criticizes Reason’s management of life on Earth. Reason answers him so forcefully that Will wakes from his dream within a dream. The character Imaginatyf, reflecting the faculty of the mind that is concerned with interpreting sense memory, arrives to help Will understand what occurred.51 He compares Will’s criticism of Reason to Adam’s behavior in Paradise: ‘Adam, þe whiles he spak no t, hadde paradis at wille;ʒ Ac whan he mamelede aboute mete and entremetede to knowe The wisedom and þe wit of God, he was put fram blisse. And ri t so ferde Reson bi þee — þow wiþ rude speche,ʒ Lakkedest and losedest þyng þat longed noʒt þe to doone. (B.XI.415–19) [ ‘Adam, while he did not speak, had paradise when he wanted; But when he babbled about food and presumed to know The wisdom and understanding of God, he was driven from bliss. And just so Reason feared about you — you with ignorant speech, Criticized and forfeited the thing that was not yours to do.] The structure of the lines places Adam’s desire to know the “wisedom and þe wit of God” parallel to his babbling talk about food.52 Knowledge and food are one, making the cause of Adam’s fall from bliss both bodily and intellectual appetite. Since speech and eating 51. Cf. Michelle Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 181–82; Nicolette Zeeman, Piers Plowman and the Medieval Discourse of Desire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 78–84, 245–258. 52. mamelen v., means to “To babble; talk foolishly,” MED. Cf. also Bakhtin’s recognition of the connection between eating and speech, “One would be tempted to seek the origin of this connection of food with the spoken word at the very cradle of human language,” Rabelais and His World, 283. 95 both involve the mouth, taste and speech were frequently joined in late medieval conceptions of the five senses.53 Through the comparison to Adam, Imaginatyf in effect tells Will that he should have kept his mouth shut.54 Adam’s lack of contentment with what he had is also key to the offense. He “hadde paradis at wille” yet desires something more, losing that which he already had in the attempt to acquire more. He also attempts to judge something that “longed no t” to ʒ him. The C-text emphasizes Adam’s overreaching differently by making God’s wisdom parallel to Reason’s “preuete,” something that is intimate and private (C.XIII.230).55 Will’s criticism of Reason is similarly viewed as going beyond what is appropriate for his station. Imaginatyf, in a possible pun, identifies Will’s speech as “rude.” The word can imply offensiveness, as in modern usage, but in Middle English it often implies lack of education, identifying someone as a member of the laity rather than the clergy.56 Will’s questions, coming from a sense of pride and self-righteousness, reflect an overinflated sense of his own intellectual capability and educational status. He, like Adam, has failed to be content with the knowledge appropriate to his station in life and greedily seeks after more. 53. Woolgar, The Senses in Late Medieval England, 10–12, 104–105. 54. The B-text contains a further food-based pun. Imaginatyf says, “Pryde now and presumpcioun parauenture wole þee appele” (B.XI.421). This would be properly translated as “Pride now and presumption perchance will make a legal charge against you.” Homophones in the sentence make it possible to construe it as, “Pride now and presumption perchance willed the apple.” 55. The word privite has rich theological connotations in Middle English. Julian of Norwich locates the reason for the existence of sin in the “hey privitye hid in God” which will only be revealed after death, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich, ed. Georgia Ronan Crampton, (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1993), 73. The term can also refer to genitals and Chaucer plays with the confusion between the anatomical and theological meanings for comedic effect in The Miller’s Tale. 56. rude adj., MED. 96 Despite this warning, Will’s wandering and questioning continues for nine more passus. Imaginatyf compares Will’s relentless desire to know to a drunk who falls into a ditch (B.XI.425–32). Neither Reason nor Clergy can convince such a person to give up their addiction. Only Need can compel a drunk to recognize the filth they are lying in and the necessity of changing their behavior. There is acute authorial awareness in this comparison. The length and multiple versions of Piers Plowman suggest a long labor, all without the support of a patron. Will’s hunger for words, questions, and Latin quotations are more insatiable than Hunger, who at least recommends moderation. Financial need must have forced the author to set aside the project in order to feed himself and his family. Nevertheless, he always returns to the poem like the drunk in the ditch returns to his drinking. Alimentary Exegesis and Too Much Honey As I noted earlier, Piers Plowman moves in a cyclical and meditative fashion, setting aside ideas and images, only to return to develop them at a later point. The second comparison between Will’s excessive appetite for knowledge and Adam and Eve makes the case that the central problem with an unbounded desire to accumulate knowledge is the difficulty of converting it into action. In answer to a question from Anima, Will utters a Faustian desire to know everything:57 ‘Ye, sire,’ I seide, ‘by so no man were greued, Alle þe sciences vnder sonne and alle þe sotile craftes I wolde I knewe and kouþe kyndely in myn herte!’ (B.XV.47–49) 57. Anima is Latin for soul. In the C-text, the speaker is Liberum Arbitrium or freewill. At this point, both characters are described in similar terms despite their differing connotations. 97 [‘Yes, sir,” I said, ‘By such no man was harmed, I wish I knew and had natural mastery of, in my heart, All the sciences under the sun and all the skilled crafts!’] Will, in his omnivorous appetite for natural knowledge, imagines knowledge as a material substance that can be incorporated in his body, i.e., in “myn herte.”58 His words draw a quick rebuke from Anima. He calls Will “oon of Prides kny tes!” [one of Pride’s ʒ knights!] (B.XV.50) and likens Will’s desire to that which caused the fall of Lucifer from heaven, the event that prefigures Adam and Eve’s fall (B.XV.51). Anima goes on to compare the desire to know everything to eating too much honey: ‘It were ayeins kynde,’ quod he, ‘and alle kynnes reson That any creature sholde konne al, except Crist oone.59 Ayein swiche Salomon spekeþ, and despiseþ hir wittes, And seiþ, Sicut qui mel comedit multum, non est ei bonum; Sic qui scrutator est maiestatis, opprimatur a gloria. ‘To Englisshe men þis is to mene, þat mowen speke and here, The man þat muche hony eet, his mawe hit engleymeþ; And þe moore þat a man of good matere hereþ, But he do þerafter it dooþ hym double scaþe. “Beatus,” seiþ Seint Bernard, “qui scripturas legit 58. This is an example of what Lakoff and Johnson term a “container metaphor.” Ideas are pictured as a substance that can be put into a particular container. Such a conceptual framework leads naturally to the use of metaphors of eating for knowing with the mind or body as the container that holds the knowledge once it is transferred from outside the body, Metaphors We Live By, 29–30, 46–48. 59. Interestingly, Christ is the only exception to this rule. 98 Et verba vertit in opera fulliche to his power.” Coueitise to konne and to knowe science Pulte out of Paradis Adam and Eue: Sciencie appetitus hominem inmortalitatis gloriam spoliavit. ‘And ri t as hony is yuel to defie and engleymeþ þe mawe,ʒ Right so þat þoru reson wolde þe roote knoweʒ Of God and hise grete my tes — hise graces it letteþ. ʒ For in þe likynge liþ a pride and a licames coueitise Ayein Cristes counseil and alle clerkes techynge — That is Non plus sapere quam oportet sapere. (B.XV.52–69) [‘It would be against nature,’ he said, ‘and all natural reason That any being should know everything, except only Christ. Solomon speaks against such people, and despises their understanding And said, “Just as to the one who eats much honey, it is not to his good; So the one who is a searcher of majesty, is overwhelmed by glory.60 ‘To English men who speak and hear English, this means, The man who eats much honey, it entangles his throat; And the more that a man hears of good matter, Unless he does it afterwards, it will do him a double hurt. “Blessed,” said Saint Bernard, “is the one who reads scripture And turns words into work to the best of his ability.” 60. The Latin is from Proverbs 25:27. I have used my own translation here, but the Douay-Rheims version run, “As it is not good for a man to eat much honey, so he that is a searcher of majesty shall be overwhelmed by glory.” 99 Covetousness to learn and know knowledge Put Adam and Eve out of Paradise: Appetite for knowledge deprived humans of the glory of immortality. ‘And just as honey is difficult to digest and entangles the throat, Just so the one that through reason would know the root Of God and his great power — it hinders his graces. For in the desire lies pride and a covetousness of the body Against Christ’s counsel and all clergy’s teaching — That is Not to know more than it is proper to know.] The passage, driven by Anima’s exegesis of Proverbs 25:27 in line 55, is a dense web of scriptural allusions, macaronic verse, and alimentary imagery. Anima claims to give the proverb’s meaning in English, yet only translates the first half of the Latin into English. He glosses the rest of the proverb to say that eating too much honey, which entangles the throat of the eater, is like a person who receives more harm the more good things he hears and fails to convert into practice. The same passage in the C-text uses more even gustatory language to gloss the second half of the proverb: “The wittiore þat eny wihte is, but yf he worche þeraftur, / The bittorere he sall abugge, but yf he wel worche” [The more one knows, unless he does so afterwards, / The bitterer he will suffer, unless he does so well] (C.XVI.218–19). Knowledge is imagined as honey that ceases to be sweet when it is consumed in large quantities. Anima then uses two quotations from Bernard of Clairvaux to further gloss the words from Solomon. The first quotation, imitating the language of the beatitudes from 100 Matthew 5, presents the ideal reader as someone who turns what they read into action. The phrase “verba vertit in opera” [turns words into works] resembles medieval understandings of digestion in which food is converted into the bodily matter of humors and nourishment.61 The second quotation contains a pun on Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit. Latin appetitus would first of all be understood as desire for knowledge, i.e., “sciencie,” recalling the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, appetitus, like its English cognate, also refers to hunger for food. The line is simultaneously an allusion to Adam and Eve’s hunger for the forbidden fruit on the tree of knowledge.62 In Middle English this desire is identified as “Coueitise” (B.XV.62). Though Will is the ostensible target of this critique—the poem’s relentless stream of alliterative lines, allusions, quotations, and questions being the prime example of his never satisfied desire for knowledge—Anima’s complaint recalls the covetousness of the friars that cause them to abandon Will when he states his intention to be buried in his parish church. The same covetousness is present in the master of divinity’s greedy eating at Conscience’s banquet. A greedy appetite and covetous desire for money, food, and knowledge are signs of each other; consumption of one recalls consumption of the others. The example of the Christian fall warns the reader that unrestrained desires will lead to another fall. By framing the fraternal orders’ covetous desires in terms of Adam and Eve’s greedy appetite for knowledge/food, the poem foreshadows the apocalyptic ending of Piers Plowman where greedy friars infiltrate and corrupt the Church. 61. See for example On the Properties of Things from around 1400: “Whan mete is ifonge in þe place of seeþinge, þat is the stomak,…to þe lyuour, and þer by þe worchinge of kinde hete it is ichaungid into þe foure humours” and “þe guttis ben nedeful, for þey chaungiþ þe mete into feedinge,” 1:148, 252. 62. While a pun on spoiliauit would fit with the poem, the application of the verb spoil to food likely came much later, OED. 101 The exegesis of the verse from Proverbs is in part driven by the author’s understanding of honey. Although modern tastes are adapted to see too much sweetness as cloying or saccharine, medieval religious authors embraced an abundance of sweetness in their language.63 Sweetness in food was associated with medicine, something that we see throughout the poem (C.I.145, VI.88, B.V.49).64 In the simile, honey is likened to “good matere.” The “double scaþe” in the B-text and the bitterness in the C-text are not the result of eating too much of a sweet thing; the harm results from the difficulty of swallowing and digesting so much of the sticky substance. As noted earlier, medieval eaters were attuned to the digestibility of their foods. Large quantities of honey are “yuel to defie,” that is digest or break down in the body.65 Indigestion from eating too much honey is absent in the B-text, but present in C: Riht so sothly sciences swelleth a mannes soule And doth hym to be deynous and deme þat beth nat lered. “Non plus sapere,” saide þe wyse, “quam oportet sapere, laste synne of pruyde wexe.” (C.XVI.225–27) [Just so, truly, knowledge swells a man’s soul And causes him to be haughty and critical of those who are not educated. “Not to know more,” said the wise, “than it is right to know, lest 63. Fulton, “‘Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9),” 180–81. See also the comments in On the Properties of Things, “Þe taast haþ þe likinge in swete þinges for þe liknes þat he haþ wiþ swetnes. For swetnesse þat stondiþ in hoot and moist is like to alle þe membres þat be moost ifedde wiþ swete foode. For swete food norischiþ moche and is liȝtliche ilikned to þe membres and lymes,” 1:118. 64. The triacle mentioned in these lines was a sugary medicine, MED. See also Brown, “‘Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9),” 185–86, 199. 65. defien v.(2), MED. Indigestion was understood in the Middle Ages from a humoral perspective. On the Properties of Things contains a description about how a poor balance of heat and moisture in foods leads to common forms of indigestion, 1:146. 102 sin grow from pride.’] The intertext for the image of indigestion is 1 Corinthians 8:1. Paul, discussing the eating of food sacrificed to idols, writes that, “Knowledge [Latin scientia] puffeth up; but charity edifieth.”66 This puffing up of one’s soul with pride imitates the swelling of one’s stomach with gas. Consuming knowledge without converting it into action causes pride to wax large in a kind of intellectual indigestion. This swollenness leads to judgmental condescension that looks down on those who lack education and “beth nat lered” (C.XVI.226) The failure to digest texts properly, to turn words into works, is at the center of Will’s critique of the master of divinity. In the midst of the banquet scene, Will recalls that the master preached a sermon on penance, using a passage from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians as his text.67 There Paul describes all the sufferings he experienced, including “In fame et frygore” [In hunger and cold] (B.XIII.67). In a passage we have already examined, Will voices his anger that the master could recommend Paul’s life of penance yet fail to practice it in his choice of food and manner of eating. He teaches one thing and does another.68 The master’s failure as an ideal reader and interpreter of scripture is reflected in his inability to digest the food that he eats, something that Will and Patience imagine in grotesque detail. His belching and bloating 66. In the Vulgate the full verse is, “De his autem quae idolis sacrificantur, scimus quia omnes scientiam habemus. scientia inflat, caritas vero aedificat.” 67. Will locates the sermon at the Church of Saint Paul’s in London. The location calls attention to the master’s elevated social status, while further calling attention to his failure to apply the words of St. Paul to himself (B.XIII.65, C.XV.71). 68. This topic of religious leaders turning words into actions recalls Chaucer’s approbation of the Parson who, “Cristes loore and his apostles tweleve / He taughte; but first he folwed it hymselve” (I.A.527– 528). He teaches the fundamentals of the Christian faith and obeys it himself. The hypocrisy of the master further depicts him in the form of a New Testament Pharisee, one of the common tropes in anti- fraternal literature, Szittya, The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature, 5. 103 as his stomach fills with gas is not only a consequence of eating the wrong texts, it is also a failure to turn the words he preaches from the correct texts into action. He has read/consumed the penitential words of scripture but does not properly digest them. If he had digested them correctly, the words would have become penitential behavior. Thus, the master of divinity’s belching and swelling pride are twin signs of his failure as a reader and interpreter. Consuming in Moderation If the inability to digest so much knowledge is the problem, the natural solution is moderate consumption. Both the B and C-texts include the Latin phrase “Non plus sapere quam oportet sapere,” which comes from Romans 12:3. Although it is rendered in the Douay-Rheims translation as “not to be more wise than it behoveth to be wise,” the Latin text has alimentary connotations. As I noted in the introduction to the dissertation, the verb sapio can equally refer to tasting and eating. With the running metaphor of eating in this passage, as well as the pun on the meaning of appetitius, this is another play on the similarity between eating and knowing. The passage might as easily be translated as, “not to taste more than it behoveth to taste.” It is another warning to knower-eaters to not consume what is beyond their ability to digest, i.e., to turn into action and behavior. Moderation in eating is a consistent theme in the poem as are diagnoses that eating too much leads to indigestion and stomach aches. We have already looked at what Hunger has to say about moderation in chapter one and at the grotesque effects of the master of divinity’s overeating in this chapter. The subject is repeated again in the way Hawkin the Active man describes his diet: “And moore mete eet and dronk þan kynde 104 myʒte defie, / And kauʒte siknesse somtyme for my surfetes ofte” [And consumed more food and drank than one might naturally digest, / ‘And caught sickness sometimes for my overindulgence] (B.XIII.404–405). Hawkin’s eating more than “kynde,” or nature, can “defie” leads to bodily sickness. Eating, though, is seldom just the physical consumption of food. The preceding lines identify the gluttonous behavior as swearing in God’s name, again associating speech with eating and the particular sins that result from intemperate eating (B.XIII.400–403). As noted in the first chapter, moderation is recommended in the listing of the three common things necessary for life. Drink is singled out for consumption in moderation when Holy Church says, “Mesure is medicine, þouʒ þow muchel yerne” [Moderation is medicine, although you desire much] (B.I.35). Later in the poem Grace distributes a seed called Spiritus Temperancie [Spirit Temperance] (B.XIX.283).69 Eating the seed offers protection against swelling brought on by too much food and lack of food in times of scarcity (B.XIX.285). The idea that moderation will prevent food scarcity also appears in Patience’s statement at one point that, “[I]f men lyuede as mesure wolde, sholde neuere moore be defaute / Amonges Cristene creatures” [If men lived as moderation wished, there should never more be scarcity / Among Christian people] (B.XIV.70–71). The value of moderation is a theme that runs throughout Piers Plowman’s critique of his contemporary society. In recommending moderation in eating, the poem aligns with much of the common wisdom about diet in the later Middle Ages. Lydgate’s “Dietary” is full of recommendations of moderation for improving health: 69. The seed of Spirit Prudencie [Spirit Prudence] is fittingly involved in food production as well. It recommends that one skim fat with a ladle (B.XIX.281–82), which could be a valuable commodity both for food and greasing wheels, Woolgar, The Culture of Food in England, 203–204. 105 Moderat diet ageyns al seekenesse, Is best phisicien to mesur thyn entraile ……………………………………… Moderat foode yeueth to man his helthe, And all surfetis doth fro hym remewe, And charite to the sowle is dewe; (87–88, 163–165)70 [A moderate diet against all sickness, Is the best physician to moderate your intestines. ……………………………………… Moderate food gives a man his health And overindulgence from him recall, And charity is dew to the soul;] The last line is a reminder that dietary advice cannot be separated from spiritual health. Recommendations for moderate eating blur with condemnations of gluttony and covetousness of food in the eyes of medieval writers. The morally approved consumption of food also happens to be the most healthy for the material body. And, as the passage about honey shows, it is nearly impossible to disambiguate medieval conceptions of material food from conceptions about the consumption of intangible and spiritual objects. Modern distinctions between the material and spiritual are anachronistic when projected onto the text.71 70. Lydgate, “A Dietary, and a Doctrine for Pestilence,” 702–7. 71. Cf. Taylor, Secular Age, 2. 106 Moderate Knowing: Why the Trinity Should Not Be on the Menu Piers Plowman’s dietary instructions on moderate bodily eating are easy enough for modern interpreters to understand. It is much harder to picture moderate consumption of knowledge. Or, putting the issue in alimentary terms, if one is only to seek to know that which they can turn into action, what topics are forbidden from the intellectual buffet table? The poem addresses this question in several places, including immediately after the passage we have just been examining. There Anima pivots unexpectedly to attack the preaching of “Freres and fele oþere maistres” [Friars and many other masters] (B.XV.70). This sudden shift should remind us, as my comparisons to the master of divinity’s behavior have shown, that Anima’s criticism has been delivered with the friars in mind. If Will is the object of censure in the passage, it is because of the way he imitates the fraternal orders’ covetous desire for knowledge. Anima criticizes the friars and other masters who in their preaching “moeuen materes vnmesurables to tellen of þe Trinite, / That oftetymes þe lewed peple of hir bileue doubte” [stir up subjects uncountable to speak on the Trinity / That often the uneducated doubt their faith] (B.XV.71–72). Their sermons to the laity explore speculative theology. Exposing people who lack formal theological education to these subjects, rather than basic matters of the faith, leads them to a state of religious doubt. This is a criticism that the poem expresses elsewhere in connection with food. Dame Study criticizes clerks who discuss theology with lay aristocracy as dinner entertainment. Ac if þei carpen of Crist, þise clerkes and þise lewed, Atte mete in hir murþes whan mynstrals beþ stille, 107 Thanne telleþ þei of þe Trinite how two slowe þe þridde,72 ………………………………………………….. Thus they dryuele at hir deys þe deitee to knowe, And gnawen God in þe gorge whanne here guttes fullen. (B.X.51–53, 56– 57) [But if they speak of Christ, these clergy and these laity, During their merriment at the meal when the minstrels are still, Then they tell of the Trinity, how two killed the third. ………………………………………………….. Thus they drool on their dais to know the godhead, And gnaw God in their gullet when their guts are full.] When clerks discuss the Trinity with those who lack formal education, the outcome is an Eucharistic parody where they drool and gnaw on God.73 Again we have the association between food, speech, and knowledge, with words about the Trinity intermingling with food in the mouth. Just as with Hawkin, the sins of blasphemy and gluttony resemble each other. In the midst of this criticism of gluttony and blasphemy, the poem never forgets the bodily needs of the poor. Dame Study complains that clerks eat in this manner while the poor “crie and carpen at þe yate, / Boþe afyngred and afurst, and for chele quake” [cry and call out at the gate / Both very hungry and thirsty, and quake because of the 72. In theological terms, the crucifixion of God the Son by God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. 73. The C-text calls attention to the difference in educational states in alliterative fashion: “The lewed a enʒ þe lered þe holy lore to dispute” [The unlearned begin to dispute holy teaching with the learned] (C.XI.36) 108 chill], lacking food, drink, and warm clothes: the three necessities for life (B.X.58–59). Such behavior leads Dame Study to say that “Clerkes and oþere kynnes men carpen of God faste, / And haue hym muche in hir mouþ, ac meene men in herte” [Clergy and other kindred men invariably speak of God / And have him much in their mouths, but poor men in their hearts] (B.X.69–70). God remains in their mouths only; they have failed to incorporate God into their bodies, to turn words into works. If the clerks had properly digested their talk about God, they would seek to care for the suffering of the poor and hungry around them. The failure of the clerks in passus X then anticipates the failure of the master of divinity in passus XIII. Dame Study lays the blame not on all clerks but specifically on “freres and faitours” [friars and fakers] (B.X.71), the same target as the banquet in passus XIII, and the passage we have been examining in passus XV. The poem asserts that speculative theology, like the nature of the Trinity, is not proper spiritual food for the uneducated. In Passus XV, Anima recommends a simple diet for lewd people: the ten commandments, the categories of sin, and how to avoid misusing their five senses (B.XV.73–76).74 This teaching focuses on basic moral and doctrinal instruction. It is the religious equivalent of bread, giving new significance to Pier’s statement that “He haþ ynou that haþ bred ynou ” (B.VII.84). The poem’s pedagogical ʒ ʒ list has much in common with the canon Ignoratia Sacerdotum issued by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1281. The archbishop who, in touch of irony, was a member of the Franciscan order, “issued an outline of six doctrinal points to be taught to the laity in the vernacular four times a year: the Articles of Faith, the Ten Commandments, the Works of 74. A good example of teaching on the categories of sin is seen in Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale, which organizes types of sin according to the seven deadly sins. 109 Mercy, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Virtues and the Sacraments.”75 In Piers Plowman these are the appropriate religious diet for the uneducated because of their limited capacity to understand and convert their knowledge into action. The embodied nature of alimentary conceptions of knowledge and its transfer provides natural limits for healthy religious instruction. It is fair to critique this approach to limited education in the same vein as Aers’s observation that the episode of the half-acre reinforces class hierarchies. Rather than attempting to raise the laity up to their level, the clerical class is to limit their teaching to what the laity can reasonably be expected to understand and assimilate into daily practice. Educational differences are reinforced instead of challenged. The poem’s mindset is very different, however, from that of a text like the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ.76 That vernacular religious text was produced with the approval of the ecclesiastical authorities and encourages its reader to be content with a fairly simple faith grounded in knowledge of the life of Christ and correct moral behavior. As Nicholas Watson has shown, the desire of the laity to read scripture and discuss theological ideas in the vernacular was a source of major debate in the second half of the fourteenth century, with the election of Archbishop Thomas Arundel in 1399 setting the English church on a course to limit lay access to speculative theology in the vernacular.77 Langland speaks with a voice outside the church hierarchy. His criticism is not primarily directed at the covetousness of the laity for knowledge above their status but at clergy in general and 75. Marjorie Curry Woods and Rita Copeland, “Classroom and Confession,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 396. 76. More will be said about the Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ in the next chapter. 77. “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England,” 822–64. Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ was the first vernacular religious work published with Arundel’s approval. 110 friars in particular. They prefer to satisfy their own bodily and intellectual appetites rather than provide for the spiritual and material nourishment of the laity and the poor. Piers Plowman warns that just as Adam and Eve’s covetous appetite led to the fall of humanity, so the fraternal orders’ covetous appetite is leading to an apocalyptic end for Langland’s society. “NEED HATH NO LAW”: THE END OF UNBOUNDED APPETITE Piers Plowman ends with an apocalyptic vision of the Church being infiltrated by false friars who corrupt the sacrament of confession and lead to the flight of Conscience. Though the alimentary language in Passus XX is more diffuse, the cyclical and meditative process of the poem means that many of the concepts expressed earlier through the language of hunger and eating resurface here. We can see the appetite driven fall of humanity mapped onto the apocalyptic fall of the Church and ordered society. The Church is presented metaphorically as the Barn of Unity, a storage place for food grown in a field plowed by Piers Plowman (B.XIX.264–337) Its fall is precipitated by a false friar who, like the serpent in the story of the Fall, enters through the use of pleasing but deceitful words (B.XX.349–56). The friar’s promised cure is found to be a poison drink that dulls Contrition’s fear of sin, corrupting the sacrament of confession (B.XX.365–80). His actions, representative of all the fraternal orders, are driven by an immoderate and covetous appetite. Throughout this vision of ecclesiastical and social collapse, the newly introduced character of Need takes on a central role. Need functions as a transformed version of Hunger, emerging from Will’s bodily appetite, while representing a desire for more than 111 food. Will encounters Need around noontime, after he has spent the morning unsuccessfully searching for food (B.XX.1–4). Need thus enters at the point that Will is intensely experiencing his bodily need for food. Jill Mann, cutting through the many allegorical interpretations of this scene, writes that, “If Langland meets Need at noon, it is because, in fourteenth-century England, noon is dinner-time…Need first emerges in the passus as the voice of Langland’s rumbling tummy; to ignore this is to overlook the wit and precision of the allegory.”78 Need launches into a verbal attack on Will, asking why he cannot simply take what he needs to satisfy his hunger. This is the only encounter with a personification in the B-text to take place outside a vision, giving it a special force, immediacy, and realism. The appearance outside of a dream emphasizes the way Need is grounded in Will’s bodily need: his grumbling stomach. The bodily experience of hunger lies behind Need’s rhetorical question to Will as to whether “nede ne haþ no lawe” [need has no law] (B.XX.10). Whether it has laws, Need does have limits, for the character qualifies its statement. One must only take in moderation, according to “Spiritus Temperancie” [Spirit Temperance] and “na moore þan nede þee tauʒte” [no more than need taught you] (B.XX.8–9). Furthermore, a person in need can only take the three things that are necessary for life, the same mentioned in the first passus: food, clothing, and drink (B.XX.11–19, I.20–25). “So Nede, at gret nede, may nymen as for his owene” [So Need, at great need, may take as his own] argues Need, overriding Conscience and all the cardinal virtues except Temperance (B.XX.20). Need, like Hunger before him, is a morally ambiguous figure. Prominent scholars of Piers Plowman have come to opposing interpretations on whether the poem ultimately 78. “The Nature of Need Revisited,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 18 (2004): 6. 112 supports or undermines the character of Need.79 The profusion of opposing interpretations reflect strong textual evidence for either reading of Need. Need’s argument that the poor have a right to take what they need to survive without the act being considered theft was supported by canon law about the common ownership of property in times of dire need, a view supported by Thomas Aquinas.80 We have already seen someone stealing bread in a state of need without censure in chapter one (C.IX.91). Need also calls attention to the self-emptying poverty that leads Jesus to take on human nature and die on the cross (B.XX.40–50). Identification with Jesus through a life of voluntary poverty was the original ideal behind the lifestyle of the fraternal orders. On the other hand, the reader is prepared to suspect Need’s arguments. In the immediately preceding passage in Passus XIX, the cardinal virtues of Justice, Prudence, and Fortitude are corrupted and perverted. Need’s appeal to Temperance suggests that the same is occurring to this virtue. What happens when temperance is decoupled from the three cardinal virtues and Conscience? Need could be seen as practicing deadly sophistry that leads to the apocalypse that follows. In contrast to other scholars of the poem, I do not think we need to definitively establish the moral valence of Need. The poem’s method reflects a common scholastic 79. Mann presents a kind of who’s who of Piers Plowman scholars who have come to opposing conclusions about Need in “The Nature of Need Revisited,” 4n3&5. A similar list can be found in Kim, “Hunger, Need, and the Politics of Poverty in Piers Plowman,” 160n12. Curiously, in spite of the fact that Need and Hunger are often examined together, e.g., Kim, “Hunger, Need, and the Politics of Poverty in Piers Plowman” and chapter one in Aer’s Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 20– 72, the interpretations of Hunger have generally been negative. The similarity between Need and Hunger argues for a more ambiguous appraisal of Hunger. 80. Tierney, Medieval Poor Law, 32–36; Miri Rubin, Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge, 61– 62. For Aquinas see Summa Theologica 2.2.66.7. It could be objected that Aquinas was one of those friars who most exemplified the omnivorous desire to acquire all knowledge within himself. Later in the passus, friars are blamed for coming up with the idea that all property is held in common ownership in order to legitimate their covetousness (B.XX.273–76). 113 habit, which must have reached Langland, of presenting opposing and contradictory views and inviting the reader to draw their own conclusion, what Newman calls the “both/and” hermeneutic.81 Just as I observed with Hunger, Langland is acutely aware of the “slipperiness” of common terms and their potential for positive or negative connotations in different contexts.82 Need reflects conflicting meanings and understandings of ‘need’ and poverty that existed in the Middle Ages, something to which scholars have long called attention.83 Conflicting interpretations of Need arise from a zealous desire to resolve all the questions raised by the poem, something at odds with the spirit of Piers Plowman, which relentlessly questions its own conclusions. For this reason, I understand Need as neither inherently positive or negative. His meaning shifts with the context, just as the word does. The Immoderate Need of Friars The passus continues with a psychomachia as different vices, led by the Antichrist, attack Conscience and the virtues as they defend the Barn of Unity. The friars are initially called to aid Conscience when it appears that the Barn of Unity is about to 81. Medieval Crossover, 7–13. Newman offers the example of Peter Abelard’s popular theological text Sic et Non, 8. We can also see this in Aquinas’s method of presenting diverse and potentially contradictory opinions in the Summa. In this way, the poem invites the reader into the work of interpretation, as it has done for many modern scholars. 