bread” but “supersubstantial bread.” (Both versions have the same word in Greek, the hapax legomenon “epiousios,” probably meaning “sufficient for the day,” but Jerome in his commentary on Matthew says it means “praecipuum” or “egregium,” that is, special or surpassing, and when we ask for it we are asking for him who said, “I am the bread of life” [PL 26.43].) That doesn’t really matter, though, since in the first place many, even most, patristic writers treat “quotidianum” as Matthew’s word as well as Luke’s, and virtually all say anyhow that “panem quotidianum” has to be taken spiritually, as Christ, who said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) and “I am the living bread which came down from heaven” (John 6:51). (Thus there are Eucharistic overtones, particularly since the Eucharist has the nickname viaticum, “food for the road”: Actyf is on the road.) Clearly L regarded the Paternoster as bread for the soul. (Stock 1988 argues that “Langland deliberately inserted the pair of quotations ‘Fiat voluntas tua’ and ‘Non de solo pane vivit homo’ at three critical junctures in his revision of PP “[474], namely in C passus 5 [“non de solo vivit homo,” man does not live from the soil], 15, and 16, to create a deep thematic interplay—but not convincingly at all, especially since “non de solo [pane] vivit homo” does not in fact occur in passus 16.)
We have, of course, as Mann insists (1979:38), seen a similar replacement of real food with spiritual food in the AB Visio, where Piers starts out getting people to work cultivating real food but ends up renouncing “bely-ioye” (B.7.130, A.8.112), claiming with the Psalmist that tears have been his bread day and night (B.7.128, A.8.110a), and quoting, as Patience does here in B.14.33, both Ne soliciti sitis (B.7.131, A.8.113) and Volucres celi deus pascit (in English, B.7.129–30, A.8.111–12).
Gillespie, who treats B almost exclusively, shows that in the commentary tradition praying “thy will be done” is an antidote to wrath and envy, which he argues are “Haukyn’s ‘head sins,’” and since “Commentaries on fiat voluntas tua consistently see Patience as the virtue which counteracts the wrathfulness addressed by the petition,” Patience “in offering it … is effectively offering himself” (1994:111). His argument has less force in C, and in both versions it seems to me that choosing God’s will over one’s own has a far broader application than just to wrath and envy. In fact Gillespie goes on to argue (113–14) that larger case, concluding that what Patience offers Haukyn is the chance to wed himself to patient poverty and achieve the joye and pure spiritual helþe (B.14.285) it promises.
It is possible to translate the phrase as “Let Will be yours,” a further piece of wit. Note that it emphatically does not mean what Recklessness said at 11:304 (B.11:38), “lat god do his wille.”
250 (B.14.51) Haue … and eet: Cf. Matt 26:26, “Accipite et comedite, hoc est corpus meum” (Take ye and eat, this is my body), repeated daily in the words of consecration at Mass.
251 (B.14.52) when thow clomsest for colde: Fiat voluntas tua is spiritual clothing as well as food, a real “coat of Cristendom” and much better than the robes Actyf craves from his patrons. The idea of spiritual clothing is Pauline, as Maillet shows, 2014:84–85. But Patience basically means real clothing, his warrant being Matthew’s and Luke’s Ne solliciti sitis passages, which are as much about clothing as about food (Matt 6:25–34, Luke 12:22–31).
