also B.11.178–215. Actually, the idea, if not the phrase, was first introduced by Holy Church in her long speech to Will on love in passus 1: the Son died but “wolde … hem no wo þat wrouhte hym þat peyne”; he was “myhtfull and meke and mercy gan graunte/To hem þat hengen hym hye,” 1.165–70 [A.1.143–48; B.1.169–74].)
In addition, however, the literal meaning “the patient win” has a local application that varies each time. At B.13.135a it signifies that Patience, the third and last speaker, is likely to win this contest of wits: as Conscience says, he probably knows things that the two clerks don’t know. In the course of Patience’s speech in B, and the combined Piers-Patience speeches in C, “vincunt” comes to mean “win” in the sense of “gain”: the enemy’s love, 143 (B.13.145), but further, power, land, and possessions: 154, 166–69 (B.13.167, 170–71). Thus when the motto is repeated at the end of Patience’s speech, B.13.171a, and by Piers in C at 156a, it means “the patient gain” or “the patient win power.” Not, of course, that the point is to be greedy: both speakers speak in riddles, and Patience emphasizes the paradox of patience’s power by carrying out to its logical political conclusion the aggressive denotation of his verb. He attaches it to all the objects it would ordinarily be attached to in the commonplace assumption it silently replaces, namely that agentes vincunt: wars, power, land, money.
Finally, given these local applications in the other places, it is likely that when, in the C version, Piers uses the motto to open his speech at 137, it refers not just to the “overall” point, “love your enemies,” but also to the two lines that follow, and makes clear that they constitute a rejoinder to what, for all the courtesy of “For Peres loue þe palmare ʒent” (130), amounts to a charge by Clergie in lines 130–36 (B.13.124–30) that Piers has undermined his profession. Piers argues back, “The patient win, and I intend to maintain (thus winning out over Clergie) that what I said (when I impugned crafts, namely, dilige deum et proximum) was right.” The implication then is that Piers is patient, whether because he represents Christ, who suffered the passion (and said dilige deum et proximum), or because he and Patience, who apparently arrived together at the dinner, share the same ideas.
138–47 “Byfore perpetuel pees … blynde mote he worthen” (cf. B.13.140–47 “Wiþ wordes and werkes … blynd mote he worþe”): What Love says in B.13.140–46 is a complete imperative sentence, a series of injunctions: Love your soul, learn to love your enemy, cast coals on his head, try to win his love, lay on him with love till he laughs at you. In Piers’s mouth in C, the sentence gets changed in such a way as to appear incomplete: I shall prove and avow and never forsake that this series of injunctions—love God and your enemy, help him, cast coals on this head, try to win his love, give to him again and again, comfort him, and lay on him with love till he laughs at you—what? He never ends up saying what he will prove the injunctions will do. The answer, I think, is first to add line 147 to the sentence, as Schmidt does (though I would put a dash rather than a semicolon at the end of 146), and to see that the imperative verbs are actually conditions that will bring about the bowing predicted in 147: I will prove to you that, love your enemy and he will bow, i.e., if you love, then he will bow. It also works in B to add line 147 to the sentence, again as Schmidt does, though again with a dash: Love him, cast coals on his head, and so on—and surely he will bow. For comment on individual phrases, see the notes below.
140 disce, doce, dilige deum and thyn enemy (B.13.137 Disce … doce, dilige inimicos, 138 Disce … doce … dilige): “Learn this and teach it: love (God and) your enemies”; see B.13.142, lere þe to louye, and cf. Lawler 1995:92 and 2011:72. “Love your enemies” is the message, as the speech goes on to make clear (cf. Matt 5:44, Luke 6:27, 35: diligite inimicos). Learning and teaching are simply elements of any major injunction: we absorb it and press it on others. For example, Love taught it to Patience (in B), and he is teaching it now. On the idea “learn to love,” see 22 (B.20).208 and 206–11n. The phrases “disce diligere” and “disce amare” occur frequently in Augustine, e.g., “Disce diligere inimicum” (as in B) PL 37.1273 (Enarrationes in Psalmos, Ps 99); “Disce amare Deum” (as in C), PL 38.160 (Sermo 23). See also 1 Thess 4:9, “Ipsi enim vos a Deo didicistis ut diligatis invicem,” Yourselves have learned of God to love one another.