82. It is worth recalling Jill Mann’s observation about Langland’s personifications that I quoted earlier, “Langland’s allegory is…rooted in ordinary language use…most of his personifications emerge in a quasi-spontaneous manner out of ordinary abstract nouns” “The Nature of Need Revisited,” 13–14. 83. See for example Anne M. Scott, “Nevere noon so nedy ne poverer deide’: Piers Plowman and the Value of Poverty,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 15 (2001): 141–53; Kim “Hunger, Need, and the Politics of Poverty in Piers Plowman,” 131; Derek Pearsall, “Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman,” 167–85; 114 fall because of slothful and covetous priests (B.XX.217–230).84 Need, however, warns that friars will be corrupted in the same manner as the priests: That þei come for coueitise to haue cure of soules: ‘And for þei are pouere, parauenture, for patrymonye hem failleþ, Thei wol flatere, to fare wel, folk þat ben riche. (B.XX.233–5) [That they come because of covetousness to have care of souls: ‘And since they are poor, perchance, because endowments are not enough for them, They will flatter, to live well, rich people.] Need as need has special insight into the nature of need, just as Hunger uniquely understands human hunger. He recognizes his potential for corruption, warning that since friars must beg to satisfy their need for food, drink, and clothing, they are more likely to flatter the rich instead of care for the spiritual needs of the poor. Their covetous desire to care for souls may turn into a covetousness for the material benefits those souls can provide. Need uses alimentary language to argue that the proper safeguard against this outcome is that friars should embrace the life of poverty that they have chosen, without the corrupting right of confession and sepulture,85 And siþen þei chosen chele and cheitiftee, pouerte — Lat hem chewe as þei chose, and charge hem with no cure. 84. The idea of the mendicant orders rescuing the Church can be seen in stories surrounding the founding of the Franciscans and Dominican orders. Examples include Thomas of Celano’s account of St. Francis repairing the church of St. Damian and the dream of Pope Innocent III of St. Dominic keeping the Lateran Church from collapsing. See Thomas of Celano, The Life of St. Francis of Assisi and the Treatise of Miracles, trans. Catherine Bolton (Assisi: Editrice Minerva, 1997), 27–28; Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend; or, Lives of the Saints as Englished by William Caxton, ed. F. S. Ellis, trans. William Caxton, (London: J. M. Dent and Co., 1900), 4:177. 85. Cf. Clopper, “Songes of Rechelesnesse,” 97–99. 115 For lomere he lyeth, þat liflode moot begge, Than he þat laboureþ for liflode and leneþ it beggeres. And siþen freres forsoke þe felicite of erþe, Lat hem be as beggeris, or lyue by aungeles foode!’ (B.XX.236–241) [And since they have chosen cold and destitution, poverty — Let them chew as they chose, and do not give them the care of souls. For more frequently he lies, that must beg for his sustenance, Than he that labors for his sustenance and gives to beggars. And because friars forsook the joy of earth, Let them live as beggars, or live by angel’s food!] The advice that the friars “chew as thei chose” uses eating as a synecdoche to include an entire way of living and using material goods. Their metaphorical diet is to include “chele and cheitiftee, pouerte” and exclude the “felicite of erþe.” Reminiscent of the emphasis on physical labor in the episode of the half-acre and the suspicion of begging, Need comments about how much greater the temptation is to lie when one does not labor directly for their “liflode.” This passage recalls the master of divinity’s propensity for lying when he has consumed rich and pleasurable foods (B.XIII.96). That friar exemplifies Need’s fears. Need suggest that friars either should be content with what they receive by honest begging or simply trust divine provision for their needs, the ironically termed “aungeles foode.”86 86. Aers considers the latter option to be offered ironically because it is “not institutionizable,” Sanctifying Signs, 154. 116 Conscience laughs at Need’s fears and promises the friars that he will supply their need: “ye shal haue breed and cloþes / And oþere necessaries ynowe — yow shal no þyng lakke” [you will have bread and clothes / And enough of other necessities — you will lack nothing] (B.XX.248–49). In spite of his dismissive attitude, Conscience warns the friars to “haueþ noen enuye / To lered ne to lewed” [do not hold envy / Toward the learned or uneducated] and to “leue logik; and lerneþ for to louye” [leave behind logic; and learn to love] invoking the Great Commandment (B.XX.246–47, 250). Conscience also instructs the friars about the importance of moderation in a brief sermon, “And if you coueite cure, Kynde wol yow telle / That in mesure God made alle manere þynges” [And if you covet the care of souls, Nature will tell you / That in moderation God made all kinds of things] (B.XX.253–254). He goes on to show how fixed numbers and limit are found in every part of the created world, while the inability to be counted and multiplication without limit are signs of sin (B.XX.255–72). Concerning the supernatural world, Conscience says that “Heuene haþ euene noumbre, and helle is wiþoute noumbre” [Heaven has a measured count, and hell is without count] (B.XX.270). With this sermon, Conscience inscribes moderation into the very fabric of the cosmos. As has been seen throughout the poem, this state of moderation will not last. The remainder of Passus XX is a swift moving summary of the fall of the mendicant orders from an original state of voluntary poverty and moderation. Envy encourages the friars to learn logic and study the works of Plato and Seneca. This knowledge allows them to justify holding all things in common and ignore the last of the Ten Commandments to “non concupisces rem proximi tui” [You shall not covet your neighbor’s things] 117 (B.XX.273–279).87 In going against Conscience’s instructions to “leue logyk; and lerneth for to louye,” the fraternal orders imitate Adam’s twin appetite for more knowledge and material pleasure than he was originally given (B.XI.415–19). Their covetous desire leads to the acquisition of knowledge which is then used to legitimate the material half of their appetite. This fall of the fraternal orders is reified in the passage where the master of divinity uses his knowledge to justify violating the Great Commandment through eating food to the harm of his poorer neighbors. In the episode of the banquet, the effects of this covetousness are seen at the individual level; passus XX imagines their effects on a historical and societal scale. The corruption spreads from the fraternal orders to the Church as a whole. Conscience is supported in the defense of the Barn of Unity by his cousin Contrition. Contrition, however, is suffering under a painful penance and so Conscience calls for a physician to care for him. “Frere Flaterere” [Friar Falterer] who is a “phisicien and surgien” [physician and surgeon] (B.XX.316) answers the call.88 The medical metaphor unites the care of souls with the cure of bodies, continuing the integration of spiritual and physical well-being that I have been exploring throughout the chapter.89 Friar Flatterer decides that Contrition’s medicine has been too harsh and substitutes “a plastre” [a 87. In Mark 7:9–10, Jesus criticizes the Pharisees for ignoring the laws of Moses for the sake of their own traditions. The poem’s mention of Moses in this passage (B.XX.278) further portrays the fraternal orders in the likeness of the New Testament Pharisees. 88. For a discussion of medicine in Piers Plowman see Gasse, “The Practice of Medicine in Piers Plowman,” 177–97; Rebecca Krug, “Piers Plowman and the Secrets of Health,” The Chaucer Review 46, 1–2 (2011): 166–81. As noted earlier in the chapter, there is significant overlap between food and medicine in medieval thought. 89. While Middle English cure is more commonly used to refer to bodily medicine, Piers Plowman primarily uses it to refer to the responsibility to care for souls and spiritual needs. Cf. MED. My thesis would suggest that these were not as separate activities for the poet as they are for modern readers. The dual meaning makes possible a few puns once the false friar arrives (e.g., B.XX.325–26). See also Gasse, “The Practice of Medicine in Piers Plowman,” 178. 118 medicine] that contains “A pryuee paiement” [a private payment] and “a litel siluer” [a little silver] (B.XX.364–65, 368).90 The medicine is an exchange of money, with “paiement” punning with piment, a spiced wine often used as medicine. Contrition is granted a less severe penance after giving the friar and his fraternity a payment. The medicine, which takes the form of an enchanted potion, or a sleeping drink in the C-text, is disastrous for the sacrament of penance.91 Contrition falls into a dreamlike state where he no longer weeps for or fears his sins (B.XX.370, 380). We have seen a similar dulling effect in the way that rich food and drink cause the master of divinity to leave off weeping for sins he hears in confession, suggesting that the exchange of money and goods affects both parties in confession. The mutual dulling of the sense of sin renders the sacrament of penance ineffectual. At the banquet the result was a grotesque scene; here it is the collapse of the church. Conscience can no longer prevent Antichrist’s army from entering the Barn of Unity. The need of the friars for material possessions, set free from moderation and temperance, has led to the capture of the Church by the forces of evil. Conscience walks out of the Barn in search of Piers Plowman and Grace because “freres hadde a fyndyng, þat for nede flateren” [friars had sustenance and support, that flatter because of need] (B.XX.384).92 His search for an appropriate “fyndyng,” i.e., provisions and sustenance, for the fraternal orders indicates that the manner in which the fraternal orders receive 90. plastre n., can refer to a plaster or poultice in the modern sense, MED. It may also be used figuratively for any medicine, e.g., B.XX.360. 91. The C-text calls it a “dwale” (XXII.380), whereas the B-text uses the more generic “phisyk” (XX.379). 92. In the way that the fall of the Church in Passus XX imitates the fall of Adam and Eve, this scene recalls Adam and Eve wandering out into the world following their ejection from the garden of Eden. 119 their food and drink is intertwined with the fate of the Church and English society.93 The characters that Conscience seeks, Piers and Grace, are significant for the way they are depicted as sources of food. Piers Plowman grew the food that fills the Barn of Unity from seeds supplied by Grace, which are the cardinal virtues (B.XIX.276).94 Restoring a provision of food, whether bodily or spiritual, that is moderately used and justly distributed would seem to be necessary to restoring the broken world at the end of Piers Plowman. LANGLAND’S CONCEPTUAL WORLD Although this and the previous chapter have demonstrated that approaching Piers Plowman from the perspective of appetite and food yields a deeper understanding of the core themes of the poem, one may still come away with the perception that the poem’s close identification of spiritual and physical hunger is merely poetic. I have tried to argue, following Lakoff and Johnson, that the metaphorical association of the two is much more than that. The poem’s understanding of the material and spiritual are inseparable. One finds moderation recommended from the simple diets of peasants to the very nature of heaven and hell. Removing the alimentary metaphors would fundamentally alter the thing being communicated through those metaphors. Langland’s refusal to disambiguate between the material and spiritual reflects a conceptual difference between the author’s view of the world and the modern interpreter. Piers Plowman was written prior to the 93. Fyndyng is central to David Aers’s analysis of the poem in chapter five of his book, Sanctifying Signs, 99–156. He argues that the “fyndyng” is material provision by the Church’s endowments so that the fraternal orders will not need to rely on flattery for food, 156. Offering similar views are Szittya, 286– 87, and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 153. Clopper takes the opposite position, arguing that the “fyndyng” is a return to the original privileges granted to the Franciscan order by Innocent III, 296–298. 94. Piers Plowman in this way represents a good bishop and priest in his provision of material and spiritual food. (Cf. B.XV.575). 120 modern and late modern separation of the spheres of the spiritual and the material, the religious and the secular. Literary scholars of the Middle Ages have noted this in passing. For example, as I noted in the introduction, Newman writes that, “[F]or us, the secular is the normative, unmarked default category, while the sacred is the marked, asymmetrical Other. In the Middle Ages it was the reverse.”95 Scholars of intellectual history, particularly of the history of secularism like Charles Taylor, have also made this observation about premodern cultures. He writes that, [I]f you go back even farther in human history, you come to archaic societies in which the whole set of distinctions we make between the religious, political, economic, social, etc., aspects of our society cease to make sense. In these earlier societies, religion was “everywhere”, was interwoven with everything else, and in no sense constituted a separate “sphere” of its own.96 Understanding the conceptual unity of the bodily and the spiritual is thus important to understanding and interpreting medieval texts like Piers Plowman. Attempts to subordinate the spiritual to the material or to see the two as a binary risk committing a conceptual anachronism. This chapter is in part an exploration of what it looks like to approach a medieval text with an eye to this essential unity. Food has been the focus not only because it unites these modern binaries but also because, to paraphrase Claude Levi- Strauss, “Food is good to think with.”97 95. Medieval Crossover, viii. 96. A Secular Age, 2. While I would use the term “premodern” rather than “archaic,” I agree that many of the divisions we project onto the world of the Middles Ages make little sense in the text. 97. The original quote is translated as “We can understand, too, that natural species are chosen not because they are ‘good to eat’ but because they are ‘good to think,’” Lévi-Strauss, Totemism, 89. The sentence 121 This understanding will be important for the next chapter as it explores the ways that other late-medieval authors conceived of reading and eating as similar processes. There were many conceptual parallels between the process of religious reading and medieval expectations about the proper consumption and enjoyment of food, many of which have already been suggested by passages in Piers Plowman. Whereas this chapter looked at the similarities between eating and reading rather quickly, the next chapter will slow down the examination, exploring the way that alimentary descriptions of religious reading present an embodied, subjective, and transformative perspective on reading. has been endlessly rephrased in anthropological scholarship. 122 And he said to me: Son of man, eat all that thou shalt find: eat this book and go speak to the children of Israel. And I opened my mouth, and he caused me to eat that book: And he said to me: Son of man, thy belly shall eat, and thy bowels shall be filled with this book which I give thee. And I did eat it: and it was sweet as honey in my mouth. — Ezekiel 3:1–3 CHAPTER 3 — TRANSFORMATIVE READING: CONSUMING TEXTS IN LATE-MEDIEVAL ENGLAND One of the most common alimentary metaphors in late-medieval English literature is the description of reading as eating, a metaphor we have already seen in the banquet at Conscience’s house in Piers Plowman. The metaphorical consumption of texts is by no means limited to Middle English authors. Mary Carruthers writes of medieval literature that, “Metaphors which use digestive activities are so powerful and tenacious that digestion should be considered another basic functional model for the complementary activities of reading and composition, collection and recollection.”1 Likewise, Catherine Brown, reflecting on her experience of reading medieval literature, observes that, “The most vivid figures” of medieval reading practice, “come from the alimentary and the erotic.”2 Alimentary descriptions of reading likely have their origin in scriptural passages such as the epigraph above from Ezekiel.3 Patristic writers, including Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, developed the metaphor before it entered the works of influential medieval authors like Hugh of St. Victor and Bernard of Clairvaux.4 Tracing the lines of 1. The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 207 2. “In the Middle,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30, 3 (2000): 559; Erotic metaphors for reading are central to Carolyn Dinshaw’s “Eunuch Hermeneutics,” ELH 55, 1 (1988): 27–51. 3. There are several similar passages to Ezekiel 3:1–3 including Revelation 10:9–10, Jeremiah 15:16, Psalm 119:103, and Psalm 19:10. 4. The alimentary metaphor for reading becomes closely associated with the practice of lectio divina in the patristic and medieval periods. Duncan Robertson’s survey of lectio divina thus covers much of the 123 influence for a metaphor this widespread would require a book length survey, so this chapter focuses synchronically on a few texts that employ the metaphor of eating for reading in significant ways. These texts, including the anonymous A Ladder of Foure Ronges, Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, and Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ, present religious reading through alimentary metaphors as a subjective, embodied, thick, and ultimately transformative practice that raised contemporary anxiety about heterodox interpretation when applied to vernacular texts. Late-medieval religious reading was expected to be a transformative encounter with a text. Unlike academic interpretation that arises during modernity in which the reader maintains a safe, objective distance from the text, medieval descriptions speak of putting a text in one’s mouth, breaking through the outer shell, chewing the inner pith, and tasting and enjoying its sweet flavor.5 Religious reading is a sensual and embodied experience, not something in which the text is kept at arm’s length.6 It is “thick” in the sense of being multilayered, seeking multiple levels of meaning beneath the literal exterior and including cognitive and affective dimensions of experience. The goal is to assimilate a text into the body of a reader: morally, intellectually, and emotionally, just as development of the metaphor, Lectio Divina: The Medieval Experience of Reading, (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2011). 5. By modernity, I mean the third era in a construction of history that includes premodern, Early Modern, and Modern periods. A comprehensive definition of modernity is beyond the scope of this chapter. Roughly, modernity is the dominant intellectual and social paradigm from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries. As I will suggest, the medieval religious approach to reading has similarities—and key differences—to reactions in literary interpretation against modernity’s assumption that an objective, impersonal, and “everyman” perspective on a text is possible. 6. Cf. Rachel Fulton, “What we see may or may not be true, but for all that it cannot—at least, according to current theories of vision—touch us. We remain distinct from the objects of our view. Taste is another matter altogether. While we can see (and hear) objects other than ourselves without touching them, we cannot taste without taking something of their substance into our mouth and absorbing it through the membranes of the epithelial cells in our tongues,” “‘Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet,’” 170. 124 food is expected to be turned into the body of the eater, while simultaneously the reader is turned into the thing eaten/read.7 The aphorism “You are what you eat” takes on new meaning against medieval practices of reading. Late-medieval reading is a reciprocal process in which text and reader are transformed by the encounter.8 Such a subjective and personal encounter with religious texts raised anxiety about heterodox interpretation and schism as reading spread from educated Latinate religious communities to vernacular readers consuming texts in Middle English. Texts like A Ladder of Foure Ronges and authors such as Hilton and Love take care to guard against “interpretative anarchy” in their instructions on reading, often through the very alimentary language they use to describe reading.9 The subjective nature of alimentary reading, and the reciprocal process of being transformed, means that the moral and doctrinal state of a reader—which Hilton describes as the teeth that chew the textual food —shapes interpretation. A Ladder and The Scale seek interpretive stability in the reader’s correct moral, doctrinal, and religious positionality, while ultimately seeing right interpretation as dependent on God’s grace. Nicholas Love, in contrast, seeks stability in a “thin” lay reading that is merely affective and focuses on the literal and moral senses, metaphorically the shell, of a text rather than the sweet and nourishing allegorical and anagogical meanings. He recommends textual “milk” for vernacular readers, which can 7. Cf. the scene in Confessions mentioned in the introduction where Augustine hears a voice saying, “I am the food of the full grown: grow and you will eat of me. You will not transform me into you as your fleshly food, but you will be transformed into me.” 8. While I make the qualification that the late-medieval reading I am looking at is religious, it is well to remember the point made in the previous chapter that it is nearly impossible to separate the sacred from the secular in the Middle Ages. Religious reading, because of religion’s pervasive presence and privileged position in society, would likely have had a significant influence on all types of reading in the late Middle Ages. 9. The term “interpretive anarchy” comes from Stanley E. Fish in “Interpreting the ‘Variorum,’” Critical Inquiry 2, 3 (1976): 484. More will be said about it in the latter third of the chapter. 125 be swallowed without the cognitive process figured by chewing. This program for reading, endorsed by the English archbishop at the time, guards against lay theological overreach and religious and political schism. My chapter joins a significant body of scholarship that explores reading in late- medieval England. Much scholarship focuses on what I consider to be the external phenomena of reading: the material culture of annotations, handling, and distribution of texts and affective responses observable through behaviors such as crying or kissing an illumination.10 Yet the absence of physical marking on a folio does not mean that a passage of text was not read with care. The cognitive and affective experience of reading may not manifest in outward behavior. As alimentary metaphors show, reading was multilayered and expected to transcend the easily observable or even utterable. Focus on the physical text and a reader’s behavior has the potential to overlook internal cognitive and experiential aspects of reading. The above scholarship may also view reading primarily as an act versus a process. With my approach, I hope to supplement the already present scholarship by exploring how late-medieval religious authors understood the process of reading and its purpose. The method of reading that I describe in the chapter, and the concerns it raised for late-medieval authors about orthodox interpretation, have parallels to discussions about objective versus subjective interpretation occurring in academia in the second-half of the 10. E.g. Sarah McNamer, Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassion (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010); Mark Amsler, Affective Literacies: Writing and Multilingualism in the Late Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011); Lawrence Warner, “Latinitas et Communitas Visionis Willielmi de Langlond,” in The Myth of Piers Plowman: Constructing a Medieval Literary Archive (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 53–71. 126 twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries.11 Broadly, modern approaches like formalism, New Criticism, historical criticism, and some strains of structuralism, which are influenced by the methods of the natural sciences, seek objectively correct interpretations of texts.12 By objective I mean interpretations that are free from personal bias and the influence of the interpreter’s gender, sexual, socioeconomic, religious, racial, or ethnic identity. These theories are often positioned against post-structuralism and deconstructionism, which seek to question all claims to objective certainty. The premodern subjective approach to reading that I describe in this chapter, and its concern with the positionality of the reader, bear similarities to reader-centered interpretive theories. Stanley Fish’s reader response theory was one of the first modern theories to argue for the centrality of the reader and their experience of a text. Such an approach has been articulated in more complex and rigorous forms first by feminist scholarship and then subsequent theories that call attention to the identity of the reader, including queer, disability, and critical race theory. In a chapter of this size, my summary of these debates necessarily will be simplistic and incomplete and I recognize the reductive nature of the above categories. Nevertheless, I believe the simplification is worth the risk in order to show that the medieval past can dialogue with the present, particularly for the way modern literary conversations can elucidate the anxieties of medieval authors and religious authorities for those of us living in the secular present. Engaging in such a 11. I owe the idea of situating medieval reading in modern debates to observations made by Robertson in Lectio Divina, 27–37. 12. Cf. Carruthers’s discussion about objectivity in modern literary interpretation in The Book of Memory, 205. 127 dialogue also shows that medieval reading practices are more sophisticated and worthy of consideration than those who do not study the Middle Ages may assume. Chapter three is divided into two sections. The first section, roughly two-thirds of the chapter, begins with an introduction to A Ladder of Foure Ronges and its account of four stages of reading: lesson, meditacion, prayer, and contemplacion. These stages provide the structure for the following deeper exploration into the way alimentary metaphors for reading in A Ladder and The Scale of Perfection conceptualize it as a subjective, embodied, thick, and transformative process. The second section looks at the tension that is visible in the above texts between the desire to expand lay access to vernacular religious texts and reading practices and fears about the multiplication of heterodox interpretations when texts are read outside educated, Latinate spheres of religious professionals. Woven into this section are comparisons to twentieth century conversations about literary interpretation. I end by comparing A Ladder’s and Hilton’s grounding of orthodox interpretation in the reader’s moral, doctrinal, and religious positionality to Nicholas Love’s strategy in A Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ to flatten the process of consuming texts. SECTION I: ALIMENTARY READING An Introduction to A Ladder of Foure Ronges and its Four Stages While Middle English texts that discuss religious reading share similar expectations about the process and experience, there is no definitive late-medieval guide to reading vernacular religious works.13 The most systematic Middle English description 13. Similar to Middle English texts, Latin formulations of the stages of lectio divina, or sacred reading, vary somewhat in name and number, yet they reflect many shared expectations about reading, Duncan, Lectio Divina, 205. The classic work about monastic reading and lectio divina is Jean Leclercq’s The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture (New York: Fordham 128 of the process is a little studied devotional work titled, A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the Whiche Men Mowe Wele Clyme to Heven.14 The text divides reading into four steps: lesson, meditacion, prayer, and contemplacion, steps that arise from the patristic and medieval tradition of lectio divina or sacred reading.15 Besides its systematic nature, A Ladder is significant for this chapter because it describes each stage of the reading process in alimentary language. A Ladder is a translation and amplification of the Latin Scala Claustralium, a mid-twelfth century guide to contemplation, written by Guigo II, a prior at the Grande Chartreuse monastery in France.16 The Middle English text, likely composed in the late fourteen century, adds a few long interpolations and clarifies the Latin text.17 Phyllis Hodgson’s comparison of the Latin and vernacular texts reveals the way A Ladder clarifies its source by expanding on metaphors, explaining scriptural allusions, and making explicit ideas that the Latin merely suggests.18 George Keiser argues that the goal of these changes is to make the text more accessible to those outside the monastic University Press, 1982). 14. The primary edition of the text is found in Phyllis Hodgson, ed., “A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the Which Men Mowe Wele Clyme to Heven,” in Deonise Hid Diuinite: And Other Treatises on Contemplative Prayer Related to The Cloud of Unknowing, Early English Text Society (London: Oxford University Press, 1955), 100–117. All quotations come from this edition. The text is extant in three manuscripts, all from the fifteenth century, 100. 15. In Modern English the stages might be translated as reading proper, meditation, prayer, and contemplation. Since the texts I analyze use the terms in ways that differ from their connotations in modern English, I will retain the Middle English spelling for each stage. 16. My source for the Latin text is the edition in the Patrologia Latina: Guigo II, “Scala Claustralium sive Tractatus de Modo Orandi,” in Patrologiae cursus completus: Series latina, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, (1862), 184:475–84. For an English translation see Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks. 17. Colledge and Walsh date the interpolations based on their style and topics, Guigo II, The Ladder of Monks, 30. 18. “‘A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the Whiche Men Mowe Wele Clyme to Heven.’ A Study of the Prose Style of a Middle English Translation,” The Modern Language Review 44, 4 (1949): 468–70. 129 audience of the Scala, including clerics, nuns, and pious laypeople.19 For example, A Ladder expands the source’s statement that “Hae est Scala Claustralium” [This is the Ladder of Monks] to “This is the ladder of cloysterers, & of oþere Goddis lovers” [This is the ladder of monks, and of other lovers of God].20 “Goddis lovers,” terminology that also appears in Walter Hilton’s work, includes a rapidly growing audience in late fourteenth and early fifteenth century England of lay people who want to read religious texts.21 The translation, and the reading practices it describes, are thus not the purview of an elite few of the professional religious but reveal expectations for a wide range of people seeking to read religious texts in the vernacular. A Ladder first describes the four stages—lesson, meditacion, prayer, and contemplacion—in non-figurative language, with the exception of the final stage, which is nearly always expressed metaphorically: Lesson is a besy lokyng vpon Holy Writte with intencion of the wille and in the witte. Meditacion is a studious inserchyng with the mynde to knowe that ere was hydde thurwe wischyng of propir skylle. Prayer is a devoute desiryng of the hert for to gete that that is good & fordoo þat is eville. Contemplacion is a risyng of hert into God that tastith sumdele of heuenly swettnesse & savourith.22 [Lesson is a diligent looking on Holy Scripture with intention of the will and in the intellect. Meditacion is a zealous inspection with the mind to know what was 19. “‘Noght How Lang Man Lifs; Bot How Wele’: The Laity and the Ladder of Perfection,” in De Cella in Seculum: Religious and Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), 146–48. 20. Keiser, “‘Noght How Lang Man Lifs,’” 148. 21. Keiser, “‘Noght How Lang Man Lifs,’” 145–46. 22. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 101. 130 previously hidden through the willing act of proper reason. Prayer is a devout desiring of the heart to acquire that which is good and to avoid evil. Contemplacion is a rising of the heart unto God that tastes a portion of heavenly sweetness and savors.] The translation is a generally direct rendering of the Latin with a couple clarifications of the final stage. The Scala says of the fourth stage that, “Contemplatio, est mentis in Deum suspensæ elevatio, æternæ dulcedinis gaudia degustans” [Contemplation is the raising of the suspended mind into God, tasting the joys of eternal sweetness].23 A Ladder, as one can see above, intensifies the gustatory language, including two verbs for experiencing flavor and shifting the direct object of taste from joys to the sweetness of heaven. Doubling is a common change the translator makes, whereas the shifting of the object appears to be a part of the clarification process.24 More significantly, contemplacion in A Ladder shifts from a cognitive activity, with the elevation of the mens into God, to an affective one where the “hert” ascends. I will discuss this shift in emphasis to affect in contemplacion later. Following the above passage, the text describes the four stages through two sets of alimentary metaphors: Lesson puttyth as it were hole mete to þe mouth;25 meditacion chewith & brekith it; prayere fyndith savoure; contemplacion is the likyng swettnes that so myche comfortith. Lesson is withouteforth in the barke; meditacion 23. Guigo II, “Scala Claustralium sive Tractatus de Modo Orandi,” 476. 24. Hodgson, “‘A Ladder of Foure Ronges by the Whiche Men Mowe Wele Clyme to Heven,’” 472–73. 25. mete is a generic word for solid food rather than the equivalent of modern day meat as referring to animal flesh. 131 is withynforth in the pythe; orison is in the desyreful askyng; and contemplacion is in the delyȝt of the grete swettnes.26 [Lesson puts as it were whole food into the mouth; meditacion chews and breaks it; prayer finds the taste; contemplacion is the pleasing sweetness that greatly consoles. Lesson is outside in the shell; meditacion is inside in the pith; prayer is in desirous asking; and contemplacion is in the delight in the great sweetness.] Following the above passage, the translation interpolates an additional metaphor that compares the stages to finding buried treasure, yet returns to alimentary language to describe contemplacion. The buried treasure “is the swettnes & likyng of contemplacion. And than commyth contemplacion & ȝildyth the trauayle of the other thre thurwe a swete heuenly dewyng, that the sowle drynkith in lykyng & in joye” [is the sweetness and pleasure of contemplacion. And then comes contemplacion and requites the labor of the other three through a sweet heavenly dew, that the soul drinks in pleasure and in joy]. 27 Contemplacion is now drinking, a shift that anticipates a later interpolation that compares contemplacion to drunkenness. Following the metaphor of buried treasure, the text proceeds to concentrate on each stage in turn. Thus, A Ladder presents four stages of reading: lesson, meditacion, prayer, and contemplacion in alimentary terms. With these four stages summarized in brief, I will now examine each in depth as they appear in A 26. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 101. In the Scala Claustralium this is “Lectio quasi solidum cibum ori apponit: meditatio masticat et frangit: oratio saporem acquirit: contemplatio est ipsa dulcedo quæ jucundat et reficit. Lectio, in cortice: meditatio, in adipe; oratio, in desiderii postulatione; contemplatio, in adeptæ dulcendinis delectatione,” 476. 27. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 102. 