urge on us. Meanwhile, the friar is shown not to make conscientious or reasonable use of his learning, whereas Will, for all his impatience, learns enough to ally himself with Conscience and Patience. At the end of the scene, he starts on the road that will lead him to redemption—the road to Jerusalem: see 15.184 (B.13.215)n.
For a different emphasis on the theme of learning, see Schmidt’s note, in his 1995 edition of the B text, to B.13.24, “And for Conscience of Clergie spak I com wel þe raþer”: “Will’s eagerness is the fruit of Ymaginatif’s instruction … But after meeting the doctor he will have many of his earlier misgivings shockingly confirmed and withdraw from intellectual learning into the company of a spiritual virtue, Patience, to find the kynde knowyng of Dowel he has sought in vain elsewhere.” It is true that Conscience regards Patience as having given a more penetrating answer than Clergie, and that he chooses the way of experience as he and Will go off with Patience, and yet the accord that Conscience and Clergie reach by the end of the scene suggests that Clergie is not being altogether rejected.
The scene is an instance of L’s general tendency to satirize the friars’ love of learning: see 11.52–58 (B.10.72–78, A.11.58–60); B.11.219–30; 16.231–41a (B.15.70–88); 22.250 (B.20.250); and 22.230–31n.
Clopper, both in his 1990 article (74n34) and his book (1997:238–41), argues that the scene has a “Franciscan character,” and that Patience is modeled on St Francis, though most scholars have accepted the identification of the friar with the Dominican William Jordan; see 91n.
Conscience and Clergie invite Will to dine with Reason (25–31); Conscience invites Will to dine with Clergie (B.13.22–28)
B.13.23 court: A large house or castle; cf. Kane, Glossary, and Chaucer’s Summoner’s Tale, D2162, “Doun to the court he gooth, / Wher as ther woned a man of greet honour.” That lord like Conscience is friends with a friar. Conscience is a lordly figure all through the poem; he regularly speaks “curteisliche.” See B.13.207–10n.
B.13.24 And for Conscience of Clergie spak I com wel þe raþer: Will was similarly eager to meet Clergie at B.10.226 (A.11.169), and he seems to remember also how warmly Clergie welcomed him (B.10.230–35; Clergie and Scripture both in A.11.173–77) to his and Scripture’s house. He might not have been so eager if he also remembered how badly he got along with Scripture. More proximately, he has been given a new understanding of Clergie by Ymaginatif in the passus just completed. The line is a bit ironic, however, since Patience will trump clergy in what follows, and become Will’s new patron as the poem makes its decisive swerve from knowing to doing—or rather, to not doing: to suffering, being acted on, to pati not agere; see the Headnote above, and the notes to 32–33, 190–16.157 (B.13.221–14.335), and 137, 156a (B.13.135a, 171a) below.
B.13.26 lowe louted and loueliche to scripture: A bit of estates satire; for friars’ attentions to women, see CT, General Prologue, A211, 217, 234, 253–55 and SumT, D1797–1815. For the way they have of showing up at dinnertime (against their rule; see next note), see SumT D1774, 1836 ff., and B.10.95 above. In B the friar seems to be already in the house when Conscience gets home; in C they seem to meet on Conscience’s way home, but perhaps not altogether by chance.
29 a maystre, a man lyk a frere (B.13.25 a maister, what man he was I nyste): usually called this doctour starting at line 65, and identified as definitely a friar in lines 69–87; in line 84 he is doctour and dyuynour … and decretistre of Canoen, i.e., very learned, and he may be named as a particular Dominican in 91; see the note there. Maister is a loaded word in antifraternal satire: it means “Pharisee,” thanks to Matt 23:7–10 and John 1:38; see Szittya 1986:35–37 and SumT, D2184–88. Of course plenty of friars, especially Dominicans and Franciscans, were Masters of Theology and Doctors of Theology; see Glorieux 1933–34:1.27–222 (Dominicans); 2.5–248 (Franciscans); Courtenay 1987:56–87; Cobban 1999:164–67; Lawrence 1994, Chapter 7.