The sentence in both versions scans as the first few feet of a hexameter (if in B one does not elide dilige inimicos at the caesura). As I have reported in Lawler 2011:72, the schoolbook collection of hexameter proverbs, Ms. Douce 52 in the Bodleian Library, gives an elegiac couplet that starts “Disce, doce, retine” (Learn, teach, retain), and Walther, Initia carminum, has eight pages of proverbs that start with Disce. Thus we may have here a little example of what I called at the end of my essay “evidence that Langland’s own training in the writing of Latin verse found its way in to Piers Plowman” (2011:68).
142 (B.13.144) Caste coles … speche: I.e., “Make his face red” with shame before your kindness; see Proverbs 25:21–22, which St Paul quotes and explicates at Romans 12:20, the climax of a passage (12:14–21) on returning good for evil. Medieval explicators thought of the coals as either one’s enemy’s hot penance or one’s own hot love: see Whiting C337. Alanus, Distinctiones, PL 210.731: “Carbo, proprie; est charitas, unde Jacobus [Paulus]: ‘Hoc faciens, carbones ignis congeres super caput ejus’ [Rom 12:20], idest patientia tua accendens eum in charitate divina” (Coal, besides its proper meaning, is love, whence James [Paul], “Doing this, thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head,” that is, by your patience setting him on fire with divine love). (In the Latin, I have inserted a semicolon after “proprie” to indicate what the PL text obscures, that Alan’s “proprie” is a brief nod to the literal word before he moves on to figurative meanings; he is not saying that “coal properly means love”; see Tuija Ainonen’s compelling explanation, 2008:21–27.)
Alle kynde speche: Speech that is “all kind,” entirely kind, with reference probably to the various sorts of unkind speech criticized in the surrounding verses in Proverbs 25: false witness in 18, unwelcome jollity in 20, backbiting in 23, contentiousness in 24. Say only nice things! The phrase may be a compression of “all kinds of kind speech”: say all the nice things you can think of.
148–51 And whan he hadde yworded thus … y couthe no mo aspye: The disappearance of Piers is like Christ’s from the dinner table at Emmaus, Luke 24:31, described at 12.123–33 (B.11.234–45), where Christ like Piers in this scene is dressed as a pilgrim. The comparison deepens the association of Piers with Christ. Cf. Aers 2004:41–42 and Gruenler 2017: 225, 240. Cf. also the disappearing guest—an angel—at St Gregory’s banquet: Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, 1.176–77. See Stith Thompson, Motif Index D2188, Magic disappearance. 150 resoun ran aftur: We forget that Reason is a significant figure at the dinner, since he was last mentioned in line 28. Why he leaves now is anybody’s guess.
Finally, Patience (152–69, B.13.133–71)
152–69 And pacience properliche spak … techest (B.13.136–71a “At youre preiere … Pacientes vincunt”): As I have said above, what Patience says has much more integrity in the B version, without Piers to say half of it for him. It celebrates love with élan in the multiple ways I have explicated above in the portion of his speech later given to Piers (136–48), then turns to riddling mode in 151–57, challenging the doctor to vndo the riddle, and going on to specify, still with élan, all the dangers, natural and political, that the charitable needn’t fear, that the patient will conquer. It is a brilliant tour de force, well calculated to get a rise out of the doctor. The slightly longer C counterpart of these lines maintains the élan, though it drops vndo it: it cuts out the riddles but then adds a new one at 161, sharpens the political boast by speaking of winning all fraunce without bloodshed, and raises the temperature of B’s Caritas nihil timet. See the enlightening discussion in Galloway 1995:95–97.