132 Ladder and Walter Hilton’s The Scale for what the metaphors say about late-medieval understandings of the reading process. LESSON: READING PROPER Lesson in Middle English most often refers to a text that is to be read, especially for a religious service or for instruction.28 In A Ladder it translates the Latin lectio, which can refer to the action of reading a text out loud.29 What is most surprising about lesson in A Ladder is how briefly the text discusses it. The dearth of explanation of reading proper is also the case in its Latin source, which has short chapters for the stages of meditatio, oratio, and contemplatio, but not lectio. One possible cause for the short attention given to lesson is that A Ladder calls lesson an activity fit for “begynners.”30 Reading proper is such a quotidian and elementary activity that it needs little exposition. It is the more advanced stages of reading that need explanation. We can, however, discover some of the features of lesson, especially through contrast with meditacion. Alimentary metaphors assume that there is an outer and an inner meaning or sense to a text. Lesson is described as putting “hole mete to þe mouth” and focusing “withouteforth in the barke” (emphasis mine). This locus of attention contrasts with meditacion, which breaks open the text, focusing “withynforth in the pythe” (emphasis mine).31 The distinction between inner and outer likewise appears in the non-alimentary description of reading where “Lesson is a besy lokyng vpon Holy Writte” while 28. See definitions 1, 3–4 in the MED for lessoun n. The entries in the OED for lesson demonstrate a similar tendency for the word to denote a text to be read. 29. See lectio in Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary. Also the second definition in the MED for lessoun, “Reading to oneself, study.” 30. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 102. Cf. Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 17–18, Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 205–206. 31. “Pythe” here refers to the inner flesh or pulp of a fruit or nut. See pithe n., MED. 133 “[m]editacion is a studious inserchyng” (emphasis mine). “Lokyng vpon,” i.e., looking upon, is the external observation of an object, while meditacion “in-searches”—a unique Middle English word—a text.32 Carolyn Dinshaw makes a similar observation about the multilayered nature of medieval reading in “Eunuch Hermeneutics” while exploring sexual metaphors for reading and their emphasis on penetrating a text.33 Here metaphors of eating and chewing present the understanding that a text has an external and an internal meaning. Put differently, a text is thick, having multiple levels; lesson can only access its surface or external layer. Although lesson concentrates on the exterior of a text, it is not a passive experience. Lesson looks “vpon Holy Writte with intencion of the wille and in the witte.”34 In Latin this is, “sedula Scripturarum cum animi intentione inspectio.”35 A Ladder elaborates on the Latin by translating animus as two functions of the medieval mind: “wille” and “witte.”36 “Wille” in this case is easy enough to understand. It is will, the part of the intellectual soul or mind, i.e., Latin animus, that desires.37 Wit, on the other hand, has a wider semantic range in Middle English. It can refer to anything on a spectrum from the five senses to common sense reasoning to intellectual capacity.38 The 32. “Inserchyng” does not appear in the MED and so must be considered a coinage based on serchen. It likely translates the Latin “investigans” in Scala Claustralium, 476. 33. “Eunuch Hermeneutics,” 27–28. 34. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 101. 35. [A zealous inspection of the Scriptures with an effort of the soul]. Guigo II, “Scala Claustralium sive Tractatus de Modo Orandi,” 476. 36. Cf. Piers Plowman B.XV.24–39 where the character Animus enumerates his different names, especially lines 24–26, “And whan I wilne and wolde, Animus Ich hatte; / And for þat I kan and knowe, called am I Mens, “Þouʒte”; / And whan I make mone to God, Memoria is my name” (24–26). 37. wille n., MED. 38. wit n., MED. 134 division of animus into will, one of Augustine’s three parts of the mind—which are memory, understanding, and will—suggests that wit refers to understanding.39 Lesson, then, involves intellect and will but not memory. In contrast to the later stages, lesson is a purely natural action rather than one aided by a special provision of divine grace. It uses the faculties that are common to all humans, whatever their spiritual state. Shortly after enumerating the four stages, A Ladder contains a long addition to the Latin source about the three different types of grace that God gives to humans.40 There is a “comoun grace” given to all creatures that sustains them physically.41 A second, special grace is available to all that will accept it. The second grace in turn makes a person able to receive the third grace, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit. The gift of the Holy Spirit enables those who receive it to persevere in virtue and avoid vice which, as I indicated in the introduction, is important to the positionality of the reader. By interpolating a passage on the three types of grace in a discussion on reading, A Ladder indicates that supernatural aid beyond what is common to all humans is necessary to move from the exterior to interior meaning of a text, from barke to pythe, and from lesson to meditacion and thence to the other two stages. Lesson uses the intellectual faculties given to all people, Christian and non-Christian alike. The inner meaning of a text, however, is only available to those to whom God grants access. All others are left chewing on the outside. In sum, lesson is a natural, literal reading of a 39. Cf. Karnes for a discussion of the medieval synthesis of Augustine’s description of the soul in Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, 63–110. Augustine’s discussion of the parts of the soul comes from De Trinitate. 40. Atsushi Iguchi argues that the additions on grace in the translation are part of the translator’s program to show that contemplation is accessible even to the laity, “Translating Grace: The Scala Claustralium and A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” The Review of English Studies 59, 242 (2008): 659–76. 41. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 102. 135 text, while the further stages involve divinely aided reading that breaks through to the spiritual senses hidden beneath the literal exterior. Alimentary metaphors for reading prioritize the three latter stages as they are concerned with the inner meaning or pythe, the most nourishing and best tasting part of a fruit or nut. What then is the value of lesson if it is unable to access the most valuable aspects of a text? A Ladder emphasizes the interrelationship of the four stages. In explaining the relationship between meditacion and lesson, A Ladder says that, “But howe may we thus thinke or beware that no false thouȝt ne vnclene make vs not in meditacion passe the bondes stabillid by oure holy Faderys, but if we first eyther of herynig or in redyng be lawfully lernyd?” [But how may we be mindful or take care that no false or unclean thought causes us in meditacion to pass the bounds established by our holy Fathers, unless we first are correctly taught through hearing or reading].42 Lesson sets the doctrinal and moral boundaries for the meanings that one can discover in meditacion. It guards against doctrinal error, i.e., “false thouȝt,” and moral error, i.e., “vnclen” thoughts.43 Lesson not only provides the raw material for meditacion by putting textual food into the “mouth,” the exterior shell or literal meaning sets boundaries on the interior meanings that one can discover within it. Bodily and Cultural Aspects of the Metaphor Before we shift to analyze meditacion, I want to briefly note a few implications of the alimentary metaphor for the bodily experience of lesson, and to some degree the other stages of reading. The quote above refers to a text that has been “redde or herde.” These 42. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 102. 43. Lesson would seem to be sufficient to discover what the vices and virtues are, while a special gift of the Holy Spirit, as the interpolation on grace makes clear, is necessarily for their continual practice. 136 actions were frequently combined as texts were read out loud or in a murmur, even when alone.44 Descriptions of putting a text “as it were hole mete to þe mouth” can be interpreted as reading a text out loud since in reading aloud a reader transfers the words of a text from the page into the mouth. As Leclecq observes, reading out loud includes the ears in the reading experience as well, adding “aural memory” to visual and “muscular memory.”45 Metaphors of consumption emphasize that medieval reading was not just the activity of a mind engaged with a text via the eyes but a process that includes multiple senses and parts of the body. Medieval reading, like eating, was an embodied activity. Medieval understandings of the senses may also have contributed to the association between speaking the words of a text and tasting them. Many late-medieval lists of the senses are similar to modern lists of the five senses, including sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. C. M. Woolgar demonstrates, however, that speech was often joined to taste as a twin sense of the mouth.46 It is an understanding of the sense that we have already seen in Piers Plowman. There was a ready sensory association for medieval readers between speaking the words of a text and tasting them since both occurred in the same part of the body and involved the teeth and tongue. The cultural practices surrounding eating in the Middle Age would also reinforce the similarities between reading and eating. Woolgar writes that, “Reading from scriptural or devotional works at mealtimes was a common expectation in a monastic house, and 44. See Leclercq, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 15–17, Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 205, 215–16. 45. The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 73. 46. The Senses in Late Medieval England, 10–12, 104–105. 137 was also practiced in devout secular households.”47 Those in monastic orders and upper class households were likely to listen to texts as they ate bodily food, a custom that lies behind the serving of scripture in Piers Plowman at the banquet in Conscience’s house. Mastication and digestion of food would have had a close experiential association with aural consumption of texts. Cultural practices and perception of the senses would have made alimentary metaphors for reading more natural for a medieval audience than a contemporary audience. Alimentary metaphors draw upon experiential similarities between medieval reading practice and eating. Lastly, alimentary descriptions of reading suggest that the size of text that one meditated on was small and the process was slow. Eating often requires breaking food into a size that can fit in the mouth, recalling the first metaphorical description of lesson. When A Ladder gives an example of its own reading process, it uses Matthew 5:8, “Blyssid are they that be clene in hert for thei shal see God.”48 The verse is a mere thirteen words in Middle English, and fewer in Latin. The three other stages involve breaking this “food” into smaller pieces and tasting and savoring them. It is necessarily a slow process, as is the careful chewing and savoring of food.49 The focus of reading is not on the quantity of text consumed but the quality of the reading experience. We can see this slow rumination on small pieces of text more clearly in descriptions of meditacion. 47. The Culture of Food in England, 1200–1500, 160. See also Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 208. 48. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 107. 49. This bears a similarity to Fish’s argument that, “Essentially what the [reader response] method does is slow down the reading experience so that ‘events’ one does not notice in normal time, but which do occur, are brought before our analytical attentions,” “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics,” New Literary History 2, 1 (1970): 128 (emphasis original). 138 MEDITACION: CHEWING THE TEXT As in bodily eating, where putting food into the mouth is ineluctably joined to chewing, so lesson leads ineluctably into meditacion. Some of the difficulty in defining lesson comes from the way that lesson and meditacion are not wholly separate or sequential in descriptions.50 Although it is not possible to fully separate them, we can observe the distinguishing features of meditacion. The non-alimentary description of meditacion in A Ladder says that it “is a studious inserchyng with the mynde to knowe that ere was hydde thurwe wischyng of propir skylle” [is a studious inspection with the mind to know what was previously hidden through the guiding of correct knowledge]. Meditacion is a cognitive activity, occurring in the mens in Latin and “mynde” in Middle English. In alimentary terms, “[M]editacion chewith & brekith” textual food. Katie Walter, in her book Middle English Mouths, discusses the way that metaphors of mastication represent cognitive activity and inquiry. She writes that, “[F]ood in this tradition stands in for Scripture and other texts, as well as for theologically difficult knowledge, which requires being broken into pieces if it is to be known at all.”51 In particular, “Words and text as food need to be chewed and broken in order to be digested and assimilated, both corporeally and cognitively.”52 While A Ladder does not spend much time talking about digestion and assimilation, in contrast to the banquet at Conscience’s house in Piers Plowman, the text does emphasize the necessity of breaking 50. The same could be said for all the stages. A Ladder attempts to divide into discrete steps what appears to be a more free flowing process. 51. Middle English Mouths: Late Medieval Medical, Religious, and Literary Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 79. 52. Middle English Mouths, 95. 139 a text into pieces for a complete reading to take place. This breaking of a text reveals what lies hidden beneath the physical and literal exterior. A good example of chewing as cognitive inquiry into what lies beneath the physical appearance is found in a passage that Walter mentions from the Speculum Vitae, a late fourteenth century verse translation of the Somme le roi.53 Although the passage is about the consumption of the Eucharist and not the reading of a text, it presents mastication as cognitive activity that seeks to understand and reveal that which is hidden beneath visible matter. The text instructs the reader that: Hastyly men suld ay ete it [the Host] And gredily, als says Hally Writte— Als þe gredy man dose gode mete Þat so gredily wil it ete Þat þe gode morsels þat er smale Withouten chewyng swalowes hale. …………………………………… Þat es men suld trowen sothfastly Þat þis mete es þe blissed body Of Ihesu Cryst vs to fede With þe saul of his Godhede, Alletogider gastly to se Withouten musyng how þat may be. (2721–26, 2731–36).54 53. Middle English Mouths, 98. Ralph Hanna and Venetia Somerset, eds., Speculum Vitae: A Reading Edition, Early English Text Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 1:xiii, lxiii. 54. Hanna and Somerset, Speculum Vitae, 1:93 140 [Men should always eat it (the Host) hastily And greedily, as Holy Scripture says— As the greedy man does good food That will eat it greedily That swallows whole without chewing The good morsels that are small. …………………………………… That is to say that men should firmly trust That this food is the blessed body Of Jesus Christ to nourish us With the soul of his Godhood, In every way only visible spiritually Without investigating how that is possible.] Speculum Vitae commends a gluttonous attitude toward eating the Host. Men should swallow it whole quickly, without stopping to chew. This action is explained in the second half of the quote as being metaphorically equivalent to accepting that Jesus is corporeally present in the host without stopping to inquire into “how þat may be.” One can only see Jesus spiritually in the host, never physically. The instructions reflect anxiety about the laity questioning the nature of Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, an issue that John Wycliffe was raising forcefully at the time.55 For our purposes, I am more interested in how the lines interpret the metaphor of mastication. The action of “chewyng” is 55. Walter, Middle English Mouths, 98–99. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Wycliffe also argued for lay access to scripture in the vernacular. 141 equivalent to analysis of a particular kind. Breaking food into pieces is an inquiry into what is hidden within the outward physical appearance or species of the host. Meditacion, according to A Ladder, finds “that ere was hydde thurwe wischyng of propir skylle,” or metaphorically that which is ‘withynforth in the pythe.”56 Metaphorically, mastication finds that which is hidden, whether Jesus beneath the physical bread or the spiritual meaning beneath the literal words of a text. Chewing with Clean Teeth Mastication is central to Walter Hilton’s alimentary description of reading in which clean teeth are needed to reach the inner meaning of the text. His application of the metaphor can help us understand more concretely what late-medieval authors understood the hidden meaning to be and what they considered necessary to access it. The passage occurs in the second book of his Scale of Perfection, which was published in the last two decades of the fourteenth century.57 Hilton first describes the soul as a palate that tastes the text of scripture: To a clene soule þat haþe palet purified from filþe of fleschly lufe, Holy Wryt is lifly fode and sustenance delectable; it sauoriþ wondir swete whan it is wel chewed by gostly vndirstondynge. For whi, þe spirit of lif is hid 56. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 101. 57. Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 2. The language that Hilton uses to describe reading in this passage is so similar to A Ladder of Foure Ronges that it is possible that Hilton knew the Scala Claustralium. See Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 164–65n48, n50–52. 142 þerin, þat quicneþ alle þe mi tes of þe soule and fylliþ hem ful with ȝ swetnes of heuenly sauour and gostly delyte.58 [To a clean soul that has its palate purified from the filth of fleshly love, Holy Scripture is living food and pleasing sustenance; it tastes wonderfully sweet when it is well chewed by spiritual understanding because the spirit of life is hidden therein that enlivens all the powers of the soul and fills them fully with sweetness of heavenly savor and spiritual delight.] The soul, likely the Latin animus, is the mouth or palate where the textual food is chewed and savored. Hilton’s conception of the life-giving power of “Holy Wryt” blurs modern divisions between spiritual and material food, similar to what we saw in the previous chapter. Scripture is “lifly fode” that has the “spirit of lif” and “quicneþ alle þe mi tesȝ of þe soule” (emphasis mine); it is a source of holistic life for the reader. Food that is good and life-giving is also pleasurable in medieval understandings of diet, so scripture is “delectable” and sweet tasting.59 As wonderful as these pleasures of scripture are, the beginning of the quotation shows that they are not accessible to everyone. One is expected to have the palate of the soul cleansed and purified from “filþe of fleschly lufe” [filth of fleshly love]. This state of cleanness is what Hilton emphasizes through his metaphorical use of teeth: Bot soþly him nediþ for to han white teþe and scharpe and wel piked þat schulde biten on þis gostly brede, for fleschly lufers and heretikes mowne 58. Walter Hilton, The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. S. S. Hussey and Michael G. Sargent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 331. 59. I will give an explanation of the humoral theory behind this perspective later in the chapter. 143 not touchyn þe inly flour of it; here teeþ are blody and ful of filþe, and þerfore þei are fastende fro felynge of þis bred.60 [But truly he needs to have sharp white teeth picked very clean that should bite on this spiritual bread, for lovers of the flesh and heretics might not touch the inward flour of it; their teeth are bloody and full of filth, and therefore they are restrained from touching this bread.] A reader’s moral and doctrinal uncleanness, i.e., “fleschly lufers and heretikes,” hinder their metaphorical teeth from reaching the inner meaning of the text, the “inly flour.” Whereas A Ladder describes the text as a fruit or nut with a “barke” and “pythe,” Hilton presents the text as a loaf of bread that has a hard crust surrounding a crumb made of fine flour.61 He then goes on to explain the metaphor: Bi teeþ arn vndirstonden þe inly wittes of þe soule, þe whilk in fleschy lufers and heretikes arn blody, ful of synne and of werdly vanytee; þei wolden, and kun not, come bi curiosite of here kyndely witte to soþfast knowynge of Holy Writte. For here wite is corupt bi þe original synne and actuel also, and is not it heled þur grace, and þerfore þei don bot gnawenȝ ȝ vpon þe barc withouten, karpen þei neuer so mikel þerfor; þe inly sauour withinne fele þei no t of. Þei ere not meke, þei are not clene for to see it, ȝ þei are not frendes of Ihesu, and þerfore he schewith hem not his conseil.62 60. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 331. 61. See flour n.(2), MED. Alternatively, bred could refer to the grain used to make bread and thus the “inly flour” is the portion of the kernel used to make flour. In either case, the best tasting and most nourishing part must be reached by piercing a hard shell. 62. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 331, 333. 144 [By teeth are understood the inward faculties of the soul, the same in lovers of the flesh and heretics which are bloody, full of sin and worldly vanity; they desire, but cannot, come by the skill of their natural faculties to trustworthy knowledge of Holy Scripture because their faculty is corrupted by original sin and actual sin, and is not yet healed through grace; therefore, they only gnaw upon the outer bark, howsoever much they talk; they do not taste inside themselves the inward savor. They are not meek, they are not clean enough to see it, they are not friends of Jesus, and so he does not show them his confidence.] Hilton’s terminology is more precise than in A Ladder. Teeth are the “inly wittes of þe soule” and “kindely witte,” recalling the “witte” mentioned in A Ladder.63 Their inward quality makes clear that they are the “mental powers comprising the human intellect.”64 “Kindely” indicates a merely natural faculty—similar to the “comoun grace” in A Ladder —rather than one assisted by supernatural grace. Heresy and immorality, which are the result of “actuel” sin, hinder a reader’s ability to arrive at “soþfast knowynge” and the “inly sauour.” These states keep a reader at the level of lesson where they can only “gnawen vpon þe barc.” What then is the inner meaning that is only accessible to those whose minds have clean teeth? It is the higher levels within the paradigm of the four-fold senses of scripture. 63. Michael Sargent identifies the source of this metaphor as Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Iob, “Walter Hilton on the Gift of Interpretation Of Scripture,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. E. A. Jones, 8 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2013), 8:54–55. Others point to Augustine’s allegorical interpretation of Song of Songs 4:2 in De doctrina Christiana—a work that itself lays out guidelines for interpreting scripture—as the likely source of this metaphor, Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. Clark and Dorward, 326n373. 64. Definition 2.(a) for wit n., MED. 145 Carruthers writes that accessing the literal and allegorical/typological levels of meaning “are the work of lectio and are essentially informative about a text; tropology and anagogy are the activities of digestive meditation and constitute the ethical activity of making one’s reading one’s own.”65 Hilton similarly recognizes four levels of meaning with the upper two levels only accessible through meditacion. However, he inverts the middle two senses from that of Carruthers.66 Prior to the above passages from the Scale of Perfection, Hilton says that scripture has four levels of meaning: “letterly, morally, mistily, and heuenly” [literal, moral/tropological, mystical/allegorical, and anagogical].67 All these senses may not be present in a text but only “if þe mater suffre it” [if the matter permits it]. Interpretations that are, “Þe more harder….and þe ferrer fro mans resonable vndirstondynge, [are] þe more delectable” [The harder….and the farther from man’s rational understanding are more pleasurable]. Those farthest from men’s rational ability, which I understand to mean natural human reason, are the “mistily” and “heuenly” senses of a text. Their pleasing, i.e., “delectable,” quality means that the are associated with the “inly flour” of a text; only the chewing and piercing action of meditacion, where natural human faculties are aided by divine grace, can access those senses. Literal and moral meanings, in contrast, which are closer to unaided human reason, are accessed through lesson.68 Thus Hilton presents a gradient of possible interpretations, moving from the surface of a text toward the interior. The literal/historical sense is on the surface and 65. The Book of Memory, 206. 66. Medieval authors by no means had identical formulations of the four-fold meanings. See Robertson, Lectio Divina, 19–21. 67. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 329. 68. Hilton’s understanding of the moral meaning as accessible to lesson agrees with A Ladder in seeing the first stage of reading as establishing the proper moral bounds for interpretation in meditacion. 146 discoverable through lesson. Beneath that lies the moral sense and even deeper the allegorical and anagogical senses, which increasingly require meditacion to access.69 We have another indication in Hilton that the hidden meanings are the spiritual senses. The first passage quoted from Hilton says that because, “[Þ]e spirit of lif is hid þerin, þat quicneþ alle þe mi tes of þe soule.” This wording is likely an allusion to 2 ȝ Corinthians 3:6, which says that, “[T]he letter killeth, but the spirit quickeneth.” It is a passage that writers from Augustine to Bernard of Clairvaux have used to argue for the importance of moving beyond the literal/historical sense of a text to the spiritual.70 For Hilton, it is the spiritual senses, i.e., the allegorical and anagogical, of a passage of scripture that are able to give life, much the same way that it is the pith of a fruit that is nourishing and not the bark or shell. Chewing the Pieces The above description of reading as determining the spiritual sense is still somewhat abstract. A Ladder gives a demonstration of meditacion with its model passage from Matthew 5:8: “Blyssid are they that be clene in hert for thei shal see God.” The verse is interpreted morally to recommend cleanness of heart and anagogically to encourage its reader to see an eschatological visio dei. Unfortunately for our purposes, these interpretation do not appear as different from the literal surface of the text as a spiritual interpretation of an Old Testament passage, such as the burning bush or the exodus from Egypt, might. The process is instructive nonetheless for the way it shows 69. The comparatives “harder….and þe ferrer” suggest that the need for divine assistance in discovering the sense of scripture lies on a spectrum. The moral sense may need divine grace to be accessible, though less so than “harder” senses. 70. Robertson, Lectio Divina, 40, 54, 191. 147 mastication in action. In a process that resembles close reading, Matthew 5:8 is broken down into shorter phrases like “clene in hert” which are themselves examined on the level of individual words through slow reflection. For example, A Ladder observes that the verse, “[S]aith not blissid be thoo that be of clene body, but þat be of clene herte, for it is not ynow e to haue handys clene from eville dede but if the herte withyn be clene of ȝ thou tis” [Says not blessed are those that are clean of body, but that are clean of heart, forȝ it is not enough to have hands clean from evil deeds unless the heart within has clean thoughts].71 The text then runs through a succession of scriptural passages that illustrate the difference between cleanness of hands and cleanness of heart.72 These other passages help to interpret the word choice and uncover the moral sense, which is a commendation of inner purity. To illustrate how this method of focusing on specific words and phrases can produce a spiritual interpretation that appears significantly different from the literal, I will give an example from Bernard of Claivaux. Robert Duncan demonstrates how attention to minute details of the text like prepositions and word choice are critical to Bernard’s interpretive process in reading the Song of Songs. Bernard wonders why in Song of Songs 2:8, “the Bridegroom leaps in or upon the mountains (in montibus) but over the hills (transiliens colles).”73 A reader taking the sentence as a whole might see the different prepositions as nothing more than poetic variation. For Bernard the smallest components 71. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 108. 72. The process is highly intertextual. Even though a single bound volume of scripture as it exists today was a rare luxury up until the later Middle Ages, it existed as a single text within the memory of the reader and in interpretative practice. Cf. Frans van Liere, An Introduction to the Medieval Bible (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 37–40. 73. Robertson, Lectio Divina, 187 (emphasis in the original). 148 of a sentence have spiritual significance. The fact that the Bridegroom, representing Jesus, touches upon the mountains means that they are something good like the mountains of Jerusalem or the mountains where the “ninety-nine sheep” reside. Jesus’s passing over the hills, in contrast, means that “The hills…represent powers of the air, fallen angels, barren in their pride, that the Lord passed over and did not visit when he came down to the valleys on earth.”74 “On” and “over,” Latin in and trans, conceal rich spiritual meanings that are not visible in a literal reading of the text. Bernard’s interpretation is rational in the sense that the symbolism he observes is not entirely arbitrary and it has internal logical consistency; the identification of fallen angels with hills, however, is not a conclusion that one can arrive at via reason.75 Presumably, divine grace assists the intellect, helping it make the imaginative or intuitive leap necessary to associate hills with fallen angels. Bernard’s method shows that the minutiae of a text are not only important to the process of spiritual reading but the inquiry into them is what generates the spiritual meaning. Mastication’s reduction of the text to its smallest crumbs yields the deepest insights into the senses hidden in a passage of scripture. Superabundance of meaning is found in each detail. One can find a similar hyper-attention to detail when Stanley Fish demonstrates his reader response method.76 He writes that, The basis of the method is a consideration of the temporal flow of the reading experience, and it is assumed that the reader responds in terms of 74. Lectio Divina, 187. 75. Presumably, this is where divine grace assists the intellect, by helping it make the imaginative or intuitive leap necessary to associate hills with fallen angels. 76. See “Literature in the Reader” and “Interpreting the ‘Variorum.’” 149 that flow and not to the whole utterance. That is, in an utterance of any length, there is a point at which the reader has taken in only the first word, and then the second, and then the third, and so on, and the report of what happens to the reader is always a report of what has happened to that point.77 Interpretation is phenomenological; it is the moment by moment experience of the text that produces meaning rather than a method that focuses on the overall structure. The way that Fish’s process centers on the experience of the reader is similar to the way slow, detail-oriented mastication of spiritual interpretation produces meaning. Meditacion and Memory As I noted earlier, lesson uses the will and the understanding, two of the three parts of the Augustinian conception of the soul. One would expect memory to be involved in meditacion and, in her masterful Book of Memory, Carruthers repeatedly links meditation with the process of storing text in memory.78 Mastication, for Carruthers, describes chunking, the dividing of material into units that are more easily stored in long term memory. However, memory is all but absent in alimentary descriptions of reading in A Ladder and Hilton’s Scale. Instead, the focus of metaphors about meditacion is on cognitive reflection and inquiry. Duncan Robertson recognizes the memorial function of meditation but notes that the term also denotes, “[T]he internalized, reflective dimensions conveyed by the modern concept of ‘meditation.’”79 I would argue that the late-medieval 77. “Literature in the Reader,” 127 (emphasis original). 78. The Book of Memory, 203, 205–206. Leclercq makes a similar association in The Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 16–17. Leclercq does observe that thinking and reflection are latent in the practice of meditation, but his focus is on memory. 79. Lectio Divina, 97. 150 texts examined in this chapter reflect the shift from the premodern association of meditation with memory toward the modern concept of meditation as reflection. There are a few potential reasons for this shift. Increasing access to written materials and the consequent lesser need for memory is one possibility. The shift from an audience of educated professionals to the laity is another likely explanation. A vernacular lay audience would not have had the time or education necessary to memorize texts in the way that Carruthers describes. Their use of religious texts would also be different from the composition and disputation for which mnemonic techniques had been designed. Carruthers is thus a helpful source for understanding meditation, but her observations about memory fit less well with texts aimed at a less educated vernacular audience. PRAYER: DESIRING AND DISCERNING Similar to lesson, prayer as a stage of reading in A Ladder of Foure Ronges seems to have needed little explanation. Meditacion and contemplacion receive the bulk of the attention. Descriptions of prayer, also referred to as orison, in A Ladder mention desire as a primary attribute of this stage of reading. The non-alimentary description says that, “Prayer is a devoute desiryng of the hert for to gete that that is good & fordoo þat is eville.”80 The second alimentary description, failing to maintain the language of eating, states that, “orison is in the desyreful askyng.” Prayer, then, is an expression of desire that arises through reading or in response to the text. The other significant function of prayer is to discern the object of desire. The alimentary description of prayer says that, “prayere fyndith savoure,” which translates 80. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 101. 151 the Latin, “oratio saporem acquirit” [prayer obtains the taste].81 Savour, in the context of A Ladder, refers to a good taste.82 It is impossible, however, to separate Middle English savour and Latin sapor from their linguistic roots in sapere, meaning to know or to taste.83 These actions have a conceptual similarity. Finding the savor of a text is a coming to know what is good in a moral, spiritual, and/or intellectual sense. In combining desiring and discerning, the purpose of prayer is to seek to acquire the good that meditacion has exposed in a text. The metaphor of reading as finding a buried treasure that follows the alimentary description—an allusion to the parable of the Parable of the Hidden Treasure from Matthew 13:44—emphasizes the acquiring function of prayer better than the alimentary metaphor here.84 The object that prayer desires could be moral in nature, such as a clean heart. A Ladder identifies a clean heart as a desirable object in its sample passage from Matthew 5:8.85 A similar transformational goal appears in Hilton’s Scale of Perfection. The second book is a guide for reforming in faith and feeling, with feeling corresponding to the sensual part of the soul and faith to the reasonable part of the soul.86 Meditative reading in 81. Guigo II, “Scala Claustralium sive Tractatus de Modo Orandi,” 476. 82. Cf. savour n., MED. 83. From the perspective of cognitive linguistics, the meaning of sapere as “to know” is a metaphor based on the bodily experience of tasting. 