to “pass from academic treatment of scriptural texts (associated with the universities) to a more inward, reflective consideration of Scripture, drawn from monastic traditions,” and cites Leclercq 1982 on the monastic practice of reading, with metaphors of eating, chewing, etc. Mann 1979:37 also cites Leclercq, and her whole essay is the seminal discussion of the deep relation in the poem between real food and spiritual food. All these text-foods set up Patience’s admonition later in the passus (in B, in the next passus) to Actyf to nourish himself on fiat voluntas tua (249; B.14.50).
The scene may not be as medieval as it seems. Cf. Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children (Knopf: Everyman’s Library, 1995), p. 176: “Reverend Mother doled out the curries and meatballs of intransigence, dishes imbued with the personality of their creator; Amine ate the fish salans of stubbornness and the birianis of determination.”
56 (B.13.50) diu perseuerans: long-persevering. In the next line, Scripture specifies the length of diu: in effect, the whole name of the drink, as with the mortar whose name begins post mortem (50–51 above) is “diu-perseverans-as-long-as-lyf-and-lycame-may-duyre”; it half-quotes, half-translates Matt 10:22: “qui autem perseveraverit usque in finem.” The verse is part of the passage in Matthew that contains Jesus’s instructions to the apostles, corresponding to Luke 10:7, quoted above, line 44a (B.13.39a). “Diu” is a natural enough addition, “diu perseverare” being a quite common phrase, as in Hildegard, “humilitatem attendite, et in ea diu perseverate” (PL 197.293), though it is as often used in a bad sense, of persevering in vice, as in the good sense here. Schmidt, however, by printing the reading “dia” of many manuscripts of both versions—the harder reading, and probably right—draws attention to what is surely a pun on “dya,” potion, a word L uses at 22.174 (B.20.174); (Schmidt 1987:92). Indeed the whole two-word phrase might be thought of as bilingual, either Latin “diu perseverans” or English “the drug perseverance.”
58 “This is a semely seruyce,” saide pacience (B.13.52 “Here is propre seruice,” quod Pacience, “þer fareþ no Prince bettre”): A deft C revision. Patience protests too much in B; the matter-of-fact remark in C is funnier.
59–62 Thenne cam contricion … non despicies (B.13.53–58a And he brouʒte vs … non despicies): Since contricion is the motion of the will that must precede acts of penitence, it (he?) is properly said to prepare the dishes. (In B no cook is mentioned.) Contrition will have a central role in the last scene of the poem. A pytaunce (60; B.13.57) is a tiny portion of food; OED, s.v. pittance, n. 2, but originally a gift to a religious house to allow an extra portion of food (the first meaning in OED). Its name is “For this shall everyone that is holy pray to thee in a seasonable time,” Ps 31:6 (te is God; pro hac means “because of thy forgiveness,” referring to the end of verse 5, “and thou hast forgiven the wickedness of my sin”). Thus the pittance is forgiveness, a gift from God: L plays on the two meanings. As forgiveness, it differs little from the “comfort” Conscience offers in the next two lines in both versions (in C, along with bothe clergie and scripture): “A contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise” (Ps 50:19). Though this comfort is spoken, it is food, too: see OED, s.v. comfort, v. 4.
In the B version, the pittance of forgiveness follows a mees of ooþer mete from the same two Psalms (both among the seven penitential psalms: cf. Alford, Quot. B.13.53, and above, 5.46n): Ps 31.1, Beati quorum … et quorum tecta sunt peccata, Blessed are they whose (iniquities are forgiven), and whose sins are covered (i.e., need not be confessed, because already forgiven through penitence—it is a dish of derne shrifte, B.13.55; see B.14.94n); Ps 31.2, Beatus vir, Blessed is the man (to whom the Lord hath not imputed sin); cf. Ps 31:5, Dixi [&] confitebor [tibi], I said, “And I will confess to you” (& is L’s addition, as is tibi for Domino); Psalm 50:3, Miserere mei deus, Have mercy on me, O God. In B it is tempting to see a clear progression, between the mess and the pittance, from penitence to forgiveness, though the cancellation of B.13.53–55 in C suggests that L had no such progression in mind: the meal, like the Psalms, intermingles penitence with trust in the Lord’s mercy.
