really have to ruminate about the matter at all. (On allegorical food in Old French poetry, see Barney 1988:126–28 and Owen 1912:103–7.)
44a (B.13.39a) Edentes … sunt &c: “Eating and drinking such things as they have,” Luke 10:7. The passage (Luke 10:1–16) is Christ’s instructions to the seventy-two, which the friars tried to follow, but which their detractors used against them: see Szittya 1986:43–47, 209. Here in Luke 10 the disciples are told to stay in one house and eat what they are offered; the next verse repeats, “eat such things as are set before you” (this verse appears in the Franciscan Rule of 1223, Chapter 3, as Clopper points out [1997:239]). But our friar has no appetite for scripture. Patience, on the other hand, loves the food: he eats such things as they have. Will “mourns” at it (64, B.13.60), envying the friar’s substitute menu; he appears not to eat it, but hasn’t the gall or status to ask for something else, as the friar does.
45 of this mete þat maystre myhte nat wel chewe (B.13.40 þis maister of þise men no maner flessh eet): Þise men (B only), namely Austin, Ambrose, and the evangelists. Gruenler associates the doctor with the hyperlogical thought of Scotus and Ockham, who, so differently from Aquinas, “wrote very little about scripture” (2017:275–76).
KD-B rightly edit out the doctor’s “man” who is in almost all B mss, and does appear in Donaldson’s translation (1990); see their explanation on pp. 179–80. Kirk and Anderson, the editors of Donaldson’s translation, point out that a man “would presumably not be at the high table in any case.” Benson 2004:55 argues for the man because friars traveled in pairs, and because of the plural pronouns þei, hem, and hir in lines 42–43. But a companion would not be called “his man,” and the plural pronouns are in C too (47–48), though there is no question there of the man; L simply wanders here from strict focus on the dinner to make a general hit at friars; see the next note.
47–50a (B.13.42–45a) Of þat men myswonne … euometis &c: Though Scripture apparently does go back to the kitchen for mortrewes and potages, since later Will actually watches the friar eating mortreux, Conscience’s house would not be stocked with food bought from miswinnings. Thus the sentence beginning at line 47 (B.13.42) is best read as a general statement: the friar’s regular diet was more costly food—at his convent, presumably, which would explain the modulation in the next line to the plurals men and þei—though the Dominican Constitutions of 1228 explicitly declare that “Everywhere in our convents meals should be meatless” (ed. Thomas, 1.8, p. 319; mortreux is a meat dish). He and his fellows would dine comfortably off þat men myswonne by buying their food either with the price of absolution purchased by the dishonest rich (12.4–10, B 11.54–58), or with contributions extracted from confessants as restitution for their wrongful gains (12.17). (This passage—12.4–22, B.11.54–83—has just been summarized in ll. 9–12.) On the whole subject of “miswinning,” see Lawler 2006, and for fuller specific comment on this passage, Appendix E to that essay, pp. 188–89. (I retract, however, my insistence there on construing “many” with mortem [“after the death of many”] rather than with “bitter peynes,” where Ian Cornelius has persuaded me it must be construed, for metrical reasons. As he says, “each hemistich is an independent unit of sense and syntax.”)
Yet another way friars miswin is to extort inheritances by promising to sing Masses for the souls of the givers (as they do for Lady Meed, 3.53, and as Coueitise of eiʒes assures Will they will do for him, B.11.53–58), and then fail to sing them: their sauce is “ground in the mortar called ‘many bitter punishments after death unless they (the friars) sing and weep for those souls’ (i.e., the souls of those whose money is thus miswon).” As Skeat says, “The whole expression, from post-mortem down to teeres, is the allegorical name of the mortar.” It should be hyphenated. Since the sauce is said in fact to be sour and unsavory—and also since they make themselves at ease—the friars clearly do fail to sing and weep. Lines 47–50 are a free translation of the Latin that follows them: “you who eat the sins of men, unless you will have poured out tears and prayers for them, will vomit up amidst torments what you eat now amidst delights.” Or the Latin translates the English, as Kerby-Fulton 1990:157 asserts [again see Lawler 2006, App E, 188–89]. The source is unidentified; it is probably by L himself. It alludes, as Alford, Quot. points out, to Hosea 4:6–8, a diatribe against bad priests. Eating sins, as Peter the Chanter says (Lawler 2006:166–67), means either saying they are not sins or making the sins food for themselves (i.e., by requiring a donation in exchange for absolution, as described above). Kerby-Fulton 1987:396 associates the phrases with the pseudo-Hildegardian anti-mendicant prophecy that begins, “Insurgent gentes quae comedent peccata populi.”