84. According to the hidden treasure metaphor, “Lesson is in the first grounde that gothe before & ledyth furth into meditacion; meditacion sekith bisily, an ay with a depe thou t gravith & dyggyth depe as he ȝ wenyth to fynde that tresoure; but for he may not wende ther-to by hymself, than he sendith vs into prayer that is my tful and stronge. And so anone prayer styeth vp to God, and there he fyndith the ȝ tresoure that he so feruently desiryth,” “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 101–102. Matthew 13:44 says, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto a treasure hidden in a field. Which a man having found, hid it: and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath and buyeth that field.” 85. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 108. 86. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, lxxxiv. See chapter 13 for Hilton’s discussion of faith and feeling, 67–71. 152 this context is part of the reforming process. Prayer, performing the functions of discerning and desiring, is the means through which religious reading brings about reformation/transformation. We saw something similar in Piers Plowman where Patience’s desire for penitential texts reinforces his penitential behavior. Hilton’s conception of reading in The Scale of Perfection “goes far beyond the traditional idea of reading as a conduit for the passage of information…the reader is constantly, intellectually, emotionally, and physically, recruited as a reading subject by the book.”87 Religious reading views texts as more than repositories of information to be stored in the memory. The goal is to align one’s orientation and desires with the text. Alimentary descriptions emphasize the embodiment of the text through action, thought, and behavior, which become a form of bodily memory. Prayer as a stage of reading discerns the good that is in a text and desires to incorporate and embody it. Transformation through acquiring the hidden “pythe” is not the final aim of religious reading. Instead, it is a prelude to the highest stage of reading, which is the desiring of something that is outside the material or immanent frame of the text altogether. A Ladder, in its reading of Matthew 5:8, concentrates on the final part of the verse, the statement that those who are pure in heart “shal see God.” A Ladder interprets this anagogically as a supremely desirable visio dei. The reading of Matthew 5:8 leads to 87. Michael G. Sargent, “Affective Reading and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection at Syon,” in Reading and Writing in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Mary C. Erler, ed. Martin Chase and Maryanne Kowaleski (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 2019), 135. As this chapter has shown, this “traditional idea of reading” is actually a modern one. 153 a prayer to see God through an experience of mystical union.88 Prayer in reading leads, ideally, to contemplacion. CONTEMPLACION: “[T]ASTE HOWE SWETE I AM” For writers of texts on religious reading, the goal and end is contemplacion. Hilton’s instructions on reading in chapter 43 begin by discussing the desire of “þe soule to seen and to felen Ihesu” [the soul to see and to feel Jesus].89 He describes how one may, [S]een Ihesu in Holy Writ, for Ihesu, þat is al soþfastnes, is hid and hiled þerin, wounded in a soft sendel vndir faire wurde, þat he may not be knowen ne felt bot of a clene herte. [See Jesus in Holy Scripture, for Jesus, that is all truthfulness, is hidden and concealed therein, shrouded in costly fabric under fair words, so that he may not be known or felt except by a clean heart.].90 The language recalls that in A Ladder about discovering an inner meaning, the “pythe” of a text, and the necessity of moral purity, except that the object of discovery is not a spiritual meaning but an affective and suprarational experience of Jesus.91 Contemplacion is then associated with the medieval concept of mystical union with God.92 Not all readers 88. The Beatitude in Matthew 5:8 is a key passage in mystical theology for understanding contemplation and mystical union, Bernard McGinn, “Mystical Union,” in The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology, ed. Edward Howells and Mark A. McIntosh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 405. 89. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 327. 90. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 327. 91. “knowen ne felt” in the previous quote indicates that the experience involves understanding and affect. As will be clear soon, the understanding is by direct or unmediated apprehension rather than arrived as via reason, hence its designation as suprarational. 92. See McGinn, “Mystical Union” and Bernard McGinn, “Love, Knowledge, and Mystical Union in Western Christianity: Twelfth to Sixteenth Centuries,” Church History 56, 1 (1987): 7–24. 154 were expected to achieve contemplacion, nor all the time. A Ladder states that, “The first degre is of begynners, the second of profiteris [someone making progress], the thirdde of hem that be devoute, the fourth of hem þat be holy & blissid of God.”93 Contemplacion is the goal that readers are expected to strive for, even if they do not achieve the vision. While the description of union above uses the language of sight, i.e., “seen Ihesu,” the felt experience is almost always described in gustatory terms. The dominant flavor of contemplacion in Middle English texts is sweetness, something we have already seen in A Ladder and The Scale of Perfection. Contemplacion’s flavor profile derives from two related metaphors. The first metaphor stretches back to biblical passages such as that from Ezekiel in the chapter’s epigraph which describes reading as sweet. Secondly, contemplacion’s sweetness comes from widespread patristic and medieval descriptions of God himself as sweet. The Vulgate translation of the Septuagint version of Psalm 33:9: “gustate et videte quoniam suavis est Dominus” [taste, and see that the Lord is sweet], is one significant source of this metaphor.94 Descriptions of Jesus as sweet occur in many Middle English texts, especially those by Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, Walter Hilton, and Margery Kempe. Contemplacion tends to feature a different mode of consumption than the other stages. Lesson and meditacion, especially the latter, are associated with mastication. Prayer uses the language of tasting and discerning good flavors. Contemplacion comes to mean savoring in the sense of enjoying the sweetness that has been discerned or drinking 93. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 102. 94. Cf. Rachel Fulton’s discussion of allusions to the verse in medieval religious literature, “‘Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9),” 173–180. One can note the way that the combination of sight and sweetness in Ps. 33:9 appears in descriptions of reading in The Scale of Perfection and A Ladder of Foure Runges. 155 in sweetness. I want to examine the language of drinking in more depth since it occurs in one of the longer interpolations in A Ladder. Drinking emphasizes contemplacion as a pleasurable activity that goes beyond the bounds of reason and moderation. Sacred Drunkenness Earlier in the chapter, I noted the interpolation that says of the final stage of reading that, “[T]han commyth contemplacion & ildyth the trauayle of the other thre ȝ thurwe a swete heuenly dewyng, that the sowle drynkith in lykyng & in ioye.”95 The metaphor of contemplacion as drinking returns in a long interpolation that compares God to a tavern owner who offers the reader a special wine: So doth God Almy ty to his loveris in contemplacion as a tauerner…ȝ Pryvely he wendyth and rowndith hem in the eere & seyth to them that he hath a clarete, and þat alle fyne for ther owyn mouth. He tollyth hem to howse & evyth hem a taast.ȝ 96 [So God almighty does to his lovers in contemplacion as a taverner… Privately he goes and whispers in their ear and tells them that he has a claret, and that is all excellent for their own mouth. He leads them to his inn and gives them a taste.] The comparison emphasizes privacy, intimacy, and exclusivity. God as taverner whispers, “rowndith,” in the reader’s ear and draws them from the public square into his own house. The experience is individual and separate from others. The wine that the taverner 95. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 102. 96. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 113. 156 provides is a claret, likely a wine with spices and honey.97 Later it will be called a pyment, which we have seen in Piers Plowman as a medicine. Whatever the exact identification, the wine is sweet and pleasurable, as one would expect according to the gustatory metaphor for contemplacion. The sample taste that the taverner provides quickly turns the contemplative into a drunkard who drinks continually and pawns their clothes so that they can continue to purchase the special wine: Sone whanne they haue tastyd therof and that they thynke the drynke good & gretly to ther plesauns, than they drynke dayly & nyȝtly…Suche lykyng they haue of that drynke that of none other wyne they thynke, but oonly for to drynke þeir fylle and to haue of this drynke alle their wylle. And so they spende that they haue, an syth they spende or lene to wedde surcotte or hode & all that they may, for to drynke with lykyng whiles that them it good thynkith. Thus it faryth sumtyme by Goddis loveris that from þe tyme that they hadde tastyd of this pyment, that is of the sweetnesse of God98 [Soon when they have tasted the drink and they think the drink is good and greatly to their pleasure, then they drink day and night…Such pleasure they have from that drink that they think about no other wine. And so they spend what they have, and at that time they spend or pawn outer coat or 97. Cf. claret n., MED. See also On the Properties of Things Book XIX, Ch. 58, “Clarette is ymade of wyne and hony and swete spicery…And so clerete draweþ of þe wyne might and scharpnesse, and holdeþ of þe spicery good smelle and odour, and borweþ of hony swetnesse and sauour,” Seymour, On the Properties of Things, 2:1321–22. 98. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 113. 157 hood and all that they can in order to drink with pleasure as long as they consider it good. Thus it occurs sometimes to lovers of God that from time to time have tasted of this piment, that is the sweetness of God.] There is a sense of excess and abandon in this description. The contemplative is an addict who is willing to pawn their clothes just so they can taste more of this pleasing drink. Yet, in contrast to scenes of riotous drunkenness, like Gluttony’s visit to the tavern in Piers Plowman, the behavior is commended.99 The text paradoxically compares the drunkard’s behavior to Christian ascetics and martyrs: [S]uch lykyng þei founde theryn that as drunkyn men they did spende that they hadde and afe themsef to fastyng and to wakyng & to other penauns ȝ doyng. And whan they hadde no more to spende they leyde their weddys, as apostelys, martyrys, & maydenys ounge of eris dyd in their tyme. ȝ ȝ Summe ȝafe their bodyes to brenne in fyre, summe lete her hedys of to be smytte, summe ȝafe her pappys corvyn from there breestys, sume ȝaf ther skyn drawn from the flessh, and somme their bodyes wyth wylde horsys to be drawe. And alle that they dyd they sette it at nou t for the desyre of the ȝ lastyng wele that they desired fully to haue in the lyfe that is withouten eende. But this likyng is here even but for to tasteȝ 100 [Such pleasure they found therein that like drunk men they did spend what they had and gave themselves to fasting and vigils and to doing other penance. And when they had no more to spend, they pawn their clothes, as 99. B.V.297–385. 100. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 113–14. 158 apostles, marytrs, and young maidens did in their time. Some gave their bodies to burn in fire, some let their heads be cut off, some gave their breasts to be cut from their chests, some gave their skin to be drawn from the body, and some their bodies to be drawn by wild horses. And all that they did they considered it as nothing for the desire of lasting happiness that they desired to have fully in the life that is without end. But this pleasure is given here only as a taste.] Gluttony and drunkenness, images of sinful pleasure through bodily excess, come to represent extreme bodily denial and suffering for the sake of spiritual pleasures. The martyrs are willing to suffer gruesome bodily disfigurement and pain to acquire what contemplacion merely tastes. A Ladder commends a very different picture of consumption from the moderation recommended by Piers Plowman. The way drunkenness exceeds moderate consumption as determined by reason is central to the metaphor’s meaning. Contemplacion is a pleasurable experience that surpasses reason and/or is incapable of being achieved by means of it. Similar to the way that Dante must leave behind Virgil, the representative of human reason, to enter the earthly paradise and then ascend to heaven in the Commedia, so contemplacion involves a suprarational experience. The use of drinking instead of chewing emphasizes this distinction in the mode of understanding. As I discussed earlier in the section on meditacion, mastication and the activity of the teeth represent cognitive and rational activity, the kind that attempts to discover how Christ is hidden beneath the species of bread and wine. In 159 contrast, from a physiological perspective, “Drinking does not involve such vigorous action [as eating] and the teeth play no significant part, though there is still movement of the liquid facilitated by the tongue and palate.”101 Drinking metaphors for contemplacion indicate that it does not involve the kind of rational cognitive analysis practiced in meditacion. A Ladder notably makes contemplacion more affective by exchanging Middle English “hert” for Latin “mentis,” in its non-metaphorical description of contemplacion. Mens implies the metaphorical use of teeth; hert indicates affect, desire, and suprarational experience. There is no analyzing what occurs in contemplacion because it is beyond human reason. The suprarational nature of contemplacion explains why it is only described through metaphors. Because the experience of contemplacion goes beyond human reason, it also goes beyond human language. Cristina Cervone observes in her study of late- medieval poetry, Poetics of the Incarnation, that “[F]igurative language could verge on saying what otherwise can neither be articulated fully in language nor, perhaps, comprehended in thought.”102 She argues that Middle English authors use metaphors to explore nearly ineffable religious and theological concepts. Drunkenness, with its emphasis on irrationality, and drinking, with its connotations of non-rational experience, are attempts to describe experiences that are otherwise difficult to express in human language.103 For that reason, metaphors of drunkenness for contemplacion and mystical 101. Newman, “A cross-linguistic Overview of ‘eat’ and ‘drink,’” 2. 102. Poetics of the Incarnation, 21. 103. The challenge of expressing the ineffable is a common feature of literature in the mystical tradition. Cf. McGinn, “Mystical Union,” 405. 160 union occur not only in A Ladder but in devotional works like Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, the Speculum Vitae, The Prickynge of Love, and Ayenbite of Inwyt.104 Reading Beyond the Page The interpolation in A Ladder has one further twist in the metaphor. Near the end, God, who has functioned as the tavern owner, becomes the wine itself as the speaker identifies himself as the second person of the Trinity. When one experiences the sweetness, A Ladder instructs its readers to imagine that God, [R]owynth in thyn eere, & sayth: ‘Haue nowe this litelle, and taste howe swete I am. But yf þou wylt fully fele that thou ofte hast tastyd, renne aftyr me and folowe the savoure of myn oyntementys. Heve up thyn hert to me there I am syttyng on the ry t half of my Fadyr, and ther shalt thou se me, ȝ not as in a myrroure, but þou shalt se me face to face. And than þou shalt fully haue at thy wylle that ioye that þoue hast tastyd euere wythouten end.105 [Whispers in your ear, and says: ‘Have now this little, and taste how sweet I am. But if you would fully feel what you have often tasted, run after me and follow the taste of my ointments. Lift up your heart to me where I am sitting on the right side of my Father, and there you will see me, not as in a 104. See for example Bk. I, Ch. 44 of The Scale of Perfection, ed. Thomas H. Bestul, 81–82. Also the great tavern passage in Speculum Vitae, 2:489–491; Harold Kane, ed., The Prickynge of Love (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1983), 133–37; Dan Michel, Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse of Conscience, ed. Pamela Gradon, Early English Text Society (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 75, 247–48. 105. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 114 (emphasis mine). 161 mirror, but you will see me face to face. And then you will have fully at your will the joy that you have tasted, forever without end.] God not only provides the sweet wine, in the end God the Son is the wine. The “savoure” or the sweetness that one discerns in prayer leads to this mystical encounter. Contemplacion involves the suprarational and affective experience of Jesus or God the Son. Contemplacion is also, as the second part of the quote shows, an anticipation of the anagogical visio dei. It provides a foretaste of heaven. The argument that the goal of contemplative reading is an experience of God is supported by the flavor that all the texts ascribe to contemplacion. God and Jesus are described as tasting sweet throughout the Middle Ages. Rachel Fulton has extensively explored this phenomenon through the perspective of medieval humoral theory.106 I will leave a longer explanation to Fulton; briefly however, sweet foods, which in Galenic humoral theory were hot and moist, were also the most nourishing to human beings.107 John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum, for example, states that, “Þe taast haþ þe likinge in swete þinges for þe liknes þat he haþ wiþ swetnes. For swetnesse þat stondiþ in hoot and moist is like to alle þe membres þat be moost ifedde wiþ swete foode. For swete food norischiþ moche and is li tliche ilikned to ȝ þe membres and lymes.”108 Human bodies are hot and moist and are thus similar to sweet 106. “‘Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9).” 107. Mystical experiences are often described as hot, for example A Ladder says that “[H]e betith it oute hote as it is, and drawyth it oute on length & brede. Whan the sowle of a glowying bronde of this fyre is enflaumyd…” [He beats it out hot as it is, and draws it out in length and breadth. When the soul is inflamed by the glowing coals of this fire…] (109). 108. On the Properties of Things, 1:118. [Taste has the pleasure in sweet things because of the similarity one has with sweetness. For sweetness, which consists in hot and moist, is similar to all the members that are most fed with sweet food. Therefore, sweet food nourishes much and is easily likened to the members and the limbs]. 162 foods, which are also hot and moist. Because of the similarity, sweet foods are the most nourishing to the human body and, for that reason, the most pleasing.109 It is from this physiological understanding that sweet foods are described as medicine in Middle English texts. As noted above, the sweet pyment in A Ladder could be used as a medicine, with honey contributing to the overall sweetness and wine and spices to the heat.110 The idea that sweet foods are pleasurable because of their essential nourishing and life-giving quality underlies Hilton’s aforementioned observation that, “þe spirit of lif is hid þerin [i.e., in scripture], þat quicneþ alle þe mi tes of þe soule and fylliþ hem ful with ȝ swetnes of heuenly sauour and gostly delyte.” The quickening power of scripture is revealed by its sweet taste. God, who is the transcendent aim of reading, is also the final cause of life for a medieval reader. While religious reading begins with a focus on the literal, physical text, the practice ultimately seeks to transcend both text and process. A Ladder states this purpose clearly in its title, declaring the work A Ladder…by the Whiche Men Mowe Wele Clyme to Heven. The text and the reading process are a means to reach something above the metaphorical ladder rather than ends in themselves. An ideal reader seeks the source of the sweetness itself. For this reason, the trajectory of medieval religious reading differs from many modern theories of interpretation that locate the meaning and importance of a text in the text itself, the interpreter, and/or their historical-material context. Theories that 109. Fulton notes that modern neurobiology has observed this preference for sweet as a tool for selecting safe and nutritious foods,“‘Taste and See That the Lord Is Sweet’ (Ps. 33:9),” 201. Modern junk food has hijacked this neurobiological preference in unhealthy ways. 110. Cf. Freedman, Out of the East, 54, 57. Spices and wine were usually considered hot and dry though presumably honey’s moisture overcomes the dryness. See also Bk. XIX, Ch. 53 of On the Properties of Things, “For liquoures in þe whiche hete and moysture haue þe maystry be most swete,” 2:1317. 163 seek meaning in the text include, loosely, formalism and structuralism. Those that focus on the interpreter’s identity and experience of a text include reader response, feminist, and queer theory and disability studies. Marxist theories and historical criticism find the significance of a text in relation to the historical-material context in which it was/is composed or read. In post-structuralism such as that practiced by Derrida, the “text” is an endless series of traces out of which there is no escape.111 There is obviously much overlap in the simple categories above and I have left out notable theoretical approaches such as psychoanalysis. The distinction I want to make, however, is that all these theories arise out of the modern era and share the assumption that interpretation takes place on a horizontal and primarily secular plane. The sharp disagreements between practitioners of these schools of literary interpretation mask a shared perspective that reading takes place in an “immanent frame.” The term “immanent frame” comes from Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age. His definition of the immanent frame is complex and layered, but in particular I am thinking of the way the “frame constitutes a ‘natural’ order, to be contrasted to a ‘supernatural’ one, an ‘immanent’ world, over against a possible ‘transcendent’ one.”112 The premodern method of religious reading I have explored expects to transcend the 111. Derrida writes in the essay “Living On” that, “[A] ‘text’ is henceforth no longer a finished corpus of writing, some content enclosed in a book or its margins, but a differential network, a fabric of traces referring endlessly to something other than itself, to other differential traces,” qtd. in Nicholas Royle, Jacques Derrida (London: Routledge, 2003), 64. 112. A Secular Age, 542. For the idea of transcendence in literary interpretation see Terry Eagleton’s observation that “Western philosophy…has yearned for the sign which will give meaning to all others — the ‘transcendental signifier’— and for the anchoring, unquestionable meaning to which all our signs can be seen to point (the ‘transcendental signified’)…God, the Idea, the World Spirit, the Self, substance, matter, and so on,” Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2. ed. (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1996), 113. A medieval view of language assumed a transcendental signified, while modern skepticism about transcendentals makes post-structuralism’s endless web of traces credible and perhaps necessary. 164 reader, the text, and historical-material context, moving vertically instead of horizontally. In contrast to most modern interpreters, who assume an immanent frame for reading in which a text does not point beyond itself, the reader, or the material order around them, medieval premodern interpreters would have seen a text as pointing toward a spiritual or supernatural horizon that transcends the text. It is a mindset we have seen in Piers Plowman where the material imbricates the spiritual and vice versa.113 Reading becomes, literally, a ladder to heaven. We have seen in this first section that late-medieval authors understood religious reading to be a process that is subjective, embodied, thick, and transformative, much as the process of eating food is. A Ladder of Foure Runges presents four stages that attempt to systematize this process: lesson, meditacion, prayer, and contemplacion. Lesson is metaphorically described as putting textual food into the mouth and focusing attention on the hard exterior, which is understood as the literal/physical and often moral senses of a text. It is a level of reading that is accessible to all people, regardless of their religious, doctrinal, or moral state. Meditacion breaks open the textual food placed in the mouth by lesson, revealing the sweet tasting and nourishing interior hidden beneath the literal exterior. Through the gift of divine grace, the mind of the reader chews small pieces of text to determine their moral, allegorical, and anagogical sense. This gift is only provided to those who are morally and doctrinally pure, which Hilton describes metaphorically as the clean teeth needed to pierce the literal shell. Prayer then discerns the good things 113. Studying metaphors is particularly useful for discovering what religious readers expected to experience beyond the immanent frame and the effable. Cervone’s argument about the function of metaphors being to express the nearly ineffable is again relevant here. 165 present in the text by savoring the sweet flavor released in meditacion and expresses desire for them. Contemplation follows the sweetness to its source in God and drinks him in, which is an affective and suprarational experience of the divine which transcends text and reader. Through the subjective experience and deliberate embodiment of the text on multiple levels, the reader is transformed by the reading experience. In the second section, I will explore the interpretive anxiety that the spread of alimentary reading to lay people in the vernacular produced and how the texts we have already looked at, with the addition of Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life, sought to guard against misreading and heresy. 166 SECTION TWO: INTERPRETIVE ANXIETY AND MEDIATING ACCESS Comparison between premodern methods of reading and modern interpretation can be helpful for elucidating the practice of late-medieval methods since literary interpretation is an activity that readers of this chapter are likely to know well. Comparisons may also be necessary to perceive a familiar activity such as reading with fresh eyes. Brown reminds us that, “Medieval readers don’t read the way we do; they do things differently.”114 From the perspective of late-medieval readers, modern interpretation only skims the surface, or bark, of a text, stopping at lesson or a shallow meditacion. Mary Carruthers assert that from a modern perspective, This [medieval] adaptation process allows for a tampering with the original text that modern scholarship would (and does) find quite intolerable, for it violates most of our notions concerning accuracy, objective scholarship, and the integrity of the text. Modern scholars learn all they can about a text, making sure they know the meaning of every word in it. So did medieval scholars; that was what lectio was for. But a modern scholar is concerned primarily with getting the text objectively right, treating it as an ultimate and sole authority…But the medieval scholar’s relationship to his texts is quite different from modern objectivity. Reading is to be digested, to be ruminated…It is both physiological and psychological, and it changes both the food and its consumer.115 114. Brown, “In the Middle,” 559. 115. The Book of Memory, 205. 167 As Carruthers observes, the kind of late-medieval religious reading that I have been describing will appear to some modern interpreters as highly subjective, violating fundamental assumptions about “correct” literary interpretation. Contemplacion, especially, the way it leaves behind the rational, material, and effable, is difficult to square with modern epistemologies that underlie much of contemporary academic study. Behind this modern drive for objectivity in part lies a desire for control and stability. “Objectification,” as Taylor observes in his survey of epistemological shifts in Europe and North America, “gives a sense of power, and control.”116 Control through objectivity provides a bulwark against what Fish has termed the fear of “interpretive anarchy.”117 Fish’s reader response theory is driven by a critique of positivist approaches to literary interpretation, which he associates with formalism and literal interpretation.118 Although reader response theory has mostly proved to be a dead end, I think Fish’s epistemological critique of interpretation is still valid. The response to objective theories of interpretation represented by Derrida and other post-structuralists, as well as feminist scholarship to a degree, suggests that the question of objectivity in literary interpretation is a live one.119 Formalist scholars have responded by charging Fish and post-structuralists of removing the possibility of shared meaning by making interpretation an entirely subjective experience. The reaction is similar to the one Carruthers ascribes to modern interpreters 116. A Secular Age, 548. Taylor argues that the Enlightenment’s appeal to instrumental reason was an attempt to find a source of stability amid the religious divisions and wars that followed the Reformation. He sees in this appeal the root of the modern drive toward objective certainty, A Secular Age, 292–295. 117. “Interpreting the ‘Variorum,’” 484. 118. “Interpreting the ‘Variorum,’” 469–70, 74. 119. Cf. Eagleton, Literary Theory, 125. Feminist theory would say that “objective” is often nothing more than a label used to assert the hegemony of perspectives that are white, heteronormative, and male. 168 viewing medieval reading practice. It is not the case, however, that medieval readers were unconcerned about unstable interpretation and interpretive anarchy. Although late- medieval reading was subjective, there was a clear desire to control interpretation. Late-medieval England witnessed its own fears and debates about potentially uncontrolled interpretation. We have already seen indications of this concern in Hilton’s alimentary discussion of “fleschy lufers and heretikes” with filthy palates. Hilton likely composed book two of The Scale of Perfection near the end of his life in 1396.120 His mention of heresy reflects increasing fears about religious division at the time, particularly as followers of John Wycliffe and those in the Lollard movement were pushing for lay access to scripture and religious texts. Interpretive anxiety surfaced among those with religious and political authority as religious reading expanded from the educated, Latinate sphere of cloisters and clergy toward a vernacular and lay audience. Hilton’s writing navigates the tension, in alimentary terms, between a desire to increase access to religious texts and a fear that increasing access will lead to interpretations that are contrary to official church teachings. Multiple divergent interpretations in the reading of religious texts, i.e., “interpretive anarchy,” become heresy and division in the religious sphere. And since religious power was intertwined with political power in the middle ages, religious schism threatened political schism. Fears of heresy and division were at the forefront of Church attempts to control access to scripture in the vernacular in late- medieval England. The desire to increase lay access can be seen in Hilton’s belief that the grace necessary to reach deeper levels of meaning are available to “lewde” as well as “lettred 120. Sargent, “Affective Reading and Walter Hilton’s Scale of Perfection at Syon,” 139. 169 men.”121 Similarly, A Ladder argues that grace makes meditative reading possible for “a symple olde pore woman that is pore of witte, that neyther sothly can sey the Pater Noster ne the Crede” [a simple poor old woman that is of limited intelligence, that can neither say the Lord’s Prayer or the Creed correctly].122 Likewise, “a pore sely man þat so dul of witt is, that lyveth by his swynke.….to this lore & this wysedom as perfi tly may wynne ȝ therto as the wisest in a londe” [a poor ignorant man that is very dull in his intellect, that lives by his work…to this knowledge and wisdom may gain access as completely as the wisest in the land].123 “[L]ore” and “this wysedom” in this case are the spiritual senses of scripture. The stated audience of both texts also reveal expectations of wide access. A Ladder interpolates “oþere Goddis lovers” in its opening address and Hilton begins his discussion of reading by referring to a “lufer” who desires to see Jesus.124 “Lovers” here are a new category of non-professional religious readers in the fourteenth and fifteenth century. They are part of the late-medieval increase in lay piety as ordinary people with secular occupations desired to practice some of the disciplines usually reserved for the professionally religious.125 Hilton and A Ladder’s use of the vernacular instead of Latin comes in response to this movement and is one of the clearest signs of attempts to meet lay desire for religious texts and practices. Yet even as Hilton attempts to increase access, his fear of heresy is clear in his insistence that “fleschy lufers and heretikes,” those with metaphorically unclean teeth, 121. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 333. 122. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 110. 123. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 110. 124. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 327. 125. This increased interest was accompanied by a surge in vernacular religious works, Keiser, “‘Noght How Lang Man Lifs,’” 145–46. 170 cannot reach the inner meaning of a text.126 Their interpretations are not legitimate. There are specific historical reasons for Hilton’s concern. Nicholas Watson has shown the intense debates that occurred in Oxford and ecclesiastical circles in the late-fourteenth century about who should have access to vernacular literature and to which religious texts they should have access.127 At the same time Hilton was writing, John Wycliffe and his followers were advocating the accessibility of scripture in the vernacular and producing vernacular translations of books of the Bible.128 Likewise, the Lollard movement, although in its infancy among the “Lollard Knights” of Richard II’s court, was pushing for “vernacular discourse” around religious matters.129 Their position outside the monastic and ecclesiastical hierarchy offered a challenge to the control exercised by the Church over interpretation of scripture. Watson and those writing after him have explored the political questions involved in the increasing access to religious texts in the vernacular.130 The debate also raises questions surrounding interpretation of texts. It calls attention to the importance of what Fish has called “interpretive communities” in determining “correct” interpretations.131 He defines interpretive communities as, 126. “fleschy lufers” offers an implicit contrast to the lovers of Jesus to whom The Scale of Perfect and A Ladder of Foure Ronges are addressed. 127. “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England,” 822–64. 128. Cf. Anne Hudson, “Lollard Biblical Scholarship,” in The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 228–77. 129. Steven Justice, “Lollardy,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 672. 130. For a summary see Gillespie, “Vernacular Theology.” 131. “Interpreting the ‘Variorum,’” 483–84. Another valuable perspective on this subject is Brian Stock’s identification of “textual communities” in The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 88–240 171 [M]ade up of those who share interpretive strategies not for reading (in the conventional sense) but for writing texts, for constituting their properties and assigning their intentions. In other words these strategies exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read rather than, as usually assumed, the other way around.132 Medieval Latinate communities of readers shared similar education and reading practices. These communities transmitted within them assumptions about correct and incorrect ways to interpret texts. The communities were also small, hierarchical groups of educated elite, meaning that policing of correct interpretation was relatively easy. Making religious texts accessible to those outside this community—a large group who generally did not have a formal education— gave less control to religious authorities, naturally leading to fears of interpretive anarchy producing heresy and schism. The challenge then for late-medieval English vernacular authors was to make religious texts available to more people, while guarding against heterodox interpretation. There are two approaches to the challenge, the first of which I have been examining in Hilton and A Ladder. Correct interpretation depends on the moral and spiritual state of the reader, the metaphorical clean teeth. Interpretation also rests on divine grace, placing the ultimate guard of correct interpretation outside the immanent frame of the reader and the text. In contrast to this is the approach taken by Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Christ, which I will look at shortly. Love gives laity access to religious texts in the vernacular, but in a tightly controlled form. He instructs his readers to attend to the literal aspects of the text and presents meditacion and contemplacion that are flattened to an 132. “Interpreting the ‘Variorum,’” 483. 