book of Distinctiones, probably c. 1225, by an anonymous English Cistercian, Distinctionum monasticarum et moralium libri V. Speaking of silver, the author says it can stand for the glory of this world, lovely to see but sordid to the touch, and then cites: “Si quis amat Christum, mundum non diligit istum;/Hujus amor mundi putei parat ima profundi” (Love of this world paves the way to the depths of the bottomless pit) (1.27; Pitra 1854:2.285; for Pitra’s discussion of the book, see 2.xxv–xxviii; he edits selections from it from Ms. Mazarine 3475 at 4.452–87). A smaller number of selections appears in Wilmart 1940, also from Mazarine 3475. There are appreciative accounts of this interesting book, with its many quotations of twelfth-century poetry, in Hunt 1950, Lehmann 1962, and Rigg 1992.
Walther, Proverbia 28959 treats the line as a proverb, citing a number of Renaissance proverb collections in which it appears. It is occasionally followed by one or two more lines, which vary; Ms E of the C version of PP has the next line in Cartula, Sed quasi fetorem sperne[n]s illius amorem (But spurning the love of it like a stench); see RK-C p. 183. See also Walther, Proverbia 25525, which has the Quisquis beginning. Walther indicates that mundum often appears as mundus, which makes the line mean “If anyone loves Christ, the world does not love him.”
260a (B.14.61a) Dixit & facta sunt: He spoke and they were made, Ps 32:9, Ps 148:5; cf. Gen 1:24.
262a Aperis tu manum tuam &c (B.14.63a Aperis tu manum tuam & imples omne animal benediccione): Thou openest thy hand and fillest with blessing every living creature, Ps 144:16; the first three words appear as a personification, in another passage on spiritual sustenance, at 16.320. Graces: thanks, Latin gratias, and so a prayer offering thanks before or after meals. OED s.v. grace, n. II.11. Alford, Quot. has found the grace that uses Ps 144:16 in Furnivall 1868:382. He lists all the graces quoted in the poem in his entry for C.3.340a, Quot. 39.
263–69 (B.14.64–70) Hit is founde … awakede: Three examples to illustrate 256 (B.14.57) dar þe nat care for no corn and 260–61 (cf. B.14.61–62) thorw his breth bestes wexe … thorw his breth bestes lyueth. The first is the forty-year sojourn of the Israelites in the desert: they “ate manna forty years,” Ex 16:35, and “When Moses had lifted up his hand, and struck the rock twice with the rod, there came forth water in great abundance, so that the people and their cattle drank,” Num 20:11. The second is the three-year (three-and-a-half-year James 5:17, still not quite manye wynter) drought brought on by Elijah to punish Ahab, 3 Kings 17–18, during which Elijah was fed first by ravens, then by the widow whose “pot of meal wasted not” and whose “cruse of oil was not diminished” 17:16. The last is the famous legend of the Seven Sleepers, Legenda aurea, 101 (trans. Ryan, 1993:2.15–18); the legend says they slept 372 years, which Jacobus reduces to 195; both are more then syxty wynter (268).
270 (B.14.71) mesure: “A reminiscence and an expansion of the words spoken by Holy Church to the Dreamer in the Visio, ‘Mesure is medicine bouʒ bow muchel ʒerne’ (B.1.35) [C.1.33],” Maguire 1949:107. Watson 2007:103 says that Patience “divagates extravagantly on the advantages of starvation and an early death,” but he forgets that St Francis put Patience’s ideas into actual practice, and also that this line tempers the extravagant idealism significantly. Like Holy Church, Patience insists that God provides us what we need, and endows us with natural kindness. It is when we replace kindness with greed that defaute arises. See Peter the Chanter’s chapter De mediocritate (ed. Boutry 2004:113–15).
271–71a cristes wordes … Dabo tibi secundum peticionem tuam: Cf Matt 7:7, Luke 11:9: “Petite, et dabitur vobis,” Ask, and it shall be given you; also John 14:14 with somewhat different wording. Alford, Quot. cites Ps 36:4, “Delectare in Domino, et dabit tibi petitiones cordis tui” (Delight in the Lord, and he will give thee the requests of thy heart). But cristes wordes suggests that one of the Gospel verses is what is meant. Some psalms are treated as spoken by Jesus (Lawler 2017:184), but not Psalm 36.