I still think, as I thought in 2006, that the sentence is L’s, but Stephen Barney has shown me a very similar passage in St Bonaventure’s Regula novitiorum (Instructions for Novices) that is surely the source—and an intriguing one, offering some support for the theory that L spent some time as a Franciscan novice, see 78–79n below. Urging the novices to pray constantly, Bonaventure says, “Ait enim Bernardus, ‘Ora, frater, instanter ora, quia ille dicitur habere tunicam mixtam sanguine, qui carnem suam nutrit de pauperum sudore. Cantando nobis,’ inquit, ‘ista bona proveniunt; graves ergo pro eis effundite gemitus, alioquin quod hic in deliciis sumitis in tormentis evometis’” (1898:214) (For St Bernard says, “Pray, brother, pray hard, for a man who feeds his flesh on the sweat of the poor is said to have a tunic mixed with blood. These goods come to us for singing [i.e., Masses],” he says, “Otherwise what you take here in pleasure you will vomit up in torments”) (my translation; cf. Monti 1994:155). Bernard, in a sermon on the Ascension, says, “Ora instanter, ora perseveranter” (PL 183.315), but Bonaventure seems to have made up the rest, or to be remembering something else. (For eating off the sweat of the poor, see Aelred, Speculum charitatis, PL 195.559 and Peter of Blois, Letter 102, PL 207.319–21.)
For a similar idea, cf. PL 209.114 (Martinus Legionensis, in a sermon directed at monks): “Peccata vestra et eorum quorum eleemosynas comeditis, studiose deflete, poenas inferni formidate” (Cry hard for your sins, and for the sins of those whose alms you eat—fear the punishments of hell). See also Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, 701–6, quoted by Szittya 1986:220. “Eating sins” is the opposite of “eating the labours of one’s hands” (Psalm 127, quoted at 8.260a (B.6.252a, A.7.234a). Peter of Blois in his Letter 102, which L knew (see B.15.332–43a note below), insists repeatedly that feasting at the expense of the poor brings damnation.
In view of this satire, of the fact that this doctor preached at St Paul’s the other day, and of the apparent association with William Jordan (91 [B.13.86]n below), Nicholas Watson’s calling him “that sad parody of the insatiable appetites of Thomas or Bonaventure for heavenly learning” (2007:95), fine though it is, is probably wrong; L is thinking much more locally, and much more venally of actual greed.
54 (B.13.48) oþer mete: Listed in lines 56–62 (B.13.58–58a). Will and Patience get more than their share of both food (such as it is) and attention from the hosts, accentuating Will’s rudeness later. The elaborate chain of command, Reason as steward reminding the host Conscience to have the server Scripture bring up the dishes, accentuates the bathos (in Will’s eyes) of the nature of the food.
55–57 (B.13.49–53) He … he … he: L has not forgotten that Scripture is female. Rather, these are feminine pronouns. He, with a middle-front rounded vowel, from West Midland ho/heo, “she,” is much less common in B mss. than in C mss.; presumably these forms have been allowed to slip through by B scribes because there are no references in the vicinity to Scripture’s sex, no genitive or accusative her or reminder that Scripture is Clergie’s wife; but see B.13.26 above.
55 (B.13.49) Agite penitenciam: Do penance (Job 21:2, Ezek 18:30, Matt 3:2 [transposed], etc.: see Alford, Quot.). Luther quoted the Matthew