172 affective experience of bodily images, rather than the thick cognitive and affective reading of Hilton and A Ladder. Moral, Doctrinal, and Spiritual Positionality in Reading According to Hilton, an immoral state, i.e., being “fleschy lufers…ful of synne,” prevents one from accessing the deeper, interior meaning of scripture.133 He describes this metaphorically as having one’s teeth so fouled with blood and filth that they are hindered from reaching the “inly flour” of a loaf of bread. Positionality matters in interpretation, though in this case positionality has nothing to do with race, gender, socioeconomic class, or sexual orientation.134 Instead, a moral state affects whether a reader can produce an interpretation that is considered valid. Intelligence and interpretive skill are not sufficient since, “[W]ite is corupt bi þe original synne and actuel also.”135 Original sin would be removed through baptism, which is administered by the Church. “Actuel” is removed by confession, which is again a sacrament administered by the Church.136 Those who are considered to be living in sin, whether original or actual, cannot access the spiritual meaning hidden within the shell of the text.137 Likewise, doctrinal positionality hinders 133. Hilton may be alluding to Lollards since they preferred the literal meaning of scripture. See Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward, 326n375. 134. Positionality challenges the idea of a “universal neutral, perspectiveless epistemology…the idea(l) of a universalizable, apolitical methodology and set of transhistorical basic truths unfettered by associations with particular genders, races, classes, or cultures. The rejection of subjectivity, unintentionally but nevertheless, colludes with this ‘generic human’ thesis of classical liberal thought, that particularities of individuals are irrelevant and improper influences on knowledge,” Linda Alcoff, “Cultural Feminism versus Post-Structuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” Signs 13, 3 (1988): 405–36. Subjectivity is central to Alcoff’s “concept of positionality.” 135. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 331. 136. We have already seen in Piers Plowman how tenuous Church control of confession is because of the ability of the mendicant orders to co-opt confessions for their own ends. 137. A secular version of this concern in contemporary society is the way the #metoo movement and “Cancel Culture” have encouraged us to scrutinize the relationship between a scholar’s ethical and personal life and their scholarship. When does a scholar’s personal actions discount their scholarship? 173 interpretation, for “[H]eretikes…gnawen vpon þe barc withouten.”138 Correct belief is required prior to interpretation. Because of the Church’s role in officially determining what is heresy and its control over the sacraments, Hilton’s stance could be seen as reinforcing the Church’s control over correct interpretation. However, vernacular authors at the time like Langland, the Pearl-Poet, and Julian of Norwich demonstrate that there were ways to explore religious ideas without drawing the Church’s condemnation, especially when one maintains moral behavior and affirms faithfulness to Church teachings. Hilton’s alimentary metaphors show that the ethical and doctrinal state of the reader/eater is essential to correct textual interpretation/consumption. The most striking difference between modern objective interpretation and Hilton’s understanding of interpretation in religious reading is his assertion that anyone with “original synne” is limited in their reading. A Ladder similarly says that the grace that is common to all is enough for lesson, but supernatural grace is necessary for further reading.139 In other words, people who are outside the Church altogether, which for a medieval audience would have included Jews, Muslims, and apostates, cannot rightly interpret scripture. Objective method and skill are not enough, one must actually believe and be part of the Church to read fully and correctly.140 Alimentary metaphors help us understand this perspective. Carruthers states above that in meditation, “Reading is to be digested, to be ruminated…it changes both the food and its consumer.” Because of the personal and subjective nature of the consumption of a text, the reader’s positionality and 138. The Scale of Perfection: Book II, ed. Hussey and Sargent, 331, 333 139. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 102–103. 140. Such an epistemological approach aligns with Anselm’s famous “Credo ut intelligam” [I believe so that I may understand] in the Prosologion. See Anselm, Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 87. 174 experience matter a great deal in producing a valid interpretation. Reading as eating stresses the importance of the eater as much as the text that is eaten because eating changes both the food and the consumer. Being the “correct” kind of reader is necessary for “correct” interpretation. In sum, religious reading for Hilton and A Ladder—reading that includes meditacion, prayer, and contemplacion—requires membership and participation in a reading community. Unlike Fish’s conception of an interpretive community, the boundaries of this community are more concrete than loosely shared expectations about writing and “the nod of recognition.”141 There is an ecclesiastical hierarchy, a set of doctrines and practices, sacraments like baptism and confession, and a shared interpretive tradition that define the boundaries of the community. There is morally correct behavior that is expected of the interpreter. There is also the gift of grace that comes directly from God and is thus in theory outside the Church’s control. It is this interpretive community that keeps spiritual interpretation from turning into something merely subjective and unstable and leading thence to heresy. Once these conditions are met, “Goddis lovers” have surprising freedom in what they can experience and the interpretations they can discover in reading.142 The full range of reading is accessible even to the “lewde,” both to “a symple olde pore woman” and “a pore sely man þat so dul of witt is.” This freedom 141. “Interpreting the ‘Variorum,’” 485. 142. One thinks of Augustine’s identification of love as a higher end in interpretation than avoiding error, On Christian Teaching, 26–27. Fish calls attention to this in “Interpreting the ‘Variorum’” in support of his position, 482–83. Cf. Alan Jacobs who attempts to formulate a literary method based on Augustine’s approach in A Theology of Reading: The Hermeneutics of Love (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2001). 175 was not to be the case with Nicholas Love and Archbishop Arundel’s vision for religious reading. Nicholas Love’s Mirror and Infant Formula for Arrested Development Nearly five years after Hilton died, in 1401, the English parliament passed the law De heretico comburendo. The law allowed for the burning of heretics, with the first execution of a Lollard taking place that year. This attempt to control religious expression was followed by Archbishop Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409, which targeted beliefs and activities associated with Lollardy.143 Vernacular access to scripture as well as vernacular religious literature were seen as characteristic of Lollardy, and so the Constitutions attempted to strictly control access to vernacular religious texts. Item 7 of the Constitutions, for example, states, “[T]hat no man, hereafter, by his own authority translate any text of the Scripture into English or any other tongue…and that no man read any such book…upon pain of greater excommunication.”144 As any vernacular religious text would likely contain translated scripture, reading and owning such material became a potentially dangerous activity.145 The law directs those seeking vernacular religious texts 143. Steven Justice argues that Lollardy was originally more of a loose set of beliefs and practices. It was the establishment of laws by the church aimed at Lollardy, like those by Arundel, that shaped Lollardy into an apparent system of belief, “Lollardy,” 676, 685. 144. From Foxe, Acts and Monuments, 3:245, qtd. in Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late- Medieval England,” 829n15. 145. Watson argues that in response to this law, “[F]rom a few years after 1410 until the sixteenth century there is a sharp decline both in the quantity of large theological works in the vernacular in their scope and originality,” “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England,” 832. In practice those in the upper classes with power and wealth escaped the restrictions and religious writing in the vernacular found ways to survive in new forms. Even in his original essay, Watson recognizes that the Constitutions were not totalizing, 831, 845; See also Gillespie, “Vernacular Theology,” 416–18. Hudson observes that owning vernacular scriptures was never enough to question someone’s orthodoxy, rather it was “the concrete evidence to substantiate suspicion aroused on other, or at least additional, grounds,” “Lollard Biblical Scholarship,” 234. 176 toward authorized material, something that Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ supplies. The Mirror was approved by Archbishop Arundel and published shortly before the 1409 Constitutions. Nicholas Watson argues that the Mirror presents a church authorized vision of lay reading for religious texts that aligns with Arundel’s Constitutions.146 The Mirror is a fully polemical work, with a Latin introduction stating that one of the translation’s purposes is “ad…hereticorum siue lollardorum confutacionem” [for the refutation of heretics or Lollards].147 Latin tags of “contra lollardos” throughout the margins of the work stand as a reminder of this purpose. Love’s Mirror, like A Ladder, is a translation of an older work, the pseudo-Bonaventuran text Meditationes Vitae Christi.148 The translation’s added proem expresses Love’s perspective on lay reading of religious texts. He declares that,“Ande for þis hope & to þis entent with holi writte also bene wryten diuerse bokes & trettes of devoute men not onelich to clerkes in latyne, but also in Englyshe to lewde men & women & hem þat bene of symple vndirstondyng” [And for this hope and to this intent various books and treatises have been written alongside Holy Scripture by devout men not only to clergy in Latin, but also in English to uneducated men and women and those that are of simple understanding].149 Love 146. “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England,” 852–55. 147. Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ: A Critical Edition Based on Cambridge University Library Additional MSS 6578 and 6686, ed. Michael G. Sargent (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 7. Archbishop Arundel’s official approval is included in this Latin introduction, certifying the church’s oversight of the translation. 148. Watson notes that translations of religious texts that had gained authoritative status, rather than the creation of original works like Piers Plowman and the Pearl-Poet’s compositions, become more common after the Constitutions, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England,” 832– 33. A Ladder is another example of this trend, though with a different aim than the Mirror. 149. Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 10. 177 identifies two groups who can benefit from religious writing: 1) clerks, for whom books and treatises in Latin are appropriate, and 2) men and women uneducated in Latin and people of simple understanding, for whom works in English are appropriate.150 In doing so, he emphasizes a distinction in education and intelligence. By categorizing “lewde men & women” with people of “symple vndirstondyng,” he implicitly presents people not educated in Latin as having limited ability to understand religious texts and their ideas. Love dismisses cognitive processing for lay vernacular readers. His position is in sharp contrast to A Ladder, which argues for the ability even of “a symple olde pore woman” and “a pore sely man þat so dul of witt is, that lyveth by his swynke” to access meditacion like “the wisest in a londe.”151 The Mirror limits the experience and process of religious reading for all outside the clergy. Love reinforces the division by gendering his audience as female and infantilizing them through his alimentary description of the text. The trope of a male religious figure writing spiritual instruction to a woman is common in English religious writings.152 Love calls attention to the gender of his source’s original audience in the following quote to gender his lay and vernacular readers as feminine in contrast to the masculine Latinate clergy. This gendering places his audience into a subordinate role to the Latin educated clergy within traditional medieval understandings of gender hierarchy.153 150. Cf. leued man n., MED. 151. “A Ladder of Foure Ronges,” 110. 152. E.g., Hilton’s Scale of Perfection, Ancrene Wisse, some of the works of Richard Rolle, and the Orcherd of Syon. 153. Susan Crane writes that, “In any medieval context, femininity stands in sufficient opposition to Latinitas that it licenses translation through gender as well as laicity,” “Anglo-Norman Cultures in England, 1066–1460,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 46. Christopher Baswell writes that, “The evidence of surviving books from women’s foundations suggests that, even when well educated, women were more 178 Ande as it is seide þe deuoute man & worthy clerke Bonauentre wrot hem to A religiouse woman in latyne þe whiche scripture ande wrytyng for þe fructuouse matere þerof steryng specialy to þe loue of Jesu ande also for þe pleyn sentence to comun vndirstondyng semeþ amonges oþere souereynly edifying to symple creatures þe whiche as childryn hauen nede to be fedde with mylke of lyȝte doctryne & not with sadde mete of grete clargye & of hye contemplacion.154 [And as it is said, the devout and worthy clerk Bonaventure wrote one in Latin to a woman in a religious order, the which scripture and writing for its fructuous subject guiding especially to the love of Jesus and also because simple teaching to normal understanding seems, among other approaches, extremely edifying to simple creatures which as children need to be feed with milk of light teaching and not serious meat of great learning and of high contemplation.] The alimentary language that Love uses to describe the text is drawn from Hebrews 5:12– 14 and 1 Corinthians 3:1–2. Both passages scold the audience for not being more spiritually mature. 1 Corinthians 3:1–2 says, “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal. As unto little ones in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not meat: for you were not able as yet. But neither indeed are you now able: for you are yet carnal.”155 Love inverts the original purpose of the metaphor, which is to encourage its likely to read English or French than Latin,” “Latinitas,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 145. 154. Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 10. “grete clargye” in this case most likely refers to “Knowledge, learning; doctrine…higher learning, theology,” clergie n., MED. 155. Hebrews 5:12–14 is more forceful in its critique of its audience’s spiritual immaturity: “For whereas for the time you ought to be masters, you have need to be taught again what are the first elements of the words of God: and you are become such as have need of milk and not of strong meat. For every one that is a partaker of milk, is unskillful in the word of justice: for he is a little child. But strong meat is for the perfect: for them who by custom have their senses exercised to the discerning of good and evil.” 179 audience toward spiritual growth. Instead, he uses it to infantilize his audience. Love speaks of their “comun [ordinary] vndirstondyng” and calls them “symple creatures þe whiche as childryn” need simple teaching.156 This teaching is “mylke of lyȝte doctryne,” which is a food appropriate for infants and children.157 The lay audience is not expected to grow out of this infant state. Significantly, this textual food is liquid and requires no active chewing or breaking with teeth. As I argued while analyzing metaphors of mastication in A Ladder and Hilton’s work, chewing represents cognitive and rational processing of a text and is generally associated with meditacion as a stage of reading. It involves inquiry into what is hidden beneath the literal exterior. According to the Mirror, the texts that need chewing, the “sadde mete of grete clargye & of hye contemplacion” are not appropriate for his lay audience. Indeed, Love does not use any form of the Middle English word meditacion, even though it is in the title of the Latin work that he adapts. In the place of solid food that needs chewing, Love gives his readers a liquid they can drink. As I argued earlier, drinking is an affective and supranational process that transcends the text, yet this definition is in doubt in Love’s presentation of a restricted contemplacion accessible to the laity. Love’s proem distinguishes between two types of contemplacion. A simple contemplacion that focuses on the human nature of Christ and a “hye contemplacion” 156. Julian of Norwich, who writes contemporary to Love, frequently calls herself a “simple creature.” The repetition gives it an ironic sense in light of the astounding revelations she receives. 157. In line with Love’s feminizing of his audience, milk may also be associated with women. Carol Walker Bynum argues for the association in medieval religious writings of milk with women through the activities of lactation and child raising. See for example pages 190 and 269–270 in Holy Feast and Holy Fast. 180 [high contemplation], as mentioned in the passage above, that focuses on the divine nature of Christ. These are parallel to the division between “mylke of lyȝte doctryne” and “sadde mete of grete clargye.” Love writes that, [A]s seynt Bernerde seye contemplacion of þe monhede of cryste is more likyng more spedefull & more sykere þan is hyȝe contemplacion of þe godhed ande þerfore to hem is pryncipally to be sette in mynde þe ymage of crystes Incarnacion passion & Resurreccion so that a symple soule þat kan not þenke bot bodyes or bodily þinges mowe haue somwhat accordynge vnto is affecion where wiþ he maye fede & stire his deuocion158 [As saint Bernard says, contemplation of the human nature of Christ is more more pleasing, more beneficial, and more free from danger than is high contemplation on the divine nature and therefore they ought to principally hold in mind the images of Christ’s Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection so that a simple soul than can not think in anything but bodies or bodily things might have something fitting to his affections where with he may feed and stir his devotion] Simple contemplacion focuses on Jesus’ human nature and is more “spedefull” because it can “fede & stire” the devotion of simple (lay) people who are unable to think in anything but bodily images. The engagement with the text works at the level of “affecion” to stir up “deuocion,” excluding any mention of the mind or the wit, which appear in A Ladder 158. Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, 10. The “Bernerde” referenced here is actually William of St. Thierry. See Love, 258. Karnes notes that Love excises William’s encouragement to contemplate Christ’s divinity from the quote, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, 216. 181 and Scale. High contemplacion, in contrast, focuses on Christ’s divinity and would seem to involve abstract and spiritual ideas that transcend the bodily. The alimentary language implies that such ideas are indigestible for the laity and thus not nourishing. There is no encouragement to transcend the material and effable. Lay vernacular readers are to remain drinking the milk of Christ’s humanity, which is appropriate for them as spiritual infants, a state in which they are encouraged to remain. In comparison to the thick program of reading presented by A Ladder and Hilton, Love’s description of reading is thin. Michelle Karnes argues that the Mirror limits the imagination of the reader to “sensible, earthy things.”159 It focuses on the visible and tangible, Jesus’s humanity instead of his divinity.160 This attention to the literal and bodily instead of the spiritual calls to mind lesson and its attention to the metaphorical shell or bark of a text. Love suggests that attempts to seek meaning beneath the exterior meaning of a text are beyond the intellectual ability of his lay readers. They are to focus on the literal and the moral/tropological senses rather than the typological and the anagogical.161 Religious reading is merely affective rather than affective and cognitive, occurring only in the desiring heart rather than the heart and the masticating mind. Love’s approach also 159. Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, 207. The focus of her argument is on how this can be explained through changing understandings of the imagination in the late middle ages. Karnes acknowledges, however, the influence of the religious and political debates that Watson describes, 212. 160. One of the commonly noted trends in late-medieval piety is an increasing focus on Jesus’ human nature and his suffering; Love’s Mirror shows that some clergy actively encouraged the shift, not from purely pastoral concerns, but from a desire to control the religious ideas and concepts to which the laity were exposed. 161. Ironically, the Lollards were charged with focusing on the literal meaning, Hilton, The Scale of Perfection, ed. John P. H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward, 326n375; Margaret Deanesly, The Lollard Bible: And Other Medieval Biblical Versions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940), 286, 355. Love does promote a moral reading of scripture, stating in his introduction that reading helps one “to be kept fro vices & to getyng of vertues,” 12. 182 deprives the reader, from the perspective of the other texts we have looked at, of the true nourishment that a text contains because he does not encourage them to break through to the textual pythe. His reductive contemplacion on Jesus’ humanity as the only acceptable form of nourishment for the laity denies his vernacular readers the sweetness of mystical union that transcends the immanent frame of the text. In the guise of caring for his audience, the author of Mirror limits the spiritual growth and reading of his audience through commending a surface and literal reading of a text that focuses on bodily images. Through this, he avoids the lay “theological overreaching” that Arundel was working so hard to control.162 READING DIFFERENTLY, READING FOR TRANSFORMATION Alimentary metaphors for reading, as I have argued, present reading as a subjective, embodied, thick, and ultimately transformative process. Nicholas Love’s vision for lay reading in The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ is certainly subjective and encourages readers to feel the events of Jesus’s life in their own bodies through the metaphor of drinking milk. Its thinness, however, the way it excludes cognitive mastication, the aid of supernatural grace, the spiritual senses, i.e., pythe, of scripture, and sweet contemplacion that transcends the text, raises the question of whether it can be as transformative as the thick reading presented by A Ladder and Hilton’s Scale. Can reading that excludes meditacion, prayer, and contemplacion change readers’ mindsets and patterns of behavior? Whatever Love’s method loses in the ability to transform the reader and transcend the text it gains in its ability to keep the laity from reaching beyond the earthly authority of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, allaying anxiety 162. Karnes, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages, 208. 183 about heterodox interpretation, heresy, and political schism. Hilton’s Scale and A Ladder, in contrast to Love, seek interpretive stability through the religious, moral, and doctrinal positionality of the reader because the reciprocal nature of transformation in alimentary reading means that the identity of the reader/eater matters in the consumption of a text. Within those boundaries, vernacular readers have wide freedom to experience lesson, meditacion, prayer, and contemplacion. The premodern, subjective and embodied process of religious reading that this chapter explores has similarities to contemporary interpretive theories that center a reader’s experience and positionality. Although I have mentioned Stanley Fish and reader response theory at different points in the chapter, it is actually feminist theory that thinks most deeply about the place of a reader’s identity in making meaning out of a text. Queer theory, critical race theory, postcolonial theory, and disability studies have continued this focus on the effects that the positionality of a reader has on interpretation. There is no neutral or “everyman” interpreter; every reader engages with a text from a particular position and perspective. Theories that center on the identity of the interpreter also tend to be associated with activism more than other interpretive approaches, a faint echo on the social level of the focus of late-medieval reading on personal transformation. There are obviously significant differences. The above theories, for example, are more likely to see religion as reinforcing oppressive systems of power. Religious and moral positionality in interpretation may be viewed as exclusionary in a way that other types of identity, such as gender, race, disability, and sexual orientation, are not. Nevertheless, medieval religious reading bears more than a passing resemblance to some of the newest approaches to 184 literary interpretation and, for this reason, deserves serious consideration as an interpretive theory. In the spirit of transformational reading, I want to end by briefly “chewing” on the value of reading in a manner such as I have described. What I have termed objective methods of interpretation, such as New Criticism, historical criticism, and formalism, have been critiqued for their lack of concern for the ethical, social, and political context in which a text’s composition and interpretation occur.163 Formalist and historical interpretation—methods I value and have used in this chapter—are often more concerned with arriving at an informationally correct interpretation than at leading to a reader’s transformation. As literary scholars and English departments seek to show the relevance of the study of literature in the classroom to contemporary issues of social justice, political action, and climate change, transformational methods of reading literature could demonstrate the continued value and relevance of literary study. More subjective, experiential, and thick methods of reading could be effective in this regard, even with chronologically distant texts such as those from the Middle Ages. We may not need different texts but different interpretive strategies. Alimentary metaphors for reading suggest that reading for transformation need not mean reading naively. 163. Marxist scholars such as Eagleton have made this charge, Literary Theory, 40–41. New Formalists like Eleanor Johnson have recognized and sought to remedy this weakness. See Johnson’s Practicing Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: Ethics and the Mixed Form in Chaucer, Gower, Usk, and Hoccleve (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 12–13. 185 Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God. — Matthew 5:8 Curteis he was, lowely, and servysable, And carf biforn his fader at the table. — Canterbury Tales I.A.99–100 [He was courteous, humble, and obedient, And carved before his father at the table.] CHAPTER 4 — CLEANNESS, COURTESY, AND THE MAKING OF AN ARISTOCRATIC MORAL IDENTITY AT TABLE Chaucer’s squire in the Canterbury Tales embodies the energy and enthusiasm of a young person pursuing the ideals of chivalry and courtly romance. The squire’s mastery of the expected social behavior for someone of his rank is demonstrated by his courteous, humble, and obedient demeanor and the carving of meat before his father at meals. Table manners were at the center of a web of expectations and norms around aristocratic behavior in late-medieval England. The anonymous Pearl-Poet incorporates practices of courteous aristocratic behavior into his adaptations of narratives from the Old and New Testament—all involving meals—that make up the poem Cleanness. The adaptations establish a framework that imagines God as the supreme exemplar of courteous behavior and the whole world as his court. God seeks a well-ordered and aesthetically pleasing— i.e., clene in the language of the poem—court full of hospitality, mirth, and refinement; however, he is continually frustrated by those who prefer disorder and unseemly fylþe. Those who offend God’s sense of decorum are violently purged from his sight at court. Through this framework, Cleanness advocates a worldly, upper-class moral order that blends aristocratic table manners with moral superiority. The poem argues that “cleanliness is next to godliness” and the route to cleanness is through the rigorous social 186 and behavioral order associated with the higher classes of English society.1 Rituals of eating become a means of affirming the religious piety and class superiority of the gentry in late-medieval England. COURTESY LITERATURE AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE Written in the late-fourteenth century, Cleanness draws on a set of mostly unwritten expectations about upper-class table manners. Rising social and economic standards in the following century, though, led to a brisk trade in vernacular courtesy literature as the emerging bourgeoisie class, urban dwellers, and guilds sought to elevate their status by imitating their social betters. The gentry, to reinforce their position against the upstarts, looked to courtesy guides to aid their mastery of proper etiquette.2 Many of the table manners taught in courtesy guides from the middle and late fifteenth century are visible in the earlier Cleanness. These guides, which include poems like “Urbanitatis,” “Stans Puer ad Mensam,” and The Boke of Curtasye, are ostensibly addressed to young men and give instruction on behavior at meals and related aspects of courtly life.3 In Cleanness and these guides, we see that courteous behavior has its origin in the 1. An early form of the phrase “cleanliness is next to godliness” appears in Sir Francis Bacon’s The Advancement of Learning (1605). See The Advancement of Learning ed. William Aldis Wright (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), xlvii, 142. It is later used by John Wesley in a sermon on proper clothing and attire. See John Wesley, Sermons on Several Occasions (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1831), 3:67. 2. See Claire Sponsler, “Eating Lessons: Lydgate’s ‘Dietary’ and Consumer Conduct”; Mark Addison Amos, “‘For Manners Make Man’: Bourdieu, De Certeau, and the Common Appropriation Of Noble Manners in the Book Of Courtesy,” in Medieval Conduct, ed. Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 23–48. For a survey of courtesy guides in the fifteenth century see Michael Foster, “From Courtesy to Urbanity in Late Medieval England,” Parergon 29, 1 (2012): 27–46. 3. The address to a young reader is a trope of courtesy literature, whether or not that reflects its actual primary readership. Cf. Amos, “‘For Manners Make Man,’” 29–30. The meaning of “Stans Puer ad Mensam” [The Boy Standing at Table] highlights the association between table manners and the overall observance of proper etiquette. 187 hospitable reception of guests and the harmonious participation of host and guest at a meal. I will use these guides to illustrate the significance of the behavior of characters in Cleanness for the poet’s theological and moral project. The Pearl-Poet demonstrates that alimentary theology uses not just metaphors of food and consumption but social practices around eating to do its work. Social practices based on the consumption of food function metaphorically to convey characters’ moral and religious states to those around them— and to the reader. The attention that people in the Middle Ages paid to courteous behavior, and the centrality of table manners to courtesy, may seem strange in societies like the contemporary United States which emphasize authentic behavior and downplay class and social difference.4 Social rituals often lack the deep significance and meaning for us that they held for people in late-medieval England. Anna Bryson writes about courtesy guides that, “The overwhelming preoccupation of their authors is with table manners, although this modern expression fails to convey the complexity and importance of the formal dinner as the central ritual of the household, one which dramatized both its internal hierarchy and its relation to the outside world in the provision of hospitality.”5 Aristocratic meals, with their emphasis on hospitality, ritual, order, and conspicuous displays of wealth, demonstrated a lord and his household’s standing and their relationship to other centers of power. The niceties of serving and eating food had religious, social, and political meaning for all the participants. Characters in Cleanness 4. Cf. Charles Taylor’s chapter on “The Age of Authenticity” in A Secular Age, 473–504. 5. From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 27. 188 demonstrate their political allegiance to, or rebellion against, God as lord of the world through the performance of their roles as hosts and guests. The depiction of God as ruler over the world, which serves as his court, would have resonated with the Pearl-Poet’s gentry audience.6 They would be familiar with the courtly manners and etiquette that Cleanness describes. Elizabeth Keiser writes that in Cleanness, “The aristocratic ethos epitomizes God’s order, his very being. The idealized ordering of gesture and costume, splendid food and drink into the satisfyingly ceremonious meal, and the comparable refinement of sexual urges…epitomize the realm of God’s goodness.”7 The Pearl-Poet fills the poem with upper-class men interacting in convivial situations and polite conversation, displaying either clean and courteous behavior, or utterly failing to do so. God is shown to enjoy feasting and celebration and delights in the joy of his followers, even in the intimate joys of romantic love. He is the perfect courtly lord and an ideal for earthly lords seeking a greater integration of refinement, religious devotion, and moral purity. The association of etiquette with virtue is a common feature of courtesy literature. In the first chapter, I pointed to the way that advice about healthy eating in Lydgate’s Dietary cannot be separated from moral instruction. Eating always occurs in a context that joins table manners, social behavior, and morality. Mark Amos observes that, In medieval courtesy literature, the language of morality everywhere links polite behavior to a moral valuation: as the texts offer advice on personal 6. Significant scholars of the poem have argued for an aristocratic audience including Elizabeth B. Keiser, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia: The Legitimation of Sexual Pleasure in Cleanness and Its Contexts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997) and A. C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 10. 7. Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 22. 