ʓe leten ʓow alle as lordes; or the language of “The Disendowment Bill” (Hudson SEWW 137/84–85): “worldely clerkes, bisshopes, abbotes and priours that arun so worldly lordes;” or Wimbledon, cited 5.35–44n. Not only do monks now routinely desert the cloister, but when they do so, they ryde 157, and consequently, ryde out of aray “in disorder,” with the strong undertone “out of their proper state” (and not just out of their proper habit/clothing). Cf., following Pearsall, Chaucer’s Monk as an outridere (CT I.166) and 4.116. AB have the blunter yet possibly less pointed a rydere, a rennere [archetypal B romere] by stretes.
Reason highlights two aspects of these abuses. First of all, modern monastics behave as only noblemen should. Riding with hawk and hound is virtually a synecdoche for the noble life; for an early example, see Brown XIII, no. 48/1–3, and analogues are legion; Skeat provides historical examples of episcopal hunters (supplemented by Mann 1973:23–24, 221–22 n29); Aston (1984:53, 59) mentions two Lollard parallels from the 1380s, “The Petition to King and Parliament” (Arnold SEW 519–20) and Hereford’s sermon (239/65–66); Owst (1961:263–64, 282–84) cites Lollard Sermons 2/417–30, 438–42; 11A/217–46, 249–50; see also Wimbledon, lines 259–62; and the Auchinleck “Simonie” 121–30. The specific association of this behavior with monks may be a late medieval development; at any rate, canon 15 of the fourth Lateran council (1215) banned both hawking and hunting for all religious persons in the context of a canon bemoaning the ill effects of drunken carousing on those who serve the altar (cf. the supplement to Innocent III’s Regesta, no. 211, PL 217:250, specifically of monks).
Other details support this metaphor for usurpation. A emphasizes the monk’s armament, A bidowe or a baselard 214, which recalls abuses the dreamer attacks at 58 (and see 22.218–19n). The B parallel to line 162, the aristocratic monk’s reported question, who lered hym curteisie? (B 10.316), involves a status confusion Chaucer displays with the Prioress, at CT I.132, 137–41 (cf. Mann 1973:34, 225 n62, 272 n36). C manages something like the same sense with the implicit pun that joins lordeyne (rascal, lowborn fellow) with the monk’s improper “lordly” aspirations.
Second, Reason charges that modern monastics interest themselves in the basic goals of lordship, the exploitation of an estate. Following Pearsall’s explanation of fram places to maneres 159 as “from one country residence to another,” they have become land-hungry proprietors of more than they need. With ypurchaced 158, cf. the comment of the Knight in the Lollard “Dialogue between a Knight and a Clerk” (Hudson SEWW 132–33/47–51): “ʓe [clerics] haue þe þridde parte of þis land in ʓour handes, and ʓit ʓe beþe about to purchase and amortaise euer more and more, so þat, ʓeue ʓe had ʓour will, in processe of tyme ʓe schuld haue all þe possessiouns of þis land in your handes.” The verb “amortaise” (to gain inalienable possession of properties by mortmain, “the dead hand”; cf. 17.55) alludes to one common lay objection to temporal ownership by clerical foundations; disendowment procedures sought precisely to overcome this claim to perpetual possession, a right contested between crown and clergy since Edward I. Aston (1984:62–63, 79 n94) cites parallels for such complaints, including passages from John Trevisa’s translation of ps.-Ockham’s Dialogus (contemporary with L’s composition of the C version). Trevisa was, of course, a magnate dependent and not, so far as we know, a Lollard (if perhaps, one of the Wycliffite translators).