B.14.73 caristiam: “Dearth.” See DML, s.v. caristia, 2.
B.14.77a Ociositas & habundancia panis peccatum turpissimum nutriuit: Idleness and too much bread fed the vilest sin. See the slightly different version at C.15.229a, and the note to 229a–32, where the ultimate source, Ezech 16:49, is quoted. L is apparently translating the two previous lines into Latin, though þe meschief and þe meschaunce is a lot milder than peccatum turpissimum—which is probably precisely the point: that L regarded Latin as a safer vehicle for sharp statement is clear in B.13.70–75. But then the Latin in turn seems to encourage him, and he translates it back into English in lines 78–81, this time translating peccatum turpissimum, first as synne þat þe deuel liked (the same phrase is used of Lot’s incest with his daughters, B.1.28, A.1.28), and then as vile synnes. (On B.13.70–75, see Lawler 2008:53, and in general on L translating into Latin, p. 52 of the same essay; also Cannon 2008:24.) The phrase turpissimum peccatum (or peccatum turpissimum) does not turn up in the standard databases. It means homosexual acts. Of the many writers who quote Ezechiel on Sodom, only Rupert of Deutz speaks openly: “Notatum et infame est toti mundo peccatum eorum scilicet saturitas panis et otium in quo male nimis semetipsis abusi sunt … masculi in masculos turpitudinem operantes” (Their sin [i.e., the men of Sodom] is known to the whole world, and known as infamy: namely, too much bread and leisure in which they abused each other very wickedly … men performing vileness on men).
B.14.83–97 And þoruʒ feiþ comeþ … yheeled: Patience repeats the process described already by Conscience in B.14.16–28 above, replacing Conscience’s allegory of cleaning with imagery of healing a diseased growth in the body by carving it out at the root. He mentions conscience in line 83 (the editors might have capitalized the word), and in the metaphor of surgery in line 89 perhaps echoes the scraping image in line 16. Shrift of mouþ 90, 91 then translates 18a Oris confessio, and satisfaccion 95 Satisfaccio 21a. Nevertheless one is not quite convinced that Patience is to be thought of as consciously alluding to what Conscience said; the feeling rather is of a wholly new treatment of the same issue. Cf. C.16.25–34, where Patience skims briefly over the same material.
B.14.82 mesure we vs wel: Recalling the advice of Holy Church, 1.24 (B.1.25, A.1.25), though Patience is surely thinking of a broader mesure than just of food and drink, as the rest of the line suggests. Sheltrom: A phalanx or shieldwall (OE scildtruma), i.e., our defense. The source is an array of more or less military Pauline metaphors: of standing in faith (1 Cor 16:13, 2 Cor 1:24), holding to faith (2 Cor 13:5, 1 Tim 1:19), the breastplate of justice, shield of faith, helmet of salvation, and sword of the Spirit (Eph 6:14–17), the firmness of faith (Col 2:5), the breastplate of faith (1 Thess 5:8), fighting the good fight of the faith (1 Tim 6:12).
B.14.83–94 And þoruʒ … peccata: Patience waffles between the traditional idea that contrition sufficed (Sola contricio delet peccatum, B.11.81a) and the obligation of oral confession imposed by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (which Wyclif opposed). See the clear discussion by Frank, 1957:98–99: he concludes, “The poet believed in all three stages of penance, but he was especially interested in contrition, as Dobest shows.” See also Hort 1938:130–55 and Watkins 1961:2.744–49. The position of B.11.81–81a was absolute, but here Patience adopts the deft, somewhat legalistic compromise that sola contritio only downgrades the sin from mortal to venial. That asserts the value of contrition without dismissing the importance of confession. Putting it in these terms, mortal sin becoming venial sin, seems to be L’s own idea, though he could have found ample support for it in Peter Lombard’s well-known discussion of the issue in the Sentences; for example, in this quotation he ascribes to St Ambrose,