189 hygiene, table etiquette, and conversational niceties, they detail the rewards and punishments for these activities in terms of virtue and vice. This ethical level provides transcendental motivations for a rarefied and self-consciously chosen limit to one’s activities, the controlling of affect through an act of the will that noble manners entail.8 One’s religious and moral state is inseparable from one’s practice of table manners and social etiquette. Cleanness, in a sense, offers a reverse motivation to that in Amos’s final sentence. The desire for this worldly order and refinement motivates ethical behavior and religious devotion. God’s demand for moral cleanness proceeds from his essential courtesy and passion for order. I am not the first to note the importance of courtesy and eating in Cleanness. Authors such as Derek Brewer have written about courtesy in the works of the Pearl- Poet.9 Jonathan Nicholls’s The Matter of Courtesy comes closest to my focus in this chapter.10 His monograph contains a short chapter on the many appearances of feasting in Cleanness and their parallels to instructions in medieval courtesy books. Elizabeth Keiser’s Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia examines the ways that courteous behavior in Cleanness is driven by sex and gender-based aspects of the courtly ethos. What these works fail to explore is the poetic association between norms of aristocratic feasting and courtesy and the seemingly oddly chosen virtue of cleanness, a virtue more 8. Amos, “‘For Manners Make Man,’” 30. 9. “Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet,” in Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis, ed. John Lawlor (London: Edward Arnold, 1966), 54–85. 10. The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain-Poet (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1985). See chapter 6 “Feasts and Feasting in Cleanness,” 85–102. 190 often associated with penance.11 How does attention to cleanness guide the poet’s use of courtesy and table manners in his adaptation of biblical narratives? My goal is also to examine Cleanness as vernacular theology, the way worldly and bodily metaphors are drawn into the work of “doing theology.”12 Rituals of eating and hospitality in the poem become vehicles to communicate a larger moral and religious framework. The poem’s association of table manners and cleanness rests on the poet’s vernacular translation of the Vulgate. DEFINING CLEANNESS AND FILTH Cleanness takes its title from the first word of the poem: “clannesse.”13 Although the term is central to the work, rendering its meaning in modern English has been a challenge since scholars first began to study the poem.14 The Middle English Dictionary observes that the most common usage of clennesse is to denote moral purity, with a narrower meaning being sexual purity such as virginity and chastity. Early scholars gave the poem the title Purity, emphasizing the moral connotations of “clannesse.”15 The poet, 11. J. J. Anderson writes that, “[I]t is in connection with the doctrine of penance, and particularly in the penitential literature of the later middle ages, that the idea of cleanness/uncleanness is most fully discussed by theologians and homilists,” Cleanness (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 5. 12. Keiser does this somewhat in her exploration of Cleanness as a “theopoetic” work. The theology she focuses on, however, is primarily medieval understandings of gender and sexuality, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 2–10. 13. All quotations from poems of the Peal-Poet are from the following edition: Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, eds., The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 5th ed. (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2007). All translations are my own. 14. For an example of two important monographs, years apart, that wrestle with the question see Spearing, The Gawain-Poet, 50–55 and Ad Putter, An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet, (London: Longman, 1996), 205, 232–236. Both scholars find it easier to come to a conclusion on the way the poet gives meaning to clannesse and fylþe than on their meaning. 15. Cf. Putter, An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet, 234. Putter observes that in contrast Cleanness calls attention to physical cleanness, 234. 191 however, uses the word in a much broader way than moral purity. He draws the term from the sixth Beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God,” a text that Cleannesss paraphrases repeatedly, especially at transitions between biblical narratives. In the Vulgate Matthew 5:8 is, “beati mundo corde quoniam ipsi Deum videbunt.” The verse is rendered near the beginning of the poem as, ‘Þe haþel clene of his hert hapenez ful fayre For he schal loke on oure Lorde with a leue chere’ [‘It befalls very well the man clean of his heart For he will look on our Lord with a pleasant expression’] (ll. 27–28) The poet’s key word clene translates Latin mundo. Within classical Latin mundus denotes “clean, cleanly, nice, neat, elegant…fine…smart, genteel” and can be applied to a way of living, dress, or speech.16 It is in ecclesiastical usage, such as the Vulgate, that mundus begins to assume the meaning of moral purity.17 The Pearl-Poet’s usage of clene combines the classical and religious definitions of mundus; the word signifies both moral purity and elegance, fineness, and gentility. Attention to elegance and gentility in Cleanness become not merely a sign of moral purity but a form of morality in itself. The classical inflection of clannesse is visible in the first lines of the poem, which commend the virtue for the way that it will advance courtesy: Clannesse whoso kyndly cowþe comende, And rekken vp alle þe resounz þat ho by ri t askez,ʒ Fayre formez my t he fynde in forþering his speche, (ll. 1–3)ʒ 16. Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary (emphasis original). Definition 1(c) for clennesse n. in the MED retains a similar sense of “shapeliness, elegance.” 17. Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary. 192 [Whosoever could naturally commend cleanness, And count up all the reasons that she asked by right, He might find fair devices for advancing his speech,] Clannesse, from the beginning, is associated with fair and elegant speech, recalling the classical meaning of mundus. The poem uses fayre throughout as a near synonym in poetic variation with clannesse, in addition to words such as wlonk and aþel. The “Fayre formez” that are available through clannesse for advancing one’s speech have important poetic and artistic significance for the Pearl-Poet’s work as a whole, something that Sandra Prior explores in her book The Fayre Formez of the Pearl Poet.18 The promise, however, would have particular importance for Cleanness’s aristocratic audience, who associated courtesy with correct speech. Derek Brewer says that, “The highest value was set on friendly, intelligent, lively, modest speech.”19 Skilled speech was critical for furthering oneself in courtly society. Courtesy texts are full of reminders to young readers to watch what they say and to speak well. The courtesy poem “Urbanitatis” (ca. 1390) advises that, “With fayr speche þou myght haue þy wylle / With hyt þou myght þy-seluen spylle [With fair speech you may have your will / With it you might terribly injure yourself] (ll. 773–74).20 Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, printed around 1477–78, recommends that its readers search Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve, and Lydgate for “fayr langage” in order to improve their eloquence 18. The Fayre Formez of the Pearl Poet (East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 1996). 19. “Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet,” 62. 20. Douglas Knoop, G. P. Jones, and Douglas Hamer, eds., The Two Earliest Masonic Mss. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1938), 150. The earliest extant Middle English version of “Urbanitatis” appears in the Regius Manuscript. It was likely compiled around 1390 in the West Midlands. See Knoop, Jones, and Hamer, The Two Earliest Masonic Mss., 3, 6–7. This makes it contemporary in time and place with Cleanness. All translations from courtesy books are my own unless otherwise noted. 193 and ability to speak well to any audience (l. 423).21 The author promises that, “It wil prouffite to see suche thingis & rede” [It will profit you to see and read such things] (l. 427).22 Although the Book of Curtesye was written many years after Cleanness, they exhibit the same impulse to find exemplars of courteous speech that would enable one to advance in society. Praiseworthy characters in Cleanness are identifiable by their fair, joyful, and courteous speech, while negative figures, particularly the men of Sodom, are identified by their rough and unclean speech. Following the initial commendation of clannesse, the poem condemns the virtue’s opposite: fylþe. Through this contrast, the poet emphasizes the moral inflection of clannesse: For wonder wroth is þe Wy þat wro t alle þingesʒ ʒ Wyth þe freke þat in fylþe fol es Hym after— (ll. 5–6)ʒ [For the One that made all things is wonderfully angry With the man that follows after Him in filth—] [F]ylþe tends to be associated with either physical impurity or moral impurity.23 Scholars of Cleanness such as Allen Frantzen, Michael Twomey, and Elizabeth Keiser primarily associate fylþe with sexual impurity, particularly anal sex between men where the poem 21. Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Caxton’s Book of Curtesye (London: N. Trübner & Co., 1868), 43. 22. Furnivall, Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, 43. 23. Cf. filth n., MED. Discussion of the meaning of fylþe and clannesse naturally invites reference to Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger following A. C. Spearing’s article “Purity and Danger” in Essays in Criticism 30, 4 (1980): 293–310. Douglas’s examination of Levitical law and argument that, “[D]irt is essentially disorder...it exists in the eye of the beholder…Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organise the environment” has some similarities to the poem’s religious focus and association of order with clannesse, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), 2. Whereas organization for Douglas is about categorization, I argue that Cleanness finds religious significance in hierarchical order. There is also an emphasis on harmonious fulfilling of social roles in the poem whereas Purity and Danger is focused on animals and material objects. 194 speaks of “fylþe of þe flesch” (ll. 202, 547).24 In the first lines of the poem, however, fylþe is positioned as the opposite of courteous behavior and speech. The effect is to blur the boundaries between a religious, moral understanding of the clannesse-fylþe binary and a courtly, aesthetic understanding. Cleanness proceeds from a “both/and” conception of what it means to be clene.25 Fair speech and manners come to signify moral purity and moral purity fair speech and manners. WHAT TO WEAR AT A FEAST Lines 5–6 illustrate an important aspect of the poem’s conception of God. God is the “Wy þat wro t alle þinges.” He created all things and so the natural ordering of the ʒ ʒ world represents his perfect cleanness. God’s creation of the world also means that he has a personal attachment to and exercises lordship over it. Violations of God’s finely wrought natural order—fylþe in the language of the poem—are received as an offense against him and provoke his fierce anger.26 Cleanness establishes this theological framework through three preliminary episodes that employ the imagery of courtliness, feasting, and clothing. Through them, God appears as an aristocratic lord and the world as his court. 24. Allen J. Frantzen, “The Disclosure of Sodomy in Cleanness,” PMLA 111, 3 (1996): 451–64; Michael W. Twomey, “Cleanness, Peter Comestor, and the Revelationes Sancti Methodii,” Mediaevalia 11 (1985): 203–17 and “The Sin of Untrawþe in Cleanness,” in Text and Matter: New Critical Perspectives of the Pearl-Poet, ed. Robert J. Blanch, Miriam Youngerman Miller, and Julian N. Wasserman (Troy, NY: Whiston Publishing Company, 1991), 117–45. Keiser, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 41–70. 25. Cf. Newman, Medieval Crossover, 7–13 26. In contrast to the deist image of God as a watchmaker who winds up the world and lets it run, God in Cleanness is like the poet himself whose detailed labor leads to possessiveness and identification of the creator with his creation. 195 The first episode, lines 7–24, describes priests dressed in clean clothes serving before God and handling his body on the altar. Their earthly service before God is parallel to the heavenly court where God is served by angels: He is so clene in His courte, þe Kyng þat al weldez, And honeste in His housholde, and hagherlych serued27 With angelez enourled in alle þat is clene, Boþe withinne and withouten in wedez ful bry t; (ll. 17–20)ʒ [He is so clean in his court, the King that rules all, And honorable in his household, and skillfully served By angels surrounded by all that is clean, In very bright clothes, both within and without;] Cleanness imagines God as a king, holding court over a well-ordered household.28 Angels appear as courtiers and servants. God’s cleanness is demonstrated through the orderliness of his angelic servants and the fineness of their dress. The comparison between the celebration of the Eucharist and service in the heavenly court would certainly have relevance to a priestly audience.29 Nevertheless, in presenting God as ruling over the 27. Honest does not refer to truthfulness as in Modern English but to a wide range of meanings related to courtly life including something that is honorable, noble, excellent, or “befitting one’s social status or office,” MED. 28. Cf. Brewer’s observation that “The poet in his preliminaries presents God very clearly as a king in his court, and in so doing strikes…the major image that underlies all his poetry—the court,” “Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet,” 58. 29. This opening passage and the appearance of the temple vessels in the narrative of Belshazzar’s feast suggests to some that the audience of the poem are primarily priests and/or the purpose of the poem is to critique clerical behavior. Cf. Eleanor Johnson, “Horrific Visions of the Host: A Meditation on Genre,” Exemplaria 27, 1–2 (2015): 150–66; Francis Ingledew, “Liturgy, Prophecy, and Belshazzar’s Babylon: Discourse and Meaning in Cleanness,” Viator 23 (1992): 247–80. My view is that the purpose is rather to endue courtly ritual with the piety and religiosity of a mass. 196 world from his perfectly ordered, i.e., clene, court, the poet sets God as an ideal of courtliness and manners that would appeal to his aristocratic readers. The second preliminary episode expounds Matthew 5:8 through comparison to one who approaches a duke at his meal with unwashed hands and wearing torn and tattered clothes (ll. 35–50). Such a person would be “Hurled to the þe halle dore…And be forboden þat bor e to bowe þider neuer” [Hurled to the door of the hall…and forbidden ʒ to come by that estate again] (ll. 44–45). Comparison is then made between earthy rulers and God. And if vnwelcum he were to a wordlych prynce, et hym is þe hy e Kyng harder in heuen; (ll. 49–50) Ʒ ʒ [And if he were unwelcome to an earthly prince, Yet to him the high King in heaven is more severe;] The text explicitly calls the reader to see the similarity between earthly lords managing a court and God as heavenly king. This statement prompts the third preliminary episode, which retells much the same scenario at length via an adaptation of the parable of the wedding feast from the gospels of Matthew and Luke. Although the poet identifies his source for the parable as the gospel of Matthew (l. 51), his adaptation conflates versions of the parable from both gospels.30 Cleanness turns the brief description of the wedding feast into a recognizably aristocratic feast at court. Although the host is first referred to as a “man ryche” (l. 51), he is later called a “lorde” (ll. 73, 97, 122, 138, 153) and “souerayn” (l. 93), in keeping with the identification of the host as a king in Matthew’s gospel. The host is served by an array of servants including a 30. The Matthew version is found in 22:1–14. The other version is in Luke 14:16–24. 197 “stewarde” (l. 90), “marchal,” “marschal” (l. 91, 118), and “sergauntez” (l. 109), essential figures for an upper-class feast. The Boke of Curtasye (ca. 1430–40), for example, details the officers and their functions, including the aforementioned, that are necessary for a lord’s courteous reception of guests and service at meals.31 The poet’s addition of these courtly officials is part of his strategy for adapting the parable for his aristocratic audience. Cleanness, likewise, adapts the biblical list of food to one that fourteenth century gentry would recognize. The poet expands the brief mention of “calves and fatlings” in Matthew 22:4 to include multiple kinds of meat, with an emphasis on upper-class meats like wild boar and game birds.32 The host’s initial invitation says that: ‘For my boles and my borez arn bayted and slayne, And my fedde foulez fatted with scla t,ʒ My polyle þat is penne-fed and partrykez boþe, Wyth scheldez of wylde swyn, swanez and cronez Al is roþeled and rosted ryʒt to þe sete; (ll. 55–59) [‘For my bulls and my boars are fatted and slain, And my well-fed fowls are fattened for slaughter, Both my poultry that is pen-fed and partridges, With shoulder of wild swine, swans, and cranes, All is properly cooked and roasted for sitting down to eat;] 31. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 187–205. 32. Chaucer’s monk’s appetite for “fat swan” (I.A.206) helps to signify his non-ascetic delight in worldly pleasures. Wild boar were a particularly aristocratic food through the rituals surrounding the hunt, as can be seen in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 198 Sidney Mintz, in his classic work Sweetness and Power, observes that “What people eat expresses who and what they are, to themselves and to others.”33 We have already seen in Piers Plowman the association between meat consumption and the upper classes, in contrast to peasants who were associated with vegetables. Cleanness celebrates the conspicuous consumption of expensive foods at aristocratic feasts and legitimates this diet through the portrayal of God as an upper-class host. Food is mixed with good cheer at the feast for there is “mynstrasy noble / And all þe laykez þat a lorde a t in londe schewe” [noble minstrelsy / And all the games that a ʒ lord ought to show in a land] (ll. 121–22). The description recalls the scenes of feasting in Gawain and the Green Knight and Bertilak’s love of games as the excellent host of Hautedessert. Proper mirth and cheerful conversation are essential aspects of courtesy at a meal. “Stans Puer ad Mensam” (ca. 1430) instructs the reader that “Of honest mirþe euere be þi daliaunce” [Let your leisurely conversation always be of honorable mirth] (l. 43).34 Fair and convivial speech, as we will see through the poem, is essential to a clene and courteous meal. One of the most significant changes the poet makes to the parable of the wedding feast is to maintain a sense of social hierarchy that the parables in Matthew and Luke undercut. Matthew’s version shows the common people being invited to a feast that the cultural and political elites have rejected.35 In Luke’s version, those who are disabled and 33. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (New York: Viking, 1985), 13. 34. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 278. “Stans Puer ad Mensam” is frequently attributed to John Lydgate and is likely a translation/adaptation of a Latin courtesy poem. See Servus Gieben, “Robert Grosseteste and Medieval Courtesy-Books,” Vivarium 5, 1 (1967): 62 and Amos, “‘For Manners Make Man,’” 34. 35. Matthew’s gospel also includes the violent rejection of the king’s messengers, to which the king responds by killing the original invitees. Presumably, the image of a king killing rebellious nobles was 199 maimed are invited. Cleanness retains Luke’s inclusion of those with disabilities (ll. 101– 103) and, similar to Matthew, people are invited, “Wheþer þay wern worþy oþer wers” [Whether they were worthy or worse] (l. 113). The poem, nevertheless, gives its attention to the courtly young men, the “bachlerez” and “[s]wyerez,” that are present (ll. 86–7). There is repeated emphasis on the order of seating that is absent in the original parable. “Ful manerly with marchal mad for to sitte, / As he watze dere of degré dressed his seete” (ll. 91–92) [Very properly he was seated by the marshal, / Assigned his seat as each was worthy of degree]. Clothes play an important role in distinguishing degree: Ay þe best byfore and bry test atyred,ʒ Þe derrest at þe hy e dese, þat dubbed wer fayrest,ʒ And syþen on lenþe bilooghe ledez inogh. And ay as segges serly semed by her wedez, So with marschal at her mete mensked þay were (ll. 114–118) [In each case the best and brightest arrayed were at the front, The noblest at the high dais, those that were considered the fairest, And then men/knights along the length of the table below.36 And always people individually according to their clothing So by the marshal they were honored at their meal.] too uncomfortable for the poet’s audience of gentry. 36. Medieval feasts often featured a high table on a dais where the most honored attendees sat and tables on the ground level at right angles to the high table where those of lower rank were arranged. See Brewer, “Feasts,” in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, 137. The raised altar at the front of churches presents architectural similarities to courtly dining that the poem’s audience may have observed. 200 The seating provides a place for everyone and everyone in their place. It makes visible in physical space the hierarchy that Cleanness sees as an essential aspect of convivial society. The clene division of people into their social order and hierarchy is important in works of courtesy literature. “Urbanitatis,” after warning its reader against presuming to mix with his betters, praises such caution as “nortur good and clene” [good and clean breeding] (l. 720).37 The clannesse of clothing and outward appearance is critical to making these distinctions. It represents metaphorically the intrinsic moral identity of the guest. After the above description of seating, the poem observes that, “Clene men in compaynye forknowen were lyte” (l. 119) [Clean/fine men were little neglected]. The line uses clene with its classical Latin inflection, describing clothing, while also being a statement about individual social and moral status. Although many are invited to the feast, better and worse, the adaptation maintains rigid order and hierarchy. One of the invited guests, in violation of proper manners, is not wearing “clene” clothes. The poet spends several lines denigrating the man’s clothing, writing that it is not appropriate for a “halyday” [holy day] (ll. 134, 141). The clothes are “vnþryuandely” [ignoble] (l. 135), “fyled with werkkez” [filthy with work] (l. 136), “so fowle” [so foul] (l. 140), “ratted” [torn] and “rent at þe sydez” [torn at the sides] (l. 144), and “febele” [feble] (l.145). The king views the man’s clothing as a personal insult, saying that, Þou praysed me and my place ful pouer and ful gnede, Þat watz so prest to aproche my presens hereinne. (ll. 146–47) [You considered me and my place so poor and stingy, 37. Knoop, Jones, and Hamer, eds., The Two Earliest Masonic Mss., 146 (my emphasis). 201 That you were so quick to approach my presence here.] The breach in courtly etiquette, wearing torn and dirty clothing, is an offense against the lord of the feast. His efforts to provide everyone with a well-ordered, joyful, and courteous meal has been hindered by the poorly dressed man. The king’s charge demands a response, one that the poorly dressed guest is unable to give. In the Vulgate the guest’s response is described briefly: “at ille obmutuit” [But he was silent].38 Cleanness expands the description to call attention to the guest’s failure in courtesy. Þat oþer burne watz abayst of his broþe wordez, And hurkelez doun with his hede, þe vrþe he biholdez; He watz so scoumfit of his scylle, lest he skaþe hent, Þat he ne wyst on worde what he warp schulde. (ll. 149–52) [The other man was confounded by his fierce words, And cowered down with his head, looking at the ground, He was so disconcerted in his reason that he would receive hurt, That he did not know what words he should utter.] His uncleanness has put him in a situation where he does not know what to say and so says nothing at all. The failure of the guest to maintain courteous speech is likewise seen in his body language. “Stans Puer ad Mensam” instructs its young courtly reader that, Who-so speke to þee in ony maner place, lumpischli caste not þin heed a-doun, 38. Matthew 22:12. 202 but with a sad cheer look hym in þe face. (ll. 15–17)39 [Whosoever speaks to you in any location, Do not awkwardly cast your head down But with a serious expression look him in the face.] The failure of the guest’s speech and his inability to look the host in the face corroborates the witness of his clothes to his failure of courtesy and clannesse. His uncleanness has deprived him of the “fayre formez” necessary for furthering his speech and advancing his own interests. The poorly dressed guest’s breach of courtly etiquette results in his ejection from the court. In a contemporizing of the source material, the poorly dressed guest is not ejected into the “exterior darkness” of Matthew but thrown into a dungeon where “doel euer dwellez” [sorrow always dwells] (l. 158).40 Lest the audience interpret the clothes literally, the poet expounds their significance at the end of the parable. He explains that clothes, …arn þy werkez, wyterly, þat þou wro t hauez,ʒ And lyued with þe lykyng þat ly e in þyn hert; ʒ Þat þo be frely and fresch fonde in þy lyue, And fetyse of a fayr forme to fote and to honde, And syþen alle þyne oþer lymez lapped ful clene; Þenne may þou se þy Sauior and His sete ryche. (ll. 171–76) […are the works, surely, that you have done, And lived with the pleasure that lies in your heart. 39. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 276. 40. Matthew 22:13. 203 That you be found noble and unsullied in your life, And well-proportioned in a fair form from foot to hand, And since all your other limbs are wrapped very clean; Then you may see the Savior and his fine seat.] As in Pearl, a physical object becomes a symbol of inner clannesse. The deeds that a person does in this life, metaphorically clothing and bodily appearance, reveal what is in “in þyn hert.” A fair form and limbs that are cleanly clothed grant one a vision of Jesus in language that paraphrases Matthew 5:8. Just as one must wear clean clothes to come within sight of a ruler, so internal cleanness is necessary for a vision of God. Failure to wear clean and fair clothing, as courtly decorum requires, results in ejection from the sight of one’s lord, earthly or heavenly. And yet, as cognitive linguists remind us, metaphors shape the content they carry.41 An aristocratic audience, which valued attention to courteous behavior and correct clothing, is unlikely to separate religious morality and manners. The Politics of Courtesy Modern readers may find the host’s response to the guest out of proportion to the offense of wearing dirty clothes to a feast, especially when guests were invited regardless of their station in life. One sees a similar apparent incongruity in God destroying the entire world during the Flood and annihilating Sodom because of the “fylþe of þe flesch.” David Aers has called the God of Cleanness a “divine terrorist” for the particular glee the poet seems to take in describing divine destruction.42 A fuller understanding of the 41. See Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By. 42. David Aers, Faith, Ethics and Church: Writing in England, 1360–1409 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 91. 204 political significance for the poet’s audience of table manners and courtly etiquette helps explain God’s violent actions. Claire Sponsler relates Jean Froissant’s account in his Chroniques of a squire who was responsible for teaching four Irish kings English table manners and customs in preparation for their meeting with Richard II. Although the Irish kings initially resist the new customs, the squire, Henry Chrystede, eventually persuades them because he “takes proper table manners as a sign not only of civility, but also of political allegiance....To be fully incorporated within the English national community, to become obedience subjects of Richard II, the Irish kings are required to cast aside their native customs.”43 Acceptance of the etiquette of eating established by the person of higher status indicates political submission, while failure to conform signifies rebellion. Wearing foul clothing in the adaptation of the parable is not simply a breach of nicety or politeness, the king takes it as an affront to his lordship. He will allow no space for rebels in his court or kingdom. The men of Sodom hold the same perspective on the link between customs of hospitality and allegiance. They tell Lot to give them the newly arrived angelic visitors, Þat we may lere hym of lof, as oure lyst biddez, As is þe asyse of Sodmas to seggez that passen. (ll. 843–44) [That we may teach them of love, as our desire commands As is the custom of Sodom to men that travel by.] It is the custom of the men of Sodom to have sex with men that visit the city. When Lot offers to teach them “a crafte þat is better” [a practice that is better] (l. 865), by offering his daughters as a substitute, the men of Sodom identify him as an outsider: 43. Sponsler, “Eating Lessons,” 2. 205 ‘Wost þou not wel þat þou wonez here a wy e strange,ʒ An outcomlyng, a carle? We kylle of þyn heued! Who joyned þe be jostyse oure japez to blame, Þat com a boy to þis bor , þa þou be burne ryche?’ (ll. 875–78)ʒ ʒ [‘Don’t you know well that you dwell here as a foreigner, An alien, a low-class knave? We’ll strike off your head! Who appointed you to be judge to criticize our pastimes, That came as a boy to this town, although you are a rich man?’] Although Lot has been in the city since he was a boy, his different customs mark him as a foreigner, and as a foreigner he has no right to criticize Sodom’s customs and practices. There is even a strong sense of class distinction in the way that he is called a “carle,” i.e., a low-status person, although he is wealthy.44 All his wealth does not allow him to enter into the upper classes of Sodom because he lacks their manners.45 Lot’s attempt to act contrary to the customs of Sodom means that the inhabitants feel justified in cutting off his head (l. 876). Adherence to customs and manners in the receiving of guests signals political allegiance; deviations are a political threat. The association between manners and political allegiance is the context in which I read Michael Twomey’s identification of untrawþe as one of the central sins condemned by the poem, particular unfaithfulness to God’s intention for sexuality. Twomey writes that, “[T]he Cleanness-Poet, who frequently uses the terms ‘king’ and ‘lord’ for God, emphasizes the feudal, covenantal inature [sic] of man’s relationship to God by 44. carl n., MED. 45. Such a comment would likely resonate with an aristocratic audience feeling the social pressure of a rising merchant class. 206 employing a legal metaphor to describe it.”46 Throughout the poem, failure to do as God commands is understood as betrayal or failure of trawþe (e.g., ll. 236, 996, 1736). God’s commands, discernible in the natural order of the world, seek to bring about a well- ordered, pleasing, and beautiful earthly court. Twomey argues that the poet understands the Sodomites’ preferences for same sex intercourse as unfaithfulness and betrayal to God as ruler of the world.47 God establishes heterosexual love-making as “a kynde crafte” [a natural practice] (l. 697) and says that he “made þerto a maner myriest” [made therefore a very merry custom] (l. 701). The Sodomites’ rejection of sex in this manner puts them in the company of other rebellious figures who go against God’s commands in Cleanness like Satan and Adam. From the perspective of the poet, the violent punishment of bad manners are just actions that any conscientious ruler would take to maintain the harmony of his court.48 OLD TESTAMENT VISIONS OF CLANNESSE AND FYLÞE The adaptation of the parable of the wedding feast, and the poet’s interpretation of it, establishes the key image of courteous feasting and hospitality that reoccurs in Cleanness’s adaptations of Old Testament narratives. The parable, and the political, social, and religious significance of courtesy that I have outlined above, provide the necessary background to interpret these narratives. Cleanness divides the narratives into what the poet calls “þrynne wyses” [three forms] (l. 1805), each of which contain shorter 46. “The Sin of Untrawþe in Cleanness,” 118–19. 47. “The Sin of Untrawþe in Cleanness,” 119–121. 48. In responding this way, there is an uncomfortable similarity between God and the Sodomites. Lot’s customs are seen as a threat to Sodom, while God views Sodom’s customs as a threat. In this case, God is the higher authority because of his creation of the world and the natural order. 207 biblical episodes.49 The poem bookends each of the “þrynne wyses” (singular wise) with a paraphrase of Matthew 5:8, an explanation of the significance of the section, and renewed praise of the desirability of clannesse for a vision of God. There is not space in this chapter to examine every appearance of eating and courtesy in the poem, so I will focus on the most significant portions that illustrate the way that the virtue of clanness is expressed through the aristocratic practice of courteous manners and hospitality.50 Most of the remainder of the chapter, for this reason, covers the second and third “wyses.” The second section juxtaposes Abraham’s hosting of the three visitors against Lot’s frustrated hosting of the two angelic visitors due to the men of Sodom. Belshazzar’s feast makes up the majority of the third section. In both we see the divine rewards that come from courteous and well-mannered behavior at table—and the violent punishment that God inflicts on those who act in an unclean and base manner. Cleansing Waters and Noah’s Sacrificial Meal Before the main Old Testament narrative of the first wise, which is an account of the Flood, the poem briefly recounts Satan’s rebellion and the fall of humanity through Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit. Satan is depicted as a rebel against his lord whose actions cause God to lose “þe tyþe dool of His tour ryche” [the tenth part of His fine entourage] (l. 216). For this, God precipitates the “falce fend” [faithless fiend] from his sight into hell (l. 205). The punishment re-enacts the parable of the wedding feast where the king ejects the poorly dressed man from his presence into the dungeon. Adam and Eve are then created to produce offspring to replace the number of fallen angels in 49. See wise n. (2), MED. 50. Nicholls list all the feasts and feast-like events in Cleanness in The Matter of Courtesy, 85–87. 208 the heavenly court (l. 240).51 Adam’s eating of the fruit represents a second rebellion against God as rightful lord; the poet condemns Adam for having “fayled in trawþe” [failed in his loyalty] (l. 236).52 Adam’s disloyalty causes God to eject Adam from his presence in the “blysse” and “paradys” for which he was originally ordained (ll. 237–38). God’s vision for a well-ordered and pleasing court is again frustrated. Within the poet’s moral framework, these rebellions against God as lord are not as serious as the “fylþe of þe flesch” [filth of the flesh] (l. 202), the sin that leads to the Flood (ll. 265–92). “[F]ylþe in fleschlych dedz” [filth of fleshly deeds] (l. 265) are “agayn kynde contraré werkez” [contrary works against nature] (l. 266): the medieval sin contra naturam. As I noted above, Twomey and Frantzen argue that “fylþe of þe flesch” is same-sex intercourse.53 Acting against God’s well-ordered customs and manners as expressed in the natural order is a rebellion against God’s person as creator and king. Since this type of fylþe is more grievous in the poet’s eyes, Cleanness devotes greater space to the Flood narrative than Satan and Adam’s falls.54 The Flood is presented as a washing of the world from fylþe (ll. 323, 355, 548). The concept of washing one’s body and hands before a meal is not unique to late- 51. The creation of Adam and Eve to replace the fallen angels is a traditional view advanced by church fathers like Augustine, e.g., Enchiridion, IX.28–29. See The Augustine Catechism: The Enchiridion on Faith, Hope, and Love, ed. John E. Rotelle, trans. Bruce Harbert (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1999), 59–60. Here the tradition is adapted into a courtly framework. 