it to two rules, presumably to the chagrin of the Pharisee who questioned him, whose doctorate is devalued; the phrase applies to our doctor as well, with the added sting of the food-image in at a sop: the rich meal that presumably he thought his status deserved becomes itself a mere sop. As for Domine, quis habitabit (Ps 14), see Middleton 1972:179–80 on the importance of its “infinite” pronoun quis. As she shows, verses 1–5 of this major psalm are all relevant; however, most pointed of all is presumably verse 3, “qui non … fecit proximo suo malum” (nor hath done evil to his neighbour), since it is the equivalent of the second great commandment of the law, love thy neighbor (see B.3.234–45, 9.46–50 [B.7.47–52a, A.8.49–54] for other applications of this psalm to love of neighbor; in the latter passage, it is used to satirize lawyers, as if L thought of it in general as an anti-intellectual text). Verse 3 has just been quoted, all too baldly and flippantly, by the doctor; Clergie restores it to its proper context.
Though the B version thus refers to love of both God and neighbor, C makes that clearer by citing the whole phrase from Matthew, dilige deum et proximum, rather than B’s brief lemma Dilige deum. The formula crops up in numerous places in the poem, above all as the wording of Moses’s maundement in passus 19 (B.17); see 19.14, 17 (B.17.13, 16)n. A passage that Clergie does not quote, but which may well be in L’s mind since it defines Dowel clearly in terms of loving one’s neighbor, is James 2:8, “Si tamen legem perficitis regalem secundum scripturas, ‘Diliges proximum tuum sicut te ipsum,’ bene facitis” (If then you fulfill the royal law according to the scriptures, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” you do well.)
Since Clergie’s seven sons in B are replaced in C by the phrase in scole, they are clearly the seven liberal arts, as Crowley asserted long ago (see Skeat). The Castel/Ther þe lord of lif wonyeþ, and where they seruen, is then presumably Theology, the queen of the disciplines, who will leren hem what is dowel: moral theology refines the ethical ideas encountered in the study of the liberal arts. L may have in mind the seven sons of Japheth or Job or Tobias, or Ruth 4:15, where Naomi is assured that Ruth’s son Obed “is much better to thee than if thou hadst seven sons.” He recasts B.10.155, where Scripture is “sib to þe seuen artʒ”, and B.9.1–24, the castle of Anima. The father with seven sons is a folktale and romance motif, Stith Thompson, Motif Index 251.6.3 (also 252.3 seven daughters). The whole little allegory suggests what Clergie goes on to say, that learning must submit to the law of love; the seven arts are in the process of learning that; eventually Clergie hopes to see them agree with him (122: “until I see that they and I agree”). Middleton 1972:172 says, “Without Piers’s ‘text,’ Clergie’s seven sons cannot define Dowel.” However, Middleton also makes clear that it is precisely through grammar, the first of the arts, and the “grounde of al” in the deeper sense that it represents unchanging truths about the nature of our relation to each other and to the world, that Clergie is able to explain the Infinite, i.e., non-finite, imperfect, insubstantial status of Dowel and Dobet. “Dowel, the object of the search, turns out to be itself an ‘infinite,’ a seeker after its own perfection” (188). For a full exposition of B.13.128–30, read Middleton; in a nutshell, they mean “Dowel and Dobet, both infinitives in their grammatical form and so non-finite, imperfect, and meaningless by themselves, are therefore expressions of the ever-seeking nature of our life: we seek perfection and completion in Dobest, which is the perfect love expressed in the two ‘infinite’ injunctions of Jesus. Virtue is endless, but in the end if you have done your best you will be saved.” Note that Clergie, in looking forward to when he will reach agreement with his sons, is himself also a seeker, a model of the interpretation of the moral life that he propounds. However, for all the disclaimers about learning in his reply, he still manages to be obscurely clerical, so that Conscience’s remark at B.13.131, which means, “I don’t really follow you, but I trust Piers,” is apt.