61 Consience confortede vs, bothe clergie and scripture: I.e., all three waited on us.
64 (B.13.60) made hym merþe with his mete: Cf. Charity at 16.343 (B.15.217), who is “murieste of mouthe at mete ʒer he sitteth.” See 32–33n above.
65 (B.13.61) faste: Steadily, continuously, eagerly, hard.
65a (B.13.61a) Ve vobis … vinum: “Woe to you that are mighty to drink wine” (Isaiah 5:22). Schmidt quotes verse 21, “Woe to you that are wise in your own eyes and prudent in your own conceits,” as “account[ing] for the one quoted” (1995 edition of B), and “[having] special relevance to the Doctor’s situation, as will appear” (Parallel-Text edition). Note also verse 23, “That justify the wicked for gifts”: that is precisely the charge leveled against friars in line 47 (B.13.42) above.
66 (B.13.62) poddynges: A meat dish, haggis: a sausage consisting of the stomach or one of the entrails of a domestic animal, stuffed with minced meat, etc. and boiled (OED pudding n., 1).
Will resents the doctor’s food (64–93, B.13.60–85)
68–73a Thenne saide y … frygore &c (B.13.64–67a Thanne seide I … quadragenas &c): Will cloaks his envy (y mournede euere 64, B.13.60) in righteous indignation. See Romaunt of the Rose, 6178–81, where Fals-Semblant boasts that as a “fals religious” (6157) he prefers religious who are proud, who “feyne hem pore, and hemsilf feden/With gode morcels delicious,/And drinken good wyn precious,/And preche us povert and distresse” (Roman de la Rose 11014–17). Again, Love says to him, “Thou semest an hooly heremyte” (6481), and he replies, “‘Soth is, but I am an ypocrite.’/‘Thou gost and prechest poverte.’/‘Ye, sir, but richesse hath pouste.’/‘Thou prechest abstinence also.’/‘Sir, I wole fillen, so mote I go,/My paunche of good mete and wyn,/As shulde a maister of dyvyn;/For how that I me pover feyne,/Yit alle pore folk I disdeyne’” (6482–90, Roman de la Rose 11202–10).
What penaunce … ioye: what penances all who desired to come to any kind of joy suffered; not in B. (Penaunce is probably plural both here and in line 72, with assimilation of the final -s; cf. 73a and penaunces B.13.66.) In enlarging the subject of the sermon in the C version, L probably imagines the doctor preaching about the desert fathers: see B.15.269–71, “Lo! in legenda sanctorum, þe lif of holy Seintes,/What penaunce and pouerte and passion þei suffrede,/In hunger, in hete, in alle manere angres,” followed soon by reference to St Paul (though to working with his hands rather than to his sufferings; B.15.290–91). Compare further 83 below (B.13.76–77), on friars preaching about Christ’s sufferings for man, to B.15.260–68 (also C.16.327–29). In effect, Anima in B.15 preaches the sermon the doctor preached at St Paul’s. L uses penance throughout in the general sense “suffering”; thus, as line 87 makes explicit, the friar has been preaching Patience, and now fails to recognize his subject when they meet in person.
70 At poules (B.13.65 bifore þe deen of Poules): At St Paul’s Cross, the outdoor cross-pulpit in the churchyard of St Paul’s cathedral in London, a venue that suggests the doctor’s stature; see 11.54n.
73a In fame et frygore &c (B.13.67–67a In fame & frigore and flappes of scourges:/Ter cesus sum … quadragenas &c: In hunger and cold, etc., cf. 2 Cor 11:27. In C L picks (with a purpose; see 74–75a) two of the perils in which St Paul “glories” (2 Cor 11:30). In B he adds flappes of scourges (blows from whips): “Thrice