52. The forbidden fruit is described as poisoning all humankind: “Bot þur þe eggyng of Eue he ete of an ʒ apple / Þat enpoysended alle peplez þat parted from hem boþe [But through the nagging of Eve he ate of an apple/ That poisoned all the people that descended from them both] (ll. 241–42). Otherwise, the poem says little about this first meal. 53. Frantzen, “The Disclosure of Sodomy in Cleanness”; Twomey, “Cleanness, Peter Comestor, and the Revelationes Sancti Methodii” and “The Sin of Untrawþe in Cleanness.” The identification of homosexual intercourse in medieval texts as the sin contra naturam (against nature) derives from Romans 1:26–27. 54. Andrew and Waldron observe that the function of Satan and Adam’s falls are to emphasize the greater anger that God holds toward fleshly uncleanness, The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, 120. 209 medieval England. Washing hands, in this case, was a ritual part of dining at courtly meals. “Stans Puer ad Mensam” says, [Þ]in hondis waische also / to-fore þi mete, & whanne þou doist arise” [Also wash your hands / before your meal and when you rise from it] (ll. 22–23).55 The Boke of Curtasye contains instructions on what ranks in a household were expected to wash a person’s hands and how (ll. 639–66).56 We will see the ritual practice shortly in Abraham’s reception of the three visitors. The importance of washing before a meal has already appeared in the parable of the wedding feast, where the poorly dressed guest’s dirtiness is one of his faults. Washing was a necessary preparation for a meal and the Flood ends with a sacrificial meal. Nicholls observes that Noah’s offering of a “comly and clene” [fair and clean] sacrifice is a kind of mass (l. 508).57 The sacrifice links Noah to the priests celebrating the Eucharist at the beginning of the poem and thus presents him as a courteous server at God’s table. With the world cleansed from fylþe by the waters of the Flood, the courtly conviviality of guests and host at table can resume. Abraham’s Hospitality and Sodom’s Hostility The second wise of Cleanness juxtaposes Abraham’s meal with the three visitors in Genesis 18 against the destruction of Sodom in Genesis 19. Considerable scholarly attention has focused on the Sodom episode because of its unusually direct discussion of same-sex intercourse and equally frank celebration of the pleasures of heterosexual love- 55. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 278. 56. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 199. 57. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy, 86. 210 making.58 Nevertheless, the two biblical episodes are best understood in tandem since each has at its center hospitality toward guests at a meal. Cleanness frequently uses contrast as a rhetorical strategy, illustrating clannesse through comparison with fylþe. Courteous hosting of guests marks Abraham, and to a lesser degree Lot, as clean, while the hostile and base treatment of visitors confirms the fylþe of the men of Sodom and the sinfulness of Lot’s wife. Cleanness prefaces the second wise with a restatement of the sixth Beatitude, reinforcing the image of God as a courteous lord who rewards those who are fair and honorable with a sight of his face: And þere He fyndez al fayre a freke wythinne, With hert honest and hol, þat haþel He honourez, Sendez hym a sad sy t: to se His auen face, (ll. 593–95)ʒ [And where He finds all fair within a man With an honorable and whole heart, that man He honors, Sends him a sober sight: to see His own face] In contrast, God “drepez in hast” [destroys in haste] (l. 599) those who do “dedez of schame” [deeds of shame”] (l. 597) because “He is so skoymos” [He is so scrupulous] (l. 598). God as a lord is a divine aesthete who responds with violent disgust to anything that 58. E.g., Keiser’s aforementioned monograph Courtly Desire & Medieval Homophobia, which examines what the poem says about the medieval ethics of sexual pleasure, and the articles by Frantzen and Twomey. Also Michael Calabrese and Eric Eliason, “The Rhetorics of Sexual Pleasure and Intolerance in the Middle English Cleanness,” Modern Language Quarterly 56, 3 (1995): 247–75. I avoid, as much as possible, the term homosexual to describe the men of Sodom. Identifying the sexual orientation of characters in a fictional premodern story is fraught with challenges, especially when terminology for sexual orientation is inseparable from contemporary conceptions of sexuality and gender. Cleanness is more useful for what it says about medieval understandings of homosexuality than what it reveals about historical same-sex attraction or identity. 211 is unseemly or distasteful. The inner refinement he seeks is represented through outwards expressions of courtesy, of whom Abraham is a superlative exemplar. Abraham’s three angelic guests are presented as the three persons of the Trinity, following many medieval interpretations of Genesis 18.59 The poem accordingly describes the guests using several of its synonyms for clannesse. Abraham sees his guests as “wlonk Wy ez þrynne” [three noble/beautiful beings] (l. 606) who are “farande and freʒ and fayre to behold” [handsome and noble and fair to see] (l. 607).60 Abraham accurately perceives these exterior signs of nobility and responds with the gracious hospitality appropriate for a superior guest. After begging the three visitors to stay, he says, And I schal wynne Yow wy t of water a lyttel,ʒ And fast aboute shal I fare Your fette wer waschene. Resttez here on þis rote and I schal rachche after And brynge a morsel of bred to baume Your hertte. (ll. 617–620) [And I will bring You speedily a little water And quickly will I work so that Your feet are washed, Rest here on this rock and I shall come afterwards And bring a morsel of bread to comfort Your heart.] Abraham’s words convey speed and efficiency in caring for his guests. As I noted earlier, courtesy texts discuss washing one’s hands before a meal. The washing of a lord’s hands 59. E.g., Augustine in Book II.4.20 in The Trinity, ed. John E Rotelle, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, New York: New City Press, 1991), 115. 60. Wlonk as an adjective combines connotations of physical beauty and refinement with a noble appearance, MED. It is a fitting term for the aristocratic ideal expressed in Cleanness, relying on the romance trope that noble birth is accompanied by noble behavior and physical beauty. The adjective can also be used for clothing and human craft. 212 before a meal was an important task that required proper etiquette and a server of suitable rank.61 Although Abraham’s provision of water for foot washing derives from the poet’s source in Genesis 18:4, it would have been familiar from contemporary monastic practice.62 Directions for offering hospitality in The Rule of St. Benedict say that, “The abbot should pour water on guests’ hands; the abbot as well as the whole community should wash the feet of all guests.”63 The patriarch’s response to the visitors exemplifies the best of religious and worldly hospitality. Abraham is equally rapid in preparing food for his guests in the manner of a good master of his household. He rushes to his wife Sarah and his servants and orders them to make cakes and stew and then slaughters a tender calf. The food is served with careful attention to detail. As host and server, Abraham lays a “clene cloþe” (l. 634) on the ground before his guests and carefully sets the food on it piece by piece: Þrwe þryftyly þeron þo þre þerue kakez, And bryngez butter wythal and be þe bred settez; Mete messez of mylke he merkkez bytweene Syþen potage and polment in plater honest. (ll. 635–638) [Skillfully throws on it three unleavened cakes, And brings butter in addition and sets it by the bread; 61. The name of this office is the Ewerer. See the description in The Boke of Curtasye lines 639–66 in Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 199. Edward IV’s Black Book (ca. 1471–72) contains detailed instructions about the “Offyce of Ewary and Napry,” which was responsible for preparing basins of water for washing and providing clean napery for the king to dry his hands: A. R. Myers, ed., The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), 192–95. 62. Monastic practice likely informed secular hospitality. See chapter 2 “Courtesy and the Religious Orders” in Nicholls’s The Matter of Courtesy, 22–44 and Gieben, “Robert Grosseteste and Medieval Courtesy-Books.” 63. Venarde, The Rule of Saint Benedict, 173. Cf. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy, 43. 213 A proper measure of milk he places in between Then stew and soup in seemly platters.] Although the table is a cloth, the language reveals Abraham’s assiduous attention to the laying out of the meal with attention to proportion, order, and measure.64 The use of present tense verbs further emphasizes Abraham’s eagerness to serve his guests. While Abraham serves, he pays careful attention to his attire. Twice the poem notes that Abraham uncovers his head. Before he serves the food, “Þe burne to be bare- heued buskez hym” [The man prepares himself to be bare-headed]” (l. 633) and later the poem observes that Abraham is “al hodlez” [completely hoodless] (l. 643). The poem “Urbanitatis” instructs its reader that, “When þou comest by-fore a lorde…at þe borde / Hod or cappe þat þou of þo” [When you come before a lord…at the table / take off your hood or cap] (ll. 695–97).65 Similar instructions occur in other courtesy guides.66 Although a covered head may appear to be a small detail in this context, small details are essential to courtesy. In this case, an uncovered head is a sign of respect to the greater person who is present at the meal.67 Attire is only one part of courtesy. Pleasing and correct speech, as I have discussed elsewhere, is a critical aspect of courtly behavior. The poet says that Abraham, As sewer in a god assyse he serued Hem fayre, Wyth sadde semblaunt and swete of such as he hade; (ll. 639–40) 64. Cf. Putter, An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet, 232. 65. Knoop, Jones, and Hamer, The Two Earliest Masonic Mss., 146. 66. E.g., The Boke of Curtasye line 16 in Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 177. 67. Abraham’s behavior may also reflect 1 Corinthians 11:4, “Every man praying or prophesying with his head covered disgraceth his head.” Alternatively, the description may be intended to recall tonsured priests in the offering of mass at the altar. Whatever the source, courteous behavior and religious piety overlap. 214 [As a server in a good manner, provided Him fair service, Of such as he had with a dignified and sweet expression;] Many courtesy guides recommend a balance between mirth and seriousness. For example, “Stans Puer ad Mensam” instructs its reader to be “Be symple in cheer…Of honest mirþe euere be þi daliaunce” [Be simple in expression…Let your conversation be of honorable mirth] (ll. 8, 43) and warns against “wantowne lau inge” [wanton laughing] ȝ (l. 20).68 Abraham’s simple and cheerful demeanor while serving his guest demonstrates mastery of late-medieval forms of courtesy and etiquette. Mastery of etiquette and courtesy are more than just good table manners in Cleanness: Abraham’s service to his divine guests reveals the political relationship and class status of the participants. Cleanness says that, “God as a glad gest mad god chere / Þat watz fayn of his frende, and his fest praysed [God as a glad guest made good cheer / That was pleased with his friend, and praised his feast] (ll. 641–42). The poem’s identification of Abraham as God’s “frende” is a political statement as much as it is a statement about their enjoyment of each other’s company. Friendship between a lord and vassal indicates mutual allegiance. God’s cheerfulness at Abraham’s service demonstrates God’s acceptance of his vassal. At the same time, God’s identification of Abraham as his “frende” shows that they are within the same social sphere. Rather than portraying him as servile, the patriarch’s direct service before God at table shows Abraham’s high place in the social hierarchy. It was expected that those of a high rank in the social hierarchy would be served by people of appropriately elevated status. The instruction for even simple meals in Edward IV’s court requires knights to do menial jobs such as holding the 68. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 276, 278. 215 king’s washing basin and towel, not to mention the accompaniment of other upper-class attendants of state.69 A similar dual association of class and political allegiance can be seen in the squire serving at the table of his knightly father in the Canterbury Tales. Just as a knight is to be served food by a squire and a king by knights, so God is served by no less a person than an Old Testament patriarch. The patriarch’s courtesy and conviviality demonstrates that he and God are aristocratic allies. Although Cleanness’s retelling of Abraham’s meal with the three visitors appears to be a simple meal, the poet draws on features of late-medieval courtesy and table manners. Abraham is quick to provide his guests with water to wash and food to eat. He pays assiduous attention to table service, attire, and speech so that he can provide a pleasing meal for his divine guests. The poet accordingly identities the picnic meal as a “fest” [feast] (l. 642), with all the cultural associations that term would have held for the poem’s audience. Abraham’s blending of religious piety and courtly behavior shows him to be clene and completely loyal to God as his lord. The external clannesse represents the inner clannesse God seeks from his followers. The meal also cements God and Abraham’s political and class-based allegiance. This unity stands in stark contrast to the political and class division between God and the Sodomites that is revealed by Sodom’s discourteous and hostile, in short filthy, reception of the angelic guests. Lot’s Frustrated Hospitality Following his visit to Abraham, God sends two angels as his representatives to determine if Sodom is as full of fylþe as he has heard (ll. 781–83). Cleanness describes the angels as courteous young men, “Meuand mekely togeder as myry men onge…sweteʒ 69. Myers, The Household of Edward IV, 91. 216 men tweyne” [Moving meekly together as merry young men…two sweet men] (ll. 783, 788). Their sweetness and mirth recall Abraham’s demeanor in serving God. The angels present the courtly ideal of well-behaved, cheerful, and good looking young men such as the squires and knights in the parable of the wedding feast. Cleanness further describes their appearance: Ful clene watz þe countenaunce of her cler y en;ʒ Wlonk whit watz her wede and wel hit hem semed. Of alle feturez ful fyn and fautlez boþe; (ll. 792–94) [Very clean was the countenance of their clear eyes; Their clothes were splendid white and fit them well. All their features were excellent and both were faultless.] Clene again functions in a dual role. The word’s application to appearance draws upon the classical inflection of mundus, indicating the fineness and nobility of the angels appearing as young courtly men. At the same time, their outward countenance and clothing reveal their moral cleanness as heavenly beings. Lot, as with Abraham, correctly recognizes the heavenly origin of his guests through the clannesse of their appearance and responds accordingly. “He ros vp ful radly and ran hem to mete” [He rose up very quickly and ran to meet them] (l. 797). Lot offers water to wash their feet, lodging for the night, and a meal. That Lot recognizes his guests’ identity and responds with proper haste and courtesy tells the reader as much about Lot as it does about the nature of his guests; Lot and the angels share social customs and rituals and so belong to the same social class. 217 His courteous service, though, is frustrated by the actions of his wife and the men of Sodom. Like Abraham in the previous episode, Lot instructs his wife and servants to prepare food for their guests. He warns them to “[Þ]enkkez on hit be þrefte what þynk so e make, / For wyth no sour ne no salt seruez hym neuer” [keep in mind that whatever ʒ thing you make is unleavened, / Because you must never serve them leaven or salt] (ll. 819–20).70 Lot’s wife takes offense at this request, seeing no reason that the guests’ gustatory preference should deprive others of salt (ll. 822–24). She calls the angelic messengers “nyse” [fastidious] (l. 824). Adjectives with similar meaning such as scoymus (ll. 21, 598 1148) and kyryous (l. 1109) are used of God, including in the introduction to this wise (l. 598), affirming the value of discriminating taste within the poem’s moral framework.71 Lot’s wife’s charge of fastidiousness against an obvious superior identifies her as uncultivated and low-born. She sees only fussiness in the sophisticated and refined tastes of her betters. Consequently, Lot’s wife adds salt to their stew (l. 825). Cleanness identifies two faults involved in her action. Lot’s wife acts, Agayne þe bone of þe burne þat hit forboden hade, And als ho scelt hem in scorne þat wel her skyl knewen. (ll. 826–27) [Against the commandment of the man that had forbidden it, And also she heaped scorn on them that well recognized her attitude.] 70. Notably, Abraham serves his guest unleavened bread (l. 635). 71. One exception is the criticism of Belshazzar for his love of “nice gettes” [frivolous fashions] (l. 1354). God’s refined observance of tradition differs from Belshazzar’s modish pursuit of the latest food and clothing. 218 Her disobedience of male authority is obviously an offense against medieval conceptions of gender hierarchy, in contrast to the obedience of Abraham’s wife Sarah. There is a deeper offense, however, than a violation of medieval gender norms. Lot’s wife’s disobedience brings disorder to Lot’s household and undermines the ability of the lord of the house to present it as a place of order and refined hospitality. Her actions are an offense against the household/court as a collective whole and a sign to outsiders of their collective weakness.72 Secondly, Lot’s wife’s actions demonstrate scorn toward the household’s guests. The poem’s language does not specify how the scorn is recognized, whether through words and attitude at the dinner table or via the taste-buds of the angels. What is clear is that the breach of courtesy is observed by the guests. The well-ordered and mutually pleasing relationship between host and guest is broken. This personal breech has, as in the parable of the wedding feast, collective and political consequences. The poem observes that Lot’s wife, “wrathed oure Lorde” [angered our Lord] (l. 828) and later that she “serued at þe soper salt bifore Dry tyn” [served salt at the supper ʒ before the Lord] (l. 997). The angels, within the poetic framework, are representatives of God’s court. Lot’s wife’s offense against the angelic representatives is by extension an offense against God.73 The poem later identifies her actions as a “mistrauþe,” an act of unfaithfulness (l. 996). Lot’s wife betrays, on multiple levels, the obedience that she owes to God and his finely-wrought natural moral order. Since respect for and observance of 72. Cf. Bryson’s aforementioned observation that, “[T]he formal dinner as the central ritual of the household…dramatized both its internal hierarchy and its relation to the outside world in the provision of hospitality,” From Courtesy to Civility, 27. 73. One could see Lot as having a similar representative function within the “natural” gender hierarchy that God created. At the same time, the sections that identify Lot’s wife’s faults (ll. 826–28, 979, 996–98) call attention to her failure to follow instructions and avoid comments about proper gender hierarchy. 219 hierarchy and order are at the heart of the poet’s depiction of clene courtesy, God as a courtly lord punishes Lot’s wife for her “mistrauþe” against himself. Sodom’s Filthy Mouths and Filthy Behavior While God punishes Lot’s wife for her discourtesy by turning her into a block of salt, the men of Sodom’s base and threatening reception of his angelic representatives causes God’s utter destruction of the city. I have quoted earlier the inhabitants of Sodom describing their custom of having sex with male travelers. Their speech occurs shortly after the meal and prior to the household going to bed (ll. 833–34), the time when a host would be expected to provide mirthful and honorable entertainment for his guests. After the Sodomites’ demand, the poet interpolates his censure of the request, criticizing not only the content of the demand but the words themselves: Whatt! þay sputen and speken of so spitous fylþe, What! þay e ed and olped of estande sor e,ʒ ʒ ʒ ʒ ʒ Þat et the wynd and þe weder and þe worlde stynkesʒ Of þe brych þat vpbraydez þose broþelych wordes. (ll. 845–48) [What! they utter and spoke of such abominable filth, What! they cried and shouted about frothing injury, That still the wind and the weather and the world stinks Of the opening that throws up those vile words.]74 Cleanness emphasizes the wrongness of the demand for sex between men by attending to the foulness and stench of the words and the mouths that utter them. We can see the 74. Andrew and Waldron gloss brych as “sin” and figuratively as “vomit,” The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, 307. The sentence structure, instead, makes “opening” or “breech” a better translation. Cf. bruche n., MED. See also Frantzen’s suggestion of alternatives to Andrew and Waldron’s gloss, “The Disclosure of Sodomy in Cleanness,” 458. 220 association, noted in the previous chapter, between taste and speech as twin senses of the mouth. The Sodomites’ mouths figuratively become festering wounds pouring out words that are pus and vomit, attaching gustatory and olfactory disgust to even the act of speaking about anal sex.75 Courtesy books frequently remind their readers to choose proper and refined subjects of speech. “Stans Puer ad Mensam” says, “speke no ribaudie” [speak no debauchery/lechery] (l. 44) and “Urbanitatis,” as quoted above, advises that, “With fayr speche þou myght haue þy wylle / With hyt þou myght þy-seluen spylle [With fair speech you may have your will / With it you might terribly injure yourself] (ll. 773–74).76 The Sodomites have breached courtly decorum by speaking publicly about sexual intercourse, and intercourse in a manner that a medieval audience would have found sinful; their “brych” (l. 848) is also a tear in proper etiquette. Cleanness has already linked clannesse to fair speech, i.e., “Fayre formez my t he fynde in forþering his speche” [He might find ʒ fair devices for advancing his speech] (l. 3). The censure of the words of the Sodomites further associates fair speech and morally correct behavior. Lot responds to the demand in the manner of a well-breed aristocrat, attempting to persuade with fair words: Þenne he [Lot] meled to þo men mesurable wordez, For harlotez with hendelayk he hoped to chast: (l. 859–60). 75. Frantzen sees “anal puns” in these lines and so an allusion to “the chief sexual orifice of the Sodomites,” “The Disclosure of Sodomy in Cleanness,” 458. Although Frantzen makes a strong case, I think the context of a meal and the association between speech and taste makes the mouth the primary orifice here. 76. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 278; Knoop, Jones, and Hamer, The Two Earliest Masonic Mss., 150. 221 [Then Lot spoke to the men in reasonable words, For he hoped to correct the base men with courtesy:] Lot’s strategy involves appealing to the Sodomites’ sense of noble behavior through reasonable speech.77 He calls their actions “vylanyne” (l. 863), yet flatters them as “jolyf gentylmen” (l. 864). These lines are loaded with classist language. Although “vylanyne” refers to wrong or wicked conduct, it connotes that someone is a villanus, or a peasant tied to agriculture.78 Lot’s identification of the Sodomites as “gentylmen” is part of his appeal to a higher class standard of behavior. Within Lot’s class-based appeal is a presentation of heterosexual intercourse as more refined than intercourse between men. While putting forward his daughters in place of his male guests, itself very morally problematic, Lot promises to “kenne yow by kynde a crafte þat is better” [teach you by nature a practice that is better] (l. 865). He offers to give the Sodomites a lesson in manners, to teach them a better and more refined way to satisfy their sexual desires. In keeping with Lot’s class-based argument, he presents vaginal sex between a man and a woman as more aristocratic than anal sex between men. Lot’s appeal to nature follows the poet’s continual association of clene and courteous behavior with the mode of life discernible in God’s natural ordering of the world. The first line’s promise to commend clannesse “kyndly,” i.e., naturally, is just one such example. Before the Sodom narrative, Cleanness describes God’s design for sex as a nearly paradisiacal experience for the participants (l. 704), Ellez þay mo t honestly ayþer oþer welde,ʒ 77. Cf. Brewer, “Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet,” 61. 78. Compare vilein n. and vileinie n., MED. 222 At a stylle stollen steuen, vnstered wyth sy t (ll. 705–06)ʒ [Provided that they might honorably enjoy each other, At a quiet private meeting, undisturbed by sight] Natural, honorable love-making occurs quietly and privately between a couple. The violent and public sexual intercourse sought by the men of Sodom is far from that courtly ideal. Lot’s offer of a more refined form of intercourse appears condescending to the Sodomites, much the same way that Lot’s wife resents the fastidious tastes of the angels. His lesson in etiquette is firmly rejected. One common trope, present both now and in the Middle Ages, is to stigmatize homosexual men as effeminate and soft in contrast to masculine heterosexual men.79 Keiser argues that Cleanness reverses this stereotype. She writes that the Pearl-Poet associates homosexual activity, with men who are brutalizing opposites of the gentler, more aesthetically appealing males who represent clannesse. Moreover, such negative depiction of phallic violence lends added appeal to the gentility of his courtly patriarchs Noah, Abraham, and Lot: their homosocial friendship with God and his angels displays a sense of what is fitting to the softened, courtly ideals of manhood.80 79. See Keiser, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 136. 80. Keiser, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 137. 223 The men of Sodom are hyper-masculine, aggressive, and unrefined.81 They blunder about in a disorganized, leaderless mob (ll. 837–38). Cleanness describes those who approach Lot’s house as “Alle þat weppen my t welde” [All that could wield a weapon] (l. 835), ʒ emphasizing their reliance on violence to accomplish their goals. They beat the walls of Lot’s property with “kene clobbez” [great clubs] (l. 839), clumsy and low-class weapons in comparison to swords. Texts like The Boke of Curtasye instruct the reader to give the porter one’s weapon at the gate before going to see a lord in a hall (ll. 5–7), marking the court as a space free from of bodily violence. For the poet and courtesy literature, the court is a space where courteous speech and ritual are the tools for advancing one’s aim, not physical force.82 The baseness of the men of Sodom is in part revealed in the way they resort to physical aggression rather than fair speech to accomplish their aims. Unlike refined courtly gentlemen, they are unable to discipline their mouths or their appetite for sex through self-control.83 Their behavior, in contrast to Lot and Abraham, identify the Sodomites as unrefined lower-class men: unclean in multiple senses of the word for the Pearl-Poet. God’s response to the uncourteous and inhospitable reception of his representatives which, like Lot’s wife, he receives as an offense against himself, is to 81. Keiser argues that the depiction of the hypermasculine Sodomites as brutal and violent may stem from a desire to protect the poet’s own aesthetic courtly ethos—with its emphasis on highly refined standards of dress, conduct, and homosocial bonding—from charges of effeminacy and same-sex desire, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 151. Such was the charge of many, often among the clergy, when criticizing the contemporary fashions of young men at court, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 142–146. 82. Furnival, Early English Meals and Manners, 177. The perspective of the hall as a space for verbal contests has a long history. One sees it in Beowulf where Beowulf and his men are instructed to leave their weapons at the door (ll. 395–398). Once inside Hrothgar’s court, Beowulf must rely on his skillful speech. 83. Amos refers to the “rarefied and self-consciously chosen limit to one’s activities, [and] the controlling of affect through an act of the will that noble manners entail,” “‘For manners Make Man,’” 30. 224 violently destroy Sodom and Gomorrah. The destruction parallels the punishment of the improperly dressed guest in the parable of the wedding feasting. Just as that man is cast down into a dungeon from the presence of the king, so Sodom is cast down from the face of the earth; it sinks into the ground and is swallowed by hell (ll. 910–11, 962–63, 968). The description borrows from the language of bodily indigestion and purging. Cleanness refers to the “uengaunce violent þat voyded þise places” [violent vengeance that voided these places] (l. 1013) and turns Sodom into a place that is “Blo, blubrande, and blak” [Dark, seething, and black] (l. 1017). The poet adds olfactory and gustatory disgust to the end of Sodom. The city becomes a “stynkande stanc” [stinking pool] (l. 1018), with water “bitter as þe galle” (l. 1022) and “Soufre sour” [bitter sulfur] (l. 1036). Sodom-apples grow there, beautiful fruit that have ashes inside (ll. 1043–48). Through this language, the poet connects the bodily disgust of noxious gasses, excrement, and bitter food with moral disgust.84 Any courtly meal that concludes with disgust and purging is a failure of courtesy, and a fitting end to serving a divine guest what is not clene. The examples of Abraham’s hospitality to the members of the Trinity and Lot’s frustrated hospitality at Sodom both present upper-class men receiving distinguished guests and preparing a meal for them. The outcome, as we have seen, is entirely different. Abraham successfully practices courteous hospitality, demonstrating his allegiance to God. Although his clannesse is known before the arrival of his guests, it is confirmed in the meal he serves to God. Because of Abraham’s courtesy and clannesse, God grants the patriarch a sight of Himself, Abraham’s courtly lord. Lot’s attempt at courteous 84. See Putter who argues that the poem’s goal is to unite physical and moral revulsion, An Introduction to the Gawain-Poet, 234. 225 hospitality fails because of the disorder of his household, revealed by his wife’s scorn and the base words and action of the men of Sodom. Although sex with other men is the “fylþe of the flesh” that condemns Sodom to divine punishment, the Sodomites’ moral uncleanness is confirmed by the uncleanness of their conduct. They lack the manners of gentlemen, behaving as low-class villains. God responds by violently removing the people of Sodom from his worldly court. Throughout the adaptation, interior states of moral clannesse and fylþe are revealed and represented through exterior action. Belshazzar’s Feast Thus far, the Old Testament adaptations have shown upper-class figures, i.e., Noah, Abraham, and Lot, behaving in ways that accord with their social standing. The final section of Cleanness considers what happens to aristocrats that behave incongruously with their upper-class identity, without courtesy or clannesse. It illustrates that once a person is made clene their state is worse if they should return to fylþe (ll. 1133–38). Cleanness ostensibly shows this through the image of the consecrated vessels from Solomon’s temple, said to represent recently shriven people, which are used in unclean ways at Belshazzar’s feast (ll. 1139–52).85 Within the framework of courtesy literature, we can interpret Belshazzar as a warning about the dangers of upper-class persons sliding into base and low-class behaviors. Belshazzar, who the poem identifies as the son of King Nebuchadnezzar, has all the advantages of a noble life and training (l. 1333). The feast he throws, however, is conspicuous for its lack of clannesse and courtesy. Belshazzar abandons clene hierarchical divisions and sits on the dais with his 85. Charlotte C. Morse provides an excellent exploration of the vessel imagery that occurs throughout Cleanness, “The Image of the Vessel in Cleanness,” University of Toronto Quarterly 40, 3 (1971): 202– 16. 226 lovers while his high-status guests sit at floor level. His inability to maintain decorous self-control is also demonstrated by his gluttonous consumption of food and drink. The poem not only portrays Belshazzar’s behavior as boorish, it increasingly likens him to an unreasoning animal. The final section of the poem demonstrates God’s fierce destruction of anyone that fails to maintain a clene division between upper-class courtesy and low- class fylþe. By all appearances, Belshazzar throws a magnificent feast. The poet devotes many alliterative lines to descriptions of the serving vessels, food, and decorations. Scholars have observed that Cleanness does not condemn the feast’s extravagance— gratuitous display was a quintessential feature of aristocratic feasting—rather Belshazzar’s behavior at the feast.86 The king sits on a dais at the head of the hall accompanied only by his concubines (ll. 1399–1400), while, “[Þ]e halle flor [watz] hiled with knyʒtes, / And barounes at þe sidebordes bounet aywhere” [The hall floor was covered by knights, /And barons gathered at the sideboards everywhere] (ll. 1397–98). Belshazzar ignores hierarchy and decorum in his seating arrangement.87 Instead of sitting on the dais with his queen and highest status guests, he surrounds himself with his sexual partners. As a further upsetting of social hierarchy, he forces all present “To loke on his lemanes and ladis hem calle” [To look on his lovers/concubines and call them ladies] (l. 1370). The term ladi was typically reserved for female heads of houses, sovereigns, or 86. See Brewer, “Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet,” 60; Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy, 96; Elizabeth B. Keiser, “The Festive Decorum of Cleanness,” in Chivalric Literature: Essays on Relations between Literature and Life in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Larry D. Benson and John Leyerle (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1980), 72 87. Nicholls observes that chroniclers often preserved records of seating arrangements, indicating their importance for a contemporary audience, The Matter of Courtesy, 98. 227 other women of high birth.88 Belshazzar’s command that all his guests who are noble should address his lovers as nobility suggests that the women on the dais are, at the very least, not noble ladies. Seating at the feast lacks clene divisions between those of different status. It is furthermore dishonorable because the seating arrangement fails to properly honor the status of Belshazzar’s guests, who are forced to affirm the disorder. We have already seen in the adaptation of the parable of the wedding feast the acute attention paid to degree and hierarchy in the seating at a clene and honorable feast. Belshazzar’s feast is disordered and chaotic in comparison.89 Similar to his failure to maintain ordered seating, Belshazzar’s immoderate consumption of wine is out of step with courteous and controlled behavior. The poem notes his impulsive demands for more wine and shouts of “Wassayl!” (l. 1508). Keiser observes that the customary cry implied that, “[W]ine be quaffed in one gulp,” hinting at the furious pace of Belshazzar’s drinking.90 Many courtesy texts remind the reader to be moderate in the consumption of food and drink.91 The Boke of Curtasye, among other instructions about courteous and measured eating, warns that, Let neuer þy cheke be Made to grete With morselle of brede þat þou shalle ete; An apys mow men sayne he makes Þat brede and flesshe in hys cheke bakes. (ll. 57–60)92 88. See ladie n., MED. 89. Although there is a sexual aspect to Belshazzar’s sin, as many scholars have noted, I consider his pride and failure to observe what is courteous and proper for the leader of a kingdom to be the greater failing. 90. “The Festive Decorum of Cleanness,” 73. 91. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy, 99–100. 92. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 179. 