As Middleton grants, “The C-revision, by simplifying or removing most of the grammatical argument from these speeches, seems to acknowledge that in the poet’s final judgment their obscurity largely outweighed their explanatory value” (182). But the central notion of imperfection remains in C, stated directly in 135 through yet one more “impugning” remark by Jesus, Nemo bonus (nisi unus Deus), None is good but one, that is God, Mark 10:18. I find that Middleton’s analysis sheds much more light on the passage than Vance Smith’s treatment of the three D’s in terms of “beginning” (2001:202–11), though his account of the value the passage places on passiveness, and its relation to Patience, is very fruitful. He is wrong to say that Middleton “does not argue that the verb in ‘Dowel’ is itself an infinitive” (206); she certainly does, on p. 175.
For some analogies to Clergie’s allegory of his seven sons, see Peter the Chanter, ed. Boutry 2012a:522, where charity’s daughters are the seven beatitudes “and the eighth, which returns to the head” (because it repeats the phrase “theirs is the kingdom of heaven”); Garnier de Rochefort (Garnerius Lingonensis), Sermones, PL 205.723, where since Moses “was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22), the seven daughters of the priest of Midian (Exod 2:16) are the seven liberal arts, which were invented in order to serve theology; and Sigebert of Gembloux, Catalogus de viris illustribus, where appears one Thomas, ninth-century author of an “enigmatic little book” in which Wisdom is the mother of seven daughters, the seven liberal arts (ed. Witte, 1974:89–90) (see Prov 9:1, the seven pillars of wisdom). In Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus, the seven arts are seven sisters attendant on Wisdom, though not her daughters.
130 þe palmare ʒent: Yonder pilgrim, the pilgrim over there—with a gesture, presumably, toward Piers. Cf. B.13.124 þe Plowman. ʒent occurs twice in the Harrowing of Hell scene, spelled yon, yond, ʒone, yone; in both places the daughters of God refer to Christ as “yonder light”: 20.148 (B. 18.145), 194 (B.18.189). It is omitted here at 15.130 in many C mss, including HM 137 (P), which Skeat used as his base, so that it was never available in print until Pearsall used HM 143 (X)—but he glossed it “noble,” as if it were “gent” (a genuine ME word that does not appear elsewhere in the poem), so that no one took it as implying Piers’s actual presence. However, words in the family “gentle,” derived from Latin gens, are never spelled in ms. X, or generally in any manuscript, with the letter yogh. Kane 1994:16 identified it for the first time as a form of “yon,” associating it with the reading “ylyke’ in line 33. See also RK-C 156n, Concordance, s.v. yond, and Kane’s Glossary, s.v. yon; Pearsall’s new edition has “over there.” It is thus a significant word indeed, reaffirming Piers’s presence at the dinner shortly before he speaks.
B.13.133–35a “Thanne … vincunt &c”: KD-B punctuate as if Clergie speaks these lines, though there seems to be little reason not to regard 131–35 as a single utterance by Conscience, as all other editors treat it; see Lawler 1995:91n10. Since Conscience has been fairly well established as Master of Ceremonies, it would surely be his place, not Clergie’s, to call on Patience. 133 þis: i.e., that only these texts matter; cf. line 132 and Matt 22:40, “on these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets.” David Aers asserts (1975:88) that Piers’s “proving this in deed” occurs when he explains the tree of charity in passus 16, though “in dede” suggests that the reference is rather to the poem’s account of the redemption in passus 18, Jesus jousting in Piers’s arms, the supreme example of love of God and neighbor in action. 134 Pacience haþ be in many place: one meaning of “to be patient” is “to experience”: if you are patient, you “have been through a lot,” and therefore have been in many places. In Ymaginatif’s terms, you have “kynde wit,” which “comeþ of alle kynnes siʒtes” (B.12.128), contriving many things “of cloudes and of costumes” (customs) (C.14.73). This preferring of “experience” to “authority,” to use Chaucer’s terms, also suggests that the lines belong to Conscience: they would be out of character for Clergie. See Lawler 1995:91–92; Vance Smith 2001:205 writes similarly.
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