163–67 (B 10.317–21) Reason explains how religious disrupt the parochial system: Having described the abusive result (sumptuous behavior), Reason now turns to its causes. As Pearsall explains, he attacks magnatial donation of the right to appoint parochial incumbents (“advowsons”; cf. persones 165 and Prol.81–84n) to religious corporations. For the ubiquity of this procedure with houses of Augustinian canons, in particular, see Southern 1970:244–48. Typically, L claims, such corporate bodies, rather than providing a rector, or even a cheap vicar, to hold services, retain the entire income of the church and redirect it to their own sumptuous uses. Not only is the parish congregation unserved and its poor unsupported, but the untended fabric collapses. Here auters 164 is particularly pointed, since in England, by custom, the parish was responsible for upkeep of the nave, the lay portion of the church, the priest/patron for the clerical chancel. The argument recurs at 17.54–73 (although there it equally addresses the consequent pauperization of lords, with which cf. William Taylor’s sermon, 17–18/545–58).
One can generate extensive parallels to the argument, especially from Lollard texts (like Taylor’s); see Skeat and Pearsall’s notes. A complaint about this abuse, seen as an English custom within a universal church infected by temporalities, heads “Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards” (1395), which mentions “chirchis … slayne be appropriacion to diuerse placys” (Hudson SEWW 24/8–9). Lollards are not simply complaining against clerical ownership but also against the disruption of both parochial instruction and the eleemosynary system. With regard to the latter, cf. such discussions as 8.222–36n and 288n, 9.58–70n.
Thus, the double reference, to reuthe 164 and pite 166, draws attention to the appropriation of the parish’s income/tithes to sustain a superfluous lifestyle, rather than to use as alms. Cf. Holychurch at 1.186–96 (where she is, however, speaking of chaplains, rather than monastics). Reason here opposes the should-be poor—who, of course, constantly protest that they are so, in spite of chartre evidence—to the actualities of dilapidation and poverty. Like L’s related discussion at B 15.340–46, Aston (1984:45) cites Jerome, Epistolae 66.8 (PL 22:644): “Pars sacrilegii est rem pauperum dare non pauperibus” (it is a form of sacrilege to give the poor’s right to those who aren’t poor), a sentence Gratian includes in his Decretum (2.12.1,5–7, CJC 1:677–78). The tag was cited as a logic that should compel disendowment during the 1371 Parliament, as well as by Wycliffe and Lollard authors (see Aston 1984:48, 51, 60, 71 n29). But in these complaints, L expresses neither the opinion of a lunatic fringe nor his individualistic and sharply honed perception of widespread poverty; as Aston mentions (1984:64–65), Parliament passed a statute designed to curb such abuses, 15 Rich. II, c. 6 (SR 2:80).
163 (B 10.317) Lytel hadde lordes ado: As Pearsall1 points out, an example of litotes: “Surely lords could have thought of something better to do,” a topic to which L returns in line 172. At the conclusion of the original A discussion here (11.216), L suggests a much narrower resolution than that found in BC; Religion should look to þe memorie of his foundours, should use the monastic church to serve benefactors by performing memorial masses that will shorten their purgatorial suffering. (Thus, when he composed A, L implied that monks should behave as the dreamer claims he does earlier in this C passus.) Such a view, given the sect’s belief in the universality of the church and in salvation by divine election, is distinctly non-Lollard; cf., as Aston (1984:53, 56) suggests, “The Twelve Conclusions,” Hudson SEWW 26/73–92; and Hudson 1988:309–10.
165 (B 10.319) be hemsulue at ese: Cf. the complaint of “The Disendowment Bill” (Hudson, SEWW 137/90–92): “But of euery estate [worldly clerics] take luste and ese and putte fro hem the travaylle and takyth profytes that shulden kome to trewe men”; and Wimbledon, lines 271–76. On the religious’ fall from their original poverty, see Mum 540–50 (perhaps particularly of Augustinian canons) and Hereford 239/65–66 “in sua prima fundacione non dedignabantur vocari et esse serui et rustici, set iam …” (In their first foundation, they did not disdain to be called—indeed, to be—servants and peasants, but now …).
166 (B 10.320) puyre chartre: The noun refers to the document recording the monastery’s endowment, the gift of secular lords. The word “charity” is presumably a loud subtext, mirroring the very suppression of their responsibilities by bad religious (cf. the “chartered streets” of Blake’s London). Cf. the similar submerged word-play of Prol.62, where one hears “chaplain,” not Chapman.
168–79 (B 10.322–35) Reason waxes