252–59a (B.14.53–60a) Shal neuere gyues … istum: as an effacer of fear, fiat voluntas tua is the equivalent of patientes vincunt or caritas nichil timet; what Patience says here essentially repeats the kinds of things he and Piers said in the banquet scene: see above, ll. 152–69 (B.13.136–71a)n and B.13.151–71n. 254 (B.14.55) Be so þat þou be sobre: Esto sobrius (Be sober) 2 Tim 4:5; see also Tit 2:12 and Maillet 2014:74–77. She argues convincingly that Paul’s sobrietas is the basis of the insistence throughout the poem on “mesure.” 256 Dar þe nat care (B.14.57 Darstow neuere care): you need not care; dar is a form of thar, need, from OE þurfan; see OED, s.v. tharf/thar v. The statement is in effect a translation of Ne sollicitus sis (Be not solicitous; cf. Matt 6:25, Luke 12:22, Phil 4:6; Maillet 2014:68–69). The thought here, extreme though it seems, is very close to Seneca’s at the end of his Letter 110, as quoted by Peter the Chanter in his chapter on poverty, ed. Boutry 2004:120: “Quid sit remedium inopie? Famem fames finit…. Liber est autem non in quem parum licet fortune, sed in quem nichil. Ita est si nil horum desideres” (What is the remedy for want? Hunger stops hunger…. The free man is not the one over whom fortune has little power, but the one over whom she has no power at all. That is how it is if you crave nothing).
258 (B.14.59) hete: drought: cf. ME, s.v. hete n. 1, 1 (d). Later in the line, note that his is stressed.
259 (B.14.60) If thow lyue aftur his lore the shortere lyf þe betere: On the surface, the least humane line L ever wrote (and anything but patient). But Patience lives on the edge, and there is indeed some of his lore, i.e., the teachings of Jesus, that is relevant: “He that loveth his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal” (John 12:25; see also Matt 10:39, 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:24, 17:33); and St Paul, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil 1:21–24). See also Origen’s Homily 14 (17) on Jeremiah in Jerome’s Latin translation: “Quapropter, longae vitae amore deposito, et desiderio humanae diei, quaeramus illam diem videre, in qua participes ejus beatitudinis, quae in Christo est, efficiamur” (PL 25.625) (And so, let us put aside our love of a long life, and our desire for a “day of man” [Amos 5.18], and seek to see the day in which we will be made partakers of the blessedness that is in Christ.) For relevant material from the Old Testament, and some literary parallels, see B.14.323–25n.
However, Contemptus mundi is one thing; to turn that into a desire to die young is a perversion of Christian thought, and not what Patience stands for. The classic, sensible view is embodied in Augustine’s regular praise of perseverance, e.g., De dono perseverantiae liber, 1: “Asserimus ergo donum Dei esse perseverantiam qua usque in finem perseveratur in Christo” (We hold that perseverance is a gift of God whereby we persevere to the end in Christ,” PL 45.994; see Matt 10:22). The heart of the matter appears in Albert King’s great blues line, “Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” Still, Patience apparently gets to Actyf: see B.14.323–25 and n. Actually, of course, Patience has just been advocating submission to God’s will in this matter: deye as god liketh … at his wille be hit. Thus the full thought here is, “Don’t fear death, but leave the time and the means up to God’s will, (and if your life ends up being short) you’re better off, since you love God better than the world.” He is not encouraging Actyf to shorten his life, or even hope for a short life, only pointing out that a short life has its advantages. See Clopper 1997:232–33.
259a (B.14.60a) Si quis Amat christum mundum non diligit istum: Anyone who loves Christ does not love the world. Identified by Alford as from the anonymous poem Carmen paraeneticum ad Rainaldum, A Poem of Advice to Rainald, PL 184.1307 (which has Quisquis instead of Si quis). Rainald is a boy; see Lawler 2011:68. As Schmidt, and Pepin 1999:57, point out, though, that poem is actually the Cartula, a twelfth-century poem on contempt of the world that is one of the works in the school-text Auctores octo, where L undoubtedly read it as a boy. The line occurs near the beginning of the poem; see Pepin’s translation, 1999:58. Alford points out that the basis of the line is 1 John 2:15, Si quis diligit mundum, non est caritas Patris in eo. The poet, being a poet, realized that there was a Leonine hexameter lurking in John’s sentence.
The line also occurs in Jean-Baptiste-François Pitra’s collection Spicilegium Solesmense (1854), in connection with his edition of the Clavis of Pseudo-Melito, the eighth-century key to allegorical meanings of terms from the bible once attributed to Melito