It is evidently part of L’s purpose to present Will as not at first recognizing this master as the man he heard preach three or four days before, though the development to that recognition in B (from “what man he was I nyste”) is more startling than in C. That he is at the dinner at all is not quite right. The Dominican Constitutions of 1220 declare that “In places where we have a convent, our friars, both priors and others, should not presume to eat outside the cloister except with bishops or in houses of religious, and that rarely” (ed. Thomas, 1.8, p. 319). But the Summoner’s Tale suggests that the rule was little regarded—and Conscience may be a bishop; again see B.13.207–10n. Gruenler 2017:155 compares him to the bishop in the story of St Andrew and the Three Questions from The Golden Legend that he posits as an analogue to the scene.
Ralph Hanna has suggested above (8.73–74n) that Faus Semblant in Roman de la Rose 11204–06 (in the Lecoy edition) gives us a model for this doctor. I would add lines 11007–19; see the note to 68–73a below. As a hypocrite relying on a surface of religiosity, he is certainly among the progeny of Faus Semblant, though not so thoroughly like him as Chaucer’s Pardoner.
31 (B.13.28) They: Why not “We?” Surely Will was invited to wash too, as Patience is a few lines later. The friar, it turns out, has a traveling companion, whom Patience mentions at line 101; this pronoun includes him. Friars always went about in pairs: see Luke 10:1 (and note to line 44a below), and supra, 10.8n. Clopper 1990:74n34 asserts that since there are two friars they must be Franciscans, for “the Franciscan rule required that brothers go about in pairs in order to imitate Christ’s apostles; the Dominican provisions for preaching and itinerancy (Distinctio 2.12–13) make no reference to this practice.” And yet Distinctio 2.12 (of Raymond of Pennaforte’s redaction, ed. Creytens 1948, which Clopper used) in fact says of preachers, “eis socii dabuntur a priore” (they will be assigned companions by the prior, p. 63). The Constitutions of 1228, ed. Thomas 1965, have the same sentence of preachers (2.30, p. 363), and, of itinerants, “socius datus praedicatori ipsi ut priori suo in omnibus obediat” (the companion given to a preacher is to obey him in everything as his superior) (2.34, p. 366). In Dominic’s famous dream in St Peter’s, when Peter and Paul order him to preach, he sees his sons “setting out two by two” (Golden Legend, trans. Ryan, 2.47). Jack Upland 310, Friar Daw’s Reply 771, and Woodford, Responsiones pp. 162–63 all write as if going in pairs was the practice of all orders. The issue matters because of the identification of the doctor with the Dominican William Jordan; see 91n. Cf. the phrase socius itineris in Gen 33:12 and 35:3.
Patience and Piers (C only) show up and are welcomed (32–37, B.13.29–32)
32–33 Pacience … Ilyke peres the ploghman, as he a palmere were (B.13.29–30 Ac Pacience … heremyte): B is plain enough, but C surprises: Piers is here! This is the first reference to him since the second vision, in the course of which he took on the role of “a pilgrym at þe plouh” (8.111), dressing accordingly (8.56–65). “Palmere” here clearly just means “pilgrim” and is not pejorative (as it probably is at Prol.47 and 7.180). The revision suggests that readers of B are perhaps to intuit from 29 in pilgrymes cloþes, along with all the praise of patient poverty in passus 11—including lines such as B.11.243–44, “And in þe apparaille of a pouere man and pilgrymes liknesse/Many tyme god haþ ben met among nedy peple”—that Patience is “Piers-like” and will speak authoritatively. But readers did not intuit that, apparently, so C, in typical fashion, makes everything plain by having Piers actually accompany Patience to the dinner.
Ilyke is a crucial word; the adverb “likewise, also,” OE ġeliċe. Skeat printed “Ilik,” the reading of ms. X and many others—i.e., the adjective “like”—and Schmidt has followed him (though he apparently takes it as the adverb, which can appear [unhistorically] without the final e: see both his note and his textual note to
