of smell, and the visceral kind of suffering associated with this sense, imagines such a visitation to the alien deathbed of a person with a disgusting illness, or incontinence, or a decaying body:
Yf þou see þin evene-cristene, þe creature of God, in visitacioun of sykenesse ouþer hirtynge [pain], as suche desese [for example, some injury] þat is roted oþer is corrupt [stinking] wherfore he haþ bodyly desese, or elles of eny ynward desese or syknesse, as yf þat his breþ is nouȝt lusty [fresh] ouþer paraunter [perhaps] unkyndely [unwholesome] corrupcioun comynge from himself which for fybulnesse he may nouȝt kepe himself from. And yf þou spare [fail] þerfor come to him in comfort of him or, yf þou come, paraunter for abhominacioun of suche savour [smell] þou makest loþly semelant [an unpleasant face] wharby he is discomforted [embarrassed] oþer þat oþre be þe loþer [less willing] for to visite him, in þis þou forfetest [do wrong]. Þenke wel in þyn herte þat, þough þou be now nevere so fresch and swote, þou myȝt ful lyȝtly [easily] in a lytel tyme be as loþly and unlusty as he … Spare nouȝt þerfore goedly for to visite and comforte such on as þou miȝt liȝtly be when God wol.130
An earlier passage, on sight, also sees the reader faced with the unpleasantnesses that accompany performance of the works of mercy, enjoining him to “byhalde Crist in his lymes” (in the fellow Christians who are the limbs of his body on earth) by focusing not on the healthy and powerful but on “hem þat ben at myschef or desese of body, relyvynge [relieving] hem and comfortynge after þy powere,” performing all the works of mercy including “comfortynge hem þat ben syke,” while reflecting “in þyn herte þat þey ben Godes creatures and his owene ymage.”131
Both these passages make careful use of the egalitarian discourse of the “even-cristen,” a strong presence throughout the treatise. Both, however, also presuppose a social imbalance between the lord and those to whom he offers comfort. In beholding “Crist in his lymes,” a theological formula that readily blends with the social formula in which the lord is the “head” of his household, the reader is to remember that the sufferers “ben breþeren and systers after kynde and grace of redempcioun”:132 a reflection itself suggestive of social distance between the reader and his “even-cristen.” In the passage on smell, the danger that, should the reader “makest loþly semelant” at the smell of a sick person, other people may “be þe loþer for to visite him” also suggests an occasion fraught with the pressures that inhere in encounters between those who are not social equals, especially in the household space of the dying person, which has its own internal hierarchies of power and spiritual responsibility. In requiring that the reader humble himself by the reflections and good works they enjoin, both passages imply that, when the lord carries out the work of mercy, he does so among his own subordinates and as a matter of special, as well as general, responsibility. It is not hard to see why Harley should include, as a matter of course, a copy of Visitation E to enable this difficult duty to be performed.
As the text develops its theme of the difficult uses of the senses, it indeed becomes clear that the lay reader is being understood as fundamentally a minister, whose duties to all to whom he is connected by any tie of dependency mirror the duties of a curate to everyone in his parish so closely that the two can be discussed in quite similar terms. Another discussion of sight, often reminiscent of the Schort Reule, thus notes that, for those in “governance temperal and spiritual” alike, spiritual responsibility for one’s dependents is a matter of eternal life and death:
Þou schalt byhalde [consider] diligently þulke þat þou hast in governaile [have responsibility for] temperal and spiritual, þat þou kepe þe lawe of God principaly after þe counceyl of þe wyse man, seyynge þus: Diligenter considera vultum pecoris tui. “Bysyly byholde þe chiere or þe vysage of þy best [beast]” (Proverbs 27:23). Þat is: tak goed hede how þy servantes and þy subjectes lyveþ, þat þey be nouȝt vicious. Yf þou be a curat and hast spiritual governayle and charge of mennes soules, þou art bounde opon peyne of þyn owen dampnacioun for to take hede to þulke þat þou hast in cure…. Iff þou have temporal governayle, þou art bounde and helde, upon payne of þyn owen dampnacioun, to loke and byhalde þat þy subjectȝ kepe þe lawe of God, þat ben þy wyf, þy childe, þy hured hyne [hired servant], þy bounde servaunt and þy tenaunt, and alle oþer þat þou hast a warde [under your protection].133
The curate has to perform differently with different kinds of parishioners, learning to preach and teach in the way most likely to bring each to God. Yet the secular lord also has to think in flexible ways, since his rule over the six categories of dependents listed here differs. It is necessary to “teche þy childe in his ȝouþe for to love Crist and his lawe,” like any parent; equally to “teche” “þy hured hyne” and “þy tenaunt,” often through discipline, warning them if they “surfete” and expelling them “fro þy companye” if they are “incorrigible and wol nouȝt amende hem”; and to punish a “bounde servaunt,” not possible to expel, “for brekynge of Cristes byddynge” more swiftly than for trespass against one’s “persone.”134 The lord’s duties even extend to policing the teaching of religion in his territories, where he is to exercise a similar mix of discipline and discretion toward the itinerant preachers often called “heretykes or lollardes,” whose vulnerable informality he should, unless they prove false, protect in the name of the prophetic truths they deliver.135 At the same time, he must also be to his tenants “as þe hurde [shepherd] his schep,” sharing the same pastoral duty and living under the same threat of divine punishment “oppon þulke þat [those who] rechelesly rewleþ ther subgettȝ or serveþ hem nouȝt of competent necessaries” as do priests with care of souls.136 For in the words of 1 Timothy, the biblical book on pastoral care, “Who þat rekkeþ nouȝt of his [does not take care of his own], and namely [especially] of þo þat ben of his housholde, how þey lyve ne how þey be governed, he haþ forsake his feyþ and ys wors þan a paynem [pagan].”137
Fyve Wyttes thus suggests a set of social contexts in which a lay householder might make actual pastoral use of a text like the Visitation of the Sick E as part of his wider temporal and spiritual responsibilities toward his subjects, and also as part of his exercise of lordship over them. In the process, it does not quite merge lay and religious forms of spiritual governance, demanding of the “curate” a level of rhetorical skill, psychological expertise, and self-awareness that the lord is not taken to possess. Although the priest’s role, like the lord’s, is to teach divine law, the work’s professional pride in the cura animarum comes through in its depictions of the subtlety of the true priest, to whom the reader owes a duty of spiritual obedience as part of his wider duty to behave as a member of the ordinary laity. However, within the framework of secular duties the work sketches for the lord, the practice of visiting sick subjects—a practice that could readily extend to teaching them and those with them, and to helping them to die—is represented on a continuum both with the lord’s temporal duty to see that his subjects “have here necessaries competently to here bodylye nede” and with the curate’s spiritual responsibility to save the souls of his parishioners.138 A mix of firm discipline and comfort these special qualities that those who carry out the visitation of the sick must bring to the households they enter, according to the Visitation texts—is the key to the governance of others in both cases.
The devolution of spiritual responsibility and governance at work in Visitation A and E, and in the household books within which the latter circulates, are thus complex. They demand a new level of alertness to the nonritual elements of the deathbed rite on the part of the priest, who must look to the deathbed as a pastoral opportunity as well as a liturgical duty. But because the sacraments are no longer necessarily at the center of the death rite, they also invite a new concern to manage the process of dying on the part of the lay sick person, who must exercise spiritual self-governance in order to respond to the new demands for spiritual preparation that the rite, as supplemented by the Visitation of the Sick, makes on the dying. Since this dying figure is part of a lay community who is included in the work’s exhortations, these responsibilities spill over to the deathbed