228 [Do not let you cheeks become too large With pieces of bread that you will eat; An ape may men say he becomes That crams bread and meat in his cheeks.] Gluttonous and rapid consumption make someone appear to be an ape through the greedy and rapacious eating associated with animals. Such behavior demonstrates lack of self- restraint and a failure to savor food in the manner that is proper to human beings, especially humans that are wealthy enough to avoid living hand to mouth. Too much drinking can also lead one to make bad decisions and say things that they will regret.93 The poet notes about Belshazzar that, So faste þay weʒed to him wyne hit warmed his hert And breyþed vppe into his brayn and blemyst his mynd, (ll. 1420–21) [So fast they carried wine to him that it warmed his heart And rose up into his brain and impaired his mind,] It is this overconsumption of alcohol that leads Belshazzar to order the vessels form the temple to be brought out, confirming the warnings of courtesy literature about the perils of over-imbibing at table. The Beastliness of Belshazzar As Belshazzar’s feast proceeds, Cleanness increasingly alludes to the animality of his behavior. The beastliness of the king’s actions links them to the manners, or lack thereof, of the lower classes. Caxton begins the prologue to his translation of The Book of 93. It is probably not an accident that “Stans Puer ad Mensam” includes instructions to its young reader to drink ale and wine in moderation in the same stanza as warnings about talking too much and maintaining a moderate composure (ll. 72–77), Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 280. 229 Good Manners (ca. late fifteenth century) with the assertion that, “[T]he condycons and maners of the comyn people whiche without enformacyon and lernyng ben rude and nat manered lyke unto bestes brute acordinge to an olde prouerbe, he that is nat manered is no man, for maners make man” [The conditions and manners of the common people who, without information or learning, are rude and like brute beasts according to an old proverb, for he that is not mannered is not a man, for manners make man].94 A version of “Urbanitatis” from the same century (ca. 1460) contains similar sentiment, stating that “Nurtur & good maners makeþ man” (l. 34).95 Manners are what make humans human, distinguish them from animals. The implication of such a view, which Caxton highlights, is that “comon people” who lack manners act like unreasoning animals. Cleanness similarly calls attention to the base and common behavior of character through comparison to animals. The men of Sodom, for example, must stumble about like the proverbial blind horse “Bayard” (l. 886) after they are blinded by the angels. Their baseness reduces them to unreasoning, cattle-like movement. The poet use a similar technique in his characterization of Belshazzar. Comparisons to beasts emphasize Belshazzar’s lack of manners and thus his lower-class behavior, while his lack of self-control in drinking likens him to unreasoning animals. I have quoted above the passage from The Boke of Curtasye about the way gluttony turns one into an ape. Likewise, when Belshazzer orders the vessels from the 94. Jacques Legrand, Here Begynneth a Lytell Boke Called Good Maners, trans. William Caxton, Early English Books, 1475–1640 (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1498). For a discussion of this quote and Caxton’s translation see Amos, “‘For Manners Make Man,’” 45–46. 95. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 263. The late-fourteenth century version of “Urbanitatis” includes a somewhat softened, “Gode maneres maken a mon” (l. 726), Knoop, Jones, and Hamer, The Two Earliest Masonic Mss., 148. 230 temple in Jerusalem to be brought so that his guests can drink from them, he declares, “Let þise ladyes of hem lape...Þat schal I cortaysly kyþe…Þer is no bounté in burne lyk Baltazar þewes” [Let these ladies lap from them…That I will courteously make known… There is no liberality in a man like Belshazzar’s courteous manners] (ll. 1434–36). The gesture highlights the king’s complete misunderstanding of courtly etiquette. Middle English lapen, like Modern English to lap, nearly always refers to an animal drinking or a person drinking in a manner like an animal.96 Belshazzar’s demonstration of the excellence of his courtesy becomes the spectacle of his concubines lapping from sacred vessels like dogs. His brutishness increases when the supernatural hand appears and writes on the wall. The event drives Belshazzar to bovine terror and he “romyes as a rad ryth þat rorez for drede” (l. 1543) [bellows as a frightened bull that roars in dread]. The king’s response humorously anticipates Daniel’s later account of Nebuchadnezzar’s bestial transformation, the punishment for Nebuchadnezzar’s pride (ll. 1642–1708). Daniel’s story suggests that discourteous presumption toward one’s heavenly lord turns a man into a beast. Belshazzar’s own transformation from powerful king to animal arrives at the end of the poem when he is killed in bed and dragged outside. The poet comments wryly that, “Now is a dogge also dere þat in a dych lygges” [Now is a dog just as valuable that lies in a ditch] (l. 1792). Belshazzar’s disordered feast precipitates him from a king in a palace to a dog in a ditch. Belshazzar’s end emphasizes the potential of anyone who has achieved high- status, whether through birth or mastery of courteous manners, to fall into lowliness. Nebuchadnezzar treated the temple vessels, “Rekenly, wyth reuerens” 96. lapen v., MED. 231 [Worthily/courteously, with reverence] (l. 1318).97 His son, in contrast, dishonors the vessels, similar to his failure to rightly honor his noble guests. This failure recalls the aforementioned warning about backsliding after being “waschen wyth water of schryfte” [washed with water of confession] (l. 1133) God will be “wel hatter to hate þen hade þou not waschen” [more angered to wrath than had you not been washed] (l. 1138). Vessels that have once been clene should not be used in a filthy manner. The inclusion of the temple vessels in the narrative is surely intended to make the reader recall the Eucharist.98 Scholars have observed that Belshazzar’s feast is a perverted mass.99 I think this observation takes on added significance when we view it within the imaginative framework established earlier in the poem: the way priests serving at the altar are an imitation of God’s heavenly court. God’s court is in turn likened to an earthly court where no one would dare to approach a lord’s presence in an unworthy manner. Belshazzar’s inclusion of the clene vessels devoted to the service of God at his feast in effect invites God to the party. Unlike the courteous Abraham and Lot, Belshazzar is unable to recognize clannesse through outward appearance and respond with proper honor. It should be little surprise then that God reacts violently to this ill-mannered parody of a feast/mass. God as lord over the world ejects Belshazzar from the king’s own feast. 97. The adverb rekenli denotes treatment according to worth or honor, an essential aspect of courtly etiquette, and thus can mean “nobly” or “courteously,” MED. 98. See Johnson, “Horrific Visions of the Host,” 155–56. 99. E.g., Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy, 86; Johnson, “Horrific Visions of the Host,” 156 232 COURTESY AND CLANNESSE: JESUS AS THE PERFECT COURTLY LORD Before we reach the chapter’s conclusion, I want to look at a short summary of the life of Jesus that Cleanness interposes between the second and third sections of the poem. Although the episode occurs roughly a hundred lines after the numerical center of the poem, it functions as the thematic center of Cleanness. Jesus, as “God and Man boþe” [both God and Man] (l. 1102), integrates heavenly and earthly courtesy within the courtly framework of the poem, making him the supreme model of aristocratic clannesse. Music and sweet scents accompany Jesus’s birth (ll. 1079–82). Animals in the stable “knewe Hym by His clannes for Kyng of nature” [knew Him by his cleanness to be King of nature] (l. 1087). The excellence of Jesus’s clannesse simultaneously reveals his lordship and sets him above the animal world. The poet explicitly links clannesse to courtesy, saying “And if clanly He þenne com, ful cortays þerafter [And if he came cleanly then, ʒ fully courteous thereafter] (l. 1089).100 A few lines later Jesus is simply called “þat Cortayse” (l. 1097). The use of the substantive adjective identifies Jesus as the human embodiment of courtly behavior. Cleanness further adapts Jesus’s life to portray him as courteous nobility by attending to his speech and behavior at table. It emphasizes Jesus healing through words over touch. The poet says that, “He heled hem wyth hynde speche” [He healed them with courtly speech] (l. 1098).101 Jesus’s clannesse enables him to speak such noble and 100. This direct joining of clannesse and courtesy recalls the pentagram on Gawain’s shield in Sir Gawain and the Green Knights which represents the integrity of his knight virtue. Two points signify, “His [Gawain’s] clannes and his cortaysye” (l. 653). 101. Cf. hende adj., MED. While the next line says that, “For whatso He towched also tyd tourned to hele” [For whatsoever he touched also at once turned to health] (l. 1099), earlier lines emphasize his physical separation, putting the emphasis on words as the means of healing. For example, “By nobleye of His norture He nolde neuer towche / O t þat watz vngoderly oþer ordure watz inne” [By the nobility of Hisʒ nurture He would never touch / Anything that was base or in which there was filth] (ll. 1091–92). 233 courtly words that they effect supernatural healing. Brewer comments about this and similar passages that, “[N]ot all speech is courteous, but one of the chief ways that courtesy is made known is with speech.”102 The fairness of Jesus’s speech, authenticated by its miraculous power, reveals the superlative quality of his courtesy. Table manners, as I have observed elsewhere, are at the core of late-medieval courtesy, and so the height of Jesus’s perfect clannesse and courtesy is demonstrated at the table. About Jesus’s ability to divide bread, the poet writes that he required, Nauþer to cout ne to kerue with knyf ne wyth egge; Forþy brek He þe bred blades wythouten, For hit ferde freloker in fete in His fayre honde, Displayed more pryuyly when He hit part schulde, Þenne alle þe toles of Tolowse mo t ty t hit to kerue. (ll. 1104–08)ʒ ʒ [Neither to cut or to carve with knife or blade: Because he broke bread without blades, For indeed it happened more nobly in His fair hand, Spread open more mysteriously when He should divide it, Than all the tools of Toulouse might manage to carve it.] The description attempts to satisfy both the biblical text and late-medieval upper-class etiquette. Meat is the proper food for someone to carve at an aristocratic meal. Instead, the poet adapts Jesus’s disclosure of his hidden identity to his disciples through the breaking of bread in the Emmaus Road narrative from Luke 23:35.103 Others have noted 102. Brewer, “Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet,” 61. 103. This passage has Eucharistic significance. As mentioned elsewhere, part of the poetic strategy is to show that the table rituals of aristocratic feasts had parallels to the rituals of the altar at mass. 234 that medieval courtesy guides dictate that bread should always be cut, never broken with hands.104 The Babees Book (ca. 1475) tells its young reader to, “Kutte withe your knyf your brede, and breke yt nouhte” (l. 141).105 The fairness of Jesus’s hands, in contrast, allows him to divide bread better than any knife. His fairness and courtesy again give him mastery over the natural world. To say that Jesus divides the bread cleanly, without jagged edges, is not to make a pun. Rather Jesus’s breaking of bread embodies the combined moral and aristocratic meaning the poem attributes to clannesse. Jesus unites in his person religious purity with courteous upper-class refinement. The significance of Jesus’s actions for the reader’s own life flows organically from this picture of courteous purity. Cleanness immediately follows the description of Jesus’s breaking of bread with a question: Þus is He kyryous and clene þat þou His cort askes: Hov schulde þou com to His kyth bot if þou clene were? (ll. 1109–10) [Thus is He fastidious and clean, He whose court you seek: How should you come to His country unless you are clean?] The romance trope of knights seeking out the most excellent lord and court is likely in the background of this portrayal. Jesus is the superlative courtly lord. Who would not want to seek his court? And yet, those who seek to be in his presence—to see his face in the language of Matthew 5:8—must be clene. Cleanness presents shrift, i.e., confession, and 104. E.g., Brewer, “Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet,” 62; Keiser, “The Festive Decorum of Cleanness,” 71; Spearing, “Purity and Danger,” 303–304. 105. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 255. The Boke of Curtasye contains detailed instructions on how to cut bread (ll. 35–40). Once cut, it was proper to break off small pieces of bread with the hands to raise to one’s mouth rather than biting off pieces (ll. 49–52), Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 178. 235 penance as the means to achieve clannesse and so arrive at God’s heavenly court (ll. 1115–32). While it may appear that here the poem has shifted back to the strictly moral and religious connotations of clene, such a reading is impossible within the imaginative framework of the poem. The Pearl-Poet so entangles courteous manners with religious and moral purity that one cannot separate them. Such a joining, as I am arguing, is the goal of Cleanness’s poetic and theological project. It is a distinctly alimentary project for the way that food and eating, especially the rituals and practices of the courtly table, are the means of joining morals and manners. MORALS AND MANNERS Cleanness, in blurring the distinction between religious and aesthetic clannesse, does alimentary theology differently from the previous texts we have explored in this dissertation. In A Ladder of Foure Ronges, it is clear that we are working with a metaphor in descriptions of religious reading as eating—no one would dare to consume a physical text. Even in Piers Plowman, where the overconsumption of knowledge parallels the overconsumption of food, the reader is continually alerted to the figurative nature of the discussion. The poetic and metaphorical framework of clene manners at table in Cleanness is different. The celebration of internal moral clannesse becomes impossible to distinguish from the alimentary and convivial imagery being used to celebrate it. This happens despite efforts by the poet to add interpretive awareness, such as the explanation of the meaning of clene clothes after the parable of the wedding feast. Metaphor and symbolic representation go beyond shaping the content communicated through them; they become the content that Cleanness communicates. 236 The association between piety, morals, and table manners is not unique to Cleanness.106 Book Two of The Boke of Curtasye, for example, lists the essentials of the Christian faith and moral instructions drawn from the Ten Commandments before moving seamlessly into more general social and moral guidance.107 Catechesis and education in etiquette overlap because good manners require piety and religious devotion. Through this pedagogical mixing, good manners become associated with virtue and bad manners with vice. The distinction between morals and manners becomes almost impossible to make, for example, when considering warnings in courtesy literature against eating greedily. Are these condemnations of gluttony or criticisms of bad manners?108 Good manners can even provide a road to heaven. “Urbanitatis,” a poem contemporary to Cleanness, concludes with the lines, Cryst þen of hys hye grace Ȝeue ow boþe wytte & spaceȝ Wel þys boke to conne & rede Heuen to haue for owre medeȝ Amen amen so mot hyt be Say we so alle þur charyte (ll. 789–794)109 [Christ by his high grace Give you both understanding & time 106. See Amos’s discussion in “‘For manners Make Man,’” 30, 34–38. 107. Furnivall, Early English Meals and Manners, 181–87. 108. We have seen similar blurring of distinctions in the discussion of Lydgate’s “Dietary” in chapter one, where dietary instruction overlaps with moral instruction. 109. Knoop, Jones, and Hamer, The Two Earliest Masonic Mss., 150. 237 To know and read this well, And have heaven for your reward; Amen, Amen, let it be so, So say we all through charity.] The conclusion attributes a religious significance to the manners in “Urbanitatis.”110 Cleanness similarly ends by announcing heaven as the reward for those who practice its combined vision of morals and table manners: Ande clannes is His comfort, and coyntyse He louyes, And þose þat seme arn and swete schyn se His face. Þat we gon gay in oure gere þat grace He vus sende, Þat we may serue in His sy t, þer solace neuer blynnez. (ll. 1809–1812)ȝ [And cleanness is His pleasure, and He loves fastidiousness, And those that are beautiful and sweet shall see His face. May He send us grace to go joyously in our clothes, That we may serve in His sight, where solace never ceases.] We are hard pressed to distinguish if the “seme…and swete” appearance and the “gere” are good moral works or mastery of courtly decorum and dress at table. Both seem to allow one to achieve an eternal sight of God where they will serve (at table) in his heavenly courtly. 110. Even an apparent universalizing appeal to heaven could have a class edge. Amos says about a similar conclusion in The Babee’s Book that, “Although the promise of everlasting bliss could be expected to have universal appeal, by locating its rewards beyond the social, the poem speaks directly to a nobility seeking to confirm its superior status through structured behavior, and offers little to those who seek through their behavior to gain respect for themselves and for their status group in this temporal world,” “‘For manners Make Man,’” 38. 238 Even as Cleanness calls its aristocratic audience to greater religious devotion, it conveys an air of sanctity to the rituals and activities that make up courtly life. The beginning of the poem portrays the ritual of the mass as imitating God’s clene and ordered heavenly court, which in turn is likened to the ritual life of a cleanly ordered earthly court. Similar to the Protestant Reformation, Cleanness finds religious value in temporal activities, from well-functioning households to heterosexual sex. One does not have to separate from the world or join a religious order to anticipate the life of heaven. The image of piety presented by Cleanness would be attractive to lay people seeking greater religious practice which, as noted in the previous chapter, was an ever-expanding group in late-medieval England.111 Cleanness, as we have seen, is at odds with the inclusive appeals in some of the texts from the previous chapter. It shows that ordinary life only achieves this level of sanctity when it approaches the ritual and order present in upper-class households. The poem’s portrayal of clannesse is a distinctly elite one, primarily for the lay elite but potentially including ecclesiastical lords and great monastic houses. The laudatory figures of the poem are not aesthetic saints who denied worldly pleasure or power; with the exception of Jesus, they are all wealthy married men. Even Jesus is considerably adapted for an upper-class audience. The crucifixion is absent, which is conspicuous in consideration of the late-medieval focus on Jesus’s humanity and suffering.112 He heals the sick and lowly, but it is they who come to him, not he to them (l. 1093). His courtesy is best revealed at the feasting table, not in caring for the poor. All the aspects of Jesus’s 111. See the classic work on late-medieval English religion, Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars. 112. Keiser, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 190–91. 239 life that would make the gentry unnecessarily uncomfortable—his passion, suffering, and self-denial—are removed. The moral order laid out by the poem reinforces the sense of moral and class superiority of its upper-class audience. Keiser ends Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia with a reminder of the simultaneous attractions of Cleanness and its “ethical difficulties and theological inadequacies.”113 The poem features a surprising valuation of bodily activities like eating, hospitality, and sex through its image of God as a courtly lord concerned with the beauty and happiness of his world. David Aers has identified the work of the Pearl-Poet as “pelagian and courtly” in the poet’s positive portrayal of human activity and the potential for disciplined self-improvement.114 At the same time, modern readers are repelled by God’s incredible violence toward those who do not practice the manners, particularly the sexual mores, required for participating in God’s feast. The poem’s insistence on elitist order and self-improvement leaves little room for grace. Cleanness presents personal cultivation of order and refinement as a means of godliness. The moral order flows from an aesthetically perfect God, but the order is discernible through the natural order of the world that God created, particularly in the case of correct human sexuality. The intense demand for order leaves little space for those who fall short.115 In spite of the poem’s commendation of repentance and shrift to approach Jesus’s court, there are no examples of repentance in the poem. God’s distance 113. Keiser, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 224. 114. Aers, Faith, Ethics and Church, 100. 115. Cleanness’s emphasis on ordered behavior and the perceptibility of the moral order in nature anticipates aspects of the modern moral order described by Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 166–67, 214–18. The poem easily fits into a shifting moral imaginary in Europe from the premodern to early modern era. 240 from fylþe and the poem’s exclusion of God’s encounter with sin and suffering in the crucifixion excises grace and forgiveness from the poem’s moral order.116 Later poems by the Pearl-Poet suggest that the poet was aware of this problem.117 Patience presents a more forgiving and earthy God who notably does not punish a sinful city.118 Likewise, the ending of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight leaves the audience to ponder whether Gawain’s standard of moral and courtly perfection wrongly prevents him from accepting the Green Knight’s absolution (ll. 2391–94). One hopes that the poet came to see space at the dinner table for all. 116. Cf. Keiser, Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 196. 117. Courtly Desire and Medieval Homophobia, 222. 118. See Caleb D. Molstad, “Adaptation, Autobiography, and Divine Passibility in Patience,” Neophilologus 106, 4 (2022): 669–81. 241 CONCLUSION Pease porridge hot, Pease porridge cold, Pease porridge in the pot Nine days old. Some like it hot, Some like it cold, Some like it in the pot Nine days old. — Traditional English Nursery Rhyme1 All you that thirst, come to the waters: and you that have no money make haste, buy, and eat. Come ye: buy wine and milk without money, and without any price. Why do you spend money for that which is not bread and your labour for that which doth not satisfy you? Hearken diligently to me and eat that which is good: and your soul shall be delighted in fatness. — Isaiah 55:1–2 Written texts offer readers a feast of words and ideas—with this dissertation being no exception. It contains many dishes, some too hot and some too cold, too spicy or not spicy enough. The unifying element in this feast has been the three “flavors” of alimentary theology that I enumerated in the introduction. Alimentary metaphors present religion in late-medieval England as experiential, social, and embodied, much like the nature of food itself. My hope is that readers were able to discern hints of each in all four chapters. After such a meal, it is fitting to conclude with a textual dessert that recapitulates the meal in a more playful form. I want to reflect on two themes that appear to me to be essential ingredients in alimentary theology, and alimentary metaphors more broadly: integration and transformation. 1. Iona Opie and Peter Opie, eds., The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 406, 408. The rhyme likely dates to the late eighteenth century. 242 Food is a critical link between insides and outsides. The preparation and eating of food integrates the carrot or cow we first see outside our bodies. That which is outside becomes, through digestion, our insides. Alimentary metaphors are similarly integrative, joining matter and spirit, mind and body. They have the power to remind us, as with food and eating, that we are whole, embodied beings. Food and writing about food can also bridge the stereotypically cerebral world of academia and the hands-on world outside the ivory tower. I have written this dissertation with the hope that both academic and popular readers will find something to chew on. The translation of Middle English texts throughout has been one way of offering hospitality to all my readers. Integration naturally leads to change. The carrot or cow we see must become carrot cake or a medium rare steak before being eaten. Once food enters the mouth, it is further transformed through chewing, digestion, and absorption. The carrot cake or steak in turn transforms our bodies, providing pleasure and health when eaten in a reasonable manner or producing negative transformation if eaten in excess. Eating transforms both eater and the thing eaten. Alimentary metaphors and thinking are similarly transformative, leading to new ideas, forms of relationship, and practices. It has been my intent that this dissertation would be similarly transformative. In what follows I will offer a few tentative suggestions as to how the ideas contained within it could bring about integration and transformation. INTEGRATION AND TRANSFORMATION IN FOUR MEALS The first chapter examines a discussion in Piers Plowman about the just distribution of food. We live in the aftermath of the Green Revolution, which has resulted 243 in a level of agricultural production many times what Langland’s plowman could have imagined.2 In spite of this revolution—or because of it if we listen to modern food critics —food insecurity and inequitable allocation of food are still with us. As I noted in chapter one, food insecurity and inequality are present in developed countries like the United States. We are also confronted in the United States by the phenomenon of “food deserts,” in which people of color and those of lower economic status lack equitable access to healthy and nourishing food.3 Worldwide, the Global South faces severer issues with food supply and famine in comparison to their northern neighbors. The continuing struggle to distribute nourishing food to those who need it suggests that technological solutions, like the Green Revolution, are not enough to equitably meet the basic needs of human hunger. Like Langland’s England, we need improved political, social, and moral frameworks to justly feed the hungry. Chapter two’s critique of the fraternal order’s appetite for knowledge should raise questions for those of us who make a living through the accumulation of knowledge. When does the desire for the acquisition of knowledge become gluttonous? What does it look like to properly “digest” knowledge gained through study? What is the responsibility of a group that devotes itself to learning to contribute to the health and well-being of a society? There are no easy answers to these questions, particularly in the humanities. STEM fields can point toward material contributions to the common life of society 2. R. Douglas Hurt defines the Green Revolution as, “[T]he substantially increased food production on traditional farmlands due to improved seed varieties that are nourished with heavy applications of fertilizer and water, the latter provided by irrigation,” The Green Revolution in the Global South: Science, Politics, and Unintended Consequences (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2020), 1. 3. The reality of food deserts is often more complex than presented by the popular media. See for example Samina Raja, Changxing Ma, and Pavan Yadav, “Beyond Food Deserts: Measuring and Mapping Racial Disparities in Neighborhood Food Environments,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 27, 4 (2008): 469–82. 244 through the creation of new medical treatments and “labor-saving” technologies.4 The humanities, especially the study of literature, struggles to explain its contribution to society in the language of the market economy. Langland presents society as requiring more than the satisfaction of its material and economic needs for health and well-being. His dual vision offers a possible way to reframe the contributions of the humanities. There is obviously not a direct translation of Langland’s concern with spiritual and religious health to today’s secular society, in spite of some historical precedent in the study of literature.5 Nevertheless, I think it is in the intangibles that the study of literature can most contribute to society. Justifying the study of literature in purely material terms, for example through the way an English degree can lead to gainful employment, is always bound to put the discipline at a disadvantage in comparison to other better paying career tracks. Literature’s power comes in part from the way that it cannot be reduced to its market value. Alan Jacobs’s counterintuitive defense of reading on the basis of delight and joy, or “Whim” as he terms it, is one possible step in this direction.6 The humanities also offers a necessary critique of a myopic focus on material progress and discovery. Science, after all, can tell you how to make a T-Rex, the 4. We tend to forget that scientific discoveries often raise obstacles to human and environmental flourishing at the same time as they provide solutions. For example, the discovery of synthetic fertilizers led to an exponential increase in the number of people that agriculture can feed. The cost, however, has been toxic waste at production sites, dead zones and algae blooms in waterways, and the environmental and geopolitical issues related to a product that is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. 5. Eagleton and Taylor both observe that the rise of the study of literature as we now understand it occurs in the nineteenth century as a response to the decline in belief in a traditional, supernatural Christianity, Literary Theory, 20–26; A Secular Age, 380–384. Eagleton characteristically provides a Marxist explanation and Taylor an explanation rooted in the human quest for “fullness.” Although coming from distinctly different ideological positions, both authors highlight the way that literature and its study were, and likely continue to, serve quasi-religious or spiritual functions in society. 6. The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 245 humanities can tell you why it is a bad idea to do so.7 Literature helps us imagine the kind of flourishing world we ought to create, and the unexpected consequences of the technologies we are pursuing.8 Although we may never arrive at those imagined worlds, literature raises our vision of human progress beyond material innovation, while not leaving it behind. Piers Plowman reminds us that we need such a dual vision when looking at the well-being of our society today. Chapter three highlights the diversity that can exist in approaches to reading. Readers come to texts with varied assumptions and strategies. It almost goes without saying that different approaches to a text will arrive at different interpretations and outcomes, whether the reader seeks inspiration, entertainment, or simply the “correct” answer for an exam. The alimentary method that I describe is significant for the way it recruits the whole reader into the process of reading, presenting an integrative approach to engaging with texts. The reader is invited to be transformed through reading in an alimentary manner. I believe that the deeper, “thicker” experience of a text that chapter three presents is valuable in an age of efficiency and distraction. The second section of chapter three anticipates some of what I am doing in the conclusion, attempting to show the contemporary relevance and application of alimentary theology. My writing necessarily broaches a large and complex subject, offering an invitation to convivial discussion rather than a settled conclusion. There are plenty of 7. Although I have encountered various versions of this statement, I first heard it from Dr. Benjamin Eisenreich, a friend and at the time postdoc in neuroscience. 8. In the modern era, the genre of science fiction does this most effectively. Even if an imagined future does not come about, as it often does not for science fiction that is set in the future, the vision it presents forces us to think more critically about the meaning and significance of what we are doing in the present. 246 works critiquing literary criticism for readers desiring more in that vein. Three different critiques can be found in the following books: The Limits of Critique by Rita Felski, Literary Theory and After Theory by Terry Eagleton, and A Theology of Reading by Alan Jacobs. Continual critical self-reflection on the purpose, method, and rationale for the study of literature is an important scholarly activity. I contend that medieval practices of reading and interpretation should have a seat at the table as literary studies seeks to better understand its purpose and aims. The fourth chapter reminds us of the social nature of eating. We never fully eat alone, even when alone, because of all the people and places involved in the production of the food we eat. Cleanness, and even more so Piers Plowman, calls us to a greater social awareness of what we eat and how it affects others. What we choose to consume and how much involves us in a web of relationships that affect ourselves and others. Our consumption has the ability to help or to harm. Moderation, as Langland recommends, in the eating of certain foods may be part of the solution here. A greater intentionality in our consumption, driven by the awareness of all who are connected to the food we eat, is also essential. Those that eat in Cleanness never do so alone. Food is integrative in ways other than digestion; eating is a social activity that draws many different people together. One can observe this at a traditional Thanksgiving meal in the United States where many families and people come together. The participants share many commonalities, but the gathering likely includes social, political, and cultural differences. Eating is the glue that holds these differences in dynamic tension for a moment. Food challenges political and 247 cultural polarization by forcing us into physical proximity, uniting us in a bodily act of need and pleasure that we all share. Eating together does need an ethical and convivial framework that allows for differences and transformation. The framework in Cleanness warns of an ethics that offers no space for differences and no ability to change. The villains in Cleanness remain villains to their violent ends. A morality that becomes preoccupied with order and rigid homogeneity as ends in themselves is a problem. Such a morality is a temptation for those who are ideological liberal as well as conservative. Despite the emphasis in Cleanness on hospitality, one could argue that the poem loses the spirit of hospitality in its obsession with the rituals of hospitality. The stranger in Cleanness is welcomed only so long as he conforms to the host’s standards of deportment. For all its faults though, Cleanness is a reminder that hospitality is a critical social function of eating. Hospitality, ideally, integrates the outsider into our household or family so that they become an insider. One wonders whether a more generous hospitality is one solution to problems raised earlier in this conclusion. Greater hospitality at a personal and national level would help to reckon with injustice and inequality in food distribution. Hospitality also has the potential to break down cultural polarization, forcing us to eat at the same literal or figurative table with our ideological stranger. Food, physical and metaphorical, will be at the heart of any such attempts to extend hospitality. HOMO SAPIENS: HUNGRY PEOPLE Alimentary theology exposes us to our own hunger, physical and metaphorical. In the introduction I noted that the Latin verb sapere means both “to taste and savor” and 248 “to know and understand.” Sapere is the root of the word sapiens in the classification homo sapiens. It is apropos in this context to think of humans not only as Linneaus’s “knowing man” but also “tasting man.”9 We are hungering beings. We experience the joys of having our hungers satisfied and the disappointment that comes when they are not. Our hunger connects us to other hungering beings. It builds community through the extension of hospitality. Like Will in Piers Plowman, we wander about life seeking something to fill our appetite. May we find our hunger satisfied. 9. For the translation see Earle E. 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